I'm sick of people acting like "Software Freedom" is a life-and-death issue. Linus is right. If it works, use it. If it doesn't work, don't. If the Free Software product is better, use it. If the proprietary/closed/whatever version is better - use it. Or contribute to the open product until it's better, THEN use it. The key point here is, USE WHAT WORKS.
Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of open-source stuff, I admire RMS and the GNU project for everything they've contributed to the computing world, and I enjoy having the freedom to tinker with stuff. In the end, though, I'll use whatever is going to work best for ME in whatever situation.
Quite a selfish viewpoint you have there - it turns out that the best solution for YOU may not be the best for society at large. Perhaps you need to brush up on FSF philosphy. No one said it as "life-or-death". But if businesses had their way, there would be no free software - and you don't find that the least bit scary? Think about it - you have 0 rights to your hardware unless you start dishing out cash and accepting possibly onerous license agreements. In other words, you give up all of your rights.
So you have a choice - live in a world where free software is a critical force for maintaining the rights of consumers, or live in a world where you just want whats "best", and therefor implying that the world would be just fine without free software. I hope you thing the first, because the second is a scary world indeed.
The Toddler- prick that he is - is also very creative, and could be said to have saved the industry, AND He created the Spidey's-black-suit = symbiote = Venom waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy back in Amazing Spiderman 299-301. So this being a forum dedicated to all things open source, he had every right to snake back his creation
The black suit appeared in Secret Wars #8, published around 84, and was a Jim Shooter story. Amazing Spider-Man #299 (April 88) had the first full appearance of Venom on the last page, but the costume was determined to be a symbiote back in #258.
Another crappy headline - this test was canceled for China and India only, and only about 1300 or so students from those countries even took the tesk in 2002...
Thats not what I said... being a Lindows insider gives you access to games, apps, etc. I'm talking about a AOL-only Internet appliance you can plunk down in front of grandma so she can see pictures of your kids. An AOL-subsidized Linux distribution on a bare-bones PC could easily retail for $200. AOL ran fine 5 years ago when top-of-the-line was half (or less) as powerful as a bare-bones systems nowadays.
Why shouldn't AOL team up with a linux distribution to make some kind of "AOL-Linux"? It would be a niche product basically for people who use their PC's exclusively for AOL and web browsing. A 50% tax on perfectly usable hardware ($200 bare bones at Walmart, $300 for same system with windows) is quite excessive.
Have you played Morrowind? I've Got an Athlon 1800 w/ gygabyte 333 board, 512 MB ram, Gforce 4 ti 4600, and my frame rates are barely adequate. I'm talking 20 frames sec in outdoor scenes with lots of detail.
I have the same problem with Anarchy Online - but Morrowind is available on the X-Box which is not spectacular hardware. The availability of better equipment should not mean that game programmers can ignore efficiency.
Quake III and WC III run fine on computers with a single processor, non SCSI non RAID hard drives, moderate amounts of RAM, and a decent video card. There simply are no games out there to justify spending so much, and by time a game does in fact appear, the cost of the advertised system will have dropped tremendously.
One could make the argument that if you recognize the current Batman as "canon" then you recognize DC as the current author or caretaker for the character. By that rational, the 60's series is also canon, because it was created with permission from DC
It boils down to what the owner of the character says - if DC comes out and says the 60s TV series isn't canon, then its not. Marvel doesn't claim that the recent Spiderman or X-Men movies are canon. Not to mention that DC has explicitly wiped out the Golden Age Batman from their continuity anyway
Moore used characters based on a defunct comic company called Charlton, which DC has just acquired the rights to. Rather than use those characters directly, he based his characters off them (e.g. Dr Manhatten from Captain Atom). Some of those old Charlton characters are still around today, like the Blue Beetle and The Question.
And yes striped down five year-old "64Mb" systems running Mozilla?!?!?... well at least you could also reduce costs with employees going postal and therefore not needing pay cheques:)
Hey, there was a time when 64 MB was "state-of-the-art". The question is, does today's hardware make people *so* much more productive it justifies spending thousands of dollars? Maybe, if you play games, or render 3D art, or search for extraterrestrial life. But we're talking e-mail here folks! Spell checkers really haven't improved much in 15 years. I think its funny walking into a computer store and seeing the latest/greatest boxes, but off to the side there is a 7 year old IBM terminal the interfaces with their 7 year old, perfectly functional inventory system. The whole "you should be running the latest software out there, you need the latest hardware to run the latest software" cycle is a complete racket. Just because computers *can* be made more powerful doesn't mean they *need* to be.
I don't know about what others think, but the fact that they are standardizing on the single most expensive solution bothers me. I am also bothered by the fact that they have either subscribed to microsoft FUD or just don't care. The vast majority of those 70,000 need word processing, web browsing, and email for which MS is a stupidly expensive solution. I would rather see them all using 5 year old hardware running a stripped down, custom Linux distro with Mozilla and an office suite.
