You know, I really hate to bring myself down to such a petty and immature level, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Mozilla is a perfectly good, respected open source solutions provider. As such, its products lend a certain amount of credibility to open source in general (hey Linux people, this means you). Credibility is the key to widescale adoption within large companies and the like. You can have the best products on Earth, but if your credibility is zilch, no major business will touch it. In the spirit of showing others that this type of bahavior yields more pain than rewards, and without further adu:
I say let the fuckers have it. Hit these assholes first, then these pricks. Fill their message boards, newsletters, email boxes, and everything else you can find that'll take your submission with the following message:
"DoSing Open Source is not fun * "
Paste it into anything that'll let you 3, 4, 5 times a day. Calling Linux fanboys - this is your chance to troll while actually doing something good for a change. Hit them as often as you possibly can (or make (and post) a script to do it automatically all day long) and continue doing it until you see the story posted on slashdot saying that BOTH of them have apologized and will never do it again.
Don't post a reply if you're going ahead with it, just do it. If they're allowed to do this and get away with it, it will legitimize it in a way we never want to see. Unfortunatly, I see no alternative to dealing with this issue other than giving these people a taste of their own medicine.
"If it makes me less of an American for believing in free speech, then so be it."
Free speech does not mean there are no consequences to what you say. For instance, I have the right to call my boss an arrogant ass to his face (he's actually a great guy, but humor me), but I best expect to be fired for doing so. If Theo wanted to exercise his right to free speech without any consquences, he ought to have exercised his right to do so anonymously. No one's saying he didn't have a right to say what he said, but DARPA has every right to not give free money away to whomever they please for whatever reason, including his publicly expressed views. Not to say that's why they pulled the funding, but so what if they did? Is any person/project entitled to a government grant? Absolutely not; although as arrogant as Theo is, he probably believes his money was taken away from him. It wasn't. A grant was pulled.
"I would be very grateful if anyone can find a way to help us."
Theo not his usual "I am God" self... Amazing. Perhaps it was part of a larger DARPA project to see if Theo could be brought down from his unimaginably high horse?
"There are less than 10^75 particles in the known universe. So, unfortunately that court document wouldn't be just ten pages of 0's, it would be bigger than anything constructable in the known universe."
Ahh, but you're neglecting dark matter; now start writing up my lawsuit!;)
"(I guess I'm a new resident FreeBSD fanboy - so be it)"
I'm afraid not, as you have done nothing to earn the title. Until you can come up with broad, unsubstantiated or entirely subjective claims for why FreeBSD is the best OS in history (and probably the future too), you can't possibly equal the awesome illogicality of a true Linux fanboy.
Aside from that, various silly statements (such as Fr33B5D r0x0rz d00dz!!!) must be made in a timely fashion to counter intelligent and thoughtout analysis of its shortcomings.
As anyone who studies political science will tell you, a democracy only works well when you have an educated public. Those who visit a library are obviously seeking knowledge, and so any attempt by the staff of said library to provide them with knowledge should be applauded.
This, however, goes above and beyond simply providing their patrons with knowledge. This is an example of a group of people with a very subtle power using that power to advance the principles of freedom and democracy. By actively protecting the right to privacy of their patrons and seeking to educate them about laws that have a very real and chilling effect on their lives, they truly are making this country greater by the day.
You won't see major media protesting this law; only showing how great it is that our wonderful government is protecting us so that we may feel warm and fuzzy all over. To see a group of people standing up in defense of the rights of citizens at the risk of being denied their own rights is both comforting and encouraging.
If any of you notices a librarian tearing up a checkout card, handing out fliers or putting up posters on this subject, thank them; they deserve that much if not more. They're risking their safety and freedom to try and protect your's.
You honestly believe we could eliminate every single bacteria in the world? To answer yes would show that you have a very limited understanding of biology and bacteria in general. Aside from that, when you look at the astroid impacts of this planet's history, remember that they would have caused something very similar to nuclear winter. Would nuclear winter wipe out all humans on this planet? More than likely, it would eliminate virtually every single higher life form. Would nuclear winter eliminate other life forms, such as bacteria? Hardly; there any many types of bacteria which would thrive in such an environment, and many others which would lay dormant for however many millions of years it took for the ecosystem to begin to reform.
You forget that life on this planet started in conditions that were staggeringly uninhabitable by today's standards. We could launch every single nuclear missile and release every chemical and biological weapon ever created and we'd still end up with tons of organisms surviving. Within a few million years, you'd never know humans existed.
