Never had a flicker-related seizure, but I will say that CRTs below 85Hz are very annoying, and CRTs at 60Hz are downright painful.
Unfortunately, every gaddamned monitor seems to default to 60Hz upon first use. As the majority of people can't even tell at 60Hz, I'm frequently "fixing" the refresh rates on friends' computers. They're always really confused and defensive about it too, as if I'm telling them there's something wrong with their monitor. A few people have flat out refused to let me change the refresh rate.
What if my only contact list for my IM was Linus Torvalds, Bruce Perens, ESR and Richard Stallman [which, it isn't =]?
One might assume that those people, being rather important in other ways, main regular contact with a wide variety of people. Perhaps they perfer other forms of contact such as email, but I'd wager they do talk to a lot of people. Thus, their buddy lists (if they had one) would be very large. Your score would be improved because of it.
To make this better, they could also record the frequency of conversation between two individuals. If you talk a lot to person A, you're connected very closely to them and their popularity rubs off on you more. Person B, who happens to be incredibly popular, but only talks to you when they need computer help won't contribute as much to your score. For example:
p[me] = sum(c[i]*p[i],i=0..buddy_list_length) c[i] = time spent chatting with person i / total time person i spends chatting p[i] = person i's popularity
I think that would give a much better approximation for your real "popularity". I would also get a much lower popularity this way. I don't really talk to anyone on AIM, though I have many people on my buddy list.
I'm really curious about the data behind this. How many buddy lists am I on? Who's added me without ever IM'ing me? Who removed me years ago? Who keeps me on their list even though we haven't spoken in just as long? I have a relatively high score for the number of people on my list and for the number of people I actually talk to. My friends must have a lot of people on their lists, but I suspect there's a lot of overlap. Are screen names double counted?
I think the previous employer should be required to continue paying salary until the clause expires or is waived. If my previous employer is dictating what I can or can not do they ought to still be paying me. That, I would think, is the most balanced approach.
Noncompete contracts aren't evil. If you want to get paid for time out of work, you should negotiate that with the company before you're hired. If you're worth it, they'll agree to it. OTOH, if you're worth it, chances are you can get another company to hire you for a year to sit on your ass, too.
You have to strike a balance with the company before you're hired that will protect both of you. You've got to admit that there are some cases where a noncompete agreement enforces ethical standards that just make sense. EG, if you developed Microsoft's next generation WMV codec, you probably shouldn't be designing one for Real Audio. However, preventing you from working at Real Networks simply because they compete with Microsoft is overboard.
I guess it's really determined by what this guy did at Microsoft and what he's going to be doing at Google. It sounds like he did a lot of work with internet searching, the particulars of which should probably not be shared with Google, just for ethical reasons. I don't know the terms of his agreement, but it appears to me that Microsoft is in the right this time, despite their own history as a head-hunter.
Easter eggs on that other censored-to-all-hell medium (movies) aren't rated at all. DVDs explicitly carry a label saying something to the effect that "DVD extras and director's commentary unrated". Why can't video games carry a similar disclaimer?
There's no way a game producer can 100% guarantee some programmer didn't stick in a pratical joke in the form of a naked woman on the back side of a panel somewhere. There's no way a game producer can even 1% guarantee that people won't release a naked patch or something similar. (See Lara Croft, The Sims, others.) Basically, if your child is travelling the net unsupervised looking for a naked patch, chances are he could find the real stuff just as easily.
I just see this as a threat to the modding community. How do they handle games like HL that are designed to be modded? Should every mod be ESRB certified, too?
Or, Rockstar disabled the content but left it there knowing that somebody was eventually going to find it - but not until after they'd been rated.
I view it as analogous to an easter egg on a DVD movie. Except for this easter egg, you have to know what you're looking for, use external hardware to get it, and spend several hours trying to find it. But other than that, an easter egg.
