It pays to be cautious and well prepared for disasters and emergencies. How many of us have 72 hour kits available? How many of us have a one-year supply of food, or even a 2 week supply of food? What about firearms and ammo (no flamebait or trolling intended). How many people know how to start a camp fire and cook all of your meals over it?
Not many. For the rest, government tends to stand between them and natural selection. It's in government's interests to do that since they still pay taxes. The rest of us pay an untold social and financial cost for this, but the politicians are secluded and cloistered so they rarely feel it themselves.
You talk about no flamebait or trolling intended... I definitely know what you mean. It's an ugly truth but that's the truth. The thing is, we have modeled needless dependency and appalling lack of planning and preparation for so long that people no longer understand this. If something does happen, they are at the mercy of the likes of FEMA or equivalent. If you recall Hurricane Katrina, how'd that work out for them? Do we need multiple tragedies for people to get it, or is one sufficient? If people refuse to understand the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, why shouldn't we respect their decision? Any compassion you feel would be better put towards helping those who are at least trying to help themselves; the rest are quite incorrigible.
Disasters can happen anywhere. They absolutely do happen somewhere from time to time. To be completely unprepared for them is to assume a risk. Real adults -- by that I mean the kind who have enough personal responsibility that they don't cling to an image of victimhood -- understand that if you assume a major risk you just might get screwed. The rest wait passively for someone to rescue them and tell them what to do. When it comes to failing to look after themselves, failing to look after their families, and providing excuses to grow government, they are Satan's little helpers, cute and well-meaning though they may be.
The government of India is pretty ill-prepared and inefficient for such events. The first instinct of most citizens is that they need to take things in their own hands.
The USA used to be like that. Is there any way we can be like that again?
A minority of us don't deserve the government our fellow countrymen are creating.
... or perhaps the only annoying issue with OSS in general, is that the OSS community contains far too many fools who think that their opinion about some other project they don't like somehow matters.
That's different from any other thing... exactly how?
The world is full of people like that. Each one of them is perfectly right in his or her own eyes. Anyone who sits there hanging on their every word is not only part of the problem, but the biggest part.
Before PulseAudio it wasn't possible to turn on a bluetooth headset and have any audio that was playing through your speakers automatically start going to the headset instead.
It's good to have a real answer to a question. Still, I have another question. Given the open-source nature of all the software involved, wouldn't the developer time be better invested in fixing the ALSA drivers to accommodate Bluetooth headsets instead of creating an entirely new layer of middleman software between the application and the audio system?
It's a question of how to best manage and invest the finite talent and effort that is available. Why would PulseAudio be the best possible method? What does that answer look like when you subtract from its gains all the time wasted by users with no such headsets who had to sort out PulseAudio-specific audio problems? There's a big picture here and it doesn't look good for PulseAudio.
Want a dual-boot Linux/Windows system with/user on an NTFS partition? Sorry, PulseAudio wont let you. WTF?!
Poettering is the poster child for crappy Linux developers.
How and why would a sound daemon even know or care about the filesystem type for any kernel-supported, read-writable volume? While the objections to PulseAudio are legion, I have never heard this particular one before.
Replace "PulseAudio" with "X Window" and you fit right in the UNIX-hater's handbook. Not that that means you're wrong, mind.
I agree that PA-on-ALSA is just ridiculous. However, PA or something like it, after it matures, and over a barebones kernel layer, can make good sense.
What does PulseAudio-on-ALSA accomplish that straight ALSA cannot? Assuming a non-null answer to that, how many users really need that functionality to justify including PulseAudio as the default configuration for major distributions?
The case for PulseAudio rests on those two questions.
As for Alsa/another sound server replacing OSS, OSS do the mixing (and resampling?) in the kernel space, citing latency is one of the reasons, while alsa let userspace programs the jobs. IMO, that kind of works does not belong to kernel space, so I prefer alsa.
Regarding to pulseaudio, dmix is fine, but pulseaudio is better with features like glitch free playback (ironically, this is the reason why pulseaudio glitches so bad on some systems with broken drivers), you can set the resampling algo, per stream volume control, flat volume (another problematic feature), and as some people said, it is the only setup that allow output via bluetooth devices but I haven't tried it yet. The main reason for many problems related to it is the horrible audio drivers on Linux (as always), so you can't exactly blame pulseaudio, at least it always has fallback mode, and the distros never set them as default.
Back when pulseaudio was first integrated into Ubuntu (around 8.04, right?), it didn't work well for me and stop working for many other. But now, most people I know have absolutely no problem with pulseaudio.
PS: Aside from dmix, there are several other sound servers like arts, esd etc.... too, I'm glad that we get rid of all that and now pulseaudio on alsa is the standard.
The in-kernel audio drivers have always worked flawlessly for me. I have never had problems with latency, glitches in playback, etc.
But let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that I just got lucky. Let's assume most users have problems that can be directly attributed to shoddy in-kernel drivers (as highly unusual and unlike the typical linux kernel experience as this is...). The solution to that is to put available development effort towards fixing those drivers. They are, after all, the low-level foundation of the audio system. The solution is emphatically NOT to add a redundant software layer on top of broken drivers. You do like to solve problems by fixing things where they are actually broken, right? That's the sensible thing to do. That's the correct use of the talent of developers who specialize in programming sound systems.
Arts (what a piece of vulture shit that was) and ESD are not on equal footing with Dmix. Dmix is a small, relatively efficient, rather problem-free mixer for sound cards that do not have a hardware mixer. It just works and it actually serves a purpose, unlike the sound daemons. ALSA will use a hardware mixer instead of Dmix if you have high-end hardware and one is available. I have never known Dmix to introduce playback stuttering, idiotic problems with multiple users, or any of the other problems you can easily find when you do a Google search for Arts or PulseAudio. I have also never known Dmix to use any noticable amount of CPU.
Again I will reiterate. PulseAudio is a middleman standing between the applicating wanting to play sound, and ALSA. How exactly is that going to fix an inherent flaw in the underlying ALSA system? Hint: it will not and cannot. If there are such horrible problems with Dmix (that somehow I won the lottery of never personally encountering), that kind of development effort should be put towards fixing Dmix. Doesn't that make a lot more sense?
PulseAudio is a useless piece of shit. It's like ALSA with a bunch of stupid complications. How it got to be the standard sound system for so many mainstream distros is a real mystery.
It was pushed by Redhat and nobody else had a better solution to clean up the morass that is linux audio.
PulseAudio is a relatively recent arrival. ALSA + Dmix by default has "just worked" for a long time now, about seven years. As a matter of fact, I don't see PulseAudio in a kernel config anywhere -- implying that PulseAudio is just an extra layer of software standing between the program wanting to play audio and ALSA. If the goal is to get rid of problems caused by ALSA (I'd love to hear what those are, by the way), then that's not going to work.
