The only copy of WinXP I allow in my presence is on my wonderful HP 8230 media center laptop; it's the most expensive computer i've bought in 20+ years of buying computers, and I don't regret a penny of it. it plays any game under the sun well, has a giant 17" screen & full size keyboard, and the PVR abilities are outstanding. It's now 1 year old, and I've had zero problems (after disabling all the XP eye-candy & spyware crap possible). The only real problem is that the PVR functions only get used when I'm on the road; when I'm home it's on my desk, not sitting next to the TV. And of course the DRM restrictions are a pain in the ass, you can't easily copy something then burn it to a DVD. Good thing I have a Matrox Marvel for stuff like that.
I just use Aluminum foil wrapped around my ball cap; seems to work.
I'm Curious: was that a joke, or do you actually think (from what I posted) that I'm paranoid & delusional? I'm not saying that I'm not or anything, it's just that my sarcasm detection unit and my troll-o-meter seem to be on the fritz.
That really made me think about something. I was reading recently about Microsoft SPOT; essentially, what microsoft has been doing since around 2002 has been rolling out these cool watches that get news & weather from FM subcarrier data transmissions; they have made available a 3rd-party SPOT development kit, which contains "the Ollie SoC, the ".netcpu CPU Module" integrates 4MB of nonvolatile Flash memory, and a number of I/O ports".
What I'm thinking that THEY might be thinking, is to embed these devices in motherboards; the suckers could just sit there, drawing from the ether the 10 billion service packs per year that XP & Vista require continuously into a flash rom of some sort, hooked into windows update. Thats just one thing it could do, of course. My thought is that they would probably hook it in with TCM & DRM, and use it to lock down, hard, a system. It would be easy for them to broadcast a list of pirated serial's for WinXP/Vista, if your PC has one, you are crippled; if your MAC address is identified by the (maf)IIA as being a "pirate', same thing. Isn't that nice?
Cray is dead. But it was sweet. the servers they were making in '93-'95 are only just now being outperformed. I, personally, want a Cray Laptop. I used to joke about getting one with my friends, I've been thinking about taking my HP DV8230US and modding it to appear to be one for the next lan party.
I had no problems using the tool in Debian, but when I tried both the CL and GUI version for windows, on both a Win2k and a WinXP machine, it not only didn't work but also didn't tell me what the problem was. And yes, imagemagik was on both systems. So, I don't think the spammers will be using this, unless spammers have really moved their operations on to the Linux platform.
Like I said, depends on the network. I've been the guy in charge of a 7000 system network (Military) that was easier to admin than a 120 system network (bellsouth). If you have a hosed network, then $4000 bucks wouldn't be worth it; if you have a decent network management infrastructure in place, that would be $400 for probably less than 4 hours of work sitting in my home office. But I'm retired from such things, so I probably wouldn't do it. But seriously, if your IT guys are saying they can't do this easily & for free, you may need to find some new IT guys/gals. Or maybe just 1 older IT guy/gal.
Depending on your location, and type of network, I would be happy to. of course, I would be using the unofficial patch (http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2007/01/unoffici al-windows-2000-daylight.html) that costs nothing, but hey! free money is nice. If you have a problem with win2k because of microsoft's efforts to kill it (like not releasing patches like this, making software that is allegedly incompatible (like AOE3), you can count on there being a free patch out there to fix the problem. Some of the designed-in hardware incompatabilities don't have a workaround yet, but....
I only have firsthand experience with two major shops in the last 6 months; A Military Command that I'm not going to ID, and a bank that I'm not going to ID.
Both have around 600+ computers networked; both use, predominantly, Win2k.
The main part of a sysadm's task is to make sure the network works; you don't change to a known to be inferior platform like XP for a technicality, and you don't "upgrade" to Windows 2003 just because it exists; unless you have drank the koolaid and are running apps that require win2k3 to function.
(note: I have nothing against win2k3. It is a nice server package, and if I couldn't use win2k s or AS for whatever reason, I would be happy to use it)
Nearly everything that Microsoft has done in the last 6 years has been in an effort to remedy their biggest mistake, releasing the best not unix or derivitave client/server operating system out there, win2k.
