You are, of course, correct when you say that knowledge == power.
But since when does knowledge == laptops? If it's just about spreading knowledge, write some useful textbooks, and create a small library in every village in need. Each copy of the book will cost a lot less than $100. Books also don't require electricity, don't break as easily as long as they're handled with care but are more easily replacable if they do, and they don't require any special training (beyond the ability to read) to use. Books are also a lot easier to keep and spread secretly in areas where knowledge of certain topics is persecuted.
Another great tool for information and learning that is often underestimated is radio. It's cheap to produce, hard to censor, and still reasonably easily available. And if you want to enable people in 3d world countries to access the internet, internet cafés or internet stations of some sort seem like a much cheaper, more reliable, less risky way to achieve that.
Laptops do have their uses, but they're certainly not a required tool for learning, or even the best one. The only advantage they have to books is that they can display interactive content, but that doesn't seem like a vital advantage to me.
So this differentiates said blogs from the so-called "real journalists" because they pick the facts from elsewhere(s) with names like Reuters, AP, etc? And just because these "elsewheres" sell their facts to anyone willing to pay for it, make up the news then? I don't think so. They pick up their facts from elsewhere as well - only difference, they pay for the fact-gathering while many bloggers do their research on their own expense.
To cut a long story short: A (well-written and -researched) Blog does not differ from a traditional news-outlet, the latter usually pays better, though.
Yes, but how often have you heard of some major item of world news from blogs first? Most people still catch pretty much all the news stories on "old media" before they read anything about them on blogs. That's what I meant with "blogs aren't news outlets". Most people don't go to blogs to actually get their news, they go to blogs for opinions, editorials and possibly discussion.
I think one problem is that people keep fooling themselves about what blogs really are. Make no mistake, blogs are, of course, a great way for people to communicate - for example, for managers to communicate with their employees, or people to communicate with relatives in other countries -, or to cover rapidly changing topics. Further advantages are that you don't need significant amounts of money to reach an audience, and that blogs are easily accessible and always readily available. Blogs are good (even though they started out as an annoying buzzword).
But what blogs are not, even though some people just won't stop claiming it, is some sort of radically new media that solves most of the problems of traditional media. Blogs aren't really news outlets - 99% of them get their news from other sources, e.g. the established organisations that they decry as the "old media". 99% of blogs don't give you any new facts, they simply pass on facts that they have picked up elsewhere. And some blogs deliberately spread misinformation. After all, it only takes very little to create a good-looking blog, so a reputable writer will look just as serious as a complete charlatan.
At the end of the day, blogs are basically nothing other than your good old-fashioned soap box brought into the 21st century - or maybe I should say, soapbox 2.0. Blogs might give everyone a chance to make his voice heard, might be a great solution to the problem of censorship, might be great to spark a good debate in the comments, might be a lot better for diversity of thought and opinion, and blogs might be a really convenient way of publishing things - but blogs are NOT by definition more reputable than "old media". Perhaps even less so. At the end of the day, if you want a balanced opinion, there is no one source of information you can use. You still need to get as many views on issues as you can, consider your sources objectively, and make up your own mind. And no new trend or technological advance on the web is going to change that.
I think if people took a moment to think about it and understand this, they wouldn't be so surprised when stories such as this one come up.
Pretty much any Linux geek will tell you that's a load of jibberish, not unlike the SCO case. But, should it come to Microsoft and Novell going to court over this, couldn't this still spell trouble for Novell? A lengthy trial isn't cheap (and neither are out-of-court settlements). And the worst case scenario - maybe this could even spell trouble for Linux itself? It certainly makes for some excellent FUD for Microsoft to feed to the CIOs and managers of the world.
With Microsoft's track history, I wonder why people trust them at all. Especially when the stakes are high, like in this situation.
I live in Switzerland, and we do have a direct democracy here. And it has pretty much always worked well for us. We have one of the highest standards of life in the world, crime levels are pretty low, our infrastructure is in excellent condition, we're not at war with anyone, in fact we managed to stay out of both world wars, our personal liberty and privacy isn't under threat the way it is in many other first world countries such as the US and the UK, we don't have any issues with the teaching of evolution at schools being forbidden, and according to many surveys, people are generally happy with life and with politics. You do get some problems, you do get some political idiocy, like you do everywhere - but we get less of it than most people.
