It's just kind of funny when you think that the only real difference between the two parties anymore is A)Whether they want you or your grandkids to pay for federal spending, and B)What reasons they're using to take away your rights.
Good way of putting it. I agree it's a joke, but I guess I don't find it very funny...
I hope you are willing to drop your membership as soon as your party (whichever it may be) deviates from the beliefs you hold to. Otherwise, you're wrong, and are indeed a tool.
Just because "Republican" has meant "conservative" for several generations doesn't mean they are now. Political parties change beliefs from time to time. The Republican party used to be the progressive/liberal party, if you recall.
Conservatives are stil Conservatives. Our Republican adminstration, however, isn't ver Conservative at all. Bush has a very large government that has sought to increase federal and executive power at every turn.
People need to dissociate their political beliefs from political parties. The party that used to represent what you personally believe may change to represent that which you abhor.
The downside is you don't get to vote in primaries. The updside is you can remain true to your actual beliefs, instead of subverting them to the cause of someone else.
Anyone who isn't an indepenent is a tool, or someone who wishes to wield tools.
All he's saying is that fifty year old military documents are being witheld by the government -- which is true. In fact, many documents are being held back. The FOIA has been weakened greatly since Bush took office, simply by the adminstration's outright refusal to release documents.
The only proof we have is that the government has documents which they are unwilling to release. The fact that we can't prove anything is exactly the point because we don't have the information to do so.
There's no conspiracy theory, because there's no information that a conspiracy exists, other than the suspicious reticence of the government. If you can hide all proof that your conspiracy exists, does to not exist anymore?
You're right to be skeptical of any conspiracy theory claims. But you're foolish to believe that no conspiracy exists because the only information that could prove or disprove it is in the guarded posession of those who would be involved in the conspiracy.
The FOIA is one of the greatest Acts in American history, IMHO. Information is the ultimate power, and that power should be held by the people. When the government witholds that power, you should be afraid.
um, so "able to call regardless of credit" is enabled for 911/999, so "able to call regardless of credit" is enabled period?
Of course! The phone company is able to allow a call to be placed regardless of credit, no matter if it's 911 or not. We're talking about what the cell provider can do, not what you as a caller can do! You're trying to equate the cell provider having a technical capability that obviously they can use whenever they want with what you as a cell phone user are allowed to do by said provider, which makes no sense.
If the cell company can track you for a 9/11 call, they can track you for any call.
The numbers were valid. If you choose to call it a "lie", you are obviously living in a fantasy world. If you continue to try and argue that a single review/reversal case for a given circuit has any REAL statistical merit without taking in the WHOLE picture, you are delibertly trying to mislead.
I rearranged the paragraph order to address this point first.
What numbers? You didn't give numbers, you gave a number. You said "It shouldn't be surprising that 3/4's of all appealed 9th circuit judments that get accepted are overturned." No reference to the overall rate or the rates of other districts, or even the quantity of cases seen by the 9th. No frame of reference, therefore no conclusion.
That's my whole point -- that one number is meaningless -- and was the point of bringing up the 100% reversal districts and if I haven't made that clear enough, I'm sorry. But you were trying to sell a premise that your singular number could not possibly support. That's the same as a sales-shyster saying "We are much safer than everyone else, with a failure rate of only half a percent!"
Now that I've hopefully explained the "lying with statisticts" portion of my posts, I'll continue...
It's not relevent as we were discussing FEDERAL courts. Geez. The job of the FEDERAL appellate courts is QUITE different from the STATE court systems.
True, but the function of the Supreme Court is largely the same. Therefore it is relevent since what we are discussing is the rate at which cases seen by the Supreme Court are overturned. Not that it isn't worth considering the appellate courts on their own. Speaking of which...
And the 9th has 18/24 cases overturned, or 75%. Higher than all the other federal courts combined - just ONE curcuit out of fourteen!. Over 70% of ALL cases heard come from just ONE circuit -- the 9th. And the 9th accounts for less than 18% of ALL appellet cases!
The 9th had 18/24 reversed, 75%. The rest of the districts combined had 24/35 reversed, 69%, 6% higher. However that translates into less than one case. If the 9th had 17/24 cases reversed, that's 70%. Speaking of the significance of one case, you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that a deviation from the overall reversal rate of less than one case indicates anything about the 9th district court.
