1) You are exactly right. The argument "It's Rob's baby, he can do what he want" is (no longer) no more valid than "It's Rupert Murdoch's baby, he can do what he want".
2) Slashdot SHOULD be held to the standards of other news orgs. For those cynically saying "what standards?" I agree that some orgs do a better job than others. However, ALL orgs print retractions and corrections (something/. rarely does, unless their noses are rubbed in it, despite what Cliff says). Furthermore, some orgs are very good at being objective and accurate. For instance, NPR.
3) Specifically what improvements could Slashdot make?
a) Have someone (else) read your post before you submit it. For that matter, create a Kuro5hin-style "posting queue" but accessible only to/. editors. Hemos puts an article in there, but it only reaches the front page if someone else signs off on it. In order to sign off on a posting, force a spellcheck and an archive search. If there was a way to force a fact check, I'd mention that as well.
b) From snippets picked up here and there (including the fact that this story was posted on the front page), I can tell some of the/. editors are getting kind of tired of the shoddier aspects of Slashdot. Listen to their ideas
c) Take a journalism class.
d) But the biggest thing that Taco/Hemos could do to improve the site is: Get involved. You two used to spend a lot of "quality time" with the site--posting comments, responding to questions, etc. You used to listen to us, use our ideas or tell us why we were dumb. But the last 2-3 years you've been sticking us in virtual daycare and rarely if ever talking to us. No wonder a lot of us are turning out to be Anonymous Delinquents. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
I prefer Gore to Bush. But I prefer "Gore in four years, after realizing he could've won had he been more like Nader" to "Gore now". --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"If an airplane is in flight, and the pilot suddenly dies, what gets lost? Direction. Control. Focus. And, potentially, the lives of innocent passengers. This is the parallel which I intended to convey."
Clearly. But the parallel doesn't exist, so stop trying.
Requirements gathering is a step towards creating a finished product. Piloting is an ongoing process. You can't suddenly lose your requirements like you can lose your pilot (you can suddenly find out they are wrong, but that just means you didn't do it right to begin with). If you are iterating (creating a new version or whatever) you can leave that step out and you might get in trouble--but once you do it, it is done. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"A piece of software without a coherent purpose is like an airplane in flight without a pilot."
(my emphasis) An airplane in flight is, by definition, in use. A piece-of-software-without-a-coherent-purpose is not necessarily so. Remove the "in flight" and you get:
"A piece of software without a coherent purpose is like an airplane without a pilot."
Huh, big deal. It's taking up some space but that's not a huge problem. It can be cannibalized for parts, used for training exercises, examples to others, etc. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The story is vaguely interesting (although largely repetitious). But why is/. accepting advertising from Salon? Andrew Leonard's address (as given by the mailto link) is aleonard@salon.com. The story is on Salon. Even my vague understanding of journalistic (not say publishing) ethics says that Andy shouldn't have sent this (nor the previous Salon links) and Taco shouldn't have printed it.
If it's really all that good, someone else will eventually submit it. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"If you have 'an apartment for rent' you make a decision on what to do with it. A) you rent it out and reap the rewards of the income or B) you store your stuff there."
And, except in rare cases, the woman is making a decision on what to do with her body, namely: have unprotected sex--an act well-known for introducing inhabitants. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"Come November 8, many of you may experience a long, sinking feeling."
I already have as much sinking feeling as I'll have on 11/8 because I already know the bad news: One of [Bush|Gore] will be president. That's why I'm voting for someone else. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"How many women are raped and impregnated every year?"
How many, indeed. And how many abortions are performed? If the latter is greater than the former your entire point is moot.
"I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise."
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant.
I am in favor of (some) abortion--but not because I'm "pro-choice". --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Not to start an off-topic flamewar, but so what? Abortion is not about choice and I can't understand why anyone thinks it IS. The religious right may not have the right answer, but they DO have the right question: Is abortion murder? Does a fetus have any right to life? This isn't about "a woman's body"--it's about a FETUS's body. Now, if you want to say that a fetus doesn't have any right to life, that's fine with me--I even agree, assuming we are talking about very very early in a pregnancy. But don't confuse the issue by talking about "a woman's choice".
And don't bother posting pointers to or arguments about how fetus's aren't people. That will only support my argument: In a rational discussion of abortion a "woman's right to choose" is irrelevant. The real issue is "a fetus's right to live". --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The real point of the article is to promote his specific explanation of a very very old theory. See this quote from the link: 'The multiverse idea is, in fact, far from new. In the late 1700s, philosopher David Hume mused that other universes might have been "botched and bungled, throughout eternity, ere this system."' --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
My state (NH) closes registration 10 days before election day--but allows registration at the polling place. Check your local listings and see if it's really too late. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power..."
