Look, as much as I wish it were otherwise, those of use who are just users and not programmers (not from lack of effort, from lack of time) *need* good software for Linux. I don't care if it comes from an Open Source developer (thought that would be *much* preferable) or a company that only distributes binaries, so long as the program works for what I want it to do. Welcome to Real Life, where practicality is more important than blind screaming evangelism. The economy, believe it or not, really does run the world.
You can call this crass commercialism if you want, but all I care about is that the system I use works. Religious bigotry like you're displaying is what turned me off to using *BSD in the first place.
If you would try to argue the specific advantages of using any BSD over using Linux without resorting to arguments like this, I would definitely listen.
Parc was just wondering about relatively calm places for him/herself to live. I never suggested moving any signifigant amount of people here. I can see how my post was ambiguous, though...
I'll grant you the Ice Storm reference, though. However, it was a *very* rare event. I doubt we'll see more than two or three such storms in the next fifty years.
If nothing else, Slashdot is showing me the value of clearly forming my thoughts.:)
>Everyone has to live somewhere. I've been looking >for the perfect place to live. Something with no >hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Haven't >found it yet. You always have at least one thing >to make your day a bummer. I live on the coast of >Texas. Hurricanes and pollution are our big >things(and mosquitoes the size of small >children). But don't knock a person because they >choose to live somewhere. Florida's pretty nice, >if it weren't for the hurricane thing. As far as >I can tell, that's their only disaster-prone >item.
You could always try somewhere in New England or Canada's maritime provinces. I, myself, live in New Brunswick. Sure, you'll get the occasional winter snowstorm, but on the whole it's a very peaceful part of the world. Plus, the beer is fantastic.:)
>I've heard, and known, people who would scope out >yard sales and plan routes for the quickest way >to hit all of 'em.. it's sad, if you ask me. and >they'd even take their kids along. with no >breakfast! ack!
I remember when I was a kid, my mom would take me out to saturday morning yard sales. Of course, she always made these huge breakfasts beforehand, and only went during the summer, so I guess it's not as bad as what others went through.
Besides, she always took me out the the mall every other week or so right afterward to buy a Transformer. Damn, I wish I still had that Starscream... He was cool. >:)
>Actually, a lot of people do write letters on >postcards. You misspelled "idiots".
>They don't have any illusion that what they write >is secret, of course. >Most people don't write that many secret >messages. That is a meaningless argument. What if those messages that *are* encrypted *must* be encrypted? What if it's a patient discussing an AIDS treatment with their doctor, or a manager dicsussing a classified manufacturing method with his or her employees? You may not need to use encryption much, but when you do, you *really* need it.
>Guess what? If you use encryption, you're likely >to be watched. Those of us who don't (most of us) >will be less watched. Being watched doesn't bother me. What important to me is that casual observers not read *my* private email. I like my privacy. My god! I must be a terrorist or a child pornographer or a communist or something!
>Wave that red flag, boys. Wave that red flag. Keep writing on postcards, boys. Keep writing on postcards.
>This, I believe, was the underlying concept >behind The Andromeda Strain (Michael Criton?). This exact plan, with a few differences, was the idea behind Clarke's "The Songs Of Distant Earth." One of my favourite books, actually.
Yeah, Michael Crighton wrote "Andromeda Strain". One of the two books he's written that I actually enjoyed, the original Jurassic Park novel being the other one. I remember reading Jurassic Park about a year before the movie came out... better in print, I think.
Just because a spacecraft stops accelerating doesn't mean it stops moving.
Quite frankly, I'm very excited by this. Imagine a mass-produced line of probes with modular sensors, driven by these M2P2 drives. We could fire them off to anything we find interesting. Imagine scouting all the planets and their moons in the solar system within just a few decades.
To our southern neighbors, I apologize for my fellow citizen.
"Contrary to popular opinion, the average Canadien does not consider themselves friendly to the USA. They just want our jobs."
And contrary to *your* ignorant opinion, I, a Canadian, *am* friendly to the USA. I have many American friends, and I'm not ashamed to hold many of their values, most notably their Constitution, in high regard.
