However the other gentleman has already replied with a good counterpoint. The fact is that there is only one human race currently living, so strictly speaking 'racism' - if by that you mean discrimination against those of another race - is impossible. We would have to first fine a way to resurrect a neanderthal, THEN we could discriminate against him.
But in fact racism is real and rampant, but racism is not discriminating by race, it's more subtle than that. It's *the delusion that multiple races of humans exist* that is the root of real racism - and discrimination just forms the icing on that particular cake of mental illness.
They release source for a lot of the infrastructure, because it's actually Free Software that they simply adapt to their needs. But a large portion of the OS is not in that class and is never released.
"Because they need to package it in order to market it to the masses."
The marketing problem I mentioned already.
"Sure, under the hood it's basically just going to be a specialised Linux distro"
And the danger, if they are going to that length already, it will make perfect sense for them to try to engineer some lock-in in the process.
" but what's the other option? Give their users Ubuntu with Steam pre-installed? That sounds rather half-baked."
Why not just release the app so that people that want it can install it on the system they are already using? And Ubuntu? See that's another problem here, if they choose a base system it will probably be something atrocious like Ubuntu - why would they wish such pain on their customers?
"Hasn't NVIDIA already responded positively? "
Nvidia has a long history and a few mumbled words from them about change are not going to impress. When nouveau supports all the features on their cards properly then there will have been progress.
In your first scenario, I am not even sure we would benefit in the driverspace. Good drivers in the tree would be wonderful, but in that case why not simply work on their client, why do they need a branded 'OS?'
If they are going to be shipping a TiVO with blobs I will not call that any sort of benefit.
"I know the die-hard free software guys shudder at the thought, but let's face it: the reason Linux is struggling on the desktop is because few developers think they can make money on the platform."
Free Software and making money have no intrinsic disagreement. To the contrary, the ability to use the code commercially is one of the pillars of the Free Software definition.
But you are right, there is a market disfunction specifically in the computers and internet field. The bulk of the customers dont have the vaguest trace of a clue what they are doing. They are thus exceptionally vulnerable to marketing, and we really have a crazy market on all kinds of levels, OS choices almost being the least of it.
Marketing displaces then supercedes engineering, in the natural cycle of things. Not sure how to fix that. Presumably once us old fogies die off a higher percentage of the oncoming generation will figure this stuff out, if only out of self-preservation, and the companies will eventually be forced to shape up or die in response (though that presumes they face competition of course.)
The tea party is a pretty amorphous thing. Originally it was just those of us that moneybombed Ron Paul starting on the tea party anniversary and set a bunch of records and forced people to pay attention to him and us for at least a short while. But after the media started paying attention others started trying to claim the name for their own purposes. Most of them have little or nothing to do with the real Tea Party or the Spirit of '76.
The long ques of passengers waiting to be molested by 'security' are very dangerous. That is where any suicide bombers will strike - why try to sneak through security when you can do more damage by pushing the button right when you get to them?
The fact that no one has done this yet just goes to show that the threat of terrorism is dramatically exaggerated. You're more likely to be killed by falling furniture than a terrorist, thankfully. But it has nothing to do with this pointless and insecure charade performed by the TSA.
"I'm not convinced they're actually capable of being principled on these things"
Doesnt look to me like they even tried to pretend otherwise. Rather than taking a stand to censor or allow these videos, they seem to be saying they will censor them - but only if they dont like the reactions that are being posted. I believe that's the least principled stand they could possibly have taken here.
"Ask BSCS grads who graduated in 2008 or earlier how much of what they learned in school is still relevant."
And if the answer is not most/all they got ripped off.
College is not supposed to teach you to use the current gadgets. It's supposed to teach you to read, write, and think. Those skills do not go out of date.
Your key lever for wiggle room is 'of US law' and the key pivot is 'in foreign countries.'
US law includes any international accord properly ratified by the Senate. And foreign countries includes many with whom we have friendly relations and various formal ties. And there are many cases where it is indeed forbidden by US and/or binding international law to do a lot of the things they have been doing. For instance bugging the phone of an accredited embassy or ambassador. Whether inside or outside of the US, that violates binding law.
Of course we all know that it was common practice in the cold war for cold combatants to bug each other anyway, and just try very hard not to get caught. All that plausible deniability stuff has worn thin over the years, these days they dont seem to care whether or not it's plausible anymore. But even back then no one was going around bugging tens of thousands of phones on either side. That scale of operation they had to have understood was way too big to stay secret for long.
