So we have to increase the masses between any two objects (F = GMm/r^2 - remeber?)
Ummm.... no. Jessica Riley was missing a button on her blouse the day my physics teacher taught me that. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
In other words, if something was different in the past, we should be able to see that effect physcially as we look backword in time at the stars.
Good point. I was going to say that since the speed of light was faster In The Beginning, then the stars that we study would not be the same as they are today... until I realized that was your point all along. FWIW, I was taking the position of You're Full Of Shit with my brother, and you just gave me another talking point.
Now, let me bring up a point. (First, a disclaimer -- based on many discussions with a lot of smart people, that I'm an idiot is a given. Bear with me...) Perhaps we do see the effects of a Universe that's winding down in the stars, but we are interpreting the effects incorrectly? Or, more importantly, the assumptions we make in regards to Uniformitarianism (as I believe the philosophy to be called -- all things continue as they did in the past) color the observations made.
An example: an astronomer observes a star emitting boogie-rays. Based on Horace McGillicutty's studies of boogie-rays, the astronomer knows that this star is in the last stages of the Boogie-Woogie Blues. This is a fair assumption based on available evidence. However, McGillicutty's study is based on the assumption that the Tip == 15%. The next week, Malcolm Strumple releases a paper that posits the Tip == the inverse of the square of how many times the waiter has to return the food to get your order correct. Suddenly, the star isn't suffering from the BW Blues, but from something else that we don't have a name for yet.
(okay, it's trite. Think of it as pseudo-code...)
Now comes the fun part -- because Strumple's paper on the new Tip calculation forces a lot of people who have fervently believed something to rethink their positions, it makes them unhappy. Very unhappy. Not much different from a Ford person calling a Chevy person a short-dicked asshole, only with bigger words. (who says science isn't fun?)
I guess my point is that it's not good to lock down your thinking on something that we have no way of knowing absolutely-for-sure-no-doubt. It may be a great theory, but it's still a theory.
I'd laugh at your ignorance, but you're not the only one who's gone off about carbon dating in this thread.
Well, I'm not really talking about carbon dating, but using it as an example for the whole of the idea. If it makes you feel better, replace "carbon dating" with "speed of light".
And you are allowed to laugh at my ignorance. In my family, I'm one of the ones holding the bottom of the intelligence ladder. I've got an electrical engineer father, a math teacher mother, two mechanical engineering uncles, a cousin with a 4.0 in Aerospace engineering and my brother who is finishing a computational engineering degree. I'm the creative one (euphamism for "well, at least he GOT a degree...").
I don't present it as gospel, but it is a philosophical argument that occurs in the scientific community (at least, the parts that I'm familiar with). It's called Uniformitarianism, or something similar. All things continue as they always have.
I find it sad, though, that you outright dismiss the idea. Everything I've ever read or heard from really smart people mentions that they don't believe that they know everything, or indeed a lot about anything. The quest for knowledge stops as soon as you believe that you know all there is to know.
I don't claim to know the answer. I don't even claim there is an answer. I just claim that I find it an interesting thing to talk and think about. It gives a different perspective on things, which may lead to a greater understanding of the problem, just as it may lead to a two hour wanking session. I make no guarantee or warranty.
Anyway, I appreciate the links. They've got good info, and I learned something new, which is cool. However, I will always keep in mind all of the things that science KNEW was true, until somebody discovered something else that discounted the earlier theory, which led to new things that science now KNEW was true... ad infinitum. They are working theories -- and good ones, I might add -- but only theories.
Had a conversation with my brother about something similar to this. The topic basically was, "The universe isn't as old as scientists believe". The posit: the universe (and all physical actions) are slowing down over time.
To explain: we know the age of X because of carbon dating. Carbon dating assumes that radioactive decay is a constant. What if, in the past, things happened much faster? Light travelled faster, radioactive isotopes decayed faster, etc. And as time went on, the physical properties assumed to be constant slowed down.
I dunno -- I know my VISA bill grows faster in the present than in the past, but VISA physics defies all rational thought. But, it's an interesting idea.
"Go to your point of origin and execute an infinite loop for 10 billion ticks! No more hydraulic fluid! Wipe that smirk off your face, or I'll impact it off for you!"
Apple gets lots of press time with surprise announcements of new, fancy computers. They don't want that impact dulled by leaked documents/pictures/specs.
I doubt that Apple will really hammer this poor schmoe -- what can they get out of him? Millions of dollars? I don't think so. It's more likely an internal corporate move to put the scare in employees about leaking stuff to rumor sites.
