The part you quote is from a minority opinion. The majority decision was that linking to content does not constitute publication of that content, period.
At least in terms of literacy, the US tends to fail on the lowest levels of competency, but excels at the highest level of competency. Only Sweden does better.
Though I don't know that I'd trust a test for high levels of literacy presented by an organization who would write something like:
"Of the 11 other countries that participated in the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS), only Sweden exceeded the United States in the percentage of adults scoring at the highest levels of literacy in any of the three domains; the only exception was Canada, which had a greater proportion of adults scoring at or above level 4 on the document scale than did the United States."
Which is a horribly convoluted way of expressing the idea that Canada and Sweden are the only two countries which exceeded the United States in the percentage of adults scoring at the highest levels in any of the three domains. It also leads the reader to believe that Canada only exceeded the US on the document scale, but if you check the table in the report Canada had a higher percentage of people scoring at the top level in two out of the three scales. (Possibly the difference of 0.3% was considered small enough to fall within the survey's margin of error, but the report doesn't say anything about what the margin of error is. It also doesn't explain why they group levels 4 and 5 together, which seems curious.)
(The table and discussion are on the 83rd page of the above-linked PDF file.)
After seeing this screenshot, I decided I just didn't care.
The article and the screenshot together just make the game look mush-brained.
What's your beef with the screenshot? One of the biggest annoyances with the SMC/MoO family of games has been the lack of decent diplomatic options. (Moreso with SMC than MoO, though.) The idea of being able to try politley stalling in response to a request sounds great to me.
(And yeah, I realize that having the options doesn't imply that the AI will use or respond to them sensibly, but it's still cause for hope.)
I don't wan't to sound un/.y, but is it really fair to expect a refund for the OS when you buy a computer package? When you buy a computer from some manufacturer you don't come back with just your graphic card and demand a refund because you don't like it. Or when you buy a car, you don't return the rearbumper just because you don't like the brand of it (no auto makers don't make every part themself.)
The rear bumper of your car does not come with a separate license which claims you have to agree to X, Y, and Z to use it. In order for a supposed contract to have any validity, you have to have the option to agree or not agree, and if you don't agree they clearly have no business taking money for it.
(To say nothing of the fact that the OS is not a part of the computer.)
Also, even if his goal is capturing the Ring Bearer, why not lay siege to Minas Tirith??
Because the sneaky heroes went and named one of the chapters of the book "The Siege of Gondor", tricking him into thinking that he had in fact done so.
So books are incapable of being entertaining, then?
Motiion, colours, and sounds obviously can be entertaining, but to say that entertainment requires them is just rubbish.
I am a graphics artist,
There's a shock.:)
my web site took a long time to conceptualize, design, and implement (for the graphics). I don't want to deal with the inconsistencies between the rendering of web pages done on all browsers.
Then don't design web pages. Seriously. There are all kinds of neat opportunities to do graphic design on paper or even film, and the finished product will look the same to every one who looks at it. But one of the great things about the web is that the way web pages are presented is ultimately under the control of the viewer, not the author. And if one of the great strengths of the medium bugs you, then honestly, maybe it's not the medium for you.
Not that I'm rabidly anti-Flash; I play and enjoy Flash games. If your specific purpose is to create a graphical toy, then Flash works great. But if you have any info at all you're trying to convey (like, say, letting people know about an upcoming movie) then Flash is a bad way to go.
Not true. The only things in common between the movie scenes and the appendix scenes are that Aragorn and Arwen both appear in both. This was slightly annoying to me, actually. I've nothing against the idea of moving the romance to the foreground, but they could have done it while relying more on the stuff that Tolkien actually wrote.
The movie simplifies the story by just putting him under Sauron. He's basically the center of all evil in the world anyway, and everything's his fault.
No, Sauron's old boss Morgoth is the centre of all evil in the world, and everything's his fault. Sauron is just the most powerful evil being active at the time.
Speaking of Morgoth, that reminds me of one clever bit in the movie that I really liked. When Saruman is discussing the origins of the orcs, he says they were created by "The Dark Powers". I thought that was nicely done, as saying Sauron created them would annoy purists while mentioning Morgoth by name would be needlessly confusing.
