A certain group of men have foisted this rubbish upon women so that they can use them sexually and erase any evidence of what they've done.
*bullshit* Why don't you ask the *women's groups* what they think about it. The large majority of them are pro-choice. Not because they want to kill babies, but because they don't want the choice stripped from them. I don't care what you think about "miscellaneous" reasons, mitigating circumstances are up to the WOMAN to decide, not you are I. A woman who has an abortion is not infringing on anybody else's rights, and for somebody who associates with a philosophy whose pretense is that government should get OUT of our business, I can't see your reasoning for infringing on that.
WHAT? Is that right? Well OUR presidential candidate isn't a slum lord. A certain other pary can't say that.
Check where your candidate's state ranks as far as child poverty, education, etc. Bush IS a slum lord.
Intellect and reason are all that we have
An "intellect and reason" that leads you right into the center of the tragedy of the commons. Unfortunately it is people like you who *benifit* from such a tragedy by exploitation.
Does the constitution provide for the death penalty? If you believe in the death penalty you are a hypocrite if you are against abortion (what is the death penalty but delayed "abortion"...maybe we should just call it "abortion"). If you tell me, "oh, it's different, the person is criminal", I'll point to evidence of innocent people getting executing, and say as long as your qualifying something that is non-constitutional why can't another person qualify abortion?
Justice. That sounds familiar. What is that again? Why do both of the major candidates go on an on about liberty and the pursuit of happiness and never even mention "justice"? It's because justice would fix the system that feeds them and corrupts government. The BILLIONS of corporate profit money that is dumped wholesale into the major parties is an *injustice*. See my sig.
"The rights, priveliges and opportunities you have were not randomly granted by god on you."
Actually, they were.
And therein lies the crux of our difference. I believe it is both arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and too convenient to think that we have our rights because some benevolant "god" has just rained them down on us, without respect to those around us. I think our rights imbue us with responsibility. Ain't nothin for free. However I'd like to say that I think Alan Keyes, despite the fact that I fundamentally and strongly disagree with his stance on religion and moralism, was the most intelligent and engaging of all the candidates.
At least one thing that you're saying makes sense. I was thinking something along the lines of, when you get welfare you have 6 months to either #1 get a job and take part in the "workfare" system or #2 go to your local community college and work towards an associate degree in some field.
Well I'm glad we at least agree on this. Just giving handouts is putting a bandaid over a gushing wound. Curing a symptom, not the disease.
Classic liberal mistake #2 race baiting. That's not going to work here. I'm black. You're not using that one against me. October 21, 1979 my father, a black man, was murdered by.....YES you guessed it another black man. Which is typically the case. Criminals stick to their own, so even if there is a disparity among criminals who are executed the majority of them have killed other members of a minority.
BTW, my father's murderer didn't get executed, he didn't even get life. In less than a decade, he was back on the street. He's in jail again for drug dealing. A real stand up guy! It would have been a travesty to execute him.
I am not "race baiting". I am stating the facts. I am sorry about your father, but that the killer got off so easily is evidence that the system is *broken*. Don't you think it would've been all to easy to pick up another, innocent, black man and give him the death penalty? When the Democrats claim to the clapping of the NAACP that unemployment has gone down among blacks, and then you realize that's because the *incarceration rate has gone up*, don't you think there is something very wrong? That the system got a guilty man off easily is no excuse for the murdering of just one innocent person.
Well using that analogy I'd say that if everybody communally owns a cave than the clan as a whole can decide what happens with profits made under the protection of the cave. Those who go out and kill a big bounty and come back to the protection of the cave owe a tiny bit to the others in the cave who are sharing it with them. We all live in a big shared cave of a country. We should pass our fellow cavemen some dregs of our meat.
(maybe House would be a better analogy, because everybody builds and maintains a house, so even those who don't profit do *something*)
what those Silicon Valley hotshots haven't figured out is that you get out of life what you put into it, same as a computer.
