Actually, the truth is, and this is going to sound strange for a six foot, 275 pound ex-marine, I like interior decorating, shopping for art and furniture, cooking, reading, and watching anime DVDs. I'm currently setting up my next apartment, and it's going to be a beautiful, serene bastion of order and grace. Everything in it is going to be coordinated; bright, white paint, chrome, white, and "blonde" wood furniture, lots of chrome and lucite... Basically a modern, minimalist environment where chaos is totally banished. I'm going to get home from work, put on a Vanilla candle, put something quiet on the CD-Player, AND FIRE UP UNREAL TOURNAMENT!!! BOO, YA!
(Ahem. Heheh. Sorry, didn't mean to ruin the mood...)
...Not to mention that they're currently blowing up convoys with unmanned drones, based on rumors about who might be in them. This weekend, an unmanned, remote-controlled drone blew the hell out of a convoy with Hellfire missles. They're going to go scrape up the bodies and check them for Saddam's DNA this week. Funny; I thought assassination was against international law. But apparently, they felt Saddam might be in the convoy, so they blew it up. No attempt at capture; no attempt at forcing a surrender. They just blew it up from the air, with an unmanned drone no less. Man...
Imagine what it must be like over there! If you were a civilian and you wanted to get out of dodge, you'd probably get your ass shot off just for trying. Not only has the country been occupied, but there's *no escape* from it. Anyone trying to leave gets vaporized. Talk about harsh!
I respect your sentiment and desire to follow a higher road, but "Dubya" was GWB's idea; it was the nickname he used during his campaign in an effort to seem friendly and approachable. It's not exactly an insult; more of a nickname the man and his advisors chose.
I don't know where the "shrub" thing came from; this is the first I've heard of it. How'd he get a nickname like shrub???
I'm not a supporter -- I don't like Bush one iota, and I'm going to vote Democrat in the next election just to help rid the nation of him (usually I vote Green Party, but in this case I'll make an exception). But, seriously -- "Dubya" was HIS idea.
Lawyers... God, what wussies we have become. Does anyone else miss the halcyon days of our nation's youth, where a couple of longshoremen could be had for a reasonable fee?
(longshoreman #1): "Hey, Stu! Look! It's our new friend, the WRITER!"
(longshoreman #2): "I believe it is, Joe! Hey, WRITER! Ya got any of them long-headed books on ya? C'mere, you..."
(Writer yelps and takes off.)
(Longshoreman #1): "Hey, Stu! Gimme that brick..." (throws brick).
(Writer yelps, falls down, gets grabbed by the longshoremen and dragged into an alley).
But, you forgot the part about "Luckily, bull999999 had a shotgun, a shovel, and a big back yard handy. After the newspaper editor misplaced three reporters in a row, he decided to have his people cover a less dangerous story, like an interview of the head of a doomsday cult about to be raided by the ATF..."
Ok, no hard feelings, then, but the post he was responding to suggested that most of the people on Slashdot probably had at least used Shareware without licensing it. Basically, the guy had said, "show me all the shareware you're using that you've actually paid for" and my post's parent post had said that no, he actually DID pay for his software. To which I replied, with my comments about paying for MY software.
See what I mean? It's not an "I don't steal so I don't have to worry" comment; it's an "it's not fair to say we steal, because we don't, and accusations are unfair" comment.
Having said that, I really don't approve of Hatch's point of view. I weighed into a previous Slashdot article about the subject with a point-by-point rebuttal of the possibility of destroying a computer remotely. Unfortunately, I don't think any moderators saw it...:(
I think it's hilarious that Orrin Hatch turned out to be using pirated software on his website, and I think he deserves to be thoroughly publicly mocked without mercy.
I think it's totally idiotic that Hatch is advocating the remote destruction of other people's computers, just because someone is suspicious they might have downloaded software or music.
BUT, and I reiterate this point: I think the poster who said that most of the people on Slashdot are probably just as bad as Hatch because we probably download software ourselves is dead wrong. Just because HE has no professional courtesy, and HE downloads other people's copyrighted code, doesn't mean that WE do. And, I think that most of us who are actually techies do NOT. I certainly do not. And, your silly point about SCO barely deserves a reply; go read the SCO thread if you want to fully understand the issues, like for example the probability that the code in question actually came from BSD. That hash isn't even close to being settled, kid.
Don't YOU get it? Regardless of whether it's right or wrong to remotely screw up someone's computer, it is ALSO wrong to rip off someone's work just because you're too cheap to pay for it. And, that counts DOUBLE for shareware, because it's generally pretty cheap to begin with. MY point was that most of us on Slashdot understand this, and consider it a no-brainer.
Don't get wise with me, pretending that I somehow don't understand your point because I disagree with something that was said. I understand perfectly well. And, it's spectacularly rude of you to pretend otherwise.
Read the parent posts, then re-read mine, then realize your comment makes no sense. Rinse, repeat.
Already there. I voted Green across the board. I like Nader; he's actually done things to help people, which is something I can't say about many other politicians. If it wasn't for his book "Unsafe at any speed", cars still wouldn't have seatbelts or safety glass.
Hear, hear! I'm a programmer (there are a lot of us, too, on Slashdot) and this issue hits close to home -- I don't pirate anything either. I haven't bought much shareware, although I did purchase licenses for winzip and WSFTP, and a good image editing program written by someone at Nasa, although I can't remember the name at the moment, all for about thirty or forty dollars each. It was worth it! They're great pieces of software.
At work I use mostly Microsoft technologies, and I have to keep up with what's going on, so I bought copies of Windows 2000, VB6 Professional with the data environment, Borland's JBuilderII and JBuilder III, VB.Net, and Microsoft Works (for resumes, ha ha). We're talking hundreds of dollars, here, and I'm a public employee, so it hurt. But I paid it. I have it all installed on a coding/testing machine I keep handy. I also have several old military-spec laptops I got for a hundred to a hundred and fifty bucks each, and those all run Red Hat Linux or FreeBSD. I paid for THOSE, too, even though technically I could have just downloaded them (of course, having paid for a CD set, I do download ISOs to upgrade FreeBSD, but that's perfectly acceptable and within the philosophy of their website).
I think you're absolutely right, and that most of the techies here on Slashdot have enough professional courtesy to avoid ripping off the work of their fellow professionals. People who accuse Slashdotters of stealing software don't understand the technical mindset at all, or the respect we frequently have for one another. Of course, you know what they say: A thief thinks everyone steals...
