Wow. Do you realise that you've just used Emacs and Latex as examples of software that isn't "bloated and continuously evolving"? A text editor that contains a web browser and Common Lisp, and a Turing-complete typesetting program? What the hell would you consider to be "bloated"?
I'm sorry, I have to regard this as insanity while fearing something worse. Half these people seem to think that a broswer is better, the fewer sites it can render properly! Surely to God the objective ought to be to make things as smooth as possible for the user, not to arbitrarily punish them for other people's coding mistakes by stopping them from viewing popular sites. These are W3C standards, for fuck's sake, not the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.
This is the attitude. You'd rather have a little badge from the W3C that proves it's "not your fault", than have your users able to view half the Web. You don't care.
If an unqualified publicist with no experience in computer programming or project management wrote a book saying that all previous models of software development were wrong, providing no quantitative evidence for his thesis but insulting everyone who didn't sgree with him for not having a "clue", then how seriously would you expect him to be taken?
Oh yeh, I forgot, Eric Raymond. Well, carry on then I guess.
The last time I looked, there were about three pages on the Web which were "W3C compliant" (and my God did they let us know about it). Given the prevalance of all sorts of non-compliant garbage out there which nevertheless works with 90% of browsers (or to give it its proper name "Internet Explorer"), why do you think anyone gives a wet slap what the W3C thinks anymore?
Netscape and IE are the de facto standards bodies these days; the browser wars are over and the days when standards were needed are over too. Apart from a gang of standards barrack-room lawyers going "Oh, I use WebFart 2000 because it's standards compliant blah blah blah", nobody cares anymore.
So my question is; why are you giving up the last shred of self-respect you might have had as a lobby group against the encroachment of the IE monopoly as a de facto standard, by turning yourself into a shill group for the same bunch of corporate interests? To preserve the fig-leaf of the "importance of standards"? Isn't that rather like destroying the village to save it?
I object in the strongest possible terms to the idea that this painfully self-conscious attempt at proving that "Scientists aren't all dull" should appear under the category "It's Funny, Laugh", and demand that Slashdot establishes an "It's Embarrassing. Cringe" category for the purpose.
If you consider a cash register to be a desktop, what else do you think? Presumably they told you that the big thing that broils the Big Macs is a "production facility"
I've got news for you, bro, the careers service lied. You ain't a manufcaturing engineer at all.
This is a quirk of Mandrake that has also caused me grief. You have to remember that "resize" in the context "Resize Windows Partition", is French for "Delete a fucking huge randomly selected chunk of, then render yourself unable to find it ever again".
While it is indeed true that private individuals can now kill 6,000 people at a stroke, which was the preserve of government beforehand, I someohow have a problem regarding this as progress.
Yeah, and pretty soon Linux will release a licence that means any time you use Open Source software, all the software you write with it has to be Open Source too.... hang on, wait a minute....
A third option, that nobody seems to have mentioned -
A fourth option, which nobody even seems to have considered, would be to raise the wages of the people who screen baggage above those who flip burgers, in the hope of attracting better quality people, and retaining them for longer than a fortnight. But of course, that would not be consistent with "maximum shareholder returns".
repeat after me, idiot
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 1, Flamebait
No amount of vengeance will deter people who have nothing to lose
You fucking idiot. Nobody is demanding a police state. Some people have suggested that more sensible checks on people boarding aeroplanes for domestic US flights (like, say, those which are absolutely standard for international flights) might be a good idea, even if they do reduce the profitability of the US airline industry. Perhaps the entirely sensible recommendations of the 1996 Gore report could be looked at again, since the airlines won't be in the mood to stomp all over it this time.
The only way to prevent these attacks is to give those who, for one reason or another, rightly or wrongly, think that the USA is the reason why their lives are so bad, an alternative realistic way to interact with the USA. At the moment, that's not possible; the US doesn't compromise on a number of foreign policy measures.
You're fighting a war, it's true. This was an act of war. But it wasn't a declaration of war. The war's being going on for years. It's just that you didn't notice, because this theatre hadn't opened up before.
