I don't have any links handy (and it's 3:45am and I'm trying to code here, so I don't really feel like finding them at the moment) but linux is already up and running on the Opteron and has been for a while. Do a search on just slashdot even and you should find some good info. (IE: the article about UT2003 running under linux on an opteron that ran a while back)
Heh, sounds like you stopped just short of my next plan of action - just set up a proxy server of my own at home on one of the spare computers I've got and not worry about the damned filter anymore. Since I'm on spring break at the moment, that'll probably happen sometime this week. My computer projects during spring break always seem to come back to fucking up the school in some way. This year it's the filter-bypassing-proxie, last year was the bolder hack-the-school-website-because-the-guy-running-it 's-a- moron.:)
This could be worth a shot, but I doubt it'd work. In my digging for a hole, I found that the google cache is blocked as - you guessed it - a loophole.
I don't even get the point of having a filter at a High School.
Yeah, I agree. In my district you have to sign a rather draconian AUP just to be able to touch the computers, and then they slap a filter on there that filters out a good bit of useful info as well. For example, the entire images.google.com subdomain is blocked with "porn" being the reason the filter page cites. It makes slapping together pictures for a stupid power point presentation a pain in the ass. Oh well, it's spring break at the moment, I have a spare computer, and nothing to do. I guess I'll be setting up a proxy server here like I've been meaning to, and then - to hell with their filter:)
Not that I *cough* EVER *cough* would consider my own ability to judge acceptable and not greater than that of a weak piece of software that only exists due to paranoia or anything like that.
Born and raised here, actually. My dad's from New York, but is actually quite conservative. My mom, on the other hand, is from here, and quite the liberal. Yeah, environment is a factor, but it's not overriding. The overriding factor are parents who teach their kids to think for themselves rather than spoon feed them their beliefs. It's really rather sickening the number of people I know here who have the beliefs they do simply because it's what their parents believed, with no other real meritt. Personally, I consider the abillity to rationally look at a situation and find the root cause for yourself a key sign of intelligence. Throwing people into stereotypes and assigning labels doesn't fall into this. Actually, I can tell you first hand that the areas where prejudice and bigotry are highest in the white community are the areas that are relatively poor with poor school systems. I've personally witnessed a direct corellation between prejudice and a lack of understanding of the world in general. I've grown up with it around me, and I don't see it as acceptable. There are just as many (hell, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more) white leeches on welfare as black. I've heard just about any slur you can think of thrown around. The one pattern I notice here (yeah, patterns again)? The fact that the people making these statements generally have a skewed world view. It's just as arbitrary as the "reasoning" behind the persecution of the jews in Europe (not just under Hitler, it's a recurrent theme in European history), and in fact, many of the same weak arguments are used here for group XYZ. I don't really know what I'm getting at here. I think what I'm basically saying is yes, it exists, environment is a factor, but it's not an excuse.
I think 'political correctness' is one of the reasons that the country is "so f**ked up"
It's not a matter of being politically correct for me, it's just a matter of treating others decently. I have no problem saying what I wish to say, I just prefer that to do so in a non-abrasive way, and appreciate it when others do the same.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I couldn't agree more. Which is exactly why I have a problem with the type language that's being discussed here. In all reality, it makes the speaker appear ignorant, and as such, it's rather difficult to take them seriously. I live in the Southeast US (Georgia, to be exact) so I have to deal with a LOT of garbage. When you regularly hear things like "Those damned mexicans just need to go home if blah blah blah" or any number of derrogatory things about blacks, gays, insert-a-group-here, you develop a fairly sensitive Bullshit-o-Meter. When it starts going off, you stop listening to what the offender has to say. So yeah, you can say whatever you want however you want, I really don't care. The thing is - is anyone going to listen?
