Granted that the pictures are amusing...but Linux User and Developer did a fairly negative story on nanotechnology in their March 2005 issue which seems to back up what these protesters are saying. Although it's always fun to make fun of protesters, you might want to actually check on what they are saying before you attack them on substance.
By the way, the synopsis of the article given at http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/content/view/60/0/ is a bit misleading. The picture is more like it. One of the major points made is that nanotechnology is brand new, and that as such there are no real ways to test for health benefits. For example, a substance that in larger sizes is non-toxic and is kept out of the cell by the usual chemistry/physics can pass into the cell when it is nanosized. Thus, the current safety sheets tend to mean little when a substance is at this scale. I think there is little argument that if these things prove to be safe, there are some real benefits to be had.
Exactly...it depends on your Windows version/settings. I used to use FPROT for DOS on WinME (after setting up WinME to load after booting a real DOS - a painful registry hack, but it worked). I would run a daemon to autoscan every 3am or so and that was it. I scanned unknown floppies before putting them into my machine and didn't click on emails unless I knew what was in them. I also had dial-up and Tiny Personal Firewall. So there was no way for something to get onto my machine without me knowing about it. Pretty simple, actually. So, no. I never had the condition you described so it wasn't a problem. Nothing ever got into a folder for me to browse without it being checked already. Different system, same results, and less intrusive for me.
A little user intervention can save $$ in software costs.
This is honestly one of the most annoying features of Windows AV programs. If you aren't click-happy, you don't need such features, especially on a linux box. When you turn it off on Windows, your machine speeds up by a factor of two.
First, it would have cost the university a software audit. "Who cares?" you say. This would undoubtedly turn up something on someone's machine that was illegal, and the university would be fined. Then the university would make damn sure that this guy never worked anywhere in academia ever again.
So, if you are prepared to deal with this sort of thing, it's not a big deal. Stand up for your rights. But, unless you want to lose your job anyway and then not get hired elsewhere, it's best to resign.
Unfortunately, as previous posters have noted, that's the way it works in academia.
Your first few comments were informative. I'm a MythTV user, not a MythTV developer. And based on those front page announcements it seemed that there was going to be support for both LxM and Zap2It (which we agreed on). A release note that I did not quote was:
"Trying something a bit different, here. Jarod Wilson (the Fedora Myth How-to guy) has been maintaining a branch of 0.18".
This (to me, at least) said that it was not exactly a point release in the usual sense of it. I did not go into the CVS tree and explore all the documentation of this release there as I've got a working install of MythTV that I don't plan on upgrading until something breaks. Your comments do illustrate why "branch/fork" were the wrong words to choose.
However, your "Seriously... do you... think every time linux kernel 2.6.x comes out that '"Oh! This is a fork from 2.6!"' " comment is a bit insulting. Try creating a little bit of light but without the heat.
Support for the LxM Suite services. Basically, this is a subscription-based data-services/extras setup, with some of the money coming back towards the project in the form of development bounties. More info on the site, but, seems fairly neat to me. The initial theme that they're working on looks rather nice, too. (It's nowhere near as dark running on a TV as it appears on a monitor). I'm personally not involved with this terribly much, but one of the other major developers (Donavan Stanley) has been working really closely with them setting this up.
I see this as a branch/fork. Based on the announcement, I'm not certain why everyone's waving flags and saying that Zap2It labs is going away. True, the other article says something along the lines of "No more Zap2It...", but if one of the major developers says that they're not involved in it much and: "If it's busted, blame him (Jarod Wilson), not me. =)", I can't see much of an issue. Those who want to keep using Zap2It can, and those who want paid for premium service can as well.
Before ascribing all complicated behavior to a creator, understand that complicated behavior often happens *in spite of a creator* or without a creator. This becomes an argument for behavior being independent of intent - something understood by most people who program computers.
Indeed, the thing least understood by creationists is such self-organizing behavior. Such non-intelligent behavior is seen by storms that are subject to coriolis forces, gravity, solar-heating, and some atmospheric chemistry. When one looks deeply enough, one can determine the root cause of such behavior (e.g. the eye of the storm), and although the consituent parts may be quite simple, the interactions may be incredibly complex.
