Or better yet, download all the images off bittorrent for free, put them on a CD with html, and give it to them free. Or even better, print the book with these pictures and just give it away free to all who enroll in class. In completely unrelated news, some other miscellaneous university fine or fee just went up $20-30.
Or just use an older textbook... the class in question is an art history class ending at 1800, with nothing more recent. I'm pretty sure, given that I've taken such classes as electives in the past, that there are other textbooks exist which don't cost anyhere near that much, and which cover the period in question. Of course, then the class wouldn't be using the textbook which was written by their prof, and they wouldn't make money off it! Had a lot of that when I was at university....
It used to be that suing was the last ditch effort of a company that had stopped innovating. When you're coming out with new product, who cares if somebody's copying last year's version?
The problem is, Apple isn't innovating any more, and their patents aren't for actual products, they're for concepts that should be considered obvious by anybody in the industry. All they have left to them are incremental updates for existing products, and anybody with their ear to the ground in technology can predict these updates before they announce them... was *anybody* surprised that the big upgrade for the iPhone 5 was a higher resolution screen and LTE radio, or that the iPad 3 was a higher resolution screen and more processing power? And if you're able to predict what's next, and you happen to be a company that's competing against them, then it's pretty easy to come up with the next version before they do, and Apple ends up caught with their pants down, as has been done with the market for 7" tablets. The end result? Apple's trying to sue everybody to prevent them from competing, because, as a company, they stopped really innovating years ago.
The same generally goes for other players in the global patent wars too, mind you... it's not that I hate Apple (though I do) that I choose them as the whipping boy, it's because they're the most obvious to make the case with. What I just said can equally be applied to Samsung, LG, or HTC in the mobile phone market, and pretty much any player in modern technology. It's been a long while since anybody came up with something that was really *new* that wasn't just a more efficient way to do what we were already doing. Even the main drivers for the smartphone market, which Apple claims to have invented (we'll pretend Palm, Sony, and Blackberry didn't already have smartphones), had been done 10 years before the iPhone it the market... downloadable apps by Palm, and mobile e-mail/calendar by Ericcson (digital PCS).
Where do you get full coverage (for a car worth more then 10 years insurance) for a 20% additional cost?
Pretty much any insurance company? Things may be different in the states, but around here it's pretty much a bog standard option from all of them.
I happen to have my insurance policy in my hands as I type this... I needed it for a trip to the bank this afternoon. My total insurance is $904/year (CAD): that's $2m liability, $300 comprehensive deductible, $500 collision deductible, transportation replacement (rental car), and new vehicle protection option. This is insurance against the depreciation cost of my car because I bought it new (2011 MY, bought in Feb. 2011), and it means that if I write the car off within the first 5 years that I own it, I will get the original purchase price back instead of the depreciated value. Of the $904/year that I pay for insurance, $96 is the new vehicle protection. That's closer to 12% of my insurance bill. The lion's share of my insurance bill is the liability coverage, followed by collision, accident benefits and direct compensation in equal measure. The comprehensive is the same cost as the new vehicle protection, and the only line item that's cheaper is the worry free/no-fault insurance. This is for a 31-year old female non-smoker with a perfect driving record, driving a car that the insurance industry considers un-stealable: a Subaru Impreza, and I'm getting a corporate rate because the company I work for insures a fleet of 30,000 vehicles through them. (without the corporate rate, I'd be paying $1400/year give or take, but the percentage breakdown would be about the same).
When you consider that this is a $30,000 car (not the base model), an extra $100/year for the first 5 years is nothing.
I'm not arguing with that, because I simply don't know enough about the industry to argue with it. But I think the point being made was that insurance (in the form of extended warranties) on consumer electronics are not generally a good deal. Depending on what you're buying, I've been quoted extended warranties on consumer electronics that were more than the original purchase price. (that was for 2yr NBD Onsite warranty on a $400 business laptop... not getting NBD Onsite was not an option, because the base warranty was 1yr NBD Onsite)
Now... the cost of writing off a $400 laptop is a completely different from writing off a $25,000 car. I've got an easier time believing that the insurance itself is less profitable in that respect. By the same token, however, the insurance industry is posting record profits, and you're making the argument that these profits come from investing capital... in *this* economy?
Don't even have to be *that* careful. I've owned several smartphones since the G1 (well, Canadian version, which was called the HTC Dream), and have never managed to break the screen, despite some serious abuses... the worst of which involved an LG Shine Plus falling from a 2nd floor balcony, winging off the edge of a swimming pool and into the drink. Remove the battery, let the phone dry out, and it worked fine without having broken the screen (though it was a bit squirrelly for the next year that I used it before replacing it). I'm currently using a One V, and have dropped it a few times without breaking it.
