It's obvious that your arguments are so weak that you are incapable of making them without resort to insult. I didn't say we were buddies with NK but there is no active state of war. There IS a sorta-kinda technical state of war since the 50s war didn't FORMALLY end but all practical purposes it did end then. We screw with each other a bit and that is about it. If there WAS an active state of war then Seoul wouldn't be much more than a smoking hole in the ground on account of the artillery NK has zeroed in on it. Furthermore, NK would either be a glass parking lot or just conventionally bombed from the air depending on how badly China lets us spank them for said Seoul-smashing.
I wasn't being either terribly sloppy or moronic. Most Warsaw Pact countries were conquered satellites. When they got out of line as the Czechs did then they got stomped on by the Soviet military. They may not have been part of the USSR's Federal structure but they were very much owned by the USSR and USSR concerns would trump anything the local governments of these "independent" states came up with. For all intents and purposes they WERE part of the USSR. As the other poster said, the practical effects are all that matter.
Most of the Western USSR states became part of NATO. That is about a big a hint as I can think of that the USSR as we knew it isn't ever coming back. Getting back places like Poland, Romania, and a good chunka Germany mean risking nuclear war. There's other real estate on their frontiers that won't get our panties in nearly as much as a twist. As an added bonus, it'd give some of these islamist nutjobs another target to play with.
Russia these days reminds me a bit of the Weimar Republic. And the Weimar Republic was the pupa of something altogether more scary when it hatched. Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, I'm starting to agree with that guy a post or three back who says we should play along and declare Russia the enemy. It's sooooooooo much easier to keep track of than a shifting cast of "Terrorist Masterminds".
Neither the war against NK or Vietnam was an open ended thing that could last for decades. Those wars had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And yes the war with NK is over. Making faces at each other over the DMZ is no real state of "war". These prisoners are POWs in Shrubya's "War On Terror". If the "War On Terror" is anything like the "War on Drugs" or "War on Poverty" it will never end. I have a hard time coming up with any sort of wartime or international law that can reasonably contemplate holding someone for the rest of their natural lives without trial.
Ole Stevie irretrievably jumped the shark when he put himself in the fucking thing. That series may well have been the center of King's personal universe but it is pretty damn far from the things he wrote at his best even if some of those best things weren't his favorites.
You generalized that "Linux users don't pay for software." This is what the GP and I were taking you to task for. Perhaps the "commie" bit was unfair but the "freeloader" bit was not. I have paid with money, bugreports, and small patches to various things I use. Your personal experience does not make that a fair statement.
I thought all that is required for a system of axioms is that none of them contradict each other. The pythagorean theorem is certainly true in plane geometry irregardless of the extent plane geometry accurately describes our world. And within its limits plane geometry is still practically useful.
XP also got two service packs and other patches besides. XP did suck when it came out but I was sorta there. XP then didn't suck as badly as Vista does now. Vista Service Pack 1 is going to be out later this year ( http://apcmag.com/5098/microsoft_kick_starts_vista _sp1 ). That it is coming out so soon means even MS knows that they pushed a flakey half-baked product out the door.
At my workplace, there will be no Vista until Service Pack 2. At that point, we figure MS will be releasing the product they should have put out in the first place.
I suppose this could be used to build such a beast once it's a bit more fully baked. A good general purpose FOSS OCR is necessary for what you want even if it isn't entirely sufficient.
Even in the midst of the endless lame-o beat-em-ups, there were still some good arcade games coming out. Some of them even came from Atari. The two games that capped off the time I regularly visited arcades were the Hard Drivin' games and T-Mek. Both were from Atari games. In that era I was seeing less beat-em-ups and a handful of games with innovative control schemes and game play. Lack of good games wasn't the only thing that killed the arcades. The arcades participated in their own demise when they brightly lit them, brought in the Skee-Ball and Claw games, and then styled themselves "Family Fun Centers". I used to frequent a mall arcade called the Gold Mine. The facade looked like the entrance to a mine and the interior was almost solely lit by glowing CRTs. The place was PACKED with cabs side by side and the only open space in there was that necessary for walking to a different game or the dollar changer. Later, one of the Mall's TWO Gold Mines was removed and the other was remodeled into a pukingly cheery "Family Fun Center" with twice the floor space and one quarter of the games.
The death of arcades could have only been forestalled not prevented though. The old differential between what arcade and home games could do has mostly disappeared. Arcade games can still differentiate themselves with moving cabinets, elaborate custom controls, and majorly roided out custom hardware. The problem is that such games cost a dollar or more a play and even people who spend that dollar enough to get really good won't last very long on a given play. This isn't just recouping the monstrous cost of the game. Recent arcade games have obviously had some hardcore reward psychology applied to them; they're designed to suck a wallet dry as quickly as possible. This type of "arcade" gaming is exemplified by Dave 'n' Busters. I once got a free 10 dollar card at a Dave 'n' Busters and it lasted all of ten minutes. Ten dollars was once two solid afternoons of arcade gaming. It's pathetic. It's also inescapable. The conditions that once allowed arcades to flourish are gone and like Big Bands, I don't see them coming back in any major way.
