Please people, stop speculating on what would happen if MS bought AOL-TW. The article is about TimeWarner selling its AOL portion to Microsoft. It does say that they are discussing MS possibly investing in TimeWarner as part of the deal though. But that is not quite the same a MS taking over the whole kit and kaboodle.
What's next, a remake of Citizen Kane, Casablanca or Blade Runner?
I recently decided to watch some of the top 100 movies as rated by the AFI that I hadn't yet seen. Citizen Kane and On the Waterfront were among these. Ick. I understand why they were groundbreaking for their time, but in my honest 2004 opinion, they sucked. They were boring. They had corny acting. Gone With the Wind is another stinker. Chinatown was OK, but just OK.
I do agree with many of their choices, but others I just don't get. I think about 3 of their top 10 deserve to be there. But that is just me.
Don't laugh, in 50 years you may very well be taking your grandkids to a remake of Star Wars.
Lucas would NEVER allow anyone to touch his masterpieces. He wants to have all the rights to screw up his creations.
Bwahaha. I can't believe you took that bait. No reply, I would have thought I made a mistake. But no, it is you. Jeez dude, it is just slashdot, let it go. Why take the time to reply to my posts as AC? Are you trying to build up the karma on your other account so you can mod me down? ROFL. You say paranoid, I say noting the obvious.
Keep following me around I guess, I may just reply once in a while for fun. But you should really just let it go.
At least you could post under your id. You still obessing over my comments? It is obvious to me who you are, and I went and checked your journal. Wow. Dude, you need to chill. You really think that you upset me? Hardly. Funny how you have a journal entry about some tactics you claim were used against you, and now you are using them.
Whatever. You can follow me around on Slashdot if you want, but there really is no point. I don't care.
Does anyone know what system(s) they are running? What (if anything) are they using as firewall(s)? What types of servers are they using? What database(s)?
I would venture: Yes, yes, and yes. Why do you think they are shut down?:-)
It was a conscious decision
on
Melting Europa
·
· Score: 1
I wish the Slashdot editors could maintain at least the pretense of objectivity in which stories they post. I'm sure someone else submitted the story without the loaded commentary. I mean, even the sexing-up BBC managed to write a decent article about this.
I think it is a conscious decision. Look at many of the highly-ranked posts. They give good information about WHY the slanted opinion is way off the mark. Those posts would be unnecessary if the submitter didn't include the oddly inflammatory comments in the submission. If the story was just posted, I am sure there wouldn't be much to comment on.
So the editors pick a submission that will more likely generate responses. Because without well-informed responses, Slashdot pretty much ceases to exist. If there isn't an inflammatory submission, they usually just add their own comments that are sure to generate at least a few rebuttals.
Just keep it in mind, and watch. You'll see the pattern.
Good advice. There may be better, however. Many vehicles, especially those with a cult following (VW, many flavors of 4x4s and large trucks) have user groups on the internet. The TDR has saved me plenty of money on my Ram. Common problems, sources for parts, sneaky dealer tricks--all there. And the ability to ask a question, and get an answer within an hour from a dozen guys that have been there before is well worth the $35/yr I pay (the quarterly magazine is nice, too). Even without the $35, people can peruse the forums if they're cheap.
Oh, I definitely agree. I own BMWs, and there is a great following for them on the internet. unofficialbmw.com is a great place, and even break things down by model. If you own something with a rabid cult following like the E30 M3 you might even be better off than going to a dealer. I have found that I know more about my car than the service people at the local dealership. But that might depend on your dealer. You can just as easily get a shop who has a few M3 fans working there. But you still have to pay their fees. You are better off finding a good independent who knows what they are doing.
One thing you can do is to join a car club. The BMW CCA is fantastic for only $35/yr. Through it you can get connections to good independent mechanics local to you.
