Yes, and that's why Sequoia's threatening to sue. They obviously don't want the machine inspected.
Maybe Sequoia should take their voting machines and shove them up their ass. The last 2 elections have shown the value of electronic voting machines. What ever happened to the good 'ol reliable paper ballot with the bubble you color in next to the person you want to cast your vote for. Simplicity at it finest.
Petition signed, check.
Keep up the good work Bruce.
We're behind you all the way.
Thank you for all your efforts to keep good software free.
Best regards and good luck
Dennis
Amazing what one 2-term presidential administration makes, aka, 8 years. If the level of domestic spying and surveillance going on today had been engaged during Bill Clinton's term, the republican press would have made a big issue out of it. But today all they, the "beetle-like-men", have to do is go to their list of key words like, terrorists, threat level, patriot act, etc... and they can literally wipe their asses with the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Are the judges in East Texas running a scam? They must know that they are viewed as the Patent Troll Capital, and that not a positive distiction. Is there money for the court involved in this type litigation?
I lived in Texas during my late teens for a couple years, 30+ years ago, but it is much the same today. They are angry their side lost the civil war, so this is their way of getting even with the rest of the country. Yep, you bet the Judges in east Texas ARE getting kick backs in smoke filled whore houses, for siding with the patent trolls.
To put this into perspective, my older sister married a texas boy long ago, he was an uneducated hillbilly but had a business repairing tractors, she has a master degree in psychology and counseled troubled youth, they had kids, he turned out to be a disturbed nut case, years later she couldn't take the abuse anymore and wanted out, she sued him for divorce and custody of the kids, the judge gave him full custody of the kids AND made her pay him child support. Now that is just about as good 'ol boy, cross burning, redneck, incest is best, my daddy and momma were brother and sister before they were married, as you can get I tell ya.
I'm not subject to M$ lock-in, I have ten times the applications you have in your best BSD variant. But most important of all, the last time I tried to install FreeBSD, I ended up with something that no average user could use. I'm not a BSCS, I'm a business owner looking for an easy to install desktop OS that is production ready, reliable, stable, and not Microsoft.
The BSD system is still a cousin and great for server application but it is not ready for the desktop prime time. When it has the software ported to it and is as simple to install as Debian Etch or Lenny, then you may have something to brag about and I'll give it a sincere consideration.
I for one see the need to reform the software patent system. It has gone completely insane. I am not a software programmer by trade, but have the capability to so if I choose. New software programmers are at the mercy of patent lawsuits for frivolous and obvious existing patents held by patent troll investment corporations.
Everyday we now read about new software patents for stupid ideas like ordering a product online by pushing a button on a web page, etc...
Patenting vague ideas will cripple progress and innovation of REAL patentable concepts. There are good ideas out there for innovation but are now sidelined by fear of penalty by broadly vague concept patents.
As stated before in other posts, time durations also need to be revised.
If the government thinks you're dead, you don't have to pay taxes, any, none, zip, zilch. The bank work around would be to buy a fake birth certificate, get the needed SS#, and you're home free to cash your paychecks. I actually knew a guy that defrauded the IRS years ago and this is how he assumed a new identity. No, it wasn't me.
So you can prove beyond reasonable doubt that Global Warming is the result of mandkinds 3% CO2? I can't prove the opposite, but this page is worth a read to counter the propaganda and fud spread by politicians.
It's funny how people in general get all emotional and irrational over modern concepts such as Global Warming. You can put a plethora of real data based on observations and measurements in front of them, but their mind is set to "Don't bother me with facts, my mind is already made up". This is where the internet can be a powerful tool when searching what is really going on. I can give you links to credible research for self education of actual facts. It kills me to watch clips of GWB, and his kind, babbling stupid shit to the public and the public swallows all it hook line & sinker. If your mind is already made up on what you want to believe, I can't prove anything to you "beyond reasonable doubt" regardless of facts.
