I never thought I'd see the day when the media actually realized that they might not always know what they are talking about in every field they report on. The thought that we may see more and more journalists actually try to get feedback from those that *do* know what they are talking about before they make fools of themselves by printing sensational half-truths gives me goosebumps. I think this "open-source" mentality may prove to change the world in ways many of us never even imagined just a few short years ago. Linus may be joking when he talks about world domination, but when you manage to completely alter the mindset of even the most hardcore "closed source" industries - such as journalism - then haven't you, in effect, conqured the world? Then again, this may just prove to be a one-time thing - there's certainly no indication that anyone else in the media is ready to move in this direction. One can dream though, right? Given the speed with which the open source ideaology is spreading currently, maybe its not too farfetched to think that this may be the way of the future.
A world in which information is truely free... kind of gives you that warm fuzzy feeling, no?
Yes, I realize that. But look at what we are fighting for, compared to what they were. We want to be able to export encryption, they were fighting for the most basic human rights. Big difference. Would you be as willing to spend the rest of your life in jail for the right to send crypto overseas as you would for the right to be treated as a human being? I sure wouldn't. Civil disobedience is not the answer to everything. You must look at the risk vs the potential profit. My original post was saying that it isn't worth it in this case, and I still stand by what I said.
I agree wholeheartedly, but there is one major problem. If this were to backfire, there would be alot of people facing felony charges for participating. While the chances of them actually prosecuting and convicting everyone involved is quite slim, the possibility is still there. I don't know about you, but that's not something I would much enjoy. This isn't exactly the type of civil disobedience that you associate with civil rights movements and such. There are some seriously powerful people who have a vested interest in seeing that the law remains as is - the NSA and FBI being just a couple of them. The fear factor from this alone would be enough to keep people from participating, thereby increasing the chances that those who do participate will be prosecuted. That's how government works anymore - it uses the fear of a felony conviction to keep its subjects^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcitizens in compliance with tyranical legislation.
I agree that the governments policy on encryption export is wrong and unconstitutional, and I agree that something seriously needs to be done about it, but what you are proposing is dangerous to anyone who gets involved. I think that we should instead look to forming some sort of grass roots lobying effort to try and get Congress to repeal these laws (is there such an entity already in existance?)./. has a large enough reader base that we should be able to pool a fair amount of $$ to start something like this - and there are always those businesses who would profit from a repeal of encryption laws. Does anyone think that such a thing would be possible? Or am I just dreaming?
Win95/98 is so unstable because it badly coded from the ground up. I've had my share of problems with Windows, but only one has ever been due to the registry. Besides, even if the registry were the source of Windows problems, that doesn't mean that it can't be done right with Linux.
"The day that Linux gets a registry will be the day I switch to a different OS." How about, "The day that Linux gets a Desktop will be the day I switch to a different OS." Your reasoning is that it's bad because Windows uses it. Just because MS does something poorly doesn't mean it's inherently a bad idea.
I've been wondering about this for a while myself. I recently switched to KDE from Gnome, mainly for Kdevelop, but I still use a few Gnome apps. I've been trying to find a way to make them "play nice" ever since I switched. I know that Kdevelop will automagicly include everything you need to be KDE compliant for you, but Gnome doesn't have anything like this AFAIK. If Kdevelop could be modified to allow you to select multiple desktop compatability, that would be a great help, but it would still limit you to compatibility with existing Desktops Environments(DE) only, forcing you to recompile if a new DE ever came along. This might not be a major problem, since it seems most people are taking to either KDE or Gnome, but you'd still have to recompile if there were ever any major feature changes to one of the DEs. It'd be nice if some sort of system could be developed that would allow IDEs like Kdevelop to create apps around a central registry - not totally unlike the MS registry system, but different in that KDE and Gnome are two totally different DEs, where as Windows is a single desktop that can simply be configured in different ways. What I am thinking of would work at a much more fundemental level than the MS registry (I think - I'm really not all that familiar with the Windows registry) You could simply have a single file listing the libraries that an app would need to load at runtime in order to be compliant with the DE that is currently being run. If any major changes were made to future versions of that DE, or if you ever installed a new DE, those changes could simply be made to the registry file.
Any comments on this? I'm curious as to whether or not this is workable.
Uh... spontaneous generation was taken *very* seriously in scientific circles. It used to be taken as a matter of fact by anyone who had any background in the matter.
And we wonder why these kind of lawsuits so often succeed. I just pray that the courts have a bit more sense in this matter. It never ceases to amaze me how some people can rationalize the most ridiculous things.
Well, this article convinced me to try using the open source encryption software that was mentioned on/. a couple weeks ago... only problem is, I don't remember the name of it, or where to find it. Can anyone help me out?
