Vi wasn't easy to learn either -- but while unintuitive, it is all logical and most of the keybindings have obvious mnemonics.
For the record, how can something be both unintuitive and logical?:)
I started using vi at the start of my unix use 7 or 8 years ago. I did have trouble at first keeping track of the mode I was in, but it was not a big deal. I accumulated many crib sheets for vi commands over the years and I can naturally do a number of tasks in vi.
That being said, I use vi for quick simple edits only, and I exclusively code in emacs. I can't remember when I started using emacs. I do remember that in a terminal it was impossible at first to remember commands at all and it was frustrating - but no more frustrating than remembering vi command mode keys and colon commands. As with any tool, I found that the more I used it, the more neat functionality I could discover and learn to use effectively. Major and minor editing modes tailor the environment for specific tasks, the control keys are now more natural to me than exiting to command mode every time I want to do something, and now I'm endeavoring on learning to use elisp expressions. I've picked up the emacs pocket reference and browsed through TFB a few times to learn essential commands, and spent as much time in the editor environment as possible, and now I'm fairly competant and comfortable with it.
But it's just like any other tool. If the style fits you and you work with it for a while, you'll appreciate what it can accomplish for you. If you learn vi first, and pick up emacs expecting it to be like vi you will get pissy and post on slashdot Just How Much You Think Emacs Stinks. But that's no more intelligent than hammering nails into wood for a few years, grabbing a screwdriver to do the same thing one day, and then bitching in the hardware forums that screwdrivers are a piece of crap because hammers are so much more intuitive.
:) I was hoping someone would comment on that one day. I'm not too well known for keeping secrets, so I'll let the cat out of the bag. I was inspired by another slashdot user (I forgot who it is) who used a similar piece of ruby code that just sort of magically worked. The idea in that code was to obfuscate a piece of text by 'unpacking' it from ascii string to another data format, and magically re-extracting it in a print command by packing it again.
I took this to another level and not only 'unpacked' the text, but the entire perl command for printing the 'unpacked' string as well. Thus perl is ordered to evaluate the statement hidden in the 'unpacked' hexadecimal string, which is 'packed' to reveal a valid perl statement.
I made a perl script to generate the (weakly) obfuscated command. Please keep in mind I am a C programmer by nature and that my approach to Perl is very indicative of that fact:
#!/usr/bin/env perl die "you must supply one argument.\n" if($#ARGV != 0); my $ephrase; my $dephrase; $ephrase = unpack(q/H*/ , $ARGV[0]); $dephrase = unpack(q/H*/, q/print pack(q{H*},q{/ . "$ephrase" . q/});/); print qq/perl -e "eval pack(q{H*}, join q{},qw{$dephrase})"\n/;
Is there any reason why I shouldn't look at FBSD as if it were a flavor of Linux? Yeah, it has a different kernel. I guess FBSD might be a little faster? That is what the benchmarks say, but the difference isn't staggering. I certainly don't notice. Is it more stable? I haven't had many problems with Linux that couldn't be blamed on cheap PC hardware.
Yes, a very important reason - FreeBSD is not Linux, just as surely as SCO UnixWare is not Solaris. Their codebase is certainly not the same, and in fact FreeBSD's code lineage dates back many years before Linux.
FreeBSD and Linux, being F/OSS systems, share a very large base of F/OSS software, so looking at kde on X on FreeBSD really won't appear that different from looking at kde on X on linux. I could just as well ask why anyone would want to use Linux when it just looks like a derivative of FreeBSD, which predates it. but that would not be a fair assessment because Linux is a seperate work built by another party. Yes, it is a unix-like system. Yes, it strives to adhere to POSIX standards. Yes, it runs all the same software. But no, it is a different system.
I have been using FreeBSD and NetBSD for many years, and where I work all of our stuff is on SuSE. In my opinion, SuSE is impossible to upgrade, its package system is inadequate, and shorewall is a lousy attempt at ip filtering. If I had my way I'd probably replace everything with FreeBSD. But did you notice somehting about the attitude of my opinions? Wasn't your first thought "Well gee, you use FreeBSD all the time and you've probably barely given SuSE Linux a shot?" If it was, you would be right. Because I learned to accomplish tasks in FreeBSD, I favor it - the same way I favor speaking in english over german because english is my native language. I'm sure if you sit down and think about it, when you picked up FreeBSD you tried to do things in the Debian idiom, expecting Debian results. But you didn't get them. So you're underwhelmed. It's natural, but please don't try to attribute it to FreeBSD being an inadequate copy of your favorite system, because that simply is a lie.
