Here in georgia, you must take a print for a drivers license now*, and most banks have a print pad for cashing checks. All states will have it for DL's soon, it's the non declared but defacto national identy card. Internal passports will be next.
*I also suspect, really just suspect, they've been doing a closeup retina scan print during the picture taking part of the license, if that's possible at a distance of a few feet. I don't know, though. I can't prove it, but last time I got mine renewed it sure was suspicious, EVERYONE in the line had two pics taken, and I asked about it, because before for years and years it was "one snap, sorry, you're stuck with that one, move along now" and the lady state cop gave me quite a squirrely answer and looked chagrined about it, like she was embarrased/angry at the same time.
And I mean really, what a scam anyway, prints and pics at the OFFICIAL border crossings, yet they turn a blind eye to the MILLIONS who cross illegally, and it's not all "out of work poor hispanics" who cross over, there's all kindsa folks sneaking across. Tell me this ain't weird..
The whole "war on terror" stuff is being taken advantage of in this stealth coup that's been going on, IMO. Look at all the 9-11 government prior knowledge stuff that is FINALLY making the mainstream news the past few weeks.
... stop the nonsense of giving personhood to corporations and make every legal action be directed against named individuals. If every time a corporation had to go to court, and someone was facing a personal fine, not the company's money but their personal money, or staring at jail time, they would think twice or thrice about being crooks. This nutso artifical human named the corporation is too much of an insulation for the actual humans who make decisions.
IMO, microsoft has more than proven they are chronic serial liars and crooks,and that they will continue to be crooks no matter what, and because of that they should have had their incorporation revoked. That joke fine they got in the US of being able to print up their own fine-money-vouchers, was beyond obscene. Joe and Josephine average can't do that, no "corporation" should be allowed to do that.
the article also answers why....
on
Why PHBs Fear Linux
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· Score: 2, Interesting
... it's so apparent that the title "college graduate" doesn't mean as much as it should. The discrepancies I bet are the same in any number of disciplines. Over specialization -as the famous quote loosely goes- are for insects. And that degree in over specialization might indicate a severe lack of other skills, some of which are necessary in making a well rounded human, in any employment position. Example,these text books. OK, a requirement for that boss management degree, but really, none of these people ever go to a normal bookstore and walk by the magazine rack and see the linux magazines? None of them read any of the tech news sites on the net? I dunno, seems strange to me, but no more strange than all the people who can rattle off hollywood movies and the stars names, or their local sports "team" stars, but who cannot name their own US representative in the house. Part of our culture I guess...
Incidently, that was my impression watching the trump apprentice series as well. I don't watch very much television at all, but for some reason I was interested in that concept, so I've been watching it. All those young people with degrees (except one) and good paying jobs, but almost all of them seemed to lack quite a bit of real world common sense, and all of them had unreasonable expectations, IMO. I know it's stupid reality TV, etc, but still, that was the impression I got.
I like that idea a lot! Just expand on it easily. Menu *options*,and I don't mean emphasize "theming" and all that hoo-rah, the apps themselves, something like you get 3 choices a single click away, default-basic (one of everything basic, web, text reader/writer, media player, email client, chat client, etc), intermediate (more apps for different purposes, choices for each style of app),then power user with the entire kitchen sink in the menus, I mean every single last steenking teeny tiny app installed on the box.
I also think that every app should have an easy to read listing of WHERE all the files relating to the app are stored, so that if the user is confronted with having to go tweak into unknown land, they can at least find the file to tweak easily. That's the intermediate level that causes so much grief I think,(does for me anyway) going from pure point and click noob to intuitive command line.
.. with the other Sun news this week. Sun desktop at wallyworld, 200 mil desktops to china, etc. My guess is, sun is basing their plan on a couple of realities. They are FORCED to deal with microsoft in some manner at this time. And they are gambling that linux and their java platform will slowly start to gain serious inroads against microsoft, and that will FORCE microsoft to play ball with more-even rules, which is what everyone except microsoft wants anyway. They are also getting paid serious cash right now to take the only options they had available. Reality would have forced them into (probably) the same exact decisions and eventualities, now they just get some cash, too. It's not a perfect solution for them, but it's a *viable* solution with some gravy they didn't have before.
.... being smart and independent sorts, with matching egos usually, have resisted unionizing. This scheme of government should help to dispel the notion that that has been a bad idea. They need to organize, and like ten years ago. They will have power then, and can not only bring better code to market, but help fight this creeping big brotherism nonsense. Then they also won't have to put up with marketing and lamer bosses BS quite as much, they can insist that code be done properly, not sloppily. Business will bingo to the fact eventually that good code is better and cheaper in the long run, both from usability for the end users and profitability for the shareholders/owners standpoints. I don't code but I've read enough horror stories here from folks who's bosses insisted on unreasonable timelines and on shipping patched kludges as finished product, to assume that it's an endemic problem.
As to suing for bad code, if it's "for sale", why not? It's a product, a for-profit product. If it's given away freely, well, that's an entire different kettle of fish isn't it? We should have never let the big for-profit companies get away with the get out of jail free card they got a long time ago. If it slows releases, guess what, I bet most people won't care. I think it's almost a given that people want things that "just work", it's just that they aren't offered that as a "job one", they take whatever is out there, or comes on their box, and then it becomes their problem, with non-guru status. Software today to the average consumer is like being sold some widget and being required to be an instant competent widget mechanic, which is nutz, IMO.
