"Trustworthy computing" is analagous to buying a car where you don't get the keys!
Um, actually, the key is supposed to prove that you own the car, or are at least authorized to drive it. You're supposed to guard your keys, keep them close to you at all times. Now, it's not the security issue it sounds like.
For example: When I go to bed, I lock all the doors in my house. My keys hang in a jacket pocket on the front door (it's a temporary situation, they should be in my bedroom, where I normally keep them). To get them under normal circumstances, someone would have to first break into the house. Well I already check the locks on the windows and doors in the house, and they're locked. I don't worry about too elaborate security measures. I keep the outside well-lit at night (whenever possible, I was fighting with the upstairs neighbor over this issue, actually, but now she's moved out). So, at night, to get the keys to my truck, you have to first go through the well-lit area, then break something (a window or something), then unlock the door or window associated with the breaking, then come inside the house. There's 4 people sleeping, theoretically, but there can be anyone awake at any time of the night. My kids know to wake me and my wife if anybody comes in the house, so if they see the intruder they might wake me. Anyway, then they have to find the keys, checking various pockets. Normally, they'd have to actually enter my bedroom to do this.
Of course, as soon as they break in, they have as much chance of finding the keys as they do of browsing the web on my computer.:) (password-protected, not strongly, but your average burglar wouldn't be able to guess it)
Why is all this important? It's important because one of Microsoft's plaguing problems which the Free Software community wants to adopt is the fact the PEOPLE DON'T THINK ABOUT SECURITY.
I fought my upstairs neighbor over the lighting issue because she was worried about our electric bill while I was worried about our house being the easiest pickings on the block. She worried about money, I worried about, um, guess what, SECURITY.
Your average bear doesn't go wondering around thinking about whether or not his keys are vulnerable. He takes it for granted. Your average person leaves doors unlocked, trunks unlatched, and so forth. I see people late at night leave their cars running while they run into a gas station! They left it running so it wouldn't get cold. Of course, a gas station, late at night is the WORST place to leave your car running! Even if you lock the doors and carry a second key! You've just made it take 2 seconds to steal your car, and no matter how closely you watch it, you won't get out there to stop the guy quick enough, and he's gone with your car. Call that security?
Yes, MS software seems to have an inordinate amount of bugs. Argue with me, I don't give a shit.
Yes, MS software tends to install with poorly chosen defaults from a security standpoint.
Yes, MS software is frequently run by people who don't ever think about security in any other aspect of their lives, why the hell should they think about it now?
For many people, "computing" is some vague amoebic thing and they expect "experts" to make it secure. They just don't think that they need to lock their doors and turn on a few lights! Hell, they don't even do it in their own homes when it's their very lives that are potentially at risk! The only way Microsoft is ever going to get out of their mess, and this is something we need to look at as a growth-minded community ourselves, is to EDUCATE END-USERS. It's a friggin' MYTH that people don't need to know anything about their computers. Do they understand "lock your doors"? Do they understand "keep your key safe"? Security is a pervasive concept. You either think about it, or you don't.
I think his point was that his machine was fully patched to the newest version, but this didn't fully eliminate the vulnerability because another unpatched machine infected his.
I'm no security expert, but the fact that he got it anyway indicates that he wasn't patched, right? If he was patched, it shouldn't matter if he stuck it on a floppy and ran the executable, right? It still wouldn't work.
How many people now refuse to buy Firestone tires because of the tread-separation issue?
Mostly people that don't understand the issue. I worked in tires for a year as a mechanic, not a salesman, and I can tell you that the tires weren't that bad. I saw them put on a number of non-Ford vehicles with the guilty numbers on them and they're still on the road! The problem is that the Ford Explorer uses a funky suspension by comparison to other SUVs, and tends to wear tires differently. It was really just a matter of putting tires on a truck where the truck's suspension wore the tires in their weakest spot. Not necessarily the best thing to do, and certainly a bad combination, but not really the worst thing to do either. Granted, Ford and Firestone both could have dealt with the situation much better than they did, but the tires shouldn't reflect on all of Firestone's tires, since they were really only a problem on Ford Explorers.
Note, I wouldn't use Firestone tires myself either, but that's because I don't trust Firestone mechanics. I was in the business a long time, long enough to know which chains to avoid.
Golly, do you think that the military may actually use those BlackHawks to *kill* people???
In fact, that's not their mission. The military doesn't exist to kill people. The military exists as a deterrent to prevent other people from coming in here and killing us. Even Switzerland, with it's neutrality policies, has a military.
In this specific case, though, it's not a question of "Did Open Source developers give the military BlackHawks?". No, the military paid for their development, and then paid to purchase them.
I'm not sure what piece of Open Source software is used in the BlackHawk similators, but I'd have to guess that it's a basic component, like a kernel, rather than specific software. The BlackHawk is almost certainly classified, and as such it would be some huge charge of treason if a developer were to release source code for the simulator that let anybody who read the source code to know what the BlackHawk was capable of. I recall when the Stealth came to Holloman and my dad joined the program that he took us down to see the simulator. My brother asked him "What's that?" and pointed to a gauge, and my dad said "That's the only classified instrument left in the cockpit, and if I tell you what it is, I'd have to kill you." We were allowed to look at it, but not to know what it does. The source code for the simulator might well tell us what it does.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: how much risk are we willing to assume for something worse than 9/11 to happen?