One of the reasons shatner did so well as Kirk was because he brought a couple of things to the roll that were just exactly right, namely the bearing (if not the sensibilities) of a Naval captain. Swagger arrogantly is a little bit of a cheap shot, and not accurate. Besides, Riker was wrong. a lot. he did have a lot of obvious Kirk mannerisms, but he missed being a kirk-like figure by a large margin; Kirk was set up and described repeatedly as a Tactical Genius, War Hero, and the best problem-solver the federation had.
I sort of think we need to wait until virtual thespian's get more advanced before they try to do any more Kirk stories; you Just Can Not Replace Shatner as Kirk. And...Damon is too pretty, in my opinion. On the other hand, I think he is a pretty good actor. maybe he could pull it off? He is about the right size and build.
No, I apparently can not.
There doesn't seem to be a link out there; however, this is what my memory can serve up.
When XP came out, DOD CERT checked it, and said that it should not be used on any network where classified material was available; after SP1, they checked it again, and still it was banned.
I left government work for a while after that, and did not keep up with it. Then, about 3 years ago, a friend was wanting to get my opinion on some laptops he was getting for his unit; he forwarded me a link to the systems, and they only came with XP home, I told him that as far as I remembered, XP was not allowed. He said that a few months back, Microsoft had done a big deal with the folks at the pentagon who do the policy on what is allowed, and after something like 3 million XP licenses were added to the deal, the security restriction from DOD CERT went away.
This could be some really good mental memory hallucination, I DO hate XP and the way that MS has tried to kill Win2k in its favor, but I'm pretty sure that was the deal; I have to think that someone else on/. remembers it.
NOTE: there are some posts that come up on google referencing this, but they do not provide an informational link to a press report or anything like that.
It's not as if anyone in charge of a datacenter is going to be foolish enough to run Vista; most places that require things to work have a predominance of Windows 2000 server, with a few win2k3, Win NT4 and OS/2 boxes. banks and government won't touch it; heck, the U.S. Military made it a criminal offense to run Windows XP on a secured network, until microsoft bribed them with a few thousand essentially free licenses.
I think Nintendo might just be able to pull off a second coming sort of deal if they do NOT spend much effort on the FPS situation. Console gaming has been dominated by FPS, Racing & FF type games for a LONG time now, to the point that other types of games are almost non-existent. One of the reasons that the Wii is jumping off of shelves is because it actually has fun games that aren't FPS as it's base. How many game consoles & games sold before Doom was ported to a console? one answer is all of them. I think the Wii would be perfectly suited for a new Wing Commander game, or even Starfox; for instance. I guess I have no concrete point on this, but I'll be buying a Wii at the first price reduction; the last console I bought for myself (instead of my kids) was a PS1.
I haven't tried the just announced version, but I have tried to use it in the past, ever since before it was GPL'd.
I'm a semi-pro; I make some money doing graphics, meshes & animation. not very much at all, it is more of a hobby than anything else.
I'm also a MCSE, Was a HP/UX sys admin, have a piece of paper thats says I'm a certified Illustrator, and I used to program quite a bit. In other words, I'm probably pretty good at figuring out new software, allegedly; I've got licensed copies (and am fluent with) 3Dstudio, Lightwave, Poser, Vue.
Blender is probably very powerful, but the GUI is so flipping terrible I just can't deal with it. I recently was helping out with meshes for a unofficial Firefly/Serenity mod for the game "The Movies", and the only script for moving meshes into the game that actually works is one for Blender; I HAD to try to work with it enough to move a mesh into blender, then export in the correct format for the game.
I just barely was able to do it, and finally succeeded mainly by luck; I spent easily as much time trying to get Blender to do something that should be simple as I did putting together a Serenity mesh & textures.
I realize that there are surely people out there who have absolutely no problem with Blender; I have no problems at all with 3Dstudio and struggle with Lightwave, while a bunch of people have the opposite experience. But what myself and A LOT of others condemn blender for is the "reinvent the wheel" syndrome; just about every 3d program does things in the same general way, as far as the GUI goes; if you are able to use one, there is no problem generally using another.
