... which is what lawyers live off. Laws have a tendency to be overcomplicated and ambiguous which really means a layman often has difficulties grasping the details. That's where lawyers and courts step in, in order to use or abuse the ambiguosities.
You should check Logitech mices implementing the Fly-Wheel. I have a MX Revolution at home and once you're used a middle wheel which can scroll for up to 7 secs after a single impulse (wonderful when you're working with thousands of line long files) and can be switched from digital clickclickclick mode to an analoguous zeeeeeeeeeeeeep mode it's really hard not to wish every mouse would work like that. Case in point : I just clicked the wheel of the saitek mouse I'm using on my netbook to switch it to flywheel mode (didn't work obviously:P
sigh... no. I'm not jealous of you. Why should I? I had my ten or fifteen really successful years, I'm now on welfare but I live on a Caribbean island and my priorities have changed : my family is much more important than "earning as much as I can". I still work a lot (10-14 hours daily), I just don't make money from my work for different reasons, most of which I can't change no matter what. And I might have a lucky break in a few month, which will give me the opportunity to get off welfare (while still not making tons of money though), thanks to good circumstances and excellent accidental timing.
I still think you should get a really bad break and end up without money though, and as the economy looks right now, it might be sooner than later. Thinking your success is solely due to your personal awesomeness just reinforce my opinion that you are truly clueless, and a reality check might do you good on a personal basis.
Interestingly, the same "they are just jealous of our success" argument has been used in conjunction with 9/11 and even back then it was complete bullshit.
no. I assume that everyone who is successful got there for an important part because of luck. I'm not sure what you mean with equality of condition, but what I'm a fan of is the idea that meritocracy, as good as it sounds, is unachievable and one's status is not a reflection of one's value to society. On this, I definitely agree with Alain de Botton.
This means that assuming everybody has the same opportunity and only "needs to work harder to succeed" is a fallacy. It also means that people looking down on those who weren't as lucky as they were are, in my eyes, very egocentric and slightly despicable. Being mean spirited, I actually often wish they would get a bit of bad luck and find themselves at the bottom again for a while. It helps with the perspective.
see... That's where we have to agree to disagree. I am talking compassion toward those who did not have the lucky breaks you certainly did have, you're talking fairness while ignoring the fact that success is not only a result of hard work in favor of inflating your ego...
A "lucky break" can be a lack of "bad luck", by the way
whilst people making $150k/year will strongly support changing the economical and legislative framework to keep as much of their money as possible, no matter whether the taxes they would have to pay would help people in need who won't ever be able to make $150k a year due to illness or lack of education. Now... who do you think has the better leverage on the framework?
I'll admit I was particularly picky on that one, although it was to introduce the fact that not everybody think OSX is superior to [insert your favourite Linux distro here]
I know where you're coming from. Taking care of my 4 year old kids here... so long passages during which I just wait for the next catastrophe and post on slashdot to pass the time in-between;)
I agree with you that the GP's "rich boy" call was out of place, but so is your "change your life" argument. You can work your ass off and still not make enough money to get past the "working to survive" stage, and you can be a lazy asshole and be rich like hell. It's not as if poor people are actively choosing to be poor or don't try to have enough to pay for luxury goods (in this case concert tickets). Generally it's a matter of chance and circumstances which leads either way, with, of course some personal work involved (if you don't try chances are you won't succeed neither... although even THAT is no absolute).
Add to that the disappearing middle class, which mean most people fall into either really piss poor or fuckingly well off and you have your reason why many ressent people talking about money as if it was something everybody has. It IS galling when you tried all your life to achieve some financial success, for some reason didn't succeed (accidents, bad timing, plain bad luck...), and someone comes along who might or might not have worked at least as much as you feel you did who basically tells you "I was lucky, It's completely normal and if you weren't then I despise you (change your life!)"