And there's your answer to the insurance question... don't buy a $700 phone. Buy a $200 phone which will give you the same experience as last year's $700 phone, and then you won't be too worried when you drop it, because it's not going to cost you that much to replace, and it'll be cheaper than the insurance on the $700 phone... especially if you plan on replacing it in a year when they come out with the upgraded version anyway. You can probably afford to get it without a contract, and that'll save you money in the long run, too.
You clearly have nothing valuable to say, because you put stock in wikipedia... have you never heard of wikiality?;)
But yes... as others have said, it's a strawman if anything, but it's a statement of fact, so not really a strawman at all. Slashdot *does* have a publication bias, just as *every* "news" outlet has one. The good ones know they have a bias and admit to it so that you can adjust your perception accordingly. The bad ones claim to be fair and balanced and free of bias. Here, they pander to the fanbois, because pitting the different groups against each other generates page impressions (Apple vs. Android, or Open Source vs. Microsoft, etc.), which they can use to sell advertising space... and given that they let a lot of the older, higher karma posters turn off the obvious ads, this means that some of the stories are themselves ads.
More on topic, OSS is sometimes the right choice, sometimes the wrong choice. There's far more that goes into the decision of which platform to choose than people seem to think or understand. It's well and good to say that you should be sticking to OSS for your enterprise, but people don't seem to understand that there's interoperability considerations too. You need to make sure that your customers will be able to read what you're producing and communicate with you, too. This means that, sometimes, you don't really have a choice about whether to use something like MS Office, or AutoCAD, which necessarily dictates what platform you're running on.... most of MS Office will run on Linux/Wine or Crossover, for example, but if you want to run the latest version of Visio or Powerpoint it's a lost cause... it does not render properly, and Powerpoint is extremely unstable. You need to run Mac or Windows for it render properly. Similarly, if you want to put downloadable documents on your website, you may have no choice about whether to include.DOC or.PDF versions of your documents, even if the web server itself is running on an OSS platform. Likewise, if you want your users to be able to use their phones or tablets for e-mail and have full calendar/contact sync with their desktops, you may have no choice about whether to run MS Exchange, depending on which phone platform you standardize on.
You simply can't say that OSS > Proprietary software for all circumstances. It's an oversimplification of the real issues, and doesn't take into account other factors like interoperability with other organizations. It's well and good to suggest that you should standardize on OSS for the enterprise, but unless you're doing only the most basic office tasks, you will have at least some need for a proprietary system. For my personal use on my laptop, yes, I can easily go with open source for everything. I did, actually... there's not a single piece of closed source software running on my laptop and I have yet to encounter a use case to justify installing it. For Office tasks I have gnumeric and AbiWord installed and have never had a problem... for personal use where I don't need to interoperate with other users, and if I do I can copy to an e-mail or print it out. My desktop/gaming machine, however, is running under Windows 7. It's a different use case, and for that specific example, an OSS operating system is a non-starter. It's not about idealogy, it's about using the right tool for the job, and in business it's the same story.
Most people on Slashdot are either too young to get the reference, or would get the reference without needing it to be credited like you.... I'm guessing they didn't put you in Group W, then?;)
I love America, actually. Not overly fond of Americans (the stereotypical kind, not the real ones), nor the politics, but as a country it's actually quite nice.
I still don't travel there, though. I used to. A lot. But I haven't flown through US airspace since the TSA started with the whole backscatter x-ray system and gropings. I've read far too many stories about things they've missed (remember Adam Savage's discussion about how they missed a 12" saw blade?), and it doesn't take a civil rights activist to decide that being forced to allow a high school dropout to look at a naked picture of you to get on a plane is an invasion of privacy. I won't even drive to the US, even though large parts of the eastern seaboard are within a day's drive of here, because I've heard about them thinking of installing those machines at land crossings and ports of entry, too. It's not a lot of money they've lost from me, but I know a fairly large number of people who live outside the US who won't touch it with a 10-foot pole any more... you have to wonder how badly this is impacting the US tourism industry. *gasp* perish the thought, but I'm spending the same money I used to spend in the US in Cuba or Mexico instead....
There was a time when the TSA actually tried doing things in a sane way. I've had dealings with them at airports before they started with the backscatter x-ray nonsense, and most of the officers I dealt with seemed genuinely interested in doing a good job making things safer. Admittedly, the last time I dealt with them was at the airport in Dayton, OH, but my experiences with them at airports like Dayton, or Bangor, ME, or smaller airports like that was actually pretty good. I have to wonder if the people who think, generally, that they're doing a good job today are basing that opinion on experiences like mine, which were both many years ago, and at airports that were small enough to be able to actually hire good people. I don't think, now, that they're doing a good job, but they used to give the impression that they were.... if you still hold on to that opinion of them, you must not be reading the same news that the rest of us are.
This is Slashdot. Logic and reason have no place in speculative discussions about the future here!