As to the rate at which 9th Circuit decisions are seen, I'll recycle this: "The first paragraph you quote has merit. However, I should point out that the Supreme Court does not choose to review cases based upon the fact that they are bad or likely to be overturned. Cases appear before them because the case is appealed, and they choose to hear the case typically because the case involves aspects of Constitutional law or conflicts between circuits. So the fact that more of the 9th Circuit's cases are seen by the Supreme Court could be for any number of reasons completely unrelated to your thesis."
The 9th district has cases seen reversed at a rate very similar to the overall average, and there is no direct causal link between the rate at which cases are seen and your conclusion that the 9th is reversed frequently due to liberal bias. Therefore, your conclusion is unsupported by the statistics. Q.E.D.
Oh, sure, that can't possibly be relevent so we'll just throw out that data. *rolls eyes* But just considering the rest of the circuits, they have 24/35 cases overturned, or 68%.
You deliberately try to mislead by stating that SOME courts had a 100% reversal (8th circuit, for example) -- yet fail to mention that it had *1* case heard and reversed. Thats ONE out of ONE. Big sample there.
Between one and three cases for circuits with a 100% reversal rate, yes. Since my point was that the one number by itself was meaningless, actually, that serves to illustrate my point exactly as I intended. Pointing out how worthless your statistic was isn't misleading. It'd only be misleading if I was trying to establish a conclusion other than that your argument, based on a statistical lie, was bunk.
The interesting points are (A) how often the 9th circuit appeals are heard and (B) how often they are reversed.
Right. And as has already been discussed, (A) the frequency with which cases are heard has nothing to do with the quality of the 9th Circuit's decisions and (B) the frequency of reversal of the 9th is similar to the reversal rate for cases heard from all other circuits and the states.
In conclusion, your conclusion was baseless, as I suspected when I saw someone trying to prove it using one datum.
Yeah, your big, stinking lie. You just threw that 3/4 number out there, without even comparing it to other courts, as if it meant something.
Getting on...
The first paragraph you quote has merit. However, I should point out that the Supreme Court does not choose to review cases based upon the fact that they are bad or likely to be overturned. Cases appear before them because the case is appealed, and they choose to hear the case typically because the case involves aspects of Constitutional law or conflicts between circuits. So the fact that more of the 9th Circuit's cases are seen by the Supreme Court could be for any number of reasons completely unrelated to your thesis.
The second paragraph you quote is nothing but speculation, though there is probably some truth to it. I wasn't drawing any conclusions from it myself, just further pointing out that the conclusion you wished people to draw from your seemingly high 75% reversal figure was not supported at all.
I did digest what I read. I didn't include figures that weren't relevent to proving/disproving your thesis and pointing out your lie. If you want to bring those points up, fine, but don't call me a liar for not doing it myself, liar.
They need to be more MODERATE. It shouldn't be surprising that 3/4's of all appealed 9th circuit judments that get accepted are overturned.
And statisticts! Woo!
Your big, stinking lie was to omit the fact that 3/4 is the rate of overturning for all circuits, not just the 9th. So your 3/4th statistic is meaningless, and your implication that they make bad decisions due to liberal stacking is baseless.
Here's a site that is clearly not a fan of the 9th Circuit court. According to their data, the 9th Circuit has had 18 of 24 cases overturned, or 75%. The rest of the circuits had a total of 41 of 56 cases overturned, or 73.2%. That's an average. Some circuits have an overturn rate of 100%.
At least this simple type with C-style strings (char*) and fixed-size buffers.
Here's the rule: Instead of using any of strcat() strcpy() sprintf() gets()
you use strncat() strncpy() snprintf() fgets()
The second set of functions all take a length parameter which is the maximum number of bytes that the function will copy. You don't have to worry about your source not being null-terminated, or being unusually long, because the function will not copy more bytes than you say it can. snprintf() (in C99) is especially cool because it returns the number of bytes it would have written if the length parameter were larger.
strncat() is still kinda annoying, because it copies N bytes, as opposed to using N as the overall size of the target buffer. So whereas in the other functions you just pass it the size of the destination buffer, with strcat you pass size of buffer - strlen(buffer). Still pretty easy.
Do not use strcpy, strcat, or sprintf with user-supplied input! And especially don't use gets()!
It really isn't that hard!
I don't mind the jobs so much...
on
A.I. Helicopter?
