The point is that, as a single individual, he has astounding control over that one thing: Linux. And that one thing, Linux, has an astounding amount of influence in the world right now.
Linux is essential to IBM's current marketing strategy. That means Linus has influence on IBM's marketing and marketshare. Linux is MicroSoft's top threat. That mean's Linus is influential in the competing with one of the top companies in the world.
Cities and countries are talking about switching over to Linux (and I don't mean just open-source software in general). That mean's Linus is influential with many governments.
Novell has a lot riding on Linux. That mean's Linus is influential with the future of Novell. RedHat, Apache, MySQL, KDE, Mandrake, and many other organizations and communities have their intrests tightly tied with Linux's results. That means Linus is influential with those organizations.
Groups like Debian base some of their decisions on what does and does not go into Linus's kernel tree, which means Linus is influential with everyone who is a part of those groups.
Although his influence in any one place is small, Linus has a very large influence overall.
Yes, it obviously works fine for land, which is why so much private land is still preserved and pollution doesn't run rampant in industry owned areas. I especially love how clean things are when even the privately owned land is not carefully regulated. I mean, I go down for a dip near the coal plant every weekend with the kids because it's just so damn safe.
By the best of both worlds, did you mean they also consume less power like an LCD does and don't cause a piercing electronic hum like a CRT does, or did you not exactly mean the best of both worlds?
Won't this just do wonders for the economy of some neighboring state that lets people easily buy cars and get them registered and everything, what with the full faith and credit clause?
OpenGroupware.org is coming along. It's not there yet, but it is coming. And, as I'm sure you can tell by the name, it is designed to drop right in beside OpenOffice
OpenGroupware actually is just making a server, but it has working clients for: Outlook, Evolution, Mozilla Calendar, iCal, Kontact, generic web-browsers, and generic weddav clients. It does already work and I'm fairly sure they're doing the 1.0 alphas right now.
Oh, and if you can't find their webpage on your own, you probably wouldn't have wanted to read it anyway.
The CIA gives a variety of possible scenarios in all cases. The Bush administration chose to use the worst case scenario EVERY TIME as their basis for going to war. The CIA's most likely scenario was in fact correct.
"If the FCC had to get congress to put their heads together and pass something (house and senate) every time they wanted to make a decision, they would never get anywhere. The IRS does it's job without congress pulling every puppet-string, while it looks like the CIA may need a little congressional intervention."
Don't be suckered by the press. The IRS doesn't do its job. The IRS is hugely understaffed and underbudget and tax fraud is rampant, yet the media doesn't say much about that. However, the CIA gets a bad rap because they gave accurate information to the administration about the situation in Iraq and were ignored, because they only gave a fairly good report about how 9/11 would happen and weren't given enough funding or freedom to do anything about it, and because they do a generally fairly good job until the administration orders them to stop.
If you are trying to create icons with those tools, you have a basic misunderstanding of the medium.
Photoshopping is for editing, well, photos. It's fine also as a finishing tool for icons that are already made.
Maya is used for making 3D models, which is almost always overkill for an icon. (I've never used Lightwave, but I recall it being a 3D app as well).
What you need is a vector graphics editor. I would have to recommend Adobe Illustrator myself, although Inkscape is coming along quite well (and is free, so start there if you just want to see what I'm talking about). As for Macromedia Freehand, it seems to be a good program. However, I've always found it awkward (many will disagree) and at the school where I work it has incredibly many printing errors, so I can't really say.
And, beyond all that (as others have said) the key problem is most likely that you are an amatuer, not a professional. So, take an art course. Just go to a local college and sign up for a 2D design course of some sort.
Yeah, we can already fly faster than their planes. Soon, though, we might be able to fly faster than their missiles. For that matter, we'll be able to fly faster than their bullets. Consider that the railguns the US is planning for its frigates have a muzzle velocity of mach 7.5. I think going mach 10 could come in real handy.
