If you see a troll post, treat it like an Xbox 360. Just do a 360 and walk away.
If you do a 360 you would end up facing the same way you came making it quite impossible to walk away unless you walk backwards.
Unless, of course, that by 'do' you instead suggest we have sexual relations with a games machine.
I have seen these types of messages on both Fusion (Fedora based), Mint and plain old Ubuntu. All supposedly noob friendly distros
The main issue is when you upgrade to a completely new version (like Ubuntu 10.10 to 12) which rarely works flawlessly.
I find that most people I switch to Linux love it...
it doesn't require a re-install every couple of months.
Hmm I'd say this issue can actually sometimes be even worse on Linux.
While you may not need to be reinstall it, it will usually request to be updated quite frequently and this is often a hairy process for the non technical.
I have lost count of the number of times where I was asked what was meant when the updater threw up some odd message. Examples include:
"Unable to find expected entry [some component] in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)"
"ERROR:root:Dist-upgrade failed: 'E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks.....'"
"subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 101"
"Could not calculate the upgrade"
or simply a basic can't find that message like: "failed to fetch [some component] 404 error"
Sure, people who post here are often quite able to deal with these kind of messages but my mom certainly can't.
When I wasn't able to get there physically it was often easier to simply ask people to install the latest version from
scratch rather than to update.
Oddly enough I had an early Pentium (75 Mhz) which came with a turbo button.
The button was not just cosmetic either but fully functional; if you unpressed it the computers speed would decrease drastically.
I cannot fathom why a turbo function on a Pentium would be considered useful but there it was nevertheless.
The original COD and UT99 games worked wonderfully right out of the box
Not quite.
The original COD, while a great game, had a great big bug that occasionally made players
essentially invulnerable during multiplayer deathmatch. As I recall it was a case of the hitbox calculations getting haywire.
I had an awesome video where I showed off my 'übergamer skills' by wiping out the entire opposing team on my own - multiple times.
Not a great feat when it turns out they cannot hit you with neither guns nor grenades.
To be fair, it takes far fewer towers to cover all of Finland compared to the United states
Yes, but the US also has vastly more population. And, more importantly more population per square meter.
Finland comes in at the 201st place with regards to pop density at 16 ppl per square km. The US has 34!
What the hell does it matter that the US is big? The cost is amortized over the number of end users you have.
It's not like rail or power lines where you need right of way; all you need one single location in each area for a
cell tower.
You guys have on average twice as many people in a given area who need access to cell phones and yet you
still manage to get your ass severely beat by the Finns with regards to coverage. Just accept it: Your phone
providers suck - hard.
Damn. I copied and pasted a and old piece of text and hit reply before I could edit it.
I was supposed to correct it to be about wired rather than cell reception but the general point stands.
If we lived in a tiny country like Sweden or Japan, it would be easy to have infrastructure in place for good internet speeds for all. "Unfortunately" for us, we just have too much room here in the USA.
This argument would make sense if Sweden was indeed geographically tiny and densely populated, however, it is not.
Sweden is actually far less densely populated than the US (source: Wikipedia and Nationmaster).
As for geography Sweden may be quite thin but this is not exactly useful for reducing costs for mobile infrastructure
since the signals from the mobile radio masts propagates in all directions forming a rough circle.
If you try to overlay Sweden on the continental US (just look at Google maps/earth) you would actually be able to enter
Sweden in Canada and exit it in Mexico without ever setting foot in the US.
In other words: Despite having less money per capita, fewer residents per square mile, a less suitable geographical shape and
being largely covered by forests blocking the the signals Sweden still manages to achieve better service than the continental US.
The excuse that the US has worse service because it is harder to reach all corners is and will always remain complete BS.
The service sucks because the operators lack competition and don't want to invest any more of their earnings than they absolutely
have to on infrastructure.
This _current_ BBC pedophilia scandal is far greater than what the slashdot article is letting on here.
Pedophilia is rampant in the uk and elsewhere in the social golden-spoon strata McAlpine hails from...
Google for BBC pedophilia scandal, there is far more than just this going on.
It's ironical that in your comment you provide a much worse example of how to depict people as criminals without any evidence than anything the BBC has done.
Once you have started getting used to always coming home to a clean floor you won't want to go back.
Just make certain there is nothing that the Roomba like* machine can get stuck on and that it can move between rooms.