Please explain to me the specific problems with Linux audio and the ways that PulseAudio addresses them. I am hoping someone will respond to that, but if no one does I will definitely understand it is not a coincidence if no one can back up your assertion.
When I actually read user forums and do research on it, the impression I receive is exactly the opposite: PulseAudio is causing problems that didn't happen with ALSA. That's about what you would expect when you add redundant, needless complexity to an already-working system. As for me, on my system I have never installed PulseAudio. I use ALSA for all audio needs. Anytime I fire up Wine, mplayer, Amarok, or anything of the sort, audio just works and I don't have to worry about it. The only requirement whatsoever is that the user in question is a member of the "audio" group and that's all; it really is so simple and easy. I am so satisfied with this setup and the way it simply works that I have no problems with it to fix. What more do users want?
I don't blame him for creating PulseAudio. I blame the distribution maintainers for having the poor judgment to make it the main sound system for so many distributions. It would be one thing to have a sane default like ALSA and then have PulseAudio available in the repositories for those who really want it.
For my friends who use Linux, the first thing I do whenever a new distro is installed is to check if it is using PulseAudio. If so, I remove it and replace it with ALSA. Suddenly issues related to audio playback go away and everything just magically works. Oh and they easily have a proper mixer without jumping through hoops, too, which is handy considering some of them are using 5.1 surround sound and/or bluetooth headphones.
The first headache I had with PulseAudio was when I tried to run something as a different (normal) user account and audio wouldn't work. There was no meaningful error message. There was only a "connection refused" error in the terminal. As it turns out, this is because PulseAudio has to be run by the user and it is recommended not to run it as a system-wide daemon. User A was running the user-daemon and User B was denied access to it as a consequence. They both could not run their own, well they could but it wouldn't work, as that'd be far too easy. Rather than screw around trying to get that to work I just used ALSA since PulseAudio didn't do anything I needed it to do that ALSA couldn't do with none of the hassle.
In case you wonder why I was running something as another normal user, it was for using Windows programs in WINE. I always prefer to do that with a separate user account that isn't used for anything else. This special WINE account has additional restrictions because I do not trust Windows programs -- they might phone home, they might contain malware, they are binary blobs that cannot easily be inspected, etc. The point is, Unix and therefore Linux are multi-user systems. You expect to be able to have multiple concurrent users running programs without issue.
PulseAudio smacks of the walled-garden model, where as long as you are a very average user who does extremely predictable things that they have decided to allow for, such as only having one active user on the local system, then you have few or maybe no problems. As soon as you do anything even the slightest bit unusual (which multiple users on a *nix system hardly is) you start running into brick walls. To that I say "no thanks, not for me". If I wanted that experience I'd use Windows. If ALSA were a barely-functional, poorly designed sound system I could at least understand why PulseAudio exists and why it is becoming so popular. As far as I can tell it's a burdensome solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Huh, I clearly was not being intelligible, because we do agree! The person I was responding to was using the "do what you are told or stay home" argument, which I was trying to show was exactly what the terrorists say, and obviously not right.
Shit. I don't know if that was you "clearly not being intelligible" or if that was me having had a few strong drinks at the time. Either way it's funny how something can get so completely misinterpreted.
Maybe it's the way I only ever hear panic, fear, anxiety, more fear, knee-jerk, security theater, more panic, crisis, impending doom, etc. ad nauseum from the media. I almost never see anything resembling rational discourse about the subject except in select Internet forums. I see so much of that intended seriously that I must have failed to pick up on your sarcasm.
Having your throat cut by a terrorist is also potentially required if you board a plane. Can't really object, because you can always take a bus, train, car, or whatever else. Conclusion: if you decide to fly sit quietly to facilitate throat-cutting.
You think that scares me into agreeing with you? How cheap. Hey when both the facts and the will of the people are overwhelmingly against you, just go for the emotional angle and see if you can play on their fears. That's not completely transparent at all. The fact is, you're more likely to get struck by lightning than fall victim to any sort of terrorist attack.
It's perfectly rational to be much more wary of the US government than any terrorist. Meanwhile, the US government is giving the terrorists exactly the panic-based security-theater overreaction they wanted. A terrorist's wet dream is to perform one attack or a small number of attacks and have those forever change the way the attacked nation is run. It lets them know that conducting such attacks means they get their way and have the impact they desired to have.
If you really want to secure airports, take a hard look at how the Israelis do it. They have many more problems with terrorism than the US has ever had. Hint: their methods don't involve groping and they don't involve using radiation to see beneath clothing. Instead, they use this crazy thing called good old-fashioned police work. Like so many other things we simply refuse to do, it works every time it's tried. The Israelis are not looking for inanimate objects like guns, knives, and explosives. The Israelis are looking for terrorists, you know, the people who have to wield the weapons before those weapons can do harm. At this they have been most successful by any law-enforcement or security standard.
It's quite difficult to argue with success. The surest sign of someone who makes a factual matter into a religious issue and an article of faith is that they will try to do it anyway.
Amazon may not directly transport items across state owned roads in _every_ state, but it does indeed depend on those roads to exist so their products can be transported by other companies. Beyond that, they also need protection from the state/local police in every state they ship items to. They need all the supporting services just to keep the roadways open.
Why wouldn't all that be covered by the brick-and-mortar presence of FedEx/UPS/whomever that Amazon is hiring? While sales taxes don't generally apply to a service such as delivery, most states do have an income tax that would apply to them. Or if you really want to get into the microscope, how about all the US citizens Amazon directly employs or indirectly causes to be employed through its expenditures (i.e. contractors, suppliers, etc)? In this economy how many of those would otherwise be unemployed and how many taxes are they paying that an unemployed person couldn't?
To say that Amazon makes no contribution is disingenuous. To say that it is a problem they don't make direct sales tax contributions when they are not the ones directly performing the transportation of items makes no sense. Of course they don't. It would only be a problem if they did directly place a burden on the government and then refused to directly pay the government. The reality is, this is part of what they are delegating when they hire someone else to perform shipping.
Otherwise what you said about the "use tax" is right. If government has difficulty enforcing a use tax, that's not Amazon's fault. It is a matter between the state government and the citizens of that state. Again, what should Amazon do differently?
He should pay the use tax and be done with it, like a law abiding citizen
Yeah, no kidding. Also I love the completely unbalanced perspective from the summary:
Slate's Farhad Manjoo loves buying from Amazon and would hate to pay higher prices, but says the e-tailer 'has no intellectually sound arguments against collecting taxes from residents — by all ethical and civic standards, its position is unsound.
"Civic standards" I can buy, but ethics? We're talking about government here: the only entity legally authorized to use lethal force in order to achieve its goals. Government is force. For wise laws and unwise laws alike, they are all enforced by an implementation of "might makes right". Even when they ask nicely, it is understood that force or threat of force will be used to deal with non-compliance. This is carried out by men with guns and other weapons, typically known as either police or agents.
