Why would you have to defend your choice of OS? It's not like a rabid slashdotter can confiscate your machine or swap it for a Windows/Linux/Solaris/"Os/2" box unless you make your case. Can't you just read a critique of your OS of choice, analyze it and, if you find it to be valid, then wonder if it makes any difference for you? It's really simple, usually takes less than a second and does not require feeding trolls. If it takes more time than that or demands a certain amount of research, then you're learning something, which is a plus. Works for me.
I did, about eight years ago. I was performing my yearly reinstall of Windows and the infamous W32.Blaster managed to infiltrate my system. It required no user interaction whatsoever and I couldn't even keep the damn computer on for more than 60 seconds to download the necessary patches or removal tool. I had to download them from a second, patched machine. So it's not the norm, but it has actually happened at least once. And I still kept on using Windows for quite some time after that, before switching to Linux, mostly because I had never heard of any alternatives to Microsoft's jewel.
Actually, by "full blown communism" I'd mean a commune, which is closer to some of the many brands of anarchism than socialism. Of course both terms have been used/hijacked by so many people, referring to so many different things, that we have a plethora of possible meanings for them. But if a system permits and rewards private ownership of capital, then it is capitalism, no matter how it is portrayed. The government, in a capitalist society, exists to interfere and regulate. Its purpose is to meddle and try to sort and direct the mess, and that doesn't mean it becomes socialist just by, say, taxing imports. Now we may think of it as a nuance, with some governments meddling more than others, being "more socialist", and that's fine, but not what I meant. Venezuela is a strong state that holds a lot of monopolies, but there's no doubt that it's still a capitalist country. You can start your enterprise and make money as you wish, though you may not, for instance, dig for oil. However you can start, buy and sell companies, trade in the stock market, erect buildings, open a McDonald's etc. and that's what moves the majority of the economy. That's what's responsible for most jobs. I don't think even 10% of Venezuela's enterprises are state-owned (though I'm admittedly pulling such a number out of my ass), and that's what defines a socialist state: collective, governmental ownership of the means of production.
As to what people mean by socialism, I'm at a loss. It tends to vary wildly. There's the everyman who thinks China is socialist or communist, there's the one who thinks only of the USSR and food lines and poverty, there are students who think it's a magic solution to everything and something cool to put on a T-shirt, scholars all over the place and there is Glenn Beck, who thinks the Post Office is communism. That's why I feel we should explain. Now backtracking, my comment was motivated because you said "socialism doesn't solve [bad distribution of income]". I meant to say that in a lot of interpretations, including mine, which I have explained, it certainly does. And if in yours, if we take that nuanced socialism up to eleven, we'd tax 100% of the income and then redistribute it. But unless you dial it pretty much all the way, taxing more or less, having governmental health care or not etc. are just minor adjustments being made to an essentially capitalist society and have nothing to do with theoretical/historical/original socialism.
That's only if your idea of socialism is just capitalism with ludicrous taxes. Capitalism is thus named because it permits and rewards accumulation of capital. The whole point of socialism is that all capital is public. So you wouldn't have those 10B nor 1M in capital because you wouldn't have any capital at all. You could maybe gather a large sum of money, but how would you reap interest? What would you invest it in when no business that requires investment can be privately owned?
Now, as an aside, I find it interesting that you'd mention socialism when the parent did not. It seems to be a very pervasive behavior whenever capitalism is theoretically explored and something about it reeks of obsolete times.
Yeah, it should really go "if we do X, we lose". But I'm afraid people like catchy jargons much more than well thought-out statements, and mentioning "the terrorists" is very trendy. Look at political discourse not only in the US, but pretty much everywhere. Plus most people seem to breathe sports metaphors. "Terrorists winning" is bad only because people automatically think that they will lose, that there are only two teams and one winner. And you do whatever it takes to win. Consequences are not that important because once the game is over, it's over, right? And we won! Fuck yeah! Makes me think if this culture that embraces and glorifies competition (much more pronounced in the US, I don't know if due to all that old capitalism vs communism propaganda) may not be hurting people's ability to think.
Guerrilla is actually as old as army occupation. Machiavelli already said that it was dumb to try to hold a city solely with armed forces because all it did was create unease and spark a difficult conflict, much less straightforward than war.
(photos of my children being used to sell Viagra would be totally legal).
