Most of the crap you are catching is from younger more insecure people. Posting snarky shit helps them feel better about themselves. The Linux User Group I attend sometimes would NOT praise such behavior. They'd correct you and suggest things but they wouldn't be dicks about it.
Being a jerk and a being a Linux user are two different things. Someone can be one or the other or both. It would be better to just play with Linux and see if you like it or not for itself.
Of COURSE you could put a rootkit in a PCI card. It would have to be done at the factory, even if the "factory" is in Joe's basement and Joe is selling cards to his friends.
Many cards have flashable firmware. Given a way to reflash a vulnerable piece of hardware, this could be done with a trojan or worm.
It's like putting a black ball and a white ball in two different boxes and playing three-card monte with them. As soon as you open one box, you'll know what is in the other but the information content is zilch.
Fair enough. However, openness is a feature too and one that I prioritize rather highly. It largely comes down to issues of trust and I have had my trust broken by proprietary vendors large and small. "Intellectual property" may well be a basis of business but secrecy doesn't lead me to trust anyone. You may not want to be a "service/support" shop but then I don't want to pay a boatload of money for whatever secret sauce you're selling. This whole business/money thing works both ways and vendors that respect my priorities will get my money. And I am not isolated in feeling this way.
And no, I have no problem with others profiting from Open Source. It rather helps keep the whole thing going.
* you saw it pushed more... I don't think the Ataris could have done "Skate or Die", say...
* on some EA games (back wheen they used that clever ECA logo and even more clever copy protection) ported between the two, IMO the 8bit games feel a little slower and more plodding.
I'll grant the Commodore got more titles first and the bulk of publishing house effort. I'll furthermore grant (mostly) better sprite hardware and the SID chip. The main cause of the "plodding" you decry is shoddy straight line ports from the Apple and Commodores. The A8 had a graphics chipset that was very powerful and could do no end of nifty tricks but it had to be explicitly programmed for. Many ports of games that started on the C64 or Apple simply did not properly exploit this hardware. Rather, the ports used it as lower-res version of the static framebuffers on the other two platforms. Games that DID properly use it include:
BallBlazer (This one in particular would have been difficult to do on a C-64. The screenshots DON'T do it justice. You have to see this one MOVE.)
Rescue on Fractulus
Koronis Rift
The Eidolon
(damn but Lucasfilm games rocked)
Alternate Reality: The City
Zybex
Bill Kendrick's Gem Drop
European demo coders also did and do astounding things with it:
Numen (this one actually uses a variant of the Build engine used in Duke3d, Redneck Rampage, and so forth. No shit.), Joyride, Drunken Chessboard and many others do incredible things.
www.atarimania.com has all of these except maybe Gem Drop.
I wasn't kidding about the video chipset. ANTIC and GTIA were designed by a team led by Jay Miner. Most of the A8 chipset engineers later went on to design the Amiga's chipset; and the A8 does have some Amiga-like characteristics. The A8 video chipset did not have a fixed framebuffer. Through DMA, almost any part of the A8 memory map could be mapped to the screen and this mapping as well as many other characteristics of the display could be changed by interrupts keyed to horizontal and vertical blank interrupts. Page-flip animations were ridiculously easy on this machine. It had a 256 color indexed palette ("trickery" can raise this); which could also be futzed around with in a very plastic way (including the granddaddy of Amiga "Copper" effects: different and shifting pallettes on zones of the screen). And yes, it is possible to put all 256 of them on the screen at once. It could mix different video modes on the same screen and this mixture could be changed at will. Different modes can be switched out on alternating frames to create even more "modes".
I had an ST after having an A8 but if I knew as a kid what I came to know later, I'd have gotten an Amiga instead. The Amiga had way more "Atari-feel". Trivia note: Miner's company offered Atari a license to the technology in the '83 timeframe. Atari didn't bite and Commodore did. The rest is history.
This is the beauty of FMPro. It simple, quick and to boot you can even create run-time solutions.
Until somebody decides to take the app in question and deploy it to 100 users in many locations instead of 10 users in one location. FM Pro is not a bad product in and of itself when used appropriately. For the sake of ease, it has no proper separation between data store, GUI widgets, and scripting language; that is all one integrated glop. When used by small workgroups, this inherent inability to scale does no harm and makes for nice little office apps. But the more people who have to use it, the uglier it gets. And for some reason, FM Pro apps often tend to be deployed in situations it simply cannot scale well too. It seems to encourage a particular PHB syndrome "look-at-me!-I'm-a-developer-too!" The education market is the worst for this.
