Sorry to burst your bubble, but the Declaration of Independence does not carry the force of law in this country.
How about the constitution? Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution guarantees that every state in the union has a Republican form of Government. In order for a state to even join the union, it must be of the Republican form of government.
You've probably heard this before, but did you notice the word republic... "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands..."
Perhaps you have, like many others, wrongly associated the word 'republic' with 'republican' and likewise, 'democracy' with 'democrat'
Because, as Plato pointed out over 2000 years ago, democracy is a dangerous thing.
It definitely is. A democracy is, simply stated, a majority-dictatorship. The framers and founders of the USA created a Democratic Republic, that is not a democracy but rather a Republic with liberty and choice. Our republic made up of the populus, voted democratically by the populus.
Many people misinterpret the US government as a democracy when in fact it is a democratic republic. One of the strenghts is that people are believed to have unalienable rights, rights given to them by their creator that cannot be taken away by any law. The point of this is not religious, but rather that no one can take away unalienable rights. Thus the formation of a body (the US goverment) to protect these rights, versus in the case of many systems (ie a democracy), a government that grants rights.
This is truly power in the peoples hands, rights that one cannot give nor take away, rights that we are created with. Thus the freedom we have is innate, not a privledge or amenity.
Yeah, mouse gestures are 'fluff' just like Palm's graffiti was 'fluff'.
You are correct, it is a hard arena to innovate in, and Opera is the only company I know that is actively innovating-- and at the same time making their product faster and less resource intensive. Voice recognition will be an optional feature, and will be quite useful especially for those who rely on non-standard accessibility features.
Many of the features opera has increase productivity and are downright addictive on the desktop, but guestures on mobile devices where you have no keyboard (such as a cellphone (with 'intelligent type' etc) or pda) are almost mandatory. Not to mention Opera's Small Screen Rendering (press Shift-F11 in opera to test it out) which makes browsing the web (ie, not WAP) actually possible.
You have to realize that Opera as a product is used on at least 7 different desktop OSs, several brands of Smartphones, PDAs, internet terminals/STBs, etc. Much of the so-called 'gimmicks' are a necessity for one of these other markets. The benefit to the Opera user is getting all of these features regardless of platform, and homogeneity of the product line (meaning Opera on Mac should have all of the features and a similar interface (barring OS/GUI differences) as Opera for Linux).
When they promote hatred against minorities, such as gays and lesbians, what they are doing is not constitutionally-protected speech, any more than shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theatre is.
WTF are you talking about? So-called "hate-speech" IS protected under the first amendment in the US. Most all speech is covered, including bomb-making instructions, paedophilia handbooks, etc. The oft-referred to "fire in a crowded theatre" example is almost cliche and ill-fitting. If we were talking about threatening speech, your point would be valid. Saying "I hate you" is constitutionally covered speech, but saying "I hate you and will slit your throat with a dull rusty butter knife" is threatening.
I myself do not approve of promoting hatred towards any such group, but I sure as hell support the rights of anyone to hate/dislike/loathe anyone or group of people they want. However, I generally think said people are misinformed, shallow, or otherwise inept.
Amen. I have owned several handsets and played with hundreds more in my quest to find the right phone. One of the things I loved about my older phones (qualcomm and nokias) was the efficient button layout and ease of use without looking.
Until recently it has taken me no time to get up and running with a new phone-- this has all changed. The samsung SCH-a310, for example, has a normal key layout but the tactile response is poor and its hard to feel the difference between keys when scanning with your fingers.
Nokia has been making some terrible design choices with their key layouts lately.. the first one I remember trying was the 3600 and the 3650. Recently they've been marketing the 3200's like crazy, which look like 1993 pager technology, albeit with a camera. I tried this one out thinking it might be easy to use, but its neigh on impossible to know what key you're hitting, then you have to make sure you hit the right SIDE of the key to get the correct number.
Now I know, after awhile you get used to it, and then when you get a new phone you need to unlearn what you have learned. But shouldn't the interface technology we use strive for ease of use and ergonomics instead of visual acceptance and clever button placement? I mean we could all be using Datahand ergonomic keyboards in the future, but somehow I doubt these new cell key layouts are for anything other than aesthetics.
"The major achievement of this project appears to be using somebody else's compiler to build a compiler that will compile the compiler."
