Ask yourself, "What software projects does RMS devote his time too?". To my knowledge, not many if any. He is a great advocate and he has done many things for our community but he did not complete what he set out to do.
Although to my understanding that's true today, he was largely responsible for several important projects, including emacs and gcc. The GNU project never achieved all of its goals, but his software contributions are integral to the free Unix(-like) operating systems of today.
So yeah, it's getting out of control and it's time to go back to common sense ideas that worked when Clinton agreed with the Republicans that unlimited taxpayer money for able bodied adults is silly.
With an attitude like that, you'll never be able to buy any votes.
now that GNOME 3 has a supported-in-the-long-term "Classic" mode?
The Gnome developers have a long history of throwing out features and behavior based on a whim. Why would anyone believe that "classic mode" is going to receive long-term support?
I hope that "we'll defer this change until the next cycle" also means that it's getting re-thought, rather than just delayed.
If you have any hope of that, you've obviously not actually used Gnome for any length of time. Considering their users is not something that Gnome designers seem to have any desire to do.
And there are HDMI switches out there that could be used that are much cheaper than the XBO
Somehow I doubt that the point is for somebody to go out and buy an XBox when they need an HDMI switch. The idea is that if you've got an XBox and a shortage of ports, you don't have to go out and buy an extra switch.
So... err... how will it go now? Instead of posting a 60th second they will make the 59th second twice as long, and have everyone think their clocks are fast, accept that out of sync clocks are a fact of life, and just synchronize?
They'll simply stop trying to correct UTC to match the rotation angle of the earth. "Correcting" UTC that way is mostly helpful to astronomers, and for everyone else has no benefit and some significant drawbacks.
Their kids are 5 and 2. Their parents are doing this for a single year. Somehow, I think that between the ages of 3 and 18 they'll be able to pick up the skills they need.
Even should they decide to do this permanently, there's no reason to think that the parents are going to ban their children from using computers. They will attend school, and socialize with their friends. Hard as it may be for someone on Slashdot to believe, being connected to the internet all the time is not universal. Not even in the United States. There are many, many households that have no or limited access to computers at home.
Finally, there are certain groups that forego technology for various reasons; sometimes religious, sometimes otherwise. It turns out that children from these cultures do just fine. They have lots of opportunities open to them, and if they choose they can learn skills that they might have missed out on at a later point. This is nothing unique to technology -- there are lots of skills that can be invaluable in today's society that most people don't have.
No. It's not abuse. It's a parenting choice, and I'll bet that their children are going to be better off than the kids whose parents think that giving them a cell phone and a television is all they need to do. The fact that the parents are making this decision tells me that they are actually involved in the lives of their children, which is far more important than any gadget.
but purposely crippling your children's education and ability to function in the world in which they will have to survive is something akin to child abuse if you ask me.
This is an absolute trivialization of the negative effects of actual child abuse. You think that it's a bad method of parenting -- fine. But trying to equate it to abuse is laughable.
Not necessarily. I mean, we label ingredients now, and that isn't due to having"scientifically-documented health risk".
There are plenty of scientifically-documented health reasons to require knowledge of ingredients. Allergies, for instance; also nutrition is related to ingredients and has an obvious impact on health. This doesn't apply for GMO foods.
I just don't understand why people that are for GMO so much, would oppose simply labeling it as an ingredient or a process on a food.
The govt would only mandate it as an add-on to existing labeling laws. From there, the public can make their own informed choices.
What is more democratic than that? Why do you cheer for more 'obscurity' in how our foods are processed and made available to market?
You are free to choose foods whose manufacturers advertise their non-GMO nature. Manufacturers already know that they can sell things to people like you by advertising it, and so they do. I don't have a problem with the information being available. I have a problem with government mandates and regulations when they aren't necessary.
Just in the past week, we've had "Libertarians" support restrictions on abortions, both for and against the Keystone XL pipeline (private property rights, yes!, private property rights for anyone but corporations, no!) and both for and against gay marriage.
I've got a newsflash for you: in any group of people, there are people with differences of opinion. Members of any political party will have some areas of disagreement.
The fact that people who subscribe to (or think they subscribe to) libertarian political philosophy don't always agree with each other doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with that philosophy.
However, there's no reason for the tails representing dumb people and very smart people to be equal in size other than trying to make the data fit an easy to analyze mathematical curve.
The number of people in those "tails" don't really matter, because there aren't enough of them to appreciably affect the average.
Why should it not be mandated, just like they have to have ingredient labels on canned foods?
