Well, then, we must do what we must - fight the powers that be.
"a"
The preceding letter is an excerpt of a piece of a very strong encryption algorhythm, posted to Slashdot where my fine European and Asian compatriots may get ahold of it.
Although I don't support the use of the letter 'a' (there, I did it again) in harming the United States of America, I must support strong crypto.
If the government comes after me for this, I will be forced to purchase a dozen PowerMac G4s and flee the country.
>>I suggest that everyone who sent a vulgar >>letter to Unisys and now regrets it should >>pick up the phone and send flowers to Cheryl.
>What an awful, sexist, materialistic idea.
...and just about every woman who I have given flowers to, or seen flowers given to, really appreciated the gesture.
Drop the political correctness B.S., it's very unbecoming.
And for the record, I'm a guy and have received flowers before. My old place of employment had a policy where they sent them to those who went through stuff like a family member dying, etc. My grandfather died, and they sent me some. I personally think it was a very nice gesture.
You on the otherhand seem to assume that being a guy and deciding to send a woman flowers is a sexist thing to do. Isn't that a stereotype against men? Maybe it's just being nice?
I bet your mom doesn't feel very well appreciated.
--- PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users. ---
That may be true now (although I think the 10x figure is a little off), but how can you possibly say "...won't ever drop to..." in this industry?
The original Apple computer used to be 10x more popular than the IBM PC, ergo the Intel architecture would never be more popular. Right? I think history generally proves this wrong in a big way.
You can't keep piling crap on top of a deadening architecture. Eventually, it becomes more economical to start from scratch or at least a more recent starting point. Even Apple, slowest of slow companies to figure important stuff like this out, knew that it had to transition from the M680X0 architecture onto something better (which came off almost flawlessly, too).
Plus, if Apple can get their own marketshare up to really high levels - thus dropping the price of the PPC line - IBM/Moto' would be more than willing to jump in. In particular, laptops are well suited to use such low-power, high speed chips. Don't think they have some sort of love infatuation with Intel.
Sure - I used to do Mac support, and tools such as Timbuktu were EXTREMELY useful for this sort of thing (Mac, Windows).
I assume you're referring to *nix, but that's not the only place this capability exists - it's not as good on the Mac/Windows side, but it's good enough to troubleshoot with.
Why run on sub-standard hardware when you don't want to run sub-standard software? With such a mindset, we'd all be running Win98 on X86.
This is what pisses me off about Be, too. They went on and on about how great the PowerPC was, how the combination of Be/PPC was top of the line all the way around, and abruptly shut up once Intel made their investment.
Besides, the article was basically about the PowerPC platform dropping down (in some cases) to 'commodity' X86 prices.
Yay - yet another study trying to seperate the masses into 'them' and 'us'. Sounds like the neo-luddites are back at it again.
I'm on the 'net far more than 4 hours a day. It's kind of my job description. It's really hard to do remote server administration and development on a server without being connected to it.
Plus, can you really call it an addiction when the results are usually positive? If you can, so what? Smoking and drinking are forms of addiction - I have yet to see masses of people gaining enjoyment, wealth-building employment, a great degree of education (ie. mental workout), and meaningful conversation out of a cigarette.
--- Your argument is defunct. People that steal cars would have never bought one to begin with, because they can steal them. People that pirate software don't buy the software because they know they can pirate it. ---
I walk because I know I can. You state an obvious truth, but it doesn't really mean anything (please don't take offense - read over your reply and ask yourself what it means).
Although I'm not sure the metaphor sticks, it could also be said that a pirate is a person who looks at your car and builds his own exact replica - VERY quickly and with very little effort. Your car sits parked, unharmed. You may not even know it happened. Would you prosecute someone who knew how to make an exact copy of your car because they didn't instead want to buy yours?
--- In the worst case you describe, stealing a car amounts to a writeoff (say, $20,000), and a "big hassle" for one person. ---
And at most, 'stealing' software that I wouldn't have purchased anyhow means a $50 loss - I'm sorry, un-gain - for a software company.
Maybe a few hundred more, for Photoshop or something.
