How can there be a dotcom crash of OSS? Most everyone involved in producing the stuff does it with the foreknowledge that there isn't any money in it directly - and yet they persist. That's because many people are driven more by a need to create than a need to make money. You see that in the extreme with the classic "starving artist" and a lot of the best OSS hackers fit in that same category. They do what they do for the love of it or because there's some kind of deep internal drive to create their visions. No it doesn't put food on the table, but that's often not the point. The beauty of OSS is that even if one author stops due to the demands of real life and the need to eat, their contributions are public and visible for the next hackers to step up and take over. OSS doesn't necessarily work as a model to sustain one individual; instead it works at a level above that - it is the currency of a culture.
The caption for the picture in the article reads, "...the cockroaches divided themselves up perfectly." And yet the picture clearly shows at least 4 roaches that are outside of the groups. That's a strange definition of "perfectly" to me. I imagine they are often running around and so perhaps capturing a picture with them all huddled together in their groups would be difficult, but when does the scientist declare that the split was "perfect" and "complete?" Is there a time period or does "perfect" in a biological sense just mean "mostly?"
That all sounds very reasonable and it would be great if everyone could be so tolerant to the differences of others. Unfortunately that is most often not the case. Whenever pornography, video games, religion, smoking, etc. come up there's always a tendency to try to apply to all what works for one. If only more people could maintain the attitude that "what works for me may not work for you" we'd probably all be far better off and have a lot less mindless controversy. Humans just don't seem to be designed that way, though. There's always those who will take something to an extreme and try to convince everyone else that it's the only way to live. What's fascinating to me is that those with extremist views have just as hard a time understanding those without. It seems to me that things are balanced as they are for a reason - either by chance or by design - and we all have something to learn about ourselves and each other by exposure to the things we most object to or fear.
First phishing steals identities and now its stealing spotlights, too? And not just any spotlights, either - but MIT spotlights! This has got to stop...
I understand that you wanted solutions that don't involve switching your OS, but why not entertain some of those, as well? It must not be quite annoying enough to you yet if you won't consider the one move that could probably fix the problem. On Mac OS X it is just about impossible to have this problem. I can't recall a single app off the top of my head that has ever stolen the focus from me since I switched platforms a couple years ago. (that doesn't mean it hasn't happened - but at the least it is so rare that I can't think of an incident right now)
Most movies that have nudity could do without and still tell the same story. As an example: The guy just got the girl and they are about to celebrate. Do we need to see the girl lose her top just before the camera pans to the window and fades out? The obvious answer is "no" since it isn't exactly a secret what's going to happen. So if the movie shows the topless girl it's basically irrelevant and is likely only being done for the sake of doing it. Therefore such a presentation would be considered pornographic, right?
However, what happens if the same scene is filmed and the nudity is left out? The guy and girl are on the bed, perhaps they go in for a kiss and the camera starts the zoom and fade to the window. You never really see anything, but the intent of the scene is clearly there to show you what's about to happen. Some people may very well be turned on just by the thought of what's happening as the scene gets to black. Would you argue that the entire presentation is stimulating sexual feelings on purpose? After all, they could have just cut to the next day and had a character say something dry like, "My, what great sex we had last night!" Would that then be non-pornographic?
Somewhere there's a line for art vs. pornography, but the line is very fuzzy. So while in principal I agree with your definition, it's hard to use it as a valid baseline. Does the art of the flow of the story and the style of the visuals trump the possibility that it's being done just for shock or turn-on-effect? How can you honestly tell the difference? Extremes are always easy to spot. A blatant porno where 50% of the screen time is devoted to bow-chicka-bowow music and lots of skin is obvious. However the ever-present tight-fitting latex suit of a female super-hero sort of blurs the line a bit, wouldn't you agree? Especially given that the director may choose certain camera angles that, shall we say, accent various features of the beautiful heroine. The movie may never call attention to her tight-fitting costume in the context of the story - but it's reasonably clear to most people that she's dressed that way to attract the young teen male market. Porn or not? I have a hard time decided based upon your definition. Perhaps that practice is just so blatant and pervasive in our society that it's hard to make what may be an obvious distinction to someone not raised in our culture.
(This isn't meant as any kind of attack on you or your religion, so I hope you don't get the wrong idea here. It's just a discussion.)
