I am not one to complain about people not reading the article, but this seems like a clear case of it. Almost all posts on this story so far have been about how the Soviets and the Apache helicoptor have had systems similar to this before.
The article mentions the fact that the Soviets designed such a system years ago.
The Apache system also only used a machine gun.
This seems to be much more advanced however.The article mentions the ability to target ground targets for sateelite targetted missles. In addition, this system coupled with AA missles able to make very tight turns means that the pilot does not have to be behind the other plane in order to take down the target.
As the Slashdot story says, the pilot would have the ability to *look over his shoulder* and still target and take out another plane. This would require an AA missle capable of making a reletively tight 180 degree turn and still be able to hit its target.
[Disclaimer: I write and maintain the comp.mail.eudora.mac FAQ. I suppose I have a fairly heavy bias towards it, but I always think that any program can be improved upon.]
One nice feature of Eudora, similar to what you menion, is the ability to see what filter worked on a particular message. With over 50 filters operating on incoming mail, it used to be a pain to figure out which filter was acting improperly. Now it is a simply click.
One thing I would like to see is an automatic archival system (very similar to Pine) that would move mail from heavy mailboxes (like the Out mailbox) into a time-stamped mailbox every week/month/year.
With people dealing with more and more email every day, archival is an important feture that could be added to more clients.
I think that the UI could also be changed to keep that in mind. For example, if I do start archival mailboxes, I want them to be accessable through the client, but I do not want them wasting room in menus. Search panes would have a simple check box to include archived mailboxes or not.
I do like your idea for automatically created mailboxes and filters, as well.
I have been using K-Meleon on Windows and iCab on the Mac for what seems like forever.
Little great features like "Open Link in Background Window" and "Disable new windows on window open/close" make great selling points (image filtering on iCab being another great one).
The more annoying advertisments become, the more people I think that third party browsers are going to convert with features to allow them to turn off/disable them.
As an experiment and as a follow-up to my post, I went to Dell's education store and tried to configure a Dell desktop as close to my new comptuer as possible.
Dell: Dimension 8200, 1.8 GHz 256/80/DVD-RW CD-RW with a Dell 17" LCD: $2541. Apple: PowerMac G4/933 256/80/DVD-RW CD-RW with an Apple 17" LCD: $2791
Dell does not seem to offer a SCSI card as an option, so I would add about $50 to that price tag (or subtract that from the Apple price). There were a few other configurations that went on both that I am not goign to go into detail here, but I set them up about as closely as possible.
In the end, it is pretty close. I, for one, would pay the extra $200 or so for the quality of the Mac.
Of course, then you have the entire Slashdot community up in arms about spy-ware.
You would be able to see the source, but it will still be transmitting your IP number and the software version number.
Another big problem, though, would be computers that are firewalled off from the Internet as a whole. The biggest problem, though, would be the server that would keep track of that information. Suppose the software is no longer supported or written. Then you have to either remove the code and recompile or you would have to wait for the software to time out each time.
Not a good solution. I think the best thing would be a warning at start-up on occasion that automatically says "OK" after a ten seconds or so(so that headless servers would be able to startt the software up without keyboard there to hit OK). Or at least allow people to start from a command line with a "no reminder" set.
This past weekend I bought my fourth Macintosh computer. For details, you can check my journal.
Disclaimer: I do not play games on my computer. The only thing I load up is MAME about once every month or so just as a stress-releiver.
That said: I have found Macintosh computers to be very low-cost in terms of life-time expenses. Yes, up-front costs are lower for PCs, but having used PCs (my job requires PC use, and I have done tech support on them before), they are far less hassle and expense to keep running well.
In addition, Macs tend to have a longer life than a comperable PC. I admit that you can throw Linux onto an older 486 or original Pentium, but most users will not do that. Most Mac users will hold onto their Macs for several years, even in its original configuration.
So comparing up-front costs does not give you the entire story.
