Depends on wh you spend your time with and how snobby you are. I only really got into anime when it became mainstream and now anime is part of my geekiness (I know enough to qualify as an anime geek but not enough for a full-blown otaku), even though there are lots of ungeeky people who share my interest in the topic. There's simplay no reason to become snobby about it.
The same with retrogaming: I'm loosely connected to a community centered around a program (th RPG Maker 2000) that lets you create games similar to the SNES' action adventures. Of course half the people there are running ZSNES, so it's not uncommon to find people who are a bit into old games. The few retrogaming geeks there (usually identified by the fact that they talk about old games for "obscure" platforms like the IBM PC, the Sega Genesis or the Commodore 64) don't mind the fact that the people around them couldn't tell Metal Slug apart from Metal Gear.
Of course there are geek snobs (usually found in IRC channels with names like #linux) but most geeks I know tolerate half-educated people who share their interests. The half-educated folks occasionally get left behind when the geeks go into full geek mode (for example, while walking a Wndows-to-Linux switcher through setting up Ubuntu they suddenly get caught up in a discussion of what's the best packet manager), but they can live with that and we can live with that. I get left behind when the otakus are discussing their favourie seiyuu as well. Turns out that coexistence can be a great thing (and you find out that there are many geeks-wh-aren't-geeks, ie. people who show many signs of geekdom but don't consider themselves geeks).
The people at Subway's are nothing more than mere sandwich makers, but they still make excellent subs. I've been to places where the burger flippers are masters of their art and I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of places where getPlural($FANCY_JOB_NAME) are incapable of giving you basic service.
They can have all the fancy names in the world, if they provide me with food that is arguably sub-par they don't get much respect as a food provider. OTOH, if I leave the place with a smile because I have just had a really good meal I'm likely to meet the people working there with respect. After all, they can do something I can't (make good food).
Note that even without the fight over abortion there still is a stem cell controversy - in Germany we can't do any stem cell research, even though abortions are perfectly acceptable. Over here the debate indeed is about "oh noes, we can't tell if it's human".
It's usually more entertaining. Some of the old plays still have recreational value even for people not into historical literature.
Apart from that it's just a document giving us information about that time - a/. post does that too, although the play might be the more exhaustive resource.
Actually I was referring to the European Open Root Server Network, a complete alternative set of DNS root servers that is, depending on the state of world politics, either synchronized with ICANN or in independent mode, which means that the root zone is manually updated to reflect the changes in ICANN's.
Basically it's okay as long as you stick to what's generally accepted as true and don't endorse the nasty stuff. For example pointing out that without Dr. Mengele there would be no modern transplantation medicine is perfectly acceptable - that's just that, a historical fact. Pointing out that we should all be thankful for Menegle doing his research would be considered bad taste but will hardly get you in court. Applauding Mengele for torturing Jews is a good way to... get your homepage taken off the 'net. If you sell Mengele memorabilia you might even get into legal trouble, but you really have to go out of your way to get in legal trouble for saying something.
Yes, we do censor stuff we consider Nazi propaganda, but the strongest effect of the censorship I know (besides the web site takedowns) is the fact that Wolfenstein 3D is illegal in Germany. It would have been classified 18+ anyway, which means that it'd been illegal to publically advertise it. BTW, RtCW is not illegal, because they did s/Nazis/evil cult/ over the manual and replaced all swastikas. Apart from video games the censorship is pretty tame.
True, but still the USA aren't flawless. No one is. The first part of my post was merely a reiteration of two arguments already used in this topic; the second part is the more important one: Sticking management of the root servers with a multinational organization is safer than letting a national one handle it. And no, teh evil Chin0r is not going to take over the Interweb once it's no longer protected by American nukes.
I also can't say that China doesn't win a war against the USA and take over ICANN. Note that "is't owned by a single country" doesn't equal "is up for grabs". Putting management of the root servers in the UN's hands will create a bloated, inefficient oganization, but it'd be a safe bloated, inefficient oganization. At least as long as the UN aren't being controlled by a single country - and when that happens we have much worse problems than the root servers.
I'm not being a zealot here, but Linux is a bit more performant than that. I'm running Gentoo Linux on an Athlon 1800+ with 768 MB of PC2100 DDR RAM and having Konversation, Konsole, Firefox, Thunderbird and XMMS running at the same time only creates lag if Firefox is loading something big or if I'm compiling something. Gentoo feels snappier than WinXP, probably because I don't have millions of services and driver-bundled helper apps running in the background.
