Remember, that their job is not their #1 priority in life. Family life always comes first.
This depends on the employee. For some people their job is their #1 priority. In which case they will contribute more given the opportunity! It would be silly to ignore the benefits. This doesn't mean make them work 60 hour weeks, it means don't shy away from giving them responsibility (if they seem competent, anyway).
People who's job is very important to them are also likely to get peed off very quickly if they feel they are stagnating.
I wouldn't accuse those involved in research of enjoying the suffering of the lab animals. I know that they believe they are doing good work.
So I think there must be a tendency to rationalise away the suffering caused in this work, rather than conducting an honest analysis.
If you look at the replies to my post, there's not much in the way of serious refutations of my points, just throw-away statements which amount to "humans are more important than animals, deal with it, STFU".
About the effects on flesh: you're not seriously proposing that a chemical is going to turn flesh to jelly and no-one would know about this until it was tested? If it has that effect on flesh it'll most likely have that effect on other materials too! And we have some knowledge of the behaviour of chemicals either from their structure or from experience of their occurence in nature.
Anyway, I can take a little sample of skin from my body and drop some of your jellifying product on it with a pipette. Then we'll find out what happens. I know this wouldn't show long-term effects, but I don't know what would. I'm pretty sure it's possible to keep tissue alive articifically, though.
So it's fine for you to condemn medical advances gained through animal suffering while at the same time taking full advantage of them.
I said I can't accept using medical benefits to humans as a justification for animal testing. Then I said I can't change what has happened in the past so there is no point refusing treatment based on my distaste for the means by which the treatment was developed. The implication is that I don't want new treatments to be developed based on animal testing.
I continued to point out that given the suffering which was entailed in previous animal tests, to refuse treatment based on such past tests is to rub metaphorical salt in the wounds of those victim animals. Not only did they suffer for insufficient reason, they suffered for no reason at all! Therefore I am compelled to encourage the acceptance of existing treatments based on animal testing. It is our moral responsiblity to ensure that those animals did not suffer in vain.
Somehow I get the impression that you don't truly believe in the convictions of your statements because of that.
If you want to call me a troll, just call me it. I'm not. I believe what I am saying because it is derived from reasonable assumptions and reached through a logical progression, rather than some emotional gut feeling or go-with-the-flow laissez-faire.
Let's say they decide to skip animal testing and go straight to human testing...
Yes, sounds good to me, I'd volunteer for that (or accept payment from a private enterprise).
...for a drug without first figuring out if it turns living tissue to jelly. Will you sign up for that?
Strikes me that such a drug would be fairly unusual and this would be discovered before it got as far as on my skin, but anyway, given the small risk of this happening, and precautions to help prevent my entire body turning to jelly (test it on my appendix, maybe), yes, I'd be first in line to test a drug which had not been proven to leave my skin in an unjellied state.
After all, your suffering is no different or more relevant than an animal's right?
I didn't say no different, I said no more significant and certainly not sufficiently insignificant to justify animal testing.
Or would you rather humankind as a whole just stop trying to cure things because in order to do so we may have to harm some animals?
No, because there are other methods.
I'm not even going to bother with the "center of the exhalted universe" statement because I honestly can't understand where you got that impression.
You accused me of moral arrogance (looking down my nose at others - I don't, but I hold your views to be illogical and unreasonable). I pointed out the arrogance of those who consider mankind's benefit to be of greater significance than non-human animal suffering.
I'm not enjoying this anymore, I feel like I'm just restating everything because you are not reading my words properly.
Oh yes, I can see why a clever-looking Classical quote wins your argument!
In life, we human beings only have eachother.
Well, it feels that way sometimes but I would contend that it's only our genes that make us feel that way; fortunately we have complex brains that give us the chance to act in a more sophisticated way.
Call it selfish if you like, but I believe it to be every creature's imperative to preserve its own kind.
Yes it is selfish. It's the imperative of the gene. If we hold ourselves to be "above animals" then this can only be demonstrated by freeing ourselves from the shackles of our genetic drives.
My principles go along the lines of "live and let live" or "treat other as you would be treated". I define "others" as "sentient beings".
