My mother-in-law just got back from Guatamala and remarked at how the McDonald's (and most restaurants) had heavily-armed guards standing at the doorway and patrolling the parking lots. However, many people don't even go to the restaurant, most of them deliver.
I think I have found the answer to having a great number of people reply to my posts. Make some anti-religious (or more specifically anti-Christian) statement. It doesn't have to be specific, actually the more general the better!
That aside, Christianity is not as screwed up and many people seem to think. Christianity is in its current disrepute because of generations of "Christians" claiming G-d is "X" or G-d is "Y". A vast majority of these things that people claim G-d is, G-d did not claim.
That the Bible (Torah, and New Testament) is inspired by G-d, is a lot different than saying that it happened exactly as it is written. If you can examine past current era Protestant "Christianity" (1500-today), ignore Roman Catholic medieval problems, find early Christian teachers and you will find that they do not subscribe to the idea that Genesis was literal and an exact transcript of the beginning of life.
In my own belief, it is more important how I treat others than whether I know how, when, and where G-d created life. See Matthew 25:31-42? to understand what G-d is looking for from us in "religion." Everything other study should wait until I master this one.
I disagree. Telling people about information that is freely available is not asshole reporting. Would it be different if the reporter just said that Google has an immense about of information on their own CEO including x, y, z, but not giving links? It is one thing to say the information exists, it is another to prove the information exists. I wouldn't trust the reporter if he couldn't prove the information actually existed.
Again, this was not secret information, or information that anyone had the expectation of being kept secret.
Now Google has a right to talk with whomever they want and stop talking to whomever they want. But I would say that they are violating their mission of "Do no evil" by retaliating against a news source because of a reporter exposing what Google does best, search and index web-based information.
Why is it that it is mostly ACs that talk about surveillence tapes. Do you realize how short of a time tapes are kept. It is quite short. Also, have you seen the quality of the images from these? It is quite hard get a good image of a face.
In addition, I often travel more than 600 miles away from where I live. I could by something there from a smaller store. Good luck tracking me down!
Actually, I am (somewhat) worried about Word and DRM. I do not think that there will be a PR backlash against DRM and Word, because large corporations actually WANT it. Large and small companies now are worried about information leak. If they can set up their computers so that documents will only be readible by people with the proper keys, they would LOVE IT.
Stopping information leaking will be the bait, some other (unimaginable by me now) DRM "feature" is the payoff.
All of the above replies miss something that Windows/MacOSX does well: they allow average users to add software easily. The difference between adoption of Windows and Linux is not going to be about open source vs. closed source. It is going to be about ease of use. Ease of use usually means a well thought out default path with few options.
If you don't care to have average users use Linux, then all of the replies are fine. If you want average users to use Linux, something (and I don't have any ideas unfortunately) has to be done.
However, Linux will never be able to "compete" with Windows because of a difference in computer use philosophy. Generally, Windows is promiscuous and Linux is not. Windows (and software developers) try to make the software installable so that a computer-phobe could still do it. Once there are more than a couple of options or steps, the basic user will give up and never return. We also know what promiscuity allows, spyware, trojans, etc.
Linux would be fine if people didn't mind hiring someone to set up their computer to do word processing, websurf, e-mail. But few if any people want to do that.
Mac OSX will succeed in ways that Linux won't because of the ease of (and consistency of) installation of other software. This has nothing to do with open source.
What upsets Microsoft is that they do not have a monopoly on ease of use. For Linux it is just a problem to be solved. Apple has solved it: *nix and ease of use. Microsoft knows that it will likely be solved eventually, and then all hell will break loose.
I think "they" call it OmniMax. At least when I was in Australia about 13 years ago. The effect was incredible. I saw an underwater film of the Great Barrier Reef (after seeing the real thing). I think it was in Brisbane, but I don't remember.
There is an interesting story about the San Francisco Bay Bridge. If you haven't seen it, it is a double-deck bridge. When first built the lower deck had train tracks and car lanes. The upper span was just for cars travelling in both directions.