Where's the definitive proof that 9/11 was completely, wholly, and independently a terrorist action? As I recall, the investigation pretty much stopped when it pointed at Afganistan. Can we pick up the investigation and try to follow the money trail all the way to the end?
Where will it lead? Russia? France? Back to Germany? To George W. Bush Jr.?
The WTC attach has the trappings of a group of professionals, but was carried out by amateurs. I'm not at all convinced that Bin Laden was solely responsible for it, if he even had anything to do with it.
I'd really prefer for people to think, learn, and think some more, before they act. This hasn't happened. Our Fellow American is pointing his finger at everybody slightly darker than he is accusing them of terrorism, or seeking weapons of mass destruction. He's really starting to look a lot more German to me (as in Adolf Hitler), and as far as I know there's still no definitive proof who Hitler's terrorist adversaries were and plenty of suspicion that he paid them off himself.
Before you can use 9/11 as a reason for going around warmongering the middle east you MUST prove that the Middle East as a region is responsible somehow for it. So where's the proof?
Is this as silly as sitting around and waiting for them to try and destroy us? In a post 9/11 world, we cannot afford to wait and see what our enemies are willing to do to us. Saddam has clearly stated that he wants to destroy the US, and has clearly demonstrated that he is willing to use WMD (against the Kurds). Is this a chance you are willing to take?
In a post 9/11 world, nothing is different. I'm really getting sick of hearing people use 9/11 as an excuse for doing stupid things.
Fact: Nobody can *ever* afford to wait and see what their enemies are willing to do to them.
That's the nature of having enemies. A much more intelligent policy would be to try to avoid making enemies. I realize it's not always possible to avoid making enemies, but if you avoid making enemies, then when one of your enemies does decide to do something to you, you have a whole bunch of friends on your side. You don't have to be the biggest, baddest military in the world.
Furthermore, Junior's given reasons for invading Iraq right now aren't any different than Senior's reasons when we did it in '91. In light of that fact, how is it that 9/11 somehow affects the situation with Iraq?
I think the statement goes more like "Ever since the Cold War ended, the US has been paying for the things it did during the Cold War." Goddamn it, we put Hussein in power in Iraq! We TRAINED Bin Laden. Now these guys come back at us? We knew they were nuts to begin with!
Why do we need to invade Iraq?
There's only one good reason, but until the President proposes it I'll be against this war. The reason is: We put him there and the people of Iraq have suffered greatly. It is now our responsibility to the people of Iraq to remove him.
Did Senior remove him? Is Junior going to? Not as long as Iraq is viewed as being a good ball for the political games going on in this country.
That's beside the point. If I give you a gun and you blow someone's head off, am I partially responsible for the death?
Only if you suspected that he might do that. If you give him and gun thinking "Hey, he's a good guy, he's got his head on straight" and then he goes and slaughters his wife, then you just say "DOH!". OTOH, if he's foaming at the mouth telling you about his wife the slut, and you give him a gun, then you might be a little responsible for the death yourself.
Guns aren't in any way a black and white issue. Turn it around. The guy comes to you white-faced and shivering talking about his wife chasing him around the kitchen with a butcher knife because he wouldn't give her a divorce. You give him a gun and say "Don't use it unless you have to, but maybe just having a gun will prevent her from pulling any more crap." A valid argument, based on other posters, anyway. Then he goes and kills her in self-defense. Are you now partially responsible for murder, or saving someone's life? Clearly someone died, but just as clearly someone died so someone else could live. Also, presumably he's your buddy, and you believe the person who lived was, for some reason, more important.
Killing of any sort will never be a black and white issue. I'm personally opposed to zoos and the like, caging up animals so the human parade can come and look at them like they're freaks or something. But I eat meat, and enjoy it.:) In the first case, you take away the animals freedom. In the second case, arguably, you take the animal's life in a fair struggle for survival (I realize that ranching and agriculture in general have done away with the "hunt").
Personally, if someone used my code to kill someone, I'd have to say "Well, I didn't tell them they couldn't, in fact, I specifically told them they can do what they want with it." I mean, do the ALSA guys really worry about people playing 'N Sync through the sound card? That would be monstrous! Worse than killing! But didn't they put something in the license that says "You can do whatever you want with this software, I won't be liable for it."?
If Free Software is all about free speech, and fighting for out rights, is it also about fighting for other people's rights? SPecifically, should we be fighting for the rights of the people in Iraq? I'm split on the issue. On the one hand, I don't think we should, 'cause I'm just sick of hearing all this FUD about every other country in the world. I just want everybody to get along.:) On the other hand, while Iraq doesn't directly threaten us, Germany didn't directly threaten us in 1930's. Neither did Japan, for awhile.
Actually, my wife's working and I'm staying home with the kids. It came about as a result of unemployment, but I'm not in a situation to be looking for a job right now. So instead I'm pursuing self-employment, and if it works out, my wife can quit working.:)
I forgot to mention that if you go into Borders or Barnes and Nobles you'll find almost as many GCC programming books as MFC, and you'll find the Linux section is only a couple of shelves smaller than the Windows section. Since they stock according to the market, I find this fact interesting. There's ALL KINDS of literature available for Linux up here. Quite unusual, if Microsoft actually had a presence up here.
However, the MS community around Seattle is extremely insular. They work, socialize, play and live together, with very little mixing with the rest of the world. The cult analogy is very apt in that regard.
