But I don't consider storing explosives and building a 30 foot rocket that can travel 60 miles to be the equivalent of "rock climbing" or "skydiving".
High-power rocketry may have a higher level of hazard to bystanders, but it's probably less useful in terrorism than knowing how to shoot and drive fast. A stolen car can deliver a much bigger warhead much more accurately than a homemade rocket. The rocket builders are being singled out because they are a small enough group to regulate without causing an uproar, not because their rockets are especially useful to terrorists.
Back to what I was trying to say in my previous post, making society absolutely safe and secure is impossible. Every increase in security and safety comes with an equal and opposite loss of convenience and freedom. Our elected leaders will never say anything about that, presidents and congresspeople don't get re-elected by telling the voters they can't be safe. So, the BATFE is under a lot of pressure from political leaders pushing this "myth of security" to do something about terrorism and this is apparently the best they could come up with.
It amazes me that people think that building a rocket weighing "hundreds of pounds" or flying over 60 miles is "a hobby.
Does it amaze you that some people think pistol shooting, motorcycle racing, skydiving, rock climbing, etc. are hobbies, too?
It would probably amaze you even more to hear that many people don't don't want to live in a perfectly safe but utterly boring world, nor do they appreciate being restricted by people who think they can make that world a reality.
1 square meter is a little more than 10 square feet. So a 15,000 ft^2 building is about 1,500 m^2. Given the inaccuracies in how real estate agents measure square footage, I wouldn't bother with more precision than that.
What contract? There wasn't a copy of any contract in any of my CDs, or posted in the music store. When I put them in the player there wasn't even a "click here to accept our licensing terms" window. What are the terms of this contract, anyway?
While we're on the subject of VERY SIMPLE CONTRACTUAL ISSUES, there's a very simple contractual legal term for any contract that one of the parties has not read and explicitly agreed to: "null and void".
The number of libraries linked tells you two things about the memory consumption, load time, and general bloatedness of a given app: Jack and Shit. Some of those libraries are tiny and do next to nothing (libXrandr, 16KB on machine) and others are huge because they contain an entire GUI toolkit (libgtk-x11, 2.8MB) or X protocol (libX11 980KB). Besides, on Linux, and just about every other modern OS, shared libraries are (surprise!) shared. That means that even if you have 12 apps running that depend on libgnomeui, you only have one copy of that code in memory.
Dylan's Blonde on Blonde sounds fantastic in 5.1, and the choir in the Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want has never sounded better. Dark Side of the Moon is, of course, astounding.
All those albums were originally recorded in analog stereo. Anyone trying to sell you more information than is on the original master tapes (like 5.1 channel recordings) is full of it.
To be blunt about it, I'm a cheapskate. Given the choice between a $300 office suite that does everything I'll ever need and a lot more, and a free one that does 90% of what I need, I'll take the freebie any time. With a *nix system, you can get all sorts of free (really Free!) apps. On Windows, finding "free" software means navigating a confusing maze of shareware, adware, nagware, spyware, and payware. They say "free" but mean "no cash up front". You will end up paying for the software somehow. Anything worth having that you can download for "free" seems to be either a timed demo, or ad-supported. The only sure way to get functional malware-free apps for Windows is to pay gobs of cash for them, so chepskates (like me) end up with machines full of viriuses, popup ad servers, spyware, etc.
On platforms like Linux or the BSDs, "free" means free as in take it, copy it, give it to all your friends, look for spyware in the source code, do whatever you want, it's really free. None of my apps have banner ads, I never see popups, and I don't have to worry about my new l33t 0-day release of The GIMP infecting my machine with virus. I like that.
You can't just compare area and volume like that. One is square units, the other is cubic units.
A cube has 6 square units of surface area for every cubic unit of volume. So, we say a cube with sides u units long has 6 u^2 / 1 u^3 which reduces to 6 / u, so as we increase u the ratio of surface area to volume drops.
"Any innocent product which becomes suddenly genocidal in the hands of a tyrant has been designed by a dangerous naif."
A good principle to keep in mind, if you're designing something virtual (like freenet) but utterly useless if you're designing a physical object. There is nothing that can slice bread that can't be turned into a weapon by someone with an IQ of more than 7. There is no crude weapon that can't be used for genocide if you have enough of them, and enough followers to wield them. (Look at the Rwandan genocide of 1994, most of the killings were committed with machetes) Even teddy bears could be a dangerous genocidal weapon if you had enough of them, and the means to air-drop them on a village in sufficient numbers to suffocate the all residents.
