> By your argument, almost no-one would bother to make their work available for free on the web
What? Uh, no, they would still "bother," but they would host it at sites that can handle traffic, instead of getting all pissy that their server broke because it wasn't good enough. Hell, they can even HAVE their pissy little servers, that's fine. BUT DON'T BLAME ME WHEN IT BREAKS! And don't blame someone for linking to it, since that is what the WWW is for. I don't get what is so hard to understand about this.
> actions like co-ordinating a DDoS attack are illegal.
Luckily, we aren't talking about a DDoS and therefore that has nothing to do with this conversation.
> do you want to go back to the old times when days weren't colour-coded?
Good lord, if that happened I wouldn't know how scared I am! And I would have to choose my clothes for myself again -- I always wear the alert color so everyone else knows how scared to be too!
> Check more than one fucking program before gloating.
Okay, I'll check just about any program I've ever used.... Nope, almost exactly the same. Except in some of them there is an extra step, as it is not on the first open tab in Page Setup.
Textpad? Great fucking example. It's basically a Windows version of DOS EDIT.COM, did you expect it to have page formatting features? That's why they have included notepad AND wordpad. Amazing.
Visual Studio.NET, well I've never used it. Is it something you commonly print sideways documents from? I guess if you had long lines of code, you might want to, but it's not exactly a word processor or commonly used for styled pages.
Outlook, well I can't argue that one as I rarely use it, but you said it was there -- so my question on that one is, when you are using a mail program, why do you expect it to print anything but mail? Open any attached dox with the appropriate program and *bingo*, you can do landscape again.
I agree about print preview -- some programs open a new window that you can close, while some of them go overtop the same window so thath if you close it the whole freakin program ends. Fucking brilliant, Microsoft, thanks. Oh, and Mozilla Firebird does it too, I hate to say.
If people would follow standards, or at least what has been already done, then they would all be nearly the same on the PC too.
Believe me, I'm not defending MS, but it's usually not too hard to figure things out.
> I don't think littleuser can afford one, at whatever price per gig
Well, my argument to that is: you never know when you will become popular, so being shortsighted when signing up is not a very good argument for blaming the people coming to your site that you publicly posted. No, a lot of people don't understand that, but ignorance is no excuse for blaming someone else.
That said, yes, I would be severely pissed off if that happened to me -- but I know it is a possibility, so I don't pay per Gig.
> By requiring people to become technically savvy in order to participate in it, you are depriving millions of people from participating in the most radical social change that has ever occurred on this planet.
I don't think I said require (if I did, I am sorry). What I meant was, that if they are complaining that people are coming to their site, they don't understand anything about the Internet. Instead of complaining, they should put their site on a server that can handle it, such as an ISP or generic webhost.
I think that the average tech-illiterate has every right to use the Internet, and you don't even have to have a GOOD site -- I hate Flash animation & embedded movies in webpages, but I'm not going to tell someone they can't use it... Heck, they can have a "My dog spot" page that looks absolutely horrible & breaks all HTML conventions: not my problem, they can have it up if they want.
So they have every right to participate, but don't complain about others when yours is the part that is broken (or, at least, insufficient).
That's great, but the analogy is weak to begin with. It is more like going to China and getting pissed off when not everyone speaks English.
> > If people like Mr. Rubenstein expect her to understand them, she suggests, perhaps they should learn to speak in a language she can understand, rather than ridiculous acronyms and suffixes
Why don't those Chinese people learn to speak in a language she understands, rather than those ridiculous sounds that make no sense!
> printing in landscape vs. printing in portrait, are hidden in six pages of "user friendly" options
How is this six pages: 1) Find the word "File" in the top-left of the window 2) Click on the word "File" 3) Find the words "Page Setup" 4) Click on "Page Setup" 5) Find the word "Landscape" (or "portrait") 6) Click on that word 7) Click "OK"
Woaaah, hold on there, buckaroo, that's too much work. Granted, if you didn't know where to find the option, "Page Setup" might not be the obvious answer to "how do I change how the page is set up" and even after you're in there, what do you click on? Oh no, the pictures of a page and a page sideways are just way too confusing.
Nonexistence of your so-called lord negates the existence of your made-up laws, but thanks for playing our game.
Here's a hint: when trying to prove a point to a group that has a high percentage of atheists & non-christians, don't bring up "our Lord," as he is "your lord," not ours. You fucking twat.
> if you would like attractive girls to post here, perhaps it's best not to greet them with insults to their intelligence!
I hate to take away your feeling of being victimized, but everyone here is greeted with insults to their intelligence. We're masochistic, that's why we post to/.
> Does any other country have a govenment position as creepy sounding as 'The Information Commissioner'?