On the packages/ports system, I think you've really overdramaticized your plight with the BSD way-of-doing-things. First, you can cvsup the ports tree and compile from source. But you can also use pkg_add to add binary packages. If you don't want to fetch the package tarball yourself, you can use pkg_add's remote fetching feature. Simply pkg_add -r and you're on your way. It will take care of dependencies and the package database will record the package's information. You can also install portupgrade and use it to magically update a port and its dependencies when it is time to upgrade. It's not a difficult or time consuming system to use. I'm unfamiliar with Debian's package system, so I can't make any comments on it, but FreeBSD's package system has always been very useful fo me, and it gets more powerful all the time.
Overall, though, Linux and BSD really do feed from eachother's growth. What's good for one is good for the other. I may use FreeBSD, but that doesn't mean Linux is useless; and the opposite is true as well. All this bickering is really pointless because both projects will continue on in their own directions; some people will favor the one while some people will favor the other. It's simply a matter of preference
It's called posturing. Just about every animal does it. Posture big enough and your enemies will leave you alone. The USA and USSR did this all through the cold war. If you don't, you can get runover or get suckerpunched if no one thinks you have backbone enough to retaliate (Pearl harbor/WWII for starters).
Posturing only works if the two animals are similar. A lion, for instance, will posture itself to fend off other big cats from its territory, but can't use posturing to fend off a bacteria or virus infection that kills it from the inside. A similar thing can be said about terrorism - because terrorist cells, like parasites and viruses, attack from the inside by abusing the infrastructure of the target to acheive its means. Terrorist cells are too small to be dealt with in conventional military means, and conventional tactics (posturing e.g.) have little or no effect. I doubt very much, for example, that an RPG-toting terrorist that's happy to die in order to kill a few Americans or British or Spanish or what-have-you would fear a gun that will shoot lighting and maybe stun him if he gets within 12 feet of it.
I think the GP points out rightly that it isn't 'charity' when the intention is not noble.
Also when the money is table scraps from the strongarm lawsuit campaigns that Microsoft has ben flinging around. I am wary that this 'donation' is purely a persuasive gesture - which comes at zero cost to Microsoft - intended to persuade the public that Microsoft should be free to flex its litigious muscles - because when Microsoft wins a case, well we all win now don't we?
One thing I've always wanted to seen done. Take all the US and Russian engineers, put them together, give them a blank check and the goal of colonizing space along with permission to use any and all knowlege (including classified) that they posses. And just wait to see how long it is until I'm living in orbit.
With all of the ships adrift in the solar system from broken russian equipment and american software failure, you'd basically have the setting of Space Hulk... minus the space marine power armor... but maybe BLEEX will get there soon.
It looks suspicious to plead the fifth amendment (specifically, "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,") when detained by authorities (what do you have to hide from the police?).
Wait just a second here - the fifth amendment is in place to protect citizens from police or court interrogation (read: confession extraction). Pleading the fifth amendment is not about what you have to hide from the authorities, but rather what evidence do the authorities _not_ have in a case against you that they need you to incriminate yourself? Maybe it looks suspicious, but its purpose is to be a protection from injustice.
In the PR filter game, the filters are not in place to protect the organization from strongarm legal tactics. Some uses are understandable, like preventing the leakage of information about an upcoming product from hitting the streets. Others, like preventing an employee from making a positive public statement about a competitor, are a little less admirable.
However, the more OS choices/forks there are, the less likely that all the fixes will get merged into any *single* OS. So users will encounter some errors no matter which OS they use, which is not optimal for the user.
OK, BSD is another choice for users, and choices and forks are bad things for users. Well obviously Linux must be superior. Let's go install one! The choice should be simple, since Linux apparently follows this theory and there are few or no variations, right? So what should I install?
An RPM system: aLinux? ALT? Ark? ASPLinux? Blag? Caixa Mágica? cAos? CentOS? Cobind Desktop? Conectiva? EduLinux? Fedora Core? Linux Mobile System? Magic? Mandriva? Novell Linux Desktop? PCLinuxOS? PCQLinux2004? PLD? QiLinux? Red Flag? Red Hat Enterprise? Scientific? SUSE? Tinfoil Hat? Trustix? Turbolinux? Vine? White Box Enterprise? Yellow Dog? YOPER?