I expect similar behaviour from those around me capable of putting that type of thought together. That's why I'm not offended by the cruelty of wild animals; they simply don't know any better. Humans generally do.
That Star Trek quote - in Star Trek, the few (or the one) are volunteers, not victims.
Well, quite; I would think the existence of a nervous system is a prerequisite to feeling anything.
When it comes to relative complexity, though, most non-human animals are pretty much on a par, don't you think? I can see grey areas when it comes to single-celled organisms and such like, but then, we don't perform lab testing on single-celled organisms and extrapolate our findings to ourselves!
Without animal testing you shouldn't have survived much past birth because babies are suceptible to all kinds of diseases.
Yes, statistically human children have a better chance of survival past birth with the benefit of today's medicine.
But it's not necessarily the case that without animal testing we would not have modern medicine capable of a similar statistical improvement in child mortality.
I don't want to base my morality on falsehoods - morality must be built on the truth, or at least as close as we get to the truth. So I happily admit we have gained knowledge from animal testing. But animal testing is just one source of medical knowledge, and as I've explained I don't see how the ends can justify the means.
Oh, and mom probably wouldn't have managed to survive childbirth without current medical technology.
I've already explained my feelings about basing moral decisions on kinship. Anyway, see my thoughts above.
And I'm willing to bet that if you came down with something that was easily treated using modern medicine you wouldn't think twice about accepting treatment.
You're bet is safe but you don't further your argument by placing it. Suffering caused by animal testing in the past cannot be undone by refusal to accept treatment based on the knowledge gained during such testing. In fact, if we act by weighing benefit against suffering, it is our responsibility to make the maximum use, to the benefit of all sentient creatures, of the knowledge we have gained from past reprehensible acts.
Be thankful you live in this day and age where we're able to treat almost anything that can go wrong before you get all high and mighty and start looking down your nose at everybody.
I just try to be honest and get close to the truth. It's you who looks down your nose at everyone from your exhalted position at the centre of the universe, placing everyone else in graduated proximity dependent on familiarity and similarity.
Like any reasonable person, I think that the fuss being made about depictions of cruelty to animals in a game is ridiculous. The content of fiction is just that, and hurts no-one, and if its entertaining, so be it.
(At this point I'd like to remind everyone that humans are animals).
But the belief that the suffering of non-humans in medical experimentation is justifiable by the possible benefits to mankind is equally ridiculous. What moral foundations is this attitude based upon?
Fundamentally, the foundation must be that the suffering of humans (by way of disease) is more significant than the suffering of non-humans.
We can further divide the anti-animal group into two camps:
* Those who refute the existence of non-human suffering
* Those who accept the existence of non-human suffering but claim it to be inferior to human suffering.
Both camps exhibit one fundamental deviation from reason. The only real evidence that anyone has for the existence of suffering is their own personal experience. These two camps take this sample size of one and extrapolate their findings to the benefit of their entire species and to the exclusion of all others. This is clearly a bigotted, unscientific and illogical position.
Those who simply refuse to accept that non-humans can suffer display simple blinkered ignorance. They can have no justification for their stance.
Those who hold that animal suffering exists generally, but that human suffering is a superior form, exhibit more subtle flaws in their reasoning.
* They admit suffering exists, hence they admit sentience of animal life.
* Without any rational possibility of understanding sentience other that which they possess, they immediately cast all beings similar in appearance in the same mental mould, and damn all others to an inferior mould.
The argument most frequently trotted out, and to which you subscribe, is that the suffering of innocent animals is 'nasty' but given that your loved one's may get some life extension out of the deal, you are happy to accept it.
Perhaps I'm from a different planet, but this reads to me thus:
"Its my feelings that count above all others. I'd be upset if people I loved were hurt, so they come next. Other people I haven't met but who share some DNA with me come after that - 'cos they're a bit like me. Don't want to know about the rest"
Given our understanding of the selfish gene, its not surprising this attitude exists. But given humans consider themselves above the limitations of their genes - "above the animals" - it stinks of the utmost hypocrisy.
Surely an animal "above all animals" can elevate its thinking above the selfish dictates of its DNA.