You are right that it's *highly* speculative... but it's still pretty cool to consider... most of the time when we talk about "high temperature supeconductors", we're still talking about -70'C or colder. Some ceramics have limited superconductivity at temperatures of -50'C... to my (limited) knowledge, this is the first time anybody's observed superconductivity anywhere near room temperature. Of course geeks are going to start waxing poetic about the potential applications of such a discovery.:)
Either you, or your friend, has completely misunderstood the point of radical empiricism, which is very definitely not an idea that your friend originated. Quite likely, at the time this was being put forward by your friend, either he had not completed his studies, or he was using it to emphasize a point in a larger discussion and you missed the implication.
Either that, or you're deliberately being a jackass. I'm not ruling that possibility out, either.
There are actually some forms of casual writing which are accepted academically, and which do not make use of what we would call proper capitalization. Similarly, curse words can be used effectively for emphasis and, at the University level, will not usually get you in trouble.:)
What amuses me most is the derision for degrees like Philosophy... here we have a degree where the focus is on logic and critical thinking, and where the ability to write effectively is not optional, and better still, a degree without any bad habits that will need to be unlearned in your first few years in the field, yet a very large number of people choose to mock it as essentially useless. I'm not saying that a Philosophy degree will set you up to practice medicine, but a good programmer doesn't necessarily have a degree in their language of choice: a good programmer is somebody who can think logically, adapt easily to change, and communicate clearly. The same applies for just about any field outside of medicine, law, hard science, and engineering (and a degree in Philosophy actually applies *very* well to Law). The irony of it all? Even though I'm using a *lot* more from the Philosophy component of my degree than anything else in my background, what actually got my foot in the door was the military experience, because they were the only ones who didn't balk at the idea of somebody with a degree in Philosophy/Linguistics with multiple secondary languages.
...Though I do get some amusement from the knowledge that the people who made fun of me for having a useless degree are now answering to me...:)
I know this is Slashdot, and reading the article is blasphemy, but if you'd read the article in its entirety, you'd know that the symptoms of this particular kind of infection can go on for decades before it reaches the point where surgery is necessary, and that the woman in question went to a doctor with these symptoms 25 years ago and was given tylenol. The article goes on to say that if it's caught early, it can be treated effectively and cheaply with steroid drugs.
The problem isn't having inadequate systems in place, it's not having proper education about this kind of thing. When the cost rises so dramatically if it's left to stew for so long, it becomes cost effective to educate people and doctors about the risks and symptoms, especially when the majority of those affected will be on medicaid, and the US taxpayer will have to foot the bill for brain surgery in the most inefficient and expensive health care system in the world (medicaid itself spends about twice per patient what gets spent in countries like Canada or the UK). Given all the other drug ads you see on US television, you'd think the steroid manufacturers would be doing the education for the health authorities.....
Neither of these countries are our neighbors. It is amazing how well you parrot the non-sequiturs of the war pigs.
They are neighbours of allies of the US. And of most of the western world. Japan is pretty important to the world's economy, as is South Korea, and nearer to Iran: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE and Pakistan are all on their immediate border, and they're close enough to make things difficult for India, Israel, Jordan, Russia and Egypt (not even mentioning Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which share a border with Iran). These are not exactly countries that we want going to war. Quite aside from that, China has a defense pact with North Korea... so that's four admitted nuclear powers, and one that won't admit it but everybody knows they have nukes, all within range of Iran and North Korea, not to mention countries that form part of NATO, with whom the US has mutual defense treaties.
I'm a tree-hugging dirt-worshipping peacenik hippie, but I still think it's naive to simply dismiss these two countries. If they want to, they can make things very difficult for the west by targetting our allies.
Don't speak for the AC... but I didn't really find the video clip all that funny... actually, I found it pretty juvenile. But different people have different senses of humour, and I can see how it would appeal to some people.
And that's the crux of it... my taste in movies is generally pretty cerebral, and I don't really like any American-made comedies, except for once-every-few-year gems that stand out amongst the crap. Off the top of my head, I can't think of an American-made comedy that I enjoyed in the last several years, but there's plenty of films from other English-speaking countries that I liked (and quite a few that weren't in English). And there's the problem... most American comedy tends towards low brow humour, and while there's an audience for it, it doesn't appeal to me.
That being said, good on them. I don't speak for the entire movie-going populace, and given that they're funded by a kickstarter, it's pretty obvious that they do have a fanbase who wants to see it done.
Secret patents exist on technologies that have military applications... cryptography systems are very commonly granted secret patents, because you don't want any member of the public to see the algorithm your army is using to encrypt its top secret files.