Probably not totally. Plus it'd be a little creepy, I think. Unless the ad went "Want to FUCK these KIDS? Well, with VIAGRA, you can!". (It wouldn't really solve the "creepy" part, but the "a little" bit would certainly not be applicable)
And it's a straw man to argue whether art requires an incentive system. It doesn't, but it definitely can and does benefit from one. For example, people will make movies, but they will not be able to make big budget films without the ability to make the money back, and pay everyone involved.
Well, let's see what such a benefit has brought us. Currently on theaters:
Bridesmaids
Jumping the Broom
Something Borrowed
Fast Five
Prom
Go For It!
Scream 4
Rio
Hobo With a Shotgun
Too bad I didn't find Michael Bay's crap of the week. Still, I'd argue that the idea of ROI does not benefit art at all.
Well, but no IE9 or DirectX 10 for you either. Computer years are like dog years, you see? Six years isn't necessary planned, it can be just plain old obsolescence. Not that it is mandatory, of course. My computer is from 2003 and still functional, but I'm using PC3200 RAM and an AGP port, which are obsolete technology. Thankfully x86 isn't going anywhere soon and NVIDIA still publishes legacy drivers, or I'd be pressed to upgrade. Now if I recall correctly, six years ago Apple was still selling PowerPC-based machines. Since then they have discarded such architecture and, while I'd be quite angry, were I a customer, for a perceived lack of commitment, it makes sense that they'd simply stop compiling new software for obsolete platforms at some point. Their reasons could be many, but are their own. And, as Apple uses closed source software (a mix of open source and proprietary, but to use a car metaphor, if you can build your own car except for the wheels, it still isn't of much use as a means of transportation), you can't do much more than disagree.
Good for you. Now suppose you usually have no use for a notebook but you'll be traveling for two months and wish to have your own computer to browse on during that period, after which you'll revert to having no use for a notebook.
He might be, but his point is pretty much valid. So the woman wasn't driving - she still dumbly spilt hot coffee on her own lap and then sued McDonald's. It's like purchasing an anvil, tripping, hitting your head on it and then suing the manufacturer for making the steel too hard.
Try reading poststructuralist philosophy one of these days. One guy I was forced to know spent dozens of pages explaining that when something is happening, it is not happening before nor after it has happened.
But what other options do we have? Of course there are plenty of good and, in my opinion, better distros, but when I'm recommending a Linux flavor to a newbie, it is pretty much mandatory that it ships already with proprietary drivers. It's amazing how a new user can get confused and discouraged by simply trying to install NVIDIA's proprietary blob ("what? I have to close what? X? You mean go to the text-thingy and type stuff? This is too hard!"). So even now, with Ubuntu going through a rough patch, I believe Kubuntu is probably the way to go. Apart from it, Mint and Madriva (also good choices), what other no-config-required distro is out there?
Interesting chart. Seems to me like the recent price drop is nothing atypical, though, just common market variation. Nothing like 2009 - that was something to be excited about. Actually, aside from a low here and there, Sony's stock price seems to have been increasing pretty steadily. I'd like to be wrong, though. Thank god I'm not a professional market analyst. Not that it would make my predictions any more trustworthy, of course - I just felt like expressing my joie de vivre.
I was wondering what would happen if someone patented "withholding the display of a webpage until the background image is loaded, assuring the design's unity" or similar crap. Would we have to give up using background images altogether?
You're forgetting rereleases that aren't touted as being so. I've played Wind Waker and it's pretty much Ocarina all over again, containing the same puzzles, enemies and equipment, the only novelty being the most annoying travel system I've ever seen.
Well... no. Linux is only the kernel. The userland is mostly GNU. I know it's nitpicking and usually irrelevant, but if we're talking about what is what...
Plus Windows wasn't a full-fledged operating system in its earliest incarnations. It was exactly a windowing system for DOS.
Hell, my father does not even use bookmarks, he just goes and gets everything out of history. It freaks the shit out of me every time I see him do it.
I know the feeling. My mother uses Word/Write as file browsers. A.jpg is lost in the hard drive? She just fires up Word and clicks through every folder until she finds (and opens) it! Somewhere, when she does that, I'm sure there's an Explorer/Nautilus coder crying.
That's the hard part right there. It may still be easy enough in some markets, if you do some research, right now, but it's definitely getting increasingly harder. Phones, consoles, OSs, ebooks...
Slashdot Mirror
Why would you have to defend your choice of OS? It's not like a rabid slashdotter can confiscate your machine or swap it for a Windows/Linux/Solaris/"Os/2" box unless you make your case. Can't you just read a critique of your OS of choice, analyze it and, if you find it to be valid, then wonder if it makes any difference for you? It's really simple, usually takes less than a second and does not require feeding trolls. If it takes more time than that or demands a certain amount of research, then you're learning something, which is a plus. Works for me.
