Maybe they're first project should be: make wikipedia's internal search work correctly! It can't even handle the most basic miss-spellings now.
You know, I've never had problems with the wikipedia search engine. More often than not, I enter something I'm looking for and it finds the correct article 95% of the time, with the spelling corrected and the missing words inserted. Of course, I have a vague idea of how what I'm looking for is spelled in the first place, perhaps I'm helping the search engine, but really so far I'm really not disappointed with it.
At any rate, flip through a real paper encylopedia and you'll find the "search engine" (the thesaurus) to be a real pain compared to anything Wikipedia can come up with, therefore I guess for an encyclopedia, I'm happy enough with it.
France gave us the word "liberty," yet the french do not value freedom of speech nearly as much as Americans do.
Wrong: they would value their freedom of speech very much if their governments hadn't taken it away long ago. If you want to see what I mean, go to France and say anything vaguely insulting about jews or arabs, and you'll quickly meet Bubba in the brig. (Note: I have nothing against jews or arabs, but I reckon it should be legal to say anything about them as long as it's not a call for racial violence).
French folks think they have freedom of speech but they don't. They did nothing to defend it and they lost it. The only difference with the US is, Americans still have the 1st, but that's not going to last for a lot longer, so enjoy it while you can. And don't kid yourself thinking you can fight to preserve it, the forces of apathy in the general public in the US make this fight lost in advance.
I know it's popular around here to think that OpenOffice is a viable replacement for MSOffice, but I'm sorry to say, whoever worked with both know it isn't. OOo is *almost* there, but not enough there that it can take on MSOffice. For example, Impress (the OOo Powerpoint) sucks ass in terms of speed. OOo font management can be erratic between OS platforms, and quite frankly, the entire OOo suite is a big slow infinitely deep rat's nest of ultra-slow ram-hungry object-oriented code.
So no, OOo won't replace MSOffice quite yet. Which incidentally is why I think MS is pulling the plug on the Mac Office suite: they do it while there's still time, before OOo gets good enough that Mac users would just say "good riddance" to MS. Right now, they can't, so MS plays its card.
I think the fact that religion pervades the average American life from birth might be an important consideration.
You're correct. America is essentially a christian fundamentalist country, or well on its way to become one, and that almost strictly has to do with parents spreading their beliefs to their offsprings from the earliest age.
However, the point I think is that, in an imaginary perfectly rational society, supernatural beliefs, and thus religion, is bound to appear in one, two, ten then many individuals. Why? not because the human brain is wired to believe, but because it is wired to try to make sense of the world around. And when coincidental events happen, people can't face the fact that is "those two events are coincidental". Instead, they much prefer thinking "this is God's will" because it provides an explanation, however irrational. When one person thinks that, another will follow, then another, etc etc... It takes an effort and a bit of courage to admit that you don't know why things are the way they are, and you may never know, and religious thinking provides a mental crutch to close the gaps in human knowledge and avoid staring at them.
So I don't think human are hardwired to believe, they're just hardwired to try to understand, even if that understanding is completely irrational. The only thing that'll make religion obsolete is total knowledge of the world around us, and that will never happen.
I agree that some form of elitism is good, i.e. bright kids and kids who perform better deserve to get more rewards and get to better colleges than others. On the other hand, if elitism is the only thing driving the school system, then you end up with anxious parents who push their kids too hard and generally end up making their lives a misery.
You say your parents and teachers encouraged you to try your hardest, and it gave you a willingness to be better. That's great, and ideally that's what should happen. My parents on the other hand pushed me so hard I just didn't do anything outside schoolwork. If I didn't get the best grades, I was punished, "good" grades didn't exist for them, just "best" grades. I can remember those moments vividly, even today as an adult. How did that help me? it didn't, it just ruined most of my childhood.
The other thing is, when parents drive their kids into a success death march, they end up missing totally what the kids might or might not be good at. I for example did advanced studies in math, physics and CS. I hated every minute of it (apart CS) but I completed the studies because my parents would be "so disappointed considering my abilities" (so they said). In reality, I wanted to work with my hands, and I realized only very late in life that that's what I really wanted. Not "could do", but "wanted to do". The end result is, today I'm a metalworker because *I* chose to.
The challenge for parents is to make their kids understand that they have a duty to perform well at school, while at the same time cutting them enough slack to let them be happy during their childhood and find their own way, and realize that a good student and happy student in "lowly" studies like woodworking or metalworking is better than a bad or stressed out student in Harvard or MIT.
