Apple is testing a new version of their Reality Distortion Field that possesses visual enhancements on an entirely new level. I always knew that Apple has some great technology.
Yeah, clearly Apple's headquarters is protected by a cloaking device recovered from the lost city of the Ancients, probably to guard against industrial espionage.
I challenge Jay Michaelson to put his money and his company where his mouth is and try and release a derivative work of some GPLed code under some other license and see how far he gets. The concept of a derivative work in software is extremely well understood by the Free Software Foundation.
You seem to be accusing the guy of hypocrisy. Where do you get that from? He's concerned about legal issues involving GPLed software and, as a result, doesn't use it. There's no contradiction there.
Also, what constitutes a "derivative work" is not so well understood. There was a controversy over Nvidia's binary-only kernel drivers. There was another controversy over drivers that include binary-only firmware in them. The driver is released under the GPL, but the source files full of hexadecimal code aren't human-readable. Is this OK? If you use Linux on your workstation or server, you don't really worry about the GPL because it's usually unnecessary to modify the kernel sources. Michaelson's company, Wasabi, specializes in embedded systems, which are far more likely to require kernel changes. So, while the restrictions imposed by the GPL are perfectly reasonable to most people, they are more of a hassle in Michaelson's line of work.
Wasabi is a major supporter of the NetBSD operating system and puts its money where its mouth is each time it contributes BSD-licensed code to NetBSD. Through his company's code contributions, Michaelson has done more for the Open Source community than almost anyone who reads Slashdot. Because of the BSD license, Wasabi isn't required to release a single line of code to the public, but they do it anyway. I think they deserve some respect for that.
"If people would seriously like to do this, we could set up a Paypal account. Are there a significant number of people who would want to do that?"
I would donate some money. As a domain owner, Penguin's harassment of Katie Jones really scares me. I'm also working on a letter expressing my disappointment and concern about this matter. I intend to mail it to Penguin and any other appropriate parties. I don't expect it will help much, but if enough people do it, Penguin might back down.
Let us know if there's anything we can do to help. Many people on Slashdot and in the blogging community own domains, and if they can come after Katie Jones, they can come after any of us. We little people need to stick together.
What if you want two, or (((GASP!!))) THREE mouse buttons???
No wait. I must be being silly. Why would ANYBODY want more than one mousebutton?
I'm procrastinating something right now, so I think I'll kill some time by feeding the trolls.
The Smartass Response
A UNIX user only uses the mouse for one task: switching between terminal windows. One mouse button is sufficient for this task.
The Serious Response
Interfaces to Mac programs are designed in such a way that one mouse button is sufficient, just as MS Windows programs are designed to work with only two mouse buttons. You only need the extra buttons when running X11 programs. If you do this only occasionally (as I do), you can emulate the other buttons by holding the Option or Command keys while clicking the mouse. Otherwise, as another poster suggested, you can simply plug in a three-button mouse. When I bought my iBook, I bought a three-button USB mouse thinking that I would be using X11 all the time, but the only X11 programs that I use are xfig, ddd (a gdb frontend), and the GIMP, and those aren't programs that I use every day.
The mouse button issue is very overrated, in my opinion. On a desktop system, there is nothing to prevent you from replacing the Apple mouse with the pointing device of your choice. On laptops, cramming mouse buttons below the touchpad isn't very practical, anyway. There isn't much space to work with, and as you cram more buttons into that space, the buttons must be made smaller so that they can all fit, and using the mouse buttons becomes increasingly awkward. I've found that, for casual use, it's faster and more ergonomic to use the Command and Option keys to emulate the extra buttons than to reposition my hand so that I can find the button I want to click. If you're using something like xfig that requires lots of mouse use, a laptop touchpad really isn't suitable regardless of how many buttons it has, and you're better off using a USB mouse anyway.
This may not be the one, but wouldn't it be nice if there was a notebook designed for Linux first, Windows second?
You can already get laptops designed to run UNIX. You can get an Apple iBook for the same price as an x86 and use OS X, which is a full-featured UNIX system. Virtually all of the open-source software you'd use on a Linux or FreeBSD system runs on OS X, even programs that require X Windows. Linux, on the other hand, has a long way to go before it catches up with Apple.
