"Literally" worship? I have doubts that they have a little altar they pray at.
I will second the other reply and express doubts that MS was first with all those things. Some of them perhaps, but not as many as you think.
When it comes down to it, the IT industry has very few companies that have been the first to produce a multitude of things. The honour of being "first" tends to be spread out among many companies, each of them getting credit for one or two things. Microsoft is one of those companies, but with its market power many more people became exposed through its implementations. That's not wrong, but it doesn't mean they were first either.
CSV isn't exactly a well-defined mail format though. Yes you could build one to import whatever Outlook exports, but some other mail program might export a slightly different CSV.
In contrast, I think mbox format is better defined and therefore can be more reliably imported without worrying about what program produced the input originally.
That is fascinating! But to add to the other comments about this not really being a loop, it amused me to imagine the wasp is thinking exactly the same thing from its point of view.
"I can get these humans to go into an infinite loop! All I have to do is drag prey to my burrow and go inside, then they will move the prey away! And they'll repeat this as long as I keep dragging it back and going inside!"
Well I think we should be honest here. Most feedback on OSS projects isn't by design or usability experts; this isn't to say they're wrong or should be ignored, but most users are just that - users, not UI professionals. So while feedback is valuable, there isn't some intellectual weight to all user feedback.
But separately to this, I think code contributions are simply easier for the developers to evaluate. UI suggestions are relatively subjective and tactile - while you can imagine how it might behave, in the end you need an implementation (or a bunch of UI mockups) to get a feel for how it might behave and whether it's superior to the status quo.
The question is, who is going to code up this implementation or the UI mockups for everyone to evaluate? The developers have a bunch of existing tasks they already want to do or are working on (features, bug fixes etc.) and may not have the mental energy to implement mockups every time someone suggests a UI improvement. This is especially true if it's a complex suggestion that's more than just "the list should be made into a drop-down".
So without having an extra developer who makes UI tweaking their prime focus, I think it does fall to those suggesting to come up with "the code", because that lets people evaluate it. Ideally "the code" really is code, but having a mockup only in screenshots is better than nothing.
It comes down to making it as easy as possible for people to prioritise the change you want. Implementations are worth so much more than ideas - a working mediocre idea is better than a good idea that's just sitting in everyone's heads.
As other people have posted, every deb should have/usr/share/doc/$pkg/copyright to describe the copyright and licensing info. This is simply a file in the package's data, not the package metadata.
Putting license info in the package metadata has been discussed on the deb-devel mailing list (possibly with tags, eg. "gpl", "bsd", whatever), but one problem raised was that plenty of software contains code under varying licenses, so you always need to check the specific source to find particular licensing details.
Re:Major Plotholes ... Spoiler Alert
on
Batman Discussion
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· Score: 1
The old cop tells Harvey the female cop picked up Whatsit, and he nabs her (the female cop) and makes her call Gordon to set the trap. That all seems pretty hole free to me.
Actually Dent threatens that gangster (Maroni, sp?), the one who Batman dropped from a floor or so off the ground. It's him who tells Dent, "It was Ramirez." Then he goes after her.
Re:Major Plotholes ... Spoiler Alert
on
Batman Discussion
·
· Score: 1
The people of Gotham have come to believe in Dent. Remember the mayor telling Dent in his office that he will suffer more scrutiny - and if they find just one black mark against him, then all the mobster cases he has built will collapse.
Gordon's dialogue at the end matches this. Dent's image is ruined and the mobsters will go free. The point of the movie is that Batman is sacrificing his reputation to save Harvey Dent's, because that is what Gotham needs. It's the contrast between Dent, described as the White Knight, and Batman the Dark Knight.
Take Dent's line from earlier: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain". Dent's fate was the latter, but Batman has taken his crimes so that Dent appeared to die a hero. This decision is foreshadowed by Alfred, who says Batman should endure, should make the choice that no-one else can make.
I found it beautiful movie-making, all the characters and their lines lead elegantly to the ending.
If by public you mean "my other Facebook friends can see it", the benefit is that is pull rather than push - people can see your photos if they want to, but they aren't pushed out the way mass photo emails are.
Also, I've had some very good conversations started when (say) friend B saw a conversation I was having with friend A on my wall and started talking about the same thing. That topic might never normally come up between you and friend B, but now you have found a new thing in common or otherwise found out something new about them.
I see a lot of hate of social networking sites here on Slashdot, and I'm not quite sure. Certainly myspace pages were often the extremes of ugly, but that is separate to the concept of social networking.
Social networking allows interactions in casual ways so you can obliquely tell them things that would be much more confrontational in another medium. For example, if you use a silly app to vote someone "most likely to be bill gates" then you may be telling them they are overly uncool or ambitious or maybe just that they are good with money.
