Hah! I love it. In the midst of singing the praises of Ubuntu I throw a small shout out to OpenSUSE and everybody responds to the latter. Wonderful. OpenSUSE in the last few years has been just marvelous, and I'm not alone in thinking this, apparently. SUSE is great.
I've been paying attention for a long time. I've done the distro hopping dance for years, and I've been advocating Linux all the while. In 15 years of Linux use, for me personally, Ubuntu comes second only to OpenSUSE as far as getting out of my way and letting me get my work done. Ubuntu is the clear favorite among family and friends whom I have foisted Linux upon over the years. I've gotten far fewer "tech guy support" calls than any other distro, spent less time dealing with computer issues over the phone and I have definitely gotten fewer complaints. Therefore, I *am* inclined to believe the stats. They are doing something right, as much as it pains some to admit.
I think this perspective is wrong. The inalienable rights described in the constitution are supposed to apply to everyone ("all men") - they are *guaranteed* to citizens. Citizens who respect those rights should not abridge them for non-citizens, under most circumstances. Failing to do so indicates a profound misunderstanding of what they mean and why the constitution was drafted in the first place.
The whole point of freedom of speech is the ability to do so without fear of reprisal, punishment or persecution, particularly when the powerful find it uncomfortable. It's not just the freedom to communicate an opinion - every single human being has the ability to do that. It's what happens afterward that matters.
So let me get this straight. Because you were a Marine, that automatically means your opinion is "correct" and mine is "wrong"?
No, but he volunteered to put his life at risk fighting for this nation, its people and the principles it represents. He has earned the right to speak in support of those principles and defend them further, particularly in cases where they have seemingly been forgotten, misunderstood or taken lightly. This does not make your opinion "wrong" or less valid, though it carries a bit less weight in my estimation, since you offer opinion alone, while his opinion is backed by the willingness to defend it. You may be equally willing, but we don't know that.
Indeed. My new rule is that good writers are separated from the bad (aka hacks) by their ability to devise a good ending to the story they started. Hint: There are few good ones, particularly in television. It's probably no accident that many writers in television today also contribute to the comics medium. I love comics, but they aren't exactly known for wrapping things up and declaring it done.
Touche. People remember the bad adaptations, but there have been a number of excellent ones. Too bad hollywood's interest is high enough that much of their King adaptation work has been shovelware, the source material is certainly not at fault.
Assenege seems like someone with a hard-on for power and attention, a bit of a megalomaniac. Why should a random person have this amount of power just because they came up with / helped implement the idea?
Kind of comes with the territory, doesn't it? Anyone with the balls and motivation to pull this kind of thing off in an effective way on the world stage isn't going to be a small-time whistle blower with a small-time ego or a small-time sense of risk-taking. Anybody with this kind of drive and motivation will seem like a megalomaniac to the sheeple.
the traditional model of paying for content may not hold up when the content can "be canned and sent around to your friends for free," but that people will hopefully still pay for content if "the experience is so much more rich, so much more involving."
The flaw is that the 'extra' content that makes 'the experience so much more rich, so much more involving' can also be 'cannned and sent around to your friends for free'. In principle this is no different from the 'shareware' model for software and games that flourished in the early 90s. Give folks a little bit of the experience and hope they pay for the full monty. Ok, fine, but unless the nature of the extra stuff is sufficiently different from the original, it suffers from the same weaknesses. People can share a glossary and such stuff just as easily. Incrementally withholding content of essentially the same nature doesn't qualify as a long term sustainable model. The extra stuff needs to be something different and much better. This might be economically infeasible, but having a small troupe of actors under contract to the author/publisher stop by your house for a fee and engage in a personalized enactment of a crucial part of the story might work as entertainment worth paying for. If the author is clever enough, this could be customized to each reader/group so it couldn't be recorded and distributed in kind as mentioned above. So okay, that wouldn't work, probably, but with a little imagination, someone could come up with something that would.