I think it's a loser proposition for Apple, though. If Apple would just work with the rumor sites (or better yet, the "real news" sites), and take their public image more seriously, they could acheive the same goals with less embarrasment.
Or, if they want to influence and/or destroy their credibility, they could buy advertising from them. We all know that advertisers get preferential treatment from Slashdot:) <GD&R>
Good thing, because I certainly am not a GNU expert. I believe I've only read the GPL once.
In general, I defer to people with more experience, knowledge, or sense -- it's a sign of maturity to admit when you don't know something. It's a sign of immaturity to call people names. It's a sign of cowardly immaturity to call people names while hiding behind anonymity.
No I did not purchase my nick from eBay. Did you? Oh, of course -- you're an Anonymous Coward. You don't have the courage of your convictions to stand behind what you say.
From my haphazard memory of past GPL discussions, that's how I believe it to be read. You can do anything you want, but as soon as you distribute it, for profit or otherwise, you have to release the source.
Distributing to Army/Navy, etc isn't "distribution", tho, as they all fall under the DOD's jurisdiction... right? It's similar to a CEO using and modifying Linux, and then passing it along to the departments underneath. That's not "distribution".
Is anybody else tired of hearing this? "Linux isn't right for us, because of all the hackers out there that will crack our machines". I was with them through POSIX, Motif (God knows why), NFS and CDE, but they lost me at posting the source online. As if/usr/src was openly accessible over the network by default.
Isn't part of the Open Source Creed the Right to Fork?
Mebbe someone with better GPL knowledge can say whether or not the DOD would have to release the source if they made modifications to the kernel to make themselves happy.
Or, I suppose, they could go with FreeBSD, and use the BSD license.
...especially the part where Minix is just coasting along, and then... "Look! that little line poking out. Whazzit say? Linux 0.0.1?"
Kinda makes you proud.
It interesting to see how Linux progresses as compared to, say, Irix. Linux progresses, and each branch (from kernel 2.0 to 2.1) is the "new" Linux, with the old branch dying off, while Irix runs in a straight, continuous line.
Looks kinda Darwinian, in fact. If I may make a poor analogy, it's like the difference between balancing a pole on it's end, and balancing a tripod.
I'm still scared of the person that took the time to put that together, though...
I'd look at this as a means for Microsoft to bypass the hardware market all together. If they can manufacture and market a WebTV box that uses the.NET infrastructure and the C# language as a development environment, they can bypass Intel, Dell, etc. altogether. And, keep those profit margins up.
You may be able to file this in the "set-top box" file, and safely forget it. This is either a really brilliant move, or a feint to keep the wolves at bay.
DKE has a habit of saying outlandish things -- I like that part of him.
He does make a good point. A box with a kernel, ls, mv, cp, vi, and gcc may be a usable computer, but I sure wouldn't use it. I think it's safe to say that 99% of people wouldn't use it either.
To define an OS these days is pretty tricky. At what point does it stop being an OS and becomes an "environment" or a "platform"?
I think it stops being an OS and becomes a platform as soon as you can use it to view porn.
What's up with consoles these days? I had more fun playing 2600 games than most of the things out there today. The last game I bought with re-playability was Perfect Dark, which is basically a revamped Goldeneye. Everything else has been spotty at best.
What happened to those 80's game designers, anyway?
I might buy a PSX2, but that might be my last game console. I'm just not seeing a reason to continue to sink money into pointless hardware. The Internet is more interesting.
Not redundant -- read all of the post before you start requesting the moderators to bring down the hammer.
What I'm asking about is how technology affects legal matters -- akin to how complicated medical terminology or complicated DNA testing results affect juries' decisions. Whether the judge knows what a "bit" is or not is point, nor the real question. It can be "bit", "debugging", "compiler", "interpreted language", or "malloc()/free()". Doesn't matter which. And, yes, I did read the ruling. I'm not asking about whether they brought up bit-for-bit copying in the case or not. I'm asking about educating (or not educating, as the case may be) the judge.
Moderators, please moderate down the post I reply to as "Inattentive, Quick to Judge, Seems To Think He Knows What's Best For Slashdot Without Giving Any Substantive Reason Why We Should Listen To Him".
I knew that it was available for Solaris, but I'm not even gonna touch trying to add cruft to my box to run Solaris binaries... it's slow enough as is.
