I might be alone here, but I don't care what the hell the stores use RFID tags for as long as there is some way to remove their tags from my product when I leave their store (which I don't think there is but I'm not too up on this issue so I don't know). I walk under the eye of a dozen security cameras a day. I don't like it, but it's no better than having my snapshot taken when I grab some razor blades. Privacy is something I don't expect when I am in public.
I don't care what techniques they use to prevent shoplifting within the confines of their store, but once I leave their store I don't want to inherit the artifacts of their internal systems.
I highly doubt they're making this move with the idea of the new user experience in mind. I'm sure this is driven by prime directive number one, the profit motive. This begs the question, does linux retail distribution prove (still) to be an unprofitable venture?
The other thing the article mentions is that they are pushing the responsibility of creating the distro packages to the developer themselves. I wonder if this is in reponse to a desire for the developers to have more control, or if this is another money-saving move.
I for one am very curious to see what is driving these changes but I can only imagine the driving factor is money. Not that I fault them for that or think they're out of line for it.
I'd admin a linux box over a windows box any day (and I've done my share of both). Even if Linux cost twice as much as windows I'd use it for a server just because the maintenence cost (in terms of stability and man-hours to make any non-trivial changes) is so low compared to windows.
Well, as long as you support my right as a private citizen to own a nuke or anthrax bomb, I guess I can't fault your line of thinking on the basis of consistency.
I'll just be thankful that your interpretation of "right to bear arms" is incorrect, much like your interpretation of a "right" meaning that that no accountability is required is wrong.
The 1st amendment has many limitations and exceptions to the freedom of speech it guarantees. the 2nd admendment is no different pertaining to weapons of mass destruction/killing.
2. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
I assume this is what you're referring to. Maybe I'm wrong and if I am, I'm sorry, please cite what you're talking about (if you want to keep this thread going, that is).
Nowhere in the 2nd admendment does it say that you have the right to own and/or stockpile weapons without any sort of registration process. Quite the contrary, the wording is well-regulated militia. Your statement saying that gun ownership is not a privilege in no way whatsoever validates your statement that you need no license to own a gun. Also don't forget that our country likes to strip rights away from certain classes of people such as felons, as you mentioned in your post, and this is part of the reason for the registration or permit process.
[Tangent: Ever wonder why we like to pass so many laws and build so many prisons in this country? Once you've been processed through "the system," whether it be for murder or getting caught with some herb, all these debates about freedoms and civil rights go away.]
The 2nd amendment doesn't even guarantee you the right to a gun, though I believe in gun ownership (even though I don't own one myself) and I believe that the right to own a handgun (as opposed to an assault rifle or other mass-killing device) is in the spirit of the 2nd amendment.
To steal an argument from Michael Moore, does the 2nd amendment guarantee us the right to own weapons grade plutonium? Without a permit, even?
Call it a biased site, but it references articles and quotes. This is out of date too; the really interesting lies are just starting to be revealed. You'll forgive me if I consider lies which end thousands of lives more reprehensible than lies about a blow job. Though I'm sure Clinton had plenty of lies about Iraq (the Bushes weren't the only ones to kill Iraqis with bombings and sanctions), Kosovo, etc, and I'm outraged by those too, this never seems to be what people are outraged about when they talk about Bill Clinton lying. However, with the Bush administration currently managing Afghanistan and Iraq at bombpoint, and seriously considering opening up franchises in even more countries, the hands of this administration are very bloody.
You mean, the attacking of other countries is an ongoing investment. I still don't understand how we can call all the money we spend on planes, aircraft carriers and missiles, and so on to be for "defense." Defense has to do with protecting ourselves from attack. We should rightly call it our assault budget. And, please don't try to tell us that invading and occupying Iraq had anything to do with protecting or defending us. Even the Bush administration has been backing away from that claim more and more every day. Even the news media (almost all owned by rich, outspoken conservatives) which has marched in lockstep with GWB from day one haven't been asserting that anymore. They've done a good job though; if statistics are to be trusted, a significant amount of Americans still somehow think that Iraq and Saddam had something to do with September 11th.