There are plenty of notebook computers that are capable of running Linux as well as they run Windows. The problems with the laptop in the review were all software-related. We don't need hardware vendors to design laptops exclusively for Linux, we need the Linux developers to get their asses in gear and improve laptop support.
I agree that stuff should 'just work' out of the box. According to the LinuxCertified website, this laptop costs $1399. I recently bought an Apple iBook with similar specs for about the same price. The Apple works correctly straight out of the box and OS X runs nearly all Linux programs for which the source is available. Besides that, it gives you the option of using commercial products like Quicken or Adobe Photoshop, if you need to use those for anything.
Since Apple's laptop prices are about the same as similarly-equipped x86 laptops and since OS X is a pretty complete UNIX workalike, it's pretty difficult to justify buying a Linux-only laptop at all, much less one that doesn't work 100%. If you're buying a laptop and want to go the UNIX-only route, an Apple laptop is the best choice in nearly every measurable respect. If, for some reason (and admittedly there are some), you require an x86 processor, you should just get a Dell or a Thinkpad with Windows preinstalled, repartition the disk, and install Linux or BSD yourself. At least that way, you can keep your Windows partition around for playing games and running commercial software applications like Photoshop.
Well, I think he was just making use of the hardware that he already had. He had bought the Qubes a couple of years ago but wasn't using them for anything. His only real expenses, if I recall, were a 128 MB RAM SIMM and a new power supply. That's way cheaper than buying an i386 motherboard and a 300 GB hard drive.
I guess I don't understand why the inability to run Linux is a big deal when he's happy with NetBSD. I use both Linux and NetBSD on my machines -- NetBSD is much easier to work with and will run any server software that you'd run on a Linux server.
I agree that if he were buying new hardware, it would probably be more cost-effective to go with an i386 solution.
"Over the years, I have memorized a number of DNS servers I have had to use... Wouldn't anyone who has done this have the ability to circumvent this restriction?"
Perhaps, but sophisticated computer users like you are much less likely to allow their computers to be infected with viruses and worms.
"[to save Slashdot users' bandwidth, a reply about how Gentoo GNU/Linux does most of this stuff, too, and some of it (like making package repositories) in an easier way has been deleted from this space]"
I know that you're making fun of Gentoo zealots, but in the process, you're in danger of awaking a sleeping giant: The BSD Snob. Because you didn't think before posting, innocent Slashdot readers will be forced to read how the BSDs are better designed, more carefully developed, and are more portable across different platforms. Readers will even be forced to endure accusations that, being Linux users, they wet the bed. Gentoo certainly has its zealots, but BSD users have been looking down their noses at AT&T UNIX since, like, the 1970s. They're the original OS zealots!
See, you've unleashed an Army of Darkness upon us all. Where's Bruce Campbell when you need him?
"Sorry, but there's a difference between "lacking" and "not knowing about." I'd be glad to point you to tons, and tons of information about the ms command line and scripting (ever heard of wsh? Apparently not!!) but I'm sure that a "seasoned network admin" knows how to use the interweb to search for this type of information (I recommend Google!)"
I don't know a lot about Microsoft server products, but I would be shocked if Windows offered the kind of command-line functionality that comes standard with UNIX. For instance, I don't see how you could run those InstallShield wizards from the command line over SSH.
Once, I wanted to write a script that would copy files from one directory to another if and only if they had been modified after a certain time. This is a very trivial in UNIX, but I couldn't figure out how to do it in Windows 98, even though I had been using Windows regularly for years. I tried searching Google, too, but found a bunch of shitty, incomplete, and incorrect information that didn't help me much. There's no doubt in my mind that there's a good way to write a script like this for Windows 98, but why isn't there built-in documentation for these scripting features, similar to UNIX man pages? And why isn't this documentation viewable from the command prompt, like UNIX man pages are?
