"Not true. Or does your time have no cost? And hardware? And support?"
Very definitely true. Name an Adobe product (other than specifically PDF tools) and I can name you a free product that does the same things *I* need to do, approximately as well. No hassles, no extra time.
Or if not free, at least a hell of a lot less expensive than Adobe.
"... and I've show quotes from the Quran to support my point of view."
You can do that equally with the Christian bible. There are terrible, terrible things in it, including incitements to rape and murder. Means nothing.
It's not what you believe, so much as what you do with that belief. I don't give a damn if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster; if you commit murder in its name you are a murderer.
Yes. Because this is where your argument falls apart:
Where are the "non-militants" when the militants are practicing their terrorism? Are they preventing it? No. Are they speaking out against it? (For the most part): no. Are they taking political stands against it? No.
Tacit endorsement of militarism is militarism. They can't weasel out of it. If they want to be non-militant, they can work to prevent militarism. If they don't, (and for the most part, they don't), the best answer is "Fuck you". And I don't mean that in a good way.
I would vote to nuke them -- I mean quite literally nuke them, with a pound of bacon on board just to make the fallout more interesting -- before agreeing to some censorship policy they endorse.
Let's get the hell away from dependence on oil, and let these people go straight to the Hell they so firmly believe in, and so richly deserve.
When I first learned of ColdFusion (about 12 years ago, give or take), I thought it was a wonderful product. Imagine: direct, simple database access and data manipulation from a web page! I was enthralled.
Sadly, while ColdFusion has matured somewhat, it hasn't kept up, and it still costs too much. Other free technologies have surpassed it: Ruby + Rails, Drupal, MySQL, PostgreSQL... the list goes on.
Over time, I have found that nearly every Adobe (or formerly Macromedia) product I used to use has now been superseded by something that doesn't cost money, and often does the job much better.
I use Adobe only as a last resort, when somebody sends me graphics in formats that only Adobe products can read properly. And hell, they don't even do that well! The most recent version of Adobe CS doesn't even export.PNG files properly on OS X! They use a long-outdated file format that needs to be post-processed before it is readable by anything else. (Fortunately, I figured out how... otherwise I would have had to tell my Adobe-dependent clients to go stuff it and get modern.)
It's almost as though -- dare I say it? -- Adobe just didn't give a sh*t about getting it right on the Apple platform. Which may be fine for them, but it also means I am that much more determined to phase out their products and replace them with other things that do get stuff right.
"Click through to some of the references, these aren't "myantiorganicblog.org" links, they're links to the relevant safety and regulatory agencies who approve and control the use of the term "organic." If you want "organic" to mean something different, that's very nice... but "organic" has a specific meaning defined by law, and if you use it in association with your crops, there are specific guidelines that your practices and production must meet."
Which is precisely why "organic" has lost all its meaning. All the regulation -- aimed at supporting big Ag -- has made it completely meaningless. And as you point out, most pesticides are "organic"... not just legally but literally.
But all the restrictions and regulations are also precisely why many of the smaller players don't bother with the designation. Instead they have chosen to completely ignore the government-regulated "organic" trade, and gone with local "natural" organizations instead. t might be "unofficial", according to the Federal government, but the Feds aren't covering your ass anyway, so who the hell cares?
And at least "natural" has a little more specific meaning than "organic". Neonicotinoids, for example, can hardly be called very "natural". But they are sure as hell organic.
Second. The Ruby market is going strong. Yes, there are more jobs in Java and Python, but those are "established" code bases that need maintenance... there is less new stuff being done.
If you know Perl and some Smalltalk, you should have little difficulty with Ruby. Also, there is a bonus: check out Rhomobile. iOS and Android and Blackberry development... all in Ruby.
Actually, we already have homemade portable rail guns, and lasers powerful enough to kill the things at which you point them. (Search gizmag.com for examples.)
In comparison, a plasma rifle -- even in the 40-watt range -- would probably be rather ineffective.
"It is paranoia to have a reaction to Acme's use of my personal data, based upon how it is used, if that reaction is similar to how Slim Shifty uses that data. It is folly to have the opposite reaction to the opposite use of data."
The problem is that it doesn't work that way.
As the Yahoo data dump showed many years ago, there is no such thing as "anonymous" data. Even if Company A "properly" anonymizes their data, when they sell it, Company B can put it together with other "anonymous" data, and use algorithms to pinpoint just exactly who you are, where you live, etc.
