"and both isp subscribers and students pay big bucks, or is 5 figures a year not enough for them?"
NO, students do not pay big bucks. Students pay a small fraction of the highly subsidized costs of their education - tuition, facilities, infrastructure, salaries - at a TAXPAYER funded public institution such as Ohio University.
And I assure you, the taxpayers of Ohio have much better things to do with their money than to foot enormous bandwidth bills so that students can illegally download copyrighted music, movies, and porn faster. I'd like to see them take that argument to the floor of their state legislature.
"Hay guys, I used to download movies and porn really quick, but now it's slowed to a trickle. Please increase the property tax levy to PIMP MY P2P!"
That's why people who aren't 20 year old college students don't give two shits about your "plight".
The "nail in the coffin of internet freedom in American universities"?
If you want your concerns to be taken seriously, stop asking the rest of us to play fools. EVERYONE knows what most students most use P2P for: transferring materials in violation of copyright.
You have some gall to suppose that the TAXPAYERS of the State of Ohio should continue subsidizing your illegal acquisition of movies and software and porn while you whine about "internet freedom".
You can have all the freedom you want (within the bounds of the law) just as soon as you move off campus and foot the bill for it yourself.
You are being deprived of about as much "freedom" as your parents requiring you to be home by midnight when you take THEIR car out.
And what about the legitimate uses that you will no doubt trumpet (because of course, *you* have never used P2P for any purpose inconsistent with the educational mission of the institution)?
It says right in the announcement that exceptions will be made for LEGITIMATE needs for P2P use. Developing a new P2P client and need to test it out on the dorm network? Go ask your technical coordinator; he or she will work with you to meet your needs consistent with the eductational mission of the institution. Need to collect real world data on a new exotic P2P network structure you are researching for your team project? Go ask IT services; they are there to help you. Need to download the latest copy of Linux Distro X available only on BitTorrent? Yup, that's legitimate too. Go ask.
Now, if it turns out that they can not accomodate your legitimate educational needs when you go ask, then you might have something to complain about.
But until then, if you feel that you need unrestricted P2P, you'll have to take it to the taxpayers of your state who are subsidizing your activity. I'm sure they'll be happy to cough up a few more dollars so that you can download porn faster./sarcasm
You don't have to choose between POP3 and a proprietary web interface for personal email, and you don't have to settle for ambiguous or outright shady privacy policies.
It will cost you less than $50/year you can choose between a number of reliable, reputable, pay email providers. They offer IMAP, POP3 if you want, and a web interface for when you don't have access to a thick client. Most also provide file storage space.
My OS X Mail app and my provider's web interface integrate seamlessly due to the "magic" of IMAP (it apparently is magic to most email users, considering what they put up with).
I use Mail at home. And at work if I want to fire off or read a few personal emails over lunch I bring up the web interface.
I read the introductory paragraphs of this interview and all I could think is: "Why on earth should we care?"
The article says he has made more correct than incorrect predictions in his several years of doing this.
Something tells me that when he predicts that the Yankees will win 110 games, for example, he is counting his prediction as fulfilled if the Yankees win AT LEAST 110 games.
Because it would be pretty remarkable if he has correctly predicated the EXACT number of games teams will win more than incorrectly over the past several years.
And since no margin of error is provided, there's really no basis for saying whether his model is impressive or not. Probably not.
RMS says that most software out there is custom software that is developed for a single user, and that this software is - unless proprietary software - not unethical to develop.
This is an interesting position I have not seen him express previously.
He seems to have in mind a very constrained set of liberties. His essential software liberties only apply within user communities. Why is this? Because, he says that a single user who contracts to have developed and to own a piece of custom software, can himself both possess the four essential software liberties, choose not to exercise them, and deprive no one else of the four essential software liberties with respect to this software.
How is this? The four essential software liberties have nothing to say about a mandate to share software - to create or expand a user community. As far as the four essential liberties are concerned, having the liberty to share software of which you are a user is an essential liberty, but for you as a user having this liberty, actually sharing the software is entirely superogatory.
I'm not sure whether or not this is something new he has latched onto, but it is certainly helpful for his credibility to not be forced to say that the majority of software developers - his target audience - are themselves engaged scandalously unethical behavior and oppression as a profession, because he says, most software is custom software of this ethically ambiguous sort.
"The second something that tries to play off one of these signing statements goes to court, does anybody really, honestly believe that they would hold any legal water?"
