funny, but also sad, like the last thing is my dream on earth, what i wish for but never get - that so lame its unbelievable. go watch some porn.
sex is not just about sticking your thing somewhere. get a clue and read deida.com
i am always ALWAYS surprised how little people know about something that is pretty central to our existance [-obligatory/. spelling mistake]. how much do you know about computers or marketing - in terms of hours invested over a lifetime? or sports? and sex [watching porn does not count]? how imporant are these things really? match?
i like this idea: it's possible that Moore's Law actually is a law of nature, while quantum physics, general relativity and the speed of light are all theories that will crumble eventually.
keep in mind that the fundamental physics limitations are based on several physical theories - not absolute, god-given truths. we have come a long way since newton.
second, keep in mind that the current physical theories generally pose more questions than answers, e.g. we know that there are more things that we don't know than things that we know.
we must remember that our theories are useful tools for many things, but we must also remember that they are just theories. if we don't, then all we have done is replace God with Science.
my physics professor in College said to me "a good theory is one that can be proven wrong". i still don't quite understand what he meant by it, but maybe it was "i rather know something is wrong for sure than not know whether it's true or false - and theories, by their very nature, can never absolutely be proven true"
the difference between programming and multi threaded programming is that, of all people programming only about 20% have the skill required to do so, while of all people programming multi threaded, only 0.5% have the skill required to do so.
the rest sort of gets away with it because threading bugs are hard to find/debug. having looked at a lot of multi threaded programs in my time, i have yet to find one that i could prove to be bug free. and i find that i usually seem to understand the concept of parallel execution better than others.
iMode is successful, but it has nothing to do with WAP. where WAP uses stupid, isolationalist technology (see above. lots of people have already explained the problems with WAP having a whole new protocol stack rather than just using what's there, needing a gateway which makes it insecure, and lots of other little technical annoyances)...
anyways, where WAP uses stupid, isolationalist technology, iMode uses CHTML, which is a subset of HTML, and all the happy protocols from the internet we know and love. iMode, in a way, is what mobile internet should have been, maybe only version 0.8 of that, but a step in the right direction.
WAP is... hmm... crap.
I mean there are way worse things to worry about than whether or not you are censoring stuff off of the internet. I mean...why not just allow your daughter to go to an X-rated movie at the age of 11...I mean if you didn't allow it you would be censoring her right? Right?!
very well. you are beginning to understand.
seriously, i think people in this country - and it seems especially bad in this country, don't take offense - are way too focused on do's and don't's rather than on important matters like teaching your child to think.
in addition, they seem to be completely unable to deal with sex in any reasonable manner. it's like they are scared to death of... what exactly i don't know. their own emotions? having emotions in general? sweaty pictures? what exactly is so scary about sex movies? i find them a lot less damaging than, say, your average action movie where people get shot left and right and the important concept of revenge is taught.
back on topic: kids before puberty really don't have any relationship to sex as we know it. they just don't have the hormones. that doesn't mean they are going to turn into raging psychos after seeing a porn flick too early.
i also don't want to defend porn in general. mostly, it's a pretty bad quality story mixed with pretty standard-fare, lame-o, humpa humpa sex.
i think kids wouldn't even be very interested in sex movies if they were not "forbidden". same as with alcohol and tobacco - normal kids don't like the stuff and will not touch it.
for all parents: ask yourselves this: if you kid had to choose between a) a porn movie, b) a pack of cigarettes, c) a bottle of whiskey and d) play games with you, what would they choose? if the answer is not d, i would suppose something has already gone horribly wrong with the kid.
personally, i had all that stuff when i was a kid. i was never encouraged to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, but there was no ban on it, either. i also was pretty uninterested in my large collection of sex-educational books (which were so explicit they would be outlawed in probably more than half of the states here). i had other things in mind. the sex books were interesting - i read at least half of one before i got bored. alcohol tasted gross, same with cigarettes.
back to the 11 year old daughter and the x-rated movie: if you went with her, it would be a mixture of not understanding and being bored. it would be weirder for you than for her. it wouldn't be very helpful for her, but it wouldn't harm her. you could do much worse things, like sitting her down in front of the TV instead of spending time with her.
even though there are companies who are insistent on betting on the wrong horse, there is really nothing about this deal that scares me.
who cares about burning CDs anyways? i have no need for it. i have a computer, i have mp3 converting software pre-installed (thanks, apple), and i have a portable player capable of holding 150+ hours of music. none of these things is going to go away.
so... burning an hour of music? go away. put those CD burners in the closet, along with the 8-track and the stereo cassette player.
as for what to do about Roxio - i would suggest: sell their stock. now.
not true. the purpose of Unicode is to have one unique number (unique... maybe that's where the name is coming from) for each character on the planet.
e.g. all of chinese, korean, english (doesn't make a big dent), arabian (whoops - dunno what it's really called), etc has to fit in there.
there are not unicodes for every language. there is only one for all of them. i think the reason was to make things more simple.
