...mini distros that have just enough and no more. Like feather or puppy or damnsmall or austrumi, which is my current favorite of the "small is beautiful" scene. They work well on older stuff. Austrumi in particular I think is well laid out and a nice selection of apps. Pretty boot up screen as well, frosting as it were.
With that said, I have FC2 with gnome desktop running fine on my PP200 with 224 megs RAM,this is my daily driver, and I could see as I added more RAM to the original factory config of 32 megs how linux got much better, I think at half a gig (don't know, just guessing really) is probably a very sweet spot if that is possible on your old machine, then maybe don't even use a swap partition at all. Mine was still a dog at 96, but that extra stick of 128 did the trick.
IBM doesn't have their own (readily apparent) brand of consumer grade ridiculously simple and cast iron linux to push. Well, because it don't exist is one reason. And they got out of the consumer PC business because they think it sucks profit to headache wise. They don't really need to advertise on TV the same way Dell does for instance to reach corporate customers who buy things in bulk and for upscale amounts of dollars. Now IF they had reemphasized their own PCs and made a major effort to keep pushing them, then yes, it would make sense then to have their own software, at least to try it again, but they got burned before in that market. That they do now makes them money when it's for a million buck sale (something like that), it loses them money bigtime when it's for every other hoo-man out there would maybe have a problem and need support, etc. At a corporate level at least they have a headstart that whomever they have to deal with at least is in a professional position and should know the bare minimum of "computing stuff", homeowners, nope, you can't even assume that bare minimum. They tried it with WARP and it failed it, so there ya go. Heck, I don't even like trying to provide tech support to ME for that matter, I ask too many stoopid questions of myself..."self, you know you need to do this "tweak this file and write some simple *script* thing nonsense,you read it on the linux intarweb, so which one and howtodothat and...". It's got to be a bear over the phone with a stranger who still don't know the difference between a browser and the OS and their ISP account...to a lot of people,millions of them out there right now, who all get computers and try to use them, those are still the *same things* in their minds.
1980 or so previously, worlds largest creditor nation, and manufacturing and agricultural production nation. Balance of international payments always in our favor. Most tangible real estate held internally as to valid "ownership" rights. All your examples remain valid.
Since 1980 or so, worlds largest debtor nation, manufacturing in serious decline, and just recently past the half way point where we now import more ag products than we produce, and increasily the "mortgage" is held by foreigners if you follow the food chains far enough up into the banking and lending world.
Whoops.
The examples are starting to change radically.
This is a new thing, so it's a tad premature to think the old model of US economic superiority is going to last and follow your historical graphing points.
My best guess is, as soon as various other nations and coalitions of nations no longer actually *need* to use US currency and can gracefully slide away, they will do so. When our last remaining export products are almost exclusively of primary military useages, or intangibles like so called software patent "products" or entertainment IP... well...that gets to be sorta weird too.
The only reason these outside nations and investors are "investing" back into the US at the rate they are now, which is humongous, is they can dump our own currency they have accumulated by the boatload back to where it came from, and do it now so this will be in effect a trade-in for them, magic beans versus the cow, they are getting the actual cow "real stuff", land, buildings, etc, or our own or our childrens future labor for these rapidly dropping in worth pieces of paper and digitised entries magic beans.
It is aparently happening now from all I have read and seen. Our currency and economy based on the old model of the US being the worlds number one tangible goods maker and exporter is no longer as valid as it used to be, not by a long shot. We are also rapidly approaching the point that we won't even be the worlds largest consumers either. and we are eating our seed corn when it gets down to actual ownership of things inside our own borders.
What might this mean? Eventually, comsing soon to a reality near you, little or nothing of any actual international importance to sell, no money of any actual international value to anyone else to buy their stuff.
That's the indicators right now. Not all the way,of course now, but that is definetly the trend and that could be graphed as well.
What that might mean for the US economy as a whole and for the people here (outside the trasnational jet setter circles) for the future is an imagination exercise. My bet is it will suck. I'd call our economy right now as being in a supernova stage right before it turns into a red dwarf. We'll see I guess, but I think we've been "sold down the river" bigtime.
...of corporations made up of all these people with families etc who lost all their jobs when just a few executives decided to close up the factory and move production to another nation actually voted or approved for that to happen. I'd really like to see some named examples of that occurring, all those little league dads and etc down working on the production floor or out on the docks approving having their jobs evaporate on them so "the corporation" could "increase profits".
That's one of the things wrong with corporations right off the bat, you have to identify all the people involved, just not some of the people. Leave out any humans in the mix, and you are working with skewed data. Money all by itself does nothing, "capital" does not work for you, it just sits there, it takes actual humans doing actual work to make anything of any so called "investment". These corporations get chartered inside a nation, yet no loyalty to that nation or it's people working for them, their original workers, is required to keep their charter in that nation. Foreign chartered corporations are allowed to come in and decide how to use or abuse citizens inside that nation. Uhh, why is that? That's just pure nuts really.
You could then get right into the political process and the whole mess of purchasing government,who can cut the largest check all at once to bribe their way in to get laws skewed to their favor. Or the phenomena that industrial cartels or "trade groups" are lawful everywhere, but "right to work" states with their "fire at will" laws make unionization efforts a moot point when it comes to practicality from the workers POV. They can move the jobs, but it's very hard for most workers to be able to adapt to that as fast or as easily by being able to move themselves and their familes of little leaguers someplace where their cost of living can drop to the level where the sudden "no check at all" can pay for normal things like housing, food, transportation, med care, etc. Show me anyplace in the US where even a single person can live on 5$ a day total pay without living in a cardboard box in an alley someplace, yet that's what the corporations can do in actual fact, force you to compete for your job at that level.
There's something to be said on both sides of the issue, I will grant that readily, but all in all the political and legal system is obviously heavily skewed towards the 1% of the population who own the most "stuff" now, buried inside a bewildering array of daisy chained and interconnected corporations, each layer designed to protect against accountability, identification of ownership, and to shield from any rational responsibility and totally ignored as to any "of benefit to society" as a whole. The other 99% of the population are left to pound sand. That isn't just empty rhetoric, it's modern reality. Here, I can give an easy to see exact example. EVERY study, poll, survey, etc taken in the last several years (that I have seen anyway) indicates quite clearly, with zero ambiguity, the huge overwhelming majority of the US people want to end illegal immigration, to close the borders down better and stop the invasion, because they can see it is more harmful than not. Yet, it still continues with useless babble at the government level. Wonder why that is? Could it be the top corporate 1% and their local wannabes in the corporate world profit from that,they pay off and control government to let the real laws slide in favor of picking and choosing what they want "enforced", as opposed to everyone else, who suffer in many numerous ways? Could it be just the bribed off and controlled aspect of corporations running the government that have allowed that to occur? That should be obvious to see anyway.
Anyhow, here's the challenge, like to see some examples where all the workers inside this corporation with kids in little league "voted" or "approved" to eliminate their jobs and send their jobs someplace else and put themselves into unemployment.
There is no practical difference between a written book or short story and a piece of code. Both take someone with at least some sort of minimal skills and on up from that point to sit down and type up various things in an unique sequence in some arbitrary language. And that's it. If a dozen people write the code it could become a big program, if a dozen people all write and collaborate on a project it could become a magazine instead of a novel, in other words, big hairy deal. If you accept software patents it should follow then you should accept patenting novels or magazines, and I think you'd find it hard to find many people who thought that wise.
Civilization and "creative progress" existed for millenia before this scam of patenting software itself got invented, and that's all it is is a paperwork razzle dazzle shuffle scam. It happened during the rough time span when the financial phony products "industry" grifters were running out of other paper product snake oil scams to milk people out of their cash for. Been an expensive elaborate joke and skim and put the con on consumers ever since.
All this valuable "software patenting" stuff creates so called "patented products" that don't even have a normal consumer warranty with them, another *obvious* scam and rip off, and you have no right to resell, dissasemble, zip, like you would if you bought an honest tangible patented product, acme vacuum cleaner for instance. I don't need to sign a "license" to resell my vacuum cleaner at a yard sale,or repay the same fee yearly. I don't need to worry about "violating the law" if I take a screw driver to it, I don't need a "license to vacuum", I am not forced to destroy the vacuum rather than reselling it. But, "patented software" all that applies to conversationally speaking. Sorry, you may have the slickest program in the world, but the second there's a patent attached to it it becomes part of an elaborate fraudulent congame.
Copyright-acceptable more or less, but patent? HAHAHAHA!
As to those middle man skimmers with their "capital", they existed for millenia also, the planet has always been infested with moneychangers, so be it, they'll find a way to weasel their way into some other easy money con without software being patented. -> "the hedged derivative shortly to the longwise reverse floating point waved bond share of your perpetual debt note" or some ridiculous babbling noise like that. Software patents are a variant on that scam, nothing more. The software can be good bad or mediocre quality, that ain't the point, the point is the patent part is a middleman skim dodge. Easy to see, too. Those black suited grifters have amazing imaginations when it comes to getting out of their own productive work and using someone else's, so don't you worry none about them, in china or any place else, coming up with some way to "profit", they'll think up a few dozen more ways before noon if you take software patents back away from them at 8 am.
hmm, first mr cheap shot coward with the insult, consume feces. Next. It's 2005 and I avoid most web overly agressive weasly advertising now and a ton of bogusness merely by leaving javascript off. It is really still that easy. No plug ins needed,no extra programs, etc nothing, other than to avoid using that security hassle. Leave it turned off. It's a rational choice that has immediate security benefits. ActiveX for folks on windows has similar serious security issues and so does JS, unless you are living in denial. If you can dispute that, let's see your 100% documented verifiable proof that JS is secure and is not used for malicious purposes. Both are decent ideas and can contribute just tons of functionality, I never disputed that,and I acknoledge that, just you get the bad with the good and which is more important is something everyone gets to choose for themselves, so webmasters should take that into consideration and not ignore the issue. Javascript IS a security problem and it can be annoying as hell with some aspects. It is all just not one or the other. If the world was all whitehats, it wouldn't matter, unfortunately it isn't and we have blackhats and overzealous marketing sleazoids. If you can dispute that as just raw data,well,just you go for it then coward weenie, and do it as a logged in user if you want any more replies.
