"'This was a simple error that shouldn't have happened... I have every sympathy with the families involved.'"
Translation: Damn, didn't catch those ones in time. Got an axe?
"The later the test is carried out in a pregnancy, the greater the risk to the mother and her unborn child."
I find this one QUITE amusing. Seeing as how if the test is carried out late in pregnancy it will be after the legal limit and the mother can't have the child killed, I believe it is the exact opposite, and later testing vastly reduces the risk for the child. =P
"They were put in the unacceptable position of being given reassurance by the test and then having that taken away from them."
I see this as monstrous. "Oh, thank god my baby will be (note capital N) Normal! I wouldn't want him to be one of those RETARDS, those FREAKS.
Karmatic retribution?
BTW any woman who hasn't heard how risk of Down's increases with age must either:
* have lived in a cave for the past 10 years
* cared so little for her baby or herself that she was too stupid to do any research
So in this case I'm torn between being saddened by the two aborted children, or relieved they were not raised by such incapable mothers.
I think it is a noble thing you are saying, that if you could save a life by giving up your privacy you would. I applaud that concept.
But giving up your privacy won't save any lives. Sad but true. Give up your privacy, people will continue to die, and you will just be a schmuck who gave up his privacy.
The whole point of 90% of these threads is this sort of bumbling treat-the-symptoms legislature has not a hope of protecting anyone from terrorism. All it is is a power snatch in a time when people are afraid and not at their mental best in critical thinking. Your noble sacrifice of your freedoms won't save a single life. So don't do it.
Dammit, an airport is a public place. If I walk into an airport carrying a gun openly, people will see it and think, "oh he has a gun", and take appropriate actions based thereon (ie., not let me on a plane). From there it is a very SMALL step to metal detectors, to find out if I have a concealed gun. It is a public place and by the mere fact that others can see and hear what I do, I naturally have a lower expectation of privacy.
Compare to in one's home. If I send an email with GPG, no one can read it. I am innocent until PROVEN guilty in this country and my personal correspondence is MY business. Any private citizen tampering with my mail would be liable to prosecution for invasion of privacy. Now, from this situation it is a very LARGE step to automatically requiring the compromise of the privacy & security of ALL my personal correspondence for the sake of a POSSIBLE threat, since I am in a private place and no immediate threat from me is visible.
Well, get the shotgun, time for some abortions, right?
The bias in this mere report is disgusting. One can hear the shock and horror in timothy's voice: "and that two of them brought the pregnancies to term."
OH NO!
Look, I've known many retarded people in my life, including a family member and his friends. Most of them were sweet, kind, and gentle people who weren't half as dumb as people make them out to be. I think the world isn't harmed when a sweet, kind, and gentle person is born, since/. already proves we have plenty of arrogant intelligent snots more interested in mouthing off than doing anything to help out. So when I see articles mourning their birth, I get a bit upset. Yes, it's sad they weren't born UNAFFLICTED. It is sad this cannot be reversed in the womb to prevent them from being crippled. It is NOT sad that they were BORN.
"...Linux will not gain converts by giving users the same thing, that they will then have to relearn. The power of UNIX is in connecting small, fleet-footed tools. What we need now is to create an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality."
This is approximately 100% backwards.
When some drone is already using Windows and it's "good enough" (which is WHY people use it), you need to tell them WHY TO SWITCH. Inertia, my friends, inertia - if people don't have a compelling reason to switch, they'll stick with the BSOD's to avoid an evening of fiddling and installing and configuring, every time. Linux already HAS "small, fleet-footed tools", and "an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality". Neither is winning Linux many converts, because 95%+ of users will never want to create customized tools or add new functionality!
This is once again an example of how thoroughly wrong we can be when we look at Linux from the techie viewpoint and then try to extend that to non-techies. Non techies DON'T WANT TO MESS WITH IT!! They want the computer to be easy to use and do what they need so they can do their job, which is likely completely unrelated to computers! Telling them they can put together their own toys is not going to work when Microsoft is spending millions to push OfficeXP.
