but the other two companies just build better-working players.
No. They don't.
I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
My Sansa died the first week I owned it, and had to be exchanged for a new one.
As for moving music to a new machine; that's a cop out. The only time that's ever an issue is if you have DRM'd tracks. And having trouble moving DRM tracks between computers is a DRM issue not an ipod issue. And having an ipod doesn't require that you have DRM'd tracks.
but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself".
I responded with the same rhetoric that was fired at the ipod by daath93 who said using was 'crippling yourself' to make a point.
Reasonable people can disagree.
Sure. I bought my 4 year old an inexpensive Sansa. Its the right device for him. (Not saying sansa's are ONLY good for 4 year old, but for him I valued 'low price' over 'advanced playlist management features' because there are good odds he'll drop it, and poor odds he'll be defining or caring about smart playlists in the near future.) And it has a (tinny) external speaker instead of requiring headphones... because I don't really want him wearing headphones yet. In other words, it had the features I wanted for him.
That said, while you might recommend a Zen or Sansa to most people, I would recommend an ipod. The itunes playlist management features, and library management features are excellent compared to the other devices, especially for non-technical people, in my opinion. Now that itms is drm free, I can recommend that too... although there are other sources for music that I think are even better.
So you are saying, rather than buying an MP3 player that does all this properly without installing bloatware (such as my Zen or my Sansa)
1) Your Zen or Sansa lacks a lot of features iPods have. Last play time/date, skip count, play count, and so on, that all two-way sync back to itunes. And I use this meta data heavily to generate smart playlists that automatically rotate tracks to the ipod etc.
Some of that stuff needs a separate database.
Sure it would be better if that database were open instead of proprietary. But quite bluntly, until someone defines an open standard, and Creative and Sansa step up and implement it, the iPod will remain my mp3 player of choice.
2) I don't -want- to manage my music library by dragging dropping files around. I do -want- to manage it by creating smart self-updating playlists based on meta data including play history, song ratings, and so on, and to have that automatically sync to the device. So installing a piece of software to handle the sync is something I'd be doing even if I didn't have to.
we should cripple ourselves to satisfy the apple fanboys on/.?
Using a Zen or Sansa is crippling yourself.
This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
There are a lot of things I don't like about apple. I don't currently own a Mac because they refuse to release a tower with anywhere near the specs or price I want. There even a lot of things I don't like about itunes. But I've had other mp3 players... Sansa, Yepp -- the iPod is, for me at least, the best device hands down.
You scheme would pay Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor the same for a month's hard work painting a piece of fine art. This is absurd if what you want is good paintings.
No it wouldn't. If you swapped Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor, we'd have shitty artwork. Van Gogh does something that is "hard" he made good art. Fred might not come up with good art if spent his whole life at it. Good art is "hard".
Remember this discussion is (was) in the context of massively compensated CEOs and management, particularly those at major banks.
Now, if you swap Fred the Janitor into bank CEO position... I seriously doubt he could have done much worse. That job really ISN'T "harder". Making 'good decisions' or being a 'good leader' is hard... but the current crop of CEOs are neither. So why were we paying them as if they were doing something special? Any Fred the Janitor could have done the same thing.
Some people really *do* just have more talent in a particular field than others.
Sure. But what talent do colossal fuck-up CEOs have that is so rarified that we should pay them millions?
And where did I say that it should apply to nobody?
The point was that that most people should turn their PCs off. If you don't disagree, why did you post? To underscore that there are some obscure exceptions? If so, why didn't you say so?
Assuming that WOL works right. It apparently doesn't.
It 'works right' around here.
Its really a hardware feature more than anything else, so if you buy hardware that works, you are set. If you bought crappy hardware that says it works but doesn't... that's not a flaw in WoL, and you can rectify it next time you refresh hardware.
How's that work with my dev environment, long builds, and syncing gigs of source code? Sure, it works pretty well, but my monitors are off at night, and you could achieve most of your goals if one of my CPUs were throttled to 0 at night.
Why would it have to apply to your machine? Or even your company? There are thousands of companies out there; should they ALL leave all their PCs on simply because it might actually make sense for yours?
MOST companies don't need everyone able to RDP in so just turning them off is good for them.
And of those that do need everyone to rdp in, most don't have everyone RDPing in every night, so a WoL solution is a sensible option for them.
And finally, yes, of those companies out there that have all their employees rdping in every other night and even when not being remoted are all busy at night doing multigb syncs - then they can turn them on.
Seriously, your objection to centers around a fringe case. Most people should turn their PCs off at night. Maybe you should leaves yours on, but the fact that you shouldn't doesn't somehow constitute a reason for everyone else to do the same.