... they should have used 32 bits to begin with...
it should be pretty obvious that unicode is for people who speak that language.
unicode's purpose is not to teach everyone how to read japanese or to make google's search engine read it (the latter could be done, though). it doesn't try to solve the problem of different languages on the planet.
as an english speaker, i find it pretty convenient that i can type and use english characters on my computer. as opposed to, say, japanese kanji - even though kanji is not all that hard to learn. what a concept... my own characters! wow!
photoshop is super-heavily optimized for AltiVec, but it's also super-heavily optimized for Intel's SSE.
unrelated bit of information: i once looked at developer documentation for both AltiVec and SSE - AltiVec is simple, logical, makes sense, and is relatively easy to use. SSE is completely insane and illogical, and requires assembler code.
maybe most of motorola's engineers were doing AltiVec, whereas most of Intel's upped MHz;-)
> But we can't afford to give Microsoft the
> benefit of the doubt in everything they do
exactly! exactly! giving a complete stranger the benefit of doubt is one thing - one thing i believe in very strongly, BTW.
giving Microsoft the benefit of doubt ist plain stupid. it's like giving benefit of doubt to the nazis, or saddam, or the Borg...
M$'s motivations have been known for more than 10 years now. they haven't changed. they won't change for as long as the company is successful - and why should they, they are making more money than anyone else.
what i am surprised about is companies cooperating with M$. it seems they should be able to tell from history that there are only 2 possible outcomes if cooperating with M$: 1) you get majorly screwed, or 2) you get bought out. i guess it must be the greed when staring at the pile of money that is M$.
i'd rather see a dubbed film than subtitles - if the dubbing is well done.
as for the "original intent of the fimmaker", the wonderful art, the will of god, and so on... well, looking at the bottom of the screen for the entire movie will not make it all that much better, believe me.
dubbing looks strange when you are not used to it - hey, the lips are out if sync!. but after about 2 films, you won't notice anymore.
the toshiba is quite impressive. but i would go for the powerbook anyways. as has been pointed out, it makes up for the missing features with others that the toshiba doesn't have - working location management for instance, firewire target disk mode, etc... but, most importantly, it looks way, way cool. irresistible, in fact. i would get the smaller version for $2349 - almost the same price as the toshiba.
granted, it plays Quake3 like crap, but for everything else it's a lot better;-)
i _assume_ that the tiBook is still so expensive because it's flying off the shelves, and apple is milking it for all it's worth. they have a huge margin on that thing.
nik
"The reason i came back to Apple is that i didn't want to have to use Windows for the rest of my life." - Steve Jobs
[jesus, what is this with/. that one cannot simply express support for an opinion without redundantly repeating the argument. a supportive yes! is neither trolling nor unimportant]
the work-ethics-theory is cute and certainly an important part of american mythology.
but, as it were, the entire computer industry and the internet - ALL of it - is based on DOD-funded R&D. the DOD provided 95% of the money at a time when IBM decided that there would be a world market for "five computers" (this is an actual quote... it's fairly famous so it should be easy to find on the web). DOD-money == government money.
a more likely theory, therefore, is that, while the US DOD is interested in faster computers, mobile phones are not interesting to the military. hence, no DOD $$$ for cell phones.
also, remember that most cell phones sold today are sold by finnish company nokia. and there is no government funding in finland.
- JWZ bought the club so it's going to be cool and technical and have little in common with the old DNA lounge.
