'And if you don't watch TV, then good for you. You're actually in a much smaller minority.'
That is neither here nor there but if you include movies that weren't made for TV as TV content you must consider all video to be the domain of TV. Interesting. Also, the will of the majority does not prevail over the will of the few. That is mob rule.
Either way, your note that broadcast TV can't be reached by everyone is well taken. It can't be received by those without a TV either and that is a larger number of people than you'd think.
I guess the reason we interpreted your comment differently wasn't that it wasn't clear but because we failed to see how the availability of broadcast TV made any sort of functional change in the discussion. Unless you are saying the fight should be expanded to go back and battle the old radio censorship as well as the new attempts to stranglehold free speech on cable?
'I had the option of not subscribing, which meant absolutely no TV'
You make it sound as if TV is a fundamental human need. There is no particular reason to censor TV just so YOU can subscribe. If you are that concerned TV is rated now and your TV has the option to filter content by rating. I personally don't see the justification for ANY content restrictions on cable.
This violates free speech plain and simple. They managed to slip this crap through on radio by claiming that broadcast radio was pushed out to consumers. Supposedly this meant that broadcasts were equivalent to yelling in the street. That was a fairly lame argument since you had to make an intentional effort to actually hear those broadcasts but whatever. Cable TV doesn't even meet that shady criteria. You actually have to pay to have a wire run into your home and pay a subscription to receive it. Cable TV is like speaking privately in your home. In your home YOU and not the public and not the FCC decide what content you want to purchase.
Cable companies and content producers should ignore this. If the FCC tried to claim to that they are a higher authority than the constitution they would quickly be put in their place by the courts. This provides an excellent window of opportunity to get rid of all the censorship the FCC has forced upon television.
Could be. Imagine the odds that, of all the things, a whale could slam hard against (it did say it was broken on the whales collar bone) a device that is designed to be slammed into whales!
Not really its called natural selection. You do realize that humans ARE a natural element right? I'm not upset about the dinosaurs being wiped out either. If it upsets you that much, take comfort in the fact that one day humans will go too.
Is there some reason planetism should be sacred and include only a few objects? I fail to see a reason that asteroids couldn't be both asteroids and planets. After all, there are plenty of asteroids that would not be planets under this definition.
A pro business stance is the core of the republican ideaology. If you don't take the pro business stance you probably aren't a republican at all since all their beliefs stem from that.
Unless... you weren't one of those who bought into the abortion/religious nonsense/values crap they spout to gain votes from those with imaginary friends were you?
The problem I see is this, both parties have a set of beliefs but there is party that's ideology includes protecting ALL my freedoms. I want a holy grail, I want a candidate that acknowledges the second amendment is about balance of power and abolishes all the unconstitutional restrictions that have been placed on guns and arms of all sorts. I want a candidate who cares about my privacy and free speech. I want a candidate who believes in a free and unregulated market but also recognizes that when the question is raised businesses are NOT people and the interests of flesh and blood people trust the interests of commerce.
Where is that candidate? Why do we have to pick between the second amendment or the first? The parties just erode the rights they don't like and slowly but surely ALL of our rights are eroded.
'Okay, but aren't those smaller parts that make me up *themselves* collective results of simpler parts? And then aren't those parts made of simpler parts? If you say I'm more like a swarming ant colony, where the ant is the simple, basic part that makes up the larger function of the swarm, then isn't the ant itself a system of parts, namely cells? And then isn't each ant cell a system of parts, namely organelles and other molecules? And then aren't those molecules made up of atoms? And atoms made up of protons, nuetrons, and electrons? And those made up of quarks?'
Without question. I wouldn't argue with what you have said in this reply only add to it and bring this increasingly philosophical discussion back to the topic at hand. Of all of these parts you mention, the only 'parts' that really exist the most basic (which I won't try to define for reason you already mentioned), the rest are all abstract concepts we have invented to label patterns we perceive in those most basic parts or their interactions.
That might seem like a mere technical point but it is actually the core point in this discussion. Neither our perception of the two genetically related plants as seperate siblings nor the plants potential perception of both as being part of its collective whole is correct or incorrect. You mention the parts at various levels of the scales but you have remember these scales are not definition of reality, they are inventions we have made to aid our understanding of it.
