I recently "built world" on a FreeBSD system, and I was somehow under the impression that, for instance, if I was on dial-up, it would have been easier to download the source, and that the binary code that resulted from my building the FreeBSD base files that I downloaded was larger. I actually have broadband, so it doesn't matter for me so much, but I was just thinking that if I were somewhere else and only had access to dial-up, downloading source would be easier.
Now, as I was surfing a couple sites (Open Office, Mozilla, etc..) just now to test my theory, I realize that I am wrong in this. The source, for instance, of Open Office is 180 megs, whereas the binary is like 60. And that's probably because there is support for many different platforms in that source. The binaries I was just looking into seem to be smaller, because you have already chosen your platform, your CPU, etc., but the source has everything you need for any situation.
So, for those with dial-up, binaries _may_ be an easier way to go. I thought it was the other way around, that source code was smaller, but maybe I have been wrong thinking that. My very un-broad, un-scientific comparison of several.deb files and the corresponding source points out that the binaries are about half the size of the source. This might be significant for those with dial-up.
Just one example -
A debian kernel-image 2.4.19 for a sun4u smp (.deb file) is 3846K
A debian kernel-source (.deb file) for the same version 2.4.19 source is 25285K
This may be an extreme example, but generally speaking, since the binary is already specialized for your hardware, it's going to be smaller. Am I missing something or is this correct? I thought it was the other way around, but now after looking into it, it appears that binaries are more bandwidth-friendly.
strange, but I was just thinking about this a couple of days ago. IBM mainframes or mainframe-type computers with dumb terminals for employees, that's kind of where it was at, if you could afford one, for business, originally, and I think that in the business world, that's kind of where it would have stayed, and the cookie-cutter concept would have perhaps been applied to smaller, server-type machines, with each employee just having a keyboard and a monitor.
I was thinking about this because I was realizing how silly it is that everyone at work has a "personal" computer, when in fact, unlike a calculator, a computer is used for communication, and plugging into the data and information that is used by the organization as a whole.
Imagine if instead of plugging into the PBX, every employee was given their own cellphone to use in their cubicle, and then the cellphone providers would have made "drastic improvements" in walkie-talkie mode. Silly.
That's kind of how the "personal computer" has been warped into something that is actually counter-productive and unnecessary, both in a technical, practical, and marketing sense, in the business world. Word, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, these are all things that pretty much stay local, they stay in what could be called "intra-net", and they don't do that particularly well, for instance in situations where someone has opened up an Excel spreadsheet, but has forgotten to save and close it, and then you go to open it and it's read only. And then you are working on that spreadsheet or that Word document, and your computer crashes, and you lose work. It's an exercise in "how often can you hit save" sometimes. Big fun. Very reliable indeed. It's actually a huge waste of time.
We would see more Oracle-type, industrial strength, bulletproof database software, and less personal, small-business type Access-type software. Industrial strength - boring, plain-jane, complicated, requiring specialists trained in those types of things. Perhaps we would not have any of those "_____ for dummies" books, either.
At home, we would have not lost the audiophile movement, the high-end stereo businesses would probably be a lot better off, and young folks would drool over Macintoshes (the amps) and Carvers, NADs and Nakamichis. The RIAA would not be a four-letter word. Or the MPAA. On the other hand, the internet - the internet would not be where it is today, probably. Is that good or bad? Hmmmm... Ebay, who knows what would be going on there. We might have game consoles, stock ticker appliances, etc.
With Microsoft, the concept of a "computer" - neither at home, nor at work, is there the somewhat boring, unexciting nature of something like a calculator or a slide rule. It's all "cool", or new, or innovative, exciting, and for the most part, almost entirely unnecessary - well, maybe not entirely unnecessary, but somewhat unnecessary. Why use a PC when a CD player or some other specialized appliance will do? Not only do we have all these anti-trust trials going on, but the PC is trying to be everything to everyone, while the concept of the computer is sort of losing its roots. In a name association game, the way things stand today, computers are not that particularly likely to trigger "binary" or "algorithm", but more likely to trigger other keywords. In a world without Microsoft, this might be different, computers might perhaps be associated with geniuses and whizes, just like physics and math and rocket science are today. It would not be OK to be stupid.
Without Microsoft, businesses would probably be using terminals and keyboards, connected into a mainframe, or mini-mainframe, all wired and networked together, and command-line, text-based messaging between employees using company-specific local apps would be very popular
Computers would be no different than calculators, except the focus would be information - databases, company-wide scheduling, information management and flow, things like that. The scientific end, of course, with the number cr
If Microsoft really feels this way, that would be fine with me. But they certainly aren't exhibiting their feelings with their actions.
Instead of trying to fight against the global adoption of Linux in many fields where Office might be useful in the ways that they have just delineated in this pdf, why not port Office so that it works on Linux?
Maybe this will happen eventually , but the inevitable situation is that if Office is to remain strong, and if users are to be able to take advantage of these "premium features", then it's going to have to get ported to Linux. It's pretty much as simple as that.
Portability is important, because I think the world is sick of being tied to one particular OS. That might have been fine in the 80's and 90's, when computers were new, but there is no way that we can move ahead over the next 100-200 years simply having one OS because of anti-competitive practices and entrenched luck.
It may not be financially "rewarding" to port Office to Linux, given that statistically, it would account for a very small percentage of Office sales - but - in the interest of making Office a fully professional product, the port should be done, even if it costs money to do it. A port to Linux would just reaffirm Microsoft's willingness to stand behind its Office product's merits and benefits, and it would also go a long way to show that Microsoft is willing to provide a premium product, for a fee, without tying it to their own OS. Of course, the backward compatibility issues are really going to hurt them here.
We have to move forward, and the future is not a future where there is only one OS. It's just a no-brainer, if you asked me.
One problem I see right away is the huge icons on the bottom there. Are they underneath the app I am using, if so, they are not very useful, or are they "always on top", which is annoying, or is it hard to figure out how to get them to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it?
I use enlightenment, because I do like cool pictures in the background, and I like the options that I have (different types of borders, edit your own menus, set stacking [on top, below, normal], sticky, middle mouse click for shading/unshading, virtual desktops up to 8x8, multiple desktops up to 32, that's (32*8*8) = 2048 desktops (I use 3x3x3 and it's more than I need).
Personally, I don't like icons, or anything. The only thing on my desktop when there aren't any apps open is a clock, with time, date, day of the week (wmclockmon). Nothing else. With the menu just a single left-click away, you can load up your favorite apps on the toplevel menu, and the ones you use less on the submenus - so basically, just click anywhere on the background - even the tiny slice of background between the edge of your app and the edge of the screen - or just mouse off the edge and scroll over to the next virtual desktop (they wrap too) and left or middle click once (not twice) for an infinite amount of nested menus you very easily learn to create yourself however you want.
I think real innovation in GUIs would involve moving as many mouse functions as possible to the keyboard for the sake of improved ergonomics - enlightement has those capabilities, and although I haven't used it much, I understand fvwm2 can be made almost entirely mouse-free, if you so desire.
I'm sticking with enlightment for now, but I think I would be equally at home with fvwm2. 3D is not as important to me as is shading with the middle mouse button, virtual/multiple desktops, and "always on top". I have a seriously hard time being productive otherwise.
Looks like both of these have connections to the University of California. NERSC is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - it's probably a strategic thing to sue University of California (not a smart strategy if you asked me, but it might help to get to the bottom of things). Looks like both of the facilities are operated by University of California for/with US Department of Energy.
I get the distinct feeling that SCO just makes a list of potential defendants and then pays the lawyers millions of dollars to choose from among them - this is, in fact, probably not too far off from what is actually going on, and getting the "Regents of the University of California" on that list probably isn't going to help SCO's case at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone thinks it might just impress the lawyers or something.
Stability gets a lot more done than something you have to rebuild after every race. Simply making it through the race, even if it's a quarter mile, requires significant amounts of stability and reliability. Not that performance isn't important, but the two are related, and an "increase" in one will probably facilitate similar changes in the other. An increase in stability is, after all, to a greater or lesser extent, an increase in performance.