If you read the article, you would know that it was in complete disagreement as well. The article is claiming that this idea of global cities being the centralization of a command-and-control structure is failing to notice the the command-and-control structure is being inherently undermined, delegitematizing the entire idea.
The article points to blogs, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, copyleft, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and several other items as examples of how bottom-up creation is replacing top-down.
The article quotes Thomas Malone in claiming that society is moving from "command-and-control to coordinate-and-cultivate." That is, rather than actually being in charge (Bill Gates setting up Microsoft) the leader only directs (Linus Torvalds leading Linux).
Initially, it would seem that such a decentralized system would be so disorganized that it would not function effeciently, but this ignores much sociological and psychological evidence on three important issues: motivation, agreeability, and capability.
Motivation: Intrinsic motivation is always stronger than extrinsic motivation. If the motivation is a genuine personal desire (fun), it is always more effective than a trumped up external desire (money). This results in the quality of work on volunteer projects commonly being much higher.
Agreeability: People inherently want to agree. People will agree with something if possible, so even without a strict command structure, a good leader will be followed. This removes much of the tension from having no clear leader, because that leader does actually exist.
Capability: Nobody is capable of handling every situation. In a strict command structure, the leader must be able to handle every situation/delegate it to someone who can. However, the direction on that issue must come from the commander, meaning that when a troublesome situation arises in a command system, it cannot be dealt with swiftly. By contrast, the open system allows the person who can deal with the problem to just come forward and do so, removing many of the failure points in a command system.
Of course, the last bunch of what I said was my interpretation, not just what was in the article. You may get something else out of it.
Is it possible to use the Xen VM that was on Slashdot earlier today to run multiple OSes and use one OS on the machine as a firewall for the other?
Could you rig the setup of one so that it couldn't crash the hardware, it could at most make itself crash and reboot without the computer going with it?
I think in part it is that the sale of these can go to people who would not be downloading the product to start with, so it generates more revenue than would otherwise be there.
Also, having an object for sale aids people in donating because it removes the burden of choosing how much to donate from their shoulders. Without such an avenue, many people worry about how much to donate, and whether or not they should send some sorts of messages with a donation, and a million other things. That's also why all projects of even a moderate size should have an FAQ section on giving donations.
Further, in the case of this product, it is essentially just a wing of the original group making a boxed, distributable product, as the project receives the profits, and the project is entirely volunteer anyway.
Deadly corporeal punishment could be argued to be beneficial to society when the convicted has shown that they constitute a clear danger to others through their actions.
Locking someone up provides the same benefit of security to the vast majority of the population. (I.e., everyone not working in a jail). Deadly corporeal punishment removes the possibility of delivering any justice to those who were falsely executed. We are human, and therefore fallible, and therefore such injustices will (and have) occur. You are right, though, religion doesn't really need to enter into the arguement.
You assume that locking them up actually does provide that same security. However, our current system has fairly well proven that not to be the case. Those who are in prison regularly are a danger to all those others who are in prison, which is only acceptable if you assume those in prison do not deserve protection, in which case the argument against just killing them to start with is moot.
Presuming that we can actually care for all convicts in the US, your argument is sound, but that presumption appears to be false. Thus, the arguments for the death penalty become:
Grants protection to the other inmates
Saves money (this argument is proven false by the expenses involved in death-penalty trials)
Deters future crimes (this is highly debatable as it cannot be reliably disproven or proven)
And the arguments against become:
Is more morally kind (this is in opposition to the first point above)
Brings the US in line with the world (the importance of following the crowd is debatable)
Reduces internal dissent (the force that is for the death penalty appears to fade in time, while that against will just not go away)
Did you even read my post? I'm guessing no, because you certainly didn't reply to it.
I said: I have an aversion to Bush due to fear and a sense of injury.
You said: I wouldn't hate someone for that, but I would distrust him, and I would let that reality color my dealings with him in the future.
So, you're saying that you distrust him and let that color your dealings, yet you do not have an aversion to Bush, do not in any way fear Bush, and do not feel a sense of injury?