It won't go to court. Or rather, it will, and the administration will have it dismissed as a matter or national security - a state secret.
They are, as explicitly stated by law, NOT limited to actual damages, NOT limited to actual number of infringing copies, NOT even a function of actual damages.
The law is completely absurd, and this case proves it. Who in their right mind could support this?
This is absurd on the level of sentencing someone to death for stealing a candy bar from a convenience store.
Just societies are founded on the principle of proportionality of punishment: the punishment must fit the crime.
The RIAA doesn't dare sue for the full amount against U.S. citizens, because they know that the day a college student is fined a billion dollars for sharing mp3s, is the day that this law is overturned.
"another notable is Minions of Mirth [prairiegames.com]. It's a respectable MMORPG written by one programmer in one year. While it's not open-source, you can host your own servers, develop mods, and he's done a nice job of publishing details about the back-end."
Wow. It actually looks no worse than EQ did at launch.
Have you (or anyone else reading) played it much? How does it rate compared to, say, old school EQ or WoW?
"Speech recognition is 'nice' - but that's it. I cannot imagine an office full of people all gabbling at their PCs without going nuts."
Well, throat mics are start. I wish more manager-level cell phone users would learn about these.
And there is already research-level technology out there demonstrating effectively separating single voices out of crowed rooms. It's really quite impressive.
A number of the problems you mention can also be solved by addressing the computer by name. Unlike a human, the computer has no visual cues to know whether you are talking to it or someone else in the room, so it isn't unreasonable that you should address it be name.
I suspect there will be a lot of computers named "Hal".
"Clear the browser cache, Hal." "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." "Clear the browser history, Hal!." *A new email composition window opens. The browser history file is added as an attachment." "Hal!"
"Voice recognition is a stupid way to enter text into a computer. In a cubicle, where your neighbours can hear you it's completely annoying. In your house, where you have the TV on in the background and kids continually talking, I can't imagine it would work that well."
There is proof of concept level technology out there now that can effectively separate out single voices in a crowded room.
And I imagine it would just be a matter of adapting. Most people start speaking before they think, because in a normal conversation there is an artificial urgency. Whereas I usually think before I type.
As for editing, it's absolutely feasible to use voice to communicate operations like "strike the last sentence", "insert X before Y", etc.
This has been done for thousands of years. It's called dictation. Most of us today just aren't used to thinking and speaking in that mode.
I would love to be able to do all my composition by speech.
"Even since the last time this came up, I haven't seen anything done to differentiate between "symptoms of infection" and "traits of average cat owners.""
1. Control groups (although no source is given the claims in this article).
2. Most infections result from eating undercooked meat, not from owning cats.
And quit with the juvenile "correlation/causation" business. Yes, if you want to be obtuse, we can never "prove" causation. But down here in the world of reality and common sense, we're pretty sure that the Sun will rise tomorrow.
"it's not like the minimum wage failures-at-life who work in rendering plants actually give a crap about animal welfare"
Failures-at-life? That is an incredibly arrogant, ignorant statement.
"Yes, what were those immigrants thinking? They should be in college instead of dallying about the meat processing plants! Why, they're to blame for the suffering of the animals we eat. The dumb brutes have an electric cattle prod and they know how to use it."
Shouldn't it be possible to use a directional antenna or some similar technology, from several points around the globe to locate the source of the transmissions with a reasonably high degree of precision?
I don't have any shortwave equipment myself, but it seems that would be a very interesting project.
It would be quite exciting, say, to discover signals originating from a mountain in Wyoming:)
This is pretty sweet. It's a very interesting strategy. Shortwave receivers are easy to come by, do not arouse suspicion, and no one can detect that you are listening in.
Frm the article: "I expect to see Parallels fully integrated into Leopard by the time the OS is released, giving us the first OS in history (to my knowledge anyway) that will allow us to seamlessly run our Windows, Mac, and even Linux programs from the same desktop."
This would be a user experience and customer support nightmare for Apple.
Not to mention it would be incredibly risky for Apple to acquire and bolt on a complex 3rd party application at this late stage in Leopard development.
The author of this article is clueless. Which isn't surprising, considering it is essentially a blog post on a mac fan site. He's just regurgitating rumours from Mac community forums in order to get page hits.
From the article: "After years of speculation, the full screen video iPod will make it's debut just in time for the 07 holiday season sales push."
