"P.S. Piracy has a net positive effect on economy."
I'm pretty much done with my degree in economics, so could you enlighten me with some proof on how that statement is true? Because I've sure never seen any indication that it is.
The point is, though, is that he's the guy who really showed one of the fundamental issues of computer security: secure software is not enough. _People_ need to be security-concious as well.
It's still a lesson people ignore to this day, so I don't think it's much of a stretch to claim him as a pioneer.
This is OT, and I know it, but information never hurt anyone, even if it's a bit out of place.
When top shows Gaim et al using 40+ meg of RAM, it's including shared libraries with it, too. You're also kind of overblowing your numbers: top is telling me that GAIM is only using 4mb of non-shared RAM (14mb including shared), which I don't think is exorbitant. Mozilla on the front page of CNN.com uses 32-19=13 meg of RAM. Tweak your caching if you find that it's using > 50mb, I suppose.
In short, top is slightly misleading.
However, it's generally acknowledged that gcc creates slightly more bloated executables than Visual C++ does, if that's what you were getting at.
It's not really NSA's Linux distribution (as the parent was implying), which is a fairly standard mistake here on/.. SELinux is basically a kernel and some utils with super-hardened security measures in them. It's not a distribution all by itself.
There are various projects that are attempting to integrate this work. The only really mainstream distro (ie, not a variant of some other distribution like "hardened Gentoo" (or whatever it's called) is) that has SELinux in it is Fedora Core 2, at least that I'm aware of.
SELinux is not a silver bullet, either. A misconfigured system is still vulnerable, for instance, and there is quite a bit of configuration to be done to get SELinux working properly.
However, when it _is_ going, it's pretty damned amazing. I've seen people put up a server, give the root password, and then beg people to attack. Nothing gets through.
Because: 1. There's nothing illegal or wrong about giving frequent and grand about public statements, at least here in the US of A, where we have the right known as "free speech". 2. SCO is _expected_ to talk smack about their competition. Did you think they were just going to politely assault one of the biggest computer firms out there? No way. They've got to go out with guns blazing if they're going to attract investors.
Let's face it: SCO, so far, has done nothing illegal. They've made total bastards out of themselves, sure, but there's nothing illegal about that in this country.
I am the current president of the University of Maryland Linux Users Group (UMLUG). One of the few intelligent things I've managed to do during my service is to set a firm policy that we _do not_ get involved in politics. Our members are all interested Linux (and, regrettably, BSD) users who have a wide variety of political opinions. It is unfair for the LUG to try to shoehorn them into some political categorization, and it only serves to alienate people.
As far as I am concerned, this guy is doing nothing more than grandstanding, and abusing his (former) position to get some anti-war press time in. I don't know about him, but I use _my_ position to advance the standing of Linux at my school.
The way I see it, this guy started LULA as yet another hippy-liberal organization, and got surprised when its newer membership wasn't jumping onboard with his political beliefs.
That's certainly a valid point. But, then again, you're taking a rather extreme example. My comments were more aimed towards spiritual issues (say, not keeping the Sabbath) than you committing wholesale murder.
Let me clarify myself, then: with sincere repentance, G-d will forgive you. But there's no responsibility on the rest of humanity to automatically forgive and forget horrible crimes against them - it's up to them. You've got to seek their forgiveness.
On Yom Kippur, for instance, we make a big deal of this - that when you sin against G-d, that's something Yom Kippur atones for. But against a fellow human - you've got to seek their forgiveness. Even G-d Himself will not let you off the hook for that.
Fortunately (unfortunately, perhaps), most people who carry out war atrocities and genocides aren't really interested in repentance and forgiveness at all, so your issue is more theoretical than practical.
Re-reading my post, though, perhaps I should have been more clear. Does this help any?
That's some good news, considering the godawful amount of statistics and investment courses I've forced upon myself in an attempt to be have some sort of desirable skill set.
It was quite an epiphany to realize that the only crap that matters is math and finance... I remember going into econ thinking I was gonna learn how people think - now, it's more like "make the optimal portfolio".
