I did. It brought up nothing interesting. Perhaps you've been browsing pr0n without using Distrust or some similar add-on?
I believe the FF beta introduces a 'porn mode', so this add-on should be obsolete very soon. Clearly that and the AwesomeBar should have been introduced concurrently.
how about: Suing Napster was stupid, they should have bought it.
The problem is that it is technically infeasible to stop filesharing without at the very least being massively invasive of privacy. Compounding the problem is that our current laws don't really take into account the fact that we have this massive high-speed data network built for the express purpose of moving files around.
So we're kind of screwed. On the one hand, our laws are draconian and out of date, and the organization supposedly protecting the rights of artists seems to act more like an organized crime syndicate. On the other hand, artists deserve to be compensated fairly, and we want to encourage respect for the law, lest we end up like China, where (I hear) everything is illegal, but only enforced arbitrarily.
This is a massive cultural shift. The RIAA has failed to catch the rising edge with Napster, and then with iTunes. Their position is absolutely untenable, and they're only making it worse with every passing day. I'd almost feel sorry for them if they had not had so many opportunities to understand what is going on.
It's a very complex issue, and many people are divided about it, but one thing is clear. If slashdot were as simple and morally bankrupt as you describe, I wouldn't be here. Actually, that sounds a lot like Digg...
300,000 people within a ten mile radius is (300,000/(pi*100)) = 955 people per square mile. Multiply by 2.58998811 (mi^2:km^2) to get approximately 2473 people per square kilometer.
Consult this list of the densest cities in the world. Do note that by this list's methodology no US cities have a population density greater than 2473 persons per sq km.
The methodology of that listing is debatable, but the point is that places where people live in such numbers are not terribly common on this planet, and consequently, places with lesser population density are very important, especially since, despite your assertion, you're probably living in one.
As an addendum, the number of cities with a population of more than 300,000 is also a fairly low number. That same website ranks only 232 cities as having equal or larger populations. Only half of the planet lives in cities, so far.
They were already selling them at a loss, making money on support and app development. I think also you should read up on what exactly the term 'total financial collapse' means.
Your post was arrogant and dismissive, good---you'll do well here.
I'm not entirely sure what your point was, though. Did you have one?
If it was something along the lines of 'what is happening to these people doesn't matter' with the subtext of 'other countries don't matter', well, it's difficult to muster a polite response. How about this: you're making our country look bad. Knock if off: that's what our politicians are for.
Software was originally given away freely. It's important to remember that.
Closed-source and/or for-profit software also has its place, but Microsoft might do well to (again) imitate Apple.
Also, in today's existence, it's difficult to not carry some measure of anger against the 'megacorp'. What have they touched that is not tarnished? What have they given us that is not tainted? Men have always harmed other men in pursuit of their own self-interest, but never is this more soul-less or harsh than when the ultimate goal of the organization is Profit.
It's unfuckupable, and if you do it can be reset to defaults in approximately the same time required for a normal boot.
I used it for all of fifteen minutes before wiping it and installing another distro. Most people probably don't need anything other than the default install.
So, an App section, a Knowledge Base, a What-is-Linux? section, a News section, a forum, hmm. I don't know whether it would be worthwhile to reproduce or relocate the information from kernel.org, kernelnewbies.org, and/or distrowatch.com, but it seems like all of those websites have sprung up because linux.com was being used for other purposes.
I'd want all of those websites to be conglomerated into one source, but I don't know what problems that could present.
Your post was not worth the time it took to read it.
You are not only arrogant in trying to teach someone else their profession and deride them for acting in a way that harms no one and is clearly motivated by morality, but you are incredibly abrasive and foul in doing so.
I have frequently noted your contributions to discussions here on slashdot, and generally found them to be lucid and insightful. This sort of bile is shameful, and reflects poorly on both yourself and this community as a whole.
What you state is quite possibly very true, and with an increasingly large dataset and more powerful computers, it may become more true over time.
Do you want a computer to determine whether or not you undergo surgery? What happens if it guesses wrong? Do you sue a computer for malpractice?
I'd suggest that people will almost always want a person to be giving them a diagnosis, even if that person is just consulting a computer behind their back. And how many doctors will substitute their own judgment for that of the computer? Would that be better or worse than a doctor blindly trusting what a computer says?
Moles are probably a good example of something that a computer could diagnose accurately, and clearly there are many sides to this issue. It's almost certain we'll have to confront this as a society in the relatively near future. At what point do we surrender our judgment to a machine?
