Left wing types, on the other hand, are much more likely to chafe under orders, start mouthing off the attackers and lead a 'popular revolt' against them.
Looking at the historical evidence, you're incorrect. The right tends to take things too far and inconvenience everyone in the process. The left tends to leave things alone and hope it all goes away on its own. When it comes to terrorism, you can't just hope it goes away on its own. In this case, I'd rather be inconvenienced than dead.
However, I don't think the "right-wing militia types" have quite the right idea either. The fact is that ANYTHING is a weapon. Right now, we're concentrating all our energy on finding the WEAPONS in airports, and not the people that use them. A gun is never going to kill someone if someone doesn't pull the trigger. On the other hand, if someone wants to kill someone, they don't need a gun (or knife, or box-cutter, or bomb, etc.). You can kill someone with your bare hands... so are we going to search people for large hands?
The solution is so amazingly simple it's almost laughable. Don't look for the weapons (aside from the most obvious ones, like bombs and guns), look for TERRORISTS. I mean no offense to anyone by saying this, but the fact is that all of the terrorists on 9/11 were, in fact, arab muslims. If you put 2 and 2 together, keep an eye on any arab muslims getting on an airplane, especially if they're shifty-like. I'd say the same thing about whites, blacks, asians, or purple spacemen.
Here's an analogy for you, before you label me a "flamebait" or "troll". Imagine that there's been a 300lbs asian male running around with a pistol shooting people. Are you going to search every single person for a pistol, or are you going to look out for a 300lbs asian male?
North Korea develops a secure e-mail? Those silly North Koreans and their strange thoughts about security... that's just crazy talk. We don't need no stinkin security here in Microsoft land.
After some googling i found this. $100million, not that unreasnoble (and if it goes over budget jackson foots the bill personally).
I thought $400m was a little much... Titanic only cost $200m, and it was (and still is, to my knowledge) the most expensive single-movie ever. The most expensive movie project, which included 3 movies, is LOTR, at (or above) $300m. $400m for ONE MOVIE is absolutely insanely expensive. For that kind of movie, you can build a theme park with 5 rides that simulate the experience of King Kong, then charge people a measly $20 to get in... and over time, make a lot more money than you would on a single movie. Look at almost ANY theme park, and you'll see the staying power.
If you ever get it anywhere near complete, let me know. I'd love to go through it again... I tried not too long ago on an emulator, but I couldn't get past the bad graphics.
It's kinda cool because I've played so many RPG's that after a few years, I usually can't remember the story... but PSIII really sticks with me. Of course, it could have something to do with how I went through it 4 times to make sure I saw all the endings......
Paul Vickie (of BIND fame) has stated that supporting unicode in bind would probably require at least a year to implement, and could introduce new buffer overflow exploits.
Oh, we should abandon hope for it then, because, as we all know, there are NO buffer overflow exploits now!
I'm still waiting for them to announce the "upgrade" of PSIII. It's the only game in the series I played for any amount of time, and it's a very nostalgic thing... I loved it, so I'd appreciate it if they'd remake it also. Besides, they can't remake I, II, and IV, and skip III... just for the sake of completism, they should remake III.
There are a fair number of RPGs that don't have random encounters, some are good (I don't care what he says, Chrono Trigger was good and Chrono Cross just plain sucked.), others aren't.
I have nothing to add against the rest of your rant that Painkiller hasn't already addressed (and done a damn fine job of it, too), except this sentence. I don't understand what was so sucky about Chrono Cross. Was it the intertwining timelines that based so much off the first game that turned you off? Maybe it was the extremely complex story? I honestly don't understand... I bought the game the day it came out because I loved the first one, and I even took a couple days off work so I could finish it. It had fantastic graphics, a good plot, good battle system, no random encounters, wasn't too easy or hard, and, most importantly, kept me entertained for quite a while. So what about Chrono Cross made you think that it "just plain sucked"?
Can you explain why you bought two copies of these games?
One copy for me, and one for my girlfriend. She enjoys the non-combat-oriented features of games... which is why I asked about crafting. Generally, she works on her crafting skills, and creates weapons and armor (or whatever) for me, and I go out and kill things, and earn money (in addition to what she does by selling her fine items).