But your point stands... SD card is a bad analogy. The floppy save icon used to have an actual meaning, back when computers didn't have hard drives. If you saved a file, it meant putting your work on a floppy, and that's where the icon came from. That most computers these days don't have floppy drives any more isn't really relevant to that history... at this point, it's become a necessity because people have been using/designing/teaching computers for decades with that icon. It'll eventually morph into something more relevant for the time, but for now it needs to stay a floppy, because if they changed it to a flash drive there'd be usability problems for people who were used to the old systems. I expect the next iteration will probably be a cloud with a floppy superimposed, and that this will eventually morph into just a cloud.
I hate having to try to rotate a knob using a mouse and prefer interaction methods that are designed for the tool I'm using (trackpad, mouse, hardware interface) but sometimes skeumorphism actually has a point.
If the knob interface is designed properly, though, you don't have to try to turn the knob with your mouse... you can simply mouse over and use the scroll wheel. I've seen it a few times like that.
But yes, I remember a program years ago that I think was called AudioDeck, where you had to actually click on the little indicator dot on the knob, and turn the mouse in a circle to try to adjust the level, and that was annoying as all out.
To be fair, it is one of the more creative trolls I've seen, though... certainly more entertaining than the usual goatse or racist crap. I especially love the part where he says he gets angry if he hasn't had his daily subway, like he's as addicted to it as he is to video games...:P
Healthy eating is part of the equation. You can eat as healthy as you want to, if you're not getting enough of the right exercise you'll still have health problems. Humans evolved to move, and the sedentary lifestyle we live today is bad for our health.
Question: if the people of Sodom were going to rape the strangers as punishment for having invaded their city, why did Lot think that offering up his daughters quell the mob?
Bloodlust, not sexual lust. Women were seen as chattel at the time. It was not really any different from saying "here, kill this goat instead of these men". ("scapegoat" was, at one point, a literal term)
As for how Lot was the righteous man of the city, he was the only one following the rules... Jewish law, at the time, was that you should always show hospitality to guests.
I don't recall ever saying that I'm a theist in this thread, so not entirely sure where you're getting that impression from.
Just because I've read the Bible doesn't make me a Christian. I've also read the Koran, the Talmud, and most of the Buddhist and Hindu sutras. To answer the question of whether I believe in gods, you first have to define what a god is, and I don't agree with the popular definition. I certainly don't worship them or prostrate myself to them, if that's what you're asking, however.
The sad thing is, you probably do remember your church school bible lessons, but that's still inconsistent with what's actually in the Bible and the historical context of the story.
In that time period, it was *normal* for conquering people to demonstrate their dominance over the conquered by raping them. They did this to the women *and* the men, and often castrated the men before putting them into slavery. That's just how things were back then. Similarly, it was the custom not to accept visitors into the city after dark, for defensive reasons... strangers coming into the city walls after the gates have been closed were seen as invaders, and dealt with accordingly.
In the context of the story in the Bible, God sent the angels to investigate the city. They happened upon the home of somebody who showed them hospitality, and when the citizens of the city discovered that strangers had entered the city under cover of dark and were at the home of this person, they were all dealt with according to the custom of the day.
Context is everything in this case, like every case. Unfortunately, the people who see it as a literal truth are rarely interested in the historical customs of the day. They see that God punished the Sodomites, and that's all they take from it. What they don't understand is that the sexual act itself, while involuntary, wasn't the reason for the punishment, it was the lack of hospitality and charity.
Take the book as an allegory intended to impart moral lessons and it's easier to swallow. I still have issues with the nature of God as he's described in the book (really, he's petty, vindictive, and cliquish), but the miracles and myth that permeate the pages are easier to take when you consider them to be a fiction rather than a fact, and it doesn't really detract from some of the message contained within, which, basically (and especially in the NT), is that we shouldn't be assholes to each other.
It is. My thought was more to the pens that have some form of ergonomic grip on them which works better for the right hand, though others have mentioned fountain pens as well.
Well, what's your definition of left-handed? We should start by discussing this. For most people it's "people who WRITE with the left hand" even if you do everything else with the right one.
Depends... I'm left-dominant, but I write with my right hand. According to my parents, I used my left until I reached grade school, and then switched to the right in order to fit in, because nobody else was using their left and I was being teased. Sports, however, I play left in hockey, soccer, baseball, and golf, and when I train in Jiu Jitsu, I practice both sides equally. I *can* write with my left hand in English (my native language) or French (which I learned to write concurrently with English), but it looks like it was written by a 6-year old. Interestingly, with alphabets I learned later in life, like Japanese, I can use either hand, and usually pick which hand I'm going to write with based on whether I'm writing right-to-left, or left-to-right in order to avoid smudging the ink.
Does that make me ambidextrous, left-handed, or right-handed?
(and technology-wise, I don't really care... I have a right-handed trackball mouse right now, so my workstation is set up in a right-handed configuration, but my uncle has his set up left-handed, and I can use it without needing to think much).
