No, it's not nitpicking, although I can see why you'd think that. The point I was trying to make is that his entire argument about Linux forcing choice down the throats of people who Just Want It To Work fails because it's based on a false assumption. Linux doesn't force you to choose much, except for which distro you use. Each distro makes default choices for most of them. If you use Fedora, you're going to be using Gnome unless you go out of your way to install KDE, XFCE or some other window manager. If it's not important to you, just let anaconda do its thing and you'll end up with a working system without worrying about which terminal program, what file manager or whatever. Linux is, in many ways, about choice, and that includes the right not to have to choose for yourself if that's what you want.
Making a good bug report is more work, but has better chances of working.
You also have to be willing to work with the developers, sometimes, to help them pin down the bug. As an example, when I moved over to Linux, I chose Pan as my newsreader. I downloaded and installed a sigmonster script, and ported over my large collection of quotes.
Soon, I noticed that Pan was doubling my.sig. Not just putting it in twice, but calling the sigmonster twice because the quote was different. After a little discussion on a mailing list, I submitted a formal bug report. As it happens, I was the fourth to do this and they were all combined. By working back and forth, we were able to pin it down that it only seemed to strike when Pan had to word-wrap a line in the signature, and the static part of mine needed wrapping. A little edit not only cleared up the issue for me, it verified that this was, in fact, what triggered the bug. There hasn't been a patch released, yet, but now the developer knows exactly where to look.
His criticisms are very well thought-out, not just stupid name calling, but clear, effective, technical, and explicit complaints about everything that is wrong with free software.
He's good, but he's not always right. As an example, he claims that in Linux, the assumption is that the percentage of people wanting each window manager is about equal. Wrong. I think that if you ask the average Linux user (even a fanatic evangelist) you'll be told that at least 90% of all Linux users use either Gnome or KDE, and that all the others are for people with specialized needs, or for the developers to play around with. Nobody is pretending that Fluxbox (let's say) is as popular as Gnome, or that it should be. However, if you're using "trailing edge" hardware and need to fit into as little RAM as possible, it's probably one of your best choices.
There are far, far less unique drivers needed than there are printers. In many cases, several models from the same line will actually use the same driver, but you have to list all of them because the average user won't have any way of knowing they're all the same. For that matter, there may well be cases where one companies printers simply use the same control codes as another, better known brand. As an example, years ago I had a dot matrix printer from Star Micronix. Even though it was a minor brand, I never had driver issues because I knew (having taken the time to RTFM) that it was Epson compatible and that the standard Epson driver was all I needed.
Not everybody has the coding skills needed to fix problems with Linux, Gnome, KDE or whatever program is giving them trouble. Of those who do, most of them have jobs that take up most of their time, and such things as eating, sleeping, and other personal maintenance tasks take up most of their Copious Free Time. Even if they did try to fix a bug, it would take them a long time -- weeks at least, if not months -- to familiarize themselves sufficiently with the code to do any good. Complaining publicly about the bugs, preferably in a forum that the developers follow, is probably the most effective use of their time. YMMV, but if so, how many times have you dug into the source code of a FOSS program you're not involved in developing and patched a bug?
It is the DIFFERENCE in speed that is much more important. If the regular flow of traffic is 75 and there is someone insisting on driving 55, then it is a great safety hazard.
And that's why Alive at 55 specifies keeping over to the right, with the rest of the slow traffic. You drive at a speed that's safer for you and keep out of the way of the younger, faster drivers so as not to cause a hazard or obstruct traffic.
My father was an excellent driver, even though he was blind in one eye and thus had no depth perception. He'd learned over the years how to compensate and judge distances without it. He was still driving, safely, until his health failed in his mid-80s. However, this was in part because of a class he'd been to: Alive at 55. The idea behind the class was that elderly drivers, with slower reflexes and dimming vision should limit themselves to 55 mph on the freeway and stay in the right-hand lane whenever possible. He didn't need any fancy, expensive technology to keep him safe, he just drove at a speed that was safer for him. I've always kept that in mind, and when I get old enough to worry about such things, I'll be doing exactly the same thing.
Being ex-Navy, I'm no fanboi of the USAF. I understand that they've turned down control of all Naval Aviation because they're afraid of carrier landings. However, let's give them credit where credit is due: they're the only branch where the officers go into combat and the enlisted men almost never do.
Regardless, while this is certainly not trying to prove that the crime is technically treason, i think it is more or less morally equivalent to it.
Not even close. If he'd been doing this on behalf of the Democrats, do you think there'd be so much anger? Probably not. Certainly what he did was nowhere near as close to treason as Hanoi Jane (who said publicly that she wished she could help shoot down an American B-52) but nobody called for her head. Maybe that's because only Liberals are allowed to act that way?