All DVDs nowadays come with a notice saying "DVD extras and commentary unrated" -- only the movie, the main content, the stuff you really paid to see, is rated. If you have to hit a dozen buttons to access the secret menu of hidden sex scenes cut from the movie, you probably know what you're in for. Nobody is going to protect you from what you worked so hard to find.
Now, if they would only add the video game version of "extras unrated", we'd be fine. People know (or should know) what GTA is when they buy it; is there really some uproar among consumers about this? You know, that game where you go around stealing cars, beating up hookers, and killing cops -- why, it has sex in it! It was fine for little Jimmy before, but not now! You must take it off the shelves and burn it!
Sure, some people should exercise more and lose weight to address their health issues, but there are some people that live unbelievably healthy lifestyles and still suffer from those type of ailments. Their bodies just don't respond to stimulus the right way.
BTW, there's no inherent conflict between preventative and corrective medicine. People do develop illnesses despite living a healthy, sensible life. We accept that for most types of diseases, but we treat people with mental illness quite differently.
Alcoholism is a disease, but it's the only one you can get yelled at for having. "Damn it Otto, you are an alcoholic!" "Damn it Otto, you have Lupis!" One of those two doesn't sound right.
Yes. In my experience, people still need some sort of external stimulus to turn their mood around, but the requirements for it become less and less stringent the longer they've been down.
I couldn't disagree more. When my college roommate flunked his midterm, a good TV show and some pizza usually turned his mood around. When my brother got cut from the football team and flunked out of college, he spent most of the next year indoors, despite copious amounts of pizza and TV.
Why bother? Most places don't actually require you to submit any information at all. I usually take the card and throw away the application.
Or, if you want to be lazy, anonymous, AND a bastard, throw the card away too. Just ask for a new one every time you go to the market. (Same as flushing your cookies, no?)
The grand jury is investigating whether or not a crime was committed. If they determine that there is enough evidence that a crime was committed, then they may issue some indictments, and we may see a trial. None of this implies guilt.
Right, but that wasn't the issue at hand. The grand-grand-parent post questioned whether or not she was actually a covert operative. However, if she wasn't covert, then there's no possible crime involved. If there's no possible crime, then there's no use for a grand jury. Because there is a grand jury, we can definitely conclude she was a covert operative. Whether or not anyone committed a crime is a separate issue.
I find it much easier to twist my wrist ever so slightly so I can hit that key with my middle finger.
IANA RSI Specialist, but my understanding is that exactly that kind of repeated wrist-twisting is what stresses the tendons in your wrist and leads to injury. I tend to hit the '1' key by moving my entire hand (putting it in place to type another number) but I do hit backspace by twisting my hand and using my ring finger.
I've been trying to use vi for my coding to avoid that, as vi uses 'x' for delete. It doesn't work in Insert mode for obvious reasons, and using the ESC key to exit Insert is the same motion (or worse). Maybe I'll remap ESC to left-alt or something.
(I'll just have to back off from my quote there, as I can think of a number of ways it is in fact wrong. However, I think your post actually helps prove my overall point.)
It's give and take really. Certain parts of other cultures catch on here, just as certain parts of US culture catch on elsewhere. For every Hollywood movie or McDonalds we export, there is a Pokemon, Spanish soap opera, swiss watch, or Kung-fu film we import.
Right. I completely agree; your examples prove that it is entirely possible for elements of another culture to gather success here in the states. For example, I've eaten more sushi than pizza in the last three months, and I'm in college. Quite a lot of "American" culture is adopted from others. I would argue that movies prove to be the exception because we're better at it. Not necessarily better at making movies, because we make a lot of crappy movies. But we're much better when it comes to the business side of it: the distribution, promotion, merchandizing, etc.
You can't just explain it away with "their culture vs. our culture", because they seem quite happy consuming American-made entertainment. Somehow, all the crap that Hollywood produces manages to get translated into Japanese, French, German, etc. and released right behind the domestic release. We're doing a much better job exporting our culture to them than they are to us.