"we could seriously fuck up the ecosystem beyond all hope of repair if we're not careful'"
That's just arrogant. Could we fuck it up to the point that humans could survive in it? Yes. But nature doesn't revolve around man - man's existence "revolves" around the center of the galactic toilet bowl, hoping nature doesn't decide to flush.
We've been here for a fraction of the Earth's history, and we've been able to accurately monitor changes in the world's atmosphere and temperature for a fraction of the time we've been here. My point? We're in absolutely no position to say what's "normal" or not "normal" in terms of temperature and weather changes. Had we been monitoring the weather for the last 100 million years, I might think otherwise. But we haven't. We've been taking accurate measurements for less than 100 years and some people are arrogant enough to assume that they're "experts" in worldwide climatic changes.
The first poster was right - we're coming off an ice age. How does an ice age end? Perhaps - global warming? Did we cause the end to the last ice age? I think not - yet if we were around at the end of the last ice age in any type of scientific fashion, there would be the same people ranting and raving about "oh my God, the ice that's been here for thousands of years is melting! Look what humans are doing to the Earth!".
My point is that we really need to take a step back. Are there some things we're doing terribly wrong? Sure; the toxic waste, giant landfills, annihilation of the rain forest, etc are all really bad things. But it's not going to affect the Earth. Why? We're nowhere near as big or as important as we think we are. Might we effect a slight change in Earth's climate and its ecosystem for a small period of time? Sure, but what we tend to forget is that Earth will be around a long time after we're gone. Those talking about how we're "destroying the planet" are so self-important and arrogant that they fail to realize just how small they're thinking. If it set fire to a forest, I've destroyed a forest. But guess what - when I'm dead and gone, that forest will grow back. Stop thinking in terms of 10 years or 100 years - nature doesn't think like that. Nature works in periods of millions of years. Our existence on this planet is a microsecond in nature's time. The most destructive thing we could possibly do - nuclear war - would be completely undone in a few million years. Don't believe me? Look at the massive astroid impacts this planet has endured. The dinosaurs were annihilated in a massive, global event - whatever that event might have been. Yet somehow, the Earth survived and bred new life. Amazing!
It's hardly amazing; it's just the way nature works. We're much smaller and less important than our religions have made us out to be. To those who march on constantly in their little "save the planet" campaigns, I really think you ought to change your cause to "save the humans". Why? Because if we damage the ecosystem that spawned us enough that we're unable to adapt, we'll be gone. We couldn't destroy the planet if we tried; but we can easily put an end to the silly bunch of creatures called "humans" - something nature will do when we've become too inconvenient.
" Doesn't the side of a Linux Box state the Minimum IQ requirements alongside the CPU and memory requirements?"
Sure, because insulting potential users by calling them stupid whenever they have a problem is the quickest way to build up a strong user base.
"All kidding aside, she essentially tried installing it on some crap hardware without having an either net access to search the newsgroups for solutions or having the geek that gave her the distros on hand."
And you call Redmond's software junk? I can throw Windows 98 on the hardware you call "crap" and it works fine. Let me ask you this: if she had tried windows 98 and it had worked flawlessly, could you really say that Linux was the superior solution? Personally, if one thing works and another doesn't, I'm going with what works; even if it is M$. Secondly, why should she have to search through newsgroups and ask for outside help for something as simple as an OS installation? Would she have had to search through newsgroups to install Win98? Let me give you a hint: no.
"Another thing I would note is that the best technical writers are essentilly retarded monkeys. Nothing personal, but the best tech writers and testers are retarded monkeys."
There's that Linux fanboy mentality showing once again. You're the worst enemy Linux could ever have. Why? Because no one will believe an accusation from a liar (M$), but people will believe a confession from anyone. As a user of Linux, your attitude that it's just the greatest thing on Earth and anyone who has a problem using it is a "retarded monkey" goes to show that Linux and its supporting community is comprised of simple-minded, immature children. Your ranting and raving does absolutely nothing to help Linux whatsoever. On the contrary, your arrogant and dismissive attitude belies the true nature of Linux and the vast majority of its users and contributors. But since your voice is the loudest and most noticable, to whom will people listen?