This is a difficult subject due to many variables. Our oceans have been, and are, capable of absorbing a good deal of what we dump into our atmosphere. (There is a rabbit trail I could go down here regarding cancers developing on the skin of Beluga whales caused by the toxic soup that ends up in our oceans, but I won't go there right now) There is also a concept of Global Cooling caused by the particulate matter industry spews into our skies. The fear is that if developing nations such as China and India adopt stricter controls over their automotive and industrial emissions, the rate of warming caused by CO2 would accelerate.
My friend, we are in a very interesting time. Do we take the concept of Global Warming seriously and begin doing something about it now? Or do we just bury our heads in the sand and think,... "life as usual"... "What me worry?"... "Fuck it, I'm only totally here for a while, and then I'm gone"...
As I've said before, we are the masters of our own destiny. If the concept of Global Warming is true, where is the point of no return? And now we've totally fucked up our planet beyond repair.
Here is my own personal "Fuck it!": Our planet is getting too overcrowded, and most of our brethren homo sapiens are morons. We may have a forced thinning of the species in our future when lower latitudes turn into barren wastelands and billions perish from starvation. I'm waiting for Fairbanks to become beach front property with the climate of Palm Springs. How's that grab your ass?
So what happens when the people in said community start using dynamite-tipped harpoons to hunt the whales?
Are they allowed to use aluminum boats?
I have not seen this part first hand so I may be speaking out my back side. They traditionally hunt the Narwhal whales so traditional harpoons would be used. Not sure if they still use their sea kayaks or more modern boats. The whale blubber gets distributed to everyone in the village. One use for the blubber is to make Eskimo ice cream. My wife has had it and says it's pretty funky.
Cultures don't have a right to live. People have a right to live. If your culture becomes unviable, you move on. It's not the rest of the planet's job to help you to live like a carbon copy of your father. We find this self evident with business models, but cultures evoke silly emotional reactions.
Wrong response... These people have lived on that spot for thousands of years. Their history and culture defines them and their way of life. Although hunting and killing whales for modern cultures is obsolete, many native villages along the Bearing sea and Arctic ocean still perform these traditions.
Life in Alaska is different than life in New York City or any other part of the lower 48 for that matter. I live in Alaska. I'm not native, but interact with natives all the time. They are a proud people. They have adopted much of modern technology such as snow machines (snow mobiles) for winter travel, but they retain their culture.
Global warming is more apparent here than lower latitudes. Winters are becoming milder and occasionally winter temperatures are warmer in the Alaska interior than places like Reno Nevada. Arctic sea ice is receding and polar bears that live on sea ice are having to swim great distances between ice fields. Many of them drown. Global warming affects us all and future generations.
I personally applaud this lawsuit if it causes people to realize that our industrial soceity is causing damage to our world. We are the masters of our own destiny. The damage we do to our planet today is what we leave for our children to deal with tomorrow.
My HP laptop dual boots both XP and Etch. Both boot times are fairly equal either way. The difference is in running the system and doing my work. Linux is always responsive and consistent, but XP sometimes daydreams between tasks and is not consistently responsive. XP is a far cry better than '95 or '98 but is not my favorite desktop system. Linux holds that honor hands down. Even most windows based software sucks compared to most Linux alternative applications.
After rebuffing Microsoft, Yahoo reportedly began discussing a possible Internet partnership with media conglomerate News Corp., which owns the popular MySpace Web site, and exploring an advertising partnership with Google, its biggest rival.
The company also adopted new severance packages that would protect employees in the event of a Microsoft takeover, a move the lawsuit labels as a blatant effort to drive up the cost of an acquisition. ... Microsoft has hired a proxy solicitation group to help oust the 10 members of Yahoo's board, all of whom are up for re-election this year.
"An imminent proxy fight necessitates judicial intervention since it poses a deadline for Yahoo's board to place shares in friendly hands," according to the plaintiffs, who allege that Yahoo board members have placed "personal distaste for Microsoft" ahead of shareholder welfare.
