Way to put words in the gp's mouth. If you were honest with yourself, you'd probably admit that a declaration like, "I only eat animals I've personally killed" sounds a little crazy. Let's say you go to a party and some guy comes up to you and says, "You know, omnifarious, I only eat animals that I've personally killed." What do you think of that fellow? 'cause I'll tell you something. That guy you just met? He's simultaneously the most interesting guy at the party and the most likely to hunt you for sport. I guess I'm saying that there's something a bit off about him.
I wouldn't say that. I know a lot of people who have a rather visceral reaction to being confronted with exactly where their food comes from. I would be surprised if some come to the conclusion that they should force themselves to come to grips with this fact in the most direct way possible. And I don't think billionares are anybody particularly special. I wouldn't think they'd gone off the deep end, I'd think that they were going through an interesting phase in their moral development.
Now, I will admit there are ways to make that statement seem creepier. For example, going on about the gory details without any prompting (which he didn't do, someone is quoting a friend who was personally involved) or having a certain gleeful glint in your eyes. But there is no statement that can be attributed directly to Mark in that story that's like that. The only thing close in when he talks about a lobster tasting better, but then he attributes that to the fact he hadn't had any lobster in a long time because of the restriction he's chosen for himself.
Maybe you lived in a city your whole life and got it nicely packaged for you in a supermarket or pre-cooked and now you want to consider people who actually kill the animals as somehow beneath you
Who's the classist again?
I'm sorry, but the original statement seem very much like "Why would one of the richest nerds go off and actually butcher his own meat?". Well, why wouldn't he? Is the work considered 'dirty' or 'unclean' or wrong in some way? Nobody thinks to remark on the fact that he drives his own car when he could easily pay to have someone else do it, or clean his own house (well, maybe he doesn't do that) even though he could afford a housekeeper. Why should butchering his own meat be any different?
You: "A member of my family killed some animals once". Yeah, I can see how that's relevant and/or insightful. Great job as usual, mods!
I've done some hunting (rabbits) and some fishing and cleaned things myself. It was a small farm, so I was also involved in butchering. Being a kid on a farm means you're involved and help out and are exposed to all the details.
So, killing animals for food is 'going off the deep end'? I lived on a farm from ages 5-11. We slaughtered several of our animals for food. That's where the meat comes from after all, or weren't you aware?
Maybe you lived in a city your whole life and got it nicely packaged for you in a supermarket or pre-cooked and now you want to consider people who actually kill the animals as somehow beneath you, or having 'gone off the deep end'? Maybe you should reconsider your food choices if you want to avoid looking like either a blatant classist or a hypocrite.
PS/3 users have been denied access to the Sony gaming network limiting the functionality of other people's PS3s in a significant way. It's also not clear what private information may have been stolen. I'd say this has been damaging to other PS3 owners don't you think?
And your response is that it's their fault for buying a PS3? Nice.
I'm one of those users. I never used the OtherOS option, and while I was very happy it existed, I didn't plan to use it. And it is my fault for buying a PS/3. I was making a convenience vs. freedom tradeoff, and I lost. I'm happy with that result. I deserve that result. And so does everybody else who made that tradeoff.
By making that tradeoff you are implicitly supporting a system that forces you to be dependent. And when that dependence turns out to hurt you because the entity you depended upon is having problems, you only have yourself to blame.
Maybe people will learn that just because the cage is comfortable, it isn't any less of a cage. It's a lesson people seem to need to be taught pretty often.
I don't see anybody who is attacking Sony going around damaging people's consoles. If damage to Sony's services had the side-effect of disabling consoles, maybe those people should've made buying choices that placed their freedom as a higher priority than their convenience.
Strangely enough, in my case, that's true, though not because I haven't tried to download anything else. I haven't yet found a torrent site that had a user interface that even came close to working on my Linux box. They all have tons of Javascript cruft on them that I don't want to run and obscure the URL for the torrent.
Open Source software is valuable precisely because strict exclusive ownership rights are not exercised over it. Yes, there are licenses like the GPL. But they do attempt to enforce continuing joint ownership by society at large, not exclusive ownership by the creator.