Slashdot Mirror
Or better yet, download all the images off bittorrent for free, put them on a CD with html, and give it to them free. Or even better, print the book with these pictures and just give it away free to all who enroll in class. In completely unrelated news, some other miscellaneous university fine or fee just went up $20-30.
Or just use an older textbook... the class in question is an art history class ending at 1800, with nothing more recent. I'm pretty sure, given that I've taken such classes as electives in the past, that there are other textbooks exist which don't cost anyhere near that much, and which cover the period in question. Of course, then the class wouldn't be using the textbook which was written by their prof, and they wouldn't make money off it! Had a lot of that when I was at university....
It used to be that suing was the last ditch effort of a company that had stopped innovating. When you're coming out with new product, who cares if somebody's copying last year's version?
The problem is, Apple isn't innovating any more, and their patents aren't for actual products, they're for concepts that should be considered obvious by anybody in the industry. All they have left to them are incremental updates for existing products, and anybody with their ear to the ground in technology can predict these updates before they announce them... was *anybody* surprised that the big upgrade for the iPhone 5 was a higher resolution screen and LTE radio, or that the iPad 3 was a higher resolution screen and more processing power? And if you're able to predict what's next, and you happen to be a company that's competing against them, then it's pretty easy to come up with the next version before they do, and Apple ends up caught with their pants down, as has been done with the market for 7" tablets. The end result? Apple's trying to sue everybody to prevent them from competing, because, as a company, they stopped really innovating years ago.
The same generally goes for other players in the global patent wars too, mind you... it's not that I hate Apple (though I do) that I choose them as the whipping boy, it's because they're the most obvious to make the case with. What I just said can equally be applied to Samsung, LG, or HTC in the mobile phone market, and pretty much any player in modern technology. It's been a long while since anybody came up with something that was really *new* that wasn't just a more efficient way to do what we were already doing. Even the main drivers for the smartphone market, which Apple claims to have invented (we'll pretend Palm, Sony, and Blackberry didn't already have smartphones), had been done 10 years before the iPhone it the market... downloadable apps by Palm, and mobile e-mail/calendar by Ericcson (digital PCS).
Where do you get full coverage (for a car worth more then 10 years insurance) for a 20% additional cost?
Pretty much any insurance company? Things may be different in the states, but around here it's pretty much a bog standard option from all of them.
I happen to have my insurance policy in my hands as I type this... I needed it for a trip to the bank this afternoon. My total insurance is $904/year (CAD): that's $2m liability, $300 comprehensive deductible, $500 collision deductible, transportation replacement (rental car), and new vehicle protection option. This is insurance against the depreciation cost of my car because I bought it new (2011 MY, bought in Feb. 2011), and it means that if I write the car off within the first 5 years that I own it, I will get the original purchase price back instead of the depreciated value. Of the $904/year that I pay for insurance, $96 is the new vehicle protection. That's closer to 12% of my insurance bill. The lion's share of my insurance bill is the liability coverage, followed by collision, accident benefits and direct compensation in equal measure. The comprehensive is the same cost as the new vehicle protection, and the only line item that's cheaper is the worry free/no-fault insurance. This is for a 31-year old female non-smoker with a perfect driving record, driving a car that the insurance industry considers un-stealable: a Subaru Impreza, and I'm getting a corporate rate because the company I work for insures a fleet of 30,000 vehicles through them. (without the corporate rate, I'd be paying $1400/year give or take, but the percentage breakdown would be about the same).
When you consider that this is a $30,000 car (not the base model), an extra $100/year for the first 5 years is nothing.
I'm not arguing with that, because I simply don't know enough about the industry to argue with it. But I think the point being made was that insurance (in the form of extended warranties) on consumer electronics are not generally a good deal. Depending on what you're buying, I've been quoted extended warranties on consumer electronics that were more than the original purchase price. (that was for 2yr NBD Onsite warranty on a $400 business laptop... not getting NBD Onsite was not an option, because the base warranty was 1yr NBD Onsite)
Now... the cost of writing off a $400 laptop is a completely different from writing off a $25,000 car. I've got an easier time believing that the insurance itself is less profitable in that respect. By the same token, however, the insurance industry is posting record profits, and you're making the argument that these profits come from investing capital... in *this* economy?
Don't even have to be *that* careful. I've owned several smartphones since the G1 (well, Canadian version, which was called the HTC Dream), and have never managed to break the screen, despite some serious abuses... the worst of which involved an LG Shine Plus falling from a 2nd floor balcony, winging off the edge of a swimming pool and into the drink. Remove the battery, let the phone dry out, and it worked fine without having broken the screen (though it was a bit squirrelly for the next year that I used it before replacing it). I'm currently using a One V, and have dropped it a few times without breaking it.