I'll repeat it again, forcing your webpage visitors to use JS on your site, forces them to be surfing with it turned on when they go to the other sites they visit, and those can be new sites, where they don't know if the site is innocent or has bogus stuff encoded there until after you mash the link and go there. Your site could be innocent as the driven snow, but like you pointed out with your smarmy comment, it's not 95, and people use tabbed browsers today, surf fast and hard, and hit a lot of pages in a row sometimes, frequently dozens. So, Mr. Coward, which site in advance is all legit content, and which has adware, malware, popup and unders or other sorts of malicious script? How are you supposed to know, the psychic hotline? this "the web" thing has NOT ever self regulated itself, and there's just as many jerks as there are nice people on it. Catch 22 and it's one of the common ways folks get nailed all the time and you know it.
I'm still using moz suite browser on linux and I didn't get any popunders or anything with that abc interview. Of course I almost always have JS turned OFF as well, which is the single easiest thing you can do to improve security in general terms while net browsing if you ask me. I *detest* so many websites just insist you use it to navigate their pages though. It is useful but has too many exploitable aspects to it, the tradeoffs aren't worth it IMO.
..that I agree with, and that is the importance of voice recognition in the browser, or by extension the computer interface in general. I think that's the next "really big thing" with computing and whichever platform gets that working well will be hard to beat. FOSS folks ignore that at their mindshare peril. CLI to GUI to VUI is an obvious natural progression. Look, even StarTrek in the 60's predicted that, because it makes sense, that's still how humans communicate. I had a small program on Mac classic back in the late 90s that had the beginnings of that, it could open and close apps "computer, start netscape", and it was *spiffy* neat. I know it exists in some forms now, just needs universal recognition of it's importance. People will like this if it works, it will be adopted rapidly if some big place like MS pushes it and FOSS shouldn't be caught in a "me too" catch up attempt when that happens, and that means not if it happens. That should be emphasized now more than a lot of other things people get excited about. Just my opinion, but step back and see how much GUI just changed the entire landscape from computers only for a few people to 1000x as many in such a short time once it became available. GUI pushed the adoption of computers to this "the masses" guy just as much as price drops did. And VUI will do it too.
Sure it will, but you have to correctly identify what the main problem is and who has the problem.
You see, the globalists think of us as "resources", we are "human resources". We stopped being "personnel" quite a long time ago now, and this is very important, language has meaning, it is not random.
We are their "stock", their property, what they use to maintain power, control, wealth, to keep themselves at top of the food chain. They know they can't just overnight declare this,it would obviously spark a physical and violent revolution and one they would lose because they are so vastly outnumbered, so over a generation or so they have to use what is called "conditioning" to get us to accept our roles as "stock" to have enough of the population in full acceptance mode that the remainders-the "resisters" or "insurgents" can be effectively dealt with.
They advance on all fronts,every day,every day, using the time honored methods of incrementalism combined with the Hegelian dialectic of garnering a Pavlovian response from somewhat less intelligent creatures.
At first,to get this ball rolling briskly, those they demonise are universally viewed as "needing it", whichever new step is taken, as in this article. Vast majority of people would look at just this little tiny reference, and never bother to look at it in terms of the big picture, because they are ordered/conditioned not to. So, generic "bad guys" get the more draconian treatment first, and if they don't have enough legitimate badguys, it is *easy* for them to artificially create more, example, the war on some drugs.
But wait, what about "the children"? They are innocent, why must they be tagged?
See, if you can't immediately demonize to further the agenda, you must manufacture "threats" and nowadays all you need is a few high profile cases, mumble the word security"" and 99% of the parents out there will *eat it raw* having their kids tagged. They might not like it, it might make them uneasy, but between being overly scared and conditioned into thinking that "reistance is futile", they will in fact *eat itraw*, same as they have eaten any number of things raw that have to do with their children over the last 20 or so years, which is the roughh time frame when this really started taking off. This is an endgame scenario for them now,they are dramatically speeding matters up, because they finally have enough tech to pull it off. It is really that simple. They didn't have quite the correct kinds and amounts of tech, nor did they have enough conditioned people, conditioned from birth, or conditioned over a long enough time frame to affect an adult, but they now have *all that stuff*. And the kids and younger adults not knowing any better grow up thinking quite a few rather heinous aspects of their lives are "normal" because they have no other practical frame of reference.
It is much easier to keep controlling a population if they have been raised "controlled" in the first place. they won't even know it's been done to them, and anyone telling them otherwise, that "things" used to be quite different and a lot more free, is "an old kook" or something to them. They may intellectualise on it a little, but never really understand it, no more than a bushman may really understand what a wall street banker's world is like, or vice versa.
They want to get everyone acclimated to the idea that we must be like walmart inventory stock, you will need to always carry an "id" that is tagged, and your vehicle must also, in many diverse ways. Why, they need "taxes" and to be able to do "road surveys", so they need cameras on all the roads ane eventually rfid readers. And eventually, just follow it down, they will magically proclaim that just carrying ID "isn't working well enough, the 'terrorists and hackers' have discovered magical ways how to circuimvent a carried ID."
Then what comes next? This is an easy extrapolation. Hint: look what they do to all ho
that's the point, so many variables to the equation. You have anice rig, I have thought along similar lines for my next new machine, with a few design twists. We have modern boards and cpus that achieve what you have, with less energy cost, but what's the cost of buidling them new and trashing the old 486s in terms of pollution and energy useage, eespecially if they were still working? To build a new one plus deal with the older one, etc, it gets to be complex. Like is it cheaper for us and better for the environment to use the free car we have (literally free, boss gave it to us, nice old lincoln in ace cherry shape) and pay a premium in bad gas mileage (12 maybe), or trash it(eek! it's too cool!), pay monthly for a new better mileage car or light truck with much higher insurance rates to boot? Which actually requires less fuel over all and is a better cost savings and would result in less pollution? One is a no brainer, obviously free is cheaper, but after that, I wonder. We only maybe put on a couple thousand miles a year, if that. It's like not quite 40 miles a week normally, and that's it. We drive once a week in for supplies. Most likely it is better overall for us to just keep what we got.
Difficult questions, that's why it has to go on an individual case by case and choice basis, IMO, rather than governmentally mandated.
Here's how I think, an exact example. Years and years ago a bunch of my hippie buds were all going to go protest at seabrook nuke plant while it was being built. they asked if I wanted to go that day, I said naw, didn't think they were going about it the right way, etc, had a different thought. they went and protested, got on TV, joe and jane sixpack at the six o clock news got to see a buncha hairy hippies walking around during a work day protesting. Me, I stayed home and built a passive solar powered thermosiphon run room air space heater and sold it, later installed it. that's how I like to protest. I suggested to them at the time set up some alternative energy so they could SHOW the newsies how it worked, maybe run a few amps and have some rock playing, etc, something like that. Nope, signs and chanting. didn't work.
I like the "honey works better than vinegar" techniques better myself.
Solar isn't that expensive at entry level, I have about into mine what someone might pay for a decent but not top of the line PC game machine. We B Po', just pieced it out over time. I think you could still do a real barebones but still practical system for around a grand, that would be one panel, charge controller, desulphator, maybe an inverter and the batt or batts. Good enough to keep you online with during a grid outtage or run some things around the house all the time, small tv and some lights or whatnot,etc. It's just neat when you got your first rig up and running and making and using the juice. Cool stuff.
Thanks for the memory jog. I had heard of MARS before but had forgotten it, that reminded me. So, ya, is it still around? That seems a cheaper and workable solution rather than this satellite uplink to internet to skype to telephone phone whatever dodge.
what about star office -> open office? Isn't that sort of close to what you want?
But ya, I know what you mean. I'm not a coder, just a consumer, but I would be more than willing to pay good cash (not x -hundreds, but maybe x-couple/3 dozen dollars) for an OS (once a year, not 3-4 times a year scamola) that paid all the developers, was still open source, had fewer apps but all of them *worked* and if I had a question or problem still remaining, I could go post on their bulletin board and get an actual for-real honest informed reply, from a paid company person, that answered my question or resolved the problem or at least determined that it was in fact pretty close to impossible to be resolved. Tell me the truth in other words, I can live with it. I'm getting sorta tired of "yep, we gots us a real community volunteer effort and it's gonna be the bestus and it almost works, just you wait until the next release!!11!1" stuff.