I really don't mean to cause offense -- I know a lot of intelligent Americans -- but the fact that the US may be better off being a representative republic is most likely less due to the fact that a direct democracy is flawed but due to the general level of education and understanding of the world simply being too low.
Toy language it may well be in your opinion, but it helps put food on my table!
I'm not sure whether you're replying to my post seriously or in jest, but just to make it clear: I don't consider PHP to be a toy language either.
It's not the most beautiful of languages, it's often inconsistent, and it's very very easy to do very very stupid things in PHP. Also, there are a lot of very bad programming practices that are so frequent among the majority of PHP coders that you'll even find them in most tutorials and PHP books.
However, PHP is great for getting simple things done quickly. And a good coder who knows what he is doing can create very solid products in PHP very quickly, even for larger projects.
The sad fact is, IMHO, that most of the bad PHP code out there isn't bad due to the language, it's bad due to the programmers behind it.
...IE7 is a mandatory update on Windows. Firefox, on the other hand, is a voluntary update (unless you have automatic updates switched on in the programme, but I assume a lot of people don't). That makes the Firefox download statistic all the more impressive.
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong about the Windows update thing. I'm not exactly an expert there - I use Linux.)
Is he serious? The way he is answering some of these questions, Slashdot could just as well have called the entire article off.
Question (summarised): "IE7 requires WGA and renders a lot of websites different than other browsers, which makes things difficult for people creating websites on Linux and Mac OS X. Why are you doing this? Or if you're not doing it to lock people into your platform, what are you planning to rectify the situation?"
Answer (summarised): "Your question is about giving away Windows licenses for free. We love developers! We won't give away licenses. Did you know there's a web developer toolbar for IE7? And we wrote a lot of documentation when we were writing IE7. It's OK with me that some people develop on other systems. Mac users have found a great way to run IE7 without using Windows - they just use Windows."
You've got to respect the sheer amount of effort he is putting into completely ignoring the question. And that's some pretty impressive aimless rambling right there in his answer, too.
Seriously, I think this is just about what a tech interview on South Park would sound like...
Growth takes a toll somewhere. But not for naught. The Earth is here for us, and we have made quite some progress based on her resources. There's no reason to replace our pride with some pessimistic view that promotes nihilism in some strange way.
That's not really a nihilistic view, though. The nihilistic view on the issue would be, "It doesn't matter whether humanity survives and it doesn't matter what condition the planet is in, since everything is fundamentally meaningless".
Don't you think the fact that this was posted right on the heels of the GEGL/GIMP story is down to the fact that the 1.6 version of KOffice just happens to have been released at this time?
I agree with the people who like GIMP's interface. I started out with Paint Shop Pro on Windows, used Photoshop on a Mac sporadically at the same time, and was comfortable with both interfaces. When I switched to Linux, I hated GIMP at first. But, after using it for a while, I got used to the interface, and now I definitely prefer it to Photoshop and GIMP.
Also on a sidenote, to the parent poster: Maybe you might just want to point out that you're involved with the wyoGuide project. In a lot of your posts I've seen over the months, you say that basically more or less any problem with open source GUI development could be solved, if everyone just switched to developing according to wyoGuide standards. Your posts almost have a sort of "testimony from a satisfied customer" sound to them that is potentially misleading. Yeah, you don't hide your identity and the link to wyoGuide is in your profile, but still, it's not immediately apparent. It would be a lot more open and honest of you to add something in the sense of "Full disclaimer: My opinion may be swayed by the fact that I'm a developer on the wyoGuide project" to your posts.
Digg featured the same story just the other day. It was on another website, but presented the same facts.
But, as opposed to Slashdot, they ran the article under the headline "Most flirtatious avatar". Somehow, I find that funny.
For those who have no idea what exactly the "sunrise disaster" in the summary is supposed to mean, like I did, here's the link: Project sunrise.
