Usually, by how far it travels before it goes poof.
Basically, it is possible to know how fast it's going (simple mechanics) and it is possible to see (or deduce) where it came into being and where it disintegrated into bits-- measure the distance between them and you have time.
It's a really really short time, but particles ejected from a collision in a particle accelerator are going really really fast-- they get to cover some distance in that short interval.
This entirely depends on what you mean by "efficient".
I measure efficiency as how much energy it takes to perform function x.
With an SUV used to commute from the 'burbs to work (the vast majority) the function x is "move driver from A to B". The additional energy required to move the vehicle itself is a factor of efficiency (waste), not part of the function. I.e.: using a heavy vehicle to "move driver" is necessarly less efficient than a lighter vehicle because you will have to use more energy (and thus more fuel) to perform the same end result.
SUVs are/not/ more efficient than cars at any task a car can do.
Now, if you happen to commute with a ton of payload every morning, or need to travel over terrain that would be inpassable by a car[1], the SUV is probably more efficient.
-- MG
[1] Unlikely, given that most sport "utility" vehicles are unstable and lack torque and handling-- all sacrificed to the altar of looks and highway performance. Feh.
In a perfect world, we would all live a block or two from our job and be within walking distance from pretty much everything we could need (grocerys, etc).
This isn't what I said. I was talking about long commutes, that suburbia imposes. In a society where money isn't squandered on incredibly expensive infrastructure to support millions of cars going and coming from work (highways, etc), it is possible to run a well-funded public transit system that is faster and less trouble than using a car. But if you spend the money on highways instead, well, people will be better off with a car... which means more cars on the road... which means you have to fund bigger and more numerous highways... ad nauseam.
This was often the case in North America in the past, and still is in many places where they haven't yet traded their brain for a V8.
I guess you could blame this, in part, on the car manufacturers who managed to brainwash the public into thinking of a car as a status symbol. Oh, well.
... what happens when the idiot in front of me with the 86 Chevy slams on his breaks and pulls across 3 lanes and hits me. Ooops, no computer for him, but I was doing 74 in a 65. Looks like it's obviously my fault
Hate to break this to you, but if you were doing 74 in a 65 zone, then you should be punished. The current speed limits are already unreasonably high for 99.95% of the driver's skills, are rarely heeded, and almost never adjusted for road conditions.
Oh, yes, of course you are a good driver. Right. What was the number again, 80% of people beleive they are part of the 10% of best drivers? Something close to that.
Our civilisation, Americans in particular, has this unexplainable obsession with speeding motor vehicles that causes so many deaths (mostly of innocent bystanders) that it's not funny. Less than 20% of people who drive cars really need to[1], and of those only a tiny fraction are careful/skilled enough to not be a deadly menace.
Get over it. I can't wait for the day where cars will disable themselves or rat out their owners when they drive stupidly. I think tickets should be issued on the spot for violations and drivers liscence suspended automatically (think Fifth Element). If you are in one of those exceedingly rare and unusual circumstances where driving dangerously was acceptable (let alone needed), fight it in court. When you endanger the lives of others, you had better be ready to prove you had a damn good reason.
A car (or any motor vehicle for that matter) is a dangerous tool. Being allowed to drive one is not a right, it's a privilege that brings great responsibilities. (And one that is granted much too lightly to way too many people right now).
-- MG
[1] And please don't give me the drive-to-work bullshit. The idea of living in a status symbol suburb, thus needing a long commute, is a recent aberation that has no sound logic. Hardly a "real need".
Trademark law specifically allows reusing the same name if it's for a completely unrelated product, since there can be no confusion. I couldn't brand my cars "Ford", because people might confuse my cars with those of the other company, but I can very well market my new "Ford breakfast cereal".
There are a number of subtleties, though, like if I were to try to package my cereal in a box featuring motor vehicles, Ford would probably have a good case that I'm trying to dilute their trademark.
Now, that being said, AOL has no such concerns whatever since they own the Netscape Trademark. They are pretty much allowed to brand anything they want with it. And besides, an ISP is hardly unrelated to an HTTP client.
