Says someone similarly using a pseudonym. That's not evidence, that's just/..
Pseudonymous usage does not == uncivil assholeishness.
If you need evidence of that, have a look at some of the anti-pseudonym sentiments that have cropped up under people's "real" names on Google+ thus far. On the whole the pseudonymous crowd have been considerably more civil, more reasonable, and more able to present research supportive of their arguments.
1) India is not kicking our ass. India is providing services for us. Regardless, India is not creating any of the advances you used as examples, but rather manufacturing the products of them. Similarly, I have to question the validity of your claim if the best evidence you can find to link is a two-year-old 2 para speculative bit from the Times of India (which isn't exactly known to be impartial where India vs the world issues are concerned). Where are the more recent articles about this actually coming to pass? I suppose they were somehow blocked from being written by patents on business journalism processes?
2) You cannot invalidate my argument by painting it with slavery. You can probably fool stupid people with that rhetorical technique, but no rational person will fall for it. You'll need to do better. Patents, just for one, are legal. Slavery is not. The fact that slavery was, at one time, legal, didn't change the fact that it violated the essential human rights of the persons subjected to it. I have a hard time swallowing the idea that patents should be regarded in the same ballpark, and so will anyone else with 2 brain cells to rub together.
3) People have a right to the control over their creations offered by patents because such is the law. If you don't like living in a society founded on the supremacy of the law, I can suggest any number of countries in the 3rd world where you can enjoy relief from this burdensome practice.
Understand, I'm not arguing that the patent process is perfect (as I stated previously, you would have to be feeble-minded in order to fail to see that it is flawed) only that attacking patents themselves is intellectually dishonest and/or ignorant. I don't really care what you "lived." In my experience, people always have reasons why some big thing held them back from succeeding. That big thing is rarely, if ever, their own inadequacies or failure to properly prepare for the realities of the world in which they were working. Patent law, sir, is a part of that world. You're free to dislike it. You're free to hate it or rail against it as you wish. I'm free to rebut your arguments and will continue to do so as long as you persist in making such silly ones.
I'd be happy to go hunting for evidence of such on the same day you show me a reasonable argument that any of the advances you describe would have been researched and developed in a country without strong patent protections. The fact that they weren't tends to weigh in against you, though, so I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time on it if I were you. Patents aren't "tools of violence" any more than the automobiles you mention are "tools of violence." There are no "tools of violence" there are only tools, and tools have no moral dimension. If they are used well or ill they remain only tools, and continue to have no moral dimension. You are confusing the tool with its use either because you are ignorant of the difference between the two or unaware of how critical to your "argument" obliterating such a difference is. It's all well and good to criticize the uses to which patents have been put. I would be suspicious of the intellectual credentials of anyone discussing the subject who did not do so. Dumping on the institution of patents qua patents, however, bespeaks either a willingness to deceive the reader (and/or yourself) or a deep-seated ignorance of nature of the issue.
So, by logical extension of your argument I should not be able to copyright a textbook I've written? I'm glad it's your humble opinion, because it certainly isn't your clearly-thought-out one.
I find it thoroughly depressing that this paragraph and a half of nonsense was modded up as "insightful." I had always thought that "ignorant vitriol" and "insight" would be relatively difficult to get confused but, as with so many opinions I've held that tend to see h. sapiens in a hopeful light, I appear to be wrong.
I think you've got that backwards, actually. Moodle development dates from 1999 (Martin Dougimas' first publication in the educational technology field was 1998, I believe). Blackboard started offering a LMS in 1998 after the original company which was a consulting operation merged with Courseinfo (the LMS developed at Cornell). I think if you're looking for prior art, Moodle--regardless of its other merits--isn't the place to look.