Sadly many who were successful just forget or ignore how much luck brought them to this point and how fast things can change for the worst and favor their ego instead . Humans being human, poor people, especially those who are really trying to better their lot, also forget how fast a lucky break might come, and don't reflect whether they would react similarly if they came to money eventually (although going from rich to poor is *a lot* easier than the other way around)
I was at both end of the spectrum and I'm currently on welfare, but at least things seems to look slightly up (aka. I might have enough to survive AND pay the rent), so I think I'm relatively well qualified to talk about it;)
This isn't a personal attack by the way. I'm just answering your question about "why does mentioning the fact that one has money produce so much hate"
As I asked in another reply : would you consider Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, Ubuntu Christian Edition, Ubuntu Satanic Edition, etc... to be different OS's? If a package can be used in Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora and Gentoo without recompiling ( fixing dependencies might be needed of course), is it cross platform?
As of your link to Wikipedia, here is a quote from the same source :
Computer hardware is usually sold with an operating system other than Linux already installed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
Distros are just variations of the same OS in my opinion, but I guess your point of view will differ. If that's the case, the GP should state exactly which version of Ubuntu he means, as, following this line of thought, each iteration is a completely different OS.
More interesting would be : when does a distro become an OS? Would you consider plain Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Christian Ubuntu, Satanic Ubuntu, etc... as separate OS's ? If I have a.deb package of a c++ application which I can convert to tar.gz and run without recompiling in Arch, should I consider that it was written in a cross-platform manner?
I'm starting to wonder if you have any actual experience with any Apple products. If you've used OS X and, say, Ubuntu, you'd know you're comparing apples and oranges. For day-to-day desktop use, they are light-years apart.
indeed. Ubuntu is a distribution, not an OS. But if you mean a Linux distro featuring one of the major WMs vs. OSX I will still say you are right. Working with pretty much any halfway sane distro (including my current one which is Arch Linux using Awesome WM) is a pleasure. Working with OSX, for me, was a "why-the-fuck-can't-I-do-that?" horror trip.
I did the unthinkable and read TFA. They are not trying to patent the diode, they came up with a completely stupidly simple *mechanical* system which really allows to put the batteries in any direction you want without checking the polarity. it's one of the "so simple anybody could have thought of it" patents, and I must confess that I am actually impressed by its simplicity.
For once I must say "well done, Microsoft" (sadly I'm not really anticipating repeating that sentence all too often)
I think you misunderstand the function of marketing for non-essential products. or underestimate its power if done correctly.
It's all about creating a demand for something people don't actually need. Believing that adults are immune against it is ignoring the reality, especially if kids are used as additional leverage.
One thing I might need to make clear though is that I don't promote going with your kids to McD (nor actually going to McD yourself), but putting the blame solely on the parents is just plain shortsighted
"you know that New CD you bought? ASCAP and RIAA think that you are a stinking dirty THIEF scumbag if you put it on your ipod." "hmm... don't care really. I didn't buy a CD, I have it in iTune. by the way, do you have an idea how I could copy the track to my non-apple mp3 player?" "that's what I'm telling you. they won't let you do it" "yeah yeah... [ rolls eyes ]... nothing to do with me. I just want to copy it to my mp3 player. Anyway" double-face-palm
Face it : most people don't care a bit about copyright issues or changes to the system which might affect them. Sometimes I wonder whether it's because they just don't actually understand the concept. Copying music, movies or games isn't something people give tyo thoughts about. If it works, then great. if it doesn't they'll just bugger any halfway knowledgeable person they know until they can do it, without thinking twice about any legal implication. They just assume that ~something was broken~ and look for a fix. (incidentally, they are right : the copyright system is broken). Many never heard of the RIAA, MPAA and any attempt to explain what ACTA is and how it might be bad for them is met with a sardonic grin and some smartass remark about conspiracy theories
Another standard line I often hear? "hey... do you know where I can download free music?" "try jamendo.com or archive.org. Some very nice stuff there. Archive even has classic movies and tv-shows!" "hmm... but nobody I ever heard about, so it sucks. I meant real music!" "nope, sorry. you'll have to pay for it and it's just better known, but not necessarily better. You could try torrents of course, but it's illegal" [their eyes go all glazy just before the mention of illegality. basically they didn't even register the word] "oh... and how does it work?"
