I agree with a lot of your observations, especially about music and peanut butter, but it turns out violent crime peaked in the early 90s and we've seen a significant reduction in the years since. If you're much older than 50 you have a better argument, but from a crime-reduction point of view, we've improved dramatically over the last couple of decades.
A few quick facts I pulled from the data on the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics site.
In the aggregate, violent crime is at about the same rate it was in 1973:
The homicide rate is the same as it was in 1965
Property crimes are at the same rate they were in 1968.
I'm not sure where you got the information about an independent survey... it's contradicted in the article. And the other reasons for the cancellation are also covered in this story.
Just where is the evidence that having an abortion is "safer" than carrying your child to full term?
Let's see... about 2 minutes of googling reveal that we can find the mortality rate per childbirth here.
And the rate of deaths (of the mother) per abortion here and here.
And we can conclude that having an abortion is something like 4-6 times safer than carrying a child to term.
Statistically, you stand a far better chance of being caught than not.
Why do you think this? Is it just what your friend told you or do you have some evidence that this is true?
I dunno about tralfamador, but I don't find it funny is because generally, political song parodies are simplistic and tedious and this is no exception. I can't imagine anyone who knows who is being parodied was surprised by any of the content, there was nothing insightful or clever, it was just a rehash of the "Bush is stupid" "Kerry is rich" memes.
Among people I've talked to, though, I'm certainly in the minority. Lots of folks thought that was the height of comedy.
How does this: The vehicle's design is not really street-safe - this will be a problem as more efficient, lighter cars share the road with Hummers.
equal this: Student Killed By Minivan... Humvee to blame? or this How will banning SUV's affect the proliferation of...
The point was, if you're going to expect to drive a car on the street, it needs to be engineered with large car crashes in mind. No one suggested that a Humvee was to blame (though I think you meant Hummer) and no one was advocating banning SUVs. You added that yourself.
The irony of strawman posts like this is that they purport to identify an incidence of illogic, rather than represent one.
Are you saying that junkscience.com is an example of "agenda based junk science"? 'Coz that's quite evident from the website.
Now if you're saying that Steven "I'm not really a scientist but I play one on Fox News" Milloy is combating "agenda based junk science", then there is no hope for you. Go into management.
First, and least worrisome, is that the core project code could be compromised by inclusion of source contributed as a fix or extension. As the core Linux code is carefully scrutinized, that's not terribly likely.
I've heard a couple of other people make this argument, but it breaks down if you think it through: you don't have to protect your trademark from things that aren't trademark infringement - like parody. So if the Fox lawyers are smart enough to figure out it was parody (which they undoubtedly are) then the suit couldn't have been brought to defend trademark.
What I've read suggests that the suit was brought at the demands of 500-pound gorilla Bill O'Reilly, likely because he was pissed about his picture on the cover of the book and the book publishers fiasco on CSPAN. It seems to fit the events and the personalities pretty closely.
Maybe. This analysis (might require free registration) came out a couple of years ago and takes a hard look at the clinical proof of the placebo effect. They analyzed 130 other studies and came to this conclusion:
We found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects. Although placebos had no significant effects on objective or binary outcomes, they had possible small benefits in studies with continuous subjective outcomes and for the treatment of pain. Outside the setting of clinical trials, there is no justification for the use of placebos.
Whenever I hear the phrase "mind over matter" I think of the phrase "wishful thinking".
The sampling The Verve did is different from the what they're talking about here. The Verve created a derivative work based on the copyrighted work of another, and lost their publishing (not total) profits as a result. You are right when you say attribution wouldn't have helped them and doesn't really bear on the topic at hand.
It's quite probably legal to record and (non-commercially) play short, representative samples from copyrighted work. I suspect creating and distributing those samples in such a manner that they can be reconstituted into the entire work, is legally dubious.
