This isn't a Slashdot specific thing, would you believe *anyone* who wanted to charge you for someone else's product and said that they wouldn't actually provide you with proof that they owned it?
Nobody in the business world thinks this case has any merit. They're trying to raise stock value right? Then why don't they push it through the roof by actually showing damning evidence? Because they don't have it, of course.
#!/usr/bin/perl use Astronomy::Mars; my ($MarsSecond, $MarsMinute, $MarsHour) = marstime(time()); print("The time on mars is $MarsHour:$MarsMinute:$MarsSecond\n");
Ahh yes, the silly idea that while someone lies to the media, perpetrates stock fraud, and threatens to kill open software, we should be seen to not only be polite, but friendly to them.
And this will show what? That we're out of touch with reality?
If SCO had showed a single piece of evidence that didn't in fact end up proving that their code derived from open source code, and if they didn't threaten to send bills for a product they don't have rights to, and if they didn't handle the case in a way calculated to cause the most damage to the free software movement, AND if they weren't doing it all the pump their stock price while they cash in, we might cut them some slack.
Considering Enron and Worldcom tanked already, SCO's the best choice for fuck-the-innocent-to-make-money award.
It's good enough for now. The world knows you can eventually get Balmer sent to your company and get down to 33% of list price, on just the parts of the suite that you want, all by saying "We've decided to move to Linux". This means Microsoft's high revenues are over.
And eventually someone'll get told they can't have a deal, that they're not big enough, and they'll switch to Linux from spite - and have it work perfectly, just like those of us who use it already are sure it will. And then Microsoft will really start to suffer. They'll send Balmer and nobody will care - they'll over steep discounts and nobody will bother to take them up on it.
But that's just sappy new-age speak. It is just a cigar. You (and I) associate a lot with it, but it's just tobacco leaves wrapped in paper.
It's when people don't say that cigars (or books) conjure up deeper meanings, but instead say that they contain deeper meanings, that the inaccuracy starts. LotR will have different meanings to you if you've been to war than to me, and I'm sure I could find a parallel to me that you wouldn't see, but that's not *in* the book any more than a randomly generated number could be said to contain meaning because it could be interpreted as someone's birthdate.
I feel we need to be clear about the distinction. Deconstructionists talk about finding the hidden meaning *in* the book, as if it's inherent in the book when really they're finding meaning in the cultural context of the book. (Or making it up, but that's another topic...)
I think a summary of my argument was that you can't say LotR has the meaning, you can only say that LotR, to a white male aged 35, raised in New York, etc, etc, etc, has these meanings.
It's not that I don't see any meaning when I read LotR, just that I don't think it's accurate to say that the meaning I see *is* in the book, when I don't know that it is - it may simply be what I see when I read it.
I actually do fairly well analysing my photographs scientifically, at least this is what I imagine I'm doing. I often take a few shots of any subject and when I show them to friends and family I'll show certain picture to some people, and a certain picture to others. I this way I attempt to seperate the subject (in all pictures) from the presentation, which varies from picture to picture.
I try to figure out reasons behind folk-knowledge such as "subjects belong on the thirds" and figure out what about these helps, if anything.
My composition has improved remarkably, so I must be doing something right. Better than simply adopting some quaint rule and following it without understanding.
I think the problem with scientific methods leading to things like phrenology is that people think that SCIENCE makes it right. In fact, the scientific method is merely a way of applying reason and trying to separate out the chaff. But it's only a tool, misapplication of it will provide a failed end result. This doesn't mean that the tool is flawed, just that it's not a substitute for reason and skill.
Just because the book contained events similar to Tolkien's life doesn't mean that these are symbolism for the same things happening to him. It's called writing what you know. He knew the horror of war so he writes a book containing a war.
But if the deeper meaning is only there in a cultural context, in other words, the meaning to you is partly because of you, can the work be said to have that significance?
This is largely a flaw in deconstructionism, imho. It implies that meaning which can be taken from something is meaning that's inherent in it.
Thus, you may see deep or shallow meaning in Tolkien's work, yet this does not mean that the meaning *is* in the work, just that you see this meaning.
And couldn't Homer be right, that it's just a bunch of stuff that happened? Things can happen without implying anything about the future happening, or that they should be happening. In this the "good" guys won over evil, but not because of inherent flaws in evil, or because the universe is biased against evil. It reads like a documentary, in that it's a listing of things that happened without extra meaning or judgement attached to these events.
