I couldn't agree more. I was just thinking it would be nice to add some spit shine. Perhaps a lightweight WINGs/stand/sysinstall, with workstation defaults selected.
I've always though that FreeBSD was incredibly userfriendly (and you are definitely right about the excellent documentation), I've just thought that it could easily capture the mainstream market on the desktop with so little work.
Well, yes, but I was thinking more of the Graphical Install--> GUI configuration tools of things like rc scripts--> Plus preconfigured menus for the user that include "must-haves" such as Gimp, LyX:-) (ok, I like it), Netscape, xmms, etc.
I've often thought that FreeBSD could be a super easy Desktop OS with little work.
Everytime someone mentions FreeBSD on/. people have to mention the ports collection and how cool it is. Then, all the Debian people counter with how cool apt-get is. Both are very cool, but I have to say that FreeBSD continually impresses me with how complete the ports are.
Some kind of a meta port that installs a userfriendly desktop along with a standard set of apps would be super cool.
I've always had an easier time of getting hardware working in FreeBSD than Linux, including soundcards and my video capture card (just add "device pcm" to the kernel config file for 99% of sound cards)
In my years of running both FreeBSD and Linux, I've only had one hardware snafu with BSD (if anyone can help, it's the integrated sound on the FIC AZ11 Mainboard. It only plays noise.:-( No IRQ conflicts that I can find)
I'd love to package a FreeBSD/GNUstep port with a nice installer for FreeBSD, but I lack a lot of programming experience. If anyone knows of a project similar to this, I'd love to hear about it, or if not, someone might be interested in forming a group?
-Peter
Yes, it's important to stay with the ports...
on
FreeBSD 4.2 Is Out
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· Score: 1
Unless you are interested installing some other parts by hand. You're gtk problem is very likely remedied by getting the latest port and: "make install"
I have found very few times when there has not been a port for the software I'm looking for. After software is released, a port usually comes a couple days after. Keep czeching Fresh Ports for new ones!
Hmm. I managed to get the source back when it was first released. Infact, I'm using OpenOffice exclusively as my office suite these days.
I'm not going to try to download it now (at home on 56k dialup), but I'll see if I can help you out tomorrow when I'm at work on the fat pipe.
Don't give up on StarOffice because of a hiccup in the download process. StarOffice 5.2 is a great program, and I think that OpenOffice will be even cooler as time progresses. Sun has a lot to gain by seeing OpenOffice take off.
In the meantime while you're waiting for OpenOffice, check out StarOffice 5.2. I've downloaded that one a million times without a hitch. Just point your webbrowser to http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice
Speaking of which, I'm sure glad that I support the death penalty... Because I don't have a choice! I wouldn't want those minority types to get all snooty thinking that it's wrong that they're disproportionately represented on death row.
"We already have compassionate conservatives; they're called Democrats." --Bill Maher
e-mail Short form of electronic mail. Many e-mail or Internet addresses use symbols such as the at symbol (@), or the tilde (~) that cannot be transmitted correctly in some member computing systems. When needed, spell them out and provide an explanatory editor's note.
Unfortunately this is not the very latest edition of the stylebook. Anyone know if this has changed in this year's copy?
I agree with one fact: Corporations are not people.
This certainly does not mean that corporations should be exempt from tax--even if the individuals who own the corporation are taxed for money made from owning stock. Here's why:
* Corporations draw on public infrastructure. Are you going to argue that a company's usage of public resource is only as great as the sum of its stockholders? That is lunacy. Corporations use natural and public resource as an entity in and of themselves; therefore they need to compensate the public accordingly.
* In a time when corporate profits are at an all time high, and labor is payed the lowest (in real dollars) amount since the 1970's. 1/3 of the United States's labor force makes less than 10 dollars per hour, and many of those make right at the minimum wage.
Do you propose that these people should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the 2nd and 4th most valuable corporations in the United States? It doesn't sound so good when you look at it that way does it?
* Finally, I do have another major beef with corporations. This is it: they are not a person; they have limited liability; they are not citizens, and yet they seem to have much more pull in government than ordinary citizens.
I think that the least corporations can do is pay their fair share.
I also think that the tax structure needs to be reset to be a true progressive tax. As it is a disproportionate burden falls on those least able to pay.
I would say that it's just mush-headed libertarianism to say that corporations should not pay taxes, but that might be misconstrued as flame-bait:-)
Check out Ralph Nader if corporate interests seem a little too strong. VoteNader.org.
Check out this funny piece of we b animation by Tom Tomorrow while you're at it:-)
My roommate and I have an Alpha Station 200/233. We went through hell getting Linux on it. (Yes MILO is a BITCH) I think this has to do with the fact that MS wrote the ARC firmware.
FreeBSD with the SRM firmware was a breaze to install. It was just like the i386 install--easy. No dicking with the ARC firmware was great. Just "boot dka1" (that's my cd-rom drive. Type "show d" at the SRM prompt to get a list of your devices.)