Okay, there are 1000 desktops at my company. How do you locate desktop X among those when all of them are off?
How do you RDP in now? by hostname?
In any case WoL uses the mac address. Maintain a database of mac addresses to hostnames or employee names or whatever. You could even automate it so the hosts register/update their mac addresses/hostname/whatever pairs with the WoL 'server' when they power on. You log into the vpn, hit the wol server with your hostname or whatever and it sends out the magic packet with your machines MAC.
Evidently he has a laptop and VPN access and company policy should be that all important documents are held on central storage, not a user's PC. Important apps can be published via Citrix and run over VPN so really, this is either a failure of the user or of IT infrastructure.
Exactly.
An office set up such that every user can RDP into their own desktop after hours is almost absurd.
And hey even if you REALLY needed this, there is WoL. (And even if you've got firewalls blocking this, just have a single terminal server that people can log into, and let them send the WoL packet from there...hell it doesn't even need to be a terminal server. You could set up a spiffy web interface... to take your name, or employeenumber, or hostname, or whatever, and it'll send out the magic packet and even let you know when the machine is listening on the RDP port and ready.
Not exactly. You have to pay tax if the seller is operating (or has operations) in your province. Otherwise it's free!
Not exactly.
Obviously, in Alberta and the territories where there is no provincial sales tax, you don't pay the tax.
In the HST provinces, you generally pay no matter where in Canada the seller is, because he has to collect GST and, that usually means collecting HST if he's selling to and HST province.
In the individual pst provinces, BC, SK, MB, ON, QC, PE the out of province seller isn't obligated to collect it... but you are still legally obligated to pay it. That means you are supposed to self assess the PST you owe and send it in yourself. In practice, nobody does this, except businesses (who get audited regularly to make sure they are self assessing pst on imports and consumed goods).
Individuals get nailed much more infrequently, unless its an item where they have to register the transaction. (For example, if you sell a car privately in BC for example you wouldn't normally collect PST from the buyer, but the buyer gets nailed for it anyway when he registers the car for insurance.)
The difference with what you did was not that you installed it, but that you installed in a way to get automatic updates and just forget about it. You could have just downloaded the deb and installed it.
True. But that is exactly the same process the OP was complaining was 'too much work' on Windows. That sort of undermines any 'advantage' of linux.
I can't answer for apt-get but yum is simple, just add the package you want ignored to the "exclude" line in your repo conf file. I'm sure apt-get is just as easy.
Manually editing a config file is precisely the sort of thing I really shouldn't need to do. I don't mind doing it, and for scripting etc, its good that it can be done... but its not something I want to walk someone through over the phone.
But apparently, some of the gui package managers do now make it simple so I misspoke on that issue.
Odd, open office usually just comes with most distributions. If that's not the case, then stick to distros that have it.
It did come with it (ubuntu). Unfortunately it came with OO2 (this was some months ago). But OO3 had already been released and was readily available, and I wanted it.
Certainly easier than doing the work to determine why a driver isn't working with your shiny, new vista rig.
I've had my share of Linux driver issues.
My current Ubuntu laptop won't reconnect to the wifi when I when it wakes from sleep unless I manually tell it to. And even then it takes like 30 seconds...to get an ip address and connect. At least this version remembers the WPA2 password. I couldn't even get WPA2 working properly with dapper drake, a year or so ago.
And sometimes (about once a month) X just locks up; and I have to ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X.
but since the parent company of 'Windows Live' doesn't support FOSS as much as Google does; then in terms of the discussion,
What terms of the discussion were those?
Google would be weighted heavier because of their FOSS support.
So, you prefer the proprietary data mining advertising company seeking to access and index all your information both private and public in order to build advertising profiles on you over the sometimes monopolistic proprietary software developer that's seeking to lock you into buying their products.
I fear google more than microsft. The worst microsoft ever aspired to was charging me too much for software. Google wants to be the gatekeepers to all information.
But "google would be weighted heavier because of their FOSS support"?
You've been bought too cheap.
Not that I'm saying I'd go with Microsoft for this. The reality is that if you are prepared to pay for email hosting, there are LOTS of very excellent 3rd party options to choose from. Ones that aren't busy trying to harvest your data or lock you into their products.
The ease of installing software on many Linux distributions shouldn't be overrated.
Then please don't.
If I want to install OpenOffice... it is easy to do that in one command in linux
It wasn't for me, just a few months ago. I wanted OO3, but all that was in the repository was OO2. So I had to add some obscure repository and key first. It wasn't particularly hard... but it was about on par with editing the windows registry. And I had to follow some online instructions on what exactly I needed to put in there.
