I dare someone to give me an explanation of why this isn't a total waste of time and effort. Shouldn't you geeks be jamming these spare cycles into some distributed whatchama-fuck, like SETI@home, protein research, or at least crypto?
Webster and most style guides didn't consider email to be a word, either, a few years ago. I would argue that since people use it as a word, it is language, just as 'w00t' is gamer lingo, and 'farking' is a meaningful adjective on FARK.com.
Re:What it'll do for me
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
One word: rollerblades. No, wait, let me add another: bicycle.
$3000 is far, far less efficient than the $100 you'd pay for either of those. Naysayers, or more precisely me, are arguing that this is laziness because quite frankly, it is. It may be more efficient than walking, but already existing devices (like rollerlbades and bicycles) are already more efficient than IT. As one clever slashdotter has already commented, it's "a brute-force solution for a non-existent problem".
Re:Jesus Fucking Christ
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
Developing countries could probably better afford $50 pairs of rollerblades than $3000 'personal people-moving devices'. Hell, they'd even save money on their health bills when their citizens got exercise and thusly did not become total lard-asses. Interestingly enough, the lazy-ass college fucker and the wage-slave SUV driver could ALSO use rollerblades, or even a bicycle (that's called 0ld-sk00l, folks) and not only would they get exercise and save $2950, they'd also not look like lazy yuppie dickheads riding around on scooters!
Re:Begging Questions and Urban Planning
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
Save yourself $2900 and get a good pair of rollerblades. Those come with free exercise, too, if you use them. Not only will you not look like a total dork, but anyone who would even consider dropping three grand on a motorized scooter just because it 'never falls down' definitely needs the exercise and resultant increased bloodflow to their empty, empty head.
Re:What it'll do for me
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 1
It's not that big a deal, really. All it will do is enable me to:
Use public transportation again to slowly make up for the $3000 I just wasted on a scooter.
Save about $4000 a year on parking fees in Boston, because without the scooter I would have never thought to take the bus, my rollerblades, or god-forbid WALK...
Move around while performing absolutely no exercise! Well, except when I have to lug it up the stairs, but that'll only be because no-one will let me in the elevator because my scooter will make me look like a total loser.
...little things like that. So I don't see what the hype is all about either. I mean come on, it doesn't even dress me or change my diapers!
Come on folks, this is just a very high-tech, low-cost motorized wheelchair. It's not for people that don't have trouble walking. Look at the inventor's previous innovations - this is another in a long line of excellent products designed to help people who need them, not you, you lazy lazy geek.
You don't get broadband unless it's provided in your area or you want to pay the big bucks for a dedicated line.
...or you live in Canada. Cable can be hard to get outside of cities but you have to live out in the boonies to not be able to get DSL. Cable and DSL are both still 40.00 CDN up here, coincidentally, which is about enough to pay for a Big Mac in the states. Not paying the extra $10 to get broadband over dial-up is nuts up here, especially considering the hidden costs of dial-up (busy lines, not-necessarily-unlimited access etc.).
If I were doing much heavy programming in Java, I'd be using Netbeans . It's high-power and open-source. I'm not doing much heavy programming in Java though.
At the university I use Metrowerk's Codewarrior . It's very good, although both features and speed seem sub-par compared to Netbeans. It's closed-source, coincidently.
My personal favorite, though, is Arachnophilia . I don't need an IDE with gobs of features for the light programming I do; Arachnophilia is a multifaceted IDE that does Java, HTML, C++ and a few other common languages (albeit in small portions). It's fast enough for my work, too.
However, unlike most liberals, he realised that that's not good and came clean.
And went on to nice happy honest things like fraud and political corruption. More likely than him 'realising that was not good' his friends just got fed up at him never using any of daddy's cash to chip in and ditched him... the frickin' mooch.
Or even better, they could attempt to use genuine scientific method, and establish a reasonable control group instead of kids plugging away at math. That's like performing a study on whether or not playing Dance-Dance Revolution gets you in shape, comparing it to a vigorous aerobic and weight-training program, and then saying 'it only helped the legs, and only a little. dance-dance is killing our kids.'.
