Specifically, there's very little mention of turning space exploration into a paying venture
Well, sure there is a potential for paying ventures, but only if you and your buddies have tons of stock in companies - like, say, Halliburton - that will definitely profit from the investment of our tax dollars into the interplanetary adventures of the United States space program.
Don't get me wrong, I want to go back to the moon and onward to mars, but I think that there is a certain hidden impetus for a lot of the goings-on in the US government these days.
My Windows XP box
Is the most powerful terminal
I have ever used
To ssh into my FreeBSD box
So that I can avoid Windows XP
When I have work to do
And I am too lazy to get up
And sit in front of it.
I'm also almost done crafting a nifty little gadget I call a "webslinger"... basically I strap a large coil of CATV to my back, and I have this little wrist gun that shoots it out about 150 meters... I haven't gotten it to stick to anything but rj45 wall jacks yet, but I'm working on it...
To say that windows only survives due to ignorance and arrogance is silly.
Very true, and I hope I didn't come off implying this at all. Hopefully one day the playing field will be more even, and users will be more informed about their choices.. that's really the most I could hope for. I mean, seriously, any monopoly brings the kind of upsets that some of us have with Microsoft. The concept of competition spurs innovation far more rapidly than monopolized security. That's why capitalism and a free market are supposed to be such Good Things after all. But they're not free, and we can't trust the large vendors to preserve them.
Do you think that people who can't rebuild their car from top to bottom shouldn't drive them? The level of ability for operating a linux computer has, in general, been more in depth than most people wish to go. Sure they can run windows update and disk defrag, but they're not about to compile something, let alone recompile the kernel.
Not at all. But I do think they should be aware of security in whatever operating system they choose (or are chosen for) to drive their machine with. Naturally, I can't expect that - just like I can't expect the driver next to me on the highway to look beside them before swerving into my lane, but it would be nice.
I used to think that everyone should switch to BSD or Linux, but it's really a naive idea. There will always be Windows fanboys, uninformed computer buyers, technophobes, and simple users that really are better off in that environment. And that's fine. What I am wary of is that many of them are the crazy drivers with the beaten up junkers causing hell on the information highway, because they simply never bothered to get a clue.
... there's so few regular tasks you should be doing by TSing into the server, the 2-connection limit shouldn't *be* a problem. Think of it as incentive to do it The Right Way.
In the Windows world, you're right.. unfortunately. but focus beyond administration - After you've bought that multi-thousand dollar piece of user software and installed it on your windows server, to allow multiple users to access it you must buy more licenses to install it on client machines. Remote access (at least in the UNIX/XWindows philosophy) should serve the purpose of distributing computing resources to users. If you've got that big fancy computer with the expensive fancy software on it, why not let all of your users run it remotely rather than installing it on their own systems? But, as has been pointed out, commercial vendors tend to get greedy and leverage that capability in exchange for seedy license agreements.. kind of like mob protection money.
I'm willing to bet that even SCO, that paragon of proprietary and evil software, doesn't dare cripple their OS as such (I could be wrong, I've never had the pleasure of working with SCO Unix).
You'd be wrong. SCO OpenServer, at least, only allows 5 (I think, might be less) simultaneous logins unless you buy more "CALs".
Again, you're right on the money here, though I'd like to pretend that commercial UNIX vendors had a Clue distributed their way from time to time. Tru64 and VMS were encumbered by the "License PAK"(PAQ when compaq took over the Alpha), which basically prohibited the addition of user accounts until the proper licenses were entered into the license database. I found this out while trying to make an old Jensen Alpha useful. Did I mention that it's a pretty paperweight at the moment?
What would you think if there were hammer geeks who spent endless amounts of time refining, modding, and configuring their hammers? Geeks who felt that only unthinking losers wouldn't change their hammers every six months. Geeks that felt it a pathetic display of ignorance that someone would not take the time to know their hammer intimately. Geeks that could endlessly debate shaft lengths, handle materials, and head geometry. In all likelihood, there would be a very large body of people who would think, 'It's a fscking hammer. I don't want to be a craftsman or hammer designer. If the thing don't hammer simply, it's of no use to me.'