Your assertion that the cold war was won with dollars is correct. Your assertion that Star Wars played a big part in this is incorrect. By the time SDI was a big deal, the Soviets were already in dire economic straits. Plus they knew what we know now: we're a long way technologically from fielding a broadly effective strategic missile defense (for the record, I think we should spend more money on it and I also believe that a defense system which can stop a small number of missles is useful in a world with North Koreas, to name one, in it).
Calling dente (sic) "basically a welfare program" means you don't know much about detente, or US/USSR relations.
This statement: "He had the forsight (sic) to know that overcoming evil, poverty and every other ill on this Earth involved investment in technology." is just bizarre. Even if you're simple enough to buy the "Evil Empire" rhetoric, does it look like our massive, massive investment in military technology has overcome poverty, and "every other ill on this Earth"?
I thought he was a decent president at the time, but let's not kid ourselves and suggest that he had the intellectual capacity to write or fully understand the quote to which you're responding. Even in his best mental condtion, this is not a man who traded on his intellect or insight.
Well... I kind of agree. I've been on Slashdot for quite a while - it seems to me that Slashdot moderation is exactly what one would expect from the Slashdot reader demographic; in large part capricious, reactionary and immature. While there are some posts moderated as trolls because the moderators disagree, there are a lot of posts moderated as trolls because they're trolls.
I'll still suggest that simply holding an opinion doesn't mean you're not a troll. And I still hold that saying "I'm not a troll" means "I am a troll" about 95% of the time.
That will remain my opinion until someone convinces me it is incorrect.;-)
IMHO, you're dramatically overstating the the decline of the home-user market. I suggest your "naiive users" category is a whole lot bigger than you think.
Similarly, your asessment of how organizations buy software is misinformed. There's lots and lots of marketing (even when the vendor is being contacted directly) and lots and lots of off-the-shelf software being sold among businesses. Site licenses are common, but by no means ubiquitous.
I work for a large software company that sells directly to customers for the most part, and has long relationships with our clients. Marketing is everywhere. Even between companies with long histories, customers still expect to go to trade shows and be sweet talked and see glossy brochures advertising the latest features. Marketing is an end in an of itself - you don't have to create a product that people need, you just have to convince people that they need the product you create. It sucks, to be sure, but it's a tried and true rule of business. Our particular software market is measured in 10s of billions of dollars at the moment and will inevitably grow in the future.
End result: there's still a sizeable market for this book.
That being said, if anyone says "tarchitecture" to my face, I'm punching 'em in the nose.
BTW: If you have to say "THIS IS NOT A TROLL. I'm serious." you just might be a little trollish. My advice is to rethink your post - either you're a genius and the troll-labelling fools just haven't caught up, or you just think you are.
I love C programming. C++ and Java are lots of fun. But IF you want something done right the first time, assembly and careful thought is the only answer...
You gotta be fucking kidding me. In the commercial software world (read: the world we're talking about here), this statement is a blazing sign in 40-foot high letters that you don't know what you're talking about.
So even if I hadn't read the rest of your "asked and answered in the article, interspersed with nonsense" questions, I'd know you weren't going to read the article and would instead post garbled over-generalizations mixed with random MS bitches.
The sad part is that you fooled enough people to be a +5 Insightful rating. Maybe they're all halfway through their first assembly class too.
I don't understand why it's such a problem for you to know if you're going to move, copy or create a shortcut to an item when you drag and drop it.
The cursor changes to show you what you're doing. If there's a little plus sign, you're copying. If there's a "shortcut arrow" then you're creating a shortcut and if there's just the gray box, then you're moving. It seems simple enough to me.
I agree that it would be preferable to have the drag and drop always move unless modified by a key press, but knowing the result of a drag and drop is, IMHO, sufficiently obvious.
I had a roommate who had a simliar experience - being a creduluous guy, he bought on eBay, for something like $650, a video tape copy of a Japanese Twin Peaks laser disc that doesn't really exist. Said seller pocketed the cash and abandoned the email addresses. The roommate, driven by a "very agressive" girlfriend made a several hundred mile detour on a road trip, showed up at the seller's house (googled it - the scammer used his real name) and browbeat him into returning the money.