Well, the previous Iraqi Information Minister seems even more creepy to me. And Director of Homeland Security would be too, had they used a word other than "director." The way it is now, it just sounds like he doesn't do anything (imagine that).
> my loyalty cards, and I don't see anyone making a big fuss about that!
YOU DON'T??? In the last 2 weeks I've seen at least 3 long threads just on/. about how evil they are. Maybe you just aren't looking in the right places...
Damn, now I'll have to microwave my money too... which is okay, until I get to the change. I wonder if getting the RFID tags wet would cause a malfunction? Would give new meaning to "money laundering."
Since everyone keeps telling them the same things over & over, I went with a slightly different approach:
I am sure you have received too many emails to count regarding the glaring inaccuracies in the piece "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty," so I will refrain from restating what you already know. The difference is that I realized that Stephen Evans' article is, in fact, an editorial/opinion piece. In the future, it might be a good idea to label opinion pieces as such. I believe that this would reduce the knee-jerk criticisms you get, although it would be ignorant of me to suggest that this would remove them altogether.
Usually, I enjoy reading BBC news and find it to be extremely credible and interesting, but this oversight has left me slightly "peeved." Thank you for your time and all the hard work you do.
> So only the technologically elite should be allowed to put up websites?
That's not insightful, it's short-sighted.
Anyone can post whatever they want. BUT they have no right to complain when people actually use the services or read the info they offered. Also, one of the worst things I see is that whenever some person/group/company wants to host a website, they just build what they think is a webserver & host it at their own location.
If you want a reliable server without needing a fat T1 (and to avoid DDoS-like visitors), there are shitloads of web hosting companies that CAN handle the traffic for you. That way, you don't need to be technically elite, you just need to choose someone who is.
> Expecting www.bigisp.com/~littleuser/aboutme.html to have serious bandwidth is not [reasonable]
What, you don't think bigisp.com can handle a slashdotting? Of course it can (if it's actually big), as long as it is designed well enough. It would be different if you were serving through a cable modem or something.
> The concept of moral behavior, or simply thinking before acting, is actually pretty radical on the internet. But more of it should be happening.
So visiting a web site is immoral? That's pretty ignorant of reality.
You are looking at it the wrong way. The guy posting the info has certain responsibilities, or at least should have realistic expectations -- ie, shit happens. If you put a website on the Internet, you should know that there is a possibility that 1 million people will just "pop by" suddenly. While it may not be likely (excepting google/slashdot), it is possible. Therefore, if you have that page there and tell more than close friends, you must be prepared for the worst. If having that page up at all times is such an important issue, then you need a beefier server. Don't have a kickass server? Get one, or host it somewhere that has the proper infrastructure to handle a website. But do not blame me for clicking on a link I found, and I damn well better not be called immoral because I thought it was interesting.
I think the guy handled it the right way -- take it down & when the immediate barrage slows, put it back up. That way, the people who are interested enough to save the link & go back later will get to see it, and you don't have to serve huge graphics to those who are just momentarily curious or bored.
Ah yes, Chocolate Eclaire. Care to explain what the heck you are talking about? What is a Double-entendre (and I don't mean the definition, I mean what are you calling a D-E & why)?
> They say the average teenager drinks *10* cans of pop a day
(Please note I'm not calling you a liar, but your source)
I call B.S. on this. I don't know where they get this sensationalist crap, but certainly not from reality. Except for geek Mt. Dew junkies, it's pretty rare to find someone that drinks 10 cans in a single day of a month, let alone every day.
Maybe this is a case of misused statistics: Calculate number of regular soda drinkers. Calculate total number of cans sold each day. Since high consumers drink the majority, assume they drink ALL of it. Come up with wildly wrong figures.
Schools should not be allowed to have contracts with any company that is not directly related to school (ie, textbooks, other necessities). I don't ever "think about the children," and I still see what a crock it is. If Coca Cola (or Pepsi) thinks their product is so great, let them market to the parents, not to schools and directly to children who don't usually know what is good for them to eat/drink. Of course, that is what they count on -- fucking scumbags.
Slashdot Mirror
> By your argument, almost no-one would bother to make their work available for free on the web
What? Uh, no, they would still "bother," but they would host it at sites that can handle traffic, instead of getting all pissy that their server broke because it wasn't good enough. Hell, they can even HAVE their pissy little servers, that's fine. BUT DON'T BLAME ME WHEN IT BREAKS! And don't blame someone for linking to it, since that is what the WWW is for. I don't get what is so hard to understand about this.
> actions like co-ordinating a DDoS attack are illegal.
Luckily, we aren't talking about a DDoS and therefore that has nothing to do with this conversation.
Shit, that's funny :)
> do you want to go back to the old times when days weren't colour-coded?