Either there's something fundamentally more universal about our culture or there's something fundamentally more universal about our movies. I don't have the arrogance to claim the former, but I'm sure pointy-haired executives spend a lot of time worrying about how their latest blockbuster will play overseas. So in one sense, you're right. Our products are designed to sell in more than one country. Anime is not.
If Anime producers got smart, they'd spend more time thinking about an international release, rather than leaving it up to third-party distributors. They'd hire a real director and good voice actors to do a new voice track. They'd actually promote the movie beyond their website for once. And they'd actually make money.
'Rebates' could easily be turned into a lower purchase price. If the manufacturer is able to offer them after sale they could offer before sale instead.
They could and probably would were it not for the many people who don't bother to submit the rebate at all. The manufacturer's average revenue per unit is therefore much more than the after-rebate price. They advertise this low, low price (after rebates) to drive up the volume, increasing total revenue. Making rebates harder (multiple rebates to different locations, checks that expire, etc) means fewer people will actually get that low, low price.
I think rebates will fade over time as people start to understand the game. Bargain websites mention rebates with disdain and highlight rebate-free offers. People have been burned too many times and aren't as easily swayed by the low, low price. I know I'd pay a few bucks extra not to deal with a rebate, and when I have to I make sure that I submit it ASAP.
Until everyone else gets the message, I'm happy to take advantage of this new tax on the lazy and forgetful. Except I'm lazy.. and forgetful.. shoot!
I completely understood your argument about the three definitions when you made it. It wasn't relevant to the point I was making, so I didn't bother to counter it. If you want an actual reply, here it is:
Your argument basically boils down to: 1. Hackers as exceptionally talented computer users/programmers are good. 2. Hackers as exceptionally talented computer criminals are good too. 3. Hackers as talentless script kiddies are bad.
I agree that 1s are good and 3s are bad, but who do you think wrote the scripts, trojans, and backdoors that type 3 hackers use? Your type 2 hackers. So they're just as culpable as the script kiddies in my view. Far from protecting us from the hordes of script kiddies as you claimed, they're creating them. For that reason, I see no real distinction between the two groups other than their skill level.
Your other point seems to be that once a skilled hacker (#2) has root on your system, they'll do a better job as admin, so it's all good and no one should worry. That doesn't many any sense to me. Media stereotype notwithstanding, anyone who attempts to break into my system has already demonstrated a severe lack of ethics and should never be allowed to run my or any system.
If you carefully read my post, without your "I despise/. nerds, and try to pretend I am not one of them" glasses... If you have a problem with nerds using different words than mainstream media, maybe you are not a nerd, and will have always trouble in a nerds forum.
I'm a Slashdot nerd pretending I'm not, except I'm not really a nerd and I don't fit in on Slashdot. I'm not sure if that's an insult or a complement.
Every/. article that refers to a hacker in the "wrong" sense, somebody has to point it out, even though everyone knows what he actually meant. It's a silly argument and completely off topic. You like your definition and the author likes his. What makes his definition "misuse"?
Only if you invent a new meaning for "hacker" that stands for "a person who does something _harmful_ with some information/piece of software, when he shouldn't", then those "hackers" would be the cause for the need for security.
Only on Slashdot would someone claim that this is a "new" definition. Yes, somebody found an email from 1980 that predates the modern media usage of the term, but neither usage is new. I have no statistics of Slashdot readers, but I would suspect that at least half of them are "newer" than that term.
What is new is the Slashdot/Linux/OSS community's obsession with the term. You guys want the cool word for yourself. You desperately want to be thought of as a hacker: the oddball geek who's secretly interesting and powerful (for good, though). You want to invoke the stupid stereotype that you profess to dispise, otherwise there would be no reason to cling to the term.
In reality, we're all just a bunch of nerds who sit at a computer all day. The daily conquests that we attempt to take pride in -- fixing the router in record time, installing Linux on your Xbox -- seem so important to us, but don't really interest anyone else. Even the celebrity hackers like Linus or RMS aren't "real" hackers. What the rest of a the public regards as a real hacker doesn't exist. To them, a hacker is a magical creature that can get free money from an ATM, bypass any electronic key lock, and bring down the Pentagon with a phone call.