As others have said, cost of living does make a large difference in determining how appropriate a salary is. Benefits, too - free health coverage is worth quite a bit. We also don't know your skill set, or your GPA, or your work experience, or whatever.
However, I guess I'd just caution not to get to too greedy. $45k with benefits is honestly pretty decent out of college. Is it _the maximum_ you could get? Probably not. Is it a pretty decent living, especially for a single guy? You bet. No one's stopping you from finding another job in a year or two, either, or asking for a raise.
Then again, I've more or less given up on CS as a career - the one thing I discovered from majoring in it is that _I don't enjoy programming all day_. The irony, eh? Surprisingly, I enjoy doing GUI work, and doing algorithms. Just not being a code monkey (although I am decent at it). Hence, I double-majored in Econ, too - CS might have ruined my GPA, but, hot damn, not too many new economists who can program as well as I do.
You know, 2 parties aren't good for expressing your exact political opinion, but the likelihood of either of them going too far from center as the party line is pretty low, since they'd only lose people. I'll take centrist, inclusive parties that only "pretty much" represent the majority of political views, rather than spawning a hundred extremist parties. That is to say, moderate politics tends to be the dominant mode of government, rather than the exception.
It's like the gas station paradox of economics - the best place to put your gas station is dead center in the middle of town. And if you're starting a new one, it's still best to put it dead center in the middle of town, or as close as possible to it.
There's also something to be said for not having your government fall apart every time a coalition has divisive issues to deal with. The Israelis, for instance, have this problem. Evacuate the settlements? Well, that's a great way to alienate UTJ and Likud, and if they happened to be part of the ruling coalition, well, the Israeli government falls apart until they can put a new coalition back together.
I'm not trying to say that I think two parties is better or worse than 2+ parties - only that I think there are some advantages to the two party system that people don't talk about.
I do agree with your sentiment that political participation in this country doesn't receive as much cultural emphasis as it should, though.
It is realistically impossible for most people to _perfectly_ keep Jewish law. There's a lot of reasons for this. It is _not_ because the laws themselves are impossible to keep. It's because they don't know them well enough, or because they're not religiously at that point.
Do your past transgressions work against you if you decide to make a new start of things? No, they do not. Jews believe in the idea of repentance, and the idea that sincere ignorance is something that's not going to be punished (however, _keeping yourself ignorant_ is not a valid loophole). It's simply unfair to punish someone for doing something they had no idea was wrong. This isn't "my view of things", either. This is Judaism's view, no matter how far to the right or left you go. Sincere repentance and trying to be better for the future is what counts.
The state of "I perfectly keep all the laws" is an end point, not a state that you're expected to be in right this moment. In Judaism, it's the journey to that end point which is what this life's about.
Sure, but they _are_ publicized. Not well, I agree, but it's out there.
Also, the idea of getting rewarded for doing no work is antiethical to Jewish thought. I find the idea that you could go to heaven after having done jack nothing in this life to be inane. A point of perspective, I admit, but to me, it's just like a job - you work down here, get rewarded up there. I can't believe you find it that preposterous of an idea.
-Erwos
Re:Monotheism
on
SimChurch
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I just want to hit on this because I think you misunderstand _why_ Jews don't try to convert everyone. I am a pretty well educated Orthodox Jew, so I think I can explain.
This isn't about "keeping the truth from everyone". That's silly. Ask a Jew about his religion, he'll tell you everything you want to know (to the limit of their own knowledge). It's funny, but Judaism the religion has no "secrets only clergy may know". Even kaballah was not really secret so much as reserved for people who had a deep understanding of Jewish knowledge already - the thought was that you'd go crazy if you didn't understand it properly. Nowadays, of course, any idiot can go buy a copy of the Zohar (in English, too!). Hardly secret knowledge!
Anyways, back on topic. Jews have no desire to convert gentiles because there's no need whatsoever. If they (the gentile) observe the seven Noachide laws (which, I may add, are not exactly hard to keep), they go to heaven. It's a pretty damned good deal, considering "real Jews" have to keep 613 commandments. A bit more reward for that, but heaven is heaven, and it's better than nothing.
