> Such is the power of Orwellian rewrites on the subconscious...
Talking about Orwell, his book Animal Farm was made into a
cartoon film and the ending was fundamentally changed by the CIA.
Orwell's widow sold the film rights and she only agreed to the rewrite
on condition that she met Clark Gable (AFAICR). This was then arranged
by our favourite spy agency who wanted to put a better "spin" on the
story of everyday farm animals and brutal oppression.
So endings of films/stories can be changed for nefarious reasons in
somewhat weird circumstances.
Perhaps someone would care to recall how they changed the ending...I
can't remember and am too tired/stoned to google..8)
I would have thought too that those boffins at MIT would know that
jerk is the vector that specifies the rate of change of
acceleration; the third derivative of displacement with respect to
time. ie. ms^-3
> How well protected are these systems really then?
Badly.
I heard the interview on the World Service and
he said in the interview that he broke into Windows machines using
user admin where the password hadn't been set. Remember that MS-SQL
used to ship like that by default? But I bet he used others too
eg. IIS.
So his uber 133t hacking skills involved the use of Google and setting
a password!
He said that netstat and traceroute on IP addresses showed that the
boxes already had active tcp/ip connections to Korea, Russia
etc. and I'm presuming his skills helped him determine that
these were not legitimate (ie. not port 80)
He sounded like a nice enough guy. A bit young and clueless but far
from an extradition to a foreign power and a possible 70 year sentence in
a pound-me-in-the-ass prison. He was expecting a few months suspended
under British law.
> That link to defenders.org is typical of the half-truths you get from environmentalist websites.
Agreed, it's shit.
What I'm thinking of is S.mahogani not S.macrophylla. The latter I can
buy down my woodyard (plantation grown). The former, I can't get for love nor money.
> That is utter BS, Mahogany may be on the more expensive end of
> hardwoods, but it's not exactly rare or difficult to find. Try going
> to a real lumberyard, not Home Depot.
I'm not bullshitting you. I'm a cabinetmaker who lives a mile from one of the largest timber
yards in Europe and they've got 1000s of feet of stuff thats marked-up
as mahogany - African or Brazilian. No bigleaf or "real" mahogany
(Swietenia macrophylla) as it's endangered.
Some high end cabinetmakers (ie. by Royal Appointment) hold
private stocks of it but mere mortals like me can't get hold of it.
Things might be different in the US.
> How long until we can start getting, say... a mahongany powerbook?
You can't get your hands on real big-leaf mahogany nowadays as it's
very rare and there has been talk of protecting it under CITES. Most reputable timber yards
won't handle it.
The various replacements that are sold as "mahogany" are too soft and
not dense enough.
> A pine iBook sounds appealing.
Again, too soft. What would be nice is one made out of African
Blackwood. African blackwood is used for making woodwind instruments
and is jet black and very hard wearing. Doesn't need any finish
either and is fairly easy to shape with rasps etc.
> It's also interesting (mentioned in the "debunking") that Apple has
> NOT been warning its developers about a pending change of
> endian-ness, as you might expect them to if a change to
> little-endian Pentium chips from big-endian PowerPC chips.
I've heard enough of this garbage about endian-ness and how hard it is
to port from one arch to another.
Fact 1: Darwin builds on IA32 and PPC as is ie. big and little
endian. (As do other OSes eg. Linux, NetBSD)
Fact 2: OSX is built on top of Darwin.
Fact 3: If Apple don't maintain OSX on another architecture besides
PPC then they are stupid. Since when did a company put all it's eggs
in one basket?
The GPL was not "tested in court" the lawsuit was a contract dispute between SCO and IBM. Though i think it may have resulted in a few more PHB's hearing about linux and maybe being curious how it could save money to switch.
I'm getting increasingly pissed off with PJs "analysis" of how the GPL
has stood up in court in this case and been shown to be robust. Yet
I've yet to see any arguments given to the court about any aspects of
the GPL and certainly not the more controversial stuff like: what constitutes linking?
