I'm honestly confused about the women and minorities bit. What does a person's gonads have to do with their ability to use an API? Does skin color help someone code? Products and their continued availability matter to the people who use those products, and unless I'm mistaken that has nothing to do with sex, race, creed, color, religion, or which professional sports franchise a person is a fan of.
Wolber is pulling nonsense out of his arse to provoke people who can be counted on to display a pavlovian response upon any mention of identity politics.
This is what happens when E Pluribus Unum is replaced by quarreling tribal groups perpetually demanding preferential treatment in compensation for past slights - both real and imagined.
Just as correlation does not imply causation, disparity does not imply discrimination.
Malware is a problem, as are sexual predators. Bullies on the other hand, can be found on any playground. Online bullies have words as their weapons, whereas the offline version use their fists. To pretend that the online variety are a special threat is ridiculous. If junior can't handle someone saying mean things about him online then he'll always be a momma's boy.
That being said, I think it is a good thing that younger people are choosing to immerse themselves in Facebook and other forms of social media.
Thanks for posting this. I don't check slashdot often, and so I didn't know about this case. I was going to post this precise sort of event as a hypothetical situation.
The plain truth is that only a damned fool would leave his wireless router open for anyone to use. Someone at the EFF has been sniffing too much glue if they're honestly suggesting that.
1) I don't want the MPAA suing me because the guy in 3c is using my router to download movies.
2) I don't want the RIAA suing me because the guy in 2f is using my router to download mp3s.
3) I don't want a bunch of goose-stepping stormtroopers executing a no-knock warrant and shooting me in the head because of a pedo-freak downloading child pornography onto his laptop from the parking lot.
4) Last, but not least, I don't want my bandwidth sucked up by other people who should get a fucking job and pay for their own network connection.
Considering this is an article for the New York Times, I was about to blast it as typical leftist dreck. But if he's intellectually honest and able to suspend his political sentiments in the interest of objective truth, then I've got no beef with him.
Last time I checked the entire region of the earth known as "Latin America" was famous for incompetence, and corruption, and oppression, and poverty.
Who knows, maybe he as a point about the incompetence bit. Lord knows the world he comes from is steeped in it. But I think it is more likely that this simply makes him blind to what actual competence looks like.
My point is that sometimes things are so obvious that we don't need to spell them out. When you pretend not to understand what someone is saying because they didn't spell it out in legalease on 8x20 stationery in double-spaced Times New Roman, you only make yourself look like an ass.
The problem is that the people who use firefox are not cut from the same cloth as the people who develop it.
GCC is a robust and powerful compiler because the people who use it can fix it when it is broken and improve it.
The vast majority of those who use firefox and other such products are utterly incapable of fixing problems, or even of identifying when there is a problem.
This is the same thing I say to people who bitch about the iPhone.
Calling attention to the things that TI is doing is all fine and good. but unless people are also encouraged to purchase other products, it is nothing more than impotent whining.
Don't buy TI's products. Don't buy products that depend heavily on technology from TI.
Publicly proclaim in as many venues as possible your decision not to buy from TI, and your reasons.
I'm sure everyone here has a blog. Create a little logo that says "I don't buy TI" that links to a write-up on what the company is doing.
National defence is the job of the federal government because no one else can do it.
Our police force and fire departments are the job of local and state governments because no one else can do it.
I'm not convinced that internet access should be something that the government does because there are plenty of other entities that can do it. In fact, they already have. My mother lives in a rural area in a town of 8,000 people. She has high speed internet. She is retired and lives on a fixed income.
There are well-intentioned people in this world who immediately look to the state to solve problems. This is generally an unwise choice as it merely expands the size of an already corpulent government and locks more and more areas of human endeavour within the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy.
The spending deficit of the federal government is higher than any other nation in all of recorded history. Our great-great-great-great grandchildren are going to be handing over their paychecks to pay for this.
I don't recall the Bush administration being so keen on enforcing copyright law, and I don't recall them being so brazen, yet at the same time secretive about it.
"The authorities" shut down an entire site and refuse to tell the owner why?