I am not the biggest fan of C# or.NET and would rather see this community work together to design and specify a next-generation free and open standard for Cross-OS/Platform/Architecture "virtual machine" and language allowing for a single portable executable binary. I'd like to see RFC's and IRC conferences, papers being passed back and forth, live conferences and formal specifications.
For too long has the opensource community nipped at the heels of the closed-source technology leaders. It is time to innovate, time to design, time for change. I do think having an opensource C# compiler/framework/CLR is a good thing, but I believe this is only secondary in importance to having a truly free and open solution where all voices are heard and designs are not made to accommodate a particular OS's limitations or benefits.
Opera has more features than mozilla yet it is faster, uses less memory, is smaller (both download and install), and does what it does-- better.
Mozilla has some of the features I love from Opera (tabbed browsing, gesture support, to name a couple). However Mozilla copied these features from Opera, they were not the first on the block with them. As a result Mozilla's support for these features is lacking compared to Opera. Case in point: gestures. I have regularly had gestures crash mozilla, or make webpages inaccessible (or both!).
Opera innovates. Gesture support and tabbing are Opera first for the browsing world. Check out the 'quick download' feature on the transfers window. You paste a link there and it starts downloading automatically. Or the fast forward/rewind features. Say you're looking through a forum and you have to click on the message, click back to the thread, and click the next message repeatedly. With fastforward it only takes one click. With this feature you can be browsing through images on a webpage and click fast forward and go to the next image without having to go through all the other clicks inbetween. Opera has the "reload every..." option where I can have a webpage (such as slashdot) reloaded every so often automatically. Opera integrates a search toolbar into the app, with google as the default. This has been around for some time and keeps getting better with more search options such as low price search, ebay searches, and domain name search- all from the toolbar, quick and simple. Mozilla's FireFox app has taken the hint and added the google search idea. What innovative ideas has Mozilla brought to the table? I don't know of any this level but I'll bet we'll see these copied from Opera in a future version.
I have 10 pages open in Opera right now and 2 transfers going and its using 16MB of memory. I have one page open in Mozilla 1.6 (google) and its using 23MB of memory (same page in FireFox v0.8 still uses more (17.3MB). The Linux version of Mozilla is a 284% larger download than the largest version of Opera for linux (13.9MB versus 4.9MB).
Opera consistantly starts faster, renders pages faster, uses less memory, has awesome tabbing and gestures that work well, continues to innovate and support more platforms. This is the reason I pay for Opera.
Symbian may be the more open of the two, but GPL it ain't - does Linux now have an edge?
A better question would be, "Does Free Software have an edge?" (which could run on uCinux, etc).
What makes symbian a quality OS is not so much the kernel but the support infrastructure/libraries built up around it. The kernel is important as it is real-time, low-overhead, and provides power management among other things specifically for mobile devices. But the strength is in the libraries.
Symbian provides apps for a calendar, contacts, and documents/notes. They have (G)UI support built in. Symbian has extensive networking, multimedia (WAV, BMP, GIF, JPEG, etc..), and browser support ALL tuned for rapid deterministic execution with little dynamic allocation.
If GNU/Linux wants to be a player in the mobile market, then the community needs to:
A) Ramp up the RTOS features of ucLinux (now a part of 2.6.x) and encorporate driver support for things like GPRS, GSM, GPS, SMS, etc
and,
B) Develop an advanced suite of software libraries for developing low-footprint mobile systems consisting of (G)UIs, peripheral support, and data accessibility/connectivity.
I am currently unaware of any competitive (or any, really) GNU/Linux solutions for the mobile/cellular market (let me know of any that do exist). The kernel alone is not enough to move developers when such mature development platforms (ie, Symbian) exist.
Considering the fact that the companies using this technology are in the business of selling clothes, there is a large incentive to make people believe they will look good in said clothes.
This doesn't sound good for the consumer, since we're already being told how much we need this or how good we'd look in that, or how we can't live without some new gadget that does some menial task 'faster' or 'better' than ever before (but breaks 10x faster). We don't need a new technology to try and fool us into buying something that we don't really look good and/or feel good in.
I think I'll continue to actually feel the product in my hands and try it on to make sure it isn't a complete piece of crap, and I don't look like a complete moron in it.
PS/2 detects devices plugged in at BOOT time, so they are only required to be plugged in at boot. I hot swap PS/2 all day long as long as it was plugged in at boot.