Yes, Linux can be dog slow. No, it doesn't have to. Especially if you built the system yourself - most ready-to-run distros come with a lot of unnecessary crud preinstalled.
And yes, I do know how a heavily swapping Unix feels like; I'm running OS X on an iBook with 256 megs of RAM.
Why invent a new system? If we put up our own root servers there's nothing you can do about it, except maybe filter all traffic from our network. Which would be financial suicide. Actually, we already put up our own root servers - google "ORSN".
Who invented the stuff is comepletely irrelevant. The technology is out and it's well-known. Saying that the USA have anything to say regarding the use of packet switching is like saying that Germany has anything to say regarding the use of automobiles.
You didn't read World Law #234: "If a country gives control over the Internet's root nameservers into the hands of the United Nations it automatically becomes a part of China." It's there, right next to the law that regulates the number of laser cannons on flying saucers.
How about Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Trinidad or Bosnia and Herzegovina? They're all better than the USA when it comes to press freedom. As has been pointed out before, citing the worst alternative is not a valid argument.
The real answer is that no single country should be trusted with control of the Internet and that the UN didn't want to control but to manage the 'net.
I don't _have_ to use them. They just provide instant gratification when the mortality rate becomes high even for the standards of a low-level character (ie. when I just happen to have bad luck). The game certainly is playable without hammering on the reload button.
Heh, it's tit for tat... If a game has abused me a lot I don't care about abusing it as well. Also, in the beginning there's not much of a difference whether you go to a dungeon to level up and die a lot (thus having to reload constantly) or you try to steal a few spellbooks so that getting past Lv. 5 isn't so damn frustrating.
Slashdot Mirror
This is in Austria, which is not part of the US.
Yet.
I'm disappointed. That movie is so bad the badness overflows and it becomes good again. Also, has 2001 got an operating system named after it?
Depends on wh you spend your time with and how snobby you are. I only really got into anime when it became mainstream and now anime is part of my geekiness (I know enough to qualify as an anime geek but not enough for a full-blown otaku), even though there are lots of ungeeky people who share my interest in the topic. There's simplay no reason to become snobby about it.
The same with retrogaming: I'm loosely connected to a community centered around a program (th RPG Maker 2000) that lets you create games similar to the SNES' action adventures. Of course half the people there are running ZSNES, so it's not uncommon to find people who are a bit into old games. The few retrogaming geeks there (usually identified by the fact that they talk about old games for "obscure" platforms like the IBM PC, the Sega Genesis or the Commodore 64) don't mind the fact that the people around them couldn't tell Metal Slug apart from Metal Gear.
Of course there are geek snobs (usually found in IRC channels with names like #linux) but most geeks I know tolerate half-educated people who share their interests. The half-educated folks occasionally get left behind when the geeks go into full geek mode (for example, while walking a Wndows-to-Linux switcher through setting up Ubuntu they suddenly get caught up in a discussion of what's the best packet manager), but they can live with that and we can live with that. I get left behind when the otakus are discussing their favourie seiyuu as well. Turns out that coexistence can be a great thing (and you find out that there are many geeks-wh-aren't-geeks, ie. people who show many signs of geekdom but don't consider themselves geeks).
But Microsoft has recently announced that Aero will be optimized for mere mutilation...
The people at Subway's are nothing more than mere sandwich makers, but they still make excellent subs. I've been to places where the burger flippers are masters of their art and I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of places where getPlural($FANCY_JOB_NAME) are incapable of giving you basic service.
They can have all the fancy names in the world, if they provide me with food that is arguably sub-par they don't get much respect as a food provider. OTOH, if I leave the place with a smile because I have just had a really good meal I'm likely to meet the people working there with respect. After all, they can do something I can't (make good food).
Thusly solving our overpopulation problems as well.
Note that even without the fight over abortion there still is a stem cell controversy - in Germany we can't do any stem cell research, even though abortions are perfectly acceptable. Over here the debate indeed is about "oh noes, we can't tell if it's human".
You Must Be New Here.(TM)
It's usually more entertaining. Some of the old plays still have recreational value even for people not into historical literature. /. post does that too, although the play might be the more exhaustive resource.
Apart from that it's just a document giving us information about that time - a
Actually I was referring to the European Open Root Server Network, a complete alternative set of DNS root servers that is, depending on the state of world politics, either synchronized with ICANN or in independent mode, which means that the root zone is manually updated to reflect the changes in ICANN's.
