Whereas I may say "cute" about an imac, I definately would say "cool" about a TNT3 Ultra Dual PIII 600, 512 ram, scsi, etc.
Speaking of "cute"/"cool" Macs...OS 8.blah has been getting a lot of hype...supposed to be more stable, more this, more that (yes, it does look nice and that theming is sorta sophisticated)...but I was just using one of these nice blue G3 boxen the other day, had Netscape and a telnet client and a text editor opened...and I Quit Netscape and the whole thing just locked up completely. Not so much as an error message. This was like 5 minutes after I booted it. Of course this is all entirely subjective and I can't guarantee the state of the hardware, etc., but that the computer just absolutely locked (not like it doesn't happen in windows, but at least only after some fair amount of screwing around)...?
I hope higher education is also paying attention...
Here at cornell you can walk into one of the many bazillions of libraries and see row upon row upon row of brand new sparkling white 400mhz PII 17-inch screen, 10Gig, 128 RAM, Gateways or Dells (because of silly educational "partnerships"), which just run a crummy telnet client to the library catalogue!!! ARGH!!! That's easily hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and software alone, not to mention the cost of supporting all these boxes! All this could be done with thin/dumb terminals and just one server. How hard is this to concieve? I really cannot believe the amount of money they spend on stupid frivolous things in these universities.
I remember my freshman year of college we had ID cards with bar codes that contained meal plan info, that would be swiped when you entered a cafeteria. I derived how they were made, printed out some of my own, and taped them to the back of my ID with transparent scotch tape. I actually had quite a few free meals before I got nervous that the tape would peel and become visible, or the paper bar-code would become visible against the card (the card would get dirty, but the paper, being under tape, wouldn't). fun stuff... That was also the year I lost a dollar with a strip of packing tape on it to a vending machine. ooops...
XML is great. Although there are some places in which it doesn't fit in, it is as much a panacea as anything could be. XML basically is just a standard plaintext way of describing everything. RDF can basically describe any resource. AllianceOS is also looking at XML as a way of storing system configuration. XML is being used already as an application revision synchronization mechanism. It's being used for those little Slashboxes. I don't want to sound like a zealot, but I think XML is/the/ way to go. It can only help. Imagine standard installation routines specified by XML...XML system configurations and package formats...the list goes on.
XML IS overkill in some cases...some things are just so darn obvious tags would just get in the way...but I think at higher, broader level, XML can help very much.
The part about forcing people I admit was out of context...I was replying to a previous statement that in an ideal world everybody would be armed and dangerous which apparently was in a different thread.
I also know that there are plenty of responsible upright gun owners. But no amount of responsible upright gun owners will be able to make up for the one that screws everything up. I am not against guns in general (as my other posts show), I am agains guns specifically designed to kill humans, or in general killing with little or no means of avoidance. Yes I/realize/ that this is a slippery slope, where does one draw the line at "assault", etc., but there are obviously lethal features of some guns that have no "sport" or "hunting" value. The proliferation of these is what I'm against. No human has a reason to have one of these (in an ideal society)...the provision in the Constitution is entirely anachronistic - nobody is going to overthrow an evil government with firearms.
The gun is a tool like the others you mention, but UNLIKE the others you mention it is the sole one designed with the express purpose of killing outright. That is the purpose of a gun (well except for olympic shooting, etc.).
You also don't have to patronize me with the "outlaw-everything-then" line of reason. I am well aware of it. There is however, unlike chemicals, a distinct line to be draw with guns. Some features simply have no reason for being other than for breaking the law. There are plenty of valid reasons for using explosive chemicals...what valid reasons are there in a civilized society for automatic assault weapons with large clips? How about anti-personell/anti-vest bullets? None of these things have a place...they are certainly not used for hunting or sport.
I'm not against guns as a concept, I'm against guns as a solution to problems, I'm against the proliferation and "arms race" safety-by-show-of-force mentality. Guns don't kill people, people kill people...but some guns make it a lot easier.
"Why do you say it is a bad thing for people who own guns to know how to use them?"