The fact that SGI has replaced the three code fragments in question does not satisfy SCO, according to Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman. "These releases have already taken place in Linux," he said. "You still have all these machines out there that haven't applied patches that are still benefitting from this Unix System V code."
If those code was removed/rewritten with no loss of functionality in further versions, exactly how much benefit could they be? By definition if you remove something and nobody misses it, then it provides no valuable benefit!
And certainly, a snippet of code you can remove does not contain the requisite "magic" to transform an OS from rags to riches, which is what SCO claims.
Why is it that only us geeks are able to see the SCO garbage as garbage?
I'd think even PHBs should be able to understand that "Less than.01% of code has possibly been included from source that is possibly proprietary, and all or most of it has since been removed or rewritten with no loss of functionality" means that what little common code there might have been had no real value to begin with and that SCO's claim are completely bogus!
I guess I'm overestimating the ability of PHBs to fire their neurons in a coherent pattern.
The original Star Wars {now re-named Episode four - A New Hope} [...]
It's never been "renamed". It was always titled "Episode IV - A New Hope". Don't you remember seeing it in the theather all those years ago? Or perhaps you are too young for that?
I remember being mildly confused by this ("Hey! Did I miss three other movies of this?") since I was fairly young at the time.
As for it being "far better" at post analysis, I think you are suffering from older-is-better syndrome. While I hate Jar-Jar like everybody else, if you objectively compare the two there are far more things that don't gel in "a new hope". (Though they did make a fair job at retcon in the novels set later for many of those things).
Incidentally, if you are going to do an army of droids, might as well let them use standard weapons that humans can use as well and which you (as a warlord) probably already own in vast numbers. Cheaper, and more reliable.
Oh, and to go back to the topic at hand: THGTTG rendered into a movie *will* be different than the radio show, the book, the TV show and the non-radio audio recordings. Doesn't mean it can't be good. (Or horrible).
There are several init replacements in progress, including mine.
I'm not too sure about the choice of Python, though, seems awfully high-level and library encumbered for something that likely has to run before many filesystems containing libraries are fscked and mounted.
I tought I was courageous when I decided to go with C++. (But it did allow me to write very flexible code while keeping it clean).
-- MG
PS: My daemond is blindlingly fast, but not known to work on any box except my own. I'd enjoy people trying it out and seeing how it breaks, but don't rely on it just yet!
Years ago, I have been contacted by a head hunter regarding a job posting I had applied to.
We had an hour-long chat about my past and experiences, and just shooting the breeze on a number of fairly interresting subjects (he had a technical rather than HR background, so he could hold a conversation.)
The result? He turned me away from the job I applied for "You're going to hate it there", dived in his file drawer and pulled out something entirely unrelated telling me that this was the job for me.
Got an interview with his client, and got the job. While they folded two years later those were the best two years of my professional life-- the pay was good, the people I worked with were great and the job was interresting.
I've dealt with other headunters before, and since, and they mostly suck. They also have HR backgrounds.
My advice? Try to find a headhunter that actually understands the postings, and the people who apply for them. Much better matches will ensue.
You think they're going to lock down the sound & video API's in the OS so that nobody can make their own media players?
Yes.
The desired aim of all of this is to make certain everything is encrypted all the way to your speakers/screen and only "approved" programs can read the data or send output to the device.
That requires hardware assistance which PCs do not yet have (remember Palladium?) but the software "right management" is part of the deal.
[...] re-entry is essentially effortless - just wrap up and give gentle push 'down'
Err, no. I know it's unintuitive, but going down back from space is as energy intensive as going up.
If you were to give a gentle "push" down on something in orbit, the only thing you'd acheive is have it settle in a (very slightly) more excentric orbit. If you want to come back down from orbit you have to loose the orbital speed that's keeping you there, i.e. accelerate by exactly as much as it took to get you there, in the opposite direction.
Well, unless you want to rely on friction with the atmosphere (which means you'd have to start in a fairly low orbit to begin with)... but then you're converting your kinetic energy into thermal energy. Lots of it. This has problems of its own. But even then, unless you want to rely on a slowly degrading orbit with uncertain destination for your goods, you still have to expend a great deal of energy to steer and aim into the atmosphere, trying to balance slowing down with not burning up while attempting to hit your target.
