... that the whole "We're no longer evil" rubbish that has been coming from MS recently really is just that: rubbish. (Not that many fully believed it though)
If they were even attempting to gain some external trust from FOSS communities and the like (which I believe they stated they were with the whole MS open source initiative etc.) this is an excellent way to soil it.
The/. post gives the wrong impression about the VGA implementation - it was difficult because they wanted to implement it in a extremely simple fashion, not because VGA itself is complex
Because the guy went entirely too far. If he had posted anonymous copies of comments they had sent etc then it probably would have been tolerable as an 'experiment'. However, he posted photos, names, emails etc. - which is fairly brutal when shared on the net
On the over hand though, regardless of the false pretense, these people gave their data to him, and took a calculated risk as to whether the ad was genuine or not. It's not as if the data was stolen or anything. So it's a bit iffy, but overall, I'd say a good judgement
Auto signature machines are not the same as long distance signature machines. It's also worth noting that mechanical signature systems are rarely used for sensitive data etc. (they're normally used on cheap merchandise etc. and hand writing experts can tell the difference between the mechanical version and a real signature)
In a lot of cases, cute is interchangeable with stupid or impractical looking. A netbook that size is going to look impractical (and hence cute or whimsical in size) for a long time to come, until they become commonplace everywhere
So either accept that your MSI is 'cute', or buy a bigger more serious looking netbook (i.e. a larger one that looks to be more practical / less whimsical). I think tiny netbooks are the equivalent of a tiny piano (+pianist) for the uninitiated: They look stupid.
Because clearly, I can't have a non-violent view on how crabs and lobsters should be killed, without being a pacifist or a "Whiny, tree-hugging worms puke[..]"
Seriously, the logic put into troll posts has decreased a lot recently - maybe you should look elsewhere? (Maybe spam posts? They don't require thinking/logic)
"If you buy into the theory that causing pain is immoral then every cow is a walking Auschwitz"
The necessity of causing pain was the key point in my argument - I didn't say pain was completely wrong
Bacteria passing through a cow's gut / digestive system is a natural process that the cow itself has no control over, and hence the necessity of it is irrelevant - it's going to happen regardless. The same cannot be said for a lobster boiling in a pot.
Most predators go for the necks of the prey (e.g. lions and most other savannah predators) and kill it nearly immediately. Very few eat other animals whilst they are still alive (and the ones that do tend to inject neuro-toxins or paralytics)
Most of all though, being an Atheist and general backer of logical thinking, the thought comes to mind "Why?" - why is it necessary to make the animal's death excruciatingly painful if we can 'terminate' it first?
Of course you ask the reverse (why be nice?) to which I'd say that not making the death painful isn't really 'nice'. It's neutral: Since torturing the animal to death serves no practical purpose at all, killing it immediately isn't really being nice, it's just being 'direct'
I find it genuinely scary how little the majority of commenters here feel for the way in which animals are killed / whether they feel pain. Fine, we eventually eat them, and I agree that the method of killing is of little consequence: but why is it necessary to give them an extremely torturous death prior to that?
If they do indeed feel pain (which I think they must: The excuse that they don't is just an excuse for a quick and easy + cheap method for executing them) I hope this study helps push more humane methods for killing crabs (and lobsters), because after watching them boil alive in tins etc. it makes you squirm thinking of the millions of these organisms facing their last minutes on this planet in blinding pain:(
I'm kind of on the fence about my country's censorship (The UK, that is). As far as I know, it's only child porn that is actively censored, and whilst I don't mind it being censored due to what it is, it does spark the question "Where will it stop?"
The other problem is that they don't censor everything else that's illegal - so should they continue to censor child porn and nothing else, or censor everything illegal? Or abandon all censorship? It's a tricky conundrum once it starts to involve the law:/
" predetermined end-point according to a top-down plan"
Even if FOSS isn't working to an 'end-point', it still ages. Why does having an age attached to it imply it has an end point or an overall plan? (See also: The anniversary of the war in Iraq)
I'm 18, and I'm about to leave my secondary school and head off to university (assuming I get my grades). I've always had an interest in tech an computers - so I learnt (or started learning) C/C++ at around 14 to try and get a step ahead of just the typical 'wannabes'. I now consider myself, four years later, to be a pretty competent coder. Besides that though, I don't consider myself 'special' in any way or form what-so-ever.
