Oh plese, I sincerely doubt (but don't know for a fact) that Home Depot actually goes into those old-growth forests and cuts the trees down. They most likely buy the cut wood from a company that actually does the cutting. Place blame where blame resides, in the lumber company that cuts the trees and the people who buy the end products.
We ARE talking about a development environment here. I would hope that it's safe to assume any "professional" developer would be able to handle a tar file. If not, I wouldn't want to use anything they developed.
It would be different if we were talking about an "end user" program such as word perfect or an office suite.
Yes, this is meant as a kind of a troll, but think about it. What developer with any self respect would complain about a non-RPM'd developer tool?
Haven't you ever downloaded the tools from prep.ai? Didn't you ever compile GCC, or egcs, from scratch to optimize the compiler and make it run faster? I can't believe I'm hearing a Linux "developer" complain about not knowing how to handle a tar file!
You do NOT have to distribute your source changes if you keep your "personal" distribution in-house and don't distribute it (include it in a larger work, etc).
Any company can make "enhancements" to GPL'd software and not share them with anyone as long as they only use it for internal systems.
This is not in the spirit of the GPL, but according to rms it is in the letter of the "law."
It gets a 3 (4 at the time I read it) precisely why it says it was moderated up -- insightful. It's possible that not many people would have thought of the "stunt programmer" aspect of the story. It's not like it was marked "informative" so it doesn't have to have any "facts."
You could always write some informative, insightful, or otherwise useful comments yourself so that you get some moderator points and can score comments yourself...
A parking lot is a physical object. An API is not. If you want a comparison with "old" technology, the "interface" you use to drive a car would be more appropriate. Sure, the steering wheel and pedals may by patented (specific implementation) but the interface itself is not. That's all an API is, an interface on how two entities communicate.
Should API's be protectable like this? I don't think so. Should specific implementations? Sure, if you are going to be a closed source company I don't see anything wrong with protecting your specific implementation. If Creative used 3Dfx's source code (specific implimentation) in their drivers and their agreement prohibited them from doing so, then I think they should be prosecuted. However, if they simply looked at the API (header files will do I'm sure) and wrote their own implementation I don't think they should be held liable at all.
I guess it depends on if you are an open source advocate or not. If you believe that ideas such as API's or algorithms should be "ownable" or if ownership should be limited to physical items and specific implementations of general ideas.
So, in response to your question "How is it that you can't believe 3dfx is dictating how THEIR api is used." my response is:
Because I don't believe API's are property that should be protected under the law. If you're question was concerning their specific implementation of the API, then I would probably agree with you.
Changing my car example above, it's more like the "API" or interface between the wheels and the car. You're saying that the API or interface between those two components is protected. You're saying that someone can not make a new wheel that might perform better simply by putting the appropriate number of holes in the right spots for the lug nuts (following the API specs). That's rediculous.
So you are implying that at any given point in time there are more unfixed exploits available for crackers to use on Linux system than on a HPUX system.
I don't buy this. Thing is that HP does not go out there and advertize that someone found exploit X or exploit Y until they have fixed it. CERT may make announcements that HP does not have a fix at this time, but I believe that HP, Sun, or any other Unix vendor knows about more exploits than CERT warns about. Just because Linux users are more "open" and admit problems right away instead of trying to keep them secret does not mean that it's less secure.
reverse solidus is right. Why do you think everyone was in an uproar over the clipper chip and it's SKIPJACK algorithm? Sure, some people were upset because of the backdoor put in there but true security people were more upset because they would not share the algorithm with the encryption community so that they could verify it's integrity. In fact, they went so far as to use a chip manufacturing process that was resistive to reverese engineering so that someone couldn't pick apart the chip and get the algorithm.
It's one thing for some people to agree with the government about key escrow but quite another for most to trust the government about the relative security of the algorithm.
RedHat is also further constrained from changing licensing agreements because the code is already GPL'd. Even if they wanted to, which I'm sure they don't, they can't repackage GPL'd source code under some other license.
