So what you're saying is basically: if open source is better than shared source then open source will prevail.
I fail to see that things haven't worked out quite ok for Gates&co the last twenty years or so, although quite a lot of people, at least in this forum, would agree that the product he took over the world with (Windows, duh!) was inferior to just about every conceivable alternative.
Conclusion: perhaps companies will use open source in ten years, perhaps they will use share source (although I sincerely doubt it), but this doesn't necessarily mean that whatever "wins" is the "best" alternative. There are other factors, that simply can't be said to be neglible.
Re:An Absolutely Amazing Book
on
Thief of Time
·
· Score: 1
More information about Terry Pratchett and his works can be found at
What I admire most about Alex Chiu is that sense of rightness. Most of us, confronted with rational evidence that we are wrong, change our minds. Not Alex! He plugs on no matter what you say about (or to) him.
You're kidding right? God, how I want you to be kidding. The above is a BAD THING, not something to be proud of. Blind faith, accorded by the inability to admit having been wrong, is probably the combination to have caused most disasters in the history of the human race. Not listening to what others have to say simply isn't admirable.
Imagine a software company CEO with a vision and sense of his own rightness as strong as Alex's. Even if that person's company wrote pretty rinky-dink code, I'll bet it could end up dominating the desktop computer operating system market.
*cough* Gates *cough*. But seriously, that was a joke, right?
If you don't accept testimonials as proofs, you won't accept any proof as proof.
Funny, I never thought hard science was built on word of mouth. I guess I flunked my last math exam for nothing. When asked to prove Stokes theorem, I should just have referred to testimonials instead of all that time consuming logical deducting that obviously was superficial anyway.
This algorithm is really not very difficult to figure out and straighforward, and there are a lot of variations on it. Not to brag or anything, but I came up with a different one when I was a child that worked almost as well. People were impressed, but I am by no means a genius.
That said about this particular case, in the general you have a point.
Actually, being able to do this calculating is a capability often attributed to various "child prodigies". For example, Amy Wallace wrote in "The Prodigy" (a sort-of biography of William Sidis, by some (myself, for example), considered by many the greatest child prodigy ever) something like:
Young Sidis astounded guest with his remarkable ability to calculate the the day of any given day in a matter of seconds, using an algorithm he had invented himself.
While Sidis undoubtly was a real prodigy, many others that are attributed with this "remarkable ability" aren't. That they are nevertheless labeled so is probably mostly due to biographers (like Wallace) overestimating the difficulty of this particular task.
Not that this is really important or anything, but it always annoys me when people gravely overestimate someone's intellectual capacity merely because of simple tricks.
Of course it will be checked whether there is sufficient money on the card before it is used. Do you really think a company the size of Deutsche Telekom would overlook such an obvious detail? Also note that this scheme does not necessarily inherit the problems associated with micropayments in general (those outline in this rant, for example), as you have a certain amount of control of the amount you're spending, thus limiting the stress-factor.
Almost everyone seem to be on their own personal crusade against micropayments, yet noone is satisfied with the way you pay for low-cost internet-services today (banners, spam etc). I say we should give these guys a break. What's so awful about trying to come up with a different way of doing things? It's not like anyone will force those cards on you anyway.
Another swedish survey where one (large) group of schoolchildren were having an extraordinarily large amount of scheduled "IT", and another group having more scheduled music (singing, learning an instrument etc.), clearly show that the "IT"-children had about the same IQ, but lower grades, and appeared more stressed and conflict-prone after a couple of month than before, whereas the group that had extra music-tuition showed increased IQ, better overall grades, and seemed generally more relaxed.
This man is a professor of law, who even teaches courses on copyright law. Wouldn't you find it slightly absurd if he had somehow managed to miss the DeCSS-case?
I don't really see the point of using him as an example. It is obvious that Mr Podesta must know more about these kind of issues than the average politician.
In Light Verse the bot who generated the art had a defect, and was because of this defect capable of creating astounding art. In the end this bot is "fixed" by an engineer, and when he finds out that the defect that he just fixed was the one that made the robot able to create he is devastated. The point of this story is pretty much the same as in the one of the ugly duck who grows up to be a swan, and the that this lady was not really the creator of the work is sort of peripheral.
Not to troll or anything, but I've never heard of any university graduate that has to do tech support. Where I come from, dotcoms are desperate for programmers and would never even consider throwing someone that actually has a degree into the tech-support pit.