Sure you can repeat evolution. It's called "setting the fitness criteria repeatedly". If you can match the criteria more than once to solve a given problem then you have repeated evolution. Note: this is for applications of evolutionary theory. When the natural environment sets the criteria for biological systems we call it Natural Selection.
As for "computers never being smarter than their programmers", watch the experiments going on with FPGAs mentioned earlier this week. The results of these regularly generate circuits that depend on undocumented chip behaivors and features/flaws of individual chips: no human would design things that way. All we really need do is build several machines capable of reproducing themselves, supply some feedstock, and watch. True, one can argue that the initial machines were created but since there isn't any predicting what you get several hundred thousand generations down the line, I wouldn't call the end product Designed either.
The original GPLv2 went "after issues that piss off free software advocates". It did it well and was successful at it for many years. Tivoization, patent threats, end-arounds like the Novell deal, and the desire for compatibility with more projects merit a rewrite. In the face of the first three items, just what is the FSF supposed to do? Nothing?
If it weren't for blatant (and sometimes successful) attempts to end-run the license, they probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble.
By using reiserfs, Mr. Coward I am using a functional piece of software that happens to serve my needs. AFAIK, Mr. Reiser hasn't had his day in court either but even if he had and were found guilty it in now way diminishes the utility of his code. It's spring most places, get out of your mom's basement and smell some fresh air.
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It's obvious that your arguments are so weak that you are incapable of making them without resort to insult. I didn't say we were buddies with NK but there is no active state of war. There IS a sorta-kinda technical state of war since the 50s war didn't FORMALLY end but all practical purposes it did end then. We screw with each other a bit and that is about it. If there WAS an active state of war then Seoul wouldn't be much more than a smoking hole in the ground on account of the artillery NK has zeroed in on it. Furthermore, NK would either be a glass parking lot or just conventionally bombed from the air depending on how badly China lets us spank them for said Seoul-smashing.
I wasn't being either terribly sloppy or moronic. Most Warsaw Pact countries were conquered satellites. When they got out of line as the Czechs did then they got stomped on by the Soviet military. They may not have been part of the USSR's Federal structure but they were very much owned by the USSR and USSR concerns would trump anything the local governments of these "independent" states came up with. For all intents and purposes they WERE part of the USSR. As the other poster said, the practical effects are all that matter.
Most of the Western USSR states became part of NATO. That is about a big a hint as I can think of that the USSR as we knew it isn't ever coming back. Getting back places like Poland, Romania, and a good chunka Germany mean risking nuclear war. There's other real estate on their frontiers that won't get our panties in nearly as much as a twist. As an added bonus, it'd give some of these islamist nutjobs another target to play with.
Russia these days reminds me a bit of the Weimar Republic. And the Weimar Republic was the pupa of something altogether more scary when it hatched. Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay, I'm starting to agree with that guy a post or three back who says we should play along and declare Russia the enemy. It's sooooooooo much easier to keep track of than a shifting cast of "Terrorist Masterminds".
The GP is probably referring to Stephen R. Donaldson Thomas Covenant books. In that fantasy world, white gold from our world had special properties.
Neither the war against NK or Vietnam was an open ended thing that could last for decades. Those wars had a beginning, a middle, and an end. And yes the war with NK is over. Making faces at each other over the DMZ is no real state of "war". These prisoners are POWs in Shrubya's "War On Terror". If the "War On Terror" is anything like the "War on Drugs" or "War on Poverty" it will never end. I have a hard time coming up with any sort of wartime or international law that can reasonably contemplate holding someone for the rest of their natural lives without trial.
"Hawt Botnet on Botnet Action". With links to robot porn.
And booze! And hookers!Ole Stevie irretrievably jumped the shark when he put himself in the fucking thing. That series may well have been the center of King's personal universe but it is pretty damn far from the things he wrote at his best even if some of those best things weren't his favorites.
You generalized that "Linux users don't pay for software." This is what the GP and I were taking you to task for. Perhaps the "commie" bit was unfair but the "freeloader" bit was not. I have paid with money, bugreports, and small patches to various things I use. Your personal experience does not make that a fair statement.
Don't edit other people's words to make them say what you want to hear. It's rude.
So is the suggestion that Linux users are commie freeloaders.I thought all that is required for a system of axioms is that none of them contradict each other. The pythagorean theorem is certainly true in plane geometry irregardless of the extent plane geometry accurately describes our world. And within its limits plane geometry is still practically useful.
