The real question is whether these attacks are successful.
First of all, a lot of comments in this thread comes from people who seem to assume that is some kind of viscious attack on their favorite OS instead of an announcement of a simple fact: there are more attacks on Linux now than before. Nobody said anything about this suggesting that Linux is less secure than it used to be.
The Forces of Evil will start using the statistics of all the h4x0red and 0wned systems (due to ignorance on the part of the users) as FUD.
It's true, so how, exactly, could it be FUD? Oh, you mean that MS would start saying things like: "look how many hax0red boxes you have, this must mean that Linux is rotten when it comes to security!" But isn't this exactly what the Linux community has been doing for years? Why do we always hear "Windows/Outlook/both suck because a gazillion boxes were infected by the ILoveYou virus" instead of "Windows users suck when it comes to security related issues, as a gazillion of them opened unknown attachments and got infected?"
And Echelon is a governmental activity that watches over someone else, hence the statement about watchers and who will watch them is pertinent.
But the submitter appears to think that this is some problem that is specific for Echelon, which is not the case. Furthermore, the questions he poses seems to indicate a belief that the reason Echelon should not go public is that someone won't be able to watch the watchers watching them, something I wholeheartedly disagree with.
Your question seems like an attempt to grab attention by seeming clever.
And your comment seems like an attempt to grab attention by seeming stupid.
But who will watch those watchers? And who will watch them?
What on earth has this to do with Echelon? It is a problem that comes with any situation where someone needs to have someone watching over someone else, i.e most governmental activity.
Rather, the problem is of course that admitting the existence of Echelon is the same as legitimizing it, which for obvious reasons isn't the best idea in the world. It would probably be helpful for those European guys trying to figure out what the hell is going on though...
I'll also grab "A Scanner Darkly"; I've been re-reading a bunch of PKD recently but have't ever read that one.
Good idea. It's by many considered his best. I'm not sure I agree with them completely, but it's no doubt PKD at his finest.
If you've read the more recent (1998, I think) english translation of The Castle, you'll know what I mean. The older "translation" included all sorts of edits by Kafka's original posthumous agent, Max Brod, including the criminal truncation of the book before the actual end. It's possible that the parallels between MFiaB and The Castle weren't as clear in the botched english version which was all we had until 1998.
I have never read Kafka in English, mind you, but thanks anyway. However, given the fact that "The Castle" was largely unfinished at the time of Kafkas death, I think it unfair to blame Brod for "botchering" it. Rather, I think one should acknowledge that the more recent translation is of superior quality and let that be the end of it.
I don't think Lem or anyone ever claimed that MFiaB was completely original with no reference intended to Kafka's work. I saw it as clearly a homage and intentional adaptation of a great work to a different time. Nothing wrong with that, in my book.
Neither do I. My problem with this book, which I once again should admit I have not read, is that it does not appear to adapt it to different conditions at all. Whereas Joyce, speaking of him, takes a greek epic, squeezes it down to a days length, and puts it, of all places, in Dublin, Lem seems to take a story about a little man in a modern overly bureaucratic society and put him in a... modern overly bureaucratic society? And keep most of the story, on top of that. I'll be the first to admit that the difference between plagiarism and homage is a subtle one, but I am sure my point comes across nonetheless.
Anyways, I can completely sympathize with thinking Lem is overrated, though I can't imagine feeling that way myself. However, I do feel that way about Joyce and a few other writers people consider classic, which gets me into all sorts of trouble with Lit. types.
With Joyce people might be able to agree with you that reading him is a less than pleasant experience, but there's no denying his impact on Western litterature, even his staunchest critics will grant him that. With Lem that is not the case, which is why the comparison is a little unfair. Getting into trouble with Lit. types is not something to be ashamed of, however. My experience is that they like what they're told to like.
To each their own.
This summarizes nicely. I can't agree with you more here.
Yeah, probably. Although most of PKD's books deal with similar issues as does this one.