The passenger train system (the Key System / Key Route) was successful but somewhat limited as the East Bay area spread out away from SF/Oakland. It was discontinued in 1958. General Motors (surprise, surprise) obtained 64% of the stock of the company which ran the Key System through a front company. They replaced the entire board and essentially dismantled the system piece by piece. GM then planned to replace the system with GM buses. The regional governments tried to stop the plan, but lost out eventually.
GM continually tried to dismatle all trains, and even had some help by the Oakland transportation department in converting popular train lines (96% ridership) into car lanes because the trains (travelling at street level) were trying up car traffic.
I love this quote: "The PUC had granted a large fare increase for Jan. 1, 1948 for "service improvements." After the fares were raised, GM stated its 'motorization" plan was the "service improvement.'" Motorization was the replacing of street cars and electric trains with buses.
Through fare increases and service cut backs, GM got what it wanted all along. Removing trains and selling buses and cars!
At the time the canon of the Bible was developed at the Nicene council in 325 AD there was no such thing as the Catholic church in any form near what is looks like today. In reality the majority of the participants in the council came from other parts of the middle eastern/western asian world, not from Rome. At the time of the Nicene council there were no world rulers that espoused Christianity, not even Constantine himself. An emperor would have very little to fear from excommunication (which is BTW very misunderstood now-a-days) from a religion he didn't even believe.
Power was very unlikely to be a factor in the set of books chosen, as the books themselves did not give power. The christian faith was just recently (less than 15 years before) legalized and supported by the emperor. The views of all of the participants were not unanimous, but the prevailing belief was that the Holy Spirit would guide the majority of the participants to come to a consensus belief. At that council there was a lot of people that believed a lot of different and conflicting things (the reason for the council!).
Just because I give myself a particular label, does not mean I practice or believe what others practice or believe who give themselves the same label. Labels are only good as a definition, if there is a stable value for that definition. Mormons (whether the think they do or not) believe in a God that is vastly different than Roman Catholcs or most protestant chrisitian religions. Muslims who hate all non-muslims and wish to kill them or have them killed, probably believe something different than a great majority of other Muslims. How do you tell the difference? It is in what they do and think.
If you want to believe what you wrote, that is fine, and you are well within your rights to to believe that. But to insinuate that you know the "true" christian belief and history, while having basic misunderstanding of how, what, and why events happened does not make your belief the true christian belief, for which you can bash to stupid christians.
What I especially find funny is when some people show a lack of tolerance for another set-of-people for that they claim that set-of-people are intolerant. If you have a right to be an a**hole, than why should you not accept their rights to be a**holes?
This issue cannot be solved with a specification by committee. The reason OSX and XP can do thing that seem better than package managers is that they control the operation of the OS. They don't rely on a group of 1000 people to try to figure out how 10000 other people can use an installer/package manager. They just put whatever hooks they need into the filesystem or the kernal. The problem with committee is that there is no personal accountability. For Apple, the people that develop the specs for software installation have personal accountability to complete their work and do it well. No non-company committee has this "fear."
For open source, the task is near impossible. First if you want to put hooks in the kernal/FS/OS to be shared by all distros, requires the buy in from a great number of people, ie. a committee.
What I think is the most interesting is that we are not looking outside of what we already have. We have package managers; we have x number of groups that think that their package manager is better than the others; we have x number of groups that want better package managers. Why are we not stepping back from the idea of a package manager, and start with requirements and and current limitations? Then come up with a set of things we need in order to accomplish all of the requirements, ignoring current limitations. These "things" might have a wide ranging effect on all parts of the GNU/Linux system. From filesystem, kernel, to executable changes.
I don't think we will have any better software distribution and management until we can pull back from the immediate needs and look at blue-sky possibilities and change all parts of the OS to accomodate a better solution.