The post which this was in was taking words from my mouth. I never said that people who own guns SHOULDN'T know how to use them properly. I was responding to a statement that in an ideal world everybody would have guns and be properly trained. Looking back in this thread I apologize for making the counter statment because that statement was not made in this thread. It must have been made in another and I must have still been thinking about it.
"No one has suggested forcing guns onto ANYONE. I suggest that the people who are getting guns be required to know how to use them. That greatly reduces the chances that someone will miss their target and hit someone else unintentionally."
I entirely agree.
"I don't care whether everyone on earth has the ability to properly fire a gun, but as long as the criminal elements believe that I have a gun and know how to use it I will feel a lot better."
It may make you feel beter, but it doesn't make me feel better. What's stopping a criminal who suspects that you have a gun from killing you outright so you won't use it (yes, enter concealed carry arguments)? I'd rather NOT be a target, and I'd rather that the criminal NOT have access to weapons from which their is hardly any escape for me. How many rounds does a pistol have? how long to reload a shotgun/rifle?...now how many bullets does an assualt weapon like an AK have in a click? What is the chance I can escape during a reload? That everyone around me could be carrying these weapons legally, and concealed (well, I hope concealed carry laws don't allow these types of weapons) don't make me feel "safe".
"IT's human nature, live with it or change it... if you wanna change it then good luck. I prefer to pay more attention to my own personalitys development than worry about everyone elses. I can not affect what you do, but I can affect my reaction to it."
And herein lies the distinction. I have no doubt it is totally plausible to actually live in an environment of enforced civility due to threat of lethal force.../but it is not an environment I live it/. I COULD feel physically safe by carrying a gun...but I'd RATHER feel physically safe by knowing that nobody could hurt me. Yes idealistic but really the schism between the two lines of thought. YES, I would MUCH rather "change it", not simply live with it and equip myself for the worst...and thank you for your wish of luck.
"The great majority of NON-religious people are also not rational about it. Most folks find it profoundly disturbing to think about the syllogism that, if there is a God, he might have an opinion about how we should live."
Well, I don't know what NON-religious people you know who are irrational about it...but I think most non-theists are non-theists/BECAUSE/ they are rational. The rationality leads to their belief, instead of the word of a 2000 yr old book.
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/overview.ht ml
They seem very rational. If there is a God, which I am not denying, and he DOES have an opinion about how I live, I will certainly rely on deduction from natural phenomenon to prove this to myself, not speculation, conjecture, and hearsay.
"Most agnostics are not really agnostics, they're antignostics. It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't want to know."
I find that peculiar. How can you be antignostic...it's not as if there really is a truth to BE known. That statement sort of presupposes a truth that they choose to deny. By definition (a thorough explanation of which you can find at the above link) and agnostice do not profess a knowledge.
"What's really, really irrational in my book is to judge the goodness of something by whether smart people or stupid people are associated with it."
Well, I don't judge the "good"ness of things by whether stupid or smart people are associated with it, I judge the smartness or validity of such things. Sure there are plenty irrational intelligent people (Nazi scientists anybody?), but I'd wager there are more irrational stupid people than irrational intelligent people.
That's why I qualified my statement with the "home user arena." As I said, "thin" clients are a GREAT idea in many cases. For example, my university has deals with major computer manufacturers, so when I go into the library I see ROWS and ROWS of PIII 400mhz Dells and Gateways and all they do is run TELNET to the library's electronic catalogue for chrissakes!! This could be solved wonderfully buy DUMB, really DUMB, terminals with NO state, all hooked up to a FREE *nix OS. It's awfull really. So for business environments, environments like this with many clients, thin clients make sense. However, I don't think the home user arena is ready for this. Perhaps when high bandwidth becomes ubiquitous (cable modems?) then this may start to become a practicality, at least for software (a renting model now). I still think the hardware is cheap enough so that it would be trivial to make a thin/dumb client into a rather spiffy one rather easily.
"You might as well say 'those without the skill, prowess, time or care to go to college are the artificially selected poor' it would be equally incorrect."
Yes...the selection criteria in that case is intelligence. The selection criteria in your case is manual dexterity, eyesight, etc. Furthermore, you do not die outright if you fail to go to college. You may very well die outright if you cannot operate your handgun in a world where civility is based on the threat of the enemy killing you.
"Also, your scenario is impossible, mine is not."