MS Access encourages similar behavior but in that case there is a rocky but plausible upgrade path to more scalable MS tech like SQL Server. The quickie office app made with Access can at least be quickly decoupled from the the built-in database and made to use something more robust. This does not seem to be true of FM Pro and leads to some real hairballs wherein the app never gets redesigned around more scalable components but instead just acquires cruft on top of hack on top of workaround designed to keep the thing from crashing as more and more users are added.
IBM licensed Java from Sun a number of years with contracts signed and everything. Assuming the Nazgul did a good job on the contracts, IBM can continue doing whatever they like with their Java code tree.
The GPL isn't some black hole that can suck up any and all licenses into it's undeniable gravitational pull. Come to think it, real black holes don't do this either unless their event horizons are crossed. Put that way, IBM Java can't and won't cross the GPL event horizon. At most, it will orbit at a safely removed distance.
Just look at the amount of holes that have been plugged since XP SP2 was released. The heck with waiting for Vista SP1, I'm telling my clients to steer clear of Vista all together until Microsoft stops releasing patches to new vulnerabilities found in XP.
That will only happen when MS decides to stop supporting XP. Not to defend MS, but any codebase as vast as that of Windows will inevitably have bugs and patches throughout it's lifecycle. It isn't bugs you need to worry about but how they are responded to and how things are designed. Designwise Vista won't be a radical departure from XP. It's still Win32/64 after all.
Now, it probably is wise to wait for the first Service Pack before adopting Vista. Many bugs won't be found until the multitudes have Vista in their hot little hands. There's just some bugs that aren't easy to find without a million monkeys pounding away. XP should be supported until then. By the time Vista SP1 arrives, XP will have fewer years of active support remaining from MS. You may HAVE to upgrade by then.
This is true of ALL energy sources. If all the energy from all the sources is put on this thing called a "power grid" and the grid is well designed, then the system can survive isolated failures here and there. If the energy is used on-site as a supplement for grid power than failure means things merely get more expensive until the system is fixed.
Actually the question should be "should we care?" You are right that it can be natural or artificial but another question is what would happen if it didn't occur. I admit I don't know enough to know a solution but at the same time it appears to be two differing camps of thought on it and the least of which is what happens at the opposite end if it wasn't started. Are we speeding it up or just creating it ourself, what could happen if we all of a sudden stop all of the "harmful things".
I don't buy the OMFG the Four Horsemen are riding school of global warming thought. That said, it definitely merits concern. At the very least, global warming can change coastlines and move fertile agricultural location. The US losing it's MidWest breadbasket to Canada might be a consequence worth at least considering. And as for the coastlines, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Lex Luther's latest plot. You know that obsession over beachfront property he has.........
Seriously, though, it seems at least plausible to me that global warming can have real economic and political consequences in this century. We should at least contingency plan for some of the outcomes.
The thing I don't understand is why doesn't a big name artist say fuck you to their studio and go out on their own. U2, Madonna, Britney, etc could all do it. Start your own site selling non DRM lossless songs, do individual deals for CD distribution, run a few commercials.
Artists that big basically ARE the recording industry. Many of them are either producing albums for others, managing newer acts, or own their own studios. So while new acts may well benefit from a change in the status quo, these are the few who managed to win and win big from the way things are right now. These are the ones who DIDN'T get the short end of what Steve Albini and Courtney Love are trying to tell the young turks.
So no. Practically no one who is "big" in the current system is going to turn on it. What is needed now is for others to get "big" outside the studio system. This will be arduous and may take years yet. Once it happens though, the writing is on wall for the system as it stands.
The biggest established artist that I've ever heard speak and act against it is Prince. And I really think it is because they turned on him first. And anyway, someone like Prince is a transitional form. He got his name recognition from the studio system but having that declares he no longer needs them. What we are looking for is stardom created entirely outside the patronage of the big labels.
The fridge is an inductive load and can cause phase and waveform issues with the power. Power issues aren't limited to the wattage a given device consumes.
Creationists like to point to the 10 or 20 among their number and conflate that into a large contingent debating the legitimacy of evolution. "Oooh! Oooh! Here's a biologist who says evolution is bunk!"
They have done this and other dishonest and disingenuous tactics long enough to make the "creationist biologist" very highly suspect. When you add in the peer reviewed work that stands up as actual done science rather than anti-evolution invective, it looks even less "reputable".