Um, sure they can. They can't pull the code they have already released under the GPL from the public, but they can surely redistribute it under a different license. This would mean nothing initially, but as they made enhancements it would start to make a difference.
That's assuming it's THEIR code. They can't repackage GPL code written by someone else under a different license, but if they wrote original code from scratch they could relicense it all they wanted to. It would also make a big difference if they code that their employees wrote was RedHat's IP or the employees'. That's an interesting question because most closed source shops "own" any code their employees write (sometimes even on their own time - according to their employment agreement). Wonder if RedHat still has that archaic policy or if they allow the individual employees to "own" all the code they write.
Absolutely. This would be great, users would submit their opinions for an opinion page. Like the polls, CmdrTaco, Hemos, and crowd could come up with the topics. Users would submit their essays to a 'box.' Moderators could use their moderator points to 'grade' the essays. Only the highest few essays would get seen by the larger community (only moderators would see all the essays).
We could even have a 'response' section from Rob an Co. just like they do in the "real" opinion sections...
You should try vmware! I've been running it since 1.0 came out a week and a half ago, and it works great so far. Havn't run any games in it yet, but Office works fine...
As dangermouse wrote earlier, correlation does not equal causation. I'll quote it completely because I think it directly addresses you lack of understanding of statistics:
Correlation is not causation.
The mere fact that some of these kids played Quake-like games does not lead, even logically, to a conclusion that Quake-like games lead them to kill.
Of the millions of kids who play these games, how many have killed? Falling back on simple statistics, and not even bothering with common sense, it should be clear that your position doesn't hold water.
Unfortunately, few people know that you can twist statistics to show any desireable result. Let's not concentrate on a far-fetched, illogical, opinion and focus on the facts. Doom and games like it may have an effect on mentally disturbed children. But, it was not a "root cause" of the incident.
Ask some questions we know the answer to:
1) Did the parents know their kids were mentally disturbed? It appears so, as it has been reported that one of the kids was on a psychological mood-altering drug.
2) Did the parents know their kids were making bombs in the garage? Don't know if they did, but shouldn't they have? If they knew they could have prevented this.
3) Did the parents know their kids were in posession of the semi-auto pistol? Why not? Where did the kids keep it? Where did they get the money to buy it (I assume it wasn't cheap)? If they knew, they could have prevented it. If they didn't, why not? The knew their kid was having mental problems. Why weren't they keeping closer check on them?
I don't think anyone is closing their mind to see whether or not a thing is possible. I think we all did consider it. I personally believe that Doom like games can have an effect on mentally disturbed kids, and I would think that others would agree. However, the "solution" is not to ban these types of games to anyone under 18. Parents should know whether their kids are mentally disturbed or not. If they are, they should take greater control of the situation.
No law is needed to allow parents to "ban" these types of games from their kids if they are mentally disturbed - or for any other reason. They can also decide that the kids don't get a car, can't go out, don't watch TV, don't have access to the computer, etc. Yes, these measures may seem draconian to some (especially those mis-guided parents who want to be their kids best friend instead of a guiding authority figure), and I don't advocate them in general, but for a mentally disturbed kid it may be appropriate.
I personally think this is a horrible suggestion. Yes, it would be nice if grandparents and the like could spend time with their grandchildren, but it often does not work out that way.
I have "firsthand" experience that those families which would benefit the most from this additional help take advantage of it. What ends up happening is that the grandparents end up raising the children, and the parents go out to party or "socialize." I've seen several older people who's lifespan I am certain has been shortened because of this.
I'm not saying that we should keep kids away from the grandparents. Quite to the contrary, I believe interaction with grandparents is useful to growing children. However, it would be absolute failure to transfer even a minimal amount of responsibility to the grandparents from the parents.
Traditionally, the kids (parents) are the ones who took care of the grandparents. Now, you see a reversal in a way in which the kids are living at their parents house, have kids of thier own, are not married, don't have jobs, and go out and party all the time. I guess you could say it's the grandparents fault in those situations, because they obviously didn't raise their children to be responsible adults.