Again: I have an aversion to Bush because I would rather not deal with him. I think that's fairly reasonable. The man has shown that he cannot deal honestly, so I don't want to deal with him.
I fear Bush because, if he gets back into office, he will cause a great deal of harm. Is that reasonable? Considering what he did this term, yes, I think it is.
I feel injured by Bush because he has harmed my country, which I take personally.
So, if those are true and reasonable, which you still have not addressed, then hate is the EXACT term for what I feel. The fact that you make exaggerated presumptions about what I mean by a completely standard word has nothing to do with that word's validity. I try to use American English, I would appreciate if you could limit yourself to either American English or British English, as those are essentially the standards. Using a common language helps with communication.
However, the president is in an entirely separate branch of government. The president is not the leader, he is the executor. He does what is directed and checks the power on congress. Should the smaller states have less say in that portion of government, which is entirely separate?
Hate: 1 a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b : extreme dislike or antipathy
So, if I said I have an aversion to Bush due to fear and a sense of injury, would you say I was going too far, stating things wrong? What if I said I had an extreme dislike for the Bush administration?
As far as I can tell, hate is the exactly correct word for what I feel about the current government. I fear them, feel they have wronged me (by permanently damaging MY country), am angry that all this has occurred, and extremely dislike what they have done.
"We're all effected by the same things: health care, SS, the war, terrorism, etc, we should all have the same say."
No, you're not. If you lived most of your life out in the midwest, you might realize how little some of that affects people there. They have entirely different problem sets, which are already marginalized slightly because they aren't in major population centers and would be completely ignored if the electoral college was removed.
"It's logical that the results are different than those in the US. However, one wonders how much of a hint some (some) US citizens (especially those posting very harsh comments in response to these shadow-elections) need to realize that it's not just the US that matters in this world. "
People continually bitch that the US shouldn't think of itself as the center of the world, but now they are bitching that it's elections are too important to the world. Well, if we're wrong about being so important, why are you bitching so much about what we do?
So, is the USA correct that it is the most important single country in the world? If so, why do people get so pissed when American's feel like it's that important? Should we lie to ourselves about the influence we have?
And, here's another question, why should the US care what foreigners have to say? Yes, maybe if someone says we're wrong, we really are wrong. By contrast, a nation two thousand years ago that looked to foreign opinion would have found that slavery was right and proper behavior. So, obviously the mere fact that the opinion is world-wide is not what matters.
For that matter, who's to say all these areas are unbiased? Many nations would love to see the USA decline (note I did not say fall). The relative weakness of the dollar has strengthened the euro. China has a lot of exports to the US, but also holds a lot against the US: if we slip too far, they'll probably get Taiwan. India likes the way we outsource right now, but would they prefer to not compete with us? Other nations around the world put their interests first, as is expected, so there is little evidence of this actually being an attempt to elect the person best for the United States.
For that matter, perhaps those nations see Kerry as benefitting them the most and don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about what he does for the US? Maybe some of them just think that Kerry will have a policy that lets them get away with more.
And, also, I couldn't find a methodology on that page. It is implied that it was done as a vote, done by people going to the site completely voluntarily. It seems likely that those who are dissatisfied are going to be inclined to vote, rather than those who are satisfied, skewing things towards Kerry and away from Bush.
The fact that I dislike Bush, am voting for Kerry, and think that the rest of the world detests Bush (in general) does not change the fact that your argument is crap until you expound upon it a great deal more, at which point it may or may not remain crap.
"You don't see this sort of nonsense in Europe or the more develped countries in Asia, where they have better education systems."
Oh, yes. Because, we all know that they've managed to convince people not to keep doing cremations and everything else in the Ganges, resulting in just about the least sanitary drinking water on earth.
One of the major issues that creationists have is that, when evolution is taught in schools, it usually conveys the idea that the Bible is FALSE. This doesn't need to be, but it is. Many schools teach it well, but many do not.