I also played a few MMOG's over the past few years... I started with Asheron's Call (I won a copy and a 2-month subscription), and played it for about 3-4 weeks before I decided that it sucked. Then I went for a few years before trying another one... the one I tried was Earth & Beyond (beta). That was pretty good, but it was VERY limited, and since it was beta, it was always down. Not that I expected perfect reliability, but in the end, it wasn't a good enough game to warrant a subscription. Then I tried The Sims Online. That took about 3 days before I quit. Then, I moved on to SWG. I played that for a couple months... mainly because I wasn't aware of how good MMORPG's could be. I've always been a fan of RPG's, but I didn't think an online game could keep me entertained for that long. However, they managed to COMPLETELY fuck up the economy of the game (after saying it was a player-controlled economy, no less), so I quit. Now I'm trying to get reviews and such on FFXI to find out if it's worth paying money for. So far, I've spent $100 or so on The Sims Online (for 2 copies), and somewhere around $190 for SWG (2 copies for $50 each, and 3 months of service at $15 per copy per month). I'd rather not spend another $50 on an MMORPG that's going to suck after 2 weeks. From everything I've heard, FFXI sounds like a good game, but I have a few questions, if anyone would like to answer them.
First, can you craft (i.e, SWG) in FFXI? Can you create many new and exciting weapons to use to defeat the evil hordes?
Second, are the enemies a challenge? Are there easy ones that I can kill if I feel like it, and are there very difficult ones that require grouping (again, i.e., SWG)?
In terms of actual gameplay, is it FUN? Am I going to love playing it?
Finally, since it's been out for awhile, if I join now, am I still going to enjoy it enough to build my character up to the higher levels?
If they actually make a NWN II I hope they will concentrate on bring the Linux release up to par.
IF they make it? Why would it even be a question? You make a game that people like, and they buy it... you get more money. Now you have an established product with a fanbase. Why the hell wouldn't you make a sequel, especially from a game with such potential for a series?
And I'd just like to take this opportunity to rate Half-Life 3 a 7.5 out of 10 - I expect solid gameplay and stunning graphics, and some nice twists, but to be ultimately left wanting more. Can't wait for its release in, er, 2006.
If Half-Life 3 comes out in 2006, I'd give it a 9.5/10 just for the speed of development! By the current rate (assuming Half-Life 2 comes out in mid-2004), Half-Life 3 will be due out in 2011!
The only company MS is battling for console supremacy is Sony, and they've been getting their asses handed to them.
If you think the point of the Xbox was to become the dominant console on the planet, you're far more naive than I would have guessed. Microsoft isn't stupid, they know that the PS2 outnumbers the XBox by the tens of millions. The point of the XBox was to show that Microsoft COULD make a worth-while console, and to gain momentum. The XBox 2 won't even try to dominate the market... but it'll make more in-roads for Microsoft. I'd guess the XBox 3 MIGHT start really giving Sony a run for their money.
The XBox is already pretty obviously the most powerful console in the world, but it doesn't have the great games... because it doesn't have the great developers yet. The XBox sent a message to the developers that Microsoft was a very real force in the video game industry. The XBox 2 will send an even greater message, being that the public supports it. Around the time the XBox 2 reaches its 2nd or 3rd birthday, you'll see a massive influx of developers making XBox games. When the XBox 3 is released, Microsoft will clearly have enough developers to make Sony nervous.
The XBox was never going to take over the world... not even close. That was never the point anyway... Just watch out for the XBox 2 or 3.
I always thought it was ironic that while the majority of/.'ers enjoy the benefits of free software, many of them think there's not much more evil than free music. Kinda funny when you think about it...
Maybe so, but geeks (me included) will want choice.
I'm a geek, and I really don't care about choice. As far as I'm concerned, there's only a handful of good distros out there, and even then, that's stretching it. I'd consider Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware. Everything else is window dressing for those that want "choice". In fact, now that I think about it, Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware aren't very user friendly, so just lump those in with the other "choices" too.
Start maintaining machines in a setting where you don't want to spend 6 hours a day teaching people how to use a computer, and then talk to me about how many wonderful choices there are in the Linux World.
How will the business people know that UserLinux is the one true distro any more than they know that Debian is the one true distro now?
The business people don't make choices like that. They make the decision that they want a free OS installed on the computers, then hire (or outsource) someone that reads/. to choose the best distro for their operation. And, unfortunately for the proponents of a lot of the distros out there, one of the main features the technical people look for is ease-of-use... and that's the area that Linux fails WAY behind Windows. Security, stability, reliability, etc. is all great, but the ease-of-use and the features are still lacking.
the porn industry might actually be the engine that'll fuel this innovation as they've already been towards much of internet drive so far...
