You know, you can get 2GB of desktop RAM for about $40 these days. Laptop memory and older kinds of desktop RAM are more, but not by much.
Seriously, you're not doing yourself any favors by using a machine with half a gig, even if you're running some bare-bones Linux distro. Join us here in 2008!
No, Mac OS is UNIX, in every way. No ifs, ands or buts. The shiny GUI does not change this, just like running Gnome or KDE on Linux or *BSD doesn't change anything about the underlying system.
Mind you so does Windows, so you could say Unix has 100% market share!!11!
Only if you're an idiot. Having a poorly-implemented, incomplete "POSIX subsystem" does not make Windows a UNIX.
If you don't regulate companies so that they can't take advantage of people and things, they will act in manors which destroy the middle class (the foundation of a good economy).
Can you support your assertion that the middle class is the "foundation of a good economy"? I'm not necessarily expressing disagreement; it just sounds like one of those random statements about macroeconomics that people so often throw out without really knowing what they're talking about.
And of course companies will try to take advantage of people. And people will try to take advantage of companies. That's precisely how capitalism works: "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest", as Adam Smith wrote.
Yes, there will be cases of fraud or abuse. But here's the rub: you are implicitly assuming that allowing elected officials to stick their noses in everything will help alleviate this problem, without causing more problems than it solves. Suffice it to say that is a matter of some debate.
The reason we believe that animals aren't conscious, and are like little automaton, is because it allows us to treat them with callous disregard.
Cute hypothesis, presented with convincing sincerity. But your supporting arguments are, at best, plausibility arguments. You'll have to do better than that to convince anyone who takes the time to think about what you're saying.
There are basically two ways to approach things: from the hardware side, or from the math side. The spectrum of languages is something like: machine code -> assembly -> C/Fortran -> C++/Java -> Python/Ruby -> Lisp/Smalltalk -> lambda calculus.
If your son is interested in abstract math, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better teaching language than Scheme (with SICP, of course).
If he's more into concrete, hands-on stuff, why not assembly? It isn't all that hard, and will teach him a lot about how computers work.
Of course, you could pick a language somewhere in between those extremes; but I think sticking to one end of the spectrum or the other is better for teaching and learning, since there are fewer distractions.
To the people of Ibm,.ibm clearly applies much better to their town than to some corporation that happens to have a similar acronym. And this is different from ibm.com how? Yes, yes, '.com' is supposed to mean 'commercial', but nobody knows that. Your argument could just as easily have been made about DNS in general (and probably was!), but we seem to have worked that out all right.
Now isn't quite as extreme as the year 2000, which may have been the most extreme in the nation's history. That you can even say this with a (metaphorically) straight face shows that you have no historical perspective, or at least are prone to wild exaggerations.
Do you think that massive privatization is a good thing for the country? If yes, vote McCain, if No, vote Obama... that should be a pretty defining issue. If you think McCain will actually bring about "massive privatization", I've got a bridge to sell you. Bush talked the "small government" talk, too, and he's done fuck-all to back it up.
In fact, the entire Republican party has basically abandoned its stance on limited government (while still paying lip service to it, of course, so as not to alienate too many conservative voters). Ron Paul was one of the only candidates who was actually serious about limiting the size and scope of the federal government, and he was ridiculed and ignored for it.
So your stance is basically, "let the little stuff slide until something REALLY bad happens"? Is an injustice any less wrong or offensive just because someone, somewhere is doing something worse? We're not allowed to complain until we've experienced the very worst the world has to offer, is that it?
Opponents of liberty will often use arguments such as: "what you're decrying really isn't much worse than this other thing we're already doing, so what are you so upset about?" Think "boiling a frog", "slippery slope", "first they came...", and so on.
Perhaps you are just jaded by the injustices you have seen elsewhere, but by acting as an apologist for these people, you are collaborating with the slow destruction of our civil liberties.
Finally, a strong and healthy disrespect for legal authority is one of the fine principles on which this country was founded. We have always believed that We the People are the only true ultimate sovereign, and that we dole out bits of our authority to police, congressmen, and other such riff-raff with the same squinty-eyed distrust and caution as we dole out our cash to used-car dealers, ready to snatch it back at the slightest sign of fraud or abuse. That's as it should be. A powerful distrust of authority and power, however sweetly decorated with noble intentions, is one of the foundation stones of liberty. How I wish that were still true. It may have been true for the majority at one time, and for some of us certainly still is; but have you watched the news recently? That cornerstone has long since crumbled away.
While you can use Objective-C to build Mac applications, you don't need to â" there are other languages that run on the Mac that are also commonly available on other platforms. Not if you want to be a first-class citizen on Mac OS X, there aren't. Java used to be a first-class language for writing Cocoa apps, but the Java-Cocoa bridge has been slowly crumbling for a while now. Objective-C is really the only game in town if you want to write native Mac apps (and Mac users will notice the difference).
