Okay, you and the poster you responded to seem like reasonable people. Perhaps you could read the following disclaimer, then answer a question I've had for a while.
Disclaimer: notatrollnotatrollnotatrollnotatroll-- this is not a troll or a slam, just a question
Why do some sophisticated computer users stick with Macs? Apples make compromises in the name of ease of use--some slightly strange (e.g. the way they insisted for so long [still?] that a mouse could only be a one-button device because more was in some way confusing to the user. My mouse has 5 buttons, and my fingers never get confused.) Even granting that cpu speed is more than just Mhz, there's strong evidence that Macs are slower--especially $ for $. There has also been a fairly large gap in the amounts and kinds of software available for the Macs. Steve Jobs is just as big a dickhead as Bill Gates, IMHO.
So, since you know a computer from a toaster, why stick with the Mac?
Yes. $.50 per track to ensure I actually like the music I buy, and can time/space shift it to my heart's content is perfectly reasonable. Many people agree and wonder what the fuck is the delay. In the absence of such a reasonable system, we steal.
Wow. I think I've had an epiphany. Despite the fact that I would never use the MS shit if I had to pay for every copy, it never occured to me that so many people and businesses feel the same way that the whole MS monopoly depends on piracy. What a hoot!
So where does the XP thing leave them, I wonder? Have they shot themselves in the foot?
can somebody explain to me his remark at the last page of the Tour: This picture just screams "only in America," doesn't it?
I'll be happy to. It's an example of one of the things Americans are widely thought to have no appreciation for: irony. The man realizes that it takes a rare combination of personal wealth, freedom, and eccentricity to create a toy like this. "Only in America" means he is a bit sheepish about the time and energy he put into a basically useless project, and is a little surprised that there's a country where a common man can afford to spend so much of his life on such a thing. It's not an insult to anybody else, and he doesn't mean it literally.
You'll know you get it when you understand that if his neighbors were to sue him for uglifying their view he might well respond with a much angrier (but just as ironic) "Goddamn it! Only in America!"
I agree with all that, and I do it too(there must be a whole separate category of karma whore for people who say they agree with Prof. Knuth, but there it is), but I think he (we) use the act of writing as an aid to maintaining an orderly thought process. (For that matter, Isaac Asimov wrote everything in longhand, too.) I don't think it means he would want to typeset the thing with a pen, and I'd be surprised if he wanted to go over to doing his drafts on a computer. Paper and pen(cil) are perfect for this task.
Re:Dear US: Look up "The Rest of the World"
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April Fools Wrap Up
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· Score: 1
Oh, BTW, I think the datestamps are "locally" correct. My stamp for Taco's post shows 18:59 (well, actually it says 06:59pm, which makes no sense whatever, so I've translated)April 01.
ps. The part about wrong hemisphere was a joke.
Re:Dear US: Look up "The Rest of the World"
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April Fools Wrap Up
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· Score: 1
It only seems like xmas cause you're in the wrong hemisphere.
...how many of the posts so far are from people who didn't read ANY of the fucking story. At least half of them don't seem to have any idea that the "advanced" search engine won't open for business for 24 hours. Then there's the post that asks if Teoma has some affilition with Ask Jeeves, although that is explicitly covered in the story.
Is there a site with "News for Nerds With IQs Above 50" I can visit?
Yeah, I thought he did a pretty good job, especially for a guy with only "2 to the 14th power neurons and 2 to the 16th power connections between them". I use a lot more than that, but have next to nothing to show for it.
I started to just mod you down (-1 wrong), but decide you might actually convince someone you were correct, and we can't have that. So, as a public service, I present this link, which says that, yes, they did indeed reset user preferences.
On the flip side, this same page says that they are/were planning to email users about the reset, and that the new changes won't take effect until you've had two (2) months to change them back. That's a nuisance, but it hardly seems worth all this uproar.
Re:easy read, but inaccurate in part
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Stopping Light
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· Score: 1
Exactly right, and the implications are chilling. Algis Budrys wrote Rogue Moon in the 1950's; it might be considered the definitive treatment of the subject.
The problem is the deconstruction (read obliteration) of your body necessary to "record" you. While the person who emerged from the "teleporter" at the destination would feel exactly like they were you because they would have your make-up and your memories, the fact is that you are dead.
You are one weird fucker. I think I'll take up your points in order:
Human beings are not unnatural. We're part of the world. We got here the same way everything else did.
Animal species that ally with humans are not somehow opting out of the natural world. If buddying up to us promotes the spread of their species, (and so far it always seems to) it's a sound "strategy."
Whether or not the competition for resources is "needed" would probably depend on whether you were asking the cat or the snake.
What exactly is the "right to be there", and where does an animal go to get it? Oh, wait, I think the answer is there in your last sentence. They have to stand in line to see a nut case like you who thinks that "NATURAL selection" requires "ecosystem management" by...uh oh. Humans. Isn't that ironic?
Goddammit, he clearly states that he's narrowing the discussion to the first Europeans because nobody else thinks it's worth arguing over. Don't be so prickly.