Unless you have a complete POS pre-1994 packard bell mobo, you should be able to hot swap with no problems.
Good parenting is a major problem today. Good as in knowing where your kids are at all times instead of knowing how to find them by giving them a phone. Its time to stop letting every hi-tech toy replace being a quality parent.
The TV is the babysitter, the cell phone is the leash, and its not my fault when something bad happens to little... whats her name again?
Yes. The proper noun, "Ford" is a person's name. The inproper noun "ford" is a shallow enough spot in a river where you can cross.
Ford Motor Company was named after Henry Ford and NOT after the english word ford. Just because they are spelled the same does not mean they are the same word.
For example, homographs are words with the same spelling that have different meaning based on pronunciation. The word minute (as in 60 seconds of time) and minute (something that is very small) is a homograph.
However, the point is, individual's names used as a business name have special treatment by the legal system.
Me (calling local store): Do you have playboy?
Information: We have Playboy. We also have Penthouse, Hustler, Scat, and the Goatse ProctalPal calendar.
Me: TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT!@!!!11 PWND
Information: ???
= ONE MONTH LATER =
DirtySanchez34 (calling the same local store): Do you carry playboy?
Information: Yes.
DirtySanchez34: Do you have anything else like playboy?
Information: I'm sorry to inform you that I am unable to process to your request.
DirtySanchez34: Son of a bitch.
Information: Yes.
DirtySanchez34: What other "adult-oriented erotic magazines" do you carry?
Information: Did I catch the word 'playboy in there'?
DirtySanchez34: I hate you.
It seems to me that this case restricts free speech, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the very thing the courts are supposed to uphold (the Constitution). It seems like these days the courts are more concerned with trying to make law instead of interpreting and keeping the law and the actions of the executive branch constitutionally sound.
I read what you wrote, and dug a lot of it, but you didn't even mention diet. And for that, you lose some credibility in my book.
In my fervor to make my primary points I left out some points. Diet is of course a likely cause. It ties in with smoking and drugs as it passes toxins and, of course, healtful nutrients (and a poor diet can rob the child of essential nutrients required to synthesize certain proteins and enzymes) on to the developing child. I'm sure mothers who have their daily starbucks with a 4 shot cappuccino or eat nothing but fried chicken strips from McDonald's are harming their developing child. Your point is taken and appreciated.
No one wants to say it, if you've known many children AND adults with ADD/ADHD you can make a fairly valid conjecture as to the underlying causes.
#1 - Lack of dicipline.
Thats right. I grew up with several friends with ADD/ADHD, and met more in college. Problems at home ranging from inattentive parents and single parents to ones who believed that little sally or sam needed to think about their problem in the corner for five minutes of 'time-out'.
After this time-out, of course, they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Many of these friends had a license to be a dick. As soon as anything happened it didn't matter whose fault it, because the kid with the disorder was the victim.
Kids don't really want to pay attention in school, they want to eat play-doh, play outside, or get some play. Without any discipline they will do what they want to do more. Concentration is learned, and isn't a fun thing to learn. This is exacerbated by the fact that teachers cannot discipline children in any manner without fearing for loss of job and perhaps legal action. Even bringing up the issue with parents can be worrisome.
#2 - Lack of structure.
This ties in somewhat to #1. In college I met very bright individuals. One of them was there on a merit scholorship and got nothing but A's in high school. This person excelled in music, and everything they put their mind to. After the first year of school and very poor grades she went to a doctor and was diagnosed with ADHD. She went on ritalin and a myriad of other drugs and became a different person. A complete nervous wreck all the time. She flunked out of almost all classes.
Now many people might say well she was drinking and doing the college thing! Grades will go down obviously, right? What happened is she came from a very structured old-fashioned asian family who directed her in every way. She had always done well because she had structure. As soon as this was gone there was no way to focus. I'm talking about the inability to focus oneself willfully. The problem here was oversheltering parents. She should have learned at a much younger age how to become self-motivated and focus when the stress is high and there is a lot going on. You have to be able to make those choices yourself, and make the wrong ones at times to learn and grow.
Both of these causes reqiure getting your ass in gear. Either via someone kicking your ass, or by you picking yourself up off your ass, and ceasing to be, well, an ass. I'm not advocating violence, but drugging so-called disorders like these bring up more problems (such as drug addictions and repressing the initial problem).