Until you can do all that, don't call yourself a hacker. You'll only end up embarassing yourself when people find out what you really do.
I don't buy it because there is only one generation between the two time periods. Surely there would be plenty who still knew of the science behind the force.
Not really, because who studied the force, who knew more about it than anyone? The Jedi, who were all killed except for Yoda and Obi-Wan. If you want to infer beyond the story itself, you might conclude that there were two camps in the Jedi: those who viewed the force from a scientific standpoint and those who viewed it from a religious standpoint. I don't recall either Yoda or Obi-Wan leaning heavily on the "midichlorian" idea in 1-3, so it would be safe to assume that they were both in the latter category. The nerds were probably all back on Coruscant at the Temple and got slaughtered immediately.
OTOH, it's much more likely that Lucas was just re-inventing his original vision, as you said.
What I don't get is if he knew Luke was his son, why wouldn't he know Leia was his daughter?
Anakin knew Padme was pregnant, but he didn't know she was going to have twins. When Vader later learned of a guy named Luke Skywalker, who was about the right age and hanging out with "Ben" Kenobi, he just put two and two together. Hell, even Luke knew that Anakin was his father. He just didn't know Vader was Anakin. (Though I don't recall that they mentioned his name specifically. Was it in the books?)
Frankly, one wonders why Leia was given much better cover from Vader than Luke. Luke gets handed over to Vader's stepbrother, who doesn't bother to change his name or even move from the same home on Tatooine that Vader undoubtably knows about. I guess Tatooine is the supposed to be the middle of nowhere, but c'mon -- Luke becomes a nerf-herder and Leia a princess. How is that fair?
I don't like you and I want to see you go to jail. I create a website that has the following tag:
<img src=kiddieporn.jpg height=1 width=1>
To you, it looks like a tiny dot, but your browser will still load it and it still goes in your cache. I call the fuzz. You get arrested for "possession".
Granted, to hide my trail I'd need to be a little smarter, but it's not very hard.
My post was not meant to be taken seriously. I don't actually think a $299 "Celeron doorstop" is comparable to a G5 tower. However, the Mac guys won't accept anything as comparable unless it's identical. If you pull the trick where any minor difference between the PC and the Mac has to be made up with a 3rd party expansion card (at retail price, of course), then you can easily "prove" Macs are competitively priced.
The G5 towers have free expansion slots and available drive bays. Yawn.
And they cost at least $1500. I specifically mentioned that. If I don't want a Mac Mini or whatever laptop-mobo-in-a-box Apple is selling, I have to shell out some serious cash to buy a Mac.
Once you start sticking quality components into your PC, then your price advantage starts to dissapear.
That kind of logic is exactly what I was parodying. The Dell doesn't have X. A "comparable" X expansion card costs $100 at retail, so the Dell is really $100 more expensive, right?
Well maybe I don't want or need X. Maybe it isn't worth $100 to me and I won't buy the expansion card. So really, I'm happy my computer doesn't have built-in wireless, firewire, etc. I'd much rather have the option to install stuff I do want, like a TV tuner and a SCSI card for my ancient scanner that still works just fine. That option on a Mac costs $1500. On a Dell, it's $300.
Any discussion on the cost effectiveness comes down to how you value your purchase. We assign different values to different features because we want different things from them. Mac users start off from the faulty premise that everyone values features the same way, and that's where this "comparable" BS comes in.
For me, I'd much rather have the option to install the things I want and pay only for what I need. For you and others, the "Apple Experience" is obviously worth it. Good for you. Some of us would rather save our money.
Me: "Letting other PCs run Mac OS, OTOH, destroys Apple's status as a premium brand will kill their hardware business... it just isn't a sound business decision for Apple."
You: "Sorry, I know you really want to believe it's not going to happen... But it is going to happen. Jobs himself has said so."