Documentation aside, I use blackboard with Linux every day and it works flawlessly. You're setting up a straw man here. Clearly it's not reasonable for a company to expend the resources to validate their software with a browser that isn't going to be a factor for 95% of their users. This is born out by the fact that they do validate for Mac OS. MacOS has a higher adoption rate in their market, so naturally, it makes business sense for them to expend those resources in that direction. If you think that validation happens for free, you need to spend some time in a software development house. The fact that it isn't on a supported list doesn't indicate "hate" any more than the fact that they don't list valid Solaris browsers indicates that they "hate" Solaris (which they also offer the product for). As for what you can see, clearly that field of vision is restricted by an interesting form of myopia.
I think your institution needs to upgrade. The latest releases of Blackboard are _extremely_ firefox-friendly. The only features which didn't work with firefox in the 6.x releases, so far as I am aware, are the WYSIWYG editor (which I've never made a practice of using, preferring to write good html). All of these features are working in the current 7.x releases. I think you probably need to consult with your system administrators--a rather more limited audience than that afforded by/.--to determine what their upgrade schedule looks like.
I would also point out before this becomes a "Blackboard hates Linux" thread, that Blackboard has always released its product for Linux and I believe most of their hosting business runs on Linux as well.
Blackboard's BB One is unrelated to this. Blackboard's Commerce System is a suite of applications that revolve around hardware for a swipe or proximity card that lets you do door access, vending, laundry accounts, library, meal services, etc. They also offer services that allow local merchants to accept student ID debit accounts as payment. That's what BB One is. It's really quite cool and convenient.
First of all, thank you. Secondly, to the poster below, it's not a muscle disorder. It's an autoimmune disorder that attacks the white matter of the brain (a protein called myelin).
You've got a valid point. And it's entirely possible the dear questioner has such a situation. I've quit a job before myself and spent a bad several months looking. THere are valid reasons.
But if the only reason the poster can be bothered to include is that they're moving to C# and visual studio...well, that's just unconvincing to me. I work for a Linux shop. We use Red Hat. Personally, I don't like Red Hat, I distinctly prefer Gentoo. Do I make a big deal of that at work? No. Would I make a big deal of it if we moved to doing more Windows work? Or even 100% Windows?
NO.
It's just an operating system.
Would I start looking for a new job?
YES.
And that, really, is what this guy should have done, unless there's a lot he isn't telling us.
Quitting a good job because of a dislike of the software platform choices that are made above your level isn't good management of your CAREER. Management of your career is a big portion of what separates the long-term successes from the long-term failures, IMHO.
Maybe not a fool, but definitely foolhardy. I think a lot in this situation depends on whether or not you have anyone else to support. Would I do the same? Absolutely not, but I've got a wife with MS and a need for continuous health coverage.
All that aside, the choice of programming tools strikes me as a very silly reason to leave a perfectly good job when you could have sat there getting paid to look for another one.
But it wont' feel like it. The whole point of Myst was the abandoned feeling you got from the areas. Crowding a Myst world with "asl??" isn't going to make it better in any concievable way. This just isn't going to make money.
I actually taught algebra to high school freshmen in rural North Carolina, and I can say, with confidence that the problem secondary schools are having teaching students algebra is, largely, that students are coming to high school completely unprepared to learn the subject. I spent the vast majority of my time in the classroom teaching my students such esoteric branches of mathematics as LONG DIVISION, and FRACTIONS.
Sorry folks, but the fact of the matter is most of your peers are NOT getting math, even basic math, the way you are, and nobody is taking notice of the fact until it's far too late.
My kids worked hard--I made them work hard--and all but a very few passed. The other math teachers in my school failed NO ONE. If you want the real culprit here, look to the self-esteem Nazis running our schools and the egregious damage being done to their chances of a meaninful education by social promotion.
First of all, minidisc. One word, spelled with a "c" not a "k," just like compact discs.
Secondly: If you want to get the real skinny on all of the technology behind Minidisc and the ATRAC compression algorithim, visit www.minidisc.org and look at the background info there. ATRAC is lossy but it's less lossy than mp3.
