The practice, especially in international politics, of seeking advantage by creating the impression that one is willing and able to push a highly dangerous situation to the limit rather than concede.
Soon to be replaced by SCOmanship.
Not much depth to the article...
on
What's Always Next?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
...indeed that's probably why there was no need to link it.
As for videophones, well general interactivity on the Internet took over from that really. People do much prefer to hide behind an electronic persona and too high a proportion of people don't like being in posed photographs, let alone on video. Those who do like it have webcams, and webcam conversations are in general between lovers and family. SciFi Movies still feature videophone communications though, although realtime one to one video communication may never really become popular to the point of replacing the telephone.
As for jetpacks, moving sidewalks, moonbases and whatnot, I don't think a lot of people even believed those at the time. Better predictions are those which really do look at current trends and technology, seeing the barriers properly, and going for it.
Like the Segway... what am I saying?
I'll tell you why it isn't popular: the same reason motorbikes aren't mainstream popular. They are terrible to use in the rain, you can't give people a ride on them with you, they don't allow you to hide all but your head and shoulders, and they don't have a stereo. Simple.
A truly, completely modern city might be somewhere to look to for futuristic ideas, but then Stevenage in the UK, for example, a concept city just outside London with cyclepaths all over the place, yet people don't all cycle, most still use cars. Because a car also comes in handy when you need to go hundreds of miles. Sadly the site doesn't mention the cyclepaths except in section 5.1.5 of some transport review. Notice how in section 5.1.2 their transport policy "focused on accomodating the car" in spite of their miles and miles of cycleways.
I grew up near Stevenage, and it's not the idyll you might think, indeed it's a rather characterless place, bit too much of a concrete jungle, but the revolutionary ideas that went into the town planning were spoiled by poor fashions in architecture at the time, and ongoing council policy which did not match with the original town planners idealistic philosophies...
This seems quite interesting but I was under the assumption that identical hashes could be created with identical rips and id3v2 tagging.
The only way for two files to have the same MD5 hash is for them to both be encoded with the same encoder, from the same WAV file, with the same bitrate and all advanced options, and to have exactly the same ID3 information, the same filesize, and to be identical to the last bit.
Otherwise, the MD5 will be nothing like the same, for two perfectly identical songs where one has a spelling error in one field of the ID3 tag. I imagine for any one song, there are many many different MD5sums out there, although perhaps one or another good quality version would exists on hundreds of different PCs...
Very interesting points you raise. Most of my malaise about the current state of world affairs weighs so heavily on my mind that every issue comes back to corporations dominating economics and the environment, that profit comes before social needs, and work before play.
I do believe that things are linked though. The whole "democratic" system is just the new mind control system, like religion was before it. There are leaders and followers in this world, and the leaders will always make sure that they have their best share of the world's resources.
I'll try to keep myself a bit more out of generalising anyway. Thanks for the reality check although bear in mind I don't live in a fantasy utopia, but I do crave a better world, and so should we all. Giving up and saying that things are just how they are, and not voting for any candidate in an election (for example) are signs of today's poor social cohesion and lack of social responsibility.
"Below the poverty line" in most developed nations is due to some kind of welfare state system. Over time, it's true that some rich families lose their money, and some poor families make it, so maybe it does average out in the end. Sorry for having let such a platitude slip in.
Your link doesn't work for your homepage, I was hoping to have a look at it. I had a warwick.ac.uk/~fruey address once... that's where fruey comes from originally:)
I don't understand why being philosophically against software patents is always equated with socialism, and that patents are the ultimate expression of capitalism. I don't agree.
I'm not really doing that, I'm drawing a parallel between the corporations that use patents as part of their arsenal in domination of capitalist (and socialist, and communist, and anarchistic) markets. More on why capitalist structures particularly in the conclusion. Patents are not an expression of capitalism, corporations are. To join the lot together, suffice to say that patents as originally intended have been subverted by large corporations that now have more say in world economic and social policy than politicians - and thus voters, who themselves are gradually more and more alienated from the politicians by many non voters' belief that abstaining from elections can still allow them to voice political opinions in public, and think they can still make change, when they forego their first, most basic politicial right to vote. So, patent law is suddenly standing up for these bastions of capitalism - the free market economy multinationals and large national tech firms - even though it is precisely this law that is supposed to support the little guy.
