1) The way the orginal poster puts it he seems to believe that Israel was the real organizer of the 9/11 attacks. Welcome to lala land. These are the same people that believe jews rule the world. If this was true then would the 6 day war have stopped with israel halfway to cairo and damascus?
What is unclear is how much Israel knew about the attacks from their intelligence sources. Then again it is widely known and reported, at least in europe, that the US itself knew an awfull lot about the planning of the attack. They had received warnings from US citizens, from their own analyst and from foreign countries that something involving hijacked aircraft was going to take place. FBI/CIA even investigated reports of muslims taking flying lessons and not being intrested in learning to land.
However it is not in the current US goverments intrest to tell the public that they knew everything they needed to know and simply refused to act. This would A stop the introduction of new laws and B raise questions why they didn't act and exactly what connection does Bush have with Bin Laden (hint look at companies wich Bush junior has an intrest in and see wich family also has an intrest in the same company).
Blaming Israel for CIA/FBI failures is however a lot easier for a certain kind of people who always need a scapegoat.
2) the war on drugs is one way of dealing with drugs. I live in holland where we have a different approach. Maybe it is better for the drug users. For the average non-drug using person it makes little difference. You get crack addicts breaking into cars. So do we. We spend a lot on wellfare to keep the drug users alive. You spend a lot on prisons. Our cops don't have enough right and manpower to do effective policing, yours are to busy with a kid who has a joint. If you really care move to a different country.
3) Watch some Japanese tv. Then compare those attitudes with your own. That was what the west was like before feminism. Rape of women and childeren punished less then stealing from the company. Women harrased at the office. Most people who anti feminist are people who are very selfish. They don't need it so neither does anyone else.
Just imagine you are a female or that the person is your daughter.
Noone can truly say wich one is true. After all if there is a god and it created all this then creating evolution as part of it would have been easy. We try to make machines that can repair themselves to adopt to changing enviroments, why wouldn't a god do the same?
So should people conform on this issue. Conform to which side? How far? Can diseases evolve? Strict christian teachings would say they can't. Good luck then predicting what will happen if we saturate our enviroment with anti-biotics.
Non-conformist are what drives society. We need the adventures just as much as we need to homebuilders. To say we don't need non-conformists now is extremly short sighted.
I got an mp3 hd player but watching videos as well would so good for those of us who use public transport (and live in countries were street robbery is still rare).
This sounds like a nice device but ideally you want something that can just play any format. Including just copying dvd to it and play. (nothing illegal about that is there?).
Oh and please don't say laptop. I mean something that fits inside your trouser pocket and can survice a little bit of rough handling.
Nerd who wanted a browser before mozilla was ready and just doesn't think the mozilla tabbing is/was as good. Plus I like it that opera can resume from where I left off.
So bleh! But yeah its popup killing is not as good as mozilla's. Not sure if it was a real popup as in a new window being opened. Looked more like a flash thingy.
Ever heard of the phrase "vote with your dollars"?
You still ordered the pc with them didn't you? So their sales department was 100% effective in your case. Stop by my house. I got an old computer to sell to you but first I will kick your teeth in.
Geez. Learn to have some self respect kid. If a company doesn't even give you service when you are buying something how the hell do you expect they will treat you when you come back with a problem?
Admit it you are a masochist. Now get on all four and beg like a dog and maybe they will honor your tech support calls.
I think I read this article before. Exactly the same things can be said about having something inhouse vs outsourcing it.
Outsourcing always seems cheaper on paper but it often turns out that it is not as flexible as inhouse or that the costs for being as flexible are actually higher. Not that it matters by this time the manager who signed the contract has had its bonus and is busy on the next bone headed move.
Let me give an example. Local school wich also gave night classes had a cafeteria. It would do cheap cheerfull dinners so you could go straight from work, eat there and then go to class. Or if your class was early the other way around. GREAT. Then they outsourced the caferteria it promptly closed this great service.
I seen the same thing in other companies. They outsource the cafeteria lady and all of a sudden the office staff has to do things like arrange cake, late night food for when a department has to work overtime and so on. Worst case I seen had us using our own Microwave and cooker since we were not allowed to touch the equipment in the kitchen since it didn't belong to the company. Great fire hazard.
