Sometimes I look at things like this and wonder, "Wouldn't it be great if I could board a maglev in Seattle and be in Chicago in eight hours? Wouldn't it be great if this only cost me a hundred bucks? Wouldn't it be great if I could walk around, sit in a seat that's large enough to be comfortable, maybe get into a serious game of cards? Or maybe even park my car on the train and take it with me for another hundred bucks? I wonder when that will happen?"
Then I realize that people have been asking that for decades, and that nobody's done anything about it. Because we don't give a damn about building new infrastructure, or even repairing the old stuff.
The national highways, power dams, the moon...all that behind us, all that in our past. America's lost her ambition. What a shame.
I don't think it's either projective or injective, but I'm not completely sure. I forget if it's free or not, and I'm afraid I don't know what "stably free" means.
If you're wondering: use convolution as outside multiplication.
Re:Differences appear minor
on
Gnome 2.0 RC1
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· Score: 2
After spending a few hours playing around with each one, my personal experience is that Gnome is their preferred choice, apparently because the icons and screen widgets look better, the interface appears simpler, and most of the engineers like the graphical virtual desktop manager on the gnome panel as opposed to the KDE version.
You've hit on something here. From a development standpoint, GNOME is ugly as sin. From a user standpoint, GNOME rocks. Why? Because users like things that are prettier. I would much rather use Qt than everything under the GNOME sun for development, and C++ rather than C, but as a user, I just like GNOME better.
GNOME and Ximian could do many good things for developers and system maintainers by consolidating a lot of those little libs into big lib packages. That would put GNOME more on par with KDE as far as programmability and maintainability go.
Here's one way to explain this to a stereotypical (!!!!) redneck:
Customer: $299? That's pretty cheap. It come with Windows?
Salesman: No sir, it comes with Linux. It's a different operating system.
Customer: Huh?
Salesman: Think of Windows like a thirty-eight and Linux like a nine millimeter. Same size bullet, they both do the job, but you wouldn't put thirty-eight rounds in a nine millimeter or vice versa. But there's plenty of ammo for both.
Customer: Oh, so it can do all the same stuff?
Salesman: Yep, lemme show you...
(It may actually be more of a disservice to use Lindows than to use another Linux distribution, such as Mandrake or Red Hat, for the purposes of this explanation.)
Answering only for myself: hell yes. Everybody in this world is somebody's whore. This is a simple fact of life, even if you pretend that it's otherwise (because you're an entrepreneur, or a "self-made man," or a rich spoiled brat with a trust fund). As long as I'm working in the computer field, not extending Microsoft's monopoly, and not building weapons, I'm A-OK. Other people's standards may vary.
You don't hit the really geeky math until you deal with spaces that have uncountably many dimentions (that is, more dimentions than there are integers; or more accurately, as many dimentions as there are points in a real interval.)
Most Physics and EE students hit this sometime during their senior year; most math students, sometime in functional analysis.
I'm older than you. Back in 1990 (!!) my calculus teacher strongly recommended we use one of these graphing calculators in our work. I didn't. I think I'm a better mathematician for it now.:)
Amen. And if that $0.99 per track means I can download (say) CSO/Solti Beethoven's 9th for $3.96, then I'll gladly pay.:) On a more serious note, it will be tons easier to get all the works from my favorite composers / conductors / performers this way, than by going through online services looking for the recordings I want.
Another thing that I'm really, really hoping for, is that smaller labels like Alternative Tentacles and Wrong Records will get in on the act. That'll scare the living unholy crap out of Tipper Gore and her gang.
I'm still pissed at RIAA for using DMCA instead of copyright laws to pursue music pirates, but this might win back my patronage.
In this situation, I would recommend one of the following:
Write your own version of the GPL'd library and avoid the issue entirely;
Work out a deal with the owner(s) of the library, possibly paying them royalties for the use of their code;
Use a different library with a less restrictive license (such as LGPL or BSD).
The second option is more realistic than you think. As you may be aware, Qt is available under both GPL and a pay-for, proprietary license. The same goes for MySQL.
GPL forces it to be owned by everyone - it can't even be put under a more restrictive license later on.
This statement is false. If I am the copyright holder of a GPL'd work, I have the right to re-license it under a different, more restrictive license, at any time. In fact, this is exactly what happened to TuxRacer: the project forked when the author decided to release his next version as a closed-source product.
GPL is IP that can no longer be privately owned.
