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User: Hosiah

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  1. Re:Good Article but... on ZNet interviews Richard Stallman · · Score: 1
    Nah, the US is not fascist...First, blah, balh,...Second, blah, blah,...

    "And even if we did have all of those things, it still wouldn't be a Fascism because you have to have a dictator named Mussolini. And even if we 'elected' a president named Mussolini, it still wouldn't be a Fascism because he'd wear brown leather boots and Mussolini was a black leather boot kinda guy. And even if President Mussolini WORE black leather boots, it still wouldn't be a Fascism because Mussolini's bootheels were 3.7689 centimeters thick and our President's bootheels would be only 3.7588 centimeters thick..."

    Besides, bad things only happen in other countries - it says so right here in the Weekly World News. Now get your ass in the kitchen and get me a beer, dingbat!

  2. Too little, too late! on ZNet interviews Richard Stallman · · Score: 2, Insightful
    'I'm a Liberal, in US terms (not Canadian terms). I'm against fascism.'"

    Oh, brother. Even HE can't see that liberal and conservative are both just two sides of the same worthless coin. All hope is lost.

  3. Re:Cargo Cults on What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like? · · Score: 1
    you'll have an OS that suits your needs (and holier-than-thou attitude)...

    All this from a four-digit ID? I would hope that age brought more wisdom!

    Yeah, as a matter of fact, if all computers WERE VMS text terminals I'd be just as happy. Criticise me for reading in an 80-column text mode while you defend becoming an illiterate sap because you're too busy gawking at all the pretty widgets on your windows to read AT ALL!

  4. Things like this... on Marfa Lights Explained · · Score: 1

    ...makes me glad we don't have contact with any extraterrestrial species, yet. Imagine explaining this one: "Have you been sending saucers to spy on our desert? No, wait, never mind, we just figured out it was the light from our own ground vehicles." Prove your sentience after that conversation!

  5. Re:My answer to Key loggers on "Dasher" Worm Brings Christmas Keylogger · · Score: 1
    Keylog THAT if you dare

    Ha! I got it! I have the logfile for the Perl code session! It's...no, wait...no, sorry, it's just line noise from my bad internet connection.

  6. Cargo Cults on What Will The Future Desktop Interface Look Like? · · Score: 1
    Cargo Cults (Read all about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) are what I think about when I see all this focus on interface, interface, interface. In my whole 30 years of being a power computer user, the absolute dead last thing I ever cared about was the interface. Interfaces *should* make no difference to anybody who understands computers. So you type here, or you click there. Document the damn thing so I can learn it and I'm fine. I'll probably be turning off the 3D interface of the future so I can get some real work done, just like I kept doing for a decade with the 2D interface as opposed to the command line, until hardware caught up with everybody's insanely inflated expectations.

    But ALLLLL I hear about, 100% of the time now, is what kind of interface it has. Does it crash? Does it compromise your privacy? Does it in fact do *anything*, useful or not useful, AT ALL??? Who cares; it's got a *lovely* interface. You people keep buying cars based on the color of the paint job and whether the turn signals are in the right place, manufacturers *will* catch on and start neglecting to put an engine under the hood altogether. What makes it go isn't the motions you make with the interface, you Cargo-Cult people, you.

  7. Re:Russ for President in 2008 on Senate Fails To Reauthorize Patriot Act Provisions · · Score: 1
    Sorry you got modded a troll.

    I'm sorry he got modded down troll, too, but I think some of you people are failing to grasp the scope of this time in American histroy. Many of us are SOOOOO pissed that we now don't want ANYBODY elected president again. No Congress, no Senate, no House, no FBI...burn the whole thing to the ground and start over. If Al Gore or Ross Perot or John Kerry or Michael Moore or Bozo the Clown were in office being the same kind of despot GWB is, it would make no difference. It's not about who gets elected. It's that once that person is elected, the system gives that person too much free power. It's that too many doors are closed so we can't see what's going on behind them. It's about how too much media is filtered until we have no choice beyond picking between two faces - we know no other facts. It's about how our citizenry has been bullied and beaten down until they are little more than ignorant peasants who are powerless to make up their own minds about any decisions beyond where to shop.

    I, for one, think the constitution was a good idea on paper. But it needs to be strengthened, and perhaps rethought altogether. It's not enough to see GWB go down in flames. He never should have been allowed to happen in the first place. He is a mere symptom, not the disease.

