RMS isn't saying that one of the common uses of the word is "wrong", he's just saying that the meaning he's using is the other one (free as in freedom).
Anyway, according to the dictionary that was the original meaning and the "free from payment" one came later. Obviously both are in common use.
The problem is that we think of software as a product. Consider "free speech" vs. "free books" and you get the idea. Probably RMS should have called it "free code" instead of "free software".
I thought it was funny, and was just worried that somebody else would make the same joke before I did. And now everybody is telling me how great Macs are, when I'm just lucky that the Apple Store is overloaded or I might have tried to buy this before realizing that I don't have $500 until Friday.
I'm a little skeptical on how it looks in photos but I don't really care, and I hope I can convince my other family members to get a couple, as I think their needs would be much better served by this mini Mac than by Dells and the like.
Maybe later I'll think of an actual troll that will get moderated up anyway and post that, so that things will balance out.
I see the dark side of the moon all the time. When the moon is crescent you can actually see it glowing from reflected light from Earth.
You probably mean the "far side", in which case the answer is "no". To see the far side of the moon from Earth you would have to change the moon's rotation, not the Earth's.
I don't think it has anything to do with focus. Even with a huge telescope, anything more than a thousand miles away should be well within infinite focus, since it's an asymptotic sort of thing. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong though.
A sibling post has a good link which explains that Hubble simply doesn't have the resolution, and it's also inconvenient that the moon moves so quickly.
I think it's sort of like how you can see a stoplight from a mile away but you can't see a bacterium on your fingernail -- the moon vehicles are really really small for astronomical objects. Also, I should point out that they found this by observing a wobble in a star. Stars are glowing, whereas the lunar vehicles are not -- they reflect about the same amount of sunlight as regular moon rocks do.
It seems like I read somewhere that the next generation of telescopes may have enough resolution to see the lunar landing sites.
That's basically the norm in British usage but has become more and more unconventional in American usage. Over on this side of the pond the plurality of the subject is typically decided only by the plurality of the noun, and the very concept of a "collective noun" is falling out of favor. So we get "Microsoft is evil", "the government has decided", but still "they are bastards" since "they" is plural. Note that "it" would be considered a valid pronoun for Microsoft by most speakers ("Microsoft is a profitable company, but its software has never been very good.")
One could argue that it makes more sense this way, as there's not a clear definition of what "collective" means -- is an individual person not a collection of cells? In any case, it makes the grammar a little easier, since it's trivial to decide whether a noun is plural and a little more difficult to notice that it is collective.
Not exactly. NASA says that the designs are still around and archived, but that they are basically useless. The Saturn V is made of a huge number of parts, and the majority of them are simply not made anymore. Although some of those parts are obviously custom-built anyway, many are not, and it would take a huge investment to recreate that 60's-era industrial infrastructure. We would be better off designing a new, modern rocket than trying to recreate a Saturn V.
Personally I'm of the opinion that the work done at PARC was so fundamentally wrong that nobody can see past it. But hey, I don't exactly have something better.
I'd like to point out that there isn't any "hooha" in the phrase "dark matter" -- that's just matter we don't see with telescopes simply because it's not actually glowing. We can only see stuff that's lit up, and we can only speculate about stuff that isn't.
"Dark energy" isn't related to dark matter; it's the "hooha" phrase if you want one. Mostly it's just a recognition of the fact that on the intergalactic scale, our observations of the universe do not match our theoretical models, and the reason for that is not particularly known (therefore "dark").
The offtopic mod you got is moderation abuse, and I have a mod point, but I decided to post instead. Sorry!
Anyway, a sibling post before mine claimed that copyright violation isn't criminal, and as others said, that's false. However, the RIAA cannot bring a criminal charge. They can ask the government to bring one, but then the government prosecutors will run the case their own way.
I think it likely that the RIAA doesn't want the risks associated with a trial they can't control or settle.
I call shenanigans -- I checked through the history of the CNN article, and it looks like there has been a "liberal bias" paragraph in there fairly consistently for over a year at least.
