Dude, we were trying to keep the francophones from finding out we pronounce 'niche' as 'nitch', 'cause it makes us look uncultured. Now, see what you and your Hooked on Phonics approach to spelling has done?
So, in Indonesia, the word for 'developer' is, uh, 'developer'? Since I'm reasonably sure there was already a word for 'one who develops', I'm guessing the English word is used to mean specifically a software developer. Must be an interesting bit of etymology there;)
Since I have decided I like Slashdot a lot better if I don't give a damn about my karma, I'll ask make this stupid observation: the Debian logo looks a lot like a "russet rat tail" in Asheron's Call.
And that gives me a nostalgia rush--it's been almost 2 years exactly since I started playing AC (and 18 months since I quit and 13 months since I started back, and 6 months since I quit again.) Anybody been to Nanto lately?
I know I must be missing something here, but I don't see the new functionality. My Win98 desktop cheerfully jumps from icon to icon as I press the arrow keys, and I've always been able to navigate the menus without the mouse (that's what the ALT key does). I got bored looking at their website; is there more to QPointer than this?
Note the undertone of amazement. Perhaps the poster has been around/. enough to be flabbergasted that his original post was neither flamed nor mindlessly mis-modded by some idiot who apparently couldn't understand the words. Rather, it was responded to as if this were a forum for actual discussion between sentient beings.
Surely this is one of the signs of the Apocolypse.
Second is when one dialog box pops up and I cannot move the underlying windows. THAT is a nono.. I should be able to move any window on the screen at any time, period. I should be able to hide it, peg it, minimise it, shade it, whatever the WM wants.
I think this isn't an OS thing, just lousy style on the part of the app developers. For instance, the Find Text box (Ctrl-F) on IE5 (which I'm using right now) allows me to scroll, highlight text, etc. under the dialog box.
Well, figure the odds that this hasn't changed in three years, but in Win98, the easiest way to make the change is Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Drive Converter. I only implemented the change about 3 months ago (maybe because it was buried so deep in the menus), and it went off without a hitch.
Well, I'm late to this discussion (post #678, I believe), so I'll take advantage of this good luck: I agree with everything this person has said here and don't have to say it again.
I'll add that I also have been searched going to work since 9/11, including one time having my car searched in order to be allowed onto the highway to get to the gate to have my car searched again. I don't mind a bit. IT'S GOING TO GET A LOT WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER.
This war is a buddy check, and it's already becoming clear that the American people have been deceived as to who their buddies really are in the Middle East. If the U.S. has the courage to look the truth in the eye and do what we have to do, this is going to be long and painful and change all of us forever. This is one of those stupid, horrible conflicts that simply boil down to us against them, and no opting out and no crying about what your team has to do to win. Just shut the fuck up, do your job and be glad you at least get to be on a team, instead of being some poor goatherder getting your ass bombed and shot at by all sides at once.
For what it's worth, I agree with you completely. I'm not quite as old as you, but old enough to see the critical importance of this fight, and the lengths we need to be willing to go to.
There are a lot of young people who read/. and I don't mean to sound alarmist to them. But, it might pay to spend a little time adjusting your expectations of the future. I have no idea what will come of all this, but the above-mentioned WWIII is by no means out of the question. We can't share the world with people who will do what they did to us on September 11, because the potential for crazy violence increases dramatically every decade. Right now it's chemicals and biological agents and nukes. Just imagine what could be done in 50 years with home-brewed nanotechnology.
You are far from the only person doing this, but why so many ACs when posting on this subject? Are you falling victim yourself to fear of your government? The government is not a present danger. We are all very right to keep an eye on it lest it gather too much power over our lives, since we would then be vulnerable in the event a takeover by (unusually) corrupt and powermongering officials. However it should be said that in the current situation the U.S. Government's 'omniscience' is far from the problem; it's their potential impotence that worries me.
Re:It really saddens me
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 1
I completely disagree with you. Calls to exterminate Arabs or Muslims are indeed crazy, but a policy of well-targeted and massive retaliation against terrorists and their supporters and harborers may just be the only one that allows us to keep the open society Americans treasure and still live in reasonable security. I won't argue whether it's 'civilized' or not, as war rarely is anything like civilized. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to protect ourselves.
I have written to my Senators advocating a policy of retaliation sufficient to deter terrorists from targetting the U.S. and, further, to deter other nations from being willing to allow such organizations to operate on their soil. I encourage other U.S. citizens to do the same.
