I meant to imply that if the drugs were made legal, I'd have no problems with those people assuming the drugs didn't lead them to be non-law abiding or responsible.
Just like some people have no problem with those black people, as long as they're law-abiding and responsible? Careful with your statements. I was expecting the next sentence to be "Some of my best friends are drug addicts."
And if you still don't like any of the choices you see before you, then put yourself on the ballot. Anything is better than being just another non-voter.
I disagree with this last part, the part that says "Anything is better than being just another non-voter." There's two types of "non-voters", near as I can tell. Those who just plain don't vote for reasons such as: no time, don't care, etc. And the other kind. Those who don't vote because there isn't a candidate running that represents them. I am the second kind. After Zappa died, I haven't since seen a candidate that I would feel comfortable electing, so I haven't voted.
Now, however, the situation's quite different. I see a candidate whose re-election I think would be very dangerous to our country. I see the future containing a police state in the US (arguably this already exists, but I'm talking about something on the order of "Revolt in 2100", although it won't be isolationist) or World War 3. These are possible futures I don't want to live in, and now I'm going to have to vote for a loser that probably doesn't represent me in order to prevent the other guy from getting elected.
And goddammit, I'm running myself in 2012! Then I can confidently vote for someone who'll represent me.:)
Dreamweaver can be replaced with a copy of the XHTML standards and a copy of emacs or $editor of your choice.
Ever actually used Dreamweaver? I said it was the best at what it does, I didn't say there weren't other options. There isn't any that I've used that makes code as standard as Dreamweaver's (not that it's perfect or anything, but Dreamweaver's HTML is better than Mozilla's) and provides such an easy visual interface. Furthermore, Dreamweaver provides superior website management features that "emacs" or "$editor of your choice" probably don't have. Dreamweaver also provides a point-and-click interface to javascript programming. It could almost be called a RAD tool for javascript if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't make javascript that works in all browsers.:) But the javascript it makes is pretty good, all things considering, and usually only requires a little bit of tweaking.
I've noticed that people who say that Dreamweaver can be easily replaced have never used it that much. It's not the easiest interface to learn, but it's a great interface after you learn it, and it really does simplify many aspects of web page creation.
On the other hand, it really sucks because it's very unreliable. Crashes about once every 10 minutes. I usually save a lot anyway (have to save every time you ftp your page to the remote host) so I don't lose any data. Besides that, I've switched to "$editor of my choice" anyway. Got used to not having Dreamweaver on my Mandrake system.:) SO I healed that addiction.
but the real power is engaged when the larger community pounds on a piece of software through use.
Microsoft even backs up this claim. I read an article awhile back about how they've been finding all kinds of bugs they never even suspected since they implemented bug reporting on Windows XP. Of course, MS won't admit that free software has been like this for awhile, simply due to the participation of the community....
But here's where I think the kicker is at: making a law mandating or prohibiting OSS is dumb. That decision should rest with the IT pros who are in charge of a given project. They're the only ones properly qualified to make that decision.
Do you really want to leave it up to a paid IT professional on how to make public government information available to the public? Do you really want the hired help to have that sort of control over our freedom?
It's a big deal when Microsoft, Oracle, and all the other guys hold your government's data hostage.
If the lawmakers make laws requiring OSS because it's technically superior to proprietary software, then I agree with you, they're out of their league.
On the other hand, I want my elected officials to mandate OSS software because it provides free and open access to the government's information. Yes, they can lock-down their top-secret stuff, but when it all comes down to it, the government's got no business putting public information under the control of a corporation who's only responsible to its shareholders. The Economist was right on with this, and it's sure in the fuck not the first time I've seen this argument made.