Why should it be mandated? It's not the government's business, unless there is an actual, scientifically-documented health risk involved. If you don't like genetically-modified food, it's your responsibility to choose products to avoid it. Plenty of manufacturers of food are helping you to do so by doing their own labeling.
This comes down to consumer preferences, and as such is not an appropriate target for government regulation. The default position should be to reject government regulation unless you can show that such regulation is actually beneficial to society.
Half the population isn't dumber than the average. That's not what average means. (pun intended)
If intelligence follows a normal distribution (and the results of most intelligence tests, at least, tend to support that conclusion), then half of the population will be less intelligent than the mean.
I would tend to agree... but not entirely... not knowing the name of the person for which one is voting can have a larger number of causes than only "can't be bothered".
I guess that's true, but I am trying (and failing) to come up with any valid reason why someone who does not know their candidate's name could possibly be considered qualified to cast a vote.
Well, I can't speak for the original poster, but in my book anyone who can't even figure out the name of which candidate they intend to vote for doesn't deserve to have their vote counted.
This is the main reason why I support removing party affiliation from all ballots. If someone can't be bothered to learn the name of the person that they're voting for, then they shouldn't be voting. Increasing voter turnout is only a worthwhile goal if the voters actually have some idea of what they're doing.
We already get enough pointless 300-post threads with everyone arguing about how they apparently know exactly what happened that day every time there's an article related to the Martin shooting. Nobody's going to change their mind on the subject at this point. No need to try to turn unrelated threads into the same argument.
It's kind of a waste of resources for the ACLU to defend 2nd amendment cases. The NRA and other groups are eager to fill the gap whereas there are fewer groups for other civil liberties.
That would make sense if the ACLU claimed a position in support of the Second Amendment, but had a policy of not taking cases related to it. In reality, though, they have an official position that opposes the Second Amendment.
They're certainly entitled to take that position, but it does mean that they don't live up to their mission to "defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States."
There are plenty of private carriers that deliver physical things. UPS, FedEX, DHL, others. Typically the private carriers do a better job. In my opinion that makes private service worth paying more for. I haven't used USPS to send things for years.
This seems to depend an awful lot on the local post office. In my area, sending packages via USPS is very good -- much more reliable and timely than UPS, and on par with FedEx, though much cheaper. On the other hand, I know people in other places where USPS is so bad that it's completely pointless to use it -- packages and letters are "lost" or destroyed more often than not.
The result is that if I have something being shipped to me, then I have the sender use USPS. If I'm shipping something myself, though, then unless I know that USPS is reliable for the receiver, I'll use another service.
The portrayal of behavioral addiction as just being due to the addict being weak-willed has not been current for several decades. If you know any psychologists, I would suggest asking them about the subject -- it's quite interesting. There are methods of treating addiction, but telling them to just quit doing it is very rarely successful.
Most addicts initially made poor choices to get themselves into the situation that they are in. But once they are, they need help to get back out. We don't deny people medical care if they injure themselves in pursuit of an extreme sport, for instance -- so why deny people medical help to recover from an addiction?
So what is the problem? Some people will always be happy to find a time sink.
An addiction is not just a "time sink." It's an addiction when you can't stop a behavior, even when it is harming your life.
Acknowledging that some people are addicted to internet usage, and need help, is not the same as saying that the internet is "bad." There's no need to get so defensive about it.
I just don't understand why Congress puts up with it. It's their toes being stepped on.
This is mostly due to the belief of many congressmen (along with most of the voting public) that the office of President is really that of Supreme Legislator.
Is anyone buying this? I doubt very much that there is any of that supposed $300 worth of software that there isn't as good or better free alternatives for. And this was supposed to be an organization that was based on free and open software. As the summary points out, there are many Android tablets available at far less than $150. And those are produced by "for profit" companies, not supposed non-profits (although I expect some pay their chief executives less that the OLPC executives skim off the top).
What next, are you going to tell me that when I buy a cheese slicer with a dozen attachment doohickeys from an informercial for $19.95, it's not actually a $300 value?
Perhaps but where are all the jackasses who kept screaming "correlations != causation" when the opposite was found? Isn't this study suffering from the same assumptions? Or do you accept "science" when it fits your model of the world... or at least your vision of the world?
"Correlation is not causation" only applies when a study yields an incorrect result. When the conclusion is correct, then obviously correlation does mean causation.
Slashdot Mirror
Ask yourself, "What software projects does RMS devote his time too?". To my knowledge, not many if any. He is a great advocate and he has done many things for our community but he did not complete what he set out to do.