If no arguments are put forward vis a vis the GPL then how can she say
that it's been tested? She's hoodwinking herself and others and
exaggerating greatly.
My opinion is that any license longer than about 12 lines can have
holes shot in it, given enough lawyers, enough money and enough court
time.
My further opinion is that rather than embracing GPL/Linux, most companies
look for unencumbered code such as BSDL.
If you were developing some (proprietary or otherwise) app that needed
something like readline, do you grab an encumbered library like
GNU/readline or an unencumbered version?
BTW, if you want a hint, stay away from her Groklaw site. It's full of
IANALs looking through the tea-leaves of the GPL and giving their
worthless opinions. It requires you to have a lobotomy if you're to get any
pleasure out of reading it....I suppose some wannabe lawyers might get
some pleasure out of it but they're just a subset of those who've had
lobotomies.
The primary threat to Linux is a broken development model and
assimilation by big companies - RedHat, IBM. Not the merits or
otherwise of the GPL.
The only thing that this court case has represented to most PHBs in
mid-size companies is "Linux maybe illegal but if I buy a Linux
server off IBM I'm probably in the clear" hence furthering the
stranglehold of the big companies on Linux and the direction it goes
in.
Q: How does this tracking mechanism differ from web log analysers?
A: Simple, web log analysers aren't capable of tracking
redistributions of the same document. If you copy a web page, say
about theories in free-market macroeconomics, and e-mail the copy to
a friend, say in China, no one will ever know your friend has read
it. But if you copy one of those and it's read by your friend there,
then certainly your friend will have a red flag (pun intended) on
him.
Well, then e-mail him a document in a format that doesn't require him
to "'phone home" and just make it RSVP.
I'm still failing to see how this is sinister. Remember that PDF is a
mark-up language (unlike Postcript) and anybody with a copy of vim can
edit them. Maybe they just have a tag with a hash of the PDF in them
inserted as a comment.
Please point out how this software is in anyway sinister and how it
represents a threat to the viewer or document distributor any more so
than a document containing Javascript/HTML or Postscript for that
matter.
Question: How does this supposedly "evil" tracking mechanism differ from web log
analysers?
Answer: It doesn't?
From the write-up above:
> Though personal information is not gathered from machines, IP addresses are.
So no different to when html documents (yes, I know they are another
"evil" open spec like PDF) are distributed via http. It's truely
shocking this but I can block access to my webserver based on
originating IPs! Yes. I'm part of the "evil" conspiracy too!
Mwuuuuahhaaha....
Remove your tinfoil hats folks. This is a none story.
Show me some evidence it is "evil" before branding it "evil".
> As someone who has been developing enterprise apps with MySQL
> for a while now, I'll answer this, even though I'm 99.44% sure
> you're trolling: what we've always done, so far, is put all the
> triggers in the application layer. Now we can make "real"
> triggers in the DB layer, but guess what?
> The logic is exactly the same.
Go and read Date, about why a 3-tier architecture is a good thing
and then come back and tell me you develop "enterprise apps with
MySQL....[with] triggers in the application layer" whilst still
keeping a a straight face.
+5, Interesting? How about -5, Clueless. It's people
like you who give IT a bad name. Do your homework before
"developing enterprise apps"! I spent a considerable part of one
year doing relational theory and RDBMSs at uni, what have you done?
Obviously not a lot and quite frankly it shows.
> But then I got wondering -- some tier I vendors have recently moved
> to a zero-defect policy on lcds -- does this mean that the
> manufacturing process is getting that much better,
The manufacturing cost of LCDs has been coming down for some years as
a direct result of improvements in the manufacturing processes by
mech/man engineers at Hitachi, Samsung etc. Hence the falling
prices.
That doesn't mean they're perfect, they still produce LCDs with stuck
pixels, they just produce less of them and they sell them on....just
cheaper.
Whilst I haven't RTFA (and don't even know what a PSP is:), I'm
assuming the PSPs have small, high-definition screens which could
stretch the current manufacturing processes to their limits. Hence the
high number of busted pixels: just like normal-size LCDs had in the old
days when they were pushing the envelope.
