I disagree. Large gov't leaves lots of areas to hide behind / lots of accountability to shirk. Who can hide malfeasence better, something the size of Enron or something the size of my company (6 people)?
Odd (but I think somewhat applicable) analogy: A large, complex, ill-defined system has will have more security issues than a small, simple, well defined one.
Anyway, if small gov't = ease of bribery then the Supreme Court would have been wearing Wal-Mart robes a long, long time ago.
It still strikes me as odd that politicians can create laws that govern so much of what goes on through the internet, when they have no knowledge of it themselves.
It is the nature of politicians: they don't know a lot of stuff (granted, in the grand scheme of things neither do I, but I'm not empowered to pass legislation directly).
That's why I love gridlock. Let the bastards argue all day and all night. The less laws they pass the better.
Which is why us nutty Libertarians like to yell and scream about having a smaller gov't, one that has a limited scope and can't change laws for the highest bidder willy nilly. Corperate welfare has brough us such niceities as inflated sugar and corn prices, farm subsidies that keep third world nation's firmly entrenched in the third world (due to lack of access to markets), ever expanding copyright lengths, and a whole other mess o' problems. It ain't capitalism's fault, its the (corporate)welfare states'.
Then again, we Libertarians are a bunch of heartless bastards who use poor folks as a cheaper substitute for furniture, so what do we know.
Actually, I buy Pixar movies for exactly that reason. I don't like their association with Disney, but Pixar is awesome, so in their case, I buy the movies before I even see it the first time.
Agreed about Pixar, but I think I like Pixar films because of the people behind it, namely John Lasciter (I know I just butchered his name) and Steve Jobs. They know how to tell a good story and believe quality comes first. Pixar without those two probably wouldn't be the Pixar we know and love.
I disagree. Not about marketshare in Namibia anyway. What this sounds like is a cheap and easy PR stunt (the $$$ from the OS licence was just a small cherry on the top). They wanted to be able to crow about how their software replaced Linux in a developing country.
Its actually much worse in the UK. Another of the laws being put forward (slipped in among the "nation security" legislation) is so broadly worded it could define critisizing a religion as a "hate crime." Nasty stuff.
How much of a performance increase is gained by optimizing the "average"[1] application?
Surprisingly quite a bit. I moved my linux workstation over to Gentoo and it runs a lot snappier than my old debian setup. (no hard numbers, simply the feel from day to day use) I have an Athlon 750 and an ancient ATI PCI Rage Pro card so every drop counts.
The OS X version is also pretty unstable. Its crashed every time I've run it within 5 seconds of startup sans once. Have tried running it off of a clean reboot with nothing else running and it still goes "bonk". Has anyone else seen this?
Also, running as root may not be ideal for Linux people, but end-users would just get irritated if they had to enter the root password everytime they wanted to change the system configuration or mount the cd-rom...
Well, you can set up the CD rom such that it doesn't need root. As for the other things I don't think its that detrimental to have a password to change system configs. Both XP and OS X do this exact thing. And as others have already pointed out running root opens your system to folks who are going to have a field day on your system. Remmeber, if they're noobies then they aren't going to be reading things like system logs, etc. IMO better to be safe than sorry.
Another reason, which is ironic, is back in the early 90's it was the perception of the BSD community that was a stickler for a lot of people. The BSD crowd (rightly or wrongly) were percieved as an insular, clubby, bickering bunch. A lot of folks worked on Linux because they had a "nicer" development community.
Now, I'm not saying this perception was warrented, but I know more than one person who held this view.
Of course, now the tables have turned and its Linux who's mentioned when you talk about issues about "the community"
Moz on windows borks out on me occasionally when printing (if I'm doing some heavy stuff). I'm running W2K, which usually is pretty stable, but Moz will take the whole system down (it reboots itself). Fun fun fun.
So what... at least that why the $cientologist says. The point is to use the legal system as a weapon. If they can win then fine, if not they'll still drag everything out, filing motion after motion in order to bankrupt their foes. They care not a jot the legality of what they do, as they've shown time and time again.
This is what I noticed with "Digital TV" in the UK. Frankly, it looked like shit: worse than TiVO on its lowest setting bad. They went with the high compressions, more channels and it looks (or at least looked, ITVD is dead) way worse than normal analog broadcasts.
No, warchalking is technically *not* theft. You may argue that the act of mooching the bandwidth of the wireless access is theft, but the warchalking is, at worst, vandalism (graffitti). It is no more theft than someone selling a "guide to the stars' homes" (since a burgler could deduce that there may be things of worth in their houses and rob them)
And if you had read the article you would have seen that the author specifically said that he was looking at only the movies and not the expanded universe.