IMHO, this kind of content delivery where the experience is solely controlled and managed by the 'rights holders' is not sufficient any longer. That ship has sailed and easy duplication plus the internet has blown that model out of the water. They should be thinking more along the lines of licensed creation of user created content where they exert less control but help make the 'fanfic' experience 'so much more rich, so much more involving'. Instead of Foxing fan driven efforts, what if content providers licensed copyrighted materials and such to interested fans for a reasonable fee? instead of being limited to putting together a crappy, budget limited fan film on your own dime and living in fear of the lawyers, what if you could buy "authentic" set pieces and props to make your fan driven effort that much more real? What if you could legitimately charge for viewings of your film/play to recoup the costs plus a franchise-like kickback to the original 'rights holder'? And so on.
It seems to me that engaging the fans (or more precisely, non-professional creators) and helping them enjoy your ideas as much as possible, including helping them with stuff that they find costly or uninteresting (like recreating 'authentic props') might be a better approach than just controlling everything as much as possible and counting on the model of "getting enough asses in the seats" at the local theater or sofa.
I don't know. Maybe this wouldn't work, but from what i can see, there is plenty of energy out there for riffing on existing stuff (when people lack the imagination or time/energy to create from scratch) that remains untapped. Maybe it's time to explore that a bit more. Set loose the lawyers on me for my lovingly crafted Tom Bombadil addition to the LOTR films and I will hate you forever. Give me help and a discount from WETA for props and I may love you all the more and keep doing it longer.
Please refer to the rest of the parent thread where you will find your refutation. The cultural bias you are carrying around might be limiting how much of the larger scientific world you have been exposed to, both in the present and historically. Your view may be even more limited if you actually aren't trained in or actively practicing science, since your knowledge would only extend to what the popular media in your country presents as notable. "I haven't heard of them" does not equate to "not notable".
You think you're being clever and insightful, but it all depends on who does the naming, doesn't it? 'non Western' folks, who are unlikely to be hanging out here, might be able to provide quite a fine list.
Sadly, I remember when spelling and grammar were taught in schools. Those days seem to be gone as well, and I miss them much, much more than the days of limited computer resources.
You're still not making a cogent argument. If you know about the acronym, what problem do you have with my use of it exactly? It concisely summarizes an important concept: Nothing is free - ultimately there will be a cost, even if not a financial one.
"WTF is wrong with you?" doesn't really communicate a point worth discussing. "Retarded" doesn't make much of a point either. I don't frequent 4chan, but your posts seem to be a better fit for that venue than mine.
For the last time:
What exactly do you find objectionable about the concept that recieving a service at no cost to you does not entitle you to compensation, but might have costs you did not anticipate? I'd really like to hear a good argument to that point.
Do. You. Have. A. Point. You. Would. Like. To. Make?
If not, go away. You're bothering me, kid. Leave the grownups alone and go play with your toys.
"I will allow others to dictate my surfing habits, even while in private."
"I will suppress my opinions, even amongst my friends."
Good lord. Are you stupid or just foolish? Your surfing habits are no more private than your habits in visiting public places via public thoroughfares. Walk down a public street to visit a brothel and your privacy isn't worth jack. Browse to a porn site via a public network using an access point traceable to you and your privacy isn't worth jack. No matter how much you whine about it. Just because you are sitting alone at your computer doesn't mean you are in a private setting when you broadcast your interests to the world. You might wish what goes through the wires to be private and secret, but you really shouldn't count on that, particularly if you understand networking at a technical level. Learn about encryption technology. It won't protect you completely, but it might help you be discreet.
Been flying lately? Or crossed an international border? Go ahead, refuse to allow others to dictate your habits to you. Good luck, my friend, you'll need it. Here's a hint of what you might be up against:
Read the section entitled "Border incident". That's how easy it can be to be bowled over by the paranoid. These people are dangerous. Internalize that and realize you aren't living in the ideal world of your dreams.
Sorry BobMcD, but I disagree. Learn the lesson of history if you haven't forgotten it. Recognize when social trends cause a large percentage of the populace to turn a blind eye to your brave stance as you get hauled in by the authorities and accused of bogus offenses. There's a time to make a brave stand and a time to recognize danger and wisely avoid it.
Or bravely celebrate your big brass ones as the world drags you down. If your stance was noble, you might be remembered as a martyr. Or not.
Or did you have an actual point you failed to articulate? You do not like or agree with the concept of TANSTAAFL? Leave off the attacks, de-anonymize yourself and make a cogent argument. Or STFU and get off the internet. You're adversely affecting the S/N ratio.