A conclusion that, taking into account how contorted his published conclusion was, he would have published instead had he actually 'hoped to find it'. Pushing to either end of the spectrum is bad science, because it's bias no matter what your intentions were. He mixed opinion with fact instead of properly extrapolating from his statistics. The fact that he had no control group, and the fact that he tested not one but two variables (video game playing and performing arithmetic) on only two groups attests to his poor use (if not total lack of) the scientific method.
But the problem with TV isn't that it itself warps the minds of children. It's that in encourages parental lazyness. Why bother talking to your kids or playing ball when you can sit the sprites in front of the tube and go have a smoke? The only good parenting done these days is by (the few and rapidly disappearing) good parents. Back in the 'good ole days' you at least had to say something to your kids every few hours.
Now we've got the same thing going on with computer games. The kid gets on the 'net and stops making noise, so Mom and Pop head to the living room to watch Jerry Springer... not taking into account that kids are pretty good at getting into whatever they want on the 'net. Remember the Dilbert strip ('I hope that's not the sound of little eyes getting really big?')? Yeah. Your six-year-old probably shouldn't be playing Counterstrike, just as he shouldn't be watching Oz. Probably the only good point that the article hits on is that environment does affect development (although that's certainly old news) and the logical extension is that bad parenting hurts children. Lazy parents are bad parents./endrant
There's no way watching/experiencing something non-chemical can actually halt the development of your mind.
I'm sure the millions of people afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder will love to hear that.
The issue isn't that environment doesn't affect development - if you're trying to argue that, you might want to read up on your psychology, because it'd be an uphill battle. The reason this article is 'bullshit' is that playing a game of soccer or climbing trees or what the-fuck-ever kids did before Atari had pretty much the same effect on their brains - no kid in his right mind is going to sit at home doing arithmetic for thrills. Maybe a kid in his wrong mind, but all the math in the world won't help those poor souls.
Seemingly the only problem I ever find with these studies: people keep drawing whatever conclusion they want from their studies. But before I even get into that, let's all have a good laugh at this:
In contrast, arithmetic stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe - the area of the brain most associated with learning, memory and emotion.
Right. I knew a few kids who performed arithmetic for fun when I was a kid... I think I'd rather trust the mad-leet-Quake player's social skills. At least he does some talk (albeit trash-talking).
First off, let's take into account that the area of the frontal lobe associated with self-control is not the same area excercised while performing arithmetic (unless arithmetic frustrates you so much that you want to break things, at which point your self control might be slightly exercised). Second, let's assume - just for a minute - that the areas worked while playing video games - only... the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement' - are actually pretty important. I like being able to see things, and efficiently have information go from eyes to brain. Likewise spatial perception, fast reflexes, quick thinking... all things that video gaming improves... are also pretty important. Even if you don't drive.
Acting impulsively is not a bad thing. Maybe it's just some cultural bias in the study, I don't know, but having too much restraint causes a lot of stress to many people these days, who can't even drive themselves to do simple things like asking out a co-worker / meet new people / try a new job etc. etc.. The only problem with playing video games, IMO, is that if you play them excessively you're missing out on more intense social interaction and physical exercise. That wouldn't be a problem for today's youth if their parents would get them into a game of soccer or go do something interesting with them. As I see it, this is just yet another attempt by the PTBs to blame problems in our world on our kids, and to point the finger at the media to do it. Weren't people concerned in the 50's that rock music would turn us all into anti-social vagabonds?
The problem I have with a lot of old game music is that the volume isn't tapered at the end, so it just drops off. Even better than the original music, however, are some remixes; Overclocked Remix has quite a few good ones, and they've just redone the layout on their site to make things easier to find (although the downloads can be a bit slow). I recommend the c64vibe remix of the good ole Arkanoid music, myself.
Most of the later Squaresoft rpgs were released with full soundtracks, as well, most of which you can probably find on ebay.
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Re:The Great Microsoft Problem
on
Windows in 2020
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· Score: 1
The overwhelming problem here isn't just that some companies are good at making their products. It's that when you push economies to extremes, with one company having most of the market share, and mix in the media, capitalism begins to disintegrate.
linux exists, mac exists, that is enough to dispell the idea that microsoft will win in the end. there are alternatives - not big ones - and that is all that capitalism can "guarantee".
