In a society where personal property is de-emphasized, there is one benefit that you may be overlooking: nobody is subjected to the violence of poverty.
No, the exact opposite happens: everyone is subjected to the exact same amount of poverty. Winston Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
The poor in the United States have televisions, cars, air-conditioning, cell phones, cable TV, and free access to health care whenever they walk into an ER. Tens of thousands of people come to this country every year from socialist countries around the world. If we're so poor and unequal, why is that?
The gap between the rich and the poor in this country is widening every day, and there's really no middle class anymore; we're a country of haves and have-nots.
The rich keep getting richer because they keep doing the things that made them rich in the first place: smart investing, good business practices, wise spending. The poor stay poor because they keep doing the things that made them poor in the first place: dropping out of school, having kids you can't afford, drifting from job to job because you have no work ethic or marketable skills, and spending your entire paycheck on beer, smokes, and pay-per-view WWF events. It's not a country of haves and have-nots, it's a country of tries and try-nots. There is room at the top for anyone. There is not room at the top for everyone.
A deemphasis on personal material gain would alleviate this.
By God, you're right! If we're too lazy or stupid to work hard and succeed like those rich bastards in their nice houses and fancy cars then we ought to tear them down from their high-achieving posts and make them just as lowly and miserable as the rest of us! God forbid that anyone who works hard should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Spoken like a true comrade, you are. Now run along to your Work Workers Party meeting, you have some anti-capitalist and class-warfare slogans to chant during the Five Minute Hate.
Because the property you earned during you life work and investiments was due to a stable society, economy and government investment in infastructure.
Funny. Your first sentence is a complete contradiction of itself. If I "earned" my property, then it is mine by right of my hard work, shrewd investment, keen intellect, or whatever. Goverment can only hinder that by regulation, taxation, etc., but it cannot earn it for me. Yet you say it's all due to a "stable society, economy and government investment in infrastructure." It's either one or the other, but it cannot be both. If I earned it, it's mine free and clear. If government "gave" it to me through social programs, income redistribution, welfare, and so forth, I didn't earn it (if fact, somebody else earned it and had it taken away from them by the government, but that's a story for another time).
You can argue that the government's maintenance of a stable environment assists me in my hard work, and you may be corrent in some circumstances. But without effort on my part, government cannot "earn" me anything. I, on the other hand, can earn things without the need for government to do much of anything for me, although it may be more difficult for me to do so. But the important point to take from this is that government needs me to earn things more than I need government to help me earn it. Unfortunately, it seems these days the government wants me to earn things specifically so that it can take it away from me in the form of taxes and give it to someone else that hasn't earned it. Karl Marx would be proud of our Social Security system and the IRS.
Who knew that such a profound quantum mechanical truth was concealed in this simple nursery rhyme? I bet in half the universes, the pigs were captured in the market and butchered for sausage, and it's only in the others where they return home safely.
Speaking from a quantum mechanical viewpoint, the pigs are both slaughtered for breakfast sausage and they make it home safely. Just make damned sure you don't observe them, though, because then (statistically speaking) you'd kill them half the time. Now, pardon me, but I have to go feed my cat and see if he's still alive...or not...
Yes, there are millions who didn't murder each other today. But there's always tomorrow.
Yes, I'm sure from the tone of your post that you're rooting fervently for as much death, carnage, and chaos as is possible. After all, who cares what happens to Iraqi civilians? Who cares what happens to U.S. military personnel? We must keep sight of the more noble goal, that of making Bush look bad! Revenge for him having "stolen" the election from the noble Al Gore in 2000! Revenge for him "stealing" it once again in 2004 from the patrician John Kerry! Death to Bush! Death to America! Death! Death! Death!
You know, you and Osama would make good buddies. I'm damned glad people like you aren't in power right now. Your cowardice, lack of logic, and absolute naivete is more dangerous than a planeload of terrorists itching for 72 virgins apiece. I sincerely hope you don't reproduce. Meanwhile, I hear Al Queda is recruiting. Why don't you go and join? You share their values and outlook quite well, it seems.
It doesn't make you mad at all that you were sent in, and over two thousand have died because of, discredited evidence?
I'm going to pretty much ignore the rest of your post because it's all downhill from here. But this point I won't let pass.
Why did we invade Iraq? To seize WMD's? If that's what you think, you're wrong. We invaded Iraq for one very clear, very concise reason: Iraq was failing to abide by the 1991 cease fire agreement. I can name a number of violations: shooting missles at planes enforcing the no-fly zone, failure to disclose all documentation and evidence on WMD research, failure to allow unfettered, unrestricted inspection of all suspected WMD sites in Iraq...the list is endless. Remember, the 1991 war was never concluded with a peace treaty, it was concluded with a cease fire, which is something completely different. A cease fire means you can go back to a "hot" war at any moment if either side violates the terms of the cease fire. In truth, we could've invaded back in 1992 and been perfectly justified in doing so, both legally and morally. I'm sure you'll argue otherwise, but you're wrong if you do.
Let's put it in a way that you can understand. Suppose there's a rundown, ramshackle house in your bad-part-of-town neighborhood. You see shady characters outside at all hours of the night. Cars pull up, and the shady guys go to the window, hand the driver something in a small baggy, and receive cash in return. You see other guys taking chemicals and other stuff into the house in the dark of night. A reasonable person would suspect the place is a crack lab, or maybe a meth lab. A reasonable person might call the police, and the police would obtain a warrant to search the place.
Now, let's suppose the owner of the house sees the warrant but refuses to allow the police to inspect the place. The owner is promptly arrested and taken to jail. The house is searched, but it turns out the guy isn't making crack or meth, he's just making...I don't know...fertilizer or something else perfectly legal.
Now here's the question that determines whether you've done your homework: the owner of the home is now sitting in jail, arrested. What is he arrested for? For failing to allow a legally authorized search of his home. "But no crack or meth was found!" you say? That doesn't matter. What matters is that the police (analogous to the U.N. inspectors) were legally authorized to search the house (Iraq) for suspicious stuff (WMD's), but the owner (Saddam) refused to allow it. The owner is now sitting in jail not for being a drug dealer (for having WMD's) but for refusing to co-operate (harrying inspectors, declaring sites as "palaces" to prevent inspection, destroying documents, etc.). There is no legal ambiguity here. He was required to comply, but didn't. Thus, the "consequences" part came into play. Bluffing the U.S. might've worked under Clinton, but it sure as hell doesn't work anymore. 'Bout damned time, I say.
I have a question for you: what if we didn't have the 22nd amendment, and Clinton was still in office, and everything happened exactly the same.