Basically it's okay as long as you stick to what's generally accepted as true and don't endorse the nasty stuff. For example pointing out that without Dr. Mengele there would be no modern transplantation medicine is perfectly acceptable - that's just that, a historical fact. Pointing out that we should all be thankful for Menegle doing his research would be considered bad taste but will hardly get you in court. Applauding Mengele for torturing Jews is a good way to... get your homepage taken off the 'net. If you sell Mengele memorabilia you might even get into legal trouble, but you really have to go out of your way to get in legal trouble for saying something.
Yes, we do censor stuff we consider Nazi propaganda, but the strongest effect of the censorship I know (besides the web site takedowns) is the fact that Wolfenstein 3D is illegal in Germany. It would have been classified 18+ anyway, which means that it'd been illegal to publically advertise it. BTW, RtCW is not illegal, because they did s/Nazis/evil cult/ over the manual and replaced all swastikas. Apart from video games the censorship is pretty tame.
True, but still the USA aren't flawless. No one is. The first part of my post was merely a reiteration of two arguments already used in this topic; the second part is the more important one: Sticking management of the root servers with a multinational organization is safer than letting a national one handle it. And no, teh evil Chin0r is not going to take over the Interweb once it's no longer protected by American nukes.
I also can't say that China doesn't win a war against the USA and take over ICANN. Note that "is't owned by a single country" doesn't equal "is up for grabs". Putting management of the root servers in the UN's hands will create a bloated, inefficient oganization, but it'd be a safe bloated, inefficient oganization. At least as long as the UN aren't being controlled by a single country - and when that happens we have much worse problems than the root servers.
Will students in 2400 have to force their way through the screenplay to Mission: Impossible? Just a thought that just crossed my mind...
Generic counterpost implying that the parent is of low intellect.
I'm not being a zealot here, but Linux is a bit more performant than that. I'm running Gentoo Linux on an Athlon 1800+ with 768 MB of PC2100 DDR RAM and having Konversation, Konsole, Firefox, Thunderbird and XMMS running at the same time only creates lag if Firefox is loading something big or if I'm compiling something. Gentoo feels snappier than WinXP, probably because I don't have millions of services and driver-bundled helper apps running in the background.
Yes, Linux can be dog slow. No, it doesn't have to. Especially if you built the system yourself - most ready-to-run distros come with a lot of unnecessary crud preinstalled.
And yes, I do know how a heavily swapping Unix feels like; I'm running OS X on an iBook with 256 megs of RAM.
I always thought I was a method...
Why invent a new system? If we put up our own root servers there's nothing you can do about it, except maybe filter all traffic from our network. Which would be financial suicide. Actually, we already put up our own root servers - google "ORSN".
Who invented the stuff is comepletely irrelevant. The technology is out and it's well-known. Saying that the USA have anything to say regarding the use of packet switching is like saying that Germany has anything to say regarding the use of automobiles.
You didn't read World Law #234: "If a country gives control over the Internet's root nameservers into the hands of the United Nations it automatically becomes a part of China." It's there, right next to the law that regulates the number of laser cannons on flying saucers.
How about Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Trinidad or Bosnia and Herzegovina? They're all better than the USA when it comes to press freedom. As has been pointed out before, citing the worst alternative is not a valid argument.
The real answer is that no single country should be trusted with control of the Internet and that the UN didn't want to control but to manage the 'net.
Sorry for the troll, but hearing US Americans brag about their great freedom is kind of cute. And sad.
Germany? Not likely.
Can't even discuss Nazi history there.
Shit! I have to call the police, all of my history teachers were criminals!
It's illegal to glorify Nazi history, discussion is very much wanted.
As for Germany, we have a ban on Nazi propaganda. Guess what would happen if we ever decided to lift that ban. Guess who'd be the first one to cry.
I don't _have_ to use them. They just provide instant gratification when the mortality rate becomes high even for the standards of a low-level character (ie. when I just happen to have bad luck). The game certainly is playable without hammering on the reload button.
Heh, it's tit for tat... If a game has abused me a lot I don't care about abusing it as well. Also, in the beginning there's not much of a difference whether you go to a dungeon to level up and die a lot (thus having to reload constantly) or you try to steal a few spellbooks so that getting past Lv. 5 isn't so damn frustrating.