Also if you look at a list of Nobel prize winners more that 1 in 4 are Jews, despite the fact that we make up less than.2% of the world popluation.
Heh, this is not surprising. It's not a race thing, it's cultural. From what I've gathered, traditionally Jewish culture tends to encourage scholarship, with prepubescent males being expected to discourse intellectually on the Torah, which, if you look at it is not only a religious text but also a fully codified set of laws both civic and penal, about 5500 years old. It is no wonder that a culture like this will produce more than it's average share of scholars.
Perhaps other minorities are subject to similar cultural circumstances.
For one thing, Microsoft has been promising since win95 that the next version would unify the code base. Three consumer OS's later we still have 2 mostly incompatible codebases, but no worries, that'll be fixed in the next release!
For a second: Wndows 2000 was released, what, februari 2000? Me was released in november I believe? And Microsoft wants us to upgrade to Whistler this year? Everyone, even Joe Sixpack, can see this strategy for what it is: a revenue maximizing forced upgrade
Do you seriously think grandma likes to have her pockets picked?
Here I go again with a late reply. However my personal circumstances seem to bear out your point.
I live in the Netherlands, and one of the things that surprises people from abroad is the average dutchman's command of foreign languages. We like to make deprecating(sp?) comments about it ourselves, like articles in newspapers and magazines pointing out obvious and common mistakes, but still it is amazing that in one country most of the population can make itself understood in at least one foreign language.
When you look at the map of Europe though, you'll see the obvious reason, Dutch is spoken in a small area directly neighbouring large areas of English, French and German. So the relative proximity of large amounts of other languages is definitely a factor in promoting multilinguality.
The other promoting factor is simple economics. The Netherlands have been a trading nation since the late Middle Ages, so it has been imperative for the middle classes upwards to speak a foreign language. England and it's colonies (and I mean to include the US) have however always had an internal economy, ie no need to trade outside their linguistic (and in the case of the US, geographical) boundaries. This obviously promotes the use of one language over all others.
Although I am late with my reaction, I'd say your post definitely deserves the 5 points, this is an interesting subject for discussion
Mart
Re:Why pay money for anonymous information?
on
Clever Girl Bess
·
· Score: 3
A couple of years ago, the German government wanted to have a census. Now Germans were (given their history)quite leery about the idea of a large government database holding all their personal info. In order to counter this the German government set controls in place to make sure that all data was 'anonymous'. Guess what: German hackers (I believe the Chaos Computer Club) proved that any level of reidentification on this so-called anonymous data was possible, in fact easy.
The point: unless N2H2 discloses *exactly* how they anonyminize their data, aggregate data is no guarantee against privacy violations
As I said, you have a good reason not to like certain articles by Jon Katz. You at least don't stoop to calling him names for it. For that I respect your opinion, and I hope we can agree to disagree on this.
I said 'some' of us like Katz. We may be a minority, true, but among us you'll find quite probably the/. editors, otherwise Katz wouldn't be posting his stuff here anymore.
I tend to view Katz as a columnist. His job is not to conform to some public standard, he writes on what he thinks is important. Like all good columnists this will mean that you can agree not to like his stuff, as long as it makes you think. Katz does seem to be able to do that for me, and from what I've seen I am not the only one.
Finally, my gripe is not with people like you that legitimately attack Katz based on the content of his articles, but people that lower themselves to factually incorrect statements and ad hominem attacks. That IMO constitutes trolling
I've just read through the discussion here and it really astonishes me, the amount of anti-Katz trolling. There's everything from calling him gay, to people deliberately misconstruing this piece.
What's wrong with you people? If you don't like Katz, don't read him! Or are you just jealous that he appears to be making a living at something you guys can't: express yourself in an entertaining manner?
For the record: I rather like the Katz pieces, the only niggle I have is that Jon doesn't seem to know how to cut down on unnecessary verbiage, but once you are aware of that it becomes easy to filter out.
I'd say that Jon might not need any defense, especially not mine, but regardless: Hang in there Jon, some of us like what you do (but do try to be a little more concise please).
