Look, I don't like BT's patent more than anyone, but this guy's claim is just stupid. Inventing "escapes" as prior art to hyperlinks? Hyperlinks as a concept have nothing to do with the particular encoding you use for them. I could have a table separate from the next with descriptions of where the hyperlinks should be, and you would still have the concept of hyperlinks.
Re:Those opening paragraphs...
on
.NETly News
·
· Score: 2
Got news for you... while the Mac has certainly influenced the industry, it did NOT popularize the computer onto everyone's desktop. That was DOS -- and then Windows.
Reality Master 101, Congratulations. You have posted to Slashdot 1700 times.
Actually, I used to post under my own name, until I got tired of trolls attacking my computer. That account was around 90,000 and had 420 posts before I retired it. That makes this post number 2128. Of course, that doesn't include any of the numerous AC posts I do now and then.:)
If you spent five minutes apiece writing whatever it is you write, that would mean you've spent over 140 hours composing Slashdot comments.
I think and type pretty fast. That average is probably high, but again, there were a lot more posts.
I'll assume you're a young man, and offer you a question:
I'm 37, so whether I'm young or not depends on your relative age.
When you're lying in your deathbed, dying of cancer,
I should mention that my superior genetics favor a very long lifespan. All of my grandparents lived well into their 90s. In fact, many doctors have remarked that many of my physical attributes are among the best they've seen. For example, one doctor said my lung capacity was second only to an olympic swimmer he had tested. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I have to admit my looks are only average.:)
... are you going to look back on those 140 man-hours of staring into a computer monitor shooting off your mouth like...
I consider it my duty and responsibility to give the world the benefits of my intelligence and wisdom. If at the end of my life I have done my part to make the world a better place, then it was time well spent.
Besides, it's fun.:)
...a complete asshole as time well spent?
If I didn't piss people off once in a while, then I would know I wasn't doing my job.
Anyone not having the same viewpoints as me is wasting their time and is to be condemned."
There are several ways someone can have a different "viewpoint":
1) Someone has a different taste in something. Some people like olives. Personally, I can't stand them. Someone likes certain movies that I don't. This is normal human variation.
2) Someone has a different opinion about a factual statement than me. For example, I think Socialism is an intrinsically evil political system, and all those who believe in it are simply wrong. Now, many people think that this is "intolerant", but it simply isn't. In my opinion, I am right and everyone else is wrong on this fact. Now, in the future I might change my opinion, but at this point based on the available evidence I have made my conclusion.
Now let's talk about the current subject, which is lifestyle choices. There are two kinds of lifestyle choices: those that have a basis in normal psychology, and those that don't. For example, there are some psychiatric diseases that cause people to rip flesh from themselves. Most people would consider this an abnormal behavior.
Some people just find their bodies artistically insufficient as-is, and want to do something to enhance their appearance. Relatively few of them (that I know, anyway) do it to shock or get attention, and those that do are usually just going through a very typical youthful phase (i.e. just started college, or rebelling against the parents).
Then there are these sort of people. I agree, many do it for the rebellious value. But let's talk about these other people who just want to "enhance their appearance". I'm sorry, but if you are so bored with your life that you have to engage in self-mutilation as "art" in order to give some meaning to your life, then you have a personality disorder. In my opinion, this is not in the range of normal human lifestyle choices, and I don't consider it a simple difference in "taste". I'm not saying that people should be locked up for it, but I am saying that it's a symptom of something they should get help for.
Not only do I find these people not to be "silly and pointless," but I find them much more interesting than anyone who is so uncomfortable with the thought of anyone different than themselves, that they believe such people must "get a life" or, to quote you, "be put in an asylum."
I would consider it fascinating to talk to Jeffrey Dahmer, or Hitler, or the Unibomber, or Charles Manson. Interesting does not mean mentally stable. In fact, probably the opposite.:)
You seem to me extremely prejudiced, to the point of xenophobia.
No. Prejudice is believing something in contradiction to facts, such as believing all blacks are mentally inferior. In my opinion, it is factual that self mutilation is a sign of a personality disorder. If I'm proven wrong in the future, then I'll change my opinion.
