It's sad that when someone mentions anything to do with the Catholic church, the first thoughts are not related to how much it has helped people.
I agree that it is sad, but it is also accurate. It's also not the fault of techies, but the fault of the Catholic church for engaging in bad behavior. How many people have AIDS today because the Catholic church lied to them about contraception? How many children are going hungry because their parents can't feed 8 kids? How many people live with unnecessary guilt due to psychological abuse heaped on them by nuns?
Are you really going to blame the "techies" for all this?
The Catholic church is one of the most scientific religions out there. The idea that faith and reason both are needed is one of it's fundamental tenets.
The most scientific religion is like the most delicious turd. It's still shit. Giving lip service to science doesn't absolve them for dealing in falsehoods and profiting off of peoples insecurities.
I am of the opinion that the problem is actually the Linux GUIs that are junk.
Then compare a command line Linux app to a Microsoft GUI app. For instance, LaTeX and R vs Word and Excel. You might get more done in your first 10 minutes if you use the GUI products, but 10 years from now you'll be wishing you had put in the work to learn the CLI alternative.
Most applications "GUI" on linux in fact nothing more than shoddy "shells" for the actual application which runs on the CLI
That's actually the best type of GUI. You get all the strengths of both a CLI and a GUI. Much more software should be designed like RasMol or Gnuplot, nothing more than a command line app with X as an optional display.
AKA, a desktop environment. Xfce provides desktop icons, a control panel, a terminal, and a file manager. What more do you need?
When you want to consider if something is a desktop environment or simply a window manager, think about what sense it would make to write a word processor for it. GNOME? Sure. KDE? Yes. XFCE? Not so much.
So a desktop environment is a window manager with so many unique features that it breaks compatibility with other environments. Sounds like a good reason to avoid desktop environments.
The spoken word is just an auditory CLI. We operate those around us via commands (and requests, and interrogatives, but you get the idea) every day. I expect you'd find it quite unusual if someone tried to get you to do something just by pointing and clicking.
This is dead on. Human beings invented symbolic language because it's simply more expressive than pointing and grunting. CLIs are superior to GUIs for the same reason.
What the hell are you talking about? Reality completely contradicts everything you said.
What reality is this?
For all western countries I can think of, certainly the majority of population, a CD costs nowhere near a weeks worth of food
I don't know about you, but I could eat for a week on $15 pretty easily. Butter, flour, sugar, beans, rice, salt. Spend about $2 on each and you're fed for the week for the price of 1 CD.
singles are the majority of purchases; which can frequently be had for less than a dollar.
$1 for 4 minutes of entertainment? Is that really what you call affordable and reasonably priced?
Since we're comparing music and food, consider the price of a CD and the price of a meal at a restaurant. Both last about an hour, and cost around $15. The meal is served to you by an actual person, prepared hot by another actual person. You can even make alterations. The CD is made in bulk and shipped in bulk, and every one of them is exactly the same. Given all this, don't you think the music industry seems a bit... inefficient? Certainly, "extremely affordable and reasonably priced" are not the words that come to mind when I make such a comparison.
Don't bet on it. All the science we have has told us that Cannabis is at least as safe as any drug in our medicine cabinets. Yet we have been fighting a war against it for decades.
You can't use facts to win a debate the government isn't even willing to have.
This argument is total bunk. The punishment is for the crime, not for the sum total of the individual. In a court, the same crime should yield the same punishment. Society can mete out rewards and punishment for other desirable and undesirable behavior in other ways.
e.g. If I'm a hedge fund manager who gets busted with drugs, A) I get paid a lot and B) I get thrown in jail. If I'm a trailer park resident who gets busted with drugs, A) I don't get paid much and B) I get thrown in jail. The hedge fund manager is still ahead. Voila, equal protection under the law and meritocracy are both preserved.
We assume for the sake of argument here that a hedge fund manager actually contributes positively to society. This is of course not actually the case.
As far as the public goes, the parts who know and care at least, hundreds of millions of people are being persecuted globally because a few overprivileged rich guys want their stupid business models protected.