Easy, big fella. He says the theories appear to share traits "to the untrained eye", and that Higgs appears to be hand-waving without understanding "really DEEP math." All the links are to sites that take Higgs seriously.
I would think that, unless you're studying "wild snake populations" in suburbia, any cats you meet would likely be, as you say, feral--i.e. unowned. By my definition, this makes the cats themselves wild animals, with all the rights and privileges that environmental spazboys like you deem NATURAL (sic) animals to have. You just kill them because you don't like them.
If you want to take sides in the evolutionary race, that's your business, but don't get sanctimonious about it.
Well, I had the opposite response. Coming from a man whose writing is so full of robot-speak (e.g. forever referring to features as 'useful'--never once a 'nice' or 'interesting' or 'excellent'), it was nice, interesting, and excellent to hear him refer to his emotions for a change. We've always been able to infer a large ego from RMS's actions; I found it refreshing to hear him admit it openly.
Well, I hope you never took loans as an advance on your paycheck. It occurs to me now that if any of these employees had any money left, the other creditors might demand they repay their loans in full, then receive their fraction-of-a-penny-on-the-dollar payments like everyone else.
It's worse than you may think. There's no requirement that these contributions actually be spent in an election campaign, and surpluses are his to keep. It is a source of widespread corruption. On the other hand, trying to stop these contributions runs into the problem of how do you do it without stripping people of the right to campaign for their choice of representative. Obviously, in this day of electronic media, no one could run a campaign without money, and lots of it; therefore, money = political speech.
Whether you buy into that logic is your choice. I'm just outlining the debate.
Sadly, I believe you are correct. The Internet will gradually be "tamed" just as the Wild West once was. It's not a place outside the law, it's just a place where law-breakers are hard to catch. That's the bad news. The good news is that, since it's all going to come down to who is doing what with that servers and in what country, it will be difficult for countries determined to regulate what can be shown to their citizens to do so. Of course, they have realized this and are hard at work on treaties to make everybody's laws enforceable everywhere. How the hell that's supposed to work, I cannot imagine.
..."Amen, Brother!" It doesn't seem like they do; he seems to just piss everybody off. I think I've sat in chairs designed by this guy's brother. "Research shows that this seat is perfectly suited to supporting the human ass. If you think it's giving you a back ache, you must not know what your body really needs."
God, what a geek I must be; this shit is very funny to me. Some other geek, mod these up.
Re:Who cares what america does? America != The Wor
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SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 1
Thank you for your completely hysteria-free response. I certainly wouldn't want to take "credit" for a lot that goes on around the world in the name of U.S. interests; your points are well-taken. Two things, though: 1. The U.S. is unrivaled militarily, but is far from alone in its successes (or predations, as the case may be) on the financial front. Europe, Canada, Japan, and an ever-growing list of newcomers compete effectively in the race to make all the money in the world. I would never argue that what international mega-corps do to the less-developed nations is right, but I would deny that the U.S. is alone or even sets the standard. Certainly we don't spare ourselves the hazards of "efficiency". It's routine for hundreds or thousands of Americans to lose there jobs when a large company decides it has become too "fat" to compete. To Americans, a lot of the complaining we hear sounds like the whining of sore losers. (No doubt other nations fail to share this view.) 2. I would deny that military power, while currently not in vogue, is passe. The fact that you can make this mistake speaks volumes for the relative peace that the age of the superpowers has imposed since WWII, but it is too optimistic to expect it to last forever. U.S. foreign policy is frequently crude, but it's not imperialistic. That doesn't mean it couldn't be; Americans are simply not imperialists. We're no saints, but most of the bashing we take seems to stem from our overdog status. Remember when "only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun"? Our time too will pass, and then it will be okay to like us.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: notatrollnotatrollnotatrollnotatroll-- this is not a troll or a slam, just a question
Why do some sophisticated computer users stick with Macs? Apples make compromises in the name of ease of use--some slightly strange (e.g. the way they insisted for so long [still?] that a mouse could only be a one-button device because more was in some way confusing to the user. My mouse has 5 buttons, and my fingers never get confused.) Even granting that cpu speed is more than just Mhz, there's strong evidence that Macs are slower--especially $ for $. There has also been a fairly large gap in the amounts and kinds of software available for the Macs. Steve Jobs is just as big a dickhead as Bill Gates, IMHO.
So, since you know a computer from a toaster, why stick with the Mac?
Yes. $.50 per track to ensure I actually like the music I buy, and can time/space shift it to my heart's content is perfectly reasonable. Many people agree and wonder what the fuck is the delay. In the absence of such a reasonable system, we steal.
So where does the XP thing leave them, I wonder? Have they shot themselves in the foot?
I'll be happy to. It's an example of one of the things Americans are widely thought to have no appreciation for: irony. The man realizes that it takes a rare combination of personal wealth, freedom, and eccentricity to create a toy like this. "Only in America" means he is a bit sheepish about the time and energy he put into a basically useless project, and is a little surprised that there's a country where a common man can afford to spend so much of his life on such a thing. It's not an insult to anybody else, and he doesn't mean it literally.
You'll know you get it when you understand that if his neighbors were to sue him for uglifying their view he might well respond with a much angrier (but just as ironic) "Goddamn it! Only in America!"
