In what way? Your message is nothing but opinion, and not a very sound one. GNOME, among other things, is considerably more advanced in both components, media framework (gstreamer), internationalization and (especially) accessiblity. The latter three pieces are about to be re-used by the KDE project!! So much for GNOME being behind and less advanced.
Pot, kettle, black? You offer little besides opinion as well. A quick google search turns up articles like this. I've yet to find anything touting GNOME architecture over KDE.
That's not to say GNOME doesn't have many good points that KDE should really look into (gConf comes to mind), but having coded for both systems, I know which one looks nicer to me.
KDE developers know the game is up, and are now trying (as the article says) to clean up the filthy mess that is the KDE/Qt interface and make it usable... and at the same time scrabble hopelessly to use the XML, media framework and accessbility systems from GNOME.
The article also says that: "Luckily for KDE, they have the advantage over Gnome. It is easier for them to streamline, strip out and clean up their current interface than Gnome to get that level or architectural quality that KDE today enjoys.", KDE's DCOP, KParts, and better overall integration (compare Abiword and Gnumeric to KSpread and KWord. I prefer the former, but the latter are better integrated).
Huh? My point, if you bothered to read it instead of getting all excited and zealous, is that it costs nothing to write applications (say a word processor) for the GNOME desktop whatever license you choose to use for your app. Unlike Qt, which will cost you $3000 for every developer you have working on it... unless you want to use the GPL for your application.
Um... Yes, you can write any application you want for GNOME, BUT it has to obey the LGPL license terms. You can't choose whatever license you want. LGPL != BSD. Whilst less restrictive than GPL terms, it's still difficult to write proprietry applications on top of it. Qt, however, has a choice between GPL and proprietry. You just have to pay for the latter.
Who is talking about commercial funding? I'm talking about commercial deployment... which is money in the bank + support fees + guaranteed survival.
Guaranteed survival? So no commercial product ever flopped?
I did not say KDE is dead. I said it is dead for business use. No doubt a hardcore of zealot will continue to huddle around the creaky old project, but it has no future in the real world.
Nice wording, but you're not backing it up much. SUSE still uses KDE as it's primary desktop, Lindows does, Mandrake does as well. Redhat uses GNOME but that's the only major Linux distro I can think of.
Again, a statement with nothing at all to back it up. Perhaps you think repeating the same old meme "KDE is more advanced" will make it true.
Um, it is? Just look at the two systems. Compare them side by side. GNOME has many nice features, but it is behind KDE; if you look at them both running, you can see that. There's quite a few internet articles on it as well.
KDE runs on top of Qt. The Qt library can be made to run without X. Thus, KDE is not really tied to the X Window at all. If something better comes along, then it will be relatively trivial to swap KDE across.
Iraqi's killed in bombings to aid the overthrow of Saddam -- good or bad? The power vacuum left in Afghanistan after the Taliban -- good or bad? The end of the Taliban compared to the tyranny of local warlords -- good or bad? The fueling of anti-american fires by prolonged stay in Iraq -- good or bad? Israelis taking Palenstine land for proclaimed national security -- good or bad?
Many issues are very morally difficult to solve. As nice as it would be to have a world of blacks and whites, there's an awful lot of greys.
As the insightful AC points out, it was a slight typo. What I meant to say was that: Almost all modern terrorism against the US is a result of US foreign policy.
GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.
The KDE architecture is a lot further on than GNOME. Whatever the eye-candy, the engine that drives KDE does appear to be more advanced and better put together than GNOME. KDE is very well put together, and like the article says, once you've got that down, it's not too hard to streamline. GNOME will have a harder job getting to KDE's standards then KDE would have imitating GNOME's ease of use. If it even wants to. It's not like there has to be only one desktop for everyone.
KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license.
As opposed to GTK, which is fully LGPL, with no proprietry license. What was your point again?
TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.
Huh? The current copy of Qt is GPLed. TrollTech cannot retract that, even if they wanted to. If TrollTech stopped developing GPL Qt, then the KDE project would just fork the codebase. As others have said, the GPL is very legally secure.
As for all the other points, whilst I could argue that KDE has made headway into the business environment as well (Lindows, SuSE 9, and so forth), I don't see why I should bother. Open Source software does not need corperate funding to continue. If it did, Linux would never have gotten off the ground. Commercial backing can't hurt, but it's not necessary for a project, either.