This is true. Whenever I go into Redmond, or take my kids to parks/shopping malls/etc. here in Bellevue you can almost smell where the Microsofties are. They really do keep to themselves, and they watch the rest of the world move around them. Look at them, though, and they look away. Not once has a MS dude actually looked me in the eye. My buddy used to live in an apartment building that was over 70% populated with MS employees, and they never talked to one another. NEVER. A guy was having trouble starting his car, and I offered to help him out and he chased me away. MS t-shirt.
It's the weirdest thing, but it's like the only way you know that Microsoft is up here is in the press. Every now and then I run into people who think Microsoft does some good for the local economy, but I really don't see it. Instead I see a lot of low-paid, low-working individuals lining up for Food Stamps. The area's in a serious depression, and it was in it when I arrived here right before the dot com crashes. Microsoft's presence in no way benefits the economy around here, and unless you wander into Redmond or Bellevue or Kirkland (I live in Bellevue, actually, but south of the highway, so I'm technically in the county and not the city), you won't even notice their presence.
Linux is hard for the user just to get something done that isn't done for them out of the box. If it's not on the install initially (preconfigured machines), god help you when your cousin Ray wants your help installing his brand new Scanner.
Your comparison leaves one small thing to be desired, and that's the fact that Mandrake Linux 9.0 installs out of the box with a graphical installer that's extremely helpful for a new user, and documentation to answer your questions. I agree that in many ways running GNU/Linux is quite a bit tougher than running Windows, but comparing my experience to yours I'd have to say that it's really come a long way. DOS used to have all the same problems you're talking about. In fact, Windows still has those problems, they're just obfuscated. Ever deal with windows deciding that the driver provided by your ethernet card manufacturer is the wrong one? Have to hack into the registry yet? Are you even aware that Windows NT has a hosts file just like UNIXes do?
The main difference, IMO, is that rebooting Windows will fix most problems, because they're problems residing in memory for some reason. Rebooting doesn't fix GNU/Linux problems, because they're real problems, when they come up, which is damn rare. When I switched from Windows to Mandrake Linux, it was a beautiful ascension into a world where people are people, and people help each other out. Warm, welcome hands reached out to me and said "there isn't a manual for me to tell you to read, but here's some things you can try". Not like Windows, where everybody I ran into told me to call Microsoft if I had any problems.
The world will change when enough people are using it, and it's sad. But I'm not going back, no matter what happens.:)
Like the US, it thinks that it knows better than everyone else what's best for everyone else.
I'd like to point out that in the current Iraq dispute, if we (the US) invade Iraq without a UN resolution, the members of the UN are obligated to go to war against us. That is the power of the UN, and they enforce their resolutions with war. It will be a nasty, destructive war. Hopefully our idiot president won't be able to start it before the next election, when we're gonna kick him out. If he gets re-elected anyway, it's time for a revolution. Bloody well time, I'd say.
Hey dude, don't get caught up too much in the idea that the only difference between different brands is the brand name.
As an example, I prefer to smoke All-natural American Spirit cigarettes. Sun-dried tobacco with no additives or preservatives. Cotton filters, when you buy them already rolled (I prefer to roll my own, but I haven't found this stuff up here in Seattle except in packs). It's a smooth smoke, and it's also not stuffed with the shit that Philip-Morris gives you. They bleach the tobacco, then coat it with SUGAR. The use fiberglass in the filters, and that shit scratched your throat, literally! A lesser-known statistic related to lung cancer has to do with the percentage of smokers that smoke Philip-Morris cigarettes and get lung cancer.
I'm not saying that my favorite brand of cigarette isn't going to kill me, but there's evidence that it's less likely to, and it's much more enjoyable. When I did smoke marlboros, I found when I finished one I wanted another one. With the American Spirits, when I finish one, I'm satisfied. It helps, though, that the cigarettes take 10-15 minutes to smoke, each, and I can suck down a Marlboro in 3 minutes or less.
American SPirits cost almost twice as much, but you also smoke less than half as many individual cigarettes, making them quite cost effective, as well.
I've also purchased them from idiot store clerks that thought they were generics.:)
Point is, there's branding, and then there's actually different brands. In the case of cigarettes, and Philip-Morris to be specific, it's actually possible for a smoker to be more addicted to something else in the cigarette than the nicotine (read: SUGAR in P-M cigarettes), and just any old cigarette won't do. In my case, I can safely say that I'm solely addicted to the nicotine in the cigarettes, and whatever else naturally occurs in the leaf, and I'm happy with that.:)
As I'm approaching 50, I'm totally flattered to be referred to as a 'college kid'.
Worse yet, unemployed in poor economic conditions, I'm thinking about Food Stamps, and here I'm referred to as "rich". College kid? Me? Married with two kids and one more coming?
I should probably get back to work on my free software, though. Maybe I"ll be able to use it to convince someone I can program after all....
Don't underestimate this problem. It's difficult today to make binary distributions of Linux software, and like it or not binary distributions are essential to acceptance and market share on the desktop.
I think it's downright shitty that the computing world has reached a point where they depend on binary distributions, and even expect them all the time!
How many different processor architectures does GNU/Linux run on? BSD? How the hell can you expect to offer a standard method of distributing binary executables when there's so many goddamn platforms to deal with?
If you ask me, and you haven't, I think that distributing as source code or byte code and having a standard way for the end-user to compile the stuff for his platform is the ideal method of software distribution. ANd in order to do that, yes, you will need to have such a compiler on every machine. It's Java, but taken the final step that makes it realistic. Only it doesn't matter if the app was written in BASIC, C/C++, Delphi, or mutherfuckin Cb--er, C#.