Just this weekend I replaced the fuel pump in my 97 318i. I called my independent mechanic and described the problem. (stuttering, occasionally dying) He asked "how many miles on the car?" I told him 80k, and he immediately said "probably the fuel pump, they usually only last that long." After talking a little more, it was clear the fuel pump was the problem. When I asked him if he thought I could handle the replacement myself, he said yes. Try and get THAT from a dealer. (I also have the Bentley manual, which was great). I was able to replace it in about an hour. That saved me $90 labor right there, and the price difference between the dealer and an online parts store was $55. So I saved at least $145. The dealer could have charged me another $99 diagnostic fee, and if the install would have taken 61 minutes, I am sure I would have been charged for 1.5 hours labor.
Just tell them you need a quote... that you need to ensure that you have the money right now to be able to repair it.
It's perfectly reasonable to, once they've given you the quote, to also tell you what all is wrong with your car. Tell them you'd need to think about it, as if this is going to put a bit of crimp in your budget for this month, and say you'll get back to them as soon as you've worked out the details.
Riiiight. Cause they're stupid and don't know people will try this. That must be why a lot of dealerships charge a "diagnostic fee" that you have to agree to (check the fine print) before they'll look at your car. The same reason they will waive that fee when they find $900 worth of repairs that you "need".
Best place to find car info - groups.google.com.
Had our Jetta freak out, alarm was sounding, anti-theft wouldn't let us start the car. Took it to an independent mechanic, they couldn't find anything, and the problem had gone away. Before I went to pick it back up, I did a quick search on groups.google.com. Found it. I called them up, talked to the tech, and said "check the wiring harness that goes to the rear door. Open the rear door, pull back the rubber boot, and see if there are any stripped or worn wires." There were 3 wires that were cut and a couple more were stripped. I guess the wiring harness on those cars was just a little too short, and eventually they would wear out. I could have spliced the wires myself, but I had dealt with this shop before and they are good guys. And I could have them do it while I was at work. But without those newsgroups, it probably would have happened to me again and again and again, and would have cost me a lot of diagnostic time.
On one side, you have the kids that are freely breaking copyright laws left and right because they want to watch a movie or listen to a song but for whatever moronic reason don't feel they should have to compensate anyone for it (to the dolts that will undoubtedly say "but it costs too much, they're just ripping us off.. waahh waahh.. let me suck my thumb like a little baby" - deal with it. It's called making an informed decision. If you don't think it's a value purchase, don't make the purchase. Doesn't mean you can just rip off a copy for yourself without compensating anyone).
I agree with you. I don't normally download copyrighted materials without permission (as far as I know). I have on occasion. Whooptie-doo, come get me. I do download copyrighted works with permission, from indie artists and such. And I downloaded a bunch of Metallica stuff from their website. I was a sucker and bought their latest CD. The only redeeming quality was the passcode included with it that allowed me to download a bunch of free tracks from their website. What if I put those on a P2P network?
See, here is the dividing line for me on this whole issue. There are bad guys on both sides, but there are no good guys that I can see on the MPAA/RIAA side. I don't believe their BS about "protecting the artist" for one AMD clock cycle. They are in it to retain their stranglehold on the music industry. At least with P2P, there are some legal uses for it. Placing restrictions on it for the benefit of the corporations is NOT the correct thing to do. People are using it to break the law? Go after them, that is your right. They tried this, but in a half-assed attempt and got a nice PR road rash from it. The laws are there, they don't have to get any new ones passed. Just because they couldn't easily reach out and grab the perps isn't the rest of the world's problem.
There's no "good fight" here to join...
I think the fight to join is the fight of freedom. With freedom, you have the choice to break the law or not. Without it, your only choice is to conform or to break the law. Look at the recent goings-on with Howard Stern and other DJs who are getting hammered by the puppets at the FCC. Clear Channel is using a government agency to do its bidding. I heard people at work say "I am glad Stern is getting kicked off the air, I hate him." I could have argued, but instead I educated them. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he is being thrown off the air because he spoke out against Clear Channel, GWB, and the religious right. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he should have the right to say what he wants to say (within the established rules, of course). He didn't violate any rules. They pulled some clips of him from 3 years ago, and said it violated their standards! And instead of fining him, they just cut his show from their stations. There was no appeal, no nothing. And what he said was nothing you can't hear elsewhere on TV/Radio. It is a farce, and it is only one of many going on in this country. And before you say "Hey, if you hate this country so much, why don't you leave?", remember this - I love this country, and the reasons this country is so great is BECAUSE of our freedom. Freedom that is systematically being taken away from the people in favor of large corporations.
