"I ask this seriously: is there any set of circumstances in which Bush could propose something you'd like and you'd be happy he did it?"
Yes, but he will have to do all of the following:
1 - Don't invent excuses to improve his weapons programs (and don't destroy the nuclear non proliferation treatry).
2 - Don't try to go to new (not needed) wars. UN know what it is doing better than he is.
3 - Stop being so corrupt. Stop helping the companies that given him money at the expense of the US (and the rest of the world) people. Stop sending money to impossible, useless and harmfull programs (see 1 and 2) like his missile shield.
4 - Fix the economical problems that he created. Stop spending more than the State incomming (see 1, 2 and 3).
If he does all of this, he's image will be improved to the status of a just bad president, and people will stop complaining so much.
1) It is a form of art. You can arguee that it is not all that usefull (and you'd be wrong), but it is art. Anyway, it no big deal.
2) Many people don't have enogh money to spend on sotware on Brazil. They can be pirates or use FOSS. Your analogy is right, but people are not forced to murder (and when thay are - legitimatee defense - the law don't declare them criminals).
3) Right parties want free (beer) software, but left people often know that it is not enoght, they want brazilans to develop and customize software, and the government to not use possibly crippled software and want free (speech). Those are two different debates, and I also don't know why they are together here.
It is not that free software ideology is converging with leftist* one, the point is that free software is gaining attention on the political debate (left and right). Free software have a very nice ideology and create some very interesting possibilities for Brazil, it is easy to understand why it has such attention.
*Brazilian leftist, that is diferent from US leftist for example.
Oh, the free press. You know... The brazilian press is free, but it is a monopoly where the bigest player have half the incoming from politicians and the governement itself.
You got the point, we have a very controlled press, almost no transparency on the governemnt and very corrupt legislative and judiciary at the local level (at hte national level, the judiciary works).
But we are doing just fine for a country that was a dictatorship until 84, and the GP is a lol (and we had this revolution stuff at 77-84, it works well to stop big problems, but create a lot of small ones).
You are trying to put two different things together.
Outsorcing happens due to the difference of incoming on different countries. It is simple, US people are richer, so their workers will want bigger salaries; the companies want to pay less, so they outsorce. This may happen on any rich country on the world, and the only way to avoid on the long run is to let the poor countries become rich (something that US try very hard to avoid, because of dunb geediness).
The US foreign debt is caused by the artificialy hight value of the dollar. Instead of letting the dollar flow decide its value, US people get loans. This way, people becomes rich on the short run, but have to pay interests and maintain a hight debt. This situation can lead to two different scenarios:
1: The US can slowly reduce the value of the dollar and pay most of the debit on the run. This is the good situation, the US people will become less rich, but US keep going.
2: The dollar's value continues high until people stop trusting it. This will lead to a major crisis on the worlds economy, with the US suffering more than anyone else.
Situation 1 is the desirable one, US is already working to make that happen. The only question is if it is working hard enogh, since the trust on the dollar's stability is already reducing all over the world.
"Either way, it's too bad; in the long run, no man (or nation) is an island."
No, but when you have 1/3 of the world economy, you become a hole continent. I guess that external reputation doesn't botter US anymore. There is not much what the rest of the world can do to harm them, only the US can kill the US now (but they are doing an excelent job on that).
Yes, but if MS win, the consumers lose. It FF wins, just MS lose, because you can't stop inovation on FOSS wordl.
But MS can't win, so we are stuck with the two good situations: FF continues to compete with IE, and IE improves sometimes, and stop improving for most of the time or FF wins and we have constant improvement.
Linux may never catch up Apple on design, but we can have a situation where the Linux design is god enogh(TM) and have more functionality. This would also be a bad to Apple.
Worse yet. The first derivative is positive. The second derivative also seems to be positive now, but they think that it will become negative by the next time we measure it.
Seems that the third one is negative, but you can still have hope for the fourth.
" I think you'll find that true communism in the spirit of Marx doesn't have anything to do with censorship."
No, not communism, but Marx's socialism does. And as he says that communism is only possible once all countries change to socialism, this one is a very Marxist move.
Disclamer: Note that I said Marx's socialism, not genral socialism. There are plenty of interpretation of the words "communism" and "socialism". I'm using the ones created by Marx.
This system have 2 flaws. First, you can't verify that another system uses TNC by the network. It can always tell you what you want to listen and not complain. Second, FOSS projects can break the DRM stuff and run on a general porpouse computer (not a TCPA machine) telling the programs that it is TCPA compilant.
Not that TCPA group don't intend to do what you say*, but I think that FOSS have a sucessfull defensive strategy to use.