This is new world imperialism, and we taxpayers are footing the bill whether we like it or not.
I don't claim to be super experienced as Linux on the desktop (though I use it on the desktop more often, and my servers have always run Linux), but I assumed having an insecure box has little to do with whether or not you're logged in as root and had a lot more to do with having old, unpatched versions of system services which just about all distros, especially the big ones which this discussion would be focusing on because we're talking about lots of peoples' computers, turn on by default. I'm sure there are many scenarios where being logged in as root is a bad thing but I thought the big reason to promote not doing it is to protect you from yourself (which is something that later versions of Windows does as well, in part by hiding the user from important files), and because the unix shell especially is so powerful that it's very easy to destroy your distribution and your data, something that wouldn't be too easy for a windows user. From personal experience (at least as the victim), Linux boxes really don't seem that difficult to 0wn. For the security-conscious and those with the time/expertise to plan the security on their desktops, Linux definitely takes the cake. I wouldn't argue that one for a second.
I think that George Bush Jr. has long since passed Bill Clinton for the record of lies told to the American public. And certainly wins the record for telling the type of lies that are actually about something really important, things that we as a society have a right to know about when we send people overseas to kill.
You think it stupid that US sites won't allow people outside the US to look at their site, but one of the points of the main article is that they feel US sites that allow him to visit even though he can't order anything is stupid. Sounds like a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't."
I agree with your point but let's give the devil his due. Chips and ram do not require a nationwide infrastructure be put into place, including digging, construction, relay stations, poles, etc. in order to improve.
This is the truth. When your boss comes back to you asking why her little project is taking so long, refer her to those emails talking about how important it is to be thorough. When your boss wants to know why your project has so many bugs, or isn't extendable, or is taking a long time to update, you can point her to the emails saying how important it is that we get it done yesterday. Usually, unless you have a lot of clout where you work, these are things you're not going to get a lot of say over. They pay you to do what they tell you to do, and for many (but far from all) in management, this is ingrained into their psyche. They may make you perform on a project emphasizing things you think are unimportant and downplaying things you think are essential, but as long as you make them commit, you have something to show them when things don't go the way they want it to. Even a mediocre PHB isn't going to have much she can say to refute her own words. I've been in this situation more than a couple of times. Sometimes this isn't as easy as it sounds; managment often bests all but the laziest of employees at being non-committal.. I usually won't even begin working on a project until my boss signs off on it.
Of course, if your PHB still points the blame on you, you can show everyone else those e-mails and make her look stupid. Which, she would be.
That's the whole point. There are those who would argue that Gator is just as much a virus or trojan as anything else. In my opinion, it certainly has an effect on people's computers like one.. It's installed in the background. It runs in the background transparently. Its meant never to be seen or detected; in fact, it's designed such that you don't even know you've installed it. It degrades the performance of your computer and hijacks your CPU cycles for its own purposes. It crashes machines frequently. If I remember correctly, it opens up a hole in your network to report back to its home server. It's nothing more than a virus with a business plan.
As I said, as long as the industry makes an effort to obfuscate whether or not a particular CD is copy-protected (ie, intentionally broken out of the box), I'm not going to bother. Deceptive marketing is no less unethical than downloading music.
If 1984 was talking about any government, it was talking about Socialism, as the name of the government was IngSoc. This is especially interesting when you consider that George Orwell himself was a socialist. However, I don't think 1984 was so much about a particular government than it was observations about power and privacy, a lot from observing the state of the world, including British-ruled India.
I always thought the other book they made all of us read in high school, Brave New World, was more of an American-compatible idea of a dystopic future. There's definitely an aspect of big brother, but it's all much more consumer-friendly. As long as people are kept happy it doesn't matter that they've been tracked and conditioned since before they were born to be a coal mine worker, or whatever else its decided they should do, that they have no freedom, etc.
I especially don't like the idea of buying a CD that won't play on my PC (which is where I listen to the majority of the music that I listen to). I consider this an unreasonable obstacle to my ability to use a CD that I paid for the way I want to. Because the recording and cd manufacturing industry has put as much energy as possible into obfuscating which cds are and aren't copy-protected, and eventually want all CDs to be copy-protected anyway, I'm not going to take my chances. That's why I stopped buying cds, not because I can get them on Kazaa.