The best Microsoft can hope for is to spread FUD.
The worst Microsoft could see is the GPL reinforced in court, and a hell of a lot of bad PR for their company.
Has bad PR hurt them in the past? They are called "computer viruses and worms", not "Microsoft viruses and worms" (which is technically more accurate). They have been convicted of antitrust violations by the US Government. They have forced many companies out of business. They have admitted that their products are insecure, but promise, for real this time, that they are going to take security seriously. They have been fined by foreign countries for their business antics.
What else could possibly happen to them to hurt their reputation any more? I would like to believe that this whole SCO ordeal will have some effect on them, but I am starting to wonder if they are untouchable.
(which makes me smile, because just when you start to think that....)
I suppose you have some more non-sequiturs to go along with your next reply?
Yep. You are obviously quite intelligent yourself.
Nice ad-hominem at the end. Shows your level of intelligence.
FYI, ad hominem is not hyphenated. And it isn't a noun. You accuse someone of using an ad hominem argument, then the very next sentence use one yourself (then claim you won't degrade yourself by going to that level). How (unintentionally) droll.
As much as I appreciate being intelligent at such a young age, getting good grades on a standardized test is hardly a standard to look up to. Unless, of course, you are going to be taking tests as a career in life.
Way to take one small illustrative point and base an entirely negative opinion on it. These kids are also taking calculus in the 6th grade. But I guess learning complex math is not worth noting. They also do things like play several instruments, create interesting art, speak and write other languages, read novels, and do social service projects. But lets focus on the fact that they did extremely well on a standardized test and point out that it doesn't mean anything. Twit.
The computer as a non-specific device is a fundamentally flawed (though useful) contraption. The command line, GUI, and other UI creations are all hacks to help users get around the problem of genericity of the machine.
It is my insane opinion that computer interfaces will become more complex, not simpler. The difference between a refrigerator, a microwave, a VCR, TV, etc and a computer is that a computer is not a single purpose device. THAT is precisely why it has revolutionized the world. And it has. A computer can be customized to BE a single purpose device - like an ATM. Or a cash register. Or a GPS device. A microwave is a microwave, that probably has a computer IN it. Without this complexity, the computer is nothing.
The problem is that we still have people around who have never used them, or remember the "good old days" when computers didn't exist. Hell, I started using them in high school (mid 80s). There are still people out there who are scared of them. In 100 years, everyone who remembered a time when there weren't computers will be dead! The fear factor will be gone. The only reason the CLI and the GUI are scary and difficult is because computers are new. I think the greatest power is in the combination of the GUI and the CLI. They each have great strengths and inherent weaknesses. You gotta have both. Today's power users will be tomorrow's users. I do lots of things with the command line that can't be done in a GUI today. Maybe tomorrow, you'll be able to, maybe not. Try this with a GUI - take a directory of images, convert them all to 800x600, and add 800x600 to the end of the file name (before the extension), then add them all to a zip file. You can do it in a GUI, but I can do it on the command line easily. Today I would be considered a power user, even though most of you were typing out the commands in your head;-). Hopefully, in 100 years, that would seem trivial, either via GUI or command line for the average user. Or obsolete, because 800x600 would be a ridiculously low resolution image that no current hardware would even display! Heh.
Anyway - the only way computers will morph into single-purpose devices is if someone who understands them makes them do so. Hopefully the rest of the world will smarten up in that amount of time, and embrace the complexity of the computer. Complex is not bad! God help us if the PC interface becomes a huge Clippy that you talk to.
My wife teaches 6-8th graders at a school for the gifted. Really smart kids - 5th graders getting perfect scores on their ACTs. One kid is a good perl programmer. She teaches French, and one student who was so far in front of everyone else was translating Star Wars books into French. Well.
