How ironic that YOU, of all people, should talk about missing the point. Nobody is talking about how we got here, but, bear in mind, we got here with a lot of luck in our isolation, and a lot of help form established countries. In fact, if it weren't for other countries helping us in the Rev. war, we wouldn't even BE here. So don't give me any bullshit that "we did it all on our own" because we didn't.
BACK to the point, however, that doesn't change the fact that we CURRENTLY are bitchslapping other countries with idiotic tarriffs because stupid people can't run their businesses effectively. Steel is a perfect example. Whine all they like, the steel giants are in about as much disarray as they can possibly be without becoming a totally anarchist system. The solution to this grossly mismanaged mess? Why, impose penalties on imported steel so that those folks from other countries who actually have a handle on things and run their businesses the way we ran ours 100 years ago can't reasonably expect to sell in our country. Yea, great. The moral of this story, kids, is that as long as you scratch the politicians' backs, they'll keep those pesky up and comers who are doing a better job of things off yours.
Whether you want to admit it or not, it's true. Same goes for mediocre IT jobs, farming, and lots of heavy industry. We can't do it at the same price and quality as others, so we lobby to keep the others from doing it at all. Our predecessors did work awfully damn hard to pull us up to where we are now (often at the expense of our own workers, mind you...), but large sectors of modern business is just flinging shit at the people trying to knock us off our perch rather than continuing to climb. We will eventually pay for that, of course. You'd do well to not defend that sort of idiotic mentality and actually STRIVE to be better instead.
Wow... if you got any less attached to solid ground, you'd probably float away.
In case you haven't noticed, whether you like it or not, the developed nations of the world aren't the only nations in the world.
And, on the drug note: how much do you think it really costs to R&D a drug, on average? The most reasonable estimate I've seen is $400M USD before tax deductions. I've seen as low as $150M USD after tax, to as high as $800M USD before tax. All seems to depend on who you ask, so which total did you arbitrarily choose?
Now, call me skeptical, if you will, but why are the pharmas so antsy about letting people get at the truth? They release fantastic studies showing R&D costs topping more than 3/4 of a billion dollars, but only through groups that receive more than 2/3 of their funding through pharmas (Tufts Center, in particular). Groups with a vested interest in getting the ability to use / produce generics drop extremely low numbers, and, oddly enough, independant studies put the numbers in between the two.
of course, forgetting the fact that nobody can come to an agreement on R&D costs, you conveniently discount the fact that with their currently sky-high pricing, these drug companies are making astronomical profits and the fact that R&D on a drug is a one-time cost, but they want long-term lockdown on their drugs or the ability to simply disallow generics altogether. Interesting.
And, as I've pointed out before to people with a superiority complex (such as yourself), you can't just step on the "losers'" faces all the time and not expect to pay for it eventually. Only someone so truly ignorant of history and so ridiculously arrogant as a politician would be so stupid as to continually snub the "losers" in the world, believing themselves totally untouchable. How do you think terrorists come into being anyway? You step on the little guys face and he'll fight back as best he can (though, granted, the current breed of terrorist everyone is so pre-occupied with will go around blowing shit up regardless of what you do). Current "losers" have as much a right to speak their mind as anyone else. Nobody says the rest of the world has to listen to them, but that doesn't mean you should just tape their mouth shut.
All well and good, but "brutal dictatorships" does not explain every problem that leads to imporverished nations. Other common problems include famine caused by weather, poor agricultural processes, and overpopulation. Infighting is also a popular problem where rebels smash, burn, and pillage things and the government does the same.
Of course, there is also the problem of developed nations evilly usurping pieces of the magic pie. The whole game of cat and mouse with subsidies and tarriffs, etc. is used to keep rich industrial giants rich at the expense of people in other countries that can perform that same work cheaper (of course, sometimes you get dweebs like China that STILL play this game and keep their currency artificially low which is REALLY mean).
Beyond that, consider that some places are still struggling to get their agricultural systems plotted out. A favorite political move of politicions wanting to look like they actually do something other than sit around scratching their nuts all day is to "boost" the war on drugs in many of these countries. Since Americans keep demanding drugs, the logic goes, we'll go to the countries that produce the supply and indiscriminantly spray huge areas of crop, legitimate and otherwise. Yea, great. Americans demand drugs, so the solution is to wipe out all the crops on a village hillside. There's also the issue of monopolistic companies like DeBeer's that help those nasty rebel and government fighters in other countries (as mentioned above) by paying them for shady supplies of things like, for example, diamonds.
Don't kid yourself. The U.S. and other developed nations gleefully bend the little guys over for fat cats who contribute campaign dollars and that IS part of the problem that many of these nations face. If we were actually "playing fair" then there would be no issue over steel right now. Our steel industry is a mess and other places have better systems in place. Same goes for farming - it's just not something we can compete in any more at our level of society. If we'd just let these things go (not entirely, but rather than overproducing food and pushing it into otehr countries that need to compete, maybe we should just concentrate on feeding ourselves and stop the whole export thing altogether) and focus on moving on to the next thing, other places would have a better shot.