The fact of the matter is that this would be enough to keep things going if every consumer was informed. One of the axioms of a functioning capitalist system is that the consumer will try to do what is best for them, and that includes being informed about what they're purchasing. Well, that doesn't happen. Average consumers are either too lazy to research OS's before they go out to buy their new PC, or the thought hasn't occured to them that other OS's do exist because M$ has the only major media coverage. Gauging the average computer consumer from a Slashdot reader is not a good idea - the fact that we're here reading is enough to prove that we like to be informed, but not everyone reads Slashdot.
secondly, microsoft, coke, wotc, rambus, intel - they're all at the top of their respective markets because they give people what they want.
No they don't. I haven't upgraded out of 98se because I don't want what The Soft is cooking. I prefer Jones to Coke. Rdram is too expensive and other types are beginning to catch up. Intel forces me to use rdram if I want a P4 and they won't be compatible with the nforce chipset. I like what WoTC makes, but I have nothing to compare against because all the major collectibles and role-playing companies are dead (with the exception of White Wolf and Palladium, who don't make enough to make a difference anymore). The fact of that matter is that capitalism has become a hegemonic system where they can control the average consumer's demand through...
they create demand through hammering their product over any media outlet 24/7
...oh good, I was worried I'd have to debunk your argument, but you don't seem to need the help.
linux does not answer the demand of a large enough audience for it to rival microsoft
But actually, it does. Most users of computers these days do only a few things with them - word processing, maybe a bit of quickbooks, web surfing, email, instant messaging. You can do these just as easily, if not more so, with Linux as with M$.
that point is one i cannot hammer home enough. microsoft provides software that is easy to navigate, an os which is unparallel in simplicity, and the best web browser that i can think of offhand. amd and intel make beautiful chips at low prices. coke and pepsi have good pop. wotc knows how to make games. that is why the list goes on and on, because those companies are unrivaled in the quality that consumers want
Excuse me while I choke on my Mountain Dew. Microsoft's OS's are not what everyone wants. I'm sure Joe Consumer loved getting Code Red 1 through 3 and not knowing what the hell was going on, especially when the media starting spewing nonsense. AMD and Intel are both lagging and would be improving their quality and lowering their prices at a much higher rate if they had other competitors. Coke and Pepsi have horrible pop, which you probably wouldn't realize because you have nothing good to weigh against. WoTC makes good games, but again has no large competitor to be compared to. Do you see a pattern here? With no diversity, the economy goes from capitalism to a planned economy... a very shoddy, corrupt type of it. The list does go on and on, because there are some major problems with our economic system that need to be addressed.
thirdly, the us is not a pure capitalist state
The United States of America is the world's most capitalist nation. Next?
the ability to destroy competitors who improve on your product, for example, is a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to protect businesses by stifling innovation
Evidence of the fact that capitalism is suffering some major problems. This reminds me of a recent case between the USofA and Canada. Canadian softwood producers on the west coast were operating more efficiently and turning greater profits than those in Washington, so the United States accused the Canadian government of granting subsidies (proved to be false) and levied a tax against them, costing tens of thousands of Canadian jobs and nearly destroying the Canadian softwood industry. This is exactly the same problem, on a larger scale: those with more market share, capital, or whatever you'd like to call it, get to cheat on the rules of capitalism.
the kind of doomsday scenario given in the article will only happen when linux is wiped off the face of the earth, and it won't be
You do realize that if for example Code Red had been given more malicious, damaging code, it could have exploited the IIS hole to basically destroy the internet by taking out a huge chunk at letting it bleed? The corn analogy from the article is EXACTLY correct. Right 95% of the corn on the internet comes from one stock, and if a corn bug wipes 95% of the field out, we will not be able to feed ourselves on the other 5%.
after all, i personally favor letting idiots not wear their seatbelts so that when they crash into something going 60 mph, their stupidity will be removed from this earth
It's a good thing your rant just ended, because that was the sickest, most amoral thing I've read on/. today. You just went from having an interesting argument to having a very sick social problem... but hey, thanks for coming out.
Most people reading this can choose things other than Windows, because they are skilled enough to convert file formats, configure devices, etc.
I'm not. If I was using this thing for something useful, maybe, but I can't seem to get all my games to work...
Which is, of course, because most people who use their computers for games don't care enough about them to choose non-ms. That means that most games aren't give *nix compatibility until months after they're released these days... the lack of diversity in the commercial os market (let's face it, Linux isn't a major commercial os for anything other than servers, because most have never even heard of it) means that people who make the software don't have to be flexible.