"quaint piece of paper" the former Constitution of the United States of America.
Isn't that the exact attitude that trolls, troglodytes and other Anonymous Cowards like you are accusing President Bush of? Funny, isn't it, that he's sticking to the Constitution on this and fools like you want to throw it out because it's inconvenient? This attitude is exactly why the Founding Fathers wrote the definition into the Constitution and made it as narrow as they did, to prevent this sort of thing. Frankly, I'm glad of it.
If it's proven to be true, it could very well mean Diebold's CEO is guilty of treason.
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war? Here in the USA, that's how treason is defined in the Constitution. Calling any and everything you don't like "treason" is exactly why it was defined that way, and why the Constitution specifies that a conviction can only be obtained by direct confession in open court or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act. I knew that the standards of education here were dropping, but I didn't thing they'd dropped that far.
If there's no other monthly charges, that'd be a good deal for me, but they'd lose money on me hand over fist! I surf two Usenet groups, both text only. I doubt I go through 10Meg per month!
The other problem with space applications and these thin deformable mirrors is whether there is any savings in making a mirror out of them over glass.
There are other factors here. With a glass mirror, you're limited to the inside diameter of your launch vehicle. You also need extra mass for all the bracing and padding needed to protect the mirror during the launch. With a magnetic mirror, it can be sent disassembled, possibly in several shipments instead of all-at-once, making things much easier.
You use the tools you have. Then, you hope that the percentage of liars is lower than your estimated margin of error. Until there's a way to make sure everybody tells the truth, that's the best that can be done.
They hate it because Castro dared overthrow their corrupt puppet Batista, then refused to play ball with them and let their big businesses keep exploiting the Cuban people for cheap labor.
Overthrowing Batista was Not A Problem. These things happen. Refusing to play ball with big business was not, in itself, a major problem. New governments did things like that all the time, back then. The big problem was how he did it. Instead of honouring the previous regime's commitments until the contracts could be renegotiated, he simply repudiated them. This is Not Done in international relations. If you don't like what your predecessor agreed to, negotiate for better terms, but fulfil the contract until you do. Why? Because if you don't, nobody will trust you. If you tear up an old contract because you don't like the terms, you'll do it to one you've signed yourself if things change. Castro didn't understand that, and quickly made it clear that he wasn't to be trusted. (One reason we never tried embargoing the Soviets is that they could be trusted to keep their word to the letter.) After a while, presidents found other reasons (human rights violations) to keep the embargo up and by now, it's probably too much of a political hot potato for anybody to mess with it.
erm... the majority of voters were in favour of the other guy. same in the UK
Well, at least we know that the majority of voters polled ahead of time told the polsters that that's how they were going to vote. Quite possibly, the lied.
Cuba is similar - Give 'em YouTube, uncensored Google, porn, Wikipedia...
Exactly. give them what Jerry Pournelle calls "weapons of cultural mass destruction" and let those weapons do their job. Within a few years, either the Cuban government will lighten up, or the people will throw them out when they realize how much better their lives could be. People are only willing to put up with repressive regimes if they don't know there's anything better out there, which is why countries like Cuba, Iran and North Korea limit the amount of information about the rest of the world that their people can get their hands on.
You couldn't be more wrong - patents are for the protection of ideas _not_ implementations!
You clearly don't know what you're talking about. In order to patent something that can be made (a better kitchen sink, a new device for recording TV shows, or whatever) you have to have a working model. Without that, you can't even apply for a patent, let alone be granted one. Your idea isn't patentable in and of itself. You only have something to patent when you've turned your idea into a physical reality. I think that that right there should be the criterion: a physical reality, because right there, all the stupid IP patents go right out the window.
From what I understand, patents are not supposed to be granted for ideas, or methods, only for implementations. If this principle were followed, you couldn't patent, let's say, the RSA public key encryption scheme, although you could patent a program that implements it. Patents (in the US, at least) were never intended to cover such things as business methods, algorithms or "doing $FOO with a computer." If we stopped letting people get patents for things that should never have been allowed, and invalidated that type of patent the moment anybody tried to enforce it, the gridlock would go away. If you want to protect your programs, use copyrights; that's what they're for. If you want to protect your business methods, use existing trade secret protections. Use patents to protect things, because that's what they're for.
Nothing would get you more geek street cred than having your own DeathStar in the front yard.
I know a man with something much better: he's rebuilt his car into a replica A-Wing fighter, complete with R2 unit. He generally gets free parking at SF cons because his car is on display as part of the Art Exhibit.