Could it be that maybe this man just wants a change of pace? Maybe he wants to move geographically?
There's probably a much simpler answer: He thinks his ideas have a better chance of being "monitized" than MS thinks. MS lets him go with his work on the condition that they get first dibs on anything. Pretty savvy move. If MS is right they lose nothing (and have one less salary to pay) and if they're wrong they have access to the fruits of the labor. Simple risk/reward.
Why stop there? Why not just get a gun and shoot Michael? I mean, from your rant it sounds like no one who has a differing view from yourself should be run out of a job. If you don't like his posts here's a suggestion:
Don't fucking read slashdot.
Jesus christ on a crutch, since when did the Universe become your personal little fifedom?
Anyone know EchoMirage's mother's phone number? I want to make a couple of calls to see if I can get her to have a retroactive abortion.
I remember this guy who was on a Saturday night TV show in England back in the 80s (it was a show hosted by a magician... my memory has been fried by years of guinness so I can remember his name... Paul something I think) who litterally could look at any vinyl classical record and tell you what it was. His photographic memory along with the patterns that a vinyl disk would make under intence light was what allowed him to freak me out at the tender age of 8.
I'd want to help run a minor league team. Do everything from serve hot dogs to marketing to raking the infield between innings. That's my idea of heaven.
The single most useful feature in a word processor. There's nothing worse than trying to format something one way and the god damn word processor does it another way (yeah yeah, I know, user error). At least when WP does it you can reveal codes and clean up the mess. Both Word and Word Pro (AFAIK) couldn't.
I was actually thinking that Microsoft might have asked Fraunhofer to start charging for decoders, to hurt free software and help Windows and Windows Media.
This would only make sense if Windows Media (i.e. wmf files) were covered by Fraunhofer's patent (i.e. MS has to pay Fraunhofer for ever WM program it ships). Does anyone know if this is the case?
If not that puts the kybosh on the MS theory, since Fraunhofer would tell MS to go sit and spin. They're not going to cut their own throats so MS can take a bigger cut of the pie. It would be like Ford asking GM to help them by stopping their car production.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree. Large gov't leaves lots of areas to hide behind / lots of accountability to shirk. Who can hide malfeasence better, something the size of Enron or something the size of my company (6 people)?
Odd (but I think somewhat applicable) analogy: A large, complex, ill-defined system has will have more security issues than a small, simple, well defined one.
Anyway, if small gov't = ease of bribery then the Supreme Court would have been wearing Wal-Mart robes a long, long time ago.
It still strikes me as odd that politicians can create laws that govern so much of what goes on through the internet, when they have no knowledge of it themselves.
It is the nature of politicians: they don't know a lot of stuff (granted, in the grand scheme of things neither do I, but I'm not empowered to pass legislation directly).
That's why I love gridlock. Let the bastards argue all day and all night. The less laws they pass the better.
Which is why us nutty Libertarians like to yell and scream about having a smaller gov't, one that has a limited scope and can't change laws for the highest bidder willy nilly. Corperate welfare has brough us such niceities as inflated sugar and corn prices, farm subsidies that keep third world nation's firmly entrenched in the third world (due to lack of access to markets), ever expanding copyright lengths, and a whole other mess o' problems. It ain't capitalism's fault, its the (corporate)welfare states'.
Then again, we Libertarians are a bunch of heartless bastards who use poor folks as a cheaper substitute for furniture, so what do we know.
Actually, I buy Pixar movies for exactly that reason. I don't like their association with Disney, but Pixar is awesome, so in their case, I buy the movies before I even see it the first time.
Agreed about Pixar, but I think I like Pixar films because of the people behind it, namely John Lasciter (I know I just butchered his name) and Steve Jobs. They know how to tell a good story and believe quality comes first. Pixar without those two probably wouldn't be the Pixar we know and love.
I disagree. Not about marketshare in Namibia anyway. What this sounds like is a cheap and easy PR stunt (the $$$ from the OS licence was just a small cherry on the top). They wanted to be able to crow about how their software replaced Linux in a developing country.
Its actually much worse in the UK. Another of the laws being put forward (slipped in among the "nation security" legislation) is so broadly worded it could define critisizing a religion as a "hate crime." Nasty stuff.
How much of a performance increase is gained by optimizing the "average"[1] application?
Surprisingly quite a bit. I moved my linux workstation over to Gentoo and it runs a lot snappier than my old debian setup. (no hard numbers, simply the feel from day to day use) I have an Athlon 750 and an ancient ATI PCI Rage Pro card so every drop counts.
Cake or Death? Death.... no no no Cake.
The OS X version is also pretty unstable. Its crashed every time I've run it within 5 seconds of startup sans once. Have tried running it off of a clean reboot with nothing else running and it still goes "bonk". Has anyone else seen this?
