Furthermore, books and films are not scary because everything that happens was put there by an author or director. Besides, fiction is not reality: whatever horrible things might happen to the character, the book, movie or game is not going to actually kill or harm you.
I recommend looking up "willing suspension of disbelief".
That kanji spelling of kawaii is ateji (= employing kanji that sort of match the sound and meaning of a word, but have no grounds in its etymology). The word "kawaii" comes from "kahohayusi", which then evolved into "kahahayusi", "kahayusi", "kawayusi", and finally into "kawaii". "Kahohayusi" is a compound of "kaho" , meaning "face" (kao in modern Japanese), and "hayusi", meaning "bright".
Much like "mabayusi" (=> modern "mabusii") indicates a brightness so strong that you have to avert your eyes, "kahohayusi" literally describes a sight that you can't face. By metaphor, the original meaning of the word was "pitiable", "a sorry sight". This meaning is retained in the modern word "kawaisou", while the meaning of "kawaii" changed into "lovely, cute".
As for how that happened, we can conjecture something like this: small, weak things are pitiful, but they can also elicit a feeling of wanting to help them; the reaction changes from "turning your face away" to "extending your hand", so to speak, and thus the feeling becomes one of attraction.
I thought there were open source based companies in America too. I also thought there were plans to increase adoption of open source in public administrations in America too. Finally, I thought America already had a host of protectionist measures in place for several economic sectors.
Privoxy never worked reliably for me. I used to use it, but it would "lock up" almost daily, leaving my browser waiting forever on every single request. When I realized it was not a connection problem, but Privoxy, I would restart it, but it was still pretty annoying. More annoying than the ads, in fact, which is why I don't use it any more.
Let's look at the facts, shall we? According to a German studyon wiretapping across the western world:
The report concludes that Italy has the highest number of wiretaps per capita, 76 per 100.000 inhabitants. The Netherlands follow closely on the second place with 62 and Switzerland gets a third place with 32. Austria has the lowest number in Western-Europe with 9 wiretaps per 100.000 inhabitants. The statistics show a remarkable low figure for the Anglo-Saxon countries. The USA apply only 0,5 wiretaps for the given number of inhabitants. The statistics would mean that Italy engages into wiretapping about 140 times more often then the USA when compared to the number of inhabitants.
Italian courts order an inordinate amount of wiretaps, and the contents of the tapped conversations are often illegally leaked to the press, even when they are not relevant to any trial. That is why the rules for wiretapping are being revised. And even if the new rules made it ten times harder to authorize a wiretap, Italy would still have 14 times as many wiretaps per inhabitant than the US! Do you realize how ridiculous Grillo and Travaglio's propaganda is?
By the way, if the courts didn't waste millions of euro on wiretapping everyone and their dog, they would be far less likely to run overbudget. If the wiretap reform works, the judiciary will have all the money it needs to bury its offices in toner and gas, without having to increase its already considerable burden on taxpayers.
I think there was a connection problem when your message was posted. It seems to have been truncated right before the part where you disclose the arcane mysteries you were hinting at.
Under Italian law, it is illegal to incite others to commit a crime ("apologia di delitto"). That is a common provision, paralleled in the laws of many other countries. The law you cited, even in the mangled form that came out of Google translate, merely says that:
1) if this incitement to commit a crime is done on the internet, the illegal content can be blocked;
2) you can appeal against the block. Also, they have to cancel the block as soon as the illegal activity ceases.
I don't know how you got "censorship of dissidents" out of that.
As for the "permit to be a journalist", it's not really a government permit: what's required is membership in the order of journalists, which is run entirely by the journalists themselves. What this boils down to is that the other journalists can ban you from the order for serious violations of professional ethics, and then you're not supposed to work as a journalist any more. Note that, in practice, this doesn't mean you can't get articles published any more: for example, Renato Farina was banned by the order in 2007, yet he still regularly writes for the newspaper Libero. Nevertheless, it has been argued that the order of journalists is an unnecessary relic, and should be dismantled. Guess who opposes that? The journalists themselves.