Some people argue against evolution on a fundamental level, while others argue against it on the level that it is misused and mistaught. Those in the second camp have a sound, solid argument that few can actually deny if they do some research into how evolution education goes.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that, as a single individual, he has astounding control over that one thing: Linux. And that one thing, Linux, has an astounding amount of influence in the world right now.
Linux is essential to IBM's current marketing strategy. That means Linus has influence on IBM's marketing and marketshare. Linux is MicroSoft's top threat. That mean's Linus is influential in the competing with one of the top companies in the world.
Cities and countries are talking about switching over to Linux (and I don't mean just open-source software in general). That mean's Linus is influential with many governments.
Novell has a lot riding on Linux. That mean's Linus is influential with the future of Novell. RedHat, Apache, MySQL, KDE, Mandrake, and many other organizations and communities have their intrests tightly tied with Linux's results. That means Linus is influential with those organizations.
Groups like Debian base some of their decisions on what does and does not go into Linus's kernel tree, which means Linus is influential with everyone who is a part of those groups.
Although his influence in any one place is small, Linus has a very large influence overall.
Yes, it obviously works fine for land, which is why so much private land is still preserved and pollution doesn't run rampant in industry owned areas. I especially love how clean things are when even the privately owned land is not carefully regulated. I mean, I go down for a dip near the coal plant every weekend with the kids because it's just so damn safe.
I've seen a lot of the flaws in the article pointed out, but I'd like to note this too:
"Top contributors to the Linux kernel have been Red Hat and SuSE, he said. Also contributing have been IBM, SGI, HP, and Intel."
Usually, when talking about the Kernel, it's valid to at least note some individuals, such as, say, Linus.
By the best of both worlds, did you mean they also consume less power like an LCD does and don't cause a piercing electronic hum like a CRT does, or did you not exactly mean the best of both worlds?
Won't this just do wonders for the economy of some neighboring state that lets people easily buy cars and get them registered and everything, what with the full faith and credit clause?
OpenGroupware.org is coming along. It's not there yet, but it is coming. And, as I'm sure you can tell by the name, it is designed to drop right in beside OpenOffice
OpenGroupware actually is just making a server, but it has working clients for: Outlook, Evolution, Mozilla Calendar, iCal, Kontact, generic web-browsers, and generic weddav clients. It does already work and I'm fairly sure they're doing the 1.0 alphas right now.
Oh, and if you can't find their webpage on your own, you probably wouldn't have wanted to read it anyway.
When you look at them, it is not apparent they are holding a camera, so this is more on par with a concealed camera of some sort.
(Note: I think the initiative is stupid and I disagree with the privacy advocates in this case. I'm just trying to help explain the situation.)
The CIA gives a variety of possible scenarios in all cases. The Bush administration chose to use the worst case scenario EVERY TIME as their basis for going to war. The CIA's most likely scenario was in fact correct.
"If the FCC had to get congress to put their heads together and pass something (house and senate) every time they wanted to make a decision, they would never get anywhere. The IRS does it's job without congress pulling every puppet-string, while it looks like the CIA may need a little congressional intervention."
Don't be suckered by the press. The IRS doesn't do its job. The IRS is hugely understaffed and underbudget and tax fraud is rampant, yet the media doesn't say much about that. However, the CIA gets a bad rap because they gave accurate information to the administration about the situation in Iraq and were ignored, because they only gave a fairly good report about how 9/11 would happen and weren't given enough funding or freedom to do anything about it, and because they do a generally fairly good job until the administration orders them to stop.
If you are trying to create icons with those tools, you have a basic misunderstanding of the medium.
Photoshopping is for editing, well, photos. It's fine also as a finishing tool for icons that are already made.
Maya is used for making 3D models, which is almost always overkill for an icon. (I've never used Lightwave, but I recall it being a 3D app as well).
What you need is a vector graphics editor. I would have to recommend Adobe Illustrator myself, although Inkscape is coming along quite well (and is free, so start there if you just want to see what I'm talking about). As for Macromedia Freehand, it seems to be a good program. However, I've always found it awkward (many will disagree) and at the school where I work it has incredibly many printing errors, so I can't really say.