Can someone please explain to me what the market is for portable video players with builtin viewing screens, in general?
I see these at electronics stores and their appeal is completely lost on me.
When might I use such a device? Well, I suppose when I am somewhere without access to a computer or television, want to watch a video, and can devote my full attention to a little ~2.5" screen (so not when I'm driving). For me, that is never.
As far as I can tell the primary markets for these are: 1) People who spend a large amount of time on public or air transportation, but don't carry a laptop. 2) Young children of parents who are rich enough to buy them personal video viewing devices but don't already have viewing screens built into their SUVs.
Anyone? I can't even think if a reason to buy the existing video iPod, muchless a full screen model.
Video is overrated. BBC radio news, for example, is more informative than any broadcast or cable television news outlet in the U.S. Add in the daily hour long DemocracyNOW broadcast (or podcast) and you have more real, compelling news than you will find in a week of 24x7 Fox News. And you can listen those while you commute or work. Video monopolizes your brain. Not only that, but even old pre-1950 radio dramas are at least comparable in quality to the majority of sitcoms, dramas. and comedies on television today: i.e. they are crap.
Kill your television. Don't bring it with you in a little box.
"Their annoying usage of a top level conf dir ~/GNUStep (or whatever it is). No other app I've seen does such garbage, dot-dirs all ftw."
Insightful?! It's a fricking directory. You have thousands of them. Can you give one single reason why any sane, non-obsessive compulsive person would care that the GNUStep directory doesn't have a dot in front of it?
And this is "garbage"? This is your biggest complaint with the framework?
I would be surprised if freshmen were much better at evaluating and weighing objectivity and authority in traditional sources such as books, journals, and newspapers.
And I would like to know the criteria for the "correct" evaluation of the objectivity and authority of these sources.
"Only 35 percent could narrow an overly broad internet search"
Yeah, and what percent of incoming freshmen new how to narrow an overly broad search using whatever ancient, proprietary electronic card catalog system the school useswithout being taught? Probably less than 35%.
"You think Bush came along and blanked out a few lines just because the authors criticized him?"
Yes. Someone in the White House obviously did. Someone who decided to override the CIA.
According to the analysis of several sources, the redacted portions of the article probably deal with several specific actions and policies of the Bush administration, which are public knowledge, that have basically undermined our chances for success in Afghanistan by alienating coopoerating Arab states, particularly Iran.
The Bush administration does not want the public to know this. Why not? Because the Bush administration now, just as it has all along, wants to villainize Iran in order to prepare the American people for bombing Iran.
There are many people with high level connections making the lecture and talk show circuits who consider it a foregone conclusion that the Bush will order the bombing of Iran before he leaves office.
I think the administration sees in Iran a chance to get the American people on board. Just like our public institutions have managed to sustain the impression of WWII as "the good war", where we were fighting real evil, the administration sees the chance to frame bombing Iran as "the good war" of Bush. Iran is making it very easy for them. What with their president saying that Israel should be wiped off the map.
All signs indicate we are on our way to bombing Iran. We have all the telltale signs we saw in 2001-2002. We have villainized their government. We are starting a military buildup. We are calling for and passing UN resolutions demanding cooperation. And just as it was clear that Saddam was not willing - or perhaps could not if he wanted to - satisfy the U.S.'s demands, it seems clear that Iran will not cease uranium enrichment, which, by international treaty, it is permitted to do.
The very sad thing is that, it seems that whether we know about it or not, there is nothing we the people can do to stop this administration from going to war against Iran if they are determined to do so. It shouldn't be this way.
I hope that "Never Forget" for this and future generations will come to apply to the Bush administration as much as it applies to 9/11. Never Forget how not recounting ballots in a few Florida counties in one election, so dramatically changed the country and our standing in the world. We are always one election away from tyranny. We have come dangerously close.
"Infringing on someone's copyright has always been a no-no. And as usual, it's up to the copyright holder to tell someone to knock it off. This isn't any different. The leech should have just quit while he was ahead, but he's obviously an idiot."
It certainly isn't clear how copyright law restricts posting a reference to non-infringing published media or documents, so I don't think it is unreasonable that we should expect you to provide some explanation for your claim. Your entire post is just rhetoric and arm waving.
This scenario translates rather well into a real world analogy.