I purchased a Tyan S2390B motherboard with the "B" being the then "new" 133MHz FSB for the Athlon Thunderbirds. The original CPU was a Duron 750, and with the help of a BIOS upgrade, it is has been replaced with a "stock" XP 1700+ with the 266Mhz frequency. It has a recent 4.9 FreeBSD on it and is responsive, apps open fast, and it's a perfectly acceptable computer for home/office use. It can run seti in the background for weeks and weeks and weeks, 24/7 and it's still perfectly useable for whatever you need to use it for. And, I just recently upgraded the FreeBSD from 4.4 to 4.9, so portions of the install and many local files are from well over 2 years ago. I think that's kind of cool.
So the attention to the hardware is good in many ways - ergonomics and recycling, environmentally friendly designs and materials, fair treatment of workers. This would make an excellent cynosure. We need to improve the interaction between the human body and the work environment. I don't forsee any surprises in this area, though. Hopefully, I am wrong in this.
There was something I was wondering. Many people make the "mistake" of associating Linux with the GNU operating system. Linux is just the kernel. GNU can run on several kernels, Linux is the most popular one, the default one.
When I started using FreeBSD I noticed that the kernel was really not that big of a deal compared to the Linux kernel, which was more of a bigger deal, or seemed to be, anyway. I remember I swapped an OpenBSD harddrive between minor architecture changes and had to compile a new kernel. It wasn't a big deal, it only took short period of time, and involved just editing the file directly, then compiling it and reboot.
So here is what I was wondering. When they say AIX - the accusation there is AIX code in Linux - they mean the kernel, right? Or are they talking all of AIX. I am even wondering how these things match up; because, technically, calling what most people call Linux Linux is incorrect, it's actually GNU/Linux to begin with, and then perhaps some proprietary stuff thrown on top like YaST was up until yesterday or so.
So I wonder how much people realize that we are just talking about a kernel here, or are we? Is it more than that? And how does the logic of these accusations draw the dividing line between kernel and OS? The accusations seem to be based on the fact that everyone is "using Linux" and "not using Unix" anymore, but identifying infringing code seems to be an afterthought, with no specific facts as of yet (probably ever). The accusations don't appear to be primarily about the technical details, they appear to be of a broader nature, about the fact that ex-Unix customers are now "using Linux". It's almost as if the individual(s) responsible for these legal actions don't know the difference between Linux and GNU - why would they be asking for "AIX" and not the "AIX kernel"?
It's just kind of strange, if you asked me. It's basically tying software to hardware, because the kernel is all about hardware, all kinds of hardware. Since there is no evidence, and no infringement has taken place, these court cases are obviously going nowhere; but shouldn't tying hardware to software be at the discrection of the hardware manufacturer/chipmaker?
I don't remember where I saw this, but apparently there was an individual who sued "the devil" here in the U.S. Sued him for all the bad things the devil had made him do, all the people the devil had caused him to hurt - something along those lines.
The judge threw out the case because the court didn't know what address to send the devil's subpeona to.
My favorite Jesse Venture quote, or one of them: "You can't legislate stupidity".
He was talking about people riding snowmobiles on thin ice, ignoring warnings from the weatherman, and then dying from falling into freezing water.
But in this case, it would have to be the stupidity of the people who involve themselves in these meaningless pursuits of trying to immerse themselves in power.
It seems to me, anyway, that these guys corresponding are fascinated with power, not with anything else. Just power. Probably because they don't think they have enough money in their bank accounts.
Hopefully, they are in a minority - well, at least - this is not the way to be successful, and participating in this type of nonsense will only bring you and your family great misery - in the long run. Despite how successful these folks are in their own minds, their plan is just doomed to fail anyway - leak or no leak. Which means one thing... they are wasting their time, hence they are stupid. If they really cared about power and prestige and wealth, they wouldn't be wasting their time attacking Linux, which is innocent.
I don't think that there necessarily has to be a correlation between technology and stress. Not that there isn't, just like there may or may not be a correlation between stress and showing up to work on time. If you get your routine down, you will be on time. If you wake up in time, you won't be late.
Stress is created by improper management of things. Manage your time improperly, and you will have stress. Manage your employees improperly, and you will have stress. Manage your technology improperly, or your projects improperly, and you will have stress.
Stress is bad, and it kills. There are ways to overcome it, but you have to be willing to make sacrifices to get rid of stress, which might mean pushing back a deadline, or hiring more staff, or something along those lines. Office environment, ergonomics, working with co-workers who have a high level of skill; these are things that can reduce stress.
Another thing that bothers me is how software, sometimes hardware manufacturers present you with "the latest" of whatever it is that they sell, and then describe to you how it will make your life easier, and why version (+1) of their product is better than the current version, and why you should shell out a couple hundred grand for it.
I think that it is better to ask "Can this computer do this for me?", rather than allowing a representative try to talk you in to buying an expensive product. With the outsourcing phenomena that is going on, software products and software companies, in many people's minds, are always going to have a certain amount of financial and job-related stress accompany them.
The concept of "environment" needs to be extended into the workspace, and into the human interactions that we have with each other day in and day out. So not only does industrial waste, improperly managed, pollute our rivers and lakes, but stress, improperly managed, pollutes our work environment. How much technology went into that top of the line ergonomic chair, that fancy expensive keyboard, or that articulating keyboard tray? Technology, by definition, can be very helpful; it can reduce stress and increase productivity. But reducing stress "costs money", money that many employers don't have, or aren't willing to spend. It is unfortunate. Technology is being used to do what: increase profits? save lives? make things easier for the consumer?. We have to intentionally go out and apply technology to stress reduction, and bingo!
I don't think that there needs to be any correlation between technology and stress. I think that it is entirely possible to use technology and not be stressed out. Furthermore, if you do find a correlation between stress and technology, take your sample environments and remove the technology, and I bet you will still have stress.
People create stress by not managing it in the first place. Technology magnifies things that already exist. The drive for wealth and profits creates stress; technology focused on creating more wealth and profits will do the same. The drive to make things easier for the consumer creates stress; technology focused on the making things easier for the consumer will do the same.
The drive to reduce stress reduces stress; applying technology to the drive to reduce stress will do the same.
The secret to growing big, huge, gigantic, beautiful, delicious, colorful vegetables is the soil. It's ALL in the soil. Soil is alive. Something like 3 billion micro-organisms in a teaspoon of it. Unfortunately, much of the soil in use today on our modern factory farms is "dead". Pesticides, high-nitrogen fertilizers, and monoculture (growing the same crop in the same spot year after year after year after year) "kill" the soil. It's the microorganisms in the soil that actually do the dying, the various types of earthworms, and other living organisms in the soil - they die - the chemicals kill them. Anyone who brews beer will understand that when something powerful is going on (yeast) that sucks up the nutritional value, bad things like molds don't have any food to grow. Same theory - with healthy soil, you get healthy veggies, and you don't need pesticides because healthier plants tend to not get pests.
The reason that open-source software and people collaborating is so effective is because all those countless volunteers who spend their time working on the code, contributing to it, making it better - they are like the earthworms; they are like the microorganisms in the soil, that do the growing of the software.
It's an amazing analogy. You can buy nutrition and security for your plants - fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds. Or you can use what nature has provided and "grow soil". All you need to do is "grow soil", and you will have yields that will boggle your mind. The veggies will be bigger, they will have less disease, they will need less water (although this has to do with planting diagrams and keeping the soil in the shade with plants planted closer together, not in rows, more like you would find plants in nature, more random, not in rows. Many people tend to not think of "soil" as something that is "alive", but what we call soil IS alive, actually - as long as you don't dump chemicals on it.
In any case, you get the idea. If you want good veggies, you focus on the soil. You can "buy" soil nutrition via fertilizers, but it's not as good, and it's more expensive. So it would logically follow then, that in order to "grow" dynamic, excellent software, what you actually need to do is to "grow" the developer community. Good software results from growing a "community", a community of developers. Respect is good, but it can't code. Acknowlegement is fine, but a living, breathing, thinking, developer is much better. Actually, make that plural - living, breathing, thinking developerS are even better!