Although to my understanding that's true today, he was largely responsible for several important projects, including emacs and gcc. The GNU project never achieved all of its goals, but his software contributions are integral to the free Unix(-like) operating systems of today.
So yeah, it's getting out of control and it's time to go back to common sense ideas that worked when Clinton agreed with the Republicans that unlimited taxpayer money for able bodied adults is silly.
With an attitude like that, you'll never be able to buy any votes.
now that GNOME 3 has a supported-in-the-long-term "Classic" mode?
The Gnome developers have a long history of throwing out features and behavior based on a whim. Why would anyone believe that "classic mode" is going to receive long-term support?
From that link:
The middle-click will be used to start selections, and provide text contextual menus (such as word definitions, sharing, etc.)
This is more "break the desktop in favor of tablet behavior" stupidity.
I hope that "we'll defer this change until the next cycle" also means that it's getting re-thought, rather than just delayed.
If you have any hope of that, you've obviously not actually used Gnome for any length of time. Considering their users is not something that Gnome designers seem to have any desire to do.
And there are HDMI switches out there that could be used that are much cheaper than the XBO
Somehow I doubt that the point is for somebody to go out and buy an XBox when they need an HDMI switch. The idea is that if you've got an XBox and a shortage of ports, you don't have to go out and buy an extra switch.
So... err... how will it go now? Instead of posting a 60th second they will make the 59th second twice as long, and have everyone think their clocks are fast, accept that out of sync clocks are a fact of life, and just synchronize?
They'll simply stop trying to correct UTC to match the rotation angle of the earth. "Correcting" UTC that way is mostly helpful to astronomers, and for everyone else has no benefit and some significant drawbacks.
Well, let's see:
Their kids are 5 and 2. Their parents are doing this for a single year. Somehow, I think that between the ages of 3 and 18 they'll be able to pick up the skills they need.
Even should they decide to do this permanently, there's no reason to think that the parents are going to ban their children from using computers. They will attend school, and socialize with their friends. Hard as it may be for someone on Slashdot to believe, being connected to the internet all the time is not universal. Not even in the United States. There are many, many households that have no or limited access to computers at home.
Finally, there are certain groups that forego technology for various reasons; sometimes religious, sometimes otherwise. It turns out that children from these cultures do just fine. They have lots of opportunities open to them, and if they choose they can learn skills that they might have missed out on at a later point. This is nothing unique to technology -- there are lots of skills that can be invaluable in today's society that most people don't have.
No. It's not abuse. It's a parenting choice, and I'll bet that their children are going to be better off than the kids whose parents think that giving them a cell phone and a television is all they need to do. The fact that the parents are making this decision tells me that they are actually involved in the lives of their children, which is far more important than any gadget.
Parent post would sound like a reasonable defense of FEMA, until this part...
So it was a reasonable defense of FEMA until the very first sentence?
but purposely crippling your children's education and ability to function in the world in which they will have to survive is something akin to child abuse if you ask me.
This is an absolute trivialization of the negative effects of actual child abuse. You think that it's a bad method of parenting -- fine. But trying to equate it to abuse is laughable.
Not necessarily. I mean, we label ingredients now, and that isn't due to having"scientifically-documented health risk".
There are plenty of scientifically-documented health reasons to require knowledge of ingredients. Allergies, for instance; also nutrition is related to ingredients and has an obvious impact on health. This doesn't apply for GMO foods.
I just don't understand why people that are for GMO so much, would oppose simply labeling it as an ingredient or a process on a food.
The govt would only mandate it as an add-on to existing labeling laws. From there, the public can make their own informed choices.
What is more democratic than that? Why do you cheer for more 'obscurity' in how our foods are processed and made available to market?
You are free to choose foods whose manufacturers advertise their non-GMO nature. Manufacturers already know that they can sell things to people like you by advertising it, and so they do. I don't have a problem with the information being available. I have a problem with government mandates and regulations when they aren't necessary.
Just in the past week, we've had "Libertarians" support restrictions on abortions, both for and against the Keystone XL pipeline (private property rights, yes!, private property rights for anyone but corporations, no!) and both for and against gay marriage.
I've got a newsflash for you: in any group of people, there are people with differences of opinion. Members of any political party will have some areas of disagreement.
The fact that people who subscribe to (or think they subscribe to) libertarian political philosophy don't always agree with each other doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with that philosophy.
However, there's no reason for the tails representing dumb people and very smart people to be equal in size other than trying to make the data fit an easy to analyze mathematical curve.