So did you switch the meaning of the pronoun "it" on me? Otherwise it looks very clear to me that you claimed that Steve Jobs said Mac OS would run on other PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
Never had a flicker-related seizure, but I will say that CRTs below 85Hz are very annoying, and CRTs at 60Hz are downright painful.
Unfortunately, every gaddamned monitor seems to default to 60Hz upon first use. As the majority of people can't even tell at 60Hz, I'm frequently "fixing" the refresh rates on friends' computers. They're always really confused and defensive about it too, as if I'm telling them there's something wrong with their monitor. A few people have flat out refused to let me change the refresh rate.
One might assume that those people, being rather important in other ways, main regular contact with a wide variety of people. Perhaps they perfer other forms of contact such as email, but I'd wager they do talk to a lot of people. Thus, their buddy lists (if they had one) would be very large. Your score would be improved because of it.
To make this better, they could also record the frequency of conversation between two individuals. If you talk a lot to person A, you're connected very closely to them and their popularity rubs off on you more. Person B, who happens to be incredibly popular, but only talks to you when they need computer help won't contribute as much to your score. For example:I think that would give a much better approximation for your real "popularity". I would also get a much lower popularity this way. I don't really talk to anyone on AIM, though I have many people on my buddy list.
I'm really curious about the data behind this. How many buddy lists am I on? Who's added me without ever IM'ing me? Who removed me years ago? Who keeps me on their list even though we haven't spoken in just as long? I have a relatively high score for the number of people on my list and for the number of people I actually talk to. My friends must have a lot of people on their lists, but I suspect there's a lot of overlap. Are screen names double counted?
I think the previous employer should be required to continue paying salary until the clause expires or is waived. If my previous employer is dictating what I can or can not do they ought to still be paying me. That, I would think, is the most balanced approach.
Noncompete contracts aren't evil. If you want to get paid for time out of work, you should negotiate that with the company before you're hired. If you're worth it, they'll agree to it. OTOH, if you're worth it, chances are you can get another company to hire you for a year to sit on your ass, too.
You have to strike a balance with the company before you're hired that will protect both of you. You've got to admit that there are some cases where a noncompete agreement enforces ethical standards that just make sense. EG, if you developed Microsoft's next generation WMV codec, you probably shouldn't be designing one for Real Audio. However, preventing you from working at Real Networks simply because they compete with Microsoft is overboard.
I guess it's really determined by what this guy did at Microsoft and what he's going to be doing at Google. It sounds like he did a lot of work with internet searching, the particulars of which should probably not be shared with Google, just for ethical reasons. I don't know the terms of his agreement, but it appears to me that Microsoft is in the right this time, despite their own history as a head-hunter.
See my other post.
Easter eggs on that other censored-to-all-hell medium (movies) aren't rated at all. DVDs explicitly carry a label saying something to the effect that "DVD extras and director's commentary unrated". Why can't video games carry a similar disclaimer?
There's no way a game producer can 100% guarantee some programmer didn't stick in a pratical joke in the form of a naked woman on the back side of a panel somewhere. There's no way a game producer can even 1% guarantee that people won't release a naked patch or something similar. (See Lara Croft, The Sims, others.) Basically, if your child is travelling the net unsupervised looking for a naked patch, chances are he could find the real stuff just as easily.
I just see this as a threat to the modding community. How do they handle games like HL that are designed to be modded? Should every mod be ESRB certified, too?
Or, Rockstar disabled the content but left it there knowing that somebody was eventually going to find it - but not until after they'd been rated.
I view it as analogous to an easter egg on a DVD movie. Except for this easter egg, you have to know what you're looking for, use external hardware to get it, and spend several hours trying to find it. But other than that, an easter egg.
All DVDs nowadays come with a notice saying "DVD extras and commentary unrated" -- only the movie, the main content, the stuff you really paid to see, is rated. If you have to hit a dozen buttons to access the secret menu of hidden sex scenes cut from the movie, you probably know what you're in for. Nobody is going to protect you from what you worked so hard to find.