Damn, what a splendid day that will be. Imagine sitting down at your computer at home, alone on a Friday night, and starting up Jenna Jameson's Virtual Sex... and then seeing her hovering over you, with those luscious, beautiful breasts heaving with every thrust..... um, oops... sorry. I'll clean that off the keyboard, really.
Congratulations!!!! You win the laziest slashdotter of the day award for not only failing to read the article but for failing to read the slashdot blurb entirely.
Uh... yeah... The part about Fedora wasn't there when I posted.
I can only guess that you were so desperate to get first meaningful post that you neglected to notice that RedHat is not asking you to switch companies but that they are only going to support the enterprise version from now on.
'Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line.'
And yet, loaded on the computer sitting beside me, I have a beta of what I would consider Red Hat 10 (or, at least 9.1). Are they seriously suggesting that those of us that rely on Red Hat's reputation as one of the driving companies behind Linux switch to another company to continue getting a FREE Operating System? Isn't that the point of Linux in the first place?
I maintain a lab with 16 Linux computers (running Red Hat 8) and 1 server. Right now, I have about 150gb or so on the server that I NFS out to all the workstations. However, each workstations has 20-80gb that they don't need and aren't using... The users all have their home directory mounted via NFS, and must have read/write access to them (obviously). Each user also must be able to SSH in, and access the console (wouldn't be much of a lab if the users couldn't sit down at a computer). I also would like to have software installed on an NFS mount, without worrying about massive performance drops.
Would NBD be able to fill all those needs? I'd like a RAID5 setup over all the computers, although maybe even some other type of RAID, like RAID5 with 5 extra disks, just in case someone powers one down... Would that work? Ideally, I'd like to make a cluster of the workstations, but also have a console for each of them... but I haven't had a lot of time to research it lately, so I don't know what's available out there. Does anyone think NBD would be a viable solution for me?
If you have to ask someone to give examples of how they value "nature" over humans, you won't believe them, or you'll make excuses anyway, so I'm not going to waste my time.
Um... you mean the goals of the entire global community? That's who the UN represents (aside from the security council, but that's on non-economic issues anyway). And as such there is no coherant 'purpose' of the UN because it's members and therefore opinions is so diverse.
There's no purpose, or there's no power to enforce its purposes? Considering that the UN has a Charter, and several documents defining what IS and what IS NOT acceptable on planet Earth, I'd say they have a pretty coherent purpose. Apparently, it IS acceptable to deliberately violate over a dozen UN resolutions, but is NOT acceptable to hold someone accountable to their actions. Heh, go figure.
Really, your opinion of the UN is assine and ignorant.
I prefer to think of my opinion of the UN as "realistic" and "logical".
Name one policy or action that is fool-heartedly 'hippie'.
First, how about the budget of the UN? The United States pays so much of the budget, yet almost every favorable resolution for US or its allies is opposed by the other nations? How about the latest incident with the Israelis building a wall to protect themselves from the Islamic extremists who seem intent on killing every free soul on the world (specifically, they're building a wall to hold back the Palestinians, but the UN seems to think that somehow infringes on the Palestinians' right to kill Israelis). But again, if I have to point out examples, you won't believe what I say, or you'll make excuses anyway.
Global oil estimates vary from widely from a few decades to around 150-200 years.
And yet, you give no link to back up that assertion...
Global estimates seem to be only 14 times what what we have already extracted.
Maybe you missed the heading of the page... It says "World Undiscovered Assessment Results Summary" and it summarizes the estimated amount of oil that we haven't discovered yet. Great... if we haven't discovered it yet, we can't assert how accurate or inaccurate the information is. So, next point please.
Add to that an ever-climbing consupmtion rate How about 284 years at present consumption rates, and much less than that given the inevitable increate in consumption rates.
Well, even if it does take 100 years to run out of oil... WHO CARES? We've barely been USING oil for 100 years! Oil was first used in the 1850's as an energy source, and look at everything we've accomplished since then. Don't you think we'll figure out a new energy source by 2103?
4 ton SUV? Holy crap... that's 8,818.4 (2204.6 x 4) lbs. worth of vehicle. Damn... that's pretty efficient, if you ask me. I mean, seriously, at 25 miles per gallon, if you take 4 tons of prehistoric plants per mile, that means you're moving 4+ tons of modern SUV and the accompanying family for the price of 4 tons of prehistoric plants. Wow... so 1:1 conversion rate of prehistoric plants to modern SUV goodness. Not too shabby.
