Geek or not, somebody who refers to a book should make an effort to get the reference right. Besides, isn't nitpicking little facts like this the ultimate in geekiness? Then again, the nitpicking is usually about things like movie Spider-man versus comic book Spider-man.
You're sort of missing my point. There's a big difference between the psychology of totalitarianism as described in the book and the psychology of a tech installing a surveillance camera. That would be obvious to you if you actually read the book.
Also, I've never bought the notion that cameras in public venue are a violation of privacy. I simply don't see how a camera is any different from a cop walking a beat.
...that the only thing anybody knows about 1984 is that it's about a government that spies on its people. If that was the only thing the book was about, it would have been forgotten long ago — there are hundreds of stories like that. This particular story is interesting because it goes insides the minds of the people who make a totalitarian society work. If people actually read 1984, they might not be so quick to refer to it. Because if they did read it, they'd probably see themselves in it — and not as a brave defender of liberty, but as one of the faceless minions of Big Brother.
People have come to expect that the government is going to do that job for them, when really it is their responsibility to make sure their child learns.
So parents should have sole responsibility for their children's education? That's pretty much a formula for an illiterate populace.
It's perfectly true that public schools have become a nightmare of bureaucracy and ineptitude. That doesn't mean the fundamental idea of public education is unworkable. Quite the contrary: public education played a key role in making the U.S. the world's dominant economic power. The fact that we're losing that status has a lot to do with countries like India spending big bucks (for them) on education.
If you think there's no connection between spending and educational quality, you have your head in the hyperlibertarian sand. Look at private schools: there's a strong correlation between spending and educational quality. There has to be, in order for expensive private schools to justify their high cost.
As for public schools: yes, money without accountability means wasted money. But no money at all means wasted lives, and a society that has to import the workers it needs.
Yes, IBM sold the Thinkpad line to Lenovo. But the IBM logo continues to appear on Thinkpads, including the X60. Apparently IBM also sold the temporary right to use the IBM logo to "sustain sales momentum".
So it's a natural mistake to look at a Thinkpad and infer that IBM still plays some role in its development and deployment. Like many such branding exercises, Lenovo's use of the IBM logo is just a bit dishonest.
You're right in thinking that S-P is pulling a fast one: there's no evidence that Clarinex is any better (or worse) than Clariten. But it is a different chemical, and it makes perfect sense to allow a patent on it. What does not make sense is for any doctor to prescribe it!
Just because one chemical is a metabolite of another doesn't mean it doesn't have imporant differences. For example, there's another antihistimine, Allegra, that is a metabolite of the antihistamine Seldane. Their effects are similar, but Allegra can safely be taken in conjunction with certain antibiotics, which can cause ventricular arrhythmia when taken with Seldane.
Of course, there's some nasty BS here too. I used to use Seldane a lot, and was looking forward to the day its patent expired, so I wouldn't have to fork over $2 a pill. But just when the generic manufacturers were gearing up to make it, the FDA decided that Seldane-antibiotic synergy was too dangerous, and ordered Seldane off the market. Which is terribly inconsistent: usually with that kind of problem they just require a warning label. The party line was that having Allegra available made the risk of accidental misuse of Seldane unnecessary. The fact that banning Seldane cost consumers millions, and preserved a lucrative marketplace for Hoechst Marion Roussel was all beside the point!
Car thieves who steal autos with the keys left in the ignition still go to jail.
Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that the car owner doesn't have some responsibility. Suppose you heard somebody say, "Oh, I always leave my keys in the ignition — if it gets stolen, the cops will just get it back for me." You'd think he was pretty stupid, right? By the same token, you wonder at the intelligence who spends a lot of money on legal action to get a result that could more easily be obtained by reconfiguring the server.
Why would a company be so dumb as to spin off the most important part of its product (lets face it, hardware is commodity these days) and THEN sell it off to a competitor and THEN pay royalties??!
That's not exactly what happened — the story has its history wrong. Palm did not sell PalmOS to Access. Palm split itself into PalmSource (software) and PalmOne (hardware), with joint ownership of the Palm brand. Later, PalmOne bought back the right to call itself "Palm", and PalmSource got bought out by Access.
Am I picking nits? I don't think so. All the investors in the old Palm ended up with stakes in the two new companies. And a software-only company was better positioned to be bought out by a company like Access, a buyout that must have been very profitable for PalmSource stockholders. Meanwhile, PalmOne/Palm is free to develop hardware that is not based on an OS that is quickly losing ground to Windows.