It's similar to this: Let's say Ford changed the way they build wheels, so that you needed a special type of tire to fit on them. Let's also say (bear with me here) that Ford somehow built themselves up to contain 97% or so of the market share for vehicles. That means that tire producers would not only have to make their tires Ford-compatible, but might decide to save money and not bother to make them compatible with the other 3% of vehicles.
Well, that's my beleagured analogy. I forgot where I was going with this, so I'm going to end it now.
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The Great Microsoft Problem
on
Windows in 2020
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· Score: 5, Insightful
To me, the great Microsoft problem seems to be part of a larger, greater problem: capitalism bogging down.
The basic tenet of a capitalist, free-enterprise system is that through competition and the invisible hand of supply-demand, products and productivity will constantly improve and thus society as a whole will prosper.
This, obviously, isn't happening.
Microsoft has no strong commercial competitors. AMD and Intel are the only major processor makers for PCs. Nobody can touch Rambus' stuff. No one sells cola at the same price as Coke or Pepsi that is any better. Wizards of the Coast has the only big CCG. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the large new corps have managed to warp the capitalist system with their own money. Theorectically no one in one of the modern capitalist countries, especially a hardcore capitalist one like America, should be able to strangle the market for their goods like Microsoft does or Rambus almost did - what needs a patch for our problems is not M$ but modern capitalism, and I don't like the way things are going, because in that path the only major wake-up call may turn out to be...
Are often horrible, demeaning work. Getting a better job requires contacts, yes, but making contacts is a much more useful skill than flipping burgers. Small businesses often do not need career-type positions filled, rather they need 'a tech guy' to fix their computers after they hit them / delete system files / plug things in the wrong holes / install a microsoft product.
My first job was at McDonalds, and it most certainly will help me down the road, though it won't be on my resume. I learned nothing about the job market or the workplace in general - rather, I learned how far you could push your boss before you got fired. If you can't work up the contacts to get a 'tech job' like you want part-time, then at least get something better than the service industry - those jobs are for the people in your classes who are pushing through with C- averages. At least work something real; I did construction at 16 and processing in a meat plant at 17 before I did tech support (@17). McDonalds is a fantasy-land extension of your education: they'll try and pound the same inflexible robot-programming into you that you probably have got at school (unless you lucked out and hit some good teachers) when what you need is a dynamic job that excercises thought - assembly line work at the local burger joint will just indoctrinate you into the hive-mind with everyone else.
Rather than conjuring images of the impossible (by our current paradigm) a more logical step would have been to assume the simpler explanation, as Occam would. Paramagnetism is not a new concept; non-ferrous materials can undergo coercion (heh, that's an interesting use of the word) by magnetic fields, although it's weak. From what the paper says, it seems far more likely that the high energy involved is manipulating a quirk of paramagnetism, as one would expect, rather than creating some 'new force'. Just my two bits 1/0.
If you check the news and screenies at DiabloII.net you will find that in the D2X, Blizzard IS including an 800x600 resolution mode. Woot! The bad news is that most of the news abilities don't have much in the way of flashy graphics (Druid's summon and form change aside). For example, the assassin skills all look like the sorceress skills. Seriously, check the screenies.
Slashdot Mirror
I dare someone to give me an explanation of why this isn't a total waste of time and effort. Shouldn't you geeks be jamming these spare cycles into some distributed whatchama-fuck, like SETI@home, protein research, or at least crypto?
3l337 reads the same, phonetically, as 'elite' to me, which does make so much more sense. Obviously.
Webster and most style guides didn't consider email to be a word, either, a few years ago. I would argue that since people use it as a word, it is language, just as 'w00t' is gamer lingo, and 'farking' is a meaningful adjective on FARK.com.
That's '3L337'. 'Leete' doesn't make any sense.
One word: rollerblades. No, wait, let me add another: bicycle.
$3000 is far, far less efficient than the $100 you'd pay for either of those. Naysayers, or more precisely me, are arguing that this is laziness because quite frankly, it is. It may be more efficient than walking, but already existing devices (like rollerlbades and bicycles) are already more efficient than IT. As one clever slashdotter has already commented, it's "a brute-force solution for a non-existent problem".