How about we wipe their tushies and tell them they won't have to work hard to make something of themselves?
Yes I agree, but remember, these are kids, they also have a childhood to live. Performance and the rage to be the first in everything should be something they gradually come to expect as they age, otherwise you get kids that are stressed out, mis-adjusted and nerdy.
What I mean is, there's a balance to find between too much homework, with parents on their kids' back all day long, and lazy kids who don't do jack squat. But at any rate, kids shouldn't be expected to work they butts off like adults do.
$4000 for a patch that modifies one line in the registry? That's gotta be the slickest scam ever, especially since there are a ton of manual fixes out there on the innurnet if you care to google a bit. People who are worried can always hire a computer professional to do it for a tenth of the price, I'm sure.
The OneCare team has access to the Windows source code, that's got to give them an edge.
Let's be logical shall we
on
Define - /etc?
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
- The C must mean "configuration" obviously - There's a high chance the T means "tool" - The E, I don't know, but surely it means something to do with system-wide
The problem is that our nursing home area is built into a lower level that was originally constructed as a fallout shelter in 1960. There's a lot of solid concrete in the walls and ceiling.
Propose management to relocate the retirement home to a nicer place with, for example, windows and sunlight. Jesus man, who the hell make older folks live in a former fallout shelter? It's really sad. Tell me where it is so I know never to send my mother there...
t has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of the copyrighted words "WINTER", "VANCOUVER" and "OLYMPICS" (the "Work") in the preparation of a Slashdot article entitled "CANADIAN GOV'T GRANTS OLYMPICS OWNERSHIP OF WINTER" (the "Article"). I have reserved all rights in the Work, granted my the Canadian Government. Your work entitled "CANADIAN GOV'T GRANTS OLYMPICS OWNERSHIP OF WINTER" is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis.
As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for the Article nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.
I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies, including electronic copies, of same, that you deliver to me, if applicable, all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If I have not received an affirmative response from you by [date give them about 2 weeks] indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall take further action against you.
need to be able to be mass-produced, scalable and just as reliable as alternatives [silicon, quantum computers etc.]
John Connor, is that you? I gotta tell you, when you come from, quantum computers might be mass-produced, scalable and reliable, but today they aren't just yet...
Because my friend, the way the world is going, one of these days you'll have to consult a lawyer before taking a dump, just in case the toilet seat scans your ass print and reports unauthorized use.
You see, the entire world is slowly being privatised. All of it, including obvious commons like the air we breathe and the water we drink, and innocuous things that everybody take for granted suddenly "belong" to someone, or aren't allowed to do because some "rightful owner" says so one day. You might wander, what does music or pictures have to do with it? Sure it doesn't, but it's just the trend. Watermarking music is fine, but what if some day some digital camera manufacturer decides that you can't shoot pictures of specially painted federal building because of some anti-terrorist law for example, and you happen to take a picture of your friend with the local FBI building in the background and post them on your website? Suddenly the camera goes "tsk tsk, can't do that pal...". Would you like that?
It's the trend that's worrying. People making machines decide for you what you may or may not do. It might be a legitimate use now, but I can see plenty of cases where this kind of technology would simply curtail civil liberties.
Let's say person A goes to Harvard and spends their time smoking up, drinking, and barely passing their classes, while person B goes to West Podunk State, where they graduate with high honors and had a leadership role among students. Which person would you expect to be accepted to a graduate program? Which person would you hire?
Dude, you should have chosen your example better: the richest man in the world is a failed Harvard student...
However, I still have my sights set on getting into a school such as MIT or Cal Tech. My grades are high (95.6 on a 100 scale), I have several leadership positions in clubs, however I'm pretty sure that's not enough.
Getting a great education and trying to be the best are noble pursuits. But if I may, I'd like to give you a perpective on another outlook on life: I too did good studies, I wasn't an impressive student as you seem to be, but I did more than okay considering I may not have you abilities. Then, fresh out of school, I became a software engineer, then I rose in the company and ended up getting a good position and a really good salary for my age.
Then at 30... realized I had a fat bank account no life at all outside work. That's when I quit my job to start "lowly" studies in the completely different field of gunsmithing. Where am I now? I work on guns, I get a low salary (at least compared to what I got before), but I have week-ends off, I don't work my butt off unless I want to, I can see my family at 5pm, and I get up everyday at the same time and eat a proper lunch and dinner with them at the same time everyday. I sleep well at night, I lowered my blood pressure and cholesterol, I have time to bike more, which made me thin out, etc etc...
