I contend that science and religion have 100% overlap in their intended usage. Both science and religion are used to give us the answer to "why?". Nothing more; nothing less.
Absolutely not. Science tells us what, not why. Logic tells us why.
After all, science has brought us not only longer lives, but more fulfilling, healthier lives with less suffering. If you're worried about death it's just sensible to turn to science.
All phones were monitored since the 70s at least. In a way, this is all nothing new except now that morons seem to have access to the data and they are making moronic decisions based on it.
I'm tired of hearing people say, "the terrorists have won" when the government infringes on our freedom, because it's wildly inaccurate. Terrorists win when their tactics cause outcomes that meet their objectives. Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government.
Actually, that is not true. One of Bin Laden's objectives was to turn the government against its own people to make it a "hellish place". Being under constant surveillance *is* hellish.
In my sleepy little city in a rural corner of my State, our 8-member police department has 2 armored vehicles, 28 fully-automatic machine guns, 2 grenade launchers, and routinely engages in military-style exercises on weekends where they set up Soviet-style checkpoints and violate peoples' civil rights. People have been bringing this up at city council meetings only to be told by the council members that this type of activity is necessary to keep us safe
Honestly, this is scary. What possible need does a small police department have for this stance?
So why won't there ever be a year of the Linux Desktop? Well... that's because it's the desktop itself that's on it way out.
So erm, uh... How will "we" be interfacing without our computers then? The command line is dead for the average user (but still highly functional and VERY useful for the serious computer user). If you take away the desktop, what then? Voice commands?
If all you are saying is that the desktop metaphor portion of the GUI is going away to be replaced strictly by icons with their own variations on user interface, you may be correct... but how is that an improvement?
The main reason why Linux on the desktop hasn't been very succesful is largely a marketing problem in my opinion.
Absolutely not. Linux with GNU tools is an awesome incredibly stable and useful environment; however, it is not graphical.
Back when XFree86 was around, configuring X was somewhat of a black art with scary warnings about causing hardware damage to your monitor/display. Not usable by the masses.
XOrg came around and made basic configuration easy but window managers like Blackbox or FVWM were not really acceptable to the masses.
Gnome with XOrg was pretty nice until the devs started to think that everything would be nicer if nobody could configure it... and they eventually just entirely jumped off the deep end with Gnome 3. Dead. Dead to everyone, not just the masses.
KDE was pretty nice around rev 2 or so. They kept improving it into version 3 but there was always something just a bit buggy about it. Font rendering would go whacko sometimes. Window redraws would stop halfway through. All sorts of weird stuff that would occur regularly but each individual instance was rather rare. KDE went off the deep end too and still has the weird bugs that pop up rarely but regularly. Using dual monitors makes them pop out even more often. Again, not usable by the masses.
I can foresee people getting upset that XFCE is not even being considered. Deal with it. It is not an environment for the masses.
In short, there was only a very short time period in the early 2000's that Linux on the desktop could have ever won and that was with Gnome and XOrg. It is a huge mess now and will continue to be so for the forseeable future... especially with the arguing and fighting over the implementation of a new windowing system.
Whether you think the program is good or bad is irrelevant. The issue at hand is, they did this to minors without permission from the parents or notification to them.
California already did something worse without notifying parents a decade ago: They took my children's pictures and fingerprints without notifying me. The pictures were for matching to a child porn database and the fingerprints were in case they were ever abducted. They may have taken DNA but my son's description of the event was rather confusing since he was only about 6 years old.
Nobody who has control cares what other people think. The people in control have their purposes and that is all that matters. Note the generic description about those in control. It could be your boss, your father, the police, the chairman of the board, etc. That is why you always limit the control others can have over you.
Even the homeless and destitute in the US enjoy a standard of living far above that of the average human even a century ago.
Reality check: Try being homeless for 3 months and tell me that they have a standard of living higher, or even equal to, that of a person from the early 1900s.
The average person from the 1900s had somewhere they could rest their head at night. The average person from 1900s knew where their next meal was coming from (excluding the 1930s depression era). The average person from the 1900s could go see a doctor at will. The average person from the 1900s had a family that cared about them.
I could go on and on what the average person from the 1900s had that a current homeless person does not have access to. Step out of your comfortable world and take a look around. Being homeless in America is a cold miserable hell of constant police harassment, lack of medical care, constant hunger, with not a single person giving one flying fuck about you except wishing that you would just lay down and die.
I know I know. You will say that electricity and medical advances have improved life far beyond the best that was achievable a hundred years ago... except homeless people DO NOT HAVE ACCESS to ANY of that. You have to have a home or apartment to take advantage of electricity and you have to have money to have access to medical care. Street lighting is the only free access to electricity that a homeless person has. Cold comfort indeed.
Hm. Very valid points. I suppose the only question left is the actual success rate with catching fleeing criminals. If the rate is low, then I would suggest that chasing them is not a good idea. If the rate is high, then I would suggest that chasing them is a good idea.
