vi on Solaris 5.7 still crashes!
on
Pet Bugs?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I just figured it out.
In vi, make a mark named "d"
( for those who are limited out there, do this by simply hitting "m" and then "d", no ":" is required )
next move down a line
( "j" key, or down arrow for the limited ones )
Then hit do a change to that d mark.
( type c'm )
Do this on Solaris and vi will core dump. vim 5.8.7 on Redhat 7.1 seems to be fixed.
6 or 8 years ago I found a bug in vi which would cause it to core dump. I've either forgotton how to do it, or it's fixed now. Not sure.
vi would core dump in a very specific case and only when making a mark using a certain letter. As I recall you had to make a mark using a specific letter, and then move your cursor past the mark, and then use "'C" to "change to the end of line" or something like that. It was a keystroke command that didn't make sense if the cursor was passed the mark.
Anyhow, it was the only time I ever had vi crash, and I only found it because I was copy/pasting string key sequences into vi, otherwise I probably never would have been able to reproduce it.
Later I saw that very bug documented on a website.
Can't cause it to happen now. Does anyone remeber this one? I recall trying it on several Unix OSes at the time and vi core dumped in every case.
Mindless drones find it easier to just "vote my team" than to think, and decide who they like best.
Back during the election Gore was saying, "A Vote for Nader is a Vote for Bush." And Harry Browne was saying Bush and Gore are so similar that "A Vote for Gore is a Vote Bush."
OpenSource Voluntary labor projects are all fine and dandy when the projects are small or at least incremental and there are enough interested parties that can work on it for free. But why would a bunch of geeks want to implement an air traffic control system just for fun? It's not like we all have our own back yard air traffic control problems we are trying to solve.
My gut instinct is that this would be a large system, that would need a Software Requirements Document, and some amount of an acual software engineering process in order to be successful.
And if OpenSource means the "Operating System", how do you know they aren't using Linux already?
Thanks for pointing out VPVision.
(I assume that's what you wanted to point out.. ) Sucks that it's
a Windows product though, and that they haven't actually released their
source code yet, and that they don't seem to have any direct support for
the most popular PVR features like setting up favorites, or live TV pause.
Great job with the Google search
though. Wish I would have thought of that.
MS has announced Freestyle
which is going to build PVR functionality right into Windows XP.
They plan to have PC vendors sell desktop systems with TV Cards installed.
This will support stuff the TiVo supports, except with Windows Media Protection
turned on.
We need an Open Source PVR system that does a better job then Video
4 Linux at helping users install and operate PVR functionality. It
would be neat to see something like the sputnik
distribution accept for PVR. We can call it GiVo. (GNU TiVo.. )
Make it so any Pentium or better PC with a CD Drive, TV Card, and Lots-o-disk can
boot up a very small kernel and turn it's self into a PVR box.
They only did it to save money. Perhaps they got the software at 50% off?
>Cortez had a lead role in pushing for the deal in which Oracle proposed to license software for asmany as 277,000 state employees and contended that it would save the state as much as $111 million, according to the state audit.
The more you buy the more you save. Had they bought it for every citizen of CA instead of just for state workers they would have saved WAY more money....
Wasn't it Hitler who said something like, "Lie to people long enough and they think it's the truth."
Kevin
-- this is a Looney plan, READ THIS...
on
Lunar Power
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· Score: 2, Insightful
We don't have an energy shortage on Earth. We have a shortage of CHEAP energy. And, cheap is relative. No matter how cheap energy is, it will never be cheap enough unless it is free. So... We will ALWAYS have a shortage of CHEAP energy.
Today, right now, we ~could~ build solar energy collection systems that ~could~ provide pollution free energy, just not cheap. We could also dam rivers, and build windmills. Again, pollution free, but not cheap.
I don't think that solar panels on the moon can possibly be significantly more effecient than solar panels on the earth. And solar panels on Earth are not cheap! ( If they were, we would have more of them.. ) Search the web, you can buy them. They cost a lot for only a few watts when the sun shines.
How can a plan to spend $150 BILLION ( before it starts to break even.. ) Be a good idea?
$150 BILLION before it starts to break even means, that you have to invest $150 Billion up front, and then after a while you won't need to invest more because the system will be paying for it's self. How does the system pay for it's self you might ask, people have BUY the power from it...
Who PAYS BACK the $150 BILLION investment??? The people buying the power?? Citizens of Gov'ts. People of planet earth? Around 6 Billion people live on planet earth. So this plan would require each human, on average, to pay ~$30 American for funding. Easy for you and me.. Perhaps not so easy for Afgani's or Cubans who live on $100 / year, and don't even have electricity..
And even after way pay the world wide energy tax to fund the building of some quack's pipe dream, we still have to pay market rates for the power.... IT will NEVER, NEVER, EVER, ( don't even think it.. ) EVER be free. ( [ never ] )
The biggest part of my electricity rate goes to pay for distribution. Commodity electricity sells for 1 - 3 cents/kilowatt hour. Average price in USA to consumers is 7 - 8 cents/kilowatt hour. Even if a magical FREE ELECTRICY engine was invented, your rate would probably only go down 2 cents..
