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No, we want things to be as fast as they can be.
From TFA:He must be criticizing open source programmers only. Because in business, programmers aren't focussed on speed and efficiency, they're focussed on what their bosses are breathing down their necks about: getting it out the door. Berger sounds like a VM-language bigot (or paid ($30K from MS)
What scares me is the wellbeing of the animal. Evolution isn't a process that guarantees particularly happy or pain-free animals, but it will guarantee that organisms are free enough of pain and misery to continue doing what is necessary to survive. And the system that these safeguards are implemented in (mainly the nervous system) is hideously complex, completely intertwined with the rest of the organism and not at all understood properly by us).
Currently chickens are so overbred that if they aren't slaughtered at the intended age they break the bones in their legs purely from the weight of the fat. We can get more fat into one chicken, but we can't insure that the rest of their body can handle it (and if we could it would be to expensive).
Imagine how much worse that's going to get when we can speed up evolution even more, by stripping out more of the safeguards. Cows are already ridiculous caricatures of the original animals, we can push them even further. Stretch their utters or increase their body fat. We don't need them to be able to stand up, live out their full lives, or even be able to eat naturally (there's tubes for that). And even if they still look normal on the outside, our cloning controlled breeding can probably lead to some torturous internal physiology, that we simply can't detect (or don't care enough about to look for it).
I will admit to a certain amount of hyperbole, but what really irks me about this is the cause. We're not curing cancer or diabetes here, we're not even trying to create some exquisite supermeat, the main reason that the bio-industry is so happy about this is that they can provide a stable quality. All this effort and risk is just to ensure that your third big-mac tastes exactly the same as the previous two. To me that's a horrible way to look at food, and especially meat. I don't care that people eat meat, I don't want to make the whole world vegetarian, but it scares me how much meat has become a commodity. Meat is something special, it won't always taste the same, and that should be part of the attraction.
Windows had a head start so to speak in terms of wide scale adoption. Choosing between familiar abuse and novel abuse people will more often choose familiar. /and/ that you're interacting with more civilized folks?
You are STILL missing the point.
"the people who will try Linux...etc"
"So they will be less likely to need any "help" from offensives individuals such as "Nick Burns"
doesn't the above imply that those people will (and from there, ought to) recieve loads of verbal abuse no matter which OS they choose?
All you did was reiterate what you already said about the Nick Burns caricature being common amongst windows support people. You still have not addressed the problem of that caricature existing in Linux people. And a reply of "they will be less likely to need an help from offensive individuals such as Nick Burns" still does not address the problem. The base problem still exists. If they go for help, they will get treated like crap, more often than not.
Isn't the point of the FOSS type alternative to Windows supposed to be that its better
When you take that kind of an approach you're validating those who aren't "the kind of people who know more about their systems than the average user" having better alternatives closed off to them.
The majority of the world falls into the "average user" category or worse. Are they just hopeless or what?
Do you think the average user is just too lazy to learn to use a new OS? If you do I would play devil's advocate here and say that they're not too lazy, they're intimidated by jackasses in a relative position of power.
And what you had said before (in reference to Linux) was
No, that caricature exists because it is common amongst Windows support techs.
Yet it hasn't seemed to hamper Windows adoption.
And, as I've stated, the people who will try Linux (except the trolls) are the kind of people who know more about their systems than the average user. So they will be less likely to need any "help" from offensive individuals such as "Nick Burns".
"What is inaccurate?
That most people use Windows? Nope, the facts contradict you.
That most computer support people are Windows support people? Nope, the facts contradict you.
Therefore, the caricature is of a Windows support person. Whether you want to accept that fact or not.
The caricature is of a jackass who decides that he has the right to mock people because he has a skill they don't. This is made worse in a lot of the sketches with the choice for the user being either "figure it out yourself" or "MOVE!" and having him do the whole thing.
Nick Burns isn't supporting their Linux boxes. He's supporting their Windows boxes."
Well, first off for a lot of the sketches he was doing Mac support =), however the reason I refer to the statement as inaccurate is that the caricature is of the computer support guy in GENERAL, not just for one OS. Yes, most people use windows, that is not what I was disputing. The dispute is with your "therefore". Just because most people use windows it does not logically follow that the caricature is of a windows support person. It might be more likely than it being a windows support person, but it doesn't make it a windows support person. Fine though, let it be a windows support guy. I don't think a lot of Linux folks who claim to want to help new people are much better.