With every fanboyesque post, a part of Linux's potential is killed. The single greatest threat to Linux is not Microsoft; it is a small group of very loud, very vocal fanboys who shout down the intelligent and helpful majority. If you truly want to see Linux succeed, you need to re-examine your attitude towards discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. This writer wasn't just someone commenting on Linux; she was a potential user. Linux has lost this potential user for a number of reasons. How many more potential users has Linux lost because of the very same issues she encountered? If people really want to see Linux make it big and take down Redmond, they need to talk to people like this writer and find out what can be changed to win over her, and those like her. It's the regular users who feed M$'s pocketbook, and it's the regular users the Linux community should be working to get.
" I'd be tempted to find a country without extradition treaties. Preferably a friendly, inexpensive country with a tropical climate and lots of nude beaches."
With $97 Trillion, they would buy the country you moved to and pass a new law stating that you, personally, are to be executed.
I'd countersue for $1Googolplex for "pain and suffering."
Or maybe I just want to see a court document with ten pages of 0's on it.
If nothing else, it would highlight the ridiculousness of the entire affair when the student charged that $150,000 of pain and suffering was owed for every nanosecond that the case lasted.
" And we thought the prices of CDs were high before. If this is any indication of where things are going I doubt I'll even be able to afford a single cd."
You don't understand; if they can sell one CD at this price, they can fund their operations for the next 120,000 years!
"That risk assessment is not one of your strengths."
You tell me: one attacked my country overtly while the other erodes rights and freedoms surreptitiously, bypassing both the congress and the courts, and locks up American citizens indefinitely without charges.
At least bin Laden declares that he wants to destroy America before he acts; Ashcroft just does it.
"In the end it may turn out that the government did lie, I hope not, but I am not foolish enough to believe that the government is always honest. I need look no further than Ruby Ridge or Waco to see glaring examples of government duplicity."
Hence my ranting and raving about Padilla's right to a trial in which evidence obtained can be examined, and charges of crimes may be put to the test. If he's guilty, lock him up; if he's innocent, set him free; but locking him up with no trial whatsoever shows, to me, a complete and utter lack of confidence in the case against him.
Not really; I hardly ever think about the FreeBSD servers here. That's my point.
"All last year you've been thinking that BSD is the only (at least from free ones) OS that has such a big uptime."
Not at all, any machine running any OS can have high amounts of uptime. It's a question of the amount of uptime of a high volume, high traffic machine that's actually doing things 24/7. I can run a DOS machine for months on end without a crash so long as I don't touch it. This doesn't make DOS my OS of choice.
"Seems to me you should open your mind, read news and listen other people. Than you will be surprised that for year Linux has no worse uptime than BSD."
Unfortunately, I do listen to people. What I hear is the Linux fanboy community well overshouting the respectable Linux community. The problem isn't with Linux itself, just the crowd it tends to attract. Much of the Linux community is made up of people who would use an abacus if it meant they could bash M$. That's not to say that Linux isn't any good or that it doesn't have a large number of very mature, intelligent users. My comment was in direct response to a post from someone of the fanboy mentality.
"My linux workstations (!) are not rebooting for months. Even when load/unload all time various modules responsible for hot-plug devices."
And I have a pair of IBM Netfinity servers running 2k server that haven't been rebooted since last summer. So what?
"I wonder where do BSD people get all those stories of the need to reboot Linux bi-weekly? Perhaps they mistake Linux with Windows, am I right?"
No, it's actually due to the fact that much of the Linux fanboy mentality is all about having the absolute latest features available, even if they don't work worth a damn. Hence all the recompiling and rebooting. Again, my comment was directed towards the fanboys, not the respectable users and not Linux itself.
"Last time I remember any memory or hardware related crashy problems of Linux kernel that was when I've been playing with 0.95 kernel."
With sufficient hardware issues, any OS will crash. The operating system depends on the accuracy of the math that the $1000 calculator is doing.
Once again, I was attacking the fanboy mentality that has striken much of the Linux community like a sort of plague. Linux's success depends in no small part on the elimination of the over-enthusiastic ranting of the immature fanboy crowd whose illogical and often hysterical ravings overshadow the many good things Linux has to offer. The Linux credibility issue is something only the Linux community itself can solve.
"When someone starts investing money into a venture, that is a pretty sound indication that things have moved beyond the just curious stage."
You assume he went overseas to meet with Al Qaeda operatives. You assume he met with Al Qaeda operatives. You assume he looked up information on dirty bombs.
