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User: greenrd

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  1. Re:Does anyone else think this is a bad idea? on Joe Trippi Interviewed · · Score: 1
    it goes directly to the core of the Democratic party, that that it's OK to "take things" from people "for the common good".

    Isn't taxation for the purposes of, say, funding the military, "taking things from the people for the common good"?

    I think it's completely unfair and senseless to pin this on the Democratic Party, when surely just about every politician or voter who supports any form of taxation falls into the same category. (i.e. almost everyone.)

  2. Re:Spam time! on eBay Scam Victim Strikes Back · · Score: 1
    That description fits the profile of a psychopath. No conscience, no shame.

  3. Re:Bah on Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS · · Score: 1
    What do you mean by the statement "DRM might be required by law"?

    Do you mean that all content would have to be encrypted? That's absurd, so that can't be what to you mean.

    Do you mean that manufacturers would be required to implement DRM? But so what? Just because it's there, doesn't mean you are forced to use it.

    Do you mean that manufacturers would be required to implement a compulsory form of DRM that stopped unsigned OSs from booting? That's also absurd. The big corporate interests behind Linux would never let that happen.

  4. Re:Bah on Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS · · Score: 1
    No, it couldn't. Governmental and corporate users of Free Software would never allow that to happen.

  5. Re:Do as any knee-jerk slashdotter would... on How Would You Handle a $1,000,000 Coding Error? · · Score: 1
    No, you still haven't RTFA.

    Both hardware and software were being upgrade. Thus, my post was correct.

  6. Re:This is a dare! on SCO Claims Linux Lifted ELF · · Score: 1
    Remember the last time they "showed the code"? Even though there was no infringement, it got removed, *within hours*.

    If you're referring to the malloc code: it had already been removed, but it had been removed because it was cruddy code and had probably been included by mistake, not because of anything that SCO said.

  7. Re:Not the only thing left out: it's for Java only on Apache Maven 1.0 Released · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Another downside to make: People often start with the false assumption that Makefiles are automatically cross-platform, and then find out that they aren't.

    Also, make/automake/autoconf/autoheader/... can be quite complicated and confusing. Whereas ant (and presumably maven) are pretty simple by comparison.

  8. Re:Dear Towogbola on 419ers Diversify Into Assassination Threats? · · Score: 1
    So, Nigeria is populated mainly by "weak cowards" now is it? Nice racist statement there...

    Have you considered the possibility that the spammer is lying about being Nigerian? Gosh no, spammers never lie!

  9. Re:General Public License License on PHP Not Moving To The GPL · · Score: 1
    Think of it this way: Since the problem is entirely understandable and unlikely to ever go away (newscasters will continue to do it for as long as newscasters exist, for obvious reasons), why don't we just define a new grammatical rule, namely: Acronym expansions are contextual.

    There, doesn't that feel better? Grammatical rules in agreement with actual English usage again!

    (As they should be.)

  10. Re:GPL is free on PHP Not Moving To The GPL · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Voluntary slavery is a contradiction in terms. Please elaborate on what you mean, and why you think it is slavery.

  11. Re:Do as any knee-jerk slashdotter would... on How Would You Handle a $1,000,000 Coding Error? · · Score: 1
    You obviously failed to RTFA or even RTFP. Third-party software was being upgraded.

  12. Re:Can the backbones handle it? on Verizon Announces FTTP Prices · · Score: 1
    What do you think these "remote backup services" will be using to store your data on? RAM?

  13. Re:grow canabis, stupid morons.... on How Would You Handle a $1,000,000 Coding Error? · · Score: 2, Insightful
    So, are you actually going to rebut those arguments, or are you just going to sneer sneeringly?

  14. Re:How can they accurately measure it? on BitTorrent Beats Kazaa In Traffic Numbers · · Score: 1
    One question.

    What the hell are you babbling about?

  15. Re:urpmi vs yum on URPMI For Fedora Core 2 · · Score: 1
    apt-get fascistically forces you to satisfy all dependencies at all times. Whilst this is generally good practice, there are times when you don't want to do that, and apt-get doesn't even offer you the option. (So much for debian being all about choice!)

    Also, I once found a corruption bug in apt-get, and submitted a patch, and it wasn't reviewed for months (if ever). I like to use software that's actually maintained, and I saw precious little evidence that it was being maintained when I tried using it a few years ago.

  16. Re:LIES about space weapons on ESA Plans Test of Asteroid Defense System · · Score: 1
    Certainly you're right that we should put more effort and money into fighting global warming than into deflecting asteroids. However, the previous poster was right to say we should take it at least as seriously as, say, airplane safety.