Good lord, if that happened I wouldn't know how scared I am! And I would have to choose my clothes for myself again -- I always wear the alert color so everyone else knows how scared to be too!
> Check more than one fucking program before gloating.
Okay, I'll check just about any program I've ever used.... Nope, almost exactly the same. Except in some of them there is an extra step, as it is not on the first open tab in Page Setup.
Textpad? Great fucking example. It's basically a Windows version of DOS EDIT.COM, did you expect it to have page formatting features? That's why they have included notepad AND wordpad. Amazing.
Visual Studio.NET, well I've never used it. Is it something you commonly print sideways documents from? I guess if you had long lines of code, you might want to, but it's not exactly a word processor or commonly used for styled pages.
Outlook, well I can't argue that one as I rarely use it, but you said it was there -- so my question on that one is, when you are using a mail program, why do you expect it to print anything but mail? Open any attached dox with the appropriate program and *bingo*, you can do landscape again.
I agree about print preview -- some programs open a new window that you can close, while some of them go overtop the same window so thath if you close it the whole freakin program ends. Fucking brilliant, Microsoft, thanks. Oh, and Mozilla Firebird does it too, I hate to say.
If people would follow standards, or at least what has been already done, then they would all be nearly the same on the PC too.
Believe me, I'm not defending MS, but it's usually not too hard to figure things out.
> I don't think littleuser can afford one, at whatever price per gig
Well, my argument to that is: you never know when you will become popular, so being shortsighted when signing up is not a very good argument for blaming the people coming to your site that you publicly posted. No, a lot of people don't understand that, but ignorance is no excuse for blaming someone else.
That said, yes, I would be severely pissed off if that happened to me -- but I know it is a possibility, so I don't pay per Gig.
> any reasonable person could anticipate that posting the link to Slashdot would compound the problem
Oh, excuse me, I misunderstood the point. Yeah, that's pretty stupid, linking to a page that's having traffic problems.
> By requiring people to become technically savvy in order to participate in it, you are depriving millions of people from participating in the most radical social change that has ever occurred on this planet.
I don't think I said require (if I did, I am sorry). What I meant was, that if they are complaining that people are coming to their site, they don't understand anything about the Internet. Instead of complaining, they should put their site on a server that can handle it, such as an ISP or generic webhost.
I think that the average tech-illiterate has every right to use the Internet, and you don't even have to have a GOOD site -- I hate Flash animation & embedded movies in webpages, but I'm not going to tell someone they can't use it... Heck, they can have a "My dog spot" page that looks absolutely horrible & breaks all HTML conventions: not my problem, they can have it up if they want.
So they have every right to participate, but don't complain about others when yours is the part that is broken (or, at least, insufficient).
> Found lots of folks that spoke English.
That's great, but the analogy is weak to begin with. It is more like going to China and getting pissed off when not everyone speaks English.
> > If people like Mr. Rubenstein expect her to understand them, she suggests, perhaps they should learn to speak in a language she can understand, rather than ridiculous acronyms and suffixes
Why don't those Chinese people learn to speak in a language she understands, rather than those ridiculous sounds that make no sense!
See the point?
> printing in landscape vs. printing in portrait, are hidden in six pages of "user friendly" options
How is this six pages:
1) Find the word "File" in the top-left of the window
2) Click on the word "File"
3) Find the words "Page Setup"
4) Click on "Page Setup"
5) Find the word "Landscape" (or "portrait")
6) Click on that word
7) Click "OK"
Woaaah, hold on there, buckaroo, that's too much work. Granted, if you didn't know where to find the option, "Page Setup" might not be the obvious answer to "how do I change how the page is set up" and even after you're in there, what do you click on? Oh no, the pictures of a page and a page sideways are just way too confusing.
> How is it censorship if you can still get access to it?
Because he said so, of course!!!! What, you don't automatically assume all wild claims are true?
> let us not abuse the laws of our Lord
Nonexistence of your so-called lord negates the existence of your made-up laws, but thanks for playing our game.
Here's a hint: when trying to prove a point to a group that has a high percentage of atheists & non-christians, don't bring up "our Lord," as he is "your lord," not ours. You fucking twat.
> if you would like attractive girls to post here, perhaps it's best not to greet them with insults to their intelligence!
/.
I hate to take away your feeling of being victimized, but everyone here is greeted with insults to their intelligence. We're masochistic, that's why we post to
> Does any other country have a govenment position as creepy sounding as 'The Information Commissioner'?
Well, the previous Iraqi Information Minister seems even more creepy to me. And Director of Homeland Security would be too, had they used a word other than "director." The way it is now, it just sounds like he doesn't do anything (imagine that).
> my loyalty cards, and I don't see anyone making a big fuss about that!
