He misstated the test a bit. Lots of people misunderstand this, unfortunately. You're in the same species if you can easily, naturally interbreed. Dogs and wolves, asses and horses, even lions and tigers are close enough that with a huge amount of human intervention they can be made to mate, but they would never normally do it, it's only human intervention that makes it possible, and therefore they fail the species test.
Each set is obviously, however, in the same genus.
Umm not quite. Dogs have been selectively bred a lot longer than 5k years first. Second breeding Timberwolves and Huskies, while possible, positively requires human intervention. It could never happen in the wild, first because the wolf would more likely kill the dog than mate with it, and secondly because wolves and dogs have very different estrus cycles.
Wolves and dogs are thus clearly different species, just as asses and horses are. Remember, asses and horse *can* mate - but it's problematic and extremely unlikely without human intervention. To be the same species it needs to be possible to mate normally - not with great difficulty and lots of outside intervention.
If you get upset when someone on the internet calls you a 'doofus' then you're not going to get much out of it. If that was the worst thing I'd ever been called... sheesh it's not even a real insult. It's like a nerf insult... I really think anyone that would feel insulted about it is wearing their feelings on their shirtsleeve to an absurd degree. In terms of removing barriers to participation, the barrier here would be the excessive sensitivity, not the word doofus.
Now if the error was ESHITFORBRAINS maybe I could see your point, but doofus? Come on.
You're perpetuating the "stopping-power" myth perpetuated by companies with a vested interest in larger slower calibers.
What companies would those be?
I agree the original poster was confused, but you're reply is pretty confusing too.
The large-caliber versus small-caliber debate has been around for decades, and both have good points. Small caliber high velocity rounds have better range, better ballistics (less drop at range) and generally higher energy (ft/lbs delivered) so at first glance it looks like a no brainer, but the issue is more subtle actually. A couple of issues exist in the small arms field - deflection ('brush-busting') affects small caliber high velocity rounds more, and against thin skinned animals (humans being a prime example) there is a tendency for a high velocity low diameter missile to penetrate and exit, meaning that part (even most) of that stopping power isn't delivered to the target, but rather to whatever is serving as the backstop.
This is why, even though a 9mm looks very good on paper next to a.45 acp (which is an extremely poor round in most ways, with ridiculously low velocity,) in practice it's sometimes actually a weaker round. (At least with the FMJs that are typically used - with hollow points it might work out differently.) The 9mm tends to go through the target and out the other side, carrying most of it's energy with it until it hits something else, so the actual affect is extremely variable - if it happens to cut through just the right place it may drop the guy, but on the other hand it may not do a hell of a lot to him if it doesn't. With a.45, you can at least be pretty sure that hitting someone anywhere is going to, at minimum, result in him being taken off his feet and hammered pretty hard, because that energy is all going into his body, not into a backstop.
Similarly, on paper the.223 looks like a much better round than the.30 russian, but in practice there are good reasons to choose the russian - particularly in brush.
The issue of penetrating-and-exiting can be dealt with by using good hollow point ammunition, but deflection issues are, if anything, aggravated when you do that. Like most everything in life, it's a trade-off.
You're absolutely right about AP not having to do with increasing caliber - quite the opposite. To pierce armour you want a small, hard projectile with the maximum possible velocity. The old 30-06 AP rounds I grew up with had a dart-like core of some hard alloy, tungsten I believe, buried in the center of the bullet - when it hit a hard target the lead and copper would just sort of slide back and let that dart keep going. This is actually a more effective strategy than the strong outer jacket you recommend - although your advice is sound if you can't get special purpose bullets.
But there's a reason AP isn't used for general purpose, and it has nothing to do with price. It isn't very effective against human targets for the same reason the 9mm is sometimes less effective than the anemic.45 acp - it just bores a little hole and keeps going, without transferring the energy to the target. Bottom line - use the right round for the right target. There is no perfect round, what's good on one type of target may be crap on another.
Well without seeing exactly what pictures these techs saw, one can't say for sure, but I think 99% of 'kiddie porn' accusations are nonsense. They don't involve, say, someone kidnapping 5 year olds and photographing their rape and torture. Now, if this professor was actually doing that, then I'd have no problem throwing the switch on him. But something tells me that's exceedingly unlikely.
Usually what's involved is someone that didn't produce the pictures, has no way to know their provenence and in no way contributed to their making, and the pictures in question are perhaps shots of 16 year old girls on nude beaches and the like. 16 years is the age of consent in a lot of countries you know. In the US it was formerly 12, in fact if memory serves 11 in one state. And there's no way to tell what age a model was in most cases anyway - is that a 16 year old, or an 18? Without knowing the provenence of the pictures and having records to prove the ages of those involved, it's simple conjecture, hiding behind outrage to avoid proving anything.