Since you're being nice, I'll admit that I was just fucking with you. Actually, I kind of like Canada, and think your peaceful approach is worth emulating. Good social services model, too.
In all fairness, you ought to realize that we Americans aren't the idiots our television shows portray us to be. But our government doesn't listen to us, and when we vote, we're given a choice of several unpleasant alternatives, so we generally just try to pick the person who'll do the least amount of damage. Unfortunately, in this case, the election was corrupted and the man who won isn't in office. Which brings us to the world we're currently living in.
I respect your point of view, here, but I think you're underestimating a couple of factors. First, I don't think Americans as a whole are as naiive as you're assuming they are. What I think is going on is, they know fully well that all sources of news are tainted, either by the government's meddling (television news) or by special interest meddling (other alternative news). So, they blow off ALL of the news, and figure they'll just let whatever is happening happen, and figure out what to do later, when things settle down and more information is available. I'm not saying I follow this; I have access to the internet, and I'm pretty good at digging for info, but I'm not the norm.
Second, as I mentioned to someone else, everyone has a limited amount of attention they can expend on any one subject. Most of us are struggling to prevent our careers from getting sucked down the toilet by corporate greed and a failing economy, so we have other things on our minds at the moment. Our time is divided between career survival, enhancing our abilities in some way, handling local news that affects us directly, and the demands of our personal lives (family, etc). There is only a limited amount of time available for world news, and as I'm sure you know, world news is pretty complicated. It's hard to follow it all even if you can spend all day at it; when you've got an hour at best, towards evening, you've got to prioritize.
A side thing is, when most people have to prioritize the information they're concentrating on, and they get one story from a "reliable" source, and you come along with a completely different story but they don't know you or have any reason to trust what you say, you can talk until you're blue in the face and you won't get anywhere. They'll assume it's your opinion and they'll politely (or not so politely) disagree. Many will (as per our tradition) say something about religion and politics being bad topics for conversation and exit the area, too.
I guess what I'm saying is, don't let it get you down. It isn't apathy in most cases. It's just the basic structure of modern life, and the massive amount of information we have to deal with.
Finally, someone from outside the U.S. who doesn't insist on insulting us, and who seems to be well-informed and rational. It's very nice to see.
I'm an American, and I'm interested in international affairs. As far as I know Australia has a prime minister, not a president, right? Also, I know from Slashdot and some other venues that some of the issues affecting you are that you're having problems building a wideband infrastructure because your telephone system is too entrenched, you have similar challenges in helping Aboriginal communities to those we have helping American Indian communities, you're concerned with conservation issues, and the preservation of the wilderness areas in your interior, you used to offer bonuses to people with technical skills willing to emigrate but since your needs have lessened you've discontinued that, and people in your government are even less worried about civil liberties than our leaders are. I'm not too well-informed about how Australia interacts with other countries around it, although I did read that several countries near Australia were having trouble with their internal dissident groups as a result of the war with Iraq, which at the time was annoying everyone.
Please, understand that Americans DO care about the rest of the world. And, we DO pay attention. But, you have to cut us some slack. Everyone might be interested in/ freaked out about the U.S. and it's easy to keep track of one country, especially when it's always in the news. But, think about it from the other direction. How can we keep track of EVERYONE? Here's a test: How much do you know about, say, Luxemborg? Do you follow Luxemborg's politics? Do you know what their issues are? How about some other random country, that isn't in the news daily. No info? See my point? You can't expect Americans to know all the news about all the countries in the world any more than we can expect the same of you.
Oh, please. Spare me. Like you fucking Canucks don't strut around with huge chips on your shoulders, telling the world that because you're great big pussies who are afraid to even raise your voices, you're somehow morally superior to the rest of us. Let's get something clear, ok? In order to make a moral choice NOT to do something, you have to have the power to DO it in the first place. In other words, if, say, I'm a 98 pound milquetoast with a glass jaw, I can't say I'm taking the high ground when I "choose" not to beat the crap out of a construction worker who's whistling at my girlfriend. Similarly, since Canadian Military Might isn't very mighty, it's not like you're CHOOSING to leave the world alone. The truth is, you're irrelevant, everyone knows it, even YOU know it, and you're okay with that. NOT the same.
As for my second paragraph, I WAS TROLLING YOU, you fucking noob. How long have you been reading Slashdot? Whatta maroon...
Oh, listen to Mr. Smarty-pants Canadian over here... "Arrogant Ignorant and Disinformed" (sic) are we??? Fuck you, you hoser. Go back to trapping beaver, or whatever it is you canucks do when you're not pissing and moaning.
Happy thought: If there IS a WW III, you're gonna get annexed as a state for your natural resources... We'll get the last laugh THEN. Kinda hard to act all superior when suddenly, YOU have "Republicrats" crawling up YOUR butts, TOO.
He's also a man who knows very, very little about computers. Let's consider how we connect to the internet for a moment, and whether it is possible to remotely destroy a computer.
There are currently five major ways for a regular home user to connect to the internet (we're leaving out work-related T1's, because any good corporate/government IT chief will have already locked that down bigtime, with electronic filters or whatever):
1. Cable modem.
2. Satellite.
3. Telephone line modem.
4. Cellular modem.
5. Wi-Fi and hotspot.
Now, let's consider each method, and whether you can remotely destroy a computer using it (we'll leave software methods aside for a moment).
1, 3: cable/analog modem. The voltages involved are small. Sending a spike down the line can't be isolated to a single computer; you'd take out the whole neighborhood. It could be possible to design special cable modems that, upon receiving a certain signal, issue a spike; or, better, turn off spike protection allowing a general spike to reach you at a scheduled time. But this is unlikely, because you would know you were getting a kamikaze cablemodem and you'd do something about it, like connect to it through a surge protector or put some kind of regulator on your line. Even if you didn't know how to do it, some of us would, and we'd sell you a protector for a few bucks just for spite.
2, 4, 5. Satellite, cellular, wi-fi. The only way this could be implemented is by a signal that tells your receiver to send a spike. Most receivers are powered off your USB bus; they could build in capacitors to store up enough juice for a spike, I guess, but still. It's dumb. Again, you'll insert some kind of inline coupler which will protect your computer, because you're not a moron and it's obvious. Of course, there won't be any market for pcmcia cards of this kind anymore -- kinda hard to fit an inline coupler in there! So people will shift to USB-based solutions, and use a USB coupler.