I have not read this particular Lem book, but am surprised at how obviously stoled from Kafkas "The Trial" (not "The Castle!") many parts of this story seems (i.e. the protagonist is never called by his name (although Josef K. is once in the first sentence of "The Trial"), it is set in an overly bureaucratic society, and, most of all, whereas K. stumbles throughout the book to find out what he is accused of, the main character in MFiaB does the same, only he has to find out what his mission is.
If you ask me, Lem has always been highly overrated anyway.
And speaking of PKD and dubbel, triple and quadruple agents, check out his "A Scanner Darkly" where the protagonist is an agent spying on himself, making him an infinitle agent. Beat that!
When not even the submitter reads the story, things must be bad. From the article:
The pact would have required the United States, which accounted for 36 percent of
the industrialized world's greenhouse gas emissions in 1990, to trim emissions by 7
percent from 1990 levels.
But the Bush administration has instead announced policy changes likely to push
them up by 30 percent by 2010, the European Commission said.
The keyword here is "would." The US isn't ratifying squat, but who's surprised? Financing election campaigns is a costly business, and you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you. Bush is just behaving like the good boy he promised to be.
Don't be so hard on him. After all, it was you who mixed up a) physical distribution with b) distribution and then somehow amazingly got them both confused with c) distribution cost which you in turn mistook to mean d) distribution cost per unit.
In summary, while you may have refuted a most confused claim that noone ever made, it was perhaps unnecessary to begin your analysis with "Bullshit." in bold. Apart from that, I applaud your insightful, albeit irrelevant and incoherent, rebuttal of some argument you picked up at, uh, New Economist?
Come to think of it, you probably misunderstood what they said too.
When the MPAA complains that it is losing billions to piracy, my first reaction is, so what? The Hollywood studios are already hugely wealthy
The MPAA is evil alright, but this is not the kind of objection against war on piracy that anyone will take seriously.
You cannot expect any industrial body not to take up a fight when they are losing money just because they are already "hugely wealthy."
I am all for MPAA-bashing, but I wouldn't expect anyone not already in the know to care about an article the stamps some entity as evil without provding any real arguments why this is so.
There are a gazillion exceptions (think child pornography, nazi propaganda, copyright...)
I hate to break it to you, but the world isn't black and white. There are exceptions to every rule, even this one.
Besides, pretending like there is some profound ideological difference between a) fining this man for using pop-ups and b) removing the means for this man to use pop-ups is just plain silly.
But this rant is pointless, since the obvious point of course is this: this has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with the medium he uses to convey his "message." He is entitled to say "FREE XXX PORN!! HORNY XXX SLUTS!!" all he wants, he just can't do it this way. Very much like someone can't be allowed to go to a schoolyard where 7-year olds are playing and start screaming "HORNY TEENAGE SLUTS."
Were this not moderated to 5 it would not be worthy of a reply. Actually, it isn't now either. I should have modded you to hell instead of writing this tedious rant.
Francis Ford Coppola *might* be able to turn Ender's Game into a good movie. I have strong doubts that any other popular
Hollywood director could.
Which of course includes the director of Das Boot? (Yes, that's Petersons.) If I remember correctly, that's one of Coppola's favorite flicks.
The thing that makes Ender's Game such a great book is that the small unwashed masses of alienated, hyper-intelligent geeks
could truly empathize with Ender on an emotional level. We can understand his trials and feel his pains.
"We"? Only on Slashdot would someone just in passing assign themselves the label "hyper-intelligent." Now if someone would only write a book where all of us uber-talented movie critics could have someone to identify with...
I've been waiting eagerly for this book ever since I first heard about it (some years ago).
Stephen is an amazing guy, and I'm sure what he's done is something absolutely marvellous. I'm also sure, however, that his attitude will continue to suck for great lengths of time. He's probably one of the most arrogant people on this planet. I think he said it best himself regarding what he thinks people will say about his book:
my opinion
of the world at large isn't high enough for me really to be interested in what they have to say
Now, if that's not a bad attitude I don't know what is. I suppose he could be excused though. He's pretty much as close to the stereotype mad scientist recluse as anyone will ever get.
Complete rejection of the existence of human knowledge and values or denial of the possibility of
making any useful distinctions among things.