#3 - Neurological Disorder
While most diagnosed cases fall into the aforementioned categories, I do concede there are legit causes of ADD/ADHD. This is most likely caused by problems during birth such as toxins introduced to the fetus (smoke, prescription and non-prescription drugs), or genetic defects by mutation, heredity. While a low percentage of cases truly fall in this category, I believe that almost none require drug treatment. There are many non-placating/mood-altering alternatives that benefit the overall body-health of a person than the commercially available and state-foisted choices currently offered en-masse.
We live in a very drug-centric society where a person sees more drug advertisements for depression in a day than there were depressed people during the depression. We want quick solutions for complex problems, problems that people used to have to just deal with. These days, no one wants to deal with your problems. It costs too much and takes too much time to figure out whats really wrong with you. In a time where time reigns supreme, with fast food, faster cars, and lightning fast downloads, a quick cheap but temporary and damaging patch-up is preferred to the real cure.
Re:Can't believe you're allowed to do this
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Cube House
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· Score: 1
There's a huge difference between enforcing political correctness within a private organization [...] and avoiding state-sponsored religious imagery in public institutions [...]
I agree.
Personal effects (say a tree at your desk, etc) are not state-sponsored, moreover, state-limited/-prohibited. What we are talking about is the stripping of personal choice, expression, and speech. And this is not limited to public institutions.
Can't believe you're allowed to do this
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Cube House
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· Score: 1
I honestly can't believe people are still allowed to celebrate Christmas at work. This is not a flame or troll but an observation.
At my roommate's work they aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas at work, they have holiday parties, winter festivals, and exchange holiday gifts (Don't forget to wrap them with holiday papaer and put them under your holiday tree decorated with holiday lights!). Someone asked at a company meeting if they could put up nativity scenes. The answer was a resounding no (and many people would agree work isn't the place for such a thing). However, when they asked if it was OK to put up a tree or some decorations they were told no because it might offend someone.
So I'm surprised you can put up a tree, presents, and decorate your cube with such offensive material.
No matter how you feel about Christmas (ie, religous/nonreligous), it is a fact that those bent to oppose it will remove it anywhere they see it. It first seemed like this meant all public places, but it has extended to private business as well.
Big deal, who cares, right? The problem is that if something as personal as someone's faith/belief/religion can be squelched from public and private life then it is only a matter of time before 'trivial things' are disallowed. Maybe you listen to 'offensive' music at work (on headphones). Maybe you want to read up on the latest 2600 or O'Reilly book but now you're labeled hackerish. Maybe you're a republican and work with democrats and its offensive to customers (or vice-versa).
Stripped of emotion, stripped of belief, stripped of thought, stripped of individualty comes the new generation of the Corporate American(TM).
Actually, I've been able to use GNU/Linux + X + some basic window manager with fast response times and low memory usage even on modest machines.
I routinely use my P133 laptop with 64MB of RAM with Sourcemage GNU/Linux, X, and fluxbox. I use Opera and dillo on there to browse the web, and it *is* browsable. (unlike using Mozilla which is slower than molasses, which I can't even compile on there (source based distro) because its too big and takes way too long (i did try)).
But my main point was that I use a computer to actually do something, not just tinker with the environment (not saying I haven't done it), and I'd like to get whatever I'm doing done in the shortest amount of time possible. That means the windowmanager and/or desktop environment will take microseconds to do their work and should feel instantaneous. That also means I want shortcuts and scripts to make my life easer.
Now, I love Opera's gestures and would not consider them a frivality (like the parent's opaque/bordered window moving issue) since they speed me up (less hand to mouse to keyboard), but at the same time I would want them disable-able.
Realistically, however, I can get much done with little (ie, a CLI). But, some tasks are better suited for a GUI (like web browsing). I guess it comes down to having the tools and the options available to you.
AMEN. Responsiveness in the (G)UI is incredibly important for me. If its slower than windows (95 era or 98lite micro) then I'll stick to the CLI. I want my alternative OS to be faster, slimmer, and more stable.
But then, thats a large reason why I don't use either GNOME or KDE. I stick with black/fluxbox, XFCE, or possibly windowmaker. Honestly, when I buy a hard drive for good seek times, fine tune my swap partition(s) and span them across multiple drives, use IDE/SCSI sw/hw RAID, and remove all but the necessary services and kernel drivers/modules-- I'll be damned if after all that I'm going to waste CPU cycles and memory on anti-aliased alpha blending of my skinned 'desktop environment' windows.