McDonald (among others) CREATES the demand for fast food with the toys, they don't answer to an already existing one. That's effective marketing for you.
As a father of two four year old girls, all I can say is : either you're extremely lucky, or you never had kids... and you definitely never really watched ads targeted at kids.
The kids I know (that's including my daughters, nieces, cousins and the other kids in the kindergarten ) are very receptive to logical arguments, they understand them, and they don't give a fucking damn. All they want is the miniature shrek. And once they've seen that there are fries coming with it they'll want those too. Thankfully, you can try (and sometimes succeed) to reason with them about how many times you will go to mcD, BK, or buy one of those pseudo-healthy products (with REAL milk, 0.5% of it!!), but you'll NEVER be able to avoid them completely, unless you live in a cave.
People work FOR corporations, which are legal entities (you can SUE a corporation, you don't have to sue every single or even a specific employee for something the corporation was liable for).
Corporations are highly hierarchised, and individual thought is only rewarded in very specific functions. If a researcher makes a potentially harmful (to the company) discovery, he will probably forward it to his superior, who'll forward it to the PR department, which won't know shit about what it's about and have to guess whether it's important or not. they might probably ask some higher up level for guidance, which will set the issue as a minor point in a meeting. It will then be treated with a fast round the table vote (thus removing the chance of anyone specific being held responsible) and filed to "stuff which didn't work out".
The net result is that YES, people make the decision to bury stuff like that, but as it's nobody in particular the only sensible thing to do is to blame the corporation as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
This might give you a better perspective
a ratio of 40:1 between plastic and plankton sounds kind of high to me. but if you really want a picture- click on this.
... which is what lawyers live off. Laws have a tendency to be overcomplicated and ambiguous which really means a layman often has difficulties grasping the details. That's where lawyers and courts step in, in order to use or abuse the ambiguosities.
You should check Logitech mices implementing the Fly-Wheel. I have a MX Revolution at home and once you're used a middle wheel which can scroll for up to 7 secs after a single impulse (wonderful when you're working with thousands of line long files) and can be switched from digital clickclickclick mode to an analoguous zeeeeeeeeeeeeep mode it's really hard not to wish every mouse would work like that. Case in point : I just clicked the wheel of the saitek mouse I'm using on my netbook to switch it to flywheel mode (didn't work obviously:P
sigh ... no. I'm not jealous of you. Why should I? I had my ten or fifteen really successful years, I'm now on welfare but I live on a Caribbean island and my priorities have changed : my family is much more important than "earning as much as I can". I still work a lot (10-14 hours daily), I just don't make money from my work for different reasons, most of which I can't change no matter what. And I might have a lucky break in a few month, which will give me the opportunity to get off welfare (while still not making tons of money though), thanks to good circumstances and excellent accidental timing.
I still think you should get a really bad break and end up without money though, and as the economy looks right now, it might be sooner than later. Thinking your success is solely due to your personal awesomeness just reinforce my opinion that you are truly clueless, and a reality check might do you good on a personal basis.
Interestingly, the same "they are just jealous of our success" argument has been used in conjunction with 9/11 and even back then it was complete bullshit.
no. I assume that everyone who is successful got there for an important part because of luck. I'm not sure what you mean with equality of condition, but what I'm a fan of is the idea that meritocracy, as good as it sounds, is unachievable and one's status is not a reflection of one's value to society. On this, I definitely agree with Alain de Botton.
This means that assuming everybody has the same opportunity and only "needs to work harder to succeed" is a fallacy. It also means that people looking down on those who weren't as lucky as they were are, in my eyes, very egocentric and slightly despicable. Being mean spirited, I actually often wish they would get a bit of bad luck and find themselves at the bottom again for a while. It helps with the perspective.
see ... That's where we have to agree to disagree. I am talking compassion toward those who did not have the lucky breaks you certainly did have, you're talking fairness while ignoring the fact that success is not only a result of hard work in favor of inflating your ego ...