Additionally, in a historical context, _every forced conversion_ of a population (it happened twice, IIRC, Samaritans and I think some population in northern Israel/Lebanon) was a big huge mistake, and it is taught that way in even the most right-wing of yeshivas. Therefore, you're never going to see any popular groundswell of support for forced conversion in Jewish religion. The "tradition" is, thankfully, not there, and is actively reviled.
So, interpret not as "hiding", but rather as "what's the point of converting?" That's why you're supposed to turn away someone who wants to convert 3 times before trying to help them. It's out of their best interests.
I suppose the inevitable question then becomes, why would anyone ever _really_ convert to Judaism? I honestly don't have an answer. I think it's emotional and spiritual attachment to the Jewish people. That's the best I can give.
A final addendum: Jews don't believe you go to hell for not being Jewish and not keeping the seven noachide laws. An interesting contrast to Christianity, I think.
I like TADS a lot better than Inform, at least if I'm going to write some IF. I don't particularly love C, which may also be revealing. TADS is relatively easy to program in, has good documentation, and best of all, is still being actively maintained and extended.
The parent was completely right in his sentiment, though, that you're a fool to try to write your own parser if all you want to do is make your own bit of IF. Writing a parser is a decidedly non-trivial exercise. Best to just use one
Civil disobedience works by _turning public opinion_ by publicly disobeying an unjust law. You sitting in your underwear in your room while downloading music and porn off Kazaa is not making any sort of statement.
"However, the end user would be committing a crime when he creates the illegal derivate."
You're wrong. The GPL only puts restrictions on distribution, not usage. _You yourself_ can do whatever the hell you want with GPL'd code, so long as you don't distribute the code or binaries (ie, keep them to yourself).
Civil disobedience has also typically involved _going to jail_ and publicizing your activities. I don't know of any filesharers who write to the RIAA and ask for the association to come arrest them.
In case you didn't realize it, the movie industry generates a _lot_ of jobs. How would you feel if your Congressperson said "on principle, I support you losing your job"?
I mean, the hypocrisy on/. is stunning. The MPAA protects their livelihood with some legislation, and all hell breaks loose, yet there's some outsourcing, and suddenly every IT geek on here is calling for a total ban on it. Not the same issue, but I really believe there's some amount of relevance in the comparison.
Red Hat does, actually. Everything they write is GPL'd, and they do not include non-free software with their distribution (IIRC, last thing they did that was problematic was Netscape, and that's been gone for years). In fact, one could argue that the inclusion of non-free software in the apt repositories for Debian means that Red Hat / Fedora is actually MORE free than Debian. I don't think that's true, but it's something to consider.
I think Mandrake also GPLs everything, for that matter. SuSE recently GPL'd YaST, too, so actually, they might be totally free, too.
Quick question: which continent were the world wars fought on?
And, as we all know, the Balkans region never has problems. None at all!
The fact that the Europeans managed to keep a semi-decent record of peace for 50 years and so they're now the world's "peace-mongers" is so laughable it's sad.
The US invades Iraq and suddenly, they're the worst country ever. What a joke. We'd have to invade Iraq a few _thousand_ more times to come anywhere near the kind of death toll that European idiots inflicted on everyone during the first half of this century.
Spare us the high horse, anti-American crap. Europeans have far more blood on their hands than the US could attain in one thousand years at this rate. The fact that they've gone 50 fucking years without having a world war is not exactly the most impressive fact ever.
Please google for "the Paradox of Thrift", because you obviously aren't aware of it.
This isn't about "Bush's rhetoric". This is about Keynes' theory, and I believe him one hell of a lot more than I believe some random idiot on/.. In fact, Keynes believed in taxing the rich _more_ so as to reduce their savings. Does that sound in line with GWB at all?
There needs to be some sort of disclaimer on/., along the lines of "90% of the people commenting have no clue whatsoever about the topic at hand".
Now, to be fair, the paradox of thrift is not a perfect theory. But, frankly, I doubt you were trying to enlighten us at all with that ignorant post.