That particular criticism is well worth reading. I'm not sure that his dietary recommendations are on the mark: clearly there have been many healthy diets pursued by many different cultures. It is equally clear that the "Western" diet (as he labels it) is quite unhealthy. Beyond that, his conclusions as to specific diet are debatable.
The companion book should be Good Calories, Bad Calories, with an eye to the merits of each book, and a healthy dose of skepticism.
Modern drugs do work. Antidepressants in the last decade have been something of a scandal, though. People want them, drug companies want to sell them. Studies have shown (even on slashdot!) that the most commonly prescribed drugs are basically no more effective than a placebo, and also that expensive placebos work better, and further that placebos can be effective in around 30% of a population, I think that there are some serious arguments against antidepressants in specific---and beyond that, what else have we been lied to about? Big Pharma has a lot to answer for.
I'm not advocating the dismissal of science in medicine, but I do think that it needs to be entirely divorced from the profit motive, if such a thing is possible.
What makes me feel safer is doctors making decisions based on the best medical practices, period. Government mandates are not equivalent to nor better than scientific analysis and rigorous studies.
Malpractice and human error happen, and we have a system in place to deal justice to those people. What on earth you're hoping to solve or improve by adding another layer of bureaucratic idiocy is beyond comprehension. Unfortunately your ignorance of the medical profession is far more readily apparent.
I've just made an extensive post on the subject, but your anecdote does not make a case for abandoning a doctor's judgment. At best it makes an argument for banning the advertisement of pharmaceuticals.
Your argument that doctors do not have 'real medical knowledge' is frankly horseshit. If they don't, who does? More importantly, the government is not going to be better at determining the proper treatment for a set of symptoms. They don't know you and cannot take into consideration complicating factors, and they are more susceptible to the influence of Big Pharma, not less.
You were prescribed a medication based on the best medical knowledge and practices of the day. That the distributors of that information presented a biased study is not the fault of the individual doctor. Subsequent scientific studies showed that the drug was flawed. That's the way the medical field advances, that's how science works. Asking the government to keep track of the rapidly advancing field of medical science can only be doomed to failure.
We can know that for a certainty, because it already happens. There is a clinic here, with which I am well acquainted, with a total staff of perhaps twenty people. Three of those people are engaged in a particular form of bookkeeping that involves finding codes for particular procedures. They have to match the symptoms and prescribed treatments with what the government and/or insurance providers will pay for. Their job, in other words, is to game the system in order to try to follow the best medical practices. The government and especially insurance providers are a constant roadblock to the goal, and the reasoning is fairly simple: they save more money that way.
If your story were to repeat itself under a system such as the one you are espousing, the most likely scenario would be that any doctor would be forced to prescribe you Paxil or face fines for not doing so. If you could demonstrate a need for an alternative medication, then you would almost certainly pay through the nose for the privilege. That might sound scary and unrealistic, but I assure you it's not terribly far from today's current practices.
This proposal is an absolutely terrible one, that will impede scientific progress, prevent people from receiving proper medical care, take judgment, responsibility and liability out of the hands of doctors, and add further layers of bureaucracy to an already overburdened profession.
It's more complicated than that. As bad as a given doctor's judgment may be, the alternatives are also not good. Despite what the lady says, this will end up as the government telling doctors what they can and cannot do, what medicines and treatments to prescribe. That will probably be a good thing in a large number of cases, but I have trouble seeing it as strictly necessary. Doctors do not routinely prescribe people to be bled by leeches any more, and there was no government intervention to force that. These sort of things will come out in the wash eventually: medical science is still a science, after all. The scientific process is not decided by some official in Washington, nor is it often the case that one procedure or medication is the best response to a set of symptoms.
We should probably not concern ourselves overmuch with a small number of doctors doing stupid things, prescribing dangerous or harmful treatments. Most medical practices have a large fund set aside for malpractice suits as is, and the ideals of the medical profession are a credit to mankind. Where treatments are safe and effective, they will be promoted, and the penalty for mistakes is extremely high.
The purpose of this initiative is to standardize treatment, in practice to regulate which drugs to give to which patients in response to which symptoms. It won't force doctors to prescribe certain medicines or treatments, but there will end up being one prescribed treatment, which will be a drug of some sort--Big Pharma has and will continue to make sure of that. All other treatments will simply not be covered by insurance.
