That's the illusion that this guy is debunking. Not that Open Source Software is useless.
That's the illusion that you're debunking, and you do it reasonably well. Granted, I largely disagree with you (being a Free Software Zealot and all), but you put forth some reasonable arguments.
What Howard Strauss is doing is a bunch of emotional, sarcastic... I don't know what. It's not coherent. It's a big, long, emotional, pointless rant against free software... I hope this guy isn't a professor -- I'd feel sorry for the poor bastards who had to take a class from him...
"Our bet is that utility-class messaging - secure, reliable and rich e-mail for tens of thousands of corporate users - will be a killer application for Linux."
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this one... email for Linux? That's your killer application?
Holy crap, these people are geniuses!
No wonder most of these startups went under... jesus...
"No other laptop out now has that 'fun' feeling that the W2 does."
Then how come it comes with a Microsoft Tax? That's not very fun. I'm not going to buy a laptop that is at odds with my OS preferences. I'm not going to pay money for an OS that I will never use.
Only unethical, leacherous scum use pirated software running Windows Products.
Run Linux and preserve your ethics, if you have any.
Where did he (she?) say or imply that he used pirated versions of Windows? I've never given Microsoft a single penny of my money, but I've used their products at work and at school. At home I use strictly Linux.
Like the grandparent poster said:
"only fools and businesses pay for Microsoft software."
Any language where white space is important to determining the blocking structure (e.g. Make leaps to mind) is badly broken... you don't want the number of spaces/tabs before a statement to indicate anything significant.
AFAIK they have allways delivered a decent service at decent price to their customers. Compared to normal bussiness practise they are just very ethical in their behavior.
Have you ever done business with them??? It's like getting your testicles slowly ripped off one by one with an old, rusty pair of pliers. And they charge you for it.
Is this why, when editing a document in 'vi' versus 'notepad', I get all those CR/LF inconsistancies? Because Microsoft plays fair with such simple open standards as ASCII text?
You don't have to buy an X-Box. You don't have to have the latest cellphone. You don't have to watch TV.
And no, these aren't fundamental necesseties in life.
As long as I can buy commoditiy hardware, put it together and install Linux (or *BSD or whatever) on it, I'm not worried. (I am worried that that may change...)
It's unfortunate that there are so many chumps out there who so willingly take it in that ass from big corporations. But none of us are required to.
Unfortunately, I don't know the details of relativity+QM -- It's something that my QM professor mentioned (stuff that we'd learn when we got to graduate level QM).
Spin is something of a misnomer. What it is is the magnetic moment of a particle. Imagine the electron having a magnetic "north pole" and "south pole". The weird thing is, even neutrons have spin (ie, they have a north pole and a south pole). (It turns out that this is because neutrons are made up of charged quarks.)
People figured out that electrons and atoms have magnetic moments (ie, spin) because of how they behaved when passing through non-uniform magnetic fields.
Spin (magnetic moments at the quantum level) is weird. Some days I think I've got it, then I learn a little bit more, then I think I don't got it. (I guess it's because QM is weird, then so is spin...) Classically, you could imagine "spin up" as an electron with it's north pole pointing up, and "spin down" as the north pole pointing down. In QM, you get linear combinations of states, and it's really just the probability that you find it in one state or another. Not only that, but if you measure the spin on a different (orthogonal) axis (say you wanted to measure if it was "spin left" or "spin right") then that would effect what you were doing on your up-down axis.
Christmas Break: I don't have to do any Quantum Physics for a month!
If harddrive copy-protection goes the same way as DVD, it may very well become illegal for you to use "alternative" operating systems on the latest harddrives.
Speaking of DVD, it doesn't really look like that you can legally watch a DVD under Linux, even if you legally own that DVD.
These large mega-corporations seem more than happy to take away people's rights as long as it benefits their bottom line.
Fusion produces helium. That's it. Helium. The same helium that they put in helium balloons. Not radioactive helium. Not some weird isotope of helium. Just helium. That is the entire waste of the fusion process.
