So, let's continue this off-topic discussion then;-)
Okay, one shouldn't try to police/. posters' behaviour too much. But I still find it strange that an off-topic discussion thread (parent) get's modded up so much. If the subject is so important, and you people care so much about it, why not make up a good story and submit it?
I've been visiting this site for somne years already (don't look at the age of my account, it's relatively new), and the discussions have always been of this nature, but the last year or so it is really getting out of control IM-not-so-HO.
"Off topic things happen, it is the nature of dynamic conversations."
Maybe you're right, but the most productive way of discussing things is to keep the scope of the discussion within reasonable distance from the original subject. It's very hard to filter out significant posts from a/. discussion, and you miss half of the discussion when browsing @ +2. Another point is that online discussions via a forum require a bit more discipline that "live" conversations, since a diversion is quickly corrected IRL, but can go on and on in an online forum. There is no direct feedback between participants, and hence nobody to suppress inproductive sidelines in the discussion.
Besides, I was just mentioning the first rule of engagement in/. discussions. The next is about replying instead of starting a new topic, and the next about reading other peoples' messages well. Three guidelines that basically say the same thing: let's keep it a discussion about the story posted, and not about something else. The intentions of Malda et al are very clear I would say, and of course they are the most experienced/. users without a doubt, so they should know... right? >;->
Maybe I'm just taking this whole thing too seriously, but I learn a lot from reading discussions on/. (insert hilarious laughter here), and it would've taken me a much smaller amount of time when discussions would be more structured, and less off-topic.
"Why shouldn't they use the inventions and intelectual property that they own to generate more money to improve facilities and teaching quality?"
Because it interferes with academic freedom, that's why. Fundamental research should not be driven by market forces, but by curousity about the nature of things. And universities are just about the only places where fundamental research is being performed.
It's just like corporate sponsoring of university research, if things go on like this, universities will be the place where companies outsource their R&D activities.
Governments should take responsability and throw some more money at research, but they only seem to think about short-term goals. Man, don't get me started on that topic;-)
Let's make something clear here: I genetically engineer organisms for a living, so I know many arguments to invalidate your response. But *I don't want to*.
Why not? Because we would be discussing the pros and cons of genetic engineering. And in my previous post, I already made clear that there are two separate issues here. This was the topic of this thread. There's many other threads that discuss the evilness of Monsanto, go and place your comments overthere! Slashdot is a discussion forum with rules, one of them being that you should try to stay on topic.
Sorry for the harsh tone, but I'm getting a bit tired when I'm thinking and rephrasing my posts while others obviously blurt out replies without even reading my posts correctly.
Please read my comment again. I was not denying that Monsanto is not exactly behaving correctly. I even acknowledged that they are bad. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, so let me rephrase:
Enviromental pollution *by dumping waste* [by Monsanto] has nothing to do with the fact that they are producing genetically modified seeds/crops.
[off topic rant]
Although I'd love to discuss the various degrees of risks that are associated with GM foodstuff, it's off-topic, and I'll resist the temptation.
[/off topic rant]
well, if your friends are willing to run linux, there's a nifty command-line utility called "abcde".
it's as simple as the name implies. it rips the tracks, gets info from the internet databases, fills in the ID tags, and encodes the tracks to *ogg. All this automatically. Of course, there are more options, but the defaults are *very* sensible.
i don't understand your argument. are you trolling?
minidisc accepts everything you throw at it? how do you throw it then? as far as i understand, minidisc uses a proprietary format to compress music (wasnt it called ATRAC or something?) so if you want to put something on a minidisc, you need a conversion step.
perhaps you're trying to say that one can't record with an mp3 player? well, it's a player:-], and not a recorder like a minidisc.
your comment has nothing to do with *ogg support on the diamond rio or similar players. the fact remains that *ogg-files are not supported in hardware players (yet). however, this has more to do with the fact that *ogg hasn't been accepted to the same extent as MP3 (yet). like anyone else, i'd love it if i could buy a rio-like walkman to play my *ogg-files, but i guess i have to be patient:-(
[off-topic, like the previous post]
IMO, the big advantage of MP3 walkmans is the lack of moving parts/optics (that is, when you have an MP3 player with solid state memory). CD's are never 100% shock-proof, so finally you *can* go jogging with your walkman, something promised in advertisements *years* ago.
