Your right. When you vote in a major national or statewide election, the best you can hope for is the "lesser evil." However, your vote has a lot MORE weight when voting for your local sherrif/county clerk/judges/treasurer or other "minor" official. The reigns of power will not be wrested away from the top, but only from the bottom. Another good place to start would be redistricting. A significant part of the current problem is that "both" parties have been working for a long time to insure safe seats through gerrymandering of voting districts, or in cases like Texas totally re-working the electoral map to insure continued victory.
Don't sweat the big stuff. Focus on what You can do in Your home town/village/county
Have you taken a look at NeverWinter Nights? It really seems to fit the bill your looking for. Not so much "Massive" but some of the "worlds" do have consistant player numbers equal to a midsized MUD. It also has a full construction tool set...
It will be very very interesting to see what they do with NWN2.
I can't really imagine that you DIDN't Try NWN nights though, so I would be interested in hereing your critique.
After the Lies about Iraq, the gross mismanagment of the government and all the other sins he has committed there HAS to be a pretext to do it. Even if it fails at least it can hold up apointing a new judge until after the next election when hopefully something resembling sanity will return to the white house.
A few months ago I was running into problems with XFS crapping out and sometimes even doing file corruption when the filesystem got past about 80% full. I had to drop back down to a XFS patched version of 2.4. Anyone who has been activly following the RC's for the last few minor versions... has this been addressed?
Yes, thats the point I had gotten to. I had hoped someone had developed a "user easy" way of doing it. Guess I'll have to break down and write it myself:P
You know I was really with you until you got to the part about no IMAP OR Webmail... Now I'm rather dubious... Your users ALL have laptops or never go on vacation/offsite and still want their mail? Your company allows the security risk of downloading mail to untrusted machines?
I'm really confused here. You sound like a smart guy but this last decision makes you sound like a duffer, or you have been using Out of the Box for way too long.
Whereas you can move the clickwheel in a single continious motion with a single finger. And, manipulate the rest of the controls with the same finger without moving your hand. And use it to quickly navigate menus and folders - good luck doing that with a radio dial. The only thing these two have in common is that they are both round, but then, so are a lot of things.
By Golly Your RIGHT! So I guess we can only go back to say the 70's when someone invented a tuner knob with a Dimple on it where you could put your one finger and do loops and press the same knob to turn things on and off... or maybe power steering? Using 10 year old technology I can put the palm of my hand on the wheel and rotate it in multiple circles while hitting the turn signals on the way around , simultaneously shifting gears or fiddling with the CD player (all controlled from "steering" wheel).
BTW, Irony and Sarcasam are NOT patented (yet) so feel free to apply them to any part of this or my previous post.
The point of patents is to provide an incentive for people to invent AND release the knowledge to the world for the common good. They are for physical inventions that can be demonstrated to work. They are not for trivial trivets that are only going to be used in market manipulation for the common bad.
I'm not against patents, I'm against stupid patents, Software patents, vaporware patents, patent-so-I-can-litigate patents, buisness model patents, flying-in-the-face-of prior-art patents and sleeper patents. If it is a true "invention" that needs protection, a patent is a good thing. If its solely a method of stopping others from inventing/developing/competing its not in the common good and should not be granted.
From the Register Article: "describes rotating an input device to navigate in a linear fashion through a user interface" I think the car radio on my Dads 1950 Ford did that. I rotate the knob and it moves the channel indicator in a linear fashion across the "user interface" showing which radio frequency I'm tuning to.
Oh wait, if you put "e", "i", before it or "computer/Network/Internet" after it - something invented 50+ years ago it is suddenly NEW! Welcome to the new iMillenium!
I've been running CourierMTA for about 4 years now and I'm not sure I can wholeheartedly agree with that recomendation. Courier is Very good... but its also Quirky as all get out. Compared to say Exim or Qmail there are just a number of things that are just different enough that they can begin to add up to make your life more difficult. The latest thing I noticed is the lack of an Easy user friendly vacation message setup. Having to manually set up.forwards can also be a pain, and while I really approve of the idea of being as RFC compliant as possible the long fight involved in getting Courier to accept "broken" mail (over-seas hotmail) was frustrating. Maildirs are a really great thing. Unless you keep 10K+ mail archives...
