Like learning any new language (and the regular expression syntax IS a sublanguage into itself) the best way to learn it is to actually work with it for a while.
After a little hands-on work, you'll start to understand the logic behind all the line noise, and once you get to that point, the pure beauty of regexes and what they can do becomes clear.
In a way, it's a little bit like learning to program assembler. At first, all those opcodes are just a confusing mess, but once you get the hang of it, it starts to become clear.
Wouldn't wormhole travel qualify as an example of "possible, but fatal"?
And it's FTL too.
Look, I think Gen. Clark is smart enough to realize that, according to all current evidence, FTL travel is impossible, and that the evidence supporting this is very very good.
But that doesn't mean you stop looking for a possible solution. Who knows? Maybe there IS a way around it, and the stars can be ours.
In the meantime, this sounds like a man willing to invest in spaceflight and research in general. It's been a while since the Yanks had somebody that visionary in charge.
What I don't understand is the mini-recovery betwen 12:30 and 13:00
There's a huge volume spike right after the press release, and the price falls right off a cliff. But then, from 12:30 to 13:00, the price recovers quite a bit, even though the volume was relatively low compared to the sell-off.
I Am Not A Broker, so I don't get this AT ALL - it takes an act of God to make the price drop, but it seems to rise at the drop of a hat.
SPOKEN: THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT KING CHARLES I IS THAT HE WAS 5'6" TALL AT THE START OF HIS REIGN, BUT ONLY 4'8" AT THE END OF IT... BECAUSE OF...
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protecteur of England PURITAN Born in 1599 and died in 1658 SEPTEMBER Was at first ONLY MP for Huntingdon BUT THEN He led the Ironside Cavalry at Marston Moor in 1644 and won. Then he founded the new model model army And praise be, beat the Cavaliers at Naisby And the King fled up North like a bat to the Scots.
SPOKEN: BUT UNDER THE TERMS OF JOHN PIMM'S SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT, THE SCOTS HANDED KING CHARLES I OVER TO... Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protecteur of England AND HIS WARDS Born in 1599 and died in 1658 SEPTEMBER But alas OY VAY! Disagreement then broke out BETWEEN The Presbyterian Parliament and the Military who meant To have an independent bent. And so... The 2nd Civil War broke out And the Roundhead ranks Faced the Cavaliers at Preston Banks And the King lost again, silly thing STUPID GIT
SPOKEN: AND CROMWELL SEND COLONEL PRIDE TO PURGE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN ROYALISTS LEAVING BEHIND ONLY THE RUMP PARLIAMENT...
Which appointed a High Court at Westminster Hall To indict Charles I for...tyranny OOOOHHH! Charles was sentenced to death Even though he refused to accept that the court had...jurisdiction SAY GOODBYE TO HIS HEAD Poor King Charles laid his head on the block JANUARY 1649 Down came the axe, and...
SPOKEN: IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED, THE ONLY SOUND THAT COULD BE HEARD WAS A SOLITARY GIGGLE, FROM... Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protecteur of England OLE Born in 1599 and died in 1658 SEPTEMBER Then he smashed IRELAND Set up the Commonwealth AND MORE He crushed the Scots at Worcester And beat the Dutch at sea In 1653 and then He dissolved the Rump Parliament And with Lambert's consent Wrote the instrument of Government Under which Oliver was Proctector at last The end.
------------------- 'Cause the man from Mars won't eat up bars where the T.V's on. And now he's gone back up to space where he won't have a hassle with the human race. And you hip hop. And you don't stop. Just blast off, sure shot. 'Cause the man from Mars stopped eating cars And eating bars And now he only eats guitars. Get up! ------------------
For obvious reasons, most of my gameplay tends to revolve around driving/racing sims, but sometimes I just want to play a game to have some fun.
I played the two Zelda games for the N64 through to completion, and I had a great time doing it. That was money (and time) well spent)
Well last night, I picked up a PS2 game mag with a bunch of demos on it, just for a lark.
SoulCaliber2 - a great game (I had the DC version too) tons of mindless fun and a real challenge.
