Excellent. I'm glad to see at least some sanity taking hold. Hopefully, the rest of the country will follow suit. You need ID to rent a movie at Blockbuster (whoever does that anymore;) and I usually have to show ID at Home Depot when I use my credit card. Why shouldn't ID be required for something as important as registration/voting?
Of course, you have the usual suspects opposing this -- Because, you know, only white Republicans can get proper identification [rolls eyes].
Where, in the US, is a valid photo ID required to vote? Even in OH, a voter is allowed to present a utility bill (such as for a cellphone) as valid ID. Where I live, no ID is required. I just find my name on the list of registrants, and sign on the dotted line.
So, it would seem, fraudulent registration can and will result in fraudulent voting -- in many areas. The difference isn't as "massive" as you claim.
Video, or it didn't happen. Until there's a video-documented case of this happening, it's a bullshit claim.
It is unfortunate, though, that whoever ends up "winning" the Presidential race will always have the question of whether the victory was legitimate. We can thank ACORN, among others, for this.
Yes, it was a straw man. When the word "only" was used, it became a straw man argument. The original post did not say that CO2 levels are only measured next to volcanoes. But, the reply attempted to reduce his argument by saying he did. Look again.
Is it your contention that they only measure CO2 levels at that one location, and that all Climate Change work is based on measurements from that one location?
Nice straw man comeback.
you are mentally ill... Please seek professional help.
Oh yeah -- the ad hominem clincher. Excellent job.
I ate some bad chicken last night, and now I have a case of ogg theora. I'm a little concerned about all the water I'm using each time I flush the vorbis after ogging.
Seriously, I'm all for open compression codecs, but do they need to be included in the browser? Can't I just install a plugin (if I want to) and keep the browser slim and lean?
It gets even worse. It wasn't just an 800 and a couple of drives. It was an 800, a 130XE, a 1050 (non-Happy), an XF551 drive (somewhat rare) and an XM301 modem. Plus a 410 tape drive, 6 joysticks (2 WICO and 4 original Atari) and a whole mess of games and software (including Batteries Included's Paperclip word processor and Newsroom.)
I know the XF551 was worth more than $100 alone, but I was feeling generous. Now, I just feel like a chump. (exaggeration)
Oh well. It was all just sitting in my basement. I believe the guy I sold it to is an actual collector, so it has a better home now.
That could happen, but I had floppies for an Atari 8-bit that were written 23 years ago. They still worked fine last week...
then sold my 800, two drives and a bunch of other stuff. I'm now $100 richer, but I have to admit feeling a bit of seller's remorse. A part of me has died.
But, the point is (damn, I miss that 800 now. Why'd I do it?) *cough* magnetic media seems to be lasting much longer than was expected.
You're right. Your post was boring, but a good thought nonetheless.:)
There probably isn't much worry if you're downloading directly from Sun/OOo -- if that copy is somehow compromized, so would be the checksum.
I usually download OOo from my ISP's mirror. They provide MD5's or SHA1's or something, and I believe that if my sum matches my ISP's, and my ISP's sum matches the original... looks good to me.
But, your last paragraph brings up an interesting and valid point -- and probably the best reason for crypto-signing the releases. I would encourage you to email the good people at OOo, in addition to your boring, yet insightful, interesting post.
Ah, your post takes me back to when DVDs were first being ripped. The same arguments of impracticality were being made then. "DVDs hold 8 gigs, and we only have ~40 gigs of HDD space to store the VOBs."
There's a difference now, though. Back then, you had to recode the vobs with some crappy (by today's standards) codec like old QuickTime, or asf or something. Nowadays, DVDs can be recoded and stored in XviD format with a decent quality tradeoff. Likewise, BD can be recoded to x.264 and stored in about 4.5 gigs....or so I'm told.
Yeah, I second stoolpigeon's request for a source on that. Until you can produce something to counter this story, (note the non-US military source) I have no respect for your opinion (free as you are to spew it) or those who modded you "Informative."
A skilled blackjack player can use casinos to make himself wealthy...
Again with the lame casino argument. Not applicable here, for reasons I've already addressed higher-up in this thread. You then go on to say...
Users of free software such as Linux, OpenOffice, Cinepaint (aka Film Gimp) can and do use those products to make themselves wealthy.
Yes, they do. As do users of Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and [insert closed-source killer app here.] I have never said that closed-source products are incapable of generating wealth. On the contrary, I believe in and use open source software to create wealth of my own (as stated elsewhere in this thread.)
I was, in fact, responding to ArsonSmith's comment way up there that, "software companies generating wealth is mostly bogus." I think you and I can agree that ArsonSmith is wrong.