The difference between Windows and UNIX is that UNIX is designed from the ground up around a command-line interface. Unless you're working with graphics and video, there's no need to use a GUI at all. I find it hard to believe that you can do absolutely everything on a Windows server from a DOS prompt with absolutely no need whatsoever for the GUI. I could be wrong, of course, but I don't think that I am.
I'm not saying that Windows sucks or that UNIX is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I just suspect that people who claim that Windows has scripting and CLI features on par with UNIX don't have an appreciation for how powerful and simple to use the UNIX command interface can be.
I wish there were a good comparison between the UNIX interface and the Windows CLI, and UNIX scripting features versus those that can be used from the Windows CLI. I'd like to see how each platform compares to the other, and to learn how the UNIX concepts that I'm familiar with translate over into Windows techniques. So much FUD has been spread by advocates of each platform that it's hard to know what to think.
Go to the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul. Find the section that contains the exhibits that belonged to the now-defunct Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. For a preview of the awesomeness within, visit this website and prepare to be amazed.
I visited the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices before the curator retired and left everything to the Science Museum. It was incredibly cool.
Also, you should check out the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
While I've got people's attention, I'd like to warn you to avoid South Carolina like the plague -- from a geek's perspective, it's a cultural wasteland!
I'm not convinced that the civil rights movements would have been less successful, in the end, without federal involvement. I think a more likely scenario is that many states would come around, and ass backwards states like South Carolina would just look foolish to the rest of the country and to the rest of the world. I would hope the foolishness is sufficient to even get the good ol' boys to turn around, but it just might take a generation for the old ones to die off before real change occurs.
South Carolina already looks foolish to the rest of the country, but people here don't know that and they don't care. I don't think you understand exactly how backward parts of South Carolina can be. Many people are so isolated geographically and culturally from the rest of society that the UN could create "International Fuck South Carolina Day" and they honestly would never know about it.
Anyone who has lived in the United States all his or her life and still cannot pronounce the word "nuclear" is a dumbass. Every time that idiot goes on TV and talks about "Nu-cue-ler" weapons he embarrasses the entire nation.
"Deterrence is the key; but deterrence requires that the deterrent be swift, highly visible, and certain. Unfortunately, the wheels of justice are too damned slow."
That's stupid -- what you want is impossible. Suppose the attacker is in country A and and the victims of the attack are in country B. How are country B's authorities going to bring the attacker to justice if he isn't even within their jurisdiction? Furthermore, identifying the attacker might not be possible at all. Suppose that the attacker uses a publicly accessible computer located in a coffee shop or a public library to release the virus or worm or whatever he comes up with? More realistically, what if the attacker uses his own computer, connected to the Internet by way of an unsecured wireless network? If there's no paper trail, then the authorities can't determine who launched the attack. As you can see, tougher laws are not sufficient to deter attacks since, due to the decentralized and anonymous nature of the Internet, it's so easy to avoid detection.
"Laws controlling devices are nothing new. There are laws about automobile safety that requires cars to meet certain standards and this allows the government to control technology. There are laws about FCC compliance and this allows the FCC to control devices. Etc. etc."
True, but with very few exceptions, once you buy a car there are no restrictions on what you can do with it. If you want to remove the catalytic converter or drive around without a safety belt, you can do that as long as you don't take it out on public roads. With the DMCA it is illegal to circumvent copy protection even on devices that you own so that you can watch DVDs (or whatever) that you paid for.
Furthermore, if I wanted to start VanDahm Motor Company and sell VMC automobiles to the public, I would be free to do that as long as I complied with the government regulations. If I wanted to make DVDs or DVD players, however, I have to get licenses from a consortium of private companies, who could very well deny me a license if they felt that my business interests were in conflict with their own.
When the government makes it illegal for company A to do business simply because it would interfere with company B's profits, it's widely considered to be corruption. However, that's exactly what the DMCA allows, and that's what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do with music and movie production.
"That seams weird to me, I'm a commited Christian, are you saying that I should have the right to spam people about my faith, please I should be made to abide by the same rules of honour and decency as any one else, spamming is wrong, I shouldn't do it whether it's for my faith or not."