I wouldn't take orzetto's opinion as "insightful" merely because he's Italian. There is a strong tradition of self-deprecation of their country among Italians (and especially in certain areas of the political spectrum) which has little basis in reality.
The judiciary is one especially touchy subject. Whenever a reform is proposed, some people wail about how it would be the "end of democracy" and it would "put Italy outside of the civilized world", etc.. And if a foreigner hears this, they'll naturally think that Italy has it pretty bad. But if you look at what these "undemocratic" reforms actually are, it turns out that they are all things that most other democratic countries already do. In other words, what they're actually saying is not "Italy would become less democratic!", but "Germany, France, the UK, the USA, etc. are totalitarian hellholes! We don't want to become more like them!"
Now, there is a problem with how long trials last in Italy. It's a hard issue to tackle, in part due to the magistrates' staunch opposition to any sort of reform. What certainly isn't the problem, though, is the amount of money spent on the judiciary, which is comparable with what other European countries spend on it. For example, from a comparation of judiciary systems in Europe we find that in 2000 Italy spent 61 euro per inhabitant on justice (109 euro per inhabitant if you add prison expenses), while in 2001 France spent 65 euro per inhabitant. And, although I don't have time to look for more recent data online right now, I remember reading that Italy's expenses on justice have actually been growing faster than in other countries over the past few years. In fact, Italian newspapers have often complained about how the country gets a poor service from its judiciary even though it spends quite a lot of money on it.
Bottom line, orzetto's claims have but the feeblest connection with reality.
Results do not indicate any significant differences in the set.
Actually, on x86 the Windows 7 beta is 12% faster than Ubuntu 8.10. That's quite a significant difference, assuming this "Richards benchmark" is a good indicator of general performance.
There is a reason we don't have and use just 4-5 letter words for everything.
Actually, yes, you do. Compared to other European languages, English has extremely low tolerance for polysyllabic words. It considers two syllables a long word, and revels in monosyllabic grunts.
Bundling IE was only part of the strategy that allowed Microsoft to unfairly exploit its market dominance in OSs to conquer the browser market. The real problem was that they forced the OEMs to stop bundling Netscape, by threatening them with worse licensing terms for Windows if they didn't comply. That's what the EU should concentrate on.
It looks like they're slowly getting a clue, since they're now talking about forcing "Microsoft and OEMs" to include multiple browsers and forcing the user to choose one. But that's still a bad idea, because those users who are capable of making that choice are already using IE to download whatever browser they prefer, while those who are not will get stumped for a minute, and eventually end up choosing the only thing that sounds familiar or seems to make sense (I want to get on the Internet -> Internet Explorer).
For those users, someone else needs to make the default choice, and the only party who can choose according to market reasons is the OEM.
The only real solution is to let the VAR (ie. dell, hp, compaq, gateway, etc. etc.) bundle whatever they want. (which is what they've wanted to do for a while, but couldn't, else they'd get hit for higher prices for their OEM deals on the 'doze licenses)
Exactly! *This* is the anticompetitive behaviour and the monopoly abuse that needs to get cracked down. Yes, it's harder to investigate and prove, but cutting corners by telling Microsoft what to bundle with Windows isn't going to help. Anyone who knows what web browser to choose is simply going to download and install it using whatever is built-in: the only group that's relevant here are the people who have no idea what to choose.
Bundling several browsers, or implementing that silly, overdesigned package manager idea espoused in many other comments, would not help with that at all. All it would do is make the user experience worse for the user, forcing them to stop and think about a choice they don't know or care about. Eventually they'd choose the only name they're familiar with, Internet Explorer (they want to get on the internet, after all, not go to the zoo or the theater or the savannah).
No, the problem is not offering users choice, because they already have plenty, but making a choice for those who are not able to. And the only party left (after excluding Microsoft and the user) who can make that choice based on market reasons is the OEM.
I'm afraid that's not how it works. The truly intelligent have no trouble going through school, especially one as undemanding as the American K-12 is. Moreover, to "push the field forward" you have to know where to start from.