Parents who are responsible adults generally don't need the kind of assistance from their parents (the grandparents) as you are alluding to.
Interesting. So if people shouldn't have kids unless they can spend lots of time with them and/or hire other people to spend time with them, we'll have two segments of the population having kids: The very rich and the very poor.
I fail to see how the "very poor" could have children if that was one of the "requirements." Why would poor people have "lots of time" to spend with them? They should be working and improving their financial situation so that one parent could stay home before they decide to have kids.
If people are that irresponsible to have kids before they can take care of them responsibly, we can't really count on them to raise them appropriately, can we?
That'd Balkanize society even more than it already is... I thought the goal was to get the middle class to expand, not shrink!
That's a common mis-conception. America society and American culture does not have as one of it's key concepts that everyone has a "right" to be middle class. As far as the "rights" that are due every citizen, it is the fundamental right to pursue their own fortune and not be kept back by government or other forces. If someone is a bum and does not want to work, makes "wrong" life decisions constantly, and is irresponsible, they can rot in a gutter for all I care. If someone wants to work, learns from their bad decisions, and tries to be responsible, then I'd be glad to help them out.
With that said, I think we should do everything we can to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to excel. What I get ticked off at is that people take our money in the form of taxes and spend it on useless people. If people want to perform private charity, that's fine, but the government shouldn't be in the business of redistributing wealth.
Western culture as practiced in the USA is also flawed in that we think that raising kids is the parents' (and only the parents') job.
It is the parents sole responsibility for raising their kids. I believe a lot of the problems we see now is because baby boomer parents, who's kids are in high school now, tried to place some of the responsibility on others.
Raising a kid demands lots of adults participating, and before state-sponsored education, that meant aunts/uncles/grandparents.
Well, that's true, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the parents responsibility to make sure their kids get the proper attention. Both from themselves and other adults who are involved in their education.
Now, it means teachers. (Does that scare you? It scares me.)
Absolutely, that's why my wife and I decided to home-school our son. I attended private (Catholic) school, but I'm begining to wonder if even that is safe enough. And I'm not referring to just physical safety. When I was leaving school, I noticed that a lot of the brothers and sisters at my school were being replaced by "normal" teachers. I believe this has the potential to make the Catholic schools no better than public as far as the level of education.
Part of the major reason for the situation we are in, IMHO, is the removal of authority by teachers and school administration. Now-a-days, teachers and admins are scared that they will get sued and/or fired if they even try to correct a kid doing wrong in their class. How can you expect teachers to teach if they can not correct?
I personally don't think you sounded like an ass at all. I don't think people realize the actual support cost involved in Microsoft products. I actually truely believe that most people don't even purchase and maintain support contracts for their Microsoft software. If they did, they would realize how expensive it is. That cost, multipled over the number of seats you have, can offset the cost of a competent Unix admin (including benefits).
That the moderator system is nothing less than perfect?
That's the incorrect thought that you let creep into your mind. From your post, it appears that you believe there are a set number of moderators that have been hand-picked by the/. folks. In addition, you project that you don't like it because it appears to you that the moderators that were picked do not represent the/. community.
Read the guidelines at Slashdot Moderation It's apparently quite outdated, but you will see that only a few initial moderators were hand-picked. The vast majority of moderators were chosen because of their apparently insightful comments that they posted. A mistake could have been made during the initial selection, thereby having an effect on the overall makeup of the moderators. However, I sincerely doubt that/. chose the original moderators so haphazardly as to cause a significant problem.
I personally don't have a problem with people moderating down comments that are slamming Linux or happen to support Microsoft. I've noticed that the comments that tend to get moderated down have either outright lies in them or appear to be written simply to generate flames. You could most likely show me specific examples where this is not the case, but I believe it is true of the majority.
And why remove the moderation system? That just doesn't make sense. If you want to see all comments you can. No one is censoring anyone else -- in the common use of the word ( "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable"). One definition of censuring is "to find fault with and criticise as blameworthy." I think that is exactly what is happening, people are finding fault with and criticizing as blameworthy posts that are made that they don't agree with. I don't see anything wrong with that (it's called free speach) and think it's a Good Thing(tm). Now, if we were actually censOring, that would be a totally different matter.