There was once a time when companies did everything themselves. They maintained their own cars, had their own doctors, had a few holiday places to send employees too. This was boomtime. Then companies started to focus on their core capabilities and outsource or sell anything that didn't belong. We been in a downward spiral ever since.
I WANT MY BLOODY DINNERLADY BACK! An old fat woman who knows everyones birthday and gives them a little cake at lunch and puts up a x-mas tree with cookies.
Computers and the software they run have long since moved away from doing the payroll. If something went wrong with that well who cares? You can always do it by hand. Compare this with building an outhouse. If it collapses. Well who cares. Bit embarrising for the person inside but nothing major.
Now scale it up. A 20 story building collapsing is major. People die and so only licensed people are allowed to design and build them.
Anyone can put on a bandaid since there is not much potential to screw that up. But the prescription of most drugs and techiniques that penetrate the skin are only allowed by people with a license. (Insulin injections are a bit outside since parents can be trained into doing it for their childeren and of course older people can be trained to do it to themselves but they are not allowed to do it to outsiders)
Now to computers. Why do we allow the computers in an hospital monitoring the patients to be written by just anyone? MS software in monitoring software. EEEK.
Of course I can't really see how they are going to do it. All the other licensed fields are relativly limited. A doctor only has to work on humans who come in basically two different versions. Complicated versions to be sure but we have known for a long time how they are put together and so far noone has been doing any upgrades on it moving important bits around or making others obsolete.
Just becoming an expert on say windows requires you to know 4 different layouts. 3.11 (still used) 9? NT and now.Net.
Oh well. No doubt this will boil down to a MSCE. Something Human Resources put on the list and then is never mentioned again.
Half-life 2 is released and Steam doesn't cripple it.
Doom3 comes out and it can be played on as many machines as the original doom could.
Gnome and KDE teams work together and the trolls on either side work together to troll the other desktops.
2.6 patches trickle down signalling ready for use when your ass is on the line.
Microsoft announces further delays to Longhorn and some features will be queitly dropped. Signalling the questioning of those who signed up for license 6.0.
There will be a review on the different OS's that is not clearly biased one way or the other.
Duke Nukem Forever will be released.
The Longest Journey 2 will continue on to a 2005 release date.
Someone will announce a movie worth watching now the Lord of the Rings has finished.
I will finally upgrade the oldest bit on my computer, the bloody monitor, and not be tempted instead to splurge on a new vidcard.
Linux/BSD/Mac/Open Office/Evolution use grows so that some big companies decide that supporting only MS formats is like putting someone in front of your shop and turning every Xth customer away. Xth being the value that is the difference between breaking even and profit.
The geek becomes the latest fashion accessorie and every girl simply must have one.
A major PC game will be released that has not been consolefied.
A shell script for me automates things I could do by hand. For instance to start apache properly I need to do a number of things. Check if I want to start or restart or reload config. Also if apache is already running and if not why not. Then to see if my command is actually carried out. Etc etc etc
All of these I can do by hand and on machines where the scripts are borked I do. I then replace the IF WHEN WHILE bits of the scripting language with my brain. In fact that is how I write scripts. I write down into code what I have been doing each time.
So speed of cpu is meaningless. It is all done to help lazy sysadmins.
You might mean, because cpu is more powerfull can't we use other languages. Well yes. There is nothing really stopping you from replacing a lot of shell scripts with say perl. EXCEPT. Perl may not always be there or working. You need something simple and lowlevel for simple and lowlevel tasks. I don't see this changing. Hell MS is talking of adding stuff like this to longhorn.
Innovating what? Using standard pc parts to make your console? Yeah that worked so well they are not going to do it with x-box2. Sorry I don't buy into PR. Your statement sounds like a general saying "We are not retreating. We are advancing to the rear. As fast as we can."
But the real reason I label them as the losers in this race is that they are the lowest seller. Some people may claim it is a tie between nintendo and MS but I think these people forget the gameboy. Nintendo collects full-price for gameboy games while they cost far less to produce (art is the killer in a game budget and you can only fit so much in a gameboy even an advanced one). So to me nintendo has two consoles out at the moment and those sales combined put it easily ahead of MS and far far closer to sony.
Of course very important to understand is that I am talking of a race or a battle being lost. MS hasn't lost the war. This war has three players and all three will survive to the next battle.
