My name is Jonathan, and I'm a nerd. That's basically it. On ICQ et
al, I use Nerd314159, because it's <= 10 characters. And on Slashdot,
I quite often go by Anonymous Coward (especially when trying for a
first post or posting goatse.cx
links).
watch the $$$ roll by... where is it going? plant owners. what kind of incentive is that?
You don't know much, do you? Because of environmental regulations, power plants in California operate at a loss. They can't build new plants because of environmental protests, and expensive regulations and rate caps ensure that they can't even break even with the plants the have, much less have "$$$ rolling in". Duke Energy, where my father works, recently had an offer to buy a power plant in California for one dollar. They refused, because the cost to run a power plant in California more than outweighs the money made from selling the electricity.
The environmental lobby created this problem, and until they wake up and ease off on the regulations, they're going to have to live with it.
"You click the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in Linux and believe whatever you want to. You click the red pill, you stay in Redmond... and I show you how deep.NET goes."
<Click>
ERROR: Windows has caused a General Protection Fault in module BLUEPILL.DLL.
"Oops. I forgot to mention that we haven't gotten the blue pill working yet. I guess you'll just have to come with me..."
We may still have that data somewhere in our DNA, it's just not switched on.
It'd be interesting if we found out what those genes do and how to activate them. Someone could even make a movie about it. They could have characters whose unusual genes allow them to move things mentally, heal quickly, shoot lasers out of their eyes, control the weather, manipulate magnetic fields, etc. I know I'd go see it.
Why does the threat of liability undermine the GPL?
Because the vast majority of people who write GPL'd software don't make money off their software (or don't make much, anyway), and therefore can't afford to defend themselves against lawsuits. Also, the policy of "release early, release often" followed by most Open Source programmers guarentees that there will be bugs in the released software. Holding open-source programmers liable for bugs in their products would destroy this practice and reduce the quality of the software.
You can already use encryption to defeat Carnivore. Assuming there are no holes in your encryption software and you private key is secure, the government isn't going to be reading your encrypted email anytime soon. (Unless you believe the reports that the government is using UFO technology taken from the Roswell crash site, in which case there's not a whole lot you can do, aside from wearing a tinfoil hat.)
Is it proper to go "(this is a joke:-) )" or is "(this is a joke:-)" sufficient?
I've always used (this is a joke:-)). Since the closing parenthesis in the smiley is part of a multicharacter symbol, it doesn't function as a closing parenthesis, so you need another closing parenthesis to close the open one.
(You'd think they'd teach us useful stuff like that in English class, but no, we had to study gerunds and participles.)
The brief description of the book at the top of the page had me a bit confused. "The fringes of Science Fiction and wacky speculation" certainly sounds like it could describe Sun's operating system, but I'd never seen an OS described in terms quite like that. (Well, except for Windows, but most Windows descriptions I've seen used more profanity than that.) It wasn't until I saw the timeframe that I realized the book couldn't be referring to an operating system.
The trouble with Nader's approach, in my opinion, is that the cure he's proposing is worse than the disease. Yes, corporations can be evil, but the government has a much greater potential for evil than any corporation. Corporations can reduce your choices as a consumer and harass you with lawsuits, but they are still bound by the law. The government, on the other hand, can generally do whatever they want, without regard to legality. Yes, there are legal limits on what the government can and cannot do, but there are no penalties for violating those limits. The Tenth Amendment has been violated so much that it essentially doesn't exist anymore, and the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth amendments are also under attack. Giving more power to the government is not the solution. To paraphrase a common saying, "More government is not the answer. More government is the question. NO is the answer."
Good luck getting the general population of Slashdot to agree on a candidate. If you picked five Slashdotters at random and asked them who they supported for President, you'd get at least six different answers. The only things we even come close to agreeing on are that Linux is good and CmdrTaco can't spell, and you could probably get quite a few dissenting opinions on both of those points.
...to stick your fingers in your ears, while talking to yourself (which is
what you'll appear to be doing until people work out about these things) tends to get you dismissed as mad.
Reminds me of a Dilbert I read once (referring to the public use of wearable computers).
"Are you an engineer?"
"No, I'm a moron. Common mistake."
They're not bluffing. Even if they had no law whatsoever on their side, they could still sue most individuals into the ground. They may not be right, but they're strong enough so that it doesn't matter.
There's a utility for Windows that
allows you to browse an ex2fs partition and copy files to and from it.
What is this utility, and where can I get it? There's nothing more annoying for me than to boot into Windows to do something that requires a Windows program and find out I left the files I needed on my Linux partition. (Well, actually, bluescreens in Windows are more annoying, but this is a close second.)
Also, to test
new potentially harmful package, you just clone your VMwared redhat istallation, try it, if it breaks something you don't even need backups.
You don't even need to do that. Just change the disk type to "undoable". If it breaks, just discard the changes. If it works, you can keep it.
I don't see how they could get those patents passed, but the US patent laws seems pretty strange to me as a swede.
You really only need to understand one thing to comprehend US patent law. The people who grant patents (especially software patents) have the intelligence of cauliflower. Therefore, you can patent anything that hasn't already been patented. I could apply for a patent on the process of rubbing two sticks together to make fire, and it would probably be granted. (Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have said that, because now someone will actually do it. I think I should just go ahead and flee the country now.)
I gave up caffiene for a while once. I started getting massive headaches,
and I couldn't stay awake. I finally had to go back. That was the
worst three minutes of my life.
Excuse me, I have to go get another 12-pack of Jolt Cola.
Ever try to fly... I did... it didn't work... no matter how many times I flapped my arms up and down I just couldn't get off the ground... I blame science and for good reason...