I agree with you from a moral perspective -- all spamming is wrong whether it's religious or commerical in nature. I'm just saying that, from a purely practical perspective, it might pay off to wait until later to go after the relgious and political spam, because you simply don't know how the courts will react. If we ban commerical spam, we stigmatize spamming in general, and while religious and political spam remains legal, it's sleazy by association. After people get used to that, then maybe we can introduce a bill that targets religious and political spam. If people raise a stink over it, someone could say, "hey, corporations have been banned from doing for years" and the practice would be much harder to defend.
I really don't agree with this. People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church or political party any more than for a new penis enlarger. It may not be "Unsolicited Commercial E-mail," but it's certainly spam.
I know it's a property rights issue, and that political and religious spam is just as bad as commercial spam. But as a practical matter, it may not be wise to mess with political and religious spam because there's no telling how the courts might see it. Commercial speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and Congress is explicitly allowed to regulate "interstate commerce," so if a spam bill is limited only to commercial spam, it would most likely be safe from a Constitutional challenge.
if they are that fucked up they are pretty much useless as it is..
Suppose that someone had a condition that could be treated with medication so that would help him to control his behavior. You would need some way to communicate with him until the medication took effect. Basically, the interpreter is one person servicing an entire state of millions and millions of people. It's not like it's costing taxpayers much of anything.
it is beyond my life experience that the state would cater to such a bizarre whim as speaking "Klingon".
The translator would be working with the mentally ill. The state has encountered mentally ill people that, for whatever reason, refused to speak in any language but Klingon, and since these people are mentally ill, you can't just require them to speak English. So, as you can see, there is at least some need for a Klingon interpreter.
As bizzare as this sounds to people like us (I live in South Carolina), it's much more humane than what happens to the mentally ill in our states. In South Carolina, at least, the Department of Mental Health is so horribly underfunded that they can barely operate.
"Pardon that sound, it was my coffee going through my nose as I read that last sentance."
When I typed my earlier comment, I was trying to download Red Hat and FreeBSD ISOs, so that took up a lot of extra space that I don't normally use. The stuff that I permanently keep in my home directory will easily fit on a CDR -- in fact, that's how I've been backing up my data.
I have 60 GB of storage space on that disk and about 100 gigabytes of total storage space and, at the time, I was only using about four gigabytes. I would say that only using 4% of my available storage is pretty efficient. Perhaps too efficient, since there are plenty of good ways to use the disk space since I've already got it. Most people that I know fill their drives, even large drives, with software they never use, MP3 files, and other assorted crap. Compared to the average computer user, I am still quite frugal.
I remember the 486 with a 255 MB hard drive we had when I was in middle school. My Dad was pissed because DOS and Windows 3.1 took up nearly 70 MB of precious storage space when the version of DOS that came with our old Tandy 1000 EX fit on a single 5.25 inch floppy diskette. Dad was even more pissed when I filled the drive with games, WAV files, and pictures. Back then, I was excited whenever I was able to free up another 750 kilobytes of disk space. Then there were the hard decisions...is removing Rise of the Triad, my all-time favorite game, worth freeing over 20 megabytes?
When I started college I bought a Pentium with a 4 gigabyte hard drive. Unlimited storage space! Well, until a friend showed me this awesome new program called "Winamp."
To this day, I'm very frugal with disk space. My home directory resides on a 60 gigabyte drive split into 3 20 gigabyte partitions, and I'm only using 17% of one partition right now.
"Material witnesses can be held for extended periods of time if it is believed that they pose a flight risk, or if they may be in danger by being without constant protection. There isn't any shady bullshit going on here, material witnesses are held all the time. Learn how the legal system works, THEN post."
This guy, an American citizen married to an American citizen with children who are American citizens and an upper middle-class job in America is clearly NOT a flight risk. Where the hell would he go?
This is very clearly a case of "shady bullshit." There's no reason in the world to expect that he would have left the country or even the state during the six weeks he was held without being charged. Since he was not a flight risk, and did not require constant protection, it was, as a matter of law, inappropriate to hold him as a material witness. Perhaps you should study up before posting.