XP also got two service packs and other patches besides. XP did suck when it came out but I was sorta there. XP then didn't suck as badly as Vista does now. Vista Service Pack 1 is going to be out later this year ( http://apcmag.com/5098/microsoft_kick_starts_vista _sp1 ). That it is coming out so soon means even MS knows that they pushed a flakey half-baked product out the door.
At my workplace, there will be no Vista until Service Pack 2. At that point, we figure MS will be releasing the product they should have put out in the first place.
I suppose this could be used to build such a beast once it's a bit more fully baked. A good general purpose FOSS OCR is necessary for what you want even if it isn't entirely sufficient.
Even in the midst of the endless lame-o beat-em-ups, there were still some good arcade games coming out. Some of them even came from Atari. The two games that capped off the time I regularly visited arcades were the Hard Drivin' games and T-Mek. Both were from Atari games. In that era I was seeing less beat-em-ups and a handful of games with innovative control schemes and game play. Lack of good games wasn't the only thing that killed the arcades. The arcades participated in their own demise when they brightly lit them, brought in the Skee-Ball and Claw games, and then styled themselves "Family Fun Centers". I used to frequent a mall arcade called the Gold Mine. The facade looked like the entrance to a mine and the interior was almost solely lit by glowing CRTs. The place was PACKED with cabs side by side and the only open space in there was that necessary for walking to a different game or the dollar changer. Later, one of the Mall's TWO Gold Mines was removed and the other was remodeled into a pukingly cheery "Family Fun Center" with twice the floor space and one quarter of the games.
The death of arcades could have only been forestalled not prevented though. The old differential between what arcade and home games could do has mostly disappeared. Arcade games can still differentiate themselves with moving cabinets, elaborate custom controls, and majorly roided out custom hardware. The problem is that such games cost a dollar or more a play and even people who spend that dollar enough to get really good won't last very long on a given play. This isn't just recouping the monstrous cost of the game. Recent arcade games have obviously had some hardcore reward psychology applied to them; they're designed to suck a wallet dry as quickly as possible. This type of "arcade" gaming is exemplified by Dave 'n' Busters. I once got a free 10 dollar card at a Dave 'n' Busters and it lasted all of ten minutes. Ten dollars was once two solid afternoons of arcade gaming. It's pathetic. It's also inescapable. The conditions that once allowed arcades to flourish are gone and like Big Bands, I don't see them coming back in any major way.
The OpenBSD people WERE offered alternate licensing. The Linux folk were (rightly) miffed that their code was pinched without permission.
Why not?
Sure you can repeat evolution. It's called "setting the fitness criteria repeatedly". If you can match the criteria more than once to solve a given problem then you have repeated evolution. Note: this is for applications of evolutionary theory. When the natural environment sets the criteria for biological systems we call it Natural Selection.
o j/Jan%20Stephen/ml-hw4.html
p eriments-with-bacteria/
o n
http://www.frams.alife.pl/common/al_evoltips.html
http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~evs/ml/OthelloStudPr
Repetition can also be observed with fast reproducing species by likewise arbitrarily setting fitness criteria:
http://www.rasmusen.org/x/2006/11/24/evolution-ex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evoluti
http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/
As for "computers never being smarter than their programmers", watch the experiments going on with FPGAs mentioned earlier this week. The results of these regularly generate circuits that depend on undocumented chip behaivors and features/flaws of individual chips: no human would design things that way. All we really need do is build several machines capable of reproducing themselves, supply some feedstock, and watch. True, one can argue that the initial machines were created but since there isn't any predicting what you get several hundred thousand generations down the line, I wouldn't call the end product Designed either.
I believe what was meant is if a person doesn't want his name generally known. So you can be a nym to the world but a name to the Citizendium board.
The original GPLv2 went "after issues that piss off free software advocates". It did it well and was successful at it for many years. Tivoization, patent threats, end-arounds like the Novell deal, and the desire for compatibility with more projects merit a rewrite. In the face of the first three items, just what is the FSF supposed to do? Nothing?
If it weren't for blatant (and sometimes successful) attempts to end-run the license, they probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble.
By using reiserfs, Mr. Coward I am using a functional piece of software that happens to serve my needs. AFAIK, Mr. Reiser hasn't had his day in court either but even if he had and were found guilty it in now way diminishes the utility of his code. It's spring most places, get out of your mom's basement and smell some fresh air.
On the other hand reiser3 is pretty quick at it and works just fine as a desktop workstation filesystem.
Parts of the Simarillion work as good novellas in themselves. I particularly enjoyed the tale of Beren and Luthien.
DOSBOX has been around for awhile and uses an emulated CPU. It works well enough to run DOS games and Windows 3.1.
That's what the LiveCD is for.
Orwell warned us about those.......