Holy crap, who modded that garbage up? Is slashdot giving mod points to ten year olds who know nothing of computer history? Micosoft the first one to write an OS??? That's just retardedly ignorant (as well as nearly incomprehensible, "or where there companies before"... probably meant "were" but is smoking crack while drinking rotgut whiskey.
You know what's really gone downhill at slashdot in the last year or two? MODERATORS. Slashdot's giving points to morons.
Someone with points who ISN'T a moron, please mod that stupid comment to oblivion.
Yep. Today's NSA makes J. Edger look like an amateur.
From TFA:
When a trip to the local college library revealed that Asimov had been born in Petrovichi, U.S.S.R. just after the Revolution, he felt compelled to bring these findings to Hoover's attention.
The correspondent closed his letter ominously, âoeAsimov may be quite all right. On the other hand, . . . ..â
J. Edgar was cordial but dismissive. His assistants noted that this was not this particular correspondent's first not-so-hot tip, his last sent in 1957 âoeregarding the Russian Revolution of 1917.â The Director returned all correspondence with thanks and enclosed a few pamphlets on the subject of communism. Hoover drily noted to himself âoewe have no particular interest in his observations.â
Asimov was like my late friend Ralph Weibie. Ralph's parents emigrated from germany to Russia to escape WWI, where Ralph was born. They moved to the US when Ralph was three (same age as Asimov was when his parents moved here). Ralph was sent home on his first day of school because he spoke no English, only German.
He fought against the Germans in WWII (Ralph had some very amusing war stories). IIRC he held a clearance.
Hoover wasn't an idiot, the NSA just has better toys.
I've read an awful lot of Asimov, fiction and nonfiction, and nowhere that I saw (aside from his atheism and amusement at religion) that he was in any way sympathetic to the communists.
ALL trans-fat is artificial. Sheesh. Transfat is natural vegetable oil that has hydrogenated. There are no trans-fats in nature, they only come from factories.
Remember how you can also lose voting rights after having been convicted of a felony. So no privacy means politicians can take away the voting rights of whoever they chose, based on that everybody but the very careful people break laws
Yeah, jaywalking is a felony. Moron (the AC and the idiot who modded him up). I've been vocally critical of politicians and other rich and powerful assholes the whole fifteen years I've had internet soapboxes, calling them thieves and traitors, why haven't I been arrested yet? It's not like I hide my identity or anything.
Sheesh, your tinfoil hat is way too tight. You should loose it.
I know I read that book as a teenager but damned if I can remember the first thing about it, and haven't seen the movie, either. Guess I'll hit the library tomorrow (I have to go there anyway to use their printer, Amazon sent the wrong notebook battery and I need a return shipping label). I doubt I'll find the movie at Family Video or TPB so I guess I'll hit Amazon for a copy.
Hell, I could have a copy of the book already, I should look.
Well, I have no debit card and only one credit card that I only use for shopping online or when I'm out of cash and the bank is closed, so Visa knows I buy beer at Shell and breakfast burritos at McDonalds, that I have a BOOST mobile phone, that I've registered a copyright and ten ISBNs, and bought a few books (mostly Asimov). Other than that? Well, I'm sure the NSA can clue them in. "Give you data? No, agent Smith, but we're willing to trade!"
What gives you the authority to decide what is a sin and what's not?
I have no such authority. All I know about sin I read in the bible.
What I find really confusing is, why did your God feel the need to have his own son tortured to death for sins I have committed because of how he made me?
God is a programmer, that was a bug fix. God is a carpenter, that was a fix to a leaky roof. God is an artist, that was a few brush strokes on the canvas. God is an author, that was a plot twist. Have you never created anything?
Furthermore, why am I obligated to feel guilty because he had his son tortured to death?
You're not. My feelings of guilt don't obligate you.
Considering that Jesus is theoretically reigning in heaven right now, was it really even a sacrifice on his part?
Punishment, not sacrifice.
You see, the very fact that you think saying something that you find offensive is deserving of punishment
I said nothing about punishment, only that it was offensive. No punishment is called for, only the understanding that you were indeed being offensive.
The whole story's at that link (Yay, Google!). I have at least one printed book with that story in it, I have a lot of Asimov although I've read a LOT more of his books than I've bought.
I'm not surprised that there's no problem getting a book signed, fans are an author's greatest asset. If I sign this book you're a lot more likely to buy my next one. I wrote Asimov a fan letter, and he answered it with a post card. I wish I still had it.
I hadn't even thought of signed editions, that is an advantage to printed books. E editions are good for convenience; if I have a boring wait somewhere I can just pull out my phone and there are tons of books. I'm reading some Dickens now. But I still like having shelves of books, and prefer reading paper to reading a screen.
