They were practically the only large news organization that did not bow either to the rabid hawks (CNN, FOX,...) or the equally unbalanced doves (Deutsche Welle, French RFI and others) during the Gulf War II.
From all your knee-jerk Bush bashing you've probably failed to notice that Bush has recently made some exceedingly smart decisions regarding science. Stem-cell research aside (which has grave and ambiguous moral problems), he has excelled by initiating a vast hydrogen fuel program that's in the same scale as Bill Clinton's unprecedented national nanotechnology initiative. He has also been diverting funds to NASA for advancing interplanetary exploration.
highly paid, proffessional engineers who design and upgrade this car every year MAKE IT POSSIBLE to upgrade fuel efficiency by 25% without sacrificing affordability?
Ah, the sweet smell of professional elitism in the morning. People with a degree may still be completely incompetent.
Ah. That's a nice, politically correct goal which gives all the ecofreaks a warm and fuzzy feeling but has nothing to do with the reality. Glad to see that the University of Wisconsin is so eager to appease the econazi crowd.
I'm working on a research project to uncover Microsoft's professional forum poster program, and
Ah. A research project. A great euphemism for collecting a black list of people who have opinions you don't like.
What do you care if Microsoft hires people to advocate their products or philosophy in public forums?
I was once infatuated with the "free software" and GPL, but the more time I spent with that crowd, the more I became to realize that their underlying philosophy was fundamentally anti-corporate, socialist and had typical characteristics of a cult. The last point was also the last straw for me.
It's either their way, all the way, or the high way. Rational discussion is impossible due to hysterical groupthink resembling that of a communist totalitarian or a theocratic state, egocentric reasoning ("closed software is eeevil because it doesn't let us steal the code!"), fondness to the Appeal to Authority logic ("closed software is eeevil because RMS said so!") and cults of personality of RMS in particular.
Fundamentally this attitude stems from nothing else than your run-of-the-mill blue-collar envy of those who are financially successful and who have actually had the courage to risk their reputation and fortune in business.
In summary, people like you have way too much free time in your hands if you obsess on people who may or may not be astroturfing for Microsoft.
Indeed. StarOffice/OpenOffice is useless in real life office work, because it does not export/import Word or Excel files 100% reliably.
And as far as the PDF conversion go, if you really are such a cheapskate that you don't want to pay for a quality product like Adobe Distiller, you can always use GhostView/GhostScript.
Print the Word document into a PS file, open it with GhostView and export it as PDF.
I was once infatuated with the "free software" and GPL, but the more time I spent with that crowd, the more I became to realize that their underlying philosophy was fundamentally anti-corporate, socialist and had typical characteristics of a cult.
It's either their way, all the way, or the high way. Rational discussion is made impossible by hysterical groupthink resembling that of a communist totalitarian state, egocentric reasoning ("closed software is eeevil because it doesn't let us steal the code!"), fondness to the Appeal to Authority logic ("closed software is eeevil because RMS said so!") and cults of personality of Linus, RMS and ESR.
As far as I can see, this attitude stems fundamentally from your run-of-the-mill blue-collar envy of those who are financially successful and who have actually had the courage to risk their reputation and fortune in business.
That's unlikely since even the actors had hard time understanding the plot in Eps. I and II. Why? Because of the excessive use of blue/green/whatever screens during filming.
You could have stopped right there, because that is exactly be the point all religions throughout the human history have made. Congratulations. You made your point.
human beings as if they were cars which you can rip apart and install new spare parts or hell make one from scratch not only this is inferior trivial thinking without insight but also insulting
I'm sorry if I'm insulting your sense of being so special. Well, actually I'm not. It's you who should stop thinking that the human race is the pinnacle of the animal kind (oops, did I insult you again by suggesting that humans are animals?). Religions and religious people have already had to give up the idea of Earth as the center of the universe. It's about time the silly notion that a god made us in his image.
I don't quite understand why you have a problem with the idea of human bodies as physical objects that can be ripped apart and fixed, because that's what we are. Fragile sacks of mostly water and utterly imperfect. Ask a doctor how well the human diaphragm, eyes and the pulmonary system actually perform in comparison to how they could have been built better. Not well. God didn't create us and evolution is clearly crawling towards perfection.