Yes, but if you're computer is a 286, you might die before getting anything out of it. A lot of people in this country are still working with vacuum tubes. Many others around the world are just discovering binary rock clacking.
You might even say that the car manufacturer is endangering your life, infringing upon your rights. Of course following that line of reasoning you have the option not to use the product. But that is impractical, and we've already made product safety standards for a good reason (when there weren't any, people sold Coke filled with cocaine, magical elixers to cure all sorts of ailments, contraptions that would just break and injure people, etc.).
Or perhaps instead, the powers that be which influence people don't want the government to change. People think everything is A-OK and gladfully vote for one of the two identical, and big-business-backed candidates. That's the feedback loop. To break it you raise awareness and give facts and choices to the people.
I believe there is at least one case in which the constitution has been interpreted as implying "standard education", although I can't find it now. It had to do with states trading and the need for people to have some common level of education.
And we have socialized food distribution...sorta: food stamps.
I'd agree with you but I would tend to think some things are simply civil duties, not favors. People who have come by masses of wealth by the grace and opportunity in this country do have some responsibility I believe. That's why we have taxes and social programs.
What are the implications on liberty if we've established that:
* Humans tend (and seem to want) to go back to this "natural state" that is undesireable
* We don't want this to happen
The implications are that "freedoms" are always derived from restrictions, which is the way it always has been. I have the "right" to life because others are *restricted* from injuring me. I have the "right" to liberty because others are *restricted* from impinging upon it. Imposing restrictions doesn't make us automatically degenerate into automatons. It is how we come by freedoms in the first place.
And if you want to learn what wonderful "rights" and "freedoms" the "natural state" gives you, go to the bad part of any major metropolitan area and you will find out: gangs (the right to injure others), drugs (the right to pursue happiness), etc. I'll take only as many restrictions as necessary to escape this "natural state" and fulfill the requirements of the constitution but as few over as necessary.
Why is it considered selfish to believe that I know best how to lead MY life?
Why is it selfish for me to think that each individual person knows more about how his/her life should be than some would be regulator?
Because, my friend, you do not live in a vacuum. I am not talking about personal sovereignty, I am talking about personal responsibility. You are personally sovereign, but you also have a responsibility. The rights, priveliges and opportunities you have were not randomly granted by god on you. Ancestors died, toiled and fought to give you a country in which you could profess to have all these privelages magically ascribed to you at birth. This country is a host which has been graciously providing you the opportunity to benefit yourself. I believe it is too arrogant to think one is entirely an island with no duty to country or countryman.
The fact that some people out there are too stupid to productively lead their own lives shouldn't mean that the rest of us should submit to arbitrary regulation of our every day lives.
Now that is just a bald-faced affront. Perhaps you would like to tell the inner city child choking of asthma induced by the polluting exhaust of your SUV that he is too "stupid" and therefore doesn't have the right to benefit from clean air which is *communally owned*. Maybe you would like to tell the african that he is starving and dying of AIDs because he is too "stupid" to be industrious enough to afford the exorbitant price of medication produced by governmentally subsidized pharmaceutical companies.
For the record, I'm not a Libertarian. I'm a Republican. I own several guns, I'm going to vote for George W Bush, I own a gas guzzling Sports car and a big honking SUV. Why? Because I feel like it. That's the only reason any of us should need to give.
Well I'll just let that stand. Don't say you're not a hypocrite when you legislate morality.
I believe that Welfare should be a second chance or a leg up, not a way of life.
Ditto. And I think we need to be giving people the opportunity to get OFF welfare. I don't see how anybody could expect someone who is uneducated and unskilled to get off welfare magically. The resources and opportunity should be there so people can pull themselves up. Not just take handouts.
I'm in favor of executing murderers.
Yes, I wouldn't mind a good old roman gladiatorial finish to some of the evil bastards that come accross the criminal justice system either. However, in evidence of the injustice of the criminal justice system, and the bias against minorities, I have to conclude you are callous or ignorant to the deaths of innocent people. One innocent person killed on death row is one too many. Until that is remedied (and perhaps even after) the death penalty is unethical.