> or does it mean that they're just swapping around the distribution
> of products, with no change in overall quality?
> Why don't you be a pal and get your friend a live linux Cd to play with?
That's an excellent idea and when I get a broadband link I'll give him
one to play with.
I've been doing my best to persuade friends to buy a Mac - since I use FreeBSD myself, I should be somewhat familiar with the underlying OS, but there's a
reluctance:
Lack of free software
Laying out money for a new machine after their disasterous
experience.
Fear of the unknown
It's the last one that's the real gotcha because I've got no arguments
against it.
> My favorite example of simple was the Viet Cong with their dung
> covered stakes vs the greatest power in the history of the world.
> We all know how that one turned out.
Let us not forget the Pentagon saying that they were winning the war
because they had less reports of Viet Cong infiltration in villages. A
cynical reporter pointed out that the Viet Cong were notorious in not
informing the Pentagon when they had infiltrated villages.
This report of the decline of posted worms is little different.
I personally know of one friend who has an unusable computer due to
infection with scumware and worms. I neither have the time, patience
or expertise to fix it. (Ad-Aware crashes the machine when run, Spybot
doesn't pick up everything and neither AFAIK do anything about
worms/virii).
There must be a pile of people who have given up on the 'net due to
broken Microsoft software. Hence "less" worms.
> A very similar story was mentioned on the Now Show on Radio 4 today.
It must be synchronicity or something. A couple of hours after posting
the parent I listened to the Now Show and heard Barry Cryer
relate a similar story as you say.
I don't know which is true (if either) but I've heard of troops putting condoms over
the barrels of their guns (they blow up if fired when the barrel has got
crap in it).
> It would seem as if Britian is experiencing socialism's endgame scenario.
I suspect you are looking at Britain from an American perspective.
Britain flirted with socialism after the war (which is when the
National Health service was introduced) but Britain remains
fundamentally a free enterprise economy which takes its orders from
Washington.
It is a commonly held view in Europe that a defining characteristic of
a civilised society is free healthcare for all that need it.
>...the government not listening to its constituents...
There is a direct correlation between how much a government listens to
its constituents and how accountable they are.
The war in Iraq is an example. French politicians know that they are
criminally liable for any decisions they make (irrespective of
how fresh the revolution and resulting terror is in their minds).
Hence their willingness to listen to the populace.
In the UK (and US) the politicians are largely unaccountable and IMO
they have profoundly undemocratic governments
The most cheering piece of news I've heard for years was when the
Argentinian finance minister was chased by an angry mob down the
street:)
We need more of that in the UK and US. Until politicians fear
for their life and liberty, you can't hold them properly to account.
> Regarding the Unix principle and Emacs. . . you really have to blame
the Emacs users for that.
No I dont have to blame the users for that, I'm blaming the developers for
producing a piss-poor editor.
To give one quick example of where it breaks down, I'll point to
Debian, my Linux distribution of choice. Debian includes bash, true,
but it also includes dash, formerly ash, which is the sh from NetBSD.
It is trivial to set/bin/sh to point to dash (in fact, it prompts you
with that question upon installation), and *poof*, now the traditional
Bourne shell is your system shell.
Can you replace the system shell on RedHat without it blowing up? I'm not
interested in Debian or any other antique or niche Linux.
but it is lacking a number of features that bash supports [ksh]
Name them. I've already mentioned that bash doesn't support ansii
escape codes properly (due to bugs). A user shell that is prone to
throwing ^D and logging you out is of no practical use at all.
You have still failed to explain to me why such a bloated mess is the
default shell on Linux systems. Well why?
> looked over the hill some 4-5 years ago, saw that to become a GNU developer you have to have the right religious attitude irrespective of whether you can code or not.
That's a steaming pile of horse crap. You can do whatever the hell you want. If you want to sit at home on a Linux machine and develop proprietary software, you're free to do that. No one is gonig to break down your door and beat you with a penguin stick for it.