Normaly I would say "I don't think they are so stupid to persue something as flawed." but anti piracy fight has created several stupid moviments aready, so, why not one more. Anyway, I reserve myself the right of being more paranoid than you and think that their strategy is stronger and unknown.
My first reaction when I listen someone claiming that he doesn't have viruses on his Windows computer it to doubt it. Not related to reputation or competence* (even because you are an AC), but I doubt you, and I am not alone. It is so common to Windows computers being infected by invisible malware that you should specify exacly how do you look for them if you whant most of the people here belive you.
*It is possible that some people very competent on this specific area know that their computers are free of malware, but most of them would say that their PC have no malware they know about. Most of the people that state that theyir Windows PC have no malware just didn't look far enogh.
What a great exemple of acountability: "The server is outsourced, it is no our fault".
I really want to know this parallel universe that you describe, where MS stands up for their faults while FOSS people don't. Here at this universe, MS hides their products' bugs (and often don't even assume that they are bugs, calling them features), hides their marketing practices, lie to buyers about what their products do (and what they will do), sell an inexistent support and even lie to courts.
It is stupid people like this that make all those FUD campaigns usefull.
The problem is that open source is often used to decrease costs and increase productivity. If Europe wait for the rest of the world to start really using it, they will be on disadvantage.
As far as I know, autopackage supports Debian, so an autopackage package will work. There is no reason for Debian to use it as their primary packaging system, they already have apt and it works fine*. You are right when said that autopackage have its quirks. Not being good for a distro management is one of them. The system is designed to make single programs install easily on multiple distros, not to base a hole distro on it.
On my case, the hardware use to fail or the programs and documetns grow to a size that it can't fit the HD anymore, and since the hole computer is worth less than a new HD, I upgrade.
But that is stuff that happened until last upgrade cicle. Nowadays, it makes more sense to upgrade the computer piece by piece and keep the system as a hole running. So, for now on, expect to see Debian lasting much longer than it used to.
Well, it will also will last longer because of the longer release cicle, but I don't think people will comemorate this...
Did you intended to be funny? If yes, don't consider the answer...
Yes, the physical location shouldn't matter, but on Windows, it does*. How do you acces your files by net, or how do you find them on those programs that don't display "My Documents" at top level? There are a lot of tasks I needed to do at Windows by the time I used it that required knowing the path to the documents, like acessing other peoples stuff** or fixing an account.
* There is a register key telling the path, so, I guess, a well written program can access it. But it is hard, you have to acces a key, and can't do that at command line (this contrasts a lot with the simple '~' expansion of *nix). No surprise several people don't use this.
** There are plenty of situations where you need to acces someone else's documents. There is a shame that Windows, with a so nice permission system have a unusable interface, so you either can't safely let people access your "My Documents" or can't have any work done while adimistrating your account (also contrasts with the simple permission system of *nix).
How many centures until a well conserved lake silt up? I've heard about problems with the dam itself, with the generators, lack of water, but a lake silting up is a joke...
Hydro dams are usefull. If the builder is corrupt* and didn't want to take care of the investment, it is his faul, not of the dam.
* Ok, maybe he gone bankrupt and forgot that he had a hydro dam... I don't think so, I'm quite sure that the one you are talking about was built with public money.
The only problem Brazil faces with its methanol program is that is used to be something like 30 - 40% expensiver than gass. We never had problems with the net energy return and where able to run almost half of all brazilian cars with alchohool some time ago*. The US studies I've read are biased towards low tech crops and bad use of land.
*We had no problem doing it, not by lack of land or excessive use of fertilizers. The other crops grew up with little impact by the achohool productions. The only problems were that cars where not so good by the time and it was expensiver than gass.
Except that it doesn't stop emissions, like the article claims. It just postpone them, the power plant emissions will still be done, just not on the plant.
Of corse, you get more energy per emission, since you are using solar. But I'm still to discover who is this as**le invented comparing the emissions of fossil fuels and renewable ones on the same basis.
Also, the Kyoto Protocol have no need to motivate specific technologies, it just motivates reduction of the overall emissions, each country uses the best technology for itself.
"All major Java JVMs do JIT compilation, and then run the result as native code."
And are still dam slow! I don't know if it is because of the VM, or the late bidding, or whatever, but Java programs are still much slower than C++ ones.
People don't upgrade laptops often, and the problem of few options available aready exists. At least, if Linux laptops become more common, hardware fabricants will start to support it (by not hidding the specs) and the options will be the same.
Firewalls are usefull only if your computer have more than one net interface, or if you don't know what you are doing. A security expert should not need one.
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"I ask this seriously: is there any set of circumstances in which Bush could propose something you'd like and you'd be happy he did it?"