Similar to Microsoft tampering with the ISO vote, now they are trying to replace the Yahoo board members with others sympathetic to Microsoft's desires for a search technology acquisition.
I guess if M$ succeeds, I may have to dump my Yahoo mail account and go to Google mail when I work away from my office. Until now Yahoo has been fairly dependable, but under M$ control it would surely turn to shit just as Hotmail has.
I've been there before in a past life my friend, but if given the choice I'd take sex anytime over watching TV. Hell, there is very little on anymore worth watching. Most programming today is pure garbage.
If anyone out there has a significant other or spouse that withholds sex on them, dump the bitch and find another. Most women that use sex as a tool can be cured of that when told "If I don't get it from you, then I'll find it somewhere else."
I was there once and did in fact dump that one. It cost me dearly, but 6 months later I found a much better model. Fortunately this woman I'm married to now would love to have a giant screen plasma TV as well as riding the 'ol pony in front of it, or anywhere else for that matter anytime I pull the old stallion out of the barn. Life is good!
Have you seen the new Ford commercials highlighting their newest stereo design? The Sync powered by Microsoft. Wonder if it will become famous for a new term know as the SSBD (Stereo Silenced By Death), or if it has an LCD display will just do the 'ol BSOD, or both.
WTF??? Mod me as Flamebait??? Give me a fucking break you assholes! This is/. or aka a GNU/Linux nerd forum. It is socially acceptable here to take cheap shots at bill gates and his crapware product line.
Microsoft has in the past even gone so far as to wrap their functions in other functions with delay loops, and not document the originals, reserving them for their own use, so that competitors' software runs artificially poorly on their operating system!
Can you give an example of this?
I know this for a fact from 10 years back when I coded some projects using the win32 API. I never could produce application GUI's that were anything like theirs. I finally concluded they had undocumented API calls they reserved for themselves so they always had an upper hand on any competition.
As a Open Source purist, I hope the EU does indeed spank Microsoft hard for their OOXML iso scandal.
Off topic, I follow the actions of the EU frequently and hope they never go down the IP (imaginary property) software-patent-troll-road we have here in the states. As long as part of the world remains free, I have freedom.
You had the same mental image I had:-). "One computer to rule them all"
"It began to learn at a geometric rate"
"It decided our fate in a microsecond"
Do we really need to pattern our world after sci-fi. If so, then lets do something fun like give everybody phasers and transporters. Not supercomputers connected to everything, that will learn and eventually figure out for themselves that humans are a virus and need to be exterminated.
It's ironic how these assholes are wire taping all of us and keeping records of it all and yet they deliberately destroy the evidence of all the criminal bullshit they're doing and getting away with.
I'll give you a hint: "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States" -Dick Cheney
Seriously. Our own Government has done a lot more to make us afraid of terrorism then the terrorists themselves have done. How depressing that in 60 years we've gone from "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" to "Buy duct tape!".
Selling fear and promoting terrorism paranoia has been an extremely profitable enterprise for those jackoffs currently infesting the white house and congress. Hundreds of billions of American dollars annually going to Carlyle group http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html/ and Haliburton to devise, promote, sell, and start military occupations around the globe. It is absolutely disgraceful how our country has become controlled by corporations profiting through an industrial military complex of their creation.
Slashdot Mirror
Adblock, Noscript, & regular cookie trimming should keep those pesky web trackers working hard for those pennies.
Now I can go back to bed.
The last 2 elections have shown the value of electronic voting machines.
What ever happened to the good 'ol reliable paper ballot with the bubble you color in next to the person you want to cast your vote for.
Simplicity at it finest.
Petition signed, check.
Keep up the good work Bruce.
We're behind you all the way.
Thank you for all your efforts to keep good software free.