This is also false. Let us suppose that I hold the patent on a process to incorporate web service into the Linux kernel. I then release my modifications under GPL. GPLing a work gives a royalty-free license to everyone who wants to play the GPL game; those who want to incorporate my patented idea in their own project, either must license their project under GPL, or pay me royalties. Conversely, if I were to license said source code under an MIT or BSD license, I would surrender my ability to make any royalties off of my patent.
GPL is IP that can no longer be privately owned.
This is also false. Trolltech and MySQL both offer their products both for free (under GPL) and for cost (under a license that allows incorporation of their product in proprietary software). The FSF seems to have no trouble with either of them offering their products under a more restrictive, proprietary license.
Most of this food (particularly the 'variety' part) originated in other countries. All we do is find a way to make it less healthy than it ought to be.
That depends on where you're eating. Fast food is total crap. Cajun food is as American as it gets, and it's no worse for you than typical French fare. The same goes for Tex-Mex, barbeque, and other types of fusions.
I'll agree with you that Pizza, especially Chicago style deep dish, has a lot more fat than the Italian, pre-WWII original. It also has more of a lot of other things, and it's soooooooo good.
And start listening to music from the UK.
Oh yeah, the Beatles (and NoMeansNo, from Canada) own Rock and Roll. But neither of them plays Newgrass or Zydeco. And it's a hard contest between Scott Joplin and Robert Simpson for Composer of the 20th Century.
Cough, Stonehenge, cough.
A mere pebble next to the Rockies.:)
Seriously though, there are some beautiful parts to America. Do we really need all those stripmalls?
No, we don't, and the marketroids that would rip out all the trees to build another strip mall should be sentenced to ten years working tech support. North Georgia is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and one of the most depressing places in the US because some goddamn idiot decided that we need a Kroger every mile or so along 285. Profitability be damned, shareholder value be damned, return on investment be damned. There are things that money cannot buy.
This is not the fault of the gun-makers so much as it is the USA's complete inability to teach responsible behavior to its own citizens.
Every firearm I've ever owned comes with a manual complete with prominent warnings and rules of firearm safety, and warnings all over the box (and sometimes the firearm) to read the manual before using. The only way the manufacturer could be responsible is if the firearm were actually defective, e.g., a Lorcin that discharges even when the safety is on.
What we really need, frankly, is a public education campaign on firearm safety (e.g., the four rules of gun safety on milk cartons, billboards, on the sides of busses, etc). Rosie O'Donnel would have a stroke in between loud denouncements of such a campaign as "totally irresponsible," but I'm willing to bet it would lead to a sharp reduction in accidental shootings.
Once again, the white paper is worried about "large commercial entities." Well, some large commercial entities like HP/Compaq, IBM, Dell and Sun are quite willing to use, produce and/or distribute GPL'd software.
Which reminds me, doesn't Microsoft distribute GPL'd software in one of its "migrate-to-Windows-from-Unix" packages?
I hate to break it to you, but things aren't much better here in the USA. The electorate is grossly uninformed, the elected aren't too much better informed, the media aren't talking about the issues, election turnout hovers about 60%, and instead of two parties, we have the Republicans and the Republican-Wannabes (otherwise known as the Democrats). Oh yeah, we have the Green and Reform parties, too, but those guys are just making noise at this stage.
On the other hand, there's still a lot that America has to offer. The food, and the variety of food, is excellent. The cost of living is relatively low while the salaries are relatively high. The music is fantastic once you turn off the damn radio. Our graduate schools, especially in technology, are second to none. Girls will dig your Brit accent. And you can't beat the scenery.
The only real pain in the ass, as far as you're concerned, is going to be learning to drive on the right-hand side of the road, and getting used to American football. The gun laws may be a bit of a shock, too, but they're a thing of beauty once you get used to them.
I'm a firm believer in the GPL and Linux. That having been said, consider the following:
Eve wants to create a back door that lets her root by sending a particular, carefully-constructed packet to Apache. She discovers a way to do this by hiding it in a very subtle bug that she introduces to some component of the Apache system. After months of research, she finds a way to introduce the bug, by incorporating it in a modification that's too good for the Apache project to pass up. Eve's code becomes part of the next release, which is signed by the Apache project with a legitimate signature. Thousands of users worldwide download the buggy Apache RPM, verify the signature, install it on their machines, and restart httpd. Eve and her friends, perhaps months later, then use the compromised httpd to infiltrate a bunch of systems. The bug is finally found after hundreds of rooted boxes, and a patch released to fix the bug (and therefore the hole); but meanwhile, the damage has been done.
