How about realizing that since there are a finite amount of people, there is a finite amount of cell phones that can be sold?
Oh, good point! Personally, I'd never buy anything twice. When these "computer" things started becoming popular, I went out and bought an IBM Personal Computer XT. Eventually I decided I'd need a hard drive and a modem, so I bought a 10 meg hard drive and a 2400 baud modem. Of course, the hard drive only has 128k of non-damaged clusters now, and it makes a noise like a baby elephant screaming while riding a dirt bike down a wet road, but it's still enough to boot io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com. Then I put in a floppy disk and run RIPterm and dial into a BBS, use their internet link, and run lynx.
Don't try to sell me a computer! I already have one!
I hate "history of" classes. Seems like "Hero worship 101". I can see a use for a "history of computing" class if the history that was being covered was the origin of standards - understanding the Teletype Model 33, for example, lends some insight into the newline character problem.
But being taught that Bageeno Hormonis invented the Univac III and his wife had six sons and one of them went to Oxford and they were trying to build a computer out of clockwork, ha, ha, isn't that funny - would be a waste of time. Of course, Universities are all about putting wastes of time in the curriculum - like the fact that CS majors in many Universities are required to take three semesters of Calculus before even going into CS101. I'm a professional programmer. I work with professional programmers. I've never seen anyone use calculus, ever. I've only seen people use trig maybe twice.
On the web, my name is generally Bageeno Hormonis, and my email address is spam@me.not.please.
With all these investment-driven dot coms that can't make a dime in profit, I think there will be so many bankruptcies that within two years, Bageeno Hormonis will have a social security number and be a registered voter in the states of Maryland and Delaware.
Yes, I'm fully aware of that. In fact, I've been fully aware of that since the first time I heard it, when this first "illegal linking" topic came up.
Just because an idea is valid or important doesn't mean you need to hear it eight thousand times. My physics teacher used to repeat every single day that the velocity of an orbiting object pointed tangent to the circle. One day, about three months in the class, he said the words "tangent to the circle", and my friend started screaming and banging his head on his desk.
That's about the way I feel about "but search engines link to DeCSS!!" posts.
Isn't it cool that every time there's a "linking legality" discussion, someone has posts "What about search engines?", and that person invariably gets moderated to +5, Insightful instead of -1, Redundant?
You've also got to think about the definition of "application". Does this mean "mature, commercial applications"? Or does it mean "The programmer trainee's VB blackjack program that doesn't let you double down"?
If any program written in a language with libraries that only support Windows, like QuickBasic 4.5, is an application, then I would estimate that there are at least a million applications out there that depend on Windows. I've written at least 500 of them.
Also, if the program compiles, but segfaults when you run it, does that count as an application? Because if it does, I've written all 70,000 myself.
Google's Cache, however, has some interesting legal issues. Even if a judge orders an ISP to shut down a web site, that site's content (at least, its text content), will remain on the web in the form of a Google cache.
Is Google then liable if they don't also remove it?
Yeah, that surprises me, too. Until recently, I thought product names such as "Extremely high-fat potato chips for fat slobs like you" or "If You Believe Any of the Stories in this Magazine You Should Fuck Off and Get a Life Magazine" wouldn't sell very well. I guess I was wrong.
In ten years, we'll see "BSD for fucking idiots like YOU who can barely tie their fucking shoes and shouldn't even be using a computer in the first place"
Does EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SLASHDOT TEENAGER have to post this piece of information without reading a single comment?!?!?
When it was posted as comment #5, I found it vaguely interesting! When it was posted as comment #11, I snickered at the redundant moron who didn't read before he posted. When it was posted as comments #18, #26, #34, #37, #52, #71, #76, and #91, I began to TEAR OUT MY HAIR AT THE ROOTS!
Like duh, Darth is evil in a new hope (iv), good in ep 1, that leaves 2 for turn to evil and 3 for consolidate evil.
I'm pretty sure he'll have sex with Natalie Portman while he's still good... plus, she has to be given nine months to have Luke & Leia... and then, I suppose, she has to die. I'm not sure he'll actually turn evil in 2.
I have a friend who's an aerospace engineer. I once asked him what 6^6 (6 to the 6th power) was. He did it in his head, and he was right.
On another occasion, I asked him his stance on abortion. It turns out he's "pro death". That's right - he thinks the government should mandate abortions without a special permit.
