English is what is refered to as a 'living language' which allows for a language to evolve and change as the times do so. An example of this is the term 'computer' which in the not too distant past refered to a person who performed computations, not a machine. As for 'blog', 'email' and 'text' there are few things to note. First, according to Knuth, 'Email (let's drop the hyphen)' (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.h tml). If you don't agree then use 'E-mail'; however both are technicaly correct and may be acceptably interchanged. I am a little warry of addressing 'blog' and 'text' because they are hottly opinionated subjects. In my opinion 'blog' and 'text' have similar properties as 'walk.'
Observe:
I went for a walk. (Past tense reference to a particular instant in time)
I am walking. I will walk. or I walk. (Active tense)
While I dislike both the term 'blog' and use of 'text' as a verb, I can't discount that the template applies.
Living languages are prone to these changes and that's what makes a language like English great. Languages that cease to change die off and slowly become less socialy pervasive as a primary form of communication, Latin for example.
As an aside, because Netspeak occurs in more than one language it shoud probably be classified as a linguistic construct associated with some non-descript language.
As with all opinions these are mine, yours may differ, and that's just fine.
"... Why haven't they jetisoned the foul beast from Redmond and migrated en mass to the Macintosh or even Linux?"
Cost and market saturation is the simple answer. Years ago MS and IBM got in bed together and since IBM was buying the 808X chips en mass from Intel MS got in bed with Intel through inderection. Admitedly the cost of a computer back in the 1980's was obsene from today's standards but the marketing machine that is IBM sold them, en mass. Software got developed and IBM/MS/Intel based system got adopted everywhere.
Fast forward a bit and Apple presents the Machintosh, an arguably superior system that has now eveolved into a fantastic system in overall design and usability. Problem: Cost and market saturation. Apple may have been presenting a "better" (subjective) system but by this time the clone market was already starting and driving costs in the PC market downward.
Unfortunately Apple has traditionaly fought the clone market and used hardware that was simply more expensive than x86 designs. To compound the problem software just didn't get developed at the same rate for Apple's systems. This goes back to market saturation, and a couple other factors. Sad but true.
Skip ahead again to the early/mid 1990's and we find that MS has countered the Machintosh with Windows and used it's own marketing machine to sell it. A lot of people use it. A lot of people are leary of it. Regardless, it's everywhere. *Poof* Linux comes on the scene, in a select cult like corner of the computing world, and it's free. It's good. We all love it. Well that is if we are prepared for the complexity in comparison. Linux is FREE it/will/ take over chant the anit-MS crowds... WRONG! Linux is free and it has a great deal of potential but it's just too darn difficult for mear mortals to use, and it doesn't have a marketing machine behind it.
In the here and now MS continues to dominate the popular market. Apple is starting to present cost efective solutions. And Linux is still free. MS has gotten a pretty interface and has lots of games and it is good. Okay it has a lot of problems but the majority don't know any better and don't care. Apple has continued to improved their interface, there's good support for the systems, but still no real clones, and limited software. They continue to suffer from a heavy blow early on. Apple loyalist however are a force to be reconed with, don't even try to sell them on a diferent system. Linux has gotten a face lift, it's reasonably simple to use and install now. Joe Shmoe can probably install Linux and start using it. Updates are better but a little scary sometimes and/finding/ and/installing/ software that isn't part of the distributors' plan is really scary, if you don't know what you're doing. So there's lots of free software that a select few are comfortable installing and working with.
Cost and market saturation. That's the answer to 'Why?' Sorry floks, OS/2 lost and Apple's mentality hurt them.
DISCLAIMER: This is how I recall the events (plus some vocal opinion). FYI, I'm a Linux loyalist from the SLS (download and raw write 56 floppy images) days. I still have to use MS though and I have a Mac in my kitchen. Well that's how my memory of things is...
I personaly started on a PET, but that's not really important. The real question is 'Where to start?' Regarding programming the answer is simple, the begining. Start with concepts and leave variable types, apis and syntax for later. Psuedo code is your friend. While this may not seem particularly satisfying it doesn't take long to lay the ground work, controls structures, methodolgy and that lot.
After the core concepts have been taught, and perhaps in parallel, choose a/simple/ language. Avoid languages with beastly syntax and apis. Pascal was a teaching language for a reason, it was/is very simple. I personaly moved from 'playing' with basic directly to C.