If there are cases where patients are placed on a clinical trial without being informed about the possibility of being in a control group, then that is clearly unethical and probably illegal. I don't understand why this would be an interesting ethical question any longer. It's like wanting to study the ethics of murder: murder is bad, we know that, what's the point?
I guess what I don't understand is what the issue is today. Certainly there are potential ethical issues surrounding any sort of clinical trial you could think up, but I don't think there are any issues with the way things are done currently.
Yes, it would be unethical if people were not informed about the possibility of a placebo, but everyone IS informed. In the case of a life-threatening disease where a proven treatment is already available, it would be unethical to use a placebo for a control group since the study is equally valid if controlled with the known treatment -- but again, this is already the way these studies are done.
I don't know of anyone who is seriously suggesting that a drug can be tested without a control group, or that a drug can be widely used without testing -- so where's the beef?
This is really a big story. Miyazaki is the idol of much of the animation world (especially Pixar for instance). His films will always be on the front page, and they always generate lots of interest on this site.
The sorts of things that would be dumped into an anime section would be minor movies and TV series and things like that -- not from one of the most famous animation directors in history.
Maybe you haven't lived in a real small town pre-Wal-Mart, where the economy is controlled by local barons who make sure that nobody gets a job unless they are the right color and go to the right church. Then they take the profits and buy imported knick-knacks from France.
American small town business as a whole has never had ethics that were any higher than Wal-Mart's.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of misspellings yes, confused rhetoric yes, even some outright dumb statements yes, and a first post... but Troll? I don't see it.
samzenpus is a perl script they use when there's not any news for the day. It goes through slashdot stories in the archive and randomly re-posts them.
RMS isn't saying that one of the common uses of the word is "wrong", he's just saying that the meaning he's using is the other one (free as in freedom).
Anyway, according to the dictionary that was the original meaning and the "free from payment" one came later. Obviously both are in common use.
The problem is that we think of software as a product. Consider "free speech" vs. "free books" and you get the idea. Probably RMS should have called it "free code" instead of "free software".
I thought it was funny, and was just worried that somebody else would make the same joke before I did. And now everybody is telling me how great Macs are, when I'm just lucky that the Apple Store is overloaded or I might have tried to buy this before realizing that I don't have $500 until Friday.
I'm a little skeptical on how it looks in photos but I don't really care, and I hope I can convince my other family members to get a couple, as I think their needs would be much better served by this mini Mac than by Dells and the like.
Maybe later I'll think of an actual troll that will get moderated up anyway and post that, so that things will balance out.
no wireless. Slower than a dell. Lame.
I see the dark side of the moon all the time. When the moon is crescent you can actually see it glowing from reflected light from Earth.
You probably mean the "far side", in which case the answer is "no". To see the far side of the moon from Earth you would have to change the moon's rotation, not the Earth's.
I don't think it has anything to do with focus. Even with a huge telescope, anything more than a thousand miles away should be well within infinite focus, since it's an asymptotic sort of thing. Someone should correct me if I'm wrong though.
A sibling post has a good link which explains that Hubble simply doesn't have the resolution, and it's also inconvenient that the moon moves so quickly.
I think it's sort of like how you can see a stoplight from a mile away but you can't see a bacterium on your fingernail -- the moon vehicles are really really small for astronomical objects. Also, I should point out that they found this by observing a wobble in a star. Stars are glowing, whereas the lunar vehicles are not -- they reflect about the same amount of sunlight as regular moon rocks do.
It seems like I read somewhere that the next generation of telescopes may have enough resolution to see the lunar landing sites.
I would really go with "Microsoft is a bunch of bastards." But I do hear things like "I hate Microsoft, they are bastards" sometimes.
That's basically the norm in British usage but has become more and more unconventional in American usage. Over on this side of the pond the plurality of the subject is typically decided only by the plurality of the noun, and the very concept of a "collective noun" is falling out of favor. So we get "Microsoft is evil", "the government has decided", but still "they are bastards" since "they" is plural. Note that "it" would be considered a valid pronoun for Microsoft by most speakers ("Microsoft is a profitable company, but its software has never been very good.")