Also, does anyone know anything about this SAFE bill? It sounds like something we should be telling our reps in Congress to support. Not that they ever really listen to us, but it can't hurt. It seems to me that with the readership that/. has, we could make for a pretty strong grassroots lobby on issues like this (if you're under 18, they don't really need to know that;). Problem is, no one ever really bothers to try. I really think, that instead of always complaining about how the government is constantly trying to invade our privacy, we should be trying to do something about it. At least then when we complain about it, we can say we've tried to do our part. There was a site posted a bit ago with the e-mail addresses of Congressmen listed on it. Can someone post that again as well?
Yeah, seems like it'd be hard to come by enough varied DNA to avoid having the entire population being inbred a few generations down the line. Not that I'm opposed to inbreeding - it keeps Country music singers out of the unemployment line.
I'm just going by what I read in my Biology textbook. I agree, it sounds rather stupid, but being able to reproduce *is* a requirement for being classified as alive. However, I'm pretty sure that it applies to the species as a whole, rather than individual members of that species (I should have made this a bit clearer in my first post) Since most humans can reproduce, all are considered alive, even if individual members cannot for one reason or another.
Uh... you're wrong there. Two members of the same species can produce a living offspring. Two members of similar species can produce a "non-living" offspring (one of the requirements for being classified as "alive" is the ability to reproduce. A lion and a tiger can produce offspring, called a "Liger" I believe, but that offspring cannot reproduce, and so, by the strictest Biological classification, is not considered alive) Two members of completely dissimilar species cannot produce any offspring at all. So there IS a distinction between species. It isn't just an artificial classification. Macro-eveolution is where an organism evolves into a complete new species, incapable of breeding with members of the species its ancestors were once a part of. Micro-evolution, by contrast, does not produce a new species, since the changes do not render the organism incapable of breeding with members of that species.
By these definitions, there is very little evidence for macro-evolution. Nearly all evidence has been in support of micro-evolution.
Anyway, IANAB, but I am pretty sure these things are taught in junior-high Biology classes. At least, they used to be.
face it, your country has pissed a LOT of people off in the last century.
Correction: our *government* has pissed off alot of people, including alot of American citizens. We have to deal with it everday of our lives, while it rarely affects you, and even then, usually indirectly. But despite this, we all get lumped in with our government when it comes time to dish out the criticism. We get screwed from both ends. There are plenty of us who would LOVE to see our military pulled out of Europe, and our government mind its own business, but the media does an excellent job of convincing the masses that the governement is their friend, so we have little chance of making a change.
It doesn't matter. Crime grows exponentaly with popualtion, or something like that. Larger populations have higher percentages of crime rates. Of course, I have no scientific evidence to back this up or anything, but it sounds good at least (and makes sense)
Labor Unions don't make any sense unless they are compulsory.
That's as bad as prohibiting unions. You just change the group that gets their rights trampled on. But, hey, that's ok, because they disagree with you, right?
As far as I can tell, the Libertarian party is the one party that is actually concerned with the rights of the individual. The others do nothing but pay lip service to those rights.
How many of you "stupid americans" out there actually LIKE what the Federal government does? This post seems to indicate that we are all in favor of the US government's actions, but I think the majority of people here and across the US (those capable of individual thought anyway) are getting pretty sick of the way our government is constantly involving itself in areas it has no business being. Please don't make generalized statements about Americans' intelligence. We're held prisoner by the mindless sheep that make up the majority of the voting populace.
While I hate taxes as much as the next guy, you said yourself that tax money should be used to fund those things which are impossible to obtain otherwise. Space exploration, at this point, falls into that catagory. Even The Great Evil One, Bill Gates, would be bankrupt after a while if he had to fund NASA. The amount of money currently required to explore space is too much for any one person, or even a small group of people, to afford, and any benefits that may be obtained from it are strictly long term. There simply isn't any way for a person to make a profit at this point. THat doesn't mean that it won't be possible in the future, when costs have dropped, and space travel becomes a bit more commonplace. If this ever occurs, then I'm all for the privatization of space research.
You also cannot ignore the necessity of space research. Where are we going to be in another couple hundred years if we haven't at least begun construction of a lunar colony. While I tend to think claims of population overcrowding are a bit exaggerated, eventually, we are going to run out of room here on Earth. Should we wait until that point to begin government funding of space exploration? I guess that wouldn't be a problem if you don't mind massive world-wide starvation for a couple decades.