What about stuff like full-frontals in R-rated movies? Have you ever seen any of those - even by accident? How about a woman breast-feeding in public (I know I've seen this numerous times)? Is that porn just because you might see a nipple? Where do you draw the line and how do you define porn? If it's okay to see a woman breast-feeding at a restaurant, but it's not okay to see a woman breast-feeding in an R-rated movie, what's the difference? Is it not porn if it's seen in person? Would that makes strip clubs okay? It's hard to properly judge your position without a clear idea as to what you define as porn.
That word brought to mind images of a massive MMORPG filled with horses, pistols, and saloons. Imagine moving up the ranks by being a better outlaw or lawman. Having your skills at drawing your gun improve accuracy and speed as you gain experience. And after a hard day of fighting bandits, you kick it in the local tavern and hook up with some bar maids... ah yeah.. good times...
It will be based around PSTP: Postal Storage Transport Protocol. Mailmen will deliver holographic boxes to your door which plug into your local network delivering you that day's version of the entire Internet... No more IP address shortage, bandwidth problems, or ISPs to deal with. Ah yes.. it makes perfect sense!
I think a lot of suits make the mistake of thinking of Linux as a unified market force. It isn't. It's just, for lack of a better term, a technology. Saying that the dress preferences of the people behind Linux are holding it back is like saying that you don't see rocket-powered cars because the rocket scientists look nerdy and wear tape on their glasses causing the car company execs to decide against it. It's just silly. Sometimes Linux is the wrong tool for the job. Sometimes strapping a rocket to a vehicle isn't the best way to get where you're going. Slow adoption ultimately allows for more intelligent deployment and utilization. It's not a race.
Can't say that I have. But that doesn't make his achievements any less impressive. Well.. okay.. *slightly* less impressive (if true). But it's still damn cool to an end-user. Besides, it isn't really about the code. It's about the man. And from what little I know of him, he seems like a good guy. (I know several people who's code I would never want to maintain but they still are able to bring good ideas to fruition and that counts for something.)
Interesting comment. I'm curious about how Rails manages to save so much time as compared to PHP and the like. I don't have Rails experience and I've only just messed with Ruby enough to do a few Hello, World type things. What is it about the Rails approach that saves all the time and effort? I frequently see those claims, but it's a little harder to get solid, real-world examples.
Tim Sweeney is one of my personal heros. He's just got loads of talent and drive, from what I can tell. He's up there with Will Wright, John Carmack, and Steve Wozniak.
Adults have more money to spend on it. Not only that, but adults are the ones telling the kids to get outside and cut the grass, take out the trash, clean their rooms, etc... while they keep playing World of Warcraft themselves!
On the surface this sounds like an attempt to bring back the monarchy. Not all at once, mind you, but just with a different set of people being in power.
The title of this news item had me thinking it was some kind of cool new transparent solar cell for houses or something. That'd be pretty cool. Too bad it's just about Linux...
It was my understanding that the press event was rather small by most standards. Perhaps it was the press and the rumor sites that over-hyped things - not Apple. I know that I had no idea the event was even going on until others pointed it out to me and were tracking the rumor sites looking for the next big announcement. If anything, perhaps the fact that nothing overly major was announced was intentional and designed to throw people off so as to better keep public expectations in check. I wouldn't put it past them.
But not the content that's being given away... That content brings in the users/viewers. The content that makes the money is the meta-content. It's the communities that develop and the loyalties that are created around the free content which bring value to the advertising and site-themed t-shirts and coffee mugs. Take slashdot, for instance.. the real value of slashdot is more in the comments and the community that develops here for each new story than it is in the story itself - at least for those of you reading this comment right now. We could find out the news from tons of places - but the real reason to come here is either habit or for the entertainment found in reading and posting comments. People are valuable and we're seeing a relfection of that happen on the web.
I've been on the net for around 11 years now. I've been posting with the same username most places for probably 7 or 8 of those years. Sometimes I say incrediably stupid stuff and on one or two occations, other people have said stupid things using my name. As time goes on, this is only going to get worse. The question is, is it better to adopt different nicknames and change them over time or is it better to build at least some kind of recognizable reputation based on just one name? Which is worse if someone starts checking up on you?
Personally, I think gambling is a waste of time - but that should always be the choice of the person doing the gambling. Sure, it can ruin lives and mess up families - but dammit, that's THEIR problem! I should be free to spend $2.00 online gambling every now and then if I were into that sort of thing. The more the government attempts to baby the public the weaker we become. Our society is going through a massive pussification and I just can't see it ending well.