If I'm running Mandrake Linux on a PPC, there's no possibility of me getting a decent RPM for it! None! Unless it comes with the OS. I'm gonna have to compile the shit anyway!
We love standards, right? We're better than Microsoft when it comes to interoperability because we embrace standards without extending them just to push our own shit, right? Where's the fucking standard here? And since when is binary used as a standard method of distributing anything? (okokok, ASCII is still binary, I know. I'm talking about executables for different processors whose instruction sets are actually different)
The reason I say that is because Microsoft evidently defines OS as Kernel + Window Manager + some crappy apps to make you realize you need to buy more shit.
RMS uses the old UNIX definition, which is basically "Everything an average user needs to use his computer to do the things he does". This is the definition generally accepted in the Free SOftware world, especially since most/all of the existing free OSs are rips of UNIX anyway...
So, form the point of view of a Windows user, yeah, Linux is the OS. But from the point of view of a UNIX user (and therefore smarter and generally better qualified for the judgement:) ), LInux is just another fucking kernel. A damn good one, I might add, but just another fucking kernel.
Linux is an excellent server platform but until Linux is as intuitive and slick as OS X...
... I will continue to wear handcuffs whenever I use my computer.
Apple and MS set the stage for computerized oppression, and from a moral standpoint they're both evil. It's just that Apple is irrelevant, for the most part.
And how many times have slashdotters been stood up for dates for more than 20 minutes? Does that mean you'll give up women forever and advocate a switch to an alternative system?
Hardly a fair comparison, slashdotters only get dates by asking for an irc channel.
MS's alternative would be to release "Windows for stubborn people" and then those people would complain about X new feature that they didn't get. And of course X new feature is different for every geek.
THis I have to disagree with. I've not yet met one person, geek or otherwise, who liked all the stuff the original poster was complaining about. In fact, I use MSN myself (GAIM, it's called, around my house), and I still disable it in windows! (Then I turn around and re-enable it , oops) Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, but it certainly looks to me like all this fancy UI stuff that Microsoft claims is so wonderful to the idiot users is nothing but self-serving to the manufacturer of the OS.
I do run Win2K and Office2k on an older machine...a P200 MMX with 128 MB ram and 2.1 GB disk. It runs fine. Take out even 16 meg of memory though, and forget it. I would try to run it with 256 meg of memory, but the board is so old it only supports 4 32MB simms. YMMV, though.
win2k running terminal services on a k6-300 with 64MB RAM. I disabled all the extraneous services, and it runs fine.
Do you understand how annoying it is to talk an African-American and constantly keep telling yourself not to use certain derogatory terms?
Do you understand how annoying it is to talk to an Irish-American and not use various derogatory terms?
Ditto for Polish-Americans, American Indians, women, hackers, how often do you mistakenly talk to someopne and unknowingly insult them? Ever use the word suit to a suit, to his face, by mistake?
Maybe if you weren't prejudiced and ashamed of it, you'd have an easier time.:)
I've earned a bit of respect from the people around me at various points by specifically *not* censoring myself for their benefit. I speak precisely, *most* of the time. The rest of the time, I'm usually purposely speaking imprecisely, for various reasons.
Fact is, I had a good fried from whom I split only because I moved to another town (not good enough a friend to keep in touch, but good enough to watch out for each other), and during a typical shit-talking day, I told him he was a nigger. He laughed pretty hard about it. Now guess what color his skin is? Well, it ain't white. Peckerwood, I think, was his answer. Fun guy, actually.
Point is, if you worry so much about offending people, then you're worrying too much. You just can't walk into any room that has more than one person in it without offending someone (well, I can't, but I'm an offensive person anyway, just look at my username:) ), so why bother trying not to? It's not worth it. Regardless of what you intend to say, or what you're trying to get across, people will just take offense at it for no real reason, if they want. Maybe they don't like your long hair? Maybe they don't like your wife? Whatever, they take offense and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Conversely, I haven't spoken much to RMS. I've only exchanged some email with him, and I found him extremly polite, even when he did correct my language.:) Hardly an offensive kind of guy. Strikes me as someone who doesn't really give a fuck whether or not people like him, but he doesn't want to hurt people anyway because he's just a nice guy. Who gives a shit if he wants you to speak precisely around him? You either do or you don't, you don't have to in any case. Say what you want. ARgue with him. Fight with him. Kick his ass.
Or you could quit worrying about it and go do something good for yourself, and maybe even the community.:)
Galeon rocks. I think Mozilla does this, and I'm sure Konqueror does something similar. Opera almost certainly does, too.
Mozilla does it, I'm using Mozilla 1.1, bundled with Mandrake 9.0. I avoid Konqueror like the plague, although I really like KDE. Don't know about Opera, I'm still waiting for the source.:)
IE is a big piece of shit, and even when I'm forced to use windows I avoid it. I've not yet been in a situation where I had to use Windows and couldn't install Mozilla, I sincerely hope I'm *never* in that situation.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Hey asshole, I just clicked on your signature and realized I was a lab rat! Now show some courtesy and click on mine. :)
"Trustworthy computing" is analagous to buying a car where you don't get the keys!
Um, actually, the key is supposed to prove that you own the car, or are at least authorized to drive it. You're supposed to guard your keys, keep them close to you at all times. Now, it's not the security issue it sounds like.