I could possibly get a few books on blender, spend a few weeks learning the interface, and start using it. Why in the world is it like this, though? it is a great idea to have a GPL'd 3D program that is as powerful as Blender is, but why can't someone do a GUI for it that follows established conventions?
Ok, that was my Rant for today. Time for people to start posting the "if you have problems with blender, you are obviously not trying/are an idiot, it is SO SIMPLE...." posts.
Yeah. Sounds attached to system events, Font smoothing, Font size, Active Desktop (which lets you put anything on the web on to your desktop. Probably some more stuff I'm not thinking of right now.
I don't get it, though. why is anyone using anything but The IceWorm?
They did have them, until 1984. bunches on loan from the US. However, the Canadians are widely known to be on the average smarter that we (U.S.) are; they have Nuclear Reactors. strap half the critical mass to a male moose, the other half to a female moose, then drive them south in a carefully divided lifestock truck. If it weren't for the Gun Control thing, I would probably have moved to B.C. years ago.
Because the Bush regency is not completely stupid. Sure, they stole the election; sure, Bush has been essentially ruling by fiat, or "executive order". But he spun things in such a way that the VAST majority of the citizens agreed with what he was doing; therefore, there was no real will to resist. Now, when the class of citizens who are capable of resisting (gun owners, usually conservative, often republican) are actually starting to notice that things weren't quite what they seemed to be, the power structure has changed by way of the 2006 democratic congress takeover; Bush is still attempting to rule by Fiat, but the media is starting to be critical, as is the congress; the people who would revolt see this, that the government is apparently sorting itself out (or is in the process of doing so) so there is no real apparent reason to hoist the Jolly Roger. At least, that is the way I see it.
I personally want to thank you for that 2 cents. The only question I would pose in reply would be "what are your recourses if you should find that the governing power of your nation proved tyrannical? if the leadership of your country decided to ignore the wishes and will of the citizens? if voting and other such rights were discontinued?" Not that I think that has a chance of happening in Austrailia; from my own experience with your nation, it doesn't seem possible.
I'm not going to try to use my own words, I'm not that articulate. However:
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible. "
-- Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, later Vice President.
"Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
-- Noah Webster An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787
"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."
-- James Monroe... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in letter to William S. Smith, 1787
Actually, The fact that he voted against private gun ownership is not really the point; when a political candidate looks like a possible contender to me, I try to get some idea on how the candidate feels on issues that I care deeply about. One issue I feel very deeply about is the 2nd amendment, our national failsafe. When, in researching this candidate (I was interested in him because he seems well spoken and pro-technology) I discovered that he has a long standing dislike for private gun ownership, it disqualified him as a candidate in my eyes. I posted the reference to the vote in 2003 because I like to provide some sort of background for my statements if possible, instead of appearing like a every day gun nut. Don't get me wrong, I AM a gun nut, but a president who wants to illegalize private gun ownership seems like a pretty damn polarizing issue. I do NOT want to vote republican this election; I want to vote for someone sane who will restore our personal freedoms, get us out of foreign adventures, and leave my guns & rights to them alone and undisturbed. That someone is NOT Obama.
They won't if he wins the election. He's against private gun ownership. For example, in 2003, Obama voted in support of SB1195, which, if passed, would have banned most of the privately held hunting shotguns, target rifles, and black powder rifles in the state. If the ban was enacted, law enforcement officials would have been authorized to forcibly enter private homes to confiscate newly banned firearms. (copied from caosblog.com, but I verified it) Enough to get me to vote for whoever isn't him.
Sounds like it wouldn't be a very good reason for going, then? But wait! if we are going anyway, might it not be sort of handy to have around? After looking around the web a little, I see that a lot of other people thought of it first; the best link to read up on stuff that would be better done on the moon than here is at http://www.permanent.com/i-index.htm
It's a pain manufacturing a vacuum; the moon has a lot of it laying around, making it a great place to make things that require one. How about.... a solar forge, melting down local ore, bubbling a gas through it (lower gravity means more spherical bubbles, better strength) to make foam alloy structural elements, then putting it on your solar powered catapult to shoot into orbit for either a) recovery for earth use via semi-controlled re-entry or b) orbital construction. Low gravity ceramic compounds would be interesting also.
um... a joke has to be thrown in... great place for a remake of Sapce:1999?
ok. Aero is a visual upgrade; it should be an add-on, similar to Plus! was for Win98. Because it's not, IMO, a upgrade; it doesn't actually do anything to improve the ability to do anything.