A slackware system - Kate OS? MiniSlack? Plamo? Slackware? Ultima? SLAX? Frugalware?
Or maybe another - Arch? Foresight? Gentoo? GoboLinux? Heretix? Impi Linux? Jedi GNU/Linux? Linux From Scratch? Lunar? MkLinux? Onebase? Sorcerer? Source Mage? Ututo?
The best solution is to stick with the FREE OS that has the best chance of survival (Linux), and if you hit a showstopper, help out and fix it:) Even if you're not a programmer, you can still email maintainers, fill bug reports, and offer to test out patches on your machine.
My, if this isn't a troll... And what metric did you use to compare the longevity of Linux to the longevity of other F/OSS systems?
We just concern ourselves with how much there is. So, if we know less after receiving negative information, the amount of information we have must actually go down. This obviously cannot happen classically...
I disagree. Have you ever watched George W. Bush give a public speech?
I swear, just listening to that man kills brain cells...
Forgetting about the huge costs of education, be that University fees, exam fees or even just books or Internet access, is not the time spent learning worth anything? If I spent 5 years of my life learning how to fix your problem, is that nearly zero effort? I think you are getting confused with the copyright infridgement isn't stealing diatribe!
5 years? And you think people "infridge" on a copyright? Somehow I have my doubts as to the quality of that education...
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I don't see how due process, double jeopardy, and property rights are equivocal with shutting employees up from freely speaking with the press. In all truth, such a practice is suppressive of the first amendment, which states: "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."
Name me any Fortune-500 companies that DON'T prohibit their employees from talking directly to the press, or otherwise require the PR/legal departments to review all public statements? Having the CEO say "Linux is a cancer" to mainstream press and having a peon say "we benefit from and contribute to OSS!" to Slashdotters definitely gives you a slimy feeling about microsoft, but don't include the tight control over public statements as one of your reasons to mark MS off as slimy.
Popularity of this symptom does not in any way indicate that it is non-slimy in nature. Lying, sitting on truth, and massaging the truth are all equally slimy from my perspective, regardless of the quantity of fortune 500 companies that participate in those tactics.
The parent is perfectly well within reason to have a sticky feeling from this article.
Are there guidelines published somewhere that say when I should start acting against a government when it has become too insane? I'd like to know, other wise I'm forced to make it up.
"... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."
The fact that some products have severly limited functionality (and sometimes quality) in order to reach a marketable price is one of the "negative implications" of what I refer to as "reality".
I was referring to the tendency for the pinto's gas to explode all over its passengers in a collision, and the corvair did in fact have excessive weight and lean that made it succeptable to excessive rolling. Aside from being dangerous in a wreck, the car also had a very large seal (6" x 16')that if not kept in like-new or better condition would allow carbon monoxide to mix in to the cabin air.
Anyway, the statement was meant to be an attention-getter and was not directed at the innovation of the vehicle - only a reminder that the negative side effects the grandparent mentioned equally warrant the attention that the PC 'revolution' they accompanied recieves.
And I also don't recall using the car analogy as a logical argument comparing cost to quality. You provided an argument for the benefits of the affordable corvair, and projected the antithesis of your logic into your perception of my argument. You forget that I simply stated that Microsoft was not the sole champion of the PC 'revolution'.
Yes. But what if you want a cheap computer? That is better than nothing at all. I do not want the best computer, I want something that does bare minumum. When you look at this in this way, I think Microsoft is nobler (and less effecient) than Apple. Microsoft in a way made the PC revolution possible, with all its negative side-effects.
Microsoft Vista - It Just (Barely) Works!
To revisit the car analogy, I think anyone that's ever been in a wreck in a Pinto or a Corvair will tell you the negative implications to such a philosophy.
And the PC revolution was here without Microsoft. The IBM PC was not made possible by Microsoft, Microsoft only got a deal on OS licensing. If MS hadn't been around, the PC would still have hit the market with a different OS (CP/M perhaps, which by all accounts was the most successful OS of the day and of which QDOS - to be usurped and called MS-DOS - was a rough implementation), or perhaps ATARI would have stepped up in its place. Most probably Apple would have retained the PC throne. In any case, Microsoft did not make the PC possible, it only latched on to a market for profit. There was nothing noble about it, Bill Gates and his cronies made a deal with IBM to distribute exclusively a fictional OS that MS didn't have, bought QDOS from SCP, and gave it to IBM as their own. They used a cheap and dirty gamble to get their position and fortune, not a noble move on behalf of home computer users everywhere as you would pretend.
