What a joke though, in one article I read they listed Halo 2 and Half Life 2 along side Doom 3 and GTA. Like there's any real comparison between those games. It was clear they never played any of the games.
But does it really matter? _IF_ a game is rated "mature" then what's the problem with it requireing parental consent to buy? Would you all be complaining if parental consent were required to buy Hustler magazine? How about to go see "Eyes Wide Shut"?
I think the real questions shouldn't be whether or not kids should be able to buy this material, it should be a question of which material gets rated "mature". If you leave it at that I'm on your side, but if you think my KID should have a right to buy GTA then there's a real problem.
2. If the applications are better than MS, then people will move to OSS apps and ultimately may pave the way to move to linux
That sure worked for me. I first tried Linux back in '99 and didn't like it very much so I stopped using it. One of the reasons why I didn't like it was because it was such a chore to relearn the simple things I've been doing in Windows for years.
Flash forward to today. I've been using Linux off and on for about the last year and the the big "surpise" I always get when I boot up is how easy it is to use. One of the biggest reasons it's so easy is that I'm very familiar with Firefox, Mozilla and OpenOffice which I use all the time in Windows. If I was stuck with only IE and Office in Windows then the switch to Linux would still be somewhat of a chore.
Ya see, Linux is not terribly difficult to use for someone with a little bit of time and intelligence. But relearning _every_ type of app you currently work with on Windows is just a massive pain in the ass. Each app isn'tdifficult, but what if you need to:
Write a doc modify a txt download a file and then find it later rip a CD Play an MP3 burn a CD set up your printer print a spreadsheet move some files to the network to make space on your hard drive copy some files to an FTP server
That's a typical day for a lot of people and that is a whole lot of stuff to re-learn if all of your apps are different when you switch OSs. Having a few of those apps be cross platform and being able to ease into them on Windows would do wonders for people feeling comfortable when they migrate to Linux.
The best part about this whole article is that it _didn't_ include the phrase "iPod killer". Why I'd want any product to kill my daughter's iPod is beyond me anyway. I paid $400 for that thing and I want it to stay alive as long as physically possible.
Three cheers for the phrase "awesome competitor" instead.
So really, the study is saying "F/OSS is cheaper than MS by a good margin, but our precision is shitty enough that our actual number doesn't mean much. It might be %37 cheaper, it might be %80 cheaper, or it might be %1 cheaper--but we're pretty sure it's cheaper."
The devil is in the details, which were conspicously absent. I could say I'm a 36% better administrator than you, but I wouldn't expect anyone to care very much about that number unless I gave some details to back it up.
There is no free energy source -- in financial or environmental effects.
Nicely put. Why can't people realize that everything man does will have an effect on the environement. Use paper and kill some trees. Use plastic and you clog up landfills. Damn rivers and you change ecosystems. Harvest wind and you kill birds.
The question isn't whether your energy source will affect the envirionment (it will), the question is which kind of effect you prefer. Environmentalists have a nasty habit of prefering the type of energy that not enough people have used to determine it's real downside. Then they switch to the other side as soon as the downside is noted.
STOP BEING SO REACTIONARY! Look at the available data and try to figure out what's best compared to other sources. If you had to choose coal, natural gas, water, nuclear or air, which are you going to choose? Why? Whatever you decide _will_ have a downside. You can't help it. So learn to live with it where necessary and try to minimize it where possible. But don't simply protest and shout, "it's bad!" because the world doesn't work like that. Everything is bad. Choose the thing that's not as bad as everythings else.
The thing I really like about TheOpenCD is the fact that a group of experts have lent their endorsements to the software. They've sort of certified them as proffesional in appearace, straightforward and useful with no major security flaws.
When a newby (or even an old hat like me) sees several open source projects for a similar software type, it can be difficult to choose which one to try. TheOpenCD gives a good starting point for many software categories.
How many VNC flavors are there out there? How do you know which ones are pretty good and easy to use and which ones are more hobbyist oriented? I can't and wont tell you that TightVNC is "the best" but it was a great starting point for me to learn more about VNC. Now that I've used it a bunch of times I can feel a lot more confident about looking at other VNC flavors.
Similarly, 7-Zip has replaced WinZip as my Windows zipper of choice. Even if I had heard about it elseware, I might have been reluctant to try it without a recommendation from someone I could trust. TheOpenCD gave me that recommendation.