It's people like you who really disgust me. Judging an entire nation by the acts of a few politicians or criminals is one of the worst things one can do. Imagine if all Americans judged us by the acts of Preston Manning, Jacques Parizeau, or Karla Homolka.
The average American isn't interested in stealing jobs, they just want to live in peace and enjoy life. They're no different from us. Except that we have to shovel a bit more snow in the winter, but that's a little off-topic. (Grin)
And it's spelled Canadian. If you're going to spout off a rant of how much "Americans suck" (to paraphrase) then please get your own citizenship straight.
Does the UK have such advanced voice-recognition that they can identify words spoken at the speeds that people normally use, in a variety of different accents, over a *phone* *line* of all things? Or do they just hire a few thousand people in order to listen to each call?
Personally, I'm skeptical. This would work if it was involving telegraphs (are they still used over there?) but not phone calls.
Unless, of course, They, the benign aliens from Alpha Centauri, gave the UK and US advanced voice surveillance technology along with the anti-gravity Black Helicopters and the cloning tanks to breed their species on Earth. Sheesh...
Hasn't this rumor been around in a variety of forms since the 60's?
Is it even possible to record in faster than real time?
Yes. Just use any old stereo with two cassette decks and high speed dubbing. Of course, this has no bearing on the patent issue... I think. Well, IANAL.
Over at http://www.spaceviews.com there's an article on this plan (Which I think is a damn good idea, BTW) which goes into more detail about what observation platforms are going to be used. The Hubble is apparently one of the satellites scheduled to be used.
This is definitely a good use of the probe. As many others have pointed out, it's mission is over and there is a chance (a small one, but a chance nonetheless) that a major scientific discovery could be made. I'll be eagerly waiting for any results.
And this is completely off-topic, but I really wish that the Russian space agency would get it's ISS components finished... Sorry for the editorial.:)
Apache's configuration/setup totally blows. Who in thier right mind would want to use some external program ( nasty text editor ) to configure a webserver with?
Of course. You're absolutely right. We should all give up our "nasty text editors" and use Wizards. After all, an M$ program would know more about optimizing performance than a trained professional, right?
IIS is way much easier to setup and maintane. It seems to be faster on my dual PII than apache does as well.
If it's faster for you, good for you. But please don't assume that we're all mindless M$ drones who are incabable of actually thinking.
>But when has lucas been known to pick >people for their acting skill? Wasnt ford >picked to do solo because his father was >friends with lucas? Not really. Harrison Ford (one of my favourite actors, BTW) was moonlighting as a construction worker on the New Hope set. Lucas needed someone to read Solo's part quickly, and Ford was one of the few actors nearby who wasn't in the movie. He, Hamill and Fisher apparently just clicked as a team, and the rest is history.
>What it comes down to is do you really want >to see leo in a lightsaber fight [...]? Yes, if he loses. Oh! You meant in the movie, not in real life. Sorry, my mistake. May Leo die screaming horribly with sharp things in his head.
I only graduated from HS last year, and the place still had two labs full of 8088 PCs. Yeah. Complete with these off-brand 15-year-old 10" monochrome monitors, no HD, DOS 4.01 and dual 5.25 floppy drives. Bleagh... They tried to sell 'em all off several times, but no one wanted them. Gee, I wonder why?
As for me, somewhere in a box in my house is an IBM PS/1 with a 286, 40 MB HD and a 2400 modem. Not as ancient as the other machines you guys have described, but still pretty old.
I feel guilty about living in Canada where the CRTC recently decided to not regulate the Internet. (I know it's well-nigh impossible, but it's the principal of the thing.) Sometimes I wish I could just walk up to a politician and beat him/her with a clue stick.
I'm going to turn my webpage black, even though it's not my home country. To our.au friends, best of luck.
An M$-built window manager. Brrrr. If it was GPLed, I might run it to try it out, but otherwise... I just don't see that happening. Well, not a reliable window manager, anyway. I'd hate to see how dumbed-down it would be, with who knows how many useless features. Can we say "bloatware", boys and girls?