Rings a bell? Yep. That's how the shuttle does it.
And yes, this is a simplification. There are many other factors to handle. But the basic idea is, going back down isn't just a matter of a gentle shove "downwards".
Actually, it's more like using a computer without having learned to toggle the bootstrap code on the front panel switches.
I think resistance to dropping CW as a requirement has nothing to do with how useful it may be, but is simply a case of "in my days, we had to do x to get y, so those young upstarts better suffer just like we did".
And yes, as far as low-power, high s/n signaling goes, CW is very nice. The thing is, I could whip up from scratch a microcontroler-based decoder that displays on an LCD in about 30 minutes of work and $10 in parts ($6 of which go to the LCD itself). There is no need for human transcoding anymore; simple hardware does a more reliable job cheaper and faster.
It should read "Mars's [...]". The possessive s is only ommited when the noun is plural, not when it otherwise ends with an s. You know, one does look a bit foolish when pointing out an editor's obvious typo by suggesting a gramatically incorrect correction.
Unless you are under the impression that there is more than Mars.:-)
Ah, yes. Have you visited the Real World(tm) recently?
I have been required when applying for a unix sysadmin job to send a resume in Word format by the human resources drones. Many governements publish information with Microsoft Office formats. Many governements accept only Microsoft Office formats when electronically receiving documents you have to send them.
What will you do when, during your next jobhunt, many HR drones will start requiring DRMed Word resumes (to "comply with privacy policy"). What will you do when, n years from now, filing for an insurance claim requires a Microsoft-approved format?
I guess that'll make you either dumb [... dumb enough to use the DRM features] or jobless.
Actually, I think that's what KDE will look like, given that they simply copy whatever Microsoft does.
I don't know if you're an Astroturfer or you are just trolling, but you whiners need to make your mind!
If Linux is "not ready for desktop" because it does thing "needlessly differently from what people are used to" (read: like windows) then KDE "copying" windows is a good thing.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, you know. Just desperate for something to whine about at all costs?
At any rate, I don't think most people think the Windows UI is bad per se. It's overly cutesy in my tastes, but YMMV. The problem with Windows is that you can't push that UI aside when you need to get some real work done.
(Near) immortality of the masses will never be a problem.
The technology to extend (perhaps indefinitely) life expectancy is going to be avaliable at first only to the rich and powerful (if only because it would be expensive because new). The rich and powerful will become richer and more powerful, and will quickly put mechanisms in place to prevent the rest of the population from partaking.
There would quickly be two classes of humans; the immensely rich and powerful few, and the increasingly expendable and poor masses.
To date, the only limiting factor that exists to limit individual amassing wealth and power is that, eventually, they will die. Sucession wars then manage to (usually) spread/dilute the power and money.
That might go away.
I'm thankfully neither rich nor powerful enough to live to see those days.
Regardless of the relative merit of the various OSes from Microsoft, it's about time that reviewers stop equating "ready for desktop use" with "works like Windows".
Just imagine the result if, say, movies were judged on how close they are to the common denominator!
- Well, Gene, Schindler's List was tought provoking and great storytelling. Thumbs down.
- I agree, it's not worth seeing unless they edit it to add at least a gratuitous sex scenes that doesn't advance the plot. A few random car chases wouldn't have hurt either. Two thumbs down.
Feh!
If the only "problems" left with a Linux distribution are that "it doesn't do X like Windows" or "it doesn't interoperate with X of Windows" then it may be time to take a long, hard look at Windows.
1) pay SCO to make noises about suing Linux users
2) offer vacuous garantee against phantom threat of being sued over third party software
3) FUD managements into thinking Linux is unsafe and MS products are safe
4) PROFIT!
We need a new mail protocol, with proper digital signing and verification of authorithy (does 231.143.211.35 have permission to send mail using the domain name "hotmail.com"?)
Yes. And who do you give the keys to that system of yours? Who do you trust?
