He makes valid if somewhat off-focus points, presents them in a clear and rational way, doesn't use inflammatory language and participates in a constructive two way conversation, including suggestions on how to improve the product that were admired by the admin.
It was not wrong to list his critique and then engage in reasonable debate about its merits, especially the limitations and possible bugs in the program. Quite the opposite, I'd thank him profusely for providing detailed feedback and keeping things civil and polite when he is obviously frustrated.
Even if his criticism was misplaced on some points, they still had technical merit. He was 100% right to post his viewpoint and is in no way bullying, trolling or anything remotely similar.
ShadowBane strode into the room, his pale Night-Elf features enveloped in the shadows of his Technomancer robes. Before him stood the artefact, an eerie light emanating from its crystal face.
He sat on the throne, in one hand brandishing a strange rune-encrusted clattering device, whilst in the other he wielded a smooth object with wheels and levers emitting a demonic red glow. His hands moved swiftly and glowing runes etched themselves on the crystal device, spelling out:
"#include <stdio.h>"
He clicked again, and the runes mystically floated upwards. The next runes were even more cryptic:
He paused, taking a sip from his recycled aluminium goblet, then taking a sheet of recycled parchment and dipping his pen into a pot of genuine organic squid ink. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced a peasant rummaging through his garbage pile. He mused about all of this, then inscribed:
"I have unlocked a mystery of great potential. By invoking the sacred word of inclusion I have unlocked a compendium, nay a veritable library of invocations and chants. Like the peasant sifting through my rubbish, so can I reuse my incantations. These shall empower me further into my research for the solution to the factorial function, a problem of seemingly infinite complexity."
That's shocking. The second article particularly bothered me. As usual, the victims who suffer most here are those they are trying to protect, such as with this from your second link:
The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.
Australia has a big difficulty with heroin abuse. We have shooting galleries where addicts can shoot up safely, methadone programs that sate the addicts with dangerous pharmaceuticals, yet we still have a serious heroin problem. We are close to many south east asian countries which produce opium in large quantities, and are the recipient of these illegal imports.
While this is just the typical reactionary 'protect the children' bullshit it does have a fairly legitimate basis in trying to reduce the impact of smack on our kids.
Amazing that this is part of our cultural history, yet the impact of its influence means nothing politically, it just helps us be more comfortable while our arse is slammed tight in the trap.
Fuck it, break down those walls you slack bastards!
How does that jibe with the incompleteness theorem?
For any consistent formal, recursively enumerable theory that proves basic arithmetical truths, an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory, can be constructed.
If there will always be unprovable truths, is science always doomed to fall short of a complete answer?
Why prove it wrong? Perhaps its not possible to rectify the way matter curves spacetime at the quantum level, perhaps Einstein doesn't need to ever be proved wrong for the description of the entire universe to be expanded upon. Perhaps there's nothing wrong at the quantum end of the scale, its just asking the wrong question.
Australia doesn't have free speech anyway, except that hinted at in the Magna Carta and common law. Still, there is a freedom at work, it's free as free market, in consumers expectation that a competitive, free and open market exists. We have a Trade Practices act that defines most of the behaviour required, play by the rules or face stiff penalties.
The ACCC acts in the interest of this competitive free market by protecting the consumer from abusive monopolies and similar extortion. Restricting ebays ability to force a monopoly on payments enables freedom of competition in that sector. Nothing charitable about it, severe abuses of monopoly and anticompetitive behaviour are unacceptable in our version of a free market.
The fucking pathetic fuckhead who fucked around coining words like 'f-bomb' can go take a flying fuck. The word fuck has a beautiful amalgam of meanings, from delicate and subtle, soft and sexy, petty frustration, joyful mockery, and yes, it can be used in a vulgar or angry fashion too. It can be a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or even just a filler like your doch. Please, keep finding it offensive, part of the allure and mystique as you mention is the taboo.
It could be because Xandros licenses patents from Microsoft that are necessary for functionality average end users expect, so it can be provided by default, out of the box, unlike on Ubuntu.
What exactly does Xandros offer out of the box that Ubuntu doesn't that also requires a patent license from Microsoft? I'm genuinely curious.
The correct answer if using generic hyperbole is any software at all.
There is a grain of truth there though. All Mac users I know dual boot Windows, yet I can think of very few PC users wishing for OSX, and they'd already have Unix of one sort or another.
My assumption is that Mac users dual-boot Windows for specific applications, like gaming. Windows users on the other hand don't need a second platform for specific applications, they have software to burn. They need a second platform for the interface.