Y'know what? No, they didn't. The problem that we have today is nobody takes responsibility for their actions. The US is a place where criminals can sue because they were hurt while they were doing illegal things on your property! In your house!
Sure. The US is a place where anybody can sue anybody for anything. I believe that's the case in most countries whose legal system is descended from the British common law. But outside the realm of urban legends there's no chance of anybody ever winning a suit like that, so it doesn't seem like it's worth getting worked up over.
Now common courtesy and basic humanity would compel me to ask the dude if he were okay if I saw him there for 4 days straight and looked like hell. People aren't negligent if they don't feel they should see if he's okay, though.
I agree with this. The failure of anybody to notice his condition wasn't something that should be criminal, but it's still pretty sad.
(Well, assuming that this incident actually occurred.)
I noticed in one of the links that the jury was made up of all women. Now I know it's a stereotype that girls don't like comics as much as boys but Mcfarlane's lawyer couldn't have been happy about that.
I don't follow you. Why would a jury which disliked comics hurt his chances in a suit between two prominent comics creators over ownership of various comics characters? If anything, I'd think McFarlane would want to avoid comic fans; Gaiman is one of the most respected creators in the industry. McFarlane is commercially successful but far from respected.
Then they are quoting comic books during the trial:)
In his closing statement, Gaimans' attorney said the case was about "keeping promises, being fair... and telling the truth."
McFarlane's lawyer's closing argument referred again to Gaiman's statement in the script to SPAWN #9: "It's your playground; I'm in for an afternoon on the swings."
That's not a quote from a comic, it's a comment Gaiman made to McFarlane in the script.
Personally, I've got nothing against text adventures, and even wrote some which are still floating around the internet to my eternal shame. But then again I don't take daguerrotypes or ride a penny farthing to the charabanc station. They're in the past...
I take it you don't read books either, now that we have TV?
If the best answer open source can come up with is "keep track of all the patches yourself, download them, and rebuild your apps, then open source software will lose. (And if that scenario is true, open source *should* lose.) It's just not reasonable to expect end users to ever have to compile *anything*. As long as that's the mindset, people have plenty of reason to avoid open source software.
Gee, then it's a good thing that this isn't the answer open source provides, as the original poster stated, right in the freaking paragraph you quoted.
Sorry to be cranky, but Bloody Hell, could you at least make a token effort to read the posts before responding?
From the article:
You only notice your poker hand when it's a royal flush, you never remember that day you got that Hearts-5, Spades-King, Diamonds-10, Diamonds-7 and Spades-8. And it's just as probable as a Royal Flush....
Just to be pedantic, the probability of getting a Royal Flush is in fact four times as great as the probability of getting that hand.
(Work with me here and we can drum up a lot of interest for IF. The Slashdot crowd loves a good holy war between two pieces of software which are more-or-less equivalent.)
You weren't reading carefully enough. The author is pointing out one of the more ridiculous aspects of X.
No, my reading was perfectly fine. The author is just wrong.
In normal usage, a server is commonly defined as a remote system, program, or resource that serves information to a local interface known as a client.
Not exactly. The two programs don't actually have to be remote, and the server doesn't necessarily have to "serve information"; it just has to serve, ie it has to do something for the client.
More succintly: a client-server interface is one where one program, the client, initiates requests, and the other program, the server, fulfills those requests (and is otherwise passive).
But when you run an X program over a network, the client is the program that runs on the remote machine and the server (which is local) is what fields information from the remote machine to the user.
True but irrelevant. While it's true that in most cases of client-server interaction the client runs on the user's machine and the server runs elsewhere, that isn't part of the definition. Look at what actually happens when you have an app running on a remote machine, diplaying on X running on your machine: the app tells X where and what it would like to draw on the screen, and X does it. X doesn't ask the app to do anything. It's a clear client-server setup, with the app being the client and X being the server.
(Incidentally, I read on, and he does make some decent points. But he really should do something about that bit of misinformation right up front. That, combined with the repeated use of the non-term "X-Windows" in the early paragraphs, gives the reader a really strong incentive to stop reading.)