So don't be so quick to chastise people for being "paranoid". Their concerns are real.
Also -- I really should throw this in because it's relevant -- a few years later I had a conversation with the owner of the company. He told me that they treated the workers like dogs BECAUSE of the union. That if the union were not there, they would have been much friendlier to their employees.
And guess what? The employees eventually voted the union out. And now they are much happier. Everybody gets along better. I know, because I have friends who still work there.
"Florida is a "right to work" state! That fucking oxymoron mean that they can fire your ass for just about anything."
It also means they can HIRE you without a union interfering.
I once worked in a place where I *HAD TO* be a member of a union (steelworkers, in fact) to work there. The union did NOTHING but take my money. Nothing. They were a bunch of worthless pieces of gangster shit and they didn't deserve my dues.
"Non-smokers can stay in the office while on non-smoking breaks."
And so could smokers, until some self-righteous assholes decided they had to go outside.
"If an office has flexible hours and smokers choose to come in early so that their combined work time and smoke break time aligns their quittin' time with that of their non-smoking peers they can all do the same amount of work by the same deadlines."
I did not perform the studies. Nevertheless, studies have regularly shown that smokers, WITH their "smoke breaks", outperform their non-smoking counterparts.
I didn't make this shit up. Hit Google. Live with it.
"There are only a few "protected" things you cant discriminate against, age, sex, skin color, disabilities, however there are plenty of things you are legally allow to discriminate against."
By Federal law. But there are many more laws than just the Federal anti-discrimination laws. If anything, they are a rather minor influence.
"If it's subject to abuse, and it is (and has been for centuries), and because of those abuses, can drive the world economy to its knees, which was within several hours of happening in 2008, how again does it make it the best fucking economic system yet devised by man?"
Because EVERY OTHER economic system did it within a few years, not a few centuries.
To be honest, I think this anti-tobacco policy probably runs afoul of Federal anti-discrimination law.
I don't know the exact wording of the law, but in business law in college I was taught that you can't discriminate against people for engaging in legal practices that do not directly affect the job.
With few exceptions, tobacco use does not have a direct detrimental effect on workers' performance. In fact studies have generally shown smokers to be more productive than their non-smoking counterparts. (Though nobody is saying that smoking is the actual cause of that.)
So according to what my law Prof. told me, this is definitely an illegal practice. I can't wait for somebody to sue the pants off of some self-righteous company.
Facebook is PHP, with other people's back-ends behind it.
Facebook and "computer science" have little to do with one another, except to the extent that one has absorbed what others have done, rather like an amoeba.
Once everybody was captured (and by a couple of years ago pretty much everybody was), all they had to do was start turning the screws.
People, I've been telling you for years, here on Slashdot, to write the FCC and your congresscritters, and fight the mergers and acquisitions and takeovers as anticompetitive. ESPECIALLY when carriers and content providers were proposing deals together. But few of you did.
Now you get to live with the results.
I hate to say "I told you so", but I did. The reason I hate it is because I have to live with it too.
Yes, it is run through the drop ceiling, but that wasn't my point.
If you later need to replace the whole cable installation, it's going to cost money unless you are going to do the whole thing yourself, slowly, one at a time.
But if you have a large installation, those cable bundles get pretty damned big once they start to get near your hub room. The big bundles aren't easily swapped out unless you have another closet next to your hub "closet".
"Through international boarders the moment they upload the files for the 3D printer online and the first international person downloads it, they are in violation of ITAR regulations, transfer of firearm plans from inside the US to outside is illegal without export permits and the State Department doesn't take too kindly to that. That is a fine of up to $1,000,000 or up to ten years in prison, or both, for each violation. That is for EACH technology transfer, so not the one file, but each time a new international user downloads the file as a separate offence. "
Excuse me, but this ENTIRE thread is about law that applies within the United States. Your ITAR regulations and international transfers of technology are completely irrelevant and off-topic.
Slashdot Mirror
"Not true. Or does your time have no cost? And hardware? And support?"
Very definitely true. Name an Adobe product (other than specifically PDF tools) and I can name you a free product that does the same things *I* need to do, approximately as well. No hassles, no extra time.
Or if not free, at least a hell of a lot less expensive than Adobe.
"... and I've show quotes from the Quran to support my point of view."