Humans have long attributed behavior they can't explain to divinity or spirituality. Before Luigi Galvani touched different types of metal to the dead muscle of a frog making it twitch, it was thought that some spiritual essense was responsible for the movement of muscles. Yet now we understand that it is an action potential - a voltage change that makes the muscles work. We understand about how this action potential propagates, and we can even construct low level computer models that take certain action potential trains as inputs to actin and myosin filaments and create large scale muscle movement.
If I, as a product of self-organizing complex behavior, am capable of building something that has its own self-organizing complex behavior, then a divine creator/intelligent designer is not required.
What it all boils down to is this a chicken or the egg argument. If a creator is needed to create life, the Universe, and everything, then who created the creator? On the other hand, maybe everthing just is. In which case, no creator is necessary.
there are any intelligent design folks who actually hold an advanced degree in computer science, physics, or AI. The idea that complex organisms have to have been created by God is ludicrous. Many of the computers we use are more complex, functionally, than many organisms on Earth.
I remember when I took a course called "Mechatronics" nearly a decade ago. We used a PIC1684(?) chip, some assembly code, some actuators and some light sensors and put together robots that would search for a light source at the end of a maze. One person put a tail light on his robot and as a result got through the maze before anyone else because all the other robots lined up behind it.
Mine was not so successful. It would give up searching after about five minutes and then go out to the local Duncan Donuts to grab some coffee and read a newspaper.
Re:Am I the only one who hates dim-on-black?
on
The Darth Vader Blog
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· Score: 5, Funny
*You* tell Darth Frickin Vader that he can't have a black on black page.
Jeez, most admins do all this remotely so it isn't such a big cost. Plus, the upgrades were going to happen anyhow.
As for format changes, most users I know (especially at the highschool level) only use the most basic of features. As such Abiword (no offense guys) and Siag could do the job as basic as they are. Heck even Wordpad would do for what most highschoolers I know need.
The resistance to OOo comes from people who see something slightly different and panic. Are there some real differences between MSO and OOo? Sure, but these aren't nearly as big at the introductory level. Also, I seem to remember a usability study which found that the two were just about equal for basic tasks. There is also this article.
Personally, I'm sick of having to be compatible with MS when plenty of other alternatives are there.
SpaceShare.com is a website that specializes in helping travellers and conference goers get to where they're going with a minimum of wasted resources. So if a bunch of you were going to the NetWorld conference in Las Vegas, you could find others like yourself online, ensure that you are compatible before-hand, and then share a ride from the airport (or even a hotel room).
Granted it's a more specialized service than Google's, but it's also pretty cool.
I learned to do most of my photo-editing on Paint Shop Pro. When I had to move to PhotoShop, it was a real pain in the a**. Nothing was where should have been (from my viewpoint). Then, as I moved to Linux, I started using the Gimp. It did take some getting used to, but honestly it's just another interface.
Most Windows users I know are locked into their interfaces whether they are good, bad, or ugly and complain bitterly when anything changes. So the bottom line is that I think that most people learn on PhotoShop, so that is what they are used to, and anything else is not acceptable.
Hey! My religion *is* science. It deeply offends me that my cosmology offends their cosmology and that they get preferential treatment!:-) Anyhow, I make it a point of not going into their churches and saying how offensive some of the stuff they say is to me.
I'm sorry but until we frame this discussion in terms of reverse discrimination, the fundies are going to win every time.
In the case of one's hard drive, there is usually some plaintext that is known. For example, you typed a letter that has been printed out, or there is an invoice, or a spreadsheet. If you know enough plaintext and a single key was used, you can cryptanalyse the contents.
It helps, of course, if you also know specifically where such information lives. If the boot sector has the standard form, then you also know what the first 1024 bytes should decrypt to. Given that and the known plaintext strings, one should be able to crack the drive.
My guess is that some open source programmer will create a bootable app that does this and thereby recovers the contents of the drive.