Without judgement, can you have meaning?
If I put a video camera in the forest and record a day of forest life, does it have *meaning*, or is a cigar just a cigar?
And we're back to the book. You look at a cigar and see something that isn't a cigar. Does this mean that a cigar contains this meaning? The issue with this proposition is that the cigar remains unchanged, if you look at a two-thousand year old cigar it'll have the same meaning as a modern cigar to anyone who wants to see something in it, yet the cigar can't embody that meaning in any way. In a similar way, if you read LotR and find it to be an analogy for the Iran-Contra affair, this can't be inherent in the book.
So if the meaning can be completely external to the object, you can see meaning when you look at it and yet the work doesn't actually have to mean anything. You could see LotR as the quest of two gay men for their identity, but still not be able to say that there is a deeper meaning in the book - the meaning is something you added later.
This is somewhat circular and depends on the meaning of the word meanings - much like another cigar issue fairly recently. But to me this is a problem with modern analysis. It's too easily accepted that everything has hidden layers, like an onion or an ogre, and that there are no objective answers which is another way of saying that everyone gets to be right, just for having an opinion.
IMHO there's one copy of LotR and if we read it and see different things, it suggests that those things aren't in the book. Unless Tolkien meant to include a hidden meaning through symbology or analogy, it seems that we must say the book does *not* contain deep meaning. If deep meaning is found, perhaps our culture contains deep meaning for LotR instead of the other way around.
And I think your last point is the party line - the heretical view (though nobody would get that mad about it really) is that the scientific method can be applied to everything.
Examining evidence, making predictions, and testing those predictions will help you in any field.
That said, I disagree about the French-Lit PhD thing. For the reasons stated mainly. A PhD thesis is supposed to require new and creative work, if you don't care about the field you're unlikely to be able to come up with a good thesis topic and care enough to do it justice.
As an example of the "science is applicable in any field", Richard Feynman did many cross-discipline things and always attacked them in a physicist's manner - as a set of laws to be deduced by observation and experimentation. While he didn't win nobel prizes in other fields he did get a lot farther than if he'd approached each field as requiring a new set of mental tools.
Re:Examples of heresies about America
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You're a fool with a persecution complex.
Maybe people mock you because your views are trivial and juvenile and you attribute everything to evil intent.
Just because people laugh at you doesn't mean your views are heresy, it means they're probably laughable. If people take children out of the room, get all quiet, and act like they don't know you, you're closer to heresy.
Certain groups might even have off-limit topics that aren't at the level of heresy. Vim vs Emacs is often off-limits, though not because it's dangerous, just because it's tired.
The only truly off-limits topic I've seen has been child sexuality. For better or worse, a 'lower the age of consent' argument (in the USA) is never listened to.
Good point, some people mistake a lack of agreement with their obviously right views as strong disagreement and ostracism. In fact, it's just that poorly thought-out flames tend to be ignored or easily dismissed.
Outside of 9-11 (right after the attack) I've never seen anyone strongly attacked for mentioning something, a lot of terrorist topics were just taboo. Now you get flamed for the opinion, but nobody acts like you aren't allowed to have it.
In a general-topic anonymous forum like Slashdot, there's little that'll get you cast out as a heretic. Too many people of different views would have to agree that what you said had no merit.
Someone else in this thread mentioned that just because we're being open minded doesn't mean that we should bother listening to opinions without arguments attached. "Blacks are stupid" is an opinion, "Blacks are... as seen in..., probably because..." is an argument. As such, most racist views (and many other stupid things) still don't get the time of day.
The problem with soft scientists is that they aren't used to having to prove something. And not by some long complicated comparison to Zeno's paradox or something, but actualy facts.
In fact, from working with people in the psych field I have to say that their taboo is the idea that there is a right and a wrong. They've leaned so far towards fluffy PC-thinking that even a blatantly wrong answer is "right to you, and has value".
This might be cuddly in a support group but is terrible when you try to actually learn things.
The problem with the idea that a smart scientist could get a Phd in an "Art" discipline is that Phds require new and interesting work. Or at least, your thesis is supposed to cover new ground, or old ground in a new way. And this is as judged by people in that discipline.