Of course, they still have to fix their political problems and there's not much they can do about natural disasters, but there's still a part of the problem that lies in our hands to solve.
You do realize that the only reason ICANN has any power is that people choose to listen to them, right? If you don't WANT to listen to ICANN, you don't actually HAVE to. They may be annoying, but if they ever got truly out of line and pissed off the majority of the Internet community, that majority would simply turn their backs to them and leave them to wither away like a memory of a bad dream.
Iraq: a soveriegn body thrown into a state of anarchy by a sudden, violent overthrow of it's psychotic government. Individuals go from absolute, ironfisted rule to none. Result is potentially disastrous. U.N.'s role would be an enormous boon to keeping the peace and helping to manage this sudden situation since the idiots that overthrew the government didn't bother to plan past the end of the military operation.
Interent (post mil control): a technological marvel that began in a destabilized anarchist state of individual computer systems and servers and has functioned just fine since then in that state. Result is an enormous amalgam of ideas, good and bad, that has managed to govern itself fairly well since then. U.N.'s role would be to jump into something it doesn't understand in the least where it's not needed.
Result of stubbornly comparing apples and oranges without the slightest hint of intelligent thought once entering the post: +4, Insightful.
Watching someone on Slashdot bitch about nobody taking us seriously: Priceless.
You're missing the point though. As an end user who "just wants it to work", that's fine. However, from a developer's perspective, a black box module is pointless. You get a kernel panic while tainted? Too bad, bucko. There's nothing the developers can do about that so you're on your own unless you can convince nVidia to fix it for you somehow.
The core isn't compiled for your architecture? Too bad, bucko. You get no driver. Wrapper? Sure. Driver? No.
The more stuff that's locked away from the kernel developers, the more "funny" setups there will be that the devs just can't do anything about. Unless the code is readily available for them to look at, a kernel panic report is useless. I'm having problems with binary only modem drivers right now that cause kernel panics. What am I to do? Nothing. Enable Magic sysrq and go about my business when something bad happens. I can't fix it, reporting it is useless. As an end user only of my modem, I'm screwed.
The point is, it doesn't just start and stop with you and what you know. Ok, so maybe it works fine for you NOW. But, what happens when the next uber-gaming card comes out and panics start flying for your personal setup? Oops. Now you as an end user are totally screwed. If they had the code available, that wouldn't be the case (at least, not permanently).
I tried pointing out that the Microsoft EULA (for political reasons, we're an "almost all" Microsoft shop), like almost all others, disclaimed any reasonable responsibility for anything that happened and expressly disclaimed any warranty.
This did not make them happy. Apparently, there are BOFH's from the Microsoft camp as well:-)
A true PHB will NEVER run out of excuses, they'll just constantly come up with wierder and stupider ones.
My latest stonewall to implementing something quality vs. something venduh:
"We are pushing to remove all freeware because of liability concerns."
Which translates to:
"Even though we have hundreds of trial-expired, unlicensed copies of Winzip, countless installations of Acrobat Reader, numerous installations of unlicensed trial versions of system tools, IIS, etc., we're not going to let you install PostgreSQL for development testing because we're idiots and our heads are filled with warm, tasty tapioca pudding."
Alright, we've narrowed our disagreement very well so far.
Bear in mind: I'm basing my terminology on a natural Right being some static thing that everyone everywhere always has had and always will. In other words, it's a built-in, verifiable, static part of the universe or, at least, human existence. In comparison, there are Rights we grant ourselves as humans in an abstract sense. Example: We claim to have the right to freedom of speech, yet, nature in general doesn't give a crap about that and would merrily go about its business even if it meant somehow quashing that self-provided Right. In other words, once it gets out of the context of our society, it may very well cease to exist.
When you say that something is a "right," what are you saying?
This is the crux of the argument. When I say something is "right", I use the term to mean that some action or belief is held, by a populace in question (for example, a governing body, people who claim a specific religious group or culture, etc.), to be, in the sense of its beliefs, a course of action or line of thinking that is acceptable within those beliefs. "Wrong" is simply the obvious antonym.
An illustration: Many people who consider themselves a part of the large, non-homogenous group "Christian", consider it "wrong" to murder people and "right" to help the homeless. There may be others, however, who feel it is "right" to simply murder the homeless. What actually makes one of those things "right" within the context of society is that the majority of people believe one of the points. Currently, obviously, the "murder the homeless" folks - who do exist - are wrong (thankfully) because we, as a society, disapprove of them.
My contention is, basically, that nature, the universe, whatever, doesn't give a rat's ass. If you murder someone, no known universal "moral law" or equivalent is going to render judgement on you (barring beliefs in supernatural beings and judgement at the endtimes and / or death). That's why murderous cretins like Bin Laden, Hussein, etc. can run amok until humans intervene. It's not that some natural order has decided they're wrong (that we have perceived, anyway), it's that we, as a worldwide populace, have decided that within the context of our own values. "Right" and "wrong" really only do exist within the context of abstract thought. Humans are, at this point in time, the only group of animals we know for sure are capable of that level of abstract thought. To take away the emotional perspective on context and abstract thought: consider "right" and "left". "right" or "left" aren't really directions. They only exist within the abstract idea that you are, somehow, a point of reference within your known universe. They have no mathematical meaning as far as direction goes for anything but you. Therefore, "right" and "left" aren't really a part of the natural order of the universe, they're just abstract ways of helping you deal with your own vision of the universe.