As far as the radiation -- Pound for pound, fusion tends to produce about ten times as much energy (ie, radiation) as fission. So what do you do? You use 1/10th as much. Viola! You have the exact same everything as a fission reactor, except that there's no waste (except for the aforementioned helium).
This is, of course, assuming that the radiation is even bad. Radiation is what makes the heat that boils the water to drive the turbines. Yeah, the radiation in the core itself is hazardous to life (it is in fission plants, too) but you surround the core with water, or concrete or something and the radiation doesn't escape.
The only environmental consequences of fusion is the consuption of a very small amount of hydrogen and the production of a very small amount of helium. (And the boiling of a whole lot of water.)
Sooner or later it has to come down to money. Somebody's got to come up with a way to make money off of all of these ideas, and so far the batting average of internet-based companies is pretty low.
Yeah, right. Okay. So, If I shoot somebody out of curiosity (I just want to see what it looks like) then I suppose I shouldn't be arrested for murder, should I...
If he did it just out of curiosity then did he put the money back? Did he turn himself in?
One thing that I always seem to laugh at about the "Conspiracy Theorists" is that a lot of the stuff they consider a "conspiracy" is actually done out in the open.
I was driving up to the mountains to do some hiking when I heard "Duel of the Fates" on Colorado Public Radio. I decided that I absolutely had to see the movie as soon as possible, so I drove to the theatre, bought a ticket (for a showing two hours later) had lunch and saw it. (At Loveland, I didn't have to wait in any lines or anything - I just had to buy my ticket two hours in advance...).
Public key encryption allows for the transfer of cash. Transferring large amounts of cash by way of dollar bills is difficult, time-consuming and inherently risky, so that's not too much of a problem. Transferring large amounts of cash digitally is easy and (can be) safe.
Digital cash means that large sums of money can be transferred un-taxed.
Slashdot Mirror
When donating to the ACLU, you also get a bunch of junk mail from a million other stereotypical left-wing organizations begging for money.
The EFF, on the other hand, so far has respected my privacy.
I have no plans to give any more money to the ACLU. I truly, truly, truly despise junk mail and telemarketers.
What Howard Strauss is doing is a bunch of emotional, sarcastic
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around this one... email for Linux? That's your killer application?
Holy crap, these people are geniuses!
No wonder most of these startups went under... jesus...
This is a very sad laptop.
Like the grandparent poster said:
"only fools and businesses pay for Microsoft software."
Have you ever done business with them??? It's like getting your testicles slowly ripped off one by one with an old, rusty pair of pliers. And they charge you for it.
Is this why, when editing a document in 'vi' versus 'notepad', I get all those CR/LF inconsistancies? Because Microsoft plays fair with such simple open standards as ASCII text?
You don't have to buy an X-Box. You don't have to have the latest cellphone. You don't have to watch TV.
And no, these aren't fundamental necesseties in life.
As long as I can buy commoditiy hardware, put it together and install Linux (or *BSD or whatever) on it, I'm not worried. (I am worried that that may change...)
It's unfortunate that there are so many chumps out there who so willingly take it in that ass from big corporations. But none of us are required to.
I'm with you there; I was very hesitant to click on the link. But don't worry, there's actually a book about Python at that link.
The egg.
Unfortunately, I don't know the details of relativity+QM -- It's something that my QM professor mentioned (stuff that we'd learn when we got to graduate level QM).
Spin is something of a misnomer. What it is is the magnetic moment of a particle. Imagine the electron having a magnetic "north pole" and "south pole". The weird thing is, even neutrons have spin (ie, they have a north pole and a south pole). (It turns out that this is because neutrons are made up of charged quarks.)
People figured out that electrons and atoms have magnetic moments (ie, spin) because of how they behaved when passing through non-uniform magnetic fields.
Spin (magnetic moments at the quantum level) is weird. Some days I think I've got it, then I learn a little bit more, then I think I don't got it. (I guess it's because QM is weird, then so is spin...) Classically, you could imagine "spin up" as an electron with it's north pole pointing up, and "spin down" as the north pole pointing down. In QM, you get linear combinations of states, and it's really just the probability that you find it in one state or another. Not only that, but if you measure the spin on a different (orthogonal) axis (say you wanted to measure if it was "spin left" or "spin right") then that would effect what you were doing on your up-down axis.