I'll grant that this is an awful lot of work to go through to get root; this scenario is strictly meant to be illustrative. My question is, what practices can we adopt, as a community, to prevent this from occuring in practice?
(We might also keep in mind that there are parties out there that are more interested in causing psychological damage than actual damage, and who may view this kind of operation as worthwhile if they can just get consumers into a panic.)
They need the assurance that there is no God - or at least that the existence of God is very unlikely. Otherwise the thought that they are going to suffer for eternity after death gets unnerving.
You're assuming that atheists are concerned about an afterlife and/or eternal damnation. This is not a warranted assumption. Most atheists I know are thoroughly convinced that after death, the lights just...go out. No eternal damnation involved.
Besides which, I personally believe that God would rather have an honest follower that examined the facts, than a sycophantic follower that "believes" because s/he's afraid of Hell. Either way, it profits the atheist or agnostic little to consider Hell in his or her calculations.
So what I'm saying is, if psychology didn't have an explanation for religion, would it be worth anything?
Probably not, but that doesn't do anything to discount psychology's explanation for religious belief.
Proof: Suppose that such a prime exists. Call it p. Since p is even, it is divisible by two. However, we have already stated that p is greater than two; this means that p is divisible by something besides one and itself. This contradicts our supposition that p is prime. Proof by contradiction.
It follows that it is not impossible to prove that something does not exist.
Think about it: the software fails, two planes crash into each other. Who's respsonsible? There is no direct line of accountability.
Nonsense. The FAA can always hire a government contractor, such as IBM or Lockheed, to maintain the system, whether it is open source or not, GPL or not, etc. In the case where two planes crash into each other, the contractor bears responsibility. In the open source case, it doesn't even matter if the contractor doesn't own the code. You can always hire a third party to maintain the project and to be the fall guy.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but my experience is that women (both geeky and non) are much easier to get along with when you're talking with them and not worshiping them. Especially if they're co-workers, or
potential co-workers.
If you're attracted to someone, try flirting. If you're afraid of scaring them off with flirting, well, your hoving from a distance because you don't want to frighten them is actually scarrier than your flirting with them. At least with flirting they know what's up.
If you get rejected...hey, it happens. And it's not the end of the world.
About a year ago it was announced on the Linux for AS/400 web page that "OS/400 V5R1 will support the first version of Linux for AS/400's." I haven't heard much since then, and there doesn't seem to be much information about Linux on AS/400s on the IBM web page. Can you comment about if, and how, porting of Linux to AS/400 machines is developing? Thanks.
I'd rather have a manager who knew how to effectively manage and didn't know the technology, than a manager who knew the technology but couldn't manage. I've had both. The first knows enough to get out of the way and let people produce. The second knows enough to not listen to other people, and eventually, to destroy the project and possibly the company.
Of course, managers who can't manage, won't listen, and don't understand the technology, shouldn't have their jobs at all.
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Sometimes I look at things like this and wonder, "Wouldn't it be great if I could board a maglev in Seattle and be in Chicago in eight hours? Wouldn't it be great if this only cost me a hundred bucks? Wouldn't it be great if I could walk around, sit in a seat that's large enough to be comfortable, maybe get into a serious game of cards? Or maybe even park my car on the train and take it with me for another hundred bucks? I wonder when that will happen?"
Then I realize that people have been asking that for decades, and that nobody's done anything about it. Because we don't give a damn about building new infrastructure, or even repairing the old stuff.
The national highways, power dams, the moon...all that behind us, all that in our past. America's lost her ambition. What a shame.
I don't think it's either projective or injective, but I'm not completely sure. I forget if it's free or not, and I'm afraid I don't know what "stably free" means.
If you're wondering: use convolution as outside multiplication.
You've hit on something here. From a development standpoint, GNOME is ugly as sin. From a user standpoint, GNOME rocks. Why? Because users like things that are prettier. I would much rather use Qt than everything under the GNOME sun for development, and C++ rather than C, but as a user, I just like GNOME better.
GNOME and Ximian could do many good things for developers and system maintainers by consolidating a lot of those little libs into big lib packages. That would put GNOME more on par with KDE as far as programmability and maintainability go.
Customer: $299? That's pretty cheap. It come with Windows?
Salesman: No sir, it comes with Linux. It's a different operating system.
Customer: Huh?
Salesman: Think of Windows like a thirty-eight and Linux like a nine millimeter. Same size bullet, they both do the job, but you wouldn't put thirty-eight rounds in a nine millimeter or vice versa. But there's plenty of ammo for both.
Customer: Oh, so it can do all the same stuff?