This idea of extreme relativism relates to the original thread by virtue of the fact that, if there is no universal ideal of "right" and "wrong" (that is, they're only abstracts to help us govern ourselves) then there is no inherent natural Right for anyone to act on those abstracts. Instead, we grant ourselves Rights and the rest of the interested parties in that process "vote" to approve or disapprove of our newfound powers.
Therefore, to claim that you have any absolute Right that someone else doesn't is folly. Absolute Rights would not need to be approved or disapproved by the populace. They would simply "be". Since justification for war is not a static thing (few people of power would agree that "religion" is an acceptable basis for war on its own, yet, 1000 years ago, that was not the case - it was a perfectly good reason then), it requires approval of the interested populace. Therefore, it must not be a natural Right. Therefore, you never naturally have the right to go to war with someone no matter what. You c
Uh...you can't have self-defense after the fact. If someone walks up to you and punches you in the eye, then starts to walk away, you can't just walk up and punch them back and claim self-defense. That's revenge and it's not the same thing.
Al Quada can believe whatever they want. They're wrong.
Too many technicalities here. You can't claim someone is wrong for what they believe. If that were true, I could just claim you were wrong and this discussion would be over. Conversely, you could do the same. It doesn't work that way though. If you're going to go after them and SAY they're wrong, that's fine. Again, it's a matter of support, not inherent natural truth. Most sensible people, including myself, would believe you when you say they're wrong. That lets you get away with it. That doesn't, however, mean you have a natural right to fight them based on that principle. It just means you have the support of the majority of the population (or, at least the population that counts).
Of course, I have a principle belief that stupidity needs to be weeded from society. That, however, doesn't give me an inherent right to go about knocking people off. Not because it's necessarily WRONG to knock stupid people off, but because the majority doesn't agree with me that it's acceptable (actually, a majority I'd be a part of, even though I don't like stupid people).
My point is a technicality, yes, but it's an important one. Nobody has an inherent RIGHT to do ANYTHING. Actions that extend beyond your person need the appropriate level of support. It's that support, not some naturally built-in rules of abstract concepts of "right" and "wrong", that let you do things like go to "justified war". It usually seems to work out okay, but sometimes it doesn't. Vietnam would be a very good example of that potential for failure.
Editorial: Well, if this post is all fucked up it's thanks to lovely old Slashdot not displaying posts properly when you hit "Preview" or "Submit" in Firebird. My apologies if it's screwed up, but I can't Preview.
You said: If your country doesn't agree that bin Laden is a murderer, and it tries to protect him from us, then my country has every right to come in there and capture him anyway, and we have every right to use force against anyone trying to stop us.
Later, you said: I never said we have a right to go to war for our principles.
Gotcha! Do I win a prize?
Seriously though - murder is not a universally defined term (as far as people and cultures are concerned, not bloated world bodies that can't even decide whether or not to open or close a window). We believe it was pure butchery that nearly 3000 people were cut down on 9/11. Al Queada believes everyone is a valid target because they're at war with an entire culture, so they see it as soldiers fighting soldiers (sort of... in a sick, twisted way). Vegetarians believe it's murder to kill a cow.
Therefore, it's not murder or crime to them. Most of the rest of the world sided with us, however, so we got the nod to go blow stuff up. We didn't have a "right" to do it, we just could and most of the world felt that our principles in the matter were correct and that we were justified in doing it.
You can pay for Linux. In fact, as long as you didn't actually take credit for making it, there's nothing stopping you from walking around on the street selling "the actual Linux" - i.e., the kernel, to people you meet so long as you meet people dumb enough to buy it from you.
As unsavory as it may be to have to go blow someone's head off because they're hiding away a butcher, I understand that it's sometimes necessary. However, my point of contention is that you are arguing that we have some inherent right to attack another nation based on our principles. We can't just grant ourselves rights that nobody else is allowed to have (although, Americans are obsessed with doing just that lately). If we have an inherent right to go to war for our principles, so does everyone else. That means that if Saudi Arabia decides that they're going to go to war with us tomorrow to go apprehend all those criminal women that bare their faces and *gasp* navels in public, that's their "right". I don't think they have any such right just because it's a crime to THEM. This illustrates the point perfectly because there's no way any sane group of individuals would go along with this idea. There's no 'right', and the rest of the world would respond with a powerful backlash as a result.
I think it's better to look at it as "it's not a right, it's a last resort". I think that, in the case of Afghanistan, that's also how it was used. We waited patiently for, what, 4 weeks? They refused repeated requests to turn him over, so we finally came to an end with the patient requests and went in after him.