If we were sent into Iraq under Clinton with the same RoE (Rules of Engagement) as we have now, I would support it. This isn't a Republican vs. Democrat thing, it's a right vs. wrong thing. Saddam was a thug who thought he could get away with violating agreements he made with the U.N. We are showing him -- and, by extension, the world -- that such thumbing-of-the-nose will not be tolerated. If the Khaddafi's and Kim Jong-Il's of the world suddenly realize we mean business, so much the better. They'd better realize it, just like Iran had better figure out that we are serious about not letting them develop nukes. If they choose to think we're bluffing -- or if they're stupid enough to think they can defeat us in armed combat -- they'll get a rude surprise. Sooner or later the sabre-rattling tinpot dictators of the world will figure out that we aren't a paper tiger anymore.
And by the way, we could have REALLY used more of you guys in the Katrina mess.
I almost missed this sentence, so I'm addressing it in a separate reply.
You can thank the governor of Louisiana for a lot of the mess. Federal disaster aid can only be brought to bear if asked for by the governor. The Federal Government cannot just blithely send in troops, even in the case of a disaster. Local governments have jurisdiction in such cases and they must ask for FEMA assistance. Governor Blanco delayed asking for aid for a couple of days and it made things much, much worse. Not that you'll hear much of this in the news, of course. Nor will you hear other really interesting questions, such as why were hundreds of school busses left in parking lots to be flooded while New Orleans residents were screaming to be evacuated? The local governments fumbled this big time, but all the blame is being placed at the Federal level. People have apparently forgotten that disasters are handled at the state level first and the Federal level second. States are supposed to be more autonomous and not dependent upon the Federal government. That's the way the Constitution is written, not that anyone seems to care.
Furthermore, there was no shortage of troops to help New Orleans after FEMA got involved. They got all the help they asked for. You must remember that our armed forces number in the millions if you include the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and the associated National Guard units. Our deployment in Iraq is relatively small when compared to this and is not a factor in things like domestic disaster relief.
I don't have enough time to disprove all of your dishonesty, lies and half-truths
Which is another way of saying "I can't disprove any one of your facts, so I'm just going to go on and generate a bunch of fake stuff to try and debunk you."
Get back to me when you have facts, not rumors, innuendo, and partisan fabrications.
This is not easy with so many partisan outlets on both sides, but the govt. has again and again and again said it's better, it's better, it's better and it DOESN'T LOOK MUCH BETTER.
And just where, pray tell, are you getting your news from? CNN? CBS? ABC? MSNBC? Fox? I've got news for you: unless you've been there and see the whole damned thing with your own eyes, you have no business saying "it doesn't look much better." You are being shown what the networks want you to see, because they know "if it bleeds, it leads." I'm not saying it's some kind of grand conspiracy because, quite frankly, I don't think the press is that smart. But I will say they're only going to show you the bombs, the blood, and the carnage when in fact that's going on in less than 5% of the whole damned country.
I mean, think about it. When you see a headline that says "Thousands of Iraqi's Protest U.S. Presence In Iraq," you do realize that that same headline could also accurately state "Millions of Iraqi's Do Not Protest U.S. Presence In Iraq," don't you? There are over 26 million people in the country, and most of the insurgents are actually being imported from Iran and Syria (we found relatively few native Iraqis doing this kind of stuff). Yet the latter headline will never be seen because it's boring news.
I'm very concerned that a lot of things I've heard from servicemen seem to indicate they feel we're the enemy.
When civilians carry signs that say "we support our troops when they kill their officers," gee, I wonder why we might feel that way. Not. The number one concern of myself and my fellow warriors is not that we'll be maimed or killed tomorrow. It's that we'll be pulled out of Iraq prematurely because of all the hand-wringing pantywaists back home, allowing a radical theocracy to take over and thus mooting all the pain and death that's been borne by us over the last few years. We don't mind fighting and, if need be, dying for something that's allowed to succeed. Fighting and dying for something that's going to be written off as a failure because we weren't allowed to succeed is something completely different.
As far as slanted reporting goes, apparently every bit of info we got going into the war was slanted towards war, and it's hard to not report things blowing up.
Put yourself in the Oval Office for a moment. You've got the head of the CIA telling you Saddam's got WMD's. You've got the Mossad, German Intelligence, French Intelligence, and Russian Intelligence organizations also concluding he has them. The U.N. report says Saddam's goons are chasing inspectors away from certain areas, sometimes with gunfire. About 90% of the evidence indicates Saddam has WMD's, and the guy is unhinged enough to use them. Perhaps not against the U.S. mainland, but there's nothing to stop him from re-invading Kuwait or Saudi Arabia under the cover of a WMD arsenal, making a hypothetical Desert Storm II much more expensive in terms of human lives. A takeover of Kuwait or Saudi would allow Saddam to use oil to blackmail the rest of the world. He could destroy the entire world economy if he wanted to and there's very little we could do about it besides a bloody invasion -- an invasion that would probably not happen because of the American attitude against massive casualties. A negotiated settlement would be much more likely, giving Saddam a political and moral victory in the eyes of the Arab world. Don't think he wasn't thinking about this exact scenario because he was; the invasion of Kuwait was a direct result of this line of thinking.
Bush made the call on this evidence. You can second guess him all you want because you now have information he didn't have then. Sure, there were dissenters back before the war who said he didn't have WMD's, but the vast majority of all the (formerly) reputable intelligence outfits said he did. Intelligence will always be a game of guessing. That's just the nature of covert intelligence. Furthermore, there is anecdotal evidence that Saddam did indeed have WMD's, but that they were spirited out of Iraq into neighoring Baathist Syria just before the invasion. Satellite evidence confirms convoys with heavy military escort crossing the Iraq-Syria border just hours before the invasion began. What was in those convoys? Nobody knows. Syria officially denies they even existed despite the satellite photos. The very fact that Syria is doing so in the face of such evidence should make one wonder when you hear the words "but Saddam never had any WMD's!"
If the countryside isn't safe enough for the reporters to get out of the Green Zone, how would they know about the good stuff? If it's not safe enough to go out, how good can it be?
Oddly enough, millions of Iraqi's venture out on a daily basis without getting shot, blown up, kidnapped, or executed. You only hear about the bad stuff. Sure, it's not as safe as Anytown, USA, but then again this was a country that until recently was ruled by a dictator who thought nothing of rounding up thousands of civilians for mass torture and execution. Keeping security with an iron fist is much easier than what we're trying to do now.