There's plenty of improvements we can make ourselves - unless we are again held back by backward religous thinking.
ok fine I will use your logic... you can't create a human being.
You could have stopped right there, because that is exactly be the point all religions throughout the human history have made. Congratulations. You made your point.
human beings as if they were cars which you can rip apart and install new spare parts or hell make one from scratch not only this is inferior trivial thinking without insight but also insulting
I'm sorry if I'm insulting your sense of being so special. Well, actually I'm not. It's you who should stop thinking that the human race is the pinnacle of the animal kind (oops, did I insult you again by suggesting that humans are animals?). Religions and religious people have already had to give up the idea of Earth as the center of the universe. It's about time the silly notion that a god made us in his image.
crawling towards perfection.
There's plenty of improvements we can make ourselves - unless we are again held back by backward religous thinking.
Yet. Once people were dying of diseases that can be easily cured today. A stopped heart can be restarted, a damaged heart can be replaced. In near future we can grow new replacement organs. All this has required a lot of research. No thanks to religions. I don't see any reason why the creation of a sentient human being would be beyond our capabilities.
as much as you cant prove the opposite
Your logic sucks. You can't prove a negative. You can, however, prove positive. Yet no-one has been able to prove god. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
'Just because there is no central licensing body it doesn't make it right to take lyrics and publish them without permission.' says Sarah Faulder of the MPA.
In other words: "If something is not explicitly allowed by the law, it must be illegal".
With SMP, I can put mathematica onto a processor of its own
Assuming you can tie a process to one particular CPU. You can do this on Solaris and TruUnix, but neither Linux or *BSD has the processor affinity feature.
No, no, no! For the love of God, keep RMS locked in the basement!
He is an idealist, a true believer, who's incapable of a compromise. Yet, all professional politics is about achieving a consensus between all parties.
Any politican would categorize RMS as a "crackpot loony that should be completely ignored" in a second he opens his mouth.
I doubt you would -- at least after spending 10+ years of your time and taking shitloads of student loan to get your PhD.
people have come to see unpayed work as unrewarded work
Any idea why people in general consider unpaid work as unrewarding work? I bet that by the time you hit your 30s and after working yourself to death for your degree, you'll realize that it really sucks to live in a crappy apartment in a crime-infested neighbourhood, eat cheap beans every day and take your laundry to an all-night laundromat because you cannot afford any better.
Asking for a better life is not selfish. You have studied hard and you contribute to the world by researching better drugs -- all you ask is a reward. Feeling good about helping people to get over AIDS or SARS does not magically change those slimy cold beans into a delicious meal.
The world is not a perfect place. In this case you can choose from two alternatives: 1) you encourage drug research by allowing the companies to make profit, thus saving at least some lives, or 2) you take the idealistic no-profit course, slowly kill the drug industry, the poor people AND the people who otherwise could have afforded to pay for the drugs and survive.
I can tell you were funding partly *should* come from... goverment funding
Ok. That might work in a way. I know that there are brilliant scientists working on a piss-poor government pay for personal reasons (ideology, preference for academic environment, etc.) and they would contribute to the drug development. However, many other brilliant researchers would see the government funded drug research as both an academic and financial dead-end and would simply choose another field where their salary is more in line with the personal and financial investments they have had to make to get where they are.
and resources given freely by companies, because those should see that finding a cure and keeping it cheap is more important than making a profit.
A company that does not aim to make profit and gives away its product is a dead company: again no drugs, more dead people.
I can see a clear parallel in your thinking between open source software development and drug research. Well, it just doesn't work like that in the latter case. Software is ideas. Drugs are concrete. You have personnel costs (or would you be willing to work for free?), infrastructure costs (any idea how much an R&D lab costs?) and trial costs (it may take 10 years for a drug to get from R&D stage to marketing).
Slashdot Mirror
They were practically the only large news organization that did not bow either to the rabid hawks (CNN, FOX, ...) or the equally unbalanced doves (Deutsche Welle, French RFI and others) during the Gulf War II.
