You haven't used Photoshop since version 3 all the way through. The "web crap" is pretty useful, but this is by far not the only useful addition we've seen. The "web crap" includes essential features such as palette optimization and better transparency/animation tools which were not available. Also, new versions have added adjustment layers, effect layers, new and improved filters, better selection tools (how I lived without the magnetic lasso I'll never know,) better typesetting tools, vector graphics & improved pen tools, cleaner interface design, scripting, history, etc. etc. have been added since 3. Every version is a clear improvement over the previous.
Show me a document that you've created using vi that has all the formatting features of Word. Don't tell me to use LaTeX, because that's a pain in the ass and is "inefficient."
The "productivity" tools you speak of that are used by geeks are intended for coding and system administration. Office apps and things of the sort are used for the creation of documents to be exchanged in a business environment.
When I buy a car, I don't want to have to give a fuck about how the engine works or the steering system or the breaks or anything. I can get by and use the car for driving without knowing these things. However, there is a substantial advantage to understanding the inner workings of the car.. though far from necessary. You are the equivalent of a mechanic preaching about how everyone should be required to understand the operation of an intake manifold before they are allowed to purchace a car.. since they'll be "wasting their life" if it breaks down.
Ironically enough, last night I released the latest version of Glasscode. It's the third release since 1.0 which was announced here on Slashdot a few months ago.
I wasn't being a troll, I was being honest. There's a difference between posting something to make a point and posting something for the sheer joys of "starting shit" (aka, trolling)
I don't think that MS is unworthy of bashing, it just always pisses me off when Slashdot posts a troll article like this one with a snide anti-MS spin on it in order to prime the collective Linux ego. I suppose it shouldn't bother me, since this is Slashdot, but somehow I still wish they were above this sort of thing.
I was going to quote some of the top modded comments that have snide MSN bashing.. but there are too many. I'm not generalizing the readers as MS-hating zombies, but look at the posts and the moderation results and you'll see that at least the people responsible for both of these things can be described as such.
Throughout this thread the mention of the said "Linux ISP" has been an entirely hypothetical one. Everyone knows that a large Linux ISP could never exist due to scalability issues only resolved by using Microsoft software.
I only use different approaches to mentation when under the influence of certain unnamed chemicals, those of which I am not in possession of at the time.
<Voice type=TylerDurden>Now you, you seem clever.. how is that working out for you, being clever?</voice>
Having a monopoly is not illegal. Abusing it is illegal, and is why MS got in trouble. It is the ultimate goal of any company to have a monopoly over the industry, though almost always an unreachable one. I'd be perfectly content with Windows on every desktop if MS didn't try to hinder the competition and leverage their OS monopoly to overtake other companies. The fact that Linux exists says that it is still not an impossibility for an alternative to exist, it just (right now) sucks nuts in comparison for the average user's desktop.
makes crappy software
I like Linux just as much as the next guy (and use it for running my site) but Windows 2000 is the best desktop platform I've yet seen. Office is the best office suite on the market as far as I'm conerned. DirectX, COM, and other technologies are well designed AFAIK (never coded using either however.) C# looks like it has potential. These are all opinions, YMMV. (And yes, I'm well aware of the security flaws MS has a reputation of having in their software, so don't lash out back at me.. I didn't say that they put out perfect software, just that the software they produce is not universally "crappy")
Activism becomes 'geeky' because of morons who call it a 'trend' that bratty young people use just to have something to rebel against
I'm 19 years old. A lot of activism is trendy, participated in by individuals who do not understand the complexity or both sides of the issues involved.. I see it every day where I live. A lot of activism is participated in not because it is trendy, but because it is well founded and offers a truthful perspective on a situation. The trick is differentiating between the two, and Microsoft bashing of extremely one-sided nature falls more into the former than the latter, IMHO. "A few readers have written in unhappy that they're about to become MSN customers, too.".. come on now, was that really necessary??
If you think there is no such thing as an activist who participates because it gives them something to do, a 'scene' to associate with, a snappy catchphrase to wear on their shirt, and a place for social interaction, I can assure you they are far from a rarity.
the few people who break from the majority are the ones called ignorant conformists
Anyone who takes a black and white view of the world and closes his or her mind to alternative opinions is an ignorant conformist. If they are conforming to a majority or minority stance is of no relevance.
