Science as a philosophy, maybe as an institution. The process you are referring to is the scientific method. 2 different things. The random scientist's belief in god is likely so vague that it's pointless. Might as well do a survey in how many believe in love. Ask how many of them believe in a patriarchial Jehovah of the old testament...
I don't know anything about Mr. Gates' computer skills, but I have no trouble finding the local pizza. Then I bookmark it. Things like that only ever need one search, duh.
Unfortunately, the "god" of the plausible "intelligent design" theorist might turn out to be a global colony of sentient bacteria, that can literally alter our DNA at whim. Read some Greg Bear.
However, just recently, biblethumping retards have hijacked the name, and are once again using it to reenact the Scopes monkey trial. Proof? When's the last time you heard one of them say "it may not have been God at all, but space aliens, or human time-travelers from the future" or for that matter, any explanation not involving their favorite deity?
In the words of Greg Bear, even evolution is evolving.
Yeh, just the other day I saw some DOT guys chasing down private contractors who pave drivewas, and beating the shit out of them. I could have swore I heard them say "and stay outta our turf!".
And what about those mailmen who AK47'ed all the UPS offices a few years back?
If it meant my government were trying to do something intelligent for once, I'd like it alot. But then, I'm a practical guy, and I'd probably just start altering my business strategy to take into consideration state competition. It is rather uncapitalistic to compete in a courtroom, rather than in the market.
Yeh, apache has comparable numbers to IIS, and it's just as exploit-riddled. Oh wait, it's not. Maybe that's because Microsoft software is institutionally-flawed?
I just bought my own new laptop 2 weeks ago. WinXP pre-installed, and used only long enough to download slackware 10 isos. I don't dualboot it, it runs only linux. So, I take offense at the insinuation that I can't care for my computers... at least I don't leave linux on them.
And mind you, I'm not a pro-linux bigot. Just an anti-windows one.
Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious... I'm speaking from the experience of phone support for DSl, this is taking 30-50 calls a night. Mind you, our customers don't always take the best care of their computers... but only the most pathologically deisgned OS could give them this much grief.
If we gave you a computer all set up with win2k and prevented you from altering it, it would still work just fine in 3 years time.
Not really. I assume automatic update will be turned off, or will you chance that a new SP doesn't murder it? If so, will you manually keep up to date for me on the patches, so that the next windows-only worm doesn't nail it? We have what, 3 or 4 major ones a season?
Are you going to filter my web access too? What happens when I go to some retard website that uses an exploit to install spyware?
Sure, if you could restrict administrator access, it might work. But with windows, everyone in the world that can run a script has that.
The idea of Freenet is to hide the activities of users, not the fact that they're participating.
Not saying that it hasn't met this design goal, rather that it is a poorly chosen goal. It is better than nothing, but I'd rather it not be obvious in any way that I even participate.
So what happens when those few get out of the network for any reason (busted, got other interests, etc) ? If you can't get more connections, you're so out of luck.
Those that are busted are by design in different jurisdictions. Their bust won't necessarily mean you will be, especially when just like freenet, you can argue that you were only associating and not committing the act yourself. There are provisions for people leaving due to disinterest, and assuming they are good enough sports to give you some sort of warning, it won't mean you are stranded.
Id say installing software is messing with it, and if the software screws the system up, then its hardly 100% Windows fault, now is it.
Installing a puzzle game, or the flash browser plugin, or any of the other little doodads people like to install, is hardly the kind of "messing with it" that I mean when I'm implying things that would fuck up the IP stack. And yet, unless the customers I try to help are installing VINES protocol, or maybe AAL5, they do all this innocuous stuff, and it somehow totally rapes the IP stack. Now, that software isn't Microsoft(tm) software, but it isn't maliciously ruining critical subsystems intentionally and not every single one of them is so poorly designed as to do it accidentally. I conclude that windows is a poor design, and if 20 years of Redmond history is any indication, it's a poor design that simply cannot be fixed.
1) All (or most, say 90%) of his systems are physically identical work machines where no one is authorized to install anything. Telling a win98 DSL user that it will work fine, if they never do more than a base software install isn't an option for me.
2) He babysits daddy's machine, or daddy is the rare family member that isn't computer literate.
