The GPL gives the FSF relicensing control over your code -- they can produce new revisions of the GPL. [...] You're handing control of your primary asset over to another organization -- specifically, one that's more than a little bit radical.
Not true. Your software is only subject to future versions if you license it under GPL version X "and any later version". You don't have to do that. In the text of the GPL it mentions that the program may specify a single version number, vs. a version number "or any later version", vs. just "GPL" (in which case all versions apply). It's totally under your control, and you aren't fragmenting the GPL itself in any way when you specify which version applies to your software.
Remember, *you* still own the copyright (unless you specifically grant this to the FSF for legal purposes). No matter what the FSF does, your code will still be licensed only as you say it is. You can even choose to stop distributing the GPL'ed version (though other people still can, with that version of the code), and release new versions under a totally commercial license (or release GPL and commercial simultaeously!), as long as you own copyright for the entire work. If you accept contributions, the respective authors control distribution of their portion -- which is licensed to YOU as GPL-only unless you arrange something else.
I'll definitely agree that the GPL is not right for every project -- like any license, you have to decide if value exchange is worth it, and I don't know the current IBM/Sun licenses in detail -- but the reasons you mentioned are not real.
[apologies if this post comes off as too prickly... I gotta get some sleep]
I think you mean "du jour", but whatever. Are you trolling or do you just not know much about these licenses?
The BSD license give you almost ZERO control over your code -- it basically says "use this for whatever you want, modify it and redistribute it in binary-only form under a proprietary license if you want... you just have to show our copyright notice along with it."
The GPL says "use this internally for whatever you want, but if you distribute it you have to include the full source code for whatever you're distributing, and anyone you give/sell it to must have the right to distribute it THEMSELVES under this same license, for free if they want".
See? With the GPL you have more control over your code, because it's harder for other people to make money off of it, and if they do you get back the improvements they made.
This is not "diehard socialism", it's using the strength of copyright (based on PERSONAL OWNERSHIP) to sell your code -- but instead of asking money you demand access to all improvements other folks want to distribute.
Okay? I really hope I'm not wasting my time on a troll, but there are obviously people out there who don't understand this stuff (case in point -- your post modded up...).
It would be excusable if the article managed to provide any useful insight through the analogy. But no, it's just the same old revelation that pacing a game well is hard to do, and many games get it wrong. But now it's wrapped up in the orgasm analogy to make it titillating (woo, I just said 'tit', huh huh), for the benefit of every teenager out there who wets himself at the mention of sex. Guess what, guys -- basically every human activity can be related or compared to sex in some way (...so in the beginning it's hard work, but I get into the swing of things, and I'm taking deductions here and stapling on W-2's there, then wow, I file my taxes and I get such a rush, and every time I do it I learn more tricks and it's easier!). But if it doesn't reveal any new insight, you're wasting your time.
Oh, and I almost forgot - the article author gets to make comments like this: I'm not going to spend more than five words here bragging about how awesome I am in the sack. Suffice to say: I am.
Lovely. Flock this way, ladies, because a GIFT has just arrived for YOU, and it's from GOD.
I agree that there were a couple of places in this movie where the anthropomorphism seemed to detract from the accuracy.
I think it's a mistake to assume that anthropomorphism is always misleading, though. Logically, it doesn't make sense to draw a strict line between humans and every other kind of creature (many of whom show behaviors a *lot* like ours).. and assume we're the only ones with any kind of "inner life" or "emotions", and everything else is simply a walking bundle of instincts and reinforced behaviors. Is it accurate to say that people get "upset" and "worried" and "depressed", but animals who react exactly the same way to similar situations are merely exhibiting behaviors? Well, no, but it's convenient to us morally - we live in a world where we do a lot of thing to animals that we wouldn't condone for humans, so separating ourselves makes us feel better.
Granted, we're limited scientifically to what we can observe, and even animals that can communicate to some degree (i.e., apes w/ sign language, etc.) still can't fully express themselves, but it doesn't make sense to assume their inner lives don't exist simply because we can't measure them.
It's dangerous to assume their inner lives are just like ours, but they are likely related. The only terms we have to describe these are based on our own experience -- so that's all we've got -- and (carefully used) they're likely closer to the truth than anything else. The danger of over-anthropomorphizing exists, but there's also a danger of over-alienizing animals. Either way misleads.
[Thoughts, anyone? This isn't exactly my field of expertise here, so if you want to fill out this thought better than I can, please do...]
There's a "most popular" page for the reviews with the most hits. This isn't going to be helpful at all, as is -- the number of hits only means that the title of the review looks interesting. It's quite possible that every single person who actually reads the review clicks back after 5 seconds, because it's horrible... but of course now that the review is stuck on the "popular" page, it's only going to keep going up as more people click on it.
The Amazon approach of "this review helped me" or not would work better, though of course it's probably patented..
I'd suggest that the creators focus on what people visiting the site are probably looking for, then redesign based on that.
Personally, I followed a couple of clicks for one review that turned out to be some random guy's ramblings about a distro he's either thinking about trying, or is trying (it wasn't clear). No thanks.
Some examples of probable visitors: Person 1: I want to switch to Linux from Windows, I know what I need (web dev, or office stuff, or graphic design etc.) and I need the name of solid distro that will do this for me with a basic non-technical review.
Person 2: I tried X distro, and I sorta liked it. What are some similar distros that are equally or more popular?
Person 3: I want a comparison of Linux Live CDs, for use in system diagnostics.
Person 4: I'm very familiar with Linux, and I heard about a particular new Debian offshoot that sounds interesting. Gimme in-depth expert reviews of this one distro.
Person 5: I want to start transitioning my employees over to Linux -- which solid distro is the best supported (from a company and/or ease of finding tech staff familiar with it?)