Shell improvements: This may be an upgrade, I might be wrong about this one.
Search: I'm not seeing anything there that wasn't a feature of Win2k Index. I may be wrong, but after looking at the wiki article, I don't think so.
Sidebar: Toy.
Mail: Win2k with thunderbird, thanks.
Contacts, Calendar, Fax & scan: All in Win2k
Meeting space: no dif from netmeeting
Sound Recorder: an actual upgrade. wow.
Snipping Tool: Win2k image viewer.
Photo gallery: New feature. not as good as any of the open source ones that would run on Win2k.
Windows Media Player 11: Heinous crime against humanity. DRM.
Media Center: very useful. almost as usefull as it was with Windows Media Center 2005, with (a little) less evil DRM.
IIS7: haven't played with it.I'm nervous about the total reliance on XML.
Security & Safety: or "making sure you can't use the software and media you bought 3 years ago". a joke. Win2k with Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0.14 and maybe zone alarm is much more secure.
OK, I'll say this: they have thrown a lot of crap in. in those terms, Vista is an upgrade in that you only have to buy vista to do just about anything. But is it not obvious that this is not really an upgrade? Windows firewall is a joke; any of a dozen different free firewalls will do a better job, and impact your system use less; why worry about how the damn operating system displays pictures or media when you can use irFanview, Media Center Classic & winamp? With every little thing that gets folded in to the system and thereby run by the draconian DRM/trusted computing system, you are eroding your own freedoms to watch what you want, create what you want, read what you want.
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The only copy of WinXP I allow in my presence is on my wonderful HP 8230 media center laptop; it's the most expensive computer i've bought in 20+ years of buying computers, and I don't regret a penny of it. it plays any game under the sun well, has a giant 17" screen & full size keyboard, and the PVR abilities are outstanding.
It's now 1 year old, and I've had zero problems (after disabling all the XP eye-candy & spyware crap possible).
The only real problem is that the PVR functions only get used when I'm on the road; when I'm home it's on my desk, not sitting next to the TV. And of course the DRM restrictions are a pain in the ass, you can't easily copy something then burn it to a DVD.
Good thing I have a Matrox Marvel for stuff like that.
I just use Aluminum foil wrapped around my ball cap; seems to work.
I'm Curious: was that a joke, or do you actually think (from what I posted) that I'm paranoid & delusional? I'm not saying that I'm not or anything, it's just that my sarcasm detection unit and my troll-o-meter seem to be on the fritz.
That really made me think about something.
I was reading recently about Microsoft SPOT; essentially, what microsoft has been doing since around 2002 has been rolling out these cool watches that get news & weather from FM subcarrier data transmissions; they have made available a 3rd-party SPOT development kit, which contains "the Ollie SoC, the ".netcpu CPU Module" integrates 4MB of nonvolatile Flash memory, and a number of I/O ports".
What I'm thinking that THEY might be thinking, is to embed these devices in motherboards; the suckers could just sit there, drawing from the ether the 10 billion service packs per year that XP & Vista require continuously into a flash rom of some sort, hooked into windows update.
Thats just one thing it could do, of course. My thought is that they would probably hook it in with TCM & DRM, and use it to lock down, hard, a system. It would be easy for them to broadcast a list of pirated serial's for WinXP/Vista, if your PC has one, you are crippled; if your MAC address is identified by the (maf)IIA as being a "pirate', same thing.
Isn't that nice?
Cray is dead.
But it was sweet. the servers they were making in '93-'95 are only just now being outperformed.
I, personally, want a Cray Laptop. I used to joke about getting one with my friends, I've been thinking about taking my HP DV8230US and modding it to appear to be one for the next lan party.
I had no problems using the tool in Debian, but when I tried both the CL and GUI version for windows, on both a Win2k and a WinXP machine, it not only didn't work but also didn't tell me what the problem was. And yes, imagemagik was on both systems.