All in all, legislation is helping those that have, and oppressing those that don't. Add to that a growing litigation culture, and it's a spiral that only the most capitalist nations seem to be succumbing to. I wasn't fully clear in my argument because after a while of typing in SlashDot I suddenly have to go off and do something... but I'm reasonably pleased with some of the points I make and submit.
What is wrong with the current system is that abuse is running high at the moment. Those who have lots of intellectual property are controlling the majority of commodity software these days. The Open Source movement is gradually making inroads, but the real impact is still slight. Let's hope it can get better, it's one way that those who have can share with those that don't in a positive, free (as in speech) way.
What people are objecting to is that innovation is being stifled by large corporations; I'm not going to mention any names, because it doesn't really matter who the company of the moment is. It's been like that for a long time, the names change but the principle is the same. The market should have more choice, but patents, buyouts, and monopolistic practices are actually supported by the current (and previous) legislatory systems are just getting more and more power. Like the hippy movement in the seventies against government powers and personal liberties beginning really to make moves against the "establishment", the yuppie move in the eighties towards personal financial freedom against the common good, the nineties technological gadget and consumerism move... and now in the 21st century people are beginning to look at inflation, unemployment and their lack of free time and starting to think maybe there is a better way. But still the rich are fighting to keep everything they have, and middle class people are following the consumer trend like sheep, they're cooling their houses with aircon, running their cars, throwing away more and more tons of garbage every year, getting fatter, and generally using more resources than they really need.
Let us not forget that Free (as in speech) is what we are still fighting for. The medium changes, the spirit stays the same. We should not let corporate greed and a system where each year more profits need to be made become the pillar of our society, but it's been happening for years and years. Globalisation just makes this more blatent, more all encompassing, and more to the detriment of the world's poor.
The rich are still getting richer, the poor are still getting poorer, and however many examples you give me of "land of the free" and personal gain still being possible no matter who you are, the overwhelming trend is that the masses are still being screwed, and there really are people who are born into dead end lives, and it's not getting any better.
And still, many people will respond to my post and say I'm a socialist and the system won't really abide by that, because capitalism is here to stay and it's the only fair system. I'm not really saying that. Just ask yourself one question : are you recycling all that you can, giving a few extra minutes a day to help the looming natural resource problem? Are you using less water, using cooler washing cycles, hanging out your laundry instead of drying with electricity, keeping cool in the shade with iced tea instead of turning up the aircon a notch, eating just enough to keep your hunger at bay and giving a dollar to the bum on the street from time to time?
Re:Problem Exists Between Pump And Customer
on
Five-second Pints
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· Score: 1
I'm from the UK originally and live in France; in France it's not so bad but then the beer is not as good either.
Running a pub might just get you 20K a year, for a 12-14 hour day...
Linux is going to go underground. Here's the take, get them tin foil hats ready.
GNU/Linux gains sufficient critical mass to be a valid alternative OS to a significant portion of business and personal computing.
People in the developed world, where most commercial OSes make their money, start to realise that significant portions of the IT economy are going to become less viable (notably Microsoft's, who just happen to plan to secretly finance via an agent, a recent electoral campaign for Arnold)
IT mafia bosses pick SCO as an ideal campaign leader as their former glory (what glory?) is tired, but they have significant intellectual property to start making mad claims about said IP
Somewhere along the line the judicial system picks up and makes Linux illegal because SCO have more money, and their tenuous argument gets backed up by Arnold (now governor of California) who represents a new technophobic movement against those free software hippies who are ruining the economy with beards and freedom philosophies which are ruinous to the economy
Linux is driven underground because the source code just can't be stamped out, and the zealots continue
The war begins, between Open Sourcers and the commercial OS unions...
???
Something like that. There is no way that this can work out for SCO, even a win will create a wave which will wash back over them having picked up a load of trash on the way.
Re:Problem Exists Between Pump And Customer
on
Five-second Pints
·
· Score: 1
Hear hear.
Pub barmanship is a most neglected trade these days. Especially the part about taking mobile calls. Mobile phones can and SHOULD be switched off. That's what voicemail is for.