While they don't have OSX for generic hardware the majority of software developers will avoid the niche for the mass market, and this will continue, even with the abomination that is Vista.
Personally, I think dual booting to OSX would be sexy and awesome, but not enough to tie myself to Mac hardware. I'd happily buy it if it was available seperately for generic hardware though, and they are idiots for tying it up.
They could crush Vista if they gave themselves the chance.
Instead, they settle for second best thinking that ridiculous premiums can somehow compensate for market share.
Don't take those clips too seriously, though they are hilarious it is a comedy skit, not a meaningful expose. To get slightly back on topic, you must see their take on Fox News.
A colleague told me of this discussion and suggested that I give a brief explanation of the motivation for this project. I'm from the Music Acoustics Group at UNSW. We maintain a large web site for the benefit of musicians, students and interested others. It has more details on the robot. The introduction on our site is aimed at a good high school student, but if you go deep enough it leads to our technical research papers.
Most of the time, we study real musical instruments, real musicians, the voice and the ear. Some of this is sponsored by companies (instrument makers, a medical device company, a museum), but much of it is curiosity research.
For us, the robot project complements one of our areas in which we study real musicians and how they play. We want to know, in some detail, why a real musician plays better and makes a better sound than a beginner. (Curiosity research, but with an obvious application in music teaching and sometimes instrument design.)
The robot is a tool for testing our understanding of the clarinet-player system. The current version is very primitive: it was put together in a hurry for the competition. But in the next year or so we shall use it to understand a range of questions: * Why does a clarinet reed squeak? How can you stop it? * What are the important parameters in a good sound? * How important are tongue position, soft palate, glottis? What are the best combinations? * How important is lip damping, and how does it depend on the reed? * What are the important parameters in fine pitch control? * What are the important parameters in expressive performance? * What is necessary to convey warmth? * What is necessary to follow a conductor?
To some of these, of course, we already have answers from our previous research. But we want to have more confidence in those answers.
So for the Music Acoustics Lab, this robot is a very useful tool. It was also a good project for two undergraduate students (Paul and Jean) in physics: a project that required a range of experimental and analytical techniques. The other groups in the robot team have different motivations.
For Mechanical Engineering, this robot was an interesting challenge. It was a good undergraduate student project for Kim: a range of questions to answer and difficulties to overcome. - It was also an interesting challenge for Mark, a Computer Engineering student Mark. In fact all of the students involved were highly motivated, worked well, learned a lot -- and had a good time. For university staff, this alone would justify the project.
For NICTA (a national research centre in ICT), the contest was a formal challenge. A good way of displaying expertise and applications in embedded systems, and a good way of inspiring students. (John Judge is from NICTA).
The team details and some more discussion is at Music Acoustics.
What of the Nokia N810? You get a Mozilla browser w/full Java support, Flash 9.0, keyboard, 800x480 screen. Sure, you need wifi or a bluetooth phone to connect, but it seems much more viable for easy surfing with the flash support, keyboard and nice wide screen.
Yeah, I heard there's atmosphere there too, and the gravity is way off, as is the cosmic radiation. They should just go somewhere on Earth with no water, no atmosphere, no magnetosphere and partial gravity.
They are all broad sweeping generalisations that have little bearing on the reality of the man on the street. Cultures are different, none better, none worse.
Your assumption that democracy is inherently better than dictatorship only holds for your cultural values. All political systems or cultures are better than dystopia and all are worse than utopia, they all have benefits and flaws, yet while there are more similarities than differences we tend to ignore the familiar (including our own flaws) and divide the world into false dichotomies, black and white, good and bad, or in this case better or worse.
Even if we take it for granted that dictatorship is a bad thing in and of itself, culture embraces far more than merely internal politics. Living under democracy might be great, but what if that democracy was overthrowing other democracies and installing dictators in those countries? Would that culture be better or worse than one that was a dictatorship that openly embraced democracy in a former territory that had been democratic for around 99 years? It's not so black and white as it first appears.
He assumed it to be true, then made an excellent point. I'd hardly call that offbase.
Even if true, two wrongs don't make a right, and only the most deluded or ignorant student of history would believe that there was anything resembling equality between whites & blacks in their status in society.
Slashdot Mirror
He makes valid if somewhat off-focus points, presents them in a clear and rational way, doesn't use inflammatory language and participates in a constructive two way conversation, including suggestions on how to improve the product that were admired by the admin.
It was not wrong to list his critique and then engage in reasonable debate about its merits, especially the limitations and possible bugs in the program. Quite the opposite, I'd thank him profusely for providing detailed feedback and keeping things civil and polite when he is obviously frustrated.