I don't know what the article means by "monolithic" either. As far as I can tell that's a techie curse word that has been so overused it has lost all meaning. What Linux needs are: Number one, more user friendliness and ease of install. Techies need to get off their arrogant high horses and make distros for the lusers, or else GUESS WHAT, they will keep going to MS. Our own self-serving software designs are keeping Linux down. Secondly, we need killer apps. The GIMP is a great example. If it could be made a bit easier to install and a lot easier to use, then it would be a true photoshop killer. After that, we need an office suite or set of programs so business drones can make their presentation slides and timesheets and status reports. If they can't do it in Linux they won't run Linux at all. Thirdly, we need much better hardware support, MS is kicking Linux's ass there. Put these three together (user friendliness, killer apps, hardware support), and you'll have an OS people will actually WANT to switch to. I won't even address networking and marketing issues, which are a whole other ball game...
As for Linux as it currently stands, I've been able to convince a few Windoze users to switch. But every one of them was a techie or wannabe techie, and every one of them switched for fun and to try it out. Not ONE of them seriously believed it would be more useful than Windoze; some of them still don't. That perception has to change before MS's dominance among non-techies ends.
Just my $0.02... If you agree/disagree, reply, don't moderate! =)
Tweaking Lego's tail might be fun, but there is such a thing as carrying a joke too far. Lego is being more wise and openminded that the vast majority of companies would in its shoes. We definitely need to LUNGE on this opportunity to SET a PRECEDENT, so we can hold it up to other countries in the same situation and say, "Look, Lego decided to be cool and not sue, and look how much the hackers benefitted them! You should do the same and not sue".
"Why do terrorists seem to go after the World Trade Center, anyways?"
My guess is they see it as a link to US, Big Money, whatever they think is keeping Elbonia down, so they need to attack it. As if they think their attack has any chance of killing the board of the I.M.F. Sorry, go back to Elbonia, you are NOT a winner...
This just makes me sick, but there is no other explanation that fits.
...the way our laws are going all the professional OSS coders are gonna be fleeing the country anyway (probably to Russia just to make the irony that much more perfect), so why not arrest them before they can escape? After all, every one of them used their brains today, and brains can be used to write code, and code can be used to circumvent encryption schemes, so the brain is a circumvention device. It's basically a crime to be a computer programmer in the US now, so git while the gittin's good is my advice...
In the original series there was quite an attempt made at keeping rigorous science. Guys were called in from NASA etc. Experts were hired for ideas. Scripts were put through many rewrites. (and yes, I know about the "no sounds in space" thing. There was no other way.)
ST today is particle of the week space opera, of course. Originally, it was much more. Of course, Gene always used science fiction the same way he used any other medium, as a device with which to tell the story he wanted to tell, which always involved people and their stories. The weakness of modern star trek is the storytelling is all based on so-called "science fiction" as the be-all and end-all, rather than on the interactions of the characters involved in the drama.
The original series was good drama. Modern star trek is good eye candy. Now, which did you mean?;-)
I mean, come on. A fool and his money? These people are clearly idiots, and they're going to waste their money on SOMEthing. So why not bilk them for items? That's how I would feel about it.
Sadly, the only game I have godly items for is Diablo 1, and those don't sell too well (plus there's that whole sentimental value thing;-). The only part about it that really annoys me is people "buying their way to power" and gaining godly suits of equipment without having to gain the tiniest bit of skill in whatever game it is. So in a sense it ruins the challenge factor of the game, but twinking is certainly nothing new and there is no argument that will make them stop.;-)
Just learn to live with it, and to laugh at the cretins who paid 100 bucks for a Stone of Jordan.
"...Orwell has, anyway, two strings to his bow: he is the author of
1984 as well as Animal Farm. If the worst comes to worst and he fails as a legislator (ed.: meaning was, in terms of "pen is mightier than" and raising awareness of tyranny), he is then virtually certain of immortality as a prophet."