And, beyond all that (as others have said) the key problem is most likely that you are an amatuer, not a professional. So, take an art course. Just go to a local college and sign up for a 2D design course of some sort.
Yeah, we can already fly faster than their planes. Soon, though, we might be able to fly faster than their missiles. For that matter, we'll be able to fly faster than their bullets. Consider that the railguns the US is planning for its frigates have a muzzle velocity of mach 7.5. I think going mach 10 could come in real handy.
If you read the article, you would know that it was in complete disagreement as well. The article is claiming that this idea of global cities being the centralization of a command-and-control structure is failing to notice the the command-and-control structure is being inherently undermined, delegitematizing the entire idea.
The article points to blogs, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, copyleft, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and several other items as examples of how bottom-up creation is replacing top-down.
The article quotes Thomas Malone in claiming that society is moving from "command-and-control to coordinate-and-cultivate." That is, rather than actually being in charge (Bill Gates setting up Microsoft) the leader only directs (Linus Torvalds leading Linux).
Initially, it would seem that such a decentralized system would be so disorganized that it would not function effeciently, but this ignores much sociological and psychological evidence on three important issues: motivation, agreeability, and capability.
Motivation: Intrinsic motivation is always stronger than extrinsic motivation. If the motivation is a genuine personal desire (fun), it is always more effective than a trumped up external desire (money). This results in the quality of work on volunteer projects commonly being much higher.
Agreeability: People inherently want to agree. People will agree with something if possible, so even without a strict command structure, a good leader will be followed. This removes much of the tension from having no clear leader, because that leader does actually exist.
Capability: Nobody is capable of handling every situation. In a strict command structure, the leader must be able to handle every situation/delegate it to someone who can. However, the direction on that issue must come from the commander, meaning that when a troublesome situation arises in a command system, it cannot be dealt with swiftly. By contrast, the open system allows the person who can deal with the problem to just come forward and do so, removing many of the failure points in a command system.
Of course, the last bunch of what I said was my interpretation, not just what was in the article. You may get something else out of it.
On this topic of layered defenses:
Is it possible to use the Xen VM that was on Slashdot earlier today to run multiple OSes and use one OS on the machine as a firewall for the other?
Could you rig the setup of one so that it couldn't crash the hardware, it could at most make itself crash and reboot without the computer going with it?
"And they seemed to treat their workers alright."
Don't be misled. They're better than Walmart, that is definitely true. However, they are not a good employer.
I think in part it is that the sale of these can go to people who would not be downloading the product to start with, so it generates more revenue than would otherwise be there.
Also, having an object for sale aids people in donating because it removes the burden of choosing how much to donate from their shoulders. Without such an avenue, many people worry about how much to donate, and whether or not they should send some sorts of messages with a donation, and a million other things. That's also why all projects of even a moderate size should have an FAQ section on giving donations.
Further, in the case of this product, it is essentially just a wing of the original group making a boxed, distributable product, as the project receives the profits, and the project is entirely volunteer anyway.
Damn. Did you just say that the only way for something to be independent was for it to be a federal agency? I think you're misunderstanding something.
Presuming that we can actually care for all convicts in the US, your argument is sound, but that presumption appears to be false. Thus, the arguments for the death penalty become:
- Grants protection to the other inmates
- Saves money (this argument is proven false by the expenses involved in death-penalty trials)
- Deters future crimes (this is highly debatable as it cannot be reliably disproven or proven)
And the arguments against become:Did you even read my post? I'm guessing no, because you certainly didn't reply to it.
I said: I have an aversion to Bush due to fear and a sense of injury.
You said: I wouldn't hate someone for that, but I would distrust him, and I would let that reality color my dealings with him in the future.
So, you're saying that you distrust him and let that color your dealings, yet you do not have an aversion to Bush, do not in any way fear Bush, and do not feel a sense of injury?
Again:
I have an aversion to Bush because I would rather not deal with him. I think that's fairly reasonable. The man has shown that he cannot deal honestly, so I don't want to deal with him.