Yes, I can sit at home coding around GNU readlines bugginess and have
the GPL imposed on me. Or I can sit at home and code around BSD code,
clean code, and not have some hairy gimp with a beard telling me what I
can or cannot do with my code. I suggest to you that if you choose the
former route, you are using the GNU code not for its utility or lack
of bugs, you are doing it because you believe in all the GPL
FUD.
Ah, so you choose what operating system you use by how much you like
other people using it?
Don't use retarded arguments. I told you quite clearly that I'll use
any BSD over any Linux because they are better as a result of a better
development model. GNU/Linux development is broken and has been for
years.
Your handwaiving about the security problems with Linux is touching in
its naivety. FYI, Linux boxes are getting rooted left right and
centre and the fact that you can forkbomb most Linux distros out of
existence is truely pathetic.
I don't know what it is that embittered you so much towards GNU and
Linux, but I think something must have.
What's embittered me is people like you. I pointed out a number of
problems with Linux 5 years ago and I got a number of people like you
pointing out that the problems weren't really "problems".
I saw a very real reluctance amongst the Linux community at large not
only to address these problems but to acknowledge that they really
exist. That gets tedious real fast and the fact that I'm arguing 5
years later with another ostrich with a fondness for burying its head
in the sand on/. is an indication that not very much has changed.
Compare and contrast with the *BSD community, it might not be perfect
but at least they attempt to address problems rather than just waive
them away whilst calling you "troll".
Your post stands as a monument to all that is broken and cretinous
about GNU/Linux.
Now, you may not be a fan of emacs, but first stating that you shouldn't use GNU code to get things done, and then holding up Emacs as an example, is ignorant at best. I am not personally a fan of Emacs, having discovered vi first, but I still can appreciate the power, flexibility, and usefulness of it.
I can't appreciate it and yes I've used it. An editor that requires
that you spend your time bouncing on the meta key fails one of the
more important requirements of a text editor - that the editing keys need to be handily placed.
A friend of mine is big an emacs fan. He uses it for text editing, e-mail, news reading, and coding.
With all due respect to your genius friend there are better programs
for editing, reading news and coding. Ever heard of the unix principle
of doing one thing and doing it well? Well GNU code usually does more
than one thing...and it usually does them all badly. Emacs being a
case in point.
For example, comparing the Bourne Shell to bash is like comparing the
old, original vi, to vim.
I was comparing the system shell of BSD
and GNU/Linux. The advantage of sh over bash is not marginal when the
system is spawning lots of shells ie. on boot-up. When I ran
Linux the system took 3 times as long to come up compared to FreeBSD
running the same softs and 2.4 performance wise was abysmal.
But they both [vim/bash] also offer an immensely great level of functionality.
As far as user shells go, bash is so far behind ksh in function it's
not funny. I've already mentioned that bash is shot through with
longstanding and seemingly intractable bugs. Which reminds me, the GNU
readline library stinks too which is one reason why most developers
choose to implement their own.
If you really want to stay stuck 10+ years in the past, with ancient
(but possibly less buggy) software, that's cool. You have that choice.
Me, though. . . I'm looking over that hill there, wondering what we're
going to see next.
I looked over the hill some 4-5 years ago, saw that to become a GNU
developer you have to have the right religious attitude irrespective
of whether you can code or not.
That was when I dumped GNU/Linux as even then it had become a ghetto
for those with some sort of OS religious axe to grind. Now it's beyond a
joke (21 kernel vulnerabilities in 3 months!) and the fact that you
and others continue to argue that it is good is frankly bizarre.
Yes, I'll be modded down again for making valid criticisms of
GNU/Linux and the rotten semi-commercial/semi-free Frankensteins
monster it has become.
It's a shame, I was largely introduced to unix through Linux and have
a soft spot for it. There are times when you have to call a spade a
spade even though the penguinista apologistas will inevitably
come crawling out of the woodwork and inform me that black is actually
white and what a troll I am. Sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
> Such is the power of Orwellian rewrites on the subconscious...
Talking about Orwell, his book Animal Farm was made into a cartoon film and the ending was fundamentally changed by the CIA.