Going offtopic, worst I ever saw was at JFK New York. A girl at the CD counter talked constantly on the phone while I was waiting for a flight, like for 2 hours or something. To different people, and half an hour of that I was standing in front of her hoping to ask a question. Since I didn't have a CD in my hand she just kept on yapping, and did not say anything to another customer who foolishly purchased a CD happily without so much as a hello or thankyou. That place didn't deserve my custom. Incidentally, the conversation was with several people; she'd hang up and redial someone else once the other got bored of her droning on. Good job local calls are free in the US but anyway she should still have got sacked.
On bar standards, sad fact is that the customer is less and less discerning and sadly politeness attrition is the name of the game in most areas of work these days.
A good dealer should be the only thing the Casino has, the counters cry.
Face it, just because there's a computer there now, doesn't mean they're not screwing you every time anyway. The house always wins.
What is interesting about this is that they are adding a cold precision to the perks they offer to big gamblers, in order to further increase their margins. What they appear to really be doing is tracking who's betting what and when. Forget the card counting part, anyone who gets a system that works will be tracked sooner or later and booted out. This may seem kind of unfair - you can't profit from genius in Casinos - but then the house can't afford to make a big loss consistently. Still, they can't take your winnings away before detection, so this system is tipping the scales back to the house's favour.
Think more about the fact that Joe Gambler who drops a bit less each time he comes and demands more perks will get away with it for a while, but now he'll be tracked. I can't believe the opposite is true, where quiet but big losers will suddenly be allocated perks... but maybe they will, because it could be good for the casino business.
To conclude : gambling is one of those things where you know the odds beforehand, and if you bet more than you can afford more than once against the odds, you're a sucker. What does need to be clear, with all this technology, is just what those odds are. Rigged odds are fine if they stay rigged the same, but I don't like the thought that a croupier could suddenly tell you, as the odds swing ever so slightly in your favour and you are ready to cut your losses, that your bets are no longer welcome. You want to know the solution? Don't bet at all, and invest your money in a guaranteed return scheme. That's the only way you can be sure to win. Then go get your thrills for much less money doing something like freefall parachuting.
Water, wind, solar. Most places do not have enough wind/sun/water to power anything meaningfull. Maybe if we kick everybody out of montana and fill the entire state full of wind farms me MAY just have enough power to run parts of californa. Well only during parts of the year.
The whole point of the article is that wind power could be the source for more than a third of Hawaii's power. Using just a few decent turbines and clever power storage.
The whole of Montana, as a wind farm, with all of the tech discussed in the article, could easily power California, I'd say, at a hunch. Can't be bothered to look up the statistics though.
doesn't criticising one system while ignoring the depredations of another constitute an argument by selective observation?
Well no. I wasn't ignoring others, I was making a subjective superlative claim, not a balanced argument. As it happens, we could draw parallels between the crusades, the rise and fall of communism, colonisation from Mongols, Arabs, Spaniards, Romans, Portuguese, English, French... and the colonisation of the Americas by all of the above (except maybe the Romans, but then the Italian and Irish settles could replace the Romans and we would start becoming flippant but anyway...). I think my original argument is getting a bit too deconstructed now.
I'll let you have the last word after this, but it's been an interesting debate.
Beginning today, music fans with Microsoft's Windows Media Player version 9 can purchase individual music tracks for 0.99 euros or 75 pence from OD2's library of over 200,000 songs, representing a 25 percent discount from most other European subscription services, the companies said.
Maybe I can preempt the lot who will say "sniff it doesn't run on Linux" etc by saying that it's quite natural that Apple's iTunes is for MacOSX only...
OD2's Grimsdale though said he viewed iTunes as a potential competitor and that the two firms would not be working together should Apple enter the market here by early next year as some industry observers expect.
That's not surprising given that both are services on competing platforms, and will not want to repackage essentially the same catalogue just with WMP and iTunes formats (and Apple eyecandy) to separate them.
This online music thing is interesting, I think I'll be sticking to mutella though.
Well most of the USSR problems are in the USSR... but maybe not, I don't really know.
I could provide links about how the Nagasaki was unnecessary to get the Japanese to surrender. I'm 99% convinced Hiroshima was unnecessary.
It's not about whether the Kyoto treaty is ineffectual, it's about the whole attitude in the debate, and the way that no alternatives were suggested.