Given. My scenario is called "idealism". Yours is called "infeasibility". Are you going to tell me that for SURE, everybody on earth has the skill and prowess to handle guns? What about the disabled? However I/CAN/ FOR SURE say that everybody on earth has the capability for NOT hurting each other. Whether we will ever get to a point where that is a reality is questionable, but not infeasible.
"Why do you say it is a bad thing for people who own guns to know how to use them?"
I don't. I say that it is a bad thing to force guns on people and then _EXPECT_ that they will know how to use them, and responsibly.
"The handgun is not the point and click instrument of death that some people would have you believe. Go try and fire a.45 accurately some time... you'll see how easy it is to hit a man sized target at 30-40 feet without some kind of training or practice."
Unfortunately, while it is true that it is hard to hit any specific target, it is just as easy to accidentally MISS the target and hit something ELSE. This is even more so with automatic, rapid-fire weapons. If the Columbine kids had.45s I have no doubt that there would have been much less injury and they would have been subdued easily.
It is assault on me with a hunting rifle (um, I'm guessing a single shot.22 is a hunting rifle?). The point is, your chancing of killing me and others is greatly reduced if you are using a gun which has a low fire rate, requires precise aiming, and takes a long time to reload...aka a hunting/sport rifle. Sure, what qualifies as an "assault" weapon is sketchy, but there are for sure things that AREN'T needed for sport/hunting. Automatic/semi-automatic capability, large clips, rapid-fire, etc. These are obviously not features that can be claimed to be added for "sport".
You must have missed the point...women or guns with features beneficial to a certain purpose will be able to do that better. An machine gun will be able to kill things faster and deader...a pretty woman would make a better prostitute. I'm not saying there are no ugly prostitutes or that nobody kills people with guns which are not assualt weapons.
Hmm...I guess nobody can post info on encryption or decryption algorithms because they can be used to avoid or break the law. Also I guess bugtraq lists cannot be on the web because they can be used to break the law. Whoops...there goes Packet Storm (well, it's not on a Finnish server luckily).
This is so stupid. Thought crime. Really stupid. How about banning the manufacture and dispersal knowledge in general? Knowledge is very dangerous. Led to guns and bombs and such. We should ban all knowledge. In fact, the ISPs are a party to this evil activity. We should shut down the net and live in caves.
And will I be arrested if I have Communist literature on my website? How about descriptions of nuclear reactions? What if I only keep SOURCE to the virii on my site...is THAT illegal? This is ridiculous. I have downloaded virii binaries and source because they are excellent assembly programming tutorials! Banning them outright is stupid. This is a thought crime as somebody else mentioned...1984ish.
What is wrong with computer virii? They are completely valid, and even subjects for scientific study. They are a learning mechanism also. They are intriguing and pose interesting questions. Will they outlaw genetic algorithms next? Maybe they'll outlaw sex because it is used in porn.
I have an idea...all the luddites can move to a remote tiny island in the pacific for y2k. If no apocalypse occurs they have to stay there. If an apocalypse does occur they can find their own damn way off the island;)
And just as an ugly woman is less likely to be a prositute...someone with a hunting rifle is a lot less likely to be a killer than someone with an assault rifle (not that guns/make/ them killers, just that it is a lot easier with a gun designed to kill people).
Um, could you just please list the statistics of people killed and injured due to firearms per year, as opposed to bombs. 5 million lamerz do a lot more damage than a few 1337 bomb makers.
"Require that people take a gun safetey course and spend X hours at the shooting range per month in order to qualify for gun ownership. Then the people with guns will know how to use them without blowing their own guts out."
And those without the skill, prowess, time, or care to operate handguns will become the artificially selected lemmings? How about nobody has guns and nobody blows anybody's guts out. I like that scenario better.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the French quaked Taiwan so their germinating silicon-based chip-producing industry can take over the world market....and stuff...
Whereas I may say "cute" about an imac, I definately would say "cool" about a TNT3 Ultra Dual PIII 600, 512 ram, scsi, etc.