It doesn't really matter if I need to opt-in. The day after the Bill is signed into Law, Lawyers will add the following line to the click-through licenses on their spyware products. "I here by grant full access to all personal data...."
The whole thing boils down to freedom, and responsibility.
I personally really, really, really, like to have as much freedom as possible, and am willing to take responsibility for my own actions.
I like the fact that there are very compelling games out there that I can choose to play if I want to. I am willing to take the risk, and accept the consequences.
I like the fact that I can buy certain drugs over the counter ( examples include alcohol, nicotine, caffine, cold meds, headache pills) I am willing to take the risk, and accept the consequences.
( insert 1000 examples here )
I don't want 1 tragic case to cause me to loose my freedoms. What other thing would that kid have abused if not the game. He was having problems. Would he have been just fine had he not started playing the game? I don't know. Probably not. Would he have gotten into IRC way too much? Or online gambling? Or porn? Or walked down the street and bought some crack?
Life is about risks. Most things come with some risks. You can end up dead in a lot of ways. Walking down the street, you could get shot, brick s could fall on your head, car could hit you. A plane could crash into the building you work in. Someone could hijack the plane you are flying in. You could get a tumor, or an infection, or virus. You could fall down and hit your head.
What is Sony supposed to do, make the game not as good, so people won't want to play it so bad? You are supposed to want to play it. Our entire culture ( these days.. ) seems to be all about hooking people on things like this.
If someone kills themselves because their favorite team looses the superbowl, is it the NFL's fault for creating such a compelling sport?
It's too bad this kid died. I grew up near the remote part of Upstate NY that he grew up in. There are not many rich people living there. Maybe $100,000 from Sony would change there lives. But I still don't think it's right.
MCI once called my wife "just to let you know that your long distance service has been fixed, and because of all the trouble we caused you we are going to give you $20. Just say yes to all the questions the auditor asks you..." Of course we didn't have MCI long distance, but we would have had my wife answered yes to all those questions.
AT&T was very aggresivily marketing their New York Local One Rate Service in my area a while back. Over a 1 year period I got about a dozen sales calls. Half of the sales people were either misleading or lying.
I spent over an hour on the phone with the first guy. I asked every question twice. And wrote down all the details of his plan. I agreed to sign up because it was a great deal. 6 weeks and 3 or 4 phone calls to AT&T later I found out that it was bogus, and I had been lied to. But I kept track of the actual terms of the plan, so I had them handy when subsequent sales people called.
One AT&T guy, thought he had me on the hook, because I kept agreeing with him on how great his plan was. When he asked me if I wanted to sign up I told him no. "Why?" he asked. I responded that I thought he was lying to me. He got all pissed off. I told him to call me back in a week, so I could find out if the terms he gave me were correct. His terms were wrong. He was lying. He never called back.
After a while I relized that AT&T's actual plan was actually competive with my existing Verizon plan. One of the phone sales deals was going to give $50 in cash, and a bunch of long distance minutes. I told the lady how much I like the plan, and how it was going to save me money, but I couldn't sign up. "Why?" Because AT&T is just too sleazy for me.
I consider MCI, and AT&T to be disreputable companies and will choose not to do business with them if I can. Verizon hasn't lied to me yet. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.
USADatanet is a great company. I have had great service from them, and absolutely no lies so far.
Like anything else, Your Milage May Vary
on
Wireless Mania
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· Score: 4, Informative
I see a couple of postings from people complaining about WiFi Stuff. One guy says the public Access Points don't work. And he wants to increase signal stregth. Somebody else is bitching because his range is only 40 feet.
This is just like anything else.
If you put your stereo and your TV right next to each other and try to play music and watch TV at the same time, it is going to suck. If you put your 802.11B 2.4 Ghz Access Point right next to your 2.4 Ghz Wireless phone, and your microwave oven that you use to do all of your cooking, then your throughput and your range are just going to suck.
If you put your stereo in your bathroom, and then close the door, you can't hear it for shit out in your living room. If you put your Access Point between the fishtank, and your metal filing cabinet, your range and throughput won't be too good. ( 2.4 Ghz can't go through metal or water very well.. )
If you leave your linux box on an open network, and leave the root account without a password, and then tell people to log into it, soon it will be trashed by someone, either on accident or on purpose. If you leave your admin account on your Access Point unprotected, and tell people to use that access point, pretty soon it wont work either.
In my opinion 802.11 B does work pretty well in terms of range and throughput. Using an off the shelf Cisco access point with only a standard rubberducky antenna, and PC Card with an integrated antenna in a laptop, I have maintained 1 and 2 Mb/s connections at a range of 1800', in direct line of sight, and through a glass window.
In a typical cube farm office environment ( 5' high partitions made of metal frames, and cloth/cardboard ) I have demonstrated a good reliable 5 - 11 Mb/s connections in a 150' radius.
In a home, 40' radius should be no problem, assuming typical drywall/stud construction.