FreeBSD (I've since tried NetBSD and OpenBSD, with similar success on older alpha) seemed to be much more polished on that architecture than other OSen.
Seriously though. FreeBSD really has a great way to install. It's not as colorful, or graphical as some others, but it really is the epitome of easy--if you know what packages you want.
I usually start with the standard install, select the X-Developer package, the ports and then any stray packages.
Then for those truely wonderful programs that they can't fit on one CD (yummm.... LyX is good.) I cd/usr/ports/category/portname, then make install.
FreeBSD is really a great system for novices, or expert people who like things to Just Work(tm).
I think that FreeBSD really represents the best of the Ncurses based installers.
Whatever they do, I hope they stick with the ncurses install. It is just as easy as the graphical system and a whole lot less more reliable.
Persons may pay the same percentage of their income, but if you look at the demographics of this country, the majority of the persons are not rich.
Thus the greater number of people in a class, the greater percentage that their socioeconomic class pays.
So if you want to be nitpicky, I believe that the largest group of americans is technically the lower, middle class, but suffice it to say that things aren't too rosy at the bottom of the bottom either.
You see, the tax burden is still primarily footed by those least able to pay
So, sorry if this was unclear. I thought that I sufficiently prefaced that idea, but I guess you missed it.
I cannot imagine a tax structure (other than our own) more pandering to big business and the ultra-rich than a flat tax.
I think that a progressive tax is needed.
Take Bill Gates for example, he siphons the labor of thousands of students educated in state-run colleges and institutions. These students pay tuition, but a vast number of them get subsidies from the govt to attend school.
Since the average American is not as rich as Bill Gates, a flat tax leaves a disproportionate responcibility on the bottom 99.9%. Yet, Bill Gates undeniably reaps a huge personal benefit from public education. In fact he reaps a much larger benefit that I do.
I hope we can all agree that public Universities are a good thing (an educated population is an effective population). So Bill Gates recieves (other that the warm fuzzies I get about higher education) a larger chunk of that pie than I do, yet under a flat tax, we pay the same.
Fees charged for services rendered. That should be pretty straitforward right?
I know the tired arguements about tax loopholes, increased cost of operation of the IRS, and the "man, doesn't it suck to do these complex taxes" arguement. However, the numbers do not add up. It does not save enough money, to offset the need for progressivity, and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You did know that the United States have the largest divide between the rich and poor of any industrialized nation, right?
I agree that these are all downsides to the current tax scheme (which I obviously disagree with vehemently).
The tax system needs to be vastly simplified. I don't see that a sliding tax scale has to be much more complicated than a flat tax, and it doesn't have the truely nasty effects that a flat tax would have.
Most people don't understand that a flat tax does not distribute the tax burden equally. With a flat tax, the less you make, the higher percentage that you pay. That doesn't seem to foster much equality or even intellegence.
You talked unfavorably about socialism, but with class warfare tactics like the flat tax idea, we're lucky that our proletariat hasn't already seized the factors of production from their bourgeoisie oppressors.
As for me, I'm taking the middle ground and voting for Nader. He really has some good ideas about making government more understandable and accessable. I suspect that most libertarians want the same basic things that Ralph Nader and the Greens support, but they've got vastly different ideas about getting it done.
For the record, Nader and the Greens do not simply support big government. In many cases they support downsizing. Check it out http://www.votenader.org
and spend less time being seduced by the libertarians.
Look at the historical precident in this country for laissez-faire capitalism. We gave rise to the Captains of Industry, Aka the "Robber Barons". Do we really want to repeat those dark days when deregulation was big?
Given a choice between being abused a large, inefficient government that I have the hope of participating in, versus being abused by the efficiency of corporation where votes are bought by dollars, I'll take government any day.
Deregulating an industry does not limit govt payouts, nor does it reconcile the fact that the average American living at the poverty line pays a higher percentage in taxes than your average corporation (average corporations pay between 2%-6%. How much do you pay?).
The corporate welfare structure in the United States is primarily the result of a mush-headed reverse-progressive (regressive?) tax scale that favors large corporation over the small businesses that are the real support for communities.
There have been corporations in the last 20 years who make hundreds of millions of dollars, pay no taxes, or 1% tax, or 3% tax. Or if they owe taxes on export profits, they have been deferred to have their taxes forgiven by special-interest legislation.
In the 1950s, the corporate income tax was 25% of the federal outlay; it's now about 6% or 7%. This is in a period of record corporate profits, record stock market prices, record executive compensation. The corporations are not contributing their fair share to the tax pool. As a matter of fact, I suspect that if you took all the corporate welfare and then took all the corporate income taxes paid, the aggregate would be zero taxes paid. So that leaves the burden on, largely, middle-income and lower-income Americans. --Ralph Nader http://www.votenader.org
Yep... Those Germans sure are backward. I'm glad that I live in the good ol' United States where that sort of corporate welfare is not tolerated.