56 MILLION people have been killed by their own governments this century alone.
Many of which your Republican friends have happily funded under the guise of "stability" and "democracy".
While the average person is being reduced to a semi-literate consumeroid, a profit battery for some giant corporate machine, there must be SOMEONE who cares about the future of the world. Why not us? If there is no other group of people who cares enough to think further ahead that what's for dinner tonight, why then shouldn't it be us who cares about the generations to come?
If you are worried about corporate influence and corruption of government you are *definately* in the wrong party. If anything, join the Libertarian party.
I think several interpretations support the definition of "general welfare" that I subscribe to. Also, provisions for "standard of education" and "progress of science and useful arts" are explicitly listed. I think "promote the general welfare" (among many other things in the constitution) was explicitly vague to support things they could not foresee. I believe health care is a rational provision (I imagine at the time there really was no concept of ongoing health care). If it is aconstitutional, it is at least moral, and strangely enough, those who traditionally oppose social programs like the above have no problems legislating other types of morality.
I just read a blurb on Objectivism. I agree with some of it. That man's rational self-interest and pursuit of happiness is the highest end seems just a bit too cold for me. I think that there are many things that man can accomplish for the good of himself and others without strictly acting in self-interest. It's the whole Tragedy of the Commons thing. Along with that I also disagree with entirely Laissez-Faire economics. No, we shouldn't unreasonably prevent people from pursuing their interests and bettering themselves. However I believe the "economy" is a publicly held resource shared by all. Some benefit, some lose, but it is hosted by society for the society, under the society's terms. Without some very basic limits (I'd say 1: 1) too poor) a purely Laissez-Faire economy merely replicates the "natural state" that we form governments to escape in the first place! So, no, I think objectivism is just a bit too irresponsible for me. Unless she considers that rational self-interest will lead to charity, but I'm not about to make that bet, and I'd rather have some form of equality be a duty, not just a favor.
I think all of us on the net have a libertarian streak running through us. I do. However, I think that pure libertarianism (like that proposed by the Libertarian party) is just plain irresponsible. Take to an extreme it is just an anarchy (every individual is entirely self-sovereign). I think there is a clear mandate in the Constitution for the government to provide a specific set of services. I interpret "provide for the general welfare" as standardized education and some form of really basic universally accessible health care. You might throw Social Security in there too (funny how conservatives and Republicans are so frothingly anti-socialist, refusing to support universal health care, yet supporting one of the most socialized of programs: Social Security).
I also have to say that I'm rather disgusted with the gold rush mentality of Silicon valley and the high tech sector in general. More than any previous time we have intelligent, educated people, coming out of colleges and being immediately consumed in a blind haste to ammass and burn vast amounts of fortune in a vaporous economy. Shame on us. While Clifford Stoll is just a little too eccentric for main-stream, he has a damn good point. Wake yourself out of your cyber-stupor. Look at the world around you. Do something *real*. It is all too easy these days to be captivated by glitz and by enraptured by the goal of 15 seconds of fame.
Your computer doesn't love you. Make a difference.
It seems to be fashion to claim that Open Source is slow and never releases something final, and that's just plain FUD.
Well, I have to play devil's advocate here. There is as much FUD about the benefits of Open Source as there is about deficits. Let me state it plainly: I do believe that Open Source in *general* can often be slower to develop, incorporate, and release *new* stuff. Open Source has been proven *excellent* for incremental development and bug fixes. The turn around rate is amazing *once there is a solid foundation*. But because Open Source projects are based on personal will, often things don't move as fast in the *consumer's* direction as a traditional cathedral monk-to-the-grindstone approach. Please, let's not be so blind as to not realize the reality of Open Source projects - their great benefits and their real deficits...it is only doing a disservice and reducing credibility. I have faith that *when* Mozilla comes out it will be of a quality much greater than any other commercial product of its type, but the price has been the long time to delivery. Suck is not doing any "marketing shit". I find Suck actually to be rather clueful. Let's just not spew venom just because somebody has insulted our baby.