Also remember that you cannot put a price tag on ease of use and ability to get things done.
I have about 300 CD's and, for the longest time, I completely agreed with you about CD changers. They never helped with multiple locations, and unless you can store all of your CDs in one at one time, they are a waste. No one is ever goign to sit down and replace all 200 CD's in a changer.
With CD buners and larger changers, though, the choice is starting to come back. I know that a lot of my CD's will never be played in my car or in my bedroom. Ones that I will listen to in multiple places you can either burn or rip to an MP3 player.
That said, I am still using single CD players in multiple places. I would like to get a 5 disk changer for my main listening environment (currently making due with a DVD player), but having single players is definitely still the way to go.
Now VHS and DVD's are a complete other story. I have about 125 VHS tapes, about 30 DVD's (and climbing weekly), and about 20 Laserdisk. All of those are a pain to store for easy retreival since they take up so much room.
A lot of Slashdot readers like movies. That is why they care so much about digital rights. Someone who does not watch (and enjoy) movies is not going to care if he/she is able to excercise "fair use" with digital movies.
I dislike the MPAA quite a bit. I have voiced that opinion many times on Slashdot. However, I also greatly enjoy movies. I went and saw FotR twice in the theatre and will buy it on DVD.
Why? Because I feel like a boycott of movies means that the MPAA has won. They want to take away my rights. A boycott simply means that instead of *them* taking away my rights, I *choose* to ignore my right to go to a movie, hopefully to get someone to notice.
Unfortunately, I enjoy movies too much to give them up for a political point.
Call me a hypocrite, that is fine. But notice that I have never said that I am boycotting, and I have never called on others to do the same. I have written to my congressmen and I have encouraged others to do the same.
The problem is that they made his life look a lot better than it was. One of the biggest problems is that it makes it look like he overcame paranoid schizophrenia by sheer willpower when, in fact, he went into an admittedly rare remission.
The screenplay makes for a good story, perhaps, but for a terrible adaptation from the book.
True, but he was up to discuss remedies and punishments. He says that MS has secret APIs, and that those need to be opened up for companies to compete with MS in the future.
I agree with him, and I think that MS should have to open up document formats, as well.
In the past year I have read both A Beautiful Mind and Lord of the Rings.
Giving the award to A Beautiful Mind endorses a mockery of the man's life.
I write a few of the major changes in the screen play in this post.
Basically, *every* major scene in A Beautiful Mind was completely made up.
The movie is loosely inspired from the actual book, and I do not think that anyone who has read the book can say that it is "based" on the book at all.
FotR deserved that award. Yes, there were a few problems with the adaptation, but there always are going to be them. Even Shawshank, which I consider to be the best adaptation ever, has a major problem with the amount of time that Red spend wandering around, looking for the tree.
I gave up on the Academy Awards when Forrest Gump won over both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption.
This is another case where the news is actually going to change the actual event. All of these news reports linking to original site will only drive the articles further up in a Google search.
Never played the game...
on
Resident Evil
·
· Score: 2
I never played any of the Resident Evil games, but when and saw the movie this past Saturday.
It was decent, and worth the $5 admission. It is far from the best movie ever, but entertaining.
Some notes:
* The volume in the theatre I saw it in was turned up *way* too loud. Part of it was the soundtrack was mixed that way, but there were some times I jumped not because of the action on the scene, but rather because the noise was startling.
* The hologram girl was done well, and I was disappointed that she was not used more. She was creepy when used well.
* I had not realized they were going to make Jason X. The trailer came on and I could not stop from laughing. "He's... he's... mutated!" As a friend of mine stated: "Six young space cadets go on a routine training mission and find, on planet Hell, something alive. 'Let's bring it on board with us!' They will regret that... forever... Jason X."
* At times it felt a little too "Night of the Living Dead."
* There were some pretty major plot inconsistencies, but I suppose that cannot be helped in an action/horror movie like that.