I did, about eight years ago. I was performing my yearly reinstall of Windows and the infamous W32.Blaster managed to infiltrate my system. It required no user interaction whatsoever and I couldn't even keep the damn computer on for more than 60 seconds to download the necessary patches or removal tool. I had to download them from a second, patched machine. So it's not the norm, but it has actually happened at least once. And I still kept on using Windows for quite some time after that, before switching to Linux, mostly because I had never heard of any alternatives to Microsoft's jewel.
their numbers are quite numerous still.
Wordy words, man.
Actually, by "full blown communism" I'd mean a commune, which is closer to some of the many brands of anarchism than socialism. Of course both terms have been used/hijacked by so many people, referring to so many different things, that we have a plethora of possible meanings for them. But if a system permits and rewards private ownership of capital, then it is capitalism, no matter how it is portrayed. The government, in a capitalist society, exists to interfere and regulate. Its purpose is to meddle and try to sort and direct the mess, and that doesn't mean it becomes socialist just by, say, taxing imports. Now we may think of it as a nuance, with some governments meddling more than others, being "more socialist", and that's fine, but not what I meant. Venezuela is a strong state that holds a lot of monopolies, but there's no doubt that it's still a capitalist country. You can start your enterprise and make money as you wish, though you may not, for instance, dig for oil. However you can start, buy and sell companies, trade in the stock market, erect buildings, open a McDonald's etc. and that's what moves the majority of the economy. That's what's responsible for most jobs. I don't think even 10% of Venezuela's enterprises are state-owned (though I'm admittedly pulling such a number out of my ass), and that's what defines a socialist state: collective, governmental ownership of the means of production.
As to what people mean by socialism, I'm at a loss. It tends to vary wildly. There's the everyman who thinks China is socialist or communist, there's the one who thinks only of the USSR and food lines and poverty, there are students who think it's a magic solution to everything and something cool to put on a T-shirt, scholars all over the place and there is Glenn Beck, who thinks the Post Office is communism. That's why I feel we should explain. Now backtracking, my comment was motivated because you said "socialism doesn't solve [bad distribution of income]". I meant to say that in a lot of interpretations, including mine, which I have explained, it certainly does. And if in yours, if we take that nuanced socialism up to eleven, we'd tax 100% of the income and then redistribute it. But unless you dial it pretty much all the way, taxing more or less, having governmental health care or not etc. are just minor adjustments being made to an essentially capitalist society and have nothing to do with theoretical/historical/original socialism.
That's only if your idea of socialism is just capitalism with ludicrous taxes. Capitalism is thus named because it permits and rewards accumulation of capital. The whole point of socialism is that all capital is public. So you wouldn't have those 10B nor 1M in capital because you wouldn't have any capital at all. You could maybe gather a large sum of money, but how would you reap interest? What would you invest it in when no business that requires investment can be privately owned?
Now, as an aside, I find it interesting that you'd mention socialism when the parent did not. It seems to be a very pervasive behavior whenever capitalism is theoretically explored and something about it reeks of obsolete times.
You have a better chance being raped by ET than dying in a terrorist attack on a plane.
You bastard! You just gave the government reason to start checking anuses on trains and to bomb the moon!
Yeah, it should really go "if we do X, we lose". But I'm afraid people like catchy jargons much more than well thought-out statements, and mentioning "the terrorists" is very trendy. Look at political discourse not only in the US, but pretty much everywhere. Plus most people seem to breathe sports metaphors. "Terrorists winning" is bad only because people automatically think that they will lose, that there are only two teams and one winner. And you do whatever it takes to win. Consequences are not that important because once the game is over, it's over, right? And we won! Fuck yeah! Makes me think if this culture that embraces and glorifies competition (much more pronounced in the US, I don't know if due to all that old capitalism vs communism propaganda) may not be hurting people's ability to think.
Guerrilla is actually as old as army occupation. Machiavelli already said that it was dumb to try to hold a city solely with armed forces because all it did was create unease and spark a difficult conflict, much less straightforward than war.
(photos of my children being used to sell Viagra would be totally legal).