Yes, but he will have to do all of the following:
1 - Don't invent excuses to improve his weapons programs (and don't destroy the nuclear non proliferation treatry).
2 - Don't try to go to new (not needed) wars. UN know what it is doing better than he is.
3 - Stop being so corrupt. Stop helping the companies that given him money at the expense of the US (and the rest of the world) people. Stop sending money to impossible, useless and harmfull programs (see 1 and 2) like his missile shield.
4 - Fix the economical problems that he created. Stop spending more than the State incomming (see 1, 2 and 3).
If he does all of this, he's image will be improved to the status of a just bad president, and people will stop complaining so much.
1) It is a form of art. You can arguee that it is not all that usefull (and you'd be wrong), but it is art. Anyway, it no big deal.
2) Many people don't have enogh money to spend on sotware on Brazil. They can be pirates or use FOSS. Your analogy is right, but people are not forced to murder (and when thay are - legitimatee defense - the law don't declare them criminals).
3) Right parties want free (beer) software, but left people often know that it is not enoght, they want brazilans to develop and customize software, and the government to not use possibly crippled software and want free (speech). Those are two different debates, and I also don't know why they are together here.
It is not that free software ideology is converging with leftist* one, the point is that free software is gaining attention on the political debate (left and right). Free software have a very nice ideology and create some very interesting possibilities for Brazil, it is easy to understand why it has such attention.
*Brazilian leftist, that is diferent from US leftist for example.
Oh, the free press. You know... The brazilian press is free, but it is a monopoly where the bigest player have half the incoming from politicians and the governement itself.
You got the point, we have a very controlled press, almost no transparency on the governemnt and very corrupt legislative and judiciary at the local level (at hte national level, the judiciary works).
But we are doing just fine for a country that was a dictatorship until 84, and the GP is a lol (and we had this revolution stuff at 77-84, it works well to stop big problems, but create a lot of small ones).
You are trying to put two different things together.
Outsorcing happens due to the difference of incoming on different countries. It is simple, US people are richer, so their workers will want bigger salaries; the companies want to pay less, so they outsorce. This may happen on any rich country on the world, and the only way to avoid on the long run is to let the poor countries become rich (something that US try very hard to avoid, because of dunb geediness).
The US foreign debt is caused by the artificialy hight value of the dollar. Instead of letting the dollar flow decide its value, US people get loans. This way, people becomes rich on the short run, but have to pay interests and maintain a hight debt. This situation can lead to two different scenarios:
1: The US can slowly reduce the value of the dollar and pay most of the debit on the run. This is the good situation, the US people will become less rich, but US keep going.
2: The dollar's value continues high until people stop trusting it. This will lead to a major crisis on the worlds economy, with the US suffering more than anyone else.
Situation 1 is the desirable one, US is already working to make that happen. The only question is if it is working hard enogh, since the trust on the dollar's stability is already reducing all over the world.
"Either way, it's too bad; in the long run, no man (or nation) is an island."
No, but when you have 1/3 of the world economy, you become a hole continent. I guess that external reputation doesn't botter US anymore. There is not much what the rest of the world can do to harm them, only the US can kill the US now (but they are doing an excelent job on that).
Yes, but if MS win, the consumers lose. It FF wins, just MS lose, because you can't stop inovation on FOSS wordl.
But MS can't win, so we are stuck with the two good situations: FF continues to compete with IE, and IE improves sometimes, and stop improving for most of the time or FF wins and we have constant improvement.
Linux may never catch up Apple on design, but we can have a situation where the Linux design is god enogh(TM) and have more functionality. This would also be a bad to Apple.
Worse yet. The first derivative is positive. The second derivative also seems to be positive now, but they think that it will become negative by the next time we measure it.
Seems that the third one is negative, but you can still have hope for the fourth.
" I think you'll find that true communism in the spirit of Marx doesn't have anything to do with censorship."
No, not communism, but Marx's socialism does. And as he says that communism is only possible once all countries change to socialism, this one is a very Marxist move.
Disclamer: Note that I said Marx's socialism, not genral socialism. There are plenty of interpretation of the words "communism" and "socialism". I'm using the ones created by Marx.
This system have 2 flaws. First, you can't verify that another system uses TNC by the network. It can always tell you what you want to listen and not complain. Second, FOSS projects can break the DRM stuff and run on a general porpouse computer (not a TCPA machine) telling the programs that it is TCPA compilant.
Not that TCPA group don't intend to do what you say*, but I think that FOSS have a sucessfull defensive strategy to use.
Normaly I would say "I don't think they are so stupid to persue something as flawed." but anti piracy fight has created several stupid moviments aready, so, why not one more. Anyway, I reserve myself the right of being more paranoid than you and think that their strategy is stronger and unknown.