Unfortunately, that's the way the cookie crumbles in the business world. If IBM decides that the cost of bringing Darl and company down exceeds the value of doing so, they won't do it. Justice, fairness, heck, even the law don't always apply in business decisions. If IBM doesn't think it's a good investment, IBM probably won't push it. They have a business stake in Linux, not an emotional one like a lot of us do.
Of course, if there happens to be an issue of criminal wrong-doing here, that could be a whole different story that doesn't involve IBM's decisions at all.
Yea, and the mythical "mark of the beast" of Christian folklore is upon us too.
We're all doomed, oh woe is us. Endtimes, fire and brimstone, blah blah blah... just like it's been for the last 1900 years.
Nothing here folks. The U.N. can't decide on which flavor of coffee to brew in the morning without 13 commissions, 87 resolutions, and 4 votes with at least 2 vetoes. There's no way they'd ever get together long enough to do something like this. Keep one on it just in case and move along.
If your country doesn't agree that bin Laden is a murderer, and it tries to protect him from us, then my country has every right to come in there and capture him anyway, and we have every right to use force against anyone trying to stop us.
That sounds all well and good when you only apply it to yourself forcing your way into someone else's country and in this circumstance.
Consider people who have been accused of practicing and/or preaching Christianity in a Fundamentalist Muslim country. They flee back to the U.S., their home. However, they still broke the law over there, even though they did nothing wrong from our point of view. Should that other country be allowed to try and remove that "criminal" by force from the United States, shooting down police officers, military, etc. who try to stop them in the process?
No, unless you can garner the support of the majority of the rest of the world, you shouldn't try something like that. Not too many people in their right minds think that blowing the Taliban and Al Quaeda to bits is a bad idea - they're pretty much universally hated. That doesn't mean that rule should be instituted all the time.
Perl isn't "freeware" OR "shareware" any more than MySQL, Linux, PostgreSQL, etcetera are.
The point is that the clueless legal group is just spouting typical legalistic nonsense without the slightest idea of what it's talking about. As far as they're concerned, the only license that doesn't leave them "liable" for anything is Microsoft's EULAs. Which is, of course, the punchline to this idiotic saga. The only thing corporate paralegals are good for is kindling and making stupid, uninformed, paranoid-delusional decisions.
I'm at work on a 'doze box where we're not allowed to install "freeware" or "shareware" (a psuedonym for "anything GPL or BSD licensed" to our idiotic paralegal group). I got into a fight about it and pointed out, rightly so, that according to the legal group's lousy definition of "freeware", acrobat reader is "freeware" and therefore a liability.
Now, nobody at work has Acrobat reader. Oops.
Of course, you may be wondering why I'm reading Slashdot at work. To that, I can only respond: shut up.
(Seriously though: I'm killing time while waiting for a Perl process to quit hogging all the resources.)
No, close, but not quite. They were slipping down the drain at the time, but they still had a decent share of the installation base. Every PC in my school up until about 2nd grade was an Apple. Heck, I didn't even HEAR of Microsoft or touch an x86 arch until 2nd or 3rd grade. By the time I got to middle school four years later, there wasn't a single Apple system in the entire DISTRICT. By my first programming class, we were using BASIC on old 286 systems with DOS.
You know, somebody else brought up Webcrawler. Man does that bring back memories. Once that went down the tubes I started using Excite, which sucked too, but not as bad. Then, Google came along and all was well with the world again.
I jumped straight from dialing into local BBSes with a 2400 baud modem to getting a dial-up Internet connection with a 14.4 modem. THAT was an exciting upgrade! Some other notes to date me:
I own an Atari 2600 (3rd gen. type). Yes, I have E.T. Lucky me.
The first computer ever in my house was indeed tape-driven.
I remember learning BASIC from the horrible manual in DOS 4.
I remember having to "learn this new-fangled Windows".
I remember the days when Apple ruled the world.
I remember when "frames" was new technology for the WWW.
I remember when animated GIFs were snazzy new technology (back in Ol' Netscape 3 - they're almost 10 years old).
I'm only 22.
Compare that with folks today who don't know what a shell is, don't know what a command prompt is, have no idea what DOS is, much less any other Operating System...
That's what sucks about computing. I'm actually so young, but I can still feel so old.
As for Jennicam, I remember when it first appeared, I don't care that "Jennicam is dying". Frankly, camwhores annoy me anyway. Shit, they spawned things like Goatse >:(
That's fine. Thanks to Verizon screwing me on line installations and expansion for DSL and the local gubment screwing me on building codes (thick firewalls between each floor) that prevent me from stringing extra cable, the ETA for me getting high speed access that would let me play this game multiplayer is "early next never".
Not that it's not fun to play with yourself, but I don't wanna go blind.
Slashdot Mirror
How ironic that YOU, of all people, should talk about missing the point. Nobody is talking about how we got here, but, bear in mind, we got here with a lot of luck in our isolation, and a lot of help form established countries. In fact, if it weren't for other countries helping us in the Rev. war, we wouldn't even BE here. So don't give me any bullshit that "we did it all on our own" because we didn't.