For example: When I go to bed, I lock all the doors in my house. My keys hang in a jacket pocket on the front door (it's a temporary situation, they should be in my bedroom, where I normally keep them). To get them under normal circumstances, someone would have to first break into the house. Well I already check the locks on the windows and doors in the house, and they're locked. I don't worry about too elaborate security measures. I keep the outside well-lit at night (whenever possible, I was fighting with the upstairs neighbor over this issue, actually, but now she's moved out). So, at night, to get the keys to my truck, you have to first go through the well-lit area, then break something (a window or something), then unlock the door or window associated with the breaking, then come inside the house. There's 4 people sleeping, theoretically, but there can be anyone awake at any time of the night. My kids know to wake me and my wife if anybody comes in the house, so if they see the intruder they might wake me. Anyway, then they have to find the keys, checking various pockets. Normally, they'd have to actually enter my bedroom to do this.
Of course, as soon as they break in, they have as much chance of finding the keys as they do of browsing the web on my computer. :) (password-protected, not strongly, but your average burglar wouldn't be able to guess it)
Why is all this important? It's important because one of Microsoft's plaguing problems which the Free Software community wants to adopt is the fact the PEOPLE DON'T THINK ABOUT SECURITY.
I fought my upstairs neighbor over the lighting issue because she was worried about our electric bill while I was worried about our house being the easiest pickings on the block. She worried about money, I worried about, um, guess what, SECURITY.
Your average bear doesn't go wondering around thinking about whether or not his keys are vulnerable. He takes it for granted. Your average person leaves doors unlocked, trunks unlatched, and so forth. I see people late at night leave their cars running while they run into a gas station! They left it running so it wouldn't get cold. Of course, a gas station, late at night is the WORST place to leave your car running! Even if you lock the doors and carry a second key! You've just made it take 2 seconds to steal your car, and no matter how closely you watch it, you won't get out there to stop the guy quick enough, and he's gone with your car. Call that security?
Yes, MS software seems to have an inordinate amount of bugs. Argue with me, I don't give a shit.
Yes, MS software tends to install with poorly chosen defaults from a security standpoint.
Yes, MS software is frequently run by people who don't ever think about security in any other aspect of their lives, why the hell should they think about it now?
For many people, "computing" is some vague amoebic thing and they expect "experts" to make it secure. They just don't think that they need to lock their doors and turn on a few lights! Hell, they don't even do it in their own homes when it's their very lives that are potentially at risk! The only way Microsoft is ever going to get out of their mess, and this is something we need to look at as a growth-minded community ourselves, is to EDUCATE END-USERS. It's a friggin' MYTH that people don't need to know anything about their computers. Do they understand "lock your doors"? Do they understand "keep your key safe"? Security is a pervasive concept. You either think about it, or you don't.
I think his point was that his machine was fully patched to the newest version, but this didn't fully eliminate the vulnerability because another unpatched machine infected his.
I'm no security expert, but the fact that he got it anyway indicates that he wasn't patched, right? If he was patched, it shouldn't matter if he stuck it on a floppy and ran the executable, right? It still wouldn't work.
How many people now refuse to buy Firestone tires because of the tread-separation issue?
Mostly people that don't understand the issue. I worked in tires for a year as a mechanic, not a salesman, and I can tell you that the tires weren't that bad. I saw them put on a number of non-Ford vehicles with the guilty numbers on them and they're still on the road! The problem is that the Ford Explorer uses a funky suspension by comparison to other SUVs, and tends to wear tires differently. It was really just a matter of putting tires on a truck where the truck's suspension wore the tires in their weakest spot. Not necessarily the best thing to do, and certainly a bad combination, but not really the worst thing to do either. Granted, Ford and Firestone both could have dealt with the situation much better than they did, but the tires shouldn't reflect on all of Firestone's tires, since they were really only a problem on Ford Explorers.
Note, I wouldn't use Firestone tires myself either, but that's because I don't trust Firestone mechanics. I was in the business a long time, long enough to know which chains to avoid.
Golly, do you think that the military may actually use those BlackHawks to *kill* people???
In fact, that's not their mission. The military doesn't exist to kill people. The military exists as a deterrent to prevent other people from coming in here and killing us. Even Switzerland, with it's neutrality policies, has a military.
In this specific case, though, it's not a question of "Did Open Source developers give the military BlackHawks?". No, the military paid for their development, and then paid to purchase them.
I'm not sure what piece of Open Source software is used in the BlackHawk similators, but I'd have to guess that it's a basic component, like a kernel, rather than specific software. The BlackHawk is almost certainly classified, and as such it would be some huge charge of treason if a developer were to release source code for the simulator that let anybody who read the source code to know what the BlackHawk was capable of. I recall when the Stealth came to Holloman and my dad joined the program that he took us down to see the simulator. My brother asked him "What's that?" and pointed to a gauge, and my dad said "That's the only classified instrument left in the cockpit, and if I tell you what it is, I'd have to kill you." We were allowed to look at it, but not to know what it does. The source code for the simulator might well tell us what it does.
Ultimately, it comes down to this: how much risk are we willing to assume for something worse than 9/11 to happen?
Where's the definitive proof that 9/11 was completely, wholly, and independently a terrorist action? As I recall, the investigation pretty much stopped when it pointed at Afganistan. Can we pick up the investigation and try to follow the money trail all the way to the end?
Where will it lead? Russia? France? Back to Germany? To George W. Bush Jr.?
The WTC attach has the trappings of a group of professionals, but was carried out by amateurs. I'm not at all convinced that Bin Laden was solely responsible for it, if he even had anything to do with it.