Speaking of "cute"/"cool" Macs...OS 8.blah has been getting a lot of hype...supposed to be more stable, more this, more that (yes, it does look nice and that theming is sorta sophisticated)...but I was just using one of these nice blue G3 boxen the other day, had Netscape and a telnet client and a text editor opened...and I Quit Netscape and the whole thing just locked up completely. Not so much as an error message. This was like 5 minutes after I booted it. Of course this is all entirely subjective and I can't guarantee the state of the hardware, etc., but that the computer just absolutely locked (not like it doesn't happen in windows, but at least only after some fair amount of screwing around)...?
I hope higher education is also paying attention...
Here at cornell you can walk into one of the many bazillions of libraries and see row upon row upon row of brand new sparkling white 400mhz PII 17-inch screen, 10Gig, 128 RAM, Gateways or Dells (because of silly educational "partnerships"), which just run a crummy telnet client to the library catalogue!!! ARGH!!! That's easily hundreds of thousands of dollars in hardware and software alone, not to mention the cost of supporting all these boxes! All this could be done with thin/dumb terminals and just one server. How hard is this to concieve? I really cannot believe the amount of money they spend on stupid frivolous things in these universities.
I remember my freshman year of college we had ID cards with bar codes that contained meal plan info, that would be swiped when you entered a cafeteria. I derived how they were made, printed out some of my own, and taped them to the back of my ID with transparent scotch tape. I actually had quite a few free meals before I got nervous that the tape would peel and become visible, or the paper bar-code would become visible against the card (the card would get dirty, but the paper, being under tape, wouldn't). fun stuff...
That was also the year I lost a dollar with a strip of packing tape on it to a vending machine. ooops...
netwatch
it is copied over but not made known by putting it in the start menu.
I think this is only for w9x. NT has how other set of utilities.
XML is great. Although there are some places in which it doesn't fit in, it is as much a panacea as anything could be. XML basically is just a standard plaintext way of describing everything. RDF can basically describe any resource. AllianceOS is also looking at XML as a way of storing system configuration. XML is being used already as an application revision synchronization mechanism. It's being used for those little Slashboxes. I don't want to sound like a zealot, but I think XML is /the/ way to go. It can only help. Imagine standard installation routines specified by XML...XML system configurations and package formats...the list goes on.
XML IS overkill in some cases...some things are just so darn obvious tags would just get in the way...but I think at higher, broader level, XML can help very much.
The part about forcing people I admit was out of context...I was replying to a previous statement that in an ideal world everybody would be armed and dangerous which apparently was in a different thread.
/realize/ that this is a slippery slope, where does one draw the line at "assault", etc., but there are obviously lethal features of some guns that have no "sport" or "hunting" value. The proliferation of these is what I'm against. No human has a reason to have one of these (in an ideal society)...the provision in the Constitution is entirely anachronistic - nobody is going to overthrow an evil government with firearms.
I also know that there are plenty of responsible upright gun owners. But no amount of responsible upright gun owners will be able to make up for the one that screws everything up. I am not against guns in general (as my other posts show), I am agains guns specifically designed to kill humans, or in general killing with little or no means of avoidance. Yes I
The gun is a tool like the others you mention, but UNLIKE the others you mention it is the sole one designed with the express purpose of killing outright. That is the purpose of a gun (well except for olympic shooting, etc.).
You also don't have to patronize me with the "outlaw-everything-then" line of reason. I am well aware of it. There is however, unlike chemicals, a distinct line to be draw with guns. Some features simply have no reason for being other than for breaking the law. There are plenty of valid reasons for using explosive chemicals...what valid reasons are there in a civilized society for automatic assault weapons with large clips? How about anti-personell/anti-vest bullets? None of these things have a place...they are certainly not used for hunting or sport.
I'm not against guns as a concept, I'm against guns as a solution to problems, I'm against the proliferation and "arms race" safety-by-show-of-force mentality. Guns don't kill people, people kill people...but some guns make it a lot easier.
"Why do you say it is a bad thing for people who own guns to know how to use them?"
The post which this was in was taking words from my mouth. I never said that people who own guns SHOULDN'T know how to use them properly. I was responding to a statement that in an ideal world everybody would have guns and be properly trained. Looking back in this thread I apologize for making the counter statment because that statement was not made in this thread. It must have been made in another and I must have still been thinking about it.