I like Netscape 4.7 -- it's fairly fast (faster than Mozilla and every other browser I've tried), and the mail client, while a bit ticky, is the best of a bad lot. But, Netscape 4 is nearly dead from age, and doesn't support enough new stuff (and some stuff (like CSS) is broken enough I have to work around it when I making a site).
IE 5 for the Mac (while a bit slow), is also very compliant to most of the latest stuff, and has some quite nifty features that I'm already taking advantage of (like the Auction mananger).
I hate to say it, but IE is moving along much faster than anything else I've seen, at least on Mac/Windows. The Solaris port may be three versions out of date, for all I know.
If you came up to me and said "Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is and has been available for years", I'd know what you meant, as would most of Slashdot. However, does a judge know what a "bit" is?
Is it a plus or a minus for your cases to be technical? Can you dazzle 'em with bull, or do you have to have a LOT of "experts" up to explain what C or C++ is?
I know that a lot of medical cases are won or lost on the complexity of the issue at hand, but these are generally jury trials. This judgement comes from a judge. Is it a plus or minus to have a technically savvy judge?
Good luck in the next stage -- I wish you all the best, and thank you for your work!
Solaris isn't meant to run on x86. That's mostly a PR Port.
Never heard it put that way.. a PR port...
It (x86 Solaris) works okay -- I'm just not much of a Solaris guru. The main killer was I couldn't get Netatalk (Appletalk services) to compile under x86 Solaris 8, and I'm not enough of a guru to figure out what went wrong. So *pfffbbbllt* -- away Solaris went.
Imagine a Beowulf clus... never mind
on
Techno Jacket
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· Score: 2
I dunno -- one of the best things about being a nerd is the knowledge that if I go out of town and leave my phone, pager, Palm, laptop, and no phone number where I'm staying, the situation at work can degenerate into tight knots of people blaming each other as to why the DB server is down, they can't get their email, and nobody is getting any Quake time in.
I sure don't want people being able to beep my skivvies to let me know that they got a Word document with a macro virus.
I think we can file this under "Lamer". Just like those hilarious white-bread suburban boys who dress in some vaguely percieved "gangsta" style, thinking it gives them an "image". Think of the guy in the next department who has a Dual PIII at home running "Linux 6.0", but mostly uses it to surf the Web. There's the target market...
(But, I have to admit, I'd REALLY like to see some of those Victoria's Secret models doing the runway with these things on...)
I *LOVE* FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The ports tree is the best damn thing I've ever used. I use Linux for the Postgres DB, though, because I found it to be slightly faster (I think it's a SMP thing -- Linux seems to be just a bit faster).
But it's telling that I use a FBSD box to do all my work on it...
But, Solaris... I DID have x86 Solaris on the box when I was testing it, and I did NOT like it. Was it fast and stable? Sure. But, I wasn't weaned on Solaris -- my first "real" Unix was Slackware. I did some poking around on SunOS boxes in college, but mostly for playing MUDs. I could telnet and IRC, but that was about it. I'm more used to how Linux/BSD does things than Solaris. They seem to put things in funny places to me.
But make no mistake -- if Linux fails me, and I can't make FreeBSD do what I need it to, I'd slap Solaris on that bitch and pay my friend, the Solaris Guru to admin it.
Macromedia has Freehand to counter Illustrator. It's less feature rich but the splines actually work well
The thing about Freehand is that it doesn't really work in postscript -- it uses its own intermediary format, and translates to Postscript. (This is how you can get transparency and such in Freehand). Also, because of this, Freehand seems to be generally "snappier" feeling than illustrator.
The down side is that whatever I make in Illustrator, I know will rip correctly. Always has, always will. But, my Freehand files... well, they run about 90-95%. Not bad, but not "production" quality -- at least to me.
The damnable thing is, there are parts of both apps I like, and so tend to do things in both. Damn those two companies...:)
I'm pretty sure that Adobe is not so much worried about Macromedia (I think the only apps which overlap are GoLive, Illustrator, ImageReady (Adobe) and Dreamweaver, Freehand, and Fireworks(Macromedia)). Adobe's biggies are Photoshop and Illustrator. Macromedia isn't really horning in on that turf.
This is based on nothing, but I think that possibly, Adobe might be making threatening gestures at Macromedia in a potential buy-out. Adobe's got a market cap of $13B, while Macromedia's at $4B. Dunno if ADBE could take the debt required to buy out, but it wouldn't be the first time a big company started hostilities with a lawsuit.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm.... no. Jessica Riley was missing a button on her blouse the day my physics teacher taught me that. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Good point. I was going to say that since the speed of light was faster In The Beginning, then the stars that we study would not be the same as they are today... until I realized that was your point all along. FWIW, I was taking the position of You're Full Of Shit with my brother, and you just gave me another talking point.