BACK to the point, however, that doesn't change the fact that we CURRENTLY are bitchslapping other countries with idiotic tarriffs because stupid people can't run their businesses effectively. Steel is a perfect example. Whine all they like, the steel giants are in about as much disarray as they can possibly be without becoming a totally anarchist system. The solution to this grossly mismanaged mess? Why, impose penalties on imported steel so that those folks from other countries who actually have a handle on things and run their businesses the way we ran ours 100 years ago can't reasonably expect to sell in our country. Yea, great. The moral of this story, kids, is that as long as you scratch the politicians' backs, they'll keep those pesky up and comers who are doing a better job of things off yours.
Whether you want to admit it or not, it's true. Same goes for mediocre IT jobs, farming, and lots of heavy industry. We can't do it at the same price and quality as others, so we lobby to keep the others from doing it at all. Our predecessors did work awfully damn hard to pull us up to where we are now (often at the expense of our own workers, mind you...), but large sectors of modern business is just flinging shit at the people trying to knock us off our perch rather than continuing to climb. We will eventually pay for that, of course. You'd do well to not defend that sort of idiotic mentality and actually STRIVE to be better instead.
"Worst debate... EVER!"
Wow... if you got any less attached to solid ground, you'd probably float away.
In case you haven't noticed, whether you like it or not, the developed nations of the world aren't the only nations in the world.
And, on the drug note: how much do you think it really costs to R&D a drug, on average? The most reasonable estimate I've seen is $400M USD before tax deductions. I've seen as low as $150M USD after tax, to as high as $800M USD before tax. All seems to depend on who you ask, so which total did you arbitrarily choose?
Now, call me skeptical, if you will, but why are the pharmas so antsy about letting people get at the truth? They release fantastic studies showing R&D costs topping more than 3/4 of a billion dollars, but only through groups that receive more than 2/3 of their funding through pharmas (Tufts Center, in particular). Groups with a vested interest in getting the ability to use / produce generics drop extremely low numbers, and, oddly enough, independant studies put the numbers in between the two.
of course, forgetting the fact that nobody can come to an agreement on R&D costs, you conveniently discount the fact that with their currently sky-high pricing, these drug companies are making astronomical profits and the fact that R&D on a drug is a one-time cost, but they want long-term lockdown on their drugs or the ability to simply disallow generics altogether. Interesting.
And, as I've pointed out before to people with a superiority complex (such as yourself), you can't just step on the "losers'" faces all the time and not expect to pay for it eventually. Only someone so truly ignorant of history and so ridiculously arrogant as a politician would be so stupid as to continually snub the "losers" in the world, believing themselves totally untouchable. How do you think terrorists come into being anyway? You step on the little guys face and he'll fight back as best he can (though, granted, the current breed of terrorist everyone is so pre-occupied with will go around blowing shit up regardless of what you do). Current "losers" have as much a right to speak their mind as anyone else. Nobody says the rest of the world has to listen to them, but that doesn't mean you should just tape their mouth shut.
Illuminati.
All well and good, but "brutal dictatorships" does not explain every problem that leads to imporverished nations. Other common problems include famine caused by weather, poor agricultural processes, and overpopulation. Infighting is also a popular problem where rebels smash, burn, and pillage things and the government does the same.
Of course, there is also the problem of developed nations evilly usurping pieces of the magic pie. The whole game of cat and mouse with subsidies and tarriffs, etc. is used to keep rich industrial giants rich at the expense of people in other countries that can perform that same work cheaper (of course, sometimes you get dweebs like China that STILL play this game and keep their currency artificially low which is REALLY mean).
Beyond that, consider that some places are still struggling to get their agricultural systems plotted out. A favorite political move of politicions wanting to look like they actually do something other than sit around scratching their nuts all day is to "boost" the war on drugs in many of these countries. Since Americans keep demanding drugs, the logic goes, we'll go to the countries that produce the supply and indiscriminantly spray huge areas of crop, legitimate and otherwise. Yea, great. Americans demand drugs, so the solution is to wipe out all the crops on a village hillside. There's also the issue of monopolistic companies like DeBeer's that help those nasty rebel and government fighters in other countries (as mentioned above) by paying them for shady supplies of things like, for example, diamonds.
Don't kid yourself. The U.S. and other developed nations gleefully bend the little guys over for fat cats who contribute campaign dollars and that IS part of the problem that many of these nations face. If we were actually "playing fair" then there would be no issue over steel right now. Our steel industry is a mess and other places have better systems in place. Same goes for farming - it's just not something we can compete in any more at our level of society. If we'd just let these things go (not entirely, but rather than overproducing food and pushing it into otehr countries that need to compete, maybe we should just concentrate on feeding ourselves and stop the whole export thing altogether) and focus on moving on to the next thing, other places would have a better shot.
Of course, they still have to fix their political problems and there's not much they can do about natural disasters, but there's still a part of the problem that lies in our hands to solve.
You do realize that the only reason ICANN has any power is that people choose to listen to them, right? If you don't WANT to listen to ICANN, you don't actually HAVE to. They may be annoying, but if they ever got truly out of line and pissed off the majority of the Internet community, that majority would simply turn their backs to them and leave them to wither away like a memory of a bad dream.