You are exactly right. They are extremely pissed. That doesn't mean that there is any possibility of a meaningful and useful dialog. The sad truth is that human life and politics sometimes come down to a conflict that is at its roots no more sophisticated than a gang war or fighting dogs. People start fights over territory and wealth (and the breeding opportunities that go with them), and to preempt same from their neighbors. Then it escalates.
If that seems oversimplified, give yourself a few more years to ponder the news.
Sorry to sound like a stuffy old man, but there it is.
is a bunch of clueless idiots. They could be well on their way to multiplying their revenue and profits manyfold if they would only embrace the opportunities technology has created for them. The vast majority of the population would cheerfully fork over $.25 a song for stuff they wanted to download, because: a: most people don't really feel good about stealing stuff, and b: most people wish for better quality recordings than you usually get via Napster or Gnutella (or whatever).
It would cost the music industry less to deliver the music this way and, I firmly believe, people would buy lots more dollars worth of music. It's pretty easy to pass up a new CD for $15 that may only have four songs you like on it, but if you can cherry pick your favorites 4-for-a-dollar, how can you say no?
Examples of the heavy hand of government acting to successfully encourage or invigorate the market are easy to find. Take the patent system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants exclusive rights and ownership to the developers of intellectual property. Inventors and innovators can then expect huge potential profits from their hard work and research dollars.
But without such governmental controls there would be much less incentive to devote resources to new technologies since anyone else would then be free to appropriate the inventions without having taken any risks. Patents thus encourage technological innovation, and both consumers and suppliers benefit enormously from this Constitutionally mandated government handout.
I added the emphasis in the second paragraph. The point of the patent system, according to Libertarians and according to the U.S. Constitution (please don't make me find that reference too), is to benefit both suppliers AND CONSUMERS--in other words, all members of society. I hardly think it can be argued that just 'doing without' drugs that can potentially limit (and, we hope someday with further advances, eliminate) an epidemic of a fatal disease benefits society. Since it's certainly possible to set the price for the drug so high that a country of limited means (all of them, if you raise the bar high enough) can't pay, 'doing without' may be the only option to breaking the patent.
In this particular case, the patent system has been found not to work properly, and the situation is grave enough to justify (in some minds, at least--I admit it's a difficult problem) stripping the patent protection. I don't know what amount the government of Brazil was willing to pay for the treatment in question, and I don't claim that I would be able to judge it fair or unfair if I did. I do know, however, that there is more to life than money.
Well, the last question is a pretty easy one: yes. I don't know how long this link will be good, but it displays a graph showing that Merck (I picked the biggest pharmaceutical company, since I didn't have any better criterion) has approximately tripled the returns of the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nasdaq composite (which are all surprisingly close to each other) for the period 1970--present. I don't think anyone has a real good explanation for how an industry can earn economic (sometimes call excess) profits for such an extended period, but there it is.
Well, I'm replying to my own post, cause I thought of another one while I was in the shower: Corporations and government and me. I'm against giving government too much power (or too much of my money). I'm against letting corporations have too much power. Sometimes I can play them off against each other--government regulates industry, and corporations speak out for smaller government. Unfortunately, this is a hit or miss kind of system, so sometimes my rights (as I see them) get trampled. But I haven't lived through the worst possibility: sometimes government and industry collude. Especially in times of high stress, like war, government is able to get large corporations to do its bidding, in the name of national security (and fat contracts). Many times, in war, what government wants is control of its population. In this context, Microsoft is probably the most dangerous corportation in history, and it would be terribly short-sighted not to have alternatives to MS software.
Speaking for myself, this shit confuses me. I find myself agreeing with whoever is doing the talking.
Let's see if we can come up with a list of things that make this hard. Who knows, maybe it will help clarify things.
1. Most of us agree that laws protecting personal property are a good thing. Many of us think, however, that intellectual property should be treated differently. But 'time is money', as they say, so what about the time and energy that went into creating the ip? Some people like to use a metaphor, saying that sharing ideas or software or mp3s is like sharing fire, but that ignores the fact that nobody spent ten years inventing fire, hoping to recoup his investment by selling it to others. On the other hand, many people have long considered the vast wealth that comes to movie stars and popular musicians a sort of 'bug in the system', like the salaries for professional atheletes, so we wonder if maybe a pay cut might not be in order, so that we don't have to pay so much to enjoy their works. Drawing this line is hard--I'm still confused.