I remain to this day of the opinion that C is a simple and powerful language where the fundamentals count. I admit that there are some concepts that can be a bit 'hairy' when dealing with C, pointers for example, but they can be taken in stride. I'm not suggesting that C is the only way to go but syntacticly it's simple, the api is small and straight forward (mostly), types are 'reasonably' understandable and the syntax has been largely adopted/adapted by most newer high-level langagues.
One drawback to C is that while it teaches pragmatic programming, things break if you get careless, without apis it's not flashy. You're teaching concepts though so that should be less important. If you're looking for something with more exciting immediate gratification look to another language.
I'd recomend PHP if that's what you're looking for. Again, it's a relatively simple language, and it's typeless which avoids a stumbling block. It can be combined with HTML to give some 'graphical' results.
Why PHP instead of Java? I think Java's api is a bit overwhelming to start with, but that's my opinion. Why not C++? 1) It needs an external api for graphics. 2) In my opinion it's inheritence/overloading syntax *bites*.
Basicly take things in step. Start with concepts. Move to application of concepts. Next, 'practical' application of concepts. Advanced concepts and techniques will come with time/experience. Don't rush things, no good comes from it. A strong background will make learing other langauges and more advanced concepts, OOP for example, less of a task.
That's 'Where to start?' from my perspective. Of course this is all my opinion, and it's based on my experience, so it may be a bit skewed. Take it for what you will.
That Sony will issue a statement and or a recall. Sony has loyal followers and deep pockets. It's not at all impractical for Sony to do drop/cross ship replacement of defective units to keep it's loyal followers. It happens, big deal.
I am aware of the United States' failing academic standing. It's sad really because we were once great leaders. The problem in schools now is that students don't really want to learn, they've simply become complacent. Worse it seems like too many teachers have fallen pray to this as well, they don't want to teach. This sounds like a completely opposite sittuation however, more power to them.
As for computers in comp sci, math, and other I don't know how much I can argue that they should be in "soft" classes. If they help, great. If they're not, perhaps it's a failing of the use of the tool not the tool itself. I can't really say, I didn't have computers in my classes but I wasn't using a slide rule either.
Tools for learning are important and if they're not working properly examination of why is equally, if not more, important. Kids that don't care are fairly well doomed, but kids that do should be given every chance and tool to help them along be it "hard" or "soft" course work.
For the same reasons that an architecture student learns AutoCAD, interactive modeling of the problem at hand. That's why they are called tools. CAD systems aren't meant to replace book learning but rather to augment it. These "kids" are looking at applied mathematics and engineering, they don't sound "unmotivated" to learn book or otherwise.
This is a totaly unacceptable solution in a real-world business environment. Two days worth of bounced emails and even a moderate size company could miss over a $100K worth of online orders. Worse yet they could lose a current customer or, almost certainly, a potential customer. Customers as a rule don't take kindly to bounced orders and then they go to a competitor.
There are drop in solutions out there. Use them if it's a real issue.
Is this scary? I suppose, but is it realistic to believe that this is a truely new development. Vulnerabilities get exploited and there's nothing that can be done about that. Consumers need to be aware of them so that they can attemt to deal with them while a advisory solution or patch is in the works.
Moreover developers aren't always aware of a vunerability and they need to be. If people don't know about a potential exploit, both companies/developers and consumers alike, they will be affected more severly.
This remindes me of iSmell, a vapor ware (pardon the pun) from the dot com era. It'll be cool if they actually get it to work but the complexity of "making" scents leaves me wondering. The difficultly in mixing components for a visual response, paint for example, is hard enough. I'm just not sure it can be done, well that is, for the olphactory systems.
You've missed the point. I quite think this is potentialy cool stuff, and I'm not saying that it should be controled. Just that those are likely the questions that will be asked as it develops.
The ramifications of everyone living to be 1000 years old seem extreme because it's such a huge jump. If this is reached a s a progression it becomes more managable. Consider that if everyone starts living to be 100 and then to 200 and so on. The gradual progression would teach us how to deal with the implications, population and otherwise.
Science is often faced with an odd host of moral/ethical questions. Equaly often the question of 'Can we do it?' is answered before 'Should we do it?' Nuclear weaponry is a great example, specificly the application of.
In the 1940's we proved that we can construct a weapon capable of intense destrctive power. Then we used it. At the time it might have been the action that we should take to help end WWII. And it did help. In retrospect, 60 years later, we struggle with whether we should have used them.
Living to be 1000 years old sounds very cool, right now the question is 'Can we?' soon though 'Should we?'. I think the answer will be yes, but I think there will be a gradual approach to reaching the goal, limited both by available technology and social climate.