That said it IS fast, and does a lot of stuff DEAD on, and was one of the first and best to ESMTP IMAPauth for sending (allowing users to authenticate and send from anywhere without being a OpenRelay (spamconduit). I'm not bashing it by any means, just warning that it may not be the best for an inexperienced email admin - really exain exim and qmail as well and see which ones quirks you can live with easier;)
Your "Representatives" do not care about you or your letter, however your letter and pro/anti stance on any given issue will go into their demographic statistics and polls. Since their job is to get elected again they will follow their polls, so your letter does have a small impact. (All this of course is negated if your "representative" has a messianic complex or is a lame duck)
Your argument is very well thought out and one of the best I've read on slashdot...
I was also a full subscriber to the invisible hand theory of freemarket economics once upon a time. The elegance of Adam Smiths arguments is very compelling, and if you look back in history it seems the natural evolution of an enlightened society.
However, somewhere between highschool and adulthood, 2 major flaws became apparent.
The first problem is inflation. Just as a currency devalues if the supply increases, so does the value of human labor. Adam Smith was writing in the late 18th century. England, along with mos t of the rest of Europe was still recovering from the ravages of the Black Plauge, assorted wars, and general bad health care/nutrition. Communication was slow and travel difficult. In other words the pool of labor was very small. With a small labor pool each persons economic value is much greater, meaning they can earn vastly more.
Fast forward to the early 20th Century in the US where "modern" free market economics gets its start. Again we have a relativly isolated landmass. We also have huge natural resources and land. Communication is better but still nothing like today. Travel while easier is still not trivial - no superhighways or 747s. Slavery has ended. We again have a relativly small labor pool and a great deal of resources. Thus the value of the human laboror is again high. Since Labor is one of the scarcest resources it can buy much more, and the "free market" works... for a while.
Then we get the robber barons, the monopolists, the "fat cats" etc. The Free market is showing its flaws. Unions start, and begin to restore the value of labor again by creating a artificial scarcity. WWI occurs but as black tuesday and the depression showed it was not quite enough and the flaws of "pure capitalism" begin to become obvious.
Then we get WWII. This has an interesting effect. Just when the middle/lower classes in the US need it most, we again get a significant reduction in the labor pool. The flip side however is that the other 50% of the population begins to enter the labor pool. Free market is shored up again, labor is expensive and we get the "golden age" of the 1950's and early 60's.
Korea and Vietnam happen and reduce the labor pool again, but the rising population numbers are only slowed not stopped - We get the "silver age" of the 80's. Good if you were _already_ middle/upper middle+ but the cracks are really beginning to show for the rest of the workforce. The world is getting smaller, communication is getting better, and the value of the person is diminishing with both global AND local population increases.
During the 40's 50's 60's smart economists are realizing that "pure" free market is not such a good idea. It ends up with mono-cultures and robber barons, and "noble" families - all of which defeat the benefits of capitalism - diversity, competition, and opportunity.
This begins the efforts of regulation. In a capitalist society power follows money. This means that those with the most money - the "nobles", the monopolies, the large corporations, have the power - Power that directly grows in proportion to the population as the individuals power shrinks. A few idealistic men and women tried to put a check on this power with regulation to protect the workers, the buyers, the children, and the environment. This helped for a bit (again see the 80's) but eventually money and ruthlessness has again overpowered idealism. The established interest already had the resources to circumvent regulation - and after a recovery they produced the new de-regulation politicos of today.
To sum things up. Capitalism is a bad idea. Like democracy it the only thing it has going for it is that its better than most of the other methods we have found - the exception perhaps being socialism. I understand your fears, but England, Sweden, Iceland, and others of the northern western states with socialist leanings do seem to be doing pretty well.
