Why is the price so high? Other than the obvious reasons, there is the historical precedent that is was tried already once, from 1861-1865, and 600,000 people died during that conflict between two groups that were closely matched in armaments. Now, thanks to people like Feinstein and Brady and Clinton and Moynihan, there's no way a group of citizens could match the armament of the U.S. military. It would be suicide, and right now, that's a much worse alternative than anything on the table.
Bullshit. It's been at least 50 years or so since anyone could match the armament of the US military. This has nothing to do with gun laws. You could make all the guns in the world legal but no citizen army is going to stand in front of an M1 tank or sit around and get bombed by a B2 bomber, while clutching their shiny, new automatic rifle. I hear this argument all the time and it absolutely holds no water whatsoever.
Besides, it's advertisment. What kind of a fucking numbskull suddenly expects advertisment to actually contain anything resembling the truth?
Well, considering advertising is highly effective I would say that there are a lot of "fucking numbskulls" out there. That's the problem, advertising works. Why else would companies spend millions a year on advertising if they were just throwing their money away?
A bunch of people calling on a boycott against a website for accepting money from a rival company. They do this by posting on a website that accepts money from the same rival company and sticks their big ads everywhere. This from the "free speech" community.
Once again you missed the point entirely. Slashdot is not a "Linux only" site. It is what they say it is, "News for Nerds". Linux Today on the otherhand is a "Linux only" site. It is just plain stupid and/or greedy to place anti-linux ads on a site that promotes linux and only linux, especially when the studies they cite are biased and FUD-filled.
Slashdot is corporate-owned; I don't think a lot of people realize that. The very day Slashdot stuck banner ads on their stories was the day it lost all credibility for me.
If Slashdot lost all credibility then why are you still here?
OpenOffice is free, market share has nothing to do with price, only the size of the userbase
Actually market share has a lot to do with price and nothing to do with user base. User base and market share have little to do with each other. Debian has no market share in the OS market but they do have a user base. A market implies commerce and price, which is not necessary for a distro like Debian, in order to have a user base.
My point is, since you're not going to affect the outcome of the election either way, why don't you vote for the candidate you think is best, not the "lesser of two evils"?
Who else am I going to vote for? Nader? Not in this lifetime. So who else can you suggest? I don't undertand how you think not voting is better than voting for the least revolting canidate. The only other choice I would have is to either vote for the canidate I hate the most, which makes no sense, or start a revolution, and I hope it hasn't come to that yet. I still have a little hope for the future.
In the fall of 2001 al Qaeda refugees from Afghanistan took refuge in northern Iraq until they were driven out by Coalition forces
Northern Iraq was not controlled by Saddam. In fact all the evidence you present is anecdotal at best. The original objection to the theory behind a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda was because of the excuse made by this Administration that Iraq was in cahoots with Al Qaeda during the 9/11 attacks. Bush used that as an excuse to go to war with Iraq. None of the articles you linked to showed ANY hard evidence that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Of course, if you listened only to Ted Kennedy, you might believe that we will filling mass graves at the 30,000+/year rate Saddam was doing.
That's a bit of an exageration. Saddam killed around 10,000 people a year, and the US has killed...wait for it...10,000 civilians in Iraq the past year.
the "scientific method" has atheism at its roots because it specifically excludes any sort of theology
I'd like to see where "scientific method" explicity excludes religion. My old high school physics teacher had no problem integrating both into his belief system.
You hardly make a case. Most of the articles you link to are over a year old and have since been debunked. In addition to that, you link to the national review, not exactly a non-partisan publication. At least half of their articles are laughable at best.
What is most telling about the "war" on terror is the fact that terrorists around the world have been more successful in their attempts during the Bush presidency than ever before. Many terrorist attempts were thwarted by law enforcement during the Clinton years, in both the US and in foreign countries.
What matters is what is right. If someone isn't wiling to stand up then they are no different from the others who vote wholeheartedly in favour. There is NO EXECUSE for Kerry to vote for the Patriot Act.