Anyone even moderately intelligent person can see how someone who says that dictarship is neither good nor evil but simply "is" could be said to subscribe to the view, or at least parts of it, expressed by the definition above.
Seroiusly though criticising moderators is not the way to get karma around here.
I don't know if this was somehow intended to be ironic or wtf you're talking about but a) i don't give a shit and b) I'm capped anyway.
I knew Stalin. Stalin was my friend. Generalissimo Pinochet, you are no Stalin.
Really? Please explain how you arrived at that conclusion. Last time I checked, huge leaps of logic plus uncalled for rhetoric did not a fair rebuttal make.
Uhhm.. no doubt a couple of mistakes there. I was really trying to hit preview, but failed.
What it should have looked like:
---
Further more, nature is entirely dictatorial, kills millions of people a year, and to quote my Physics
teacher 'nothing kills like the laws of physics'. Does that make Nature or Physics evil or immoral ? I would suggest that
dictatorship is actually amoral, neither good or evil, it simply is.
Ahem. Nature does not have intentions. Dictators do. Hence the difference. *
This was actually the dumbest post I've ever seen modded to five (but of course it was: nothing speaks to the Slashdot audience
like badly cloaked nihilism.)
* Any basic text in moral philosophy. Page 1, probably.
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relatively benign
relatively benign (Score:5)
by Martin Spamer ((Martin_Spamer) (at) (kitv.co.uk)) on Friday May 17, @09:05AM (#3536432)
(User #244245 Info | http://www.kitv.co.uk/)
Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can
do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run
by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.
Much as I disapprove of Pinochet; and agree that on an absolute scale he is a pretty despicable character, he was relatively
benign when compared to dictators. He killed thousands of people and not millions like, Pol-Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Mao.
Further more, nature is entirely dictatorial, kills millions of people a year, and to quote my Physics teacher 'nothing kills like the
laws of physics'. Does that make Nature or Physics evil or immoral ? I would suggest that dictatorship is actually amoral, neither
good or evil, it simply is.
Ahem. Nature does not have intentions. Dictators do. Hence the difference. *
This was actually the dumbest post I've ever seen modded to five (but of course it was: nothing speaks to the Slashdot audience like badly cloaked nihilism.)
* Any basic text in moral philosophy. Page 1, probably.
[T]he only possible way to get screwed over by predators online is to be a complete MORON! [...] I've met probably 10 people outside of the IRC channel meets I've been to, and while
some of them have been real @ssholes, none of them have been Lester the Molestor. Stop being stupid, people!
Given these not totally unreasonable premises:
1) You do, on occasion, meet some of those you chat with and find interesting in real life
2) Lester the Molestor can fake being interesting
it's not very easy to see how you could avoid meeting him even though you are not "a complete MORON."
Not that this was anything but a shameless troll anyway, but I'm bored.
But, man, did he have it coming or what?!
Anyway, congratulations to you both!
lskfdglkjsfkjslfdgafdljkslkfglksjfdlkgjslfdgsfdg hl kjdlgkhjldkgjhldkjglhkdjghlkjdglhkjdlkhgjdljhldkdk hglkdjhkdjlhgkjdhgdhg (too few characters per line..)
Once the dot-com boom was a fact and everybody went ballistic and cried for "IT" scheduled in public schools from an early age, there was conducted an experiment.
Two large groups of school children (and one control group) were chosen. One of these group had massive "IT" training. The other group had massive music training. A year later results clearly showed that the "IT" students had not enhanced their creativity, formal reasoning or anything else of interest. The music students, however, had enhanced creativity, analytical thinking and other areas of significance enormously. They also seemed to get along better with each other, and to be more content with their lives than people in the control group or in the IT group.
Unfortunately, nobody took much notice of this study, although it was huge. Probably because it didn't show the results the politicians wanted it to show. Nowadays there's a lot of "IT" training in elementary schools. I have, however, yet to come across a normal elementary school with an increased number of music lessons.
Note: this is not a flamebait. I'm a huge fan of both the Simpsons and Futurama. In my opinion, Futurama is the better show.