So, ok, hardware solutions won't work. It isn't going to be possible to "remotely destroy" jack shit, at least not using electrical means. Moving right along:
The alternative: SOFTWARE:
Let's say these maniacs figure out how to implement a software solution that somehow renders your computer useless. This would require that they either attack the operating system and your files (which wouldn't harm the computer itself), or the system firmware (which would go after the hardware leaving the software intact), or both. Let's call them case A and B, because C is just the join of A and B.
A. If they are going to fry your O/S remotely, they have to be able to install a trojan horse or virus, OR hack your computer and run their death software. So, quit running Windows, switch to Linux or one of the BSDs, lock down your system using one of the many excellent FAQs on the subject, and firewall it off from the internet using a packet filtering firewall (mmm, IPTables/IPFW!). Put a NAT/packet filtering hardware firewall appliance between your system and the internet for good measure. Let 'em try and find their way around THAT. If they were dumb enough to come up with this idea, I bet they're still dithering about the difference between "enter" and "return" on their keyboards.
B. They try to finegle built-in self destruct systems in the computer. Well, in order to get your computer to self destruct, they have to TELL it to, right? Fine. Firewall the fucker off. Figure out what port the machine is using to call out to the web to ask if it should die, and firewall that off first. Then, firewall off ALL incoming packets that aren't part of an established connection. Then, make sure you're firewalled both at your PC AND at a hardware firewall, and that both are covering the ports in question and all incoming packets.
Remotely destroying computers... Yeah, RIGHT! What fools these politicians be. If I ever met one that actually knew fuck-all about a computer, I'd have a heart attack on the spot.
Sorry if I jumped on you a little too fast; I'm a little prickly about the whole online/offline thing. I see your point, and I agree that if a person gets too carried away, he can get himself in a lot of trouble, but by the same token, if he exercises a little restraint, he can add a really nice dimension to his life. My post mostly approached the situation from the point of view of the lonely; an online community can open all sorts of doors for people who don't really fit in anywhere (and I am definitely one of those, so I'm speaking from experience). And, an online life can be at least as significant to a person as his offline life. I disagree that the exchange is "a real life with a fake one"; I think that both realms of experience are real in the sense that you're there, experiencing and interacting. And online, when someone runs you over or shoots you, you don't have to go through the whole funeral thing.;)
All memories are real, you know. A great experience meeting people online can be just as good as one in a bar. It all depends on your point of view.
It's true, what you say about there always being something you can do to make your life better, but I think going online is one of those things. It's not that we're giving up; it's that we're working around our problems.
And, it's not really practical to compare joining an online community with taking drugs and self-destructing. To lamely quote a movie, "that's not the same ballpark -- hell, that's not the same game". I think you're looking at this in the wrong light.
What is an online community, really? It's a place where people who have something in common can get together in spite of geography and enjoy themselves. Usually, this ends up meaning it's a place where geeks can be geeks and not get hassled by a bunch of conformist joe sixpack types. The fact that we CAN go online means that we're not as limited by where we live as we used to be. It brings us together, if you think about it. That's a good thing.
Here's an interesting website for you; all it is, really, is a zillion pictures of different people's apartments, but what it represents is people from all over the world comparing how they're living. It's an online community in a sense. Check it out, it's cool:
www.wholiveshere.com
Don't think about this in terms of addiction. Because if it IS addiction, then everyone who gathers at TGI Fridays to hang out with their friends is addicted too (and I don't mean they're alcoholics, although there's always that possibility).
Ah -- so you're a "reality snob" with a mean-spirited point of view. You think that it's appropriate to blame people who are lonely, sad, disenfranchised, and miserable for their lot in life, and you think they should just get up and learn to play music, and that'll suddenly make everything okay. From your comments, it's obvious you've never experienced the cruelty with which people can be ostracized in our society -- at least not from the victim's point of view. From your comfortable perch in popularland, you can effortlessly look down into the valleys of the miserable and say, "what fools; it's their own fault".
First of all, before we go any further, check out this wonderful little book by Celia Green:
http://www.deoxy.org/evasion/toc.htm
I think you'll find it profoundly disturbing, but also perhaps enlightening. It'll demonstrate what I'm trying to get at here in a much more eloquent way than I ever could.
Having said that, I think you make very reasonable points, but you're overlooking several things:
1. People with families are generally not the disenfranchised people I'm talking about. After all, if they had families, they wouldn't be disenfranchised. Nor would they be alone, or lonely, or miserable (evil wives and disrespectful children notwithstanding, ha ha). I'm specifically talking about the lonely and unhappy.
2. When you take the "neglect of your family" problem out of the picture, things change significantly. Now you're not neglecting your friends; you're JOINING them. Going online is all about interaction with others; it is all about community. It isn't hermitage; it is by its very nature very social. Why do you think hacker groups are so tight, so close? You take a bunch of kids, who are probably treated like crap all day in high school or college, and who all love computers and programming, and you give them a venue where they can finally hang around with people exactly like them! In many cases, they're probably closer with their friends than they are with their own siblings. This is what I'm talking about; the process strips the high-school/college clique system of its power. It destroys our society's ability to disenfranchise and crush the nonconformists among us, and grants the fringe the right to be happy. For me, this is the best thing that has ever, ever happened. After a childhood of being considered a loser and an outcast, and ten years of being a pariah during my twenties, I've found my niche, and I'm extremely happy about it. Not that I do Everquest; in my case, it's Slashdot, Unix/Linux, hardware restoration, and other similar groups. But, it's not that much different.
3. You can't really call it an addiction. Because if you call hanging around an online community with friends you've met there an addiction, then every joe sixpack who spends his evenings at the local watering hole is addicted as well, whether he's an alcoholic or not. It's not addiction; it's social interaction.
4. I'll grant you this: if a person is into online gaming, it would be very destructive if he was married to someone who wasn't, and neglected her. Obviously the marriage would go down the toilet. HOWEVER, please, let's think this through. If, say, Edward is a gamer, and spends a lot of time online because his real life sucks ass, Eddie isn't going to be getting married anytime soon -- except maybe to a fellow online gamer. And, if he does, well, his whole family will be online so it isn't going to be a problem for them, unless one of the kids goes into GOD mode and starts thrashing people. Ok, I'm kidding around, but seriously. Plus, you have to admit, once the person hooks up with that fellow gamer, he'll have someone to go do things offline WITH. So it's likely that the behavior will end up being self-modifying; boy goes online, boy meets girl online, boy and girl shack up, boy and girl get naked, boy and girl forget to go online, or at least, scale it back to make room for lots of freaky sex. And, everyone's happy.