If creationists don't like "bully debating" then they can quit using it themselves. Fact is, the primary modes of creationist argument are religious apologetic, demogogary, and the very worst sort of political lobbying. They wouldn't have gotten the traction they have gotten if they had to stick to the rules of formal debate and scientific discourse. It is past time they are called on it explicitly and often.
My problem with evolution is that it doesn't explain the beginning.
Then you need not have a problem with evolution. Evolution and abiogenesis (life from non-life) are two separate questions and topics. Evolution tells us that descent with modification is the current best explanation for the species and forms we see today. It does not purport to tell us what the first life form(s)? were or how they came to be. That is a separate and far more speculative field of study.
Even Darwin understood this way back when. His first attempt to systemize evolution was NOT called "Origin of Life". It was called "Origin of Species". Evolution operates on extant forms of life. If it operates in the processes that lead to life starting in the first place, the mechanisms involved are likely different from the ones creationists and (reputable) biologists argue all the time. Evolution presupposes entities capable of self-reproduction. You need replicators of some sort to even talk about evolution in the first place. Once the first replicator either spontaneously arrives or is created (and no this need not be dismissed out of hand but if the only case for it is faith-based then we aren't talking science.....) then evolution can take over and eventually bring about forms vastly more varied and different from the starting point.
20 messages isn't that big a limitation. Spamgourmet just forwards to a permanent email address which is kept secret. If you're just buying something online or signing up for something, 20 messages is pretty much enough. Another option is run your own SMTP at a hosting provider. Individuals have indeed coded transient email address utilities for themselves before. The catch is you have to be an mail admin for that work so it really doesn't scale to Joe AOL.
If the goal is to make China a nicey-nice place full of nicey-nice people then forget it. NOTHING is going to do that. The initial goal of opening up to China was make them if not our friend than at least not an enemy. Secondly, some really cool heads saw an opportunity to make China a REALLY big thorn in the side of the U.S.S.R. Thirdly, it helped to redirect China's show of external force into more constructive paths. Economic competition with China is surely hard on the American worker but it isn't nearly as hard on them as an exchange of nukes would be.
Say what you want about ole Tricky Dick but he kicks the crap out of Shrub when it comes to foreign diplomacy and foreign policy. He took a couple of years too long to do it but he also knew it was time to pull the plug on Vietnam. There is good management of potential enemies and will to pull the national boot out of a quagmire. What a time we live in when Tricky Dick Nixon is someone to look up too.........
apt has been ported to rpm distros; it just won't do you as much good. The problem isn't either rpm or apt packaging. It comes down to having a large well thought out and well tested SET of packages. RPM didn't drive me away from Mandrake a number of years ago. Consistently broken packages from hard to find repositories is what drove me away. I use Debian and Ubuntu and from what I've seen, all of the Debian based distros benefit from Mother Debian's attention to integration and detail. I think Debian based distros would be pretty much as good even if they used RPM. The package format isn't where the quality and ease of installation comes from.
RPM based distros on the other hand tend to start off as RedHat forks. In time, you have a limited number of developers managing a smaller number of packages than what Debian's community does. RedHat itself has good repositories with adequate developer attention but their scope isn't as vast as Debian's. Again, this has little to do with RPM and more to do with the human model behind the package repository. Also, once a distro forks away from RedHat it tends to stay forked so it doesn't benefit from integration work done by RedHat's larger number of developers. The Debian based distros periodically resync to Debian either directly or through Ubuntu. The same large pool of packages is available on all even though the Debian derivatives all differ in purpose and focus.
That was an awesome video, I never thought they'd find the cartridges so easily.
Actually the carts were supposedly crushed by bulldozers and buried in cement. So far as I know, nobody has ever tried to find and dig up the actual burial site. The 2600 Forum at Atariage.com has an infamous thread on the subject.
Wintergreen made a video about the whole E.T. disposal debacle. It has nice touches like the 2600 E.T. running around the desert where his carts are buried. Funny stuff.
When a non-geek hears about open source, whether it's a layman or member of a spy agency, they shrink away, basically thinking that open ROM (hardware, software) is open RAM (data transfer), if they could phrase it as such.
The language of FOSS geeks isn't how I would explain this. The people of Nevada know that the Nevada Gaming Commission has to possess and pass on ALL code used in electronic gambling devices. Put that way the reasoning is obvious. I would prefer that the code in voting machines be open to scrutiny by all but I could live with a requirement that all code used in a voting machine be disclosed to the Boards of Election. Presumably at least some BODs would have outside auditors scour the code.