    In terms of civilisation-wide disaster, yes of course it becomes an imperative, but that's not the only kind of disaster that an asteroid poses. Smaller ones can wipe out cities, like a nuke would, and they're far more likely to hit in our lifetime.

  17. Re:55bn isn't so much, really on Browser Wars 2004 · · Score: 1
    Please explain how share price dilution is a problem necessitating stock buyback? As long as the market can track it quantitatively, it can adjust the pricing accordingly. There's no real sleight of hand involved, IMHO.

    Also, Microsoft has started paying out (small) dividends, since the tax situation changed in favour of dividend recipients.

  18. Re:LIES about space weapons on ESA Plans Test of Asteroid Defense System · · Score: 1
    You're doing the calculation wrong. You do P(Asteroid Collision with Earth) x Number of Casualties. You've correctly observed that P(Asteroid Collision with Earth) is low, but you've forgotten to factor in the expected number of casualties. And you have to sum this over all possible asteroid sizes. The calculation was done a few years ago and came IIRC to the conclusion previously quoted.

    I think the risk estimate has been revised slightly downward since then, but certainly not enough to make it negligible.

    Of course, this just goes to show that probability is wildly counterintuitive at the extremes.

  19. Re:wild life friendly turbine? on Green Energy From Manhattan's East River · · Score: 1
    Two questions:

    1. Just to confirm - aren't class action lawsuits for pollution already possible? So your scenario would only be taking away regulations, not adding anything new.

    2. What does it mean to have "libertarian" environmental laws? If companies are prohibited from polluting, isn't this regulation, and un-libertarian? Conversely, if companies are permitted to pollute, how are you going to sue them? On what grounds? I see that there could be answers to these questions, but I'd like to understand the libertarian-esque position better.

  20. Re:Browser Compatibility and Open Source on Carnegie Mellon Starts Offering Courses Online · · Score: 1
    Well, you made a bit of a PR flub there. How long would it have taken to add a note about Linux support? Ten minutes, max?

  21. Zealot alert! on Browser Wars 2004 · · Score: 1
    idiots using tags and other atrocities which go against the idea of conveying information.

    I'm sorry, but you win the Most Ridiculous Slashdot Metaphor award for this week. Use of the FONT tag simply is not comparable to mass murder, rape or torture.

    Pedantry aside, I very much doubt that use of the FONT tag is going to hurt any web surfers in the vast majority of cases - even disabled people. The most it will do is piss off the person who has to maintain the page, most probably. That's the most significant reason to switch to HTML Strict, IMHO. Be more accurate about your concerns and people are more likely to take you seriously.

  22. Re:Not going to happen on USA PATRIOT Act Survives Amendment Attempt · · Score: 1
    I think Bush poorly represents the people of the United States. Because of the two-party system, many people support neither of the two main candidates but don't bother to vote because they don't see the point.

    If you look at the numbers, I think you'll find that not only did Bush get less than 50% of the actual votes cast (no-one really disputes this), but he persuaded way way less than 50% of the eligible-to-vote population to vote for him. Perhaps close to the 25% figure you quoted.

    Now, if you had an intelligent system like instant runoff, that would almost by definition increase the number of people voting for every candidate, because people would be able to vote for more than one candidate. So instant runoff voting would provide more legitimacy, not less. As I said, if you look at the actual numbers, not the percentage of voters.

  23. Re:Oh my... on Microsoft Responds to IE Criticism · · Score: 1
    I'm sure many of those people have the ability to use Google. What's different is that they don't realise there's an alternative, or they don't realise they have to search for a "web browser" instead of a plugin, etc. Maybe I'm not disagreeing with you.

  24. Re:Or AntiSocial Behaviour Orders on USA, UK, Australia Sign Anti-Spam Memorandum · · Score: 1
    It's kind of scary that ASBOs can seemingly be used against pretty much arbitrary behaviour that is deemed "antisocial"...

    Of course, it's also very useful when used in the right hands. ;)

    I'm not really sure what to think about this.

  25. Re:Author seems to live in a vacuum on On PHP and Scaling · · Score: 1
    Tomcat is:

    (a) a servlet/JSP engine, not a fully-fledged J2EE container (like, say, JBoss)
    and (b) hardly the most efficient servlet engine on earth.

    Thus, the fact that an author knows a lot about Tomcat does not automatically imply that they know a lot about J2EE overall - or, indeed, scalability.