That might even work. Except let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that some nation leveled sanctions against the US and impoverished us all. Finland, maybe. Linus always looked a little shifty to me... (silly, yeah, yeah... just pretending, remember?)
Anyway, sure, we might rise up to overthrow the government just like Finland wants. But I bet when all was said and done Finland wouldn't be real popular in the hearts and minds of American citizens...
"They starved us because of our evil rulers." Once those evil rulers are gone it becomes real easy for the survivors to shorten that to, "They starved us..."
War. Sanctions. They both kind of suck. Too bad good will and common sense seem to be in such short supply among the powerful. Or maybe among all of us and it just doesn't show because we little guys don't have as much freedom to flex our muscles.
Believe it or not, I agree with you for the most part.
Where we differ is that I do blame the US for killing Iraqi citizens. Tens of thousands dead during the Gulf War, yet Saddam remained in power. Those responsible had to know he wasn't going to turn tame just because he'd been given a spanking.
We were there. We were in a position to act. We did nothing (just as we urged citizens to revolt, then sat idly by while the revolt was brutally put down and tens of thousands were slaughtered).
We kill tens of thousands, stop short of doing the real job, turn Iraq into a poverty state and THEN go back in over a decade later to finish what we started. Of course, after 12 years of letting Iraq simmer in its own filth... well, it only took 3 weeks the second time. It was much easier. Surely the lives of all those who starved or died from drinking filthy water were worth it.
He should never have been left in power to start with. Problem would have been solved.
I'm not for or against war in a general sense. Sometimes it's right, sometimes not, and I don't claim to be an authority on which is which. But, damn... if you're going to do it, do it. Don't start, get cold feet, torture millions for years, and then swoop in for an easy kill. Where's the honor in that? Where are the high-blown American morals?
"Truth, Justice and The American Way... but only when it's easy."
The sanctions against Iraq, and the massive, long-term human suffering they have inflicted, have undermined this common view of sanctions. Since 1991, international agencies have documented Iraq's explosion in child mortality rates, water-borne diseases from untreated water supplies, malnutrition in large sectors of the population, and on and on. The most reliable estimate holds that 237,000 Iraqi children under five are dead as a result of sanctions, with other estimates going as high as one million.(2) The deaths from sanctions are far greater than the number of Iraqis directly killed in the Persian Gulf War -- an estimated 40,000 casualties, both military and civilian.(3) But the sanctions are shocking not only because of the extent of the human damage, but also because the suffering has been borne primarily by women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor; the state and the wealthy classes seem to be inconvenienced, but are otherwise exempt from extreme hardship.
All this while Hussein et al were shitting on golden toilets. Did the sanctions hurt Saddam? Sure. But the damage done to the Iraqi people was orders of magnitude worse. Twelve years of sanctions, and what was accomplished? The task of removing Saddam through the use of military force was made easier, I suppose. But the primary reason for using sanctions in the first place is to avoid the use of military force. So, our sanctions against Iraq inconvenienced Saddam, killed a quarter-million children, and failed miserably at their stated purpose.
What reliability? I mean, what do you base this on, exactly? Got a link? An impartial study conducted over a period of years (who keeps a desktop CPU that long anyway?). Really, I'd like to know.
Or is this like "Bad ATI drivers," just one of those convenient myths people spout anytime a certain trademark or company name is mentioned? Kind of like "Linux is hard to install and configure." In 1996 maybe.
I was an nVidia fan for years, but when 9700 Pro came out I gave one a try. Am I an ATI fan now? Sure. But if NV40 blows away whatever ATI offers at the time, so be it. Times change. Products change.
Myths, apparently, never die.
I have a Duron running right now that has seen very little down time for over 3 years. It just keeps chugging away, overclocked and over-volted all to hell. It's outlived CPU fans, hard drives, video cards, a stick of RAM, even a motherboard.
1) I am not a customer of the music industry. Even if I'd never heard of an mp3 I would not buy music. Period.
2) Stealing, by definition, means taking something from another without permission. The core idea is that by taking this item, you deprive the rightful owner of the item of its use and value.
Now, assuming point one is true -- that I'd never buy music -- then my downloading mp3s is taking nothing from anyone. In that case I'm not downloading music INSTEAD of buying it, I'm downloading it just because it's there. If it wasn't there and "free" I'd just do without.
So we get to point two. Let's say I come to your house and you have your dead mother's Harvard degree hanging on the wall. I take it. You'd be justifiably angry. But what if I just took a picture of it? Then we both have a copy. What if I stole your car? That'd suck. What if I somehow duplicated it without inconveniencing you in any way? I doubt you'd care unless you're just a big meanie.
It's not as if I download an mp3 and it's MINE MINE MINE and only mine... no one has been deprived of anything if I never intended to buy the CD anyway.
My roommate downloads songs all the time. Then he buys the CD if he likes the music and there's not too much crappy filler material... who wants to pay $17 for 3 good songs and an hour of crap you'll never listen to? Not every good song becomes a single, after all. Maybe the industry should look into letting people download legal tracks and make their own CDs without filler crap that they'll never listen to and don't want to pay for... and make the price reasonable. Sounded good up until that last part, huh?
And what if he buys a CD and HATES it? Can't take it back after it's been opened, that's a no-no. So he downloads the stuff, listens, and decides based on that whether to get the CD (he was way over a hundred, compared to my zero -- I'm just not a music person).
I bet there are a lot more people like him (and like me) than there are people who "steal" just for the fun of it. The music industry MAKES money because he "steals" music. If the music industry would get with the times and stop waging war against its customers... well, I doubt it would stop piracy, but it certainly couldn't hurt.
Also in Tallahassee, FL. When I first got cable I just went out, picked up a free self-install kit, came home and had it up and running in a few minutes. All it took was a phone call to give them the MAC address and modem serial number. The modem is a Toshiba with USB and Ethernet, which is great.
I've had the cable guy over here a few times to check my lines (once when the idiot landscapers chopped the cable to bits at the box outside). I told tech support and the cable guys that I use Linux. Best I can tell, they don't particularly care, especially since my machines are behind a router anyway. One of the cable guys might even be using Linux now. He was so impressed with my setup I let him play around with it a few minutes.
Anyway, were those the United States he was talking about? I don't think so. Comcast would rather you self-install, at least here... the service techs seem to be seriously overextended as it is. If they had to do all the installations the waiting list would be huge (already takes ~1 week to get a tech out if something goes wrong).
Back to the actual topic: the Comcast CD in the self-install kit is crap. Pretty much wrecked my roommate's XP box with its custom IE install. I didn't notice any spyware, but I was deleting everything and starting over, so I didn't really pay attention. When I showed him he didn't need it in the first place (despite what the kit says) he wasn't very happy.
Microbes would be ... depressing.
on
Life on Pluto?
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Recently there's been a lot of talk about life on other bodies in the solar system. Yet even the most hopeful proponents of these theories don't truly expect to find anything much more advanced than algae. The upper reaches of Venus's atmosphere, Europa, Ganymede, Triton, maybe even somewhere in Jupiter's atmosphere where the pressures and temperatures are "just right", whatever that is.
I've read theories that of all places in the system outside Earth, Europa is the most promising. So, maybe there are "hot spots" in the Europan ocean and maybe there is life around those hot spots. Yet, look at Earth's version of those deep-ocean hotspots. The life there is interesting, to be sure, and spectacularly resilient in the face of extreme pressures and temperatures, but it's not spectacularly advanced and there's not a lot of room for evolution in such a system. Tubeworms have been tubeworms for geologic ages, after all.
So, what if we do move out into the solar system and find life is "everywhere"? Not literally everywhere, but everywhere in the sense that life, after a fashion, will generally show up pretty much anywhere it can. There are organisms (waterbears, for one) on Earth right now that could survive a trip through the vacuum of space. So we might even find that life on other bodies in the system is shockingly similar to life on Earth, perhaps even distant "cousins". Simple life, and abundant; clinging to existence in every nook and cranny where it's managed to take hold.
How depressing is that? We go to the planets with arms open to greet... algae and paramecia. Maybe Fermi's Paradox isn't much of a paradox at all. "Where are they?" They're everywhere, maybe. "They" just won't be making any radios or FTL starships any time over the next few billion years.
Imagine a universe full of lichen and amoebas, riding their respective planets to whatever oblivion awaits in some far-distant future. Imagine humanity spreading, in some distant future, into the galaxy, ever searching for others like themselves. They find instead world after world where any of a hundred (thousand? million?) variables was off by just enough to doom the life there to brainless simplicity. What if we are the aberration? It seems silly, to think all that real estate out there is just a big petri dish, doesn't it? Silly that there isn't someone out there... somewhere.
But the universe is big, time is broad, and we as a species are disheartingly tiny when viewed against such a scale. Maybe there were, or will be, beings much like us riding their little worlds round and round some other star... But how far away in space and time? Long dead, not yet born? In some impossibly distant galaxy speeding away from us at a significant fraction of C? It would need to be only a tiny time differential in the grand scheme of things. The entire sum of human existence isn't even an eyeblink on such scales. It seems silly to think that in all the universe (even the galaxy) we are alone. But does it really matter? We may not in fact be alone, but those "others", if they exist, might well be forever out of reach, perhaps even unknowable. I think that's what we fear the most, that notion that we might pass, not forgotten but simply unknown, out of existence. Why do we really want to find others anyway? Maybe just to shout, "We exist!" at the universe and for the first time know that we are heard. Now that I think about it, it seems that the search for aliens isn't really all that different from humanity's never-ending quest for "god"... maybe the two are merely differing expressions of the same inherent need -- to be known, acknowledged, and (dare we hope it!) validated.