You can do that equally with the Christian bible. There are terrible, terrible things in it, including incitements to rape and murder. Means nothing.
It's not what you believe, so much as what you do with that belief. I don't give a damn if you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster; if you commit murder in its name you are a murderer.
"What about non-militant Islam, is that evil?"
Yes. Because this is where your argument falls apart:
Where are the "non-militants" when the militants are practicing their terrorism? Are they preventing it? No. Are they speaking out against it? (For the most part): no. Are they taking political stands against it? No.
Tacit endorsement of militarism is militarism. They can't weasel out of it. If they want to be non-militant, they can work to prevent militarism. If they don't, (and for the most part, they don't), the best answer is "Fuck you". And I don't mean that in a good way.
I would vote to nuke them -- I mean quite literally nuke them, with a pound of bacon on board just to make the fallout more interesting -- before agreeing to some censorship policy they endorse.
Let's get the hell away from dependence on oil, and let these people go straight to the Hell they so firmly believe in, and so richly deserve.
When I first learned of ColdFusion (about 12 years ago, give or take), I thought it was a wonderful product. Imagine: direct, simple database access and data manipulation from a web page! I was enthralled.
.PNG files properly on OS X! They use a long-outdated file format that needs to be post-processed before it is readable by anything else. (Fortunately, I figured out how... otherwise I would have had to tell my Adobe-dependent clients to go stuff it and get modern.)
Sadly, while ColdFusion has matured somewhat, it hasn't kept up, and it still costs too much. Other free technologies have surpassed it: Ruby + Rails, Drupal, MySQL, PostgreSQL... the list goes on.
Over time, I have found that nearly every Adobe (or formerly Macromedia) product I used to use has now been superseded by something that doesn't cost money, and often does the job much better.
I use Adobe only as a last resort, when somebody sends me graphics in formats that only Adobe products can read properly. And hell, they don't even do that well! The most recent version of Adobe CS doesn't even export
It's almost as though -- dare I say it? -- Adobe just didn't give a sh*t about getting it right on the Apple platform. Which may be fine for them, but it also means I am that much more determined to phase out their products and replace them with other things that do get stuff right.
"Click through to some of the references, these aren't "myantiorganicblog.org" links, they're links to the relevant safety and regulatory agencies who approve and control the use of the term "organic." If you want "organic" to mean something different, that's very nice... but "organic" has a specific meaning defined by law, and if you use it in association with your crops, there are specific guidelines that your practices and production must meet."
Which is precisely why "organic" has lost all its meaning. All the regulation -- aimed at supporting big Ag -- has made it completely meaningless. And as you point out, most pesticides are "organic"... not just legally but literally.
But all the restrictions and regulations are also precisely why many of the smaller players don't bother with the designation. Instead they have chosen to completely ignore the government-regulated "organic" trade, and gone with local "natural" organizations instead. t might be "unofficial", according to the Federal government, but the Feds aren't covering your ass anyway, so who the hell cares?
And at least "natural" has a little more specific meaning than "organic". Neonicotinoids, for example, can hardly be called very "natural". But they are sure as hell organic.
Second. The Ruby market is going strong. Yes, there are more jobs in Java and Python, but those are "established" code bases that need maintenance... there is less new stuff being done.
If you know Perl and some Smalltalk, you should have little difficulty with Ruby. Also, there is a bonus: check out Rhomobile. iOS and Android and Blackberry development... all in Ruby.
Actually, we already have homemade portable rail guns, and lasers powerful enough to kill the things at which you point them. (Search gizmag.com for examples.)
In comparison, a plasma rifle -- even in the 40-watt range -- would probably be rather ineffective.
... are ridiculously easy to make. Particularly about the future.
Correct predictions, on the other hand, are a completely different matter.
"It is paranoia to have a reaction to Acme's use of my personal data, based upon how it is used, if that reaction is similar to how Slim Shifty uses that data. It is folly to have the opposite reaction to the opposite use of data."
The problem is that it doesn't work that way.
As the Yahoo data dump showed many years ago, there is no such thing as "anonymous" data. Even if Company A "properly" anonymizes their data, when they sell it, Company B can put it together with other "anonymous" data, and use algorithms to pinpoint just exactly who you are, where you live, etc.
So don't be so quick to chastise people for being "paranoid". Their concerns are real.