People should really read about the protesters and what they stand for. Most (I would go as far as to say all, but there are always a few exceptions) of these people are very concerned citizens who are worried about the current state of our democracy. Common Dreams seems to have some pretty good coverage of the civil rights trampling that was done.
There are a number of instances where organizers were singled out and arrested in a preemptive manner. This is probably why the staff member from 2600 was arrested. You see, the organizers all carry the Nextel phones, because they are cheap and can conference call. Read a number of instances where people were arrested, not read any rights, detained for longer than legal times, not told what they were being charged with, (and here is the shocker) because they happened to be walking by with a Nextel phone.
Do the protesters have valid concerns? Yes, I think so. In Philidelphia, it appears you can walk on civil rights, and get away with it with out so much as a mention from the mainstream media. My favorite site has been Tom Tommorrow's photo shoot of the Republican convention (Tom Tommorrow draws This Modern World.) The highlight in my mind is the part where you have a picture of Sam Donaldson sitting bored complaining about the lack of news, while protesters flooded the streets outside.
Over the past 10 years the Democrats have moved vastly to the right, and the Republicans have moved to the left. What we have right now are two parties that quibble over minor details while agreeing on the big ones. It truely has become a monoparty system. The term "Republicrat" is popping up more and more.
Bill Mahr put it best on his show, Politically Incorrect, "We already have compassionate conservatives. They're called Democrats." This is very true. There really is no voice for the progressive these days--or so the media would have us believe. The fact is, that Ralph Nader is a liberal progressive--and a damn smart person. He is the reason we have some semblance of auto safety standards. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1955, and from Harvard Law School in 1958. Since then he has tirelessly devoted his life to public service. The guy makes over $300,000/yr and lives off of $25,000--because he gives the rest to civic projects.
More importantly, the guy is way ahead of all the other third party candidates, is on the ballot in 30 states already (including Montana:-) Thank you Mr. Wachs and co.) with more to come, and he has eight percent popularity. If enough people vote for him, the Green Party (I was a staunch Democrat before I found the Greens) will become a "recognized" political party.
But, the media has chosen to ignore him.
So rather than throw my vote away by voting for one of the major parties, I'm going to do something this year. I'm going to do my part to get the Green Party recognized so that the Democrats can never again say,"You have to vote for us, we're not Newt Gingrich's party."
-Peter
Voting for the "least worst choice" is still going downhill. Make your vote actually count. Vote Nader
Lets not get too compfy with the media yet...
on
The Myth Of The Borg
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· Score: 4
I found this article a little disturbing. I understand Slashdot's desire to be viewed favorably by both the suits (Andover et al), and the geeks (we loyal readers). This article seemed to me to be an attempt to reconcile the two by simply saying, "Any lapses in journalistic ethics that you may experience are not the result of a conflict of interest."
Well, don't get too compfy with the media yet. They have their problems, and many of them are not limited to greedy freelance writers, or "small and understaffed publications."
I will add that I found that assertion to be rather amusing. I've generally found that the best reporting comes from "small and understaffed publications" simply because they are not afraid to report the stories that go against the advertising grain. In fact, I've noticed that journalistic integrity almost ensures that publications remain small and understaffed.
As for the assertion that most advertising departments and reporter segments of news organisations are highly separate, I believe that they are at the lower levels. However, you'd better believe that if it comes down to exposing a giant agribusiness company or "Joe Bob's Burger Barn" most big news publications will kill the little guy first, because the little guy doesn't buy big advertising. Is this a concious choice by reporters? No. But the senior editing staff is more likely to run the stories that keep their organisation alive.
Everyone should check out Norman Solomon's new book, "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media." I'm a journalism major, and it sure as hell changed my outlook on this topic. He'll give you the specific examples that I'm sure everyone was looking for:-)
Roblimo mentions watchdog organisations that "help keep editorial content free from business or outside influence." Right. How much press time devoted to watchdogging has anyone seen? Following Dateline NBC, do you see follow-ups where someone like FAIR shreds Dateline for factual inacuracies? I thought not. The reasons that watchdog groups aren't terribly effective (Yes I do think that watchdog groups are quintessential to accurate reporting), is that a small minority of people read them. Why does such a small number of people read them? Because they simply don't have enough money to get out to a wide audience. Why don't they have the money? Because most businesses prefer to remain outside the hard scrutiny that such watchdog groups provide.
Roblimo talks about these watchdogs saving news organisations from business intervention (which I don't think is true). But Roblimo prefaces this article with the statement that we shouldn't waste our time with such watchdogging activities! Then he implies that any such activity is simply "makeing up fake [conspiracies].
Sorry Roblimo, Slashdot (by nature) has built-in watchdogging. Some of it shoots from the hip but some of it is absolutely biting. This story is not the panacea for curing people with the urge to look for conflict of interest, be it in Andover or any other news mag.