When I think of FOSS, I do not assume that all brands of software that have the same roots under an open source license are created equal, nor that I should not be sure to distinguish between them. 0Look at all the flavors (brands) of Linux people can choose from. The only think they have in common is the Linux kernel (thanks, Linus!). At least we know that whoever builds a complete OS around a Linux kernal had enough of a clue to start with a good foundation. Things differ from that point, as most Linux users realize. I want to know whose derivative software I am using.
But the kernel is a poster child for reasonable branding. Almost every distro makes numberous modifications to the mainline kernel. The behaivor is pretty much encouraged. Red Hat can refer to their product as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" rather than "Red Hat Enterprise Weaselix". If I download the Linux kernel from kernel.org, then I know that is Linus' tree. Thing is, one is usually better off running distro kernels because (gasp!) they have been modified to better integrate with the rest of the distro. Come to think of it, the kernel devs leave a certain amount of stabilization and productilization to the distros. If I get it from a distro then I know it is a derivative. Lo and behold, the distros list their changes too so that I know in what way it differs. Linux has a good "brand" without Linus insisting that it can only be called "Linux" if all use is subject to his approval and scrutiny.
Your examples about "phoning home" and "impossible to uninstall" paint Debian in the same light as a Windows spyware vendor; this is completely unfair. They are doing nothing of the kind. Debian wants to be able to:
A. Integrate it with the directory and config file structures of the distro.
B. Freeze on a version and do only security updates.
Both are completely reasonable IMHO. You see, when I deploy Debian stable I too "want to know what I'm getting". In this case that means "A software base that won't change for a few years except for minimal bugfixing and security fixing."
You also say that "Debian wants to modify a program without distinguishing their version from the original. Bad Debian!" WRONG! Every Debian package has a "changelog.Debian.gz" file included with the docs. This lays out how and in what way they modified the original. Debian source packages are distributed as an upstream tarball with patch and control files. Nothing like "phoning home" is hidden. Again, this is standard practice with almost every package in almost every Linux distribution. The more reasonable FOSS projects do not throw up petty roadblocks to the kind of integration customizations are standard practice in Linux and xBSD distros. This is what I meant by "serious trouble" if every project behaved as Mozilla does. ALL packages would have to have different names and probably a different name in every distro. Openoffice say in one distro would be FreeOffice in RedHat and maybe Libre Office in Debian and nobody would be able to make head or tail of anything. In reality, everyone would standardize around forks with sane trademark usage policies.
What Mozilla risks is everyone standardizing on Iceweasel. If Iceweasel is easier to contribute to and easier to make standard distro usage of then it WILL happen. If a more actively developed Iceweasel comes to Windows then goodbye Firefox buzz and goodbye Firefox brand: the opposite of what their anal policies are meant to protect.
I don't dispute that Mozilla is within their legal rights to behave as they are behaving. But it is bad behaivor for an Open Source project. They would do better to drop the pretense and take future versions of Firefox closed source. Most Open Source projects simply do not micromanage outside use of their code bases and branding. Only overt attempt to steal credit or make a project look bad provoke the kind of behaivor Mozilla is engaging in from other projects. Mozilla is treating everybody tha
If every FOSS project behaved as Mozilla does then almost EVERY piece of software in most Linux distros would have to be renamed. Just how does this help with public perception and branding? I believe Mozilla's policies have damaged their perception as an Open Source project. Perhaps this enhances their brand as a consumer product but it will be costly in the long term if it induces developers to stay away in droves.
For the billionth time, this is more than the logo. Debian had an understanding that let them call the version in their repository "Firefox" if they used a different logo. The mozilla.com people say that isn't good enough anymore. To use the codebase and call it Firefox Debian must:
1. Submit all patches to mozilla.com for approval. This includes security patches.
2. Debian's policy is to stick with a version of a given package for a release and backport security and stability fixes only. Mozilla.com would rather have everyone running the latest version at all times.
Basically, the codebase ceases to be Open Source if any product compiled from it is to be called Firefox. Very few other projects engage in this sort of control freakery and branding. If all Open Source projects behaved as Mozilla does, we'd have a real problem on our hands.
To pin ALL blame for this on Debian shows no understanding of what the issues are.
Slashdot Mirror
Most of the crap you are catching is from younger more insecure people. Posting snarky shit helps them feel better about themselves. The Linux User Group I attend sometimes would NOT praise such behavior. They'd correct you and suggest things but they wouldn't be dicks about it.