That one was irking me too. Run some cat5 and wrap lead foil around it for goodness sake. I thought the old BS didn't even HAVE computers, and that was the whole point of why it survived. Good overall episode but they need to get a computer guy on staff to do sanity checks.
Ok Every body switch to my favorite distribution and we can go march forward to victory!
Oh what, you don't want to change to mine? You want me to change to YOURS? Heck no! Your throbber doesn't frob in the right direction for Bjork's sake!
Ok Naked Heather Graham is worth a LOT a WHOLE lot... I would watch 2 hours of that:) but it wasn't worht 2 hours of boogie nights for a few seconds of HG.
I will agree with you on the blond to... I like strong bone structure as much as the next guy but... I don't know she just doesn't do anything for me. And they "sexy" act feels forced.
No. Really. Its worse than bad. We are talking beachball aliens and collander/cheese grater space equipmnet. Directed by John Carpenter and Written by the author of R. Scott's "Alien"
I think its even worse than boogie nights... which to this day I am furious I will never get those hours of my life back.
But if you've seen it you will agree - Dark Star. Worst. Movie. Ever.
Actually. No they have not Or if they did, it has already been cleaned up. I went and checked since, well I'm curious about the plot of the new Potter and I thought the "no right to read" thing stunketh.
All I can see there is excellent coverage of BSG.
Which is very very good, but I just can't quite stand to watch due to the Balthazar subplot. I've tried and tried but I can't figure out Why it annoys me so deeply. Its so bad I can't realy even watch the rest of the excellent show. I don't think is "objectivly" bad, but it irks the crap out of me.
Your ambition is commendable, but if you are starting from scratch, don't make the foundation of you new company a first attempt from someone who is learning as they go. From hard experience I can tell you that any "good enough for now" solution will linger on well past when it should have been scrapped.
Hire a professional company to run your cable if you are doing more than a couple rooms.
Hire someone to set up your infrastruce. Programmers are Not Sysadmins and Sysadmins are not programmers. They are very different jobs with overlapping but different skill sets.
If you can't afford a long term employee then just contract the setup with the end goal of minimal maintenance.
If you plan on being the "developer" at this start up, you do Not want to try and be part time amature sysadmin as well.
You do realize this is exactly the sentiment that the people you are so willing to dehumanize hold?
I don't aprove of their means or their motives, but they are Acting on the glib ideas you are espousing.
Contrary to what our delusional leader might say in his sound bites, nobody is bombing/killing because they "hate freedom." They are doing it because, however misguided and brainwashed, they think they are fighting for their way of life - in your terms exercising their rights to defend themselves, and just as you are suggesting, not worrying about getting blood on their hands.
Are you sure you still want to espouse your philosophy? You seem to sound identical to those you hate.
Convinging people to defend themselves is never hard. Convincing people to use restraint and act as humans rather than animals is the hard part. I somehow doubt you have any real understanding of the "dark side" of humanity. Watching war movies and Tarrentino films does not count. Those who Have seen such things and come out human are not so glib.
Grow up. There are no "easy" answers. You reap what you sow. Simple solutions are the product of simple minds.
Hmm.. you do know you could be burned at the stake for doing that to a Bible for most of Christian history? Or lynched even in the 20th century?
I think there are quite a number of people who would _want_ to kill you if you did that to Old Glory the Red White and Blue. Ask your father... though to be honest I'm kind of in doubt you have one. I pretty sure he would have taught you better manners. Maybe he was an ignorant, racist, redneck too?
I think that would be a good title. You would have desecrated your self in your act of desecration all based on your illusion of having a philosophy.
There is a fine saying by Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." I really wish my own government would think hard about it each morning.
There are horrible people in this world doing horrible things for horrible reasons. I think you are well on the way to becoming one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Your right. When you vote in a major national or statewide election, the best you can hope for is the "lesser evil." However, your vote has a lot MORE weight when voting for your local sherrif/county clerk/judges/treasurer or other "minor" official. The reigns of power will not be wrested away from the top, but only from the bottom. Another good place to start would be redistricting. A significant part of the current problem is that "both" parties have been working for a long time to insure safe seats through gerrymandering of voting districts, or in cases like Texas totally re-working the electoral map to insure continued victory.