Even if his criticism was misplaced on some points, they still had technical merit. He was 100% right to post his viewpoint and is in no way bullying, trolling or anything remotely similar.
ShadowBane strode into the room, his pale Night-Elf features enveloped in the shadows of his Technomancer robes. Before him stood the artefact, an eerie light emanating from its crystal face.
He sat on the throne, in one hand brandishing a strange rune-encrusted clattering device, whilst in the other he wielded a smooth object with wheels and levers emitting a demonic red glow. His hands moved swiftly and glowing runes etched themselves on the crystal device, spelling out:
"#include <stdio.h>"
He clicked again, and the runes mystically floated upwards. The next runes were even more cryptic:
"void main(int argc, char *argv[]) { printf("Hello world"); }"
He paused, taking a sip from his recycled aluminium goblet, then taking a sheet of recycled parchment and dipping his pen into a pot of genuine organic squid ink. Out of the corner of his eye he glanced a peasant rummaging through his garbage pile. He mused about all of this, then inscribed:
"I have unlocked a mystery of great potential. By invoking the sacred word of inclusion I have unlocked a compendium, nay a veritable library of invocations and chants. Like the peasant sifting through my rubbish, so can I reuse my incantations. These shall empower me further into my research for the solution to the factorial function, a problem of seemingly infinite complexity."
Why wait? You can just disable them in your hosts file, like I'm doi@'#^&2:_=
NO CARRIER
That's shocking. The second article particularly bothered me. As usual, the victims who suffer most here are those they are trying to protect, such as with this from your second link:
The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.
Its a fine line between education and propagandist indoctrination. Education is not the key, thinking for yourself is the key.
Australia has a big difficulty with heroin abuse. We have shooting galleries where addicts can shoot up safely, methadone programs that sate the addicts with dangerous pharmaceuticals, yet we still have a serious heroin problem. We are close to many south east asian countries which produce opium in large quantities, and are the recipient of these illegal imports.
While this is just the typical reactionary 'protect the children' bullshit it does have a fairly legitimate basis in trying to reduce the impact of smack on our kids.
Amazing that this is part of our cultural history, yet the impact of its influence means nothing politically, it just helps us be more comfortable while our arse is slammed tight in the trap.
Fuck it, break down those walls you slack bastards!
How does that jibe with the incompleteness theorem?
For any consistent formal, recursively enumerable theory that proves basic arithmetical truths, an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory, can be constructed.
If there will always be unprovable truths, is science always doomed to fall short of a complete answer?
Why prove it wrong? Perhaps its not possible to rectify the way matter curves spacetime at the quantum level, perhaps Einstein doesn't need to ever be proved wrong for the description of the entire universe to be expanded upon. Perhaps there's nothing wrong at the quantum end of the scale, its just asking the wrong question.
Australia doesn't have free speech anyway, except that hinted at in the Magna Carta and common law. Still, there is a freedom at work, it's free as free market, in consumers expectation that a competitive, free and open market exists. We have a Trade Practices act that defines most of the behaviour required, play by the rules or face stiff penalties.
The ACCC acts in the interest of this competitive free market by protecting the consumer from abusive monopolies and similar extortion. Restricting ebays ability to force a monopoly on payments enables freedom of competition in that sector. Nothing charitable about it, severe abuses of monopoly and anticompetitive behaviour are unacceptable in our version of a free market.
The fucking pathetic fuckhead who fucked around coining words like 'f-bomb' can go take a flying fuck. The word fuck has a beautiful amalgam of meanings, from delicate and subtle, soft and sexy, petty frustration, joyful mockery, and yes, it can be used in a vulgar or angry fashion too. It can be a noun, verb, adjective, adverb, or even just a filler like your doch. Please, keep finding it offensive, part of the allure and mystique as you mention is the taboo.
It could be because Xandros licenses patents from Microsoft that are necessary for functionality average end users expect, so it can be provided by default, out of the box, unlike on Ubuntu.
What exactly does Xandros offer out of the box that Ubuntu doesn't that also requires a patent license from Microsoft? I'm genuinely curious.
Gaming.
Consoles.
The correct answer if using generic hyperbole is any software at all.
There is a grain of truth there though. All Mac users I know dual boot Windows, yet I can think of very few PC users wishing for OSX, and they'd already have Unix of one sort or another.
My assumption is that Mac users dual-boot Windows for specific applications, like gaming. Windows users on the other hand don't need a second platform for specific applications, they have software to burn. They need a second platform for the interface.