And I really mean trust. Trust that your "permission to send mail" will not be taken away by a competitor, or givernement, silencing you. Trust that the organisation managing this doesn't mishandle things technically. Trust that they cannot be financially "convince" to give that "permission" to phantom spammers.
Email works because it is unsecure. Sure, right now you get inordinate amounts of spam, but at least you cannot be silenced either.
Fix the cause, not the method or effect. There is spam today; lots of it. The cause of spam isn't the permissive mail system; it's naive pigeons who buy into the snakeoil that they sell.
If you lock mail down, spammers will cheat, lie and bribe their way into sending spam. But your ability to send mail may someday disapear.
Do you think corporate/governement whistleblowers (the Haloween memos come to mind) would still speak freely if the only way they could communicate suddenly needed digital signatures?
Reading this kook's website I cannot help but thing this has GOT the patent that could be the foundation of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation!
"I am happy I could fulfill my function and open for you! Have a nice day!", quoth the door.
-- MG
Actually I think this is kinda good. Those increasingly ludicrous patents will eventually become stupid enough that even lawmakers will be able to see that they serve no purpose beyond litigating away true innovation.
Yes, but the logistical problems trying to overhaul something as ubiquitous as SMTP are unsurmountable. The 'net has worked mostly because everything has been designed for interoperability-- a non-compatible overhaul would break so many things this wouldn't even be funny.
It turns out there are compatible upgrades that can help reduce the cost of spam, and reduce their flow [shameless plug for my own work-in-progress for an SMTP extension that does just that].
The problem is, the only way to dispose of spam would be end-to-end authentication tied to a physical identity; I'm sure there are very many governements and evil corporations would would just love that.
And even then; rather than big spammers paying for disposable accounts they'd pay for disposable stooges who are willing to exchange their mail reputation against some big dough for spamming until they get kicked out.
While I don't particulary enjoy Apple's hold-your-hand approach to human interface (I would tend to feel it is a tie-your-hands-behind-your-back-blindfold-and-gag- you approach) there is a wide market for easily digestible interfaces.
J. Random Secretary neither needs nor cares about flexibility, power, or cutomizability. Pointy haired bosses couldn't care less about command line interfaces, or wide availability of development tools. For them, the MacOS dumbed down interface is ideal-- it allows them to get their simple tasks done without giving them too many opportunities to shoot themselves in the foot.
There will always be a market for Mac-like systems, and dumbing down Linux user interface to that level would be disastrous for those who have technological work to do.
Plus, Apple has seen the light and actually has a real OS buried beneath the chrome-- giving the opportunity for real Open Source development and genuine stability and security.
I am a Linux zealot by all means, but I don't see Macs as competition. They are a required, and orthogonal part of the market. If Apple folds, we would all loose a quality product.
Let's pray Apple holds on dearly to its clue, and never lets go.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, it is possible to know how fast it's going (simple mechanics) and it is possible to see (or deduce) where it came into being and where it disintegrated into bits-- measure the distance between them and you have time.
It's a really really short time, but particles ejected from a collision in a particle accelerator are going really really fast-- they get to cover some distance in that short interval.
-- MG
I measure efficiency as how much energy it takes to perform function x.
With an SUV used to commute from the 'burbs to work (the vast majority) the function x is "move driver from A to B". The additional energy required to move the vehicle itself is a factor of efficiency (waste), not part of the function. I.e.: using a heavy vehicle to "move driver" is necessarly less efficient than a lighter vehicle because you will have to use more energy (and thus more fuel) to perform the same end result.
SUVs are /not/ more efficient than cars at any task a car can do.
Now, if you happen to commute with a ton of payload every morning, or need to travel over terrain that would be inpassable by a car[1], the SUV is probably more efficient.
-- MG
[1] Unlikely, given that most sport "utility" vehicles are unstable and lack torque and handling-- all sacrificed to the altar of looks and highway performance. Feh.
This isn't what I said. I was talking about long commutes, that suburbia imposes. In a society where money isn't squandered on incredibly expensive infrastructure to support millions of cars going and coming from work (highways, etc), it is possible to run a well-funded public transit system that is faster and less trouble than using a car. But if you spend the money on highways instead, well, people will be better off with a car... which means more cars on the road... which means you have to fund bigger and more numerous highways... ad nauseam.