- linux terminals are used
- there is a detailed, technical description of how they are made
- the article in question is several months old
- CowboyNeal [uh, time to leave the basement...]
also, as a reminder, having the word "Linux" in it is a perfectly good reason to post something on/.
if you don't like it, look for real news on the Onion or bbspot (both recommended).
i second the opinion. the picture in europe is even more comparable to the US - simply because the europeans are not generally gadget-freaks and the culture is more comparable to the US culture.
and still... LOTS and LOTS of phones sold there. maybe we still don't get the really cool japanese stuff, but it's close...
all your points are true for european cell phone plans as well. the only really hard difference to the States is the larger distance that needs to be covered here, but that's no excuse for poor coverage in any major population center like silicon valley or new york.
conclusion 1: american cell phone operators suck big time.
conclusion 2: there will be one that doesn't suck, and it will eat all the others alive. it's just a matter of time. maybe it will be one that's owned by deutsche telekom or NTT, maybe it will be an american one. but it will happen. the question is, why hasn't it happened already?
i recently went back to europe, back to my eu-cellphone. the difference to the states is unbelievable. clear, crisp quality. works everywhere, even when leaving the country, in the train, in the car, etc. batteries last forever. text messages are sent all over the place. everybody has a cell phone, you can just wander through the city, feel like having a coffe, call all your friends, some of which will then join you because they are in the area... the world becomes a smaller place.
ps: i use ATT here, and it S-U-C-K-S. example short message service (sending someone a text msg): in the states, that's $10 extra/month. so no one gets it. because no one has it. because it costs $10 AND no-one has it. in europe, that's free and included in every single phone sold. sending a message costs from 10 to 30 cents. duh.
quick counter-inspirion: i am impressed by the inspirion's price tag, but don't forget to mention it's absolutely HUGE and HEAVY (7.9 lb) - it's more like a mobile office - but not a laptop. it's easily twice the size of the iBook.
so i do drool over the 1400x1050 resolution on the low end option (! - the high end is 1600x1200 !), but i don't think i could put up with having this big ugly brick in my backpack. it has 2 fans for chrissake!! where is my peace and quiet?
missing ethernet and DVD are other minor details that were left out. these can be had for a few hundred bucks, tho.
warnings affect one pad only. the system doesn't let you have more than one [out of 4] pads loose. therefore, at any given point, 3 are safely attached [and unlikely to lose pressure]. you would not even get up there if they were not.
as for the empire state building - you better get up there in 25 minutes. that's as long as the batteries will last;-)
Nokia is a serious company, so i doubt this is vaporware. Nokia is generally very conservative with their money.
the big question is how do they plan to get developers to make games / applications for this device? Nokia has a history of disastrous developer relations. for instance, if you want to develop for a nokia phone, pretty much everything is proprietary or secret or costs tons of money. they would have to change that completely...
i come from a country where access to guns is restricted. and i think that's a _good thing_. it saves lives.
just recently, two kids had planned a shooting akin to columbine. they were captured before they could do any harm, and they will now - NO, not be locked up - be counseled. the entire school and much of the country is talking of what's behind the anger. no one is talking about video games, BTW.
the reason they were captured is that they couldn't get a gun in time. it took them several weeks to to try and get the gun on the black market. in america, they would have been stacked with military grade weaponry by that time.
guns don't kill people. but they certainly are neccessary to kill people.
of course, it's more important to discuss what is behind incidents like this. a bully-society? enormous pressure on teens to "make it" lest they be "losers" for the rest of their lives? general carelessness by parents? there is no easy answer, but the dialoge must start now.
sex is not violence. in fact, the one (reproductive, or just plain fun) has nothing to do with the other.
you might as well talk about the dangers of gardening and violence. there is a very clear line between the two. if you are not able to see that line, i am very sorry for you and you should probably seek counseling.
i totally agree with you that linux _could_ take out M$, and that time and effort spent on it would be a _good thing_.
however, linux already has one of the best kernels around. the most broken element of linux is the UI. it's basically - unless you are a command line freak in which case this point will be lost on you - complete crap. unuseable. unintuitive. competing standards.
a nightmare. your average non-geek will never look at it twice.
there is a good reason: linux is written by people who care more about the kernel than anything else. which is fine with me - linux can not lose the platform war because it's not even competing. it was always conceived as a system by hackers for hackers, and at this it's unrivaled.
if you want to go mass-market, you have to fix the UI first and foremost. eazel is trying to do this, but i think the linux community in general doesn't think of the UI as a problem that needs to be taken seriously.
the superior product will indeed win. lunix' kernel is already superior. usability, however, has a long way to go.
However as Joseph Campbell says in Hero With A Thousand Faces: "A schism in the body social, will not be resolved by any scheme of a return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death-the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new."
does anybody know more about Joseph Campbell? It's very interesting to see somebody straight out of my D&D-induced youth say something so profound - in a game magazine interview, of all things. does anybody know more about Joseph Campbell?
computer games will be an art form like film and books. the time is here.