I'm allowed my own opinions of who has done the worst pillage. Indeed, whether or not you can prove, by some system or another, that the USSR or any other system / region is worse is besides the point. What I'm most interested in is not blaming others, but blaming my own cultural history (as a European) rather than others. A frightening tendency of replies I get on Slashdot is "such and such a thing is worse so don't point any fingers at me" which is entirely an incorrect attitude.
I just knew that someone would mention the communist flipside of the coin. Especially in the former USSR. Let us not forget which system damaged rather more of other countries' lands than their own, launched the only agressive attack on another nation using nuclear warheads, and has the best record of denying that there is an environmental problem and rejecting the Kyoto treaty.
But I'm not vehemently anti American either; indeed many systems are bad, but let me just add a little emphasis to my comment :
There is no doubt in my mind that the
worst pillages of nature have all been
initiated in the minds and by the greed
of the western capitalist system
I was throwing stuff out there in an uninformedway, but I was mainly reacting to the poster saying the native Africans are "the dumbest".
Now, I'm not even going to go down the religion equality road. Anyone who reasonably adheres to religious doctrines is probably going to believe their version is best. It's a natural thing.
Rome was, of course, a European empire before going into Africa, and it didn't get that far before being unable to manage against the Mongols and the Berbers and the Arabs and the Andalous. Everyone was fighting, but recent colonialism was the worst of all, particularly France in Northern and England / Holland in Southern Africa.
The valid point is the grazing animals thing, I'll take your word for that because I don't have time to look up historical references.
Thanks for your reply, always worth more to me than mod points is for a little bit of illumination to be added to my gut-reaction ramblings based on skimpy knowledge of Africa. Although I have actually been there: I've visited 4 African states.
It's not especially infertile, it's merely littered with some of the dumbest people on Earth who have done nothing but fight each other and set up dictatorship after dictatorship, destroying what little infrastructure existed and robbing the people of their rightful resources like food and water. Of course old colonialism didnt help and modern capitalism doesnt help either.
Saharan Africa may have had a more simple existence, based rather more on tribal rules and minor warfare, but everything was massively accelerated by colonialism. I don't think calling the people "dumb" is fair.
First of all, the introduction of "the one true" religion, mostly Christianity, but also Islam from the North, (never so good a cause of much bloodshed as religion through the ages). Then, the creation of arbitrary borders, to further separate tribes from their previous allies. Then, the pillage of most natural resources, agricultural practices, dams, etc.
Further, the sale of arms and weapons to these tribes to further ruin their economies, and increase bloodshed further. Indeed a lot of war in Africa directly profits the arms trade, and leaves countries with a trade deficit in spite of all the tropical fruit they sell.
It's hard for me to understand just how the pot can call the kettle black in such circumstances as you describe. Primitive culture, perhaps, but it was adapted to its surroundings to an extent. Before colonialism I doubt there was much in the way of dictatorships, just chiefdoms, etc... although I'm sure Saharan Africa wasn't a peaceful nirvana or anything.
There is no doubt in my mind that the worst pillages of nature have all been initiated in the minds and by the greed of the western capitalist system, particularly this inexorable trend towards ever greater consumerism, which is what is really robbing the world of natural resources and causing a higher percentage of pollution than anything else.
The import issue is mostly to do with Outlook using a proprietary format for its mail store, or at least slightly strange format.
You could use IMAP to acheive something of an import, especially if you can run your own IMAP server on the LAN - then copy your email from OE to a separate IMAP account that you create with OE too. Heck, there might even be a util you can use to convert OE mailboxes into UNIX mbox or CYRUS maildir formats that you could read directly with Mutt.
Once you store all your email locally, rather than leaving it in an IMAP repository somewhere, then you are going to be a little stuck for keeping email, that's par for the course.
What I hate about Outlook Express is that sender names are plainly visible but no option to view email addresses too. That is the biggest security issue I have with it. I don't like not knowing if My Best Mate suddenly has become My Best Mate without being able to see it without message properties.
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer this amphibious vehicle
Also people can't tell how tall you are to the same degree, etc etc.
brinkmanship
Soon to be replaced by SCOmanship.
As for videophones, well general interactivity on the Internet took over from that really. People do much prefer to hide behind an electronic persona and too high a proportion of people don't like being in posed photographs, let alone on video. Those who do like it have webcams, and webcam conversations are in general between lovers and family. SciFi Movies still feature videophone communications though, although realtime one to one video communication may never really become popular to the point of replacing the telephone.