By the way, I should point out that self mutilation is different from tattooing, which you lump together. That's in a different class. Someone can have a tattoo and have problems, although there is often a correllation (i.e., I think you'll find more criminals have tattoos than law-abiding citizens).
That, combined with your (apparently) raging ego, makes you the silly one in my book.
Although I do have a considerable ego, combined with a certain arrogance, I like to think of it as self-confidence instead.:)
Heh. Well, in this case I have to plead guilty as charged. It's not so much a "prejudice" as a lack of patience. I've just never had any patience with people who do silly, pointless things like piercing your cheek just for the attention. I just want to slap them and say, "Sheesh! Get a life!"
On the other hand, could it possibly be that the movie actually had a point, but you just missed it?
That's entirely possible, since you've already apparently seen way more than I saw.:)
I don't know, maybe I did miss the whole plot. I have to admit that I found all the cutting very distracting and got bored after a while. It may have caused me to tune out and stop looking for some point to the whole thing.
On the one hand, I agree with you: It shouldn't be difficult to "get" a movie, and by that measure A.I. probably could have been better.
But on the other hand, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have a movie with a lot of subtlety and ambiguity. A great movie can be like an onion, where you find different things about it as you peel back the layers. I think A.I. has a lot of depth that you only find when you really think about it. Where A.I. failed is in inspiring people to look for the subtlety, rather than having people frustrated with it.
The fun thing about reading an analysis site like that is not so much "I have to read it because I'm too stupid to understand the movie", but to find other interpretations that others have found that you may have missed yourself.
Well, a plot summary is not the same. I mean you could literally tell the entire story of Moulin Rouge in one sentence, and not leave anything out.
Take Sound of Music: There were a number of sub-plots in the film. (pardon my memory of the names of everyone:) ): The nanny's relationship with the father, the father's relationship with the children, the father's relationship with that other woman, the escape from the Nazis, the young Nazi dude who had the relationship with the daughter, etc. There was a lot of plot to the movie -- there was an actual story.
There simply wasn't much of a story to Moulin Rouge. Put it this way: did you feel any suspense about the relationship and how the movie would end, or did you just watch the spectacle?
I have to admit, I don't tend to enjoy "freak movies". I usually end up shaking my head and getting irritated, thinking "I don't give a crap about this person, just put them in the insane asylum and be done with it.":)
OK, I know I'm in the minority, but I loved A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. If you hated anything about it, or hated the ending, or whatever, I encourage you to see it again once the DVD comes out and look past the obvious. A great site devoted to analysis of the film is Mysteries of AI. There's a ton of information on the site (although, he doesn't have it totally done at this point).
Re: if you hated the ending... ask yourself if Monica was real or not.
As for the Oscars, I was really disappointed with Osmont not getting a best actor nomination. I thought he was fantastic. I didn't really expect a best picture nomination, because it was so dark and so many people didn't get it ("what's with the aliens??" ARGH!)
I think this is one of those pictures that will only be appreciated in 20 years after people start taking it apart.
I have two minds about Moulin Rouge. On the one hand, there is no doubt it was a beutiful movie and I personally enjoy musicals. I would like to see more of them made.
On the other hand, there's just no getting around one fact: The movie's plot totally sucked! I guess there was sort of a story, but it was so simplistic you probably sum it up in one sentence.
Like I said, I really like musicals, but let's get back to actually having GOOD MOVIES that happen to be musicals.
For this reason, I'm glad it's getting an award because it will encourage them to make more, but it's really not deserving (except maybe costumes, music, etc).
"The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices. The pursuit of simple Truth."
Both Socialism and Libertarianism are both bad ideas, although Socialism is much more evil than Libertarianism. At least Libertarianism embraces freedom (just in the wrong ways).
What's frightening is that this is more insightful than the responses to a lot of my posts (I'll resist temptation to link a few recent responses...).:)
Sure you could transform the scale, but the problem is that you typically only have 8 bits of intensity information (or maybe 10 in some cases, I believe). That not a very wide range. I don't remember exactly what the dynamic range of film is, but it's way higher than this (maybe someone knowledgeable could give their 2c about this).
More resolution, while nice, is not what digital photography primarily lacks. Light and shadow sensitivity is what really sucks with digital cameras. Film has a logarithmic sensitivity to light, while a digital sensor has a linear sensitivity.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of any technologies in development to give better light/shadow sensitivity.