Is tons easier than going to 10 different websites, downloading at least 10 install packages, installing all of them, etc.
No. apt-get is more efficient. Going to a website, downloading the program, and double clicking to install isn't harder, its just time consuming.
And then there is keeping all of that up to date.
These days most of them just prompt when they want to update. Again its not hard, its mostly just annoying. And the ones that don't auto-update simply require another visit to the website from time to time, or that you join a mailing list... its not hard... but yeah, its annoying and less efficient.
That said, if I don't want to install updates to something, most (but not all) programs have a simple checkbox to turn of auto updating. If I want to 'pin' something in linux, its not nearly so simple.
Oh, and technically, the Nazis won a 33% of the seats in 1932, actually losing seats from their previous election.
Yes. But the point was really just that of a minority taking power. And a 'Hitler'-type could do that in a legitimate election, with proportional representation... or even under the US system.
But yeah, the exact circumstances around the real Hitler's ascension to power really have little to do with proportional representation, or even democracy for that matter. As you pointed out.
If the senate also reaches deadlock on selecting a vice-president, well... I'm not really sure what happens at that point. Does anybody?
Sorry to answer my own question. But I sorted it out:
The senate gets one vote per senator, choosing from the top 2 vice presidential candidates (not 3 as I originally thought). So they CAN'T get deadlocked the way the house can, because the house chooses from 3. So the senate will either come up with a majority and select a vp, or they'll reach a tie.
If its a tie, then the current Vice president casts the tie breaking vote, and effectively picks new the vice president.
The new vice-president-elect is acting president until the house reaches consensus. If the house doesn't reach consensus by a certain deadline, the vice-president-elect becomes the new president.
Uh, plurality of electors wins, not a majority. If Rush or Ron Paul of Kucinich wins 37%, and the other guys win 30% and 33%, the 37% guy wins.
No. Not in the the US. Read the US Constitution. In the US, if no candidate achieves a MAJORITY of the electroal college, the House of Representatives elects the president (by state delegation).
For more info: Google: what if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes
If the US switched to a proportional system, the odds of a minority government headed by Rush Limbaugh would become greater than zero,
This can happen in the US, if there were enough strong political parties.
and that's a risk I'm happy that the founders avoided.
Except they didn't.
Hitler was elected as head of a minority government.
Lets say in addition to the dems and republicans we had rush, all roughly equally strong. We go to election and Rush 'wins' with 37% of the vote (same as Hitler). This isn't enough to win the electoral college however, so the House must elect a president from the top three. Rush, as the 'winner' is one of those 3. He could win a majority here and become president. But even if he doesn't, and the house deadlocks with no canditate getting a majority, then what happens?
The senate votes on the vice president, again rush's running mate will be in the top three, and may win, and become acting-president indefinitely until the house can resolve its presidential deadlock. (So Rush himself isn't president, but his party running mate is... that's about as bad.) Meanwhile the house has to resolve the deadlock... (ie back room deals...)
If the senate also reaches deadlock on selecting a vice-president, well... I'm not really sure what happens at that point. Does anybody?
Frankly, the entire US system is thrown into really really ugly chaos as soon as you have 3 strong political parties, such that no candidate can ever win the electoral college. The 'founding fathers', in my opinion have left a mess waiting to happen. If the moderate republicans and democrats ever decide that they share more in common with eachother in the 'middle' than they do with the more extreme parts of their own party the US is completely screwed.
With 3 strong parties, the electoral college can't be won, and the house decides every election. Assuming the house itself is good mix of those 3 parties, no candidate will get a majority in that vote either, and we'll have deadlock.
"Backroom deals" between parties and the house members to get a candidate a majority will be how every president will be elected.
I'm fairly sure OpenGroupware.org (or, SOGO, at least) supports everything you've described, and does so via open protocols like CalDAV, IMAP, SMTP, LDAP, and so on.
Sure, but Exchange actually works.
Seriously. As bad as exchange is, its miles ahead of the competition if you go beyond the most basic features.
So if you want to say something snarky like "exchange actually works, for small values of 'works'" I'd agree... but sadly the open options work for even smaller values of 'work'.
Actually, one of the best things to have happened is Google Mail and Google Apps. I know that several large churches have moved all of their staff from Exchange to Google Mail; and more of them are coming.
Why is that so great? How about hotmail? Would you endorse that?
No, it's very much not prudent on a production server. God help any company who hires you as a server admin.
I wonder. Does this apply to terminal servers too?
It would be rather absurd at a lot of companies to log into the vpn, log into the terminal server, and then search in vain for the web browser, only to be told after calling the help desk they can't browse the company intranet, or use any of the internal web applications like the CRM, web based project tracking, web based defect tracking, web based groupware, web based order entry and inventory tracking systems, etc, etc, etc because the new idiot server admin has a strict policy of not installing browsers on production servers.