In the ABS incident, the brakes didn't fail, the car acted as it had never had ABS. Cars have had a lot of mechanical recalls that could cause death, and people have died from them. The software is no more complex than the mechanics and other hardware in the car, and no more dangerous. But few crashes are from mechanical failure, almost all are human error.
As long as it has seat belts and airbags and a mechanical emergency brake (which could fail, of course) I'll feel safer. It's easy to be distracted, I wrecked a motorcycle getting distracted by a pretty girl once when I was young.
Granted I haven't tried it again for a good few years now
Ah, there it is there. I'd had those issues (maybe not as bad as yours) a long time ago; a USB sound blaster I'd bought because I lost the Windows driver (dual boot PC) wouldn't work in Linux, some extra buttons on a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard didn't work, etc. Choice of distro may have something to do with it, too. SVGA from the computer to the TV didn't work with Suse but worked fine with Mandrake.
I still have that keyboard and mouse, all the extra knobs and buttons now work. It's greatly improved, haven't had problems like that in years.
I bought a bluetooth dongle to move pictures from my phone to my computers and didn't think it would work on the Linux (kubuntu) box, since there were install programs for Windows and Mac but not Linux. So I installed the drivers on the Win7 notebook, rebooted (of course, it's Windows), went through its setup program, rebooted again, and had to hunt for the program to actually use bluetooth. It worked fine after all that.
I wanted to see what Linux would do if I plugged the bluetooth dongle in, and was amazed when a new icon appeared on the task bar. Clicking it brought up a screen to pair with a bluetooth device. One click on the computer and on the phone and I was moving pictures.
So which OS "just works"?
it's always failed to gain traction on the desktop is precisely because of shitty server support
I take it you mean connecting one to a network, I'm not sure I understand you. I've never had any problem connecting my Linux computers, Samba just works and is usually installed as a default. If you mean for it to be a file server I still don't get it.
lack of decent failsafe modes if something goes wrong
What? Windows is the one without failsafes. I've lost lots of data to Windows malfunctions, none to Linux. I had a dual boot box a few years ago and was cursing XP up and down because it kept crashing, but it wasn't completely Microsoft's fault, as one evening after I'd given up getting Windows work I was in Linux, Linux froze for a second, then the PC stopped. The power supply was flaky and trying to fail and causing Windows to crash repeatedly while Mandrake kept chugging along. I put the drive in another computer and Linux booted up just fine, except I couldn't access the windows files as I usually could, and when I tried to boot Windows I couldn't even get into safe mode, the entire file system was trashed. It was a good thing I had the data backed up.
As to Windows 7, the only thing that's kept linux off of this notebook is laziness. Yes, it works, but I have the hassle of Patch Tuesday while the Linux tower just pops up a thing saying updates are available and I click "install" and it's done, no reboots, no fuss. I hate shutting this computer off, don't mind shutting Linux off at all. None of the "waiting to close program" and losing data if you force it or time if you click cancel, it just shuts down. When I turn it back on it enters the password for me (this is optional on install), goes to the desktop and opens everything like it was before you shut it down. On the notebook I have to enter a password then remember what I was working on and find where I was. What takes ten clicks on the notebook takes three on the tower.
I would disagree about fast. I had another notebook that was dual-boot, and the Linux side ran rings around it.
Yes, it's stable from what I've seen (and this computer is starting to get a bit elderly) but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on security (I know enough to have a thin grasp on how immensely ignorant I am) but disagree on useability. Take that dual-boot notebook. It took me a month or longer to find out where you shut off the annoying "tap to click" thing. It wasn't under control panel in the "mouse" selection although you could swap buttons there, but in an icon that was inside a hidden icon, and was 20 clicks down. I installed kubuntu on it and it took less than five minutes t
I was dealing with far more primitive computers in the early eighties; TS-1000, TRS-80, Apple IIe as a programming hobbyist. Mid '80s I got a job that needed dealing with IBM PCs and XTs, bought a used XT about 1988. I was writing (and playing) games at home since about 1983. By 1990 I was writing databases in dBase and later on the mainframe in NOMAD at work. Didn't start using Linux until around 2002. At work they have me using (UGH!) Access now, glad I retire next year. Haven't done any real programming in a decade. On the mainframe all I did was submit the code, I didn't administer it or anything so I have no idea what its operating environment was like.
Realizing just how much some of us geeks use this service, whether to search for lost content
I've done exactly that. I kept my old Quake site on CDs and lost a few in a move. Unfortunately, there are still data lost because IA didn't save everything.