I'd like to actually use my computer, not just use my GUI. Choice is paramount.
Genetic neutering is not a solution, merely an attempt to cover one's ass. Its like wearing a bullet-proof vest over another one. Wow that shows a lot of faith in the first vest!
locked in...
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· Score: 0, Redundant
I'm surprised this doesn't come with Phoenix's DRM'd BIOS (aka 'trusted computing') to prevent booting or installing other OS's. This way AOL could really lock you in, possibly even limiting what other dialup networking and broadband connections you can install.
I'm surprised this doesn't come with Phoenix's DRM'd BIOS (aka 'trusted computing') to prevent booting or installing other OS's. This way AOL could really lock you in, possibly even limiting what other dialup networking and broadband connections you can install. Maybe the next logical step?
Slashdot Mirror
How about the constitution? Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution guarantees that every state in the union has a Republican form of Government. In order for a state to even join the union, it must be of the Republican form of government.
You've probably heard this before, but did you notice the word republic... "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands..." Perhaps you have, like many others, wrongly associated the word 'republic' with 'republican' and likewise, 'democracy' with 'democrat'
It definitely is. A democracy is, simply stated, a majority-dictatorship. The framers and founders of the USA created a Democratic Republic, that is not a democracy but rather a Republic with liberty and choice. Our republic made up of the populus, voted democratically by the populus.
Many people misinterpret the US government as a democracy when in fact it is a democratic republic. One of the strenghts is that people are believed to have unalienable rights, rights given to them by their creator that cannot be taken away by any law. The point of this is not religious, but rather that no one can take away unalienable rights. Thus the formation of a body (the US goverment) to protect these rights, versus in the case of many systems (ie a democracy), a government that grants rights.
This is truly power in the peoples hands, rights that one cannot give nor take away, rights that we are created with. Thus the freedom we have is innate, not a privledge or amenity.
I believe it is, "You can just go to the hot place," or perhaps even, "go to the place where Jesus would never be."
You are correct, it is a hard arena to innovate in, and Opera is the only company I know that is actively innovating-- and at the same time making their product faster and less resource intensive. Voice recognition will be an optional feature, and will be quite useful especially for those who rely on non-standard accessibility features.
Many of the features opera has increase productivity and are downright addictive on the desktop, but guestures on mobile devices where you have no keyboard (such as a cellphone (with 'intelligent type' etc) or pda) are almost mandatory. Not to mention Opera's Small Screen Rendering (press Shift-F11 in opera to test it out) which makes browsing the web (ie, not WAP) actually possible.
You have to realize that Opera as a product is used on at least 7 different desktop OSs, several brands of Smartphones, PDAs, internet terminals/STBs, etc. Much of the so-called 'gimmicks' are a necessity for one of these other markets. The benefit to the Opera user is getting all of these features regardless of platform, and homogeneity of the product line (meaning Opera on Mac should have all of the features and a similar interface (barring OS/GUI differences) as Opera for Linux).
WTF are you talking about? So-called "hate-speech" IS protected under the first amendment in the US. Most all speech is covered, including bomb-making instructions, paedophilia handbooks, etc. The oft-referred to "fire in a crowded theatre" example is almost cliche and ill-fitting. If we were talking about threatening speech, your point would be valid. Saying "I hate you" is constitutionally covered speech, but saying "I hate you and will slit your throat with a dull rusty butter knife" is threatening.
I myself do not approve of promoting hatred towards any such group, but I sure as hell support the rights of anyone to hate/dislike/loathe anyone or group of people they want. However, I generally think said people are misinformed, shallow, or otherwise inept.
Until recently it has taken me no time to get up and running with a new phone-- this has all changed. The samsung SCH-a310, for example, has a normal key layout but the tactile response is poor and its hard to feel the difference between keys when scanning with your fingers.
Nokia has been making some terrible design choices with their key layouts lately.. the first one I remember trying was the 3600 and the 3650. Recently they've been marketing the 3200's like crazy, which look like 1993 pager technology, albeit with a camera. I tried this one out thinking it might be easy to use, but its neigh on impossible to know what key you're hitting, then you have to make sure you hit the right SIDE of the key to get the correct number.