There's an open source business model that might work to sell a real joe consumer desktop and still pay the coders. I'll pay for 20 really well written apps with extensive user accessible written in hoo-mann speech docs, said apps that work and serve basic normal computing functionality for this "the masses" guy (moi and probably millions more), but I am not going to pay for two hundred or one thousand "almost works" volunteer apps on 6 cds and a dvd plus download even more!, etc , including the no credible help even if they have a so called wiki or board or mailing list or irc channel. Nope. I used to believe that but not any more. Not prudent any longer. This is 2005. We have entered the "better work right now right when it's installed" era, not the "coming soon" era, that was LAST century.
Something to consider as well. I would bet any number of local to the families HAMS would be willing to give it a try to talk to Iraq, and that leaves the soldiers there with just coming up with some comms and freqs on their end. No idea on if they could use what their radio guys already have though, or the rules, etc, but it's a time tested method for point A to B communications.
Actually we just like to argue and call the other guy a numbskull. At least I think I read that in the FAQs someplace;)
Put me down for "all of the above", plus zero point vacuum energy and all the other schemes. I even think that has potential, along with atmospheric and ground based "natural" electricity. That's a biggee I never hear talked up and it should be. We are sitting on a huge spinning ball of molten iron that has a huge electromagnetic potential just hanging around mostly untapped, unlooked at, undiscussed. why I do not know. Maybe re-look at that, a la some tesla action.
I'm a "more power" kinda guy. We got new coal techniques that leave the coal underground and use this special bacteria to convert it to methane, easy to extract and pipe away and use in the existing natgas pipelines then. We got your nuclear batteries and somewhat better designed reactors. We got solar and wind (I got me some of that stuff). We got wood and cellulose to ethanol. We got algae that give off hydrogen gas. We got just using more insulation (still the best bang for the buck but not sexy enough to talk about usually). We got your geothermal. We got your biodiesel and making fuel from hemp a couple of ways. heck, for some cargo, they could bring back sailing ships with new dynaimc sailing designs for the long haul. Man, there's tons of solutions out there.
And so on and so forth and yada yada, I can probably rattle off another couple dozen if I think on it some and check a scosh and refresh me memories with google.
The energy solution is to use "all of the above" wherever it fits in the best. There is no one size fits all magic bullet solution. If tidal gennys work, I say throw em out there! We got umpteen millions of naked roofs with shingles rotting away on them, I say throw some solar PV up there, it'll add in. Stick a few megawatt wind gennys on every farms in the midwest, help the farmers out some and they help us out then, they got the land, we need the juice. Throw them tidal gennys off the coasts. Stick the hydropower back in and stop tearing down the old dams. Put the methane digesters in. Whatever. We been tallking about it too long.
The deal is, we can't wait for big money and bigger politics government to do all of it, we have it in our little grubby hands to all be part of producing energy, not just be total consumers and waste all our loot on stoopid toys and just kvetch about it all the time. I say it is every geeks civic duty to be the leader in their neighborhood and at least do something along these lines to get the ball rolling, just like we were the early adopters of computers and got that ball rolling.
You got "all the way" with making some energy personally, "part of the way" and "none of the way" to go with it. That's IT, three choices only that every geek gets to make on that question. "None of the way" is the only guaranteed "you fail it" selection, so everyone has a 2/3rds chance of making a correct decision..
thanks for reading and replying. I hope some of the "me too" distro makers decide to bite the ego bullet and decide to combine forces and produce a single unified "linux" that is slower to release but a lot more of this "rock solid" and functional, and then take strength of product and strength of lobbying pressure and get the vendors to carry it and they will in turn get the governments to stop being dorks about things. that's how the world works.
There's too many new and shiny wheels being invented that are trying to masquerade as the entire car, if that makes any sense.
Even if some of the already established major linux vendors would combine forces it might help. I can't put my finger on it exactly but I think this is a critical juncture for "linux" and if it doesn't start to standardize soon with "the community" and get it's act together that it will be relegated to a small handful of big hardware vendors who will do it for them, and they will then step back and wonder where that ten ton truck came from and why did they get run over by it. And by this I mean the "more weird IP laws and even wierder hardware laws", because if you stand up and put your nose to the wind you can smell it coming now, and it's stench is foul.
Anything new that is a struggle comes a lot easier if there's a reward associated with it, and the sooner the better. This is just a for instance, just look at the basic premise: does he like cartoons, that sort of thing, perhaps of his video game characters maybe? Tell him if he can draw a cartoon and insert the dialog, that you will publish it up on the WWW where he and all his friends can see it. Easy enough to do and a neat incentive for him to put forth a scosh more effort voluntarily. That's the key, learning cannot be easily forced, but it can be a lot easier accomplished if you *want* to learn. Any subject.
That might not be an exact premise to implement, but just follow that frame of thought, based on his strengths and interests right now.
oh well, I tried to be reasonable. And I don't think it's because you don't get it, you obviously do, you just have this idea that someone elses viewpoint and choice makes them an asshole, because it's not your choice. Pretty broadbrush viewpoint you have there.
If you can't see what's wrong with that,that negatively labelling someone else who isn't in lock step agreement with you, guess I feel sorry for you then, but only partially, because it's the restricted freedoms fascistic path you choose to follow. And fascism has always started with demonization, every instance I am aware of in history.
7/8ths or something of all the distros out there are now debian clones it appears on a casual glance at distro watch. The bummer is, it's tedious as all get out to try them all out if you are stuck on dialup and your burner has a mind of it's own and only works hit or miss. That leaves sending away mailorder for CDs, which gets old after awhile. Every time I try a new one, something else is broken it appears, given that I am referring to this "me" guy and "me's" personal machine, not any generic other posters experience. Example, I have a semi recent knoppix, ubuntu and mepis. Knoppix and Mepis dialout and actually give me an internet connect, which is my personal "killer app" and deal breaker, because I primarily use a computer for web surfing and listening to net stream radio, and that's about it. Ubuntu just sat there, and after hitting several evenings in a row trying to find out how to fix it and getting nowhere fast, that was it, that deal was broken. All three are debian based though, so one has to wonder.... but for joe schmoo next door,another random example, he runs wireless in his house and is interested in primarily SOHO business type things to do with a computer, maybe, so for him that stuff better be on the distro and work adequately or it's a deal breaker for him. And so on and so forth. And how many people as a percentage of the computer using population are going to go down the list of HUNDREDS of various distros to see which one works the best? Really? Safe to say some number less than 1%. So what do you do then, read a review? Reviews are BROKEN. Let's just admit reality, reviews cannot adequately address the issues faced by most people, because performance is so very random and hit or miss. Nature of the beast and all.
And people have a habit of jumping back in forth on posting reviews from speaking in general terms to speaking in personal experience terms,completely mixing them up in implied appearance, because it's extremely hard to do both. See, I just had to do it myself up above. You can't do it otherwise, it's impossible. For some people,joe reviewer or commentator, distro x works well,or so claim subset x fanclub, but the same exact distro installed on someone elses machine will work radically different from hardware issues and might have several broken apps,so then distro Y fanclub chimes in with "neener neener you lame luser, use our stuff and..." really, after years of reading this sort of thing it has gotten beyond silly..
In that sense, OS reviews on the internet in general are broken themselves, the entire "review" concept is flawed,there is no patch available to fix it, they can't really be reviewed adequately consistently or even fairly, the variables are just too huge.
This is why Mac has always been more consistent than not (obvious hardware/software integration at vendor/developer level), Windows is closer but always still hit or miss, and Linux is even further into hit or miss. I think it's safe to say that is a valid postulate. That's been my experience so far anyway and from everything I have read over the years. For real the only consistent way is for the OS, whichever one it is, is to come pre installed on hardware that the vendors tweak for the user in advance, at least to a point of near perfect useability within currently available software and hardware design constraints, then also applying the IP laws to it. It's a rough row to hoe otherwise.
With that said, I read the list of improvements that this company offers and it seems most decent enough, and you have to admit there's not a lot of ways around those propietary apps and licensing short of paying the money or not including them if you want to distribute in the US officially as a company. They have taken the only rational way for them to take on this issue. It seems like they are doing the best they can, ease of use/features/price. What else could a company do?
I think it would be better as reviews go to do the "OS review" thing based on one of the vendo
really..that the best you can do? They gonna take away your troll apprentice badge for that feeble attempt. So, uh...dude....mr anonymous coward, I drive various pieces of heavy equipment for a living. I terraform, dig it? I got chunks of machinery around here could *squish totally flat* one of those tiny trucks you are creaming over. OK, cool, they are nice as far as city boy trucks go, but that's about it. Those are near the size of the *smallest* truck around here. You need to try again on the insults. I don't play video games, I drive real things made out of steel that burn lotsa diesel and that weigh beaucoup multiple tons and I shoot real guns of the large caliber for sport, not imaginary space blasters in some jackoff kids computer game. Grow up and at least get a handle to post on slashdot or get a clue who you are posting to. If you think I am a yuppie, man, the expression is "wow, you must be new here".
Besides that, nice troll for an amateur, thanks for playing and no I don't mind responding even if it was a troll. All the points I made are still valid.
don't do drugs.Seen too many folks messed up from that noise, but I don't think it should be illegal or anything. I'm a personal freedoms kinda guy..
Also don't like seeing one nation dissed unfairly with a cheap shot. I'm as big a disser to the US as anyone when we deserve it, but to single out the US and imply that we are the only ones that inject politics into science deserved a sharp response.