Nor does a project die if another overtakes it. KDE is technologically ahead of GNOME, and has been ever since GNOME's creation. Does that stop people working on GNOME? Nope. Because the Linux desktop is a varied thing. Just because Windows gained a monopoly, doesn't mean that there has to be a desktop monopoly. I'd like greater inter-compatability between the two systems, but I don't see a need for there to be only one.
By problem you mean terrorists, right? Because their is no excuse to go around being a terrorist. They may have legitimate gripes, but a violent retalitation is usually not a solution.
I think you're missing his point. Terrorists should be brought to justing, yes, but the root problem is not the terrorists themselves, but the environment of US resentment that breeds them. Any "War on Terror" cannot be won by strong arm tactics, guns, tanks and bombs. It is won by solving the problems that create the terrorists in the first place.
What problem could we have solved that would have prevented Osama Bin Laden being a terrorist?
Are you joking? The US had a large hand in training much of the resistance force in Afghanistan, including Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), of which Osama was the head. Osama later split from MAK and established al-Qaida. So the US's efforts gave a lot toward Osama's current terror regime. It's also hard to be friendly toward a force that uses you to fight for them. The Afghanistan rebels were useful to the US as long as they fought the Soviets. When they didn't need them anymore, the US left, leaving Afghanistan in ruins and paving the way for the Taliban and worse.
According to Wikipedia, Osama's main beef with the US is it's support of Saudi Arabia monarchy, which, if you'll pardon a cliche, was largely supported due to it's oil reserves. Osama is, of course, a psychopath, but that doesn't mean that the US didn't have a hand in the creation of the terrorist leader we know today.
9/11 didn't occur because of something we did, it happened simply because of what we were. A successful, free, secular society.
Almost all modern terrorism is due to US foreign policy. It is not because terrorists "hate freedom". That is, franky an extremely naive view of the world, seperating people into blank and white views of "good" and "bad".
This War on Terror can be won and will be by acting decisively and crushing them all.
Even more naive. By "acting decisively and crushing them all" you only incite more people to harm the US. As a UK citizen, I've seen what happened when terrorism was tackled by force. It increased. Whilst terrorism must not be tolerated, a "War on Terror" is going to be as successful as the US "War on Drugs".
Well, if they can pull it through, sure why not. I just don't think the USA or the international community should get involved in any way.
So you're saying that Taiwan and China should be left to their own devices, and it doesn't matter who pulls through? If Taiwan fails, it will be because China exherted force upon the island. Unless you're equating might with right (a favourite subject of Herr Hitler), then you should agree that this is wrong.
If it is wrong to subject a people by force, then is it right to stand by whilst wrong-doings happen? Is inaction truly a moral defense, if you can do something about it?
If I had a loaded gun, and witnessed someone else murdering someone with a knife without interfering, would I be in the right? If I could stop a crime from happening, yet specifically chose not to, wouldn't that be immoral? Extending this, would it be wrong to extract the promise military assistance to Taiwan, to remove the deterrent and let China conquer Taiwan by force? Because that seems to be to be what you're saying.
If a robot can build another robot, then all it wouldn't really be worth much for a select few to keep the robots to themselves. When the day comes when robots can do all our work for us, then they'd obviously be complicated enough to repair themselves and create new copies. If there are more robots than are needed in the world, and robots can be produced, effectively, for nothing, then there's no economic motication for hording all these 'bots for oneself.
What if some benevolent person bought a robot and, after making sure it was legal to change it's software, commanded it to work for the betterment of humanity, creating more and more copies of itself. Perhaps the benevolent person could create a limited company as a front. That way the robot could do services, and deposit money in a bank account, and buy material, even if it has no rights itself.
There are problems with a world dependant on robots (Issac Asimov delved a lot into that subject), but if the robots are truly as advanced as we are, then I doubt there would be much of an economic problem.
I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a P4 3200 w/1024 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder.
Sure someone hasn't 0wned your box?:)
At home, on my Athlon 900 running Windows XP, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes.
Two minutes? Damn, looks like your Windows box is 0wned too. Takes me 10 seconds to copy a 20 meg file on my Athlon 1200 Linux box.
Hate to say this, but your boxen are some lucky skiddie's prize bitches.
Even vi is straining to keep up as I type this.