Frankly, in the absence of evidence of some real wrongdoing (kidnapping, torture, whatnot) I'm extremely skeptical of the notion of simply possessing digital image files being a crime. I'm extremely skeptical, also, of a tech that would make a stink because he saw some naughty pictures on a professors machine. Like I said, without having been there and knowing all the details, I'll have to withold judgement, but it sure sounds to me like a couple of people that have proven themselves untrustworthy by their actions, caused a basically innocent man a hell of a lot of trouble, and deserve a lot worse than they're getting.
Bad analogy. Anime is completely legal and ok in anyone's book. Child pornography, OTOH, is an instant felony. Possession or distribution of said pornography is a serious offense in this country.
You imagine a bright line where one doesn't exist. There are plenty of cops and judges and legislators that would think a lot of Manga is child pornography.
Anyway having wasted my time reading through the thread I might as well waste a few more seconds venting my opinion.
First off, whoever the idiot at Apple who is pushing you to fork to avoid the horrible indignity of having the word doofus in the source code is, he should be fired. Yesterday. God, that's just lame. Particularly considering it's in a place that amounts to a note amongst the programmers saying 'if you get this you did something really dumb' - it's not going to users and it's perfectly appropriate in context. I read all your soft-pedaling about not being humour impaired yourself, and I think you needed to do that, this request is just so bloody silly it's unbelievable.
That said, I do think the EDONTPANIC suggestion is a very good one. There is nothing wrong with EDOOFUS, but EDONTPANIC is better, so maybe something good came of this.
Of course my opinion means nothing, my only connection to FreeBSD is the fact I'm typing this on my TiBook, and I'm going back to work now. I don't envy you, though, if your job requires you to cater to people that are willing to fork because EDOOFUS offends them then you are really earning your money in my opinion. Glad someone is, if Apple ever dies I'll cry, I really love my TiBook and I would hate to ever have to go back to an x86 based laptop.;)
check that: 45 MB for X, whil _only_ xdm is running ?
It's mapping the buffer on your vidcard, among other things. So it's memory usage will appear to be increased if you add memory to your vidcard, or switch to one with more memory... this isn't really anything to worry about.
Maybe you haven't used XFree on older hardware, but you shoudl try it -- prepare for the shock !
you can still run windows95 on a 486/16MB, don't try that with XFree...
Oh bullshit. I've run Xfree on many 486s. Yes, win95 will struggle and run on a 486. XP won't even try. Xfree will run just fine if it's configured right. Tip: You don't have to load up Gnome and KDE environments with all their bars and libraries and subcomponents - particularly on older hardware you want to avoid both of those things like the plague. Use a lightweight window manager (WindowMaker is absolutely the heaviest thing you should consider, ICEWM is lighter, TWM is really light, there are lots of choices that don't add a lot of bloat.) A 486 with an old Mach card running ICEWM and straight X apps will run at about the same speed as Win95... and of course it's far more powerful and flexible.
That's only because you're used to it. Money is money.
I believe that was my point.;)
My opinion, your opinion.... We won't agree on this topic.
I think if you weren't so set on disagreeing with me you might realise we already agree, for the most part.
I have a 20 euro in hand atm, looking at it now, it's more 'modern' in a sense, but that's not necessarily better. The little patterns look computer generated to me, I don't know if they are or not, but they give that appearance. The greenbacks have intricate patterns in the engravings that have all sorts of irregularities and humanity to them, intentionally. There is no way you can be looking at a greenback of any denomination next to a 20 euro bill and think they are comparable in terms of detail of engraving, the euro doesn't hold a candle there. The greenbacks don't have the flashy space-age-looking shiny strip on them, but for years they have had a very small hard to find strip embedded that serves the same purpose. I really don't believe it's any harder to counterfeit one than the other. Certainly the euro paper would be a lot easier to match, it feels cheap actually... greenbacks are printed on a very special paper that's almost impossible to get, you can rub it for a moment and it will turn very smooth, like satin... anyway my point all along was it's more a matter of what you're used to and what you expect than any 'objective' superiority of one design over another.
Actually I kind of like the Swedish bills, they're like the euros in having different sizes and colours, but the designs are a step up in my opinion, they look more like they were really designed and not just generated, and the paper doesn't feel so cheap for some reason. But regardless, the important thing is that you can spend them, everything else is fluff really...
If it's enough slower that you can really notice then you probably have a driver problem.
It will always be a little slower, of course, because it's more powerful, and because it runs in user ring instead of kernel ring - a good choice, but one that does incur a performance hit.
Still, on my Athlon XP 1700+ it's very hard to tell any difference in speed with XP and X11 on Slack. Win98 is noticeably faster, though it's not a big deal you can tell it's there... XP though is not. Like I said, check on your driver situation... not all XFree drivers are equal - and for that matter XFree isn't the fastest X server out there either, although with good drivers it's fast enough.
Of course if you're running twenty million applets and have twenty million different widget sets and shared libraries loading and so forth, that could cause a slow down too.