The plant recognizing its component parts on the same scale we invented is unlikely, only being similar to ourselves with intelligences that work in the same fashion are likely to see similar patterns in the actual chaos that is the fabric of the universe. I find it amusing because it seems that most who are skeptical seem to be implying that understanding siblings in the fashion we do would somehow be superior to understanding similar genetics in a different fashion.
'What I mean is that it feels to me that there is an indivisible Lawpoop that has no parts.'
Just like it may feel to the plant that there an indivisible lawpoop that has no parts despite the fact that we see several sibling plants. Neither your lawpoop, nor even one of those sibling plants is one thing. Both are composed of billions of simplistic parts that perform simple functions. Your 'lawpoop' is actually more like the collective result of an ant colony functioning or birds flocking.
'Where's your ethical cutoff point? Why? I'd wager that it's a lot more arbitrary than my "the less functional neurons, the better" cutoff.'
Well now that is a silly statement. There aren't degrees, either something is arbitrary or not.
Personal I avoid eating humans because of the legal issues. Other things I don't eat because I don't like them. That and a general root for the home team philosophy. After all, living and promoting our own set of genetics is our 'purpose' by default. So, that is the one I go with. At no point is there any arbitrary cutoff dictated by some sort of imaginary code of ethics or morals.
Actually I appreciate vegetarians more than most. Vegetarians took the thought process halfway when they realized that animal life was as valuable as human life. Most of the rest eat what they want because they never thought, not because they reached the conclusions one discovers if they follow the logic to the cold reality of its conclusion.
'Even a lab mouse has meta cognition and problem solving abilities.'
We are discovering that we have underestimated the intelligence of creatures every day. For instance, I have seen a cockroach operating a vehicle and using that vehicle to run and hide in the shadows just as it would do on foot. Our intelligence is the chance interaction of individual components, we have already replicated those kind of processes in software. Why do would we assume that the chemical interactions in our brains and other mammals are the only medium in which intelligence has evolved naturally?
Of course. You don't think your 'self' is actually one thing do you? Even the neurons that together culminate in your conscious mind are actually a bunch of completely independent pieces.
The closer an organism is to your genetics the closer the instinctual bond. Parents, Children, brothers, and sisters. Then extended family and finally other humans. Then other lifeforms that are most similar to humans, mammals before reptiles and fish, animals before plants, and even plants are closer and therefore more sacred than micro-organisms. Do you actually think one form of life is innately superior to another? Of course not, we just view those that are closer to ourselves as superior.
Minor correction: 'A2b. GNU/Linux (the whole system) comes with many libraries'
There is no such thing as GNU/Linux. There is the Linux operating system (aka kernel) and then there are Linux based distributions which couple the Linux operating system with libraries and applications that make the system more functional for users. Those distributions may or may not include GNU applications and libraries and those would be the only portions it would be appropriate to refer to as GNU.
Of course there is a conflict in the original question. The original poster first claims that he is writing the software 100% from scratch and then asks about linking to Linux libraries.
'Next time there's a store near you having a buy-one-get-one-free sale, go on in and tell them you'd rather not have two of whatever it is, and could they please just give you the free one by itself. See how well that works for you;)'
That's my point. You aren't getting anything free with a buy-one-get-one-free sale. The 'free' ones cost the store money, they are an expense, the store bases its prices on its expenses plus a markup. That 'free' one increased the price of other items in the store. In other words, it wasn't free at all.
'Ah yes, giving away FREE software and expecting people to use it for FREE.'
Apple is a commercial entity. As long as Apple is still making a profit nothing you get from Apple is free, it may not be the guy browsing but someone is footing the bill. You can certainly bet that Apple didn't just drop their bottom line by the cost of developing and distributing the software.
It reminds me of the last time I called Comcast. I ordered Showtime for the Showtime on demand movies and while the channels came in the video on demand gave an error code (very annoying since I never waste my time watching whatever they are force feeding at the moment and watch what I want when I want with the video on demand). It took them 3 months to fix it and they had the nerve to charge me for Showtime during that time. Naturally I demanded a credit and the girl tried to claim that I was paying for the channels only and the video on demand was a free service they gave me out of the kindness of their hearts so there was nothing to credit. I told her that was wonderful, take away all that expensive programming I pay all that money for and just leave me the free stuff. She told me that it only comes free with the paid programming. I told her to make up her mind, either they are giving me the video on demand for free or they require me to pay them money in order to receive it.
