The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
Can we please get past the cheap shots about Microsoft's security, and pay attention to the trend wherein Microsoft, practically founded on opposition to sharing code, has been experimenting with open source licenses and making overtures to the FLOSS community?
I've met people who think that LInux is all command line, all the time, despite the fact that *nix systems had GUIs before Linux was invented, and despite the fact that OS X and Windows also have command line interfaces.
Why is learning to use GNOME instead of Windows such a big deal?
Sure, learning a new interface can be frustrating. There's a learning curve. But that's a problem when someone switches Web browsers, mobile phones, televisions, cars, or any number of other complicated devices. There are conventions in play that ease the transitions. GNOME follows conventions familiar to users of Windows and OS X, and includes tutorials.
I don't understand why learning a new GUI is regarded as more difficult.
Most often, when people ask to borrow a computer, they just want a Web browser. As more and more services are available via Web-based front ends, this becomes more true. In this, I think Google is on the right track.
I sometimes think that in a decade or two, most people will regard the question of what operating system supports the browser as of interest equivalent to the question of whether power is alternating current or direct current -- that is, it's just for specialists to worry about.
That's a pretty good analogy. I'd change it to, "automatically eating any cookies you come across," as that's a slightly less obviously stupid thing to do, and thus more likely, outside of the club scene anyway.
The point of authentication is that the agent being authenticated is external to the system -- and that requires information that isn't present in the system. Passwords are the simplest way to implement this, since the system is confirming the password matches a hash, but doesn't store the password directly.
The examples given of how you'd prefer things handled are variants of the familiar OK/Cancel dialogue boxes. There's no authentication, which means that there's no external information required -- so it's easily bypassed, as with the commonly available utilities to automatically "Click OK." A malware author could easily bypass even the display of the prompt, so long as the prompt doesn't require external information.
To be fair, I think part of what people hated about Vista was that Microsoft finally implemented some decent security. Users complained about being asked to enter passwords to authorize software installation and the like. Vista was a tremendous resource hog, but it looked to me like Microsoft decided to upgrade security and stability first, then optimized performance later in Windows 7. That's the responsible thing to do, and I think Microsoft got burned for doing the right thing for a change.
I've seen the conspiracy theory pre-emptively denied, but this is actually the first time I've seen it asserted.
When I've seen lists of viruses, I've been puzzled that some of them -- a small proportion -- have the annotation that they have been seen "in the wild." Occasionally, I'll see hints that many viruses are only theoretical. Is it the case that the security companies are competing to invent computer viruses, then using those computer viruses, which exist only in their own labs, to inflate the ever-increasing numbers of computer viruses they supposedly defeat?
I believe it's a general pattern in training, to start with a smaller, simpler system that the trainee can more readily comprehend as a whole. It's easier to be a passenger on a big plane, but easier to learn to fly a small plane, as it's a lot easier to keep track of all the details of a small plane.
I think the NWN1 camera system was okay, but could have used improvement. NWN2, though, it's almost unbearable. It's like they forgot until the last moment that it isn't a first-person shooter.
It sounds as if they're not going to fix the biggest problem with Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2: that they were not turn-based.
Neverwinter Nights 1 was a really good game, surprisingly faithful to tabletop D&D. The modmaking community produced a lot of modules that were adaptations of classic tabletop D&D modules. There were a number of minor deviations from the tabletop rules, but the most serious deviation was that NWN 1 was not turn-based. Neverwinter Nights 2 worsened the problem.
The turn-based mechanics of D&D are significant in all sorts of ways: it directly affects tactical gameplay, and indirectly affects the relationships between character classes. Spellcasting and archery work very differently in turn-based combat, spellcasting especially. In tabletop D&D, spellcasters can precisely target spells, at fixed locations, or at the current location of enemies. There are saving throws to resist spells, but most spells hit their targets automatically -- this is a significant advantage for spellcasters, offsetting the limitations of casting a limited number of spells. At low levels, spellcasting is much less effective than melee combat. At high levels, spellcasting determines control of the battlefield, and melee combat is used to guard the flanks of spellcasters.
In NWN1, spellcasting was much reduced in effectiveness, because targets were still moving when spells were being cast. This meant that players of spellcasters had to lead their targets. Since the targets were only spotted at short range to begin with, this made area-of-effect spells of only limited usefulness. It also made spellcasting combat a matter of player reflexes, not player tactical acumen. It also lead to a lot of emphasis on spells to make spellcasters melee combatants, and on monster summoning spells, which made for a very different feel from tabletop gaming. Finally, it meant that the singleplayer game encouraged players to "rest" between each combat to recover spells, removing the strategic element of carefully selecting spells; the overuse of "rest" was very controversial among players, DMs, and modmakers, as various solutions to prevent the overuse of "rest" would cause other problems.