I agree with all that, and I do it too(there must be a whole separate category of karma whore for people who say they agree with Prof. Knuth, but there it is), but I think he (we) use the act of writing as an aid to maintaining an orderly thought process. (For that matter, Isaac Asimov wrote everything in longhand, too.) I don't think it means he would want to typeset the thing with a pen, and I'd be surprised if he wanted to go over to doing his drafts on a computer. Paper and pen(cil) are perfect for this task.
ps. The part about wrong hemisphere was a joke.
It only seems like xmas cause you're in the wrong hemisphere.
Is there a site with "News for Nerds With IQs Above 50" I can visit?
Yeah, I thought he did a pretty good job, especially for a guy with only "2 to the 14th power neurons and 2 to the 16th power connections between them". I use a lot more than that, but have next to nothing to show for it.
...we can post stories like this so only the U.S. citizens can see them? This is humiliating.
On the flip side, this same page says that they are/were planning to email users about the reset, and that the new changes won't take effect until you've had two (2) months to change them back. That's a nuisance, but it hardly seems worth all this uproar.
The problem is the deconstruction (read obliteration) of your body necessary to "record" you. While the person who emerged from the "teleporter" at the destination would feel exactly like they were you because they would have your make-up and your memories, the fact is that you are dead.
Human beings are not unnatural. We're part of the world. We got here the same way everything else did.
Animal species that ally with humans are not somehow opting out of the natural world. If buddying up to us promotes the spread of their species, (and so far it always seems to) it's a sound "strategy."
Whether or not the competition for resources is "needed" would probably depend on whether you were asking the cat or the snake.
What exactly is the "right to be there", and where does an animal go to get it? Oh, wait, I think the answer is there in your last sentence. They have to stand in line to see a nut case like you who thinks that "NATURAL selection" requires "ecosystem management" by...uh oh. Humans. Isn't that ironic?
Goddammit, he clearly states that he's narrowing the discussion to the first Europeans because nobody else thinks it's worth arguing over. Don't be so prickly.
Well, it looks like he only cut-n-pasted the first and last paragraphs. Everything in between is different.
Doesn't look like disrespect to me.
If you want to take sides in the evolutionary race, that's your business, but don't get sanctimonious about it.
Well, I had the opposite response. Coming from a man whose writing is so full of robot-speak (e.g. forever referring to features as 'useful'--never once a 'nice' or 'interesting' or 'excellent'), it was nice, interesting, and excellent to hear him refer to his emotions for a change. We've always been able to infer a large ego from RMS's actions; I found it refreshing to hear him admit it openly.
Well, I hope you never took loans as an advance on your paycheck. It occurs to me now that if any of these employees had any money left, the other creditors might demand they repay their loans in full, then receive their fraction-of-a-penny-on-the-dollar payments like everyone else.
Does knowing that make you wonder what they were thinking when they kept working without a paycheck?
Whether you buy into that logic is your choice. I'm just outlining the debate.
Sadly, I believe you are correct. The Internet will gradually be "tamed" just as the Wild West once was. It's not a place outside the law, it's just a place where law-breakers are hard to catch. That's the bad news. The good news is that, since it's all going to come down to who is doing what with that servers and in what country, it will be difficult for countries determined to regulate what can be shown to their citizens to do so. Of course, they have realized this and are hard at work on treaties to make everybody's laws enforceable everywhere. How the hell that's supposed to work, I cannot imagine.
..."Amen, Brother!" It doesn't seem like they do; he seems to just piss everybody off. I think I've sat in chairs designed by this guy's brother. "Research shows that this seat is perfectly suited to supporting the human ass. If you think it's giving you a back ache, you must not know what your body really needs."
God, what a geek I must be; this shit is very funny to me. Some other geek, mod these up.
Thank you for your completely hysteria-free response. I certainly wouldn't want to take "credit" for a lot that goes on around the world in the name of U.S. interests; your points are well-taken. Two things, though:
1. The U.S. is unrivaled militarily, but is far from alone in its successes (or predations, as the case may be) on the financial front. Europe, Canada, Japan, and an ever-growing list of newcomers compete effectively in the race to make all the money in the world. I would never argue that what international mega-corps do to the less-developed nations is right, but I would deny that the U.S. is alone or even sets the standard. Certainly we don't spare ourselves the hazards of "efficiency". It's routine for hundreds or thousands of Americans to lose there jobs when a large company decides it has become too "fat" to compete. To Americans, a lot of the complaining we hear sounds like the whining of sore losers. (No doubt other nations fail to share this view.)
2. I would deny that military power, while currently not in vogue, is passe. The fact that you can make this mistake speaks volumes for the relative peace that the age of the superpowers has imposed since WWII, but it is too optimistic to expect it to last forever. U.S. foreign policy is frequently crude, but it's not imperialistic. That doesn't mean it couldn't be; Americans are simply not imperialists. We're no saints, but most of the bashing we take seems to stem from our overdog status. Remember when "only mad dogs and Englishmen went out in the noonday sun"? Our time too will pass, and then it will be okay to like us.