I'd just like to say that I really appreciate the watchdogging that Slashdot readers do. I'd like to see more of it. Not less. Watchdogging is especially important in the tech industry! Slashdot is a great source of it. Why is it so important to watchdog technology publications? The simple fact is that computers are changing the face of communication (duh). There is a lot of interest at stake in this media. Take an active role in making sure that its reporting is honest.
Hmm. It seems like these abuses of corporate power are getting more and more. Maybe Nader has the right idea after all. I know who I'm voting for this election year.
This may be rather against the prevalent libertarian sentiment of notables like ESR, but this story seems to me to be a result of the libertarian mindset.
Given the choice of being bent over by a large inefficient government, or being bent over by a large efficient corporation, I chose government. Atleast I have the a _potential_ to make a difference in the government.
When I can't run *BSD (i.e. need vmware at work) I run Slackware!
Seriously, Slackware is very BSD like. It doesn't quite have all the niceties that I have come to love in FreeBSD or OpenBSD (haven't tried NetBSD... yet.), but Slackware is a very solidly built distribution. Any for BSD converts such as myself, it really does try to conform to BSD standards where possible.
That being said, I've really come to dislike the shear size of other distros. I know harddrives are cheap, but it seems that I cannot install in less than 500 megs with RedHat or SuSE.
I really like the "build as you go" approach that FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Slackware use. You can install a very minimal system and add *exactly* what you need as you need it.
I feel compelled to agree with this comment. I too, must say that I really love Linux. That being said, it is _not_ a new user's operating system.
I feel that any of the *BSDs are very solid and production ready. I can't say that about a number of Linux machines. Linux can be made to be a very secure, wonderful, and easy Operating system, but for people wanting to get started, BSD is a better choice.
BSD's _biggest_ advantage is the weath of excellent documentation on general usage. OpenBSD's documentation is the man page system. Anything that you could possibly want to know about OpenBSD is in the man pages. This makes it very easy to find what you are looking for.
For those who also like "handbook" style docs, FreeBSD combines excellent man pages (sometimes Linux's manpages are a stretch) with a handbook that gives you a general overview of how to do basic administrative functions.
I advocate new users starting with FreeBSD because of the very user-friendly docs. FreeBSD's website has documentation that starts by teaching a user how to login! Seriously, read the "FreeBSD for people new to both FreeBSD and UNIX" documentation and tell me that wouldn't be good for _any_ new user.
OpenBSD is not quite so basic, but the docs are more friendly than anything I've seen from the Linux Documentation Project. I really like the LDP, but OpenBSD has some really great man pages.
If you are a linux user, check out one of the BSDs. You'll be glad you did. I started with Debian and Slackware circa kernel 1.2.13, and started using BSD last August. I'm hooked!
I'm taking a class at my University called "The Sociology of Alternative Religions." The title used to be "The Sociology of Cults," but I guess people didn't like that terminology.
The fact is, brainwashing (more appropriately called "mind control") is somewhat of a myth. Mind control is almost 100% ineffective at converting someone who is not already a willing participant.
An example is the capture and "brainwashing" of U.S. soldiers in Chinese POW camps. They used traditional mind control tactics (i.e. Beatings, humiliation, etc. to induce a psychological breakdown.) They had U.S. soldiers extolling the virtues of communism on TV. However of the thousands of POWs that were subjected to this behavior, only one chose to remain in China after the war.
The important thing to remember with mindcontrol, is that it is horribly ineffective. That is not to say, however, that groups do not attempt to use it anyway.
There are a number of models for Cult formation. The model of Scientology is the entrepreneurial model of cult formation. It started as a business (Remember dianetics?) and evolved into its own religion.
Being a secular humanist / athiest myself, I view religions in general to be somewhat deceptive and counterproductive to humanity in general, but Scientology takes the cake. Check out Operation Clambake at http://www.xenu.net.
Andreas Heldal-Lund who runs Operation Clambake is a first class individual and has no shortage of courage. The sorts of character assasinations that Scientology has subjected him to are scary. -Peter "Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars." --Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Has anyone done this yet? I tried naming the file as an iso, and burning it in windows (don't have a cd-burner on my FreeBSD machine).
So far, it is no go. Does this have to made as a different type of image? Can this be extracted? Also I thought that this was a working BFS formatted partition. Does BFS support El-Torrito loading?
I'm new to the world of cd-burning, and I'm curious to see if this hack works. Ofcourse none of this would be needed had they supplied support for FreeBSD's FFS:-) -Peter
Ray Kurzweil wrote an interesting book a while back that I believe was even reviewed here on Slashdot called The Age of Spiritual Machines.
This book seems to me be a lot more reasonable in its treatment of technology. He (very rightly) points out that stopping the growth of technology would be much like a gnat stopping a loaded freight train.
Interestingly enough, he has an extended quote from Theodore Kaczynski in his book. It is a well reasoned arguement, but one that is fundamentally flawed. Kaczynski argues that we should stop the growth of technology and go back to simpler times. This presupposes that such a thing is possible.