The point is why those people don't buy a PC. The macs are more expensive and the hardware isn't so different.
My first reaction when I listen someone claiming that he doesn't have viruses on his Windows computer it to doubt it. Not related to reputation or competence* (even because you are an AC), but I doubt you, and I am not alone. It is so common to Windows computers being infected by invisible malware that you should specify exacly how do you look for them if you whant most of the people here belive you.
*It is possible that some people very competent on this specific area know that their computers are free of malware, but most of them would say that their PC have no malware they know about. Most of the people that state that theyir Windows PC have no malware just didn't look far enogh.
What a great exemple of acountability: "The server is outsourced, it is no our fault".
I really want to know this parallel universe that you describe, where MS stands up for their faults while FOSS people don't. Here at this universe, MS hides their products' bugs (and often don't even assume that they are bugs, calling them features), hides their marketing practices, lie to buyers about what their products do (and what they will do), sell an inexistent support and even lie to courts.
It is stupid people like this that make all those FUD campaigns usefull.
The problem is that open source is often used to decrease costs and increase productivity. If Europe wait for the rest of the world to start really using it, they will be on disadvantage.
As far as I know, autopackage supports Debian, so an autopackage package will work. There is no reason for Debian to use it as their primary packaging system, they already have apt and it works fine*. You are right when said that autopackage have its quirks. Not being good for a distro management is one of them. The system is designed to make single programs install easily on multiple distros, not to base a hole distro on it.
* Try apt before complainning... Really, try it!
On my case, the hardware use to fail or the programs and documetns grow to a size that it can't fit the HD anymore, and since the hole computer is worth less than a new HD, I upgrade.
But that is stuff that happened until last upgrade cicle. Nowadays, it makes more sense to upgrade the computer piece by piece and keep the system as a hole running. So, for now on, expect to see Debian lasting much longer than it used to.
Well, it will also will last longer because of the longer release cicle, but I don't think people will comemorate this...
Did you intended to be funny? If yes, don't consider the answer...
Yes, the physical location shouldn't matter, but on Windows, it does*. How do you acces your files by net, or how do you find them on those programs that don't display "My Documents" at top level? There are a lot of tasks I needed to do at Windows by the time I used it that required knowing the path to the documents, like acessing other peoples stuff** or fixing an account.
* There is a register key telling the path, so, I guess, a well written program can access it. But it is hard, you have to acces a key, and can't do that at command line (this contrasts a lot with the simple '~' expansion of *nix). No surprise several people don't use this.
** There are plenty of situations where you need to acces someone else's documents. There is a shame that Windows, with a so nice permission system have a unusable interface, so you either can't safely let people access your "My Documents" or can't have any work done while adimistrating your account (also contrasts with the simple permission system of *nix).
"Hydro dams - they silt up and become unusable"
How many centures until a well conserved lake silt up? I've heard about problems with the dam itself, with the generators, lack of water, but a lake silting up is a joke...
Hydro dams are usefull. If the builder is corrupt* and didn't want to take care of the investment, it is his faul, not of the dam.
* Ok, maybe he gone bankrupt and forgot that he had a hydro dam... I don't think so, I'm quite sure that the one you are talking about was built with public money.
The only problem Brazil faces with its methanol program is that is used to be something like 30 - 40% expensiver than gass. We never had problems with the net energy return and where able to run almost half of all brazilian cars with alchohool some time ago*. The US studies I've read are biased towards low tech crops and bad use of land.
*We had no problem doing it, not by lack of land or excessive use of fertilizers. The other crops grew up with little impact by the achohool productions. The only problems were that cars where not so good by the time and it was expensiver than gass.
Except that it doesn't stop emissions, like the article claims. It just postpone them, the power plant emissions will still be done, just not on the plant.
Of corse, you get more energy per emission, since you are using solar. But I'm still to discover who is this as**le invented comparing the emissions of fossil fuels and renewable ones on the same basis.
Also, the Kyoto Protocol have no need to motivate specific technologies, it just motivates reduction of the overall emissions, each country uses the best technology for itself.
TCPA have some really good ideas, maybe AMD wil implement just the good part.
"All major Java JVMs do JIT compilation, and then run the result as native code."
And are still dam slow! I don't know if it is because of the VM, or the late bidding, or whatever, but Java programs are still much slower than C++ ones.
People don't upgrade laptops often, and the problem of few options available aready exists. At least, if Linux laptops become more common, hardware fabricants will start to support it (by not hidding the specs) and the options will be the same.
Firewalls are usefull only if your computer have more than one net interface, or if you don't know what you are doing. A security expert should not need one.