And there's your answer to the insurance question... don't buy a $700 phone. Buy a $200 phone which will give you the same experience as last year's $700 phone, and then you won't be too worried when you drop it, because it's not going to cost you that much to replace, and it'll be cheaper than the insurance on the $700 phone... especially if you plan on replacing it in a year when they come out with the upgraded version anyway. You can probably afford to get it without a contract, and that'll save you money in the long run, too.
You clearly have nothing valuable to say, because you put stock in wikipedia... have you never heard of wikiality? ;)
But yes... as others have said, it's a strawman if anything, but it's a statement of fact, so not really a strawman at all. Slashdot *does* have a publication bias, just as *every* "news" outlet has one. The good ones know they have a bias and admit to it so that you can adjust your perception accordingly. The bad ones claim to be fair and balanced and free of bias. Here, they pander to the fanbois, because pitting the different groups against each other generates page impressions (Apple vs. Android, or Open Source vs. Microsoft, etc.), which they can use to sell advertising space... and given that they let a lot of the older, higher karma posters turn off the obvious ads, this means that some of the stories are themselves ads.
More on topic, OSS is sometimes the right choice, sometimes the wrong choice. There's far more that goes into the decision of which platform to choose than people seem to think or understand. It's well and good to say that you should be sticking to OSS for your enterprise, but people don't seem to understand that there's interoperability considerations too. You need to make sure that your customers will be able to read what you're producing and communicate with you, too. This means that, sometimes, you don't really have a choice about whether to use something like MS Office, or AutoCAD, which necessarily dictates what platform you're running on.... most of MS Office will run on Linux/Wine or Crossover, for example, but if you want to run the latest version of Visio or Powerpoint it's a lost cause... it does not render properly, and Powerpoint is extremely unstable. You need to run Mac or Windows for it render properly. Similarly, if you want to put downloadable documents on your website, you may have no choice about whether to include .DOC or .PDF versions of your documents, even if the web server itself is running on an OSS platform. Likewise, if you want your users to be able to use their phones or tablets for e-mail and have full calendar/contact sync with their desktops, you may have no choice about whether to run MS Exchange, depending on which phone platform you standardize on.
You simply can't say that OSS > Proprietary software for all circumstances. It's an oversimplification of the real issues, and doesn't take into account other factors like interoperability with other organizations. It's well and good to suggest that you should standardize on OSS for the enterprise, but unless you're doing only the most basic office tasks, you will have at least some need for a proprietary system. For my personal use on my laptop, yes, I can easily go with open source for everything. I did, actually... there's not a single piece of closed source software running on my laptop and I have yet to encounter a use case to justify installing it. For Office tasks I have gnumeric and AbiWord installed and have never had a problem... for personal use where I don't need to interoperate with other users, and if I do I can copy to an e-mail or print it out. My desktop/gaming machine, however, is running under Windows 7. It's a different use case, and for that specific example, an OSS operating system is a non-starter. It's not about idealogy, it's about using the right tool for the job, and in business it's the same story.
Most people on Slashdot are either too young to get the reference, or would get the reference without needing it to be credited like you.... I'm guessing they didn't put you in Group W, then? ;)
I love America, actually. Not overly fond of Americans (the stereotypical kind, not the real ones), nor the politics, but as a country it's actually quite nice.
I still don't travel there, though. I used to. A lot. But I haven't flown through US airspace since the TSA started with the whole backscatter x-ray system and gropings. I've read far too many stories about things they've missed (remember Adam Savage's discussion about how they missed a 12" saw blade?), and it doesn't take a civil rights activist to decide that being forced to allow a high school dropout to look at a naked picture of you to get on a plane is an invasion of privacy. I won't even drive to the US, even though large parts of the eastern seaboard are within a day's drive of here, because I've heard about them thinking of installing those machines at land crossings and ports of entry, too. It's not a lot of money they've lost from me, but I know a fairly large number of people who live outside the US who won't touch it with a 10-foot pole any more... you have to wonder how badly this is impacting the US tourism industry. *gasp* perish the thought, but I'm spending the same money I used to spend in the US in Cuba or Mexico instead....
There was a time when the TSA actually tried doing things in a sane way. I've had dealings with them at airports before they started with the backscatter x-ray nonsense, and most of the officers I dealt with seemed genuinely interested in doing a good job making things safer. Admittedly, the last time I dealt with them was at the airport in Dayton, OH, but my experiences with them at airports like Dayton, or Bangor, ME, or smaller airports like that was actually pretty good. I have to wonder if the people who think, generally, that they're doing a good job today are basing that opinion on experiences like mine, which were both many years ago, and at airports that were small enough to be able to actually hire good people. I don't think, now, that they're doing a good job, but they used to give the impression that they were.... if you still hold on to that opinion of them, you must not be reading the same news that the rest of us are.
This is Slashdot. Logic and reason have no place in speculative discussions about the future here!