Also, you're wrong when you say all hardware is a commodity. PC hardware (or more precisely, PC motherboards) are a commodity, because they're produced on a huge scale by lots of different manufacturers who fight each other to sell them cheaply to big PC companies. But PalmOS-based PDAs have a tiny market with very little competition. Palm does not face the problems of commodity manufacturers (fierce competition to sell virtually identical products), it faces the problems of a specialized manufacturer that has gotten a little too specialized. If Palm survives at all, it will be as yet another manufacturer of smartphones, where competition is based as much on features as on price.
I personally use both a Palm PDA and a cell, even though the cell has PDA functionality. (Nowadays it's pretty hard to buy a cell that doesn't.) I find the PDA features of the phone too limited, and too hard to use. But you're still basically correct: most people just can't be bothered with a separate PDA. I expect the "true PDA" market to die in near future — there aren't enough purists like me to sustain it.
do you REALLY need it to be a full blown computer when most of the time your going to be using it to take contacts and stuff.
Not only do you not need to, you don't want to. One reason the Palm succeeded where the Newton failed is it's sense of focus: the Palm is designed to be an adjunct to a PC, not a replacement for it.
Well, if Debian developers feel that people shouldn't be paid for their contributions to the distro, then they should make it an explicit part of their charter or rules or whatever. In the meantime, it's a little silly to go all man-the-barricades just because somebody's donated a tiny amount of money to help get the next release out the door.
You should also be asking yourselves whether this "volunteers only" model works. The issues Debian has had with flaky software and missed schedules seem to indicate that it doesn't. Lots of organizations rely on volunteers, but also employ paid staff. It's often the only way to make sure all the skills the org needs are available, or to guarantee some consistency of effort. Yes, once you start paying people, you risk sliding down the slippery slope of going commercial. You just have to decide whether that's worse than the risk of your organization just falling apart because crucial stuff isn't getting done.
And once again, I have to object to some self-righteous, patronizing language. You say "community, not corporation" as if the two were mutually exclusive. Any group of people working together needs to be a community, whether they're a group of unpaid volunteers or a department in a big corporation. If people don't feel they're part of a community, the quality of work suffers. And from what I've seen of the FOSS movement, relying on unpaid volunteers does not guarantee a sense of community!
being in the work force, you should know that often times people say "hey, I can cobble together some shit in five minutes and move on to the next thing I don't want to be doing".
There are indeed. But you seem to think that anybody who works for pay is like that. Your own attitude perhaps? Better get over it before mom and dad stop paying your bills.
Wonder how they'll get around their current licenses?
They won't. Presumably the new distribution network has measures that prevent it from working outside the UK. Hard to imagine how that would work, but it must be there, or the Beeb's licensees will make them shut it down.
That's one of the most self-righteous, idiotic statements I've ever heard. You're saying that anybody who gets paid to do something does it for the money and doesn't care about the quality of what they do. That's bullshit, of the smelliest variety. I get paid for most of what I do, but I take pride in my work. I've walked away from jobs — jobs were I was getting paid huge amounts of money — because there were other factors that made the job professionally or ethically unacceptable. And I'm not alone.
I'm guessing you've never had to worry about paying the bills or having a place to live. If you had, you'd know that sometimes people have to say, "God, I'd love to work on that, but I need to be doing something that brings in some money."
Well, I was thinking of a very simple forum: each post is represented by a row that contains just the index field, a text field that contains the post content, and a couple other fields that contain metadata, such as the date of the post. I suppose a typical forum database would also have a field for things like parent and child posts. Now, these could be foreign keys (yes, that's allowed; table often have relations with themselves) but for a simple application that doesn't make sense. You'd access the rows one at a time, and cross references would be handled by your procedural code, not your SQL.
Except I've never actually written this kind of software, so I'm talking through my third orifice. Anyway, this is just an example. The key point is that MySQL works perfectly well (and is faster) when all you need is a flat database. Where many MySQL enthusiasts go wrong is assuming that MySQL can do anything an RDBMS can do, just because it implements SQL.
Your statement requires one qualification: foreign keys are essential in a relational database. The fact is, most applications implemented on top of MySQL use it as a simple flat database, with no attempt (and often no need) to normalize the data. A classic example is a forum or wiki, where each post or topic is represented by a table row, and there are no relations to other tables. For that kind of non-relational database, foreign keys are not at all necessary.
Of course, once you get into more complex applications, you start using relations and normalizing your data — or at least you should. But many self-taught database "experts" out there have no idea what "relations" and "normalization" are. Or if they do, they assume MySQL supports them because it uses the same query language as relational DBMSs.