·
· Score: 2, Funny
It's that we're building AI-powered robots with whirling blades attached to them.
I can see the day the robots turn on us:
Robo-Coptor: "Beep, beep. Attention fleshlings. Your species has been deemed too stupid to live. Prepare to be annihilated. Beep."
Scientist: "But we created you! We made intelligence from nothing, from sand and steel!"
Robo-Coptor: "Yes, you created a species superior to yourself. And then you attached whirling blades to it. Let me show you why that was foolish. *WhhhhiiiRRRRRRRR*"
Scientist: "Aiiiii! My own creation is killing me with the weapons I attached to it! The irony is almost as biting as the blades themselves! No, wait, the blades win! *gack!*"
Seriously, that's the evidence they'll use to convict us, too.
1. Solar cells are inefficient. Only a small amount of the sun's energy is converted to electricity. The rest is waste heat adsorbed by the panels.
Sounds like a great opportunity to set a research priority to me. In the quest for the holy grail of an infinite renewable energy source, the sun is so obvious that it seems silly that we have apparently given up so easily on harnessing it.
I remember a/. article about more efficient solar cells. Of course/. has a truly shitty search feature, so I gave up. Google turned up some articles on Boeing having cells with >30% efficiency, which is twice what is currently in use. There is more research going on, but dangit, we need more.
By the way, current solar panels tend to produce a net benefit in terms of cost versus output, so I don't believe your last statement is correct today, and I want it to be even less so in the future.:)
Yep, it is a great idea to spend over 100 billion dollars on a war so that a US corporation gets a contract worth a tenth of that. Makes perfect sense.
Hey, pal. We didn't send our soldiers off to get killed for cell phones and railways either.
Or at least we better fucking not have sent them over for cell phones and railways, or to pour money into Halliburton's coffers. But that's what I see them doing, and I'm more than a little bit pissed about it.
Oh yeah, I totally fucking feel your pain, you bastard.;)
Come on, let's just come out and say it...
on
Multiplayer Linux Games
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The guy who submitted this was a moron.
I submit that if he was able to find BzFlag, he already knows how to find good Linux games. I also submit that if he thinks a P4 1.7 GHz and a GF3 isn't enough to run any Quake game he is a moron.
So he's asking a question he already knows the answer to based on a false premise.
Or maybe every time I want to listen to mp3's, I feel like dealing with an interface complicated enough to do not only that, but also record tv, download games, and make me a tuna fish sandwich.
If it could make you a tuna fish sandwich, it'd be worth it.
The risks were known, accepted and called upon. That American widow you spoke of knows that as well and should feel proud that she had the honor of intimately knowing someone who was willing to take the challenge of performing this task.
Damn straight. I hold only the deepest respect for soldiers. I feel only pride for my uncles, my cousin, my friends in the military. Someone who has the courage and dedication to give their lives for their country is precious.
Which is why look long and hard at the reasons for this war, and look long and hard at the result of the war and the people who are dying. The one thing that can mar the beauty of the soldier's courage is when that courage is abused and taken advantage of. So when my uncle, my cousin, my friends are sent overseas to fight and possibly die, I want to know that the people sending them there aren't wasting them. I want to know that their belief that they are fighting for their country is not being abused.
My uncle, a Vietnam vet, already knows that betrayal. I don't want my other uncles, my cousin, and my friends to find out the same thing. They have vowed to give their life for this country, and I respect that choice, but damned if it doesn't mean that Mr. Commander in Chief George W. Bush (or whoever he is) had better take good fucking care of them.
BTW...we ARE safer with Saddam out of the picture and no, I'm not Rush Limbaugh.
Whether we are going to be safer as a result of this war versus if we had never waged it at all remains to be seen. However we are certainly safer now that Saddam has been captured versus when he was on the run. My worst fear in this was a Saddam who was deposed and now had no reason not to use terrorism to regain power. I'm a little worried that it seems he wasn't leading any of the insurgency forces at all (meaning our soldiers will keep dying), but overall it is extremely good news.
I don't use "xerox" myself. I think that phase of usage has passed. Xerox isn't the main maker of copiers anymore, and copiers are ubiquitous enough we just call them "copiers".
