Re:A few more modern taboos:
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 2, Insightful
How do Jews become powerful in every country they have moved to?
2) Jews (and ethnic Chinese for that matter) become influential in diaspora because they have cultures which value hard work and study, so over the course of a couple generations, they eat the lunch of any "natives" who don't value that (like every antisemitic racist bubba still digging ditches in my hometown). Duh. It never ceases to amaze me that people think there's more to it than that.
You missed the most obvious answer to the question: Jews didn't always become powerful in every country to which they have moved. Sometimes the questions you are asked to answer make unwarranted assumptions.
"There's so many more workers in China it's only a matter of time (and very little at that compared to the US, IMHO) before workers there demand more, and decide to demand it in groups."
Except that China is by no means a democracy. Even in the U.S., unions had to scratch and claw to get any headway. Imagine the difficulty of establishing workers' rights in a country that has no qualms at all about repressing speech, press, and peaceful demonstration. The Chinese government would be quite willing to roll over would-be unionizers with tanks.
But we do have "Black Budgets" -- many billions of dollars for covert military/spook purposes, approved by small Congressional committees, the details of which are hidden from Congress at large and from the public. In other words, closed-source spending.
True. However, the idea is to avoid that sort of thing unless it is truly necessary, since even though there are good reasons to keep the details of military and espionage spending secret, the secrecy can be abused and used to hide unethical and even illegal actions. It's best to keep government activity public by default and only maintain secrecy if there is a compelling reason to do so.
" I reject Godwin's law, because Nazi's, Hitler, and Sept. 11 were real events, and comparisons are sometimes valid."
I don't think Godwin's Law was ever meant to apply to non-trivializing comparisons to Hitler. Saying Bill Gates is akin to Hitler runs afoul of Godwin's Law. Saying Pol Pot is akin to Hitler does not.
"His approach isn't very *nix-ish, it is very Windows-ish. It assumes you have a GUI."
Please read the article again, especially the part where Seth Nickell wrote "I *will* provide a way to boot into a "stripped down console mode" aka "single" for system recovery and backup, and a regular non-graphical boot for servers."
From what I can tell, SystemServices in and of itself only depends on D-BUS and libc. There are Python bindings for D-BUS, so that may make it easy to write a script for SystemServices using Python, but that's the extent of Python's relationship to SystemServices.
The rules for using the Fedora trademark will be generally more permissive than the rules for using the Red Hat trademarks. The separate name and trademark are necessary in order to have different rules for using the trademarks. The rules for using the "Fedora" trademark will be available before the first release of Fedora Core.
I wish Red Hat weren't so non-committal here, but does this mean that instead of CheapBytes selling Pink Tie, LinuxCD selling Blue Jacket, and OSDisc selling Red Tux, every third-party CD Vendor will just call it Fedora?
"Tolkien had very anti-technology undertones. He constantly refered to the dark clouds of Mordor, the decimation of the forests in Eisengard."
IIRC, that wasn't about industry so much as pointless destruction. The forests were being destroyed not even for the sake of creating lumber, but only to make waste and mess.
"All I ask that they please write it in a language other than C or C++."
Please.
Yes, the world would arguably be a better place if applications were written in higher-level languages. But system-level stuff like operating system kernels? A relatively low-level language is required. Heck, some of the stuff that operating systems do requires assembly.
"The sad thing is Microsoft already has a bad reputation and nobody cares."
That's not quite true. It's more like "Microsoft has a bad reputation but a lot of people find it unfeasible to do business without MS." That's also less of an issue in markets where MS isn't entrenched (i.e. cell phones).
Right now, the only cash cows MS has are Windows and Office. Gee, wonder why?
"Typically in OSS security bugs are fixed within hours of the report. . . . If windows users transfer wholesale to Linux we'll just see the same problems over again."
Do you realize that you just contradicted yourself? You just identified a major difference between OSS and Windows--besides popularity--that affects security, yet concluded that if Linux became as popular as Windows, Linux would have the same problems.
OpenLindows made me think of Sun's OpenWindows. Just imagine olvwm and all the various XView apps, and that menu that could be edited with a simple text editor.
"If a Linux hole is found, nearly ever user would update to fix the change, because the average user of Linux knows what putting it off may entail."
There are also two other issues:
1) Updates on Linux systems tend to be more robust. There is little worry that an updated package will break things. 2) Updates seldom require a reboot.
I think that the value people place on words is influenced only very indirectly by past usage. People think "intelligent" sounds more sophisticated than "smart" because "smart" is used more commonly.
Also, "intelligent" and "smart" have subtle differences in connotation. If you want to describe someone who has a lot of "raw CPU power" but is a more ivory-tower type, you'll probably choose the word "intelligent" rather than "smart." If you are trying to imply that someone is savvy, "smart" is probably the word to use. That's not to say that "intelligent" and "smart" aren't synonyms, but even synonyms have slight shades of difference.
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You missed the most obvious answer to the question: Jews didn't always become powerful in every country to which they have moved. Sometimes the questions you are asked to answer make unwarranted assumptions.
Except that China is by no means a democracy. Even in the U.S., unions had to scratch and claw to get any headway. Imagine the difficulty of establishing workers' rights in a country that has no qualms at all about repressing speech, press, and peaceful demonstration. The Chinese government would be quite willing to roll over would-be unionizers with tanks.