So, I don't think the spammers will be using this, unless spammers have really moved their operations on to the Linux platform.
Like I said, depends on the network.
I've been the guy in charge of a 7000 system network (Military) that was easier to admin than a 120 system network (bellsouth). If you have a hosed network, then $4000 bucks wouldn't be worth it; if you have a decent network management infrastructure in place, that would be $400 for probably less than 4 hours of work sitting in my home office.
But I'm retired from such things, so I probably wouldn't do it.
But seriously, if your IT guys are saying they can't do this easily & for free, you may need to find some new IT guys/gals. Or maybe just 1 older IT guy/gal.
Depending on your location, and type of network, I would be happy to.i al-windows-2000-daylight.html) that costs nothing, but hey! free money is nice.
of course, I would be using the unofficial patch (http://www.intelliadmin.com/blog/2007/01/unoffic
If you have a problem with win2k because of microsoft's efforts to kill it (like not releasing patches like this, making software that is allegedly incompatible (like AOE3), you can count on there being a free patch out there to fix the problem.
Some of the designed-in hardware incompatabilities don't have a workaround yet, but....
I only have firsthand experience with two major shops in the last 6 months; A Military Command that I'm not going to ID, and a bank that I'm not going to ID. Both have around 600+ computers networked; both use, predominantly, Win2k. The main part of a sysadm's task is to make sure the network works; you don't change to a known to be inferior platform like XP for a technicality, and you don't "upgrade" to Windows 2003 just because it exists; unless you have drank the koolaid and are running apps that require win2k3 to function. (note: I have nothing against win2k3. It is a nice server package, and if I couldn't use win2k s or AS for whatever reason, I would be happy to use it) Nearly everything that Microsoft has done in the last 6 years has been in an effort to remedy their biggest mistake, releasing the best not unix or derivitave client/server operating system out there, win2k.
One of the reasons shatner did so well as Kirk was because he brought a couple of things to the roll that were just exactly right, namely the bearing (if not the sensibilities) of a Naval captain. Swagger arrogantly is a little bit of a cheap shot, and not accurate.
Besides, Riker was wrong. a lot. he did have a lot of obvious Kirk mannerisms, but he missed being a kirk-like figure by a large margin; Kirk was set up and described repeatedly as a Tactical Genius, War Hero, and the best problem-solver the federation had.
I sort of think we need to wait until virtual thespian's get more advanced before they try to do any more Kirk stories; you Just Can Not Replace Shatner as Kirk.
And...Damon is too pretty, in my opinion.
On the other hand, I think he is a pretty good actor. maybe he could pull it off? He is about the right size and build.
No, I apparently can not. There doesn't seem to be a link out there; however, this is what my memory can serve up. When XP came out, DOD CERT checked it, and said that it should not be used on any network where classified material was available; after SP1, they checked it again, and still it was banned. I left government work for a while after that, and did not keep up with it. Then, about 3 years ago, a friend was wanting to get my opinion on some laptops he was getting for his unit; he forwarded me a link to the systems, and they only came with XP home, I told him that as far as I remembered, XP was not allowed. He said that a few months back, Microsoft had done a big deal with the folks at the pentagon who do the policy on what is allowed, and after something like 3 million XP licenses were added to the deal, the security restriction from DOD CERT went away. This could be some really good mental memory hallucination, I DO hate XP and the way that MS has tried to kill Win2k in its favor, but I'm pretty sure that was the deal; I have to think that someone else on /. remembers it.
NOTE: there are some posts that come up on google referencing this, but they do not provide an informational link to a press report or anything like that.
It's not as if anyone in charge of a datacenter is going to be foolish enough to run Vista; most places that require things to work have a predominance of Windows 2000 server, with a few win2k3, Win NT4 and OS/2 boxes.
banks and government won't touch it; heck, the U.S. Military made it a criminal offense to run Windows XP on a secured network, until microsoft bribed them with a few thousand essentially free licenses.
I think Nintendo might just be able to pull off a second coming sort of deal if they do NOT spend much effort on the FPS situation.
Console gaming has been dominated by FPS, Racing & FF type games for a LONG time now, to the point that other types of games are almost non-existent. One of the reasons that the Wii is jumping off of shelves is because it actually has fun games that aren't FPS as it's base.