Quite possibly true but irrelevant. Things like Code Red, Slammer, MSBlaster will not spread extensively and will be extinguished because there's a diverse horde of people with the ability to work out what it takes to stop and extinguish it. If you remove the top two-thirds of the talent, what's left will still manage to somehow extinguish it
This stuff will exist for Linux, when Linux has 90% of the market share. All other arguments about it aside, the only way to prevent viruses and worms and crap from hurting large groups of people is to have a diverse group of binary-incompatible platforms. For example, if Linux on x86 had 20%, Linux on PPC had 10%, FreeBSD on x86 had 10%, FreeBSD on PPC had 10%, Mac OS X had 10%....on and on and on. POint is, the x86 Linux machines wouldn't be able to spread a virus to the PPC Linux machines, and so on and so forth. Make the crackers have to support a variety of platforms in they really want to exploit it.
In the meantime, keep the protocols and file formats and so forth open, using POSIX systems and standard UNIX interfaces, and open interfaces, we can have developers develop for ALL of these platforms very easily. (I realize that the tools application developers have are the same tools that virus developers have, but making a GUI that compiles on 5 platforms is different than making a virus that exploits 5 platforms simultaneously)
Netscape started the trend of making extensions to HTML which only their browser supported. It was those very extensions that led to 90% marketshare.
Microsoft was, as far as web standards are concerned, the white knight. They were the ones who submitted CSS to the W3C (and had the first semi-working implementations circa IE3). They were the ones who were pushing open web standards.
Only when IE began really eating Netscape's share (which didn't occur until long after IE4 was bundled with Win98, btw) did Netscape realize that adhering to standards was a good thing.
Who created the font tag? Who created the marquee tag? Who created the blink tag? Who created iframes? Neither one of those companies were "playing nice". Microsoft's answer to Javascript was VBScript in the browser, but they had to use Netscapes DOM. There's a reason the early DOM used a top-level object called "Navigator". Point is, they were both constantly implementing standards differently on purpose to force web developers to choose one browser over another to support. Talk about freedom. Heh. Then, after web developers made their choice, MS had to bundle IE with their OS, and give it away for free. It was the smoothest case of rape that ever happened.
Yes, they are reverse engineering the formats, but they are never 100% accurate. I use special formatting on my resume (doc format) that never displays correctly on StarOffice and OpenOffice. If the format were published, it would be perfected of course, but why would Microsoft want it to work on other software suites?
Upon looking further, though, I wound up looking at this page, and learned that they stopped publishing most of their office formats in 1999, so recent information is unavailable. The page also provides instructions for if you want the information. I think they're scared of giving it to Sun or somebody who might sneak it into OpenOffice.org. Heh.
Take MySQL. It's currently behind Oracle/SQL because it doesn't have a whole bunch of features of those databases. Primarily: Stored Procedures. When it gets that (which is not far away), a whole chunk of users (who do not currently) will look at MySQL.
Why aren't they looking at PostgreSQL, then? PostgreSQL has beaten Oracle in a few performance tests and regularly kicks MySQL's ass. Hell, Sourceforge runs on PostgreSQL. I realize that Oracle has a few hits over PostgreSQL, but PostgreSQL supports stored procedures. Furthermore, you can even store PHP scripts in PostgreSQL (and any arbitrary scripting language, if you really want).
Name any closed source package that is far superior to all OSS equvilents. Can't, do it. Why? 'cause there are none.
Goldmine. I hate to have to say this about Goldmine, since it's a big piece of shit, but I've looked long and hard for an OSS solution that even comes close, and haven't found one.
Dreamweaver, arguably. In my experience, Dreamweaver is the best at what it does, and it's a big piece of shit. Just like Goldmine. Heh.
That said, I'm as much an OSS zealot as the next guy, and I would LOVE to see something come out that kicks the ass out of Goldmine. I've found alternatives to Dreamweaver that suit me fine, but I'm still looking for something to kick Goldmine into next year.
Mention one adance over the last 100 years that hasn't been brought about by someone's gov't, not neccessarily the us congress. They have had thier share though.
That's easy. Viagra. (Please, I already thought of the octogenarian US-centric comeback to that)
Maybe someone should convince Hillary that there are potential Democratic voters on Mars...
Shit, just point out the additions to the Electoral College that would come about when the Moon and Mars become states. WOuldn't the party that made them want to benefit from these extra votes? Then Gore might not need to recount Florida...