Granted, but I was a guilty party, so I figured I'd explain myself. Besides, what's the point of debating an issue if it's not to come out with a better understanding of the other side?
lol yeah, I know. It's a little nit-picky, but when I'm trying to make a point about attempting to avoid using words that may offend people, I think of it as a hair on the hypocritical side to go about using that language. Really, it depends on whether I think it's nessecary to make my point. If I need to actually say the word to make the point clear, I say it. If the point can be made just as clearly without it, I don't. Yeah, I'm weird like that.:)
Or, if you're Canadian, 'fag' can be a cigarette. If you're gay, you might want to stay out of Canada, unless you want to risk being offended.
I had actually considered including that definition in my original post. It's a common slang over in britain as well from what I'm told. The point remains however, just because a word has many meanings doesn't mean your meaning is the only one.
The 'N' word, as you call it, is used regularly in a positive manner, but still with racial prejudice. It's not the same.
I'd like to know how it can be used in a positive light. It's used a lot in an almost interjectional sense, kind of like "holmes" or "esse" in the latin community, but I wouldn't really consider that a "positive manner." And this is probably more directly related to the matter at hand in all reality. It's a word that can be used in a way that's not meant to be offensive, but outside of the younger, black community it's still an extremely volatile word to use. If you want a specific case, Rosa Parks took offense to Outkast's use of that word in a song that talked about her. For the group that the slang usage is common, it was no big deal, but for those who come from outside that culture, it's a huge deal.
OR, backing down to your point of view is favorable to you;)
I don't see how realizing you offended someone's sensibilities is a bad thing. Would it be wrong to appologize for calling you a "stupid cunt" if I realized in hindsight it wasn't a very smart thing to say?:)
Heh, you wouldn't HAVE to consider all the local definition of words you used, if everyone else wasn't so ignorant about those other definitions, and taking the word out of context, right?
I think this is the issue of debate, really. Common usage is really a fairly subjective matter. It really comes down to a matter of audience, as before. Had the original poster been talking to a group of his friends that were used to the word in that manner, it wouldn't have been an issue. The reason it became an issue is due to the fact that he was speaking to a much larger audience, and in that audience, there are people who take issue with this usage. The "stupid" definition of the word "gay" almost inarguably stemmed from homosexuality being considered a "bad" thing, and people who don't share that viewpoint find that usage of the word offensive. While I'm personally familiar with "gay" being used to mean "stupid," what about my 60 year old father? He's familiar with the word in the sense of homosexuality, but most likely not in the sense of calling something "stupid." The general population consists of more than the under 30 crowd. My point is that you can use whatever wording you want, and it's really not my problem. However, if you want people to listen to you and actually consider your arguments, you have to make them in a way that doesn't offend since as soon as you offend someone, they'll likely shut you off.
I've posted a couple of comments in this thread in response to people that jumped up not understanding why people were offended at the initial comment. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you're mature enough to recognize your error and appologize for it. It's a shame we don't see more people like you here on/.:)
I've already posted one reply to this argument so why not another?
It used to primarily mean 'happy'. Just because you have a different definition than the poster, doesn't call for apologies.
And the word "faggot" used to mean "a bundle of sticks." Try using it with a general audience and have them not think you're using a derrogatory term for homosexuals. YOUR definition of a word might be different, but when choosing your words, you have to take into account the fact that others define words differently, and therefore assume that the most common definition is the way it will be interpreted. MOST people interpret "gay" to mean homosexual. In calling something stupid "gay," you're implying that homosexuality is a negative thing, whether you want to admit it or not. That's why people get offended.
I realize it's slang, but that doesn't mean that it's harmless. The ever contentious N word is slang for a black person, but it's also extremely offensive to most black people, or most anyone else for that matter. In the same book, "gay" when used in a derrogatory manner is offensive to many people, so don't act surprised when people get offended or dismiss you as ignorant for using it in such a way. I'd also like to point out the maturity of the original poster in the fact that they admitted that the word choice was poor, rather than go off on a rant about "no wonder this country is so fucked up." The reason this country is so fucked up is because people don't take the time to be considerate of others. Think about that.