Re:Wii-doubting articles - the biggest thing...
on
Will the Wii Work?
·
· Score: 1
But the hard-core-gamer-mags won't admit that. The reviewers are biased towards more==better and the oooh-shiney factor. Since the Wii doesn't fit in their small view of "successful" they'll continue to dismiss it in favor of the Xbox360 and the PS3 that DO fit their need for oooh-shiney.
Especially when they make decent money in magazine sales/ad sales/subscriptions by keeping their definition of "successful" so narrow-minded, one might add.
Wii-doubting articles - the biggest thing...
on
Will the Wii Work?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...since Wii-glorifying articles.
We're seeing quite a few articles in that style right now, and I predict we'll see several more before the Wii launches. Creating controversy is an easy way to get hits. And controversy is easily generated by suggesting that a point that was generally considered to be long-established ("THE WII WILL BE THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD!!!") may be incorrect ("...but will it work in the marketplace?!").
> Few expect truly dedicated gamers to choose the Wii over the PS3 or Xbox. And ultimately, the advantage may go to Sony.
The very point of Nintendo's strategy is that the truly dedicated gamer won't be their core audience and in fact only a small fragment of their audience. This seems like a non-issue to me.
Why do you believe that? Blog comments have influenced VS2005, MSbuild, etc. Why would Vista be different?
You can use Windows without even knowing what MSbuild is, but there's no real abundance of people out there using Windows without ever having come in contact with the GUI. So it seems to me that the GUI is something a lot more people would have an opinion on, compared to the relatively specialised things you mentioned. Especially since nowadays, a new version of Windows is major news not just within the IT industry, but in nearly all walks of life. Basically, I wouldn't be surprised if every man and his dog had their own (often rather uneducated/ignorant, as these things tend to go) opinion on how the Vista shell "ought to" work.
And that's why I predict a higher noise ratio for the comments on that particular blog. (I'm actually quite surprised at my original post being modded Flamebait. Is what I'm saying that unreasonable?)
Why should we always have to be so fake? It's insane. If we can't even admit to our friends what music we listen to, I think there's something wrong that has nothing to do with the internet being involved or not.
Example from my own life: Most of my friends listen to metal, some of them to old-school hip hop, with random bits of jazz, world music and electronica thrown in in some cases. Basically things which don't get in the mainstream charts all that much (or only in watered down form), and carry certain associations of snobbism with them. Now, although I enjoy most of these styles of music myself and listen to them once in a while, I also listen to lots of stuff a lot of people would automatically turn their nose up at because they'd consider it so extremely mainstream. For example, I'm a reasonably big fan of Phil Collins.
But tell me - why should I be hiding that? When I like something, I like something. Why should I be having hour-long conversations about the virtues of metal and jazz when I'm among people and only be listening to my copy of Face Value secretly?
All my friends are roughly aware of what music I listen to, the bits they approve of as well as the bits they don't. And you know what? Although they largely detest Phil Collins, I still get respect from them, just for being the person I am, doing the things I do, saying the things I say, treating people the way I do. MY FRIENDS JUDGE ME ON THE BASIS OF WHAT SORT OF PERSON I AM, AND NOT ON THE BASIS OF HOW HIP I AM AND HOW ALTERNATIVE THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO IS.
That doesn't just go for friends - I don't try to hide myself before people I've only just met, either. Because frankly, people that would only be interested in me as a person if I listened to The Mars Volta but not if I listen to Genesis are not the sort of people I want to be around.
Not a bad idea, but I have my doubts that posting problems or opinions to that blog would make much difference. The noise ratio of comments would just be too high. Seems more like a marketing thing. They're trying to be all hip and with it, so they make a blog to make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside because Microsoft is actually personally listening to *their* input and criticism!
RTFA. It's on a voluntary basis. If you don't like it, don't do it. But it certainly is nice to have the possibility, and, as it seems, officially approved by Sony.
Slashdot Mirror
You are, of course, correct when you say that knowledge == power.