Iraq: a soveriegn body thrown into a state of anarchy by a sudden, violent overthrow of it's psychotic government. Individuals go from absolute, ironfisted rule to none. Result is potentially disastrous. U.N.'s role would be an enormous boon to keeping the peace and helping to manage this sudden situation since the idiots that overthrew the government didn't bother to plan past the end of the military operation.
Interent (post mil control): a technological marvel that began in a destabilized anarchist state of individual computer systems and servers and has functioned just fine since then in that state. Result is an enormous amalgam of ideas, good and bad, that has managed to govern itself fairly well since then. U.N.'s role would be to jump into something it doesn't understand in the least where it's not needed.
Result of stubbornly comparing apples and oranges without the slightest hint of intelligent thought once entering the post: +4, Insightful.
Watching someone on Slashdot bitch about nobody taking us seriously: Priceless.
You're missing the point though. As an end user who "just wants it to work", that's fine. However, from a developer's perspective, a black box module is pointless. You get a kernel panic while tainted? Too bad, bucko. There's nothing the developers can do about that so you're on your own unless you can convince nVidia to fix it for you somehow.
The core isn't compiled for your architecture? Too bad, bucko. You get no driver. Wrapper? Sure. Driver? No.
The more stuff that's locked away from the kernel developers, the more "funny" setups there will be that the devs just can't do anything about. Unless the code is readily available for them to look at, a kernel panic report is useless. I'm having problems with binary only modem drivers right now that cause kernel panics. What am I to do? Nothing. Enable Magic sysrq and go about my business when something bad happens. I can't fix it, reporting it is useless. As an end user only of my modem, I'm screwed.
The point is, it doesn't just start and stop with you and what you know. Ok, so maybe it works fine for you NOW. But, what happens when the next uber-gaming card comes out and panics start flying for your personal setup? Oops. Now you as an end user are totally screwed. If they had the code available, that wouldn't be the case (at least, not permanently).
Yes, the corporate mentatility is wierd.
If something lacks mental capabilities altogether, can it really have a weird mentality?
I tried pointing out that the Microsoft EULA (for political reasons, we're an "almost all" Microsoft shop), like almost all others, disclaimed any reasonable responsibility for anything that happened and expressly disclaimed any warranty.
This did not make them happy. Apparently, there are BOFH's from the Microsoft camp as well :-)
DO NOT TAUNT HAPPY FUN ADMINISTRATOR!
Ok, where?
A true PHB will NEVER run out of excuses, they'll just constantly come up with wierder and stupider ones.
My latest stonewall to implementing something quality vs. something venduh:
"We are pushing to remove all freeware because of liability concerns."
Which translates to:
"Even though we have hundreds of trial-expired, unlicensed copies of Winzip, countless installations of Acrobat Reader, numerous installations of unlicensed trial versions of system tools, IIS, etc., we're not going to let you install PostgreSQL for development testing because we're idiots and our heads are filled with warm, tasty tapioca pudding."
Alright, we've narrowed our disagreement very well so far.
Bear in mind: I'm basing my terminology on a natural Right being some static thing that everyone everywhere always has had and always will. In other words, it's a built-in, verifiable, static part of the universe or, at least, human existence. In comparison, there are Rights we grant ourselves as humans in an abstract sense. Example: We claim to have the right to freedom of speech, yet, nature in general doesn't give a crap about that and would merrily go about its business even if it meant somehow quashing that self-provided Right. In other words, once it gets out of the context of our society, it may very well cease to exist.
When you say that something is a "right," what are you saying?
This is the crux of the argument. When I say something is "right", I use the term to mean that some action or belief is held, by a populace in question (for example, a governing body, people who claim a specific religious group or culture, etc.), to be, in the sense of its beliefs, a course of action or line of thinking that is acceptable within those beliefs. "Wrong" is simply the obvious antonym.
An illustration: Many people who consider themselves a part of the large, non-homogenous group "Christian", consider it "wrong" to murder people and "right" to help the homeless. There may be others, however, who feel it is "right" to simply murder the homeless. What actually makes one of those things "right" within the context of society is that the majority of people believe one of the points. Currently, obviously, the "murder the homeless" folks - who do exist - are wrong (thankfully) because we, as a society, disapprove of them.
My contention is, basically, that nature, the universe, whatever, doesn't give a rat's ass. If you murder someone, no known universal "moral law" or equivalent is going to render judgement on you (barring beliefs in supernatural beings and judgement at the endtimes and / or death). That's why murderous cretins like Bin Laden, Hussein, etc. can run amok until humans intervene. It's not that some natural order has decided they're wrong (that we have perceived, anyway), it's that we, as a worldwide populace, have decided that within the context of our own values. "Right" and "wrong" really only do exist within the context of abstract thought. Humans are, at this point in time, the only group of animals we know for sure are capable of that level of abstract thought. To take away the emotional perspective on context and abstract thought: consider "right" and "left". "right" or "left" aren't really directions. They only exist within the abstract idea that you are, somehow, a point of reference within your known universe. They have no mathematical meaning as far as direction goes for anything but you. Therefore, "right" and "left" aren't really a part of the natural order of the universe, they're just abstract ways of helping you deal with your own vision of the universe.