This was often the case in North America in the past, and still is in many places where they haven't yet traded their brain for a V8.
I guess you could blame this, in part, on the car manufacturers who managed to brainwash the public into thinking of a car as a status symbol. Oh, well.
-- MG
Hate to break this to you, but if you were doing 74 in a 65 zone, then you should be punished. The current speed limits are already unreasonably high for 99.95% of the driver's skills, are rarely heeded, and almost never adjusted for road conditions.
Oh, yes, of course you are a good driver. Right. What was the number again, 80% of people beleive they are part of the 10% of best drivers? Something close to that.
Our civilisation, Americans in particular, has this unexplainable obsession with speeding motor vehicles that causes so many deaths (mostly of innocent bystanders) that it's not funny. Less than 20% of people who drive cars really need to[1], and of those only a tiny fraction are careful/skilled enough to not be a deadly menace.
Get over it. I can't wait for the day where cars will disable themselves or rat out their owners when they drive stupidly. I think tickets should be issued on the spot for violations and drivers liscence suspended automatically (think Fifth Element). If you are in one of those exceedingly rare and unusual circumstances where driving dangerously was acceptable (let alone needed), fight it in court. When you endanger the lives of others, you had better be ready to prove you had a damn good reason.
A car (or any motor vehicle for that matter) is a dangerous tool. Being allowed to drive one is not a right, it's a privilege that brings great responsibilities. (And one that is granted much too lightly to way too many people right now).
-- MG
[1] And please don't give me the drive-to-work bullshit. The idea of living in a status symbol suburb, thus needing a long commute, is a recent aberation that has no sound logic. Hardly a "real need".
If their scientists are anything like ours, chance are we'll get a numbering system, a list of prime numbers, and a few "interresting" atomic numbers.
Or we might get their latest weather report.
-- MG
Yes, but you got it backwards.
Trademark law specifically allows reusing the same name if it's for a completely unrelated product, since there can be no confusion. I couldn't brand my cars "Ford", because people might confuse my cars with those of the other company, but I can very well market my new "Ford breakfast cereal".
There are a number of subtleties, though, like if I were to try to package my cereal in a box featuring motor vehicles, Ford would probably have a good case that I'm trying to dilute their trademark.
Now, that being said, AOL has no such concerns whatever since they own the Netscape Trademark. They are pretty much allowed to brand anything they want with it. And besides, an ISP is hardly unrelated to an HTTP client.
-- MG
If those code was removed/rewritten with no loss of functionality in further versions, exactly how much benefit could they be? By definition if you remove something and nobody misses it, then it provides no valuable benefit!
And certainly, a snippet of code you can remove does not contain the requisite "magic" to transform an OS from rags to riches, which is what SCO claims.
Why is it that only us geeks are able to see the SCO garbage as garbage?
I'd think even PHBs should be able to understand that "Less than .01% of code has possibly been included from source that is possibly proprietary, and all or most of it has since been removed or rewritten with no loss of functionality" means that what little common code there might have been had no real value to begin with and that SCO's claim are completely bogus!
I guess I'm overestimating the ability of PHBs to fire their neurons in a coherent pattern.
-- MG
Nah, I do want to pick a nit:
It's never been "renamed". It was always titled "Episode IV - A New Hope". Don't you remember seeing it in the theather all those years ago? Or perhaps you are too young for that?
I remember being mildly confused by this ("Hey! Did I miss three other movies of this?") since I was fairly young at the time.
As for it being "far better" at post analysis, I think you are suffering from older-is-better syndrome. While I hate Jar-Jar like everybody else, if you objectively compare the two there are far more things that don't gel in "a new hope". (Though they did make a fair job at retcon in the novels set later for many of those things).
Incidentally, if you are going to do an army of droids, might as well let them use standard weapons that humans can use as well and which you (as a warlord) probably already own in vast numbers. Cheaper, and more reliable.
Oh, and to go back to the topic at hand: THGTTG rendered into a movie *will* be different than the radio show, the book, the TV show and the non-radio audio recordings. Doesn't mean it can't be good. (Or horrible).
