Sheesh, and they say liberals have no sense of humour -- you right wingers are still quite uppity. You'd think after completely destroying the Democrats you'd learn to relax a little bit.
do you even know if it was a diebold machine, or are you just spouting the same rhetoric so brainwashed into you?
There is a possible third option, you know. I could be joking. FWIW, the machines weren't actually made Diebold, but we can only hope they used the ultra-secure password-protected Microsoft Access databases as well.
The Diebold machines have told us that President Bush won the election. Why can't the Democrats be satisfied with that? I mean, the integrity of the votes was secured by a Microsoft Access database, which as we all know has *password protection*. The only way someone could have tampered with the results would be if the designers were somehow partisan and wanted to promise the election to a particular candidate.
And as if the people in the USA would stand for their black box voting machines to be designed by a pro-Bush partisan. It's just not realistic, so stop doubting and Praise Jesus. God Bless America.
Actually, that is quite a powerful statement you are making fun of it. They are acknowledging that TCO and ROI are not mystical magical numbers that one "side" is automatically superior to the other. The point is that the TCO and ROI depend as much on the organization as the software solution they are looking to implement. It's a hell of a lot stronger statement than pretending that there is one solution that is the most optimal for all organizations.
I *HAVE* read that act you linked to, in full. Perhaps you should? I'll quote it for you from YOUR link, since you are too lazy.
"(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty" -- Section 319
319 (1) is exactly what you said, inciting violence against another group. But 319 (2) is exactly what I said, and what they used against that Holocaust denier Doug Collins.
Before you claim that I am misinformed again, check to make sure your evidence doesn't prove my point instead of yours.
1.... Anti Hate laws protect you from being victimized by hate promoting groups.
I personally agree that on balance, the anti-hate laws are a good thing. My point was not that they are bad, but that they are a restriction on speech that the USA does not have.
2. Yes, we have the 'not withstanding clause
I'm glad you agree.
3. not true (the canadian part), you're a sucker.
Google is your friend. Look it up, I wasn't kidding or making that up... this is going on under our very notices and most Canadians are like you don't have any clue it even exists.
4. The French DJ did not simply make an off-colour remark or two that were deemed hateful.. the station's entire theme is hateful attacks on anyone and everyone with no basis in truth at all, as if it is some kind of entertainment!
Let's see, hateful attacks with no basis in truth? That sounds like a summary of American talk radio to me. In Canada that is illegal... you may think it's a good thing but that doesn't make what I said untrue.
Repeat after me: I wasn't saying that the USA is better than Canada. I *prefer* living in Canada, and on balance I like the laws we have up here. But many liberal Americans have misconceptions about Canada, thinking that it is just like the USA but without George Bush. From an ACLU point of view, Canada's system lacks many freedoms that Americans take for granted.
Why you should think twice before heading to Canad
on
What's Going On in Canada?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Yet another reason to come to the Great White North!
I must start off by saying that I love my beloved Canada -- but I just want to add a dose of realism to this discussion. Canada is not a freedom-lovers paradise by any means. We have our fair share of problems which don't happen to be in the spotlight as much as the USA transgressions on freedom because it's not so unusual.
(1) We don't have free speech in Canada.
Hate a group of people, and want to say it in public? You're breaking the law, as Hate Speech is a violation of the criminal code. That's right, you can get fined or thrown in jail for something you said because others find it hateful. Whether you agree with this or not, it's certainly not near the ideal of free speech attempted by the USA's first amendment.
(2) Our constitution has an exemption clause.
The USA Constitution is set in stone, and can only be overridden by an amendment which is a very difficult process. Canada's constitution has a built-in "or maybe not" clause, letting politicians willfully violate our Charter of Rights and Freedoms if they want to in a process much simpler than in the USA. Again, this has benefits as well as drawbacks, but there are no absolute protections for rights like the USA constitution enshrines.
(3) We have our own "anti-terror" violations of due process.
In the USA you have the PATRIOT act and Guantanemo Bay, but here in Canada we have "Security Certificates". These are used against Muslims -- er, make that evildoers -- who are suspected of terrorist activities. They are handed out by a secret court and a secret judge, and the accused is not allowed to see the charges levied against him or her.
