And here I was thinking, all along, that they were a bunch of fucking nut-jobs who wanted the whole world to wind the clock back to 800 AD, covering women's faces and making us all bow to Mecca five times a day.
Where have you been? This is not what the terrorists want at all. They don't want the entire world to become Muslim. They just want to isolate themselves into one big Muslim empire that is completely void of Western Influence.
P.S. Please turn off Fox News. I'm afraid you've become ill-informed because of it.
Yes I have, and while it may be useful in some parts it definitely takes away some of our civil liberties, like the right to a trial.
Here's a crazy idea... Come up with a better solution to deal with terrorism in a free and open society
No Patiot Act is just as good as having the Patriot Act when it comes to terrorism. The Patriot Act has done nothing to protect us from terrorists since its inception. In fact, the terrorists from 9/11 should have been caught with the existing infrastructure at the time. There really is no need for The Patriot Act to catch terrorists.
And if you think that the US is no longer a free and open society, remember that in many countries around the world, you would be hunted down, arrested and maybe even executed for expressing the thoughts that you've so thoughtfully shared in this forum
That's irrelevant. If you want to play that game you can tell the Iraqi people that at least they don't live in North Korea. You can tell Cubans that they're lucky because they don't live in Afganistan. Human rights and civil liberties are not relative, they are absolute. We must constantly safe-gaurd them or they WILL slip away a little at a time.
Maybe I'm missing something but Autohotkey doesn't seem that amazing to me but I haven't used it so maybe I'm missing something. For my purposes Linux has the important things covered. Autohotkey touts the following features:
Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
That's easy to do in Linux. Just write a script and then give it a keybinding.
Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse. Virtually any key, button, or combination can become a hotkey.
I can do this within WindowMaker.
Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing "btw" can automatically produce "by the way".
I bet this wouldn't be hard to do but I haven't seen it in action yet on Linux. It's not all that useful anyway.
Create custom data entry forms, user interfaces, and menu bars. See GUI for details.
I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to mean. Data entry forms for what? The web? A standalone program?
Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
You can do this with X.
Run existing AutoIt v2 scripts and enhance them with new capabilities.
Expand on open source scripts? That's the closest I could come on that one. There isn't really a need for this type of feature in the open source world.
Convert any script into an EXE file that can be run on computers that don't have AutoHotkey installed.
A bash script can be run on almost any other nix without a problem.
When talking about how ready GNU/Linux is for Desktop user, there is no point in saying it's better because the source is available since no desktop user is going to care (hell most won't even know) what the source code is.
No one said that Linux is better and no one can and say it authoritatively because it is a matter of opinion.
Desktop in this context means "clueless users who want it to do what they think they want", not a kernel hacker who is using a GUI.
A desktop user does not have to be clueless. I am a desktop user who uses Linux comfortabley. I also administer a few servers but I am still a desktop user. Just because there are completely computer illiterate people out there doesn't mean that Linux has to cater to them. In fact Linux has always been catering to a different crowd. My point was, and still is, that saying Linux offers nothing over Windows on the desktop is a lie. It probably offers nothing to your average Dell customer but then it's not supposed to, not yet at least. Linux does offer many advantages for other, more advanced desktop users though.
I speak authoritatively on the subject because my experience with Linux begins many moons ago with an old system called Linux Mandrake...
Your opinion is still youropinion no matter how "authoritatively" you speak.
These problems I experienced were not uncommon and plagued Linux for years, leaving astute IT professionals shaking their heads, and young, energetic, and idealistic kids suffering under a burdensome system. I think it is fair to say that the rise in Linux use during the IT bubble and the subsequent pop of that bubble is not a completely coincidental correlation. Literally millions of man hours were lost in this time to troublesome Linux boxes and that sort of loss can hit new IPOs hard when it comes time to pay the piper.