Being a jerk and a being a Linux user are two different things. Someone can be one or the other or both. It would be better to just play with Linux and see if you like it or not for itself.
Of COURSE you could put a rootkit in a PCI card. It would have to be done at the factory, even if the "factory" is in Joe's basement and Joe is selling cards to his friends.
Many cards have flashable firmware. Given a way to reflash a vulnerable piece of hardware, this could be done with a trojan or worm.
It's like putting a black ball and a white ball in two different boxes and playing three-card monte with them. As soon as you open one box, you'll know what is in the other but the information content is zilch.
Fair enough. However, openness is a feature too and one that I prioritize rather highly. It largely comes down to issues of trust and I have had my trust broken by proprietary vendors large and small. "Intellectual property" may well be a basis of business but secrecy doesn't lead me to trust anyone. You may not want to be a "service/support" shop but then I don't want to pay a boatload of money for whatever secret sauce you're selling. This whole business/money thing works both ways and vendors that respect my priorities will get my money. And I am not isolated in feeling this way.
And no, I have no problem with others profiting from Open Source. It rather helps keep the whole thing going.
* you saw it pushed more... I don't think the Ataris could have done "Skate or Die", say... * on some EA games (back wheen they used that clever ECA logo and even more clever copy protection) ported between the two, IMO the 8bit games feel a little slower and more plodding.
I'll grant the Commodore got more titles first and the bulk of publishing house effort. I'll furthermore grant (mostly) better sprite hardware and the SID chip. The main cause of the "plodding" you decry is shoddy straight line ports from the Apple and Commodores. The A8 had a graphics chipset that was very powerful and could do no end of nifty tricks but it had to be explicitly programmed for. Many ports of games that started on the C64 or Apple simply did not properly exploit this hardware. Rather, the ports used it as lower-res version of the static framebuffers on the other two platforms. Games that DID properly use it include:
BallBlazer (This one in particular would have been difficult to do on a C-64. The screenshots DON'T do it justice. You have to see this one MOVE.) Rescue on Fractulus
Koronis Rift
The Eidolon
(damn but Lucasfilm games rocked)
Alternate Reality: The City
Zybex
Bill Kendrick's Gem Drop
European demo coders also did and do astounding things with it:
Numen (this one actually uses a variant of the Build engine used in Duke3d, Redneck Rampage, and so forth. No shit.), Joyride, Drunken Chessboard and many others do incredible things.
www.atarimania.com has all of these except maybe Gem Drop.
I wasn't kidding about the video chipset. ANTIC and GTIA were designed by a team led by Jay Miner. Most of the A8 chipset engineers later went on to design the Amiga's chipset; and the A8 does have some Amiga-like characteristics. The A8 video chipset did not have a fixed framebuffer. Through DMA, almost any part of the A8 memory map could be mapped to the screen and this mapping as well as many other characteristics of the display could be changed by interrupts keyed to horizontal and vertical blank interrupts. Page-flip animations were ridiculously easy on this machine. It had a 256 color indexed palette ("trickery" can raise this); which could also be futzed around with in a very plastic way (including the granddaddy of Amiga "Copper" effects: different and shifting pallettes on zones of the screen). And yes, it is possible to put all 256 of them on the screen at once. It could mix different video modes on the same screen and this mixture could be changed at will. Different modes can be switched out on alternating frames to create even more "modes".
I had an ST after having an A8 but if I knew as a kid what I came to know later, I'd have gotten an Amiga instead. The Amiga had way more "Atari-feel". Trivia note: Miner's company offered Atari a license to the technology in the '83 timeframe. Atari didn't bite and Commodore did. The rest is history.
This is the beauty of FMPro. It simple, quick and to boot you can even create run-time solutions.
Until somebody decides to take the app in question and deploy it to 100 users in many locations instead of 10 users in one location. FM Pro is not a bad product in and of itself when used appropriately. For the sake of ease, it has no proper separation between data store, GUI widgets, and scripting language; that is all one integrated glop. When used by small workgroups, this inherent inability to scale does no harm and makes for nice little office apps. But the more people who have to use it, the uglier it gets. And for some reason, FM Pro apps often tend to be deployed in situations it simply cannot scale well too. It seems to encourage a particular PHB syndrome "look-at-me!-I'm-a-developer-too!" The education market is the worst for this.