-C. M. Woodhouse, on George Orwell.
I think his prophecy is now all but proven. We're headed there. I would ask you to mark my words, but in 50 years it will turn out that I never existed and this was never written. But then, you will have never existed either. So we'll be even. And if you listen reeeeeeeeeelly close, you can hear the corporations whispering,
...this was probably uncalled-for. Sheesh, looking back on this I don't know why I was so angry at Taco over such a little thing. For all I know it could have been a slip of the tongue (keyboard?).
So, apologies for the overly harsh wording of the title there. Wownt doowit n'mower.
FUD/fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
(my bold)
You said: "Answering this question may be the key to resolving public FUD about open source."
My question is, are you meaning MS-instilled FUD, or is there now a new definition of FUD, for mere FUD that has arisen on its own rather than via propaganda? Or are you just using it wrong? =P
"...(Yes, I'm buying CDs again. I ended my boycott now that Napster battle is over)"
Ah, I see. Of course the battle is over! It must be. Because Fanning and company sold out like the little whores they are, we shall all now stop trading mp3's and gladly throw away our fair-use rights to music and literature. Please RIAA, saddle us with watermarks, encryption, and subscriptions! Please, publishers, lock us out of reading the books we bought and paid for! We don't mind. Because if CmdrTaco says the battle is over, then it must be so.
Stephen Hawking = physicist. NOT computer scientist. He might be a brilliant man in his field, but this is not his field.
August = the silly season, when journalists have no real news to report. This is when you see alarming reports on the number of people killed by spoiled lizard milk. This time of year, "real" news sources are about as reliable as tabloids.
You'd think slashdotters could put two and two together.
"Binary groups either contain legitimate data that has a minority of interested parties... If the data is legal, then it will be available virtually everywhere else as well..."
Minority of interested parties != available everywhere.
Almost every cable provider (that I've seen, that is) has it in their TOS that you can't run an FTP server, some of them also say you can't run a webserver (and hands you a gayass little "personal web space" thing as a consolation prize).
So if you don't mind getting a hardware router to disguise your firewall dishonestly, by all means go with cable.
While I hate monsterhut as much as the next guy (yes I've been spammed by them, no I didn't save it so I can't help with the affidavits), this is definitely a good thing.
Anyone remember the recent case where the copyright-piracy-cops got an IP wrong and cut off some innocent guy's cable access, for downloading a DivX while - get this - while he was out at the movies with his computer turned OFF? And it took him months to get back on his cable ISP and he could not get them to waive the bill for that month.
This is definitely a good thing, because if it can be done to the spammers it can be done to us. We need more levelheadedness - and more spam blackholes. Not more litigation and access-cancelling.
I've *personally* threatened reporting spammers to MAPS in the past, and about 50% of the time I never hear from them again. Perhaps this means they fear that, hmm? =)
...consumers can't get it through their heads that clock speed is not even close to being everything. Intel has proven a willingness to more or less lie about the speed of their processors (got look at some Tbird vs P4 benchmarks and tell me I'm wrong there).
As long as the public continues to see things based solely on the clock speed, AMD can't win unless they:
1.) try to educate consumers better (not gonna happen because cpu design is complex)
2.) fight dirty and do Intel's tricks right back to them.
I'm not too happy about it either, but there's little else AMD can do. At least there's one good thing: it's only a model number. Unlike Intel, they're at least not lying about clock speed.
I grew up playing with Lego (used to have a Lego starbase covering a table that was made out of a door, full of fighters and freighters and androids and fun stuff =). It seems from reading/. that a lot of other geeks/hackers seem to have loved these toys as well.
The article indicates that Lego is falling behind the times and can't maintain the needed popularity. Also, it has very little presence in the online world. This gave me a small brainstorm and I'd like to run it past you folks.