No, in real world the seller will _try_ to retract the offer, you will sue them and the judge will force them to sell the item for the price listed. Once you made a binding offer, it's done.
No. The judge won't. A binding offer is essentially just a contract. If a contract is breached by either party, the judge usually awards 'damages'; he rarely forces the party in breach to live up to the original terms.
Furthermore, if the contract is clearly unfair and the offending clause is a typo. The judge will nullify the contract.
Happened quite a few times on various auctioning services.
Usually its because the damages the seller will be liable for are greater than the loss he will take from simply honoring the deal, because the deal isn't usually -that bad-. However if the deal is really outrageously unfair it doesn't hold, and the seller's best interests are served by being in breach and paying any damages, assuming the judge doesn't nullify it outright.
I don't see how you have any ethical burden to not buy the sword at his listed price just because you think he screwed up the listing.
A transaction or contract is supposed to represent a 'meeting of the minds', If you -think- he screwed up the listing then you don't think a 'meeting of the minds' is taking place. In other words, you don't think the seller would wish to make this deal, yet you are completing it anyway, enabled by the game mechanics which will blindy enforce his mistake without giving him any recourse.
Is it just because the discrepancy is so big?
As the magnitude of the error grows the magnitude of the harm grows.
What if some guy is selling an item you think you can resell for 10g for 7g?
I wouldn't think twice. Its 70% of what I think I can get for it. We don't have any reason to think its probably a mistake. And even if it is a mistake its a small one. A loss of 3g in WoW is essentially irrelevant.
Its the same reason that if you walk down the street and see a quarter lying on the ground there is nothing wrong with picking it up and pocketing it. If you instead found a jewelry box full of jewelry, you should probably turn it in and give the rightful owner a chance to claim it. In general, nobody is going to really miss that quarter. In general, someone is going to miss that jewelry box immensely.
It hurts him a lot? On what scale? How much is a lot? 1k for a 2k item? 1k for a 5k item? Is that too much?
For really low values of coin, its not an issue. For really large values it is. We don't have to pinpoint the exact point in the middle it switches in order to agree on what is true out near the edges.
To try and direct to the debate to the murky center is really just a red herring. In the murky center their is no clear ethical position, so its meaningless to debate it. At that point the various opposing moral principles in play are approaching balance, and it becomes increasingly difficult for a group of people to reach any consensus except that 'its a close call' or 'it could go either way'. But as you move away from the center the ethics of the situation become more clearly defined.
And the fact that they are murky in the middle doesn't make the argument out at the edges invalid. That would be like computing y=1/x for x=4 and observing that y is positive, and that when x=-4 y is negative... and then claiming that because y is undefined when x=0 that somehow invalidates the other results.
The game has rules.
Yes, and if you read them, abusing the mechanics to make the game less enjoyable for others is against them.
You list an item on the AH with a buy price, that's the price. You don't get take backsies once the auction sells. The onus is on you to get the listing right in the first place. How can you fault someone for buying what you're selling for the price you're listing it for?
I fault myself for making a mistake. I fault them for taking advantage of it. The purpose of the auction house is to let sellers and buyers conveniently exchange goods for mutually acceptable prices. If I've made a typo, then its not a mutually acceptable price.
Everybody played the game by the rules--you just screwed up your opening gambit, as it were.
An auction house transaction is not supposed to be a competition with a winner and loser. It is supposed to represent an agreement between two parties. The fact that the mechanics allow terrible mistakes to happen doesn't make it ok to abuse other players.
Is it really "nice" to buy something, *anything*, from somebody, at any time, in WoW or IRL, that you knew for a fact you were going to turn around and sell for a profit?
Absolutely.
Wouldn't the "nice" thing to do be to tell the guy selling the item "Hey, I know this guy who will pay half again what you're asking for that thing"?
That would be very nice. However, there is no ethical imperative to do so. There is nothing wrong with acting
Slashdot Mirror
but the other two companies just build better-working players.
No. They don't.
I've never had to do TECH SUPPORT for a friend to get their Sansa working, or move their music to a new machine, etc; I have had to to that with an iPod.
My Sansa died the first week I owned it, and had to be exchanged for a new one.
As for moving music to a new machine; that's a cop out. The only time that's ever an issue is if you have DRM'd tracks. And having trouble moving DRM tracks between computers is a DRM issue not an ipod issue. And having an ipod doesn't require that you have DRM'd tracks.
but you're blatantly wrong if you try to can claim as a fact that those other players are "crippling yourself".