Of course, you're incredibly wrong in many things... First, the average US car doesn't weigh 9,000 lbs. In fact, It doesn't even weigh HALF that. The highest selling car in the US is the Toyota Camry, which, as of the 2004 edition, weighs a grand total of 3,142 lbs. give or take 100 lbs, depending on the configuration. I understand you were joking, but I just wanted to clarify. So, take the highest selling car weight and add 350 lbs for a couple people... just round it out to 3,500 lbs. That's 1.75 tons (or 1.59 metric tons).
Second, I'm interested to know what car you drive, and how much it costs. I took a brief glance at BMW's website, and I could only find 3 cars that break the 30 mpg barrier (the 700 series, the X3 SUV, and the X5 SUV). The highest one I found was 43mpg. However, I certainly don't consider my research to be the end-all, be-all conclusive summary of BMW models available.
Third, I would hardly call 25mpg "crap". I'd love to see a study that shows when the world will run out of oil, given the past 25 or so years of usage. This planet is billions of years old... I hardly think our driving SUV's around for a couple decades is going to kill it. However, if anyone has a link to a study that shows exactly when we're destined to run out of oil (please, none sponsored by the UN... no offense, but they're a bunch of tree-hugging hippies that would twist and distort facts to suit their own purposes (and they have) anyway), I'd be glad to take a look. My guestimate would be... around the year 29,296. Give or take 10,000 years.
There have been plenty of very cruel military regimes in the history of humankind (the Nazi party ranking right up there at the top) but I don't think that in comparison people like Stalin and Pol Pot are saints.
I agree that Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, etc. were terrible, evil men that deserved to die horrible deaths... the main difference between them and Hitler and the Nazis is that Hitler and the Nazis were certifiably the "bad guy" of WWII. There was no world-wide effort to oust Stalin, Lenin, or Pol Pot. Therefore, whatever games based on their respective reign of terrors wouldn't have specific "good guys" and "bad guys". Besides, Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot were major leaders for the Communist & Socialist movement, which still exists today... so it might not be "politically correct" to make a game dedicated to destroying their efforts... although I seem to remember a little game called Command and Conquer: Red Alert that did just that.
(As a side note, the word "Nazi" originally was an abbreviation for the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany... interesting, no?)
Do US companies have "the contracts?" From what I understand, Iraq is going to sell oil to whomever they damn-well please, and I haven't heard of any major US oil contracts with Iraq.
You are correct. Iraq can, and will, sell oil to whomever it pleases, after their government is set up and takes control of the country... which is set to be a LOT quicker than Germany after WWII (which, by the way, we STILL have the military there).
And before someone brings it up, Halliburton doesn't have any contracts with Iraq. Halliburton bid on a contract for the Department of Defense after the first Persian Gulf war and won. Its job was to clean up after oil spills and whatnot. The reason the Democrats in the US don't like Halliburton right now is because that contract is still in effect, and the DOD didn't put it BACK out to bid... there was no reason to. A company already bid on it, and got the contract, so why waste time and money re-inventing the wheel?
The main problem with your conclusions is that there are only 2 major parties in the country, yet 3 economic ideals.
It appears the Democrats are for raising spending and raising taxes, but decreasing the debt (as long as a Democratic president is in office).
The Republicans are for lowering taxes, while lowering spending and decreasing the debt... theoretically. In practice, for the last few years, they've lowered taxes while raising spending, and also increasing the debt.
So if lowering taxes isn't contradictory to raising spending or lowering the deficit/debt, and if the economists are correct in saying that lowering taxes will result in an economic boom (and it certainly seems to have, if you watch the Stock Market), then lowering taxes DOES equal lowering the deficit. However, the current administration also apparently wants to raise spending. That's where the current problem lies.
The answer seems to be to cut programs that are too wasteful, or promote laziness in the populace (like welfare, social security, etc.), and reduce taxes... at the same time, start programs to educate people on how to start a retirement fund, and how to save money.
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Left wing types, on the other hand, are much more likely to chafe under orders, start mouthing off the attackers and lead a 'popular revolt' against them.
Looking at the historical evidence, you're incorrect. The right tends to take things too far and inconvenience everyone in the process. The left tends to leave things alone and hope it all goes away on its own. When it comes to terrorism, you can't just hope it goes away on its own. In this case, I'd rather be inconvenienced than dead.
However, I don't think the "right-wing militia types" have quite the right idea either. The fact is that ANYTHING is a weapon. Right now, we're concentrating all our energy on finding the WEAPONS in airports, and not the people that use them. A gun is never going to kill someone if someone doesn't pull the trigger. On the other hand, if someone wants to kill someone, they don't need a gun (or knife, or box-cutter, or bomb, etc.). You can kill someone with your bare hands... so are we going to search people for large hands?