You mean like that "hydrolic assortment" bullshit about how in the "great flood" all the animals got mixed up in the water and then settled into the sediment, with the heavier ones on the bottom since they sank faster?
Yep. That's one of the funnier ideas. That brings to mind a drawing I believe Morris produced in retort to the theory that aquatic mammals evolved from landbound hoofed mammals. It was a picture of a whale with hooves in the ocean saying "please don't eat me for 40 million years while I evolve fins" or something to that effect. It's used as an argument against evolution, while it stems from assumptions that are completely opposite from evolution in the first place - namely that the animal 'decided' to evolve, chose its environment without features suitable for it, and made the transition instantaneously. But it is, however, perfectly within reason of the *poof*-and-something-happens view of the world that they have.
Actually, no. Scientific theories are required to be falsifiable.
Yes, I failed to make that distinction initially, though I did later go on to state that evolution could be proved false. I think I grabbed a different quote from the parent than I had intended.
The basic idea is that democracy is inherently flawed and always degenrates into fascism unless religious doctrine is put in charge.
And who can beat logic like that when we have such great examples of theologically based governments such as Afghanistan's Taliban to support the theory?
Centralized authority - no matter if it is called a dictator, a pope, a mullah, or a theology - is the basis for autocracy. Democracy cannot exist in the presence of over-ruling authority that determines policy without regard to public concensus. Therefore religious minded government cannot be democratic by definition. In fact, as history has shown us, religious governments or likely more to be themselves fascist in nature.
The idea of Democratic Republics came from Rome and Greece before they were Christianized. These ideas were revived during the 17th/18th century Enlightment, first incorporated in the US government, then France and so on.
That's why I forsee democracy to be next on the hit-list for ultra-conservative christians. Theocratic autocracy is the security blanket they need to ensure their domination, and the only system that could co-exist with the principles of divine authority.
The way it's taught now, evolution isn't falsifiable either.
Hence it is a theory. But it is a theory with supporting evidence. Scientists have made many observations of microevolution in species that adapt to their environment, that vertebrate embryos share similar or exactly the same structure during early development, changes over time in physical structure of animals the fossil record, and other observations that offer support for the theory. It cannot be a scientific truth until it is positively confirmed, and it will be dismissed if contrary evidence is found.
The fundamental difference in the ID and Evolution claims is that evolution is accepted as merely a theory with support which is always subject to the democracy of peer review. ID is a totalitarian iron fist with no want or need of justification save 'the bible'. I put that in quotes because more often than not, there is no justification in religious literature, but only group of people terrified that their entire belief system may come crashing down if they must concede that their mythology isn't historically accurate.
Once upon a time, civilized people came to the realization that from observation comes conclusion, but now Americans - even educated Americans - are saying we should take a step back here, proceed from a pre-concieved notion, and make up a way for it to be right. Even if that means something as asinine as to claim that the layers of the earth's crust are all the same age and that 'things just lived at different altitudes' - Apparently inside the layers of rock, though I haven't ever heard how that is explained.
Slashdot Mirror
For the record, how can something be both unintuitive and logical? :)
I started using vi at the start of my unix use 7 or 8 years ago. I did have trouble at first keeping track of the mode I was in, but it was not a big deal. I accumulated many crib sheets for vi commands over the years and I can naturally do a number of tasks in vi.
That being said, I use vi for quick simple edits only, and I exclusively code in emacs. I can't remember when I started using emacs. I do remember that in a terminal it was impossible at first to remember commands at all and it was frustrating - but no more frustrating than remembering vi command mode keys and colon commands. As with any tool, I found that the more I used it, the more neat functionality I could discover and learn to use effectively. Major and minor editing modes tailor the environment for specific tasks, the control keys are now more natural to me than exiting to command mode every time I want to do something, and now I'm endeavoring on learning to use elisp expressions. I've picked up the emacs pocket reference and browsed through TFB a few times to learn essential commands, and spent as much time in the editor environment as possible, and now I'm fairly competant and comfortable with it.