I will be traveling by air soon, and I intend to make up some leaflets to distribute at the airport about this
Oh right, I get it, you're a nut. You might have put this at the top of your post and saved me the trouble.
Office 2000 has a massive advantage over 97 -- it has the first version of Powerpoint in which OLE actually works the way you think it's going to. You can paste Excel tables into a slide and then resize them without it looking like shit.
After reading the article it's disgusting how the people patent office can justify some of these patents
Liar. The only patents mentioned as examples in the linked article are:
Machine vision
Bar codes
The answering machine
A method for improving the resolution of laser printers
The method for making Pentium chips compatible with older architectures.
Which of these patents is "disgusting"? They are all non-obvious devices which have been highly useful to the world. You haven't read the article beyond the first couple of lines; alternatively, you are a victim of American education.
This guy is a lawyer working for TechSearch and is going after intel for $2 billion to $7 billion in damages
Intel are rich. The owners of the patents are poor (in fact; they're bankrupt). The lawyer's statement is factually correct. The lawyers are anticipating a fifty/fifty share of the profits in return for investing their time and effort in seeing that the (arguably) genuine inventor of the technology is not ripped off by Intel. How is this different from Eric Raymond getting a $40million windfall from Open Source IPOs?
How did a system that was supposed to encourage innovation turn into a moneymaking machine for bottom-feeders?
What? Is there a shortage of innovation in the USA at presnet? Not enough new technologies coming through? For fuck's sake, technology has just driven the longest sustained expansion in GDP since the War, and you're pissing and moaning over... what? No specific complaint at all, as far as I can see.
Could it be that the means by which innovation is encouraged is by a "money making machine"? Well jiminy, I guess it could.
I can not imagine any way that repealing patent law and disbanding patents would be any worse than the situation we have now
How about the entire chip and biotech industries relocating to Switzerland, or somewhere that will let them make a profit on their investment? Bad enough for you?
It appears unsalvagable -- can't we just hit the reset button and start from scratch?
Yes we certainly can, and a google search on the words "Pol Pot" will give you a clue as to how good an idea that is.
So you're saying that the proven fact that gun crime in Britain jumped 40% in one year after enacting laws to ban regular citizens from owning guns is not relevant
Yes, I'm making the bizarre counterintuitive suggestion that movements in the British crime statistics since 1997 are not relevant to the question of whether it should be illegal to reverse engineer Adobe's ebook document format.
I may be wrong, but you're going to have to spell this out for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations.
I'm sorry, I have to regard this as insanity while fearing something worse. Half these people seem to think that a broswer is better, the fewer sites it can render properly! Surely to God the objective ought to be to make things as smooth as possible for the user, not to arbitrarily punish them for other people's coding mistakes by stopping them from viewing popular sites. These are W3C standards, for fuck's sake, not the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed.
This is the attitude. You'd rather have a little badge from the W3C that proves it's "not your fault", than have your users able to view half the Web. You don't care.
Or alternatively, because the Mozilla developers don't care.
ugh. If you're waiting until the oil light goes off before you change the oil in your BMW, you're doing something silly that will cost you money.
Oh yeh, I forgot, Eric Raymond. Well, carry on then I guess.
Netscape and IE are the de facto standards bodies these days; the browser wars are over and the days when standards were needed are over too. Apart from a gang of standards barrack-room lawyers going "Oh, I use WebFart 2000 because it's standards compliant blah blah blah", nobody cares anymore.
So my question is; why are you giving up the last shred of self-respect you might have had as a lobby group against the encroachment of the IE monopoly as a de facto standard, by turning yourself into a shill group for the same bunch of corporate interests? To preserve the fig-leaf of the "importance of standards"? Isn't that rather like destroying the village to save it?
Oh yeh, and the Darwin Awards can fuck off too.
I've got news for you, bro, the careers service lied. You ain't a manufcaturing engineer at all.
This is a quirk of Mandrake that has also caused me grief. You have to remember that "resize" in the context "Resize Windows Partition", is French for "Delete a fucking huge randomly selected chunk of, then render yourself unable to find it ever again".