Let me just say that my mother and father have both had cancer. They were cured by chemotherapy; however I would not use their longevity as an excuse for non-human testing. I lost my best friend to an unexplained death. His absence is a continual ache to me, but I would not have him back if it meant innocent suffering.
The animals upon which we experiment in labs are innocent slaves being extorted for the highest price - their lives and freedom - to a clumsy, cruel, stupid and conceited master, The master hides his actions from his own miserable compassion behind a veil of self-deceit.
* Make SURE that you get the authority to remove people from the project. Without requiring someone else's approval. Otherwise, you might get stuck with a bad team and the inability to fix it. (Hiring the right people is really the greatest tool a manager has - everything else pales in comparison to having the right people on the team.)
This is the golden nugget of information and this is why I would never accept a management position over people who were not up to the job. If the company is willing to get rid of them, why have they not done so already? The options for incompetents are:
* Train them into competency * Move them somewhere that they will cope * Bring in better staff to do their job and let them fester away * Make them leave, somehow.
If none of these have been tried, then what makes you think you'll be given the resources or authority to do them yourself? It's not exactly rocket science. Unless the previous manager was a complete incompetent too, and didn't comminicate the issues to his own boss.
Of course, if the problem is not competency but motivation, then the job is far easier, if you are yourself strongly motivated. Motivation is contagious. Strongly motivated people motivate those around them, just by being keen. This is not so much a skill but a predisposition.
Well, this is how I see it from my lowly position of tech grunt, anyway.
Re:One option is treating your customer with respe
on
Linux and DRM?
·
· Score: 1
Yes it has some bloat but seriously it's not as bad as you make out. Its small enough to run invisibly from crontab to record Interet radio broadcasts.
Re:One option is treating your customer with respe
on
Linux and DRM?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Learn for the Real Player debacle, and note how many people have said that no video is compelling enough to get them to install RealPlayer.
Kind of off-topic, but the fact that, at least on the supported platforms, mplayer plays Real streams quite happily and allows nice things like output to a file, means even if Real was a great format, there is no compulsion to install the proprietary player.
Of course the devil's advocate has to defend a position themselves. They have to defend the position of not doing what everyone else is blindly proposing. And if you can't see the benefit of analysing a proposal for flaws against the status quo, then I'm glad I don't have to work with you.
If everyone just went along with the flow then there would be all kinds of fuck-ups. Being constructively critical of a proposal can highlight serious gotchas, or expose a course of action as a management knee-jerk.
By definition. Science is the application of a rigorous discipline in an attempt to understand nature. Computing has nothing to do with understanding nature and everything to do with implementing logic in physical systems.
This is not to degrade computing. In fact, computing is provably correct as it is based on logic. Science is a statistical endeavour in which nothing is proven, but theories are constructed which demonstrate usefullness and have not yet been disproven. Computing is, however, built on the results of science.
Maths is a branch of logic. Science is a branch of logic. They are of course cross-fertilising. Computing is so close to father logic as to be almost indistinguishable - it's just a way of logic happening in acceptable time scales.
Thinking about it, I think some older ones used the smaller screws but more recent ones have been the large. It's been about a year for me. I promise I have had motherboard mounting kits which used the small screws, the large ones would not fit.
They used to have little red card washers too; the small screws have that little lip which was exactly the same diameter as the red washer. Do they still come with washers?
There are two, sometimes three thread sizes with your standard clone PC case. Small fits floppy disks, CD/DVD drives and holds the motherboard down. Large fits hard disks, holds the blanking plates in place, and fits the power supply, usually also the case. Sometimes the case has a larger thread size.
I thought this was obvious - screw goes where it fits, as you say. I recently went to a reasonably well respected computer shop and was served by an assistant aged around 19. I'm 30 and I've been building PCs since I was 19. The guy tried to sell me small screws for a hard disk. I told him what I thought. He pulled out a hard disk and one of his little screws and screwed it in as if to say "see?". I said to him, keep turning. Needless to say the screw had zero purchase in the hole. He still would not accept his incorrectitude.
I really wanted to punch his spotty little face. But I didn't, as I know better.