Amazon may be acting flippant but there is no moral equivalence here. Government at its finest is a benign parasite, a necessary evil that takes its money (and property) instead of earning it. We have one simply because that's a little better than not having one. It is not something to glorify, hold in high esteem, or celebrate to the tune of patriotic music. Government at its worst is a bloated, overgrown cancer that destroys its own nation and its own people. Government's style of "might makes right" is scraping the sludge at the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to ethics. At least you can refuse to ever allow Amazon to affect your life. You can simply not do business with them.
Then there's the entire Constitutional notion that there are actually good reasons why we don't have states regulating interstate commerce. If Amazon were breaking a law, why haven't they been prosecuted? Until a prosecutor proves otherwise, they're presumed innocent. They're presumed to be simply doing something that certain people don't like. Those people want to do what, force Amazon to do otherwise? Make it conform to their personal whims? By what manner of legal threat? How ethical is that?
When are we just gonna call it quits with the version crap, and go with the rolling release model? OpenSuse is already moving in that direction with Tumbleweed, others will soon follow I hope. My Archlinux box hasn't been reinstalled since Firefox 3 was brand new, and that box is still rock solid and on the bleeding edge. At this point I suspect Ubuntu is doing it just because Mark Shuttleworth has a fetish for wordplay.
I could be wrong but I think the version crap appeals to the suits. They can easily check off their list that "Version X.YZ is supported by our IT staff". A rolling release is less suited to a bureaucracy though it's great for a hobbyist.
That's why I run Gentoo at home because I really like it, but on a production server in a corporate environment I would go with Debian.
Agreed, so long as we are talking about good conditions for the speed limit portion. The speed limits are already set too low, judging from the ease with which modest vehicles can exceed them with no valid concern whatsoever about losing control of the vehicle, failing to see an obstacle/hazard in time, etc.
Agreed that speed limits are too low, but I'm talking more about the inconvenience of a slow driver AND the sheer amount of traffic and havoc they cause by disrupting the normal flow of traffic. Plus, they are more of a hazard than they know because the difference in speed between two vehicles is often times the bigger danger than two cars going 15 mph over the speed limit (or in this case, everyone going 15 mph over the speed limit, for example).
Absolutely. In fact the federal Department of Transportation released a report a few years back about the leading primary causes of traffic accidents. Speeding was near the bottom of the list. Driving slowly (i.e. impeding traffic) was much closer to the top of the list. In fact this so embarassed the speed-enforcers that the report was suppressed for a while via bureaucratic processes before it was finally released. They definitely don't want the facts to interfere with the revenue collection of the states...The way I've heard it said is that speeding is not really illegal; it's just loosely taxed.
It makes absolute sense. Except for the very rare cases where someone is going so crazy-fast that the tires cannot stay on the road (i.e. on the curves), speed itself does not cause accidents. Almost all of the time, the self-preservation instinct will prevent someone from going so fast that speed alone is the primary cause of the accident. So, you still have to screw up and hit something. The screw-up will be the usual failure to yield, following too closely, improper passing, driving on the wrong side, etc. The amount of speed of course affects how much damage is done but it is not the cause of the accident.
I seriously wish police officers would stop worrying about speeding and start paying attention instead to the level of skill with which the vehicle is maneuvered. That, and I also wish you had to demonstrate actual skill with the vehicle before being allowed to have a license. Under the current system you hardly do anything more than memorizing a bunch of traffic laws. That's why the average driver I see can't understand even the most basic notions, like the fact that you have finite traction so you steer better if you are not also trying to brake, or the fact that banked curves are banked for a reason, or that long turning lanes are there so you can get off the main road _before_ slowing down so you don't hold up cars behind you needlessly.
Instead of worrying about laws concerning petty violations, I'd rather drivers spend more time acquainting themselves with the laws of physics.
Or in the case of someone using their phone while driving; "any idiot going 10 mph or more under the speed limit or who fails to go on a green light within 5 seconds shall be guilty of lame driving and should lose their license forever".
Agreed, so long as we are talking about good conditions for the speed limit portion. The speed limits are already set too low, judging from the ease with which modest vehicles can exceed them with no valid concern whatsoever about losing control of the vehicle, failing to see an obstacle/hazard in time, etc.
Regarding the green light deal... apparently it's shocking news to many people that when you're doing something dangerous where one mistake could maim and kill, you really should be paying attention. At all times, not just when you're "pretty sure" nothing is going on.
For a good example of that kind of idiocy... ever notice that some drivers will tailgate you but they will back off and increase their following distance when you are approaching a stop sign or a red light? Their arrogance is their belief that they will always know in advance when you need to come to a stop. I suppose when they finally cripple or kill someone they'll stand a slim chance of reconsidering. This is why I want "following too closely" to be a major violation like reckless driving or DUI -- it is easily the most stupid, most careless, most easily preventable accident anyone could ever cause. People who do this simply cannot comprehend cause and effect.
Because whenever I ask a passenger to answer my phone they feel I'm being lazy and rude by pushing them to handle something they feel I should be able to do, because, you know, "everyone else does it and doesn't have a problem."
I just don't telephone in the car anyway. To help with this I've taken to only buying rag-tops. It only takes 20 seconds on the phone before the other person realizes that when I reject her call I'm actually trying to NOT be rude.
Eh at some point people do have to understand that it's your phone and you answer it at your convenience, not theirs. At some point you have to explain to certain people that, in the face of a safety issue, you cannot be concerned with how much they might not like occasionally feeling like maybe they're not the very most important thing in the entire universe. Unless you happen to really enjoy rag-tops it makes no sense to alter your purchasing decisions to placate people who are themselves being rude and controlling by trying to tell you what you should do with your own property.
Someone who truly cares about you and respects you doesn't try to pressure you to conform to their idea of how you should be. If a reasonable level of assertiveness makes someone want to never speak to you again, you really haven't lost anything except maybe a liability.
An example is my old Motorola E815... with T9 and having used it enough, I could text (in any setting.. doesn't mean while driving) one handed without looking at the phone just fine. But when I first got it, heck no. I had to look to learn where the keys were, double check the spelling, etc.
Ok, sure. But I think you're glossing over the real question here. Until such time that you can use the device effortlessly without it causing a distraction, why the hell would you even consider using it while driving?
It's not a matter of getting used to a phone. It's a matter of stupid, self-centered decision-making that overemphasizes immediate gratification over the lives and safety of those around you. If the call/text is going to be a distraction, and you still think it's so important, such a drastic emergency that it cannot wait some minutes until you get to your destination, what's wrong with pulling over? Nevermind that most "emergencies" are actually a failure to plan ahead...