I have a friend of a friend who's a city cop here (Tallahassee, FL -- state capital). After reading the article, it occurred to me: so what would an everyday cop walking the beat (she actually has a cruiser, but that's beside the point) actually say if something like this came up.
Anyway, I e-mailed the friend and asked whether or not the cop was online. I don't know her well enough to just "barge in" (odd that I felt the need to confess POLITELY to a federal crime, but I digress). Turns out she is, so I left my e-mail addy and screen name with the friend. I'd pretty much forgotten about it until later tonight when a message window opened. To make a long story short, my confession went something like:
"I recently used my laptop to watch The Matrix. Since I run Linux, I was forced to use an illegal decryption algorithm in order to watch it. It's my DVD, though. I bought it when it first came out. Anyway, if you guys want to arrest me I can give you my address."
I really think she thought I was some kind of nutcase. But she was polite. "Why was that illegal," she asked, "if you own the movie?"
I explained, briefly, and gave the spiel about "circumventing protection schemes".
She said, "You bought the movie. Watch it however you want, just don't copy it and sell it outside the mall." Kind of an inside joke, since a modest-sized music-pirating ring was busted here a while back. They were burning illegal CDs and selling them openly at swap meets and the like. Why? Because, for months, the cops apparently had NO CLUE they had an obligation to do anything about it. Or maybe they just didn't care until someone lit a fire under them. Who knows.
I finally asked: "Aren't you going to arrest me? I'm guilty of, I dunno, dozens of violations of federal law. I wouldn't even know how to guess how many times I've gotten bored and thrown a DVD onto my laptop."
She gave me an LOL and said, "I don't know what would be more stupid. You trying to get arrested for something like that, me for being willing to do the paperwork over something like that, or any prosecutor who'd stop doing his job to go after you for it."
I guess the city cops haven't been briefed properly on the finer points of cybercrime, so people like me could happily watch The Matrix illegally on the courthouse steps and the Powers That Be would just smile and keep on walking.
In the tiny little town where I grew up, my uncle was the sheriff... I wonder if he even knows what a DVD is...
Interestingly enough, the conversation went on for quite a while after that. Seems she was intrigued by Linux. She's currently using Windows ME,that steaming piece of crap someone at Microsoft decided, for whatever reason, to call an operating system. How the same company that created Windows2000 could create THAT is beyond me. Anyway, as converts go, ME users are generally an easy sell. It's not like things can get any worse, right? Maybe I can get her to convert... eventually she'll want to watch a DVD while she surfs the web or something... and then... oh yes... then she'll be one of us...
2) Microsoft gets called to task for doing really really bad things by the United States Government.
3) Microsoft is told sternly to stop being such a big meanie, given an affectionate pat on it's cute lil corporate head, and sent to think about how really really bad it had been. Monopolies will be monopolies, after all.
4) Microsoft promises it isn't really really bad anymore, Scout's Honor.
5) Significant portion of United States Government mandantes the use of Microsoft Software.
Does this mean I can go down to the local bar, beat the crap out of the proprietor, steal everything he owns, drive him out of business, and take over the place? Then when I get caught, I'll promise to be a good boy from now on, keep all my ill-gotten gains, and turn the place into a cop bar. Then I'll have enough money to hire some muscle and really move up in the world.
In all seriousness, however, Microsoft has made sincere strides toward policing its own actions (someone has to, right?). For example, from a recent press release:
"SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corporation is pleased to unveil, over the coming weeks, a series of strategic alliances designed to further the goals of our Trusted Computing Initiative.
Beginning next month, to ease customer transition to and acceptance of Licensing 6.0, all Microsoft End User License Agreements will be accompanied by a single-use packet of high-quality non-pretroleum-based personal lubricant. In line with our Software Choice Program, we have partnered with both AstroGlide and Wet* to provide this service to our Valued Customers.
In response to continuing customer concerns regarding the clarity of our various End User License Agreements, we have elected to move to a Unified EULA structure (patent pending) that we feel will more clearly outline the agreements attached to our Software Products. Beginning November 1, 2002, the following EULA will apply to all newly licensed Microsoft Products. Please note that present Microsoft Customers will still be able to benefit from the new EULA scheme, as we will be attaching it to all vital Software Security Updates and Hotfixes for previous Microsoft Products.
'[Product Name]
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This End-User License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Microsoft Corporation for the Microsoft software product identified above, which includes computer software and may include associated media, printed materials, "online" or electronic documentation, and Internet-based services ("Product"). An amendment or addendum to this EULA may accompany the Product.
YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE PRODUCT (THIS INCLUDES THE ACT OF PLACING THE PRODUCT MEDIA INTO YOUR CD/DVD-ROM DRIVE).
1) ALL YOUR COMPUTER ARE BELONG TO US!'
We hope that the new Unified Eula (patent pending) system will clear up any lingering customer concerns regarding our Product Licensing.
*This promotion applies to Wet Light only. Wet Platinum is currently unavailable. Offer good in the United States and Canada only, subject to availability."
For some reason, this made me think of that scene in Airplane (or maybe it was Airplane II, it's been a few years), where the helpless little old lady is being brutalized by airport security while a group of terrorists carrying ammo cases and rocket launchers stroll by in the background.
And, of course, Sonny Bono at the gift shop, saying, "...and I'll take the second timebomb on the right."
It just seems sad to me, the whole "security crackdown". People have been flying commercially for decades, which is pretty much the same length of time crazies of one variety or another have been trying to [blow up | divert | crash | take over] planes. So after all this time, we finally decide it's time to do something about this shocking, unsuspected and unexpected, brand new problem facing air travelers. That's just great. I'm sure everyone who's been blown up, diverted, crashed, or held hostage is really pleased they might not have to go through it again.
A big shiny new lock for the barn must be a good thing, right? Of course, the horses ran off ages ago... I guess I can accept that, in theory at least, this and other measures are potentially good things if handled properly (which would be only slightly more shocking than MS Office 2003 releasing for Linux two weeks ahead of the Win32 version, replete with nifty Linux-only features).
Too little? Who knows. Too late? Definitely.
Besides, it's been proven over and over that profiling and amassing large databases of personal information (unhackable and infinitely secure, I'm sure) on private citizens is a fair, even-handed means of separating "them" from "us", right?
I think you were wrong in a few places. You seemed to horribly misunderstand what I was trying to say in a lot of places. I actually just wrote a really long response, trying to clarify things, since I felt maybe I wasn't clear in the original post.
But then I realized it doesn't matter. You have your opinions, and I have mine. You chose to pick mine apart, rightly or wrongly, depending on who you asked and, maybe, what they had for breakfast and whether or not they had sex the previous night. That's just human nature.
I doubt there's anything I could say at this point to rectify (what I perceive as) the misunderstanding. If I didn't get my points across clearly the first time around, I doubt I'd have any better luck the second.
Anyway, thanks for the critique, and for trying to get me to see things from a slightly different perspective. That's always an interesting challenge, trying to overcome and see past one's own feelings, opinions, and sometimes silly ideas and preconceptions about the world. Apparently, in this instance, I wasn't up to the task.
I appreciate your POV, but I'm afraid I just can't share it. =)
Maybe you should try reading the other 99% of my post, which had nothing at all to do with the Internet. I simply referenced the net briefly because it was mentioned in the parent and because it is a symptom of (what I see, in my own fallible human way) the larger problem.
There are ways to say things, and ways not to say them. If you had taken the time and thought to frame a reasonable reply, your message might actually have been heard, might actually have caused others to think.
And you actually make reference to "trivial" things, which was the heart of my post, which you apparently missed altogether. It is the trivial things that matter most, because they are the easiest to miss. But taken cumulatively, the effect is frightening.
Actually, it's more likely you're just an Anonymous Coward in more ways than one. I've tried to reply in as civil a manner as possible, since even people like you have the right to be heard... for now.
That anonymity, and so many other things we risk losing, ARE precious. Your response is precisely what the powers that be are banking on. You see, there's a flaw in your logic:
If we as American citizens have but a SINGLE less right or freedom than we did on September 10, 2001 then the terrorists won not by blowing up planes and buildings but by forcing us to destroy our OWN way of life.
Do you really think they intended to strike a horrible physical blow against the United States with those planes? Of course not. That was just a by-product of the real intent: to show the American public that we are not safe. To strike fear into the hearts of every "middle-class" American everywhere who walks into an office building at 8am every morning. For the first time in their lives, those people had to consider: "What if it was THIS building?" And that fear is an insidious thing, like a tumor growing in America's collective subconscious.
We had become complacent. Most Americans simply aren't concerned with American foreign policy simply because it has no immediate domestic effects. We watch our troops fighting on other continents, shake our heads sadly at the "necessity" of it, and then go back to watching sitcoms and football games. For the first time, we were shown that we are no less vulnerable than anyone else on the planet -- that, maybe, our giant cities, seats of government and commerce that could not be easily replaced, might make us even MORE vulnerable than some.
Two buildings in New York were destroyed and the American economy was rocked to its foundation. TWO BUILDINGS. It was just a bloody nose, horrible as it sounds to say so. It could have been much, much worse. And that is what scares the average American into blindly accepting whatever "safety regulations" the Powers That Be deem appropriate to protect us from the ubiquitous "them" that we've all feared from childhood, be it the monster in the closet or the terrorist in the desert.
Government is, at its heart, simply the sum of its human parts. Humans are, at their hearts, ambitious, maybe even greedy. As such, the general tendency of any government is toward expansion. Some governments do this all at once: that's called a revolution, and its often bloody and leaves the "winners" in a weakened, untenable position, leaving them easily toppled in yet another "revolution". This cycle can go on for generations. But the smart governments treat us all like lobster.