Orwell's widow sold the film rights and she only agreed to the rewrite on condition that she met Clark Gable (AFAICR). This was then arranged by our favourite spy agency who wanted to put a better "spin" on the story of everyday farm animals and brutal oppression.
So endings of films/stories can be changed for nefarious reasons in somewhat weird circumstances.
Perhaps someone would care to recall how they changed the ending...I can't remember and am too tired/stoned to google..8)
The satellite image of Denver Airport shows the runway layout.
I would have thought too that those boffins at MIT would know that jerk is the vector that specifies the rate of change of acceleration; the third derivative of displacement with respect to time. ie. ms^-3
The jerks ;)
> How well protected are these systems really then?
Badly.
I heard the interview on the World Service and he said in the interview that he broke into Windows machines using user admin where the password hadn't been set. Remember that MS-SQL used to ship like that by default? But I bet he used others too eg. IIS.
So his uber 133t hacking skills involved the use of Google and setting a password!
He said that netstat and traceroute on IP addresses showed that the boxes already had active tcp/ip connections to Korea, Russia etc. and I'm presuming his skills helped him determine that these were not legitimate (ie. not port 80)
He sounded like a nice enough guy. A bit young and clueless but far from an extradition to a foreign power and a possible 70 year sentence in a pound-me-in-the-ass prison. He was expecting a few months suspended under British law.
> That link to defenders.org is typical of the half-truths you get from environmentalist websites.
Agreed, it's shit.
What I'm thinking of is S.mahogani not S.macrophylla. The latter I can buy down my woodyard (plantation grown). The former, I can't get for love nor money.
Wikipedia has a more informative article.
> You mean grenadilla wood?
That's the stuff.
> That is utter BS, Mahogany may be on the more expensive end of
> hardwoods, but it's not exactly rare or difficult to find. Try going
> to a real lumberyard, not Home Depot.
I'm not bullshitting you. I'm a cabinetmaker who lives a mile from one of the largest timber yards in Europe and they've got 1000s of feet of stuff thats marked-up as mahogany - African or Brazilian. No bigleaf or "real" mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) as it's endangered.
Some high end cabinetmakers (ie. by Royal Appointment) hold private stocks of it but mere mortals like me can't get hold of it. Things might be different in the US.
> How long until we can start getting, say... a mahongany powerbook?
You can't get your hands on real big-leaf mahogany nowadays as it's very rare and there has been talk of protecting it under CITES. Most reputable timber yards won't handle it.
The various replacements that are sold as "mahogany" are too soft and not dense enough.
> A pine iBook sounds appealing.
Again, too soft. What would be nice is one made out of African Blackwood. African blackwood is used for making woodwind instruments and is jet black and very hard wearing. Doesn't need any finish either and is fairly easy to shape with rasps etc.
> It's also interesting (mentioned in the "debunking") that Apple has
> NOT been warning its developers about a pending change of
> endian-ness, as you might expect them to if a change to
> little-endian Pentium chips from big-endian PowerPC chips.
I've heard enough of this garbage about endian-ness and how hard it is to port from one arch to another.
Fact 1: Darwin builds on IA32 and PPC as is ie. big and little endian. (As do other OSes eg. Linux, NetBSD)
Fact 2: OSX is built on top of Darwin.
Fact 3: If Apple don't maintain OSX on another architecture besides PPC then they are stupid. Since when did a company put all it's eggs in one basket?
> Just so you know, ems are actually vertical units.
You're wrong. ems are a horizontal unit: the length of an m in the current font.
exs on the other hand are a vertical unit (height of an x).
You can use ems for height but "it's not done". Both come from typography.
The GPL was not "tested in court" the lawsuit was a contract dispute between SCO and IBM. Though i think it may have resulted in a few more PHB's hearing about linux and maybe being curious how it could save money to switch.
I'm getting increasingly pissed off with PJs "analysis" of how the GPL has stood up in court in this case and been shown to be robust. Yet I've yet to see any arguments given to the court about any aspects of the GPL and certainly not the more controversial stuff like: what constitutes linking?