Your analogy is a bit skewed. A hammer doesn't exactly have the same power in society as a computer. A hammer can't communicate with another hammer. A hammer doesn't hold bank records or social security numbers or credit card accounts. A hammer doesn't spread hammer viruses that allow other hammer users to steal that information. A geek hammer user doesn't use his hammer skills to exploit the weaknesses of your hammer to break into it.
Your car is a decent analogy to a computer, but as you pointed out most people simply dump it into someone else's lap when something "don't work" - that's why so many people drive broken down heaps, or constantly have their vehicles in the shop, or destroy their engines from years of unmaintained use. A person that never bothered to understand that their car needs brake maintenance will only figure it out when their brakes finally go and they careen into another car. But also those who change their own oil, perform tune-ups themselves, and know How Their Car Works tend to drive well-running vehicles that are not road hazards. It's called responsible ownership. Could you argue that awareness of the care and maintenance of a car is an undesirable thing?
You legally are required to have a license to drive a car. If it's simply a tool, why would that be? Why should you have to intimately know the operation of driving a tool? Well, it's a powerful tool. It's also a dangerous tool. You can cause massive amounts of damage with a car because of its power. An idiot driver that doesn't signal before merging on the highway can cause multi-car wrecks. People cause fatalities by running stop lights and stop signs. Similarly, a person with a computer that doesn't care to understand the need for its security quickly becomes a zombie node in massive DoS attacks on other systems. These cost network providers untold sums of money in downtime and customer dissatisfaction. In some cases it allows their personal information to be stolen, just as if they were to keep their bank records in their cars without locking the doors - or their windows were smashed out and the records taken. Do you see the relationship here? The power that computers and global internetworking have given us must be taken with some measure of responsibility for the technology to be safe. Ignorance is not something to take pride or comfort in - there is no reason that computer users should not be more aware of their computers and how to properly maintain them.
Oh, and the hammer geeks that you mentioned are the reason why we have progressed from hand rocks, animal bones, and tree stumps to clawhammers, ball peen hammers, plastic and rubber mallets, and sledgehammers.
It has nothing to do with design; it's purely a licensing move. Windows XP Home has no Terminal Services. Windows XP Professional allows one TS connection or console session. Windows Server in "remote administration" mode allows two TS connections plus a console session. To get more than two TS sessions, you need to by TS licenses.
Ah, good call. Their remote access solution is, out of the box, purposefully encumbered to prompt the user to Buy More Stuff. Bad design by mistake is a curse for most software engineers, but bad design by intention seems to be Microsoft's Tao of Making Money.
Yeah because higher costs, Microsoft lock-in, constant security issues and greater hardware difficulties are less trouble than installing VNC.
Also, IIRC using MS's Remote Desktop Connection the system can still only service one acting user login at a time... if another user is already logged in, you might as well forget about it. Whereas with VNC (and especially the X protocol and XDMCP) a system can handle multiple simultaneous user and client sessions. Microsoft is still over 20 years behind in timesharing design...
Because Windows OneCare is a service, you will not need to wait for a new version in order to help protect your system from new threats or to take advantage of new features. Windows OneCare updates itself automatically over the Internet so you always have the latest technology.
So basically, "We've opened another giant door for the entry of viruses into the system, and you're going to pay for it.. you poor suckers!"
b) Unlike common myth on/. the Nazi's did not set the fire.
First of all, don't play the common/. "I'm more elite than you" card. This is debatable. With Goering so close at hand before the starting of the fire, and the the accusations of a Communist uprising even before Marinus was apprehended, the arson could very well have had non-communist origin. I personally think Marinus was an easy scapegoat, his ties to the communist movement allowed the Nazis to draw up a good conspiracy theory, and it is well known that Victors always write the history books. Who had more to gain from the burning of the Reichstag, after all? It certainly gave the Nazis enough public fear to press their advantage over the communists.
In short, I know Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany was a degree of mine. Patriot Act is no Nazi Germany enableing act or anything else.