--- A single website or FTP site can result in 1000's of illegal downloads, so it would be pretty easy to exceed the cost of a single car theft by an order of magnitude. ---
True. Then again, that's assuming that if that website did not exist, those pieces of software would have been legally purchased. Most people who pirate I would tend to believe are teenaged boys who don't have the financial resources to buy Photoshop 5.5 or whatever. That may not necessarily mean it's ethical, but it's still VERY hard to place a 'damage' value on an intangible un-purchase.
I'm not exactly seeing programmers sleeping out in the streets, either.
I've run Win95, Win98, WinNT 4.0, DOS, and OpenStep on VirtualPC. I got part-way through a BeOS R3 install at one point, but the install didn't recognize the CD-ROM (although with R3, it probably wouldn't have worked on a decent share of PCs either). I started on an old Red Hat install but never got it to work, but others have.
VirtualPC is very flexible, although I'd rather run LinuxPPC and BeOS/PPC personally.
Interesting thought. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees the irony in this.
The government complains that email is 'cutting into' the postal service? Isn't that a GOOD THING? Email, unlike the postal service, is efficient. It is fast. It is cheap. If the postal service is being used less, then by all means cut back the number of employees or whatever it takes - cut back on the infrastructure. Don't do an ass-backwards thing like tax the superior technology so that people will continue to use the old, inferior way.
Is it me, or does the government's primary goal seem not to be to provide needed services, but to ensure its own bloat?
And yes, I'm sure it's a hoax, but regardless given the bloated government we have, it's almost plausible that they would attempt something like this if it were technologically feasible (which, as others have said, it is not).
--- Christianity does not require blind faith, but states that Blessed are those who have it. ---
Blind are those with have blind faith - a useful cog in the machines of many a tyrant. Only religion would consider this a virtue - presumedly to prevent its followers from asking too many questions. "Believe what you are told," says the religious leader "for questioning faith is BAD!"
It would seem to me that this is the antithesis of geek-hood. Question EVERYTHING - in particular those things you are told not to question!
--- Even though the theory of evolution is laid out in nearly every scientific textbook you'll come across, it, like Creationism, takes some degree of faith to accept. ---
Certainly - but there is a difference between science and religion, and a very important distinction to be made between 'faith' and 'blind faith'.
As a very atheistic agnostic, can I say that evolution COULD BE untrue? Certainly. Is there possibility that everything I've been told is BS? Sure. I can live my life by having a few ground rules (ie. gravity) that I believe in, but can accept that I may be fooling myself. Science in general works in this manner, as by its very nature - that of the Scientific Method - everything is and should be questioned. Without a few ground rules, nothing would ever get done. On the other hand, even those 'laws' can (and occasionally are) revised to better meet apparent reality. That's the best we, as fallable humans, can do. That's what makes us 'geeks'. EVERYTHING can be questioned, even those things that we feel are right.
Religion on the other hand has 1 single unshakeable premise that CAN NOT, WILL NOT be revoked (lest you be a heathen): the existance of god. In many/most religions, there are a number of other premises that are considered absolute - that cannot be disproved unless you 'unbecome' a part of that religion. With differing religions, you are EXPECTED to believe in those things with undeniable faith - questioning them to any degree is considered blasphemy, or at least a cause of concern. With some, this includes the creation myth. With others, it may be the trinity. Either way, there are questions you aren't supposed to ask.
If you consider yourself a geek, this should be strange and inefficient to you. Your mind, which questions everything, should immediately scream out "Why shouldn't I question this?". Someone saying that something is the absolute truth should provoke you to get to the heart of the matter. Religion is like an infinite loop where predefined constants ruin the flow of a routine to a geek - while this may seem fine to the average person, to me it seems like bad coding practice.
So, if you can sincerely state "there might not be a god, it's possible" without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt, then you are a true religious geek and I can respect that. Otherwise, you are merely an technologically competent religious follower.
--- There would have had to have been a large body of water covering the entire surface of the earth, that rose very quickly. ---
And this is where that 'flood theory' falls flat. Where did the water come from? To cover the entire earth would require an enormous amount of water (enough to fill the oceans, plus several hundred feet more). Where did it come from? 'God'? Where did it go?
The flood theory is just a myth that originated from the middle east, where large floods are common and present a great deal of source material for religious wackery. To someone sitting next to the Nile during flood season, it would appear that the 'whole world' was under water.