[/off topic]
ah, i see, just like dna testing for everyone because one might become a burglar / rapist / murderer in a near or distant future?
you are (IMO) right to ridicule the concept of letting emotions take the overhand in a debate like this. the strange thing is that people do tend to react stronger to emotions than to facts, and this is why the above example is too close to reality for comfort.
what troubles me is that these technologies will be applied, because it's possible. not because we want it, no: because they can...
it's not a question whether we really want it. if there's enough momentum in the industry to launch a certain feature, it will eventually become mainstream, whether you want it to or not.
when cell phones became popular in the Netherlands (were I come from), a lot of people were complaining about the annoying ringtones and the public conversations people would be having (you can find out interesting things about the personal life of complete strangers when listening to telephone conversations in public places;-) ).
you would hear a lot of talk about the uselessness of this new medium, but, after a while, people just ignore the annoyances. and now, everyone seems to have a cell-phone...
i think the same will happen with this kind of thing, especially since it doesn't affect you too much when someone is having a video conversation.
and eventually, we will have a 1984-world, just a little later then orwell thought it'd be
shit happens
meneer de koekepeer
(ps. no comments about my sig dutchies, i *do* happen to think it's funny!)
Yeah, yeah,
this is al very true since M$ introduced WIN2000 and now XP. they use plenty of resources. But before that, Win95 or 98 were much faster at playing MPEGs on a Pentium 200 than Linux.
I was always very puzzled when people claimed that Linux was so fast compared to Windows. When running blackbox perhaps, but don't try to fire up KDE...
Don't get me wrong, I like using Linux a lot, especially since I now own an Athlon900:-)
see subject. please someone mod this up dramatically!
[quote]
Perhaps Windows shouldn't be regarded as an OS at all, but more of a multiplayer game with a number of naiive players.
[/quote]
meneer de koekepeer
1. please please separate your arguments, and put them in paragraphs. my god this is unreadable.
2. let's agree to disagree. i have been in this argument many times, and it seems that a lot of people do not know what darwin actually said, mix it up with some lamarckian stuff, and try to prove with numbers darwin is wrong.
try reading "climbing mount improbable" and "the blind watchmaker" by richard dawkins. suggesting to read those books is probably a better way for me to convince you you're wrong.
if you want to believe in something else, be my guest:-| see if i care...
you don't understand the concepts of evolutiuon, and neither does mr. van riel.
biological selection (actually, the terminology is "natural selection") does not work by weeding out the weak ones. natural selection favours the multiplication of successfull ones (ie 'survival of the fittest').
the argument you (and rik van riel) are using, is essentially the same as most creationists use: mutation can only break down and not build up.
this is wrong. read some darwin before you comment on this stuff please.
regards,
I have, unfortunately I don't have the picture to prove it. It was at an ABN-AMRO ATM near the Waterloo square in Amsterdam. It ran Windows NT4. And it was a true BSOD, after pressing some buttons it even tried to restart, immediately crashing again after loading.
using logo's/foto's in the login manager was in sgi-irix a long time before it even appeared in mac-os. actually, mac-os introduced this together with the multi-user capabilities of OS9, which is not *a long time ago*.
i'm probably not the one with the best historical knowledge on this, so someone can probably correct me on this and claim someone else has done this before sgi.
although i like the way they made it look in the XP login screen (shoot me, i don't care), this just goes to show that there's hardly any *real* innovation in interface-design land.
this is anyway *way* off-topic...so let's stop this thread.
Slashdot Mirror
So, let's continue this off-topic discussion then ;-)
/. posters' behaviour too much. But I still find it strange that an off-topic discussion thread (parent) get's modded up so much. If the subject is so important, and you people care so much about it, why not make up a good story and submit it?
/. discussion, and you miss half of the discussion when browsing @ +2. Another point is that online discussions via a forum require a bit more discipline that "live" conversations, since a diversion is quickly corrected IRL, but can go on and on in an online forum. There is no direct feedback between participants, and hence nobody to suppress inproductive sidelines in the discussion.
/. discussions. The next is about replying instead of starting a new topic, and the next about reading other peoples' messages well. Three guidelines that basically say the same thing: let's keep it a discussion about the story posted, and not about something else. The intentions of Malda et al are very clear I would say, and of course they are the most experienced /. users without a doubt, so they should know... right? >;->
/. (insert hilarious laughter here), and it would've taken me a much smaller amount of time when discussions would be more structured, and less off-topic.
Okay, one shouldn't try to police
I've been visiting this site for somne years already (don't look at the age of my account, it's relatively new), and the discussions have always been of this nature, but the last year or so it is really getting out of control IM-not-so-HO.
"Off topic things happen, it is the nature of dynamic conversations."
Maybe you're right, but the most productive way of discussing things is to keep the scope of the discussion within reasonable distance from the original subject. It's very hard to filter out significant posts from a
Besides, I was just mentioning the first rule of engagement in
Maybe I'm just taking this whole thing too seriously, but I learn a lot from reading discussions on
You wrote:
/. this is not a bad thing."
/. ???