How many game consoles & games sold before Doom was ported to a console? one answer is all of them. I think the Wii would be perfectly suited for a new Wing Commander game, or even Starfox; for instance.
I guess I have no concrete point on this, but I'll be buying a Wii at the first price reduction; the last console I bought for myself (instead of my kids) was a PS1.
I haven't tried the just announced version, but I have tried to use it in the past, ever since before it was GPL'd. I'm a semi-pro; I make some money doing graphics, meshes & animation. not very much at all, it is more of a hobby than anything else. I'm also a MCSE, Was a HP/UX sys admin, have a piece of paper thats says I'm a certified Illustrator, and I used to program quite a bit. In other words, I'm probably pretty good at figuring out new software, allegedly; I've got licensed copies (and am fluent with) 3Dstudio, Lightwave, Poser, Vue. Blender is probably very powerful, but the GUI is so flipping terrible I just can't deal with it. I recently was helping out with meshes for a unofficial Firefly/Serenity mod for the game "The Movies", and the only script for moving meshes into the game that actually works is one for Blender; I HAD to try to work with it enough to move a mesh into blender, then export in the correct format for the game. I just barely was able to do it, and finally succeeded mainly by luck; I spent easily as much time trying to get Blender to do something that should be simple as I did putting together a Serenity mesh & textures. I realize that there are surely people out there who have absolutely no problem with Blender; I have no problems at all with 3Dstudio and struggle with Lightwave, while a bunch of people have the opposite experience. But what myself and A LOT of others condemn blender for is the "reinvent the wheel" syndrome; just about every 3d program does things in the same general way, as far as the GUI goes; if you are able to use one, there is no problem generally using another. I could possibly get a few books on blender, spend a few weeks learning the interface, and start using it. Why in the world is it like this, though? it is a great idea to have a GPL'd 3D program that is as powerful as Blender is, but why can't someone do a GUI for it that follows established conventions? Ok, that was my Rant for today. Time for people to start posting the "if you have problems with blender, you are obviously not trying/are an idiot, it is SO SIMPLE...." posts.
Yeah.
Sounds attached to system events, Font smoothing, Font size, Active Desktop (which lets you put anything on the web on to your desktop.
Probably some more stuff I'm not thinking of right now.
I don't get it, though. why is anyone using anything but The IceWorm?
They did have them, until 1984. bunches on loan from the US.
However, the Canadians are widely known to be on the average smarter that we (U.S.) are; they have Nuclear Reactors. strap half the critical mass to a male moose, the other half to a female moose, then drive them south in a carefully divided lifestock truck.
If it weren't for the Gun Control thing, I would probably have moved to B.C. years ago.
That was truly excellent.
Because the Bush regency is not completely stupid. Sure, they stole the election; sure, Bush has been essentially ruling by fiat, or "executive order". But he spun things in such a way that the VAST majority of the citizens agreed with what he was doing; therefore, there was no real will to resist.
Now, when the class of citizens who are capable of resisting (gun owners, usually conservative, often republican) are actually starting to notice that things weren't quite what they seemed to be, the power structure has changed by way of the 2006 democratic congress takeover; Bush is still attempting to rule by Fiat, but the media is starting to be critical, as is the congress; the people who would revolt see this, that the government is apparently sorting itself out (or is in the process of doing so) so there is no real apparent reason to hoist the Jolly Roger.
At least, that is the way I see it.
I personally want to thank you for that 2 cents.
The only question I would pose in reply would be "what are your recourses if you should find that the governing power of your nation proved tyrannical? if the leadership of your country decided to ignore the wishes and will of the citizens? if voting and other such rights were discontinued?"
Not that I think that has a chance of happening in Austrailia; from my own experience with your nation, it doesn't seem possible.
I'm not going to try to use my own words, I'm not that articulate. However:
... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.... The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.... The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible. "
-- Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, later Vice President.
"Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive."
-- Noah Webster
An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, Philadelphia, 1787
"... of the liberty of conscience in matters of religious faith, of speech and of the press; of the trail by jury of the vicinage in civil and criminal cases; of the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; of the right to keep and bear arms.... If these rights are well defined, and secured against encroachment, it is impossible that government should ever degenerate into tyranny."
