That said, you should consider whether it's a good thing or not to block banner ads - regardless of the web's "everything is free!" illusion, without banner advertising or other support lots of sites would suddenly have no money and wouldn't be there any more. I dunno whether slashdot's included in this, but it's worth thinking of what would happen if everyone did this - it does actually cost to run a website, and you need to get the cash together somehow...
It isn't, on the whole, terribly surprising that the whole Jesux thing has turned out to be a hoax after all. It was obviously a hoax the first time I saw it, but yet, it's still managed to convince a few folks who'll believe anything that it wasn't. This seems to say a few things about debate in general, which probably apply to a lot of discussions other than the one this article concerns:
Occam is usually right. If the obvious answer is "it's a hoax", it's most likely it is.
Conspiracy theories, however, are far more interesting than the simple explanations.
Slashdot readers have an almost infinite capacity for discussing the same thing over and over again, especially if it might involve one of the Evil Conspiratorial Groups (Microsoft, the Religious Right, the US Government, etc) and how they're Doing Something Evil Again.
Don't let your judgement be clouded by your likes and/or dislikes for one camp or another in a debate. Facts, on the whole, are much more interesting than opinions.
It would certainly increase the S/N if people did engage the brain a little before posting. Then maybe we wouldn't have had all this kerfluffle over one innocent, and rather obviously satirical, web page.
Yargle! This old chestnut again! For the definitive viewpoint on this, the old classic DEC response to this particular "bug report" can be found right here - note that this was being thought about back in 1983..
The couple who are betting that their twins due on 01/01/2000 will be born in different centuries may run into problems claiming their bet. As no doubt the majority of slashdotters will know, the 20th century doesn't actually officially end until 31 December 2000. Most people are quite rightly saying "soddit, it's a big change in the calendar, we're going to get pissed anyway", but if this came to a legal challenge it might be quite interesting. The bookies would have been well advised to seek legal advice as to just when the accepted end of the century will officially be.
Although the type of "oh, the millenium doesn't finish until 01/01/2001" pedantry generally irritates me intensely (look, we're all going to get very drunk whatever, OK, pedant? If you really want to you can stay at home and sulk, just don't expect everyone else to join in) in this case it could be quite interesting if the law became involved.
More information on this tricky topic can be found at the US Naval Observatory, or alternatively from Douglas Adams, who explains things much better than I could.
My last two jobs have been in cities which are known, or at least said, to have more single women than men by nontrivial margins. Now, in my geeky jobs, this has never been apparent to me, basically because geeks just don't tend to frequent the kind of places where this imbalance would be apparent. I've spent a few years working in these two cities, and remained steadfastly single throughout, not through intention, but just because that's how it's turned out. And so have a lot of other geeks I know. Admittedly, in some cases, some strong-willed and generally determined woman has done the modern equivalent of bopping them over the head and dragging them back to her cave and they've both ended up happy with the end results, but I rather think that this kind of thing is something that geeks hope to happen across, rather than specifically going out on the razz to look for. Not to mention the fact that quite a few of us wouldn't know how to go out on the razz, and don't care either.
I guess what I'm saying is, don't bother going to pickup joints or specific Places Where Singles Go looking for geeks because on the whole, you won't find them there. After all, why would you want to waste time in some singles bar when there's hacking to be done? This is probably a fault of the geek personality, but elementary human mating rituals can be as bewildering to your average geek as sendmail.cf is to a non-geek - often it's just not apparent where to start.
The best bet if you really want to grab a geek is to be one yourself. Either that or become one, but I think it might be a bit of a culture shock...
(Besides, here's a little secret that the article's author missed. We aren't all that rich - don't go looking around universities for rich geeks, 'cuz you won't find any)
He's sitting on IRC at the moment saying how terribly embarrassing this all is. Yeah, right.
I have to concur that the word that springs to mind least frequently when I think of Ben is "pr0n". Seeing as he is currently having his moment in the sun, however, I think it's only fair that we tell the world his nickname is Flopsy.