Even the US government hasn't publicly gone so far as to claim those assumptions. What they have done is said that he travelled oversease. The reason? Who knows; he went to a lot of places, many of them sacred Islamic holy places. Islam != terrorism. Travel is not illegal so far as I know. Nor is chatting with friends, even if they're accused of crimes. Otherwise, all of Tim McVeigh's friends and family would be in a navy brig as we speak. Nor is it illegal to look up information that is publicly available. Otherwise, myself and 200 million other Americans would be in a navy brig right now.
If they truly had evidence against this man, he would be in a courtroom, not a brig. He sits incommunicado because the administration knows it has insufficient evidence to convict him in any court; even a military tribunal.
You're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Those Americans who are too lazy or complacent to understand the concept ignore it. A presumption of guilt turns a judicial system into a rubber stamp sham. God help us if we ever reach that point.
"Oh, BTW, this is the same Ashcroft that lost an election to a dead man and Bush appointed."
Indeed, he was appointed at the behest of the ACU (American Conservative Union), which later issued a statement following the implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act (since when is it patriotic to shred the US Constitution?) stating that many of their constituents regretted its support for his appointment. Aside from that, all reports indicate that even the rest of the Bush Administration doesn't like Ashcroft. A part of me thinks that he might not be part of the package if Bush wins re-election.
Oddly enough though, John Ashcroft has managed to unite the left and the right. Groups such as the ACLU and the ACU (at completely different ends of the political spectrum) are actually issuing joint press releases stating their belief that he is the single greatest threat to American liberty right now.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, I really hate to bring myself down to such a petty and immature level, but in this case, I'll make an exception. Mozilla is a perfectly good, respected open source solutions provider. As such, its products lend a certain amount of credibility to open source in general (hey Linux people, this means you). Credibility is the key to widescale adoption within large companies and the like. You can have the best products on Earth, but if your credibility is zilch, no major business will touch it. In the spirit of showing others that this type of bahavior yields more pain than rewards, and without further adu:
I say let the fuckers have it. Hit these assholes first, then these pricks. Fill their message boards, newsletters, email boxes, and everything else you can find that'll take your submission with the following message:
"DoSing Open Source is not fun * "
Paste it into anything that'll let you 3, 4, 5 times a day. Calling Linux fanboys - this is your chance to troll while actually doing something good for a change. Hit them as often as you possibly can (or make (and post) a script to do it automatically all day long) and continue doing it until you see the story posted on slashdot saying that BOTH of them have apologized and will never do it again.
Don't post a reply if you're going ahead with it, just do it. If they're allowed to do this and get away with it, it will legitimize it in a way we never want to see. Unfortunatly, I see no alternative to dealing with this issue other than giving these people a taste of their own medicine.
"If it makes me less of an American for believing in free speech, then so be it."
Free speech does not mean there are no consequences to what you say. For instance, I have the right to call my boss an arrogant ass to his face (he's actually a great guy, but humor me), but I best expect to be fired for doing so. If Theo wanted to exercise his right to free speech without any consquences, he ought to have exercised his right to do so anonymously. No one's saying he didn't have a right to say what he said, but DARPA has every right to not give free money away to whomever they please for whatever reason, including his publicly expressed views. Not to say that's why they pulled the funding, but so what if they did? Is any person/project entitled to a government grant? Absolutely not; although as arrogant as Theo is, he probably believes his money was taken away from him. It wasn't. A grant was pulled.
"I would be very grateful if anyone can find a way to help us."
:/
Theo not his usual "I am God" self... Amazing. Perhaps it was part of a larger DARPA project to see if Theo could be brought down from his unimaginably high horse?
Hmm, where did I put my tin foil hat?
"There are less than 10^75 particles in the known universe. So, unfortunately that court document wouldn't be just ten pages of 0's, it would be bigger than anything constructable in the known universe."
;)
Ahh, but you're neglecting dark matter; now start writing up my lawsuit!
"(I guess I'm a new resident FreeBSD fanboy - so be it)"
I'm afraid not, as you have done nothing to earn the title. Until you can come up with broad, unsubstantiated or entirely subjective claims for why FreeBSD is the best OS in history (and probably the future too), you can't possibly equal the awesome illogicality of a true Linux fanboy.
Aside from that, various silly statements (such as Fr33B5D r0x0rz d00dz!!!) must be made in a timely fashion to counter intelligent and thoughtout analysis of its shortcomings.
Please try to work on that, mmkay?