As for lateral thinking, you can have a natural leaning towards a certain kind of mental activity because you're better than usual at it, or because you're worse than usual at everything else. In the latter case, it's perfectly possible to be a dumb lateral thinker.
Yeah, nice. So you want them to include a full browser engine, minus the thin application shell that you can double-click on. Do I even need to argue against that idea? I think I'll just point at it and laugh.
But ok, let's remove iexplore.exe to save Opera's (old) business. While we're at it, let's kill explorer.exe too - it just ruined Norton Commander's whole thing, you know. And let's not forget notepad.exe: we can have a built-in text editing widget, but including an application that uses it is just mean to third-party text editors.
It's not just stupid, it's wrong. In 2008, Microsoft is right: a web browser is an integral part of a desktop operating system. And it's not just the browser as an application, it's the rendering engine that's being used pervasively, from help systems to all sorts of third party applications. Look at how much stuff uses WebKit on OS X: dictionaries, widgets, chat programs... it'd be folly to remove it.
You're forced to live different from other people because you don't obey a certain religious belief. That's the textbook definition of religious discrimination and anyone ought to be able to see that it's a violation of the constitution.
Hold your horses! For that, you'd have to demonstrate that you are being discriminated *purely* because you follow/don't follow a specific religion. Otherwise, one might argue that putting murderers in jail is religious discrimination because, hey, some religions forbid murder! But of course, that's not the *only* reason to prosecute murderers. Considering that there are homophobes from all religious and irreligious backgrounds, it'd be hard to argue that opposition to gay marriage is a purely religious issue. You might seek a historical connection to the cultural influence of some religions, but that's not enough: once religious ideas have moved into a general cultural background, they're not covered by religious discrimination any more. You're going to have to look elsewhere in the law, or perhaps to pass new laws.
Actually, I've tried asking some twenty-somethings whose parents divorced when they were kids, and they vehemently opposed the idea that the family environment they grew up in was anything less than perfect.
The idea that a married couple is better for kids has about as much currency as the idea that a heterosexual couple is better for kids (ie, it's widely held by the general population, but it's unmentionable in polite company amongst educated people).
Scientific evidence doesn't matter, either, and not just because of the epistemological weakness of sociology as a field, but most importantly because everyone's position is rooted in strong emotional reasons.
The judge who presided over this case said he believes that the 17-year-old defendant "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."
I can see why playing Halo (or, indeed, most games, with the notable exception of NetHack) might make you believe that. If only he had watched anime instead, he would have been taught the cruel reality of murder.
Actually, this time I see two feminine women (Lightning and Vanille) and one manly man (Snow). Ok, he's still blond, but at least this time he has a beard! Beards are manly. He's muscle-bound, too.
Everything your code does is something the framework doesn't do for you: the real problem is not customization, but how cleanly the framework allows you to extend it, how stable the interface (between the framework core and your extensions) is, and so on.
That's why I'm surprised to hear people recommend switching from Rails to Django. My experience in going through that route is that Django is less flexible and harder to customize than Rails. For example, in both frameworks you can write custom SQL queries, but while find_by_sql in Rails returns fully-formed model objects (as long as you fetch all the needed attributes in the query), raw SQL queries in Django only return raw data tuples. You cannot integrate your custom SQL with Django's ORM (ie, you cannot get a Django model object from cursor.execute), so you end up getting a bunch of IDs from your custom SQL, and then passing them to Django so it can query the database again for the same objects, using two queries to do the work of one.
Next time I want to make a web application in Python, I'm going to skip Django and look into Pylons instead.
I'm not sure why the slashdot editors have decided to combine two unrelated steam stories, effectively denying the localized price story its own discussion. Maybe nobody reads slashdot in Europe? I'd say that, for anyone interested in using Steam living in the EU, the huge price increases are much bigger news than the EA thing.
How huge? For example, Call of Duty 4 went from 49,99 US$ to 71.97 US$ overnight, according to TFA. As a result, for most (all?) games on Steam it is now cheaper to buy them in brick-and-mortar stores, and you get a box too!