One of the hardest and most rewarding things she has had to deal with is the oddity of these kids. Some seem perfectly normal, some are social misfits. Some have meltdowns once a week. Yes, she works with the less social students to improve their social skills, but if she only concentrated on that it would be the only thing she could do. Instead, she teaches all the kids how to deal with those that are different from them.
One student was fidgeting a lot in his seat, and kept getting out of his chair when called on. At first she kept telling him to sit back down, but that agitated him more. Finally she realized that he could think better if he could stand up and walk around when he talked. She asked him if it would make him more comfortable, and he said it would. He started doing immensely better in class. She didn't care, the other students didn't care. The students there are used to things like that.
She deals with all kinds of situations and students that those of us that went to "normal" schools would consider weird. But those kids are smart. So they do things a little differently. So they don't remember to comb their hair. Should they be reprimanded, or should we be a little more tolerant? Personally, I hope nobody else is crammed into this social box, it is getting too crowded anyway.
I make short films, and stream with windows media all the time. Everybody has it, and it's a lot less hassle then supporting all three formats.
I don't know if it was your intention, but you just indicated what the problem is. Look at your assertion - you use WMV because "everybody has it" and to avoid the hassle of supporting other formats.
That is EXACTLY why Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to do what they are doing. Now it may seem silly to make them unbundle WMP. It wasn't a big deal before, but that was before multimedia over the internet was a real possibility. Now it is a huge business. They are leveraging their OS monopoly to enter and dominate other businesses.
Yours is exactly the attitude that they are banking on. Do you get it now?
I've been reading./ for years now, and I always thought that it was a BBS that was extremely popular because it linked to lots of news stories, which gave its members a constant stream of new topics to "discuss".
Slashdot is what happens after journalism.
First off, it wasn't MY comment that said it was journalism, but it got me to thinking...
Well, is it? Here is one definition of journalism: "The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts."
Now it could certainly be argued that what Slashdot editors do is not journalism, because they simply take submissions and repost them (with a little commentary). But that is awfully close to what the nightly news is. But that isn't real journalism either.
There are the Slashdot interviews, which is more like journalism. Hmm, but all the editors do is facilitate - we do all the work there by coming up with the questions. BTW, what ever happened to the Bruce Perens interview from July 2003?
Ask Slashdot is interesting, because we pose the questions and the answers. The editors just deem the topic interesting enough to post.
But this all brings back my question - what is Slashdot? Is Slashdot the editors and the webpage? If so, then it could hardly be considered journalism. Or is it the collective of that and all the moderated comments? Some responses to articles are decently thought out and researched. They provide links to other sources and facts. It could be that Slashdot is what happens after journalism, as you say, but it woulnd't be too hard of a stretch to say that Slashdot could be used as research for journalism. (In which case it would be what happens BEFORE journalism) I have seen Slashdot stories linked to from other news sites in their stories.
What if someone took the top 20 stories from Slashdot over a year, compiles all of the responses that they thought were the best, and wrote a book? Would that be journalism?
I had a roommate in college who got his degree in journalism, and I thought it was all about never needing to study, drinking a lot, and taking blow-off classes.:-)
Please people, stop speculating on what would happen if MS bought AOL-TW. The article is about TimeWarner selling its AOL portion to Microsoft. It does say that they are discussing MS possibly investing in TimeWarner as part of the deal though. But that is not quite the same a MS taking over the whole kit and kaboodle.
I recently decided to watch some of the top 100 movies as rated by the AFI that I hadn't yet seen. Citizen Kane and On the Waterfront were among these. Ick. I understand why they were groundbreaking for their time, but in my honest 2004 opinion, they sucked. They were boring. They had corny acting. Gone With the Wind is another stinker. Chinatown was OK, but just OK.
I do agree with many of their choices, but others I just don't get. I think about 3 of their top 10 deserve to be there. But that is just me.
Don't laugh, in 50 years you may very well be taking your grandkids to a remake of Star Wars.
Lucas would NEVER allow anyone to touch his masterpieces. He wants to have all the rights to screw up his creations.