Now, let me bring up a point. (First, a disclaimer -- based on many discussions with a lot of smart people, that I'm an idiot is a given. Bear with me...) Perhaps we do see the effects of a Universe that's winding down in the stars, but we are interpreting the effects incorrectly? Or, more importantly, the assumptions we make in regards to Uniformitarianism (as I believe the philosophy to be called -- all things continue as they did in the past) color the observations made.
An example: an astronomer observes a star emitting boogie-rays. Based on Horace McGillicutty's studies of boogie-rays, the astronomer knows that this star is in the last stages of the Boogie-Woogie Blues. This is a fair assumption based on available evidence. However, McGillicutty's study is based on the assumption that the Tip == 15%. The next week, Malcolm Strumple releases a paper that posits the Tip == the inverse of the square of how many times the waiter has to return the food to get your order correct. Suddenly, the star isn't suffering from the BW Blues, but from something else that we don't have a name for yet.
(okay, it's trite. Think of it as pseudo-code...)
Now comes the fun part -- because Strumple's paper on the new Tip calculation forces a lot of people who have fervently believed something to rethink their positions, it makes them unhappy. Very unhappy. Not much different from a Ford person calling a Chevy person a short-dicked asshole, only with bigger words. (who says science isn't fun?)
I guess my point is that it's not good to lock down your thinking on something that we have no way of knowing absolutely-for-sure-no-doubt. It may be a great theory, but it's still a theory.
Well, I'm not really talking about carbon dating, but using it as an example for the whole of the idea. If it makes you feel better, replace "carbon dating" with "speed of light".
And you are allowed to laugh at my ignorance. In my family, I'm one of the ones holding the bottom of the intelligence ladder. I've got an electrical engineer father, a math teacher mother, two mechanical engineering uncles, a cousin with a 4.0 in Aerospace engineering and my brother who is finishing a computational engineering degree. I'm the creative one (euphamism for "well, at least he GOT a degree...").
I don't present it as gospel, but it is a philosophical argument that occurs in the scientific community (at least, the parts that I'm familiar with). It's called Uniformitarianism, or something similar. All things continue as they always have.
I find it sad, though, that you outright dismiss the idea. Everything I've ever read or heard from really smart people mentions that they don't believe that they know everything, or indeed a lot about anything. The quest for knowledge stops as soon as you believe that you know all there is to know.
I don't claim to know the answer. I don't even claim there is an answer. I just claim that I find it an interesting thing to talk and think about. It gives a different perspective on things, which may lead to a greater understanding of the problem, just as it may lead to a two hour wanking session. I make no guarantee or warranty.
Anyway, I appreciate the links. They've got good info, and I learned something new, which is cool. However, I will always keep in mind all of the things that science KNEW was true, until somebody discovered something else that discounted the earlier theory, which led to new things that science now KNEW was true... ad infinitum. They are working theories -- and good ones, I might add -- but only theories.
Had a conversation with my brother about something similar to this. The topic basically was, "The universe isn't as old as scientists believe". The posit: the universe (and all physical actions) are slowing down over time.
To explain: we know the age of X because of carbon dating. Carbon dating assumes that radioactive decay is a constant. What if, in the past, things happened much faster? Light travelled faster, radioactive isotopes decayed faster, etc. And as time went on, the physical properties assumed to be constant slowed down.
I dunno -- I know my VISA bill grows faster in the present than in the past, but VISA physics defies all rational thought. But, it's an interesting idea.
It multi-tasks. It initiates an infinite loop and runs the loop for 10 billion ticks.
"Go to your point of origin and execute an infinite loop for 10 billion ticks! No more hydraulic fluid! Wipe that smirk off your face, or I'll impact it off for you!"
Apple gets lots of press time with surprise announcements of new, fancy computers. They don't want that impact dulled by leaked documents/pictures/specs.
I doubt that Apple will really hammer this poor schmoe -- what can they get out of him? Millions of dollars? I don't think so. It's more likely an internal corporate move to put the scare in employees about leaking stuff to rumor sites.
I think it's a loser proposition for Apple, though. If Apple would just work with the rumor sites (or better yet, the "real news" sites), and take their public image more seriously, they could acheive the same goals with less embarrasment.
Or, if they want to influence and/or destroy their credibility, they could buy advertising from them. We all know that advertisers get preferential treatment from Slashdot :) <GD&R>
Good thing, because I certainly am not a GNU expert. I believe I've only read the GPL once.