You are right that it's *highly* speculative... but it's still pretty cool to consider... most of the time when we talk about "high temperature supeconductors", we're still talking about -70'C or colder. Some ceramics have limited superconductivity at temperatures of -50'C... to my (limited) knowledge, this is the first time anybody's observed superconductivity anywhere near room temperature. Of course geeks are going to start waxing poetic about the potential applications of such a discovery. :)
Thank you for proving my point.
Either you, or your friend, has completely misunderstood the point of radical empiricism, which is very definitely not an idea that your friend originated. Quite likely, at the time this was being put forward by your friend, either he had not completed his studies, or he was using it to emphasize a point in a larger discussion and you missed the implication.
Either that, or you're deliberately being a jackass. I'm not ruling that possibility out, either.
There are actually some forms of casual writing which are accepted academically, and which do not make use of what we would call proper capitalization. Similarly, curse words can be used effectively for emphasis and, at the University level, will not usually get you in trouble. :)
What amuses me most is the derision for degrees like Philosophy... here we have a degree where the focus is on logic and critical thinking, and where the ability to write effectively is not optional, and better still, a degree without any bad habits that will need to be unlearned in your first few years in the field, yet a very large number of people choose to mock it as essentially useless. I'm not saying that a Philosophy degree will set you up to practice medicine, but a good programmer doesn't necessarily have a degree in their language of choice: a good programmer is somebody who can think logically, adapt easily to change, and communicate clearly. The same applies for just about any field outside of medicine, law, hard science, and engineering (and a degree in Philosophy actually applies *very* well to Law). The irony of it all? Even though I'm using a *lot* more from the Philosophy component of my degree than anything else in my background, what actually got my foot in the door was the military experience, because they were the only ones who didn't balk at the idea of somebody with a degree in Philosophy/Linguistics with multiple secondary languages.
I know this is Slashdot, and reading the article is blasphemy, but if you'd read the article in its entirety, you'd know that the symptoms of this particular kind of infection can go on for decades before it reaches the point where surgery is necessary, and that the woman in question went to a doctor with these symptoms 25 years ago and was given tylenol. The article goes on to say that if it's caught early, it can be treated effectively and cheaply with steroid drugs.
The problem isn't having inadequate systems in place, it's not having proper education about this kind of thing. When the cost rises so dramatically if it's left to stew for so long, it becomes cost effective to educate people and doctors about the risks and symptoms, especially when the majority of those affected will be on medicaid, and the US taxpayer will have to foot the bill for brain surgery in the most inefficient and expensive health care system in the world (medicaid itself spends about twice per patient what gets spent in countries like Canada or the UK). Given all the other drug ads you see on US television, you'd think the steroid manufacturers would be doing the education for the health authorities.....
no we don't.
Recipes aren't copyrightable. Any recipe you can find is "free as in freedom".
I carry a GPS-enabled smartphone. What's your point?
Neither of these countries are our neighbors. It is amazing how well you parrot the non-sequiturs of the war pigs.
They are neighbours of allies of the US. And of most of the western world. Japan is pretty important to the world's economy, as is South Korea, and nearer to Iran: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE and Pakistan are all on their immediate border, and they're close enough to make things difficult for India, Israel, Jordan, Russia and Egypt (not even mentioning Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which share a border with Iran). These are not exactly countries that we want going to war. Quite aside from that, China has a defense pact with North Korea... so that's four admitted nuclear powers, and one that won't admit it but everybody knows they have nukes, all within range of Iran and North Korea, not to mention countries that form part of NATO, with whom the US has mutual defense treaties.
I'm a tree-hugging dirt-worshipping peacenik hippie, but I still think it's naive to simply dismiss these two countries. If they want to, they can make things very difficult for the west by targetting our allies.
Don't speak for the AC... but I didn't really find the video clip all that funny... actually, I found it pretty juvenile. But different people have different senses of humour, and I can see how it would appeal to some people.
And that's the crux of it... my taste in movies is generally pretty cerebral, and I don't really like any American-made comedies, except for once-every-few-year gems that stand out amongst the crap. Off the top of my head, I can't think of an American-made comedy that I enjoyed in the last several years, but there's plenty of films from other English-speaking countries that I liked (and quite a few that weren't in English). And there's the problem... most American comedy tends towards low brow humour, and while there's an audience for it, it doesn't appeal to me.
That being said, good on them. I don't speak for the entire movie-going populace, and given that they're funded by a kickstarter, it's pretty obvious that they do have a fanbase who wants to see it done.
Secret patents exist on technologies that have military applications... cryptography systems are very commonly granted secret patents, because you don't want any member of the public to see the algorithm your army is using to encrypt its top secret files.