The bible may be many things - it may be the basis of many faiths, but by no means whatsoever is it even vaguely scientific. At best, you have so called 'Creation Scientists' whose entire basis of thought it to meld real science in such ways that help them explain their favored myth. If something came up that contradicts their belief (like, say, 95% of scientific findings), it'll never get published in their journals.
--- I take some issue with teaching that mankind evolved from apes. ---
As do I. That's not even a part of evolutionary theory, and your repeating of it shows your ignorance on the subject (take no offense, please, but it's the truth). The theory generally states that men and current apes evolved from a common ancestor, which is fairly well established in the fossil record.
--- On the other hand, what happens when you tell a kid that everyone is just an animal? That human life is worth no more than the life of that cow that died to make that hamburger? ---
Not my problem. We shouldn't change scientific fact just because it serves our needs. Just because nuclear warfare killed tens of thousands in WWII doesn't mean that fission isn't a valid scientific process, does it? You don't just go and change the results because it doesn't paint a nice picture - killing cows for meat is no different than doing the same to a human, except that we're human, not cows, so we don't like to think about that.
The way I see it, if a Christian NEEDS either the threat of eternal damnation in the firey pits of hell or religious teaching to know that killing fellow humans is not a cool thing to do, he/she has serious mental problems already. I guess that's just my take on it, as one of the millions of peaceful agnostics out there.
--- Here in Washington [State], we never were taught creation in public schools. Evolution was the primary curriculum. ---
Sadly, this is somewhat mistaken. I assume you're from the west side of the mountaints, right? Here in the south-eastern desert areas (specifically, the Tri-Cities) things are a little different. We have far too many right-wing, gun-toting rednecks per capita. Tons of bible-thumpers call the area home, and evolution merely shares time with creationism - as if it has ANY basis in science whatsoever.
This was how it was when I was in 8th grade science about 6 years ago - and that was with a relatively progressive teacher (I don't think it was his choice). I assume community pressure from all around as well as the Baptist church literally next door to the school didn't help any.
My suggestion: Let's let these certain individuals have their very own state or two in the midwest, locked away from the rest of the world. Then, in a few hundred thousand years, let's return and see if they've evolved any more. Given their recessed little gene pool, it's no wonder they believe in creationism over evolution.
Re:Typical Bigotry...Give MS a fair shot...
on
CrackThisBox Updates
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· Score: 1
As a Mac ex-sysadmin (New job: I now work on a Mac locally with Linux boxes remotely - am I a happy guy or what?), I have to take issue with your belief that Macs tend to have 'system rot' issues more often than PCs.
However, I can see where you came from. Exchange for the Mac sucks rotten eggs, and immediately divides your uptime to 1/8th usual. A well written application will not cause problems in any way. Exchange is/was not a decent application. Issues I've seen:
1. Slowest synching I've ever seen in an email client. Worse than ccMail! Hours upon hours downloading just a few messages.
2. Decidedly limp calender support. Each release promised a fix, but it never materialized. Unless things have changes since March, you still don't have parity with the Windows version.
3. "Gee, what happened to my Personal Address Book? It's gone!"
4. "Gee, what happened to my Offline Storage Folder? It's gone!"
5. "Gee, what happened to my Personal Folders file? It's gone!"
6. "Gee, what happened to my calender button? It's gone!"
7. "Gee, what happened to my formatting toolbar? It's gone!"
8. Used to freeze up the entire system, which would only become active when you HELD DOWN the mouse button (har har, single button - just saving you flamers the effort). Does Microsoft not understand an event loop?
9. ANY network interference or server problems, and the program would crash. As Exchange Server runs on NT boxen, this was not uncommon.
Mac Exchange (now Outlook - not Outlook Express, which is halfway usable) is one of the worst applications I've ever seen for the Mac, or had the distinct displeasure of administering/supporting. It is a complete joke, and was responsible for at LEAST half of the Mac->Windows migrations while I worked at my old job. I have no idea why they went with it. Rumor had it someone 'upstairs' had some MS stock, and a PC on his disk... *sigh*
Okay - someone out there develop an open-source messaging technology and get it out there. It's obvious that certain other players would rather not play fair.
I'm not of the 'open-source it or it is evil' camp, but it is cases like this where there is obvious merit to the open-source idea.