So, by your logic, calling someone a "faggot" doesn't really mean you're connotating homosexuality to be a negative thing, since the word originally something along the lines of "a bundle of sticks?" Pretending that "gay" in today's time, especially when used in a derrogatory manner, is harmless and won't be associated with homosexuality is fooling yourself. And claiming that "no one notices" is even more foolish, since you can tell just by looking at this post that you've offended a number of people simply from the backlash this post has already received. You may not see the problem, but that doesn't mean other people won't take offense just the same. It's like a redneck not understanding why people get offended when they use the N word.
Expecting immediate repercussions is rather short sighted, if you ask me. If you look at the '93 WTC bombing as the first major "strike back" from the Gulf War, you suddenly see that terrorist elements don't do things on a whim, and that the repurcussions of a decission can take a year or two to come about. Add in the fact that they're having to reorganize their command and control system since it's in general disarray at the moment, and it makes perfect sense that there haven't been any retaliatory strikes... yet.
As far as I'm concerned, yes, Bush's foreign policies WILL result in increased terrorism, but you have to take the long view in order to see this. Terrorism doesn't just happen because someone decides instilling fear in the hearts of others would be a fun weekend activity - there is a driving cause, and at the moment that driving cause is a poor image of the US in the middle east in particular, but with the path we're on now, that poor image is also spreading into Europe and the rest of the world. Things such as an unprovoked war only serve to weaken it further. But there are also smaller things we do that hurt our global image. Key example: the house bill from last week locking non-US corporations out of bidding for post-war reconstruction contracts. This is a HUGE mistake. The Islamic community already believes this is a war driven by greed with the goal of setting up a puppet government in Iraq, and here's a bill which which will be interpreted as telling the new, "sovereign" Iraqi state that they can only give their reconstruction money to US business interests. Try to tell me Osama and friends won't use that as recruitment material, no matter how skewed it may seem.
The company *does* owe you, personally, the value of your stock.
ONLY if you were in on the initial IPO. As the original poster stated, the company shouldn't have to care less about making sure you get a positive return on stock that you paid $100/share on because it's "the hot thing on the market" if you didn't buy it from them directly. People seem to forget that the entire purpose of a company selling stock is to raise capital. Their obligation back to the shareholder is to pay them back part of the profits they make in a given term, and that's it.
Personally I have to agree with the grandparent poster, in that people missing this point are the reason why the stock market doesn't work properly. The only time a company should have to worry about their stock price is when they intend to either buy their own stock back or if they intend to sell new stock for new capital. The general corporate board of director's attitude of keeping stock price up to "keep shareholders happy at all cost" as opposed to actually being actually being profitable is exactly what causes disasters like Enron and Worldcom.
This should change the default display fonts for all of Mozilla. I don't see a Courier in the (rather short) list given, but I imagine at least one of the options is a fixed width font. I don't really have to time to play with it myself at the moment, else I could tell you for certain.
Perhaps, but depending on the job environment, the type of person that tends to buck the system may be what is NEEDED. If you're looking for someone to simply spend all day writing patches or straight-forward applications, then yes, someone who plays by the book might be best. But if you're trying to fill a position that requires creativity and novel approaches, it's always been my experience that the coder that plays by his own rules will be able to accomplish far more, while the CS grad that likes to jump through the hoops will be so constricted by the "rules" of what they're doing, that they aren't able to think outside the box in the way that some jobs often need.
I tend to think that knowing how to do your job is important, but there's a point where you become over-trained, and don't really know how to think for yourself. The best coders are the ones who find a balance between the two.
I don't really agree with the way Moore said what he said, but he was correct in stating most Americans didn't vote for Bush. Yes, Bush got most of the votes - in Florida. Nationwide, Gore had actually received more total votes, but due to the way the electoral college system is currently set up, Florida swung enough electoral votes to Bush for him to take the election. When you consider the number of votes Gore got, as well as the number of votes the independent candidates got (I'd have to imagine something like 5-10% nationwide), then saying that the majority of Americans overall did not vote for Bush is actually an accurate statement.