But the truth is that Futurama really is extremely similar to the Simpsons. The type of animation is exactly the same. The music's very similar. The voices are similar. The jokes are similar. The whole style, soul and idea of the show is the same. The only thing that's different is the period in time they're supposed to take place. Don't agree? Consider a hypothetical show by the name "Simpsons 3000". Can you imagine such a show not being very very similar to Futurama?
You can argue all you want that Futurama is a great show that should be kept on the air - and I'm all with you - but don't tell me it's not a Simpsons knockoff. Believe me, it is, and it's worth saving anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
oil during Bush speeches
plastic surgery during Cher videos
flying lessons during reruns of 9-11 shots
See it from the bright side. This could make way for some excellent political and satirical commentary.
Oh, in case you're wondering: I'm not being serious.
The real question is whether these attacks are successful.
First of all, a lot of comments in this thread comes from people who seem to assume that is some kind of viscious attack on their favorite OS instead of an announcement of a simple fact: there are more attacks on Linux now than before. Nobody said anything about this suggesting that Linux is less secure than it used to be.
The Forces of Evil will start using the statistics of all the h4x0red and 0wned systems (due to ignorance on the part of the users) as FUD.
It's true, so how, exactly, could it be FUD? Oh, you mean that MS would start saying things like: "look how many hax0red boxes you have, this must mean that Linux is rotten when it comes to security!" But isn't this exactly what the Linux community has been doing for years? Why do we always hear "Windows/Outlook/both suck because a gazillion boxes were infected by the ILoveYou virus" instead of "Windows users suck when it comes to security related issues, as a gazillion of them opened unknown attachments and got infected?"
Doublespeak, I say. And I'm no troll.
I'm not sure what you mean by "real" but if you think OO and Perl don't go together, you're just plain wrong.
Which, of course, is the whole point of this article. Just because it's obvious doesn't mean it's not bad.
Idiot.
But the submitter appears to think that this is some problem that is specific for Echelon, which is not the case. Furthermore, the questions he poses seems to indicate a belief that the reason Echelon should not go public is that someone won't be able to watch the watchers watching them, something I wholeheartedly disagree with.
Your question seems like an attempt to grab attention by seeming clever.
And your comment seems like an attempt to grab attention by seeming stupid.
What on earth has this to do with Echelon? It is a problem that comes with any situation where someone needs to have someone watching over someone else, i.e most governmental activity.
Rather, the problem is of course that admitting the existence of Echelon is the same as legitimizing it, which for obvious reasons isn't the best idea in the world. It would probably be helpful for those European guys trying to figure out what the hell is going on though...
Good idea. It's by many considered his best. I'm not sure I agree with them completely, but it's no doubt PKD at his finest.
If you've read the more recent (1998, I think) english translation of The Castle, you'll know what I mean. The older "translation" included all sorts of edits by Kafka's original posthumous agent, Max Brod, including the criminal truncation of the book before the actual end. It's possible that the parallels between MFiaB and The Castle weren't as clear in the botched english version which was all we had until 1998.
I have never read Kafka in English, mind you, but thanks anyway. However, given the fact that "The Castle" was largely unfinished at the time of Kafkas death, I think it unfair to blame Brod for "botchering" it. Rather, I think one should acknowledge that the more recent translation is of superior quality and let that be the end of it.
I don't think Lem or anyone ever claimed that MFiaB was completely original with no reference intended to Kafka's work. I saw it as clearly a homage and intentional adaptation of a great work to a different time. Nothing wrong with that, in my book.
Neither do I. My problem with this book, which I once again should admit I have not read, is that it does not appear to adapt it to different conditions at all. Whereas Joyce, speaking of him, takes a greek epic, squeezes it down to a days length, and puts it, of all places, in Dublin, Lem seems to take a story about a little man in a modern overly bureaucratic society and put him in a... modern overly bureaucratic society? And keep most of the story, on top of that. I'll be the first to admit that the difference between plagiarism and homage is a subtle one, but I am sure my point comes across nonetheless.