Since lego is a good toy for children (in my opinion) and teaches creativity, how about we combine it with some ingenious coding to teach software programming? Now, I have no idea how this could be done. I'm no programmer, though I think I have a grasp of the basic concepts. What if a game (more correctly a "Software Toy" a la Maxis) could be made, whereby the kids have certain small prefab "bricks" which are chunks of code, which they can rearrange and recombine to create a piece of custom software? The software might be a game (think of the enjoyment we had as kids from playing games we devised with legos. Then think of kids enjoying playing computer games they feel they "built"). The company could maintain profits by selling expansion packs with new "bricks", and "expert" versions for young teens which have smaller "bricks" (smaller and more basic chunks of code which require more combination and understanding). Maybe there would be an interface for kids to write their own sections of code to interact with the others.
The reason I thought of this was, I was thinking of the parallels between building out of lego and programming. In both activities, you think of what you want to design, gather the neccessary tools and parts, and then enter Deep Hack Mode (or Deep Lego Mode) and build the thing. Does anyone think this idea is cool or is it just me? =) Could someone who can actually code tell me if this could work?
Slashdot Mirror
"'This was a simple error that shouldn't have happened... I have every sympathy with the families involved.'"
Translation: Damn, didn't catch those ones in time. Got an axe?
"The later the test is carried out in a pregnancy, the greater the risk to the mother and her unborn child."
I find this one QUITE amusing. Seeing as how if the test is carried out late in pregnancy it will be after the legal limit and the mother can't have the child killed, I believe it is the exact opposite, and later testing vastly reduces the risk for the child. =P
"They were put in the unacceptable position of being given reassurance by the test and then having that taken away from them."
I see this as monstrous. "Oh, thank god my baby will be (note capital N) Normal! I wouldn't want him to be one of those RETARDS, those FREAKS.
Karmatic retribution?
BTW any woman who hasn't heard how risk of Down's increases with age must either:
* have lived in a cave for the past 10 years
* cared so little for her baby or herself that she was too stupid to do any research
So in this case I'm torn between being saddened by the two aborted children, or relieved they were not raised by such incapable mothers.
-Kasreyn
I think it is a noble thing you are saying, that if you could save a life by giving up your privacy you would. I applaud that concept.
But giving up your privacy won't save any lives. Sad but true. Give up your privacy, people will continue to die, and you will just be a schmuck who gave up his privacy.
The whole point of 90% of these threads is this sort of bumbling treat-the-symptoms legislature has not a hope of protecting anyone from terrorism. All it is is a power snatch in a time when people are afraid and not at their mental best in critical thinking. Your noble sacrifice of your freedoms won't save a single life. So don't do it.
-Kasreyn
Dammit, an airport is a public place. If I walk into an airport carrying a gun openly, people will see it and think, "oh he has a gun", and take appropriate actions based thereon (ie., not let me on a plane). From there it is a very SMALL step to metal detectors, to find out if I have a concealed gun. It is a public place and by the mere fact that others can see and hear what I do, I naturally have a lower expectation of privacy.
Compare to in one's home. If I send an email with GPG, no one can read it. I am innocent until PROVEN guilty in this country and my personal correspondence is MY business. Any private citizen tampering with my mail would be liable to prosecution for invasion of privacy. Now, from this situation it is a very LARGE step to automatically requiring the compromise of the privacy & security of ALL my personal correspondence for the sake of a POSSIBLE threat, since I am in a private place and no immediate threat from me is visible.
See the difference yet?
-Kasreyn
Well, get the shotgun, time for some abortions, right?
/. already proves we have plenty of arrogant intelligent snots more interested in mouthing off than doing anything to help out. So when I see articles mourning their birth, I get a bit upset. Yes, it's sad they weren't born UNAFFLICTED. It is sad this cannot be reversed in the womb to prevent them from being crippled. It is NOT sad that they were BORN.
The bias in this mere report is disgusting. One can hear the shock and horror in timothy's voice: "and that two of them brought the pregnancies to term."
OH NO!
