Slashdot Mirror

Well, since we are redefining what censorship means...

Who is? Not me. Censorship according to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (per Reference.com) is "The act, process, or practice of censoring." And censoring is "To examine and expurgate," e.g., by a censor. And a censor is "A person authorized to examine books... or other material and to remove... what is considered morally... or otherwise objectionable." Emphasis added, to highlight the connection to the (moral) justification provided by the Kansas AG. Doesn't sound like redefinition, just a perfect example for a future printing of a dictionary.

...any ship made of...

Booo....

Say that I specialize in middle-tier code. But if I'm working against a poorly designed database, my chances of delivering a successful product go down. If the front-end coder doesn't know what they're doing, again, my chances of delivering a successful product go down. The same with the documentation writers, the installer writer, the support staff, etc.

The probability of failure in software is multiplicative, meaning that if any one person in the chain is a "zero" at their job, the result is a zero.

What this proposal (software as a mass-produced item) does is put the burden of responsibilty of delivering a timely & quality product on the heads of technical management (where it ought to be). They have to select people with the right skills and skill level to form a team that is able to deliver the product on-time and on-budget.

However, my personal experiences to date are that technical managers got there via the Peter Principle and the chance of this idea actually working is about nil.

Chip H.

ECONOMICS IS NOT A SCIENCE!

Just have to say the word moron.

Yes, in fact, it is: The most prevelant definition, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=science clearly makes economics a science.

Methanol can also be made from renewable resources such as wood, municipal solid wastes and sewage.

It is also a byproduct of the process of converting waste cooking oil to biodiesel.

Nice try, though.

though I do believe corporations already use terrorism to get what they want (SCO, RIAA, etc.)

Terrorism is the use of mass murder of random people to invoke political changes.

No. Terrorism is the use of fear to force others to submit to your will. The fear of death is both strong and easy to use, so most terror organizations go with it. This, however, doesn't mean that one has to use fear of death - corporations might find the fear of bancrupty easier to inspire.

Besides, hasn't RIAA hired bands of thugs to harass street vendors ? I seem to recall reading a Slashdot story about it...

The SCO and RIAA use laws in a court room to force specific people to surrender property for engaging in specific activities.

No, they use the threat of lawsuits to force people to give them money. People so threatened are selected on the basis of being too poor to properly defend themselves without risking bancrupty, but not so poor that they couldn't pay.

See this and this.

SCO and RIAA do not use terrorism to achieve their goals. This is a bad choice of metaphor because it trivalizes the actions of murderers and over-exagerates the SCO and RIAA actions.

From Dictionary.com:

\Ter"ror*ism\, n. [Cf. F. terrorisme.] The act of terrorizing, or state of being terrorized; a mode of government by terror or intimidation.

\Ter"ror*ize\, v. t. [Cf. F. terroriser.] To impress with terror; to coerce by intimidation.

Put these together, and it seems to me that the RIAA is indeed engaging in terrorism.

tell it to the bard:

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=petard

Word History: The French used pétard, "a loud discharge of intestinal gas," for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. "To be hoist by one's own petard," a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means "to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices." The French noun pet, "fart," developed regularly from the Latin noun pditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd-, "fart."/i

Try this

HST"="Hubble Space Telescope." Thanks to Chris Johansen for pointing out the overloaded acryonym

Do you mean acronym, which please note is derived from the Greek: acro [head] and nym [word]. Opposing views beow, there is no requirement that this acro-nym be pronounceable as a normal word, this is a restriction imosed very much in recent times.

This link may help explain that part of his post.

air (esp. #1b)

Semantics of the word indoctrination aside, the reason this is so objectionable is that the kids aren't being taught the law as it is written, but the law the record companies use it.

What's next, Microsoft and the BSA telling kids that copying software is bad? Copying software is perfectly legal, under the right license, and so is copying music. The record companies are desperate so to maintain their old business model -- one that simply doesn't make sense now that music can be disseminated with neglible cost -- that they've resorted to indoctrinating kids with the traditional, and false, view of music.

P.S. Who modded the parent a troll? Having a different point of view isn't trolling.

but there was that one government minister who was forced to resign after calling President Bush a moron.

President Bush is not a moron. "Moron" denotes intelligence typical of children from ages 7 through 12; even my Democratic mother would probably put the President's mind at least past puberty.