No, I understand it completely. This is why I gave the example of WordPerfect. The original company is now gone, and the source code is no longer used for anything meaningful. The wealth remains, though. The doctoral theses that were written in WP, the capital generated by the sales and employment of the company, and the education taught in new schools that were built from tax dollars collected from the company, its employees and consumers. All examples of wealth that remains from a dead, closed-source software company.
Please don't misunderstand me by thinking that I believe FOSS is incapable or not equally-capable of creating wealth. I believe in OSS, and love and use Linux. But, aside from using it at home, I use it at work to write closed-source firmware that runs on microprocs embedded in closed-source FPGAs. And, it's making me wealthy. And, it is making our investors wealthy. And, because of the income tax I pay, society as a whole will benefit. Eventually, this company may die, and I'll suffer another layoff. But, the wealth generated by this venture will, in fact continue.
As I stated above, the users of Microsoft's (or Adobe's or whoever's) products use those products to make themselves wealthy. I believe this fact quite handily proves my point.
In the [non-software-related] examples you gave, wealth is simply shifted from the consumer to the producer. In my [completely software-related] argument, the selling of the product creates wealth for the company. The company expands and creates jobs, providing wealth for new employees. The purchasers of the product use the product to generate wealth for themselves. In all of these cases, the tax (income and sales where applicable) revenue enables the expansion of infrastructure and education - thus generating even more... wealth.
Did I really need to go into that level of depth? Pretty simple stuff.
Not only that, but his complaint about software companies generating wealth is mostly bogus as well.
Wha? Yeah, because Adobe and Microsoft haven't created any wealth at all. Please. Microsoft's (I really hate them, but they're a convenient example here) products make many within the company wealthy. Many who purchase [or pirate] their products use them to make themselves wealthy. The same can be said about pretty much any other large closed-source software company you can think of. Even the founders of WordPerfect (a now all-but-defunct company) are still enjoying the wealth generated by their closed-source product.
Why is it that anyone pointing out racism other than that of the whites is automatically labelled a racist? Observing racism and racial division, and practicing racism are two different thigns. Whether you agree with the GP or not, he or she makes a valid assertion. But, to claim racism out of hand, as you did, is simple idiocy.
Of course, I understand that the specs aren't impressive by today's standards -- all 1950's tech is going to pale in comparison to what we have today. But, as an engineer (or simply just an observer of technology,) I'm impressed with what they were able to do with vacuum tube-based tech.
What came to my mind by looking at the photo was this: Whoa! They had airplanes in 1956?
Seriously, though, I was impressed reading the specs at the end of the snopes article:
Disks rotated at 1,200 rpm, tracks (20 to the inch) were recorded at up to 100 bits per inch, and typical head-to-disk spacing was 800 microinches. The execution of a "seek" instruction positioned a read-write head to the track that contained the desired sector and selected the sector for a later read or write operation. Seek time averaged about 600 milliseconds.
I don't know why, but 1200 RPM rotation and 600 ms seeks seems impressive, even if it IS as big as the WOPR.
Whoa! I never knew such a thing existed. This is absolutely geeky-cool! I watched a few MST3000's (Rauzdower!) but this could (depending on just how funny these really are) be really, really good.
"A port scan is very easy to do and if the port is open it will show. With port knocking, it will be much more difficult to find out because all the ports are closed..."
I whole-heartedly agree that port-knocking would afford an even higher level of security than simply moving the port. In fact, both methods are security through obscurity -- port knocking is just even more so. My original point was that security through obscurity is effectual. It looks like we both agree on that.
The probabilities for the occurrence of life are small, but over billions of years the possibility of chemical compounds, with increasing complexity, becoming organized as simple single cell organisms...
Order does not increase in a system that is not acted upon by an outside force. What's needed for abiogenesis is not simply complexity, either. Look at the complexity of a single cell. It's not just a round dot in some goo. It has a mitochondrion -- the cell's powerplant, a nucleus with DNA, etc. It is a complex system of organelles that work together in a balanced harmony. If one was generated without the other to depend on, the cell would die.
I know I can break down the complexity the simplest life, and infinitessimal probability of its spontaneous generation repeatedly in each post -- and we'll both continue to agree that, yes, it is very improbable. My point with bringing up faith was, and is, that for me it requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief to accept a theory that relies on the random and spontaneous generation of life. If you're going to rely on science, then look at the math. The math doesn't support it. And then, coming to the conclusion that natural science does not support abiogenesis, I turn my attention to the supernatural. For me, this is less of a stretch.
Slashdot Mirror
You having to pay a "usage" tax is different than the merchant having to collect sales tax to pay your state government.