I would'nt say that you could directly contribute the success of the moon landing to Kennedy.
YOu're right, not completely. He takes his share of credit as a visionary and a leader who decided that this was going to happen, got the support of the citizens and--most importantly--congress to give to the scientists what they needed to make it so. Give the guy some credit for that, at least.
Luckily our great nation has lately acquired a lot of high tech rocket technology from Iraq.
+5 funny:) Ever see how high a cooscoos-filled arab can launch himself?
You know, I just gotta love how all these spontaneous debates on the Iraq War keep breaking out all over the place. I find it funnier than shit. I've been using it as a bit of a gag, I must admit.
Just for the record, though, I think that Bush could have done a better job giving us reasons to fight over there. If he had given reason instead of ideological rhetoric, he'd've had my complete support. He had plenty of good reasons. (Yes, he gave some of them, I know) But I have a bit of trouble supporting an ideologically-motivated invasion. Sounds too much like a crusade for my tastes.
In the end, whether or not the war was right or wrong depends entirely on your point of view.
yeah, it boggles my mind that you're not even allowed to pump your own gas there. I seriously thought the atttendent was somehow trying to scam me into giving him a tip. No chance of that after he told me it was the law, though...
Shit, the attendant that first put gas in my truck asked me where the key for the cap was. I told him "On my keyring, so nobody opens it without my permission." He said "Well, I'm gonna have to put gas in there." I say "No you're not." He says "Yes, I am." Then he noticed my eyes turning red and my fists starting to clench (if you touch my truck, you must be suicidal, I'm *very* possessive about it). White-faced, he managed to squeak out "It's the law!" Then he looked at my Texas plates and said "Oh, you're not from around here."
I chose the Toyota Prius precisely because it has had a few years to mature (Toyota's been shipping since 2000, so I bought the 4th year car in 2003). That's why I didn't get the (first year) hybrid Civic; I figured Toyota's had time to get the bugs out. So far it's been a great car, though to be fair I've only had it since April.
In 2000, I read an article about the Prius, and it had already been shipping in Japan for 2 years. Japanese had gotten in the neighborhood of 500mpg, showing it to be a very good system. Toyota was unsure at the time how the US market would take to the car, since the reason the Japanese got the mileage they got was because there's nothing but stop-n-go traffic there. We Americans, on the other hand, LOVE to drive our long commutes, and drive out into the country, and what have you.
Pet Peeve #843302: Rednecks who live in west Texas and think they're people. (NOte: living in west texas is not to be mistaken for living in West, Texas. The I-35 corridor is well-stocked with people)
Assuming $2/gal and 15k miles per year (very favorable to the small car), a 15MPG SUV costs $2000 in fuel, and a 30MPG car costs $1000 in fuel. $1000/yr savings might sound like a lot, but if someone bought a big SUV because they tow a boat or trailer on their vacation, it's just not worth buying a second small car for commuting. Just registration and insurance would be close to that much.
INsurance is a rip, you know? I get so sick of people telling me "Oh you've gotta have insurance." For what? YOu want me to gamble that I'm going to hit somebody? Where's the confidence in that? "You'll get a ticket!" Yeah, driving without insurance for 2 years and I've paid a total of $333 in tickets for it. How much has your insurance cost you?
Yeah, I know, *if* I get in a wreck, it'll cost me a helluva lot more. But if price is all it's about, I'll take those odds.
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I meant to imply that if the drugs were made legal, I'd have no problems with those people assuming the drugs didn't lead them to be non-law abiding or responsible.
Just like some people have no problem with those black people, as long as they're law-abiding and responsible? Careful with your statements. I was expecting the next sentence to be "Some of my best friends are drug addicts."
And if you still don't like any of the choices you see before you, then put yourself on the ballot. Anything is better than being just another non-voter.
I disagree with this last part, the part that says "Anything is better than being just another non-voter." There's two types of "non-voters", near as I can tell. Those who just plain don't vote for reasons such as: no time, don't care, etc. And the other kind. Those who don't vote because there isn't a candidate running that represents them. I am the second kind. After Zappa died, I haven't since seen a candidate that I would feel comfortable electing, so I haven't voted.