But then there were demos of Perfect Dark 3, Sphynx, Hunter something or other, and a Warhammer 40000 FPS. Beautiful games crippled by absolutely horrid controls and game cameras. PD3 was particularly bad for this.
Over and over I see examples of games that should be tons of fun that wind up being unplayable because the controls and camera suck so very very badly. I don't care how pretty your graphics are, or how involving your storyline, or how much you paid your voice talent - if my on-screen dude doesn't do what I want him to do when I want him to do it, the game is just going to frustrate the hell out of me and I won't play it. I don't want FRUSTRATION in my goddman games!
Game studios, take note! CONTROL IS KING!
Games that I really liked and played through:
- both Zeldas on N64 - SoulCaliber on DC - NFL 2K2 on DC - Skies of Arcadia on DC - Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on PS2 - GTA 3 on PS2 - Neverwinter Nights & the expansion pack on Linux
All of which have great controls and intelligent cameras - oh, and no "jump" button!
The best place for a heavy + long vehicle on the Interstate is the centre lane. If you keep right, you have people who don't know how to merge popping out in front of you and you risk smashing into the back of them.
On a 2-lane Interstate, yes, you generally keep right unless you're passing. The exception is you move left whenever an exit is coming up - see above.
But there are legions of suicidal drivers who will chose these moments to pass on the right - and the expectation of EVERY truck driver is that fast traffic is on his left, slow on his right. And there is an ENORMOUS blind spot on the right. You try and make the mirrors cover it, but they never get everything.
If I overhaul you, I know you're there, and I won't move over on you when I eventually come right. I expect people left of me to be faster, and the blind spot left is much smaller. But what I don't expect - and what I don't SEE - is an attempt to pass on the right.
Every time you pass a big truck on the right, you take your life into your hands. We can't see you, and we don't expect you to be there.
Ever driven on the Interstate, in the rain, while towing 5000lbs of racecar and trailer?
I share your pain when it comes to the HID headlights, but it is impossible to make brake lights too bright or too responsive.
The very second I find some LED brakelights that fit the form factor of my trailer, they're going on. And because they draw less power than the incandescents, I'm going to add more of them.
They make the whole rig a billion times more safe in shitty weather. In fact, I hope DOT makes LED brake lights mandatory.
That, and making passing on the right a capital offence.
I had a 1541 that wouldn't stay aligned for more than a couple of hours. One day, I smacked the drive in pure frustration while it was gronking away - and the sonofabitch loaded.
From that time forward, SOP for loading any C=64 program was:
1) load *,8,1 [enter] 2) watch drive light come on 3) swat drive 4) PROFIT!!!!
The Linux Kernel isn't "centrally planned" at all. It is centrally ADMINISTERED, but not "planned".
There's a big difference 'twixt the two concepts.
In SOVIET RUSSIA (heh, I get to do this straight:) the entire economy was planned out before the fact. As in "this plant will make so many rolls of toilet paper per month". There was no capitalist-style supply and demand (at least, not in the open) because the demand was front-loaded.
This invariably lead to shortages or oversupply whenever the central planners got it wrong.
For the Linux kernel to follow the same method, Linus would have to come up with a development plan and then force each developer to work on his assigned task. You couldn't fix bugs as they turned up unless that bug happened to fit in the plan.
Linus doesn't work that way. He's a gatekeeper, not a dictator. You won't be seeing an email any time soon that says "your job for the next 6 months is to work on the eepro100 driver".
Finally, while it can be tough to get a patch approved unless you're on the whitelist, depending on the nature and correctness of the patch Joe Random can indeed get his patch accepted. Patches that fix obvious bugs in straightforward ways and do not interact or interfere with other sections of the kernel get accepted all the time. Attempts to rework the scheduler in your own image are a little tougher to get approved:)
So while there are communist-esqe aspects to Linux development, it is by no means a communist undertaking. It's not entirely free-market either, but it's closer to that pole than to the communist pole.
You're right - that is a very interesting article.
And the process he describes _almost_ maps into the Free Software development model.
ESR would probably state that the "alternative currency" is ego-boo, but I think that's too simplistic. Many FS developers are just scratching their own itch, without concern if anybody notices. The act of releasing the code that scratched your personal itch is usually motivated by the desire to contribute to the solution space more so than a desire to "get my name in lights"
Thanks for sharing that though - it was a good read.