Stupid, pointless rant? Yes. But I've not spoken to anyone about this incident (how do you bring it up in normal conversation?) and this is truly a release to get it off my chest.
Thing is, Perens has been saying this all along. All the knee-jerk KDE fanboys were up in arms that KDE was not the chosen GUI for UserLinux, while Perens said that there was nothing preventing vendors providing such support.
So Perens LLC is just that kind of vendor! Nothing new though. This is a misleading article, because it implies that Perens has had a change of heart, when in fact he has not, and there was nothing wrong with the state of his heart anyway.
I fear we already do.. it's called "trademarks" - whole swathes of our language are being land-grabbed by rapacious corporations and their pet lawyers. By 2010, will we still be able to say "Good Morning" without paying licensing fees to someone?
A trademark is protected only in the context of trade. Coke is a trademark. I can say Coke all I like, because I am not passing this post off as a soft drink with vegetable extracts. As it happens, coke is also a smokeless fuel. This has not led to trademark disputes.
Trademarks are probably the most defensible form of "intellectual property". They protect the customer, because they provide confidence that you know with whom you are dealing. They protect the seller, because you can invest reputation in your brand and not have someone undermine it. They do not infringe upon otherwise free use of the trademarked device, because trademarks only apply within the registered fields.
Don't worry about trademarks. Software patents and long-lived copyrights are the threats to progress and freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
I know you're kidding but we need to fight this false image Debian has unfairly gained.
Debian has 2.6.2 images in unstable. And just recently got Firefox builds too.
So Debian is bang up to date, if you want it to be (by running unstable).
kind of crap you spew
domineering fucktard.
That's a good indication that you're an ass.
pretend you know everything yourself, you dick.
you fascist pig.
you six cent whore.
I'm can't put my finger on it, but something tells me this is personal for you.
I agree with your other points. However:
Remember, that their job is not their #1 priority in life. Family life always comes first.
This depends on the employee. For some people their job is their #1 priority. In which case they will contribute more given the opportunity! It would be silly to ignore the benefits. This doesn't mean make them work 60 hour weeks, it means don't shy away from giving them responsibility (if they seem competent, anyway).
People who's job is very important to them are also likely to get peed off very quickly if they feel they are stagnating.
Sorry if I was unclear at any point.
I wouldn't accuse those involved in research of enjoying the suffering of the lab animals. I know that they believe they are doing good work.
So I think there must be a tendency to rationalise away the suffering caused in this work, rather than conducting an honest analysis.
If you look at the replies to my post, there's not much in the way of serious refutations of my points, just throw-away statements which amount to "humans are more important than animals, deal with it, STFU".
About the effects on flesh: you're not seriously proposing that a chemical is going to turn flesh to jelly and no-one would know about this until it was tested? If it has that effect on flesh it'll most likely have that effect on other materials too! And we have some knowledge of the behaviour of chemicals either from their structure or from experience of their occurence in nature.
Anyway, I can take a little sample of skin from my body and drop some of your jellifying product on it with a pipette. Then we'll find out what happens. I know this wouldn't show long-term effects, but I don't know what would. I'm pretty sure it's possible to keep tissue alive articifically, though.
I said I can't accept using medical benefits to humans as a justification for animal testing. Then I said I can't change what has happened in the past so there is no point refusing treatment based on my distaste for the means by which the treatment was developed. The implication is that I don't want new treatments to be developed based on animal testing.
I continued to point out that given the suffering which was entailed in previous animal tests, to refuse treatment based on such past tests is to rub metaphorical salt in the wounds of those victim animals. Not only did they suffer for insufficient reason, they suffered for no reason at all! Therefore I am compelled to encourage the acceptance of existing treatments based on animal testing. It is our moral responsiblity to ensure that those animals did not suffer in vain.
Somehow I get the impression that you don't truly believe in the convictions of your statements because of that.
If you want to call me a troll, just call me it. I'm not. I believe what I am saying because it is derived from reasonable assumptions and reached through a logical progression, rather than some emotional gut feeling or go-with-the-flow laissez-faire.
Let's say they decide to skip animal testing and go straight to human testing...