This is just about the first JK feature in ages where Jon doesn't draw a parallel with geekdom. Hell, he even stated that much in a comment a little earlier. Give the guy a little credit, and don't put words in his mouth.
The reason you see so many security updates for RH, is quite simple: it's the most prevalent distro out there.
That said, there are a few things that set distro's apart:
SuSE. Pro: great internationalization. It's the only distro that is wholly available in my native language (dutch), loads of apps and great documentation. Con: Proprietary tools, very KDE-oriented
Mandrake. Pro: Easy to install, looks great, always has cutting edge software. Con: Unstable at times, also very KDE-centric
Red Hat: Pro: market-share makes finding 3d party support and software easily available, very generic all-purpose philosophy. Con: market-share means most linux-based exploits are RH specific. A jack of all trades but master of none
Debian. Pro: Ideologicallly closest to Real Free Software(TM), strict packaging policies and distributed development leads to a very stable and consistent system. Con: Ideological bias, try running non-Free software and get help from a Debian newsgroup (bring flame-retardant suit), not always cutting edge due to packaging policies
For the record I have run RH 6.2 and am now running Debian 2.2, I liked them both, but I do like Debian better. Take my remarks (maybe someone can expand on them a little) and decide what's best for your needs, there really is not much difference.
I am still somewhat new here; is it harmful to me to reply to obviously braindead trolls? Will he come visit me and gun me down? {/sarcasm}
For one SuSE is making a profit, for another, Red Hat actually expects to make a profit earlier than predicted. The point is these companies do not make their money selling support to individuals, but to businesses. Because of their Open Source methods, the individual customer can profit from this even without paying.
In reality, only closed source business models will ever turn a HUGE profit. Open Source businesses just need to turn enough of a profit to pay their staff (mostly Open Source developers).
Yes, this means that Red Hat will probably never become a billion-dollar business. Guess what, mr. Clueless: THEY DON'T INTEND TO! They do intend however to sell lots of servers and eventually workstations with support contracts to businesses big and small, and if IBM can make 75 % of it's profits on that, then I would say this is a viable business model indeed.
Now go and start worshipping monopoly lock-in as a viable business model and trouble us no more with your trolling.
On another note, are the/. servers acting up?/. is horrendously slow all night, and insisted I tried to post this twice, after eating an earlier reply in another discussion.
Sorry for the other readers as this wanders off-topic. EULA's=End User License Agreements, you know, the things you agree to when you click 'Agree' on that friendly wizard when you install some software in the Windows world. In the Netherlands some of these wouldn't stand up as being unreasonably restrictive.
None have been tested in court though, AFAIK.
As for gov't regulations being the cause of recessions, the jury of economists is still not decided on that one yet. You're right though, sometimes the gov't does go overboard in it's zeal, but that's no different than in the US I presume
Once again thanks for a civil discussion, but I think we'd better stop before we completely go off-topic. I'll update my user info with my email adress in case you want to continue (I like discussion, why else would I read Slashdot?)
On the other hand I keep hearing horror stories about 60 hour work weeks in the US. What would you rather have?
Although I will admit that these regulations you mention can be cumbersome, they do come with benefits:
They mitigate the business cycle. While growth in boom times may not be spectacular, neither is the slump in recession times.
Security. I am protected by law against arbitrary firing (eg for trying to organize a union) and bad working conditions. If I do lose my job through no fault of my own, I have decent unemployment insurance.
Protection. Contract laws and privacy laws restrict what corps can get away with. For example most EULA's carry conditions that are quite invalid under dutch law. And if they do try to get away with it, the government will assist me if I can't pay a lawyer, so these laws have teeth.
Now I must admit, I live in the Netherlands, and I do see the downside of government regulation. The bureaucratic idiocies we have to put up with can be quite staggering, but this is just a tradeoff we chose to make. Some, like you, would like less, some would like more, in the end we use the democratic process and if necessary the courts to end up with a workable compromise.
Thanks for the reasoned reply though, and if this turns up twice, sorry, but it seems that/. ate my first reply.
And as for the the depleted uranium issue, that's just some media throwing up a scare. Unfortunately it's not the quality newspapers that have the highest circulation, but I can assure you that most rational Europeans, although worried a little, would consider this almost a non-issue.