3) Linux always has bugfixes. Just not a bugfix necessary to make the machine work at all. Such as the win98 "is it IE or MSN explorer?" bullshit.
Mirroring could be made simple. When the hd dies, the bios marks it as bad somehow. Have it autodetect a new hd, and rebuild automatically. (Have it reject an incompatible hd). Most would take theirs to a computer shop for this anyway, and the majority of DIYers wouldn't have trouble.
And yes, I agree it's not a proper backup. But it's automated, and for 95% of hd deaths, it would preserve people's files. It wouldn't ever do for the enterprise computing enviroment, but for some of the ijits I support, it's better than what they have now.
C) It's not normal to have to upgrade to the latest version of the OS just for the machine to behave normally (Note: though this isn't true if you want the latest security patches).
Define "behave normally". If by that you mean being safe from viruses and what not, then this is definitly the case, no matter what OS you are running.
I mean that when they take their piece of shit machine to a computer shop, and the shop does a fresh install of windows 98se, they have no web browser. I help them set up a static IP, and when they go to lauch IE, the only thing it does is try to sell MSN to them. A copy of redhat 5 might have a bunch of security holes, but the netscape 4 browser on the machine won't insist on selling a service redhat gave up on 3 years ago.
D) If you use an OS other than windows, all the previous problems disappear.
This is analagous to saying if someone who can't take care of a car, uses a different brand, they will have better luck. While true, the other brand may very well have fewer issues needing repair, it still will break down, and the person will still find a way to fubar it.
No, it means if they buy even a decent used GM/Ford/Audi/Toyota, and stop driving the East German Trebant (you know, the one with the manual in the glove compartment that says if the car makes any strange noises, to park it, and run away from it immediately), the car won't break down every single day. Not "less" problems as in 1 or 2 less per year, but as in 1 or 2 less per hour. If not more. Windows is flawed. 2k/xp relatively less so, but that's still several orders of magnitude more than anything else.
What should click in their brains? That they should only allow users to operate on one piece of proprietary software/hardware, and never ever allow them to upgrade? I'll set up a windows box for you, and i'm betting if I dont ever let you change it in any way - it will still be working just fine many years down the line. Just a hunch.
That's possible to design software, so that once you set the IP, it's just set. That it's not normal or acceptable for win2k's ipconfig to tell you that you have the correct static IP set, but still refuse to work until you uninstall the network card driver, reinstall it, and reconfigure the IP. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that even 4 years from now, when they're playing online games not in existence now, that the ps2 still won't shit in its own IP stack.
With Windows XX out of the picture, the only reason for backups at all will be catastrophic disk failure. Hard drives are so cheap, that I'm wondering why Gateway and Dell aren't offering machines with 2 identical drives, and mirroring on by default. One dies, customer gets a new one, and it rebuilds the mirror. No backup.
As a ISP helpdesk technician, I personally don't want to support some webtv bullshit. And the people that run the company I work for, make it policy to support as little as possible. When someone wants to connect their playstation 2, technically, I'm not supposed to help them (but honest to god, no matter how weird the machine is that someone wants to connect, it's always 100 times easier than windows is).
What Microsoft should fear the most, is people waking up and realizing that: A) It's not normal for your computer's configuration to get screwed up unless you're messing with it. B) It's not normal to have to reinstall the OS every 3 weeks. C) It's not normal to have to upgrade to the latest version of the OS just for the machine to behave normally (Note: though this isn't true if you want the latest security patches). D) If you use an OS other than windows, all the previous problems disappear.
One last thing. No one has ***ever*** called up, claiming that their playstation 2 or gamecube is "messed up" and can no longer connect. You'd think that would click in their brains...
Practical anonymity doesn't need this as a requirement. And on some levels, freenet isn't even anonymous. If I like, I can always download a seed file with how many IPs of participants? Granted, you always have to know at least a few IPs of other participants, but I think it's important that once you learn those few, you never learn any others, period. My understanding of freenet is that as the routing evolves, you start learning IP addresses of even more people.
If you'd like to connect to a different sort of network, I'd be happy to let you connect, just to check it out.