However, the conclusion that people who do tech-support don't really want to be there and therefore may not always do their job very well is probably correct.
Interesting that there's a new story on tech support right after this one. Anyway, if someone missed this link that someone posted in that thread, I think they should have a look. Apart from being hilarious, it may shed some light on why tech support people sometimes may have a hard time being as friendly and supportive as expected of them.
Obviously, no one wants to have 100 dead embryos and another 100 deformed babies running around, just because they want to clone someone. But techonology improves, and probably some time in the not too distant future, the statistics may appear less frightening; perhaps the numbers will even be reversed (saying that 1 in 200 clones may be deformed or dead, instead of the other way round). Creationists and the like may complain by then too, but not the average Joe, and certainly not the average cancer-man, and thus this will in the end be approved of anyhow. Technological progress is irreversible, and whatever can be done will be done.
unfortunately no, and I can't remember where I first came across it either. If you have any further information I'd be very interested, as I would find it quite embarrasing if I credit him [Derek Bok] on false grounds.
In this case, it is clearly obvious that the challengers intent is either to make a fool out of someone, or to make money. Not only does this person (Mike) believe the challenge will not be successfully met, he also believes it cannot be successfully met. This is not good sportmanship to me, and the only right thing to do is to look for the little things in the way the challenge was stated, that may allow bending the rules just enough to "win". This is exactly what Partick did.
Had Mike had a different intent with this challenge, or stated it so that he thought it would be possible, but very unlikely, that he would have to cough up, the kind of approach Patrick took may be considered wrong. But this was not the case, and it seems to me as if you're trying to make this into something that it isn't.
As seen in his letter posted to the newsgroup after the challenge had been accepted, Mike was very arrogant, and quite stupid. As many slashdotters have noted already, being able to compress a single "random" file, is not the same as being able to compress any "random" file. $5000 is a lot of money for a not very clearly thought-through competition, and though it is obvious that this guy can't cough up although he should, he ought to apologize and give the $100 back. Bending the rules are what these kind of contests are about. Besides, threatening with legal action makes him lose his face completely.
Hopefully, at least, he learned his lesson, which most likely was all Patrick ever hoped for anyway.
The only problem is that we didn't do a good job of it.
Sort of the point. Is that "cleaning up after yourself"?
It apparently took two.
I may not be an american citizen, but as someone who have written a 40 page essay on this very subject (yes, the subject of whether the dropping of a a-bomb on Japan was necessary and, if so, if dropping one was not enough), I think may comment on this particular matter with some authority.
It was not necessary to drop a second bomb in order to get Japan to surrender. In fact, most experts considered it obvious that it was at most a matter of days before they would have done so nonetheless, and this Truman and his pals knew very well. As for frightening Russia, on the other hand, it may very well have had the desired effect, but that is quite another story.
After Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march, they are lucky we only dropped two.
So it's about revenge now? I thought we were discussing whether it was necessary in order to get them to surrender or not. These are two quite different things.
But if that were really true, they [Madonna and McDonald's] wouldn't BE there.
In that there is some amount of truth, I will admit to that. However, you may want to ask yourself, for example, if you really would prefer the world we currently have to a McDonalds-free one. I believe it is possible that you would prefer the one without ever-growing oligopolistic McDonalds present in every corner, and that you yet may at times eat at McDonalds, and thus see what I'm getting at. Besides, do you think the average American would like to have, for example, white-power music sold in the states? Do you have it?
But I am no hypocrite, and I admit that I maybe spoke for myself, or for a minority, when I made the remark about Madonna and McDonalds.
I can't believe this was actually rated 5, Insightful. Maybe I could find it in my heart to agree on 5, Funny, but this is just ridiculous.
Bob and Martha aren't forcing the Chinese to use slave labor, but they'll take advantage of it if the Chinese make it available. As will the Russians, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, even the Kenyans.
Missing the whole point of the argument, as you probably already know. Either you're for child labor or you're against it. Making decision solely on the availability of cheap products that result from already existing labor, is sheer hypocracy. What Russia, Vietnam etc. has to with this I fail to see. The "but mummy, Joe and Sarah stole candy as well"-argument quickly loses its appeal to most people having reached the age of 6 or so. Apperantly, you're an exception.
Americans make a mess, sure -- and we're the only country to clean up after ourselves.