Have you ever considered this: The US and the EU are already embroiled in trade wars over bananas and cattle treated with growth hormones. The EU has already started a separate antitrust investigation against Microsoft.
In the near future I see the following points of contention:
American corporations start pushing for patent reform, to make software patents legal in Europe.
American data miners are already pushing to have Europe's privacy restrictions on computerized databases restricted
With the constant degeneration of US IP law, US content producers will want similar protection in Europe
Is it not logical to assume that as the US economy continues to slump, and Europe continues to catch up, that the US Corporate Complex will start pushing the Bush Administration to put pressure on Europe to harmonize it's laws and regulations with the US, in order to secure more markets for US corps in the EU?
And do you really think that the EU is just going to roll over and say 'Yes of course we will sacrifice all that we care for for your profits'?
I predict at least one major trade conflict on these issues before the end of 2001
It is an interesting parallel for sure, and I think it will have played at least a subconscious role for the Nokia developers, but there is a common cause for this: the Finnish government has been pursuing an active policy to promote the tech industry to make Finland less dependent on its main economic driving forces: forestry and tourism. The main result is that Finland is now one of the countries with the highest densities of mobile phones, and one country where this technology is being moved to new and interesting uses, such as safe electronic payment schemes. This is also the reason why Nokia, a once classic industrial conglomerate switched to communications technology somewhere in the early nineties
On another note: Nokia is one of those companies that balances on the fine line between true innovation and smart marketing. I have used their Communicator phone/PDA as my primary mail client for some time, and despite it's rateher unstable OS it is a joy to use. I have nothing but the highest regard for Nokia's technical accomplishments, and will definitely look into buying one of these Media Terminals as a terminal for my flatmate, who currently has to share my computer with me for the occasional letter and web browsing.
Agree here. I happened to see the interview with Bill Gates a few (2?) years back on the BBC. Now the interview would be conducted by Jeremy Paxman, and I think most British readers will agree that he is one of the UK's most feared interviewers. Once Paxman feels he has cause, he can and will break his subject on prime time TV, so I sat down to really enjoy myself.
It turned out that the interview focused on Bill personally, not on Bill as the chairman of Microsoft, so Paxman was rather lowkey for his doing, and I was dumbstruck: I actually liked Bill's personality. One thing that was obvious was that this nice, likeable man really believed that he was doing the right thing.
Well, I guess we all know what the road to Hell is paved with, don't we......?
Well, I can't get to the article right now (somehow Mozilla refuses to connect), but I would think that the actual drawing to the framebuffer is handled by Gdk, so any well-behaved Gtk app that doesn't do straight X calls should work.
Disclaimer: I have just started learning Gtk/Gdk.
Nice Point: You've just shot yourself in the foot. How many Gold medalists on the short distances at the past few Olympics have been coloured as opposed to white?
Face it: physical differences exist: ask any medical student about sickel cell anemia. This doesn't however constitute a judgment of value, because that would be racism
Same as Jews being good lawyers: when you have grown up in a culture that has known codified law, both penal and civil, for almost 6000 years, your cultural background will give you an advantage if you go to law school. It's just a factual difference, not a value judgment
This is a common economic fallacy: taking production of goods as a measure of value, without differentiation between categories of goods. To say that luxury goods == basic necessities is stretching things a bit.
I suggest you read 'The Affluent Society' by J.K. Galbraith for a real economists point of view on this.
Now, I know very little of processor design, but I can spot faulty logic. Your post would seem to be correct based on the assumption that AMD wouldn't optimize it's design at the same time.
On a related note: Sinterklaas NV (Euronext Amsterdam: SINT) has sued for trademark infringement, citing prior art, at the European Court in Strasbourg. Pressure by the Dutch government has led the EC to institute an import ban on all products by Santa Inc. The US Sec. of Trade has already issued a protest.