Besides that, this is a casual post on slashdot, I replied in the spirit of good natured "well f u 2" that is commnon here;) No biggee man
...helps lead to a cooperative society, ie, "civilization". If we reproduced asexually no one would give anyone else the time of day let alone cooperate in much of anything, and we most likely would still be arguing over *tasty* carrion chunks as the height of our daily activities...oh wait, that IS what we do...never mind...
...to dictate/mandate by law/ what all peoples needs are, but be prepared for a pretty nasty rejection of that effort. Just because your needs a met with vehicle A, doesn't mean other folks needs are met with vehicle A, they prefer B, based on THEIR ideas of what is important to them or not.
That is a very slippery slope to go on once you start deciding for other people what their needs and wants are. You complain about people using a Hummer, swell, bet ya a quarter I could come to your house and see quite a few things you are personally doing that don't need to be done and cause pollution and for which alternatives exist, but guarantee you you wouldn't like being forced into changing by law.
Don't go there friend, don't advocate it on others, your way is the way of fascism, however well intentioned it might be. We are all individuals, we aren't clones yet.
I'm a big alternative energy enthusiast and advocate, as well as a long time environmentalist, but I will NEVER advocate throwing out our freedom baby with the bathwater of this years version of being politically correct. Never, not going to happen. You have a prius because there was enough interest in it to make someone build them and sell them, that's how it should be. You got to pick and choose a vehicle that suits YOUR needs. YOUR needs. It just might noit suit someone elses. I looked at the prius, it wouldn't serve mine as I would need something that could haul more weight and large articles. I would rather have one of the newer hybrid pickups coming on the market that also have a built in household voltage plug option to use the vehicle as a standby generator. See? Suits my needs much better, although the prius would get better mileage. If I had to choose, and my only options were a hummer or a prius I would have to choose the hummer, as it would suit more needs and wants, whereas with you it wouldn't. But I think it's GREAT it suits your needs and wants, and I heartily like to see modern engineering improvem4nts, to give folks CHOICE. See the difference yet? Don't try to take that human option away from others, don't even advocate it, that's a dangerous slippery slope to be on, IMO. Where would you like to stop? Mandate x-square feet per person in any residence as a maximum, make illegal anything else? How about clothes, you may only have two sets of clothes, style and design and color mandated by someone else. How about food, the calorie inspector comes by once a month and takes measurements and weighs you, determines what your proper diet is, and you have to fgollow that or it's illegal? Absurd, sure it is, just as absurd as mandating what people want for a ride or how to build their house or what they should wear for clothes or what music to listen to or....
Nope, we don't need to go down that authoritarian road any more than we have already. If you want to advocate like this "please consider getting an alternative vehicle, if you need a large one look into xyz model because..." and do it that way, it certainly comes across better. Just picking something out and telling that person they are evil because they aren't exactly like you with their choices is kinda bogus. And doing it by law is dangerous.
...that a photo of the sculpture was similar to quoting selected passages in a written text under the fair use doctrines. Of course you would have to actually _use_ that photo somehow in discussion/educational purposes anyway, but I think it would make an interesting court case. It wouldn't classify as a derivative work then, would it?
I understand the statutes, but I think they are overly broad and are subject to some challenges, especially in this case. If the artist has at any point made reference to it's reflective quality being part of the art he copyrighted, he would be on pretty shaky ground if someone elses copyrighted work was reflected in it and he didn't pony up a copyright licensing fee agreement with that person. He can't have it both ways.
So there's two potential court cases to try and get the law clarified or thrown out.
As to copyrights and patents, yep, I think the system is long broken and now should almost be scrapped and re thought out. Wouldn't bother me on iota to scrap it totally. Not for one second, I'd be all in favor of it. I really don't care anymore, it has gotten so far into the ludcrous range it's throwing good money and effort after the bad, better to abandon the whole idea. I would be fully in favor of redsigning it from the ground up, limiting patents to tangible objects only,no IP patents and no business process patents, and dropping copyright to just a few years max and having it be severely restricted as to how far you can go to restrict others around using it and as to what exactly you can "copyright" in the first place. If that means some folks make less money, or have to get alternative jobs or employment, still doesn't matter, the people who really want to create and be innovative have a built in drive to do so and will continue to do so, the ones who are just milkling the system will beforced into doing something more constructive and useful. Truely creative people will still create, we might suffer a temporary drop in things being copyrighted, but it would pick back up shortly when people realised it's just better to do it then not, creating new stuff I mean. The way we are headed now is back to the middle ages with restrictions and who can use technology or not. The **AAs want full use of technology so they can make copies and profit from it, yet want no one else to have that ability. They have no problenms ripping off people in other ways or just spewing out variations on a theme, ie, "the love story", the "action movie", etc. It is not all that new they are variations on what has already been created, that's it. Look at formula music genres, the same stuff, slight variations. whoppedy do, big deal. And yada yada, numerous examples out there now. This alleged "art" crap monstrosity. What a big fat joke. Like I mentioned, why shouldn't I copyright my "living sculptures" I create when I landscape, and have the law force people to pay me a fee for looking at it or taking a picture of it? It's like how far into absurdity are these "artists" and copyright doofusses and the lawyers and for mega profits corps going to haul this stinking "IP" carcass around anyway? It's already hit the ridiculous level.
A society shouldn't need everyone to have a personal lawyer on retainer tied to a leash following them around just to function, and we are *this close* to that point right now. When it gets there, right at that point, I think that it should be torn down with "extreme prejudice".
..and it's lead to a hundreds of billions of dollars industry that has no warranties for it's products, yet they insist on full legal protection for their products as regards "profits".
It's one thing to give away free software and ask people to be beta tester/users, quite another to charge serious folding cash and inflict that "no warranty" crap bogus "license", which is a license to be lied to and abused by these software corps and force people to pay for it. And I don't want to hear about "choice", that's a strawman, waltz into any generic mainstream computer store and they have peecess with software on them that you pay for, and there is no choice on that shelf, and people know exactly what I am alluding to, so I am not going to respond to any trolls who insist there's an alternative. Of course there is, you just have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get it, it's barely on the shelf buried deep down the dusty cobweb area if it's there at all, and most places it's not even there, and 99% of the computers sold have no warranty software "products" on them that come from a small number of monopolists who profit greatly from not having to put a warranty on their perpetual cash cow beta ware scribblings.
Enoughs enough, take away the training wheels and let paid-for software compete in the same arena all other products compete in, with a suitability of purpose warranty and a protection against defects warranty. Either that or stop charging money for it, one or the other. No other industry gets to get away with that noise.
SUVs are not bad, they are the result of quite a lot of evolving engineering that has revolved around peoples needs and wants. You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second? I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you? I think anyone with a gram of brains should own some, and if they don't they are evil and stupid. Whoops, sounds elitist doesn't it? I advocate people do, but I wouldn't say they are evil and stupid if they don't. I'm still on a computer that most slashdotters would chunk in the rubbish, an old pp200, yet it fits my needs enough I don't have to junk it or pollute to get a larger/faster/ more energy hog one at this second. That will change obviously, but everyones needs are different, yes? So what is "evil"? what's stupid really? Is it because it's just different? Glass houses and stones.
People will naturally switch to practical alternatives once they are, to use the expression, "on the shelf' for purchase. Practical is the keyword there. Some of the hottest best selling vehicles in the US are the hybrids now, including SUV hybrids that are just now hitting the market. You look at what is hot at the car shows, look at what is being demanded at the dealers. I'll tell you if you haven't looked, Hybrids are hot, besides in small cars like the Prius, they are coming in the SUV design and pickups, and new design high mileage cleaner burning diesels are hot and coming on strong in the near future, as well as the increasing interest in such things as biodiesel. Those are the two really large trends now you can readily see with a little research.
We are such a physically large nation that mass public transportation is not near as practical as in other nations, so we use roads and private vehicles more, just the way it is and no amount of complaining is going to put light rail to everyones doorstep or back yard mr fusion reactors in everyones aprtament or home. The tech and money isn't there yet for that. Neither. Nor would it even be remotely practical, that's why it isn't being done, there's little demand for it, because it just plain wouldn't work. It would be a humongously impractical polluting expensive lame idea to try and put some sort of light rail everyplace that humans need to go to.
We have "cars" of various types. that is what suits our needs in the US presently as a universal general concept in transportation. Primarily this is what we use. Those few areas and niche markets that absolutely can be better served by light rail or walking, ARE being served with light rail and walking right now, daily millions commute on light rail, IF it serves their needs, and everyone has different needs. When I lived urban I frequently took the commuter train, except when it didn't serve my needs, then I drove the approriate vehicle, or occassionaly rented a large truck, say when moving.
It's just how we socially evolved, and those sorts of SUV styled vehicles are practical for a lot of people, millions and millions of people. SUVs caught on because they are just a latter version of the old "family station wagon",just with even better features, and more useful features. These got popular because they filled a "needs" niche so well, people (a lot of people, not all but a lot) needed a "universal" designed vehicle that could function to get dad to work (a commuter vehicle), haul the family to the beach(a very large car or van to fit all the family and their gear), bring home the lumber and bricks and bags of cement for the back yard weekend patio project (some sort of truck), and etc. You can buy three specifically designed vehicles for those purposes, or one vehicle that covers all the needed uses. If you don't believe it, go to any Home Depot on the weekend and look at the parking lots. You'll see huge numbers of SUVs packed with stuff that would normally
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...mini distros that have just enough and no more. Like feather or puppy or damnsmall or austrumi, which is my current favorite of the "small is beautiful" scene. They work well on older stuff. Austrumi in particular I think is well laid out and a nice selection of apps. Pretty boot up screen as well, frosting as it were.