Mod this man President.
Also -- I really should throw this in because it's relevant -- a few years later I had a conversation with the owner of the company. He told me that they treated the workers like dogs BECAUSE of the union. That if the union were not there, they would have been much friendlier to their employees.
And guess what? The employees eventually voted the union out. And now they are much happier. Everybody gets along better. I know, because I have friends who still work there.
"Florida is a "right to work" state! That fucking oxymoron mean that they can fire your ass for just about anything."
It also means they can HIRE you without a union interfering.
I once worked in a place where I *HAD TO* be a member of a union (steelworkers, in fact) to work there. The union did NOTHING but take my money. Nothing. They were a bunch of worthless pieces of gangster shit and they didn't deserve my dues.
"Non-smokers can stay in the office while on non-smoking breaks."
And so could smokers, until some self-righteous assholes decided they had to go outside.
"If an office has flexible hours and smokers choose to come in early so that their combined work time and smoke break time aligns their quittin' time with that of their non-smoking peers they can all do the same amount of work by the same deadlines."
I did not perform the studies. Nevertheless, studies have regularly shown that smokers, WITH their "smoke breaks", outperform their non-smoking counterparts.
I didn't make this shit up. Hit Google. Live with it.
"There are only a few "protected" things you cant discriminate against, age, sex, skin color, disabilities, however there are plenty of things you are legally allow to discriminate against."
By Federal law. But there are many more laws than just the Federal anti-discrimination laws. If anything, they are a rather minor influence.
"If it's subject to abuse, and it is (and has been for centuries), and because of those abuses, can drive the world economy to its knees, which was within several hours of happening in 2008, how again does it make it the best fucking economic system yet devised by man?"
Because EVERY OTHER economic system did it within a few years, not a few centuries.
Sense of proportion here.
Come on, guys. Go borrow FlowPlayer from some porno site or something. Something that actually works, anyway.
I agree with you 100% that there are plenty of faithful yet thoughtful and responsible people.
But at the same time: among people who are morons, there are few worse than fundamentalist fucking morons.
"That's a lie that's told over and over again to justify massive wealth inequity."
It is nothing of the sort. It is the best fucking economic system yet devised by man, despite the recent abuse of it by government and corporations.
To be honest, I think this anti-tobacco policy probably runs afoul of Federal anti-discrimination law.
I don't know the exact wording of the law, but in business law in college I was taught that you can't discriminate against people for engaging in legal practices that do not directly affect the job.
With few exceptions, tobacco use does not have a direct detrimental effect on workers' performance. In fact studies have generally shown smokers to be more productive than their non-smoking counterparts. (Though nobody is saying that smoking is the actual cause of that.)
So according to what my law Prof. told me, this is definitely an illegal practice. I can't wait for somebody to sue the pants off of some self-righteous company.
Facebook is PHP, with other people's back-ends behind it.
Facebook and "computer science" have little to do with one another, except to the extent that one has absorbed what others have done, rather like an amoeba.
Please tell that to Apple.
This.
Once everybody was captured (and by a couple of years ago pretty much everybody was), all they had to do was start turning the screws.
People, I've been telling you for years, here on Slashdot, to write the FCC and your congresscritters, and fight the mergers and acquisitions and takeovers as anticompetitive. ESPECIALLY when carriers and content providers were proposing deals together. But few of you did.
Now you get to live with the results.
I hate to say "I told you so", but I did. The reason I hate it is because I have to live with it too.
Yes, it is run through the drop ceiling, but that wasn't my point.
If you later need to replace the whole cable installation, it's going to cost money unless you are going to do the whole thing yourself, slowly, one at a time.
But if you have a large installation, those cable bundles get pretty damned big once they start to get near your hub room. The big bundles aren't easily swapped out unless you have another closet next to your hub "closet".
"Through international boarders the moment they upload the files for the 3D printer online and the first international person downloads it, they are in violation of ITAR regulations, transfer of firearm plans from inside the US to outside is illegal without export permits and the State Department doesn't take too kindly to that. That is a fine of up to $1,000,000 or up to ten years in prison, or both, for each violation. That is for EACH technology transfer, so not the one file, but each time a new international user downloads the file as a separate offence. "
Excuse me, but this ENTIRE thread is about law that applies within the United States. Your ITAR regulations and international transfers of technology are completely irrelevant and off-topic.