I'd really prefer for people to think, learn, and think some more, before they act. This hasn't happened. Our Fellow American is pointing his finger at everybody slightly darker than he is accusing them of terrorism, or seeking weapons of mass destruction. He's really starting to look a lot more German to me (as in Adolf Hitler), and as far as I know there's still no definitive proof who Hitler's terrorist adversaries were and plenty of suspicion that he paid them off himself.
Before you can use 9/11 as a reason for going around warmongering the middle east you MUST prove that the Middle East as a region is responsible somehow for it. So where's the proof?
Is this as silly as sitting around and waiting for them to try and destroy us? In a post 9/11 world, we cannot afford to wait and see what our enemies are willing to do to us. Saddam has clearly stated that he wants to destroy the US, and has clearly demonstrated that he is willing to use WMD (against the Kurds). Is this a chance you are willing to take?
In a post 9/11 world, nothing is different. I'm really getting sick of hearing people use 9/11 as an excuse for doing stupid things.
Fact: Nobody can *ever* afford to wait and see what their enemies are willing to do to them.
That's the nature of having enemies. A much more intelligent policy would be to try to avoid making enemies. I realize it's not always possible to avoid making enemies, but if you avoid making enemies, then when one of your enemies does decide to do something to you, you have a whole bunch of friends on your side. You don't have to be the biggest, baddest military in the world.
Furthermore, Junior's given reasons for invading Iraq right now aren't any different than Senior's reasons when we did it in '91. In light of that fact, how is it that 9/11 somehow affects the situation with Iraq?
I think the statement goes more like "Ever since the Cold War ended, the US has been paying for the things it did during the Cold War." Goddamn it, we put Hussein in power in Iraq! We TRAINED Bin Laden. Now these guys come back at us? We knew they were nuts to begin with!
Why do we need to invade Iraq?
There's only one good reason, but until the President proposes it I'll be against this war. The reason is: We put him there and the people of Iraq have suffered greatly. It is now our responsibility to the people of Iraq to remove him.
Did Senior remove him? Is Junior going to? Not as long as Iraq is viewed as being a good ball for the political games going on in this country.
That's beside the point. If I give you a gun and you blow someone's head off, am I partially responsible for the death?
Only if you suspected that he might do that. If you give him and gun thinking "Hey, he's a good guy, he's got his head on straight" and then he goes and slaughters his wife, then you just say "DOH!". OTOH, if he's foaming at the mouth telling you about his wife the slut, and you give him a gun, then you might be a little responsible for the death yourself.
Guns aren't in any way a black and white issue. Turn it around. The guy comes to you white-faced and shivering talking about his wife chasing him around the kitchen with a butcher knife because he wouldn't give her a divorce. You give him a gun and say "Don't use it unless you have to, but maybe just having a gun will prevent her from pulling any more crap." A valid argument, based on other posters, anyway. Then he goes and kills her in self-defense. Are you now partially responsible for murder, or saving someone's life? Clearly someone died, but just as clearly someone died so someone else could live. Also, presumably he's your buddy, and you believe the person who lived was, for some reason, more important.
Killing of any sort will never be a black and white issue. I'm personally opposed to zoos and the like, caging up animals so the human parade can come and look at them like they're freaks or something. But I eat meat, and enjoy it. :) In the first case, you take away the animals freedom. In the second case, arguably, you take the animal's life in a fair struggle for survival (I realize that ranching and agriculture in general have done away with the "hunt").
Personally, if someone used my code to kill someone, I'd have to say "Well, I didn't tell them they couldn't, in fact, I specifically told them they can do what they want with it." I mean, do the ALSA guys really worry about people playing 'N Sync through the sound card? That would be monstrous! Worse than killing! But didn't they put something in the license that says "You can do whatever you want with this software, I won't be liable for it."?
If Free Software is all about free speech, and fighting for out rights, is it also about fighting for other people's rights? SPecifically, should we be fighting for the rights of the people in Iraq? I'm split on the issue. On the one hand, I don't think we should, 'cause I'm just sick of hearing all this FUD about every other country in the world. I just want everybody to get along. :) On the other hand, while Iraq doesn't directly threaten us, Germany didn't directly threaten us in 1930's. Neither did Japan, for awhile.
Actually, my wife's working and I'm staying home with the kids. It came about as a result of unemployment, but I'm not in a situation to be looking for a job right now. So instead I'm pursuing self-employment, and if it works out, my wife can quit working. :)
I forgot to mention that if you go into Borders or Barnes and Nobles you'll find almost as many GCC programming books as MFC, and you'll find the Linux section is only a couple of shelves smaller than the Windows section. Since they stock according to the market, I find this fact interesting. There's ALL KINDS of literature available for Linux up here. Quite unusual, if Microsoft actually had a presence up here.
However, the MS community around Seattle is extremely insular. They work, socialize, play and live together, with very little mixing with the rest of the world. The cult analogy is very apt in that regard.
This is true. Whenever I go into Redmond, or take my kids to parks/shopping malls/etc. here in Bellevue you can almost smell where the Microsofties are. They really do keep to themselves, and they watch the rest of the world move around them. Look at them, though, and they look away. Not once has a MS dude actually looked me in the eye. My buddy used to live in an apartment building that was over 70% populated with MS employees, and they never talked to one another. NEVER. A guy was having trouble starting his car, and I offered to help him out and he chased me away. MS t-shirt.
