I knew when I clicked on the link from the home page of/. that this could not possibly be good. I expected to use my plentiful mod points to try to diminish the impact of illiterate trolls who take any opportunity to draw attention to themselves at the expense of their scorn of valid opinions.
I had no idea it would be this bad.
I am not an education elitist, at all. I didn't graduate high school. But it is so mind-numbing reading the poorly formed language and logic in nearly every positively-modded post here that I am just simply shocked.
I can't pretend to not have bias in this situation. I am an American living in Germany, and it is really interesting to watch all of this from outside, and see how Europeans view it. Also, I am so far left liberal that I am considered radical in the USA, although simply center-liberal here. My younger sister asked for a basic explanation of what is going on (she is extremely intelligent, but not well-informed - no TV, only mobile phone internet) and I wrote this to her:
"The Democrats and Republicans can't agree on a budget (and the Republicans don't appear to care about the budget, they're keeping it hostage over unrelated issues). The House is controlled by Republicans, and the Senate is controlled by Democrats. It takes both parts of the congress to pass a budget. The deadline for passing a budget passed, so although there is "money in the bank", almost a million people have to go home without pay until these assholes agree on how to spend it."
So, yes, I show my bias.
My point here, though, is simply to ponder: Why does any political discussion, particularly involving the USA, immediately devolve into nearly nonsensical, illiterate commentary that is almost impossible to understand, much less extract value from? 15 mod points is not nearly enough to down-mod all the garbage here, and I see very little to mod up, which is what I usually try to focus on as per Taco's original guidelines.
Well, I didn't actually say anything negative about either Pandora or Last. I in fact said Last works better for me. I simply said that I don't consider automatons to be "radio". I agree with you here - I have found many artists that I now love, have paid money for their records and to see them that I would never have heard at all if it weren't for Last, and to a lesser degree, Pandora.
I am simply making a distinction between automated services and actual DJ based stations. There are MANY shows on both stations I have personally been involved with that I don't listen to more than once in a blue moon, because I know the DJ does not share taste with me.
I'm a new DJ at Radio 23 - I have nothing to do with their web presence. I built or modified a lot of the web presence at House of Sound. I also see confusion in what I think is a pretty, but dysfunctional, web site they've got going. I like their human-side approach, though, outside of the website - online training for free for would-be DJs anywhere on the planet and then a platform for broadcasting.
And of course, feel free to listen to other stations instead! That is practically the whole point. Democratization of shit that you put in your ears.
I find the summary nearly trollish. There is no standard bearer in internet radio, and if there were, I don't think Pandora would be it. Yes, lots of people use Pandora. Lots also use Last.fm, and/or listen to the tens of thousands of independent internet radio stations out there - many of which are actually, I believe, much more in the spirit of "radio" than automated algorithmic music-recommendation services like Pandora and Last.
I say these indie stations (House of Sound is one that I co-founded, and I currently DJ at Radio 23 - there are thousands of others) are more in the spirit of radio, because they actually have live DJs, "spinning" (sometimes literally) records, mp3s, YouTubes, even cassettes, on a constant basis. These "stations" are interactive to a degree that music recommendation services are not - they are inflected by the taste of the DJ, many have live-chat or call-in features, and they are in real time.
My conclusion is that neither Pandora nor Last.fm are actually "radio" at all. Pandora recommends music to a listener based on pseudo-scientific analysis of what a person listens to (key, tempo, tone, volume, etc.) and Last uses the Amazon social model (x people who listened to y track also listened to z). I find, personally, Last's social model to be more effective for me than Pandora's algorithmic approach. Neither are radio. Radio, to me, whether based on radio waves or not, is a real person exposing their tastes, quirks, personality and even mistakes.
There is an awesome, long running "Makerspace" in Portland, Oregon, that was formerly a public vocational school. http://watershedpdx.com/ - but it takes individual and collective will and effort for such a thing to happen. They shouldn't just be handed out by the state.
Baloney. Long distance relationships are, for certain, difficult as hell. But they can work, and things as asked by TimBur1e6 are legit ways to feel together. My fiance and I watched movies together (both of us having downloaded the same file, starting it at the same time) while on Skype, and it really did engender a feeling of closeness.