Christmas Break: I don't have to do any Quantum Physics for a month!
Paul Dirac wed Relativity and Quantum Mechanics long ago. It's where we get the proof of spin and anti-particles.
Note that I very carefully specified "game players".
Whether it's sold to a "gamer" or a casual game user (like me) it's still a sell. Money is green, regardless of who it comes from.
I haven't bought NWN. If the Linux client comes out, and it's serious and feature-complete, I will buy it. (And play it occasionally.)
(I no longer have a Windows install. After the last round of unexplained driver screwups, I formatted that harddrive and never looked back.)
If harddrive copy-protection goes the same way as DVD, it may very well become illegal for you to use "alternative" operating systems on the latest harddrives.
Speaking of DVD, it doesn't really look like that you can legally watch a DVD under Linux, even if you legally own that DVD.
These large mega-corporations seem more than happy to take away people's rights as long as it benefits their bottom line.
Fusion is much cleaner the fission.
Fusion produces helium. That's it. Helium. The same helium that they put in helium balloons. Not radioactive helium. Not some weird isotope of helium. Just helium. That is the entire waste of the fusion process.
As far as the radiation -- Pound for pound, fusion tends to produce about ten times as much energy (ie, radiation) as fission. So what do you do? You use 1/10th as much. Viola! You have the exact same everything as a fission reactor, except that there's no waste (except for the aforementioned helium).
This is, of course, assuming that the radiation is even bad. Radiation is what makes the heat that boils the water to drive the turbines. Yeah, the radiation in the core itself is hazardous to life (it is in fission plants, too) but you surround the core with water, or concrete or something and the radiation doesn't escape.
The only environmental consequences of fusion is the consuption of a very small amount of hydrogen and the production of a very small amount of helium. (And the boiling of a whole lot of water.)
If only we could get it to work.
I can't buy food with ideas.
I can't pay my rent with ideas.
I can't retire on ideas.
Sooner or later it has to come down to money. Somebody's got to come up with a way to make money off of all of these ideas, and so far the batting average of internet-based companies is pretty low.
Here's a disturbing thought:
that would look like a man made out of thousands of tiny little insects. Imagine if the little buggers were constantly rearranging themselves...
my skin would crawl because the "macro-bot's" skin really was...
He stole $100,000 out of curiosity???
Yeah, right. Okay. So, If I shoot somebody out of curiosity (I just want to see what it looks like) then I suppose I shouldn't be arrested for murder, should I...
If he did it just out of curiosity then did he put the money back? Did he turn himself in?
One thing that I always seem to laugh at about the "Conspiracy Theorists" is that a lot of the stuff they consider a "conspiracy" is actually done out in the open.
Palpatine declared himself emporer in the beginning of ANH (shortly after he desolved the senate).
I was driving up to the mountains to do some hiking when I heard "Duel of the Fates" on Colorado Public Radio. I decided that I absolutely had to see the movie as soon as possible, so I drove to the theatre, bought a ticket (for a showing two hours later) had lunch and saw it. (At Loveland, I didn't have to wait in any lines or anything - I just had to buy my ticket two hours in advance...).
That scene is by far my favorite of the movie.
--
Mark Fassler
fassler at frii dot com
Public key encryption allows for the transfer of cash. Transferring large amounts of cash by way of dollar bills is difficult, time-consuming and inherently risky, so that's not too much of a problem. Transferring large amounts of cash digitally is easy and (can be) safe.
Digital cash means that large sums of money can be transferred un-taxed.
--
Mark Fassler
fassler at frii dot com
According to the Bill Gates Net Worth Page Bill Gates currently owns 18.5% of Microsoft. When Microsoft stock first went public, he owned 49.8%.
Either way, I doubt that he could ever be forced out of the CEO job, unless things were really bad.
Mark Fassler
fassler at frii dot com
I despise GNU Info... I wish all that documentation was available in HTML...