As a Mac user, I know exactly how this goes. The Mac advocacy community has at the same time helped and hurt the Mac platform immensely. on the one hand you have stories of Macs being brought back in droves to various educational and corporate environments. This was often due to some volunteer work by Mac advocates in such activities as handing out pamphlets are Best Buy or training salespeople or whatever.
On the other hand, the Mac community practically tore itself to shreads a few years back when Apple was at its worst. A community with something to worry about gets defensive - a stereotype the Mac community has had to bear for a very long time. Do you want this to happen to Linux too?
Now, as things begin to look really good for the Mac platform and its users, things are getting better. Mac users are being more open to outside technologies (ie. Unix/Linux, USB, etc) and less... erm... rabid. Linux users must do the same, lest they be avoided and scorned.
This is not an insult - just an insight from a member of the Mac community. Be careful...
But, realize this: "Free" isn't everything. This isn't a holy war. Open source should be considered an additial 'feature' of a given piece of software, not the end all and be all of how evil a company is. Despite popular opinion, there are ethical companies that deal in closed source software.
Sure, their economic model may be screwed, but that's their problem, not yours. It doesn't make them evil, it just makes them a bad business prospect (even this I doubt, as I'm not exactly seeing the closing of tons of closed source businesses happening).
In my opinion, a piece of software being open sourced is a GREAT feature - many eyes catch many bugs, and you can hack out your own fixes as needed. But, it is NOT a prerequisite for good (or 'ethical') software development. In some cases, it can even hamper things.
Anyhow, people really need to see the BeOS on good hardware (say, a high end PowerPC) to appreciate its merits. This blind fanaticism really is unbecoming for the Linux community.
Actually, Be apps tend to be very very compact. So much so that it'd take me twice as long to download a comparable program on my Mac partition as on the Be side of things.
It really is a 'clean' OS - it'd be cleaner if they'd get rid of all that X86 cruft, though.:>
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but if I'm lucky they'll let me keep my G4s.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Well, then, we must do what we must - fight the powers that be.
"a"
The preceding letter is an excerpt of a piece of a very strong encryption algorhythm, posted to Slashdot where my fine European and Asian compatriots may get ahold of it.
Although I don't support the use of the letter 'a' (there, I did it again) in harming the United States of America, I must support strong crypto.
If the government comes after me for this, I will be forced to purchase a dozen PowerMac G4s and flee the country.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
>>I suggest that everyone who sent a vulgar
>>letter to Unisys and now regrets it should
>>pick up the phone and send flowers to Cheryl.
>What an awful, sexist, materialistic idea.
...and just about every woman who I have given flowers to, or seen flowers given to, really appreciated the gesture.
Drop the political correctness B.S., it's very unbecoming.
And for the record, I'm a guy and have received flowers before. My old place of employment had a policy where they sent them to those who went through stuff like a family member dying, etc. My grandfather died, and they sent me some. I personally think it was a very nice gesture.
You on the otherhand seem to assume that being a guy and deciding to send a woman flowers is a sexist thing to do. Isn't that a stereotype against men? Maybe it's just being nice?
I bet your mom doesn't feel very well appreciated.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
PowerPC won't ever drop to the prices you see in x86 land. Why? 10x as many users.
---
That may be true now (although I think the 10x figure is a little off), but how can you possibly say "...won't ever drop to..." in this industry?
The original Apple computer used to be 10x more popular than the IBM PC, ergo the Intel architecture would never be more popular. Right? I think history generally proves this wrong in a big way.
You can't keep piling crap on top of a deadening architecture. Eventually, it becomes more economical to start from scratch or at least a more recent starting point. Even Apple, slowest of slow companies to figure important stuff like this out, knew that it had to transition from the M680X0 architecture onto something better (which came off almost flawlessly, too).
Plus, if Apple can get their own marketshare up to really high levels - thus dropping the price of the PPC line - IBM/Moto' would be more than willing to jump in. In particular, laptops are well suited to use such low-power, high speed chips. Don't think they have some sort of love infatuation with Intel.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Sure - I used to do Mac support, and tools such as Timbuktu were EXTREMELY useful for this sort of thing (Mac, Windows).
I assume you're referring to *nix, but that's not the only place this capability exists - it's not as good on the Mac/Windows side, but it's good enough to troubleshoot with.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Why run on sub-standard hardware when you don't want to run sub-standard software? With such a mindset, we'd all be running Win98 on X86.