"you're splitting hairs if you only accept statements that are universal." -- THIS.
It's certainly not universal, but for many it is true. I am a far-too-skinny (unhealthily so) person engaged to a person who is quite overweight. Her weight doesn't bother me a bit, nor mine her, but we both have serious difficulties with our own body image. Thing is - we both have what might be called eating disorders - both related to stress or anxiety. If I feel anxiety, I simply CAN'T eat. Not hungry, can't finish even small meals. If she feels anxiety, she is absolutely compelled to eat constantly. We know this is not healthy, and are trying to find ways to healthily reduce our anxiety, such that both of us might eat "normally" (which is another total variant from individual to individual).
Petr Kropotkin wrote a series of essays in the late 1800s that became the book "Mutual Aid". It lays out in beautiful and exquisite detail the premise here, that co-operation is a primary factor in evolution, rather than simple dominance, as he felt Darwin suggested. It is truly a masterpiece work and I highly recommend that anyone interested in the subject read it.
Kropotkin went on to become (very much posthumously) one of the most-read and best regarded philosophers of the Anarchist political movement; his politics were largely molded by his observations that are laid out in Mutual Aid.
I find this to be quite true. Though not entirely voluntarily,* I recently downsized from 25 years of built up possessions to almost nothing - a backpack and a couple of suitcases worth of belongings. It is absolutely liberating. Yes, there are some things I miss - but I don't think of it nearly as much as I would have thought. The freedom of not worrying about "things" is very real.
* I was relieved of many of my possessions in my divorce; I shed the rest of them moving to Europe after a lifetime in the USA.
As far as I understand it, query autocomplete is mostly, but not entirely, social in nature - which turns out to be a pretty good predictor. It is quite likely that I will be looking for the same thing as millions of other people. I think autocomplete is probably a combination of social and algorithmic, And for me, even for technical queries, it works so well that sometimes I am astounded - or disappointed that I was not the first to have a brilliant idea.
I'm actually shocked that the overwhelming opinion here on/. seems to be vehement defense of the status quo. I'm certainly not advocating ludicrous moves like enterprise adoption of Win8, but really, people? Upgrade already. Even things like MS Excel DO take on major functional upgrades over time. I absolutely can't imagine doing my job or navigating my day to day life with even just 10 year old technology.
I think it's time to dispel the notion that "...there aren't a lot of technically inept people running Linux as a desktop at home." This is simply not as true as it used to be. I have a growing number of friends running Linux on their single computer that is used by the whole family. These people are generally FAR from technically adept. Why are they running Linux? They can't afford Windows any more. As Windows has become harder to pirate, the required hardware has become more expensive, and with the advent of many small shops or non-profits selling very inexpensive, turn-on-and-it-works Linux systems, I am seeing it much more commonly in homes of average or below technical aptitude.
The scary economy is actually driving people to FOSS, in my subjective experience.
I think you miss the point of the question, or at least a very important point here. Nudity != pornography, at least in Europe. It is not at all rare to see nudity in commercials or programs in much of European TV, for example, even on, say, Viva, the German analogue to MTV. Which is of course watched by kids.
Now this in itself may be off topic to the original post here, as it does sound that what the child found on the 3DS could be considered pornography most anywhere. I still think it is a very interesting set of questions: Where does the line between art, or documentary photography, and porn lie? How does this vary by country, or regionally? At what age is nudity ok for people to view? And what age pornography? What affect does viewing such "too early" have?
Now, I'm ultra-liberal. I don't believe pornography should be regulated for adults, and I believe that education is the best defense, not regulation beyond reason (again, entirely subjective).
So, apologies for being off-topic, but I think parent should think twice before dismissing the question of differing cultural and national attitudes toward nudity.
I'm happily surprised to see that all the early comments are in support of PGSQL, with brief anecdotes to back it up. I 100% agree - even if your future hopeful employer uses MySQL (which has actually matured a great deal), everything you learn in PGSQL will teach you the underlying theory of WHY good databases are good. You can apply that to any roughly SQL database. Further, PGSQL is even closer to zero-cost than MySQL, in spirit. So, if you have to go up against beancounters advocating for your software, it still looks really good.