>In a system of larger agricultural farms, farm owners tend to be very rich and farm workers are very poor: the rural economy is transformed from one of self-suficiency to one in which farmers are forced to make livings as wage earners. The point is, more small farms means more farmers producing for themselves rather than becoming dependent on the poor wages derived from farm work.
The problem with small farms here in America, is that the economics of food, combined with the overhead of our society, has made it very hard to keep a farm that is small enough to be run by a typical family.
Farms must get bigger in order to make enough to stay in business. We all bitch and moan if the price of milk goes up by a nickel a gallon. After the grocery, and the middle men, and the processors all take their cut, that leaves about 1 penny for the dairymen. In USA the price of milk to farmers right now is about what it was in 1981. You can bet everything else has gone up.
Even the small diversified subsistance farmer, who plans to grow a variety of crops and products that he can eat and use himself, still needs to make enough money to pay local taxes, school taxes, state taxes, federal taxes, sales taxes, a mortgage, and put his kids through 4 years a Cornell.
> Dismissing the problems caused by these materials by saying "they bought
it, it's now their problem" is irresponsible at best.
Only if they didn't know the dangers or I missled them in some way.
> Imagine I'm a gun store owner. I know for a fact that the person at
my counter is going to commit a crime with their purchase. I > am
both legally and morally obligated to do something about it - i.e. not
sell that gun.
What if the crime was the breaking of a law that only existed in your
town but not the town from where the person lived. Do you have the
right to subject that person to your laws even though he doesn't live in
your town?
> to an irresponsible foreign company; a company which would not
be allowed to operate under the same conditions in the United States?
( side note: This is why so many jobs go out of the country and
overseases. Liberals have made it very hard and costly for industry
and manufacturing. Most every job moved out of the country is done
so to avoid operating under our rules, like minimum wage, work hours, and
OSHA stuff. And in most places were these jobs go, people are usually
damned glad to get them, even if they don't get pampered like we Americans
do. And unemployed Americans can be happy that at least if they had a job,
they would be making minimum wage.)
>It's not about running their lives, its about providing them a voice
that says "this is not right".
Problem is that you are not speaking for them. You are speaking
for you. It is YOU who are worried for the environment in their country,
it is YOU who are worried for their health, it is YOU who will take their
jobs away, it is You who will make them starve. This report from
the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition was not authored by Chinese or Indians.
It was authored by arrogant Americans trying to run other people's lives.
> "The poor do not have the same choices as the rich"
You are right they don't in most cases. Because people like YOU
are pushing them down, staring them in the eye and telling them what is good
for them.
> You're argument comes from an irresponsible, non-empathetic
world view.
Yes and No. I absolutely do not consider myself to be responsible
for actions taken by others, by their own free will, and in full knowledge
of the consequences.
NO!! I'm not "non-empathetic." I wish people and nations
didn't do stupid things. And I do feel bad when people get hurt.
But Arrogant Americans are not going to force countries to change their
ways. Trying to do so will only cause more hatred. Let them
go. They will learn just like we did. It will be a lesson well
learned. When it's over we will all be friends.
> I'm skeptical. I don't think that circuit boards are so particularly
dangerous .
Sigh.... no wonder they stopped teaching history in the USA. I think
its the on ly place in the world where you can justify a shirking of responsibily
by saying , "I don't think thats true."
I didn't get your jab about history.
As far as voicing ones unsubstantiated opinion goes, it happens all
the time in USA, and probably caused this issue in the first place.
Actually, my long winded friend, I went over and read about the SVTC.
It seems their biggest gripe is actually all the lead in CRTs. Apparently
CRT glass is about 20% lead. It's not clear to me how lead can leach
out of glass though.
Get over it, it's true; thats not up for debate, and frankly, I'm
upset I wasted my time contending your limited indivual-centric world view
in light of stagger ing social costs to the power of 'economic goodness'.
Ok. Why did you keep typing then?
I don't know if you remember or not, but (relatively) modern economies
were form alized and implemented in order to improve the quality of life.
If you really th ink a tee-totalled land and serious health concerns deserve a back
seat to a goo d business, you're defeating the original purpose of money.
Actually I don't remember. As near as I can tell most all of the
significant economies of the world have been around for a good long time.
I don't think "invented" is the correct term. And I don't think people
said, "Oh, how can we improve the quality of life? lets invent an economy."
Economy, as near as I can estimate, is trade. And I think it
just kind of happened.
I think the original purpose of money was to make trade easier.
People wanted trade to be easier because before there existed Nanny states,
and welfare at every level, people had to MAKE a living, or EARN a living.
They werent HANDED a living. With money I can wait until later to
buy the food I need later. A good business has, always, and will
always be the most important thing. When good business stops driving
the laws of the land, you will see the great economies and nations of the
world being eroded by the looters and moochers.
Your ideology, successful by virtue on being made on the backs of
others, has be en sold successfully (and its certainly easier to sell in countries
with little personal freedom such as China) to these people, who are all too
happy to sell o ut their local neighbours for the almighty buck.