A good example is the water market. In the US for instance, it would be corporate insanity to try and sell bottled water, because 99% of americans have free access to tap or well water. Since it is free, people are unlikely to demand it at any price other than free.
Except that this isn't about protection from terrorists at all, its about control-freakism on a rampage.
The terrorist that defeats this, will be one with a valid ID as janitorial staff. Not someone trying to fake an ID as a junior senator. Duh.
Don't you wonder a little bit, that they're rushing to protect all the official buildings, when people like you and I will still be unsafe in public buildings? Do they think this will have protected us at the airport prior to 9/11, or in the towers? Even the pentagon, that was attacked, wasn't infiltrated with a fake ID, but with a 757 hellbent for the ground. Duh.
Centralization is a fetish for the elected nazi wannabees. It won't do a damn bit of good for you and me, and only a fool can't dream up at least one way for it to be abused...
I just did it, I believe. Left hand the circle was parallel with the wall, right hand parallel with the floor. Is that what you meant? For some reason, the left hand wanted to do it clockwise, and the right did some automatic CC response.
I actually know how VOIP works, I work for a company that offers it. In theory, it might be quick to switch to another, but since there needs to be an interface between the packets and POTS, and since this is rather complex... things can often be screwed up for days or weeks. Try having no dial tone for 10 days, if you think it's easy (and this is for people wanting our service, not necessarily switching to a competitor).
And as far as that goes, I don't even know that anyone uses the same hardware as us, or that the customer would be considered to own that hardware. So tack on another 3 day wait for fedex to ship you the competitor's DVC. And, we just had to wait a week to get in new DSL modems, which has happened twice in the short time that I've been there.
Switching to a competitor will never take less than a week, and if youre unlucky or if the company is spiteful, you could expect it to take much longer than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Science as a philosophy, maybe as an institution. The process you are referring to is the scientific method. 2 different things. The random scientist's belief in god is likely so vague that it's pointless. Might as well do a survey in how many believe in love. Ask how many of them believe in a patriarchial Jehovah of the old testament...
I don't know anything about Mr. Gates' computer skills, but I have no trouble finding the local pizza. Then I bookmark it. Things like that only ever need one search, duh.
Unfortunately, the "god" of the plausible "intelligent design" theorist might turn out to be a global colony of sentient bacteria, that can literally alter our DNA at whim. Read some Greg Bear.
However, just recently, biblethumping retards have hijacked the name, and are once again using it to reenact the Scopes monkey trial. Proof? When's the last time you heard one of them say "it may not have been God at all, but space aliens, or human time-travelers from the future" or for that matter, any explanation not involving their favorite deity?
In the words of Greg Bear, even evolution is evolving.
So, a neutrino pushes his new Chevy Proton into the garage and says to the quantum mechanic... "I need a miracle!".
Ba da dump!
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week...
Yeh, just the other day I saw some DOT guys chasing down private contractors who pave drivewas, and beating the shit out of them. I could have swore I heard them say "and stay outta our turf!".
And what about those mailmen who AK47'ed all the UPS offices a few years back?
If it meant my government were trying to do something intelligent for once, I'd like it alot. But then, I'm a practical guy, and I'd probably just start altering my business strategy to take into consideration state competition. It is rather uncapitalistic to compete in a courtroom, rather than in the market.
After all, fedex and UPS seem to do well enough.
Yeh, not using windows would be like losing the "no-rubber sex with $2 hookers" habit.
Yeh, apache has comparable numbers to IIS, and it's just as exploit-riddled. Oh wait, it's not. Maybe that's because Microsoft software is institutionally-flawed?
I just bought my own new laptop 2 weeks ago. WinXP pre-installed, and used only long enough to download slackware 10 isos. I don't dualboot it, it runs only linux. So, I take offense at the insinuation that I can't care for my computers... at least I don't leave linux on them.
And mind you, I'm not a pro-linux bigot. Just an anti-windows one.
Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious... I'm speaking from the experience of phone support for DSl, this is taking 30-50 calls a night. Mind you, our customers don't always take the best care of their computers... but only the most pathologically deisgned OS could give them this much grief.
If we gave you a computer all set up with win2k and prevented you from altering it, it would still work just fine in 3 years time.