The solution is so amazingly simple it's almost laughable. Don't look for the weapons (aside from the most obvious ones, like bombs and guns), look for TERRORISTS. I mean no offense to anyone by saying this, but the fact is that all of the terrorists on 9/11 were, in fact, arab muslims. If you put 2 and 2 together, keep an eye on any arab muslims getting on an airplane, especially if they're shifty-like. I'd say the same thing about whites, blacks, asians, or purple spacemen.
Here's an analogy for you, before you label me a "flamebait" or "troll". Imagine that there's been a 300lbs asian male running around with a pistol shooting people. Are you going to search every single person for a pistol, or are you going to look out for a 300lbs asian male?
North Korea develops a secure e-mail? Those silly North Koreans and their strange thoughts about security... that's just crazy talk. We don't need no stinkin security here in Microsoft land.
Don't forget:
- Dropping a Load
- Baking Brownies
- Giving Birth to a Brown Baby Boy
- Dropping a Bomb
- Launching Torpedos
- Laying Cable
And my personal favorite, "Pebble-dashing the porcelain".After some googling i found this. $100million, not that unreasnoble (and if it goes over budget jackson foots the bill personally).
I thought $400m was a little much... Titanic only cost $200m, and it was (and still is, to my knowledge) the most expensive single-movie ever. The most expensive movie project, which included 3 movies, is LOTR, at (or above) $300m. $400m for ONE MOVIE is absolutely insanely expensive. For that kind of movie, you can build a theme park with 5 rides that simulate the experience of King Kong, then charge people a measly $20 to get in... and over time, make a lot more money than you would on a single movie. Look at almost ANY theme park, and you'll see the staying power.
If you ever get it anywhere near complete, let me know. I'd love to go through it again... I tried not too long ago on an emulator, but I couldn't get past the bad graphics.
It's kinda cool because I've played so many RPG's that after a few years, I usually can't remember the story... but PSIII really sticks with me. Of course, it could have something to do with how I went through it 4 times to make sure I saw all the endings......
Paul Vickie (of BIND fame) has stated that supporting unicode in bind would probably require at least a year to implement, and could introduce new buffer overflow exploits.
Oh, we should abandon hope for it then, because, as we all know, there are NO buffer overflow exploits now!
I'm still waiting for them to announce the "upgrade" of PSIII. It's the only game in the series I played for any amount of time, and it's a very nostalgic thing... I loved it, so I'd appreciate it if they'd remake it also. Besides, they can't remake I, II, and IV, and skip III... just for the sake of completism, they should remake III.
There are a fair number of RPGs that don't have random encounters, some are good (I don't care what he says, Chrono Trigger was good and Chrono Cross just plain sucked.), others aren't.
I have nothing to add against the rest of your rant that Painkiller hasn't already addressed (and done a damn fine job of it, too), except this sentence. I don't understand what was so sucky about Chrono Cross. Was it the intertwining timelines that based so much off the first game that turned you off? Maybe it was the extremely complex story? I honestly don't understand... I bought the game the day it came out because I loved the first one, and I even took a couple days off work so I could finish it. It had fantastic graphics, a good plot, good battle system, no random encounters, wasn't too easy or hard, and, most importantly, kept me entertained for quite a while. So what about Chrono Cross made you think that it "just plain sucked"?
Can you explain why you bought two copies of these games?
One copy for me, and one for my girlfriend. She enjoys the non-combat-oriented features of games... which is why I asked about crafting. Generally, she works on her crafting skills, and creates weapons and armor (or whatever) for me, and I go out and kill things, and earn money (in addition to what she does by selling her fine items).
I also played a few MMOG's over the past few years... I started with Asheron's Call (I won a copy and a 2-month subscription), and played it for about 3-4 weeks before I decided that it sucked. Then I went for a few years before trying another one... the one I tried was Earth & Beyond (beta). That was pretty good, but it was VERY limited, and since it was beta, it was always down. Not that I expected perfect reliability, but in the end, it wasn't a good enough game to warrant a subscription. Then I tried The Sims Online. That took about 3 days before I quit. Then, I moved on to SWG. I played that for a couple months... mainly because I wasn't aware of how good MMORPG's could be. I've always been a fan of RPG's, but I didn't think an online game could keep me entertained for that long. However, they managed to COMPLETELY fuck up the economy of the game (after saying it was a player-controlled economy, no less), so I quit. Now I'm trying to get reviews and such on FFXI to find out if it's worth paying money for. So far, I've spent $100 or so on The Sims Online (for 2 copies), and somewhere around $190 for SWG (2 copies for $50 each, and 3 months of service at $15 per copy per month). I'd rather not spend another $50 on an MMORPG that's going to suck after 2 weeks. From everything I've heard, FFXI sounds like a good game, but I have a few questions, if anyone would like to answer them.