In general, I defer to people with more experience, knowledge, or sense -- it's a sign of maturity to admit when you don't know something. It's a sign of immaturity to call people names. It's a sign of cowardly immaturity to call people names while hiding behind anonymity.
No I did not purchase my nick from eBay. Did you? Oh, of course -- you're an Anonymous Coward. You don't have the courage of your convictions to stand behind what you say.
From my haphazard memory of past GPL discussions, that's how I believe it to be read. You can do anything you want, but as soon as you distribute it, for profit or otherwise, you have to release the source.
Distributing to Army/Navy, etc isn't "distribution", tho, as they all fall under the DOD's jurisdiction... right? It's similar to a CEO using and modifying Linux, and then passing it along to the departments underneath. That's not "distribution".
Is anybody else tired of hearing this? "Linux isn't right for us, because of all the hackers out there that will crack our machines". I was with them through POSIX, Motif (God knows why), NFS and CDE, but they lost me at posting the source online. As if /usr/src was openly accessible over the network by default.
Isn't part of the Open Source Creed the Right to Fork?
Mebbe someone with better GPL knowledge can say whether or not the DOD would have to release the source if they made modifications to the kernel to make themselves happy.
Or, I suppose, they could go with FreeBSD, and use the BSD license.
...especially the part where Minix is just coasting along, and then... "Look! that little line poking out. Whazzit say? Linux 0.0.1?"
Kinda makes you proud.
It interesting to see how Linux progresses as compared to, say, Irix. Linux progresses, and each branch (from kernel 2.0 to 2.1) is the "new" Linux, with the old branch dying off, while Irix runs in a straight, continuous line.
Looks kinda Darwinian, in fact. If I may make a poor analogy, it's like the difference between balancing a pole on it's end, and balancing a tripod.
I'm still scared of the person that took the time to put that together, though...
I'd look at this as a means for Microsoft to bypass the hardware market all together. If they can manufacture and market a WebTV box that uses the .NET infrastructure and the C# language as a development environment, they can bypass Intel, Dell, etc. altogether. And, keep those profit margins up.
You may be able to file this in the "set-top box" file, and safely forget it. This is either a really brilliant move, or a feint to keep the wolves at bay.
DKE has a habit of saying outlandish things -- I like that part of him.
He does make a good point. A box with a kernel, ls, mv, cp, vi, and gcc may be a usable computer, but I sure wouldn't use it. I think it's safe to say that 99% of people wouldn't use it either.
To define an OS these days is pretty tricky. At what point does it stop being an OS and becomes an "environment" or a "platform"?
I think it stops being an OS and becomes a platform as soon as you can use it to view porn.
What's up with consoles these days? I had more fun playing 2600 games than most of the things out there today. The last game I bought with re-playability was Perfect Dark, which is basically a revamped Goldeneye. Everything else has been spotty at best.
What happened to those 80's game designers, anyway?
I might buy a PSX2, but that might be my last game console. I'm just not seeing a reason to continue to sink money into pointless hardware. The Internet is more interesting.
Not redundant -- read all of the post before you start requesting the moderators to bring down the hammer.
What I'm asking about is how technology affects legal matters -- akin to how complicated medical terminology or complicated DNA testing results affect juries' decisions. Whether the judge knows what a "bit" is or not is point, nor the real question. It can be "bit", "debugging", "compiler", "interpreted language", or "malloc()/free()". Doesn't matter which. And, yes, I did read the ruling. I'm not asking about whether they brought up bit-for-bit copying in the case or not. I'm asking about educating (or not educating, as the case may be) the judge.
Moderators, please moderate down the post I reply to as "Inattentive, Quick to Judge, Seems To Think He Knows What's Best For Slashdot Without Giving Any Substantive Reason Why We Should Listen To Him".
I knew that it was available for Solaris, but I'm not even gonna touch trying to add cruft to my box to run Solaris binaries... it's slow enough as is.
I like Netscape 4.7 -- it's fairly fast (faster than Mozilla and every other browser I've tried), and the mail client, while a bit ticky, is the best of a bad lot. But, Netscape 4 is nearly dead from age, and doesn't support enough new stuff (and some stuff (like CSS) is broken enough I have to work around it when I making a site).
IE 5 for the Mac (while a bit slow), is also very compliant to most of the latest stuff, and has some quite nifty features that I'm already taking advantage of (like the Auction mananger).