Probably not totally. Plus it'd be a little creepy, I think. Unless the ad went "Want to FUCK these KIDS? Well, with VIAGRA, you can!". (It wouldn't really solve the "creepy" part, but the "a little" bit would certainly not be applicable)
And it's a straw man to argue whether art requires an incentive system. It doesn't, but it definitely can and does benefit from one. For example, people will make movies, but they will not be able to make big budget films without the ability to make the money back, and pay everyone involved.
Well, let's see what such a benefit has brought us. Currently on theaters: Bridesmaids Jumping the Broom Something Borrowed Fast Five Prom Go For It! Scream 4 Rio Hobo With a Shotgun Too bad I didn't find Michael Bay's crap of the week. Still, I'd argue that the idea of ROI does not benefit art at all.
Well, but no IE9 or DirectX 10 for you either. Computer years are like dog years, you see? Six years isn't necessary planned, it can be just plain old obsolescence. Not that it is mandatory, of course. My computer is from 2003 and still functional, but I'm using PC3200 RAM and an AGP port, which are obsolete technology. Thankfully x86 isn't going anywhere soon and NVIDIA still publishes legacy drivers, or I'd be pressed to upgrade. Now if I recall correctly, six years ago Apple was still selling PowerPC-based machines. Since then they have discarded such architecture and, while I'd be quite angry, were I a customer, for a perceived lack of commitment, it makes sense that they'd simply stop compiling new software for obsolete platforms at some point. Their reasons could be many, but are their own. And, as Apple uses closed source software (a mix of open source and proprietary, but to use a car metaphor, if you can build your own car except for the wheels, it still isn't of much use as a means of transportation), you can't do much more than disagree.
Apart from the editors, of course.
Good for you. Now suppose you usually have no use for a notebook but you'll be traveling for two months and wish to have your own computer to browse on during that period, after which you'll revert to having no use for a notebook.
He might be, but his point is pretty much valid. So the woman wasn't driving - she still dumbly spilt hot coffee on her own lap and then sued McDonald's. It's like purchasing an anvil, tripping, hitting your head on it and then suing the manufacturer for making the steel too hard.
Try reading poststructuralist philosophy one of these days. One guy I was forced to know spent dozens of pages explaining that when something is happening, it is not happening before nor after it has happened.
Yeah, that'd be really unprecedented. Maybe if you're a little arab-looking or you happen to have a muslim friend...
I'll bet on Unity source code.
But what other options do we have? Of course there are plenty of good and, in my opinion, better distros, but when I'm recommending a Linux flavor to a newbie, it is pretty much mandatory that it ships already with proprietary drivers. It's amazing how a new user can get confused and discouraged by simply trying to install NVIDIA's proprietary blob ("what? I have to close what? X? You mean go to the text-thingy and type stuff? This is too hard!"). So even now, with Ubuntu going through a rough patch, I believe Kubuntu is probably the way to go. Apart from it, Mint and Madriva (also good choices), what other no-config-required distro is out there?
If true they have some monumentally stupid people working for them.
I wasn't taking that conspiracy theory seriously until now, but you make a compelling argument.
Interesting chart. Seems to me like the recent price drop is nothing atypical, though, just common market variation. Nothing like 2009 - that was something to be excited about. Actually, aside from a low here and there, Sony's stock price seems to have been increasing pretty steadily. I'd like to be wrong, though. Thank god I'm not a professional market analyst. Not that it would make my predictions any more trustworthy, of course - I just felt like expressing my joie de vivre.
I was wondering what would happen if someone patented "withholding the display of a webpage until the background image is loaded, assuring the design's unity" or similar crap. Would we have to give up using background images altogether?
You're forgetting rereleases that aren't touted as being so. I've played Wind Waker and it's pretty much Ocarina all over again, containing the same puzzles, enemies and equipment, the only novelty being the most annoying travel system I've ever seen.
Well... no. Linux is only the kernel. The userland is mostly GNU. I know it's nitpicking and usually irrelevant, but if we're talking about what is what... Plus Windows wasn't a full-fledged operating system in its earliest incarnations. It was exactly a windowing system for DOS.
Hell, my father does not even use bookmarks, he just goes and gets everything out of history. It freaks the shit out of me every time I see him do it.
I know the feeling. My mother uses Word/Write as file browsers. A .jpg is lost in the hard drive? She just fires up Word and clicks through every folder until she finds (and opens) it! Somewhere, when she does that, I'm sure there's an Explorer/Nautilus coder crying.
Don't buy a device with a EULA
That's the hard part right there. It may still be easy enough in some markets, if you do some research, right now, but it's definitely getting increasingly harder. Phones, consoles, OSs, ebooks...