I think for nintendo the next one will be critical. They have two entries and both are contested by sony and one by MS. They have money but not as much as the others.
There is no easy answer. Remember northern ireland? How long that has taken and is still taking? Hundreds of years.
This situation is far far worse. Catholics and protestants may get along like a house on fire but it is as nothing as jews and muslims AND catholics AND protestants AND etc etc etc.
There are also far more nations who have an interest in the situation. France doesn't give a hoot about ireland but it does have an intrest in keeping its muslim relations happy. America doesn't want to upset the jewish population and prefers having a stable allie in that region of the world. All the arab nations have to deal with a populace that for a part wants to see Israel wiped out why also dealing with the reality that if there is going to be any wiping out for now it is the Israelies doing it. All the offical stuff like wars has gone really really wrong for arab nations. Imaging WW2 starting and 6 days laters the poles are half way to Berlin and moving fast. Or to reflect size. The dutch. Scary stuff if you are on the wrong side.
Further more is the problem that arabs ain't united. They kill each other off routinely and the amount of arabs killed by israel over the entire history of the conflict fades into nothing by what arabs do to each other. Why are the koerds not helped? Why are the palenstines not given land somewhere else? No arab nation would allow such trouble makers to run around inside their borders. Might give others ideas.
The solution? There isn't one sadly except a really nasty one. It needs to get out of control. For now the stalemate is just to handy for to many outsiders to do anything. Israel can't do anything. Peace? They seen what peace does. They are surrounded by enemies who want to eradicate them and they know far to well what that can lead to. One moment of weakness could lead to Israel being overrun. Each time Israel lowers restrictions suicide bombers strike.
The palenstines can't do anything. The suicide bombers are not under their control and with nothing to loose their are always new volunteers. Their current leaders do very well from the status quo. Enough aid has been poored into palenstine to make every one of them rich yet most can barely survive. Arafat and his cronies are rich.
The only thing I see happening is that something must cause the rest of the world to step in and make some really though choices. Current peacekeeps are for show. Has the UN in lebabon done anything except provide target practice? No.
Maybe after a massacre takes place like in the balkans or ruwanda will a foreign force intervene and draw some real borders wich neither side is allowed to cross and enforce it with deadly force.
The idiotic situation now is that the palenstines need Israel for jobs and hospitals and that Israel seems to need the labor. The first step to stop any fight is to seperate the combatants and cool them off away from each other. Not to get them to be friends and work together while the punches are flying. Doesn't work has never worked will never work. Prove me wrong by pointing out an example in history,
So as we end 2003 I think this conversation will be held for much much longer until something goes wrong. A few dozen people killed in a year isn't wrong enough sadly. Hell more people die on the road then in violence even over there. We don't do anything anywhere to stop that do we?
Happy drinking and driving and calling the cops fascists for trying to stop us killing each other.
What unions are varies widely with where you are in the world. Don't forget that there are places were the fight that has long since been won in europe is still taking place else where in the world. People are still dying to bring basic rights to those who are not rich. Read up on soutern america to see what it means to live in a place where companies are the boss.
I have no idea what northern american unions are like since almost everyone talking about them seems to be on one side or the other. Here in europe they seem like a good idea. Disbanding them now that the fight seems to be won is like disbanding the fireservice because I haven't had a fire in the last two decades.
Unions would fight tooth and nail against the exporting of jobs. But hey, it is not like we highly valuable workers in the IT ever have to worry about that happening to us? That can only be done with low quality jobs like assembly lines.
Scary secret foreign goverment agency putting software on my computer. Damn how dare they. How can I ever check out what it does? Don't worry. I broke into their computers and liberated the source from their cluthces!
So the US goverment is already distributing OS software. If you look into SELinux you will find it an intrestting idea and a very usefull addition for machines not 100% under your control.
You didn't send it to the right publisher. Publishers are humans too and it is not unknown for extremely succesfull authors to be turned down on their first attemps.
You are to controversial. Your work may be excellent but just to hot to touch. Publishing a work about a pedo relation was fine a few decades ago. Now they would have a witchhunt.
You are crap. If you send it to all and they didn't give reason 2 for refusing then maybe your story just isn't good. It happens you know. Live with it.