* The special effects were good, and used sparingly enough to keep them entertaining.
This guy reminds me quite a bit of Steve Wozniak, from Apple.
Subtle, quiet, approachable, and doing something for the love of the field. These are the type of people who do more for a field without thinking about it than most people even think possible.
That and he seems to be a huge Mac fan!
He even mentions Lemonaid Stand! I remember playing that game when I was about seven!
Indeed, third party retailers have complained that Apple mark-ups and incentives are less than what other computer manufacturers offer, making them less than ideal to sell.
Apple has a long history of not getting along with its brick-and-morter resellers.
I would also make a guess that Apple is feeding its online store before some resellers.
What a lot of PC fanatics do not realize is that a lot of Mac sales are done online and through phone orders. SmallDog is a great example of this.
As a Mac fan who has *tried* purchasing Mac accessories (usually high mark-up items) at stores, I have no sympathy for the resellers.
Did you ever think about the fact that Slashdot users care about digital rights because some of us are actually movie fans?
I mean, someone who never goes to the movies and never rents movies is not going to be the one who shows up for protests concerning copyright protection on movies.
A friend of mine had one of these...
on
iMac LCD Impostors
·
· Score: 3, Informative
A friend I lived with for a while had an older Gateway Profile 2 or 3 (where he got it from was unknown).
A few comments, having used it a bit:
1) The LCD quality was not very good. Colors were completely off. Off-axis views were not good at all (worse than most LCDs I have seen) 2) The vertically mounted CD-ROM was a frequent problem. I am not sure if the new Profile 4 is going to have the same problem. 3) Celeron-based. Enough said. 4) The LCD eventually crapped out on it for no reason. It was more expensive to replace than the computer was worth at the time.
I have played with the new iMac in a local Apple store and it seemed like a much better machine.
Your argument holds true for most commercial sites, but not always for small to medium sized sites. Slashdot, for example, links to several dozen related web sites, a lot of them competition.
In addition, when I search on Google, more often than not I am not looking for huge commercial sites. I am looking for smaller pages, sometimes written and hosted by individuals, that contain information on the subject I am searching for.
These types of pages completely fall under your argument. They are not big enough to warrant ideas like "competition" and "sponsors." It is just some Joe Public, writing a web page about something he is interested in and housing it in the 5 megs of web space his ISP gives him.
Numerous people have said that they would stop reading Slashdot if they had to pay for anything above and beyond ad-removal.
I do not want subscribers paying for special moderation access. I want it based on positive karma, as it is now.
Taco has to be very special giving special priviledges to subscribers for fear of pissing off the people who post/submit that do not subscribe and would leave if these were implemented.
I am, apparently, the "rich fat brat who doesn't know a line of code" in your description.
Have you looked at my UID recently?
I was here when I used to refuse to read a story with more than 100 comments because it would take too long to read.
I was here before moderation.
No, I have poured through the Slash code at night, and sent off bug reports to CmdrTaco.
People like you, attacking posters and calling them "rich fat brat who doesn't know a line of code" (as an AC at that) because you do not agree with them, are the ones bringing Slashdot down.
Money Slashdot gets from readers under current system: $0 Money Slashdot gets from readers under proposed system: $0 (if, according to you, not a single person pays)
How is this a stupid idea?
*It does not cost Slashdot anything, and might bring in money.*
I would probably pay even though I currently block about 98% of the banners that Slashdot shows.
Why?
Because I get a lot out of Slashdot. I am willing to pay, or even donate, to a cause/service that is offered for free that I get something out of. I have disposable income, like most of Slashdot, and I am willing to give some of that up for things that I like (like Slashdot)
I have contributed monetarily to FSF, EFF, and CPSR, as well as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
I am not under the impression that I deserve everything for free, nor that these services can rely on others for support. I realize that Slashdot does have income from advertisements now, but I am willing to give up a few dollars to make sure that Slashdot continues even if this dries up (have you checked how much less people are paying for ads these days?)