I hope you cut and pasted this from Gore's site because if so it is absolutely classic. It's also self-refuting. On the one hand he claims to be so technologically literate and insightful that he figured out Moore's law before Moore did but on the other hand he doesn't know what "logarithmic" means. Tee hee! --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
I know this is a flame, but I just can't help it: "its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate.
You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans! --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"I believe there are some merits to the idea of restricting people from looking at porn at libraries and schools, even though it might not be practical to do so."
And I do not. Part of the reason I do not is that I think there are powerful, theoretical (as opposed to practical) reasons why it isn't even possible. Thus my original demand that you define "porn".
Suppose I said "I believe there are some merits to the idea of restricting people from whizzing ginggangs at libraries and schools, even though it might not be practical to do so." You might rightly come back and ask me to define "whizzing ginggangs" before agreeing the idea has merit. If I cannot define the term or if my only definition could be easily twisted then you would conclude that the idea does NOT have merit.
Even your attempts at "something we can all agree on" fall short: "I don't like the idea of spending tax dollars on a school where kids are, instead of learning how to read & write, looking at mpegs of people having anal sex."
And I don't like the idea of spending tax dollars on schools where kids are, instead of learning how life came to evolve on this planet, learning about "alternative", pseudo-scientific theories like creationism. Does that mean that the idea of blocking all references to God in the library "has merit"?
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Religion vs Cult (for real)
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
The difference between a cult and a religion is that a religion has mostly "native" members--people born and raised within it. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
I thought it was poorly editing until I realized that "Every" was the original author's last name. That's gotta be a daily confusion-generator. "Every stand up. No, not everyone. Just Every." --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"I don't think there's any point to keep defining things when I think that you understand what I'm saying."
Then you are obviously not a programmer. You have 3 problems here:
1) Coming up with a consistent definition of "porn". This definition has to include all those and only those items that YOU think are porn. (For instance, you can't say "breasts are bad", because breast cancer is OK)
2) Coming up with a global definition of "porn". This definition has to comply with every (affected) person's definition from #1. If Jane Schmoe thinks SI swimsuits are porn but Joe Schmoe doesn't, this goal is impossible.
3) Implementing #2 (assuming you pass #2, which you won't) in software. This itself is nearly impossible because simple greps or color matches won't work.
"But, if you restrict kids in a public library, for instance, from looking at pictures of 8 guys ejaculating all over some girl's face, then I don't think that's violating anybody's human rights."
I do, on at least two levels. On the theoretical level, the library (or the gov't) has no right deciding what my children should or should not see. I'll be in charge of that, thank you. On the practical level, there's not even any way to accomplish this (supposedly) laudable goal. What are you going to do, hire some guy to find all the porn pics and hand enter the file names in a block list? You'll miss many this way, not to mention constantly updating, javascripts that hide filenames, email, ftp sites, etc. Write some software to blanket anything that seems to match? You'll miss many AND get false positives.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
RAH was my favorite author (and is still one of the top 3). Hack!? He wrote more good sci fi than you've had hot meals! Hack!? He was a GRANDMASTER! Hack!? He invented at least one sub-genre of sci fi! Hack!? He invented at least three commonly used words/devices! Hack!?? Why, I'll.....ooooooohhhhhhhh --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The objection to filters in libraries is not "they don't work". The objection is "they don't work which keeps me from doing what I want". My solution removes the filtering for those that don't want it. The people that DO want filtering can then walk the never-ending treadmill of trying to formulate an objective definition for a subjective notion. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Also, I dispute your claim that the SI swimsuit issue's primary intention is to advertise swimwear. Whether or not I'm right, the existence of my dissenting opinion proves that your definition is not objective. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
What's sophisticated about it? Put your netscape prefs on a floppy that is labelled with the child's name. Done. --
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Slashdot Mirror
"By the way, I should mention that all of these cheesecakes were very delicious."
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"I had a dream I wanted to lick your knees"
And wasn't Detachable Penis by CvB? Or were they Cracker by then?
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
1) You are exactly right. The argument "It's Rob's baby, he can do what he want" is (no longer) no more valid than "It's Rupert Murdoch's baby, he can do what he want".
/. rarely does, unless their noses are rubbed in it, despite what Cliff says). Furthermore, some orgs are very good at being objective and accurate. For instance, NPR.