An Iraqi general just got blown up going to the airport, and the military has made it clear they're putting out disi
Yes, we are. I can speak as someone who's been there on a tour. And despite your fondest wishes, I didn't murder any babies, rape any women, or generally terrorize the countryside in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan. Neither did any of my brother or sister Marines. If there's one constant thread you can get from just about any soldier, sailor, or Marine who's served in the current conflict, it's that the news we're getting over here in the States is unbelievably slanted. Only the bad stuff is being reported, and the reporters are looking as hard as they can to find bad stuff to report on. It has the effect of making everyone here think the place is in a total shambles since all they hear is a constant, uninterrupted stream of bad news. For those of us who've been there and know better, it's very frustrating.
However, to address your "fighting for freedom" comment, I will leave you with a quote from a famous American from a bygone era (emphasis is mine):
"It is by no means enough that an officer should be capable... He should as well be a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor... No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention, even if the reward be only one word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate. True as may be the political principals for which we are now contending... the ships themselves must be ruled under a system of absolute despotism. I trust that I have now made clear to you the tremendous responsibilities... We must do the best we can with what we have." -John Paul Jones, 14 September 1775; excerpts from a letter to the naval committee of the North American insurrectionists.
No, your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection of your education not just your intelligence level. Try talking with a few people outside the US, which use English as a 3rd language, and you might learn how meaningless your supposed link is.
As a measure of respect for the language you're speaking -- whatever language that may be -- the least you can do is speak it (or write it) correctly. If I were speaking in German, criticism of improper grammar would be equally valid. This criticism is not restricted to Anglo-centric languages despite your attempt to paint it as such.
If you can't do it right, don't bother doing it at all. In this day and age of grammar checkers, spell checkers, and the resources of the Internet in general, no one can use the excuse that they didn't know better. To do any less excuses laziness and invites mediocrity. Typographical errors are one thing, but the obvious grammatical inaccuracy shown in the OP has no excuse whatsoever.
That what this all is, a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf cluster jokes. You don't get it, do you?
2. Supercomputer are basically BeoWulf clusters
Congratulations! You win the "Duh!" Awards of the day!
3. Someone else posted the same joke 3 posts up, but included "Will it run linux".
Humor is in the eye of the beholder.
4. It isn't the first time someone has made the mistake of their/they're
This isn't the first time I've corrected them, either. Nor will it be the last. Your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection on your intelligence level. Ergo, he's an idiot. You're defending an idiot. What does that make you?
5. You aren't the first to point that out to anyone.
Yet they never seem to learn...
6. Somone else will reply to your post and point that out two posts after mine.
Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
7. Someone else in this comment thread will also make misuse of their and they're.
And I'll gleefully point out their flaws as well.
8. Somone two posts down from your original will also make a mention of a Beowulf cluster.
See response to #1.
9. And 5 posts after that another will try to get modded funny by trying to include "In Soviet Russia, only old people use Beowulf Clusters Running linux."
And eight years later you still haven't discovered the difference between "their" and "they're." You're a poster child for grammatical stupidity all by yourself, so remind me again why you're casting stones?
Of course "Microsoft" is a defacto standard! They are a monopoly! Regardless, the fact remains that the standard is closed and secret, making it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone else to offer 100% adherence to the standard.
The very fact that OpenOffice exists and enjoys a (relatively) large following completely refutes your "They are a monopoly!" statement. You sound like one of those idiotic moonbat protesters screaming "the government is restricting my right to free speech!" in a public square, when the very fact that the government isn't restricting such speech gives lie to the statement. Your pandering to the anti-business crowd might go over well with the Kool-Aid drinkers here at/. but it's winning you no points in a logical debate.
By the way, 100% adherence isn't impossible, and if you weren't so blinded by hatred you'd see that. It's called "clean room reverse engineering" and it's what's allowed OpenOffice to get as close to full compatibility as it has. Just as Samba reverse-engineers Microsoft's SMB protocols to make it emulate a Windows server, OpenOffice can study, tweak, and experiment with Word file formats until they have it down to a science. The fact that Microsoft won't help makes this difficult to be sure, but far from impossible. Your whining indicates you'd rather not try, relying instead on Microsoft's "good graces" to give you the tools needed to bring them down. Yeah, right. Like that's ever gonna happen. How pathetic you are that you have to ask your enemy for a weapon with which to fight them with.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom.
No, you're lazy and full of contempt for your betters. If you want to displace Office, get out there and make a better product at a better price. If you can't -- or if OpenOffice.org can't -- you have no business whining about Microsoft's dominance.
This is an impossible ideal because users are different.
Male cow excrement. A good UI will take into account that there are probably two or three ways 95% of the users will want to perform a given task. It will then make those few options as visible and intuitive as possible. The remaining 5% should be accomodated with context-sensitive tool tips that guide them in the direction they need to go. It's not impossible, it's merely difficult. You are willing instead to settle on something less but then still complain that users don't like your UI. Check Websters for the meaning of the word "contradiction."
Your rephrasing was unnecessary, because I indicated that the parts that you've added were true by using the pronoun "I". Did you think that I was claiming that F/OSS is capable of being all things to all people? No software can do that. It's intuitively obvious that the conditions you specified apply on a case-by-case basis. Different people have different requirements, after all.
It's intuitively obvious, is it? There you go again, assuming that because you know something to be true therefore everyone else must also know it to be true. Obviously it's not intuitive because your statement was sufficiently nebulous to allow misunderstanding. Hence my clarification.
You seem to have completely misinterpreted my post.
How is that possible? I thought it was "intuitively obvious"? Yes, I'm directing sarcasm your way in an attempt to point out how hideously narrowminded you are about the entire subject of what constitutes "obvious".
If Microsoft was an official and open standard, then you would have a point.
Perhaps you're unaware of the concept of a de facto standard. Microsoft Office is present in more than 95% of all business computers worldwide. It doesn't matter one damn little bit whether Office complies with any outside "standard," it is a standard by virtue of its overwhelming market presence. Your ignorance of reality here is the prime reason why Linux on the desktop is moving slowly (if at all). You cannot force people to like an open standard that is blatantly incompatible with the widely-accepted, de facto "standard" by which nearly everyone does daily business. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether or not Microsoft is compliant with some open standard or not. The only thing that matters is that a document made by Person A is viewed easily and accurately by Person B. You're trying to bring ideology into what is actually a pragmatic business decision, and that's why you're failing.
In a perfect world, it would be easy to get people to abandon Office for something standards-based. We do not live in a perfect world, and people are not accepting of anything that doesn't perform 100% compatibly with Office. If you don't like it, tough, but that's reality. Nobody likes it, but right now the alternatives are more painful than the current solution.
