Only companies that are already intimately familiar with Linux could make this type of decision. Do you expect a company that has always supported Microsoft and Apple to be able to tell the difference between Slackware and Ubuntu, and understand the support differences? All they see is a mind-boggling mishmash of different incompatible systems, where support costs would dwarf whatever thin margin they're making on the hardware. It's easier to just skip the decision. That wouldn't happen with one dominant distro.
Again, most people here are offering technical solutions to a business problem. That's why Linux on the desktop has been a pipe dream for the last ten years.
Yes, but the reason you can't get support for printer XYZ is exactly due to that choice. No company wants to offer "Linux support" for their peripheral and have someone call in who is using whackadoodle-encrypto-tiny-footprint-Linux version 7 alpha.
Get one main distro which is THE official desktop distribution. Everything else is experimental. Then you can go to Epson and ask them to support that when they bring out their new multifunction printer. If you're not using the official distro then it's on you to figure out why the ink level monitor won't work on your system.
Linus is a techie. He is as qualified to plot business strategy as Jack Welch is qualified to change the breaker box in my basement.
Sorry you missed the boat on SERO, but my point was that there are people who choose Sprint even though it's not the only viable option where they live.
Try reading the parent post, then you'll see the relevance.
I choose Sprint because I'm on their SERO plan and get 450 peak minutes, unlimited data, unlimited texts, and 7pm night and weekends for $29.99 a month. My bill with all the taxes and fees is $37 every month. No other carrier comes close to that.
I've dealt with AmerenUE people. And no, their lives are not worth the extra $500 to me.
You need to get the stick out of your ass. How about just remembering to turn the generator off before turning the main breaker on? Does that kind of make sense or are you stupid enough that you don't trust yourself and need a $500 switch?
I asked the same question a couple of years ago and got enough information to write a book.
In the end, I bought a 3500W generator that I can pick up and carry, and made two extension cords with male ends on both sides.
When the power goes out, I turn off the main breaker, carry the generator to the porch, and fire it up. I hook up one extension cord to each side of the house, and voila, I have computers, Internet, TV, and microwave. Every few hours I look down the street and see if the other houses have their power back. I don't bother calling the electric company.
There are undoubtedly many union electricians gasping in horror after reading this, but it works great and cost me a total of about $500 to implement.
You're making the academic's assumption that because you are intelligent and logical, that the people you argue with will be intelligent and logical.
Sometimes you have to break your foot off in someone's ass to get the message through. This teacher was a lazy moron who couldn't bother to do a little research on Google. She got her just deserts as far as I'm concerned.
Actually if you're not burdened with preconceptions on where everything is supposed to be, Office 2007 is better. The problem with 2003 is that you can't find what you need unless you're an expert. The interface in 2007 groups similar items better.
I use OpenOffice at home, but it's by no means ready to compete against Office head-to-head. Access databases are the particulary nasty thorn - there's no way in OOo for an intermediate user to set up a database with a few tables and reports. When Base matures hopefully that problem will dissolve.
When I took OS design way back in my undergrad days, we were expected to learn the nuts and bolts on our own and be able to use csh proficiently. Our professor told us the only thing we needed was the "man" command and to just use that instead of asking him stupid questions.
So someone innocently asked him how the man command worked and he said to use "man man".
We thought he was joking, it took about a minute for it to sink in that he was serious and you could actually do this in Unix.
If you can't name more superhero characters than you have servers then either...
(a) We're going to take your official geek card away.
or (b) You should already know more about naming conventions than anyone reading this.
Seriously, there shouldn't be a problem with a mix and match scheme. For instance, name a typical server ohio-27-002.mycompany.com but use DNS to give the important ones a second name as in wolverine.mycompany.com
There's already an entire industry devoted to what you're trying to do. We scan rare books at work, in fact we have two employees who do nothing but scan.
We use overhead book scanners where the height can be adjusted as desired. The technician holds the book/magazine open with his hands, using his judgement as to how far it can be opened. After the picture is taken the software flattens out the area by the spine.
If this is important to you, lease the equipment and software for a few hundred a month. Or you can spend several hundred hours jury-rigging a system with lights and writing your own software to flatten the pages.
I don't think this qualifies as road rage. I would assume you have to be actually angry as a necessary condition, hence the word "rage".