Prior to the ascension of The One, the leftysphere and MSM (but I repeat myself) would have been all over this, proclaiming the birth of the Bush Police State.
Yet now all I hear is some grumbling from the same fringe kooks who think copyright law is invalid to begin with.
I have to suspect that this action may be a trial balloon. I have to suspect that in the future, websites that host content that the regime finds objectionable will also be subject to arbitrary termination, and for equally mysterious reasons.
Tyranny depends on information control. It isn't easy to control what people think, but it is easy to control what they think ABOUT if you control what information they have access to.
How long before the Drudge Report gets taken down? (I am engaging in hyperbole there, but you get the point).
Wasn't this supposed to be the new era of transparency? Well it is, transparent evil.
There is also that nebulous concept we call character.
While it is true that a person with a 90 IQ will never become a neurosurgeon, it is also true that there are many people with IQ's 50 points higher than that who never will either.
There are lots of talented losers in this world; people whose intellectual gifts are completely wasted upon them. We've all met these types. The genius high school dropout who works at Starbucks. Or the bright girl who gets married and sits at home all day. Intelligence is only worth something if you use it.
On the flip-side there are those with modest intellectual gifts who achieve a great deal in life. I know a man who is the victim of a drive-by shooting that left him with a bullet in his head. He cannot read. He is easily confused. He works moving furniture for a living. Yet he owns his own home. He has a nice truck that he enjoys driving. His mother helps take care of those things that he cannot do for himself, and in return she has a place to live. Given his circumstances, he has achieved more than what could reasonably be expected. The reason he is a success despite his profound disability is that he works very hard. He doesn't make excuses to give up, or to not try.
There are a lot of 35 year old losers with high IQ's still sponging off their parents who could learn a great deal from this man.
I used to bitch all day long about the state of public education in America. But as I've grown older I've come to realize just how irrelevant it is. It isn't created to teach anyone anything. Its purpose is to warehouse the young while their parents are at work and to provide them with some modicum of education before handing the brightest ones off to a university to actually be educated. The schools will never be "fixed" because they are operating according to plan already.
If you actually want your children to be educated before you shell out 100,000 to send them off to an elite university, then you have to either home school them or shell out 25,000 a year for a good private school, and even then there are no guarantees.
I'd also like to point out that there are not too many college graduates. There are too few jobs for which college graduates are suited. Don't confuse lack of demand with an excess of supply.
It should also be remembered that a recreational degree like Art History or English Lit is not the same as a real degree like Business or Engineering. If you're going to school and pursuing a course of study that does not lead to a better job than you would get with just a high school diploma, then you are wasting your time. If you want to study something because you are interested in it, do so AFTER you've graduated from a real degree program and have a good paying job.
The problem here is not that they are doing this, but that they are doing this NOW.
RHEL was pay-to-update from day one. Everyone considering RHEL knew this and could decide whether that was what they wanted to go with.
The difference here is that users who have been using Solaris for years and making do with critical updates are now unable to keep their systems secure.
Oracle is changing the rules of the game in mid-stream. That is where the problem is.
Were they to come out with Solaris 11 and proclaim THEN that security updates to THAT version of the OS would be pay-to-play, then that would be fine.
What isn't fine is yanking the rug out from under people. Especially in this economy.
I think this is a fine example of why users should be wary of freeware. (Not to be confused with open source). Sooner or later, you pay for what you get.
The CIA has also launched a joint effort with the Association for Alternative Science (ASS) to determine the effect of changes in the luminiferous aether on the mating habits of Leprechauns.
There are people in this world who dream of lording themselves over others. This is just another scheme that they have cooked up using the tried and tested method of presenting that which they wish to control as a threat to children, with the remedy being that they are given more power.
This is horseshit and the people who are proposing it should be beaten to death with a tire iron.
So in other words, in order for the thugocrats who run the Chinese prison state to make nice, you have to create games that lie?
Communism is evil.
Socialism is just a euphemism for Communism.
The thugocrats in who run China have a profound understanding of Communism. It is a tool by which the ruthless few can gain and keep power over the helpless many.