Look, I've known many retarded people in my life, including a family member and his friends. Most of them were sweet, kind, and gentle people who weren't half as dumb as people make them out to be. I think the world isn't harmed when a sweet, kind, and gentle person is born, since
-Kasreyn
"...Linux will not gain converts by giving users the same thing, that they will then have to relearn. The power of UNIX is in connecting small, fleet-footed tools. What we need now is to create an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality."
This is approximately 100% backwards.
When some drone is already using Windows and it's "good enough" (which is WHY people use it), you need to tell them WHY TO SWITCH. Inertia, my friends, inertia - if people don't have a compelling reason to switch, they'll stick with the BSOD's to avoid an evening of fiddling and installing and configuring, every time. Linux already HAS "small, fleet-footed tools", and "an environment, where users can easily create customized tools for the way they work, and developers can easily add new functionality". Neither is winning Linux many converts, because 95%+ of users will never want to create customized tools or add new functionality!
This is once again an example of how thoroughly wrong we can be when we look at Linux from the techie viewpoint and then try to extend that to non-techies. Non techies DON'T WANT TO MESS WITH IT!! They want the computer to be easy to use and do what they need so they can do their job, which is likely completely unrelated to computers! Telling them they can put together their own toys is not going to work when Microsoft is spending millions to push OfficeXP.
I don't know what the article means by "monolithic" either. As far as I can tell that's a techie curse word that has been so overused it has lost all meaning. What Linux needs are: Number one, more user friendliness and ease of install. Techies need to get off their arrogant high horses and make distros for the lusers, or else GUESS WHAT, they will keep going to MS. Our own self-serving software designs are keeping Linux down. Secondly, we need killer apps. The GIMP is a great example. If it could be made a bit easier to install and a lot easier to use, then it would be a true photoshop killer. After that, we need an office suite or set of programs so business drones can make their presentation slides and timesheets and status reports. If they can't do it in Linux they won't run Linux at all. Thirdly, we need much better hardware support, MS is kicking Linux's ass there. Put these three together (user friendliness, killer apps, hardware support), and you'll have an OS people will actually WANT to switch to. I won't even address networking and marketing issues, which are a whole other ball game...
As for Linux as it currently stands, I've been able to convince a few Windoze users to switch. But every one of them was a techie or wannabe techie, and every one of them switched for fun and to try it out. Not ONE of them seriously believed it would be more useful than Windoze; some of them still don't. That perception has to change before MS's dominance among non-techies ends.
Just my $0.02... If you agree/disagree, reply, don't moderate! =)
-Kasreyn
"hold it up to more countries ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H COMPANIES..."
There.
-Kasreyn
Tweaking Lego's tail might be fun, but there is such a thing as carrying a joke too far. Lego is being more wise and openminded that the vast majority of companies would in its shoes. We definitely need to LUNGE on this opportunity to SET a PRECEDENT, so we can hold it up to other countries in the same situation and say, "Look, Lego decided to be cool and not sue, and look how much the hackers benefitted them! You should do the same and not sue".
Precedent is good!
-Kasreyn
Get them now.
;-)
Tasty 160Gb with no built in copy protection governors? They'll be quite a bit more on the black market in a few years. Get em while you can.
-Kasreyn
This site is a bit over-the-top. Would apparently lay the entirety of Linux, the OSS movement, the wheel, and sliced bread at Linus's feet.
Not a word about the GNU project, RMS, the FSF, the GPL, etc. Just "appease the Linux fans by publically worshipping their poster boy!".
Heh, I bet RMS is taking an ANGRY sponge bath this morning. =P
-Kasreyn
"Why do terrorists seem to go after the World Trade Center, anyways?"
My guess is they see it as a link to US, Big Money, whatever they think is keeping Elbonia down, so they need to attack it. As if they think their attack has any chance of killing the board of the I.M.F. Sorry, go back to Elbonia, you are NOT a winner...
This just makes me sick, but there is no other explanation that fits.