Kurzweil notes that previous luddite movements have been underwhelmingly successful. Where would one draw a line with technology? Should we use digital implants to eventually eradicate deafness? Blindness? How about Alzheimers? At what point is a human no longer a human?
Kurzweil does throw the reader a curve-ball in reguards to human extinction. He thinks that our technology will ultimately make us obsolete. (How many Neandrothals do you see running around in relation to modern humans?)
Maybe such a change will be incremental and we won't even realize it has happened until it is common place.
Come on people, do you think that a super-intellegent race of robots will ever enslave us for our ohh-so efficient use of resources? I think not. I think that we'll just see the lines between man and machine blur until there is no difference.
As for a nano-catastrophe, Kurzweil deals with that too. What do we use to combat current bio-engineered virii and bacteria? Well, we use the same technology that we used to design them. Is it scary? Maybe. Do we really have a choice? Maybe. Would the majority likely chose the luddite path? Likely not.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always though that FreeBSD was incredibly userfriendly (and you are definitely right about the excellent documentation), I've just thought that it could easily capture the mainstream market on the desktop with so little work.
-Peter
Well, yes, but I was thinking more of the Graphical Install--> GUI configuration tools of things like rc scripts--> Plus preconfigured menus for the user that include "must-haves" such as Gimp, LyX :-) (ok, I like it), Netscape, xmms, etc.
-Peter
I've often thought that FreeBSD could be a super easy Desktop OS with little work.
/. people have to mention the ports collection and how cool it is. Then, all the Debian people counter with how cool apt-get is. Both are very cool, but I have to say that FreeBSD continually impresses me with how complete the ports are.
Everytime someone mentions FreeBSD on
Some kind of a meta port that installs a userfriendly desktop along with a standard set of apps would be super cool.
I've always had an easier time of getting hardware working in FreeBSD than Linux, including soundcards and my video capture card (just add "device pcm" to the kernel config file for 99% of sound cards)
In my years of running both FreeBSD and Linux, I've only had one hardware snafu with BSD (if anyone can help, it's the integrated sound on the FIC AZ11 Mainboard. It only plays noise.:-( No IRQ conflicts that I can find)
I'd love to package a FreeBSD/GNUstep port with a nice installer for FreeBSD, but I lack a lot of programming experience. If anyone knows of a project similar to this, I'd love to hear about it, or if not, someone might be interested in forming a group?
-Peter
I have found very few times when there has not been a port for the software I'm looking for. After software is released, a port usually comes a couple days after. Keep czeching Fresh Ports for new ones!
-Peter
I'm not going to try to download it now (at home on 56k dialup), but I'll see if I can help you out tomorrow when I'm at work on the fat pipe.
Don't give up on StarOffice because of a hiccup in the download process. StarOffice 5.2 is a great program, and I think that OpenOffice will be even cooler as time progresses. Sun has a lot to gain by seeing OpenOffice take off.
In the meantime while you're waiting for OpenOffice, check out StarOffice 5.2. I've downloaded that one a million times without a hitch. Just point your webbrowser to http://www.sun.com/products/staroffice
Hope this helps you out!
-Peter
Who are you going to vote for? Check the candidate fact sheet
Speaking of which, I'm sure glad that I support the death penalty... Because I don't have a choice! I wouldn't want those minority types to get all snooty thinking that it's wrong that they're disproportionately represented on death row.
"We already have compassionate conservatives; they're called Democrats." --Bill Maher
-Peter
Unfortunately this is not the very latest edition of the stylebook. Anyone know if this has changed in this year's copy?
-Peter
This certainly does not mean that corporations should be exempt from tax--even if the individuals who own the corporation are taxed for money made from owning stock. Here's why:
* Corporations draw on public infrastructure. Are you going to argue that a company's usage of public resource is only as great as the sum of its stockholders? That is lunacy. Corporations use natural and public resource as an entity in and of themselves; therefore they need to compensate the public accordingly.
* In a time when corporate profits are at an all time high, and labor is payed the lowest (in real dollars) amount since the 1970's. 1/3 of the United States's labor force makes less than 10 dollars per hour, and many of those make right at the minimum wage.
Do you propose that these people should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the 2nd and 4th most valuable corporations in the United States? It doesn't sound so good when you look at it that way does it?
* Finally, I do have another major beef with corporations. This is it: they are not a person; they have limited liability; they are not citizens, and yet they seem to have much more pull in government than ordinary citizens.
I think that the least corporations can do is pay their fair share.
I also think that the tax structure needs to be reset to be a true progressive tax. As it is a disproportionate burden falls on those least able to pay.
I would say that it's just mush-headed libertarianism to say that corporations should not pay taxes, but that might be misconstrued as flame-bait
Check out Ralph Nader if corporate interests seem a little too strong. VoteNader.org.