Trolled out? They callin' me trolled out? I tell you pesky kids, I ain't getting older, I'm getting better.
Consider the other creditors (including other employees) of the bankrupt company, who would otherwise share in the potential value of those assets.
While it is indeed true that private individuals can now kill 6,000 people at a stroke, which was the preserve of government beforehand, I someohow have a problem regarding this as progress.
Yeah, and pretty soon Linux will release a licence that means any time you use Open Source software, all the software you write with it has to be Open Source too .... hang on, wait a minute ....
What do you think those books of mugshots are for?
OTOH, you have to admit that, whatever the bugs count, Mozilla does, as a matter of objective fact, fucking suck.
check the list of insider sellers of VA for the words "Larry" and "Augustin" before you start baggin on anyone else for "cashing in".
A fourth option, which nobody even seems to have considered, would be to raise the wages of the people who screen baggage above those who flip burgers, in the hope of attracting better quality people, and retaining them for longer than a fortnight. But of course, that would not be consistent with "maximum shareholder returns".
You fucking idiot. Nobody is demanding a police state. Some people have suggested that more sensible checks on people boarding aeroplanes for domestic US flights (like, say, those which are absolutely standard for international flights) might be a good idea, even if they do reduce the profitability of the US airline industry. Perhaps the entirely sensible recommendations of the 1996 Gore report could be looked at again, since the airlines won't be in the mood to stomp all over it this time.
The only way to prevent these attacks is to give those who, for one reason or another, rightly or wrongly, think that the USA is the reason why their lives are so bad, an alternative realistic way to interact with the USA. At the moment, that's not possible; the US doesn't compromise on a number of foreign policy measures.
You're fighting a war, it's true. This was an act of war. But it wasn't a declaration of war. The war's being going on for years. It's just that you didn't notice, because this theatre hadn't opened up before.
I will be traveling by air soon, and I intend to make up some leaflets to distribute at the airport about this
Oh right, I get it, you're a nut. You might have put this at the top of your post and saved me the trouble.
Office 2000 has a massive advantage over 97 -- it has the first version of Powerpoint in which OLE actually works the way you think it's going to. You can paste Excel tables into a slide and then resize them without it looking like shit.
that was sarcasm. It's worth slightly more than 1% of that now.
Liar. The only patents mentioned as examples in the linked article are:
- Machine vision
- Bar codes
- The answering machine
- A method for improving the resolution of laser printers
- The method for making Pentium chips compatible with older architectures.
Which of these patents is "disgusting"? They are all non-obvious devices which have been highly useful to the world. You haven't read the article beyond the first couple of lines; alternatively, you are a victim of American education.This guy is a lawyer working for TechSearch and is going after intel for $2 billion to $7 billion in damages
Intel are rich. The owners of the patents are poor (in fact; they're bankrupt). The lawyer's statement is factually correct. The lawyers are anticipating a fifty/fifty share of the profits in return for investing their time and effort in seeing that the (arguably) genuine inventor of the technology is not ripped off by Intel. How is this different from Eric Raymond getting a $40million windfall from Open Source IPOs?
So your stage of events is:
What? Is there a shortage of innovation in the USA at presnet? Not enough new technologies coming through? For fuck's sake, technology has just driven the longest sustained expansion in GDP since the War, and you're pissing and moaning over ... what? No specific complaint at all, as far as I can see.
Could it be that the means by which innovation is encouraged is by a "money making machine"? Well jiminy, I guess it could.
I can not imagine any way that repealing patent law and disbanding patents would be any worse than the situation we have now
How about the entire chip and biotech industries relocating to Switzerland, or somewhere that will let them make a profit on their investment? Bad enough for you?
It appears unsalvagable -- can't we just hit the reset button and start from scratch?
Yes we certainly can, and a google search on the words "Pol Pot" will give you a clue as to how good an idea that is.
Yes, I'm making the bizarre counterintuitive suggestion that movements in the British crime statistics since 1997 are not relevant to the question of whether it should be illegal to reverse engineer Adobe's ebook document format.
I may be wrong, but you're going to have to spell this out for me.