This is obviously killing the community - that's what it's doing, so it's really sad, in a way - that the X people don't understand why open source and community-based projects like Linux do so well - it's the "soil". A project will die if it's license doesn't encourage vast numbers of developers to get involved. That's why proprietary software tends to not be as advanced as open source projects that encourage participation from qualified volunteers. If you don't encourage participation from qualified volunteers, your project will slowly fade away and be replaced by a project that has an active and dynamic developer pool.
The context here is that God is upset with Adam, and is letting Adam know about it. This is because Adam ate the forbidden fruit.
King James Version (sorry for the Old English, but it's public domain)
17...cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
What I did was this... Drink REALLY good coffee. It may or may not work for you. It wasn't hard for me to stop, just getting awake in the morning is the hard part sometimes. We have this Whole Foods market here in town that roasts their own in the store; I used to (just recently) always get the Papau New Guinea? ( I actually don't remember...wow.) which is Jamaica Blue Mountain seedstock grown in a climate where the coffee comes out more flavorful. I (used to) grind it coarse, put it in a french press with spring water, a LOT of coffee in a french press with spring water and I am off to the moon. It's a different buzz. I can usually get through 1/2 of my stainless steel coffee mug - it still tastes WONDERFUL 2 hours later - thick, mocha-like, viscous, invigorating and inspiring - unlike most coffee, especially work coffee which you wouldn't even dream of drinking cold.
Mixed with Eden Soymilk and Ricemilk blend. Eden Blend is awesome - sugar free, no ups and downs. Eden Blend has amazake, which is rice sweetened with the help of a beneficial mold - aspergillus oryzae - it turns the rice sweet, and you can make a flavorful beverage out of it. It's how they make sake. Sake, straight up, just made, can get up to 21% alcohol by volume, because of the dual action of the aspergillus turning the starch into sugars and the yeast turning those sugars into alcohol. Japanese law limits it to 16% by volume - Momokawa Pearl (US) is 18% and unfiltered. Awesome sake. Anyway... Eden Blend rules.
CAUTION: Don't use sugar -- if your coffee is also sugar or if your coffee object inherits a sugar method (or whatever) -- it's a bug. Sugar is way worse than coffee. And it's ubiquitous.
Anyway...I'm not even jonesing yet... amazing. But yes, this really strong coffee and I just go nuts on it and I am just in outer space (it tastes like chocolate, literally). But eventually I realize that I really don't have any energy and that it's just a waste of time. Coffee doesn't really give you any kind of long-lasting energy, it's a band-aid, at best. But you won't notice that if you are on the sugar roller coaster.
The normal rate at which your body uses blood sugar is up to approximately, when you are awake, somewhere around 2 calories per minute. That's all you ever need. When you eat a candy bar, that candy bar shoots it up to about somewhere around 30 calories per minute, or so. Pot - i.e. marijuana - interestingly enough, does the same thing. Bad bad bad. Don't mess with the blood sugar levels. So your pancreas kicks in with the insulin and now your blood sugar goes down to approximately 0 calories per minute, and your eyes tear up and you yawn and start planning your next trip to the coffee machine, or in the other instance, it's at this point that you get the munchies and cotton mouth real bad. Stop using sugar (refined sugar, to be specific) as best you can and quitting coffee will be easier.
You will have to read the labels - corn sugar, fructose, evaporated cane juice, brown sugar (brown sugar is regular sugar with molasses added BACK in) - those are all "refined" sugars and will put you on a blood sugar roller coaster. Apple juice is a more gentle sugar - combined with a high-mineral spring water like original Trinity or Elvis' favorite Mountain Valley Spring makes an excellent sports drink pick-me-up type thing. Good first thing in the morning, too. Organic Apple Juice and high mineral content spring water kept me going like a top all summer. It's cheaper than sugary sports drinks, and gives you more energy as well.
The key is to realize that #1, it's probably sugar that's the problem in the first place, and #2, it's all in your mind - provided there is no sugar involved. If you get rid of the sugar and only drink high quality, strong coffee made with spring water, you will eventually just stop drinking it. It's like magic.
Your own natural energy, maybe with the help of some green tea or high-quality organic yerba mate (which can be made in a french press with Eden Blend, BTW)
It's better, in an ethical sense, to approach a job interview as a test, testing the waters. People who give advice about getting a job tend to advocate getting your foot in the door with an interview and then making a wonderful impression to get the job. What good is a job if it's not the right job for you? A job interview is a chance to meet each other, get to know each other, and ask those questions to make sure neither one of you will lose their minds trying to make something work that wasn't meant to work for purely financial reasons. If you had enough money to never have to work again, would you never work again? If so, then maybe it's time to re-define what you call work. Ethically speaking, you should use a job interview as part of a filtering process to arrive at an appropriately long-term commitement where a contribution to the greater good can be made. Generally speaking, you will be more wealthy if you don't let other people treat you like dirt. Putting the horse before the cart is the hard part.
Look at the top-level post. We know for a fact that just because you worked somewhere before, that's not what makes you a bad employee. The question is whether or not someone will actually think, or be required by an official or unofficial policy to think, that this makes you a bad employee.
Do yourself a favor and don't work for people like that. That's one very good reason why human beings have brains; so that they can use them. If a policy requires the human resources person to be stupid and go against their own common sense, then it's a stupid policy for stupid people who work at a stupid company. Rest assured there are intelligent people who work at intelligent companies with intelligent policies. So it stands to reason that if you are an intelligent person, you will find it relatively easy to find work at an intelligently-run company with intelligent policies, where you can spend your days or nights working with other friendly intelligent people.
The answer is obvious: we already know that it's a stigma, if anything; and that companies that attach stigmas to things across the board will fail to attract the most talented people, and this will start a chain reaction that will eventually spare the rest of us from having to deal with that stupid company ever again.
For Christmas, this year, my cold went away; I could get back to work sooner than I expected, which was what I wanted anyway because I am working on a really cool project. It sucks to be sick so you can't concentrate even when there is something important, and not entirely uninteresting, to do to move yourself forward in the world.
This is a first time thing for me, as I was actually feeling pretty awful right around 1PM on the 24th, but by 8PM, I didn't need the cold medications anymore, and on the 25th I woke up feeling pretty good.
Problem is, I don't know who to thank, and even if I did, there would be a problem with the address.
One strategy that you could use would be to cram as much hardware into one case as you can (unless you want to keep the case, which would make sense). On the other hand, cases are relatively inexpensive, so it might be worth it for the sake of neatness.
Cram it full of expansion cards that don't work, old hard drives, CD drives, just pack that case full until you can't fit anything else in there. With a little creativity, you could even mount a power supply where hard drives are supposed to be.
That way you have it all in one handy, nice, little (or not so little) package which will be easier to "put" somewhere.
In any case, if you do consolidate and simplify, it will make you feel better because your computer parts area of your domicile will at least have the appearance of being organized.
I guess some people like to choose their truth, or perhaps believe the first thing that looks like truth they see, but we all know they're short an equals sign, don't we?
I think (or I have a hunch) that this "quantum computing is not possible" will be proven to be at least partially wrong. At least, I don't think that we will be stuck with a binary "load and store" (I believe that is what they are called) machines. Computers will change in ways that are going to highlight the delicate balance and fragile characteristics of life itself, while making our bodies more useful - not in a borg sense, but in a sense that computers will become easier to use, or more peripheral, perhaps even orthogonal to the process of going about your daily activities.
2. "I'm going to get into computers"
"I'm going to get into computers" as a worthwhile career goal. Working in the computer industry is going to (has) become increasingly more challenging, and is going to (does) require increasingly complex skillsets as computer science and real-world computer science applications evolve. The industry as a whole will continue to become more important in our daily lives, but the skill required will also increase exponentially. "Computers" will no longer represent a middle ground between the corporate, scientific, and research worlds and the unskilled labor workforce.
This really shows why, it seems, that so many well-known artists end up having serious problems with the music industry. Staying in the running requires shutting your mouth, counting your blessings, and towing the "party" line.
If the law is that way, then obviously it's just wrong. Injustice in every sense of the word. But of course, no one really cares. It's devastating when you realize that as a popular musician, you are less "free" to express yourself than you would be if you were a "starving artist". It's crushing, particularly for those people who simply would like to express themselves.