That is how people make and earn a living. Someone has to actually
DO THE WORK. I'm talking about the real world. I grew up on
a dairy farm, that my folks still own and operate. They both work
60 hour weeks, 52 weeks a year, for less money than you can earn a quicky
mart. Why? Because they like to earn it themselves, doing honest
work. A great number of people on our planet don't know what real
work is, what it feels like to work an honest day, and have never felt
the satisfaction of a job well done.
You forget that the same mechan isms and resources that allowed the USA and Canada to raise their
standard of li ving depended on many things that other nations and geographies
do not have. In other words, making a buck in many other corners of the globe does
more to desta bilize the standard of living (nevermind increasing the wealth gap
among citizen s) and destroy the environment than would occurr if some countries
(including mi ne) respected that their dirty ideologies and computer parts affect
other societ ies and economies in far more adverse fashions than they do domestically.
I mean , do you really think Africa woke up one morning to discover that
the vfast majo rity of their drinking water was suddenly undrinkable, through some
perverse act of god?
YES!! I agree. One mechanism that we had was a large lack
of handouts. If you wanted to live you had to earn it. Nobody
came packing in with train loads of food to keep us alive when we couldn't
support ourselves.
No, it was people going, "Well, they're taking their shit, so they'll
o nly have themselves to blame in the end."
Why did they have that problem? Too many people too close together?
How could they survive? Handouts?
(Ironoically, NA probably likes it thi s way, as it keeps these areas under our economic thumb under the
ongoing empty promise of helping them 'develop' out of their [sic] problems.)
Cultures and pol itical setups are like kids, at least when it comes to new toys
(technologies, i deologies, etc). Other countries see everything on TV (and other
media outlets) that works for America (remember that many other societies' only
opportunity to judge and evaluate what living in the US is like is through episodes
of Friends and Baywatch.. ). The impedus should be on the US and Canada, et
al to understa nd that just because another country/wants/ something, and claims
it/understan ds/ something.. doesn't mean that they do, in which case the more
ethical actio n is to discourage access.
Now we cut to the heart of our disagreement. You think that some
nations are like kids that need to be protected and brought up.
I think that some of the biggest problems some nations have is our coddling.
We need to let them come to a balance naturally.
your point regarding your kids (which I agree, is the best way to go about things) is simply not possible on the
scale of countries a nd political and economic systems.
Yes it is.
Education is near impossible between cultures , because the axioms of social behaviour and value systems are so
far apart that neither side and truely and effectively judge whether the
other culture truely can handle something forgeign resposibily.
You are right. Most cultures won't listen. And some kids
are going to start smoking anyway. Thats tough for them. But
they'll have to learn the hard way just like we did.
In this case, the ethical behaviour i s to be conservative in one's analysis of another culture, and for
the benifit o f everyone, err on the side of conservation, safety and non-action.
Some other poster suggested that my opinions are the kind of thing that
cause other countries to hate us. I disagree. What you are
talking about is what causes countries to hate us. Those big fat
rich Americans telling everyone what to do, and getting into everyone's
business. What will India or China say when we tell them we
won't sell them junk computers anymore because they are not responsible
enought to recycle them properly? 1) They are going to be pissed.
2) They are going to keep recycling the stuff anyway. They
just won't recycle any of ours. Or they'll smuggle it in.
(As an aside , if the US absolutely can't sufficiently handle what they're consuming
domestic ally, I think thats a larger problem what will go unrecognized so
long as other parts of the world try to turn a buck on their cast off garbage.)
Can't handle? That's not quite right. More likely they can
sell it so they do. Why pay $25 to get ride of a box when I can sell
it for $.25? Interestingly, all those west coast nature nuts that
started the SVTC have probably caused this whole strange phonomon.
Why does it coast so much to recycle electronics in USA? Because
of all the hazardous waste laws? As stated above, I don't believe
that Circuit boards are so bad. And I question how dangerous leaded
glass is. After all, A lot of antique glassware is leaded glass.
I don't recall hearing anyone say we shouldn't drink out of it.
Yes you can tell me about all the heavy metals. So what, I'm not
going to eat them. And I'm not going burn them. So you've got
a bunch of circuit boards that are going be around forever. That
doesn't mean they are polluting anything... I can't imagine leaded
glass hurting anything, as long as you don't crush it into a fine powder
and snort it up your nose. Glass is heavy. It won't easily
float in air or water.
And finally, why do we think every other country should be like us?
Those people in China aren't bitching about all the circuit boards.
Why did americans need to go over there and decided that those people need
to be just like us, and that monkeying around with dangerous garbage is
too hard for them, just like it's too hard for us. What makes us
think that we are better then them, and that they are too stupid to know
what is right? If an Indian is starving to death, and he gets a job,
working for food, smashing powersupplies into pieces with a rock, I bet
he is pretty god damed happy about it. And how can you tell him that
job is bad. He is alive. He is not dead. Every minute
that passes is one more minute alive. He isn't standing in some long
line with a dirty bowl, walking through waste hoping to get 2 tablespoons
of American Rice to eat today. He has some real food, that he really
earned, doing real work, like a MAN.