(4) Our media regulator is trigger happy.
In the USA you've got Stern being targeted and fined by the FCC, but the situation in Canada is little better. We are far more liberal about nudity and sexuality -- it's not uncommon to see full male or female nudity on broadcast television and we have shows on our cable networks that need to be censored on USA cable networks. But if you say something deemed hateful, you're not welcome.
During the brief period Stern was broadcast here, he ran afoul of the hate crimes police for poking fun on French-Canadians. More recently, they tried to revoke the radio license of the most popular station in Quebec City because one of the DJs made some off-colour remarks that were deemed hateful.
Anyhow -- I want to reiterate that I love living in Canada, and that I prefer it to the USA. But many Americans are under the false belief that it is a paradise of freedom, but we have our own warts too and the full truth deserves to be out there so people can make informed decisions.
Have you found a way to get support for the less sexy projects and if so, how?
Easy answer: he pays people to do it. There are 5-10 people employed by his company to work on Ubuntu, doing all sorts of unsexy things like answering peoples questions on IRC and mailing lists and actually paying attention to bugfixes and getting out a release on schedule.
Who are these people that would vote for Nader if he was on the ballot, but will vote for Kerry if Nader is not on the ballot? Are there any of them? If Nader was my candidate but not qualified because pro-Kerry people blocked his access to the ballot, would I really be expected to vote Kerry? At least the Republicans trying to disqualify black voters and trashing Democratic voter registrations makes logical sense in an evil sort of way.
Makes you think, of all the countries in the world, should the USA really be the one trying to spread democracy? They seem to have a really lousy grip on the whole concept right now. All of these events in the news surrounding votes should be about countries in the so-called "third world", not in the good old USofA.
That's right, me and everyone else who disagree with you work for the RIAA! Well spotted, mate!
Putting that aside, your analysis is incredibly simplistic. Copy protection is only one of a myriad of factors that affects willingness to grab copyrighted files off p2p networks. Some of those factors include: * Repect for copyrights. Perhaps South Korea doesn't have the same corporation-worshipping mantra we have in the West? * Price of content. If the DVDs and CDs people want are priced more than people can afford, they will grab them for free instead. * Availability. If high-quality free content is available and people, and the applications to aquire them are easy to use, it will encourage more filesharing. * Legal difficulties. If you don't fear the RIAA or other policing knocking down your door, you are again more likely to grab stuff of P2P. * Network infrastructure. If your ISP or networking technology limits your upload/download potential, you either hit a rate cap and it costs you money, or download too slowly to make p2p worthwhile.
Copy protection is also a factor, I'm sure. But here, very few CDs are copy protected, enough so that it would be a surprise if a random CD purchased at a store had copy protection on it. Unless South Korea has a significantly higher percentage of copy protected CDs, I fail to see how that could explain the additional filesharing when the other factors I listed above have far more explanatory power.
You must be living in a dream world. South Korea is widely known to be the world's leader in p2p filesharing. It only makes sense that the content middleman industries would suffer as a result of that, copy protection or not. Why pay for what you can get for free, especially when the practice is so commonplace that it's not considered "bad"?
Unless you can show that a higher percentage of South Korean CDs are copy protected compared with North America or Europe, you've got no argument.
Yes, for out-of-the-box support, modern Linux distros can't be beat. However, many common hardware devices do not play well with Linux -- if you use Linux you know this as well as I do. This is not an insult to the developers, they have done an amazing job and deserve a lot of credit, but at the same time you have to admit that getting certain things working in Linux is a pain in the ass. Webcams, 3D accelerated video, scanners, many printers, dual monitor configurations, many wireless cards with a/g support, the list goes on.
Don't get me wrong -- many of those things can be accomplished if you know what you are doing and can tweak the configuration settings yourself. I have yet to encounter a device that I couldn't get working with Linux -- but with some of them it was quite an involved process.