Elaborate superstitions, all kinds of nasty habits, and a certain type of detachment, combined with either extreme luck, extensive knowledge of other's works and litigatory habits, or a very specific formula all, in essence, fail to solve the essential problem... it's the wrong way to do it.
Be that as it may, we should all be aware of the difficulties inherent in being a published musician, and why sometimes a Beethoven sonata can be so much more rewarding to play than the latest hastily written, divinely inspired hit. It's all about feeling good - or at least, I could say... music should be about feeling good - not just for the listener, but for the musician as well. At least with a Beethoven sonata I can focus on playing the best I can and practicing until I am blue in the face, not on methods of anxiety management. It's unnerving to have the priviledges of a justice system removed from your life.
With Linux, I see an opportunity to create new work and and extend existing work in an environment free from the cruel realities of having something that is clearly unjust forced on you because you are creative - as in this Harrison case. Why punish creativity? But of course, it happens, and probably will continue to happen, especially in the music industry.
The typical music industry saying - "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" - could not be any more wrong - and just goes to show the brainwashing that people will endure in an attempt to prepare themselves for an unrewarding, stifling, frightening environment where sudden wealth is the only true reward, regardless of how tenuous or ephemeral it might be.
Linux will continue to be a force that builds confidence and efficiency into the creative process. It is more important to be able to program free from fear, than it is to try to play along with every sicko's fantasy about how you can be made liable for something that everyone knows darn well you aren't liable for anyway.
The Harrison case shows us that there is precedent when it comes to "accidentally" tuning into a song. Didn't Steven Tyler say something about having written "Dude Looks Like A Lady" right around the time that the Kinks wrote "Lola", or something like that - although there's no real infringement there, there is some kind of connection. Or how about Close Encounters of the Third Kind and that melody? I can see it now: Aliens Disrupt Legal System by Inspiring Hundreds of Artists to Write Identical Song".
I believe it is accidentally possible to hum the same song as someone else. I would rather hear that song, actually. It's the song I want to hum. Especially if hundreds of people are humming it.
SCO, on the other hand, does not have precedent for what they are trying to do. They need to create it. That's why it's important to nip it in the bud and clarify to them, and the public, that Linux has a right to stay free and clear from other people's code, and that if, for some reason, somehow, that infringing code did slip in to Linux, then Linux should have a chance to remove the code and resolve the situation.
uuummm.... I can't keep up. I like to reboot after I upgrade, just because I'm paranoid (technically, it' s not necessary.)
With the Debian (sarge) version, I have been updating about once a week. I don't know if that's the way you are supposed to do it, but that's how I have been doing it. When it comes to web browsers, email clients, Open Office, etc... it's fun to keep up with "sarge". But seriously... it's like every time you check your source for updates, at least a few pop up.
Because I am just in the habit of re-booting after an upgrade that is basically (besides power outages) what keeps my uptime as low as it is. You have to look past the dial-up concept of "releases" and learn to look at the OS software on your hard drive as a cellular organism that continually creates new cells, and replaces the old ones. Given a year's time, I doubt that very many of the packages on your machine ( and this depends on how many packages you have installed, and what your software needs are ) would be the same at all.
Broadband changes the way you think about operating systems. But the nice thing is that you really only need to be around a broadband connection when you update, and for instance, with the "stable", tracking security patches, dial-up would probably be just be fine.
I cannot keep up, seriously... with all the updates that come on down the line. It's worth it though, to do the upgrade and get the newer software (if you have broadband).
I just hope that they don't create FUD to the point that the situation becomes ripe for an "attack" - that is, insult Linux, stage a DDOS or something.
This complete and utter nonsense is almost designed to piss people off, so it's only a logical step that it might become an attempt to further discredit Linux and other free / open source software by portraying Linux developers and enthusiasts as untrustworthy, irresponsible, disrespectful, malicious individuals. As long as we make it through this PR thing (if the rumor is true) without any kind of DDOS on Microsoft's servers, it'll be relatively inane.
There's always a trade-off between being on the cutting edge and being totally stable and secure; people need to weigh the pros and cons before they make decisions about these kinds of things.
If Microsoft were taking security seriously then they wouldn't be busy bashing other OS'es about security; this kind of nonsense, provided that the article, or rumor, is correct, is just wasted breath, because Linux security is not that bad, and Linux in no way makes Microsoft products less secure - there's no correlation.
Or maybe, just maybe... Microsoft is embracing Linux? Maybe they want to help make it more secure? One thing is for sure, Linux is NOT a waste of time. Microsoft certainly has to resources to contribute things to Linux, don't they? Instead of bashing it, why not help make it better? Thing is, it's pretty darn secure already.
When I saw this headline I thought it was a joke, but I guess it isn't. Kind of hard to believe, though - it's just so wrong.
The only fair comparison would be between software that is in development at Microsoft - beta Longhorn, for instance, or something like that. Linux is a very broad term that encompasses all kinds of levels of done-ness of software. Some stuff is in alpha, some in beta, some is in pre-alpha stages. Of course there are going to be bugs. If you want to use Linux, and you don't want bugs, you can't use alpha and beta software, and you need to go with the tried and true, not the cutting edge. I don't trust Microsoft to make those distinctions - it's not fair to compare development versions of one OS with stable versions of another. If you compare stable, non-cutting-edge versions of Linux with MS's current offerings, Linux wins hands down. Software that is under development is always going to have bugs - it's a fact of life.
It's an interesting thought, Novell being acquired by some successful IT giant up in the sky... but I doubt the fact they acquired SuSE and Ximian has anything to do Novell trying to position itself favorably for its own acquisition.
I just can't see Novell saying: "OK, we are going to buy SuSE and Ximian so that we can get acquired." It would devalue the company to do that - that kind of approach would minimize the percieved value of Novell and trivialize the somewhat major moves that Novell is making. Companies generally do what is in the best interests of the company; if someone acquires that company, they are only building on the good things that the company has done already. I sense an anti-Linux "Linux can't save you, your company is doomed because you are not as big as IBM, HP, or MS" sentiment. I am not sure this type of theorizing is much more than the typical pro-SCO, anti-Linux drivel. Sour grapes, perhaps.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but there is a lot more going on here than Novell struggling to have someone buy them out. I think that Novell is really doing some interesting things, and I kind of doubt that either the original intention or the desired outcome of what they are doing was to put themselves into a more favorable position of being acquired.
Given time, going about building a technically superior distribution that is built on 100% free software is the best solution. If there is a need to mix and match GPL and other free software with non-free and other proprietary software in order to get a technically superior distribution at this point in time, then of course, there is no reason not to do that.
But over time, if you give it a decade or so, you will be better off having starting those seeds with software the preserves the freedoms that allow that same software to be improved and upgraded as a unit, not coming from different sources, not being dependent on proprietary models to keep your distribution technically superior. It's the tortoise-hare thing. Free software may seem somehow less glamorous, less appealing, less "technologically advanced", but it's a moving target, so given time, it will tend to keep moving.
It's not just about right now, it's about 25 years from now. I could not have imagined a world without Adobe Acrobat several years ago. It was an extremely important piece of software to me, personally, and has been for some time. I just put together a Debian "testing" system, which I am now using as my "daily driver", and I still have not installed Acrobat - I like xpdf better. Again, I can install Acrobat if I really need to, but as of yet, I haven't needed to. I am experiencing the same thing with Java on this system. I don't have it, don't need it... yet. When I do, I will install it... no big deal. But up to that point, I am not going to bother. I know that I can get what I need within 10 minutes if I ever need it.
I think it makes sense; I think that's actually something that makes Debian kind of cool; is that you can give your system its own (your) personality by modifying the sources.list file.
I don't think I really understood the possibilites until I discovered apt-get.org. It's a great concept, that you can "tune in" to the types of software that you want/need, and it doesn't all necessarily have to come from the official Debian servers.
This might give Debian users more choices, actually.