MS Access encourages similar behavior but in that case there is a rocky but plausible upgrade path to more scalable MS tech like SQL Server. The quickie office app made with Access can at least be quickly decoupled from the the built-in database and made to use something more robust. This does not seem to be true of FM Pro and leads to some real hairballs wherein the app never gets redesigned around more scalable components but instead just acquires cruft on top of hack on top of workaround designed to keep the thing from crashing as more and more users are added.
IBM licensed Java from Sun a number of years with contracts signed and everything. Assuming the Nazgul did a good job on the contracts, IBM can continue doing whatever they like with their Java code tree.
The GPL isn't some black hole that can suck up any and all licenses into it's undeniable gravitational pull. Come to think it, real black holes don't do this either unless their event horizons are crossed. Put that way, IBM Java can't and won't cross the GPL event horizon. At most, it will orbit at a safely removed distance.
Just look at the amount of holes that have been plugged since XP SP2 was released. The heck with waiting for Vista SP1, I'm telling my clients to steer clear of Vista all together until Microsoft stops releasing patches to new vulnerabilities found in XP.
That will only happen when MS decides to stop supporting XP. Not to defend MS, but any codebase as vast as that of Windows will inevitably have bugs and patches throughout it's lifecycle. It isn't bugs you need to worry about but how they are responded to and how things are designed. Designwise Vista won't be a radical departure from XP. It's still Win32/64 after all.
Now, it probably is wise to wait for the first Service Pack before adopting Vista. Many bugs won't be found until the multitudes have Vista in their hot little hands. There's just some bugs that aren't easy to find without a million monkeys pounding away. XP should be supported until then. By the time Vista SP1 arrives, XP will have fewer years of active support remaining from MS. You may HAVE to upgrade by then.
This is true of ALL energy sources. If all the energy from all the sources is put on this thing called a "power grid" and the grid is well designed, then the system can survive isolated failures here and there. If the energy is used on-site as a supplement for grid power than failure means things merely get more expensive until the system is fixed.
Actually the question should be "should we care?" You are right that it can be natural or artificial but another question is what would happen if it didn't occur. I admit I don't know enough to know a solution but at the same time it appears to be two differing camps of thought on it and the least of which is what happens at the opposite end if it wasn't started. Are we speeding it up or just creating it ourself, what could happen if we all of a sudden stop all of the "harmful things".
I don't buy the OMFG the Four Horsemen are riding school of global warming thought. That said, it definitely merits concern. At the very least, global warming can change coastlines and move fertile agricultural location. The US losing it's MidWest breadbasket to Canada might be a consequence worth at least considering. And as for the coastlines, I wouldn't be surprised if it was Lex Luther's latest plot. You know that obsession over beachfront property he has.........
Seriously, though, it seems at least plausible to me that global warming can have real economic and political consequences in this century. We should at least contingency plan for some of the outcomes.
The thing I don't understand is why doesn't a big name artist say fuck you to their studio and go out on their own. U2, Madonna, Britney, etc could all do it. Start your own site selling non DRM lossless songs, do individual deals for CD distribution, run a few commercials.
Artists that big basically ARE the recording industry. Many of them are either producing albums for others, managing newer acts, or own their own studios. So while new acts may well benefit from a change in the status quo, these are the few who managed to win and win big from the way things are right now. These are the ones who DIDN'T get the short end of what Steve Albini and Courtney Love are trying to tell the young turks.
So no. Practically no one who is "big" in the current system is going to turn on it. What is needed now is for others to get "big" outside the studio system. This will be arduous and may take years yet. Once it happens though, the writing is on wall for the system as it stands.
The biggest established artist that I've ever heard speak and act against it is Prince. And I really think it is because they turned on him first. And anyway, someone like Prince is a transitional form. He got his name recognition from the studio system but having that declares he no longer needs them. What we are looking for is stardom created entirely outside the patronage of the big labels.
-1, Presumptive.
Who says the fridge was either:
a. Made in the EU
b. Made in the last ten years
Fridges tend to be pretty damn durable and could have been made in the last 25 years for all you know.
The fridge is an inductive load and can cause phase and waveform issues with the power. Power issues aren't limited to the wattage a given device consumes.
Creationists like to point to the 10 or 20 among their number and conflate that into a large contingent debating the legitimacy of evolution. "Oooh! Oooh! Here's a biologist who says evolution is bunk!"
They have done this and other dishonest and disingenuous tactics long enough to make the "creationist biologist" very highly suspect. When you add in the peer reviewed work that stands up as actual done science rather than anti-evolution invective, it looks even less "reputable".