I'm not sure which comment you're referring to as tautology, but I have to assume that you're referring to the comment about amputating a growth. This may be tautological, but it's also referred to as a moral or a summary example. It's a common and effective form of rhetoric to first rebut a statement with a topical demonstration of an example that voids the original premis; then summarize the underlying principle in the scope of a much shorter example (presented as a truism) which demonstrates the principle itself on another topic. The overall effect being a demonstration that the original premis is wrong, and it's wrong in more than just the specific example presented; instead it's incorrect across a wide berth of similar situations.

However, rebutting my statement based on a tautology present in it is a logical fallacy known as Style Over Substance. You don't address the logic in the statements I made, rather you attack the manner in which they were delivered. Even if delivered poorly, their truth and applicability aren't affected.

Ultimately it remains that OS service packs serve a greater purpose than maintaining reverse compatibility: they fix bugs on the OS level (just as appliation service packs address bugs on the application level). If these bugs are being taken advantage of by an application and the application now breaks, that is still desirable behavior on the part of the OS service pack.

In this case the approach Microsoft took to many of the areas which they are fixing in this service pack was wrong initially. They incorrectly advised developers to use tools that have since been proven impossible to appropriately secure. It's very unfortunate that fixing these issues will kneecap many existing applications, but I for one am very glad Microsoft has decided to address the underlying issues despite the pain it'll cause.

Hey, people: I'm not saying that just calling people names is directly a crime. It just depends on the situation, plain simple. You cannot call someone a "delicate fag" in the middle of a public speech and expect it to be treated as "just your opinion about him". It doesn't matter if you say it is just your opinion, what matter is if other people can interpretate that your affirmation means more than just bad words directed to a person.

And, about the "right to not be humiliated", that's a "right" indirectly covered by injury law, and it does not relates only to your words, your actions (posting a message to difamate him) and intentions can be punished too.

I know it does sound stupid, but "fat" and "ugly" are direct affirmations, clearly crossing the line between your opinion and false statement. But they are just a minor issue here. Saying someone is fat might not give you a suit, but saying someone is a "shyster" can be interpreted as a direct affirmation that the said person is unethical and unscrupulous.

You cannot just say someone is a "unscrupulous and corrupt son of a bitch". You're directly asserting that this person is corrupt. It doesn't matter if his mother is a "bitch" or not, because your statement that the person is corrupt has already given him enough reason to sue you.

I still think his suit was very, very, stupid. But calling him names, using very large groups of people, can give him very good legal arguments.

To the lovable AC-

1)Not all devices are available as usb/fw combos.
2)Almost no devices need any more throughput than USB Hi-speed provides.
3)Even if 1 and 2 were not the case, it would not be any justification for the parent I replied to, which acted like it didn't matter that the USB2 on the chipset under discussion was completely broken. The fact that there's USB on a (hypothetical) board doesn't excuse bad ps2 ports either.
4)Near as I can tell, few boards using the chipset in question even had firewire.
5)If you are going to accuse me of having my head in my ass, pay more attention to what the fuck you're talking about...because I usually do. And while you're at it, try not to use ridiculous non-words like irregardless while you do it.

Thanks

I believe the parent of your post (Grandparent of this one) would be firmly covered by the 1st Amendment of the US constitution, as his post falls into the realm of SATIRE.

1. a: literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.

Protected speech is a grand thing, as long as you make your intent clear.

Indeed, I have no idea if he is actually a shyster but this does sound like he is now engaging in pettifoggery one way or another :)

pettifogger

Sorry it's my new word of the day.

tr.v. obsoleted, obsoleting, obsoletes: To cause to become obsolete.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=obsolete And it gets used, too, even in slashdot headlines.

What a beautiful world anthology is. It comes from the Greek for a gathering of flowers, and in literature means a collection of works. Harry Fuecks, a very frequent contributor to the SitePoint community PHP forums, has gathered a bouquet of PHP best practices in a new book.

I'm somehow grateful you didn't use the word nosegay.

http://dictionary.reference.com/

Gives you both the spelling, and the meaning.
Or, you could use Google, and type "define: " in. That'll look up definitions, too.

This comes up every time. The only place "government" appears in the definitions of "censor" is in the context of ancient Rome. Non-governments are perfectly capable of engaging in censorship, it's just not necessarily a First Amendment violation when they do.

Calling someone a shyster might be considered libellous; knowing its probable origin adds insult to injury.

irony

I'm not sure if that's just a typo, but do you mean "Tongue in cheek" instead of "tung in check"?

Mind you I have not read the book..
nor will I.. but..