Wow. You actually took the time to learn Vi whilst simultaniously loathing Linux?
"Gaaah! Hate Linux! Must troll slashdot! But... will... learn... Vi. Escape-colon-double-you. What that mean? Graaah! Getting angriererer."
Open Source over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Cheaper systems? You get paid money to use some other OS? How much per copy? Because I could use some spare cash.
Play it online, or grab one of the numerous campaign modules availiable for NWN designed by players. The campaign that Bioware included in NWN struck me as more a showcase piece than the actual game. There are some very very good games out there. Just think of NWN as the engine to run them on:)
Similar thing happened with AT&T and BSD, IIRC. AT&T claimed that their code was in BSD. It went to court. It emerged that it was AT&T that had taken code from BSD, rather than the other way round. AT&T settled for an undisclosed amount.
Re:I do the same, with no expiration...
on
Real Security?
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Ditto here. Though I do change about some passwords every couple of years or so, but nothing really much. Expiry seems to me to be overrated for some things. If someone gets your password, then expiry isn't going to matter because they're already in your system. Only way it could matter is if they got a copy of/etc/shadow and tried brute forcing it starting with aaaaaaaa or whatever. Or intercepted an SSL stream and tried to brute force that. I can't really see that as too big an issue, really.
I'm calling this one. Let's see it. Also, for what it's worth, I never claimed Iraw had a damned thing to do with the twin towers. I think you have your countries and wars confused.
Um, well, the ball's in your court there. It's well known that the IRA had US backers. Has there been any evidence at all that the twin tower bombings had Iraqi backings? That was my point. I wasn't claiming anything more.
First, that's a blatantly insulting ethnicist statement, and shows that the problem doesn't lie 100% with the irish.
I was paraphrasing an irishman I know when he was describing his family to me. I was rather less blunt than he was:) - He didn't mean it as an insult, either. It was just an observation, and frankly, a very astute one. Anyone claiming that quite a few Irish don't have a fixation on ancient grudges are just deluding themselves.
And as you point out I am ignorant of the politics, but I *bet* that there are contigious regions of Irish catholics, probably those most near Ireland, in favor of splitting with the UK. Not my business or my problem, but you'd be wise to let them.
The majority of the Catholic population in Ireland wants independence. The problem is that Northern Ireland (which isn't part of the RoI) is two-thirds Protestant.
That doesn't have a damned thing to do with the price of diamonds in Sierra Leone. I'm talking about solving world problems outside your borders. Saying you made an economically united Europe to further your own economic goals really doesn't count.
And the EU isn't one country. Take Spain, for instance. That's somewhere outside my borders. EU membership, and large cash grants have transformed it within a generation. If you visited it before it joined the EU, and compared it to it's neighbours, you'd see the difference between then and now. Heh. I hope I'm not being nasty to the Spanish there. Nice people, but anyone needs a leg up if you're economy was basically rock-bottom.
It's wrong to think of the EU as a country. It isn't. Countries that join the EU get many benefits, and cash does get distributed. Why do you think the 10 new countries are clamouring for membership? Because it'll benefit them a lot.
Wow, that's some delusion of grandeur there.
Sorry? I must have not been paying much attention in history for that to slip by me. When I say "Nothing like the EU has ever been set up in the whole of human history", that is, to the best of my knowledge, factually accurate. How is it delusional, unless I am incorrect. And if I am incorrect, could you provide an example of when this has happened before? I'd be intrigued of another EU-like setup.
It's not about waging war, it's about ending genocide and furthering stability and self-determinism. Put it this way - what the hell has Europe done in the last 50 years for someone not in Europe? When has any European nation sent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its own to risk their lives for the freedom of people they've never met?
Well, there was an obscure conflict, 65 years ago, when some nasty nation invaded another nation, and Britain came to the aid of it's ally, sacrificing tens of thousands of young men, amongst casualties of women and children from tonnes of bombs that were dropped nightly.
It was, of course, World War II. The US joined WW2 in defence. Only when it was attacked, did it fight. Britain, and France for that matter, declared war to stand up for the people in Poland. People they had never met. Frankly, it rather surprises me that France has a reputation for cowardice when it declared war on a superior force to aid another nation.