But since when does knowledge == laptops? If it's just about spreading knowledge, write some useful textbooks, and create a small library in every village in need. Each copy of the book will cost a lot less than $100. Books also don't require electricity, don't break as easily as long as they're handled with care but are more easily replacable if they do, and they don't require any special training (beyond the ability to read) to use. Books are also a lot easier to keep and spread secretly in areas where knowledge of certain topics is persecuted.
Another great tool for information and learning that is often underestimated is radio. It's cheap to produce, hard to censor, and still reasonably easily available. And if you want to enable people in 3d world countries to access the internet, internet cafés or internet stations of some sort seem like a much cheaper, more reliable, less risky way to achieve that.
Laptops do have their uses, but they're certainly not a required tool for learning, or even the best one. The only advantage they have to books is that they can display interactive content, but that doesn't seem like a vital advantage to me.
So this differentiates said blogs from the so-called "real journalists" because they pick the facts from elsewhere(s) with names like Reuters, AP, etc? And just because these "elsewheres" sell their facts to anyone willing to pay for it, make up the news then? I don't think so. They pick up their facts from elsewhere as well - only difference, they pay for the fact-gathering while many bloggers do their research on their own expense.
To cut a long story short: A (well-written and -researched) Blog does not differ from a traditional news-outlet, the latter usually pays better, though.
Yes, but how often have you heard of some major item of world news from blogs first? Most people still catch pretty much all the news stories on "old media" before they read anything about them on blogs. That's what I meant with "blogs aren't news outlets". Most people don't go to blogs to actually get their news, they go to blogs for opinions, editorials and possibly discussion.
I think one problem is that people keep fooling themselves about what blogs really are. Make no mistake, blogs are, of course, a great way for people to communicate - for example, for managers to communicate with their employees, or people to communicate with relatives in other countries -, or to cover rapidly changing topics. Further advantages are that you don't need significant amounts of money to reach an audience, and that blogs are easily accessible and always readily available. Blogs are good (even though they started out as an annoying buzzword).
But what blogs are not, even though some people just won't stop claiming it, is some sort of radically new media that solves most of the problems of traditional media. Blogs aren't really news outlets - 99% of them get their news from other sources, e.g. the established organisations that they decry as the "old media". 99% of blogs don't give you any new facts, they simply pass on facts that they have picked up elsewhere. And some blogs deliberately spread misinformation. After all, it only takes very little to create a good-looking blog, so a reputable writer will look just as serious as a complete charlatan.
At the end of the day, blogs are basically nothing other than your good old-fashioned soap box brought into the 21st century - or maybe I should say, soapbox 2.0. Blogs might give everyone a chance to make his voice heard, might be a great solution to the problem of censorship, might be great to spark a good debate in the comments, might be a lot better for diversity of thought and opinion, and blogs might be a really convenient way of publishing things - but blogs are NOT by definition more reputable than "old media". Perhaps even less so. At the end of the day, if you want a balanced opinion, there is no one source of information you can use. You still need to get as many views on issues as you can, consider your sources objectively, and make up your own mind. And no new trend or technological advance on the web is going to change that.
I think if people took a moment to think about it and understand this, they wouldn't be so surprised when stories such as this one come up.
Pretty much any Linux geek will tell you that's a load of jibberish, not unlike the SCO case. But, should it come to Microsoft and Novell going to court over this, couldn't this still spell trouble for Novell? A lengthy trial isn't cheap (and neither are out-of-court settlements). And the worst case scenario - maybe this could even spell trouble for Linux itself? It certainly makes for some excellent FUD for Microsoft to feed to the CIOs and managers of the world.
With Microsoft's track history, I wonder why people trust them at all. Especially when the stakes are high, like in this situation.
Pre-register now for your copy of Antiguasoft Vista
Yes, but does it run GNU/Antigua?
There would definitely be a Linux (as in, just the kernel). There wouldn't be a GNU/Linux, however.
I live in Switzerland, and we do have a direct democracy here. And it has pretty much always worked well for us. We have one of the highest standards of life in the world, crime levels are pretty low, our infrastructure is in excellent condition, we're not at war with anyone, in fact we managed to stay out of both world wars, our personal liberty and privacy isn't under threat the way it is in many other first world countries such as the US and the UK, we don't have any issues with the teaching of evolution at schools being forbidden, and according to many surveys, people are generally happy with life and with politics. You do get some problems, you do get some political idiocy, like you do everywhere - but we get less of it than most people.