Slashdot Mirror
funny, but also sad, like the last thing is my dream on earth, what i wish for but never get - that so lame its unbelievable. go watch some porn.
/. spelling mistake]. how much do you know about computers or marketing - in terms of hours invested over a lifetime? or sports? and sex [watching porn does not count]? how imporant are these things really? match?
sex is not just about sticking your thing somewhere. get a clue and read deida.com
i am always ALWAYS surprised how little people know about something that is pretty central to our existance [-obligatory
i like this idea: it's possible that Moore's Law actually is a law of nature, while quantum physics, general relativity and the speed of light are all theories that will crumble eventually.
not likely. but possible.
keep in mind that the fundamental physics limitations are based on several physical theories - not absolute, god-given truths. we have come a long way since newton.
second, keep in mind that the current physical theories generally pose more questions than answers, e.g. we know that there are more things that we don't know than things that we know.
we must remember that our theories are useful tools for many things, but we must also remember that they are just theories. if we don't, then all we have done is replace God with Science.
my physics professor in College said to me "a good theory is one that can be proven wrong". i still don't quite understand what he meant by it, but maybe it was "i rather know something is wrong for sure than not know whether it's true or false - and theories, by their very nature, can never absolutely be proven true"
the difference between programming and multi threaded programming is that, of all people programming only about 20% have the skill required to do so, while of all people programming multi threaded, only 0.5% have the skill required to do so.
the rest sort of gets away with it because threading bugs are hard to find/debug. having looked at a lot of multi threaded programs in my time, i have yet to find one that i could prove to be bug free. and i find that i usually seem to understand the concept of parallel execution better than others.
iMode is successful, but it has nothing to do with WAP. where WAP uses stupid, isolationalist technology (see above. lots of people have already explained the problems with WAP having a whole new protocol stack rather than just using what's there, needing a gateway which makes it insecure, and lots of other little technical annoyances)...
... hmm... crap.
anyways, where WAP uses stupid, isolationalist technology, iMode uses CHTML, which is a subset of HTML, and all the happy protocols from the internet we know and love. iMode, in a way, is what mobile internet should have been, maybe only version 0.8 of that, but a step in the right direction.
WAP is
I mean there are way worse things to worry about than whether or not you are censoring stuff off of the internet. I mean...why not just allow your daughter to go to an X-rated movie at the age of 11...I mean if you didn't allow it you would be censoring her right? Right?!
very well. you are beginning to understand.
seriously, i think people in this country - and it seems especially bad in this country, don't take offense - are way too focused on do's and don't's rather than on important matters like teaching your child to think.
in addition, they seem to be completely unable to deal with sex in any reasonable manner. it's like they are scared to death of... what exactly i don't know. their own emotions? having emotions in general? sweaty pictures? what exactly is so scary about sex movies? i find them a lot less damaging than, say, your average action movie where people get shot left and right and the important concept of revenge is taught.
back on topic: kids before puberty really don't have any relationship to sex as we know it. they just don't have the hormones. that doesn't mean they are going to turn into raging psychos after seeing a porn flick too early.
i also don't want to defend porn in general. mostly, it's a pretty bad quality story mixed with pretty standard-fare, lame-o, humpa humpa sex.
i think kids wouldn't even be very interested in sex movies if they were not "forbidden". same as with alcohol and tobacco - normal kids don't like the stuff and will not touch it.
for all parents: ask yourselves this: if you kid had to choose between a) a porn movie, b) a pack of cigarettes, c) a bottle of whiskey and d) play games with you, what would they choose? if the answer is not d, i would suppose something has already gone horribly wrong with the kid.
personally, i had all that stuff when i was a kid. i was never encouraged to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, but there was no ban on it, either. i also was pretty uninterested in my large collection of sex-educational books (which were so explicit they would be outlawed in probably more than half of the states here). i had other things in mind. the sex books were interesting - i read at least half of one before i got bored. alcohol tasted gross, same with cigarettes.
back to the 11 year old daughter and the x-rated movie: if you went with her, it would be a mixture of not understanding and being bored. it would be weirder for you than for her. it wouldn't be very helpful for her, but it wouldn't harm her. you could do much worse things, like sitting her down in front of the TV instead of spending time with her.
this is so obvious i find it sad that it needs mention here.
your kids need only one gift from you, although that's one they can't live without: your time.
jeez!
n.
even though there are companies who are insistent on betting on the wrong horse, there is really nothing about this deal that scares me.