Now, however, the situation's quite different. I see a candidate whose re-election I think would be very dangerous to our country. I see the future containing a police state in the US (arguably this already exists, but I'm talking about something on the order of "Revolt in 2100", although it won't be isolationist) or World War 3. These are possible futures I don't want to live in, and now I'm going to have to vote for a loser that probably doesn't represent me in order to prevent the other guy from getting elected.
And goddammit, I'm running myself in 2012! Then I can confidently vote for someone who'll represent me. :)
Dreamweaver can be replaced with a copy of the XHTML standards and a copy of emacs or $editor of your choice.
Ever actually used Dreamweaver? I said it was the best at what it does, I didn't say there weren't other options. There isn't any that I've used that makes code as standard as Dreamweaver's (not that it's perfect or anything, but Dreamweaver's HTML is better than Mozilla's) and provides such an easy visual interface. Furthermore, Dreamweaver provides superior website management features that "emacs" or "$editor of your choice" probably don't have. Dreamweaver also provides a point-and-click interface to javascript programming. It could almost be called a RAD tool for javascript if it weren't for the fact that it doesn't make javascript that works in all browsers. :) But the javascript it makes is pretty good, all things considering, and usually only requires a little bit of tweaking.
I've noticed that people who say that Dreamweaver can be easily replaced have never used it that much. It's not the easiest interface to learn, but it's a great interface after you learn it, and it really does simplify many aspects of web page creation.
On the other hand, it really sucks because it's very unreliable. Crashes about once every 10 minutes. I usually save a lot anyway (have to save every time you ftp your page to the remote host) so I don't lose any data. Besides that, I've switched to "$editor of my choice" anyway. Got used to not having Dreamweaver on my Mandrake system. :) SO I healed that addiction.
Sorry, I Microsoft has more users willing to promote Microsoft than Free Software has users willing to promote Free Software.
The difference between the two groups is the the Free SOftware group is growing while the Microsoft group is shrinking.
but the real power is engaged when the larger community pounds on a piece of software through use.
Microsoft even backs up this claim. I read an article awhile back about how they've been finding all kinds of bugs they never even suspected since they implemented bug reporting on Windows XP. Of course, MS won't admit that free software has been like this for awhile, simply due to the participation of the community....
But here's where I think the kicker is at: making a law mandating or prohibiting OSS is dumb. That decision should rest with the IT pros who are in charge of a given project. They're the only ones properly qualified to make that decision.
Do you really want to leave it up to a paid IT professional on how to make public government information available to the public? Do you really want the hired help to have that sort of control over our freedom?
It's a big deal when Microsoft, Oracle, and all the other guys hold your government's data hostage.
If the lawmakers make laws requiring OSS because it's technically superior to proprietary software, then I agree with you, they're out of their league.
On the other hand, I want my elected officials to mandate OSS software because it provides free and open access to the government's information. Yes, they can lock-down their top-secret stuff, but when it all comes down to it, the government's got no business putting public information under the control of a corporation who's only responsible to its shareholders. The Economist was right on with this, and it's sure in the fuck not the first time I've seen this argument made.
Quite possibly true but irrelevant. Things like Code Red, Slammer, MSBlaster will not spread extensively and will be extinguished because there's a diverse horde of people with the ability to work out what it takes to stop and extinguish it. If you remove the top two-thirds of the talent, what's left will still manage to somehow extinguish it
This stuff will exist for Linux, when Linux has 90% of the market share. All other arguments about it aside, the only way to prevent viruses and worms and crap from hurting large groups of people is to have a diverse group of binary-incompatible platforms. For example, if Linux on x86 had 20%, Linux on PPC had 10%, FreeBSD on x86 had 10%, FreeBSD on PPC had 10%, Mac OS X had 10%....on and on and on. POint is, the x86 Linux machines wouldn't be able to spread a virus to the PPC Linux machines, and so on and so forth. Make the crackers have to support a variety of platforms in they really want to exploit it.