The nations we are spying on now are supposedly friends, in several cases close allies.
Illegal actions taken by our government against foreigners, causing damage to our countries reputation, its relations, and indeed sparking violent blowback as well, is one of the major dangers that Americans face in todays world. Ignoring or avoiding those problems is pointless.
It's just F8 on earlier versions of Windows, and earlier versions give you a decent fraction of a second window to hit with it. On win8, it's shift-f8, and the window is so small that it's practically impossible to hit.
I know you probably are not old enough to remember it, but there was a time before this BS. Then came the cold war, and it made sense to build stuff like this to stop them. Then they keeled over dead from bad economics and we... started making new enemies. And by that time generations had gone by so constant wartime footing seems 'normal' to a lot of people.
But it's bad economics and if we keep it up we're going the way of the Soviet Union.
Spying on friendly governments *might* be technically legal, though I doubt it. Nonetheless it is certainly not what anyone tasked with national security *should* be doing, because it is completely contrary to the supposed goal.
"It's especially ballsy to try and argue that the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction."
It's worse than you think.
They are simultaneously arguing in lower courts that the lower courts have no jurisdiction because it's a matter for the SC, AND in the SC that the SC does not have jurisdiction, because it's a question for the lower courts.
Actually they are supposed to be spying on *enemy governments*.
Problem is we dont have any more of those left, but bureaucracy doesnt know how to shut down when it is not needed. Instead they keep trying to make new enemies. And unfortunately succeeding...
Much use of Mathematics in human/social science, in my experience, has more to do with Physics-envy than with real science. Another related function is to give a scientistic seal of approval on what amounts to modern witchcraft - this is particularly prevalent in the region of applied psychology I have found. It does not have to make sense, just be slightly denser than your grad students (and patients/clients) can parse, in order to give you the full and wondrous benefits of the holy placebo.
"The National Highway System isn't a constitutional mandate. Do you REALLY want to defund interstate highways?"
Absolutely.
That's effectively a subsidy to trucking, which distorts the market in favor of that method of shipping, to the detriment of competitors (air and train) and through this chain of unintended consequences works against the greater good and makes us all poorer. Get rid of it.
""Unproductive expenditures" to YOU might mean "the only thing keeping X industry from unceremoniously collapsing and causing a domino effect on the economy.""
If industry X is dependent on subsidies or supports in order to avoid collapse, that is exactly the situation where it is most critical that no such supports be provided, that the sick industry be allowed to collapse so that healing can then begin. Propping up a sick industry only allows the problem to fester and makes the effects of the inevitable collapse even more devastating in the end.
"Thats called throwing the neighbor's baby out along with your own dirty bath water."
Really? Your neighbors baby is pork funding? I dont think I want to meet your neighbor.
I am talking about getting the federal government out of the way, not ignoring the problem, but striking at the root of it.
"How much money and people would have been saved if someone had taken proper precautions against passengers hijacking planes before 9/11?"
Not as much as you might think, in the grand scheme of things - falling furniture still kills more of us than the terrorists get. But yes, some proper prevention could have saved us massively. Read up on something the CIA calls 'blowback' and get back to me when you are ready to have an intelligent conversation on how an imperial foreign policy costs us over and over again - both in direct costs and in blowback later.
"How much money and people would have been saved if they had built the walls around New Orleans properly before Katrina?"
The people directly affected are always the ones in the best position to deal with this sort of thing ahead of time. Letting them keep their own money and spend it where it's needed is more likely to produce favorable results than sending it to DC and expecting a bureaucrat there to spend it wisely - while encouraging the locals to shut up and leave it to him. What a recipe for disaster that was - and continues to be.
"Ignoring problems to save money will cost more in the end."
Not talking about ignoring problems. Talking about finally solving a lot of them instead of making them worse every year.
Slashdot Mirror
Slackware still uses sensible init scripts you know.
Init would have been my pick, but I still hope this works out well for them.
Good point.
However the other gentleman has already replied with a good counterpoint. The fact is that there is only one human race currently living, so strictly speaking 'racism' - if by that you mean discrimination against those of another race - is impossible. We would have to first fine a way to resurrect a neanderthal, THEN we could discriminate against him.
But in fact racism is real and rampant, but racism is not discriminating by race, it's more subtle than that. It's *the delusion that multiple races of humans exist* that is the root of real racism - and discrimination just forms the icing on that particular cake of mental illness.