-- MG
I'm not too sure about the choice of Python, though, seems awfully high-level and library encumbered for something that likely has to run before many filesystems containing libraries are fscked and mounted.
I tought I was courageous when I decided to go with C++. (But it did allow me to write very flexible code while keeping it clean).
-- MG
PS: My daemond is blindlingly fast, but not known to work on any box except my own. I'd enjoy people trying it out and seeing how it breaks, but don't rely on it just yet!
We had an hour-long chat about my past and experiences, and just shooting the breeze on a number of fairly interresting subjects (he had a technical rather than HR background, so he could hold a conversation.)
The result? He turned me away from the job I applied for "You're going to hate it there", dived in his file drawer and pulled out something entirely unrelated telling me that this was the job for me.
Got an interview with his client, and got the job. While they folded two years later those were the best two years of my professional life-- the pay was good, the people I worked with were great and the job was interresting.
I've dealt with other headunters before, and since, and they mostly suck. They also have HR backgrounds.
My advice? Try to find a headhunter that actually understands the postings, and the people who apply for them. Much better matches will ensue.
-- MG
Yes.
The desired aim of all of this is to make certain everything is encrypted all the way to your speakers/screen and only "approved" programs can read the data or send output to the device.
That requires hardware assistance which PCs do not yet have (remember Palladium?) but the software "right management" is part of the deal.
-- MG
Err, no. I know it's unintuitive, but going down back from space is as energy intensive as going up.
If you were to give a gentle "push" down on something in orbit, the only thing you'd acheive is have it settle in a (very slightly) more excentric orbit. If you want to come back down from orbit you have to loose the orbital speed that's keeping you there, i.e. accelerate by exactly as much as it took to get you there, in the opposite direction.
Well, unless you want to rely on friction with the atmosphere (which means you'd have to start in a fairly low orbit to begin with)... but then you're converting your kinetic energy into thermal energy. Lots of it. This has problems of its own. But even then, unless you want to rely on a slowly degrading orbit with uncertain destination for your goods, you still have to expend a great deal of energy to steer and aim into the atmosphere, trying to balance slowing down with not burning up while attempting to hit your target.
Rings a bell? Yep. That's how the shuttle does it.
And yes, this is a simplification. There are many other factors to handle. But the basic idea is, going back down isn't just a matter of a gentle shove "downwards".
-- MG
I think resistance to dropping CW as a requirement has nothing to do with how useful it may be, but is simply a case of "in my days, we had to do x to get y, so those young upstarts better suffer just like we did".
And yes, as far as low-power, high s/n signaling goes, CW is very nice. The thing is, I could whip up from scratch a microcontroler-based decoder that displays on an LCD in about 30 minutes of work and $10 in parts ($6 of which go to the LCD itself). There is no need for human transcoding anymore; simple hardware does a more reliable job cheaper and faster.
-- MG
It should read "Mars's [...]". The possessive s is only ommited when the noun is plural, not when it otherwise ends with an s. You know, one does look a bit foolish when pointing out an editor's obvious typo by suggesting a gramatically incorrect correction.
Unless you are under the impression that there is more than Mars. :-)
-- MG
I have been required when applying for a unix sysadmin job to send a resume in Word format by the human resources drones. Many governements publish information with Microsoft Office formats. Many governements accept only Microsoft Office formats when electronically receiving documents you have to send them.
What will you do when, during your next jobhunt, many HR drones will start requiring DRMed Word resumes (to "comply with privacy policy"). What will you do when, n years from now, filing for an insurance claim requires a Microsoft-approved format?
I guess that'll make you either dumb [... dumb enough to use the DRM features] or jobless.
-- MG
I don't know if you're an Astroturfer or you are just trolling, but you whiners need to make your mind!
If Linux is "not ready for desktop" because it does thing "needlessly differently from what people are used to" (read: like windows) then KDE "copying" windows is a good thing.
You can't have your cake and eat it too, you know. Just desperate for something to whine about at all costs?