I really don't mean to cause offense -- I know a lot of intelligent Americans -- but the fact that the US may be better off being a representative republic is most likely less due to the fact that a direct democracy is flawed but due to the general level of education and understanding of the world simply being too low.
Toy language it may well be in your opinion, but it helps put food on my table!
I'm not sure whether you're replying to my post seriously or in jest, but just to make it clear: I don't consider PHP to be a toy language either.
It's not the most beautiful of languages, it's often inconsistent, and it's very very easy to do very very stupid things in PHP. Also, there are a lot of very bad programming practices that are so frequent among the majority of PHP coders that you'll even find them in most tutorials and PHP books.
However, PHP is great for getting simple things done quickly. And a good coder who knows what he is doing can create very solid products in PHP very quickly, even for larger projects.
The sad fact is, IMHO, that most of the bad PHP code out there isn't bad due to the language, it's bad due to the programmers behind it.
...a PHP story!
"PHP is a toy language" trolls in 3... 2... 1...
The so called Do Not Steal Mac OS X (DSMOS) kernel extension...
DSMOS - Do Steal Mac OS?
...IE7 is a mandatory update on Windows. Firefox, on the other hand, is a voluntary update (unless you have automatic updates switched on in the programme, but I assume a lot of people don't). That makes the Firefox download statistic all the more impressive.
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong about the Windows update thing. I'm not exactly an expert there - I use Linux.)
Is he serious? The way he is answering some of these questions, Slashdot could just as well have called the entire article off.
Question (summarised): "IE7 requires WGA and renders a lot of websites different than other browsers, which makes things difficult for people creating websites on Linux and Mac OS X. Why are you doing this? Or if you're not doing it to lock people into your platform, what are you planning to rectify the situation?"
Answer (summarised): "Your question is about giving away Windows licenses for free. We love developers! We won't give away licenses. Did you know there's a web developer toolbar for IE7? And we wrote a lot of documentation when we were writing IE7. It's OK with me that some people develop on other systems. Mac users have found a great way to run IE7 without using Windows - they just use Windows."
You've got to respect the sheer amount of effort he is putting into completely ignoring the question. And that's some pretty impressive aimless rambling right there in his answer, too.
Seriously, I think this is just about what a tech interview on South Park would sound like...
Growth takes a toll somewhere. But not for naught. The Earth is here for us, and we have made quite some progress based on her resources. There's no reason to replace our pride with some pessimistic view that promotes nihilism in some strange way.
That's not really a nihilistic view, though. The nihilistic view on the issue would be, "It doesn't matter whether humanity survives and it doesn't matter what condition the planet is in, since everything is fundamentally meaningless".
Don't you think the fact that this was posted right on the heels of the GEGL/GIMP story is down to the fact that the 1.6 version of KOffice just happens to have been released at this time?
I agree with the people who like GIMP's interface. I started out with Paint Shop Pro on Windows, used Photoshop on a Mac sporadically at the same time, and was comfortable with both interfaces. When I switched to Linux, I hated GIMP at first. But, after using it for a while, I got used to the interface, and now I definitely prefer it to Photoshop and GIMP. Also on a sidenote, to the parent poster: Maybe you might just want to point out that you're involved with the wyoGuide project. In a lot of your posts I've seen over the months, you say that basically more or less any problem with open source GUI development could be solved, if everyone just switched to developing according to wyoGuide standards. Your posts almost have a sort of "testimony from a satisfied customer" sound to them that is potentially misleading. Yeah, you don't hide your identity and the link to wyoGuide is in your profile, but still, it's not immediately apparent. It would be a lot more open and honest of you to add something in the sense of "Full disclaimer: My opinion may be swayed by the fact that I'm a developer on the wyoGuide project" to your posts.
Digg featured the same story just the other day. It was on another website, but presented the same facts. But, as opposed to Slashdot, they ran the article under the headline "Most flirtatious avatar". Somehow, I find that funny.