The more I read of SCO's garbage, the more I think that SCO Really Does Not Get It.
I think that McBride and Cronys really do believe in their heart of hearts that people are not capable of organizing, co-ordinating, and for that matter, producing functional code, without the direct support of some company as a mastermind.
When you think about it, the forces and processes behind Linux and other Open Source/Free Software are so contrary to what are taught at business schools that it must threaten to make your average MBA's head explode.
In many ways, the whole Free Software movement is a direct refutation of the core principles of the MBA curriculem* I can't wait to see how Alan Cox does on his MBA.:)
When one reads an SCO press release, one cannot help but imagine a group of dinosaurs confronted by an ice age - and mammals.
DG
* One may interpret through this that I think Free Software in inheritly Communist - and I don't agree. One of the central principles of Communism is Central Planning, and that's NOT how Linux etc development is done - it's more like a free market of ideas. Where the MBA-brainfuck comes in is that this "free market" has absolutely nothing to do with MONEY. There's no PRODUCT here - instead, it's a "free market" designed to provide something for the common good.
So we have a quasi-Capitalist process - with no capital, per sae - in the service of a quasi-Communist ideal. This is, I think, something new and scary, and this fear colours everything coming out of SCO.
Once again, the American slanted view of history rears it's red, white, and blue head.
Not, I suppose, that's it's entirely your fault. It's not like the American educational system is big on the nuances of history....
Anway:
1) Hitler used the political instability of the time to help him launch his populist movement. Without an unstable (from a political perspective) Germany, the Nazis would have never made it into power.
Collerary: be VERY suspicious of the motives of people promoting instability and chaos.
2) By every metric one could choose to measure with, the defeat of Germany in WW2 was a Russian show. The Western Allies made important contributions, especially in material, but the Nazi war machine died on the Russian steppes.
The prime American contribution to WW2 was in the Pacific theatre, which was pretty much a straight US vs Japan fight (with small contributions from the British and Commonwealth nations)
You can make a solid case for "the United States kicked Japan's ass", but the oft-repeated opinion that the US "rescued" Europe is mythmaking at its finest.
It's about time that the West (and especially the US) got over the Cold War cheerleading and started facing reality.
DG
PS - if there are any ex-Soviet-army tank officers reading this, drop me a line, willya? I'd love to compare notes with my former opposite numbers.:)
All the talk about flight sims used to help train terrorists - at least, for the people not just joking - is mostly wasted worry.
Here's why: no way, no how will that tactic of "hijack plane, crash into structure" ever work again.
The only reason it worked the first time was that it was so unexpected. Previously, the MO of a plane hijacking was to fly to some remote location and hold the passengers for ransom. As such, your best chance for survival as a passenger was to lay low, not attract attention to yourself, and wait for either rescue or for the hijackers to get what they wanted.
The more passive you were, the better things were likely to turn out for you.
But those days are now irrovocably GONE. Now anybody who even makes the slightest move towards the cockpit is likely to be dogpiled by every passenger on the plane, no matter what weapon the hijacker might be carrying.
In fact, the days of the "passive hijackee" were over before all the 9/11 planes were out of the air. The news of the change in tactics spread SO quickly that the passengers on Flight 51 (?) prevented the final plane from reaching its target.
The only way a hijacker can get ahold of a plane these days would be to buy/rent it - and you can be damned sure that the people holding the keys are being VERY dilligent about who can get their hands on something large enough to cause any real damage.
I can't help but wonder how much influence Slashdot might have on SCO stock price.
Like if Slashdot were to "accidentally" publish a story like "SCO Insider Reveals Code Copied From Linux to UnixWare!' - how much would the stock drop?
Makes one think... not that I'd suggest anybody actually TRY this.
Introvert/extrovert is a current state of mind, not some sort of destiny.
It is entirely possible to act like an "introvert" one day (or whichever timeslice you choose) and an "extrovert" the next.
It's all about finding the appropriate tactic to fit the current situation.