While they don't have OSX for generic hardware the majority of software developers will avoid the niche for the mass market, and this will continue, even with the abomination that is Vista.
Personally, I think dual booting to OSX would be sexy and awesome, but not enough to tie myself to Mac hardware. I'd happily buy it if it was available seperately for generic hardware though, and they are idiots for tying it up.
They could crush Vista if they gave themselves the chance.
Instead, they settle for second best thinking that ridiculous premiums can somehow compensate for market share.
Or perhaps just more research into atmospheric plasma like this: Three Dimensional Images in the Air, video.
Don't take those clips too seriously, though they are hilarious it is a comedy skit, not a meaningful expose. To get slightly back on topic, you must see their take on Fox News.
What's a Google? Around 10^100
What's a Yahoo!? A crude or boorish person.
What's a WinAmp? Some sort of political blog.
What's a Slashdot? HALTING ERROR
What's a Firefox? A group of crop circle enthusiasts.
What's an eBay? An employment agency.
What's a NewEgg? Another political forum, this one invite only.
What's a Lightwave? Some sort of fan-fic blog.
What's a Nero? Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) was born in 37 A.D. and died in 68 A.D. (pp. 154)
What's an Outlook Express? Some sort of torture device.
What's a Visual Studio? A far more subtle tourture device.
What's an AutoCAD? An employment agency.
Really, you're on the net, there's no excuse for not knowing this stuff.
Subject shouting abusively, recommend immediate ASBO and follow up with sustained surveillance for two months.
Most of the time, we study real musical instruments, real musicians, the voice and the ear. Some of this is sponsored by companies (instrument makers, a medical device company, a museum), but much of it is curiosity research.
For us, the robot project complements one of our areas in which we study real musicians and how they play. We want to know, in some detail, why a real musician plays better and makes a better sound than a beginner. (Curiosity research, but with an obvious application in music teaching and sometimes instrument design.)
The robot is a tool for testing our understanding of the clarinet-player system. The current version is very primitive: it was put together in a hurry for the competition. But in the next year or so we shall use it to understand a range of questions:
* Why does a clarinet reed squeak? How can you stop it?
* What are the important parameters in a good sound?
* How important are tongue position, soft palate, glottis? What are the best combinations?
* How important is lip damping, and how does it depend on the reed?
* What are the important parameters in fine pitch control?
* What are the important parameters in expressive performance?
* What is necessary to convey warmth?
* What is necessary to follow a conductor?
To some of these, of course, we already have answers from our previous research. But we want to have more confidence in those answers.
So for the Music Acoustics Lab, this robot is a very useful tool. It was also a good project for two undergraduate students (Paul and Jean) in physics: a project that required a range of experimental and analytical techniques. The other groups in the robot team have different motivations.
For Mechanical Engineering, this robot was an interesting challenge. It was a good undergraduate student project for Kim: a range of questions to answer and difficulties to overcome. - It was also an interesting challenge for Mark, a Computer Engineering student Mark. In fact all of the students involved were highly motivated, worked well, learned a lot -- and had a good time. For university staff, this alone would justify the project.
For NICTA (a national research centre in ICT), the contest was a formal challenge. A good way of displaying expertise and applications in embedded systems, and a good way of inspiring students. (John Judge is from NICTA).
The team details and some more discussion is at Music Acoustics.
What of the Nokia N810? You get a Mozilla browser w/full Java support, Flash 9.0, keyboard, 800x480 screen. Sure, you need wifi or a bluetooth phone to connect, but it seems much more viable for easy surfing with the flash support, keyboard and nice wide screen.
Better yet, leave the country and it will be perfect!
Indeed. Every intelligent person knows the Lego playsets are way more fun.
Yeah, I heard there's atmosphere there too, and the gravity is way off, as is the cosmic radiation. They should just go somewhere on Earth with no water, no atmosphere, no magnetosphere and partial gravity.
Your assumption that democracy is inherently better than dictatorship only holds for your cultural values. All political systems or cultures are better than dystopia and all are worse than utopia, they all have benefits and flaws, yet while there are more similarities than differences we tend to ignore the familiar (including our own flaws) and divide the world into false dichotomies, black and white, good and bad, or in this case better or worse.
Even if we take it for granted that dictatorship is a bad thing in and of itself, culture embraces far more than merely internal politics. Living under democracy might be great, but what if that democracy was overthrowing other democracies and installing dictators in those countries? Would that culture be better or worse than one that was a dictatorship that openly embraced democracy in a former territory that had been democratic for around 99 years? It's not so black and white as it first appears.
Here you go then, enjoy.