Three... the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
But your point stands... SD card is a bad analogy. The floppy save icon used to have an actual meaning, back when computers didn't have hard drives. If you saved a file, it meant putting your work on a floppy, and that's where the icon came from. That most computers these days don't have floppy drives any more isn't really relevant to that history... at this point, it's become a necessity because people have been using/designing/teaching computers for decades with that icon. It'll eventually morph into something more relevant for the time, but for now it needs to stay a floppy, because if they changed it to a flash drive there'd be usability problems for people who were used to the old systems. I expect the next iteration will probably be a cloud with a floppy superimposed, and that this will eventually morph into just a cloud.
I hate having to try to rotate a knob using a mouse and prefer interaction methods that are designed for the tool I'm using (trackpad, mouse, hardware interface) but sometimes skeumorphism actually has a point.
If the knob interface is designed properly, though, you don't have to try to turn the knob with your mouse... you can simply mouse over and use the scroll wheel. I've seen it a few times like that.
But yes, I remember a program years ago that I think was called AudioDeck, where you had to actually click on the little indicator dot on the knob, and turn the mouse in a circle to try to adjust the level, and that was annoying as all out.
To be fair, it is one of the more creative trolls I've seen, though... certainly more entertaining than the usual goatse or racist crap. I especially love the part where he says he gets angry if he hasn't had his daily subway, like he's as addicted to it as he is to video games... :P
Healthy eating is part of the equation. You can eat as healthy as you want to, if you're not getting enough of the right exercise you'll still have health problems. Humans evolved to move, and the sedentary lifestyle we live today is bad for our health.
Question: if the people of Sodom were going to rape the strangers as punishment for having invaded their city, why did Lot think that offering up his daughters quell the mob?
Bloodlust, not sexual lust. Women were seen as chattel at the time. It was not really any different from saying "here, kill this goat instead of these men". ("scapegoat" was, at one point, a literal term)
As for how Lot was the righteous man of the city, he was the only one following the rules... Jewish law, at the time, was that you should always show hospitality to guests.
I don't recall ever saying that I'm a theist in this thread, so not entirely sure where you're getting that impression from.
Just because I've read the Bible doesn't make me a Christian. I've also read the Koran, the Talmud, and most of the Buddhist and Hindu sutras. To answer the question of whether I believe in gods, you first have to define what a god is, and I don't agree with the popular definition. I certainly don't worship them or prostrate myself to them, if that's what you're asking, however.
The sad thing is, you probably do remember your church school bible lessons, but that's still inconsistent with what's actually in the Bible and the historical context of the story.
In that time period, it was *normal* for conquering people to demonstrate their dominance over the conquered by raping them. They did this to the women *and* the men, and often castrated the men before putting them into slavery. That's just how things were back then. Similarly, it was the custom not to accept visitors into the city after dark, for defensive reasons... strangers coming into the city walls after the gates have been closed were seen as invaders, and dealt with accordingly.
In the context of the story in the Bible, God sent the angels to investigate the city. They happened upon the home of somebody who showed them hospitality, and when the citizens of the city discovered that strangers had entered the city under cover of dark and were at the home of this person, they were all dealt with according to the custom of the day.
Context is everything in this case, like every case. Unfortunately, the people who see it as a literal truth are rarely interested in the historical customs of the day. They see that God punished the Sodomites, and that's all they take from it. What they don't understand is that the sexual act itself, while involuntary, wasn't the reason for the punishment, it was the lack of hospitality and charity.
Take the book as an allegory intended to impart moral lessons and it's easier to swallow. I still have issues with the nature of God as he's described in the book (really, he's petty, vindictive, and cliquish), but the miracles and myth that permeate the pages are easier to take when you consider them to be a fiction rather than a fact, and it doesn't really detract from some of the message contained within, which, basically (and especially in the NT), is that we shouldn't be assholes to each other.
It is. My thought was more to the pens that have some form of ergonomic grip on them which works better for the right hand, though others have mentioned fountain pens as well.
Well, what's your definition of left-handed? We should start by discussing this. For most people it's "people who WRITE with the left hand" even if you do everything else with the right one.
Depends... I'm left-dominant, but I write with my right hand. According to my parents, I used my left until I reached grade school, and then switched to the right in order to fit in, because nobody else was using their left and I was being teased. Sports, however, I play left in hockey, soccer, baseball, and golf, and when I train in Jiu Jitsu, I practice both sides equally. I *can* write with my left hand in English (my native language) or French (which I learned to write concurrently with English), but it looks like it was written by a 6-year old. Interestingly, with alphabets I learned later in life, like Japanese, I can use either hand, and usually pick which hand I'm going to write with based on whether I'm writing right-to-left, or left-to-right in order to avoid smudging the ink.
Does that make me ambidextrous, left-handed, or right-handed?
(and technology-wise, I don't really care... I have a right-handed trackball mouse right now, so my workstation is set up in a right-handed configuration, but my uncle has his set up left-handed, and I can use it without needing to think much).