From all your knee-jerk Bush bashing you've probably failed to notice that Bush has recently made some exceedingly smart decisions regarding science. Stem-cell research aside (which has grave and ambiguous moral problems), he has excelled by initiating a vast hydrogen fuel program that's in the same scale as Bill Clinton's unprecedented national nanotechnology initiative. He has also been diverting funds to NASA for advancing interplanetary exploration.
Ah, the sweet smell of professional elitism in the morning. People with a degree may still be completely incompetent.
Ah. That's a nice, politically correct goal which gives all the ecofreaks a warm and fuzzy feeling but has nothing to do with the reality. Glad to see that the University of Wisconsin is so eager to appease the econazi crowd.
Ah. A research project. A great euphemism for collecting a black list of people who have opinions you don't like.
What do you care if Microsoft hires people to advocate their products or philosophy in public forums?
I was once infatuated with the "free software" and GPL, but the more time I spent with that crowd, the more I became to realize that their underlying philosophy was fundamentally anti-corporate, socialist and had typical characteristics of a cult. The last point was also the last straw for me.
It's either their way, all the way, or the high way. Rational discussion is impossible due to hysterical groupthink resembling that of a communist totalitarian or a theocratic state, egocentric reasoning ("closed software is eeevil because it doesn't let us steal the code!"), fondness to the Appeal to Authority logic ("closed software is eeevil because RMS said so!") and cults of personality of RMS in particular.
Fundamentally this attitude stems from nothing else than your run-of-the-mill blue-collar envy of those who are financially successful and who have actually had the courage to risk their reputation and fortune in business.
In summary, people like you have way too much free time in your hands if you obsess on people who may or may not be astroturfing for Microsoft.
Get a real job - just like Linus did.
And as far as the PDF conversion go, if you really are such a cheapskate that you don't want to pay for a quality product like Adobe Distiller, you can always use GhostView/GhostScript.
Print the Word document into a PS file, open it with GhostView and export it as PDF.
I was once infatuated with the "free software" and GPL, but the more time I spent with that crowd, the more I became to realize that their underlying philosophy was fundamentally anti-corporate, socialist and had typical characteristics of a cult.
It's either their way, all the way, or the high way. Rational discussion is made impossible by hysterical groupthink resembling that of a communist totalitarian state, egocentric reasoning ("closed software is eeevil because it doesn't let us steal the code!"), fondness to the Appeal to Authority logic ("closed software is eeevil because RMS said so!") and cults of personality of Linus, RMS and ESR.
As far as I can see, this attitude stems fundamentally from your run-of-the-mill blue-collar envy of those who are financially successful and who have actually had the courage to risk their reputation and fortune in business.
That's unlikely since even the actors had hard time understanding the plot in Eps. I and II. Why? Because of the excessive use of blue/green/whatever screens during filming.
So?
There's much more to the Open Source than the fundamentalist GPL movement.
That's what they said about the Titanic too.
Makes you wonder...
By 2880 we will have developed amazing technology such as asteroid repellent beams, fusion and flying cars.
stop thinking
You could have stopped right there, because that is exactly be the point all religions throughout the human history have made. Congratulations. You made your point.
human beings as if they were cars which you can rip apart and install new spare parts or hell make one from scratch not only this is inferior trivial thinking without insight but also insulting
I'm sorry if I'm insulting your sense of being so special. Well, actually I'm not. It's you who should stop thinking that the human race is the pinnacle of the animal kind (oops, did I insult you again by suggesting that humans are animals?). Religions and religious people have already had to give up the idea of Earth as the center of the universe. It's about time the silly notion that a god made us in his image.
I don't quite understand why you have a problem with the idea of human bodies as physical objects that can be ripped apart and fixed, because that's what we are. Fragile sacks of mostly water and utterly imperfect. Ask a doctor how well the human diaphragm, eyes and the pulmonary system actually perform in comparison to how they could have been built better. Not well. God didn't create us and evolution is clearly crawling towards perfection.
There's plenty of improvements we can make ourselves - unless we are again held back by backward religous thinking.
ok fine I will use your logic... you can't create a human being.