Is there a site out there that can really help these people? This one has a ways to go, anyway. It's a start -- yes, collecting feedback from users is good (but you need useable data, not just unclassified reviews in a big bucket!). Yes, collecting links to external reviews all in one place is great (but you need the meta-data - like audience, reviewer expertise, etc. - before it's useful).
There are obviously technical ways to obscure the source of a message, but I'm not sure that helps anyone.
The issue is that in the current system, the reporter *KNOWS* who the anonymous source is. They speak with them directly on the phone, in most cases, or face to face. The reporter can say truthfully "a white house staff member who wished to remain anonymous said x". This communication could easily be kept private -- a good reporter will be meeting regularly with lots of people, so a spoken communication will be impossible to pin on anyone in particular (as long as the reporter stays quiet).
In contract, total anonymity: if I walked into a random internet cafe in a neighboring city, submitted a feedback form to the paper, paid with cash and walked out, I would be anonymous... but I could easily say *I* was a high-ranking official and the reporter would just have to guess. That's not useful to them, and few reporters would base a story on this kind of information.
There's still a place for this kind of communication -- an anonymous source can say "x is going to happen tonight at the WaterGate hotel..." and a reporter can follow it up and do more research before printing anything... but they will have to filter through a lot of crackpots.
I would think hacking into the sites and logging everything would be more productive. Shutting them down will only cause them to find other means of communication...
That's only if you assume that the "other means" will be as effective. I don't think they can be.
I'm going to ignore the freedom of speech issues for the moment and say that shutting them down is the better option. Extremist websites (especially well-established, well-developed sites) are invaluable in giving the *impression* that a cause is legitimate and well-supported.
Your group might consist of just you and your neighbor, but online you can create the impression of a huge movement. Psychologically, this is a tremendous power. You can use it to intimidate people into joining you, and to give courage to people already on your side. Regular people still tend to equate websites with newspapers, or other real-world things that are actually held to standards and require money and support to create. Forcing extremist websites offline forces that many fewer results to come up in Google, and forces the ones that survive into fly-by-night mode (which usually means ugly and hard-to-find)... which remove much of their power as first-contact recruitment tools.
All of that said, any restriction of free speech still makes me nervous (think about it -- they probably also recruit by talking about the injustice in Iraq and seeing who agrees the loudest... if we can make anti-government talk illegal, we can stop this method!). Plus, if they're not applying an even standard to sites they shut down (i.e., any site, Muslim or not, including exhortations to violence will be shut down, etc.) this becomes an obvious injustice = yet another recruiting tool.
For more advice... there are a couple hundred people discussing all of these things, exhaustively, on this site.
One common thread is that focussing on *home users* can be a pretty painful route to take. If you go that way, price yourself high enough so that you don't have to deal with the nickel-and-dimers, and make it very clear to customers what they are paying for and what their own responsibilities are.
You'll want business cards (give a few to each customer to facilitate word of mouth advertising).
I agree to some degree, however, if we were to find that the laws of our universe were changing, or that the there were alternate universes with different laws, we would immediately assume that there were new, invariate meta-laws underlying these observations. Hence, we have not challenged our assumption.
No, once we realized our current laws did not apply, we'd start looking for new patterns... hoping to increase our understanding. You're muddling the definition of "assumption" -- looking for reliable patterns that *may* exist in the observations we can make is not the same as assuming the patterns are there. For example, plenty of people are still searching for that elusive "theory of everything". They still haven't found it. We don't know it exists. Where's the assumption in looking for it? Scientists don't simply post the new law and say "trust us... someday we may find some support for this".
Our current physical "laws" are only called laws because they were patterns that were observed again and again, and have been reliably recreated and fulfilled predictions as expected.
If you applied the religious type of assumption to the scientific world... it'd be like if Einstein announced his theory of relativity as E=M^2C, and everyone respected him so much that no one checked his math but based all kinds of other work on this formula. And when experiments failed and although all evidence suggested that Einstein had been off, they insisted that doubting the formula was just a lack of faith, and that if your heart was really in it your experiment would have succeeded.
Obviously, I'm talking about the ideal state of science. In real life, some scientists fabricate evidence, some make mistakes.. but when an accepted finding is clearly shown to be unreproduceable or fabricated, no one wants to be left still supporting it... unlike Christianity, for instance, with "truths" that are easily proven false and contradictory by anyone with an 8th grade education, but friggin' 85% of Americans still identify as Christians, and are proud of it. By comparison BTW (sort of off-topic, but it boggles my mind...), only 78% of Israelis identify as Jewish.
Sorry if I'm ranting; this stuff seems so obvious to me that I keep feeling like I'm living in some kind of funhouse. Frankly, I understand why serious fundamentalists feel threatened by science. God can coexist with science, but not as a surety, only as a "this is what I *choose* to believe about the questions science cannot answer". That's utterly unacceptable if you are preaching that every word in the Bible is pure fact. Faith has to trump facts if this kind of believe is going to survive.
The only difference I see is that there is a lot more evidence that the well-ordering/induction axiom, Euclid's postulates, and the foundational assumptions of science are true than the assumption that an all-powerful and high irrational being runs the universe.
You're missing the biggest difference -- the assumptions of science can be enumerated and acknowledged without undermining the science. Even the assumption that "the consistency of physical law throughout the universe" is not ironclad -- if we find a place in the universe that doesn't adhere to physical law as we know it, *the law must change* to include this exception. Science is simply a best effort at predicting future observations based on past observations, and where it works, it works. "Maybe if we mix these things together, we can ignite them to power a rocket to beyond Earth's gravity." Holy cow, it worked. Go science.
The assumptions that are made by religion are totally different. They CANNOT be enumerated and acknowledged without undermining the religious beliefs. They are stated as *facts*, not as conclusions that could be changed if they are contradicted by new observations. Religious beliefs are conclusions based on observations poorly documented thousands of years ago, which have never been corrected. The assumptions are not comparable.