It is entirely possible that the level of flaminess and general inability to take criticism as anything other than a personal insult by some members of the Linux community is having entirely the opposite effect than they intended as far as getting Linux (and the rest of the free / open source SW movement) taken seriously by those in what, for the sake of simplicity, I'll call Industry. If I was an IT manager looking at using Linux, and I came up against any of these attitudes, I'd instantly take my business somewhere that can show a more professional attitude than flaming anything that might be even slightly negative. The price is insignificant in most of these markets - with the kind of IT budgets most corporates have, a pile of NT Server or Solaris licences isn't much of a hit.
It's important to be able to view things subjectively and rebut criticism in a constructive way - "you stinking MS whore" is a not a valid point to make in response to someone else's work that suggests Linux may not be as wondrous as you thought.
Linux is not everything to all users, and never will be - there will always be a place in the marketplace for Microsoft and their ilk, and what should be being focused on is gaining a reasonable slice of the pie so that users have more of a choice than _just_ one OS - whatever it may be. A world in which Linux is the only OS available is as unattractive to me as a world universally tied to Windows 95.
The type of flaming advocacy that's indulged in by some people can be described as nothing less than totally counterproductive, unprofessional and damaging to the cause as a whole. If you want to be taken seriously, speak reasonably or not at all!
In an ideal world, people would use the best OS for _their_ needs, be it Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS or whatever. Any one person's opinion of "best" is not necessarily the opinion of the rest of the world, and there are valid arguments in favour of and against every one.
The flaming weenies (most of whom, I suspect, contribute little to the development or documentation effort) are one of the biggest negative points of Linux, and are one of the reasons why I still have problems seeing it as a proper OS for real, hard, production use against Solaris or (even) NT.
If the most vocal group of proponents sound like 13-year old 3l33t d3wdZ, then what they're marketing will look like a toy rather than a tool however well-engineered it is.
In summary, think before you open your gob. The other folks are people too. Forget this, and you'll be destroying a lot of the hard work that more reasoned folks have done to promote the whole field of free/OS software over the past years.
The definition of "first computer" is a vague one, and should really be divided into two, at least.
The first true electronic stored-program computer (a computer which doesn't require rewiring to reprogram it) was the Manchester Mark 1, in 1948. It could be said that this was the first "true" computer, as earlier machines had programs hardwired or plugged and were not easily reprogrammable in this way.
ENIAC was completed in late 1945, while the first production Colossus was completed in December 1943. It's as much a case of ideology (or patriotism) whether the prize for "first digital computer" should go to the British or American machine - and they weren't the only countries working on such things at that time, either.
What usually happens in these cases is that the definitions are redefined each time they're used depending on who you want to win. The term "first computer" never seems to get used without some proviso or another - "first computer with a grey front panel, black pushbuttons and nifty flashing lights"...
Hell, there's almost as much confusion about the first computer as there is about the first use of the term "bug" in a computing context..
Power grids in Europe generally are more robust, as most countries have decent national power grids which do a pretty good job of distributing power where it's needed and spreading the load when one part of the network goes down - very few areas, at least, those with major populations, are fed by only one grid line. This makes for more robustness when power stations go offline or the lines come down, to the extent that major blackouts are very rare in Europe. It's kind of like internetworking, really - diverse connections and routing make for more robust networks. However, the topic digresses...
Yeah - I'd second the recommendation of "Silicon Snake Oil". I don't necessarily agree with everything Cliff writes, but there are certainly a lot of good points made.
The social aspects of online communication are, I'm sure, well known to most slashdot folks, but certain things do need to be looked at, or at least thought about. Is it good for people to do all their communicating from behind a terminal rather than in person? Is it really healthy to prefer spending a day on your own browsing the web or MUDding to going out with friends or walking in the hills?
Myself, I'm fascinated by the difference between people's writing styles on Usenet, IRC, whatever, and the way they are when you meet them in real life. Can the constant switching between online persona and real-life personality affect your image of who you really are, or does it improve your self-image by letting you explore aspects that you wouldn't usually explore in reality?
Don't get me wrong here - I love the Internet, I've been around it for the best part of a decade, I wouldn't want to be without it, but sometimes I wonder whether the "digital utopia" that so many are touting is really going to bring that many benefits to society, or whether it is, as Cliff said, snake oil, or smoke and mirrors.