Yes, sounds good to me, I'd volunteer for that (or accept payment from a private enterprise).
Strikes me that such a drug would be fairly unusual and this would be discovered before it got as far as on my skin, but anyway, given the small risk of this happening, and precautions to help prevent my entire body turning to jelly (test it on my appendix, maybe), yes, I'd be first in line to test a drug which had not been proven to leave my skin in an unjellied state.
After all, your suffering is no different or more relevant than an animal's right?
I didn't say no different, I said no more significant and certainly not sufficiently insignificant to justify animal testing.
Or would you rather humankind as a whole just stop trying to cure things because in order to do so we may have to harm some animals?
No, because there are other methods.
I'm not even going to bother with the "center of the exhalted universe" statement because I honestly can't understand where you got that impression.
You accused me of moral arrogance (looking down my nose at others - I don't, but I hold your views to be illogical and unreasonable). I pointed out the arrogance of those who consider mankind's benefit to be of greater significance than non-human animal suffering.
I'm not enjoying this anymore, I feel like I'm just restating everything because you are not reading my words properly.
Oh yes, I can see why a clever-looking Classical quote wins your argument!
In life, we human beings only have eachother.
Well, it feels that way sometimes but I would contend that it's only our genes that make us feel that way; fortunately we have complex brains that give us the chance to act in a more sophisticated way.
Call it selfish if you like, but I believe it to be every creature's imperative to preserve its own kind.
Yes it is selfish. It's the imperative of the gene. If we hold ourselves to be "above animals" then this can only be demonstrated by freeing ourselves from the shackles of our genetic drives.
My principles go along the lines of "live and let live" or "treat other as you would be treated". I define "others" as "sentient beings".
I expect similar behaviour from those around me capable of putting that type of thought together. That's why I'm not offended by the cruelty of wild animals; they simply don't know any better. Humans generally do.
That Star Trek quote - in Star Trek, the few (or the one) are volunteers, not victims.
Well, quite; I would think the existence of a nervous system is a prerequisite to feeling anything.
When it comes to relative complexity, though, most non-human animals are pretty much on a par, don't you think? I can see grey areas when it comes to single-celled organisms and such like, but then, we don't perform lab testing on single-celled organisms and extrapolate our findings to ourselves!
Without animal testing you shouldn't have survived much past birth because babies are suceptible to all kinds of diseases.
Yes, statistically human children have a better chance of survival past birth with the benefit of today's medicine.
But it's not necessarily the case that without animal testing we would not have modern medicine capable of a similar statistical improvement in child mortality.
I don't want to base my morality on falsehoods - morality must be built on the truth, or at least as close as we get to the truth. So I happily admit we have gained knowledge from animal testing. But animal testing is just one source of medical knowledge, and as I've explained I don't see how the ends can justify the means.
Oh, and mom probably wouldn't have managed to survive childbirth without current medical technology.
I've already explained my feelings about basing moral decisions on kinship. Anyway, see my thoughts above.
And I'm willing to bet that if you came down with something that was easily treated using modern medicine you wouldn't think twice about accepting treatment.
You're bet is safe but you don't further your argument by placing it. Suffering caused by animal testing in the past cannot be undone by refusal to accept treatment based on the knowledge gained during such testing. In fact, if we act by weighing benefit against suffering, it is our responsibility to make the maximum use, to the benefit of all sentient creatures, of the knowledge we have gained from past reprehensible acts.
Be thankful you live in this day and age where we're able to treat almost anything that can go wrong before you get all high and mighty and start looking down your nose at everybody.
I just try to be honest and get close to the truth. It's you who looks down your nose at everyone from your exhalted position at the centre of the universe, placing everyone else in graduated proximity dependent on familiarity and similarity.
Like any reasonable person, I think that the fuss being made about depictions of cruelty to animals in a game is ridiculous. The content of fiction is just that, and hurts no-one, and if its entertaining, so be it.
(At this point I'd like to remind everyone that humans are animals).
But the belief that the suffering of non-humans in medical experimentation is justifiable by the possible benefits to mankind is equally ridiculous. What moral foundations is this attitude based upon?
