There are 200 million guns in the U.S. How do you suggest a few politicians would go about trying to opress a population like that? It only takes a few politicians to trample our rights, but it takes a hell of a lot more to fight against 200 million guns.
How about killing someone in self-defense? Or killing 10 people in self-defense? Or, providing a healthy amount of concern for any politicians who think that they can trample our rights?
Being solely dependent on the government for your own protection is not a path to freedom. If the government officials don't like you, maybe they won't provide police for your neighborhood. "Oh, there's someone breaking into your house with an ax? We'll send someone right away to scoop up your remains."
How can you battle something that is within every houshold without battling the public at large?
Widespread disobedience does not always mean that a law is counterproductive to the general population. In many cases it indicates a problem with the law, but not always.
As with many crimes, piracy is selfish. If you pirate something, you gain more benefit from the one instance than you will lose in the general decline in content. However, the aggregate decline in content across the population is greater than the benefit you gain from the instance of copyright infringement. You may argue that a better way of creating content works better (e.g. OSS), but that's a separate issue since we're not talking about OSS.
The authors of the content created a unique expression. In 1,000,000 years that will never be created again in the same way. Is it not reasonable then to give the author some control over how his expression is copied for a limited time? I stop short of calling it his "property", but it's certainly a lot closer to call it his property than the property of someone else.
I think piracy in many cases is unethical. If OSS is a better way for all forms of content, then get OSS content and create OSS content. I think the reason that piracy takes place so frequently is because it's anonymous. Do you think it would take place as often if the musician who created a song was standing behind the person using napster? A lot of people pirate the music of people they admire, and probably wouldn't want to admit to them that they don't really feel like paying actual money.
The linked bill merely places a 5-10% tax on software that stores your files in a closed format. ANY COMPANY is perfectly free to use an existing open format, or to openly document the format they do use.
"merely"?
Documenting formats or protocols isn't as simple as you make it sound, nor is it harmless to innovation.
Take for example image formats. An Adobe internal image format, such as PSD, is likely a trade secret that involved considerable research to develop. Exporting to JPG clearly means data loss. But, I wouldn't say that it's fair to Adobe as a company to say that they must accurately and publicly document the format.
What about comressed documents using a special compression scheme? What about databases storing data with a new type of index?
These are examples where the format is non-trivial and important to the developing company. It's not fair in my mind to tax these companies above and beyond the rest of the taxes that they pay merely because they find themselves in the wrong market segment.
People abuse data formats, that's certain. Something makes me think that the MSWord.doc format is not all that innovative. But the proposal seems unenforceable (what's "user data" anyway?), unreasonable (they may need to provide functions that their software wouldn't provide already, such as a new type of data export feature), and works against a legitimate aspect of innovation (innovation in formats).
As far as government purchases, that may be different. If the people do not feel comfortable with their governemnt using proprietary and secret data formats, it's reasonable for the government to avoid those. But a tax? That to me is primarily just the attitude that we should take from people we don't agree with (more related to a Robin Hood scheme than fairness).
How is "compliance" measured? What's the difference between an infringing feature and a bug? How many bugs constitute infringement? And don't pretend like it's always economically worthwhile to eliminate all of the bugs with respect to a standard. A new version of the software? Be prepared to pay, because it's gonna have bugs.
Oh, and where is this money going again? Whose vision of free software is best? Who will spend the money most wisely? I doubt you could get many people to agreee on that subject, so it's likely to just end up going to administration expenses after we turn away for a moment.
ext3 can be mounted ext2, and ext2 can be converted to ext3 without having to move any large amount of data.
JFS is an IBM filesystem, which makes me think it serves a similar compatibility issue.
Compatibility is especially important in a filesystem, because it's so difficult to upgrade a filesystem.
I don't think that people make a lot of blank disks into JFS/Ext3 unless you have tools (i.e. recovery tools) that only work with JFS/EXT3. I used to use ext3, but then debian put reiserfs support on the 3.0 ISO so I could recover from whatever problems I caused without worrying about whether my boot disk could mount my root filesystem.
As for XFS, I think it's supposed to have better performance in some areas (mostly dealing with large files) and it's also been around for a while and is stable. So, it's supposed to be stable like ext2, but perform well and have journaling. Also, I'm sure SGI mainly did that so that their customers would have better access to their existing data.