Now I know, after awhile you get used to it, and then when you get a new phone you need to unlearn what you have learned. But shouldn't the interface technology we use strive for ease of use and ergonomics instead of visual acceptance and clever button placement? I mean we could all be using Datahand ergonomic keyboards in the future, but somehow I doubt these new cell key layouts are for anything other than aesthetics.
I am not the biggest fan of C# or .NET and would rather see this community work together to design and specify a next-generation free and open standard for Cross-OS/Platform/Architecture "virtual machine" and language allowing for a single portable executable binary. I'd like to see RFC's and IRC conferences, papers being passed back and forth, live conferences and formal specifications.
For too long has the opensource community nipped at the heels of the closed-source technology leaders. It is time to innovate, time to design, time for change. I do think having an opensource C# compiler/framework/CLR is a good thing, but I believe this is only secondary in importance to having a truly free and open solution where all voices are heard and designs are not made to accommodate a particular OS's limitations or benefits.
Mozilla has some of the features I love from Opera (tabbed browsing, gesture support, to name a couple). However Mozilla copied these features from Opera, they were not the first on the block with them. As a result Mozilla's support for these features is lacking compared to Opera. Case in point: gestures. I have regularly had gestures crash mozilla, or make webpages inaccessible (or both!).
Opera innovates. Gesture support and tabbing are Opera first for the browsing world. Check out the 'quick download' feature on the transfers window. You paste a link there and it starts downloading automatically. Or the fast forward/rewind features. Say you're looking through a forum and you have to click on the message, click back to the thread, and click the next message repeatedly. With fastforward it only takes one click. With this feature you can be browsing through images on a webpage and click fast forward and go to the next image without having to go through all the other clicks inbetween. Opera has the "reload every..." option where I can have a webpage (such as slashdot) reloaded every so often automatically. Opera integrates a search toolbar into the app, with google as the default. This has been around for some time and keeps getting better with more search options such as low price search, ebay searches, and domain name search- all from the toolbar, quick and simple. Mozilla's FireFox app has taken the hint and added the google search idea. What innovative ideas has Mozilla brought to the table? I don't know of any this level but I'll bet we'll see these copied from Opera in a future version.
I have 10 pages open in Opera right now and 2 transfers going and its using 16MB of memory. I have one page open in Mozilla 1.6 (google) and its using 23MB of memory (same page in FireFox v0.8 still uses more (17.3MB). The Linux version of Mozilla is a 284% larger download than the largest version of Opera for linux (13.9MB versus 4.9MB).
Opera consistantly starts faster, renders pages faster, uses less memory, has awesome tabbing and gestures that work well, continues to innovate and support more platforms. This is the reason I pay for Opera.
A better question would be, "Does Free Software have an edge?" (which could run on uCinux, etc).
What makes symbian a quality OS is not so much the kernel but the support infrastructure/libraries built up around it. The kernel is important as it is real-time, low-overhead, and provides power management among other things specifically for mobile devices. But the strength is in the libraries.
Symbian provides apps for a calendar, contacts, and documents/notes. They have (G)UI support built in. Symbian has extensive networking, multimedia (WAV, BMP, GIF, JPEG, etc..), and browser support ALL tuned for rapid deterministic execution with little dynamic allocation.
If GNU/Linux wants to be a player in the mobile market, then the community needs to:
A) Ramp up the RTOS features of ucLinux (now a part of 2.6.x) and encorporate driver support for things like GPRS, GSM, GPS, SMS, etc
and,
B) Develop an advanced suite of software libraries for developing low-footprint mobile systems consisting of (G)UIs, peripheral support, and data accessibility/connectivity.
I am currently unaware of any competitive (or any, really) GNU/Linux solutions for the mobile/cellular market (let me know of any that do exist). The kernel alone is not enough to move developers when such mature development platforms (ie, Symbian) exist.
This doesn't sound good for the consumer, since we're already being told how much we need this or how good we'd look in that, or how we can't live without some new gadget that does some menial task 'faster' or 'better' than ever before (but breaks 10x faster). We don't need a new technology to try and fool us into buying something that we don't really look good and/or feel good in.
I think I'll continue to actually feel the product in my hands and try it on to make sure it isn't a complete piece of crap, and I don't look like a complete moron in it.