In fact, though I'm an experienced computer admin, I got a lot of good, free (both kinds) software from TheOpenCD without needing to install and uninstall hundreds of different programs looking for "the best." This is because of the great job the project has done of picking quality software.
THANKS VERY MUCH TO THE TEAM FOR MAKING MY LIFE EASIER!!!!
I've actualy rented anime videos from the PQ in Springfield VA. About half their stock were obviously copies. It's possible they were leagal copies, but the shear volume suggested otherwise. This event does not surprise me.
I hope they win the lawsuit. If they were to get the courts to agree that hiding malicious wording in the EULA is fraud then that would be a nice boon to shutting some of these people down.
In fact, just about any attack on the concept of click-through EULAs is pretty good in my book. Scream "contract!" all you want, they're bad for me personally and bad for the industry. Consent and informed consent are two different things and it appears the industry has completely abandonded any pretext of the latter.
I like a lot of rap. Much of the stuff I like is old school like Public Enemy or The Ghetto Boys. I listen to some new rap too.
In my experience with the hip-hop culture, if they remove the word "motherfucker," the content of the song is very likely to be hos and/or drugs. Most of the rest of the songs, including very many that are socially and politically meaningful, don't have "motherfuckers" that need to be removed.
The most amazing part is what we choose to censor. South Park shows a hamster being insterted into and traveling through a man's colon but bleeps the word "fuck". I don't fucking get it. We are prudes and nasty fuckers all in the same show.
Selective censorship never works. Bleeping a cuss word doesn't stop everyone from understanding it's a cuss word and, because of the nasty context, does nothing to protect children or anyone else. You can remove every "motherfucker" you want from Rap music and it's still talking about fucking hos and doing drugs.
I don't know the answer, but I'm growing fatigued of all the shows and songs that punch holes in the dialog, yet still leave you feeling violated. We're not only protecting no one, but we're treating adults like children in the process. Though I'm not asking for it in this case, I sure wish a government who claims to be trying to protect me would actually try to protect me... or butt the fuck out.
Ok I am wrong sorry. Just Mod my origional message down I haven't used Windows 2000/XP enough to really check those features I was basing it on my NT knowlege.
I think this happens a lot. People keep wanting to compare the current features of Unix and/or Linux to the features of NT4.0. They used NT back in the day, it left a bad taste in their mouth, and they moved on to something else. They keep this snapshot picture in their mind of the bad ol' days because they got burned so badly they didn't want to try it again with a more recent version.
I've seen people do this to Linux too. Linux is not the same OS it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago when a lot of people tried it and came to the conclusion that it didn't quite meet their needs. I personally tried Linux about 5 years ago and disliked it for a variety of reasons. But I've been using a few versions recently ranging from 6 months to a year old and almost all of those objections have been fixed.
Windows Server OSs have grown up a lot since NT 4.0 and and deserves a much better reputation too. Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 are stable and flexible, even if they're still closed and expensive. People who used NT in the past should at least give the new Windows a chance before dismissing it.
"Chalk up another victory for adult stem cell research... what is that now 79 to 0? Why are we studying embryonic stem cells?"
I tend to agree with that sentiment.. seems like the embryonic research is turning into a big waste of money...
Maybe if they cut funding to adult stem cells and then got half the country to think working with them as moraly reprehensible maybe the embryonic stem cells would have a chance to catch up?
Or maybe you could just say any reseach that doesn't pay off in, say, 10 years should just be counted as a failure? What the hell are we doing messing around with fusion research anyway? It's obviously far less useful than fission because, ya see, only fission actually produces any power.
Or maybe we could just let science do its job and ignore all the people that think giving a pint of blood is moral, but giving an 8-cell grouping is murder?
I think the point is that literal interpretation of the Bible is problematic. Christians, being human themselves, should understand that, but too often they just don't.
If I had a dime for every time I've heard a Christian say "I only read the King James version of the Bible because it's a word for word interpretation" I'd have a pretty big handful of dimes. You and I know that the KJ bible has a history that rejects literal interpretation on translation grounds alone, but what about other literary techniques like alegory, simily and metaphor? Are Christians so blind to the capabilities of the written word?