I'm not making excuses for Kerry. I agree with you that a politician should do what is right above all but that's not the world we live in right now. Given the choice, which I am, I am going to vote for the lesser of two evils in my opinion. At this point can you tell me what other options I have? I really would like to know because I think this country is going to hell in a handbasket in a hurry. The Republicans are so ruthless as to seem sadistic and the Democrats unbelievably spineless.
There you people go again with that "Lesser of two evils" bullshit. It's thinking like that which got us into this mess in the first place.
Who else is there to vote for? Nader? Nope, he's an egotist, and Bush might as well be Satan by my book. I'll vote for the wooden senator from Mass, thank you very much.
If you'd use your fucking brains at the ballot box, maybe you'd have a little bit less to bitch about.
Maybe if you had brains you would realize that this is a two party system. Who the hell else am I going to vote for. Maybe I'll vote for Bush as the worse of two evils. Does that make sense? Neither do you.
You wanna be mad at somebody? Point to the asshole that thinks the right way to express himself is to brainwash people into flying planes into buildings.
Unfortunately brainwashing is going on here in the United States as well, along with white washing and gay bashing. There is more than one reason to oust Bush in my opinion, not least of which is his environmental record. At least Kerry has a good track record in that area. As for terrorists, they have never been so succesful as they have been during the Bush presidency. Traditional handling of terrorism seemed to be more succesful than the present military approach. Personally I think the government should continue along that path (pre Bush anti-terrorism) while also attempting to win hearts and minds.
True, and while I don't love Kerry, he is the lesser of two evils. I don't doubt for a minute that voting for the Patriot Act was largley due to political pressure. That seems to be the case for most Democrats. Voting against the "Patriot Act" would have been political suicide at the time.
"Weed" was a contributing factor in one death in one case
I don't buy it. Marijuana has never killed anyone. Even if marijuana was in his system when he died I hardly believe it was a "contributing factor". If it was a car accident, more than likely your friend had other drugs/alcohol in his system.
Eventually, you grow up, and if you didn't come to the realization in grade school that drugs are a cop out and dead end, you hopefully realize it as you enter your adulthood.
Or you go the other way and realize that everything you were taught about drugs as a kid is a lie. Some people grow up and keep the myth alive, others spread the truth.
In fact, one of their chairmen even claims he has invented the internet.
I know that was supposed to be a joke but please stop spreading lies. It makes you look unintelligent, and that joke hasn't been funny in years anyway.
Yeah I know I've been trolled but here goes anyway:
If you expect companies to follow the copyright of the GPL, you should support the RIAA going after infringers of its copyright. If not, you're a hypocrite.
Wrong. The RIAA is attempting to skirt the rules by demanding names from ISPs. Also the OSS community doesn't go after home users. They go after people who take their product and make money off it without showing their source code, as they are required to do.
Try getting a real job sometime and see what it feels like when your work is everywhere, and you start worrying that your days are numbered.
I can't speak for anyone else but I have a job, and have been without a job also. This has nothing to do with that. Metallica isn't starving because someone shared and mp3 of theirs. They won't ever starve if they can put on a good show.
This is a result of people visiting every day and buying into the groupthink. Nobody outside of Slashdot knows or cares about "Linux," "RIAA", "M$," or anything else Slashdotters think is such a huge issue in today's society. Go to a mall or coffee shop sometime and see what people actually talk about.
You contradict yourself. Why should slashdotters care what other people think unless they want to be a part of a "groupthink"? You seem to think that in order to avoid groupthink I must be a part of a larger groupthink, which makes absolutely no sense. Slashdotters are in the minority on some subjects but that does not make us wrong and it definitely does not make us groupthinkers. It's just the opposite in fact.
Speaking of VA Linux--it's a Linux company...that owns a "tech news" site...that posts news stories negative toward competitors like Microsoft. If a Windows company or even Microsoft itself owned a "tech news" site and posted anti-Linux articles all the time, everyone would be up in arms. But with VA Linux, it's a-okay.
If you don't like it then leave, or filter out topics. The situation is not really comparable anyway. Stories are submitted by slashdotters from other news sources. Tech news sites owned by a MS site would be completely different because the articles are written by people employed by a MS company.