Keep following me around I guess, I may just reply once in a while for fun. But you should really just let it go.
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I would venture: Yes, yes, and yes. Why do you think they are shut down? :-)
I think it is a conscious decision. Look at many of the highly-ranked posts. They give good information about WHY the slanted opinion is way off the mark. Those posts would be unnecessary if the submitter didn't include the oddly inflammatory comments in the submission. If the story was just posted, I am sure there wouldn't be much to comment on.
So the editors pick a submission that will more likely generate responses. Because without well-informed responses, Slashdot pretty much ceases to exist. If there isn't an inflammatory submission, they usually just add their own comments that are sure to generate at least a few rebuttals.
Just keep it in mind, and watch. You'll see the pattern.
He has the woOrld's la.rG_est Pae.n.is, that is nev@r fflAccid.
He makes $10k woarKING @t homme in his sp.a.re ti_me.
He's seen P.a r is Hi+ltoon nek&kid more than anyone.
His wife's br*ea=sts are la%rg"er.
He has the lowest M.0rt6a6e Re.ate in the w0r1D.
Heh, I thought of this in a totally different way. But that is just me. And your girlfriend.
Oh, I definitely agree. I own BMWs, and there is a great following for them on the internet. unofficialbmw.com is a great place, and even break things down by model. If you own something with a rabid cult following like the E30 M3 you might even be better off than going to a dealer. I have found that I know more about my car than the service people at the local dealership. But that might depend on your dealer. You can just as easily get a shop who has a few M3 fans working there. But you still have to pay their fees. You are better off finding a good independent who knows what they are doing.
One thing you can do is to join a car club. The BMW CCA is fantastic for only $35/yr. Through it you can get connections to good independent mechanics local to you.
Just this weekend I replaced the fuel pump in my 97 318i. I called my independent mechanic and described the problem. (stuttering, occasionally dying) He asked "how many miles on the car?" I told him 80k, and he immediately said "probably the fuel pump, they usually only last that long." After talking a little more, it was clear the fuel pump was the problem. When I asked him if he thought I could handle the replacement myself, he said yes. Try and get THAT from a dealer. (I also have the Bentley manual, which was great). I was able to replace it in about an hour. That saved me $90 labor right there, and the price difference between the dealer and an online parts store was $55. So I saved at least $145. The dealer could have charged me another $99 diagnostic fee, and if the install would have taken 61 minutes, I am sure I would have been charged for 1.5 hours labor.
Riiiight. Cause they're stupid and don't know people will try this. That must be why a lot of dealerships charge a "diagnostic fee" that you have to agree to (check the fine print) before they'll look at your car. The same reason they will waive that fee when they find $900 worth of repairs that you "need".
Best place to find car info - groups.google.com. Had our Jetta freak out, alarm was sounding, anti-theft wouldn't let us start the car. Took it to an independent mechanic, they couldn't find anything, and the problem had gone away. Before I went to pick it back up, I did a quick search on groups.google.com. Found it. I called them up, talked to the tech, and said "check the wiring harness that goes to the rear door. Open the rear door, pull back the rubber boot, and see if there are any stripped or worn wires." There were 3 wires that were cut and a couple more were stripped. I guess the wiring harness on those cars was just a little too short, and eventually they would wear out. I could have spliced the wires myself, but I had dealt with this shop before and they are good guys. And I could have them do it while I was at work. But without those newsgroups, it probably would have happened to me again and again and again, and would have cost me a lot of diagnostic time.
Ahh the internet - is there anything it can't do?
I agree with you. I don't normally download copyrighted materials without permission (as far as I know). I have on occasion. Whooptie-doo, come get me. I do download copyrighted works with permission, from indie artists and such. And I downloaded a bunch of Metallica stuff from their website. I was a sucker and bought their latest CD. The only redeeming quality was the passcode included with it that allowed me to download a bunch of free tracks from their website. What if I put those on a P2P network?