Do the same for your bathroom / washing area and get a Scooba if these areas warrant it.
* It doesn't actually have to be a roomba you use for the term to apply.
The other robot cleaners are usually similar enough so if one works they all do
Whenever normal humans (non mathematicians) speak of average they almost invariably mean the arithmetic mean.
Which in a case like this is not likely to be far enough from the median point to make a difference.
Though pointing out that using the term average is not technically perfect in some cases even though we all pretty much
understand what was meant is a good example of the dickishness that this thread is about.
You still cannot prove that he exists. Dawkins is just another "Russell's Teapot".
Oh such complete and (n)utter bullshit.
We can device proper scientific models complete with repeatable predictable and falsifiable tests which show that Dawkins exists*.
This is not true for god.
* Repeating these tests on a regular basis would likely greatly annoy Dawkins who may refuse to participate but it is no way impossible.
Why not just educate equally and allow people to come to their own conclusions?
This is an excellent idea.
One of the most efficient antidotes to religious indoctrination is to teach about all religions equally in school allowing
no special treatment of the most popular ones.
This way you expose all the similarities and common roots as well as our propensity as a species to accept this type
of dogma.
Very true. Religion is only one of the tribal markers used to determine "us" vs. "them". It's what irritates me about the oft repeated claim "most wars are caused by religion."
It should be noted that Dawkins speaks about this as well. This is addressed both in the God delusion and in an interview on hardtalk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdZ_iA8fP_A
His main point is that religion is often used as a very potent marker to differentiate various groups.
I am a Christian. I understand the Atheist viewpoint....
Whether or not he was the Son of God, is irrelevant. From a purely utilitarian perspective, his philosophy is what is important, and his philosophy is very sensible.
This view seems very unusually sensible.
But this would mean that you are not a Christian as the vast majority define it since you are not a actually a theist.
If the only thing you believe in is that the teachings of Jesus are good in some general sense I'd consider this a philosophy
or simply an ethical viewpoint. This is especially true if you view the teachings as more important than the source
Would you consider the teachings themselves to be of equal importance if someone other than Jesus was the source of them?
If so wouldn't 'Christ' be quite irrelevant to your ethical/moral/philosophical viewpoint as well and your view of yourself as a Christ-ian
simply a way of expressing that you are not wholly without a moral code?
Considering that we have had industrial robots that can do quite advanced work
for far longer than I've been alive I find it quite depressing that our consumer
products remain so simplistic.
None of these robots are at all advanced with nearly no adjustable moving
parts nor any attempt at doing anything beyond simple and purely reactive A.I.
Shouldn't we by now have enough capabilities to create a robot that
is more than just a very crude little toy car that moves randomly?
I talking about something that can clean multiple types of surfaces rather
than just different types of floors. Something that can clean walls and
tables as well.
We are after all just talking about something which would need a
rotatable/adjustable robot arm that can move with a certain amount of
freedom coupled with a few different sensors.
I'm not suggesting that it should actually be intelligent. You would still
likely need to move small items out of the area that is to be cleaned as
well as program the task it should do.
Sure the first ones would be expensive (they always are) and it would take a while
to fully mature but this has to come close to the ultimate cleaning tool.
A case not entirely dissimilar to what you describe was recently tried in Sweden.
A comics researcher named Simon Lundström was charged with possession of child pornography due to having explicit manga comics depicting
young girls in his research collection.
He was initially convicted in a lower court but the supreme court struck down the verdict on grounds that it violated free speech and that no one
could reasonably mistake the manga drawings for depictions of real children.
The verdict did not, however, rule out that it could be illegal to possess depictions of children were they are drawn in a more realistic fashion.
The ruling was the first of it's kind and has set a president in Sweden.
samsung phones havent came with a uSD slot for some time. Google Nexus for example, are you that out of touch?
Huh?
The S III has a hidden micro-sdhc slot and so does my Note. The same was true for the both the older S and S II models.
So what the hell are you talking about?
...here is what is important. If you take the time to try and answer the question for yourself, you may be surprised at how low the probability there is for the Universe not needing a creator
Ah. This old argument again.
If you assume that a creator with the power to create the universe already exists it makes it easier to explain how the universe could exist. (duh)
Have you ever tried to figure out what the chances are of such a creator existing are?