So I'm not the super-hotshot I was striving to be. I'm a blue collar now, so many of my former "friends" consider I'm a failure and turned away from me, but I'm happier and I'll probably live longer as a result. Sure I'm not earning what I used to, but then I realized I don't need the latest PDA, a collector car or a big house.
My adice to you is, while you have a great career in front of you, try to remember the pursuit of happiness is more important than a good career. If I were you, I'd chill out and go to CMU, which is a great university you've already been accepted in, and I'd try to fret over more important things in life.
With a 5-digit Slashdot id, you probably can answer this question honestly then: do you have 1024 times more fun playing Doom3 than Doom1?
I thought not... The point of the OP is that whatever we do today in almost any software that require *gasp* 4 gigs of ram isn't significantly different than what we did 10 or 15 years ago with 4 megs. Sure it's prettier and more polished, but it's roughly the same number of features and, gee, even the same speed. I don't think I was less productive with DT Publisher on my Atari MegaST than today, the only real difference is the result was printed on a slow, noisy 24-pin printer. But I don't work any faster today.
The copyright model dates back to the guild systems which Europe coined ages ago.
In Europe ages ago, they also used all sorts of funky units. But you know what? at some point people figured out there was something better than guilds and pounds, invented something better and moved on. The US however, once a country driven by ideals and new things, has since stopped evolving and insist on clinging onto how things once were. It's definitely not a new thing too, and there are plenty of signs that Americans just refuses to be part of the future in many areas: refusal to go metric is an obvious one, but also the scary religious revival, insistance on using fossil fuels for energy and nothing else,...
In short: you'll see the US patent system change when you see the US going metric. Ain't happening anytime soon...
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they're first project should be: make wikipedia's internal search work correctly! It can't even handle the most basic miss-spellings now.
You know, I've never had problems with the wikipedia search engine. More often than not, I enter something I'm looking for and it finds the correct article 95% of the time, with the spelling corrected and the missing words inserted. Of course, I have a vague idea of how what I'm looking for is spelled in the first place, perhaps I'm helping the search engine, but really so far I'm really not disappointed with it.
At any rate, flip through a real paper encylopedia and you'll find the "search engine" (the thesaurus) to be a real pain compared to anything Wikipedia can come up with, therefore I guess for an encyclopedia, I'm happy enough with it.
And you thought saying "Windoze" was a stale joke...
France gave us the word "liberty," yet the french do not value freedom of speech nearly as much as Americans do.
Wrong: they would value their freedom of speech very much if their governments hadn't taken it away long ago. If you want to see what I mean, go to France and say anything vaguely insulting about jews or arabs, and you'll quickly meet Bubba in the brig. (Note: I have nothing against jews or arabs, but I reckon it should be legal to say anything about them as long as it's not a call for racial violence).
French folks think they have freedom of speech but they don't. They did nothing to defend it and they lost it. The only difference with the US is, Americans still have the 1st, but that's not going to last for a lot longer, so enjoy it while you can. And don't kid yourself thinking you can fight to preserve it, the forces of apathy in the general public in the US make this fight lost in advance.
4th of July?
I know it's popular around here to think that OpenOffice is a viable replacement for MSOffice, but I'm sorry to say, whoever worked with both know it isn't. OOo is *almost* there, but not enough there that it can take on MSOffice. For example, Impress (the OOo Powerpoint) sucks ass in terms of speed. OOo font management can be erratic between OS platforms, and quite frankly, the entire OOo suite is a big slow infinitely deep rat's nest of ultra-slow ram-hungry object-oriented code.
So no, OOo won't replace MSOffice quite yet. Which incidentally is why I think MS is pulling the plug on the Mac Office suite: they do it while there's still time, before OOo gets good enough that Mac users would just say "good riddance" to MS. Right now, they can't, so MS plays its card.
I think the fact that religion pervades the average American life from birth might be an important consideration.
You're correct. America is essentially a christian fundamentalist country, or well on its way to become one, and that almost strictly has to do with parents spreading their beliefs to their offsprings from the earliest age.
However, the point I think is that, in an imaginary perfectly rational society, supernatural beliefs, and thus religion, is bound to appear in one, two, ten then many individuals. Why? not because the human brain is wired to believe, but because it is wired to try to make sense of the world around. And when coincidental events happen, people can't face the fact that is "those two events are coincidental". Instead, they much prefer thinking "this is God's will" because it provides an explanation, however irrational. When one person thinks that, another will follow, then another, etc etc... It takes an effort and a bit of courage to admit that you don't know why things are the way they are, and you may never know, and religious thinking provides a mental crutch to close the gaps in human knowledge and avoid staring at them.
