Why is it scientists always use weird units? I have absolutely no clue of what "the implicit information storage that corresponds to all of the hard disks made in the world this year, multiplied by the number of years the universe has been around" actually represents in bytes.
They don't put such stuff into research papers, but many of them believe that ordinary people will be more impressed by such comparisons.
Many times I have installed an old rpm binary and solved library revision issues just by using 'ln -s' command (not with glibc, though). But that still has nothing to do with the issue whether distributions should have the default kernel patched or not. My opinion is that if a patch changes kernel behaviour in such a way that an innocent program which does not interface with the kernel in the areas touched by the patch gets confused, then the patch is broken (e.g. when I apply a patch which adds support for some weird soundcard, my network servers shouldn't notice it). Anyway, in most cases even programs dealing with this part of the kernel which is affected by the patch won't notice (my mplayer will still send the data to/dev/dsp as usual, going after the example described above).
Give me some examples when applying a patch on the kernel forced you to recompile some program. Most patches add support for hardware or increase security (thus, they have more to do with configuration of the system than with binary compatibility).
FYI: the Canadian government does not like to brag about it, but Canadian snipers had more kills in Afghanistan than any others (probably per sniper, but who knows).
Come to Europe, then. In Poland we dumped out entire government for, among other things, coveting to the interests of one financialist (well, they had to screw up the health care system, too).
Are people who write HTML pages that common? It's still a minority of the society, I think (at least in Poland, but somewhat backwards w/r to the USA in this area). Besides, we're confusing two things: writing actual text in latex and designing latex styles. The first is easy (except maybe for the math and laying out of figures), the second much more difficult. When you write a book in latex, you usually do it in the style some other person has written for you. This quite different than from the page design, where you always want to do your own design, usually either reproducing some well-known standard or creating some horrible mess. I think that the magic could be taken out from CSS and XHTML if somebody produced a 'standard' CSS styles (like Leslie Lamport did with latex) which anyone could take as a basis for their web page and modify later. I know that it sounds dreadful, but after 10 years of the WWW popularity we have some knowledge what is good web page design and what is not.
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvkl
I'm neither a philosopher nor an atheist, but the most primitive justification of what is right and what is wrong for an atheist would be: "don't to other what you would like being done to you".
they don't get the idea of separating content from presentation (in fact to many of them, the two are equivalent)
If this were true, Plain TeX would be more popular than LaTeX (the latter separates context from presentation).
Of course some people have 1Mb/s connection and don't care, but for me 2KB/page less means something. Slashdot pages feel 'heavy' when downloading with ADSL connection. It shouldn't be so.
If the EU continues to expand into the former USSR, North Africa, and the Middle East, then the US becomes vulnerable regarding oil, etc.
I don't think this opinion is correct. The US does not control North Africa (it never tried), and does not control Middle East. If it did, we wouldn't have terrorists' nests in Saudi Arabia up till 2001 and the Palestinian-Israel conflict would be quenched. In Central Asia the America's direct competitor is not EU but Russia, with which America appears to have cordial relations, despite Chechenya and all that (I wonder if the gain is worth the sacrifice). Summing it up, I think the idea that the EU going east into Asia and Africa steps on America's toes is wrong. The America's toes are simply not there. What's more, EU can succeed (in stabilising unstable regions) where America has failed, for various reasons:
it does not have the US's "bully" image
it spends more money (IMHO) on foreing aid than the US
it is capable of multlilateral action.
(of course, EU must upgrade on the force side of the formula, so we don't have another Bosnia -- which is another reason why the EU army is not such a bad thing -- it can save some American GIs' lives). What is the reason behind democratic reforms in Turkey: military alliance with the US or the prospect of EU membership? And, what is better for the US: to buy oil from the country run by a corrupt dictator of from the country modernising itself to meet EU's standards?
No. There lots of good patches to the kernel flying around which are not part of the vanilla kernel and it OK for the distro people to incorporate these patches in their binary kernel package. It is much easier for the person not satisfied with that to compile a vanilla kernel than the other way around (take a vanilla source from the distro and apply patches to it).
And how could I forget to mention Columbia there too after we threatened to withhold foreign aid due to a little disputer over whether they shoudl ratify the ICC treaty?
Honestly, I can't I understand why the USA is so much opposed to the ICC. It pays a high price for it, gaining nothing. If American army does something nasty enough to gain the attention of ICC, the USA will get bashed anyway. Just look at the Abu-Ghraib scandal. After all, I think that we have the development of an EU standing army (as a direct albeit hidden competitor to NATO) which might not have happened had Blair not had to make these concessions in order to regain so much lost political capital.
Why is the development of EU army a bad thing?
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Why is it scientists always use weird units? I have absolutely no clue of what "the implicit information storage that corresponds to all of the hard disks made in the world this year, multiplied by the number of years the universe has been around" actually represents in bytes.