"No one has suggested forcing guns onto ANYONE. I suggest that the people who are getting guns be required to know how to use them. That greatly reduces the chances that someone will miss their target and hit someone else unintentionally."
I entirely agree.
"I don't care whether everyone on earth has the ability to properly fire a gun, but as long as the criminal elements believe that I have a gun and know how to use it I will feel a lot better."
It may make you feel beter, but it doesn't make me feel better. What's stopping a criminal who suspects that you have a gun from killing you outright so you won't use it (yes, enter concealed carry arguments)? I'd rather NOT be a target, and I'd rather that the criminal NOT have access to weapons from which their is hardly any escape for me. How many rounds does a pistol have? how long to reload a shotgun/rifle?...now how many bullets does an assualt weapon like an AK have in a click? What is the chance I can escape during a reload? That everyone around me could be carrying these weapons legally, and concealed (well, I hope concealed carry laws don't allow these types of weapons) don't make me feel "safe".
"IT's human nature, live with it or change it... if you wanna change it then good luck. I prefer to pay more attention to my own personalitys development than worry about everyone elses. I can not affect what you do, but I can affect my reaction to it."
And herein lies the distinction. I have no doubt it is totally plausible to actually live in an environment of enforced civility due to threat of lethal force.../but it is not an environment I live it/. I COULD feel physically safe by carrying a gun...but I'd RATHER feel physically safe by knowing that nobody could hurt me. Yes idealistic but really the schism between the two lines of thought. YES, I would MUCH rather "change it", not simply live with it and equip myself for the worst...and thank you for your wish of luck.
"The great majority of NON-religious people are also not rational about it. Most folks find it profoundly disturbing to think about the syllogism that, if there is a God, he might have an opinion about how we should live."
/BECAUSE/ they are rational. The rationality leads to their belief, instead of the word of a 2000 yr old book.
t ml
Well, I don't know what NON-religious people you know who are irrational about it...but I think most non-theists are non-theists
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/overview.h
They seem very rational. If there is a God, which I am not denying, and he DOES have an opinion about how I live, I will certainly rely on deduction from natural phenomenon to prove this to myself, not speculation, conjecture, and hearsay.
"Most agnostics are not really agnostics, they're antignostics. It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't want to know."
I find that peculiar. How can you be antignostic...it's not as if there really is a truth to BE known. That statement sort of presupposes a truth that they choose to deny. By definition (a thorough explanation of which you can find at the above link) and agnostice do not profess a knowledge.
"What's really, really irrational in my book is to judge the goodness of something by whether smart people or stupid people are associated with it."
Well, I don't judge the "good"ness of things by whether stupid or smart people are associated with it, I judge the smartness or validity of such things. Sure there are plenty irrational intelligent people (Nazi scientists anybody?), but I'd wager there are more irrational stupid people than irrational intelligent people.
What is peculiar is that Knuth's explanation apparently comes from BOTH the text book, AND the Bible.
That's why I qualified my statement with the "home user arena." As I said, "thin" clients are a GREAT idea in many cases. For example, my university has deals with major computer manufacturers, so when I go into the library I see ROWS and ROWS of PIII 400mhz Dells and Gateways and all they do is run TELNET to the library's electronic catalogue for chrissakes!! This could be solved wonderfully buy DUMB, really DUMB, terminals with NO state, all hooked up to a FREE *nix OS. It's awfull really. So for business environments, environments like this with many clients, thin clients make sense. However, I don't think the home user arena is ready for this. Perhaps when high bandwidth becomes ubiquitous (cable modems?) then this may start to become a practicality, at least for software (a renting model now). I still think the hardware is cheap enough so that it would be trivial to make a thin/dumb client into a rather spiffy one rather easily.
"You might as well say 'those without the skill, prowess, time or care to go to college are the artificially selected poor' it would be equally incorrect."
/CAN/ FOR SURE say that everybody on earth has the capability for NOT hurting each other. Whether we will ever get to a point where that is a reality is questionable, but not infeasible.
.45 accurately some time... you'll see how easy it is to hit a man sized target at 30-40 feet without some kind of training or practice."
.45s I have no doubt that there would have been much less injury and they would have been subdued easily.