"You really don't want to know what kinda of a smog contraption i'd be driving past your place i there wasn't a bus to drive me to work every morning.;)"
The fact that buses are better than no buses doesn't mean that buses don't suck. If the buses were replaced by electric trains running in subway tunnels, or if the gasoline engines in the buses were replaced with propane-burning engines (I don't know if this would really work, but you get the idea) things would be much cleaner, and probably quieter.
Buses are the C- solution to mass transit problems. They are really noisy and, at least in Minneapolis, they can mess up traffic since they're big, bulky and slow. After seeing the Metro in Montreal, I'm convinced that subways are the best type of public transportation.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, clearly Apple's headquarters is protected by a cloaking device recovered from the lost city of the Ancients, probably to guard against industrial espionage.
Also, what constitutes a "derivative work" is not so well understood. There was a controversy over Nvidia's binary-only kernel drivers. There was another controversy over drivers that include binary-only firmware in them. The driver is released under the GPL, but the source files full of hexadecimal code aren't human-readable. Is this OK? If you use Linux on your workstation or server, you don't really worry about the GPL because it's usually unnecessary to modify the kernel sources. Michaelson's company, Wasabi, specializes in embedded systems, which are far more likely to require kernel changes. So, while the restrictions imposed by the GPL are perfectly reasonable to most people, they are more of a hassle in Michaelson's line of work.
Wasabi is a major supporter of the NetBSD operating system and puts its money where its mouth is each time it contributes BSD-licensed code to NetBSD. Through his company's code contributions, Michaelson has done more for the Open Source community than almost anyone who reads Slashdot. Because of the BSD license, Wasabi isn't required to release a single line of code to the public, but they do it anyway. I think they deserve some respect for that.
Steve
Let us know if there's anything we can do to help. Many people on Slashdot and in the blogging community own domains, and if they can come after Katie Jones, they can come after any of us. We little people need to stick together.
Best of wishes!
Steve
I'm procrastinating something right now, so I think I'll kill some time by feeding the trolls.
The Smartass ResponseA UNIX user only uses the mouse for one task: switching between terminal windows. One mouse button is sufficient for this task.
The Serious ResponseInterfaces to Mac programs are designed in such a way that one mouse button is sufficient, just as MS Windows programs are designed to work with only two mouse buttons. You only need the extra buttons when running X11 programs. If you do this only occasionally (as I do), you can emulate the other buttons by holding the Option or Command keys while clicking the mouse. Otherwise, as another poster suggested, you can simply plug in a three-button mouse. When I bought my iBook, I bought a three-button USB mouse thinking that I would be using X11 all the time, but the only X11 programs that I use are xfig, ddd (a gdb frontend), and the GIMP, and those aren't programs that I use every day.
The mouse button issue is very overrated, in my opinion. On a desktop system, there is nothing to prevent you from replacing the Apple mouse with the pointing device of your choice. On laptops, cramming mouse buttons below the touchpad isn't very practical, anyway. There isn't much space to work with, and as you cram more buttons into that space, the buttons must be made smaller so that they can all fit, and using the mouse buttons becomes increasingly awkward. I've found that, for casual use, it's faster and more ergonomic to use the Command and Option keys to emulate the extra buttons than to reposition my hand so that I can find the button I want to click. If you're using something like xfig that requires lots of mouse use, a laptop touchpad really isn't suitable regardless of how many buttons it has, and you're better off using a USB mouse anyway.
SteveYou can already get laptops designed to run UNIX. You can get an Apple iBook for the same price as an x86 and use OS X, which is a full-featured UNIX system. Virtually all of the open-source software you'd use on a Linux or FreeBSD system runs on OS X, even programs that require X Windows. Linux, on the other hand, has a long way to go before it catches up with Apple.
There are plenty of notebook computers that are capable of running Linux as well as they run Windows. The problems with the laptop in the review were all software-related. We don't need hardware vendors to design laptops exclusively for Linux, we need the Linux developers to get their asses in gear and improve laptop support.