Slashdot Mirror
I recently "built world" on a FreeBSD system, and I was somehow under the impression that, for instance, if I was on dial-up, it would have been easier to download the source, and that the binary code that resulted from my building the FreeBSD base files that I downloaded was larger. I actually have broadband, so it doesn't matter for me so much, but I was just thinking that if I were somewhere else and only had access to dial-up, downloading source would be easier.
.deb files and the corresponding source points out that the binaries are about half the size of the source. This might be significant for those with dial-up.
Now, as I was surfing a couple sites (Open Office, Mozilla, etc..) just now to test my theory, I realize that I am wrong in this. The source, for instance, of Open Office is 180 megs, whereas the binary is like 60. And that's probably because there is support for many different platforms in that source. The binaries I was just looking into seem to be smaller, because you have already chosen your platform, your CPU, etc., but the source has everything you need for any situation.
So, for those with dial-up, binaries _may_ be an easier way to go. I thought it was the other way around, that source code was smaller, but maybe I have been wrong thinking that. My very un-broad, un-scientific comparison of several
Just one example -
A debian kernel-image 2.4.19 for a sun4u smp (.deb file) is 3846K
A debian kernel-source (.deb file) for the same version 2.4.19 source is 25285K
This may be an extreme example, but generally speaking, since the binary is already specialized for your hardware, it's going to be smaller. Am I missing something or is this correct? I thought it was the other way around, but now after looking into it, it appears that binaries are more bandwidth-friendly.
strange, but I was just thinking about this a couple of days ago. IBM mainframes or mainframe-type computers with dumb terminals for employees, that's kind of where it was at, if you could afford one, for business, originally, and I think that in the business world, that's kind of where it would have stayed, and the cookie-cutter concept would have perhaps been applied to smaller, server-type machines, with each employee just having a keyboard and a monitor.
I was thinking about this because I was realizing how silly it is that everyone at work has a "personal" computer, when in fact, unlike a calculator, a computer is used for communication, and plugging into the data and information that is used by the organization as a whole.
Imagine if instead of plugging into the PBX, every employee was given their own cellphone to use in their cubicle, and then the cellphone providers would have made "drastic improvements" in walkie-talkie mode. Silly.
That's kind of how the "personal computer" has been warped into something that is actually counter-productive and unnecessary, both in a technical, practical, and marketing sense, in the business world. Word, Access, Excel, PowerPoint, these are all things that pretty much stay local, they stay in what could be called "intra-net", and they don't do that particularly well, for instance in situations where someone has opened up an Excel spreadsheet, but has forgotten to save and close it, and then you go to open it and it's read only. And then you are working on that spreadsheet or that Word document, and your computer crashes, and you lose work. It's an exercise in "how often can you hit save" sometimes. Big fun. Very reliable indeed. It's actually a huge waste of time.
We would see more Oracle-type, industrial strength, bulletproof database software, and less personal, small-business type Access-type software. Industrial strength - boring, plain-jane, complicated, requiring specialists trained in those types of things. Perhaps we would not have any of those "_____ for dummies" books, either.
At home, we would have not lost the audiophile movement, the high-end stereo businesses would probably be a lot better off, and young folks would drool over Macintoshes (the amps) and Carvers, NADs and Nakamichis. The RIAA would not be a four-letter word. Or the MPAA. On the other hand, the internet - the internet would not be where it is today, probably. Is that good or bad? Hmmmm... Ebay, who knows what would be going on there. We might have game consoles, stock ticker appliances, etc.
With Microsoft, the concept of a "computer" - neither at home, nor at work, is there the somewhat boring, unexciting nature of something like a calculator or a slide rule. It's all "cool", or new, or innovative, exciting, and for the most part, almost entirely unnecessary - well, maybe not entirely unnecessary, but somewhat unnecessary. Why use a PC when a CD player or some other specialized appliance will do? Not only do we have all these anti-trust trials going on, but the PC is trying to be everything to everyone, while the concept of the computer is sort of losing its roots. In a name association game, the way things stand today, computers are not that particularly likely to trigger "binary" or "algorithm", but more likely to trigger other keywords. In a world without Microsoft, this might be different, computers might perhaps be associated with geniuses and whizes, just like physics and math and rocket science are today. It would not be OK to be stupid.
Without Microsoft, businesses would probably be using terminals and keyboards, connected into a mainframe, or mini-mainframe, all wired and networked together, and command-line, text-based messaging between employees using company-specific local apps would be very popular
Computers would be no different than calculators, except the focus would be information - databases, company-wide scheduling, information management and flow, things like that. The scientific end, of course, with the number cr
If Microsoft really feels this way, that would be fine with me. But they certainly aren't exhibiting their feelings with their actions.
Instead of trying to fight against the global adoption of Linux in many fields where Office might be useful in the ways that they have just delineated in this pdf, why not port Office so that it works on Linux?
Maybe this will happen eventually , but the inevitable situation is that if Office is to remain strong, and if users are to be able to take advantage of these "premium features", then it's going to have to get ported to Linux. It's pretty much as simple as that.
Portability is important, because I think the world is sick of being tied to one particular OS. That might have been fine in the 80's and 90's, when computers were new, but there is no way that we can move ahead over the next 100-200 years simply having one OS because of anti-competitive practices and entrenched luck.
It may not be financially "rewarding" to port Office to Linux, given that statistically, it would account for a very small percentage of Office sales - but - in the interest of making Office a fully professional product, the port should be done, even if it costs money to do it. A port to Linux would just reaffirm Microsoft's willingness to stand behind its Office product's merits and benefits, and it would also go a long way to show that Microsoft is willing to provide a premium product, for a fee, without tying it to their own OS. Of course, the backward compatibility issues are really going to hurt them here.
We have to move forward, and the future is not a future where there is only one OS. It's just a no-brainer, if you asked me.
One problem I see right away is the huge icons on the bottom there. Are they underneath the app I am using, if so, they are not very useful, or are they "always on top", which is annoying, or is it hard to figure out how to get them to do what you want them to do when you want them to do it?
I use enlightenment, because I do like cool pictures in the background, and I like the options that I have (different types of borders, edit your own menus, set stacking [on top, below, normal], sticky, middle mouse click for shading/unshading, virtual desktops up to 8x8, multiple desktops up to 32, that's (32*8*8) = 2048 desktops (I use 3x3x3 and it's more than I need).
Personally, I don't like icons, or anything. The only thing on my desktop when there aren't any apps open is a clock, with time, date, day of the week (wmclockmon). Nothing else. With the menu just a single left-click away, you can load up your favorite apps on the toplevel menu, and the ones you use less on the submenus - so basically, just click anywhere on the background - even the tiny slice of background between the edge of your app and the edge of the screen - or just mouse off the edge and scroll over to the next virtual desktop (they wrap too) and left or middle click once (not twice) for an infinite amount of nested menus you very easily learn to create yourself however you want.
I think real innovation in GUIs would involve moving as many mouse functions as possible to the keyboard for the sake of improved ergonomics - enlightement has those capabilities, and although I haven't used it much, I understand fvwm2 can be made almost entirely mouse-free, if you so desire.
I'm sticking with enlightment for now, but I think I would be equally at home with fvwm2. 3D is not as important to me as is shading with the middle mouse button, virtual/multiple desktops, and "always on top". I have a seriously hard time being productive otherwise.
Looks like both of these have connections to the University of California. NERSC is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - it's probably a strategic thing to sue University of California (not a smart strategy if you asked me, but it might help to get to the bottom of things). Looks like both of the facilities are operated by University of California for/with US Department of Energy.
I get the distinct feeling that SCO just makes a list of potential defendants and then pays the lawyers millions of dollars to choose from among them - this is, in fact, probably not too far off from what is actually going on, and getting the "Regents of the University of California" on that list probably isn't going to help SCO's case at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone thinks it might just impress the lawyers or something.
Stability gets a lot more done than something you have to rebuild after every race. Simply making it through the race, even if it's a quarter mile, requires significant amounts of stability and reliability. Not that performance isn't important, but the two are related, and an "increase" in one will probably facilitate similar changes in the other. An increase in stability is, after all, to a greater or lesser extent, an increase in performance.