Here's the deal, all you hard-core introvert-types - social skill are like any other skills - they are LEARNED. Some people have an easier time with the learning process than others, and if you are one of those who have a hard time with it, well son, the only way to get to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice, practice.
But to just hang an "introvert" label on yourself and consider it done - that's just avoidance.
1) There is no requirement for the matter coming out of the Big Bang to be distributed in a perfectly spherical, homogeneous, low-density fog.
That means that there are many different scenarios that would allow for locallized "clumping" (and the scale of these clumps could well be galaxy-sized)
2) We've got a very, very long time scale to work with. Gravity may be a weak force, but it had a long time to work with.
From this, one could reasonably expect the matter distribution of the universe some very long time after the Big Bang to be mostly empty space, with areas of clumping around bits of matter that exert sufficiant gravity.
In other words, a lot like what we see now.
I wouldn't be suprised at all to find someone who has already written a computer simulation of this effect.
There is a difference between Science and Engineering (although Engineering depends on Science, and sometimes the attempt to solve an Engineering problem advances Science)
The Science behind fusion is well understood and proven out
The Engineering behind creating a self-sustaining fusion reaction from which more power can be extracted than consumed is a little more challenging - especially given that the only natural model we have requires collecting enough Hydrogen such that it starts to fuse under the pressures of its own gravity - a little tough to package in a useful manner.
But progress - or lack thereof - on an Engineering project does not necessarily discredit the Science.
Then let me ask you this:
on
Saving the Net
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I'm a Canadian (who works in the US) and I've noted (given my constant exposure to it) that American politics are very, very strange.
It seems that a large number of Americans see politics as some sort of sport or game, where "our team" plays against "their team" with control of the Presidency, House, Senate etc as both goal and a means of keeping score.
As such, it seems that many, many voters look straight past the issues, and instead vote for their "team" regardless of the conduct of the actual players.
A prime example is what happened to Bill Clinton, and what is now (not) happening to Dubya.
Clinton is an articulate, intelligent man. He is also a known philanderer who had an affair on the job and lied about it. And despite this character flaw, during his two terms as President, the US did pretty well.
Yet despite his intelligence and demonstrated competance, he and his wife were the targets of levels of harrassment and abuse, orchestrated by "the other side", to a degree that was downright Orwellian. Once the affair (and the subsequent lie) was exposed, he was hauled in front of an impeachement hearing, ostensibly for lying to the American People.
Now I cannot condone the lie, although I can understand it - the man was trying to protect his private life. Martial fidelity is a deeply personal subject and nobobody wants his dirty laundry aired publically.
But at the end of the day, the issue of if Clinton had an affair or not, or if he lied about it or not, had zero impact on the type of job he was doing as President.
But now....
We have a President who plays for the other team; the team that went to such extrordinary lengths to try and bring down the former President. this President, too, has been caught in a lie, also presented directly to the American people. But unlike the former President's lie, THIS lie was used to justify taking the country to war against another nation. Unlike Clinton's hummer, Dubya's lie about Iraq buying nuclear material resulted in enormous taxpayer expendature and American deaths.
The latter lie is more serious than the former by several orders of magnitude, but is is going unchallenged, from what I can see because the journalists who should be going after Dubya for his misconduct play for his team.
If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
So then, I ask you - are you capable of breaking away from your "team" and voting for someone based on concience and consideration of the issues, or are you forever tied to support the candidate with the (R) behind his name?
Slashdot Mirror
Like learning any new language (and the regular expression syntax IS a sublanguage into itself) the best way to learn it is to actually work with it for a while.
After a little hands-on work, you'll start to understand the logic behind all the line noise, and once you get to that point, the pure beauty of regexes and what they can do becomes clear.
In a way, it's a little bit like learning to program assembler. At first, all those opcodes are just a confusing mess, but once you get the hang of it, it starts to become clear.
DG
Wouldn't wormhole travel qualify as an example of "possible, but fatal"?
And it's FTL too.
Look, I think Gen. Clark is smart enough to realize that, according to all current evidence, FTL travel is impossible, and that the evidence supporting this is very very good.
But that doesn't mean you stop looking for a possible solution. Who knows? Maybe there IS a way around it, and the stars can be ours.
