"Let's hope they can de-complexify SUSE's YAST. Few things could make Linux look more complex to fresh eyes."
I find that very interesting. I have been running Suse for many years now, and one of the reasons is YAST. I like the fact that I can use it in text mode and do remote administration without running X. I have always found it to be a very user friendly application. I was also very pleased that when Novel bought Suse, one of the first things they did was open YAST. I would like to see it included with more distributions.
"Copyright owners can be sufficiently protected by purely civil remedies.
That was my reaction. If you tape the wedding of a famous movie star without their permission, the police are not going to arrest you unless you are trespassing. Still, the star has the right to take you to civil court. The nice thing about civil court is that even if found guilty, the punishment can be adjusted to suit the crime. EG: "Yeah we think she was guilty and we award the defendat $1.00 and all copies of the video."
"Congressmen do not read their emails. *maybe* a staffer will read the email and send a form response. But if you think sending emails makes a difference, then you're living in a fantasy land. Campaign donations can make a difference, but only if you making large enough contributions to get invited to some of their fundraising[sic]dinners and get some face time."
I disagree. My father was a career politician. I know some congressmen. It is true that they do not read all their email. A staffer reads it and gives his boss an overview of what the level of interest and opinions are. I know they are getting read, because I always get back a policy paper on the subject I wrote about. Sure it is a form letter. I do not expect any more than that.
My point is that if you are not participating in the process, you are wasting your own time groaning about the results.
Everyone keeps saying that money controls the politicians. The only reason that is true, is because they can use that money to change public opinion. If we had an informed active electorate, the politicians would have to listen. If you are not trying to be part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.
Did you really vote? If so it is a matter of record that the politicians can look up.
"You work for us."
They only work for voters and supporters. The best way to get your opinion heard is to vote and contribute to campaigns. BTW, contributing to the opposing candidate works too. Campaign contributions are a matter of public record. If you say "I will support your opponent in the next elections." they can check if you have ever supported any candidates before. If not they will treat it as an empty threat.
"We want you to tell the RIAA to f**k off."
Have you actually told your congressman this? I email my congressman regularly on issues that are important to me. I hope you do as well.
"One researcher predicts it will be five to seven years before only the "die-hard" desktop users are left."
I'm not sure I agree. I have two desktops at home as well as my laptop. I am a gamer, and when I play I use my workstation. It has better graphics, more memory, better sound, and bigger hard drives. Also, because I build my own systems, I do not have to pay what I do for a laptop. I also do not have to pay it all at once. I am in a constant upgrade cycle using towers that I originally purchased around 2002. Because I do not have to replace everything at once, it is less of a financial burden to keep the machine up to near cutting edge.
OK, maybe I am just one of those "die-hard" desktop users.
Here is a good article on why hydrogen is not an ideal fuel source. It is written by Dr. Robert Zubrin. Here is a good quote that points out my favorite objections:
"So if we put aside the spectacularly improbable prospect of fueling our planet with extraterrestrial hydrogen imports, the only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.
The spokesmen for the hydrogen hoax claim that hydrogen will be manufactured from water via electrolysis. It is certainly possible to make hydrogen this way, but it is very expensive--so much so, that only four percent of all hydrogen currently produced in the United States is produced in this manner. The rest is made by breaking down hydrocarbons, through processes like pyrolysis of natural gas or steam reforming of coal.
Neither type of hydrogen is even remotely economical as fuel. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen (made the cheap way, from hydrocarbons) shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram. High purity hydrogen made from electrolysis for scientific applications costs considerably more. Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that even if hydrogen cars were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one with the power to choose otherwise would ever buy such vehicles. This fact alone makes the hydrogen economy a non-starter in a free society."
I don't know about anyone elses, but IMHO GPL3 is as invasive a liscense agreement as the one in Windows Vista. How dare anyone tell me what I can and cannot do with my own hardware. I am looking forward to the GPL2 / GPL3 fork so we can get that nut Richards Stallman out of our business.
BTW: Go ahead and mod me troll, I have karma to burn.