You're right though I think: ReiserFS is taking over as a technically superior FS.
Then most of the people are stupid. History shows that when you rely on a job from somebody else, they have the power to hurt you.
It works both ways. Historically, labor can, and does hurt industry as well. It can cost an employer a lot to fire you and hire someone else in your place. There's friction associated with losing a job, but there's also friction associated with losing an employee.
If what you say is true, then why do employers pay Americans such a high wage? If employers make so much money, then why don't banks lend to any small business that walks in the door (after all, if they make so much money the loan will *certainly* be paid back).
Drug dealers only make their high profits *because* of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA restricts supply to the U.S., thereby increasing prices and taking out the "little guys". Generally, when the DEA gets a tip, it's from a rival drug lord.
It's the same with this SPAM thing. They want fewer "little guys" around so they try to force the supply of SPAM down which increases the effectiveness of their own SPAM. Not altruistic by any means, but if it lands fewer junk emails in my box each day, it's fine by me.
In other words, let's just assume it's caused by humans.
Yup, guilty until proven innocent is the best policy. While we're at it, let's focus on the costs that don't exist (the "what if" costs), and completely ignore the costs of proposals such as the Kyoto protocol that do exist.
I agree completely with your comment, except I might not lump all environmentalists together as you have.
I agree with your conclusion that a Big Brother government is bad, but I don't find it obvious that privacy is "essential liberty", more specifically, I don't find it obvious that privacy is a liberty.
The way I look at it, if you have a freedom you can complete the sentence: "I am now free to ______," e.g. "I am free to speak". Sure you can work something on the end of that sentence involving privacy, but what I really mean is that freedom is about actions, otherwise you can twist anything into a freedom.
"I am free from poverty because of socialism," would make sense if you talk about freedom in the sense that privacy is a freedom.
I think it's counterproductive to dilute the importance of freedom by assigning it to anything you feel is right.
Well, it's one thing to be given all the responsibility you mention, and another to actually live up to it. Have you seen a high-school teacher recently? Do they really deliver on your high standards?
My awswer is a strong "NO". Some of my teachers knew the subject matter, and tried hard to never impose their moral sense on the students (as it should be; that's the parents' job). However, most (>90%) were incompetent (to put it mildly) and imposed all of their beliefs on the students in place of actual knowledge or facts.
You maybe argue that if we pay them more, they'll be better? Then why have U.S. schools declined as money has inclined? Maybe because the rewards (money) are not tied to results. They weasel out of standardized tests (our only way of actually measuring their output) and would rather just appease kids and get off easy without work. Maybe we need to pay current teachers less and give them money when they produce results on tests.
Oh, and remember that the idea that teachers should be paid more is advocated by the NEA primarily. That's an institution aimed at the betterment of teachers, not students or parents.
Pilots, on the other hand, rarely crash, and often bring the plane safely to the destination, in a timely manner. Those are results worth paying for, not the teachers' poor excuse for education.
Normally you just recompile changed files when programming in C/C++. Is there some reason you'd recompile unchanged files?
Also normally on a project *that* huge I would assume that some of the code is not executed very often, and can be dynamically linked without a significant performance penalty. I would say the dynamic linking pretty much eliminates the linking time argument. I mean, who wants to load a 50MB executable binary anyway?
The reason that I think a lot of companies do recompiles of all the code is because of some revision control. Maybe they want to build the stable branch to test a release, and they don't have the version specific object files around (because they're working on the devel branch). However, how does java solve that problem? You'd need the right object/class files for the right release, no matter what.
To some extent, I think it's because it's easier to call yourself a perl/php/python scripter without actually knowing anything about programming. That means that people run into a lot of people who call themselves "perl programmers" that don't know how to program, and so they might make a bad association.
If they're a coworker, they should really take the time to get to know how talented the real programmers actually are. However, casual acquaintences won't necessarily be impressed because you say you can program perl.
Since it takes more skill to write something simple in C, people will be more impressed. They might know from one simple text processing program that you understand: -dynamic memory allocation -pointers -complex iterative algorithms
wheras a comperable perl program might not demonstrate a deep understanding of anything.
I understand that, in principle, you should only have one IP per machine. However, what about having multiple sites on one computer that need to use different SSL certs? This is of course common in virtualhosting environments.