With that said, I have FC2 with gnome desktop running fine on my PP200 with 224 megs RAM,this is my daily driver, and I could see as I added more RAM to the original factory config of 32 megs how linux got much better, I think at half a gig (don't know, just guessing really) is probably a very sweet spot if that is possible on your old machine, then maybe don't even use a swap partition at all. Mine was still a dog at 96, but that extra stick of 128 did the trick.
IBM doesn't have their own (readily apparent) brand of consumer grade ridiculously simple and cast iron linux to push. Well, because it don't exist is one reason. And they got out of the consumer PC business because they think it sucks profit to headache wise. They don't really need to advertise on TV the same way Dell does for instance to reach corporate customers who buy things in bulk and for upscale amounts of dollars. Now IF they had reemphasized their own PCs and made a major effort to keep pushing them, then yes, it would make sense then to have their own software, at least to try it again, but they got burned before in that market. That they do now makes them money when it's for a million buck sale (something like that), it loses them money bigtime when it's for every other hoo-man out there would maybe have a problem and need support, etc. At a corporate level at least they have a headstart that whomever they have to deal with at least is in a professional position and should know the bare minimum of "computing stuff", homeowners, nope, you can't even assume that bare minimum. They tried it with WARP and it failed it, so there ya go. Heck, I don't even like trying to provide tech support to ME for that matter, I ask too many stoopid questions of myself..."self, you know you need to do this "tweak this file and write some simple *script* thing nonsense,you read it on the linux intarweb, so which one and howtodothat and...". It's got to be a bear over the phone with a stranger who still don't know the difference between a browser and the OS and their ISP account...to a lot of people,millions of them out there right now, who all get computers and try to use them, those are still the *same things* in their minds.
1980 or so previously, worlds largest creditor nation, and manufacturing and agricultural production nation. Balance of international payments always in our favor. Most tangible real estate held internally as to valid "ownership" rights. All your examples remain valid.
Since 1980 or so, worlds largest debtor nation, manufacturing in serious decline, and just recently past the half way point where we now import more ag products than we produce, and increasily the "mortgage" is held by foreigners if you follow the food chains far enough up into the banking and lending world.
Whoops.
The examples are starting to change radically.
This is a new thing, so it's a tad premature to think the old model of US economic superiority is going to last and follow your historical graphing points.
My best guess is, as soon as various other nations and coalitions of nations no longer actually *need* to use US currency and can gracefully slide away, they will do so. When our last remaining export products are almost exclusively of primary military useages, or intangibles like so called software patent "products" or entertainment IP... well...that gets to be sorta weird too.
The only reason these outside nations and investors are "investing" back into the US at the rate they are now, which is humongous, is they can dump our own currency they have accumulated by the boatload back to where it came from, and do it now so this will be in effect a trade-in for them, magic beans versus the cow, they are getting the actual cow "real stuff", land, buildings, etc, or our own or our childrens future labor for these rapidly dropping in worth pieces of paper and digitised entries magic beans.
It is aparently happening now from all I have read and seen. Our currency and economy based on the old model of the US being the worlds number one tangible goods maker and exporter is no longer as valid as it used to be, not by a long shot. We are also rapidly approaching the point that we won't even be the worlds largest consumers either. and we are eating our seed corn when it gets down to actual ownership of things inside our own borders.
What might this mean? Eventually, comsing soon to a reality near you, little or nothing of any actual international importance to sell, no money of any actual international value to anyone else to buy their stuff.
That's the indicators right now. Not all the way,of course now, but that is definetly the trend and that could be graphed as well.
What that might mean for the US economy as a whole and for the people here (outside the trasnational jet setter circles) for the future is an imagination exercise. My bet is it will suck. I'd call our economy right now as being in a supernova stage right before it turns into a red dwarf. We'll see I guess, but I think we've been "sold down the river" bigtime.
...of corporations made up of all these people with families etc who lost all their jobs when just a few executives decided to close up the factory and move production to another nation actually voted or approved for that to happen. I'd really like to see some named examples of that occurring, all those little league dads and etc down working on the production floor or out on the docks approving having their jobs evaporate on them so "the corporation" could "increase profits".
That's one of the things wrong with corporations right off the bat, you have to identify all the people involved, just not some of the people. Leave out any humans in the mix, and you are working with skewed data. Money all by itself does nothing, "capital" does not work for you, it just sits there, it takes actual humans doing actual work to make anything of any so called "investment". These corporations get chartered inside a nation, yet no loyalty to that nation or it's people working for them, their original workers, is required to keep their charter in that nation. Foreign chartered corporations are allowed to come in and decide how to use or abuse citizens inside that nation. Uhh, why is that? That's just pure nuts really.
You could then get right into the political process and the whole mess of purchasing government,who can cut the largest check all at once to bribe their way in to get laws skewed to their favor. Or the phenomena that industrial cartels or "trade groups" are lawful everywhere, but "right to work" states with their "fire at will" laws make unionization efforts a moot point when it comes to practicality from the workers POV. They can move the jobs, but it's very hard for most workers to be able to adapt to that as fast or as easily by being able to move themselves and their familes of little leaguers someplace where their cost of living can drop to the level where the sudden "no check at all" can pay for normal things like housing, food, transportation, med care, etc. Show me anyplace in the US where even a single person can live on 5$ a day total pay without living in a cardboard box in an alley someplace, yet that's what the corporations can do in actual fact, force you to compete for your job at that level.
There's something to be said on both sides of the issue, I will grant that readily, but all in all the political and legal system is obviously heavily skewed towards the 1% of the population who own the most "stuff" now, buried inside a bewildering array of daisy chained and interconnected corporations, each layer designed to protect against accountability, identification of ownership, and to shield from any rational responsibility and totally ignored as to any "of benefit to society" as a whole. The other 99% of the population are left to pound sand. That isn't just empty rhetoric, it's modern reality. Here, I can give an easy to see exact example. EVERY study, poll, survey, etc taken in the last several years (that I have seen anyway) indicates quite clearly, with zero ambiguity, the huge overwhelming majority of the US people want to end illegal immigration, to close the borders down better and stop the invasion, because they can see it is more harmful than not. Yet, it still continues with useless babble at the government level. Wonder why that is? Could it be the top corporate 1% and their local wannabes in the corporate world profit from that,they pay off and control government to let the real laws slide in favor of picking and choosing what they want "enforced", as opposed to everyone else, who suffer in many numerous ways? Could it be just the bribed off and controlled aspect of corporations running the government that have allowed that to occur? That should be obvious to see anyway.
Anyhow, here's the challenge, like to see some examples where all the workers inside this corporation with kids in little league "voted" or "approved" to eliminate their jobs and send their jobs someplace else and put themselves into unemployment.
There is no practical difference between a written book or short story and a piece of code. Both take someone with at least some sort of minimal skills and on up from that point to sit down and type up various things in an unique sequence in some arbitrary language. And that's it. If a dozen people write the code it could become a big program, if a dozen people all write and collaborate on a project it could become a magazine instead of a novel, in other words, big hairy deal. If you accept software patents it should follow then you should accept patenting novels or magazines, and I think you'd find it hard to find many people who thought that wise.
Civilization and "creative progress" existed for millenia before this scam of patenting software itself got invented, and that's all it is is a paperwork razzle dazzle shuffle scam. It happened during the rough time span when the financial phony products "industry" grifters were running out of other paper product snake oil scams to milk people out of their cash for. Been an expensive elaborate joke and skim and put the con on consumers ever since.
All this valuable "software patenting" stuff creates so called "patented products" that don't even have a normal consumer warranty with them, another *obvious* scam and rip off, and you have no right to resell, dissasemble, zip, like you would if you bought an honest tangible patented product, acme vacuum cleaner for instance. I don't need to sign a "license" to resell my vacuum cleaner at a yard sale,or repay the same fee yearly. I don't need to worry about "violating the law" if I take a screw driver to it, I don't need a "license to vacuum", I am not forced to destroy the vacuum rather than reselling it. But, "patented software" all that applies to conversationally speaking. Sorry, you may have the slickest program in the world, but the second there's a patent attached to it it becomes part of an elaborate fraudulent congame.
Copyright-acceptable more or less, but patent? HAHAHAHA!
As to those middle man skimmers with their "capital", they existed for millenia also, the planet has always been infested with moneychangers, so be it, they'll find a way to weasel their way into some other easy money con without software being patented. -> "the hedged derivative shortly to the longwise reverse floating point waved bond share of your perpetual debt note" or some ridiculous babbling noise like that. Software patents are a variant on that scam, nothing more. The software can be good bad or mediocre quality, that ain't the point, the point is the patent part is a middleman skim dodge. Easy to see, too. Those black suited grifters have amazing imaginations when it comes to getting out of their own productive work and using someone else's, so don't you worry none about them, in china or any place else, coming up with some way to "profit", they'll think up a few dozen more ways before noon if you take software patents back away from them at 8 am.
hmm, first mr cheap shot coward with the insult, consume feces. Next. It's 2005 and I avoid most web overly agressive weasly advertising now and a ton of bogusness merely by leaving javascript off. It is really still that easy. No plug ins needed,no extra programs, etc nothing, other than to avoid using that security hassle. Leave it turned off. It's a rational choice that has immediate security benefits. ActiveX for folks on windows has similar serious security issues and so does JS, unless you are living in denial. If you can dispute that, let's see your 100% documented verifiable proof that JS is secure and is not used for malicious purposes. Both are decent ideas and can contribute just tons of functionality, I never disputed that,and I acknoledge that, just you get the bad with the good and which is more important is something everyone gets to choose for themselves, so webmasters should take that into consideration and not ignore the issue. Javascript IS a security problem and it can be annoying as hell with some aspects. It is all just not one or the other. If the world was all whitehats, it wouldn't matter, unfortunately it isn't and we have blackhats and overzealous marketing sleazoids. If you can dispute that as just raw data,well,just you go for it then coward weenie, and do it as a logged in user if you want any more replies.