That is without exception, the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.
Let's take Firefox - known for it's security - and have you enable ActiveX, the mack-daddy of all virus vectors. And then for an encore, have it run the mother-of-all virus vectors, IE - inside it!
I'll grant you that it seems absurd. Frow a web developers perspective though, the ability to switch between the two major rendering engines without having to keep two browsers running is pretty slick. Granted I still have two broswers running because I lack faith in a first run hack based on a version of Firefox that had a documented security risk, but that's not the point. The point is that if this is implemented well (read wishful thinking) it could be a very powerful development tool for cross browser support. AOL-isms aside that is.
As the senior web developer (not exactly IT I know) I don't really have time. There is a reasonable expectation of being "on-call". I can scarce imagine an IT professional that's not on-call to deal with the problems that/will/ happen.
It's nice to have something to do on the side but I think "side job" is a bit too strong. Hobby is more likely. I personaly find that I hardly have time to clean my garage to make room for my pool table. Occationaly I work on a personal development project but again, hobby.
Of course a daisy wheel printer can be tracked forensicly anyway since they suffer the same "signature" issues that a typewriter does. Hammer based printers, manual and electric typewriters, leave distinct, identifiable, characteristics in the copy that they produce. For example, wear on the hammer, a tendancy to "drop" a letter etc.
Frankly I imagine that Linus has a favorite environment.
That completely aside however; Linux is only the kernel. This is a fact/point that Linus and others have been very clear on over the years. Things like sh, cat, ls, cd etc are 'not part of Linux' they are part of a distribution. Quite honestly I'm fond of installing from a distribution (partial to SuSE thank you). I have literaly no desire to build, from scratch, a Linux based system with all that entails.
The point of course is that Linux does not fundamentaly have a desktop. So it's neither important, relevant nor appropriate for Linus to 'choose' a desktop for Linux.
If you're inclined to complain about not haveing a standard desktop/window manager for Linux, switch to Windows or a Mac. Choose carefuly though and never switch versions once you've choosen because I remember when MS looked like:
C:\> _
and when you might type:
pr#1
on an Apple. You wouldn't want to have to deal with differences in your interface.
I have to wonder about the value added. Presumably they will suffer from the same degrading properties of other digital media with a proportionaly high price point. I suppose 10dvds could be storred on one makeing for only one point of failure for 10x much data.
It's a straight-up, informed-consent deal (at least for Gmail account holders- the issues get stickier if you send mail to Gmail because you never clicked through a use agreement) and if you don't want their robots reading your email you shouldn't use the service.
You make an implied agreement with mail providers when you send email, whether to or from. It's a realitiy. If you don't like that they may scan your email then either don't use email or use some sort of encryption to prevent it. Societaly it is increasingly impractical to not use email though. There are a few notable people who've made this decision (ie. Donald Knuth), but it's simply not a reasonable option in most business situations. Further many of us have become dependant enought that not using email is simply unacceptable to us. Personaly when I need to deal in sensitive materials (email, im, etc) I pass it through gpg and be done with it. *shrug* Price we pay for convienice. Regardless I love my Gmail.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an advocate of gun control and gun responsibility. The key part of the second ammendment is 'well regulated', regulation is control. Bob and a bunch of his buddies shooting beer cans is not a 'well regulated' militia.
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Hmmm... No. No mention of the millitarization of space there. Last time I checked militia were frowned upon, if not illegal, in the United States anyway.
I don't think I feel any more safe with weapons above me, but some people might.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin
Which has always been a bad idea. "Star Wars" simply doesn't implement well. Consider that if it could prevent 90% of a full-scale attack the payload of current nuclear weaons is so great that it wouldn't matter. Moreover what are the repercusions of nuelear fallout in space? M.A.D. is a reality and the world can no longer bear a full-scale world war. We demonstrated the awesome and terrible power of nuclear weapons in WWII, do we need to see how far they've come since then in a "practical" application?
Yes it certainly will have to go somewhere. When dealing in multiple $24K transactions that place is a un-named, numbered account. Somewhere. I would put it in the Caymans or some such. In fact I would probably pass it around through a few such accounts in places with non-exctradition to 'clean' it up a bit. If you have enough of it, money laundering is shockingly simple in principle.