The image that comes to my mind is of the scientist standing on the shoulders of giants (standing on other giants...), looking into the distance to see farther, while the "pious" person crouches under the frock of the gnarled, ancient midget and closes his eyes, with "faith" that the words whispered in his ear are true.
Vista Windows is an entirely different industry, so trademarks can overlap with no conflict. Vista software has a much better case.
Does anyone remember the hassles that Mozilla went through before we got the "Firefox" browser? They were butting up against other established trademark names *in the same industry*. True, a database and a web browser aren't the same thing (like an OS and a software services company aren't the same thing)... but they are in the same industry. Yes, it could be confusing to many people to read on www.vista.com that "New Vista Interchange software for small business now available on Windows Vista!"
Much more confusing than "Lindows" vs. "Windows", for sure....
Not a very good idea. You might not be guilty of a traffic violation, but you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, and if something really bad happens, you might just find yourself charged with murder.
That seems unlikely assuming you *don't* run, and stick to your story... but of course causing an accident is a very risky thing.
Seriously, the *safest* thing to do when you're being tailgated is to let them by you -- get into the other lane if there is one, or even pull off into a side road. Every second they're tailing you you're at much higher risk of an accident, so letting them by is almost always the quickest way out of danger. Doing anything to force them to back off is actually *more* dangerous than just letting them tailgate you, because once they're pissed off they're far more likely to do something stupid that could kill you both -- like passing illegally (even on the shoulder) at extreme high velocity, and probably cutting you off in the process.
I admit I'll occasionally play little games with drivers who piss me off (nothing obviously malicious... I just happen to be driving sedately in the most inconvenient spot for that guy trying to dodge and weave through). But if there's anyone in the car with me, I just let them go by -- it's not worth it. "Sorry, honey -- I know it'll take years of surgery to reconstruct your face, but my pride is intact!"
It's a little more complicated than that. It's your responsibility to keep a safe distance because sometimes the car in front of you HAS to slam on the brakes. If you can't stop when the car in front of you slams on the brakes, you are NOT at a safe distance. Let's face it -- even if you're tailgating, you can handle slowing down. The whole point of the "safe distance" is so you don't cause a crash when things go wrong.
Obvious example -- if I see a kid run out into the road in front of me, do you think I'm going to brake gently so the guy behind me has time to react? Less obvious example -- suppose I see a ball roll out from between two parked cars (and think a kid is probably following). Even less obvious -- suppose it's just an empty paper bag, but I just reacted and slammed on the brakes. Suppose the puddle on the manhole cover looked exactly like a *missing* manhole cover. So many things can go wrong -- are you saying I shouldn't play it safe?
I don't know in this case what the woman said about why she stopped... but I still tend to feel like she would have been less at fault. Maybe she was distracted because she missed a turn, whatever -- but in her negligence she didn't hit anything she wasn't supposed to. In his, he did. There are so many situations that happen all the time where people DO have to suddenly slam on the brakes. And the option of keeping a safe distance from the car *behind* you simply isn't possible (wow, if that excuse worked..!)
Reminds me of a funny story, actually -- different situation, but related. A friend of mine was driving an massive old junker when he was in high school, going 10 over the speed limit already on a narrow, no-passing road, and a guy in a BMW was just riding his bumper, tailgating like crazy. He couldn't go any faster without risking a ticket, so he just kept driving, but the guy was glued to his bumper. Finally he was angry enough that he just slammed on his brakes, and of course it was an instant rear-end, the front of the BMW was crushed, and the driver leaped out of his car shouting, etc.. The reply? "I thought I saw an animal." The BMW driver was totally at fault, and his car was toast (whereas my friend could drive away after the cops wrote it up... one bonus of those massive old American cars).
Obviously, this approach to tailgaters is not recommended (and the legal situation would be different if that little lie were admitted), but it's sure nice to think about when someone's practically in your trunk and endangering *your* life because he's late for some meeting. I've been tailgated by Hummers on the highway, which *really* raises the hair on the back of my neck. Yeah, like HE'LL be able to stop from crushing me when I have to brake because something falls off a truck (an experience I've had...).
Someone who can stick a price on human life, or argument for improving the economy by killing people deserves no respect from me.
This "journalist" did just that.
The article is pure flamebait.
Someone who can make an outraged (outraged!) post about an article based on a Slashdot writeup might not deserve so much respect either....
The journalist you're scorning (John Tierney) was very clearly NOT advocating the death penalty. He discussed an interesting report made by an analyst putting things in perspective -- i.e., that if you look at the penalties purely from the standpoint of saving society money, a death penalty for serious "hacker" crimes is much more logical than the death penalty for murder. Then he dismissed this as (rather obviously) impractical:
I see his logic, but I also see practical difficulties. For one thing, many hackers live in places where capital punishment is illegal. For another, most of them are teenage boys, a group that has never been known for fearing death. They're probably more afraid of going five years without computer games.
...and went on to make his own quite funny, alternate suggestions.
Make the hacker spend 16 hours a day fielding help-desk inquiries in an AOL chat room for computer novices. Force him to do this with a user name at least as uncool as KoolDude and to work on a vintage IBM PC with a 2400-baud dial-up connection. Most painful of all for any geek, make him use Windows 95 for the rest of his life.
This is NOT, repeat NOT an article that warrants outrage. The "hacker vs. murderer" comparison certainly makes for interesting discussion fodder (about what criteria we should *actually* use to decide punishments), and it can be fun to think up other good "punishment befitting the crime" penalties for virus-writers, spammers, etc... but no outrage in sight.
1) Prisoner's dilemma: It's not really probability (since the other guy isn't deciding randomly) but... Don't confess. If you do, and your buddy *doesn't*, you are out of jail immediately but you probably have only 6 years left to live. You're risking 6 years if he confesses, but you can hope the same fear will shut him up too.