A "lucky break" can be a lack of "bad luck", by the way
nah .. no worry. Nobody ever goes that deep into threads. Besides : what's the use of karma if you don't burn it from time to time ;)
whilst people making $150k/year will strongly support changing the economical and legislative framework to keep as much of their money as possible, no matter whether the taxes they would have to pay would help people in need who won't ever be able to make $150k a year due to illness or lack of education. Now ... who do you think has the better leverage on the framework?
I'll admit I was particularly picky on that one, although it was to introduce the fact that not everybody think OSX is superior to [insert your favourite Linux distro here]
I know where you're coming from. Taking care of my 4 year old kids here ... so long passages during which I just wait for the next catastrophe and post on slashdot to pass the time in-between;)
okay .. now you're officially creeping me out. This is /. for god's sake! You're not supposed to reply with statements I agree with!
I agree with you that the GP's "rich boy" call was out of place, but so is your "change your life" argument. You can work your ass off and still not make enough money to get past the "working to survive" stage, and you can be a lazy asshole and be rich like hell. It's not as if poor people are actively choosing to be poor or don't try to have enough to pay for luxury goods (in this case concert tickets). Generally it's a matter of chance and circumstances which leads either way, with, of course some personal work involved (if you don't try chances are you won't succeed neither ... although even THAT is no absolute).
Add to that the disappearing middle class, which mean most people fall into either really piss poor or fuckingly well off and you have your reason why many ressent people talking about money as if it was something everybody has. It IS galling when you tried all your life to achieve some financial success, for some reason didn't succeed (accidents, bad timing, plain bad luck ...), and someone comes along who might or might not have worked at least as much as you feel you did who basically tells you "I was lucky, It's completely normal and if you weren't then I despise you (change your life!)"
Sadly many who were successful just forget or ignore how much luck brought them to this point and how fast things can change for the worst and favor their ego instead . Humans being human, poor people, especially those who are really trying to better their lot, also forget how fast a lucky break might come, and don't reflect whether they would react similarly if they came to money eventually (although going from rich to poor is *a lot* easier than the other way around)
I was at both end of the spectrum and I'm currently on welfare, but at least things seems to look slightly up (aka. I might have enough to survive AND pay the rent), so I think I'm relatively well qualified to talk about it ;)
This isn't a personal attack by the way. I'm just answering your question about "why does mentioning the fact that one has money produce so much hate"
Forgot to add : the OS would be GNU/Linux btw :)
As I asked in another reply : would you consider Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Linux Mint, Ubuntu Christian Edition, Ubuntu Satanic Edition, etc ... to be different OS's? If a package can be used in Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora and Gentoo without recompiling ( fixing dependencies might be needed of course), is it cross platform?
As of your link to Wikipedia, here is a quote from the same source :
Computer hardware is usually sold with an operating system other than Linux already installed by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM).
(from the page about Linux distributions). Notice how in this case Linux is used as an OS.
Distros are just variations of the same OS in my opinion, but I guess your point of view will differ. If that's the case, the GP should state exactly which version of Ubuntu he means, as, following this line of thought, each iteration is a completely different OS.
More interesting would be : when does a distro become an OS? Would you consider plain Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, Christian Ubuntu, Satanic Ubuntu, etc... as separate OS's ? If I have a .deb package of a c++ application which I can convert to tar.gz and run without recompiling in Arch, should I consider that it was written in a cross-platform manner?
I'm starting to wonder if you have any actual experience with any Apple products. If you've used OS X and, say, Ubuntu, you'd know you're comparing apples and oranges. For day-to-day desktop use, they are light-years apart.
indeed. Ubuntu is a distribution, not an OS. But if you mean a Linux distro featuring one of the major WMs vs. OSX I will still say you are right. Working with pretty much any halfway sane distro (including my current one which is Arch Linux using Awesome WM) is a pleasure. Working with OSX, for me, was a "why-the-fuck-can't-I-do-that?" horror trip.
"They hand out Grammys to anyone these days!"
