This is a very insightful comment. And to take your "rock star" mentality a bit further:
"Dimebag Darrell", the guitarist of Pantera was assassinated ON STAGE by one of the band's fans.
If you go to metal shows, you'll see that - even though most fans are actually really nice (but scary-looking) people, there's a certain subset (that you're not going to see as prevalently at say, a Tom Jones concert, for example) who are just angry scumbags looking to stir up shit. This is precisely why a friend I know, (and very talented guitarist) quit his metal band, got a haircut, and started doing studio work and teaching. His fans were getting creepier and scarier, the mosh-pits were becoming very violent, and no matter what they tried to tell the crowds about "staying cool", they just got worse and worse. People just apparently don't know how to behave civilized anymore.
Understand that the following is typical "blame-the-victim" mentality, but I think it has a lot of basis in-fact:
When you write a game whose story, material, and setting, attract violent, unparented pre-teens as the chief demographic among your customers - you should pretty much expect the "I will find you and kill you" mentality to be strongly dominant among your customer base.
I'm betting that if the CoD-type game authors turned to writing First-Person-Barbie-Doll simulations, they'd have a wildly different set of customers, and more civilized feedback.
To a certain degree, the downside is that this can lead to a big old circlejerk (also-known-as groupthink - also-known-as, colloquially from the pleasant times of 1930's-40's Germany; zeitgeist).
But by-and-large, I have been on slashdot from before the moderation system. I remember the debates. I didn't agree with the reasons for moderation. But after CmdrTaco made those changes, things did get better, and I really do agree that peer moderation, though not perfect, is the best way to deal with fanbois and trolls. (and ESPECIALLY astroturfing - which has been a HUGE problem, here on slashdot, historically).
yes - this is a real issue - and ARCHIVED data that is important DOES need to be "spun up" and refreshed to new media.
If it's hard drives, yes. If it's optical media. . . well that depends. Because some optical media just plain degrades over time. Some is written in special proprietary formats (like Apple's early implementations of CD+R) that you're going to have a hard time reading with CURRENT equipment.
If your data is archived to tape, and more than 10 years old, I'm afraid you're fucked.
True; but STILL . . . I went for a few years coding without really having much of a need for math beyond Algebra. Then I started getting into some interesting projects. I had to force myself to learn calculus. (realizing that: - a lot of basic calculus is already embodied in programming structures - it's just expressed differently in mathematics. Already having a background in programming gave me an insight to calculus that made it a LOT easier to understand, than when I struggled with pre-calc in High School).
Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).
These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.
And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.
If you have insurance you pay the medical expenses for smokers, alcoholics or drug users . . . who are presumably WORKING, and on an employer-provided plan.
It's the NON-WORKING drug-users that I have a problem with. Gee, I wish I had the luxury to sit around all day, play video games, smoke crack, and have someone else work their ass off to pay for it.
I'm upset that I'm in my 40's and can't have what my parents had - (including a secure retirement) - despite their lack of college education. Yes, this IS a fucking depression, and despite a localized, brief illusion of recovery, things are, long-term, on the down trend. We will likely have a pretty nice spring and summer (jobs and energy-price wise) - but the drought is continuing, and harvest will be bad, food prices will continue to climb (globally), and the EU financial situation is continuing to spiral downwards. Confidence in our financial institutions is not improving. It's likely that after around October, we're going to see some more signs of another downward change in direction in the global economy, which will continue to put the brakes on the US economy, no matter how much more austerity we continue to apply.
That's not actually true. He was "saving" us from a world dominated by overpriced IBM time-sharing systems, and Sun, SGI, workstations. The world of the vertically-integrated systems.
There was no such thing as "personal computers" - and commodity hardware didn't really exist until the IBM PC and Apple I came on the market. As Microsoft was an independent software company, Bill Gates' "vision" was that by de-coupling the software from the hardware, he was providing a solution to the high-priced systems that the vertically-integrated competitors were selling.
At least, that was the idea in the late 1980's, early 1990's. And it was really the truth. Your typical IBM PC, plus MS DOS, plus productivity software, was a crapload cheaper than all competitors. When competitors DID emerge, the productivity software didn't exist. And that's where the problem occurred, because that's where MS became a monopoly. The only thing that kept prices competitive was the competition in the hardware space, and the bundling deals.
It's very different, in the post-2005-ish market, now that there are viable Linux solutions out there. Microsoft is hurting because of this. Most of their former competitors - if you hadn't noticed, are gone.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very insightful comment. And to take your "rock star" mentality a bit further:
"Dimebag Darrell", the guitarist of Pantera was assassinated ON STAGE by one of the band's fans.
If you go to metal shows, you'll see that - even though most fans are actually really nice (but scary-looking) people, there's a certain subset (that you're not going to see as prevalently at say, a Tom Jones concert, for example) who are just angry scumbags looking to stir up shit. This is precisely why a friend I know, (and very talented guitarist) quit his metal band, got a haircut, and started doing studio work and teaching. His fans were getting creepier and scarier, the mosh-pits were becoming very violent, and no matter what they tried to tell the crowds about "staying cool", they just got worse and worse. People just apparently don't know how to behave civilized anymore.