You're kidding, right? This is just the kind of reckless patriotic arrogance that is the very heart of everything that is wrong with American culture. "We're the only country", I bet you've never even heard of most of the countries in the world, let alone know about how well they "clean up after themselves". And just what is to "clean up" after oneself supposed to mean anyway? That you rape and slaughter most of the Vietnamese before you leave in some halfhearted manner? That you drop two a-bombs instead of one? Although I happen to condemn both of those actions, it is not the point. The point is that what you're saying, if anything, is "unmitigated nonsense".
there's always one fox who thinks they should stop burrowing because it makes life so hard for the hounds.
Just the kind of statement one would expect from someone who gladly defends the nowadays all too common notion that outside the borders the good ol' US, there's nothing but empty space.
The *REST* of the planet is trying their damndest to get Madonna and McDonalds in their countries as fast as they can.
Actually, most of us are trying to get them out. I doubt there is one unamerican person on this earth who regards any of those two phenomena as something the world would not do better without.
The LEADERS in other countries have a ton of ideas about how the world should be run -- all of them bad.
I'm sure you carefully reviewed them all, and that you are comfortably knowing the conclusion you have reached on this matter is the only one that counts. For the second time, as you so brilliantly put it yourself, this is, at best, nothing but "unmitigrated nonsense". At worst, it may be plain wrong.
American doesn't want to rule the world, they just want to have a good time on Saturday night.
I'm sure most Russians, most Vietnamese, most Cubans, and pretty much all Europeans (who, for a century or so, have had their phones Echelon-tapped by some nice fellows who just want to have a good time on a Saturday night) would disagree. With your lovely reasoning, China is probably a rather nice country after all: most Chinese don't want to hold Americans hostages, they just want don't want to eat, sleep and don't be surpressed by their goverment. So why don't you just go out and play instead of quibbling about irrelevant pecadillos such as "who squashed whose plain"? I hate to break it to you kid, but the world may be somewhat more complex than you seem to be willing to accept.
Maybe it was unintentional, but the anything but subtle undertone of your posting made me feel the need for a bathroom-visit. Thus I will say no more, and take on more urgent matters.
I can see Lucy Random Cheerleader asking this question, and how everybody would giggle nervously and then change the subject. But as for this being accepted by Cliff as an entire "Ask Slashdot?"? Someone hasn't slept in a while, that's for sure.
As for the passport issue: I'll guess they'll just have to make an exception.
Suggestions for future Ask Slashdots:
If it was somehow proven that God doesn't exist, what are we going to with all churches and stuff?
If a tree falls in a forest, and noone is there to hear it, how did it fall in the first place?
If a giant rock is heading towards the earth and we all die when we collide, who's going to be around to kick Bruce Willis ass for not saving us?
The answer to all of these is of course: who gives a damn? There might be more important questions to address in such a situation.
END RANT
Now flame on if you want to, but I seriously think this was a really silly question.
I mean, if you work in a pizziaria, you get sick of pizza fast. - RAL
I used to work at a pizza place when I was in high school, and learned to like almost every pizza topping there is, even anchovies. - Cowboy Neal
Besides, answering "I have no clue" to some question when you either obviously must know the answer or could easily find it, really is quite lame considering there might be a couple of thousand peope out there who are honestly interested in what you have to say.
... but I find it hard to read more than 5 pages of an online novel without having at least a couple of coffee breaks. Printing the damn thing doesn't make things easier either: carrying around a jillion of loose papers you drop all over the place and arrange in random order when you pick them up is quite painful too (not to mention the painful process of actually printing it).
However, you, of course, don't have to read the whole thing from page to page. This is a sweet link to have bookmarked when some jerk on irc claims he is quoting "Matteus 5:1" or whatever.
"One day maybe you will enter your credit card details online and ask the satellite to turn and take a picture for you," says Nigel Wells of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency
cute idea, to bad you didn't get it ten years ago. Now digicrime is taking all the cash.
This way, Slashdot can within hours be infected by thousands of lenghty fps (although not all of them, obviously, a fp in the original meaning of the word), none of which could be easily be dismissed as a troll without first reading the entiry crappy post.
like your post couldn't be dismissed as a troll from the title alone...
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't that good enough? I mean, really, there are people who still believe that actually happened..
I fail to see that things haven't worked out quite ok for Gates&co the last twenty years or so, although quite a lot of people, at least in this forum, would agree that the product he took over the world with (Windows, duh!) was inferior to just about every conceivable alternative.