We use this all the time at my University. Absolutely fantastic bit of software, and it can give you another decently-sized cluster "for free" at night as long as you tell everyone to leave their computers on.
-Erwos
Re:Jumping the Shark
on
Red Hat Recap
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
What you're neglecting to mention is the fact that Novell is also moving to aggressively lock people into Netware. Have you ever talked with any of their sales reps?
The last time they came to my university (around 3 weeks ago or so), it was a _debacle_. They said they didn't feel any particular need to GPL everything. They said they weren't going to support anything but SuSE for Netware. They lied to us directly when we asked whether Netware was going to move entirely to a Linux kernel ("we'll do both forever!" Right.). They talked about how great their pricing scheme was, but when further queried, they _didn't have one ready_. We could not have bought from them even if we wanted to!
Compare this to the Red Hat rep, who told us exactly what we wanted to hear, and then offered us amazing terms for licensing. Novell may or may not be doing a good job on the corporate side, but they've effectively locked themselves out of the rather lucrative educational market, unless they magically turn comptent real fast.
In other words, Novell just bought SuSE and Ximian. Give them some time to make idiot mistakes in public, and I promise you'll see them. Novell's management is not exactly the greatest ever.
I also think that people don't understand what exactly the benefits of RHN are _besides_ the updates. That's only part of it. It's absolutely excellent to be able to remotely schedule individual updates to individual machines, as well as remotely install packages without touching the command line. Red Hat _is_ genuinely easier to administrate than pretty much every other distribution I've seen - I think RH just does a poor job of marketing that.
Making a mistake is not the same thing as jumping the shark. If Red Hat starts bleeding subscribers (which, I should note, they have NOT done), we can talk about their situation in more dire terms. But Novell buying SuSE does not suddenly make them into an unstoppable juggernaut.
Slashdot Mirror
"P.S. Piracy has a net positive effect on economy."
I'm pretty much done with my degree in economics, so could you enlighten me with some proof on how that statement is true? Because I've sure never seen any indication that it is.
-Erwos
The point is, though, is that he's the guy who really showed one of the fundamental issues of computer security: secure software is not enough. _People_ need to be security-concious as well.
It's still a lesson people ignore to this day, so I don't think it's much of a stretch to claim him as a pioneer.
-Erwos
This is OT, and I know it, but information never hurt anyone, even if it's a bit out of place.
When top shows Gaim et al using 40+ meg of RAM, it's including shared libraries with it, too. You're also kind of overblowing your numbers: top is telling me that GAIM is only using 4mb of non-shared RAM (14mb including shared), which I don't think is exorbitant. Mozilla on the front page of CNN.com uses 32-19=13 meg of RAM. Tweak your caching if you find that it's using > 50mb, I suppose.
In short, top is slightly misleading.
However, it's generally acknowledged that gcc creates slightly more bloated executables than Visual C++ does, if that's what you were getting at.
-Erwos
It's not really NSA's Linux distribution (as the parent was implying), which is a fairly standard mistake here on /.. SELinux is basically a kernel and some utils with super-hardened security measures in them. It's not a distribution all by itself.
There are various projects that are attempting to integrate this work. The only really mainstream distro (ie, not a variant of some other distribution like "hardened Gentoo" (or whatever it's called) is) that has SELinux in it is Fedora Core 2, at least that I'm aware of.
SELinux is not a silver bullet, either. A misconfigured system is still vulnerable, for instance, and there is quite a bit of configuration to be done to get SELinux working properly.
However, when it _is_ going, it's pretty damned amazing. I've seen people put up a server, give the root password, and then beg people to attack. Nothing gets through.
-Erwos
Because:
1. There's nothing illegal or wrong about giving frequent and grand about public statements, at least here in the US of A, where we have the right known as "free speech".
2. SCO is _expected_ to talk smack about their competition. Did you think they were just going to politely assault one of the biggest computer firms out there? No way. They've got to go out with guns blazing if they're going to attract investors.
Let's face it: SCO, so far, has done nothing illegal. They've made total bastards out of themselves, sure, but there's nothing illegal about that in this country.
-Erwos
Exactly.