See, here is the dividing line for me on this whole issue. There are bad guys on both sides, but there are no good guys that I can see on the MPAA/RIAA side. I don't believe their BS about "protecting the artist" for one AMD clock cycle. They are in it to retain their stranglehold on the music industry. At least with P2P, there are some legal uses for it. Placing restrictions on it for the benefit of the corporations is NOT the correct thing to do. People are using it to break the law? Go after them, that is your right. They tried this, but in a half-assed attempt and got a nice PR road rash from it. The laws are there, they don't have to get any new ones passed. Just because they couldn't easily reach out and grab the perps isn't the rest of the world's problem.
There's no "good fight" here to join...
I think the fight to join is the fight of freedom. With freedom, you have the choice to break the law or not. Without it, your only choice is to conform or to break the law. Look at the recent goings-on with Howard Stern and other DJs who are getting hammered by the puppets at the FCC. Clear Channel is using a government agency to do its bidding. I heard people at work say "I am glad Stern is getting kicked off the air, I hate him." I could have argued, but instead I educated them. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he is being thrown off the air because he spoke out against Clear Channel, GWB, and the religious right. It doesn't matter if you like him or not, he should have the right to say what he wants to say (within the established rules, of course). He didn't violate any rules. They pulled some clips of him from 3 years ago, and said it violated their standards! And instead of fining him, they just cut his show from their stations. There was no appeal, no nothing. And what he said was nothing you can't hear elsewhere on TV/Radio. It is a farce, and it is only one of many going on in this country. And before you say "Hey, if you hate this country so much, why don't you leave?", remember this - I love this country, and the reasons this country is so great is BECAUSE of our freedom. Freedom that is systematically being taken away from the people in favor of large corporations.
Has bad PR hurt them in the past? They are called "computer viruses and worms", not "Microsoft viruses and worms" (which is technically more accurate). They have been convicted of antitrust violations by the US Government. They have forced many companies out of business. They have admitted that their products are insecure, but promise, for real this time, that they are going to take security seriously. They have been fined by foreign countries for their business antics.
What else could possibly happen to them to hurt their reputation any more? I would like to believe that this whole SCO ordeal will have some effect on them, but I am starting to wonder if they are untouchable.
(which makes me smile, because just when you start to think that....)
Dude, the task at hand is maintaining a monopoly. It hasn't been about computing since the early 90's.
Your mom *knows* I am not a eunuch.
As much as will fit onto said device.
Almost? I have never seen a scanner able to hold any ink.
Yep. You are obviously quite intelligent yourself.
Nice ad-hominem at the end. Shows your level of intelligence.
FYI, ad hominem is not hyphenated. And it isn't a noun. You accuse someone of using an ad hominem argument, then the very next sentence use one yourself (then claim you won't degrade yourself by going to that level). How (unintentionally) droll.
Yeah, but they would have gotten a free scanner with it!
Way to take one small illustrative point and base an entirely negative opinion on it. These kids are also taking calculus in the 6th grade. But I guess learning complex math is not worth noting. They also do things like play several instruments, create interesting art, speak and write other languages, read novels, and do social service projects. But lets focus on the fact that they did extremely well on a standardized test and point out that it doesn't mean anything. Twit.
It is my insane opinion that computer interfaces will become more complex, not simpler. The difference between a refrigerator, a microwave, a VCR, TV, etc and a computer is that a computer is not a single purpose device. THAT is precisely why it has revolutionized the world. And it has. A computer can be customized to BE a single purpose device - like an ATM. Or a cash register. Or a GPS device. A microwave is a microwave, that probably has a computer IN it. Without this complexity, the computer is nothing.