Conclusion: perhaps companies will use open source in ten years, perhaps they will use share source (although I sincerely doubt it), but this doesn't necessarily mean that whatever "wins" is the "best" alternative. There are other factors, that simply can't be said to be neglible.
You're kidding right? God, how I want you to be kidding. The above is a BAD THING, not something to be proud of. Blind faith, accorded by the inability to admit having been wrong, is probably the combination to have caused most disasters in the history of the human race. Not listening to what others have to say simply isn't admirable.
Imagine a software company CEO with a vision and sense of his own rightness as strong as Alex's. Even if that person's company wrote pretty rinky-dink code, I'll bet it could end up dominating the desktop computer operating system market.
*cough* Gates *cough*. But seriously, that was a joke, right?
Funny, I never thought hard science was built on word of mouth. I guess I flunked my last math exam for nothing. When asked to prove Stokes theorem, I should just have referred to testimonials instead of all that time consuming logical deducting that obviously was superficial anyway.
That said about this particular case, in the general you have a point.
- Young Sidis astounded guest with his remarkable ability to calculate the the day of any given day in a matter of seconds, using an algorithm he had invented himself.
While Sidis undoubtly was a real prodigy, many others that are attributed with this "remarkable ability" aren't. That they are nevertheless labeled so is probably mostly due to biographers (like Wallace) overestimating the difficulty of this particular task. Not that this is really important or anything, but it always annoys me when people gravely overestimate someone's intellectual capacity merely because of simple tricks.Almost everyone seem to be on their own personal crusade against micropayments, yet noone is satisfied with the way you pay for low-cost internet-services today (banners, spam etc). I say we should give these guys a break. What's so awful about trying to come up with a different way of doing things? It's not like anyone will force those cards on you anyway.
Another swedish survey where one (large) group of schoolchildren were having an extraordinarily large amount of scheduled "IT", and another group having more scheduled music (singing, learning an instrument etc.), clearly show that the "IT"-children had about the same IQ, but lower grades, and appeared more stressed and conflict-prone after a couple of month than before, whereas the group that had extra music-tuition showed increased IQ, better overall grades, and seemed generally more relaxed.
This man is a professor of law, who even teaches courses on copyright law. Wouldn't you find it slightly absurd if he had somehow managed to miss the DeCSS-case? I don't really see the point of using him as an example. It is obvious that Mr Podesta must know more about these kind of issues than the average politician.
Not that this is really important or anything.
However, the conclusion that people who do tech-support don't really want to be there and therefore may not always do their job very well is probably correct.
Interesting that there's a new story on tech support right after this one. Anyway, if someone missed this link that someone posted in that thread, I think they should have a look. Apart from being hilarious, it may shed some light on why tech support people sometimes may have a hard time being as friendly and supportive as expected of them.
unfortunately no, and I can't remember where I first came across it either. If you have any further information I'd be very interested, as I would find it quite embarrasing if I credit him [Derek Bok] on false grounds.
Had Mike had a different intent with this challenge, or stated it so that he thought it would be possible, but very unlikely, that he would have to cough up, the kind of approach Patrick took may be considered wrong. But this was not the case, and it seems to me as if you're trying to make this into something that it isn't.
Hopefully, at least, he learned his lesson, which most likely was all Patrick ever hoped for anyway.
- The only problem is that we didn't do a good job of it.
Sort of the point. Is that "cleaning up after yourself"?- It apparently took two.
I may not be an american citizen, but as someone who have written a 40 page essay on this very subject (yes, the subject of whether the dropping of a a-bomb on Japan was necessary and, if so, if dropping one was not enough), I think may comment on this particular matter with some authority. It was not necessary to drop a second bomb in order to get Japan to surrender. In fact, most experts considered it obvious that it was at most a matter of days before they would have done so nonetheless, and this Truman and his pals knew very well. As for frightening Russia, on the other hand, it may very well have had the desired effect, but that is quite another story.- After Pearl Harbor and the Bataan death march, they are lucky we only dropped two.
So it's about revenge now? I thought we were discussing whether it was necessary in order to get them to surrender or not. These are two quite different things.- But if that were really true, they [Madonna and McDonald's] wouldn't BE there.