I think that is a problem most people have, not knowing the difference between censoring and censuring, and it appears you have the same misunderstanding. If you don't then good, but do you see how your argument falls apart when the moderator system relies on censure and not censorship?
A possible fault may be that they don't get to note why they moderated up or down, because moderators can't participate in discussions they moderate. However, I believe this is a good thing -- you wouldn't want people to moderate their own comments or those of people who comment on their comments. May be that you could not allow moderation after you made your comments. No, one could moderate a comment up that they planned on replying to and then reply to that comment. Well, if we had these restrictions:
1) You can't moderate your own comments. 2) You can't reply to any comments that you have moderated, or any replies to any comments you have moderated. 3) You can't moderate any replies to your comments.
I don't know it's kind of getting a little complicated. I think the best thing is, just live with it. If you find that you don't fit in with this community, relocate and move somewhere else. We won't kick you out and we can't make you stay. You could always use your preferences so that you don't hear news items concerning Microsoft and/or Linux. Or may be you can get into the practice of changing your threshold to -1 every time you go into a "controversial" story? I think that's one of the reasons why it has been so easy to change your threshold, so you can see all comments if you want to.
Yes, you were whining, and it is not appreciated. There has not been any censorship on/. by the moderators. There has been plenty of censuring by moderators because that's what they've been asked to do. The goal in choosing moderators, to my knowledge, was never to pick those who were "open minded" (the definition of how open minded we wanted them to be if that was the goal would change from person to person). It was to have the moderators act as representatives of the/. community in "scoring" comments based upon their totally subjective worth. If that doesn't work for you don't use the threshold feature and keep yours set to -1.
Gee, that's exactly what I meant:-) Sorry you mis-understood me. I don't have anything against unreadable languages at all, but I do against computer-pro "imposters."
I don't understand the people who have commented so far and their view that REBOL is a "good" language simply because it's "easier" than other languages. I think this is a common misconception that is evident in multiple areas of computer science -- that something is "good" because it's easy for the lay-person to pick it up and understand it.
While this may be true for application programs, which are designed for end users, other areas of computers should not be made "simple" for end users. Take two examples, both from our "favorite" company:
1) Visual Basic - this was an attempt to make programming a graphical system "easy" for lay people and those just getting "started" in programming. The result is horrendous. It may be easy to throw a few things together and come up with a "prototype" program but I'd be hard to convince that VisualBasic is "the" programming language to use for large complex projects.
2) WindowsNT - Well, this is pretty self explainatory. This server operating system was designed with a "user-friendly" interface to make it easier for "administrators" to configure and maintain the system. What a joke. It's plain stupid to believe that anyone can make system administration "easy." The only way it's easy is if you have an experienced administrator behind the wheel who knows what they are doing. Then, you can have a well oiled operation that does not require any unforseen problems. However, I would strongly disagree with anyone that says you can take an inexperienced person and have them effectively administer a system just because it has a "user-friendly" interface.
Now, what does this have to do with REBOL? Well, REBOL may be a great language. But whether it makes it "easy" for beginners or not does not influence my decision to use the language at all. In fact, I would hope that end users do not try to "program" in it simply because it's "easy." We would then end up with programs that "sort of" work "sometimes."
If someone wants to get into the computer field, let them go to school and take some classes. It's important to learn the underlying concepts before going off and writing programs for production systems. Failure to do so usually results in more work for true CS gurus who have to fix the resulting problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, I thought it was:
"W-w-w-w-why can't we all just get along?"
Oh plese, I sincerely doubt (but don't know for a fact) that Home Depot actually goes into those old-growth forests and cuts the trees down. They most likely buy the cut wood from a company that actually does the cutting. Place blame where blame resides, in the lumber company that cuts the trees and the people who buy the end products.
Oh puh-leeze.
We ARE talking about a development environment here. I would hope that it's safe to assume any "professional" developer would be able to handle a tar file. If not, I wouldn't want to use anything they developed.