Not really. I assume automatic update will be turned off, or will you chance that a new SP doesn't murder it? If so, will you manually keep up to date for me on the patches, so that the next windows-only worm doesn't nail it? We have what, 3 or 4 major ones a season?
Are you going to filter my web access too? What happens when I go to some retard website that uses an exploit to install spyware?
Sure, if you could restrict administrator access, it might work. But with windows, everyone in the world that can run a script has that.
The idea of Freenet is to hide the activities of users, not the fact that they're participating.
Not saying that it hasn't met this design goal, rather that it is a poorly chosen goal. It is better than nothing, but I'd rather it not be obvious in any way that I even participate.
So what happens when those few get out of the network for any reason (busted, got other interests, etc) ? If you can't get more connections, you're so out of luck.
Those that are busted are by design in different jurisdictions. Their bust won't necessarily mean you will be, especially when just like freenet, you can argue that you were only associating and not committing the act yourself. There are provisions for people leaving due to disinterest, and assuming they are good enough sports to give you some sort of warning, it won't mean you are stranded.
Id say installing software is messing with it, and if the software screws the system up, then its hardly 100% Windows fault, now is it.
Installing a puzzle game, or the flash browser plugin, or any of the other little doodads people like to install, is hardly the kind of "messing with it" that I mean when I'm implying things that would fuck up the IP stack. And yet, unless the customers I try to help are installing VINES protocol, or maybe AAL5, they do all this innocuous stuff, and it somehow totally rapes the IP stack. Now, that software isn't Microsoft(tm) software, but it isn't maliciously ruining critical subsystems intentionally and not every single one of them is so poorly designed as to do it accidentally. I conclude that windows is a poor design, and if 20 years of Redmond history is any indication, it's a poor design that simply cannot be fixed.
Well, let's see:
1) All (or most, say 90%) of his systems are physically identical work machines where no one is authorized to install anything. Telling a win98 DSL user that it will work fine, if they never do more than a base software install isn't an option for me.
2) He babysits daddy's machine, or daddy is the rare family member that isn't computer literate.
3) Linux always has bugfixes. Just not a bugfix necessary to make the machine work at all. Such as the win98 "is it IE or MSN explorer?" bullshit.
Mirroring could be made simple. When the hd dies, the bios marks it as bad somehow. Have it autodetect a new hd, and rebuild automatically. (Have it reject an incompatible hd). Most would take theirs to a computer shop for this anyway, and the majority of DIYers wouldn't have trouble.
And yes, I agree it's not a proper backup. But it's automated, and for 95% of hd deaths, it would preserve people's files. It wouldn't ever do for the enterprise computing enviroment, but for some of the ijits I support, it's better than what they have now.
C) It's not normal to have to upgrade to the latest version of the OS just for the machine to behave normally (Note: though this isn't true if you want the latest security patches).
Define "behave normally". If by that you mean being safe from viruses and what not, then this is definitly the case, no matter what OS you are running.
I mean that when they take their piece of shit machine to a computer shop, and the shop does a fresh install of windows 98se, they have no web browser. I help them set up a static IP, and when they go to lauch IE, the only thing it does is try to sell MSN to them. A copy of redhat 5 might have a bunch of security holes, but the netscape 4 browser on the machine won't insist on selling a service redhat gave up on 3 years ago.
D) If you use an OS other than windows, all the previous problems disappear.
This is analagous to saying if someone who can't take care of a car, uses a different brand, they will have better luck. While true, the other brand may very well have fewer issues needing repair, it still will break down, and the person will still find a way to fubar it.
No, it means if they buy even a decent used GM/Ford/Audi/Toyota, and stop driving the East German Trebant (you know, the one with the manual in the glove compartment that says if the car makes any strange noises, to park it, and run away from it immediately), the car won't break down every single day. Not "less" problems as in 1 or 2 less per year, but as in 1 or 2 less per hour. If not more. Windows is flawed. 2k/xp relatively less so, but that's still several orders of magnitude more than anything else.
What should click in their brains? That they should only allow users to operate on one piece of proprietary software/hardware, and never ever allow them to upgrade? I'll set up a windows box for you, and i'm betting if I dont ever let you change it in any way - it will still be working just fine many years down the line. Just a hunch.