In fact, the only 'special' thing about what I just mentioned is the age I was when I did it - what I actually did (self teaching, as per the java beans example) is painfully uninteresting. Yet people I meet routinely single this out as 'strange' and 'amazing' (people in other fields, that is).
I don't share their enthusiasm - why is self-teaching so amazing? Am I really that cool for doing the simplest thing ever - teaching myself. Or are the other people I'm being judged against too fucking retarded to teach themselves?
I think that's the main scary thing this article touches on (and something I've experienced) - self teaching is now some kind of oddity. I'm pleased I learnt C/C++ when I did: Not because of what it is, but apparently, in this new age of retardation, self taught *anything* is some amazing feat to be behold. I think that's the scarier prospect than overly narcissistic students/graduates
No company can turn out a bug-free ANYTHING because it is a logical impossibility. This is nothing to do with which corporations make what: It's called software development, and whatever the outcome, it will have bugs. Take it or leave it
I'm surprised it has taken this long for a technology like this to come around. Not the hamster part, but the generation of electricity via small/random body movements. Considering we've had self-winding/kinetic watches for a while, I'm surprised this took so long to materialise.
My comment was addressing the fact that this has turned up during an economic slump - I was not commenting on the validity or usefulness of the upgrade itself. My point was, AMD do not have magic crystal balls when they start their projects (like most chip makers) months or even years before launch - they probably did not foresee this new tech. turning up during a crunch.
Being fair to AMD, these processors/sockets do not just turn up in a week or so in a finished state - they go through multiple stages during months/years before we ever see them. So I doubt they planned on releasing this at an economic slump - it may have looked very unlikely such a slump would even occur when the project was launched.
It is however a downer for smaller groups or actual singers with decent voices, because they have to compete with an altered (potentially 'perfect-sounding') voice.
We'll end up with the same thing as what has happened with photoshopped magazine images - people expect unreasonable perfection, and the people without an army of machines behind them get made to look inferior. We'll end up losing touch with reality at this rate... What's a human singing voice sound like again...?
This being a genuine question - how did regular bog-standard USB win its war against the random assortment of proprietary plugs? I assume there would have been similar issues for manufacturers when USB first rolled around, and we still ended up with USB everywhere
USB was starting to get popular as I was getting my first modern computer though, and I never really saw much of how it grew and developed - did it fight a war, or did it just waltz on into victory? Can this do the same as whatever the heck standard USB connectors did?
"Now show me one border patrol person that is eager to get yet another thingamajig into their hands that means more work for the same pay?"
I believe part of the ID card initiative was to make it easier to do border checks (so all the information is available in a single piece of ID)
"This system was paid for by the taxpayer and sold to the taxpayer on all sorts of spurious grounds. With DVD and Blu-Ray, people can decide not to buy and the investment is lost - and if you object to R&D a company is carrying out right now, you can avoid funding it by not buying one of their products."
I wasn't comparing the way they are 'sold' - what I meant is that during some stage of development on DVD/Blu-Ray there would have been no widely-available player on which to use the technology. That doesn't make the technology bad, or a waste of money; it just hasn't had a chance to penetrate the 'market' (in the same way that no-one ha ID cards yet, so the readers have been delayed/ignored for now)
Slashdot Mirror
... that the whole "We're no longer evil" rubbish that has been coming from MS recently really is just that: rubbish. (Not that many fully believed it though)
If they were even attempting to gain some external trust from FOSS communities and the like (which I believe they stated they were with the whole MS open source initiative etc.) this is an excellent way to soil it.