2) Easy one -- flip! Half the time your total drops $25, the other half it goes UP $50. If you keep playing you'll make out better than just sticking every time.
3) Don't go on this game show. If you pick the right door, sure, you get a prize, but you'll also get a lot of publicity, your relatives and old friends will pop up out of the woodwork asking for money, and you may pick up a stalker or two. If you pick the wrong one you will be forever haunted by it. You'll wake up in the night covered in sweat, shouting "No, I said DON'T change, DON'T change!!"
I did mention it... but as a developer, I have to still treat it as a "best guess". It's certainly not a guarantee of the preferred language. I've done a decent amount of traveling, and when I'm in an internet cafe and websites show me content in the local language (without the option to change!), I'm screwed if it's a language I don't read. That's a more serious bug than showing a non-preferred language (but allowing them to click a link for their preferred lang).
Of course, travellers are not the majority of users... but still, there are plenty of countries where multiple languages are spoken, and any user going into an internet cafe (still how most people access the internet in many places...) will likely not be able to change the language setting on the browser.
So.. it can be helpful, but it can't be the center of your localization strategy.
Cool; thanks! I didn't even try running it... their homepage says "The current PHPeclipse version 1.1.4 works only with Eclipse 3.0.x versions" -- but this may just be that they haven't tested it on the new version yet.
the buttons; the plastic casing; the use of symbols to convey meaning; and of course the device's flagrant use of electricity. Face it, they were asking for this.
You're missing the most obvious violation -- they're screaming over at the Blackberry Growers Association over the confusion this device causes in the average consumer who is accustomed to the juicy sweetness (with a hint of tartness) of a "properly" produced Blackberry(TM).
This unpleasantly plasticky, painfully crunchy and bitter-tasting product is diluting and damaging the mark!
Okay, I like it -- everything's visibly faster (starting up, shutting down, opening files/projects/etc.), the settings make more sense now and are easier to navigate (you can type in a filter like "color" and it'll just show you all of the settings pages where you can set colors of some kind. Sweet). They also link helpfully to related settings pages. No drastic additions that I see so far -- though it's a workday, so I haven't spent much time exploring yet. My code formatting profile was carried over perfectly into the new version, as did various build profiles and so on for 14 different projects (though the one Eclipse plugin project seems to be in need of help).
The support for 1.5 seems quite complete and well-integrated (including a slew of possible new coding style warnings); but I'm not developing to 1.5 right now, so I won't vouch for everything.
Most of the other changes I've noticed are like these and what you'd expect for a solid minor release -- nothing drastic, but lots of little enhancements across the board.
The main trouble right now is that most 3rd party plugins won't support the new version yet, for example PHPeclipse (which I use now and again). I'll be keeping 3.0.1 around for a bit because of this.
One minor glitch that I ran into using a workspace from earlier versions was that I couldn't change the selection foreground/background -- that's because I had overridden this value earlier in the Java editor prefs pages... and you can't change it there anymore, BUT the setting was still being read (and the setting I put in the text editor prefs page was still being overridden...).
If you run into something like this, close eclipse and search through the properties files where these settings are stored:/your.eclipse.workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.ecl ipse.core.runtime/.settings/
In this case, I had to delete the AbstractTextEditor.Color.SelectionForeground and Background keys in org.eclipse.jdt.ui.prefs, then everything worked fine when I restarted.
Overall, I'm pleased -- the last big upgrade I had to redo my code formatting rules and syntax-highlighting colors/fonts from scratch (which takes awhile.. gotta have that black bg though!).
There must be something else going on with your computer.
I'm using an old Dell laptop with Win2K, 1.3 GHZ P3, 512 RAM. Half the machine yours is, and plenty of issues accumulating after years of use without a clean reinstall (IE tends to take a full minute or two to start up when I have to run it, for example).
Anyway, first run of Eclipse 3.1 took about 20 seconds from double-click to workspace loaded. My text coloring is off and I clearly need to go through the settings again, but it works fine. Opening a project, source file, etc. doesn't take more than 1-2 seconds.
Closed down, re-ran -- after the first startup, now it's 8 seconds from double-click to useable workspace. Memory usage: 41MB, VM Size: 69MB. Not bad at all -- I'm not swapping, and I have various databases and other server software running locally at the same time.
So... I'm guessing your startup problems are your own. Good luck.
I had the page up to the mirrors, then even the routing pages died (so I had to extract that actual mirror link from the full URL...); anyway, here's one mirror that's zipping along for me. And I will post this reply as soon as my download finishes...
That's not formatting; "formatting" means changing the display to convey the *same* info to people who use different standards (I think I mentioned currency conversions in the data section).
For example,
$1,999.00 might be formatted as
USD 1.999,00 in a different locale.
I glanced through the mapped offenders in D.C. -- what surprised me was the seeming smallness of some of the crimes.
Some of them definitely fit in with what I'd think of dangerously disturbed... rape of child under 12, etc. etc... but there are also crimes like "enticing a child under 16 years of age". I'm not even sure what that means -- does it really put this guy in the same category? We don't even know that he knew the girl he was "enticing" was underage... and perhaps he would have found out for sure before committing statutory rape.
Personally, I think listing someone in a database like this is a pretty severe punishment (because it will likely continue to cost them jobs, make it impossible to make friends with neighbors, etc. etc.). If they're going to list such a broad range of crimes, they'd at least make damn sure that someone checking the list will know -- WITHOUT clicking on the name and reading through the details -- what kind of crime it was.
Forgot to mention... remember you are always balancing ease of development and ease of maintenance.
Something that helps one does NOT always help the other -- for example, building the site in English, then making complete copies and translating all text into other languages is easy to develop, but quickly becomes a nightmare in maintenance... the customer wants a minor change and you have to update 10 files.