Now, if they would only add the video game version of "extras unrated", we'd be fine. People know (or should know) what GTA is when they buy it; is there really some uproar among consumers about this? You know, that game where you go around stealing cars, beating up hookers, and killing cops -- why, it has sex in it! It was fine for little Jimmy before, but not now! You must take it off the shelves and burn it!
Yes. In my experience, people still need some sort of external stimulus to turn their mood around, but the requirements for it become less and less stringent the longer they've been down.
I couldn't disagree more. When my college roommate flunked his midterm, a good TV show and some pizza usually turned his mood around. When my brother got cut from the football team and flunked out of college, he spent most of the next year indoors, despite copious amounts of pizza and TV.
Why bother? Most places don't actually require you to submit any information at all. I usually take the card and throw away the application.
Or, if you want to be lazy, anonymous, AND a bastard, throw the card away too. Just ask for a new one every time you go to the market. (Same as flushing your cookies, no?)
The grand jury is investigating whether or not a crime was committed. If they determine that there is enough evidence that a crime was committed, then they may issue some indictments, and we may see a trial. None of this implies guilt.
Right, but that wasn't the issue at hand. The grand-grand-parent post questioned whether or not she was actually a covert operative. However, if she wasn't covert, then there's no possible crime involved. If there's no possible crime, then there's no use for a grand jury. Because there is a grand jury, we can definitely conclude she was a covert operative. Whether or not anyone committed a crime is a separate issue.
I find it much easier to twist my wrist ever so slightly so I can hit that key with my middle finger.
IANA RSI Specialist, but my understanding is that exactly that kind of repeated wrist-twisting is what stresses the tendons in your wrist and leads to injury. I tend to hit the '1' key by moving my entire hand (putting it in place to type another number) but I do hit backspace by twisting my hand and using my ring finger.
I've been trying to use vi for my coding to avoid that, as vi uses 'x' for delete. It doesn't work in Insert mode for obvious reasons, and using the ESC key to exit Insert is the same motion (or worse). Maybe I'll remap ESC to left-alt or something.
Allowing for inflation and all, the cost of repaving or putting in a new road stays fairly static, so a report on the cost makes sense.
They're not as static as you think. A lot of work goes into a good construction estimate and they're frequently wrong.
Yet the same argument applies to any bright, shiny, Linux box you purchased and the only physical media you have on hand is a Redhat 7.2 CD.
(I'll just have to back off from my quote there, as I can think of a number of ways it is in fact wrong. However, I think your post actually helps prove my overall point.)
It's give and take really. Certain parts of other cultures catch on here, just as certain parts of US culture catch on elsewhere.
For every Hollywood movie or McDonalds we export, there is a Pokemon, Spanish soap opera, swiss watch, or Kung-fu film we import.
Right. I completely agree; your examples prove that it is entirely possible for elements of another culture to gather success here in the states. For example, I've eaten more sushi than pizza in the last three months, and I'm in college. Quite a lot of "American" culture is adopted from others. I would argue that movies prove to be the exception because we're better at it. Not necessarily better at making movies, because we make a lot of crappy movies. But we're much better when it comes to the business side of it: the distribution, promotion, merchandizing, etc.
You can't just explain it away with "their culture vs. our culture", because they seem quite happy consuming American-made entertainment. Somehow, all the crap that Hollywood produces manages to get translated into Japanese, French, German, etc. and released right behind the domestic release. We're doing a much better job exporting our culture to them than they are to us.
Either there's something fundamentally more universal about our culture or there's something fundamentally more universal about our movies. I don't have the arrogance to claim the former, but I'm sure pointy-haired executives spend a lot of time worrying about how their latest blockbuster will play overseas. So in one sense, you're right. Our products are designed to sell in more than one country. Anime is not.
If Anime producers got smart, they'd spend more time thinking about an international release, rather than leaving it up to third-party distributors. They'd hire a real director and good voice actors to do a new voice track. They'd actually promote the movie beyond their website for once. And they'd actually make money.