2. Software users should have rights, and software developers should have rights. But of course software developers USE more software than just about anybody, so now what? It's probably not an accident that the GPL started to run into real resistance among developers once the task of replicating the software that developers use most reached a high level of completion; if the GPL spreads farther, it may just cut into my livelihood or yours, instead of AT&T's or Sun Microsystems'. Is that a problem? And what about licenses? Should you or I or that guy over there be allowed to release his software under any license we see fit? What if that guy has a monopoly on OS software? It sort of reminds me of the stuff in the history books about the Labor movement in the U.S. After all, those coal miners and steel workers signed themselves up to work for those companies, and they could quit anytime they wanted to, right? So the companies should have been allowed to bust the unions? Or does duress and coercion enter into this? Apparently the government thought so in that case, and a lot of people still agree with that decision, but here's another case that sort of resembles that one, and I'm confused again.
3. And how about that encryption/copyright/fair use thing, huh? That enters into this discussion too, I imagine, because it brings up reverse engineering and freely distributable materials, and copy protection schemes on software, and whatnot. Obviously we're all on the side of the angels here, right? We all want to ability to crack DVDs and ebooks and CDs and so on because we wish to exercise our right of fair use. Like for when we write a review or something. Right? I mean when we say free, we mean free as in speech, and being able to use stuff we didn't pay for never enters into it, am I correct?
Well, I'm tired of thinking about this now, and I have to get ready to go to work, so feel free to correct this list, or add to it, cause I'm still pretty up in the air about the whole mess.
Re:Mirrrors list (someone had to do it, right?)
on
KDE 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
Please excuse my ignorance of Debian (okay, excuse my ignorance, period), but have ALL the Debian releases been named for characters in Toy Story?
Language writers should put their creativity into extending C++ rather than abandoning it....
is answered by:
C++ is unsuitable. So why is C++ unsuitable... because of IBM, Sun and Oracle. They chose Java to be the industry standard, so they provided an install base and lots of libraries.
It looks like there's no disagreement here, just a difference of perspective. The first poster would probably include IBM et.al. in his list of 'language writers' who should stick to improving the tools we have. The reply looks at things from the standpoint of the individual programmer who must get along in the environment we're given. 'Civil disobedience' in the form of refusing to go along with the proliferation of superfluous 'tools' is not always an option when you're trying to make a living. That doesn't mean that we need 130 different little languages.
Here's the thing: I don't care what machine you use. But, both the Mac and the Winboxes are marketed as 'computers', which in supposed to mean a multi-purpose number-crunching and symbol-manipulating machine. To say the Mac is a better computer because it kicks ass running Photoshop is a lot like saying the PS2 is a great computer cause it rules video games. The bozo that put together that 'comparison' knows this, but doesn't care. If you know this and don't care either (or have other criteria besides 'speed'), then by all means enjoy your Apple.
Just don't waste time telling people what a fast computer it is.
I think I see a trend here: younger people seem more confident that they can multitask without penalty than older folks (obviously I have to guess what the ages of posters are, but I bet I'm not too far wrong on most of them).
Some of the happy multitaskers have gone so far as to proclaim the process's superiority for certain tasks, pronouncing it more 'efficient'. That's not likely, since it implies that you can do a task more quickly (or get a better result) if you do it while you do other things than you would if you did just the one thing. What multitasking frequently is is 'more useful', because many situations simply demand it. If you're supposed to type and answer the phone, it's not an option to type all morning and field phone calls all afternoon.
But here's the thing--you learn to hate it (obviously the poster I'm responding to has). First, (and this hurts, but I think it's true) your context switches get slower as you age. I don't know if it's physiological, or the result of years of distracting crap piling up in the corners of your mind, or maybe even training (my job demands a lot of focus on a few related tasks, and complete exclusion of distractions--maybe 17 years of that has affected me), Second, you get crankier about asshole employers that won't give you a free moment to get your thoughts in order. Third, over the years you build up a list in your head of the things you have irredeemably fouled up by trying to do too many things at once, and you don't want to add to it any more.
That's what I think, anyway.
re: your sig-- No, I do not think I should cut my hair just because I'm now middle-aged.
Well, I did when I was 32, but now that I'm 41 (and feeling younger than before--I'll bet you're familiar with the phenomenon) I think you're right. To hell with the gray, I've been growing it back for about 10 months.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, we were trying to keep the francophones from finding out we pronounce 'niche' as 'nitch', 'cause it makes us look uncultured. Now, see what you and your Hooked on Phonics approach to spelling has done?