Just walk through quick scenarios for each option: I would do X to create and integrate this page, and I would have to do Y to update its layout or text later. If they add in a few new fields, I'd do Z... you get the idea. If there are dozens of steps, and you'll be laughing cynically at the suggestion of bringing a new developer onto the team... you're probably doing something wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The GPL gives the FSF relicensing control over your code -- they can produce new revisions of the GPL. [...] You're handing control of your primary asset over to another organization -- specifically, one that's more than a little bit radical.
Not true. Your software is only subject to future versions if you license it under GPL version X "and any later version". You don't have to do that. In the text of the GPL it mentions that the program may specify a single version number, vs. a version number "or any later version", vs. just "GPL" (in which case all versions apply). It's totally under your control, and you aren't fragmenting the GPL itself in any way when you specify which version applies to your software.
Remember, *you* still own the copyright (unless you specifically grant this to the FSF for legal purposes). No matter what the FSF does, your code will still be licensed only as you say it is. You can even choose to stop distributing the GPL'ed version (though other people still can, with that version of the code), and release new versions under a totally commercial license (or release GPL and commercial simultaeously!), as long as you own copyright for the entire work. If you accept contributions, the respective authors control distribution of their portion -- which is licensed to YOU as GPL-only unless you arrange something else.
I'll definitely agree that the GPL is not right for every project -- like any license, you have to decide if value exchange is worth it, and I don't know the current IBM/Sun licenses in detail -- but the reasons you mentioned are not real.
[apologies if this post comes off as too prickly... I gotta get some sleep]
I think you mean "du jour", but whatever. Are you trolling or do you just not know much about these licenses?
The BSD license give you almost ZERO control over your code -- it basically says "use this for whatever you want, modify it and redistribute it in binary-only form under a proprietary license if you want... you just have to show our copyright notice along with it."
The GPL says "use this internally for whatever you want, but if you distribute it you have to include the full source code for whatever you're distributing, and anyone you give/sell it to must have the right to distribute it THEMSELVES under this same license, for free if they want".
See? With the GPL you have more control over your code, because it's harder for other people to make money off of it, and if they do you get back the improvements they made.
This is not "diehard socialism", it's using the strength of copyright (based on PERSONAL OWNERSHIP) to sell your code -- but instead of asking money you demand access to all improvements other folks want to distribute.
Okay? I really hope I'm not wasting my time on a troll, but there are obviously people out there who don't understand this stuff (case in point -- your post modded up...).
It would be excusable if the article managed to provide any useful insight through the analogy. But no, it's just the same old revelation that pacing a game well is hard to do, and many games get it wrong. But now it's wrapped up in the orgasm analogy to make it titillating (woo, I just said 'tit', huh huh), for the benefit of every teenager out there who wets himself at the mention of sex. Guess what, guys -- basically every human activity can be related or compared to sex in some way (...so in the beginning it's hard work, but I get into the swing of things, and I'm taking deductions here and stapling on W-2's there, then wow, I file my taxes and I get such a rush, and every time I do it I learn more tricks and it's easier!). But if it doesn't reveal any new insight, you're wasting your time.
Oh, and I almost forgot - the article author gets to make comments like this:
I'm not going to spend more than five words here bragging about how awesome I am in the sack. Suffice to say: I am.
Lovely. Flock this way, ladies, because a GIFT has just arrived for YOU, and it's from GOD.
I agree that there were a couple of places in this movie where the anthropomorphism seemed to detract from the accuracy.
I think it's a mistake to assume that anthropomorphism is always misleading, though. Logically, it doesn't make sense to draw a strict line between humans and every other kind of creature (many of whom show behaviors a *lot* like ours).. and assume we're the only ones with any kind of "inner life" or "emotions", and everything else is simply a walking bundle of instincts and reinforced behaviors. Is it accurate to say that people get "upset" and "worried" and "depressed", but animals who react exactly the same way to similar situations are merely exhibiting behaviors? Well, no, but it's convenient to us morally - we live in a world where we do a lot of thing to animals that we wouldn't condone for humans, so separating ourselves makes us feel better.
Granted, we're limited scientifically to what we can observe, and even animals that can communicate to some degree (i.e., apes w/ sign language, etc.) still can't fully express themselves, but it doesn't make sense to assume their inner lives don't exist simply because we can't measure them.
It's dangerous to assume their inner lives are just like ours, but they are likely related. The only terms we have to describe these are based on our own experience -- so that's all we've got -- and (carefully used) they're likely closer to the truth than anything else. The danger of over-anthropomorphizing exists, but there's also a danger of over-alienizing animals. Either way misleads.
[Thoughts, anyone? This isn't exactly my field of expertise here, so if you want to fill out this thought better than I can, please do...]
..I just noticed.
There's a "most popular" page for the reviews with the most hits. This isn't going to be helpful at all, as is -- the number of hits only means that the title of the review looks interesting. It's quite possible that every single person who actually reads the review clicks back after 5 seconds, because it's horrible... but of course now that the review is stuck on the "popular" page, it's only going to keep going up as more people click on it.
The Amazon approach of "this review helped me" or not would work better, though of course it's probably patented..
I'd suggest that the creators focus on what people visiting the site are probably looking for, then redesign based on that.
Personally, I followed a couple of clicks for one review that turned out to be some random guy's ramblings about a distro he's either thinking about trying, or is trying (it wasn't clear). No thanks.
Some examples of probable visitors:
Person 1: I want to switch to Linux from Windows, I know what I need (web dev, or office stuff, or graphic design etc.) and I need the name of solid distro that will do this for me with a basic non-technical review.
Person 2: I tried X distro, and I sorta liked it. What are some similar distros that are equally or more popular?
Person 3: I want a comparison of Linux Live CDs, for use in system diagnostics.
Person 4: I'm very familiar with Linux, and I heard about a particular new Debian offshoot that sounds interesting. Gimme in-depth expert reviews of this one distro.