Of course, since the government has decided that other (harmless) acts I take part in are illegal (smoking weed for example), I am very accustomed to breaking the law and consider it part of my life here in the United States. I don't flinch at it very much. When people wonder why so many break the law in the US, I always try to remind them that a big part of this is because we have so many laws.
It's also harder to start a revolution when the people you'd be revolting against have highly specialized training, tanks, advanced small arms, high tech gear, planes, bombs, etc, and no lack of willingness to use them.
Maybe geeks are highly individualistic as a character trait and are difficult to pin statements such as "99% of geeks use.."
I scoffed at the comment that 99% of geeks use Mozilla, even though I use and love Mozilla myself and forgot how painful the web can be until I have to use IE on someone else's computer (not so much because of the browser but because of the lack of pop up blocking and tabbed browsing, two features I cannot be without anymore), because geeks use all kinds of stuff.
They may sue the US government to keep them from using the name as a trademarked name if they attempt to trademark it, but I don't think they're gonna do that so there's probably no chance of that happening.
I think "lawsuit" has become a loaded word. Most people don't seem to realize that any legal action can be correctly called a lawsuit. Hormel isn't asking for money.
I've watched slashdot come and go, shift this way and that with the wind, and of course I've shifted with it at times, but I've never understood Slashdot's love affair with ATI when nVidia has always seemed far more Linux-friendly. I'm far from the most Linux-savvy person in the world, but since I bought an ATI card really cheap from a friend (because it didn't do what he wanted in Linux), I've been constantly frustrated at my inability to set up seemingly simple things such as TV-out which my linux newbie friends do with their nvidia cards without breaking a sweat. I know there's projects out there, but I'll be damned if I can get any of them to work.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure he feels like he's going to get real paid.
I might be alone here, but I don't care what the hell the stores use RFID tags for as long as there is some way to remove their tags from my product when I leave their store (which I don't think there is but I'm not too up on this issue so I don't know). I walk under the eye of a dozen security cameras a day. I don't like it, but it's no better than having my snapshot taken when I grab some razor blades. Privacy is something I don't expect when I am in public.
I don't care what techniques they use to prevent shoplifting within the confines of their store, but once I leave their store I don't want to inherit the artifacts of their internal systems.
I highly doubt they're making this move with the idea of the new user experience in mind. I'm sure this is driven by prime directive number one, the profit motive. This begs the question, does linux retail distribution prove (still) to be an unprofitable venture?
The other thing the article mentions is that they are pushing the responsibility of creating the distro packages to the developer themselves. I wonder if this is in reponse to a desire for the developers to have more control, or if this is another money-saving move.
I for one am very curious to see what is driving these changes but I can only imagine the driving factor is money. Not that I fault them for that or think they're out of line for it.
I'd admin a linux box over a windows box any day (and I've done my share of both). Even if Linux cost twice as much as windows I'd use it for a server just because the maintenence cost (in terms of stability and man-hours to make any non-trivial changes) is so low compared to windows.
Well, as long as you support my right as a private citizen to own a nuke or anthrax bomb, I guess I can't fault your line of thinking on the basis of consistency.
I'll just be thankful that your interpretation of "right to bear arms" is incorrect, much like your interpretation of a "right" meaning that that no accountability is required is wrong.
The 1st amendment has many limitations and exceptions to the freedom of speech it guarantees. the 2nd admendment is no different pertaining to weapons of mass destruction/killing.