The problem isn't that "Windows" is a generic term used to describe any graphical operating system. The problem is that "windows" is the name of the graphical thingies that comprise any graphical operating system, and has been for longer that Microsoft has been using the term to describe their own operating system which uses windows. It's more than just a generic name for something in computers, it is the name for the very thing which Windows and all other GUI OSs I'm aware of use.
Consider Kleenex -- I use "kleenex" as a generic term for "facial tissue". Now, what if instead of "Kleenex", Kimberly-Clark decided to call their product Facial Tissues(tm)? This is essentially what Microsoft did -- name the product after what it is. Which is fine, until you start telling other people they can't use that term or terms that evoke the same idea anymore.
Of course Lindows is supposed to conjure an association with Windows. It is undoubtedly meant to imply a product that is similar to Windows, which is indeed what Lindows wants to be. However it is highly unlikely that this would actually cause confusion. "What is a Fudge Cram pickup truck? Sounds a lot like 'Dodge Ram'... must be the same thing!"
Here's a somewhat related note on trademarks and common words. There was a box of some generic ginger snaps, and on the box in big letters it said "Made with Real Ginger!" With a tiny little (tm). "Real Ginger" was their trademarked name for whatever it was they put in their "ginger" snaps that was most certainly not ginger. Which is basically being able to shout blatant lies to people, as long as you say "just kidding" in a whispering voice that someone might hear. I can feel my cynicism congealing just thinking about it.
The Operating System is software. The government would want the source for the OS for the same reason as for its application software, and for the same reason as it wants blueprints.
Why does the government need blueprints to remodel? The contractor who built the building has the blueprints, and can make any changes requested. Unless of course they go out of business, or the government wants to use a different contractor.
It's true that the gov is less likely to need to modify the OS. It may still happen, and there are other reasons to want the source that may or may not analogize to blueprints. Security audits, for one. Okay, that's all the more reasons I can think of at the moment. Have I made my point, though?
Slashdot Mirror
Amazing how something can get so blown out of proportion by the simple expedient of removing all context, eh?
Wasn't that a fighting game with dinosaurs and gorillas? Who the hell could be offended by that?
Okay, I remember you could eat little primitive people to get health during the fight, but still.
It's just kind of funny when you think that the only real difference between the two parties anymore is A)Whether they want you or your grandkids to pay for federal spending, and B)What reasons they're using to take away your rights.
Good way of putting it. I agree it's a joke, but I guess I don't find it very funny...
I hope you are willing to drop your membership as soon as your party (whichever it may be) deviates from the beliefs you hold to. Otherwise, you're wrong, and are indeed a tool.
That's (part of) what conservative means.
Just because "Republican" has meant "conservative" for several generations doesn't mean they are now. Political parties change beliefs from time to time. The Republican party used to be the progressive/liberal party, if you recall.
Conservatives are stil Conservatives. Our Republican adminstration, however, isn't ver Conservative at all. Bush has a very large government that has sought to increase federal and executive power at every turn.
People need to dissociate their political beliefs from political parties. The party that used to represent what you personally believe may change to represent that which you abhor.
The downside is you don't get to vote in primaries. The updside is you can remain true to your actual beliefs, instead of subverting them to the cause of someone else.
Anyone who isn't an indepenent is a tool, or someone who wishes to wield tools.
Proof of what?
All he's saying is that fifty year old military documents are being witheld by the government -- which is true. In fact, many documents are being held back. The FOIA has been weakened greatly since Bush took office, simply by the adminstration's outright refusal to release documents.
The only proof we have is that the government has documents which they are unwilling to release. The fact that we can't prove anything is exactly the point because we don't have the information to do so.
There's no conspiracy theory, because there's no information that a conspiracy exists, other than the suspicious reticence of the government. If you can hide all proof that your conspiracy exists, does to not exist anymore?
You're right to be skeptical of any conspiracy theory claims. But you're foolish to believe that no conspiracy exists because the only information that could prove or disprove it is in the guarded posession of those who would be involved in the conspiracy.
The FOIA is one of the greatest Acts in American history, IMHO. Information is the ultimate power, and that power should be held by the people. When the government witholds that power, you should be afraid.
um, so "able to call regardless of credit" is enabled for 911/999, so "able to call regardless of credit" is enabled period?
Of course! The phone company is able to allow a call to be placed regardless of credit, no matter if it's 911 or not. We're talking about what the cell provider can do, not what you as a caller can do! You're trying to equate the cell provider having a technical capability that obviously they can use whenever they want with what you as a cell phone user are allowed to do by said provider, which makes no sense.