Fundamentally, the foundation must be that the suffering of humans (by way of disease) is more significant than the suffering of non-humans.
We can further divide the anti-animal group into two camps:
* Those who refute the existence of non-human suffering
* Those who accept the existence of non-human suffering but claim it to be inferior to human suffering.
Both camps exhibit one fundamental deviation from reason. The only real evidence that anyone has for the existence of suffering is their own personal experience. These two camps take this sample size of one and extrapolate their findings to the benefit of their entire species and to the exclusion of all others. This is clearly a bigotted, unscientific and illogical position.
Those who simply refuse to accept that non-humans can suffer display simple blinkered ignorance. They can have no justification for their stance.
Those who hold that animal suffering exists generally, but that human suffering is a superior form, exhibit more subtle flaws in their reasoning.
* They admit suffering exists, hence they admit sentience of animal life.
* Without any rational possibility of understanding sentience other that which they possess, they immediately cast all beings similar in appearance in the same mental mould, and damn all others to an inferior mould.
The argument most frequently trotted out, and to which you subscribe, is that the suffering of innocent animals is 'nasty' but given that your loved one's may get some life extension out of the deal, you are happy to accept it.
Perhaps I'm from a different planet, but this reads to me thus:
"Its my feelings that count above all others. I'd be upset if people I loved were hurt, so they come next. Other people I haven't met but who share some DNA with me come after that - 'cos they're a bit like me. Don't want to know about the rest"
Given our understanding of the selfish gene, its not surprising this attitude exists. But given humans consider themselves above the limitations of their genes - "above the animals" - it stinks of the utmost hypocrisy.
Surely an animal "above all animals" can elevate its thinking above the selfish dictates of its DNA.
Let me just say that my mother and father have both had cancer. They were cured by chemotherapy; however I would not use their longevity as an excuse for non-human testing. I lost my best friend to an unexplained death. His absence is a continual ache to me, but I would not have him back if it meant innocent suffering.
The animals upon which we experiment in labs are innocent slaves being extorted for the highest price - their lives and freedom - to a clumsy, cruel, stupid and conceited master, The master hides his actions from his own miserable compassion behind a veil of self-deceit.
* Make SURE that you get the authority to remove people from the project. Without requiring someone else's approval. Otherwise, you might get stuck with a bad team and the inability to fix it. (Hiring the right people is really the greatest tool a manager has - everything else pales in comparison to having the right people on the team.)
This is the golden nugget of information and this is why I would never accept a management position over people who were not up to the job. If the company is willing to get rid of them, why have they not done so already? The options for incompetents are:
* Train them into competency
* Move them somewhere that they will cope
* Bring in better staff to do their job and let them fester away
* Make them leave, somehow.
If none of these have been tried, then what makes you think you'll be given the resources or authority to do them yourself? It's not exactly rocket science. Unless the previous manager was a complete incompetent too, and didn't comminicate the issues to his own boss.
Of course, if the problem is not competency but motivation, then the job is far easier, if you are yourself strongly motivated. Motivation is contagious. Strongly motivated people motivate those around them, just by being keen. This is not so much a skill but a predisposition.
Well, this is how I see it from my lowly position of tech grunt, anyway.
Yes it has some bloat but seriously it's not as bad as you make out. Its small enough to run invisibly from crontab to record Interet radio broadcasts.
Learn for the Real Player debacle, and note how many people have said that no video is compelling enough to get them to install RealPlayer.
Kind of off-topic, but the fact that, at least on the supported platforms, mplayer plays Real streams quite happily and allows nice things like output to a file, means even if Real was a great format, there is no compulsion to install the proprietary player.
Plus, if you're really lucky, you might be able to persuade a girl to spend more than 30 seconds in there. Well, if you need more!
Of course the devil's advocate has to defend a position themselves. They have to defend the position of not doing what everyone else is blindly proposing. And if you can't see the benefit of analysing a proposal for flaws against the status quo, then I'm glad I don't have to work with you.
If everyone just went along with the flow then there would be all kinds of fuck-ups. Being constructively critical of a proposal can highlight serious gotchas, or expose a course of action as a management knee-jerk.