Of course, good for them. When scammed, getting the scammer back is a virtue. But the real virtue is not putting yourself in that position. Don't sell expensive items COD. Don't spend $650 for a tape of a laser disc which the fan community says doesn't exist. I'm happy the Mac guy got his satisfaction but a "4.0 Honor Student" (aside : my father always said - don't trust people who are always the heroes of their stories) should have enough brains to realize that COD is a dumb way to sell computers and he also should've realized that when you deposit a $3000 check from someone you don't know, you wait for it to clear before using the cash.
Sorry to continue the pedantry, but unless "Pedants: Think about it on a different level" means "Ignore the fact that although I'm invoking mathematics, I'm ignoring it" I still don't get it. If you mean Price to Performance, then you're saying that Linux has a price, but it's performance is 0?
You're neglecting drag (except when you're talking about vaporizing the projectile). Breaking a reasonably aerodynamic projectile in to decidedly non-aerodynamically optimized parts will seriously change the course of the object. If you're just trying to get an artillery shell to miss it's intended target, breaking it in two would almost certainly be sufficient. Try throwing a tennis ball then half a tennis ball for something of an example.
.. the first rule of aerial surveillance is to make yourself look like a huge flying lizard. That's also why you saw all those CIA guys in Afghanistan dressed up in the Tyranasaur suits.
Incidentally, I assume you're talking about the 18-foot pterodactyl captured in the IMAX film On the Wing in 1986. It was built by Paul McReady, who also built the Gossamer Condor, the world's first human-powered aircraft.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with a lot of your observations, especially about music and peanut butter, but it turns out violent crime peaked in the early 90s and we've seen a significant reduction in the years since. If you're much older than 50 you have a better argument, but from a crime-reduction point of view, we've improved dramatically over the last couple of decades.
A few quick facts I pulled from the data on the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Statistics site.
In the aggregate, violent crime is at about the same rate it was in 1973:
The homicide rate is the same as it was in 1965
Property crimes are at the same rate they were in 1968.
Great show and good reference. There are lots of places above the arctic circle and below the tree line. Ugly map
Here's a better story on the issue you cite.
... it's contradicted in the article. And the other reasons for the cancellation are also covered in this story.
I'm not sure where you got the information about an independent survey
Just where is the evidence that having an abortion is "safer" than carrying your child to full term? Let's see ... about 2 minutes of googling reveal that we can find the mortality rate per childbirth here.
And the rate of deaths (of the mother) per abortion here and here.
And we can conclude that having an abortion is something like 4-6 times safer than carrying a child to term.
Statistically, you stand a far better chance of being caught than not. Why do you think this? Is it just what your friend told you or do you have some evidence that this is true?
I dunno about tralfamador, but I don't find it funny is because generally, political song parodies are simplistic and tedious and this is no exception. I can't imagine anyone who knows who is being parodied was surprised by any of the content, there was nothing insightful or clever, it was just a rehash of the "Bush is stupid" "Kerry is rich" memes.
Among people I've talked to, though, I'm certainly in the minority. Lots of folks thought that was the height of comedy.
How does this: The vehicle's design is not really street-safe - this will be a problem as more efficient, lighter cars share the road with Hummers.
...
equal this: Student Killed By Minivan... Humvee to blame? or this How will banning SUV's affect the proliferation of
The point was, if you're going to expect to drive a car on the street, it needs to be engineered with large car crashes in mind. No one suggested that a Humvee was to blame (though I think you meant Hummer) and no one was advocating banning SUVs. You added that yourself.
The irony of strawman posts like this is that they purport to identify an incidence of illogic, rather than represent one.
Are you saying that junkscience.com is an example of "agenda based junk science"? 'Coz that's quite evident from the website.