So much for the notion that higher IQs make better leaders:)
Hey! Don't try to tell us that releasing WordPerfect was good and screwing Debian was bad! Maybe it's the other way around! Maybe releasting WordPerfect would have been Linux's death blow if Debian hadn't been screwed! Maybe Debian needed to be screwed, to give it a boost! That which does not kill Debian makes it stronger, and nothing kills Debian!
That was probably one of the top ten flames I've ever received.
Too bad you're too much of a pussy to use an actual account, so I could, erm, email you and congratulate you.
Anyway, there's no content to that post, at all. Granted, that's what makes it a flame, and I probably shouldn't be responding to flamebait, but the only thing you actually said with real substance is that you support CEOs raping the public so they can take six-month vacations. Well, more power to you. You probably don't vote anyway.
Sometimes there's value in criticizing successful things. Other successful business practices include slavery, strip mining, sweatshop labor...
It's not just open-source drivers. Remember the story posted a couple weeks ago where it spelled out the way Nvidia bullied web sites, tried to elminate advertising space for their competitor, refused to cancel the contract even if the hardware was returned, and essentially acted like asshole fucks?
And remember all the links in that story to all the other ugly things Nvidia was doing? And their half-hearted, arrogant "apology" (that consisted of claiming that the woman with an nVidia PR address was not an nVidia PR person, but apparently some random woman in the office) in the face of a proposed boycott?
These people suck. Sure, you can get good quality at an affordable price, just like you can get good, affordable stuff from sweatshops and strip mines.
If the quality and price of the product are the only acceptable factors in whether or not one should do business with a company, well, then, we're all in big trouble.
I have this fight with my girlfriend all the time. I say, "Wal-Mart encourages sprawl, traffic problems, environmental issues, and monopoly power, and bullies cities into getting its way through lawsuits and political action." She says, "But they sell cheap stuff!"
Oh, brave new world...
P.S. I only listed 3DFx as one possible alternative. If you don't like them, buy something else entirely.
I don't think programming language structures rely very heavily on English. There are certain kinds of loops that are useful in programming, and we don't exactly try to define them in proper English. Let's look at the if/then loop.
English: "If the value of a is 1, then set b to 2 and print 'Hello' to the screen."
BASIC: IF A=1 THEN LET B=2:PRINT "HELLO"
C: If (a) {b=2;
printf ("Hello");}
bash: IF ($a=1)
THEN
$b=2
echo Hello
FI
None of these have a great deal in common with English, other than that we use the word "if" to declare a conditional because it's intuitive. Essentially, we need one instruction to let the computer know we're about to do a conditional (if), one instruction to let the computer know we're typing the instructions that go with the conditional (then/brackets), and one instruction to let it know we're done with the conditional (brackets, or "fi", or significant whitespace).
The words we use are irrelevent. There's just certain mathematical ways of doing loops.
You just said that the internet should be "completely free in terms of content" and that interpol should hunt down spammers. How is that possible?
Abuse != content.
I should be able to visit sites about neo-nazis. I should not find sites about neo-nazis in my mailbox each morning. I should be able to download winnuke. I should not be winnuked, unless I ask someone to do it.
Personally, I think one government is inadequate even for a single nation. Remember those medical marijuana bills in the U.S. that passed by an *astounding margin* (like 75-25, which is almost never seen, and beat school bonds) in Nevada, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii, Oregon, and (I think) 3 more states? They were all in the West.
Personally, I wish every day that the Union had lost the civil war, and we had three nations - the North, South, and West.
To those of you who are British, I'd like to ask - despite all the really ugly wars you had throughout this century, do you really think it would be better to have been sharing a government with France and Germany all along?
As for the internet, it needs to be strictly controlled for abuse (I wouldn't mind Interpol hunting down spammers and script kiddies, yanking their 'net connections, and putting them on "don't use a computer or you'll be seeing prison time" parole for, say, five years), and completely free in terms of content. Local governments should decide whether they want their citizens to have access to things that are completely free in terms of content. If France doesn't like Nazi material on the internet, it should just cut all the cables going to the country. In my mind, it's that simple.
I don't think we're defining "pedophile" correctly.
A man who is attracted to 14, 15, 16 year old girls is "normal". It's normal human sexuality to start being attracted to girls, well, pretty much as soon as they start menstruating and growing breasts. 200 years ago, it was expected that a 14-year-old girl get married (usually to an older man) and start having kids.