First, can you craft (i.e, SWG) in FFXI? Can you create many new and exciting weapons to use to defeat the evil hordes?
Second, are the enemies a challenge? Are there easy ones that I can kill if I feel like it, and are there very difficult ones that require grouping (again, i.e., SWG)?
In terms of actual gameplay, is it FUN? Am I going to love playing it?
Finally, since it's been out for awhile, if I join now, am I still going to enjoy it enough to build my character up to the higher levels?
If they actually make a NWN II I hope they will concentrate on bring the Linux release up to par.
IF they make it? Why would it even be a question? You make a game that people like, and they buy it... you get more money. Now you have an established product with a fanbase. Why the hell wouldn't you make a sequel, especially from a game with such potential for a series?
And I'd just like to take this opportunity to rate Half-Life 3 a 7.5 out of 10 - I expect solid gameplay and stunning graphics, and some nice twists, but to be ultimately left wanting more. Can't wait for its release in, er, 2006.
If Half-Life 3 comes out in 2006, I'd give it a 9.5/10 just for the speed of development! By the current rate (assuming Half-Life 2 comes out in mid-2004), Half-Life 3 will be due out in 2011!
The only company MS is battling for console supremacy is Sony, and they've been getting their asses handed to them.
If you think the point of the Xbox was to become the dominant console on the planet, you're far more naive than I would have guessed. Microsoft isn't stupid, they know that the PS2 outnumbers the XBox by the tens of millions. The point of the XBox was to show that Microsoft COULD make a worth-while console, and to gain momentum. The XBox 2 won't even try to dominate the market... but it'll make more in-roads for Microsoft. I'd guess the XBox 3 MIGHT start really giving Sony a run for their money.
The XBox is already pretty obviously the most powerful console in the world, but it doesn't have the great games... because it doesn't have the great developers yet. The XBox sent a message to the developers that Microsoft was a very real force in the video game industry. The XBox 2 will send an even greater message, being that the public supports it. Around the time the XBox 2 reaches its 2nd or 3rd birthday, you'll see a massive influx of developers making XBox games. When the XBox 3 is released, Microsoft will clearly have enough developers to make Sony nervous.
The XBox was never going to take over the world... not even close. That was never the point anyway... Just watch out for the XBox 2 or 3.
I always thought it was ironic that while the majority of /.'ers enjoy the benefits of free software, many of them think there's not much more evil than free music. Kinda funny when you think about it...
Maybe so, but geeks (me included) will want choice.
/. to choose the best distro for their operation. And, unfortunately for the proponents of a lot of the distros out there, one of the main features the technical people look for is ease-of-use... and that's the area that Linux fails WAY behind Windows. Security, stability, reliability, etc. is all great, but the ease-of-use and the features are still lacking.
I'm a geek, and I really don't care about choice. As far as I'm concerned, there's only a handful of good distros out there, and even then, that's stretching it. I'd consider Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware. Everything else is window dressing for those that want "choice". In fact, now that I think about it, Gentoo, Debian, and Slackware aren't very user friendly, so just lump those in with the other "choices" too.
Start maintaining machines in a setting where you don't want to spend 6 hours a day teaching people how to use a computer, and then talk to me about how many wonderful choices there are in the Linux World.
How will the business people know that UserLinux is the one true distro any more than they know that Debian is the one true distro now?
The business people don't make choices like that. They make the decision that they want a free OS installed on the computers, then hire (or outsource) someone that reads
the porn industry might actually be the engine that'll fuel this innovation as they've already been towards much of internet drive so far...
Damn, what a splendid day that will be. Imagine sitting down at your computer at home, alone on a Friday night, and starting up Jenna Jameson's Virtual Sex... and then seeing her hovering over you, with those luscious, beautiful breasts heaving with every thrust..... um, oops... sorry. I'll clean that off the keyboard, really.
Congratulations!!!! You win the laziest slashdotter of the day award for not only failing to read the article but for failing to read the slashdot blurb entirely.