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I never thought I'd see the day when the media actually realized that they might not always know what they are talking about in every field they report on. The thought that we may see more and more journalists actually try to get feedback from those that *do* know what they are talking about before they make fools of themselves by printing sensational half-truths gives me goosebumps. I think this "open-source" mentality may prove to change the world in ways many of us never even imagined just a few short years ago. Linus may be joking when he talks about world domination, but when you manage to completely alter the mindset of even the most hardcore "closed source" industries - such as journalism - then haven't you, in effect, conqured the world? Then again, this may just prove to be a one-time thing - there's certainly no indication that anyone else in the media is ready to move in this direction. One can dream though, right? Given the speed with which the open source ideaology is spreading currently, maybe its not too farfetched to think that this may be the way of the future.
A world in which information is truely free... kind of gives you that warm fuzzy feeling, no?
gee, let me guess... Chewbacca is the one that dies in the new book. Thanks. I've been avoiding reading about it so as not to spoil it. *sigh*
Yes, I realize that. But look at what we are fighting for, compared to what they were. We want to be able to export encryption, they were fighting for the most basic human rights. Big difference. Would you be as willing to spend the rest of your life in jail for the right to send crypto overseas as you would for the right to be treated as a human being? I sure wouldn't. Civil disobedience is not the answer to everything. You must look at the risk vs the potential profit. My original post was saying that it isn't worth it in this case, and I still stand by what I said.
I agree wholeheartedly, but there is one major problem. If this were to backfire, there would be alot of people facing felony charges for participating. While the chances of them actually prosecuting and convicting everyone involved is quite slim, the possibility is still there. I don't know about you, but that's not something I would much enjoy. This isn't exactly the type of civil disobedience that you associate with civil rights movements and such. There are some seriously powerful people who have a vested interest in seeing that the law remains as is - the NSA and FBI being just a couple of them. The fear factor from this alone would be enough to keep people from participating, thereby increasing the chances that those who do participate will be prosecuted. That's how government works anymore - it uses the fear of a felony conviction to keep its subjects^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcitizens in compliance with tyranical legislation.
/. has a large enough reader base that we should be able to pool a fair amount of $$ to start something like this - and there are always those businesses who would profit from a repeal of encryption laws. Does anyone think that such a thing would be possible? Or am I just dreaming?
I agree that the governments policy on encryption export is wrong and unconstitutional, and I agree that something seriously needs to be done about it, but what you are proposing is dangerous to anyone who gets involved. I think that we should instead look to forming some sort of grass roots lobying effort to try and get Congress to repeal these laws (is there such an entity already in existance?).
Win95/98 is so unstable because it badly coded from the ground up. I've had my share of problems with Windows, but only one has ever been due to the registry. Besides, even if the registry were the source of Windows problems, that doesn't mean that it can't be done right with Linux.
"The day that Linux gets a registry will be the day I switch to a different OS."
How about, "The day that Linux gets a Desktop will be the day I switch to a different OS."
Your reasoning is that it's bad because Windows uses it. Just because MS does something poorly doesn't mean it's inherently a bad idea.
I've been wondering about this for a while myself. I recently switched to KDE from Gnome, mainly for Kdevelop, but I still use a few Gnome apps. I've been trying to find a way to make them "play nice" ever since I switched. I know that Kdevelop will automagicly include everything you need to be KDE compliant for you, but Gnome doesn't have anything like this AFAIK. If Kdevelop could be modified to allow you to select multiple desktop compatability, that would be a great help, but it would still limit you to compatibility with existing Desktops Environments(DE) only, forcing you to recompile if a new DE ever came along. This might not be a major problem, since it seems most people are taking to either KDE or Gnome, but you'd still have to recompile if there were ever any major feature changes to one of the DEs. It'd be nice if some sort of system could be developed that would allow IDEs like Kdevelop to create apps around a central registry - not totally unlike the MS registry system, but different in that KDE and Gnome are two totally different DEs, where as Windows is a single desktop that can simply be configured in different ways. What I am thinking of would work at a much more fundemental level than the MS registry (I think - I'm really not all that familiar with the Windows registry) You could simply have a single file listing the libraries that an app would need to load at runtime in order to be compliant with the DE that is currently being run. If any major changes were made to future versions of that DE, or if you ever installed a new DE, those changes could simply be made to the registry file.
Any comments on this? I'm curious as to whether or not this is workable.
Uh... spontaneous generation was taken *very* seriously in scientific circles. It used to be taken as a matter of fact by anyone who had any background in the matter.
If anyone has a patent on human stupidity, then this guy's going to be bankrupt. I doubt he could even breathe without owing royalties.
And we wonder why these kind of lawsuits so often succeed. I just pray that the courts have a bit more sense in this matter. It never ceases to amaze me how some people can rationalize the most ridiculous things.
Actually, SAFE is the good bill. The one the Feds want vetoed if it passes Congress.