I'd be more than happy to vote for a bill that takes first offenders off the road for a month, 2nd for a year, 3rd for life. Get rid of speed limits, they help nothing. If you can't drive your car, get the hell off my road.
I never understood why "following too closely" and "failure to yield right-of-way" are minor violations, on par with a speeding ticket. They should be major violations comparable to reckless driving or DUI.
At least, if traffic safety is our goal then we should be getting these drivers off the road. However, if ticket revenue for the state is the goal, then you'd want them to keep driving so they can keep racking up violations. It's a no-win situation when the entity which benefits from ticket revenue is the same entity writing the laws.
but being overly specific with our laws serves to reinforce the idea that the opposite is true, and creates the expectation that drivers can be irresponsible because they'll be told every thing they shouldn't do, rather than being required to behave as thoughtful, responsible adults.
I would like to see one new, specific law. Something saying that any idiot* who drifts over the double-yellow line on a curve shall be guilty of reckless driving and lose his or her license for six months to a year. This law should include a $500 bounty for the police officer who enforces it, just to properly motivate its enforcement.
* Typically these are the people who must drive the largest truck/SUV they can afford even though they never haul cargo, never have multiple passengers, and never drive off-road. I'm not entirely sure what's causing this enduring trend but I speculate that some drivers feel competent and relatively safe because of their level of skill, while others only feel safe when they have as much metal around them as possible. That would explain why the very worst and most careless drivers tend to gravitate towards SUVs and large pick-up trucks.
I'm willing to bet that they aren't removing Evolution from Ubuntu but just aren't installing it by default. If you're upgrading an older system, you'll get a newer version of Evolution along with everything else.
Except that, the general concensus for *all* desktop operating systems is that *upgrading* an OS from an old version is stupid, and it is always recommended to re-install the new version after backing up the/home folder.
Well, that is exactly what everybody says in ubuntuforums.org when people bring up problems with stuff breaking after running apt-get dist-upgrade
If you're going to have a function like "dist-upgrade" at all, it should work correctly. That's even more true when you produce a distribution specifically intended for nontechnical users.
Though, consider that Gentoo isn't sectioned off into versions of the distro. To update to the latest version of the distro, update your system as you normally would as part of routine maintainence. There is no format and reinstallation required (though you could do it if you just wanted to waste time). Having to do that to avoid upgrade hassles would honestly be a nuisance.
If a source distribution can do that, it should be even easier on a binary distribution. Everyone has the same compile-time options, everyone has the same mandatory dependencies, etc. There are fewer variables.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Debian takes 42 years to configure. I need a distro that works out of the box.
I have to admit, I was quite impressed when I recommended Kubuntu and in one case Xubuntu (for an older system) to a completely non-technical friend of mine. I was prepared to have to spend time helping with installation, configuration, etc. Instead, this person came to me a little later and told me the system is all set up, works great, and hasn't caused any problems. That was very nearly an expensive retail purchase of Windows 7.
When I started using Linux around 1996-1997, I had to calculate mode timings myself to get X to work and do all sorts of other things manually. At that time, recommending it to a non-techie would have been a great way to piss someone off. It's amazing to see that it's come such a long way in terms of usability.
Personally I run Gentoo and have been satisfied with it for some years now so you can probably see why Ubuntu/*buntu wouldn't be my personal distro of choice. But it's what I would recommend to anyone who just wants it to work anytime they need a new OS, get fed up with Windows, want to breathe some new life into an older system that's still good enough for e-mail and Web browsing, or just wants to try something different.
Because, Evolution has been a part of the default GNOME suite for a very long time, so as more functionality was built, developers could assume Evolution was there.
Oops.
KDE is currently going down that path with Nepomuk and the whole semantic-desktop. Those things used to be optional. Then, increasingly, more and more programs wouldn't build without it (i.e. the entire kde-pim suite). This is functionality I don't want, will never use, and now can't get rid of without starting my own fork. Desktop search? To me the concept of "remember where you put stuff" was never that difficult. So I just disable it and call it a day. Though, before this, it was much easier to customize.
Does anyone remember KDE 3.x and ARTS and what a giant pain in the ass that was? Some programs depended on it and would not compile without it. Yet they couldn't have needed it that badly since they ran perfectly with ALSA when the ARTS daemon was clearly not running. Yet, at build time, they better find it to link against it or you get no compilation.
In all cases I wish these things were more modular and less interdependent. There's no reason an entire desktop environment should depend on a groupware suite. Just like there's no reason large parts of an entire desktop environment should depend on a desktop search utility. If they implement functionality that is truly indispensable and critical to a smoothly-functioning system, great, then put those few functions into the core kdelibs and libgnome and be done with it. If they aren't that important and don't warrant that kind of treatment, make them optional. Isn't a simplified dependency graph a good thing?
Bless our open source developers, but I think even they too are not immune to letting their "vision" of how a computer should be used interfere with the practical implementation of what is truly useful.
The whole problem with the current currency system is that there is always more debt than there are dollars in circulation. If everyone perfectly tried to pay back all debts what would happen is there would be no more money in circulation at all and there would still be debt left over.
It's a deliberately fundamentally broken system. It's designed so that there is only one temporary way out: borrow more money to cover the interest on the debt, and then borrow more money to cover the interest on that, until the debt becomes such a great weight on the economy that someone has to hold that debt and the economy begins to collapse.
Sure, it would be possible to have a fiat currency that isn't fundamentally based on debt. It would be really easy, in fact. Just have the actual government control, manage, and distribute it and not an international cartel of private corporations. Just don't attach any interest to the money at the time of creation. Charge interest only to private parties who choose to borrow it after it leaves the central banks, not to the federal government the moment it is created. Then you could repay all debts and there would still be money circulating. Lincoln's Greenback was a lot like this.
The most desirable of all is to have a representative currency (gold standard, silver standard, etc). Then it can't be fundamentally debt-based.
If he wants any real respect, then yes. Politicians worthy of real respect can admit when something has failed and are willing to stop doing that failed thing and start doing something else.
One may think that getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq and start using part of the defense budget at home would mean enough of a proof.
Contrary to prevailing Slashdot wisdom, multiple unrelated items are rarely mutually exclusive. Mentioning one of them doesn't mean you're against the others. Yet that won't stop someone from chiming in to remind you that you have not mentioned every possible issue concerning each one of their personal pet subjects... Look, marijuana was the subject that had already been mentioned and I merely responded to that. Sorry if I didn't see that as an opportunity to evangelize about each nuance of federal domestic policy.
Having said that, for what it is worth, I'd like to see all of those things. Reducing the defense budget so we're "only" 2-5 times more powerful than the second-strongest military wouldn't be a bad thing. That and a more sensible approach to so-called entitlements might help us work on this deficit problem. Though if you *really* want to get rid of national debt, and if you're like me in the sense that you want to address the single root of a problem and not the hundreds of side-effects that spring from that root, then you need a currency system that isn't fundamentally based on debt...