Anyways, I can completely sympathize with thinking Lem is overrated, though I can't imagine feeling that way myself. However, I do feel that way about Joyce and a few other writers people consider classic, which gets me into all sorts of trouble with Lit. types.
With Joyce people might be able to agree with you that reading him is a less than pleasant experience, but there's no denying his impact on Western litterature, even his staunchest critics will grant him that. With Lem that is not the case, which is why the comparison is a little unfair. Getting into trouble with Lit. types is not something to be ashamed of, however. My experience is that they like what they're told to like.
To each their own.
This summarizes nicely. I can't agree with you more here.
Theo
I have not read this particular Lem book, but am surprised at how obviously stoled from Kafkas "The Trial" (not "The Castle!") many parts of this story seems (i.e. the protagonist is never called by his name (although Josef K. is once in the first sentence of "The Trial"), it is set in an overly bureaucratic society, and, most of all, whereas K. stumbles throughout the book to find out what he is accused of, the main character in MFiaB does the same, only he has to find out what his mission is.
If you ask me, Lem has always been highly overrated anyway.
And speaking of PKD and dubbel, triple and quadruple agents, check out his "A Scanner Darkly" where the protagonist is an agent spying on himself, making him an infinitle agent. Beat that!
America - where even acronyms are censored.
The pact would have required the United States, which accounted for 36 percent of the industrialized world's greenhouse gas emissions in 1990, to trim emissions by 7 percent from 1990 levels. But the Bush administration has instead announced policy changes likely to push them up by 30 percent by 2010, the European Commission said.
The keyword here is "would." The US isn't ratifying squat, but who's surprised? Financing election campaigns is a costly business, and you shouldn't bite the hand that feeds you. Bush is just behaving like the good boy he promised to be.Don't be so hard on him. After all, it was you who mixed up a) physical distribution with b) distribution and then somehow amazingly got them both confused with c) distribution cost which you in turn mistook to mean d) distribution cost per unit.
In summary, while you may have refuted a most confused claim that noone ever made, it was perhaps unnecessary to begin your analysis with "Bullshit." in bold. Apart from that, I applaud your insightful, albeit irrelevant and incoherent, rebuttal of some argument you picked up at, uh, New Economist?
Come to think of it, you probably misunderstood what they said too.
The MPAA is evil alright, but this is not the kind of objection against war on piracy that anyone will take seriously. You cannot expect any industrial body not to take up a fight when they are losing money just because they are already "hugely wealthy."
I am all for MPAA-bashing, but I wouldn't expect anyone not already in the know to care about an article the stamps some entity as evil without provding any real arguments why this is so.
People like you are ignored in any serious debate. Politics is about compromises. Get over it.
*Ahem*
There are a gazillion exceptions (think child pornography, nazi propaganda, copyright...) I hate to break it to you, but the world isn't black and white. There are exceptions to every rule, even this one.
Besides, pretending like there is some profound ideological difference between a) fining this man for using pop-ups and b) removing the means for this man to use pop-ups is just plain silly.
But this rant is pointless, since the obvious point of course is this: this has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with the medium he uses to convey his "message." He is entitled to say "FREE XXX PORN!! HORNY XXX SLUTS!!" all he wants, he just can't do it this way. Very much like someone can't be allowed to go to a schoolyard where 7-year olds are playing and start screaming "HORNY TEENAGE SLUTS."
Were this not moderated to 5 it would not be worthy of a reply. Actually, it isn't now either. I should have modded you to hell instead of writing this tedious rant.
Which of course includes the director of Das Boot? (Yes, that's Petersons.) If I remember correctly, that's one of Coppola's favorite flicks.
The thing that makes Ender's Game such a great book is that the small unwashed masses of alienated, hyper-intelligent geeks could truly empathize with Ender on an emotional level. We can understand his trials and feel his pains.
"We"? Only on Slashdot would someone just in passing assign themselves the label "hyper-intelligent." Now if someone would only write a book where all of us uber-talented movie critics could have someone to identify with...