There is lots and lots of subtext in all these interactions. A lot of it is trivial, but trivial isn't the same as meaningless.
Basicly, some people want to ban "assault rifles" because they look scary. If we painted them day-glow orange and had pictures of kittens and unicorns on them, they would be OK.
Well that's an interesting idea. To an outsider, gun culture looks dangerous. I'd find it amusing if you could only buy guns in day-glo orange, fluoro yellow or other bright colours, to reduce the stupid feeling of coolness and personal power people get out of them.
It's not really practical because people would just buy them and paint them black, but in a fantasy world I like the idea.
So don't? Only accept the units you're used to if Americans want to do business with you? It's not only business, but the ordinary social interactions and content that we get on the modern Internet.
I mean, it's not like we'd expect Australians to speak English just because they were speaking with us! Heh:)
I'm Australian, and I think it's just another one of those things where the size/dominance of the US is annoying to the rest of the world because it is different *and gets away with it*.
We've all converted to metric but the US refuses the change. That's partly understandable due to the cost/effort, but it means that the rest of the world forever more has to convert units to talk to them. Effectively they're making more work for everyone, and don't seem to care. When you think about it, in many social situations it's considered a bit rude to needlessly make work for other people.
The other aspect of this is that many Americans either don't know, remember or care about foreigners using a different unit systems, so even when they mention things like "it was 96 degrees outside today!" they don't bother offering a conversion or even a "sorry, don't know what that is in Celsius".
Okay this post is a lot longer than I intended; it's not really that annoying in the big scheme of things, but you asked why it annoys people so I'm explaining why it irritates me. No biggie.
I totally loved Grim Fandango, to date it has to be one of my favourite adventure games ever. But I think it was a beautifully self-contained story about Manny, the whole thing just fits together perfectly. I wouldn't want it ruined by a forced sequel with cheesy premise.
Also, they cut corners on development costs by buying some of the code
I don't really consider doing that to be cutting corners (usually implied to be a negative). Is there something wrong by definition in purchasing code eg. for a library? It saves money (perhaps), and may be better than the code you'd write in-house if you implemented it yourself.
Why would the company that developed that give that to a competitor, and allow that competitor to improve their bottom line? Every piece of doing business is a competitive advantage. There are no insignificant parts of any business.
As already pointed out, the company would be sharing with lots of companies (or just people) that aren't competitors at all - a million companies,plus schools, charities, government buildings etc. Those people might then contribute back and eventually maintain the software, meaning the original company gets it for free.
And not to mention that even if it's adopted by competitors, the original company has first-mover advantage anyway. It would take the other company time to investigate and integrate the software anyway. Meanwhile, company A is already saving money and if the sharemarket is smart, they'll realise that B was copying but A was innovative, making them more valuable.
My pet peeve - something being "literally" true means that there is no exaggeration or metaphor going on, the words mean exactly what they say at face value. So you're saying there were some real wolves and a lamb voting about dinner... I'm skeptical:)
People try to use the word "literally" for emphasis nowadays for some reason, but if you'd simply said "it is no better than two wolves and one lamb..." that would be clearer and just as rhetorically strong.
Any particular reason for this story other than another kdawsonfud attempt to get a slam in at Bush?
You mean apart from the fact it's funny and is filed under the Humour section?:) APEC is a reasonably major political/economic forum for the region, I don't see this as being gratuitous.
Don't you watch comedies or more serious/arty dramas? To name a few (that I'm not saying I have watched), what did you consider Little Miss Sunshine, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Broken Flowers, Crash etc. to be?
Knowing Slashdot, someone will tell me that one or more of the above are based on books, but it doesn't change the essential point. You watch blockbusters, you'll get that kind of movie. You watch dramas that only get shown a couple of times a day, you'll get more original viewing because it doesn't require the audience kn
In terms of cultural significance, I think Doom had greater impact than Wolfenstein. Yes, most/. readers know that Doom is just an enhanced version of Wolfenstein, but Doom was a much bigger hit than Wolfenstein. It's not just a technical achievement per se, but the impact on the industry and culture. As other posters have pointed out, Doom popularised multiplayer deathmatch in a way that no previous game had done. I don't think industry competitors sat up and took note after Wolfenstein, but Doom spawned a bunch of clones - turning FPSs into a mainstream genre for the industry. Doom eventually even spawned that movie.
If you look at it as more than just "who made this kind of game first?" then I think the choices they made are at least reasonable, even if you don't always agree. Such judgements will always be subjective.
If the number of options paralyze your decision, you'll be more likely to stick with the status quo...