  8. Re:Don't get my hopes up. on Conducting a Unix Desktop Usability Study? · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    You also go out of your way to diminish the importance of Windows. I am certainly no fan myself, but it is used by over 90% of all users today and the Windows interfaces are by far the interfaces someone is the most likely to know about.

    WHY??? WHY DO IDIOTS LIKE YOU PERSIST IN WAXING SUCH STUPID BULLSHIT AND KNOWING THAT NO SAPIENT SPECIES EXISTS THAT IS STUPID ENOUGH TO FALL FOR IT??? WHY BOTHER TO POST??? NO, YOU'RE NO FAN - YOU ONLY WORSHIP MICROSOFT AND SLOB ON BILLY'S KNOB, THAT'S ALL!!!

    Making sure your interface system looks and feels totally unlike what 90% of people are used to is not going to ease people into using your system.

    So you still shit in diapers, right? Because the toilet was a different interface from the one you're used to. And you never learned to walk because it looks and feels totally different from crawling. And you never learned to fuck, thank God for the purification of the gene pool, because you already knew the interface of masturbating, and copulation was too different in look and feel. Hey, I already refuted this point in the original post. Remember? Go back and read where it says the year Microshit first released Win-Duhs. Note how long computers existed before that. For 90% of the history of computers, WE'VE USED NON-WINDOWS INTERFACES. In fact, since Unix was running on a PDP-series (the closest the technology would allow to a general purpose desktop system) before Bull Gay-ts ever touched a computer, WE HAVE HAD UNIX INTERFACES FOR MUCH LONGER THAN WINDOWS INTERFACES. Windows should be learning from Unix, not the other way around. So why didn't the all-holy status quo effect apply to the initial adoption of Windows? Wasn't it radically different from what not 90%, but 100% of users knew before? Why did Microshit ever go from the command line to the GUI in the first place, if it's such an huge issue to switch interfaces? Hey, Socrates, I think we found a break in your AIRTIGHT FUCKING LOGIC, HUH?

    No, the truth is, morons like you only found the first interface you accidentally stumbled upon, learned enough to use it without embarassing yourself by trying to reboot it by shaking the monitor upside down or yelling into the mouse, and now you want to force it on everybody else just so YOUR LAZY ASS doesn't have to learn anything new. Well, forget it. We'll continue to innovate and advance technology like we were doing before there was a Windows. It's WORTH working our asses off to make and give away a free operating system, just to see the stock (presumably purchased within a week of your having secured your five-digit /. ID) for your pisshole company go down the crapper. Stay in your cave. Civilization will go on advancing without you as it always has done anyway, Neanderthal.

  9. Don't get my hopes up. on Conducting a Unix Desktop Usability Study? · · Score: 3, Interesting
    would you give us on conducting a deep and objective study on the Unix desktop

    Well, since Unix has *NEVER* had an objective study of it's desktop done, you will make history as a pioneer. Since it's survived so many smear campaigns, yours will, unfortunately, just add to the hot air. What, exactly, is the *point* of such a study, anyway? What does it change? I have yet to read a single such study that swayed my choices one iota.

    Sadly, you're off on the wrong foot already. KDE-vs-Gnome. Hey, Dr Kinsey, there's just a few other test subjects you're failing to interview: http://xwinman.org/. So actually, you're flunking already. You are not doing a "Unix desktop study". You are doing a "KDE-vs-Gnome" study, and your results will no more be applicable to Unix in general than a study of Coke-vs-Pepsi would apply to all beverages.

    It does not go without saying: Don't be paid Microsoft shills. Don't be paid by *anybody* for that matter.

    Now, if I studied dogs, I wouldn't start with everything I know about cats and try to fit it all around that by comparing dogs with cats at every possible point. Similarly, Unix never gets taken as an operating system on it's own right. Everything is instead stated "It is not as good as or just like or better than Microsoft." How about judging something just once based on it's own merit, the way anybody studying anything else is expected to do in any other field? Consider your subject as if other operating systems did not exist. God knows, Microsoft is talked about in this manner.