Please, If you believe in what the Bible says then I urge you to be a thinking person and believe God gave the gift of literature to the writers of the Bible. Please believe that there is the capability that things don't mean exactly what they say. Heck I've heard all kinds of fun interpretations of the meaning of Revelations, why must you fail to believe the same possibilities of the rest of the book?
I think a Slashdot quote is pretty appropriate when it comes to literally interpreteed Bible math: "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
This is bullshit. You can wipe out a server hard drive with less than 10 characters and an "enter" on most Unix/Linux systems. But you want to blame Microsoft for the UK government not properly running their IT staff enough to make sure they're pushing the patch to a test group instead the production group?
Microsoft builds very powerful software. Their Active Directory and Group Policy can do amazing things over huge numbers of computers. But if the guy in charge gives admin rights over the directory to some monkey that doesn't know how it works it's no different than giving root to the same monkey on your big Unix file server.
I'm quite familiar with the Microsoft recommendations for big projects like this. Claiming Microsoft would "sell a complex system [of this magnitude] with the claim idiots can administer it" is flat out false. They recommend highly trained proffesionals, testing in an offline environment and strict change control procedures. Don't let your personal prejudice cloud the facts: MS sells big systems to big customers with the understanding and recommendation that they'll have tallented staff to run them.... Just like every Unix house does.
Sniping is a good metaphor for this. A good sniper fires exactly one shot before moving on. It's not obvious to many people, but it's quite difficult to pinpoint gunfire if only one shot is fired. Second and third shots let your potential victims zero in on you and return fire.
Suggesting to criminals not to get gready is like suggesting to fish not to live in water. I guess there's no law against giving advice you know can't be followed.
It was Chico, but it could really describe several very nice citys in California.
I also couldn't afford a car for several years and had the same grocery problems. My tean-age daughter still remembers being completely imobilized by grocery bags in her bike trailer when she was three. When she talks about it, she describes those years as some the happiest in her life. I can't disagree with her either.:-)
I'm wondering if we should ban bicycles from the open roads cars are on.
Great answer. Lets ban vehicles that use no foreign oil and actually help our health. Society can only benefit from such legislation.
It is dangerous to have a bicycle that is hard to see on a road were the majority of vehicles are over 2000lbs..and traveling a minimum of 35 mph.
You're right, it's dangerous. But what do you think of banning cars instead? I've never heard of an SUV driver biting the dust because he was hit by a reckless cyclist.
They do hold up traffic, and are a hazard in that and the fact they are hard to see when driving a car.
Pedestrians are even slower and harder to see. Maybe they shouldn't be allowed either?
In all seriousness, Americans have a hell of a hard time seeing past the thing that benefits them the most at the moment. We complain about gas prices and our collectively ballooning waistlines, but all we can see is that guy on the bike "slowing us down." Let's ban him?
I moved from a nice small city in California that was about 7-8 miles across. The roads and the downtown area were designed for easy access by bikes. They were used heavily by both cars and bikes. And you know what? Life was beautiful there. Cars could get where they were going and bikes could get where they were going and traffic was something somebody else in some other city had to deal with. Bikes were a very real part of "the solution" because they kept that traffic low because, you see, bikes take up significantly less space than cars on the road.
Now I live in Northern Virginia in the DC Metro Area. Everybody drives. But if you try riding your bike a few things become quickly evident. The roads are not designed with bikes in mind. in order for you to go down the road you HAVE to get in the way of cars. There are a few bike paths, but they don't go anywhere. It's kind of like a 4-lane highway in the middle of a corn field. Useless.
The sidewalks are the same way. You see them all over the place, but they never connect. You literally can't walk a block down the street to get the morning paper in most places. You have to walk out in the street to get there.
And you know what? The traffic sucks. It doesn't just suck on the highway, but all over. I can't prove that the reason is because they designed without bikes in mind, but I can tell you that both cyclists and drivers hate cycling for any utilitarian purpose so almost nobody rides. Instead they drive, usually big SUVs or minivans, and take up a lot more space on the road.
What does all this rambling mean? Ride more and drive less. If you want to ban anything, think about the end result. We are not better off because we drive cars more and bike less.
To bad you're not figuring traffic into the equation. If you get more people traveling closer together at a faster pace then you've solved an important problem that's been plaguing the motorists for quite some time. You don't even need to replace cars, just get enough of them off the road to make roads more tolerable.
