Also, the idea that McCain can't understand the value of the Internet as a campaigning force because of his age is slightly patronising, and entirely add odds with what we know about the rise of the 'silver surfer'.
The candidate I saw leveraging the power of the Internet the most, early in this election, was Ron Paul -- and it looked like most people just used it to smear the guy. EG. "Nobody but spammers and a few computer geeks with loud mouths care about him!"
Ron Paul is a cautionary counterexample; It's all very well building up grassroots support on the Internet, but if your grassroots comprises a mishmash of troofers, stoppers, lunatics, antisemites, conspiracy theorists, naive libertarians, politically vacuous "fuck the system" types, and a spattering of basement-bound non-voting teenagers and various other subcultures and social outcasts entirely ill at ease with Middle America, then it's (as we kept trying to tell them) not going to be enough.
Sure, the average joe isn't producing semantically meaningful markup when he uses his whizbang Web 2.0 sites, but then again what the average joe produces isn't worth all that much anyway. Even if the Semantic Web doesn't expand to include all Internet activity, it has and continues to do much good.
Cutting a swathe through your charmingly misplaced snobbery for a second, the ideal thing would be for you to provide a useful example or two of this human thing called SEMANTIWEB, and explain to silly old me how it has already changed my life but I'm just too gosh darned ordinary to have noticed.
Maybe I'm just your regular Homer, but reading that, I only make it as far as the second paragraph before my mind has already wandered off to a magical land of (Beer/Chocolate/Boobies)*.
I'd always assumed the semantic web was some meaningless and faded buzzword designed to keep the W3C away from useful stuff. Is it back again with a vengeance?
I remember seeing a curve of cost/gig over time of SSDs vs magnetic media, and it seemed to show that although both were falling, SSDs were falling faster, and were due to overtake their clicky brethren in the 2012-2014 time frame.
Once that happens, I imagine that magnetic drives' usage will tail off sharply, and disappear within a couple of years, because nobody (or at least nobody worth speaking of) wants to use magnetic over solid state anyway. In fact, it might start happening even whilst SSDs have a small price premium.
God knows, I'd be happy to pay a 20% premium to never have to use magnetic hard drives again.
It's fairly gory; It seems that the German ratings board take particular exception to gory and/or fantasty violence. Which is odd, since the moral majority tend to get all het-up over the regular kind, and tend to ignore demon and zombie slaying as inexcusably geeky.
Personally, I think the game should be banned because you can't *jump*. And FPS with no jumping makes mee feel inexcusably crippled, like they've cut off one of my legs and my primary weapon is a supersoaker. Gah.
I suggest you learn the GSM spec before making rash comments.
I would suggest that the GSM spec has very little to do with whether or not the networks will sell, subsidise and support a particular phone.
A phone that is not supported in this way has very little chance of market penetration, and the networks know this well, and use it to get manufacturers to lock their handsets down.
I'm well aware that unlocked phones from no-name manufacturers exist and can be used on any network; That wasn't really my point.
It's disingenuous, because we all know that any handset is as open as the network allows. Which is to say, not very. If a handset manufacturer won't agree to their capricious whims, they just won't carry it. Insta-death for Mr Phone.
Although you can download 3rd party applications to my phone (Nokia N80 on Vodafone), that's only to the extent that Vodafone allows.
Nokia might like to think they're open. In reality, it's just not their decision, alas.
Does Apple truly have much to lose from iPhone hackery?
The only people this really harms is AT&T, and Jobs has never shown the slightest inclination before towards caring about a business partner getting fucked over. If it suits his needs, he'll probably want Apple to subtly encourage it.
He may have had the "vision", but others have done more to promote it than he ever could accomplish, and that must be galling.
I agree with you, but I still think that Stallman's role is hardly negligible. Despite his difficult personality, the man needs to be listened to. Usually, somewhere beneath his frothy ideologue bluster, there's a profound point or two battling to get out.
And Stallman's stances on, say DRM and SWPat are absolutely unimpeachable. I'm not sure if Torvalds even has a recognizable stance on these issues.
So how am I going to 'lose' my software freedom by 'following' Linus?
Remember BitKeeper?
Frankly, it's only the GPL and his lieutenants that's keeping Torvalds honest. There's no suggestion that he chose the GPLv2 for any reason other than sheer practicality, unless you know otherwise.
Riiight. Linus Torvalds never says anything controversial or political.
Perhaps you didn't notice how a vast majority of those quotations are technical in nature? Look, it's not a personality flaw that Torvalds is largely preoccupied with technical discussions, but you must be able to see how that would grate on some free-software ideologue like Stallman. Pragmatists hate ideologues, ideologues like pragmatists.
Which is better? There's only one way to find out. FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, the idea that McCain can't understand the value of the Internet as a campaigning force because of his age is slightly patronising, and entirely add odds with what we know about the rise of the 'silver surfer'.
You must not spend a lot of time on Usenet.
Ah, that only happened when you 'misspoke'.
The candidate I saw leveraging the power of the Internet the most, early in this election, was Ron Paul -- and it looked like most people just used it to smear the guy. EG. "Nobody but spammers and a few computer geeks with loud mouths care about him!"
Ron Paul is a cautionary counterexample; It's all very well building up grassroots support on the Internet, but if your grassroots comprises a mishmash of troofers, stoppers, lunatics, antisemites, conspiracy theorists, naive libertarians, politically vacuous "fuck the system" types, and a spattering of basement-bound non-voting teenagers and various other subcultures and social outcasts entirely ill at ease with Middle America, then it's (as we kept trying to tell them) not going to be enough.
One nice effect of being a digital President: on the Internet, one rarely has to flee under sniper fire.
