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Comment Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score 1) 546

War is not a necessity, we do not need war. War is inevitable. Whether it be a president, a dictator or a tribal chieftan any sizable group of people will put someone in control. Then, when groups meet the leaders will send their pawns to go fight. This is human nature.

War is too powerful of a tool for governments to ever let go. War is a means of obtaining what one wants without making it themselves. War is a means of instilling fear in your people, or hatred of the enemy thus keeping the people looking to the leader for protection and keeping their attention off of the leaders' own evils.

People banding together has not and will not eliminate war. Just look at the 60s. How popular was it to protest the Vietnam war? We didn't get an end to war out of that, just some good music, a lot of pot and the hippies who later turned in their ideals and became the yuppies.

The serfs did not wake up one day and throw off their monarchies. The monarchs became to secure in their positions. They allowed some families to become richer and more powerful then they were. These families along with some free minded "serfs" (there are always a few rare ones) stirred up the people and eliminated the monarch threat to their own position. Now they exist today in the form of the corporations and political parties which are slowly chipping away those freedoms returning the "Free World" to our more natural less free state.

Democracy is not a new idea which is suddenly sweeping the world. Democracy has existed at various times and places such as Ancient Greece and Rome. Yes, some parts of the world are currently becoming more free but surely by the time that the current dictatorships, monarchies, etc... are all replaced with democracies many of the existing democracies will be replaced with dictatorships and monarchies.

I only hope that mankind starts colonizing frontiers on other worlds before society on this one becomes so tightly controlled that natural selection starts taking away our brainpower and makes our descendants collective like ants. That I'm convinced is the future on this world. Only in open spaces where we can expand too thin for central control does human nature tend towards freedom.

Comment Re:As far as the miscarriage one goes. . . (Score 1) 703

That depends... how were the workers evaluated. Her recent performance was probably affected by her situation but this would not have lasted. If they did take this into consideration, and her pre-miscarriage performance was below the others then it certainly makes sense to chose her to go. Timing certainly sucks though... Was it so urgent that they get rid of someone that they couldn't just wait a month or so then get rid of her?

Comment Re:Obama == Bush (corporate friend)? (Score 1) 546

Poverty and War, boring, snore snore

These two issues are old news and have plagued mankind since civilization began. What issue doesn't get thrown on the back burner to wait for solutions to never come.

We will always have poverty, we will always have war we cannot lose those as much as we would like to.

If we don't hold our politicians accountable while we still have a democracy that allows us to do so we will lose that.

Comment Re:No More Cowbell (Score 2, Insightful) 610

Not so simple.

Imagine Apple powered by RIAA lawyers. (Is it really that hard?) They would pay your phone carrier to monitor activity to and from your phone , building up their evidence of a jailbroken phone . When ready, their super expensive (better than you can afford) lawyers would write it all up and submit it to the court along with 100 or so other cases. As I understand it this is illegal but it's not like our government (US) has been keeping to it's own laws much lately.

Up till now you are clueless, happily enjoying your open device. Then you receive a registered letter informing you of the problem. The case is made against you before you even knew you needed to mount a defense.

Now, you are given a choice. Fork over a good amount of hard earned cash immediately, or face trial.

If you chose trial there will be a panel of highly paid lawyers of a different class than you can afford explaining their case to a probably technically incompetent appointed for life, answering to no one judge. Who will explain said "technobable" to him? Said lawyers of course. This trial will not be for the large lump of cash which was asked for previously in the settlement offer, it will be for a much larger amount that will probably keep you broken for life.

Yes, you are in the right. You were only using your device which you own as you see fit.

Good luck with that.

Comment Re:I have a better idea. (Score 1) 610

That would be fine too. I like the Zaurus option b/c of the USB host and microdrive, you could extend it to do just about anything with that but an IPAQ with SD+CF would be just fine. In fact, the same software could probably run on both!

Actually, even the old US sold Zauri (55/5600 series) which I mentioned not using would technically work for this as they have both CF and SD though I don't think you would want to carry them in your pocket and you could get so much more power from something newer.

Comment Re:I have a better idea. (Score 1) 610

Sounds nice...

Good luck with that though...

Here in the US it's going to take the money of a large corporation to get the phone FCC type approved. I doubt it is much better elsewhere.

Even if you get past that the carriers won't touch it. They want to charge you for each program you install, each ringtone you download etc... Then they want to charge it again when you upgrade to a new phone. They won't let your open phone on their network.

What might work... a PDA with a CF cellular modem card. I think Cingular had CF cards for a while just before AT&T ate them. I'm not sure if you can get voice through it though. If not there is alway VoIP but it requires the data connection be on which will probably go through batteries faster than most people would want to deal with. Plus, any data plan I have seen forbids using it for VoIP (protecting that traditional phone revenue). You would always be at risk of getting noticed and turned off.

If you did this you would need a PDA with a CF slot. Since most PDAs only have one memory slot filling it with your cell modem kind of sucks. For that reason I would suggest a Sharp Zaurus. Not the ones which were released here in the US 10 years ago (too outdated) but the clamshell ones they only sold in Japan. Some of those had internal microdrives and USB host.

You might want to look into Opie and GPE. I think they both had phone editions, or at least phone apps. I would go with GPE as it's X based, you could port all sorts of stuff to it w/o much work. They could probably use some updated 3d eye candy though if this is to compete with the iPhone. GPE + compiz? Is it possible?

Of course, having a device with a CF card sticking out the top all the time is an invitation for breakage too if it catches on something...

Any better ideas???

Comment Apple the new Mickeysoft? Hardly (Score 1, Insightful) 610

Apple has always been more proprietary than Mickeysoft! Before OSS gained a real showing outside of academia Mickeysoft was the open, free choice over Apple because at least you could choose the hardware.

And yet... so many Mickeysoft hating OSS fans (me) also love Apple (not me). Not even PocketPC locks it's users into the one Mickeysoft marketplace. Leave it to Apple to come up with that.

Honestly, if you bought an iPhone, turn in your geek card immediately and seek rehabilitation! Myself, I'll hold onto my PocketPC until a REAL Linux phone is released. Something with X, GTK and Qt where I can actually port my Desktop apps over with no more than a UI shuffle to handle the small screen. Not a new (read no existing software base)Java API with a Linux kernel hiding under 10 layers of cruft as though someone was embarrassed of it(that means you GPhone)

Comment Bloat? I didn't see anything about that! (Score 2, Insightful) 187

I didn't see anything in the article where the author made a value statement, that it is bad (or good) that system calls are increasing. He was just pointing out that the trend is not towards simplicity in this area.

I would also point out, that ext4 is very new and ntfs may not be new but never has been quite completed so active feature development could explain away the upward curves in their call counts, though not the absolute values.

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