A distant motocross goods store has setup an offer in which, in order to promote motocross, if you write the store with a request for a video of particular motocross events, they will send you the video free of charge. Now, as a motocross enthusiast, I have requested and seen many of their videos myself. I decide to compile a list of my favorite videos. I then publish that list, including the video title and video identifier number, so that readers of my list can write to the motocross goods store and request free copies of the videos for themselves.
In the real world, the motocross goods store might eventually determine that it is not sustainable to honor all requests for free motocross videos, and would either discontinue free distribution or perform additional research to develop a more targeted distribution scheme.
The store would have no basis for attempting to prevent me from distributing my list of favorite, free, mail order motocross videos.
They would be laughed out of court. The judge would tell them, "If you can not afford to honor public requests for free, mail order motocross videos, THEN STOP SENDING THE VIDEOS OUT TO ANYONE WHO ASKS FOR THEM."
Maybe we should just shut down the whole damn series of tubes before idiots like these guys really hurt someone.
Most people don't have any reason to migrate to GNU/Linux on the home desktop. Their computer comes with Windows. They pay for Windows either way.
Windows does everything they need.
Even Office usually comes with the new computer or can be added to the bundle for an insignificant price.
Most families with children aren't going to move to GNU/Linux, if only for the reason that their off the shelf games can not run under GNU/Linux.
Not to mention off the shelf tax software.
WHY would a home user want to migrate to GNU/Linux?
I develop on Debian GNU/Linux at work, but at home I use OS X and reboot via Boot Camp to play Windows games. GNU/Linux does absolutely nothing for me on the home desktop, and I'm sure that I'm more likely than Joe Average to have an interest in using it. But even I don't.
Slashdot Mirror
"and both isp subscribers and students pay big bucks, or is 5 figures a year not enough for them?"
NO, students do not pay big bucks. Students pay a small fraction of the highly subsidized costs of their education - tuition, facilities, infrastructure, salaries - at a TAXPAYER funded public institution such as Ohio University.
And I assure you, the taxpayers of Ohio have much better things to do with their money than to foot enormous bandwidth bills so that students can illegally download copyrighted music, movies, and porn faster. I'd like to see them take that argument to the floor of their state legislature.
"Hay guys, I used to download movies and porn really quick, but now it's slowed to a trickle. Please increase the property tax levy to PIMP MY P2P!"
That's why people who aren't 20 year old college students don't give two shits about your "plight".
The "nail in the coffin of internet freedom in American universities"?
/sarcasm
If you want your concerns to be taken seriously, stop asking the rest of us to play fools. EVERYONE knows what most students most use P2P for: transferring materials in violation of copyright.
You have some gall to suppose that the TAXPAYERS of the State of Ohio should continue subsidizing your illegal acquisition of movies and software and porn while you whine about "internet freedom".
You can have all the freedom you want (within the bounds of the law) just as soon as you move off campus and foot the bill for it yourself.
You are being deprived of about as much "freedom" as your parents requiring you to be home by midnight when you take THEIR car out.
And what about the legitimate uses that you will no doubt trumpet (because of course, *you* have never used P2P for any purpose inconsistent with the educational mission of the institution)?
It says right in the announcement that exceptions will be made for LEGITIMATE needs for P2P use. Developing a new P2P client and need to test it out on the dorm network? Go ask your technical coordinator; he or she will work with you to meet your needs consistent with the eductational mission of the institution. Need to collect real world data on a new exotic P2P network structure you are researching for your team project? Go ask IT services; they are there to help you. Need to download the latest copy of Linux Distro X available only on BitTorrent? Yup, that's legitimate too. Go ask.
Now, if it turns out that they can not accomodate your legitimate educational needs when you go ask, then you might have something to complain about.
But until then, if you feel that you need unrestricted P2P, you'll have to take it to the taxpayers of your state who are subsidizing your activity. I'm sure they'll be happy to cough up a few more dollars so that you can download porn faster.
You don't have to choose between POP3 and a proprietary web interface for personal email, and you don't have to settle for ambiguous or outright shady privacy policies.
It will cost you less than $50/year you can choose between a number of reliable, reputable, pay email providers. They offer IMAP, POP3 if you want, and a web interface for when you don't have access to a thick client. Most also provide file storage space.
My OS X Mail app and my provider's web interface integrate seamlessly due to the "magic" of IMAP (it apparently is magic to most email users, considering what they put up with).
I use Mail at home. And at work if I want to fire off or read a few personal emails over lunch I bring up the web interface.
I read the introductory paragraphs of this interview and all I could think is: "Why on earth should we care?"