To be fair, in many cases old hardware that worked with windows 98 won't work with Windows XP but will work with Linux no problem. So I know it goes both ways, I'm not trying to make Linux seem worse than it is. But if you are using the latest version of windows you can go to Best Buy or $whatever and buy pretty much anything you want, knowing that it will be able to work after installing the drivers. You just can't say that about Linux.
You may have said it a touch flame-ily, but whatever, you are completely right on all three counts. Of the existing and upcoming distros that actually matter to corporations, Gnome is the only one in the game. And no matter what people think, Linux is not ready on the home desktop right now (except for tinkerers) simply because of a lack of driver support. On the other hand, Linux is more than ready for many corporate desktops today and Gnome is the correct choice for those.
Where would Mozilla be today had AOL/Netscape not pull millions of dollars of R&D money into building it up? Probably nowhere, or just now becoming remotely useful.
That's just bull. I'm a Gnome zealot through and through but I do admit that KHTML is a decent rendering engine, even if I do prefer Gecko/Mozilla instead. If Mozilla didn't exist, more energy would be spent on KHTML and it or something else just as good would be commonplace. AOL/Netscape kept up the Mozilla Suite while the marketshare tumbled and has only started to recover since AOL let loose their grip and FireFox came to be.
It was great that AOL put a little bit of money into the Mozilla foundation, but they didn't save the world.... Mozilla is good _despite_ AOL, not because of it.
You joke, but with the amount of money that Microsoft makes they could very easily refocus on their browser and make it a lot more competitive. If they added tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and a few other popular FireFox features they would prevent a lot of average Windows users from switching to FireFox.
With all the money they make there, I really can't understand why they _don't_ do this. It makes no sense at all why they'd just give up on their browser like they have.
Uh, maybe you're new the game but most *editorial* pages contain, well, *editorials*. And the reason they have editorial pages is because they don't want their own bias to interfere with the news stories they publish. The problem is *not* with the editorials themselves, it's with publishing editorials in the news pages.
See the editorial today in the nytimes as an example of this. They publish an editorial saying that Condi should be fired because of the Iraqi centrifuge lies/mistruths/errors/whatever. This was an opinion based on their investigative news article published on the weekend, which was an actual news item and not an editorial.
The point is that the Times presented the facts in the news pages, and suggested their opinion as to a course of action in the editorial pages. Many people _like_ editorials, and it's not reasonable to suggest that they should go away. A more laudible goal for you should be to decry the bias in the news articles themselves -- a very real problem -- instead of complaining about a popular feature of the newspapers.
How? Very simple... let the distribution manage the updates for you. If you are using free software it shouldn't be a problem -- and if you aren't a free software zealot for drivers then use a distribution that manages the binary graphics drivers for you. It's not that hard.
"Linux" is a shitty platform for binary compatibility though, and all indications suggest that this will continue to be the case for the near future at least. Don't expect non-free games and other software binaries to work with "Linux" anytime soon, instead they will work with a subset of supported distributions.
In the long run, there may be a LSB-alike for games, but that is a long way off still.
With a six-month release schedule, solid funding, and many prominent Debian and Gnome developers employed by Canonical to work on Ubuntu, the future looks bright for this project. For such a new distribution they have already come quite a long way. The mailing lists and IRC channel are full of people checking out the distribution, and has already moved into the top twenty distributions listed on DistroWatch, an impressive feat considering how young the project still is.
As Ubuntu Warty is still in preview period, there are several quirks that are still being ironed out before the final release, but it is already a very stable and solid desktop system. I predict that this distribution will have the staying power that so many other Linux options seem to lack.
Because unlike the other 104, Ubuntu has proper funding, contributes packages back upstream to Debian, employs a lot of prominent Debian and Gnome hackers, and is already a kick-ass distribution while in the preview phase of their first release. This the flavour de jour for a very good reason, it's suprisingly kick-ass.
Uh, a laptop-using kind of Linux user? Maybe you find assembling laptops easier than I do...
Yes, I know that major manufacturers (HP) are finally starting to release laptops without the Windows tax, but that is a very new development. Hopefully more will pick up this on this trend, but for the vast majority of cases if you want a laptop you're stuck with also buying Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed. Please see my reply to the other person who replied to me. Note the timestamp is before you tried to "correct" me?