Slashbots think people don't like the music coming out these days, which is the cause of the piracy. Never mind that if people didn't like the music they wouldn't be pirating it, most Slashbots--again, this goes back to the niche opinion thing--don't realize that most people these days love the music coming out and want to hear all of it. Probing around, you discover that Slashdot is made up of nerds and fogies who listen to things like The Who and Blind Guardian and techno--not what mainstream society enjoys.
I don't know where you got the idea that slashdotters believe that the crappy music is the reason for pirating but it is not and I haven't heard anyone say that it is. Most of the music that comes out now does suck. A lot. It's just a copy of a copy of a copy. Who cares what mainstream society listens to anyway? This is a tech site! What's wrong with the Who anyway? Not everyone can be a 15 year old popstar-loving fanboy. Some of us appreciate REAL music.
Any company ending in "AA" is evil. Especially if it doesn't want you distributing its works without paying for it. Somehow, this mindset is supposed to make sense.
They are evil when they charge you an arm and a leg for something that costs next to nothing. Especially when they didn't create any of it, they just distribute it. The real losers are the customers and the bands. They both get screwed out of money for the sake of the Labels.
The inevitable result of all this is a world in which nothing can be profitable because people simply pirate free copies. Is that really what Slashbots want? OSS and free-ness in general reminds me of the hippie era of the 60s--idealistic socialism that only exists because of the surrounding capita
No, not flamebait, but an indictment of...piss poor font support
Can we put this to rest already? First of all the font support is great. I can use every font from an old Windows install if I want too. If you meant the fonts suck, well then, you're wrong about that too. I gaurantee my fonts (bitstream-vera) are better than any Mac or Windows machine.
and our friend X.
What's wrong with X? It is an excellent protocol. Maybe you have some problems with certain implementations but X itself is excellent. Why else would MS and Apple attempt to copy its features?
I'll keep my menus where i expect them, at the top of the screen.
You only expect them there because you are used to it. It's the same thing with window focus. The MS way (click-to-focus) seemed a lot better to me until I had more experience with Linux. Now I hate click-to-focus and I dread using a Windows computer for that reason alone. It's the same thing with right-clicking the image in the GIMP. It makes a hell of a lot more sense too. You are manipulating that image. It is also more productive to right click on it than to drag your mouse to the top of the screen to the menubar. It's the same thing with keyboard shortcuts. They are much quicker than buttons or menus. They are harder to learn initially, but are much easier to use once learned, which is usually the preferred method by professionals.
I think the biggest problem has been, and will continue to be, that people don't spend enough time with these programs. They just try them, decide that they don't work in the same way as a comparable propietary solution, and toss them. Then we get awful articles like this one.
I agree. I prefer the GIMP. I am not a professional graphics artist or anything like that. I do simple photo and icon editing and I think the GIMP is much easier to use. The last time I used photoshop it was a mess of buttons all over the place.
For the average user I think the GIMP is superior. For professionals, use photoshop, because the features are just not there yet in the GIMP.
Slashdot Mirror
Bullshit. It's been at least 50 years or so since anyone could match the armament of the US military. This has nothing to do with gun laws. You could make all the guns in the world legal but no citizen army is going to stand in front of an M1 tank or sit around and get bombed by a B2 bomber, while clutching their shiny, new automatic rifle. I hear this argument all the time and it absolutely holds no water whatsoever.
You'll also notice that all of your credit card bills come from Deleware for that very same reason.
That, my friend, is the quote of the day.
Well, considering advertising is highly effective I would say that there are a lot of "fucking numbskulls" out there. That's the problem, advertising works. Why else would companies spend millions a year on advertising if they were just throwing their money away?
Once again you missed the point entirely. Slashdot is not a "Linux only" site. It is what they say it is, "News for Nerds". Linux Today on the otherhand is a "Linux only" site. It is just plain stupid and/or greedy to place anti-linux ads on a site that promotes linux and only linux, especially when the studies they cite are biased and FUD-filled.
Slashdot is corporate-owned; I don't think a lot of people realize that. The very day Slashdot stuck banner ads on their stories was the day it lost all credibility for me.