I bought a Slashdot T-shirt from CopyLeft pre-Slashdot buyout in part to support Slashdot.
I think you are the one that needs to get in touch with reality.
Saying that Apple has a monopoly on Macs is like saying that Ford has a monopoly on Mustangs.
Sure, but there are thousands of other cars out there that you can purchase. You want a Mustang, though, you have to go to a Ford dealer. You want a Mac, you go to Apple.
In fact, nothing is keeping anyone from putting together a computer using the PowerPC even. Slashdot even had an article on PowerPC motherboards for sale.
So you want an Apple, but you do not want to buy from Apple? How is that any different than saying you want a Dell but you are unwilling to buy from Dell?
No, Apple does not have a monopoly.
And the FSF boycott was a result of Apple's first attempt at *open sourcing* Darwin, was it not?
As for other people on this thread commenting on Be: The *BSD's and LinuxPPC is proof that you can figure out what is going on in the new machines (indeed, OpenFirmware made things even easier). Be, for whatever reason, decided to try to smear Apple during Be's decision to go to the Intel platform because Apple would not just hand over the specs.
Apple may not have helped Be at all, but they certainly did not stand in their way at all, either, just as it has not stood in the way of LinuxPPC (even going as far as to help that development out).
Calling for anything else is asking Apple to change its business plan in a way that will *definitely* hurt its bottom line.
As a Libertarian, I have to respond: Libertarians are in favor of *moving* and *reallocating* government power.
Your argument that Libertarians are in favor of reducing power is simply incorrect.
I want my locally elected official to have the power that he/she should have as written in the Constitution. *I*, personally, want to power to decide certain things about my life, leaving the goverment out of those decisions.
As a result, these powers need to be taken away fro the federal government. This is not a *reduction* in power, but a reallocation.
The entire start of this thread was that if you reduce power to the federal government, you reduce power to corporations to bribe those same individuals. Your argument that we need a overly-protective federal government to protect us from those same corporations is exactly opposite to that thinking and the evidence pointed out in the original article.
As for everyone arguing that moving power to the states will only mean that MS will resort to bribing them - remember who it is pushing for a weak settlement (Department of Justice and the White House) and who it is pushing for more extreme measures (the states and the states' Attorney Generals). This is direct evidence against that claim.
Indeed. I just got finished with the actual biography. I got into a conversation with a co-worker yesterday. I started listing scnes from the movie that were blatently wrong.
1) The scene with him giving the baby a bath. The truth is that Nash actively avoided both sons that he had. He was in in a mental institution when his wife gave birth, and left for Europe shortly after that.
2) Nash's acceptance speech for his Nobel prize. The truth was that he was divorced at the time.
3) His roommate. The truth was that Nash never seemed to suffer from visual halucienation.
4) The Nazi bomb idea.
5) Nash teaching today. Apparently he is in residence at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, but only teaches an occasional seminar.
6) Nash's work for the Department of Defense. Nash worked for RAND for a while as a researcher, but was apparently more involved in pure mathematical research and game theory than active code-breaking.
7) Princeton. The truth is that Nash did quite a bit of work at MIT, but the movie leads you to believe that Princeton was the only place he ever did anything.
8) Nash's recovery. The movie would have you believe that it was entirely Nash repressing the illness. In truth, it would seem that Nash has actually been in remission. As he says it, it seems like the volume of the ideas have been turned down, allowing him to concentrate on reality instead.
9) His idea for his equilibrium theory. Nash has stated that the idea came from thinking about nations trying to acheive what they want, not from a hot chick in a bar.
10) The scene with the pens in the faculty louge. Nothing ever happened like that.
I did not like the movie, both as a math/psych student and as a movie buff. Crowe definitely deserves for Best Actor, but little other than that.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not one to complain about people not reading the article, but this seems like a clear case of it. Almost all posts on this story so far have been about how the Soviets and the Apache helicoptor have had systems similar to this before.