From the 2004 List of Banished Words:
The term "smoking gun" did not come "to us from Iraq." Please. It is at least as old as the Watergate scandal.
Sigh. It's all here: On the GUI Selection in UserLinux.
"Not to be entirely cynical but what are the odds that Microsoft had a little bit to do with the review by the USPTO."
IIRC, the W3 consortium had requested a reexamination of the Eolas patent.
True. However, the idea is to avoid that sort of thing unless it is truly necessary, since even though there are good reasons to keep the details of military and espionage spending secret, the secrecy can be abused and used to hide unethical and even illegal actions. It's best to keep government activity public by default and only maintain secrecy if there is a compelling reason to do so.
" I reject Godwin's law, because Nazi's, Hitler, and Sept. 11 were real events, and comparisons are sometimes valid."
I don't think Godwin's Law was ever meant to apply to non-trivializing comparisons to Hitler. Saying Bill Gates is akin to Hitler runs afoul of Godwin's Law. Saying Pol Pot is akin to Hitler does not.
The Jargon File's definition of copy protection:
Intuit's own "copy protection" proved to fit this definition a little too well.
"Wanna know what happens when you type Hyper-Super-Meta-Control-Symbol-Shift-Square?"
Hand cramps?
"His approach isn't very *nix-ish, it is very Windows-ish. It assumes you have a GUI."
Please read the article again, especially the part where Seth Nickell wrote "I *will* provide a way to boot into a "stripped down console mode" aka "single" for system recovery and backup, and a regular non-graphical boot for servers."
From what I can tell, SystemServices in and of itself only depends on D-BUS and libc. There are Python bindings for D-BUS, so that may make it easy to write a script for SystemServices using Python, but that's the extent of Python's relationship to SystemServices.
Copying myself from OSNews . . .
From http://fedora.redhat.com/about/name.html:
I wish Red Hat weren't so non-committal here, but does this mean that instead of CheapBytes selling Pink Tie, LinuxCD selling Blue Jacket, and OSDisc selling Red Tux, every third-party CD Vendor will just call it Fedora?
Because the red hat in the Red Hat logo is a fedora.
He said that God would be consistent with such a development of life, not that God indeed spurred such a development of life.
"But try to play a video file... oops, no media codec installed in the RH9 default distro. Hmmm... well, try to play an MP3 then."
Oh yes, this is a great argument against a corporate oriented distro. Gee! People can't use their workstations to look at media clips on company time.
Please. Red Hat chooses to leave certain feature out of their desktop, and it reflects on Linux desktops in general?
"They did loose the antitrust case did they not ?"
:]
No, MS won the antitrust case. All the government did was find MS guilty.
"Tolkien had very anti-technology undertones. He constantly refered to the dark clouds of Mordor, the decimation of the forests in Eisengard."
IIRC, that wasn't about industry so much as pointless destruction. The forests were being destroyed not even for the sake of creating lumber, but only to make waste and mess.
"Isn't this somewhat like extortion?"
Considering what we know of SCO's "evidence" against Linux, it's more like fraud: trying to use false pretense to get money.
"All I ask that they please write it in a language other than C or C++."
Please.
Yes, the world would arguably be a better place if applications were written in higher-level languages. But system-level stuff like operating system kernels? A relatively low-level language is required. Heck, some of the stuff that operating systems do requires assembly.
"The sad thing is Microsoft already has a bad reputation and nobody cares."
That's not quite true. It's more like "Microsoft has a bad reputation but a lot of people find it unfeasible to do business without MS." That's also less of an issue in markets where MS isn't entrenched (i.e. cell phones).
Right now, the only cash cows MS has are Windows and Office. Gee, wonder why?
"Typically in OSS security bugs are fixed within hours of the report. . . . If windows users transfer wholesale to Linux we'll just see the same problems over again."
Do you realize that you just contradicted yourself? You just identified a major difference between OSS and Windows--besides popularity--that affects security, yet concluded that if Linux became as popular as Windows, Linux would have the same problems.
"Not only desktop - a lot of military sites I have seen are running on IIS. SQL Server 2k is used also."
Yeah, but are those used for *important* things? Bear in mind that what the DOD counts as "important" may be more life-and-death stuff.
OpenLindows made me think of Sun's OpenWindows. Just imagine olvwm and all the various XView apps, and that menu that could be edited with a simple text editor.
Ok, maybe not.
"OpenOffice.org is non-commercial. It is not sold . . ."
Tell that to Red Hat and SuSE, who sell it as part of their distribution. Tell that to Lycoris and Lindows, who sell it as an add-on.
GPL'd software can be sold, legally. If OpenOffice cannot be legally sold, then it is not truly GPL'd, period.
You have to pay attention to details like this, or else they backfire later on.
"If a Linux hole is found, nearly ever user would update to fix the change, because the average user of Linux knows what putting it off may entail."
There are also two other issues:
1) Updates on Linux systems tend to be more robust. There is little worry that an updated package will break things.
2) Updates seldom require a reboot.
Also, "intelligent" and "smart" have subtle differences in connotation. If you want to describe someone who has a lot of "raw CPU power" but is a more ivory-tower type, you'll probably choose the word "intelligent" rather than "smart." If you are trying to imply that someone is savvy, "smart" is probably the word to use. That's not to say that "intelligent" and "smart" aren't synonyms, but even synonyms have slight shades of difference.