âoeI donâ(TM)t understand.â
Excellent. I'm glad to see at least some sanity taking hold. Hopefully, the rest of the country will follow suit. You need ID to rent a movie at Blockbuster (whoever does that anymore ;) and I usually have to show ID at Home Depot when I use my credit card. Why shouldn't ID be required for something as important as registration/voting?
Of course, you have the usual suspects opposing this -- Because, you know, only white Republicans can get proper identification [rolls eyes].
Where, in the US, is a valid photo ID required to vote? Even in OH, a voter is allowed to present a utility bill (such as for a cellphone) as valid ID. Where I live, no ID is required. I just find my name on the list of registrants, and sign on the dotted line.
So, it would seem, fraudulent registration can and will result in fraudulent voting -- in many areas. The difference isn't as "massive" as you claim.
Uh, the story was about West Virginia -- not Springfield,... um... MO, er uh... wherever Springfield is.
Besides, isn't Homer a Convicted felon and fugitive?
Apologies. I meant Amstrad. :)
Video, or it didn't happen. Until there's a video-documented case of this happening, it's a bullshit claim. It is unfortunate, though, that whoever ends up "winning" the Presidential race will always have the question of whether the victory was legitimate. We can thank ACORN, among others, for this.
Yes, it was a straw man. When the word "only" was used, it became a straw man argument. The original post did not say that CO2 levels are only measured next to volcanoes. But, the reply attempted to reduce his argument by saying he did. Look again.
Nice straw man comeback.
Oh yeah -- the ad hominem clincher. Excellent job.
I ate some bad chicken last night, and now I have a case of ogg theora. I'm a little concerned about all the water I'm using each time I flush the vorbis after ogging.
Seriously, I'm all for open compression codecs, but do they need to be included in the browser? Can't I just install a plugin (if I want to) and keep the browser slim and lean?
It gets even worse. It wasn't just an 800 and a couple of drives. It was an 800, a 130XE, a 1050 (non-Happy), an XF551 drive (somewhat rare) and an XM301 modem. Plus a 410 tape drive, 6 joysticks (2 WICO and 4 original Atari) and a whole mess of games and software (including Batteries Included's Paperclip word processor and Newsroom.)
I know the XF551 was worth more than $100 alone, but I was feeling generous. Now, I just feel like a chump. (exaggeration)
Oh well. It was all just sitting in my basement. I believe the guy I sold it to is an actual collector, so it has a better home now.
That could happen, but I had floppies for an Atari 8-bit that were written 23 years ago. They still worked fine last week...
then sold my 800, two drives and a bunch of other stuff. I'm now $100 richer, but I have to admit feeling a bit of seller's remorse. A part of me has died.
But, the point is (damn, I miss that 800 now. Why'd I do it?) *cough* magnetic media seems to be lasting much longer than was expected.
You're right. Your post was boring, but a good thought nonetheless. :)
There probably isn't much worry if you're downloading directly from Sun/OOo -- if that copy is somehow compromized, so would be the checksum.
I usually download OOo from my ISP's mirror. They provide MD5's or SHA1's or something, and I believe that if my sum matches my ISP's, and my ISP's sum matches the original... looks good to me.
But, your last paragraph brings up an interesting and valid point -- and probably the best reason for crypto-signing the releases. I would encourage you to email the good people at OOo, in addition to your boring, yet insightful, interesting post.
Ah, your post takes me back to when DVDs were first being ripped. The same arguments of impracticality were being made then. "DVDs hold 8 gigs, and we only have ~40 gigs of HDD space to store the VOBs."
...or so I'm told.
There's a difference now, though. Back then, you had to recode the vobs with some crappy (by today's standards) codec like old QuickTime, or asf or something. Nowadays, DVDs can be recoded and stored in XviD format with a decent quality tradeoff. Likewise, BD can be recoded to x.264 and stored in about 4.5 gigs.
Yeah, I second stoolpigeon's request for a source on that. Until you can produce something to counter this story, (note the non-US military source) I have no respect for your opinion (free as you are to spew it) or those who modded you "Informative."
A skilled blackjack player can use casinos to make himself wealthy...
Again with the lame casino argument. Not applicable here, for reasons I've already addressed higher-up in this thread. You then go on to say...
Users of free software such as Linux, OpenOffice, Cinepaint (aka Film Gimp) can and do use those products to make themselves wealthy.
Yes, they do. As do users of Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and [insert closed-source killer app here.] I have never said that closed-source products are incapable of generating wealth. On the contrary, I believe in and use open source software to create wealth of my own (as stated elsewhere in this thread.)
I was, in fact, responding to ArsonSmith's comment way up there that, "software companies generating wealth is mostly bogus." I think you and I can agree that ArsonSmith is wrong.