Point taken, however, I get the feeling a large part of the Microsoft bashing seen here is not due to an understanding of their business tactics but because it is the cool thing to do. If said Linux ISP had evil business tactics in the past, it wouldn't receive the slaughtering MS does.. or so I'd like to think.
Sometimes I think it would be interesting if Slashdot would post a Microsoft (bashing) story with Microsoft's name omitted ("An Unknown Company" or something less suspicious) initially, let the posts roll in, then reveal the truth and see how quickly opinions change.
I'm guessing that if some large Linux based ISP picked up the entire userbase of another (NT based, perhaps?) ISP it would be declared a "Victory for Linux" etc., etc.
Well, anyone who plays Quake knows that part of your ability to play is how well you are used to your setup.. Microsoft Optical Mouse? Razor Boomslang? Grip Surface? Desktop surface? 20 inch monitor? 18?
I wouldn't want to play on a setup other that my own if it was going to count for anything. I've played at LAN parties on other peoples' computers and it definately takes a hit on your frag count. Don't get me wrong though, a huge LAN party would definately be fun.. but the bragging rights would be lessened since someone could always claim they usually play with their imported Genius mouse using their hand crafted mouse pad from Holland or something:)
half-empty is being supported by DynDNS out of the goodness of their hearts since they think it's such a fun site. They're volunteers and its a donation based operation, a chunk of which is used to provide bandwidth for half-empty. I've been very fortunate, as banner ads would not cut it in paying the bills I'm guessing.. even if it could the fact is I'm a poor college kid and even launching a site and taking the risk of having a bandwidth bill to pay is something I couldn't do.
Also, as a side note, you can dramatically decrease bandwidth for pages with lots of HTML (like half-empty's front page) and only some small (cachable) sparse images via GZip compression. In the past when I've mentioned this to webmasters they're usually pretty surprised, never hearing of it before. Netscape 4, IE5, and Mozilla all support client side page decompression via GZip, and all it takes is an Apache plugin (or for servlets, I had to write it myself) to send the right headers along with the compressed data. It won't break on older browsers, it's just sends the uncompressed pages. A 35k front page (something I was feeling REALLY guilty about) now serves up at around 6k, and everyone breathes a lot easier.
Microsoft already has a fix out. I think this bug was reported today. I'm impressed.
So many people here always scream that Open Source is better because you don't have to "wait for the service pack" in order to get fixes. Granted, the bug probably would've been found sooner if the source were open, but the fact that there is a fix out already is admirable.
I think this is going to be another long thread of unwarranted Microsoft bashing. You can bitch about the bugs in IE and it's security hazards, but if they get fixed this fast then it really detracts from your argument that Microsoft sucks. There have been security flaws found in Linux with a fix issued and instead of posts saying "Linux sucks, here's yet another security patch I have to add!" they're praising the community for getting a fix out so much faster than Microsoft would have.
Congrats on the 100,000th node guys. I have a few e2 nodes, here's to node 1,000,000.:) It's pretty amazing what you can type in there and find.. it's usually the case that I have a hard time typing something that doesn't have a node.
Half-empty just passed it's 1000th Idea post. It's kind of a hybrid between slashdot and everything2..
(and I skimmed over the article) but does this seem fake to anyone else?:) The only reason I'd think it wasn't fake is simply because it's really not THAT funny of a hoax.. just kind of silly really.
If it's not a fake, then, well, wow. IIRC, the mandelbrot set is a plot on the real/imaginary axes of the "rate" at which the function approaches infinity for each coordinate.. it seems odd that a monk would use the same technique for describing the fractal. Especially since this technique is just begging for a high amount of computation. Unless I'm missing something, aren't there many possible ways to describe the mandelbrot set other than using this technique? I'd imagine a monk with limited computational resources would decide on a description of the fractal that would be more concise and elegant and less computationally intense than plotting it!
Umm.. I don't care how you slice it, Microsoft does write some pretty complex and functional software. There are people in any company who can just "talk the talk".. but an operating system and other complex software that MS creates doesn't just come out of their ass, some of the smartest and most talented coders in the world work for them.
War on youth? I don't know if I agree with that, but when I was under 16 I had no qualms having an older buddy or my parents run in and get the tickets for me and my underage friends. Of course, there were times when we'd sneak in, but that's not the point.