They don't simply throw us into the boiling water, they gradually increase the temperature, allow us to acclimate, turn it up another notch...
Not too long ago, a devastating earthquake in India killed TENS OF THOUSANDS. Why aren't you and people like you screaming about that? TENS OF THOUSANDS. Dead. Wiped out. Gone. Whether it was a terrorist act or simply the whim of nature, they are just as dead. But that's a natural disaster, yes? We can't FIGHT that, can we? So it warrants a few minutes on CNN, a spot on the "World" page of the local paper, and maybe a few prayers here and there.
Except, in many places around the world, under-funded research is being done to be able to predict earthquakes. Where is your support? Where is your rage that the governments of the world haven't united to fund this crucial research? If a way was found to reliably (or even NOT so reliably, any at all is better than none!) predict earthquakes, how many dozens of thousands of future lives might be saved? If it had happened 20 years ago, how many of those Indians, men, women, and children crushed like so much garbage in their own homes, might have been saved by early evacuation?
This is just one example. There are doubtless many more. No offense, but people like you are exactly the kinds of people who will gleefully allow the Internet to become nothing more than a corporate/government (and THAT distinction is ever-blurring) playground. People like you will applaud while our rights wither away, because it's happening at a pace that doesn't seem immediately or obviously threatening. Instead of revolution, it almost seems to be a natural evolution. But take the long view and think -- really think and ask yourself -- is what we are evolving toward really the legacy you wish to leave your children? Your grandchildren? America is in a delicate situation. What we do now, the amount of ground we give in the name of "safety" will have real and powerful consequences in the not-too-distant future.
How long before Americans who don't fit the WASP profile, and sometimes even those who do, can be stopped in the streets by any government authority and asked those fateful words:
I don't even know where to begin. First of all, I live in Florida (in Tallahassee -- I can almost see the capitol building from home). I've always thought of myself as quietly patriotic, not as someone who makes a big display of saluting the Stars And Stripes everytime I see it or rabidly defending the US anytime someone dares utter a negative word about it, just as an American citizen who is proud to have chanced being born here.
Yet, increasingly I find myself developing sentiments many would likely label anti-American, maybe even seditious. And you know what the worst part is -- the very worst part? For the first time, it occurs to me that I have good reason not to voice my opinion. Our government, of, for, and by the people, has lately acquired the ability to detain (read as: unilaterally imprison) any of us indefinitely for "suspected terrorist affiliation". So I worry, at least in a small "what-if" way, that by condemning the actions and policies of my country, I could place my personal freedoms in jeopardy -- and if that is the case, then my country has, in any way that matters, ceased to exist.
When I read the article mentioned in this post, my heart sank. My stomach kind of tightened up, and after the first few paragraphs the sorry general state of American affairs solidified for me.
A couple of things from the article that I find most disheartening:
In Tallahassee, Smith, the secretary of state, said he received a call from someone -- he did not say who -- on the Broward County Commission who told him the county did not have enough voting equipment.
He said the county commissioner said the governor should call out the National Guard to deal with any problems.
Since when do Americans participating in the election process need the supervision of armed troops to "deal with" any problems? Americans watch armed troops "dealing with" voters in other countries and shake their heads sadly: complacent, arrogant, secure -- "Those poor bastards. Thank God I was born in America, where such things simply don't happen. Honey, bring me another slice of apple pie..."
What have we become that problems with a simple gubernatorial primary (not even the main event, just a primary) should lead someone with the power to make such decisions to even CONSIDER such a thing? The thought of Americans -- subdued, casting furtive, uncertain glances at the soldiers in their midst -- slinking quietly behind the curtain to cast their ballots... it makes me sick.
At Precinct 224 in Carol City, a predominantly black precinct, potential voters complained that once again they were about to be disenfranchised. The trouble: At 7 a.m., none of the 14 machines worked. Some left out of frustration.
If I think I'm disgusted, being a white American, I shudder to think what black Americans must think of this. Were they being targeted for disenfranchisement this morning? Probably not. But that is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I should be able to say, unequivocally, that they were NOT being targeted, that they COULD NOT BE. I should feel that in my bones. I don't. And for those black voters who left in disgust this morning, that feeling must be amplified beyond my ability to understand. After all, I'm white, and this is the Deep South. But for all those who read this, not that it matters, know this: I am not one of them. This ties into the next part:
In North Florida's Gadsden County, which had the state's highest percentage of rejected ballots in 2000 -- 11.5 percent -- new ballot-reading optical scanners drew early praise from voters.
Gadsden borders Leon county (Tallahasse, the capital, is in Leon). The population of Gadsden county is predominantly black. I don't have the exact figures, or particularly feel like digging them up, but I can say from seeing with my own eyes that the vast majority of Gadsden's residents are black. 11.5% of them had no say in the 2000 Presidential election. Rejected. The highest proportionate number of rejections in the state, in a predominantly black county. Go figure.
Bush won the Presidency of our nation in Florida. Everyone knows that. But, all other things being equal, Bush won the Presidency of our nation in Gadsden County. Here in the South, black voters generally vote Democrat. Of the thousands of residents, mostly black, mostly registered Democrats, 11.5% had no say. Bush won by less than SIX HUNDRED votes. What have we become that even the Presidency of the United States is a fraud on its face?
Did I want Gore? No. But I didn't want Bush, either. I felt that the 2000 elections were pretty much a lose-lose scenario. I had no strong feelings either way, yet I do feel strongly that the process at least be legitimate. Hopefully, Bush's brother, our illustrious governor (who promised us all the 2000 fiasco would never come again) will be taught a very public, very visible lesson in the coming election. If he regains office, the tiny faith I have left in the American people will likely evaporate.
''What do I think about her efforts?'' Sager said. ``I think they're non-existent. What ability? I don't see that she has any ability. And if I can't vote, I can't change things.''
Pay careful, careful attention to that last line. It is the most ringing line in the entire article. This is not "just another" right being mishandled, maybe even trampled upon, this is THE fundamental right -- the only hand we truly have in goverment. All those people who have been turned away... it's disgusting. I don't see how it can be allowed to stand. Those people pay their taxes, they obey the laws (else they couldn't vote in the first place), they are American CITIZENS. Yet the government screws up: sorry, better luck next time.
Every person turned away -- EVERY person denied the right to vote today -- should promptly sue the state of Florida for a refund of ALL taxes they've paid this year. Why? Because one of the fundamental tenets of American society and government is the belief that taxation without representation is wrong. These people, who have been turned away, have lost the right to the most basic interaction we have with our goverment: our very own small but vitally important part in creating the government in such a way that it represents us as a people. Without that right for EVERY law-abiding American, we are nothing.
''I was there at 8:20 a.m. and the [poll worker] yelled at me,'' she said. ``He said, `You have to wait. They're still setting up the machines. You don't like it, you can leave.''
That poll worker should be fired. At least. If not for the fact that the worker committed no actual crime, that I know of, I'd say he should be stripped of HIS right to vote. But that isn't the way our system works. Or, at least, not the way it's supposed to. That's why we have the system: so that someone like me can't get angry and arbitrarily strip away the rights of others.
''This is outrageous,'' said Pauline Winick of Miami Beach. ``After being so embarrassed by Florida's voting scandal [in 2000], you would have thought that they'd do better than this.''
You seem to be forgetting that, for whatever reason, many people using Linux (or even alternative browsers for Windows) have their browsers set to "spoof" as Internet Explorer. For instance, my roommate can't access online banking unless he has Mozilla report itself as IE. Last time I installed Opera, it *defaulted* to spoofing as IE. In Konqueror there's a pulldown menu right on the menubar that lets you spoof as pretty much any browser (even Lynx, wcm, and WGet).
The point being, your "reliable" data is nothing of the sort. I'm suspicious of pretty much ANY data that tries to quantify things like this -- it just doesn't work. Assemble ten legitimately unbiased researchers, turn them loose on the web to gather this same data, and I bet you end up with 10 hugely varied answers. Assemble 10 *biased* researchers and the "data" can be manipulated to represent the "facts" in whatever light the reasearcher desires.
In other words, the Google data is only reliable if every browser in that sample was truthfully reporting itself to the server. Not to mention the fact that there is such a thing as dual booting, after all.
My roommate is just as likely to boot Windows as Linux (depends on his mood, so he claims). So which is he? Does his computer add to the 90%+ Microsoft tally? Does it get added to the Linux tally? It is certainly not *likely*, but suppose 40% of those "Windows" users were dual booters who just HAPPENED to have booted into Windows that day. Like I said, that's *highly* unlikely, but who's to say? Who has the REAL numbers? No one. So MY number (40%) probably strikes everyone as incredibly unrealistic -- but only by virtue of being so *obviously* wrong. But in the end, that doesn't mean I'm any more wrong than anyone else since the data itself isn't reliable... seems to me, the whole thing is a waste of time.
Ah, but Longhorn is projected for -- what? -- 2005, 2006 or so?
Linux development is *fast*, as is often trotted out by supporters as well as opponents (who see it as a sort of barely controlled chaos/anarchy, I suppose).
So even if MS rolled out Longhorn on schedule (which is anyone's guess), Linux has a significant amount of time to improve. Breathing room. Looking back on the last two years, Linux then and now, and looking forward two years -- maybe my expectations are unrealistic, but the prospects are exciting (and, yeah, I know there's a word for people who find IT exciting).
It's a snowball effect. As Linux becomes better, it attracts more users and developers. As it attracts more users and developers, it in turn becomes better. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. The great thing about that kind of growth is that (yeah, I know, not in the real world) it has the potential for exponential expansion once a critical mass (on which I am certinaly not informed enough to speculate about) has been reached. Ah, to dream...