Person 5: I want to start transitioning my employees over to Linux -- which solid distro is the best supported (from a company and/or ease of finding tech staff familiar with it?)
Is there a site out there that can really help these people? This one has a ways to go, anyway. It's a start -- yes, collecting feedback from users is good (but you need useable data, not just unclassified reviews in a big bucket!). Yes, collecting links to external reviews all in one place is great (but you need the meta-data - like audience, reviewer expertise, etc. - before it's useful).
There are obviously technical ways to obscure the source of a message, but I'm not sure that helps anyone.
The issue is that in the current system, the reporter *KNOWS* who the anonymous source is. They speak with them directly on the phone, in most cases, or face to face. The reporter can say truthfully "a white house staff member who wished to remain anonymous said x". This communication could easily be kept private -- a good reporter will be meeting regularly with lots of people, so a spoken communication will be impossible to pin on anyone in particular (as long as the reporter stays quiet).
In contract, total anonymity: if I walked into a random internet cafe in a neighboring city, submitted a feedback form to the paper, paid with cash and walked out, I would be anonymous... but I could easily say *I* was a high-ranking official and the reporter would just have to guess. That's not useful to them, and few reporters would base a story on this kind of information.
There's still a place for this kind of communication -- an anonymous source can say "x is going to happen tonight at the WaterGate hotel..." and a reporter can follow it up and do more research before printing anything... but they will have to filter through a lot of crackpots.
I would think hacking into the sites and logging everything would be more productive. Shutting them down will only cause them to find other means of communication...
That's only if you assume that the "other means" will be as effective. I don't think they can be.
I'm going to ignore the freedom of speech issues for the moment and say that shutting them down is the better option. Extremist websites (especially well-established, well-developed sites) are invaluable in giving the *impression* that a cause is legitimate and well-supported.
Your group might consist of just you and your neighbor, but online you can create the impression of a huge movement. Psychologically, this is a tremendous power. You can use it to intimidate people into joining you, and to give courage to people already on your side. Regular people still tend to equate websites with newspapers, or other real-world things that are actually held to standards and require money and support to create. Forcing extremist websites offline forces that many fewer results to come up in Google, and forces the ones that survive into fly-by-night mode (which usually means ugly and hard-to-find)... which remove much of their power as first-contact recruitment tools.
All of that said, any restriction of free speech still makes me nervous (think about it -- they probably also recruit by talking about the injustice in Iraq and seeing who agrees the loudest... if we can make anti-government talk illegal, we can stop this method!). Plus, if they're not applying an even standard to sites they shut down (i.e., any site, Muslim or not, including exhortations to violence will be shut down, etc.) this becomes an obvious injustice = yet another recruiting tool.
linky
For more advice... there are a couple hundred people discussing all of these things, exhaustively, on this site.
One common thread is that focussing on *home users* can be a pretty painful route to take. If you go that way, price yourself high enough so that you don't have to deal with the nickel-and-dimers, and make it very clear to customers what they are paying for and what their own responsibilities are.
You'll want business cards (give a few to each customer to facilitate word of mouth advertising).
I agree to some degree, however, if we were to find that the laws of our universe were changing, or that the there were alternate universes with different laws, we would immediately assume that there were new, invariate meta-laws underlying these observations. Hence, we have not challenged our assumption.
No, once we realized our current laws did not apply, we'd start looking for new patterns... hoping to increase our understanding. You're muddling the definition of "assumption" -- looking for reliable patterns that *may* exist in the observations we can make is not the same as assuming the patterns are there. For example, plenty of people are still searching for that elusive "theory of everything". They still haven't found it. We don't know it exists. Where's the assumption in looking for it? Scientists don't simply post the new law and say "trust us... someday we may find some support for this".
Our current physical "laws" are only called laws because they were patterns that were observed again and again, and have been reliably recreated and fulfilled predictions as expected.
If you applied the religious type of assumption to the scientific world... it'd be like if Einstein announced his theory of relativity as E=M^2C, and everyone respected him so much that no one checked his math but based all kinds of other work on this formula. And when experiments failed and although all evidence suggested that Einstein had been off, they insisted that doubting the formula was just a lack of faith, and that if your heart was really in it your experiment would have succeeded.
Obviously, I'm talking about the ideal state of science. In real life, some scientists fabricate evidence, some make mistakes.. but when an accepted finding is clearly shown to be unreproduceable or fabricated, no one wants to be left still supporting it... unlike Christianity, for instance, with "truths" that are easily proven false and contradictory by anyone with an 8th grade education, but friggin' 85% of Americans still identify as Christians, and are proud of it. By comparison BTW (sort of off-topic, but it boggles my mind...), only 78% of Israelis identify as Jewish.
Sorry if I'm ranting; this stuff seems so obvious to me that I keep feeling like I'm living in some kind of funhouse. Frankly, I understand why serious fundamentalists feel threatened by science. God can coexist with science, but not as a surety, only as a "this is what I *choose* to believe about the questions science cannot answer". That's utterly unacceptable if you are preaching that every word in the Bible is pure fact. Faith has to trump facts if this kind of believe is going to survive.
The only difference I see is that there is a lot more evidence that the well-ordering/induction axiom, Euclid's postulates, and the foundational assumptions of science are true than the assumption that an all-powerful and high irrational being runs the universe.
You're missing the biggest difference -- the assumptions of science can be enumerated and acknowledged without undermining the science. Even the assumption that "the consistency of physical law throughout the universe" is not ironclad -- if we find a place in the universe that doesn't adhere to physical law as we know it, *the law must change* to include this exception. Science is simply a best effort at predicting future observations based on past observations, and where it works, it works. "Maybe if we mix these things together, we can ignite them to power a rocket to beyond Earth's gravity." Holy cow, it worked. Go science.