-Kasreyn
...the way our laws are going all the professional OSS coders are gonna be fleeing the country anyway (probably to Russia just to make the irony that much more perfect), so why not arrest them before they can escape? After all, every one of them used their brains today, and brains can be used to write code, and code can be used to circumvent encryption schemes, so the brain is a circumvention device. It's basically a crime to be a computer programmer in the US now, so git while the gittin's good is my advice...
-Kasreyn
"modern" ST or the original series?
;-)
In the original series there was quite an attempt made at keeping rigorous science. Guys were called in from NASA etc. Experts were hired for ideas. Scripts were put through many rewrites. (and yes, I know about the "no sounds in space" thing. There was no other way.)
ST today is particle of the week space opera, of course. Originally, it was much more. Of course, Gene always used science fiction the same way he used any other medium, as a device with which to tell the story he wanted to tell, which always involved people and their stories. The weakness of modern star trek is the storytelling is all based on so-called "science fiction" as the be-all and end-all, rather than on the interactions of the characters involved in the drama.
The original series was good drama. Modern star trek is good eye candy. Now, which did you mean?
-Kasreyn
I mean, come on. A fool and his money? These people are clearly idiots, and they're going to waste their money on SOMEthing. So why not bilk them for items? That's how I would feel about it.
;-). The only part about it that really annoys me is people "buying their way to power" and gaining godly suits of equipment without having to gain the tiniest bit of skill in whatever game it is. So in a sense it ruins the challenge factor of the game, but twinking is certainly nothing new and there is no argument that will make them stop. ;-)
Sadly, the only game I have godly items for is Diablo 1, and those don't sell too well (plus there's that whole sentimental value thing
Just learn to live with it, and to laugh at the cretins who paid 100 bucks for a Stone of Jordan.
-Kasreyn
I think his prophecy is now all but proven. We're headed there. I would ask you to mark my words, but in 50 years it will turn out that I never existed and this was never written. But then, you will have never existed either. So we'll be even. And if you listen reeeeeeeeeelly close, you can hear the corporations whispering,
"...but some are more equal than others."
-Kasreyn
...this was probably uncalled-for. Sheesh, looking back on this I don't know why I was so angry at Taco over such a little thing. For all I know it could have been a slip of the tongue (keyboard?).
So, apologies for the overly harsh wording of the title there. Wownt doowit n'mower.
-Kasreyn
From the jargon file:
/fuhd/ n. Defined by Gene Amdahl after he left IBM to found his own company: "FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering [Amdahl] products." The idea, of course, was to persuade them to go with safe IBM gear rather than with competitors' equipment. This implicit coercion was traditionally accomplished by promising that Good Things would happen to people who stuck with IBM, but Dark Shadows loomed over the future of competitors' equipment or software. See IBM. After 1990 the term FUD was associated increasingly frequently with Microsoft, and has become generalized to refer to any kind of disinformation used as a competitive weapon.
FUD
(my bold)
You said: "Answering this question may be the key to resolving public FUD about open source."
My question is, are you meaning MS-instilled FUD, or is there now a new definition of FUD, for mere FUD that has arisen on its own rather than via propaganda? Or are you just using it wrong? =P
OK, I'm done being a dictionary nazi for the day.
-Kasreyn
"...(Yes, I'm buying CDs again. I ended my boycott now that Napster battle is over)"
Ah, I see. Of course the battle is over! It must be. Because Fanning and company sold out like the little whores they are, we shall all now stop trading mp3's and gladly throw away our fair-use rights to music and literature. Please RIAA, saddle us with watermarks, encryption, and subscriptions! Please, publishers, lock us out of reading the books we bought and paid for! We don't mind. Because if CmdrTaco says the battle is over, then it must be so.
-Kasreyn
...why anyone is taking this seriously?
Stephen Hawking = physicist. NOT computer scientist. He might be a brilliant man in his field, but this is not his field.