And, from my humble perspective, it does seem as if MS is somewhat distracted, what with the antitrust headaches and.Net not falling into place quite as planned. Many other things, too, like users adapting to the new licensing scheme (or balking and needed to be coaxed); then there's the WPA thing, which must be a true nightmare to implement without pissing off pretty much everyone. Personally, I'd love to see MS protect XP and Office such that it can't be pirated -- period, ever -- but that's a pipe dream for all concerned. And one has to wonder if an influx of angry former MS-pirate refugees is really what the Linux userbase needs anyway...
MS has always been known for having a lot of irons in the fire and for so rarely being burned. It's a wholly subjective opinion and maybe you're right and it's wrong, but I just get the feeling some of those irons are getting a little harder to handle than MS is used to. But then, it's often said that successfully weathering adversity only leaves you stronger at the other end... ain't *that* a lovely thought... =)
I think you missed (part of) my point. As Linux supporters, we are often Linux' worst enemy. We want it all and we want it all by end of the work-day yesterday.
My point was, each new generation is an improvement upon the last. Microsoft is currently distracted, what with trying to patch XP into something the DOJ and those pesky 9 remaining states won't stomp all over, which must be done in concert with their secret, ever-vigilant adherence to the Microsoft Prime Directive:
[Deep in the heart of the fortress at Redmond, the fate of the world, except maybe Alabama, hangs in the balance...]
Gates: Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Ballmer?
Ballmer: I think I am, Bill. But won't Apple sue us if we re-release the Newton?
Gates: Not that, you imbecile!
Ballmer: What then, Bill? What are we going to do tonight?
Gates: The same thing we do every night, Ballmer. Try to take over the world!
Anyway, my sleep-deprivation-induced ranting aside: Patience is the key. Linux is moving forward, maybe not as fast as its proponents would like, but at a respectable clip. And (to add a trite cliche to the trite cult media references) the best things are worth waiting for.
Sure, if you really want to you can frame a hundred -- a thousand -- "When can I do ______ with Linux? When, damn you, WHEN!?" But to a lesser or greater extent, that's true of all projects. Some grow, some wither on the vine, some are ruthlessly slaughtered by Bill's goons, some merely have their kneecaps shattered and relatives threatened. But I think with Linux, Microsoft has finally met its match. There's no one to strong-arm, there's no one to drive out of business. Linux is a Hydra immune even to fire, two heads to replace every one struck from the body, the body itself so broadly distributed as to be nearly invulnerable.
Microsoft would have to take over the Internet itself to strike at the exposed belly of its enemy...
Welcome to Palladium.
"Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt... to service us..."
I've used all three versions of Null (the first two were called Limbo) so far.
It's improving VERY fast, and I can honestly say that, as far as font rendering is concerned, it's the most beautiful distro I've ever seen. In my opinion, at least on my laptop (which are always problematic with fonts), the latest Null renders better than Windows. Font rendering has always been one of the, "Yeah, but Linux can't..." deals, and, forunately, with the next release, Red Hat is going to put that line of argument to an end. Mandrake's latest beta also has the potential to render beautifully, but IMO the default settings / choices are atrocious.
Once I tweaked things a bit and installed a few extra fonts, Mandrake 9.0RC1 was plenty able to keep up. It seems that with each new release from the major players, more and more of the old, "Yeah, but Linux can't..." excuses fall by the wayside.
Both Null and Mandrake 9.0RC1 installed flawlessly on this laptop. But then that isn't really surprising, since both current versions installed equally well.
The newest Null includes a long list of new GUI configuration tools, and finally even includes an after-the-install package manager capable of browsing, installing, and uninstalling packages from the CDs. This still doesn't come close to Mandrake's newest URPMI, of course, but it's a step in the right direction and a nod to the casual user, since Red Hat's corporate customers will be managing packages via Red Hat's Up2Date service anyway.
As for Red Hat 8.2 being a mature desktop Linux... your time table sounds about right. We can only hope, since whatever Red Hat does inevitably filters out to all the other distros. Some may disagree, some might even cringe in terror and start screaming that Red Hat will be (ugh!) the "Next Microsoft" (uttered in ominous tones by people who have no concept of what Red Hat's business model is really all about). Yet the simple fact remains that when Red Hat improves, the state of Linux userland improves. IMO, anyone NOT rooting for Red Hat is simply rooting AGAINST Linux.
Actually, one of the things that really turned me off WindwowsXP was support for my SBLive! card. You see, I went out and bought a $200 SBLive! Platinum 5.1
It has all the (mostly useless, but ya never know, right?) bells and whisltes. The LiveDrive, the IR remote, lots of pretty ports to plug pretty much anything into pretty much everywhere.
And when XP was released, there were NO official drivers for the Live! 5.1... you either used the generic Live! drivers shipped with XP (which turned my expensive Platinum 5.1 card into a "basic" Live! -- no remote, no 5.1, no fancy applets for setting everything up). If I attempted to install from the OEM CD, it'd break the system. Then, Creative finally got around to releasing some VERY basic drivers, but LiveWare was no more. So now I had drivers that would update previously installed versions of LiveWare to use WindowsXP, except that previous LiveWare BROKE on XP.
So, I had to install the original Creative apps, which broke my sound. THEN install the new drivers from Creative, THEN figure out which of the original apps STILL wouldn't work. It wasn't fun. It was the GUI version of your "rmmod... etc" story. So it might have been superficially prettier than mucking around in a console, but certainly no more fun.
You're probably about to scream, "But that's not Microsoft's fault! It's Creative's fault!"
Exactly.
If your stuff didn't work with Linux (which I find odd -- was it a distro made within the last 2 years?) then whose fault is that really? Is "Linux" to blame because, for instance, Trident refuses to release specs for its cards and the XFree86 team can't write 3D drivers for them? Sometimes it's tempting to blame Linux / Open Source developers for this kind of shortcoming, maybe because they are real people and it feels better to vent / shout at real people as opposed to firing off a nasty, venom-filled letter to some faceless corporation.
Try a recent Linux distro that is designed for ease of use. If you want that, grab Mandrake (or the newest Red Hat Null beta), ELX, Lycoris, any of a number of great distros. I've tested all of them (plus a few others) and so far NONE of them have failed to detect my SB Live!...
Closing thought: How many corporate desktops do you know of that run a SB Live! and an off-the-shelf QuickCam? Red Hat is targeting the corporate desktop which is going to be running very vanilla, very commodity hardware. Hardware simply won't play into Red Hat's scheme. It's software, especially proprietary interal corp software, that is going to be the bane of their existence.
Actually, Lycoris doesn't have a "lot" of ANY programmers. They have 5 employees, who have apparently worked themselves senseless to get Lycoris to its present state.
I don't particularly care for the distro, but then I'm not the class of user Lycoris targets. But, aside from a few quirks, I think it's a solid product, and it's improving quickly. When you factor in the size of their development team, those quirks and shortcomings pale in comparison to the usability enhancements (which I find personally useless and "in the way") such a small team has managed to churn out.
Just thought all their hard work deserved a bit of recognition, even if it is mostly lost on me. =)
Actually, calling it "sci-fi" is generally frowned upon. The Sci-Fi Channel, for instance, is a great example of true "sci-fi". Glitzy (cheesy?), over-the-top, all-for-effect, thoughtless mass-media crap.
The Foundation series is science fiction. Anything Arthur Clarke ever wrote is science fiction. Certain stories by King (Dreamcatcher) have flirted with becoming science fiction. The Tommyknockers, OTOH, is SF (more on that in a bit) but NOT "sci-fi". Independence Day, Killer Clowns From Outer Space and their ilk are "sci-fi".
No science fiction writer would ever refer to his or her own work (except, perhaps, in scorn or self-derision) as sci-fi.
SF, on the other hand, is NOT science fiction, merely speculative fiction. It encompasses many genres: fantasy, horror, and generally forward-looking stories that may not be true science fiction because...
According to Ben Bova:
Science fictions stories are those in which some aspect of future science or high technology is so integral to the story that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses.
And......when I say science fiction, I mean stories that meet the definition given above. Other areas of the field, I will refer to as SF.
And then the definition of "sci-fi":...the term "sci-fi", which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse.
So, yes, this story IS science fiction. NOT sci-fi. It may or may not be great science fiction, but it is certainly above the level of sci-fi.
And, lest you come back with a boatload of (flaming) gibberish about Mr. Bova, I'll just mention a few of his credits:
Author of almost 100 books, both ficion and non-fiction.
Former president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. President Emeritus of the National Space Society.
Once taught science fiction writing at a backwards little school called Harvard, as well as at the Hayden Planetarium in NYC.
Former editor of both Omni and Analog. Oh, and he also won a half-dozen or so Hugos.
All that being said, this wasn't the greatest science fiction story ever told, but it was certainly thought-provoking and seemed a hell of a lot more insightful than what the average hack would turn out, in hopes of pimping the work out to Hollywood. Maybe that accounts for it being so "boring" to so many of the posters (those who actually read it and those who merely claimed to). Maybe if he'd jumped through all the right "literary" hoops (read as: sensationalized it all to pieces merely for the sake of sensationalizing it all to pieces) it would have gotten a better reception.
Maybe people have simply become disinterested in story-telling in the traditional sense (ie, this piece being a classic cautionary tale). If he'd put in a bit more sex, a few more explosions, and plenty of things that would look great with the help of a few million in digital effects but add basically nothing to the story itself... who knows...