Is there some other way that SSL can determine which certificate to use? It seems as though an SSL-based site (anything, even not HTTP) requires its own IP. Am I correct? What is the "right" thing to do?
Might you be referring to the kinetic energy ((1/2)*mass*(velocity^2)) required to break the chemical bonds that are necessary for survival?
Accelleration times mass is force. But force doesn't kill people, force exerted over a distance kills people.
Of course, the energy must be directed properly, and enough must be transferred. If the bullet has the same kinetic energy but the force is exterted over a long distance and a large area, it won't do much damage.
Lindows has always given me a little bit of a bad feeling, but I've never really been able to identify anything really wrong with them. Sure, the CEO does some weird things, and even makes some people mad. But whatever they do doesn't even compare to many other businesses from which we buy software.
Beyond that, Linodws is a good distribution. Very easy install, and sensible defaults for an ex-windows user. More importantly, debian lies beneath the whole thing, and the debian servers are (by default) set in sources.list. That means you have everything a world-class server distro has, yet a nice interface for a beginner.
I administer some servers, and recently one of my coworkers decided to really get linux installed. I recommended lindows because it is easy to install, and sure enough, he got it up and running. I also offered Mandrake as an alternative, but it was just a little more difficult to work with and install new software. Also, I didn't know enough about RPM to help him out.
The $99 click-n-run service seems like a perfectly acceptable business model to me. It's working for my coworker, and doesn't even slow down the way I might go about installing software (apt-get). I would probably change it to run as a non-root user also, but a new user probably finds it easiest to just use root. Lindows is not too insecure, I might add, because it doesn't install all kinds of servers.
I wouldn't choose lindows for myself, but it seems like a damn good way to get started to me.
Don't try to teach them everything out there. Show them what the computer can do. First do things you can't do in windows: upgrade all the software on your computer with a single command, all the while doing normal stuff (checking email, browsing the web...), show them all the sleek software you can, write a script to do something a typical windows user could not do quickly, and make the desktop into a fancy router/server instantly. Hopefully that will make them realize the *nix is more than just an alternative.
Then, of course, show them how to do all the normal stuff they can already do in windows, to make them realize that they're not missing anything.
After you've gotten them all thinking how great everything is, then show them some good install tips, how to compile from source, and how to install the OS in general. If they were really interested, they'll pick up the rest of the details over time. But if they never see a good system, they'll never even bother remembering the details that you show them.
MySQL uses "autoincrement" for the serial fields. The main issue you'll run into here is when you're trying to use the value that was inserted by a previous query, you use (usually) currval() in postgres whereas in MySQL they use a different function. So, you might need to update a few queries in the client app to use currval().
I saw on 60 minutes that Finland has the highest level of depression and suicide rate in the world (grain of salt may be required). Perhaps their problem is not people killing other people, but people killing themselves. Maybe gun control works better in that kind of country.
Now, I'm all for an organization trying to help protect our rights. But don't act like Bush is the first politician to overstep his bounds. I think that Al Gore would have been worse, personally.
I agree about setting aside affiliations. I'll say right now, I don't think Bush is the best man for the job, but I think he was better than the primary alternatives at the time.
The libertarians are a good party, and seem to be gainning acceptence. Their last presidential candidate didn't seem very bright, but the party's fundamentals are there. I bet that a lot of the Democrats and Republicans on slashdot would probably be able to agree on libertarianism in many ways (except I think the/. posters seem more socialist than a libertarian, although I could be mistaken).
I think the point is that the developers did not choose the software because of the license. It's not like Linus is saying, "Oh we should change to their license!". They're using it because it does help them get the job done. The license doesn't help them get the job done, but the software does.
As I understand it, the people of the U.S. statistically support invading Iraq, as does Congress. Bush didn't ask your specific opinion. Although some of us might not agree, shouldn't you at least concede that sometimes politicians do what the people want?
I already donated US$7.50 to xiph (10 times the price of an mp3 decoder). It's really not much, but it seemed about right in proportion to the other software I use (especially since I only use xiph's products for my desktop, not servers). I know xiph is working hard, but I feel more of a debt to the creators of linux, gnu, postgres, apache, exim, debian, python, perl, openbsd (I only use their openssh, but that's important), and all the other great projects I didn't mention (and those aren't necessarily in order).