Q:So. Why don't you like Linux? A: Well... OpenOffice doesn't have features I want. Q: What specific features do you use that OpenOffice does not provide? A: Uh...
Oh, gee, how about things like compatibility with third-party applications that expect to be usable via OLE or Word add-ins? Or if that wasn't enough, how about full compatiblity with Word documents, including macros and 100% accurate formatting? 99.9% compatibility isn't good enough when an error can creep in that you might not notice but your client is sure to notice. Or how about the fact that your clients, who will almost certainly be using Word, will find it odd that things that looked perfectly formatted in OpenOffice look...odd...in Word. Oh, you can argue that Word might be at fault here, but that's missing the point. It doesn't matter who is at fault, it only matters that the client is not getting what the client expects, wants, or has paid for. If you ignore that, don't expect to be in business very long.
Personally, I think it would be great if most people would grow a clue, learn how to read manuals and geek out about the same things that I do.
And that's where you fall down: you expect the person to adapt to fit the machine, not the other way around. I've got news for you: that's not why machines -- or in this case, software -- were invented. The software should adapt to the user, not the other way around. Fifteen years ago in college, my UI design prof said that the measure of a good user interface is one where the user can perform almost any function without the need to consult a manual. Everything works the way it feels like it ought to work, not the way one solitary UI developer thought it ought to work. What's missing here is two things: maturity and perspective. One begets the other. Developers who wish their products to achieve mass-market success must understand and accomodate the mass market. Microsoft certainly understands this quite well, which is why they've made billions of dollars selling mediocre software. It may be mediocre, but it's useful to the massses. A Linux CLI or some of the hideous UI's I've seen elsewhere is not useful to the masses, hence their desire to stay far, far away from it.
That's a great list. As I reflect back on my desktop transition from Windows to Linux, I see how F/OSS satisfied each of those requirements. I guess maybe it can succeed on the desktop... but I don't care, because I'm in the second group.
I'm going to rephrase your sentence to be more in line with reality. You should have written "As I reflect back on my desktop transition from Windows to Linux, I see how F/OSS satisfied each of those requirements for me and anyone else who is an exact clone of me . I guess maybe it can succeed on the desktop for me and anyone else who is an exact clone of me." Your self-centered attitude in this is amazingly close minded. Does everyone like the same foods as you? The same music? Does everyone have your exact same taste in clothes? Does everyone write with your handwriting style? Does everyone agree with your standards of beauty and ugliness? Of functional and non-functional? Of course not. Yet just because something succeeded for you, you then pronounce it fit for everyone else's consumption. Can you not see that what you're saying is no more correct than a rabid Windows user saying Windows is the best interface ever, that it does everything that he wants it to do, just as he wants it, therefore it's the best for everyone?
I've never heard it put better than how you just put it. You've just summed up the prime reason why the tech-head geeks never, ever get "their" way by being bull headed about things. You cannot force people to like what you like just because you like its technical elegance. Pity that most F/OSS people cannot figure that out.
Getting users to adopt new software (such as desktop Linux) is really much simpler than you might think. You must do the following:
1. Provide a seamless (or near seamless) transition. This means the user interfaces between the old and the new must be as similar is possible. Or, if the old interface was a godawful nightmare, the new one must be uber-intuitive. Sadly, a lot of F/OSS misses the concept entirely, as UI design seems to be the absolute last thing on any developer's mind.
2. Provide the features users use. This is a tricky one because 95% of the features in stuff like MS Office goes ununsed by most folks. However, the 5% that is used varies wildly from office to office. The only way to make sure you're covering all bases is to get 100% of the features ported. Again, a lot of F/OSS misses this concept because developers develop for what they want, not for what some other target market might want.
3. Give the users a reason to change. Again, simple concept, but one that most F/OSS packages completely fail to deliver on. Why should I install a new OS and entire suite of apps just so I can keep doing what I already do just fine on my Windows/Office setup? Stability? Sorry, a properly-managed XP box can have great uptimes, and most corporate setups are done with standardized images that have ultra-stable drivers and thus few (if any) BSOD's. Lack of viruses? This is probably the best angle, but again it's not enough for most people to want to switch. With modern antivirus software and a well-managed environment, virus intrusion isn't nearly the problem it once was. The vast majority of issues you read about are ones where either it's a home-based box (which are rarely well administered) or in a company that has no idea how to secure a Windows box. Cost of acquisition? Again, this one falls pretty flat. Corporations aren't going to install free Linux distros, they're going to purchase things like RHEL so they can get support. Have you priced RHEL lately? It's no cheaper than WinXP is on a corporate licensing program which is how most businesses deploy Windows.
If F/OSS can satisfy these three points, there's no reason why it can't succeed on the desktop. The fact that it has variously failed to some degree in some or all of the above traits is why desktop Linux has enjoyed but a shadow of the success of server-room Linux.
I mean, how hard is it to add the e at the end, geniuses.
Perhaps if you researched a bit you'd discover that "Blue Ray" is a generic term with respect to trademarks. The original name was to be "Blue Ray" until they discovered you can't trademark it. Thus the removal of the "e" to make a term that can't be pilfered by competitors like Intel's 386, 486, etc.
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed?
Can't you guys make up your minds? On the one hand, you deride Bush as being "Chimpy W. Hitler," an incompetent that's so incompetent he can't find has ass with both hands. On the other hand, he's this evil, diabolical mastermind that's capable of gerrymandering an election where over 100 million Americans participated in, and he did it with such cunning and subtlety that no one has been able to find hard, concrete evidence of it.
So, which is it? Either way, you Democrats look silly. If he's the idiot you claim him to be, that means you were duped by an idiot, which makes you...well, a bigger idiot. On the other hand, if he's the evil, diabolical genius bent on world domination, all your claims of him being stupid are...well, stupid.
I have no doubt there is some Orwellian twist of language that you take solace in that is allowing you to hold these two contradictory poses in your head at the same time without being aware of the contradiction.
Uh...no, it won't. Pressurized water reactors use the water as a moderator for the reaction as well as a means to carry heat away from the reactor core. If you remove the water, the reaction essentially stops. Unfortunately for anyone nearby, heat removal also stops, which means the heat accumulated in the core is enough to melt pretty much everything in it. The fuel rods will then melt into a slag that will retain enough heat to attack the reactor vessel, which will then fail, releasing the slag into the environment.
Slashdot Mirror
In a society where personal property is de-emphasized, there is one benefit that you may be overlooking: nobody is subjected to the violence of poverty.
No, the exact opposite happens: everyone is subjected to the exact same amount of poverty. Winston Churchill said it best: "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
The poor in the United States have televisions, cars, air-conditioning, cell phones, cable TV, and free access to health care whenever they walk into an ER. Tens of thousands of people come to this country every year from socialist countries around the world. If we're so poor and unequal, why is that?