Slashdot Mirror
That might even work. Except let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that some nation leveled sanctions against the US and impoverished us all. Finland, maybe. Linus always looked a little shifty to me ... (silly, yeah, yeah ... just pretending, remember?)
...
..."
Anyway, sure, we might rise up to overthrow the government just like Finland wants. But I bet when all was said and done Finland wouldn't be real popular in the hearts and minds of American citizens
"They starved us because of our evil rulers." Once those evil rulers are gone it becomes real easy for the survivors to shorten that to, "They starved us
War. Sanctions. They both kind of suck. Too bad good will and common sense seem to be in such short supply among the powerful. Or maybe among all of us and it just doesn't show because we little guys don't have as much freedom to flex our muscles.
Believe it or not, I agree with you for the most part.
... well, it only took 3 weeks the second time. It was much easier. Surely the lives of all those who starved or died from drinking filthy water were worth it.
... if you're going to do it, do it. Don't start, get cold feet, torture millions for years, and then swoop in for an easy kill. Where's the honor in that? Where are the high-blown American morals?
... but only when it's easy."
Where we differ is that I do blame the US for killing Iraqi citizens. Tens of thousands dead during the Gulf War, yet Saddam remained in power. Those responsible had to know he wasn't going to turn tame just because he'd been given a spanking.
We were there. We were in a position to act. We did nothing (just as we urged citizens to revolt, then sat idly by while the revolt was brutally put down and tens of thousands were slaughtered).
We kill tens of thousands, stop short of doing the real job, turn Iraq into a poverty state and THEN go back in over a decade later to finish what we started. Of course, after 12 years of letting Iraq simmer in its own filth
He should never have been left in power to start with. Problem would have been solved.
I'm not for or against war in a general sense. Sometimes it's right, sometimes not, and I don't claim to be an authority on which is which. But, damn
"Truth, Justice and The American Way
An excerpt:
All this while Hussein et al were shitting on golden toilets. Did the sanctions hurt Saddam? Sure. But the damage done to the Iraqi people was orders of magnitude worse. Twelve years of sanctions, and what was accomplished? The task of removing Saddam through the use of military force was made easier, I suppose. But the primary reason for using sanctions in the first place is to avoid the use of military force. So, our sanctions against Iraq inconvenienced Saddam, killed a quarter-million children, and failed miserably at their stated purpose.
Way to go, Monster. That'll teach 'em.
nVidia's lack of driver support for non-nVidia AGP cards running on nForce2 under Linux is quite a problem for me ...
...
I guess no one is perfect
What reliability? I mean, what do you base this on, exactly? Got a link? An impartial study conducted over a period of years (who keeps a desktop CPU that long anyway?). Really, I'd like to know.
Or is this like "Bad ATI drivers," just one of those convenient myths people spout anytime a certain trademark or company name is mentioned? Kind of like "Linux is hard to install and configure." In 1996 maybe.
I was an nVidia fan for years, but when 9700 Pro came out I gave one a try. Am I an ATI fan now? Sure. But if NV40 blows away whatever ATI offers at the time, so be it. Times change. Products change.
Myths, apparently, never die.
I have a Duron running right now that has seen very little down time for over 3 years. It just keeps chugging away, overclocked and over-volted all to hell. It's outlived CPU fans, hard drives, video cards, a stick of RAM, even a motherboard.
I guess I'll play devil's advocate ...
... no one has been deprived of anything if I never intended to buy the CD anyway.
... who wants to pay $17 for 3 good songs and an hour of crap you'll never listen to? Not every good song becomes a single, after all. Maybe the industry should look into letting people download legal tracks and make their own CDs without filler crap that they'll never listen to and don't want to pay for ... and make the price reasonable. Sounded good up until that last part, huh?
... well, I doubt it would stop piracy, but it certainly couldn't hurt.
Consider the following two items:
1) I am not a customer of the music industry. Even if I'd never heard of an mp3 I would not buy music. Period.
2) Stealing, by definition, means taking something from another without permission. The core idea is that by taking this item, you deprive the rightful owner of the item of its use and value.
Now, assuming point one is true -- that I'd never buy music -- then my downloading mp3s is taking nothing from anyone. In that case I'm not downloading music INSTEAD of buying it, I'm downloading it just because it's there. If it wasn't there and "free" I'd just do without.
So we get to point two. Let's say I come to your house and you have your dead mother's Harvard degree hanging on the wall. I take it. You'd be justifiably angry. But what if I just took a picture of it? Then we both have a copy. What if I stole your car? That'd suck. What if I somehow duplicated it without inconveniencing you in any way? I doubt you'd care unless you're just a big meanie.
It's not as if I download an mp3 and it's MINE MINE MINE and only mine
My roommate downloads songs all the time. Then he buys the CD if he likes the music and there's not too much crappy filler material
And what if he buys a CD and HATES it? Can't take it back after it's been opened, that's a no-no. So he downloads the stuff, listens, and decides based on that whether to get the CD (he was way over a hundred, compared to my zero -- I'm just not a music person).
I bet there are a lot more people like him (and like me) than there are people who "steal" just for the fun of it. The music industry MAKES money because he "steals" music. If the music industry would get with the times and stop waging war against its customers
Also in Tallahassee, FL. When I first got cable I just went out, picked up a free self-install kit, came home and had it up and running in a few minutes. All it took was a phone call to give them the MAC address and modem serial number. The modem is a Toshiba with USB and Ethernet, which is great.
... the service techs seem to be seriously overextended as it is. If they had to do all the installations the waiting list would be huge (already takes ~1 week to get a tech out if something goes wrong).
I've had the cable guy over here a few times to check my lines (once when the idiot landscapers chopped the cable to bits at the box outside). I told tech support and the cable guys that I use Linux. Best I can tell, they don't particularly care, especially since my machines are behind a router anyway. One of the cable guys might even be using Linux now. He was so impressed with my setup I let him play around with it a few minutes.
Anyway, were those the United States he was talking about? I don't think so. Comcast would rather you self-install, at least here
Back to the actual topic: the Comcast CD in the self-install kit is crap. Pretty much wrecked my roommate's XP box with its custom IE install. I didn't notice any spyware, but I was deleting everything and starting over, so I didn't really pay attention. When I showed him he didn't need it in the first place (despite what the kit says) he wasn't very happy.
Recently there's been a lot of talk about life on other bodies in the solar system. Yet even the most hopeful proponents of these theories don't truly expect to find anything much more advanced than algae. The upper reaches of Venus's atmosphere, Europa, Ganymede, Triton, maybe even somewhere in Jupiter's atmosphere where the pressures and temperatures are "just right", whatever that is.
... algae and paramecia. Maybe Fermi's Paradox isn't much of a paradox at all. "Where are they?" They're everywhere, maybe. "They" just won't be making any radios or FTL starships any time over the next few billion years.
... somewhere.
... But how far away in space and time? Long dead, not yet born? In some impossibly distant galaxy speeding away from us at a significant fraction of C? It would need to be only a tiny time differential in the grand scheme of things. The entire sum of human existence isn't even an eyeblink on such scales. It seems silly to think that in all the universe (even the galaxy) we are alone. But does it really matter? We may not in fact be alone, but those "others", if they exist, might well be forever out of reach, perhaps even unknowable. I think that's what we fear the most, that notion that we might pass, not forgotten but simply unknown, out of existence. Why do we really want to find others anyway? Maybe just to shout, "We exist!" at the universe and for the first time know that we are heard. Now that I think about it, it seems that the search for aliens isn't really all that different from humanity's never-ending quest for "god" ... maybe the two are merely differing expressions of the same inherent need -- to be known, acknowledged, and (dare we hope it!) validated.
I've read theories that of all places in the system outside Earth, Europa is the most promising. So, maybe there are "hot spots" in the Europan ocean and maybe there is life around those hot spots. Yet, look at Earth's version of those deep-ocean hotspots. The life there is interesting, to be sure, and spectacularly resilient in the face of extreme pressures and temperatures, but it's not spectacularly advanced and there's not a lot of room for evolution in such a system. Tubeworms have been tubeworms for geologic ages, after all.
So, what if we do move out into the solar system and find life is "everywhere"? Not literally everywhere, but everywhere in the sense that life, after a fashion, will generally show up pretty much anywhere it can. There are organisms (waterbears, for one) on Earth right now that could survive a trip through the vacuum of space. So we might even find that life on other bodies in the system is shockingly similar to life on Earth, perhaps even distant "cousins". Simple life, and abundant; clinging to existence in every nook and cranny where it's managed to take hold.
How depressing is that? We go to the planets with arms open to greet
Imagine a universe full of lichen and amoebas, riding their respective planets to whatever oblivion awaits in some far-distant future. Imagine humanity spreading, in some distant future, into the galaxy, ever searching for others like themselves. They find instead world after world where any of a hundred (thousand? million?) variables was off by just enough to doom the life there to brainless simplicity. What if we are the aberration? It seems silly, to think all that real estate out there is just a big petri dish, doesn't it? Silly that there isn't someone out there
But the universe is big, time is broad, and we as a species are disheartingly tiny when viewed against such a scale. Maybe there were, or will be, beings much like us riding their little worlds round and round some other star
Seriously. Won't work. I tried it.
... I wonder if he even knows what a DVD is ...
... eventually she'll want to watch a DVD while she surfs the web or something ... and then ... oh yes ... then she'll be one of us ...
I have a friend of a friend who's a city cop here (Tallahassee, FL -- state capital). After reading the article, it occurred to me: so what would an everyday cop walking the beat (she actually has a cruiser, but that's beside the point) actually say if something like this came up.