SteveI agree that stuff should 'just work' out of the box. According to the LinuxCertified website, this laptop costs $1399. I recently bought an Apple iBook with similar specs for about the same price. The Apple works correctly straight out of the box and OS X runs nearly all Linux programs for which the source is available. Besides that, it gives you the option of using commercial products like Quicken or Adobe Photoshop, if you need to use those for anything.
Since Apple's laptop prices are about the same as similarly-equipped x86 laptops and since OS X is a pretty complete UNIX workalike, it's pretty difficult to justify buying a Linux-only laptop at all, much less one that doesn't work 100%. If you're buying a laptop and want to go the UNIX-only route, an Apple laptop is the best choice in nearly every measurable respect. If, for some reason (and admittedly there are some), you require an x86 processor, you should just get a Dell or a Thinkpad with Windows preinstalled, repartition the disk, and install Linux or BSD yourself. At least that way, you can keep your Windows partition around for playing games and running commercial software applications like Photoshop.
Steve
Well, I think he was just making use of the hardware that he already had. He had bought the Qubes a couple of years ago but wasn't using them for anything. His only real expenses, if I recall, were a 128 MB RAM SIMM and a new power supply. That's way cheaper than buying an i386 motherboard and a 300 GB hard drive.
I guess I don't understand why the inability to run Linux is a big deal when he's happy with NetBSD. I use both Linux and NetBSD on my machines -- NetBSD is much easier to work with and will run any server software that you'd run on a Linux server.
I agree that if he were buying new hardware, it would probably be more cost-effective to go with an i386 solution.
Steve
They're using OS X.
"Over the years, I have memorized a number of DNS servers I have had to use... Wouldn't anyone who has done this have the ability to circumvent this restriction?"
Perhaps, but sophisticated computer users like you are much less likely to allow their computers to be infected with viruses and worms.
Steve
"[to save Slashdot users' bandwidth, a reply about how Gentoo GNU/Linux does most of this stuff, too, and some of it (like making package repositories) in an easier way has been deleted from this space]"
I know that you're making fun of Gentoo zealots, but in the process, you're in danger of awaking a sleeping giant: The BSD Snob. Because you didn't think before posting, innocent Slashdot readers will be forced to read how the BSDs are better designed, more carefully developed, and are more portable across different platforms. Readers will even be forced to endure accusations that, being Linux users, they wet the bed. Gentoo certainly has its zealots, but BSD users have been looking down their noses at AT&T UNIX since, like, the 1970s. They're the original OS zealots!
See, you've unleashed an Army of Darkness upon us all. Where's Bruce Campbell when you need him?
Steve
Linux and BSD User
"Sorry, but there's a difference between "lacking" and "not knowing about." I'd be glad to point you to tons, and tons of information about the ms command line and scripting (ever heard of wsh? Apparently not!!) but I'm sure that a "seasoned network admin" knows how to use the interweb to search for this type of information (I recommend Google!)"
I don't know a lot about Microsoft server products, but I would be shocked if Windows offered the kind of command-line functionality that comes standard with UNIX. For instance, I don't see how you could run those InstallShield wizards from the command line over SSH.
Once, I wanted to write a script that would copy files from one directory to another if and only if they had been modified after a certain time. This is a very trivial in UNIX, but I couldn't figure out how to do it in Windows 98, even though I had been using Windows regularly for years. I tried searching Google, too, but found a bunch of shitty, incomplete, and incorrect information that didn't help me much. There's no doubt in my mind that there's a good way to write a script like this for Windows 98, but why isn't there built-in documentation for these scripting features, similar to UNIX man pages? And why isn't this documentation viewable from the command prompt, like UNIX man pages are?
The difference between Windows and UNIX is that UNIX is designed from the ground up around a command-line interface. Unless you're working with graphics and video, there's no need to use a GUI at all. I find it hard to believe that you can do absolutely everything on a Windows server from a DOS prompt with absolutely no need whatsoever for the GUI. I could be wrong, of course, but I don't think that I am.
I'm not saying that Windows sucks or that UNIX is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I just suspect that people who claim that Windows has scripting and CLI features on par with UNIX don't have an appreciation for how powerful and simple to use the UNIX command interface can be.