"I have read the article and still can't tell whether the game makers are actually serious or not."
They are quite serious. I went to their web site and grabbed a list of the games features.
Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces - a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers, and uncover the truth about the worldwide disappearances!
Lead the Tribulation Force from the book series , including Rayford, Chloe, Buck and Bruce against Nicolae Carpathia - the AntiChrist.
Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.
Recover ancient scriptures and witness spectacular Angelic and Demonic activity as a direct consequence of your choices.
Command your forces through intense battles across a breathtaking, authentic depiction of New York City .
Control more than 30 units types - from Prayer Warrior and Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks!
Enjoy a robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps in Story Mode - fighting in China Town , SoHo , Uptown and more!
Play multiplayer games as Tribulation Force or the AntiChrist's Global Community Peacekeepers with up to eight players via LAN or over the internet!
Personally I think it is funny. I was hoping they had a demo I could download.
"Your stretching it a bit by belittling Apple. They and NeXT did the impossible - they made Unix really, really usable."
I do not have a Mac, I run Suse Linux on PCs. Still I agree with you whole heartedly. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to do some work for a company that was exclusively running Red Hat on their servers. There developers all had Mac Books. It was my first exposure to OS X and I have to say I was impressed. It just worked. Better than windows even! It just worked. And the great thing was that I could drop to a CLI and all the tools I expect are there.
I wish Linux could do this. I understand that Apple has the advantage of targeting a limited hardware platform. For me Suse mostly 'just works,' because I limit my hardware to what is supported. Still, I would not put my 78 year old mother on Suse - yet. I would put her on a Mac tomorrow if she asked me. In fact she is hinting that she wants to buy a laptop. When she makes up her mind, I will show her a Mac first.
"Here's my system - there are a few issues I'm informed on, many not. When I don't know anything about the candidates, I never vote for the incumbent, and when possible, I vote for a non Repubocrat - 3rd party, independant, etc."
Wow! That is almost exactly my system. Personally I think you should still cast a vote. There are proably going to be local initiatives that you can simply read what it says and make a decision then. For example, in my district we are voting on whether to allow the sale of alcohol for offsite consumption. That is pretty straightforward and I bet you can decide where you stand while at the ballot box. For the ones you do not feel comfortable voting on, simply leave them blank.
"most machines with VVPT print out the receipt behind a window, allow the voter to inspect and confirm/reject the ballot, and then drop the receipt into an internal ballot box."
I would accept that. I voted in early voting Saturday in my precinct in Texas. The machine used does not provide any paper trail. I used the electronic voting machine provided, then I filed an official complaint on the lack of a paper trail. It was actually kind of funny, the election judges were quite concerned that I had a complaint. They were very accommodating though.
Since everyone asks me when they find out I'm from Texas, yes I voted for the Kinkster.
"Both parties want this country to remain polarized for the next election because they feel they both have votes to gain from it."
I believe that the real debate in Washington is how best to distract citizens from the real issues facing our country and the world. The polarization of the parties is simply a ploy to get americans to react on an emotional level instead of examining issues from a logical perspective.
"They want us to buy the hardware in order to run their operating system, when an operating system is supposed to run our hardware. Like people are going to buy hardware just to run the new Windows."
People did it with windows 95. I was running OS/2 back then and all my friends complained that the hardware requirements were too high, but as soon as Windows 95 came out they bought it and upgraded.
"If you've found yourself in this position, what things did you do to cope?"
I find a martini helps.
Seriously though, I can remember when I was in my early adult life calling my older brother a yuppie and a sell out as I heard corporate speak creep into his vocabulary. Now, years later, I am as bad as any one. We all learned geek speak and tech speak in order to communicate with our peers. This is just another vocabulary to learn. If you want to be understood by non-IT coworkers, you have to speak their language.
Slashdot Mirror
I find that very interesting. I have been running Suse for many years now, and one of the reasons is YAST. I like the fact that I can use it in text mode and do remote administration without running X. I have always found it to be a very user friendly application. I was also very pleased that when Novel bought Suse, one of the first things they did was open YAST. I would like to see it included with more distributions.