I am the current president of the University of Maryland Linux Users Group (UMLUG). One of the few intelligent things I've managed to do during my service is to set a firm policy that we _do not_ get involved in politics. Our members are all interested Linux (and, regrettably, BSD) users who have a wide variety of political opinions. It is unfair for the LUG to try to shoehorn them into some political categorization, and it only serves to alienate people.
As far as I am concerned, this guy is doing nothing more than grandstanding, and abusing his (former) position to get some anti-war press time in. I don't know about him, but I use _my_ position to advance the standing of Linux at my school.
The way I see it, this guy started LULA as yet another hippy-liberal organization, and got surprised when its newer membership wasn't jumping onboard with his political beliefs.
-Erwos
That's certainly a valid point. But, then again, you're taking a rather extreme example. My comments were more aimed towards spiritual issues (say, not keeping the Sabbath) than you committing wholesale murder.
Let me clarify myself, then: with sincere repentance, G-d will forgive you. But there's no responsibility on the rest of humanity to automatically forgive and forget horrible crimes against them - it's up to them. You've got to seek their forgiveness.
On Yom Kippur, for instance, we make a big deal of this - that when you sin against G-d, that's something Yom Kippur atones for. But against a fellow human - you've got to seek their forgiveness. Even G-d Himself will not let you off the hook for that.
Fortunately (unfortunately, perhaps), most people who carry out war atrocities and genocides aren't really interested in repentance and forgiveness at all, so your issue is more theoretical than practical.
Re-reading my post, though, perhaps I should have been more clear. Does this help any?
-Erwos
That's some good news, considering the godawful amount of statistics and investment courses I've forced upon myself in an attempt to be have some sort of desirable skill set.
It was quite an epiphany to realize that the only crap that matters is math and finance... I remember going into econ thinking I was gonna learn how people think - now, it's more like "make the optimal portfolio".
-Erwos
As others have said, cost of living does make a large difference in determining how appropriate a salary is. Benefits, too - free health coverage is worth quite a bit. We also don't know your skill set, or your GPA, or your work experience, or whatever.
However, I guess I'd just caution not to get to too greedy. $45k with benefits is honestly pretty decent out of college. Is it _the maximum_ you could get? Probably not. Is it a pretty decent living, especially for a single guy? You bet. No one's stopping you from finding another job in a year or two, either, or asking for a raise.
Then again, I've more or less given up on CS as a career - the one thing I discovered from majoring in it is that _I don't enjoy programming all day_. The irony, eh? Surprisingly, I enjoy doing GUI work, and doing algorithms. Just not being a code monkey (although I am decent at it). Hence, I double-majored in Econ, too - CS might have ruined my GPA, but, hot damn, not too many new economists who can program as well as I do.
-Erwos
You know, 2 parties aren't good for expressing your exact political opinion, but the likelihood of either of them going too far from center as the party line is pretty low, since they'd only lose people. I'll take centrist, inclusive parties that only "pretty much" represent the majority of political views, rather than spawning a hundred extremist parties. That is to say, moderate politics tends to be the dominant mode of government, rather than the exception.
It's like the gas station paradox of economics - the best place to put your gas station is dead center in the middle of town. And if you're starting a new one, it's still best to put it dead center in the middle of town, or as close as possible to it.
There's also something to be said for not having your government fall apart every time a coalition has divisive issues to deal with. The Israelis, for instance, have this problem. Evacuate the settlements? Well, that's a great way to alienate UTJ and Likud, and if they happened to be part of the ruling coalition, well, the Israeli government falls apart until they can put a new coalition back together.
I'm not trying to say that I think two parties is better or worse than 2+ parties - only that I think there are some advantages to the two party system that people don't talk about.
I do agree with your sentiment that political participation in this country doesn't receive as much cultural emphasis as it should, though.
-Erwos
It is realistically impossible for most people to _perfectly_ keep Jewish law. There's a lot of reasons for this. It is _not_ because the laws themselves are impossible to keep. It's because they don't know them well enough, or because they're not religiously at that point.