What you espouse is akin to denying corrective lenses because the optical community wants to extract money from the vision impaired. Go ahead and view the blurry world. More power to you.
HD, absent the stuff you rant about is just another word for higher resolution. If you don't want or need it, that's cool. But it's just more data to your higher resolution viewing device. Corporate conspiracies aside, you get to see more stuff. More data = win.
I've come nowhere near Mr. Job's ass. I am no Apple fan by a long shot (I've never purchased an Apple product in my life) and have no interest in going where the (reality distorted) sun does not shine.
Your evidence is that malicious apps can exist in an environment where vetting takes place. You have not demonstrated that vetting has no effect on the number of malicious apps a person is exposed to. Nor have you demonstrated that the vetting was effective in your example. You might have demonstrated that Apple's vetting could use some improvement - I'll grant you that.
I am claiming that an *effective* vetting process will *REDUCE* the number of malicious apps a user is exposed to, not that it will necessarily eliminate them entirely. So an effective vetting process is worth pursing, because in its absence, there is NO BARRIER to the presentation of malicious apps to the user, and a user will experience more of them.
Ok, the volley is in your court. I await your reasoned and logical response.
Negative word-of-mouth (and painful difficulties) will separate the wheat from the chaff. The solutions that work well will survive. So has it been, so shall it be. The invisible hand may not always work as we wish, but it can still slap down the business models that suck.
Why the hell is this never discussed as a serious option?
If humans are capable of destroying the planet accidentally, surely they are capable of saving it deliberately. It's a worthy goal, and it has the wonderful side effect of being applicable to climate manipulation of other planets, so we can go there and live comfortably.
My biggest gripe about this whole debate is the willingness of participants to think small. Forget about whether your SUV is too big or you are not "green" enough. Let's just fix things properly by manipulating our environment deliberately and move on to growing in our abilities as we should be.
Slashdot Mirror
Hah! I love it. In the midst of singing the praises of Ubuntu I throw a small shout out to OpenSUSE and everybody responds to the latter. Wonderful. OpenSUSE in the last few years has been just marvelous, and I'm not alone in thinking this, apparently. SUSE is great.
I've been paying attention for a long time. I've done the distro hopping dance for years, and I've been advocating Linux all the while. In 15 years of Linux use, for me personally, Ubuntu comes second only to OpenSUSE as far as getting out of my way and letting me get my work done. Ubuntu is the clear favorite among family and friends whom I have foisted Linux upon over the years. I've gotten far fewer "tech guy support" calls than any other distro, spent less time dealing with computer issues over the phone and I have definitely gotten fewer complaints. Therefore, I *am* inclined to believe the stats. They are doing something right, as much as it pains some to admit.
I think this perspective is wrong. The inalienable rights described in the constitution are supposed to apply to everyone ("all men") - they are *guaranteed* to citizens. Citizens who respect those rights should not abridge them for non-citizens, under most circumstances. Failing to do so indicates a profound misunderstanding of what they mean and why the constitution was drafted in the first place.
The whole point of freedom of speech is the ability to do so without fear of reprisal, punishment or persecution, particularly when the powerful find it uncomfortable. It's not just the freedom to communicate an opinion - every single human being has the ability to do that. It's what happens afterward that matters.
So let me get this straight. Because you were a Marine, that automatically means your opinion is "correct" and mine is "wrong"?
No, but he volunteered to put his life at risk fighting for this nation, its people and the principles it represents. He has earned the right to speak in support of those principles and defend them further, particularly in cases where they have seemingly been forgotten, misunderstood or taken lightly. This does not make your opinion "wrong" or less valid, though it carries a bit less weight in my estimation, since you offer opinion alone, while his opinion is backed by the willingness to defend it. You may be equally willing, but we don't know that.
Stacker, is that you?
Clint could still pull it off.
Indeed. My new rule is that good writers are separated from the bad (aka hacks) by their ability to devise a good ending to the story they started. Hint: There are few good ones, particularly in television. It's probably no accident that many writers in television today also contribute to the comics medium. I love comics, but they aren't exactly known for wrapping things up and declaring it done.
Touche. People remember the bad adaptations, but there have been a number of excellent ones. Too bad hollywood's interest is high enough that much of their King adaptation work has been shovelware, the source material is certainly not at fault.