I use open source, and I also know full well it's gonna be buggy and need tweaking, BUT, if I purchased expensive coded product, I expect it to be functional and secure. I know that doesn't exist to the point of practicality in closed source/expensive, which I used for many moons, so I switched, it was a logical decision.
yes, in a way they are forced. US based companies are given a serious tax break to move overseas. Why*, I don't know but it's reality. It's insane if ya ask me. We are also supposed to compete with nations who have MUCH higher tariffs on our exports to them than we have on their exports coming in to here, in particular china. Why, again, no idea, but it's reality, and those two issues are not much talked about in the financial press. If we had "free trade" the tariffs would equal, or be eliminated entirely, but they are most certainly now, not at this point in time. It's hugely unbalanced, and in no way "fair" to US workers or US based companies who have an interest in staying here. That's the force, the carrot and the stick used by our government rulers.
* I do have a theory why, but it's a long elaborate side issue that doesn't fit in the discussion.
...came about from a variety of reasons. This is complex, but I'll hit a few points.
Originally, in the US, corporations had a duality they were forced into, they were granted charters to incorporate-it wasn't automatic, and part of the deal from government was that they had to be of the public benefit-inside the united states. Profitability was one thing and taken as a gimme, but the other applied as well. That's just historical fact. If the company failed to stick to that, their incorporation charter wasn't renewed or it was pulled. The united+states was a federation of (much more than today) independent states, so we had a "common market" that had a default language and used a common currency, and the tax structure was setup to insure that the economy as a whole *inside this federation of independent states* improved, and there wasn't as bad a currency drain to outside the borders. We still had trade with other nations, but the default was it had to improve THIS nation over-all, and not replace anything domestically. Excise taxes at the border were a part of this, and why we didn't have the onerous "income" tax. There WEREN'T income taxes. We had protectionism by default, for the nation as a whole, but states weren't allowed protectionism legislation, only the federation.
We then gradually realised that monopolies stifled trade, so controls were put into place. We also had the phenomenon of collective bargaining finally being allowed, so that gross exploitation didn't occur, and that general over-all standard of living increased as more and more people as a percentage of the gross population had disposable income, could save for retirement, could afford even beyond basic necessities, and etc. During this time, we also used a currency that was backed by tangible assets, and was productivity-based, not credit-based.
Once all those were in place, we had the fastest and most successful rise of a true middle class that the planet has ever seen. It worked, it was a combination that worked, and most of it was based on common sense, nationalism, and yes, morality.
That's all gone now. It's based on greed again, exploitation, no thoughts of being loyal to your nation or your neighbors.
I EXPECT an Indian or a Chinese to be loyal and patriotic to their respective nations, to be looking out for the best deal they can find, it is the natural order of things and I approve of that, it just makes sense. I EXPECT that of a USian as well. The argument now is, is that it doesn't matter, nothing matters other than short term profits. No long range view of what is happening to your (anyone your, speaking generally here of course) nation or your neighbor. It's also pretty short sighted. Put your neighbor out of work, you've lost a domestic customer for your widget or widget service, as they have no money now. In the US now they have to cook the books and outright lie to keep true unemployment figures out of the mainstream press. Put enough of them out of work you have a national balance of trade deficit, which is the largest in our history now. We had a domestic balance of trade surplus for our entire existence as a nation UNTIL corporations got given tax breaks to outsource, and it's recent in historical terms. Continue that for a number of years and your nation is forced as a stop gap matter to abandon asset and productivity based currency to a complete fraud lying debt-based inflationary currency. this has happened, and was inevitable when we abandoned asset based currency. That is for sure happened, it's undebateable here.
Shipping off your carefully built up manufacturing base means that some other nation or group of nations can hold you hostage at some point for critical infrastructure. that's happened. Shipping off your agriculture means the same. This is also true now and accelerating. Allowing the rise of the monopolies, the same, it's happening.
*True* wealth is a bona-fide tangible, despite the bankers and casino traders assertions otherwise.. True wealth is refl
you ever make a hot dog cooker when you were a kid? Easy instructions. Take a clean board (a 1 x 4 is handy size), pound two 16 penny nails through it, distance separating them approximately 3/4ths the length of a hot dog (check fridge meat drawer, hotdogs vary). Leave a 1/4 inch of nail and head showing. Snag (dad's) extension cord, cut off the female end, separate the wirez. Strip them a half inch or so, wrap one end to one nailhead, one to the other, then finish pounding the nails in. Get vice grips, bend nails parallel to board about halfway up the nails, pointing towards each other. Impale hotdog onto nails, making your circuit. Plug it in, cook to your specs. If you leave them on too long, reality will remind you of the fact....
That sucks. I guess you could have pulled the starter, making it a non running car when you sold it. Then "lost" the starter over on her front porch, and let her boyfriend (whatever) put it back on. Something like that.
Ya know, not only that but the government in general is dismally sucky. Just dismal. there's no outside limit in the amount of laws they can pass, zee-ro. It's a growth industry, the legislators and the bureaucrats and employees love it. They can do whatever they want to do, and have hired mercenaries with guns "enforce" their will on you and call it "justice". The theory is you can "vote" for change. Uh huh, that's worked swell so far, with the two carved in stone political gangs just swapping places every 2/4/6 years, and doing the same thing over and over again, ie, "staying in rule"..
heheheheheh
on
Usenet Audio
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· Score: 3, Informative
another good 4-1 submission!
But here's a *real* project, StreamerP2P, that could use some coders to help out porting to linux and making packages that work.