I, personally, avoid using software that isn't Open Source, and I generally refuse to use non-Open Source software in certain situations. Proprietary software frequently has negative value to me. The exercise of strict ownership over it has leached it of all value it might otherwise have possessed.
And once all the artistic works that are important to a culture are owned in perpetuity by their respective creators? That basically means culture is owned.
Actually, in the creation of software, it loses. There is a reason that about 80% of the startups around here use Open Source software.
I think the reason we have more creative works and greater access to them than at any point in history is because of the Internet. And these things are happening in spite of copyright law, not because of it.
It sounds like the general public has discovered that copyright law and trademark law allows them to do an end-run around the 1st amendment. From the article:
The range of material that individuals and businesses are seeking to get copyright protection for has only been expanding, often at the insistence of movie studios. Mattel has gone to court to assert the copyright of the face of its Barbie doll; fashion companies have been lobbying Congress to pass a law to protect unique, nontrivial new designs. And trademark, which is governed by different laws and is much more contextual, has been used by athletes and coaches to get a measure of control over terms like “three-peat” or “Revis Island.”
This system is broken. Culture should not be owned.
You seem to think that the goal of the system is to give you open access to anything you want on your terms. That has never been the point of copyright. The point has always been to set up a system whereby creation can be incentivized - which works wonderfully well. We have more creative output and more access to it now than ever before, and every trend is upward.
That shouldn't mean everyone gets what they want when they want it merely because they want it.
Yes, anytime anybody criticizes copyright in any way, you should accuse them of being a deadbeat or a thief. You go on with your bad self!
I had a co-worker who did this. Discovered later he was being paid 20% more than I was, and he did poorer work that was eventually thrown away. But, as they say, correlation is not causation.
I could go around patenting the idea of paying for things with brain waves, or using personal visual information overlays to identify plants, or using similar technologies to determine where a long nail hammered into a board will hit a stud, or any number of other things. Things that are so totally impractical today that nobody would think of patenting. Then, in 5-15 years when they actually happen, poof, extortion city, here we come!
Thinking of an idea is the easy part. The hard part is actually making it come to life. People should not be compensated for thinking of ideas. The system that allows them to be compensated for that is broken.
Exactly. Why do you have a large high-resolution screen anyway? How many pixels would it have to have before you decided you didn't really need your program to be full screen?
And, in 1988, how were you going to purchase that app, and how was it going to be delivered to you? I knew what the Internet was at the time, but I bet I was in a pretty exclusive club.
*chuckle* If you can get management to spring for extra monitors, more power to you. I still think any such need is generally a result of bad UI design and status seeking. I find it hilarious that people open up full screen terminal windows. How ridiculous can you get? Oh, there's a maximize button there, I must press it. My will is weak!
You can't honestly say that you work on code that has functions that don't take up a significant amount of vertical space. If you do, you must really be enjoying your entry level work. When you grow out of that, you'll find that vertical space is wonderful to have.
I've worked on code that had enormously long and complex functions. Whenever possible (and I push extremely hard on this, no "We don't have time for that." with me, if you don't have time for that, you certainly don't have the time for everybody to maintain it) I refactor the code into smaller functions, and usually remove a lot of bugs in the process.
While I don't really lack for vertical space on my setup (I generally have 50-60 lines on-screen) having a limitation helps keep me honest when writing code.
My argument is not against giving developers more real estate. I don't care one way or the other for myself. I've had multiple monitors, and unless I have a VM or remote desktop session, I can take them or leave them.
No, my argument is against stupidly designed web pages and horribly bad application software that simply doesn't work properly unless it's taking up your whole screen. Designing stuff that way is incredibly dumb, and the UI designers who do it should be forced to use a single 14" 800x600 monitor with their application until they realize the error of their ways.
I don't use application software like that. It's one of the many reasons I despise Eclipse.
Once stupid UI designers realize that most developers have multiple monitors, next thing you know they'll be designing programs that don't really work well unless you have two screens.
I would rather have one monitor that was 4000x2000 and 30" than two any day.