If no arguments are put forward vis a vis the GPL then how can she say that it's been tested? She's hoodwinking herself and others and exaggerating greatly.
My opinion is that any license longer than about 12 lines can have holes shot in it, given enough lawyers, enough money and enough court time.
My further opinion is that rather than embracing GPL/Linux, most companies look for unencumbered code such as BSDL.
If you were developing some (proprietary or otherwise) app that needed something like readline, do you grab an encumbered library like GNU/readline or an unencumbered version?
BTW, if you want a hint, stay away from her Groklaw site. It's full of IANALs looking through the tea-leaves of the GPL and giving their worthless opinions. It requires you to have a lobotomy if you're to get any pleasure out of reading it....I suppose some wannabe lawyers might get some pleasure out of it but they're just a subset of those who've had lobotomies.
The primary threat to Linux is a broken development model and assimilation by big companies - RedHat, IBM. Not the merits or otherwise of the GPL.
The only thing that this court case has represented to most PHBs in mid-size companies is "Linux maybe illegal but if I buy a Linux server off IBM I'm probably in the clear" hence furthering the stranglehold of the big companies on Linux and the direction it goes in.
Q: How does this tracking mechanism differ from web log analysers?
A: Simple, web log analysers aren't capable of tracking redistributions of the same document. If you copy a web page, say about theories in free-market macroeconomics, and e-mail the copy to a friend, say in China, no one will ever know your friend has read it. But if you copy one of those and it's read by your friend there, then certainly your friend will have a red flag (pun intended) on him.
Well, then e-mail him a document in a format that doesn't require him to "'phone home" and just make it RSVP.
I'm still failing to see how this is sinister. Remember that PDF is a mark-up language (unlike Postcript) and anybody with a copy of vim can edit them. Maybe they just have a tag with a hash of the PDF in them inserted as a comment.
Please point out how this software is in anyway sinister and how it represents a threat to the viewer or document distributor any more so than a document containing Javascript/HTML or Postscript for that matter.
TIA.
Question: How does this supposedly "evil" tracking mechanism differ from web log analysers?
Answer: It doesn't?
From the write-up above:
> Though personal information is not gathered from machines, IP addresses are.
So no different to when html documents (yes, I know they are another "evil" open spec like PDF) are distributed via http. It's truely shocking this but I can block access to my webserver based on originating IPs! Yes. I'm part of the "evil" conspiracy too! Mwuuuuahhaaha....
Remove your tinfoil hats folks. This is a none story.
Show me some evidence it is "evil" before branding it "evil".
Microsoft to partner with Krusty the Clown?
> As someone who has been developing enterprise apps with MySQL
> for a while now, I'll answer this, even though I'm 99.44% sure
> you're trolling: what we've always done, so far, is put all the
> triggers in the application layer. Now we can make "real"
> triggers in the DB layer, but guess what?
> The logic is exactly the same.
Go and read Date, about why a 3-tier architecture is a good thing and then come back and tell me you develop "enterprise apps with MySQL....[with] triggers in the application layer" whilst still keeping a a straight face.
+5, Interesting? How about -5, Clueless. It's people like you who give IT a bad name. Do your homework before "developing enterprise apps"! I spent a considerable part of one year doing relational theory and RDBMSs at uni, what have you done? Obviously not a lot and quite frankly it shows.
> But then I got wondering -- some tier I vendors have recently moved
> to a zero-defect policy on lcds -- does this mean that the
> manufacturing process is getting that much better,
The manufacturing cost of LCDs has been coming down for some years as a direct result of improvements in the manufacturing processes by mech/man engineers at Hitachi, Samsung etc. Hence the falling prices.
That doesn't mean they're perfect, they still produce LCDs with stuck pixels, they just produce less of them and they sell them on....just cheaper.
Whilst I haven't RTFA (and don't even know what a PSP is :), I'm
assuming the PSPs have small, high-definition screens which could
stretch the current manufacturing processes to their limits. Hence the
high number of busted pixels: just like normal-size LCDs had in the old
days when they were pushing the envelope.