Slashdot Mirror
I just figured it out. In vi, make a mark named "d" ( for those who are limited out there, do this by simply hitting "m" and then "d", no ":" is required ) next move down a line ( "j" key, or down arrow for the limited ones ) Then hit do a change to that d mark. ( type c'm ) Do this on Solaris and vi will core dump. vim 5.8.7 on Redhat 7.1 seems to be fixed.
6 or 8 years ago I found a bug in vi which would cause it to core dump. I've either forgotton how to do it, or it's fixed now. Not sure.
vi would core dump in a very specific case and only when making a mark using a certain letter. As I recall you had to make a mark using a specific letter, and then move your cursor past the mark, and then use "'C" to "change to the end of line" or something like that. It was a keystroke command that didn't make sense if the cursor was passed the mark.
Anyhow, it was the only time I ever had vi crash, and I only found it because I was copy/pasting string key sequences into vi, otherwise I probably never would have been able to reproduce it.
Later I saw that very bug documented on a website.
Can't cause it to happen now. Does anyone remeber this one? I recall trying it on several Unix OSes at the time and vi core dumped in every case.
A-Men Brother.
Mindless drones find it easier to just "vote my team" than to think, and decide who they like best.
Back during the election Gore was saying, "A Vote for Nader is a Vote for Bush." And Harry Browne was saying Bush and Gore are so similar that "A Vote for Gore is a Vote Bush."
Your math is right, but 530,000 kWh is still a lot of power. It's roughly enough to power 50 Average American homes for a year.
How do you patent a DNA sequence?
Seems like he is talking about Ultra Wide Band to me. That has been covered on Slashdot a couple of times all ready.
8 /215525 4&mode=thread&tid=126
Check this:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/1
OpenSource Voluntary labor projects are all fine and dandy when the projects are small or at least incremental and there are enough interested parties that can work on it for free. But why would a bunch of geeks want to implement an air traffic control system just for fun? It's not like we all have our own back yard air traffic control problems we are trying to solve.
My gut instinct is that this would be a large system, that would need a Software Requirements Document, and some amount of an acual software engineering process in order to be successful.
And if OpenSource means the "Operating System", how do you know they aren't using Linux already?
What makes you think it isn't?
Great job with the Google search though. Wish I would have thought of that.
Once we have the source for an Open PVR system, the networks, or SONY, or MS won't be able to prevent us from skipping the commercials.
There are software programmable remote tools available. It's all there. It just needs to be integrated, refined, and made into a distribution.
We need an Open Source PVR system that does a better job then Video 4 Linux at helping users install and operate PVR functionality. It would be neat to see something like the sputnik distribution accept for PVR. We can call it GiVo. (GNU TiVo.. ) Make it so any Pentium or better PC with a CD Drive, TV Card, and Lots-o-disk can boot up a very small kernel and turn it's self into a PVR box.
They only did it to save money. Perhaps they got the software at 50% off?
>Cortez had a lead role in pushing for the deal in which Oracle proposed to license software for asmany as 277,000 state employees and contended that it would save the state as much as $111 million, according to the state audit.
The more you buy the more you save. Had they bought it for every citizen of CA instead of just for state workers they would have saved WAY more money....
Wasn't it Hitler who said something like, "Lie to people long enough and they think it's the truth."
Kevin
We don't have an energy shortage on Earth. We have a shortage of CHEAP energy. And, cheap is relative. No matter how cheap energy is, it will never be cheap enough unless it is free. So... We will ALWAYS have a shortage of CHEAP energy.
Today, right now, we ~could~ build solar energy collection systems that ~could~ provide pollution free energy, just not cheap. We could also dam rivers, and build windmills. Again, pollution free, but not cheap.
I don't think that solar panels on the moon can possibly be significantly more effecient than solar panels on the earth. And solar panels on Earth are not cheap! ( If they were, we would have more of them.. ) Search the web, you can buy them. They cost a lot for only a few watts when the sun shines.
How can a plan to spend $150 BILLION ( before it starts to break even.. ) Be a good idea?
$150 BILLION before it starts to break even means, that you have to invest $150 Billion up front, and then after a while you won't need to invest more because the system will be paying for it's self. How does the system pay for it's self you might ask, people have BUY the power from it...
Who PAYS BACK the $150 BILLION investment??? The people buying the power?? Citizens of Gov'ts. People of planet earth? Around 6 Billion people live on planet earth. So this plan would require each human, on average, to pay ~$30 American for funding. Easy for you and me.. Perhaps not so easy for Afgani's or Cubans who live on $100 / year, and don't even have electricity..
And even after way pay the world wide energy tax to fund the building of some quack's pipe dream, we still have to pay market rates for the power.... IT will NEVER, NEVER, EVER, ( don't even think it.. ) EVER be free. ( [ never ] )
The biggest part of my electricity rate goes to pay for distribution. Commodity electricity sells for 1 - 3 cents/kilowatt hour. Average price in USA to consumers is 7 - 8 cents/kilowatt hour. Even if a magical FREE ELECTRICY engine was invented, your rate would probably only go down 2 cents..