Note for non-Dutch: The festival of St. Nicholas aka Sinterklaas (Dec. 5th) predates the UK/US Santa by centuries and is quite probably the inspiration for the latter
Euhh, 1 minor niggle: the prohbition on any kind of Nazi publications was, if not imposed, then at least encouraged by the Allies. In 1945 this effectively means *by the Americans*. This comment encourages the general European prejudice that you Americans know jack sh** about history, let alone European history. Sorry for the late reply, time difference you know. Mart
".... Several programs seem to live the eternal beta-alpha sickness..."
"....In fact KDE looses to Gnome on what concerns the quality of programs...."
Interesting. Bit inconsistent aren't we? Next time take a deep breath and count to ten before you post an emotional outburst as fact.
In fact, how is the Gnome interface a frankenstein? I have some gripes with it as well, I'd love to compare notes, but sadly you do not give examples to back up your outrage.
This seems to be a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, this is not surprising. It's not a race thing, it's cultural. From what I've gathered, traditionally Jewish culture tends to encourage scholarship, with prepubescent males being expected to discourse intellectually on the Torah, which, if you look at it is not only a religious text but also a fully codified set of laws both civic and penal, about 5500 years old. It is no wonder that a culture like this will produce more than it's average share of scholars.
Perhaps other minorities are subject to similar cultural circumstances.
MartYeah,
For one thing, Microsoft has been promising since win95 that the next version would unify the code base. Three consumer OS's later we still have 2 mostly incompatible codebases, but no worries, that'll be fixed in the next release!
For a second: Wndows 2000 was released, what, februari 2000? Me was released in november I believe? And Microsoft wants us to upgrade to Whistler this year? Everyone, even Joe Sixpack, can see this strategy for what it is: a revenue maximizing forced upgrade
Do you seriously think grandma likes to have her pockets picked?
MartOk,
Here I go again with a late reply. However my personal circumstances seem to bear out your point.
I live in the Netherlands, and one of the things that surprises people from abroad is the average dutchman's command of foreign languages. We like to make deprecating(sp?) comments about it ourselves, like articles in newspapers and magazines pointing out obvious and common mistakes, but still it is amazing that in one country most of the population can make itself understood in at least one foreign language.
When you look at the map of Europe though, you'll see the obvious reason, Dutch is spoken in a small area directly neighbouring large areas of English, French and German. So the relative proximity of large amounts of other languages is definitely a factor in promoting multilinguality.
The other promoting factor is simple economics. The Netherlands have been a trading nation since the late Middle Ages, so it has been imperative for the middle classes upwards to speak a foreign language. England and it's colonies (and I mean to include the US) have however always had an internal economy, ie no need to trade outside their linguistic (and in the case of the US, geographical) boundaries. This obviously promotes the use of one language over all others.
Although I am late with my reaction, I'd say your post definitely deserves the 5 points, this is an interesting subject for discussion
MartA couple of years ago, the German government wanted to have a census. Now Germans were (given their history)quite leery about the idea of a large government database holding all their personal info. In order to counter this the German government set controls in place to make sure that all data was 'anonymous'. Guess what: German hackers (I believe the Chaos Computer Club) proved that any level of reidentification on this so-called anonymous data was possible, in fact easy.
The point: unless N2H2 discloses *exactly* how they anonyminize their data, aggregate data is no guarantee against privacy violations
MartAnd here I was thinking you were getting paid by the word. No worries Jon, I may disagree with you sometimes, but I like the pieces 'til now
MartAs I said, you have a good reason not to like certain articles by Jon Katz. You at least don't stoop to calling him names for it. For that I respect your opinion, and I hope we can agree to disagree on this.
MartOk, I'll bite:
Thanks for a civil reply nonetheless,
MartI've just read through the discussion here and it really astonishes me, the amount of anti-Katz trolling. There's everything from calling him gay, to people deliberately misconstruing this piece.
What's wrong with you people? If you don't like Katz, don't read him! Or are you just jealous that he appears to be making a living at something you guys can't: express yourself in an entertaining manner?
For the record: I rather like the Katz pieces, the only niggle I have is that Jon doesn't seem to know how to cut down on unnecessary verbiage, but once you are aware of that it becomes easy to filter out.
I'd say that Jon might not need any defense, especially not mine, but regardless: Hang in there Jon, some of us like what you do (but do try to be a little more concise please).