As for jetpacks, moving sidewalks, moonbases and whatnot, I don't think a lot of people even believed those at the time. Better predictions are those which really do look at current trends and technology, seeing the barriers properly, and going for it.
Like the Segway... what am I saying?
I'll tell you why it isn't popular: the same reason motorbikes aren't mainstream popular. They are terrible to use in the rain, you can't give people a ride on them with you, they don't allow you to hide all but your head and shoulders, and they don't have a stereo. Simple.
A truly, completely modern city might be somewhere to look to for futuristic ideas, but then Stevenage in the UK, for example, a concept city just outside London with cyclepaths all over the place, yet people don't all cycle, most still use cars. Because a car also comes in handy when you need to go hundreds of miles. Sadly the site doesn't mention the cyclepaths except in section 5.1.5 of some transport review. Notice how in section 5.1.2 their transport policy "focused on accomodating the car" in spite of their miles and miles of cycleways.
I grew up near Stevenage, and it's not the idyll you might think, indeed it's a rather characterless place, bit too much of a concrete jungle, but the revolutionary ideas that went into the town planning were spoiled by poor fashions in architecture at the time, and ongoing council policy which did not match with the original town planners idealistic philosophies...
As has been said in previous article comments, SlashDot could close too, that would have a far larger ranging effect than Knoppix or Wine anyway.
The only way for two files to have the same MD5 hash is for them to both be encoded with the same encoder, from the same WAV file, with the same bitrate and all advanced options, and to have exactly the same ID3 information, the same filesize, and to be identical to the last bit.
Otherwise, the MD5 will be nothing like the same, for two perfectly identical songs where one has a spelling error in one field of the ID3 tag. I imagine for any one song, there are many many different MD5sums out there, although perhaps one or another good quality version would exists on hundreds of different PCs...
PHProjekt also does calendaring, project management, that sort of stuff...
I do believe that things are linked though. The whole "democratic" system is just the new mind control system, like religion was before it. There are leaders and followers in this world, and the leaders will always make sure that they have their best share of the world's resources.
I'll try to keep myself a bit more out of generalising anyway. Thanks for the reality check although bear in mind I don't live in a fantasy utopia, but I do crave a better world, and so should we all. Giving up and saying that things are just how they are, and not voting for any candidate in an election (for example) are signs of today's poor social cohesion and lack of social responsibility.
But I'm digressing again.
Your link doesn't work for your homepage, I was hoping to have a look at it. I had a warwick.ac.uk/~fruey address once... that's where fruey comes from originally :)
I'm not really doing that, I'm drawing a parallel between the corporations that use patents as part of their arsenal in domination of capitalist (and socialist, and communist, and anarchistic) markets. More on why capitalist structures particularly in the conclusion. Patents are not an expression of capitalism, corporations are. To join the lot together, suffice to say that patents as originally intended have been subverted by large corporations that now have more say in world economic and social policy than politicians - and thus voters, who themselves are gradually more and more alienated from the politicians by many non voters' belief that abstaining from elections can still allow them to voice political opinions in public, and think they can still make change, when they forego their first, most basic politicial right to vote. So, patent law is suddenly standing up for these bastions of capitalism - the free market economy multinationals and large national tech firms - even though it is precisely this law that is supposed to support the little guy.
All in all, legislation is helping those that have, and oppressing those that don't. Add to that a growing litigation culture, and it's a spiral that only the most capitalist nations seem to be succumbing to. I wasn't fully clear in my argument because after a while of typing in SlashDot I suddenly have to go off and do something... but I'm reasonably pleased with some of the points I make and submit.
What people are objecting to is that innovation is being stifled by large corporations; I'm not going to mention any names, because it doesn't really matter who the company of the moment is. It's been like that for a long time, the names change but the principle is the same. The market should have more choice, but patents, buyouts, and monopolistic practices are actually supported by the current (and previous) legislatory systems are just getting more and more power. Like the hippy movement in the seventies against government powers and personal liberties beginning really to make moves against the "establishment", the yuppie move in the eighties towards personal financial freedom against the common good, the nineties technological gadget and consumerism move... and now in the 21st century people are beginning to look at inflation, unemployment and their lack of free time and starting to think maybe there is a better way. But still the rich are fighting to keep everything they have, and middle class people are following the consumer trend like sheep, they're cooling their houses with aircon, running their cars, throwing away more and more tons of garbage every year, getting fatter, and generally using more resources than they really need.