Look at the far right of the panorama... Thats not bedrock, thats the spinal column of an enormous alien life form that walked mars ages ago!
Unless you have a complete POS pre-1994 packard bell mobo, you should be able to hot swap with no problems.
Good parenting is a major problem today. Good as in knowing where your kids are at all times instead of knowing how to find them by giving them a phone. Its time to stop letting every hi-tech toy replace being a quality parent.
The TV is the babysitter, the cell phone is the leash, and its not my fault when something bad happens to little... whats her name again?
Ford Motor Company was named after Henry Ford and NOT after the english word ford. Just because they are spelled the same does not mean they are the same word.
For example, homographs are words with the same spelling that have different meaning based on pronunciation. The word minute (as in 60 seconds of time) and minute (something that is very small) is a homograph.
However, the point is, individual's names used as a business name have special treatment by the legal system.
No the name is a person's name, and companies named after individuals have certain special protections- just look up the McDonald's case.
Me (calling local store): Do you have playboy?
Information: We have Playboy. We also have Penthouse, Hustler, Scat, and the Goatse ProctalPal calendar.
Me: TRADEMARK INFRINGEMENT!@!!!11 PWND
Information: ???
= ONE MONTH LATER =
DirtySanchez34 (calling the same local store): Do you carry playboy?
Information: Yes.
DirtySanchez34: Do you have anything else like playboy?
Information: I'm sorry to inform you that I am unable to process to your request.
DirtySanchez34: Son of a bitch.
Information: Yes.
DirtySanchez34: What other "adult-oriented erotic magazines" do you carry?
Information: Did I catch the word 'playboy in there'?
DirtySanchez34: I hate you.
It seems to me that this case restricts free speech, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the very thing the courts are supposed to uphold (the Constitution). It seems like these days the courts are more concerned with trying to make law instead of interpreting and keeping the law and the actions of the executive branch constitutionally sound.
In my fervor to make my primary points I left out some points. Diet is of course a likely cause. It ties in with smoking and drugs as it passes toxins and, of course, healtful nutrients (and a poor diet can rob the child of essential nutrients required to synthesize certain proteins and enzymes) on to the developing child. I'm sure mothers who have their daily starbucks with a 4 shot cappuccino or eat nothing but fried chicken strips from McDonald's are harming their developing child. Your point is taken and appreciated.
#1 - Lack of dicipline.
Thats right. I grew up with several friends with ADD/ADHD, and met more in college. Problems at home ranging from inattentive parents and single parents to ones who believed that little sally or sam needed to think about their problem in the corner for five minutes of 'time-out'.
After this time-out, of course, they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Many of these friends had a license to be a dick. As soon as anything happened it didn't matter whose fault it, because the kid with the disorder was the victim.
Kids don't really want to pay attention in school, they want to eat play-doh, play outside, or get some play. Without any discipline they will do what they want to do more. Concentration is learned, and isn't a fun thing to learn. This is exacerbated by the fact that teachers cannot discipline children in any manner without fearing for loss of job and perhaps legal action. Even bringing up the issue with parents can be worrisome.
#2 - Lack of structure.
This ties in somewhat to #1. In college I met very bright individuals. One of them was there on a merit scholorship and got nothing but A's in high school. This person excelled in music, and everything they put their mind to. After the first year of school and very poor grades she went to a doctor and was diagnosed with ADHD. She went on ritalin and a myriad of other drugs and became a different person. A complete nervous wreck all the time. She flunked out of almost all classes.
Now many people might say well she was drinking and doing the college thing! Grades will go down obviously, right? What happened is she came from a very structured old-fashioned asian family who directed her in every way. She had always done well because she had structure. As soon as this was gone there was no way to focus. I'm talking about the inability to focus oneself willfully. The problem here was oversheltering parents. She should have learned at a much younger age how to become self-motivated and focus when the stress is high and there is a lot going on. You have to be able to make those choices yourself, and make the wrong ones at times to learn and grow.
Both of these causes reqiure getting your ass in gear. Either via someone kicking your ass, or by you picking yourself up off your ass, and ceasing to be, well, an ass. I'm not advocating violence, but drugging so-called disorders like these bring up more problems (such as drug addictions and repressing the initial problem).
