Naur is hardly alone in not liking "computer science". The department where I studied CS was called "Information Science" because (as the chairman put it) computers are just instruments, not the thing being studied; do you call astronomers "telescopists"?
But that's actually wrong. Computers are instruments, but they're not just instruments. Their existence drives the whole discipline. Leave "computer" out of the terminology and most people won't know what you're talking about. When I told people I was majoring in "Information Science", they though I was studying to be a librarian! "Datalogy" is even worse.
Hey, most people here got their physics from watching Star Trek. Which means their knowledge is pre-Newtonian.
Anyway, education is not the issue here. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or even a model rocket scientist) to understand that big heavy metal structures can fall down and hurt people. I myself thought the used tower concept was perfectly cool until you explained why it wasn't.
The problem is that many folks just don't like to admit that they don't know what they don't know. That's a problem with almost every discussion on Slashdot. Not a lot you can do about it.
Jeez dude, read before you react. He said what was dangerous: 60 fucking feet of unstable, rustable metal. Any piece of which can fall down and turn you into a quadriplegic. Or fall on your neighbor and put you in hock for the next century.
Old ladies? I used to work for a company that provided management services to homeowner's associations, which job entailed attending a lot of association board meetings. Lots of basically intelligent and tolerant people would expend major hassles over things like satellite dishes. Now the sight of a dish is not something I could ever bring myself to care about, but many homeowners get darned worked up about it. They'd ban them completely if they could, but since they can't, the jump through hoops making them as inconspicuous as they possibly can.
OK, that's just bizarre. But sometimes people have a point. Like once my parents lived in a little neighborhood of one-story houses, and one of their neighbors decided they just had to have a sort of penthouse room on their roof. Went ahead and built it without getting planning permission. Not only was the thing as ugly as hell, but it destroyed the privacy of everybody on the block.
I don't think it's too much to expect recourse for something like that. The question is, once you start making rules, where do you stop?
Hey, it's all relative. Being a total klutz, I could have an Uzi in my carryon baggage, and honestly say, "No, I'm not carrying anything that I could use as a weapon."
That says something about small-town versus big-town life. This guy couldn't get the church to install a small repeater in their belfry, but nobody cares if he has a 60' tower on his property. In the big city, churches vie with each other to put transmitters in their towers (nice source of revenue), but a homeowner would never get a 60' tower past the zoning board, the local homeowner's assocation, the neighbors concerned about property values...
You obviously have never worked in an enterprise environment. If you had, you'd know that individuals don't always get to decide which programs they use.
As previously discussed, that doesn't solve the problem. Just because I'm smart enough not to turn on a dangerous feature doesn't mean everybody in my organization is. So my CIO bans the programs and enforces the ban with regular audits. That means I can't use the program, even though I know how to use it safely. That makes me pissed at the people who don't know how to design software without dangerous features. That fact that these features are off by default is like saying a gun is unloaded by default.
You're making the standard geek mistake of only evaluating a program in the context of your own, personal hacker-friendly environment. People who run enterprises have to evaluate the software in the context of that enterprise.
Which is exactly what the CIO did. What's dumb is that Google (allegedly) got careless about copying data, putting the CIO in the position of having to ban the program. And what's absolutely stupid is idiots like you insisting that it's no big deal, just because nobody's forced to use the product. That's like saying that exploding laptops are no problem, just because only some brands explode.
I use Google desktop, and find it very handy. It's quite possible I'll have to give up using it because of this issue. That doesn't make me feel well-disposed towards Google, or inclined to try any new products they might release.
Usually this kind of crap only happens on weekends, which is when everybody else goes home, leaving Zonk in charge. I guess everybody's taking a long weekend.
Could it be that Zonk is not a carbon-based unit? Maybe he's just a script that accepts stories at random.
On the other hand, he does seem to think that it's a big deal that the new Minis come without keyboards. It's supposed to mean that they meant to be media centers rather than computers. Except haven't Minis always come without keyboards? Their big selling point is that they work with all the peripherals you already bought for your PC.
Sure, I'd rather have a tablet than a PDA. But a decent tablet costs as much as a high-end laptop, and that's not going to change until more consumers start buying them. And there's no sign of that happening. Right now, most tablet sales are to vertical markets (like the health care industry), and that's never going to lead to mainstream adoption.
Here's the sad truth: most people don't like using stylus-based input devices. I prefer them, you prefer them, but there aren't enough people like us to make them profitable.
Fine, get out of the market. Just please, someone stay in.
Doesn't work that way, alas. If it did, you'd still be able to buy cars with hand-crank starters. (Very handy in cold weather!) Even Palm, which pretty much defined the PDA (after Apple botched the job), is moving towards devices that don't uses styluses. (And don't even run PalmOS, worse luck!)
...I don't want a 'smartphone'. I want something I can reference while holding the phone...
Personally, I agree with you. And judging from previous discussions, so do most geeks. But I get the sense that non-geeks don't want to learn to use a stylus and don't want to carry around multiple pieces of hardware. At least the most people I talk to seem to feel that way, and that's what the marketeers perceive. It's the great, non-technical public that drives the market, not us.