If there is no other way than this then I call "bullshit". Their installer shouldn't be so brain-dead it doesn't even have the option to install off a file system. One shouldn't have to trick the installer with hostname games. What *do* they do at Netscape?
I posted this basic thing to Mozillazine: I'm sick of the previews. Either Netscape should put out a *real* product, or just make us wait, but not tease us with "Netscape 6" previews which are basically a nightly build with some funky Netscape installer. If we get another preview that will be pushing it. One preview, fine. Two, and we know that you're schedule is slipping. But three and beyond we realize you are just toying with us while you putz around. This is not really helping Netscape's image. I sure hope the next thing the get out has actually had some effort put into something called "packaging", not just taking a nightly and slapping on AOL AIM and saying it's done. I'm getting really frustrated (yeah yeah it's free, but it's still frustrating being tempted with intriguing downloads that are just loosely assembled nightly builds and AOL junk).
You make some valid points. Yes, creators of products (or services) cannot be entirely seperated from the results of usage of said products or services. But in the examples you cite, the products do EXACTLY what they were meant to do. Cheaply made cars break and kill people, well, because they weren't designed not to. Driving a car is not some strange and bizarre activity - in fact it is the activity the car was designed for. Tobacco also was designed (don't even try to tell me otherwise) to deliver a neurostimulant. Inherent to the fact of being a smoked neurostimulant follow many consequences. I think guns are a bit different because they are not failing to perform in the advertised manner or producing unwarrented results (when you shoot something it will get hurt - duh). Guns do exactly what they are supposed to (and what they're supposed to do is the issue, not the metal and wood of a gun).
However, nobody is complaining that the product in question has bad side effects when *used correctly*. Nobody is being hit by shrapnel, or inhaling second hand smoke when they trade files. What is being claimed is that because some people choose to use an entirely valid product for a criminal purpose, the creator of said product, who may have nothing to do with this person, or even the product itself at this time, can be held responsible. Bombs and guns are not a good analogy - because they do *exactly* what they're supposed to do. A file sharing network is for sharing files, agnostic of their legitimacy or value. If somebody is using this service/product criminally it's not the creator's fault. E.g., are car companies responsible for bank heists or drug trafficking? Their responsible for cars breaking down or blowing up, but not for somebody doing something illegal with them.
Ok, I'm dumb...I understand what *brightness* is, but what exactly is "gamma"? I've seen these terms used independently, so I assume they are not exactly the same thing?
Perhaps I don't have my full dosage of clue, but, while the LSB is nice and all, I still would like to see broad standards to which all distributions conform. Linux, the net, and open source software in general is largely based on open specifications, standards, so that things can interoperate. I'd like a few things cleared up:
/usr/*,/usr/local/* ?
/var usage
/opt usage
/users,/usr/home,/home ?
init scripts: System V, BSD ?
name and format of configuration files (*.conf, *.rc,.*rc)
Also I think there should be a unified package manager system. It seems to me package management needs to migrate to a standardized repository or database (dare I say "registry"?) of application information, indicating interdependences, and what is installed. Somebody mentioned OS X-like application package system. I don't think that is entirely feasible, because many packages consist of different components: applications, documentation, system components - these all need to be put in their correct place. We hate the windows registry because it is of some proprietary binary format that you need a tool to use, but what about a simple XML file, or micro-database, where information is stored centrally?
You might even migrate various application configuration files into this, but that's pushing it, and for the most part, application-specific configuration files do the job just fine (I believe there is at least one effort to standardize application configuration files).
Again if things are already being done, then fine, I'm not aware of them. Ideally one should be able to install any distribution, and immediately know where things are and how things work, having used any other distribution, and be able to install, configure and remove packages in a standardized way.
I am reposting this from a previous article because it makes more sense under this one.