Realistically, most users don't know about other browsers, so they won't get paralysed. Those who know about them all are more computer-savvy and won't be daunted by that choice. They would try one or two of the others at most, and pick the one they like best.
In no way does Iceweasel make any user more likely to use Internet Explorer.
I do know that if it does get replaced with IceWeasel, I'll (obtain Firefox by some other means).
and
I just don't want to one day find a vulnerability or incompatibility in IceWeasel that's not in Firefox.
From the above I take it you already use the Firefox package on Ubuntu. That means you've trusted Ubuntu (and therefore Debian) already, since Firefox is already patched (that is, after all, part of the problem to Mozilla). But you're saying if they change the name and the icon, you can't trust it anymore. That seems rather silly to me.
Slashdot Mirror
"Literally" worship? I have doubts that they have a little altar they pray at.
I will second the other reply and express doubts that MS was first with all those things. Some of them perhaps, but not as many as you think.
When it comes down to it, the IT industry has very few companies that have been the first to produce a multitude of things. The honour of being "first" tends to be spread out among many companies, each of them getting credit for one or two things. Microsoft is one of those companies, but with its market power many more people became exposed through its implementations. That's not wrong, but it doesn't mean they were first either.
CSV isn't exactly a well-defined mail format though. Yes you could build one to import whatever Outlook exports, but some other mail program might export a slightly different CSV.
In contrast, I think mbox format is better defined and therefore can be more reliably imported without worrying about what program produced the input originally.
That is fascinating! But to add to the other comments about this not really being a loop, it amused me to imagine the wasp is thinking exactly the same thing from its point of view.
"I can get these humans to go into an infinite loop! All I have to do is drag prey to my burrow and go inside, then they will move the prey away! And they'll repeat this as long as I keep dragging it back and going inside!"
The anti-USA sentiment on /. is strong but I think it's also matched by an equally strong pro-USA sentiment.
Most of the Blu-ray discs I have (not many, around ~5) go straight into playing the movie, at least on my PS3.
This seemed much better than DVDs, where players seem to always bring up the menu even though 90% of the time you just want to watch the movie.
Well I think we should be honest here. Most feedback on OSS projects isn't by design or usability experts; this isn't to say they're wrong or should be ignored, but most users are just that - users, not UI professionals. So while feedback is valuable, there isn't some intellectual weight to all user feedback.
But separately to this, I think code contributions are simply easier for the developers to evaluate. UI suggestions are relatively subjective and tactile - while you can imagine how it might behave, in the end you need an implementation (or a bunch of UI mockups) to get a feel for how it might behave and whether it's superior to the status quo.
The question is, who is going to code up this implementation or the UI mockups for everyone to evaluate? The developers have a bunch of existing tasks they already want to do or are working on (features, bug fixes etc.) and may not have the mental energy to implement mockups every time someone suggests a UI improvement. This is especially true if it's a complex suggestion that's more than just "the list should be made into a drop-down".
So without having an extra developer who makes UI tweaking their prime focus, I think it does fall to those suggesting to come up with "the code", because that lets people evaluate it. Ideally "the code" really is code, but having a mockup only in screenshots is better than nothing.
It comes down to making it as easy as possible for people to prioritise the change you want. Implementations are worth so much more than ideas - a working mediocre idea is better than a good idea that's just sitting in everyone's heads.
As other people have posted, every deb should have /usr/share/doc/$pkg/copyright to describe the copyright and licensing info. This is simply a file in the package's data, not the package metadata.
Putting license info in the package metadata has been discussed on the deb-devel mailing list (possibly with tags, eg. "gpl", "bsd", whatever), but one problem raised was that plenty of software contains code under varying licenses, so you always need to check the specific source to find particular licensing details.
The old cop tells Harvey the female cop picked up Whatsit, and he nabs her (the female cop) and makes her call Gordon to set the trap. That all seems pretty hole free to me.
Actually Dent threatens that gangster (Maroni, sp?), the one who Batman dropped from a floor or so off the ground. It's him who tells Dent, "It was Ramirez." Then he goes after her.
The people of Gotham have come to believe in Dent. Remember the mayor telling Dent in his office that he will suffer more scrutiny - and if they find just one black mark against him, then all the mobster cases he has built will collapse.
Gordon's dialogue at the end matches this. Dent's image is ruined and the mobsters will go free. The point of the movie is that Batman is sacrificing his reputation to save Harvey Dent's, because that is what Gotham needs. It's the contrast between Dent, described as the White Knight, and Batman the Dark Knight.
Take Dent's line from earlier: "You either die a hero, or live long enough to become the villain". Dent's fate was the latter, but Batman has taken his crimes so that Dent appeared to die a hero. This decision is foreshadowed by Alfred, who says Batman should endure, should make the choice that no-one else can make.