I believe (I didn't look it up again), that the reason typefaces cannot be copyrighted has to do with the fear that by being able to copyright typefaces would allow the ability to deny freedom of the press. I can't remember the exact reasoning, but something like an owner of the typeface copyright (if it existed) could use their ownership to limit others' ability to print what they wanted.
The answer is that with information I can obtain, I can manipulate that information in any way I want. I just can't pass my manipulated information off as though it was the original.
I a site provides information, I have the right to receive that information and do whatever I want with it (with the above proscribed limitation). If I want to remove every 5th word, I can. There is no lgocial reason I should not be allowed to do this. If I want to record something off of the TV and skip every other 5 seconds of information, why should I not be allowed to do this?
An ad is just a piece of information. Just like any other piece of information. I am not changing the original information, just my version of it. To filter information comes very naturally. I don't have to watch TV commercials, I change the channel or go do something else, or skip ahead. If I'm reading the newspaper, I do not have to look at every add in the paper, I just look at the information in which I am interested. For the newspaper, my only obligation to obtain the information was the 50 cents I put into the machine.
If a website requires money from readers in order to survive, then they need to figure out the best way to obtain said money. If they think advertising is going to work, that's fine, but they have to figure the percentage of readership that will actually see the ad. Just like over-the-air television. TV stations/networks can't make you watch the very thing that is paying their way. All they can do is tell advertisers approximately how many people watch, and use statistical modelling to determine how many of those watch the commercials.
If a website wants to charge users for access, that is fine, and would be along the lines of HBO charging for access to their information.
Just like in over-the-air television, I cannot steal (or break a social contract) if the information is offered free in the first place.
As for newspapers, am I breaking a social contract by leaving the newspaper I read at lunch for someone else to read? Or what about libraries? Are they breaking a social contract by letting multiple people read the same copy of a book?
Like I said above, modifying Firefox or creating software that retrieves available information in a manner I desire is up to the me, as long as I don't pass off that modified information as the original source. What would be a problem is if the ISP that provided the website the hardware and IP connection, choose to modify the information before being sent out, simply because this would then have the ISP transmitting modified information as the original source. (I am not talking about mail or http headers. The headers should be considered public access, but rather the actual content as created.)
I haven't used Acrobat 4 for quite a long time. However I cannot find a way to remove the PDF toolbar even after I have removed the software completely from my machine.
It has always seemed strange to me that we (as American's) have to "pay" in order to file taxes. Whether we pay money (a lot) for an accountant or an H&R Block droid, or for a software/web based tax preparation, or we pay a significant amount of time to prepare our taxes manually.
Although I would hate to give up my mortgage interest deduction, I am very much in favor of a radically simplified tax scheme. Eliminate or drastically reduce tax deductions and the form becomes simple: ((Income-deductions) * tax%) - Prepaid tax = amount owed/refunded.
I don't particularly agree, being religious. However, before I became religious, I was a "moral" person. Now I have learned that I should be better than I was. I did not need religion to know what was right from the view point of other people. This is an aspect of empathy.
However, what I have learned is all of those items you say the religious don't have, peace, sanctity of life, mercy, tolerance.
Now the argument that religion is a crutch seems strange. My religion taught me how to be a better human, better to those around me. All of us, no matter whom is speaking, does or has done something immoral, for which I would include something as "easy" as lying. Crutches are supposed to make life easier. It would be easier for me to not be religious. How is it then a crutch. I am required to do work, physical and mental, in order to fulfill the obligations I accepted. My religion is obviously not a crutch for me. A crutch (for me) would be to say God does not exist and there is no reason to care about other people.
What I find interesting is you say laws are a reason for criminals to avoid crime? That idea is logically backwards. You can't be a criminal unless there is a law directed against your actions. Unless you are talking about "moral law," which is an entirely different beast. There is no law directed against the practice of my religion, currently. If there was a change, would that make me a criminal?
Regarding life on other planets. It doesn't affect me much. Of course I am not a fundamentalist, and neither were early Christian Church believers. The story of Genesis was not considered a precise story of creation. I do not know about Jewish understanding of Genesis, but my guess is that they do not believe in a fundamentalist viewpoint either.