I'll repeat it again, forcing your webpage visitors to use JS on your site, forces them to be surfing with it turned on when they go to the other sites they visit, and those can be new sites, where they don't know if the site is innocent or has bogus stuff encoded there until after you mash the link and go there. Your site could be innocent as the driven snow, but like you pointed out with your smarmy comment, it's not 95, and people use tabbed browsers today, surf fast and hard, and hit a lot of pages in a row sometimes, frequently dozens. So, Mr. Coward, which site in advance is all legit content, and which has adware, malware, popup and unders or other sorts of malicious script? How are you supposed to know, the psychic hotline? this "the web" thing has NOT ever self regulated itself, and there's just as many jerks as there are nice people on it. Catch 22 and it's one of the common ways folks get nailed all the time and you know it.
I'm still using moz suite browser on linux and I didn't get any popunders or anything with that abc interview. Of course I almost always have JS turned OFF as well, which is the single easiest thing you can do to improve security in general terms while net browsing if you ask me. I *detest* so many websites just insist you use it to navigate their pages though. It is useful but has too many exploitable aspects to it, the tradeoffs aren't worth it IMO.
..that I agree with, and that is the importance of voice recognition in the browser, or by extension the computer interface in general. I think that's the next "really big thing" with computing and whichever platform gets that working well will be hard to beat. FOSS folks ignore that at their mindshare peril. CLI to GUI to VUI is an obvious natural progression. Look, even StarTrek in the 60's predicted that, because it makes sense, that's still how humans communicate. I had a small program on Mac classic back in the late 90s that had the beginnings of that, it could open and close apps "computer, start netscape", and it was *spiffy* neat. I know it exists in some forms now, just needs universal recognition of it's importance. People will like this if it works, it will be adopted rapidly if some big place like MS pushes it and FOSS shouldn't be caught in a "me too" catch up attempt when that happens, and that means not if it happens. That should be emphasized now more than a lot of other things people get excited about. Just my opinion, but step back and see how much GUI just changed the entire landscape from computers only for a few people to 1000x as many in such a short time once it became available. GUI pushed the adoption of computers to this "the masses" guy just as much as price drops did. And VUI will do it too.
Sure it will, but you have to correctly identify what the main problem is and who has the problem.
You see, the globalists think of us as "resources", we are "human resources". We stopped being "personnel" quite a long time ago now, and this is very important, language has meaning, it is not random.
We are their "stock", their property, what they use to maintain power, control, wealth, to keep themselves at top of the food chain. They know they can't just overnight declare this,it would obviously spark a physical and violent revolution and one they would lose because they are so vastly outnumbered, so over a generation or so they have to use what is called "conditioning" to get us to accept our roles as "stock" to have enough of the population in full acceptance mode that the remainders-the "resisters" or "insurgents" can be effectively dealt with.
They advance on all fronts,every day,every day, using the time honored methods of incrementalism combined with the Hegelian dialectic of garnering a Pavlovian response from somewhat less intelligent creatures.
At first,to get this ball rolling briskly, those they demonise are universally viewed as "needing it", whichever new step is taken, as in this article. Vast majority of people would look at just this little tiny reference, and never bother to look at it in terms of the big picture, because they are ordered/conditioned not to. So, generic "bad guys" get the more draconian treatment first, and if they don't have enough legitimate badguys, it is *easy* for them to artificially create more, example, the war on some drugs.
But wait, what about "the children"? They are innocent, why must they be tagged?
See, if you can't immediately demonize to further the agenda, you must manufacture "threats" and nowadays all you need is a few high profile cases, mumble the word security"" and 99% of the parents out there will *eat it raw* having their kids tagged. They might not like it, it might make them uneasy, but between being overly scared and conditioned into thinking that "reistance is futile", they will in fact *eat itraw*, same as they have eaten any number of things raw that have to do with their children over the last 20 or so years, which is the roughh time frame when this really started taking off. This is an endgame scenario for them now,they are dramatically speeding matters up, because they finally have enough tech to pull it off. It is really that simple. They didn't have quite the correct kinds and amounts of tech, nor did they have enough conditioned people, conditioned from birth, or conditioned over a long enough time frame to affect an adult, but they now have *all that stuff*. And the kids and younger adults not knowing any better grow up thinking quite a few rather heinous aspects of their lives are "normal" because they have no other practical frame of reference.
It is much easier to keep controlling a population if they have been raised "controlled" in the first place. they won't even know it's been done to them, and anyone telling them otherwise, that "things" used to be quite different and a lot more free, is "an old kook" or something to them. They may intellectualise on it a little, but never really understand it, no more than a bushman may really understand what a wall street banker's world is like, or vice versa.
They want to get everyone acclimated to the idea that we must be like walmart inventory stock, you will need to always carry an "id" that is tagged, and your vehicle must also, in many diverse ways. Why, they need "taxes" and to be able to do "road surveys", so they need cameras on all the roads ane eventually rfid readers. And eventually, just follow it down, they will magically proclaim that just carrying ID "isn't working well enough, the 'terrorists and hackers' have discovered magical ways how to circuimvent a carried ID."
Then what comes next? This is an easy extrapolation. Hint: look what they do to all ho
that's the point, so many variables to the equation. You have anice rig, I have thought along similar lines for my next new machine, with a few design twists. We have modern boards and cpus that achieve what you have, with less energy cost, but what's the cost of buidling them new and trashing the old 486s in terms of pollution and energy useage, eespecially if they were still working? To build a new one plus deal with the older one, etc, it gets to be complex. Like is it cheaper for us and better for the environment to use the free car we have (literally free, boss gave it to us, nice old lincoln in ace cherry shape) and pay a premium in bad gas mileage (12 maybe), or trash it(eek! it's too cool!), pay monthly for a new better mileage car or light truck with much higher insurance rates to boot? Which actually requires less fuel over all and is a better cost savings and would result in less pollution? One is a no brainer, obviously free is cheaper, but after that, I wonder. We only maybe put on a couple thousand miles a year, if that. It's like not quite 40 miles a week normally, and that's it. We drive once a week in for supplies. Most likely it is better overall for us to just keep what we got.
Difficult questions, that's why it has to go on an individual case by case and choice basis, IMO, rather than governmentally mandated.
Here's how I think, an exact example. Years and years ago a bunch of my hippie buds were all going to go protest at seabrook nuke plant while it was being built. they asked if I wanted to go that day, I said naw, didn't think they were going about it the right way, etc, had a different thought. they went and protested, got on TV, joe and jane sixpack at the six o clock news got to see a buncha hairy hippies walking around during a work day protesting. Me, I stayed home and built a passive solar powered thermosiphon run room air space heater and sold it, later installed it. that's how I like to protest. I suggested to them at the time set up some alternative energy so they could SHOW the newsies how it worked, maybe run a few amps and have some rock playing, etc, something like that. Nope, signs and chanting. didn't work.
I like the "honey works better than vinegar" techniques better myself.
Solar isn't that expensive at entry level, I have about into mine what someone might pay for a decent but not top of the line PC game machine. We B Po', just pieced it out over time. I think you could still do a real barebones but still practical system for around a grand, that would be one panel, charge controller, desulphator, maybe an inverter and the batt or batts. Good enough to keep you online with during a grid outtage or run some things around the house all the time, small tv and some lights or whatnot,etc. It's just neat when you got your first rig up and running and making and using the juice. Cool stuff.
Thanks for the memory jog. I had heard of MARS before but had forgotten it, that reminded me. So, ya, is it still around? That seems a cheaper and workable solution rather than this satellite uplink to internet to skype to telephone phone whatever dodge.
what about star office -> open office? Isn't that sort of close to what you want?
But ya, I know what you mean. I'm not a coder, just a consumer, but I would be more than willing to pay good cash (not x -hundreds, but maybe x-couple/3 dozen dollars) for an OS (once a year, not 3-4 times a year scamola) that paid all the developers, was still open source, had fewer apps but all of them *worked* and if I had a question or problem still remaining, I could go post on their bulletin board and get an actual for-real honest informed reply, from a paid company person, that answered my question or resolved the problem or at least determined that it was in fact pretty close to impossible to be resolved. Tell me the truth in other words, I can live with it. I'm getting sorta tired of "yep, we gots us a real community volunteer effort and it's gonna be the bestus and it almost works, just you wait until the next release!!11!1" stuff.