The effective of a MS solution is not justified by its cost period - and as a taxpayer, I say its a problem.
I think this law should be applied to snail-mail too - the credit card applications I get lately are disguised as legitimate checks, or look like certified letters. While I'm sure they are valid companies and offers, I find myself wasting time opening every piece of mail due to their deceptive practices. Annoying!
First, create some files called "LOTR 2 Towers - divx REAL THING.avi" and put them on 50 or so gnutella nodes. Then "leak" the news that pirated copies have hit the P2P networks, and get it on slashdot. Then what happens? Your 50 seed copies turn into 10,000 bogus files. Then when the real movie hits, it will be harder to find the real copies. Its kinda like the insect control strategy of release millions of sterilized males to reduce the changes of real fertilization happening.
Oh well probably not, but I do think it would be effective.
Crude, but true. These drinks have an insane amount of carbohydrates, which most diet systems (Zone, Atkins) seem to agree gets converted very quickly to fat. The sugar can also increase your share of dental problems (it certainly doesn't help). Personally I have found diet soda to be a decent substitute, but water is of course ideal.
I agree - it seems like the biggest privacy issues in this country are petty at best. Oh no, someone is sending me targeting advertising! Oh no, someone is searching my luggage for a bomb! As an honest citizen, my privacy/body/anything is *far* more likely to be violated by another citizen than the government - I think the Constitution and Supreme Court have done a fine job protecting privacy (perhaps even a little too fine).
I have just started using Mozilla full time at home. I am starting to think it is the most signifigant app on the linux destop ever. Why? For the first time when surfing the web on linux, the browser has faded away and I am paying 100% focused on the content. In previous versions of Netscape, I was constantly distracted by ugly font or odd placement of things. Mozilla on the other hand renders everything great. I call it the most signifigant app so far because if web browsing "Has Arrived", and most people spend most of their time on the web, then the linux desktop is that much closed to "Arrival" as well. Its odd that the best complement I can give a browser is to say I don't even notice it!
As I understand Christian thought, God is eternal, here is a suggestion that the Universe is eternal, surely if you exclude an eternal Universe as being nonsensical, then God goes along with it, and I'm pretty sure that's blasphemy. I appreciate that the Universe is not required for Gods existence, I'm simply saying that one hypothesis is just as valid as the other within their respective frames of reference.
You mention in a previous post that Athiests simply haven't spent the time to understand Christians, well some of us are ex Christians, who really sat down and thought about it very hard. I do not wish to attack your religion, if that's what you need to get through the day, but when you are saying that God is eternal, and exists outside of space and time (previous post) on the one hand, but that the Universe MUST have a start and end, and it's foolish to consider any other possibility, well you are proving that you have faith, not that you've thought about it.
I never said it's foolish to consider a cyclical universe - for a while it was foolish to believe the Earth revolves around the Sun. All I said was that the theory behind such a notion is rather new, and hard (if not impossible) to test, and that we'll see what happens. I definitely think the Universe had a beginning, and there is hard evidence to support a Big Bang theory, but no evidence to support that the three minutes before the Big Bang were the three minutes of another Universe's Big Crunch. I simply find it highly unlikely that the atoms in my body (which at one point where about six inches from the atoms in your body) got here without some help from Intelligent Design. Speaking of which, its a good thing all this universal constants are what they are, or matter would not have even been able to coalesce into atoms!
All I'm saying is that the universe, cyclical or otherwise, screams "Intelligent Design" - Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
I am sorry you have lost your faith. Being an athiest would take more faith than I could ever possibly have.
You are assuming no infinite regression of causes. There is no reason to believe that the universe did not exist forever. Really: Why must it be bounded by a beginning or end?
I thing the Wolfram book A New Kind of Science talks about it. I'm not up on cutting edge theories of everything, so we'll see what happens in the next 50 years. But keep in mind this kind of theory goes against all knowledge ever directly observed - all things have a beginning, all things have an end. As it stands this exact moment, there are plenty of reasons (data like Doppler shifts) to believe the Universe is expanding forever and only theory to describe why there will be a Big Crunch.
Religion and science both strive to do the same thing: explain who we are, where we came from, where we're going and why we're here. The difference is that science doesn't have the arrogance of claiming to already have the answers.
Except that science is doomed to fail! The entire principle of cause and effect, upon which the entire scientific method is based on, breaks down when one looks at the origin of the Universe. "Where we came from" in science is simply the effect of some previous cause, so we can go all the way back to the Big Bang (or even a previous point of origin), then thats it. Christianity is actually a super-set of science, claiming that an eternal Creator, who exists outside time and space, created the Universe and later man, and has domain over scientific laws. There are no real conflicts of interest that haven't left the realm of scientific debate. A very applicable passage that in my mind that characterizes God in this way is Exodus 3:13-15:
The Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Isreal and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say to the people of Isreal, 'I AM has sent me to you' "
Athiests aren't morons, many of them simply haven't taken the time to understand what Christians believe.