You've got to be kidding me. Are you seriously suggesting that Linux is responsible for the dotcom bust? If anything it was the other way around. Linux was responsible for the sudden upsurge in the internet; unrealistic investment was responsible for the crash.
Why, indeed? In the end, the Linux system offers nothing of value that Windows doesn't.
That's simply not true. Linux gives me the ability to fine tune it. For example, when the newest version of WindowMaker came out the old patches I used with it would no longer work. I rewrote those patches and intergrated them into a local repository so I could install the newest WindowMaker with my revised patches through the package manager. Just the other day I made a one line adjustment to the source code of a gnome-specific piece of software to allow it to open ROX instead of nautilus. Try that with Windows. Not every user will take advantage of these capabilities but it is an utter lie to say that Linux offers nothing more.
Darwinism is nothing more than one of the mechanisms by which the mystery of so called intelligent design is explained.
No, it's not. In fact intelligent design is the opposite of evolution. Intelligent design is the fake science that Christians use to reinforce their religious beliefs. Evolution is an actual theory that has been tested and has survived for over a hundred years.
If there are so many "fine engineers" working at MS how come they cannot make a decent product? I'm sure they have some bright people there but not enough to actually make a difference. If they did we wouldn't be dealing with the shit storm that is XP.
Linux on the desktop is facing an uphill battle. It has made very little inroads against the Apple and Microsoft jauggernaut. Lack of desktop standards and UI guidlines is the main culprit.
As long as we have KDE and GNOME and a weak display technology, Linux will never be a serious contender on the desktop. Unfortunetly, choice is NOT good when it comes to desktops. Think GSM vs. the many US cellular technologies. Standard vs fragmantation.
What does this have to do with anything? Sun is dropping Linux in favor of Solaris and OpenSolaris, not Windows. If you recall Solaris uses GNOME for its desktop environment so what you said makes no sense.
I haven't used Knoppix in a long time but the Gentoo LiveCD allows you to do this if you pass the right option at boot time. It caches the entire CD in memory so you can take it out and put another CD in if you want. You can then put the LiveCD back in. Knoppix probably has a similar feature.
When the government doesn't want to pay licensing fees it is great to be able to run your computer infrastructure on the freebie software. Usually you get what you pay for too.
Get a clue. That argument might have worked on some people 5-10 years ago but now that we have IBM and SGI making super computers with linux, you can hardly convince even the most naive among us.
Doesn't really matter anyways since MS is already going to open standards for the next Office.
The format is not so open anymore when you consider that basically all GNU software will be prohibited from using it. Without any real good BSD licensed Office software out there (as far as I know) what's the use?
Take a look at all of the available open software and you will see that you have many options available to you. Software and hardware on multiple platforms. That is not a rut. Plus you have the opportunity of saving some hard earned $$$.
You're preaching to the choir. I use free software but the lack of marketing means that there is still a large majority of people that have never even heard of Linux or other free alternatives. Some people just have so much other shit on their minds that the last thing they think they need to think about is an operating system for their computer.
If people didn't pirate software, then software manufacturers wouldn't have to do this.
People wouldn't pirate software if it was reasonably priced. $300 for WindowsXP Pro!? $400 for Office2003 Pro!? Are you kidding me? Maybe all this authentication crap will finally drive people to alternatives like Linux and OpenOffice, but I doubt it. Open Source just doesn't have the marketing power that Microsoft does.
How in the world does using the same protection method for books and music and software make sense? You don't sit down and read a piece of software.
What? That makes no sense. You can sit down and read code, just as you can sit down and read music, but most people don't. They use the program or they listen to music. So I guess under your circumstances music shouldn't be copyrighted either because most people don't sit down and read it. Maybe we should apply patents to music! We can patent the use of different instruments, or how about patenting certain musical notes! That sounds like it would progress music much faster than it is now!