If you were really that old-fashioned, you wouldn't have to disable JavaScript. The graphical web browser was invented in 1992, so you'd be compelled to use a text-only browser, such as Lynx. And those don't have any JavaScript to disable.
You are obviously part of an Evil Conspiracy. Please rant some more so I can figure out which one.
Let me put it this way: why do you suppose they provide Mac versions of Acrobat, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, InDesign, and more, but not FrameMaker?
Slashdot Mirror
Geek or not, somebody who refers to a book should make an effort to get the reference right. Besides, isn't nitpicking little facts like this the ultimate in geekiness? Then again, the nitpicking is usually about things like movie Spider-man versus comic book Spider-man.
You're sort of missing my point. There's a big difference between the psychology of totalitarianism as described in the book and the psychology of a tech installing a surveillance camera. That would be obvious to you if you actually read the book.
Also, I've never bought the notion that cameras in public venue are a violation of privacy. I simply don't see how a camera is any different from a cop walking a beat.
...that the only thing anybody knows about 1984 is that it's about a government that spies on its people. If that was the only thing the book was about, it would have been forgotten long ago — there are hundreds of stories like that. This particular story is interesting because it goes insides the minds of the people who make a totalitarian society work. If people actually read 1984, they might not be so quick to refer to it. Because if they did read it, they'd probably see themselves in it — and not as a brave defender of liberty, but as one of the faceless minions of Big Brother.
So parents should have sole responsibility for their children's education? That's pretty much a formula for an illiterate populace.
It's perfectly true that public schools have become a nightmare of bureaucracy and ineptitude. That doesn't mean the fundamental idea of public education is unworkable. Quite the contrary: public education played a key role in making the U.S. the world's dominant economic power. The fact that we're losing that status has a lot to do with countries like India spending big bucks (for them) on education.
If you think there's no connection between spending and educational quality, you have your head in the hyperlibertarian sand. Look at private schools: there's a strong correlation between spending and educational quality. There has to be, in order for expensive private schools to justify their high cost.
As for public schools: yes, money without accountability means wasted money. But no money at all means wasted lives, and a society that has to import the workers it needs.
Yes, IBM sold the Thinkpad line to Lenovo. But the IBM logo continues to appear on Thinkpads, including the X60. Apparently IBM also sold the temporary right to use the IBM logo to "sustain sales momentum".
So it's a natural mistake to look at a Thinkpad and infer that IBM still plays some role in its development and deployment. Like many such branding exercises, Lenovo's use of the IBM logo is just a bit dishonest.
You're right in thinking that S-P is pulling a fast one: there's no evidence that Clarinex is any better (or worse) than Clariten. But it is a different chemical, and it makes perfect sense to allow a patent on it. What does not make sense is for any doctor to prescribe it!
Just because one chemical is a metabolite of another doesn't mean it doesn't have imporant differences. For example, there's another antihistimine, Allegra, that is a metabolite of the antihistamine Seldane. Their effects are similar, but Allegra can safely be taken in conjunction with certain antibiotics, which can cause ventricular arrhythmia when taken with Seldane.
Of course, there's some nasty BS here too. I used to use Seldane a lot, and was looking forward to the day its patent expired, so I wouldn't have to fork over $2 a pill. But just when the generic manufacturers were gearing up to make it, the FDA decided that Seldane-antibiotic synergy was too dangerous, and ordered Seldane off the market. Which is terribly inconsistent: usually with that kind of problem they just require a warning label. The party line was that having Allegra available made the risk of accidental misuse of Seldane unnecessary. The fact that banning Seldane cost consumers millions, and preserved a lucrative marketplace for Hoechst Marion Roussel was all beside the point!
Not true. The odd person is neither here nor there.
That's not exactly what happened — the story has its history wrong. Palm did not sell PalmOS to Access. Palm split itself into PalmSource (software) and PalmOne (hardware), with joint ownership of the Palm brand. Later, PalmOne bought back the right to call itself "Palm", and PalmSource got bought out by Access.
Am I picking nits? I don't think so. All the investors in the old Palm ended up with stakes in the two new companies. And a software-only company was better positioned to be bought out by a company like Access, a buyout that must have been very profitable for PalmSource stockholders. Meanwhile, PalmOne/Palm is free to develop hardware that is not based on an OS that is quickly losing ground to Windows.