It looks like the message is "If you want to be free from Securom, you'll have to pay more. Actually, scratch that, you'll just pay more regardless."
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, books and films are not scary because everything that happens was put there by an author or director. Besides, fiction is not reality: whatever horrible things might happen to the character, the book, movie or game is not going to actually kill or harm you.
I recommend looking up "willing suspension of disbelief".
That kanji spelling of kawaii is ateji (= employing kanji that sort of match the sound and meaning of a word, but have no grounds in its etymology). The word "kawaii" comes from "kahohayusi", which then evolved into "kahahayusi", "kahayusi", "kawayusi", and finally into "kawaii". "Kahohayusi" is a compound of "kaho" , meaning "face" (kao in modern Japanese), and "hayusi", meaning "bright".
;)
Much like "mabayusi" (=> modern "mabusii") indicates a brightness so strong that you have to avert your eyes, "kahohayusi" literally describes a sight that you can't face. By metaphor, the original meaning of the word was "pitiable", "a sorry sight". This meaning is retained in the modern word "kawaisou", while the meaning of "kawaii" changed into "lovely, cute".
As for how that happened, we can conjecture something like this: small, weak things are pitiful, but they can also elicit a feeling of wanting to help them; the reaction changes from "turning your face away" to "extending your hand", so to speak, and thus the feeling becomes one of attraction.
(if you don't believe me, check the Gogen Yurai Jiten)
Who knows, maybe someday Japanese buyers will be moved by the pitiful, weak iPhone, and grant it a place inside their hearts.
I thought there were open source based companies in America too. I also thought there were plans to increase adoption of open source in public administrations in America too. Finally, I thought America already had a host of protectionist measures in place for several economic sectors.
Basically, what the hell are you talking about?
I can see a lot of boys getting confused and thinking they've fallen in love with their best friend.
the guns were not very special. It's the way they were used that was special.
That's what she said.
Privoxy never worked reliably for me. I used to use it, but it would "lock up" almost daily, leaving my browser waiting forever on every single request. When I realized it was not a connection problem, but Privoxy, I would restart it, but it was still pretty annoying. More annoying than the ads, in fact, which is why I don't use it any more.
At least I have ClickToFlash now.
Italian courts order an inordinate amount of wiretaps, and the contents of the tapped conversations are often illegally leaked to the press, even when they are not relevant to any trial. That is why the rules for wiretapping are being revised. And even if the new rules made it ten times harder to authorize a wiretap, Italy would still have 14 times as many wiretaps per inhabitant than the US! Do you realize how ridiculous Grillo and Travaglio's propaganda is?
By the way, if the courts didn't waste millions of euro on wiretapping everyone and their dog, they would be far less likely to run overbudget. If the wiretap reform works, the judiciary will have all the money it needs to bury its offices in toner and gas, without having to increase its already considerable burden on taxpayers.
I think there was a connection problem when your message was posted. It seems to have been truncated right before the part where you disclose the arcane mysteries you were hinting at.
Under Italian law, it is illegal to incite others to commit a crime ("apologia di delitto"). That is a common provision, paralleled in the laws of many other countries. The law you cited, even in the mangled form that came out of Google translate, merely says that:
1) if this incitement to commit a crime is done on the internet, the illegal content can be blocked;
2) you can appeal against the block. Also, they have to cancel the block as soon as the illegal activity ceases.
I don't know how you got "censorship of dissidents" out of that.
As for the "permit to be a journalist", it's not really a government permit: what's required is membership in the order of journalists, which is run entirely by the journalists themselves. What this boils down to is that the other journalists can ban you from the order for serious violations of professional ethics, and then you're not supposed to work as a journalist any more. Note that, in practice, this doesn't mean you can't get articles published any more: for example, Renato Farina was banned by the order in 2007, yet he still regularly writes for the newspaper Libero. Nevertheless, it has been argued that the order of journalists is an unnecessary relic, and should be dismantled. Guess who opposes that? The journalists themselves.