The assumptions that are made by religion are totally different. They CANNOT be enumerated and acknowledged without undermining the religious beliefs. They are stated as *facts*, not as conclusions that could be changed if they are contradicted by new observations. Religious beliefs are conclusions based on observations poorly documented thousands of years ago, which have never been corrected. The assumptions are not comparable.
The image that comes to my mind is of the scientist standing on the shoulders of giants (standing on other giants...), looking into the distance to see farther, while the "pious" person crouches under the frock of the gnarled, ancient midget and closes his eyes, with "faith" that the words whispered in his ear are true.
Vista Windows is an entirely different industry, so trademarks can overlap with no conflict. Vista software has a much better case.
Does anyone remember the hassles that Mozilla went through before we got the "Firefox" browser? They were butting up against other established trademark names *in the same industry*. True, a database and a web browser aren't the same thing (like an OS and a software services company aren't the same thing)... but they are in the same industry. Yes, it could be confusing to many people to read on www.vista.com that "New Vista Interchange software for small business now available on Windows Vista!"
Much more confusing than "Lindows" vs. "Windows", for sure....
Not a very good idea. You might not be guilty of a traffic violation, but you are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, and if something really bad happens, you might just find yourself charged with murder.
That seems unlikely assuming you *don't* run, and stick to your story... but of course causing an accident is a very risky thing.
Seriously, the *safest* thing to do when you're being tailgated is to let them by you -- get into the other lane if there is one, or even pull off into a side road. Every second they're tailing you you're at much higher risk of an accident, so letting them by is almost always the quickest way out of danger. Doing anything to force them to back off is actually *more* dangerous than just letting them tailgate you, because once they're pissed off they're far more likely to do something stupid that could kill you both -- like passing illegally (even on the shoulder) at extreme high velocity, and probably cutting you off in the process.
I admit I'll occasionally play little games with drivers who piss me off (nothing obviously malicious... I just happen to be driving sedately in the most inconvenient spot for that guy trying to dodge and weave through). But if there's anyone in the car with me, I just let them go by -- it's not worth it. "Sorry, honey -- I know it'll take years of surgery to reconstruct your face, but my pride is intact!"
It's a little more complicated than that. It's your responsibility to keep a safe distance because sometimes the car in front of you HAS to slam on the brakes. If you can't stop when the car in front of you slams on the brakes, you are NOT at a safe distance. Let's face it -- even if you're tailgating, you can handle slowing down. The whole point of the "safe distance" is so you don't cause a crash when things go wrong.
Obvious example -- if I see a kid run out into the road in front of me, do you think I'm going to brake gently so the guy behind me has time to react? Less obvious example -- suppose I see a ball roll out from between two parked cars (and think a kid is probably following). Even less obvious -- suppose it's just an empty paper bag, but I just reacted and slammed on the brakes. Suppose the puddle on the manhole cover looked exactly like a *missing* manhole cover. So many things can go wrong -- are you saying I shouldn't play it safe?
I don't know in this case what the woman said about why she stopped... but I still tend to feel like she would have been less at fault. Maybe she was distracted because she missed a turn, whatever -- but in her negligence she didn't hit anything she wasn't supposed to. In his, he did. There are so many situations that happen all the time where people DO have to suddenly slam on the brakes. And the option of keeping a safe distance from the car *behind* you simply isn't possible (wow, if that excuse worked..!)
Reminds me of a funny story, actually -- different situation, but related. A friend of mine was driving an massive old junker when he was in high school, going 10 over the speed limit already on a narrow, no-passing road, and a guy in a BMW was just riding his bumper, tailgating like crazy. He couldn't go any faster without risking a ticket, so he just kept driving, but the guy was glued to his bumper. Finally he was angry enough that he just slammed on his brakes, and of course it was an instant rear-end, the front of the BMW was crushed, and the driver leaped out of his car shouting, etc.. The reply? "I thought I saw an animal." The BMW driver was totally at fault, and his car was toast (whereas my friend could drive away after the cops wrote it up... one bonus of those massive old American cars).
Obviously, this approach to tailgaters is not recommended (and the legal situation would be different if that little lie were admitted), but it's sure nice to think about when someone's practically in your trunk and endangering *your* life because he's late for some meeting. I've been tailgated by Hummers on the highway, which *really* raises the hair on the back of my neck. Yeah, like HE'LL be able to stop from crushing me when I have to brake because something falls off a truck (an experience I've had...).
This "journalist" did just that.
The article is pure flamebait.
Someone who can make an outraged (outraged!) post about an article based on a Slashdot writeup might not deserve so much respect either....
The journalist you're scorning (John Tierney) was very clearly NOT advocating the death penalty. He discussed an interesting report made by an analyst putting things in perspective -- i.e., that if you look at the penalties purely from the standpoint of saving society money, a death penalty for serious "hacker" crimes is much more logical than the death penalty for murder. Then he dismissed this as (rather obviously) impractical:
1) Prisoner's dilemma: It's not really probability (since the other guy isn't deciding randomly) but... Don't confess. If you do, and your buddy *doesn't*, you are out of jail immediately but you probably have only 6 years left to live. You're risking 6 years if he confesses, but you can hope the same fear will shut him up too.
2) Easy one -- flip! Half the time your total drops $25, the other half it goes UP $50. If you keep playing you'll make out better than just sticking every time.
3) Don't go on this game show. If you pick the right door, sure, you get a prize, but you'll also get a lot of publicity, your relatives and old friends will pop up out of the woodwork asking for money, and you may pick up a stalker or two. If you pick the wrong one you will be forever haunted by it. You'll wake up in the night covered in sweat, shouting "No, I said DON'T change, DON'T change!!"
I did mention it... but as a developer, I have to still treat it as a "best guess". It's certainly not a guarantee of the preferred language. I've done a decent amount of traveling, and when I'm in an internet cafe and websites show me content in the local language (without the option to change!), I'm screwed if it's a language I don't read. That's a more serious bug than showing a non-preferred language (but allowing them to click a link for their preferred lang).