Yes...the selection criteria in that case is intelligence. The selection criteria in your case is manual dexterity, eyesight, etc. Furthermore, you do not die outright if you fail to go to college. You may very well die outright if you cannot operate your handgun in a world where civility is based on the threat of the enemy killing you.
"Also, your scenario is impossible, mine is not."
Given. My scenario is called "idealism". Yours is called "infeasibility". Are you going to tell me that for SURE, everybody on earth has the skill and prowess to handle guns? What about the disabled? However I
"Why do you say it is a bad thing for people who own guns to know how to use them?"
I don't. I say that it is a bad thing to force guns on people and then _EXPECT_ that they will know how to use them, and responsibly.
"The handgun is not the point and click instrument of death that some people would have you believe. Go try and fire a
Unfortunately, while it is true that it is hard to hit any specific target, it is just as easy to accidentally MISS the target and hit something ELSE. This is even more so with automatic, rapid-fire weapons. If the Columbine kids had
It is assault on me with a hunting rifle (um, I'm guessing a single shot .22 is a hunting rifle?). The point is, your chancing of killing me and others is greatly reduced if you are using a gun which has a low fire rate, requires precise aiming, and takes a long time to reload...aka a hunting/sport rifle. Sure, what qualifies as an "assault" weapon is sketchy, but there are for sure things that AREN'T needed for sport/hunting. Automatic/semi-automatic capability, large clips, rapid-fire, etc. These are obviously not features that can be claimed to be added for "sport".
You must have missed the point...women or guns with features beneficial to a certain purpose will be able to do that better. An machine gun will be able to kill things faster and deader...a pretty woman would make a better prostitute. I'm not saying there are no ugly prostitutes or that nobody kills people with guns which are not assualt weapons.
Both. People who want to sound like they're more 1337 use virii...and I use it because it saves 2 keystrokes...
Hmm...I guess nobody can post info on encryption or decryption algorithms because they can be used to avoid or break the law. Also I guess bugtraq lists cannot be on the web because they can be used to break the law. Whoops...there goes Packet Storm (well, it's not on a Finnish server luckily).
This is so stupid. Thought crime. Really stupid. How about banning the manufacture and dispersal knowledge in general? Knowledge is very dangerous. Led to guns and bombs and such. We should ban all knowledge. In fact, the ISPs are a party to this evil activity. We should shut down the net and live in caves.
And will I be arrested if I have Communist literature on my website? How about descriptions of nuclear reactions? What if I only keep SOURCE to the virii on my site...is THAT illegal? This is ridiculous. I have downloaded virii binaries and source because they are excellent assembly programming tutorials! Banning them outright is stupid. This is a thought crime as somebody else mentioned...1984ish.
What is wrong with computer virii? They are completely valid, and even subjects for scientific study. They are a learning mechanism also. They are intriguing and pose interesting questions. Will they outlaw genetic algorithms next? Maybe they'll outlaw sex because it is used in porn.
"Between the American government 'changing the facts' (YES, it DOES happen) on a few mistakes or other reasons, "
What do you mean the American goverment lies? FNORD Those damn indians did it to themselves. FNORD
(extrem sarcasm)
I think they are.
I have an idea...all the luddites can move to a remote tiny island in the pacific for y2k. If no apocalypse occurs they have to stay there. If an apocalypse does occur they can find their own damn way off the island ;)
And just as an ugly woman is less likely to be a prositute...someone with a hunting rifle is a lot less likely to be a killer than someone with an assault rifle (not that guns /make/ them killers, just that it is a lot easier with a gun designed to kill people).
Um, could you just please list the statistics of people killed and injured due to firearms per year, as opposed to bombs. 5 million lamerz do a lot more damage than a few 1337 bomb makers.
Because all the "impolite" people would be shot dead in cold blood. Great. Lemme just shack up with that nice "polite" religious right...
"Require that people take a gun safetey course and spend X hours at the shooting range per month in order to qualify for gun ownership. Then the people with guns will know how to use them without blowing their own guts out."
And those without the skill, prowess, time, or care to operate handguns will become the artificially selected lemmings? How about nobody has guns and nobody blows anybody's guts out. I like that scenario better.