2. A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. I assume this is what you're referring to. Maybe I'm wrong and if I am, I'm sorry, please cite what you're talking about (if you want to keep this thread going, that is). Nowhere in the 2nd admendment does it say that you have the right to own and/or stockpile weapons without any sort of registration process. Quite the contrary, the wording is well-regulated militia. Your statement saying that gun ownership is not a privilege in no way whatsoever validates your statement that you need no license to own a gun. Also don't forget that our country likes to strip rights away from certain classes of people such as felons, as you mentioned in your post, and this is part of the reason for the registration or permit process. [Tangent: Ever wonder why we like to pass so many laws and build so many prisons in this country? Once you've been processed through "the system," whether it be for murder or getting caught with some herb, all these debates about freedoms and civil rights go away.] The 2nd amendment doesn't even guarantee you the right to a gun, though I believe in gun ownership (even though I don't own one myself) and I believe that the right to own a handgun (as opposed to an assault rifle or other mass-killing device) is in the spirit of the 2nd amendment. To steal an argument from Michael Moore, does the 2nd amendment guarantee us the right to own weapons grade plutonium? Without a permit, even?
Because Kevorkian helped people die with a modicum of grace and mercy.
This story is bunk. Doc Brown made a flying, time traveling train after he settled down.
Here's a start
Call it a biased site, but it references articles and quotes. This is out of date too; the really interesting lies are just starting to be revealed. You'll forgive me if I consider lies which end thousands of lives more reprehensible than lies about a blow job. Though I'm sure Clinton had plenty of lies about Iraq (the Bushes weren't the only ones to kill Iraqis with bombings and sanctions), Kosovo, etc, and I'm outraged by those too, this never seems to be what people are outraged about when they talk about Bill Clinton lying. However, with the Bush administration currently managing Afghanistan and Iraq at bombpoint, and seriously considering opening up franchises in even more countries, the hands of this administration are very bloody.
You mean, the attacking of other countries is an ongoing investment. I still don't understand how we can call all the money we spend on planes, aircraft carriers and missiles, and so on to be for "defense." Defense has to do with protecting ourselves from attack. We should rightly call it our assault budget. And, please don't try to tell us that invading and occupying Iraq had anything to do with protecting or defending us. Even the Bush administration has been backing away from that claim more and more every day. Even the news media (almost all owned by rich, outspoken conservatives) which has marched in lockstep with GWB from day one haven't been asserting that anymore. They've done a good job though; if statistics are to be trusted, a significant amount of Americans still somehow think that Iraq and Saddam had something to do with September 11th.
This is new world imperialism, and we taxpayers are footing the bill whether we like it or not.
I don't claim to be super experienced as Linux on the desktop (though I use it on the desktop more often, and my servers have always run Linux), but I assumed having an insecure box has little to do with whether or not you're logged in as root and had a lot more to do with having old, unpatched versions of system services which just about all distros, especially the big ones which this discussion would be focusing on because we're talking about lots of peoples' computers, turn on by default. I'm sure there are many scenarios where being logged in as root is a bad thing but I thought the big reason to promote not doing it is to protect you from yourself (which is something that later versions of Windows does as well, in part by hiding the user from important files), and because the unix shell especially is so powerful that it's very easy to destroy your distribution and your data, something that wouldn't be too easy for a windows user. From personal experience (at least as the victim), Linux boxes really don't seem that difficult to 0wn. For the security-conscious and those with the time/expertise to plan the security on their desktops, Linux definitely takes the cake. I wouldn't argue that one for a second.
I think that George Bush Jr. has long since passed Bill Clinton for the record of lies told to the American public. And certainly wins the record for telling the type of lies that are actually about something really important, things that we as a society have a right to know about when we send people overseas to kill.
You think it stupid that US sites won't allow people outside the US to look at their site, but one of the points of the main article is that they feel US sites that allow him to visit even though he can't order anything is stupid. Sounds like a case of "damned if you do and damned if you don't."
I agree with your point but let's give the devil his due. Chips and ram do not require a nationwide infrastructure be put into place, including digging, construction, relay stations, poles, etc. in order to improve.
This is the truth. When your boss comes back to you asking why her little project is taking so long, refer her to those emails talking about how important it is to be thorough. When your boss wants to know why your project has so many bugs, or isn't extendable, or is taking a long time to update, you can point her to the emails saying how important it is that we get it done yesterday. Usually, unless you have a lot of clout where you work, these are things you're not going to get a lot of say over. They pay you to do what they tell you to do, and for many (but far from all) in management, this is ingrained into their psyche. They may make you perform on a project emphasizing things you think are unimportant and downplaying things you think are essential, but as long as you make them commit, you have something to show them when things don't go the way they want it to. Even a mediocre PHB isn't going to have much she can say to refute her own words. I've been in this situation more than a couple of times. Sometimes this isn't as easy as it sounds; managment often bests all but the laziest of employees at being non-committal.. I usually won't even begin working on a project until my boss signs off on it.