Stallman will tell you that no protection is necessary, but if you look at the rediculously slow level of progress that we have made in computer science it is clear that some system is needed
What an interesting remark. This "slow level of progress" has occurred while software patents were in effect. Perhaps that is the reason for the lack of progress. In fact that is what Stallman suggests. You should be an opponent of software patents if you really believe your own comments.
Presuming that this plan costs the government any money at all (and you can be sure it does) it's a sure bet that every citizen is going to be paying some sort of a "wireless tax" to pay for governmental infrastructure, staffing, cables, transmitters, etc. Whether this is good for the average consumer is a simple question of comparing those taxed costs with the costs of a competitive private industry. Knowing government wages here in the US, it's entirely likely that, not a private monopoly, but a competitive industry of wireless providers could hook up the entire island for a lot less.
Actually this kind of project is probably a lot cheaper for the government to do than a private company. The government has its own institutions throughout the country that are attached to the government's own infrastructure. The only work that needs to be done is to attach WAPs to the exisiting infrastructure and maintain them. If a private company even had any interest in doing anything like this (and most have shown they have no interest) they would either have to have their own infrastructure in place or build one from scratch. They then have to buy or rent land all over the country to set up WAPs.
Like I said, I'm not a proponent of the PATRIOT ACT at all, but denying there is any usefulness in it without any critical thinking at all is, well, just dumb. There are some amazingly illegal and/or unconstitutional sections but there are also useful sections in it. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not the solution. On one hand, if I was given a choice of either throwing it all out or keeping it all I would gladly throw it all out to retain my civil liberties, but we have other options at our disposal. We have already seen the Supreme Court throw out some sections and lawmakers are in the process of legislating other parts out. While it was a mistake to rush through that kind of legislation, at least some have recognized this and are doing something to correct it. We must use critical thinking though to determine the best course of action instead of allowing emotional reactions to determine the fate of such legislation. If you're so concerned about the PATRIOT ACT then you should also be concerned about the numerous laws passed by this government in the meantime that have been much worse in respect to civil liberties. The PATRIOT ACT is actually pretty benign compared to some of the other crap that has passed as law.
Considering all of the provisions that are in this, and how extremely overbroad almost every single one of them is and unneeded most of them are, that the only thing congress finds fault with is the library and bookstore provisions is quite disturbing.
I'm no fan of the PATRIOT ACT but there is actually a lot of necessary changes in it. It allows different agencies to work more closely together, which is a good thing. There are parts that need to be repealed but that has been happening for a while now. The Supreme Court has already struck parts of the PATRIOT ACT down. There was a proposal for a "SAFE ACT" which would eliminate the unnecessary and illegal parts of the PATRIOT ACT while keeping the needed changes.
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Where have you been? This is not what the terrorists want at all. They don't want the entire world to become Muslim. They just want to isolate themselves into one big Muslim empire that is completely void of Western Influence.
P.S. Please turn off Fox News. I'm afraid you've become ill-informed because of it.
Yes I have, and while it may be useful in some parts it definitely takes away some of our civil liberties, like the right to a trial.
Here's a crazy idea... Come up with a better solution to deal with terrorism in a free and open society
No Patiot Act is just as good as having the Patriot Act when it comes to terrorism. The Patriot Act has done nothing to protect us from terrorists since its inception. In fact, the terrorists from 9/11 should have been caught with the existing infrastructure at the time. There really is no need for The Patriot Act to catch terrorists.
And if you think that the US is no longer a free and open society, remember that in many countries around the world, you would be hunted down, arrested and maybe even executed for expressing the thoughts that you've so thoughtfully shared in this forum
That's irrelevant. If you want to play that game you can tell the Iraqi people that at least they don't live in North Korea. You can tell Cubans that they're lucky because they don't live in Afganistan. Human rights and civil liberties are not relative, they are absolute. We must constantly safe-gaurd them or they WILL slip away a little at a time.
Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
That's easy to do in Linux. Just write a script and then give it a keybinding.
Create hotkeys for keyboard, joystick, and mouse. Virtually any key, button, or combination can become a hotkey.