Do your past transgressions work against you if you decide to make a new start of things? No, they do not. Jews believe in the idea of repentance, and the idea that sincere ignorance is something that's not going to be punished (however, _keeping yourself ignorant_ is not a valid loophole). It's simply unfair to punish someone for doing something they had no idea was wrong. This isn't "my view of things", either. This is Judaism's view, no matter how far to the right or left you go. Sincere repentance and trying to be better for the future is what counts.
The state of "I perfectly keep all the laws" is an end point, not a state that you're expected to be in right this moment. In Judaism, it's the journey to that end point which is what this life's about.
-Erwos
Sure, but they _are_ publicized. Not well, I agree, but it's out there.
Also, the idea of getting rewarded for doing no work is antiethical to Jewish thought. I find the idea that you could go to heaven after having done jack nothing in this life to be inane. A point of perspective, I admit, but to me, it's just like a job - you work down here, get rewarded up there. I can't believe you find it that preposterous of an idea.
-Erwos
I just want to hit on this because I think you misunderstand _why_ Jews don't try to convert everyone. I am a pretty well educated Orthodox Jew, so I think I can explain.
This isn't about "keeping the truth from everyone". That's silly. Ask a Jew about his religion, he'll tell you everything you want to know (to the limit of their own knowledge). It's funny, but Judaism the religion has no "secrets only clergy may know". Even kaballah was not really secret so much as reserved for people who had a deep understanding of Jewish knowledge already - the thought was that you'd go crazy if you didn't understand it properly. Nowadays, of course, any idiot can go buy a copy of the Zohar (in English, too!). Hardly secret knowledge!
Anyways, back on topic. Jews have no desire to convert gentiles because there's no need whatsoever. If they (the gentile) observe the seven Noachide laws (which, I may add, are not exactly hard to keep), they go to heaven. It's a pretty damned good deal, considering "real Jews" have to keep 613 commandments. A bit more reward for that, but heaven is heaven, and it's better than nothing.
Additionally, in a historical context, _every forced conversion_ of a population (it happened twice, IIRC, Samaritans and I think some population in northern Israel/Lebanon) was a big huge mistake, and it is taught that way in even the most right-wing of yeshivas. Therefore, you're never going to see any popular groundswell of support for forced conversion in Jewish religion. The "tradition" is, thankfully, not there, and is actively reviled.
So, interpret not as "hiding", but rather as "what's the point of converting?" That's why you're supposed to turn away someone who wants to convert 3 times before trying to help them. It's out of their best interests.
I suppose the inevitable question then becomes, why would anyone ever _really_ convert to Judaism? I honestly don't have an answer. I think it's emotional and spiritual attachment to the Jewish people. That's the best I can give.
A final addendum: Jews don't believe you go to hell for not being Jewish and not keeping the seven noachide laws. An interesting contrast to Christianity, I think.
-Erwos
I like TADS a lot better than Inform, at least if I'm going to write some IF. I don't particularly love C, which may also be revealing. TADS is relatively easy to program in, has good documentation, and best of all, is still being actively maintained and extended.
The parent was completely right in his sentiment, though, that you're a fool to try to write your own parser if all you want to do is make your own bit of IF. Writing a parser is a decidedly non-trivial exercise. Best to just use one
-Erwos
You're really missing the point.
Civil disobedience works by _turning public opinion_ by publicly disobeying an unjust law. You sitting in your underwear in your room while downloading music and porn off Kazaa is not making any sort of statement.
-Erwos
"However, the end user would be committing a crime when he creates the illegal derivate."
You're wrong. The GPL only puts restrictions on distribution, not usage. _You yourself_ can do whatever the hell you want with GPL'd code, so long as you don't distribute the code or binaries (ie, keep them to yourself).
-Erwos
"lest your copyright go "poof" due to failure to enforce"
You're thinking of trademarks, not copyrighted works. Your copyright remains in effect whether you protect it or not.
-Erwos
Civil disobedience has also typically involved _going to jail_ and publicizing your activities. I don't know of any filesharers who write to the RIAA and ask for the association to come arrest them.
-Erwos
In case you didn't realize it, the movie industry generates a _lot_ of jobs. How would you feel if your Congressperson said "on principle, I support you losing your job"?