Developing countries could probably better afford $50 pairs of rollerblades than $3000 'personal people-moving devices'. Hell, they'd even save money on their health bills when their citizens got exercise and thusly did not become total lard-asses. Interestingly enough, the lazy-ass college fucker and the wage-slave SUV driver could ALSO use rollerblades, or even a bicycle (that's called 0ld-sk00l, folks) and not only would they get exercise and save $2950, they'd also not look like lazy yuppie dickheads riding around on scooters!
Save yourself $2900 and get a good pair of rollerblades. Those come with free exercise, too, if you use them. Not only will you not look like a total dork , but anyone who would even consider dropping three grand on a motorized scooter just because it 'never falls down' definitely needs the exercise and resultant increased bloodflow to their empty, empty head.
Come on folks, this is just a very high-tech, low-cost motorized wheelchair. It's not for people that don't have trouble walking. Look at the inventor's previous innovations - this is another in a long line of excellent products designed to help people who need them, not you, you lazy lazy geek.
You don't get broadband unless it's provided in your area or you want to pay the big bucks for a dedicated line.
...or you live in Canada. Cable can be hard to get outside of cities but you have to live out in the boonies to not be able to get DSL. Cable and DSL are both still 40.00 CDN up here, coincidentally, which is about enough to pay for a Big Mac in the states. Not paying the extra $10 to get broadband over dial-up is nuts up here, especially considering the hidden costs of dial-up (busy lines, not-necessarily-unlimited access etc.).
If I were doing much heavy programming in Java, I'd be using Netbeans . It's high-power and open-source. I'm not doing much heavy programming in Java though.
At the university I use Metrowerk's Codewarrior . It's very good, although both features and speed seem sub-par compared to Netbeans. It's closed-source, coincidently.
My personal favorite, though, is Arachnophilia . I don't need an IDE with gobs of features for the light programming I do; Arachnophilia is a multifaceted IDE that does Java, HTML, C++ and a few other common languages (albeit in small portions). It's fast enough for my work, too.
And went on to nice happy honest things like fraud and political corruption. More likely than him 'realising that was not good' his friends just got fed up at him never using any of daddy's cash to chip in and ditched him... the frickin' mooch.
Or even better, they could attempt to use genuine scientific method, and establish a reasonable control group instead of kids plugging away at math. That's like performing a study on whether or not playing Dance-Dance Revolution gets you in shape, comparing it to a vigorous aerobic and weight-training program, and then saying 'it only helped the legs, and only a little. dance-dance is killing our kids.'.
A conclusion that, taking into account how contorted his published conclusion was, he would have published instead had he actually 'hoped to find it'. Pushing to either end of the spectrum is bad science, because it's bias no matter what your intentions were. He mixed opinion with fact instead of properly extrapolating from his statistics. The fact that he had no control group, and the fact that he tested not one but two variables (video game playing and performing arithmetic) on only two groups attests to his poor use (if not total lack of) the scientific method.
And yeah, I read the fucking article. Thanks.
The older I get the more I appreciate the wisdom in "act"... something a lot of people never get to, because they spend too much time thinking.
Now we've got the same thing going on with computer games. The kid gets on the 'net and stops making noise, so Mom and Pop head to the living room to watch Jerry Springer... not taking into account that kids are pretty good at getting into whatever they want on the 'net. Remember the Dilbert strip ('I hope that's not the sound of little eyes getting really big?')? Yeah. Your six-year-old probably shouldn't be playing Counterstrike, just as he shouldn't be watching Oz. Probably the only good point that the article hits on is that environment does affect development (although that's certainly old news) and the logical extension is that bad parenting hurts children. Lazy parents are bad parents. /endrant
I'm sure the millions of people afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder will love to hear that.
The issue isn't that environment doesn't affect development - if you're trying to argue that, you might want to read up on your psychology, because it'd be an uphill battle. The reason this article is 'bullshit' is that playing a game of soccer or climbing trees or what the-fuck-ever kids did before Atari had pretty much the same effect on their brains - no kid in his right mind is going to sit at home doing arithmetic for thrills. Maybe a kid in his wrong mind, but all the math in the world won't help those poor souls.
In contrast, arithmetic stimulated brain activity in both the left and right hemispheres of the frontal lobe - the area of the brain most associated with learning, memory and emotion.
Right. I knew a few kids who performed arithmetic for fun when I was a kid... I think I'd rather trust the mad-leet-Quake player's social skills. At least he does some talk (albeit trash-talking).