So, in Indonesia, the word for 'developer' is, uh, 'developer'? Since I'm reasonably sure there was already a word for 'one who develops', I'm guessing the English word is used to mean specifically a software developer. Must be an interesting bit of etymology there;)
Since I have decided I like Slashdot a lot better if I don't give a damn about my karma, I'll ask make this stupid observation: the Debian logo looks a lot like a "russet rat tail" in Asheron's Call.
And that gives me a nostalgia rush--it's been almost 2 years exactly since I started playing AC (and 18 months since I quit and 13 months since I started back, and 6 months since I quit again.) Anybody been to Nanto lately?
I know I must be missing something here, but I don't see the new functionality. My Win98 desktop cheerfully jumps from icon to icon as I press the arrow keys, and I've always been able to navigate the menus without the mouse (that's what the ALT key does). I got bored looking at their website; is there more to QPointer than this?
That's actually really interesting...
/. enough to be flabbergasted that his original post was neither flamed nor mindlessly mis-modded by some idiot who apparently couldn't understand the words. Rather, it was responded to as if this were a forum for actual discussion between sentient beings.
Note the undertone of amazement. Perhaps the poster has been around
Surely this is one of the signs of the Apocolypse.
Second is when one dialog box pops up and I cannot move the underlying windows. THAT is a nono.. I should be able to move any window on the screen at any time, period. I should be able to hide it, peg it, minimise it, shade it, whatever the WM wants.
I think this isn't an OS thing, just lousy style on the part of the app developers. For instance, the Find Text box (Ctrl-F) on IE5 (which I'm using right now) allows me to scroll, highlight text, etc. under the dialog box.
Not just a prick, but stupid, too (the usual case, actually). The original question posits 100:1 compression to 3kB per frame.
Brush up on those reading skills here.
Well, figure the odds that this hasn't changed in three years, but in Win98, the easiest way to make the change is Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Drive Converter. I only implemented the change about 3 months ago (maybe because it was buried so deep in the menus), and it went off without a hitch.
Well, I'm late to this discussion (post #678, I believe), so I'll take advantage of this good luck: I agree with everything this person has said here and don't have to say it again.
I'll add that I also have been searched going to work since 9/11, including one time having my car searched in order to be allowed onto the highway to get to the gate to have my car searched again. I don't mind a bit. IT'S GOING TO GET A LOT WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER.
This war is a buddy check, and it's already becoming clear that the American people have been deceived as to who their buddies really are in the Middle East. If the U.S. has the courage to look the truth in the eye and do what we have to do, this is going to be long and painful and change all of us forever. This is one of those stupid, horrible conflicts that simply boil down to us against them, and no opting out and no crying about what your team has to do to win. Just shut the fuck up, do your job and be glad you at least get to be on a team, instead of being some poor goatherder getting your ass bombed and shot at by all sides at once.
For what it's worth, I agree with you completely. I'm not quite as old as you, but old enough to see the critical importance of this fight, and the lengths we need to be willing to go to.
/. and I don't mean to sound alarmist to them. But, it might pay to spend a little time adjusting your expectations of the future. I have no idea what will come of all this, but the above-mentioned WWIII is by no means out of the question. We can't share the world with people who will do what they did to us on September 11, because the potential for crazy violence increases dramatically every decade. Right now it's chemicals and biological agents and nukes. Just imagine what could be done in 50 years with home-brewed nanotechnology.
There are a lot of young people who read
You are far from the only person doing this, but why so many ACs when posting on this subject? Are you falling victim yourself to fear of your government? The government is not a present danger. We are all very right to keep an eye on it lest it gather too much power over our lives, since we would then be vulnerable in the event a takeover by (unusually) corrupt and powermongering officials. However it should be said that in the current situation the U.S. Government's 'omniscience' is far from the problem; it's their potential impotence that worries me.
I completely disagree with you. Calls to exterminate Arabs or Muslims are indeed crazy, but a policy of well-targeted and massive retaliation against terrorists and their supporters and harborers may just be the only one that allows us to keep the open society Americans treasure and still live in reasonable security. I won't argue whether it's 'civilized' or not, as war rarely is anything like civilized. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to protect ourselves.
I have written to my Senators advocating a policy of retaliation sufficient to deter terrorists from targetting the U.S. and, further, to deter other nations from being willing to allow such organizations to operate on their soil. I encourage other U.S. citizens to do the same.