That's fantastic. I am sure you know better, so I should believe everything you post. Your grammar assures me that in some university somewhere there is some joker handing out a degree in "Nazi Germany".
All sarcasm aside; I have an opinion and my opinion is that both the Patriot Act and the Reichstagsbrandverordnung were passed to accomplish the same thing - legal capacity of the State to get around the constitutional provisions protecting its enemies. Communists for Germany, terrorists for the USA. I simply draw the parallel to emphasize what negative implications surround the limitation and suspension of civil liberties.
You're right. What I'm referring to is the Reichstagsbrandverordnung.. I had forgotten the german word for the act and thought that the enabling act was what I was thinking of.
But the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree) did the same thing that the patriot act did - suspend civil rights to enable the government to act freely during what was declared as the beginnings of a communist uprising. Freedoms of the press, habaeus corpus, and protection from unwarranted search and siezure are just a few of the civil rights suspended or limited in provisions from both the Patriot act and Rechstagsbrandverordnung.
Thank you for posting this. Most people don't get past a knee jerk reaction and bother to look at what is really in Patriot beyond the FUD.
The Patriot Act itself was a knee-jerk reaction, and not too much unlike the Enabling Act passed after the burning of the Reichstag in 1933. I'm still not too certain that the Patriot Act did not have the same fitness to purpose as the Enabling Act.
Kids are smarter than people think, they see the writing on the wall. Why go to school for 4-5 years only to find a job market with no room for you. So all the best and brightest kids end up going to law school, which is in and of itself a terrifying thought.
It's funny you should mention that... at my Alma Mater this spring there were about 3 times as many Management Information Systems graduates as there were Computer Science graduates. Marketing and Management graduates constituted over half the entire graduating class. It seems sadly humorous to me that so many educated 'Managers' are being produced in America with so few educated programmers to manage.
Didn't mean to snoop on your conversation, guys, but Exchange delivered me all of your email this week.
Why don't we just *borrow* some BSD code again? We can strip off the license, patent it, and no one will be in a position to complain. Plus we have ammunition for future court appearances!
You Cannot Rip People Off - what haven't we figured out about that?
Here's what we haven't figured out.. well, some people have figured it out, but what they've figured out is how to corner markets. When someone like, say, Cisco has under IP protection an IETF adopted standard protocol, nobody is allowed to implement said protocol without paying Cisco buku licensing dollars - if Cisco even agrees to license it. This leads to a standard that is effectively owned by a proprietary provider that cannot be freely implemented. This is exactly what happened with VRRP. It's a standard! But Cisco owns it! So the free world has to pay up or not use the standard. This is what prompted CARP http://kerneltrap.org/node/1021 to come into existance.
IP may have originally been intended to encourage scientific development, but these days it is a farce that is abused by moneyholders to fill their coffers. When you can patent the idea of a process, and no one else can implement it, that process is adopted slowly and poorly. Take networking for example. Who uses IPX on the internet? Appletalk? The reason TCP/IP took off is because TCP and IP were open protocols, not because a computer giant had them secured in their Intellectual Property trophy vaults. But the owners of Appletalk and IPX did manage to secure a number of customers in the trap of interoperability.
The conclusion of point 6. is non sequitar. You are using mathmatetical definitons to setup categories and trying to limit them like a mathmatietical proof. If we are dealing with free agents then these the conclusions drawn by this exercise is meaningless and inane. Regardless of other differences both God and humans have wills. Abstract numbers and number systems do not have wills do not have wills. Unless you are trying to argue that God, humanity, or both have do not have wills; you can not say either party would be categorically uninterested in the other.
6. If man's actions are exclusively his own, and he does not have unlimited power, then they do not intersect the set of god's actions
Perhaps I should have used 'acts' instead of 'actions'. I'm attempting to show that if man's acts are exclusively his own (his set of acts intersects no other set), and man is not omnipotent(man's set of acts is not equal to all acts), then man and god cannot share any set of acts.
Since man's set of acts S does not intersect U (the set of all acts, which is equal to god's set of acts G), then S must be empty or god's set of acts G does not equal U and god is not omnipotent; assuming previous assertions are true.