I responded with the same rhetoric that was fired at the ipod by daath93 who said using was 'crippling yourself' to make a point.
Reasonable people can disagree.
Sure. I bought my 4 year old an inexpensive Sansa. Its the right device for him. (Not saying sansa's are ONLY good for 4 year old, but for him I valued 'low price' over 'advanced playlist management features' because there are good odds he'll drop it, and poor odds he'll be defining or caring about smart playlists in the near future.) And it has a (tinny) external speaker instead of requiring headphones... because I don't really want him wearing headphones yet. In other words, it had the features I wanted for him.
That said, while you might recommend a Zen or Sansa to most people, I would recommend an ipod. The itunes playlist management features, and library management features are excellent compared to the other devices, especially for non-technical people, in my opinion. Now that itms is drm free, I can recommend that too... although there are other sources for music that I think are even better.
So you are saying, rather than buying an MP3 player that does all this properly without installing bloatware (such as my Zen or my Sansa)
1) Your Zen or Sansa lacks a lot of features iPods have. Last play time/date, skip count, play count, and so on, that all two-way sync back to itunes. And I use this meta data heavily to generate smart playlists that automatically rotate tracks to the ipod etc.
Some of that stuff needs a separate database.
Sure it would be better if that database were open instead of proprietary. But quite bluntly, until someone defines an open standard, and Creative and Sansa step up and implement it, the iPod will remain my mp3 player of choice.
2) I don't -want- to manage my music library by dragging dropping files around. I do -want- to manage it by creating smart self-updating playlists based on meta data including play history, song ratings, and so on, and to have that automatically sync to the device. So installing a piece of software to handle the sync is something I'd be doing even if I didn't have to.
we should cripple ourselves to satisfy the apple fanboys on /.?
Using a Zen or Sansa is crippling yourself.
This place is always against proprietary, unless its apple proprietary and then BEND OVER BABY!
There are a lot of things I don't like about apple. I don't currently own a Mac because they refuse to release a tower with anywhere near the specs or price I want. There even a lot of things I don't like about itunes. But I've had other mp3 players... Sansa, Yepp -- the iPod is, for me at least, the best device hands down.
You scheme would pay Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor the same for a month's hard work painting a piece of fine art. This is absurd if what you want is good paintings.
No it wouldn't. If you swapped Van Gogh and Fred the Janitor, we'd have shitty artwork. Van Gogh does something that is "hard" he made good art. Fred might not come up with good art if spent his whole life at it. Good art is "hard".
Remember this discussion is (was) in the context of massively compensated CEOs and management, particularly those at major banks.
Now, if you swap Fred the Janitor into bank CEO position... I seriously doubt he could have done much worse. That job really ISN'T "harder". Making 'good decisions' or being a 'good leader' is hard... but the current crop of CEOs are neither. So why were we paying them as if they were doing something special? Any Fred the Janitor could have done the same thing.
Some people really *do* just have more talent in a particular field than others.
Sure. But what talent do colossal fuck-up CEOs have that is so rarified that we should pay them millions?
You're the one that made a blanket statement.
Because the blanket statement broadly applies.
And where did I say that it should apply to nobody?
The point was that that most people should turn their PCs off. If you don't disagree, why did you post? To underscore that there are some obscure exceptions? If so, why didn't you say so?
Assuming that WOL works right. It apparently doesn't.
It 'works right' around here.
Its really a hardware feature more than anything else, so if you buy hardware that works, you are set. If you bought crappy hardware that says it works but doesn't... that's not a flaw in WoL, and you can rectify it next time you refresh hardware.
How's that work with my dev environment, long builds, and syncing gigs of source code? Sure, it works pretty well, but my monitors are off at night, and you could achieve most of your goals if one of my CPUs were throttled to 0 at night.
Why would it have to apply to your machine? Or even your company? There are thousands of companies out there; should they ALL leave all their PCs on simply because it might actually make sense for yours?
MOST companies don't need everyone able to RDP in so just turning them off is good for them.
And of those that do need everyone to rdp in, most don't have everyone RDPing in every night, so a WoL solution is a sensible option for them.
And finally, yes, of those companies out there that have all their employees rdping in every other night and even when not being remoted are all busy at night doing multigb syncs - then they can turn them on.
Seriously, your objection to centers around a fringe case. Most people should turn their PCs off at night. Maybe you should leaves yours on, but the fact that you shouldn't doesn't somehow constitute a reason for everyone else to do the same.
Okay, there are 1000 desktops at my company. How do you locate desktop X among those when all of them are off?
How do you RDP in now? by hostname?