Nick Burns is funny to people because they have similar experiences with all sorts of technical support personnel. He is the GENERIC IT support guy caricature, whether that is a support guy for a network going to end user's offices to see if a switch isn't behaving, a support guy for Windows, a support guy for Linux, a support guy for Mac, or even for corporate phones. Average users simply see it as "that guy who lords it over me that he knows more about this than me and makes me feel like a dumbshit to the point where I can't even ask a question without being wrong from the start" and that's the important part here. A person like Nick Burns would treat those folks the same if they were on Windows or Linux, he would just mock them about something Linux related instead of Mac or Windows related.
"trolls complain about Linux simply because it is different from Windows and they don't want to re-learn their "computer skills". But the reality is that they don't have "computer skills". All they have is "Windows Skills"".
Ok, so people have to learn new skills to learn new OSes. Do people complain about OSX because it is different from Windows? People, as a rule, don't like windows. However, they view their options as "go to a mac and lose compatibility with almost everything along with breaking the bank or go to linux and get told what a dumbass I am when I ask questions the wrong way or don't know something that's considered common knowledge. Eh, I'll stay with windows".
Yes, your comment about the Ubuntu channel is entirely correct, I have gotten no end of help in the ubuntu/kubuntu channels. I would posit, however, that you and I have "learned" how to ask questions, odd that it's a skill.
I think the question of whether Linux will become a serious desktop contender has more to do with the people behind it than the software. Stop thinking about whether its free or not (as in speech or beer or whatever else) and think about how people are seeing it. The question is who the OS is "for". I happen to think that most people don't have the time or the inclination to learn everything needed about computers and the related technology to "switch to linux and stay there" as it is now. They're doing other things for the world. Aren't the ideas behind FOSS that user-friendly doesn't have to mean bogged down or crappy, to provide software free of charge and open source that you don't have to be a "computer person" to use? Or are we just another little treefort with our own initiation ceremonies talking about how stupid people are? I think anyone on this planet could learn to use a linux distribution. I think anyone on this planet could learn to u
I tend to hand out on the Ubuntu channel and I don't see that.
No. Linux is free (as in speech, as in beer).
Accomplishing a specific task in Linux takes effort, the same as it does in Windows or any other system.
But most people have already invested the time to learn how to accomplish that task in Windows and they no longer remember the effort it took.
I've taught people who have never used a computer before. I know the effort it takes for them to learn. My best example was a woman who could not double click with a mouse. She had to hold it still with one hand and click the buttons with her other hand.
A week of playing solitaire and she had mastered the double click and fine mouse control.
Compare apples to apples, okay?
Again, those are the ones who already know how their systems work and how to do research online. Those are the ones who switch to Linux and stay there.
Well, that's a pretty good example of what I was saying. Linux is a kernel. Even a whole distribution is just an OS.
Who would hype it (and who would believe that hype) to the same level as "the second coming of Christ"?
What is inaccurate?
That most people use Windows? Nope, the facts contradict you.
That most computer support people are Windows support people? Nope, the facts contradict you.
Therefore, the caricature is of a Windows support person. Whether you want to accept that fact or not.
Nick Burns isn't supporting their Linux boxes. He's supporting their Windows boxes.
No. If he was doing Linux support he would be a lot less amusing because far fewer people would have experienced that type of Linux support.
Which is the reason you don't see "Nick Burns, jet engine mechanic" as a comedy routine. It wouldn't be funny because very few people would have any experience with that situation.
Nick Burns is funny to so many people because so many people have had similar experiences with Windows support personel.
Not with Linux. With Windows.
Trolls complain about Linux simply because it is different from Windows and they don't want to re-learn their "computer skills". But the reality is that they don't have "computer skills". All they have is "Windows skills".
Well, the free support I was referring to was the IRC channels and Forums. I probably didn't make it clear but I was saying that the people who do venture into IRC channels and forums for the first time looking for help usually get informed fairly quickly that they should stfu and figure it out themselves. That's a surefire way to scare off people who could otherwise be great examples of how linux can work for anyone who tries. Note that difference. What is said about linux is "it works for anyone who will try", what that really means is the old joke of "linux is only free if your time is worthless". The majority of my post was not about phone support, it was about the very negative sides of the culture.
"Very few people will even try linux". Yes and that is why we should try to retain those people, instead of basically saying "are you good enough/smart enough to use this OS?".
"Or they want something to complain about to show how superior they are to the geeks who prefer Linux." I'm unclear what you mean by that. If you're referring to people complaining about things not working in Linux and then acting like they've just "shown them", maybe it's because the hype makes Linux out to be the second coming of Christ?