Also, you're wrong when you say all hardware is a commodity. PC hardware (or more precisely, PC motherboards) are a commodity, because they're produced on a huge scale by lots of different manufacturers who fight each other to sell them cheaply to big PC companies. But PalmOS-based PDAs have a tiny market with very little competition. Palm does not face the problems of commodity manufacturers (fierce competition to sell virtually identical products), it faces the problems of a specialized manufacturer that has gotten a little too specialized. If Palm survives at all, it will be as yet another manufacturer of smartphones, where competition is based as much on features as on price.
How can it be otherwise when half the population is below median in intelligence?!
I personally use both a Palm PDA and a cell, even though the cell has PDA functionality. (Nowadays it's pretty hard to buy a cell that doesn't.) I find the PDA features of the phone too limited, and too hard to use. But you're still basically correct: most people just can't be bothered with a separate PDA. I expect the "true PDA" market to die in near future — there aren't enough purists like me to sustain it.
Not only do you not need to, you don't want to. One reason the Palm succeeded where the Newton failed is it's sense of focus: the Palm is designed to be an adjunct to a PC, not a replacement for it.
Well, if Debian developers feel that people shouldn't be paid for their contributions to the distro, then they should make it an explicit part of their charter or rules or whatever. In the meantime, it's a little silly to go all man-the-barricades just because somebody's donated a tiny amount of money to help get the next release out the door.
You should also be asking yourselves whether this "volunteers only" model works. The issues Debian has had with flaky software and missed schedules seem to indicate that it doesn't. Lots of organizations rely on volunteers, but also employ paid staff. It's often the only way to make sure all the skills the org needs are available, or to guarantee some consistency of effort. Yes, once you start paying people, you risk sliding down the slippery slope of going commercial. You just have to decide whether that's worse than the risk of your organization just falling apart because crucial stuff isn't getting done.
And once again, I have to object to some self-righteous, patronizing language. You say "community, not corporation" as if the two were mutually exclusive. Any group of people working together needs to be a community, whether they're a group of unpaid volunteers or a department in a big corporation. If people don't feel they're part of a community, the quality of work suffers. And from what I've seen of the FOSS movement, relying on unpaid volunteers does not guarantee a sense of community!
Because not everybody can find work in the middle of nowhere?
If you think $6K is "wealth", somebody else must write your rent checks. Or do you live in Albania?
That's one of the most self-righteous, idiotic statements I've ever heard. You're saying that anybody who gets paid to do something does it for the money and doesn't care about the quality of what they do. That's bullshit, of the smelliest variety. I get paid for most of what I do, but I take pride in my work. I've walked away from jobs — jobs were I was getting paid huge amounts of money — because there were other factors that made the job professionally or ethically unacceptable. And I'm not alone.
I'm guessing you've never had to worry about paying the bills or having a place to live. If you had, you'd know that sometimes people have to say, "God, I'd love to work on that, but I need to be doing something that brings in some money."
Well, I was thinking of a very simple forum: each post is represented by a row that contains just the index field, a text field that contains the post content, and a couple other fields that contain metadata, such as the date of the post. I suppose a typical forum database would also have a field for things like parent and child posts. Now, these could be foreign keys (yes, that's allowed; table often have relations with themselves) but for a simple application that doesn't make sense. You'd access the rows one at a time, and cross references would be handled by your procedural code, not your SQL.
Except I've never actually written this kind of software, so I'm talking through my third orifice. Anyway, this is just an example. The key point is that MySQL works perfectly well (and is faster) when all you need is a flat database. Where many MySQL enthusiasts go wrong is assuming that MySQL can do anything an RDBMS can do, just because it implements SQL.
You can always run the 1991 version.
It's worth mentioning that these values vary slightly from person to person.
Your statement requires one qualification: foreign keys are essential in a relational database. The fact is, most applications implemented on top of MySQL use it as a simple flat database, with no attempt (and often no need) to normalize the data. A classic example is a forum or wiki, where each post or topic is represented by a table row, and there are no relations to other tables. For that kind of non-relational database, foreign keys are not at all necessary.
Of course, once you get into more complex applications, you start using relations and normalizing your data — or at least you should. But many self-taught database "experts" out there have no idea what "relations" and "normalization" are. Or if they do, they assume MySQL supports them because it uses the same query language as relational DBMSs.
If you were really that old-fashioned, you wouldn't have to disable JavaScript. The graphical web browser was invented in 1992, so you'd be compelled to use a text-only browser, such as Lynx. And those don't have any JavaScript to disable.
You are obviously part of an Evil Conspiracy. Please rant some more so I can figure out which one.
Let me put it this way: why do you suppose they provide Mac versions of Acrobat, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, InDesign, and more, but not FrameMaker?