Don't sweat the big stuff. Focus on what You can do in Your home town/village/county
Have you taken a look at NeverWinter Nights? It really seems to fit the bill your looking for. Not so much "Massive" but some of the "worlds" do have consistant player numbers equal to a midsized MUD. It also has a full construction tool set...
It will be very very interesting to see what they do with NWN2.
I can't really imagine that you DIDN't Try NWN nights though, so I would be interested in hereing your critique.
After the Lies about Iraq, the gross mismanagment of the government and all the other sins he has committed there HAS to be a pretext to do it. Even if it fails at least it can hold up apointing a new judge until after the next election when hopefully something resembling sanity will return to the white house.
A few months ago I was running into problems with XFS crapping out and sometimes even doing file corruption when the filesystem got past about 80% full. I had to drop back down to a XFS patched version of 2.4. Anyone who has been activly following the RC's for the last few minor versions... has this been addressed?
Yes, thats the point I had gotten to. I had hoped someone had developed a "user easy" way of doing it. Guess I'll have to break down and write it myself :P
You know I was really with you until you got to the part about no IMAP OR Webmail... Now I'm rather dubious... Your users ALL have laptops or never go on vacation/offsite and still want their mail? Your company allows the security risk of downloading mail to untrusted machines?
I'm really confused here. You sound like a smart guy but this last decision makes you sound like a duffer, or you have been using Out of the Box for way too long.
Ah HA! caught an Exchange salesman in the Act! This is astroturfing at its best ;)
How do you handle vacation messages? I'd like something users can turn on and off but there seems to be no built in function in courier
Whereas you can move the clickwheel in a single continious motion with a single finger. And, manipulate the rest of the controls with the same finger without moving your hand. And use it to quickly navigate menus and folders - good luck doing that with a radio dial. The only thing these two have in common is that they are both round, but then, so are a lot of things.
By Golly Your RIGHT! So I guess we can only go back to say the 70's when someone invented a tuner knob with a Dimple on it where you could put your one finger and do loops and press the same knob to turn things on and off... or maybe power steering? Using 10 year old technology I can put the palm of my hand on the wheel and rotate it in multiple circles while hitting the turn signals on the way around , simultaneously shifting gears or fiddling with the CD player (all controlled from "steering" wheel).
BTW, Irony and Sarcasam are NOT patented (yet) so feel free to apply them to any part of this or my previous post.
The point of patents is to provide an incentive for people to invent AND release the knowledge to the world for the common good. They are for physical inventions that can be demonstrated to work. They are not for trivial trivets that are only going to be used in market manipulation for the common bad.
I'm not against patents, I'm against stupid patents, Software patents, vaporware patents, patent-so-I-can-litigate patents, buisness model patents, flying-in-the-face-of prior-art patents and sleeper patents. If it is a true "invention" that needs protection, a patent is a good thing. If its solely a method of stopping others from inventing/developing/competing its not in the common good and should not be granted.
Ouch. Do you take e-Gold?
From the Register Article:
"describes rotating an input device to navigate in a linear fashion through a user interface" I think the car radio on my Dads 1950 Ford did that. I rotate the knob and it moves the channel indicator in a linear fashion across the "user interface" showing which radio frequency I'm tuning to.
Oh wait, if you put "e", "i", before it or "computer/Network/Internet" after it - something invented 50+ years ago it is suddenly NEW! Welcome to the new iMillenium!
I've been running CourierMTA for about 4 years now and I'm not sure I can wholeheartedly agree with that recomendation. Courier is Very good... but its also Quirky as all get out. Compared to say Exim or Qmail there are just a number of things that are just different enough that they can begin to add up to make your life more difficult. The latest thing I noticed is the lack of an Easy user friendly vacation message setup. Having to manually set up .forwards can also be a pain, and while I really approve of the idea of being as RFC compliant as possible the long fight involved in getting Courier to accept "broken" mail (over-seas hotmail) was frustrating. Maildirs are a really great thing. Unless you keep 10K+ mail archives...