I think the false assumption is that the behavior of either God or human beings can be reduced to simple algebric rules.
That's fair. I must make that assumption to proceed. If you can prove that assumption false, then my argument can't be conclusive.
Support is not free. User training is not free. IT training is not free. Making all your other applications play nice, integrate into websites, case management, workflow management, document management and so on isn't. Exchange and integration with other departments, end-users and subcontractors isn't. Custom development isn't. And by that I mean everything from huge internal applications to simple VBA macros.
Support, training, and custom development is not free. But neither is it cheap from a vendor. Hiring a handful of OSS developers who can do the same job with freely available software at agency level salary pay is a much more viable alternative for increasingly more government agencies.
What I am saying is the buck stops with the one with free will who commits the act. Saying that God gave me the ability to do what I want, and everything I do is his fault because of this is a complete denial of what free will is. In other words, when I, a being with free will, make a decision, have a thought, or commit an action, the I am responsible. I cannot attribute my actions to another person.
You're simply re-stating your original argument that I proved to be false. I'll prove it again for your ignorance.
1. Assert "god is omnipotent" to be true
2. Omnipotence is defined as "having unlimited power", and god's set of actions encompass all possible actions
3. This lets us form the statement "God has unlimited power if and only if God is omnipotent", since a definition infers an exclusive relationship
4. Assert man is not omnipotent. Since man is not omnipotent, man cannot have unlimited power from argument 3.
5. Assert man's actions are exclusively his own.
6. If man's actions are exclusively his own, and he does not have unlimited power, then they do not intersect the set of god's actions
7. For any set S Union U- (the complement set of all actions), the result is the empty set, meaning man's set of actions is empty.
8. Therefore at least one of your assertions is false, and god is responsible for all actions, god is not omnipotent, or man is omnipotent.
I find it very interesting that the arguments against God and his character are VERY similar (some are identical) to the ones that the Bible describes Satan having.
So label me a heretic because you cannot form a logically valid argument. If you will notice, I am not arguing about god but only your arguments. As it so happens, I do believe in a god, but I do not make the same wild assertions about that god as you do.
Mankind has free will and God has made provisions for the eternal lives of the children that are starving.
But again, you're back to square one in this argument because god could by action or inaction cause mankind to not have free will, which by your definition is what allows mankind to cause suffering.
So, again we have god making inaction to prevent the starvation, which is the same as a direct action for an omnipotent being, which is a malicious action.
I'm not necessarily saying I support the parent argument, but you are competing on the grounds of logic here and your counterargument is an appeal to false authority at worst and circular argument at best.
When my kids show me a game, I usually say that it's nothing but the same old running-jumping-kicking-shooting with a new background. They leave in a huff.
Well, obviously his kids should be proof enough to him that he's wrong. If his kids were bored with this 'same-old-running-jumping with a new background', then they really wouldn't be interested in it, would they?
And his paranoia over virtual dog sex on the DS is pretty hilarious. This guy obviously hasn't had a clue distributed his way in a while, and is just pissing and moaning.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, sure there is a potential for paying ventures, but only if you and your buddies have tons of stock in companies - like, say, Halliburton - that will definitely profit from the investment of our tax dollars into the interplanetary adventures of the United States space program.
Don't get me wrong, I want to go back to the moon and onward to mars, but I think that there is a certain hidden impetus for a lot of the goings-on in the US government these days.
Hey, I've got it! What we need is a new keyboard layout, in the spirit of the DVORAK layout, that makes typing quicker and easier for programmers.
We could name it the "K&R" layout. The home row would be characters ;{}[].->/ , and the space bar would be replaced with a massive DELETE.
My Windows XP box
Is the most powerful terminal
I have ever used
To ssh into my FreeBSD box
So that I can avoid Windows XP
When I have work to do
And I am too lazy to get up
And sit in front of it.
...could you please specify what color you would like your fantastic bikeshed painted?