I'm sure I could learn about French lit, if I cared to, but I don't know that I could ever write a thesis about it that would satisfy "real" lit majors. For two reasons, one that I would find it hard to write a Phd thesis about a subject I wasn't interested in, and because if I did, it'd likely be a very unconventional look at the subject. I've learned from years in art classes that art is very rigidly defined as anything the teacher likes. (This is partly why I like sciences, the objectivity means that a right answer is right even if the prof doesn't like you.)
That said, there is a difference between arts and sciences. The sciences usually do require many obscure technical skills. (Math - Even basic engineering requires a few calculus courses - many of my non-science friends have trouble with basic arithmetic.) I wouldn't say that a scientist could, by virtue of being smart enough to be a scientist, get a phd in any art discipline, but I know many art types who couldn't handle *any* science course.
Re:Heresy and Slashdot (was Proud to be a Heretic!
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No, Slashdot isn't *the* home a Linux. A home perhaps, but nothing more.
The point about Flamebait though is that a truthful post can be a flame, and the most polite post can be complete trash I suppose. But nobody is going to listen to the flamer long enough to know.
I think a lot of people come to Slashdot, flame some "sacred cow", and then say nobody at Slashdot is willing to discuss the issue because they didn't get any positive responses. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How about AI cars not vanishing once they're a block from you, or if you turn your head for a second? At some point they need to be recycled, but it's laughably short now.
Re:Heresy and Slashdot (was Proud to be a Heretic!
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Are those Anti-Linux posts just flamebait though? If you go to a Photoshop forum and say "Photoshop sucks" it's flamebait, even if by an objective standard, Photoshop could be proven to suck. It's like me going to your house, bulling my way in, and insulting your kid's fridge art.
If however, you have a valid criticism and don't make stupid blanket statements while making your point, it's not flamebait.
When I browse at -1 I see a lot of flames and crap - maybe they're meant well, but if so they're from people who never learned to work and play well with others. In other words, I think they belong down there.
You can say whatever you want on Slashdot and suffer no worse than a negative moderating. Usually though, if you don't troll obviously, you don't get down-moderated for it, just flamed. But a flaming is nothing like having your friends and family refuse to associate with you, like being fired and black-listed, etc. Being anonymous is a wonderful thing. (Or at least having plausible deniability - "I didn't post that, it was a hacker!")
Anyways, even on MS vs Linux issues I've found that posting in a useful way, which means not saying "Well I'm going against the herd mentality, but Linux really sucks and you're all unable to admit it", doesn't result in much if any negative moderation.
People are genuinely willing to listen to issues, and we realize that some MS products aren't hideous, but if you say something obviously false and do so rudely people naturely assume it's a troll.
The problem is that many gimboids think that they're the first people to notice that Slashdot is pro-Linux and biased against Microsoft, so they attack everyone without realizing that the opinions seen here are from a variety of users, and do so by saying that "we" are unable to see the obvious truth, and they act as if they're somehow gifted for being able to see the emperor's schlong... Well of course it's not going to get very far.
Linux *is* a very effective server platform, it's essentially a fact; I've frequently seen busy webservers run for six months without downtime. Windows does crash, it's visible daily. SCO is scum, their lies alone, despite any merits the case may have, prove this. If you just "question" (read: troll) one of these "sacred cows" (read: observable facts) you're going to get punished for heresy (read: being a gimboid). Nobody (few people at any rate) say that Linux is perfect, or that Windows does nothing but crash, or that *everything* SCO does is evil. In a similar vein, "we" expect you're not going to say that Windows never crashes, or that SCO has never done anything questionable.
Disagree?
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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The problem with an imparement test is that pot makes you mentally drift, yet when required you can usually seem more sober than a drunk could in the same situation. Try to do something for long though (like drive anywhere) and you'll start drifting again.
Besides, an imparement test would show that many people who aren't under the influence aren't safe to drive and that would be a political nightmare, especially because the elderly (a large voting block) would likely be highly represented in this group.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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Exactly. What a study like this does is tell us that some people learn differently than others, and this (to me) suggests that we inform teachers about both learning styles, so that they can give multiple examples that will work for everyone. Let them understand why some students may, because of brain chemistry or upbringing, find some problems harder than others, so that they can give everyone effective tools for dealing with these problems.