I believe (I have not actually seen the plant myself) that it is already operational. It is creating oil and selling it to a local manufacturer for combustion in a boiler. It is, however, nowhere near the cost range they initially (2003) thought it would be. But first generation technology always has fits and starts.
What about this idea... If a support tech can only support 40 windows PCs, but another support tech can support 200 Linux PCs, is the difference the amount of support or the intelligence of the tech.
Now I run windows, and have administered windows and I develop software for windows. However, Linux is not as straightforward to administer as windows. I think it requires someone with more skills to administer a Linux box than a windows box.
Someone with more skills will likely be better at administration in general, regardless of which OS. So it is kind of a split problem. To administer linux boxes, you need someone with a good skill set, but they can administer more boxes, but probably at a higher salary. To administer windows boxes, you may not have to pay as much but each tech supports fewer boxes.
The discussion went from software patents and free software to the morality of donating money. It has been a long time since my Logic and Reasoning class I took in college, but I believe this is a something of a red-herring. By arguing charity, the original conversation has been lost, as was the intent of the AC pro-Gates.
It is great (I guess) that Bill is giving away his money for the sake of third-world countries and puppy dogs. But this has nothing to do with to whom I would listen, or the truth of the matter.
Personal morality and monopoly practices of a company are not within the same discussion. Screwing over an entire industry and its associated consumers (almost everyone) is another matter, the original matter.
I'd hate to say it but you could be close to the truth. Stranger things have happened in business. Murder has happened because of business. The more powerful a corporation becomes, the less "costly" unsociable ideas become.
Walmart just closes a store because of fears of unions. A much smaller company would not likely be able to use such an audacious tactic.
I believe that politics and business go hand in hand in how power can skew normally reasonable people to do bizarre and immoral things.
I think it is only natural. People get excited about something new (the internet) and spend a lot of time on it. They try every application using it (IM, e-mail, web, chat, etc).
For some, though, it isn't something that is essential. For me, I use the internet everyday, but if I didn't have access to it anymore, everyone that I care to talk to has my telephone number and vis-versa. If I didn't have access to my e-mail, it almost wouldn't matter. It wasn't always like that for me, but I've come to a place where there are other things more important.
That said, sometimes people also through out the "baby with the bath water." If I was having problems with spam, I would change my e-mail address and only give it out to people whom I would want to talk to, not shopping sites or other privacy invading sites. Then leave it at that.
Although a little late to posting, I had an interesting experience about 8 years ago in Northern Ireland. When crossing from the Republic to the North, I was stopped at a British army checkpoint. It was just after a medium bombing and I happened, unbeknownst to me to be driving near the bombing site.
The soldier asked for my name and when I told them, all of a sudden the soldier stood up with a visible change her appearance. There was scurrying around the armored transport with soldiers now grasping their assault rifles and coming towards the car.
Fortunately the next question was "where are you from?". When I said "America" things got under control quickly, with the other soldiers turning around and heading back to where they were sitting, and the soldier asking me questions was much relieved.
Apparently my family name had links to the IRA with a couple of members serving time for terrorist offenses. Mind you, none of my relatives were/are involved. But because my name is a somewhat uncommon Irish name, the simple reference to the name almost caused me and my family problems.
Just simply our names should not enough to cause these problems.
I recently, from about 1 1/2 years ago, until a couple of months ago, had the pleasure to exchange e-mails. He was very easy going, and responded to every one of my e-mails, even when they weren't that important. Even though I didn't know him past the history on his website, the way he treated me, a complete stranger, tells me that there was something special about him, past his "father of ASCII" title.
This is just a guess, but I believe that a copyright is inhertied by the creator's estate. This is how the copyright is still in force after the creator's death.
Slashdot Mirror
My mother-in-law just got back from Guatamala and remarked at how the McDonald's (and most restaurants) had heavily-armed guards standing at the doorway and patrolling the parking lots. However, many people don't even go to the restaurant, most of them deliver.