In any case WoL uses the mac address. Maintain a database of mac addresses to hostnames or employee names or whatever. You could even automate it so the hosts register/update their mac addresses/hostname/whatever pairs with the WoL 'server' when they power on. You log into the vpn, hit the wol server with your hostname or whatever and it sends out the magic packet with your machines MAC.
Evidently he has a laptop and VPN access and company policy should be that all important documents are held on central storage, not a user's PC. Important apps can be published via Citrix and run over VPN so really, this is either a failure of the user or of IT infrastructure.
Exactly.
An office set up such that every user can RDP into their own desktop after hours is almost absurd.
And hey even if you REALLY needed this, there is WoL. (And even if you've got firewalls blocking this, just have a single terminal server that people can log into, and let them send the WoL packet from there...hell it doesn't even need to be a terminal server. You could set up a spiffy web interface... to take your name, or employeenumber, or hostname, or whatever, and it'll send out the magic packet and even let you know when the machine is listening on the RDP port and ready.
Not exactly. You have to pay tax if the seller is operating (or has operations) in your province. Otherwise it's free!
Not exactly.
Obviously, in Alberta and the territories where there is no provincial sales tax, you don't pay the tax.
In the HST provinces, you generally pay no matter where in Canada the seller is, because he has to collect GST and, that usually means collecting HST if he's selling to and HST province.
In the individual pst provinces, BC, SK, MB, ON, QC, PE the out of province seller isn't obligated to collect it... but you are still legally obligated to pay it. That means you are supposed to self assess the PST you owe and send it in yourself. In practice, nobody does this, except businesses (who get audited regularly to make sure they are self assessing pst on imports and consumed goods).
Individuals get nailed much more infrequently, unless its an item where they have to register the transaction. (For example, if you sell a car privately in BC for example you wouldn't normally collect PST from the buyer, but the buyer gets nailed for it anyway when he registers the car for insurance.)
The difference with what you did was not that you installed it, but that you installed in a way to get automatic updates and just forget about it. You could have just downloaded the deb and installed it.
True. But that is exactly the same process the OP was complaining was 'too much work' on Windows. That sort of undermines any 'advantage' of linux.
Candy bars!?!? I thought you were happy to see me!
His candy bar was all flaccid, squishy, and droopy from being in his pocket.
That doesn't sound all that happy to me.
I can't answer for apt-get but yum is simple, just add the package you want ignored to the "exclude" line in your repo conf file. I'm sure apt-get is just as easy.
Manually editing a config file is precisely the sort of thing I really shouldn't need to do. I don't mind doing it, and for scripting etc, its good that it can be done... but its not something I want to walk someone through over the phone.
But apparently, some of the gui package managers do now make it simple so I misspoke on that issue.
Odd, open office usually just comes with most distributions. If that's not the case, then stick to distros that have it.
It did come with it (ubuntu). Unfortunately it came with OO2 (this was some months ago). But OO3 had already been released and was readily available, and I wanted it.
Certainly easier than doing the work to determine why a driver isn't working with your shiny, new vista rig.
I've had my share of Linux driver issues.
My current Ubuntu laptop won't reconnect to the wifi when I when it wakes from sleep unless I manually tell it to. And even then it takes like 30 seconds...to get an ip address and connect. At least this version remembers the WPA2 password. I couldn't even get WPA2 working properly with dapper drake, a year or so ago.
And sometimes (about once a month) X just locks up; and I have to ctrl-alt-backspace to restart X.
Thanks for the tip!
but since the parent company of 'Windows Live' doesn't support FOSS as much as Google does; then in terms of the discussion,
What terms of the discussion were those?
Google would be weighted heavier because of their FOSS support.
So, you prefer the proprietary data mining advertising company seeking to access and index all your information both private and public in order to build advertising profiles on you over the sometimes monopolistic proprietary software developer that's seeking to lock you into buying their products.
I fear google more than microsft. The worst microsoft ever aspired to was charging me too much for software. Google wants to be the gatekeepers to all information.
But "google would be weighted heavier because of their FOSS support"?
You've been bought too cheap.
Not that I'm saying I'd go with Microsoft for this. The reality is that if you are prepared to pay for email hosting, there are LOTS of very excellent 3rd party options to choose from. Ones that aren't busy trying to harvest your data or lock you into their products.
Google Mail, etc, is a bit more palatable since it allows standard IMAP, SMTP, etc
True.
But your average church really doesn't care about stuff like IMAP. And if you did need IMAP while hotmail might not do it, yahoo, for example, does.
The ease of installing software on many Linux distributions shouldn't be overrated.
Then please don't.