I have, and I see no difference between having multiple monitors and having multiple non-maximized windows open at the same time. I think the fetish for multiple monitors is because application designers are are incredibly annoyingly bad and design their applications to not really work so well when they aren't maximized.
Most of the applications I use are not maximized and work fine that way. But I'm an odd duck and a bit of an old-school Unix geek. Lots of emacs and terminal windows with the occasional browser window.
I find multiple monitors to be mildly annoying because they are often a bit of a pain to get set up properly on a Fedora system (thought that's gotten better). I would much rather have my main monitor be somewhat bigger and have a whole ton more pixels.
No, because I use small function sizes to reduce indentation levels. And smaller function sizes mean fewer variables which means I can have shorter names that are still meaningful and distinguished. And I avoid creating conditionals with a whole ton of clauses, and use other techniques to create small local aliases for long global names (which means I don't generally program in Java).
This means my code naturally fits in 80 columns most of the time without awkward wrapping.
*chuckle* I find 'proper IDEs' to be the bane of single monitor use. They take up the whole screen, and inevitably you'll need to do something outside the IDE, and because of how the stupid thing is designed, this means you have to bring up a window that was previously not at all visible to sit on top of some vitally important part of your IDE.
No, I use a single screen, and a whole ton of windows. I have windows devoted to compiler output, windows devoted to the running application, 2 or 3 code windows, and a window or two with a bunch of tabs devoted to documentation.
My question is, how many people used all their applications in full-screen mode? Would they have gotten the same benefit if those applications worked reasonably when the window only took up half the screen? I agree its a trivial expense. But I also think people use their existing resources really stupidly and the applications they use encourage this.
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Way to put words in the gp's mouth. If you were honest with yourself, you'd probably admit that a declaration like, "I only eat animals I've personally killed" sounds a little crazy. Let's say you go to a party and some guy comes up to you and says, "You know, omnifarious, I only eat animals that I've personally killed." What do you think of that fellow? 'cause I'll tell you something. That guy you just met? He's simultaneously the most interesting guy at the party and the most likely to hunt you for sport. I guess I'm saying that there's something a bit off about him.
I wouldn't say that. I know a lot of people who have a rather visceral reaction to being confronted with exactly where their food comes from. I would be surprised if some come to the conclusion that they should force themselves to come to grips with this fact in the most direct way possible. And I don't think billionares are anybody particularly special. I wouldn't think they'd gone off the deep end, I'd think that they were going through an interesting phase in their moral development.
Now, I will admit there are ways to make that statement seem creepier. For example, going on about the gory details without any prompting (which he didn't do, someone is quoting a friend who was personally involved) or having a certain gleeful glint in your eyes. But there is no statement that can be attributed directly to Mark in that story that's like that. The only thing close in when he talks about a lobster tasting better, but then he attributes that to the fact he hadn't had any lobster in a long time because of the restriction he's chosen for himself.
Maybe you lived in a city your whole life and got it nicely packaged for you in a supermarket or pre-cooked and now you want to consider people who actually kill the animals as somehow beneath you
Who's the classist again?
I'm sorry, but the original statement seem very much like "Why would one of the richest nerds go off and actually butcher his own meat?". Well, why wouldn't he? Is the work considered 'dirty' or 'unclean' or wrong in some way? Nobody thinks to remark on the fact that he drives his own car when he could easily pay to have someone else do it, or clean his own house (well, maybe he doesn't do that) even though he could afford a housekeeper. Why should butchering his own meat be any different?
People tend to denigrate the people who do the jobs they'd prefer not to think about. Japan has developed a weird caste system based on whether or not your ancestors ever worked in the sewers. And that sort of thing starts with a reaction of disdain and disgust whenever someone brings up the unpleasant thing.
You: "A member of my family killed some animals once". Yeah, I can see how that's relevant and/or insightful. Great job as usual, mods!
I've done some hunting (rabbits) and some fishing and cleaned things myself. It was a small farm, so I was also involved in butchering. Being a kid on a farm means you're involved and help out and are exposed to all the details.