If creationists don't like "bully debating" then they can quit using it themselves. Fact is, the primary modes of creationist argument are religious apologetic, demogogary, and the very worst sort of political lobbying. They wouldn't have gotten the traction they have gotten if they had to stick to the rules of formal debate and scientific discourse. It is past time they are called on it explicitly and often.
My problem with evolution is that it doesn't explain the beginning.
Then you need not have a problem with evolution. Evolution and abiogenesis (life from non-life) are two separate questions and topics. Evolution tells us that descent with modification is the current best explanation for the species and forms we see today. It does not purport to tell us what the first life form(s)? were or how they came to be. That is a separate and far more speculative field of study.
Even Darwin understood this way back when. His first attempt to systemize evolution was NOT called "Origin of Life". It was called "Origin of Species". Evolution operates on extant forms of life. If it operates in the processes that lead to life starting in the first place, the mechanisms involved are likely different from the ones creationists and (reputable) biologists argue all the time. Evolution presupposes entities capable of self-reproduction. You need replicators of some sort to even talk about evolution in the first place. Once the first replicator either spontaneously arrives or is created (and no this need not be dismissed out of hand but if the only case for it is faith-based then we aren't talking science.....) then evolution can take over and eventually bring about forms vastly more varied and different from the starting point.
20 messages isn't that big a limitation. Spamgourmet just forwards to a permanent email address which is kept secret. If you're just buying something online or signing up for something, 20 messages is pretty much enough. Another option is run your own SMTP at a hosting provider. Individuals have indeed coded transient email address utilities for themselves before. The catch is you have to be an mail admin for that work so it really doesn't scale to Joe AOL.
You've just described spamgourmet. http://www.spamgourmet.com/
If the goal is to make China a nicey-nice place full of nicey-nice people then forget it. NOTHING is going to do that. The initial goal of opening up to China was make them if not our friend than at least not an enemy. Secondly, some really cool heads saw an opportunity to make China a REALLY big thorn in the side of the U.S.S.R. Thirdly, it helped to redirect China's show of external force into more constructive paths. Economic competition with China is surely hard on the American worker but it isn't nearly as hard on them as an exchange of nukes would be.
Say what you want about ole Tricky Dick but he kicks the crap out of Shrub when it comes to foreign diplomacy and foreign policy. He took a couple of years too long to do it but he also knew it was time to pull the plug on Vietnam. There is good management of potential enemies and will to pull the national boot out of a quagmire. What a time we live in when Tricky Dick Nixon is someone to look up too.........
apt has been ported to rpm distros; it just won't do you as much good. The problem isn't either rpm or apt packaging. It comes down to having a large well thought out and well tested SET of packages. RPM didn't drive me away from Mandrake a number of years ago. Consistently broken packages from hard to find repositories is what drove me away. I use Debian and Ubuntu and from what I've seen, all of the Debian based distros benefit from Mother Debian's attention to integration and detail. I think Debian based distros would be pretty much as good even if they used RPM. The package format isn't where the quality and ease of installation comes from.
RPM based distros on the other hand tend to start off as RedHat forks. In time, you have a limited number of developers managing a smaller number of packages than what Debian's community does. RedHat itself has good repositories with adequate developer attention but their scope isn't as vast as Debian's. Again, this has little to do with RPM and more to do with the human model behind the package repository. Also, once a distro forks away from RedHat it tends to stay forked so it doesn't benefit from integration work done by RedHat's larger number of developers. The Debian based distros periodically resync to Debian either directly or through Ubuntu. The same large pool of packages is available on all even though the Debian derivatives all differ in purpose and focus.
That was an awesome video, I never thought they'd find the cartridges so easily.
Actually the carts were supposedly crushed by bulldozers and buried in cement. So far as I know, nobody has ever tried to find and dig up the actual burial site. The 2600 Forum at Atariage.com has an infamous thread on the subject.Wintergreen made a video about the whole E.T. disposal debacle. It has nice touches like the 2600 E.T. running around the desert where his carts are buried. Funny stuff.
http://keithschofield.com/et/
When a non-geek hears about open source, whether it's a layman or member of a spy agency, they shrink away, basically thinking that open ROM (hardware, software) is open RAM (data transfer), if they could phrase it as such.