It's the same bad math that gets motorists angry at bicyclists. Where they see one slow guy added in that they have to drive around, the better math sees one SUV subtracted out that you wouldn't have been able to drive around at all.
If a traditional rocket kicks in at Mach 15 to get the rest of the way to orbit, the savings in launch weight and thus cost from not having to carry all that oxidizer to get up to Mach 15 could still be quite large.
I've heard the idea of using three stages in scramjet orbital launches. The first and third are rockets and the middle is the scramjet. It makes me kind of curious about using chemical propellants, like in a giant howitzer, to propell the scramjet to it's initial speed.
I couldn't see this doing much for manned flight, but most of what we send up isn't manned anyway. It could also have some pretty kick ass millitary application, say for dramatically increasing the payload of current rocket propelled artillery rounds.
The technology certainly is there to prevent us from skipping commercials, for example, on DVDs, the hardware can be prevented from fast forwarding through content they don't want us to skip. I had to assume this was what they wanted to do for future TiVos.
But at least its only the manufacturers trying to screw us. I can live with that. I don't like it, but I can live with it. When the government starts telling us that we have to watch commercials I have to wonder exactly who's side the government is on?
I don't even understand what theory of government would be involved in such a law. Is there a some sort of constitutional mandate to give businesses whatever will make them happy? Is there some sort of law that insinuates consumers must purchase a full price product with every loss leader? When exactly did businesses get the right to have their business models only negative aspects "corrected" via legislation?
If the age of comercials is waning, then pick another business model. HBO and Showtime do just fine without commercials. So do most DVD releases. Don't foce my government, who I thought was looking out for MY interests, to prop up your failed model with protectionist legislation.
The secret of backups is to not only keep your eggs in more than one basket, but to keep them in more than one backup basket as well.
Here's an example of one of our backup shemes
Full backup on Saturday Incremental (just the changes) backup Mon-Fri Every week, take the prior weeks backup off site. Every Month take one of the weekly off-sites and put it in permanent storage.
Now lets say notice cooruption one Monday. First I'd go to my last backup, the Saturday one, and check the data there. If there's corruption there then I go through the rest of my in-house backups and check till I find a good version of the file. Then I go through my off-site backups until I find a version of the file that's good. Because I have so many different versions saved up, (including the once a month permanent storage) I'll eventually find one that's good.
How can you make this work for you? Well, your current system isn't too bad, but you don't say what you do with the CDRs you burn every few weeks. If you make sure to keep all prior versions when you make a new one, then if your HD all of a sudden becomes corrupted, you'll have many different places to look for a good version. Additionally, you should periodically take a copy to your mom's or your sisters house. I actually keep a backup of my personal stuff on a HD at my work because I live far away from my family.
If you do all that, (it's not as difficult as it sounds once you get going) your personal backups will far excede anything you might have done otherwise. Unless your hometown gets nuked, you'll be in pretty good shape with those treasured files.
And you say you don't want to be a museum curator, but you're choosing the option that will require exactly that.
I'm not a photo geek. The pictures I take are snapshots, not art. When I print them out they end up in a frame from Target or a photo album from Wal-Mart or sometimes a shoe box on my shelf. These pictures will not last and I'm unwilling to go to the effort of to print them and store them in such a way that they do last.
I am a tech geek though. I have more than a dozen functioning and used computers in my house at them moment and uncounted, but huge amounts of hard, floppy and compact disks. I have an excellent backup scheme (including off-site) for things that are important to me.
I'm unwilling to be a museum currator, but I have no problem being a backup expert. That's who I am and I'm going with my strengths. I honestly feel my grandkids have a much better chance to see a great picture of their mom when she was growing up if I use my archival scheme. Though they're not going to be computer geeks like me, I believe the "copy to new media/format as it becomes available" method will give better results to Joe Average too, because they're buything the same Target frames and Wal-Mart albums that I am.
Slashdot Mirror
What a joke though, in one article I read they listed Halo 2 and Half Life 2 along side Doom 3 and GTA. Like there's any real comparison between those games. It was clear they never played any of the games.
But does it really matter? _IF_ a game is rated "mature" then what's the problem with it requireing parental consent to buy? Would you all be complaining if parental consent were required to buy Hustler magazine? How about to go see "Eyes Wide Shut"?