NWN2 made things worse, as it shortened the viewable range, and shortened the range at which enemies were detected. On top of that, it made it take time for spells and missile weapons to reach their targets, rendering ranged combat and area-of-effect spells almost useless.
It sounds as if the developers of this new game have learned nothing from these mistakes.
The really sad thing is that, while D&D has had an incredibly large impact on computer games, most of those games, including the ones that claimed to be D&D itself, deviated significantly from the underlying mechanics of D&D. The Baldur's Gate series, and Neverwinter Nights 1, came closest, and NWN1 had an enormous community of modmakers. It seems as if the dream of a really faithful, playable online D&D is receding.
"Managing a team" is a skill. "Writing documentation" is a skill. "Soft skills" is an HR term for, "We'll make up some reason why we're not hiring you."
What really gets me are the job descriptions that ask for degrees, certifications, and the ability to lift 80 to 140 pounds. I've had warehouse jobs, and it was an explicit rule that you should get a second person to move anything more than 35 pounds. I'm not sure it's even legal to require an individual to lift 75 pounds.
Linguists say "African-American Vernacular English".
What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?
They're fully integrated already. African-Americans already understand standard US English.
This point I heard made at an academic conference on Ebonics, when it was a political issue in Oakland public schools. That is, everyone knows that to fully learn a language, you have to spend time immersed in it -- that to really learn French, for example, you go live in France for a while. But, nobody can possibly be more immersed in standard US English than African-American kids in US cities, where almost all print and broadcast media is in standard US English.
This is a classic colonialist scenario. The intent of the colonizer is to emphasize that their own language is superior, by rejecting the colonized language. The colonized are required to learn the colonizer's language, and the colonizer makes it a point of pride to not understand the colonized language. The ironic result is that the colonized can communicate without the colonizer understanding. The use of a dialect (where the dialect picks up elements from other languages, such as languages that the colonized used before becoming colonized) is a variant of this.
The fact that the Justice Department needs to hire translators is evidence that it is an effective strategy.
This guy is being a dick to those homeowners for the sake of what... documentary completeness?
Unfortunately, I don't know German well enough to read the article, so I don't know the details of Jens Best's argument.
What does come to mind is that in the US, after the destruction of the World Trade Center, I gather there was a rash of episodes of photographers trying to photograph structures in public view -- railroad depots, power stations, etc. -- and being harassed by police.
I am of two minds about this problem. On the one side, I feel we should have rights to individual privacy, and we're encountering challenges to individual privacy that were almost unimagined a generation ago. On the other hand, I believe powerful social institutions should be open to public scrutiny, and that this is necessary for a democratic society, but any right to individual privacy can be used by corporate entities, or by agents that act as catspaws for those institutions. I am at a loss how to reconcile these two goals.
Microsoft has already implemented a solution, in Windows 7 at least -- which is to say, Microsoft is actually ahead of the curve in implementing an RFC standard. Good on them. That covers the majority of home and office desktop users. The Linux folks will catch up.
It reads as if they were pretty close to completing implementation of IPv6 in MySQL. It's disappointing that they haven't already done it, but I rather expect the priority will go up if it becomes more of a problem.
Nominally, I have a dynamic IPv4 address, but it's been the same IPv4 address since I started my account. I've been using he.net (or tunnelbroker.net to be more specific) for four or five months now, without a hitch.
It's like walking into a manager's office, and the manager is complaining about how much he hates his computer, an old 486, that works, albeit badly. In a corner is an unopened shipping carton, containing a modern PC, that's been sitting there for a few months. The manager doesn't want you to set it up, because he's having enough trouble with the computer he's got.
The facilities for auto-configuration built in to IPv6 will be great for end-users -- as in, they won't have to do a thing, once the ISPs and routers have gotten up to speed.
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In fact, the idea that we need to "educate" humanity to be genius-saints is pure Marxism. It didn't turn out so well.
It's often the case that ideas attributed to Marxism are ideas that Marx specifically criticized.
In this case, from Theses on Feuerbach:
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.
Besides, the specific data from this Census gets opened in 2080 and will be a treasure trove for historians and genealogists.
That's very important. Social scientists use US Census records extensively.