The way I see it, one thing at a time. Ending an obviously idiotic Prohibition when most people can see it's not working is a relatively small, achievable step. It can help build a pro-freedom inertia. Shrinking the size, influence, and power of the military-industrial complex will be much more difficult. They have grown fat and wealthy by encouraging and profiting on useless wars and they won't cede control of the budget easily. Getting a real currency system would mean taking on international banking interests and that would be the most difficult task of all. You'd have more than enough propaganda and demagoguery to overcome just to legalize marijuana. The bankers might get downright nasty.
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Not many. For the rest, government tends to stand between them and natural selection. It's in government's interests to do that since they still pay taxes. The rest of us pay an untold social and financial cost for this, but the politicians are secluded and cloistered so they rarely feel it themselves.
You talk about no flamebait or trolling intended... I definitely know what you mean. It's an ugly truth but that's the truth. The thing is, we have modeled needless dependency and appalling lack of planning and preparation for so long that people no longer understand this. If something does happen, they are at the mercy of the likes of FEMA or equivalent. If you recall Hurricane Katrina, how'd that work out for them? Do we need multiple tragedies for people to get it, or is one sufficient? If people refuse to understand the fable of the ant and the grasshopper, why shouldn't we respect their decision? Any compassion you feel would be better put towards helping those who are at least trying to help themselves; the rest are quite incorrigible.
Disasters can happen anywhere. They absolutely do happen somewhere from time to time. To be completely unprepared for them is to assume a risk. Real adults -- by that I mean the kind who have enough personal responsibility that they don't cling to an image of victimhood -- understand that if you assume a major risk you just might get screwed. The rest wait passively for someone to rescue them and tell them what to do. When it comes to failing to look after themselves, failing to look after their families, and providing excuses to grow government, they are Satan's little helpers, cute and well-meaning though they may be.
The USA used to be like that. Is there any way we can be like that again?
A minority of us don't deserve the government our fellow countrymen are creating.
... or perhaps the only annoying issue with OSS in general, is that the OSS community contains far too many fools who think that their opinion about some other project they don't like somehow matters.
That's different from any other thing ... exactly how?
The world is full of people like that. Each one of them is perfectly right in his or her own eyes. Anyone who sits there hanging on their every word is not only part of the problem, but the biggest part.
Before PulseAudio it wasn't possible to turn on a bluetooth headset and have any audio that was playing through your speakers automatically start going to the headset instead.
It's good to have a real answer to a question. Still, I have another question. Given the open-source nature of all the software involved, wouldn't the developer time be better invested in fixing the ALSA drivers to accommodate Bluetooth headsets instead of creating an entirely new layer of middleman software between the application and the audio system?
It's a question of how to best manage and invest the finite talent and effort that is available. Why would PulseAudio be the best possible method? What does that answer look like when you subtract from its gains all the time wasted by users with no such headsets who had to sort out PulseAudio-specific audio problems? There's a big picture here and it doesn't look good for PulseAudio.
Want a dual-boot Linux/Windows system with /user on an NTFS partition? Sorry, PulseAudio wont let you. WTF?!
Poettering is the poster child for crappy Linux developers.
How and why would a sound daemon even know or care about the filesystem type for any kernel-supported, read-writable volume? While the objections to PulseAudio are legion, I have never heard this particular one before.
Replace "PulseAudio" with "X Window" and you fit right in the UNIX-hater's handbook. Not that that means you're wrong, mind.
I agree that PA-on-ALSA is just ridiculous. However, PA or something like it, after it matures, and over a barebones kernel layer, can make good sense.
What does PulseAudio-on-ALSA accomplish that straight ALSA cannot? Assuming a non-null answer to that, how many users really need that functionality to justify including PulseAudio as the default configuration for major distributions?
The case for PulseAudio rests on those two questions.
As for Alsa/another sound server replacing OSS, OSS do the mixing (and resampling?) in the kernel space, citing latency is one of the reasons, while alsa let userspace programs the jobs. IMO, that kind of works does not belong to kernel space, so I prefer alsa.
Regarding to pulseaudio, dmix is fine, but pulseaudio is better with features like glitch free playback (ironically, this is the reason why pulseaudio glitches so bad on some systems with broken drivers), you can set the resampling algo, per stream volume control, flat volume (another problematic feature), and as some people said, it is the only setup that allow output via bluetooth devices but I haven't tried it yet. The main reason for many problems related to it is the horrible audio drivers on Linux (as always), so you can't exactly blame pulseaudio, at least it always has fallback mode, and the distros never set them as default. Back when pulseaudio was first integrated into Ubuntu (around 8.04, right?), it didn't work well for me and stop working for many other. But now, most people I know have absolutely no problem with pulseaudio. PS: Aside from dmix, there are several other sound servers like arts, esd etc.... too, I'm glad that we get rid of all that and now pulseaudio on alsa is the standard.
The in-kernel audio drivers have always worked flawlessly for me. I have never had problems with latency, glitches in playback, etc.
But let's just assume, for the sake of argument, that I just got lucky. Let's assume most users have problems that can be directly attributed to shoddy in-kernel drivers (as highly unusual and unlike the typical linux kernel experience as this is...). The solution to that is to put available development effort towards fixing those drivers. They are, after all, the low-level foundation of the audio system. The solution is emphatically NOT to add a redundant software layer on top of broken drivers. You do like to solve problems by fixing things where they are actually broken, right? That's the sensible thing to do. That's the correct use of the talent of developers who specialize in programming sound systems.
Arts (what a piece of vulture shit that was) and ESD are not on equal footing with Dmix. Dmix is a small, relatively efficient, rather problem-free mixer for sound cards that do not have a hardware mixer. It just works and it actually serves a purpose, unlike the sound daemons. ALSA will use a hardware mixer instead of Dmix if you have high-end hardware and one is available. I have never known Dmix to introduce playback stuttering, idiotic problems with multiple users, or any of the other problems you can easily find when you do a Google search for Arts or PulseAudio. I have also never known Dmix to use any noticable amount of CPU.
Again I will reiterate. PulseAudio is a middleman standing between the applicating wanting to play sound, and ALSA. How exactly is that going to fix an inherent flaw in the underlying ALSA system? Hint: it will not and cannot. If there are such horrible problems with Dmix (that somehow I won the lottery of never personally encountering), that kind of development effort should be put towards fixing Dmix. Doesn't that make a lot more sense?
PulseAudio is a useless piece of shit. It's like ALSA with a bunch of stupid complications. How it got to be the standard sound system for so many mainstream distros is a real mystery.
It was pushed by Redhat and nobody else had a better solution to clean up the morass that is linux audio.