August = the silly season, when journalists have no real news to report. This is when you see alarming reports on the number of people killed by spoiled lizard milk. This time of year, "real" news sources are about as reliable as tabloids.
You'd think slashdotters could put two and two together.
-Kasreyn
"Binary groups either contain legitimate data that has a minority of interested parties... If the data is legal, then it will be available virtually everywhere else as well..."
Minority of interested parties != available everywhere.
Non sequitir. Human error detected.
-Kasreyn
Almost every cable provider (that I've seen, that is) has it in their TOS that you can't run an FTP server, some of them also say you can't run a webserver (and hands you a gayass little "personal web space" thing as a consolation prize).
So if you don't mind getting a hardware router to disguise your firewall dishonestly, by all means go with cable.
-Kasreyn
While I hate monsterhut as much as the next guy (yes I've been spammed by them, no I didn't save it so I can't help with the affidavits), this is definitely a good thing.
Anyone remember the recent case where the copyright-piracy-cops got an IP wrong and cut off some innocent guy's cable access, for downloading a DivX while - get this - while he was out at the movies with his computer turned OFF? And it took him months to get back on his cable ISP and he could not get them to waive the bill for that month.
This is definitely a good thing, because if it can be done to the spammers it can be done to us. We need more levelheadedness - and more spam blackholes. Not more litigation and access-cancelling.
I've *personally* threatened reporting spammers to MAPS in the past, and about 50% of the time I never hear from them again. Perhaps this means they fear that, hmm? =)
-Kasreyn
Funny, I've always heard it pronounced "scuzzy". =P
Perhaps there are even more ways? Feel free to reply with weird pronunciations you've heard.
-Kasreyn
...consumers can't get it through their heads that clock speed is not even close to being everything. Intel has proven a willingness to more or less lie about the speed of their processors (got look at some Tbird vs P4 benchmarks and tell me I'm wrong there).
As long as the public continues to see things based solely on the clock speed, AMD can't win unless they:
1.) try to educate consumers better (not gonna happen because cpu design is complex)
2.) fight dirty and do Intel's tricks right back to them.
I'm not too happy about it either, but there's little else AMD can do. At least there's one good thing: it's only a model number. Unlike Intel, they're at least not lying about clock speed.
-Kasreyn
...and "Illustrator" was in common use back when Adobe was only something you made bricks out of.
Wise up. Just because it makes no sense doesn't mean corporate muscle can't make it happen.
-Kasreyn
I grew up playing with Lego (used to have a Lego starbase covering a table that was made out of a door, full of fighters and freighters and androids and fun stuff =). It seems from reading /. that a lot of other geeks/hackers seem to have loved these toys as well.
The article indicates that Lego is falling behind the times and can't maintain the needed popularity. Also, it has very little presence in the online world. This gave me a small brainstorm and I'd like to run it past you folks.
Since lego is a good toy for children (in my opinion) and teaches creativity, how about we combine it with some ingenious coding to teach software programming? Now, I have no idea how this could be done. I'm no programmer, though I think I have a grasp of the basic concepts. What if a game (more correctly a "Software Toy" a la Maxis) could be made, whereby the kids have certain small prefab "bricks" which are chunks of code, which they can rearrange and recombine to create a piece of custom software? The software might be a game (think of the enjoyment we had as kids from playing games we devised with legos. Then think of kids enjoying playing computer games they feel they "built"). The company could maintain profits by selling expansion packs with new "bricks", and "expert" versions for young teens which have smaller "bricks" (smaller and more basic chunks of code which require more combination and understanding). Maybe there would be an interface for kids to write their own sections of code to interact with the others.
The reason I thought of this was, I was thinking of the parallels between building out of lego and programming. In both activities, you think of what you want to design, gather the neccessary tools and parts, and then enter Deep Hack Mode (or Deep Lego Mode) and build the thing. Does anyone think this idea is cool or is it just me? =) Could someone who can actually code tell me if this could work?
-Kasreyn