Geeks talk about the importance of people, but anything involving Microsoft will have 500+ comments in 5 minutes, and anything involving science will have barely 100+ in an hour.
Perhaps there are a bunch of lurkers who -- like me -- don't feel qualified to comment on such a highly technical subject outside their field or experience. I'm certainly interested in this subject and what people have to say about it, but I'm not likely to be able to throw in a point of fact like I might in a Linux vs. MS flamewar, or a politics debate. It would be interesting to know the number of views stories and their comments get -- maybe that's already possible? I'm too lazy to check right now. In any case, it would reflect the level of interest in the story better than the number of comments.
BTW I also found your comment an enlightening and interesting contribution to the discussion. I would have modded it as such but I decided to reply instead:-P
Ah, you kids these days. Maybe that's true of the newfangled flimsy karma they introduced to save on transportation costs when Slashdot got bigger, but way back in the beginning Slashdot still used all natural karma made from completley organic materials; much more solid and robust and burns with a nice hickory smell;-)
Ugh. What the hell were they thinking calling a laser device "Sonar"? In case anyone here doesn't know (and any geek *should*), 'sonar' refers to the sound-based systems used by various marine vessels, submarines in particular, to navigate and locate other ships. I've also heard it used to refer to bats' natural navigation system. 'Sonar' means Sound Navigation and Ranging. As an ex Submarine Sonar Tech I'm aghast that a supposed tech company would make such a stupid mistake.
For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows? In VMS that would be a piece of cake, in a Unix system it's more complicated, for i in *.jpeg; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/jpeg$/jpg/ - ` ; done or something like that would do it
I would use mmv! I'm always surprised how little known this gem is among Unix veterans: mmv '*.jpeg' '#1.jpg'
I always make sure to install this tool with my Linux installs. For whatever reason it's not part of most Linux 'standard' installs, but it is available as part of the package selection in every Linux I've seen.
It's essentially a complete replacement for mv, with the addition of globbing and replacement rules. And, in contrast to mv, it's safe; IOW if you screw up your glob or replacement expression it will stop and warn you before overwriting any files.
Not that I trust Mr. Gore to shrink the federal government.
Why not? He already did more to shrink the federal government as Clintons VP than any of these lip-service Republicans since they've been in power:
Reduced the size of federal civilian workforce by 426,200 positions between January 1993 and September 2000...The government workforce was for the first time the smallest it had been since the Eisenhower Administration.
Closed nearly 2,000 obsolete field offices and eliminated 250 programs and agencies, like the Tea-Tasters Board, the Bureau of Mines, and wool and mohair subsidies.
Procurement reform led to the expanded use of credit cards for small item purchases, saving about $250 million a year in processing costs.
This is getting to be such a common statement I can just copy and paste from my last answer to this factoid:
*Sigh* Not this 'factoid' again. Let's start with a dictionary definition: Censor : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable "censor the news"; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable "censor out indecent passages"
The only aspect of censorship which is tied to being performed by the government is the fact that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution implicitly forbids the government from doing it. That does not mean that other censorship is not censorship, which in turn means that "Voluntary censorship" is a completely valid phrase. 'Correcting' this kind of usage of the word 'censor' is apparently something that wanna-be grammar nazis have started clinging to recently, but no matter how cool you think it is be very exacting about language, you should check that you're being exacting about the right thing; IOW look it up first!
I never said that the Veto was not valid or that anyone was not performing their function. I said it's disingenuous to imply that it represents the views of a significant portion of the population.
Yes, a good number of the people who voted for Bush share his views on the the stem cell issue. But a good number also voted for him *despite* his views on the stem cell issue; they voted for him because they were scared of the evil terrorists.
So, although it's technically correct, that "enough" people believe the same as Bush, that he was elected, it *is* disingenuous to claim that the lack of Federal funding for the research is because "enough of the population disagrees with the use of federal funds for that purpose" per se. Polls consistently show a clear majority are in favor of Federal funding for that purpose:
You may not agree to their views, or his, but you have to respect their rights to voice their opinion and not be made to participate in what they consider murder.
Just as they have to respect my right to rebut their bullshit. I respect the legality of the Veto, and I respect that a Veto may be against popular opinion, but I don't respect attempts to make it sound like it *is* in tune with the popular when it isn't; that's just plain dishonest.
By all means, try and prove me wrong (with facts, not anecdotes nor opinion).
I already said I'd leave it to the Europeans to provide counter-examples.