It's the weirdest thing, but it's like the only way you know that Microsoft is up here is in the press. Every now and then I run into people who think Microsoft does some good for the local economy, but I really don't see it. Instead I see a lot of low-paid, low-working individuals lining up for Food Stamps. The area's in a serious depression, and it was in it when I arrived here right before the dot com crashes. Microsoft's presence in no way benefits the economy around here, and unless you wander into Redmond or Bellevue or Kirkland (I live in Bellevue, actually, but south of the highway, so I'm technically in the county and not the city), you won't even notice their presence.
Linux is hard for the user just to get something done that isn't done for them out of the box. If it's not on the install initially (preconfigured machines), god help you when your cousin Ray wants your help installing his brand new Scanner.
Your comparison leaves one small thing to be desired, and that's the fact that Mandrake Linux 9.0 installs out of the box with a graphical installer that's extremely helpful for a new user, and documentation to answer your questions. I agree that in many ways running GNU/Linux is quite a bit tougher than running Windows, but comparing my experience to yours I'd have to say that it's really come a long way. DOS used to have all the same problems you're talking about. In fact, Windows still has those problems, they're just obfuscated. Ever deal with windows deciding that the driver provided by your ethernet card manufacturer is the wrong one? Have to hack into the registry yet? Are you even aware that Windows NT has a hosts file just like UNIXes do?
The main difference, IMO, is that rebooting Windows will fix most problems, because they're problems residing in memory for some reason. Rebooting doesn't fix GNU/Linux problems, because they're real problems, when they come up, which is damn rare. When I switched from Windows to Mandrake Linux, it was a beautiful ascension into a world where people are people, and people help each other out. Warm, welcome hands reached out to me and said "there isn't a manual for me to tell you to read, but here's some things you can try". Not like Windows, where everybody I ran into told me to call Microsoft if I had any problems.
The world will change when enough people are using it, and it's sad. But I'm not going back, no matter what happens. :)
Like the US, it thinks that it knows better than everyone else what's best for everyone else.
I'd like to point out that in the current Iraq dispute, if we (the US) invade Iraq without a UN resolution, the members of the UN are obligated to go to war against us. That is the power of the UN, and they enforce their resolutions with war. It will be a nasty, destructive war. Hopefully our idiot president won't be able to start it before the next election, when we're gonna kick him out. If he gets re-elected anyway, it's time for a revolution. Bloody well time, I'd say.
One of the few geeks that brews his own beer, explores caves, can weld with the best of them, and boats and raf
Besides the fact that your sig gets cut off, you do realize that by definition, then, you're not a geek? :)
Hey dude, don't get caught up too much in the idea that the only difference between different brands is the brand name.
As an example, I prefer to smoke All-natural American Spirit cigarettes. Sun-dried tobacco with no additives or preservatives. Cotton filters, when you buy them already rolled (I prefer to roll my own, but I haven't found this stuff up here in Seattle except in packs). It's a smooth smoke, and it's also not stuffed with the shit that Philip-Morris gives you. They bleach the tobacco, then coat it with SUGAR. The use fiberglass in the filters, and that shit scratched your throat, literally! A lesser-known statistic related to lung cancer has to do with the percentage of smokers that smoke Philip-Morris cigarettes and get lung cancer.
I'm not saying that my favorite brand of cigarette isn't going to kill me, but there's evidence that it's less likely to, and it's much more enjoyable. When I did smoke marlboros, I found when I finished one I wanted another one. With the American Spirits, when I finish one, I'm satisfied. It helps, though, that the cigarettes take 10-15 minutes to smoke, each, and I can suck down a Marlboro in 3 minutes or less.
American SPirits cost almost twice as much, but you also smoke less than half as many individual cigarettes, making them quite cost effective, as well.
I've also purchased them from idiot store clerks that thought they were generics. :)
Point is, there's branding, and then there's actually different brands. In the case of cigarettes, and Philip-Morris to be specific, it's actually possible for a smoker to be more addicted to something else in the cigarette than the nicotine (read: SUGAR in P-M cigarettes), and just any old cigarette won't do. In my case, I can safely say that I'm solely addicted to the nicotine in the cigarettes, and whatever else naturally occurs in the leaf, and I'm happy with that. :)
As I'm approaching 50, I'm totally flattered to be referred to as a 'college kid'.
Worse yet, unemployed in poor economic conditions, I'm thinking about Food Stamps, and here I'm referred to as "rich". College kid? Me? Married with two kids and one more coming?
I should probably get back to work on my free software, though. Maybe I"ll be able to use it to convince someone I can program after all....
Don't underestimate this problem. It's difficult today to make binary distributions of Linux software, and like it or not binary distributions are essential to acceptance and market share on the desktop.
I think it's downright shitty that the computing world has reached a point where they depend on binary distributions, and even expect them all the time!
How many different processor architectures does GNU/Linux run on? BSD? How the hell can you expect to offer a standard method of distributing binary executables when there's so many goddamn platforms to deal with?
If you ask me, and you haven't, I think that distributing as source code or byte code and having a standard way for the end-user to compile the stuff for his platform is the ideal method of software distribution. ANd in order to do that, yes, you will need to have such a compiler on every machine. It's Java, but taken the final step that makes it realistic. Only it doesn't matter if the app was written in BASIC, C/C++, Delphi, or mutherfuckin Cb--er, C#.
If I'm running Mandrake Linux on a PPC, there's no possibility of me getting a decent RPM for it! None! Unless it comes with the OS. I'm gonna have to compile the shit anyway!
