I don't see anything wrong with that last statement. I find it genuinely offensive that you seem to think it OK for someone to stand by and refuse to part with food unless for money when there are people starving to death.
Just because capitalism is an effective way of creating massive economies of scale, to the great benefit of some of its users, doesn't mean it can't be wrong.
As for software, I'm not sure that ethics can be applied to the premises of free and propriatary software. I'm damned sure, though, that they can be applied to its results. Why the hell should I have to use Windows to watch my DVDs? Why can't I improve the software I bought and paid for?
I only watched the Matrix for the first time today. I'm getting dragged to see it by some damn female some time next week, so I thought it would probably be polite to have some vague clue what it was all about.
It was better than I thought it would be, but too much cheesiness and gratuitous special effects. The first director to make a sci-fi film with no SFX will get my vote.
Very impressive, no doubt you will gain the +5 insightful mod you're trolling for.
In the meantime, WTF is a Lie group? WTF is an algebraic varity? Non-holomorphic sounds very impressive, but WTF is it?
You might be right; I've observed that certain Asian groups do seem to have a handle on maths that many Western brains don't, and I doubt it's entirely due to genetics. But if you actually want to change things, as opposed to sounding clever, people have to understand what you're on about. I don't, and I'm three-quarters of the way through an engineering degree. Thank you.
I don't know about you, but I appreciate honesty in my tech support. That kind of thing just makes me believe they are honest. Hmm, hope no-one from MS is reading this...
While I don't agree with everything he says, I have to say he's far better informed and making far better decisions than I thought he was.
For the first time, someone is pushing a Linux distribution at customers with regard only to what customers want, not what geeks feel like providing.
He has a serious handle on the things that will crack open the door to mass acceptance; pre-installation...simple installation - criticise the ethics of CnR all you like, at the end of the day it is designed to work seamlessly without specialist knowledge, and precious little else manages it.
He also seems to have a good handle on what freedom means in a practical sense; the ability to control your computer - witness the Xbox bounty, leaving in apt-get, and so on.
Lindows won't ever be my cup of tea, but I suspect that in a few versions down the road it will be the ideal Christmas present for Granny.
There were very few people who knew about it with any real understanding.
As far as those in authority were concerned "the boffins did it". As far as they were concerned, there was no interest in examining what they had done and deciding if it should be released. Bear in mind also the Cold War was opening up; many at that time thought there would be a shooting war within a decade, and opening military at that time was a non-starter.
In short, you can't really blame them. It would be fifty years before anyone in power (except maybe Gore;) ) realised what computers would mean to society.I doubt I would think any differently in their shoes.
I think the reason the story about George Galloway has gone unnoticed is that no-one believes a word of it.
The story, for those that missed it, is that Galloway was a big anti-war, anti-sanctions guy. He went out to Iraq several times and appeared more than once in public cosily chatting to Saddam-may-he-rest-in-peace. Then, last week, the Daily Telegraph (very right-wing, whereas George Galloway is kinda not), produced documents apparently showing Galloway had taken piles of money for it.
It's interesting to note that on four consecutive days, the same reporter had four different scoops in two different papers, all down to miraculously unburnt secret documents. Private Eye this week has a fairly withering commentary on the whole thing.
I do something similar; every email I get that flags as spam receives a bounce, telling them it's been blocked, and if they want to contact me, fix whatever's broken in their message (I also include a description of what my filters are set to; I used to just send a pass-phrase they could stick in their subject, but I found that that just meant I ended up with more rubbish. Now I tend not to get crappy forwards all day log:)
The priciples of a structurally sound building are simple and obvious to anyone who's ever worked as a housebuilder.
Don't use concrete
Brick's OK; lumps of rock are better
Well seasoned wood; 'nuff said.
Why not concrete? Simple. It's brittle. When it cracks, you get a crack right the way up you nice new house. Give it another ten years, and the surveyors won't touch it with a barge pole. Been there, got the T-shirt.
Really, this isn't difficult. Don't build crappy houses out of prefab frames, slapped on breeze blocks and expect it to last for centuries.