Check out this funny piece of we b animation by Tom Tomorrow while you're at it
FreeBSD with the SRM firmware was a breaze to install. It was just like the i386 install--easy. No dicking with the ARC firmware was great. Just "boot dka1" (that's my cd-rom drive. Type "show d" at the SRM prompt to get a list of your devices.)
FreeBSD (I've since tried NetBSD and OpenBSD, with similar success on older alpha) seemed to be much more polished on that architecture than other OSen.
Hope this helps.
-Peter
that ./ will no longer be able to have offspring?
-Peter
Seriously though. FreeBSD really has a great way to install. It's not as colorful, or graphical as some others, but it really is the epitome of easy--if you know what packages you want.
I usually start with the standard install, select the X-Developer package, the ports and then any stray packages.
Then for those truely wonderful programs that they can't fit on one CD (yummm.... LyX is good.) I cd
FreeBSD is really a great system for novices, or expert people who like things to Just Work(tm).
I think that FreeBSD really represents the best of the Ncurses based installers.
Whatever they do, I hope they stick with the ncurses install. It is just as easy as the graphical system and a whole lot less more reliable.
-Peter
Thus the greater number of people in a class, the greater percentage that their socioeconomic class pays.
So if you want to be nitpicky, I believe that the largest group of americans is technically the lower, middle class, but suffice it to say that things aren't too rosy at the bottom of the bottom either.
You see, the tax burden is still primarily footed by those least able to pay
So, sorry if this was unclear. I thought that I sufficiently prefaced that idea, but I guess you missed it.
-Peter
I cannot imagine a tax structure (other than our own) more pandering to big business and the ultra-rich than a flat tax.
I think that a progressive tax is needed.
Take Bill Gates for example, he siphons the labor of thousands of students educated in state-run colleges and institutions. These students pay tuition, but a vast number of them get subsidies from the govt to attend school.
Since the average American is not as rich as Bill Gates, a flat tax leaves a disproportionate responcibility on the bottom 99.9%. Yet, Bill Gates undeniably reaps a huge personal benefit from public education. In fact he reaps a much larger benefit that I do.
I hope we can all agree that public Universities are a good thing (an educated population is an effective population). So Bill Gates recieves (other that the warm fuzzies I get about higher education) a larger chunk of that pie than I do, yet under a flat tax, we pay the same.
Fees charged for services rendered. That should be pretty straitforward right?
I know the tired arguements about tax loopholes, increased cost of operation of the IRS, and the "man, doesn't it suck to do these complex taxes" arguement. However, the numbers do not add up. It does not save enough money, to offset the need for progressivity, and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. You did know that the United States have the largest divide between the rich and poor of any industrialized nation, right?
I agree that these are all downsides to the current tax scheme (which I obviously disagree with vehemently).
The tax system needs to be vastly simplified. I don't see that a sliding tax scale has to be much more complicated than a flat tax, and it doesn't have the truely nasty effects that a flat tax would have.
Most people don't understand that a flat tax does not distribute the tax burden equally. With a flat tax, the less you make, the higher percentage that you pay. That doesn't seem to foster much equality or even intellegence.
You talked unfavorably about socialism, but with class warfare tactics like the flat tax idea, we're lucky that our proletariat hasn't already seized the factors of production from their bourgeoisie oppressors.
As for me, I'm taking the middle ground and voting for Nader. He really has some good ideas about making government more understandable and accessable. I suspect that most libertarians want the same basic things that Ralph Nader and the Greens support, but they've got vastly different ideas about getting it done.
For the record, Nader and the Greens do not simply support big government. In many cases they support downsizing. Check it out http://www.votenader.org
-Peter
Look at the historical precident in this country for laissez-faire capitalism. We gave rise to the Captains of Industry, Aka the "Robber Barons". Do we really want to repeat those dark days when deregulation was big?
Given a choice between being abused a large, inefficient government that I have the hope of participating in, versus being abused by the efficiency of corporation where votes are bought by dollars, I'll take government any day.
Deregulating an industry does not limit govt payouts, nor does it reconcile the fact that the average American living at the poverty line pays a higher percentage in taxes than your average corporation (average corporations pay between 2%-6%. How much do you pay?).
The corporate welfare structure in the United States is primarily the result of a mush-headed reverse-progressive (regressive?) tax scale that favors large corporation over the small businesses that are the real support for communities.
-Peter
Yep... Those Germans sure are backward. I'm glad that I live in the good ol' United States where that sort of corporate welfare is not tolerated.
-Peter
Seriously, MS porting Office to Linux? Is there any way to permanently break Linux binary compatibility in FreeBSD?
*Sigh* probably not, it works too damn good. Perhaps it is time to migrate to BeOS.
Now, if only BeOS had LyX...
-Peter
There are a number of instances where organizers were singled out and arrested in a preemptive manner. This is probably why the staff member from 2600 was arrested. You see, the organizers all carry the Nextel phones, because they are cheap and can conference call. Read a number of instances where people were arrested, not read any rights, detained for longer than legal times, not told what they were being charged with, (and here is the shocker) because they happened to be walking by with a Nextel phone.