PulseAudio is a relatively recent arrival. ALSA + Dmix by default has "just worked" for a long time now, about seven years. As a matter of fact, I don't see PulseAudio in a kernel config anywhere -- implying that PulseAudio is just an extra layer of software standing between the program wanting to play audio and ALSA. If the goal is to get rid of problems caused by ALSA (I'd love to hear what those are, by the way), then that's not going to work.
Please explain to me the specific problems with Linux audio and the ways that PulseAudio addresses them. I am hoping someone will respond to that, but if no one does I will definitely understand it is not a coincidence if no one can back up your assertion.
When I actually read user forums and do research on it, the impression I receive is exactly the opposite: PulseAudio is causing problems that didn't happen with ALSA. That's about what you would expect when you add redundant, needless complexity to an already-working system. As for me, on my system I have never installed PulseAudio. I use ALSA for all audio needs. Anytime I fire up Wine, mplayer, Amarok, or anything of the sort, audio just works and I don't have to worry about it. The only requirement whatsoever is that the user in question is a member of the "audio" group and that's all; it really is so simple and easy. I am so satisfied with this setup and the way it simply works that I have no problems with it to fix. What more do users want?
This guy needs beaten just for this.
I don't blame him for creating PulseAudio. I blame the distribution maintainers for having the poor judgment to make it the main sound system for so many distributions. It would be one thing to have a sane default like ALSA and then have PulseAudio available in the repositories for those who really want it.
For my friends who use Linux, the first thing I do whenever a new distro is installed is to check if it is using PulseAudio. If so, I remove it and replace it with ALSA. Suddenly issues related to audio playback go away and everything just magically works. Oh and they easily have a proper mixer without jumping through hoops, too, which is handy considering some of them are using 5.1 surround sound and/or bluetooth headphones.
The first headache I had with PulseAudio was when I tried to run something as a different (normal) user account and audio wouldn't work. There was no meaningful error message. There was only a "connection refused" error in the terminal. As it turns out, this is because PulseAudio has to be run by the user and it is recommended not to run it as a system-wide daemon. User A was running the user-daemon and User B was denied access to it as a consequence. They both could not run their own, well they could but it wouldn't work, as that'd be far too easy. Rather than screw around trying to get that to work I just used ALSA since PulseAudio didn't do anything I needed it to do that ALSA couldn't do with none of the hassle.
In case you wonder why I was running something as another normal user, it was for using Windows programs in WINE. I always prefer to do that with a separate user account that isn't used for anything else. This special WINE account has additional restrictions because I do not trust Windows programs -- they might phone home, they might contain malware, they are binary blobs that cannot easily be inspected, etc. The point is, Unix and therefore Linux are multi-user systems. You expect to be able to have multiple concurrent users running programs without issue.
PulseAudio smacks of the walled-garden model, where as long as you are a very average user who does extremely predictable things that they have decided to allow for, such as only having one active user on the local system, then you have few or maybe no problems. As soon as you do anything even the slightest bit unusual (which multiple users on a *nix system hardly is) you start running into brick walls. To that I say "no thanks, not for me". If I wanted that experience I'd use Windows. If ALSA were a barely-functional, poorly designed sound system I could at least understand why PulseAudio exists and why it is becoming so popular. As far as I can tell it's a burdensome solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Huh, I clearly was not being intelligible, because we do agree! The person I was responding to was using the "do what you are told or stay home" argument, which I was trying to show was exactly what the terrorists say, and obviously not right.
Shit. I don't know if that was you "clearly not being intelligible" or if that was me having had a few strong drinks at the time. Either way it's funny how something can get so completely misinterpreted.
Maybe it's the way I only ever hear panic, fear, anxiety, more fear, knee-jerk, security theater, more panic, crisis, impending doom, etc. ad nauseum from the media. I almost never see anything resembling rational discourse about the subject except in select Internet forums. I see so much of that intended seriously that I must have failed to pick up on your sarcasm.
Anyway, thanks for clearing that up.
Having your throat cut by a terrorist is also potentially required if you board a plane. Can't really object, because you can always take a bus, train, car, or whatever else. Conclusion: if you decide to fly sit quietly to facilitate throat-cutting.
You think that scares me into agreeing with you? How cheap. Hey when both the facts and the will of the people are overwhelmingly against you, just go for the emotional angle and see if you can play on their fears. That's not completely transparent at all. The fact is, you're more likely to get struck by lightning than fall victim to any sort of terrorist attack.
It's perfectly rational to be much more wary of the US government than any terrorist. Meanwhile, the US government is giving the terrorists exactly the panic-based security-theater overreaction they wanted. A terrorist's wet dream is to perform one attack or a small number of attacks and have those forever change the way the attacked nation is run. It lets them know that conducting such attacks means they get their way and have the impact they desired to have.
If you really want to secure airports, take a hard look at how the Israelis do it. They have many more problems with terrorism than the US has ever had. Hint: their methods don't involve groping and they don't involve using radiation to see beneath clothing. Instead, they use this crazy thing called good old-fashioned police work. Like so many other things we simply refuse to do, it works every time it's tried. The Israelis are not looking for inanimate objects like guns, knives, and explosives. The Israelis are looking for terrorists, you know, the people who have to wield the weapons before those weapons can do harm. At this they have been most successful by any law-enforcement or security standard.
It's quite difficult to argue with success. The surest sign of someone who makes a factual matter into a religious issue and an article of faith is that they will try to do it anyway.
Why wouldn't all that be covered by the brick-and-mortar presence of FedEx/UPS/whomever that Amazon is hiring? While sales taxes don't generally apply to a service such as delivery, most states do have an income tax that would apply to them. Or if you really want to get into the microscope, how about all the US citizens Amazon directly employs or indirectly causes to be employed through its expenditures (i.e. contractors, suppliers, etc)? In this economy how many of those would otherwise be unemployed and how many taxes are they paying that an unemployed person couldn't?
To say that Amazon makes no contribution is disingenuous. To say that it is a problem they don't make direct sales tax contributions when they are not the ones directly performing the transportation of items makes no sense. Of course they don't. It would only be a problem if they did directly place a burden on the government and then refused to directly pay the government. The reality is, this is part of what they are delegating when they hire someone else to perform shipping.
Otherwise what you said about the "use tax" is right. If government has difficulty enforcing a use tax, that's not Amazon's fault. It is a matter between the state government and the citizens of that state. Again, what should Amazon do differently?
He should pay the use tax and be done with it, like a law abiding citizen
Yeah, no kidding. Also I love the completely unbalanced perspective from the summary:
"Civic standards" I can buy, but ethics? We're talking about government here: the only entity legally authorized to use lethal force in order to achieve its goals. Government is force. For wise laws and unwise laws alike, they are all enforced by an implementation of "might makes right". Even when they ask nicely, it is understood that force or threat of force will be used to deal with non-compliance. This is carried out by men with guns and other weapons, typically known as either police or agents.