This idea of extreme relativism relates to the original thread by virtue of the fact that, if there is no universal ideal of "right" and "wrong" (that is, they're only abstracts to help us govern ourselves) then there is no inherent natural Right for anyone to act on those abstracts. Instead, we grant ourselves Rights and the rest of the interested parties in that process "vote" to approve or disapprove of our newfound powers.
Therefore, to claim that you have any absolute Right that someone else doesn't is folly. Absolute Rights would not need to be approved or disapproved by the populace. They would simply "be". Since justification for war is not a static thing (few people of power would agree that "religion" is an acceptable basis for war on its own, yet, 1000 years ago, that was not the case - it was a perfectly good reason then), it requires approval of the interested populace. Therefore, it must not be a natural Right. Therefore, you never naturally have the right to go to war with someone no matter what. You c
Uh...you can't have self-defense after the fact. If someone walks up to you and punches you in the eye, then starts to walk away, you can't just walk up and punch them back and claim self-defense. That's revenge and it's not the same thing.
Al Quada can believe whatever they want. They're wrong.
Too many technicalities here. You can't claim someone is wrong for what they believe. If that were true, I could just claim you were wrong and this discussion would be over. Conversely, you could do the same. It doesn't work that way though. If you're going to go after them and SAY they're wrong, that's fine. Again, it's a matter of support, not inherent natural truth. Most sensible people, including myself, would believe you when you say they're wrong. That lets you get away with it. That doesn't, however, mean you have a natural right to fight them based on that principle. It just means you have the support of the majority of the population (or, at least the population that counts).
Of course, I have a principle belief that stupidity needs to be weeded from society. That, however, doesn't give me an inherent right to go about knocking people off. Not because it's necessarily WRONG to knock stupid people off, but because the majority doesn't agree with me that it's acceptable (actually, a majority I'd be a part of, even though I don't like stupid people).
My point is a technicality, yes, but it's an important one. Nobody has an inherent RIGHT to do ANYTHING. Actions that extend beyond your person need the appropriate level of support. It's that support, not some naturally built-in rules of abstract concepts of "right" and "wrong", that let you do things like go to "justified war". It usually seems to work out okay, but sometimes it doesn't. Vietnam would be a very good example of that potential for failure.
Editorial: Well, if this post is all fucked up it's thanks to lovely old Slashdot not displaying posts properly when you hit "Preview" or "Submit" in Firebird. My apologies if it's screwed up, but I can't Preview.
I call shenanigans! :)
You said: If your country doesn't agree that bin Laden is a murderer, and it tries to protect him from us, then my country has every right to come in there and capture him anyway, and we have every right to use force against anyone trying to stop us.
Later, you said: I never said we have a right to go to war for our principles.
Gotcha! Do I win a prize?
Seriously though - murder is not a universally defined term (as far as people and cultures are concerned, not bloated world bodies that can't even decide whether or not to open or close a window). We believe it was pure butchery that nearly 3000 people were cut down on 9/11. Al Queada believes everyone is a valid target because they're at war with an entire culture, so they see it as soldiers fighting soldiers (sort of... in a sick, twisted way). Vegetarians believe it's murder to kill a cow.
Therefore, it's not murder or crime to them. Most of the rest of the world sided with us, however, so we got the nod to go blow stuff up. We didn't have a "right" to do it, we just could and most of the world felt that our principles in the matter were correct and that we were justified in doing it.
Uh... no, it's not.
You can pay for Linux. In fact, as long as you didn't actually take credit for making it, there's nothing stopping you from walking around on the street selling "the actual Linux" - i.e., the kernel, to people you meet so long as you meet people dumb enough to buy it from you.
As unsavory as it may be to have to go blow someone's head off because they're hiding away a butcher, I understand that it's sometimes necessary. However, my point of contention is that you are arguing that we have some inherent right to attack another nation based on our principles. We can't just grant ourselves rights that nobody else is allowed to have (although, Americans are obsessed with doing just that lately). If we have an inherent right to go to war for our principles, so does everyone else. That means that if Saudi Arabia decides that they're going to go to war with us tomorrow to go apprehend all those criminal women that bare their faces and *gasp* navels in public, that's their "right". I don't think they have any such right just because it's a crime to THEM. This illustrates the point perfectly because there's no way any sane group of individuals would go along with this idea. There's no 'right', and the rest of the world would respond with a powerful backlash as a result.
I think it's better to look at it as "it's not a right, it's a last resort". I think that, in the case of Afghanistan, that's also how it was used. We waited patiently for, what, 4 weeks? They refused repeated requests to turn him over, so we finally came to an end with the patient requests and went in after him.
Unfortunately, that's the way the cookie crumbles in the business world. If IBM decides that the cost of bringing Darl and company down exceeds the value of doing so, they won't do it. Justice, fairness, heck, even the law don't always apply in business decisions. If IBM doesn't think it's a good investment, IBM probably won't push it. They have a business stake in Linux, not an emotional one like a lot of us do.