About twelve years ago, I was cruising along in the right lane at the speed limit, and there was this asshole tailgating me instead of just going around. I was coming around a corner and see this OTHER asshole who has his car sticking halfway into the lane waiting to pull into traffic, obviously assuming I will go around him.
In a rare flash of inspiration, I kept my speed until I almost ran into him, and then swung out abruptly into the next lane. The guy tailgating me didn't have a chance, he was close enough behind me that I could hear the wonderfully satisfying crunch.
Two assholes with one stone. Yes, I'm pretty sure I taught them a lesson and maybe even changed their driving habits. But since I wasn't in the least bit angry, it's hardly "road rage".
... whereby you can actually "sign" digital data so that it's clear where it came from. If somehow they could incorporate that into this whole "DNS" system, maybe it would fix the problem?
It's actually relatively easy to find TrueCrypt volumes assuming that you know you're searching for one - they contain completely random data and are thus distinguishable from most other files. Remember that most compressed files (ZIP, MP3) have easily distinguished patterns, so when you find a large file with no pattern and random data, you can be fairly certain you're looking at an encrypted partition.
Luckily, that doesn't matter one iota. Hidden volumes in TrueCrypt are specifically for this very reason. Assuming you admit that you use TC and show someone the contents of the "dummy" volume, there is no way for someone to determine the existence of the hidden volume.
Wiki seems to think that a vegan diet exists and that it is sometimes referred to as a strict vegetarian diet. From the article you posted, let's look at the first two lines:
"Veganism is a philosophy and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.[1][2] Vegans do not use or consume animal products of any kind.[3]"
By definition, from YOUR source, he is not a vegan.
Having a vegan diet != being a vegan.
This entire thread has been about vegans. Not people with "vegan diets" or people married to vegans or guys who date vegan gals. Vegans. If your friend is not a vegan, he is simply not relevant to this discussion. My original point after all was that vegans arrived there through a common philosophical basis. I never made any claims about "people following vegan diets" so it doesn't make much sense for you to use that as a counterexample.
As an aside, it really doesn't matter what your friend calls himself. The fact is that most vegans wouldn't consider him a vegan. The term "vegan" was originally coined specifically to distinguish those people from vegetarians who otherwise would use animal products. Your friend is corrupting the meaning and purpose of the word by misapplication.
I have friends who consider themselves vegetarian even though they eat chicken at least twice a week. As you said, same difference.
"He's a dietary vegan. Same difference as far as I'm concerned."
Ummm... no...
There is no such thing as a "dietary vegan". Vegans avoid all animal products. Veganism is not simply a diet plan. Your friend is a strict vegetarian, or as some people call it "vegetan". You are using your terminology incorrectly.
If you don't believe me, feel free to post on any vegan forum and clarify...
If he wears wool and leather, then he's not a vegan. Vegans do their utmost to avoid animal products - he's not doing that. He's an environmentalist who shares a great deal with vegans, but the philosophy is the necessary and sufficient condition.
He wears wool and leather because he values the environment over animal welfare. Vegans put animal welfare first. You're absolutely right in that a lot of the vegan products use a lot more resources to create (not to mention the extra shipping). But a vegan would argue that the extra expenditure is valid and the lesser of two evils.
There's a different word coined for those who have a vegan diet but do not go the whole nine yards in terms of forgoing all products. That's "vegetan". You can be vegetan for health or environmental reasons, but I have yet to meet anyone who's vegan who didn't make the final jump due to animal welfare concerns.
You are being too pedantic. Necessity is not a rigorous concept, and I am not claiming that it is. It varies from person to person. A homeless person might need that leather jacket if no other alternative is available and it's freezing outside. The question is whether you can reasonably do without it.
Also, my welfare IS more important than that of animals - much in the way that a dolphin's welfare would be more important than that of an amoeba. There is no contradiction there and no one is advocating sacrificing yourself to save animals. That's a false dichotomy. In most (almost all) cases there's no conflict, which is where being vegan is possible.
So in answer to the question at the top, this vegan would not eat cloned meat. Unless they could make it taste like tempeh, in which case he'd dig right in. I thought the whole point of eating tempeh was that it tasted like meat? Now you want synthetic meat that tastes like tempeh?!