The gap between the rich and the poor in this country is widening every day, and there's really no middle class anymore; we're a country of haves and have-nots.
The rich keep getting richer because they keep doing the things that made them rich in the first place: smart investing, good business practices, wise spending. The poor stay poor because they keep doing the things that made them poor in the first place: dropping out of school, having kids you can't afford, drifting from job to job because you have no work ethic or marketable skills, and spending your entire paycheck on beer, smokes, and pay-per-view WWF events. It's not a country of haves and have-nots, it's a country of tries and try-nots. There is room at the top for anyone. There is not room at the top for everyone.
A deemphasis on personal material gain would alleviate this.
By God, you're right! If we're too lazy or stupid to work hard and succeed like those rich bastards in their nice houses and fancy cars then we ought to tear them down from their high-achieving posts and make them just as lowly and miserable as the rest of us! God forbid that anyone who works hard should be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Spoken like a true comrade, you are. Now run along to your Work Workers Party meeting, you have some anti-capitalist and class-warfare slogans to chant during the Five Minute Hate.
Because the property you earned during you life work and investiments was due to a stable society, economy and government investment in infastructure.
Funny. Your first sentence is a complete contradiction of itself. If I "earned" my property, then it is mine by right of my hard work, shrewd investment, keen intellect, or whatever. Goverment can only hinder that by regulation, taxation, etc., but it cannot earn it for me. Yet you say it's all due to a "stable society, economy and government investment in infrastructure." It's either one or the other, but it cannot be both. If I earned it, it's mine free and clear. If government "gave" it to me through social programs, income redistribution, welfare, and so forth, I didn't earn it (if fact, somebody else earned it and had it taken away from them by the government, but that's a story for another time).
You can argue that the government's maintenance of a stable environment assists me in my hard work, and you may be corrent in some circumstances. But without effort on my part, government cannot "earn" me anything. I, on the other hand, can earn things without the need for government to do much of anything for me, although it may be more difficult for me to do so. But the important point to take from this is that government needs me to earn things more than I need government to help me earn it. Unfortunately, it seems these days the government wants me to earn things specifically so that it can take it away from me in the form of taxes and give it to someone else that hasn't earned it. Karl Marx would be proud of our Social Security system and the IRS.
Who knew that such a profound quantum mechanical truth was concealed in this simple nursery rhyme? I bet in half the universes, the pigs were captured in the market and butchered for sausage, and it's only in the others where they return home safely.
Speaking from a quantum mechanical viewpoint, the pigs are both slaughtered for breakfast sausage and they make it home safely. Just make damned sure you don't observe them, though, because then (statistically speaking) you'd kill them half the time. Now, pardon me, but I have to go feed my cat and see if he's still alive...or not...
Yes, there are millions who didn't murder each other today. But there's always tomorrow.
Yes, I'm sure from the tone of your post that you're rooting fervently for as much death, carnage, and chaos as is possible. After all, who cares what happens to Iraqi civilians? Who cares what happens to U.S. military personnel? We must keep sight of the more noble goal, that of making Bush look bad! Revenge for him having "stolen" the election from the noble Al Gore in 2000! Revenge for him "stealing" it once again in 2004 from the patrician John Kerry! Death to Bush! Death to America! Death! Death! Death!
You know, you and Osama would make good buddies. I'm damned glad people like you aren't in power right now. Your cowardice, lack of logic, and absolute naivete is more dangerous than a planeload of terrorists itching for 72 virgins apiece. I sincerely hope you don't reproduce. Meanwhile, I hear Al Queda is recruiting. Why don't you go and join? You share their values and outlook quite well, it seems.
It doesn't make you mad at all that you were sent in, and over two thousand have died because of, discredited evidence?
I'm going to pretty much ignore the rest of your post because it's all downhill from here. But this point I won't let pass.
Why did we invade Iraq? To seize WMD's? If that's what you think, you're wrong. We invaded Iraq for one very clear, very concise reason: Iraq was failing to abide by the 1991 cease fire agreement. I can name a number of violations: shooting missles at planes enforcing the no-fly zone, failure to disclose all documentation and evidence on WMD research, failure to allow unfettered, unrestricted inspection of all suspected WMD sites in Iraq...the list is endless. Remember, the 1991 war was never concluded with a peace treaty, it was concluded with a cease fire, which is something completely different. A cease fire means you can go back to a "hot" war at any moment if either side violates the terms of the cease fire. In truth, we could've invaded back in 1992 and been perfectly justified in doing so, both legally and morally. I'm sure you'll argue otherwise, but you're wrong if you do.
Let's put it in a way that you can understand. Suppose there's a rundown, ramshackle house in your bad-part-of-town neighborhood. You see shady characters outside at all hours of the night. Cars pull up, and the shady guys go to the window, hand the driver something in a small baggy, and receive cash in return. You see other guys taking chemicals and other stuff into the house in the dark of night. A reasonable person would suspect the place is a crack lab, or maybe a meth lab. A reasonable person might call the police, and the police would obtain a warrant to search the place.
Now, let's suppose the owner of the house sees the warrant but refuses to allow the police to inspect the place. The owner is promptly arrested and taken to jail. The house is searched, but it turns out the guy isn't making crack or meth, he's just making...I don't know...fertilizer or something else perfectly legal.
Now here's the question that determines whether you've done your homework: the owner of the home is now sitting in jail, arrested. What is he arrested for? For failing to allow a legally authorized search of his home. "But no crack or meth was found!" you say? That doesn't matter. What matters is that the police (analogous to the U.N. inspectors) were legally authorized to search the house (Iraq) for suspicious stuff (WMD's), but the owner (Saddam) refused to allow it. The owner is now sitting in jail not for being a drug dealer (for having WMD's) but for refusing to co-operate (harrying inspectors, declaring sites as "palaces" to prevent inspection, destroying documents, etc.). There is no legal ambiguity here. He was required to comply, but didn't. Thus, the "consequences" part came into play. Bluffing the U.S. might've worked under Clinton, but it sure as hell doesn't work anymore. 'Bout damned time, I say.
I have a question for you: what if we didn't have the 22nd amendment, and Clinton was still in office, and everything happened exactly the same.