First off, let's take into account that the area of the frontal lobe associated with self-control is not the same area excercised while performing arithmetic (unless arithmetic frustrates you so much that you want to break things, at which point your self control might be slightly exercised). Second, let's assume - just for a minute - that the areas worked while playing video games - only... the parts of the brain associated with vision and movement' - are actually pretty important. I like being able to see things, and efficiently have information go from eyes to brain. Likewise spatial perception, fast reflexes, quick thinking... all things that video gaming improves... are also pretty important. Even if you don't drive.
Acting impulsively is not a bad thing. Maybe it's just some cultural bias in the study, I don't know, but having too much restraint causes a lot of stress to many people these days, who can't even drive themselves to do simple things like asking out a co-worker / meet new people / try a new job etc. etc.. The only problem with playing video games, IMO, is that if you play them excessively you're missing out on more intense social interaction and physical exercise. That wouldn't be a problem for today's youth if their parents would get them into a game of soccer or go do something interesting with them. As I see it, this is just yet another attempt by the PTBs to blame problems in our world on our kids, and to point the finger at the media to do it. Weren't people concerned in the 50's that rock music would turn us all into anti-social vagabonds?
Most of the later Squaresoft rpgs were released with full soundtracks, as well, most of which you can probably find on ebay.
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linux exists, mac exists, that is enough to dispell the idea that microsoft will win in the end. there are alternatives - not big ones - and that is all that capitalism can "guarantee".
The fact of the matter is that this would be enough to keep things going if every consumer was informed. One of the axioms of a functioning capitalist system is that the consumer will try to do what is best for them, and that includes being informed about what they're purchasing. Well, that doesn't happen. Average consumers are either too lazy to research OS's before they go out to buy their new PC, or the thought hasn't occured to them that other OS's do exist because M$ has the only major media coverage. Gauging the average computer consumer from a Slashdot reader is not a good idea - the fact that we're here reading is enough to prove that we like to be informed, but not everyone reads Slashdot.
secondly, microsoft, coke, wotc, rambus, intel - they're all at the top of their respective markets because they give people what they want. No they don't. I haven't upgraded out of 98se because I don't want what The Soft is cooking. I prefer Jones to Coke. Rdram is too expensive and other types are beginning to catch up. Intel forces me to use rdram if I want a P4 and they won't be compatible with the nforce chipset. I like what WoTC makes, but I have nothing to compare against because all the major collectibles and role-playing companies are dead (with the exception of White Wolf and Palladium, who don't make enough to make a difference anymore). The fact of that matter is that capitalism has become a hegemonic system where they can control the average consumer's demand through...
they create demand through hammering their product over any media outlet 24/7
...oh good, I was worried I'd have to debunk your argument, but you don't seem to need the help.
linux does not answer the demand of a large enough audience for it to rival microsoft
But actually, it does. Most users of computers these days do only a few things with them - word processing, maybe a bit of quickbooks, web surfing, email, instant messaging. You can do these just as easily, if not more so, with Linux as with M$.
that point is one i cannot hammer home enough. microsoft provides software that is easy to navigate, an os which is unparallel in simplicity, and the best web browser that i can think of offhand. amd and intel make beautiful chips at low prices. coke and pepsi have good pop. wotc knows how to make games. that is why the list goes on and on, because those companies are unrivaled in the quality that consumers want
Excuse me while I choke on my Mountain Dew. Microsoft's OS's are not what everyone wants. I'm sure Joe Consumer loved getting Code Red 1 through 3 and not knowing what the hell was going on, especially when the media starting spewing nonsense. AMD and Intel are both lagging and would be improving their quality and lowering their prices at a much higher rate if they had other competitors. Coke and Pepsi have horrible pop, which you probably wouldn't realize because you have nothing good to weigh against. WoTC makes good games, but again has no large competitor to be compared to. Do you see a pattern here? With no diversity, the economy goes from capitalism to a planned economy... a very shoddy, corrupt type of it. The list does go on and on, because there are some major problems with our economic system that need to be addressed.
thirdly, the us is not a pure capitalist state
The United States of America is the world's most capitalist nation. Next?