MartCome come,
This is just about the first JK feature in ages where Jon doesn't draw a parallel with geekdom. Hell, he even stated that much in a comment a little earlier. Give the guy a little credit, and don't put words in his mouth.
MartFWIW,
The reason you see so many security updates for RH, is quite simple: it's the most prevalent distro out there.
That said, there are a few things that set distro's apart:
For the record I have run RH 6.2 and am now running Debian 2.2, I liked them both, but I do like Debian better. Take my remarks (maybe someone can expand on them a little) and decide what's best for your needs, there really is not much difference.
MartFellow slashdotters,
I am still somewhat new here; is it harmful to me to reply to obviously braindead trolls? Will he come visit me and gun me down? {/sarcasm}
For one SuSE is making a profit, for another, Red Hat actually expects to make a profit earlier than predicted. The point is these companies do not make their money selling support to individuals, but to businesses. Because of their Open Source methods, the individual customer can profit from this even without paying.
In reality, only closed source business models will ever turn a HUGE profit. Open Source businesses just need to turn enough of a profit to pay their staff (mostly Open Source developers).
Yes, this means that Red Hat will probably never become a billion-dollar business. Guess what, mr. Clueless: THEY DON'T INTEND TO! They do intend however to sell lots of servers and eventually workstations with support contracts to businesses big and small, and if IBM can make 75 % of it's profits on that, then I would say this is a viable business model indeed.
Now go and start worshipping monopoly lock-in as a viable business model and trouble us no more with your trolling.
On another note, are the /. servers acting up? /. is horrendously slow all night, and insisted I tried to post this twice, after eating an earlier reply in another discussion.
MartSorry for the other readers as this wanders off-topic. EULA's=End User License Agreements, you know, the things you agree to when you click 'Agree' on that friendly wizard when you install some software in the Windows world. In the Netherlands some of these wouldn't stand up as being unreasonably restrictive.
None have been tested in court though, AFAIK.
As for gov't regulations being the cause of recessions, the jury of economists is still not decided on that one yet. You're right though, sometimes the gov't does go overboard in it's zeal, but that's no different than in the US I presume
Once again thanks for a civil discussion, but I think we'd better stop before we completely go off-topic. I'll update my user info with my email adress in case you want to continue (I like discussion, why else would I read Slashdot?)
MartOn the other hand I keep hearing horror stories about 60 hour work weeks in the US. What would you rather have?
Although I will admit that these regulations you mention can be cumbersome, they do come with benefits:
Now I must admit, I live in the Netherlands, and I do see the downside of government regulation. The bureaucratic idiocies we have to put up with can be quite staggering, but this is just a tradeoff we chose to make. Some, like you, would like less, some would like more, in the end we use the democratic process and if necessary the courts to end up with a workable compromise.
Thanks for the reasoned reply though, and if this turns up twice, sorry, but it seems that /. ate my first reply.
And as for the the depleted uranium issue, that's just some media throwing up a scare. Unfortunately it's not the quality newspapers that have the highest circulation, but I can assure you that most rational Europeans, although worried a little, would consider this almost a non-issue.
MartJon, fellow /.ers,
Have you ever considered this: The US and the EU are already embroiled in trade wars over bananas and cattle treated with growth hormones. The EU has already started a separate antitrust investigation against Microsoft.
In the near future I see the following points of contention:
Is it not logical to assume that as the US economy continues to slump, and Europe continues to catch up, that the US Corporate Complex will start pushing the Bush Administration to put pressure on Europe to harmonize it's laws and regulations with the US, in order to secure more markets for US corps in the EU?
And do you really think that the EU is just going to roll over and say 'Yes of course we will sacrifice all that we care for for your profits'?
I predict at least one major trade conflict on these issues before the end of 2001
MartOk, Here I go again posting too late, but have all of us and you in particular considerd these points:
either
If #1 is true and we ignore it we end up with a catastrophe
If #2 is true and we ignore it we suffer at most a little discomfort (i.e. higher taxes on fossil fuels).
Therefore the rational thing to do would be to err on the side of caution, right?
Mart
Uhh, no. And yes, I know you were joking.