Should you self publish? Only if you consider writing your hobby and then see it as a one time splurge never to be recooped.
If you want your story out there just put it on the net. If you wanta make money with writing then you need a publisher. A real one. Not just a printer who cuts out the middle man.
What use is a car with a locked engine to a carjacker. Ooh I got your car by disabling the engine now watch me sit here. Don't think it will be much of a pursuit.
Simple enough reason. One step at the time. Brave enough that apparently in a windows shop he is installing an evil job destroying communist unproven amateur OS. Let alone replace a WORKING setup with something new. If it ain't broken don't fix it.
For him installing a single linux machine in to the existing windows network maybe the first step. Next may be to offload printing to easy the load on the windows server and the balance sheet. One small step at the time.
This time the director is put on trial and forced to prove that the horrific murders really did take place and none of the actors made it out or he will be send down the slammer for getting our hopes up.
If you run the test 5 times on 5 different machines. Then you can rule out software vs hardware errors. PRESUMING the hardware is known to be usually good. Remember the old pentiums and their error baked in? Good luck determining that one without some kind of reference material.
And this is the real way to determine it. Run the suspect software on a piece of hardware known to be good or run a piece of software known to be good on suspect hardware. Testing anything with a single sample is meaningless. If you did this in medicine you would be kicked out so fast you might just discover if mankind can survive lightspeed.
MS is running ads saying how windows XP is so reliable. It is kinda hard to believe when you hear the ad because you a getting a cup of coffee waiting for XP to reboot. Same with 2k3. It crashes. Not as often as XP same as XP doesn't crash as often as 98 and so on. But it still crashes.
Now on to my linux machines. Wich don't crash. I only run in total about a dozen of them and not one of them has crashed.
I also have had some experience with AIX. Typically on machines everybody had forgotten about that ran some app that everyone just used and they only noticed its importance when someone unplugs an old useless cable.
So from my daily experience I will find any report coming from MS saying that they are reliable suspect. From my experience with AIX and Linux I will be far more willing to believe a report from IBM about reliabilty because THEY HAVEN'T BEEN TELLING ME TO MANY LIES BEFORE.
You of course may have different experiences. Linux if nothing else seems capable of generating wildly conflicting emotions in people. So does MS software come to think of it. Funny that we can get so worked up over a collection of bits.
Yeah BSD is dying. No wait nintendo or is it pc gaming. The desktop?
Nintendo is dead when it is dead. Until then it is just a company that is not doing terribly well at the moment. Sony is the clear winner in the console race. MS is the clear loser but doesn't need to win in the first round. Nintendo needs the consoles badly but may be able to survive on the handheld where it is so far in front that it is lapping the competition.
So on to the next round. We have a fairly good idea what sony is going to do. PSP and the Cell based PS3. MS is going to do more powerfull x-box and move away from standard parts to stop the copying of its games. Nintendo? Well so far only that something very intresting would be released in the near future.
The coming round may kill off nintendo if sony can deliver with both its new platforms. May kill but not likely. Don't forget that in japan itself nintendo is not doing badly at all. It is just the western markets were it is goofing off. It may just become more of niche player then it once was. Can you say atari?
Of course we could make a serious effort. First put a string of sattelites around mars so that we actually know what is going on there 24/7 and don't have to have blackouts in the communication. Then send some heavy probes the size of those russian capsules. You know the ones that routinly land safely on solid ground with fragile humans inside? No messing about with little parachutes and bouncing. Make it big make it heavy make it a bloody tank.
And put a bloody nuclear reactor inside. Small ones are safe and stop you having to rely on the weather on some distant planet to power your solar panels. Why settle for a probe that can only survive weeks if your lucky when you can have a tank roaming the surface for years in any weather.
But no we waste effort on peanut operations like this. Why? Ego. Oh well nice try. Better luck next time.
Slashdot Mirror
What is unclear is how much Israel knew about the attacks from their intelligence sources. Then again it is widely known and reported, at least in europe, that the US itself knew an awfull lot about the planning of the attack. They had received warnings from US citizens, from their own analyst and from foreign countries that something involving hijacked aircraft was going to take place. FBI/CIA even investigated reports of muslims taking flying lessons and not being intrested in learning to land.