The thugocrats don't really BELIEVE in communism. What they do believe is that they should have power over their fellow man and that communism provides a way to do this.
They hate democracy precisely because it would take power away from them spread it far and wide.
I would not want to create content that justifies the rule of these thugs.
But like someone else has already mentioned, in a corrupt society like China, it all comes down to who you bribe and how generous your offer is.
Some of your audiophiles will tell you that tube based amplifiers produce less distortion than transistor based models.
The truth is that they often produce MORE distortion, only the distortion that they produce is pleasing to the ear, where as the distortion created by transistor based amps tends to be unpleasant to listen to.
If listeners are rating MP3's as superior to FLAC, it is most likely because the psycho-acoustic models used by the codes are introducing artifacts that improve the sound of the music, at least according to the subjective opinion of those listeners.
What you have to realize is that there is no perfect recording of music or any other form of audio data. All music is distorted as compared to what it actually sounded like in the studio. Some of this distortion is deliberate, which is why you have all those knobs and dials on the mixing console. A lot of music nowadays is compressed, which creates more deliberate distortion. Encoding that analog data into a 16bit digital stream stream at 44khz produces yet more distortion.
At the end of the day you have to figure out what sounds best to you because all of it will have distortion of some sort or another.
.....and I can tell you from personal experience that it really is pure concentrated evil.
Scientology has gotten away with innumerable crimes over the years in part because the average person is incapable of imagining that anything can be so completely malign in its goals. The organization is completely sociopathic.
They kicked me out because I wouldn't drink the koolaide.
If you want to know more, I recommend you check out operation clambake (www.xenu.net)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm honestly confused about the women and minorities bit. What does a person's gonads have to do with their ability to use an API? Does skin color help someone code? Products and their continued availability matter to the people who use those products, and unless I'm mistaken that has nothing to do with sex, race, creed, color, religion, or which professional sports franchise a person is a fan of.
Wolber is pulling nonsense out of his arse to provoke people who can be counted on to display a pavlovian response upon any mention of identity politics.
This is what happens when E Pluribus Unum is replaced by quarreling tribal groups perpetually demanding preferential treatment in compensation for past slights - both real and imagined.
Just as correlation does not imply causation, disparity does not imply discrimination.
World to end: Women and minorities hardest hit
Malware is a problem, as are sexual predators. Bullies on the other hand, can be found on any playground. Online bullies have words as their weapons, whereas the offline version use their fists. To pretend that the online variety are a special threat is ridiculous. If junior can't handle someone saying mean things about him online then he'll always be a momma's boy.
That being said, I think it is a good thing that younger people are choosing to immerse themselves in Facebook and other forms of social media.
Thanks for posting this. I don't check slashdot often, and so I didn't know about this case. I was going to post this precise sort of event as a hypothetical situation.
The plain truth is that only a damned fool would leave his wireless router open for anyone to use. Someone at the EFF has been sniffing too much glue if they're honestly suggesting that.
1) I don't want the MPAA suing me because the guy in 3c is using my router to download movies.
2) I don't want the RIAA suing me because the guy in 2f is using my router to download mp3s.
3) I don't want a bunch of goose-stepping stormtroopers executing a no-knock warrant and shooting me in the head because of a pedo-freak downloading child pornography onto his laptop from the parking lot.
4) Last, but not least, I don't want my bandwidth sucked up by other people who should get a fucking job and pay for their own network connection.
The organized crime outfit that currently rules China does so because its people lack the political power that comes from the barrel of a gun.
Good to know.
Considering this is an article for the New York Times, I was about to blast it as typical leftist dreck. But if he's intellectually honest and able to suspend his political sentiments in the interest of objective truth, then I've got no beef with him.
Last time I checked the entire region of the earth known as "Latin America" was famous for incompetence, and corruption, and oppression, and poverty.
Who knows, maybe he as a point about the incompetence bit. Lord knows the world he comes from is steeped in it. But I think it is more likely that this simply makes him blind to what actual competence looks like.
About 50% of all marriages end in divorce.
What do the other 50% end in?