So you don't recognize that there might be some information that shouldn't be exposed to the public for a certain length of time?
No, not really. In a representative democracy, as much information as possible should be in the hands of everyone, else it's all just a big fiction.
Assenege seems like someone with a hard-on for power and attention, a bit of a megalomaniac. Why should a random person have this amount of power just because they came up with / helped implement the idea?
Kind of comes with the territory, doesn't it? Anyone with the balls and motivation to pull this kind of thing off in an effective way on the world stage isn't going to be a small-time whistle blower with a small-time ego or a small-time sense of risk-taking. Anybody with this kind of drive and motivation will seem like a megalomaniac to the sheeple.
the traditional model of paying for content may not hold up when the content can "be canned and sent around to your friends for free," but that people will hopefully still pay for content if "the experience is so much more rich, so much more involving."
The flaw is that the 'extra' content that makes 'the experience so much more rich, so much more involving' can also be 'cannned and sent around to your friends for free'. In principle this is no different from the 'shareware' model for software and games that flourished in the early 90s. Give folks a little bit of the experience and hope they pay for the full monty. Ok, fine, but unless the nature of the extra stuff is sufficiently different from the original, it suffers from the same weaknesses. People can share a glossary and such stuff just as easily. Incrementally withholding content of essentially the same nature doesn't qualify as a long term sustainable model. The extra stuff needs to be something different and much better. This might be economically infeasible, but having a small troupe of actors under contract to the author/publisher stop by your house for a fee and engage in a personalized enactment of a crucial part of the story might work as entertainment worth paying for. If the author is clever enough, this could be customized to each reader/group so it couldn't be recorded and distributed in kind as mentioned above. So okay, that wouldn't work, probably, but with a little imagination, someone could come up with something that would.
IMHO, this kind of content delivery where the experience is solely controlled and managed by the 'rights holders' is not sufficient any longer. That ship has sailed and easy duplication plus the internet has blown that model out of the water. They should be thinking more along the lines of licensed creation of user created content where they exert less control but help make the 'fanfic' experience 'so much more rich, so much more involving'. Instead of Foxing fan driven efforts, what if content providers licensed copyrighted materials and such to interested fans for a reasonable fee? instead of being limited to putting together a crappy, budget limited fan film on your own dime and living in fear of the lawyers, what if you could buy "authentic" set pieces and props to make your fan driven effort that much more real? What if you could legitimately charge for viewings of your film/play to recoup the costs plus a franchise-like kickback to the original 'rights holder'? And so on.
It seems to me that engaging the fans (or more precisely, non-professional creators) and helping them enjoy your ideas as much as possible, including helping them with stuff that they find costly or uninteresting (like recreating 'authentic props') might be a better approach than just controlling everything as much as possible and counting on the model of "getting enough asses in the seats" at the local theater or sofa.
I don't know. Maybe this wouldn't work, but from what i can see, there is plenty of energy out there for riffing on existing stuff (when people lack the imagination or time/energy to create from scratch) that remains untapped. Maybe it's time to explore that a bit more. Set loose the lawyers on me for my lovingly crafted Tom Bombadil addition to the LOTR films and I will hate you forever. Give me help and a discount from WETA for props and I may love you all the more and keep doing it longer.
Just sayin.
Please refer to the rest of the parent thread where you will find your refutation. The cultural bias you are carrying around might be limiting how much of the larger scientific world you have been exposed to, both in the present and historically. Your view may be even more limited if you actually aren't trained in or actively practicing science, since your knowledge would only extend to what the popular media in your country presents as notable. "I haven't heard of them" does not equate to "not notable".
You think you're being clever and insightful, but it all depends on who does the naming, doesn't it? 'non Western' folks, who are unlikely to be hanging out here, might be able to provide quite a fine list.
Sadly, I remember when spelling and grammar were taught in schools. Those days seem to be gone as well, and I miss them much, much more than the days of limited computer resources.
Well, that is the end of my rant.
Well said, sir.
welcome our new Android overlords.
Amen, brother, amen.
You're still not making a cogent argument. If you know about the acronym, what problem do you have with my use of it exactly? It concisely summarizes an important concept: Nothing is free - ultimately there will be a cost, even if not a financial one.