The number of people in those "tails" don't really matter, because there aren't enough of them to appreciably affect the average.
Why should it not be mandated, just like they have to have ingredient labels on canned foods?
Why should it be mandated? It's not the government's business, unless there is an actual, scientifically-documented health risk involved. If you don't like genetically-modified food, it's your responsibility to choose products to avoid it. Plenty of manufacturers of food are helping you to do so by doing their own labeling.
This comes down to consumer preferences, and as such is not an appropriate target for government regulation. The default position should be to reject government regulation unless you can show that such regulation is actually beneficial to society.
Half the population isn't dumber than the average. That's not what average means. (pun intended)
If intelligence follows a normal distribution (and the results of most intelligence tests, at least, tend to support that conclusion), then half of the population will be less intelligent than the mean.
I would tend to agree... but not entirely... not knowing the name of the person for which one is voting can have a larger number of causes than only "can't be bothered".
I guess that's true, but I am trying (and failing) to come up with any valid reason why someone who does not know their candidate's name could possibly be considered qualified to cast a vote.
Well, I can't speak for the original poster, but in my book anyone who can't even figure out the name of which candidate they intend to vote for doesn't deserve to have their vote counted.
This is the main reason why I support removing party affiliation from all ballots. If someone can't be bothered to learn the name of the person that they're voting for, then they shouldn't be voting. Increasing voter turnout is only a worthwhile goal if the voters actually have some idea of what they're doing.
We already get enough pointless 300-post threads with everyone arguing about how they apparently know exactly what happened that day every time there's an article related to the Martin shooting. Nobody's going to change their mind on the subject at this point. No need to try to turn unrelated threads into the same argument.
It's kind of a waste of resources for the ACLU to defend 2nd amendment cases. The NRA and other groups are eager to fill the gap whereas there are fewer groups for other civil liberties.
That would make sense if the ACLU claimed a position in support of the Second Amendment, but had a policy of not taking cases related to it. In reality, though, they have an official position that opposes the Second Amendment.
They're certainly entitled to take that position, but it does mean that they don't live up to their mission to "defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States."
There are plenty of private carriers that deliver physical things. UPS, FedEX, DHL, others. Typically the private carriers do a better job. In my opinion that makes private service worth paying more for. I haven't used USPS to send things for years.
This seems to depend an awful lot on the local post office. In my area, sending packages via USPS is very good -- much more reliable and timely than UPS, and on par with FedEx, though much cheaper. On the other hand, I know people in other places where USPS is so bad that it's completely pointless to use it -- packages and letters are "lost" or destroyed more often than not.
The result is that if I have something being shipped to me, then I have the sender use USPS. If I'm shipping something myself, though, then unless I know that USPS is reliable for the receiver, I'll use another service.
The portrayal of behavioral addiction as just being due to the addict being weak-willed has not been current for several decades. If you know any psychologists, I would suggest asking them about the subject -- it's quite interesting. There are methods of treating addiction, but telling them to just quit doing it is very rarely successful.
Most addicts initially made poor choices to get themselves into the situation that they are in. But once they are, they need help to get back out. We don't deny people medical care if they injure themselves in pursuit of an extreme sport, for instance -- so why deny people medical help to recover from an addiction?
So what is the problem? Some people will always be happy to find a time sink.
An addiction is not just a "time sink." It's an addiction when you can't stop a behavior, even when it is harming your life.
Acknowledging that some people are addicted to internet usage, and need help, is not the same as saying that the internet is "bad." There's no need to get so defensive about it.
I just don't understand why Congress puts up with it. It's their toes being stepped on.
This is mostly due to the belief of many congressmen (along with most of the voting public) that the office of President is really that of Supreme Legislator.
Is anyone buying this? I doubt very much that there is any of that supposed $300 worth of software that there isn't as good or better free alternatives for. And this was supposed to be an organization that was based on free and open software. As the summary points out, there are many Android tablets available at far less than $150. And those are produced by "for profit" companies, not supposed non-profits (although I expect some pay their chief executives less that the OLPC executives skim off the top).
What next, are you going to tell me that when I buy a cheese slicer with a dozen attachment doohickeys from an informercial for $19.95, it's not actually a $300 value?
Perhaps but where are all the jackasses who kept screaming "correlations != causation" when the opposite was found? Isn't this study suffering from the same assumptions? Or do you accept "science" when it fits your model of the world... or at least your vision of the world?
"Correlation is not causation" only applies when a study yields an incorrect result. When the conclusion is correct, then obviously correlation does mean causation.