The only classes that could reasonably be seperated based on genitals are "Proper Tampon Application", "Protective Cup Usage", etc. But, there's probably a benefit in making everyone take both of these - give everyone an understanding of what the other half has to deal with.
KDE is usable, very, and pretty. When my parents come to visit my mom is perfectly comfortable fiding Mozilla and opening it to browse, etc. She's downloaded files and saved them, created directories in the save-file dialog, etc. She hasn't really hit a problem with it, and she's even agreed to have me put Linux on her next PC so I can fix it remotely, instead of taking up to a week to get to her place to fix virus problems and broken email issues, etc.
What you can't do is stuff that only power users want to do, cut and paste between vastly different applications (going from Mozilla to Open Office *usually* preserves table formatting, but other combos don't work so well.) Also, embedding a graph into a document, etc, is fairly clunky and has to be explicitly supported by the app, unlike in Windows where you can theoretically embed anything (though this doesn't really work).
What do you see as being to end-user level problems?
Because, if you look at Photoshop and Gimp like a UI designer and not like a user of one or the other, you realize that Photoshop does many things badly. (Not that Gimp is perfect.) Cloning photoshop would end up with something that was never all that Photoshop was, yet wasn't free to advance in other areas.
For examples of Photoshop issues, you can't scroll a maximized image to bring one of the edges into the center of the screen. (The usually uncluttered area.) You can if the picture isn't maximized and you enlarge the window it's in, but then you add the window UI cruft that you don't want. Being able to bring the edges into prime editing territory would be handy for that alone, but would also let you start crop and selects off of the edge of a picture and not risk losing the border pixels, or having to crop from the inside to the outside.
Photoshop also doesn't have a good way of making a commonly used submenu more easily accessible. Image size is always burried, Levels is always burried. If you are continually working with a submenu like this it's not very handy. Gimp lets you tear off submenus and sit them on the desktop.
Now, things Gimp should do... Let you lock all of the sub-menus, pallettes, and main window so that bringing one forward brings them all forward. (Or most, in a selectable way.) I wish I was one alt-tab away from seeing all the menus and tools, not three or four toolbar clicks away.
There is no program that I know of which is widely thought to be perfect, at least with people who have actually tried alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the magical library is,
Go away troll.
This isn't a Slashdot specific thing, would you believe *anyone* who wanted to charge you for someone else's product and said that they wouldn't actually provide you with proof that they owned it?
Nobody in the business world thinks this case has any merit. They're trying to raise stock value right? Then why don't they push it through the roof by actually showing damning evidence? Because they don't have it, of course.
Zip up your 40GB C: drive with it. When that fails, examine your claim again.
The built-in zip is handy, but it killed the explorer when I tried to use it, moments after first install, and that didn't make a good impression.
Get the Mars module from CPAN.
Why would you want one? The correct format is yyyy/mm/dd, anything else doesn't sort correctly when used to date filenames, etc.
Ahh yes, the silly idea that while someone lies to the media, perpetrates stock fraud, and threatens to kill open software, we should be seen to not only be polite, but friendly to them.
And this will show what? That we're out of touch with reality?
If SCO had showed a single piece of evidence that didn't in fact end up proving that their code derived from open source code, and if they didn't threaten to send bills for a product they don't have rights to, and if they didn't handle the case in a way calculated to cause the most damage to the free software movement, AND if they weren't doing it all the pump their stock price while they cash in, we might cut them some slack.
Considering Enron and Worldcom tanked already, SCO's the best choice for fuck-the-innocent-to-make-money award.
It's good enough for now. The world knows you can eventually get Balmer sent to your company and get down to 33% of list price, on just the parts of the suite that you want, all by saying "We've decided to move to Linux". This means Microsoft's high revenues are over.
And eventually someone'll get told they can't have a deal, that they're not big enough, and they'll switch to Linux from spite - and have it work perfectly, just like those of us who use it already are sure it will. And then Microsoft will really start to suffer. They'll send Balmer and nobody will care - they'll over steep discounts and nobody will bother to take them up on it.
But that's just sappy new-age speak. It is just a cigar. You (and I) associate a lot with it, but it's just tobacco leaves wrapped in paper.
It's when people don't say that cigars (or books) conjure up deeper meanings, but instead say that they contain deeper meanings, that the inaccuracy starts. LotR will have different meanings to you if you've been to war than to me, and I'm sure I could find a parallel to me that you wouldn't see, but that's not *in* the book any more than a randomly generated number could be said to contain meaning because it could be interpreted as someone's birthdate.