I wish there were a good comparison between the UNIX interface and the Windows CLI, and UNIX scripting features versus those that can be used from the Windows CLI. I'd like to see how each platform compares to the other, and to learn how the UNIX concepts that I'm familiar with translate over into Windows techniques. So much FUD has been spread by advocates of each platform that it's hard to know what to think.
Go to the Minnesota Science Museum in St. Paul. Find the section that contains the exhibits that belonged to the now-defunct Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. For a preview of the awesomeness within, visit this website and prepare to be amazed.
I visited the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices before the curator retired and left everything to the Science Museum. It was incredibly cool.
Also, you should check out the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
While I've got people's attention, I'd like to warn you to avoid South Carolina like the plague -- from a geek's perspective, it's a cultural wasteland!
Steve
Steve
"But he isn't dumb"
Anyone who has lived in the United States all his or her life and still cannot pronounce the word "nuclear" is a dumbass. Every time that idiot goes on TV and talks about "Nu-cue-ler" weapons he embarrasses the entire nation.
"and it's inappropriate to call him Dumbya."
Can I call him "Fratboy" instead?
"Deterrence is the key; but deterrence requires that the deterrent be swift, highly visible, and certain. Unfortunately, the wheels of justice are too damned slow."
That's stupid -- what you want is impossible. Suppose the attacker is in country A and and the victims of the attack are in country B. How are country B's authorities going to bring the attacker to justice if he isn't even within their jurisdiction? Furthermore, identifying the attacker might not be possible at all. Suppose that the attacker uses a publicly accessible computer located in a coffee shop or a public library to release the virus or worm or whatever he comes up with? More realistically, what if the attacker uses his own computer, connected to the Internet by way of an unsecured wireless network? If there's no paper trail, then the authorities can't determine who launched the attack. As you can see, tougher laws are not sufficient to deter attacks since, due to the decentralized and anonymous nature of the Internet, it's so easy to avoid detection.
Steve
"Please be aware that there is an extremely nasty Macromedia Flash-related bug in Mozilla Firebird 0.6."
The existence of Flash is an extremely nasty Macromedia Flash-related bug.
Steve
"Laws controlling devices are nothing new. There are laws about automobile safety that requires cars to meet certain standards and this allows the government to control technology. There are laws about FCC compliance and this allows the FCC to control devices. Etc. etc."
True, but with very few exceptions, once you buy a car there are no restrictions on what you can do with it. If you want to remove the catalytic converter or drive around without a safety belt, you can do that as long as you don't take it out on public roads. With the DMCA it is illegal to circumvent copy protection even on devices that you own so that you can watch DVDs (or whatever) that you paid for.
Furthermore, if I wanted to start VanDahm Motor Company and sell VMC automobiles to the public, I would be free to do that as long as I complied with the government regulations. If I wanted to make DVDs or DVD players, however, I have to get licenses from a consortium of private companies, who could very well deny me a license if they felt that my business interests were in conflict with their own.
When the government makes it illegal for company A to do business simply because it would interfere with company B's profits, it's widely considered to be corruption. However, that's exactly what the DMCA allows, and that's what the RIAA and MPAA are trying to do with music and movie production.
"That seams weird to me, I'm a commited Christian, are you saying that I should have the right to spam people about my faith, please I should be made to abide by the same rules of honour and decency as any one else, spamming is wrong, I shouldn't do it whether it's for my faith or not."
I agree with you from a moral perspective -- all spamming is wrong whether it's religious or commerical in nature. I'm just saying that, from a purely practical perspective, it might pay off to wait until later to go after the relgious and political spam, because you simply don't know how the courts will react. If we ban commerical spam, we stigmatize spamming in general, and while religious and political spam remains legal, it's sleazy by association. After people get used to that, then maybe we can introduce a bill that targets religious and political spam. If people raise a stink over it, someone could say, "hey, corporations have been banned from doing for years" and the practice would be much harder to defend.
Steve
I really don't agree with this. People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church or political party any more than for a new penis enlarger. It may not be "Unsolicited Commercial E-mail," but it's certainly spam.