> or does it mean that they're just swapping around the distribution
> of products, with no change in overall quality?
No.
> Why don't you be a pal and get your friend a live linux Cd to play with?
That's an excellent idea and when I get a broadband link I'll give him one to play with.
I've been doing my best to persuade friends to buy a Mac - since I use FreeBSD myself, I should be somewhat familiar with the underlying OS, but there's a reluctance:
It's the last one that's the real gotcha because I've got no arguments against it.
> My favorite example of simple was the Viet Cong with their dung
> covered stakes vs the greatest power in the history of the world.
> We all know how that one turned out.
Let us not forget the Pentagon saying that they were winning the war because they had less reports of Viet Cong infiltration in villages. A cynical reporter pointed out that the Viet Cong were notorious in not informing the Pentagon when they had infiltrated villages.
This report of the decline of posted worms is little different.
I personally know of one friend who has an unusable computer due to infection with scumware and worms. I neither have the time, patience or expertise to fix it. (Ad-Aware crashes the machine when run, Spybot doesn't pick up everything and neither AFAIK do anything about worms/virii).
There must be a pile of people who have given up on the 'net due to broken Microsoft software. Hence "less" worms.
> A very similar story was mentioned on the Now Show on Radio 4 today.
It must be synchronicity or something. A couple of hours after posting the parent I listened to the Now Show and heard Barry Cryer relate a similar story as you say.
I don't know which is true (if either) but I've heard of troops putting condoms over the barrels of their guns (they blow up if fired when the barrel has got crap in it).
My favourite condom story:
During the war the Russians ran short of condoms and they asked the British government to ship some over on the next convoy.
Churchill ordered that the London Rubber Company should ship a consignment of extra large condoms over but mark them all as "extra small".
The story maybe apocryphal but it's well known Winston had a well-developed sense of humour and didn't like Stalin, so I tend to believe it :)
> Look on the bright side
OK...* Worst food
* Rottenest teeth
* Ugliest women
* Gayest prime minister
[Note to foreigners: This is called self-deprecating British humour] ;)
> It would seem as if Britian is experiencing socialism's endgame scenario.
I suspect you are looking at Britain from an American perspective. Britain flirted with socialism after the war (which is when the National Health service was introduced) but Britain remains fundamentally a free enterprise economy which takes its orders from Washington.
It is a commonly held view in Europe that a defining characteristic of a civilised society is free healthcare for all that need it.
> ...the government not listening to its constituents...
There is a direct correlation between how much a government listens to its constituents and how accountable they are.
The war in Iraq is an example. French politicians know that they are criminally liable for any decisions they make (irrespective of how fresh the revolution and resulting terror is in their minds). Hence their willingness to listen to the populace.
In the UK (and US) the politicians are largely unaccountable and IMO they have profoundly undemocratic governments
The most cheering piece of news I've heard for years was when the Argentinian finance minister was chased by an angry mob down the street :)
We need more of that in the UK and US. Until politicians fear for their life and liberty, you can't hold them properly to account.
> Regarding the Unix principle and Emacs. . . you really have to blame the Emacs users for that.
No I dont have to blame the users for that, I'm blaming the developers for producing a piss-poor editor.
To give one quick example of where it breaks down, I'll point to Debian, my Linux distribution of choice. Debian includes bash, true, but it also includes dash, formerly ash, which is the sh from NetBSD. It is trivial to set /bin/sh to point to dash (in fact, it prompts you
with that question upon installation), and *poof*, now the traditional
Bourne shell is your system shell.
Can you replace the system shell on RedHat without it blowing up? I'm not interested in Debian or any other antique or niche Linux.
but it is lacking a number of features that bash supports [ksh]
Name them. I've already mentioned that bash doesn't support ansii escape codes properly (due to bugs). A user shell that is prone to throwing ^D and logging you out is of no practical use at all.
You have still failed to explain to me why such a bloated mess is the default shell on Linux systems. Well why?
> looked over the hill some 4-5 years ago, saw that to become a GNU developer you have to have the right religious attitude irrespective of whether you can code or not.