I run X11 with tolerable performance on machines that XP won't even try to run on, so believe me, if XP is outperforming X on your hardware it's a configuration issue.
It's not a matter of boring or not pretty. Greenbacks are very pretty. Ever look at the detail on them? They're really quite incredible. So it's not that they are boring, or not pretty, I think they're quite incredible works of art. But they're very dignified works of art, where the european money is more... dignified would not be the word, restrained would not be the word... no. Something quite the opposite.
Either type spends the same, and I've never had any trouble knowing which bill was which with either type, and I'm quite happy to get paid with either type. But the old Greenbacks will always look more like real money to me, I suspect.
I think that's funny, I live in Europe, but I'm from the US, I know everyone here seems so used to the different colours and sizes of notes and thinks the US ones are confusing - but it was never confusing to me. You don't have to take your bills out of the wallet to figure out which is which, you just flip hold the corner of the wad with finger and thumb and let them flip... normally you sort them when you get them, when they go in the wallet, anyway. I do that with european bills too, the larger denominations go to the back the small to the front, without even thinking about it, just habit.
To me, the european currencies are strange, yes the colours and sizes make it particularly easy to distinguish the denominations, but I never had any trouble doing that just by flipping the corners anyway... and they just don't look like money. They look like the banknotes in a childrens game, not something real.
I guess it's just a matter of what you're used to. I know the new 20s are NOT well received in the US, again, too much like something out of a childrens game, not like real money.
Don't trust the slashdot editors, they usually screw it up. If you RTA, which in this case takes only a few seconds, you'll see that the rumour is only that it will be available on X-Box and no other *consoles* - the deal MS is supposedly offering concerns exclusivity in the console market and nothing else. And if the rumour is true, it's basically free money for id, since they were not planning to port it to any other consoles anyway.
And the right of self determination of the people in Northern Ireland? The people that want to remain part of the UK?
What about the rights of the Irish folk in Manchester that would really rather it be part of Ireland? It's not exactly the same thing, of course - it's not like the Irish government placed settlers in Manchester, hostile to the local population, to try and solidify their hold on it - no, those folks just came for economic opportunities. But the bad acts in the distant past of the English crown can hardly give it a legitimate claim on Irish territory now. It might give those folk you refer to in northern Ireland a very good claim against the UK, of course. But there's no reason that Catholic and Protestant, Irish and Scot, can't live in peace together in the north of Ireland. Once the UK finally withdraws from Ireland, quits supporting the Ulster Unionist scum directly, and the IRA scum indirectly, which is what keeps the whole thing stirred up.
What really annoys me is the fact that time and again U.S. Presidents shake hands with that murderous bastard that is Gerry Adams. I wonder how many Americans fund AlQueda freedom fighters? None?
I don't have a number, of course, but I'm quite certain it's greater than zero.
Why do they continue to support the IRA, which, although dormant as recent, has blown up towns and cities across the UK. Just over 10 years ago they tried to blow up a gasworks in Warrington, which would have caused casualties in the hundereds, at best. They were foiled, and the perpetrators caught. In revenge they blew up a bin outside Macdonalds on a busy high street, the day before Mothers Day, killing 2 innocent little boys.
I don't believe the IRA recieves much support, from the US or anywhere else, these days. But your Ulster Unionist murders, RUC, and other groups official and unofficial are responsible for their share of atrocities as well - and it's those atrocities, along with the ongoing illegal occupation of Irish soil itself, which makes it possible to justify what the IRA does, even support it. Just as the numerous and ongoing provocations of the US against the muslim world make people willing to join Bin Ladins suicide pact. Just as the continued occupation, the atrocities, the ethnic cleansing of the Israelis in Palestine guarantees a terrorist threat there indefinately. Just as, for that matter, the atrocities of Nazi Germany made Germans and Frenchmen and Serbs and many others willing to join the 'terrorist' groups idolised in so many films and books, the 'resistance' commited their share of atrocities as well you know. War is hell. It's pretty much impossible to wage without civilian casualties, particularly if the conflict is 'assymetrical' - if it involves a well trained and well armed group on one side and one with far less resources on the other, the weaker group is faced with the choice of surrendering or resorting to guerilla tactics and thus opening itself to being called a 'terrorist' by its enemies. But when people fight for their own land, their own homes, their own country... they aren't all going to surrender. Count on that.
Yet you still go "rar rar up the republic, down with the occupation". You really have no idea about what the people of Northern Ireland want, its just a few lunatics that *you* fund that disrupt the lives of the people of Northern Ireland, and the mainland.
And now you're just stooping to personal attacks, made all the more pathetic by the fact you don't know anything about me to base it on other than sheer guesswork. I don't fund the IRA, or any other terrorist organisation. I can understand why some would - and I can understand why some would support the equally terrorist RUC as well. I'm not supporting one over the other, just telling you the simple truth of the matter. Whether you want to listen or not is up to you.