I feel we need to be clear about the distinction. Deconstructionists talk about finding the hidden meaning *in* the book, as if it's inherent in the book when really they're finding meaning in the cultural context of the book. (Or making it up, but that's another topic...)
I think a summary of my argument was that you can't say LotR has the meaning, you can only say that LotR, to a white male aged 35, raised in New York, etc, etc, etc, has these meanings.
It's not that I don't see any meaning when I read LotR, just that I don't think it's accurate to say that the meaning I see *is* in the book, when I don't know that it is - it may simply be what I see when I read it.
I actually do fairly well analysing my photographs scientifically, at least this is what I imagine I'm doing. I often take a few shots of any subject and when I show them to friends and family I'll show certain picture to some people, and a certain picture to others. I this way I attempt to seperate the subject (in all pictures) from the presentation, which varies from picture to picture.
I try to figure out reasons behind folk-knowledge such as "subjects belong on the thirds" and figure out what about these helps, if anything.
My composition has improved remarkably, so I must be doing something right. Better than simply adopting some quaint rule and following it without understanding.
I think the problem with scientific methods leading to things like phrenology is that people think that SCIENCE makes it right. In fact, the scientific method is merely a way of applying reason and trying to separate out the chaff. But it's only a tool, misapplication of it will provide a failed end result. This doesn't mean that the tool is flawed, just that it's not a substitute for reason and skill.
Just because the book contained events similar to Tolkien's life doesn't mean that these are symbolism for the same things happening to him. It's called writing what you know. He knew the horror of war so he writes a book containing a war.
You know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
But if the deeper meaning is only there in a cultural context, in other words, the meaning to you is partly because of you, can the work be said to have that significance?
This is largely a flaw in deconstructionism, imho. It implies that meaning which can be taken from something is meaning that's inherent in it.
Thus, you may see deep or shallow meaning in Tolkien's work, yet this does not mean that the meaning *is* in the work, just that you see this meaning.
And couldn't Homer be right, that it's just a bunch of stuff that happened? Things can happen without implying anything about the future happening, or that they should be happening. In this the "good" guys won over evil, but not because of inherent flaws in evil, or because the universe is biased against evil. It reads like a documentary, in that it's a listing of things that happened without extra meaning or judgement attached to these events.
Without judgement, can you have meaning?
If I put a video camera in the forest and record a day of forest life, does it have *meaning*, or is a cigar just a cigar?
And we're back to the book. You look at a cigar and see something that isn't a cigar. Does this mean that a cigar contains this meaning? The issue with this proposition is that the cigar remains unchanged, if you look at a two-thousand year old cigar it'll have the same meaning as a modern cigar to anyone who wants to see something in it, yet the cigar can't embody that meaning in any way. In a similar way, if you read LotR and find it to be an analogy for the Iran-Contra affair, this can't be inherent in the book.
So if the meaning can be completely external to the object, you can see meaning when you look at it and yet the work doesn't actually have to mean anything. You could see LotR as the quest of two gay men for their identity, but still not be able to say that there is a deeper meaning in the book - the meaning is something you added later.
This is somewhat circular and depends on the meaning of the word meanings - much like another cigar issue fairly recently. But to me this is a problem with modern analysis. It's too easily accepted that everything has hidden layers, like an onion or an ogre, and that there are no objective answers which is another way of saying that everyone gets to be right, just for having an opinion.
IMHO there's one copy of LotR and if we read it and see different things, it suggests that those things aren't in the book. Unless Tolkien meant to include a hidden meaning through symbology or analogy, it seems that we must say the book does *not* contain deep meaning. If deep meaning is found, perhaps our culture contains deep meaning for LotR instead of the other way around.
And I think your last point is the party line - the heretical view (though nobody would get that mad about it really) is that the scientific method can be applied to everything.
Examining evidence, making predictions, and testing those predictions will help you in any field.
That said, I disagree about the French-Lit PhD thing. For the reasons stated mainly. A PhD thesis is supposed to require new and creative work, if you don't care about the field you're unlikely to be able to come up with a good thesis topic and care enough to do it justice.
