His comment isn't the problem, it's his sig. -1 Does not conform to the Slashbot hive mind.
Re:Good time for Canadian Movie Makers
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 1
I wish that were true, but the sad fact is that Canadian movies simply suck. There are a couple of exceptions, such as Red Green and Corner Gas (oh wait, they're not movies... oh well). Perhaps if Canadian film makers concentrated on making movies that people actaully wanted to see, instead of politically correct CBC-eske crap, they would be able to turn a profit instead of relying on government handouts.
The entire concept of 'Canadian' movie/music/programming-of-any-type is really outdated. If a singer from Canada, guitar player from the US and a drummer from Finland team up, what label do you stick on the result? What about an American production company shooting a movie in Canada with Mexican actors? Geographic labels on art never did make much sense, and much less so now. The sooner that the CRTC and the 'Heritage' minister realize this and quit dictating what the public can and can't see, the better.
Part of the problem is the flexibility that Linux affords. A highly-componentized system is great for flexibility, but a nightmare for usability and developers.
Very true, but these hassles can be mitigated by good organization and management schemes. Linux is way ahead of Windows here - library versioning, package management systems - but there is more work to be done.
I thought last year was supposed to be the 'worst ever' according to this article anyway. Hmmm, let's review: 2003 - worst year ever 2004 - viruses sharply up (from the worst year ever) So - when does that 'Great Security Initiative' of 2002 start working? Microsoft please - the authenticated code approach doesn't work. Sandboxes do.
My plan for Iraq is a 90-day phased withdrawal concentrating on the physical security of the troops.
Didn't the US get skewered for doing this after the first gulf war? And in Afganistan? Which is what lead to the rise of the Taliban. Which led to 9/11. How is this not repeating bad decisions which, as we can see from history, will lead to bad consequences?
The marketspeak phenomenon has become increasingly irritating over the last couple of years. Many times I have gone to a web site to research a product, only to be snowed under by babble that was carefully designed to give me a warm glowing fuzzy about a company without actually conveying any useful information. I would surmise that this tripe is what appeals to executives, CEO's and presidents. They call the shots and that's why the stuff is there.
It should be noted that open source projects aren't immune to this either. For example, consider this blurb taken from the Postnuke documentation:
Some may see PN as a weblog or content management system. But PN is more than that, PostNuke is a community, content, collaborative management system, a C3MS. It's your electronic toolbox, a set of tools allowing you to build a dynamically generated web site that five years ago would have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch.
Um, sure. Great. But what does it do? Notepad and vi manage content. FTP manages content. Alongside the paragraph above is a cute little picture that says "PostNuke's system brings together content and users effectively". So does an old-fashioned cork-covered bulletin board.
Open source authors - when people come to your site, they're asking three questions:
What does it do?
How is it different from everything else?
Can I make it do what I want it to do?
If your web site isn't answering these questions clearly, you're losing users, authors, contributors and community.
Sounds like as good a reason as any to limit the amount people can spend on a Presidential campaign.
That's a simplistic solution to a complex problem. It does nothing to curtail the ultra-rich and the mega-influential. A corporation could start inserting subtle political messages into its ad campaigns. Or a person could conceivably make a movie with a political message, call it a 'documentary' and have the DVD released just before an important election. Options like these are only available to a select few, but it's these select few that need the restrictions.
He has a point, but there are some flaws in his reasoning. First of all, just because the world can examine the source code of a program, it doesn't mean that people with the necessary skills and knowledge will. However, it does happen. BSD is noticeably absent from the article and anything dealing with open source and code auditing needs to at least touch on it. (But it's dying, I know...) The author also wants us to believe that commercial software has better code auditing software and procedures than open source. He doesn't give much evidence of this, we're just supposed to accept it because they have lots of money and the impoverished open source hackers don't.
Judging from this article, I would doubt that the author has a true understanding of the open source concept. Just because something lacks structure doesn't mean that it's inferior. What really matters is how vulnerable a box is to being exploited. And in terms of real-world metrics, despite much-vaunted 'security initiatives', open source software has a better record of delivering network services more efficiently, reliably and securely than commercial alternatives.