For people who understand X its wonderful and versatile as hell... but its also very complex and has plenty of security issues associated with it. Is that really what a simple end user wants?
Um, yeah, actually. I barely understand X, and I'm just a user (and wannabe perl hacker, but that's off topic), but I love X. It may take me a few hours of reading the man pages and my paper documentation to figure out a new feature or how to configure something, but in the end it's worth it. And yes, I do have a 9 to 5 job.:)
Kudos to the "Rebel Scum", and may they succeed in their deperate struggle for freedom from the "Imperial Drones".:)
All my co-workers are looking at me funny. I guess I shouldn't laugh out loud like that while I'm supposed to be working. I really should go back to slaving away now...
...I would *never* have believed that the CRTC would ever make an intelligent decision regarding communications and broadcasting. My faith in my home country is restored. For once in my life, I'm glad I live north of the 49th.
If only our southern neighbors' governments would take a cue, we could have a nice, communications-friendly continent. I'm not sure what the situation is in Mexico, though... Anyone from there have any info on regulation?
Only 26 times each? I've watched the entire trilogy every weekend for as long as I can remember. It's no waste of time in my book.
And no, I'm not seeing it opening night. I'm going to see it a week and a half later, so I can watch it with all my out-of-town friends. SW:TPM might be good and it might be bad, but one thing's for sure: It'll be *fun*.
Cheers. -- SG "I'm not suffering from insanity. I'm enjoying every minute of it."
Slashdot Mirror
Look, as much as I wish it were otherwise, those of use who are just users and not programmers (not from lack of effort, from lack of time) *need* good software for Linux. I don't care if it comes from an Open Source developer (thought that would be *much* preferable) or a company that only distributes binaries, so long as the program works for what I want it to do. Welcome to Real Life, where practicality is more important than blind screaming evangelism. The economy, believe it or not, really does run the world.
You can call this crass commercialism if you want, but all I care about is that the system I use works. Religious bigotry like you're displaying is what turned me off to using *BSD in the first place.
If you would try to argue the specific advantages of using any BSD over using Linux without resorting to arguments like this, I would definitely listen.
Parc was just wondering about relatively calm places for him/herself to live. I never suggested moving any signifigant amount of people here. I can see how my post was ambiguous, though...
:)
I'll grant you the Ice Storm reference, though. However, it was a *very* rare event. I doubt we'll see more than two or three such storms in the next fifty years.
If nothing else, Slashdot is showing me the value of clearly forming my thoughts.
>Everyone has to live somewhere. I've been looking
:)
>for the perfect place to live. Something with no
>hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Haven't
>found it yet. You always have at least one thing >to make your day a bummer. I live on the coast of >Texas. Hurricanes and pollution are our big
>things(and mosquitoes the size of small
>children). But don't knock a person because they
>choose to live somewhere. Florida's pretty nice,
>if it weren't for the hurricane thing. As far as
>I can tell, that's their only disaster-prone
>item.
You could always try somewhere in New England or Canada's maritime provinces. I, myself, live in New Brunswick. Sure, you'll get the occasional winter snowstorm, but on the whole it's a very peaceful part of the world. Plus, the beer is fantastic.
Sorry for the offtopic post.
>Light has mass, not much, but some, so any
>sufficently massive object can bend light
>perceptibly.
Err, what? Light has mass? I want to know what you're smoking, 'cause I want some too.
Light does not have mass. Gravity affects both matter and radiation. This is how, theoretically, black holes work.
>I've heard, and known, people who would scope out
>yard sales and plan routes for the quickest way
>to hit all of 'em.. it's sad, if you ask me. and
>they'd even take their kids along. with no
>breakfast! ack!
I remember when I was a kid, my mom would take me out to saturday morning yard sales. Of course, she always made these huge breakfasts beforehand, and only went during the summer, so I guess it's not as bad as what others went through.
Besides, she always took me out the the mall every other week or so right afterward to buy a Transformer. Damn, I wish I still had that Starscream... He was cool. >:)
>Actually, a lot of people do write letters on
>postcards.