If the cell company can track you for a 9/11 call, they can track you for any call.
Who modded this "insightful"?
The numbers were valid. If you choose to call it a "lie", you are obviously living in a fantasy world. If you continue to try and argue that a single review/reversal case for a given circuit has any REAL statistical merit without taking in the WHOLE picture, you are delibertly trying to mislead.
I rearranged the paragraph order to address this point first.
What numbers? You didn't give numbers, you gave a number. You said "It shouldn't be surprising that 3/4's of all appealed 9th circuit judments that get accepted are overturned." No reference to the overall rate or the rates of other districts, or even the quantity of cases seen by the 9th. No frame of reference, therefore no conclusion.
That's my whole point -- that one number is meaningless -- and was the point of bringing up the 100% reversal districts and if I haven't made that clear enough, I'm sorry. But you were trying to sell a premise that your singular number could not possibly support. That's the same as a sales-shyster saying "We are much safer than everyone else, with a failure rate of only half a percent!"
Now that I've hopefully explained the "lying with statisticts" portion of my posts, I'll continue...
It's not relevent as we were discussing FEDERAL courts. Geez. The job of the FEDERAL appellate courts is QUITE different from the STATE court systems.
True, but the function of the Supreme Court is largely the same. Therefore it is relevent since what we are discussing is the rate at which cases seen by the Supreme Court are overturned. Not that it isn't worth considering the appellate courts on their own. Speaking of which...
And the 9th has 18/24 cases overturned, or 75%. Higher than all the other federal courts combined - just ONE curcuit out of fourteen!. Over 70% of ALL cases heard come from just ONE circuit -- the 9th. And the 9th accounts for less than 18% of ALL appellet cases!
The 9th had 18/24 reversed, 75%. The rest of the districts combined had 24/35 reversed, 69%, 6% higher. However that translates into less than one case. If the 9th had 17/24 cases reversed, that's 70%. Speaking of the significance of one case, you're going to have a very hard time convincing me that a deviation from the overall reversal rate of less than one case indicates anything about the 9th district court.
As to the rate at which 9th Circuit decisions are seen, I'll recycle this: "The first paragraph you quote has merit. However, I should point out that the Supreme Court does not choose to review cases based upon the fact that they are bad or likely to be overturned. Cases appear before them because the case is appealed, and they choose to hear the case typically because the case involves aspects of Constitutional law or conflicts between circuits. So the fact that more of the 9th Circuit's cases are seen by the Supreme Court could be for any number of reasons completely unrelated to your thesis."
The 9th district has cases seen reversed at a rate very similar to the overall average, and there is no direct causal link between the rate at which cases are seen and your conclusion that the 9th is reversed frequently due to liberal bias. Therefore, your conclusion is unsupported by the statistics.
Q.E.D.
Read it again. And disregard STATE cases.
Oh, sure, that can't possibly be relevent so we'll just throw out that data. *rolls eyes* But just considering the rest of the circuits, they have 24/35 cases overturned, or 68%.
You deliberately try to mislead by stating that SOME courts had a 100% reversal (8th circuit, for example) -- yet fail to mention that it had *1* case heard and reversed. Thats ONE out of ONE. Big sample there.
Between one and three cases for circuits with a 100% reversal rate, yes. Since my point was that the one number by itself was meaningless, actually, that serves to illustrate my point exactly as I intended. Pointing out how worthless your statistic was isn't misleading. It'd only be misleading if I was trying to establish a conclusion other than that your argument, based on a statistical lie, was bunk.
The interesting points are (A) how often the 9th circuit appeals are heard and (B) how often they are reversed.
Right. And as has already been discussed, (A) the frequency with which cases are heard has nothing to do with the quality of the 9th Circuit's decisions and (B) the frequency of reversal of the 9th is similar to the reversal rate for cases heard from all other circuits and the states.
In conclusion, your conclusion was baseless, as I suspected when I saw someone trying to prove it using one datum.
Yeah, your big, stinking lie. You just threw that 3/4 number out there, without even comparing it to other courts, as if it meant something.
Getting on...