Uh... yeah... The part about Fedora wasn't there when I posted.
I can only guess that you were so desperate to get first meaningful post that you neglected to notice that RedHat is not asking you to switch companies but that they are only going to support the enterprise version from now on.
Hence the FREE part.
'Red Hat does not plan to release another product in the Red Hat Linux line.'
And yet, loaded on the computer sitting beside me, I have a beta of what I would consider Red Hat 10 (or, at least 9.1). Are they seriously suggesting that those of us that rely on Red Hat's reputation as one of the driving companies behind Linux switch to another company to continue getting a FREE Operating System? Isn't that the point of Linux in the first place?
I maintain a lab with 16 Linux computers (running Red Hat 8) and 1 server. Right now, I have about 150gb or so on the server that I NFS out to all the workstations. However, each workstations has 20-80gb that they don't need and aren't using... The users all have their home directory mounted via NFS, and must have read/write access to them (obviously). Each user also must be able to SSH in, and access the console (wouldn't be much of a lab if the users couldn't sit down at a computer). I also would like to have software installed on an NFS mount, without worrying about massive performance drops.
Would NBD be able to fill all those needs? I'd like a RAID5 setup over all the computers, although maybe even some other type of RAID, like RAID5 with 5 extra disks, just in case someone powers one down... Would that work? Ideally, I'd like to make a cluster of the workstations, but also have a console for each of them... but I haven't had a lot of time to research it lately, so I don't know what's available out there. Does anyone think NBD would be a viable solution for me?
WRONG. The US has not paid it's UN dues in over 30 years. And it gets away with it. Given that I don't put too much stock in the rest of your comment.
WRONG. The US paid ALL of its debt to the UN in September - October of 2002. Do some research on the Helms-Biden legislation if you don't believe me.
Oh, and the US has a policy of supporting up to 25% of the UN's budget...
Care to give some examples?
If you have to ask someone to give examples of how they value "nature" over humans, you won't believe them, or you'll make excuses anyway, so I'm not going to waste my time.
Um... you mean the goals of the entire global community? That's who the UN represents (aside from the security council, but that's on non-economic issues anyway). And as such there is no coherant 'purpose' of the UN because it's members and therefore opinions is so diverse.
There's no purpose, or there's no power to enforce its purposes? Considering that the UN has a Charter, and several documents defining what IS and what IS NOT acceptable on planet Earth, I'd say they have a pretty coherent purpose. Apparently, it IS acceptable to deliberately violate over a dozen UN resolutions, but is NOT acceptable to hold someone accountable to their actions. Heh, go figure.
Really, your opinion of the UN is assine and ignorant.
I prefer to think of my opinion of the UN as "realistic" and "logical".
Name one policy or action that is fool-heartedly 'hippie'.
First, how about the budget of the UN? The United States pays so much of the budget, yet almost every favorable resolution for US or its allies is opposed by the other nations? How about the latest incident with the Israelis building a wall to protect themselves from the Islamic extremists who seem intent on killing every free soul on the world (specifically, they're building a wall to hold back the Palestinians, but the UN seems to think that somehow infringes on the Palestinians' right to kill Israelis). But again, if I have to point out examples, you won't believe what I say, or you'll make excuses anyway.
Global oil estimates vary from widely from a few decades to around 150-200 years.
And yet, you give no link to back up that assertion...
Global estimates seem to be only 14 times what what we have already extracted.
Maybe you missed the heading of the page... It says "World Undiscovered Assessment Results Summary" and it summarizes the estimated amount of oil that we haven't discovered yet. Great... if we haven't discovered it yet, we can't assert how accurate or inaccurate the information is. So, next point please.
Add to that an ever-climbing consupmtion rate How about 284 years at present consumption rates, and much less than that given the inevitable increate in consumption rates.
Well, even if it does take 100 years to run out of oil... WHO CARES? We've barely been USING oil for 100 years! Oil was first used in the 1850's as an energy source, and look at everything we've accomplished since then. Don't you think we'll figure out a new energy source by 2103?
Man, sometimes it must hurt to be so pessimistic.
4 ton SUV? Holy crap... that's 8,818.4 (2204.6 x 4) lbs. worth of vehicle. Damn... that's pretty efficient, if you ask me. I mean, seriously, at 25 miles per gallon, if you take 4 tons of prehistoric plants per mile, that means you're moving 4+ tons of modern SUV and the accompanying family for the price of 4 tons of prehistoric plants. Wow... so 1:1 conversion rate of prehistoric plants to modern SUV goodness. Not too shabby.