'Rebates' could easily be turned into a lower purchase price. If the manufacturer is able to offer them after sale they could offer before sale instead.
They could and probably would were it not for the many people who don't bother to submit the rebate at all. The manufacturer's average revenue per unit is therefore much more than the after-rebate price. They advertise this low, low price (after rebates) to drive up the volume, increasing total revenue. Making rebates harder (multiple rebates to different locations, checks that expire, etc) means fewer people will actually get that low, low price.
I think rebates will fade over time as people start to understand the game. Bargain websites mention rebates with disdain and highlight rebate-free offers. People have been burned too many times and aren't as easily swayed by the low, low price. I know I'd pay a few bucks extra not to deal with a rebate, and when I have to I make sure that I submit it ASAP.
Until everyone else gets the message, I'm happy to take advantage of this new tax on the lazy and forgetful. Except I'm lazy.. and forgetful.. shoot!
I completely understood your argument about the three definitions when you made it. It wasn't relevant to the point I was making, so I didn't bother to counter it. If you want an actual reply, here it is:
Your argument basically boils down to:
1. Hackers as exceptionally talented computer users/programmers are good.
2. Hackers as exceptionally talented computer criminals are good too.
3. Hackers as talentless script kiddies are bad.
I agree that 1s are good and 3s are bad, but who do you think wrote the scripts, trojans, and backdoors that type 3 hackers use? Your type 2 hackers. So they're just as culpable as the script kiddies in my view. Far from protecting us from the hordes of script kiddies as you claimed, they're creating them. For that reason, I see no real distinction between the two groups other than their skill level.
Your other point seems to be that once a skilled hacker (#2) has root on your system, they'll do a better job as admin, so it's all good and no one should worry. That doesn't many any sense to me. Media stereotype notwithstanding, anyone who attempts to break into my system has already demonstrated a severe lack of ethics and should never be allowed to run my or any system.
If you carefully read my post, without your "I despise /. nerds, and try to pretend I am not one of them" glasses ... If you have a problem with nerds using different words than mainstream media, maybe you are not a nerd, and will have always trouble in a nerds forum.
/. article that refers to a hacker in the "wrong" sense, somebody has to point it out, even though everyone knows what he actually meant. It's a silly argument and completely off topic. You like your definition and the author likes his. What makes his definition "misuse"?
I'm a Slashdot nerd pretending I'm not, except I'm not really a nerd and I don't fit in on Slashdot. I'm not sure if that's an insult or a complement.
Every
Only if you invent a new meaning for "hacker" that stands for "a person who does something _harmful_ with some information/piece of software, when he shouldn't", then those "hackers" would be the cause for the need for security.
Only on Slashdot would someone claim that this is a "new" definition. Yes, somebody found an email from 1980 that predates the modern media usage of the term, but neither usage is new. I have no statistics of Slashdot readers, but I would suspect that at least half of them are "newer" than that term.
What is new is the Slashdot/Linux/OSS community's obsession with the term. You guys want the cool word for yourself. You desperately want to be thought of as a hacker: the oddball geek who's secretly interesting and powerful (for good, though). You want to invoke the stupid stereotype that you profess to dispise, otherwise there would be no reason to cling to the term.
In reality, we're all just a bunch of nerds who sit at a computer all day. The daily conquests that we attempt to take pride in -- fixing the router in record time, installing Linux on your Xbox -- seem so important to us, but don't really interest anyone else. Even the celebrity hackers like Linus or RMS aren't "real" hackers. What the rest of a the public regards as a real hacker doesn't exist. To them, a hacker is a magical creature that can get free money from an ATM, bypass any electronic key lock, and bring down the Pentagon with a phone call.
Until you can do all that, don't call yourself a hacker. You'll only end up embarassing yourself when people find out what you really do.
I don't buy it because there is only one generation between the two time periods. Surely there would be plenty who still knew of the science behind the force.