It would be different if we were talking about an "end user" program such as word perfect or an office suite.
Yes, this is meant as a kind of a troll, but think about it. What developer with any self respect would complain about a non-RPM'd developer tool?
Haven't you ever downloaded the tools from prep.ai? Didn't you ever compile GCC, or egcs, from scratch to optimize the compiler and make it run faster? I can't believe I'm hearing a Linux "developer" complain about not knowing how to handle a tar file!
Er, clarification:
You do NOT have to distribute your source changes if you keep your "personal" distribution in-house and don't distribute it (include it in a larger work, etc).
Any company can make "enhancements" to GPL'd software and not share them with anyone as long as they only use it for internal systems.
This is not in the spirit of the GPL, but according to rms it is in the letter of the "law."
It gets a 3 (4 at the time I read it) precisely why it says it was moderated up -- insightful. It's possible that not many people would have thought of the "stunt programmer" aspect of the story. It's not like it was marked "informative" so it doesn't have to have any "facts."
You could always write some informative, insightful, or otherwise useful comments yourself so that you get some moderator points and can score comments yourself...
A parking lot is a physical object. An API is not. If you want a comparison with "old" technology, the "interface" you use to drive a car would be more appropriate. Sure, the steering wheel and pedals may by patented (specific implementation) but the interface itself is not. That's all an API is, an interface on how two entities communicate.
Should API's be protectable like this? I don't think so. Should specific implementations? Sure, if you are going to be a closed source company I don't see anything wrong with protecting your specific implementation. If Creative used 3Dfx's source code (specific implimentation) in their drivers and their agreement prohibited them from doing so, then I think they should be prosecuted. However, if they simply looked at the API (header files will do I'm sure) and wrote their own implementation I don't think they should be held liable at all.
I guess it depends on if you are an open source advocate or not. If you believe that ideas such as API's or algorithms should be "ownable" or if ownership should be limited to physical items and specific implementations of general ideas.
So, in response to your question "How is it that you can't believe 3dfx is dictating how THEIR api is used." my response is:
Because I don't believe API's are property that should be protected under the law. If you're question was concerning their specific implementation of the API, then I would probably agree with you.
Changing my car example above, it's more like the "API" or interface between the wheels and the car. You're saying that the API or interface between those two components is protected. You're saying that someone can not make a new wheel that might perform better simply by putting the appropriate number of holes in the right spots for the lug nuts (following the API specs). That's rediculous.
API's are nothing like parking lots.
So you are implying that at any given point in time there are more unfixed exploits available for crackers to use on Linux system than on a HPUX system.
I don't buy this. Thing is that HP does not go out there and advertize that someone found exploit X or exploit Y until they have fixed it. CERT may make announcements that HP does not have a fix at this time, but I believe that HP, Sun, or any other Unix vendor knows about more exploits than CERT warns about. Just because Linux users are more "open" and admit problems right away instead of trying to keep them secret does not mean that it's less secure.
reverse solidus is right. Why do you think everyone was in an uproar over the clipper chip and it's SKIPJACK algorithm? Sure, some people were upset because of the backdoor put in there but true security people were more upset because they would not share the algorithm with the encryption community so that they could verify it's integrity. In fact, they went so far as to use a chip manufacturing process that was resistive to reverese engineering so that someone couldn't pick apart the chip and get the algorithm.
It's one thing for some people to agree with the government about key escrow but quite another for most to trust the government about the relative security of the algorithm.
O.K.,
Go to their web site and click on Groups. Then click on clubs and then Team Slashdot and then Join this group.
Better yet, just click HERE
This makes absolutely no sense.
Hey, let's reduct the MTU for all network packets to 64 bytes so computers can process them faster and more programs can bang on them!
Ever heard of overhead? Larger packets of data cut down on overhead.
I don't get the "collaboration" comment. Aren't we "collaborating" now with large packets?
wag
Options for "normal" employees usually expire at time of termination (willful or not).