Welcome to 1996.
The article says he has made more correct than incorrect predictions in his several years of doing this.
Something tells me that when he predicts that the Yankees will win 110 games, for example, he is counting his prediction as fulfilled if the Yankees win AT LEAST 110 games.
Because it would be pretty remarkable if he has correctly predicated the EXACT number of games teams will win more than incorrectly over the past several years.
And since no margin of error is provided, there's really no basis for saying whether his model is impressive or not. Probably not.
RMS says that most software out there is custom software that is developed for a single user, and that this software is - unless proprietary software - not unethical to develop.
This is an interesting position I have not seen him express previously.
He seems to have in mind a very constrained set of liberties. His essential software liberties only apply within user communities. Why is this? Because, he says that a single user who contracts to have developed and to own a piece of custom software, can himself both possess the four essential software liberties, choose not to exercise them, and deprive no one else of the four essential software liberties with respect to this software.
How is this? The four essential software liberties have nothing to say about a mandate to share software - to create or expand a user community. As far as the four essential liberties are concerned, having the liberty to share software of which you are a user is an essential liberty, but for you as a user having this liberty, actually sharing the software is entirely superogatory.
I'm not sure whether or not this is something new he has latched onto, but it is certainly helpful for his credibility to not be forced to say that the majority of software developers - his target audience - are themselves engaged scandalously unethical behavior and oppression as a profession, because he says, most software is custom software of this ethically ambiguous sort.
"The second something that tries to play off one of these signing statements goes to court, does anybody really, honestly believe that they would hold any legal water?"
It won't go to court. Or rather, it will, and the administration will have it dismissed as a matter or national security - a state secret.
Business as usual.
Beam me up, hot Nord babes.
"This wouldn't be so bad if they, as you said, sold 150W equivalent bulbs."
Walmart sells 150W equivalent CFLs. I went looking for one over the weekend. My 2nd time in a Walmart.
Unfortunately it didn't fit in my particular lamp due to the wide base.
FYI
They are, as explicitly stated by law, NOT limited to actual damages, NOT limited to actual number of infringing copies, NOT even a function of actual damages.
The law is completely absurd, and this case proves it. Who in their right mind could support this?
This is absurd on the level of sentencing someone to death for stealing a candy bar from a convenience store.
Just societies are founded on the principle of proportionality of punishment: the punishment must fit the crime.
The RIAA doesn't dare sue for the full amount against U.S. citizens, because they know that the day a college student is fined a billion dollars for sharing mp3s, is the day that this law is overturned.
No sane person would tolerate this, one hopes.
"Although I would agree that this is pretty much a Bush bashing article in its tone"
What does this even mean?
Is an article that points out the dangers of trans-fats a "trans-fats bashing article in its tone"?
Not, it is an article pointing out the uncontested, blatant abuses perpetrated against the world and its own citizens by this administration.
Sometimes there is right and wrong. I'm sure Bush would agree.
"another notable is Minions of Mirth [prairiegames.com]. It's a respectable MMORPG written by one programmer in one year. While it's not open-source, you can host your own servers, develop mods, and he's done a nice job of publishing details about the back-end."
Wow. It actually looks no worse than EQ did at launch.
Have you (or anyone else reading) played it much? How does it rate compared to, say, old school EQ or WoW?
"Speech recognition is 'nice' - but that's it. I cannot imagine an office full of people all gabbling at their PCs without going nuts."
Well, throat mics are start. I wish more manager-level cell phone users would learn about these.
And there is already research-level technology out there demonstrating effectively separating single voices out of crowed rooms. It's really quite impressive.
A number of the problems you mention can also be solved by addressing the computer by name. Unlike a human, the computer has no visual cues to know whether you are talking to it or someone else in the room, so it isn't unreasonable that you should address it be name.
I suspect there will be a lot of computers named "Hal".
"Clear the browser cache, Hal."
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
"Clear the browser history, Hal!."
*A new email composition window opens. The browser history file is added as an attachment."
"Hal!"
We are much closer than you seem to think.
"Voice recognition is a stupid way to enter text into a computer. In a cubicle, where your neighbours can hear you it's completely annoying. In your house, where you have the TV on in the background and kids continually talking, I can't imagine it would work that well."
There is proof of concept level technology out there now that can effectively separate out single voices in a crowded room.