Sheesh, and they say liberals have no sense of humour -- you right wingers are still quite uppity. You'd think after completely destroying the Democrats you'd learn to relax a little bit.
do you even know if it was a diebold machine, or are you just spouting the same rhetoric so brainwashed into you?
There is a possible third option, you know. I could be joking. FWIW, the machines weren't actually made Diebold, but we can only hope they used the ultra-secure password-protected Microsoft Access databases as well.
The Diebold machines have told us that President Bush won the election. Why can't the Democrats be satisfied with that? I mean, the integrity of the votes was secured by a Microsoft Access database, which as we all know has *password protection*. The only way someone could have tampered with the results would be if the designers were somehow partisan and wanted to promise the election to a particular candidate.
And as if the people in the USA would stand for their black box voting machines to be designed by a pro-Bush partisan. It's just not realistic, so stop doubting and Praise Jesus. God Bless America.
Actually, that is quite a powerful statement you are making fun of it. They are acknowledging that TCO and ROI are not mystical magical numbers that one "side" is automatically superior to the other. The point is that the TCO and ROI depend as much on the organization as the software solution they are looking to implement. It's a hell of a lot stronger statement than pretending that there is one solution that is the most optimal for all organizations.
I think you meant to reply to someone else. If not, I have no idea what you mean in context the context of my post or its parent.
I *HAVE* read that act you linked to, in full. Perhaps you should? I'll quote it for you from YOUR link, since you are too lazy.
"(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty" -- Section 319
319 (1) is exactly what you said, inciting violence against another group. But 319 (2) is exactly what I said, and what they used against that Holocaust denier Doug Collins.
Before you claim that I am misinformed again, check to make sure your evidence doesn't prove my point instead of yours.
1. ... Anti Hate laws protect you from being victimized by hate promoting groups.
.. the station's entire theme is hateful attacks on anyone and everyone with no basis in truth at all, as if it is some kind of entertainment!
I personally agree that on balance, the anti-hate laws are a good thing. My point was not that they are bad, but that they are a restriction on speech that the USA does not have.
2. Yes, we have the 'not withstanding clause
I'm glad you agree.
3. not true (the canadian part), you're a sucker.
Google is your friend. Look it up, I wasn't kidding or making that up... this is going on under our very notices and most Canadians are like you don't have any clue it even exists.
4. The French DJ did not simply make an off-colour remark or two that were deemed hateful
Let's see, hateful attacks with no basis in truth? That sounds like a summary of American talk radio to me. In Canada that is illegal... you may think it's a good thing but that doesn't make what I said untrue.
Repeat after me: I wasn't saying that the USA is better than Canada. I *prefer* living in Canada, and on balance I like the laws we have up here. But many liberal Americans have misconceptions about Canada, thinking that it is just like the USA but without George Bush. From an ACLU point of view, Canada's system lacks many freedoms that Americans take for granted.
Yet another reason to come to the Great White North!
I must start off by saying that I love my beloved Canada -- but I just want to add a dose of realism to this discussion. Canada is not a freedom-lovers paradise by any means. We have our fair share of problems which don't happen to be in the spotlight as much as the USA transgressions on freedom because it's not so unusual.
(1) We don't have free speech in Canada.
Hate a group of people, and want to say it in public? You're breaking the law, as Hate Speech is a violation of the criminal code. That's right, you can get fined or thrown in jail for something you said because others find it hateful. Whether you agree with this or not, it's certainly not near the ideal of free speech attempted by the USA's first amendment.
(2) Our constitution has an exemption clause.
The USA Constitution is set in stone, and can only be overridden by an amendment which is a very difficult process. Canada's constitution has a built-in "or maybe not" clause, letting politicians willfully violate our Charter of Rights and Freedoms if they want to in a process much simpler than in the USA. Again, this has benefits as well as drawbacks, but there are no absolute protections for rights like the USA constitution enshrines.
(3) We have our own "anti-terror" violations of due process.