I found it beautiful movie-making, all the characters and their lines lead elegantly to the ending.
If by public you mean "my other Facebook friends can see it", the benefit is that is pull rather than push - people can see your photos if they want to, but they aren't pushed out the way mass photo emails are.
Also, I've had some very good conversations started when (say) friend B saw a conversation I was having with friend A on my wall and started talking about the same thing. That topic might never normally come up between you and friend B, but now you have found a new thing in common or otherwise found out something new about them.
Is that so terrible?
I see a lot of hate of social networking sites here on Slashdot, and I'm not quite sure. Certainly myspace pages were often the extremes of ugly, but that is separate to the concept of social networking.
Social networking allows interactions in casual ways so you can obliquely tell them things that would be much more confrontational in another medium. For example, if you use a silly app to vote someone "most likely to be bill gates" then you may be telling them they are overly uncool or ambitious or maybe just that they are good with money.
There is lots and lots of subtext in all these interactions. A lot of it is trivial, but trivial isn't the same as meaningless.
Basicly, some people want to ban "assault rifles" because they look scary. If we painted them day-glow orange and had pictures of kittens and unicorns on them, they would be OK.
Well that's an interesting idea. To an outsider, gun culture looks dangerous. I'd find it amusing if you could only buy guns in day-glo orange, fluoro yellow or other bright colours, to reduce the stupid feeling of coolness and personal power people get out of them.It's not really practical because people would just buy them and paint them black, but in a fantasy world I like the idea.
I'm Australian, and I think it's just another one of those things where the size/dominance of the US is annoying to the rest of the world because it is different *and gets away with it*.
We've all converted to metric but the US refuses the change. That's partly understandable due to the cost/effort, but it means that the rest of the world forever more has to convert units to talk to them. Effectively they're making more work for everyone, and don't seem to care. When you think about it, in many social situations it's considered a bit rude to needlessly make work for other people.
The other aspect of this is that many Americans either don't know, remember or care about foreigners using a different unit systems, so even when they mention things like "it was 96 degrees outside today!" they don't bother offering a conversion or even a "sorry, don't know what that is in Celsius".
Okay this post is a lot longer than I intended; it's not really that annoying in the big scheme of things, but you asked why it annoys people so I'm explaining why it irritates me. No biggie.
And then the site got started :)
I totally loved Grim Fandango, to date it has to be one of my favourite adventure games ever. But I think it was a beautifully self-contained story about Manny, the whole thing just fits together perfectly. I wouldn't want it ruined by a forced sequel with cheesy premise.
I think it's just meant to be amusing (hence the +5 Funny mod as of writing) not logically convincing at second glance.
As already pointed out, the company would be sharing with lots of companies (or just people) that aren't competitors at all - a million companies,plus schools, charities, government buildings etc. Those people might then contribute back and eventually maintain the software, meaning the original company gets it for free.
And not to mention that even if it's adopted by competitors, the original company has first-mover advantage anyway. It would take the other company time to investigate and integrate the software anyway. Meanwhile, company A is already saving money and if the sharemarket is smart, they'll realise that B was copying but A was innovative, making them more valuable.
My pet peeve - something being "literally" true means that there is no exaggeration or metaphor going on, the words mean exactly what they say at face value. So you're saying there were some real wolves and a lamb voting about dinner... I'm skeptical
People try to use the word "literally" for emphasis nowadays for some reason, but if you'd simply said "it is no better than two wolves and one lamb..." that would be clearer and just as rhetorically strong.
You mean apart from the fact it's funny and is filed under the Humour section?
Don't you watch comedies or more serious/arty dramas? To name a few (that I'm not saying I have watched), what did you consider Little Miss Sunshine, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Broken Flowers, Crash etc. to be?
Knowing Slashdot, someone will tell me that one or more of the above are based on books, but it doesn't change the essential point. You watch blockbusters, you'll get that kind of movie. You watch dramas that only get shown a couple of times a day, you'll get more original viewing because it doesn't require the audience kn
In terms of cultural significance, I think Doom had greater impact than Wolfenstein. Yes, most /. readers know that Doom is just an enhanced version of Wolfenstein, but Doom was a much bigger hit than Wolfenstein. It's not just a technical achievement per se, but the impact on the industry and culture. As other posters have pointed out, Doom popularised multiplayer deathmatch in a way that no previous game had done. I don't think industry competitors sat up and took note after Wolfenstein, but Doom spawned a bunch of clones - turning FPSs into a mainstream genre for the industry. Doom eventually even spawned that movie.
If you look at it as more than just "who made this kind of game first?" then I think the choices they made are at least reasonable, even if you don't always agree. Such judgements will always be subjective.