In the meantime, this sounds like a man willing to invest in spaceflight and research in general. It's been a while since the Yanks had somebody that visionary in charge.
DG
Beams of light, shoot out of its eyes,
If it scares your wife, I can't say I'm suprised...
DG
What I don't understand is the mini-recovery betwen 12:30 and 13:00
There's a huge volume spike right after the press release, and the price falls right off a cliff. But then, from 12:30 to 13:00, the price recovers quite a bit, even though the volume was relatively low compared to the sell-off.
I Am Not A Broker, so I don't get this AT ALL - it takes an act of God to make the price drop, but it seems to rise at the drop of a hat.
DG
SPOKEN: THE MOST INTERESTING THING ABOUT KING CHARLES I IS THAT HE WAS 5'6" TALL AT THE START OF HIS REIGN, BUT ONLY 4'8" AT THE END OF IT...
BECAUSE OF...
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protecteur of England
PURITAN
Born in 1599 and died in 1658
SEPTEMBER
Was at first
ONLY
MP for Huntingdon
BUT THEN
He led the Ironside Cavalry at Marston Moor
in 1644 and won.
Then he founded the new model model army
And praise be, beat the Cavaliers at Naisby
And the King fled up North like a bat to the
Scots.
SPOKEN: BUT UNDER THE TERMS OF JOHN PIMM'S SOLEMN
LEAGUE AND COVENANT, THE SCOTS HANDED KING
CHARLES I OVER TO...
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protecteur of England
AND HIS WARDS
Born in 1599 and died in 1658
SEPTEMBER
But alas
OY VAY!
Disagreement then broke out
BETWEEN
The Presbyterian Parliament and the Military
who meant
To have an independent bent.
And so...
The 2nd Civil War broke out
And the Roundhead ranks
Faced the Cavaliers at Preston Banks
And the King lost again, silly thing
STUPID GIT
SPOKEN: AND CROMWELL SEND COLONEL PRIDE TO PURGE THE HOUSE OF COMMONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN ROYALISTS LEAVING BEHIND ONLY THE RUMP PARLIAMENT...
Which appointed a High Court at Westminster Hall
To indict Charles I for...tyranny
OOOOHHH!
Charles was sentenced to death
Even though he refused to accept that the court had...jurisdiction
SAY GOODBYE TO HIS HEAD
Poor King Charles laid his head on the block
JANUARY 1649
Down came the axe, and...
SPOKEN: IN THE SILENCE THAT FOLLOWED, THE ONLY SOUND THAT COULD BE HEARD WAS A SOLITARY GIGGLE, FROM...
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protecteur of England
OLE
Born in 1599 and died in 1658
SEPTEMBER
Then he smashed
IRELAND
Set up the Commonwealth
AND MORE
He crushed the Scots at Worcester
And beat the Dutch at sea
In 1653 and then
He dissolved the Rump Parliament
And with Lambert's consent
Wrote the instrument of Government
Under which Oliver was Proctector at last
The end.
DG
Hmmm....
. . . .
-------------------
'Cause the man from Mars won't eat up bars where the T.V's on.
And now he's gone back up to space where he won't have a hassle with the
human race
And you hip hop.
And you don't stop
Just blast off, sure shot
'Cause the man from Mars stopped eating cars
And eating bars
And now he only eats guitars
Get up!
------------------
I guess so.
DG
...make great toilet paper.
Although they may not flush well after use - better to send them back from whence they came, once you got your use out of it.
Please use a plastic-lined envelope - no need to punish the poor mail carrier for SCO's stupidity.
DG
I agree completely.
For obvious reasons, most of my gameplay tends to revolve around driving/racing sims, but sometimes I just want to play a game to have some fun.
I played the two Zelda games for the N64 through to completion, and I had a great time doing it. That was money (and time) well spent)
Well last night, I picked up a PS2 game mag with a bunch of demos on it, just for a lark.
SoulCaliber2 - a great game (I had the DC version too) tons of mindless fun and a real challenge.
But then there were demos of Perfect Dark 3, Sphynx, Hunter something or other, and a Warhammer 40000 FPS. Beautiful games crippled by absolutely horrid controls and game cameras. PD3 was particularly bad for this.