/. editors. Hemos puts an article in there, but it only reaches the front page if someone else signs off on it. In order to sign off on a posting, force a spellcheck and an archive search. If there was a way to force a fact check, I'd mention that as well.
/. editors are getting kind of tired of the shoddier aspects of Slashdot. Listen to their ideas
2) Slashdot SHOULD be held to the standards of other news orgs. For those cynically saying "what standards?" I agree that some orgs do a better job than others. However, ALL orgs print retractions and corrections (something
3) Specifically what improvements could Slashdot make?
a) Have someone (else) read your post before you submit it. For that matter, create a Kuro5hin-style "posting queue" but accessible only to
b) From snippets picked up here and there (including the fact that this story was posted on the front page), I can tell some of the
c) Take a journalism class.
d) But the biggest thing that Taco/Hemos could do to improve the site is: Get involved. You two used to spend a lot of "quality time" with the site--posting comments, responding to questions, etc. You used to listen to us, use our ideas or tell us why we were dumb. But the last 2-3 years you've been sticking us in virtual daycare and rarely if ever talking to us. No wonder a lot of us are turning out to be Anonymous Delinquents.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
I prefer Gore to Bush. But I prefer "Gore in four years, after realizing he could've won had he been more like Nader" to "Gore now".
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"Both candidates are identical in pretty much every respect..."
So don't vote for one of the "both candidates". For for someone else.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"If an airplane is in flight, and the pilot suddenly dies, what gets lost? Direction. Control. Focus. And, potentially, the lives of innocent passengers. This is the parallel which I intended to convey."
Clearly. But the parallel doesn't exist, so stop trying.
Requirements gathering is a step towards creating a finished product. Piloting is an ongoing process. You can't suddenly lose your requirements like you can lose your pilot (you can suddenly find out they are wrong, but that just means you didn't do it right to begin with). If you are iterating (creating a new version or whatever) you can leave that step out and you might get in trouble--but once you do it, it is done.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"A piece of software without a coherent purpose is like an airplane in flight without a pilot."
(my emphasis) An airplane in flight is, by definition, in use. A piece-of-software-without-a-coherent-purpose is not necessarily so. Remove the "in flight" and you get:
"A piece of software without a coherent purpose is like an airplane without a pilot."
Huh, big deal. It's taking up some space but that's not a huge problem. It can be cannibalized for parts, used for training exercises, examples to others, etc.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The story is vaguely interesting (although largely repetitious). But why is /. accepting advertising from Salon? Andrew Leonard's address (as given by the mailto link) is aleonard@salon.com. The story is on Salon. Even my vague understanding of journalistic (not say publishing) ethics says that Andy shouldn't have sent this (nor the previous Salon links) and Taco shouldn't have printed it.
If it's really all that good, someone else will eventually submit it.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"If you have 'an apartment for rent' you make a decision on what to do with it. A) you rent it out and reap the rewards of the income or B) you store your stuff there."
And, except in rare cases, the woman is making a decision on what to do with her body, namely: have unprotected sex--an act well-known for introducing inhabitants.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"Come November 8, many of you may experience a long, sinking feeling."
I already have as much sinking feeling as I'll have on 11/8 because I already know the bad news: One of [Bush|Gore] will be president. That's why I'm voting for someone else.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"How many women are raped and impregnated every year?"
How many, indeed. And how many abortions are performed? If the latter is greater than the former your entire point is moot.
"I don't think its anybody elses right to force someone to bear a child and bring them into this world just because they believe it to be wrong to do otherwise."
This is typical of the poor reasoning skills of the "pro-choice" movement. If I have an apartment for rent and I want to start storing my own stuff in there, can I kill the inhabitants because "it isn't anybody else's right to force me to rent"? No, because that's irrelevant.
I am in favor of (some) abortion--but not because I'm "pro-choice".
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"He is not pro choice."
Not to start an off-topic flamewar, but so what? Abortion is not about choice and I can't understand why anyone thinks it IS. The religious right may not have the right answer, but they DO have the right question: Is abortion murder? Does a fetus have any right to life? This isn't about "a woman's body"--it's about a FETUS's body. Now, if you want to say that a fetus doesn't have any right to life, that's fine with me--I even agree, assuming we are talking about very very early in a pregnancy. But don't confuse the issue by talking about "a woman's choice".
And don't bother posting pointers to or arguments about how fetus's aren't people. That will only support my argument: In a rational discussion of abortion a "woman's right to choose" is irrelevant. The real issue is "a fetus's right to live".