A pedophile is someone attracted to prepubescent children. Nine-year-olds, five-year-olds, two-year-olds. This sort of attraction doesn't have, as far as I know, a biological purpose. It's something weird that happens to a person's psychology. Whether it's a genetic or environmental condition, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's not "choice". I've known some pedophiles, and most of them also had ADD, manic depression, major depression, OCD, or any combination of the four.
For Disney to portray 20-year-olds as 15-year-olds with bare midriffs isn't a perversion of nature. They've just realized they can make money by showing us images that appeal to our normal, biological sexuality.
there is no form of blocking, automatic nor manual that is foolproof. if you go with automatic, either you end up blocking things you'd rather have available, or you miss some of the porn.
That's why you don't block.
If you want to give junior high kids "internet access", you know they'll go through trying every single porn site until they hit one that beats your filters:)
Instead of selective denial, the best you can do is selective allowance. Give them access to msn.com, aol.com, disney.com, dictionary.com, a few encyclopedias, etc. I mean, in a school library, they don't start by buying every book in existence and then beginning the horrific task of throwing out the porn and racist manifestos. They add things, one at a time. That's the same way school 'net connections should work, too.
I don't think this should even be a temporary boycott. I've finally decided that I'm sickened by the idea of corporate music. Therefore, I have decided that I will never again buy a major-label CD, listen to the radio, watch MTV, enter a Tower Records or Sam Goody, or attend a concert by a major-label band.
I think it's okay to continue to listen to CDs I already own, but I'm still divided on whether I can continue to download MP3s by my favorite bands. I'd like to download Radiohead's next album and send them a check for $20, or $50 if it's anything like OK Computer, but I'm sure that would violate their contract, and they wouldn't cash it. Hmmmmmm.
Slashdot Mirror
How about realizing that since there are a finite amount of people, there is a finite amount of cell phones that can be sold?
Oh, good point! Personally, I'd never buy anything twice. When these "computer" things started becoming popular, I went out and bought an IBM Personal Computer XT. Eventually I decided I'd need a hard drive and a modem, so I bought a 10 meg hard drive and a 2400 baud modem. Of course, the hard drive only has 128k of non-damaged clusters now, and it makes a noise like a baby elephant screaming while riding a dirt bike down a wet road, but it's still enough to boot io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com. Then I put in a floppy disk and run RIPterm and dial into a BBS, use their internet link, and run lynx.
Don't try to sell me a computer! I already have one!
I hate "history of" classes. Seems like "Hero worship 101". I can see a use for a "history of computing" class if the history that was being covered was the origin of standards - understanding the Teletype Model 33, for example, lends some insight into the newline character problem.
But being taught that Bageeno Hormonis invented the Univac III and his wife had six sons and one of them went to Oxford and they were trying to build a computer out of clockwork, ha, ha, isn't that funny - would be a waste of time. Of course, Universities are all about putting wastes of time in the curriculum - like the fact that CS majors in many Universities are required to take three semesters of Calculus before even going into CS101. I'm a professional programmer. I work with professional programmers. I've never seen anyone use calculus, ever. I've only seen people use trig maybe twice.
On the web, my name is generally Bageeno Hormonis, and my email address is spam@me.not.please.
With all these investment-driven dot coms that can't make a dime in profit, I think there will be so many bankruptcies that within two years, Bageeno Hormonis will have a social security number and be a registered voter in the states of Maryland and Delaware.
Yes, I'm fully aware of that. In fact, I've been fully aware of that since the first time I heard it, when this first "illegal linking" topic came up.
Just because an idea is valid or important doesn't mean you need to hear it eight thousand times. My physics teacher used to repeat every single day that the velocity of an orbiting object pointed tangent to the circle. One day, about three months in the class, he said the words "tangent to the circle", and my friend started screaming and banging his head on his desk.
That's about the way I feel about "but search engines link to DeCSS!!" posts.
Isn't it cool that every time there's a "linking legality" discussion, someone has posts "What about search engines?", and that person invariably gets moderated to +5, Insightful instead of -1, Redundant?
The answer, by the way, is no.
Actually, you CAN sue someone for pointing at you, and their lawyers would probably settle the case out of court, and you'd get a nice little check.