We love standards, right? We're better than Microsoft when it comes to interoperability because we embrace standards without extending them just to push our own shit, right? Where's the fucking standard here? And since when is binary used as a standard method of distributing anything? (okokok, ASCII is still binary, I know. I'm talking about executables for different processors whose instruction sets are actually different)
Actually, the Linux kernel is itself the OS
Define OS, if you don't mind. :)
The reason I say that is because Microsoft evidently defines OS as Kernel + Window Manager + some crappy apps to make you realize you need to buy more shit.
RMS uses the old UNIX definition, which is basically "Everything an average user needs to use his computer to do the things he does". This is the definition generally accepted in the Free SOftware world, especially since most/all of the existing free OSs are rips of UNIX anyway...
So, form the point of view of a Windows user, yeah, Linux is the OS. But from the point of view of a UNIX user (and therefore smarter and generally better qualified for the judgement :) ), LInux is just another fucking kernel. A damn good one, I might add, but just another fucking kernel.
Linux is an excellent server platform but until Linux is as intuitive and slick as OS X...
... I will continue to wear handcuffs whenever I use my computer.
Apple and MS set the stage for computerized oppression, and from a moral standpoint they're both evil. It's just that Apple is irrelevant, for the most part.
Why is this guy modded as a troll???? He makes valid points.
Only if you're brain-dead...
And how many times have slashdotters been stood up for dates for more than 20 minutes? Does that mean you'll give up women forever and advocate a switch to an alternative system?
Hardly a fair comparison, slashdotters only get dates by asking for an irc channel.
MS's alternative would be to release "Windows for stubborn people" and then those people would complain about X new feature that they didn't get. And of course X new feature is different for every geek.
THis I have to disagree with. I've not yet met one person, geek or otherwise, who liked all the stuff the original poster was complaining about. In fact, I use MSN myself (GAIM, it's called, around my house), and I still disable it in windows! (Then I turn around and re-enable it , oops) Granted, this is anecdotal evidence, but it certainly looks to me like all this fancy UI stuff that Microsoft claims is so wonderful to the idiot users is nothing but self-serving to the manufacturer of the OS.
one can pick up an athlon/duron, some ram and a mobo for cheap cheap!!!
"You know what you're problem is, you take too many things for granted!" Hoggwort, err, Hoggle.
My computer budget is $0. My hardware upgrade budget is 3 times my computer budget. My software upgrade budget is 2 times my hardware upgrade budget.
In the end, it matters not what the price of new stuff is, it matters more how much life I have left in the old stuff.
I do run Win2K and Office2k on an older machine...a P200 MMX with 128 MB ram and 2.1 GB disk. It runs fine. Take out even 16 meg of memory though, and forget it. I would try to run it with 256 meg of memory, but the board is so old it only supports 4 32MB simms. YMMV, though.
win2k running terminal services on a k6-300 with 64MB RAM. I disabled all the extraneous services, and it runs fine.
Do you understand how annoying it is to talk an African-American and constantly keep telling yourself not to use certain derogatory terms? Do you understand how annoying it is to talk to an Irish-American and not use various derogatory terms? Ditto for Polish-Americans, American Indians, women, hackers, how often do you mistakenly talk to someopne and unknowingly insult them? Ever use the word suit to a suit, to his face, by mistake?
Maybe if you weren't prejudiced and ashamed of it, you'd have an easier time. :)
I've earned a bit of respect from the people around me at various points by specifically *not* censoring myself for their benefit. I speak precisely, *most* of the time. The rest of the time, I'm usually purposely speaking imprecisely, for various reasons.
Fact is, I had a good fried from whom I split only because I moved to another town (not good enough a friend to keep in touch, but good enough to watch out for each other), and during a typical shit-talking day, I told him he was a nigger. He laughed pretty hard about it. Now guess what color his skin is? Well, it ain't white. Peckerwood, I think, was his answer. Fun guy, actually.
Point is, if you worry so much about offending people, then you're worrying too much. You just can't walk into any room that has more than one person in it without offending someone (well, I can't, but I'm an offensive person anyway, just look at my username :) ), so why bother trying not to? It's not worth it. Regardless of what you intend to say, or what you're trying to get across, people will just take offense at it for no real reason, if they want. Maybe they don't like your long hair? Maybe they don't like your wife? Whatever, they take offense and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Conversely, I haven't spoken much to RMS. I've only exchanged some email with him, and I found him extremly polite, even when he did correct my language. :) Hardly an offensive kind of guy. Strikes me as someone who doesn't really give a fuck whether or not people like him, but he doesn't want to hurt people anyway because he's just a nice guy. Who gives a shit if he wants you to speak precisely around him? You either do or you don't, you don't have to in any case. Say what you want. ARgue with him. Fight with him. Kick his ass.
Or you could quit worrying about it and go do something good for yourself, and maybe even the community. :)
Really, all you free-market guys out there - how does this work? When do we get normality again?
After the revolution, when we have a government that cares again, at least for a little while.
Galeon rocks. I think Mozilla does this, and I'm sure Konqueror does something similar. Opera almost certainly does, too.
Mozilla does it, I'm using Mozilla 1.1, bundled with Mandrake 9.0. I avoid Konqueror like the plague, although I really like KDE. Don't know about Opera, I'm still waiting for the source. :)
IE is a big piece of shit, and even when I'm forced to use windows I avoid it. I've not yet been in a situation where I had to use Windows and couldn't install Mozilla, I sincerely hope I'm *never* in that situation. :)