Ok, as only partially-initiated, I must ask, in spite of the simplicity of the philosophy of Unix, why oh why are there so many damn interdependencies in applications? Example: I install RedHat (yeah, shut up, it was the only thing that would install over DHCP on this old ThinkPad, after trying FreeBSD, Slackware, NetBSD, and TurboLinux), and choose the most minimal of configurations, and also choosing some small tools like cvs, etc. Well all of a sudden it is prompting me for all sorts of other dependent packages. I could not believe it when it told me I needed the entirety of KDE, and *then* also GNOME to satisfy dependencies! That is bullshit. Tk, Tcl, Python, Perl, Expect (!)...how the hell many things do I need to install? Am I the only one who thinks that backending GUI or administrative applications by Perl is just a god-awful abuse?
Sure this is just one experience, but I've found the same general thing when installing other distributions. Is this just a commercial flaw? Or do other "non-commercial" distributions like Slackware and Debian not require this? I just boggle at the horrendous amount of crap that even the most trivial of applications is dependent upon.
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*bullshit* Why don't you ask the *women's groups* what they think about it. The large majority of them are pro-choice. Not because they want to kill babies, but because they don't want the choice stripped from them. I don't care what you think about "miscellaneous" reasons, mitigating circumstances are up to the WOMAN to decide, not you are I. A woman who has an abortion is not infringing on anybody else's rights, and for somebody who associates with a philosophy whose pretense is that government should get OUT of our business, I can't see your reasoning for infringing on that.
Check where your candidate's state ranks as far as child poverty, education, etc. Bush IS a slum lord.
An "intellect and reason" that leads you right into the center of the tragedy of the commons. Unfortunately it is people like you who *benifit* from such a tragedy by exploitation.
Does the constitution provide for the death penalty? If you believe in the death penalty you are a hypocrite if you are against abortion (what is the death penalty but delayed "abortion"...maybe we should just call it "abortion"). If you tell me, "oh, it's different, the person is criminal", I'll point to evidence of innocent people getting executing, and say as long as your qualifying something that is non-constitutional why can't another person qualify abortion?
Justice. That sounds familiar. What is that again? Why do both of the major candidates go on an on about liberty and the pursuit of happiness and never even mention "justice"? It's because justice would fix the system that feeds them and corrupts government. The BILLIONS of corporate profit money that is dumped wholesale into the major parties is an *injustice*. See my sig.
And therein lies the crux of our difference. I believe it is both arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and too convenient to think that we have our rights because some benevolant "god" has just rained them down on us, without respect to those around us. I think our rights imbue us with responsibility. Ain't nothin for free. However I'd like to say that I think Alan Keyes, despite the fact that I fundamentally and strongly disagree with his stance on religion and moralism, was the most intelligent and engaging of all the candidates.
Well I'm glad we at least agree on this. Just giving handouts is putting a bandaid over a gushing wound. Curing a symptom, not the disease.
I am not "race baiting". I am stating the facts. I am sorry about your father, but that the killer got off so easily is evidence that the system is *broken*. Don't you think it would've been all to easy to pick up another, innocent, black man and give him the death penalty? When the Democrats claim to the clapping of the NAACP that unemployment has gone down among blacks, and then you realize that's because the *incarceration rate has gone up*, don't you think there is something very wrong? That the system got a guilty man off easily is no excuse for the murdering of just one innocent person.
Well using that analogy I'd say that if everybody communally owns a cave than the clan as a whole can decide what happens with profits made under the protection of the cave. Those who go out and kill a big bounty and come back to the protection of the cave owe a tiny bit to the others in the cave who are sharing it with them. We all live in a big shared cave of a country. We should pass our fellow cavemen some dregs of our meat.
(maybe House would be a better analogy, because everybody builds and maintains a house, so even those who don't profit do *something*)
Yes, but if you're computer is a 286, you might die before getting anything out of it. A lot of people in this country are still working with vacuum tubes. Many others around the world are just discovering binary rock clacking.