If Sterling thinks this has any bearing on real engineering, I have to ask who the naif really is...
Can we get over this "greatest generation" meme already? Please?
Coming through the second world war and the great depression is an impressive feat, but we conveniently forget that the generation of Americans that included heros like FDR and Eisenhower also brought us criminals like Al Capone, made "Mafia" a household word, and revitalized the Ku Klux Klan. Compared to the rose-tinted selective memory of what some people did in the past, every generation looks like a lame imitation of the previous one's greatness.
I think the Sumerians said it best: "The youth of today are lazy, without God, and disrespecful to elders." And the youth always will be lazy, godless, and disrespectful, at least until a new generation comes along to take their place.
KDE and Gnome are following the same path to h-e-double-toothpicks.
Lots of people open up gconf-editor (or worse, judge it from screenshots), and their only reaction is "OMG ITS TEH REGISTRY! BILLG PWNZ GNOME! EEEEEEEEVVIIILL!!!1!"
It's not at all the same. First, gconf stores stuff in many small xml files, not one big easily-corrupted binary file. If some app's settings get corrupted, I can change one those files with a text editor and fix it, just like a traditional *nix program. Second, it's simple to remove cruft. I can rm -r ~/.gconf/apps/blackjack, and every trace that gnome-blackjack has left in gconf will be gone. Compare that to Windows, where people still have bits of Netscape 4.0 in the registry. Third, information on shared libraries isn't kept in gconf, so it's no help in the sort of browser helper object and DLL hijacking tricks that malware uses on Windows. Lastly, since gconf is many small files, it provides a finer-grained access control than the windows registry. All the user-editable gconf files are in the user's home dir, so one user running some bit of malware can't infect other users. Nothing running without root privledges can corrupt system-wide gconf files. It's all-around much safer than a registry.
If the ACLU defends the far-right loonies, you get peeved and stop donating. If they don't defend them, they're fscking hypocrites and the entire purpose of their organization is negated. Which do you think is worse?
The reason the ACLU exists is to fight for *anyone's* right to speek freely, no matter how bizarre or offensive that speech may be to the ACLU's members. Defending someone's right to disagree with you is the highest possible expression of free speech.
Keep all the money you aren't giving the ACLU in a jar. That way when you grow up enough to realize that free speech is a human right, not a privledge reserved to those who only say inoffensive things, you can give it to them.
Take everything in this article with a full shaker of salt. It's pretty obvious that the author went into the review process looking for things to hate, rather than giving gnome a fair chance.
gConf-editor looks a lot like the Windows registry editor. However, gConf stores settings as a lot of small xml files, not a single huge binary database like the windows registry. You can still edit any setting with a text editor, if you want. As for "the folder thing", I like it. Try it, you might like it too.
The gargoyles wore gear the recorded everything they saw, heard, sensed, etc for publication in "the library" (originally the Library of Congress). They would get paid if someone downloaded their recordings later. Some of the freelance hackers (including Hiro, I think) resent the gargoyles for clogging up the library with too much useless data.
Your script crashes epiphany 1.2.5 (built with mozilla 1.6). All I got was a javascript warning with the standard goatse.cx disclaimer ("Our lawyers tell us this site needs a disclaimer..."), then epiphany froze without displaying any shocking and/or offending images.
They don't want out. Baystar was using the threat of dumping their stock to keep SCO managment in line. They wanted SCO to halt what was left of their software development and sales operations and "concentrate on IP licensing and enforcment". Darl and co. agreed, Baystar withdrew their threat, and now we're seeing the last of SCO's programmers getting downsized.
But seriously, as much as the internet is becoming the the globe's central nervous system, I don't see much problem with a limited suspension of due process rights with a theft of this scale, even if it still just boils down to theft.
I see a problem. Last year the Patriot act was only for infringing the constitutional rights of terrorists. Last week, it was only for terrorists and drug smugglers. Today it's terrorists, drug smugglers, and network card theives. Who's up next for loss of due process? People accused of robbery? Fraud? Speeding? Keeping overdue library books?
If you start denying due process to anyone it erodes the rights of everyone. Now we're seeing that slippery slope in action.
Feel free at any time to understand that "monopoly", like many other words, is given specific meaning in legal matters that may or may not be identical to the meaning assigned to that word by Random House, Merriam-Webster, or your average seventh-grade english teacher. Microsoft is a monopoly as defined by U.S. antitrust law.
I never said that I should be given discretion over how MS spends their money, I was just citing their failure to spend such an enormous sum of money as evidence that they don't have any significant competitors.