Assuming from the obvious clues you're speaking as a sassenach.
You didn't create the IRA. I'll hazard a guess that you weren't even alive when this crap got started, nor through the vast majority of the history involved, and another that you are not personally responsible for the actions of your government even now. But to suggest that invasions and forcible occupation of Ireland by the english state, 900 years of colonial occupation, have nothing to do with the question of why we have the IRA now would be silly.
And the government of the "UK" even now continues, in part, the provocations of the past. To the degree it does so, it is indeed to this very day creating the IRA.
There is one way, and one way only, to end the IRA. Withdraw from Ireland. The UK appears to be finally coming to grips with this. The US, on the other hand, is still in utter denial regarding the in many ways analogous situation involving the middle-eastern satrapies - and making more terrorists every day, making every one of us that carries a US passport (or, indeed, a UK passport, since your Tony Blair is so enamoured of being King George's lapdog he can't be bothered to consider the interests of his own people lately) less safe in the name of keeping us safe.
I wouldn't care if it was a microsoft codec, as long as the specification was open or at the very least there were implementations for other operating systems.
Even earlier Microsoft codecs are de-facto open, they're open in that you can download Windows Media for Mac or any of a number of free players that are very cross-platform to access them. WM9 is Windows only, the Mac Windows Media player won't even play it (and this is deliberate MS policy, publically announced) and if anyone reverse engineers it they'll be sued out of existence. That's the objectionable part of this thing, not who made it.
Of course, as a practical matter, it probably doesn't matter too much in this case, because this is aimed at movie theatres - but the point from MS view is publicity, not anything immediately practical. They'll use this as a publicity gain to increase the acceptance of WM9, and for reasons I just explained, that pisses me off, and quite reasonably.
MPEG4 and QT (whatever you meant by that, QT is a wrapper not a codec, mostly used with MPEG4 in fact recently... I suppose you meant Sorensen) are also objectionable, in that they are not at all open, but at the very least they're codecs that you can legally and easily play without buying a particular OS.
Speaking, btw, as a former Opera user who now uses Mozilla instead, on all platforms.
Let me review a few of his points:
The menu titles are underlined when the cursor mouses over them. Granted, Microsoft's practice (in Windows 98 and later) of making menus look like buttons was pretty stupid, but using underlining instead is probably worse, and definitely not better enough to warrant the inconsistency.
This is to some degree debateable whether or not the underlining thing is really a good idea or not, but it's certainly far better than the ridiculous button mimicing, and many think that it's a good idea. At any rate it's certainly hard to see how such an unobtrusive feedback mechanism could be objectionable (especially as I believe it can be turned off.)
The "File" and "View" menus are far too long, with 19 items each. (In general, if you have more than about twelve items in a menu, something needs redesigning.)
Well, fair enough, to start with. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to redesign those menus a bit, on the other hand, in comparison to say, IE, I will defend them - it's far better to have an arguably over-complex menu than to simply eliminate the functionality entirely, which is what IE and to a lesser degree Mozilla do in comparison. But if he stopped here he'd have grudging agreement... but that he does not do.
One contributing factor to this problem appears to be laziness on the part of the programmers. For example, "Save with images" has been given its own menu item, which no doubt took less time to implement than the more obvious design of having the option in the Save dialog itself.
This is just wrongheaded. Having used it, I can testify that having those two options seperate is a big usability gain. If it were a checkbox on the save dialogue, for instance, there would be considerable wasted time on each save where it needed to be toggled - which for some of us very often. Now, if you use only one or the other it would make sense to do it the way he suggests - but when you remember Operas core audience it's clear they made the right choice here.
The menu items use initial capitalization ("Tell a friend"). This is inconsistent with, and more slowly scannable than, the title capitalization ("Tell a Friend") used by almost all other programs on both Windows and Mac OS.
I actually agree with this one, but it's hardly a major criticism - usability reviews are often heavy on nit-picking but this has to be one of the smallest nits I've seen picked in quite awhile. Small mistakes like this certainly don't justify the scathing tone of the review, particularly when he's comparing Opera to IE and Mozilla, both of which make far more serious mistakes.
The browser uses MDI, long after even those who introduced it (Microsoft) realized it was a bad idea.
Both factually incorrect and wrongheaded.
Factually incorrect because Opera doesn't insist on MDI anymore, it can be set to run in MDI or SDI at the users preference, and because Microsoft didn't invent MDI - it was used long before they got ahold of it.
Wrongheaded because it's relying on fallacious reasoning - even if the factual errors were correct that still wouldn't mean that MDI shouldn't be used in a browser. Many (including me) find it to be one area where MDI is really useful. So many, in fact, that Mozilla and most other browsers now implement a half-assed copy of it, so-called 'tabbed browsing.' Those that don't like MDI, of course, can still use Opera and simply set it to SDI mode, so no criticisms based on MDI really hold water anyway, regardless of whether or not you have some sort of religious aversion to it.