.... are built by the full knowledge of every government contractor and government out there that:
A-human beings steal a lot
B-some of these "legitimate" missiles are going to suffer "inventory shrinkage"
C-they will and have wind up on the black market
In the US, even the official sources are an open air bazaar (google for the huntsville alabama scandals)
Even nuke tech gets lost/stolen, informed rumor has it that's how israel (which to this day refuses to sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty) was able to build it's first nukes, they were given or sold the stuff straight from US arsenals, but then it was reported as "lost". uh huh, sure it was, same as the deliberate fires set around the grounds at los alamos let some rogue group steal some critical info. Same as Saddam got critical WMD info and hardware from a variety of western nations, including the US.
Wheels within wheels within intrigues around global power/money. Weapons are just too valuable, and human beings too weak to deal with the temptations. Sucks, but there ya go.
I know this is an april fools message, but reality is, the jenni is out of the bottle on missile technology, and the cork has been thrown away.
uh huh, I believe this. Geek site, hmm.. I think the REAL subliminal mesage will be like Mr. Subliminal's *hotpants* talking *high heels* to a group *hotsex* of women he meets.
well, let me know when you got the RPM built anyway..
....been mostly offline too long I guess... Sorry for the side issue in the discussion, but reading the ars technica piece, it talks about this sun java desktop? China gonna slap it on 200 million PC's? Huh, never heard of it before. Does it work, suck, any reviews or personal experience here, generally wuzzup with the thing? My experience with generic java stuff is that they are slow and buggy on my olden daze hardware.
... but, the farther you get away from larger cities the less crime there is. More or less, mostly less, but I understand what you are saying. the comparison between kennesaw georgia and morton grove illinois when they pased the opposing viewpoints of righteous self defense is about the best anecdotal out there with the "gun question"..
I moved from 'lanta in 99 to the mountains, then moved again last summer to a scosh and a county above you right now. Much less crime, but I got a suspicion it will increase within the next few years if the economy continues to bork like it's been doing and if we become even more...hmm, got to be politically correct here... "multi cultural". Starting to see gang signs a la graffiti around lately, and reading the police reports in the local rag there's a rise in that sort of "free trade" imported activity. That and utterly brane dead rural rednecks who've decided crank + mass quantities of booze is just a swell idea. That's making crime rates go up fast.
I got no easy answers for any of that noise, other than my old boy sprout training of "be prepared", which covers a lot of ground.
.. I left something out. In georgia, cops are allowed to moonlight, wearing their uniforms. When the mugger wannabe took of running, I had seen a cop earlier directing traffic closeby, in and out of a parking garage (rush hour, natch). I walked over to him, to report the attempted mugging. I left nothing out, including my inspired quip, and pointed out the guy, still splitting at a brisk pace, down the street to the cop. Cop sez "-> whut ya want me to do about it?" I sez -> "arrest him????". Cop sez -> "I'm working this garage right now, ain't on duty, and the mugger dint get nuthin".
Well, that settled that. Mr. Mugger gets away to go prey on someone else. Oh well, so much for cops wanting to "serve justice". I always knew that was a load of horse hockey anyway....
True facts
He never asked me for a carry permit, but I had one in my wallet. Right now, I think it's bogus, I prefer honest vermont state styled carry, ie "allowed by default by second amendment born-with, not to be denied by any government goon inalienable right", but discretion being the better part of not going to the hoosegow, I get their illegal "permit". To me it's as illegal and stupid and unconstitutional as applying for a "free speech" permit or applying to the state for a "right to associate with my friends" permit. ditto for their freedom to travel "permits", illegal as heck, but it'sso entrenched now and people so brainwashed that they get away with it..
zognote: vermont, with about zip gun laws, has incredibly low crime rate. It has a few large cities, too, it's not all rural, but granted, fairly rural.
I understand switzerland has the lowest crime rates in industrialised europe, yet is the most liberal on gun ownership. Coincidence? I think not.
... singles were used to create a playlist of favorites when you were listening. Your record player had a stack option where you slipped this plastic thing over the metal spindle, to make up for the records spindle hole size discrpency. Then you stacked your 45s in the order you wanted to hear them in. You could (can still) stack albums, but as far as I know, there weren't any technological ways to jump to different tracks on the disk(s) on demand, so singles-on-the-stack was it for customization. Singles were also much cheaper, and yep, often the flip side of the "hit" really, really sucked. That was a crapshoot. I also remember saving my nickles to get a reel to reel ( a cheap one), so I could make dupes of my singles, in the order I wanted, thenput them away so they wouldn't get scratched. I would have shared them with friends and let them make copies, but dang I can't remember any others in my crowd who had a reel to reel.
...sux. Had some street dude try to mug me before, downtown atlanta. Was getting off work, that day in the merchandise mart doing tradeshow set-up. Was tired and not in the mood to get mugged. This doofus walks up to me in the parking lot across the street as I was loading my tools back in the ride, waltzs right up and demands cash, Sez Mr. mugger wannabe -> "gimmee 20$" then some cursing. I stepped back, swung my vest open and started to draw my piece. Sez me ->" How 'bout 45 instead?"
heh heh he took off running.
Just an anecdotal story, doesn't mean much except to point out muggings happen everywhere,all around the whirrled, just sometimes they have a happy ending.
There's an old saying I am fond of:
"God made man - Then Colonel Colt made them equal"
The DIY effort reminded me of something. Some friends of friends of mine did this "round the world" amphibious vehicle trip a long time ahgo, here is the url I luckily found via google..
http://www.amphibiousvehicle.net/amphi/H/halfsaf es pecial/halfsafe.html
The book about it is a good read, BTW Dang, hadn't thought about it for 40 years proly...