Doctors, like the rest of us, are not immune to bad judgment. They make mistakes, they overlook things, and suffer from all common flaws. They are frequently overworked, as well. Their work environment is extremely demanding, and they must keep pace with current developments in their field, and thread their way through ever increasing amounts of government oversight and the vagaries of insurance companies. Privacy issues with electronic medical records and bombardments of advertising from drug companies are just icing on the cake. Despite all of this, most people would rather rely on a doctor's judgment than on a computers' (even if the computer is more accurate more often). I doubt I need to express the reasons why. Both are preferable to relying on the judgment of someone working for Big Pharma in the name of the federal government.
Computers are extremely useful to doctors. They can cross-reference common symptoms and diseases, serving as an aide-memoire. They are not prone to emotional issues, and in some cases they can identify diseases more accurately and consistently than the doctors themselves. One can make a case for the judgment of the computer over the doctor today, and the argument will become ever stronger with the increasing power of computers.
On the other hand, computers struggle to make allowances for things that are out of the ordinary. Asthma, obesity, allergies, intolerance for a particular medicine: rarely do diseases come singly, and these things are called complications for a reason. A computer is also going to pick the most likely thing in all cases. This is not entirely a good thing, but while a doctor might or might not be able to correctly diagnose a rash as necrotizing fasciitis, a computer will almost certainly fail to do so. It just isn't likely enough to take into consideration. A government hand in determining treatments (do note that this takes place to a degree today) would have at least all the downsides of a computer and probably none of the upsides. At best, it would be no worse than leaving well enough alone.
Beyond the dangers of standardized treatments, this proposal also eliminates personal responsibility. As I mentioned, along with the precept of "First, do no harm," malpractice suits are a large incentive to practice the best medicine possible. To remove the doctor's judgment is to remove responsibility: how can he be sued for doing as the state mandat
Slashdot Mirror
Why would someone develop for WinCE? Not to troll, it just seems like a dead platform.
Wikipedia has other etymologies. I think it's more likely a derivative of sacredieu (holy god!), myself.
(It's the fearsome slash2digg curse.)
I did. It brought up nothing interesting. Perhaps you've been browsing pr0n without using Distrust or some similar add-on?
I believe the FF beta introduces a 'porn mode', so this add-on should be obsolete very soon. Clearly that and the AwesomeBar should have been introduced concurrently.
how about: Suing Napster was stupid, they should have bought it.
The problem is that it is technically infeasible to stop filesharing without at the very least being massively invasive of privacy. Compounding the problem is that our current laws don't really take into account the fact that we have this massive high-speed data network built for the express purpose of moving files around.
So we're kind of screwed. On the one hand, our laws are draconian and out of date, and the organization supposedly protecting the rights of artists seems to act more like an organized crime syndicate. On the other hand, artists deserve to be compensated fairly, and we want to encourage respect for the law, lest we end up like China, where (I hear) everything is illegal, but only enforced arbitrarily.
This is a massive cultural shift. The RIAA has failed to catch the rising edge with Napster, and then with iTunes. Their position is absolutely untenable, and they're only making it worse with every passing day. I'd almost feel sorry for them if they had not had so many opportunities to understand what is going on.
It's a very complex issue, and many people are divided about it, but one thing is clear. If slashdot were as simple and morally bankrupt as you describe, I wouldn't be here. Actually, that sounds a lot like Digg...
Check my math.
300,000 people within a ten mile radius is (300,000/(pi*100)) = 955 people per square mile. Multiply by 2.58998811 (mi^2:km^2) to get approximately 2473 people per square kilometer.
Consult this list of the densest cities in the world. Do note that by this list's methodology no US cities have a population density greater than 2473 persons per sq km.
The methodology of that listing is debatable, but the point is that places where people live in such numbers are not terribly common on this planet, and consequently, places with lesser population density are very important, especially since, despite your assertion, you're probably living in one.
As an addendum, the number of cities with a population of more than 300,000 is also a fairly low number. That same website ranks only 232 cities as having equal or larger populations. Only half of the planet lives in cities, so far.
Oh, and one last thing: you're an asshole.
They were already selling them at a loss, making money on support and app development. I think also you should read up on what exactly the term 'total financial collapse' means.
Your post was arrogant and dismissive, good---you'll do well here.
I'm not entirely sure what your point was, though. Did you have one?
If it was something along the lines of 'what is happening to these people doesn't matter' with the subtext of 'other countries don't matter', well, it's difficult to muster a polite response. How about this: you're making our country look bad. Knock if off: that's what our politicians are for.
Software was originally given away freely. It's important to remember that.
Closed-source and/or for-profit software also has its place, but Microsoft might do well to (again) imitate Apple.