Over and over I see examples of games that should be tons of fun that wind up being unplayable because the controls and camera suck so very very badly. I don't care how pretty your graphics are, or how involving your storyline, or how much you paid your voice talent - if my on-screen dude doesn't do what I want him to do when I want him to do it, the game is just going to frustrate the hell out of me and I won't play it. I don't want FRUSTRATION in my goddman games!
Game studios, take note! CONTROL IS KING!
Games that I really liked and played through:
- both Zeldas on N64
- SoulCaliber on DC
- NFL 2K2 on DC
- Skies of Arcadia on DC
- Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance on PS2
- GTA 3 on PS2
- Neverwinter Nights & the expansion pack on Linux
All of which have great controls and intelligent cameras - oh, and no "jump" button!
DG
Have you never seen a 3+ lane Interstate?
The best place for a heavy + long vehicle on the Interstate is the centre lane. If you keep right, you have people who don't know how to merge popping out in front of you and you risk smashing into the back of them.
On a 2-lane Interstate, yes, you generally keep right unless you're passing. The exception is you move left whenever an exit is coming up - see above.
But there are legions of suicidal drivers who will chose these moments to pass on the right - and the expectation of EVERY truck driver is that fast traffic is on his left, slow on his right. And there is an ENORMOUS blind spot on the right. You try and make the mirrors cover it, but they never get everything.
If I overhaul you, I know you're there, and I won't move over on you when I eventually come right. I expect people left of me to be faster, and the blind spot left is much smaller. But what I don't expect - and what I don't SEE - is an attempt to pass on the right.
Every time you pass a big truck on the right, you take your life into your hands. We can't see you, and we don't expect you to be there.
DG
Ever driven on the Interstate, in the rain, while towing 5000lbs of racecar and trailer?
I share your pain when it comes to the HID headlights, but it is impossible to make brake lights too bright or too responsive.
The very second I find some LED brakelights that fit the form factor of my trailer, they're going on. And because they draw less power than the incandescents, I'm going to add more of them.
They make the whole rig a billion times more safe in shitty weather. In fact, I hope DOT makes LED brake lights mandatory.
That, and making passing on the right a capital offence.
DG
I've seen one of these puppies in a local Future Shop, and it's flat-out gorgeous.
I wonder if they'll ever make one minus the speakers and tuner hardware - just a monitor - to bring the price down a little.
DG
True story:
I had a 1541 that wouldn't stay aligned for more than a couple of hours. One day, I smacked the drive in pure frustration while it was gronking away - and the sonofabitch loaded.
From that time forward, SOP for loading any C=64 program was:
1) load *,8,1 [enter]
2) watch drive light come on
3) swat drive
4) PROFIT!!!!
DG
The Linux Kernel isn't "centrally planned" at all. It is centrally ADMINISTERED, but not "planned".
:) the entire economy was planned out before the fact. As in "this plant will make so many rolls of toilet paper per month". There was no capitalist-style supply and demand (at least, not in the open) because the demand was front-loaded.
:)
There's a big difference 'twixt the two concepts.
In SOVIET RUSSIA (heh, I get to do this straight
This invariably lead to shortages or oversupply whenever the central planners got it wrong.
For the Linux kernel to follow the same method, Linus would have to come up with a development plan and then force each developer to work on his assigned task. You couldn't fix bugs as they turned up unless that bug happened to fit in the plan.
Linus doesn't work that way. He's a gatekeeper, not a dictator. You won't be seeing an email any time soon that says "your job for the next 6 months is to work on the eepro100 driver".
Finally, while it can be tough to get a patch approved unless you're on the whitelist, depending on the nature and correctness of the patch Joe Random can indeed get his patch accepted. Patches that fix obvious bugs in straightforward ways and do not interact or interfere with other sections of the kernel get accepted all the time. Attempts to rework the scheduler in your own image are a little tougher to get approved
So while there are communist-esqe aspects to Linux development, it is by no means a communist undertaking. It's not entirely free-market either, but it's closer to that pole than to the communist pole.
DG
You're right - that is a very interesting article.