;)
That said it IS fast, and does a lot of stuff DEAD on, and was one of the first and best to ESMTP IMAPauth for sending (allowing users to authenticate and send from anywhere without being a OpenRelay (spamconduit). I'm not bashing it by any means, just warning that it may not be the best for an inexperienced email admin - really exain exim and qmail as well and see which ones quirks you can live with easier
Your "Representatives" do not care about you or your letter, however your letter and pro/anti stance on any given issue will go into their demographic statistics and polls. Since their job is to get elected again they will follow their polls, so your letter does have a small impact. (All this of course is negated if your "representative" has a messianic complex or is a lame duck)
A terrorist can kill hundreds or thousands. It takes a congressman to strip the rights and freedoms from millions.
Your argument is very well thought out and one of the best I've read on slashdot...
I was also a full subscriber to the invisible hand theory of freemarket economics once upon a time. The elegance of Adam Smiths arguments is very compelling, and if you look back in history it seems the natural evolution of an enlightened society.
However, somewhere between highschool and adulthood, 2 major flaws became apparent.
The first problem is inflation. Just as a currency devalues if the supply increases, so does the value of human labor. Adam Smith was writing in the late 18th century. England, along with mos t of the rest of Europe was still recovering from the ravages of the Black Plauge, assorted wars, and general bad health care/nutrition. Communication was slow and travel difficult. In other words the pool of labor was very small. With a small labor pool each persons economic value is much greater, meaning they can earn vastly more.
Fast forward to the early 20th Century in the US where "modern" free market economics gets its start. Again we have a relativly isolated landmass. We also have huge natural resources and land. Communication is better but still nothing like today. Travel while easier is still not trivial - no superhighways or 747s. Slavery has ended. We again have a relativly small labor pool and a great deal of resources. Thus the value of the human laboror is again high. Since Labor is one of the scarcest resources it can buy much more, and the "free market" works... for a while.
Then we get the robber barons, the monopolists, the "fat cats" etc. The Free market is showing its flaws. Unions start, and begin to restore the value of labor again by creating a artificial scarcity. WWI occurs but as black tuesday and the depression showed it was not quite enough and the flaws of "pure capitalism" begin to become obvious.
Then we get WWII. This has an interesting effect. Just when the middle/lower classes in the US need it most, we again get a significant reduction in the labor pool. The flip side however is that the other 50% of the population begins to enter the labor pool. Free market is shored up again, labor is expensive and we get the "golden age" of the 1950's and early 60's.
Korea and Vietnam happen and reduce the labor pool again, but the rising population numbers are only slowed not stopped - We get the "silver age" of the 80's. Good if you were _already_ middle/upper middle+ but the cracks are really beginning to show for the rest of the workforce. The world is getting smaller, communication is getting better, and the value of the person is diminishing with both global AND local population increases.
During the 40's 50's 60's smart economists are realizing that "pure" free market is not such a good idea. It ends up with mono-cultures and robber barons, and "noble" families - all of which defeat the benefits of capitalism - diversity, competition, and opportunity.
This begins the efforts of regulation. In a capitalist society power follows money. This means that those with the most money - the "nobles", the monopolies, the large corporations, have the power - Power that directly grows in proportion to the population as the individuals power shrinks. A few idealistic men and women tried to put a check on this power with regulation to protect the workers, the buyers, the children, and the environment. This helped for a bit (again see the 80's) but eventually money and ruthlessness has again overpowered idealism. The established interest already had the resources to circumvent regulation - and after a recovery they produced the new de-regulation politicos of today.
To sum things up. Capitalism is a bad idea. Like democracy it the only thing it has going for it is that its better than most of the other methods we have found - the exception perhaps being socialism. I understand your fears, but England, Sweden, Iceland, and others of the northern western states with socialist leanings do seem to be doing pretty well.