You misspelled "idiots".
>They don't have any illusion that what they write
>is secret, of course.
>Most people don't write that many secret
>messages.
That is a meaningless argument. What if those
messages that *are* encrypted *must* be encrypted?
What if it's a patient discussing an AIDS
treatment with their doctor, or a manager
dicsussing a classified manufacturing method with
his or her employees? You may not need to use
encryption much, but when you do, you *really*
need it.
>Guess what? If you use encryption, you're likely
>to be watched. Those of us who don't (most of us)
>will be less watched.
Being watched doesn't bother me. What important to
me is that casual observers not read *my* private
email. I like my privacy. My god! I must be a
terrorist or a child pornographer or a communist
or something!
>Wave that red flag, boys. Wave that red flag.
Keep writing on postcards, boys. Keep writing on postcards.
Some people might be new to both /. and the NYT and might not know. It doesn't cost anything to just ignore it if it really bugs you.
>This, I believe, was the underlying concept
>behind The Andromeda Strain (Michael Criton?).
This exact plan, with a few differences, was the idea behind Clarke's "The Songs Of Distant Earth." One of my favourite books, actually.
Yeah, Michael Crighton wrote "Andromeda Strain". One of the two books he's written that I actually enjoyed, the original Jurassic Park novel being the other one. I remember reading Jurassic Park about a year before the movie came out... better in print, I think.
Just because a spacecraft stops accelerating doesn't mean it stops moving.
Quite frankly, I'm very excited by this. Imagine a mass-produced line of probes with modular sensors, driven by these M2P2 drives. We could fire them off to anything we find interesting. Imagine scouting all the planets and their moons in the solar system within just a few decades.
Anyway, that's just my $0.02.
Chibi-bits?! Ugh! I can just imagine a mutie-freak HD with pink hair being installed in my machine...
To our southern neighbors, I apologize for my fellow citizen.
"Contrary to popular opinion, the average Canadien does not consider themselves friendly to the USA. They just want our jobs."
And contrary to *your* ignorant opinion, I, a Canadian, *am* friendly to the USA. I have many American friends, and I'm not ashamed to hold many of their values, most notably their Constitution, in high regard.
It's people like you who really disgust me. Judging an entire nation by the acts of a few politicians or criminals is one of the worst things one can do. Imagine if all Americans judged us by the acts of Preston Manning, Jacques Parizeau, or Karla Homolka.
The average American isn't interested in stealing jobs, they just want to live in peace and enjoy life. They're no different from us. Except that we have to shovel a bit more snow in the winter, but that's a little off-topic. (Grin)
And it's spelled Canadian. If you're going to spout off a rant of how much "Americans suck" (to paraphrase) then please get your own citizenship straight.
Does the UK have such advanced voice-recognition that they can identify words spoken at the speeds that people normally use, in a variety of different accents, over a *phone* *line* of all things? Or do they just hire a few thousand people in order to listen to each call?
Personally, I'm skeptical. This would work if it was involving telegraphs (are they still used over there?) but not phone calls.
Unless, of course, They, the benign aliens from Alpha Centauri, gave the UK and US advanced voice surveillance technology along with the anti-gravity Black Helicopters and the cloning tanks to breed their species on Earth. Sheesh...
Hasn't this rumor been around in a variety of forms since the 60's?
Is it even possible to record in faster than real time?
Yes. Just use any old stereo with two cassette decks and high speed dubbing. Of course, this has no bearing on the patent issue... I think. Well, IANAL.
Always wanted to say that...
Over at http://www.spaceviews.com there's an article on this plan (Which I think is a damn good idea, BTW) which goes into more detail about what observation platforms are going to be used. The Hubble is apparently one of the satellites scheduled to be used.
:)
This is definitely a good use of the probe. As many others have pointed out, it's mission is over and there is a chance (a small one, but a chance nonetheless) that a major scientific discovery could be made. I'll be eagerly waiting for any results.