Now, you tell me, when has the US sent "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its own to risk their lives for the freedom of people they've never met"? Vietnam comes to mind. Of course, the US lost that, though it might have done some good. WWII, maybe, but that was motivated by defence... Hmm, can'
Ht's far better for the U.S. and the world for the U.S. to maintain a strong military presence in Europe. History is replete with examples of how the Europeans cannot coexist peacefully for long.
Which is precisely why the EU was founded in the first place. It was originally designed to prevent another catastrophe from befalling Europe. Not through force, but through cooperation, open borders, and the strongest incentive; a single market. And so far, it's worked.
Yes, and I agree with you. Check the parent to my post. Perhaps I was being too subtle in my sarcasm, I suppose. Still, it's irritating that whoever who modded me as troll wasn't browsing at 0, otherwise they would have picked up the AC I was replying to. Oh well.
Next time I'll be sure to put big "SARCASM" notices up:)
Um... I suggest that people click on the parent link and note that I was actually using a form of humour known as "sarcasm". It may be refered to as the lowest form of wit, but obviously I need to explain despite this.
Some Irish-Americans, perhaps, acting as private citizens. That's like blaming Germany because Muslims living in Germany contributed heavily to Al-Queda. That doesn't fly.
Perhaps. But the US did had more to do with UK terrorism than Iraq had to do with bombing the twin towers.
Personally, I'd recommend allowing NI a referendum on joining Ireland, as that would solve the whole problem.
Of course! We'll do what the majority of people in Northern Ireland want, and then there'll be no more violence. Why didn't we think of that!
Except... Wait. We did. And over one hundred years ago. Oh well.
The problem with Irish politics, of which you are entirely ignorant, is that the majority of people living in Northern Ireland want to remain part of the UK. The minority (though a rather large minority) want to become a part of Ireland. Due largely to religious differences between the two, and the fact that the Irish can hold grudges for centuries, we can't just wave a magic wand and make it all right.
Ultimately, no country in Europe has done a damned thing outside its borders in 50 years, save sending a thousand troops or so to play soldier in UN-sanctioned excercises in pointlessness. Even in those conflicts, it's the US doing the real work while European armies police Red Cross shelters. European armies have been allowed to decay into make-work for older, under-skilled citizens, with the exception of the British army which has been somewhat well-maintained.
Yep, they've done absolutely nothing. Not one bit. Well, except create the second (soon to be the) largest single market in the world, and initiated an immense project of international cooperation that is unpreceeded in history. Nothing like the EU has ever been set up in the whole of human history. A collaberation of member states around a single market, and planned currency. It may not be perfect, but since no-one's done this before, and taking the incompetance of politicians into account, perhaps that can be forgiven.
No European country has gone out and blown up a lot of stuff in recent history, this is true. But is that really a good thing? Is the only way to mark history is to wage war?
Yes... But in today's climate, there aren't really any countries who would invade the EU, or could even consider the possibility of such. The only country that could be successful is the US, and I'd rather hope that they're not planning anything!
So, under a situation where one is pretty certain that no-one will invade for at least a generation or so, what use is keeping a big ol' army about the place? Better to spend the money on healthcare, no?
The US is simply asking for similar ability. Before just wholeheartedly thinking the US is evil in doing so, read some of the other posts here that are quite thought provoking.
As other posts have also pointed out, you can jam any EMF-based system, which includes Galileo. What the US is asking for is to be allowed to shut it off whenever it wants. If the US has permission to turn the EU system off, the EU should really have permission to do the same to the US.
Without the ability for the government to arrest citizens in secret and execute them without being held accountable, there's no telling what damage terrorist could do. If that's what it takes to keep the country safe then so be it. Don't blame the US, blame the fucking terrorists who created the climate.
Slashdot Mirror
In what way? Your message is nothing but opinion, and not a very sound one. GNOME, among other things, is considerably more advanced in both components, media framework (gstreamer), internationalization and (especially) accessiblity. The latter three pieces are about to be re-used by the KDE project!! So much for GNOME being behind and less advanced.
Pot, kettle, black? You offer little besides opinion as well. A quick google search turns up articles like this. I've yet to find anything touting GNOME architecture over KDE.
That's not to say GNOME doesn't have many good points that KDE should really look into (gConf comes to mind), but having coded for both systems, I know which one looks nicer to me.
KDE developers know the game is up, and are now trying (as the article says) to clean up the filthy mess that is the KDE/Qt interface and make it usable... and at the same time scrabble hopelessly to use the XML, media framework and accessbility systems from GNOME.