But it's just like any other tool. If the style fits you and you work with it for a while, you'll appreciate what it can accomplish for you. If you learn vi first, and pick up emacs expecting it to be like vi you will get pissy and post on slashdot Just How Much You Think Emacs Stinks. But that's no more intelligent than hammering nails into wood for a few years, grabbing a screwdriver to do the same thing one day, and then bitching in the hardware forums that screwdrivers are a piece of crap because hammers are so much more intuitive.
This is interesting and all...
But why classify this in the hardware section? Wouldn't the Linux section be more appropriate?
I took this to another level and not only 'unpacked' the text, but the entire perl command for printing the 'unpacked' string as well. Thus perl is ordered to evaluate the statement hidden in the 'unpacked' hexadecimal string, which is 'packed' to reveal a valid perl statement.
I made a perl script to generate the (weakly) obfuscated command. Please keep in mind I am a C programmer by nature and that my approach to Perl is very indicative of that fact:
Is there any reason why I shouldn't look at FBSD as if it were a flavor of Linux? Yeah, it has a different kernel. I guess FBSD might be a little faster? That is what the benchmarks say, but the difference isn't staggering. I certainly don't notice. Is it more stable? I haven't had many problems with Linux that couldn't be blamed on cheap PC hardware.
Yes, a very important reason - FreeBSD is not Linux, just as surely as SCO UnixWare is not Solaris. Their codebase is certainly not the same, and in fact FreeBSD's code lineage dates back many years before Linux.
FreeBSD and Linux, being F/OSS systems, share a very large base of F/OSS software, so looking at kde on X on FreeBSD really won't appear that different from looking at kde on X on linux. I could just as well ask why anyone would want to use Linux when it just looks like a derivative of FreeBSD, which predates it. but that would not be a fair assessment because Linux is a seperate work built by another party. Yes, it is a unix-like system. Yes, it strives to adhere to POSIX standards. Yes, it runs all the same software. But no, it is a different system.
I have been using FreeBSD and NetBSD for many years, and where I work all of our stuff is on SuSE. In my opinion, SuSE is impossible to upgrade, its package system is inadequate, and shorewall is a lousy attempt at ip filtering. If I had my way I'd probably replace everything with FreeBSD. But did you notice somehting about the attitude of my opinions? Wasn't your first thought "Well gee, you use FreeBSD all the time and you've probably barely given SuSE Linux a shot?" If it was, you would be right. Because I learned to accomplish tasks in FreeBSD, I favor it - the same way I favor speaking in english over german because english is my native language. I'm sure if you sit down and think about it, when you picked up FreeBSD you tried to do things in the Debian idiom, expecting Debian results. But you didn't get them. So you're underwhelmed. It's natural, but please don't try to attribute it to FreeBSD being an inadequate copy of your favorite system, because that simply is a lie.
On the packages/ports system, I think you've really overdramaticized your plight with the BSD way-of-doing-things. First, you can cvsup the ports tree and compile from source. But you can also use pkg_add to add binary packages. If you don't want to fetch the package tarball yourself, you can use pkg_add's remote fetching feature. Simply pkg_add -r and you're on your way. It will take care of dependencies and the package database will record the package's information. You can also install portupgrade and use it to magically update a port and its dependencies when it is time to upgrade. It's not a difficult or time consuming system to use. I'm unfamiliar with Debian's package system, so I can't make any comments on it, but FreeBSD's package system has always been very useful fo me, and it gets more powerful all the time.
Overall, though, Linux and BSD really do feed from eachother's growth. What's good for one is good for the other. I may use FreeBSD, but that doesn't mean Linux is useless; and the opposite is true as well. All this bickering is really pointless because both projects will continue on in their own directions; some people will favor the one while some people will favor the other. It's simply a matter of preference
they are still here...
No, they evolved in to homo territus, took over the republican party, and ran for office.
It's called posturing. Just about every animal does it. Posture big enough and your enemies will leave you alone. The USA and USSR did this all through the cold war. If you don't, you can get runover or get suckerpunched if no one thinks you have backbone enough to retaliate (Pearl harbor/WWII for starters).
Posturing only works if the two animals are similar. A lion, for instance, will posture itself to fend off other big cats from its territory, but can't use posturing to fend off a bacteria or virus infection that kills it from the inside. A similar thing can be said about terrorism - because terrorist cells, like parasites and viruses, attack from the inside by abusing the infrastructure of the target to acheive its means. Terrorist cells are too small to be dealt with in conventional military means, and conventional tactics (posturing e.g.) have little or no effect. I doubt very much, for example, that an RPG-toting terrorist that's happy to die in order to kill a few Americans or British or Spanish or what-have-you would fear a gun that will shoot lighting and maybe stun him if he gets within 12 feet of it.