    Unfortunately, the focus will of course be on KDE and Gnome, the Heckyl and Jeckyl whose sole point of contention is "I'M a perfect clone of the Windows environment!" "No, I am!" "No, me!" "NO, ME!" So in fact, you're not the least bit interested in considering even KDE or Gnome on it's own right - this will be a Windows-impersonator contest. Never mind that counting from the invention of computers: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html, computers have been around for one hundred and eighty-two years, and only the last 20 years http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/windows.ht m has seen the existence of a desktop system known as Windows. For a ratio of 0.10989011 of computer's history, you are going to compare the one system whose sole claim is that it made a lot of money in the United States to two other desktops expressly written to mimic it.

    I'm really sure the world will be enlightened.

  10. Re:How many people? on It's "1984" in Europe, What About Your Country? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, with 450 billion people, it *must* be tough to get some privacy! "Who ARE these people in my medicine cabinet? Out! OUT!"

  11. Re:PRIVACY == FREEDOM on It's "1984" in Europe, What About Your Country? · · Score: 1
    f this individual wasn't so anonymous people would be able protest and debate him forcing him to modify his behavior to take a more moderate stand.

    *raising hand from the back of the class* What would be an example of an idea that perpetuated itself into law as the result of it's proponents remaining anonymous? For instance, how would the measures of the Klu Klux Klan to maintain their privacy (i.e. wearing sheets over their heads, publishing hate sites on the web) lead to an adoption of racism and predjudice as a standard behavior?

  12. Data harvesting != Data Comprehension on It's "1984" in Europe, What About Your Country? · · Score: 1
    I'm actually not that worried about all the "they can record *everything* about you" stories, and havn't been fore some years. What relaxed me is the realization that streaming all the data in the world live is worth nothing, what counts is having the eyeballs to *read* the data. Ever worked as a security guard? You may have a room with banks of monitors, but 20 screens may get glanced at once or twice per shift, if that. Ditto with raw information: do you use a feedburner/news agregator? You have access to potentially thousands of pages of news, right? Yet you may only spend an hour per day browsing it, if that, and you quickly tire of digging through the garbage looking for something interesting.

    Until everybody but me works for the NSA (or Europe sends over it's "450 billion citizens"* to spy on me :-0 !), I'm not too worried.

    *450 billion! All that attention just for me! My blog ads would BANK!!!

  13. 450 billion people of Europe ? on It's "1984" in Europe, What About Your Country? · · Score: 1

    Last I checked: http://www.secretsituation.com/geo/graphic1.htm the global population is at 6.6 billion. Stop selling Viagra to Europe!!!

  14. Re:* * Beatles-Beatles on Slashback: Quinn, iBackups, Wikipedia · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Is it too late to suspect that Beatles-Beatles is a script running on Scuttle-Monkey's home server?

    I was trying my own hand at a hand-rolled newsfeed aggregator, once, with an eye towards including it in my blog as a sidebar newsalerter. This was extensive Bash, sed, awk, grep, and lynx + Tcl/Tk/Expect work (and a couple of parsing algorithms in C), and the results were quite interesting, but I never got it past beta (it really wasn't worth the time for me, I might pick it back up later). With the right AI, a news-anchorman isn't that much harder to imitate than a Rogerian psychiatrist - and I could add or remove RSS URLs from a simple list, and use frequency analysis plus a dictionary counter to determine "overreported" and "underreported" stories, and give it a preference for crawling the web looking for more stories containing keywords from the "underreported" category, while shunning the "overreported" stories to avoid dupes.

    I've never typed out the whole story on that damn thing before. Looking back, forget it. Nobody could possibly come up with such a contraption!

  15. "Guide to repairing and upgrading PCs" on No More Internet Anonymity · · Score: 1
    I just hope my skills at fixing/rebuilding old PCs never dull as the decades wear on. I haven't bought a new machine in ten years - people just throw too many out. Keep all your tech pre-millenium, get really good at hardware, (I mean recently a CD-rom drive failed...so I took it apart and *fixed* it. THAT good!), run Linux on it, and you'll never have to worry about Orwellian hardware hacks.

    Disregarding this article, which is courtesy of MSNBC. Which I rank right between Weekly World News and the National Enquirer when it comes to credibility.

  16. Re:Java? on IBM Promotes Linux Partners to Highest Tier · · Score: 1

    If we're going to be like that, IBM is so 70's.

  17. Here's a real test: on Paramount Sues Ohio Man For $100,000 · · Score: 1

    Would the law's and Paramount's actions be justified if I ran into Walmart, dropped a recording of a movie on a cassette on a shelf there, and ran out, bothering no one and taking nothing? Would that be a $100,000 - dollar crime?