Understand that the following is typical "blame-the-victim" mentality, but I think it has a lot of basis in-fact:
When you write a game whose story, material, and setting, attract violent, unparented pre-teens as the chief demographic among your customers - you should pretty much expect the "I will find you and kill you" mentality to be strongly dominant among your customer base.
I'm betting that if the CoD-type game authors turned to writing First-Person-Barbie-Doll simulations, they'd have a wildly different set of customers, and more civilized feedback.
No. It belongs on an SLS booster.
Best Hentai site evAr!
I unblocked ads for them. There are few sites for whom I do that.
Slashdot is where I heard of them - and why I put them on my weekly reading-list.
It sucks that they're going to most likely be replaced by outfits such as OMGUbuntu. :(
What is holding Microsoft's stock up?
I am assuming: NSA subcontracting.
Your comment gave me cancer. Also, are you allergic to Reddit?
Video? All I see is a big yellow box with a little circle and a blue "f" in the middle. That's why I prefer reading articles to videos.
To a certain degree, the downside is that this can lead to a big old circlejerk (also-known-as groupthink - also-known-as, colloquially from the pleasant times of 1930's-40's Germany; zeitgeist).
But by-and-large, I have been on slashdot from before the moderation system. I remember the debates. I didn't agree with the reasons for moderation. But after CmdrTaco made those changes, things did get better, and I really do agree that peer moderation, though not perfect, is the best way to deal with fanbois and trolls. (and ESPECIALLY astroturfing - which has been a HUGE problem, here on slashdot, historically).
yes - this is a real issue - and ARCHIVED data that is important DOES need to be "spun up" and refreshed to new media.
If it's hard drives, yes. If it's optical media. . . well that depends. Because some optical media just plain degrades over time. Some is written in special proprietary formats (like Apple's early implementations of CD+R) that you're going to have a hard time reading with CURRENT equipment.
If your data is archived to tape, and more than 10 years old, I'm afraid you're fucked.
. . . IMO - it's almost certainly the book/teacher.
True; but STILL . . . I went for a few years coding without really having much of a need for math beyond Algebra. Then I started getting into some interesting projects. I had to force myself to learn calculus. (realizing that: - a lot of basic calculus is already embodied in programming structures - it's just expressed differently in mathematics. Already having a background in programming gave me an insight to calculus that made it a LOT easier to understand, than when I struggled with pre-calc in High School).
nor do they really have the power to do jack didlysquat about it if they DID care. Really.
. . . well, to be fair, the same contingent of "geniuses" took us to war in Iraq based on a "1% chance" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . .
Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).
These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.
And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.
If you have insurance you pay the medical expenses for smokers, alcoholics or drug users . . . who are presumably WORKING, and on an employer-provided plan.
It's the NON-WORKING drug-users that I have a problem with. Gee, I wish I had the luxury to sit around all day, play video games, smoke crack, and have someone else work their ass off to pay for it.
. . . well, the first practical applications of industrial manufacturing, and computers, have been war and genocide. I don't expect THAT to change.
. . . . standing in VERY long lines. . .
exactly.
I'm upset that I'm in my 40's and can't have what my parents had - (including a secure retirement) - despite their lack of college education. Yes, this IS a fucking depression, and despite a localized, brief illusion of recovery, things are, long-term, on the down trend. We will likely have a pretty nice spring and summer (jobs and energy-price wise) - but the drought is continuing, and harvest will be bad, food prices will continue to climb (globally), and the EU financial situation is continuing to spiral downwards. Confidence in our financial institutions is not improving. It's likely that after around October, we're going to see some more signs of another downward change in direction in the global economy, which will continue to put the brakes on the US economy, no matter how much more austerity we continue to apply.
I don't expect this much class from Ellison. I really don't.
I may be paraphrasing Nathan Explosion here, but we're all facing mortality. Most of us are just in denial about it - most of the time.
That's not actually true. He was "saving" us from a world dominated by overpriced IBM time-sharing systems, and Sun, SGI, workstations. The world of the vertically-integrated systems.
There was no such thing as "personal computers" - and commodity hardware didn't really exist until the IBM PC and Apple I came on the market. As Microsoft was an independent software company, Bill Gates' "vision" was that by de-coupling the software from the hardware, he was providing a solution to the high-priced systems that the vertically-integrated competitors were selling.
At least, that was the idea in the late 1980's, early 1990's. And it was really the truth. Your typical IBM PC, plus MS DOS, plus productivity software, was a crapload cheaper than all competitors. When competitors DID emerge, the productivity software didn't exist. And that's where the problem occurred, because that's where MS became a monopoly. The only thing that kept prices competitive was the competition in the hardware space, and the bundling deals.
It's very different, in the post-2005-ish market, now that there are viable Linux solutions out there. Microsoft is hurting because of this. Most of their former competitors - if you hadn't noticed, are gone.
Gonna just squirt on down to Cabo on my Yune.
. . . who could have imagined that?