5. Corollary: the kind of person who is involved with an actual, physical woman is unlikely to be one who feels so lonely and alone that he spends all his time online. There may be the occasional cases of people who get obsessed with a game *after* they've hooked up with someone, and yes, that may be a problem, but you have to consider that a totally separate case from people for whom their online activities are *not* a problem. We're talking about two separate things, here: people for whom online communities are empowering, and people for whom they are destructive. Both types of people exist, so you can't just lay down a blanket assumption that spen
Re:Things ARE getting a little scary...
on
Robots Without a Cause
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· Score: 2, Insightful
But what about people who are truly unhappy? The geek who gets picked on all day in school, and feels isolated and alone, with no one like him to talk to? The guy whose job well and truly sucks, and who wants to do something else at night? The person who has no friends, no one to hang around with outside of work, and very little to make him happy? What about these people? A good, immersive online existence can literally SAVE them. It gives them a virtual place where they can actually be *happy*, and get away from the sordid lives they've been cursed with.
I see technology like this as a Godsend. Anything that can bring a little joy into someone's life is worth having.
I'm not too bad a case, because I don't spend that much time in my games (I tend to spend a lot of time tinkering with hardware, programming, messing with various unices, and such -- it's a hobby). But I certainly sympathize with people who aren't particularly happy about their lives.
And, think about this: when you haven't got a lot of money, you can't fly to Miami for the weekend because you're bummed out and miserable. But you can fire up Grand Theft Auto, Vice City for fifty bucks, and misbehave in a variety of ways with no consequences. Or, if you're into multiplayer, you can go get yourself a nice match against some MechWarriors, or play Tribes on the PSII. It's social, you're meeting other people like you, you're having fun...
I don't see how anyone could find this a frightening thing. It's a wonderful thing.
Re:This may be true for some, but it's not for me
on
Robots Without a Cause
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· Score: 4, Interesting
That's a pretty good point. When you think about it, it doesn't really matter whether a gadget is stupid in and of itself. The technology that is within the gadget is all patented, which means it becomes part of the public record, and available (after 17 years, or earlier through license) to the rest of us.
Take that little vacuum for instance. Would I buy one? Well, ok, maybe I would, but I'd crack it open and hack it into something else, maybe a little patrol camera for my apartment. So, if I can think of that, others can as well. If you've got a little trilobite-like thing that knows how to navigate around your apartment, getting over cables and such, and using sonar to "see", you can go pretty easily from there to a fleet of security bots who can detect motion and automatically capture video of whomever is breaking into your apartment, store, or corporate location.
Ok, next step. Make the trilobite out of aluminum. Mount a webcam on the back, and make it stream images. Program the device to patrol your apartment, store, or corporate location. When it locates someone, it emails you and you can see what it's seeing on the webcam. You can call the police and bust the thieves without ever leaving your cubicle, or vacation spot, or whatever.
Moving along, make one out of waterproof, floatation plastic, with a floating/swimming feature. Emergency services send out thousands of them to find flood survivors using infrared. Whenever they run into someone, they beam back a GPS coord set and some video. Or, better: some kid's lost in a forest. Thousands of trilobites scurry through the woods looking for heat signatures. Or, police use them to find fugitives.
Take this a little further. Make the little trilobite out of steel, and beef up the power and suspension. Mount a stronger antenna, and make it radio-controllable, so that it'll navigate through, say, a terrorist's cave until it "sees" somebody on infrared, and then hand over control to an operator. The operator drives it into the middle of the terrorists, and activates the modified claymore mine built into its armor. Boom.
Sure, it's a silly little vacuum cleaner NOW, but what can you do with the basic idea of the machine? Now that they've built it, what else can you do with it?
Most of the weird gadgets that are around today could be put to better uses. Research is research. It only takes imagination to bend it to a purpose...
Actually, the silly bitch made me get out, walk around the truck, and open the door for her. In a weird sense, it was kind of funny. If I'd have had a heart attack or an aneurism or something, she'd have starved to death in there (the locks were mechanical too).;)
I was nice, though. I stayed for the rest of the date, and asked the married couple (they met us at the movie theater) to take her home, because "I had a pressing engagement". I figured, that would be the end of that, right? I mean, she didn't like *anything* about me. Too poor, doesn't own a home, father isn't rich, and truck doesn't have any gadgets.
But the next day at work, the married guy was like, "So, when are you going out with X again?" I said, "Never, what are you, nuts? She didn't even like me." He was surprised. "She told us that you were fine, and she wanted to see you again."
Which just goes to show that the world is a completely nutso place. At some point between driving to the movie theater in my (unsuitable) truck, and going home with the married couple, she decided that I was a fixer-upper or something. I told the guy I wasn't interested, and told him why, at which point I was kind of persona-non-grata as far as blind-dates go, but that's ok. It makes life a lot quieter.
It's funny, people used to do things for themselves, now they expect some stupid gadget to do it for them. Here's a true story: I went on a blind date with a recent arrival from the Philippines. It was a set-up orchestrated by a married couple we both knew; the wife was a friend of the girl's. Well, I picked her up in my truck, which is a small GMC Sonoma, manual-everything. She got in, and she started looking around in horror. I watched her for a minute, trying to figure out what was going on, and she suddenly asked me, "where are the window controls?". I pointed at the crank. She looked at it, totally not comprehending. I said, "It's a crank." She looked at me again. "You turn it and the window comes down." She said, "You don't have a window button?" I said, "no". I could see a variable in her head getting flagged, "philman=slacker_loser". She didn't like my manual transmission, either.
It was weird. She really, honestly, had never seen a window crank before. I've never seen anyone horrified by a lack of electrical controls...
If we're not careful, we might ALL be running FreeBSD soon. Remember, even though WE know the SCO suit ought to be won by IBM, that doesn't mean a JUDGE will know. In fact, I'd say it's completely impossible to predict the outcome of the case. Remember OJ? Remember the Microsoft "trial"? Remember Enron's executives getting away scot free?
This is America, where every day is "anything can happen day".
FreeBSD is there for us; it is our exit strategy. Mock not the exit strategy! For it may save our butts one day...:)
Slashdot Mirror
Nah, just kidding...