If I want to install OpenOffice...
it is easy to do that in one command in linux
It wasn't for me, just a few months ago. I wanted OO3, but all that was in the repository was OO2. So I had to add some obscure repository and key first. It wasn't particularly hard... but it was about on par with editing the windows registry. And I had to follow some online instructions on what exactly I needed to put in there.
Is tons easier than going to 10 different websites, downloading at least 10 install packages, installing all of them, etc.
No. apt-get is more efficient. Going to a website, downloading the program, and double clicking to install isn't harder, its just time consuming.
And then there is keeping all of that up to date.
These days most of them just prompt when they want to update. Again its not hard, its mostly just annoying. And the ones that don't auto-update simply require another visit to the website from time to time, or that you join a mailing list... its not hard... but yeah, its annoying and less efficient.
That said, if I don't want to install updates to something, most (but not all) programs have a simple checkbox to turn of auto updating. If I want to 'pin' something in linux, its not nearly so simple.
Oh, and technically, the Nazis won a 33% of the seats in 1932, actually losing seats from their previous election.
Yes. But the point was really just that of a minority taking power. And a 'Hitler'-type could do that in a legitimate election, with proportional representation... or even under the US system.
But yeah, the exact circumstances around the real Hitler's ascension to power really have little to do with proportional representation, or even democracy for that matter. As you pointed out.
If the senate also reaches deadlock on selecting a vice-president, well... I'm not really sure what happens at that point. Does anybody?
Sorry to answer my own question. But I sorted it out:
The senate gets one vote per senator, choosing from the top 2 vice presidential candidates (not 3 as I originally thought). So they CAN'T get deadlocked the way the house can, because the house chooses from 3. So the senate will either come up with a majority and select a vp, or they'll reach a tie.
If its a tie, then the current Vice president casts the tie breaking vote, and effectively picks new the vice president.
The new vice-president-elect is acting president until the house reaches consensus. If the house doesn't reach consensus by a certain deadline, the vice-president-elect becomes the new president.
Uh, plurality of electors wins, not a majority. If Rush or Ron Paul of Kucinich wins 37%, and the other guys win 30% and 33%, the 37% guy wins.
No. Not in the the US. Read the US Constitution. In the US, if no candidate achieves a MAJORITY of the electroal college, the House of Representatives elects the president (by state delegation).
For more info: Google: what if no candidate gets 270 electoral votes
http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=DUs&q=what+if+no+candidate+gets+270+electoral+votes&btnG=Search&meta=
If the US switched to a proportional system, the odds of a minority government headed by Rush Limbaugh would become greater than zero,
This can happen in the US, if there were enough strong political parties.
and that's a risk I'm happy that the founders avoided.
Except they didn't.
Hitler was elected as head of a minority government.
Lets say in addition to the dems and republicans we had rush, all roughly equally strong. We go to election and Rush 'wins' with 37% of the vote (same as Hitler). This isn't enough to win the electoral college however, so the House must elect a president from the top three. Rush, as the 'winner' is one of those 3. He could win a majority here and become president. But even if he doesn't, and the house deadlocks with no canditate getting a majority, then what happens?
The senate votes on the vice president, again rush's running mate will be in the top three, and may win, and become acting-president indefinitely until the house can resolve its presidential deadlock. (So Rush himself isn't president, but his party running mate is... that's about as bad.) Meanwhile the house has to resolve the deadlock... (ie back room deals...)
If the senate also reaches deadlock on selecting a vice-president, well... I'm not really sure what happens at that point. Does anybody?
Frankly, the entire US system is thrown into really really ugly chaos as soon as you have 3 strong political parties, such that no candidate can ever win the electoral college. The 'founding fathers', in my opinion have left a mess waiting to happen. If the moderate republicans and democrats ever decide that they share more in common with eachother in the 'middle' than they do with the more extreme parts of their own party the US is completely screwed.
With 3 strong parties, the electoral college can't be won, and the house decides every election. Assuming the house itself is good mix of those 3 parties, no candidate will get a majority in that vote either, and we'll have deadlock.
"Backroom deals" between parties and the house members to get a candidate a majority will be how every president will be elected.
How does that even resemble democracy?
I'm fairly sure OpenGroupware.org (or, SOGO, at least) supports everything you've described, and does so via open protocols like CalDAV, IMAP, SMTP, LDAP, and so on.
Sure, but Exchange actually works.
Seriously. As bad as exchange is, its miles ahead of the competition if you go beyond the most basic features.
So if you want to say something snarky like "exchange actually works, for small values of 'works'" I'd agree... but sadly the open options work for even smaller values of 'work'.
Actually, one of the best things to have happened is Google Mail and Google Apps. I know that several large churches have moved all of their staff from Exchange to Google Mail; and more of them are coming.