The original Luddites were opposed to specific technology - machines that threatened their jobs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite). When technology came along that forced them to adapt, instead they chose violent protest. Kind of a precursor to unions.
I also disagree with your assertion that there are no true Luddies on slashdot. How often are GUI's maligned? Graphical interfaces are a huge advancement over the command line, in terms of information presentation and user interaction, yet you still have people who decry them. Flash can do things that DHTML can't, yet how often do you see people bragging about how they have it disabled? And don't get me started on the HTML purists. "HTML was designed for structure, not presentation" they chant, but can't see that capabilities and needs have progressed beyond that.
In each of these cases you have a group that got used to a certain level of technology and way of doing things (command line, plain HTML), and don't want to go through the effort of changing when new technology comes along. Just like the Luddites.
Contary to popular belief there is very little added security Really? They block incoming connections to a computer, which is a great security enhancement. A NAT box will prevent you from accidentally sharing your hard drive with the world, unless you explicitly allow it. An unpatched Windows machine lasts 16 minutes or so before being compromised - unless it is behind a NAT box. You will also be protected from all worms that depend on incoming connections to propagate, as well as Messenger spam. So - please explain to me what is so insecure about NAT.
The deceit in F9/11 has been covered very well, on David Kopel's site and on many other ones as well. See the "Presumption of Relevance" post for better phrasing than mine.
It's an illustration. It shows how one can recite facts while distorting their meaning.
Here's another one for you. Suppose we were discussing Adolf Hitler and I told you that:
1. He united the German people and lifted their spirits following their defeat in WW1. 2. He was elected by a large majority in a fair election. 3. He conquered most of Europe.
These are historically verifiable facts, yet they do not convey the truth about the man. This is what Moore does. He shows the portions of interviews and events that support his goal. It's not 'spin' or 'bias'. A half truth is a full lie.
Time for an object lesson. Let's apply Moore's "creative editing" techniques to your post and see what we come up with.
Wait... poor... low-pay... [Micheal]Moore was behind the scenes... reporting that Gore won the election... but the mistake did not make a difference to... and was in to way detrimental to... the US Supreme Court.
Ridiculous? Yup. Out of context? You bet. Totally changed your meaning? Of course. Can you deny that you said those words? Not a chance. You did indeed write those words, but I used them to express a different (and opposite) meaning than what you intended. Just like Moore in Columbine and F9/11.
Let's take a look at this. Your employer already has a relationship with IBM. IBM has been pushing Linux for the last two years. If you wanted Linux to be adopted in your company, wouldn't it be logical to go with an IBM-supported distro?
Mindless, empty-headed zealot. If it was just affected yourself I wouldn't care, but people like you are giving us all a bad name.
As far as popular usage goes, "left" and "right" are usually used to label people when it's easier to do so than to think about what they are saying. For example, supposed you were talking to someone and they mentioned that they thought that citizen ownership of firearms decreases violent crime because it allows for practical self-defense. Now picture yourself rolling your eyes and muttering "right-wing nutjob". Now imagine engaging this person in a long, protracted discussion and researching the matter yourself. It's obvious that the former is much quicker, easier and doesn't involve nearly as much strenuous thinking.
You can repeat this exercise with any hot issue you care to. War, peace, abortion, welfare - it doesn't matter. The underlying concept is the same. Just stick a 'right' or 'left' label on anything or anyone that might pose a threat to your worldview. Then, instead of thinking for yourself, you can dedicate your efforts to defeating the 'other guys', they being whomever picked the opposite side as you.
There have been times when I have played a game like Tetris (wonderfully addictive) for long hours on end. After turning it off and going about other activities, I find myself trying to fit thoughts into place - turning them this way and that.
I can relate. There have been times when, after playing Hitman, I find myself walking into a building and looking around for clothes to steal.
I agree - it is the closest I've found. I actually bought one - and thirteen days later, sony made that incredibly short-sighted announcement. I have no desire to be tied to a orphaned platform. Luckily, the store accepted it back.