This is what pisses me off about Be, too. They went on and on about how great the PowerPC was, how the combination of Be/PPC was top of the line all the way around, and abruptly shut up once Intel made their investment.
Besides, the article was basically about the PowerPC platform dropping down (in some cases) to 'commodity' X86 prices.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Oh look, it's yet another "grrl".
Don't you have, like, an online journal to edit or something?
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
My god, this is the funniest rip I've seen in ages.
:>
You can't get much better than using someone's own words against them - esp. when they are fuel for elitism.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Yay - yet another study trying to seperate the masses into 'them' and 'us'. Sounds like the neo-luddites are back at it again.
I'm on the 'net far more than 4 hours a day. It's kind of my job description. It's really hard to do remote server administration and development on a server without being connected to it.
Plus, can you really call it an addiction when the results are usually positive? If you can, so what? Smoking and drinking are forms of addiction - I have yet to see masses of people gaining enjoyment, wealth-building employment, a great degree of education (ie. mental workout), and meaningful conversation out of a cigarette.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
Your argument is defunct. People that steal cars would have never bought one to begin with, because they can steal them. People that pirate software don't buy the software because they know they can pirate it.
---
I walk because I know I can. You state an obvious truth, but it doesn't really mean anything (please don't take offense - read over your reply and ask yourself what it means).
Although I'm not sure the metaphor sticks, it could also be said that a pirate is a person who looks at your car and builds his own exact replica - VERY quickly and with very little effort. Your car sits parked, unharmed. You may not even know it happened. Would you prosecute someone who knew how to make an exact copy of your car because they didn't instead want to buy yours?
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
In the worst case you describe, stealing a car amounts to a writeoff (say, $20,000), and a "big hassle" for one person.
---
And at most, 'stealing' software that I wouldn't have purchased anyhow means a $50 loss - I'm sorry, un-gain - for a software company.
Maybe a few hundred more, for Photoshop or something.
---
A single website or FTP site can result in 1000's of illegal downloads, so it would be pretty easy to exceed the cost of a single car theft by an order of magnitude.
---
True. Then again, that's assuming that if that website did not exist, those pieces of software would have been legally purchased. Most people who pirate I would tend to believe are teenaged boys who don't have the financial resources to buy Photoshop 5.5 or whatever. That may not necessarily mean it's ethical, but it's still VERY hard to place a 'damage' value on an intangible un-purchase.
I'm not exactly seeing programmers sleeping out in the streets, either.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
I've run Win95, Win98, WinNT 4.0, DOS, and OpenStep on VirtualPC. I got part-way through a BeOS R3 install at one point, but the install didn't recognize the CD-ROM (although with R3, it probably wouldn't have worked on a decent share of PCs either). I started on an old Red Hat install but never got it to work, but others have.
VirtualPC is very flexible, although I'd rather run LinuxPPC and BeOS/PPC personally.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
I think Apple is cheesed off because the eMachine box costs $400 less, and has the added benefit of being a PC-compatible.
---
Benefit?
---
If you can't beat them, sue them...
---
Or steal from them, apparently
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Interesting thought. I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees the irony in this.
The government complains that email is 'cutting into' the postal service? Isn't that a GOOD THING? Email, unlike the postal service, is efficient. It is fast. It is cheap. If the postal service is being used less, then by all means cut back the number of employees or whatever it takes - cut back on the infrastructure. Don't do an ass-backwards thing like tax the superior technology so that people will continue to use the old, inferior way.
Is it me, or does the government's primary goal seem not to be to provide needed services, but to ensure its own bloat?
And yes, I'm sure it's a hoax, but regardless given the bloated government we have, it's almost plausible that they would attempt something like this if it were technologically feasible (which, as others have said, it is not).
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
Christianity does not require blind faith, but states that Blessed are those who have it.
---
Blind are those with have blind faith - a useful cog in the machines of many a tyrant. Only religion would consider this a virtue - presumedly to prevent its followers from asking too many questions. "Believe what you are told," says the religious leader "for questioning faith is BAD!"
It would seem to me that this is the antithesis of geek-hood. Question EVERYTHING - in particular those things you are told not to question!
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
Even though the theory of evolution is laid out in nearly every scientific textbook you'll come across, it, like Creationism, takes some degree of faith to accept.