Thirdly: Newer minidisc recorders using Sony's NetMD setup are not limited to 1x recording.
Fourthly: MDLP allows recording at LP2 (2.5 hrs/74 min disc) and LP4 (5 hrs / 74min disc) respectively. Both of these formats sound pretty good. LP 2 is indistinguishable from high bitrate mp3. LP 4 is a little better than 128kbit mp3 (in my opinion). If you want a workout unit or something for the car or train, LP 4 is plenty high quality.
Filthy(heh): Minidiscs are cheap media compared to flash. Minidiscs get you 1.25-5 hrs of listening pleasure per disc and discs cost $2 each. Compare that to a similar amount of Flash RAM, memory stick, or what have you. Compare that to the piddly amount of ram most mp3 players come with. Short of going to the hard disk route and getting an iPod, there's nothing that even starts to compare.
I have a Sony MZ n-707 NetMD recorder and have very rarely been as pleased with a purchase as I have with this one. Everything about it from the size (smaller than a pack of the smokes I am no longer addicted to) to the LONG LONG LONG playback time (14 hours on the included rechargeable battery), to the USB hookup (whither firewire? whither macintosh support?) to the promise of a future where I can do this under linux (The Open NMD Project) makes it a fantastic solution to the problem of how to handle portable music.
...to different people (duh!). Questions about GNOME are, to my mind, all about Unix on the desktop. There is no need for GNOME in server space. That is what is so very, very wrong about Windows NT. So if we're talking about *NIX on the desktop (and we are) we're talking about the great unwashed masses. The great unwashed masses are never, ever going to learn the command line syntax for find. Ever. Period.
And, if you can't do this problem in either Windows or Unix, i'd suggest you aren't a sufficiently skilled computer user to really judge ease of use issues.
I would say that if you can do this problem you are too skilled a computer user to really judge ease of use issues. Ease of use is not for those of us who already know how to make a computer sit up and bark. It's for democratizing the power of the computer and offering it to that other 99% of the human race, the clueless (with the assumption that as a result, some of them will get a clue).
Is there anything more suitable for these upcoming, thin, networked devices than X? Photon may fit on a floppy, but can it distribute where the various parts of the GUI are actually executing code? If thin clients are the future (and I believe that for the commonplace mom 'n' pop user, they are) then that future will run on X.
PS--He's right about one thing. Enlightenment _IS_ a train wreck.
Katz has discovered the work of Swedish economist Staffan Linder. Before reading this article, you really should read The Harried Leisure Class which is sadly out of print.
Imagine you're basically lazy, not math-ooriented (English major), bad with money, and hate using MS Windows.
GnuCash changed my life.
I started keeping track of every single little thing I spent a few months ago with this software and finally, after 27 years of floundering and fearing my own finances, I have the money demon whipped. This is not merely good software, this is important software. Get it. Use it.
Record of Lodoss War--Excellent fantasy action series with a really strong AD&D/RPG feel. If you ever wondered what a level 1 fighter looked like in action, watch this series.
Evangelion--If you haven't seen both Neon Genesis and Death and Rebirth you owe it to yourself to do so. Weird, beautifully drawn and animated, heartfelt, well-scripted, full of the kind of strong emotional content and character development moments expected from the genre. This is great anime.
Wings of Honiamise(sp?)--A great and very, very different anime. Not an action film but a brilliant drama set around a culture with a tech level like pre-WWII Japan's space program and their first astronaut. This film is worth watching just for the scenes featuring the computer at ground control, but don't be misled. This is serious drama with all of the heavy dialog that implies. Best anime-to-watch-with-your-artsy-girlfriend ever.
Fyushi Yuugi(sp?)--When my friend Sean brought over a fan sub of this series it caught me immediately. Very, very weird. Some occaisionally annoying use of super-deformed style, but by and large a fascinating, bizarre, and very humorous series.
Slashdot Mirror
Point of interest: in order to get to step 5, I'd have had to set up AdSense prior to step 3.