Also, in today's existence, it's difficult to not carry some measure of anger against the 'megacorp'. What have they touched that is not tarnished? What have they given us that is not tainted? Men have always harmed other men in pursuit of their own self-interest, but never is this more soul-less or harsh than when the ultimate goal of the organization is Profit.
You mean like the default EeePC linux install?
It's unfuckupable, and if you do it can be reset to defaults in approximately the same time required for a normal boot.
I used it for all of fifteen minutes before wiping it and installing another distro. Most people probably don't need anything other than the default install.
If there was a joke there, I didn't get it.
If that was not intended to be a joke, it is a spectacular display of willful ignorance.
It's legal in Alaska.
Here, let me google that for you.
That's one good idea.
So, an App section, a Knowledge Base, a What-is-Linux? section, a News section, a forum, hmm. I don't know whether it would be worthwhile to reproduce or relocate the information from kernel.org, kernelnewbies.org, and/or distrowatch.com, but it seems like all of those websites have sprung up because linux.com was being used for other purposes.
I'd want all of those websites to be conglomerated into one source, but I don't know what problems that could present.
lol...Richard M. Stallman, you win the internets.
And a slashdot subscriber, to boot. Is that recent, or am I just unobservant?
I've speculated elsewhere, but what do you think the world would be like today had the RIAA purchased Napster instead of suing them into oblivion?
SDHC cards, on the other hand, max out at 32 GB, and the projected SDXC cards will top out at 2 TB.
These are all likely to have the same form factor, and all are referred to as "SD cards".
Your post was not worth the time it took to read it.
You are not only arrogant in trying to teach someone else their profession and deride them for acting in a way that harms no one and is clearly motivated by morality, but you are incredibly abrasive and foul in doing so.
I have frequently noted your contributions to discussions here on slashdot, and generally found them to be lucid and insightful. This sort of bile is shameful, and reflects poorly on both yourself and this community as a whole.
What you state is quite possibly very true, and with an increasingly large dataset and more powerful computers, it may become more true over time.
Do you want a computer to determine whether or not you undergo surgery? What happens if it guesses wrong? Do you sue a computer for malpractice?
I'd suggest that people will almost always want a person to be giving them a diagnosis, even if that person is just consulting a computer behind their back. And how many doctors will substitute their own judgment for that of the computer? Would that be better or worse than a doctor blindly trusting what a computer says?
Moles are probably a good example of something that a computer could diagnose accurately, and clearly there are many sides to this issue. It's almost certain we'll have to confront this as a society in the relatively near future. At what point do we surrender our judgment to a machine?
That particular criticism is well worth reading. I'm not sure that his dietary recommendations are on the mark: clearly there have been many healthy diets pursued by many different cultures. It is equally clear that the "Western" diet (as he labels it) is quite unhealthy. Beyond that, his conclusions as to specific diet are debatable.
The companion book should be Good Calories, Bad Calories, with an eye to the merits of each book, and a healthy dose of skepticism.
Modern drugs do work. Antidepressants in the last decade have been something of a scandal, though. People want them, drug companies want to sell them. Studies have shown (even on slashdot!) that the most commonly prescribed drugs are basically no more effective than a placebo, and also that expensive placebos work better, and further that placebos can be effective in around 30% of a population, I think that there are some serious arguments against antidepressants in specific---and beyond that, what else have we been lied to about? Big Pharma has a lot to answer for.
I'm not advocating the dismissal of science in medicine, but I do think that it needs to be entirely divorced from the profit motive, if such a thing is possible.
Sorry, what the hell are you talking about?
What makes me feel safer is doctors making decisions based on the best medical practices, period. Government mandates are not equivalent to nor better than scientific analysis and rigorous studies.
Malpractice and human error happen, and we have a system in place to deal justice to those people. What on earth you're hoping to solve or improve by adding another layer of bureaucratic idiocy is beyond comprehension. Unfortunately your ignorance of the medical profession is far more readily apparent.
The same thing happens in the US, for the same reason, and probably it's the exact same corporations in both cases.
That issue seems like it will be particularly difficult to eradicate, but I think that the US has bigger problems with health care at the moment.
I've just made an extensive post on the subject, but your anecdote does not make a case for abandoning a doctor's judgment. At best it makes an argument for banning the advertisement of pharmaceuticals.
Your argument that doctors do not have 'real medical knowledge' is frankly horseshit. If they don't, who does? More importantly, the government is not going to be better at determining the proper treatment for a set of symptoms. They don't know you and cannot take into consideration complicating factors, and they are more susceptible to the influence of Big Pharma, not less.