---
Certainly - but there is a difference between science and religion, and a very important distinction to be made between 'faith' and 'blind faith'.
As a very atheistic agnostic, can I say that evolution COULD BE untrue? Certainly. Is there possibility that everything I've been told is BS? Sure. I can live my life by having a few ground rules (ie. gravity) that I believe in, but can accept that I may be fooling myself. Science in general works in this manner, as by its very nature - that of the Scientific Method - everything is and should be questioned. Without a few ground rules, nothing would ever get done. On the other hand, even those 'laws' can (and occasionally are) revised to better meet apparent reality. That's the best we, as fallable humans, can do. That's what makes us 'geeks'. EVERYTHING can be questioned, even those things that we feel are right.
Religion on the other hand has 1 single unshakeable premise that CAN NOT, WILL NOT be revoked (lest you be a heathen): the existance of god. In many/most religions, there are a number of other premises that are considered absolute - that cannot be disproved unless you 'unbecome' a part of that religion. With differing religions, you are EXPECTED to believe in those things with undeniable faith - questioning them to any degree is considered blasphemy, or at least a cause of concern. With some, this includes the creation myth. With others, it may be the trinity. Either way, there are questions you aren't supposed to ask.
If you consider yourself a geek, this should be strange and inefficient to you. Your mind, which questions everything, should immediately scream out "Why shouldn't I question this?". Someone saying that something is the absolute truth should provoke you to get to the heart of the matter. Religion is like an infinite loop where predefined constants ruin the flow of a routine to a geek - while this may seem fine to the average person, to me it seems like bad coding practice.
So, if you can sincerely state "there might not be a god, it's possible" without feeling the slightest twinge of guilt, then you are a true religious geek and I can respect that. Otherwise, you are merely an technologically competent religious follower.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
There would have had to have been a large body of water covering the entire surface of the earth, that rose very quickly.
---
And this is where that 'flood theory' falls flat. Where did the water come from? To cover the entire earth would require an enormous amount of water (enough to fill the oceans, plus several hundred feet more). Where did it come from? 'God'? Where did it go?
The flood theory is just a myth that originated from the middle east, where large floods are common and present a great deal of source material for religious wackery. To someone sitting next to the Nile during flood season, it would appear that the 'whole world' was under water.
The bible may be many things - it may be the basis of many faiths, but by no means whatsoever is it even vaguely scientific. At best, you have so called 'Creation Scientists' whose entire basis of thought it to meld real science in such ways that help them explain their favored myth. If something came up that contradicts their belief (like, say, 95% of scientific findings), it'll never get published in their journals.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
I take some issue with teaching that mankind evolved from apes.
---
As do I. That's not even a part of evolutionary theory, and your repeating of it shows your ignorance on the subject (take no offense, please, but it's the truth). The theory generally states that men and current apes evolved from a common ancestor, which is fairly well established in the fossil record.
---
On the other hand, what happens when you tell a kid that everyone is just an animal? That human life is worth no more than the life of that cow that died to make that hamburger?
---
Not my problem. We shouldn't change scientific fact just because it serves our needs. Just because nuclear warfare killed tens of thousands in WWII doesn't mean that fission isn't a valid scientific process, does it? You don't just go and change the results because it doesn't paint a nice picture - killing cows for meat is no different than doing the same to a human, except that we're human, not cows, so we don't like to think about that.
The way I see it, if a Christian NEEDS either the threat of eternal damnation in the firey pits of hell or religious teaching to know that killing fellow humans is not a cool thing to do, he/she has serious mental problems already. I guess that's just my take on it, as one of the millions of peaceful agnostics out there.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
---
Here in Washington [State], we never were taught creation in public schools. Evolution was the primary curriculum.
---
Sadly, this is somewhat mistaken. I assume you're from the west side of the mountaints, right? Here in the south-eastern desert areas (specifically, the Tri-Cities) things are a little different. We have far too many right-wing, gun-toting rednecks per capita. Tons of bible-thumpers call the area home, and evolution merely shares time with creationism - as if it has ANY basis in science whatsoever.
This was how it was when I was in 8th grade science about 6 years ago - and that was with a relatively progressive teacher (I don't think it was his choice). I assume community pressure from all around as well as the Baptist church literally next door to the school didn't help any.