"I use Linux in work, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I had to reinstall it when I changed graphics card because it kept crashing (kernel too)."
Somehow these sort of problems always seem to involve Ubuntu. Might be a clue...
No they dont.
They release source for a lot of the infrastructure, because it's actually Free Software that they simply adapt to their needs. But a large portion of the OS is not in that class and is never released.
It's not Free Software, it's just a free binary. Really says it all.
"Because they need to package it in order to market it to the masses."
The marketing problem I mentioned already.
"Sure, under the hood it's basically just going to be a specialised Linux distro"
And the danger, if they are going to that length already, it will make perfect sense for them to try to engineer some lock-in in the process.
" but what's the other option? Give their users Ubuntu with Steam pre-installed? That sounds rather half-baked."
Why not just release the app so that people that want it can install it on the system they are already using? And Ubuntu? See that's another problem here, if they choose a base system it will probably be something atrocious like Ubuntu - why would they wish such pain on their customers?
"Hasn't NVIDIA already responded positively? "
Nvidia has a long history and a few mumbled words from them about change are not going to impress. When nouveau supports all the features on their cards properly then there will have been progress.
In your first scenario, I am not even sure we would benefit in the driverspace. Good drivers in the tree would be wonderful, but in that case why not simply work on their client, why do they need a branded 'OS?'
If they are going to be shipping a TiVO with blobs I will not call that any sort of benefit.
"I know the die-hard free software guys shudder at the thought, but let's face it: the reason Linux is struggling on the desktop is because few developers think they can make money on the platform."
Free Software and making money have no intrinsic disagreement. To the contrary, the ability to use the code commercially is one of the pillars of the Free Software definition.
But you are right, there is a market disfunction specifically in the computers and internet field. The bulk of the customers dont have the vaguest trace of a clue what they are doing. They are thus exceptionally vulnerable to marketing, and we really have a crazy market on all kinds of levels, OS choices almost being the least of it.
Marketing displaces then supercedes engineering, in the natural cycle of things. Not sure how to fix that. Presumably once us old fogies die off a higher percentage of the oncoming generation will figure this stuff out, if only out of self-preservation, and the companies will eventually be forced to shape up or die in response (though that presumes they face competition of course.)
Vandals are a plague, but *paid vandals* are much more difficult to deal with.
Paid vandals who make admin status are even worse again, of course, but I suppose that is a different subject.
The tea party is a pretty amorphous thing. Originally it was just those of us that moneybombed Ron Paul starting on the tea party anniversary and set a bunch of records and forced people to pay attention to him and us for at least a short while. But after the media started paying attention others started trying to claim the name for their own purposes. Most of them have little or nothing to do with the real Tea Party or the Spirit of '76.
"Put Schneier in a ring with Bruce Wayne, Bruce Willis, and Bruce Lee. See who survives."
Obviously the answer is no one. Lee is already dead, and he will still kill all the others before they can make it over the rope.
You cant really be that dense?
The long ques of passengers waiting to be molested by 'security' are very dangerous. That is where any suicide bombers will strike - why try to sneak through security when you can do more damage by pushing the button right when you get to them?
The fact that no one has done this yet just goes to show that the threat of terrorism is dramatically exaggerated. You're more likely to be killed by falling furniture than a terrorist, thankfully. But it has nothing to do with this pointless and insecure charade performed by the TSA.
"I'm not convinced they're actually capable of being principled on these things"
Doesnt look to me like they even tried to pretend otherwise. Rather than taking a stand to censor or allow these videos, they seem to be saying they will censor them - but only if they dont like the reactions that are being posted. I believe that's the least principled stand they could possibly have taken here.
"hair protects your head from sunburn"
You know what works even better for that?
A hat.
"Ask BSCS grads who graduated in 2008 or earlier how much of what they learned in school is still relevant."
And if the answer is not most/all they got ripped off.
College is not supposed to teach you to use the current gadgets. It's supposed to teach you to read, write, and think. Those skills do not go out of date.
Your key lever for wiggle room is 'of US law' and the key pivot is 'in foreign countries.'
US law includes any international accord properly ratified by the Senate. And foreign countries includes many with whom we have friendly relations and various formal ties. And there are many cases where it is indeed forbidden by US and/or binding international law to do a lot of the things they have been doing. For instance bugging the phone of an accredited embassy or ambassador. Whether inside or outside of the US, that violates binding law.