The article mentions the fact that the Soviets designed such a system years ago.
The Apache system also only used a machine gun.
This seems to be much more advanced however.The article mentions the ability to target ground targets for sateelite targetted missles. In addition, this system coupled with AA missles able to make very tight turns means that the pilot does not have to be behind the other plane in order to take down the target.
As the Slashdot story says, the pilot would have the ability to *look over his shoulder* and still target and take out another plane. This would require an AA missle capable of making a reletively tight 180 degree turn and still be able to hit its target.
[Disclaimer: I write and maintain the comp.mail.eudora.mac FAQ. I suppose I have a fairly heavy bias towards it, but I always think that any program can be improved upon.]
One nice feature of Eudora, similar to what you menion, is the ability to see what filter worked on a particular message. With over 50 filters operating on incoming mail, it used to be a pain to figure out which filter was acting improperly. Now it is a simply click.
One thing I would like to see is an automatic archival system (very similar to Pine) that would move mail from heavy mailboxes (like the Out mailbox) into a time-stamped mailbox every week/month/year.
With people dealing with more and more email every day, archival is an important feture that could be added to more clients.
I think that the UI could also be changed to keep that in mind. For example, if I do start archival mailboxes, I want them to be accessable through the client, but I do not want them wasting room in menus. Search panes would have a simple check box to include archived mailboxes or not.
I do like your idea for automatically created mailboxes and filters, as well.
I have been using K-Meleon on Windows and iCab on the Mac for what seems like forever.
Little great features like "Open Link in Background Window" and "Disable new windows on window open/close" make great selling points (image filtering on iCab being another great one).
The more annoying advertisments become, the more people I think that third party browsers are going to convert with features to allow them to turn off/disable them.
As an experiment and as a follow-up to my post, I went to Dell's education store and tried to configure a Dell desktop as close to my new comptuer as possible.
Dell: Dimension 8200, 1.8 GHz 256/80/DVD-RW CD-RW with a Dell 17" LCD: $2541.
Apple: PowerMac G4/933 256/80/DVD-RW CD-RW with an Apple 17" LCD: $2791
Dell does not seem to offer a SCSI card as an option, so I would add about $50 to that price tag (or subtract that from the Apple price). There were a few other configurations that went on both that I am not goign to go into detail here, but I set them up about as closely as possible.
In the end, it is pretty close. I, for one, would pay the extra $200 or so for the quality of the Mac.
Of course, then you have the entire Slashdot community up in arms about spy-ware.
You would be able to see the source, but it will still be transmitting your IP number and the software version number.
Another big problem, though, would be computers that are firewalled off from the Internet as a whole.
The biggest problem, though, would be the server that would keep track of that information. Suppose the software is no longer supported or written. Then you have to either remove the code and recompile or you would have to wait for the software to time out each time.
Not a good solution. I think the best thing would be a warning at start-up on occasion that automatically says "OK" after a ten seconds or so(so that headless servers would be able to startt the software up without keyboard there to hit OK). Or at least allow people to start from a command line with a "no reminder" set.
This past weekend I bought my fourth Macintosh computer. For details, you can check my journal.
Disclaimer: I do not play games on my computer. The only thing I load up is MAME about once every month or so just as a stress-releiver.
That said: I have found Macintosh computers to be very low-cost in terms of life-time expenses. Yes, up-front costs are lower for PCs, but having used PCs (my job requires PC use, and I have done tech support on them before), they are far less hassle and expense to keep running well.
In addition, Macs tend to have a longer life than a comperable PC. I admit that you can throw Linux onto an older 486 or original Pentium, but most users will not do that. Most Mac users will hold onto their Macs for several years, even in its original configuration.
So comparing up-front costs does not give you the entire story.
Also remember that you cannot put a price tag on ease of use and ability to get things done.