I am admittedly not really a web developer anymore but I do still have the need to build a site here and there. My experience that is Firefox/Konqueror/Safari (lets face it, anything but IE and Opera which is designed to break in the same ways IE does) are good spec references.
That said, the specs suck. I have to question the experience of anyone who uses the 'if you code to specs it should display properly' argument. The problem is that specs are open to interpretation in many points and blatantly leave how elements are visually handled to implementor in a large number of instances.
I have seen pages render differently in different browsers whilst using only standards compliant code that the browsers implemented properly. I admit this problem is rare, I only encounter it... every time I make a page of any complexity or check another's page in multiple browsers.
'Mainly because you spent years learning how to configure it through M4 and you're so stuck in your ways that moving to a modular, faster, more flexible and secure MTA is unthinkable.'
I don't think it's just that. I think of the old unix admins have the ability to readily grasp and learn the new stuff. I suspect it has more to do with job security. It goes like this, if sendmail isn't in place you sell it by explaining that it is tried, true , and stable unlike these flaky new systems and maybe you claim nothing else could reliability handle the load if it is a big corporation. TADA. You have just made yourself more valuable because the number of people who can competently administer the mail server has dropped dramatically.
The same is true for many proprietary unix solutions and mainframes, certain large database solutions and last but not least some very expensive network solutions.
The old guys in many industries may be obsolete but nobody became an old hat computer guru with a learning impairment. These guys have just learned that there are more important aspects of the corporate game than the computers they administrate.
'And I guarantee you there are (or will be) flaws in both applications...'
Without questions and the number of reported flaws is a useless metric for a number of reasons. You are right sendmail and postfix can be equally secure and/or insecure depending upon configuration. That said security in otherwise secure programs is inversely proportional to configuration complexity. Both programs have a learning curve but the configuration of sendmail is far more complex than that of Postfix (even for a knowledgeable user).
Slashdot Mirror
'And if you don't watch TV, then good for you. You're actually in a much smaller minority.'
That is neither here nor there but if you include movies that weren't made for TV as TV content you must consider all video to be the domain of TV. Interesting. Also, the will of the majority does not prevail over the will of the few. That is mob rule.
Either way, your note that broadcast TV can't be reached by everyone is well taken. It can't be received by those without a TV either and that is a larger number of people than you'd think.
I guess the reason we interpreted your comment differently wasn't that it wasn't clear but because we failed to see how the availability of broadcast TV made any sort of functional change in the discussion. Unless you are saying the fight should be expanded to go back and battle the old radio censorship as well as the new attempts to stranglehold free speech on cable?
'I had the option of not subscribing, which meant absolutely no TV'
You make it sound as if TV is a fundamental human need. There is no particular reason to censor TV just so YOU can subscribe. If you are that concerned TV is rated now and your TV has the option to filter content by rating. I personally don't see the justification for ANY content restrictions on cable.
That's better than my area. If you want digital cable you have to take everything except the premium movie channels and the prices reflect it.
Don't sweat it, I checked your profile and you aren't a friendless loser. You have fans, three of to be precise.
This violates free speech plain and simple. They managed to slip this crap through on radio by claiming that broadcast radio was pushed out to consumers. Supposedly this meant that broadcasts were equivalent to yelling in the street. That was a fairly lame argument since you had to make an intentional effort to actually hear those broadcasts but whatever. Cable TV doesn't even meet that shady criteria. You actually have to pay to have a wire run into your home and pay a subscription to receive it. Cable TV is like speaking privately in your home. In your home YOU and not the public and not the FCC decide what content you want to purchase.
Cable companies and content producers should ignore this. If the FCC tried to claim to that they are a higher authority than the constitution they would quickly be put in their place by the courts. This provides an excellent window of opportunity to get rid of all the censorship the FCC has forced upon television.
You need to recalibrate your sarcasm detector.
Could be. Imagine the odds that, of all the things, a whale could slam hard against (it did say it was broken on the whales collar bone) a device that is designed to be slammed into whales!
Not really its called natural selection. You do realize that humans ARE a natural element right? I'm not upset about the dinosaurs being wiped out either. If it upsets you that much, take comfort in the fact that one day humans will go too.
'A friend'
He didn't say girlfriend. I'm sure there are no shortage of losers stuck in the friend zone.
Begone foul grammar troll.