#3 - Neurological Disorder
While most diagnosed cases fall into the aforementioned categories, I do concede there are legit causes of ADD/ADHD. This is most likely caused by problems during birth such as toxins introduced to the fetus (smoke, prescription and non-prescription drugs), or genetic defects by mutation, heredity. While a low percentage of cases truly fall in this category, I believe that almost none require drug treatment. There are many non-placating/mood-altering alternatives that benefit the overall body-health of a person than the commercially available and state-foisted choices currently offered en-masse.
We live in a very drug-centric society where a person sees more drug advertisements for depression in a day than there were depressed people during the depression. We want quick solutions for complex problems, problems that people used to have to just deal with. These days, no one wants to deal with your problems. It costs too much and takes too much time to figure out whats really wrong with you. In a time where time reigns supreme, with fast food, faster cars, and lightning fast downloads, a quick cheap but temporary and damaging patch-up is preferred to the real cure.
Personal effects (say a tree at your desk, etc) are not state-sponsored, moreover, state-limited/-prohibited. What we are talking about is the stripping of personal choice, expression, and speech. And this is not limited to public institutions.
At my roommate's work they aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas at work, they have holiday parties, winter festivals, and exchange holiday gifts (Don't forget to wrap them with holiday papaer and put them under your holiday tree decorated with holiday lights!). Someone asked at a company meeting if they could put up nativity scenes. The answer was a resounding no (and many people would agree work isn't the place for such a thing). However, when they asked if it was OK to put up a tree or some decorations they were told no because it might offend someone.
So I'm surprised you can put up a tree, presents, and decorate your cube with such offensive material.
No matter how you feel about Christmas (ie, religous/nonreligous), it is a fact that those bent to oppose it will remove it anywhere they see it. It first seemed like this meant all public places, but it has extended to private business as well.
Big deal, who cares, right? The problem is that if something as personal as someone's faith/belief/religion can be squelched from public and private life then it is only a matter of time before 'trivial things' are disallowed. Maybe you listen to 'offensive' music at work (on headphones). Maybe you want to read up on the latest 2600 or O'Reilly book but now you're labeled hackerish. Maybe you're a republican and work with democrats and its offensive to customers (or vice-versa).
Stripped of emotion, stripped of belief, stripped of thought, stripped of individualty comes the new generation of the Corporate American(TM).
Actually, I've been able to use GNU/Linux + X + some basic window manager with fast response times and low memory usage even on modest machines.
I routinely use my P133 laptop with 64MB of RAM with Sourcemage GNU/Linux, X, and fluxbox. I use Opera and dillo on there to browse the web, and it *is* browsable. (unlike using Mozilla which is slower than molasses, which I can't even compile on there (source based distro) because its too big and takes way too long (i did try)).
But my main point was that I use a computer to actually do something, not just tinker with the environment (not saying I haven't done it), and I'd like to get whatever I'm doing done in the shortest amount of time possible. That means the windowmanager and/or desktop environment will take microseconds to do their work and should feel instantaneous. That also means I want shortcuts and scripts to make my life easer.
Now, I love Opera's gestures and would not consider them a frivality (like the parent's opaque/bordered window moving issue) since they speed me up (less hand to mouse to keyboard), but at the same time I would want them disable-able.
Realistically, however, I can get much done with little (ie, a CLI). But, some tasks are better suited for a GUI (like web browsing). I guess it comes down to having the tools and the options available to you.
But then, thats a large reason why I don't use either GNOME or KDE. I stick with black/fluxbox, XFCE, or possibly windowmaker. Honestly, when I buy a hard drive for good seek times, fine tune my swap partition(s) and span them across multiple drives, use IDE/SCSI sw/hw RAID, and remove all but the necessary services and kernel drivers/modules-- I'll be damned if after all that I'm going to waste CPU cycles and memory on anti-aliased alpha blending of my skinned 'desktop environment' windows.
I'd like to actually use my computer, not just use my GUI. Choice is paramount.
Genetic neutering is not a solution, merely an attempt to cover one's ass. Its like wearing a bullet-proof vest over another one. Wow that shows a lot of faith in the first vest!
Maybe the next logical step?
I'm surprised this doesn't come with Phoenix's DRM'd BIOS (aka 'trusted computing') to prevent booting or installing other OS's. This way AOL could really lock you in, possibly even limiting what other dialup networking and broadband connections you can install. Maybe the next logical step?