You might even say that the car manufacturer is endangering your life, infringing upon your rights. Of course following that line of reasoning you have the option not to use the product. But that is impractical, and we've already made product safety standards for a good reason (when there weren't any, people sold Coke filled with cocaine, magical elixers to cure all sorts of ailments, contraptions that would just break and injure people, etc.).
Or perhaps instead, the powers that be which influence people don't want the government to change. People think everything is A-OK and gladfully vote for one of the two identical, and big-business-backed candidates. That's the feedback loop. To break it you raise awareness and give facts and choices to the people.
I believe there is at least one case in which the constitution has been interpreted as implying "standard education", although I can't find it now. It had to do with states trading and the need for people to have some common level of education.
And we have socialized food distribution...sorta: food stamps.
I'd agree with you but I would tend to think some things are simply civil duties, not favors. People who have come by masses of wealth by the grace and opportunity in this country do have some responsibility I believe. That's why we have taxes and social programs.
The implications are that "freedoms" are always derived from restrictions, which is the way it always has been. I have the "right" to life because others are *restricted* from injuring me. I have the "right" to liberty because others are *restricted* from impinging upon it. Imposing restrictions doesn't make us automatically degenerate into automatons. It is how we come by freedoms in the first place.
And if you want to learn what wonderful "rights" and "freedoms" the "natural state" gives you, go to the bad part of any major metropolitan area and you will find out: gangs (the right to injure others), drugs (the right to pursue happiness), etc. I'll take only as many restrictions as necessary to escape this "natural state" and fulfill the requirements of the constitution but as few over as necessary.
Because, my friend, you do not live in a vacuum. I am not talking about personal sovereignty, I am talking about personal responsibility. You are personally sovereign, but you also have a responsibility. The rights, priveliges and opportunities you have were not randomly granted by god on you. Ancestors died, toiled and fought to give you a country in which you could profess to have all these privelages magically ascribed to you at birth. This country is a host which has been graciously providing you the opportunity to benefit yourself. I believe it is too arrogant to think one is entirely an island with no duty to country or countryman.
Now that is just a bald-faced affront. Perhaps you would like to tell the inner city child choking of asthma induced by the polluting exhaust of your SUV that he is too "stupid" and therefore doesn't have the right to benefit from clean air which is *communally owned*. Maybe you would like to tell the african that he is starving and dying of AIDs because he is too "stupid" to be industrious enough to afford the exorbitant price of medication produced by governmentally subsidized pharmaceutical companies.
Well I'll just let that stand. Don't say you're not a hypocrite when you legislate morality.
Ditto. And I think we need to be giving people the opportunity to get OFF welfare. I don't see how anybody could expect someone who is uneducated and unskilled to get off welfare magically. The resources and opportunity should be there so people can pull themselves up. Not just take handouts.
Yes, I wouldn't mind a good old roman gladiatorial finish to some of the evil bastards that come accross the criminal justice system either. However, in evidence of the injustice of the criminal justice system, and the bias against minorities, I have to conclude you are callous or ignorant to the deaths of innocent people. One innocent person killed on death row is one too many. Until that is remedied (and perhaps even after) the death penalty is unethical.
Many of which your Republican friends have happily funded under the guise of "stability" and "democracy".
If you are worried about corporate influence and corruption of government you are *definately* in the wrong party. If anything, join the Libertarian party.
I think several interpretations support the definition of "general welfare" that I subscribe to. Also, provisions for "standard of education" and "progress of science and useful arts" are explicitly listed. I think "promote the general welfare" (among many other things in the constitution) was explicitly vague to support things they could not foresee. I believe health care is a rational provision (I imagine at the time there really was no concept of ongoing health care). If it is aconstitutional, it is at least moral, and strangely enough, those who traditionally oppose social programs like the above have no problems legislating other types of morality.