Sorry, but Microsoft *is* a monopoly. No company that's facing real competition can afford to keep/FORTY BILLION DOLLARS/ cash in the bank. If there was a significant threat to MS dominance in any market they would be spending that cash on research, hiring more programmers, or marketing. The fact thet they feel like they have the ability to just hold that money in reserve means they see no threat to their market share. Your RedHat box is an insignificant drop in the MS-owned ocean.
This die-hard Harley-Davidson fan decides to install the 1.8 litre engine from junked a Honda Civic (hey, it was free!) in his Dyna Glide, only to be confused by it's chaotic array of wires and hoses, non-standard bolt pattern, difficulty matching it to his original Harley transmission, and the general slowness of his new behemoth bike.
Seriously, if you post something like this on a gearhead site, you'll get laughed off the internet. Why is the same sort of stuff can be passed off as constructive criticism when it's about open-source software? The Gimp was never meant to be a Mac app. If it works, that's a nice bonus, but please don't expect it to be neatly integrated with a platform that it only runs on because of a third-party porting effort.
Why is offshoring computer-related jobs so much worse than any other jobs?
What's happening now in IT happened to consumer electronics in the 1980s, autobuilding in the 70s and 80s, to steelmaking in the 50s and 60s, and so on, back through industial history. It's a consequence of free trade, once the skills and captital to produce something high-tech become available to less-developed economies, production migrates to take advantage of lower labor costs.
Now, if you typed that post on a computer built from imported parts, or if you drive an imported car (that includes Fords and Chevies that are mostly built in Mexico), or own imported electronics then you have to ask yourself "What makes IT special?" Why should it be alright to listen to a Sony stereo (designed in Japan and built in Korea) and post to slashdot on a computer built in Honk Kong from Taiwanese parts, but unacceptable to buy software written in India?
Free trade is good until it takes *your* job, then it's slavery?
Slashdot Mirror
But I don't consider storing explosives and building a 30 foot rocket that can travel 60 miles to be the equivalent of "rock climbing" or "skydiving".
High-power rocketry may have a higher level of hazard to bystanders, but it's probably less useful in terrorism than knowing how to shoot and drive fast. A stolen car can deliver a much bigger warhead much more accurately than a homemade rocket. The rocket builders are being singled out because they are a small enough group to regulate without causing an uproar, not because their rockets are especially useful to terrorists.
Back to what I was trying to say in my previous post, making society absolutely safe and secure is impossible. Every increase in security and safety comes with an equal and opposite loss of convenience and freedom. Our elected leaders will never say anything about that, presidents and congresspeople don't get re-elected by telling the voters they can't be safe. So, the BATFE is under a lot of pressure from political leaders pushing this "myth of security" to do something about terrorism and this is apparently the best they could come up with.
It amazes me that people think that building a rocket weighing "hundreds of pounds" or flying over 60 miles is "a hobby.
Does it amaze you that some people think pistol shooting, motorcycle racing, skydiving, rock climbing, etc. are hobbies, too?
It would probably amaze you even more to hear that many people don't don't want to live in a perfectly safe but utterly boring world, nor do they appreciate being restricted by people who think they can make that world a reality.
1 square meter is a little more than 10 square feet. So a 15,000 ft^2 building is about 1,500 m^2. Given the inaccuracies in how real estate agents measure square footage, I wouldn't bother with more precision than that.
That would make it an issue for copyright law, not contract law, then, wouldn't it? Maybe it's not a "VERY SIMPLE CONTRACTUAL ISSUE" after all.
If you don't recognize the difference between contract law and criminal law, your legal skills are sub-par, even by slashdot standards.
What contract? There wasn't a copy of any contract in any of my CDs, or posted in the music store. When I put them in the player there wasn't even a "click here to accept our licensing terms" window. What are the terms of this contract, anyway?
While we're on the subject of VERY SIMPLE CONTRACTUAL ISSUES, there's a very simple contractual legal term for any contract that one of the parties has not read and explicitly agreed to: "null and void".
The number of libraries linked tells you two things about the memory consumption, load time, and general bloatedness of a given app: Jack and Shit. Some of those libraries are tiny and do next to nothing (libXrandr, 16KB on machine) and others are huge because they contain an entire GUI toolkit (libgtk-x11, 2.8MB) or X protocol (libX11 980KB). Besides, on Linux, and just about every other modern OS, shared libraries are (surprise!) shared. That means that even if you have 12 apps running that depend on libgnomeui, you only have one copy of that code in memory.
isn't it just infinitely easier (and gives a better end result) to plug an iPod into your head unit?