Now if you're saying that Steven "I'm not really a scientist but I play one on Fox News" Milloy is combating "agenda based junk science", then there is no hope for you. Go into management.
From the 2nd paragraph of article:
First, and least worrisome, is that the core project code could be compromised by inclusion of source contributed as a fix or extension. As the core Linux code is carefully scrutinized, that's not terribly likely.
I've heard a couple of other people make this argument, but it breaks down if you think it through: you don't have to protect your trademark from things that aren't trademark infringement - like parody. So if the Fox lawyers are smart enough to figure out it was parody (which they undoubtedly are) then the suit couldn't have been brought to defend trademark.
What I've read suggests that the suit was brought at the demands of 500-pound gorilla Bill O'Reilly, likely because he was pissed about his picture on the cover of the book and the book publishers fiasco on CSPAN. It seems to fit the events and the personalities pretty closely.
The placebo effect is great evidence of this.
Maybe. This analysis (might require free registration) came out a couple of years ago and takes a hard look at the clinical proof of the placebo effect. They analyzed 130 other studies and came to this conclusion:
We found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects. Although placebos had no significant effects on objective or binary outcomes, they had possible small benefits in studies with continuous subjective outcomes and for the treatment of pain. Outside the setting of clinical trials, there is no justification for the use of placebos.
Whenever I hear the phrase "mind over matter" I think of the phrase "wishful thinking".
The sampling The Verve did is different from the what they're talking about here. The Verve created a derivative work based on the copyrighted work of another, and lost their publishing (not total) profits as a result. You are right when you say attribution wouldn't have helped them and doesn't really bear on the topic at hand.
It's quite probably legal to record and (non-commercially) play short, representative samples from copyrighted work. I suspect creating and distributing those samples in such a manner that they can be reconstituted into the entire work, is legally dubious.
This is a decent discussion of Fair Use.
Your assertion that the cold war was won with dollars is correct. Your assertion that Star Wars played a big part in this is incorrect. By the time SDI was a big deal, the Soviets were already in dire economic straits. Plus they knew what we know now: we're a long way technologically from fielding a broadly effective strategic missile defense (for the record, I think we should spend more money on it and I also believe that a defense system which can stop a small number of missles is useful in a world with North Koreas, to name one, in it).
Calling dente (sic) "basically a welfare program" means you don't know much about detente, or US/USSR relations.
This statement: "He had the forsight (sic) to know that overcoming evil, poverty and every other ill on this Earth involved investment in technology." is just bizarre. Even if you're simple enough to buy the "Evil Empire" rhetoric, does it look like our massive, massive investment in military technology has overcome poverty, and "every other ill on this Earth"?
I thought he was a decent president at the time, but let's not kid ourselves and suggest that he had the intellectual capacity to write or fully understand the quote to which you're responding. Even in his best mental condtion, this is not a man who traded on his intellect or insight.
.. but they don't work. Back to DEET for me.
Well ... I kind of agree. I've been on Slashdot for quite a while - it seems to me that Slashdot moderation is exactly what one would expect from the Slashdot reader demographic; in large part capricious, reactionary and immature. While there are some posts moderated as trolls because the moderators disagree, there are a lot of posts moderated as trolls because they're trolls.
;-)
I'll still suggest that simply holding an opinion doesn't mean you're not a troll. And I still hold that saying "I'm not a troll" means "I am a troll" about 95% of the time.
That will remain my opinion until someone convinces me it is incorrect.
Cheers.
IMHO, you're dramatically overstating the the decline of the home-user market. I suggest your "naiive users" category is a whole lot bigger than you think.
Similarly, your asessment of how organizations buy software is misinformed. There's lots and lots of marketing (even when the vendor is being contacted directly) and lots and lots of off-the-shelf software being sold among businesses. Site licenses are common, but by no means ubiquitous.