I just read a blurb on Objectivism. I agree with some of it. That man's rational self-interest and pursuit of happiness is the highest end seems just a bit too cold for me. I think that there are many things that man can accomplish for the good of himself and others without strictly acting in self-interest. It's the whole Tragedy of the Commons thing. Along with that I also disagree with entirely Laissez-Faire economics. No, we shouldn't unreasonably prevent people from pursuing their interests and bettering themselves. However I believe the "economy" is a publicly held resource shared by all. Some benefit, some lose, but it is hosted by society for the society, under the society's terms. Without some very basic limits (I'd say 1: 1) too poor) a purely Laissez-Faire economy merely replicates the "natural state" that we form governments to escape in the first place! So, no, I think objectivism is just a bit too irresponsible for me. Unless she considers that rational self-interest will lead to charity, but I'm not about to make that bet, and I'd rather have some form of equality be a duty, not just a favor.
I think all of us on the net have a libertarian streak running through us. I do. However, I think that pure libertarianism (like that proposed by the Libertarian party) is just plain irresponsible. Take to an extreme it is just an anarchy (every individual is entirely self-sovereign). I think there is a clear mandate in the Constitution for the government to provide a specific set of services. I interpret "provide for the general welfare" as standardized education and some form of really basic universally accessible health care. You might throw Social Security in there too (funny how conservatives and Republicans are so frothingly anti-socialist, refusing to support universal health care, yet supporting one of the most socialized of programs: Social Security).
I also have to say that I'm rather disgusted with the gold rush mentality of Silicon valley and the high tech sector in general. More than any previous time we have intelligent, educated people, coming out of colleges and being immediately consumed in a blind haste to ammass and burn vast amounts of fortune in a vaporous economy. Shame on us. While Clifford Stoll is just a little too eccentric for main-stream, he has a damn good point. Wake yourself out of your cyber-stupor. Look at the world around you. Do something *real*. It is all too easy these days to be captivated by glitz and by enraptured by the goal of 15 seconds of fame.
Your computer doesn't love you. Make a difference.
I'm sure by now I don't have to explain my sig.
Well, I have to play devil's advocate here. There is as much FUD about the benefits of Open Source as there is about deficits. Let me state it plainly: I do believe that Open Source in *general* can often be slower to develop, incorporate, and release *new* stuff. Open Source has been proven *excellent* for incremental development and bug fixes. The turn around rate is amazing *once there is a solid foundation*. But because Open Source projects are based on personal will, often things don't move as fast in the *consumer's* direction as a traditional cathedral monk-to-the-grindstone approach. Please, let's not be so blind as to not realize the reality of Open Source projects - their great benefits and their real deficits...it is only doing a disservice and reducing credibility. I have faith that *when* Mozilla comes out it will be of a quality much greater than any other commercial product of its type, but the price has been the long time to delivery. Suck is not doing any "marketing shit". I find Suck actually to be rather clueful. Let's just not spew venom just because somebody has insulted our baby.
If there is no other way than this then I call "bullshit". Their installer shouldn't be so brain-dead it doesn't even have the option to install off a file system. One shouldn't have to trick the installer with hostname games. What *do* they do at Netscape?
I posted this basic thing to Mozillazine: I'm sick of the previews. Either Netscape should put out a *real* product, or just make us wait, but not tease us with "Netscape 6" previews which are basically a nightly build with some funky Netscape installer. If we get another preview that will be pushing it. One preview, fine. Two, and we know that you're schedule is slipping. But three and beyond we realize you are just toying with us while you putz around. This is not really helping Netscape's image. I sure hope the next thing the get out has actually had some effort put into something called "packaging", not just taking a nightly and slapping on AOL AIM and saying it's done. I'm getting really frustrated (yeah yeah it's free, but it's still frustrating being tempted with intriguing downloads that are just loosely assembled nightly builds and AOL junk).
So, when can we get the Dilbert ring with which we can surf the net one character at a time?