I purchased a Tyan S2390B motherboard with the "B" being the then "new" 133MHz FSB for the Athlon Thunderbirds. The original CPU was a Duron 750, and with the help of a BIOS upgrade, it is has been replaced with a "stock" XP 1700+ with the 266Mhz frequency. It has a recent 4.9 FreeBSD on it and is responsive, apps open fast, and it's a perfectly acceptable computer for home/office use. It can run seti in the background for weeks and weeks and weeks, 24/7 and it's still perfectly useable for whatever you need to use it for. And, I just recently upgraded the FreeBSD from 4.4 to 4.9, so portions of the install and many local files are from well over 2 years ago. I think that's kind of cool.
So the attention to the hardware is good in many ways - ergonomics and recycling, environmentally friendly designs and materials, fair treatment of workers. This would make an excellent cynosure. We need to improve the interaction between the human body and the work environment. I don't forsee any surprises in this area, though. Hopefully, I am wrong in this.
There was something I was wondering. Many people make the "mistake" of associating Linux with the GNU operating system. Linux is just the kernel. GNU can run on several kernels, Linux is the most popular one, the default one.
When I started using FreeBSD I noticed that the kernel was really not that big of a deal compared to the Linux kernel, which was more of a bigger deal, or seemed to be, anyway. I remember I swapped an OpenBSD harddrive between minor architecture changes and had to compile a new kernel. It wasn't a big deal, it only took short period of time, and involved just editing the file directly, then compiling it and reboot.
So here is what I was wondering. When they say AIX - the accusation there is AIX code in Linux - they mean the kernel, right? Or are they talking all of AIX. I am even wondering how these things match up; because, technically, calling what most people call Linux Linux is incorrect, it's actually GNU/Linux to begin with, and then perhaps some proprietary stuff thrown on top like YaST was up until yesterday or so.
So I wonder how much people realize that we are just talking about a kernel here, or are we? Is it more than that? And how does the logic of these accusations draw the dividing line between kernel and OS? The accusations seem to be based on the fact that everyone is "using Linux" and "not using Unix" anymore, but identifying infringing code seems to be an afterthought, with no specific facts as of yet (probably ever). The accusations don't appear to be primarily about the technical details, they appear to be of a broader nature, about the fact that ex-Unix customers are now "using Linux". It's almost as if the individual(s) responsible for these legal actions don't know the difference between Linux and GNU - why would they be asking for "AIX" and not the "AIX kernel"?
It's just kind of strange, if you asked me. It's basically tying software to hardware, because the kernel is all about hardware, all kinds of hardware. Since there is no evidence, and no infringement has taken place, these court cases are obviously going nowhere; but shouldn't tying hardware to software be at the discrection of the hardware manufacturer/chipmaker?
I don't remember where I saw this, but apparently there was an individual who sued "the devil" here in the U.S. Sued him for all the bad things the devil had made him do, all the people the devil had caused him to hurt - something along those lines.
The judge threw out the case because the court didn't know what address to send the devil's subpeona to.
My favorite Jesse Venture quote, or one of them: "You can't legislate stupidity".
He was talking about people riding snowmobiles on thin ice, ignoring warnings from the weatherman, and then dying from falling into freezing water.
But in this case, it would have to be the stupidity of the people who involve themselves in these meaningless pursuits of trying to immerse themselves in power.
It seems to me, anyway, that these guys corresponding are fascinated with power, not with anything else. Just power. Probably because they don't think they have enough money in their bank accounts.
Hopefully, they are in a minority - well, at least - this is not the way to be successful, and participating in this type of nonsense will only bring you and your family great misery - in the long run. Despite how successful these folks are in their own minds, their plan is just doomed to fail anyway - leak or no leak. Which means one thing... they are wasting their time, hence they are stupid. If they really cared about power and prestige and wealth, they wouldn't be wasting their time attacking Linux, which is innocent.
I don't think that there necessarily has to be a correlation between technology and stress. Not that there isn't, just like there may or may not be a correlation between stress and showing up to work on time. If you get your routine down, you will be on time. If you wake up in time, you won't be late.
Stress is created by improper management of things. Manage your time improperly, and you will have stress. Manage your employees improperly, and you will have stress. Manage your technology improperly, or your projects improperly, and you will have stress.
Stress is bad, and it kills. There are ways to overcome it, but you have to be willing to make sacrifices to get rid of stress, which might mean pushing back a deadline, or hiring more staff, or something along those lines. Office environment, ergonomics, working with co-workers who have a high level of skill; these are things that can reduce stress.
Another thing that bothers me is how software, sometimes hardware manufacturers present you with "the latest" of whatever it is that they sell, and then describe to you how it will make your life easier, and why version (+1) of their product is better than the current version, and why you should shell out a couple hundred grand for it.
I think that it is better to ask "Can this computer do this for me?", rather than allowing a representative try to talk you in to buying an expensive product. With the outsourcing phenomena that is going on, software products and software companies, in many people's minds, are always going to have a certain amount of financial and job-related stress accompany them.
The concept of "environment" needs to be extended into the workspace, and into the human interactions that we have with each other day in and day out. So not only does industrial waste, improperly managed, pollute our rivers and lakes, but stress, improperly managed, pollutes our work environment. How much technology went into that top of the line ergonomic chair, that fancy expensive keyboard, or that articulating keyboard tray? Technology, by definition, can be very helpful; it can reduce stress and increase productivity. But reducing stress "costs money", money that many employers don't have, or aren't willing to spend. It is unfortunate. Technology is being used to do what: increase profits? save lives? make things easier for the consumer?. We have to intentionally go out and apply technology to stress reduction, and bingo!
I don't think that there needs to be any correlation between technology and stress. I think that it is entirely possible to use technology and not be stressed out. Furthermore, if you do find a correlation between stress and technology, take your sample environments and remove the technology, and I bet you will still have stress.
People create stress by not managing it in the first place. Technology magnifies things that already exist. The drive for wealth and profits creates stress; technology focused on creating more wealth and profits will do the same. The drive to make things easier for the consumer creates stress; technology focused on the making things easier for the consumer will do the same.
The drive to reduce stress reduces stress; applying technology to the drive to reduce stress will do the same.
The secret to growing big, huge, gigantic, beautiful, delicious, colorful vegetables is the soil. It's ALL in the soil. Soil is alive. Something like 3 billion micro-organisms in a teaspoon of it. Unfortunately, much of the soil in use today on our modern factory farms is "dead". Pesticides, high-nitrogen fertilizers, and monoculture (growing the same crop in the same spot year after year after year after year) "kill" the soil. It's the microorganisms in the soil that actually do the dying, the various types of earthworms, and other living organisms in the soil - they die - the chemicals kill them. Anyone who brews beer will understand that when something powerful is going on (yeast) that sucks up the nutritional value, bad things like molds don't have any food to grow. Same theory - with healthy soil, you get healthy veggies, and you don't need pesticides because healthier plants tend to not get pests.
The reason that open-source software and people collaborating is so effective is because all those countless volunteers who spend their time working on the code, contributing to it, making it better - they are like the earthworms; they are like the microorganisms in the soil, that do the growing of the software.
It's an amazing analogy. You can buy nutrition and security for your plants - fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds. Or you can use what nature has provided and "grow soil". All you need to do is "grow soil", and you will have yields that will boggle your mind. The veggies will be bigger, they will have less disease, they will need less water (although this has to do with planting diagrams and keeping the soil in the shade with plants planted closer together, not in rows, more like you would find plants in nature, more random, not in rows. Many people tend to not think of "soil" as something that is "alive", but what we call soil IS alive, actually - as long as you don't dump chemicals on it.
In any case, you get the idea. If you want good veggies, you focus on the soil. You can "buy" soil nutrition via fertilizers, but it's not as good, and it's more expensive. So it would logically follow then, that in order to "grow" dynamic, excellent software, what you actually need to do is to "grow" the developer community. Good software results from growing a "community", a community of developers. Respect is good, but it can't code. Acknowlegement is fine, but a living, breathing, thinking, developer is much better. Actually, make that plural - living, breathing, thinking developerS are even better!