As anyone who studies political science will tell you, a democracy only works well when you have an educated public. Those who visit a library are obviously seeking knowledge, and so any attempt by the staff of said library to provide them with knowledge should be applauded.
This, however, goes above and beyond simply providing their patrons with knowledge. This is an example of a group of people with a very subtle power using that power to advance the principles of freedom and democracy. By actively protecting the right to privacy of their patrons and seeking to educate them about laws that have a very real and chilling effect on their lives, they truly are making this country greater by the day.
You won't see major media protesting this law; only showing how great it is that our wonderful government is protecting us so that we may feel warm and fuzzy all over. To see a group of people standing up in defense of the rights of citizens at the risk of being denied their own rights is both comforting and encouraging.
If any of you notices a librarian tearing up a checkout card, handing out fliers or putting up posters on this subject, thank them; they deserve that much if not more. They're risking their safety and freedom to try and protect your's.
You honestly believe we could eliminate every single bacteria in the world? To answer yes would show that you have a very limited understanding of biology and bacteria in general. Aside from that, when you look at the astroid impacts of this planet's history, remember that they would have caused something very similar to nuclear winter. Would nuclear winter wipe out all humans on this planet? More than likely, it would eliminate virtually every single higher life form. Would nuclear winter eliminate other life forms, such as bacteria? Hardly; there any many types of bacteria which would thrive in such an environment, and many others which would lay dormant for however many millions of years it took for the ecosystem to begin to reform.
You forget that life on this planet started in conditions that were staggeringly uninhabitable by today's standards. We could launch every single nuclear missile and release every chemical and biological weapon ever created and we'd still end up with tons of organisms surviving. Within a few million years, you'd never know humans existed.
"we could seriously fuck up the ecosystem beyond all hope of repair if we're not careful'"
That's just arrogant. Could we fuck it up to the point that humans could survive in it? Yes. But nature doesn't revolve around man - man's existence "revolves" around the center of the galactic toilet bowl, hoping nature doesn't decide to flush.
We've been here for a fraction of the Earth's history, and we've been able to accurately monitor changes in the world's atmosphere and temperature for a fraction of the time we've been here. My point? We're in absolutely no position to say what's "normal" or not "normal" in terms of temperature and weather changes. Had we been monitoring the weather for the last 100 million years, I might think otherwise. But we haven't. We've been taking accurate measurements for less than 100 years and some people are arrogant enough to assume that they're "experts" in worldwide climatic changes.
The first poster was right - we're coming off an ice age. How does an ice age end? Perhaps - global warming? Did we cause the end to the last ice age? I think not - yet if we were around at the end of the last ice age in any type of scientific fashion, there would be the same people ranting and raving about "oh my God, the ice that's been here for thousands of years is melting! Look what humans are doing to the Earth!".
My point is that we really need to take a step back. Are there some things we're doing terribly wrong? Sure; the toxic waste, giant landfills, annihilation of the rain forest, etc are all really bad things. But it's not going to affect the Earth. Why? We're nowhere near as big or as important as we think we are. Might we effect a slight change in Earth's climate and its ecosystem for a small period of time? Sure, but what we tend to forget is that Earth will be around a long time after we're gone. Those talking about how we're "destroying the planet" are so self-important and arrogant that they fail to realize just how small they're thinking. If it set fire to a forest, I've destroyed a forest. But guess what - when I'm dead and gone, that forest will grow back. Stop thinking in terms of 10 years or 100 years - nature doesn't think like that. Nature works in periods of millions of years. Our existence on this planet is a microsecond in nature's time. The most destructive thing we could possibly do - nuclear war - would be completely undone in a few million years. Don't believe me? Look at the massive astroid impacts this planet has endured. The dinosaurs were annihilated in a massive, global event - whatever that event might have been. Yet somehow, the Earth survived and bred new life. Amazing!
It's hardly amazing; it's just the way nature works. We're much smaller and less important than our religions have made us out to be. To those who march on constantly in their little "save the planet" campaigns, I really think you ought to change your cause to "save the humans". Why? Because if we damage the ecosystem that spawned us enough that we're unable to adapt, we'll be gone. We couldn't destroy the planet if we tried; but we can easily put an end to the silly bunch of creatures called "humans" - something nature will do when we've become too inconvenient.
I find myself wondering if any of the machines involved in Echelon are running Seti or Distributed.net.
" Doesn't the side of a Linux Box state the Minimum IQ requirements alongside the CPU and memory requirements?"