In the USA you have the PATRIOT act and Guantanemo Bay, but here in Canada we have "Security Certificates". These are used against Muslims -- er, make that evildoers -- who are suspected of terrorist activities. They are handed out by a secret court and a secret judge, and the accused is not allowed to see the charges levied against him or her.
(4) Our media regulator is trigger happy.
In the USA you've got Stern being targeted and fined by the FCC, but the situation in Canada is little better. We are far more liberal about nudity and sexuality -- it's not uncommon to see full male or female nudity on broadcast television and we have shows on our cable networks that need to be censored on USA cable networks. But if you say something deemed hateful, you're not welcome.
During the brief period Stern was broadcast here, he ran afoul of the hate crimes police for poking fun on French-Canadians. More recently, they tried to revoke the radio license of the most popular station in Quebec City because one of the DJs made some off-colour remarks that were deemed hateful.
Anyhow -- I want to reiterate that I love living in Canada, and that I prefer it to the USA. But many Americans are under the false belief that it is a paradise of freedom, but we have our own warts too and the full truth deserves to be out there so people can make informed decisions.
Have you found a way to get support for the less sexy projects and if so, how?
Easy answer: he pays people to do it. There are 5-10 people employed by his company to work on Ubuntu, doing all sorts of unsexy things like answering peoples questions on IRC and mailing lists and actually paying attention to bugfixes and getting out a release on schedule.
Hey now... you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
That's right, a world omelette! In the meantime, I hope you don't mind being scrambled.
Who are these people that would vote for Nader if he was on the ballot, but will vote for Kerry if Nader is not on the ballot? Are there any of them? If Nader was my candidate but not qualified because pro-Kerry people blocked his access to the ballot, would I really be expected to vote Kerry? At least the Republicans trying to disqualify black voters and trashing Democratic voter registrations makes logical sense in an evil sort of way.
Makes you think, of all the countries in the world, should the USA really be the one trying to spread democracy? They seem to have a really lousy grip on the whole concept right now. All of these events in the news surrounding votes should be about countries in the so-called "third world", not in the good old USofA.
That's right, me and everyone else who disagree with you work for the RIAA! Well spotted, mate!
Putting that aside, your analysis is incredibly simplistic. Copy protection is only one of a myriad of factors that affects willingness to grab copyrighted files off p2p networks. Some of those factors include:
* Repect for copyrights. Perhaps South Korea doesn't have the same corporation-worshipping mantra we have in the West?
* Price of content. If the DVDs and CDs people want are priced more than people can afford, they will grab them for free instead.
* Availability. If high-quality free content is available and people, and the applications to aquire them are easy to use, it will encourage more filesharing.
* Legal difficulties. If you don't fear the RIAA or other policing knocking down your door, you are again more likely to grab stuff of P2P.
* Network infrastructure. If your ISP or networking technology limits your upload/download potential, you either hit a rate cap and it costs you money, or download too slowly to make p2p worthwhile.
Copy protection is also a factor, I'm sure. But here, very few CDs are copy protected, enough so that it would be a surprise if a random CD purchased at a store had copy protection on it. Unless South Korea has a significantly higher percentage of copy protected CDs, I fail to see how that could explain the additional filesharing when the other factors I listed above have far more explanatory power.
You must be living in a dream world. South Korea is widely known to be the world's leader in p2p filesharing. It only makes sense that the content middleman industries would suffer as a result of that, copy protection or not. Why pay for what you can get for free, especially when the practice is so commonplace that it's not considered "bad"?
Unless you can show that a higher percentage of South Korean CDs are copy protected compared with North America or Europe, you've got no argument.
Yes, for out-of-the-box support, modern Linux distros can't be beat. However, many common hardware devices do not play well with Linux -- if you use Linux you know this as well as I do. This is not an insult to the developers, they have done an amazing job and deserve a lot of credit, but at the same time you have to admit that getting certain things working in Linux is a pain in the ass. Webcams, 3D accelerated video, scanners, many printers, dual monitor configurations, many wireless cards with a/g support, the list goes on.