-- James Monroe
-- Thomas Jefferson, in letter to William S. Smith, 1787
I would also urge you to read the 1982 senate report on the 2nd amendment, available at http://hematite.com/dragon/senaterpt.html
Actually, The fact that he voted against private gun ownership is not really the point; when a political candidate looks like a possible contender to me, I try to get some idea on how the candidate feels on issues that I care deeply about.
One issue I feel very deeply about is the 2nd amendment, our national failsafe. When, in researching this candidate (I was interested in him because he seems well spoken and pro-technology) I discovered that he has a long standing dislike for private gun ownership, it disqualified him as a candidate in my eyes. I posted the reference to the vote in 2003 because I like to provide some sort of background for my statements if possible, instead of appearing like a every day gun nut.
Don't get me wrong, I AM a gun nut, but a president who wants to illegalize private gun ownership seems like a pretty damn polarizing issue.
I do NOT want to vote republican this election; I want to vote for someone sane who will restore our personal freedoms, get us out of foreign adventures, and leave my guns & rights to them alone and undisturbed. That someone is NOT Obama.
They won't if he wins the election. He's against private gun ownership.
For example, in 2003, Obama voted in support of SB1195, which, if passed, would have banned most of the privately held hunting shotguns, target rifles, and black powder rifles in the state. If the ban was enacted, law enforcement officials would have been authorized to forcibly enter private homes to confiscate newly banned firearms.
(copied from caosblog.com, but I verified it)
Enough to get me to vote for whoever isn't him.
Sounds like it wouldn't be a very good reason for going, then?
But wait! if we are going anyway, might it not be sort of handy to have around? After looking around the web a little, I see that a lot of other people thought of it first; the best link to read up on stuff that would be better done on the moon than here is at http://www.permanent.com/i-index.htm
It's a pain manufacturing a vacuum; the moon has a lot of it laying around, making it a great place to make things that require one.
How about.... a solar forge, melting down local ore, bubbling a gas through it (lower gravity means more spherical bubbles, better strength) to make foam alloy structural elements, then putting it on your solar powered catapult to shoot into orbit for either a) recovery for earth use via semi-controlled re-entry or b) orbital construction.
Low gravity ceramic compounds would be interesting also.
um... a joke has to be thrown in...
great place for a remake of Sapce:1999?
ok.
Aero is a visual upgrade; it should be an add-on, similar to Plus! was for Win98. Because it's not, IMO, a upgrade; it doesn't actually do anything to improve the ability to do anything.
Shell improvements: This may be an upgrade, I might be wrong about this one.
Search: I'm not seeing anything there that wasn't a feature of Win2k Index. I may be wrong, but after looking at the wiki article, I don't think so.
Sidebar: Toy.
Mail: Win2k with thunderbird, thanks.
Contacts, Calendar, Fax & scan: All in Win2k
Meeting space: no dif from netmeeting
Sound Recorder: an actual upgrade. wow.
Snipping Tool: Win2k image viewer.
Photo gallery: New feature. not as good as any of the open source ones that would run on Win2k.
Windows Media Player 11: Heinous crime against humanity. DRM.
Media Center: very useful. almost as usefull as it was with Windows Media Center 2005, with (a little) less evil DRM.
IIS7: haven't played with it.I'm nervous about the total reliance on XML.
Security & Safety: or "making sure you can't use the software and media you bought 3 years ago". a joke. Win2k with Tiny Personal Firewall 2.0.14 and maybe zone alarm is much more secure.
OK, I'll say this: they have thrown a lot of crap in. in those terms, Vista is an upgrade in that you only have to buy vista to do just about anything.
But is it not obvious that this is not really an upgrade? Windows firewall is a joke; any of a dozen different free firewalls will do a better job, and impact your system use less; why worry about how the damn operating system displays pictures or media when you can use irFanview, Media Center Classic & winamp?
With every little thing that gets folded in to the system and thereby run by the draconian DRM/trusted computing system, you are eroding your own freedoms to watch what you want, create what you want, read what you want.