"Most of the computer users are using Windows. Therefore, that caricature is about a Windows support person and Windows users." I'm sorry I find this to be inaccurate. The caricature is of a jackass who decides that he has the right to mock people because he has a skill they don't. This is made worse in a lot of the sketches with the choice for the user being either "figure it out yourself" or "MOVE!" and having him do the whole thing. The caricature is OS-independent. You could have a Nick Burns in Windows, Linux, OSX or in your refrigerator repairman. The key part of it is "Jackass Who Decides That You Are An Idiot For Not Having The Same Expertise He Does"
Pay attention to that.
Most of the computer users are using Windows. Therefore, that caricature is about a Windows support person and Windows users.
And "most people" are not going to try Linux because "most people" use whatever OS was installed when they purchased the computer from Dell or HP or such.
Very few people will even try Linux. Those few are (aside from the trolls) the few who understand how the system works (hardware / OS / apps / etc).
The trolls simply want Microsoft Windows
Phone support for Linux is available to those who need it. Red Hat provides it. Canonical provides it. The reason you don't hear about it that much is because the people who use it are usually supporting corporate servers, not home desktops. The people who run Linux on their home desktop already know how to use the Internet to find the answers they need.
Phone support for home users of Linux will be necessary when Linux is pre-installed on machines sold to home users by Dell and HP and so forth. And when that happens, Dell and HP and the others will provide the phone support.
But that is a long ways away. Look for Linux to gain in the corporate/government desktop market first. And the phone support for those will be the same as it is today. They will have their own IT staff trained on Linux and the specific apps that they use.
Ubuntu on the desktop is ready, today, for those people who have requirements that are met by Ubuntu.
Other people have different requirements. It's as simple as that.
There's that old saying "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar". When most people think of Linux...well...most people to be perfectly honest don't know what it is, and more importantly, they don't care. Most who have heard of Linux have the impression that it's kind of like a treefort for the geeks who still havn't outgrown their victim complexes. Now while I don't think this is true for the majority of Linux users (after I waded through and became more accustomed to the culture), it is simple to see how a vast majority of users would not want to be anywhere near a culture so hostile. Most people are accustomed to being able to call a number, wait on hold for an hour or so, and then slowly work through their problem with a technician, some of whom are more polite and or better at communicating than others. Getting help for their problem with a technology does not involve having to learn a new technology (IRC, Froums, etc. And yes forums can be new to people). It involves picking up a phone and dialing a number. For those who have read Neal Stephenson's "in the beginning there was the command line", you will recall the analogy of the vehicle dealerships. Remember how he described Linux as a tank with people who were building them for free and yelling "if it doesn't work we'll come fix it for free! while you sleep!" to which the response from the prospective buyer was "stay away from my house you freak!"?. That's not really the case anymore. The tanks are still free, but the "free support" if you will, lives in a system of caves and revile the surface dwellers; insulting them for asking questions unless they do the secret handshake first.
Now obviously not all, not even a majority of linux people are going to do that to new folks, but enough do that we have the unfortunate reputation to most folks of being the caricature of the jackass IT guy best described in the "Nick Burns, your company's Computer Guy" sketches on Saturday Night Live.
One of the responses to this is "well I learned this the hard way! I read all of these man pages and read all of these forums and spent a year learning to code!". Congratulations, that is a great accomplishment, and no one is trying to lessen it. Those methods might not work for everyone, or even most people who are trying to learn. I, for one, found the man pages to be horribly inaccessible. Most of them don't even have examples.
Time to open the treefort, people learn a lot better when you're nice to them.
> SPECTRE and the rest of the Bond supervillains all had brilliant (if coercive) ideas on how to solve the world's problems,
... but he is a caricature in a series of rather bad novels that got turned into fun action "popcorn movies". Not sure what sort of statement that makes aside from that there isn't one.
Ernst Blofeld (who I believe was #1 of SPECTRE) didn't exactly seem interested in solving problems so much as starting WWIII so his little underground cadre could emerge from the ashes as rulers of what was left of the world.
Still, Bond's not an idealist, no
No one has presented "the disprovability" of God as an argument to believe, and no, I'm not so dense as to attempt to build on such an argument a valid case for the existance of God (hence my previous comments about your prerogative to build strawmen such as the tiny elephants).