It was a VERY close election, and while the nationwide tallies leaned slightly toward Gore, the electoral college system decided the race in favor of Bush. It's the reason why you heard so much talk of the electoral college system being inadequette in the months directly after the election. Personally, I think it needs reform, but I also believe that going with individual tallies would just lead to a situation of Florida^n. A large part of the problem is almost all the states (there is an exception or two) award their electoral votes in an all-or-nothing manner, even if a candidate won the state by just a few votes (ala Florida). If states allocated the votes proportionally, say by districting the state up into the number of electoral votes the state has, then Florida would never have been an issue in 2000. It's definitely an interesting situation with many possible ways of approaching it since the constitution only defines the electoral college system, not how the states handle their individual votes.
Ah, I wasn't aware that you're an Aussie. My appologies. But the sad thing is, there are Americans that really wouldn't know who the president was at any given time in the past half century, which shouldn't be all that hard of a task since all of them (except maybe Ford) did at least something significant during their tenure. Well, Ford pardoned Nixon, so I guess that was his great act.
And I thought it was bad that most Americans had no grasp of international history in the last 50 years. I wasn't even born yet when Carter was in office, so it's not exactly like I remember this first hand.
um, dude, I think you have your facts a little mixed up here. First off, they were only able to release the first single for free in MP3 format. They wanted to release the entire album for free in MP3 format on their site, but Sony (their label) had a fit, as this was unheard of at the time. The free single ended up being the compromise, which we doesn't seem all that spectacular now, but they were among the first 2 or 3 major label bands to do it.
And as far as the "Steal This Album" thing goes, that's not the Offspring. That's a System of a Down album.
Is it just me, or does it sound like this guy wants another Kevin Mitnick? It seems that when the government decides to make an example out of somebody when it comes to tech-related crimes, they go the the extremes. The difference in this case, however, is that I'd be willing to bet that unlike the Mitnick case, you wouldn't have the person who was prosecuted denouncing their past activities. Not to mention you'll basically be ruining someone's life for nothing - you can go legit as a former hacker and earning a living from it, but what is a "reformed" file trader supposed to do?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have any links handy (and it's 3:45am and I'm trying to code here, so I don't really feel like finding them at the moment) but linux is already up and running on the Opteron and has been for a while. Do a search on just slashdot even and you should find some good info. (IE: the article about UT2003 running under linux on an opteron that ran a while back)
Heh, sounds like you stopped just short of my next plan of action - just set up a proxy server of my own at home on one of the spare computers I've got and not worry about the damned filter anymore. Since I'm on spring break at the moment, that'll probably happen sometime this week. My computer projects during spring break always seem to come back to fucking up the school in some way. This year it's the filter-bypassing-proxie, last year was the bolder hack-the-school-website-because-the-guy-running-it 's-a- moron. :)
This could be worth a shot, but I doubt it'd work. In my digging for a hole, I found that the google cache is blocked as - you guessed it - a loophole.
Not that I *cough* EVER *cough* would consider my own ability to judge acceptable and not greater than that of a weak piece of software that only exists due to paranoia or anything like that.
Born and raised here, actually. My dad's from New York, but is actually quite conservative. My mom, on the other hand, is from here, and quite the liberal. Yeah, environment is a factor, but it's not overriding. The overriding factor are parents who teach their kids to think for themselves rather than spoon feed them their beliefs. It's really rather sickening the number of people I know here who have the beliefs they do simply because it's what their parents believed, with no other real meritt. Personally, I consider the abillity to rationally look at a situation and find the root cause for yourself a key sign of intelligence. Throwing people into stereotypes and assigning labels doesn't fall into this. Actually, I can tell you first hand that the areas where prejudice and bigotry are highest in the white community are the areas that are relatively poor with poor school systems. I've personally witnessed a direct corellation between prejudice and a lack of understanding of the world in general. I've grown up with it around me, and I don't see it as acceptable. There are just as many (hell, it wouldn't surprise me if there were more) white leeches on welfare as black. I've heard just about any slur you can think of thrown around. The one pattern I notice here (yeah, patterns again)? The fact that the people making these statements generally have a skewed world view. It's just as arbitrary as the "reasoning" behind the persecution of the jews in Europe (not just under Hitler, it's a recurrent theme in European history), and in fact, many of the same weak arguments are used here for group XYZ. I don't really know what I'm getting at here. I think what I'm basically saying is yes, it exists, environment is a factor, but it's not an excuse.