I wonder what distro they'll use. A custom one, perhaps?
For those who have no idea what exactly the "sunrise disaster" in the summary is supposed to mean, like I did, here's the link: Project sunrise.
But the hard-core-gamer-mags won't admit that. The reviewers are biased towards more==better and the oooh-shiney factor. Since the Wii doesn't fit in their small view of "successful" they'll continue to dismiss it in favor of the Xbox360 and the PS3 that DO fit their need for oooh-shiney.
Especially when they make decent money in magazine sales/ad sales/subscriptions by keeping their definition of "successful" so narrow-minded, one might add.
...since Wii-glorifying articles.
We're seeing quite a few articles in that style right now, and I predict we'll see several more before the Wii launches. Creating controversy is an easy way to get hits. And controversy is easily generated by suggesting that a point that was generally considered to be long-established ("THE WII WILL BE THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD!!!") may be incorrect ("...but will it work in the marketplace?!").
> Few expect truly dedicated gamers to choose the Wii over the PS3 or Xbox. And ultimately, the advantage may go to Sony.
The very point of Nintendo's strategy is that the truly dedicated gamer won't be their core audience and in fact only a small fragment of their audience. This seems like a non-issue to me.
Why do you believe that? Blog comments have influenced VS2005, MSbuild, etc. Why would Vista be different?
You can use Windows without even knowing what MSbuild is, but there's no real abundance of people out there using Windows without ever having come in contact with the GUI. So it seems to me that the GUI is something a lot more people would have an opinion on, compared to the relatively specialised things you mentioned. Especially since nowadays, a new version of Windows is major news not just within the IT industry, but in nearly all walks of life. Basically, I wouldn't be surprised if every man and his dog had their own (often rather uneducated/ignorant, as these things tend to go) opinion on how the Vista shell "ought to" work.
And that's why I predict a higher noise ratio for the comments on that particular blog. (I'm actually quite surprised at my original post being modded Flamebait. Is what I'm saying that unreasonable?)
Why should we always have to be so fake? It's insane. If we can't even admit to our friends what music we listen to, I think there's something wrong that has nothing to do with the internet being involved or not.
Example from my own life: Most of my friends listen to metal, some of them to old-school hip hop, with random bits of jazz, world music and electronica thrown in in some cases. Basically things which don't get in the mainstream charts all that much (or only in watered down form), and carry certain associations of snobbism with them. Now, although I enjoy most of these styles of music myself and listen to them once in a while, I also listen to lots of stuff a lot of people would automatically turn their nose up at because they'd consider it so extremely mainstream. For example, I'm a reasonably big fan of Phil Collins.
But tell me - why should I be hiding that? When I like something, I like something. Why should I be having hour-long conversations about the virtues of metal and jazz when I'm among people and only be listening to my copy of Face Value secretly?
All my friends are roughly aware of what music I listen to, the bits they approve of as well as the bits they don't. And you know what? Although they largely detest Phil Collins, I still get respect from them, just for being the person I am, doing the things I do, saying the things I say, treating people the way I do. MY FRIENDS JUDGE ME ON THE BASIS OF WHAT SORT OF PERSON I AM, AND NOT ON THE BASIS OF HOW HIP I AM AND HOW ALTERNATIVE THE MUSIC I LISTEN TO IS.
That doesn't just go for friends - I don't try to hide myself before people I've only just met, either. Because frankly, people that would only be interested in me as a person if I listened to The Mars Volta but not if I listen to Genesis are not the sort of people I want to be around.
End of rant.
Not a bad idea, but I have my doubts that posting problems or opinions to that blog would make much difference. The noise ratio of comments would just be too high. Seems more like a marketing thing. They're trying to be all hip and with it, so they make a blog to make people feel all warm and fuzzy inside because Microsoft is actually personally listening to *their* input and criticism!
RTFA. It's on a voluntary basis. If you don't like it, don't do it. But it certainly is nice to have the possibility, and, as it seems, officially approved by Sony.
This definitely seems like a good thing. But I wonder, will gamers really let that influence their purchasing decisions? Honestly, I have my doubts.