One could argue that it makes more sense this way, as there's not a clear definition of what "collective" means -- is an individual person not a collection of cells? In any case, it makes the grammar a little easier, since it's trivial to decide whether a noun is plural and a little more difficult to notice that it is collective.
Not exactly. NASA says that the designs are still around and archived, but that they are basically useless. The Saturn V is made of a huge number of parts, and the majority of them are simply not made anymore. Although some of those parts are obviously custom-built anyway, many are not, and it would take a huge investment to recreate that 60's-era industrial infrastructure. We would be better off designing a new, modern rocket than trying to recreate a Saturn V.
Personally I'm of the opinion that the work done at PARC was so fundamentally wrong that nobody can see past it. But hey, I don't exactly have something better.
I'd like to point out that there isn't any "hooha" in the phrase "dark matter" -- that's just matter we don't see with telescopes simply because it's not actually glowing. We can only see stuff that's lit up, and we can only speculate about stuff that isn't.
"Dark energy" isn't related to dark matter; it's the "hooha" phrase if you want one. Mostly it's just a recognition of the fact that on the intergalactic scale, our observations of the universe do not match our theoretical models, and the reason for that is not particularly known (therefore "dark").
You have to specify "tea" so that it doesn't replicate up a grey Earl ("Earl, Grey")
You have to specify "hot" because the company that makes the replicators lost a lawsuit.
The offtopic mod you got is moderation abuse, and I have a mod point, but I decided to post instead. Sorry!
Anyway, a sibling post before mine claimed that copyright violation isn't criminal, and as others said, that's false. However, the RIAA cannot bring a criminal charge. They can ask the government to bring one, but then the government prosecutors will run the case their own way.
I think it likely that the RIAA doesn't want the risks associated with a trial they can't control or settle.
I call shenanigans -- I checked through the history of the CNN article, and it looks like there has been a "liberal bias" paragraph in there fairly consistently for over a year at least.
If there are cases where patients are placed on a clinical trial without being informed about the possibility of being in a control group, then that is clearly unethical and probably illegal. I don't understand why this would be an interesting ethical question any longer. It's like wanting to study the ethics of murder: murder is bad, we know that, what's the point?
I guess what I don't understand is what the issue is today. Certainly there are potential ethical issues surrounding any sort of clinical trial you could think up, but I don't think there are any issues with the way things are done currently.
Yes, it would be unethical if people were not informed about the possibility of a placebo, but everyone IS informed. In the case of a life-threatening disease where a proven treatment is already available, it would be unethical to use a placebo for a control group since the study is equally valid if controlled with the known treatment -- but again, this is already the way these studies are done.
I don't know of anyone who is seriously suggesting that a drug can be tested without a control group, or that a drug can be widely used without testing -- so where's the beef?
The others I understand, but what is the ethical issue regarding placebos in clinical trials?
You're not going to see a law phrased like that in Texas where some state highways are privately maintained.
Well, that's where we are NOW (except replace "terminal-based" with "WIMP-based", so I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.
This is really a big story. Miyazaki is the idol of much of the animation world (especially Pixar for instance). His films will always be on the front page, and they always generate lots of interest on this site.
The sorts of things that would be dumped into an anime section would be minor movies and TV series and things like that -- not from one of the most famous animation directors in history.
Maybe "In Soviet Russia, unless you are digitally signed, no one trusts YOU!"
Uh, maybe not.
Maybe you haven't lived in a real small town pre-Wal-Mart, where the economy is controlled by local barons who make sure that nobody gets a job unless they are the right color and go to the right church. Then they take the profits and buy imported knick-knacks from France.
American small town business as a whole has never had ethics that were any higher than Wal-Mart's.
There are over 31.5 million seconds in a year, or 31.5 billion milliseconds. A 32-bit signed integer goes as high as 4.2 billion.
In other words, not only is Unix time SECONDS since the epoch, and not milliseconds, but you should have known that.