My point is that sometimes things are so obvious that we don't need to spell them out. When you pretend not to understand what someone is saying because they didn't spell it out in legalease on 8x20 stationery in double-spaced Times New Roman, you only make yourself look like an ass.
The real issue is all the DHMO these kids are being exposed to.
http://www.dhmo.org/
The problem is that the people who use firefox are not cut from the same cloth as the people who develop it.
GCC is a robust and powerful compiler because the people who use it can fix it when it is broken and improve it.
The vast majority of those who use firefox and other such products are utterly incapable of fixing problems, or even of identifying when there is a problem.
This is the same thing I say to people who bitch about the iPhone.
Calling attention to the things that TI is doing is all fine and good. but unless people are also encouraged to purchase other products, it is nothing more than impotent whining.
Don't buy TI's products. Don't buy products that depend heavily on technology from TI.
Publicly proclaim in as many venues as possible your decision not to buy from TI, and your reasons.
I'm sure everyone here has a blog. Create a little logo that says "I don't buy TI" that links to a write-up on what the company is doing.
This is how the market punishes bad actors.
Get to it!
National defence is the job of the federal government because no one else can do it.
Our police force and fire departments are the job of local and state governments because no one else can do it.
I'm not convinced that internet access should be something that the government does because there are plenty of other entities that can do it. In fact, they already have. My mother lives in a rural area in a town of 8,000 people. She has high speed internet. She is retired and lives on a fixed income.
There are well-intentioned people in this world who immediately look to the state to solve problems. This is generally an unwise choice as it merely expands the size of an already corpulent government and locks more and more areas of human endeavour within the Iron Cage of Bureaucracy.
The spending deficit of the federal government is higher than any other nation in all of recorded history. Our great-great-great-great grandchildren are going to be handing over their paychecks to pay for this.
We don't need to add to this problem.
I don't recall the Bush administration being so keen on enforcing copyright law, and I don't recall them being so brazen, yet at the same time secretive about it.
"The authorities" shut down an entire site and refuse to tell the owner why?
Prior to the ascension of The One, the leftysphere and MSM (but I repeat myself) would have been all over this, proclaiming the birth of the Bush Police State.
Yet now all I hear is some grumbling from the same fringe kooks who think copyright law is invalid to begin with.
I have to suspect that this action may be a trial balloon. I have to suspect that in the future, websites that host content that the regime finds objectionable will also be subject to arbitrary termination, and for equally mysterious reasons.
Tyranny depends on information control. It isn't easy to control what people think, but it is easy to control what they think ABOUT if you control what information they have access to.
How long before the Drudge Report gets taken down? (I am engaging in hyperbole there, but you get the point).
Wasn't this supposed to be the new era of transparency? Well it is, transparent evil.
There is more to the story than mere intellect.
There is also that nebulous concept we call character.
While it is true that a person with a 90 IQ will never become a neurosurgeon, it is also true that there are many people with IQ's 50 points higher than that who never will either.
There are lots of talented losers in this world; people whose intellectual gifts are completely wasted upon them. We've all met these types. The genius high school dropout who works at Starbucks. Or the bright girl who gets married and sits at home all day. Intelligence is only worth something if you use it.
On the flip-side there are those with modest intellectual gifts who achieve a great deal in life. I know a man who is the victim of a drive-by shooting that left him with a bullet in his head. He cannot read. He is easily confused. He works moving furniture for a living. Yet he owns his own home. He has a nice truck that he enjoys driving. His mother helps take care of those things that he cannot do for himself, and in return she has a place to live. Given his circumstances, he has achieved more than what could reasonably be expected. The reason he is a success despite his profound disability is that he works very hard. He doesn't make excuses to give up, or to not try.
There are a lot of 35 year old losers with high IQ's still sponging off their parents who could learn a great deal from this man.
I used to bitch all day long about the state of public education in America. But as I've grown older I've come to realize just how irrelevant it is. It isn't created to teach anyone anything. Its purpose is to warehouse the young while their parents are at work and to provide them with some modicum of education before handing the brightest ones off to a university to actually be educated. The schools will never be "fixed" because they are operating according to plan already.