Here are several GUI administration tools for Apache.
That was my reaction. If you tape the wedding of a famous movie star without their permission, the police are not going to arrest you unless you are trespassing. Still, the star has the right to take you to civil court. The nice thing about civil court is that even if found guilty, the punishment can be adjusted to suit the crime. EG: "Yeah we think she was guilty and we award the defendat $1.00 and all copies of the video."
But we "Won't Get Fooled Again."
Yeah that was my reaction. I checked on the site to see the list of other certified OS'. Here it is:
- Apple Inc.: Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard on Intel-based Macintosh computers
- Fujitsu Limited: Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System on Fujitsu PRIMEPOWER® 64-bit SPARC® Based Platforms
- Hewlett-Packard Company: HP-UX 11i V3 Release B.11.31 or later on HP Integrity Servers
- IBM Corporation: AIX 5L for POWER V5.3 dated 7-2006 or later
- IBM Corporation: AIX 5L for POWER V5.2 dated 8-2004 or later with APARs: IY59610, IY60869, IY61405 with VAC 6.0.0.8 or later on pSeries CHRP systems
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System plus patch 118844-06 for X86 and on, on 64-bit X86 based systems
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System and on, on 32-bit X86 based systems
- Sun Microsystems, Inc.: Solaris 10 Operating System and on, on 32-bit and 64-bit SPARC based systems
There is no Linux. The only BSD up there is OS X. Apparently even Unix isn't Unix. It looks to me like 'THE Open GROUP' is a PR firm for Sun and IBM.I like Blu-ray, but only because I don't like Microsoft. Since Microsoft is support HD-DVD, I refuse to consider it a viable option.
I disagree. My father was a career politician. I know some congressmen. It is true that they do not read all their email. A staffer reads it and gives his boss an overview of what the level of interest and opinions are. I know they are getting read, because I always get back a policy paper on the subject I wrote about. Sure it is a form letter. I do not expect any more than that.
My point is that if you are not participating in the process, you are wasting your own time groaning about the results.
Everyone keeps saying that money controls the politicians. The only reason that is true, is because they can use that money to change public opinion. If we had an informed active electorate, the politicians would have to listen. If you are not trying to be part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.
Did you really vote? If so it is a matter of record that the politicians can look up.
"You work for us."
They only work for voters and supporters. The best way to get your opinion heard is to vote and contribute to campaigns. BTW, contributing to the opposing candidate works too. Campaign contributions are a matter of public record. If you say "I will support your opponent in the next elections." they can check if you have ever supported any candidates before. If not they will treat it as an empty threat.
"We want you to tell the RIAA to f**k off."
Have you actually told your congressman this? I email my congressman regularly on issues that are important to me. I hope you do as well.
To quote the movie 'Sweet Home Alabama', "Honey, just cuz I talk slow doesn't mean I'm stupid."
I'm not sure I agree. I have two desktops at home as well as my laptop. I am a gamer, and when I play I use my workstation. It has better graphics, more memory, better sound, and bigger hard drives. Also, because I build my own systems, I do not have to pay what I do for a laptop. I also do not have to pay it all at once. I am in a constant upgrade cycle using towers that I originally purchased around 2002. Because I do not have to replace everything at once, it is less of a financial burden to keep the machine up to near cutting edge.
OK, maybe I am just one of those "die-hard" desktop users.
"So if we put aside the spectacularly improbable prospect of fueling our planet with extraterrestrial hydrogen imports, the only way to get free hydrogen on Earth is to make it. The trouble is that making hydrogen requires more energy than the hydrogen so produced can provide. Hydrogen, therefore, is not a source of energy. It simply is a carrier of energy. And it is, as we shall see, an extremely poor one.
The spokesmen for the hydrogen hoax claim that hydrogen will be manufactured from water via electrolysis. It is certainly possible to make hydrogen this way, but it is very expensive--so much so, that only four percent of all hydrogen currently produced in the United States is produced in this manner. The rest is made by breaking down hydrocarbons, through processes like pyrolysis of natural gas or steam reforming of coal.