And the process he describes _almost_ maps into the Free Software development model.
ESR would probably state that the "alternative currency" is ego-boo, but I think that's too simplistic. Many FS developers are just scratching their own itch, without concern if anybody notices. The act of releasing the code that scratched your personal itch is usually motivated by the desire to contribute to the solution space more so than a desire to "get my name in lights"
Thanks for sharing that though - it was a good read.
DG
The more I read of SCO's garbage, the more I think that SCO Really Does Not Get It.
:)
I think that McBride and Cronys really do believe in their heart of hearts that people are not capable of organizing, co-ordinating, and for that matter, producing functional code, without the direct support of some company as a mastermind.
When you think about it, the forces and processes behind Linux and other Open Source/Free Software are so contrary to what are taught at business schools that it must threaten to make your average MBA's head explode.
In many ways, the whole Free Software movement is a direct refutation of the core principles of the MBA curriculem* I can't wait to see how Alan Cox does on his MBA.
When one reads an SCO press release, one cannot help but imagine a group of dinosaurs confronted by an ice age - and mammals.
DG
* One may interpret through this that I think Free Software in inheritly Communist - and I don't agree. One of the central principles of Communism is Central Planning, and that's NOT how Linux etc development is done - it's more like a free market of ideas. Where the MBA-brainfuck comes in is that this "free market" has absolutely nothing to do with MONEY. There's no PRODUCT here - instead, it's a "free market" designed to provide something for the common good.
So we have a quasi-Capitalist process - with no capital, per sae - in the service of a quasi-Communist ideal. This is, I think, something new and scary, and this fear colours everything coming out of SCO.
Ah, brave new world!
Oi.
:)
Once again, the American slanted view of history rears it's red, white, and blue head.
Not, I suppose, that's it's entirely your fault. It's not like the American educational system is big on the nuances of history....
Anway:
1) Hitler used the political instability of the time to help him launch his populist movement. Without an unstable (from a political perspective) Germany, the Nazis would have never made it into power.
Collerary: be VERY suspicious of the motives of people promoting instability and chaos.
2) By every metric one could choose to measure with, the defeat of Germany in WW2 was a Russian show. The Western Allies made important contributions, especially in material, but the Nazi war machine died on the Russian steppes.
The prime American contribution to WW2 was in the Pacific theatre, which was pretty much a straight US vs Japan fight (with small contributions from the British and Commonwealth nations)
You can make a solid case for "the United States kicked Japan's ass", but the oft-repeated opinion that the US "rescued" Europe is mythmaking at its finest.
It's about time that the West (and especially the US) got over the Cold War cheerleading and started facing reality.
DG
PS - if there are any ex-Soviet-army tank officers reading this, drop me a line, willya? I'd love to compare notes with my former opposite numbers.
All the talk about flight sims used to help train terrorists - at least, for the people not just joking - is mostly wasted worry.
Here's why: no way, no how will that tactic of "hijack plane, crash into structure" ever work again.
The only reason it worked the first time was that it was so unexpected. Previously, the MO of a plane hijacking was to fly to some remote location and hold the passengers for ransom. As such, your best chance for survival as a passenger was to lay low, not attract attention to yourself, and wait for either rescue or for the hijackers to get what they wanted.
The more passive you were, the better things were likely to turn out for you.
But those days are now irrovocably GONE. Now anybody who even makes the slightest move towards the cockpit is likely to be dogpiled by every passenger on the plane, no matter what weapon the hijacker might be carrying.
In fact, the days of the "passive hijackee" were over before all the 9/11 planes were out of the air. The news of the change in tactics spread SO quickly that the passengers on Flight 51 (?) prevented the final plane from reaching its target.
The only way a hijacker can get ahold of a plane these days would be to buy/rent it - and you can be damned sure that the people holding the keys are being VERY dilligent about who can get their hands on something large enough to cause any real damage.
That's a trick that would only work once.
DG
I can't help but wonder how much influence Slashdot might have on SCO stock price.
Like if Slashdot were to "accidentally" publish a story like "SCO Insider Reveals Code Copied From Linux to UnixWare!' - how much would the stock drop?