I know it's a property rights issue, and that political and religious spam is just as bad as commercial spam. But as a practical matter, it may not be wise to mess with political and religious spam because there's no telling how the courts might see it. Commercial speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and Congress is explicitly allowed to regulate "interstate commerce," so if a spam bill is limited only to commercial spam, it would most likely be safe from a Constitutional challenge.
Steve
if they are that fucked up they are pretty much useless as it is..
Suppose that someone had a condition that could be treated with medication so that would help him to control his behavior. You would need some way to communicate with him until the medication took effect. Basically, the interpreter is one person servicing an entire state of millions and millions of people. It's not like it's costing taxpayers much of anything.
Steve
it is beyond my life experience that the state would cater to such a bizarre whim as speaking "Klingon".
The translator would be working with the mentally ill. The state has encountered mentally ill people that, for whatever reason, refused to speak in any language but Klingon, and since these people are mentally ill, you can't just require them to speak English. So, as you can see, there is at least some need for a Klingon interpreter.
As bizzare as this sounds to people like us (I live in South Carolina), it's much more humane than what happens to the mentally ill in our states. In South Carolina, at least, the Department of Mental Health is so horribly underfunded that they can barely operate.
Steve
"Pardon that sound, it was my coffee going through my nose as I read that last sentance."
When I typed my earlier comment, I was trying to download Red Hat and FreeBSD ISOs, so that took up a lot of extra space that I don't normally use. The stuff that I permanently keep in my home directory will easily fit on a CDR -- in fact, that's how I've been backing up my data.
I have 60 GB of storage space on that disk and about 100 gigabytes of total storage space and, at the time, I was only using about four gigabytes. I would say that only using 4% of my available storage is pretty efficient. Perhaps too efficient, since there are plenty of good ways to use the disk space since I've already got it. Most people that I know fill their drives, even large drives, with software they never use, MP3 files, and other assorted crap. Compared to the average computer user, I am still quite frugal.
I remember the 486 with a 255 MB hard drive we had when I was in middle school. My Dad was pissed because DOS and Windows 3.1 took up nearly 70 MB of precious storage space when the version of DOS that came with our old Tandy 1000 EX fit on a single 5.25 inch floppy diskette. Dad was even more pissed when I filled the drive with games, WAV files, and pictures. Back then, I was excited whenever I was able to free up another 750 kilobytes of disk space. Then there were the hard decisions...is removing Rise of the Triad, my all-time favorite game, worth freeing over 20 megabytes?
When I started college I bought a Pentium with a 4 gigabyte hard drive. Unlimited storage space! Well, until a friend showed me this awesome new program called "Winamp."
To this day, I'm very frugal with disk space. My home directory resides on a 60 gigabyte drive split into 3 20 gigabyte partitions, and I'm only using 17% of one partition right now.
"Material witnesses can be held for extended periods of time if it is believed that they pose a flight risk, or if they may be in danger by being without constant protection. There isn't any shady bullshit going on here, material witnesses are held all the time. Learn how the legal system works, THEN post."
This guy, an American citizen married to an American citizen with children who are American citizens and an upper middle-class job in America is clearly NOT a flight risk. Where the hell would he go?
This is very clearly a case of "shady bullshit." There's no reason in the world to expect that he would have left the country or even the state during the six weeks he was held without being charged. Since he was not a flight risk, and did not require constant protection, it was, as a matter of law, inappropriate to hold him as a material witness. Perhaps you should study up before posting.
Steve
"You really don't want to know what kinda of a smog contraption i'd be driving past your place i there wasn't a bus to drive me to work every morning. ;)"
The fact that buses are better than no buses doesn't mean that buses don't suck. If the buses were replaced by electric trains running in subway tunnels, or if the gasoline engines in the buses were replaced with propane-burning engines (I don't know if this would really work, but you get the idea) things would be much cleaner, and probably quieter.
Buses are the C- solution to mass transit problems. They are really noisy and, at least in Minneapolis, they can mess up traffic since they're big, bulky and slow. After seeing the Metro in Montreal, I'm convinced that subways are the best type of public transportation.
Steve