Re:Geeks only think about one thing!
on
Saving the Net
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· Score: 1
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You got it! I've been moving, don't have inet at my new digs yet, MAN O MAN do I miss the internet! Tried watching the boob toob, yeeech. No news, shows are lame, all the previews seem to be of new shows and movies to get people conditioned to the new world order, swat teams whatever and the commercials are dismal, none of thyem are even funny anymore. It's terrible with no net. Girls you can find but you NEED the internet!
Maybe something like ebay could help out then. something like the old coupon clippers/swap clubs used to operate. People would swap around their "recycling rebate" coupons to get what they wanted. A modern equivalent with the recycling credits maybe would work. Especially if it was universal. I have zero problems with mandated recycling to manufactureres, domestic or imports. If people could get back 10 or 20 bucks per electronic toy, they WOULD hang onto the devices and then make a trip to the recycling centers. Suppose you waited until you had several items to get the recycling rebate back from, make a trip, get the cash, buy a new toy. Sounds like a winner to me. I remember I was in a state when they started a 5 cent per soda and beer can thing. The time previous, the roadsides were covered with casually tossed out cans, within a month or so after the nickle law went into effect, you hardly saw a can, and the companies didn't "go out of business" like they kept claiming. The same for virtually all manufactured durable goods would work, IF the recycling rebate was high enough, and if it applied to all the manufactureres, the prices (and society) would adjust quickly. Well, IMO, of course. Creates useful jobs also and helps reduce pollution, a triple win.
If you can beef up your RAM, linux runs pretty well on a 200. I'm on a 200PP, works perfectly OK. I can surf, listen to net audio streams, run apt, etc, all at the same time. Before I added a couple of sticks it was pretty slow, now it's fine.
--I _don't_ know obviously. I can see,though, whenever we have freenet threads that current supporters are quick to dis and rank anyone not using it, telling them they "don't 'get it' on free speech" or whatever. It's a major turn off, and I can also see it's not only myself that feels that way, several posters have been dissed when they brought up some legit points for discussion and/or questions.
To repeat, I support most of the basic ideas of freenet, what I don't support is the notion that you have plausible deniability, because anyone sophisticated enough to install and use freenet must also be aware that there's a good chance that your sharing will be used for not very nice purposes, and I'll predict that eventually court cases will back that up. It's not a possibility, it's a high probability. You can't be sure it won't be, you can't be sure it will, but you KNOW that it's possible and that bad guys could be using you. And my original post was to inquire if there was a way to limit file types,in order to lessen the chances, to show you have been proactive as much as possible, that you have tried to be a good netizen. I mean it was that simple. A simple, basic question, with the reason behind it. Why is this wrong or deserving of dissing? I don't automatically assume every AC is a troll, people need anonymity on occassion posting here (or anywhere), what I don't understand is why every reply I got was nasty or close to nasty. It's like I never had any legitimate point of view or right to even question, which is absurd, anyone has that right. And isn't it ironic that freenet supporters (a lot of them, not all) here don't like it when someone uses free speech?
Anyway, that's it for me with anonymous replies on this thread, either an official of the project can answer my original question, or I am done on this subject, I'll look elsewhere for better quality (more features and selectability of files, etc)software. I know that the net is threatened with massive big brotherism, anyone who reads a fraction of my stuff will know it's a major concern of mine, government power grabs and official corruption, etc,and has been since the early 60's, I have huge involvement in freedom issues and have walked the dangerous walk along with the talk for decades now, so I recognize that "the people" need a secure way to communicate. But so far, although it has promise, I am turned off by the bulk of the freenet users responses to myself and other posters, it's just.... too much arrogance, elitism and outright hate to pique my interest in their product. You are known by the company you keep, ergo, sayonnarah "freenet".
I am far from apathetic, I've posted my desire to use freenet-or something similar. I find it interesting that freenet supporters seem to be universally nasty to people on these threads, people who have some legit questions about it. Is that the "official" freenet mindset? I was just wondering if it was possible to not host/transfer images and video, etc, to cut down on the possibility of hosting stuff that is universally regarded as illegal and immoral. I have no problems with helping legit freedom fighters around the planet, or helping whistleblowers get the information out while helping protect them, and things of that sort. If that rates a "fuck you" from the freenet "community", why don't you reply non anonymously as an official freenet developer to verify that. That isn't the way to win converts, the way you come across. In fact, most likely that's the main reason YOU use freenet, your use of immoral "files" no doubt. I'll have naught to do with such goings on. I agree with the stated purpose I have read about freenet, but if one isn't allowed to inquire or ask a question, well, bad luck to you then, you are right, freenet probably isn't for me, I'll keep looking for another project along similar lines but with decent people involved with it who don't get upset just because someone asks some questions.
Yo! Your new 1.4 is great! Been using it almost a week now (linux version), the email spam filter is wonderful, POOF, spam it's learned doesn't even show up in the inbox. Surfing speed seems to have increased and tabbed browsing is da bomb on this old rural dialup account. I've also noticed improvements in forms and checkboxes, they used to go squirrely sometimes, now they stay the correct size and function faster. Only real buggy stuff I am seeing is display of style sheets (or something like that,if you want an example of what I am talking about, try prisonplanet.com, a site I like but is very hard to read), but that is such a random thing it's hard to judge if it's a moz bug or the page writers mis-application. All in all I love it! Here's a request, individual image loading. Most of the time to speed up surfing I have images off, it would be nice like in iCab to have a right click menu option to load an individual image without changing everything in preferences. And that's it!