My old web site is there... most of it, anyway. Good to see that the archived data are safe. And even without lolcats it's a treasure trove, the archive's music section alone is worth a visit.
I lived with 8.3 filenames for well over a decade (W95 had them if you ran Norton Desktop). No native TCP/IP stack didn't keep me off of bulletin boards or the internet. But a bad UI is a productivity killer.
If given a choice between DOS 3.1 and Win8, I'll take DOS.
Yep, Famvid.com was my first ISP. They offered free "unlimited" internet hosting and I used the hell out of it. I built what became a pretty popular Quake site at my "URL from Hell" as some called it (I had it several subdirectories down from my index page).
Since I got a domain to pimp my new book on, I'm going to bring back the Christmas Quake page next month. If you were a Quake fan, watch my/. journal.
They still have a lot of stores here in Springfield. Not sure if they still have dialup ISP (it was only $12 a month when I had it, kept it until DSL became available). Hell, I don't even have a landline, haven't had one for a decade.
The "hate the sinner, not the sin" mentality is one of the biggest pieces of cognitive dissonance affecting modern Christianity. A person's sexuality is an integral part of their self; it is as much a part of them as the color of their skin.
You're pretty ignorant of Christianity, I see, as are those who modded you up. It is by no means "hate the sinner, not the sin." It's "love the sinner, hate the sin." A Christian is supposed to love everyone. Period.
And there's no cognative dissonance at all, it only looks that way to you because you've obviously not read what Christ said. Everyone sins. A lesbian friend once told me she wished she wasn't gay because she didn't want to go to hell; it seems her preacher had preached an anti-gay sermon the previous Sunday. I pointed out that being homosexual was no sin; that's how God made her, and that it was as sinful for me to eat a women's pussy as it was for her to.
And also, that your sins have been paid for in blood. The bad part is, every time you sin, Jesus gets hit with that cat-o-nine-tails again.
A homosexual's sins are no worse than Orson Scott Card's, and his wanting to put people in prison for something that can't possibly affect him is one of those sins. "Judge not, lest you be judged yourself." Homophobia is a sin. So is your offensive slander.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy crap, who modded that garbage up? Is slashdot giving mod points to ten year olds who know nothing of computer history? Micosoft the first one to write an OS??? That's just retardedly ignorant (as well as nearly incomprehensible, "or where there companies before"... probably meant "were" but is smoking crack while drinking rotgut whiskey.
You know what's really gone downhill at slashdot in the last year or two? MODERATORS. Slashdot's giving points to morons.
Someone with points who ISN'T a moron, please mod that stupid comment to oblivion.
Yep. Today's NSA makes J. Edger look like an amateur.
From TFA:
Asimov was like my late friend Ralph Weibie. Ralph's parents emigrated from germany to Russia to escape WWI, where Ralph was born. They moved to the US when Ralph was three (same age as Asimov was when his parents moved here). Ralph was sent home on his first day of school because he spoke no English, only German.
He fought against the Germans in WWII (Ralph had some very amusing war stories). IIRC he held a clearance.
Hoover wasn't an idiot, the NSA just has better toys.
I've read an awful lot of Asimov, fiction and nonfiction, and nowhere that I saw (aside from his atheism and amusement at religion) that he was in any way sympathetic to the communists.
Well, maybe compared to Heinlein...
we are borrowing money to pay for tax cuts to the rich.
Correct.
we are borrowing money to pay for social security/medicare.
Incorrect. Social Security/Medicare is paid for by payroll taxes. The government has borrowed from SS/M to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
we are borrowing money to pay for farm subsidies.
No, you got it right the first time. If people like Romney paid the same percentage of their income in taxes I do we would not have a deficit.
ALL trans-fat is artificial. Sheesh. Transfat is natural vegetable oil that has hydrogenated. There are no trans-fats in nature, they only come from factories.
You mean Heinlien was serious???
Jerry Was A Man
Our Fair City
[1] What were the books?
Christ, you paranoid morons...
Remember how you can also lose voting rights after having been convicted of a felony. So no privacy means politicians can take away the voting rights of whoever they chose, based on that everybody but the very careful people break laws
Yeah, jaywalking is a felony. Moron (the AC and the idiot who modded him up). I've been vocally critical of politicians and other rich and powerful assholes the whole fifteen years I've had internet soapboxes, calling them thieves and traitors, why haven't I been arrested yet? It's not like I hide my identity or anything.
Sheesh, your tinfoil hat is way too tight. You should loose it.
The Only Good Bug is a Dead Bug.
Let me guess... you repair Volkswagons?