They didn't build to last in the old days because it was fun, and they got a kick out of thinking about how their grandchildren would appreciate it; they just knew damn fine they would have to build it again when it fell down, so they didn't get it wrong the first time round.
SCO own the rights to the "original" Unix source code. They're suing IBM, ostensibly on the grounds that IBM incorporated ideas in the "original" Unix (which IBM had some rights to) into Linux; they claim that Linux couldn't have done all the technical whizz-bangery that it has without help from the original source code.
The real reason is that SCO is dying, and wants to be bought out by IBM, thereby knocking up the final share price for their investors.
Hate to shoot a good argument full of holes (and a good argument it is), but distrowatch ranks on the basis of interest, not users, downloads, or anything else. So if two hundred thousand rampaging/.ers head over there and check it out, it's quite likely to jump up the charts. It's the same with any new, unknown, probably crappy distro.
What I find interesting is the way Linux at my uni is slowly consuming the entire back-end of the network - email, file space, the print system, network control, all these are running off Linux and the system seems the stabler for it. On the desktop, however, Windows remains king (in fact it's going backwards; the last Linux cluster in my engineering school went late last year).
I don't know what it's done TCO wise, but I do know the helpdesk are a lot more helpful now and seem to have more time than they did a couple of years ago. Roll on the desktop, say I.
Eh? Descartes set up some rather intractable issues, some of which we still haven't satisfactorily resolved. I would agree that Descartes (along with Anselm and every other medaeval philosopher going) lost the plot attempting to prove God's existence, but it's understandable given the era in which they lived.
I would be fascinated to hear how you answer the problem of the sceptic, for example - what's your proof that there is a world external to our minds with which we interface? Cogito is easy; getting from there to an external reality is slightly more difficult, and neither Humer, Kant, nor anyone else has really dealt with it, so maybe a bit of reading is in order before you start laughing at better thinkers.
I'm no more a lawyer than anyone else here *g* but my understanding is that once something is received under the GPL, the copyright holder is limited to doing no ore than enforcing the GPL terms on those who received the GPLed works.
What this means that if Linus was to decide that he no longer wanted his code out there, there would be nothing he could do about it. He could remove his code from his source tree (although that would probably be less catastrophic than you might think; Linus' code doesn't make up all that much of the total code base these days), but anyone with a copy of the kernel sources who had accepted the terms of the GPL previously would be free to carry on modifying and distributing till the cows came home.
This person(ette) appears recently, starts posting a dozen times a day, and begs for fans? What gives? Every time I see him/her, another twenty people have signerd themselves up. What's the craic?
Slashdot Mirror
He told me that they routinely showed it to visiting brass (note the absence of the word top).
I suspect it works if you use a prop plane. Or maybe they just got bored of falling over all the time.
Me too! Oh, sorry, I've taken it too far. I'll crawl back into my hole...
Just because capitalism is an effective way of creating massive economies of scale, to the great benefit of some of its users, doesn't mean it can't be wrong.
As for software, I'm not sure that ethics can be applied to the premises of free and propriatary software. I'm damned sure, though, that they can be applied to its results. Why the hell should I have to use Windows to watch my DVDs? Why can't I improve the software I bought and paid for?
It was better than I thought it would be, but too much cheesiness and gratuitous special effects. The first director to make a sci-fi film with no SFX will get my vote.
In the meantime, WTF is a Lie group? WTF is an algebraic varity? Non-holomorphic sounds very impressive, but WTF is it?
You might be right; I've observed that certain Asian groups do seem to have a handle on maths that many Western brains don't, and I doubt it's entirely due to genetics. But if you actually want to change things, as opposed to sounding clever, people have to understand what you're on about. I don't, and I'm three-quarters of the way through an engineering degree. Thank you.
I don't know about you, but I appreciate honesty in my tech support. That kind of thing just makes me believe they are honest. Hmm, hope no-one from MS is reading this...
You forgot that one, which was very remiss of you. You deprived anyone less sad than me from finding her. Shame on you.
For the first time, someone is pushing a Linux distribution at customers with regard only to what customers want, not what geeks feel like providing.
He has a serious handle on the things that will crack open the door to mass acceptance; pre-installation...simple installation - criticise the ethics of CnR all you like, at the end of the day it is designed to work seamlessly without specialist knowledge, and precious little else manages it.