Let us not forget that Free (as in speech) is what we are still fighting for. The medium changes, the spirit stays the same. We should not let corporate greed and a system where each year more profits need to be made become the pillar of our society, but it's been happening for years and years. Globalisation just makes this more blatent, more all encompassing, and more to the detriment of the world's poor.
The rich are still getting richer, the poor are still getting poorer, and however many examples you give me of "land of the free" and personal gain still being possible no matter who you are, the overwhelming trend is that the masses are still being screwed, and there really are people who are born into dead end lives, and it's not getting any better.
And still, many people will respond to my post and say I'm a socialist and the system won't really abide by that, because capitalism is here to stay and it's the only fair system. I'm not really saying that. Just ask yourself one question : are you recycling all that you can, giving a few extra minutes a day to help the looming natural resource problem? Are you using less water, using cooler washing cycles, hanging out your laundry instead of drying with electricity, keeping cool in the shade with iced tea instead of turning up the aircon a notch, eating just enough to keep your hunger at bay and giving a dollar to the bum on the street from time to time?
Running a pub might just get you 20K a year, for a 12-14 hour day...
Something like that. There is no way that this can work out for SCO, even a win will create a wave which will wash back over them having picked up a load of trash on the way.
Pub barmanship is a most neglected trade these days. Especially the part about taking mobile calls. Mobile phones can and SHOULD be switched off. That's what voicemail is for.
Going offtopic, worst I ever saw was at JFK New York. A girl at the CD counter talked constantly on the phone while I was waiting for a flight, like for 2 hours or something. To different people, and half an hour of that I was standing in front of her hoping to ask a question. Since I didn't have a CD in my hand she just kept on yapping, and did not say anything to another customer who foolishly purchased a CD happily without so much as a hello or thankyou. That place didn't deserve my custom. Incidentally, the conversation was with several people; she'd hang up and redial someone else once the other got bored of her droning on. Good job local calls are free in the US but anyway she should still have got sacked.
On bar standards, sad fact is that the customer is less and less discerning and sadly politeness attrition is the name of the game in most areas of work these days.
Face it, just because there's a computer there now, doesn't mean they're not screwing you every time anyway. The house always wins.
What is interesting about this is that they are adding a cold precision to the perks they offer to big gamblers, in order to further increase their margins. What they appear to really be doing is tracking who's betting what and when. Forget the card counting part, anyone who gets a system that works will be tracked sooner or later and booted out. This may seem kind of unfair - you can't profit from genius in Casinos - but then the house can't afford to make a big loss consistently. Still, they can't take your winnings away before detection, so this system is tipping the scales back to the house's favour.
Think more about the fact that Joe Gambler who drops a bit less each time he comes and demands more perks will get away with it for a while, but now he'll be tracked. I can't believe the opposite is true, where quiet but big losers will suddenly be allocated perks... but maybe they will, because it could be good for the casino business.
To conclude : gambling is one of those things where you know the odds beforehand, and if you bet more than you can afford more than once against the odds, you're a sucker. What does need to be clear, with all this technology, is just what those odds are. Rigged odds are fine if they stay rigged the same, but I don't like the thought that a croupier could suddenly tell you, as the odds swing ever so slightly in your favour and you are ready to cut your losses, that your bets are no longer welcome. You want to know the solution? Don't bet at all, and invest your money in a guaranteed return scheme. That's the only way you can be sure to win. Then go get your thrills for much less money doing something like freefall parachuting.
The whole point of the article is that wind power could be the source for more than a third of Hawaii's power. Using just a few decent turbines and clever power storage.
The whole of Montana, as a wind farm, with all of the tech discussed in the article, could easily power California, I'd say, at a hunch. Can't be bothered to look up the statistics though.
doesn't criticising one system while ignoring the depredations of another constitute an argument by selective observation?
Well no. I wasn't ignoring others, I was making a subjective superlative claim, not a balanced argument. As it happens, we could draw parallels between the crusades, the rise and fall of communism, colonisation from Mongols, Arabs, Spaniards, Romans, Portuguese, English, French... and the colonisation of the Americas by all of the above (except maybe the Romans, but then the Italian and Irish settles could replace the Romans and we would start becoming flippant but anyway...). I think my original argument is getting a bit too deconstructed now.