I think the real questions shouldn't be whether or not kids should be able to buy this material, it should be a question of which material gets rated "mature". If you leave it at that I'm on your side, but if you think my KID should have a right to buy GTA then there's a real problem.
TW
2. If the applications are better than MS, then people will move to OSS apps and ultimately may pave the way to move to linux
That sure worked for me. I first tried Linux back in '99 and didn't like it very much so I stopped using it. One of the reasons why I didn't like it was because it was such a chore to relearn the simple things I've been doing in Windows for years.
Flash forward to today. I've been using Linux off and on for about the last year and the the big "surpise" I always get when I boot up is how easy it is to use. One of the biggest reasons it's so easy is that I'm very familiar with Firefox, Mozilla and OpenOffice which I use all the time in Windows. If I was stuck with only IE and Office in Windows then the switch to Linux would still be somewhat of a chore.
Ya see, Linux is not terribly difficult to use for someone with a little bit of time and intelligence. But relearning _every_ type of app you currently work with on Windows is just a massive pain in the ass. Each app isn'tdifficult, but what if you need to:
Write a doc
modify a txt
download a file and then find it later
rip a CD
Play an MP3
burn a CD
set up your printer
print a spreadsheet
move some files to the network to make space on your hard drive
copy some files to an FTP server
That's a typical day for a lot of people and that is a whole lot of stuff to re-learn if all of your apps are different when you switch OSs. Having a few of those apps be cross platform and being able to ease into them on Windows would do wonders for people feeling comfortable when they migrate to Linux.
It sure helped for me.
TW
The best part about this whole article is that it _didn't_ include the phrase "iPod killer". Why I'd want any product to kill my daughter's iPod is beyond me anyway. I paid $400 for that thing and I want it to stay alive as long as physically possible.
Three cheers for the phrase "awesome competitor" instead.
TW
So really, the study is saying "F/OSS is cheaper than MS by a good margin, but our precision is shitty enough that our actual number doesn't mean much. It might be %37 cheaper, it might be %80 cheaper, or it might be %1 cheaper--but we're pretty sure it's cheaper."
The devil is in the details, which were conspicously absent. I could say I'm a 36% better administrator than you, but I wouldn't expect anyone to care very much about that number unless I gave some details to back it up.
TW
There is no free energy source -- in financial or environmental effects.
Nicely put. Why can't people realize that everything man does will have an effect on the environement. Use paper and kill some trees. Use plastic and you clog up landfills. Damn rivers and you change ecosystems. Harvest wind and you kill birds.
The question isn't whether your energy source will affect the envirionment (it will), the question is which kind of effect you prefer. Environmentalists have a nasty habit of prefering the type of energy that not enough people have used to determine it's real downside. Then they switch to the other side as soon as the downside is noted.
STOP BEING SO REACTIONARY! Look at the available data and try to figure out what's best compared to other sources. If you had to choose coal, natural gas, water, nuclear or air, which are you going to choose? Why? Whatever you decide _will_ have a downside. You can't help it. So learn to live with it where necessary and try to minimize it where possible. But don't simply protest and shout, "it's bad!" because the world doesn't work like that. Everything is bad. Choose the thing that's not as bad as everythings else.
TW
The thing I really like about TheOpenCD is the fact that a group of experts have lent their endorsements to the software. They've sort of certified them as proffesional in appearace, straightforward and useful with no major security flaws.
When a newby (or even an old hat like me) sees several open source projects for a similar software type, it can be difficult to choose which one to try. TheOpenCD gives a good starting point for many software categories.
How many VNC flavors are there out there? How do you know which ones are pretty good and easy to use and which ones are more hobbyist oriented? I can't and wont tell you that TightVNC is "the best" but it was a great starting point for me to learn more about VNC. Now that I've used it a bunch of times I can feel a lot more confident about looking at other VNC flavors.
Similarly, 7-Zip has replaced WinZip as my Windows zipper of choice. Even if I had heard about it elseware, I might have been reluctant to try it without a recommendation from someone I could trust. TheOpenCD gave me that recommendation.
In fact, though I'm an experienced computer admin, I got a lot of good, free (both kinds) software from TheOpenCD without needing to install and uninstall hundreds of different programs looking for "the best." This is because of the great job the project has done of picking quality software.