The article also says that: "Luckily for KDE, they have the advantage over Gnome. It is easier for them to streamline, strip out and clean up their current interface than Gnome to get that level or architectural quality that KDE today enjoys.", KDE's DCOP, KParts, and better overall integration (compare Abiword and Gnumeric to KSpread and KWord. I prefer the former, but the latter are better integrated).
Huh? My point, if you bothered to read it instead of getting all excited and zealous, is that it costs nothing to write applications (say a word processor) for the GNOME desktop whatever license you choose to use for your app. Unlike Qt, which will cost you $3000 for every developer you have working on it... unless you want to use the GPL for your application.
Um... Yes, you can write any application you want for GNOME, BUT it has to obey the LGPL license terms. You can't choose whatever license you want. LGPL != BSD. Whilst less restrictive than GPL terms, it's still difficult to write proprietry applications on top of it. Qt, however, has a choice between GPL and proprietry. You just have to pay for the latter.
Who is talking about commercial funding? I'm talking about commercial deployment... which is money in the bank + support fees + guaranteed survival.
Guaranteed survival? So no commercial product ever flopped?
I did not say KDE is dead. I said it is dead for business use. No doubt a hardcore of zealot will continue to huddle around the creaky old project, but it has no future in the real world.
Nice wording, but you're not backing it up much. SUSE still uses KDE as it's primary desktop, Lindows does, Mandrake does as well. Redhat uses GNOME but that's the only major Linux distro I can think of.
Again, a statement with nothing at all to back it up. Perhaps you think repeating the same old meme "KDE is more advanced" will make it true.
Um, it is? Just look at the two systems. Compare them side by side. GNOME has many nice features, but it is behind KDE; if you look at them both running, you can see that. There's quite a few internet articles on it as well.
KDE runs on top of Qt. The Qt library can be made to run without X. Thus, KDE is not really tied to the X Window at all. If something better comes along, then it will be relatively trivial to swap KDE across.
You're trolling, right? Let's see if I can name some terrorist groups that have nothing to do with US:
:/ - I meant all terrorism against the US.
An unfortunate typo
Oh, and the IRA did get a lot of it's money from US sources. But you are correct in that quite a lot of terrorism has zip to do with the US.
"Almost all modern terrorism is due to US foreign policy."
Oops! I meant:
"Almost all modern terrorism, against the US, is due to US foreign policy."
Iraqi's killed in bombings to aid the overthrow of Saddam -- good or bad? The power vacuum left in Afghanistan after the Taliban -- good or bad? The end of the Taliban compared to the tyranny of local warlords -- good or bad? The fueling of anti-american fires by prolonged stay in Iraq -- good or bad? Israelis taking Palenstine land for proclaimed national security -- good or bad?
Many issues are very morally difficult to solve. As nice as it would be to have a world of blacks and whites, there's an awful lot of greys.
As the insightful AC points out, it was a slight typo. What I meant to say was that: Almost all modern terrorism against the US is a result of US foreign policy.
GNOME has always been the commerical desktop of choice. It has long been focussed on getting the basics right and building from there... as opposed to the KDE Project, which is entirely aimed at pleasing the slashdot peanut gallery with pointless eye-candy. KDE features are thrown into the mix with little or no regard for usability, or even good taste. The end result is disasterous, as can be seen by anyone unforunate enough to be forced into using it.
The KDE architecture is a lot further on than GNOME. Whatever the eye-candy, the engine that drives KDE does appear to be more advanced and better put together than GNOME. KDE is very well put together, and like the article says, once you've got that down, it's not too hard to streamline. GNOME will have a harder job getting to KDE's standards then KDE would have imitating GNOME's ease of use. If it even wants to. It's not like there has to be only one desktop for everyone.
KDE is extremely expensive to develop for, unless you intend to produce GPL software. TrollTech, the owners of KDE and Qt, license the X11 version of their Qt toolkit under the GPL. This forces anyone wanting to develop software built on top of it (including KDE), to be (L)GPL licensed -- or pay TrollTech $3000 for every developer you have working on the application to purchase a commercial license.
As opposed to GTK, which is fully LGPL, with no proprietry license. What was your point again?
TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by companies hostile to Free software and good corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the laughable FreeQt agreements.