You are exactly right. They are extremely pissed. That doesn't mean that there is any possibility of a meaningful and useful dialog. The sad truth is that human life and politics sometimes come down to a conflict that is at its roots no more sophisticated than a gang war or fighting dogs. People start fights over territory and wealth (and the breeding opportunities that go with them), and to preempt same from their neighbors. Then it escalates.
If that seems oversimplified, give yourself a few more years to ponder the news.
Sorry to sound like a stuffy old man, but there it is.
mod this up; I want to hear the answer
is a bunch of clueless idiots. They could be well on their way to multiplying their revenue and profits manyfold if they would only embrace the opportunities technology has created for them. The vast majority of the population would cheerfully fork over $.25 a song for stuff they wanted to download, because:
a: most people don't really feel good about stealing stuff, and
b: most people wish for better quality recordings than you usually get via Napster or Gnutella (or whatever).
It would cost the music industry less to deliver the music this way and, I firmly believe, people would buy lots more dollars worth of music. It's pretty easy to pass up a new CD for $15 that may only have four songs you like on it, but if you can cherry pick your favorites 4-for-a-dollar, how can you say no?
At least that's what I think.
From the Libertarian Party's home page:
Examples of the heavy hand of government acting to successfully encourage or invigorate the market are easy to find. Take the patent system. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants exclusive rights and ownership to the developers of intellectual property. Inventors and innovators can then expect huge potential profits from their hard work and research dollars.
But without such governmental controls there would be much less incentive to devote resources to new technologies since anyone else would then be free to appropriate the inventions without having taken any risks. Patents thus encourage technological innovation, and both consumers and suppliers benefit enormously from this Constitutionally mandated government handout.
I added the emphasis in the second paragraph. The point of the patent system, according to Libertarians and according to the U.S. Constitution (please don't make me find that reference too), is to benefit both suppliers AND CONSUMERS--in other words, all members of society. I hardly think it can be argued that just 'doing without' drugs that can potentially limit (and, we hope someday with further advances, eliminate) an epidemic of a fatal disease benefits society. Since it's certainly possible to set the price for the drug so high that a country of limited means (all of them, if you raise the bar high enough) can't pay, 'doing without' may be the only option to breaking the patent.
In this particular case, the patent system has been found not to work properly, and the situation is grave enough to justify (in some minds, at least--I admit it's a difficult problem) stripping the patent protection. I don't know what amount the government of Brazil was willing to pay for the treatment in question, and I don't claim that I would be able to judge it fair or unfair if I did. I do know, however, that there is more to life than money.
Well, the last question is a pretty easy one: yes.
I don't know how long this link will be good, but it displays a graph showing that Merck (I picked the biggest pharmaceutical company, since I didn't have any better criterion) has approximately tripled the returns of the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Nasdaq composite (which are all surprisingly close to each other) for the period 1970--present. I don't think anyone has a real good explanation for how an industry can earn economic (sometimes call excess) profits for such an extended period, but there it is.
Well, I'm replying to my own post, cause I thought of another one while I was in the shower: Corporations and government and me. I'm against giving government too much power (or too much of my money). I'm against letting corporations have too much power. Sometimes I can play them off against each other--government regulates industry, and corporations speak out for smaller government. Unfortunately, this is a hit or miss kind of system, so sometimes my rights (as I see them) get trampled. But I haven't lived through the worst possibility: sometimes government and industry collude. Especially in times of high stress, like war, government is able to get large corporations to do its bidding, in the name of national security (and fat contracts). Many times, in war, what government wants is control of its population. In this context, Microsoft is probably the most dangerous corportation in history, and it would be terribly short-sighted not to have alternatives to MS software.
Just a thought.
Speaking for myself, this shit confuses me. I find myself agreeing with whoever is doing the talking.
Let's see if we can come up with a list of things that make this hard. Who knows, maybe it will help clarify things.
1. Most of us agree that laws protecting personal property are a good thing. Many of us think, however, that intellectual property should be treated differently. But 'time is money', as they say, so what about the time and energy that went into creating the ip? Some people like to use a metaphor, saying that sharing ideas or software or mp3s is like sharing fire, but that ignores the fact that nobody spent ten years inventing fire, hoping to recoup his investment by selling it to others. On the other hand, many people have long considered the vast wealth that comes to movie stars and popular musicians a sort of 'bug in the system', like the salaries for professional atheletes, so we wonder if maybe a pay cut might not be in order, so that we don't have to pay so much to enjoy their works. Drawing this line is hard--I'm still confused.