Well, I think your problem is that you're going about it the wrong way. From the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "There is an art, or rather a knack, to flying. The knack involves the ability to throw yourself at the ground very hard, and miss." (I'm quoting that from memory, so I probably mangled the actual quote, but that's the gist of it.) You'll never fly if you just stand there flapping your arms. You have to throw yourself at the ground without actually hitting it. The key to doing that is to completely forget about gravity, the ground, and how much it's going to hurt when you land. It might help to jump off a high cliff, so as to give yourself more time to forget about falling and thus achieve flight. Good luck!
Slashdot Mirror
My name is Jonathan, and I'm a nerd. That's basically it. On ICQ et al, I use Nerd314159, because it's <= 10 characters. And on Slashdot, I quite often go by Anonymous Coward (especially when trying for a first post or posting goatse.cx links).
You don't know much, do you? Because of environmental regulations, power plants in California operate at a loss. They can't build new plants because of environmental protests, and expensive regulations and rate caps ensure that they can't even break even with the plants the have, much less have "$$$ rolling in". Duke Energy, where my father works, recently had an offer to buy a power plant in California for one dollar. They refused, because the cost to run a power plant in California more than outweighs the money made from selling the electricity.
The environmental lobby created this problem, and until they wake up and ease off on the regulations, they're going to have to live with it.
Where do I sign up???
<Click>
ERROR: Windows has caused a General Protection Fault in module BLUEPILL.DLL.
"Oops. I forgot to mention that we haven't gotten the blue pill working yet. I guess you'll just have to come with me..."
"High quality evil empire stuff"? Isn't that an oxymoron?
It'd be interesting if we found out what those genes do and how to activate them. Someone could even make a movie about it. They could have characters whose unusual genes allow them to move things mentally, heal quickly, shoot lasers out of their eyes, control the weather, manipulate magnetic fields, etc. I know I'd go see it.
Because the vast majority of people who write GPL'd software don't make money off their software (or don't make much, anyway), and therefore can't afford to defend themselves against lawsuits. Also, the policy of "release early, release often" followed by most Open Source programmers guarentees that there will be bugs in the released software. Holding open-source programmers liable for bugs in their products would destroy this practice and reduce the quality of the software.
You can already use encryption to defeat Carnivore. Assuming there are no holes in your encryption software and you private key is secure, the government isn't going to be reading your encrypted email anytime soon. (Unless you believe the reports that the government is using UFO technology taken from the Roswell crash site, in which case there's not a whole lot you can do, aside from wearing a tinfoil hat.)
I've always used (this is a joke :-)). Since the closing parenthesis in the smiley is part of a multicharacter symbol, it doesn't function as a closing parenthesis, so you need another closing parenthesis to close the open one.
(You'd think they'd teach us useful stuff like that in English class, but no, we had to study gerunds and participles.)
Yes, "corrosion" refers to the actual software, rather than the license agreement.
The trouble with Nader's approach, in my opinion, is that the cure he's proposing is worse than the disease. Yes, corporations can be evil, but the government has a much greater potential for evil than any corporation. Corporations can reduce your choices as a consumer and harass you with lawsuits, but they are still bound by the law. The government, on the other hand, can generally do whatever they want, without regard to legality. Yes, there are legal limits on what the government can and cannot do, but there are no penalties for violating those limits. The Tenth Amendment has been violated so much that it essentially doesn't exist anymore, and the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth amendments are also under attack. Giving more power to the government is not the solution. To paraphrase a common saying, "More government is not the answer. More government is the question. NO is the answer."
Good luck getting the general population of Slashdot to agree on a candidate. If you picked five Slashdotters at random and asked them who they supported for President, you'd get at least six different answers. The only things we even come close to agreeing on are that Linux is good and CmdrTaco can't spell, and you could probably get quite a few dissenting opinions on both of those points.
Reminds me of a Dilbert I read once (referring to the public use of wearable computers).
"Are you an engineer?"
"No, I'm a moron. Common mistake."
And of course we have the inevitable flames. Every single Katz article seems to end up looking like this sooner or later.
LiViD tried to write their own legal DVD player, and they got sued. Obeying the laws doesn't protect you from lawsuits.
What is this utility, and where can I get it? There's nothing more annoying for me than to boot into Windows to do something that requires a Windows program and find out I left the files I needed on my Linux partition. (Well, actually, bluescreens in Windows are more annoying, but this is a close second.)
You don't even need to do that. Just change the disk type to "undoable". If it breaks, just discard the changes. If it works, you can keep it.
You really only need to understand one thing to comprehend US patent law. The people who grant patents (especially software patents) have the intelligence of cauliflower. Therefore, you can patent anything that hasn't already been patented. I could apply for a patent on the process of rubbing two sticks together to make fire, and it would probably be granted. (Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have said that, because now someone will actually do it. I think I should just go ahead and flee the country now.)
Excuse me, I have to go get another 12-pack of Jolt Cola.
Isn't Linux already POSIX-compliant (or at least mostly, anyway)? Why would an add-on POSIX layer even be needed?
Well, I think your problem is that you're going about it the wrong way. From the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "There is an art, or rather a knack, to flying. The knack involves the ability to throw yourself at the ground very hard, and miss." (I'm quoting that from memory, so I probably mangled the actual quote, but that's the gist of it.) You'll never fly if you just stand there flapping your arms. You have to throw yourself at the ground without actually hitting it. The key to doing that is to completely forget about gravity, the ground, and how much it's going to hurt when you land. It might help to jump off a high cliff, so as to give yourself more time to forget about falling and thus achieve flight. Good luck!
Sorry, Emmett. They're scientists, not miracle workers.