While we're at it, how about quotas to get more veterans into the workforce. Even better would be a separate quota for veterans with service-connected disabilities. That way I'd be even more of an asset to any company because I could fill two quotas at once. Oh, come to think of it, if htey add in a quota for the over 50 crowd, I get a triple-play.
I can't believe professionals who do this every day would have such a hard time adapting to toolsets.
They don't. But just because somebody's getting paid to code web pages doesn't make them a professional web designer. There's a lot of one-trick-pony webmonkeys out there calling themselves "professional web designers," and it sounds as if whoever wrote TFA ran across most of them.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not nitpicking, although I can see why you'd think that. The point I was trying to make is that his entire argument about Linux forcing choice down the throats of people who Just Want It To Work fails because it's based on a false assumption. Linux doesn't force you to choose much, except for which distro you use. Each distro makes default choices for most of them. If you use Fedora, you're going to be using Gnome unless you go out of your way to install KDE, XFCE or some other window manager. If it's not important to you, just let anaconda do its thing and you'll end up with a working system without worrying about which terminal program, what file manager or whatever. Linux is, in many ways, about choice, and that includes the right not to have to choose for yourself if that's what you want.
You also have to be willing to work with the developers, sometimes, to help them pin down the bug. As an example, when I moved over to Linux, I chose Pan as my newsreader. I downloaded and installed a sigmonster script, and ported over my large collection of quotes.
Soon, I noticed that Pan was doubling my .sig. Not just putting it in twice, but calling the sigmonster twice because the quote was different. After a little discussion on a mailing list, I submitted a formal bug report. As it happens, I was the fourth to do this and they were all combined. By working back and forth, we were able to pin it down that it only seemed to strike when Pan had to word-wrap a line in the signature, and the static part of mine needed wrapping. A little edit not only cleared up the issue for me, it verified that this was, in fact, what triggered the bug. There hasn't been a patch released, yet, but now the developer knows exactly where to look.
He's good, but he's not always right. As an example, he claims that in Linux, the assumption is that the percentage of people wanting each window manager is about equal. Wrong. I think that if you ask the average Linux user (even a fanatic evangelist) you'll be told that at least 90% of all Linux users use either Gnome or KDE, and that all the others are for people with specialized needs, or for the developers to play around with. Nobody is pretending that Fluxbox (let's say) is as popular as Gnome, or that it should be. However, if you're using "trailing edge" hardware and need to fit into as little RAM as possible, it's probably one of your best choices.
There are far, far less unique drivers needed than there are printers. In many cases, several models from the same line will actually use the same driver, but you have to list all of them because the average user won't have any way of knowing they're all the same. For that matter, there may well be cases where one companies printers simply use the same control codes as another, better known brand. As an example, years ago I had a dot matrix printer from Star Micronix. Even though it was a minor brand, I never had driver issues because I knew (having taken the time to RTFM) that it was Epson compatible and that the standard Epson driver was all I needed.
Not everybody has the coding skills needed to fix problems with Linux, Gnome, KDE or whatever program is giving them trouble. Of those who do, most of them have jobs that take up most of their time, and such things as eating, sleeping, and other personal maintenance tasks take up most of their Copious Free Time. Even if they did try to fix a bug, it would take them a long time -- weeks at least, if not months -- to familiarize themselves sufficiently with the code to do any good. Complaining publicly about the bugs, preferably in a forum that the developers follow, is probably the most effective use of their time. YMMV, but if so, how many times have you dug into the source code of a FOSS program you're not involved in developing and patched a bug?
And that's why Alive at 55 specifies keeping over to the right, with the rest of the slow traffic. You drive at a speed that's safer for you and keep out of the way of the younger, faster drivers so as not to cause a hazard or obstruct traffic.
My father was an excellent driver, even though he was blind in one eye and thus had no depth perception. He'd learned over the years how to compensate and judge distances without it. He was still driving, safely, until his health failed in his mid-80s. However, this was in part because of a class he'd been to: Alive at 55. The idea behind the class was that elderly drivers, with slower reflexes and dimming vision should limit themselves to 55 mph on the freeway and stay in the right-hand lane whenever possible. He didn't need any fancy, expensive technology to keep him safe, he just drove at a speed that was safer for him. I've always kept that in mind, and when I get old enough to worry about such things, I'll be doing exactly the same thing.
Being ex-Navy, I'm no fanboi of the USAF. I understand that they've turned down control of all Naval Aviation because they're afraid of carrier landings. However, let's give them credit where credit is due: they're the only branch where the officers go into combat and the enlisted men almost never do.
Not even close. If he'd been doing this on behalf of the Democrats, do you think there'd be so much anger? Probably not. Certainly what he did was nowhere near as close to treason as Hanoi Jane (who said publicly that she wished she could help shoot down an American B-52) but nobody called for her head. Maybe that's because only Liberals are allowed to act that way?