I wasn't objecting to a statement which claimed the U.S. produces *more* results (as it should, with the world's leading economy), I object to the implication that the Europeans *never* produce any scientific results (your quote: "...for a change"), and especially the way you have to confirm everyone's view that Americans are arrogant assholes with your tone. It makes all Americans look bad; in fact, I'll allow myself a little hyperbole and take a line from Cheney: "It emboldens the terrorists!" (tongue firmly in cheek).
If European scientists develop something before the US, good for them. It would be a nice change.
It's statements like these which make it almost embarrassing to be an American abroad. I'll leave it to some Europeans to list some counter-examples, but I have to ask: Do you really believe crap like this? How's that patriotic Koolaid?
You say embryoes are not human life, and therefore killing them is not murder.
NO. That's your vocabulary. My sperm is human life, and I kill millions every day; other 'human life' includes my hair and fingernails. We (the 'you' in your sentence) say embryos (nice Quayle spelling of that word BTW) are not Human Beings. Big difference.
It's just not funded by the federal government because enough of the population disagrees with the use of federal funds for that purpose.
Wow, that's disingenuous. "Enough of the population" meaning the population of 1 sitting in the Oval Office who vetoed such funding although it passed both houses of Congress.
This just shows again how out of touch most Americans are with the world. There's hardly an industrialized nation that's *less* of a nanny state than America.
The phenomenon you're talking about has nothing to do with a nanny state, and everything to do with a finger-pointing culture. *That* is definitely pretty bad in America. No one takes responsibility, our dear Commander in Chief least of all.
Much the same as a lot of exercises and routines that athletes go through are not directly used in their chosen sport, but are none-the-less important towards their excelling.
This is an excellent comparison, so I'm quoting it here in a reply just so people who are skimming are more likely to catch it. A lot of school is (or should be) about preparing kids to think. It's not always about remembering exactly what was taught, but that the learning process 'exercises' those parts of the brain.
The English teacher further up in this thread "didn't learn math, and doesn't need it"; this exemplifies the people I saw showing up in Linguistics courses thinking *I'm good with languages, so I'll study Linguistics* and then realizing that modern theoretical Linguistics is heavy on analysis (very similar to computer science, only it's the other way around) and even includes an -- admittedly abbreviated -- introduction to information theory.
I didn't need to remember any of my math from school for that stuff, but I'm sure I utilized the kind of thinking I developed in math/computer courses when I had to build syntax trees of sentences and such.
Censorship is ONLY when a government does not allow someone to speak freely. "Voluntary censorship" is just two words put together, they mean nothing no matter how cool you think they sound together, nor how abuse this phrase is.
*Sigh* Not this 'factoid' again. Let's start with a dictionary definition: Censor : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable "censor the news"; also : to suppress or delete as objectionable "censor out indecent passages"
The only aspect of censorship which is tied to being performed by the government is the fact that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution implicitly forbids the government from doing it. That does not mean that other censorship is not censorship, which in turn means that "Voluntary censorship" is a completely valid phrase. 'Correcting' this kind of usage of the word 'censor' is apparently something that wanna-be grammar nazis have started clinging to recently, but no matter how cool you think it is be very exacting about language, you should check that you're being exacting about the right thing; IOW look it up first!
Is there something special about cable TV that would contribute to autism?
Just a guess, but I think it's about the quantity. I'm from the generation in question here (grew up in 70's and 80's), and I remember, when cable was still relatively new and exotic, that the defining characteristic of cable was the massive increase in number of channels available. My family didn't have cable and there were, maybe, 10 broadcast channels to choose from, and several of those would be mostly 'boring' local programming. And that's in the San Francisco Bay Area which was (maybe still is?) one of the most media saturated regions in the U.S. Friends of mine with cable had something like 30+ channels:-O
which has led to e.g. the soft "r" at the end of syllables in most British dialects
This is pretty much confined to the South-East of England (perhaps into the Midlands? Not sure). It's certainly not in "most British dialects".
Well, to be fair though I studied Linguistics I did not specialize in Anglo-Saxon Studies and I have a relatively general background in the history of English so I'll happily admit I'm not *that* familiar with the dialectology of the British Isles.
I just chose my example from a list of such cases we had learned about in one of my courses about language change in general. I plead 'mea culpa' regarding one of the details (I guess I just had it in my mind that that 'r' is soft through most of Great Britain), but the principles still stand.