The "New Page" command opens a new subwindow, not a new page. (For Web geeks: No, it doesn't contain about:blank
Slashcode produces incredibly nasty buggy html and it's use would be vetoed on that basis alone. And contrary to your little morality tale, it doesn't stop trolling or crapflooding or anything else except posting urls and code snippets that might be very interesting.
It's been descussed many times if Everquest is addictive. Whats come out of the discussions is that there are two types of addictiveness, chemical and phychological. Chemical addictiveness is like heroin or caffein. Phychological addictiveness are things such as sex, being liked, or chocolate. While chemical addictions are definately more physical and obvious, phychological addictions can be just as addictive.
That's really a misuse of the word. What you call 'chemical addictiveness' is addictiveness, period. What you're calling 'phychological' (sic) is not addictive and has nothing to do with it, the proper word is 'habit-forming'.
Slashdot Mirror
He misstated the test a bit. Lots of people misunderstand this, unfortunately. You're in the same species if you can easily, naturally interbreed. Dogs and wolves, asses and horses, even lions and tigers are close enough that with a huge amount of human intervention they can be made to mate, but they would never normally do it, it's only human intervention that makes it possible, and therefore they fail the species test.
Each set is obviously, however, in the same genus.
Umm not quite. Dogs have been selectively bred a lot longer than 5k years first. Second breeding Timberwolves and Huskies, while possible, positively requires human intervention. It could never happen in the wild, first because the wolf would more likely kill the dog than mate with it, and secondly because wolves and dogs have very different estrus cycles.
Wolves and dogs are thus clearly different species, just as asses and horses are. Remember, asses and horse *can* mate - but it's problematic and extremely unlikely without human intervention. To be the same species it needs to be possible to mate normally - not with great difficulty and lots of outside intervention.
It's worse than that actually, you also need to build that tool with a compiler, assembled from cleanly after a source audit.
Your sniffer code may have no problems but the binary still could, if the compiler has been compromised.
One more good reason to just swear off MS for good and get a real computer.
Well here's how I think.
FreeBSD is very much an internet phenomenon.
If you get upset when someone on the internet calls you a 'doofus' then you're not going to get much out of it. If that was the worst thing I'd ever been called... sheesh it's not even a real insult. It's like a nerf insult... I really think anyone that would feel insulted about it is wearing their feelings on their shirtsleeve to an absurd degree. In terms of removing barriers to participation, the barrier here would be the excessive sensitivity, not the word doofus.
Now if the error was ESHITFORBRAINS maybe I could see your point, but doofus? Come on.
What companies would those be?
I agree the original poster was confused, but you're reply is pretty confusing too.
The large-caliber versus small-caliber debate has been around for decades, and both have good points. Small caliber high velocity rounds have better range, better ballistics (less drop at range) and generally higher energy (ft/lbs delivered) so at first glance it looks like a no brainer, but the issue is more subtle actually. A couple of issues exist in the small arms field - deflection ('brush-busting') affects small caliber high velocity rounds more, and against thin skinned animals (humans being a prime example) there is a tendency for a high velocity low diameter missile to penetrate and exit, meaning that part (even most) of that stopping power isn't delivered to the target, but rather to whatever is serving as the backstop.
This is why, even though a 9mm looks very good on paper next to a .45 acp (which is an extremely poor round in most ways, with ridiculously low velocity,) in practice it's sometimes actually a weaker round. (At least with the FMJs that are typically used - with hollow points it might work out differently.) The 9mm tends to go through the target and out the other side, carrying most of it's energy with it until it hits something else, so the actual affect is extremely variable - if it happens to cut through just the right place it may drop the guy, but on the other hand it may not do a hell of a lot to him if it doesn't. With a .45, you can at least be pretty sure that hitting someone anywhere is going to, at minimum, result in him being taken off his feet and hammered pretty hard, because that energy is all going into his body, not into a backstop.
Similarly, on paper the .223 looks like a much better round than the .30 russian, but in practice there are good reasons to choose the russian - particularly in brush.
The issue of penetrating-and-exiting can be dealt with by using good hollow point ammunition, but deflection issues are, if anything, aggravated when you do that. Like most everything in life, it's a trade-off.
You're absolutely right about AP not having to do with increasing caliber - quite the opposite. To pierce armour you want a small, hard projectile with the maximum possible velocity. The old 30-06 AP rounds I grew up with had a dart-like core of some hard alloy, tungsten I believe, buried in the center of the bullet - when it hit a hard target the lead and copper would just sort of slide back and let that dart keep going. This is actually a more effective strategy than the strong outer jacket you recommend - although your advice is sound if you can't get special purpose bullets.