Not really, because who studied the force, who knew more about it than anyone? The Jedi, who were all killed except for Yoda and Obi-Wan. If you want to infer beyond the story itself, you might conclude that there were two camps in the Jedi: those who viewed the force from a scientific standpoint and those who viewed it from a religious standpoint. I don't recall either Yoda or Obi-Wan leaning heavily on the "midichlorian" idea in 1-3, so it would be safe to assume that they were both in the latter category. The nerds were probably all back on Coruscant at the Temple and got slaughtered immediately.
OTOH, it's much more likely that Lucas was just re-inventing his original vision, as you said.
What I don't get is if he knew Luke was his son, why wouldn't he know Leia was his daughter?
Anakin knew Padme was pregnant, but he didn't know she was going to have twins. When Vader later learned of a guy named Luke Skywalker, who was about the right age and hanging out with "Ben" Kenobi, he just put two and two together. Hell, even Luke knew that Anakin was his father. He just didn't know Vader was Anakin. (Though I don't recall that they mentioned his name specifically. Was it in the books?)
Frankly, one wonders why Leia was given much better cover from Vader than Luke. Luke gets handed over to Vader's stepbrother, who doesn't bother to change his name or even move from the same home on Tatooine that Vader undoubtably knows about. I guess Tatooine is the supposed to be the middle of nowhere, but c'mon -- Luke becomes a nerf-herder and Leia a princess. How is that fair?
I'm guessing you meant to link to itallconnects.com
No offense or nothing, but it's not terribly interesting. No porn at all! How can you call that a website?
I don't like you and I want to see you go to jail. I create a website that has the following tag:
<img src=kiddieporn.jpg height=1 width=1>
To you, it looks like a tiny dot, but your browser will still load it and it still goes in your cache. I call the fuzz. You get arrested for "possession".
Granted, to hide my trail I'd need to be a little smarter, but it's not very hard.
And this is different than you...how exactly?
My post was not meant to be taken seriously. I don't actually think a $299 "Celeron doorstop" is comparable to a G5 tower. However, the Mac guys won't accept anything as comparable unless it's identical. If you pull the trick where any minor difference between the PC and the Mac has to be made up with a 3rd party expansion card (at retail price, of course), then you can easily "prove" Macs are competitively priced.
The G5 towers have free expansion slots and available drive bays. Yawn.
And they cost at least $1500. I specifically mentioned that. If I don't want a Mac Mini or whatever laptop-mobo-in-a-box Apple is selling, I have to shell out some serious cash to buy a Mac.
Once you start sticking quality components into your PC, then your price advantage starts to dissapear.
That kind of logic is exactly what I was parodying. The Dell doesn't have X. A "comparable" X expansion card costs $100 at retail, so the Dell is really $100 more expensive, right?
Well maybe I don't want or need X. Maybe it isn't worth $100 to me and I won't buy the expansion card. So really, I'm happy my computer doesn't have built-in wireless, firewire, etc. I'd much rather have the option to install stuff I do want, like a TV tuner and a SCSI card for my ancient scanner that still works just fine. That option on a Mac costs $1500. On a Dell, it's $300.
Any discussion on the cost effectiveness comes down to how you value your purchase. We assign different values to different features because we want different things from them. Mac users start off from the faulty premise that everyone values features the same way, and that's where this "comparable" BS comes in.
For me, I'd much rather have the option to install the things I want and pay only for what I need. For you and others, the "Apple Experience" is obviously worth it. Good for you. Some of us would rather save our money.
Me: "Letting other PCs run Mac OS, OTOH, destroys Apple's status as a premium brand will kill their hardware business ... it just isn't a sound business decision for Apple."
... But it is going to happen. Jobs himself has said so."
You: "Sorry, I know you really want to believe it's not going to happen
So did you switch the meaning of the pronoun "it" on me? Otherwise it looks very clear to me that you claimed that Steve Jobs said Mac OS would run on other PCs.
But it is going to happen. Jobs himself has said so.
He did? Link?
Funny, Apple VP Phil Schiller said the exact opposite.