Actually, the truth is, and this is going to sound strange for a six foot, 275 pound ex-marine, I like interior decorating, shopping for art and furniture, cooking, reading, and watching anime DVDs. I'm currently setting up my next apartment, and it's going to be a beautiful, serene bastion of order and grace. Everything in it is going to be coordinated; bright, white paint, chrome, white, and "blonde" wood furniture, lots of chrome and lucite... Basically a modern, minimalist environment where chaos is totally banished. I'm going to get home from work, put on a Vanilla candle, put something quiet on the CD-Player, AND FIRE UP UNREAL TOURNAMENT!!! BOO, YA!
(Ahem. Heheh. Sorry, didn't mean to ruin the mood...)
...Not to mention that they're currently blowing up convoys with unmanned drones, based on rumors about who might be in them. This weekend, an unmanned, remote-controlled drone blew the hell out of a convoy with Hellfire missles. They're going to go scrape up the bodies and check them for Saddam's DNA this week. Funny; I thought assassination was against international law. But apparently, they felt Saddam might be in the convoy, so they blew it up. No attempt at capture; no attempt at forcing a surrender. They just blew it up from the air, with an unmanned drone no less. Man...
Imagine what it must be like over there! If you were a civilian and you wanted to get out of dodge, you'd probably get your ass shot off just for trying. Not only has the country been occupied, but there's *no escape* from it. Anyone trying to leave gets vaporized. Talk about harsh!
I respect your sentiment and desire to follow a higher road, but "Dubya" was GWB's idea; it was the nickname he used during his campaign in an effort to seem friendly and approachable. It's not exactly an insult; more of a nickname the man and his advisors chose.
I don't know where the "shrub" thing came from; this is the first I've heard of it. How'd he get a nickname like shrub???
I'm not a supporter -- I don't like Bush one iota, and I'm going to vote Democrat in the next election just to help rid the nation of him (usually I vote Green Party, but in this case I'll make an exception). But, seriously -- "Dubya" was HIS idea.
Lawyers... God, what wussies we have become. Does anyone else miss the halcyon days of our nation's youth, where a couple of longshoremen could be had for a reasonable fee?
(longshoreman #1): "Hey, Stu! Look! It's our new friend, the WRITER!"
(longshoreman #2): "I believe it is, Joe! Hey, WRITER! Ya got any of them long-headed books on ya? C'mere, you..."
(Writer yelps and takes off.)
(Longshoreman #1): "Hey, Stu! Gimme that brick..." (throws brick).
(Writer yelps, falls down, gets grabbed by the longshoremen and dragged into an alley).
(Longshoreman #1): POUND, POUND, SOCK, SMACK!
(Longshoreman #2): KICK, KICK, WHACK, SMACK!
Sigh... We were born in the wrong decade, boys.
But, you forgot the part about "Luckily, bull999999 had a shotgun, a shovel, and a big back yard handy. After the newspaper editor misplaced three reporters in a row, he decided to have his people cover a less dangerous story, like an interview of the head of a doomsday cult about to be raided by the ATF..."
Ok, no hard feelings, then, but the post he was responding to suggested that most of the people on Slashdot probably had at least used Shareware without licensing it. Basically, the guy had said, "show me all the shareware you're using that you've actually paid for" and my post's parent post had said that no, he actually DID pay for his software. To which I replied, with my comments about paying for MY software.
:(
= 6236735
See what I mean? It's not an "I don't steal so I don't have to worry" comment; it's an "it's not fair to say we steal, because we don't, and accusations are unfair" comment.
Having said that, I really don't approve of Hatch's point of view. I weighed into a previous Slashdot article about the subject with a point-by-point rebuttal of the possibility of destroying a computer remotely. Unfortunately, I don't think any moderators saw it...
Here it is:
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=67978&cid
Anyway, no hard feelings! Have a great weekend.
You misunderstand.
I think it's hilarious that Orrin Hatch turned out to be using pirated software on his website, and I think he deserves to be thoroughly publicly mocked without mercy.
I think it's totally idiotic that Hatch is advocating the remote destruction of other people's computers, just because someone is suspicious they might have downloaded software or music.
BUT, and I reiterate this point: I think the poster who said that most of the people on Slashdot are probably just as bad as Hatch because we probably download software ourselves is dead wrong. Just because HE has no professional courtesy, and HE downloads other people's copyrighted code, doesn't mean that WE do. And, I think that most of us who are actually techies do NOT. I certainly do not. And, your silly point about SCO barely deserves a reply; go read the SCO thread if you want to fully understand the issues, like for example the probability that the code in question actually came from BSD. That hash isn't even close to being settled, kid.
Don't YOU get it? Regardless of whether it's right or wrong to remotely screw up someone's computer, it is ALSO wrong to rip off someone's work just because you're too cheap to pay for it. And, that counts DOUBLE for shareware, because it's generally pretty cheap to begin with. MY point was that most of us on Slashdot understand this, and consider it a no-brainer.
Don't get wise with me, pretending that I somehow don't understand your point because I disagree with something that was said. I understand perfectly well. And, it's spectacularly rude of you to pretend otherwise.
Read the parent posts, then re-read mine, then realize your comment makes no sense. Rinse, repeat.
Already there. I voted Green across the board. I like Nader; he's actually done things to help people, which is something I can't say about many other politicians. If it wasn't for his book "Unsafe at any speed", cars still wouldn't have seatbelts or safety glass.
Hear, hear! I'm a programmer (there are a lot of us, too, on Slashdot) and this issue hits close to home -- I don't pirate anything either. I haven't bought much shareware, although I did purchase licenses for winzip and WSFTP, and a good image editing program written by someone at Nasa, although I can't remember the name at the moment, all for about thirty or forty dollars each. It was worth it! They're great pieces of software.
At work I use mostly Microsoft technologies, and I have to keep up with what's going on, so I bought copies of Windows 2000, VB6 Professional with the data environment, Borland's JBuilderII and JBuilder III, VB.Net, and Microsoft Works (for resumes, ha ha). We're talking hundreds of dollars, here, and I'm a public employee, so it hurt. But I paid it. I have it all installed on a coding/testing machine I keep handy. I also have several old military-spec laptops I got for a hundred to a hundred and fifty bucks each, and those all run Red Hat Linux or FreeBSD. I paid for THOSE, too, even though technically I could have just downloaded them (of course, having paid for a CD set, I do download ISOs to upgrade FreeBSD, but that's perfectly acceptable and within the philosophy of their website).
I think you're absolutely right, and that most of the techies here on Slashdot have enough professional courtesy to avoid ripping off the work of their fellow professionals. People who accuse Slashdotters of stealing software don't understand the technical mindset at all, or the respect we frequently have for one another. Of course, you know what they say: A thief thinks everyone steals...