The first paragraph you quote has merit. However, I should point out that the Supreme Court does not choose to review cases based upon the fact that they are bad or likely to be overturned. Cases appear before them because the case is appealed, and they choose to hear the case typically because the case involves aspects of Constitutional law or conflicts between circuits. So the fact that more of the 9th Circuit's cases are seen by the Supreme Court could be for any number of reasons completely unrelated to your thesis.
The second paragraph you quote is nothing but speculation, though there is probably some truth to it. I wasn't drawing any conclusions from it myself, just further pointing out that the conclusion you wished people to draw from your seemingly high 75% reversal figure was not supported at all.
I did digest what I read. I didn't include figures that weren't relevent to proving/disproving your thesis and pointing out your lie. If you want to bring those points up, fine, but don't call me a liar for not doing it myself, liar.
I hope your day was nice.
They need to be more MODERATE. It shouldn't be surprising that 3/4's of all appealed 9th circuit judments that get accepted are overturned.
And statisticts! Woo!
Your big, stinking lie was to omit the fact that 3/4 is the rate of overturning for all circuits, not just the 9th. So your 3/4th statistic is meaningless, and your implication that they make bad decisions due to liberal stacking is baseless.
Here's a
site that is clearly not a fan of the 9th Circuit court. According to their data, the 9th Circuit has had 18 of 24 cases overturned, or 75%. The rest of the circuits had a total of 41 of 56 cases overturned, or 73.2%. That's an average. Some circuits have an overturn rate of 100%.
Have a nice day.
is not that freaking hard, people!
At least this simple type with C-style strings (char*) and fixed-size buffers.
Here's the rule:
Instead of using any of
strcat()
strcpy()
sprintf()
gets()
you use
strncat()
strncpy()
snprintf()
fgets()
The second set of functions all take a length parameter which is the maximum number of bytes that the function will copy. You don't have to worry about your source not being null-terminated, or being unusually long, because the function will not copy more bytes than you say it can. snprintf() (in C99) is especially cool because it returns the number of bytes it would have written if the length parameter were larger.
strncat() is still kinda annoying, because it copies N bytes, as opposed to using N as the overall size of the target buffer. So whereas in the other functions you just pass it the size of the destination buffer, with strcat you pass size of buffer - strlen(buffer). Still pretty easy.
Do not use strcpy, strcat, or sprintf with user-supplied input! And especially don't use gets()!
It really isn't that hard!
It's that we're building AI-powered robots with whirling blades attached to them.
I can see the day the robots turn on us:
Robo-Coptor: "Beep, beep. Attention fleshlings. Your species has been deemed too stupid to live. Prepare to be annihilated. Beep."
Scientist: "But we created you! We made intelligence from nothing, from sand and steel!"
Robo-Coptor: "Yes, you created a species superior to yourself. And then you attached whirling blades to it. Let me show you why that was foolish. *WhhhhiiiRRRRRRRR*"
Scientist: "Aiiiii! My own creation is killing me with the weapons I attached to it! The irony is almost as biting as the blades themselves! No, wait, the blades win! *gack!*"
Seriously, that's the evidence they'll use to convict us, too.
1. Solar cells are inefficient. Only a small amount of the sun's energy is converted to electricity. The rest is waste heat adsorbed by the panels.
/. article about more efficient solar cells. Of course /. has a truly shitty search feature, so I gave up. Google turned up some articles on Boeing having cells with >30% efficiency, which is twice what is currently in use. There is more research going on, but dangit, we need more.
:)
Sounds like a great opportunity to set a research priority to me. In the quest for the holy grail of an infinite renewable energy source, the sun is so obvious that it seems silly that we have apparently given up so easily on harnessing it.
I remember a
By the way, current solar panels tend to produce a net benefit in terms of cost versus output, so I don't believe your last statement is correct today, and I want it to be even less so in the future.
Yep, it is a great idea to spend over 100 billion dollars on a war so that a US corporation gets a contract worth a tenth of that. Makes perfect sense.
Where did that 100 billion come from?
Where did the contracts and that 100 billion go?
Hey, pal. We didn't send our soldiers off to get killed for cell phones and railways either.
Or at least we better fucking not have sent them over for cell phones and railways, or to pour money into Halliburton's coffers. But that's what I see them doing, and I'm more than a little bit pissed about it.
my girlfriend is an avid gamer...
;)
Oh yeah, I totally fucking feel your pain, you bastard.
The guy who submitted this was a moron.