Anyway, I e-mailed the friend and asked whether or not the cop was online. I don't know her well enough to just "barge in" (odd that I felt the need to confess POLITELY to a federal crime, but I digress). Turns out she is, so I left my e-mail addy and screen name with the friend. I'd pretty much forgotten about it until later tonight when a message window opened. To make a long story short, my confession went something like:
"I recently used my laptop to watch The Matrix. Since I run Linux, I was forced to use an illegal decryption algorithm in order to watch it. It's my DVD, though. I bought it when it first came out. Anyway, if you guys want to arrest me I can give you my address."
I really think she thought I was some kind of nutcase. But she was polite. "Why was that illegal," she asked, "if you own the movie?"
I explained, briefly, and gave the spiel about "circumventing protection schemes".
She said, "You bought the movie. Watch it however you want, just don't copy it and sell it outside the mall." Kind of an inside joke, since a modest-sized music-pirating ring was busted here a while back. They were burning illegal CDs and selling them openly at swap meets and the like. Why? Because, for months, the cops apparently had NO CLUE they had an obligation to do anything about it. Or maybe they just didn't care until someone lit a fire under them. Who knows.
I finally asked: "Aren't you going to arrest me? I'm guilty of, I dunno, dozens of violations of federal law. I wouldn't even know how to guess how many times I've gotten bored and thrown a DVD onto my laptop."
She gave me an LOL and said, "I don't know what would be more stupid. You trying to get arrested for something like that, me for being willing to do the paperwork over something like that, or any prosecutor who'd stop doing his job to go after you for it."
I guess the city cops haven't been briefed properly on the finer points of cybercrime, so people like me could happily watch The Matrix illegally on the courthouse steps and the Powers That Be would just smile and keep on walking.
In the tiny little town where I grew up, my uncle was the sheriff
Interestingly enough, the conversation went on for quite a while after that. Seems she was intrigued by Linux. She's currently using Windows ME,that steaming piece of crap someone at Microsoft decided, for whatever reason, to call an operating system. How the same company that created Windows2000 could create THAT is beyond me. Anyway, as converts go, ME users are generally an easy sell. It's not like things can get any worse, right? Maybe I can get her to convert
1) Microsoft does really really bad things.
2) Microsoft gets called to task for doing really really bad things by the United States Government.
3) Microsoft is told sternly to stop being such a big meanie, given an affectionate pat on it's cute lil corporate head, and sent to think about how really really bad it had been. Monopolies will be monopolies, after all.
4) Microsoft promises it isn't really really bad anymore, Scout's Honor.
5) Significant portion of United States Government mandantes the use of Microsoft Software.
Does this mean I can go down to the local bar, beat the crap out of the proprietor, steal everything he owns, drive him out of business, and take over the place? Then when I get caught, I'll promise to be a good boy from now on, keep all my ill-gotten gains, and turn the place into a cop bar. Then I'll have enough money to hire some muscle and really move up in the world.
In all seriousness, however, Microsoft has made sincere strides toward policing its own actions (someone has to, right?). For example, from a recent press release:
"SEATTLE -- Microsoft Corporation is pleased to unveil, over the coming weeks, a series of strategic alliances designed to further the goals of our Trusted Computing Initiative.
Beginning next month, to ease customer transition to and acceptance of Licensing 6.0, all Microsoft End User License Agreements will be accompanied by a single-use packet of high-quality non-pretroleum-based personal lubricant. In line with our Software Choice Program, we have partnered with both AstroGlide and Wet* to provide this service to our Valued Customers.
In response to continuing customer concerns regarding the clarity of our various End User License Agreements, we have elected to move to a Unified EULA structure (patent pending) that we feel will more clearly outline the agreements attached to our Software Products. Beginning November 1, 2002, the following EULA will apply to all newly licensed Microsoft Products. Please note that present Microsoft Customers will still be able to benefit from the new EULA scheme, as we will be attaching it to all vital Software Security Updates and Hotfixes for previous Microsoft Products.
'[Product Name]
END-USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
IMPORTANT-READ CAREFULLY: This End-User
License Agreement ("EULA") is a legal agreement between you (either an individual or a single entity) and Microsoft Corporation for the Microsoft software product identified above,
which includes computer software and may include associated media, printed materials, "online" or electronic documentation, and Internet-based services ("Product"). An amendment or addendum to this EULA may accompany the Product.
YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS EULA BY INSTALLING, COPYING, OR OTHERWISE USING THE PRODUCT (THIS INCLUDES THE ACT OF PLACING THE PRODUCT MEDIA INTO YOUR CD/DVD-ROM DRIVE).
1) ALL YOUR COMPUTER ARE BELONG TO US!'
We hope that the new Unified Eula (patent pending) system will clear up any lingering customer concerns regarding our Product Licensing.
*This promotion applies to Wet Light only. Wet Platinum is currently unavailable. Offer good in the United States and Canada only, subject to availability."
For some reason, this made me think of that scene in Airplane (or maybe it was Airplane II, it's been a few years), where the helpless little old lady is being brutalized by airport security while a group of terrorists carrying ammo cases and rocket launchers stroll by in the background.
... I guess I can accept that, in theory at least, this and other measures are potentially good things if handled properly (which would be only slightly more shocking than MS Office 2003 releasing for Linux two weeks ahead of the Win32 version, replete with nifty Linux-only features).
And, of course, Sonny Bono at the gift shop, saying, "...and I'll take the second timebomb on the right."
It just seems sad to me, the whole "security crackdown". People have been flying commercially for decades, which is pretty much the same length of time crazies of one variety or another have been trying to [blow up | divert | crash | take over] planes. So after all this time, we finally decide it's time to do something about this shocking, unsuspected and unexpected, brand new problem facing air travelers. That's just great. I'm sure everyone who's been blown up, diverted, crashed, or held hostage is really pleased they might not have to go through it again.
A big shiny new lock for the barn must be a good thing, right? Of course, the horses ran off ages ago
Too little? Who knows. Too late? Definitely.
Besides, it's been proven over and over that profiling and amassing large databases of personal information (unhackable and infinitely secure, I'm sure) on private citizens is a fair, even-handed means of separating "them" from "us", right?
I think you were wrong in a few places. You seemed to horribly misunderstand what I was trying to say in a lot of places. I actually just wrote a really long response, trying to clarify things, since I felt maybe I wasn't clear in the original post.
But then I realized it doesn't matter. You have your opinions, and I have mine. You chose to pick mine apart, rightly or wrongly, depending on who you asked and, maybe, what they had for breakfast and whether or not they had sex the previous night. That's just human nature.
I doubt there's anything I could say at this point to rectify (what I perceive as) the misunderstanding. If I didn't get my points across clearly the first time around, I doubt I'd have any better luck the second.
Anyway, thanks for the critique, and for trying to get me to see things from a slightly different perspective. That's always an interesting challenge, trying to overcome and see past one's own feelings, opinions, and sometimes silly ideas and preconceptions about the world. Apparently, in this instance, I wasn't up to the task.
I appreciate your POV, but I'm afraid I just can't share it. =)
Maybe you should try reading the other 99% of my post, which had nothing at all to do with the Internet. I simply referenced the net briefly because it was mentioned in the parent and because it is a symptom of (what I see, in my own fallible human way) the larger problem.
... for now.
There are ways to say things, and ways not to say them. If you had taken the time and thought to frame a reasonable reply, your message might actually have been heard, might actually have caused others to think.
And you actually make reference to "trivial" things, which was the heart of my post, which you apparently missed altogether. It is the trivial things that matter most, because they are the easiest to miss. But taken cumulatively, the effect is frightening.
Actually, it's more likely you're just an Anonymous Coward in more ways than one. I've tried to reply in as civil a manner as possible, since even people like you have the right to be heard
That anonymity, and so many other things we risk losing, ARE precious. Your response is precisely what the powers that be are banking on. You see, there's a flaw in your logic:
...
If we as American citizens have but a SINGLE less right or freedom than we did on September 10, 2001 then the terrorists won not by blowing up planes and buildings but by forcing us to destroy our OWN way of life.
Do you really think they intended to strike a horrible physical blow against the United States with those planes? Of course not. That was just a by-product of the real intent: to show the American public that we are not safe. To strike fear into the hearts of every "middle-class" American everywhere who walks into an office building at 8am every morning. For the first time in their lives, those people had to consider: "What if it was THIS building?" And that fear is an insidious thing, like a tumor growing in America's collective subconscious.
We had become complacent. Most Americans simply aren't concerned with American foreign policy simply because it has no immediate domestic effects. We watch our troops fighting on other continents, shake our heads sadly at the "necessity" of it, and then go back to watching sitcoms and football games. For the first time, we were shown that we are no less vulnerable than anyone else on the planet -- that, maybe, our giant cities, seats of government and commerce that could not be easily replaced, might make us even MORE vulnerable than some.
Two buildings in New York were destroyed and the American economy was rocked to its foundation. TWO BUILDINGS. It was just a bloody nose, horrible as it sounds to say so. It could have been much, much worse. And that is what scares the average American into blindly accepting whatever "safety regulations" the Powers That Be deem appropriate to protect us from the ubiquitous "them" that we've all feared from childhood, be it the monster in the closet or the terrorist in the desert.
Government is, at its heart, simply the sum of its human parts. Humans are, at their hearts, ambitious, maybe even greedy. As such, the general tendency of any government is toward expansion. Some governments do this all at once: that's called a revolution, and its often bloody and leaves the "winners" in a weakened, untenable position, leaving them easily toppled in yet another "revolution". This cycle can go on for generations. But the smart governments treat us all like lobster.