Using the term "free software" doesn't give power to anyone.
I refer to his personal power and ego.
Put it this way: As you point out, there are a lot of licenses that Stallman doesn't go out of this way to discredit, even though they are not what he would consider ideal.
So why does he go out of his way to disparage Open Source whenever he can, even though the definitions of Free Software and Open Source are virtually identical? It's because it's not just a competitor license, it's a competitor organization.
Stallman knows that he will be marginalized if the Open Source organization gains any ground. If Stallman were really as "agnostic" about these things, as long as the software was free, he would recognize the Open Source organization as a partner in his goals that happens to just come at it from a different angle.
As much as I generally dislike the VC scene, I have to defend them to some extent. You have to think about it from their point of view: You are giving a group of people several million dollars of your own money, or someone else's money that contributed to the fund. An extremely high proportion of people end up failing, so you want to make sure these guys don't just piss all your money away.
Now, take that to its logical conclusion... you are going to become a control freak, insisting that these guys (who are probably going to fail anyway) bring in "experts" who have succeeded in the past, insist that a plan be in place, make sure that they aren't making stupid decisions, etc.
The VC game is really hard. I don't like it, but I sympathize with the fact that they are damned if they do (just hand the keys to the lunatics, and watch them piss it away), and damned if they don't (keep control, and prevent possibly competent people from doing their job).
Slashdot Mirror
It is not far fetched at all to consider escaped data as a link.
This is wrong on two counts:
1) The concept of hyperlink is what was patented, not the encoding of a hyperlink. A hyperlink can be implemented without any concept of an escape.
2) Escaped data might be a link, but that's an interpretation of the data. An escape is an encoding, nothing more.
Oops, that should be "separate from the text". Preview is my friend.
Look, I don't like BT's patent more than anyone, but this guy's claim is just stupid. Inventing "escapes" as prior art to hyperlinks? Hyperlinks as a concept have nothing to do with the particular encoding you use for them. I could have a table separate from the next with descriptions of where the hyperlinks should be, and you would still have the concept of hyperlinks.
Got news for you... while the Mac has certainly influenced the industry, it did NOT popularize the computer onto everyone's desktop. That was DOS -- and then Windows.
Besides, you spend all that energy whining about the moderation on Slashdot, and you accuse me of wasting my time??
Reality Master 101, Congratulations. You have posted to Slashdot 1700 times.
Actually, I used to post under my own name, until I got tired of trolls attacking my computer. That account was around 90,000 and had 420 posts before I retired it. That makes this post number 2128. Of course, that doesn't include any of the numerous AC posts I do now and then. :)
If you spent five minutes apiece writing whatever it is you write, that would mean you've spent over 140 hours composing Slashdot comments.
I think and type pretty fast. That average is probably high, but again, there were a lot more posts.
I'll assume you're a young man, and offer you a question:
I'm 37, so whether I'm young or not depends on your relative age.
When you're lying in your deathbed, dying of cancer,
I should mention that my superior genetics favor a very long lifespan. All of my grandparents lived well into their 90s. In fact, many doctors have remarked that many of my physical attributes are among the best they've seen. For example, one doctor said my lung capacity was second only to an olympic swimmer he had tested. In the interest of full disclosure, however, I have to admit my looks are only average. :)
I consider it my duty and responsibility to give the world the benefits of my intelligence and wisdom. If at the end of my life I have done my part to make the world a better place, then it was time well spent.
Besides, it's fun. :)
If I didn't piss people off once in a while, then I would know I wasn't doing my job.
Anyone not having the same viewpoints as me is wasting their time and is to be condemned."
There are several ways someone can have a different "viewpoint":
1) Someone has a different taste in something. Some people like olives. Personally, I can't stand them. Someone likes certain movies that I don't. This is normal human variation.
2) Someone has a different opinion about a factual statement than me. For example, I think Socialism is an intrinsically evil political system, and all those who believe in it are simply wrong. Now, many people think that this is "intolerant", but it simply isn't. In my opinion, I am right and everyone else is wrong on this fact. Now, in the future I might change my opinion, but at this point based on the available evidence I have made my conclusion.