1. Big, bright screen. Half-VGA at least. 2. Built-in Wi-Fi. Don't care about Bluetooth. 3. Ability to display all types of document formats. PDF, HTML, CHM, and all the rest I forgot. Ability to view in portrait and landscape mode.No document conversion. Document conversion is a pain. Are you LISTENING Palm? 4. NOT a phone. If I wanted to pay per month for the priviledge of using the device I bought, I would buy a phone. 5. Lots of developers churning out neat programs that can download and play with. 6. Tangentially related, I want to be able to right-click on a file and say "Send to handheld", and have it appear there. 7. I don't care about viewing movies on a handheld. I makes no sense to view movies on a screen a couple of square inches. 8. CHEAP I'm talking $200 CDN max.
Um, are you seriously suggesting people can just "pick up" grafiti? My nine-year old son was writing his name in about three minutes. It took me about two hours to get a handle on the alphabet. That got me started and I looked up puncutation and numbers as I needed them. When I was too lazy to do that, I just used the on-screen keyboard. And that's with the old single-stroke Grafitti. The new version is even easier. My Visor has been sitting in the closet gathering dust for 3 years Fine. Send it to me. How much you want for it?
I'd like to see less semis on the road Me too. Despite the much-vaunted 'extra training', I still see a lot of semi drivers doing boneheaded things. Just this past week I saw one that blocked off half of the highway as he tried to make a left turn into a column of stationary vehicles waiting for a train.
Freight is much more efficently and quickly transported by, say, rail Um, no. If it were, there wouldn't be a trucking industry. The fact of the matter is that the unions have crippled the ability of the railroads to compete. People who want stuff shipped go with trucks because they can get cargo to where it's supposed to go, quicker and cheaper.
there is NO GOOD REASON for hummers Let me explain something to you. In a free society, one does not have to explain his reasons for anything to anyone else, barring an investigation of some type. The fact that there is someone who produces them and there are people who are willing to pay for them is enough of a reason for them to exist. You may not understand the reason, but that's OK. Personally, I don't understand stamp collectors or country music, but that's hardly a reason to ban them.
What people do with thier own time and money deserves just as much protection as what they do with their mind and mouth.
I think that doing something that sounds freaking impossible is the point of the project. Our daily lives consist of things that were deemed impossible at one time by the most educated people of the day. And the reason that rope climbing is so hard is because you have to use your arms to move your body, not your legs as you are used to. How hard is it to walk up a three foot hill? For that matter, many people have a vertical jump of three feet (well, perhaps not to many people on Slashdot...)
Having said that, you're right about the difficulty of the project. I've heard it said that a helicopter doesn't fly, it beats the air into submission. Awfully tough to do that using a human as a power source.
From the letter: "...serious risks posed to the consumers of our states by your companies' peer-to-peer file-sharing technology... to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed."
Hoo boy. Sounds like this evil p2p technology is going to jump through the screen and grab the user by the throat.
Wait a minute - I just got a great idea. I'm going to write a movie script about an malicious p2p program that does exactly that. Evil software that sucks unsuspecting users into the "computer world". Fakes and uncompletes everywhere. The MPAA is going to give me millions!!
Strictly speaking, guns (along with the requisite ammunition) are designed to propel a bullet into a predictable, repeatable trajectory. A gun designer is preoccupied with how to feed the bullet into the chamber, how to design the action, how to increase accuracy, etc.
There are many reasons to own a gun, other than to kill or maim. There are many different forms of target shooting, collecting, a fascination with their mechanisms or with things that make loud noises. Compare the number of bullets sold in a year to the number that end up headed towards a human being. When it comes down to actual use, non-violent use of firearms absolutely dwarfs the violent useage.
I can understand where you misconceptions are coming from. For most people, the only exposure to guns comes from TV or movies. I don't think that I have ever seen a gun being handled in a safe and responsible manner in the media. If your only exposure to cars was in the same manner, you would probably think that they only had three modes: stopped, speeding and exploding.
You're bloody well right we don't understand. So enlighten us. What did they say? How did they justify his speech?
BTW - free speech works both ways. The same rights that protect CrimethInc protect the Republicans as well. Let's play shoe-on-other-foot for a moment. What do you think would happen if the Republicans encouraged their attendees to deface the CrimethInc web site, to launch denial of service attacks against their server, and to harass members in the street? Considering that he called being escorted from the room for his own protection "censorship", I can very nearly hear the indignant screams from here.