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The real point of the article is to promote his specific explanation of a very very old theory. See this quote from the link: 'The multiverse idea is, in fact, far from new. In the late 1700s, philosopher David Hume mused that other universes might have been "botched and bungled, throughout eternity, ere this system."'
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
My state (NH) closes registration 10 days before election day--but allows registration at the polling place. Check your local listings and see if it's really too late.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"What I realized then was that the phenomenon later to be known as Moore's Law [the prediction that transistor capacity would double every 18 months] was causing a logarithmic increase in processing power..."
I hope you cut and pasted this from Gore's site because if so it is absolutely classic. It's also self-refuting. On the one hand he claims to be so technologically literate and insightful that he figured out Moore's law before Moore did but on the other hand he doesn't know what "logarithmic" means. Tee hee!
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
I know this is a flame, but I just can't help it: "its gonna be to close of an election to risk wasting my vote making a "Statement" on a 3rd party candidate.
You can't risk making a statement? You can't risk not to!. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Break the cycle! Stop the madness! Other slogans!
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
See subject line
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"I believe there are some merits to the idea of restricting people from looking at porn at libraries and schools, even though it might not be practical to do so."
And I do not. Part of the reason I do not is that I think there are powerful, theoretical (as opposed to practical) reasons why it isn't even possible. Thus my original demand that you define "porn".
Suppose I said "I believe there are some merits to the idea of restricting people from whizzing ginggangs at libraries and schools, even though it might not be practical to do so." You might rightly come back and ask me to define "whizzing ginggangs" before agreeing the idea has merit. If I cannot define the term or if my only definition could be easily twisted then you would conclude that the idea does NOT have merit.
Even your attempts at "something we can all agree on" fall short: "I don't like the idea of spending tax dollars on a school where kids are, instead of learning how to read & write, looking at mpegs of people having anal sex."
And I don't like the idea of spending tax dollars on schools where kids are, instead of learning how life came to evolve on this planet, learning about "alternative", pseudo-scientific theories like creationism. Does that mean that the idea of blocking all references to God in the library "has merit"?
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The difference between a cult and a religion is that a religion has mostly "native" members--people born and raised within it.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
I thought it was poorly editing until I realized that "Every" was the original author's last name. That's gotta be a daily confusion-generator. "Every stand up. No, not everyone. Just Every."
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
"I don't think there's any point to keep defining things when I think that you understand what I'm saying."
Then you are obviously not a programmer. You have 3 problems here:
1) Coming up with a consistent definition of "porn". This definition has to include all those and only those items that YOU think are porn. (For instance, you can't say "breasts are bad", because breast cancer is OK)
2) Coming up with a global definition of "porn". This definition has to comply with every (affected) person's definition from #1. If Jane Schmoe thinks SI swimsuits are porn but Joe Schmoe doesn't, this goal is impossible.
3) Implementing #2 (assuming you pass #2, which you won't) in software. This itself is nearly impossible because simple greps or color matches won't work.
"But, if you restrict kids in a public library, for instance, from looking at pictures of 8 guys ejaculating all over some girl's face, then I don't think that's violating anybody's human rights."
I do, on at least two levels. On the theoretical level, the library (or the gov't) has no right deciding what my children should or should not see. I'll be in charge of that, thank you. On the practical level, there's not even any way to accomplish this (supposedly) laudable goal. What are you going to do, hire some guy to find all the porn pics and hand enter the file names in a block list? You'll miss many this way, not to mention constantly updating, javascripts that hide filenames, email, ftp sites, etc. Write some software to blanket anything that seems to match? You'll miss many AND get false positives.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
RAH was my favorite author (and is still one of the top 3). Hack!? He wrote more good sci fi than you've had hot meals! Hack!? He was a GRANDMASTER! Hack!? He invented at least one sub-genre of sci fi! Hack!? He invented at least three commonly used words/devices! Hack!?? Why, I'll.....ooooooohhhhhhhh
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
The objection to filters in libraries is not "they don't work". The objection is "they don't work which keeps me from doing what I want". My solution removes the filtering for those that don't want it. The people that DO want filtering can then walk the never-ending treadmill of trying to formulate an objective definition for a subjective notion.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Define "get off" objectively.
Also, I dispute your claim that the SI swimsuit issue's primary intention is to advertise swimwear. Whether or not I'm right, the existence of my dissenting opinion proves that your definition is not objective.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
What's sophisticated about it? Put your netscape prefs on a floppy that is labelled with the child's name. Done.
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.