Makes one think... not that I'd suggest anybody actually TRY this.
DG
Introvert/extrovert is a current state of mind, not some sort of destiny.
It is entirely possible to act like an "introvert" one day (or whichever timeslice you choose) and an "extrovert" the next.
It's all about finding the appropriate tactic to fit the current situation.
Here's the deal, all you hard-core introvert-types - social skill are like any other skills - they are LEARNED. Some people have an easier time with the learning process than others, and if you are one of those who have a hard time with it, well son, the only way to get to Carnegie Hall is to practice, practice, practice.
But to just hang an "introvert" label on yourself and consider it done - that's just avoidance.
DG
1) There is no requirement for the matter coming out of the Big Bang to be distributed in a perfectly spherical, homogeneous, low-density fog.
That means that there are many different scenarios that would allow for locallized "clumping" (and the scale of these clumps could well be galaxy-sized)
2) We've got a very, very long time scale to work with. Gravity may be a weak force, but it had a long time to work with.
From this, one could reasonably expect the matter distribution of the universe some very long time after the Big Bang to be mostly empty space, with areas of clumping around bits of matter that exert sufficiant gravity.
In other words, a lot like what we see now.
I wouldn't be suprised at all to find someone who has already written a computer simulation of this effect.
DG
There is a difference between Science and Engineering (although Engineering depends on Science, and sometimes the attempt to solve an Engineering problem advances Science)
The Science behind fusion is well understood and proven out
The Engineering behind creating a self-sustaining fusion reaction from which more power can be extracted than consumed is a little more challenging - especially given that the only natural model we have requires collecting enough Hydrogen such that it starts to fuse under the pressures of its own gravity - a little tough to package in a useful manner.
But progress - or lack thereof - on an Engineering project does not necessarily discredit the Science.
DG
A question for you two biblical scholar types:
Can you post examples of where the text of a "corrupted" manuscript differs signifigantly from the text of an "uncorrupted" text?
It might be interesting to see the size of the head of the pin.
DG
A man who speaks three languages is trilingual.
A man who speaks two languages is bilingual.
A man who speaks one language is American.
DG
Is 20451 your college number perchance?
Rats. 321 off.
DG
I'm a Canadian (who works in the US) and I've noted (given my constant exposure to it) that American politics are very, very strange.
It seems that a large number of Americans see politics as some sort of sport or game, where "our team" plays against "their team" with control of the Presidency, House, Senate etc as both goal and a means of keeping score.
As such, it seems that many, many voters look straight past the issues, and instead vote for their "team" regardless of the conduct of the actual players.
A prime example is what happened to Bill Clinton, and what is now (not) happening to Dubya.
Clinton is an articulate, intelligent man. He is also a known philanderer who had an affair on the job and lied about it. And despite this character flaw, during his two terms as President, the US did pretty well.
Yet despite his intelligence and demonstrated competance, he and his wife were the targets of levels of harrassment and abuse, orchestrated by "the other side", to a degree that was downright Orwellian. Once the affair (and the subsequent lie) was exposed, he was hauled in front of an impeachement hearing, ostensibly for lying to the American People.
Now I cannot condone the lie, although I can understand it - the man was trying to protect his private life. Martial fidelity is a deeply personal subject and nobobody wants his dirty laundry aired publically.
But at the end of the day, the issue of if Clinton had an affair or not, or if he lied about it or not, had zero impact on the type of job he was doing as President.
But now....
We have a President who plays for the other team; the team that went to such extrordinary lengths to try and bring down the former President. this President, too, has been caught in a lie, also presented directly to the American people. But unlike the former President's lie, THIS lie was used to justify taking the country to war against another nation. Unlike Clinton's hummer, Dubya's lie about Iraq buying nuclear material resulted in enormous taxpayer expendature and American deaths.
The latter lie is more serious than the former by several orders of magnitude, but is is going unchallenged, from what I can see because the journalists who should be going after Dubya for his misconduct play for his team.
If this isn't corruption, I don't know what is.
So then, I ask you - are you capable of breaking away from your "team" and voting for someone based on concience and consideration of the issues, or are you forever tied to support the candidate with the (R) behind his name?
DG