Also, Brazil is a relatively wealthy country.
Can we please get past the cheap shots about Microsoft's security, and pay attention to the trend wherein Microsoft, practically founded on opposition to sharing code, has been experimenting with open source licenses and making overtures to the FLOSS community?
I've met people who think that LInux is all command line, all the time, despite the fact that *nix systems had GUIs before Linux was invented, and despite the fact that OS X and Windows also have command line interfaces.
That's hard to credit, with the rapid rise in popularity of Apple laptops.
Why is learning to use GNOME instead of Windows such a big deal?
Sure, learning a new interface can be frustrating. There's a learning curve. But that's a problem when someone switches Web browsers, mobile phones, televisions, cars, or any number of other complicated devices. There are conventions in play that ease the transitions. GNOME follows conventions familiar to users of Windows and OS X, and includes tutorials.
I don't understand why learning a new GUI is regarded as more difficult.
Most often, when people ask to borrow a computer, they just want a Web browser. As more and more services are available via Web-based front ends, this becomes more true. In this, I think Google is on the right track.
I sometimes think that in a decade or two, most people will regard the question of what operating system supports the browser as of interest equivalent to the question of whether power is alternating current or direct current -- that is, it's just for specialists to worry about.
That's a pretty good analogy. I'd change it to, "automatically eating any cookies you come across," as that's a slightly less obviously stupid thing to do, and thus more likely, outside of the club scene anyway.
According to Wikipedia, the Czech Republic is a party to the Berne Convention. So it's possible the courts could stop this.
The point of authentication is that the agent being authenticated is external to the system -- and that requires information that isn't present in the system. Passwords are the simplest way to implement this, since the system is confirming the password matches a hash, but doesn't store the password directly.
The examples given of how you'd prefer things handled are variants of the familiar OK/Cancel dialogue boxes. There's no authentication, which means that there's no external information required -- so it's easily bypassed, as with the commonly available utilities to automatically "Click OK." A malware author could easily bypass even the display of the prompt, so long as the prompt doesn't require external information.
To be fair, I think part of what people hated about Vista was that Microsoft finally implemented some decent security. Users complained about being asked to enter passwords to authorize software installation and the like. Vista was a tremendous resource hog, but it looked to me like Microsoft decided to upgrade security and stability first, then optimized performance later in Windows 7. That's the responsible thing to do, and I think Microsoft got burned for doing the right thing for a change.
I've seen the conspiracy theory pre-emptively denied, but this is actually the first time I've seen it asserted.
When I've seen lists of viruses, I've been puzzled that some of them -- a small proportion -- have the annotation that they have been seen "in the wild." Occasionally, I'll see hints that many viruses are only theoretical. Is it the case that the security companies are competing to invent computer viruses, then using those computer viruses, which exist only in their own labs, to inflate the ever-increasing numbers of computer viruses they supposedly defeat?
I believe it's a general pattern in training, to start with a smaller, simpler system that the trainee can more readily comprehend as a whole. It's easier to be a passenger on a big plane, but easier to learn to fly a small plane, as it's a lot easier to keep track of all the details of a small plane.
I think the NWN1 camera system was okay, but could have used improvement. NWN2, though, it's almost unbearable. It's like they forgot until the last moment that it isn't a first-person shooter.
It sounds as if they're not going to fix the biggest problem with Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2: that they were not turn-based.
Neverwinter Nights 1 was a really good game, surprisingly faithful to tabletop D&D. The modmaking community produced a lot of modules that were adaptations of classic tabletop D&D modules. There were a number of minor deviations from the tabletop rules, but the most serious deviation was that NWN 1 was not turn-based. Neverwinter Nights 2 worsened the problem.
The turn-based mechanics of D&D are significant in all sorts of ways: it directly affects tactical gameplay, and indirectly affects the relationships between character classes. Spellcasting and archery work very differently in turn-based combat, spellcasting especially. In tabletop D&D, spellcasters can precisely target spells, at fixed locations, or at the current location of enemies. There are saving throws to resist spells, but most spells hit their targets automatically -- this is a significant advantage for spellcasters, offsetting the limitations of casting a limited number of spells. At low levels, spellcasting is much less effective than melee combat. At high levels, spellcasting determines control of the battlefield, and melee combat is used to guard the flanks of spellcasters.