And yup, I know this is supposed to be a technical discussion, but there's more to the Net than just routers and hosts.
In my experience, AOL actually are pretty responsive and prompt at thwacking spamming users (just 'cause you don't get anything other than an autoresponse doesn't mean nothing's been done, necessarily) - for the number of free accounts they give away and for the sheer number of users they have, the quantity of AOL-originated spam is low. A lot of people use AOL throwaway accounts for return addresses, but this isn't "spam from AOL".
Their rep for clueless users is largely undeserved nowadays. Not that I'd use them myself, but it's important to check reality against prejudice.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, you should consider whether it's a good thing or not to block banner ads - regardless of the web's "everything is free!" illusion, without banner advertising or other support lots of sites would suddenly have no money and wouldn't be there any more. I dunno whether slashdot's included in this, but it's worth thinking of what would happen if everyone did this - it does actually cost to run a website, and you need to get the cash together somehow...
This seems to say a few things about debate in general, which probably apply to a lot of discussions other than the one this article concerns:
Evil Again.
It would certainly increase the S/N if people did engage the brain a little before posting. Then maybe we wouldn't have had all this kerfluffle over one innocent, and rather obviously satirical, web page.
Yargle! This old chestnut again!
For the definitive viewpoint on this, the old classic DEC response to this particular "bug report" can be found right here - note that this was being thought about back in 1983..
Although the type of "oh, the millenium doesn't finish until 01/01/2001" pedantry generally irritates me intensely (look, we're all going to get very drunk whatever, OK, pedant? If you really want to you can stay at home and sulk, just don't expect everyone else to join in) in this case it could be quite interesting if the law became involved.
More information on this tricky topic can be found at the US Naval Observatory, or alternatively from Douglas Adams, who explains things much better than I could.
My last two jobs have been in cities which are known, or at least said, to have more single women than men by nontrivial margins. Now, in my geeky jobs, this has never been apparent to me, basically because geeks just don't tend to frequent the kind of places where this imbalance would be apparent. I've spent a few years working in these two cities, and remained steadfastly single throughout, not through intention, but just because that's how it's turned out. And so have a lot of other geeks I know. Admittedly, in some cases, some strong-willed and generally determined woman has done the modern equivalent of bopping them over the head and dragging them back to her cave and they've both ended up happy with the end results, but I rather think that this kind of thing is something that geeks hope to happen across, rather than specifically going out on the razz to look for. Not to mention the fact that quite a few of us wouldn't know how to go out on the razz, and don't care either.
I guess what I'm saying is, don't bother going to pickup joints or specific Places Where Singles Go looking for geeks because on the whole, you won't find them there. After all, why would you want to waste time in some singles bar when there's hacking to be done? This is probably a fault of the geek personality, but elementary human mating rituals can be as bewildering to your average geek as sendmail.cf is to a non-geek - often it's just not apparent where to start.
The best bet if you really want to grab a geek is to be one yourself. Either that or become one, but I think it might be a bit of a culture shock...
(Besides, here's a little secret that the article's author missed. We aren't all that rich - don't go looking around universities for rich geeks, 'cuz you won't find any)
Mike
He's sitting on IRC at the moment saying how terribly embarrassing this all is. Yeah, right.
I have to concur that the word that springs to mind least frequently when I think of Ben is "pr0n". Seeing as he is currently having his moment in the sun, however, I think it's only fair that we tell the world his nickname is Flopsy.
m.
It is entirely possible that the level of flaminess and general inability to take criticism as anything other than a personal insult by some members of the Linux community is having entirely the opposite effect than they intended as far as getting Linux (and the rest of the free / open source SW movement) taken seriously by those in what, for the sake of simplicity, I'll call Industry. If I was an IT manager looking at using Linux, and I came up against any of these attitudes, I'd instantly take my business somewhere that can show a more professional attitude than flaming anything that might be even slightly negative. The price is insignificant in most of these markets - with the kind of IT budgets most corporates have, a pile of NT Server or Solaris licences isn't much of a hit.
It's important to be able to view things subjectively and rebut criticism in a constructive way - "you stinking MS whore" is a not a valid point to make in response to someone else's work that suggests Linux may not be as wondrous as you thought.