This was a perfectly valid observation. How is it redundant?
How in the hell is this offtopic?
I think the GP points out rightly that it isn't 'charity' when the intention is not noble.
Also when the money is table scraps from the strongarm lawsuit campaigns that Microsoft has ben flinging around. I am wary that this 'donation' is purely a persuasive gesture - which comes at zero cost to Microsoft - intended to persuade the public that Microsoft should be free to flex its litigious muscles - because when Microsoft wins a case, well we all win now don't we?
One thing I've always wanted to seen done. Take all the US and Russian engineers, put them together, give them a blank check and the goal of colonizing space along with permission to use any and all knowlege (including classified) that they posses. And just wait to see how long it is until I'm living in orbit.
With all of the ships adrift in the solar system from broken russian equipment and american software failure, you'd basically have the setting of Space Hulk... minus the space marine power armor... but maybe BLEEX will get there soon.
It looks suspicious to plead the fifth amendment (specifically, "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,") when detained by authorities (what do you have to hide from the police?).
Wait just a second here - the fifth amendment is in place to protect citizens from police or court interrogation (read: confession extraction). Pleading the fifth amendment is not about what you have to hide from the authorities, but rather what evidence do the authorities _not_ have in a case against you that they need you to incriminate yourself? Maybe it looks suspicious, but its purpose is to be a protection from injustice.
In the PR filter game, the filters are not in place to protect the organization from strongarm legal tactics. Some uses are understandable, like preventing the leakage of information about an upcoming product from hitting the streets. Others, like preventing an employee from making a positive public statement about a competitor, are a little less admirable.
However, the more OS choices/forks there are, the less likely that all the fixes will get merged into any *single* OS. So users will encounter some errors no matter which OS they use, which is not optimal for the user.
OK, BSD is another choice for users, and choices and forks are bad things for users. Well obviously Linux must be superior. Let's go install one! The choice should be simple, since Linux apparently follows this theory and there are few or no variations, right? So what should I install?
A Debian system - Adamantix? Amber? ASLinux? Debian? Gnoppix? Guadalinex? Hiweed? Kanotix? Knoppix? Kurumin? LinEx? Loco? Rays? Skole? Symphony? Ubuntu? Kubuntu?
An RPM system: aLinux? ALT? Ark? ASPLinux? Blag? Caixa Mágica? cAos? CentOS? Cobind Desktop? Conectiva? EduLinux? Fedora Core? Linux Mobile System? Magic? Mandriva? Novell Linux Desktop? PCLinuxOS? PCQLinux2004? PLD? QiLinux? Red Flag? Red Hat Enterprise? Scientific? SUSE? Tinfoil Hat? Trustix? Turbolinux? Vine? White Box Enterprise? Yellow Dog? YOPER?
A slackware system - Kate OS? MiniSlack? Plamo? Slackware? Ultima? SLAX? Frugalware?
Or maybe another - Arch? Foresight? Gentoo? GoboLinux? Heretix? Impi Linux? Jedi GNU/Linux? Linux From Scratch? Lunar? MkLinux? Onebase? Sorcerer? Source Mage? Ututo?
The best solution is to stick with the FREE OS that has the best chance of survival (Linux), and if you hit a showstopper, help out and fix it :) Even if you're not a programmer, you can still email maintainers, fill bug reports, and offer to test out patches on your machine.
My, if this isn't a troll... And what metric did you use to compare the longevity of Linux to the longevity of other F/OSS systems?
I disagree. Have you ever watched George W. Bush give a public speech?
I swear, just listening to that man kills brain cells...
5 years? And you think people "infridge" on a copyright? Somehow I have my doubts as to the quality of that education...
According to the Constitutional Amendments;
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
I don't see how due process, double jeopardy, and property rights are equivocal with shutting employees up from freely speaking with the press. In all truth, such a practice is suppressive of the first amendment, which states: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ..."
So would you please elaborate?
Popularity of this symptom does not in any way indicate that it is non-slimy in nature. Lying, sitting on truth, and massaging the truth are all equally slimy from my perspective, regardless of the quantity of fortune 500 companies that participate in those tactics.
The parent is perfectly well within reason to have a sticky feeling from this article.