I provided the link to Palast's site because it gives a short English synopsis of what's going on in Latin America.
Your statement that the only difference between governmental involvement and private enterprise being that some corporations got involved neglects the fact that water prices DID rise in the case of Bolivia and that the root cause WAS the handing of the water utilities over to foreign companies in the name of capitalism. I couldn't find much in English other than Palast's stuff. But if you can read Spanish, you will see the humanitarian effect of handing over the water to Bechtel.
The blackouts in California can also be traced to deregulation. About.com has a nice summary of the relationship.
Point is that privatization of shared resources has historically resulted in profits to businesses at the expense of the consumer. It's not just a matter of changing hands from governmental owners/regulators to private industry. Part of the mandate of government is to serve the people. This is NOT a mandate of business. If you have been following WTO, and US business models of late, you will note that they all include the ownership of government officials.
There is an interesting confluence of things going on, it seems. Costa Rica has suceeded as a nation largely because it has not privatized many services. Privatization of services in central and south American countries has often led to rampant inflation and in some caused the fall of the middle class in the case of Argentina or led to water shortages as in Bolivia. Contrary to what is preached in the U.S. about government regulation, many people actually seem to benefit from it.
What seems to be happening is that one of the Costa Rican government's cash cows, the internet (and communications, in general) seems to be threatened by this. As such, they are concerned that they won't have the budget to provide the services they currently do. Of course, I have no way of knowing specifically what their budgetary constraints are.
Personally, I think the banning of VoIP would be a bad thing considering the usual ethics of Costa Rica. (For example, they don't maintain a standing army). But I'm going to wait to hear from Willy Smith (hey Willy!), at the Linux Gazette since he lives there and probably has a much more informed opinion than myself.
I believe that they've hacked kudzu. But more than that I can't specifically say.
Last year on a brand new emachine laptop, I tried installing VL and the install failed to detect anything sound related. I tried Morphix. Morphix found the sound card but couldn't get the ethernet. Fedora Core 1 couldn't find the sound card OR the ethernet. I eventually went with the VL install because it had to do with a mess-up with ALSA. (The VL version was a release candidate). After recompiling ALSA, everything worked fine.
I have used some old Pentium II 200MHz computers with 2GB harddrives and VectorLinux 4.3 to build a Spanish Language Lab at my wife's school. We have kverbos and Festival text to speech software installed, and other than that, we rely on the free online language services offered by the BBC, by the textbook manufacturer, and other sources. The computers were all donated.
The major cost was time in getting it set up since all the computers have a different configuration.
BTW, VectorLinux hardware detection on these old machines is awesome. Let's just say that after setting up nearly 50 of them, I've only had to edit the XF86Config-4 file two or three times. Also, no problems with strange cards. Also, VL, being Slackware based, is extremely FAST on old machines and boots into IceWM nearly as quickly as it takes my new 1.8 GHz Athlon to load KDE. (Please no flames about how KDE is bloatware, we've all been there.)
Point of the matter is that if you have the time and you have old hardware, setting up one of these labs is a snap.
Could anyone design a javascript blocker with the following characteristics:
1) Be able to block javascripts by site or origin versus globally (the current setting)
2) Be able to block certain javascript commands
3) Be able to add to the javascript commands that are blockable
This way, should one site be irritating but still have good content, the user could still go there and benefit, but filter out the bad stuff. So I guess what I'm suggesting are "Javascript Filters".
As I really have no problems with viruses, trojans and the like, the only purpose I see to this is restricting content. I, for one, feel that the current Disney/Bono copyright law is decimating the public domain and that fair use is in danger of going extinct. An open source version might allow one to simulate trusted computing when necessary and build in a back door so that fair use can still apply. Last I recall, the Constitution mandated fair use, not the content providers. Of course, this sort of programming would probably violate the DMCA (which as we know, supercedes the Constitution).