Once again - free speech is a two-way street. If you expect it for yourself, you'd better be ready to extend it to other people as well.
Slashdot Mirror
His comment isn't the problem, it's his sig.
-1 Does not conform to the Slashbot hive mind.
I wish that were true, but the sad fact is that Canadian movies simply suck. There are a couple of exceptions, such as Red Green and Corner Gas (oh wait, they're not movies ... oh well). Perhaps if Canadian film makers concentrated on making movies that people actaully wanted to see, instead of politically correct CBC-eske crap, they would be able to turn a profit instead of relying on government handouts.
The entire concept of 'Canadian' movie/music/programming-of-any-type is really outdated. If a singer from Canada, guitar player from the US and a drummer from Finland team up, what label do you stick on the result? What about an American production company shooting a movie in Canada with Mexican actors? Geographic labels on art never did make much sense, and much less so now. The sooner that the CRTC and the 'Heritage' minister realize this and quit dictating what the public can and can't see, the better.
Part of the problem is the flexibility that Linux affords. A highly-componentized system is great for flexibility, but a nightmare for usability and developers.
Very true, but these hassles can be mitigated by good organization and management schemes. Linux is way ahead of Windows here - library versioning, package management systems - but there is more work to be done.
I thought last year was supposed to be the 'worst ever' according to this article anyway.
Hmmm, let's review:
2003 - worst year ever
2004 - viruses sharply up (from the worst year ever)
So - when does that 'Great Security Initiative' of 2002 start working? Microsoft please - the authenticated code approach doesn't work. Sandboxes do.
My plan for Iraq is a 90-day phased withdrawal concentrating on the physical security of the troops.
Didn't the US get skewered for doing this after the first gulf war? And in Afganistan? Which is what lead to the rise of the Taliban. Which led to 9/11. How is this not repeating bad decisions which, as we can see from history, will lead to bad consequences?
It should be noted that open source projects aren't immune to this either. For example, consider this blurb taken from the Postnuke documentation:Um, sure. Great. But what does it do? Notepad and vi manage content. FTP manages content. Alongside the paragraph above is a cute little picture that says "PostNuke's system brings together content and users effectively". So does an old-fashioned cork-covered bulletin board.
Open source authors - when people come to your site, they're asking three questions:
If your web site isn't answering these questions clearly, you're losing users, authors, contributors and community.
Sounds like as good a reason as any to limit the amount people can spend on a Presidential campaign.
That's a simplistic solution to a complex problem. It does nothing to curtail the ultra-rich and the mega-influential. A corporation could start inserting subtle political messages into its ad campaigns. Or a person could conceivably make a movie with a political message, call it a 'documentary' and have the DVD released just before an important election. Options like these are only available to a select few, but it's these select few that need the restrictions.
He has a point, but there are some flaws in his reasoning. First of all, just because the world can examine the source code of a program, it doesn't mean that people with the necessary skills and knowledge will. However, it does happen. BSD is noticeably absent from the article and anything dealing with open source and code auditing needs to at least touch on it. (But it's dying, I know...) The author also wants us to believe that commercial software has better code auditing software and procedures than open source. He doesn't give much evidence of this, we're just supposed to accept it because they have lots of money and the impoverished open source hackers don't.
Judging from this article, I would doubt that the author has a true understanding of the open source concept. Just because something lacks structure doesn't mean that it's inferior. What really matters is how vulnerable a box is to being exploited. And in terms of real-world metrics, despite much-vaunted 'security initiatives', open source software has a better record of delivering network services more efficiently, reliably and securely than commercial alternatives.
The original Luddites were opposed to specific technology - machines that threatened their jobs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite). When technology came along that forced them to adapt, instead they chose violent protest. Kind of a precursor to unions.
I also disagree with your assertion that there are no true Luddies on slashdot. How often are GUI's maligned? Graphical interfaces are a huge advancement over the command line, in terms of information presentation and user interaction, yet you still have people who decry them. Flash can do things that DHTML can't, yet how often do you see people bragging about how they have it disabled? And don't get me started on the HTML purists. "HTML was designed for structure, not presentation" they chant, but can't see that capabilities and needs have progressed beyond that.