Of course we all know that it was common practice in the cold war for cold combatants to bug each other anyway, and just try very hard not to get caught. All that plausible deniability stuff has worn thin over the years, these days they dont seem to care whether or not it's plausible anymore. But even back then no one was going around bugging tens of thousands of phones on either side. That scale of operation they had to have understood was way too big to stay secret for long.
The nations we are spying on now are supposedly friends, in several cases close allies.
You are not making any sense here.
Illegal actions taken by our government against foreigners, causing damage to our countries reputation, its relations, and indeed sparking violent blowback as well, is one of the major dangers that Americans face in todays world. Ignoring or avoiding those problems is pointless.
It's just F8 on earlier versions of Windows, and earlier versions give you a decent fraction of a second window to hit with it. On win8, it's shift-f8, and the window is so small that it's practically impossible to hit.
"We have always been at war with Eastasia."
I know you probably are not old enough to remember it, but there was a time before this BS. Then came the cold war, and it made sense to build stuff like this to stop them. Then they keeled over dead from bad economics and we... started making new enemies. And by that time generations had gone by so constant wartime footing seems 'normal' to a lot of people.
But it's bad economics and if we keep it up we're going the way of the Soviet Union.
Spying on friendly governments *might* be technically legal, though I doubt it. Nonetheless it is certainly not what anyone tasked with national security *should* be doing, because it is completely contrary to the supposed goal.
"It's especially ballsy to try and argue that the Supreme Court doesn't have jurisdiction."
It's worse than you think.
They are simultaneously arguing in lower courts that the lower courts have no jurisdiction because it's a matter for the SC, AND in the SC that the SC does not have jurisdiction, because it's a question for the lower courts.
Actually they are supposed to be spying on *enemy governments*.
Problem is we dont have any more of those left, but bureaucracy doesnt know how to shut down when it is not needed. Instead they keep trying to make new enemies. And unfortunately succeeding...
I am not so sure this is insightful.
Much use of Mathematics in human/social science, in my experience, has more to do with Physics-envy than with real science. Another related function is to give a scientistic seal of approval on what amounts to modern witchcraft - this is particularly prevalent in the region of applied psychology I have found. It does not have to make sense, just be slightly denser than your grad students (and patients/clients) can parse, in order to give you the full and wondrous benefits of the holy placebo.
"The National Highway System isn't a constitutional mandate. Do you REALLY want to defund interstate highways?"
Absolutely.
That's effectively a subsidy to trucking, which distorts the market in favor of that method of shipping, to the detriment of competitors (air and train) and through this chain of unintended consequences works against the greater good and makes us all poorer. Get rid of it.
""Unproductive expenditures" to YOU might mean "the only thing keeping X industry from unceremoniously collapsing and causing a domino effect on the economy.""
If industry X is dependent on subsidies or supports in order to avoid collapse, that is exactly the situation where it is most critical that no such supports be provided, that the sick industry be allowed to collapse so that healing can then begin. Propping up a sick industry only allows the problem to fester and makes the effects of the inevitable collapse even more devastating in the end.
"Thats called throwing the neighbor's baby out along with your own dirty bath water."
Really? Your neighbors baby is pork funding? I dont think I want to meet your neighbor.
Who said anything about ignoring problems?
I am talking about getting the federal government out of the way, not ignoring the problem, but striking at the root of it.
"How much money and people would have been saved if someone had taken proper precautions against passengers hijacking planes before 9/11?"
Not as much as you might think, in the grand scheme of things - falling furniture still kills more of us than the terrorists get. But yes, some proper prevention could have saved us massively. Read up on something the CIA calls 'blowback' and get back to me when you are ready to have an intelligent conversation on how an imperial foreign policy costs us over and over again - both in direct costs and in blowback later.
"How much money and people would have been saved if they had built the walls around New Orleans properly before Katrina?"
The people directly affected are always the ones in the best position to deal with this sort of thing ahead of time. Letting them keep their own money and spend it where it's needed is more likely to produce favorable results than sending it to DC and expecting a bureaucrat there to spend it wisely - while encouraging the locals to shut up and leave it to him. What a recipe for disaster that was - and continues to be.
"Ignoring problems to save money will cost more in the end."
Not talking about ignoring problems. Talking about finally solving a lot of them instead of making them worse every year.