Do the protesters have valid concerns? Yes, I think so. In Philidelphia, it appears you can walk on civil rights, and get away with it with out so much as a mention from the mainstream media. My favorite site has been Tom Tommorrow's photo shoot of the Republican convention (Tom Tommorrow draws This Modern World.) The highlight in my mind is the part where you have a picture of Sam Donaldson sitting bored complaining about the lack of news, while protesters flooded the streets outside.
Over the past 10 years the Democrats have moved vastly to the right, and the Republicans have moved to the left. What we have right now are two parties that quibble over minor details while agreeing on the big ones. It truely has become a monoparty system. The term "Republicrat" is popping up more and more.
Bill Mahr put it best on his show, Politically Incorrect, "We already have compassionate conservatives. They're called Democrats." This is very true. There really is no voice for the progressive these days--or so the media would have us believe. The fact is, that Ralph Nader is a liberal progressive--and a damn smart person. He is the reason we have some semblance of auto safety standards. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton in 1955, and from Harvard Law School in 1958. Since then he has tirelessly devoted his life to public service. The guy makes over $300,000/yr and lives off of $25,000--because he gives the rest to civic projects.
More importantly, the guy is way ahead of all the other third party candidates, is on the ballot in 30 states already (including Montana
But, the media has chosen to ignore him.
So rather than throw my vote away by voting for one of the major parties, I'm going to do something this year. I'm going to do my part to get the Green Party recognized so that the Democrats can never again say,"You have to vote for us, we're not Newt Gingrich's party."
-Peter
Voting for the "least worst choice" is still going downhill. Make your vote actually count. Vote Nader
Well, don't get too compfy with the media yet. They have their problems, and many of them are not limited to greedy freelance writers, or "small and understaffed publications."
I will add that I found that assertion to be rather amusing. I've generally found that the best reporting comes from "small and understaffed publications" simply because they are not afraid to report the stories that go against the advertising grain. In fact, I've noticed that journalistic integrity almost ensures that publications remain small and understaffed.
As for the assertion that most advertising departments and reporter segments of news organisations are highly separate, I believe that they are at the lower levels. However, you'd better believe that if it comes down to exposing a giant agribusiness company or "Joe Bob's Burger Barn" most big news publications will kill the little guy first, because the little guy doesn't buy big advertising. Is this a concious choice by reporters? No. But the senior editing staff is more likely to run the stories that keep their organisation alive.
Everyone should check out Norman Solomon's new book, "The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media." I'm a journalism major, and it sure as hell changed my outlook on this topic. He'll give you the specific examples that I'm sure everyone was looking for
Roblimo mentions watchdog organisations that "help keep editorial content free from business or outside influence." Right. How much press time devoted to watchdogging has anyone seen? Following Dateline NBC, do you see follow-ups where someone like FAIR shreds Dateline for factual inacuracies? I thought not. The reasons that watchdog groups aren't terribly effective (Yes I do think that watchdog groups are quintessential to accurate reporting), is that a small minority of people read them. Why does such a small number of people read them? Because they simply don't have enough money to get out to a wide audience. Why don't they have the money? Because most businesses prefer to remain outside the hard scrutiny that such watchdog groups provide.
Roblimo talks about these watchdogs saving news organisations from business intervention (which I don't think is true). But Roblimo prefaces this article with the statement that we shouldn't waste our time with such watchdogging activities! Then he implies that any such activity is simply "makeing up fake [conspiracies].
Sorry Roblimo, Slashdot (by nature) has built-in watchdogging. Some of it shoots from the hip but some of it is absolutely biting. This story is not the panacea for curing people with the urge to look for conflict of interest, be it in Andover or any other news mag.
I'd just like to say that I really appreciate the watchdogging that Slashdot readers do. I'd like to see more of it. Not less. Watchdogging is especially important in the tech industry! Slashdot is a great source of it. Why is it so important to watchdog technology publications? The simple fact is that computers are changing the face of communication (duh). There is a lot of interest at stake in this media. Take an active role in making sure that its reporting is honest.
-Peter
Hmm. It seems like these abuses of corporate power are getting more and more. Maybe Nader has the right idea after all. I know who I'm voting for this election year.
This may be rather against the prevalent libertarian sentiment of notables like ESR, but this story seems to me to be a result of the libertarian mindset.
Given the choice of being bent over by a large inefficient government, or being bent over by a large efficient corporation, I chose government. Atleast I have the a _potential_ to make a difference in the government.
-Peter
Ohh, this is a great idea. Could we instead leave something useful for future generations?
If there is an apocalypse and humanity needs a record of the past, wouldn't it be handier to include something other than a record of who begat who?
I'd personally rather have a nice set of instructions on how to be decadent than listen to some 4,000 year old skewed version of reality.