In that case, truce!
;)
Since you're being nice, I'll admit that I was just fucking with you. Actually, I kind of like Canada, and think your peaceful approach is worth emulating. Good social services model, too.
In all fairness, you ought to realize that we Americans aren't the idiots our television shows portray us to be. But our government doesn't listen to us, and when we vote, we're given a choice of several unpleasant alternatives, so we generally just try to pick the person who'll do the least amount of damage. Unfortunately, in this case, the election was corrupted and the man who won isn't in office. Which brings us to the world we're currently living in.
No hard feelings!
I respect your point of view, here, but I think you're underestimating a couple of factors. First, I don't think Americans as a whole are as naiive as you're assuming they are. What I think is going on is, they know fully well that all sources of news are tainted, either by the government's meddling (television news) or by special interest meddling (other alternative news). So, they blow off ALL of the news, and figure they'll just let whatever is happening happen, and figure out what to do later, when things settle down and more information is available. I'm not saying I follow this; I have access to the internet, and I'm pretty good at digging for info, but I'm not the norm.
Second, as I mentioned to someone else, everyone has a limited amount of attention they can expend on any one subject. Most of us are struggling to prevent our careers from getting sucked down the toilet by corporate greed and a failing economy, so we have other things on our minds at the moment. Our time is divided between career survival, enhancing our abilities in some way, handling local news that affects us directly, and the demands of our personal lives (family, etc). There is only a limited amount of time available for world news, and as I'm sure you know, world news is pretty complicated. It's hard to follow it all even if you can spend all day at it; when you've got an hour at best, towards evening, you've got to prioritize.
A side thing is, when most people have to prioritize the information they're concentrating on, and they get one story from a "reliable" source, and you come along with a completely different story but they don't know you or have any reason to trust what you say, you can talk until you're blue in the face and you won't get anywhere. They'll assume it's your opinion and they'll politely (or not so politely) disagree. Many will (as per our tradition) say something about religion and politics being bad topics for conversation and exit the area, too.
I guess what I'm saying is, don't let it get you down. It isn't apathy in most cases. It's just the basic structure of modern life, and the massive amount of information we have to deal with.
SubtleNuance mumblemouthedly muttered, "One more thing: Fuck you warmongering yankee baby killer"
Well, fuck you too, you big dumb canuck. With GUSTO!
Blah, blah, blah. "I'm a big dumb canuck and I love the sound of my own voice". You're full of it. Go back to your beer.
And, what's with that grammar? You DID go to school, right? Preview and edit your posts, whydoncha, ya lazy fucker!
Finally, someone from outside the U.S. who doesn't insist on insulting us, and who seems to be well-informed and rational. It's very nice to see.
I'm an American, and I'm interested in international affairs. As far as I know Australia has a prime minister, not a president, right? Also, I know from Slashdot and some other venues that some of the issues affecting you are that you're having problems building a wideband infrastructure because your telephone system is too entrenched, you have similar challenges in helping Aboriginal communities to those we have helping American Indian communities, you're concerned with conservation issues, and the preservation of the wilderness areas in your interior, you used to offer bonuses to people with technical skills willing to emigrate but since your needs have lessened you've discontinued that, and people in your government are even less worried about civil liberties than our leaders are. I'm not too well-informed about how Australia interacts with other countries around it, although I did read that several countries near Australia were having trouble with their internal dissident groups as a result of the war with Iraq, which at the time was annoying everyone.
Please, understand that Americans DO care about the rest of the world. And, we DO pay attention. But, you have to cut us some slack. Everyone might be interested in/ freaked out about the U.S. and it's easy to keep track of one country, especially when it's always in the news. But, think about it from the other direction. How can we keep track of EVERYONE? Here's a test: How much do you know about, say, Luxemborg? Do you follow Luxemborg's politics? Do you know what their issues are? How about some other random country, that isn't in the news daily. No info? See my point? You can't expect Americans to know all the news about all the countries in the world any more than we can expect the same of you.
Please consider this.
Oh, please. Spare me. Like you fucking Canucks don't strut around with huge chips on your shoulders, telling the world that because you're great big pussies who are afraid to even raise your voices, you're somehow morally superior to the rest of us. Let's get something clear, ok? In order to make a moral choice NOT to do something, you have to have the power to DO it in the first place. In other words, if, say, I'm a 98 pound milquetoast with a glass jaw, I can't say I'm taking the high ground when I "choose" not to beat the crap out of a construction worker who's whistling at my girlfriend. Similarly, since Canadian Military Might isn't very mighty, it's not like you're CHOOSING to leave the world alone. The truth is, you're irrelevant, everyone knows it, even YOU know it, and you're okay with that. NOT the same.
As for my second paragraph, I WAS TROLLING YOU, you fucking noob. How long have you been reading Slashdot? Whatta maroon...
Oh, listen to Mr. Smarty-pants Canadian over here... "Arrogant Ignorant and Disinformed" (sic) are we??? Fuck you, you hoser. Go back to trapping beaver, or whatever it is you canucks do when you're not pissing and moaning.
Happy thought: If there IS a WW III, you're gonna get annexed as a state for your natural resources... We'll get the last laugh THEN. Kinda hard to act all superior when suddenly, YOU have "Republicrats" crawling up YOUR butts, TOO.
He's also a man who knows very, very little about computers. Let's consider how we connect to the internet for a moment, and whether it is possible to remotely destroy a computer.
There are currently five major ways for a regular home user to connect to the internet (we're leaving out work-related T1's, because any good corporate/government IT chief will have already locked that down bigtime, with electronic filters or whatever):
1. Cable modem.
2. Satellite.
3. Telephone line modem.
4. Cellular modem.
5. Wi-Fi and hotspot.
Now, let's consider each method, and whether you can remotely destroy a computer using it (we'll leave software methods aside for a moment).
1, 3: cable/analog modem. The voltages involved are small. Sending a spike down the line can't be isolated to a single computer; you'd take out the whole neighborhood. It could be possible to design special cable modems that, upon receiving a certain signal, issue a spike; or, better, turn off spike protection allowing a general spike to reach you at a scheduled time. But this is unlikely, because you would know you were getting a kamikaze cablemodem and you'd do something about it, like connect to it through a surge protector or put some kind of regulator on your line. Even if you didn't know how to do it, some of us would, and we'd sell you a protector for a few bucks just for spite.