Slashdot Mirror
How can there be a dotcom crash of OSS? Most everyone involved in producing the stuff does it with the foreknowledge that there isn't any money in it directly - and yet they persist. That's because many people are driven more by a need to create than a need to make money. You see that in the extreme with the classic "starving artist" and a lot of the best OSS hackers fit in that same category. They do what they do for the love of it or because there's some kind of deep internal drive to create their visions. No it doesn't put food on the table, but that's often not the point. The beauty of OSS is that even if one author stops due to the demands of real life and the need to eat, their contributions are public and visible for the next hackers to step up and take over. OSS doesn't necessarily work as a model to sustain one individual; instead it works at a level above that - it is the currency of a culture.
The caption for the picture in the article reads, "...the cockroaches divided themselves up perfectly." And yet the picture clearly shows at least 4 roaches that are outside of the groups. That's a strange definition of "perfectly" to me. I imagine they are often running around and so perhaps capturing a picture with them all huddled together in their groups would be difficult, but when does the scientist declare that the split was "perfect" and "complete?" Is there a time period or does "perfect" in a biological sense just mean "mostly?"
That all sounds very reasonable and it would be great if everyone could be so tolerant to the differences of others. Unfortunately that is most often not the case. Whenever pornography, video games, religion, smoking, etc. come up there's always a tendency to try to apply to all what works for one. If only more people could maintain the attitude that "what works for me may not work for you" we'd probably all be far better off and have a lot less mindless controversy. Humans just don't seem to be designed that way, though. There's always those who will take something to an extreme and try to convince everyone else that it's the only way to live. What's fascinating to me is that those with extremist views have just as hard a time understanding those without. It seems to me that things are balanced as they are for a reason - either by chance or by design - and we all have something to learn about ourselves and each other by exposure to the things we most object to or fear.
First phishing steals identities and now its stealing spotlights, too? And not just any spotlights, either - but MIT spotlights! This has got to stop...
I understand that you wanted solutions that don't involve switching your OS, but why not entertain some of those, as well? It must not be quite annoying enough to you yet if you won't consider the one move that could probably fix the problem. On Mac OS X it is just about impossible to have this problem. I can't recall a single app off the top of my head that has ever stolen the focus from me since I switched platforms a couple years ago. (that doesn't mean it hasn't happened - but at the least it is so rare that I can't think of an incident right now)
Most movies that have nudity could do without and still tell the same story. As an example: The guy just got the girl and they are about to celebrate. Do we need to see the girl lose her top just before the camera pans to the window and fades out? The obvious answer is "no" since it isn't exactly a secret what's going to happen. So if the movie shows the topless girl it's basically irrelevant and is likely only being done for the sake of doing it. Therefore such a presentation would be considered pornographic, right?
However, what happens if the same scene is filmed and the nudity is left out? The guy and girl are on the bed, perhaps they go in for a kiss and the camera starts the zoom and fade to the window. You never really see anything, but the intent of the scene is clearly there to show you what's about to happen. Some people may very well be turned on just by the thought of what's happening as the scene gets to black. Would you argue that the entire presentation is stimulating sexual feelings on purpose? After all, they could have just cut to the next day and had a character say something dry like, "My, what great sex we had last night!" Would that then be non-pornographic?
Somewhere there's a line for art vs. pornography, but the line is very fuzzy. So while in principal I agree with your definition, it's hard to use it as a valid baseline. Does the art of the flow of the story and the style of the visuals trump the possibility that it's being done just for shock or turn-on-effect? How can you honestly tell the difference? Extremes are always easy to spot. A blatant porno where 50% of the screen time is devoted to bow-chicka-bowow music and lots of skin is obvious. However the ever-present tight-fitting latex suit of a female super-hero sort of blurs the line a bit, wouldn't you agree? Especially given that the director may choose certain camera angles that, shall we say, accent various features of the beautiful heroine. The movie may never call attention to her tight-fitting costume in the context of the story - but it's reasonably clear to most people that she's dressed that way to attract the young teen male market. Porn or not? I have a hard time decided based upon your definition. Perhaps that practice is just so blatant and pervasive in our society that it's hard to make what may be an obvious distinction to someone not raised in our culture.
(This isn't meant as any kind of attack on you or your religion, so I hope you don't get the wrong idea here. It's just a discussion.)
What about stuff like full-frontals in R-rated movies? Have you ever seen any of those - even by accident? How about a woman breast-feeding in public (I know I've seen this numerous times)? Is that porn just because you might see a nipple? Where do you draw the line and how do you define porn? If it's okay to see a woman breast-feeding at a restaurant, but it's not okay to see a woman breast-feeding in an R-rated movie, what's the difference? Is it not porn if it's seen in person? Would that makes strip clubs okay? It's hard to properly judge your position without a clear idea as to what you define as porn.