And I imagine it would just be a matter of adapting. Most people start speaking before they think, because in a normal conversation there is an artificial urgency. Whereas I usually think before I type.
As for editing, it's absolutely feasible to use voice to communicate operations like "strike the last sentence", "insert X before Y", etc.
This has been done for thousands of years. It's called dictation. Most of us today just aren't used to thinking and speaking in that mode.
I would love to be able to do all my composition by speech.
"Correlation != causation."
"Even since the last time this came up, I haven't seen anything done to differentiate between "symptoms of infection" and "traits of average cat owners.""
1. Control groups (although no source is given the claims in this article).
2. Most infections result from eating undercooked meat, not from owning cats.
And quit with the juvenile "correlation/causation" business. Yes, if you want to be obtuse, we can never "prove" causation. But down here in the world of reality and common sense, we're pretty sure that the Sun will rise tomorrow.
And who are you calling "kids"?
"it's not like the minimum wage failures-at-life who work in rendering plants actually give a crap about animal welfare"
Failures-at-life? That is an incredibly arrogant, ignorant statement.
"Yes, what were those immigrants thinking? They should be in college instead of dallying about the meat processing plants! Why, they're to blame for the suffering of the animals we eat. The dumb brutes have an electric cattle prod and they know how to use it."
I know what *I'm* thinking.
Maybe earthworms aren't so far below us afterall.
Shouldn't it be possible to use a directional antenna or some similar technology, from several points around the globe to locate the source of the transmissions with a reasonably high degree of precision?
:)
I don't have any shortwave equipment myself, but it seems that would be a very interesting project.
It would be quite exciting, say, to discover signals originating from a mountain in Wyoming
This is pretty sweet. It's a very interesting strategy. Shortwave receivers are easy to come by, do not arouse suspicion, and no one can detect that you are listening in.
Frm the article:
"I expect to see Parallels fully integrated into Leopard by the time the OS is released, giving us the first OS in history (to my knowledge anyway) that will allow us to seamlessly run our Windows, Mac, and even Linux programs from the same desktop."
This would be a user experience and customer support nightmare for Apple.
Not to mention it would be incredibly risky for Apple to acquire and bolt on a complex 3rd party application at this late stage in Leopard development.
The author of this article is clueless. Which isn't surprising, considering it is essentially a blog post on a mac fan site. He's just regurgitating rumours from Mac community forums in order to get page hits.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
From the article:
"After years of speculation, the full screen video iPod will make it's debut just in time for the 07 holiday season sales push."
Can someone please explain to me what the market is for portable video players with builtin viewing screens, in general?
I see these at electronics stores and their appeal is completely lost on me.
When might I use such a device? Well, I suppose when I am somewhere without access to a computer or television, want to watch a video, and can devote my full attention to a little ~2.5" screen (so not when I'm driving). For me, that is never.
As far as I can tell the primary markets for these are:
1) People who spend a large amount of time on public or air transportation, but don't carry a laptop.
2) Young children of parents who are rich enough to buy them personal video viewing devices but don't already have viewing screens built into their SUVs.
Anyone? I can't even think if a reason to buy the existing video iPod, muchless a full screen model.
Video is overrated. BBC radio news, for example, is more informative than any broadcast or cable television news outlet in the U.S. Add in the daily hour long DemocracyNOW broadcast (or podcast) and you have more real, compelling news than you will find in a week of 24x7 Fox News. And you can listen those while you commute or work. Video monopolizes your brain. Not only that, but even old pre-1950 radio dramas are at least comparable in quality to the majority of sitcoms, dramas. and comedies on television today: i.e. they are crap.
Kill your television. Don't bring it with you in a little box.
"Their annoying usage of a top level conf dir ~/GNUStep (or whatever it is). No other app I've seen does such garbage, dot-dirs all ftw."
Insightful?! It's a fricking directory. You have thousands of them. Can you give one single reason why any sane, non-obsessive compulsive person would care that the GNUStep directory doesn't have a dot in front of it?
And this is "garbage"? This is your biggest complaint with the framework?
Seriously. Are you obsessive compulsive?
I would be surprised if freshmen were much better at evaluating and weighing objectivity and authority in traditional sources such as books, journals, and newspapers.
And I would like to know the criteria for the "correct" evaluation of the objectivity and authority of these sources.
"Only 35 percent could narrow an overly broad internet search"
Yeah, and what percent of incoming freshmen new how to narrow an overly broad search using whatever ancient, proprietary electronic card catalog system the school useswithout being taught? Probably less than 35%.