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, the synopsis of the article given at http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/content/view/60/0/ is a bit misleading. The picture is more like it. One of the major points made is that nanotechnology is brand new, and that as such there are no real ways to test for health benefits. For example, a substance that in larger sizes is non-toxic and is kept out of the cell by the usual chemistry/physics can pass into the cell when it is nanosized. Thus, the current safety sheets tend to mean little when a substance is at this scale. I think there is little argument that if these things prove to be safe, there are some real benefits to be had.
A little user intervention can save $$ in software costs.
This is honestly one of the most annoying features of Windows AV programs. If you aren't click-happy, you don't need such features, especially on a linux box. When you turn it off on Windows, your machine speeds up by a factor of two.
First, it would have cost the university a software audit. "Who cares?" you say. This would undoubtedly turn up something on someone's machine that was illegal, and the university would be fined. Then the university would make damn sure that this guy never worked anywhere in academia ever again.
So, if you are prepared to deal with this sort of thing, it's not a big deal. Stand up for your rights. But, unless you want to lose your job anyway and then not get hired elsewhere, it's best to resign.
Unfortunately, as previous posters have noted, that's the way it works in academia.
As for citing my post as a basis for discontinuing Zap2It support...Egads! I thought I was making a point that it *was* continuing...
I guess everyone misreads things sometimes.
However, your "Seriously... do you ... think every time linux kernel 2.6.x comes out that '"Oh! This is a fork from 2.6!"' " comment is a bit insulting. Try creating a little bit of light but without the heat.
Before ascribing all complicated behavior to a creator, understand that complicated behavior often happens *in spite of a creator* or without a creator. This becomes an argument for behavior being independent of intent - something understood by most people who program computers.
Indeed, the thing least understood by creationists is such self-organizing behavior. Such non-intelligent behavior is seen by storms that are subject to coriolis forces, gravity, solar-heating, and some atmospheric chemistry. When one looks deeply enough, one can determine the root cause of such behavior (e.g. the eye of the storm), and although the consituent parts may be quite simple, the interactions may be incredibly complex.
Humans have long attributed behavior they can't explain to divinity or spirituality. Before Luigi Galvani touched different types of metal to the dead muscle of a frog making it twitch, it was thought that some spiritual essense was responsible for the movement of muscles. Yet now we understand that it is an action potential - a voltage change that makes the muscles work. We understand about how this action potential propagates, and we can even construct low level computer models that take certain action potential trains as inputs to actin and myosin filaments and create large scale muscle movement.
If I, as a product of self-organizing complex behavior, am capable of building something that has its own self-organizing complex behavior, then a divine creator/intelligent designer is not required.
What it all boils down to is this a chicken or the egg argument. If a creator is needed to create life, the Universe, and everything, then who created the creator? On the other hand, maybe everthing just is. In which case, no creator is necessary.
I remember when I took a course called "Mechatronics" nearly a decade ago. We used a PIC1684(?) chip, some assembly code, some actuators and some light sensors and put together robots that would search for a light source at the end of a maze. One person put a tail light on his robot and as a result got through the maze before anyone else because all the other robots lined up behind it.
Mine was not so successful. It would give up searching after about five minutes and then go out to the local Duncan Donuts to grab some coffee and read a newspaper.
*You* tell Darth Frickin Vader that he can't have a black on black page.
If you had, you'd have seen that this is a BUSH ONLY thing.
It's nice to know that in this time of corporatocracy, governments still occasionally stick up for individual rights.
As for format changes, most users I know (especially at the highschool level) only use the most basic of features. As such Abiword (no offense guys) and Siag could do the job as basic as they are. Heck even Wordpad would do for what most highschoolers I know need.
The resistance to OOo comes from people who see something slightly different and panic. Are there some real differences between MSO and OOo? Sure, but these aren't nearly as big at the introductory level. Also, I seem to remember a usability study which found that the two were just about equal for basic tasks. There is also this article.
Personally, I'm sick of having to be compatible with MS when plenty of other alternatives are there.
Former Word Perfect user - now OOo user
Granted it's a more specialized service than Google's, but it's also pretty cool.