The only semi-recent stories I recall that were tangentially related to file system development in the last 5 years was about a certain murder trial. Then you haven't been paying attention: ZFS was released less than five years ago, and it's been pretty big news in the filesystems world.
... balanced by an equal and opposite right for someone not to have defamatory remarks likely to create a false impression in a reasonable person made about them. Why do you believe in such a right? I have never understood this position.
The word is 'cryptanalyst', not 'crypto-analyst'. And Hellman is a cryptographer (or cryptologist), not a cryptanalyst. Cryptographers create encryption schemes; cryptanalysts break them.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, you can get 2GB of desktop RAM for about $40 these days. Laptop memory and older kinds of desktop RAM are more, but not by much.
Seriously, you're not doing yourself any favors by using a machine with half a gig, even if you're running some bare-bones Linux distro. Join us here in 2008!
It has a Posix subsystem.
No, Mac OS is UNIX, in every way. No ifs, ands or buts. The shiny GUI does not change this, just like running Gnome or KDE on Linux or *BSD doesn't change anything about the underlying system.
Mind you so does Windows, so you could say Unix has 100% market share!!11!
Only if you're an idiot. Having a poorly-implemented, incomplete "POSIX subsystem" does not make Windows a UNIX.
You do realize that Mac OS X is UNIX, right?
It's fewer ffs.
Oh really?
If you don't regulate companies so that they can't take advantage of people and things, they will act in manors which destroy the middle class (the foundation of a good economy).
Can you support your assertion that the middle class is the "foundation of a good economy"? I'm not necessarily expressing disagreement; it just sounds like one of those random statements about macroeconomics that people so often throw out without really knowing what they're talking about.
And of course companies will try to take advantage of people. And people will try to take advantage of companies. That's precisely how capitalism works: "it is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest", as Adam Smith wrote.
Yes, there will be cases of fraud or abuse. But here's the rub: you are implicitly assuming that allowing elected officials to stick their noses in everything will help alleviate this problem, without causing more problems than it solves. Suffice it to say that is a matter of some debate.
The reason we believe that animals aren't conscious, and are like little automaton, is because it allows us to treat them with callous disregard.
Cute hypothesis, presented with convincing sincerity. But your supporting arguments are, at best, plausibility arguments. You'll have to do better than that to convince anyone who takes the time to think about what you're saying.
What's scary is that I can't tell if you're serious.
There is nothing funny about unsolved crime and criminals who go free because people are intimidated into not talking.
There is when the "crime" in question is essentially gardening.
There are basically two ways to approach things: from the hardware side, or from the math side. The spectrum of languages is something like: machine code -> assembly -> C/Fortran -> C++/Java -> Python/Ruby -> Lisp/Smalltalk -> lambda calculus.
If your son is interested in abstract math, you'd be hard-pressed to find a better teaching language than Scheme (with SICP, of course).
If he's more into concrete, hands-on stuff, why not assembly? It isn't all that hard, and will teach him a lot about how computers work.
Of course, you could pick a language somewhere in between those extremes; but I think sticking to one end of the spectrum or the other is better for teaching and learning, since there are fewer distractions.
...try finding an unmoderated web forum!
Allow me to introduce you to 4chan.
We'll go out of business, and stop making good products for people to use. So will a lot of other small software houses.
Good. Go out of business, and take your culture of victimhood with you. We'll get along fine without you.
I'm sure this will come as a great shock to you, but you're not somehow magically ENTITLED to enjoy whatever you want whenever you are for free.
You have the gall to accuse file-sharers of a sense of entitlement, when your entire business model is based on government-granted monopolies?
You re-wrote a 100,000-line project rather than fix some compiler warnings?
In fact, the entire Republican party has basically abandoned its stance on limited government (while still paying lip service to it, of course, so as not to alienate too many conservative voters). Ron Paul was one of the only candidates who was actually serious about limiting the size and scope of the federal government, and he was ridiculed and ignored for it.
Tree of liberty, blood of tyrants and patriots, etc.
So your stance is basically, "let the little stuff slide until something REALLY bad happens"? Is an injustice any less wrong or offensive just because someone, somewhere is doing something worse? We're not allowed to complain until we've experienced the very worst the world has to offer, is that it?
Opponents of liberty will often use arguments such as: "what you're decrying really isn't much worse than this other thing we're already doing, so what are you so upset about?" Think "boiling a frog", "slippery slope", "first they came...", and so on.
Perhaps you are just jaded by the injustices you have seen elsewhere, but by acting as an apologist for these people, you are collaborating with the slow destruction of our civil liberties.
... balanced by an equal and opposite right for someone not to have defamatory remarks likely to create a false impression in a reasonable person made about them. Why do you believe in such a right? I have never understood this position.The word is 'cryptanalyst', not 'crypto-analyst'. And Hellman is a cryptographer (or cryptologist), not a cryptanalyst. Cryptographers create encryption schemes; cryptanalysts break them.