Unfortunately, the ones who know and care are a very small minority. Look at the public opinion on most gaming sites on Sony vs Hotz, for instance. Bunch of dumb kids blaming Hotz for cheating on online games, and ready to sacrifice basic property rights to deal with it. Sickening.
Why should they have to fly in generators anyway? If this thing is generating enough heat to melt through steel and concrete, it has enough heat to boil water and run a turbine.
there is at least some mild form of intellectual discussion present with respect to political topics. However, that doesn't seem to be present when we speak of the Tea Party.
Because the Tea Party is incapable of any sort of intellectualism.
It's as if the "small government" crowd is meant to be laughed at or something.
They are to be laughed at, as they are utterly hypocritical and ignorant of that fact. How can any "small government" advocate be against people e.g. exercising their First and Thirteenth amendment rights to collectively bargain, for instance? Do they love the Constitution, or hate it? Which is it?
Say what you want about Tea Partiers (or baggers?) but they have critical mass now and are a force to be reckoned with.
Idiots have always had critical mass and been a force to be reckoned with in American politics. Believe me, any fun had at their expense is gallows humor. We laugh, because otherwise we'd have to cry.
I have a challenge for you. You wish to be a libertarian. Then find a way to deregulate everything without imposing on my individual freedom to breathe clean air.
unless you want to start asking why Chris Dodd needed a super deal on a Countrywide mortgage with his $174,000 salary, or Charlie Rangel needed to omit his properties and stock holdings from his tax returns, or why VP Biden doesn't donate anything to charity when he makes even more than Congress.
Slashdot Mirror
It's sad that when someone mentions anything to do with the Catholic church, the first thoughts are not related to how much it has helped people.
I agree that it is sad, but it is also accurate. It's also not the fault of techies, but the fault of the Catholic church for engaging in bad behavior. How many people have AIDS today because the Catholic church lied to them about contraception? How many children are going hungry because their parents can't feed 8 kids? How many people live with unnecessary guilt due to psychological abuse heaped on them by nuns?
Are you really going to blame the "techies" for all this?
The Catholic church is one of the most scientific religions out there.
The idea that faith and reason both are needed is one of it's fundamental tenets.
The most scientific religion is like the most delicious turd. It's still shit. Giving lip service to science doesn't absolve them for dealing in falsehoods and profiting off of peoples insecurities.
I am of the opinion that the problem is actually the Linux GUIs that are junk.
Then compare a command line Linux app to a Microsoft GUI app. For instance, LaTeX and R vs Word and Excel. You might get more done in your first 10 minutes if you use the GUI products, but 10 years from now you'll be wishing you had put in the work to learn the CLI alternative.
Most applications "GUI" on linux in fact nothing more than shoddy "shells" for the actual application which runs on the CLI
That's actually the best type of GUI. You get all the strengths of both a CLI and a GUI. Much more software should be designed like RasMol or Gnuplot, nothing more than a command line app with X as an optional display.
XFCE is a full featured window manager.
AKA, a desktop environment. Xfce provides desktop icons, a control panel, a terminal, and a file manager. What more do you need?
When you want to consider if something is a desktop environment or simply a window manager, think about what sense it would make to write a word processor for it. GNOME? Sure. KDE? Yes. XFCE? Not so much.
So a desktop environment is a window manager with so many unique features that it breaks compatibility with other environments. Sounds like a good reason to avoid desktop environments.
Everything? I'd encourage you to write an OS using a point and click programming language.
The spoken word is just an auditory CLI. We operate those around us via commands (and requests, and interrogatives, but you get the idea) every day. I expect you'd find it quite unusual if someone tried to get you to do something just by pointing and clicking.
This is dead on. Human beings invented symbolic language because it's simply more expressive than pointing and grunting. CLIs are superior to GUIs for the same reason.
Boy, it would be awfully nice to have screen shots to show us what the ()*&*(&%^&^ GUI looks like.
Why would that help? Both GNOME and KDE can be configured to look however you want.
Wouldn't something like R be better suited to that kind of data analysis?
Yes, and they should be controlled by XBMC remotes.
Steam evolved as a response to everything that was wrong with gamestop.