That's a steaming pile of horse crap. You can do whatever the hell you want. If you want to sit at home on a Linux machine and develop proprietary software, you're free to do that. No one is gonig to break down your door and beat you with a penguin stick for it.
Yes, I can sit at home coding around GNU readlines bugginess and have the GPL imposed on me. Or I can sit at home and code around BSD code, clean code, and not have some hairy gimp with a beard telling me what I can or cannot do with my code. I suggest to you that if you choose the former route, you are using the GNU code not for its utility or lack of bugs, you are doing it because you believe in all the GPL FUD.
Ah, so you choose what operating system you use by how much you like other people using it?
Don't use retarded arguments. I told you quite clearly that I'll use any BSD over any Linux because they are better as a result of a better development model. GNU/Linux development is broken and has been for years.
Your handwaiving about the security problems with Linux is touching in its naivety. FYI, Linux boxes are getting rooted left right and centre and the fact that you can forkbomb most Linux distros out of existence is truely pathetic.
I don't know what it is that embittered you so much towards GNU and Linux, but I think something must have.
What's embittered me is people like you. I pointed out a number of problems with Linux 5 years ago and I got a number of people like you pointing out that the problems weren't really "problems".
I saw a very real reluctance amongst the Linux community at large not only to address these problems but to acknowledge that they really exist. That gets tedious real fast and the fact that I'm arguing 5 years later with another ostrich with a fondness for burying its head in the sand on /. is an indication that not very much has changed.
Compare and contrast with the *BSD community, it might not be perfect but at least they attempt to address problems rather than just waive them away whilst calling you "troll".
Your post stands as a monument to all that is broken and cretinous about GNU/Linux.
Now, you may not be a fan of emacs, but first stating that you shouldn't use GNU code to get things done, and then holding up Emacs as an example, is ignorant at best. I am not personally a fan of Emacs, having discovered vi first, but I still can appreciate the power, flexibility, and usefulness of it.
I can't appreciate it and yes I've used it. An editor that requires that you spend your time bouncing on the meta key fails one of the more important requirements of a text editor - that the editing keys need to be handily placed.
A friend of mine is big an emacs fan. He uses it for text editing, e-mail, news reading, and coding.
With all due respect to your genius friend there are better programs for editing, reading news and coding. Ever heard of the unix principle of doing one thing and doing it well? Well GNU code usually does more than one thing...and it usually does them all badly. Emacs being a case in point.For example, comparing the Bourne Shell to bash is like comparing the old, original vi, to vim.
I was comparing the system shell of BSD and GNU/Linux. The advantage of sh over bash is not marginal when the system is spawning lots of shells ie. on boot-up. When I ran Linux the system took 3 times as long to come up compared to FreeBSD running the same softs and 2.4 performance wise was abysmal.But they both [vim/bash] also offer an immensely great level of functionality.
As far as user shells go, bash is so far behind ksh in function it's not funny. I've already mentioned that bash is shot through with longstanding and seemingly intractable bugs. Which reminds me, the GNU readline library stinks too which is one reason why most developers choose to implement their own.If you really want to stay stuck 10+ years in the past, with ancient (but possibly less buggy) software, that's cool. You have that choice.
Me, though. . . I'm looking over that hill there, wondering what we're going to see next.
I looked over the hill some 4-5 years ago, saw that to become a GNU developer you have to have the right religious attitude irrespective of whether you can code or not.
That was when I dumped GNU/Linux as even then it had become a ghetto for those with some sort of OS religious axe to grind. Now it's beyond a joke (21 kernel vulnerabilities in 3 months!) and the fact that you and others continue to argue that it is good is frankly bizarre.
Yes, I'll be modded down again for making valid criticisms of GNU/Linux and the rotten semi-commercial/semi-free Frankensteins monster it has become.
It's a shame, I was largely introduced to unix through Linux and have a soft spot for it. There are times when you have to call a spade a spade even though the penguinista apologistas will inevitably come crawling out of the woodwork and inform me that black is actually white and what a troll I am. Sigh.