Yes you should update. Online updates keep you patched, but the difference between 9.1 and 9.2 may be subtle and distinct at the same time. SuSE releases are seperated, preusmably to maintain package/library consistency. If you're on the 'online update bandwagon' you can simply perform and online system update. I've used this feature in the past and it works well enough, occationaly I've had problems but for the most part it works. I'll be updating this way once I figure out why my network is Flubber.
Slashdot Mirror
English is what is refered to as a 'living language' which allows for a language to evolve and change as the times do so. An example of this is the term 'computer' which in the not too distant past refered to a person who performed computations, not a machine. As for 'blog', 'email' and 'text' there are few things to note. First, according to Knuth, 'Email (let's drop the hyphen)' (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.h tml). If you don't agree then use 'E-mail'; however both are technicaly correct and may be acceptably interchanged. I am a little warry of addressing 'blog' and 'text' because they are hottly opinionated subjects. In my opinion 'blog' and 'text' have similar properties as 'walk.'
Observe:
I went for a walk. (Past tense reference to a particular instant in time)
I am walking.
I will walk. or
I walk. (Active tense)
While I dislike both the term 'blog' and use of 'text' as a verb, I can't discount that the template applies.
Living languages are prone to these changes and that's what makes a language like English great. Languages that cease to change die off and slowly become less socialy pervasive as a primary form of communication, Latin for example.
As an aside, because Netspeak occurs in more than one language it shoud probably be classified as a linguistic construct associated with some non-descript language.
As with all opinions these are mine, yours may differ, and that's just fine.
"... Why haven't they jetisoned the foul beast from Redmond and migrated en mass to the Macintosh or even Linux?"
/will/ take over chant the anit-MS crowds... WRONG! Linux is free and it has a great deal of potential but it's just too darn difficult for mear mortals to use, and it doesn't have a marketing machine behind it.
/finding/ and /installing/ software that isn't part of the distributors' plan is really scary, if you don't know what you're doing. So there's lots of free software that a select few are comfortable installing and working with.
Cost and market saturation is the simple answer. Years ago MS and IBM got in bed together and since IBM was buying the 808X chips en mass from Intel MS got in bed with Intel through inderection. Admitedly the cost of a computer back in the 1980's was obsene from today's standards but the marketing machine that is IBM sold them, en mass. Software got developed and IBM/MS/Intel based system got adopted everywhere.
Fast forward a bit and Apple presents the Machintosh, an arguably superior system that has now eveolved into a fantastic system in overall design and usability. Problem: Cost and market saturation. Apple may have been presenting a "better" (subjective) system but by this time the clone market was already starting and driving costs in the PC market downward.
Unfortunately Apple has traditionaly fought the clone market and used hardware that was simply more expensive than x86 designs. To compound the problem software just didn't get developed at the same rate for Apple's systems. This goes back to market saturation, and a couple other factors. Sad but true.
Skip ahead again to the early/mid 1990's and we find that MS has countered the Machintosh with Windows and used it's own marketing machine to sell it. A lot of people use it. A lot of people are leary of it. Regardless, it's everywhere. *Poof* Linux comes on the scene, in a select cult like corner of the computing world, and it's free. It's good. We all love it. Well that is if we are prepared for the complexity in comparison. Linux is FREE it
In the here and now MS continues to dominate the popular market. Apple is starting to present cost efective solutions. And Linux is still free. MS has gotten a pretty interface and has lots of games and it is good. Okay it has a lot of problems but the majority don't know any better and don't care. Apple has continued to improved their interface, there's good support for the systems, but still no real clones, and limited software. They continue to suffer from a heavy blow early on. Apple loyalist however are a force to be reconed with, don't even try to sell them on a diferent system. Linux has gotten a face lift, it's reasonably simple to use and install now. Joe Shmoe can probably install Linux and start using it. Updates are better but a little scary sometimes and
Cost and market saturation. That's the answer to 'Why?' Sorry floks, OS/2 lost and Apple's mentality hurt them.
DISCLAIMER: This is how I recall the events (plus some vocal opinion). FYI, I'm a Linux loyalist from the SLS (download and raw write 56 floppy images) days. I still have to use MS though and I have a Mac in my kitchen. Well that's how my memory of things is...
I personaly started on a PET, but that's not really important. The real question is 'Where to start?' Regarding programming the answer is simple, the begining. Start with concepts and leave variable types, apis and syntax for later. Psuedo code is your friend. While this may not seem particularly satisfying it doesn't take long to lay the ground work, controls structures, methodolgy and that lot.
/simple/ language. Avoid languages with beastly syntax and apis. Pascal was a teaching language for a reason, it was/is very simple. I personaly moved from 'playing' with basic directly to C.