The language of FOSS geeks isn't how I would explain this. The people of Nevada know that the Nevada Gaming Commission has to possess and pass on ALL code used in electronic gambling devices. Put that way the reasoning is obvious. I would prefer that the code in voting machines be open to scrutiny by all but I could live with a requirement that all code used in a voting machine be disclosed to the Boards of Election. Presumably at least some BODs would have outside auditors scour the code.
When I think of FOSS, I do not assume that all brands of software that have the same roots under an open source license are created equal, nor that I should not be sure to distinguish between them. 0Look at all the flavors (brands) of Linux people can choose from. The only think they have in common is the Linux kernel (thanks, Linus!). At least we know that whoever builds a complete OS around a Linux kernal had enough of a clue to start with a good foundation. Things differ from that point, as most Linux users realize. I want to know whose derivative software I am using.
But the kernel is a poster child for reasonable branding. Almost every distro makes numberous modifications to the mainline kernel. The behaivor is pretty much encouraged. Red Hat can refer to their product as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" rather than "Red Hat Enterprise Weaselix". If I download the Linux kernel from kernel.org, then I know that is Linus' tree. Thing is, one is usually better off running distro kernels because (gasp!) they have been modified to better integrate with the rest of the distro. Come to think of it, the kernel devs leave a certain amount of stabilization and productilization to the distros. If I get it from a distro then I know it is a derivative. Lo and behold, the distros list their changes too so that I know in what way it differs. Linux has a good "brand" without Linus insisting that it can only be called "Linux" if all use is subject to his approval and scrutiny.
Your examples about "phoning home" and "impossible to uninstall" paint Debian in the same light as a Windows spyware vendor; this is completely unfair. They are doing nothing of the kind. Debian wants to be able to:
A. Integrate it with the directory and config file structures of the distro.
B. Freeze on a version and do only security updates.
Both are completely reasonable IMHO. You see, when I deploy Debian stable I too "want to know what I'm getting". In this case that means "A software base that won't change for a few years except for minimal bugfixing and security fixing."
You also say that "Debian wants to modify a program without distinguishing their version from the original. Bad Debian!" WRONG! Every Debian package has a "changelog.Debian.gz" file included with the docs. This lays out how and in what way they modified the original. Debian source packages are distributed as an upstream tarball with patch and control files. Nothing like "phoning home" is hidden. Again, this is standard practice with almost every package in almost every Linux distribution. The more reasonable FOSS projects do not throw up petty roadblocks to the kind of integration customizations are standard practice in Linux and xBSD distros. This is what I meant by "serious trouble" if every project behaved as Mozilla does. ALL packages would have to have different names and probably a different name in every distro. Openoffice say in one distro would be FreeOffice in RedHat and maybe Libre Office in Debian and nobody would be able to make head or tail of anything. In reality, everyone would standardize around forks with sane trademark usage policies.
What Mozilla risks is everyone standardizing on Iceweasel. If Iceweasel is easier to contribute to and easier to make standard distro usage of then it WILL happen. If a more actively developed Iceweasel comes to Windows then goodbye Firefox buzz and goodbye Firefox brand: the opposite of what their anal policies are meant to protect.
I don't dispute that Mozilla is within their legal rights to behave as they are behaving. But it is bad behaivor for an Open Source project. They would do better to drop the pretense and take future versions of Firefox closed source. Most Open Source projects simply do not micromanage outside use of their code bases and branding. Only overt attempt to steal credit or make a project look bad provoke the kind of behaivor Mozilla is engaging in from other projects. Mozilla is treating everybody tha
If every FOSS project behaved as Mozilla does then almost EVERY piece of software in most Linux distros would have to be renamed. Just how does this help with public perception and branding? I believe Mozilla's policies have damaged their perception as an Open Source project. Perhaps this enhances their brand as a consumer product but it will be costly in the long term if it induces developers to stay away in droves.
For the billionth time, this is more than the logo. Debian had an understanding that let them call the version in their repository "Firefox" if they used a different logo. The mozilla.com people say that isn't good enough anymore. To use the codebase and call it Firefox Debian must:
1. Submit all patches to mozilla.com for approval. This includes security patches.
2. Debian's policy is to stick with a version of a given package for a release and backport security and stability fixes only. Mozilla.com would rather have everyone running the latest version at all times.
Basically, the codebase ceases to be Open Source if any product compiled from it is to be called Firefox. Very few other projects engage in this sort of control freakery and branding. If all Open Source projects behaved as Mozilla does, we'd have a real problem on our hands.
To pin ALL blame for this on Debian shows no understanding of what the issues are.