Amazon may be acting flippant but there is no moral equivalence here. Government at its finest is a benign parasite, a necessary evil that takes its money (and property) instead of earning it. We have one simply because that's a little better than not having one. It is not something to glorify, hold in high esteem, or celebrate to the tune of patriotic music. Government at its worst is a bloated, overgrown cancer that destroys its own nation and its own people. Government's style of "might makes right" is scraping the sludge at the very bottom of the barrel when it comes to ethics. At least you can refuse to ever allow Amazon to affect your life. You can simply not do business with them.
Then there's the entire Constitutional notion that there are actually good reasons why we don't have states regulating interstate commerce. If Amazon were breaking a law, why haven't they been prosecuted? Until a prosecutor proves otherwise, they're presumed innocent. They're presumed to be simply doing something that certain people don't like. Those people want to do what, force Amazon to do otherwise? Make it conform to their personal whims? By what manner of legal threat? How ethical is that?
When are we just gonna call it quits with the version crap, and go with the rolling release model? OpenSuse is already moving in that direction with Tumbleweed, others will soon follow I hope. My Archlinux box hasn't been reinstalled since Firefox 3 was brand new, and that box is still rock solid and on the bleeding edge. At this point I suspect Ubuntu is doing it just because Mark Shuttleworth has a fetish for wordplay.
I could be wrong but I think the version crap appeals to the suits. They can easily check off their list that "Version X.YZ is supported by our IT staff". A rolling release is less suited to a bureaucracy though it's great for a hobbyist.
That's why I run Gentoo at home because I really like it, but on a production server in a corporate environment I would go with Debian.
Agreed, so long as we are talking about good conditions for the speed limit portion. The speed limits are already set too low, judging from the ease with which modest vehicles can exceed them with no valid concern whatsoever about losing control of the vehicle, failing to see an obstacle/hazard in time, etc.
Agreed that speed limits are too low, but I'm talking more about the inconvenience of a slow driver AND the sheer amount of traffic and havoc they cause by disrupting the normal flow of traffic. Plus, they are more of a hazard than they know because the difference in speed between two vehicles is often times the bigger danger than two cars going 15 mph over the speed limit (or in this case, everyone going 15 mph over the speed limit, for example).
Absolutely. In fact the federal Department of Transportation released a report a few years back about the leading primary causes of traffic accidents. Speeding was near the bottom of the list. Driving slowly (i.e. impeding traffic) was much closer to the top of the list. In fact this so embarassed the speed-enforcers that the report was suppressed for a while via bureaucratic processes before it was finally released. They definitely don't want the facts to interfere with the revenue collection of the states...The way I've heard it said is that speeding is not really illegal; it's just loosely taxed.
It makes absolute sense. Except for the very rare cases where someone is going so crazy-fast that the tires cannot stay on the road (i.e. on the curves), speed itself does not cause accidents. Almost all of the time, the self-preservation instinct will prevent someone from going so fast that speed alone is the primary cause of the accident. So, you still have to screw up and hit something. The screw-up will be the usual failure to yield, following too closely, improper passing, driving on the wrong side, etc. The amount of speed of course affects how much damage is done but it is not the cause of the accident.
I seriously wish police officers would stop worrying about speeding and start paying attention instead to the level of skill with which the vehicle is maneuvered. That, and I also wish you had to demonstrate actual skill with the vehicle before being allowed to have a license. Under the current system you hardly do anything more than memorizing a bunch of traffic laws. That's why the average driver I see can't understand even the most basic notions, like the fact that you have finite traction so you steer better if you are not also trying to brake, or the fact that banked curves are banked for a reason, or that long turning lanes are there so you can get off the main road _before_ slowing down so you don't hold up cars behind you needlessly.
Instead of worrying about laws concerning petty violations, I'd rather drivers spend more time acquainting themselves with the laws of physics.
Or in the case of someone using their phone while driving; "any idiot going 10 mph or more under the speed limit or who fails to go on a green light within 5 seconds shall be guilty of lame driving and should lose their license forever".
Agreed, so long as we are talking about good conditions for the speed limit portion. The speed limits are already set too low, judging from the ease with which modest vehicles can exceed them with no valid concern whatsoever about losing control of the vehicle, failing to see an obstacle/hazard in time, etc.
Regarding the green light deal... apparently it's shocking news to many people that when you're doing something dangerous where one mistake could maim and kill, you really should be paying attention. At all times, not just when you're "pretty sure" nothing is going on.
For a good example of that kind of idiocy... ever notice that some drivers will tailgate you but they will back off and increase their following distance when you are approaching a stop sign or a red light? Their arrogance is their belief that they will always know in advance when you need to come to a stop. I suppose when they finally cripple or kill someone they'll stand a slim chance of reconsidering. This is why I want "following too closely" to be a major violation like reckless driving or DUI -- it is easily the most stupid, most careless, most easily preventable accident anyone could ever cause. People who do this simply cannot comprehend cause and effect.
Because whenever I ask a passenger to answer my phone they feel I'm being lazy and rude by pushing them to handle something they feel I should be able to do, because, you know, "everyone else does it and doesn't have a problem."
I just don't telephone in the car anyway. To help with this I've taken to only buying rag-tops. It only takes 20 seconds on the phone before the other person realizes that when I reject her call I'm actually trying to NOT be rude.
Eh at some point people do have to understand that it's your phone and you answer it at your convenience, not theirs. At some point you have to explain to certain people that, in the face of a safety issue, you cannot be concerned with how much they might not like occasionally feeling like maybe they're not the very most important thing in the entire universe. Unless you happen to really enjoy rag-tops it makes no sense to alter your purchasing decisions to placate people who are themselves being rude and controlling by trying to tell you what you should do with your own property.
Someone who truly cares about you and respects you doesn't try to pressure you to conform to their idea of how you should be. If a reasonable level of assertiveness makes someone want to never speak to you again, you really haven't lost anything except maybe a liability.
Ok, sure. But I think you're glossing over the real question here. Until such time that you can use the device effortlessly without it causing a distraction, why the hell would you even consider using it while driving?
It's not a matter of getting used to a phone. It's a matter of stupid, self-centered decision-making that overemphasizes immediate gratification over the lives and safety of those around you. If the call/text is going to be a distraction, and you still think it's so important, such a drastic emergency that it cannot wait some minutes until you get to your destination, what's wrong with pulling over? Nevermind that most "emergencies" are actually a failure to plan ahead...
I'd be more than happy to vote for a bill that takes first offenders off the road for a month, 2nd for a year, 3rd for life. Get rid of speed limits, they help nothing. If you can't drive your car, get the hell off my road.
I never understood why "following too closely" and "failure to yield right-of-way" are minor violations, on par with a speeding ticket. They should be major violations comparable to reckless driving or DUI.