However it is not in the current US goverments intrest to tell the public that they knew everything they needed to know and simply refused to act. This would A stop the introduction of new laws and B raise questions why they didn't act and exactly what connection does Bush have with Bin Laden (hint look at companies wich Bush junior has an intrest in and see wich family also has an intrest in the same company).
Blaming Israel for CIA/FBI failures is however a lot easier for a certain kind of people who always need a scapegoat. 2) the war on drugs is one way of dealing with drugs. I live in holland where we have a different approach. Maybe it is better for the drug users. For the average non-drug using person it makes little difference. You get crack addicts breaking into cars. So do we. We spend a lot on wellfare to keep the drug users alive. You spend a lot on prisons. Our cops don't have enough right and manpower to do effective policing, yours are to busy with a kid who has a joint. If you really care move to a different country. 3) Watch some Japanese tv. Then compare those attitudes with your own. That was what the west was like before feminism. Rape of women and childeren punished less then stealing from the company. Women harrased at the office. Most people who anti feminist are people who are very selfish. They don't need it so neither does anyone else.
Just imagine you are a female or that the person is your daughter.
Windows 2003 really isn't all that bad as windows 3.1.
So should people conform on this issue. Conform to which side? How far? Can diseases evolve? Strict christian teachings would say they can't. Good luck then predicting what will happen if we saturate our enviroment with anti-biotics.
Non-conformist are what drives society. We need the adventures just as much as we need to homebuilders. To say we don't need non-conformists now is extremly short sighted.
This sounds like a nice device but ideally you want something that can just play any format. Including just copying dvd to it and play. (nothing illegal about that is there?).
Oh and please don't say laptop. I mean something that fits inside your trouser pocket and can survice a little bit of rough handling.
Steve Jobs get a move on.
Nerd who wanted a browser before mozilla was ready and just doesn't think the mozilla tabbing is/was as good. Plus I like it that opera can resume from where I left off.
So bleh! But yeah its popup killing is not as good as mozilla's. Not sure if it was a real popup as in a new window being opened. Looked more like a flash thingy.
You still ordered the pc with them didn't you? So their sales department was 100% effective in your case. Stop by my house. I got an old computer to sell to you but first I will kick your teeth in.
Geez. Learn to have some self respect kid. If a company doesn't even give you service when you are buying something how the hell do you expect they will treat you when you come back with a problem?
Admit it you are a masochist. Now get on all four and beg like a dog and maybe they will honor your tech support calls.
Outsourcing always seems cheaper on paper but it often turns out that it is not as flexible as inhouse or that the costs for being as flexible are actually higher. Not that it matters by this time the manager who signed the contract has had its bonus and is busy on the next bone headed move.
Let me give an example. Local school wich also gave night classes had a cafeteria. It would do cheap cheerfull dinners so you could go straight from work, eat there and then go to class. Or if your class was early the other way around. GREAT. Then they outsourced the caferteria it promptly closed this great service.
I seen the same thing in other companies. They outsource the cafeteria lady and all of a sudden the office staff has to do things like arrange cake, late night food for when a department has to work overtime and so on. Worst case I seen had us using our own Microwave and cooker since we were not allowed to touch the equipment in the kitchen since it didn't belong to the company. Great fire hazard.
There was once a time when companies did everything themselves. They maintained their own cars, had their own doctors, had a few holiday places to send employees too. This was boomtime. Then companies started to focus on their core capabilities and outsource or sell anything that didn't belong. We been in a downward spiral ever since.
I WANT MY BLOODY DINNERLADY BACK! An old fat woman who knows everyones birthday and gives them a little cake at lunch and puts up a x-mas tree with cookies.
And yes the 40gb vs 40mb was a big mistake. A 40gb backup would be tremendous and at $10 per disc insanely cheap.
Now scale it up. A 20 story building collapsing is major. People die and so only licensed people are allowed to design and build them.
Anyone can put on a bandaid since there is not much potential to screw that up. But the prescription of most drugs and techiniques that penetrate the skin are only allowed by people with a license. (Insulin injections are a bit outside since parents can be trained into doing it for their childeren and of course older people can be trained to do it to themselves but they are not allowed to do it to outsiders)
Now to computers. Why do we allow the computers in an hospital monitoring the patients to be written by just anyone? MS software in monitoring software. EEEK.