Utter drivel.
In almost every way, it's one of the most sophisticated MMOs available, and its technical achievements both front and back end are to be applauded.
Now, if you didn't like it, that's fine. But I don't see why you need to badmouth it though, especially with claims that are demonstrably untrue.
I've got a short attention span you insens...
Ooh, look! Monkeys.
What material could be darker?
None. None more dark.
Sure, the average joe isn't producing semantically meaningful markup when he uses his whizbang Web 2.0 sites, but then again what the average joe produces isn't worth all that much anyway. Even if the Semantic Web doesn't expand to include all Internet activity, it has and continues to do much good.
Cutting a swathe through your charmingly misplaced snobbery for a second, the ideal thing would be for you to provide a useful example or two of this human thing called SEMANTIWEB, and explain to silly old me how it has already changed my life but I'm just too gosh darned ordinary to have noticed.
So, uh, yeah. I'm just as stumped as you are.
Maybe I'm just your regular Homer, but reading that, I only make it as far as the second paragraph before my mind has already wandered off to a magical land of (Beer/Chocolate/Boobies)*.
*delete as appropriate
A query language for the semantic web...
A what for the what now?
I'd always assumed the semantic web was some meaningless and faded buzzword designed to keep the W3C away from useful stuff. Is it back again with a vengeance?
THE SEMANTIC WEB II: THIS TIME IT'S FOLKSONOMY
Eek.
When all is said and done, it's just another format to support. If it's not very good... Nothing to see here, please move along.
I remember seeing a curve of cost/gig over time of SSDs vs magnetic media, and it seemed to show that although both were falling, SSDs were falling faster, and were due to overtake their clicky brethren in the 2012-2014 time frame.
Once that happens, I imagine that magnetic drives' usage will tail off sharply, and disappear within a couple of years, because nobody (or at least nobody worth speaking of) wants to use magnetic over solid state anyway. In fact, it might start happening even whilst SSDs have a small price premium.
God knows, I'd be happy to pay a 20% premium to never have to use magnetic hard drives again.
Australian KDE developer Hamish Rodda, who calls the new architecture "future-proof."
That sounds like a challenge to me.
Oh, it's on.
Love,
The Future.
Welcome to last year.
Trust me, I'll be able to find a Wii come Christmas Morning. It'll be exactly where I put it a year ago.
...then it's a Wii port.
Still, if they fix the Meat Circus and its idiotic difficulty spike, the world will be a better place for it.
Yeah, and then what about the poor cybering Night Elf ladies of Goldshire?
The saucy little NelfJump is one if the primary ways the long-eared trollops sell their Elvish asses.
It's fairly gory; It seems that the German ratings board take particular exception to gory and/or fantasty violence. Which is odd, since the moral majority tend to get all het-up over the regular kind, and tend to ignore demon and zombie slaying as inexcusably geeky.
Personally, I think the game should be banned because you can't *jump*. And FPS with no jumping makes mee feel inexcusably crippled, like they've cut off one of my legs and my primary weapon is a supersoaker. Gah.
I suggest you learn the GSM spec before making rash comments.
I would suggest that the GSM spec has very little to do with whether or not the networks will sell, subsidise and support a particular phone.
A phone that is not supported in this way has very little chance of market penetration, and the networks know this well, and use it to get manufacturers to lock their handsets down.
I'm well aware that unlocked phones from no-name manufacturers exist and can be used on any network; That wasn't really my point.
It's disingenuous, because we all know that any handset is as open as the network allows. Which is to say, not very. If a handset manufacturer won't agree to their capricious whims, they just won't carry it. Insta-death for Mr Phone.
Although you can download 3rd party applications to my phone (Nokia N80 on Vodafone), that's only to the extent that Vodafone allows.
Nokia might like to think they're open. In reality, it's just not their decision, alas.
I'm fairly certain that in Soviet Russia, triumphs improvise you.
I read it in a book about Commies, so I did.
Clearly, the proper solution to this 'problem' is for mobile devices to have a proper web browser, rather than some half-arsed cut-down POS.
Now Apple has shown you how to do it, mobile phone industry, I imagine you'll have no difficulty rolling out poor-quality copies in a year or two.
The iPhone Safari rendering engine is even Free as in Something You Guys Don't Understand.
Does Apple truly have much to lose from iPhone hackery?
The only people this really harms is AT&T, and Jobs has never shown the slightest inclination before towards caring about a business partner getting fucked over. If it suits his needs, he'll probably want Apple to subtly encourage it.
I would.
He may have had the "vision", but others have done more to promote it than he ever could accomplish, and that must be galling.
I agree with you, but I still think that Stallman's role is hardly negligible. Despite his difficult personality, the man needs to be listened to. Usually, somewhere beneath his frothy ideologue bluster, there's a profound point or two battling to get out.
And Stallman's stances on, say DRM and SWPat are absolutely unimpeachable. I'm not sure if Torvalds even has a recognizable stance on these issues.
So how am I going to 'lose' my software freedom by 'following' Linus?
Remember BitKeeper?
Frankly, it's only the GPL and his lieutenants that's keeping Torvalds honest. There's no suggestion that he chose the GPLv2 for any reason other than sheer practicality, unless you know otherwise.
Riiight. Linus Torvalds never says anything controversial or political.
Perhaps you didn't notice how a vast majority of those quotations are technical in nature? Look, it's not a personality flaw that Torvalds is largely preoccupied with technical discussions, but you must be able to see how that would grate on some free-software ideologue like Stallman. Pragmatists hate ideologues, ideologues like pragmatists.
Which is better? There's only one way to find out. FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!
In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people.
Another snarky technical quotation. See?