You make some valid points. Yes, creators of products (or services) cannot be entirely seperated from the results of usage of said products or services. But in the examples you cite, the products do EXACTLY what they were meant to do. Cheaply made cars break and kill people, well, because they weren't designed not to. Driving a car is not some strange and bizarre activity - in fact it is the activity the car was designed for. Tobacco also was designed (don't even try to tell me otherwise) to deliver a neurostimulant. Inherent to the fact of being a smoked neurostimulant follow many consequences. I think guns are a bit different because they are not failing to perform in the advertised manner or producing unwarrented results (when you shoot something it will get hurt - duh). Guns do exactly what they are supposed to (and what they're supposed to do is the issue, not the metal and wood of a gun).
However, nobody is complaining that the product in question has bad side effects when *used correctly*. Nobody is being hit by shrapnel, or inhaling second hand smoke when they trade files. What is being claimed is that because some people choose to use an entirely valid product for a criminal purpose, the creator of said product, who may have nothing to do with this person, or even the product itself at this time, can be held responsible. Bombs and guns are not a good analogy - because they do *exactly* what they're supposed to do. A file sharing network is for sharing files, agnostic of their legitimacy or value. If somebody is using this service/product criminally it's not the creator's fault. E.g., are car companies responsible for bank heists or drug trafficking? Their responsible for cars breaking down or blowing up, but not for somebody doing something illegal with them.
does that make sense...
Ok, I'm dumb...I understand what *brightness* is, but what exactly is "gamma"? I've seen these terms used independently, so I assume they are not exactly the same thing?
Is this a hoax? If not, I want my flying-car-in-a-briefcase.
This Microsoft time must be why all their products are delivered late and unfinished. Probably also why they slow down a perfectly fine computer.
Perhaps I don't have my full dosage of clue, but, while the LSB is nice and all, I still would like to see broad standards to which all distributions conform. Linux, the net, and open source software in general is largely based on open specifications, standards, so that things can interoperate. I'd like a few things cleared up:
/usr/local/* ?
/usr/home, /home ?
.*rc)
/usr/*,
/var usage
/opt usage
/users,
init scripts: System V, BSD ?
name and format of configuration files (*.conf, *.rc,
Also I think there should be a unified package manager system. It seems to me package management needs to migrate to a standardized repository or database (dare I say "registry"?) of application information, indicating interdependences, and what is installed. Somebody mentioned OS X-like application package system. I don't think that is entirely feasible, because many packages consist of different components: applications, documentation, system components - these all need to be put in their correct place. We hate the windows registry because it is of some proprietary binary format that you need a tool to use, but what about a simple XML file, or micro-database, where information is stored centrally?
You might even migrate various application configuration files into this, but that's pushing it, and for the most part, application-specific configuration files do the job just fine (I believe there is at least one effort to standardize application configuration files).
Again if things are already being done, then fine, I'm not aware of them. Ideally one should be able to install any distribution, and immediately know where things are and how things work, having used any other distribution, and be able to install, configure and remove packages in a standardized way.
I am reposting this from a previous article because it makes more sense under this one.
Ok, as only partially-initiated, I must ask, in spite of the simplicity of the philosophy of Unix, why oh why are there so many damn interdependencies in applications? Example: I install RedHat (yeah, shut up, it was the only thing that would install over DHCP on this old ThinkPad, after trying FreeBSD, Slackware, NetBSD, and TurboLinux), and choose the most minimal of configurations, and also choosing some small tools like cvs, etc. Well all of a sudden it is prompting me for all sorts of other dependent packages. I could not believe it when it told me I needed the entirety of KDE, and *then* also GNOME to satisfy dependencies! That is bullshit. Tk, Tcl, Python, Perl, Expect (!)...how the hell many things do I need to install? Am I the only one who thinks that backending GUI or administrative applications by Perl is just a god-awful abuse?
Sure this is just one experience, but I've found the same general thing when installing other distributions. Is this just a commercial flaw? Or do other "non-commercial" distributions like Slackware and Debian not require this? I just boggle at the horrendous amount of crap that even the most trivial of applications is dependent upon.
Ok, I'm putting on my asbestos trousers...