Of course, if your PHB still points the blame on you, you can show everyone else those e-mails and make her look stupid. Which, she would be.
That's the whole point. There are those who would argue that Gator is just as much a virus or trojan as anything else. In my opinion, it certainly has an effect on people's computers like one.. It's installed in the background. It runs in the background transparently. Its meant never to be seen or detected; in fact, it's designed such that you don't even know you've installed it. It degrades the performance of your computer and hijacks your CPU cycles for its own purposes. It crashes machines frequently. If I remember correctly, it opens up a hole in your network to report back to its home server. It's nothing more than a virus with a business plan.
I agree with you. Thanks for extrapolating on the point I made in the two sentences after the one you quoted in your post. :)
As I said, as long as the industry makes an effort to obfuscate whether or not a particular CD is copy-protected (ie, intentionally broken out of the box), I'm not going to bother. Deceptive marketing is no less unethical than downloading music.
If 1984 was talking about any government, it was talking about Socialism, as the name of the government was IngSoc. This is especially interesting when you consider that George Orwell himself was a socialist. However, I don't think 1984 was so much about a particular government than it was observations about power and privacy, a lot from observing the state of the world, including British-ruled India.
I always thought the other book they made all of us read in high school, Brave New World, was more of an American-compatible idea of a dystopic future. There's definitely an aspect of big brother, but it's all much more consumer-friendly. As long as people are kept happy it doesn't matter that they've been tracked and conditioned since before they were born to be a coal mine worker, or whatever else its decided they should do, that they have no freedom, etc.
I especially don't like the idea of buying a CD that won't play on my PC (which is where I listen to the majority of the music that I listen to). I consider this an unreasonable obstacle to my ability to use a CD that I paid for the way I want to. Because the recording and cd manufacturing industry has put as much energy as possible into obfuscating which cds are and aren't copy-protected, and eventually want all CDs to be copy-protected anyway, I'm not going to take my chances. That's why I stopped buying cds, not because I can get them on Kazaa.
Of course, since the government has decided that other (harmless) acts I take part in are illegal (smoking weed for example), I am very accustomed to breaking the law and consider it part of my life here in the United States. I don't flinch at it very much. When people wonder why so many break the law in the US, I always try to remind them that a big part of this is because we have so many laws.
It's also harder to start a revolution when the people you'd be revolting against have highly specialized training, tanks, advanced small arms, high tech gear, planes, bombs, etc, and no lack of willingness to use them.
Maybe geeks are highly individualistic as a character trait and are difficult to pin statements such as "99% of geeks use.."
I scoffed at the comment that 99% of geeks use Mozilla, even though I use and love Mozilla myself and forgot how painful the web can be until I have to use IE on someone else's computer (not so much because of the browser but because of the lack of pop up blocking and tabbed browsing, two features I cannot be without anymore), because geeks use all kinds of stuff.
Third degree burns are a little more than mildly discomforting.
They may sue the US government to keep them from using the name as a trademarked name if they attempt to trademark it, but I don't think they're gonna do that so there's probably no chance of that happening.
I think "lawsuit" has become a loaded word. Most people don't seem to realize that any legal action can be correctly called a lawsuit. Hormel isn't asking for money.
I've watched slashdot come and go, shift this way and that with the wind, and of course I've shifted with it at times, but I've never understood Slashdot's love affair with ATI when nVidia has always seemed far more Linux-friendly. I'm far from the most Linux-savvy person in the world, but since I bought an ATI card really cheap from a friend (because it didn't do what he wanted in Linux), I've been constantly frustrated at my inability to set up seemingly simple things such as TV-out which my linux newbie friends do with their nvidia cards without breaking a sweat. I know there's projects out there, but I'll be damned if I can get any of them to work.
Maybe now the winds will shift again.