If not, the only thing you are doing here is moving the focus from the problem of the improbability of the existence of the universe to the improbability of
the existence of some eternal omnipotent god.
This is not in any way an improvement since the likelihood of such a being existing is a lot more improbable than the universe being created by random chance.
That is unless, of course, you have figured out something no one else ever has: how this being came about and how it acquired the power to create the universe.
If so, I, and a large part of the rest of humanity, would really like to know. You could even make a few bucks by writing a book about it.
Choose US... There is no country on Earth that will offer you the same opportunity to succeed and the same liberty to pursue your goals...bla bla
Chose Canada or Scandinavia if you are insecure about your ability to maintain employment... bla bla ... the collectivist nanny states of Europe or Canada, with zero energy and innovation.... bla bla
Ignore the impression you might have from Hollywood movies...
A question to you as someone who actually urges others to ignore the impression you get from the media: Where did you yourself acquire this view of the world?
Was it by extensively researching facts and figures to back this up or have you perhaps personally lived and worked in each of these countries for years to
form a strong factual base for this belief. Or have you, I'm just providing this as a utterly far fetched hypothetical possibility, pulled this crap right out of your
posterior?
There are these things called 'facts' you should check them out some times.
A few of these 'facts' regarding the "zero energy and innovation" of the horrible socialistic Scandinavian countries:
Swedes are, by capita, the third highest recipients of patents in the world , easily beating the average* US citizen by more than a factor of 2.
You are also beaten by a significant margin by both Finland and Denmark.
You do manage to outinvent the Norwegians so hurray for you I guess. You may now continue waving your flag.
I realize that in the US the celebration of the "American way of life" is nearly a form of state religion and that you are currently not doing so well but if the
only way you can still feel pleased about yourselves is to make up shit about how the rest of the world is an awful place then frankly you are just sad and
pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
If you see a troll post, treat it like an Xbox 360. Just do a 360 and walk away.
If you do a 360 you would end up facing the same way you came making it quite impossible to walk away unless you walk backwards.
Unless, of course, that by 'do' you instead suggest we have sexual relations with a games machine.
I have seen these types of messages on both Fusion (Fedora based), Mint and plain old Ubuntu. All supposedly noob friendly distros
The main issue is when you upgrade to a completely new version (like Ubuntu 10.10 to 12) which rarely works flawlessly.
If you want more factual info just look at bug pages like:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager
And reports like: http://fusionlinux.org/2011/03/17/fusion-linux-update-breakage/
or http://geslinux.blogspot.com/2012/07/fedora-17-gpg-key-retrieval-failed.html
I find that most people I switch to Linux love it...
it doesn't require a re-install every couple of months.
Hmm I'd say this issue can actually sometimes be even worse on Linux.
While you may not need to be reinstall it, it will usually request to be updated quite frequently and this is often a hairy process for the non technical.
I have lost count of the number of times where I was asked what was meant when the updater threw up some odd message. Examples include:
"Unable to find expected entry [some component] in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)"
"ERROR:root:Dist-upgrade failed: 'E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks.....'"
"subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 101"
"Could not calculate the upgrade"
or simply a basic can't find that message like: "failed to fetch [some component] 404 error"
Sure, people who post here are often quite able to deal with these kind of messages but my mom certainly can't.
When I wasn't able to get there physically it was often easier to simply ask people to install the latest version from
scratch rather than to update.
Oddly enough I had an early Pentium (75 Mhz) which came with a turbo button.
The button was not just cosmetic either but fully functional; if you unpressed it the computers speed would decrease drastically.
I cannot fathom why a turbo function on a Pentium would be considered useful but there it was nevertheless.
The original COD and UT99 games worked wonderfully right out of the box
Not quite.
The original COD, while a great game, had a great big bug that occasionally made players essentially invulnerable during multiplayer deathmatch.
As I recall it was a case of the hitbox calculations getting haywire.
I had an awesome video where I showed off my 'übergamer skills' by wiping out the entire opposing team on my own - multiple times.
Not a great feat when it turns out they cannot hit you with neither guns nor grenades.
To be fair, it takes far fewer towers to cover all of Finland compared to the United states
Yes, but the US also has vastly more population. And, more importantly more population per square meter.
Finland comes in at the 201st place with regards to pop density at 16 ppl per square km. The US has 34!