Don't get me wrong -- many of those things can be accomplished if you know what you are doing and can tweak the configuration settings yourself. I have yet to encounter a device that I couldn't get working with Linux -- but with some of them it was quite an involved process.
To be fair, in many cases old hardware that worked with windows 98 won't work with Windows XP but will work with Linux no problem. So I know it goes both ways, I'm not trying to make Linux seem worse than it is. But if you are using the latest version of windows you can go to Best Buy or $whatever and buy pretty much anything you want, knowing that it will be able to work after installing the drivers. You just can't say that about Linux.
You may have said it a touch flame-ily, but whatever, you are completely right on all three counts. Of the existing and upcoming distros that actually matter to corporations, Gnome is the only one in the game. And no matter what people think, Linux is not ready on the home desktop right now (except for tinkerers) simply because of a lack of driver support. On the other hand, Linux is more than ready for many corporate desktops today and Gnome is the correct choice for those.
The transcript of these debates should be on the NOW website somewhere here:
Well yeah, maybe it should be, but it's not. How helpful, thanks!
Where would Mozilla be today had AOL/Netscape not pull millions of dollars of R&D money into building it up? Probably nowhere, or just now becoming remotely useful.
That's just bull. I'm a Gnome zealot through and through but I do admit that KHTML is a decent rendering engine, even if I do prefer Gecko/Mozilla instead. If Mozilla didn't exist, more energy would be spent on KHTML and it or something else just as good would be commonplace. AOL/Netscape kept up the Mozilla Suite while the marketshare tumbled and has only started to recover since AOL let loose their grip and FireFox came to be.
It was great that AOL put a little bit of money into the Mozilla foundation, but they didn't save the world.... Mozilla is good _despite_ AOL, not because of it.
Acknowledging God as the author of liberty
What? Obviously the tooth fairy is the author of liberty, not God. I read it in a book.
You joke, but with the amount of money that Microsoft makes they could very easily refocus on their browser and make it a lot more competitive. If they added tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and a few other popular FireFox features they would prevent a lot of average Windows users from switching to FireFox.
With all the money they make there, I really can't understand why they _don't_ do this. It makes no sense at all why they'd just give up on their browser like they have.
The L is for "Libre", to distinguish it from free "Beer" software.
Uh, maybe you're new the game but most *editorial* pages contain, well, *editorials*. And the reason they have editorial pages is because they don't want their own bias to interfere with the news stories they publish. The problem is *not* with the editorials themselves, it's with publishing editorials in the news pages.
See the editorial today in the nytimes as an example of this. They publish an editorial saying that Condi should be fired because of the Iraqi centrifuge lies/mistruths/errors/whatever. This was an opinion based on their investigative news article published on the weekend, which was an actual news item and not an editorial.
The point is that the Times presented the facts in the news pages, and suggested their opinion as to a course of action in the editorial pages. Many people _like_ editorials, and it's not reasonable to suggest that they should go away. A more laudible goal for you should be to decry the bias in the news articles themselves -- a very real problem -- instead of complaining about a popular feature of the newspapers.
How? Very simple... let the distribution manage the updates for you. If you are using free software it shouldn't be a problem -- and if you aren't a free software zealot for drivers then use a distribution that manages the binary graphics drivers for you. It's not that hard.
"Linux" is a shitty platform for binary compatibility though, and all indications suggest that this will continue to be the case for the near future at least. Don't expect non-free games and other software binaries to work with "Linux" anytime soon, instead they will work with a subset of supported distributions.
In the long run, there may be a LSB-alike for games, but that is a long way off still.
Because unlike the other 104, Ubuntu has proper funding, contributes packages back upstream to Debian, employs a lot of prominent Debian and Gnome hackers, and is already a kick-ass distribution while in the preview phase of their first release. This the flavour de jour for a very good reason, it's suprisingly kick-ass.
Uh, a laptop-using kind of Linux user? Maybe you find assembling laptops easier than I do...
Yes, I know that major manufacturers (HP) are finally starting to release laptops without the Windows tax, but that is a very new development. Hopefully more will pick up this on this trend, but for the vast majority of cases if you want a laptop you're stuck with also buying Windows.