who cares about burning CDs anyways? i have no need for it. i have a computer, i have mp3 converting software pre-installed (thanks, apple), and i have a portable player capable of holding 150+ hours of music. none of these things is going to go away.
so... burning an hour of music? go away. put those CD burners in the closet, along with the 8-track and the stereo cassette player.
as for what to do about Roxio - i would suggest: sell their stock. now.
not true. the purpose of Unicode is to have one unique number (unique... maybe that's where the name is coming from) for each character on the planet.
e.g. all of chinese, korean, english (doesn't make a big dent), arabian (whoops - dunno what it's really called), etc has to fit in there.
there are not unicodes for every language. there is only one for all of them. i think the reason was to make things more simple.
... they should have used 32 bits to begin with...
it should be pretty obvious that unicode is for people who speak that language.
unicode's purpose is not to teach everyone how to read japanese or to make google's search engine read it (the latter could be done, though). it doesn't try to solve the problem of different languages on the planet.
as an english speaker, i find it pretty convenient that i can type and use english characters on my computer. as opposed to, say, japanese kanji - even though kanji is not all that hard to learn. what a concept... my own characters! wow!
photoshop is super-heavily optimized for AltiVec, but it's also super-heavily optimized for Intel's SSE.
;-)
unrelated bit of information: i once looked at developer documentation for both AltiVec and SSE - AltiVec is simple, logical, makes sense, and is relatively easy to use. SSE is completely insane and illogical, and requires assembler code.
maybe most of motorola's engineers were doing AltiVec, whereas most of Intel's upped MHz
> But we can't afford to give Microsoft the
> benefit of the doubt in everything they do
exactly! exactly! giving a complete stranger the benefit of doubt is one thing - one thing i believe in very strongly, BTW.
giving Microsoft the benefit of doubt ist plain stupid. it's like giving benefit of doubt to the nazis, or saddam, or the Borg...
M$'s motivations have been known for more than 10 years now. they haven't changed. they won't change for as long as the company is successful - and why should they, they are making more money than anyone else.
what i am surprised about is companies cooperating with M$. it seems they should be able to tell from history that there are only 2 possible outcomes if cooperating with M$: 1) you get majorly screwed, or 2) you get bought out. i guess it must be the greed when staring at the pile of money that is M$.
i'd rather see a dubbed film than subtitles - if the dubbing is well done.
as for the "original intent of the fimmaker", the wonderful art, the will of god, and so on... well, looking at the bottom of the screen for the entire movie will not make it all that much better, believe me.
dubbing looks strange when you are not used to it - hey, the lips are out if sync!. but after about 2 films, you won't notice anymore.
the toshiba is quite impressive. but i would go for the powerbook anyways. as has been pointed out, it makes up for the missing features with others that the toshiba doesn't have - working location management for instance, firewire target disk mode, etc... but, most importantly, it looks way, way cool. irresistible, in fact. i would get the smaller version for $2349 - almost the same price as the toshiba. ;-)
granted, it plays Quake3 like crap, but for everything else it's a lot better
i _assume_ that the tiBook is still so expensive because it's flying off the shelves, and apple is milking it for all it's worth. they have a huge margin on that thing.
nik
"The reason i came back to Apple is that i didn't want to have to use Windows for the rest of my life." - Steve Jobs
[jesus, what is this with /. that one cannot simply express support for an opinion without redundantly repeating the argument. a supportive yes! is neither trolling nor unimportant]
the work-ethics-theory is cute and certainly an important part of american mythology.
but, as it were, the entire computer industry and the internet - ALL of it - is based on DOD-funded R&D. the DOD provided 95% of the money at a time when IBM decided that there would be a world market for "five computers" (this is an actual quote... it's fairly famous so it should be easy to find on the web). DOD-money == government money.
a more likely theory, therefore, is that, while the US DOD is interested in faster computers, mobile phones are not interesting to the military. hence, no DOD $$$ for cell phones.
also, remember that most cell phones sold today are sold by finnish company nokia. and there is no government funding in finland.
the story obviously belongs on /. because:
/.
- JWZ bought the club so it's going to be cool and technical and have little in common with the old DNA lounge.