I have about 300 CD's and, for the longest time, I completely agreed with you about CD changers. They never helped with multiple locations, and unless you can store all of your CDs in one at one time, they are a waste. No one is ever goign to sit down and replace all 200 CD's in a changer.
With CD buners and larger changers, though, the choice is starting to come back. I know that a lot of my CD's will never be played in my car or in my bedroom. Ones that I will listen to in multiple places you can either burn or rip to an MP3 player.
That said, I am still using single CD players in multiple places. I would like to get a 5 disk changer for my main listening environment (currently making due with a DVD player), but having single players is definitely still the way to go.
Now VHS and DVD's are a complete other story. I have about 125 VHS tapes, about 30 DVD's (and climbing weekly), and about 20 Laserdisk. All of those are a pain to store for easy retreival since they take up so much room.
I agree completely. I voiced a similar argument a while back.
A lot of Slashdot readers like movies. That is why they care so much about digital rights. Someone who does not watch (and enjoy) movies is not going to care if he/she is able to excercise "fair use" with digital movies.
I dislike the MPAA quite a bit. I have voiced that opinion many times on Slashdot. However, I also greatly enjoy movies. I went and saw FotR twice in the theatre and will buy it on DVD.
Why? Because I feel like a boycott of movies means that the MPAA has won. They want to take away my rights. A boycott simply means that instead of *them* taking away my rights, I *choose* to ignore my right to go to a movie, hopefully to get someone to notice.
Unfortunately, I enjoy movies too much to give them up for a political point.
Call me a hypocrite, that is fine. But notice that I have never said that I am boycotting, and I have never called on others to do the same. I have written to my congressmen and I have encouraged others to do the same.
The problem is that they made his life look a lot better than it was. One of the biggest problems is that it makes it look like he overcame paranoid schizophrenia by sheer willpower when, in fact, he went into an admittedly rare remission.
The screenplay makes for a good story, perhaps, but for a terrible adaptation from the book.
True, but he was up to discuss remedies and punishments. He says that MS has secret APIs, and that those need to be opened up for companies to compete with MS in the future.
I agree with him, and I think that MS should have to open up document formats, as well.
In the past year I have read both A Beautiful Mind and Lord of the Rings.
Giving the award to A Beautiful Mind endorses a mockery of the man's life.
I write a few of the major changes in the screen play in this post.
Basically, *every* major scene in A Beautiful Mind was completely made up.
The movie is loosely inspired from the actual book, and I do not think that anyone who has read the book can say that it is "based" on the book at all.
FotR deserved that award. Yes, there were a few problems with the adaptation, but there always are going to be them. Even Shawshank, which I consider to be the best adaptation ever, has a major problem with the amount of time that Red spend wandering around, looking for the tree.
I gave up on the Academy Awards when Forrest Gump won over both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption.
This is another case where the news is actually going to change the actual event. All of these news reports linking to original site will only drive the articles further up in a Google search.
I never played any of the Resident Evil games, but when and saw the movie this past Saturday.
It was decent, and worth the $5 admission. It is far from the best movie ever, but entertaining.
Some notes:
* The volume in the theatre I saw it in was turned up *way* too loud. Part of it was the soundtrack was mixed that way, but there were some times I jumped not because of the action on the scene, but rather because the noise was startling.
* The hologram girl was done well, and I was disappointed that she was not used more. She was creepy when used well.
* I had not realized they were going to make Jason X. The trailer came on and I could not stop from laughing. "He's... he's... mutated!" As a friend of mine stated: "Six young space cadets go on a routine training mission and find, on planet Hell, something alive. 'Let's bring it on board with us!' They will regret that... forever... Jason X."
* At times it felt a little too "Night of the Living Dead."
* There were some pretty major plot inconsistencies, but I suppose that cannot be helped in an action/horror movie like that.
* The special effects were good, and used sparingly enough to keep them entertaining.