Best regards and good luck
Dennis
Amazing what one 2-term presidential administration makes, aka, 8 years. If the level of domestic spying and surveillance going on today had been engaged during Bill Clinton's term, the republican press would have made a big issue out of it. But today all they, the "beetle-like-men", have to do is go to their list of key words like, terrorists, threat level, patriot act, etc... and they can literally wipe their asses with the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
To put this into perspective, my older sister married a texas boy long ago, he was an uneducated hillbilly but had a business repairing tractors, she has a master degree in psychology and counseled troubled youth, they had kids, he turned out to be a disturbed nut case, years later she couldn't take the abuse anymore and wanted out, she sued him for divorce and custody of the kids, the judge gave him full custody of the kids AND made her pay him child support. Now that is just about as good 'ol boy, cross burning, redneck, incest is best, my daddy and momma were brother and sister before they were married, as you can get I tell ya.
I'm not subject to M$ lock-in, I have ten times the applications you have in your best BSD variant.
But most important of all, the last time I tried to install FreeBSD, I ended up with something that no average user could use. I'm not a BSCS, I'm a business owner looking for an easy to install desktop OS that is production ready, reliable, stable, and not Microsoft.
The BSD system is still a cousin and great for server application but it is not ready for the desktop prime time. When it has the software ported to it and is as simple to install as Debian Etch or Lenny, then you may have something to brag about and I'll give it a sincere consideration.
Everyday we now read about new software patents for stupid ideas like ordering a product online by pushing a button on a web page, etc...
Patenting vague ideas will cripple progress and innovation of REAL patentable concepts. There are good ideas out there for innovation but are now sidelined by fear of penalty by broadly vague concept patents.
As stated before in other posts, time durations also need to be revised.
If the government thinks you're dead, you don't have to pay taxes, any, none, zip, zilch.
The bank work around would be to buy a fake birth certificate, get the needed SS#, and you're home free to cash your paychecks.
I actually knew a guy that defrauded the IRS years ago and this is how he assumed a new identity.
No, it wasn't me.
It's Vogon poetry to my ears!
It's funny how people in general get all emotional and irrational over modern concepts such as Global Warming. You can put a plethora of real data based on observations and measurements in front of them, but their mind is set to "Don't bother me with facts, my mind is already made up". This is where the internet can be a powerful tool when searching what is really going on. I can give you links to credible research for self education of actual facts. It kills me to watch clips of GWB, and his kind, babbling stupid shit to the public and the public swallows all it hook line & sinker. If your mind is already made up on what you want to believe, I can't prove anything to you "beyond reasonable doubt" regardless of facts.
This is a difficult subject due to many variables. Our oceans have been, and are, capable of absorbing a good deal of what we dump into our atmosphere. (There is a rabbit trail I could go down here regarding cancers developing on the skin of Beluga whales caused by the toxic soup that ends up in our oceans, but I won't go there right now) There is also a concept of Global Cooling caused by the particulate matter industry spews into our skies. The fear is that if developing nations such as China and India adopt stricter controls over their automotive and industrial emissions, the rate of warming caused by CO2 would accelerate.
My friend, we are in a very interesting time. Do we take the concept of Global Warming seriously and begin doing something about it now? Or do we just bury our heads in the sand and think, ... "life as usual" ... "What me worry?" ... "Fuck it, I'm only totally here for a while, and then I'm gone" ...
As I've said before, we are the masters of our own destiny. If the concept of Global Warming is true, where is the point of no return? And now we've totally fucked up our planet beyond repair.
Here is my own personal "Fuck it!": Our planet is getting too overcrowded, and most of our brethren homo sapiens are morons. We may have a forced thinning of the species in our future when lower latitudes turn into barren wastelands and billions perish from starvation. I'm waiting for Fairbanks to become beach front property with the climate of Palm Springs. How's that grab your ass?
I have not seen this part first hand so I may be speaking out my back side. They traditionally hunt the Narwhal whales so traditional harpoons would be used. Not sure if they still use their sea kayaks or more modern boats. The whale blubber gets distributed to everyone in the village. One use for the blubber is to make Eskimo ice cream. My wife has had it and says it's pretty funky.