My suggestion: Let's let these certain individuals have their very own state or two in the midwest, locked away from the rest of the world. Then, in a few hundred thousand years, let's return and see if they've evolved any more. Given their recessed little gene pool, it's no wonder they believe in creationism over evolution.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
As a Mac ex-sysadmin (New job: I now work on a Mac locally with Linux boxes remotely - am I a happy guy or what?), I have to take issue with your belief that Macs tend to have 'system rot' issues more often than PCs.
However, I can see where you came from. Exchange for the Mac sucks rotten eggs, and immediately divides your uptime to 1/8th usual. A well written application will not cause problems in any way. Exchange is/was not a decent application. Issues I've seen:
1. Slowest synching I've ever seen in an email client. Worse than ccMail! Hours upon hours downloading just a few messages.
2. Decidedly limp calender support. Each release promised a fix, but it never materialized. Unless things have changes since March, you still don't have parity with the Windows version.
3. "Gee, what happened to my Personal Address Book? It's gone!"
4. "Gee, what happened to my Offline Storage Folder? It's gone!"
5. "Gee, what happened to my Personal Folders file? It's gone!"
6. "Gee, what happened to my calender button? It's gone!"
7. "Gee, what happened to my formatting toolbar? It's gone!"
8. Used to freeze up the entire system, which would only become active when you HELD DOWN the mouse button (har har, single button - just saving you flamers the effort). Does Microsoft not understand an event loop?
9. ANY network interference or server problems, and the program would crash. As Exchange Server runs on NT boxen, this was not uncommon.
Mac Exchange (now Outlook - not Outlook Express, which is halfway usable) is one of the worst applications I've ever seen for the Mac, or had the distinct displeasure of administering/supporting. It is a complete joke, and was responsible for at LEAST half of the Mac->Windows migrations while I worked at my old job. I have no idea why they went with it. Rumor had it someone 'upstairs' had some MS stock, and a PC on his disk... *sigh*
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Okay - someone out there develop an open-source messaging technology and get it out there. It's obvious that certain other players would rather not play fair.
I'm not of the 'open-source it or it is evil' camp, but it is cases like this where there is obvious merit to the open-source idea.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
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Isn't that what Microsoft has really been doing all along until they essentially bought out Apple?
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When did MS essentially 'buy out Apple'?
150 million in non-voting stock in a 4+ billion dollar company isn't usually called a buy-out where I'm from.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Here's a tip to Linux advocates everywhere:
... erm ... rabid. Linux users must do the same, lest they be avoided and scorned.
Be careful.
As a Mac user, I know exactly how this goes. The Mac advocacy community has at the same time helped and hurt the Mac platform immensely. on the one hand you have stories of Macs being brought back in droves to various educational and corporate environments. This was often due to some volunteer work by Mac advocates in such activities as handing out pamphlets are Best Buy or training salespeople or whatever.
On the other hand, the Mac community practically tore itself to shreads a few years back when Apple was at its worst. A community with something to worry about gets defensive - a stereotype the Mac community has had to bear for a very long time. Do you want this to happen to Linux too?
Now, as things begin to look really good for the Mac platform and its users, things are getting better. Mac users are being more open to outside technologies (ie. Unix/Linux, USB, etc) and less
This is not an insult - just an insight from a member of the Mac community. Be careful...
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
But, realize this: "Free" isn't everything. This isn't a holy war. Open source should be considered an additial 'feature' of a given piece of software, not the end all and be all of how evil a company is. Despite popular opinion, there are ethical companies that deal in closed source software.
Sure, their economic model may be screwed, but that's their problem, not yours. It doesn't make them evil, it just makes them a bad business prospect (even this I doubt, as I'm not exactly seeing the closing of tons of closed source businesses happening).
In my opinion, a piece of software being open sourced is a GREAT feature - many eyes catch many bugs, and you can hack out your own fixes as needed. But, it is NOT a prerequisite for good (or 'ethical') software development. In some cases, it can even hamper things.
Anyhow, people really need to see the BeOS on good hardware (say, a high end PowerPC) to appreciate its merits. This blind fanaticism really is unbecoming for the Linux community.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
Actually, Be apps tend to be very very compact. So much so that it'd take me twice as long to download a comparable program on my Mac partition as on the Be side of things.
:>
It really is a 'clean' OS - it'd be cleaner if they'd get rid of all that X86 cruft, though.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net