Sure, because insulting potential users by calling them stupid whenever they have a problem is the quickest way to build up a strong user base.
"All kidding aside, she essentially tried installing it on some crap hardware without having an either net access to search the newsgroups for solutions or having the geek that gave her the distros on hand."
And you call Redmond's software junk? I can throw Windows 98 on the hardware you call "crap" and it works fine. Let me ask you this: if she had tried windows 98 and it had worked flawlessly, could you really say that Linux was the superior solution? Personally, if one thing works and another doesn't, I'm going with what works; even if it is M$. Secondly, why should she have to search through newsgroups and ask for outside help for something as simple as an OS installation? Would she have had to search through newsgroups to install Win98? Let me give you a hint: no.
"Another thing I would note is that the best technical writers are essentilly retarded monkeys. Nothing personal, but the best tech writers and testers are retarded monkeys."
There's that Linux fanboy mentality showing once again. You're the worst enemy Linux could ever have. Why? Because no one will believe an accusation from a liar (M$), but people will believe a confession from anyone. As a user of Linux, your attitude that it's just the greatest thing on Earth and anyone who has a problem using it is a "retarded monkey" goes to show that Linux and its supporting community is comprised of simple-minded, immature children. Your ranting and raving does absolutely nothing to help Linux whatsoever. On the contrary, your arrogant and dismissive attitude belies the true nature of Linux and the vast majority of its users and contributors. But since your voice is the loudest and most noticable, to whom will people listen?
With every fanboyesque post, a part of Linux's potential is killed. The single greatest threat to Linux is not Microsoft; it is a small group of very loud, very vocal fanboys who shout down the intelligent and helpful majority. If you truly want to see Linux succeed, you need to re-examine your attitude towards discussion of its strengths and weaknesses. This writer wasn't just someone commenting on Linux; she was a potential user. Linux has lost this potential user for a number of reasons. How many more potential users has Linux lost because of the very same issues she encountered? If people really want to see Linux make it big and take down Redmond, they need to talk to people like this writer and find out what can be changed to win over her, and those like her. It's the regular users who feed M$'s pocketbook, and it's the regular users the Linux community should be working to get.
" Has Halliburton been assigned this contract yet?"
Na, I hear some Iraqi contractor got it.
"Enter ["Blind Thrust"] comment here.
I mean...really...who thought that up?"
People like us.
"Slashdot
News for nerds, stuff that matters."
" I'd be tempted to find a country without extradition treaties. Preferably a friendly, inexpensive country with a tropical climate and lots of nude beaches."
With $97 Trillion, they would buy the country you moved to and pass a new law stating that you, personally, are to be executed.
"http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/large.html"
I'm sorry, but I can't follow any link which has the words "large" and "unit" in the same URL.
I'd countersue for $1Googolplex for "pain and suffering."
Or maybe I just want to see a court document with ten pages of 0's on it.
If nothing else, it would highlight the ridiculousness of the entire affair when the student charged that $150,000 of pain and suffering was owed for every nanosecond that the case lasted.
1. Find student with mp3s.
2. Sue student for $97 Billion
3. PROFIT!!!
Holy shit, it works!
" And we thought the prices of CDs were high before. If this is any indication of where things are going I doubt I'll even be able to afford a single cd."
You don't understand; if they can sell one CD at this price, they can fund their operations for the next 120,000 years!
" "RIAA starts funding US military actions in countries with highest piracy rates"... you can buy many missiles with $97.8 trillion."
Bush will personally sell you a Minuteman II nuclear missile along with the silo for $97.8 trillion.
Perhaps this is the RIAA's motive. "If lawsuits and jail are not an effective deterent, perhaps we need a nuclear deterent to file sharing!"
"That risk assessment is not one of your strengths."
You tell me: one attacked my country overtly while the other erodes rights and freedoms surreptitiously, bypassing both the congress and the courts, and locks up American citizens indefinitely without charges.
At least bin Laden declares that he wants to destroy America before he acts; Ashcroft just does it.
"Alan Greenspan is asking some tough questions about the correct balance between rewarding innovators and inhibiting follow-on innovators."
Are they tough questions because they're difficult to answer? Or are they tough questions because no one understands what the fuck he's talking about?
Being a fan of C-SPAN, I suspect it's the latter.
"In the end it may turn out that the government did lie, I hope not, but I am not foolish enough to believe that the government is always honest. I need look no further than Ruby Ridge or Waco to see glaring examples of government duplicity."