Of course I can't really see how they are going to do it. All the other licensed fields are relativly limited. A doctor only has to work on humans who come in basically two different versions. Complicated versions to be sure but we have known for a long time how they are put together and so far noone has been doing any upgrades on it moving important bits around or making others obsolete.
Just becoming an expert on say windows requires you to know 4 different layouts. 3.11 (still used) 9? NT and now .Net.
Oh well. No doubt this will boil down to a MSCE. Something Human Resources put on the list and then is never mentioned again.
Happy new year. We got snow in Holland!
All of these I can do by hand and on machines where the scripts are borked I do. I then replace the IF WHEN WHILE bits of the scripting language with my brain. In fact that is how I write scripts. I write down into code what I have been doing each time.
So speed of cpu is meaningless. It is all done to help lazy sysadmins.
You might mean, because cpu is more powerfull can't we use other languages. Well yes. There is nothing really stopping you from replacing a lot of shell scripts with say perl. EXCEPT. Perl may not always be there or working. You need something simple and lowlevel for simple and lowlevel tasks. I don't see this changing. Hell MS is talking of adding stuff like this to longhorn.
But the real reason I label them as the losers in this race is that they are the lowest seller. Some people may claim it is a tie between nintendo and MS but I think these people forget the gameboy. Nintendo collects full-price for gameboy games while they cost far less to produce (art is the killer in a game budget and you can only fit so much in a gameboy even an advanced one). So to me nintendo has two consoles out at the moment and those sales combined put it easily ahead of MS and far far closer to sony.
Of course very important to understand is that I am talking of a race or a battle being lost. MS hasn't lost the war. This war has three players and all three will survive to the next battle.
I think for nintendo the next one will be critical. They have two entries and both are contested by sony and one by MS. They have money but not as much as the others.
This situation is far far worse. Catholics and protestants may get along like a house on fire but it is as nothing as jews and muslims AND catholics AND protestants AND etc etc etc.
There are also far more nations who have an interest in the situation. France doesn't give a hoot about ireland but it does have an intrest in keeping its muslim relations happy. America doesn't want to upset the jewish population and prefers having a stable allie in that region of the world. All the arab nations have to deal with a populace that for a part wants to see Israel wiped out why also dealing with the reality that if there is going to be any wiping out for now it is the Israelies doing it. All the offical stuff like wars has gone really really wrong for arab nations. Imaging WW2 starting and 6 days laters the poles are half way to Berlin and moving fast. Or to reflect size. The dutch. Scary stuff if you are on the wrong side.
Further more is the problem that arabs ain't united. They kill each other off routinely and the amount of arabs killed by israel over the entire history of the conflict fades into nothing by what arabs do to each other. Why are the koerds not helped? Why are the palenstines not given land somewhere else? No arab nation would allow such trouble makers to run around inside their borders. Might give others ideas.
The solution? There isn't one sadly except a really nasty one. It needs to get out of control. For now the stalemate is just to handy for to many outsiders to do anything. Israel can't do anything. Peace? They seen what peace does. They are surrounded by enemies who want to eradicate them and they know far to well what that can lead to. One moment of weakness could lead to Israel being overrun. Each time Israel lowers restrictions suicide bombers strike.
The palenstines can't do anything. The suicide bombers are not under their control and with nothing to loose their are always new volunteers. Their current leaders do very well from the status quo. Enough aid has been poored into palenstine to make every one of them rich yet most can barely survive. Arafat and his cronies are rich.
The only thing I see happening is that something must cause the rest of the world to step in and make some really though choices. Current peacekeeps are for show. Has the UN in lebabon done anything except provide target practice? No.
Maybe after a massacre takes place like in the balkans or ruwanda will a foreign force intervene and draw some real borders wich neither side is allowed to cross and enforce it with deadly force.
The idiotic situation now is that the palenstines need Israel for jobs and hospitals and that Israel seems to need the labor. The first step to stop any fight is to seperate the combatants and cool them off away from each other. Not to get them to be friends and work together while the punches are flying. Doesn't work has never worked will never work. Prove me wrong by pointing out an example in history,
So as we end 2003 I think this conversation will be held for much much longer until something goes wrong. A few dozen people killed in a year isn't wrong enough sadly. Hell more people die on the road then in violence even over there. We don't do anything anywhere to stop that do we?
