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Comment Re:Why (Score 2) 529

Time and time again, posters on Slashdot talk about the 'fictitious' threat of terrorism that government uses as the excuse for encroachments on perceived liberties.

How many people died in terrorist attacks last year? How many died in the hands of various authoritarian regimes?

I think even the most cursory review of history shows which threat deserves more attention.

You, the posters are the reason why an actual coordinated attack within a 'safe' democratic country is news on Slashdot.

We're the reason why coordinated attacks are rare enough to be newsworthy and why rushing in with a gun now counts as a coordinated attack? I think you give us too much credit.

Comment Re:IN OTHER WORDS? (Score 1) 774

This is one time me and the FOSSies are actually on the same page, as just like windows 8 was forced from on high and gave the users a big fat greasy finger so too is systemd being pushed by corporate with exactly zero fucks given about what the end users want.

Most end users don't care about the init system one way or another, since most end users don't ever mess with it. On the other hand, every end user was forced to mess with Metro. That's the difference.

Comment Re:you deserve neither (Score 1) 331

you're an idiot

I acknowledge your feelings of inadequacy. But it would be more effective to improve yourself than attack random strangers online, especially since your ad hominems are less than impressive, too. Might I suggest learning basic reading comprehension as a start?

just because some asshats are screening new hire's facebook page doesn't mean we should surrender all privacy rights

I didn't propose we do.

really, everything about your post is upside-down...

Try adjusting your system configuration.

Comment Re:In Japan (Score 1) 331

One beer? You're an idiot. Who'd want to live in a society where job loss and de facto permanent unemployment occurs at the slightest infraction?

Driving drunk is not a slight infraction, and many (most?) companies screen their employees for off-hour drug use nowadays - heck, I've heard that having Facebook pics of yourself drinking beer can get you disqualified from a job. We already have all the worst sides of authoritarianism, so why not get what few good things there are, too?

Comment Re:Ahhhh.... (Score 1) 489

Um, this law is wholly illiberal, why would liberals ever want this?

"But why would they want to kill their own customers?"
"Why do madmen do anything? They're bloody madmen, that's why!" -Arcanum

Political debate gets a lot easier when you pretend your opponents do not have any motives besides being card carrying villains. This also has the added benefits of not needing to think your own politics or their consequences, after all since your opponent is evil you are by definition good. Operation Barbarossa? What's that?

Basically, the OP was simply confirming their tribal identity as one of the Good Guys, and happened to belong to the tribe called "conservatives". Since the issue at hand is not one of the flag issues - issues used for defining the tribe's identity - they were free to acknowledge the proposal as evil and attribute it to the other tribe ("liberals"). Had this been one of those issues, for example gay rights, we'd been treated to a convoluted logic to "prove" that their tribe was correct and the other evil.

This kind of behaviour is typical for political fringes, where it serves to help the members keep their flame going, but since the US only has two parties it gets injected straight to the core of the nation's political life, the result being increasing instability.

Comment Re:Overly broad? (Score 1) 422

Also, for the natural foods buffs, please note that honey is mostly fructose and glucose in almost the same concentration as HFCS, so if HFCS is bad for you, "natural" honey is probably not a solution to this problem.

Well, perhaps we could repurpose a rollercoaster to produce a less sugary alternative to insect vomit?

Comment Re:are the debian support forums down? (Score 1) 286

The base coding languages, which are abstractions of the machine language. Those are the only libraries that should be installed, in the first place.

I don't really see how an interpreter or a JIT compiler would help the problem, or even be a library for that matter. The issue isn't how to make the same code run on multiple architectures, after all, but how to make the program logic flexible enough to handle the absence of a service yet make full use of it when present.

Also, most languages are still stuck with only standard input and output without third-party libraries, which are typically an awful fit. This is not the 80's anymore, that hasn't cut it for the long time now, and not really even then. Most applications aren't headless servers, and require graphics and proper UI.

Comment Re:The mention of Valentina Tereshkova is ridiculo (Score 1) 200

It depends on whether you consider "look what happened to me!" to be worthier than "look at what I achieved in my life through my own skills and determination".

Wan Hu was determined to go to space. That didn't do much good for him, since he happened to live in 16th century (if at all). It takes more just personal qualities to achieve anything at all, thus evevery achievement has an element of "look what happened to me!". And of course this is all ignoring the fact that while you did indeed earn those skills, the intelligence and discipline required to do so were handed to you by birth and upbringing, both of which simply happened to you.

It takes more than just the end result ot judge the worthiness of an accomplishment. You also have to determine the starting point and any factors influencing the performance along the way. But that might lead to some uncomfortable conclusions about the nature of pure meritocracy, and especially about how fair it actually is, so in practice people simply worship fortune and fame.

You're also assuming that the Soviets simply sent up the first woman who happened to walk past the recruiting office, with the famously reliable Soviet technology eliminating the need for any training or even basic guts, but whatever.

Comment Re:Best use of resources? (Score 1) 87

If we developed an Ebola vaccine, it might be the world's greatest knows way of eliminating Luddites.

You can eliminate Luddites by making sure people losing their jobs to machines don't become desolate. That was, after all, Ludd's complaint. But of course any actual method of doing so would be eeevil socialism, so I guess it's easier to remain ideologically pure and pretend ludditism is about some inherent hate of progress.

Comment Re:are the debian support forums down? (Score 1) 286

And this is why we have LIBRARIES.

And when someone complains they should be able to install only the libraries they want, what layer of abstraction comes to rescue then?

Making the entire system an onion doesn't solve the issue but does add complexity, and it's completely irrational to do so just because someone wants a custom system out of the box, especially since they won't be any happier with n+1 library dependencies either.

Comment Re:Can We Get This for Kids? (Score 1) 304

I wonder though, what you might suggest for a child that refuses to be responsible? Do you think it will go better for them if the parent just slowly goes hands off regardless of the child's maturity level?

Actually, yeah, it might. You said it yourself below:

I've know kids that simply needed to realize the world was hard work and became responsible adults.

It's much better for everyone that this wakeup call comes before the person in question can, for example, make legally binding contracts or other actions with long-lasting consequences.

That said, it just occurred to me that I'm arguing with someone who's family I've never met about their parenting methods based on a three-paragraph Slashdot message, so... sorry.

Comment Re:are the debian support forums down? (Score 1) 286

How about "can have and run only if you want".

No, because to do so every program needs to support 2^n different configurations, where n is the number of services they could potentially make use of. Most developers aren't going to bother, so in practice you either run a set of services or don't run the program. And at that point it makes sense to define a standard set which a program can expect a server or desktop to have.

Comment Re: Heavier than air flight is impossible (Score 1) 350

And who knows what "the physics" will be like in 20, 50, 200 years time?

Theory of Relativity didn't mean you could suddenly ignore gravity and just jump into space. New physics might unify and connect phenomenom previously thought unconnected, but they won't make them go away.

Also, the reason we don't currently use fission rather than coal is political, and the same politics will also keep either hot or cold fusion from being used, should either ever get functional. People conditioned to fear anything nuclear will not change their minds until the rolling blackouts start, and at that point it's far too late.

In other words - just because currently "the physics" says "cold fusion can't be done", is no reason to say "so we shouldn't try" - that way lies stagnation.

By all means, keep trying to jump into space, just don't expect other people to pay you attention until you succeed and can prove it.

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