Huh? The current copy of Qt is GPLed. TrollTech cannot retract that, even if they wanted to. If TrollTech stopped developing GPL Qt, then the KDE project would just fork the codebase. As others have said, the GPL is very legally secure.
As for all the other points, whilst I could argue that KDE has made headway into the business environment as well (Lindows, SuSE 9, and so forth), I don't see why I should bother. Open Source software does not need corperate funding to continue. If it did, Linux would never have gotten off the ground. Commercial backing can't hurt, but it's not necessary for a project, either.
Nor does a project die if another overtakes it. KDE is technologically ahead of GNOME, and has been ever since GNOME's creation. Does that stop people working on GNOME? Nope. Because the Linux desktop is a varied thing. Just because Windows gained a monopoly, doesn't mean that there has to be a desktop monopoly. I'd like greater inter-compatability between the two systems, but I don't see a need for there to be only one.
You've missed the point entirely.
By problem you mean terrorists, right? Because their is no excuse to go around being a terrorist. They may have legitimate gripes, but a violent retalitation is usually not a solution.
I think you're missing his point. Terrorists should be brought to justing, yes, but the root problem is not the terrorists themselves, but the environment of US resentment that breeds them. Any "War on Terror" cannot be won by strong arm tactics, guns, tanks and bombs. It is won by solving the problems that create the terrorists in the first place.
What problem could we have solved that would have prevented Osama Bin Laden being a terrorist?
Are you joking? The US had a large hand in training much of the resistance force in Afghanistan, including Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), of which Osama was the head. Osama later split from MAK and established al-Qaida. So the US's efforts gave a lot toward Osama's current terror regime. It's also hard to be friendly toward a force that uses you to fight for them. The Afghanistan rebels were useful to the US as long as they fought the Soviets. When they didn't need them anymore, the US left, leaving Afghanistan in ruins and paving the way for the Taliban and worse.
According to Wikipedia, Osama's main beef with the US is it's support of Saudi Arabia monarchy, which, if you'll pardon a cliche, was largely supported due to it's oil reserves. Osama is, of course, a psychopath, but that doesn't mean that the US didn't have a hand in the creation of the terrorist leader we know today.
9/11 didn't occur because of something we did, it happened simply because of what we were. A successful, free, secular society.
Almost all modern terrorism is due to US foreign policy. It is not because terrorists "hate freedom". That is, franky an extremely naive view of the world, seperating people into blank and white views of "good" and "bad".
This War on Terror can be won and will be by acting decisively and crushing them all.
Even more naive. By "acting decisively and crushing them all" you only incite more people to harm the US. As a UK citizen, I've seen what happened when terrorism was tackled by force. It increased. Whilst terrorism must not be tolerated, a "War on Terror" is going to be as successful as the US "War on Drugs".
Are you a troll, or just incredibly uninformed?
Well, if they can pull it through, sure why not. I just don't think the USA or the international community should get involved in any way.
So you're saying that Taiwan and China should be left to their own devices, and it doesn't matter who pulls through? If Taiwan fails, it will be because China exherted force upon the island. Unless you're equating might with right (a favourite subject of Herr Hitler), then you should agree that this is wrong.
If it is wrong to subject a people by force, then is it right to stand by whilst wrong-doings happen? Is inaction truly a moral defense, if you can do something about it?
If I had a loaded gun, and witnessed someone else murdering someone with a knife without interfering, would I be in the right? If I could stop a crime from happening, yet specifically chose not to, wouldn't that be immoral? Extending this, would it be wrong to extract the promise military assistance to Taiwan, to remove the deterrent and let China conquer Taiwan by force? Because that seems to be to be what you're saying.
If a robot can build another robot, then all it wouldn't really be worth much for a select few to keep the robots to themselves. When the day comes when robots can do all our work for us, then they'd obviously be complicated enough to repair themselves and create new copies. If there are more robots than are needed in the world, and robots can be produced, effectively, for nothing, then there's no economic motication for hording all these 'bots for oneself.
What if some benevolent person bought a robot and, after making sure it was legal to change it's software, commanded it to work for the betterment of humanity, creating more and more copies of itself. Perhaps the benevolent person could create a limited company as a front. That way the robot could do services, and deposit money in a bank account, and buy material, even if it has no rights itself.