This is obviously killing the community - that's what it's doing, so it's really sad, in a way - that the X people don't understand why open source and community-based projects like Linux do so well - it's the "soil". A project will die if it's license doesn't encourage vast numbers of developers to get involved. That's why proprietary software tends to not be as advanced as open source projects that encourage participation from qualified volunteers. If you don't encourage participation from qualified volunteers, your project will slowly fade away and be replaced by a project that has an active and dynamic developer pool.
Genesis 3:17-19
The context here is that God is upset with Adam, and is letting Adam know about it. This is because Adam ate the forbidden fruit.
King James Version (sorry for the Old English, but it's public domain)
What I did was this... Drink REALLY good coffee. It may or may not work for you. It wasn't hard for me to stop, just getting awake in the morning is the hard part sometimes. We have this Whole Foods market here in town that roasts their own in the store; I used to (just recently) always get the Papau New Guinea? ( I actually don't remember...wow.) which is Jamaica Blue Mountain seedstock grown in a climate where the coffee comes out more flavorful. I (used to) grind it coarse, put it in a french press with spring water, a LOT of coffee in a french press with spring water and I am off to the moon. It's a different buzz. I can usually get through 1/2 of my stainless steel coffee mug - it still tastes WONDERFUL 2 hours later - thick, mocha-like, viscous, invigorating and inspiring - unlike most coffee, especially work coffee which you wouldn't even dream of drinking cold.
Mixed with Eden Soymilk and Ricemilk blend. Eden Blend is awesome - sugar free, no ups and downs. Eden Blend has amazake, which is rice sweetened with the help of a beneficial mold - aspergillus oryzae - it turns the rice sweet, and you can make a flavorful beverage out of it. It's how they make sake. Sake, straight up, just made, can get up to 21% alcohol by volume, because of the dual action of the aspergillus turning the starch into sugars and the yeast turning those sugars into alcohol. Japanese law limits it to 16% by volume - Momokawa Pearl (US) is 18% and unfiltered. Awesome sake. Anyway... Eden Blend rules.
CAUTION: Don't use sugar -- if your coffee is also sugar or if your coffee object inherits a sugar method (or whatever) -- it's a bug. Sugar is way worse than coffee. And it's ubiquitous.
Anyway...I'm not even jonesing yet... amazing. But yes, this really strong coffee and I just go nuts on it and I am just in outer space (it tastes like chocolate, literally). But eventually I realize that I really don't have any energy and that it's just a waste of time. Coffee doesn't really give you any kind of long-lasting energy, it's a band-aid, at best. But you won't notice that if you are on the sugar roller coaster.
The normal rate at which your body uses blood sugar is up to approximately, when you are awake, somewhere around 2 calories per minute. That's all you ever need. When you eat a candy bar, that candy bar shoots it up to about somewhere around 30 calories per minute, or so. Pot - i.e. marijuana - interestingly enough, does the same thing. Bad bad bad. Don't mess with the blood sugar levels. So your pancreas kicks in with the insulin and now your blood sugar goes down to approximately 0 calories per minute, and your eyes tear up and you yawn and start planning your next trip to the coffee machine, or in the other instance, it's at this point that you get the munchies and cotton mouth real bad. Stop using sugar (refined sugar, to be specific) as best you can and quitting coffee will be easier.
You will have to read the labels - corn sugar, fructose, evaporated cane juice, brown sugar (brown sugar is regular sugar with molasses added BACK in) - those are all "refined" sugars and will put you on a blood sugar roller coaster. Apple juice is a more gentle sugar - combined with a high-mineral spring water like original Trinity or Elvis' favorite Mountain Valley Spring makes an excellent sports drink pick-me-up type thing. Good first thing in the morning, too. Organic Apple Juice and high mineral content spring water kept me going like a top all summer. It's cheaper than sugary sports drinks, and gives you more energy as well.
The key is to realize that #1, it's probably sugar that's the problem in the first place, and #2, it's all in your mind - provided there is no sugar involved. If you get rid of the sugar and only drink high quality, strong coffee made with spring water, you will eventually just stop drinking it. It's like magic.
Your own natural energy, maybe with the help of some green tea or high-quality organic yerba mate (which can be made in a french press with Eden Blend, BTW)
It's better, in an ethical sense, to approach a job interview as a test, testing the waters. People who give advice about getting a job tend to advocate getting your foot in the door with an interview and then making a wonderful impression to get the job. What good is a job if it's not the right job for you? A job interview is a chance to meet each other, get to know each other, and ask those questions to make sure neither one of you will lose their minds trying to make something work that wasn't meant to work for purely financial reasons. If you had enough money to never have to work again, would you never work again? If so, then maybe it's time to re-define what you call work. Ethically speaking, you should use a job interview as part of a filtering process to arrive at an appropriately long-term commitement where a contribution to the greater good can be made. Generally speaking, you will be more wealthy if you don't let other people treat you like dirt. Putting the horse before the cart is the hard part.
Look at the top-level post. We know for a fact that just because you worked somewhere before, that's not what makes you a bad employee. The question is whether or not someone will actually think, or be required by an official or unofficial policy to think, that this makes you a bad employee.
Do yourself a favor and don't work for people like that. That's one very good reason why human beings have brains; so that they can use them. If a policy requires the human resources person to be stupid and go against their own common sense, then it's a stupid policy for stupid people who work at a stupid company. Rest assured there are intelligent people who work at intelligent companies with intelligent policies. So it stands to reason that if you are an intelligent person, you will find it relatively easy to find work at an intelligently-run company with intelligent policies, where you can spend your days or nights working with other friendly intelligent people.
The answer is obvious: we already know that it's a stigma, if anything; and that companies that attach stigmas to things across the board will fail to attract the most talented people, and this will start a chain reaction that will eventually spare the rest of us from having to deal with that stupid company ever again.
For Christmas, this year, my cold went away; I could get back to work sooner than I expected, which was what I wanted anyway because I am working on a really cool project. It sucks to be sick so you can't concentrate even when there is something important, and not entirely uninteresting, to do to move yourself forward in the world.
This is a first time thing for me, as I was actually feeling pretty awful right around 1PM on the 24th, but by 8PM, I didn't need the cold medications anymore, and on the 25th I woke up feeling pretty good.
Problem is, I don't know who to thank, and even if I did, there would be a problem with the address.
One strategy that you could use would be to cram as much hardware into one case as you can (unless you want to keep the case, which would make sense). On the other hand, cases are relatively inexpensive, so it might be worth it for the sake of neatness.
Cram it full of expansion cards that don't work, old hard drives, CD drives, just pack that case full until you can't fit anything else in there. With a little creativity, you could even mount a power supply where hard drives are supposed to be.
That way you have it all in one handy, nice, little (or not so little) package which will be easier to "put" somewhere.
In any case, if you do consolidate and simplify, it will make you feel better because your computer parts area of your domicile will at least have the appearance of being organized.
I always looked at stuff like this as helping some executive somewhere in the marketing deparment get a huge bonus.
Give me some!
I guess some people like to choose their truth, or perhaps believe the first thing that looks like truth they see, but we all know they're short an equals sign, don't we?
1. Quantum computing is not possible
I think (or I have a hunch) that this "quantum computing is not possible" will be proven to be at least partially wrong. At least, I don't think that we will be stuck with a binary "load and store" (I believe that is what they are called) machines. Computers will change in ways that are going to highlight the delicate balance and fragile characteristics of life itself, while making our bodies more useful - not in a borg sense, but in a sense that computers will become easier to use, or more peripheral, perhaps even orthogonal to the process of going about your daily activities.
2. "I'm going to get into computers"
"I'm going to get into computers" as a worthwhile career goal. Working in the computer industry is going to (has) become increasingly more challenging, and is going to (does) require increasingly complex skillsets as computer science and real-world computer science applications evolve. The industry as a whole will continue to become more important in our daily lives, but the skill required will also increase exponentially. "Computers" will no longer represent a middle ground between the corporate, scientific, and research worlds and the unskilled labor workforce.
This really shows why, it seems, that so many well-known artists end up having serious problems with the music industry. Staying in the running requires shutting your mouth, counting your blessings, and towing the "party" line.