/. about how evil they are. Maybe you just aren't looking in the right places...
YOU DON'T??? In the last 2 weeks I've seen at least 3 long threads just on
Damn, now I'll have to microwave my money too... which is okay, until I get to the change. I wonder if getting the RFID tags wet would cause a malfunction? Would give new meaning to "money laundering."
Since everyone keeps telling them the same things over & over, I went with a slightly different approach:
I am sure you have received too many emails to count regarding the glaring inaccuracies in the piece "Linux cyber-battle turns nasty," so I will refrain from restating what you already know. The difference is that I realized that Stephen Evans' article is, in fact, an editorial/opinion piece. In the future, it might be a good idea to label opinion pieces as such. I believe that this would reduce the knee-jerk criticisms you get, although it would be ignorant of me to suggest that this would remove them altogether.
Usually, I enjoy reading BBC news and find it to be extremely credible and interesting, but this oversight has left me slightly "peeved." Thank you for your time and all the hard work you do.
> Microsoft at least knows something about setting up secure, high bandwidth servers
Too bad their programmers don't. Hahaha.. err, okay, I'm done with lame jokes today. Or am I? Mwuhahahaha, live in fear, lest my comedy strikes again!
> aint you ever noticed it'll be unaccessible for hours, even days at a time?
No. Well, I guess not "ever," as I've had a day or two in the last 4 years that I noticed it was down. When was the most recent?
> So only the technologically elite should be allowed to put up websites?
That's not insightful, it's short-sighted.
Anyone can post whatever they want. BUT they have no right to complain when people actually use the services or read the info they offered. Also, one of the worst things I see is that whenever some person/group/company wants to host a website, they just build what they think is a webserver & host it at their own location.
If you want a reliable server without needing a fat T1 (and to avoid DDoS-like visitors), there are shitloads of web hosting companies that CAN handle the traffic for you. That way, you don't need to be technically elite, you just need to choose someone who is.
> Expecting www.bigisp.com/~littleuser/aboutme.html to have serious bandwidth is not [reasonable]
What, you don't think bigisp.com can handle a slashdotting? Of course it can (if it's actually big), as long as it is designed well enough. It would be different if you were serving through a cable modem or something.
> The concept of moral behavior, or simply thinking before acting, is actually pretty radical on the internet. But more of it should be happening.
So visiting a web site is immoral? That's pretty ignorant of reality.
You are looking at it the wrong way. The guy posting the info has certain responsibilities, or at least should have realistic expectations -- ie, shit happens. If you put a website on the Internet, you should know that there is a possibility that 1 million people will just "pop by" suddenly. While it may not be likely (excepting google/slashdot), it is possible. Therefore, if you have that page there and tell more than close friends, you must be prepared for the worst. If having that page up at all times is such an important issue, then you need a beefier server. Don't have a kickass server? Get one, or host it somewhere that has the proper infrastructure to handle a website. But do not blame me for clicking on a link I found, and I damn well better not be called immoral because I thought it was interesting.
I think the guy handled it the right way -- take it down & when the immediate barrage slows, put it back up. That way, the people who are interested enough to save the link & go back later will get to see it, and you don't have to serve huge graphics to those who are just momentarily curious or bored.
> Double entendre?
Ah yes, Chocolate Eclaire. Care to explain what the heck you are talking about? What is a Double-entendre (and I don't mean the definition, I mean what are you calling a D-E & why)?
> because they aren't good enough to get a recording contract.
Or they don't like getting raped in the ass, like you.
> Say "Where mountain dew?" out loud and ask yourself if that makes sense.
It make sense? Yes make me sense good. (ugh, oog, ugh). What wrong you no know? Duh! Me so smart.
> i'm not going to raise any sort of such hell
So don't raise hell. Just tell the person nicely. If you get removed for that, suicide bomb the fuckers.
> They say the average teenager drinks *10* cans of pop a day
(Please note I'm not calling you a liar, but your source)
I call B.S. on this. I don't know where they get this sensationalist crap, but certainly not from reality. Except for geek Mt. Dew junkies, it's pretty rare to find someone that drinks 10 cans in a single day of a month, let alone every day.
Maybe this is a case of misused statistics:
Calculate number of regular soda drinkers.
Calculate total number of cans sold each day.
Since high consumers drink the majority, assume they drink ALL of it.
Come up with wildly wrong figures.
Schools should not be allowed to have contracts with any company that is not directly related to school (ie, textbooks, other necessities). I don't ever "think about the children," and I still see what a crock it is. If Coca Cola (or Pepsi) thinks their product is so great, let them market to the parents, not to schools and directly to children who don't usually know what is good for them to eat/drink. Of course, that is what they count on -- fucking scumbags.