2, 4, 5. Satellite, cellular, wi-fi. The only way this could be implemented is by a signal that tells your receiver to send a spike. Most receivers are powered off your USB bus; they could build in capacitors to store up enough juice for a spike, I guess, but still. It's dumb. Again, you'll insert some kind of inline coupler which will protect your computer, because you're not a moron and it's obvious. Of course, there won't be any market for pcmcia cards of this kind anymore -- kinda hard to fit an inline coupler in there! So people will shift to USB-based solutions, and use a USB coupler.
So, ok, hardware solutions won't work. It isn't going to be possible to "remotely destroy" jack shit, at least not using electrical means. Moving right along:
The alternative: SOFTWARE:
Let's say these maniacs figure out how to implement a software solution that somehow renders your computer useless. This would require that they either attack the operating system and your files (which wouldn't harm the computer itself), or the system firmware (which would go after the hardware leaving the software intact), or both. Let's call them case A and B, because C is just the join of A and B.
A. If they are going to fry your O/S remotely, they have to be able to install a trojan horse or virus, OR hack your computer and run their death software. So, quit running Windows, switch to Linux or one of the BSDs, lock down your system using one of the many excellent FAQs on the subject, and firewall it off from the internet using a packet filtering firewall (mmm, IPTables/IPFW!). Put a NAT/packet filtering hardware firewall appliance between your system and the internet for good measure. Let 'em try and find their way around THAT. If they were dumb enough to come up with this idea, I bet they're still dithering about the difference between "enter" and "return" on their keyboards.
B. They try to finegle built-in self destruct systems in the computer. Well, in order to get your computer to self destruct, they have to TELL it to, right? Fine. Firewall the fucker off. Figure out what port the machine is using to call out to the web to ask if it should die, and firewall that off first. Then, firewall off ALL incoming packets that aren't part of an established connection. Then, make sure you're firewalled both at your PC AND at a hardware firewall, and that both are covering the ports in question and all incoming packets.
Remotely destroying computers... Yeah, RIGHT! What fools these politicians be. If I ever met one that actually knew fuck-all about a computer, I'd have a heart attack on the spot.
Sorry if I jumped on you a little too fast; I'm a little prickly about the whole online/offline thing. I see your point, and I agree that if a person gets too carried away, he can get himself in a lot of trouble, but by the same token, if he exercises a little restraint, he can add a really nice dimension to his life. My post mostly approached the situation from the point of view of the lonely; an online community can open all sorts of doors for people who don't really fit in anywhere (and I am definitely one of those, so I'm speaking from experience). And, an online life can be at least as significant to a person as his offline life. I disagree that the exchange is "a real life with a fake one"; I think that both realms of experience are real in the sense that you're there, experiencing and interacting. And online, when someone runs you over or shoots you, you don't have to go through the whole funeral thing. ;)
All memories are real, you know. A great experience meeting people online can be just as good as one in a bar. It all depends on your point of view.
It's true, what you say about there always being something you can do to make your life better, but I think going online is one of those things. It's not that we're giving up; it's that we're working around our problems.
And, it's not really practical to compare joining an online community with taking drugs and self-destructing. To lamely quote a movie, "that's not the same ballpark -- hell, that's not the same game". I think you're looking at this in the wrong light.
What is an online community, really? It's a place where people who have something in common can get together in spite of geography and enjoy themselves. Usually, this ends up meaning it's a place where geeks can be geeks and not get hassled by a bunch of conformist joe sixpack types. The fact that we CAN go online means that we're not as limited by where we live as we used to be. It brings us together, if you think about it. That's a good thing.
Here's an interesting website for you; all it is, really, is a zillion pictures of different people's apartments, but what it represents is people from all over the world comparing how they're living. It's an online community in a sense. Check it out, it's cool:
www.wholiveshere.com
Don't think about this in terms of addiction. Because if it IS addiction, then everyone who gathers at TGI Fridays to hang out with their friends is addicted too (and I don't mean they're alcoholics, although there's always that possibility).
Ah -- so you're a "reality snob" with a mean-spirited point of view. You think that it's appropriate to blame people who are lonely, sad, disenfranchised, and miserable for their lot in life, and you think they should just get up and learn to play music, and that'll suddenly make everything okay. From your comments, it's obvious you've never experienced the cruelty with which people can be ostracized in our society -- at least not from the victim's point of view. From your comfortable perch in popularland, you can effortlessly look down into the valleys of the miserable and say, "what fools; it's their own fault".
It's people like YOU that they're escaping from.
First of all, before we go any further, check out this wonderful little book by Celia Green:
http://www.deoxy.org/evasion/toc.htm
I think you'll find it profoundly disturbing, but also perhaps enlightening. It'll demonstrate what I'm trying to get at here in a much more eloquent way than I ever could.
Having said that, I think you make very reasonable points, but you're overlooking several things:
1. People with families are generally not the disenfranchised people I'm talking about. After all, if they had families, they wouldn't be disenfranchised. Nor would they be alone, or lonely, or miserable (evil wives and disrespectful children notwithstanding, ha ha). I'm specifically talking about the lonely and unhappy.
2. When you take the "neglect of your family" problem out of the picture, things change significantly. Now you're not neglecting your friends; you're JOINING them. Going online is all about interaction with others; it is all about community. It isn't hermitage; it is by its very nature very social. Why do you think hacker groups are so tight, so close? You take a bunch of kids, who are probably treated like crap all day in high school or college, and who all love computers and programming, and you give them a venue where they can finally hang around with people exactly like them! In many cases, they're probably closer with their friends than they are with their own siblings. This is what I'm talking about; the process strips the high-school/college clique system of its power. It destroys our society's ability to disenfranchise and crush the nonconformists among us, and grants the fringe the right to be happy. For me, this is the best thing that has ever, ever happened. After a childhood of being considered a loser and an outcast, and ten years of being a pariah during my twenties, I've found my niche, and I'm extremely happy about it. Not that I do Everquest; in my case, it's Slashdot, Unix/Linux, hardware restoration, and other similar groups. But, it's not that much different.
3. You can't really call it an addiction. Because if you call hanging around an online community with friends you've met there an addiction, then every joe sixpack who spends his evenings at the local watering hole is addicted as well, whether he's an alcoholic or not. It's not addiction; it's social interaction.