This is possibly the most insightful and intelligent comment I've ever seen here. Nice.
That word brought to mind images of a massive MMORPG filled with horses, pistols, and saloons. Imagine moving up the ranks by being a better outlaw or lawman. Having your skills at drawing your gun improve accuracy and speed as you gain experience. And after a hard day of fighting bandits, you kick it in the local tavern and hook up with some bar maids... ah yeah.. good times...
It will be based around PSTP: Postal Storage Transport Protocol. Mailmen will deliver holographic boxes to your door which plug into your local network delivering you that day's version of the entire Internet... No more IP address shortage, bandwidth problems, or ISPs to deal with. Ah yes.. it makes perfect sense!
I think a lot of suits make the mistake of thinking of Linux as a unified market force. It isn't. It's just, for lack of a better term, a technology. Saying that the dress preferences of the people behind Linux are holding it back is like saying that you don't see rocket-powered cars because the rocket scientists look nerdy and wear tape on their glasses causing the car company execs to decide against it. It's just silly. Sometimes Linux is the wrong tool for the job. Sometimes strapping a rocket to a vehicle isn't the best way to get where you're going. Slow adoption ultimately allows for more intelligent deployment and utilization. It's not a race.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
Can't say that I have. But that doesn't make his achievements any less impressive. Well.. okay.. *slightly* less impressive (if true). But it's still damn cool to an end-user. Besides, it isn't really about the code. It's about the man. And from what little I know of him, he seems like a good guy. (I know several people who's code I would never want to maintain but they still are able to bring good ideas to fruition and that counts for something.)
Why can't people come along and offer me millions of dollars for my websites? Damn... Oh.. right.. content. Heh.. minor detail. :-)
Interesting comment. I'm curious about how Rails manages to save so much time as compared to PHP and the like. I don't have Rails experience and I've only just messed with Ruby enough to do a few Hello, World type things. What is it about the Rails approach that saves all the time and effort? I frequently see those claims, but it's a little harder to get solid, real-world examples.
Tim Sweeney is one of my personal heros. He's just got loads of talent and drive, from what I can tell. He's up there with Will Wright, John Carmack, and Steve Wozniak.
Too bad VR can't cure Lazy Person. I seem to be quite badly infected with it...
Adults have more money to spend on it. Not only that, but adults are the ones telling the kids to get outside and cut the grass, take out the trash, clean their rooms, etc... while they keep playing World of Warcraft themselves!
On the surface this sounds like an attempt to bring back the monarchy. Not all at once, mind you, but just with a different set of people being in power.
The title of this news item had me thinking it was some kind of cool new transparent solar cell for houses or something. That'd be pretty cool. Too bad it's just about Linux...
It was my understanding that the press event was rather small by most standards. Perhaps it was the press and the rumor sites that over-hyped things - not Apple. I know that I had no idea the event was even going on until others pointed it out to me and were tracking the rumor sites looking for the next big announcement. If anything, perhaps the fact that nothing overly major was announced was intentional and designed to throw people off so as to better keep public expectations in check. I wouldn't put it past them.
But not the content that's being given away... That content brings in the users/viewers. The content that makes the money is the meta-content. It's the communities that develop and the loyalties that are created around the free content which bring value to the advertising and site-themed t-shirts and coffee mugs. Take slashdot, for instance.. the real value of slashdot is more in the comments and the community that develops here for each new story than it is in the story itself - at least for those of you reading this comment right now. We could find out the news from tons of places - but the real reason to come here is either habit or for the entertainment found in reading and posting comments. People are valuable and we're seeing a relfection of that happen on the web.
I've been on the net for around 11 years now. I've been posting with the same username most places for probably 7 or 8 of those years. Sometimes I say incrediably stupid stuff and on one or two occations, other people have said stupid things using my name. As time goes on, this is only going to get worse. The question is, is it better to adopt different nicknames and change them over time or is it better to build at least some kind of recognizable reputation based on just one name? Which is worse if someone starts checking up on you?
My opinion is pretty much uninformed. :-) What are some of the other ramifications to consider?
Personally, I think gambling is a waste of time - but that should always be the choice of the person doing the gambling. Sure, it can ruin lives and mess up families - but dammit, that's THEIR problem! I should be free to spend $2.00 online gambling every now and then if I were into that sort of thing. The more the government attempts to baby the public the weaker we become. Our society is going through a massive pussification and I just can't see it ending well.