In each of these cases you have a group that got used to a certain level of technology and way of doing things (command line, plain HTML), and don't want to go through the effort of changing when new technology comes along. Just like the Luddites.
I don't.
;-)
The guy was an idiot
Contary to popular belief there is very little added security
Really? They block incoming connections to a computer, which is a great security enhancement. A NAT box will prevent you from accidentally sharing your hard drive with the world, unless you explicitly allow it. An unpatched Windows machine lasts 16 minutes or so before being compromised - unless it is behind a NAT box. You will also be protected from all worms that depend on incoming connections to propagate, as well as Messenger spam.
So - please explain to me what is so insecure about NAT.
The deceit in F9/11 has been covered very well, on David Kopel's site and on many other ones as well. See the "Presumption of Relevance" post for better phrasing than mine.
It's an illustration. It shows how one can recite facts while distorting their meaning.
Here's another one for you. Suppose we were discussing Adolf Hitler and I told you that:
1. He united the German people and lifted their spirits following their defeat in WW1.
2. He was elected by a large majority in a fair election.
3. He conquered most of Europe.
These are historically verifiable facts, yet they do not convey the truth about the man. This is what Moore does. He shows the portions of interviews and events that support his goal. It's not 'spin' or 'bias'. A half truth is a full lie.
Wait ... poor ... low-pay ... [Micheal]Moore was behind the scenes ... reporting that Gore won the election ... but the mistake did not make a difference to ... and was in to way detrimental to ... the US Supreme Court.
Ridiculous? Yup. Out of context? You bet. Totally changed your meaning? Of course. Can you deny that you said those words? Not a chance. You did indeed write those words, but I used them to express a different (and opposite) meaning than what you intended. Just like Moore in Columbine and F9/11.
Now someone give me an Oscar!!
You Debian guys are as bad as the Mac crowd.
Let's take a look at this. Your employer already has a relationship with IBM. IBM has been pushing Linux for the last two years. If you wanted Linux to be adopted in your company, wouldn't it be logical to go with an IBM-supported distro?
Mindless, empty-headed zealot. If it was just affected yourself I wouldn't care, but people like you are giving us all a bad name.
As far as popular usage goes, "left" and "right" are usually used to label people when it's easier to do so than to think about what they are saying. For example, supposed you were talking to someone and they mentioned that they thought that citizen ownership of firearms decreases violent crime because it allows for practical self-defense. Now picture yourself rolling your eyes and muttering "right-wing nutjob". Now imagine engaging this person in a long, protracted discussion and researching the matter yourself. It's obvious that the former is much quicker, easier and doesn't involve nearly as much strenuous thinking.
You can repeat this exercise with any hot issue you care to. War, peace, abortion, welfare - it doesn't matter. The underlying concept is the same. Just stick a 'right' or 'left' label on anything or anyone that might pose a threat to your worldview. Then, instead of thinking for yourself, you can dedicate your efforts to defeating the 'other guys', they being whomever picked the opposite side as you.
There have been times when I have played a game like Tetris (wonderfully addictive) for long hours on end. After turning it off and going about other activities, I find myself trying to fit thoughts into place - turning them this way and that.
I can relate. There have been times when, after playing Hitman, I find myself walking into a building and looking around for clothes to steal.
I agree - it is the closest I've found. I actually bought one - and thirteen days later, sony made that incredibly short-sighted announcement. I have no desire to be tied to a orphaned platform. Luckily, the store accepted it back.
1. Big, bright screen. Half-VGA at least.
2. Built-in Wi-Fi. Don't care about Bluetooth.
3. Ability to display all types of document formats. PDF, HTML, CHM, and all the rest I forgot. Ability to view in portrait and landscape mode.No document conversion. Document conversion is a pain. Are you LISTENING Palm?
4. NOT a phone. If I wanted to pay per month for the priviledge of using the device I bought, I would buy a phone.
5. Lots of developers churning out neat programs that can download and play with.
6. Tangentially related, I want to be able to right-click on a file and say "Send to handheld", and have it appear there.