I wouldn't take orzetto's opinion as "insightful" merely because he's Italian. There is a strong tradition of self-deprecation of their country among Italians (and especially in certain areas of the political spectrum) which has little basis in reality.
The judiciary is one especially touchy subject. Whenever a reform is proposed, some people wail about how it would be the "end of democracy" and it would "put Italy outside of the civilized world", etc.. And if a foreigner hears this, they'll naturally think that Italy has it pretty bad. But if you look at what these "undemocratic" reforms actually are, it turns out that they are all things that most other democratic countries already do. In other words, what they're actually saying is not "Italy would become less democratic!", but "Germany, France, the UK, the USA, etc. are totalitarian hellholes! We don't want to become more like them!"
Now, there is a problem with how long trials last in Italy. It's a hard issue to tackle, in part due to the magistrates' staunch opposition to any sort of reform. What certainly isn't the problem, though, is the amount of money spent on the judiciary, which is comparable with what other European countries spend on it. For example, from a comparation of judiciary systems in Europe we find that in 2000 Italy spent 61 euro per inhabitant on justice (109 euro per inhabitant if you add prison expenses), while in 2001 France spent 65 euro per inhabitant. And, although I don't have time to look for more recent data online right now, I remember reading that Italy's expenses on justice have actually been growing faster than in other countries over the past few years. In fact, Italian newspapers have often complained about how the country gets a poor service from its judiciary even though it spends quite a lot of money on it.
Bottom line, orzetto's claims have but the feeblest connection with reality.
Actually, on x86 the Windows 7 beta is 12% faster than Ubuntu 8.10. That's quite a significant difference, assuming this "Richards benchmark" is a good indicator of general performance.
Actually, yes, you do. Compared to other European languages, English has extremely low tolerance for polysyllabic words. It considers two syllables a long word, and revels in monosyllabic grunts.
...that got the opposite results? Also, aren't brain games aimed more at middle-aged people than at kids?
Bundling IE was only part of the strategy that allowed Microsoft to unfairly exploit its market dominance in OSs to conquer the browser market. The real problem was that they forced the OEMs to stop bundling Netscape, by threatening them with worse licensing terms for Windows if they didn't comply. That's what the EU should concentrate on.
It looks like they're slowly getting a clue, since they're now talking about forcing "Microsoft and OEMs" to include multiple browsers and forcing the user to choose one. But that's still a bad idea, because those users who are capable of making that choice are already using IE to download whatever browser they prefer, while those who are not will get stumped for a minute, and eventually end up choosing the only thing that sounds familiar or seems to make sense (I want to get on the Internet -> Internet Explorer).
For those users, someone else needs to make the default choice, and the only party who can choose according to market reasons is the OEM.
Exactly! *This* is the anticompetitive behaviour and the monopoly abuse that needs to get cracked down. Yes, it's harder to investigate and prove, but cutting corners by telling Microsoft what to bundle with Windows isn't going to help. Anyone who knows what web browser to choose is simply going to download and install it using whatever is built-in: the only group that's relevant here are the people who have no idea what to choose.
Bundling several browsers, or implementing that silly, overdesigned package manager idea espoused in many other comments, would not help with that at all. All it would do is make the user experience worse for the user, forcing them to stop and think about a choice they don't know or care about. Eventually they'd choose the only name they're familiar with, Internet Explorer (they want to get on the internet, after all, not go to the zoo or the theater or the savannah).
No, the problem is not offering users choice, because they already have plenty, but making a choice for those who are not able to. And the only party left (after excluding Microsoft and the user) who can make that choice based on market reasons is the OEM.
I'm afraid that's not how it works. The truly intelligent have no trouble going through school, especially one as undemanding as the American K-12 is. Moreover, to "push the field forward" you have to know where to start from.
As for lateral thinking, you can have a natural leaning towards a certain kind of mental activity because you're better than usual at it, or because you're worse than usual at everything else. In the latter case, it's perfectly possible to be a dumb lateral thinker.