After the core concepts have been taught, and perhaps in parallel, choose a
I remain to this day of the opinion that C is a simple and powerful language where the fundamentals count. I admit that there are some concepts that can be a bit 'hairy' when dealing with C, pointers for example, but they can be taken in stride. I'm not suggesting that C is the only way to go but syntacticly it's simple, the api is small and straight forward (mostly), types are 'reasonably' understandable and the syntax has been largely adopted/adapted by most newer high-level langagues.
One drawback to C is that while it teaches pragmatic programming, things break if you get careless, without apis it's not flashy. You're teaching concepts though so that should be less important. If you're looking for something with more exciting immediate gratification look to another language.
I'd recomend PHP if that's what you're looking for. Again, it's a relatively simple language, and it's typeless which avoids a stumbling block. It can be combined with HTML to give some 'graphical' results.
Why PHP instead of Java? I think Java's api is a bit overwhelming to start with, but that's my opinion. Why not C++? 1) It needs an external api for graphics. 2) In my opinion it's inheritence/overloading syntax *bites*.
Basicly take things in step. Start with concepts. Move to application of concepts. Next, 'practical' application of concepts. Advanced concepts and techniques will come with time/experience. Don't rush things, no good comes from it. A strong background will make learing other langauges and more advanced concepts, OOP for example, less of a task.
That's 'Where to start?' from my perspective. Of course this is all my opinion, and it's based on my experience, so it may be a bit skewed. Take it for what you will.
That Sony will issue a statement and or a recall. Sony has loyal followers and deep pockets. It's not at all impractical for Sony to do drop/cross ship replacement of defective units to keep it's loyal followers. It happens, big deal.
I am aware of the United States' failing academic standing. It's sad really because we were once great leaders. The problem in schools now is that students don't really want to learn, they've simply become complacent. Worse it seems like too many teachers have fallen pray to this as well, they don't want to teach. This sounds like a completely opposite sittuation however, more power to them.
As for computers in comp sci, math, and other I don't know how much I can argue that they should be in "soft" classes. If they help, great. If they're not, perhaps it's a failing of the use of the tool not the tool itself. I can't really say, I didn't have computers in my classes but I wasn't using a slide rule either.
Tools for learning are important and if they're not working properly examination of why is equally, if not more, important. Kids that don't care are fairly well doomed, but kids that do should be given every chance and tool to help them along be it "hard" or "soft" course work.
For the same reasons that an architecture student learns AutoCAD, interactive modeling of the problem at hand. That's why they are called tools. CAD systems aren't meant to replace book learning but rather to augment it. These "kids" are looking at applied mathematics and engineering, they don't sound "unmotivated" to learn book or otherwise.
.02
my
This is a totaly unacceptable solution in a real-world business environment. Two days worth of bounced emails and even a moderate size company could miss over a $100K worth of online orders. Worse yet they could lose a current customer or, almost certainly, a potential customer. Customers as a rule don't take kindly to bounced orders and then they go to a competitor.
There are drop in solutions out there. Use them if it's a real issue.
Is this scary? I suppose, but is it realistic to believe that this is a truely new development. Vulnerabilities get exploited and there's nothing that can be done about that. Consumers need to be aware of them so that they can attemt to deal with them while a advisory solution or patch is in the works.
Moreover developers aren't always aware of a vunerability and they need to be. If people don't know about a potential exploit, both companies/developers and consumers alike, they will be affected more severly.
No you can't, I haven't provided digitaly encoded scent information.
Actually I use "olphactory" frequently. "Onomatopoeia" on the other hand is a tough one to work with.
This remindes me of iSmell, a vapor ware (pardon the pun) from the dot com era. It'll be cool if they actually get it to work but the complexity of "making" scents leaves me wondering. The difficultly in mixing components for a visual response, paint for example, is hard enough. I'm just not sure it can be done, well that is, for the olphactory systems.
You've missed the point. I quite think this is potentialy cool stuff, and I'm not saying that it should be controled. Just that those are likely the questions that will be asked as it develops.
The ramifications of everyone living to be 1000 years old seem extreme because it's such a huge jump. If this is reached a s a progression it becomes more managable. Consider that if everyone starts living to be 100 and then to 200 and so on. The gradual progression would teach us how to deal with the implications, population and otherwise.
Science is often faced with an odd host of moral/ethical questions. Equaly often the question of 'Can we do it?' is answered before 'Should we do it?' Nuclear weaponry is a great example, specificly the application of.