RedHat is also further constrained from changing licensing agreements because the code is already GPL'd. Even if they wanted to, which I'm sure they
don't, they can't repackage GPL'd source code under some other license.
Um, sure they can. They can't pull the code they have already released under the GPL from the public, but they can surely redistribute it under a different license. This would mean nothing initially, but as they made enhancements it would start to make a difference.
That's assuming it's THEIR code. They can't repackage GPL code written by someone else under a different license, but if they wrote original code from scratch they could relicense it all they wanted to. It would also make a big difference if they code that their employees wrote was RedHat's IP or the employees'. That's an interesting question because most closed source shops "own" any code their employees write (sometimes even on their own time - according to their employment agreement). Wonder if RedHat still has that archaic policy or if they allow the individual employees to "own" all the code they write.
Anyone know for sure?
Absolutely. This would be great, users would submit their opinions for an opinion page. Like the polls, CmdrTaco, Hemos, and crowd could come up with the topics. Users would submit their essays to a 'box.' Moderators could use their moderator points to 'grade' the essays. Only the highest few essays would get seen by the larger community (only moderators would see all the essays).
We could even have a 'response' section from Rob an Co. just like they do in the "real" opinion sections...
FreshMeat never hosed my browser...
You should try vmware! I've been running it since 1.0 came out a week and a half ago, and it works great so far. Havn't run any games in it yet, but Office works fine...
Probably the HP-PA1.1
No, no flames.
Just wanted to say that I totally agree with you.
I agree that we were talking about the different ends of the spectrum.
As dangermouse wrote earlier, correlation does not equal causation. I'll quote it completely because I think it directly addresses you lack of understanding of statistics:
Correlation is not causation.
The mere fact that some of these kids played Quake-like games does not lead, even logically, to a conclusion that Quake-like
games lead them to kill.
Of the millions of kids who play these games, how many have killed? Falling back on simple statistics, and not even bothering
with common sense, it should be clear that your position doesn't hold water.
Unfortunately, few people know that you can twist statistics to show any desireable result. Let's not concentrate on a far-fetched, illogical, opinion and focus on the facts. Doom and games like it may have an effect on mentally disturbed children. But, it was not a "root cause" of the incident.
Ask some questions we know the answer to:
1) Did the parents know their kids were mentally disturbed? It appears so, as it has been reported that one of the kids was on a psychological mood-altering drug.
2) Did the parents know their kids were making bombs in the garage? Don't know if they did, but shouldn't they have? If they knew they could have prevented this.
3) Did the parents know their kids were in posession of the semi-auto pistol? Why not? Where did the kids keep it? Where did they get the money to buy it (I assume it wasn't cheap)? If they knew, they could have prevented it. If they didn't, why not? The knew their kid was having mental problems. Why weren't they keeping closer check on them?
I don't think anyone is closing their mind to see whether or not a thing is possible. I think we all did consider it. I personally believe that Doom like games can have an effect on mentally disturbed kids, and I would think that others would agree. However, the "solution" is not to ban these types of games to anyone under 18. Parents should know whether their kids are mentally disturbed or not. If they are, they should take greater control of the situation.
No law is needed to allow parents to "ban" these types of games from their kids if they are mentally disturbed - or for any other reason. They can also decide that the kids don't get a car, can't go out, don't watch TV, don't have access to the computer, etc. Yes, these measures may seem draconian to some (especially those mis-guided parents who want to be their kids best friend instead of a guiding authority figure), and I don't advocate them in general, but for a mentally disturbed kid it may be appropriate.
I personally think this is a horrible suggestion. Yes, it would be nice if grandparents and the like could spend time with their grandchildren, but it often does not work out that way.
I have "firsthand" experience that those families which would benefit the most from this additional help take advantage of it. What ends up happening is that the grandparents end up raising the children, and the parents go out to party or "socialize." I've seen several older people who's lifespan I am certain has been shortened because of this.
I'm not saying that we should keep kids away from the grandparents. Quite to the contrary, I believe interaction with grandparents is useful to growing children. However, it would be absolute failure to transfer even a minimal amount of responsibility to the grandparents from the parents.