Personally, I like the idea of catching criminals in the act. Makes the death penalty much more appealing.
Cute, but socializing the costs will not fix the problem of high cost. It will just mean that the costs will be paid through taxes. Not much of an improvement. Find a better argument for socialism.
Just crazy. I am over halfway through reading the comments to this article and not a single person glommed onto the obvious troll: Of course "your" video games will not become collectors items because they are all going the way of online activation. Geez people. Get with the program... feed the troll machine.
However, this is what the FSF and GNU want. They think that using Linux kernel APIs or linking to a library is a copyright violation if your source code is not freely available to all. LOL, I can't wait to watch the fireworks as this plays out. FSF and Oracle against Google and sane people. Mixed company indeed.:)
Very few Americans want anything like a police state.
Most Americans, hell, most people in the world, want most of the things that go into a police state. They all want someone else's email to be monitored, they want someone else stopped and searched because that person looks suspicious, they want the police and government bureaucrats all up in the other person's business. Oh, but they want freedom... for themselves... and the only way to maintain those freedoms is to keep everyone else closely monitored and controlled...
and the cognitive dissonance never kicks in. Welcome to planet Earth. Please enjoy your stay.
Those that need long range (work, distance from city, whatever) can keep their gas vehicles, they're not a significant proportion of the population.
Hm. I strongly suspect that the folks who currently need to drive long distances will be a very significant portion of those who could actually afford one of these EVs.
Windows 7 was a real step forward. A true sucesssor to XP.
In some ways, yes. I appreciate the compositing and the greater stability. In some ways, no. I really dislike the higher latencies and the needlessly increased complexity for managing.
Hm. I suspect that after the novelty wears off, you will start saying something like, "What now?", and then you may just regret deciding that the only thing that matters is touching another planet. Kind of like sex when you are a virgin. "God just let me have sex even once and then nothing else matters". Yeah, 20 years of herpes later... Hm?
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I contend that science and religion have 100% overlap in their intended usage. Both science and religion are used to give us the answer to "why?". Nothing more; nothing less.
Absolutely not. Science tells us what, not why. Logic tells us why.
After all, science has brought us not only longer lives, but more fulfilling, healthier lives with less suffering. If you're worried about death it's just sensible to turn to science.
Someone should have told Steve Jobs about that...
What? Too soon?
All phones were monitored since the 70s at least. In a way, this is all nothing new except now that morons seem to have access to the data and they are making moronic decisions based on it.
I'm tired of hearing people say, "the terrorists have won" when the government infringes on our freedom, because it's wildly inaccurate. Terrorists win when their tactics cause outcomes that meet their objectives. Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government.
Actually, that is not true. One of Bin Laden's objectives was to turn the government against its own people to make it a "hellish place". Being under constant surveillance *is* hellish.
Hm. It sounds like America is not the people, it is the government. The people are merely an inconvenience.
In my sleepy little city in a rural corner of my State, our 8-member police department has 2 armored vehicles, 28 fully-automatic machine guns, 2 grenade launchers, and routinely engages in military-style exercises on weekends where they set up Soviet-style checkpoints and violate peoples' civil rights. People have been bringing this up at city council meetings only to be told by the council members that this type of activity is necessary to keep us safe
Honestly, this is scary. What possible need does a small police department have for this stance?
So why won't there ever be a year of the Linux Desktop? Well... that's because it's the desktop itself that's on it way out.
So erm, uh... How will "we" be interfacing without our computers then? The command line is dead for the average user (but still highly functional and VERY useful for the serious computer user). If you take away the desktop, what then? Voice commands?
If all you are saying is that the desktop metaphor portion of the GUI is going away to be replaced strictly by icons with their own variations on user interface, you may be correct... but how is that an improvement?
The main reason why Linux on the desktop hasn't been very succesful is largely a marketing problem in my opinion.
Absolutely not. Linux with GNU tools is an awesome incredibly stable and useful environment; however, it is not graphical.
Back when XFree86 was around, configuring X was somewhat of a black art with scary warnings about causing hardware damage to your monitor/display. Not usable by the masses.
XOrg came around and made basic configuration easy but window managers like Blackbox or FVWM were not really acceptable to the masses.
Gnome with XOrg was pretty nice until the devs started to think that everything would be nicer if nobody could configure it... and they eventually just entirely jumped off the deep end with Gnome 3. Dead. Dead to everyone, not just the masses.
KDE was pretty nice around rev 2 or so. They kept improving it into version 3 but there was always something just a bit buggy about it. Font rendering would go whacko sometimes. Window redraws would stop halfway through. All sorts of weird stuff that would occur regularly but each individual instance was rather rare. KDE went off the deep end too and still has the weird bugs that pop up rarely but regularly. Using dual monitors makes them pop out even more often. Again, not usable by the masses.