They don't simply throw us into the boiling water, they gradually increase the temperature, allow us to acclimate, turn it up another notch
Not too long ago, a devastating earthquake in India killed TENS OF THOUSANDS. Why aren't you and people like you screaming about that? TENS OF THOUSANDS. Dead. Wiped out. Gone. Whether it was a terrorist act or simply the whim of nature, they are just as dead. But that's a natural disaster, yes? We can't FIGHT that, can we? So it warrants a few minutes on CNN, a spot on the "World" page of the local paper, and maybe a few prayers here and there.
Except, in many places around the world, under-funded research is being done to be able to predict earthquakes. Where is your support? Where is your rage that the governments of the world haven't united to fund this crucial research? If a way was found to reliably (or even NOT so reliably, any at all is better than none!) predict earthquakes, how many dozens of thousands of future lives might be saved? If it had happened 20 years ago, how many of those Indians, men, women, and children crushed like so much garbage in their own homes, might have been saved by early evacuation?
This is just one example. There are doubtless many more. No offense, but people like you are exactly the kinds of people who will gleefully allow the Internet to become nothing more than a corporate/government (and THAT distinction is ever-blurring) playground. People like you will applaud while our rights wither away, because it's happening at a pace that doesn't seem immediately or obviously threatening. Instead of revolution, it almost seems to be a natural evolution. But take the long view and think -- really think and ask yourself -- is what we are evolving toward really the legacy you wish to leave your children? Your grandchildren? America is in a delicate situation. What we do now, the amount of ground we give in the name of "safety" will have real and powerful consequences in the not-too-distant future.
How long before Americans who don't fit the WASP profile, and sometimes even those who do, can be stopped in the streets by any government authority and asked those fateful words:
"Papers please?"
I don't even know where to begin. First of all, I live in Florida (in Tallahassee -- I can almost see the capitol building from home). I've always thought of myself as quietly patriotic, not as someone who makes a big display of saluting the Stars And Stripes everytime I see it or rabidly defending the US anytime someone dares utter a negative word about it, just as an American citizen who is proud to have chanced being born here.
..."
... it makes me sick.
... it's disgusting. I don't see how it can be allowed to stand. Those people pay their taxes, they obey the laws (else they couldn't vote in the first place), they are American CITIZENS. Yet the government screws up: sorry, better luck next time.
Yet, increasingly I find myself developing sentiments many would likely label anti-American, maybe even seditious. And you know what the worst part is -- the very worst part? For the first time, it occurs to me that I have good reason not to voice my opinion. Our government, of, for, and by the people, has lately acquired the ability to detain (read as: unilaterally imprison) any of us indefinitely for "suspected terrorist affiliation". So I worry, at least in a small "what-if" way, that by condemning the actions and policies of my country, I could place my personal freedoms in jeopardy -- and if that is the case, then my country has, in any way that matters, ceased to exist.
When I read the article mentioned in this post, my heart sank. My stomach kind of tightened up, and after the first few paragraphs the sorry general state of American affairs solidified for me.
A couple of things from the article that I find most disheartening:
In Tallahassee, Smith, the secretary of state, said he received a call from someone -- he did not say who -- on the Broward County Commission who told him the county did not have enough voting equipment.
He said the county commissioner said the governor should call out the National Guard to deal with any problems.
Since when do Americans participating in the election process need the supervision of armed troops to "deal with" any problems? Americans watch armed troops "dealing with" voters in other countries and shake their heads sadly: complacent, arrogant, secure -- "Those poor bastards. Thank God I was born in America, where such things simply don't happen. Honey, bring me another slice of apple pie
What have we become that problems with a simple gubernatorial primary (not even the main event, just a primary) should lead someone with the power to make such decisions to even CONSIDER such a thing? The thought of Americans -- subdued, casting furtive, uncertain glances at the soldiers in their midst -- slinking quietly behind the curtain to cast their ballots
At Precinct 224 in Carol City, a predominantly black precinct, potential voters complained that once again they were about to be disenfranchised. The trouble: At 7 a.m., none of the 14 machines worked. Some left out of frustration.
If I think I'm disgusted, being a white American, I shudder to think what black Americans must think of this. Were they being targeted for disenfranchisement this morning? Probably not. But that is NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I should be able to say, unequivocally, that they were NOT being targeted, that they COULD NOT BE. I should feel that in my bones. I don't. And for those black voters who left in disgust this morning, that feeling must be amplified beyond my ability to understand. After all, I'm white, and this is the Deep South. But for all those who read this, not that it matters, know this: I am not one of them. This ties into the next part:
In North Florida's Gadsden County, which had the state's highest percentage of rejected ballots in 2000 -- 11.5 percent -- new ballot-reading optical scanners drew early praise from voters.
Gadsden borders Leon county (Tallahasse, the capital, is in Leon). The population of Gadsden county is predominantly black. I don't have the exact figures, or particularly feel like digging them up, but I can say from seeing with my own eyes that the vast majority of Gadsden's residents are black. 11.5% of them had no say in the 2000 Presidential election. Rejected. The highest proportionate number of rejections in the state, in a predominantly black county. Go figure.
Bush won the Presidency of our nation in Florida. Everyone knows that. But, all other things being equal, Bush won the Presidency of our nation in Gadsden County. Here in the South, black voters generally vote Democrat. Of the thousands of residents, mostly black, mostly registered Democrats, 11.5% had no say. Bush won by less than SIX HUNDRED votes. What have we become that even the Presidency of the United States is a fraud on its face?
Did I want Gore? No. But I didn't want Bush, either. I felt that the 2000 elections were pretty much a lose-lose scenario. I had no strong feelings either way, yet I do feel strongly that the process at least be legitimate. Hopefully, Bush's brother, our illustrious governor (who promised us all the 2000 fiasco would never come again) will be taught a very public, very visible lesson in the coming election. If he regains office, the tiny faith I have left in the American people will likely evaporate.
''What do I think about her efforts?'' Sager said. ``I think they're non-existent. What ability? I don't see that she has any ability. And if I can't vote, I can't change things.''
Pay careful, careful attention to that last line. It is the most ringing line in the entire article. This is not "just another" right being mishandled, maybe even trampled upon, this is THE fundamental right -- the only hand we truly have in goverment. All those people who have been turned away
Every person turned away -- EVERY person denied the right to vote today -- should promptly sue the state of Florida for a refund of ALL taxes they've paid this year. Why? Because one of the fundamental tenets of American society and government is the belief that taxation without representation is wrong. These people, who have been turned away, have lost the right to the most basic interaction we have with our goverment: our very own small but vitally important part in creating the government in such a way that it represents us as a people. Without that right for EVERY law-abiding American, we are nothing.
''I was there at 8:20 a.m. and the [poll worker] yelled at me,'' she said. ``He said, `You have to wait. They're still setting up the machines. You don't like it, you can leave.''
That poll worker should be fired. At least. If not for the fact that the worker committed no actual crime, that I know of, I'd say he should be stripped of HIS right to vote. But that isn't the way our system works. Or, at least, not the way it's supposed to. That's why we have the system: so that someone like me can't get angry and arbitrarily strip away the rights of others.
''This is outrageous,'' said Pauline Winick of Miami Beach. ``After being so embarrassed by Florida's voting scandal [in 2000], you would have thought that they'd do better than this.''
Yeah. You'd have thought.
You seem to be forgetting that, for whatever reason, many people using Linux (or even alternative browsers for Windows) have their browsers set to "spoof" as Internet Explorer. For instance, my roommate can't access online banking unless he has Mozilla report itself as IE. Last time I installed Opera, it *defaulted* to spoofing as IE. In Konqueror there's a pulldown menu right on the menubar that lets you spoof as pretty much any browser (even Lynx, wcm, and WGet).
... seems to me, the whole thing is a waste of time.
The point being, your "reliable" data is nothing of the sort. I'm suspicious of pretty much ANY data that tries to quantify things like this -- it just doesn't work. Assemble ten legitimately unbiased researchers, turn them loose on the web to gather this same data, and I bet you end up with 10 hugely varied answers. Assemble 10 *biased* researchers and the "data" can be manipulated to represent the "facts" in whatever light the reasearcher desires.
In other words, the Google data is only reliable if every browser in that sample was truthfully reporting itself to the server. Not to mention the fact that there is such a thing as dual booting, after all.
My roommate is just as likely to boot Windows as Linux (depends on his mood, so he claims). So which is he? Does his computer add to the 90%+ Microsoft tally? Does it get added to the Linux tally? It is certainly not *likely*, but suppose 40% of those "Windows" users were dual booters who just HAPPENED to have booted into Windows that day. Like I said, that's *highly* unlikely, but who's to say? Who has the REAL numbers? No one. So MY number (40%) probably strikes everyone as incredibly unrealistic -- but only by virtue of being so *obviously* wrong. But in the end, that doesn't mean I'm any more wrong than anyone else since the data itself isn't reliable
Ah, but Longhorn is projected for -- what? -- 2005, 2006 or so?
...
.Net not falling into place quite as planned. Many other things, too, like users adapting to the new licensing scheme (or balking and needed to be coaxed); then there's the WPA thing, which must be a true nightmare to implement without pissing off pretty much everyone. Personally, I'd love to see MS protect XP and Office such that it can't be pirated -- period, ever -- but that's a pipe dream for all concerned. And one has to wonder if an influx of angry former MS-pirate refugees is really what the Linux userbase needs anyway ...
... ain't *that* a lovely thought ... =)
Linux development is *fast*, as is often trotted out by supporters as well as opponents (who see it as a sort of barely controlled chaos/anarchy, I suppose).
So even if MS rolled out Longhorn on schedule (which is anyone's guess), Linux has a significant amount of time to improve. Breathing room. Looking back on the last two years, Linux then and now, and looking forward two years -- maybe my expectations are unrealistic, but the prospects are exciting (and, yeah, I know there's a word for people who find IT exciting).