I wonder what John Zerzan would have to say about this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zerzan
Disclosure: I find Zerzan's writings provocative and interesting, but it is ironic that a fellow who advocates primitivisation to the point of abandoning language uses egghead polysyllabic words to describe such.
Perhaps I'm just not trying to use a part of the system that is down, but I filed for an extension this year, e-filed about 3 weeks ago, and got a very clear "Down For Maintenance" message when I went to check the status of my refund yesterday. The message included an estimated date for the system to be back up (10/12 - today), and indeed it was. Poking around a little, it appears that the rest of the e-file system is also functional at this time (though I don't care enough to do an exhaustive search for broken things, having fulfilled my immediate needs).
...vinyl records to CDs - compare vinyl vs. digital downloads thru i.e. iTunes. I recently mail-ordered Wilderness Heart by Black mountain (as an aside, GREAT record), which came with an immediate digital download of the record. I couldn't wait for the vinyl to arrive because I expected it to sound superior to the high-bitrate mp3s. It does. It's noticeable even to my far-from-audiophile wife.
I'm admittedly a fetishist for packaging - double LPs with great gatefold art, colored / clear / marbled vinyl, large-format insert books, all the way to crazy triple and quadruple LPs with all of the above (i.e. Altar, by Boris and Sunn O))) ).
If I can help it I buy nothing but vinyl now. And yes, I do have a USB turntable so (admittedly quite a bit more labor than with a CD) I can make properly tagged copies for listening to on my iPhone.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew when I clicked on the link from the home page of /. that this could not possibly be good. I expected to use my plentiful mod points to try to diminish the impact of illiterate trolls who take any opportunity to draw attention to themselves at the expense of their scorn of valid opinions.
I had no idea it would be this bad.
I am not an education elitist, at all. I didn't graduate high school. But it is so mind-numbing reading the poorly formed language and logic in nearly every positively-modded post here that I am just simply shocked.
I can't pretend to not have bias in this situation. I am an American living in Germany, and it is really interesting to watch all of this from outside, and see how Europeans view it. Also, I am so far left liberal that I am considered radical in the USA, although simply center-liberal here. My younger sister asked for a basic explanation of what is going on (she is extremely intelligent, but not well-informed - no TV, only mobile phone internet) and I wrote this to her:
"The Democrats and Republicans can't agree on a budget (and the Republicans don't appear to care about the budget, they're keeping it hostage over unrelated issues). The House is controlled by Republicans, and the Senate is controlled by Democrats. It takes both parts of the congress to pass a budget. The deadline for passing a budget passed, so although there is "money in the bank", almost a million people have to go home without pay until these assholes agree on how to spend it."
So, yes, I show my bias.
My point here, though, is simply to ponder: Why does any political discussion, particularly involving the USA, immediately devolve into nearly nonsensical, illiterate commentary that is almost impossible to understand, much less extract value from? 15 mod points is not nearly enough to down-mod all the garbage here, and I see very little to mod up, which is what I usually try to focus on as per Taco's original guidelines.
Actually, when I saw this, I thought:
"O" - Single player
"[O ]" - Multiplayer with remote, internet, co-players.
"[O + O]" - In-person multiplayer, console style.
OpenVPN.
Well, I didn't actually say anything negative about either Pandora or Last. I in fact said Last works better for me. I simply said that I don't consider automatons to be "radio". I agree with you here - I have found many artists that I now love, have paid money for their records and to see them that I would never have heard at all if it weren't for Last, and to a lesser degree, Pandora.
I am simply making a distinction between automated services and actual DJ based stations. There are MANY shows on both stations I have personally been involved with that I don't listen to more than once in a blue moon, because I know the DJ does not share taste with me.
I'm a new DJ at Radio 23 - I have nothing to do with their web presence. I built or modified a lot of the web presence at House of Sound. I also see confusion in what I think is a pretty, but dysfunctional, web site they've got going. I like their human-side approach, though, outside of the website - online training for free for would-be DJs anywhere on the planet and then a platform for broadcasting.