I fear Bush because, if he gets back into office, he will cause a great deal of harm. Is that reasonable? Considering what he did this term, yes, I think it is.
I feel injured by Bush because he has harmed my country, which I take personally.
So, if those are true and reasonable, which you still have not addressed, then hate is the EXACT term for what I feel. The fact that you make exaggerated presumptions about what I mean by a completely standard word has nothing to do with that word's validity. I try to use American English, I would appreciate if you could limit yourself to either American English or British English, as those are essentially the standards. Using a common language helps with communication.
However, the president is in an entirely separate branch of government. The president is not the leader, he is the executor. He does what is directed and checks the power on congress. Should the smaller states have less say in that portion of government, which is entirely separate?
Hate:
1 a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b : extreme dislike or antipathy
So, if I said I have an aversion to Bush due to fear and a sense of injury, would you say I was going too far, stating things wrong? What if I said I had an extreme dislike for the Bush administration?
As far as I can tell, hate is the exactly correct word for what I feel about the current government. I fear them, feel they have wronged me (by permanently damaging MY country), am angry that all this has occurred, and extremely dislike what they have done.
"We're all effected by the same things: health care, SS, the war, terrorism, etc, we should all have the same say."
No, you're not. If you lived most of your life out in the midwest, you might realize how little some of that affects people there. They have entirely different problem sets, which are already marginalized slightly because they aren't in major population centers and would be completely ignored if the electoral college was removed.
"It's logical that the results are different than those in the US. However, one wonders how much of a hint some (some) US citizens (especially those posting very harsh comments in response to these shadow-elections) need to realize that it's not just the US that matters in this world. "
People continually bitch that the US shouldn't think of itself as the center of the world, but now they are bitching that it's elections are too important to the world. Well, if we're wrong about being so important, why are you bitching so much about what we do?
So, is the USA correct that it is the most important single country in the world? If so, why do people get so pissed when American's feel like it's that important? Should we lie to ourselves about the influence we have?
And, here's another question, why should the US care what foreigners have to say? Yes, maybe if someone says we're wrong, we really are wrong. By contrast, a nation two thousand years ago that looked to foreign opinion would have found that slavery was right and proper behavior. So, obviously the mere fact that the opinion is world-wide is not what matters.
For that matter, who's to say all these areas are unbiased? Many nations would love to see the USA decline (note I did not say fall). The relative weakness of the dollar has strengthened the euro. China has a lot of exports to the US, but also holds a lot against the US: if we slip too far, they'll probably get Taiwan. India likes the way we outsource right now, but would they prefer to not compete with us? Other nations around the world put their interests first, as is expected, so there is little evidence of this actually being an attempt to elect the person best for the United States.
For that matter, perhaps those nations see Kerry as benefitting them the most and don't give a flying fuck at a rolling donut about what he does for the US? Maybe some of them just think that Kerry will have a policy that lets them get away with more.
And, also, I couldn't find a methodology on that page. It is implied that it was done as a vote, done by people going to the site completely voluntarily. It seems likely that those who are dissatisfied are going to be inclined to vote, rather than those who are satisfied, skewing things towards Kerry and away from Bush.
The fact that I dislike Bush, am voting for Kerry, and think that the rest of the world detests Bush (in general) does not change the fact that your argument is crap until you expound upon it a great deal more, at which point it may or may not remain crap.
"You don't see this sort of nonsense in Europe or the more develped countries in Asia, where they have better education systems."
Oh, yes. Because, we all know that they've managed to convince people not to keep doing cremations and everything else in the Ganges, resulting in just about the least sanitary drinking water on earth.
One of the major issues that creationists have is that, when evolution is taught in schools, it usually conveys the idea that the Bible is FALSE. This doesn't need to be, but it is. Many schools teach it well, but many do not.
Some people argue against evolution on a fundamental level, while others argue against it on the level that it is misused and mistaught. Those in the second camp have a sound, solid argument that few can actually deny if they do some research into how evolution education goes.