I can foresee people getting upset that XFCE is not even being considered. Deal with it. It is not an environment for the masses.
In short, there was only a very short time period in the early 2000's that Linux on the desktop could have ever won and that was with Gnome and XOrg. It is a huge mess now and will continue to be so for the forseeable future... especially with the arguing and fighting over the implementation of a new windowing system.
Whether you think the program is good or bad is irrelevant. The issue at hand is, they did this to minors without permission from the parents or notification to them.
California already did something worse without notifying parents a decade ago: They took my children's pictures and fingerprints without notifying me. The pictures were for matching to a child porn database and the fingerprints were in case they were ever abducted. They may have taken DNA but my son's description of the event was rather confusing since he was only about 6 years old.
Nobody who has control cares what other people think. The people in control have their purposes and that is all that matters. Note the generic description about those in control. It could be your boss, your father, the police, the chairman of the board, etc. That is why you always limit the control others can have over you.
Except these unlicensed plants are from a lab strain which was never released...
The evidence says that in fact they HAVE released it... apparently unwillingly.
You are lost... and you will be one of the ones up against the wall when the revolution comes. Wake up and find yourself.
Even the homeless and destitute in the US enjoy a standard of living far above that of the average human even a century ago.
Reality check: Try being homeless for 3 months and tell me that they have a standard of living higher, or even equal to, that of a person from the early 1900s.
The average person from the 1900s had somewhere they could rest their head at night. The average person from 1900s knew where their next meal was coming from (excluding the 1930s depression era). The average person from the 1900s could go see a doctor at will. The average person from the 1900s had a family that cared about them.
I could go on and on what the average person from the 1900s had that a current homeless person does not have access to. Step out of your comfortable world and take a look around. Being homeless in America is a cold miserable hell of constant police harassment, lack of medical care, constant hunger, with not a single person giving one flying fuck about you except wishing that you would just lay down and die.
I know I know. You will say that electricity and medical advances have improved life far beyond the best that was achievable a hundred years ago... except homeless people DO NOT HAVE ACCESS to ANY of that. You have to have a home or apartment to take advantage of electricity and you have to have money to have access to medical care. Street lighting is the only free access to electricity that a homeless person has. Cold comfort indeed.
Too easy indeed. Meh.
There is but it is not an option due to the fact that the government will abuse it: Place transponders in ALL vehicles.
Hm. Very valid points. I suppose the only question left is the actual success rate with catching fleeing criminals. If the rate is low, then I would suggest that chasing them is not a good idea. If the rate is high, then I would suggest that chasing them is a good idea.
Personally, I like the idea of catching criminals in the act. Makes the death penalty much more appealing.
Cute, but socializing the costs will not fix the problem of high cost. It will just mean that the costs will be paid through taxes. Not much of an improvement. Find a better argument for socialism.
Just crazy. I am over halfway through reading the comments to this article and not a single person glommed onto the obvious troll: Of course "your" video games will not become collectors items because they are all going the way of online activation. Geez people. Get with the program... feed the troll machine.
BTW, you had good arguments. :)
However, this is what the FSF and GNU want. They think that using Linux kernel APIs or linking to a library is a copyright violation if your source code is not freely available to all. LOL, I can't wait to watch the fireworks as this plays out. FSF and Oracle against Google and sane people. Mixed company indeed. :)
A Scanner Darkly was deeply disturbing. A very good movie.
Very few Americans want anything like a police state.
Most Americans, hell, most people in the world, want most of the things that go into a police state. They all want someone else's email to be monitored, they want someone else stopped and searched because that person looks suspicious, they want the police and government bureaucrats all up in the other person's business. Oh, but they want freedom... for themselves... and the only way to maintain those freedoms is to keep everyone else closely monitored and controlled...
and the cognitive dissonance never kicks in. Welcome to planet Earth. Please enjoy your stay.
Those that need long range (work, distance from city, whatever) can keep their gas vehicles, they're not a significant proportion of the population.
Hm. I strongly suspect that the folks who currently need to drive long distances will be a very significant portion of those who could actually afford one of these EVs.
Windows 7 was a real step forward. A true sucesssor to XP.
In some ways, yes. I appreciate the compositing and the greater stability. In some ways, no. I really dislike the higher latencies and the needlessly increased complexity for managing.
The power cord works pretty well. ;-)
Yeah but the aliens drop by after a bit. The smaller faster ship is a real PITA to kill. It also shoots at you. :(
Hm. Why not use magnetism to protect the people inside the spacecraft? No real need for huge masses. Magnetism is what protects us on Earth right?
Hm. I suspect that after the novelty wears off, you will start saying something like, "What now?", and then you may just regret deciding that the only thing that matters is touching another planet. Kind of like sex when you are a virgin. "God just let me have sex even once and then nothing else matters". Yeah, 20 years of herpes later... Hm?