In that there is some amount of truth, I will admit to that. However, you may want to ask yourself, for example, if you really would prefer the world we currently have to a McDonalds-free one. I believe it is possible that you would prefer the one without ever-growing oligopolistic McDonalds present in every corner, and that you yet may at times eat at McDonalds, and thus see what I'm getting at. Besides, do you think the average American would like to have, for example, white-power music sold in the states? Do you have it? But I am no hypocrite, and I admit that I maybe spoke for myself, or for a minority, when I made the remark about Madonna and McDonalds.- Bob and Martha aren't forcing the Chinese to use slave labor, but they'll take advantage of it if the Chinese make it available. As will the Russians, the Vietnamese, the Japanese, even the Kenyans.
Missing the whole point of the argument, as you probably already know. Either you're for child labor or you're against it. Making decision solely on the availability of cheap products that result from already existing labor, is sheer hypocracy. What Russia, Vietnam etc. has to with this I fail to see. The "but mummy, Joe and Sarah stole candy as well"-argument quickly loses its appeal to most people having reached the age of 6 or so. Apperantly, you're an exception.- Americans make a mess, sure -- and we're the only country to clean up after ourselves.
You're kidding, right? This is just the kind of reckless patriotic arrogance that is the very heart of everything that is wrong with American culture. "We're the only country", I bet you've never even heard of most of the countries in the world, let alone know about how well they "clean up after themselves". And just what is to "clean up" after oneself supposed to mean anyway? That you rape and slaughter most of the Vietnamese before you leave in some halfhearted manner? That you drop two a-bombs instead of one? Although I happen to condemn both of those actions, it is not the point. The point is that what you're saying, if anything, is "unmitigated nonsense".- there's always one fox who thinks they should stop burrowing because it makes life so hard for the hounds.
Just the kind of statement one would expect from someone who gladly defends the nowadays all too common notion that outside the borders the good ol' US, there's nothing but empty space.- The *REST* of the planet is trying their damndest to get Madonna and McDonalds in their countries as fast as they can.
Actually, most of us are trying to get them out. I doubt there is one unamerican person on this earth who regards any of those two phenomena as something the world would not do better without.- The LEADERS in other countries have a ton of ideas about how the world should be run -- all of them bad.
I'm sure you carefully reviewed them all, and that you are comfortably knowing the conclusion you have reached on this matter is the only one that counts. For the second time, as you so brilliantly put it yourself, this is, at best, nothing but "unmitigrated nonsense". At worst, it may be plain wrong.- American doesn't want to rule the world, they just want to have a good time on Saturday night.
I'm sure most Russians, most Vietnamese, most Cubans, and pretty much all Europeans (who, for a century or so, have had their phones Echelon-tapped by some nice fellows who just want to have a good time on a Saturday night) would disagree. With your lovely reasoning, China is probably a rather nice country after all: most Chinese don't want to hold Americans hostages, they just want don't want to eat, sleep and don't be surpressed by their goverment. So why don't you just go out and play instead of quibbling about irrelevant pecadillos such as "who squashed whose plain"? I hate to break it to you kid, but the world may be somewhat more complex than you seem to be willing to accept.Maybe it was unintentional, but the anything but subtle undertone of your posting made me feel the need for a bathroom-visit. Thus I will say no more, and take on more urgent matters.
bravo!
I can see Lucy Random Cheerleader asking this question, and how everybody would giggle nervously and then change the subject. But as for this being accepted by Cliff as an entire "Ask Slashdot?"? Someone hasn't slept in a while, that's for sure.
As for the passport issue: I'll guess they'll just have to make an exception.
Suggestions for future Ask Slashdots:
- If it was somehow proven that God doesn't exist, what are we going to with all churches and stuff?
- If a tree falls in a forest, and noone is there to hear it, how did it fall in the first place?
- If a giant rock is heading towards the earth and we all die when we collide, who's going to be around to kick Bruce Willis ass for not saving us?
The answer to all of these is of course: who gives a damn? There might be more important questions to address in such a situation.END RANT
Now flame on if you want to, but I seriously think this was a really silly question.
I used to work at a pizza place when I was in high school, and learned to like almost every pizza topping there is, even anchovies. - Cowboy Neal
Besides, answering "I have no clue" to some question when you either obviously must know the answer or could easily find it, really is quite lame considering there might be a couple of thousand peope out there who are honestly interested in what you have to say.
However, you, of course, don't have to read the whole thing from page to page. This is a sweet link to have bookmarked when some jerk on irc claims he is quoting "Matteus 5:1" or whatever.
cute idea, to bad you didn't get it ten years ago. Now digicrime is taking all the cash.
like your post couldn't be dismissed as a troll from the title alone...