"WTF is wrong with you?" doesn't really communicate a point worth discussing. "Retarded" doesn't make much of a point either. I don't frequent 4chan, but your posts seem to be a better fit for that venue than mine.
For the last time:
What exactly do you find objectionable about the concept that recieving a service at no cost to you does not entitle you to compensation, but might have costs you did not anticipate? I'd really like to hear a good argument to that point.
Do. You. Have. A. Point. You. Would. Like. To. Make?
If not, go away. You're bothering me, kid. Leave the grownups alone and go play with your toys.
"I will allow others to dictate my surfing habits, even while in private."
"I will suppress my opinions, even amongst my friends."
Good lord. Are you stupid or just foolish? Your surfing habits are no more private than your habits in visiting public places via public thoroughfares. Walk down a public street to visit a brothel and your privacy isn't worth jack. Browse to a porn site via a public network using an access point traceable to you and your privacy isn't worth jack. No matter how much you whine about it. Just because you are sitting alone at your computer doesn't mean you are in a private setting when you broadcast your interests to the world. You might wish what goes through the wires to be private and secret, but you really shouldn't count on that, particularly if you understand networking at a technical level. Learn about encryption technology. It won't protect you completely, but it might help you be discreet.
Been flying lately? Or crossed an international border? Go ahead, refuse to allow others to dictate your habits to you. Good luck, my friend, you'll need it. Here's a hint of what you might be up against:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Watts_(author)
Read the section entitled "Border incident". That's how easy it can be to be bowled over by the paranoid. These people are dangerous. Internalize that and realize you aren't living in the ideal world of your dreams.
Sorry BobMcD, but I disagree. Learn the lesson of history if you haven't forgotten it. Recognize when social trends cause a large percentage of the populace to turn a blind eye to your brave stance as you get hauled in by the authorities and accused of bogus offenses. There's a time to make a brave stand and a time to recognize danger and wisely avoid it.
Or bravely celebrate your big brass ones as the world drags you down. If your stance was noble, you might be remembered as a martyr. Or not.
WTF is wrong with *you*? Can't use internet search?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch
Or did you have an actual point you failed to articulate? You do not like or agree with the concept of TANSTAAFL? Leave off the attacks, de-anonymize yourself and make a cogent argument. Or STFU and get off the internet. You're adversely affecting the S/N ratio.
You're either an fool or not a geek.
What you espouse is akin to denying corrective lenses because the optical community wants to extract money from the vision impaired. Go ahead and view the blurry world. More power to you.
HD, absent the stuff you rant about is just another word for higher resolution. If you don't want or need it, that's cool. But it's just more data to your higher resolution viewing device. Corporate conspiracies aside, you get to see more stuff. More data = win.
I've come nowhere near Mr. Job's ass. I am no Apple fan by a long shot (I've never purchased an Apple product in my life) and have no interest in going where the (reality distorted) sun does not shine.
Your evidence is that malicious apps can exist in an environment where vetting takes place. You have not demonstrated that vetting has no effect on the number of malicious apps a person is exposed to. Nor have you demonstrated that the vetting was effective in your example. You might have demonstrated that Apple's vetting could use some improvement - I'll grant you that.
I am claiming that an *effective* vetting process will *REDUCE* the number of malicious apps a user is exposed to, not that it will necessarily eliminate them entirely. So an effective vetting process is worth pursing, because in its absence, there is NO BARRIER to the presentation of malicious apps to the user, and a user will experience more of them.
Ok, the volley is in your court. I await your reasoned and logical response.
... and ignore the rest.
Negative word-of-mouth (and painful difficulties) will separate the wheat from the chaff. The solutions that work well will survive. So has it been, so shall it be. The invisible hand may not always work as we wish, but it can still slap down the business models that suck.
Why the hell is this never discussed as a serious option?
If humans are capable of destroying the planet accidentally, surely they are capable of saving it deliberately. It's a worthy goal, and it has the wonderful side effect of being applicable to climate manipulation of other planets, so we can go there and live comfortably.
My biggest gripe about this whole debate is the willingness of participants to think small. Forget about whether your SUV is too big or you are not "green" enough. Let's just fix things properly by manipulating our environment deliberately and move on to growing in our abilities as we should be.