So, killing animals for food is 'going off the deep end'? I lived on a farm from ages 5-11. We slaughtered several of our animals for food. That's where the meat comes from after all, or weren't you aware?
Maybe you lived in a city your whole life and got it nicely packaged for you in a supermarket or pre-cooked and now you want to consider people who actually kill the animals as somehow beneath you, or having 'gone off the deep end'? Maybe you should reconsider your food choices if you want to avoid looking like either a blatant classist or a hypocrite.
PS/3 users have been denied access to the Sony gaming network limiting the functionality of other people's PS3s in a significant way. It's also not clear what private information may have been stolen. I'd say this has been damaging to other PS3 owners don't you think?
And your response is that it's their fault for buying a PS3? Nice.
I'm one of those users. I never used the OtherOS option, and while I was very happy it existed, I didn't plan to use it. And it is my fault for buying a PS/3. I was making a convenience vs. freedom tradeoff, and I lost. I'm happy with that result. I deserve that result. And so does everybody else who made that tradeoff.
By making that tradeoff you are implicitly supporting a system that forces you to be dependent. And when that dependence turns out to hurt you because the entity you depended upon is having problems, you only have yourself to blame.
Maybe people will learn that just because the cage is comfortable, it isn't any less of a cage. It's a lesson people seem to need to be taught pretty often.
I don't see anybody who is attacking Sony going around damaging people's consoles. If damage to Sony's services had the side-effect of disabling consoles, maybe those people should've made buying choices that placed their freedom as a higher priority than their convenience.
Really, control over the stuff you have in your own house isn't an important issue?
Strangely enough, in my case, that's true, though not because I haven't tried to download anything else. I haven't yet found a torrent site that had a user interface that even came close to working on my Linux box. They all have tons of Javascript cruft on them that I don't want to run and obscure the URL for the torrent.
Open Source software is valuable precisely because strict exclusive ownership rights are not exercised over it. Yes, there are licenses like the GPL. But they do attempt to enforce continuing joint ownership by society at large, not exclusive ownership by the creator.
I, personally, avoid using software that isn't Open Source, and I generally refuse to use non-Open Source software in certain situations. Proprietary software frequently has negative value to me. The exercise of strict ownership over it has leached it of all value it might otherwise have possessed.
And once all the artistic works that are important to a culture are owned in perpetuity by their respective creators? That basically means culture is owned.
He is, whether you like it or not. Sorry. Deal. If you don't like it, go shoot him yourself, though that won't stop people from talking about him.
Actually, in the creation of software, it loses. There is a reason that about 80% of the startups around here use Open Source software.
I think the reason we have more creative works and greater access to them than at any point in history is because of the Internet. And these things are happening in spite of copyright law, not because of it.
It sounds like the general public has discovered that copyright law and trademark law allows them to do an end-run around the 1st amendment. From the article:
The range of material that individuals and businesses are seeking to get copyright protection for has only been expanding, often at the insistence of movie studios. Mattel has gone to court to assert the copyright of the face of its Barbie doll; fashion companies have been lobbying Congress to pass a law to protect unique, nontrivial new designs. And trademark, which is governed by different laws and is much more contextual, has been used by athletes and coaches to get a measure of control over terms like “three-peat” or “Revis Island.”
This system is broken. Culture should not be owned.
You seem to think that the goal of the system is to give you open access to anything you want on your terms. That has never been the point of copyright. The point has always been to set up a system whereby creation can be incentivized - which works wonderfully well. We have more creative output and more access to it now than ever before, and every trend is upward.
That shouldn't mean everyone gets what they want when they want it merely because they want it.
Yes, anytime anybody criticizes copyright in any way, you should accuse them of being a deadbeat or a thief. You go on with your bad self!
I had a co-worker who did this. Discovered later he was being paid 20% more than I was, and he did poorer work that was eventually thrown away. But, as they say, correlation is not causation.
I could go around patenting the idea of paying for things with brain waves, or using personal visual information overlays to identify plants, or using similar technologies to determine where a long nail hammered into a board will hit a stud, or any number of other things. Things that are so totally impractical today that nobody would think of patenting. Then, in 5-15 years when they actually happen, poof, extortion city, here we come!