-Peter
Seriously, Slackware is very BSD like. It doesn't quite have all the niceties that I have come to love in FreeBSD or OpenBSD (haven't tried NetBSD... yet.), but Slackware is a very solidly built distribution. Any for BSD converts such as myself, it really does try to conform to BSD standards where possible.
That being said, I've really come to dislike the shear size of other distros. I know harddrives are cheap, but it seems that I cannot install in less than 500 megs with RedHat or SuSE.
I really like the "build as you go" approach that FreeBSD, OpenBSD and Slackware use. You can install a very minimal system and add *exactly* what you need as you need it.
Keep up the excellent work, Pat V.!
-Peter
I feel compelled to agree with this comment. I too, must say that I really love Linux. That being said, it is _not_ a new user's operating system.
I feel that any of the *BSDs are very solid and production ready. I can't say that about a number of Linux machines. Linux can be made to be a very secure, wonderful, and easy Operating system, but for people wanting to get started, BSD is a better choice.
BSD's _biggest_ advantage is the weath of excellent documentation on general usage. OpenBSD's documentation is the man page system. Anything that you could possibly want to know about OpenBSD is in the man pages. This makes it very easy to find what you are looking for.
For those who also like "handbook" style docs, FreeBSD combines excellent man pages (sometimes Linux's manpages are a stretch) with a handbook that gives you a general overview of how to do basic administrative functions.
I advocate new users starting with FreeBSD because of the very user-friendly docs. FreeBSD's website has documentation that starts by teaching a user how to login! Seriously, read the "FreeBSD for people new to both FreeBSD and UNIX" documentation and tell me that wouldn't be good for _any_ new user.
OpenBSD is not quite so basic, but the docs are more friendly than anything I've seen from the Linux Documentation Project. I really like the LDP, but OpenBSD has some really great man pages.
If you are a linux user, check out one of the BSDs. You'll be glad you did. I started with Debian and Slackware circa kernel 1.2.13, and started using BSD last August. I'm hooked!
-Peter
The fact is, brainwashing (more appropriately called "mind control") is somewhat of a myth. Mind control is almost 100% ineffective at converting someone who is not already a willing participant.
An example is the capture and "brainwashing" of U.S. soldiers in Chinese POW camps. They used traditional mind control tactics (i.e. Beatings, humiliation, etc. to induce a psychological breakdown.) They had U.S. soldiers extolling the virtues of communism on TV. However of the thousands of POWs that were subjected to this behavior, only one chose to remain in China after the war.
The important thing to remember with mindcontrol, is that it is horribly ineffective. That is not to say, however, that groups do not attempt to use it anyway.
There are a number of models for Cult formation. The model of Scientology is the entrepreneurial model of cult formation. It started as a business (Remember dianetics?) and evolved into its own religion.
Being a secular humanist / athiest myself, I view religions in general to be somewhat deceptive and counterproductive to humanity in general, but Scientology takes the cake. Check out Operation Clambake at http://www.xenu.net.
Andreas Heldal-Lund who runs Operation Clambake is a first class individual and has no shortage of courage. The sorts of character assasinations that Scientology has subjected him to are scary. -Peter "Ignorance worships mystery; reason explains it; the one grovels, the other soars." --Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)
So far, it is no go. Does this have to made as a different type of image? Can this be extracted? Also I thought that this was a working BFS formatted partition. Does BFS support El-Torrito loading?
I'm new to the world of cd-burning, and I'm curious to see if this hack works. Ofcourse none of this would be needed had they supplied support for FreeBSD's FFS :-) -Peter
This book seems to me be a lot more reasonable in its treatment of technology. He (very rightly) points out that stopping the growth of technology would be much like a gnat stopping a loaded freight train.
Interestingly enough, he has an extended quote from Theodore Kaczynski in his book. It is a well reasoned arguement, but one that is fundamentally flawed. Kaczynski argues that we should stop the growth of technology and go back to simpler times. This presupposes that such a thing is possible.
Kurzweil notes that previous luddite movements have been underwhelmingly successful. Where would one draw a line with technology? Should we use digital implants to eventually eradicate deafness? Blindness? How about Alzheimers? At what point is a human no longer a human?
Kurzweil does throw the reader a curve-ball in reguards to human extinction. He thinks that our technology will ultimately make us obsolete. (How many Neandrothals do you see running around in relation to modern humans?)
Maybe such a change will be incremental and we won't even realize it has happened until it is common place.
Come on people, do you think that a super-intellegent race of robots will ever enslave us for our ohh-so efficient use of resources? I think not. I think that we'll just see the lines between man and machine blur until there is no difference.
As for a nano-catastrophe, Kurzweil deals with that too. What do we use to combat current bio-engineered virii and bacteria? Well, we use the same technology that we used to design them. Is it scary? Maybe. Do we really have a choice? Maybe. Would the majority likely chose the luddite path? Likely not.
-Peter