I know I read that book as a teenager but damned if I can remember the first thing about it, and haven't seen the movie, either. Guess I'll hit the library tomorrow (I have to go there anyway to use their printer, Amazon sent the wrong notebook battery and I need a return shipping label). I doubt I'll find the movie at Family Video or TPB so I guess I'll hit Amazon for a copy.
Hell, I could have a copy of the book already, I should look.
Well, I have no debit card and only one credit card that I only use for shopping online or when I'm out of cash and the bank is closed, so Visa knows I buy beer at Shell and breakfast burritos at McDonalds, that I have a BOOST mobile phone, that I've registered a copyright and ten ISBNs, and bought a few books (mostly Asimov). Other than that? Well, I'm sure the NSA can clue them in. "Give you data? No, agent Smith, but we're willing to trade!"
Does it really need to?
I honestly don't know.
What gives you the authority to decide what is a sin and what's not?
I have no such authority. All I know about sin I read in the bible.
What I find really confusing is, why did your God feel the need to have his own son tortured to death for sins I have committed because of how he made me?
God is a programmer, that was a bug fix. God is a carpenter, that was a fix to a leaky roof. God is an artist, that was a few brush strokes on the canvas. God is an author, that was a plot twist. Have you never created anything?
Furthermore, why am I obligated to feel guilty because he had his son tortured to death?
You're not. My feelings of guilt don't obligate you.
Considering that Jesus is theoretically reigning in heaven right now, was it really even a sacrifice on his part?
Punishment, not sacrifice.
You see, the very fact that you think saying something that you find offensive is deserving of punishment
I said nothing about punishment, only that it was offensive. No punishment is called for, only the understanding that you were indeed being offensive.
Not just Calvin, but Lanning and Robertson as well. But yeah, that's exactly what they did.
I love using the word "aliterate", people think it's a misspelling.
The whole story's at that link (Yay, Google!). I have at least one printed book with that story in it, I have a lot of Asimov although I've read a LOT more of his books than I've bought.
I'm not surprised that there's no problem getting a book signed, fans are an author's greatest asset. If I sign this book you're a lot more likely to buy my next one. I wrote Asimov a fan letter, and he answered it with a post card. I wish I still had it.
I hadn't even thought of signed editions, that is an advantage to printed books. E editions are good for convenience; if I have a boring wait somewhere I can just pull out my phone and there are tons of books. I'm reading some Dickens now. But I still like having shelves of books, and prefer reading paper to reading a screen.
Yes, I do agree with that.
In the ABS incident, the brakes didn't fail, the car acted as it had never had ABS. Cars have had a lot of mechanical recalls that could cause death, and people have died from them. The software is no more complex than the mechanics and other hardware in the car, and no more dangerous. But few crashes are from mechanical failure, almost all are human error.
As long as it has seat belts and airbags and a mechanical emergency brake (which could fail, of course) I'll feel safer. It's easy to be distracted, I wrecked a motorcycle getting distracted by a pretty girl once when I was young.
Granted I haven't tried it again for a good few years now
Ah, there it is there. I'd had those issues (maybe not as bad as yours) a long time ago; a USB sound blaster I'd bought because I lost the Windows driver (dual boot PC) wouldn't work in Linux, some extra buttons on a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard didn't work, etc. Choice of distro may have something to do with it, too. SVGA from the computer to the TV didn't work with Suse but worked fine with Mandrake.
I still have that keyboard and mouse, all the extra knobs and buttons now work. It's greatly improved, haven't had problems like that in years.
I bought a bluetooth dongle to move pictures from my phone to my computers and didn't think it would work on the Linux (kubuntu) box, since there were install programs for Windows and Mac but not Linux. So I installed the drivers on the Win7 notebook, rebooted (of course, it's Windows), went through its setup program, rebooted again, and had to hunt for the program to actually use bluetooth. It worked fine after all that.
I wanted to see what Linux would do if I plugged the bluetooth dongle in, and was amazed when a new icon appeared on the task bar. Clicking it brought up a screen to pair with a bluetooth device. One click on the computer and on the phone and I was moving pictures.
So which OS "just works"?
it's always failed to gain traction on the desktop is precisely because of shitty server support
I take it you mean connecting one to a network, I'm not sure I understand you. I've never had any problem connecting my Linux computers, Samba just works and is usually installed as a default. If you mean for it to be a file server I still don't get it.
lack of decent failsafe modes if something goes wrong
What? Windows is the one without failsafes. I've lost lots of data to Windows malfunctions, none to Linux. I had a dual boot box a few years ago and was cursing XP up and down because it kept crashing, but it wasn't completely Microsoft's fault, as one evening after I'd given up getting Windows work I was in Linux, Linux froze for a second, then the PC stopped. The power supply was flaky and trying to fail and causing Windows to crash repeatedly while Mandrake kept chugging along. I put the drive in another computer and Linux booted up just fine, except I couldn't access the windows files as I usually could, and when I tried to boot Windows I couldn't even get into safe mode, the entire file system was trashed. It was a good thing I had the data backed up.