Thinking of an idea is the easy part. The hard part is actually making it come to life. People should not be compensated for thinking of ideas. The system that allows them to be compensated for that is broken.
Exactly. Why do you have a large high-resolution screen anyway? How many pixels would it have to have before you decided you didn't really need your program to be full screen?
I would never have guessed that's how it would happen in 1992, and neither did the patent holder.
And, in 1988, how were you going to purchase that app, and how was it going to be delivered to you? I knew what the Internet was at the time, but I bet I was in a pretty exclusive club.
*chuckle* If you can get management to spring for extra monitors, more power to you. I still think any such need is generally a result of bad UI design and status seeking. I find it hilarious that people open up full screen terminal windows. How ridiculous can you get? Oh, there's a maximize button there, I must press it. My will is weak!
Those are two exceptions to the rule. And no, I haven't worked on either.
You can't honestly say that you work on code that has functions that don't take up a significant amount of vertical space. If you do, you must really be enjoying your entry level work. When you grow out of that, you'll find that vertical space is wonderful to have.
I've worked on code that had enormously long and complex functions. Whenever possible (and I push extremely hard on this, no "We don't have time for that." with me, if you don't have time for that, you certainly don't have the time for everybody to maintain it) I refactor the code into smaller functions, and usually remove a lot of bugs in the process.
While I don't really lack for vertical space on my setup (I generally have 50-60 lines on-screen) having a limitation helps keep me honest when writing code.
My argument is not against giving developers more real estate. I don't care one way or the other for myself. I've had multiple monitors, and unless I have a VM or remote desktop session, I can take them or leave them.
No, my argument is against stupidly designed web pages and horribly bad application software that simply doesn't work properly unless it's taking up your whole screen. Designing stuff that way is incredibly dumb, and the UI designers who do it should be forced to use a single 14" 800x600 monitor with their application until they realize the error of their ways.
I don't use application software like that. It's one of the many reasons I despise Eclipse.
Once stupid UI designers realize that most developers have multiple monitors, next thing you know they'll be designing programs that don't really work well unless you have two screens.
I would rather have one monitor that was 4000x2000 and 30" than two any day.
I have, and I see no difference between having multiple monitors and having multiple non-maximized windows open at the same time. I think the fetish for multiple monitors is because application designers are are incredibly annoyingly bad and design their applications to not really work so well when they aren't maximized.
Most of the applications I use are not maximized and work fine that way. But I'm an odd duck and a bit of an old-school Unix geek. Lots of emacs and terminal windows with the occasional browser window.
I find multiple monitors to be mildly annoying because they are often a bit of a pain to get set up properly on a Fedora system (thought that's gotten better). I would much rather have my main monitor be somewhat bigger and have a whole ton more pixels.
That it does. For my main workstation, I prefer to have at least a 19" monitor, and prefer a 21" if I can get it.
I'm also rather disappointed at the whole 1080p thing and how that's caused monitor resolutions to top out.
No, because I use small function sizes to reduce indentation levels. And smaller function sizes mean fewer variables which means I can have shorter names that are still meaningful and distinguished. And I avoid creating conditionals with a whole ton of clauses, and use other techniques to create small local aliases for long global names (which means I don't generally program in Java).
This means my code naturally fits in 80 columns most of the time without awkward wrapping.
*chuckle* I find 'proper IDEs' to be the bane of single monitor use. They take up the whole screen, and inevitably you'll need to do something outside the IDE, and because of how the stupid thing is designed, this means you have to bring up a window that was previously not at all visible to sit on top of some vitally important part of your IDE.
No, I use a single screen, and a whole ton of windows. I have windows devoted to compiler output, windows devoted to the running application, 2 or 3 code windows, and a window or two with a bunch of tabs devoted to documentation.
My question is, how many people used all their applications in full-screen mode? Would they have gotten the same benefit if those applications worked reasonably when the window only took up half the screen? I agree its a trivial expense. But I also think people use their existing resources really stupidly and the applications they use encourage this.