- linux terminals are used
- there is a detailed, technical description of how they are made
- the article in question is several months old
- CowboyNeal [uh, time to leave the basement...]
also, as a reminder, having the word "Linux" in it is a perfectly good reason to post something on
if you don't like it, look for real news on the Onion or bbspot (both recommended).
laters,
nik
i second the opinion. the picture in europe is even more comparable to the US - simply because the europeans are not generally gadget-freaks and the culture is more comparable to the US culture.
and still... LOTS and LOTS of phones sold there. maybe we still don't get the really cool japanese stuff, but it's close...
all your points are true for european cell phone plans as well. the only really hard difference to the States is the larger distance that needs to be covered here, but that's no excuse for poor coverage in any major population center like silicon valley or new york.
conclusion 1: american cell phone operators suck big time.
conclusion 2: there will be one that doesn't suck, and it will eat all the others alive. it's just a matter of time. maybe it will be one that's owned by deutsche telekom or NTT, maybe it will be an american one. but it will happen. the question is, why hasn't it happened already?
i recently went back to europe, back to my eu-cellphone. the difference to the states is unbelievable. clear, crisp quality. works everywhere, even when leaving the country, in the train, in the car, etc. batteries last forever. text messages are sent all over the place. everybody has a cell phone, you can just wander through the city, feel like having a coffe, call all your friends, some of which will then join you because they are in the area... the world becomes a smaller place.
ps: i use ATT here, and it S-U-C-K-S. example short message service (sending someone a text msg): in the states, that's $10 extra/month. so no one gets it. because no one has it. because it costs $10 AND no-one has it. in europe, that's free and included in every single phone sold. sending a message costs from 10 to 30 cents. duh.
quick counter-inspirion: i am impressed by the inspirion's price tag, but don't forget to mention it's absolutely HUGE and HEAVY (7.9 lb) - it's more like a mobile office - but not a laptop. it's easily twice the size of the iBook.
so i do drool over the 1400x1050 resolution on the low end option (! - the high end is 1600x1200 !), but i don't think i could put up with having this big ugly brick in my backpack. it has 2 fans for chrissake!! where is my peace and quiet?
missing ethernet and DVD are other minor details that were left out. these can be had for a few hundred bucks, tho.
warnings affect one pad only. the system doesn't let you have more than one [out of 4] pads loose. therefore, at any given point, 3 are safely attached [and unlikely to lose pressure]. you would not even get up there if they were not.
;-)
as for the empire state building - you better get up there in 25 minutes. that's as long as the batteries will last
i like the "carrying capacity of 1 metric ton"...
Nokia is a serious company, so i doubt this is vaporware. Nokia is generally very conservative with their money.
the big question is how do they plan to get developers to make games / applications for this device? Nokia has a history of disastrous developer relations. for instance, if you want to develop for a nokia phone, pretty much everything is proprietary or secret or costs tons of money. they would have to change that completely...
i come from a country where access to guns is restricted. and i think that's a _good thing_. it saves lives.
just recently, two kids had planned a shooting akin to columbine. they were captured before they could do any harm, and they will now - NO, not be locked up - be counseled. the entire school and much of the country is talking of what's behind the anger. no one is talking about video games, BTW.
the reason they were captured is that they couldn't get a gun in time. it took them several weeks to to try and get the gun on the black market. in america, they would have been stacked with military grade weaponry by that time.
guns don't kill people. but they certainly are neccessary to kill people.
of course, it's more important to discuss what is behind incidents like this. a bully-society? enormous pressure on teens to "make it" lest they be "losers" for the rest of their lives? general carelessness by parents? there is no easy answer, but the dialoge must start now.
sex is not violence. in fact, the one (reproductive, or just plain fun) has nothing to do with the other.
you might as well talk about the dangers of gardening and violence. there is a very clear line between the two. if you are not able to see that line, i am very sorry for you and you should probably seek counseling.
nuff said.
>> Find a bug in the kernal and fix it!
i totally agree with you that linux _could_ take out M$, and that time and effort spent on it would be a _good thing_.
however, linux already has one of the best kernels around. the most broken element of linux is the UI. it's basically - unless you are a command line freak in which case this point will be lost on you - complete crap. unuseable. unintuitive. competing standards.
a nightmare. your average non-geek will never look at it twice.
there is a good reason: linux is written by people who care more about the kernel than anything else. which is fine with me - linux can not lose the platform war because it's not even competing. it was always conceived as a system by hackers for hackers, and at this it's unrivaled.
if you want to go mass-market, you have to fix the UI first and foremost. eazel is trying to do this, but i think the linux community in general doesn't think of the UI as a problem that needs to be taken seriously.
the superior product will indeed win. lunix' kernel is already superior. usability, however, has a long way to go.
computer games will be an art form like film and books. the time is here.