Isn't that the exact attitude that trolls, troglodytes and other Anonymous Cowards like you are accusing President Bush of? Funny, isn't it, that he's sticking to the Constitution on this and fools like you want to throw it out because it's inconvenient? This attitude is exactly why the Founding Fathers wrote the definition into the Constitution and made it as narrow as they did, to prevent this sort of thing. Frankly, I'm glad of it.
And how is this making war against the United States or giving Aid and Comfort to it's enemies in time of war? Here in the USA, that's how treason is defined in the Constitution. Calling any and everything you don't like "treason" is exactly why it was defined that way, and why the Constitution specifies that a conviction can only be obtained by direct confession in open court or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act. I knew that the standards of education here were dropping, but I didn't thing they'd dropped that far.
If there's no other monthly charges, that'd be a good deal for me, but they'd lose money on me hand over fist! I surf two Usenet groups, both text only. I doubt I go through 10Meg per month!
I can see why they'd want to block access to that site. After all, it has pictures of flowers, and as we all know, flowers are reproductive organs!
I don't know about any other ISP, but Verizon dropped all but the "Big 8" without warning or explanation about three weeks ago.
There are other factors here. With a glass mirror, you're limited to the inside diameter of your launch vehicle. You also need extra mass for all the bracing and padding needed to protect the mirror during the launch. With a magnetic mirror, it can be sent disassembled, possibly in several shipments instead of all-at-once, making things much easier.
You use the tools you have. Then, you hope that the percentage of liars is lower than your estimated margin of error. Until there's a way to make sure everybody tells the truth, that's the best that can be done.
Overthrowing Batista was Not A Problem. These things happen. Refusing to play ball with big business was not, in itself, a major problem. New governments did things like that all the time, back then. The big problem was how he did it. Instead of honouring the previous regime's commitments until the contracts could be renegotiated, he simply repudiated them. This is Not Done in international relations. If you don't like what your predecessor agreed to, negotiate for better terms, but fulfil the contract until you do. Why? Because if you don't, nobody will trust you. If you tear up an old contract because you don't like the terms, you'll do it to one you've signed yourself if things change. Castro didn't understand that, and quickly made it clear that he wasn't to be trusted. (One reason we never tried embargoing the Soviets is that they could be trusted to keep their word to the letter.) After a while, presidents found other reasons (human rights violations) to keep the embargo up and by now, it's probably too much of a political hot potato for anybody to mess with it.
Well, at least we know that the majority of voters polled ahead of time told the polsters that that's how they were going to vote. Quite possibly, the lied.
Maybe because the majority of voters were more objective than you are?
Exactly. give them what Jerry Pournelle calls "weapons of cultural mass destruction" and let those weapons do their job. Within a few years, either the Cuban government will lighten up, or the people will throw them out when they realize how much better their lives could be. People are only willing to put up with repressive regimes if they don't know there's anything better out there, which is why countries like Cuba, Iran and North Korea limit the amount of information about the rest of the world that their people can get their hands on.
You clearly don't know what you're talking about. In order to patent something that can be made (a better kitchen sink, a new device for recording TV shows, or whatever) you have to have a working model. Without that, you can't even apply for a patent, let alone be granted one. Your idea isn't patentable in and of itself. You only have something to patent when you've turned your idea into a physical reality. I think that that right there should be the criterion: a physical reality, because right there, all the stupid IP patents go right out the window.
From what I understand, patents are not supposed to be granted for ideas, or methods, only for implementations. If this principle were followed, you couldn't patent, let's say, the RSA public key encryption scheme, although you could patent a program that implements it. Patents (in the US, at least) were never intended to cover such things as business methods, algorithms or "doing $FOO with a computer." If we stopped letting people get patents for things that should never have been allowed, and invalidated that type of patent the moment anybody tried to enforce it, the gridlock would go away. If you want to protect your programs, use copyrights; that's what they're for. If you want to protect your business methods, use existing trade secret protections. Use patents to protect things, because that's what they're for.
I know a man with something much better: he's rebuilt his car into a replica A-Wing fighter, complete with R2 unit. He generally gets free parking at SF cons because his car is on display as part of the Art Exhibit.
While we're at it, how about quotas to get more veterans into the workforce. Even better would be a separate quota for veterans with service-connected disabilities. That way I'd be even more of an asset to any company because I could fill two quotas at once. Oh, come to think of it, if htey add in a quota for the over 50 crowd, I get a triple-play.
They don't. But just because somebody's getting paid to code web pages doesn't make them a professional web designer. There's a lot of one-trick-pony webmonkeys out there calling themselves "professional web designers," and it sounds as if whoever wrote TFA ran across most of them.