Happy drinking and driving and calling the cops fascists for trying to stop us killing each other.
Answer: One if it goes down the wrong way.
Smart people read the warning labels and are killed by stupid people who down a couple before setting off on their task.
I have no idea what northern american unions are like since almost everyone talking about them seems to be on one side or the other. Here in europe they seem like a good idea. Disbanding them now that the fight seems to be won is like disbanding the fireservice because I haven't had a fire in the last two decades.
Unions would fight tooth and nail against the exporting of jobs. But hey, it is not like we highly valuable workers in the IT ever have to worry about that happening to us? That can only be done with low quality jobs like assembly lines.
Scary secret foreign goverment agency putting software on my computer. Damn how dare they. How can I ever check out what it does? Don't worry. I broke into their computers and liberated the source from their cluthces!
So the US goverment is already distributing OS software. If you look into SELinux you will find it an intrestting idea and a very usefull addition for machines not 100% under your control.
Should you self publish? Only if you consider writing your hobby and then see it as a one time splurge never to be recooped.
If you want your story out there just put it on the net. If you wanta make money with writing then you need a publisher. A real one. Not just a printer who cuts out the middle man.
What use is a car with a locked engine to a carjacker. Ooh I got your car by disabling the engine now watch me sit here. Don't think it will be much of a pursuit.
For him installing a single linux machine in to the existing windows network maybe the first step. Next may be to offload printing to easy the load on the windows server and the balance sheet. One small step at the time.
This time the director is put on trial and forced to prove that the horrific murders really did take place and none of the actors made it out or he will be send down the slammer for getting our hopes up.
And this is the real way to determine it. Run the suspect software on a piece of hardware known to be good or run a piece of software known to be good on suspect hardware. Testing anything with a single sample is meaningless. If you did this in medicine you would be kicked out so fast you might just discover if mankind can survive lightspeed.
MS is running ads saying how windows XP is so reliable. It is kinda hard to believe when you hear the ad because you a getting a cup of coffee waiting for XP to reboot. Same with 2k3. It crashes. Not as often as XP same as XP doesn't crash as often as 98 and so on. But it still crashes.
Now on to my linux machines. Wich don't crash. I only run in total about a dozen of them and not one of them has crashed.
I also have had some experience with AIX. Typically on machines everybody had forgotten about that ran some app that everyone just used and they only noticed its importance when someone unplugs an old useless cable.
So from my daily experience I will find any report coming from MS saying that they are reliable suspect. From my experience with AIX and Linux I will be far more willing to believe a report from IBM about reliabilty because THEY HAVEN'T BEEN TELLING ME TO MANY LIES BEFORE.
You of course may have different experiences. Linux if nothing else seems capable of generating wildly conflicting emotions in people. So does MS software come to think of it. Funny that we can get so worked up over a collection of bits.
Nintendo is dead when it is dead. Until then it is just a company that is not doing terribly well at the moment. Sony is the clear winner in the console race. MS is the clear loser but doesn't need to win in the first round. Nintendo needs the consoles badly but may be able to survive on the handheld where it is so far in front that it is lapping the competition.
So on to the next round. We have a fairly good idea what sony is going to do. PSP and the Cell based PS3. MS is going to do more powerfull x-box and move away from standard parts to stop the copying of its games. Nintendo? Well so far only that something very intresting would be released in the near future.
The coming round may kill off nintendo if sony can deliver with both its new platforms. May kill but not likely. Don't forget that in japan itself nintendo is not doing badly at all. It is just the western markets were it is goofing off. It may just become more of niche player then it once was. Can you say atari?
Of course we could make a serious effort. First put a string of sattelites around mars so that we actually know what is going on there 24/7 and don't have to have blackouts in the communication. Then send some heavy probes the size of those russian capsules. You know the ones that routinly land safely on solid ground with fragile humans inside? No messing about with little parachutes and bouncing. Make it big make it heavy make it a bloody tank.
And put a bloody nuclear reactor inside. Small ones are safe and stop you having to rely on the weather on some distant planet to power your solar panels. Why settle for a probe that can only survive weeks if your lucky when you can have a tank roaming the surface for years in any weather.
But no we waste effort on peanut operations like this. Why? Ego. Oh well nice try. Better luck next time.