Stephen is an amazing guy, and I'm sure what he's done is something absolutely marvellous. I'm also sure, however, that his attitude will continue to suck for great lengths of time. He's probably one of the most arrogant people on this planet. I think he said it best himself regarding what he thinks people will say about his book:
my opinion of the world at large isn't high enough for me really to be interested in what they have to say
Now, if that's not a bad attitude I don't know what is. I suppose he could be excused though. He's pretty much as close to the stereotype mad scientist recluse as anyone will ever get.
I think Philosophy Pages' definition is pretty much on the mark:
- Complete rejection of the existence of human knowledge and values or denial of the possibility of
making any useful distinctions among things.
Anyone even moderately intelligent person can see how someone who says that dictarship is neither good nor evil but simply "is" could be said to subscribe to the view, or at least parts of it, expressed by the definition above.Seroiusly though criticising moderators is not the way to get karma around here.
I don't know if this was somehow intended to be ironic or wtf you're talking about but a) i don't give a shit and b) I'm capped anyway.
Really? Please explain how you arrived at that conclusion. Last time I checked, huge leaps of logic plus uncalled for rhetoric did not a fair rebuttal make.
What it should have looked like:
---
Further more, nature is entirely dictatorial, kills millions of people a year, and to quote my Physics teacher 'nothing kills like the laws of physics'. Does that make Nature or Physics evil or immoral ? I would suggest that dictatorship is actually amoral, neither good or evil, it simply is.
Ahem. Nature does not have intentions. Dictators do. Hence the difference. *
This was actually the dumbest post I've ever seen modded to five (but of course it was: nothing speaks to the Slashdot audience like badly cloaked nihilism.)
* Any basic text in moral philosophy. Page 1, probably.
---
Now mod me to hell. I deserve it.
Ahem. Nature does not have intentions. Dictators do. Hence the difference. *
This was actually the dumbest post I've ever seen modded to five (but of course it was: nothing speaks to the Slashdot audience like badly cloaked nihilism.) * Any basic text in moral philosophy. Page 1, probably.
Given these not totally unreasonable premises:
1) You do, on occasion, meet some of those you chat with and find interesting in real life
2) Lester the Molestor can fake being interesting
it's not very easy to see how you could avoid meeting him even though you are not "a complete MORON."
Not that this was anything but a shameless troll anyway, but I'm bored.
I get your point though. I only happen to strongly dislike his nonsense.
One ring to bind them?
Will she be open source?
She should marry CowboyNeal!
Hey, I submitted this a week ago!
And, of course, best of all:
Taco's bride naked and petrified (well, almost).
But, man, did he have it coming or what?! Anyway, congratulations to you both!
lskfdglkjsfkjslfdgafdljkslkfglksjfdlkgjslfdgsfdg hl kjdlgkhjldkgjhldkjglhkdjghlkjdglhkjdlkhgjdljhldkdk hglkdjhkdjlhgkjdhgdhg (too few characters per line..)
Two large groups of school children (and one control group) were chosen. One of these group had massive "IT" training. The other group had massive music training. A year later results clearly showed that the "IT" students had not enhanced their creativity, formal reasoning or anything else of interest. The music students, however, had enhanced creativity, analytical thinking and other areas of significance enormously. They also seemed to get along better with each other, and to be more content with their lives than people in the control group or in the IT group.
Unfortunately, nobody took much notice of this study, although it was huge. Probably because it didn't show the results the politicians wanted it to show. Nowadays there's a lot of "IT" training in elementary schools. I have, however, yet to come across a normal elementary school with an increased number of music lessons.
This was in Sweden, by the way.
But the truth is that Futurama really is extremely similar to the Simpsons. The type of animation is exactly the same. The music's very similar. The voices are similar. The jokes are similar. The whole style, soul and idea of the show is the same. The only thing that's different is the period in time they're supposed to take place. Don't agree? Consider a hypothetical show by the name "Simpsons 3000". Can you imagine such a show not being very very similar to Futurama?
You can argue all you want that Futurama is a great show that should be kept on the air - and I'm all with you - but don't tell me it's not a Simpsons knockoff. Believe me, it is, and it's worth saving anyway.