I would appreciate some more political diversity. I'm never of any danger of hearing a pro-capitalism statement at my college (UC San Diego). If someone does like the American culture, they don't speak much.
The ratios are definately out of proportion to the rest of the nation.
You could make the argument that smart teachers are liberals and/or socialists, and they can't find any smart capitalists. However, that assumes intelligence on behalf of the teachers. The only teachers that I really regard as intelligent there are engineers, who steer clear of politics.
I am mostly a libertarian, in case anyone's wondering.
Excuse me, but how did you arrive at "clearly illegal"?
I suppose I shouldn't expect much from someone who writes "Therefore the law is clearly illegal".
So, if it's all so clear, why the debate? Why isn't it over? I'm strongly against the increase in copyright, but I'll fight it in the November elections. I don't believe the US Supreme Court would be within it's bounds to declare that law unconstitutional.
The US Constitution includes the copyright clause , but doesn't specify a limit, rather states that any such grant must be limited. So, it seems apparent to me that the framers intended for Congress to modify the duration. Modifying the duration implies the ability to decrease or increase the duration. It seems we've only had increases, but I don't see anything unconstitutional about that (I do see something wrong with that maybe, and like I said, elections in November). Would you be happier if Congress decided: "OK, this is the last increase ever. We're fixing the copyright term at 50,000 years". That's limited.
Oh, and as for promoting progress? That should be for Congress to decide as well. Retrospective extensions can't promote progress you say? Interesting point, but flawed. When you are going to produce a work, you know that copyright duration can be changed, either up or down. You might be more likely to produce the work if the U.S. has a long history of keeping the duration high. That seems similar to the argument that "Why don't we just erase everyone's debt?". Sure, we could, but nobody would trust Congress afterward, and nobody would ever invest or loan money in the U.S. again. I'm not saying it's always helpful to retrospectively increase the duration of copyright, but it can be. That's for Congress to decide.
Get out and vote, or campaign for the reps you want. If everyone spent an almost insignificant amount of their income supporting "good" candidates, that's way more than special interests could possibly spend. Or you could also boycott corporations that pay for bad legislation.
Slashdot Mirror
There are 200 million guns in the U.S. How do you suggest a few politicians would go about trying to opress a population like that? It only takes a few politicians to trample our rights, but it takes a hell of a lot more to fight against 200 million guns.
How about killing someone in self-defense? Or killing 10 people in self-defense? Or, providing a healthy amount of concern for any politicians who think that they can trample our rights?
Being solely dependent on the government for your own protection is not a path to freedom. If the government officials don't like you, maybe they won't provide police for your neighborhood. "Oh, there's someone breaking into your house with an ax? We'll send someone right away to scoop up your remains."
How can you battle something that is within every houshold without battling the public at large?
Widespread disobedience does not always mean that a law is counterproductive to the general population. In many cases it indicates a problem with the law, but not always.
As with many crimes, piracy is selfish. If you pirate something, you gain more benefit from the one instance than you will lose in the general decline in content. However, the aggregate decline in content across the population is greater than the benefit you gain from the instance of copyright infringement. You may argue that a better way of creating content works better (e.g. OSS), but that's a separate issue since we're not talking about OSS.
The authors of the content created a unique expression. In 1,000,000 years that will never be created again in the same way. Is it not reasonable then to give the author some control over how his expression is copied for a limited time? I stop short of calling it his "property", but it's certainly a lot closer to call it his property than the property of someone else.
I think piracy in many cases is unethical. If OSS is a better way for all forms of content, then get OSS content and create OSS content. I think the reason that piracy takes place so frequently is because it's anonymous. Do you think it would take place as often if the musician who created a song was standing behind the person using napster? A lot of people pirate the music of people they admire, and probably wouldn't want to admit to them that they don't really feel like paying actual money.
The linked bill merely places a 5-10% tax on software that stores your files in a closed format. ANY COMPANY is perfectly free to use an existing open format, or to openly document the format they do use.
.doc format is not all that innovative. But the proposal seems unenforceable (what's "user data" anyway?), unreasonable (they may need to provide functions that their software wouldn't provide already, such as a new type of data export feature), and works against a legitimate aspect of innovation (innovation in formats).
"merely"?
Documenting formats or protocols isn't as simple as you make it sound, nor is it harmless to innovation.