Colour was colour before it was reduced to color.... and it was color before *that*;-)
From Merriam-Webster: Main Entry: 1color
Pronunciation: 'k&-l&r
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English colour, from Anglo-French, from Latin color; akin to Latin celare to conceal
I love it when British-English fanboys start talking up the 'seniority' of their dialect.:-)
-chris
P.S. See also my rant about English dialects (yes, they are *all* dialects)
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps there are a bunch of lurkers who -- like me -- don't feel qualified to comment on such a highly technical subject outside their field or experience. I'm certainly interested in this subject and what people have to say about it, but I'm not likely to be able to throw in a point of fact like I might in a Linux vs. MS flamewar, or a politics debate. It would be interesting to know the number of views stories and their comments get -- maybe that's already possible? I'm too lazy to check right now. In any case, it would reflect the level of interest in the story better than the number of comments.
BTW I also found your comment an enlightening and interesting contribution to the discussion. I would have modded it as such but I decided to reply instead
-chris
...for injecting some facts into the discussion!
Of course my mod points just ran out a couple of days ago...
*sigh* I knew I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.
Ah, you kids these days. Maybe that's true of the newfangled flimsy karma they introduced to save on transportation costs when Slashdot got bigger, but way back in the beginning Slashdot still used all natural karma made from completley organic materials; much more solid and robust and burns with a nice hickory smell ;-)
Yay!! My first troll mod. Let's go for offtopic! I have karma to BURN baby.
asshole much?
Ugh. What the hell were they thinking calling a laser device "Sonar"? In case anyone here doesn't know (and any geek *should*), 'sonar' refers to the sound-based systems used by various marine vessels, submarines in particular, to navigate and locate other ships. I've also heard it used to refer to bats' natural navigation system. 'Sonar' means Sound Navigation and Ranging. As an ex Submarine Sonar Tech I'm aghast that a supposed tech company would make such a stupid mistake.
-chris
For instance, let's say you were sent a project that has dozens of directories with thousands of files in it. Let's say you want to rename all *.jpeg files to *.jpg. How would you do that in Windows? In VMS that would be a piece of cake, in a Unix system it's more complicated, for i in *.jpeg; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/jpeg$/jpg/ - ` ; done or something like that would do it
I would use mmv! I'm always surprised how little known this gem is among Unix veterans:
mmv '*.jpeg' '#1.jpg'
I always make sure to install this tool with my Linux installs. For whatever reason it's not part of most Linux 'standard' installs, but it is available as part of the package selection in every Linux I've seen.
It's essentially a complete replacement for mv, with the addition of globbing and replacement rules. And, in contrast to mv, it's safe; IOW if you screw up your glob or replacement expression it will stop and warn you before overwriting any files.
-chris
within 100 hours (that's 4.16 days)
She means 100 "legislative" hours, the hours actually spent on the house floor, probably significantly more than 4 days.
Why not? He already did more to shrink the federal government as Clintons VP than any of these lip-service Republicans since they've been in power:
source: http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/whoweare/appen
Not that the mainstream "liberal" media covered this. sigh.
Thanks for the Civics lesson.
I never said that the Veto was not valid or that anyone was not performing their function. I said it's disingenuous to imply that it represents the views of a significant portion of the population.
Yes, a good number of the people who voted for Bush share his views on the the stem cell issue. But a good number also voted for him *despite* his views on the stem cell issue; they voted for him because they were scared of the evil terrorists.
So, although it's technically correct, that "enough" people believe the same as Bush, that he was elected, it *is* disingenuous to claim that the lack of Federal funding for the research is because "enough of the population disagrees with the use of federal funds for that purpose" per se. Polls consistently show a clear majority are in favor of Federal funding for that purpose:
http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm#Stem
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/Daily
Just as they have to respect my right to rebut their bullshit. I respect the legality of the Veto, and I respect that a Veto may be against popular opinion, but I don't respect attempts to make it sound like it *is* in tune with the popular when it isn't; that's just plain dishonest.
Brain drain and funding disparities are REAL.
I don't dispute this.
By all means, try and prove me wrong (with facts, not anecdotes nor opinion).
I already said I'd leave it to the Europeans to provide counter-examples.
I wasn't objecting to a statement which claimed the U.S. produces *more* results (as it should, with the world's leading economy), I object to the implication that the Europeans *never* produce any scientific results (your quote: "...for a change"), and especially the way you have to confirm everyone's view that Americans are arrogant assholes with your tone. It makes all Americans look bad; in fact, I'll allow myself a little hyperbole and take a line from Cheney: "It emboldens the terrorists!" (tongue firmly in cheek).