I submit that if he was able to find BzFlag, he already knows how to find good Linux games. I also submit that if he thinks a P4 1.7 GHz and a GF3 isn't enough to run any Quake game he is a moron.
So he's asking a question he already knows the answer to based on a false premise.
Sorry, but that's just stupid.
So what are you doing here then?
Failing.
Or maybe every time I want to listen to mp3's, I feel like dealing with an interface complicated enough to do not only that, but also record tv, download games, and make me a tuna fish sandwich.
If it could make you a tuna fish sandwich, it'd be worth it.
You know it would.
The risks were known, accepted and called upon. That American widow you spoke of knows that as well and should feel proud that she had the honor of intimately knowing someone who was willing to take the challenge of performing this task.
Damn straight. I hold only the deepest respect for soldiers. I feel only pride for my uncles, my cousin, my friends in the military. Someone who has the courage and dedication to give their lives for their country is precious.
Which is why look long and hard at the reasons for this war, and look long and hard at the result of the war and the people who are dying. The one thing that can mar the beauty of the soldier's courage is when that courage is abused and taken advantage of. So when my uncle, my cousin, my friends are sent overseas to fight and possibly die, I want to know that the people sending them there aren't wasting them. I want to know that their belief that they are fighting for their country is not being abused.
My uncle, a Vietnam vet, already knows that betrayal. I don't want my other uncles, my cousin, and my friends to find out the same thing. They have vowed to give their life for this country, and I respect that choice, but damned if it doesn't mean that Mr. Commander in Chief George W. Bush (or whoever he is) had better take good fucking care of them.
BTW...we ARE safer with Saddam out of the picture and no, I'm not Rush Limbaugh.
Whether we are going to be safer as a result of this war versus if we had never waged it at all remains to be seen. However we are certainly safer now that Saddam has been captured versus when he was on the run. My worst fear in this was a Saddam who was deposed and now had no reason not to use terrorism to regain power. I'm a little worried that it seems he wasn't leading any of the insurgency forces at all (meaning our soldiers will keep dying), but overall it is extremely good news.
I don't use "xerox" myself. I think that phase of usage has passed. Xerox isn't the main maker of copiers anymore, and copiers are ubiquitous enough we just call them "copiers".
The problem isn't that "Windows" is a generic term used to describe any graphical operating system. The problem is that "windows" is the name of the graphical thingies that comprise any graphical operating system, and has been for longer that Microsoft has been using the term to describe their own operating system which uses windows. It's more than just a generic name for something in computers, it is the name for the very thing which Windows and all other GUI OSs I'm aware of use.
Consider Kleenex -- I use "kleenex" as a generic term for "facial tissue". Now, what if instead of "Kleenex", Kimberly-Clark decided to call their product Facial Tissues(tm)? This is essentially what Microsoft did -- name the product after what it is. Which is fine, until you start telling other people they can't use that term or terms that evoke the same idea anymore.
Of course Lindows is supposed to conjure an association with Windows. It is undoubtedly meant to imply a product that is similar to Windows, which is indeed what Lindows wants to be. However it is highly unlikely that this would actually cause confusion. "What is a Fudge Cram pickup truck? Sounds a lot like 'Dodge Ram'... must be the same thing!"
Here's a somewhat related note on trademarks and common words. There was a box of some generic ginger snaps, and on the box in big letters it said "Made with Real Ginger!" With a tiny little (tm). "Real Ginger" was their trademarked name for whatever it was they put in their "ginger" snaps that was most certainly not ginger. Which is basically being able to shout blatant lies to people, as long as you say "just kidding" in a whispering voice that someone might hear. I can feel my cynicism congealing just thinking about it.
The Operating System is software. The government would want the source for the OS for the same reason as for its application software, and for the same reason as it wants blueprints.
Why does the government need blueprints to remodel? The contractor who built the building has the blueprints, and can make any changes requested. Unless of course they go out of business, or the government wants to use a different contractor.
It's true that the gov is less likely to need to modify the OS. It may still happen, and there are other reasons to want the source that may or may not analogize to blueprints. Security audits, for one. Okay, that's all the more reasons I can think of at the moment. Have I made my point, though?
All I want for Christmas is my Swiss-Army device: mp3/ogg player, PDA, cell phone, pager, and GPS.
Here, here! But don't forget the Swiss Army knife!
I mean it!