Traditionally, the kids (parents) are the ones who took care of the grandparents. Now, you see a reversal in a way in which the kids are living at their parents house, have kids of thier own, are not married, don't have jobs, and go out and party all the time. I guess you could say it's the grandparents fault in those situations, because they obviously didn't raise their children to be responsible adults.
Parents who are responsible adults generally don't need the kind of assistance from their parents (the grandparents) as you are alluding to.
Interesting. So if people shouldn't have kids unless they can spend lots of time with them and/or hire other people to spend time with them, we'll have two segments of the population having kids: The very rich and the very poor.
I fail to see how the "very poor" could have children if that was one of the "requirements." Why would poor people have "lots of time" to spend with them? They should be working and improving their financial situation so that one parent could stay home before they decide to have kids.
If people are that irresponsible to have kids before they can take care of them responsibly, we can't really count on them to raise them appropriately, can we?
That'd Balkanize society even more than it already is... I thought the goal was to get the middle class to expand, not shrink!
That's a common mis-conception. America society and American culture does not have as one of it's key concepts that everyone has a "right" to be middle class. As far as the "rights" that are due every citizen, it is the fundamental right to pursue their own fortune and not be kept back by government or other forces. If someone is a bum and does not want to work, makes "wrong" life decisions constantly, and is irresponsible, they can rot in a gutter for all I care. If someone wants to work, learns from their bad decisions, and tries to be responsible, then I'd be glad to help them out.
With that said, I think we should do everything we can to ensure that everyone has an equal chance to excel. What I get ticked off at is that people take our money in the form of taxes and spend it on useless people. If people want to perform private charity, that's fine, but the government shouldn't be in the business of redistributing wealth.
Western culture as practiced in the USA is also flawed in that we think that raising kids is the parents' (and only the parents') job.
It is the parents sole responsibility for raising their kids. I believe a lot of the problems we see now is because baby boomer parents, who's kids are in high school now, tried to place some of the responsibility on others.
Raising a kid demands lots of adults participating, and before state-sponsored education, that meant aunts/uncles/grandparents.
Well, that's true, but it doesn't change the fact that it's the parents responsibility to make sure their kids get the proper attention. Both from themselves and other adults who are involved in their education.
Now, it means teachers. (Does that scare you? It scares me.)
Absolutely, that's why my wife and I decided to home-school our son. I attended private (Catholic) school, but I'm begining to wonder if even that is safe enough. And I'm not referring to just physical safety. When I was leaving school, I noticed that a lot of the brothers and sisters at my school were being replaced by "normal" teachers. I believe this has the potential to make the Catholic schools no better than public as far as the level of education.
Part of the major reason for the situation we are in, IMHO, is the removal of authority by teachers and school administration. Now-a-days, teachers and admins are scared that they will get sued and/or fired if they even try to correct a kid doing wrong in their class. How can you expect teachers to teach if they can not correct?
I personally don't think you sounded like an ass at all. I don't think people realize the actual support cost involved in Microsoft products. I actually truely believe that most people don't even purchase and maintain support contracts for their Microsoft software. If they did, they would realize how expensive it is. That cost, multipled over the number of seats you have, can offset the cost of a competent Unix admin (including benefits).
That the moderator system is nothing less than perfect?
/. folks. In addition, you project that you don't like it because it appears to you that the moderators that were picked do not represent the /. community.
/. chose the original moderators so haphazardly as to cause a significant problem.
/. by the moderators. There has been plenty of censuring by moderators because that's what they've been asked to do. The goal in choosing moderators, to my knowledge, was never to pick those who were "open minded" (the definition of how open minded we wanted them to be if that was the goal would change from person to person). It was to have the moderators act as representatives of the /. community in "scoring" comments based upon their totally subjective worth. If that doesn't work for you don't use the threshold feature and keep yours set to -1.