There's an open source business model that might work to sell a real joe consumer desktop and still pay the coders. I'll pay for 20 really well written apps with extensive user accessible written in hoo-mann speech docs, said apps that work and serve basic normal computing functionality for this "the masses" guy (moi and probably millions more), but I am not going to pay for two hundred or one thousand "almost works" volunteer apps on 6 cds and a dvd plus download even more!, etc , including the no credible help even if they have a so called wiki or board or mailing list or irc channel. Nope. I used to believe that but not any more. Not prudent any longer. This is 2005. We have entered the "better work right now right when it's installed" era, not the "coming soon" era, that was LAST century.
signed, joe consumer
Something to consider as well. I would bet any number of local to the families HAMS would be willing to give it a try to talk to Iraq, and that leaves the soldiers there with just coming up with some comms and freqs on their end. No idea on if they could use what their radio guys already have though, or the rules, etc, but it's a time tested method for point A to B communications.
Actually we just like to argue and call the other guy a numbskull. At least I think I read that in the FAQs someplace;)
Put me down for "all of the above", plus zero point vacuum energy and all the other schemes. I even think that has potential, along with atmospheric and ground based "natural" electricity. That's a biggee I never hear talked up and it should be. We are sitting on a huge spinning ball of molten iron that has a huge electromagnetic potential just hanging around mostly untapped, unlooked at, undiscussed. why I do not know. Maybe re-look at that, a la some tesla action.
I'm a "more power" kinda guy. We got new coal techniques that leave the coal underground and use this special bacteria to convert it to methane, easy to extract and pipe away and use in the existing natgas pipelines then. We got your nuclear batteries and somewhat better designed reactors. We got solar and wind (I got me some of that stuff). We got wood and cellulose to ethanol. We got algae that give off hydrogen gas. We got just using more insulation (still the best bang for the buck but not sexy enough to talk about usually). We got your geothermal. We got your biodiesel and making fuel from hemp a couple of ways. heck, for some cargo, they could bring back sailing ships with new dynaimc sailing designs for the long haul. Man, there's tons of solutions out there.
And so on and so forth and yada yada, I can probably rattle off another couple dozen if I think on it some and check a scosh and refresh me memories with google.
The energy solution is to use "all of the above" wherever it fits in the best. There is no one size fits all magic bullet solution. If tidal gennys work, I say throw em out there! We got umpteen millions of naked roofs with shingles rotting away on them, I say throw some solar PV up there, it'll add in. Stick a few megawatt wind gennys on every farms in the midwest, help the farmers out some and they help us out then, they got the land, we need the juice. Throw them tidal gennys off the coasts. Stick the hydropower back in and stop tearing down the old dams. Put the methane digesters in. Whatever. We been tallking about it too long.
The deal is, we can't wait for big money and bigger politics government to do all of it, we have it in our little grubby hands to all be part of producing energy, not just be total consumers and waste all our loot on stoopid toys and just kvetch about it all the time. I say it is every geeks civic duty to be the leader in their neighborhood and at least do something along these lines to get the ball rolling, just like we were the early adopters of computers and got that ball rolling.
You got "all the way" with making some energy personally, "part of the way" and "none of the way" to go with it. That's IT, three choices only that every geek gets to make on that question. "None of the way" is the only guaranteed "you fail it" selection, so everyone has a 2/3rds chance of making a correct decision..
thanks for reading and replying. I hope some of the "me too" distro makers decide to bite the ego bullet and decide to combine forces and produce a single unified "linux" that is slower to release but a lot more of this "rock solid" and functional, and then take strength of product and strength of lobbying pressure and get the vendors to carry it and they will in turn get the governments to stop being dorks about things. that's how the world works.
There's too many new and shiny wheels being invented that are trying to masquerade as the entire car, if that makes any sense.
Even if some of the already established major linux vendors would combine forces it might help. I can't put my finger on it exactly but I think this is a critical juncture for "linux" and if it doesn't start to standardize soon with "the community" and get it's act together that it will be relegated to a small handful of big hardware vendors who will do it for them, and they will then step back and wonder where that ten ton truck came from and why did they get run over by it. And by this I mean the "more weird IP laws and even wierder hardware laws", because if you stand up and put your nose to the wind you can smell it coming now, and it's stench is foul.
Anything new that is a struggle comes a lot easier if there's a reward associated with it, and the sooner the better. This is just a for instance, just look at the basic premise: does he like cartoons, that sort of thing, perhaps of his video game characters maybe? Tell him if he can draw a cartoon and insert the dialog, that you will publish it up on the WWW where he and all his friends can see it. Easy enough to do and a neat incentive for him to put forth a scosh more effort voluntarily. That's the key, learning cannot be easily forced, but it can be a lot easier accomplished if you *want* to learn. Any subject.
That might not be an exact premise to implement, but just follow that frame of thought, based on his strengths and interests right now.
oh well, I tried to be reasonable. And I don't think it's because you don't get it, you obviously do, you just have this idea that someone elses viewpoint and choice makes them an asshole, because it's not your choice. Pretty broadbrush viewpoint you have there.
If you can't see what's wrong with that,that negatively labelling someone else who isn't in lock step agreement with you, guess I feel sorry for you then, but only partially, because it's the restricted freedoms fascistic path you choose to follow. And fascism has always started with demonization, every instance I am aware of in history.
Have a nice life, pig.
7/8ths or something of all the distros out there are now debian clones it appears on a casual glance at distro watch. The bummer is, it's tedious as all get out to try them all out if you are stuck on dialup and your burner has a mind of it's own and only works hit or miss. That leaves sending away mailorder for CDs, which gets old after awhile. Every time I try a new one, something else is broken it appears, given that I am referring to this "me" guy and "me's" personal machine, not any generic other posters experience. Example, I have a semi recent knoppix, ubuntu and mepis. Knoppix and Mepis dialout and actually give me an internet connect, which is my personal "killer app" and deal breaker, because I primarily use a computer for web surfing and listening to net stream radio, and that's about it. Ubuntu just sat there, and after hitting several evenings in a row trying to find out how to fix it and getting nowhere fast, that was it, that deal was broken. All three are debian based though, so one has to wonder.... but for joe schmoo next door,another random example, he runs wireless in his house and is interested in primarily SOHO business type things to do with a computer, maybe, so for him that stuff better be on the distro and work adequately or it's a deal breaker for him. And so on and so forth. And how many people as a percentage of the computer using population are going to go down the list of HUNDREDS of various distros to see which one works the best? Really? Safe to say some number less than 1%. So what do you do then, read a review? Reviews are BROKEN. Let's just admit reality, reviews cannot adequately address the issues faced by most people, because performance is so very random and hit or miss. Nature of the beast and all.
And people have a habit of jumping back in forth on posting reviews from speaking in general terms to speaking in personal experience terms,completely mixing them up in implied appearance, because it's extremely hard to do both. See, I just had to do it myself up above. You can't do it otherwise, it's impossible. For some people,joe reviewer or commentator, distro x works well,or so claim subset x fanclub, but the same exact distro installed on someone elses machine will work radically different from hardware issues and might have several broken apps,so then distro Y fanclub chimes in with "neener neener you lame luser, use our stuff and..." really, after years of reading this sort of thing it has gotten beyond silly..
In that sense, OS reviews on the internet in general are broken themselves, the entire "review" concept is flawed,there is no patch available to fix it, they can't really be reviewed adequately consistently or even fairly, the variables are just too huge.
This is why Mac has always been more consistent than not (obvious hardware/software integration at vendor/developer level), Windows is closer but always still hit or miss, and Linux is even further into hit or miss. I think it's safe to say that is a valid postulate. That's been my experience so far anyway and from everything I have read over the years. For real the only consistent way is for the OS, whichever one it is, is to come pre installed on hardware that the vendors tweak for the user in advance, at least to a point of near perfect useability within currently available software and hardware design constraints, then also applying the IP laws to it. It's a rough row to hoe otherwise.
With that said, I read the list of improvements that this company offers and it seems most decent enough, and you have to admit there's not a lot of ways around those propietary apps and licensing short of paying the money or not including them if you want to distribute in the US officially as a company. They have taken the only rational way for them to take on this issue. It seems like they are doing the best they can, ease of use/features/price. What else could a company do?
I think it would be better as reviews go to do the "OS review" thing based on one of the vendo
really..that the best you can do? They gonna take away your troll apprentice badge for that feeble attempt. So, uh...dude....mr anonymous coward, I drive various pieces of heavy equipment for a living. I terraform, dig it? I got chunks of machinery around here could *squish totally flat* one of those tiny trucks you are creaming over. OK, cool, they are nice as far as city boy trucks go, but that's about it. Those are near the size of the *smallest* truck around here. You need to try again on the insults. I don't play video games, I drive real things made out of steel that burn lotsa diesel and that weigh beaucoup multiple tons and I shoot real guns of the large caliber for sport, not imaginary space blasters in some jackoff kids computer game. Grow up and at least get a handle to post on slashdot or get a clue who you are posting to. If you think I am a yuppie, man, the expression is "wow, you must be new here".
Besides that, nice troll for an amateur, thanks for playing and no I don't mind responding even if it was a troll. All the points I made are still valid.
don't do drugs.Seen too many folks messed up from that noise, but I don't think it should be illegal or anything. I'm a personal freedoms kinda guy..
;) No biggee man
Also don't like seeing one nation dissed unfairly with a cheap shot. I'm as big a disser to the US as anyone when we deserve it, but to single out the US and imply that we are the only ones that inject politics into science deserved a sharp response.
Besides that, this is a casual post on slashdot, I replied in the spirit of good natured "well f u 2" that is commnon here
...helps lead to a cooperative society, ie, "civilization". If we reproduced asexually no one would give anyone else the time of day let alone cooperate in much of anything, and we most likely would still be arguing over *tasty* carrion chunks as the height of our daily activities. ..oh wait, that IS what we do...never mind...