Some girls will have sex but won't give head, even after several years. Believe me, I've just split up with one, and this is one of the reasons.
/. ...
Such a strange topic for
Thanks for your support!
Note that you missed the word "big" in the sequence "big", "bigger", "biggest".
Language theory is linguistics.
Complexity theory is mathematics.
The study of mental phenomena is psychology.
'Attempting to find algorithems' is 'problem solving'.
Numerical simulation is modelling - part of mathematics.
Computer Science is a pick'n'mix - precisely because it is not a science, but a discipline built on top of many sciences.
Using your logic I can study the way people prepare food and call it domestic science. Oh wait...
Well said. Computing is not a science.
By definition. Science is the application of a rigorous discipline in an attempt to understand nature. Computing has nothing to do with understanding nature and everything to do with implementing logic in physical systems.
This is not to degrade computing. In fact, computing is provably correct as it is based on logic. Science is a statistical endeavour in which nothing is proven, but theories are constructed which demonstrate usefullness and have not yet been disproven. Computing is, however, built on the results of science.
Maths is a branch of logic. Science is a branch of logic. They are of course cross-fertilising. Computing is so close to father logic as to be almost indistinguishable - it's just a way of logic happening in acceptable time scales.
Of course, you might disagree.
Cheers!
Thinking about it, I think some older ones used the smaller screws but more recent ones have been the large. It's been about a year for me. I promise I have had motherboard mounting kits which used the small screws, the large ones would not fit.
They used to have little red card washers too; the small screws have that little lip which was exactly the same diameter as the red washer. Do they still come with washers?
There are two, sometimes three thread sizes with your standard clone PC case. Small fits floppy disks, CD/DVD drives and holds the motherboard down. Large fits hard disks, holds the blanking plates in place, and fits the power supply, usually also the case. Sometimes the case has a larger thread size.
I thought this was obvious - screw goes where it fits, as you say. I recently went to a reasonably well respected computer shop and was served by an assistant aged around 19. I'm 30 and I've been building PCs since I was 19. The guy tried to sell me small screws for a hard disk. I told him what I thought. He pulled out a hard disk and one of his little screws and screwed it in as if to say "see?". I said to him, keep turning. Needless to say the screw had zero purchase in the hole. He still would not accept his incorrectitude.
I really wanted to punch his spotty little face. But I didn't, as I know better.
Stupid, pointless rant? Yes. But I've not spoken to anyone about this incident (how do you bring it up in normal conversation?) and this is truly a release to get it off my chest.
Thing is, Perens has been saying this all along. All the knee-jerk KDE fanboys were up in arms that KDE was not the chosen GUI for UserLinux, while Perens said that there was nothing preventing vendors providing such support.
So Perens LLC is just that kind of vendor! Nothing new though. This is a misleading article, because it implies that Perens has had a change of heart, when in fact he has not, and there was nothing wrong with the state of his heart anyway.
I fear we already do.. it's called "trademarks" - whole swathes of our language are being land-grabbed by rapacious corporations and their pet lawyers.
By 2010, will we still be able to say "Good Morning" without paying licensing fees to someone?
A trademark is protected only in the context of trade. Coke is a trademark. I can say Coke all I like, because I am not passing this post off as a soft drink with vegetable extracts. As it happens, coke is also a smokeless fuel. This has not led to trademark disputes.
Trademarks are probably the most defensible form of "intellectual property". They protect the customer, because they provide confidence that you know with whom you are dealing. They protect the seller, because you can invest reputation in your brand and not have someone undermine it. They do not infringe upon otherwise free use of the trademarked device, because trademarks only apply within the registered fields.
Don't worry about trademarks. Software patents and long-lived copyrights are the threats to progress and freedom.
No. You are wrong. Copyright does not protect meaning. It protects one expression of that meaning.
Example: "Jack and Jill went up the hill"; "Our two protagonists, Jack and his affiliate Jill, scaled the mound". Two expressions, one meaning.
Meaning is unspoken and occurs in your mind. It is only tangible via expression, hence only expressions can be protected.
Thanks, I narrowly advoided spraying my laptop with wine!