In NWN1, spellcasting was much reduced in effectiveness, because targets were still moving when spells were being cast. This meant that players of spellcasters had to lead their targets. Since the targets were only spotted at short range to begin with, this made area-of-effect spells of only limited usefulness. It also made spellcasting combat a matter of player reflexes, not player tactical acumen. It also lead to a lot of emphasis on spells to make spellcasters melee combatants, and on monster summoning spells, which made for a very different feel from tabletop gaming. Finally, it meant that the singleplayer game encouraged players to "rest" between each combat to recover spells, removing the strategic element of carefully selecting spells; the overuse of "rest" was very controversial among players, DMs, and modmakers, as various solutions to prevent the overuse of "rest" would cause other problems.
NWN2 made things worse, as it shortened the viewable range, and shortened the range at which enemies were detected. On top of that, it made it take time for spells and missile weapons to reach their targets, rendering ranged combat and area-of-effect spells almost useless.
It sounds as if the developers of this new game have learned nothing from these mistakes.
The really sad thing is that, while D&D has had an incredibly large impact on computer games, most of those games, including the ones that claimed to be D&D itself, deviated significantly from the underlying mechanics of D&D. The Baldur's Gate series, and Neverwinter Nights 1, came closest, and NWN1 had an enormous community of modmakers. It seems as if the dream of a really faithful, playable online D&D is receding.
Seriously.
"Managing a team" is a skill. "Writing documentation" is a skill. "Soft skills" is an HR term for, "We'll make up some reason why we're not hiring you."
I've been seeing MS degrees required for tier 1.
What really gets me are the job descriptions that ask for degrees, certifications, and the ability to lift 80 to 140 pounds. I've had warehouse jobs, and it was an explicit rule that you should get a second person to move anything more than 35 pounds. I'm not sure it's even legal to require an individual to lift 75 pounds.
Linguists say "African-American Vernacular English".
What does it say about our society if a group we need to integrate is so isolated it's developing an incompatible dialect?
They're fully integrated already. African-Americans already understand standard US English.
This point I heard made at an academic conference on Ebonics, when it was a political issue in Oakland public schools. That is, everyone knows that to fully learn a language, you have to spend time immersed in it -- that to really learn French, for example, you go live in France for a while. But, nobody can possibly be more immersed in standard US English than African-American kids in US cities, where almost all print and broadcast media is in standard US English.
This is a classic colonialist scenario. The intent of the colonizer is to emphasize that their own language is superior, by rejecting the colonized language. The colonized are required to learn the colonizer's language, and the colonizer makes it a point of pride to not understand the colonized language. The ironic result is that the colonized can communicate without the colonizer understanding. The use of a dialect (where the dialect picks up elements from other languages, such as languages that the colonized used before becoming colonized) is a variant of this.
The fact that the Justice Department needs to hire translators is evidence that it is an effective strategy.
This guy is being a dick to those homeowners for the sake of what... documentary completeness?
Unfortunately, I don't know German well enough to read the article, so I don't know the details of Jens Best's argument.
What does come to mind is that in the US, after the destruction of the World Trade Center, I gather there was a rash of episodes of photographers trying to photograph structures in public view -- railroad depots, power stations, etc. -- and being harassed by police.
I am of two minds about this problem. On the one side, I feel we should have rights to individual privacy, and we're encountering challenges to individual privacy that were almost unimagined a generation ago. On the other hand, I believe powerful social institutions should be open to public scrutiny, and that this is necessary for a democratic society, but any right to individual privacy can be used by corporate entities, or by agents that act as catspaws for those institutions. I am at a loss how to reconcile these two goals.
This is *exactly* what RFC3041 discusses.
Microsoft has already implemented a solution, in Windows 7 at least -- which is to say, Microsoft is actually ahead of the curve in implementing an RFC standard. Good on them. That covers the majority of home and office desktop users. The Linux folks will catch up.
Are you referring to this?
It reads as if they were pretty close to completing implementation of IPv6 in MySQL. It's disappointing that they haven't already done it, but I rather expect the priority will go up if it becomes more of a problem.
Nominally, I have a dynamic IPv4 address, but it's been the same IPv4 address since I started my account. I've been using he.net (or tunnelbroker.net to be more specific) for four or five months now, without a hitch.
It's like walking into a manager's office, and the manager is complaining about how much he hates his computer, an old 486, that works, albeit badly. In a corner is an unopened shipping carton, containing a modern PC, that's been sitting there for a few months. The manager doesn't want you to set it up, because he's having enough trouble with the computer he's got.
The facilities for auto-configuration built in to IPv6 will be great for end-users -- as in, they won't have to do a thing, once the ISPs and routers have gotten up to speed.