2. Software users should have rights, and software developers should have rights. But of course software developers USE more software than just about anybody, so now what? It's probably not an accident that the GPL started to run into real resistance among developers once the task of replicating the software that developers use most reached a high level of completion; if the GPL spreads farther, it may just cut into my livelihood or yours, instead of AT&T's or Sun Microsystems'. Is that a problem? And what about licenses? Should you or I or that guy over there be allowed to release his software under any license we see fit? What if that guy has a monopoly on OS software? It sort of reminds me of the stuff in the history books about the Labor movement in the U.S. After all, those coal miners and steel workers signed themselves up to work for those companies, and they could quit anytime they wanted to, right? So the companies should have been allowed to bust the unions? Or does duress and coercion enter into this? Apparently the government thought so in that case, and a lot of people still agree with that decision, but here's another case that sort of resembles that one, and I'm confused again.
3. And how about that encryption/copyright/fair use thing, huh? That enters into this discussion too, I imagine, because it brings up reverse engineering and freely distributable materials, and copy protection schemes on software, and whatnot. Obviously we're all on the side of the angels here, right? We all want to ability to crack DVDs and ebooks and CDs and so on because we wish to exercise our right of fair use. Like for when we write a review or something. Right? I mean when we say free, we mean free as in speech, and being able to use stuff we didn't pay for never enters into it, am I correct?
Well, I'm tired of thinking about this now, and I have to get ready to go to work, so feel free to correct this list, or add to it, cause I'm still pretty up in the air about the whole mess.
Please excuse my ignorance of Debian (okay, excuse my ignorance, period), but have ALL the Debian releases been named for characters in Toy Story?
Language writers should put their creativity into extending C++ rather than abandoning it....
is answered by:
C++ is unsuitable. So why is C++ unsuitable... because of IBM, Sun and Oracle. They chose Java to be the industry standard, so they provided an install base and lots of libraries.
It looks like there's no disagreement here, just a difference of perspective. The first poster would probably include IBM et.al. in his list of 'language writers' who should stick to improving the tools we have. The reply looks at things from the standpoint of the individual programmer who must get along in the environment we're given. 'Civil disobedience' in the form of refusing to go along with the proliferation of superfluous 'tools' is not always an option when you're trying to make a living. That doesn't mean that we need 130 different little languages.
Here's the thing: I don't care what machine you use. But, both the Mac and the Winboxes are marketed as 'computers', which in supposed to mean a multi-purpose number-crunching and symbol-manipulating machine. To say the Mac is a better computer because it kicks ass running Photoshop is a lot like saying the PS2 is a great computer cause it rules video games. The bozo that put together that 'comparison' knows this, but doesn't care. If you know this and don't care either (or have other criteria besides 'speed'), then by all means enjoy your Apple.
Just don't waste time telling people what a fast computer it is.
I think I see a trend here: younger people seem more confident that they can multitask without penalty than older folks (obviously I have to guess what the ages of posters are, but I bet I'm not too far wrong on most of them).
Some of the happy multitaskers have gone so far as to proclaim the process's superiority for certain tasks, pronouncing it more 'efficient'. That's not likely, since it implies that you can do a task more quickly (or get a better result) if you do it while you do other things than you would if you did just the one thing. What multitasking frequently is is 'more useful', because many situations simply demand it. If you're supposed to type and answer the phone, it's not an option to type all morning and field phone calls all afternoon.
But here's the thing--you learn to hate it (obviously the poster I'm responding to has). First, (and this hurts, but I think it's true) your context switches get slower as you age. I don't know if it's physiological, or the result of years of distracting crap piling up in the corners of your mind, or maybe even training (my job demands a lot of focus on a few related tasks, and complete exclusion of distractions--maybe 17 years of that has affected me), Second, you get crankier about asshole employers that won't give you a free moment to get your thoughts in order. Third, over the years you build up a list in your head of the things you have irredeemably fouled up by trying to do too many things at once, and you don't want to add to it any more.
That's what I think, anyway.
re: your sig--
No, I do not think I should cut my hair just because I'm now middle-aged.
Well, I did when I was 32, but now that I'm 41 (and feeling younger than before--I'll bet you're familiar with the phenomenon) I think you're right. To hell with the gray, I've been growing it back for about 10 months.
Obviously you're correct, cuntlip. I used 'pro-government' in the popular sense of 'in favor of large, intrusive government'.
I don't think Napster is a publicly-traded corporation. Obviously, somebody has a financial stake in it, but I didn't know it was Marx or Lenin.