> Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction.
Of course this is rubbish - crack'll screw me up. Software won't. Even if I buy my crack from the government or whoever makes it, it'll still screw me up.
> I have found that the instructors do their damned best to change the text as frequently as possible
Speaking as an instructor, I can tell you that changing a text (even a version of the text) is not something many instructors want to do. It means we have to rewrite support materials, lecture notes, etc.
Thing is, sometimes we *have* to change the text in order to keep up with technology. By your logic, we should keep using the same dusty 1973 edition of a networks book, simply so we don't have to change texts.
> Do what I did: round everyone's books up, pile them up in a parking lot on campus and set them on fire
If this is your solution, university and higher education obviously could do nothing to help you.
> they are currently investigating instructor "kick backs" from the text manufacturers. This is commonplace.
First, who is "they"?? How do you know this is commonplace?? This is speculation. In all my years of teaching I have *never* known of any kickbacks of any kind.
> The internet is a huge resource of mostly free material. There isn't any reason that text books can't go to the wayside.
And when you dislike something about the Internet, what will you burn then?
What irritates me about this entire/. discussion is the number of people who stride in here yelling about how the causality is unproven, as if it's some huge revelation that the scientific world hasn't yet caught on to.
Right now, we *can't* prove cause and effect for *anything*. All we can prove is correlation. That's IT. This is nothing new in the research world, and the authors of this piece know this (probably better than most of the people posting here).
For those of you who want to know why Linus pursues a monolithic kernel, have a read of the archived usenet debate between Andrew Tanenbaum and Linus from 1992:
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=12595%40 st ar.cs.vu.nl
What the other replies to this particularly incorrect post are missing is that if you steal a car (or even take it for a test drive, fraudulently or otherwise), the car is *no longer there*. You are depriving someone else of its use.
However, if I copy Photoshop, the original is still there. I haven't deprived anyone else of its use.
>But people bidding a couple thousand dollars to
>get a really nicely painted AMT/Ertl model that
>you can buy in any Kay-Bee Toy Store is quite
>funny
Ummmmm....it's an "Auction for America" - a *charity* auction. They're *donating* these items for a good cause, and people are buying in the spirit of *giving* to a good cause.
"You're nuts Mr Leno, that's just a cruddy motorbike - paying several thousand dollars to do the same thing any public transport system could do for fifty cents is really funny".
It's my contention that for complex topics such as comedy, we require people who can *teach*, not simply people who are *funny*. This is why, in many introductory courses, we use secondary and tertiary evidence: textbooks and things. Such sources help us understand the broad concepts in the discipline.
Later courses (such as graduate and post-graduate subjects) make more use of primary sources and research methods. At this point we have understood the fundamentals and it is now up to us to work out the more complex points for ourselves.
I understand the value of being able to examine a cadaver for medical purposes, or observe a real knight in action. But would you really want an introductory course to be based entirely on the unintelligible blitherings of an intoxicated drunk who may or may not even show up to class?
DD.
P.S. I was criticising your *post*, not *you* (and I maintain that the post, not the poster, is still stupid).
...yet you still read Slashdot, probably in a computer lab or at least in front of a glaring computer monitor. Instead, you could be outside in the shade of a tree with this technology.
Ummm...that's the point of the 'Digital Divide': that while some areas are technologically affluent, others can't even maintian a basic social service structure, let alone any kind of technology or telecommunications.
At last, a decent slap in the face to all those arrogant, arrogant, arrogant Linux users who, in the middle of a virus outbreak, would calmly say, "virii can't affect Linux boxen - not our problem!".
Virii and trojans are everyone's problem. The sooner we all (*nix/Windows/MacOX) work together to stamp them out, the closer we'll be to a resolution.
My guess is that sometimes, you don't want to use an umbrella - you want to take a cab. Likewise, sometimes, you don't want your wife, you want...er...something else.