Neither type of hydrogen is even remotely economical as fuel. The wholesale cost of commercial grade liquid hydrogen (made the cheap way, from hydrocarbons) shipped to large customers in the United States is about $6 per kilogram. High purity hydrogen made from electrolysis for scientific applications costs considerably more. Dispensed in compressed gas cylinders to retail customers, the current price of commercial grade hydrogen is about $100 per kilogram. For comparison, a kilogram of hydrogen contains about the same amount of energy as a gallon of gasoline. This means that even if hydrogen cars were available and hydrogen stations existed to fuel them, no one with the power to choose otherwise would ever buy such vehicles. This fact alone makes the hydrogen economy a non-starter in a free society."
I don't know about anyone elses, but IMHO GPL3 is as invasive a liscense agreement as the one in Windows Vista. How dare anyone tell me what I can and cannot do with my own hardware. I am looking forward to the GPL2 / GPL3 fork so we can get that nut Richards Stallman out of our business. BTW: Go ahead and mod me troll, I have karma to burn.
They are quite serious. I went to their web site and grabbed a list of the games features.
Personally I think it is funny. I was hoping they had a demo I could download.
I do not have a Mac, I run Suse Linux on PCs. Still I agree with you whole heartedly. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to do some work for a company that was exclusively running Red Hat on their servers. There developers all had Mac Books. It was my first exposure to OS X and I have to say I was impressed. It just worked. Better than windows even! It just worked. And the great thing was that I could drop to a CLI and all the tools I expect are there.
I wish Linux could do this. I understand that Apple has the advantage of targeting a limited hardware platform. For me Suse mostly 'just works,' because I limit my hardware to what is supported. Still, I would not put my 78 year old mother on Suse - yet. I would put her on a Mac tomorrow if she asked me. In fact she is hinting that she wants to buy a laptop. When she makes up her mind, I will show her a Mac first.
Wow! That is almost exactly my system. Personally I think you should still cast a vote. There are proably going to be local initiatives that you can simply read what it says and make a decision then. For example, in my district we are voting on whether to allow the sale of alcohol for offsite consumption. That is pretty straightforward and I bet you can decide where you stand while at the ballot box. For the ones you do not feel comfortable voting on, simply leave them blank.
Add "who hasn't had a date in years, living in his parents basement." to that and I think we will have our profile.
I would accept that. I voted in early voting Saturday in my precinct in Texas. The machine used does not provide any paper trail. I used the electronic voting machine provided, then I filed an official complaint on the lack of a paper trail. It was actually kind of funny, the election judges were quite concerned that I had a complaint. They were very accommodating though.
Since everyone asks me when they find out I'm from Texas, yes I voted for the Kinkster.
This has always been one of my prefered gaming models. If the MMORPG's worked my way, that potion of strength would be a Starbucks Latte.
I believe that the real debate in Washington is how best to distract citizens from the real issues facing our country and the world. The polarization of the parties is simply a ploy to get americans to react on an emotional level instead of examining issues from a logical perspective.
If you outlaw CVS only outlaws will use CVS.
George Orwell
People did it with windows 95. I was running OS/2 back then and all my friends complained that the hardware requirements were too high, but as soon as Windows 95 came out they bought it and upgraded.
"Upgrade your CPU
800 MHz required to install Windows Vista (Your computer currently has 0.00 Hz)"
I get great performance to have such a slow clock speed.
Microsoft.com passed without issue. Google.com failed with 47 errors. Slashdot.org is forbidden.
I find a martini helps.
Seriously though, I can remember when I was in my early adult life calling my older brother a yuppie and a sell out as I heard corporate speak creep into his vocabulary. Now, years later, I am as bad as any one. We all learned geek speak and tech speak in order to communicate with our peers. This is just another vocabulary to learn. If you want to be understood by non-IT coworkers, you have to speak their language.