Wrong response ...
These people have lived on that spot for thousands of years. Their history and culture defines them and their way of life. Although hunting and killing whales for modern cultures is obsolete, many native villages along the Bearing sea and Arctic ocean still perform these traditions.
Life in Alaska is different than life in New York City or any other part of the lower 48 for that matter. I live in Alaska. I'm not native, but interact with natives all the time. They are a proud people. They have adopted much of modern technology such as snow machines (snow mobiles) for winter travel, but they retain their culture.
Global warming is more apparent here than lower latitudes. Winters are becoming milder and occasionally winter temperatures are warmer in the Alaska interior than places like Reno Nevada. Arctic sea ice is receding and polar bears that live on sea ice are having to swim great distances between ice fields. Many of them drown. Global warming affects us all and future generations.
I personally applaud this lawsuit if it causes people to realize that our industrial soceity is causing damage to our world. We are the masters of our own destiny. The damage we do to our planet today is what we leave for our children to deal with tomorrow.
My HP laptop dual boots both XP and Etch. Both boot times are fairly equal either way. The difference is in running the system and doing my work. Linux is always responsive and consistent, but XP sometimes daydreams between tasks and is not consistently responsive. XP is a far cry better than '95 or '98 but is not my favorite desktop system. Linux holds that honor hands down. Even most windows based software sucks compared to most Linux alternative applications.
Similar to Microsoft tampering with the ISO vote, now they are trying to replace the Yahoo board members with others sympathetic to Microsoft's desires for a search technology acquisition.
I guess if M$ succeeds, I may have to dump my Yahoo mail account and go to Google mail when I work away from my office. Until now Yahoo has been fairly dependable, but under M$ control it would surely turn to shit just as Hotmail has.
And then again, there is always my favorite, the evil villain Dr. Barrel Bomb.
If anyone out there has a significant other or spouse that withholds sex on them, dump the bitch and find another. Most women that use sex as a tool can be cured of that when told "If I don't get it from you, then I'll find it somewhere else."
I was there once and did in fact dump that one. It cost me dearly, but 6 months later I found a much better model. Fortunately this woman I'm married to now would love to have a giant screen plasma TV as well as riding the 'ol pony in front of it, or anywhere else for that matter anytime I pull the old stallion out of the barn. Life is good!
WTF??? Mod me as Flamebait??? Give me a fucking break you assholes! This is /. or aka a GNU/Linux nerd forum. It is socially acceptable here to take cheap shots at bill gates and his crapware product line.
Very interesting. Hope it works out for the inventor and BillyG doesn't try to steal his idea.
I know this for a fact from 10 years back when I coded some projects using the win32 API. I never could produce application GUI's that were anything like theirs. I finally concluded they had undocumented API calls they reserved for themselves so they always had an upper hand on any competition.
As a Open Source purist, I hope the EU does indeed spank Microsoft hard for their OOXML iso scandal.
Off topic, I follow the actions of the EU frequently and hope they never go down the IP (imaginary property) software-patent-troll-road we have here in the states. As long as part of the world remains free, I have freedom.
Was your hair on a little too tight to see ironic humor there? Just wondering....
"It began to learn at a geometric rate"
"It decided our fate in a microsecond"
Do we really need to pattern our world after sci-fi. If so, then lets do something fun like give everybody phasers and transporters. Not supercomputers connected to everything, that will learn and eventually figure out for themselves that humans are a virus and need to be exterminated.
It's ironic how these assholes are wire taping all of us and keeping records of it all and yet they deliberately destroy the evidence of all the criminal bullshit they're doing and getting away with.
Selling fear and promoting terrorism paranoia has been an extremely profitable enterprise for those jackoffs currently infesting the white house and congress. Hundreds of billions of American dollars annually going to Carlyle group http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html/ and Haliburton to devise, promote, sell, and start military occupations around the globe. It is absolutely disgraceful how our country has become controlled by corporations profiting through an industrial military complex of their creation.