Yes, but a Sun E450 with a multi-terabyte RAID is still significantly cheaper than an iPod.
Dylan's Blonde on Blonde sounds fantastic in 5.1, and the choir in the Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want has never sounded better. Dark Side of the Moon is, of course, astounding.
All those albums were originally recorded in analog stereo. Anyone trying to sell you more information than is on the original master tapes (like 5.1 channel recordings) is full of it.
To be blunt about it, I'm a cheapskate. Given the choice between a $300 office suite that does everything I'll ever need and a lot more, and a free one that does 90% of what I need, I'll take the freebie any time. With a *nix system, you can get all sorts of free (really Free!) apps. On Windows, finding "free" software means navigating a confusing maze of shareware, adware, nagware, spyware, and payware. They say "free" but mean "no cash up front". You will end up paying for the software somehow. Anything worth having that you can download for "free" seems to be either a timed demo, or ad-supported. The only sure way to get functional malware-free apps for Windows is to pay gobs of cash for them, so chepskates (like me) end up with machines full of viriuses, popup ad servers, spyware, etc.
On platforms like Linux or the BSDs, "free" means free as in take it, copy it, give it to all your friends, look for spyware in the source code, do whatever you want, it's really free. None of my apps have banner ads, I never see popups, and I don't have to worry about my new l33t 0-day release of The GIMP infecting my machine with virus. I like that.
You can't just compare area and volume like that. One is square units, the other is cubic units.
A cube has 6 square units of surface area for every cubic unit of volume. So, we say a cube with sides u units long has 6 u^2 / 1 u^3 which reduces to 6 / u, so as we increase u the ratio of surface area to volume drops.
"Any innocent product which becomes suddenly genocidal in the hands of a tyrant has been designed by a dangerous naif."
A good principle to keep in mind, if you're designing something virtual (like freenet) but utterly useless if you're designing a physical object. There is nothing that can slice bread that can't be turned into a weapon by someone with an IQ of more than 7. There is no crude weapon that can't be used for genocide if you have enough of them, and enough followers to wield them. (Look at the Rwandan genocide of 1994, most of the killings were committed with machetes) Even teddy bears could be a dangerous genocidal weapon if you had enough of them, and the means to air-drop them on a village in sufficient numbers to suffocate the all residents.
If Sterling thinks this has any bearing on real engineering, I have to ask who the naif really is...
Can we get over this "greatest generation" meme already? Please?
Coming through the second world war and the great depression is an impressive feat, but we conveniently forget that the generation of Americans that included heros like FDR and Eisenhower also brought us criminals like Al Capone, made "Mafia" a household word, and revitalized the Ku Klux Klan. Compared to the rose-tinted selective memory of what some people did in the past, every generation looks like a lame imitation of the previous one's greatness.
I think the Sumerians said it best: "The youth of today are lazy, without God, and disrespecful to elders." And the youth always will be lazy, godless, and disrespectful, at least until a new generation comes along to take their place.
"I too am getting sick of these people who have discovered that mod'ing as overrated makes them immune to being meta-moded."
How do you feel about people who post complaints about moderation as AC because it makes them immune to losing karma?
KDE and Gnome are following the same path to h-e-double-toothpicks.
Lots of people open up gconf-editor (or worse, judge it from screenshots), and their only reaction is "OMG ITS TEH REGISTRY! BILLG PWNZ GNOME! EEEEEEEEVVIIILL!!!1!"
It's not at all the same. First, gconf stores stuff in many small xml files, not one big easily-corrupted binary file. If some app's settings get corrupted, I can change one those files with a text editor and fix it, just like a traditional *nix program. Second, it's simple to remove cruft. I can rm -r ~/.gconf/apps/blackjack, and every trace that gnome-blackjack has left in gconf will be gone. Compare that to Windows, where people still have bits of Netscape 4.0 in the registry. Third, information on shared libraries isn't kept in gconf, so it's no help in the sort of browser helper object and DLL hijacking tricks that malware uses on Windows. Lastly, since gconf is many small files, it provides a finer-grained access control than the windows registry. All the user-editable gconf files are in the user's home dir, so one user running some bit of malware can't infect other users. Nothing running without root privledges can corrupt system-wide gconf files. It's all-around much safer than a registry.
If the ACLU defends the far-right loonies, you get peeved and stop donating. If they don't defend them, they're fscking hypocrites and the entire purpose of their organization is negated. Which do you think is worse?