Much kudos to all you folks, and as feeble as my wallet is ya'all will be getting some FRN's from me!
Slashdot Mirror
Here in georgia, you must take a print for a drivers license now*, and most banks have a print pad for cashing checks. All states will have it for DL's soon, it's the non declared but defacto national identy card. Internal passports will be next.
*I also suspect, really just suspect, they've been doing a closeup retina scan print during the picture taking part of the license, if that's possible at a distance of a few feet. I don't know, though. I can't prove it, but last time I got mine renewed it sure was suspicious, EVERYONE in the line had two pics taken, and I asked about it, because before for years and years it was "one snap, sorry, you're stuck with that one, move along now" and the lady state cop gave me quite a squirrely answer and looked chagrined about it, like she was embarrased/angry at the same time.
And I mean really, what a scam anyway, prints and pics at the OFFICIAL border crossings, yet they turn a blind eye to the MILLIONS who cross illegally, and it's not all "out of work poor hispanics" who cross over, there's all kindsa folks sneaking across. Tell me this ain't weird..
The whole "war on terror" stuff is being taken advantage of in this stealth coup that's been going on, IMO. Look at all the 9-11 government prior knowledge stuff that is FINALLY making the mainstream news the past few weeks.
... stop the nonsense of giving personhood to corporations and make every legal action be directed against named individuals. If every time a corporation had to go to court, and someone was facing a personal fine, not the company's money but their personal money, or staring at jail time, they would think twice or thrice about being crooks. This nutso artifical human named the corporation is too much of an insulation for the actual humans who make decisions.
IMO, microsoft has more than proven they are chronic serial liars and crooks,and that they will continue to be crooks no matter what, and because of that they should have had their incorporation revoked. That joke fine they got in the US of being able to print up their own fine-money-vouchers, was beyond obscene. Joe and Josephine average can't do that, no "corporation" should be allowed to do that.
... it's so apparent that the title "college graduate" doesn't mean as much as it should. The discrepancies I bet are the same in any number of disciplines. Over specialization -as the famous quote loosely goes- are for insects. And that degree in over specialization might indicate a severe lack of other skills, some of which are necessary in making a well rounded human, in any employment position. Example,these text books. OK, a requirement for that boss management degree, but really, none of these people ever go to a normal bookstore and walk by the magazine rack and see the linux magazines? None of them read any of the tech news sites on the net? I dunno, seems strange to me, but no more strange than all the people who can rattle off hollywood movies and the stars names, or their local sports "team" stars, but who cannot name their own US representative in the house. Part of our culture I guess...
Incidently, that was my impression watching the trump apprentice series as well. I don't watch very much television at all, but for some reason I was interested in that concept, so I've been watching it. All those young people with degrees (except one) and good paying jobs, but almost all of them seemed to lack quite a bit of real world common sense, and all of them had unreasonable expectations, IMO. I know it's stupid reality TV, etc, but still, that was the impression I got.
I like that idea a lot! Just expand on it easily. Menu *options*,and I don't mean emphasize "theming" and all that hoo-rah, the apps themselves, something like you get 3 choices a single click away, default-basic (one of everything basic, web, text reader/writer, media player, email client, chat client, etc), intermediate (more apps for different purposes, choices for each style of app),then power user with the entire kitchen sink in the menus, I mean every single last steenking teeny tiny app installed on the box.
I also think that every app should have an easy to read listing of WHERE all the files relating to the app are stored, so that if the user is confronted with having to go tweak into unknown land, they can at least find the file to tweak easily. That's the intermediate level that causes so much grief I think,(does for me anyway) going from pure point and click noob to intuitive command line.
.. with the other Sun news this week. Sun desktop at wallyworld, 200 mil desktops to china, etc. My guess is, sun is basing their plan on a couple of realities. They are FORCED to deal with microsoft in some manner at this time. And they are gambling that linux and their java platform will slowly start to gain serious inroads against microsoft, and that will FORCE microsoft to play ball with more-even rules, which is what everyone except microsoft wants anyway. They are also getting paid serious cash right now to take the only options they had available. Reality would have forced them into (probably) the same exact decisions and eventualities, now they just get some cash, too. It's not a perfect solution for them, but it's a *viable* solution with some gravy they didn't have before.
.... being smart and independent sorts, with matching egos usually, have resisted unionizing. This scheme of government should help to dispel the notion that that has been a bad idea. They need to organize, and like ten years ago. They will have power then, and can not only bring better code to market, but help fight this creeping big brotherism nonsense. Then they also won't have to put up with marketing and lamer bosses BS quite as much, they can insist that code be done properly, not sloppily. Business will bingo to the fact eventually that good code is better and cheaper in the long run, both from usability for the end users and profitability for the shareholders/owners standpoints. I don't code but I've read enough horror stories here from folks who's bosses insisted on unreasonable timelines and on shipping patched kludges as finished product, to assume that it's an endemic problem.
As to suing for bad code, if it's "for sale", why not? It's a product, a for-profit product. If it's given away freely, well, that's an entire different kettle of fish isn't it? We should have never let the big for-profit companies get away with the get out of jail free card they got a long time ago. If it slows releases, guess what, I bet most people won't care. I think it's almost a given that people want things that "just work", it's just that they aren't offered that as a "job one", they take whatever is out there, or comes on their box, and then it becomes their problem, with non-guru status. Software today to the average consumer is like being sold some widget and being required to be an instant competent widget mechanic, which is nutz, IMO.