There are problems with a world dependant on robots (Issac Asimov delved a lot into that subject), but if the robots are truly as advanced as we are, then I doubt there would be much of an economic problem.
I wasn't being serious. As you notice, the subject of my post is "troll food", rather suggesting I'm aware of the trollish nature of the AC :)
I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Linux box (a P4 3200 w/1024 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder.
:)
Sure someone hasn't 0wned your box?
At home, on my Athlon 900 running Windows XP, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Linux box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes.
Two minutes? Damn, looks like your Windows box is 0wned too. Takes me 10 seconds to copy a 20 meg file on my Athlon 1200 Linux box.
Hate to say this, but your boxen are some lucky skiddie's prize bitches.
Even vi is straining to keep up as I type this.
Wow. You actually took the time to learn Vi whilst simultaniously loathing Linux?
"Gaaah! Hate Linux! Must troll slashdot! But... will... learn... Vi. Escape-colon-double-you. What that mean? Graaah! Getting angriererer."
Open Source over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Cheaper systems? You get paid money to use some other OS? How much per copy? Because I could use some spare cash.
Play it online, or grab one of the numerous campaign modules availiable for NWN designed by players. The campaign that Bioware included in NWN struck me as more a showcase piece than the actual game. There are some very very good games out there. Just think of NWN as the engine to run them on :)
Similar thing happened with AT&T and BSD, IIRC. AT&T claimed that their code was in BSD. It went to court. It emerged that it was AT&T that had taken code from BSD, rather than the other way round. AT&T settled for an undisclosed amount.
Ditto here. Though I do change about some passwords every couple of years or so, but nothing really much. Expiry seems to me to be overrated for some things. If someone gets your password, then expiry isn't going to matter because they're already in your system. Only way it could matter is if they got a copy of /etc/shadow and tried brute forcing it starting with aaaaaaaa or whatever. Or intercepted an SSL stream and tried to brute force that. I can't really see that as too big an issue, really.
I'm calling this one. Let's see it. Also, for what it's worth, I never claimed Iraw had a damned thing to do with the twin towers. I think you have your countries and wars confused.
:) - He didn't mean it as an insult, either. It was just an observation, and frankly, a very astute one. Anyone claiming that quite a few Irish don't have a fixation on ancient grudges are just deluding themselves.
Um, well, the ball's in your court there. It's well known that the IRA had US backers. Has there been any evidence at all that the twin tower bombings had Iraqi backings? That was my point. I wasn't claiming anything more.
First, that's a blatantly insulting ethnicist statement, and shows that the problem doesn't lie 100% with the irish.
I was paraphrasing an irishman I know when he was describing his family to me. I was rather less blunt than he was
And as you point out I am ignorant of the politics, but I *bet* that there are contigious regions of Irish catholics, probably those most near Ireland, in favor of splitting with the UK. Not my business or my problem, but you'd be wise to let them.
The majority of the Catholic population in Ireland wants independence. The problem is that Northern Ireland (which isn't part of the RoI) is two-thirds Protestant.
That doesn't have a damned thing to do with the price of diamonds in Sierra Leone. I'm talking about solving world problems outside your borders. Saying you made an economically united Europe to further your own economic goals really doesn't count.
And the EU isn't one country. Take Spain, for instance. That's somewhere outside my borders. EU membership, and large cash grants have transformed it within a generation. If you visited it before it joined the EU, and compared it to it's neighbours, you'd see the difference between then and now. Heh. I hope I'm not being nasty to the Spanish there. Nice people, but anyone needs a leg up if you're economy was basically rock-bottom.
It's wrong to think of the EU as a country. It isn't. Countries that join the EU get many benefits, and cash does get distributed. Why do you think the 10 new countries are clamouring for membership? Because it'll benefit them a lot.
Wow, that's some delusion of grandeur there.
Sorry? I must have not been paying much attention in history for that to slip by me. When I say "Nothing like the EU has ever been set up in the whole of human history", that is, to the best of my knowledge, factually accurate. How is it delusional, unless I am incorrect. And if I am incorrect, could you provide an example of when this has happened before? I'd be intrigued of another EU-like setup.
It's not about waging war, it's about ending genocide and furthering stability and self-determinism. Put it this way - what the hell has Europe done in the last 50 years for someone not in Europe? When has any European nation sent hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its own to risk their lives for the freedom of people they've never met?