Well, this article convinced me to try using the open source encryption software that was mentioned on /. a couple weeks ago... only problem is, I don't remember the name of it, or where to find it. Can anyone help me out?
/. has, we could make for a pretty strong grassroots lobby on issues like this (if you're under 18, they don't really need to know that ;). Problem is, no one ever really bothers to try. I really think, that instead of always complaining about how the government is constantly trying to invade our privacy, we should be trying to do something about it. At least then when we complain about it, we can say we've tried to do our part. There was a site posted a bit ago with the e-mail addresses of Congressmen listed on it. Can someone post that again as well?
Also, does anyone know anything about this SAFE bill? It sounds like something we should be telling our reps in Congress to support. Not that they ever really listen to us, but it can't hurt. It seems to me that with the readership that
Yeah, seems like it'd be hard to come by enough varied DNA to avoid having the entire population being inbred a few generations down the line. Not that I'm opposed to inbreeding - it keeps Country music singers out of the unemployment line.
I'm just going by what I read in my Biology textbook. I agree, it sounds rather stupid, but being able to reproduce *is* a requirement for being classified as alive. However, I'm pretty sure that it applies to the species as a whole, rather than individual members of that species (I should have made this a bit clearer in my first post) Since most humans can reproduce, all are considered alive, even if individual members cannot for one reason or another.
Uh... you're wrong there. Two members of the same species can produce a living offspring. Two members of similar species can produce a "non-living" offspring (one of the requirements for being classified as "alive" is the ability to reproduce. A lion and a tiger can produce offspring, called a "Liger" I believe, but that offspring cannot reproduce, and so, by the strictest Biological classification, is not considered alive) Two members of completely dissimilar species cannot produce any offspring at all. So there IS a distinction between species. It isn't just an artificial classification. Macro-eveolution is where an organism evolves into a complete new species, incapable of breeding with members of the species its ancestors were once a part of. Micro-evolution, by contrast, does not produce a new species, since the changes do not render the organism incapable of breeding with members of that species.
By these definitions, there is very little evidence for macro-evolution. Nearly all evidence has been in support of micro-evolution.
Anyway, IANAB, but I am pretty sure these things are taught in junior-high Biology classes. At least, they used to be.
Correction: our *government* has pissed off alot of people, including alot of American citizens. We have to deal with it everday of our lives, while it rarely affects you, and even then, usually indirectly. But despite this, we all get lumped in with our government when it comes time to dish out the criticism. We get screwed from both ends. There are plenty of us who would LOVE to see our military pulled out of Europe, and our government mind its own business, but the media does an excellent job of convincing the masses that the governement is their friend, so we have little chance of making a change.
It doesn't matter. Crime grows exponentaly with popualtion, or something like that. Larger populations have higher percentages of crime rates. Of course, I have no scientific evidence to back this up or anything, but it sounds good at least (and makes sense)
And being religious != being a religious nut
Hey, there's nothing wrong with being insane! I know plenty of perfectly respectable insane people.
That's as bad as prohibiting unions. You just change the group that gets their rights trampled on.
But, hey, that's ok, because they disagree with you, right?
As far as I can tell, the Libertarian party is the one party that is actually concerned with the rights
of the individual. The others do nothing but pay lip service to those rights.
How many of you "stupid americans" out there actually LIKE what the Federal government does? This post seems to indicate that we are all in favor of the US government's actions, but I think the majority of people here and across the US (those capable of individual thought anyway) are getting pretty sick of the way our government is constantly involving itself in areas it has no business being. Please don't make generalized statements about Americans' intelligence. We're held prisoner by the mindless sheep that make up the majority of the voting populace.
Plus, when you consider what a joke Carter had made of our military, he really had no choice but to increase its budget during his first term.
While I hate taxes as much as the next guy, you said yourself that tax money should be used to fund those things which are impossible to obtain otherwise. Space exploration, at this point, falls into that catagory. Even The Great Evil One, Bill Gates, would be bankrupt after a while if he had to fund NASA. The amount of money currently required to explore space is too much for any one person, or even a small group of people, to afford, and any benefits that may be obtained from it are strictly long term. There simply isn't any way for a person to make a profit at this point. THat doesn't mean that it won't be possible in the future, when costs have dropped, and space travel becomes a bit more commonplace. If this ever occurs, then I'm all for the privatization of space research.
You also cannot ignore the necessity of space research. Where are we going to be in another couple hundred years if we haven't at least begun construction of a lunar colony. While I tend to think claims of population overcrowding are a bit exaggerated, eventually, we are going to run out of room here on Earth. Should we wait until that point to begin government funding of space exploration? I guess that wouldn't be a problem if you don't mind massive world-wide starvation for a couple decades.