The reason the ACLU exists is to fight for *anyone's* right to speek freely, no matter how bizarre or offensive that speech may be to the ACLU's members. Defending someone's right to disagree with you is the highest possible expression of free speech.
Keep all the money you aren't giving the ACLU in a jar. That way when you grow up enough to realize that free speech is a human right, not a privledge reserved to those who only say inoffensive things, you can give it to them.
Take everything in this article with a full shaker of salt. It's pretty obvious that the author went into the review process looking for things to hate, rather than giving gnome a fair chance.
gConf-editor looks a lot like the Windows registry editor. However, gConf stores settings as a lot of small xml files, not a single huge binary database like the windows registry. You can still edit any setting with a text editor, if you want. As for "the folder thing", I like it. Try it, you might like it too.
The gargoyles wore gear the recorded everything they saw, heard, sensed, etc for publication in "the library" (originally the Library of Congress). They would get paid if someone downloaded their recordings later. Some of the freelance hackers (including Hiro, I think) resent the gargoyles for clogging up the library with too much useless data.
Your script crashes epiphany 1.2.5 (built with mozilla 1.6). All I got was a javascript warning with the standard goatse.cx disclaimer ("Our lawyers tell us this site needs a disclaimer..."), then epiphany froze without displaying any shocking and/or offending images.
They don't want out. Baystar was using the threat of dumping their stock to keep SCO managment in line. They wanted SCO to halt what was left of their software development and sales operations and "concentrate on IP licensing and enforcment". Darl and co. agreed, Baystar withdrew their threat, and now we're seeing the last of SCO's programmers getting downsized.
But seriously, as much as the internet is becoming the the globe's central nervous system, I don't see much problem with a limited suspension of due process rights with a theft of this scale, even if it still just boils down to theft.
I see a problem. Last year the Patriot act was only for infringing the constitutional rights of terrorists. Last week, it was only for terrorists and drug smugglers. Today it's terrorists, drug smugglers, and network card theives. Who's up next for loss of due process? People accused of robbery? Fraud? Speeding? Keeping overdue library books?
If you start denying due process to anyone it erodes the rights of everyone. Now we're seeing that slippery slope in action.
Feel free at any time to understand that "monopoly", like many other words, is given specific meaning in legal matters that may or may not be identical to the meaning assigned to that word by Random House, Merriam-Webster, or your average seventh-grade english teacher. Microsoft is a monopoly as defined by U.S. antitrust law.
I never said that I should be given discretion over how MS spends their money, I was just citing their failure to spend such an enormous sum of money as evidence that they don't have any significant competitors.
Sorry, but Microsoft *is* a monopoly. No company that's facing real competition can afford to keep /FORTY BILLION DOLLARS/ cash in the bank. If there was a significant threat to MS dominance in any market they would be spending that cash on research, hiring more programmers, or marketing. The fact thet they feel like they have the ability to just hold that money in reserve means they see no threat to their market share. Your RedHat box is an insignificant drop in the MS-owned ocean.
This die-hard Harley-Davidson fan decides to install the 1.8 litre engine from junked a Honda Civic (hey, it was free!) in his Dyna Glide, only to be confused by it's chaotic array of wires and hoses, non-standard bolt pattern, difficulty matching it to his original Harley transmission, and the general slowness of his new behemoth bike.
Seriously, if you post something like this on a gearhead site, you'll get laughed off the internet. Why is the same sort of stuff can be passed off as constructive criticism when it's about open-source software? The Gimp was never meant to be a Mac app. If it works, that's a nice bonus, but please don't expect it to be neatly integrated with a platform that it only runs on because of a third-party porting effort.
Why is offshoring computer-related jobs so much worse than any other jobs?
What's happening now in IT happened to consumer electronics in the 1980s, autobuilding in the 70s and 80s, to steelmaking in the 50s and 60s, and so on, back through industial history. It's a consequence of free trade, once the skills and captital to produce something high-tech become available to less-developed economies, production migrates to take advantage of lower labor costs.
Now, if you typed that post on a computer built from imported parts, or if you drive an imported car (that includes Fords and Chevies that are mostly built in Mexico), or own imported electronics then you have to ask yourself "What makes IT special?" Why should it be alright to listen to a Sony stereo (designed in Japan and built in Korea) and post to slashdot on a computer built in Honk Kong from Taiwanese parts, but unacceptable to buy software written in India?
Free trade is good until it takes *your* job, then it's slavery?