What the hell does it matter that the US is big? The cost is amortized over the number of end users you have.
It's not like rail or power lines where you need right of way; all you need one single location in each area for a
cell tower.
You guys have on average twice as many people in a given area who need access to cell phones and yet you
still manage to get your ass severely beat by the Finns with regards to coverage. Just accept it: Your phone
providers suck - hard.
Damn. I copied and pasted a and old piece of text and hit reply before I could edit it.
I was supposed to correct it to be about wired rather than cell reception but the general point stands.
If we lived in a tiny country like Sweden or Japan, it would be easy to have infrastructure in place for good internet speeds for all. "Unfortunately" for us, we just have too much room here in the USA.
This argument would make sense if Sweden was indeed geographically tiny and densely populated, however, it is not.
Sweden is actually far less densely populated than the US (source: Wikipedia and Nationmaster).
As for geography Sweden may be quite thin but this is not exactly useful for reducing costs for mobile infrastructure
since the signals from the mobile radio masts propagates in all directions forming a rough circle.
If you try to overlay Sweden on the continental US (just look at Google maps/earth) you would actually be able to enter
Sweden in Canada and exit it in Mexico without ever setting foot in the US.
In other words: Despite having less money per capita, fewer residents per square mile, a less suitable geographical shape and
being largely covered by forests blocking the the signals Sweden still manages to achieve better service than the continental US.
The excuse that the US has worse service because it is harder to reach all corners is and will always remain complete BS.
The service sucks because the operators lack competition and don't want to invest any more of their earnings than they absolutely
have to on infrastructure.
Mel Gibson is that you?
This _current_ BBC pedophilia scandal is far greater than what the slashdot article is letting on here. Pedophilia is rampant in the uk and elsewhere in the social golden-spoon strata McAlpine hails from...
Google for BBC pedophilia scandal, there is far more than just this going on.
It's ironical that in your comment you provide a much worse example of how to depict people as criminals without any evidence than anything the BBC has done.
You can find emulators for the TI line from TI 82 all the way to the TI 89 on the regular google play market.
Once you have started getting used to always coming home to a clean floor you won't want to go back.
Just make certain there is nothing that the Roomba like* machine can get stuck on and that it can move between rooms.
Do the same for your bathroom / washing area and get a Scooba if these areas warrant it.
* It doesn't actually have to be a roomba you use for the term to apply.
The other robot cleaners are usually similar enough so if one works they all do
That would be the median person, of course.
Whenever normal humans (non mathematicians) speak of average they almost invariably mean the arithmetic mean.
Which in a case like this is not likely to be far enough from the median point to make a difference.
Though pointing out that using the term average is not technically perfect in some cases even though we all pretty much
understand what was meant is a good example of the dickishness that this thread is about.
You still cannot prove that he exists. Dawkins is just another "Russell's Teapot".
Oh such complete and (n)utter bullshit.
We can device proper scientific models complete with repeatable predictable and falsifiable tests which show that Dawkins exists*.
This is not true for god.
* Repeating these tests on a regular basis would likely greatly annoy Dawkins who may refuse to participate but it is no way impossible.
Why not just educate equally and allow people to come to their own conclusions?
This is an excellent idea.
One of the most efficient antidotes to religious indoctrination is to teach about all religions equally in school allowing
no special treatment of the most popular ones.
This way you expose all the similarities and common roots as well as our propensity as a species to accept this type
of dogma.
Very true. Religion is only one of the tribal markers used to determine "us" vs. "them". It's what irritates me about the oft repeated claim "most wars are caused by religion."
It should be noted that Dawkins speaks about this as well. This is addressed both in the God delusion and in an interview on hardtalk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdZ_iA8fP_A
His main point is that religion is often used as a very potent marker to differentiate various groups.
Bah. I managed to fail at creating a proper quote. The first two lines were expressed by flonker not me.
Whether or not he was the Son of God, is irrelevant. From a purely utilitarian perspective, his philosophy is what is important, and his philosophy is very sensible.
This view seems very unusually sensible.
But this would mean that you are not a Christian as the vast majority define it since you are not a actually a theist.
If the only thing you believe in is that the teachings of Jesus are good in some general sense I'd consider this a philosophy
or simply an ethical viewpoint. This is especially true if you view the teachings as more important than the source
Would you consider the teachings themselves to be of equal importance if someone other than Jesus was the source of them?