Take for example image formats. An Adobe internal image format, such as PSD, is likely a trade secret that involved considerable research to develop. Exporting to JPG clearly means data loss. But, I wouldn't say that it's fair to Adobe as a company to say that they must accurately and publicly document the format.
What about comressed documents using a special compression scheme? What about databases storing data with a new type of index?
These are examples where the format is non-trivial and important to the developing company. It's not fair in my mind to tax these companies above and beyond the rest of the taxes that they pay merely because they find themselves in the wrong market segment.
People abuse data formats, that's certain. Something makes me think that the MSWord
As far as government purchases, that may be different. If the people do not feel comfortable with their governemnt using proprietary and secret data formats, it's reasonable for the government to avoid those. But a tax? That to me is primarily just the attitude that we should take from people we don't agree with (more related to a Robin Hood scheme than fairness).
How is "compliance" measured? What's the difference between an infringing feature and a bug? How many bugs constitute infringement? And don't pretend like it's always economically worthwhile to eliminate all of the bugs with respect to a standard. A new version of the software? Be prepared to pay, because it's gonna have bugs.
Oh, and where is this money going again? Whose vision of free software is best? Who will spend the money most wisely? I doubt you could get many people to agreee on that subject, so it's likely to just end up going to administration expenses after we turn away for a moment.
ext3 can be mounted ext2, and ext2 can be converted to ext3 without having to move any large amount of data.
JFS is an IBM filesystem, which makes me think it serves a similar compatibility issue.
Compatibility is especially important in a filesystem, because it's so difficult to upgrade a filesystem.
I don't think that people make a lot of blank disks into JFS/Ext3 unless you have tools (i.e. recovery tools) that only work with JFS/EXT3. I used to use ext3, but then debian put reiserfs support on the 3.0 ISO so I could recover from whatever problems I caused without worrying about whether my boot disk could mount my root filesystem.
As for XFS, I think it's supposed to have better performance in some areas (mostly dealing with large files) and it's also been around for a while and is stable. So, it's supposed to be stable like ext2, but perform well and have journaling. Also, I'm sure SGI mainly did that so that their customers would have better access to their existing data.
You're right though I think: ReiserFS is taking over as a technically superior FS.
Then most of the people are stupid. History shows that when you rely on a job from somebody else, they have the power to hurt you.
It works both ways. Historically, labor can, and does hurt industry as well. It can cost an employer a lot to fire you and hire someone else in your place. There's friction associated with losing a job, but there's also friction associated with losing an employee.
If what you say is true, then why do employers pay Americans such a high wage? If employers make so much money, then why don't banks lend to any small business that walks in the door (after all, if they make so much money the loan will *certainly* be paid back).
Drug dealers only make their high profits *because* of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The DEA restricts supply to the U.S., thereby increasing prices and taking out the "little guys". Generally, when the DEA gets a tip, it's from a rival drug lord.
It's the same with this SPAM thing. They want fewer "little guys" around so they try to force the supply of SPAM down which increases the effectiveness of their own SPAM. Not altruistic by any means, but if it lands fewer junk emails in my box each day, it's fine by me.
In other words, let's just assume it's caused by humans.
Yup, guilty until proven innocent is the best policy. While we're at it, let's focus on the costs that don't exist (the "what if" costs), and completely ignore the costs of proposals such as the Kyoto protocol that do exist.
I agree completely with your comment, except I might not lump all environmentalists together as you have.
I agree with your conclusion that a Big Brother government is bad, but I don't find it obvious that privacy is "essential liberty", more specifically, I don't find it obvious that privacy is a liberty.
The way I look at it, if you have a freedom you can complete the sentence: "I am now free to ______," e.g. "I am free to speak". Sure you can work something on the end of that sentence involving privacy, but what I really mean is that freedom is about actions, otherwise you can twist anything into a freedom.
"I am free from poverty because of socialism," would make sense if you talk about freedom in the sense that privacy is a freedom.
I think it's counterproductive to dilute the importance of freedom by assigning it to anything you feel is right.
Well, it's one thing to be given all the responsibility you mention, and another to actually live up to it. Have you seen a high-school teacher recently? Do they really deliver on your high standards?
My awswer is a strong "NO". Some of my teachers knew the subject matter, and tried hard to never impose their moral sense on the students (as it should be; that's the parents' job). However, most (>90%) were incompetent (to put it mildly) and imposed all of their beliefs on the students in place of actual knowledge or facts.