THANKS VERY MUCH TO THE TEAM FOR MAKING MY LIFE EASIER!!!!
TW
I've actualy rented anime videos from the PQ in Springfield VA. About half their stock were obviously copies. It's possible they were leagal copies, but the shear volume suggested otherwise. This event does not surprise me.
I hope they win the lawsuit. If they were to get the courts to agree that hiding malicious wording in the EULA is fraud then that would be a nice boon to shutting some of these people down.
In fact, just about any attack on the concept of click-through EULAs is pretty good in my book. Scream "contract!" all you want, they're bad for me personally and bad for the industry. Consent and informed consent are two different things and it appears the industry has completely abandonded any pretext of the latter.
TW
I like a lot of rap. Much of the stuff I like is old school like Public Enemy or The Ghetto Boys. I listen to some new rap too.
In my experience with the hip-hop culture, if they remove the word "motherfucker," the content of the song is very likely to be hos and/or drugs. Most of the rest of the songs, including very many that are socially and politically meaningful, don't have "motherfuckers" that need to be removed.
TW
The most amazing part is what we choose to censor. South Park shows a hamster being insterted into and traveling through a man's colon but bleeps the word "fuck". I don't fucking get it. We are prudes and nasty fuckers all in the same show.
Selective censorship never works. Bleeping a cuss word doesn't stop everyone from understanding it's a cuss word and, because of the nasty context, does nothing to protect children or anyone else. You can remove every "motherfucker" you want from Rap music and it's still talking about fucking hos and doing drugs.
I don't know the answer, but I'm growing fatigued of all the shows and songs that punch holes in the dialog, yet still leave you feeling violated. We're not only protecting no one, but we're treating adults like children in the process. Though I'm not asking for it in this case, I sure wish a government who claims to be trying to protect me would actually try to protect me... or butt the fuck out.
TW
Ok I am wrong sorry. Just Mod my origional message down I haven't used Windows 2000/XP enough to really check those features I was basing it on my NT knowlege.
I think this happens a lot. People keep wanting to compare the current features of Unix and/or Linux to the features of NT4.0. They used NT back in the day, it left a bad taste in their mouth, and they moved on to something else. They keep this snapshot picture in their mind of the bad ol' days because they got burned so badly they didn't want to try it again with a more recent version.
I've seen people do this to Linux too. Linux is not the same OS it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago when a lot of people tried it and came to the conclusion that it didn't quite meet their needs. I personally tried Linux about 5 years ago and disliked it for a variety of reasons. But I've been using a few versions recently ranging from 6 months to a year old and almost all of those objections have been fixed.
Windows Server OSs have grown up a lot since NT 4.0 and and deserves a much better reputation too. Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 are stable and flexible, even if they're still closed and expensive. People who used NT in the past should at least give the new Windows a chance before dismissing it.
TW
Windows implimentation of DFS lets you mount to any point on the tree, much like NFS. Come to think of it, Window has an implimentation of NFS too.
Drive letters are not an issue on Windows unless you want them to be.
TW
"Dell Computer, said at a financial conference call this month that Dell was considering adding computers with A.M.D. chips to its product line."
The words "news of Intel's death were greatly exagerated," come to mind.
It's like Microsoft wringing their hands over Linux; they _should_ be paying attention, but they've got a long way to go before they become number 2.
TW
"Chalk up another victory for adult stem cell research... what is that now 79 to 0? Why are we studying embryonic stem cells?"
I tend to agree with that sentiment.. seems like the embryonic research is turning into a big waste of money...
Maybe if they cut funding to adult stem cells and then got half the country to think working with them as moraly reprehensible maybe the embryonic stem cells would have a chance to catch up?
Or maybe you could just say any reseach that doesn't pay off in, say, 10 years should just be counted as a failure? What the hell are we doing messing around with fusion research anyway? It's obviously far less useful than fission because, ya see, only fission actually produces any power.
Or maybe we could just let science do its job and ignore all the people that think giving a pint of blood is moral, but giving an 8-cell grouping is murder?
TW
I think the point is that literal interpretation of the Bible is problematic. Christians, being human themselves, should understand that, but too often they just don't.
If I had a dime for every time I've heard a Christian say "I only read the King James version of the Bible because it's a word for word interpretation" I'd have a pretty big handful of dimes. You and I know that the KJ bible has a history that rejects literal interpretation on translation grounds alone, but what about other literary techniques like alegory, simily and metaphor? Are Christians so blind to the capabilities of the written word?