Whenever I'm in Linux I *always* yearn for IE when I'm browsing, no matter what browser I use.
I haven't looked at IE in ages... what does it do that Galeon (for example) doesn't? I've heard IE doesn't even do tabbed browsing, which seems like it would make it an antique.
The Unix Hater's Handbook claims that modern Unix is broken by design and cannot be fixed, only replaced by something better. (Do a Google search and read their rant on X and become enlightened.)
After getting just a few paragraphs in and finding that the author doesn't know what the hell "client" and "server" mean, I'm inclined to doubt that I'll find it very enlightening. Does it get better?
Designing a good GUI requires everything that a geek doesn't have: notions of ergonomy
A quick consultation of the OED reveals that there's no such (English) word as "ergonomy". If your point is that geeks are ignorant of meaningless marketing buzzwords, I'd say that's a point in the geek's favour.
Slashdot Mirror
The part you quote is from a minority opinion. The majority decision was that linking to content does not constitute publication of that content, period.
Though I don't know that I'd trust a test for high levels of literacy presented by an organization who would write something like:
Which is a horribly convoluted way of expressing the idea that Canada and Sweden are the only two countries which exceeded the United States in the percentage of adults scoring at the highest levels in any of the three domains. It also leads the reader to believe that Canada only exceeded the US on the document scale, but if you check the table in the report Canada had a higher percentage of people scoring at the top level in two out of the three scales. (Possibly the difference of 0.3% was considered small enough to fall within the survey's margin of error, but the report doesn't say anything about what the margin of error is. It also doesn't explain why they group levels 4 and 5 together, which seems curious.)
(The table and discussion are on the 83rd page of the above-linked PDF file.)
The article and the screenshot together just make the game look mush-brained.
What's your beef with the screenshot? One of the biggest annoyances with the SMC/MoO family of games has been the lack of decent diplomatic options. (Moreso with SMC than MoO, though.) The idea of being able to try politley stalling in response to a request sounds great to me.
(And yeah, I realize that having the options doesn't imply that the AI will use or respond to them sensibly, but it's still cause for hope.)
So that would make your game, what... a 9D^2 version of Warcraft?
The rear bumper of your car does not come with a separate license which claims you have to agree to X, Y, and Z to use it. In order for a supposed contract to have any validity, you have to have the option to agree or not agree, and if you don't agree they clearly have no business taking money for it.
(To say nothing of the fact that the OS is not a part of the computer.)
Because the sneaky heroes went and named one of the chapters of the book "The Siege of Gondor", tricking him into thinking that he had in fact done so.
So books are incapable of being entertaining, then?
Motiion, colours, and sounds obviously can be entertaining, but to say that entertainment requires them is just rubbish.
I am a graphics artist,
There's a shock.:)
my web site took a long time to conceptualize, design, and implement (for the graphics). I don't want to deal with the inconsistencies between the rendering of web pages done on all browsers.
Then don't design web pages. Seriously. There are all kinds of neat opportunities to do graphic design on paper or even film, and the finished product will look the same to every one who looks at it. But one of the great things about the web is that the way web pages are presented is ultimately under the control of the viewer, not the author. And if one of the great strengths of the medium bugs you, then honestly, maybe it's not the medium for you.
Not that I'm rabidly anti-Flash; I play and enjoy Flash games. If your specific purpose is to create a graphical toy, then Flash works great. But if you have any info at all you're trying to convey (like, say, letting people know about an upcoming movie) then Flash is a bad way to go.
So, anyway, about that movie...
They do? Why?
Not true. The only things in common between the movie scenes and the appendix scenes are that Aragorn and Arwen both appear in both. This was slightly annoying to me, actually. I've nothing against the idea of moving the romance to the foreground, but they could have done it while relying more on the stuff that Tolkien actually wrote.
No, Sauron's old boss Morgoth is the centre of all evil in the world, and everything's his fault. Sauron is just the most powerful evil being active at the time.