I think I have found the answer to having a great number of people reply to my posts. Make some anti-religious (or more specifically anti-Christian) statement. It doesn't have to be specific, actually the more general the better!
That aside, Christianity is not as screwed up and many people seem to think. Christianity is in its current disrepute because of generations of "Christians" claiming G-d is "X" or G-d is "Y". A vast majority of these things that people claim G-d is, G-d did not claim.
That the Bible (Torah, and New Testament) is inspired by G-d, is a lot different than saying that it happened exactly as it is written. If you can examine past current era Protestant "Christianity" (1500-today), ignore Roman Catholic medieval problems, find early Christian teachers and you will find that they do not subscribe to the idea that Genesis was literal and an exact transcript of the beginning of life.
In my own belief, it is more important how I treat others than whether I know how, when, and where G-d created life. See Matthew 25:31-42? to understand what G-d is looking for from us in "religion." Everything other study should wait until I master this one.
I disagree. Telling people about information that is freely available is not asshole reporting. Would it be different if the reporter just said that Google has an immense about of information on their own CEO including x, y, z, but not giving links? It is one thing to say the information exists, it is another to prove the information exists. I wouldn't trust the reporter if he couldn't prove the information actually existed.
Again, this was not secret information, or information that anyone had the expectation of being kept secret.
Now Google has a right to talk with whomever they want and stop talking to whomever they want. But I would say that they are violating their mission of "Do no evil" by retaliating against a news source because of a reporter exposing what Google does best, search and index web-based information.
Why is it that it is mostly ACs that talk about surveillence tapes. Do you realize how short of a time tapes are kept. It is quite short. Also, have you seen the quality of the images from these? It is quite hard get a good image of a face.
In addition, I often travel more than 600 miles away from where I live. I could by something there from a smaller store. Good luck tracking me down!
Actually, I am (somewhat) worried about Word and DRM. I do not think that there will be a PR backlash against DRM and Word, because large corporations actually WANT it. Large and small companies now are worried about information leak. If they can set up their computers so that documents will only be readible by people with the proper keys, they would LOVE IT.
Stopping information leaking will be the bait, some other (unimaginable by me now) DRM "feature" is the payoff.
All of the above replies miss something that Windows/MacOSX does well: they allow average users to add software easily. The difference between adoption of Windows and Linux is not going to be about open source vs. closed source. It is going to be about ease of use. Ease of use usually means a well thought out default path with few options.
If you don't care to have average users use Linux, then all of the replies are fine. If you want average users to use Linux, something (and I don't have any ideas unfortunately) has to be done.
However, Linux will never be able to "compete" with Windows because of a difference in computer use philosophy. Generally, Windows is promiscuous and Linux is not. Windows (and software developers) try to make the software installable so that a computer-phobe could still do it. Once there are more than a couple of options or steps, the basic user will give up and never return. We also know what promiscuity allows, spyware, trojans, etc.
Linux would be fine if people didn't mind hiring someone to set up their computer to do word processing, websurf, e-mail. But few if any people want to do that.
Mac OSX will succeed in ways that Linux won't because of the ease of (and consistency of) installation of other software. This has nothing to do with open source.
What upsets Microsoft is that they do not have a monopoly on ease of use. For Linux it is just a problem to be solved. Apple has solved it: *nix and ease of use. Microsoft knows that it will likely be solved eventually, and then all hell will break loose.
I think "they" call it OmniMax. At least when I was in Australia about 13 years ago. The effect was incredible. I saw an underwater film of the Great Barrier Reef (after seeing the real thing). I think it was in Brisbane, but I don't remember.
There is an interesting story about the San Francisco Bay Bridge. If you haven't seen it, it is a double-deck bridge. When first built the lower deck had train tracks and car lanes. The upper span was just for cars travelling in both directions.