So I don't think human are hardwired to believe, they're just hardwired to try to understand, even if that understanding is completely irrational. The only thing that'll make religion obsolete is total knowledge of the world around us, and that will never happen.
I agree that some form of elitism is good, i.e. bright kids and kids who perform better deserve to get more rewards and get to better colleges than others. On the other hand, if elitism is the only thing driving the school system, then you end up with anxious parents who push their kids too hard and generally end up making their lives a misery.
You say your parents and teachers encouraged you to try your hardest, and it gave you a willingness to be better. That's great, and ideally that's what should happen. My parents on the other hand pushed me so hard I just didn't do anything outside schoolwork. If I didn't get the best grades, I was punished, "good" grades didn't exist for them, just "best" grades. I can remember those moments vividly, even today as an adult. How did that help me? it didn't, it just ruined most of my childhood.
The other thing is, when parents drive their kids into a success death march, they end up missing totally what the kids might or might not be good at. I for example did advanced studies in math, physics and CS. I hated every minute of it (apart CS) but I completed the studies because my parents would be "so disappointed considering my abilities" (so they said). In reality, I wanted to work with my hands, and I realized only very late in life that that's what I really wanted. Not "could do", but "wanted to do". The end result is, today I'm a metalworker because *I* chose to.
The challenge for parents is to make their kids understand that they have a duty to perform well at school, while at the same time cutting them enough slack to let them be happy during their childhood and find their own way, and realize that a good student and happy student in "lowly" studies like woodworking or metalworking is better than a bad or stressed out student in Harvard or MIT.
How about we wipe their tushies and tell them they won't have to work hard to make something of themselves?
Yes I agree, but remember, these are kids, they also have a childhood to live. Performance and the rage to be the first in everything should be something they gradually come to expect as they age, otherwise you get kids that are stressed out, mis-adjusted and nerdy.
What I mean is, there's a balance to find between too much homework, with parents on their kids' back all day long, and lazy kids who don't do jack squat. But at any rate, kids shouldn't be expected to work they butts off like adults do.
$4000 for a patch that modifies one line in the registry? That's gotta be the slickest scam ever, especially since there are a ton of manual fixes out there on the innurnet if you care to google a bit. People who are worried can always hire a computer professional to do it for a tenth of the price, I'm sure.
The OneCare team has access to the Windows source code, that's got to give them an edge.
- The C must mean "configuration" obviously
- There's a high chance the T means "tool"
- The E, I don't know, but surely it means something to do with system-wide
The problem is that our nursing home area is built into a lower level that was originally constructed as a fallout shelter in 1960. There's a lot of solid concrete in the walls and ceiling.
Propose management to relocate the retirement home to a nicer place with, for example, windows and sunlight. Jesus man, who the hell make older folks live in a former fallout shelter? It's really sad. Tell me where it is so I know never to send my mother there...
Dear Mr. Zonk and Cmdrtaco,
t has come to my attention that you have made an unauthorized use of the copyrighted words "WINTER", "VANCOUVER" and "OLYMPICS" (the "Work") in the preparation of a Slashdot article entitled "CANADIAN GOV'T GRANTS OLYMPICS OWNERSHIP OF WINTER" (the "Article"). I have reserved all rights in the Work, granted my the Canadian Government. Your work entitled "CANADIAN GOV'T GRANTS OLYMPICS OWNERSHIP OF WINTER" is essentially identical to the Work and clearly used the Work as its basis.
As you neither asked for nor received permission to use the Work as the basis for the Article nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, I believe you have willfully infringed my rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein.
I demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all infringing works derived from the Work, and all copies, including electronic copies, of same, that you deliver to me, if applicable, all unused, undistributed copies of same, or destroy such copies immediately and that you desist from this or any other infringement of my rights in the future. If I have not received an affirmative response from you by [date give them about 2 weeks] indicating that you have fully complied with these requirements, I shall take further action against you.
Very truly yours,
The Krazy Kanuck Kommitee
need to be able to be mass-produced, scalable and just as reliable as alternatives [silicon, quantum computers etc.]
John Connor, is that you? I gotta tell you, when you come from, quantum computers might be mass-produced, scalable and reliable, but today they aren't just yet...
Why does everyone here want this not to work?