Please, If you believe in what the Bible says then I urge you to be a thinking person and believe God gave the gift of literature to the writers of the Bible. Please believe that there is the capability that things don't mean exactly what they say. Heck I've heard all kinds of fun interpretations of the meaning of Revelations, why must you fail to believe the same possibilities of the rest of the book?
I think a Slashdot quote is pretty appropriate when it comes to literally interpreteed Bible math: "If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."
TW
This is bullshit. You can wipe out a server hard drive with less than 10 characters and an "enter" on most Unix/Linux systems. But you want to blame Microsoft for the UK government not properly running their IT staff enough to make sure they're pushing the patch to a test group instead the production group?
Microsoft builds very powerful software. Their Active Directory and Group Policy can do amazing things over huge numbers of computers. But if the guy in charge gives admin rights over the directory to some monkey that doesn't know how it works it's no different than giving root to the same monkey on your big Unix file server.
I'm quite familiar with the Microsoft recommendations for big projects like this. Claiming Microsoft would "sell a complex system [of this magnitude] with the claim idiots can administer it" is flat out false. They recommend highly trained proffesionals, testing in an offline environment and strict change control procedures. Don't let your personal prejudice cloud the facts: MS sells big systems to big customers with the understanding and recommendation that they'll have tallented staff to run them.... Just like every Unix house does.
TW
That "once" part of it is key...
Sniping is a good metaphor for this. A good sniper fires exactly one shot before moving on. It's not obvious to many people, but it's quite difficult to pinpoint gunfire if only one shot is fired. Second and third shots let your potential victims zero in on you and return fire.
TW
3. Don't get greedy, never forget rule 1.
Suggesting to criminals not to get gready is like suggesting to fish not to live in water. I guess there's no law against giving advice you know can't be followed.
TW
It was Chico, but it could really describe several very nice citys in California.
:-)
I also couldn't afford a car for several years and had the same grocery problems. My tean-age daughter still remembers being completely imobilized by grocery bags in her bike trailer when she was three. When she talks about it, she describes those years as some the happiest in her life. I can't disagree with her either.
TW
I'm wondering if we should ban bicycles from the open roads cars are on.
Great answer. Lets ban vehicles that use no foreign oil and actually help our health. Society can only benefit from such legislation.
It is dangerous to have a bicycle that is hard to see on a road were the majority of vehicles are over 2000lbs..and traveling a minimum of 35 mph.
You're right, it's dangerous. But what do you think of banning cars instead? I've never heard of an SUV driver biting the dust because he was hit by a reckless cyclist.
They do hold up traffic, and are a hazard in that and the fact they are hard to see when driving a car.
Pedestrians are even slower and harder to see. Maybe they shouldn't be allowed either?
In all seriousness, Americans have a hell of a hard time seeing past the thing that benefits them the most at the moment. We complain about gas prices and our collectively ballooning waistlines, but all we can see is that guy on the bike "slowing us down." Let's ban him?
I moved from a nice small city in California that was about 7-8 miles across. The roads and the downtown area were designed for easy access by bikes. They were used heavily by both cars and bikes. And you know what? Life was beautiful there. Cars could get where they were going and bikes could get where they were going and traffic was something somebody else in some other city had to deal with. Bikes were a very real part of "the solution" because they kept that traffic low because, you see, bikes take up significantly less space than cars on the road.
Now I live in Northern Virginia in the DC Metro Area. Everybody drives. But if you try riding your bike a few things become quickly evident. The roads are not designed with bikes in mind. in order for you to go down the road you HAVE to get in the way of cars. There are a few bike paths, but they don't go anywhere. It's kind of like a 4-lane highway in the middle of a corn field. Useless.
The sidewalks are the same way. You see them all over the place, but they never connect. You literally can't walk a block down the street to get the morning paper in most places. You have to walk out in the street to get there.
And you know what? The traffic sucks. It doesn't just suck on the highway, but all over. I can't prove that the reason is because they designed without bikes in mind, but I can tell you that both cyclists and drivers hate cycling for any utilitarian purpose so almost nobody rides. Instead they drive, usually big SUVs or minivans, and take up a lot more space on the road.