But there's a reason AP isn't used for general purpose, and it has nothing to do with price. It isn't very effective against human targets for the same reason the 9mm is sometimes less effective than the anemic .45 acp - it just bores a little hole and keeps going, without transferring the energy to the target. Bottom line - use the right round for the right target. There is no perfect round, what's good on one type of target may be crap on another.
Which is why they left us with an interesting rule of law, 'innocent until proven guilty' - you may have heard of it?
Well without seeing exactly what pictures these techs saw, one can't say for sure, but I think 99% of 'kiddie porn' accusations are nonsense. They don't involve, say, someone kidnapping 5 year olds and photographing their rape and torture. Now, if this professor was actually doing that, then I'd have no problem throwing the switch on him. But something tells me that's exceedingly unlikely.
Usually what's involved is someone that didn't produce the pictures, has no way to know their provenence and in no way contributed to their making, and the pictures in question are perhaps shots of 16 year old girls on nude beaches and the like. 16 years is the age of consent in a lot of countries you know. In the US it was formerly 12, in fact if memory serves 11 in one state. And there's no way to tell what age a model was in most cases anyway - is that a 16 year old, or an 18? Without knowing the provenence of the pictures and having records to prove the ages of those involved, it's simple conjecture, hiding behind outrage to avoid proving anything.
Frankly, in the absence of evidence of some real wrongdoing (kidnapping, torture, whatnot) I'm extremely skeptical of the notion of simply possessing digital image files being a crime. I'm extremely skeptical, also, of a tech that would make a stink because he saw some naughty pictures on a professors machine. Like I said, without having been there and knowing all the details, I'll have to withold judgement, but it sure sounds to me like a couple of people that have proven themselves untrustworthy by their actions, caused a basically innocent man a hell of a lot of trouble, and deserve a lot worse than they're getting.
So what you're saying is you're not just a snitch, you're a cowardly snitch?
You imagine a bright line where one doesn't exist. There are plenty of cops and judges and legislators that would think a lot of Manga is child pornography.
Umm I think you got that backwards.
No.
Yeah, slow news day indeed.
Anyway having wasted my time reading through the thread I might as well waste a few more seconds venting my opinion.
First off, whoever the idiot at Apple who is pushing you to fork to avoid the horrible indignity of having the word doofus in the source code is, he should be fired. Yesterday. God, that's just lame. Particularly considering it's in a place that amounts to a note amongst the programmers saying 'if you get this you did something really dumb' - it's not going to users and it's perfectly appropriate in context. I read all your soft-pedaling about not being humour impaired yourself, and I think you needed to do that, this request is just so bloody silly it's unbelievable.
That said, I do think the EDONTPANIC suggestion is a very good one. There is nothing wrong with EDOOFUS, but EDONTPANIC is better, so maybe something good came of this.
Of course my opinion means nothing, my only connection to FreeBSD is the fact I'm typing this on my TiBook, and I'm going back to work now. I don't envy you, though, if your job requires you to cater to people that are willing to fork because EDOOFUS offends them then you are really earning your money in my opinion. Glad someone is, if Apple ever dies I'll cry, I really love my TiBook and I would hate to ever have to go back to an x86 based laptop. ;)
It's mapping the buffer on your vidcard, among other things. So it's memory usage will appear to be increased if you add memory to your vidcard, or switch to one with more memory... this isn't really anything to worry about.
Oh bullshit. I've run Xfree on many 486s. Yes, win95 will struggle and run on a 486. XP won't even try. Xfree will run just fine if it's configured right. Tip: You don't have to load up Gnome and KDE environments with all their bars and libraries and subcomponents - particularly on older hardware you want to avoid both of those things like the plague. Use a lightweight window manager (WindowMaker is absolutely the heaviest thing you should consider, ICEWM is lighter, TWM is really light, there are lots of choices that don't add a lot of bloat.) A 486 with an old Mach card running ICEWM and straight X apps will run at about the same speed as Win95... and of course it's far more powerful and flexible.
I believe that was my point. ;)
I think if you weren't so set on disagreeing with me you might realise we already agree, for the most part.
I have a 20 euro in hand atm, looking at it now, it's more 'modern' in a sense, but that's not necessarily better. The little patterns look computer generated to me, I don't know if they are or not, but they give that appearance. The greenbacks have intricate patterns in the engravings that have all sorts of irregularities and humanity to them, intentionally. There is no way you can be looking at a greenback of any denomination next to a 20 euro bill and think they are comparable in terms of detail of engraving, the euro doesn't hold a candle there. The greenbacks don't have the flashy space-age-looking shiny strip on them, but for years they have had a very small hard to find strip embedded that serves the same purpose. I really don't believe it's any harder to counterfeit one than the other. Certainly the euro paper would be a lot easier to match, it feels cheap actually... greenbacks are printed on a very special paper that's almost impossible to get, you can rub it for a moment and it will turn very smooth, like satin... anyway my point all along was it's more a matter of what you're used to and what you expect than any 'objective' superiority of one design over another.