If you actually want your children to be educated before you shell out 100,000 to send them off to an elite university, then you have to either home school them or shell out 25,000 a year for a good private school, and even then there are no guarantees.
I'd also like to point out that there are not too many college graduates. There are too few jobs for which college graduates are suited. Don't confuse lack of demand with an excess of supply.
It should also be remembered that a recreational degree like Art History or English Lit is not the same as a real degree like Business or Engineering. If you're going to school and pursuing a course of study that does not lead to a better job than you would get with just a high school diploma, then you are wasting your time. If you want to study something because you are interested in it, do so AFTER you've graduated from a real degree program and have a good paying job.
The problem here is not that they are doing this, but that they are doing this NOW.
RHEL was pay-to-update from day one. Everyone considering RHEL knew this and could decide whether that was what they wanted to go with.
The difference here is that users who have been using Solaris for years and making do with critical updates are now unable to keep their systems secure.
Oracle is changing the rules of the game in mid-stream. That is where the problem is.
Were they to come out with Solaris 11 and proclaim THEN that security updates to THAT version of the OS would be pay-to-play, then that would be fine.
What isn't fine is yanking the rug out from under people. Especially in this economy.
I think this is a fine example of why users should be wary of freeware. (Not to be confused with open source). Sooner or later, you pay for what you get.
30 year old MALE virgins whose sexual innocence is the result of poor hygiene and high functioning autism.
That would be true if Al Gore was president.
The CIA dances to the tune the president plays, and since Obama is even more to the left than Gore is.....
The CIA has also launched a joint effort with the Association for Alternative Science (ASS) to determine the effect of changes in the luminiferous aether on the mating habits of Leprechauns.
And besides, everyone knows that strangers have the best candy.
There are people in this world who dream of lording themselves over others. This is just another scheme that they have cooked up using the tried and tested method of presenting that which they wish to control as a threat to children, with the remedy being that they are given more power.
This is horseshit and the people who are proposing it should be beaten to death with a tire iron.
I thought that Apple was bad about wanting total control, but they've got nothing on Google.
My response to this crap is the same as my response to the failed monopolists in Cupertino: I simply don't buy their shit under any circumstances.
So in other words, in order for the thugocrats who run the Chinese prison state to make nice, you have to create games that lie?
Communism is evil.
Socialism is just a euphemism for Communism.
The thugocrats in who run China have a profound understanding of Communism. It is a tool by which the ruthless few can gain and keep power over the helpless many.
The thugocrats don't really BELIEVE in communism. What they do believe is that they should have power over their fellow man and that communism provides a way to do this.
They hate democracy precisely because it would take power away from them spread it far and wide.
I would not want to create content that justifies the rule of these thugs.
But like someone else has already mentioned, in a corrupt society like China, it all comes down to who you bribe and how generous your offer is.
Some of your audiophiles will tell you that tube based amplifiers produce less distortion than transistor based models.
The truth is that they often produce MORE distortion, only the distortion that they produce is pleasing to the ear, where as the distortion created by transistor based amps tends to be unpleasant to listen to.
If listeners are rating MP3's as superior to FLAC, it is most likely because the psycho-acoustic models used by the codes are introducing artifacts that improve the sound of the music, at least according to the subjective opinion of those listeners.
What you have to realize is that there is no perfect recording of music or any other form of audio data. All music is distorted as compared to what it actually sounded like in the studio. Some of this distortion is deliberate, which is why you have all those knobs and dials on the mixing console. A lot of music nowadays is compressed, which creates more deliberate distortion. Encoding that analog data into a 16bit digital stream stream at 44khz produces yet more distortion.
At the end of the day you have to figure out what sounds best to you because all of it will have distortion of some sort or another.
.....and I can tell you from personal experience that it really is pure concentrated evil.
Scientology has gotten away with innumerable crimes over the years in part because the average person is incapable of imagining that anything can be so completely malign in its goals. The organization is completely sociopathic.
They kicked me out because I wouldn't drink the koolaide.
If you want to know more, I recommend you check out operation clambake (www.xenu.net)