In the 1940's we proved that we can construct a weapon capable of intense destrctive power. Then we used it. At the time it might have been the action that we should take to help end WWII. And it did help. In retrospect, 60 years later, we struggle with whether we should have used them.
Living to be 1000 years old sounds very cool, right now the question is 'Can we?' soon though 'Should we?'. I think the answer will be yes, but I think there will be a gradual approach to reaching the goal, limited both by available technology and social climate.
As the senior web developer (not exactly IT I know) I don't really have time. There is a reasonable expectation of being "on-call". I can scarce imagine an IT professional that's not on-call to deal with the problems that /will/ happen.
It's nice to have something to do on the side but I think "side job" is a bit too strong. Hobby is more likely. I personaly find that I hardly have time to clean my garage to make room for my pool table. Occationaly I work on a personal development project but again, hobby.
Of course a daisy wheel printer can be tracked forensicly anyway since they suffer the same "signature" issues that a typewriter does. Hammer based printers, manual and electric typewriters, leave distinct, identifiable, characteristics in the copy that they produce. For example, wear on the hammer, a tendancy to "drop" a letter etc.
Frankly I imagine that Linus has a favorite environment.
That completely aside however; Linux is only the kernel. This is a fact/point that Linus and others have been very clear on over the years. Things like sh, cat, ls, cd etc are 'not part of Linux' they are part of a distribution. Quite honestly I'm fond of installing from a distribution (partial to SuSE thank you). I have literaly no desire to build, from scratch, a Linux based system with all that entails.
The point of course is that Linux does not fundamentaly have a desktop. So it's neither important, relevant nor appropriate for Linus to 'choose' a desktop for Linux.
If you're inclined to complain about not haveing a standard desktop/window manager for Linux, switch to Windows or a Mac. Choose carefuly though and never switch versions once you've choosen because I remember when MS looked like:
C:\> _
and when you might type:
pr#1
on an Apple. You wouldn't want to have to deal with differences in your interface.
Which makes the prospect even worse
I have to wonder about the value added. Presumably they will suffer from the same degrading properties of other digital media with a proportionaly high price point. I suppose 10dvds could be storred on one makeing for only one point of failure for 10x much data.
It's a straight-up, informed-consent deal (at least for Gmail account holders- the issues get stickier if you send mail to Gmail because you never clicked through a use agreement) and if you don't want their robots reading your email you shouldn't use the service.
You make an implied agreement with mail providers when you send email, whether to or from. It's a realitiy. If you don't like that they may scan your email then either don't use email or use some sort of encryption to prevent it. Societaly it is increasingly impractical to not use email though. There are a few notable people who've made this decision (ie. Donald Knuth), but it's simply not a reasonable option in most business situations. Further many of us have become dependant enought that not using email is simply unacceptable to us. Personaly when I need to deal in sensitive materials (email, im, etc) I pass it through gpg and be done with it. *shrug* Price we pay for convienice. Regardless I love my Gmail.
Purely copy and paste.
Don't get me wrong, I'm an advocate of gun control and gun responsibility. The key part of the second ammendment is 'well regulated', regulation is control. Bob and a bunch of his buddies shooting beer cans is not a 'well regulated' militia.
I don't think I feel any more safe with weapons above me, but some people might.
...right in line with the "Star Wars" ideas
Which has always been a bad idea. "Star Wars" simply doesn't implement well. Consider that if it could prevent 90% of a full-scale attack the payload of current nuclear weaons is so great that it wouldn't matter. Moreover what are the repercusions of nuelear fallout in space? M.A.D. is a reality and the world can no longer bear a full-scale world war. We demonstrated the awesome and terrible power of nuclear weapons in WWII, do we need to see how far they've come since then in a "practical" application?
Yes it certainly will have to go somewhere. When dealing in multiple $24K transactions that place is a un-named, numbered account. Somewhere. I would put it in the Caymans or some such. In fact I would probably pass it around through a few such accounts in places with non-exctradition to 'clean' it up a bit. If you have enough of it, money laundering is shockingly simple in principle.
Yes you should update. Online updates keep you patched, but the difference between 9.1 and 9.2 may be subtle and distinct at the same time. SuSE releases are seperated, preusmably to maintain package/library consistency. If you're on the 'online update bandwagon' you can simply perform and online system update. I've used this feature in the past and it works well enough, occationaly I've had problems but for the most part it works. I'll be updating this way once I figure out why my network is Flubber.