I did the unthinkable and read TFA. They are not trying to patent the diode, they came up with a completely stupidly simple *mechanical* system which really allows to put the batteries in any direction you want without checking the polarity. it's one of the "so simple anybody could have thought of it" patents, and I must confess that I am actually impressed by its simplicity.
For once I must say "well done, Microsoft" (sadly I'm not really anticipating repeating that sentence all too often)
I think you misunderstand the function of marketing for non-essential products. or underestimate its power if done correctly.
It's all about creating a demand for something people don't actually need. Believing that adults are immune against it is ignoring the reality, especially if kids are used as additional leverage.
One thing I might need to make clear though is that I don't promote going with your kids to McD (nor actually going to McD yourself), but putting the blame solely on the parents is just plain shortsighted
can't be arsed to find where I got the previous one (I think it was google's own "online dictionary"), but here is another one that fits : 2. (tr) Slang chiefly Brit to ruin, complicate, or frustrate :P
nah. t'was the right word alright.
"the process of wrecking or wearing something out, or making a general mess of things"
too optimistic.
The way this generally goes is :
"you know that New CD you bought? ASCAP and RIAA think that you are a stinking dirty THIEF scumbag if you put it on your ipod." "hmm ... don't care really. I didn't buy a CD, I have it in iTune. by the way, do you have an idea how I could copy the track to my non-apple mp3 player?" "that's what I'm telling you. they won't let you do it" "yeah yeah ... [ rolls eyes ] ... nothing to do with me. I just want to copy it to my mp3 player. Anyway" double-face-palm
Face it : most people don't care a bit about copyright issues or changes to the system which might affect them. Sometimes I wonder whether it's because they just don't actually understand the concept. Copying music, movies or games isn't something people give tyo thoughts about. If it works, then great. if it doesn't they'll just bugger any halfway knowledgeable person they know until they can do it, without thinking twice about any legal implication. They just assume that ~something was broken~ and look for a fix. (incidentally, they are right : the copyright system is broken). Many never heard of the RIAA, MPAA and any attempt to explain what ACTA is and how it might be bad for them is met with a sardonic grin and some smartass remark about conspiracy theories
Another standard line I often hear? "hey... do you know where I can download free music?" "try jamendo.com or archive.org. Some very nice stuff there. Archive even has classic movies and tv-shows!" "hmm ... but nobody I ever heard about, so it sucks. I meant real music!" "nope, sorry. you'll have to pay for it and it's just better known, but not necessarily better. You could try torrents of course, but it's illegal" [their eyes go all glazy just before the mention of illegality. basically they didn't even register the word] "oh ... and how does it work?"
nice :) I hope to get my daughters that far too in a few years :)
McDonald (among others) CREATES the demand for fast food with the toys, they don't answer to an already existing one. That's effective marketing for you.
As a father of two four year old girls, all I can say is : either you're extremely lucky, or you never had kids ... and you definitely never really watched ads targeted at kids.
The kids I know (that's including my daughters, nieces, cousins and the other kids in the kindergarten ) are very receptive to logical arguments, they understand them, and they don't give a fucking damn. All they want is the miniature shrek. And once they've seen that there are fries coming with it they'll want those too. Thankfully, you can try (and sometimes succeed) to reason with them about how many times you will go to mcD, BK, or buy one of those pseudo-healthy products (with REAL milk, 0.5% of it!!), but you'll NEVER be able to avoid them completely, unless you live in a cave.
People work FOR corporations, which are legal entities (you can SUE a corporation, you don't have to sue every single or even a specific employee for something the corporation was liable for).
Corporations are highly hierarchised, and individual thought is only rewarded in very specific functions. If a researcher makes a potentially harmful (to the company) discovery, he will probably forward it to his superior, who'll forward it to the PR department, which won't know shit about what it's about and have to guess whether it's important or not. they might probably ask some higher up level for guidance, which will set the issue as a minor point in a meeting. It will then be treated with a fast round the table vote (thus removing the chance of anyone specific being held responsible) and filed to "stuff which didn't work out".
The net result is that YES, people make the decision to bury stuff like that, but as it's nobody in particular the only sensible thing to do is to blame the corporation as a whole.