The /. post gives the wrong impression about the VGA implementation - it was difficult because they wanted to implement it in a extremely simple fashion, not because VGA itself is complex
Because the guy went entirely too far. If he had posted anonymous copies of comments they had sent etc then it probably would have been tolerable as an 'experiment'. However, he posted photos, names, emails etc. - which is fairly brutal when shared on the net
On the over hand though, regardless of the false pretense, these people gave their data to him, and took a calculated risk as to whether the ad was genuine or not. It's not as if the data was stolen or anything. So it's a bit iffy, but overall, I'd say a good judgement
Auto signature machines are not the same as long distance signature machines. It's also worth noting that mechanical signature systems are rarely used for sensitive data etc. (they're normally used on cheap merchandise etc. and hand writing experts can tell the difference between the mechanical version and a real signature)
"People having their flesh burned to the bone while they are alive."
No, no, you seem to have misunderstood, this game is about Fallujah, not Viet Nam
In a lot of cases, cute is interchangeable with stupid or impractical looking. A netbook that size is going to look impractical (and hence cute or whimsical in size) for a long time to come, until they become commonplace everywhere
So either accept that your MSI is 'cute', or buy a bigger more serious looking netbook (i.e. a larger one that looks to be more practical / less whimsical). I think tiny netbooks are the equivalent of a tiny piano (+pianist) for the uninitiated: They look stupid.
Because clearly, I can't have a non-violent view on how crabs and lobsters should be killed, without being a pacifist or a "Whiny, tree-hugging worms puke[..]"
Seriously, the logic put into troll posts has decreased a lot recently - maybe you should look elsewhere? (Maybe spam posts? They don't require thinking/logic)
"If you buy into the theory that causing pain is immoral then every cow is a walking Auschwitz"
The necessity of causing pain was the key point in my argument - I didn't say pain was completely wrong
Bacteria passing through a cow's gut / digestive system is a natural process that the cow itself has no control over, and hence the necessity of it is irrelevant - it's going to happen regardless. The same cannot be said for a lobster boiling in a pot.
Which animals boil their prey to death in water?
Most predators go for the necks of the prey (e.g. lions and most other savannah predators) and kill it nearly immediately. Very few eat other animals whilst they are still alive (and the ones that do tend to inject neuro-toxins or paralytics)
Most of all though, being an Atheist and general backer of logical thinking, the thought comes to mind "Why?" - why is it necessary to make the animal's death excruciatingly painful if we can 'terminate' it first?
Of course you ask the reverse (why be nice?) to which I'd say that not making the death painful isn't really 'nice'. It's neutral: Since torturing the animal to death serves no practical purpose at all, killing it immediately isn't really being nice, it's just being 'direct'
I find it genuinely scary how little the majority of commenters here feel for the way in which animals are killed / whether they feel pain. Fine, we eventually eat them, and I agree that the method of killing is of little consequence: but why is it necessary to give them an extremely torturous death prior to that?
If they do indeed feel pain (which I think they must: The excuse that they don't is just an excuse for a quick and easy + cheap method for executing them) I hope this study helps push more humane methods for killing crabs (and lobsters), because after watching them boil alive in tins etc. it makes you squirm thinking of the millions of these organisms facing their last minutes on this planet in blinding pain :(
There's a presentation that explains how it works: http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/2/8/728FE40F-93B6-47BD-B67D-78D04B63E27D/Automated%20Security%20Crash%20Dump%20Analysis.pptx
I'm kind of on the fence about my country's censorship (The UK, that is). As far as I know, it's only child porn that is actively censored, and whilst I don't mind it being censored due to what it is, it does spark the question "Where will it stop?"
The other problem is that they don't censor everything else that's illegal - so should they continue to censor child porn and nothing else, or censor everything illegal? Or abandon all censorship? It's a tricky conundrum once it starts to involve the law :/
" predetermined end-point according to a top-down plan"
Even if FOSS isn't working to an 'end-point', it still ages. Why does having an age attached to it imply it has an end point or an overall plan? (See also: The anniversary of the war in Iraq)
I'm 18, and I'm about to leave my secondary school and head off to university (assuming I get my grades). I've always had an interest in tech an computers - so I learnt (or started learning) C/C++ at around 14 to try and get a step ahead of just the typical 'wannabes'. I now consider myself, four years later, to be a pretty competent coder. Besides that though, I don't consider myself 'special' in any way or form what-so-ever.