I can do this within WindowMaker.
Expand abbreviations as you type them. For example, typing "btw" can automatically produce "by the way".
I bet this wouldn't be hard to do but I haven't seen it in action yet on Linux. It's not all that useful anyway.
Create custom data entry forms, user interfaces, and menu bars. See GUI for details.
I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to mean. Data entry forms for what? The web? A standalone program?
Remap keys and buttons on your keyboard, joystick, and mouse.
You can do this with X.
Run existing AutoIt v2 scripts and enhance them with new capabilities.
Expand on open source scripts? That's the closest I could come on that one. There isn't really a need for this type of feature in the open source world.
Convert any script into an EXE file that can be run on computers that don't have AutoHotkey installed.
A bash script can be run on almost any other nix without a problem.
No one said that Linux is better and no one can and say it authoritatively because it is a matter of opinion.
Desktop in this context means "clueless users who want it to do what they think they want", not a kernel hacker who is using a GUI.
A desktop user does not have to be clueless. I am a desktop user who uses Linux comfortabley. I also administer a few servers but I am still a desktop user. Just because there are completely computer illiterate people out there doesn't mean that Linux has to cater to them. In fact Linux has always been catering to a different crowd. My point was, and still is, that saying Linux offers nothing over Windows on the desktop is a lie. It probably offers nothing to your average Dell customer but then it's not supposed to, not yet at least. Linux does offer many advantages for other, more advanced desktop users though.
Your opinion is still your opinion no matter how "authoritatively" you speak.
These problems I experienced were not uncommon and plagued Linux for years, leaving astute IT professionals shaking their heads, and young, energetic, and idealistic kids suffering under a burdensome system. I think it is fair to say that the rise in Linux use during the IT bubble and the subsequent pop of that bubble is not a completely coincidental correlation. Literally millions of man hours were lost in this time to troublesome Linux boxes and that sort of loss can hit new IPOs hard when it comes time to pay the piper.
You've got to be kidding me. Are you seriously suggesting that Linux is responsible for the dotcom bust? If anything it was the other way around. Linux was responsible for the sudden upsurge in the internet; unrealistic investment was responsible for the crash.
Why, indeed? In the end, the Linux system offers nothing of value that Windows doesn't.
That's simply not true. Linux gives me the ability to fine tune it. For example, when the newest version of WindowMaker came out the old patches I used with it would no longer work. I rewrote those patches and intergrated them into a local repository so I could install the newest WindowMaker with my revised patches through the package manager. Just the other day I made a one line adjustment to the source code of a gnome-specific piece of software to allow it to open ROX instead of nautilus. Try that with Windows. Not every user will take advantage of these capabilities but it is an utter lie to say that Linux offers nothing more.
I am an AMD fan but that is simply not true. You can get a dual-core Pentium D computer for $999 at an electronics retailer.
I cannot recall when I said that. Can you quote me please because I don't like having words put in my mouth.
Would the hypocrit like to take his head out of his ass now? Sheesh.
Exactly what did I say that was hypocritical? Do you even know the meaning of the word?
Seriously, either step up or shut up.
I have. It's called free software. I use it and contribute to it. Now you can take your head out of you ass.
No, it's not. In fact intelligent design is the opposite of evolution. Intelligent design is the fake science that Christians use to reinforce their religious beliefs. Evolution is an actual theory that has been tested and has survived for over a hundred years.
If there are so many "fine engineers" working at MS how come they cannot make a decent product? I'm sure they have some bright people there but not enough to actually make a difference. If they did we wouldn't be dealing with the shit storm that is XP.
As long as we have KDE and GNOME and a weak display technology, Linux will never be a serious contender on the desktop. Unfortunetly, choice is NOT good when it comes to desktops. Think GSM vs. the many US cellular technologies. Standard vs fragmantation.