The problem is that we still have people around who have never used them, or remember the "good old days" when computers didn't exist. Hell, I started using them in high school (mid 80s). There are still people out there who are scared of them. In 100 years, everyone who remembered a time when there weren't computers will be dead! The fear factor will be gone. The only reason the CLI and the GUI are scary and difficult is because computers are new. I think the greatest power is in the combination of the GUI and the CLI. They each have great strengths and inherent weaknesses. You gotta have both. Today's power users will be tomorrow's users. I do lots of things with the command line that can't be done in a GUI today. Maybe tomorrow, you'll be able to, maybe not. Try this with a GUI - take a directory of images, convert them all to 800x600, and add 800x600 to the end of the file name (before the extension), then add them all to a zip file. You can do it in a GUI, but I can do it on the command line easily. Today I would be considered a power user, even though most of you were typing out the commands in your head ;-). Hopefully, in 100 years, that would seem trivial, either via GUI or command line for the average user. Or obsolete, because 800x600 would be a ridiculously low resolution image that no current hardware would even display! Heh.
Anyway - the only way computers will morph into single-purpose devices is if someone who understands them makes them do so. Hopefully the rest of the world will smarten up in that amount of time, and embrace the complexity of the computer. Complex is not bad! God help us if the PC interface becomes a huge Clippy that you talk to.
One of the hardest and most rewarding things she has had to deal with is the oddity of these kids. Some seem perfectly normal, some are social misfits. Some have meltdowns once a week. Yes, she works with the less social students to improve their social skills, but if she only concentrated on that it would be the only thing she could do. Instead, she teaches all the kids how to deal with those that are different from them.
One student was fidgeting a lot in his seat, and kept getting out of his chair when called on. At first she kept telling him to sit back down, but that agitated him more. Finally she realized that he could think better if he could stand up and walk around when he talked. She asked him if it would make him more comfortable, and he said it would. He started doing immensely better in class. She didn't care, the other students didn't care. The students there are used to things like that.
She deals with all kinds of situations and students that those of us that went to "normal" schools would consider weird. But those kids are smart. So they do things a little differently. So they don't remember to comb their hair. Should they be reprimanded, or should we be a little more tolerant? Personally, I hope nobody else is crammed into this social box, it is getting too crowded anyway.
I don't know if it was your intention, but you just indicated what the problem is. Look at your assertion - you use WMV because "everybody has it" and to avoid the hassle of supporting other formats.
That is EXACTLY why Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to do what they are doing. Now it may seem silly to make them unbundle WMP. It wasn't a big deal before, but that was before multimedia over the internet was a real possibility. Now it is a huge business. They are leveraging their OS monopoly to enter and dominate other businesses.
Yours is exactly the attitude that they are banking on. Do you get it now?
This just in... the RIAA and the MPAA are now strongly supporting Linux as their OS of choice.
Wait a second. Slashdot is journalism?
./ for years now, and I always thought that it was a BBS that was extremely popular because it linked to lots of news stories, which gave its members a constant stream of new topics to "discuss".
:-)
I've been reading
Slashdot is what happens after journalism.
First off, it wasn't MY comment that said it was journalism, but it got me to thinking...
Well, is it? Here is one definition of journalism: "The collecting, writing, editing, and presenting of news or news articles in newspapers and magazines and in radio and television broadcasts."
Now it could certainly be argued that what Slashdot editors do is not journalism, because they simply take submissions and repost them (with a little commentary). But that is awfully close to what the nightly news is. But that isn't real journalism either.
There are the Slashdot interviews, which is more like journalism. Hmm, but all the editors do is facilitate - we do all the work there by coming up with the questions. BTW, what ever happened to the Bruce Perens interview from July 2003?
Ask Slashdot is interesting, because we pose the questions and the answers. The editors just deem the topic interesting enough to post.
But this all brings back my question - what is Slashdot? Is Slashdot the editors and the webpage? If so, then it could hardly be considered journalism. Or is it the collective of that and all the moderated comments? Some responses to articles are decently thought out and researched. They provide links to other sources and facts. It could be that Slashdot is what happens after journalism, as you say, but it woulnd't be too hard of a stretch to say that Slashdot could be used as research for journalism. (In which case it would be what happens BEFORE journalism) I have seen Slashdot stories linked to from other news sites in their stories.
What if someone took the top 20 stories from Slashdot over a year, compiles all of the responses that they thought were the best, and wrote a book? Would that be journalism?
I had a roommate in college who got his degree in journalism, and I thought it was all about never needing to study, drinking a lot, and taking blow-off classes.