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Kevin
It doesn't really matter if I need to opt-in. The day after the Bill is signed into Law, Lawyers will add the following line to the click-through licenses on their spyware products. "I here by grant full access to all personal data...."
The whole thing boils down to freedom, and responsibility.
I personally really, really, really, like to have as much freedom as possible, and am willing to take responsibility for my own actions.
I like the fact that there are very compelling games out there that I can choose to play if I want to. I am willing to take the risk, and accept the consequences.
I like the fact that I can buy certain drugs over the counter ( examples include alcohol, nicotine, caffine, cold meds, headache pills) I am willing to take the risk, and accept the consequences.
( insert 1000 examples here )
I don't want 1 tragic case to cause me to loose my freedoms. What other thing would that kid have abused if not the game. He was having problems. Would he have been just fine had he not started playing the game? I don't know. Probably not. Would he have gotten into IRC way too much? Or online gambling? Or porn? Or walked down the street and bought some crack?
Life is about risks. Most things come with some risks. You can end up dead in a lot of ways. Walking down the street, you could get shot, brick s could fall on your head, car could hit you. A plane could crash into the building you work in. Someone could hijack the plane you are flying in. You could get a tumor, or an infection, or virus. You could fall down and hit your head.
What is Sony supposed to do, make the game not as good, so people won't want to play it so bad? You are supposed to want to play it. Our entire culture ( these days.. ) seems to be all about hooking people on things like this.
If someone kills themselves because their favorite team looses the superbowl, is it the NFL's fault for creating such a compelling sport?
It's too bad this kid died. I grew up near the remote part of Upstate NY that he grew up in. There are not many rich people living there. Maybe $100,000 from Sony would change there lives. But I still don't think it's right.
I Gotcha.
My comment stands. /* Mother of 21 year old Suing to get warning labels. Come on... */
Mother's should not allow dangerously wacko kids to play too many video games.
MCI once called my wife "just to let you know that your long distance service has been fixed, and because of all the trouble we caused you we are going to give you $20. Just say yes to all the questions the auditor asks you..." Of course we didn't have MCI long distance, but we would have had my wife answered yes to all those questions.
AT&T was very aggresivily marketing their New York Local One Rate Service in my area a while back. Over a 1 year period I got about a dozen sales calls. Half of the sales people were either misleading or lying.
I spent over an hour on the phone with the first guy. I asked every question twice. And wrote down all the details of his plan. I agreed to sign up because it was a great deal. 6 weeks and 3 or 4 phone calls to AT&T later I found out that it was bogus, and I had been lied to. But I kept track of the actual terms of the plan, so I had them handy when subsequent sales people called.
One AT&T guy, thought he had me on the hook, because I kept agreeing with him on how great his plan was. When he asked me if I wanted to sign up I told him no. "Why?" he asked. I responded that I thought he was lying to me. He got all pissed off. I told him to call me back in a week, so I could find out if the terms he gave me were correct. His terms were wrong. He was lying. He never called back.
After a while I relized that AT&T's actual plan was actually competive with my existing Verizon plan. One of the phone sales deals was going to give $50 in cash, and a bunch of long distance minutes. I told the lady how much I like the plan, and how it was going to save me money, but I couldn't sign up. "Why?" Because AT&T is just too sleazy for me.
I consider MCI, and AT&T to be disreputable companies and will choose not to do business with them if I can. Verizon hasn't lied to me yet. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt for now.
USADatanet is a great company. I have had great service from them, and absolutely no lies so far.
I see a couple of postings from people complaining about WiFi Stuff. One guy says the public Access Points don't work. And he wants to increase signal stregth. Somebody else is bitching because his range is only 40 feet.
This is just like anything else.
If you put your stereo and your TV right next to each other and try to play music and watch TV at the same time, it is going to suck. If you put your 802.11B 2.4 Ghz Access Point right next to your 2.4 Ghz Wireless phone, and your microwave oven that you use to do all of your cooking, then your throughput and your range are just going to suck.
If you put your stereo in your bathroom, and then close the door, you can't hear it for shit out in your living room. If you put your Access Point between the fishtank, and your metal filing cabinet, your range and throughput won't be too good. ( 2.4 Ghz can't go through metal or water very well.. )
If you leave your linux box on an open network, and leave the root account without a password, and then tell people to log into it, soon it will be trashed by someone, either on accident or on purpose. If you leave your admin account on your Access Point unprotected, and tell people to use that access point, pretty soon it wont work either.
In my opinion 802.11 B does work pretty well in terms of range and throughput. Using an off the shelf Cisco access point with only a standard rubberducky antenna, and PC Card with an integrated antenna in a laptop, I have maintained 1 and 2 Mb/s connections at a range of 1800', in direct line of sight, and through a glass window.
In a typical cube farm office environment ( 5' high partitions made of metal frames, and cloth/cardboard ) I have demonstrated a good reliable 5 - 11 Mb/s connections in a 150' radius.