You maybe argue that if we pay them more, they'll be better? Then why have U.S. schools declined as money has inclined? Maybe because the rewards (money) are not tied to results. They weasel out of standardized tests (our only way of actually measuring their output) and would rather just appease kids and get off easy without work. Maybe we need to pay current teachers less and give them money when they produce results on tests.
Oh, and remember that the idea that teachers should be paid more is advocated by the NEA primarily. That's an institution aimed at the betterment of teachers, not students or parents.
Pilots, on the other hand, rarely crash, and often bring the plane safely to the destination, in a timely manner. Those are results worth paying for, not the teachers' poor excuse for education.
Normally you just recompile changed files when programming in C/C++. Is there some reason you'd recompile unchanged files?
:)
Also normally on a project *that* huge I would assume that some of the code is not executed very often, and can be dynamically linked without a significant performance penalty. I would say the dynamic linking pretty much eliminates the linking time argument. I mean, who wants to load a 50MB executable binary anyway?
The reason that I think a lot of companies do recompiles of all the code is because of some revision control. Maybe they want to build the stable branch to test a release, and they don't have the version specific object files around (because they're working on the devel branch). However, how does java solve that problem? You'd need the right object/class files for the right release, no matter what.
By the way, nice website
To some extent, I think it's because it's easier to call yourself a perl/php/python scripter without actually knowing anything about programming. That means that people run into a lot of people who call themselves "perl programmers" that don't know how to program, and so they might make a bad association.
If they're a coworker, they should really take the time to get to know how talented the real programmers actually are. However, casual acquaintences won't necessarily be impressed because you say you can program perl.
Since it takes more skill to write something simple in C, people will be more impressed. They might know from one simple text processing program that you understand:
-dynamic memory allocation
-pointers
-complex iterative algorithms
wheras a comperable perl program might not demonstrate a deep understanding of anything.
I understand that, in principle, you should only have one IP per machine. However, what about having multiple sites on one computer that need to use different SSL certs? This is of course common in virtualhosting environments.
Is there some other way that SSL can determine which certificate to use? It seems as though an SSL-based site (anything, even not HTTP) requires its own IP. Am I correct? What is the "right" thing to do?
Might you be referring to the kinetic energy ((1/2)*mass*(velocity^2)) required to break the chemical bonds that are necessary for survival?
Accelleration times mass is force. But force doesn't kill people, force exerted over a distance kills people.
Of course, the energy must be directed properly, and enough must be transferred. If the bullet has the same kinetic energy but the force is exterted over a long distance and a large area, it won't do much damage.
Lindows has always given me a little bit of a bad feeling, but I've never really been able to identify anything really wrong with them. Sure, the CEO does some weird things, and even makes some people mad. But whatever they do doesn't even compare to many other businesses from which we buy software.
Beyond that, Linodws is a good distribution. Very easy install, and sensible defaults for an ex-windows user. More importantly, debian lies beneath the whole thing, and the debian servers are (by default) set in sources.list. That means you have everything a world-class server distro has, yet a nice interface for a beginner.
I administer some servers, and recently one of my coworkers decided to really get linux installed. I recommended lindows because it is easy to install, and sure enough, he got it up and running. I also offered Mandrake as an alternative, but it was just a little more difficult to work with and install new software. Also, I didn't know enough about RPM to help him out.
The $99 click-n-run service seems like a perfectly acceptable business model to me. It's working for my coworker, and doesn't even slow down the way I might go about installing software (apt-get). I would probably change it to run as a non-root user also, but a new user probably finds it easiest to just use root. Lindows is not too insecure, I might add, because it doesn't install all kinds of servers.
I wouldn't choose lindows for myself, but it seems like a damn good way to get started to me.
Don't try to teach them everything out there. Show them what the computer can do. First do things you can't do in windows: upgrade all the software on your computer with a single command, all the while doing normal stuff (checking email, browsing the web...), show them all the sleek software you can, write a script to do something a typical windows user could not do quickly, and make the desktop into a fancy router/server instantly. Hopefully that will make them realize the *nix is more than just an alternative.
Then, of course, show them how to do all the normal stuff they can already do in windows, to make them realize that they're not missing anything.