As to Windows 7, the only thing that's kept linux off of this notebook is laziness. Yes, it works, but I have the hassle of Patch Tuesday while the Linux tower just pops up a thing saying updates are available and I click "install" and it's done, no reboots, no fuss. I hate shutting this computer off, don't mind shutting Linux off at all. None of the "waiting to close program" and losing data if you force it or time if you click cancel, it just shuts down. When I turn it back on it enters the password for me (this is optional on install), goes to the desktop and opens everything like it was before you shut it down. On the notebook I have to enter a password then remember what I was working on and find where I was. What takes ten clicks on the notebook takes three on the tower.
I would disagree about fast. I had another notebook that was dual-boot, and the Linux side ran rings around it.
Yes, it's stable from what I've seen (and this computer is starting to get a bit elderly) but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on security (I know enough to have a thin grasp on how immensely ignorant I am) but disagree on useability. Take that dual-boot notebook. It took me a month or longer to find out where you shut off the annoying "tap to click" thing. It wasn't under control panel in the "mouse" selection although you could swap buttons there, but in an icon that was inside a hidden icon, and was 20 clicks down. I installed kubuntu on it and it took less than five minutes t
Free will is suggested, yes, but it doesn't flat out state it.
I was dealing with far more primitive computers in the early eighties; TS-1000, TRS-80, Apple IIe as a programming hobbyist. Mid '80s I got a job that needed dealing with IBM PCs and XTs, bought a used XT about 1988. I was writing (and playing) games at home since about 1983. By 1990 I was writing databases in dBase and later on the mainframe in NOMAD at work. Didn't start using Linux until around 2002. At work they have me using (UGH!) Access now, glad I retire next year. Haven't done any real programming in a decade. On the mainframe all I did was submit the code, I didn't administer it or anything so I have no idea what its operating environment was like.
Realizing just how much some of us geeks use this service, whether to search for lost content
I've done exactly that. I kept my old Quake site on CDs and lost a few in a move. Unfortunately, there are still data lost because IA didn't save everything.
My old web site is there... most of it, anyway. Good to see that the archived data are safe. And even without lolcats it's a treasure trove, the archive's music section alone is worth a visit.
I lived with 8.3 filenames for well over a decade (W95 had them if you ran Norton Desktop). No native TCP/IP stack didn't keep me off of bulletin boards or the internet. But a bad UI is a productivity killer.
If given a choice between DOS 3.1 and Win8, I'll take DOS.
Yep, Famvid.com was my first ISP. They offered free "unlimited" internet hosting and I used the hell out of it. I built what became a pretty popular Quake site at my "URL from Hell" as some called it (I had it several subdirectories down from my index page).
Since I got a domain to pimp my new book on, I'm going to bring back the Christmas Quake page next month. If you were a Quake fan, watch my /. journal.
They still have a lot of stores here in Springfield. Not sure if they still have dialup ISP (it was only $12 a month when I had it, kept it until DSL became available). Hell, I don't even have a landline, haven't had one for a decade.
The millions of women burned at the stake "in his name". An uncountable number of wars perpetrated "in his name".
You can hack Microsoft "in Google's name" but that doesn't mean Google approves.
You have free will.
And where does the bible (or science) say that?
The "hate the sinner, not the sin" mentality is one of the biggest pieces of cognitive dissonance affecting modern Christianity. A person's sexuality is an integral part of their self; it is as much a part of them as the color of their skin.
You're pretty ignorant of Christianity, I see, as are those who modded you up. It is by no means "hate the sinner, not the sin." It's "love the sinner, hate the sin." A Christian is supposed to love everyone. Period.
And there's no cognative dissonance at all, it only looks that way to you because you've obviously not read what Christ said. Everyone sins. A lesbian friend once told me she wished she wasn't gay because she didn't want to go to hell; it seems her preacher had preached an anti-gay sermon the previous Sunday. I pointed out that being homosexual was no sin; that's how God made her, and that it was as sinful for me to eat a women's pussy as it was for her to.
And also, that your sins have been paid for in blood. The bad part is, every time you sin, Jesus gets hit with that cat-o-nine-tails again.
A homosexual's sins are no worse than Orson Scott Card's, and his wanting to put people in prison for something that can't possibly affect him is one of those sins. "Judge not, lest you be judged yourself." Homophobia is a sin. So is your offensive slander.