Of course, you're incredibly wrong in many things... First, the average US car doesn't weigh 9,000 lbs. In fact, It doesn't even weigh HALF that. The highest selling car in the US is the Toyota Camry, which, as of the 2004 edition, weighs a grand total of 3,142 lbs. give or take 100 lbs, depending on the configuration. I understand you were joking, but I just wanted to clarify. So, take the highest selling car weight and add 350 lbs for a couple people... just round it out to 3,500 lbs. That's 1.75 tons (or 1.59 metric tons).
Second, I'm interested to know what car you drive, and how much it costs. I took a brief glance at BMW's website, and I could only find 3 cars that break the 30 mpg barrier (the 700 series, the X3 SUV, and the X5 SUV). The highest one I found was 43mpg. However, I certainly don't consider my research to be the end-all, be-all conclusive summary of BMW models available.
Third, I would hardly call 25mpg "crap". I'd love to see a study that shows when the world will run out of oil, given the past 25 or so years of usage. This planet is billions of years old... I hardly think our driving SUV's around for a couple decades is going to kill it. However, if anyone has a link to a study that shows exactly when we're destined to run out of oil (please, none sponsored by the UN... no offense, but they're a bunch of tree-hugging hippies that would twist and distort facts to suit their own purposes (and they have) anyway), I'd be glad to take a look. My guestimate would be... around the year 29,296. Give or take 10,000 years.
There have been plenty of very cruel military regimes in the history of humankind (the Nazi party ranking right up there at the top) but I don't think that in comparison people like Stalin and Pol Pot are saints.
I agree that Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, etc. were terrible, evil men that deserved to die horrible deaths... the main difference between them and Hitler and the Nazis is that Hitler and the Nazis were certifiably the "bad guy" of WWII. There was no world-wide effort to oust Stalin, Lenin, or Pol Pot. Therefore, whatever games based on their respective reign of terrors wouldn't have specific "good guys" and "bad guys". Besides, Stalin, Lenin, and Pol Pot were major leaders for the Communist & Socialist movement, which still exists today... so it might not be "politically correct" to make a game dedicated to destroying their efforts... although I seem to remember a little game called Command and Conquer: Red Alert that did just that.
(As a side note, the word "Nazi" originally was an abbreviation for the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany... interesting, no?)
Do US companies have "the contracts?" From what I understand, Iraq is going to sell oil to whomever they damn-well please, and I haven't heard of any major US oil contracts with Iraq.
You are correct. Iraq can, and will, sell oil to whomever it pleases, after their government is set up and takes control of the country... which is set to be a LOT quicker than Germany after WWII (which, by the way, we STILL have the military there).
And before someone brings it up, Halliburton doesn't have any contracts with Iraq. Halliburton bid on a contract for the Department of Defense after the first Persian Gulf war and won. Its job was to clean up after oil spills and whatnot. The reason the Democrats in the US don't like Halliburton right now is because that contract is still in effect, and the DOD didn't put it BACK out to bid... there was no reason to. A company already bid on it, and got the contract, so why waste time and money re-inventing the wheel?
The main problem with your conclusions is that there are only 2 major parties in the country, yet 3 economic ideals.
It appears the Democrats are for raising spending and raising taxes, but decreasing the debt (as long as a Democratic president is in office).
The Republicans are for lowering taxes, while lowering spending and decreasing the debt... theoretically. In practice, for the last few years, they've lowered taxes while raising spending, and also increasing the debt.
However, even given all these variables, the facts speak for themselves. "credited stronger-than-expected tax collections in recent months in combination with less government spending for the improvement over the summer forecast." It would seem, that the expected deficit of $455 billion has been lowered to $374.2 billion, AFTER the tax cuts. So, apparently, lowering taxes isn't contradictory to raising spending, or lowering the deficit. (By the way, the total deficit is ONLY 3.5% of the GNP, which is much lower than the 5-6% of the 1980's.)
So if lowering taxes isn't contradictory to raising spending or lowering the deficit/debt, and if the economists are correct in saying that lowering taxes will result in an economic boom (and it certainly seems to have, if you watch the Stock Market), then lowering taxes DOES equal lowering the deficit. However, the current administration also apparently wants to raise spending. That's where the current problem lies.
The answer seems to be to cut programs that are too wasteful, or promote laziness in the populace (like welfare, social security, etc.), and reduce taxes... at the same time, start programs to educate people on how to start a retirement fund, and how to save money.