Yahoo! Answers is rejecting Open-Source options in answers

Please go here to have the full story: the question, my answer, Yahoo’s official reason, etc.

Yahoo Answers + Open Source Censorship. Yahoo’s reason and the question in… question.

[Psst! Go to the link!]

I answered a question a few days ago (I can’t find the link at the moment) that was basically:

Someone got a computer from a friend that has some serious problems with Windows. S/he has none of the disks (XP or restore) and was asking for recommendations.

This was my reply after reading some of the other answers:

If you buy the XP disks you just get that – XP. No MS office, no other programs other than the very basics.

If you’re starting over anyways, grab a blank CD and use imgburn ( http://imgburn.com/ ) to burn an Ubuntu ( http://ubuntu.com/ ) or Kubuntu ( http://kubuntu.com/ ) .iso on there.

Put the burned CD in the CD tray and restart the computer. It doesn’t need a hard drive at all to run – it loads into the computer’s RAM (temporary memory).

K/ubuntu comes fully loaded and thousands of other programs are just a few clicks away – you just look them up in a built in installer, it grabs the stuff needed and installs it all. It’s free in both senses of the word – free of cost and free of obligations.

Upcoming attack on the WTC (Global Warming) and no one cares.

Originally titled: If Only Gay Sex Caused Global WarmingNo one seems to care about the upcoming attack on the World Trade Center site. Why? Because it won’t involve villains with box cutters. Instead, it will involve melting ice sheets that swell the oceans and turn that particular block of lower Manhattan into an aquarium.

The odds of this happening in the next few decades are better than the odds that a disgruntled Saudi will sneak onto an airplane and detonate a shoe bomb.
And yet our government will spend billions of dollars this year to prevent global terrorism and … well, essentially nothing to prevent global warming.

Why are we less worried about the more likely disaster?

The United States – A People Losing its Identity

 

The United States of America is no longer united. It’s being divided by its own devices and it’s unknowingly dividing and infecting the rest of the world.

Capitalism, the nature of the system, the nervous system of the U.S., is working to perfection. The American Dream is turning into a nightmare. While millions of people go without the white fence, many millions more aren’t satisfied with just a white fence. More, more, more…that’s the name of the game. Your success and identity is defined by not only what you own, but how much.

Osama Bin Forgotten… or so it seems

http://flickr.com/photos/picturemehere/132452065/

Ignoramus Thursday: We The People

This made me laugh and wake up my daughter:

WE let him steal the election… twice. And WE have let him run loose on:

* Katrina
* Iraq
* the Constitution

I’m not even mentioning the economy and the deficit, the sorry state of education, global warming, Medicare, etc. On a very real level, we’re all responsible for his freedom of actions, reactions, distractions.

http://www.seancoon.org/2006/03/ignoramus_thursday_we_the_people-2.html

Child-care promises have been forgotten

(Jan 31, 2007)One year ago the Conservative Party of Canada won an election on a key platform issue, improving child care in the country through “choice” options and by promising to create 25,000 new child-care spaces per year.

No spaces have been created and the “plan” hasn’t materialized.

Canadians, who believe that the $100 a month was the “plan” — sold to the electorate and bought by 36.3 per cent of voters — are understandably frustrated.

For those of us who qualify for the $100 cheques each month (the Universal Child Care Benefit), a rude awakening will occur at year end when both the province and federal government tax this benefit.

Iraqi Oil Belongs To The Iraqi People

 

Posted by balkanbalkan on April 1st, 2007

CommonDreams The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have already cost the American people more than $500 billion, the deaths of 3200 U.S. troops, 25,000 others wounded, and countless Iraqi lives. The total price tag is projected to top $1.2 trillion.With the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq upon us, the Bush administration asks Congress for $93 billion more for the war, over and above the fiscal year 2008 Pentagon request for $484 billion – an 11% increase over last year! The war machine eats well while starving our people of decent housing, quality health care, and education. The Gulf Coast remains a disaster.