If we were sent into Iraq under Clinton with the same RoE (Rules of Engagement) as we have now, I would support it. This isn't a Republican vs. Democrat thing, it's a right vs. wrong thing. Saddam was a thug who thought he could get away with violating agreements he made with the U.N. We are showing him -- and, by extension, the world -- that such thumbing-of-the-nose will not be tolerated. If the Khaddafi's and Kim Jong-Il's of the world suddenly realize we mean business, so much the better. They'd better realize it, just like Iran had better figure out that we are serious about not letting them develop nukes. If they choose to think we're bluffing -- or if they're stupid enough to think they can defeat us in armed combat -- they'll get a rude surprise. Sooner or later the sabre-rattling tinpot dictators of the world will figure out that we aren't a paper tiger anymore.
And by the way, we could have REALLY used more of you guys in the Katrina mess.
I almost missed this sentence, so I'm addressing it in a separate reply.
You can thank the governor of Louisiana for a lot of the mess. Federal disaster aid can only be brought to bear if asked for by the governor. The Federal Government cannot just blithely send in troops, even in the case of a disaster. Local governments have jurisdiction in such cases and they must ask for FEMA assistance. Governor Blanco delayed asking for aid for a couple of days and it made things much, much worse. Not that you'll hear much of this in the news, of course. Nor will you hear other really interesting questions, such as why were hundreds of school busses left in parking lots to be flooded while New Orleans residents were screaming to be evacuated? The local governments fumbled this big time, but all the blame is being placed at the Federal level. People have apparently forgotten that disasters are handled at the state level first and the Federal level second. States are supposed to be more autonomous and not dependent upon the Federal government. That's the way the Constitution is written, not that anyone seems to care.
Furthermore, there was no shortage of troops to help New Orleans after FEMA got involved. They got all the help they asked for. You must remember that our armed forces number in the millions if you include the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and the associated National Guard units. Our deployment in Iraq is relatively small when compared to this and is not a factor in things like domestic disaster relief.
I don't have enough time to disprove all of your dishonesty, lies and half-truths
Which is another way of saying "I can't disprove any one of your facts, so I'm just going to go on and generate a bunch of fake stuff to try and debunk you."
Get back to me when you have facts, not rumors, innuendo, and partisan fabrications.
This is not easy with so many partisan outlets on both sides, but the govt. has again and again and again said it's better, it's better, it's better and it DOESN'T LOOK MUCH BETTER.
And just where, pray tell, are you getting your news from? CNN? CBS? ABC? MSNBC? Fox? I've got news for you: unless you've been there and see the whole damned thing with your own eyes, you have no business saying "it doesn't look much better." You are being shown what the networks want you to see, because they know "if it bleeds, it leads." I'm not saying it's some kind of grand conspiracy because, quite frankly, I don't think the press is that smart. But I will say they're only going to show you the bombs, the blood, and the carnage when in fact that's going on in less than 5% of the whole damned country.
I mean, think about it. When you see a headline that says "Thousands of Iraqi's Protest U.S. Presence In Iraq," you do realize that that same headline could also accurately state "Millions of Iraqi's Do Not Protest U.S. Presence In Iraq," don't you? There are over 26 million people in the country, and most of the insurgents are actually being imported from Iran and Syria (we found relatively few native Iraqis doing this kind of stuff). Yet the latter headline will never be seen because it's boring news.
I'm very concerned that a lot of things I've heard from servicemen seem to indicate they feel we're the enemy.
When civilians carry signs that say "we support our troops when they kill their officers," gee, I wonder why we might feel that way. Not. The number one concern of myself and my fellow warriors is not that we'll be maimed or killed tomorrow. It's that we'll be pulled out of Iraq prematurely because of all the hand-wringing pantywaists back home, allowing a radical theocracy to take over and thus mooting all the pain and death that's been borne by us over the last few years. We don't mind fighting and, if need be, dying for something that's allowed to succeed. Fighting and dying for something that's going to be written off as a failure because we weren't allowed to succeed is something completely different.
As far as slanted reporting goes, apparently every bit of info we got going into the war was slanted towards war, and it's hard to not report things blowing up.
Put yourself in the Oval Office for a moment. You've got the head of the CIA telling you Saddam's got WMD's. You've got the Mossad, German Intelligence, French Intelligence, and Russian Intelligence organizations also concluding he has them. The U.N. report says Saddam's goons are chasing inspectors away from certain areas, sometimes with gunfire. About 90% of the evidence indicates Saddam has WMD's, and the guy is unhinged enough to use them. Perhaps not against the U.S. mainland, but there's nothing to stop him from re-invading Kuwait or Saudi Arabia under the cover of a WMD arsenal, making a hypothetical Desert Storm II much more expensive in terms of human lives. A takeover of Kuwait or Saudi would allow Saddam to use oil to blackmail the rest of the world. He could destroy the entire world economy if he wanted to and there's very little we could do about it besides a bloody invasion -- an invasion that would probably not happen because of the American attitude against massive casualties. A negotiated settlement would be much more likely, giving Saddam a political and moral victory in the eyes of the Arab world. Don't think he wasn't thinking about this exact scenario because he was; the invasion of Kuwait was a direct result of this line of thinking.
Bush made the call on this evidence. You can second guess him all you want because you now have information he didn't have then. Sure, there were dissenters back before the war who said he didn't have WMD's, but the vast majority of all the (formerly) reputable intelligence outfits said he did. Intelligence will always be a game of guessing. That's just the nature of covert intelligence. Furthermore, there is anecdotal evidence that Saddam did indeed have WMD's, but that they were spirited out of Iraq into neighoring Baathist Syria just before the invasion. Satellite evidence confirms convoys with heavy military escort crossing the Iraq-Syria border just hours before the invasion began. What was in those convoys? Nobody knows. Syria officially denies they even existed despite the satellite photos. The very fact that Syria is doing so in the face of such evidence should make one wonder when you hear the words "but Saddam never had any WMD's!"
If the countryside isn't safe enough for the reporters to get out of the Green Zone, how would they know about the good stuff? If it's not safe enough to go out, how good can it be?
Oddly enough, millions of Iraqi's venture out on a daily basis without getting shot, blown up, kidnapped, or executed. You only hear about the bad stuff. Sure, it's not as safe as Anytown, USA, but then again this was a country that until recently was ruled by a dictator who thought nothing of rounding up thousands of civilians for mass torture and execution. Keeping security with an iron fist is much easier than what we're trying to do now.
An Iraqi general just got blown up going to the airport, and the military has made it clear they're putting out disi
Fighting for freedom are we?
Yes, we are. I can speak as someone who's been there on a tour. And despite your fondest wishes, I didn't murder any babies, rape any women, or generally terrorize the countryside in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan. Neither did any of my brother or sister Marines. If there's one constant thread you can get from just about any soldier, sailor, or Marine who's served in the current conflict, it's that the news we're getting over here in the States is unbelievably slanted. Only the bad stuff is being reported, and the reporters are looking as hard as they can to find bad stuff to report on. It has the effect of making everyone here think the place is in a total shambles since all they hear is a constant, uninterrupted stream of bad news. For those of us who've been there and know better, it's very frustrating.