And of course, feel free to listen to other stations instead! That is practically the whole point. Democratization of shit that you put in your ears.
I find the summary nearly trollish. There is no standard bearer in internet radio, and if there were, I don't think Pandora would be it. Yes, lots of people use Pandora. Lots also use Last.fm, and/or listen to the tens of thousands of independent internet radio stations out there - many of which are actually, I believe, much more in the spirit of "radio" than automated algorithmic music-recommendation services like Pandora and Last.
I say these indie stations (House of Sound is one that I co-founded, and I currently DJ at Radio 23 - there are thousands of others) are more in the spirit of radio, because they actually have live DJs, "spinning" (sometimes literally) records, mp3s, YouTubes, even cassettes, on a constant basis. These "stations" are interactive to a degree that music recommendation services are not - they are inflected by the taste of the DJ, many have live-chat or call-in features, and they are in real time.
My conclusion is that neither Pandora nor Last.fm are actually "radio" at all. Pandora recommends music to a listener based on pseudo-scientific analysis of what a person listens to (key, tempo, tone, volume, etc.) and Last uses the Amazon social model (x people who listened to y track also listened to z). I find, personally, Last's social model to be more effective for me than Pandora's algorithmic approach. Neither are radio. Radio, to me, whether based on radio waves or not, is a real person exposing their tastes, quirks, personality and even mistakes.
There is an awesome, long running "Makerspace" in Portland, Oregon, that was formerly a public vocational school. http://watershedpdx.com/ - but it takes individual and collective will and effort for such a thing to happen. They shouldn't just be handed out by the state.
Baloney. Long distance relationships are, for certain, difficult as hell. But they can work, and things as asked by TimBur1e6 are legit ways to feel together. My fiance and I watched movies together (both of us having downloaded the same file, starting it at the same time) while on Skype, and it really did engender a feeling of closeness.
"you're splitting hairs if you only accept statements that are universal." -- THIS.
It's certainly not universal, but for many it is true. I am a far-too-skinny (unhealthily so) person engaged to a person who is quite overweight. Her weight doesn't bother me a bit, nor mine her, but we both have serious difficulties with our own body image. Thing is - we both have what might be called eating disorders - both related to stress or anxiety. If I feel anxiety, I simply CAN'T eat. Not hungry, can't finish even small meals. If she feels anxiety, she is absolutely compelled to eat constantly. We know this is not healthy, and are trying to find ways to healthily reduce our anxiety, such that both of us might eat "normally" (which is another total variant from individual to individual).
I see two common trends to the comments here:
1) Only negative comments, not a single positive comment about this distro.
2) Not a single person appears to have actually used it.
I'd be very interested in an old-school, actually informed comment from someone who has actually installed and used it.
-astro
Petr Kropotkin wrote a series of essays in the late 1800s that became the book "Mutual Aid". It lays out in beautiful and exquisite detail the premise here, that co-operation is a primary factor in evolution, rather than simple dominance, as he felt Darwin suggested. It is truly a masterpiece work and I highly recommend that anyone interested in the subject read it.
Kropotkin went on to become (very much posthumously) one of the most-read and best regarded philosophers of the Anarchist political movement; his politics were largely molded by his observations that are laid out in Mutual Aid.
I find this to be quite true. Though not entirely voluntarily,* I recently downsized from 25 years of built up possessions to almost nothing - a backpack and a couple of suitcases worth of belongings. It is absolutely liberating. Yes, there are some things I miss - but I don't think of it nearly as much as I would have thought. The freedom of not worrying about "things" is very real.
* I was relieved of many of my possessions in my divorce; I shed the rest of them moving to Europe after a lifetime in the USA.
As far as I understand it, query autocomplete is mostly, but not entirely, social in nature - which turns out to be a pretty good predictor. It is quite likely that I will be looking for the same thing as millions of other people. I think autocomplete is probably a combination of social and algorithmic, And for me, even for technical queries, it works so well that sometimes I am astounded - or disappointed that I was not the first to have a brilliant idea.