If Slashdot lost all credibility then why are you still here?
Actually market share has a lot to do with price and nothing to do with user base. User base and market share have little to do with each other. Debian has no market share in the OS market but they do have a user base. A market implies commerce and price, which is not necessary for a distro like Debian, in order to have a user base.
Anti-zionism != Anti-semitism.
Who else am I going to vote for? Nader? Not in this lifetime. So who else can you suggest? I don't undertand how you think not voting is better than voting for the least revolting canidate. The only other choice I would have is to either vote for the canidate I hate the most, which makes no sense, or start a revolution, and I hope it hasn't come to that yet. I still have a little hope for the future.
Northern Iraq was not controlled by Saddam. In fact all the evidence you present is anecdotal at best. The original objection to the theory behind a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda was because of the excuse made by this Administration that Iraq was in cahoots with Al Qaeda during the 9/11 attacks. Bush used that as an excuse to go to war with Iraq. None of the articles you linked to showed ANY hard evidence that Saddam was behind 9/11.
Well the page you link to has this to say:
There were 82 anti-U.S. attacks last year, which is up slightly from the 77 attacks the previous year.
That's a bit of an exageration. Saddam killed around 10,000 people a year, and the US has killed...wait for it...10,000 civilians in Iraq the past year.
I'd like to see where "scientific method" explicity excludes religion. My old high school physics teacher had no problem integrating both into his belief system.
What is most telling about the "war" on terror is the fact that terrorists around the world have been more successful in their attempts during the Bush presidency than ever before. Many terrorist attempts were thwarted by law enforcement during the Clinton years, in both the US and in foreign countries.
I'm not making excuses for Kerry. I agree with you that a politician should do what is right above all but that's not the world we live in right now. Given the choice, which I am, I am going to vote for the lesser of two evils in my opinion. At this point can you tell me what other options I have? I really would like to know because I think this country is going to hell in a handbasket in a hurry. The Republicans are so ruthless as to seem sadistic and the Democrats unbelievably spineless.
Who else is there to vote for? Nader? Nope, he's an egotist, and Bush might as well be Satan by my book. I'll vote for the wooden senator from Mass, thank you very much.
If you'd use your fucking brains at the ballot box, maybe you'd have a little bit less to bitch about.
Maybe if you had brains you would realize that this is a two party system. Who the hell else am I going to vote for. Maybe I'll vote for Bush as the worse of two evils. Does that make sense? Neither do you.
Unfortunately brainwashing is going on here in the United States as well, along with white washing and gay bashing. There is more than one reason to oust Bush in my opinion, not least of which is his environmental record. At least Kerry has a good track record in that area. As for terrorists, they have never been so succesful as they have been during the Bush presidency. Traditional handling of terrorism seemed to be more succesful than the present military approach. Personally I think the government should continue along that path (pre Bush anti-terrorism) while also attempting to win hearts and minds.
True, and while I don't love Kerry, he is the lesser of two evils. I don't doubt for a minute that voting for the Patriot Act was largley due to political pressure. That seems to be the case for most Democrats. Voting against the "Patriot Act" would have been political suicide at the time.
I don't buy it. Marijuana has never killed anyone. Even if marijuana was in his system when he died I hardly believe it was a "contributing factor". If it was a car accident, more than likely your friend had other drugs/alcohol in his system.
Eventually, you grow up, and if you didn't come to the realization in grade school that drugs are a cop out and dead end, you hopefully realize it as you enter your adulthood.
Or you go the other way and realize that everything you were taught about drugs as a kid is a lie. Some people grow up and keep the myth alive, others spread the truth.
I know that was supposed to be a joke but please stop spreading lies. It makes you look unintelligent, and that joke hasn't been funny in years anyway.
litigious bastards
Just a nitpick...SGI introduced NUMA into Linux, not IBM.
If you expect companies to follow the copyright of the GPL, you should support the RIAA going after infringers of its copyright. If not, you're a hypocrite.
Wrong. The RIAA is attempting to skirt the rules by demanding names from ISPs. Also the OSS community doesn't go after home users. They go after people who take their product and make money off it without showing their source code, as they are required to do.