7. I don't care about viewing movies on a handheld. I makes no sense to view movies on a screen a couple of square inches.
8. CHEAP I'm talking $200 CDN max.
Well, I can dream, can't I?
Um, are you seriously suggesting people can just "pick up" grafiti?
My nine-year old son was writing his name in about three minutes. It took me about two hours to get a handle on the alphabet. That got me started and I looked up puncutation and numbers as I needed them. When I was too lazy to do that, I just used the on-screen keyboard. And that's with the old single-stroke Grafitti. The new version is even easier.
My Visor has been sitting in the closet gathering dust for 3 years
Fine. Send it to me. How much you want for it?
I'd like to see less semis on the road
Me too. Despite the much-vaunted 'extra training', I still see a lot of semi drivers doing boneheaded things. Just this past week I saw one that blocked off half of the highway as he tried to make a left turn into a column of stationary vehicles waiting for a train.
Freight is much more efficently and quickly transported by, say, rail
Um, no. If it were, there wouldn't be a trucking industry. The fact of the matter is that the unions have crippled the ability of the railroads to compete. People who want stuff shipped go with trucks because they can get cargo to where it's supposed to go, quicker and cheaper.
there is NO GOOD REASON for hummers
Let me explain something to you. In a free society, one does not have to explain his reasons for anything to anyone else, barring an investigation of some type. The fact that there is someone who produces them and there are people who are willing to pay for them is enough of a reason for them to exist. You may not understand the reason, but that's OK. Personally, I don't understand stamp collectors or country music, but that's hardly a reason to ban them.
What people do with thier own time and money deserves just as much protection as what they do with their mind and mouth.
I think that doing something that sounds freaking impossible is the point of the project. Our daily lives consist of things that were deemed impossible at one time by the most educated people of the day. And the reason that rope climbing is so hard is because you have to use your arms to move your body, not your legs as you are used to. How hard is it to walk up a three foot hill? For that matter, many people have a vertical jump of three feet (well, perhaps not to many people on Slashdot ...)
Having said that, you're right about the difficulty of the project. I've heard it said that a helicopter doesn't fly, it beats the air into submission. Awfully tough to do that using a human as a power source.
From the letter: ... to which the vast majority of our consumers do not wish to be exposed."
"...serious risks posed to the consumers of our states by your companies' peer-to-peer file-sharing technology
Hoo boy. Sounds like this evil p2p technology is going to jump through the screen and grab the user by the throat.
Wait a minute - I just got a great idea. I'm going to write a movie script about an malicious p2p program that does exactly that. Evil software that sucks unsuspecting users into the "computer world". Fakes and uncompletes everywhere. The MPAA is going to give me millions!!
Strictly speaking, guns (along with the requisite ammunition) are designed to propel a bullet into a predictable, repeatable trajectory. A gun designer is preoccupied with how to feed the bullet into the chamber, how to design the action, how to increase accuracy, etc.
There are many reasons to own a gun, other than to kill or maim. There are many different forms of target shooting, collecting, a fascination with their mechanisms or with things that make loud noises. Compare the number of bullets sold in a year to the number that end up headed towards a human being. When it comes down to actual use, non-violent use of firearms absolutely dwarfs the violent useage.
I can understand where you misconceptions are coming from. For most people, the only exposure to guns comes from TV or movies. I don't think that I have ever seen a gun being handled in a safe and responsible manner in the media. If your only exposure to cars was in the same manner, you would probably think that they only had three modes: stopped, speeding and exploding.
You're bloody well right we don't understand. So enlighten us. What did they say? How did they justify his speech?
BTW - free speech works both ways. The same rights that protect CrimethInc protect the Republicans as well. Let's play shoe-on-other-foot for a moment. What do you think would happen if the Republicans encouraged their attendees to deface the CrimethInc web site, to launch denial of service attacks against their server, and to harass members in the street? Considering that he called being escorted from the room for his own protection "censorship", I can very nearly hear the indignant screams from here.
Once again - free speech is a two-way street. If you expect it for yourself, you'd better be ready to extend it to other people as well.