I use open source, and I also know full well it's gonna be buggy and need tweaking, BUT, if I purchased expensive coded product, I expect it to be functional and secure. I know that doesn't exist to the point of practicality in closed source/expensive, which I used for many moons, so I switched, it was a logical decision.
yes, in a way they are forced. US based companies are given a serious tax break to move overseas. Why*, I don't know but it's reality. It's insane if ya ask me. We are also supposed to compete with nations who have MUCH higher tariffs on our exports to them than we have on their exports coming in to here, in particular china. Why, again, no idea, but it's reality, and those two issues are not much talked about in the financial press. If we had "free trade" the tariffs would equal, or be eliminated entirely, but they are most certainly now, not at this point in time. It's hugely unbalanced, and in no way "fair" to US workers or US based companies who have an interest in staying here. That's the force, the carrot and the stick used by our government rulers.
* I do have a theory why, but it's a long elaborate side issue that doesn't fit in the discussion.
...came about from a variety of reasons. This is complex, but I'll hit a few points.
Originally, in the US, corporations had a duality they were forced into, they were granted charters to incorporate-it wasn't automatic, and part of the deal from government was that they had to be of the public benefit-inside the united states. Profitability was one thing and taken as a gimme, but the other applied as well. That's just historical fact. If the company failed to stick to that, their incorporation charter wasn't renewed or it was pulled. The united+states was a federation of (much more than today) independent states, so we had a "common market" that had a default language and used a common currency, and the tax structure was setup to insure that the economy as a whole *inside this federation of independent states* improved, and there wasn't as bad a currency drain to outside the borders. We still had trade with other nations, but the default was it had to improve THIS nation over-all, and not replace anything domestically. Excise taxes at the border were a part of this, and why we didn't have the onerous "income" tax. There WEREN'T income taxes. We had protectionism by default, for the nation as a whole, but states weren't allowed protectionism legislation, only the federation.
We then gradually realised that monopolies stifled trade, so controls were put into place. We also had the phenomenon of collective bargaining finally being allowed, so that gross exploitation didn't occur, and that general over-all standard of living increased as more and more people as a percentage of the gross population had disposable income, could save for retirement, could afford even beyond basic necessities, and etc. During this time, we also used a currency that was backed by tangible assets, and was productivity-based, not credit-based.
Once all those were in place, we had the fastest and most successful rise of a true middle class that the planet has ever seen. It worked, it was a combination that worked, and most of it was based on common sense, nationalism, and yes, morality.
That's all gone now. It's based on greed again, exploitation, no thoughts of being loyal to your nation or your neighbors.
I EXPECT an Indian or a Chinese to be loyal and patriotic to their respective nations, to be looking out for the best deal they can find, it is the natural order of things and I approve of that, it just makes sense. I EXPECT that of a USian as well. The argument now is, is that it doesn't matter, nothing matters other than short term profits. No long range view of what is happening to your (anyone your, speaking generally here of course) nation or your neighbor. It's also pretty short sighted. Put your neighbor out of work, you've lost a domestic customer for your widget or widget service, as they have no money now. In the US now they have to cook the books and outright lie to keep true unemployment figures out of the mainstream press. Put enough of them out of work you have a national balance of trade deficit, which is the largest in our history now. We had a domestic balance of trade surplus for our entire existence as a nation UNTIL corporations got given tax breaks to outsource, and it's recent in historical terms. Continue that for a number of years and your nation is forced as a stop gap matter to abandon asset and productivity based currency to a complete fraud lying debt-based inflationary currency. this has happened, and was inevitable when we abandoned asset based currency. That is for sure happened, it's undebateable here.
Shipping off your carefully built up manufacturing base means that some other nation or group of nations can hold you hostage at some point for critical infrastructure. that's happened. Shipping off your agriculture means the same. This is also true now and accelerating. Allowing the rise of the monopolies, the same, it's happening.
*True* wealth is a bona-fide tangible, despite the bankers and casino traders assertions otherwise.. True wealth is refl
you ever make a hot dog cooker when you were a kid? Easy instructions. Take a clean board (a 1 x 4 is handy size), pound two 16 penny nails through it, distance separating them approximately 3/4ths the length of a hot dog (check fridge meat drawer, hotdogs vary). Leave a 1/4 inch of nail and head showing. Snag (dad's) extension cord, cut off the female end, separate the wirez. Strip them a half inch or so, wrap one end to one nailhead, one to the other, then finish pounding the nails in. Get vice grips, bend nails parallel to board about halfway up the nails, pointing towards each other. Impale hotdog onto nails, making your circuit. Plug it in, cook to your specs. If you leave them on too long, reality will remind you of the fact....
That sucks. I guess you could have pulled the starter, making it a non running car when you sold it. Then "lost" the starter over on her front porch, and let her boyfriend (whatever) put it back on. Something like that.
Ya know, not only that but the government in general is dismally sucky. Just dismal. there's no outside limit in the amount of laws they can pass, zee-ro. It's a growth industry, the legislators and the bureaucrats and employees love it. They can do whatever they want to do, and have hired mercenaries with guns "enforce" their will on you and call it "justice". The theory is you can "vote" for change. Uh huh, that's worked swell so far, with the two carved in stone political gangs just swapping places every 2/4/6 years, and doing the same thing over and over again, ie, "staying in rule"..
another good 4-1 submission!