Try getting a real job sometime and see what it feels like when your work is everywhere, and you start worrying that your days are numbered.
I can't speak for anyone else but I have a job, and have been without a job also. This has nothing to do with that. Metallica isn't starving because someone shared and mp3 of theirs. They won't ever starve if they can put on a good show.
This is a result of people visiting every day and buying into the groupthink. Nobody outside of Slashdot knows or cares about "Linux," "RIAA", "M$," or anything else Slashdotters think is such a huge issue in today's society. Go to a mall or coffee shop sometime and see what people actually talk about.
You contradict yourself. Why should slashdotters care what other people think unless they want to be a part of a "groupthink"? You seem to think that in order to avoid groupthink I must be a part of a larger groupthink, which makes absolutely no sense. Slashdotters are in the minority on some subjects but that does not make us wrong and it definitely does not make us groupthinkers. It's just the opposite in fact.
Speaking of VA Linux--it's a Linux company...that owns a "tech news" site...that posts news stories negative toward competitors like Microsoft. If a Windows company or even Microsoft itself owned a "tech news" site and posted anti-Linux articles all the time, everyone would be up in arms. But with VA Linux, it's a-okay.
If you don't like it then leave, or filter out topics. The situation is not really comparable anyway. Stories are submitted by slashdotters from other news sources. Tech news sites owned by a MS site would be completely different because the articles are written by people employed by a MS company.
Slashbots think people don't like the music coming out these days, which is the cause of the piracy. Never mind that if people didn't like the music they wouldn't be pirating it, most Slashbots--again, this goes back to the niche opinion thing--don't realize that most people these days love the music coming out and want to hear all of it. Probing around, you discover that Slashdot is made up of nerds and fogies who listen to things like The Who and Blind Guardian and techno--not what mainstream society enjoys.
I don't know where you got the idea that slashdotters believe that the crappy music is the reason for pirating but it is not and I haven't heard anyone say that it is. Most of the music that comes out now does suck. A lot. It's just a copy of a copy of a copy. Who cares what mainstream society listens to anyway? This is a tech site! What's wrong with the Who anyway? Not everyone can be a 15 year old popstar-loving fanboy. Some of us appreciate REAL music.
Any company ending in "AA" is evil. Especially if it doesn't want you distributing its works without paying for it. Somehow, this mindset is supposed to make sense.
They are evil when they charge you an arm and a leg for something that costs next to nothing. Especially when they didn't create any of it, they just distribute it. The real losers are the customers and the bands. They both get screwed out of money for the sake of the Labels.
The inevitable result of all this is a world in which nothing can be profitable because people simply pirate free copies. Is that really what Slashbots want? OSS and free-ness in general reminds me of the hippie era of the 60s--idealistic socialism that only exists because of the surrounding capita
Can we put this to rest already? First of all the font support is great. I can use every font from an old Windows install if I want too. If you meant the fonts suck, well then, you're wrong about that too. I gaurantee my fonts (bitstream-vera) are better than any Mac or Windows machine.
and our friend X.
What's wrong with X? It is an excellent protocol. Maybe you have some problems with certain implementations but X itself is excellent. Why else would MS and Apple attempt to copy its features?
You only expect them there because you are used to it. It's the same thing with window focus. The MS way (click-to-focus) seemed a lot better to me until I had more experience with Linux. Now I hate click-to-focus and I dread using a Windows computer for that reason alone. It's the same thing with right-clicking the image in the GIMP. It makes a hell of a lot more sense too. You are manipulating that image. It is also more productive to right click on it than to drag your mouse to the top of the screen to the menubar. It's the same thing with keyboard shortcuts. They are much quicker than buttons or menus. They are harder to learn initially, but are much easier to use once learned, which is usually the preferred method by professionals.
I think the biggest problem has been, and will continue to be, that people don't spend enough time with these programs. They just try them, decide that they don't work in the same way as a comparable propietary solution, and toss them. Then we get awful articles like this one.
For the average user I think the GIMP is superior. For professionals, use photoshop, because the features are just not there yet in the GIMP.