/. is stunning. The MPAA protects their livelihood with some legislation, and all hell breaks loose, yet there's some outsourcing, and suddenly every IT geek on here is calling for a total ban on it. Not the same issue, but I really believe there's some amount of relevance in the comparison.
I mean, the hypocrisy on
-Erwos
They yanked the integrated "SoundStorm" sound, too. A shame, considering what a great solution it is.
However, AFAIK, you could never use the integrated video with anything in the AGP slot.
-Erwos
Red Hat does, actually. Everything they write is GPL'd, and they do not include non-free software with their distribution (IIRC, last thing they did that was problematic was Netscape, and that's been gone for years). In fact, one could argue that the inclusion of non-free software in the apt repositories for Debian means that Red Hat / Fedora is actually MORE free than Debian. I don't think that's true, but it's something to consider.
I think Mandrake also GPLs everything, for that matter. SuSE recently GPL'd YaST, too, so actually, they might be totally free, too.
I hope that educates you.
-Erwos
Quick question: which continent were the world wars fought on?
And, as we all know, the Balkans region never has problems. None at all!
The fact that the Europeans managed to keep a semi-decent record of peace for 50 years and so they're now the world's "peace-mongers" is so laughable it's sad.
The US invades Iraq and suddenly, they're the worst country ever. What a joke. We'd have to invade Iraq a few _thousand_ more times to come anywhere near the kind of death toll that European idiots inflicted on everyone during the first half of this century.
Spare us the high horse, anti-American crap. Europeans have far more blood on their hands than the US could attain in one thousand years at this rate. The fact that they've gone 50 fucking years without having a world war is not exactly the most impressive fact ever.
-Erwos
Please google for "the Paradox of Thrift", because you obviously aren't aware of it.
/.. In fact, Keynes believed in taxing the rich _more_ so as to reduce their savings. Does that sound in line with GWB at all?
/., along the lines of "90% of the people commenting have no clue whatsoever about the topic at hand".
This isn't about "Bush's rhetoric". This is about Keynes' theory, and I believe him one hell of a lot more than I believe some random idiot on
There needs to be some sort of disclaimer on
Now, to be fair, the paradox of thrift is not a perfect theory. But, frankly, I doubt you were trying to enlighten us at all with that ignorant post.
-Erwos
We use this all the time at my University. Absolutely fantastic bit of software, and it can give you another decently-sized cluster "for free" at night as long as you tell everyone to leave their computers on.
-Erwos
What you're neglecting to mention is the fact that Novell is also moving to aggressively lock people into Netware. Have you ever talked with any of their sales reps?
The last time they came to my university (around 3 weeks ago or so), it was a _debacle_. They said they didn't feel any particular need to GPL everything. They said they weren't going to support anything but SuSE for Netware. They lied to us directly when we asked whether Netware was going to move entirely to a Linux kernel ("we'll do both forever!" Right.). They talked about how great their pricing scheme was, but when further queried, they _didn't have one ready_. We could not have bought from them even if we wanted to!
Compare this to the Red Hat rep, who told us exactly what we wanted to hear, and then offered us amazing terms for licensing. Novell may or may not be doing a good job on the corporate side, but they've effectively locked themselves out of the rather lucrative educational market, unless they magically turn comptent real fast.
In other words, Novell just bought SuSE and Ximian. Give them some time to make idiot mistakes in public, and I promise you'll see them. Novell's management is not exactly the greatest ever.
I also think that people don't understand what exactly the benefits of RHN are _besides_ the updates. That's only part of it. It's absolutely excellent to be able to remotely schedule individual updates to individual machines, as well as remotely install packages without touching the command line. Red Hat _is_ genuinely easier to administrate than pretty much every other distribution I've seen - I think RH just does a poor job of marketing that.
Making a mistake is not the same thing as jumping the shark. If Red Hat starts bleeding subscribers (which, I should note, they have NOT done), we can talk about their situation in more dire terms. But Novell buying SuSE does not suddenly make them into an unstoppable juggernaut.
-Erwos