Says someone similarly using a pseudonym. That's not evidence, that's just /..
Pseudonymous usage does not == uncivil assholeishness.
If you need evidence of that, have a look at some of the anti-pseudonym sentiments that have cropped up under people's "real" names on Google+ thus far. On the whole the pseudonymous crowd have been considerably more civil, more reasonable, and more able to present research supportive of their arguments.
1) India is not kicking our ass. India is providing services for us. Regardless, India is not creating any of the advances you used as examples, but rather manufacturing the products of them. Similarly, I have to question the validity of your claim if the best evidence you can find to link is a two-year-old 2 para speculative bit from the Times of India (which isn't exactly known to be impartial where India vs the world issues are concerned). Where are the more recent articles about this actually coming to pass? I suppose they were somehow blocked from being written by patents on business journalism processes?
2) You cannot invalidate my argument by painting it with slavery. You can probably fool stupid people with that rhetorical technique, but no rational person will fall for it. You'll need to do better. Patents, just for one, are legal. Slavery is not. The fact that slavery was, at one time, legal, didn't change the fact that it violated the essential human rights of the persons subjected to it. I have a hard time swallowing the idea that patents should be regarded in the same ballpark, and so will anyone else with 2 brain cells to rub together.
3) People have a right to the control over their creations offered by patents because such is the law. If you don't like living in a society founded on the supremacy of the law, I can suggest any number of countries in the 3rd world where you can enjoy relief from this burdensome practice.
Understand, I'm not arguing that the patent process is perfect (as I stated previously, you would have to be feeble-minded in order to fail to see that it is flawed) only that attacking patents themselves is intellectually dishonest and/or ignorant. I don't really care what you "lived." In my experience, people always have reasons why some big thing held them back from succeeding. That big thing is rarely, if ever, their own inadequacies or failure to properly prepare for the realities of the world in which they were working. Patent law, sir, is a part of that world. You're free to dislike it. You're free to hate it or rail against it as you wish. I'm free to rebut your arguments and will continue to do so as long as you persist in making such silly ones.
I'd be happy to go hunting for evidence of such on the same day you show me a reasonable argument that any of the advances you describe would have been researched and developed in a country without strong patent protections. The fact that they weren't tends to weigh in against you, though, so I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time on it if I were you. Patents aren't "tools of violence" any more than the automobiles you mention are "tools of violence." There are no "tools of violence" there are only tools, and tools have no moral dimension. If they are used well or ill they remain only tools, and continue to have no moral dimension. You are confusing the tool with its use either because you are ignorant of the difference between the two or unaware of how critical to your "argument" obliterating such a difference is. It's all well and good to criticize the uses to which patents have been put. I would be suspicious of the intellectual credentials of anyone discussing the subject who did not do so. Dumping on the institution of patents qua patents, however, bespeaks either a willingness to deceive the reader (and/or yourself) or a deep-seated ignorance of nature of the issue.
So, by logical extension of your argument I should not be able to copyright a textbook I've written? I'm glad it's your humble opinion, because it certainly isn't your clearly-thought-out one.
I find it thoroughly depressing that this paragraph and a half of nonsense was modded up as "insightful." I had always thought that "ignorant vitriol" and "insight" would be relatively difficult to get confused but, as with so many opinions I've held that tend to see h. sapiens in a hopeful light, I appear to be wrong.
I think you've got that backwards, actually. Moodle development dates from 1999 (Martin Dougimas' first publication in the educational technology field was 1998, I believe). Blackboard started offering a LMS in 1998 after the original company which was a consulting operation merged with Courseinfo (the LMS developed at Cornell). I think if you're looking for prior art, Moodle--regardless of its other merits--isn't the place to look.
