Humodour

He was allowed. He just chose not to. He chose to boycott his own trial and go on talk shows instead and try to convince people he was a lovable rascal.

The latest Ubuntu Live CD's default option (since like 8.04 or so) doesn't carry partitioning risk anyway (unless you specifically want to partition). It just squeezes the Windows partition and installs Ubuntu in the spare space for you automatically. No formatting, no hassle, no risk.

Bestest EVAR! SECRET AGENT SAM!

Standards certainly isn't evil. You don't need to have a monopoly to have standards, though. Poor comparison. You should be thinking of hardware. There has definitely not been any hardware monopoly for PCs. Perhaps instead they should make a console with a single console OS and allow competing hardware vendors to utilise that OS? Oh wait. Seriously, the only thing consoles still have going for them is their controllers. For example, they've all been hacked to run Linux, etc. They're just glorified PCs, and their ability to continue to hide that fact is disintegrating.

What do you do? Analyst of some sort?

You seem to get by ok, so I don't think it poses a problem.

I just switched to methylphenidate (a cocaine analogue, marketed as 'Ritalin') from amphetamine (commonly sold as Adderall), and it's like 2 or 3 times better at improving my concentration and focus. Which is probably bad on an internet forum since it results in posts which exceed the character limit.

But all the Cylons that lived on Earth were different 'models', too (and as far as we know, the same as the final five, just not reborn), so how many human/cylon wars are we talking about? I think there's actually been three. Remember the 12 tribes made the 13th tribe leave (and then most likely bombed their new colony, Earth), so that was probably the first war.

Cont. It's called a free market. Only the fittest survive. It's not unique to open source. You see more open source projects die because they don't have to secure funding first (which acts like a vetting process). So what? Does it effect you if an open source project doesn't survive the first month? Any ideas that are half decent typically get picked up again later by people who have the drive to see them through. Plenty of people are willing to code for free. For many it's a creative pleasure. Don't even bother trying to use "no monetary incentive" as a justification against open source. And again you rely on a search result to 'prove' your point. No. Then be specific. Don't claim all strawberries taste bad because you ate a rotten one. Generally only the software which has an equivalent or superior open source alternative. If some random starts ranting about how all proprietary software is inhumane, just smile and pay attention to something else. Building a reliable reputation is a trait of companies and has nothing to do with open source software. The open source business model is to create the software for free and then provide sell support for it. This business model flies squarely in the face of the claims that "open source is not reliable". Again you show your ignorance. Most open source programmers are highly educated and often have technical jobs (the most common of which is obviously programming). I think you meant VB there. But to the point: All you did was provide a search result as 'proof' of your claim. Which is absolutely ludicrous even if your claim had of been true.

I gather you don't mind us discussing this in the thread, then. Yes. See the posts above. Ignorant means lack of knowledge in an area. It's not an insult unless you or others view such a lack of knowledge as a woeful deficit. I do not, but I will admit me it annoys me when ignorant opinion is touted as fact (which is not terribly fair on my part as I should correct you not condescend you). I don't care. You're still ignorant on open source software, just as I am ignorant on electronics and hardware these days. But you implied it. How else did you expect people to interpret the statement "open source is overrated"? Ubuntu started (and obviously remains) free and was then is funded by a multimillionaire, Firefox started free and then built a non-profit company around itself to develop it when it started converting people away from IE. Open source management is fine. Take a look at your typical successful open source project and you'll find that people contribute managerial skills like they do code. Those with poor management die. You haven't looked at the guts of many (any?) successful open source projects, then. You won't find any of those in the major Linux distributions for example, or Firefox, or many other things. Of course, those which do fail on these things often die. So? Blame that on poor management. It's certainly not unique to open source.

Maybe the final five aren't Cylons at all, but genetically enhanced humans who could accept a downloaded consciousness? I mean, they age, they were created before humanoid Cylons, they can reproduce like normal humans, and they aren't susceptible to radiation or that Cylon disease. Perhaps the people (Cylon or otherwise) who built those funky temples and wrote those prophecies were actually acting deliberately with knowledge of the five and their creation (and they obviously added extra programming to them, e.g. activate, home in on Kara's ship's beacon - which means THEY resurrected Kara and she's a Cylon, which fits because she's a sixth but was made AFTER the final five prophecies were told). Maybe they built them to stop any future war between Cylons and humans (and failed because of the sketchy nature of the whole thing - or perhaps they were only meant to stop total annihilation). As for the mysticism - it's not hard at all for humans to make mundane anecdotes or technical specifications mythical. Look at the Church of Scientology or the Viking Sagas. The Cylon dog raiders obviously knew they weren't humans but didn't automatically detect them as Cylon, either. Edit: There's plenty of gaps to fill here, but it's actually fairly self-consistent IMHO. Time travel would help, but I'm kind of hoping they avoid that.