The passenger train system (the Key System / Key Route) was successful but somewhat limited as the East Bay area spread out away from SF/Oakland. It was discontinued in 1958. General Motors (surprise, surprise) obtained 64% of the stock of the company which ran the Key System through a front company. They replaced the entire board and essentially dismantled the system piece by piece. GM then planned to replace the system with GM buses. The regional governments tried to stop the plan, but lost out eventually.
GM continually tried to dismatle all trains, and even had some help by the Oakland transportation department in converting popular train lines (96% ridership) into car lanes because the trains (travelling at street level) were trying up car traffic.
I love this quote: "The PUC had granted a large fare increase for Jan. 1, 1948 for "service improvements." After the fares were raised, GM stated its 'motorization" plan was the "service improvement.'" Motorization was the replacing of street cars and electric trains with buses.
Through fare increases and service cut backs, GM got what it wanted all along. Removing trains and selling buses and cars!
Source: http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc03.html
So, it wasn't a conspiracy so-to-speak, but underhanded corporate tactics to sell product.
At the time the canon of the Bible was developed at the Nicene council in 325 AD there was no such thing as the Catholic church in any form near what is looks like today. In reality the majority of the participants in the council came from other parts of the middle eastern/western asian world, not from Rome. At the time of the Nicene council there were no world rulers that espoused Christianity, not even Constantine himself. An emperor would have very little to fear from excommunication (which is BTW very misunderstood now-a-days) from a religion he didn't even believe.
Power was very unlikely to be a factor in the set of books chosen, as the books themselves did not give power. The christian faith was just recently (less than 15 years before) legalized and supported by the emperor. The views of all of the participants were not unanimous, but the prevailing belief was that the Holy Spirit would guide the majority of the participants to come to a consensus belief. At that council there was a lot of people that believed a lot of different and conflicting things (the reason for the council!).
Just because I give myself a particular label, does not mean I practice or believe what others practice or believe who give themselves the same label. Labels are only good as a definition, if there is a stable value for that definition. Mormons (whether the think they do or not) believe in a God that is vastly different than Roman Catholcs or most protestant chrisitian religions. Muslims who hate all non-muslims and wish to kill them or have them killed, probably believe something different than a great majority of other Muslims. How do you tell the difference? It is in what they do and think.
If you want to believe what you wrote, that is fine, and you are well within your rights to to believe that. But to insinuate that you know the "true" christian belief and history, while having basic misunderstanding of how, what, and why events happened does not make your belief the true christian belief, for which you can bash to stupid christians.
What I especially find funny is when some people show a lack of tolerance for another set-of-people for that they claim that set-of-people are intolerant. If you have a right to be an a**hole, than why should you not accept their rights to be a**holes?
This issue cannot be solved with a specification by committee. The reason OSX and XP can do thing that seem better than package managers is that they control the operation of the OS. They don't rely on a group of 1000 people to try to figure out how 10000 other people can use an installer/package manager. They just put whatever hooks they need into the filesystem or the kernal. The problem with committee is that there is no personal accountability. For Apple, the people that develop the specs for software installation have personal accountability to complete their work and do it well. No non-company committee has this "fear."
For open source, the task is near impossible. First if you want to put hooks in the kernal/FS/OS to be shared by all distros, requires the buy in from a great number of people, ie. a committee.
What I think is the most interesting is that we are not looking outside of what we already have. We have package managers; we have x number of groups that think that their package manager is better than the others; we have x number of groups that want better package managers. Why are we not stepping back from the idea of a package manager, and start with requirements and and current limitations? Then come up with a set of things we need in order to accomplish all of the requirements, ignoring current limitations. These "things" might have a wide ranging effect on all parts of the GNU/Linux system. From filesystem, kernel, to executable changes.
I don't think we will have any better software distribution and management until we can pull back from the immediate needs and look at blue-sky possibilities and change all parts of the OS to accomodate a better solution.
I do not have hope that it will ever happen.
I believe (I didn't look it up again), that the reason typefaces cannot be copyrighted has to do with the fear that by being able to copyright typefaces would allow the ability to deny freedom of the press. I can't remember the exact reasoning, but something like an owner of the typeface copyright (if it existed) could use their ownership to limit others' ability to print what they wanted.