...to dictate/mandate by law/ what all peoples needs are, but be prepared for a pretty nasty rejection of that effort. Just because your needs a met with vehicle A, doesn't mean other folks needs are met with vehicle A, they prefer B, based on THEIR ideas of what is important to them or not.
That is a very slippery slope to go on once you start deciding for other people what their needs and wants are. You complain about people using a Hummer, swell, bet ya a quarter I could come to your house and see quite a few things you are personally doing that don't need to be done and cause pollution and for which alternatives exist, but guarantee you you wouldn't like being forced into changing by law.
Don't go there friend, don't advocate it on others, your way is the way of fascism, however well intentioned it might be. We are all individuals, we aren't clones yet.
I'm a big alternative energy enthusiast and advocate, as well as a long time environmentalist, but I will NEVER advocate throwing out our freedom baby with the bathwater of this years version of being politically correct. Never, not going to happen. You have a prius because there was enough interest in it to make someone build them and sell them, that's how it should be. You got to pick and choose a vehicle that suits YOUR needs. YOUR needs. It just might noit suit someone elses. I looked at the prius, it wouldn't serve mine as I would need something that could haul more weight and large articles. I would rather have one of the newer hybrid pickups coming on the market that also have a built in household voltage plug option to use the vehicle as a standby generator. See? Suits my needs much better, although the prius would get better mileage. If I had to choose, and my only options were a hummer or a prius I would have to choose the hummer, as it would suit more needs and wants, whereas with you it wouldn't. But I think it's GREAT it suits your needs and wants, and I heartily like to see modern engineering improvem4nts, to give folks CHOICE. See the difference yet? Don't try to take that human option away from others, don't even advocate it, that's a dangerous slippery slope to be on, IMO. Where would you like to stop? Mandate x-square feet per person in any residence as a maximum, make illegal anything else? How about clothes, you may only have two sets of clothes, style and design and color mandated by someone else. How about food, the calorie inspector comes by once a month and takes measurements and weighs you, determines what your proper diet is, and you have to fgollow that or it's illegal? Absurd, sure it is, just as absurd as mandating what people want for a ride or how to build their house or what they should wear for clothes or what music to listen to or....
Nope, we don't need to go down that authoritarian road any more than we have already. If you want to advocate like this "please consider getting an alternative vehicle, if you need a large one look into xyz model because..." and do it that way, it certainly comes across better. Just picking something out and telling that person they are evil because they aren't exactly like you with their choices is kinda bogus. And doing it by law is dangerous.
...that a photo of the sculpture was similar to quoting selected passages in a written text under the fair use doctrines. Of course you would have to actually _use_ that photo somehow in discussion/educational purposes anyway, but I think it would make an interesting court case. It wouldn't classify as a derivative work then, would it?
I understand the statutes, but I think they are overly broad and are subject to some challenges, especially in this case. If the artist has at any point made reference to it's reflective quality being part of the art he copyrighted, he would be on pretty shaky ground if someone elses copyrighted work was reflected in it and he didn't pony up a copyright licensing fee agreement with that person. He can't have it both ways.
So there's two potential court cases to try and get the law clarified or thrown out.
As to copyrights and patents, yep, I think the system is long broken and now should almost be scrapped and re thought out. Wouldn't bother me on iota to scrap it totally. Not for one second, I'd be all in favor of it. I really don't care anymore, it has gotten so far into the ludcrous range it's throwing good money and effort after the bad, better to abandon the whole idea. I would be fully in favor of redsigning it from the ground up, limiting patents to tangible objects only,no IP patents and no business process patents, and dropping copyright to just a few years max and having it be severely restricted as to how far you can go to restrict others around using it and as to what exactly you can "copyright" in the first place. If that means some folks make less money, or have to get alternative jobs or employment, still doesn't matter, the people who really want to create and be innovative have a built in drive to do so and will continue to do so, the ones who are just milkling the system will beforced into doing something more constructive and useful. Truely creative people will still create, we might suffer a temporary drop in things being copyrighted, but it would pick back up shortly when people realised it's just better to do it then not, creating new stuff I mean. The way we are headed now is back to the middle ages with restrictions and who can use technology or not. The **AAs want full use of technology so they can make copies and profit from it, yet want no one else to have that ability. They have no problenms ripping off people in other ways or just spewing out variations on a theme, ie, "the love story", the "action movie", etc. It is not all that new they are variations on what has already been created, that's it. Look at formula music genres, the same stuff, slight variations. whoppedy do, big deal. And yada yada, numerous examples out there now. This alleged "art" crap monstrosity. What a big fat joke. Like I mentioned, why shouldn't I copyright my "living sculptures" I create when I landscape, and have the law force people to pay me a fee for looking at it or taking a picture of it? It's like how far into absurdity are these "artists" and copyright doofusses and the lawyers and for mega profits corps going to haul this stinking "IP" carcass around anyway? It's already hit the ridiculous level.
A society shouldn't need everyone to have a personal lawyer on retainer tied to a leash following them around just to function, and we are *this close* to that point right now. When it gets there, right at that point, I think that it should be torn down with "extreme prejudice".
..and it's lead to a hundreds of billions of dollars industry that has no warranties for it's products, yet they insist on full legal protection for their products as regards "profits".
It's one thing to give away free software and ask people to be beta tester/users, quite another to charge serious folding cash and inflict that "no warranty" crap bogus "license", which is a license to be lied to and abused by these software corps and force people to pay for it. And I don't want to hear about "choice", that's a strawman, waltz into any generic mainstream computer store and they have peecess with software on them that you pay for, and there is no choice on that shelf, and people know exactly what I am alluding to, so I am not going to respond to any trolls who insist there's an alternative. Of course there is, you just have to jump through ridiculous hoops to get it, it's barely on the shelf buried deep down the dusty cobweb area if it's there at all, and most places it's not even there, and 99% of the computers sold have no warranty software "products" on them that come from a small number of monopolists who profit greatly from not having to put a warranty on their perpetual cash cow beta ware scribblings.
Enoughs enough, take away the training wheels and let paid-for software compete in the same arena all other products compete in, with a suitability of purpose warranty and a protection against defects warranty. Either that or stop charging money for it, one or the other. No other industry gets to get away with that noise.
SUVs are not bad, they are the result of quite a lot of evolving engineering that has revolved around peoples needs and wants. You don't NEED a later model computer to surf the net, you can surf just fine with a 486, but do you want to? Are you still on a 486 era computer, or are you driving something bigger/better/faster/fits your needs better machine right this second? I own solar PV and a wind genny, do you? I think anyone with a gram of brains should own some, and if they don't they are evil and stupid. Whoops, sounds elitist doesn't it? I advocate people do, but I wouldn't say they are evil and stupid if they don't. I'm still on a computer that most slashdotters would chunk in the rubbish, an old pp200, yet it fits my needs enough I don't have to junk it or pollute to get a larger/faster/ more energy hog one at this second. That will change obviously, but everyones needs are different, yes? So what is "evil"? what's stupid really? Is it because it's just different? Glass houses and stones.
People will naturally switch to practical alternatives once they are, to use the expression, "on the shelf' for purchase. Practical is the keyword there. Some of the hottest best selling vehicles in the US are the hybrids now, including SUV hybrids that are just now hitting the market. You look at what is hot at the car shows, look at what is being demanded at the dealers. I'll tell you if you haven't looked, Hybrids are hot, besides in small cars like the Prius, they are coming in the SUV design and pickups, and new design high mileage cleaner burning diesels are hot and coming on strong in the near future, as well as the increasing interest in such things as biodiesel. Those are the two really large trends now you can readily see with a little research.
We are such a physically large nation that mass public transportation is not near as practical as in other nations, so we use roads and private vehicles more, just the way it is and no amount of complaining is going to put light rail to everyones doorstep or back yard mr fusion reactors in everyones aprtament or home. The tech and money isn't there yet for that. Neither. Nor would it even be remotely practical, that's why it isn't being done, there's little demand for it, because it just plain wouldn't work. It would be a humongously impractical polluting expensive lame idea to try and put some sort of light rail everyplace that humans need to go to.
We have "cars" of various types. that is what suits our needs in the US presently as a universal general concept in transportation. Primarily this is what we use. Those few areas and niche markets that absolutely can be better served by light rail or walking, ARE being served with light rail and walking right now, daily millions commute on light rail, IF it serves their needs, and everyone has different needs. When I lived urban I frequently took the commuter train, except when it didn't serve my needs, then I drove the approriate vehicle, or occassionaly rented a large truck, say when moving.
It's just how we socially evolved, and those sorts of SUV styled vehicles are practical for a lot of people, millions and millions of people. SUVs caught on because they are just a latter version of the old "family station wagon",just with even better features, and more useful features. These got popular because they filled a "needs" niche so well, people (a lot of people, not all but a lot) needed a "universal" designed vehicle that could function to get dad to work (a commuter vehicle), haul the family to the beach(a very large car or van to fit all the family and their gear), bring home the lumber and bricks and bags of cement for the back yard weekend patio project (some sort of truck), and etc. You can buy three specifically designed vehicles for those purposes, or one vehicle that covers all the needed uses. If you don't believe it, go to any Home Depot on the weekend and look at the parking lots. You'll see huge numbers of SUVs packed with stuff that would normally