*blah blah blah* our business model is obsolete *blah blah blah blah*
I'm also almost done crafting a nifty little gadget I call a "webslinger" ... basically I strap a large coil of CATV to my back, and I have this little wrist gun that shoots it out about 150 meters... I haven't gotten it to stick to anything but rj45 wall jacks yet, but I'm working on it...
Freedom costs a buck-oh-five you know.
Not at all. But I do think they should be aware of security in whatever operating system they choose (or are chosen for) to drive their machine with. Naturally, I can't expect that - just like I can't expect the driver next to me on the highway to look beside them before swerving into my lane, but it would be nice.
I used to think that everyone should switch to BSD or Linux, but it's really a naive idea. There will always be Windows fanboys, uninformed computer buyers, technophobes, and simple users that really are better off in that environment. And that's fine. What I am wary of is that many of them are the crazy drivers with the beaten up junkers causing hell on the information highway, because they simply never bothered to get a clue.
In the Windows world, you're right.. unfortunately. but focus beyond administration - After you've bought that multi-thousand dollar piece of user software and installed it on your windows server, to allow multiple users to access it you must buy more licenses to install it on client machines. Remote access (at least in the UNIX/XWindows philosophy) should serve the purpose of distributing computing resources to users. If you've got that big fancy computer with the expensive fancy software on it, why not let all of your users run it remotely rather than installing it on their own systems? But, as has been pointed out, commercial vendors tend to get greedy and leverage that capability in exchange for seedy license agreements.. kind of like mob protection money.
Again, you're right on the money here, though I'd like to pretend that commercial UNIX vendors had a Clue distributed their way from time to time. Tru64 and VMS were encumbered by the "License PAK"(PAQ when compaq took over the Alpha), which basically prohibited the addition of user accounts until the proper licenses were entered into the license database. I found this out while trying to make an old Jensen Alpha useful. Did I mention that it's a pretty paperweight at the moment?
Your analogy is a bit skewed. A hammer doesn't exactly have the same power in society as a computer. A hammer can't communicate with another hammer. A hammer doesn't hold bank records or social security numbers or credit card accounts. A hammer doesn't spread hammer viruses that allow other hammer users to steal that information. A geek hammer user doesn't use his hammer skills to exploit the weaknesses of your hammer to break into it.
Your car is a decent analogy to a computer, but as you pointed out most people simply dump it into someone else's lap when something "don't work" - that's why so many people drive broken down heaps, or constantly have their vehicles in the shop, or destroy their engines from years of unmaintained use. A person that never bothered to understand that their car needs brake maintenance will only figure it out when their brakes finally go and they careen into another car. But also those who change their own oil, perform tune-ups themselves, and know How Their Car Works tend to drive well-running vehicles that are not road hazards. It's called responsible ownership. Could you argue that awareness of the care and maintenance of a car is an undesirable thing?
You legally are required to have a license to drive a car. If it's simply a tool, why would that be? Why should you have to intimately know the operation of driving a tool? Well, it's a powerful tool. It's also a dangerous tool. You can cause massive amounts of damage with a car because of its power. An idiot driver that doesn't signal before merging on the highway can cause multi-car wrecks. People cause fatalities by running stop lights and stop signs. Similarly, a person with a computer that doesn't care to understand the need for its security quickly becomes a zombie node in massive DoS attacks on other systems. These cost network providers untold sums of money in downtime and customer dissatisfaction. In some cases it allows their personal information to be stolen, just as if they were to keep their bank records in their cars without locking the doors - or their windows were smashed out and the records taken. Do you see the relationship here? The power that computers and global internetworking have given us must be taken with some measure of responsibility for the technology to be safe. Ignorance is not something to take pride or comfort in - there is no reason that computer users should not be more aware of their computers and how to properly maintain them.
Oh, and the hammer geeks that you mentioned are the reason why we have progressed from hand rocks, animal bones, and tree stumps to clawhammers, ball peen hammers, plastic and rubber mallets, and sledgehammers.
That's fantastic. I am sure you know better, so I should believe everything you post. Your grammar assures me that in some university somewhere there is some joker handing out a degree in "Nazi Germany".