Seems to me based on the definition of rape:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rape

So Katie T is attempting to rape Katie J..

If the PS3 games can be played on the PS2, then they are backwards compatible. If the PS2 games can be played on the PS3, then the PS3 is backwards compatible.

I refer you to FOLDOC: " For example, WordPerfect 6.0 can read WordPerfect 5.1 files, so it is backward compatible."

HTH, HAND.

If the PS3 games can be played on the PS2, then they are backwards compatible. If the PS2 games can be played on the PS3, then the PS3 is backwards compatible.

I refer you to FOLDOC: " For example, WordPerfect 6.0 can read WordPerfect 5.1 files, so it is backward compatible."

HTH, HAND.

If the PS2 could play PS3 games then the PS2 would be forwards compatible. That the PS3 can play PS2 games means that the PS3 is backwards compatible with the PS2.

Check a dictionary.

• HP and Open Source
• IBM Open source projects
• IBM Wont Use Patents Against Linux
• Software giants feel open source pressure
• Sun, Java and Open Source
• Nokia fights Microsoft by addressing Series 60 developer complaints

I also have no doubt whatsoever that your statement is bald zealotry

If the current corporate adoption of OSS is what constitutes critical mass (ie a few marginal projects here and there), then continue to welcome our current microsoft overlords..

If there's anything more pathetic than somebody that bothers to post to correct another posters spelling, it's someone who tries but is incorrect.

>>What the initial poster was talking about was a motherfucking update, NOT a service pack.

Since when is a service pack not an update?

Update:

1. Information that updates something.

2. The act or an instance of bringing something up to date.

3. An updated version of something.

Now. Please. Tell me how a Service pack doesn't count as an update?

NeoThermic

I think it was "stress helps to delimit the morphemes", where "delimit" is defined here.

Republic?

We've always been a republic. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands... Futhermore, the country as a whole is a Federal Republic, and each state is a Republic, too, and Texas was once it's own country--and they're the only state that is allowed to seperate from the union, if they so desire.

(Frankly, I think we should kick 'em out of the union and then invade 'em for the oil.)

We practice SOME of the principles of Democracy, which is probably a good thing. If we were totally Democratic (like Greece) We'd never get a fucking thing done (just look at their country--it takes forever to do anything. Olympic buildings and whatnot, for example.. Everyone's got a vote on it.)

But, yeah. People that call the US a democracy are so ignorant it must hurt.

hibernation doesn't say diddly about the heart stopping . If the heart and/or respiration stops, you die due to lack of oxygen in the brain.

Machine gun would still accurate, if the weapon in question was capable of firing more than one round per depression of the trigger.
Of course some people choose to limit the scope of the word.
Some differentiate between assault rifle and squad automatic weapons by calling the SAW a machine gun and the others rifles.
Others draw the line between single opperator and multiple operators or man-portable and vehicle mounted. The SAW is man-portable and a single soldier can weild it effectively. Other machine guns are not portable by a single soldier and require a crew of two or more to effectively transport, setup, and weild.

There are also very clear legal definitions of public. Yours isn't one of them.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=axle

"dumbass"

• Word History: It is fitting that the name of an authoritarian political movement like Fascism, founded in 1919 by Benito Mussolini, should come from the name of a symbol of authority. The Italian name of the movement, fascismo, is derived from fascio, "bundle, (political) group," but also refers to the movement's emblem, the fasces, a bundle of rods bound around a projecting axe-head that was carried before an ancient Roman magistrate by an attendant as a symbol of authority and power. The name of Mussolini's group of revolutionaries was soon used for similar nationalistic movements in other countries that sought to gain power through violence and ruthlessness, such as National Socialism.

Yes it is

Wait a sec...

Here

Blackmail is entirely the wrong word.

I think the word you're looking for is trade.

Blackmail is entirely the wrong word.

I think the word you're looking for is trade.

[Latin virus, poison.]

"You're guess is as good as mine."

the difference between "e.g." and "i.e."

The word you are probably looking for is declension. Conjugation refers to verbs.

The word you are probably looking for is declension. Conjugation refers to verbs.

My suspicion is that there's not any right now (or perhaps much less than the MS newsbot) but you can't ever be sure.

I think you're being paranoid. Google is a very transparent company and has always been such. They are proud of their tech and like to show it off. Their claim of non-bias is better than MS's stated bias by default.

Video directors use those techniques because they *work*.

...instead of creating something new that also works... or works better.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=creativit y