Why don't we sell systems with two monitors so people can see if they're missing out on an expandable desktop?
Or a tape drive in case they don't know they're missing out on backups?
Or mandate a GeForce3 64 MB in case they don't know about games?
Making and supporting custom dual boot systems can be time consuming, certainly more so than installing just Windows, or just RedHat. Who's going to bear the extra staff costs? The user who requested the dual boot? That's a big meatball!
"...and we leave you tonight with scenes from the City of Houston where residents today were up in arms because of a 'bug' in their email. City commissioners last year elected to use Hotmail as their free mail provider only to find some 'hackers' are able to read users' email. Well, Tony, looks like all their base certainly don't belong to them!"
Er...that's why we use a blind peer review process: so neither party can tell the author of the paper.
Sounds like your Q-Mech teacher may have been cheesed off that they hadn't had any publications. Like the sloppy worker blaming their tools, it's easy for a disgruntled academic to blame the peer review process.
I'm not related to it, but it was the only place I could find the Megablast by Bomb the Bass from Xenon 2. Now all I need is someone to call me. Call, damnit!!
Slashdot Mirror
> Pirating software is like stealing crack from a drug dealer and pretending that it makes you free from addiction.
.sig is still incorrect.
Of course this is rubbish - crack'll screw me up. Software won't. Even if I buy my crack from the government or whoever makes it, it'll still screw me up.
An incorrect
> I am a lawyer, but this post is not legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship
The fact that you have to attach this to your post says a lot about your profession...
DD.
> I have found that the instructors do their damned best to change the text as frequently as possible
Speaking as an instructor, I can tell you that changing a text (even a version of the text) is not something many instructors want to do. It means we have to rewrite support materials, lecture notes, etc.
Thing is, sometimes we *have* to change the text in order to keep up with technology. By your logic, we should keep using the same dusty 1973 edition of a networks book, simply so we don't have to change texts.
> Do what I did: round everyone's books up, pile them up in a parking lot on campus and set them on fire
If this is your solution, university and higher education obviously could do nothing to help you.
> they are currently investigating instructor "kick backs" from the text manufacturers. This is commonplace.
First, who is "they"?? How do you know this is commonplace?? This is speculation. In all my years of teaching I have *never* known of any kickbacks of any kind.
> The internet is a huge resource of mostly free material. There isn't any reason that text books can't go to the wayside.
And when you dislike something about the Internet, what will you burn then?
DD.
What irritates me about this entire /. discussion is the number of people who stride in here yelling about how the causality is unproven, as if it's some huge revelation that the scientific world hasn't yet caught on to.
Right now, we *can't* prove cause and effect for *anything*. All we can prove is correlation. That's IT. This is nothing new in the research world, and the authors of this piece know this (probably better than most of the people posting here).
DD.
>you cannot SELL what you did not create.
So I can't sell my car? My house? My laptop?
Crumbs!
DD.
For those of you who want to know why Linus pursues a monolithic kernel, have a read of the archived usenet debate between Andrew Tanenbaum and Linus from 1992:
0 st ar.cs.vu.nl
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=12595%4
DD.
>Internet traffic has dropped over 50% since the raids
Wow - and I've started wearing dark blue socks again....hmmm...coincidence? I think not!!!
DD
What the other replies to this particularly incorrect post are missing is that if you steal a car (or even take it for a test drive, fraudulently or otherwise), the car is *no longer there*. You are depriving someone else of its use.
However, if I copy Photoshop, the original is still there. I haven't deprived anyone else of its use.
DD.
>But people bidding a couple thousand dollars to
>get a really nicely painted AMT/Ertl model that
>you can buy in any Kay-Bee Toy Store is quite
>funny
Ummmmm....it's an "Auction for America" - a *charity* auction. They're *donating* these items for a good cause, and people are buying in the spirit of *giving* to a good cause.