The issue here isn't that a 16 year old shouldn't be able to go see an R movie. I personally agree that the age for movies is a bit ridiculous. The point is that giving parents control over what video games their kids can play in their house is a good thing, not a "war on youth."
I'm a kid too for christ's sake, I'm only 19 (watch my reputability drop...)
Having a parent turn off violent content from games their 13 year old wants to play is not discrimination even though the 13 year old "is a person too." Like it or not, you ain't got no rights at 13 years of age (in the U.S., at least.) It's for your own good, most of the time, anyway. 15-16 is a grey area, its different for each person how they mature, but the line does have to be drawn somewhere. Luckily in most cases the line can be shifted around by parents (ie, the movie case.)
And, BTW, it matters not what the opinions of the "raters" are of the MPAA.. (the use of that acronym spells troll to me, but I'll continue).. we all know what makes it an R rated movie or a PG-13 movie. It doesn't really matter how ridiculous you think it is, if everything is rated relative to one another, parents can decide that an R movie is in fact something they don't want their 13 year old kid to see. 5 years ago an R rated movie was different than an R rated movie today, but the parent can still make the judgement call effectively.
Well, I was talking about parents covering their kids' eyes. Is this acceptable "censorship?"
Anyway, this basically diverges into two opinions, that keeping kids from being subjected to violence/sex through a brute force method is bad parenting, or isn't. I personally don't think it is, if you reinforce your decision by discussing it.. not by catching the kid doing it and telling them "no!"
The question really is where you draw the line for a "brute force" method.. such a method is used on medicine, chemical caps, and gun cabinets. Is performing such a method on video games too much, or not? I don't think so, but evidentally you do. That's where our opinions differ, and there's really not much more to discuss:) I'm not a parent, so this really falls outside of my realm of experience. I think the X-Box feature definately couldn't hurt though, and if a parent decides that the brute force method is not for them, so be it. It's a choice, one which is better there than not, IMHO.
Slashdot Mirror
You haven't used Photoshop since version 3 all the way through. The "web crap" is pretty useful, but this is by far not the only useful addition we've seen. The "web crap" includes essential features such as palette optimization and better transparency/animation tools which were not available. Also, new versions have added adjustment layers, effect layers, new and improved filters, better selection tools (how I lived without the magnetic lasso I'll never know,) better typesetting tools, vector graphics & improved pen tools, cleaner interface design, scripting, history, etc. etc. have been added since 3. Every version is a clear improvement over the previous.
You take take your rules and shove them up your ass if it results in a kid killing himself.
End of story.
It's not when "someone" hacks into a computer, it's when a kid cracks into a computer. Immaturity leads to curiosity which leads to cracking.
I don't recall seeing people justifying malicious cracks by adults with the intent to deceive or steal. This kid was 13.
Show me a document that you've created using vi that has all the formatting features of Word. Don't tell me to use LaTeX, because that's a pain in the ass and is "inefficient."
The "productivity" tools you speak of that are used by geeks are intended for coding and system administration. Office apps and things of the sort are used for the creation of documents to be exchanged in a business environment.
When I buy a car, I don't want to have to give a fuck about how the engine works or the steering system or the breaks or anything. I can get by and use the car for driving without knowing these things. However, there is a substantial advantage to understanding the inner workings of the car.. though far from necessary. You are the equivalent of a mechanic preaching about how everyone should be required to understand the operation of an intake manifold before they are allowed to purchace a car.. since they'll be "wasting their life" if it breaks down.
Nice try, troll.
Ironically enough, last night I released the latest version of Glasscode. It's the third release since 1.0 which was announced here on Slashdot a few months ago.
:)
The FM announcement is here.
For those interested, have fun
They don't. That's why you start out as a codemonkey and move your way up, at least, AFAIK.
I wasn't being a troll, I was being honest. There's a difference between posting something to make a point and posting something for the sheer joys of "starting shit" (aka, trolling)
I don't think that MS is unworthy of bashing, it just always pisses me off when Slashdot posts a troll article like this one with a snide anti-MS spin on it in order to prime the collective Linux ego. I suppose it shouldn't bother me, since this is Slashdot, but somehow I still wish they were above this sort of thing.