I work for a large software company that sells directly to customers for the most part, and has long relationships with our clients. Marketing is everywhere. Even between companies with long histories, customers still expect to go to trade shows and be sweet talked and see glossy brochures advertising the latest features. Marketing is an end in an of itself - you don't have to create a product that people need, you just have to convince people that they need the product you create. It sucks, to be sure, but it's a tried and true rule of business. Our particular software market is measured in 10s of billions of dollars at the moment and will inevitably grow in the future.
End result: there's still a sizeable market for this book.
That being said, if anyone says "tarchitecture" to my face, I'm punching 'em in the nose.
BTW: If you have to say "THIS IS NOT A TROLL. I'm serious." you just might be a little trollish. My advice is to rethink your post - either you're a genius and the troll-labelling fools just haven't caught up, or you just think you are.
There is no noun that can't be verbed.
I love C programming. C++ and Java are lots of fun. But IF you want something done right the first time, assembly and careful thought is the only answer...
You gotta be fucking kidding me. In the commercial software world (read: the world we're talking about here), this statement is a blazing sign in 40-foot high letters that you don't know what you're talking about.
So even if I hadn't read the rest of your "asked and answered in the article, interspersed with nonsense" questions, I'd know you weren't going to read the article and would instead post garbled over-generalizations mixed with random MS bitches.
The sad part is that you fooled enough people to be a +5 Insightful rating. Maybe they're all halfway through their first assembly class too.
I don't understand why it's such a problem for you to know if you're going to move, copy or create a shortcut to an item when you drag and drop it.
The cursor changes to show you what you're doing. If there's a little plus sign, you're copying. If there's a "shortcut arrow" then you're creating a shortcut and if there's just the gray box, then you're moving. It seems simple enough to me.
I agree that it would be preferable to have the drag and drop always move unless modified by a key press, but knowing the result of a drag and drop is, IMHO, sufficiently obvious.
I had a roommate who had a simliar experience - being a creduluous guy, he bought on eBay, for something like $650, a video tape copy of a Japanese Twin Peaks laser disc that doesn't really exist. Said seller pocketed the cash and abandoned the email addresses. The roommate, driven by a "very agressive" girlfriend made a several hundred mile detour on a road trip, showed up at the seller's house (googled it - the scammer used his real name) and browbeat him into returning the money.
Of course, good for them. When scammed, getting the scammer back is a virtue. But the real virtue is not putting yourself in that position. Don't sell expensive items COD. Don't spend $650 for a tape of a laser disc which the fan community says doesn't exist. I'm happy the Mac guy got his satisfaction but a "4.0 Honor Student" (aside : my father always said - don't trust people who are always the heroes of their stories) should have enough brains to realize that COD is a dumb way to sell computers and he also should've realized that when you deposit a $3000 check from someone you don't know, you wait for it to clear before using the cash.
Nope. Cause a non-police guy set it up. No such thing as entrapment if it's done between private citizens (who aren't directly acting for the police).
Sorry to continue the pedantry, but unless "Pedants: Think about it on a different level" means "Ignore the fact that although I'm invoking mathematics, I'm ignoring it" I still don't get it. If you mean Price to Performance, then you're saying that Linux has a price, but it's performance is 0?
Please enlighten me(us).
You're neglecting drag (except when you're talking about vaporizing the projectile). Breaking a reasonably aerodynamic projectile in to decidedly non-aerodynamically optimized parts will seriously change the course of the object. If you're just trying to get an artillery shell to miss it's intended target, breaking it in two would almost certainly be sufficient. Try throwing a tennis ball then half a tennis ball for something of an example.
What's your point exactly? That Slasdot should have no higher aspiration than to be Microsoft?
.. the first rule of aerial surveillance is to make yourself look like a huge flying lizard. That's also why you saw all those CIA guys in Afghanistan dressed up in the Tyranasaur suits.
Incidentally, I assume you're talking about the 18-foot pterodactyl captured in the IMAX film On the Wing in 1986. It was built by Paul McReady, who also built the Gossamer Condor, the world's first human-powered aircraft.
You can buy (somewhat) similar models here