This guy reminds me quite a bit of Steve Wozniak, from Apple.
Subtle, quiet, approachable, and doing something for the love of the field. These are the type of people who do more for a field without thinking about it than most people even think possible.
That and he seems to be a huge Mac fan!
He even mentions Lemonaid Stand! I remember playing that game when I was about seven!
Indeed, third party retailers have complained that Apple mark-ups and incentives are less than what other computer manufacturers offer, making them less than ideal to sell.
Apple has a long history of not getting along with its brick-and-morter resellers.
I would also make a guess that Apple is feeding its online store before some resellers.
What a lot of PC fanatics do not realize is that a lot of Mac sales are done online and through phone orders. SmallDog is a great example of this.
As a Mac fan who has *tried* purchasing Mac accessories (usually high mark-up items) at stores, I have no sympathy for the resellers.
Did you ever think about the fact that Slashdot users care about digital rights because some of us are actually movie fans?
I mean, someone who never goes to the movies and never rents movies is not going to be the one who shows up for protests concerning copyright protection on movies.
A friend I lived with for a while had an older Gateway Profile 2 or 3 (where he got it from was unknown).
A few comments, having used it a bit:
1) The LCD quality was not very good. Colors were completely off. Off-axis views were not good at all (worse than most LCDs I have seen)
2) The vertically mounted CD-ROM was a frequent problem. I am not sure if the new Profile 4 is going to have the same problem.
3) Celeron-based. Enough said.
4) The LCD eventually crapped out on it for no reason. It was more expensive to replace than the computer was worth at the time.
I have played with the new iMac in a local Apple store and it seemed like a much better machine.
Your argument holds true for most commercial sites, but not always for small to medium sized sites. Slashdot, for example, links to several dozen related web sites, a lot of them competition.
In addition, when I search on Google, more often than not I am not looking for huge commercial sites. I am looking for smaller pages, sometimes written and hosted by individuals, that contain information on the subject I am searching for.
These types of pages completely fall under your argument. They are not big enough to warrant ideas like "competition" and "sponsors." It is just some Joe Public, writing a web page about something he is interested in and housing it in the 5 megs of web space his ISP gives him.
I suppose your last line gets at the heart of the matter - "there are a lot of fair options to make interested people pay."
If Slashdot were to try to *make* people pay they would offend the freeloaders.
It is as simple as that.
I believe Taco is listening all too well.
Numerous people have said that they would stop reading Slashdot if they had to pay for anything above and beyond ad-removal.
I do not want subscribers paying for special moderation access. I want it based on positive karma, as it is now.
Taco has to be very special giving special priviledges to subscribers for fear of pissing off the people who post/submit that do not subscribe and would leave if these were implemented.
I wrote the original message.
I am, apparently, the "rich fat brat who doesn't know a line of code" in your description.
Have you looked at my UID recently?
I was here when I used to refuse to read a story with more than 100 comments because it would take too long to read.
I was here before moderation.
No, I have poured through the Slash code at night, and sent off bug reports to CmdrTaco.
People like you, attacking posters and calling them "rich fat brat who doesn't know a line of code" (as an AC at that) because you do not agree with them, are the ones bringing Slashdot down.
Do you see how that works?
Let me see something:
Money Slashdot gets from readers under current system: $0
Money Slashdot gets from readers under proposed system: $0 (if, according to you, not a single person pays)
How is this a stupid idea?
*It does not cost Slashdot anything, and might bring in money.*
I would probably pay even though I currently block about 98% of the banners that Slashdot shows.
Why?
Because I get a lot out of Slashdot. I am willing to pay, or even donate, to a cause/service that is offered for free that I get something out of. I have disposable income, like most of Slashdot, and I am willing to give some of that up for things that I like (like Slashdot)
I have contributed monetarily to FSF, EFF, and CPSR, as well as the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
I am not under the impression that I deserve everything for free, nor that these services can rely on others for support. I realize that Slashdot does have income from advertisements now, but I am willing to give up a few dollars to make sure that Slashdot continues even if this dries up (have you checked how much less people are paying for ads these days?)