I was going to quote some of the top modded comments that have snide MSN bashing.. but there are too many. I'm not generalizing the readers as MS-hating zombies, but look at the posts and the moderation results and you'll see that at least the people responsible for both of these things can be described as such.
I only use different approaches to mentation when under the influence of certain unnamed chemicals, those of which I am not in possession of at the time.
<Voice type=TylerDurden>Now you, you seem clever.. how is that working out for you, being clever?</voice>
Having a monopoly is not illegal. Abusing it is illegal, and is why MS got in trouble. It is the ultimate goal of any company to have a monopoly over the industry, though almost always an unreachable one. I'd be perfectly content with Windows on every desktop if MS didn't try to hinder the competition and leverage their OS monopoly to overtake other companies. The fact that Linux exists says that it is still not an impossibility for an alternative to exist, it just (right now) sucks nuts in comparison for the average user's desktop.
makes crappy software
I like Linux just as much as the next guy (and use it for running my site) but Windows 2000 is the best desktop platform I've yet seen. Office is the best office suite on the market as far as I'm conerned. DirectX, COM, and other technologies are well designed AFAIK (never coded using either however.) C# looks like it has potential. These are all opinions, YMMV. (And yes, I'm well aware of the security flaws MS has a reputation of having in their software, so don't lash out back at me.. I didn't say that they put out perfect software, just that the software they produce is not universally "crappy")
Activism becomes 'geeky' because of morons who call it a 'trend' that bratty young people use just to have something to rebel against
I'm 19 years old. A lot of activism is trendy, participated in by individuals who do not understand the complexity or both sides of the issues involved.. I see it every day where I live. A lot of activism is participated in not because it is trendy, but because it is well founded and offers a truthful perspective on a situation. The trick is differentiating between the two, and Microsoft bashing of extremely one-sided nature falls more into the former than the latter, IMHO. "A few readers have written in unhappy that they're about to become MSN customers, too." .. come on now, was that really necessary??
If you think there is no such thing as an activist who participates because it gives them something to do, a 'scene' to associate with, a snappy catchphrase to wear on their shirt, and a place for social interaction, I can assure you they are far from a rarity.
the few people who break from the majority are the ones called ignorant conformists
Anyone who takes a black and white view of the world and closes his or her mind to alternative opinions is an ignorant conformist. If they are conforming to a majority or minority stance is of no relevance.
Point taken, however, I get the feeling a large part of the Microsoft bashing seen here is not due to an understanding of their business tactics but because it is the cool thing to do. If said Linux ISP had evil business tactics in the past, it wouldn't receive the slaughtering MS does.. or so I'd like to think.
See sig. I did my best.
Let the Microsoft bashing begin..
Sometimes I think it would be interesting if Slashdot would post a Microsoft (bashing) story with Microsoft's name omitted ("An Unknown Company" or something less suspicious) initially, let the posts roll in, then reveal the truth and see how quickly opinions change.
I'm guessing that if some large Linux based ISP picked up the entire userbase of another (NT based, perhaps?) ISP it would be declared a "Victory for Linux" etc., etc.
Well, anyone who plays Quake knows that part of your ability to play is how well you are used to your setup.. Microsoft Optical Mouse? Razor Boomslang? Grip Surface? Desktop surface? 20 inch monitor? 18?
.. but the bragging rights would be lessened since someone could always claim they usually play with their imported Genius mouse using their hand crafted mouse pad from Holland or something :)
I wouldn't want to play on a setup other that my own if it was going to count for anything. I've played at LAN parties on other peoples' computers and it definately takes a hit on your frag count. Don't get me wrong though, a huge LAN party would definately be fun
Also, as a side note, you can dramatically decrease bandwidth for pages with lots of HTML (like half-empty's front page) and only some small (cachable) sparse images via GZip compression. In the past when I've mentioned this to webmasters they're usually pretty surprised, never hearing of it before. Netscape 4, IE5, and Mozilla all support client side page decompression via GZip, and all it takes is an Apache plugin (or for servlets, I had to write it myself) to send the right headers along with the compressed data. It won't break on older browsers, it's just sends the uncompressed pages. A 35k front page (something I was feeling REALLY guilty about) now serves up at around 6k, and everyone breathes a lot easier.
^^ Funniest April Fools gag all day
Microsoft already has a fix out. I think this bug was reported today. I'm impressed.