In time we will.
You could have stopped right there, because that is exactly be the point all religions throughout the human history have made. Congratulations. You made your point.
human beings as if they were cars which you can rip apart and install new spare parts or hell make one from scratch not only this is inferior trivial thinking without insight but also insulting
I'm sorry if I'm insulting your sense of being so special. Well, actually I'm not. It's you who should stop thinking that the human race is the pinnacle of the animal kind (oops, did I insult you again by suggesting that humans are animals?). Religions and religious people have already had to give up the idea of Earth as the center of the universe. It's about time the silly notion that a god made us in his image.
crawling towards perfection.
There's plenty of improvements we can make ourselves - unless we are again held back by backward religous thinking.
And before you smart-alecs reply, that should say: "artificial creation". Not the natural way.
Yes, and we are thoroughly enjoying the play written by your sadistic puppetmaster.
we certainly can't give life to something dead
Yet. Once people were dying of diseases that can be easily cured today. A stopped heart can be restarted, a damaged heart can be replaced. In near future we can grow new replacement organs. All this has required a lot of research. No thanks to religions. I don't see any reason why the creation of a sentient human being would be beyond our capabilities.
as much as you cant prove the opposite
Your logic sucks. You can't prove a negative. You can, however, prove positive. Yet no-one has been able to prove god. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.
"It won't be long, mark my words. The time has come for the revenge of the geeks. Oh boy!"
In other words: "If something is not explicitly allowed by the law, it must be illegal".
That's nice reasoning.
Cram 20 blades in a 6U box with a lot of fans to help it keep cool and reserve one 1U case for a RAID array...
Assuming you can tie a process to one particular CPU. You can do this on Solaris and TruUnix, but neither Linux or *BSD has the processor affinity feature.
I don't see any reason why universities cannot patent their research and effectively place it in the "public domain" by not requesting royalities.
He is an idealist, a true believer, who's incapable of a compromise. Yet, all professional politics is about achieving a consensus between all parties.
Any politican would categorize RMS as a "crackpot loony that should be completely ignored" in a second he opens his mouth.
I doubt you would -- at least after spending 10+ years of your time and taking shitloads of student loan to get your PhD.
people have come to see unpayed work as unrewarded work
Any idea why people in general consider unpaid work as unrewarding work? I bet that by the time you hit your 30s and after working yourself to death for your degree, you'll realize that it really sucks to live in a crappy apartment in a crime-infested neighbourhood, eat cheap beans every day and take your laundry to an all-night laundromat because you cannot afford any better.
Asking for a better life is not selfish. You have studied hard and you contribute to the world by researching better drugs -- all you ask is a reward. Feeling good about helping people to get over AIDS or SARS does not magically change those slimy cold beans into a delicious meal.
"Cutting a Canada deal" is a slightly different matter than allowing a worldwide breach of your patent rights.
The world is not a perfect place. In this case you can choose from two alternatives: 1) you encourage drug research by allowing the companies to make profit, thus saving at least some lives, or 2) you take the idealistic no-profit course, slowly kill the drug industry, the poor people AND the people who otherwise could have afforded to pay for the drugs and survive.
I can tell you were funding partly *should* come from... goverment funding
Ok. That might work in a way. I know that there are brilliant scientists working on a piss-poor government pay for personal reasons (ideology, preference for academic environment, etc.) and they would contribute to the drug development. However, many other brilliant researchers would see the government funded drug research as both an academic and financial dead-end and would simply choose another field where their salary is more in line with the personal and financial investments they have had to make to get where they are.
and resources given freely by companies, because those should see that finding a cure and keeping it cheap is more important than making a profit.
A company that does not aim to make profit and gives away its product is a dead company: again no drugs, more dead people.
I can see a clear parallel in your thinking between open source software development and drug research. Well, it just doesn't work like that in the latter case. Software is ideas. Drugs are concrete. You have personnel costs (or would you be willing to work for free?), infrastructure costs (any idea how much an R&D lab costs?) and trial costs (it may take 10 years for a drug to get from R&D stage to marketing).