Salesman: Yep, lemme show you...
(It may actually be more of a disservice to use Lindows than to use another Linux distribution, such as Mandrake or Red Hat, for the purposes of this explanation.)
Answering only for myself: hell yes. Everybody in this world is somebody's whore. This is a simple fact of life, even if you pretend that it's otherwise (because you're an entrepreneur, or a "self-made man," or a rich spoiled brat with a trust fund). As long as I'm working in the computer field, not extending Microsoft's monopoly, and not building weapons, I'm A-OK. Other people's standards may vary.
Hear hear. Microsoft wouldn't be able to do half the crap they get away with if certain large customers simply refused to use their software anymore.
You don't hit the really geeky math until you deal with spaces that have uncountably many dimentions (that is, more dimentions than there are integers; or more accurately, as many dimentions as there are points in a real interval.)
Most Physics and EE students hit this sometime during their senior year; most math students, sometime in functional analysis.
I'm older than you. Back in 1990 (!!) my calculus teacher strongly recommended we use one of these graphing calculators in our work. I didn't. I think I'm a better mathematician for it now. :)
Amen. And if that $0.99 per track means I can download (say) CSO/Solti Beethoven's 9th for $3.96, then I'll gladly pay. :) On a more serious note, it will be tons easier to get all the works from my favorite composers / conductors / performers this way, than by going through online services looking for the recordings I want.
Another thing that I'm really, really hoping for, is that smaller labels like Alternative Tentacles and Wrong Records will get in on the act. That'll scare the living unholy crap out of Tipper Gore and her gang.
I'm still pissed at RIAA for using DMCA instead of copyright laws to pursue music pirates, but this might win back my patronage.
In this situation, I would recommend one of the following:
The second option is more realistic than you think. As you may be aware, Qt is available under both GPL and a pay-for, proprietary license. The same goes for MySQL.
This statement is false. If I am the copyright holder of a GPL'd work, I have the right to re-license it under a different, more restrictive license, at any time. In fact, this is exactly what happened to TuxRacer: the project forked when the author decided to release his next version as a closed-source product.
This is also false. Let us suppose that I hold the patent on a process to incorporate web service into the Linux kernel. I then release my modifications under GPL. GPLing a work gives a royalty-free license to everyone who wants to play the GPL game; those who want to incorporate my patented idea in their own project, either must license their project under GPL, or pay me royalties. Conversely, if I were to license said source code under an MIT or BSD license, I would surrender my ability to make any royalties off of my patent.
This is also false. Trolltech and MySQL both offer their products both for free (under GPL) and for cost (under a license that allows incorporation of their product in proprietary software). The FSF seems to have no trouble with either of them offering their products under a more restrictive, proprietary license.
That depends on where you're eating. Fast food is total crap. Cajun food is as American as it gets, and it's no worse for you than typical French fare. The same goes for Tex-Mex, barbeque, and other types of fusions.
I'll agree with you that Pizza, especially Chicago style deep dish, has a lot more fat than the Italian, pre-WWII original. It also has more of a lot of other things, and it's soooooooo good.
Oh yeah, the Beatles (and NoMeansNo, from Canada) own Rock and Roll. But neither of them plays Newgrass or Zydeco. And it's a hard contest between Scott Joplin and Robert Simpson for Composer of the 20th Century.
A mere pebble next to the Rockies. :)
No, we don't, and the marketroids that would rip out all the trees to build another strip mall should be sentenced to ten years working tech support. North Georgia is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and one of the most depressing places in the US because some goddamn idiot decided that we need a Kroger every mile or so along 285. Profitability be damned, shareholder value be damned, return on investment be damned. There are things that money cannot buy.
Every firearm I've ever owned comes with a manual complete with prominent warnings and rules of firearm safety, and warnings all over the box (and sometimes the firearm) to read the manual before using. The only way the manufacturer could be responsible is if the firearm were actually defective, e.g., a Lorcin that discharges even when the safety is on.
What we really need, frankly, is a public education campaign on firearm safety (e.g., the four rules of gun safety on milk cartons, billboards, on the sides of busses, etc). Rosie O'Donnel would have a stroke in between loud denouncements of such a campaign as "totally irresponsible," but I'm willing to bet it would lead to a sharp reduction in accidental shootings.
Which reminds me, doesn't Microsoft distribute GPL'd software in one of its "migrate-to-Windows-from-Unix" packages?