At least, if traffic safety is our goal then we should be getting these drivers off the road. However, if ticket revenue for the state is the goal, then you'd want them to keep driving so they can keep racking up violations. It's a no-win situation when the entity which benefits from ticket revenue is the same entity writing the laws.
I would like to see one new, specific law. Something saying that any idiot* who drifts over the double-yellow line on a curve shall be guilty of reckless driving and lose his or her license for six months to a year. This law should include a $500 bounty for the police officer who enforces it, just to properly motivate its enforcement.
* Typically these are the people who must drive the largest truck/SUV they can afford even though they never haul cargo, never have multiple passengers, and never drive off-road. I'm not entirely sure what's causing this enduring trend but I speculate that some drivers feel competent and relatively safe because of their level of skill, while others only feel safe when they have as much metal around them as possible. That would explain why the very worst and most careless drivers tend to gravitate towards SUVs and large pick-up trucks.
I'm willing to bet that they aren't removing Evolution from Ubuntu but just aren't installing it by default. If you're upgrading an older system, you'll get a newer version of Evolution along with everything else.
Except that, the general concensus for *all* desktop operating systems is that *upgrading* an OS from an old version is stupid, and it is always recommended to re-install the new version after backing up the /home folder.
Well, that is exactly what everybody says in ubuntuforums.org when people bring up problems with stuff breaking after running apt-get dist-upgrade
If you're going to have a function like "dist-upgrade" at all, it should work correctly. That's even more true when you produce a distribution specifically intended for nontechnical users.
Though, consider that Gentoo isn't sectioned off into versions of the distro. To update to the latest version of the distro, update your system as you normally would as part of routine maintainence. There is no format and reinstallation required (though you could do it if you just wanted to waste time). Having to do that to avoid upgrade hassles would honestly be a nuisance.
If a source distribution can do that, it should be even easier on a binary distribution. Everyone has the same compile-time options, everyone has the same mandatory dependencies, etc. There are fewer variables.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Debian takes 42 years to configure. I need a distro that works out of the box.
I have to admit, I was quite impressed when I recommended Kubuntu and in one case Xubuntu (for an older system) to a completely non-technical friend of mine. I was prepared to have to spend time helping with installation, configuration, etc. Instead, this person came to me a little later and told me the system is all set up, works great, and hasn't caused any problems. That was very nearly an expensive retail purchase of Windows 7.
When I started using Linux around 1996-1997, I had to calculate mode timings myself to get X to work and do all sorts of other things manually. At that time, recommending it to a non-techie would have been a great way to piss someone off. It's amazing to see that it's come such a long way in terms of usability.
Personally I run Gentoo and have been satisfied with it for some years now so you can probably see why Ubuntu/*buntu wouldn't be my personal distro of choice. But it's what I would recommend to anyone who just wants it to work anytime they need a new OS, get fed up with Windows, want to breathe some new life into an older system that's still good enough for e-mail and Web browsing, or just wants to try something different.
Because, Evolution has been a part of the default GNOME suite for a very long time, so as more functionality was built, developers could assume Evolution was there.
Oops.
KDE is currently going down that path with Nepomuk and the whole semantic-desktop. Those things used to be optional. Then, increasingly, more and more programs wouldn't build without it (i.e. the entire kde-pim suite). This is functionality I don't want, will never use, and now can't get rid of without starting my own fork. Desktop search? To me the concept of "remember where you put stuff" was never that difficult. So I just disable it and call it a day. Though, before this, it was much easier to customize.
Does anyone remember KDE 3.x and ARTS and what a giant pain in the ass that was? Some programs depended on it and would not compile without it. Yet they couldn't have needed it that badly since they ran perfectly with ALSA when the ARTS daemon was clearly not running. Yet, at build time, they better find it to link against it or you get no compilation.
In all cases I wish these things were more modular and less interdependent. There's no reason an entire desktop environment should depend on a groupware suite. Just like there's no reason large parts of an entire desktop environment should depend on a desktop search utility. If they implement functionality that is truly indispensable and critical to a smoothly-functioning system, great, then put those few functions into the core kdelibs and libgnome and be done with it. If they aren't that important and don't warrant that kind of treatment, make them optional. Isn't a simplified dependency graph a good thing?
Bless our open source developers, but I think even they too are not immune to letting their "vision" of how a computer should be used interfere with the practical implementation of what is truly useful.
The whole problem with the current currency system is that there is always more debt than there are dollars in circulation. If everyone perfectly tried to pay back all debts what would happen is there would be no more money in circulation at all and there would still be debt left over.
It's a deliberately fundamentally broken system. It's designed so that there is only one temporary way out: borrow more money to cover the interest on the debt, and then borrow more money to cover the interest on that, until the debt becomes such a great weight on the economy that someone has to hold that debt and the economy begins to collapse.
Sure, it would be possible to have a fiat currency that isn't fundamentally based on debt. It would be really easy, in fact. Just have the actual government control, manage, and distribute it and not an international cartel of private corporations. Just don't attach any interest to the money at the time of creation. Charge interest only to private parties who choose to borrow it after it leaves the central banks, not to the federal government the moment it is created. Then you could repay all debts and there would still be money circulating. Lincoln's Greenback was a lot like this.
The most desirable of all is to have a representative currency (gold standard, silver standard, etc). Then it can't be fundamentally debt-based.
If he wants any real respect, then yes. Politicians worthy of real respect can admit when something has failed and are willing to stop doing that failed thing and start doing something else.
One may think that getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq and start using part of the defense budget at home would mean enough of a proof.
Contrary to prevailing Slashdot wisdom, multiple unrelated items are rarely mutually exclusive. Mentioning one of them doesn't mean you're against the others. Yet that won't stop someone from chiming in to remind you that you have not mentioned every possible issue concerning each one of their personal pet subjects... Look, marijuana was the subject that had already been mentioned and I merely responded to that. Sorry if I didn't see that as an opportunity to evangelize about each nuance of federal domestic policy.
Having said that, for what it is worth, I'd like to see all of those things. Reducing the defense budget so we're "only" 2-5 times more powerful than the second-strongest military wouldn't be a bad thing. That and a more sensible approach to so-called entitlements might help us work on this deficit problem. Though if you *really* want to get rid of national debt, and if you're like me in the sense that you want to address the single root of a problem and not the hundreds of side-effects that spring from that root, then you need a currency system that isn't fundamentally based on debt...
The way I see it, one thing at a time. Ending an obviously idiotic Prohibition when most people can see it's not working is a relatively small, achievable step. It can help build a pro-freedom inertia. Shrinking the size, influence, and power of the military-industrial complex will be much more difficult. They have grown fat and wealthy by encouraging and profiting on useless wars and they won't cede control of the budget easily. Getting a real currency system would mean taking on international banking interests and that would be the most difficult task of all. You'd have more than enough propaganda and demagoguery to overcome just to legalize marijuana. The bankers might get downright nasty.