He also seems to have a good handle on what freedom means in a practical sense; the ability to control your computer - witness the Xbox bounty, leaving in apt-get, and so on.
Lindows won't ever be my cup of tea, but I suspect that in a few versions down the road it will be the ideal Christmas present for Granny.
As far as those in authority were concerned "the boffins did it". As far as they were concerned, there was no interest in examining what they had done and deciding if it should be released. Bear in mind also the Cold War was opening up; many at that time thought there would be a shooting war within a decade, and opening military at that time was a non-starter.
In short, you can't really blame them. It would be fifty years before anyone in power (except maybe Gore ;) ) realised what computers would mean to society.I doubt I would think any differently in their shoes.
The story, for those that missed it, is that Galloway was a big anti-war, anti-sanctions guy. He went out to Iraq several times and appeared more than once in public cosily chatting to Saddam-may-he-rest-in-peace. Then, last week, the Daily Telegraph (very right-wing, whereas George Galloway is kinda not), produced documents apparently showing Galloway had taken piles of money for it.
It's interesting to note that on four consecutive days, the same reporter had four different scoops in two different papers, all down to miraculously unburnt secret documents. Private Eye this week has a fairly withering commentary on the whole thing.
I would remove the state of stupidity. Or perhaps the state of blind faith in national leadership.
I do something similar; every email I get that flags as spam receives a bounce, telling them it's been blocked, and if they want to contact me, fix whatever's broken in their message (I also include a description of what my filters are set to; I used to just send a pass-phrase they could stick in their subject, but I found that that just meant I ended up with more rubbish. Now I tend not to get crappy forwards all day log :)
- Don't use concrete
- Brick's OK; lumps of rock are better
- Well seasoned wood; 'nuff said.
Why not concrete? Simple. It's brittle. When it cracks, you get a crack right the way up you nice new house. Give it another ten years, and the surveyors won't touch it with a barge pole. Been there, got the T-shirt.Really, this isn't difficult. Don't build crappy houses out of prefab frames, slapped on breeze blocks and expect it to last for centuries.
They didn't build to last in the old days because it was fun, and they got a kick out of thinking about how their grandchildren would appreciate it; they just knew damn fine they would have to build it again when it fell down, so they didn't get it wrong the first time round.
The real reason is that SCO is dying, and wants to be bought out by IBM, thereby knocking up the final share price for their investors.
Got it?
Which is sadder, getting the joke or finding it funny?
It's probably quite sad to admit that I learnt a fair bit from the parented link. And the pics aren't bad, either.
Hate to shoot a good argument full of holes (and a good argument it is), but distrowatch ranks on the basis of interest, not users, downloads, or anything else. So if two hundred thousand rampaging /.ers head over there and check it out, it's quite likely to jump up the charts. It's the same with any new, unknown, probably crappy distro.
I don't know what it's done TCO wise, but I do know the helpdesk are a lot more helpful now and seem to have more time than they did a couple of years ago. Roll on the desktop, say I.
Boring.
Gnu are not gnu/funny.
I would be fascinated to hear how you answer the problem of the sceptic, for example - what's your proof that there is a world external to our minds with which we interface? Cogito is easy; getting from there to an external reality is slightly more difficult, and neither Humer, Kant, nor anyone else has really dealt with it, so maybe a bit of reading is in order before you start laughing at better thinkers.
Can it transport 160 metric tonnes of polystyrene foam?
What this means that if Linus was to decide that he no longer wanted his code out there, there would be nothing he could do about it. He could remove his code from his source tree (although that would probably be less catastrophic than you might think; Linus' code doesn't make up all that much of the total code base these days), but anyone with a copy of the kernel sources who had accepted the terms of the GPL previously would be free to carry on modifying and distributing till the cows came home.
Therefore we conclude that god is most likely irrational and imaginary. QED.
PS - I'm an atheist anyway, so this argument is strictly for shits and giggles. He's quite definitely imaginary.
This person(ette) appears recently, starts posting a dozen times a day, and begs for fans? What gives? Every time I see him/her, another twenty people have signerd themselves up. What's the craic?