Because my friend, the way the world is going, one of these days you'll have to consult a lawyer before taking a dump, just in case the toilet seat scans your ass print and reports unauthorized use.
You see, the entire world is slowly being privatised. All of it, including obvious commons like the air we breathe and the water we drink, and innocuous things that everybody take for granted suddenly "belong" to someone, or aren't allowed to do because some "rightful owner" says so one day. You might wander, what does music or pictures have to do with it? Sure it doesn't, but it's just the trend. Watermarking music is fine, but what if some day some digital camera manufacturer decides that you can't shoot pictures of specially painted federal building because of some anti-terrorist law for example, and you happen to take a picture of your friend with the local FBI building in the background and post them on your website? Suddenly the camera goes "tsk tsk, can't do that pal...". Would you like that?
It's the trend that's worrying. People making machines decide for you what you may or may not do. It might be a legitimate use now, but I can see plenty of cases where this kind of technology would simply curtail civil liberties.
Let's say person A goes to Harvard and spends their time smoking up, drinking, and barely passing their classes, while person B goes to West Podunk State, where they graduate with high honors and had a leadership role among students. Which person would you expect to be accepted to a graduate program? Which person would you hire?
Dude, you should have chosen your example better: the richest man in the world is a failed Harvard student...
However, I still have my sights set on getting into a school such as MIT or Cal Tech. My grades are high (95.6 on a 100 scale), I have several leadership positions in clubs, however I'm pretty sure that's not enough.
Getting a great education and trying to be the best are noble pursuits. But if I may, I'd like to give you a perpective on another outlook on life: I too did good studies, I wasn't an impressive student as you seem to be, but I did more than okay considering I may not have you abilities. Then, fresh out of school, I became a software engineer, then I rose in the company and ended up getting a good position and a really good salary for my age.
Then at 30... realized I had a fat bank account no life at all outside work. That's when I quit my job to start "lowly" studies in the completely different field of gunsmithing. Where am I now? I work on guns, I get a low salary (at least compared to what I got before), but I have week-ends off, I don't work my butt off unless I want to, I can see my family at 5pm, and I get up everyday at the same time and eat a proper lunch and dinner with them at the same time everyday. I sleep well at night, I lowered my blood pressure and cholesterol, I have time to bike more, which made me thin out, etc etc...
So I'm not the super-hotshot I was striving to be. I'm a blue collar now, so many of my former "friends" consider I'm a failure and turned away from me, but I'm happier and I'll probably live longer as a result. Sure I'm not earning what I used to, but then I realized I don't need the latest PDA, a collector car or a big house.
My adice to you is, while you have a great career in front of you, try to remember the pursuit of happiness is more important than a good career. If I were you, I'd chill out and go to CMU, which is a great university you've already been accepted in, and I'd try to fret over more important things in life.
There are tons and tons of the stuff at the bottom of the oceans. It's called methane clathrate and I'm sure it'd be easier to extract than ice.
They should have given it to the president of the CSA: they too have developed a slow language...
With a 5-digit Slashdot id, you probably can answer this question honestly then: do you have 1024 times more fun playing Doom3 than Doom1?
I thought not... The point of the OP is that whatever we do today in almost any software that require *gasp* 4 gigs of ram isn't significantly different than what we did 10 or 15 years ago with 4 megs. Sure it's prettier and more polished, but it's roughly the same number of features and, gee, even the same speed. I don't think I was less productive with DT Publisher on my Atari MegaST than today, the only real difference is the result was printed on a slow, noisy 24-pin printer. But I don't work any faster today.
The copyright model dates back to the guild systems which Europe coined ages ago.
In Europe ages ago, they also used all sorts of funky units. But you know what? at some point people figured out there was something better than guilds and pounds, invented something better and moved on. The US however, once a country driven by ideals and new things, has since stopped evolving and insist on clinging onto how things once were. It's definitely not a new thing too, and there are plenty of signs that Americans just refuses to be part of the future in many areas: refusal to go metric is an obvious one, but also the scary religious revival, insistance on using fossil fuels for energy and nothing else,...
In short: you'll see the US patent system change when you see the US going metric. Ain't happening anytime soon...
When he grows up, that baby might be the one who'll finally be able to take on Chuck Norris.
On a related note, what kind of disease is this meant to cure?
Constipation.
The answer is in the form of a question: given Solaris' marketshare, does it really matter?
Peace may save limbs lost in war.
In short: stop warmongering, and soldiers will stay in one piece.