That's the incorrect thought that you let creep into your mind. From your post, it appears that you believe there are a set number of moderators that have been hand-picked by the
Read the guidelines at Slashdot Moderation It's apparently quite outdated, but you will see that only a few initial moderators were hand-picked. The vast majority of moderators were chosen because of their apparently insightful comments that they posted. A mistake could have been made during the initial selection, thereby having an effect on the overall makeup of the moderators. However, I sincerely doubt that
I personally don't have a problem with people moderating down comments that are slamming Linux or happen to support Microsoft. I've noticed that the comments that tend to get moderated down have either outright lies in them or appear to be written simply to generate flames. You could most likely show me specific examples where this is not the case, but I believe it is true of the majority.
And why remove the moderation system? That just doesn't make sense. If you want to see all comments you can. No one is censoring anyone else -- in the common use of the word ( "to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable"). One definition of censuring is "to find fault with and criticise as blameworthy." I think that is exactly what is happening, people are finding fault with and criticizing as blameworthy posts that are made that they don't agree with. I don't see anything wrong with that (it's called free speach) and think it's a Good Thing(tm). Now, if we were actually censOring, that would be a totally different matter.
I think that is a problem most people have, not knowing the difference between censoring and censuring, and it appears you have the same misunderstanding. If you don't then good, but do you see how your argument falls apart when the moderator system relies on censure and not censorship?
A possible fault may be that they don't get to note why they moderated up or down, because moderators can't participate in discussions they moderate. However, I believe this is a good thing -- you wouldn't want people to moderate their own comments or those of people who comment on their comments. May be that you could not allow moderation after you made your comments. No, one could moderate a comment up that they planned on replying to and then reply to that comment. Well, if we had these restrictions:
1) You can't moderate your own comments.
2) You can't reply to any comments that you have moderated, or any replies to any comments you have moderated.
3) You can't moderate any replies to your comments.
I don't know it's kind of getting a little complicated. I think the best thing is, just live with it. If you find that you don't fit in with this community, relocate and move somewhere else. We won't kick you out and we can't make you stay. You could always use your preferences so that you don't hear news items concerning Microsoft and/or Linux. Or may be you can get into the practice of changing your threshold to -1 every time you go into a "controversial" story? I think that's one of the reasons why it has been so easy to change your threshold, so you can see all comments if you want to.
Yes, you were whining, and it is not appreciated. There has not been any censorship on
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Gee, that's exactly what I meant :-) Sorry you mis-understood me. I don't have anything against unreadable languages at all, but I do against computer-pro "imposters."
I don't understand the people who have commented so far and their view that REBOL is a "good" language simply because it's "easier" than other languages. I think this is a common misconception that is evident in multiple areas of computer science -- that something is "good" because it's easy for the lay-person to pick it up and understand it.
While this may be true for application programs, which are designed for end users, other areas of computers should not be made "simple" for end users. Take two examples, both from our "favorite" company:
1) Visual Basic - this was an attempt to make programming a graphical system "easy" for lay people and those just getting "started" in programming. The result is horrendous. It may be easy to throw a few things together and come up with a "prototype" program but I'd be hard to convince that VisualBasic is "the" programming language to use for large complex projects.
2) WindowsNT - Well, this is pretty self explainatory. This server operating system was designed with a "user-friendly" interface to make it easier for "administrators" to configure and maintain the system. What a joke. It's plain stupid to believe that anyone can make system administration "easy." The only way it's easy is if you have an experienced administrator behind the wheel who knows what they are doing. Then, you can have a well oiled operation that does not require any unforseen problems. However, I would strongly disagree with anyone that says you can take an inexperienced person and have them effectively administer a system just because it has a "user-friendly" interface.
Now, what does this have to do with REBOL? Well, REBOL may be a great language. But whether it makes it "easy" for beginners or not does not influence my decision to use the language at all. In fact, I would hope that end users do not try to "program" in it simply because it's "easy." We would then end up with programs that "sort of" work "sometimes."
If someone wants to get into the computer field, let them go to school and take some classes. It's important to learn the underlying concepts before going off and writing programs for production systems. Failure to do so usually results in more work for true CS gurus who have to fix the resulting problems.