Hence my ranting and raving about Padilla's right to a trial in which evidence obtained can be examined, and charges of crimes may be put to the test. If he's guilty, lock him up; if he's innocent, set him free; but locking him up with no trial whatsoever shows, to me, a complete and utter lack of confidence in the case against him.
In other words: he needs a trial. Agreed?
"And you feel very proud of it, right?"
:)
Not really; I hardly ever think about the FreeBSD servers here. That's my point.
"All last year you've been thinking that BSD is the only (at least from free ones) OS that has such a big uptime."
Not at all, any machine running any OS can have high amounts of uptime. It's a question of the amount of uptime of a high volume, high traffic machine that's actually doing things 24/7. I can run a DOS machine for months on end without a crash so long as I don't touch it. This doesn't make DOS my OS of choice.
"Seems to me you should open your mind, read news and listen other people. Than you will be surprised that for year Linux has no worse uptime than BSD."
Unfortunately, I do listen to people. What I hear is the Linux fanboy community well overshouting the respectable Linux community. The problem isn't with Linux itself, just the crowd it tends to attract. Much of the Linux community is made up of people who would use an abacus if it meant they could bash M$. That's not to say that Linux isn't any good or that it doesn't have a large number of very mature, intelligent users. My comment was in direct response to a post from someone of the fanboy mentality.
"My linux workstations (!) are not rebooting for months. Even when load/unload all time various modules responsible for hot-plug devices."
And I have a pair of IBM Netfinity servers running 2k server that haven't been rebooted since last summer. So what?
"I wonder where do BSD people get all those stories of the need to reboot Linux bi-weekly? Perhaps they mistake Linux with Windows, am I right?"
No, it's actually due to the fact that much of the Linux fanboy mentality is all about having the absolute latest features available, even if they don't work worth a damn. Hence all the recompiling and rebooting. Again, my comment was directed towards the fanboys, not the respectable users and not Linux itself.
"Last time I remember any memory or hardware related crashy problems of Linux kernel that was when I've been playing with 0.95 kernel."
With sufficient hardware issues, any OS will crash. The operating system depends on the accuracy of the math that the $1000 calculator is doing.
Once again, I was attacking the fanboy mentality that has striken much of the Linux community like a sort of plague. Linux's success depends in no small part on the elimination of the over-enthusiastic ranting of the immature fanboy crowd whose illogical and often hysterical ravings overshadow the many good things Linux has to offer. The Linux credibility issue is something only the Linux community itself can solve.
Besides, it was a joke, so chill out
"When someone starts investing money into a venture, that is a pretty sound indication that things have moved beyond the just curious stage."
You assume he went overseas to meet with Al Qaeda operatives.
You assume he met with Al Qaeda operatives.
You assume he looked up information on dirty bombs.
Even the US government hasn't publicly gone so far as to claim those assumptions. What they have done is said that he travelled oversease. The reason? Who knows; he went to a lot of places, many of them sacred Islamic holy places. Islam != terrorism. Travel is not illegal so far as I know. Nor is chatting with friends, even if they're accused of crimes. Otherwise, all of Tim McVeigh's friends and family would be in a navy brig as we speak. Nor is it illegal to look up information that is publicly available. Otherwise, myself and 200 million other Americans would be in a navy brig right now.
If they truly had evidence against this man, he would be in a courtroom, not a brig. He sits incommunicado because the administration knows it has insufficient evidence to convict him in any court; even a military tribunal.
Let me rephrase:
You're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Those Americans who are too lazy or complacent to understand the concept ignore it. A presumption of guilt turns a judicial system into a rubber stamp sham. God help us if we ever reach that point.
"Oh, BTW, this is the same Ashcroft that lost an election to a dead man and Bush appointed."
Indeed, he was appointed at the behest of the ACU (American Conservative Union), which later issued a statement following the implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act (since when is it patriotic to shred the US Constitution?) stating that many of their constituents regretted its support for his appointment. Aside from that, all reports indicate that even the rest of the Bush Administration doesn't like Ashcroft. A part of me thinks that he might not be part of the package if Bush wins re-election.
Oddly enough though, John Ashcroft has managed to unite the left and the right. Groups such as the ACLU and the ACU (at completely different ends of the political spectrum) are actually issuing joint press releases stating their belief that he is the single greatest threat to American liberty right now.