All sarcasm aside; I have an opinion and my opinion is that both the Patriot Act and the Reichstagsbrandverordnung were passed to accomplish the same thing - legal capacity of the State to get around the constitutional provisions protecting its enemies. Communists for Germany, terrorists for the USA. I simply draw the parallel to emphasize what negative implications surround the limitation and suspension of civil liberties.
Now pull your head in.
You're right. What I'm referring to is the Reichstagsbrandverordnung.. I had forgotten the german word for the act and thought that the enabling act was what I was thinking of.
But the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree) did the same thing that the patriot act did - suspend civil rights to enable the government to act freely during what was declared as the beginnings of a communist uprising. Freedoms of the press, habaeus corpus, and protection from unwarranted search and siezure are just a few of the civil rights suspended or limited in provisions from both the Patriot act and Rechstagsbrandverordnung.
It's funny you should mention that... at my Alma Mater this spring there were about 3 times as many Management Information Systems graduates as there were Computer Science graduates. Marketing and Management graduates constituted over half the entire graduating class. It seems sadly humorous to me that so many educated 'Managers' are being produced in America with so few educated programmers to manage.
From: Jim Allchin
Subject: Re:Re: Longhorn
Didn't mean to snoop on your conversation, guys, but Exchange delivered me all of your email this week.
Why don't we just *borrow* some BSD code again? We can strip off the license, patent it, and no one will be in a position to complain. Plus we have ammunition for future court appearances!
You will be assimilated,
-Jim
IP may have originally been intended to encourage scientific development, but these days it is a farce that is abused by moneyholders to fill their coffers. When you can patent the idea of a process, and no one else can implement it, that process is adopted slowly and poorly. Take networking for example. Who uses IPX on the internet? Appletalk? The reason TCP/IP took off is because TCP and IP were open protocols, not because a computer giant had them secured in their Intellectual Property trophy vaults. But the owners of Appletalk and IPX did manage to secure a number of customers in the trap of interoperability.
Perhaps I should have used 'acts' instead of 'actions'. I'm attempting to show that if man's acts are exclusively his own (his set of acts intersects no other set), and man is not omnipotent(man's set of acts is not equal to all acts), then man and god cannot share any set of acts.
Since man's set of acts S does not intersect U (the set of all acts, which is equal to god's set of acts G), then S must be empty or god's set of acts G does not equal U and god is not omnipotent; assuming previous assertions are true.
That's fair. I must make that assumption to proceed. If you can prove that assumption false, then my argument can't be conclusive.
1. Assert "god is omnipotent" to be true
2. Omnipotence is defined as "having unlimited power", and god's set of actions encompass all possible actions
3. This lets us form the statement "God has unlimited power if and only if God is omnipotent", since a definition infers an exclusive relationship
4. Assert man is not omnipotent. Since man is not omnipotent, man cannot have unlimited power from argument 3.
5. Assert man's actions are exclusively his own.
6. If man's actions are exclusively his own, and he does not have unlimited power, then they do not intersect the set of god's actions
7. For any set S Union U- (the complement set of all actions), the result is the empty set, meaning man's set of actions is empty.
8. Therefore at least one of your assertions is false, and god is responsible for all actions, god is not omnipotent, or man is omnipotent.
So label me a heretic because you cannot form a logically valid argument. If you will notice, I am not arguing about god but only your arguments. As it so happens, I do believe in a god, but I do not make the same wild assertions about that god as you do.
So, again we have god making inaction to prevent the starvation, which is the same as a direct action for an omnipotent being, which is a malicious action.
I'm not necessarily saying I support the parent argument, but you are competing on the grounds of logic here and your counterargument is an appeal to false authority at worst and circular argument at best.
Well, obviously his kids should be proof enough to him that he's wrong. If his kids were bored with this 'same-old-running-jumping with a new background', then they really wouldn't be interested in it, would they?
And his paranoia over virtual dog sex on the DS is pretty hilarious. This guy obviously hasn't had a clue distributed his way in a while, and is just pissing and moaning.