That's possible to design software, so that once you set the IP, it's just set. That it's not normal or acceptable for win2k's ipconfig to tell you that you have the correct static IP set, but still refuse to work until you uninstall the network card driver, reinstall it, and reconfigure the IP. Oh, and I'm pretty sure that even 4 years from now, when they're playing online games not in existence now, that the ps2 still won't shit in its own IP stack.
With Windows XX out of the picture, the only reason for backups at all will be catastrophic disk failure. Hard drives are so cheap, that I'm wondering why Gateway and Dell aren't offering machines with 2 identical drives, and mirroring on by default. One dies, customer gets a new one, and it rebuilds the mirror. No backup.
As a ISP helpdesk technician, I personally don't want to support some webtv bullshit. And the people that run the company I work for, make it policy to support as little as possible. When someone wants to connect their playstation 2, technically, I'm not supposed to help them (but honest to god, no matter how weird the machine is that someone wants to connect, it's always 100 times easier than windows is).
What Microsoft should fear the most, is people waking up and realizing that:
A) It's not normal for your computer's configuration to get screwed up unless you're messing with it.
B) It's not normal to have to reinstall the OS every 3 weeks.
C) It's not normal to have to upgrade to the latest version of the OS just for the machine to behave normally (Note: though this isn't true if you want the latest security patches).
D) If you use an OS other than windows, all the previous problems disappear.
One last thing. No one has ***ever*** called up, claiming that their playstation 2 or gamecube is "messed up" and can no longer connect. You'd think that would click in their brains...
Practical anonymity doesn't need this as a requirement. And on some levels, freenet isn't even anonymous. If I like, I can always download a seed file with how many IPs of participants? Granted, you always have to know at least a few IPs of other participants, but I think it's important that once you learn those few, you never learn any others, period. My understanding of freenet is that as the routing evolves, you start learning IP addresses of even more people.
If you'd like to connect to a different sort of network, I'd be happy to let you connect, just to check it out.
Except that freenet wants to use 30 times as much bandwidth as you, the user, actually download.
Download a 700 meg movie, and expect to use 20 gigs worth of bandwidth.
Not unless someone invents a time machine that can take the RIAA back to 1993.
And their "zero dead rat" policy.
A good example is the water market. In the US for instance, it would be corporate insanity to try and sell bottled water, because 99% of americans have free access to tap or well water. Since it is free, people are unlikely to demand it at any price other than free.
Agreed. It's a trojan. So what makes it different than Sub7 and Back Orifice?
Except that this isn't about protection from terrorists at all, its about control-freakism on a rampage.
The terrorist that defeats this, will be one with a valid ID as janitorial staff. Not someone trying to fake an ID as a junior senator. Duh.
Don't you wonder a little bit, that they're rushing to protect all the official buildings, when people like you and I will still be unsafe in public buildings? Do they think this will have protected us at the airport prior to 9/11, or in the towers? Even the pentagon, that was attacked, wasn't infiltrated with a fake ID, but with a 757 hellbent for the ground. Duh.
Centralization is a fetish for the elected nazi wannabees. It won't do a damn bit of good for you and me, and only a fool can't dream up at least one way for it to be abused...
Thought CC was standard abbreviation fro counter-clockwise.
I just did it, I believe. Left hand the circle was parallel with the wall, right hand parallel with the floor. Is that what you meant? For some reason, the left hand wanted to do it clockwise, and the right did some automatic CC response.
Am I hired?
I actually know how VOIP works, I work for a company that offers it. In theory, it might be quick to switch to another, but since there needs to be an interface between the packets and POTS, and since this is rather complex... things can often be screwed up for days or weeks. Try having no dial tone for 10 days, if you think it's easy (and this is for people wanting our service, not necessarily switching to a competitor).
And as far as that goes, I don't even know that anyone uses the same hardware as us, or that the customer would be considered to own that hardware. So tack on another 3 day wait for fedex to ship you the competitor's DVC. And, we just had to wait a week to get in new DSL modems, which has happened twice in the short time that I've been there.
Switching to a competitor will never take less than a week, and if youre unlucky or if the company is spiteful, you could expect it to take much longer than that.