Is there some reason planetism should be sacred and include only a few objects? I fail to see a reason that asteroids couldn't be both asteroids and planets. After all, there are plenty of asteroids that would not be planets under this definition.
A pro business stance is the core of the republican ideaology. If you don't take the pro business stance you probably aren't a republican at all since all their beliefs stem from that.
Unless... you weren't one of those who bought into the abortion/religious nonsense/values crap they spout to gain votes from those with imaginary friends were you?
The problem I see is this, both parties have a set of beliefs but there is party that's ideology includes protecting ALL my freedoms. I want a holy grail, I want a candidate that acknowledges the second amendment is about balance of power and abolishes all the unconstitutional restrictions that have been placed on guns and arms of all sorts. I want a candidate who cares about my privacy and free speech. I want a candidate who believes in a free and unregulated market but also recognizes that when the question is raised businesses are NOT people and the interests of flesh and blood people trust the interests of commerce.
Where is that candidate? Why do we have to pick between the second amendment or the first? The parties just erode the rights they don't like and slowly but surely ALL of our rights are eroded.
'Now if we could just get mandatory picture IDs for voting'
Now if we could just get rid of mandatory picture ID's we could get our privacy back.
'Okay, but aren't those smaller parts that make me up *themselves* collective results of simpler parts? And then aren't those parts made of simpler parts? If you say I'm more like a swarming ant colony, where the ant is the simple, basic part that makes up the larger function of the swarm, then isn't the ant itself a system of parts, namely cells? And then isn't each ant cell a system of parts, namely organelles and other molecules? And then aren't those molecules made up of atoms? And atoms made up of protons, nuetrons, and electrons? And those made up of quarks?'
Without question. I wouldn't argue with what you have said in this reply only add to it and bring this increasingly philosophical discussion back to the topic at hand. Of all of these parts you mention, the only 'parts' that really exist the most basic (which I won't try to define for reason you already mentioned), the rest are all abstract concepts we have invented to label patterns we perceive in those most basic parts or their interactions.
That might seem like a mere technical point but it is actually the core point in this discussion. Neither our perception of the two genetically related plants as seperate siblings nor the plants potential perception of both as being part of its collective whole is correct or incorrect. You mention the parts at various levels of the scales but you have remember these scales are not definition of reality, they are inventions we have made to aid our understanding of it.
The plant recognizing its component parts on the same scale we invented is unlikely, only being similar to ourselves with intelligences that work in the same fashion are likely to see similar patterns in the actual chaos that is the fabric of the universe. I find it amusing because it seems that most who are skeptical seem to be implying that understanding siblings in the fashion we do would somehow be superior to understanding similar genetics in a different fashion.
'What I mean is that it feels to me that there is an indivisible Lawpoop that has no parts.'
Just like it may feel to the plant that there an indivisible lawpoop that has no parts despite the fact that we see several sibling plants. Neither your lawpoop, nor even one of those sibling plants is one thing. Both are composed of billions of simplistic parts that perform simple functions. Your 'lawpoop' is actually more like the collective result of an ant colony functioning or birds flocking.
'Where's your ethical cutoff point? Why? I'd wager that it's a lot more arbitrary than my "the less functional neurons, the better" cutoff.'
Well now that is a silly statement. There aren't degrees, either something is arbitrary or not.
Personal I avoid eating humans because of the legal issues. Other things I don't eat because I don't like them. That and a general root for the home team philosophy. After all, living and promoting our own set of genetics is our 'purpose' by default. So, that is the one I go with. At no point is there any arbitrary cutoff dictated by some sort of imaginary code of ethics or morals.
Actually I appreciate vegetarians more than most. Vegetarians took the thought process halfway when they realized that animal life was as valuable as human life. Most of the rest eat what they want because they never thought, not because they reached the conclusions one discovers if they follow the logic to the cold reality of its conclusion.
'Even a lab mouse has meta cognition and problem solving abilities.'
We are discovering that we have underestimated the intelligence of creatures every day. For instance, I have seen a cockroach operating a vehicle and using that vehicle to run and hide in the shadows just as it would do on foot. Our intelligence is the chance interaction of individual components, we have already replicated those kind of processes in software. Why do would we assume that the chemical interactions in our brains and other mammals are the only medium in which intelligence has evolved naturally?
Of course. You don't think your 'self' is actually one thing do you? Even the neurons that together culminate in your conscious mind are actually a bunch of completely independent pieces.