And this is completely off-topic, but I really wish that the Russian space agency would get it's ISS components finished...
Sorry for the editorial.
Perhaps Space 1999 was a prophecy not just a scifi series?
Yikes! I sure hope not! I'd sooner believe that Ren and Stimpy's "Space Madness" was a prophetic vision.
Apache's configuration/setup totally blows. Who in thier right mind would want to use some external program ( nasty text editor ) to configure a webserver with?
Of course. You're absolutely right. We should all give up our "nasty text editors" and use Wizards. After all, an M$ program would know more about optimizing performance than a trained professional, right?
IIS is way much easier to setup and maintane. It seems to be faster on my dual PII than apache does as well.
If it's faster for you, good for you. But please don't assume that we're all mindless M$ drones who are incabable of actually thinking.
>But when has lucas been known to pick
>people for their acting skill? Wasnt ford
>picked to do solo because his father was
>friends with lucas?
Not really. Harrison Ford (one of my favourite actors, BTW) was moonlighting as a construction worker on the New Hope set. Lucas needed someone to read Solo's part quickly, and Ford was one of the few actors nearby who wasn't in the movie. He, Hamill and Fisher apparently just clicked as a team, and the rest is history.
>What it comes down to is do you really want
>to see leo in a lightsaber fight [...]?
Yes, if he loses. Oh! You meant in the movie, not in real life. Sorry, my mistake. May Leo die screaming horribly with sharp things in his head.
I only graduated from HS last year, and the place still had two labs full of 8088 PCs. Yeah. Complete with these off-brand 15-year-old 10" monochrome monitors, no HD, DOS 4.01 and dual 5.25 floppy drives. Bleagh... They tried to sell 'em all off several times, but no one wanted them. Gee, I wonder why?
As for me, somewhere in a box in my house is an IBM PS/1 with a 286, 40 MB HD and a 2400 modem. Not as ancient as the other machines you guys have described, but still pretty old.
I feel guilty about living in Canada where the CRTC recently decided to not regulate the Internet. (I know it's well-nigh impossible, but it's the principal of the thing.) Sometimes I wish I could just walk up to a politician and beat him/her with a clue stick.
.au friends, best of luck.
I'm going to turn my webpage black, even though it's not my home country. To our
An M$-built window manager. Brrrr. If it was GPLed, I might run it to try it out, but otherwise...
:)
I just don't see that happening. Well, not a reliable window manager, anyway. I'd hate to see how dumbed-down it would be, with who knows how many useless features. Can we say "bloatware", boys and girls?
For people who understand X its wonderful and versatile as hell... but its also very complex and has plenty of security issues associated with it. Is that really what a simple end user wants?
Um, yeah, actually. I barely understand X, and I'm just a user (and wannabe perl hacker, but that's off topic), but I love X. It may take me a few hours of reading the man pages and my paper documentation to figure out a new feature or how to configure something, but in the end it's worth it. And yes, I do have a 9 to 5 job.
Can't wait for WINE...
Any bets as to whether some employees decided to "acquire" it?
Kudos to the "Rebel Scum", and may they succeed in their deperate struggle for freedom from the "Imperial Drones". :)
All my co-workers are looking at me funny. I guess I shouldn't laugh out loud like that while I'm supposed to be working. I really should go back to slaving away now...
...I would *never* have believed that the CRTC would ever make an intelligent decision regarding communications and broadcasting. My faith in my home country is restored. For once in my life, I'm glad I live north of the 49th.
If only our southern neighbors' governments would take a cue, we could have a nice, communications-friendly continent. I'm not sure what the situation is in Mexico, though... Anyone from there have any info on regulation?
Only 26 times each? I've watched the entire trilogy every weekend for as long as I can remember. It's no waste of time in my book.
And no, I'm not seeing it opening night. I'm going to see it a week and a half later, so I can watch it with all my out-of-town friends. SW:TPM might be good and it might be bad, but one thing's for sure: It'll be *fun*.
Cheers.
-- SG
"I'm not suffering from insanity. I'm enjoying every minute of it."