What does this have to do with anything? Sun is dropping Linux in favor of Solaris and OpenSolaris, not Windows. If you recall Solaris uses GNOME for its desktop environment so what you said makes no sense.
A republic is a democracy dipshit. It's called a "representative democracy".
I haven't used Knoppix in a long time but the Gentoo LiveCD allows you to do this if you pass the right option at boot time. It caches the entire CD in memory so you can take it out and put another CD in if you want. You can then put the LiveCD back in. Knoppix probably has a similar feature.
Get a clue. That argument might have worked on some people 5-10 years ago but now that we have IBM and SGI making super computers with linux, you can hardly convince even the most naive among us.
Doesn't really matter anyways since MS is already going to open standards for the next Office.
The format is not so open anymore when you consider that basically all GNU software will be prohibited from using it. Without any real good BSD licensed Office software out there (as far as I know) what's the use?
You're preaching to the choir. I use free software but the lack of marketing means that there is still a large majority of people that have never even heard of Linux or other free alternatives. Some people just have so much other shit on their minds that the last thing they think they need to think about is an operating system for their computer.
People wouldn't pirate software if it was reasonably priced. $300 for WindowsXP Pro!? $400 for Office2003 Pro!? Are you kidding me? Maybe all this authentication crap will finally drive people to alternatives like Linux and OpenOffice, but I doubt it. Open Source just doesn't have the marketing power that Microsoft does.
Actually it is called MP3tunes.com
What? That makes no sense. You can sit down and read code, just as you can sit down and read music, but most people don't. They use the program or they listen to music. So I guess under your circumstances music shouldn't be copyrighted either because most people don't sit down and read it. Maybe we should apply patents to music! We can patent the use of different instruments, or how about patenting certain musical notes! That sounds like it would progress music much faster than it is now!
What an interesting remark. This "slow level of progress" has occurred while software patents were in effect. Perhaps that is the reason for the lack of progress. In fact that is what Stallman suggests. You should be an opponent of software patents if you really believe your own comments.
Airport cards are made by broadcom, not Intel.
Actually that is not a fear at all. The GPL has already been to court and upheld. Just ask the FSF.
You may have found the reason why they think those IT professionals are sell outs.
Actually this kind of project is probably a lot cheaper for the government to do than a private company. The government has its own institutions throughout the country that are attached to the government's own infrastructure. The only work that needs to be done is to attach WAPs to the exisiting infrastructure and maintain them. If a private company even had any interest in doing anything like this (and most have shown they have no interest) they would either have to have their own infrastructure in place or build one from scratch. They then have to buy or rent land all over the country to set up WAPs.
Like I said, I'm not a proponent of the PATRIOT ACT at all, but denying there is any usefulness in it without any critical thinking at all is, well, just dumb. There are some amazingly illegal and/or unconstitutional sections but there are also useful sections in it. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is not the solution. On one hand, if I was given a choice of either throwing it all out or keeping it all I would gladly throw it all out to retain my civil liberties, but we have other options at our disposal. We have already seen the Supreme Court throw out some sections and lawmakers are in the process of legislating other parts out. While it was a mistake to rush through that kind of legislation, at least some have recognized this and are doing something to correct it. We must use critical thinking though to determine the best course of action instead of allowing emotional reactions to determine the fate of such legislation. If you're so concerned about the PATRIOT ACT then you should also be concerned about the numerous laws passed by this government in the meantime that have been much worse in respect to civil liberties. The PATRIOT ACT is actually pretty benign compared to some of the other crap that has passed as law.
I'm no fan of the PATRIOT ACT but there is actually a lot of necessary changes in it. It allows different agencies to work more closely together, which is a good thing. There are parts that need to be repealed but that has been happening for a while now. The Supreme Court has already struck parts of the PATRIOT ACT down. There was a proposal for a "SAFE ACT" which would eliminate the unnecessary and illegal parts of the PATRIOT ACT while keeping the needed changes.
Get an axe!