The closer an organism is to your genetics the closer the instinctual bond. Parents, Children, brothers, and sisters. Then extended family and finally other humans. Then other lifeforms that are most similar to humans, mammals before reptiles and fish, animals before plants, and even plants are closer and therefore more sacred than micro-organisms. Do you actually think one form of life is innately superior to another? Of course not, we just view those that are closer to ourselves as superior.
Minor correction:
'A2b. GNU/Linux (the whole system) comes with many libraries'
There is no such thing as GNU/Linux. There is the Linux operating system (aka kernel) and then there are Linux based distributions which couple the Linux operating system with libraries and applications that make the system more functional for users. Those distributions may or may not include GNU applications and libraries and those would be the only portions it would be appropriate to refer to as GNU.
Of course there is a conflict in the original question. The original poster first claims that he is writing the software 100% from scratch and then asks about linking to Linux libraries.
I got everything working and my entire cable bill credited for the period I had issues.
'Next time there's a store near you having a buy-one-get-one-free sale, go on in and tell them you'd rather not have two of whatever it is, and could they please just give you the free one by itself. See how well that works for you ;)'
That's my point. You aren't getting anything free with a buy-one-get-one-free sale. The 'free' ones cost the store money, they are an expense, the store bases its prices on its expenses plus a markup. That 'free' one increased the price of other items in the store. In other words, it wasn't free at all.
'Ah yes, giving away FREE software and expecting people to use it for FREE.'
Apple is a commercial entity. As long as Apple is still making a profit nothing you get from Apple is free, it may not be the guy browsing but someone is footing the bill. You can certainly bet that Apple didn't just drop their bottom line by the cost of developing and distributing the software.
It reminds me of the last time I called Comcast. I ordered Showtime for the Showtime on demand movies and while the channels came in the video on demand gave an error code (very annoying since I never waste my time watching whatever they are force feeding at the moment and watch what I want when I want with the video on demand). It took them 3 months to fix it and they had the nerve to charge me for Showtime during that time. Naturally I demanded a credit and the girl tried to claim that I was paying for the channels only and the video on demand was a free service they gave me out of the kindness of their hearts so there was nothing to credit. I told her that was wonderful, take away all that expensive programming I pay all that money for and just leave me the free stuff. She told me that it only comes free with the paid programming. I told her to make up her mind, either they are giving me the video on demand for free or they require me to pay them money in order to receive it.
People with opinions you don't like are not 'overrated' either. Slashdot would be better off without the overrated and underrated moderations.
I am admittedly not really a web developer anymore but I do still have the need to build a site here and there. My experience that is Firefox/Konqueror/Safari (lets face it, anything but IE and Opera which is designed to break in the same ways IE does) are good spec references.
That said, the specs suck. I have to question the experience of anyone who uses the 'if you code to specs it should display properly' argument. The problem is that specs are open to interpretation in many points and blatantly leave how elements are visually handled to implementor in a large number of instances.
I have seen pages render differently in different browsers whilst using only standards compliant code that the browsers implemented properly. I admit this problem is rare, I only encounter it... every time I make a page of any complexity or check another's page in multiple browsers.
'Mainly because you spent years learning how to configure it through M4 and you're so stuck in your ways that moving to a modular, faster, more flexible and secure MTA is unthinkable.'
I don't think it's just that. I think of the old unix admins have the ability to readily grasp and learn the new stuff. I suspect it has more to do with job security. It goes like this, if sendmail isn't in place you sell it by explaining that it is tried, true , and stable unlike these flaky new systems and maybe you claim nothing else could reliability handle the load if it is a big corporation. TADA. You have just made yourself more valuable because the number of people who can competently administer the mail server has dropped dramatically.
The same is true for many proprietary unix solutions and mainframes, certain large database solutions and last but not least some very expensive network solutions.
The old guys in many industries may be obsolete but nobody became an old hat computer guru with a learning impairment. These guys have just learned that there are more important aspects of the corporate game than the computers they administrate.
'And I guarantee you there are (or will be) flaws in both applications...'
Without questions and the number of reported flaws is a useless metric for a number of reasons. You are right sendmail and postfix can be equally secure and/or insecure depending upon configuration. That said security in otherwise secure programs is inversely proportional to configuration complexity. Both programs have a learning curve but the configuration of sendmail is far more complex than that of Postfix (even for a knowledgeable user).