"It [the post] is offtopic, but given the nature of
Look below your "Comment" box when posting. The first thing after "Important stuff". It says: "Try to keep posts on topic."
How can you say that posting offtopic is not a bad thing, and in agreement with the nature of
But then again I should shut up since I'm replying an off-topic post with an off-topic post. Ooooh, I'm evil...
erm...
:-|
what exactly happened on september the 12th?
allright, mod me into oblivion now
.
Within the context of this specific example, I agree completely with you.
;-).
However, the creation of markets is happening all the time. This process is called marketing
Again, that does not apply to the "Hoskins" example, obviously.
Meneer de Koekepeer
come visit us in the netherlands, you'd be surprised ;-) don't believe everything your government propaganda tells you!
have a nice day
Meneer de Koekepeer
You asked:
;-)
"Why shouldn't they use the inventions and intelectual property that they own to generate more money to improve facilities and teaching quality?"
Because it interferes with academic freedom, that's why. Fundamental research should not be driven by market forces, but by curousity about the nature of things. And universities are just about the only places where fundamental research is being performed.
It's just like corporate sponsoring of university research, if things go on like this, universities will be the place where companies outsource their R&D activities.
Governments should take responsability and throw some more money at research, but they only seem to think about short-term goals. Man, don't get me started on that topic
Meneer de Koekepeer
I know I shouldn't react to this :-|
;-)
Let's make something clear here: I genetically engineer organisms for a living, so I know many arguments to invalidate your response. But *I don't want to*.
Why not? Because we would be discussing the pros and cons of genetic engineering. And in my previous post, I already made clear that there are two separate issues here. This was the topic of this thread. There's many other threads that discuss the evilness of Monsanto, go and place your comments overthere! Slashdot is a discussion forum with rules, one of them being that you should try to stay on topic.
Sorry for the harsh tone, but I'm getting a bit tired when I'm thinking and rephrasing my posts while others obviously blurt out replies without even reading my posts correctly.
You can go and click on that "foe" button now
Meneer de Koekepeer
Mr. SilentStrike,
Please read my comment again. I was not denying that Monsanto is not exactly behaving correctly. I even acknowledged that they are bad. Maybe I wasn't clear enough, so let me rephrase:
Enviromental pollution *by dumping waste* [by Monsanto] has nothing to do with the fact that they are producing genetically modified seeds/crops.
[off topic rant]
Although I'd love to discuss the various degrees of risks that are associated with GM foodstuff, it's off-topic, and I'll resist the temptation.
[/off topic rant]
Meneer de Koekepeer
I'll probably burn the little karma I built up, but what the heck.
I think writers of these headlines should try to maintain a certain level of objectivity and integrity when posting it. Let's separate the issues.
1st: Monsanto is a big corporation that does bad things.
2nd: Monsanto is a Biotech company.
The author most likely isn't very fond of the idea of GM food, I quote:
However, this has nothing to do with the fact that Monsanto produces GM seeds. If it were some chemical plant, it would be just as relevant .
Maybe I'm overreacting, it's just that a lot of people bash genetic modification as a "bad thing" perse, which is something I don't agree with.
Meneer de Koekepeer
hey ac, can you send a link or 2 to back this up?
I'd like to see how "genetic drift" can account for the crops' automagical transformation into the patented form Monsanto sells.
Meneer de Koekepeer
well, if your friends are willing to run linux, there's a nifty command-line utility called "abcde".
it's as simple as the name implies. it rips the tracks, gets info from the internet databases, fills in the ID tags, and encodes the tracks to *ogg. All this automatically. Of course, there are more options, but the defaults are *very* sensible.
I recommend this util to everyone, it's great!
here's the website:
http://freshmeat.net/projects/abcde/
meneer de koekepeer
erm, I just spoke (online chat) to an iomega representative, and he said:
[quote]
It may work but we doesn't support using playing obb-vorbis music files in our drive.
[/quote]
Where did you get your information? I'll buy a hipzip if it plays *oggs, so I'm very interested.
regards,
meneer de koekepeer
actually, their file-format is frozen, so i don't think that will be a huge problem. see their web page.
meneer de koekepeer
i don't understand your argument. are you trolling?
:-], and not a recorder like a minidisc.
:-(
minidisc accepts everything you throw at it? how do you throw it then? as far as i understand, minidisc uses a proprietary format to compress music (wasnt it called ATRAC or something?) so if you want to put something on a minidisc, you need a conversion step.
perhaps you're trying to say that one can't record with an mp3 player? well, it's a player
your comment has nothing to do with *ogg support on the diamond rio or similar players. the fact remains that *ogg-files are not supported in hardware players (yet). however, this has more to do with the fact that *ogg hasn't been accepted to the same extent as MP3 (yet). like anyone else, i'd love it if i could buy a rio-like walkman to play my *ogg-files, but i guess i have to be patient
[off-topic, like the previous post]
IMO, the big advantage of MP3 walkmans is the lack of moving parts/optics (that is, when you have an MP3 player with solid state memory). CD's are never 100% shock-proof, so finally you *can* go jogging with your walkman, something promised in advertisements *years* ago.