  18. Re:Motive? on Paramount Sues Ohio Man For $100,000 · · Score: 1
    This is typical of the big media companies now, just like the Mafia:

    Leaving aside the fact that Mafia bootleggers did not piss in the booze they sold.

  19. Re:Tech Novice? on Paramount Sues Ohio Man For $100,000 · · Score: 1
    A tech novice with 4 computers? That seems sort of unlikely. I'm not saying he's guilty, but the facts just don't seem to mesh with the description there.

    Yeah, a tech novice with 4 computers. Tech novices acquire computers at an incredibly fast rate, since their cycle is (1) buy MS-loaded machine (2) get viruses (3) get tired of it and decide it's "worn out" and needs to be replaced. I personally know several fools who own about a *dozen* machines...eleven are in a pile in the basement, the twelvth plugged in and blue-screening.

    Thanks for adding to the hacker witchhunt by throwing suspicion on somebody just because of what they own. Does this make you a witch if you have more than three moles?

  20. Re:Actually, it gets better on Microsoft Patches Fix IE, Sony Flaws · · Score: 1
    Probably too many Sony stories already.

    Nah, heck, I can't get enough of it. I've been laughing my ass off through the whole Sony saga. I'm thinking it would be great to cut up into half-hour episodes and show on Nick-at-Nite five years down the road.

    The title is left as an exercise for the witty Slashdotter.

  21. Re:Wal*Mart Kids on Chimpanzees Beat out Children in Reasoning Test · · Score: 1
    When you stop behavior, the child then has time to analyze what he has done

    Disclaimer: I don't get my parenting advice from Slashdot and neither should anybody else.

    Anyway, I just had to share a form of discipline I *invented*. It works to control the child's mood, when they seem stuck on a particular negative mental state: just invite the child to sit on the floor with you and meditate for five minutes! We're being goofy and silly about it - hamming it up in very sloppy position, loud deep humming, etc. The point is that you got the kid to sit still for five minutes and quit thinking about what they were obsessing about before. I never deal with a terrible-two-year-old without it.

    That being said, I *still* believe that there are rare occasions when physical punishment is needed - is essential, nothing else will do. It's a last resort - to be avoided if at all possible - but still sometimes needed. My rule of thumb is: if I, as an adult, were to do what the child just did, would it get me punched in the face, in jail, or lynched by an angry mod, etc? Then the kid should at least get a tap on the butt to get the point across.

  22. Re:Hypocrites! on Google and Red Hat added to Nasdaq · · Score: 1

    But they *are* open source. You can read them for free. You can even print them up. Of course, if you actually try to sell them yourself as stock certificates, you're likely to get a little tap on the shoulder from some Federal guy...

  23. Re:Nasdaq /= Nasdaq-100 on Google and Red Hat added to Nasdaq · · Score: 1
    don't know that ISO means anything other than ISO 9000

    Or know "computer" means anything but "Windows" or "internet" means anything but "AOL"...

  24. Is Linus himself even paying attention anymore? on Torvalds Says 'Use KDE' · · Score: 1
    Hey, Linus! WAKE UP!!! There are Xfce, Blackbox, Fluxbox, Window Maker, Fvwm, ICEwm, Rat Poison, Enlightenment, TWM, and a whole truckload of bananas besides. Yet he compares KDE and Gnome as if they were the only two things in the universe.

    If we augment his quote to: "This 'users are idiots, and are confused by functionality' mentality is a disease." and apply it to all of technology, it's worthy of being cast in gold and framed. But arguing whether KDE or Gnome insults your intelligence less is like debating which of two rocks tastes least like a carrot. Gnome *is* the simplest, and it's also the *faster* of the two, whereas KDE promotes you from Gnome's kindergarten to KDE's first grade - at the sacrifice of a 25% hit on your system resources. Or, you can get all the way to adulthood and get drunk and laid already, with just about any other choice.

    *Disclaimer* I'm talking about the desktop environments, here. As always, I have to head off the forecoming attempts to derail it into "gedit" vs "kwrite" flames by pointing out *ahead* of time that we're not talking about the applications that are associated with either desktop. If this confuses you, this conversation is over your head.

  25. Re:Garfield on A Programmer's Bookshelf · · Score: 1
    Every good programmer loves garfield?

    <WC Fields>"do you mean boiled or fried?"</WC Fields>