If the law is that way, then obviously it's just wrong. Injustice in every sense of the word. But of course, no one really cares. It's devastating when you realize that as a popular musician, you are less "free" to express yourself than you would be if you were a "starving artist". It's crushing, particularly for those people who simply would like to express themselves.
Elaborate superstitions, all kinds of nasty habits, and a certain type of detachment, combined with either extreme luck, extensive knowledge of other's works and litigatory habits, or a very specific formula all, in essence, fail to solve the essential problem... it's the wrong way to do it.
Be that as it may, we should all be aware of the difficulties inherent in being a published musician, and why sometimes a Beethoven sonata can be so much more rewarding to play than the latest hastily written, divinely inspired hit. It's all about feeling good - or at least, I could say... music should be about feeling good - not just for the listener, but for the musician as well. At least with a Beethoven sonata I can focus on playing the best I can and practicing until I am blue in the face, not on methods of anxiety management. It's unnerving to have the priviledges of a justice system removed from your life.
With Linux, I see an opportunity to create new work and and extend existing work in an environment free from the cruel realities of having something that is clearly unjust forced on you because you are creative - as in this Harrison case. Why punish creativity? But of course, it happens, and probably will continue to happen, especially in the music industry.
The typical music industry saying - "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" - could not be any more wrong - and just goes to show the brainwashing that people will endure in an attempt to prepare themselves for an unrewarding, stifling, frightening environment where sudden wealth is the only true reward, regardless of how tenuous or ephemeral it might be.
Linux will continue to be a force that builds confidence and efficiency into the creative process. It is more important to be able to program free from fear, than it is to try to play along with every sicko's fantasy about how you can be made liable for something that everyone knows darn well you aren't liable for anyway.
The Harrison case shows us that there is precedent when it comes to "accidentally" tuning into a song. Didn't Steven Tyler say something about having written "Dude Looks Like A Lady" right around the time that the Kinks wrote "Lola", or something like that - although there's no real infringement there, there is some kind of connection. Or how about Close Encounters of the Third Kind and that melody? I can see it now: Aliens Disrupt Legal System by Inspiring Hundreds of Artists to Write Identical Song".
I believe it is accidentally possible to hum the same song as someone else. I would rather hear that song, actually. It's the song I want to hum. Especially if hundreds of people are humming it.
SCO, on the other hand, does not have precedent for what they are trying to do. They need to create it. That's why it's important to nip it in the bud and clarify to them, and the public, that Linux has a right to stay free and clear from other people's code, and that if, for some reason, somehow, that infringing code did slip in to Linux, then Linux should have a chance to remove the code and resolve the situation.
uuummm.... I can't keep up. I like to reboot after I upgrade, just because I'm paranoid (technically, it' s not necessary.)
With the Debian (sarge) version, I have been updating about once a week. I don't know if that's the way you are supposed to do it, but that's how I have been doing it. When it comes to web browsers, email clients, Open Office, etc... it's fun to keep up with "sarge". But seriously... it's like every time you check your source for updates, at least a few pop up.
Because I am just in the habit of re-booting after an upgrade that is basically (besides power outages) what keeps my uptime as low as it is. You have to look past the dial-up concept of "releases" and learn to look at the OS software on your hard drive as a cellular organism that continually creates new cells, and replaces the old ones. Given a year's time, I doubt that very many of the packages on your machine ( and this depends on how many packages you have installed, and what your software needs are ) would be the same at all.
Broadband changes the way you think about operating systems. But the nice thing is that you really only need to be around a broadband connection when you update, and for instance, with the "stable", tracking security patches, dial-up would probably be just be fine.
I cannot keep up, seriously... with all the updates that come on down the line. It's worth it though, to do the upgrade and get the newer software (if you have broadband).
I just hope that they don't create FUD to the point that the situation becomes ripe for an "attack" - that is, insult Linux, stage a DDOS or something.
This complete and utter nonsense is almost designed to piss people off, so it's only a logical step that it might become an attempt to further discredit Linux and other free / open source software by portraying Linux developers and enthusiasts as untrustworthy, irresponsible, disrespectful, malicious individuals. As long as we make it through this PR thing (if the rumor is true) without any kind of DDOS on Microsoft's servers, it'll be relatively inane.
There's always a trade-off between being on the cutting edge and being totally stable and secure; people need to weigh the pros and cons before they make decisions about these kinds of things.
If Microsoft were taking security seriously then they wouldn't be busy bashing other OS'es about security; this kind of nonsense, provided that the article, or rumor, is correct, is just wasted breath, because Linux security is not that bad, and Linux in no way makes Microsoft products less secure - there's no correlation.
Or maybe, just maybe... Microsoft is embracing Linux? Maybe they want to help make it more secure? One thing is for sure, Linux is NOT a waste of time. Microsoft certainly has to resources to contribute things to Linux, don't they? Instead of bashing it, why not help make it better? Thing is, it's pretty darn secure already.
When I saw this headline I thought it was a joke, but I guess it isn't. Kind of hard to believe, though - it's just so wrong.
The only fair comparison would be between software that is in development at Microsoft - beta Longhorn, for instance, or something like that. Linux is a very broad term that encompasses all kinds of levels of done-ness of software. Some stuff is in alpha, some in beta, some is in pre-alpha stages. Of course there are going to be bugs. If you want to use Linux, and you don't want bugs, you can't use alpha and beta software, and you need to go with the tried and true, not the cutting edge. I don't trust Microsoft to make those distinctions - it's not fair to compare development versions of one OS with stable versions of another. If you compare stable, non-cutting-edge versions of Linux with MS's current offerings, Linux wins hands down. Software that is under development is always going to have bugs - it's a fact of life.
It's an interesting thought, Novell being acquired by some successful IT giant up in the sky... but I doubt the fact they acquired SuSE and Ximian has anything to do Novell trying to position itself favorably for its own acquisition.
I just can't see Novell saying: "OK, we are going to buy SuSE and Ximian so that we can get acquired." It would devalue the company to do that - that kind of approach would minimize the percieved value of Novell and trivialize the somewhat major moves that Novell is making. Companies generally do what is in the best interests of the company; if someone acquires that company, they are only building on the good things that the company has done already. I sense an anti-Linux "Linux can't save you, your company is doomed because you are not as big as IBM, HP, or MS" sentiment. I am not sure this type of theorizing is much more than the typical pro-SCO, anti-Linux drivel. Sour grapes, perhaps.
Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but there is a lot more going on here than Novell struggling to have someone buy them out. I think that Novell is really doing some interesting things, and I kind of doubt that either the original intention or the desired outcome of what they are doing was to put themselves into a more favorable position of being acquired.
Given time, going about building a technically superior distribution that is built on 100% free software is the best solution. If there is a need to mix and match GPL and other free software with non-free and other proprietary software in order to get a technically superior distribution at this point in time, then of course, there is no reason not to do that.
But over time, if you give it a decade or so, you will be better off having starting those seeds with software the preserves the freedoms that allow that same software to be improved and upgraded as a unit, not coming from different sources, not being dependent on proprietary models to keep your distribution technically superior. It's the tortoise-hare thing. Free software may seem somehow less glamorous, less appealing, less "technologically advanced", but it's a moving target, so given time, it will tend to keep moving.
It's not just about right now, it's about 25 years from now. I could not have imagined a world without Adobe Acrobat several years ago. It was an extremely important piece of software to me, personally, and has been for some time. I just put together a Debian "testing" system, which I am now using as my "daily driver", and I still have not installed Acrobat - I like xpdf better. Again, I can install Acrobat if I really need to, but as of yet, I haven't needed to. I am experiencing the same thing with Java on this system. I don't have it, don't need it... yet. When I do, I will install it... no big deal. But up to that point, I am not going to bother. I know that I can get what I need within 10 minutes if I ever need it.
I think it makes sense; I think that's actually something that makes Debian kind of cool; is that you can give your system its own (your) personality by modifying the sources.list file.
I don't think I really understood the possibilites until I discovered apt-get.org. It's a great concept, that you can "tune in" to the types of software that you want/need, and it doesn't all necessarily have to come from the official Debian servers.
This might give Debian users more choices, actually.