Granted, but I was a guilty party, so I figured I'd explain myself. Besides, what's the point of debating an issue if it's not to come out with a better understanding of the other side?
lol yeah, I know. It's a little nit-picky, but when I'm trying to make a point about attempting to avoid using words that may offend people, I think of it as a hair on the hypocritical side to go about using that language. Really, it depends on whether I think it's nessecary to make my point. If I need to actually say the word to make the point clear, I say it. If the point can be made just as clearly without it, I don't. Yeah, I'm weird like that. :)
I've posted a couple of comments in this thread in response to people that jumped up not understanding why people were offended at the initial comment. I just wanted to say that I appreciate the fact that you're mature enough to recognize your error and appologize for it. It's a shame we don't see more people like you here on /. :)
I realize it's slang, but that doesn't mean that it's harmless. The ever contentious N word is slang for a black person, but it's also extremely offensive to most black people, or most anyone else for that matter. In the same book, "gay" when used in a derrogatory manner is offensive to many people, so don't act surprised when people get offended or dismiss you as ignorant for using it in such a way. I'd also like to point out the maturity of the original poster in the fact that they admitted that the word choice was poor, rather than go off on a rant about "no wonder this country is so fucked up." The reason this country is so fucked up is because people don't take the time to be considerate of others. Think about that.
So, by your logic, calling someone a "faggot" doesn't really mean you're connotating homosexuality to be a negative thing, since the word originally something along the lines of "a bundle of sticks?" Pretending that "gay" in today's time, especially when used in a derrogatory manner, is harmless and won't be associated with homosexuality is fooling yourself. And claiming that "no one notices" is even more foolish, since you can tell just by looking at this post that you've offended a number of people simply from the backlash this post has already received. You may not see the problem, but that doesn't mean other people won't take offense just the same. It's like a redneck not understanding why people get offended when they use the N word.
Expecting immediate repercussions is rather short sighted, if you ask me. If you look at the '93 WTC bombing as the first major "strike back" from the Gulf War, you suddenly see that terrorist elements don't do things on a whim, and that the repurcussions of a decission can take a year or two to come about. Add in the fact that they're having to reorganize their command and control system since it's in general disarray at the moment, and it makes perfect sense that there haven't been any retaliatory strikes... yet.
As far as I'm concerned, yes, Bush's foreign policies WILL result in increased terrorism, but you have to take the long view in order to see this. Terrorism doesn't just happen because someone decides instilling fear in the hearts of others would be a fun weekend activity - there is a driving cause, and at the moment that driving cause is a poor image of the US in the middle east in particular, but with the path we're on now, that poor image is also spreading into Europe and the rest of the world. Things such as an unprovoked war only serve to weaken it further. But there are also smaller things we do that hurt our global image. Key example: the house bill from last week locking non-US corporations out of bidding for post-war reconstruction contracts. This is a HUGE mistake. The Islamic community already believes this is a war driven by greed with the goal of setting up a puppet government in Iraq, and here's a bill which which will be interpreted as telling the new, "sovereign" Iraqi state that they can only give their reconstruction money to US business interests. Try to tell me Osama and friends won't use that as recruitment material, no matter how skewed it may seem.
Personally I have to agree with the grandparent poster, in that people missing this point are the reason why the stock market doesn't work properly. The only time a company should have to worry about their stock price is when they intend to either buy their own stock back or if they intend to sell new stock for new capital. The general corporate board of director's attitude of keeping stock price up to "keep shareholders happy at all cost" as opposed to actually being actually being profitable is exactly what causes disasters like Enron and Worldcom.