That one was irking me too. Run some cat5 and wrap lead foil around it for goodness sake. I thought the old BS didn't even HAVE computers, and that was the whole point of why it survived. Good overall episode but they need to get a computer guy on staff to do sanity checks.
I think this is a GREAT Idea!
Ok Every body switch to my favorite distribution and we can go march forward to victory!
Oh what, you don't want to change to mine? You want me to change to YOURS? Heck no! Your throbber doesn't frob in the right direction for Bjork's sake!
Ok Naked Heather Graham is worth a LOT a WHOLE lot... I would watch 2 hours of that :) but it wasn't worht 2 hours of boogie nights for a few seconds of HG.
I will agree with you on the blond to... I like strong bone structure as much as the next guy but... I don't know she just doesn't do anything for me. And they "sexy" act feels forced.
No. Really. Its worse than bad. We are talking beachball aliens and collander/cheese grater space equipmnet. Directed by John Carpenter and Written by the author of R. Scott's "Alien"
I think its even worse than boogie nights... which to this day I am furious I will never get those hours of my life back.
But if you've seen it you will agree - Dark Star. Worst. Movie. Ever.
Actually. No they have not Or if they did, it has already been cleaned up. I went and checked since, well I'm curious about the plot of the new Potter and I thought the "no right to read" thing stunketh.
All I can see there is excellent coverage of BSG.
Which is very very good, but I just can't quite stand to watch due to the Balthazar subplot. I've tried and tried but I can't figure out Why it annoys me so deeply. Its so bad I can't realy even watch the rest of the excellent show. I don't think is "objectivly" bad, but it irks the crap out of me.
*shrug*
Your ambition is commendable, but if you are starting from scratch, don't make the foundation of you new company a first attempt from someone who is learning as they go. From hard experience I can tell you that any "good enough for now" solution will linger on well past when it should have been scrapped.
Hire a professional company to run your cable if you are doing more than a couple rooms.
Hire someone to set up your infrastruce. Programmers are Not Sysadmins and Sysadmins are not programmers. They are very different jobs with overlapping but different skill sets.
If you can't afford a long term employee then just contract the setup with the end goal of minimal maintenance.
If you plan on being the "developer" at this start up, you do Not want to try and be part time amature sysadmin as well.
You do realize this is exactly the sentiment that the people you are so willing to dehumanize hold?
I don't aprove of their means or their motives, but they are Acting on the glib ideas you are espousing.
Contrary to what our delusional leader might say in his sound bites, nobody is bombing/killing because they "hate freedom." They are doing it because, however misguided and brainwashed, they think they are fighting for their way of life - in your terms exercising their rights to defend themselves, and just as you are suggesting, not worrying about getting blood on their hands.
Are you sure you still want to espouse your philosophy? You seem to sound identical to those you hate.
Convinging people to defend themselves is never hard. Convincing people to use restraint and act as humans rather than animals is the hard part. I somehow doubt you have any real understanding of the "dark side" of humanity. Watching war movies and Tarrentino films does not count. Those who Have seen such things and come out human are not so glib.
Grow up. There are no "easy" answers. You reap what you sow. Simple solutions are the product of simple minds.
I am a total geek.
Now that we have that cleared up...
I think one of my very favorite Farscape episodes was the "Planet of the Lawyers" (not the actual title).
The planet's society had d|evolved into a caste system of hereditary attorneys and their serfs...
Laughed my ass off.
Hmm.. you do know you could be burned at the stake for doing that to a Bible for most of Christian history? Or lynched even in the 20th century?
I think there are quite a number of people who would _want_ to kill you if you did that to Old Glory the Red White and Blue. Ask your father... though to be honest I'm kind of in doubt you have one. I pretty sure he would have taught you better manners. Maybe he was an ignorant, racist, redneck too?
I think that would be a good title. You would have desecrated your self in your act of desecration all based on your illusion of having a philosophy.
There is a fine saying by Nietzsche:
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." I really wish my own government would think hard about it each morning.
There are horrible people in this world doing horrible things for horrible reasons. I think you are well on the way to becoming one of them.