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Don't get me wrong. I'm in favor of open-source stuff, I admire RMS and the GNU project for everything they've contributed to the computing world, and I enjoy having the freedom to tinker with stuff. In the end, though, I'll use whatever is going to work best for ME in whatever situation.
Quite a selfish viewpoint you have there - it turns out that the best solution for YOU may not be the best for society at large. Perhaps you need to brush up on FSF philosphy. No one said it as "life-or-death". But if businesses had their way, there would be no free software - and you don't find that the least bit scary? Think about it - you have 0 rights to your hardware unless you start dishing out cash and accepting possibly onerous license agreements. In other words, you give up all of your rights.
So you have a choice - live in a world where free software is a critical force for maintaining the rights of consumers, or live in a world where you just want whats "best", and therefor implying that the world would be just fine without free software. I hope you thing the first, because the second is a scary world indeed.
The black suit appeared in Secret Wars #8, published around 84, and was a Jim Shooter story. Amazing Spider-Man #299 (April 88) had the first full appearance of Venom on the last page, but the costume was determined to be a symbiote back in #258.
I already patented mouse gestures. Not just for web browsing either, for menus and stuff as well. Y'all can expect to hear from my lawyers soon.
Another crappy headline - this test was canceled for China and India only, and only about 1300 or so students from those countries even took the tesk in 2002...
Being a Lindows Insider is $99/yr. 50%?
Thats not what I said... being a Lindows insider gives you access to games, apps, etc. I'm talking about a AOL-only Internet appliance you can plunk down in front of grandma so she can see pictures of your kids. An AOL-subsidized Linux distribution on a bare-bones PC could easily retail for $200. AOL ran fine 5 years ago when top-of-the-line was half (or less) as powerful as a bare-bones systems nowadays.
Why shouldn't AOL team up with a linux distribution to make some kind of "AOL-Linux"? It would be a niche product basically for people who use their PC's exclusively for AOL and web browsing. A 50% tax on perfectly usable hardware ($200 bare bones at Walmart, $300 for same system with windows) is quite excessive.
Have you played Morrowind? I've Got an Athlon 1800 w/ gygabyte 333 board, 512 MB ram, Gforce 4 ti 4600, and my frame rates are barely adequate. I'm talking 20 frames sec in outdoor scenes with lots of detail.
I have the same problem with Anarchy Online - but Morrowind is available on the X-Box which is not spectacular hardware. The availability of better equipment should not mean that game programmers can ignore efficiency.
Quake III and WC III run fine on computers with a single processor, non SCSI non RAID hard drives, moderate amounts of RAM, and a decent video card. There simply are no games out there to justify spending so much, and by time a game does in fact appear, the cost of the advertised system will have dropped tremendously.
One could make the argument that if you recognize the current Batman as "canon" then you recognize DC as the current author or caretaker for the character. By that rational, the 60's series is also canon, because it was created with permission from DC
It boils down to what the owner of the character says - if DC comes out and says the 60s TV series isn't canon, then its not. Marvel doesn't claim that the recent Spiderman or X-Men movies are canon. Not to mention that DC has explicitly wiped out the Golden Age Batman from their continuity anyway
Moore used characters based on a defunct comic company called Charlton, which DC has just acquired the rights to. Rather than use those characters directly, he based his characters off them (e.g. Dr Manhatten from Captain Atom). Some of those old Charlton characters are still around today, like the Blue Beetle and The Question.
Hey, there was a time when 64 MB was "state-of-the-art". The question is, does today's hardware make people *so* much more productive it justifies spending thousands of dollars? Maybe, if you play games, or render 3D art, or search for extraterrestrial life. But we're talking e-mail here folks! Spell checkers really haven't improved much in 15 years. I think its funny walking into a computer store and seeing the latest/greatest boxes, but off to the side there is a 7 year old IBM terminal the interfaces with their 7 year old, perfectly functional inventory system. The whole "you should be running the latest software out there, you need the latest hardware to run the latest software" cycle is a complete racket. Just because computers *can* be made more powerful doesn't mean they *need* to be.
I don't know about what others think, but the fact that they are standardizing on the single most expensive solution bothers me. I am also bothered by the fact that they have either subscribed to microsoft FUD or just don't care. The vast majority of those 70,000 need word processing, web browsing, and email for which MS is a stupidly expensive solution. I would rather see them all using 5 year old hardware running a stripped down, custom Linux distro with Mozilla and an office suite.
The effective of a MS solution is not justified by its cost period - and as a taxpayer, I say its a problem.