[/off topic]
regards,
meneer de koekepeer
ah, i see, just like dna testing for everyone because one might become a burglar / rapist / murderer in a near or distant future?
you are (IMO) right to ridicule the concept of letting emotions take the overhand in a debate like this. the strange thing is that people do tend to react stronger to emotions than to facts, and this is why the above example is too close to reality for comfort.
what troubles me is that these technologies will be applied, because it's possible. not because we want it, no: because they can...
what if they made that illegal?
of course, this would be years from now, but i can imagine it's going to be very easy to find out whether someone wears such an implant.
of course it will start with criminals being tagged, but after a while it would be very convenient to just tag everyone at birth.
i hope there's no ground for my pessimism regarding the human race...
it's not a question whether we really want it. if there's enough momentum in the industry to launch a certain feature, it will eventually become mainstream, whether you want it to or not.
;-) ).
when cell phones became popular in the Netherlands (were I come from), a lot of people were complaining about the annoying ringtones and the public conversations people would be having (you can find out interesting things about the personal life of complete strangers when listening to telephone conversations in public places
you would hear a lot of talk about the uselessness of this new medium, but, after a while, people just ignore the annoyances. and now, everyone seems to have a cell-phone...
i think the same will happen with this kind of thing, especially since it doesn't affect you too much when someone is having a video conversation.
and eventually, we will have a 1984-world, just a little later then orwell thought it'd be
shit happens
meneer de koekepeer
(ps. no comments about my sig dutchies, i *do* happen to think it's funny!)
Yeah, yeah,
:-)
this is al very true since M$ introduced WIN2000 and now XP. they use plenty of resources. But before that, Win95 or 98 were much faster at playing MPEGs on a Pentium 200 than Linux.
I was always very puzzled when people claimed that Linux was so fast compared to Windows. When running blackbox perhaps, but don't try to fire up KDE...
Don't get me wrong, I like using Linux a lot, especially since I now own an Athlon900
Regards,
meneer de koekepeer
see subject. please someone mod this up dramatically!
[quote]
Perhaps Windows shouldn't be regarded as an OS at all, but more of a multiplayer game with a number of naiive players.
[/quote]
meneer de koekepeer
Does any other European (like myself) find this very amusing?
;-).
The major annoyance of any "US-english" based piece of software for me has been the default US-letter settings.
It's a *good thing* that there's now an European software project that does the reverse
KOffice: The emancipation of European Software!
hehe
meneer de koekepeer
1. please please separate your arguments, and put them in paragraphs. my god this is unreadable.
:-| see if i care...
2. let's agree to disagree. i have been in this argument many times, and it seems that a lot of people do not know what darwin actually said, mix it up with some lamarckian stuff, and try to prove with numbers darwin is wrong.
try reading "climbing mount improbable" and "the blind watchmaker" by richard dawkins. suggesting to read those books is probably a better way for me to convince you you're wrong.
if you want to believe in something else, be my guest
regards
meneer de koekepeer
bollocks, no way this is insightful!!!
you don't understand the concepts of evolutiuon, and neither does mr. van riel.
biological selection (actually, the terminology is "natural selection") does not work by weeding out the weak ones. natural selection favours the multiplication of successfull ones (ie 'survival of the fittest').
the argument you (and rik van riel) are using, is essentially the same as most creationists use: mutation can only break down and not build up.
this is wrong. read some darwin before you comment on this stuff please.
regards,
meneer de koekepeer
I have, unfortunately I don't have the picture to prove it. It was at an ABN-AMRO ATM near the Waterloo square in Amsterdam. It ran Windows NT4. And it was a true BSOD, after pressing some buttons it even tried to restart, immediately crashing again after loading.
Meneer de Koekepeer
exactly!
evolution can be observed in your everyday life.
meneer de koekepeer
be quite children, you're both wrong anyway.
using logo's/foto's in the login manager was in sgi-irix a long time before it even appeared in mac-os. actually, mac-os introduced this together with the multi-user capabilities of OS9, which is not *a long time ago*.
i'm probably not the one with the best historical knowledge on this, so someone can probably correct me on this and claim someone else has done this before sgi.
although i like the way they made it look in the XP login screen (shoot me, i don't care), this just goes to show that there's hardly any *real* innovation in interface-design land.
this is anyway *way* off-topic...so let's stop this thread.
meneer de koekepeer