Well, there was an obscure conflict, 65 years ago, when some nasty nation invaded another nation, and Britain came to the aid of it's ally, sacrificing tens of thousands of young men, amongst casualties of women and children from tonnes of bombs that were dropped nightly.
It was, of course, World War II. The US joined WW2 in defence. Only when it was attacked, did it fight. Britain, and France for that matter, declared war to stand up for the people in Poland. People they had never met. Frankly, it rather surprises me that France has a reputation for cowardice when it declared war on a superior force to aid another nation.
Now, you tell me, when has the US sent "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of its own to risk their lives for the freedom of people they've never met"? Vietnam comes to mind. Of course, the US lost that, though it might have done some good. WWII, maybe, but that was motivated by defence... Hmm, can'
Ht's far better for the U.S. and the world for the U.S. to maintain a strong military presence in Europe. History is replete with examples of how the Europeans cannot coexist peacefully for long.
Which is precisely why the EU was founded in the first place. It was originally designed to prevent another catastrophe from befalling Europe. Not through force, but through cooperation, open borders, and the strongest incentive; a single market. And so far, it's worked.
Yes, and I agree with you. Check the parent to my post. Perhaps I was being too subtle in my sarcasm, I suppose. Still, it's irritating that whoever who modded me as troll wasn't browsing at 0, otherwise they would have picked up the AC I was replying to. Oh well.
:)
Next time I'll be sure to put big "SARCASM" notices up
Um... I suggest that people click on the parent link and note that I was actually using a form of humour known as "sarcasm". It may be refered to as the lowest form of wit, but obviously I need to explain despite this.
Perhaps I could put <sarcasm> tags around it?
Some Irish-Americans, perhaps, acting as private citizens. That's like blaming Germany because Muslims living in Germany contributed heavily to Al-Queda. That doesn't fly.
Perhaps. But the US did had more to do with UK terrorism than Iraq had to do with bombing the twin towers.
Personally, I'd recommend allowing NI a referendum on joining Ireland, as that would solve the whole problem.
Of course! We'll do what the majority of people in Northern Ireland want, and then there'll be no more violence. Why didn't we think of that!
Except... Wait. We did. And over one hundred years ago. Oh well.
The problem with Irish politics, of which you are entirely ignorant, is that the majority of people living in Northern Ireland want to remain part of the UK. The minority (though a rather large minority) want to become a part of Ireland. Due largely to religious differences between the two, and the fact that the Irish can hold grudges for centuries, we can't just wave a magic wand and make it all right.
Ultimately, no country in Europe has done a damned thing outside its borders in 50 years, save sending a thousand troops or so to play soldier in UN-sanctioned excercises in pointlessness. Even in those conflicts, it's the US doing the real work while European armies police Red Cross shelters. European armies have been allowed to decay into make-work for older, under-skilled citizens, with the exception of the British army which has been somewhat well-maintained.
Yep, they've done absolutely nothing. Not one bit. Well, except create the second (soon to be the) largest single market in the world, and initiated an immense project of international cooperation that is unpreceeded in history. Nothing like the EU has ever been set up in the whole of human history. A collaberation of member states around a single market, and planned currency. It may not be perfect, but since no-one's done this before, and taking the incompetance of politicians into account, perhaps that can be forgiven.
No European country has gone out and blown up a lot of stuff in recent history, this is true. But is that really a good thing? Is the only way to mark history is to wage war?
Yes... But in today's climate, there aren't really any countries who would invade the EU, or could even consider the possibility of such. The only country that could be successful is the US, and I'd rather hope that they're not planning anything!
So, under a situation where one is pretty certain that no-one will invade for at least a generation or so, what use is keeping a big ol' army about the place? Better to spend the money on healthcare, no?
The US is simply asking for similar ability. Before just wholeheartedly thinking the US is evil in doing so, read some of the other posts here that are quite thought provoking.
As other posts have also pointed out, you can jam any EMF-based system, which includes Galileo. What the US is asking for is to be allowed to shut it off whenever it wants. If the US has permission to turn the EU system off, the EU should really have permission to do the same to the US.
Without the ability for the government to arrest citizens in secret and execute them without being held accountable, there's no telling what damage terrorist could do. If that's what it takes to keep the country safe then so be it. Don't blame the US, blame the fucking terrorists who created the climate.