After you've gotten them all thinking how great everything is, then show them some good install tips, how to compile from source, and how to install the OS in general. If they were really interested, they'll pick up the rest of the details over time. But if they never see a good system, they'll never even bother remembering the details that you show them.
In addition to the above info:
MySQL uses "autoincrement" for the serial fields. The main issue you'll run into here is when you're trying to use the value that was inserted by a previous query, you use (usually) currval() in postgres whereas in MySQL they use a different function. So, you might need to update a few queries in the client app to use currval().
I saw on 60 minutes that Finland has the highest level of depression and suicide rate in the world (grain of salt may be required). Perhaps their problem is not people killing other people, but people killing themselves. Maybe gun control works better in that kind of country.
Now, I'm all for an organization trying to help protect our rights. But don't act like Bush is the first politician to overstep his bounds. I think that Al Gore would have been worse, personally.
/. posters seem more socialist than a libertarian, although I could be mistaken).
I agree about setting aside affiliations. I'll say right now, I don't think Bush is the best man for the job, but I think he was better than the primary alternatives at the time.
The libertarians are a good party, and seem to be gainning acceptence. Their last presidential candidate didn't seem very bright, but the party's fundamentals are there. I bet that a lot of the Democrats and Republicans on slashdot would probably be able to agree on libertarianism in many ways (except I think the
I think the point is that the developers did not choose the software because of the license. It's not like Linus is saying, "Oh we should change to their license!". They're using it because it does help them get the job done. The license doesn't help them get the job done, but the software does.
As I understand it, the people of the U.S. statistically support invading Iraq, as does Congress. Bush didn't ask your specific opinion. Although some of us might not agree, shouldn't you at least concede that sometimes politicians do what the people want?
I already donated US$7.50 to xiph (10 times the price of an mp3 decoder). It's really not much, but it seemed about right in proportion to the other software I use (especially since I only use xiph's products for my desktop, not servers). I know xiph is working hard, but I feel more of a debt to the creators of linux, gnu, postgres, apache, exim, debian, python, perl, openbsd (I only use their openssh, but that's important), and all the other great projects I didn't mention (and those aren't necessarily in order).
I would appreciate some more political diversity. I'm never of any danger of hearing a pro-capitalism statement at my college (UC San Diego). If someone does like the American culture, they don't speak much.
The ratios are definately out of proportion to the rest of the nation.
You could make the argument that smart teachers are liberals and/or socialists, and they can't find any smart capitalists. However, that assumes intelligence on behalf of the teachers. The only teachers that I really regard as intelligent there are engineers, who steer clear of politics.
I am mostly a libertarian, in case anyone's wondering.
The post office? I bet the stole that idea from Fry's!
Excuse me, but how did you arrive at "clearly illegal"?
I suppose I shouldn't expect much from someone who writes "Therefore the law is clearly illegal".
So, if it's all so clear, why the debate? Why isn't it over? I'm strongly against the increase in copyright, but I'll fight it in the November elections. I don't believe the US Supreme Court would be within it's bounds to declare that law unconstitutional.
The US Constitution includes the copyright clause , but doesn't specify a limit, rather states that any such grant must be limited. So, it seems apparent to me that the framers intended for Congress to modify the duration. Modifying the duration implies the ability to decrease or increase the duration. It seems we've only had increases, but I don't see anything unconstitutional about that (I do see something wrong with that maybe, and like I said, elections in November). Would you be happier if Congress decided: "OK, this is the last increase ever. We're fixing the copyright term at 50,000 years". That's limited.
Oh, and as for promoting progress? That should be for Congress to decide as well. Retrospective extensions can't promote progress you say? Interesting point, but flawed. When you are going to produce a work, you know that copyright duration can be changed, either up or down. You might be more likely to produce the work if the U.S. has a long history of keeping the duration high. That seems similar to the argument that "Why don't we just erase everyone's debt?". Sure, we could, but nobody would trust Congress afterward, and nobody would ever invest or loan money in the U.S. again. I'm not saying it's always helpful to retrospectively increase the duration of copyright, but it can be. That's for Congress to decide.
Get out and vote, or campaign for the reps you want. If everyone spent an almost insignificant amount of their income supporting "good" candidates, that's way more than special interests could possibly spend. Or you could also boycott corporations that pay for bad legislation.