I'm actually shocked that the overwhelming opinion here on /. seems to be vehement defense of the status quo. I'm certainly not advocating ludicrous moves like enterprise adoption of Win8, but really, people? Upgrade already. Even things like MS Excel DO take on major functional upgrades over time. I absolutely can't imagine doing my job or navigating my day to day life with even just 10 year old technology.
Add vodka, and we're in business. Breakfast of, uh, champions.
With a planet full of starving people I continue to fail to understand how using food crops for fuel makes any kind of rational sense at all.
I think it's time to dispel the notion that "...there aren't a lot of technically inept people running Linux as a desktop at home." This is simply not as true as it used to be. I have a growing number of friends running Linux on their single computer that is used by the whole family. These people are generally FAR from technically adept. Why are they running Linux? They can't afford Windows any more. As Windows has become harder to pirate, the required hardware has become more expensive, and with the advent of many small shops or non-profits selling very inexpensive, turn-on-and-it-works Linux systems, I am seeing it much more commonly in homes of average or below technical aptitude.
The scary economy is actually driving people to FOSS, in my subjective experience.
I think you miss the point of the question, or at least a very important point here. Nudity != pornography, at least in Europe. It is not at all rare to see nudity in commercials or programs in much of European TV, for example, even on, say, Viva, the German analogue to MTV. Which is of course watched by kids.
Now this in itself may be off topic to the original post here, as it does sound that what the child found on the 3DS could be considered pornography most anywhere. I still think it is a very interesting set of questions: Where does the line between art, or documentary photography, and porn lie? How does this vary by country, or regionally? At what age is nudity ok for people to view? And what age pornography? What affect does viewing such "too early" have?
Now, I'm ultra-liberal. I don't believe pornography should be regulated for adults, and I believe that education is the best defense, not regulation beyond reason (again, entirely subjective).
So, apologies for being off-topic, but I think parent should think twice before dismissing the question of differing cultural and national attitudes toward nudity.
I'm happily surprised to see that all the early comments are in support of PGSQL, with brief anecdotes to back it up. I 100% agree - even if your future hopeful employer uses MySQL (which has actually matured a great deal), everything you learn in PGSQL will teach you the underlying theory of WHY good databases are good. You can apply that to any roughly SQL database. Further, PGSQL is even closer to zero-cost than MySQL, in spirit. So, if you have to go up against beancounters advocating for your software, it still looks really good.
Agile methods like Scrum and Kanban didn't even start in the software development field. They've been used in manufacturing for longer.
I would mod this up if my points hadn't expired yesterday. Mod parent up!
I wonder what John Zerzan would have to say about this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zerzan
Disclosure: I find Zerzan's writings provocative and interesting, but it is ironic that a fellow who advocates primitivisation to the point of abandoning language uses egghead polysyllabic words to describe such.
Bookchin would probably embrace this technology.
I've dropped my (naked / unprotected) iPhone 4 from a height of roughly 5 feet onto a concrete sidewalk, and it's not even scuffed.
YMMV...
Perhaps I'm just not trying to use a part of the system that is down, but I filed for an extension this year, e-filed about 3 weeks ago, and got a very clear "Down For Maintenance" message when I went to check the status of my refund yesterday. The message included an estimated date for the system to be back up (10/12 - today), and indeed it was. Poking around a little, it appears that the rest of the e-file system is also functional at this time (though I don't care enough to do an exhaustive search for broken things, having fulfilled my immediate needs).
...vinyl records to CDs - compare vinyl vs. digital downloads thru i.e. iTunes. I recently mail-ordered Wilderness Heart by Black mountain (as an aside, GREAT record), which came with an immediate digital download of the record. I couldn't wait for the vinyl to arrive because I expected it to sound superior to the high-bitrate mp3s. It does. It's noticeable even to my far-from-audiophile wife.
I'm admittedly a fetishist for packaging - double LPs with great gatefold art, colored / clear / marbled vinyl, large-format insert books, all the way to crazy triple and quadruple LPs with all of the above (i.e. Altar, by Boris and Sunn O))) ).
If I can help it I buy nothing but vinyl now. And yes, I do have a USB turntable so (admittedly quite a bit more labor than with a CD) I can make properly tagged copies for listening to on my iPhone.