the ability to destroy competitors who improve on your product, for example, is a particularly ugly piece of legislation designed to protect businesses by stifling innovation
Evidence of the fact that capitalism is suffering some major problems. This reminds me of a recent case between the USofA and Canada. Canadian softwood producers on the west coast were operating more efficiently and turning greater profits than those in Washington, so the United States accused the Canadian government of granting subsidies (proved to be false) and levied a tax against them, costing tens of thousands of Canadian jobs and nearly destroying the Canadian softwood industry. This is exactly the same problem, on a larger scale: those with more market share, capital, or whatever you'd like to call it, get to cheat on the rules of capitalism.
the kind of doomsday scenario given in the article will only happen when linux is wiped off the face of the earth, and it won't be
You do realize that if for example Code Red had been given more malicious, damaging code, it could have exploited the IIS hole to basically destroy the internet by taking out a huge chunk at letting it bleed? The corn analogy from the article is EXACTLY correct. Right 95% of the corn on the internet comes from one stock, and if a corn bug wipes 95% of the field out, we will not be able to feed ourselves on the other 5%.
after all, i personally favor letting idiots not wear their seatbelts so that when they crash into something going 60 mph, their stupidity will be removed from this earth
It's a good thing your rant just ended, because that was the sickest, most amoral thing I've read on /. today. You just went from having an interesting argument to having a very sick social problem... but hey, thanks for coming out.
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Which is, of course, because most people who use their computers for games don't care enough about them to choose non-ms. That means that most games aren't give *nix compatibility until months after they're released these days... the lack of diversity in the commercial os market (let's face it, Linux isn't a major commercial os for anything other than servers, because most have never even heard of it) means that people who make the software don't have to be flexible.
It's similar to this: Let's say Ford changed the way they build wheels, so that you needed a special type of tire to fit on them. Let's also say (bear with me here) that Ford somehow built themselves up to contain 97% or so of the market share for vehicles. That means that tire producers would not only have to make their tires Ford-compatible, but might decide to save money and not bother to make them compatible with the other 3% of vehicles.
Well, that's my beleagured analogy. I forgot where I was going with this, so I'm going to end it now.
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The basic tenet of a capitalist, free-enterprise system is that through competition and the invisible hand of supply-demand, products and productivity will constantly improve and thus society as a whole will prosper.
This, obviously, isn't happening.
Microsoft has no strong commercial competitors. AMD and Intel are the only major processor makers for PCs. Nobody can touch Rambus' stuff. No one sells cola at the same price as Coke or Pepsi that is any better. Wizards of the Coast has the only big CCG. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is that the large new corps have managed to warp the capitalist system with their own money. Theorectically no one in one of the modern capitalist countries, especially a hardcore capitalist one like America, should be able to strangle the market for their goods like Microsoft does or Rambus almost did - what needs a patch for our problems is not M$ but modern capitalism, and I don't like the way things are going, because in that path the only major wake-up call may turn out to be...
Hacked by Chinese!
{/rant)
My first job was at McDonalds, and it most certainly will help me down the road, though it won't be on my resume. I learned nothing about the job market or the workplace in general - rather, I learned how far you could push your boss before you got fired. If you can't work up the contacts to get a 'tech job' like you want part-time, then at least get something better than the service industry - those jobs are for the people in your classes who are pushing through with C- averages. At least work something real; I did construction at 16 and processing in a meat plant at 17 before I did tech support (@17). McDonalds is a fantasy-land extension of your education: they'll try and pound the same inflexible robot-programming into you that you probably have got at school (unless you lucked out and hit some good teachers) when what you need is a dynamic job that excercises thought - assembly line work at the local burger joint will just indoctrinate you into the hive-mind with everyone else.
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Rather than conjuring images of the impossible (by our current paradigm) a more logical step would have been to assume the simpler explanation, as Occam would. Paramagnetism is not a new concept; non-ferrous materials can undergo coercion (heh, that's an interesting use of the word) by magnetic fields, although it's weak. From what the paper says, it seems far more likely that the high energy involved is manipulating a quirk of paramagnetism, as one would expect, rather than creating some 'new force'. Just my two bits 1/0.
If you check the news and screenies at DiabloII.net you will find that in the D2X, Blizzard IS including an 800x600 resolution mode. Woot! The bad news is that most of the news abilities don't have much in the way of flashy graphics (Druid's summon and form change aside). For example, the assassin skills all look like the sorceress skills. Seriously, check the screenies.