Actually I kind of like the Swedish bills, they're like the euros in having different sizes and colours, but the designs are a step up in my opinion, they look more like they were really designed and not just generated, and the paper doesn't feel so cheap for some reason. But regardless, the important thing is that you can spend them, everything else is fluff really...
If it's enough slower that you can really notice then you probably have a driver problem.
It will always be a little slower, of course, because it's more powerful, and because it runs in user ring instead of kernel ring - a good choice, but one that does incur a performance hit.
Still, on my Athlon XP 1700+ it's very hard to tell any difference in speed with XP and X11 on Slack. Win98 is noticeably faster, though it's not a big deal you can tell it's there... XP though is not. Like I said, check on your driver situation... not all XFree drivers are equal - and for that matter XFree isn't the fastest X server out there either, although with good drivers it's fast enough.
Of course if you're running twenty million applets and have twenty million different widget sets and shared libraries loading and so forth, that could cause a slow down too.
I run X11 with tolerable performance on machines that XP won't even try to run on, so believe me, if XP is outperforming X on your hardware it's a configuration issue.
It's not a matter of boring or not pretty. Greenbacks are very pretty. Ever look at the detail on them? They're really quite incredible. So it's not that they are boring, or not pretty, I think they're quite incredible works of art. But they're very dignified works of art, where the european money is more... dignified would not be the word, restrained would not be the word... no. Something quite the opposite.
Either type spends the same, and I've never had any trouble knowing which bill was which with either type, and I'm quite happy to get paid with either type. But the old Greenbacks will always look more like real money to me, I suspect.
I think that's funny, I live in Europe, but I'm from the US, I know everyone here seems so used to the different colours and sizes of notes and thinks the US ones are confusing - but it was never confusing to me. You don't have to take your bills out of the wallet to figure out which is which, you just flip hold the corner of the wad with finger and thumb and let them flip... normally you sort them when you get them, when they go in the wallet, anyway. I do that with european bills too, the larger denominations go to the back the small to the front, without even thinking about it, just habit. To me, the european currencies are strange, yes the colours and sizes make it particularly easy to distinguish the denominations, but I never had any trouble doing that just by flipping the corners anyway... and they just don't look like money. They look like the banknotes in a childrens game, not something real. I guess it's just a matter of what you're used to. I know the new 20s are NOT well received in the US, again, too much like something out of a childrens game, not like real money.
Don't trust the slashdot editors, they usually screw it up. If you RTA, which in this case takes only a few seconds, you'll see that the rumour is only that it will be available on X-Box and no other *consoles* - the deal MS is supposedly offering concerns exclusivity in the console market and nothing else. And if the rumour is true, it's basically free money for id, since they were not planning to port it to any other consoles anyway.
What about the rights of the Irish folk in Manchester that would really rather it be part of Ireland? It's not exactly the same thing, of course - it's not like the Irish government placed settlers in Manchester, hostile to the local population, to try and solidify their hold on it - no, those folks just came for economic opportunities. But the bad acts in the distant past of the English crown can hardly give it a legitimate claim on Irish territory now. It might give those folk you refer to in northern Ireland a very good claim against the UK, of course. But there's no reason that Catholic and Protestant, Irish and Scot, can't live in peace together in the north of Ireland. Once the UK finally withdraws from Ireland, quits supporting the Ulster Unionist scum directly, and the IRA scum indirectly, which is what keeps the whole thing stirred up.
I don't have a number, of course, but I'm quite certain it's greater than zero.
I don't believe the IRA recieves much support, from the US or anywhere else, these days. But your Ulster Unionist murders, RUC, and other groups official and unofficial are responsible for their share of atrocities as well - and it's those atrocities, along with the ongoing illegal occupation of Irish soil itself, which makes it possible to justify what the IRA does, even support it. Just as the numerous and ongoing provocations of the US against the muslim world make people willing to join Bin Ladins suicide pact. Just as the continued occupation, the atrocities, the ethnic cleansing of the Israelis in Palestine guarantees a terrorist threat there indefinately. Just as, for that matter, the atrocities of Nazi Germany made Germans and Frenchmen and Serbs and many others willing to join the 'terrorist' groups idolised in so many films and books, the 'resistance' commited their share of atrocities as well you know. War is hell. It's pretty much impossible to wage without civilian casualties, particularly if the conflict is 'assymetrical' - if it involves a well trained and well armed group on one side and one with far less resources on the other, the weaker group is faced with the choice of surrendering or resorting to guerilla tactics and thus opening itself to being called a 'terrorist' by its enemies. But when people fight for their own land, their own homes, their own country... they aren't all going to surrender. Count on that.