But here's a *real* project, StreamerP2P, that could use some coders to help out porting to linux and making packages that work.
hint fedora hint
.... are built by the full knowledge of every government contractor and government out there that:
A-human beings steal a lot
B-some of these "legitimate" missiles are going to suffer "inventory shrinkage"
C-they will and have wind up on the black market
In the US, even the official sources are an open air bazaar (google for the huntsville alabama scandals)
Even nuke tech gets lost/stolen, informed rumor has it that's how israel (which to this day refuses to sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty) was able to build it's first nukes, they were given or sold the stuff straight from US arsenals, but then it was reported as "lost". uh huh, sure it was, same as the deliberate fires set around the grounds at los alamos let some rogue group steal some critical info. Same as Saddam got critical WMD info and hardware from a variety of western nations, including the US.
Wheels within wheels within intrigues around global power/money. Weapons are just too valuable, and human beings too weak to deal with the temptations. Sucks, but there ya go.
I know this is an april fools message, but reality is, the jenni is out of the bottle on missile technology, and the cork has been thrown away.
uh huh, I believe this. Geek site, hmm.. I think the REAL subliminal mesage will be like Mr. Subliminal's *hotpants* talking *high heels* to a group *hotsex* of women he meets.
well, let me know when you got the RPM built anyway..
can't hurt....
....been mostly offline too long I guess... Sorry for the side issue in the discussion, but reading the ars technica piece, it talks about this sun java desktop? China gonna slap it on 200 million PC's? Huh, never heard of it before. Does it work, suck, any reviews or personal experience here, generally wuzzup with the thing? My experience with generic java stuff is that they are slow and buggy on my olden daze hardware.
Thanks in advance and stuff...
... but, the farther you get away from larger cities the less crime there is. More or less, mostly less, but I understand what you are saying. the comparison between kennesaw georgia and morton grove illinois when they pased the opposing viewpoints of righteous self defense is about the best anecdotal out there with the "gun question"..
I moved from 'lanta in 99 to the mountains, then moved again last summer to a scosh and a county above you right now. Much less crime, but I got a suspicion it will increase within the next few years if the economy continues to bork like it's been doing and if we become even more...hmm, got to be politically correct here... "multi cultural". Starting to see gang signs a la graffiti around lately, and reading the police reports in the local rag there's a rise in that sort of "free trade" imported activity. That and utterly brane dead rural rednecks who've decided crank + mass quantities of booze is just a swell idea. That's making crime rates go up fast.
I got no easy answers for any of that noise, other than my old boy sprout training of "be prepared", which covers a lot of ground.
.. I left something out. In georgia, cops are allowed to moonlight, wearing their uniforms. When the mugger wannabe took of running, I had seen a cop earlier directing traffic closeby, in and out of a parking garage (rush hour, natch). I walked over to him, to report the attempted mugging. I left nothing out, including my inspired quip, and pointed out the guy, still splitting at a brisk pace, down the street to the cop. Cop sez "-> whut ya want me to do about it?" I sez -> "arrest him????". Cop sez -> "I'm working this garage right now, ain't on duty, and the mugger dint get nuthin".
Well, that settled that. Mr. Mugger gets away to go prey on someone else. Oh well, so much for cops wanting to "serve justice". I always knew that was a load of horse hockey anyway....
True facts
He never asked me for a carry permit, but I had one in my wallet. Right now, I think it's bogus, I prefer honest vermont state styled carry, ie "allowed by default by second amendment born-with, not to be denied by any government goon inalienable right", but discretion being the better part of not going to the hoosegow, I get their illegal "permit". To me it's as illegal and stupid and unconstitutional as applying for a "free speech" permit or applying to the state for a "right to associate with my friends" permit. ditto for their freedom to travel "permits", illegal as heck, but it'sso entrenched now and people so brainwashed that they get away with it..
zognote: vermont, with about zip gun laws, has incredibly low crime rate. It has a few large cities, too, it's not all rural, but granted, fairly rural.
I understand switzerland has the lowest crime rates in industrialised europe, yet is the most liberal on gun ownership. Coincidence? I think not.
... singles were used to create a playlist of favorites when you were listening. Your record player had a stack option where you slipped this plastic thing over the metal spindle, to make up for the records spindle hole size discrpency. Then you stacked your 45s in the order you wanted to hear them in. You could (can still) stack albums, but as far as I know, there weren't any technological ways to jump to different tracks on the disk(s) on demand, so singles-on-the-stack was it for customization. Singles were also much cheaper, and yep, often the flip side of the "hit" really, really sucked. That was a crapshoot. I also remember saving my nickles to get a reel to reel ( a cheap one), so I could make dupes of my singles, in the order I wanted, thenput them away so they wouldn't get scratched. I would have shared them with friends and let them make copies, but dang I can't remember any others in my crowd who had a reel to reel.
...sux. Had some street dude try to mug me before, downtown atlanta. Was getting off work, that day in the merchandise mart doing tradeshow set-up. Was tired and not in the mood to get mugged. This doofus walks up to me in the parking lot across the street as I was loading my tools back in the ride, waltzs right up and demands cash, Sez Mr. mugger wannabe -> "gimmee 20$" then some cursing. I stepped back, swung my vest open and started to draw my piece. Sez me ->" How 'bout 45 instead?"
heh heh he took off running.
Just an anecdotal story, doesn't mean much except to point out muggings happen everywhere,all around the whirrled, just sometimes they have a happy ending.
There's an old saying I am fond of:
"God made man - Then Colonel Colt made them equal"
--outstanding effort and a really cool ride!
f es pecial/halfsafe.html
The DIY effort reminded me of something. Some friends of friends of mine did this "round the world" amphibious vehicle trip a long time ahgo, here is the url I luckily found via google..
http://www.amphibiousvehicle.net/amphi/H/halfsa
The book about it is a good read, BTW Dang, hadn't thought about it for 40 years proly...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You got it! I've been moving, don't have inet at my new digs yet, MAN O MAN do I miss the internet! Tried watching the boob toob, yeeech. No news, shows are lame, all the previews seem to be of new shows and movies to get people conditioned to the new world order, swat teams whatever and the commercials are dismal, none of thyem are even funny anymore. It's terrible with no net. Girls you can find but you NEED the internet!