"You're nuts Mr Leno, that's just a cruddy motorbike - paying several thousand dollars to do the same thing any public transport system could do for fifty cents is really funny".
Sheesh.
DD.
The chaps over at the Annals of Improbable Research have done some experiments into USPS package handling:
Postal Experiments
Good reading!
SG.
I'm like you. I don't have a bible out, but I'm your age and in tears.
God have mercy on us all.
It's my contention that for complex topics such as comedy, we require people who can *teach*, not simply people who are *funny*. This is why, in many introductory courses, we use secondary and tertiary evidence: textbooks and things. Such sources help us understand the broad concepts in the discipline.
Later courses (such as graduate and post-graduate subjects) make more use of primary sources and research methods. At this point we have understood the fundamentals and it is now up to us to work out the more complex points for ourselves.
I understand the value of being able to examine a cadaver for medical purposes, or observe a real knight in action. But would you really want an introductory course to be based entirely on the unintelligible blitherings of an intoxicated drunk who may or may not even show up to class?
DD.
P.S. I was criticising your *post*, not *you* (and I maintain that the post, not the poster, is still stupid).
...yet you still read Slashdot, probably in a computer lab or at least in front of a glaring computer monitor. Instead, you could be outside in the shade of a tree with this technology.
DD
Ummm...that's the point of the 'Digital Divide': that while some areas are technologically affluent, others can't even maintian a basic social service structure, let alone any kind of technology or telecommunications.
DD.
At last, a decent slap in the face to all those arrogant, arrogant, arrogant Linux users who, in the middle of a virus outbreak, would calmly say, "virii can't affect Linux boxen - not our problem!".
Virii and trojans are everyone's problem. The sooner we all (*nix/Windows/MacOX) work together to stamp them out, the closer we'll be to a resolution.
>Why would anyone accept a professor teaching >comedy who was not a professional comedian?
This is quite possibly the most stupid comment I've ever read on Slashdot.
Do we ask a dead person about death? Must we speak with a medieval knight to learn about the Crusades? Or a drunk about intoxication?
Of course not.
Instead, we look for people who can synthesize the facts and present them to us in a way we can understand. We call them 'teachers'.
The punch line variation I've heard to this one is:
"That's the fifteenth gay rooster this month!"
DD.
My guess is that sometimes, you don't want to use an umbrella - you want to take a cab. Likewise, sometimes, you don't want your wife, you want...er...something else.
Or something.
DD
Why don't we sell systems with two monitors so people can see if they're missing out on an expandable desktop?
Or a tape drive in case they don't know they're missing out on backups?
Or mandate a GeForce3 64 MB in case they don't know about games?
Making and supporting custom dual boot systems can be time consuming, certainly more so than installing just Windows, or just RedHat. Who's going to bear the extra staff costs? The user who requested the dual boot? That's a big meatball!
and pr0n. Lots and lots of pr0n.
> The article did say that some people come in person?
Wow! That must be a REALLY good operating system!
"...and we leave you tonight with scenes from the City of Houston where residents today were up in arms because of a 'bug' in their email. City commissioners last year elected to use Hotmail as their free mail provider only to find some 'hackers' are able to read users' email. Well, Tony, looks like all their base certainly don't belong to them!"
Er...that's why we use a blind peer review process: so neither party can tell the author of the paper.
Sounds like your Q-Mech teacher may have been cheesed off that they hadn't had any publications. Like the sloppy worker blaming their tools, it's easy for a disgruntled academic to blame the peer review process.
DD
Arcade Tones
I'm not related to it, but it was the only place I could find the Megablast by Bomb the Bass from Xenon 2. Now all I need is someone to call me. Call, damnit!!
DD
Just as long as id doesn't forget about those of us who dig good, fun, singleplayer gameplay, as opposed to ho hum multiplayer. Don't tease me with release date shenanigans or release yesterday's product without doing something interesting to it.
Oh, and I ain't suckin' nothing down, neither.
DD