The answer is that with information I can obtain, I can manipulate that information in any way I want. I just can't pass my manipulated information off as though it was the original.
I a site provides information, I have the right to receive that information and do whatever I want with it (with the above proscribed limitation). If I want to remove every 5th word, I can. There is no lgocial reason I should not be allowed to do this. If I want to record something off of the TV and skip every other 5 seconds of information, why should I not be allowed to do this?
An ad is just a piece of information. Just like any other piece of information. I am not changing the original information, just my version of it. To filter information comes very naturally. I don't have to watch TV commercials, I change the channel or go do something else, or skip ahead. If I'm reading the newspaper, I do not have to look at every add in the paper, I just look at the information in which I am interested. For the newspaper, my only obligation to obtain the information was the 50 cents I put into the machine.
If a website requires money from readers in order to survive, then they need to figure out the best way to obtain said money. If they think advertising is going to work, that's fine, but they have to figure the percentage of readership that will actually see the ad. Just like over-the-air television. TV stations/networks can't make you watch the very thing that is paying their way. All they can do is tell advertisers approximately how many people watch, and use statistical modelling to determine how many of those watch the commercials.
If a website wants to charge users for access, that is fine, and would be along the lines of HBO charging for access to their information.
Just like in over-the-air television, I cannot steal (or break a social contract) if the information is offered free in the first place.
As for newspapers, am I breaking a social contract by leaving the newspaper I read at lunch for someone else to read? Or what about libraries? Are they breaking a social contract by letting multiple people read the same copy of a book?
Like I said above, modifying Firefox or creating software that retrieves available information in a manner I desire is up to the me, as long as I don't pass off that modified information as the original source. What would be a problem is if the ISP that provided the website the hardware and IP connection, choose to modify the information before being sent out, simply because this would then have the ISP transmitting modified information as the original source. (I am not talking about mail or http headers. The headers should be considered public access, but rather the actual content as created.)
I haven't used Acrobat 4 for quite a long time. However I cannot find a way to remove the PDF toolbar even after I have removed the software completely from my machine.
It has always seemed strange to me that we (as American's) have to "pay" in order to file taxes. Whether we pay money (a lot) for an accountant or an H&R Block droid, or for a software/web based tax preparation, or we pay a significant amount of time to prepare our taxes manually.
Although I would hate to give up my mortgage interest deduction, I am very much in favor of a radically simplified tax scheme. Eliminate or drastically reduce tax deductions and the form becomes simple: ((Income-deductions) * tax%) - Prepaid tax = amount owed/refunded.
I don't particularly agree, being religious. However, before I became religious, I was a "moral" person. Now I have learned that I should be better than I was. I did not need religion to know what was right from the view point of other people. This is an aspect of empathy.
However, what I have learned is all of those items you say the religious don't have, peace, sanctity of life, mercy, tolerance.
Now the argument that religion is a crutch seems strange. My religion taught me how to be a better human, better to those around me. All of us, no matter whom is speaking, does or has done something immoral, for which I would include something as "easy" as lying. Crutches are supposed to make life easier. It would be easier for me to not be religious. How is it then a crutch. I am required to do work, physical and mental, in order to fulfill the obligations I accepted. My religion is obviously not a crutch for me. A crutch (for me) would be to say God does not exist and there is no reason to care about other people.
What I find interesting is you say laws are a reason for criminals to avoid crime? That idea is logically backwards. You can't be a criminal unless there is a law directed against your actions. Unless you are talking about "moral law," which is an entirely different beast. There is no law directed against the practice of my religion, currently. If there was a change, would that make me a criminal?
Regarding life on other planets. It doesn't affect me much. Of course I am not a fundamentalist, and neither were early Christian Church believers. The story of Genesis was not considered a precise story of creation. I do not know about Jewish understanding of Genesis, but my guess is that they do not believe in a fundamentalist viewpoint either.