Why is that so great? How about hotmail? Would you endorse that?
Why or why not?
Cool thing about a Constitutional Republic: if you're in the minority your vote does count.
Tell that to a republican in washinton or a democrat in texas. If your in a Constitutional Republic, your vote only counts in a swing state.
No, it's very much not prudent on a production server. God help any company who hires you as a server admin.
I wonder. Does this apply to terminal servers too?
It would be rather absurd at a lot of companies to log into the vpn, log into the terminal server, and then search in vain for the web browser, only to be told after calling the help desk they can't browse the company intranet, or use any of the internal web applications like the CRM, web based project tracking, web based defect tracking, web based groupware, web based order entry and inventory tracking systems, etc, etc, etc because the new idiot server admin has a strict policy of not installing browsers on production servers.
No, in real world the seller will _try_ to retract the offer, you will sue them and the judge will force them to sell the item for the price listed. Once you made a binding offer, it's done.
No. The judge won't. A binding offer is essentially just a contract. If a contract is breached by either party, the judge usually awards 'damages'; he rarely forces the party in breach to live up to the original terms.
Furthermore, if the contract is clearly unfair and the offending clause is a typo. The judge will nullify the contract.
Happened quite a few times on various auctioning services.
Usually its because the damages the seller will be liable for are greater than the loss he will take from simply honoring the deal, because the deal isn't usually -that bad-. However if the deal is really outrageously unfair it doesn't hold, and the seller's best interests are served by being in breach and paying any damages, assuming the judge doesn't nullify it outright.
I don't see how you have any ethical burden to not buy the sword at his listed price just because you think he screwed up the listing.
A transaction or contract is supposed to represent a 'meeting of the minds', If you -think- he screwed up the listing then you don't think a 'meeting of the minds' is taking place. In other words, you don't think the seller would wish to make this deal, yet you are completing it anyway, enabled by the game mechanics which will blindy enforce his mistake without giving him any recourse.
Is it just because the discrepancy is so big?
As the magnitude of the error grows the magnitude of the harm grows.
What if some guy is selling an item you think you can resell for 10g for 7g?
I wouldn't think twice. Its 70% of what I think I can get for it. We don't have any reason to think its probably a mistake. And even if it is a mistake its a small one. A loss of 3g in WoW is essentially irrelevant.
Its the same reason that if you walk down the street and see a quarter lying on the ground there is nothing wrong with picking it up and pocketing it. If you instead found a jewelry box full of jewelry, you should probably turn it in and give the rightful owner a chance to claim it. In general, nobody is going to really miss that quarter. In general, someone is going to miss that jewelry box immensely.
It hurts him a lot? On what scale? How much is a lot? 1k for a 2k item? 1k for a 5k item? Is that too much?
For really low values of coin, its not an issue. For really large values it is. We don't have to pinpoint the exact point in the middle it switches in order to agree on what is true out near the edges.
To try and direct to the debate to the murky center is really just a red herring. In the murky center their is no clear ethical position, so its meaningless to debate it. At that point the various opposing moral principles in play are approaching balance, and it becomes increasingly difficult for a group of people to reach any consensus except that 'its a close call' or 'it could go either way'. But as you move away from the center the ethics of the situation become more clearly defined.
And the fact that they are murky in the middle doesn't make the argument out at the edges invalid. That would be like computing y=1/x for x=4 and observing that y is positive, and that when x=-4 y is negative... and then claiming that because y is undefined when x=0 that somehow invalidates the other results.
The game has rules.
Yes, and if you read them, abusing the mechanics to make the game less enjoyable for others is against them.
You list an item on the AH with a buy price, that's the price. You don't get take backsies once the auction sells. The onus is on you to get the listing right in the first place. How can you fault someone for buying what you're selling for the price you're listing it for?
I fault myself for making a mistake. I fault them for taking advantage of it. The purpose of the auction house is to let sellers and buyers conveniently exchange goods for mutually acceptable prices. If I've made a typo, then its not a mutually acceptable price.
Everybody played the game by the rules--you just screwed up your opening gambit, as it were.
An auction house transaction is not supposed to be a competition with a winner and loser. It is supposed to represent an agreement between two parties. The fact that the mechanics allow terrible mistakes to happen doesn't make it ok to abuse other players.
Is it really "nice" to buy something, *anything*, from somebody, at any time, in WoW or IRL, that you knew for a fact you were going to turn around and sell for a profit?
Absolutely.
Wouldn't the "nice" thing to do be to tell the guy selling the item "Hey, I know this guy who will pay half again what you're asking for that thing"?
That would be very nice. However, there is no ethical imperative to do so. There is nothing wrong with acting