No, I understand it completely. This is why I gave the example of WordPerfect. The original company is now gone, and the source code is no longer used for anything meaningful. The wealth remains, though. The doctoral theses that were written in WP, the capital generated by the sales and employment of the company, and the education taught in new schools that were built from tax dollars collected from the company, its employees and consumers. All examples of wealth that remains from a dead, closed-source software company.
Please don't misunderstand me by thinking that I believe FOSS is incapable or not equally-capable of creating wealth. I believe in OSS, and love and use Linux. But, aside from using it at home, I use it at work to write closed-source firmware that runs on microprocs embedded in closed-source FPGAs. And, it's making me wealthy. And, it is making our investors wealthy. And, because of the income tax I pay, society as a whole will benefit. Eventually, this company may die, and I'll suffer another layoff. But, the wealth generated by this venture will, in fact continue.
As I stated above, the users of Microsoft's (or Adobe's or whoever's) products use those products to make themselves wealthy. I believe this fact quite handily proves my point.
In the [non-software-related] examples you gave, wealth is simply shifted from the consumer to the producer. In my [completely software-related] argument, the selling of the product creates wealth for the company. The company expands and creates jobs, providing wealth for new employees. The purchasers of the product use the product to generate wealth for themselves. In all of these cases, the tax (income and sales where applicable) revenue enables the expansion of infrastructure and education - thus generating even more... wealth.
Did I really need to go into that level of depth? Pretty simple stuff.
Not only that, but his complaint about software companies generating wealth is mostly bogus as well.
Wha? Yeah, because Adobe and Microsoft haven't created any wealth at all. Please. Microsoft's (I really hate them, but they're a convenient example here) products make many within the company wealthy. Many who purchase [or pirate] their products use them to make themselves wealthy. The same can be said about pretty much any other large closed-source software company you can think of. Even the founders of WordPerfect (a now all-but-defunct company) are still enjoying the wealth generated by their closed-source product.
Yup, sounds like a bogus argument to me.
Why is it that anyone pointing out racism other than that of the whites is automatically labelled a racist? Observing racism and racial division, and practicing racism are two different thigns. Whether you agree with the GP or not, he or she makes a valid assertion. But, to claim racism out of hand, as you did, is simple idiocy.
ktorrent too! Nothing less than excellent.
Of course, I understand that the specs aren't impressive by today's standards -- all 1950's tech is going to pale in comparison to what we have today. But, as an engineer (or simply just an observer of technology,) I'm impressed with what they were able to do with vacuum tube-based tech.
What came to my mind by looking at the photo was this: Whoa! They had airplanes in 1956?
Seriously, though, I was impressed reading the specs at the end of the snopes article:
Disks rotated at 1,200 rpm, tracks (20 to the inch) were recorded at up to 100 bits per inch, and typical head-to-disk spacing was 800 microinches. The execution of a "seek" instruction positioned a read-write head to the track that contained the desired sector and selected the sector for a later read or write operation. Seek time averaged about 600 milliseconds.
I don't know why, but 1200 RPM rotation and 600 ms seeks seems impressive, even if it IS as big as the WOPR.
Riff... trax? What. Is... riff...
Whoa! I never knew such a thing existed. This is absolutely geeky-cool! I watched a few MST3000's (Rauzdower!) but this could (depending on just how funny these really are) be really, really good.
Thanks for the link.
"A port scan is very easy to do and if the port is open it will show. With port knocking, it will be much more difficult to find out because all the ports are closed..."
I whole-heartedly agree that port-knocking would afford an even higher level of security than simply moving the port. In fact, both methods are security through obscurity -- port knocking is just even more so. My original point was that security through obscurity is effectual. It looks like we both agree on that.
The probabilities for the occurrence of life are small, but over billions of years the possibility of chemical compounds, with increasing complexity, becoming organized as simple single cell organisms...
Order does not increase in a system that is not acted upon by an outside force. What's needed for abiogenesis is not simply complexity, either. Look at the complexity of a single cell. It's not just a round dot in some goo. It has a mitochondrion -- the cell's powerplant, a nucleus with DNA, etc. It is a complex system of organelles that work together in a balanced harmony. If one was generated without the other to depend on, the cell would die.
I know I can break down the complexity the simplest life, and infinitessimal probability of its spontaneous generation repeatedly in each post -- and we'll both continue to agree that, yes, it is very improbable. My point with bringing up faith was, and is, that for me it requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief to accept a theory that relies on the random and spontaneous generation of life. If you're going to rely on science, then look at the math. The math doesn't support it. And then, coming to the conclusion that natural science does not support abiogenesis, I turn my attention to the supernatural. For me, this is less of a stretch.