"You think Bush came along and blanked out a few lines just because the authors criticized him?"
Yes. Someone in the White House obviously did. Someone who decided to override the CIA.
According to the analysis of several sources, the redacted portions of the article probably deal with several specific actions and policies of the Bush administration, which are public knowledge, that have basically undermined our chances for success in Afghanistan by alienating coopoerating Arab states, particularly Iran.
The Bush administration does not want the public to know this. Why not? Because the Bush administration now, just as it has all along, wants to villainize Iran in order to prepare the American people for bombing Iran.
There are many people with high level connections making the lecture and talk show circuits who consider it a foregone conclusion that the Bush will order the bombing of Iran before he leaves office.
I think the administration sees in Iran a chance to get the American people on board. Just like our public institutions have managed to sustain the impression of WWII as "the good war", where we were fighting real evil, the administration sees the chance to frame bombing Iran as "the good war" of Bush. Iran is making it very easy for them. What with their president saying that Israel should be wiped off the map.
All signs indicate we are on our way to bombing Iran. We have all the telltale signs we saw in 2001-2002. We have villainized their government. We are starting a military buildup. We are calling for and passing UN resolutions demanding cooperation. And just as it was clear that Saddam was not willing - or perhaps could not if he wanted to - satisfy the U.S.'s demands, it seems clear that Iran will not cease uranium enrichment, which, by international treaty, it is permitted to do.
The very sad thing is that, it seems that whether we know about it or not, there is nothing we the people can do to stop this administration from going to war against Iran if they are determined to do so. It shouldn't be this way.
I hope that "Never Forget" for this and future generations will come to apply to the Bush administration as much as it applies to 9/11. Never Forget how not recounting ballots in a few Florida counties in one election, so dramatically changed the country and our standing in the world. We are always one election away from tyranny. We have come dangerously close.
"Hezbollah is Shia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah#Shi.27a_Isl amism [wikipedia.org]."
He said Hamas, not Hezbollah. Hamas is indeed Sunni.
"Infringing on someone's copyright has always been a no-no. And as usual, it's up to the copyright holder to tell someone to knock it off. This isn't any different. The leech should have just quit while he was ahead, but he's obviously an idiot."
It certainly isn't clear how copyright law restricts posting a reference to non-infringing published media or documents, so I don't think it is unreasonable that we should expect you to provide some explanation for your claim. Your entire post is just rhetoric and arm waving.
This scenario translates rather well into a real world analogy.
A distant motocross goods store has setup an offer in which, in order to promote motocross, if you write the store with a request for a video of particular motocross events, they will send you the video free of charge. Now, as a motocross enthusiast, I have requested and seen many of their videos myself. I decide to compile a list of my favorite videos. I then publish that list, including the video title and video identifier number, so that readers of my list can write to the motocross goods store and request free copies of the videos for themselves.
In the real world, the motocross goods store might eventually determine that it is not sustainable to honor all requests for free motocross videos, and would either discontinue free distribution or perform additional research to develop a more targeted distribution scheme.
The store would have no basis for attempting to prevent me from distributing my list of favorite, free, mail order motocross videos.
They would be laughed out of court. The judge would tell them, "If you can not afford to honor public requests for free, mail order motocross videos, THEN STOP SENDING THE VIDEOS OUT TO ANYONE WHO ASKS FOR THEM."
Maybe we should just shut down the whole damn series of tubes before idiots like these guys really hurt someone.
Most people don't have any reason to migrate to GNU/Linux on the home desktop. Their computer comes with Windows. They pay for Windows either way.
Windows does everything they need.
Even Office usually comes with the new computer or can be added to the bundle for an insignificant price.
Most families with children aren't going to move to GNU/Linux, if only for the reason that their off the shelf games can not run under GNU/Linux.
Not to mention off the shelf tax software.
WHY would a home user want to migrate to GNU/Linux?
I develop on Debian GNU/Linux at work, but at home I use OS X and reboot via Boot Camp to play Windows games. GNU/Linux does absolutely nothing for me on the home desktop, and I'm sure that I'm more likely than Joe Average to have an interest in using it. But even I don't.
"I'm as liberal as they come: anarcho-syndicalist, it doesn't get more hardcore leftist than that."
Hoho! The anarcho-communists spit in your general direction, bourgeoisie scum!