Now let's talk about the current subject, which is lifestyle choices. There are two kinds of lifestyle choices: those that have a basis in normal psychology, and those that don't. For example, there are some psychiatric diseases that cause people to rip flesh from themselves. Most people would consider this an abnormal behavior.
Some people just find their bodies artistically insufficient as-is, and want to do something to enhance their appearance. Relatively few of them (that I know, anyway) do it to shock or get attention, and those that do are usually just going through a very typical youthful phase (i.e. just started college, or rebelling against the parents).
Then there are these sort of people. I agree, many do it for the rebellious value. But let's talk about these other people who just want to "enhance their appearance". I'm sorry, but if you are so bored with your life that you have to engage in self-mutilation as "art" in order to give some meaning to your life, then you have a personality disorder. In my opinion, this is not in the range of normal human lifestyle choices, and I don't consider it a simple difference in "taste". I'm not saying that people should be locked up for it, but I am saying that it's a symptom of something they should get help for.
Not only do I find these people not to be "silly and pointless," but I find them much more interesting than anyone who is so uncomfortable with the thought of anyone different than themselves, that they believe such people must "get a life" or, to quote you, "be put in an asylum."
I would consider it fascinating to talk to Jeffrey Dahmer, or Hitler, or the Unibomber, or Charles Manson. Interesting does not mean mentally stable. In fact, probably the opposite. :)
You seem to me extremely prejudiced, to the point of xenophobia.
No. Prejudice is believing something in contradiction to facts, such as believing all blacks are mentally inferior. In my opinion, it is factual that self mutilation is a sign of a personality disorder. If I'm proven wrong in the future, then I'll change my opinion.
By the way, I should point out that self mutilation is different from tattooing, which you lump together. That's in a different class. Someone can have a tattoo and have problems, although there is often a correllation (i.e., I think you'll find more criminals have tattoos than law-abiding citizens).
That, combined with your (apparently) raging ego, makes you the silly one in my book.
Although I do have a considerable ego, combined with a certain arrogance, I like to think of it as self-confidence instead. :)
Heh. Well, in this case I have to plead guilty as charged. It's not so much a "prejudice" as a lack of patience. I've just never had any patience with people who do silly, pointless things like piercing your cheek just for the attention. I just want to slap them and say, "Sheesh! Get a life!"
and I'm not quite sure I want to beta test this one,
That's like saying you don't want to test a View Master 3D toy because you're afraid they might have put a search-light-power light bulb inside.
Do you really think they're putting a 1 watt laser in this thing?
On the other hand, could it possibly be that the movie actually had a point, but you just missed it?
That's entirely possible, since you've already apparently seen way more than I saw. :)
I don't know, maybe I did miss the whole plot. I have to admit that I found all the cutting very distracting and got bored after a while. It may have caused me to tune out and stop looking for some point to the whole thing.
On the one hand, I agree with you: It shouldn't be difficult to "get" a movie, and by that measure A.I. probably could have been better.
But on the other hand, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to have a movie with a lot of subtlety and ambiguity. A great movie can be like an onion, where you find different things about it as you peel back the layers. I think A.I. has a lot of depth that you only find when you really think about it. Where A.I. failed is in inspiring people to look for the subtlety, rather than having people frustrated with it.
The fun thing about reading an analysis site like that is not so much "I have to read it because I'm too stupid to understand the movie", but to find other interpretations that others have found that you may have missed yourself.
Well, a plot summary is not the same. I mean you could literally tell the entire story of Moulin Rouge in one sentence, and not leave anything out.
Take Sound of Music: There were a number of sub-plots in the film. (pardon my memory of the names of everyone :) ): The nanny's relationship with the father, the father's relationship with the children, the father's relationship with that other woman, the escape from the Nazis, the young Nazi dude who had the relationship with the daughter, etc. There was a lot of plot to the movie -- there was an actual story.
There simply wasn't much of a story to Moulin Rouge. Put it this way: did you feel any suspense about the relationship and how the movie would end, or did you just watch the spectacle?