You were prescribed a medication based on the best medical knowledge and practices of the day. That the distributors of that information presented a biased study is not the fault of the individual doctor. Subsequent scientific studies showed that the drug was flawed. That's the way the medical field advances, that's how science works. Asking the government to keep track of the rapidly advancing field of medical science can only be doomed to failure.
We can know that for a certainty, because it already happens. There is a clinic here, with which I am well acquainted, with a total staff of perhaps twenty people. Three of those people are engaged in a particular form of bookkeeping that involves finding codes for particular procedures. They have to match the symptoms and prescribed treatments with what the government and/or insurance providers will pay for. Their job, in other words, is to game the system in order to try to follow the best medical practices. The government and especially insurance providers are a constant roadblock to the goal, and the reasoning is fairly simple: they save more money that way.
If your story were to repeat itself under a system such as the one you are espousing, the most likely scenario would be that any doctor would be forced to prescribe you Paxil or face fines for not doing so. If you could demonstrate a need for an alternative medication, then you would almost certainly pay through the nose for the privilege. That might sound scary and unrealistic, but I assure you it's not terribly far from today's current practices.
This proposal is an absolutely terrible one, that will impede scientific progress, prevent people from receiving proper medical care, take judgment, responsibility and liability out of the hands of doctors, and add further layers of bureaucracy to an already overburdened profession.
It's more complicated than that. As bad as a given doctor's judgment may be, the alternatives are also not good. Despite what the lady says, this will end up as the government telling doctors what they can and cannot do, what medicines and treatments to prescribe. That will probably be a good thing in a large number of cases, but I have trouble seeing it as strictly necessary. Doctors do not routinely prescribe people to be bled by leeches any more, and there was no government intervention to force that. These sort of things will come out in the wash eventually: medical science is still a science, after all. The scientific process is not decided by some official in Washington, nor is it often the case that one procedure or medication is the best response to a set of symptoms.
We should probably not concern ourselves overmuch with a small number of doctors doing stupid things, prescribing dangerous or harmful treatments. Most medical practices have a large fund set aside for malpractice suits as is, and the ideals of the medical profession are a credit to mankind. Where treatments are safe and effective, they will be promoted, and the penalty for mistakes is extremely high.
The purpose of this initiative is to standardize treatment, in practice to regulate which drugs to give to which patients in response to which symptoms. It won't force doctors to prescribe certain medicines or treatments, but there will end up being one prescribed treatment, which will be a drug of some sort--Big Pharma has and will continue to make sure of that. All other treatments will simply not be covered by insurance.
Doctors, like the rest of us, are not immune to bad judgment. They make mistakes, they overlook things, and suffer from all common flaws. They are frequently overworked, as well. Their work environment is extremely demanding, and they must keep pace with current developments in their field, and thread their way through ever increasing amounts of government oversight and the vagaries of insurance companies. Privacy issues with electronic medical records and bombardments of advertising from drug companies are just icing on the cake. Despite all of this, most people would rather rely on a doctor's judgment than on a computers' (even if the computer is more accurate more often). I doubt I need to express the reasons why. Both are preferable to relying on the judgment of someone working for Big Pharma in the name of the federal government.
Computers are extremely useful to doctors. They can cross-reference common symptoms and diseases, serving as an aide-memoire. They are not prone to emotional issues, and in some cases they can identify diseases more accurately and consistently than the doctors themselves. One can make a case for the judgment of the computer over the doctor today, and the argument will become ever stronger with the increasing power of computers.
On the other hand, computers struggle to make allowances for things that are out of the ordinary. Asthma, obesity, allergies, intolerance for a particular medicine: rarely do diseases come singly, and these things are called complications for a reason. A computer is also going to pick the most likely thing in all cases. This is not entirely a good thing, but while a doctor might or might not be able to correctly diagnose a rash as necrotizing fasciitis, a computer will almost certainly fail to do so. It just isn't likely enough to take into consideration. A government hand in determining treatments (do note that this takes place to a degree today) would have at least all the downsides of a computer and probably none of the upsides. At best, it would be no worse than leaving well enough alone.
Beyond the dangers of standardized treatments, this proposal also eliminates personal responsibility. As I mentioned, along with the precept of "First, do no harm," malpractice suits are a large incentive to practice the best medicine possible. To remove the doctor's judgment is to remove responsibility: how can he be sued for doing as the state mandat