The other reply dealt with this. If it's black/white, then how can you ever take an animal derived medicine? If you'll accept that it's not black/white, then I'm simply a slightly darker shade of grey than you are.
Let me ask you this - were you actively avoiding animal products, not just food? Did you have a problem wearing leather shoes? If not, then you were not vegan. I was. I already had some leather shoes, I kept them (no point wasting them), but I made sure some other stuff I bought was plastic (synthetic 'leather'). There is probably overlap between this and my other post - but I am using the classic definition of vegan based on intent, not behavior.
If you HAVE to take cardiac medicine that has gelatin, you are just as much vegan as someone who does not take the medicine. But you have to be trying to avoid animal products as much as possible. Intent is the necessary and sufficient condition here. That is the black/white portion, not what you are actually doing. If you are not fully committed to eliminating animal products from your lifestyle as much as possible, then you are not vegan.
"It seems you just redefined a vegan as "Someone who doesn't eat or use animal products unless if they feel they have no choice, then they must feel bad about it but go ahead and do it anyway."
Ummm... that's kind of the definition that most vegans (and PETA) already use... I didn't just create it for the purposes of this Slashdot discussion.
Veganism is an effort to entirely avoid animal products. If you are sincerely attempting to avoid animal products then you should feel bad about using them, because you are failing in your goal. If you are stranded on a desert island with a case of Spam, I doubt any ethicists would argue that you should starve to death rather than use the can opener.
If you haven't eaten in a day and NEED bacon, then you can eat it. That's different from being inconvenienced by not being able to eat a Big Mac. You are conflating necessity and convenience as most people in the West usually do.
This is all Animal Rights 101. Read Peter Singer's books. Everything we're talking about has been discussed to death in various forums. This is not new ground.
"I was mostly-vegan for a while. Since it wasn't because of animal welfare, I wasn't too bothered if I bought a meal with some tiny amount of gelatine in it (or whatever)."
There is no such thing as "mostly-vegan" just as there is no thing as "slightly pregnant". You are either a vegan or you are not. Again, it's NOT simply a dietary choice, it's a full lifestyle pacakge. The link you posted was for vegetarianism, not veganism. They are two different things. Vegans by definition try to minimize use of all animal products, so if you had actually been one, you WOULD have been bothered by gelatine.
I am not claiming that vegans never use animal products. The criteria is that they try their best not to. Pragmatic concerns apply as always - if you can't find the medication you need in a gelatine-free version, and you have tried your best, there's nothing wrong with going with the gelatine version. But if you are not bothered by it, then you are not a vegan.
Let me ask you this - were you actively avoiding animal products, not just food? Did you have a problem wearing leather shoes? If not, then you were not vegan.
So, every single vegan you've met would be happy to eat cloned meat provided there was no animal involved.
Your logic is flawed. If methadone is a safer alternative to heroin, the fact that I do not use heroin does not automatically imply that I use methadone.
From an ethical viewpoint, not eating meat (or cloned meat) is at least as good as eating cloned meat. Thus a vegan would have the choice of eating cloned meat or continuing their current diet. The existence of cloned meat does not provide them any obligation to actually consume it.
Slashdot Mirror
Only companies that are already intimately familiar with Linux could make this type of decision. Do you expect a company that has always supported Microsoft and Apple to be able to tell the difference between Slackware and Ubuntu, and understand the support differences? All they see is a mind-boggling mishmash of different incompatible systems, where support costs would dwarf whatever thin margin they're making on the hardware. It's easier to just skip the decision. That wouldn't happen with one dominant distro.
Again, most people here are offering technical solutions to a business problem. That's why Linux on the desktop has been a pipe dream for the last ten years.
Yes, but the reason you can't get support for printer XYZ is exactly due to that choice. No company wants to offer "Linux support" for their peripheral and have someone call in who is using whackadoodle-encrypto-tiny-footprint-Linux version 7 alpha.
Get one main distro which is THE official desktop distribution. Everything else is experimental. Then you can go to Epson and ask them to support that when they bring out their new multifunction printer. If you're not using the official distro then it's on you to figure out why the ink level monitor won't work on your system.
Linus is a techie. He is as qualified to plot business strategy as Jack Welch is qualified to change the breaker box in my basement.