Really? Steam can help me buy games for the Sega Saturn or Neo Geo Pocket Color?
What the hell are you talking about? Reality completely contradicts everything you said.
What reality is this?
For all western countries I can think of, certainly the majority of population, a CD costs nowhere near a weeks worth of food
I don't know about you, but I could eat for a week on $15 pretty easily. Butter, flour, sugar, beans, rice, salt. Spend about $2 on each and you're fed for the week for the price of 1 CD.
singles are the majority of purchases; which can frequently be had for less than a dollar.
$1 for 4 minutes of entertainment? Is that really what you call affordable and reasonably priced?
Since we're comparing music and food, consider the price of a CD and the price of a meal at a restaurant. Both last about an hour, and cost around $15. The meal is served to you by an actual person, prepared hot by another actual person. You can even make alterations. The CD is made in bulk and shipped in bulk, and every one of them is exactly the same. Given all this, don't you think the music industry seems a bit... inefficient? Certainly, "extremely affordable and reasonably priced" are not the words that come to mind when I make such a comparison.
Piracy dropped like a stone when cheap downloads became available.
Did that actually happen? What data supports this assertion?
Don't bet on it. All the science we have has told us that Cannabis is at least as safe as any drug in our medicine cabinets. Yet we have been fighting a war against it for decades.
You can't use facts to win a debate the government isn't even willing to have.
This argument is total bunk. The punishment is for the crime, not for the sum total of the individual. In a court, the same crime should yield the same punishment. Society can mete out rewards and punishment for other desirable and undesirable behavior in other ways.
e.g. If I'm a hedge fund manager who gets busted with drugs, A) I get paid a lot and B) I get thrown in jail. If I'm a trailer park resident who gets busted with drugs, A) I don't get paid much and B) I get thrown in jail. The hedge fund manager is still ahead. Voila, equal protection under the law and meritocracy are both preserved.
We assume for the sake of argument here that a hedge fund manager actually contributes positively to society. This is of course not actually the case.
As far as the public goes, the parts who know and care at least, hundreds of millions of people are being persecuted globally because a few overprivileged rich guys want their stupid business models protected.
Unfortunately, the ones who know and care are a very small minority. Look at the public opinion on most gaming sites on Sony vs Hotz, for instance. Bunch of dumb kids blaming Hotz for cheating on online games, and ready to sacrifice basic property rights to deal with it. Sickening.
Sure, they spent millions of dollars trying to find a way to have their cake and eat it too. Turns out you can't.
Why should they have to fly in generators anyway? If this thing is generating enough heat to melt through steel and concrete, it has enough heat to boil water and run a turbine.
*ONE* day of the year?
Mark Slashdot as untrusted in NoScript. Switch your user preferences to the Classic Discussion System. /. becomes usable again.
I'm waiting until tomorrow, when I can get the first post-April Fools day first post.
The inventor of fire never got a patent on it. Think of all the royalties he missed out on!
It's also National Cleavage Day. How are you celebrating?
there is at least some mild form of intellectual discussion present with respect to political topics. However, that doesn't seem to be present when we speak of the Tea Party.
Because the Tea Party is incapable of any sort of intellectualism.
It's as if the "small government" crowd is meant to be laughed at or something.
They are to be laughed at, as they are utterly hypocritical and ignorant of that fact. How can any "small government" advocate be against people e.g. exercising their First and Thirteenth amendment rights to collectively bargain, for instance? Do they love the Constitution, or hate it? Which is it?
Say what you want about Tea Partiers (or baggers?) but they have critical mass now and are a force to be reckoned with.
Idiots have always had critical mass and been a force to be reckoned with in American politics. Believe me, any fun had at their expense is gallows humor. We laugh, because otherwise we'd have to cry.
I have a challenge for you. You wish to be a libertarian. Then find a way to deregulate everything without imposing on my individual freedom to breathe clean air.
unless you want to start asking why Chris Dodd needed a super deal on a Countrywide mortgage with his $174,000 salary, or Charlie Rangel needed to omit his properties and stock holdings from his tax returns, or why VP Biden doesn't donate anything to charity when he makes even more than Congress.
I do, I do, and I do.