However, to address your "fighting for freedom" comment, I will leave you with a quote from a famous American from a bygone era (emphasis is mine):
"It is by no means enough that an officer should be capable... He should as well be a gentleman of liberal education, refined manners, punctilious courtesy, and the nicest sense of personal honor... No meritorious act of a subordinate should escape his attention, even if the reward be only one word of approval. Conversely, he should not be blind to a single fault in any subordinate.
True as may be the political principals for which we are now contending... the ships themselves must be ruled under a system of absolute despotism.
I trust that I have now made clear to you the tremendous responsibilities... We must do the best we can with what we have." -John Paul Jones, 14 September 1775; excerpts from a letter to the naval committee of the North American insurrectionists.
No, your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection of your education not just your intelligence level. Try talking with a few people outside the US, which use English as a 3rd language, and you might learn how meaningless your supposed link is.
As a measure of respect for the language you're speaking -- whatever language that may be -- the least you can do is speak it (or write it) correctly. If I were speaking in German, criticism of improper grammar would be equally valid. This criticism is not restricted to Anglo-centric languages despite your attempt to paint it as such.
If you can't do it right, don't bother doing it at all. In this day and age of grammar checkers, spell checkers, and the resources of the Internet in general, no one can use the excuse that they didn't know better. To do any less excuses laziness and invites mediocrity. Typographical errors are one thing, but the obvious grammatical inaccuracy shown in the OP has no excuse whatsoever.
1. Someone posted the BeoWulf joke 5 posts up.
That what this all is, a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf cluster jokes. You don't get it, do you?
2. Supercomputer are basically BeoWulf clusters
Congratulations! You win the "Duh!" Awards of the day!
3. Someone else posted the same joke 3 posts up, but included "Will it run linux".
Humor is in the eye of the beholder.
4. It isn't the first time someone has made the mistake of their/they're
This isn't the first time I've corrected them, either. Nor will it be the last. Your ability to use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation is a reflection on your intelligence level. Ergo, he's an idiot. You're defending an idiot. What does that make you?
5. You aren't the first to point that out to anyone.
Yet they never seem to learn...
6. Somone else will reply to your post and point that out two posts after mine.
Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
7. Someone else in this comment thread will also make misuse of their and they're.
And I'll gleefully point out their flaws as well.
8. Somone two posts down from your original will also make a mention of a Beowulf cluster.
See response to #1.
9. And 5 posts after that another will try to get modded funny by trying to include "In Soviet Russia, only old people use Beowulf Clusters Running linux."
See response to #3.
8 years later, their dumb.
And eight years later you still haven't discovered the difference between "their" and "they're." You're a poster child for grammatical stupidity all by yourself, so remind me again why you're casting stones?
...but imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
Hey, somebody had to say it!
Of course "Microsoft" is a defacto standard! They are a monopoly! Regardless, the fact remains that the standard is closed and secret, making it IMPOSSIBLE for anyone else to offer 100% adherence to the standard.
/. but it's winning you no points in a logical debate.
The very fact that OpenOffice exists and enjoys a (relatively) large following completely refutes your "They are a monopoly!" statement. You sound like one of those idiotic moonbat protesters screaming "the government is restricting my right to free speech!" in a public square, when the very fact that the government isn't restricting such speech gives lie to the statement. Your pandering to the anti-business crowd might go over well with the Kool-Aid drinkers here at
By the way, 100% adherence isn't impossible, and if you weren't so blinded by hatred you'd see that. It's called "clean room reverse engineering" and it's what's allowed OpenOffice to get as close to full compatibility as it has. Just as Samba reverse-engineers Microsoft's SMB protocols to make it emulate a Windows server, OpenOffice can study, tweak, and experiment with Word file formats until they have it down to a science. The fact that Microsoft won't help makes this difficult to be sure, but far from impossible. Your whining indicates you'd rather not try, relying instead on Microsoft's "good graces" to give you the tools needed to bring them down. Yeah, right. Like that's ever gonna happen. How pathetic you are that you have to ask your enemy for a weapon with which to fight them with.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom.
No, you're lazy and full of contempt for your betters. If you want to displace Office, get out there and make a better product at a better price. If you can't -- or if OpenOffice.org can't -- you have no business whining about Microsoft's dominance.
This is an impossible ideal because users are different.
Male cow excrement. A good UI will take into account that there are probably two or three ways 95% of the users will want to perform a given task. It will then make those few options as visible and intuitive as possible. The remaining 5% should be accomodated with context-sensitive tool tips that guide them in the direction they need to go. It's not impossible, it's merely difficult. You are willing instead to settle on something less but then still complain that users don't like your UI. Check Websters for the meaning of the word "contradiction."
Your rephrasing was unnecessary, because I indicated that the parts that you've added were true by using the pronoun "I". Did you think that I was claiming that F/OSS is capable of being all things to all people? No software can do that. It's intuitively obvious that the conditions you specified apply on a case-by-case basis. Different people have different requirements, after all.
It's intuitively obvious, is it? There you go again, assuming that because you know something to be true therefore everyone else must also know it to be true. Obviously it's not intuitive because your statement was sufficiently nebulous to allow misunderstanding. Hence my clarification.
You seem to have completely misinterpreted my post.
How is that possible? I thought it was "intuitively obvious"? Yes, I'm directing sarcasm your way in an attempt to point out how hideously narrowminded you are about the entire subject of what constitutes "obvious".
If Microsoft was an official and open standard, then you would have a point.
Perhaps you're unaware of the concept of a de facto standard. Microsoft Office is present in more than 95% of all business computers worldwide. It doesn't matter one damn little bit whether Office complies with any outside "standard," it is a standard by virtue of its overwhelming market presence. Your ignorance of reality here is the prime reason why Linux on the desktop is moving slowly (if at all). You cannot force people to like an open standard that is blatantly incompatible with the widely-accepted, de facto "standard" by which nearly everyone does daily business. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter whether or not Microsoft is compliant with some open standard or not. The only thing that matters is that a document made by Person A is viewed easily and accurately by Person B. You're trying to bring ideology into what is actually a pragmatic business decision, and that's why you're failing.
In a perfect world, it would be easy to get people to abandon Office for something standards-based. We do not live in a perfect world, and people are not accepting of anything that doesn't perform 100% compatibly with Office. If you don't like it, tough, but that's reality. Nobody likes it, but right now the alternatives are more painful than the current solution.