You've also got to think about the definition of "application". Does this mean "mature, commercial applications"? Or does it mean "The programmer trainee's VB blackjack program that doesn't let you double down"?
If any program written in a language with libraries that only support Windows, like QuickBasic 4.5, is an application, then I would estimate that there are at least a million applications out there that depend on Windows. I've written at least 500 of them.
Also, if the program compiles, but segfaults when you run it, does that count as an application? Because if it does, I've written all 70,000 myself.
The site has such good usability, it makes me sick!
Perhaps a career in marketing is not for you.
Google's Cache, however, has some interesting legal issues. Even if a judge orders an ISP to shut down a web site, that site's content (at least, its text content), will remain on the web in the form of a Google cache.
Is Google then liable if they don't also remove it?
Yeah, that surprises me, too. Until recently, I thought product names such as "Extremely high-fat potato chips for fat slobs like you" or "If You Believe Any of the Stories in this Magazine You Should Fuck Off and Get a Life Magazine" wouldn't sell very well. I guess I was wrong.
In ten years, we'll see "BSD for fucking idiots like YOU who can barely tie their fucking shoes and shouldn't even be using a computer in the first place"
FUCK!!!
You're now the TWELVE MILLIONTH POSTER to give us that LAME PIECE OF INFORMATION!
FUCKING SHIT!!
Does EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SLASHDOT TEENAGER have to post this piece of information without reading a single comment?!?!?
When it was posted as comment #5, I found it vaguely interesting! When it was posted as comment #11, I snickered at the redundant moron who didn't read before he posted. When it was posted as comments #18, #26, #34, #37, #52, #71, #76, and #91, I began to TEAR OUT MY HAIR AT THE ROOTS!
For fuck's sake! Read before you post!!!
FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!
You are the EIGHTEENTH PERSON who mentioned that!!
Read before you post!!
Like duh, Darth is evil in a new hope (iv), good in ep 1, that leaves 2 for turn to evil and 3 for consolidate evil.
I'm pretty sure he'll have sex with Natalie Portman while he's still good... plus, she has to be given nine months to have Luke & Leia... and then, I suppose, she has to die. I'm not sure he'll actually turn evil in 2.
What more can you ask for!
:)
I have a friend who's an aerospace engineer. I once asked him what 6^6 (6 to the 6th power) was. He did it in his head, and he was right.
On another occasion, I asked him his stance on abortion. It turns out he's "pro death". That's right - he thinks the government should mandate abortions without a special permit.
So much for the notion that higher IQs make better leaders
Hey! Don't try to tell us that releasing WordPerfect was good and screwing Debian was bad! Maybe it's the other way around! Maybe releasting WordPerfect would have been Linux's death blow if Debian hadn't been screwed! Maybe Debian needed to be screwed, to give it a boost! That which does not kill Debian makes it stronger, and nothing kills Debian!
How did Corel screw Debian?
That was probably one of the top ten flames I've ever received.
Too bad you're too much of a pussy to use an actual account, so I could, erm, email you and congratulate you.
Anyway, there's no content to that post, at all. Granted, that's what makes it a flame, and I probably shouldn't be responding to flamebait, but the only thing you actually said with real substance is that you support CEOs raping the public so they can take six-month vacations. Well, more power to you. You probably don't vote anyway.
Sometimes there's value in criticizing successful things. Other successful business practices include slavery, strip mining, sweatshop labor...
It's not just open-source drivers. Remember the story posted a couple weeks ago where it spelled out the way Nvidia bullied web sites, tried to elminate advertising space for their competitor, refused to cancel the contract even if the hardware was returned, and essentially acted like asshole fucks?
And remember all the links in that story to all the other ugly things Nvidia was doing? And their half-hearted, arrogant "apology" (that consisted of claiming that the woman with an nVidia PR address was not an nVidia PR person, but apparently some random woman in the office) in the face of a proposed boycott?
These people suck. Sure, you can get good quality at an affordable price, just like you can get good, affordable stuff from sweatshops and strip mines.
If the quality and price of the product are the only acceptable factors in whether or not one should do business with a company, well, then, we're all in big trouble.
I have this fight with my girlfriend all the time. I say, "Wal-Mart encourages sprawl, traffic problems, environmental issues, and monopoly power, and bullies cities into getting its way through lawsuits and political action." She says, "But they sell cheap stuff!"