Gentoo [gentoo.org] is an excellent distribution where everything goes fast :)
Except my SBLive card, which goes no where {grumble grumble grumble} God knows what I've done to foobar it up.
Otherwise, yes, Gentoo makes your machine go mucho fast (well, faster).
Also, running as root may not be ideal for Linux people, but end-users would just get irritated if they had to enter the root password everytime they wanted to change the system configuration or mount the cd-rom...
Well, you can set up the CD rom such that it doesn't need root. As for the other things I don't think its that detrimental to have a password to change system configs. Both XP and OS X do this exact thing. And as others have already pointed out running root opens your system to folks who are going to have a field day on your system. Remmeber, if they're noobies then they aren't going to be reading things like system logs, etc. IMO better to be safe than sorry.
Another reason, which is ironic, is back in the early 90's it was the perception of the BSD community that was a stickler for a lot of people. The BSD crowd (rightly or wrongly) were percieved as an insular, clubby, bickering bunch. A lot of folks worked on Linux because they had a "nicer" development community.
Now, I'm not saying this perception was warrented, but I know more than one person who held this view.
Of course, now the tables have turned and its Linux who's mentioned when you talk about issues about "the community"
Moz on windows borks out on me occasionally when printing (if I'm doing some heavy stuff). I'm running W2K, which usually is pretty stable, but Moz will take the whole system down (it reboots itself). Fun fun fun.
So what... at least that why the $cientologist says. The point is to use the legal system as a weapon. If they can win then fine, if not they'll still drag everything out, filing motion after motion in order to bankrupt their foes. They care not a jot the legality of what they do, as they've shown time and time again.
There's no such thing as perfect encryption
Three words: one time pads.
Although I suspect you mean a perfect algo. based encryption scheme.
This is what I noticed with "Digital TV" in the UK. Frankly, it looked like shit: worse than TiVO on its lowest setting bad. They went with the high compressions, more channels and it looks (or at least looked, ITVD is dead) way worse than normal analog broadcasts.
No, warchalking is technically *not* theft. You may argue that the act of mooching the bandwidth of the wireless access is theft, but the warchalking is, at worst, vandalism (graffitti). It is no more theft than someone selling a "guide to the stars' homes" (since a burgler could deduce that there may be things of worth in their houses and rob them)
And if you had read the article you would have seen that the author specifically said that he was looking at only the movies and not the expanded universe.
Could it be that maybe this man just wants a change of pace? Maybe he wants to move geographically?
There's probably a much simpler answer: He thinks his ideas have a better chance of being "monitized" than MS thinks. MS lets him go with his work on the condition that they get first dibs on anything. Pretty savvy move. If MS is right they lose nothing (and have one less salary to pay) and if they're wrong they have access to the fruits of the labor. Simple risk/reward.
Why stop there? Why not just get a gun and shoot Michael? I mean, from your rant it sounds like no one who has a differing view from yourself should be run out of a job. If you don't like his posts here's a suggestion:
Don't fucking read slashdot.
Jesus christ on a crutch, since when did the Universe become your personal little fifedom?
Anyone know EchoMirage's mother's phone number? I want to make a couple of calls to see if I can get her to have a retroactive abortion.
I remember this guy who was on a Saturday night TV show in England back in the 80s (it was a show hosted by a magician... my memory has been fried by years of guinness so I can remember his name... Paul something I think) who litterally could look at any vinyl classical record and tell you what it was. His photographic memory along with the patterns that a vinyl disk would make under intence light was what allowed him to freak me out at the tender age of 8.
I'd want to help run a minor league team. Do everything from serve hot dogs to marketing to raking the infield between innings. That's my idea of heaven.
That, and own a pinball shop.
Yup.. tell the parents you need to buy Word, buy WP and go out on a binge!
Two words: Reveal Codes.
The single most useful feature in a word processor. There's nothing worse than trying to format something one way and the god damn word processor does it another way (yeah yeah, I know, user error). At least when WP does it you can reveal codes and clean up the mess. Both Word and Word Pro (AFAIK) couldn't.
I was actually thinking that Microsoft might have asked Fraunhofer to start charging for decoders, to hurt free software and help Windows and Windows Media.
This would only make sense if Windows Media (i.e. wmf files) were covered by Fraunhofer's patent (i.e. MS has to pay Fraunhofer for ever WM program it ships). Does anyone know if this is the case?
If not that puts the kybosh on the MS theory, since Fraunhofer would tell MS to go sit and spin. They're not going to cut their own throats so MS can take a bigger cut of the pie. It would be like Ford asking GM to help them by stopping their car production.