Sorry you missed the boat on SERO, but my point was that there are people who choose Sprint even though it's not the only viable option where they live.
Try reading the parent post, then you'll see the relevance.
I choose Sprint because I'm on their SERO plan and get 450 peak minutes, unlimited data, unlimited texts, and 7pm night and weekends for $29.99 a month. My bill with all the taxes and fees is $37 every month. No other carrier comes close to that.
I've dealt with AmerenUE people. And no, their lives are not worth the extra $500 to me.
You need to get the stick out of your ass. How about just remembering to turn the generator off before turning the main breaker on? Does that kind of make sense or are you stupid enough that you don't trust yourself and need a $500 switch?
I asked the same question a couple of years ago and got enough information to write a book.
In the end, I bought a 3500W generator that I can pick up and carry, and made two extension cords with male ends on both sides.
When the power goes out, I turn off the main breaker, carry the generator to the porch, and fire it up. I hook up one extension cord to each side of the house, and voila, I have computers, Internet, TV, and microwave. Every few hours I look down the street and see if the other houses have their power back. I don't bother calling the electric company.
There are undoubtedly many union electricians gasping in horror after reading this, but it works great and cost me a total of about $500 to implement.
You're making the academic's assumption that because you are intelligent and logical, that the people you argue with will be intelligent and logical.
Sometimes you have to break your foot off in someone's ass to get the message through. This teacher was a lazy moron who couldn't bother to do a little research on Google. She got her just deserts as far as I'm concerned.
Actually if you're not burdened with preconceptions on where everything is supposed to be, Office 2007 is better. The problem with 2003 is that you can't find what you need unless you're an expert. The interface in 2007 groups similar items better.
I use OpenOffice at home, but it's by no means ready to compete against Office head-to-head. Access databases are the particulary nasty thorn - there's no way in OOo for an intermediate user to set up a database with a few tables and reports. When Base matures hopefully that problem will dissolve.
When I took OS design way back in my undergrad days, we were expected to learn the nuts and bolts on our own and be able to use csh proficiently. Our professor told us the only thing we needed was the "man" command and to just use that instead of asking him stupid questions.
So someone innocently asked him how the man command worked and he said to use "man man".
We thought he was joking, it took about a minute for it to sink in that he was serious and you could actually do this in Unix.
I think I can summarize your post thusly:
USA! USA! USA!
Their collider is better, but WE work harder, so we get superior results!
USA! USA!
If you can't name more superhero characters than you have servers then either...
(a) We're going to take your official geek card away.
or (b) You should already know more about naming conventions than anyone reading this.
Seriously, there shouldn't be a problem with a mix and match scheme. For instance, name a typical server ohio-27-002.mycompany.com but use DNS to give the important ones a second name as in wolverine.mycompany.com
We use overhead book scanners where the height can be adjusted as desired. The technician holds the book/magazine open with his hands, using his judgement as to how far it can be opened. After the picture is taken the software flattens out the area by the spine. If this is important to you, lease the equipment and software for a few hundred a month. Or you can spend several hundred hours jury-rigging a system with lights and writing your own software to flatten the pages.
About twelve years ago, I was cruising along in the right lane at the speed limit, and there was this asshole tailgating me instead of just going around. I was coming around a corner and see this OTHER asshole who has his car sticking halfway into the lane waiting to pull into traffic, obviously assuming I will go around him.
In a rare flash of inspiration, I kept my speed until I almost ran into him, and then swung out abruptly into the next lane. The guy tailgating me didn't have a chance, he was close enough behind me that I could hear the wonderfully satisfying crunch.
Two assholes with one stone. Yes, I'm pretty sure I taught them a lesson and maybe even changed their driving habits. But since I wasn't in the least bit angry, it's hardly "road rage".
Apparently they did the same thing for Vista and posted it to youtube, but people just thought it was a watermelon exploding...
... whereby you can actually "sign" digital data so that it's clear where it came from. If somehow they could incorporate that into this whole "DNS" system, maybe it would fix the problem?
Luckily, that doesn't matter one iota. Hidden volumes in TrueCrypt are specifically for this very reason. Assuming you admit that you use TC and show someone the contents of the "dummy" volume, there is no way for someone to determine the existence of the hidden volume.