Actually that conversation goes like this:
Q:So. Why don't you like Linux?
A: Well... OpenOffice doesn't have features I want.
Q: What specific features do you use that OpenOffice does not provide?
A: Uh...
Oh, gee, how about things like compatibility with third-party applications that expect to be usable via OLE or Word add-ins? Or if that wasn't enough, how about full compatiblity with Word documents, including macros and 100% accurate formatting? 99.9% compatibility isn't good enough when an error can creep in that you might not notice but your client is sure to notice. Or how about the fact that your clients, who will almost certainly be using Word, will find it odd that things that looked perfectly formatted in OpenOffice look...odd...in Word. Oh, you can argue that Word might be at fault here, but that's missing the point. It doesn't matter who is at fault, it only matters that the client is not getting what the client expects, wants, or has paid for. If you ignore that, don't expect to be in business very long.
Personally, I think it would be great if most people would grow a clue, learn how to read manuals and geek out about the same things that I do.
." Your self-centered attitude in this is amazingly close minded. Does everyone like the same foods as you? The same music? Does everyone have your exact same taste in clothes? Does everyone write with your handwriting style? Does everyone agree with your standards of beauty and ugliness? Of functional and non-functional? Of course not. Yet just because something succeeded for you, you then pronounce it fit for everyone else's consumption. Can you not see that what you're saying is no more correct than a rabid Windows user saying Windows is the best interface ever, that it does everything that he wants it to do, just as he wants it, therefore it's the best for everyone?
And that's where you fall down: you expect the person to adapt to fit the machine, not the other way around. I've got news for you: that's not why machines -- or in this case, software -- were invented. The software should adapt to the user, not the other way around. Fifteen years ago in college, my UI design prof said that the measure of a good user interface is one where the user can perform almost any function without the need to consult a manual. Everything works the way it feels like it ought to work, not the way one solitary UI developer thought it ought to work. What's missing here is two things: maturity and perspective. One begets the other. Developers who wish their products to achieve mass-market success must understand and accomodate the mass market. Microsoft certainly understands this quite well, which is why they've made billions of dollars selling mediocre software. It may be mediocre, but it's useful to the massses. A Linux CLI or some of the hideous UI's I've seen elsewhere is not useful to the masses, hence their desire to stay far, far away from it.
That's a great list. As I reflect back on my desktop transition from Windows to Linux, I see how F/OSS satisfied each of those requirements. I guess maybe it can succeed on the desktop... but I don't care, because I'm in the second group.
I'm going to rephrase your sentence to be more in line with reality. You should have written "As I reflect back on my desktop transition from Windows to Linux, I see how F/OSS satisfied each of those requirements for me and anyone else who is an exact clone of me . I guess maybe it can succeed on the desktop for me and anyone else who is an exact clone of me
I've never heard it put better than how you just put it. You've just summed up the prime reason why the tech-head geeks never, ever get "their" way by being bull headed about things. You cannot force people to like what you like just because you like its technical elegance. Pity that most F/OSS people cannot figure that out.
Getting users to adopt new software (such as desktop Linux) is really much simpler than you might think. You must do the following:
1. Provide a seamless (or near seamless) transition. This means the user interfaces between the old and the new must be as similar is possible. Or, if the old interface was a godawful nightmare, the new one must be uber-intuitive. Sadly, a lot of F/OSS misses the concept entirely, as UI design seems to be the absolute last thing on any developer's mind.
2. Provide the features users use. This is a tricky one because 95% of the features in stuff like MS Office goes ununsed by most folks. However, the 5% that is used varies wildly from office to office. The only way to make sure you're covering all bases is to get 100% of the features ported. Again, a lot of F/OSS misses this concept because developers develop for what they want, not for what some other target market might want.
3. Give the users a reason to change. Again, simple concept, but one that most F/OSS packages completely fail to deliver on. Why should I install a new OS and entire suite of apps just so I can keep doing what I already do just fine on my Windows/Office setup? Stability? Sorry, a properly-managed XP box can have great uptimes, and most corporate setups are done with standardized images that have ultra-stable drivers and thus few (if any) BSOD's. Lack of viruses? This is probably the best angle, but again it's not enough for most people to want to switch. With modern antivirus software and a well-managed environment, virus intrusion isn't nearly the problem it once was. The vast majority of issues you read about are ones where either it's a home-based box (which are rarely well administered) or in a company that has no idea how to secure a Windows box. Cost of acquisition? Again, this one falls pretty flat. Corporations aren't going to install free Linux distros, they're going to purchase things like RHEL so they can get support. Have you priced RHEL lately? It's no cheaper than WinXP is on a corporate licensing program which is how most businesses deploy Windows.
If F/OSS can satisfy these three points, there's no reason why it can't succeed on the desktop. The fact that it has variously failed to some degree in some or all of the above traits is why desktop Linux has enjoyed but a shadow of the success of server-room Linux.
Got a cite for that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Trivia
You consider using the number "386" *pilfering*?
I don't, but Intel certainly did. I was referring to the perspective of the trademark holder.
I mean, how hard is it to add the e at the end, geniuses.
Perhaps if you researched a bit you'd discover that "Blue Ray" is a generic term with respect to trademarks. The original name was to be "Blue Ray" until they discovered you can't trademark it. Thus the removal of the "e" to make a term that can't be pilfered by competitors like Intel's 386, 486, etc.
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed?
Can't you guys make up your minds? On the one hand, you deride Bush as being "Chimpy W. Hitler," an incompetent that's so incompetent he can't find has ass with both hands. On the other hand, he's this evil, diabolical mastermind that's capable of gerrymandering an election where over 100 million Americans participated in, and he did it with such cunning and subtlety that no one has been able to find hard, concrete evidence of it.
So, which is it? Either way, you Democrats look silly. If he's the idiot you claim him to be, that means you were duped by an idiot, which makes you...well, a bigger idiot. On the other hand, if he's the evil, diabolical genius bent on world domination, all your claims of him being stupid are...well, stupid.
I have no doubt there is some Orwellian twist of language that you take solace in that is allowing you to hold these two contradictory poses in your head at the same time without being aware of the contradiction.
Uh...no, it won't. Pressurized water reactors use the water as a moderator for the reaction as well as a means to carry heat away from the reactor core. If you remove the water, the reaction essentially stops. Unfortunately for anyone nearby, heat removal also stops, which means the heat accumulated in the core is enough to melt pretty much everything in it. The fuel rods will then melt into a slag that will retain enough heat to attack the reactor vessel, which will then fail, releasing the slag into the environment.