If European scientists develop something before the US, good for them. It would be a nice change.
It's statements like these which make it almost embarrassing to be an American abroad. I'll leave it to some Europeans to list some counter-examples, but I have to ask: Do you really believe crap like this? How's that patriotic Koolaid?
You say embryoes are not human life, and therefore killing them is not murder.
NO. That's your vocabulary. My sperm is human life, and I kill millions every day; other 'human life' includes my hair and fingernails. We (the 'you' in your sentence) say embryos (nice Quayle spelling of that word BTW) are not Human Beings. Big difference.
It's just not funded by the federal government because enough of the population disagrees with the use of federal funds for that purpose.
Wow, that's disingenuous. "Enough of the population" meaning the population of 1 sitting in the Oval Office who vetoed such funding although it passed both houses of Congress.
it's just that the nanny-state in America
This just shows again how out of touch most Americans are with the world. There's hardly an industrialized nation that's *less* of a nanny state than America.
The phenomenon you're talking about has nothing to do with a nanny state, and everything to do with a finger-pointing culture. *That* is definitely pretty bad in America. No one takes responsibility, our dear Commander in Chief least of all.
-chris
Much the same as a lot of exercises and routines that athletes go through are not directly used in their chosen sport, but are none-the-less important towards their excelling.
This is an excellent comparison, so I'm quoting it here in a reply just so people who are skimming are more likely to catch it. A lot of school is (or should be) about preparing kids to think. It's not always about remembering exactly what was taught, but that the learning process 'exercises' those parts of the brain.
The English teacher further up in this thread "didn't learn math, and doesn't need it"; this exemplifies the people I saw showing up in Linguistics courses thinking *I'm good with languages, so I'll study Linguistics* and then realizing that modern theoretical Linguistics is heavy on analysis (very similar to computer science, only it's the other way around) and even includes an -- admittedly abbreviated -- introduction to information theory.
I didn't need to remember any of my math from school for that stuff, but I'm sure I utilized the kind of thinking I developed in math/computer courses when I had to build syntax trees of sentences and such.
-chris
*Sigh* Not this 'factoid' again. Let's start with a dictionary definition:
Censor
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable "censor the news"; also
: to suppress or delete as objectionable "censor out indecent passages"
The only aspect of censorship which is tied to being performed by the government is the fact that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution implicitly forbids the government from doing it. That does not mean that other censorship is not censorship, which in turn means that "Voluntary censorship" is a completely valid phrase. 'Correcting' this kind of usage of the word 'censor' is apparently something that wanna-be grammar nazis have started clinging to recently, but no matter how cool you think it is be very exacting about language, you should check that you're being exacting about the right thing; IOW look it up first!
-chris
Hmmmmm... I'm not sure if 'Troll' is the appropriate moderation, but I guess the moderator was trying to find something fairly close to "-1 Asshole".
-chris
This is a great summing up! Mods, please mod up!
Is there something special about cable TV that would contribute to autism?
:-O
Just a guess, but I think it's about the quantity. I'm from the generation in question here (grew up in 70's and 80's), and I remember, when cable was still relatively new and exotic, that the defining characteristic of cable was the massive increase in number of channels available. My family didn't have cable and there were, maybe, 10 broadcast channels to choose from, and several of those would be mostly 'boring' local programming. And that's in the San Francisco Bay Area which was (maybe still is?) one of the most media saturated regions in the U.S. Friends of mine with cable had something like 30+ channels
-chris
Well, to be fair though I studied Linguistics I did not specialize in Anglo-Saxon Studies and I have a relatively general background in the history of English so I'll happily admit I'm not *that* familiar with the dialectology of the British Isles.
I just chose my example from a list of such cases we had learned about in one of my courses about language change in general. I plead 'mea culpa' regarding one of the details (I guess I just had it in my mind that that 'r' is soft through most of Great Britain), but the principles still stand.
-chris
Colour was colour before it was reduced to color. ... ;-)
:-)
and it was color before *that*
From Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: 1color
Pronunciation: 'k&-l&r
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English colour, from Anglo-French, from Latin color; akin to Latin celare to conceal
I love it when British-English fanboys start talking up the 'seniority' of their dialect.
-chris
P.S. See also my rant about English dialects (yes, they are *all* dialects)
I'm betting there's going to be a lot of very polite and respectful replies in this story's thread.
;-)
You better watch that sort of thing, it's illegal now
-chris