In fact, the only argument that has been a purported way to prove or disprove anything is in your orginal post. I am merely pointing out that such an argument really proves or disproves nothing beyond refuting the flawed arguments of those few "intelligent design" proponents that also pretend to understand the nature of how God operates (hint: The idea of an intelligent designer per se assumes nothing of how God operates).
If I wanted to build a case for God there are, as I said, a number of concepts that are possible only if we assume that a God exist. There are some very compelling epistemological theories about the nature of knowledge and how it may relate to God. In additional, there are philosophical excercises such as the Pascal wager that can be used to further bolster the case for faith. But that is not the scope of this discussion, and all the arguments in the world mean little if your mind is closed anyway, hence the need for faith (open mind), but I digress once more.
The scope of this discussion is your offered "disproval" for intelligent design, which offers virtually nothing in the way of disproval to those that don't have a caricatured idea of God.
I, frankly, believe that thie entire debate concerning "Intelligent Design in Classrooms" is rather ludicrous. It is a biology classroom. If the teacher deems it pedagogically beneficial to discuss the philosophical interpretations of evolutionary theory, then why not let her? Are parents -- or, perhaps, more accurately, politicians -- so worried that their impressionable children are going to be irreparably corrupted by such dangerous ideas that they must be legislated out of the classroom altogether? If these classrooms are like most biology classrooms, the students are merely memorizing terms, in any case. Likewise, if a teacher deems it pedagogically irrelevant to discuss potential philosophical implications in the classroom, then that is his prerogative. I think that the kids deserve more credit for being able to make up their own minds about these things. What is a "scientific theory"? There are some very interesting denotations available. The fact of the matter is that one side of this debate wants theism to be admissible into scientific discussions; the other wants naturalism to be the de facto standard. Now, I personally think that making any worldview a standard by default is mistaken and arrogant. I do not believe in dispassionately assimilating information, but I also do not like the idea of a teacher shoving a worldview down the throat of a high school student. This is all about political correctness, and it is nothing new. There is absolutely no reasonable justification for a teacher to be banned from bringing up the philosophical implications of the information being presented. I would argue that one is doing a disservice by omitting this critical part of education. People are so afraid of someone "forcing" a view upon the students that we have taken items for discussion out of educational institutions. However, if the teacher has the disposition that things like intelligent design are inappropriate for a biology classroom, then that is also the teacher's prerogative. I happen to think that intelligent design is important to discuss, but that is just my opinion. Either there is a designer or there isn't. There are intelligent people who believe both. The only people who believe otherwise are guilty of bigotedly caricaturing people with whom they disagree.
I hope SEGA treats the franchise with the reverence and irreverence it needs.
:D
A part of me wants them to build a game that is faithful to the Aliens franchise like the two AVP games released for the PC. The Xenomorphs, brutal and nasty. The Predators, merciless and unrelenting. The United States Colonial Marines, cocky and sardonic. The weapons gritty and awesome.
However, another part of me wants them to rebuild that classic Aliens Versus Predator Capcom arcade beat 'em up, ridiculously featuring 1000 different alien castes, 50 different predator weapons not in canon, and a two dimensional caricature representation of the colonial marines...
Oh! Oh! Don't forget the manga stylized artwork with uber-cute butch colonial marine chicks that normally wouldn't look cute in real life!
Wait, I see, you're only concerned with the market effects on the original creator. Look, if it makes you feel better, you can mail a check to Sophocles every time you read Oedipus Rex, to Shakespeare every time you read Twelfth Night or watch She's All That, and to Aesop every time you read a fable. But please do explain why I'm morally required to do the same.
I should also like to point out that nobody here is arguing for the abolishment of copyright. Copyright was abolished for a time in France, and the result was utter higgly-piggly, publishers going out of business and authors moving to another country. What the people here are arguing for is a limit to copyright terms. Unless you're ready to make philosophy students mail their drachmas to long-dead Aristotle, you don't actually think copyright should last forever. At that point, we're just arguing over terms. So stop pretending that your fellow Slashdotters want to abolish copyright. They don't. Copyright encourages artists, enriches culture, and provides the protections against exploitation that the free software ecology depends on. When abused, it creates a stagnant culture, destroys history by making orphan works rot away when no one knows or can know who owns the rights to them, and cripples technology by making it bow to corrupt interests such as the RIAA.
Generally speaking the show had good music, but the intro theme was unbelievably corny. I don't think it took away from the show because it just played over the credits, but every time I hear it my friends and I crack up. There's something to be said for a little subtlety in lyrics. It is like a caricature of a cheesy cowboy song (speaking as a fan of country and folk music). I'm not sure if that's what they were going for.