I hate to say it, but IE is moving along much faster than anything else I've seen, at least on Mac/Windows. The Solaris port may be three versions out of date, for all I know.
Not really -- I wouldn't mind IE for Linux. I've become quite the IE convert here recently. I wouldn't mind using it on Linux as well.
Seeing as how there is not much else out there that's even reasonalby finished, IE is almost the only game in town.
But then... I'm not looking forward to VB-script viruses...
After all, Anakin will eventually have to, uhm... do the Queen, so...
*SMACK* Okay, I deserved that...
If you came up to me and said "Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is and has been available for years", I'd know what you meant, as would most of Slashdot. However, does a judge know what a "bit" is?
Is it a plus or a minus for your cases to be technical? Can you dazzle 'em with bull, or do you have to have a LOT of "experts" up to explain what C or C++ is?
I know that a lot of medical cases are won or lost on the complexity of the issue at hand, but these are generally jury trials. This judgement comes from a judge. Is it a plus or minus to have a technically savvy judge?
Good luck in the next stage -- I wish you all the best, and thank you for your work!
Never heard it put that way .. a PR port ...
It (x86 Solaris) works okay -- I'm just not much of a Solaris guru. The main killer was I couldn't get Netatalk (Appletalk services) to compile under x86 Solaris 8, and I'm not enough of a guru to figure out what went wrong. So *pfffbbbllt* -- away Solaris went.
I dunno -- one of the best things about being a nerd is the knowledge that if I go out of town and leave my phone, pager, Palm, laptop, and no phone number where I'm staying, the situation at work can degenerate into tight knots of people blaming each other as to why the DB server is down, they can't get their email, and nobody is getting any Quake time in.
I sure don't want people being able to beep my skivvies to let me know that they got a Word document with a macro virus.
I think we can file this under "Lamer". Just like those hilarious white-bread suburban boys who dress in some vaguely percieved "gangsta" style, thinking it gives them an "image". Think of the guy in the next department who has a Dual PIII at home running "Linux 6.0", but mostly uses it to surf the Web. There's the target market...
(But, I have to admit, I'd REALLY like to see some of those Victoria's Secret models doing the runway with these things on...)
I *LOVE* FreeBSD and OpenBSD. The ports tree is the best damn thing I've ever used. I use Linux for the Postgres DB, though, because I found it to be slightly faster (I think it's a SMP thing -- Linux seems to be just a bit faster).
But it's telling that I use a FBSD box to do all my work on it...
But, Solaris... I DID have x86 Solaris on the box when I was testing it, and I did NOT like it. Was it fast and stable? Sure. But, I wasn't weaned on Solaris -- my first "real" Unix was Slackware. I did some poking around on SunOS boxes in college, but mostly for playing MUDs. I could telnet and IRC, but that was about it. I'm more used to how Linux/BSD does things than Solaris. They seem to put things in funny places to me.
But make no mistake -- if Linux fails me, and I can't make FreeBSD do what I need it to, I'd slap Solaris on that bitch and pay my friend, the Solaris Guru to admin it.
I dunno -- I like Postgres better cause I need transactions. MySQL wouldn't work for me as well.
OTOH, I like it a lot when nerds take punches at each other. Kinda like mud wrestling, but without the swinging breasts.
Maybe a Postgres/MySQL Nerf fight?
The thing about Freehand is that it doesn't really work in postscript -- it uses its own intermediary format, and translates to Postscript. (This is how you can get transparency and such in Freehand). Also, because of this, Freehand seems to be generally "snappier" feeling than illustrator.
The down side is that whatever I make in Illustrator, I know will rip correctly. Always has, always will. But, my Freehand files... well, they run about 90-95%. Not bad, but not "production" quality -- at least to me.
The damnable thing is, there are parts of both apps I like, and so tend to do things in both. Damn those two companies... :)
I'm pretty sure that Adobe is not so much worried about Macromedia (I think the only apps which overlap are GoLive, Illustrator, ImageReady (Adobe) and Dreamweaver, Freehand, and Fireworks(Macromedia)). Adobe's biggies are Photoshop and Illustrator. Macromedia isn't really horning in on that turf.
This is based on nothing, but I think that possibly, Adobe might be making threatening gestures at Macromedia in a potential buy-out. Adobe's got a market cap of $13B, while Macromedia's at $4B. Dunno if ADBE could take the debt required to buy out, but it wouldn't be the first time a big company started hostilities with a lawsuit.
Just FYI... makes me rethink that dual-Xeon III server I was looking at...