As an example of the "science is applicable in any field", Richard Feynman did many cross-discipline things and always attacked them in a physicist's manner - as a set of laws to be deduced by observation and experimentation. While he didn't win nobel prizes in other fields he did get a lot farther than if he'd approached each field as requiring a new set of mental tools.
You're a fool with a persecution complex.
Maybe people mock you because your views are trivial and juvenile and you attribute everything to evil intent.
Just because people laugh at you doesn't mean your views are heresy, it means they're probably laughable. If people take children out of the room, get all quiet, and act like they don't know you, you're closer to heresy.
Certain groups might even have off-limit topics that aren't at the level of heresy. Vim vs Emacs is often off-limits, though not because it's dangerous, just because it's tired.
The only truly off-limits topic I've seen has been child sexuality. For better or worse, a 'lower the age of consent' argument (in the USA) is never listened to.
Good point, some people mistake a lack of agreement with their obviously right views as strong disagreement and ostracism. In fact, it's just that poorly thought-out flames tend to be ignored or easily dismissed.
... as seen in ..., probably because ..." is an argument. As such, most racist views (and many other stupid things) still don't get the time of day.
Outside of 9-11 (right after the attack) I've never seen anyone strongly attacked for mentioning something, a lot of terrorist topics were just taboo. Now you get flamed for the opinion, but nobody acts like you aren't allowed to have it.
In a general-topic anonymous forum like Slashdot, there's little that'll get you cast out as a heretic. Too many people of different views would have to agree that what you said had no merit.
Someone else in this thread mentioned that just because we're being open minded doesn't mean that we should bother listening to opinions without arguments attached. "Blacks are stupid" is an opinion, "Blacks are
The problem with soft scientists is that they aren't used to having to prove something. And not by some long complicated comparison to Zeno's paradox or something, but actualy facts.
In fact, from working with people in the psych field I have to say that their taboo is the idea that there is a right and a wrong. They've leaned so far towards fluffy PC-thinking that even a blatantly wrong answer is "right to you, and has value".
This might be cuddly in a support group but is terrible when you try to actually learn things.
The problem with the idea that a smart scientist could get a Phd in an "Art" discipline is that Phds require new and interesting work. Or at least, your thesis is supposed to cover new ground, or old ground in a new way. And this is as judged by people in that discipline.
I'm sure I could learn about French lit, if I cared to, but I don't know that I could ever write a thesis about it that would satisfy "real" lit majors. For two reasons, one that I would find it hard to write a Phd thesis about a subject I wasn't interested in, and because if I did, it'd likely be a very unconventional look at the subject. I've learned from years in art classes that art is very rigidly defined as anything the teacher likes. (This is partly why I like sciences, the objectivity means that a right answer is right even if the prof doesn't like you.)
That said, there is a difference between arts and sciences. The sciences usually do require many obscure technical skills. (Math - Even basic engineering requires a few calculus courses - many of my non-science friends have trouble with basic arithmetic.) I wouldn't say that a scientist could, by virtue of being smart enough to be a scientist, get a phd in any art discipline, but I know many art types who couldn't handle *any* science course.
No, Slashdot isn't *the* home a Linux. A home perhaps, but nothing more.
The point about Flamebait though is that a truthful post can be a flame, and the most polite post can be complete trash I suppose. But nobody is going to listen to the flamer long enough to know.
I think a lot of people come to Slashdot, flame some "sacred cow", and then say nobody at Slashdot is willing to discuss the issue because they didn't get any positive responses. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
How about AI cars not vanishing once they're a block from you, or if you turn your head for a second? At some point they need to be recycled, but it's laughably short now.
Are those Anti-Linux posts just flamebait though? If you go to a Photoshop forum and say "Photoshop sucks" it's flamebait, even if by an objective standard, Photoshop could be proven to suck. It's like me going to your house, bulling my way in, and insulting your kid's fridge art.
If however, you have a valid criticism and don't make stupid blanket statements while making your point, it's not flamebait.
When I browse at -1 I see a lot of flames and crap - maybe they're meant well, but if so they're from people who never learned to work and play well with others. In other words, I think they belong down there.
You can say whatever you want on Slashdot and suffer no worse than a negative moderating. Usually though, if you don't troll obviously, you don't get down-moderated for it, just flamed. But a flaming is nothing like having your friends and family refuse to associate with you, like being fired and black-listed, etc. Being anonymous is a wonderful thing. (Or at least having plausible deniability - "I didn't post that, it was a hacker!")