I know this sounds very trollish/flame-baitish, and it's also a caricature, but the fact is, Big Government is that what gave an edge to the USA since around 1940, and most people who go to a hall of worship on Sunday morning turn out to be not so great scientists (I know, I know, there are exceptions, blah, blah, blah). Actually, only 17% of them even know their sacred scriptures, according to a recent survey.
The GI Bill and other educational subsidies only take up a very small fraction of the federal budget. "Big Government" has little to do with education. And given how education costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation in what should be a highly competitive environment, it seems to me that the level of government subsidies are counterproductive.Well, US voters elected twice (not just once, but twice!) a man that does not care about science, and has been trying to undermine some of the most prestigious US research centers if they disagree with his policies or analysis.
And this man is backed by (a) a group of people who want an end to big governement and (b) another group of people who believe an obscure semitic carpenter - turned - Savior - turned - deity is going to come back Real Soon Now, which will bring the end of the world as we know it and the judgement of the unbelievers.
So is this so surprising?
I know this sounds very trollish/flame-baitish, and it's also a caricature, but the fact is, Big Government is that what gave an edge to the USA since around 1940, and most people who go to a hall of worship on Sunday morning turn out to be not so great scientists (I know, I know, there are exceptions, blah, blah, blah). Actually, only 17% of them even know their sacred scriptures, according to a recent survey.
So, let me ask you again: is that so surprising? I think not. Another brilliant civilization rejected science and went into a profound decline: it was the Middle-Ages Moslem civilization. Think about that for a minute.
But you're picking on a tiny fraction of the wealthy in this country; the vast majority of "rich" people made their money (reference "The Millionaire Next Door"), they earned it and they were taxed when they earned it.
If I can give another analogy of two people making $75k a year.
One guy rents a nice apartment in the uptown area of the city he works and leases a new car every two years and doesn't save enough to invest an significant amount.
The other guy scrimps and saves and invests all he can manage. He lives in a moderate house near the city, but not in it, and drives a financed automobile until it becomes economically wiser to trade it in then to keep repairing it.
The second guy has paid income tax on all the money he's earned; the money he's invested is taxed money. So the money he makes in capital gains is a lot less than it would be... this is the benefit of 401ks, you get to invest the money pre-taxes, but then you have to pay taxes on it when withdrawn. A Roth IRA isn't taxed because it's built with already taxed money.
Taxing capital gains is a form of double taxation. This is why you need to start off your argument with "if I was sitting on a huge pile of money" as opposed to "if I earned a huge pile of money that was already taxed."
So you look at the caricatures of wealthy people; the Paris Hilton's and Nicole Richies of the world, the poster children for excess, and complain they aren't paying taxes because it was "given" to them by their parents. But these people represent only a tiny fraction of the wealthy people in this country. The whole system of taxation we currently have simply punishes people for achievement. It's one of the reasons I support the Fair Tax. Poor people (below poverty levels) not only wouldn't pay a damn penny in taxes, but they'd get more money and have more spending power then they do now even if prices didn't go down. It's a system where you're punished for spending on non-necessities. Who spends the most on non-necessities? People like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie - these are the people you think of when wealth envy rears it's ugly head, aren't they the people you want to "punish" for being born rich?
Their completely pathetic "The Da Vinci Code" campaign on Yahoo Chess is the worst I've seen in my life. They turned all the game pieces into some nightmare caricatures that I still confuse and wrote "The Da Vince Code" in big fancy letters across the board. And no option to change back to the normal theme! I mean, I can't even tell a difference between black and white pieces without giving it some major thought, how are people supposed to play? No player I asked liked this theme and many said that they wrote to Yahoo telling them to stop this torture (and so did I, twice), but they don't care. How can they think this ad campaign is effective if everyone hates it? Bad publicity is also publicity?
In the end you may have some other reason for disliking MySpace, of course, but the Slashdot line that MySpace is populated solely by angst-ridden uneducated children is bull shit. You would have the same impression of Earth if you were looking at it from the outside. But if you actually use the superior intelligence that you imply you possess, you will discover that there are many people on MySpace who do not fit your caricature.
Or, you know, you could just use it to communicate with people from real life, the way i and everybody else i know do, and not even worry about how the rest of the world behaves on MySpace.
Or, of course, we could choose to relate to people in the real world and ignore Myspace completely.