Documentation aside, I use blackboard with Linux every day and it works flawlessly. You're setting up a straw man here. Clearly it's not reasonable for a company to expend the resources to validate their software with a browser that isn't going to be a factor for 95% of their users. This is born out by the fact that they do validate for Mac OS. MacOS has a higher adoption rate in their market, so naturally, it makes business sense for them to expend those resources in that direction. If you think that validation happens for free, you need to spend some time in a software development house. The fact that it isn't on a supported list doesn't indicate "hate" any more than the fact that they don't list valid Solaris browsers indicates that they "hate" Solaris (which they also offer the product for). As for what you can see, clearly that field of vision is restricted by an interesting form of myopia.
I think your institution needs to upgrade. The latest releases of Blackboard are _extremely_ firefox-friendly. The only features which didn't work with firefox in the 6.x releases, so far as I am aware, are the WYSIWYG editor (which I've never made a practice of using, preferring to write good html). All of these features are working in the current 7.x releases. I think you probably need to consult with your system administrators--a rather more limited audience than that afforded by /.--to determine what their upgrade schedule looks like.
I would also point out before this becomes a "Blackboard hates Linux" thread, that Blackboard has always released its product for Linux and I believe most of their hosting business runs on Linux as well.
Blackboard has supported Safari for well over 2 years. It's entirely possible that your institution was following a less than active upgrade path.
Blackboard's BB One is unrelated to this. Blackboard's Commerce System is a suite of applications that revolve around hardware for a swipe or proximity card that lets you do door access, vending, laundry accounts, library, meal services, etc. They also offer services that allow local merchants to accept student ID debit accounts as payment. That's what BB One is. It's really quite cool and convenient.
First of all, thank you. Secondly, to the poster below, it's not a muscle disorder. It's an autoimmune disorder that attacks the white matter of the brain (a protein called myelin).
You've got a valid point. And it's entirely possible the dear questioner has such a situation. I've quit a job before myself and spent a bad several months looking. THere are valid reasons.
But if the only reason the poster can be bothered to include is that they're moving to C# and visual studio...well, that's just unconvincing to me. I work for a Linux shop. We use Red Hat. Personally, I don't like Red Hat, I distinctly prefer Gentoo. Do I make a big deal of that at work? No. Would I make a big deal of it if we moved to doing more Windows work? Or even 100% Windows?
NO.
It's just an operating system.
Would I start looking for a new job?
YES.
And that, really, is what this guy should have done, unless there's a lot he isn't telling us.
Quitting a good job because of a dislike of the software platform choices that are made above your level isn't good management of your CAREER. Management of your career is a big portion of what separates the long-term successes from the long-term failures, IMHO.
Maybe not a fool, but definitely foolhardy. I think a lot in this situation depends on whether or not you have anyone else to support. Would I do the same? Absolutely not, but I've got a wife with MS and a need for continuous health coverage.
All that aside, the choice of programming tools strikes me as a very silly reason to leave a perfectly good job when you could have sat there getting paid to look for another one.
But it wont' feel like it. The whole point of Myst was the abandoned feeling you got from the areas. Crowding a Myst world with "asl??" isn't going to make it better in any concievable way. This just isn't going to make money.
I actually taught algebra to high school freshmen in rural North Carolina, and I can say, with confidence that the problem secondary schools are having teaching students algebra is, largely, that students are coming to high school completely unprepared to learn the subject. I spent the vast majority of my time in the classroom teaching my students such esoteric branches of mathematics as LONG DIVISION, and FRACTIONS.
Sorry folks, but the fact of the matter is most of your peers are NOT getting math, even basic math, the way you are, and nobody is taking notice of the fact until it's far too late.
My kids worked hard--I made them work hard--and all but a very few passed. The other math teachers in my school failed NO ONE. If you want the real culprit here, look to the self-esteem Nazis running our schools and the egregious damage being done to their chances of a meaninful education by social promotion.
First of all, minidisc. One word, spelled with a "c" not a "k," just like compact discs.