Linux is not everything to all users, and never will be - there will always be a place in the marketplace for Microsoft and their ilk, and what should be being focused on is gaining a reasonable slice of the pie so that users have more of a choice than _just_ one OS - whatever it may be. A world in which Linux is the only OS available is as unattractive to me as a world universally tied to Windows 95.
The type of flaming advocacy that's indulged in by some people can be described as nothing less than totally counterproductive, unprofessional and damaging to the cause as a whole. If you want to be taken seriously, speak reasonably or not at all!
In an ideal world, people would use the best OS for _their_ needs, be it Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS or whatever. Any one person's opinion of "best" is not necessarily the opinion of the rest of the world, and there are valid arguments in favour of and against every one.
The flaming weenies (most of whom, I suspect, contribute little to the development or documentation effort) are one of the biggest negative points of Linux, and are one of the reasons why I still have problems seeing it as a proper OS for real, hard, production use against Solaris or (even) NT.
If the most vocal group of proponents sound like 13-year old 3l33t d3wdZ, then what they're marketing will look like a toy rather than a tool however well-engineered it is.
In summary, think before you open your gob. The other folks are people too. Forget this, and you'll be destroying a lot of the hard work that more reasoned folks have done to promote the whole field of free/OS software over the past years.
mpk
The definition of "first computer" is a vague one, and should really be divided into two, at least.
The first true electronic stored-program computer (a computer which doesn't require rewiring to reprogram it) was the Manchester Mark 1, in 1948. It could be said that this was the first "true" computer, as earlier machines had programs hardwired or plugged and were not easily reprogrammable in this way.
ENIAC was completed in late 1945, while the first production Colossus was completed in December 1943. It's as much a case of ideology (or patriotism) whether the prize for "first digital computer" should go to the British or American machine - and they weren't the only countries working on such things at that time, either.
What usually happens in these cases is that the definitions are redefined each time they're used
depending on who you want to win. The term "first computer" never seems to get used without some proviso or another - "first computer with a grey front panel, black pushbuttons and nifty flashing lights"...
Hell, there's almost as much confusion about the first computer as there is about the first use of the term "bug" in a computing context..
Power grids in Europe generally are more robust, as most countries have decent national power grids which do a pretty good job of distributing power where it's needed and spreading the load when one part of the network goes down - very few areas, at least, those with major populations, are fed by only one grid line. This makes for more robustness when power stations go offline or the lines come down, to the extent that major blackouts are very rare in Europe. It's kind of like internetworking, really - diverse connections and routing make for more robust networks. However, the topic digresses...
Yeah - I'd second the recommendation of "Silicon Snake Oil". I don't necessarily agree with everything Cliff writes, but there are certainly a lot of good points made.
The social aspects of online communication are, I'm sure, well known to most slashdot folks, but certain things do need to be looked at, or at least thought about. Is it good for people to do all their communicating from behind a terminal rather than in person? Is it really healthy to prefer spending a day on your own browsing the web or MUDding to going out with friends
or walking in the hills?
Myself, I'm fascinated by the difference between people's writing styles on Usenet, IRC, whatever, and the way they are when you meet them in real life. Can the constant switching between online persona and real-life personality affect your
image of who you really are, or does it improve
your self-image by letting you explore aspects that you wouldn't usually explore in reality?
Don't get me wrong here - I love the Internet, I've been around it for the best part of a decade, I wouldn't want to be without it, but sometimes I wonder whether the "digital utopia" that so many are touting is really going to bring that many benefits to society, or whether it is, as Cliff said, snake oil, or smoke and mirrors.
And yup, I know this is supposed to be a technical discussion, but there's more to the Net than just routers and hosts.
In my experience, AOL actually are pretty responsive and prompt at thwacking spamming users (just 'cause you don't get anything other than an autoresponse doesn't mean nothing's been done, necessarily) - for the number of free accounts they give away and for the sheer number of users they have, the quantity of AOL-originated spam is low. A lot of people use AOL throwaway accounts for return addresses, but this isn't "spam from AOL".
Their rep for clueless users is largely undeserved nowadays. Not that I'd use them myself, but it's important to check reality against prejudice.