I'll let you have the last word after this, but it's been an interesting debate.
Maybe I can preempt the lot who will say "sniff it doesn't run on Linux" etc by saying that it's quite natural that Apple's iTunes is for MacOSX only...
That's not surprising given that both are services on competing platforms, and will not want to repackage essentially the same catalogue just with WMP and iTunes formats (and Apple eyecandy) to separate them.
This online music thing is interesting, I think I'll be sticking to mutella though.
I could provide links about how the Nagasaki was unnecessary to get the Japanese to surrender. I'm 99% convinced Hiroshima was unnecessary.
It's not about whether the Kyoto treaty is ineffectual, it's about the whole attitude in the debate, and the way that no alternatives were suggested.
I'm allowed my own opinions of who has done the worst pillage. Indeed, whether or not you can prove, by some system or another, that the USSR or any other system / region is worse is besides the point. What I'm most interested in is not blaming others, but blaming my own cultural history (as a European) rather than others. A frightening tendency of replies I get on Slashdot is "such and such a thing is worse so don't point any fingers at me" which is entirely an incorrect attitude.
But I'm not vehemently anti American either; indeed many systems are bad, but let me just add a little emphasis to my comment :
Note the superlative.
I was throwing stuff out there in an uninformedway, but I was mainly reacting to the poster saying the native Africans are "the dumbest".
Now, I'm not even going to go down the religion equality road. Anyone who reasonably adheres to religious doctrines is probably going to believe their version is best. It's a natural thing.
Rome was, of course, a European empire before going into Africa, and it didn't get that far before being unable to manage against the Mongols and the Berbers and the Arabs and the Andalous. Everyone was fighting, but recent colonialism was the worst of all, particularly France in Northern and England / Holland in Southern Africa.
The valid point is the grazing animals thing, I'll take your word for that because I don't have time to look up historical references.
Thanks for your reply, always worth more to me than mod points is for a little bit of illumination to be added to my gut-reaction ramblings based on skimpy knowledge of Africa. Although I have actually been there: I've visited 4 African states.
Usually in your BIOS you can set the system to not halt on a keyboard error. Depends what hardware you have of course, I'm thinking x86 here mainly.
Saharan Africa may have had a more simple existence, based rather more on tribal rules and minor warfare, but everything was massively accelerated by colonialism. I don't think calling the people "dumb" is fair.
First of all, the introduction of "the one true" religion, mostly Christianity, but also Islam from the North, (never so good a cause of much bloodshed as religion through the ages). Then, the creation of arbitrary borders, to further separate tribes from their previous allies. Then, the pillage of most natural resources, agricultural practices, dams, etc. Further, the sale of arms and weapons to these tribes to further ruin their economies, and increase bloodshed further. Indeed a lot of war in Africa directly profits the arms trade, and leaves countries with a trade deficit in spite of all the tropical fruit they sell.
It's hard for me to understand just how the pot can call the kettle black in such circumstances as you describe. Primitive culture, perhaps, but it was adapted to its surroundings to an extent. Before colonialism I doubt there was much in the way of dictatorships, just chiefdoms, etc... although I'm sure Saharan Africa wasn't a peaceful nirvana or anything.
There is no doubt in my mind that the worst pillages of nature have all been initiated in the minds and by the greed of the western capitalist system, particularly this inexorable trend towards ever greater consumerism, which is what is really robbing the world of natural resources and causing a higher percentage of pollution than anything else.
I meant My Best Mate <okguy@trust.com> and My Best Mate <dodgy@strangee.com> ... forgot I was posting in HTML
You could use IMAP to acheive something of an import, especially if you can run your own IMAP server on the LAN - then copy your email from OE to a separate IMAP account that you create with OE too. Heck, there might even be a util you can use to convert OE mailboxes into UNIX mbox or CYRUS maildir formats that you could read directly with Mutt.
Once you store all your email locally, rather than leaving it in an IMAP repository somewhere, then you are going to be a little stuck for keeping email, that's par for the course.
What I hate about Outlook Express is that sender names are plainly visible but no option to view email addresses too. That is the biggest security issue I have with it. I don't like not knowing if My Best Mate suddenly has become My Best Mate without being able to see it without message properties.
Did you try Mulberry, by the way?