In a home, 40' radius should be no problem, assuming typical drywall/stud construction.
Kevin
>In a system of larger agricultural farms, farm owners tend to be very rich and farm workers are very poor: the rural economy is transformed from one of self-suficiency to one in which farmers are forced to make livings as wage earners. The point is, more small farms means more farmers producing for themselves rather than becoming dependent on the poor wages derived from farm work.
The problem with small farms here in America, is that the economics of food, combined with the overhead of our society, has made it very hard to keep a farm that is small enough to be run by a typical family.
Farms must get bigger in order to make enough to stay in business. We all bitch and moan if the price of milk goes up by a nickel a gallon. After the grocery, and the middle men, and the processors all take their cut, that leaves about 1 penny for the dairymen. In USA the price of milk to farmers right now is about what it was in 1981. You can bet everything else has gone up.
Even the small diversified subsistance farmer, who plans to grow a variety of crops and products that he can eat and use himself, still needs to make enough money to pay local taxes, school taxes, state taxes, federal taxes, sales taxes, a mortgage, and put his kids through 4 years a Cornell.
Kevin
Only if they didn't know the dangers or I missled them in some way.
> Imagine I'm a gun store owner. I know for a fact that the person at my counter is going to commit a crime with their purchase. I > am both legally and morally obligated to do something about it - i.e. not sell that gun.
What if the crime was the breaking of a law that only existed in your town but not the town from where the person lived. Do you have the right to subject that person to your laws even though he doesn't live in your town?
> to an irresponsible foreign company; a company which would not be allowed to operate under the same conditions in the United States?
( side note: This is why so many jobs go out of the country and overseases. Liberals have made it very hard and costly for industry and manufacturing. Most every job moved out of the country is done so to avoid operating under our rules, like minimum wage, work hours, and OSHA stuff. And in most places were these jobs go, people are usually damned glad to get them, even if they don't get pampered like we Americans do. And unemployed Americans can be happy that at least if they had a job, they would be making minimum wage.)
>It's not about running their lives, its about providing them a voice that says "this is not right".
Problem is that you are not speaking for them. You are speaking for you. It is YOU who are worried for the environment in their country, it is YOU who are worried for their health, it is YOU who will take their jobs away, it is You who will make them starve. This report from the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition was not authored by Chinese or Indians. It was authored by arrogant Americans trying to run other people's lives.
> "The poor do not have the same choices as the rich"
You are right they don't in most cases. Because people like YOU are pushing them down, staring them in the eye and telling them what is good for them.
> You're argument comes from an irresponsible, non-empathetic world view.
Yes and No. I absolutely do not consider myself to be responsible for actions taken by others, by their own free will, and in full knowledge of the consequences.
NO!! I'm not "non-empathetic." I wish people and nations didn't do stupid things. And I do feel bad when people get hurt. But Arrogant Americans are not going to force countries to change their ways. Trying to do so will only cause more hatred. Let them go. They will learn just like we did. It will be a lesson well learned. When it's over we will all be friends.
How can it be considered meddling if we WANT to sell and they WANT to buy. Is your grocery store meddling in your business when you go to buy food?
Sigh .... no wonder they stopped teaching history in the USA. I think
its the on
ly place in the world where you can justify a shirking of responsibily by saying
, "I don't think thats true."
I didn't get your jab about history.
As far as voicing ones unsubstantiated opinion goes, it happens all the time in USA, and probably caused this issue in the first place.
Actually, my long winded friend, I went over and read about the SVTC. It seems their biggest gripe is actually all the lead in CRTs. Apparently CRT glass is about 20% lead. It's not clear to me how lead can leach out of glass though.
Get over it, it's true; thats not up for debate, and frankly, I'm upset I wasted
my time contending your limited indivual-centric world view in light of stagger
ing social costs to the power of 'economic goodness'.
Ok. Why did you keep typing then?
I don't know if you remember or not, but (relatively) modern economies were form
alized and implemented in order to improve the quality of life. If you really th
ink a tee-totalled land and serious health concerns deserve a back seat to a goo
d business, you're defeating the original purpose of money.
Actually I don't remember. As near as I can tell most all of the significant economies of the world have been around for a good long time. I don't think "invented" is the correct term. And I don't think people said, "Oh, how can we improve the quality of life? lets invent an economy." Economy, as near as I can estimate, is trade. And I think it just kind of happened.
I think the original purpose of money was to make trade easier. People wanted trade to be easier because before there existed Nanny states, and welfare at every level, people had to MAKE a living, or EARN a living. They werent HANDED a living. With money I can wait until later to buy the food I need later. A good business has, always, and will always be the most important thing. When good business stops driving the laws of the land, you will see the great economies and nations of the world being eroded by the looters and moochers.
Your ideology, successful by virtue on being made on the backs of others, has be
en sold successfully (and its certainly easier to sell in countries with little
personal freedom such as China) to these people, who are all too happy to sell o
ut their local neighbours for the almighty buck.