Capitalism: Paragon Of Childcare – Child Mortality Rising

April 1st, 2007 — RickB

 

Yep, only the Empire has a worse rate out of the 24 richest countries. Looks like the ‘Anglosphere’ of Conrad Black’s wet dreams is marching gloriously forward, over the bones of it’s children:-

The researchers, from Dundee University, who link relatively high infant mortality with income inequality, found that in the UK the gap between the haves and the have-nots was the third biggest among the 24 countries. They calculated that the top 20 per cent of people in the UK have more than 2.5 times the income of the bottom 40 per cent, almost double the difference in Japan.

Their work, which is reported this week in the Journal of Public Health, analysed Unicef data on child mortality and income inequality. The study comes 14 years after the UK and other “Anglo-American” rich countries were strongly criticised in a Unicef study on child neglect in wealthy nations. That study did not report on child death rates but at that time the UK ranked 15th for child mortality;the new research shows it has now dropped to joint 22nd, just above the US.

The results show that the child mortality rate, based on the number of children dying before the age of five per 1,000 live births averaged over a four-year period, was below five in the top six countries – Sweden at 3.25, followed by Iceland (3.75) Norway (4.00) Denmark (4.25) Japan (4.50) and Finland (4.75). The bottom six were New Zealand, Australia, and Ireland (all 6.0), UK and Canada (6.5) and the US (8.0).

The researchers also calculated income inequality in each country by comparing the income share of the top 20 per cent with that of the bottom 40 per cent. The ratio was lowest in Luxembourg, Japan, Finland and Norway, where the income of the top earners 20 per cent was only 1.5 times greater than the bottom 40 per cent. But the ratio was 2.5 in the UK and 2.8 in the US.

“There is a very strong association between income inequality and under-five child mortality among the wealthier OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries,” said the report. “Within this group the highest child mortality figures are to be found in those ‘Anglo-American’ countries which attracted criticism in 1993 in a Unicef study on child neglect. Since 1960, the relative ranking, based on increasing under-five mortality, of these countries has markedly worsened relative to the others.”

David Collison, who led the study, said: “All the Anglo-American countries do pretty badly. It is clear that inequality is linked to the poor position of the UK and elsewhere.”-

Why do these pessimists do this, why not a happy story about the booming child coffin industry? Celebrating not only entrepreneurship but hard work and the pro business policies that enable it. Nu-Labour said they would halve child poverty, now don’t moan just because they didn’t specify how.

http://tenpercent.wordpress.com/2007/04/01/capitalism-paragon-of-childcare-child-mortality-rising/

Flavoured stevia + plain yogurt = beyond yum!

As a follow-up to my post about making yogurt, I’d like to mention that there’s a natural sweetener you probably know nothing about. It’s called “Stevia” and it’s from the leaves of a plant.

Stevia contains absolutely no sugar but is 200 – 400 times sweeter than sugar. It’s not a chemical concoction that burns holes in your brain like aspartame. Stevia’s been used for years… centuries probably by the locals.

So… why haven’t you heard about it? The gov’t is holding it back from the general public as a sweetener. Why is up for debate – they say they don’t know for sure that it’s safe. On the other hand it hasn’t been massively tested because it’s not highly profitable. As a plant extract it’s unpatentable. Unpatentable means no monopoly on it’s production.

But you can get your hands on it if you look in the “herbal suppliments” section of stores. Where I live there are even flavoured varieties – vanilla creme, raspberry, orange, etc. Most people put it in their coffee, but as it’s heat stable you can cook with it too!

You can’t say that about aspartame.

And don’t get me started on Splenda – it gives me gas that’s more painful than labour.

The media doesn’t always get things right

This hoopla about Muslims and that stupid drawing has everyone in a tizzy.

I can understand it… sorta.

Some people are afraid of Muslims cause they think they’re the same as the “9-11 terrorists” and Muslims are pissed off cause they’re already considered the same as the “9-11 terrorists”.

Mmmm no. They’re not.

How would I know? I’ve lived around people of many different faiths, and I dated a guy who happened to be a Muslim. Went to class with a couple people who were Muslim.