What does all this rambling mean? Ride more and drive less. If you want to ban anything, think about the end result. We are not better off because we drive cars more and bike less.
TW
To bad you're not figuring traffic into the equation. If you get more people traveling closer together at a faster pace then you've solved an important problem that's been plaguing the motorists for quite some time. You don't even need to replace cars, just get enough of them off the road to make roads more tolerable.
It's the same bad math that gets motorists angry at bicyclists. Where they see one slow guy added in that they have to drive around, the better math sees one SUV subtracted out that you wouldn't have been able to drive around at all.
TW
If a traditional rocket kicks in at Mach 15 to get the rest of the way to orbit, the savings in launch weight and thus cost from not having to carry all that oxidizer to get up to Mach 15 could still be quite large.
I've heard the idea of using three stages in scramjet orbital launches. The first and third are rockets and the middle is the scramjet. It makes me kind of curious about using chemical propellants, like in a giant howitzer, to propell the scramjet to it's initial speed.
I couldn't see this doing much for manned flight, but most of what we send up isn't manned anyway. It could also have some pretty kick ass millitary application, say for dramatically increasing the payload of current rocket propelled artillery rounds.
TW
The technology certainly is there to prevent us from skipping commercials, for example, on DVDs, the hardware can be prevented from fast forwarding through content they don't want us to skip. I had to assume this was what they wanted to do for future TiVos.
But at least its only the manufacturers trying to screw us. I can live with that. I don't like it, but I can live with it. When the government starts telling us that we have to watch commercials I have to wonder exactly who's side the government is on?
I don't even understand what theory of government would be involved in such a law. Is there a some sort of constitutional mandate to give businesses whatever will make them happy? Is there some sort of law that insinuates consumers must purchase a full price product with every loss leader? When exactly did businesses get the right to have their business models only negative aspects "corrected" via legislation?
If the age of comercials is waning, then pick another business model. HBO and Showtime do just fine without commercials. So do most DVD releases. Don't foce my government, who I thought was looking out for MY interests, to prop up your failed model with protectionist legislation.
TW
The secret of backups is to not only keep your eggs in more than one basket, but to keep them in more than one backup basket as well.
Here's an example of one of our backup shemes
Full backup on Saturday
Incremental (just the changes) backup Mon-Fri
Every week, take the prior weeks backup off site.
Every Month take one of the weekly off-sites and put it in permanent storage.
Now lets say notice cooruption one Monday. First I'd go to my last backup, the Saturday one, and check the data there. If there's corruption there then I go through the rest of my in-house backups and check till I find a good version of the file. Then I go through my off-site backups until I find a version of the file that's good. Because I have so many different versions saved up, (including the once a month permanent storage) I'll eventually find one that's good.
How can you make this work for you? Well, your current system isn't too bad, but you don't say what you do with the CDRs you burn every few weeks. If you make sure to keep all prior versions when you make a new one, then if your HD all of a sudden becomes corrupted, you'll have many different places to look for a good version. Additionally, you should periodically take a copy to your mom's or your sisters house. I actually keep a backup of my personal stuff on a HD at my work because I live far away from my family.
If you do all that, (it's not as difficult as it sounds once you get going) your personal backups will far excede anything you might have done otherwise. Unless your hometown gets nuked, you'll be in pretty good shape with those treasured files.
TW
And you say you don't want to be a museum curator, but you're choosing the option that will require exactly that.
I'm not a photo geek. The pictures I take are snapshots, not art. When I print them out they end up in a frame from Target or a photo album from Wal-Mart or sometimes a shoe box on my shelf. These pictures will not last and I'm unwilling to go to the effort of to print them and store them in such a way that they do last.
I am a tech geek though. I have more than a dozen functioning and used computers in my house at them moment and uncounted, but huge amounts of hard, floppy and compact disks. I have an excellent backup scheme (including off-site) for things that are important to me.
I'm unwilling to be a museum currator, but I have no problem being a backup expert. That's who I am and I'm going with my strengths. I honestly feel my grandkids have a much better chance to see a great picture of their mom when she was growing up if I use my archival scheme. Though they're not going to be computer geeks like me, I believe the "copy to new media/format as it becomes available" method will give better results to Joe Average too, because they're buything the same Target frames and Wal-Mart albums that I am.
TW