Yeah, nice. So you want them to include a full browser engine, minus the thin application shell that you can double-click on. Do I even need to argue against that idea? I think I'll just point at it and laugh.
But ok, let's remove iexplore.exe to save Opera's (old) business. While we're at it, let's kill explorer.exe too - it just ruined Norton Commander's whole thing, you know. And let's not forget notepad.exe: we can have a built-in text editing widget, but including an application that uses it is just mean to third-party text editors.
It's not just stupid, it's wrong. In 2008, Microsoft is right: a web browser is an integral part of a desktop operating system. And it's not just the browser as an application, it's the rendering engine that's being used pervasively, from help systems to all sorts of third party applications. Look at how much stuff uses WebKit on OS X: dictionaries, widgets, chat programs... it'd be folly to remove it.
You're forced to live different from other people because you don't obey a certain religious belief. That's the textbook definition of religious discrimination and anyone ought to be able to see that it's a violation of the constitution.
Hold your horses! For that, you'd have to demonstrate that you are being discriminated *purely* because you follow/don't follow a specific religion. Otherwise, one might argue that putting murderers in jail is religious discrimination because, hey, some religions forbid murder! But of course, that's not the *only* reason to prosecute murderers.
Considering that there are homophobes from all religious and irreligious backgrounds, it'd be hard to argue that opposition to gay marriage is a purely religious issue. You might seek a historical connection to the cultural influence of some religions, but that's not enough: once religious ideas have moved into a general cultural background, they're not covered by religious discrimination any more. You're going to have to look elsewhere in the law, or perhaps to pass new laws.
Actually, I've tried asking some twenty-somethings whose parents divorced when they were kids, and they vehemently opposed the idea that the family environment they grew up in was anything less than perfect.
The idea that a married couple is better for kids has about as much currency as the idea that a heterosexual couple is better for kids (ie, it's widely held by the general population, but it's unmentionable in polite company amongst educated people).
Scientific evidence doesn't matter, either, and not just because of the epistemological weakness of sociology as a field, but most importantly because everyone's position is rooted in strong emotional reasons.
In other words, blame the Halo. We're back were we started!
I can see why playing Halo (or, indeed, most games, with the notable exception of NetHack) might make you believe that. If only he had watched anime instead, he would have been taught the cruel reality of murder.
Actually, this time I see two feminine women (Lightning and Vanille) and one manly man (Snow). Ok, he's still blond, but at least this time he has a beard! Beards are manly. He's muscle-bound, too.
Everything your code does is something the framework doesn't do for you: the real problem is not customization, but how cleanly the framework allows you to extend it, how stable the interface (between the framework core and your extensions) is, and so on.
That's why I'm surprised to hear people recommend switching from Rails to Django. My experience in going through that route is that Django is less flexible and harder to customize than Rails. For example, in both frameworks you can write custom SQL queries, but while find_by_sql in Rails returns fully-formed model objects (as long as you fetch all the needed attributes in the query), raw SQL queries in Django only return raw data tuples. You cannot integrate your custom SQL with Django's ORM (ie, you cannot get a Django model object from cursor.execute), so you end up getting a bunch of IDs from your custom SQL, and then passing them to Django so it can query the database again for the same objects, using two queries to do the work of one.
Next time I want to make a web application in Python, I'm going to skip Django and look into Pylons instead.
And Europeans got burned when it vented.
I'm not sure why the slashdot editors have decided to combine two unrelated steam stories, effectively denying the localized price story its own discussion. Maybe nobody reads slashdot in Europe? I'd say that, for anyone interested in using Steam living in the EU, the huge price increases are much bigger news than the EA thing.
How huge? For example, Call of Duty 4 went from 49,99 US$ to 71.97 US$ overnight, according to TFA. As a result, for most (all?) games on Steam it is now cheaper to buy them in brick-and-mortar stores, and you get a box too!
It looks like the message is "If you want to be free from Securom, you'll have to pay more. Actually, scratch that, you'll just pay more regardless."