If so wouldn't 'Christ' be quite irrelevant to your ethical/moral/philosophical viewpoint as well and your view of yourself as a Christ-ian
simply a way of expressing that you are not wholly without a moral code?
Considering that we have had industrial robots that can do quite advanced work
for far longer than I've been alive I find it quite depressing that our consumer
products remain so simplistic.
None of these robots are at all advanced with nearly no adjustable moving
parts nor any attempt at doing anything beyond simple and purely reactive A.I.
Shouldn't we by now have enough capabilities to create a robot that
is more than just a very crude little toy car that moves randomly?
I talking about something that can clean multiple types of surfaces rather
than just different types of floors. Something that can clean walls and
tables as well.
We are after all just talking about something which would need a
rotatable/adjustable robot arm that can move with a certain amount of
freedom coupled with a few different sensors.
I'm not suggesting that it should actually be intelligent. You would still
likely need to move small items out of the area that is to be cleaned as
well as program the task it should do.
Sure the first ones would be expensive (they always are) and it would take a while
to fully mature but this has to come close to the ultimate cleaning tool.
A case not entirely dissimilar to what you describe was recently tried in Sweden.
A comics researcher named Simon Lundström was charged with possession of child pornography due to having explicit manga comics depicting
young girls in his research collection.
He was initially convicted in a lower court but the supreme court struck down the verdict on grounds that it violated free speech and that no one
could reasonably mistake the manga drawings for depictions of real children.
The verdict did not, however, rule out that it could be illegal to possess depictions of children were they are drawn in a more realistic fashion.
The ruling was the first of it's kind and has set a president in Sweden.
Congratulations my good sir. You win this days tinfoil award.
samsung phones havent came with a uSD slot for some time. Google Nexus for example, are you that out of touch?
Huh?
The S III has a hidden micro-sdhc slot and so does my Note. The same was true for the both the older S and S II models.
So what the hell are you talking about?
http://www.thelocal.se/42952/20120901/ The local is a news source for sweden translated for english speaking audience.
...here is what is important. If you take the time to try and answer the question for yourself, you may be surprised at how low the probability there is for the Universe not needing a creator
Ah. This old argument again.
If you assume that a creator with the power to create the universe already exists it makes it easier to explain how the universe could exist. (duh)
Have you ever tried to figure out what the chances are of such a creator existing are?
If not, the only thing you are doing here is moving the focus from the problem of the improbability of the existence of the universe to the improbability of
the existence of some eternal omnipotent god.
This is not in any way an improvement since the likelihood of such a being existing is a lot more improbable than the universe being created by random chance.
That is unless, of course, you have figured out something no one else ever has: how this being came about and how it acquired the power to create the universe.
If so, I, and a large part of the rest of humanity, would really like to know. You could even make a few bucks by writing a book about it.
Choose US... There is no country on Earth that will offer you the same opportunity to succeed and the same liberty to pursue your goals...bla bla
... the collectivist nanny states of Europe or Canada, with zero energy and innovation.... bla bla
Chose Canada or Scandinavia if you are insecure about your ability to maintain employment... bla bla
Ignore the impression you might have from Hollywood movies...
A question to you as someone who actually urges others to ignore the impression you get from the media: Where did you yourself acquire this view of the world?
Was it by extensively researching facts and figures to back this up or have you perhaps personally lived and worked in each of these countries for years to
form a strong factual base for this belief. Or have you, I'm just providing this as a utterly far fetched hypothetical possibility, pulled this crap right out of your posterior?
There are these things called 'facts' you should check them out some times.
A few of these 'facts' regarding the "zero energy and innovation" of the horrible socialistic Scandinavian countries:
Swedes are, by capita, the third highest recipients of patents in the world , easily beating the average* US citizen by more than a factor of 2.
You are also beaten by a significant margin by both Finland and Denmark.
You do manage to outinvent the Norwegians so hurray for you I guess. You may now continue waving your flag.
I realize that in the US the celebration of the "American way of life" is nearly a form of state religion and that you are currently not doing so well but if the
only way you can still feel pleased about yourselves is to make up shit about how the rest of the world is an awful place then frankly you are just sad and
pathetic.
*by average I mean arithmetic mean