4. I'll grant you this: if a person is into online gaming, it would be very destructive if he was married to someone who wasn't, and neglected her. Obviously the marriage would go down the toilet. HOWEVER, please, let's think this through. If, say, Edward is a gamer, and spends a lot of time online because his real life sucks ass, Eddie isn't going to be getting married anytime soon -- except maybe to a fellow online gamer. And, if he does, well, his whole family will be online so it isn't going to be a problem for them, unless one of the kids goes into GOD mode and starts thrashing people. Ok, I'm kidding around, but seriously. Plus, you have to admit, once the person hooks up with that fellow gamer, he'll have someone to go do things offline WITH. So it's likely that the behavior will end up being self-modifying; boy goes online, boy meets girl online, boy and girl shack up, boy and girl get naked, boy and girl forget to go online, or at least, scale it back to make room for lots of freaky sex. And, everyone's happy.
5. Corollary: the kind of person who is involved with an actual, physical woman is unlikely to be one who feels so lonely and alone that he spends all his time online. There may be the occasional cases of people who get obsessed with a game *after* they've hooked up with someone, and yes, that may be a problem, but you have to consider that a totally separate case from people for whom their online activities are *not* a problem. We're talking about two separate things, here: people for whom online communities are empowering, and people for whom they are destructive. Both types of people exist, so you can't just lay down a blanket assumption that spen
But what about people who are truly unhappy? The geek who gets picked on all day in school, and feels isolated and alone, with no one like him to talk to? The guy whose job well and truly sucks, and who wants to do something else at night? The person who has no friends, no one to hang around with outside of work, and very little to make him happy? What about these people? A good, immersive online existence can literally SAVE them. It gives them a virtual place where they can actually be *happy*, and get away from the sordid lives they've been cursed with.
I see technology like this as a Godsend. Anything that can bring a little joy into someone's life is worth having.
I'm not too bad a case, because I don't spend that much time in my games (I tend to spend a lot of time tinkering with hardware, programming, messing with various unices, and such -- it's a hobby). But I certainly sympathize with people who aren't particularly happy about their lives.
And, think about this: when you haven't got a lot of money, you can't fly to Miami for the weekend because you're bummed out and miserable. But you can fire up Grand Theft Auto, Vice City for fifty bucks, and misbehave in a variety of ways with no consequences. Or, if you're into multiplayer, you can go get yourself a nice match against some MechWarriors, or play Tribes on the PSII. It's social, you're meeting other people like you, you're having fun...
I don't see how anyone could find this a frightening thing. It's a wonderful thing.
That's a pretty good point. When you think about it, it doesn't really matter whether a gadget is stupid in and of itself. The technology that is within the gadget is all patented, which means it becomes part of the public record, and available (after 17 years, or earlier through license) to the rest of us.
Take that little vacuum for instance. Would I buy one? Well, ok, maybe I would, but I'd crack it open and hack it into something else, maybe a little patrol camera for my apartment. So, if I can think of that, others can as well. If you've got a little trilobite-like thing that knows how to navigate around your apartment, getting over cables and such, and using sonar to "see", you can go pretty easily from there to a fleet of security bots who can detect motion and automatically capture video of whomever is breaking into your apartment, store, or corporate location.
Ok, next step. Make the trilobite out of aluminum. Mount a webcam on the back, and make it stream images. Program the device to patrol your apartment, store, or corporate location. When it locates someone, it emails you and you can see what it's seeing on the webcam. You can call the police and bust the thieves without ever leaving your cubicle, or vacation spot, or whatever.
Moving along, make one out of waterproof, floatation plastic, with a floating/swimming feature. Emergency services send out thousands of them to find flood survivors using infrared. Whenever they run into someone, they beam back a GPS coord set and some video. Or, better: some kid's lost in a forest. Thousands of trilobites scurry through the woods looking for heat signatures. Or, police use them to find fugitives.
Take this a little further. Make the little trilobite out of steel, and beef up the power and suspension. Mount a stronger antenna, and make it radio-controllable, so that it'll navigate through, say, a terrorist's cave until it "sees" somebody on infrared, and then hand over control to an operator. The operator drives it into the middle of the terrorists, and activates the modified claymore mine built into its armor. Boom.
Sure, it's a silly little vacuum cleaner NOW, but what can you do with the basic idea of the machine? Now that they've built it, what else can you do with it?
Most of the weird gadgets that are around today could be put to better uses. Research is research. It only takes imagination to bend it to a purpose...
Actually, the silly bitch made me get out, walk around the truck, and open the door for her. In a weird sense, it was kind of funny. If I'd have had a heart attack or an aneurism or something, she'd have starved to death in there (the locks were mechanical too). ;)
I was nice, though. I stayed for the rest of the date, and asked the married couple (they met us at the movie theater) to take her home, because "I had a pressing engagement". I figured, that would be the end of that, right? I mean, she didn't like *anything* about me. Too poor, doesn't own a home, father isn't rich, and truck doesn't have any gadgets.
But the next day at work, the married guy was like, "So, when are you going out with X again?" I said, "Never, what are you, nuts? She didn't even like me." He was surprised. "She told us that you were fine, and she wanted to see you again."
Which just goes to show that the world is a completely nutso place. At some point between driving to the movie theater in my (unsuitable) truck, and going home with the married couple, she decided that I was a fixer-upper or something. I told the guy I wasn't interested, and told him why, at which point I was kind of persona-non-grata as far as blind-dates go, but that's ok. It makes life a lot quieter.
It's funny, people used to do things for themselves, now they expect some stupid gadget to do it for them. Here's a true story: I went on a blind date with a recent arrival from the Philippines. It was a set-up orchestrated by a married couple we both knew; the wife was a friend of the girl's. Well, I picked her up in my truck, which is a small GMC Sonoma, manual-everything. She got in, and she started looking around in horror. I watched her for a minute, trying to figure out what was going on, and she suddenly asked me, "where are the window controls?". I pointed at the crank. She looked at it, totally not comprehending. I said, "It's a crank." She looked at me again. "You turn it and the window comes down." She said, "You don't have a window button?" I said, "no". I could see a variable in her head getting flagged, "philman=slacker_loser". She didn't like my manual transmission, either.
It was weird. She really, honestly, had never seen a window crank before. I've never seen anyone horrified by a lack of electrical controls...
If we're not careful, we might ALL be running FreeBSD soon. Remember, even though WE know the SCO suit ought to be won by IBM, that doesn't mean a JUDGE will know. In fact, I'd say it's completely impossible to predict the outcome of the case. Remember OJ? Remember the Microsoft "trial"? Remember Enron's executives getting away scot free?
:)
This is America, where every day is "anything can happen day".
FreeBSD is there for us; it is our exit strategy. Mock not the exit strategy! For it may save our butts one day...