Most Windows users I know are locked into their interfaces whether they are good, bad, or ugly and complain bitterly when anything changes. So the bottom line is that I think that most people learn on PhotoShop, so that is what they are used to, and anything else is not acceptable.
Just my 2 cents...
I'm sorry but until we frame this discussion in terms of reverse discrimination, the fundies are going to win every time.
In the case of one's hard drive, there is usually some plaintext that is known. For example, you typed a letter that has been printed out, or there is an invoice, or a spreadsheet. If you know enough plaintext and a single key was used, you can cryptanalyse the contents.
It helps, of course, if you also know specifically where such information lives. If the boot sector has the standard form, then you also know what the first 1024 bytes should decrypt to. Given that and the known plaintext strings, one should be able to crack the drive.
My guess is that some open source programmer will create a bootable app that does this and thereby recovers the contents of the drive.
Er...what about the Skipjack algorithm??? Didn't they put a backdoor into that?
I agree with you 100%. Recently we've been using a type of doublespeak to redefine a lot of words.
Your statement that the only difference between governmental involvement and private enterprise being that some corporations got involved neglects the fact that water prices DID rise in the case of Bolivia and that the root cause WAS the handing of the water utilities over to foreign companies in the name of capitalism. I couldn't find much in English other than Palast's stuff. But if you can read Spanish, you will see the humanitarian effect of handing over the water to Bechtel.
- www.gvom.ch
- www.socialismo-o-barbarie.org
- www.aguabolivia.org
- www.whrnet.org
The blackouts in California can also be traced to deregulation. About.com has a nice summary of the relationship.Point is that privatization of shared resources has historically resulted in profits to businesses at the expense of the consumer. It's not just a matter of changing hands from governmental owners/regulators to private industry. Part of the mandate of government is to serve the people. This is NOT a mandate of business. If you have been following WTO, and US business models of late, you will note that they all include the ownership of government officials.
What seems to be happening is that one of the Costa Rican government's cash cows, the internet (and communications, in general) seems to be threatened by this. As such, they are concerned that they won't have the budget to provide the services they currently do. Of course, I have no way of knowing specifically what their budgetary constraints are.
Personally, I think the banning of VoIP would be a bad thing considering the usual ethics of Costa Rica. (For example, they don't maintain a standing army). But I'm going to wait to hear from Willy Smith (hey Willy!), at the Linux Gazette since he lives there and probably has a much more informed opinion than myself.
Last year on a brand new emachine laptop, I tried installing VL and the install failed to detect anything sound related. I tried Morphix. Morphix found the sound card but couldn't get the ethernet. Fedora Core 1 couldn't find the sound card OR the ethernet. I eventually went with the VL install because it had to do with a mess-up with ALSA. (The VL version was a release candidate). After recompiling ALSA, everything worked fine.
The major cost was time in getting it set up since all the computers have a different configuration.
BTW, VectorLinux hardware detection on these old machines is awesome. Let's just say that after setting up nearly 50 of them, I've only had to edit the XF86Config-4 file two or three times. Also, no problems with strange cards. Also, VL, being Slackware based, is extremely FAST on old machines and boots into IceWM nearly as quickly as it takes my new 1.8 GHz Athlon to load KDE. (Please no flames about how KDE is bloatware, we've all been there.)
Point of the matter is that if you have the time and you have old hardware, setting up one of these labs is a snap.
- 1) Be able to block javascripts by site or origin versus globally (the current setting)
- 2) Be able to block certain javascript commands
- 3) Be able to add to the javascript commands that are blockable
This way, should one site be irritating but still have good content, the user could still go there and benefit, but filter out the bad stuff. So I guess what I'm suggesting are "Javascript Filters".As I really have no problems with viruses, trojans and the like, the only purpose I see to this is restricting content. I, for one, feel that the current Disney/Bono copyright law is decimating the public domain and that fair use is in danger of going extinct. An open source version might allow one to simulate trusted computing when necessary and build in a back door so that fair use can still apply. Last I recall, the Constitution mandated fair use, not the content providers. Of course, this sort of programming would probably violate the DMCA (which as we know, supercedes the Constitution).