Of course, if there happens to be an issue of criminal wrong-doing here, that could be a whole different story that doesn't involve IBM's decisions at all.
Yea, and the mythical "mark of the beast" of Christian folklore is upon us too.
We're all doomed, oh woe is us. Endtimes, fire and brimstone, blah blah blah... just like it's been for the last 1900 years.
Nothing here folks. The U.N. can't decide on which flavor of coffee to brew in the morning without 13 commissions, 87 resolutions, and 4 votes with at least 2 vetoes. There's no way they'd ever get together long enough to do something like this. Keep one on it just in case and move along.
If your country doesn't agree that bin Laden is a murderer, and it tries to protect him from us, then my country has every right to come in there and capture him anyway, and we have every right to use force against anyone trying to stop us.
That sounds all well and good when you only apply it to yourself forcing your way into someone else's country and in this circumstance.
Consider people who have been accused of practicing and/or preaching Christianity in a Fundamentalist Muslim country. They flee back to the U.S., their home. However, they still broke the law over there, even though they did nothing wrong from our point of view. Should that other country be allowed to try and remove that "criminal" by force from the United States, shooting down police officers, military, etc. who try to stop them in the process?
No, unless you can garner the support of the majority of the rest of the world, you shouldn't try something like that. Not too many people in their right minds think that blowing the Taliban and Al Quaeda to bits is a bad idea - they're pretty much universally hated. That doesn't mean that rule should be instituted all the time.
Perl isn't "freeware" OR "shareware" any more than MySQL, Linux, PostgreSQL, etcetera are.
The point is that the clueless legal group is just spouting typical legalistic nonsense without the slightest idea of what it's talking about. As far as they're concerned, the only license that doesn't leave them "liable" for anything is Microsoft's EULAs. Which is, of course, the punchline to this idiotic saga. The only thing corporate paralegals are good for is kindling and making stupid, uninformed, paranoid-delusional decisions.
How right you are.
I'm at work on a 'doze box where we're not allowed to install "freeware" or "shareware" (a psuedonym for "anything GPL or BSD licensed" to our idiotic paralegal group). I got into a fight about it and pointed out, rightly so, that according to the legal group's lousy definition of "freeware", acrobat reader is "freeware" and therefore a liability.
Now, nobody at work has Acrobat reader. Oops.
Of course, you may be wondering why I'm reading Slashdot at work. To that, I can only respond: shut up.
(Seriously though: I'm killing time while waiting for a Perl process to quit hogging all the resources.)
No, close, but not quite. They were slipping down the drain at the time, but they still had a decent share of the installation base. Every PC in my school up until about 2nd grade was an Apple. Heck, I didn't even HEAR of Microsoft or touch an x86 arch until 2nd or 3rd grade. By the time I got to middle school four years later, there wasn't a single Apple system in the entire DISTRICT. By my first programming class, we were using BASIC on old 286 systems with DOS.
You know, somebody else brought up Webcrawler. Man does that bring back memories. Once that went down the tubes I started using Excite, which sucked too, but not as bad. Then, Google came along and all was well with the world again.
All you did was throw it out? YOU'RE the wuss. I KICKED the TV right out of it's crappy plastic case.
I also hurt my tender little toes. That freakin' glass is HARD. Served it's purpose though - my TV is quite dead. :-)
"Doing it." - Euphism. Clearly understood way of stating something potentially offensive or unpleasant "nicely".
Other good examples - "ethnic cleansing" (mass murder), "number one" (take a piss).
think 99% of the population thinks that euphemism means "a veiled sexual reference".
I happen to think that 99% of the population is comprised of idiots. I don't think it's a coing-ki-dink that our numbers coincide. :)
I jumped straight from dialing into local BBSes with a 2400 baud modem to getting a dial-up Internet connection with a 14.4 modem. THAT was an exciting upgrade! Some other notes to date me:
- I own an Atari 2600 (3rd gen. type). Yes, I have E.T. Lucky me.
- The first computer ever in my house was indeed tape-driven.
- I remember learning BASIC from the horrible manual in DOS 4.
- I remember having to "learn this new-fangled Windows".
- I remember the days when Apple ruled the world.
- I remember when "frames" was new technology for the WWW.
- I remember when animated GIFs were snazzy new technology (back in Ol' Netscape 3 - they're almost 10 years old).
- I'm only 22.
Compare that with folks today who don't know what a shell is, don't know what a command prompt is, have no idea what DOS is, much less any other Operating System...That's what sucks about computing. I'm actually so young, but I can still feel so old.
As for Jennicam, I remember when it first appeared, I don't care that "Jennicam is dying". Frankly, camwhores annoy me anyway. Shit, they spawned things like Goatse >:(
That's fine. Thanks to Verizon screwing me on line installations and expansion for DSL and the local gubment screwing me on building codes (thick firewalls between each floor) that prevent me from stringing extra cable, the ETA for me getting high speed access that would let me play this game multiplayer is "early next never".
Not that it's not fun to play with yourself, but I don't wanna go blind.