I hate to break it to you, but things aren't much better here in the USA. The electorate is grossly uninformed, the elected aren't too much better informed, the media aren't talking about the issues, election turnout hovers about 60%, and instead of two parties, we have the Republicans and the Republican-Wannabes (otherwise known as the Democrats). Oh yeah, we have the Green and Reform parties, too, but those guys are just making noise at this stage.
On the other hand, there's still a lot that America has to offer. The food, and the variety of food, is excellent. The cost of living is relatively low while the salaries are relatively high. The music is fantastic once you turn off the damn radio. Our graduate schools, especially in technology, are second to none. Girls will dig your Brit accent. And you can't beat the scenery.
The only real pain in the ass, as far as you're concerned, is going to be learning to drive on the right-hand side of the road, and getting used to American football. The gun laws may be a bit of a shock, too, but they're a thing of beauty once you get used to them.
Huh? What about apt-get? What about up2date? What about Red Carpet?
I'm a firm believer in the GPL and Linux. That having been said, consider the following:
Eve wants to create a back door that lets her root by sending a particular, carefully-constructed packet to Apache. She discovers a way to do this by hiding it in a very subtle bug that she introduces to some component of the Apache system. After months of research, she finds a way to introduce the bug, by incorporating it in a modification that's too good for the Apache project to pass up. Eve's code becomes part of the next release, which is signed by the Apache project with a legitimate signature. Thousands of users worldwide download the buggy Apache RPM, verify the signature, install it on their machines, and restart httpd. Eve and her friends, perhaps months later, then use the compromised httpd to infiltrate a bunch of systems. The bug is finally found after hundreds of rooted boxes, and a patch released to fix the bug (and therefore the hole); but meanwhile, the damage has been done.
I'll grant that this is an awful lot of work to go through to get root; this scenario is strictly meant to be illustrative. My question is, what practices can we adopt, as a community, to prevent this from occuring in practice?
(We might also keep in mind that there are parties out there that are more interested in causing psychological damage than actual damage, and who may view this kind of operation as worthwhile if they can just get consumers into a panic.)
OK, done talking, now I listen :)
You're assuming that atheists are concerned about an afterlife and/or eternal damnation. This is not a warranted assumption. Most atheists I know are thoroughly convinced that after death, the lights just...go out. No eternal damnation involved.
Besides which, I personally believe that God would rather have an honest follower that examined the facts, than a sycophantic follower that "believes" because s/he's afraid of Hell. Either way, it profits the atheist or agnostic little to consider Hell in his or her calculations.
Probably not, but that doesn't do anything to discount psychology's explanation for religious belief.
Proof: Suppose that such a prime exists. Call it p. Since p is even, it is divisible by two. However, we have already stated that p is greater than two; this means that p is divisible by something besides one and itself. This contradicts our supposition that p is prime. Proof by contradiction.
It follows that it is not impossible to prove that something does not exist.
Not to mention an instant target for Islamic and White Supremacist terrorists.
Nonsense. The FAA can always hire a government contractor, such as IBM or Lockheed, to maintain the system, whether it is open source or not, GPL or not, etc. In the case where two planes crash into each other, the contractor bears responsibility. In the open source case, it doesn't even matter if the contractor doesn't own the code. You can always hire a third party to maintain the project and to be the fall guy.
This post should be modded +4 Understated.
I can't speak for the parent poster, but my experience is that women (both geeky and non) are much easier to get along with when you're talking with them and not worshiping them. Especially if they're co-workers, or potential co-workers.
If you're attracted to someone, try flirting. If you're afraid of scaring them off with flirting, well, your hoving from a distance because you don't want to frighten them is actually scarrier than your flirting with them. At least with flirting they know what's up.
If you get rejected...hey, it happens. And it's not the end of the world.
Hope this helps.
About a year ago it was announced on the Linux for AS/400 web page that "OS/400 V5R1 will support the first version of Linux for AS/400's." I haven't heard much since then, and there doesn't seem to be much information about Linux on AS/400s on the IBM web page. Can you comment about if, and how, porting of Linux to AS/400 machines is developing? Thanks.
There are now TWO Ann Arbor parties as of this writing. I think his method worked.
Party one: Ann Arbor party (That's its actual name)
Party Two: Ann Arbor Destroyed by Mozilla
I'd rather have a manager who knew how to effectively manage and didn't know the technology, than a manager who knew the technology but couldn't manage. I've had both. The first knows enough to get out of the way and let people produce. The second knows enough to not listen to other people, and eventually, to destroy the project and possibly the company.
Of course, managers who can't manage, won't listen, and don't understand the technology, shouldn't have their jobs at all.