It's a snowball effect. As Linux becomes better, it attracts more users and developers. As it attracts more users and developers, it in turn becomes better. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. The great thing about that kind of growth is that (yeah, I know, not in the real world) it has the potential for exponential expansion once a critical mass (on which I am certinaly not informed enough to speculate about) has been reached. Ah, to dream
And, from my humble perspective, it does seem as if MS is somewhat distracted, what with the antitrust headaches and
MS has always been known for having a lot of irons in the fire and for so rarely being burned. It's a wholly subjective opinion and maybe you're right and it's wrong, but I just get the feeling some of those irons are getting a little harder to handle than MS is used to. But then, it's often said that successfully weathering adversity only leaves you stronger at the other end
Patience. =)
...]
...
... to service us ..."
I think you missed (part of) my point. As Linux supporters, we are often Linux' worst enemy. We want it all and we want it all by end of the work-day yesterday.
My point was, each new generation is an improvement upon the last. Microsoft is currently distracted, what with trying to patch XP into something the DOJ and those pesky 9 remaining states won't stomp all over, which must be done in concert with their secret, ever-vigilant adherence to the Microsoft Prime Directive:
[Deep in the heart of the fortress at Redmond, the fate of the world, except maybe Alabama, hangs in the balance
Gates: Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Ballmer?
Ballmer: I think I am, Bill. But won't Apple sue us if we re-release the Newton?
Gates: Not that, you imbecile!
Ballmer: What then, Bill? What are we going to do tonight?
Gates: The same thing we do every night, Ballmer. Try to take over the world!
Anyway, my sleep-deprivation-induced ranting aside: Patience is the key. Linux is moving forward, maybe not as fast as its proponents would like, but at a respectable clip. And (to add a trite cliche to the trite cult media references) the best things are worth waiting for.
Sure, if you really want to you can frame a hundred -- a thousand -- "When can I do ______ with Linux? When, damn you, WHEN!?" But to a lesser or greater extent, that's true of all projects. Some grow, some wither on the vine, some are ruthlessly slaughtered by Bill's goons, some merely have their kneecaps shattered and relatives threatened. But I think with Linux, Microsoft has finally met its match. There's no one to strong-arm, there's no one to drive out of business. Linux is a Hydra immune even to fire, two heads to replace every one struck from the body, the body itself so broadly distributed as to be nearly invulnerable.
Microsoft would have to take over the Internet itself to strike at the exposed belly of its enemy
Welcome to Palladium.
"Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Your culture will adapt
I've used all three versions of Null (the first two were called Limbo) so far.
..." deals, and, forunately, with the next release, Red Hat is going to put that line of argument to an end. Mandrake's latest beta also has the potential to render beautifully, but IMO the default settings / choices are atrocious.
..." excuses fall by the wayside.
... your time table sounds about right. We can only hope, since whatever Red Hat does inevitably filters out to all the other distros. Some may disagree, some might even cringe in terror and start screaming that Red Hat will be (ugh!) the "Next Microsoft" (uttered in ominous tones by people who have no concept of what Red Hat's business model is really all about). Yet the simple fact remains that when Red Hat improves, the state of Linux userland improves. IMO, anyone NOT rooting for Red Hat is simply rooting AGAINST Linux.
It's improving VERY fast, and I can honestly say that, as far as font rendering is concerned, it's the most beautiful distro I've ever seen. In my opinion, at least on my laptop (which are always problematic with fonts), the latest Null renders better than Windows. Font rendering has always been one of the, "Yeah, but Linux can't
Once I tweaked things a bit and installed a few extra fonts, Mandrake 9.0RC1 was plenty able to keep up. It seems that with each new release from the major players, more and more of the old, "Yeah, but Linux can't
Both Null and Mandrake 9.0RC1 installed flawlessly on this laptop. But then that isn't really surprising, since both current versions installed equally well.
The newest Null includes a long list of new GUI configuration tools, and finally even includes an after-the-install package manager capable of browsing, installing, and uninstalling packages from the CDs. This still doesn't come close to Mandrake's newest URPMI, of course, but it's a step in the right direction and a nod to the casual user, since Red Hat's corporate customers will be managing packages via Red Hat's Up2Date service anyway.
As for Red Hat 8.2 being a mature desktop Linux
Actually, one of the things that really turned me off WindwowsXP was support for my SBLive! card. You see, I went out and bought a $200 SBLive! Platinum 5.1
... you either used the generic Live! drivers shipped with XP (which turned my expensive Platinum 5.1 card into a "basic" Live! -- no remote, no 5.1, no fancy applets for setting everything up). If I attempted to install from the OEM CD, it'd break the system. Then, Creative finally got around to releasing some VERY basic drivers, but LiveWare was no more. So now I had drivers that would update previously installed versions of LiveWare to use WindowsXP, except that previous LiveWare BROKE on XP.
... etc" story. So it might have been superficially prettier than mucking around in a console, but certainly no more fun.
...
It has all the (mostly useless, but ya never know, right?) bells and whisltes. The LiveDrive, the IR remote, lots of pretty ports to plug pretty much anything into pretty much everywhere.
And when XP was released, there were NO official drivers for the Live! 5.1
So, I had to install the original Creative apps, which broke my sound. THEN install the new drivers from Creative, THEN figure out which of the original apps STILL wouldn't work. It wasn't fun. It was the GUI version of your "rmmod
You're probably about to scream, "But that's not Microsoft's fault! It's Creative's fault!"
Exactly.
If your stuff didn't work with Linux (which I find odd -- was it a distro made within the last 2 years?) then whose fault is that really? Is "Linux" to blame because, for instance, Trident refuses to release specs for its cards and the XFree86 team can't write 3D drivers for them? Sometimes it's tempting to blame Linux / Open Source developers for this kind of shortcoming, maybe because they are real people and it feels better to vent / shout at real people as opposed to firing off a nasty, venom-filled letter to some faceless corporation.
Try a recent Linux distro that is designed for ease of use. If you want that, grab Mandrake (or the newest Red Hat Null beta), ELX, Lycoris, any of a number of great distros. I've tested all of them (plus a few others) and so far NONE of them have failed to detect my SB Live!
Closing thought: How many corporate desktops do you know of that run a SB Live! and an off-the-shelf QuickCam? Red Hat is targeting the corporate desktop which is going to be running very vanilla, very commodity hardware. Hardware simply won't play into Red Hat's scheme. It's software, especially proprietary interal corp software, that is going to be the bane of their existence.
Actually, Lycoris doesn't have a "lot" of ANY programmers. They have 5 employees, who have apparently worked themselves senseless to get Lycoris to its present state. I don't particularly care for the distro, but then I'm not the class of user Lycoris targets. But, aside from a few quirks, I think it's a solid product, and it's improving quickly. When you factor in the size of their development team, those quirks and shortcomings pale in comparison to the usability enhancements (which I find personally useless and "in the way") such a small team has managed to churn out. Just thought all their hard work deserved a bit of recognition, even if it is mostly lost on me. =)
Actually, calling it "sci-fi" is generally frowned upon. The Sci-Fi Channel, for instance, is a great example of true "sci-fi". Glitzy (cheesy?), over-the-top, all-for-effect, thoughtless mass-media crap.
...
... ...when I say science fiction, I mean stories that meet the definition given above. Other areas of the field, I will refer to as SF.
...the term "sci-fi", which most science fiction writers loathe, I will reserve for those motion pictures that claim to be science fiction but are actually based on comic strips. Or worse.
... who knows ...
The Foundation series is science fiction. Anything Arthur Clarke ever wrote is science fiction. Certain stories by King (Dreamcatcher) have flirted with becoming science fiction. The Tommyknockers, OTOH, is SF (more on that in a bit) but NOT "sci-fi". Independence Day, Killer Clowns From Outer Space and their ilk are "sci-fi".
No science fiction writer would ever refer to his or her own work (except, perhaps, in scorn or self-derision) as sci-fi.
SF, on the other hand, is NOT science fiction, merely speculative fiction. It encompasses many genres: fantasy, horror, and generally forward-looking stories that may not be true science fiction because
According to Ben Bova:
Science fictions stories are those in which some aspect of future science or high technology is so integral to the story that, if you take away the science or technology, the story collapses.
And
And then the definition of "sci-fi":
So, yes, this story IS science fiction. NOT sci-fi. It may or may not be great science fiction, but it is certainly above the level of sci-fi.
And, lest you come back with a boatload of (flaming) gibberish about Mr. Bova, I'll just mention a few of his credits:
Author of almost 100 books, both ficion and non-fiction.
Former president of Science-fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. President Emeritus of the National Space Society.
Once taught science fiction writing at a backwards little school called Harvard, as well as at the Hayden Planetarium in NYC.
Former editor of both Omni and Analog. Oh, and he also won a half-dozen or so Hugos.
All that being said, this wasn't the greatest science fiction story ever told, but it was certainly thought-provoking and seemed a hell of a lot more insightful than what the average hack would turn out, in hopes of pimping the work out to Hollywood. Maybe that accounts for it being so "boring" to so many of the posters (those who actually read it and those who merely claimed to). Maybe if he'd jumped through all the right "literary" hoops (read as: sensationalized it all to pieces merely for the sake of sensationalizing it all to pieces) it would have gotten a better reception.
Maybe people have simply become disinterested in story-telling in the traditional sense (ie, this piece being a classic cautionary tale). If he'd put in a bit more sex, a few more explosions, and plenty of things that would look great with the help of a few million in digital effects but add basically nothing to the story itself