/74 min disc) and LP4 (5 hrs / 74min disc) respectively. Both of these formats sound pretty good. LP 2 is indistinguishable from high bitrate mp3. LP 4 is a little better than 128kbit mp3 (in my opinion). If you want a workout unit or something for the car or train, LP 4 is plenty high quality.
Secondly: If you want to get the real skinny on all of the technology behind Minidisc and the ATRAC compression algorithim, visit www.minidisc.org and look at the background info there. ATRAC is lossy but it's less lossy than mp3.
Thirdly: Newer minidisc recorders using Sony's NetMD setup are not limited to 1x recording.
Fourthly: MDLP allows recording at LP2 (2.5 hrs
Filthy(heh): Minidiscs are cheap media compared to flash. Minidiscs get you 1.25-5 hrs of listening pleasure per disc and discs cost $2 each. Compare that to a similar amount of Flash RAM, memory stick, or what have you. Compare that to the piddly amount of ram most mp3 players come with. Short of going to the hard disk route and getting an iPod, there's nothing that even starts to compare.
I have a Sony MZ n-707 NetMD recorder and have very rarely been as pleased with a purchase as I have with this one. Everything about it from the size (smaller than a pack of the smokes I am no longer addicted to) to the LONG LONG LONG playback time (14 hours on the included rechargeable battery), to the USB hookup (whither firewire? whither macintosh support?) to the promise of a future where I can do this under linux (The Open NMD Project) makes it a fantastic solution to the problem of how to handle portable music.
kit to enable speech and speech recognition in various Linux projects. See here.
...to different people (duh!). Questions about GNOME are, to my mind, all about Unix on the desktop. There is no need for GNOME in server space. That is what is so very, very wrong about Windows NT. So if we're talking about *NIX on the desktop (and we are) we're talking about the great unwashed masses. The great unwashed masses are never, ever going to learn the command line syntax for find. Ever. Period.
I would say that if you can do this problem you are too skilled a computer user to really judge ease of use issues. Ease of use is not for those of us who already know how to make a computer sit up and bark. It's for democratizing the power of the computer and offering it to that other 99% of the human race, the clueless (with the assumption that as a result, some of them will get a clue).
I can give you something much better than that (though with java support if you must):
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
ATT's Virtual Network Console rules. Very, very cool interconnectivity for unix, mac, and winders.
Is there anything more suitable for these upcoming, thin, networked devices than X? Photon may fit on a floppy, but can it distribute where the various parts of the GUI are actually executing code? If thin clients are the future (and I believe that for the commonplace mom 'n' pop user, they are) then that future will run on X.
PS--He's right about one thing. Enlightenment _IS_ a train wreck.
Katz has discovered the work of Swedish economist Staffan Linder. Before reading this article, you really should read The Harried Leisure Class which is sadly out of print.
Try this some time:
Imagine you're basically lazy, not math-ooriented (English major), bad with money, and hate using MS Windows.
GnuCash changed my life.
I started keeping track of every single little thing I spent a few months ago with this software and finally, after 27 years of floundering and fearing my own finances, I have the money demon whipped. This is not merely good software, this is important software. Get it. Use it.
Evangelion--If you haven't seen both Neon Genesis and Death and Rebirth you owe it to yourself to do so. Weird, beautifully drawn and animated, heartfelt, well-scripted, full of the kind of strong emotional content and character development moments expected from the genre. This is great anime.
Wings of Honiamise(sp?)--A great and very, very different anime. Not an action film but a brilliant drama set around a culture with a tech level like pre-WWII Japan's space program and their first astronaut. This film is worth watching just for the scenes featuring the computer at ground control, but don't be misled. This is serious drama with all of the heavy dialog that implies. Best anime-to-watch-with-your-artsy-girlfriend ever.
Fyushi Yuugi(sp?)--When my friend Sean brought over a fan sub of this series it caught me immediately. Very, very weird. Some occaisionally annoying use of super-deformed style, but by and large a fascinating, bizarre, and very humorous series.