I have to admit, I don't tend to enjoy "freak movies". I usually end up shaking my head and getting irritated, thinking "I don't give a crap about this person, just put them in the insane asylum and be done with it." :)
On the other hand, since Spielberg set out to make a "Kubrickian" movie, maybe it's fitting that it's so neglected by the Academy. :)
OK, I know I'm in the minority, but I loved A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. If you hated anything about it, or hated the ending, or whatever, I encourage you to see it again once the DVD comes out and look past the obvious. A great site devoted to analysis of the film is Mysteries of AI. There's a ton of information on the site (although, he doesn't have it totally done at this point).
Re: if you hated the ending... ask yourself if Monica was real or not.
As for the Oscars, I was really disappointed with Osmont not getting a best actor nomination. I thought he was fantastic. I didn't really expect a best picture nomination, because it was so dark and so many people didn't get it ("what's with the aliens??" ARGH!)
I think this is one of those pictures that will only be appreciated in 20 years after people start taking it apart.
I have two minds about Moulin Rouge. On the one hand, there is no doubt it was a beutiful movie and I personally enjoy musicals. I would like to see more of them made.
On the other hand, there's just no getting around one fact: The movie's plot totally sucked! I guess there was sort of a story, but it was so simplistic you probably sum it up in one sentence.
Like I said, I really like musicals, but let's get back to actually having GOOD MOVIES that happen to be musicals.
For this reason, I'm glad it's getting an award because it will encourage them to make more, but it's really not deserving (except maybe costumes, music, etc).
"The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices. The pursuit of simple Truth."
Both Socialism and Libertarianism are both bad ideas, although Socialism is much more evil than Libertarianism. At least Libertarianism embraces freedom (just in the wrong ways).
What's frightening is that this is more insightful than the responses to a lot of my posts (I'll resist temptation to link a few recent responses...). :)
Sure you could transform the scale, but the problem is that you typically only have 8 bits of intensity information (or maybe 10 in some cases, I believe). That not a very wide range. I don't remember exactly what the dynamic range of film is, but it's way higher than this (maybe someone knowledgeable could give their 2c about this).
If anyone is interested how photography resolution compares to digital, I found a great link once about this: http://www.users.qwest.net/~rnclark/scandetail.htm
It's pretty eye-opening if you think digital photography is getting close to film.
More resolution, while nice, is not what digital photography primarily lacks. Light and shadow sensitivity is what really sucks with digital cameras. Film has a logarithmic sensitivity to light, while a digital sensor has a linear sensitivity.
Just out of curiosity, does anyone know of any technologies in development to give better light/shadow sensitivity.
Using the term "free software" doesn't give power to anyone.
I refer to his personal power and ego.
Put it this way: As you point out, there are a lot of licenses that Stallman doesn't go out of this way to discredit, even though they are not what he would consider ideal.
So why does he go out of his way to disparage Open Source whenever he can, even though the definitions of Free Software and Open Source are virtually identical? It's because it's not just a competitor license, it's a competitor organization.
Stallman knows that he will be marginalized if the Open Source organization gains any ground. If Stallman were really as "agnostic" about these things, as long as the software was free, he would recognize the Open Source organization as a partner in his goals that happens to just come at it from a different angle.
Open source rejects his ideals of freedom.
Uh, no. I see you have bought into Stallman's propaganda. Please tell me what part of the Open Source Definition doesn't meet the Free Software Definition.
Stallman doesn't like Open Source for two reasons:
1) It dilutes his power,
2) It doesn't use the confusing word "free", which Stallman clings to with religious fervor, and
3) It dilutes his power.
It's democracy too to vote it legal to ban Harry Potter books for religious reasons, but that doesn't make it right.
I think a lot of communities need to mind their own damn business.
As much as I generally dislike the VC scene, I have to defend them to some extent. You have to think about it from their point of view: You are giving a group of people several million dollars of your own money, or someone else's money that contributed to the fund. An extremely high proportion of people end up failing, so you want to make sure these guys don't just piss all your money away.
Now, take that to its logical conclusion... you are going to become a control freak, insisting that these guys (who are probably going to fail anyway) bring in "experts" who have succeeded in the past, insist that a plan be in place, make sure that they aren't making stupid decisions, etc.
The VC game is really hard. I don't like it, but I sympathize with the fact that they are damned if they do (just hand the keys to the lunatics, and watch them piss it away), and damned if they don't (keep control, and prevent possibly competent people from doing their job).