My source was not the movie.
this was my source.
Don't throw assumptions around, please.
Yes. The declaration of independence is a good one.
"... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government."I was referring to the tendency for the pinto's gas to explode all over its passengers in a collision, and the corvair did in fact have excessive weight and lean that made it succeptable to excessive rolling. Aside from being dangerous in a wreck, the car also had a very large seal (6" x 16')that if not kept in like-new or better condition would allow carbon monoxide to mix in to the cabin air.
Anyway, the statement was meant to be an attention-getter and was not directed at the innovation of the vehicle - only a reminder that the negative side effects the grandparent mentioned equally warrant the attention that the PC 'revolution' they accompanied recieves.
And I also don't recall using the car analogy as a logical argument comparing cost to quality. You provided an argument for the benefits of the affordable corvair, and projected the antithesis of your logic into your perception of my argument. You forget that I simply stated that Microsoft was not the sole champion of the PC 'revolution'.
Microsoft Vista - It Just (Barely) Works!
To revisit the car analogy, I think anyone that's ever been in a wreck in a Pinto or a Corvair will tell you the negative implications to such a philosophy.
And the PC revolution was here without Microsoft. The IBM PC was not made possible by Microsoft, Microsoft only got a deal on OS licensing. If MS hadn't been around, the PC would still have hit the market with a different OS (CP/M perhaps, which by all accounts was the most successful OS of the day and of which QDOS - to be usurped and called MS-DOS - was a rough implementation), or perhaps ATARI would have stepped up in its place. Most probably Apple would have retained the PC throne. In any case, Microsoft did not make the PC possible, it only latched on to a market for profit. There was nothing noble about it, Bill Gates and his cronies made a deal with IBM to distribute exclusively a fictional OS that MS didn't have, bought QDOS from SCP, and gave it to IBM as their own. They used a cheap and dirty gamble to get their position and fortune, not a noble move on behalf of home computer users everywhere as you would pretend.
Yep. That's one of the funnier ideas. That brings to mind a drawing I believe Morris produced in retort to the theory that aquatic mammals evolved from landbound hoofed mammals. It was a picture of a whale with hooves in the ocean saying "please don't eat me for 40 million years while I evolve fins" or something to that effect. It's used as an argument against evolution, while it stems from assumptions that are completely opposite from evolution in the first place - namely that the animal 'decided' to evolve, chose its environment without features suitable for it, and made the transition instantaneously. But it is, however, perfectly within reason of the *poof*-and-something-happens view of the world that they have.
Yes, I failed to make that distinction initially, though I did later go on to state that evolution could be proved false. I think I grabbed a different quote from the parent than I had intended.
And who can beat logic like that when we have such great examples of theologically based governments such as Afghanistan's Taliban to support the theory?
Centralized authority - no matter if it is called a dictator, a pope, a mullah, or a theology - is the basis for autocracy. Democracy cannot exist in the presence of over-ruling authority that determines policy without regard to public concensus. Therefore religious minded government cannot be democratic by definition. In fact, as history has shown us, religious governments or likely more to be themselves fascist in nature.
That's why I forsee democracy to be next on the hit-list for ultra-conservative christians. Theocratic autocracy is the security blanket they need to ensure their domination, and the only system that could co-exist with the principles of divine authority.
Hence it is a theory. But it is a theory with supporting evidence. Scientists have made many observations of microevolution in species that adapt to their environment, that vertebrate embryos share similar or exactly the same structure during early development, changes over time in physical structure of animals the fossil record, and other observations that offer support for the theory. It cannot be a scientific truth until it is positively confirmed, and it will be dismissed if contrary evidence is found.
The fundamental difference in the ID and Evolution claims is that evolution is accepted as merely a theory with support which is always subject to the democracy of peer review. ID is a totalitarian iron fist with no want or need of justification save 'the bible'. I put that in quotes because more often than not, there is no justification in religious literature, but only group of people terrified that their entire belief system may come crashing down if they must concede that their mythology isn't historically accurate.
Once upon a time, civilized people came to the realization that from observation comes conclusion, but now Americans - even educated Americans - are saying we should take a step back here, proceed from a pre-concieved notion, and make up a way for it to be right. Even if that means something as asinine as to claim that the layers of the earth's crust are all the same age and that 'things just lived at different altitudes' - Apparently inside the layers of rock, though I haven't ever heard how that is explained.