For the curious, a decoder
I think this law should be applied to snail-mail too - the credit card applications I get lately are disguised as legitimate checks, or look like certified letters. While I'm sure they are valid companies and offers, I find myself wasting time opening every piece of mail due to their deceptive practices. Annoying!
Doesn't this completely vindicate eBay? Or is there where "patent-pending" makes a difference?
I don't care how right or wrong you are, pathetic trolls like this are inexcusable
First, create some files called "LOTR 2 Towers - divx REAL THING.avi" and put them on 50 or so gnutella nodes. Then "leak" the news that pirated copies have hit the P2P networks, and get it on slashdot. Then what happens? Your 50 seed copies turn into 10,000 bogus files. Then when the real movie hits, it will be harder to find the real copies. Its kinda like the insect control strategy of release millions of sterilized males to reduce the changes of real fertilization happening.
Oh well probably not, but I do think it would be effective.
Crude, but true. These drinks have an insane amount of carbohydrates, which most diet systems (Zone, Atkins) seem to agree gets converted very quickly to fat. The sugar can also increase your share of dental problems (it certainly doesn't help). Personally I have found diet soda to be a decent substitute, but water is of course ideal.
I agree - it seems like the biggest privacy issues in this country are petty at best. Oh no, someone is sending me targeting advertising! Oh no, someone is searching my luggage for a bomb! As an honest citizen, my privacy/body/anything is *far* more likely to be violated by another citizen than the government - I think the Constitution and Supreme Court have done a fine job protecting privacy (perhaps even a little too fine).
I have just started using Mozilla full time at home. I am starting to think it is the most signifigant app on the linux destop ever. Why? For the first time when surfing the web on linux, the browser has faded away and I am paying 100% focused on the content. In previous versions of Netscape, I was constantly distracted by ugly font or odd placement of things. Mozilla on the other hand renders everything great. I call it the most signifigant app so far because if web browsing "Has Arrived", and most people spend most of their time on the web, then the linux desktop is that much closed to "Arrival" as well. Its odd that the best complement I can give a browser is to say I don't even notice it!
I absolutely agree - pop-unders even make the "close" button a small, moving target, and they tend to be noisy.
I am convinced that Shockwave Flash is a tool of the devil designed to drive ordinary people insane.
You mention in a previous post that Athiests simply haven't spent the time to understand Christians, well some of us are ex Christians, who really sat down and thought about it very hard. I do not wish to attack your religion, if that's what you need to get through the day, but when you are saying that God is eternal, and exists outside of space and time (previous post) on the one hand, but that the Universe MUST have a start and end, and it's foolish to consider any other possibility, well you are proving that you have faith, not that you've thought about it.
I never said it's foolish to consider a cyclical universe - for a while it was foolish to believe the Earth revolves around the Sun. All I said was that the theory behind such a notion is rather new, and hard (if not impossible) to test, and that we'll see what happens. I definitely think the Universe had a beginning, and there is hard evidence to support a Big Bang theory, but no evidence to support that the three minutes before the Big Bang were the three minutes of another Universe's Big Crunch. I simply find it highly unlikely that the atoms in my body (which at one point where about six inches from the atoms in your body) got here without some help from Intelligent Design. Speaking of which, its a good thing all this universal constants are what they are, or matter would not have even been able to coalesce into atoms!
All I'm saying is that the universe, cyclical or otherwise, screams "Intelligent Design" - Romans 1:20
For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
I am sorry you have lost your faith. Being an athiest would take more faith than I could ever possibly have.
I thing the Wolfram book A New Kind of Science talks about it. I'm not up on cutting edge theories of everything, so we'll see what happens in the next 50 years. But keep in mind this kind of theory goes against all knowledge ever directly observed - all things have a beginning, all things have an end. As it stands this exact moment, there are plenty of reasons (data like Doppler shifts) to believe the Universe is expanding forever and only theory to describe why there will be a Big Crunch.
Except that science is doomed to fail! The entire principle of cause and effect, upon which the entire scientific method is based on, breaks down when one looks at the origin of the Universe. "Where we came from" in science is simply the effect of some previous cause, so we can go all the way back to the Big Bang (or even a previous point of origin), then thats it. Christianity is actually a super-set of science, claiming that an eternal Creator, who exists outside time and space, created the Universe and later man, and has domain over scientific laws. There are no real conflicts of interest that haven't left the realm of scientific debate. A very applicable passage that in my mind that characterizes God in this way is Exodus 3:13-15:
The Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Isreal and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM." And he said, "Say to the people of Isreal, 'I AM has sent me to you' "
Athiests aren't morons, many of them simply haven't taken the time to understand what Christians believe.
Er, have you tried Ogle? Menus and everything. See also xine. From an options standpoint, I couldn't even find a free DVD player for Windows...