So many people here always scream that Open Source is better because you don't have to "wait for the service pack" in order to get fixes. Granted, the bug probably would've been found sooner if the source were open, but the fact that there is a fix out already is admirable.
I think this is going to be another long thread of unwarranted Microsoft bashing. You can bitch about the bugs in IE and it's security hazards, but if they get fixed this fast then it really detracts from your argument that Microsoft sucks. There have been security flaws found in Linux with a fix issued and instead of posts saying "Linux sucks, here's yet another security patch I have to add!" they're praising the community for getting a fix out so much faster than Microsoft would have.
Congrats on the 100,000th node guys. I have a few e2 nodes, here's to node 1,000,000. :) It's pretty amazing what you can type in there and find.. it's usually the case that I have a hard time typing something that doesn't have a node.
Half-empty just passed it's 1000th Idea post. It's kind of a hybrid between slashdot and everything2..
Yeah, but the colors are determined by the "rate" .. right?
(and I skimmed over the article) but does this seem fake to anyone else? :) The only reason I'd think it wasn't fake is simply because it's really not THAT funny of a hoax.. just kind of silly really.
If it's not a fake, then, well, wow. IIRC, the mandelbrot set is a plot on the real/imaginary axes of the "rate" at which the function approaches infinity for each coordinate.. it seems odd that a monk would use the same technique for describing the fractal. Especially since this technique is just begging for a high amount of computation. Unless I'm missing something, aren't there many possible ways to describe the mandelbrot set other than using this technique? I'd imagine a monk with limited computational resources would decide on a description of the fractal that would be more concise and elegant and less computationally intense than plotting it!
256 kbs link for EACH server.. not for the whole HavenCo facility. Not sure if this would still be enough, though.
Weird. I've never seen two slashdot posts from seemingly different people duplicate each other exactly :)
Umm.. I don't care how you slice it, Microsoft does write some pretty complex and functional software. There are people in any company who can just "talk the talk" .. but an operating system and other complex software that MS creates doesn't just come out of their ass, some of the smartest and most talented coders in the world work for them.
Uh, Lucent isn't exactly thriving (despite the discovery) .. the building I used to work in is getting layoffs every Thursday now.
War on youth? I don't know if I agree with that, but when I was under 16 I had no qualms having an older buddy or my parents run in and get the tickets for me and my underage friends. Of course, there were times when we'd sneak in, but that's not the point.
.. we all know what makes it an R rated movie or a PG-13 movie. It doesn't really matter how ridiculous you think it is, if everything is rated relative to one another, parents can decide that an R movie is in fact something they don't want their 13 year old kid to see. 5 years ago an R rated movie was different than an R rated movie today, but the parent can still make the judgement call effectively.
The issue here isn't that a 16 year old shouldn't be able to go see an R movie. I personally agree that the age for movies is a bit ridiculous. The point is that giving parents control over what video games their kids can play in their house is a good thing, not a "war on youth."
I'm a kid too for christ's sake, I'm only 19 (watch my reputability drop...)
Having a parent turn off violent content from games their 13 year old wants to play is not discrimination even though the 13 year old "is a person too." Like it or not, you ain't got no rights at 13 years of age (in the U.S., at least.) It's for your own good, most of the time, anyway. 15-16 is a grey area, its different for each person how they mature, but the line does have to be drawn somewhere. Luckily in most cases the line can be shifted around by parents (ie, the movie case.)
And, BTW, it matters not what the opinions of the "raters" are of the MPAA.. (the use of that acronym spells troll to me, but I'll continue)
Well, I was talking about parents covering their kids' eyes. Is this acceptable "censorship?"
:) I'm not a parent, so this really falls outside of my realm of experience. I think the X-Box feature definately couldn't hurt though, and if a parent decides that the brute force method is not for them, so be it. It's a choice, one which is better there than not, IMHO.
Anyway, this basically diverges into two opinions, that keeping kids from being subjected to violence/sex through a brute force method is bad parenting, or isn't. I personally don't think it is, if you reinforce your decision by discussing it.. not by catching the kid doing it and telling them "no!"
The question really is where you draw the line for a "brute force" method.. such a method is used on medicine, chemical caps, and gun cabinets. Is performing such a method on video games too much, or not? I don't think so, but evidentally you do. That's where our opinions differ, and there's really not much more to discuss