Speaking of Morgoth, that reminds me of one clever bit in the movie that I really liked. When Saruman is discussing the origins of the orcs, he says they were created by "The Dark Powers". I thought that was nicely done, as saying Sauron created them would annoy purists while mentioning Morgoth by name would be needlessly confusing.
Sure. The US is a place where anybody can sue anybody for anything. I believe that's the case in most countries whose legal system is descended from the British common law. But outside the realm of urban legends there's no chance of anybody ever winning a suit like that, so it doesn't seem like it's worth getting worked up over.
Now common courtesy and basic humanity would compel me to ask the dude if he were okay if I saw him there for 4 days straight and looked like hell. People aren't negligent if they don't feel they should see if he's okay, though.
I agree with this. The failure of anybody to notice his condition wasn't something that should be criminal, but it's still pretty sad.
(Well, assuming that this incident actually occurred.)
I don't follow you. Why would a jury which disliked comics hurt his chances in a suit between two prominent comics creators over ownership of various comics characters? If anything, I'd think McFarlane would want to avoid comic fans; Gaiman is one of the most respected creators in the industry. McFarlane is commercially successful but far from respected.
Then they are quoting comic books during the trial :)
In his closing statement, Gaimans' attorney said the case was about "keeping promises, being fair... and telling the truth." McFarlane's lawyer's closing argument referred again to Gaiman's statement in the script to SPAWN #9: "It's your playground; I'm in for an afternoon on the swings."
That's not a quote from a comic, it's a comment Gaiman made to McFarlane in the script.
I take it you don't read books either, now that we have TV?
Gee, then it's a good thing that this isn't the answer open source provides, as the original poster stated, right in the freaking paragraph you quoted.
Sorry to be cranky, but Bloody Hell, could you at least make a token effort to read the posts before responding?
Just to be pedantic, the probability of getting a Royal Flush is in fact four times as great as the probability of getting that hand.
No, not Inform, TADS! TADS rules! Inform sucks!
(Work with me here and we can drum up a lot of interest for IF. The Slashdot crowd loves a good holy war between two pieces of software which are more-or-less equivalent.)
Although really, a ten dollar bill doesn't seem like it would be much money for a company like Intel.
No, my reading was perfectly fine. The author is just wrong.
In normal usage, a server is commonly defined as a remote system, program, or resource that serves information to a local interface known as a client.
Not exactly. The two programs don't actually have to be remote, and the server doesn't necessarily have to "serve information"; it just has to serve, ie it has to do something for the client.
More succintly: a client-server interface is one where one program, the client, initiates requests, and the other program, the server, fulfills those requests (and is otherwise passive).
But when you run an X program over a network, the client is the program that runs on the remote machine and the server (which is local) is what fields information from the remote machine to the user.
True but irrelevant. While it's true that in most cases of client-server interaction the client runs on the user's machine and the server runs elsewhere, that isn't part of the definition. Look at what actually happens when you have an app running on a remote machine, diplaying on X running on your machine: the app tells X where and what it would like to draw on the screen, and X does it. X doesn't ask the app to do anything. It's a clear client-server setup, with the app being the client and X being the server.
(Incidentally, I read on, and he does make some decent points. But he really should do something about that bit of misinformation right up front. That, combined with the repeated use of the non-term "X-Windows" in the early paragraphs, gives the reader a really strong incentive to stop reading.)
I haven't looked at IE in ages... what does it do that Galeon (for example) doesn't? I've heard IE doesn't even do tabbed browsing, which seems like it would make it an antique.
After getting just a few paragraphs in and finding that the author doesn't know what the hell "client" and "server" mean, I'm inclined to doubt that I'll find it very enlightening. Does it get better?
You're saying Scrappy Doo was a poor actor?
A quick consultation of the OED reveals that there's no such (English) word as "ergonomy". If your point is that geeks are ignorant of meaningless marketing buzzwords, I'd say that's a point in the geek's favour.
Where do you get the idea that this system is going to be used in the capital? The story mentions three cities, and none of them are Ottawa.
Finally, I can look like a Terran!
There's no statue of limitation on murder, is there?
I sort of feel sorry for the officer assigned to this case.