I bought a Slashdot T-shirt from CopyLeft pre-Slashdot buyout in part to support Slashdot.
I think you are the one that needs to get in touch with reality.
Saying that Apple has a monopoly on Macs is like saying that Ford has a monopoly on Mustangs.
Sure, but there are thousands of other cars out there that you can purchase. You want a Mustang, though, you have to go to a Ford dealer. You want a Mac, you go to Apple.
In fact, nothing is keeping anyone from putting together a computer using the PowerPC even. Slashdot even had an article on PowerPC motherboards for sale.
So you want an Apple, but you do not want to buy from Apple? How is that any different than saying you want a Dell but you are unwilling to buy from Dell?
No, Apple does not have a monopoly.
And the FSF boycott was a result of Apple's first attempt at *open sourcing* Darwin, was it not?
As for other people on this thread commenting on Be: The *BSD's and LinuxPPC is proof that you can figure out what is going on in the new machines (indeed, OpenFirmware made things even easier). Be, for whatever reason, decided to try to smear Apple during Be's decision to go to the Intel platform because Apple would not just hand over the specs.
Apple may not have helped Be at all, but they certainly did not stand in their way at all, either, just as it has not stood in the way of LinuxPPC (even going as far as to help that development out).
Calling for anything else is asking Apple to change its business plan in a way that will *definitely* hurt its bottom line.
As a Libertarian, I have to respond: Libertarians are in favor of *moving* and *reallocating* government power.
Your argument that Libertarians are in favor of reducing power is simply incorrect.
I want my locally elected official to have the power that he/she should have as written in the Constitution. *I*, personally, want to power to decide certain things about my life, leaving the goverment out of those decisions.
As a result, these powers need to be taken away fro the federal government. This is not a *reduction* in power, but a reallocation.
The entire start of this thread was that if you reduce power to the federal government, you reduce power to corporations to bribe those same individuals. Your argument that we need a overly-protective federal government to protect us from those same corporations is exactly opposite to that thinking and the evidence pointed out in the original article.
As for everyone arguing that moving power to the states will only mean that MS will resort to bribing them - remember who it is pushing for a weak settlement (Department of Justice and the White House) and who it is pushing for more extreme measures (the states and the states' Attorney Generals). This is direct evidence against that claim.
Indeed. I just got finished with the actual biography. I got into a conversation with a co-worker yesterday. I started listing scnes from the movie that were blatently wrong.
1) The scene with him giving the baby a bath. The truth is that Nash actively avoided both sons that he had. He was in in a mental institution when his wife gave birth, and left for Europe shortly after that.
2) Nash's acceptance speech for his Nobel prize. The truth was that he was divorced at the time.
3) His roommate. The truth was that Nash never seemed to suffer from visual halucienation.
4) The Nazi bomb idea.
5) Nash teaching today. Apparently he is in residence at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, but only teaches an occasional seminar.
6) Nash's work for the Department of Defense. Nash worked for RAND for a while as a researcher, but was apparently more involved in pure mathematical research and game theory than active code-breaking.
7) Princeton. The truth is that Nash did quite a bit of work at MIT, but the movie leads you to believe that Princeton was the only place he ever did anything.
8) Nash's recovery. The movie would have you believe that it was entirely Nash repressing the illness. In truth, it would seem that Nash has actually been in remission. As he says it, it seems like the volume of the ideas have been turned down, allowing him to concentrate on reality instead.
9) His idea for his equilibrium theory. Nash has stated that the idea came from thinking about nations trying to acheive what they want, not from a hot chick in a bar.
10) The scene with the pens in the faculty louge. Nothing ever happened like that.
I did not like the movie, both as a math/psych student and as a movie buff. Crowe definitely deserves for Best Actor, but little other than that.