In fact, the only 'special' thing about what I just mentioned is the age I was when I did it - what I actually did (self teaching, as per the java beans example) is painfully uninteresting. Yet people I meet routinely single this out as 'strange' and 'amazing' (people in other fields, that is).
I don't share their enthusiasm - why is self-teaching so amazing? Am I really that cool for doing the simplest thing ever - teaching myself. Or are the other people I'm being judged against too fucking retarded to teach themselves?
I think that's the main scary thing this article touches on (and something I've experienced) - self teaching is now some kind of oddity. I'm pleased I learnt C/C++ when I did: Not because of what it is, but apparently, in this new age of retardation, self taught *anything* is some amazing feat to be behold. I think that's the scarier prospect than overly narcissistic students/graduates
No company can turn out a bug-free ANYTHING because it is a logical impossibility. This is nothing to do with which corporations make what: It's called software development, and whatever the outcome, it will have bugs. Take it or leave it
I'm surprised it has taken this long for a technology like this to come around. Not the hamster part, but the generation of electricity via small/random body movements. Considering we've had self-winding/kinetic watches for a while, I'm surprised this took so long to materialise.
Why is this modded funny - he is still chairman of the board!
My comment was addressing the fact that this has turned up during an economic slump - I was not commenting on the validity or usefulness of the upgrade itself. My point was, AMD do not have magic crystal balls when they start their projects (like most chip makers) months or even years before launch - they probably did not foresee this new tech. turning up during a crunch.
Being fair to AMD, these processors/sockets do not just turn up in a week or so in a finished state - they go through multiple stages during months/years before we ever see them. So I doubt they planned on releasing this at an economic slump - it may have looked very unlikely such a slump would even occur when the project was launched.
It is however a downer for smaller groups or actual singers with decent voices, because they have to compete with an altered (potentially 'perfect-sounding') voice.
We'll end up with the same thing as what has happened with photoshopped magazine images - people expect unreasonable perfection, and the people without an army of machines behind them get made to look inferior. We'll end up losing touch with reality at this rate... What's a human singing voice sound like again...?
This being a genuine question - how did regular bog-standard USB win its war against the random assortment of proprietary plugs? I assume there would have been similar issues for manufacturers when USB first rolled around, and we still ended up with USB everywhere
USB was starting to get popular as I was getting my first modern computer though, and I never really saw much of how it grew and developed - did it fight a war, or did it just waltz on into victory? Can this do the same as whatever the heck standard USB connectors did?
I agree with what you're saying - but in the context of what I was replying to, what I said made sense, irrespective of the points you have made
Wow, I guess you don't know how to read: "So don't install Google Earth."
i.e. don't install it to begin with
"This is hardly "caving". Microsoft was alerted to a security issue, and they're fixing it. How did this get spun into an anti-microsoft story?"
They stated it was by design a few days ago, immediately after the issue was posted, that's why
"Now show me one border patrol person that is eager to get yet another thingamajig into their hands that means more work for the same pay?"
I believe part of the ID card initiative was to make it easier to do border checks (so all the information is available in a single piece of ID)
"This system was paid for by the taxpayer and sold to the taxpayer on all sorts of spurious grounds. With DVD and Blu-Ray, people can decide not to buy and the investment is lost - and if you object to R&D a company is carrying out right now, you can avoid funding it by not buying one of their products."
I wasn't comparing the way they are 'sold' - what I meant is that during some stage of development on DVD/Blu-Ray there would have been no widely-available player on which to use the technology. That doesn't make the technology bad, or a waste of money; it just hasn't had a chance to penetrate the 'market' (in the same way that no-one ha ID cards yet, so the readers have been delayed/ignored for now)