At any rate, I don't think most people think the Windows UI is bad per se. It's overly cutesy in my tastes, but YMMV. The problem with Windows is that you can't push that UI aside when you need to get some real work done.
-- MG
The technology to extend (perhaps indefinitely) life expectancy is going to be avaliable at first only to the rich and powerful (if only because it would be expensive because new). The rich and powerful will become richer and more powerful, and will quickly put mechanisms in place to prevent the rest of the population from partaking.
There would quickly be two classes of humans; the immensely rich and powerful few, and the increasingly expendable and poor masses.
To date, the only limiting factor that exists to limit individual amassing wealth and power is that, eventually, they will die. Sucession wars then manage to (usually) spread/dilute the power and money.
That might go away.
I'm thankfully neither rich nor powerful enough to live to see those days.
-- MG
But their earnings just took a RIM shot. (Ack! I should be ashamed of myself). -- MA
Just imagine the result if, say, movies were judged on how close they are to the common denominator!
- Well, Gene, Schindler's List was tought provoking and great storytelling. Thumbs down.
- I agree, it's not worth seeing unless they edit it to add at least a gratuitous sex scenes that doesn't advance the plot. A few random car chases wouldn't have hurt either. Two thumbs down.
Feh!
If the only "problems" left with a Linux distribution are that "it doesn't do X like Windows" or "it doesn't interoperate with X of Windows" then it may be time to take a long, hard look at Windows.
-- MG
1) pay SCO to make noises about suing Linux users
2) offer vacuous garantee against phantom threat of being sued over third party software
3) FUD managements into thinking Linux is unsafe and MS products are safe
4) PROFIT!
-- Marc A. Pelletier
Yes. And who do you give the keys to that system of yours? Who do you trust?
And I really mean trust. Trust that your "permission to send mail" will not be taken away by a competitor, or givernement, silencing you. Trust that the organisation managing this doesn't mishandle things technically. Trust that they cannot be financially "convince" to give that "permission" to phantom spammers.
Email works because it is unsecure. Sure, right now you get inordinate amounts of spam, but at least you cannot be silenced either.
Fix the cause, not the method or effect. There is spam today; lots of it. The cause of spam isn't the permissive mail system; it's naive pigeons who buy into the snakeoil that they sell.
If you lock mail down, spammers will cheat, lie and bribe their way into sending spam. But your ability to send mail may someday disapear.
Do you think corporate/governement whistleblowers (the Haloween memos come to mind) would still speak freely if the only way they could communicate suddenly needed digital signatures?
-- MG
"I am happy I could fulfill my function and open for you! Have a nice day!", quoth the door.
-- MG
Actually I think this is kinda good. Those increasingly ludicrous patents will eventually become stupid enough that even lawmakers will be able to see that they serve no purpose beyond litigating away true innovation.
It turns out there are compatible upgrades that can help reduce the cost of spam, and reduce their flow [shameless plug for my own work-in-progress for an SMTP extension that does just that].
The problem is, the only way to dispose of spam would be end-to-end authentication tied to a physical identity; I'm sure there are very many governements and evil corporations would would just love that.
And even then; rather than big spammers paying for disposable accounts they'd pay for disposable stooges who are willing to exchange their mail reputation against some big dough for spamming until they get kicked out.
-- MG
Well, I would tend to agree with you. Nothing can make GWB's election right, regardless of how many people... Oh, wait a minute... -- MG
J. Random Secretary neither needs nor cares about flexibility, power, or cutomizability. Pointy haired bosses couldn't care less about command line interfaces, or wide availability of development tools. For them, the MacOS dumbed down interface is ideal-- it allows them to get their simple tasks done without giving them too many opportunities to shoot themselves in the foot.
There will always be a market for Mac-like systems, and dumbing down Linux user interface to that level would be disastrous for those who have technological work to do.
Plus, Apple has seen the light and actually has a real OS buried beneath the chrome-- giving the opportunity for real Open Source development and genuine stability and security.
I am a Linux zealot by all means, but I don't see Macs as competition. They are a required, and orthogonal part of the market. If Apple folds, we would all loose a quality product.
Let's pray Apple holds on dearly to its clue, and never lets go.
-- MG