That is how people make and earn a living. Someone has to actually DO THE WORK. I'm talking about the real world. I grew up on a dairy farm, that my folks still own and operate. They both work 60 hour weeks, 52 weeks a year, for less money than you can earn a quicky mart. Why? Because they like to earn it themselves, doing honest work. A great number of people on our planet don't know what real work is, what it feels like to work an honest day, and have never felt the satisfaction of a job well done.
You forget that the same mechan
isms and resources that allowed the USA and Canada to raise their standard of li
ving depended on many things that other nations and geographies do not have. In
other words, making a buck in many other corners of the globe does more to desta
bilize the standard of living (nevermind increasing the wealth gap among citizen
s) and destroy the environment than would occurr if some countries (including mi
ne) respected that their dirty ideologies and computer parts affect other societ
ies and economies in far more adverse fashions than they do domestically. I mean
, do you really think Africa woke up one morning to discover that the vfast majo
rity of their drinking water was suddenly undrinkable, through some perverse act
of god?
YES!! I agree. One mechanism that we had was a large lack of handouts. If you wanted to live you had to earn it. Nobody came packing in with train loads of food to keep us alive when we couldn't support ourselves.
No, it was people going, "Well, they're taking their shit, so they'll o
nly have themselves to blame in the end."
Why did they have that problem? Too many people too close together? How could they survive? Handouts?
(Ironoically, NA probably likes it thi .. ). The impedus should be on the US and Canada, et
al to understa
/wants/ something, and claims
it /understan
.. doesn't mean that they do, in which case the more
ethical actio
s way, as it keeps these areas under our economic thumb under the ongoing empty
promise of helping them 'develop' out of their [sic] problems.) Cultures and pol
itical setups are like kids, at least when it comes to new toys (technologies, i
deologies, etc). Other countries see everything on TV (and other media outlets)
that works for America (remember that many other societies' only opportunity to
judge and evaluate what living in the US is like is through episodes of Friends
and Baywatch
nd that just because another country
ds/ something
n is to discourage access.
Now we cut to the heart of our disagreement. You think that some nations are like kids that need to be protected and brought up. I think that some of the biggest problems some nations have is our coddling. We need to let them come to a balance naturally.
your point regarding your kids (which I agree, is the
best way to go about things) is simply not possible on the scale of countries a
nd political and economic systems.
Yes it is.
Education is near impossible between cultures
, because the axioms of social behaviour and value systems are so far apart that
neither side and truely and effectively judge whether the other culture truely
can handle something forgeign resposibily.
You are right. Most cultures won't listen. And some kids are going to start smoking anyway. Thats tough for them. But they'll have to learn the hard way just like we did.
In this case, the ethical behaviour i
s to be conservative in one's analysis of another culture, and for the benifit o
f everyone, err on the side of conservation, safety and non-action.
Some other poster suggested that my opinions are the kind of thing that cause other countries to hate us. I disagree. What you are talking about is what causes countries to hate us. Those big fat rich Americans telling everyone what to do, and getting into everyone's business. What will India or China say when we tell them we won't sell them junk computers anymore because they are not responsible enought to recycle them properly? 1) They are going to be pissed. 2) They are going to keep recycling the stuff anyway. They just won't recycle any of ours. Or they'll smuggle it in.
(As an aside
, if the US absolutely can't sufficiently handle what they're consuming domestic
ally, I think thats a larger problem what will go unrecognized so long as other
parts of the world try to turn a buck on their cast off garbage.)
Can't handle? That's not quite right. More likely they can sell it so they do. Why pay $25 to get ride of a box when I can sell it for $.25? Interestingly, all those west coast nature nuts that started the SVTC have probably caused this whole strange phonomon. Why does it coast so much to recycle electronics in USA? Because of all the hazardous waste laws? As stated above, I don't believe that Circuit boards are so bad. And I question how dangerous leaded glass is. After all, A lot of antique glassware is leaded glass. I don't recall hearing anyone say we shouldn't drink out of it.
Yes you can tell me about all the heavy metals. So what, I'm not going to eat them. And I'm not going burn them. So you've got a bunch of circuit boards that are going be around forever. That doesn't mean they are polluting anything... I can't imagine leaded glass hurting anything, as long as you don't crush it into a fine powder and snort it up your nose. Glass is heavy. It won't easily float in air or water.
And finally, why do we think every other country should be like us? Those people in China aren't bitching about all the circuit boards. Why did americans need to go over there and decided that those people need to be just like us, and that monkeying around with dangerous garbage is too hard for them, just like it's too hard for us. What makes us think that we are better then them, and that they are too stupid to know what is right? If an Indian is starving to death, and he gets a job, working for food, smashing powersupplies into pieces with a rock, I bet he is pretty god damed happy about it. And how can you tell him that job is bad. He is alive. He is not dead. Every minute that passes is one more minute alive. He isn't standing in some long line with a dirty bowl, walking through waste hoping to get 2 tablespoons of American Rice to eat today. He has some real food, that he really earned, doing real work, like a MAN.