In the meantime, keep the protocols and file formats and so forth open, using POSIX systems and standard UNIX interfaces, and open interfaces, we can have developers develop for ALL of these platforms very easily. (I realize that the tools application developers have are the same tools that virus developers have, but making a GUI that compiles on 5 platforms is different than making a virus that exploits 5 platforms simultaneously)
Netscape started the trend of making extensions to HTML which only their browser supported. It was those very extensions that led to 90% marketshare.
Microsoft was, as far as web standards are concerned, the white knight. They were the ones who submitted CSS to the W3C (and had the first semi-working implementations circa IE3). They were the ones who were pushing open web standards.
Only when IE began really eating Netscape's share (which didn't occur until long after IE4 was bundled with Win98, btw) did Netscape realize that adhering to standards was a good thing.
Who created the font tag? Who created the marquee tag? Who created the blink tag? Who created iframes? Neither one of those companies were "playing nice". Microsoft's answer to Javascript was VBScript in the browser, but they had to use Netscapes DOM. There's a reason the early DOM used a top-level object called "Navigator". Point is, they were both constantly implementing standards differently on purpose to force web developers to choose one browser over another to support. Talk about freedom. Heh. Then, after web developers made their choice, MS had to bundle IE with their OS, and give it away for free. It was the smoothest case of rape that ever happened.
Yes, they are reverse engineering the formats, but they are never 100% accurate. I use special formatting on my resume (doc format) that never displays correctly on StarOffice and OpenOffice. If the format were published, it would be perfected of course, but why would Microsoft want it to work on other software suites?
I hate to defend Microsoft, but they used to publish the doc format.
Upon looking further, though, I wound up looking at this page, and learned that they stopped publishing most of their office formats in 1999, so recent information is unavailable. The page also provides instructions for if you want the information. I think they're scared of giving it to Sun or somebody who might sneak it into OpenOffice.org. Heh.
Take MySQL. It's currently behind Oracle/SQL because it doesn't have a whole bunch of features of those databases. Primarily: Stored Procedures. When it gets that (which is not far away), a whole chunk of users (who do not currently) will look at MySQL.
Why aren't they looking at PostgreSQL, then? PostgreSQL has beaten Oracle in a few performance tests and regularly kicks MySQL's ass. Hell, Sourceforge runs on PostgreSQL. I realize that Oracle has a few hits over PostgreSQL, but PostgreSQL supports stored procedures. Furthermore, you can even store PHP scripts in PostgreSQL (and any arbitrary scripting language, if you really want).
Name any closed source package that is far superior to all OSS equvilents. Can't, do it. Why? 'cause there are none.
Goldmine. I hate to have to say this about Goldmine, since it's a big piece of shit, but I've looked long and hard for an OSS solution that even comes close, and haven't found one.
Dreamweaver, arguably. In my experience, Dreamweaver is the best at what it does, and it's a big piece of shit. Just like Goldmine. Heh.
That said, I'm as much an OSS zealot as the next guy, and I would LOVE to see something come out that kicks the ass out of Goldmine. I've found alternatives to Dreamweaver that suit me fine, but I'm still looking for something to kick Goldmine into next year.
Speaking is free. It's actively expanding your potential audience that consumes resources.
Wasn't free when Opera made that comment about cattle-ranching and beef.
Wasn't free when that other guy (Sorry, don't remember his name) got locked in jail for saying the 7 words that you can't say on TV, on TV.
Free speach in this country is a sham, always has been, always will be. Yeah, I know, the country is free enough for me to say that.
Then how did Sen. Al Gore invent the internet?
By pissing on a transformer.
Mention one adance over the last 100 years that hasn't been brought about by someone's gov't, not neccessarily the us congress. They have had thier share though.
That's easy. Viagra. (Please, I already thought of the octogenarian US-centric comeback to that)
Maybe someone should convince Hillary that there are potential Democratic voters on Mars...
Shit, just point out the additions to the Electoral College that would come about when the Moon and Mars become states. WOuldn't the party that made them want to benefit from these extra votes? Then Gore might not need to recount Florida...