Maybe something like ebay could help out then. something like the old coupon clippers/swap clubs used to operate. People would swap around their "recycling rebate" coupons to get what they wanted. A modern equivalent with the recycling credits maybe would work. Especially if it was universal. I have zero problems with mandated recycling to manufactureres, domestic or imports. If people could get back 10 or 20 bucks per electronic toy, they WOULD hang onto the devices and then make a trip to the recycling centers. Suppose you waited until you had several items to get the recycling rebate back from, make a trip, get the cash, buy a new toy. Sounds like a winner to me. I remember I was in a state when they started a 5 cent per soda and beer can thing. The time previous, the roadsides were covered with casually tossed out cans, within a month or so after the nickle law went into effect, you hardly saw a can, and the companies didn't "go out of business" like they kept claiming. The same for virtually all manufactured durable goods would work, IF the recycling rebate was high enough, and if it applied to all the manufactureres, the prices (and society) would adjust quickly. Well, IMO, of course. Creates useful jobs also and helps reduce pollution, a triple win.
If you can beef up your RAM, linux runs pretty well on a 200. I'm on a 200PP, works perfectly OK. I can surf, listen to net audio streams, run apt, etc, all at the same time. Before I added a couple of sticks it was pretty slow, now it's fine.
--I _don't_ know obviously. I can see,though, whenever we have freenet threads that current supporters are quick to dis and rank anyone not using it, telling them they "don't 'get it' on free speech" or whatever. It's a major turn off, and I can also see it's not only myself that feels that way, several posters have been dissed when they brought up some legit points for discussion and/or questions.
To repeat, I support most of the basic ideas of freenet, what I don't support is the notion that you have plausible deniability, because anyone sophisticated enough to install and use freenet must also be aware that there's a good chance that your sharing will be used for not very nice purposes, and I'll predict that eventually court cases will back that up. It's not a possibility, it's a high probability. You can't be sure it won't be, you can't be sure it will, but you KNOW that it's possible and that bad guys could be using you. And my original post was to inquire if there was a way to limit file types,in order to lessen the chances, to show you have been proactive as much as possible, that you have tried to be a good netizen. I mean it was that simple. A simple, basic question, with the reason behind it. Why is this wrong or deserving of dissing? I don't automatically assume every AC is a troll, people need anonymity on occassion posting here (or anywhere), what I don't understand is why every reply I got was nasty or close to nasty. It's like I never had any legitimate point of view or right to even question, which is absurd, anyone has that right. And isn't it ironic that freenet supporters (a lot of them, not all) here don't like it when someone uses free speech?
Anyway, that's it for me with anonymous replies on this thread, either an official of the project can answer my original question, or I am done on this subject, I'll look elsewhere for better quality (more features and selectability of files, etc)software. I know that the net is threatened with massive big brotherism, anyone who reads a fraction of my stuff will know it's a major concern of mine, government power grabs and official corruption, etc,and has been since the early 60's, I have huge involvement in freedom issues and have walked the dangerous walk along with the talk for decades now, so I recognize that "the people" need a secure way to communicate. But so far, although it has promise, I am turned off by the bulk of the freenet users responses to myself and other posters, it's just.... too much arrogance, elitism and outright hate to pique my interest in their product. You are known by the company you keep, ergo, sayonnarah "freenet".
I am far from apathetic, I've posted my desire to use freenet-or something similar. I find it interesting that freenet supporters seem to be universally nasty to people on these threads, people who have some legit questions about it. Is that the "official" freenet mindset? I was just wondering if it was possible to not host/transfer images and video, etc, to cut down on the possibility of hosting stuff that is universally regarded as illegal and immoral. I have no problems with helping legit freedom fighters around the planet, or helping whistleblowers get the information out while helping protect them, and things of that sort. If that rates a "fuck you" from the freenet "community", why don't you reply non anonymously as an official freenet developer to verify that. That isn't the way to win converts, the way you come across. In fact, most likely that's the main reason YOU use freenet, your use of immoral "files" no doubt. I'll have naught to do with such goings on. I agree with the stated purpose I have read about freenet, but if one isn't allowed to inquire or ask a question, well, bad luck to you then, you are right, freenet probably isn't for me, I'll keep looking for another project along similar lines but with decent people involved with it who don't get upset just because someone asks some questions.
Yo! Your new 1.4 is great! Been using it almost a week now (linux version), the email spam filter is wonderful, POOF, spam it's learned doesn't even show up in the inbox. Surfing speed seems to have increased and tabbed browsing is da bomb on this old rural dialup account. I've also noticed improvements in forms and checkboxes, they used to go squirrely sometimes, now they stay the correct size and function faster. Only real buggy stuff I am seeing is display of style sheets (or something like that,if you want an example of what I am talking about, try prisonplanet.com, a site I like but is very hard to read), but that is such a random thing it's hard to judge if it's a moz bug or the page writers mis-application. All in all I love it! Here's a request, individual image loading. Most of the time to speed up surfing I have images off, it would be nice like in iCab to have a right click menu option to load an individual image without changing everything in preferences. And that's it!
Much kudos to all you folks, and as feeble as my wallet is ya'all will be getting some FRN's from me!