Of course, travellers are not the majority of users... but still, there are plenty of countries where multiple languages are spoken, and any user going into an internet cafe (still how most people access the internet in many places...) will likely not be able to change the language setting on the browser.
So.. it can be helpful, but it can't be the center of your localization strategy.
Cool; thanks! I didn't even try running it... their homepage says "The current PHPeclipse version 1.1.4 works only with Eclipse 3.0.x versions" -- but this may just be that they haven't tested it on the new version yet.
I'll give it a shot.
the buttons; the plastic casing; the use of symbols to convey meaning; and of course the device's flagrant use of electricity. Face it, they were asking for this.
You're missing the most obvious violation -- they're screaming over at the Blackberry Growers Association over the confusion this device causes in the average consumer who is accustomed to the juicy sweetness (with a hint of tartness) of a "properly" produced Blackberry(TM).
This unpleasantly plasticky, painfully crunchy and bitter-tasting product is diluting and damaging the mark!
Okay, I like it -- everything's visibly faster (starting up, shutting down, opening files/projects/etc.), the settings make more sense now and are easier to navigate (you can type in a filter like "color" and it'll just show you all of the settings pages where you can set colors of some kind. Sweet). They also link helpfully to related settings pages. No drastic additions that I see so far -- though it's a workday, so I haven't spent much time exploring yet. My code formatting profile was carried over perfectly into the new version, as did various build profiles and so on for 14 different projects (though the one Eclipse plugin project seems to be in need of help).
/your.eclipse.workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.ecl ipse.core.runtime/.settings/
The support for 1.5 seems quite complete and well-integrated (including a slew of possible new coding style warnings); but I'm not developing to 1.5 right now, so I won't vouch for everything.
Most of the other changes I've noticed are like these and what you'd expect for a solid minor release -- nothing drastic, but lots of little enhancements across the board.
The main trouble right now is that most 3rd party plugins won't support the new version yet, for example PHPeclipse (which I use now and again). I'll be keeping 3.0.1 around for a bit because of this.
One minor glitch that I ran into using a workspace from earlier versions was that I couldn't change the selection foreground/background -- that's because I had overridden this value earlier in the Java editor prefs pages... and you can't change it there anymore, BUT the setting was still being read (and the setting I put in the text editor prefs page was still being overridden...).
If you run into something like this, close eclipse and search through the properties files where these settings are stored:
In this case, I had to delete the AbstractTextEditor.Color.SelectionForeground and Background keys in org.eclipse.jdt.ui.prefs, then everything worked fine when I restarted.
Overall, I'm pleased -- the last big upgrade I had to redo my code formatting rules and syntax-highlighting colors/fonts from scratch (which takes awhile.. gotta have that black bg though!).
There must be something else going on with your computer.
I'm using an old Dell laptop with Win2K, 1.3 GHZ P3, 512 RAM. Half the machine yours is, and plenty of issues accumulating after years of use without a clean reinstall (IE tends to take a full minute or two to start up when I have to run it, for example).
Anyway, first run of Eclipse 3.1 took about 20 seconds from double-click to workspace loaded. My text coloring is off and I clearly need to go through the settings again, but it works fine. Opening a project, source file, etc. doesn't take more than 1-2 seconds.
Closed down, re-ran -- after the first startup, now it's 8 seconds from double-click to useable workspace. Memory usage: 41MB, VM Size: 69MB. Not bad at all -- I'm not swapping, and I have various databases and other server software running locally at the same time.
So... I'm guessing your startup problems are your own. Good luck.
I had the page up to the mirrors, then even the routing pages died (so I had to extract that actual mirror link from the full URL...); anyway, here's one mirror that's zipping along for me. And I will post this reply as soon as my download finishes...
win32 zip at mirror.reachable.ca
You can figure out the base directory from that if you want it for another platform.
And a few more that I haven't tested, in various countries (trying to pick the ones that look the toughest):
gulus.USherbrooke.ca
mirrorservice.org
eclipse.objectweb.org
software-mirror.com
sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de
Final note: some of these are definitely hosed; the first seems to work. Gotta hand it to the Canadians -- they're the ones staying up.
That's not formatting; "formatting" means changing the display to convey the *same* info to people who use different standards (I think I mentioned currency conversions in the data section).
For example,
$1,999.00
might be formatted as
USD 1.999,00 in a different locale.
I glanced through the mapped offenders in D.C. -- what surprised me was the seeming smallness of some of the crimes.
Some of them definitely fit in with what I'd think of dangerously disturbed... rape of child under 12, etc. etc... but there are also crimes like "enticing a child under 16 years of age". I'm not even sure what that means -- does it really put this guy in the same category? We don't even know that he knew the girl he was "enticing" was underage... and perhaps he would have found out for sure before committing statutory rape.
Personally, I think listing someone in a database like this is a pretty severe punishment (because it will likely continue to cost them jobs, make it impossible to make friends with neighbors, etc. etc.). If they're going to list such a broad range of crimes, they'd at least make damn sure that someone checking the list will know -- WITHOUT clicking on the name and reading through the details -- what kind of crime it was.
Forgot to mention... remember you are always balancing ease of development and ease of maintenance.
Something that helps one does NOT always help the other -- for example, building the site in English, then making complete copies and translating all text into other languages is easy to develop, but quickly becomes a nightmare in maintenance... the customer wants a minor change and you have to update 10 files.
Just walk through quick scenarios for each option: I would do X to create and integrate this page, and I would have to do Y to update its layout or text later. If they add in a few new fields, I'd do Z... you get the idea. If there are dozens of steps, and you'll be laughing cynically at the suggestion of bringing a new developer onto the team... you're probably doing something wrong.