"Veganism is a philosophy and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose.[1][2] Vegans do not use or consume animal products of any kind.[3]"
By definition, from YOUR source, he is not a vegan.
Having a vegan diet != being a vegan.
This entire thread has been about vegans. Not people with "vegan diets" or people married to vegans or guys who date vegan gals. Vegans. If your friend is not a vegan, he is simply not relevant to this discussion. My original point after all was that vegans arrived there through a common philosophical basis. I never made any claims about "people following vegan diets" so it doesn't make much sense for you to use that as a counterexample.
As an aside, it really doesn't matter what your friend calls himself. The fact is that most vegans wouldn't consider him a vegan. The term "vegan" was originally coined specifically to distinguish those people from vegetarians who otherwise would use animal products. Your friend is corrupting the meaning and purpose of the word by misapplication.
I have friends who consider themselves vegetarian even though they eat chicken at least twice a week. As you said, same difference.
Ummm... no...
There is no such thing as a "dietary vegan". Vegans avoid all animal products. Veganism is not simply a diet plan. Your friend is a strict vegetarian, or as some people call it "vegetan". You are using your terminology incorrectly.
If you don't believe me, feel free to post on any vegan forum and clarify...
He wears wool and leather because he values the environment over animal welfare. Vegans put animal welfare first. You're absolutely right in that a lot of the vegan products use a lot more resources to create (not to mention the extra shipping). But a vegan would argue that the extra expenditure is valid and the lesser of two evils.
There's a different word coined for those who have a vegan diet but do not go the whole nine yards in terms of forgoing all products. That's "vegetan". You can be vegetan for health or environmental reasons, but I have yet to meet anyone who's vegan who didn't make the final jump due to animal welfare concerns.
Also, my welfare IS more important than that of animals - much in the way that a dolphin's welfare would be more important than that of an amoeba. There is no contradiction there and no one is advocating sacrificing yourself to save animals. That's a false dichotomy. In most (almost all) cases there's no conflict, which is where being vegan is possible.
If you HAVE to take cardiac medicine that has gelatin, you are just as much vegan as someone who does not take the medicine. But you have to be trying to avoid animal products as much as possible. Intent is the necessary and sufficient condition here. That is the black/white portion, not what you are actually doing. If you are not fully committed to eliminating animal products from your lifestyle as much as possible, then you are not vegan.
Ummm... that's kind of the definition that most vegans (and PETA) already use... I didn't just create it for the purposes of this Slashdot discussion.
Veganism is an effort to entirely avoid animal products. If you are sincerely attempting to avoid animal products then you should feel bad about using them, because you are failing in your goal. If you are stranded on a desert island with a case of Spam, I doubt any ethicists would argue that you should starve to death rather than use the can opener.
If you haven't eaten in a day and NEED bacon, then you can eat it. That's different from being inconvenienced by not being able to eat a Big Mac. You are conflating necessity and convenience as most people in the West usually do.
This is all Animal Rights 101. Read Peter Singer's books. Everything we're talking about has been discussed to death in various forums. This is not new ground.
There is no such thing as "mostly-vegan" just as there is no thing as "slightly pregnant". You are either a vegan or you are not. Again, it's NOT simply a dietary choice, it's a full lifestyle pacakge. The link you posted was for vegetarianism, not veganism. They are two different things. Vegans by definition try to minimize use of all animal products, so if you had actually been one, you WOULD have been bothered by gelatine.
I am not claiming that vegans never use animal products. The criteria is that they try their best not to. Pragmatic concerns apply as always - if you can't find the medication you need in a gelatine-free version, and you have tried your best, there's nothing wrong with going with the gelatine version. But if you are not bothered by it, then you are not a vegan.
Let me ask you this - were you actively avoiding animal products, not just food? Did you have a problem wearing leather shoes? If not, then you were not vegan.
Your logic is flawed. If methadone is a safer alternative to heroin, the fact that I do not use heroin does not automatically imply that I use methadone.
From an ethical viewpoint, not eating meat (or cloned meat) is at least as good as eating cloned meat. Thus a vegan would have the choice of eating cloned meat or continuing their current diet. The existence of cloned meat does not provide them any obligation to actually consume it.