I would'nt say that you could directly contribute the success of the moon landing to Kennedy.
YOu're right, not completely. He takes his share of credit as a visionary and a leader who decided that this was going to happen, got the support of the citizens and--most importantly--congress to give to the scientists what they needed to make it so. Give the guy some credit for that, at least.
Luckily our great nation has lately acquired a lot of high tech rocket technology from Iraq.
+5 funny :) Ever see how high a cooscoos-filled arab can launch himself?
You know, I just gotta love how all these spontaneous debates on the Iraq War keep breaking out all over the place. I find it funnier than shit. I've been using it as a bit of a gag, I must admit.
Just for the record, though, I think that Bush could have done a better job giving us reasons to fight over there. If he had given reason instead of ideological rhetoric, he'd've had my complete support. He had plenty of good reasons. (Yes, he gave some of them, I know) But I have a bit of trouble supporting an ideologically-motivated invasion. Sounds too much like a crusade for my tastes.
In the end, whether or not the war was right or wrong depends entirely on your point of view.
The afghanistan economy grew by 28% last year
Um, 28% of nothing is still nothing, isn't it?
I'll bet whoever modded me flamebait drives a Civic. Hah-hah.
And speaking of the look of the Insight, it's really just a modern take on the CRX. They're strikingly similar in appearance.
That's because they're just a CRX with a body kit. :) Or so I read a few years back...
yeah, it boggles my mind that you're not even allowed to pump your own gas there. I seriously thought the atttendent was somehow trying to scam me into giving him a tip. No chance of that after he told me it was the law, though...
Shit, the attendant that first put gas in my truck asked me where the key for the cap was. I told him "On my keyring, so nobody opens it without my permission." He said "Well, I'm gonna have to put gas in there." I say "No you're not." He says "Yes, I am." Then he noticed my eyes turning red and my fists starting to clench (if you touch my truck, you must be suicidal, I'm *very* possessive about it). White-faced, he managed to squeak out "It's the law!" Then he looked at my Texas plates and said "Oh, you're not from around here."
I did the math 2 years ago when the insight came out. At $10,000 more than a Kia (loaded)
Except that the difference between any Honda and any Kia is about 100k miles in favor of the Honda...
(Kias are pieces of shit on wheels. Remember Daihatsu? Daewoo? All crap. Kia goes in the pile too.)
I chose the Toyota Prius precisely because it has had a few years to mature (Toyota's been shipping since 2000, so I bought the 4th year car in 2003). That's why I didn't get the (first year) hybrid Civic; I figured Toyota's had time to get the bugs out. So far it's been a great car, though to be fair I've only had it since April.
In 2000, I read an article about the Prius, and it had already been shipping in Japan for 2 years. Japanese had gotten in the neighborhood of 500mpg, showing it to be a very good system. Toyota was unsure at the time how the US market would take to the car, since the reason the Japanese got the mileage they got was because there's nothing but stop-n-go traffic there. We Americans, on the other hand, LOVE to drive our long commutes, and drive out into the country, and what have you.
Pet Peeve #843302: Rednecks who live in west Texas and think they're people. (NOte: living in west texas is not to be mistaken for living in West, Texas. The I-35 corridor is well-stocked with people)
Assuming $2/gal and 15k miles per year (very favorable to the small car), a 15MPG SUV costs $2000 in fuel, and a 30MPG car costs $1000 in fuel. $1000/yr savings might sound like a lot, but if someone bought a big SUV because they tow a boat or trailer on their vacation, it's just not worth buying a second small car for commuting. Just registration and insurance would be close to that much.
INsurance is a rip, you know? I get so sick of people telling me "Oh you've gotta have insurance." For what? YOu want me to gamble that I'm going to hit somebody? Where's the confidence in that? "You'll get a ticket!" Yeah, driving without insurance for 2 years and I've paid a total of $333 in tickets for it. How much has your insurance cost you?
Yeah, I know, *if* I get in a wreck, it'll cost me a helluva lot more. But if price is all it's about, I'll take those odds.