Well, if that's actually true, I feel somewhat better about Wikipedia. Obscure geographical shit is worth recording, but beyond the reach of any regular encyclopedia. Though there's still the fact-checking issue...
I find it interesting that the "official" one millionth article is one of those obscure geographical articles that help justify Wikipedia's existence. It's the sort of narrow topic that old-fashioned encylopedias would never get to, but which is actually useful to certain people.
But it's a little strange that the counter hit 1 million on such an article. By percentages it should have been a vanity article, a topic that exists mainly in the mind of the author, or a summary of a TV episode.
OK, I stand corrected. But I have to question the wisdom of prescribing antibiotics for an infection that might happen. Is the creation of new antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains worth preventing a hypothetical, non-serious infection? Yes, I know, secondary infections can be a big deal if the patient has other health issues. But giving antibiotics to a person who is likely to recover without them strikes me as questionable.
There's also the fact that too many doctors (not you I trust) overprescribe antibiotics. I get the impression that they're often used as placebos during flu season. Not cool!
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But that's actually wrong. Computers are instruments, but they're not just instruments. Their existence drives the whole discipline. Leave "computer" out of the terminology and most people won't know what you're talking about. When I told people I was majoring in "Information Science", they though I was studying to be a librarian! "Datalogy" is even worse.
Anyway, education is not the issue here. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or even a model rocket scientist) to understand that big heavy metal structures can fall down and hurt people. I myself thought the used tower concept was perfectly cool until you explained why it wasn't.
The problem is that many folks just don't like to admit that they don't know what they don't know. That's a problem with almost every discussion on Slashdot. Not a lot you can do about it.
Jeez dude, read before you react. He said what was dangerous: 60 fucking feet of unstable, rustable metal. Any piece of which can fall down and turn you into a quadriplegic. Or fall on your neighbor and put you in hock for the next century.
OK, that's just bizarre. But sometimes people have a point. Like once my parents lived in a little neighborhood of one-story houses, and one of their neighbors decided they just had to have a sort of penthouse room on their roof. Went ahead and built it without getting planning permission. Not only was the thing as ugly as hell, but it destroyed the privacy of everybody on the block.
I don't think it's too much to expect recourse for something like that. The question is, once you start making rules, where do you stop?
Hey, it's all relative. Being a total klutz, I could have an Uzi in my carryon baggage, and honestly say, "No, I'm not carrying anything that I could use as a weapon."
That says something about small-town versus big-town life. This guy couldn't get the church to install a small repeater in their belfry, but nobody cares if he has a 60' tower on his property. In the big city, churches vie with each other to put transmitters in their towers (nice source of revenue), but a homeowner would never get a 60' tower past the zoning board, the local homeowner's assocation, the neighbors concerned about property values...
You obviously have never worked in an enterprise environment. If you had, you'd know that individuals don't always get to decide which programs they use.
You're making the standard geek mistake of only evaluating a program in the context of your own, personal hacker-friendly environment. People who run enterprises have to evaluate the software in the context of that enterprise.
I use Google desktop, and find it very handy. It's quite possible I'll have to give up using it because of this issue. That doesn't make me feel well-disposed towards Google, or inclined to try any new products they might release.
Could it be that Zonk is not a carbon-based unit? Maybe he's just a script that accepts stories at random.
On the other hand, he does seem to think that it's a big deal that the new Minis come without keyboards. It's supposed to mean that they meant to be media centers rather than computers. Except haven't Minis always come without keyboards? Their big selling point is that they work with all the peripherals you already bought for your PC.
Here's the sad truth: most people don't like using stylus-based input devices. I prefer them, you prefer them, but there aren't enough people like us to make them profitable.
It's all smoke and mirrors....
Well, if that's actually true, I feel somewhat better about Wikipedia. Obscure geographical shit is worth recording, but beyond the reach of any regular encyclopedia. Though there's still the fact-checking issue...
But it's a little strange that the counter hit 1 million on such an article. By percentages it should have been a vanity article, a topic that exists mainly in the mind of the author, or a summary of a TV episode.
OK, I stand corrected. But I have to question the wisdom of prescribing antibiotics for an infection that might happen. Is the creation of new antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains worth preventing a hypothetical, non-serious infection? Yes, I know, secondary infections can be a big deal if the patient has other health issues. But giving antibiotics to a person who is likely to recover without them strikes me as questionable.
There's also the fact that too many doctors (not you I trust) overprescribe antibiotics. I get the impression that they're often used as placebos during flu season. Not cool!
...a Beowulf .... AAAACK!!!
You mean you never even go to a web site that uses Java applets? You never use a web browser that has the Java plug-in?
In that case, you'll have to give up using Java, all versions of which are now "dot oh".
Do you even know what wardriving is? It involves looking for other people's access points.
Of course if you pay by the megabyte, it makes no sense to share. Only people with flat rate plans (plenty in the U.S.) would buy these things.