Anyways, even on MS vs Linux issues I've found that posting in a useful way, which means not saying "Well I'm going against the herd mentality, but Linux really sucks and you're all unable to admit it", doesn't result in much if any negative moderation.
People are genuinely willing to listen to issues, and we realize that some MS products aren't hideous, but if you say something obviously false and do so rudely people naturely assume it's a troll.
The problem is that many gimboids think that they're the first people to notice that Slashdot is pro-Linux and biased against Microsoft, so they attack everyone without realizing that the opinions seen here are from a variety of users, and do so by saying that "we" are unable to see the obvious truth, and they act as if they're somehow gifted for being able to see the emperor's schlong... Well of course it's not going to get very far.
Linux *is* a very effective server platform, it's essentially a fact; I've frequently seen busy webservers run for six months without downtime. Windows does crash, it's visible daily. SCO is scum, their lies alone, despite any merits the case may have, prove this. If you just "question" (read: troll) one of these "sacred cows" (read: observable facts) you're going to get punished for heresy (read: being a gimboid). Nobody (few people at any rate) say that Linux is perfect, or that Windows does nothing but crash, or that *everything* SCO does is evil. In a similar vein, "we" expect you're not going to say that Windows never crashes, or that SCO has never done anything questionable.
Disagree?
The problem with an imparement test is that pot makes you mentally drift, yet when required you can usually seem more sober than a drunk could in the same situation. Try to do something for long though (like drive anywhere) and you'll start drifting again.
Besides, an imparement test would show that many people who aren't under the influence aren't safe to drive and that would be a political nightmare, especially because the elderly (a large voting block) would likely be highly represented in this group.
Exactly. What a study like this does is tell us that some people learn differently than others, and this (to me) suggests that we inform teachers about both learning styles, so that they can give multiple examples that will work for everyone. Let them understand why some students may, because of brain chemistry or upbringing, find some problems harder than others, so that they can give everyone effective tools for dealing with these problems.
The only classes that could reasonably be seperated based on genitals are "Proper Tampon Application", "Protective Cup Usage", etc. But, there's probably a benefit in making everyone take both of these - give everyone an understanding of what the other half has to deal with.
I don't understand where you're coming from.
KDE is usable, very, and pretty. When my parents come to visit my mom is perfectly comfortable fiding Mozilla and opening it to browse, etc. She's downloaded files and saved them, created directories in the save-file dialog, etc. She hasn't really hit a problem with it, and she's even agreed to have me put Linux on her next PC so I can fix it remotely, instead of taking up to a week to get to her place to fix virus problems and broken email issues, etc.
What you can't do is stuff that only power users want to do, cut and paste between vastly different applications (going from Mozilla to Open Office *usually* preserves table formatting, but other combos don't work so well.) Also, embedding a graph into a document, etc, is fairly clunky and has to be explicitly supported by the app, unlike in Windows where you can theoretically embed anything (though this doesn't really work).
What do you see as being to end-user level problems?
Because, if you look at Photoshop and Gimp like a UI designer and not like a user of one or the other, you realize that Photoshop does many things badly. (Not that Gimp is perfect.) Cloning photoshop would end up with something that was never all that Photoshop was, yet wasn't free to advance in other areas.
For examples of Photoshop issues, you can't scroll a maximized image to bring one of the edges into the center of the screen. (The usually uncluttered area.) You can if the picture isn't maximized and you enlarge the window it's in, but then you add the window UI cruft that you don't want. Being able to bring the edges into prime editing territory would be handy for that alone, but would also let you start crop and selects off of the edge of a picture and not risk losing the border pixels, or having to crop from the inside to the outside.
Photoshop also doesn't have a good way of making a commonly used submenu more easily accessible. Image size is always burried, Levels is always burried. If you are continually working with a submenu like this it's not very handy. Gimp lets you tear off submenus and sit them on the desktop.
Now, things Gimp should do... Let you lock all of the sub-menus, pallettes, and main window so that bringing one forward brings them all forward. (Or most, in a selectable way.) I wish I was one alt-tab away from seeing all the menus and tools, not three or four toolbar clicks away.
There is no program that I know of which is widely thought to be perfect, at least with people who have actually tried alternatives.