And now you're just stooping to personal attacks, made all the more pathetic by the fact you don't know anything about me to base it on other than sheer guesswork. I don't fund the IRA, or any other terrorist organisation. I can understand why some would - and I can understand why some would support the equally terrorist RUC as well. I'm not supporting one over the other, just telling you the simple truth of the matter. Whether you want to listen or not is up to you.
Assuming from the obvious clues you're speaking as a sassenach.
You didn't create the IRA. I'll hazard a guess that you weren't even alive when this crap got started, nor through the vast majority of the history involved, and another that you are not personally responsible for the actions of your government even now. But to suggest that invasions and forcible occupation of Ireland by the english state, 900 years of colonial occupation, have nothing to do with the question of why we have the IRA now would be silly.
And the government of the "UK" even now continues, in part, the provocations of the past. To the degree it does so, it is indeed to this very day creating the IRA.
There is one way, and one way only, to end the IRA. Withdraw from Ireland. The UK appears to be finally coming to grips with this. The US, on the other hand, is still in utter denial regarding the in many ways analogous situation involving the middle-eastern satrapies - and making more terrorists every day, making every one of us that carries a US passport (or, indeed, a UK passport, since your Tony Blair is so enamoured of being King George's lapdog he can't be bothered to consider the interests of his own people lately) less safe in the name of keeping us safe.
I wouldn't care if it was a microsoft codec, as long as the specification was open or at the very least there were implementations for other operating systems.
Even earlier Microsoft codecs are de-facto open, they're open in that you can download Windows Media for Mac or any of a number of free players that are very cross-platform to access them. WM9 is Windows only, the Mac Windows Media player won't even play it (and this is deliberate MS policy, publically announced) and if anyone reverse engineers it they'll be sued out of existence. That's the objectionable part of this thing, not who made it.
Of course, as a practical matter, it probably doesn't matter too much in this case, because this is aimed at movie theatres - but the point from MS view is publicity, not anything immediately practical. They'll use this as a publicity gain to increase the acceptance of WM9, and for reasons I just explained, that pisses me off, and quite reasonably.
MPEG4 and QT (whatever you meant by that, QT is a wrapper not a codec, mostly used with MPEG4 in fact recently... I suppose you meant Sorensen) are also objectionable, in that they are not at all open, but at the very least they're codecs that you can legally and easily play without buying a particular OS.
The guy at phrasewise is, frankly, an idiot.
Speaking, btw, as a former Opera user who now uses Mozilla instead, on all platforms.
Let me review a few of his points:
This is to some degree debateable whether or not the underlining thing is really a good idea or not, but it's certainly far better than the ridiculous button mimicing, and many think that it's a good idea. At any rate it's certainly hard to see how such an unobtrusive feedback mechanism could be objectionable (especially as I believe it can be turned off.)
Well, fair enough, to start with. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to redesign those menus a bit, on the other hand, in comparison to say, IE, I will defend them - it's far better to have an arguably over-complex menu than to simply eliminate the functionality entirely, which is what IE and to a lesser degree Mozilla do in comparison. But if he stopped here he'd have grudging agreement... but that he does not do.
This is just wrongheaded. Having used it, I can testify that having those two options seperate is a big usability gain. If it were a checkbox on the save dialogue, for instance, there would be considerable wasted time on each save where it needed to be toggled - which for some of us very often. Now, if you use only one or the other it would make sense to do it the way he suggests - but when you remember Operas core audience it's clear they made the right choice here.
I actually agree with this one, but it's hardly a major criticism - usability reviews are often heavy on nit-picking but this has to be one of the smallest nits I've seen picked in quite awhile. Small mistakes like this certainly don't justify the scathing tone of the review, particularly when he's comparing Opera to IE and Mozilla, both of which make far more serious mistakes.
Both factually incorrect and wrongheaded.
Factually incorrect because Opera doesn't insist on MDI anymore, it can be set to run in MDI or SDI at the users preference, and because Microsoft didn't invent MDI - it was used long before they got ahold of it.
Wrongheaded because it's relying on fallacious reasoning - even if the factual errors were correct that still wouldn't mean that MDI shouldn't be used in a browser. Many (including me) find it to be one area where MDI is really useful. So many, in fact, that Mozilla and most other browsers now implement a half-assed copy of it, so-called 'tabbed browsing.' Those that don't like MDI, of course, can still use Opera and simply set it to SDI mode, so no criticisms based on MDI really hold water anyway, regardless of whether or not you have some sort of religious aversion to it.
That depends, are you a horse?
Slashcode produces incredibly nasty buggy html and it's use would be vetoed on that basis alone. And contrary to your little morality tale, it doesn't stop trolling or crapflooding or anything else except posting urls and code snippets that might be very interesting.
That's really a misuse of the word. What you call 'chemical addictiveness' is addictiveness, period. What you're calling 'phychological' (sic) is not addictive and has nothing to do with it, the proper word is 'habit-forming'.