Oh, brave new world...
P.S. I only listed 3DFx as one possible alternative. If you don't like them, buy something else entirely.
I don't think programming language structures rely very heavily on English. There are certain kinds of loops that are useful in programming, and we don't exactly try to define them in proper English. Let's look at the if/then loop.
English: "If the value of a is 1, then set b to 2 and print 'Hello' to the screen."
BASIC: IF A=1 THEN LET B=2:PRINT "HELLO"
C: If (a) {b=2;
printf ("Hello");}
bash: IF ($a=1)
THEN
$b=2
echo Hello
FI
None of these have a great deal in common with English, other than that we use the word "if" to declare a conditional because it's intuitive. Essentially, we need one instruction to let the computer know we're about to do a conditional (if), one instruction to let the computer know we're typing the instructions that go with the conditional (then/brackets), and one instruction to let it know we're done with the conditional (brackets, or "fi", or significant whitespace).
The words we use are irrelevent. There's just certain mathematical ways of doing loops.
You just said that the internet should be "completely free in terms of content" and that interpol should hunt down spammers. How is that possible?
Abuse != content.
I should be able to visit sites about neo-nazis. I should not find sites about neo-nazis in my mailbox each morning. I should be able to download winnuke. I should not be winnuked, unless I ask someone to do it.
That's the worst solution I've ever heard.
Personally, I think one government is inadequate even for a single nation. Remember those medical marijuana bills in the U.S. that passed by an *astounding margin* (like 75-25, which is almost never seen, and beat school bonds) in Nevada, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii, Oregon, and (I think) 3 more states? They were all in the West.
Personally, I wish every day that the Union had lost the civil war, and we had three nations - the North, South, and West.
To those of you who are British, I'd like to ask - despite all the really ugly wars you had throughout this century, do you really think it would be better to have been sharing a government with France and Germany all along?
As for the internet, it needs to be strictly controlled for abuse (I wouldn't mind Interpol hunting down spammers and script kiddies, yanking their 'net connections, and putting them on "don't use a computer or you'll be seeing prison time" parole for, say, five years), and completely free in terms of content. Local governments should decide whether they want their citizens to have access to things that are completely free in terms of content. If France doesn't like Nazi material on the internet, it should just cut all the cables going to the country. In my mind, it's that simple.
I don't think we're defining "pedophile" correctly.
A man who is attracted to 14, 15, 16 year old girls is "normal". It's normal human sexuality to start being attracted to girls, well, pretty much as soon as they start menstruating and growing breasts. 200 years ago, it was expected that a 14-year-old girl get married (usually to an older man) and start having kids.
A pedophile is someone attracted to prepubescent children. Nine-year-olds, five-year-olds, two-year-olds. This sort of attraction doesn't have, as far as I know, a biological purpose. It's something weird that happens to a person's psychology. Whether it's a genetic or environmental condition, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it's not "choice". I've known some pedophiles, and most of them also had ADD, manic depression, major depression, OCD, or any combination of the four.
For Disney to portray 20-year-olds as 15-year-olds with bare midriffs isn't a perversion of nature. They've just realized they can make money by showing us images that appeal to our normal, biological sexuality.
there is no form of blocking, automatic nor manual that is foolproof. if you go with automatic, either you end up blocking things you'd rather have available, or you miss some of the porn.
:)
That's why you don't block.
If you want to give junior high kids "internet access", you know they'll go through trying every single porn site until they hit one that beats your filters
Instead of selective denial, the best you can do is selective allowance. Give them access to msn.com, aol.com, disney.com, dictionary.com, a few encyclopedias, etc. I mean, in a school library, they don't start by buying every book in existence and then beginning the horrific task of throwing out the porn and racist manifestos. They add things, one at a time. That's the same way school 'net connections should work, too.
I don't think this should even be a temporary boycott. I've finally decided that I'm sickened by the idea of corporate music. Therefore, I have decided that I will never again buy a major-label CD, listen to the radio, watch MTV, enter a Tower Records or Sam Goody, or attend a concert by a major-label band.
I think it's okay to continue to listen to CDs I already own, but I'm still divided on whether I can continue to download MP3s by my favorite bands. I'd like to download Radiohead's next album and send them a check for $20, or $50 if it's anything like OK Computer, but I'm sure that would violate their contract, and they wouldn't cash it. Hmmmmmm.