Edit --> Prefs --> Appearance --> Fonts
This should change the default display fonts for all of Mozilla. I don't see a Courier in the (rather short) list given, but I imagine at least one of the options is a fixed width font. I don't really have to time to play with it myself at the moment, else I could tell you for certain.
Perhaps, but depending on the job environment, the type of person that tends to buck the system may be what is NEEDED. If you're looking for someone to simply spend all day writing patches or straight-forward applications, then yes, someone who plays by the book might be best. But if you're trying to fill a position that requires creativity and novel approaches, it's always been my experience that the coder that plays by his own rules will be able to accomplish far more, while the CS grad that likes to jump through the hoops will be so constricted by the "rules" of what they're doing, that they aren't able to think outside the box in the way that some jobs often need.
I tend to think that knowing how to do your job is important, but there's a point where you become over-trained, and don't really know how to think for yourself. The best coders are the ones who find a balance between the two.
Doom 3.... :)
or wait, is that the work of just one 700 lbs Gorilla?
I don't really agree with the way Moore said what he said, but he was correct in stating most Americans didn't vote for Bush. Yes, Bush got most of the votes - in Florida. Nationwide, Gore had actually received more total votes, but due to the way the electoral college system is currently set up, Florida swung enough electoral votes to Bush for him to take the election. When you consider the number of votes Gore got, as well as the number of votes the independent candidates got (I'd have to imagine something like 5-10% nationwide), then saying that the majority of Americans overall did not vote for Bush is actually an accurate statement.
It was a VERY close election, and while the nationwide tallies leaned slightly toward Gore, the electoral college system decided the race in favor of Bush. It's the reason why you heard so much talk of the electoral college system being inadequette in the months directly after the election. Personally, I think it needs reform, but I also believe that going with individual tallies would just lead to a situation of Florida^n. A large part of the problem is almost all the states (there is an exception or two) award their electoral votes in an all-or-nothing manner, even if a candidate won the state by just a few votes (ala Florida). If states allocated the votes proportionally, say by districting the state up into the number of electoral votes the state has, then Florida would never have been an issue in 2000. It's definitely an interesting situation with many possible ways of approaching it since the constitution only defines the electoral college system, not how the states handle their individual votes.
lol I didn't say great, I said significant. Sad when that's the highlight of your presidency.
Ah, I wasn't aware that you're an Aussie. My appologies. But the sad thing is, there are Americans that really wouldn't know who the president was at any given time in the past half century, which shouldn't be all that hard of a task since all of them (except maybe Ford) did at least something significant during their tenure. Well, Ford pardoned Nixon, so I guess that was his great act.
Jimmy Carter.
And I thought it was bad that most Americans had no grasp of international history in the last 50 years. I wasn't even born yet when Carter was in office, so it's not exactly like I remember this first hand.
um, dude, I think you have your facts a little mixed up here. First off, they were only able to release the first single for free in MP3 format. They wanted to release the entire album for free in MP3 format on their site, but Sony (their label) had a fit, as this was unheard of at the time. The free single ended up being the compromise, which we doesn't seem all that spectacular now, but they were among the first 2 or 3 major label bands to do it.
And as far as the "Steal This Album" thing goes, that's not the Offspring. That's a System of a Down album.
Is it just me, or does it sound like this guy wants another Kevin Mitnick? It seems that when the government decides to make an example out of somebody when it comes to tech-related crimes, they go the the extremes. The difference in this case, however, is that I'd be willing to bet that unlike the Mitnick case, you wouldn't have the person who was prosecuted denouncing their past activities. Not to mention you'll basically be ruining someone's life for nothing - you can go legit as a former hacker and earning a living from it, but what is a "reformed" file trader supposed to do?
Off topic, yes, but I picked up a copy of the game on a whim about a week ago, and wow, I'm impressed. Good job. =)