It is an interesting parallel for sure, and I think it will have played at least a subconscious role for the Nokia developers, but there is a common cause for this: the Finnish government has been pursuing an active policy to promote the tech industry to make Finland less dependent on its main economic driving forces: forestry and tourism. The main result is that Finland is now one of the countries with the highest densities of mobile phones, and one country where this technology is being moved to new and interesting uses, such as safe electronic payment schemes. This is also the reason why Nokia, a once classic industrial conglomerate switched to communications technology somewhere in the early nineties
On another note: Nokia is one of those companies that balances on the fine line between true innovation and smart marketing. I have used their Communicator phone/PDA as my primary mail client for some time, and despite it's rateher unstable OS it is a joy to use. I have nothing but the highest regard for Nokia's technical accomplishments, and will definitely look into buying one of these Media Terminals as a terminal for my flatmate, who currently has to share my computer with me for the occasional letter and web browsing.
Mart
Agree here. I happened to see the interview with Bill Gates a few (2?) years back on the BBC. Now the interview would be conducted by Jeremy Paxman, and I think most British readers will agree that he is one of the UK's most feared interviewers. Once Paxman feels he has cause, he can and will break his subject on prime time TV, so I sat down to really enjoy myself.
It turned out that the interview focused on Bill personally, not on Bill as the chairman of Microsoft, so Paxman was rather lowkey for his doing, and I was dumbstruck: I actually liked Bill's personality. One thing that was obvious was that this nice, likeable man really believed that he was doing the right thing.
Well, I guess we all know what the road to Hell is paved with, don't we......?
Mart
Well, I can't get to the article right now (somehow Mozilla refuses to connect), but I would think that the actual drawing to the framebuffer is handled by Gdk, so any well-behaved Gtk app that doesn't do straight X calls should work.
Disclaimer: I have just started learning Gtk/Gdk.
Mart
In which case they will lose, for as we well know, if MS thinks it's right it won't settle
Mart
Nice Point: You've just shot yourself in the foot. How many Gold medalists on the short distances at the past few Olympics have been coloured as opposed to white? Face it: physical differences exist: ask any medical student about sickel cell anemia. This doesn't however constitute a judgment of value, because that would be racism
Same as Jews being good lawyers: when you have grown up in a culture that has known codified law, both penal and civil, for almost 6000 years, your cultural background will give you an advantage if you go to law school. It's just a factual difference, not a value judgment
Mart
30 times more productive at producing what?
This is a common economic fallacy: taking production of goods as a measure of value, without differentiation between categories of goods. To say that luxury goods == basic necessities is stretching things a bit.
I suggest you read 'The Affluent Society' by J.K. Galbraith for a real economists point of view on this.
Mart
Now, I know very little of processor design, but I can spot faulty logic. Your post would seem to be correct based on the assumption that AMD wouldn't optimize it's design at the same time.
Surely AMD can see this as well?
Mart
On a related note: Sinterklaas NV (Euronext Amsterdam: SINT) has sued for trademark infringement, citing prior art, at the European Court in Strasbourg. Pressure by the Dutch government has led the EC to institute an import ban on all products by Santa Inc. The US Sec. of Trade has already issued a protest.
Note for non-Dutch: The festival of St. Nicholas aka Sinterklaas (Dec. 5th) predates the UK/US Santa by centuries and is quite probably the inspiration for the latter
Mart
Euhh, 1 minor niggle: the prohbition on any kind of Nazi publications was, if not imposed, then at least encouraged by the Allies. In 1945 this effectively means *by the Americans*. This comment encourages the general European prejudice that you Americans know jack sh** about history, let alone European history. Sorry for the late reply, time difference you know. Mart
Hmmm...
".... Several programs seem to live the eternal beta-alpha sickness..."
"....In fact KDE looses to Gnome on what concerns the quality of programs...."
Interesting. Bit inconsistent aren't we? Next time take a deep breath and count to ten before you post an emotional outburst as fact.
In fact, how is the Gnome interface a frankenstein? I have some gripes with it as well, I'd love to compare notes, but sadly you do not give examples to back up your outrage.
This seems to be a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Cheers,
Mart