I believe (I have not actually seen the plant myself) that it is already operational. It is creating oil and selling it to a local manufacturer for combustion in a boiler. It is, however, nowhere near the cost range they initially (2003) thought it would be. But first generation technology always has fits and starts.
What about this idea...
If a support tech can only support 40 windows PCs, but another support tech can support 200 Linux PCs, is the difference the amount of support or the intelligence of the tech.
Now I run windows, and have administered windows and I develop software for windows. However, Linux is not as straightforward to administer as windows. I think it requires someone with more skills to administer a Linux box than a windows box.
Someone with more skills will likely be better at administration in general, regardless of which OS. So it is kind of a split problem. To administer linux boxes, you need someone with a good skill set, but they can administer more boxes, but probably at a higher salary. To administer windows boxes, you may not have to pay as much but each tech supports fewer boxes.
The discussion went from software patents and free software to the morality of donating money. It has been a long time since my Logic and Reasoning class I took in college, but I believe this is a something of a red-herring. By arguing charity, the original conversation has been lost, as was the intent of the AC pro-Gates. It is great (I guess) that Bill is giving away his money for the sake of third-world countries and puppy dogs. But this has nothing to do with to whom I would listen, or the truth of the matter. Personal morality and monopoly practices of a company are not within the same discussion. Screwing over an entire industry and its associated consumers (almost everyone) is another matter, the original matter.
I'd hate to say it but you could be close to the truth. Stranger things have happened in business. Murder has happened because of business. The more powerful a corporation becomes, the less "costly" unsociable ideas become. Walmart just closes a store because of fears of unions. A much smaller company would not likely be able to use such an audacious tactic. I believe that politics and business go hand in hand in how power can skew normally reasonable people to do bizarre and immoral things.
I believe DEET is actually N, N-diethyl-3-methybenzamide (DEET)t orepell.html
See ref: http://www.msstate.edu/Entomology/Homepest/mosqui
Although I am not a chemistry person.
True, but my first two kids were born right on the due date the doctor calculated.
I think it is only natural. People get excited about something new (the internet) and spend a lot of time on it. They try every application using it (IM, e-mail, web, chat, etc). For some, though, it isn't something that is essential. For me, I use the internet everyday, but if I didn't have access to it anymore, everyone that I care to talk to has my telephone number and vis-versa. If I didn't have access to my e-mail, it almost wouldn't matter. It wasn't always like that for me, but I've come to a place where there are other things more important. That said, sometimes people also through out the "baby with the bath water." If I was having problems with spam, I would change my e-mail address and only give it out to people whom I would want to talk to, not shopping sites or other privacy invading sites. Then leave it at that.
Although a little late to posting, I had an interesting experience about 8 years ago in Northern Ireland. When crossing from the Republic to the North, I was stopped at a British army checkpoint. It was just after a medium bombing and I happened, unbeknownst to me to be driving near the bombing site. The soldier asked for my name and when I told them, all of a sudden the soldier stood up with a visible change her appearance. There was scurrying around the armored transport with soldiers now grasping their assault rifles and coming towards the car. Fortunately the next question was "where are you from?". When I said "America" things got under control quickly, with the other soldiers turning around and heading back to where they were sitting, and the soldier asking me questions was much relieved. Apparently my family name had links to the IRA with a couple of members serving time for terrorist offenses. Mind you, none of my relatives were/are involved. But because my name is a somewhat uncommon Irish name, the simple reference to the name almost caused me and my family problems. Just simply our names should not enough to cause these problems.
I recently, from about 1 1/2 years ago, until a couple of months ago, had the pleasure to exchange e-mails. He was very easy going, and responded to every one of my e-mails, even when they weren't that important. Even though I didn't know him past the history on his website, the way he treated me, a complete stranger, tells me that there was something special about him, past his "father of ASCII" title.
This is just a guess, but I believe that a copyright is inhertied by the creator's estate. This is how the copyright is still in force after the creator's death.