They don't put such stuff into research papers, but many of them believe that ordinary people will be more impressed by such comparisons.
My God, and me stupid thought that Napoleon did actually win his first wars, and that in 1918 France was on the winning side.
But this is probably "old history" (to quote Mr Rumsfeld) and I should upgrade to "new history"...
No, you just need any rifle to take out a person at >2 thousand meters.
Many times I have installed an old rpm binary and solved library revision issues just by using 'ln -s' command (not with glibc, though). But that still has nothing to do with the issue whether distributions should have the default kernel patched or not. My opinion is that if a patch changes kernel behaviour in such a way that an innocent program which does not interface with the kernel in the areas touched by the patch gets confused, then the patch is broken (e.g. when I apply a patch which adds support for some weird soundcard, my network servers shouldn't notice it). Anyway, in most cases even programs dealing with this part of the kernel which is affected by the patch won't notice (my mplayer will still send the data to /dev/dsp as usual, going after the example described above).
Give me some examples when applying a patch on the kernel forced you to recompile some program. Most patches add support for hardware or increase security (thus, they have more to do with configuration of the system than with binary compatibility).
The guy suggested that Canadian army has lousy equipment.
Because it is better when everybody does so. Anyway, I don't defend atheism. IMHO true atheism is very rare.
FYI: the Canadian government does not like to brag about it, but Canadian snipers had more kills in Afghanistan than any others (probably per sniper, but who knows).
Come to Europe, then. In Poland we dumped out entire government for, among other things, coveting to the interests of one financialist (well, they had to screw up the health care system, too).
Are people who write HTML pages that common? It's still a minority of the society, I think (at least in Poland, but somewhat backwards w/r to the USA in this area). Besides, we're confusing two things: writing actual text in latex and designing latex styles. The first is easy (except maybe for the math and laying out of figures), the second much more difficult. When you write a book in latex, you usually do it in the style some other person has written for you. This quite different than from the page design, where you always want to do your own design, usually either reproducing some well-known standard or creating some horrible mess. I think that the magic could be taken out from CSS and XHTML if somebody produced a 'standard' CSS styles (like Leslie Lamport did with latex) which anyone could take as a basis for their web page and modify later. I know that it sounds dreadful, but after 10 years of the WWW popularity we have some knowledge what is good web page design and what is not. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvkl
Should have been "don't do to others what you would not like being done to you".
I'm neither a philosopher nor an atheist, but the most primitive justification of what is right and what is wrong for an atheist would be: "don't to other what you would like being done to you".
they don't get the idea of separating content from presentation (in fact to many of them, the two are equivalent)
If this were true, Plain TeX would be more popular than LaTeX (the latter separates context from presentation).
Of course some people have 1Mb/s connection and don't care, but for me 2KB/page less means something. Slashdot pages feel 'heavy' when downloading with ADSL connection. It shouldn't be so.
I don't think this opinion is correct. The US does not control North Africa (it never tried), and does not control Middle East. If it did, we wouldn't have terrorists' nests in Saudi Arabia up till 2001 and the Palestinian-Israel conflict would be quenched. In Central Asia the America's direct competitor is not EU but Russia, with which America appears to have cordial relations, despite Chechenya and all that (I wonder if the gain is worth the sacrifice). Summing it up, I think the idea that the EU going east into Asia and Africa steps on America's toes is wrong. The America's toes are simply not there. What's more, EU can succeed (in stabilising unstable regions) where America has failed, for various reasons:
- it does not have the US's "bully" image
- it spends more money (IMHO) on foreing aid than the US
- it is capable of multlilateral action.
(of course, EU must upgrade on the force side of the formula, so we don't have another Bosnia -- which is another reason why the EU army is not such a bad thing -- it can save some American GIs' lives). What is the reason behind democratic reforms in Turkey: military alliance with the US or the prospect of EU membership? And, what is better for the US: to buy oil from the country run by a corrupt dictator of from the country modernising itself to meet EU's standards?No. There lots of good patches to the kernel flying around which are not part of the vanilla kernel and it OK for the distro people to incorporate these patches in their binary kernel package. It is much easier for the person not satisfied with that to compile a vanilla kernel than the other way around (take a vanilla source from the distro and apply patches to it).
And how could I forget to mention Columbia there too after we threatened to withhold foreign aid due to a little disputer over whether they shoudl ratify the ICC treaty?
Honestly, I can't I understand why the USA is so much opposed to the ICC. It pays a high price for it, gaining nothing. If American army does something nasty enough to gain the attention of ICC, the USA will get bashed anyway. Just look at the Abu-Ghraib scandal.
After all, I think that we have the development of an EU standing army (as a direct albeit hidden competitor to NATO) which might not have happened had Blair not had to make these concessions in order to regain so much lost political capital. Why is the development of EU army a bad thing?