1949? There was no EU back then, let alone a Coal-steel union that was formed in 1953. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Europe Nothing. Most projections show the US dollar won't collapse, and those that do show other countries' currencies collapsing more, meaning the USD is still the dominant currency. The Euro isn't a bad one, though. It's like 20% of world reserves (the USD is like 70%). Not really, they are just calling early elections. This might sound odd to Americans, but it happens in other countries when there's things like a loss of confidence, or supply (budget) is blocked, or the executive (President, Prime Minister, etc) calls for it. I found the total collapse of Iceland's economy to be far more interesting - due to their small size, most of their investment is foreign, which obviously killed them when America and Britain caught a severe case of the economic 'flu. Through it all they're still probably one of the richest countries in the world per capita, with one of the highest standards of life. The thing about PPP is it's for internal comparison. It says little to nothing about international strength or competitiveness. Of course, GDP growth is calculated based on internal growth for obvious reasons (i.e. to eliminate fluctuations based on currency shift). But yes, China's doubles with PPP to about $8 trillion. When I first learnt about the EU I was puzzled as to why Britain was a member "They're about as European as your average Australian!". It pissed Australians and New Zealanders off a lot when you guys entered the EU. So we set up a bunch of FTAs with eachother and South-East Asia instead. In hindsight, our economy got stronger because of it, so thanks. :D

I agree wholeheartedly. I disagree for a simple reason: it won't happen. Regional trade actually isn't easier or more profitable. It certainly hasn't been the significant force shaping economies in the past. Globalisation only hinders it further. This disagreement obviously frames the rest of this post. Far too simplistic for the reasons above. I believe each of those countries will have their power spread through the entire world, which is pretty much already the case. Australia relies on China, America, AND Japan for trade (among many other smaller partners). Which is why we typically don't suffer from recessions in any one country, only global ones (like when the USSR collapsed). Because China is in (or near) a recession now (by economist standards, not newspaper ones - 6% drop in GDP growth is enormous), Australia will enter one, too. Yep. Australia's even gearing up for war because our leaders expect a resource race (which I don't think will happen). It doesn't pay to be an unguarded diamond in a den of thieves. Then they're not exactly blocs, are they? Sort of. I mean they argue endlessly over the details but you can't deny they've concrete overarching ideology with the will and means to back it up (NATO). Expect hell if any country tries to go to war again. This makes a lot of sense. However I disagree with your use of the term 'bloc' because it has distinctly militaristic/political connotations. I think one thing it's safe to predict is that Africa will take China and India's place as an economic powerhouse in the next 50 years, though, because economic growth is logistic, and once China and India develop sufficiently, the capitalists will realise it's cheaper to offshore to Africa. It'll be weird to hear Indians complaining about their job being outsourced to Africa.

Oh, I didn't notice. Hah.

me@ferrous:/media/EXTERNAL/pygame/trip$ python main.py Cannot load image: data/sprites/0 Couldn't open data/sprites/0 What an arcane error message.

But I thought I vanquished you.

If you're still reading this, Crimson, here's a rundown of all the Linux replacements of popular Windows tools: http://www.e-linux.it/news_detail.php?id=7616 You can get almost all of them freely from Linux repositories.

No, it really isn't. The constant allusions to the Lords of Kobol, God(s), mysticism, and all the virtual beings don't paint that picture at all. Of course the us vs. them theme is prevalent but if they were aiming for that exclusively, they've been failing miserably for a whole 4 seasons now. I sincerely hope they're not going to try and retcon half the story away just to keep viewers like you happy.

Somebody, like, PM me when it's done.

No. It has to do with the 'third party' which was mentioned earlier which you were skeptical of. I just quoted the wrong post by you. So, what of it? What are the virtual beings, Dan, if not aliens (and obviously not Cylon or human)?

One would think so, right? Yet Google is being sued every whichway by Hollywood and the RIAA because their stuff is on YouTube. Hurlshoot: it helps to understand the mindset of the people implementing DRM before you go defending it.

What accounts for this, though? http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Virtual_beings

Hurry up and let Tom Bombadil take his merry band of whiny civilians off into space without any military backup. I'm sick of seeing them. Episode sucked. Best bit was Saul and Six discussing their baby.

Monty Python's sales on Amazon.com jump 23000% when they release all their episodes to YouTube for free. http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article....9/01/25/0041202

Because they want to? I don't know, why don't you ask their members of parliament? Turkey has been dabbling with membership to the EU and it's predecessors since 1949. Even the current Islamist party in power is pressing to join the EU. A lot of countries in the EU are also quite capable of going their own way. Aaaaand? But if they are part of anything, it's the European sphere of influence. I don't know about that, but the US, Iraq, and Turkey just signed a pact on eliminating the PKKK or is it PPPK? Whatever the main Kurdish terror group is called. Probably your the main issue. But once it becomes the sole remaining bone of contention between the EU and Turkey, it, too will fall. Turkey is already moving on this (though probably only because the EU tells them to). As a sign, ties between Armenia and Turkey are almost normalised. The Turkish constitution isn't terribly different to your typical European one. If other European states can manage conforming their constitutions to meet European guidelines, Turkey certainly can. We're not talking about the next 5 years here. Probably the next 20. But that's still short term, relatively speaking. For reference: