Applicants can't recieve email (e.g. an offer letter or response to resume submission
Customers send feedback and support requests, but cannot recieve responses
Newsletters stop being recieved
Receipts of purchase stop being recieved
Warnings about termination of service stops being recieved
On the plus side, I'm hoping that they will accept SPF-Classic, and that my ISP will list one, finally. I'm tired of getting mail bounced because my SPF inclusion of my ISP isn't honored (due to their lack of SPF listing).
"Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer"
"who's fault is that?"
Well, clearly it's Opera's, but they do have a valid point, and some effort should be made to determine correct numbers by metrics companies that actually care about accuracy.
HOWEVER, it should also be noted that none of this changes the fact that next to no one uses Opera. I know perhaps 60 people who use Firefox on at least a casual basis (probably more like 40 who use it exclusively), and of those people I know no one who uses Opera regularly enough to count.
That's obviously not a useful way to conduct a survey, but I do think it's telling as a general sense that Firefox is VERY widely used, and almost certainly deserves its place as the second most popular browser.
The real question is: does Opera beat out Netscape 4 and Mozilla? I think the answer is yes, but I'm not sure.
Slashdot hordes react without reading TFA, film at 11....
He's not deflecting blame, he's pointing out that blaming your neighbor or your vendor is fine, but the lion's share of the blame for intrusions belong's square in the lap of the intruder.
To quote TFA:
[...]some of our neighbours keep getting exploited by spyware, virus, and so on. Who should we blame? OS producers? Or our neighbours that [...] run it without an appropriate secure setup?
There's enough blame for everyone.
Blame the users who don't secure their systems and applications.
Blame the vendors who write and distribute insecure shovel-ware.
Blame the sleazebags who make their living infecting innocent people with spyware, or sending spam.
Blame Microsoft for producing an operating system that is bloated and has an ineffective permissions model and poor default configurations.
Blame the IT managers who overrule their security practitioners' advice and put their systems at risk in the interest of convenience. Etc.
Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the hackers. Let's not forget that they're the ones doing this to us.
However, I'd like to point out that I disagree with something fairly fundamental in what he's saying. The people who are "annoying us" make us build better security, and I'm much rather have a numbskull try to poke at my security for bragging rights than have nothing for years and then a series of well-organized, well-hidden attacks that gain long-term access to sensitve data. I don't enjoy having to secure networks against boneheads, but I don't blame them for having to build good security, that should have been done from the day the first machine sent out a set of voltage modulations that could loosely be called "IP".
First off, I just want to say that I'm sorry. I was pretty harsh in my last message, and it was because I was typing at max baud in order to crank the message out while I waited for a report to generate at work. Not your fault, not an excuse, just the facts.
Ok, that said, I certainly see where we differ here. You look at Google's filing as a "promise" just like all the rest of the worthless promisses you are made in a day. I look at it as the freedom to do the right thing.
You see, no matter how good the intentions of your average CEO, he (or she) must admit that when push comes to shove, they MUST do anything legal within the bounds of their prospectus to maintain shareholder value. If that means being "evil", then evil is what they must be.
Google did a very smart thing: they put "don't be evil" in the S-1. To my knowledge, no one has ever done this. It doesn't mean you can trust them, but it DOES mean that you don't HAVE to assume that they will behave in as corrupt a manner as neccessary to keep the company profitable and meeting analyst expectations. It's the kind of clever hack I expect from Google, nothing more.
Now, on to the topic of the projects. I think there, we just didn't communicate very well. Partially, it is a clever ploy to get more work out of people. Personally, I have no problem with that, as long as it also improves the QUALITY of that work, and I think it does... you may not feel the same. That's cool.
Your comments about ecconomic motivation are well taken.
"Forgive us. We've been burned many times in the past. Nor would you realize my employer is such a drag by only talking to me.:) Unless, of course, I told you."
No, you have never been burned in the past. Please, go find me any company in the past 50 years whose S-1 for their IPO includes a promise not to be evil.... I'll wait, go ahead.
You have NEVER been burned, because you've never had the chance. This is classic reverse-psychology. You walk up to someone and say, "I'm not going to be evil," and for the next decade they're watching you like a hawk to see you do something evil. Of course, if Google had filed an S-1 that said, "we intend on razing the Earth and building a little house out of the bones of innocent children," everyone would have chuckled and gone on with their lives.... we're so messed up.
"You take exactly what I said, and cast it in a positive light."
No, I don't. You said that Google was asking you to work on a personal project and that they then claimed ownership. No such process occurs. They ask you to spec your own Google project. VERY DIFFERENT. There is a clear understanding that what you are working on is just the same as every other project, just specified by you. Your manager even has to approve it!
"That's great and all, but let's get with it here. Google's asking you for unpaid work."
Nope.
"Yes, they pay you for one day of work on said project, but like all "independent projects", they're hoping you kick spare hours into it."
No, I think the hope is that enjoying your work will make you want to work longer on the things that they actually tell you to do. And, here's the shocking bit: that kind of sick "make your employees enjoy working" strategy actually works. Sheep! </sarcasm>
"But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.
No need to be defensive."
I'm not being defensive, and you dodged the point that Google's corporate culture, counter to your claims, does indeed accomplish the things you seem to think that it cannot.
"And if Google ever abuses the engineers who take part in this practice, or penalizes someone for not having an independent project"
Well, I'm sure that if you didn't take the time to write up an idea, they'd be concerned. It is, after all, one of the conditions under which you are hired, and you did agree to do so. If you were unhappy with specifying your own project, you could have negotiated that up-front. Dealing in good faith with your employer is ALWAYS a good idea.
"...Google is going to be publicly reamed over it. Working on projects like that is a powerful and significant display of trust that Google's employees have in their company."
What planet does that kind of attitude come from?! Why is it a display of trust to work on a project of your own choosing? Because you might enjoy it? When my boss lets me work on what I want to work on, I'm thrilled. I don't ask, "but will I be able to claim ownership over it?" or "you're not going to turn it into a product are you?!" I'm just happy to be able to call the shots on at least one project of mine (and at my company that doesn't happen as often as at Google, but it does happen).
Indeed, control over the server and browser is powerful, but the same can be done in the open source world. As long as it's done as an extension that's done in a way that allows incompatible browsers to work in a degreded mode (e.g. <img src="img.png" btsrc="img.torrent"/>), then you're all set.
"I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister."
Every time someone uses some variant of the word "evil" in association with Google, I just have to laugh. Have you met anyone from Google? This is a company fascinated with the technology of the Internet. This is a company full of people (from founders to trenches) that honestly believe that technology can make people's lives better.
"Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it."
Go do some research. The personal project thing is highly confused outside of the company. Inside the company, you are asked to work on a project that has a benefit to Google. It's not your chance to write something for yourself, it's a chance to get paid to work on the Google project YOU WANT. This is no more sinister than not having such a project and having you work on a project of your manager's choosing.
"It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create"
But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.
"Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project"
You're really reaching for some dirt. My Advice? Give up.
Hi, welcome to the 20th century... well, you're a bit late, but that's OK.
Here in 20th-land we call any form of government where the people elect leaders, and where any citizen (with minimal restrictions, usually based on age, nation of origin, etc.) can campaign for those offices, a "democracy".
Yes, this does NOT fit the classical definition, but since no one has founded a democracy in a VERY long time (arguably never), it's not going to be very confusing as we continue to use the new definition.
Let's say that in a slightly different way: companies that are non-technical now treat IT as they should: a necessary evil that they must absorb as best they can.
There are still highly technical companies in which computer science and software engneering ARE the bottom-line. I happen to work for one such company
"Learning darkroom technique teaches masking and burning which, for me, is the magic touch of photography."
I find this statement emblematic of your post. Isn't the "magic touch" of photography the act of recording an image on some sort of media? Anything beyond that is called painting in my book (and, I don't care if you do it in a lab or in PhotoShop).
Of course, there are "painting" techniques that need to be learned, but the fundamentals are all about learning how, when and why to point and shoot. The how is a mechanical process that involves everything about your gear; the when is a matter of composition and understanding the physical as well as aesthetic and emotional content of your pictures; and the why personal... it cannot be taught.
What you do after pressing the button is interesting (and an art form unto itself), but is NOT what I consider photography to be all about.
IMHO, the purest form of photography would be practiced WITHOUT film in the camera, but that's perhaps a tad too detached....
Folks, the parent is WRONG, so why is it still modded up?! Clearly, this is someone who just did a quick search with Google and didn't actually understand what he was reading. "Slashdot lies" indeed.
There's an "overrated" option available to you....
Taking pics by point and shoot is to photography what using Windows and using a mouse to point and click is to computer literacy.
Both are quite acceptable, and I think you'll find that the majority of up-and-coming masters in both fields will have started with the "easy stuff".
Personally, I'd get a newbie to computers started on a Mac these days, specifically because it is trivial to use. Same thing with photography: I'd go for a digital SLR system like the Digital Rebel.
In both cases, I'd encourage any enthusiasm they brought to it, and if they showed a tendancy to explore what the device was capable of, I'd help them to understand the tool and the art involved.
Darkroom work is a fine thing to learn about, but let's face it: photography is the art of seeing for other people, and you can do that just as well with a digital SLR as a pinhole box.
"Using google hit counts is about as dumb as thinking that boxen is a real word simply by sticking a B on the front of the plural of Ox."
You didn't actually read the original message of mine in this thread, did you? It's a nice idea, but that's NOT the origin of the word.
"You do realize that the majority of computer users out there still refer to their computer as a "computer", not a "box""
Not only do I realize that, but I've already pointed it out.
You and I seem to agree on so many points that I think you might want to read a bit of what I wrote before replying.
"Shall we remind you of the word "Jargon"? Existence in the world of jargon does not imply accepted use in the larger language."
Jargon is a word that people who like to think that the English language will be the same tomorrow as it was today use. "Google" is jargon. "Ain't" is jargon. "Bloody" is jargon. It's all part of this soup that we like to call English. Cope or don't but don't get mad at me about it.
Yes, but that's completely vague. For example, if I translate my code into some unreadable mess and then make a trivial change to it and compile that, I can easily defend the idea that that unreadable mess is the prefered form of the work for making modifications. I might continue to modify the original source, but I've never distributed THAT software....
This violates the spirit of the GPL, clearly, but not it's letter.
This thread got a bit silly and carried away, so let me try to start it over. There are several theories of time travel, and without peppering you with names and links, let me just summarize:
The timeline is constant. If you go back, you must do what you have always done in the past, though you may not have been aware of your "previous" actions. Usually this implies that if you went back with the intention of creating a paradox, you are guaranteed that something will prevent you from succeeding.
Time is like a river, branching every time anything gets in its way (in this case every "decision" (which is defined in terms of physics, not choices). In this case, time-travel would simply put you on a new branch in which you could do whatever you want, even prevent your birth (because it would be preventing the birth of a different version of you).
Time is personal (ala "The Men Who Murdered Mohamed"), in which paradoxical effects are possible, but they remove you from the frame of reference in which others can interact with you.
There are others, but those are the biggies. Essentially someone just figured out version number 1 all over again. I hope that they consider this news because they have come up with some particularly interesting math to back it up, not just because they thought it was original....
"However, the bombings weren't exactly simultaneous. Three days seem long enough to verify exactly what had happened to Hiroshima (it was obvious that the damage was done by a single catastrophic blast rather than a carpet-bombing campaign). And even after Nagasaki, it took six more days of waffling on the part of the Japanese government to get around to surrendering."
This was a result of the fact that the Japanese had little real data to go on. Today, we might find this fantastic, but imagine if you will that no one has cell phones; there are not satelite images; most people who try to survey the damage don't come back; most everyone in the city proper is dead; you're in the middle of running a war; and there are a whole lot of very confused people running around.
As you can imagine, there's more than 3 days of figuring out what the hell is going on to be done. It could have been that a large earthquake just struck, and the US is trying to take advantage of that fact to get you to surrender under false pretenses. It could be that the US was just using conventional explosives, and reports are wrong. You need to confirm that before you hand the welfare of your citizens over to your enemy.
We should have waited a week and offered to test a second bomb with Japanese observers as a condition to surrender, but we did not, and I for one am glad that Truman did end the war if for no other reason then the US was butchering Japan's citizens, and it NEEDED to stop. We (the US) had gone completely insane, and forcing a Japanese surrender was the only thing that I could see stopping us. It's a horrible, horrible blot on our already tainted history as a nation, but at least Japan still exists.
You are posting on Slashdot, in response to an article that has interest only to those who find the politics of open source to be compelling news... and you have refered to someone other than yourself as a fanboy. How... interesting.
Colorful metaphor, though. I like the "hanging off his balls" thing. I have no idea what it means, but still a cool turn of phrase.
Woefully, you cannot trivially extract the correct usage there. I never said that "boxen" was used as the plural for "box" in the general case, in fact I explicitly qualified that statement, refering only to computers that come in box-shaped cases (e.g. any non-embeded computer). Most of these reference will be to boxes of the more traditional kind, which I've never heard anyone refer to as "boxen".
Now, I'd be happy to be wrong here, and that's possible. The scenarios where I could imagine this would be:
* I'm exposed to a limited sample of people who refer to computers as a "box", and a larger sample use the more traditional plural from other contexts (exposure)
* I find "boxen" somewhat grating, so I might notice it more (perception)
* There has bee a recent change in usage (say, last 3-5 years), and I just didn't notice that "boxen" went away (old data)
Any of these is possible, so I'm not deluding myself into thinking I have an irrefutable point here.
"The difference is that there are already proper words for the ones you are attempting to fabricate"
That's just the thing! I'm not fabricating anything. I don't WANT "boxen" to be a word. I think it's kind of odd sounding. I also don't like that "what's up!" is an appropriate response to "what's up?"; that "buzz" means "word of mouth"; that words spelled with numbers instead of letters have subtly different meanings; etc.
The fact that I don't *like* these things, and would choose to prevent them from becoming part of the common usage language if I could has nothing to do with the fact that they are in common usage, and we all know what they mean at this point.
Those are my two definitions of a language element. I don't go check a dead tree (because it only knows when someone who writes for the dead tree happens to notice), and I don't really care what someone on Slashdot thinks of me because I pointed it out. The fact of the matter is that it's out there, and you can cope or not as you wish.
PS: I wonder how pr0n will be sorted in the OED....
Good point, you do have to provide source to your customers if you wish to refuse all comers. Easy enough requirement, though. There's also a loop-hole in part a, if you look closely.
For example, a CD containing "complete corresponding machine-readable source code" might well contain a heavily obfuscated intermediate stage (e.g. the results of a language-to-language translator) as long as that was what you compiled their binary from. There's no provision that says you have to give them the version that you MADE YOUR CHANGES TO, only the version that their binary was created from.
"are you actually trying to make the argument that most people say "boxen" when referring to more than one pc case?"
"Most people"? No. "Most people" say "PCs" or "computers". Those who refer to such things as a "box" tend, in my rather lengthy experience, to use "boxen" rather than "boxes", though it certainly is a mix.
"Yes, it is the plural in common usage of box as a class"
This is a lie.
Look, troll-boy, don't call me a liar unless you're willing to quote me IN-CONTEXT:
"Yes, it is the plural in common usage of box as a class, when refering to the type of computers which are classically placed inside rectangular (either stand-alone or rack-mounted) cases."
And yes, the common usage that I've heard for a good 5-6 years now is "boxen". This is wide-spread (as evidenced by the fact that its use triggered this thread).
To quote Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 272,000 English pages for boxen.
Slashdot Mirror
- Applicants can't recieve email (e.g. an offer letter or response to resume submission
- Customers send feedback and support requests, but cannot recieve responses
- Newsletters stop being recieved
- Receipts of purchase stop being recieved
- Warnings about termination of service stops being recieved
On the plus side, I'm hoping that they will accept SPF-Classic, and that my ISP will list one, finally. I'm tired of getting mail bounced because my SPF inclusion of my ISP isn't honored (due to their lack of SPF listing)."Opera is configured by default to identify itself as Internet Explorer"
"who's fault is that?"
Well, clearly it's Opera's, but they do have a valid point, and some effort should be made to determine correct numbers by metrics companies that actually care about accuracy.
HOWEVER, it should also be noted that none of this changes the fact that next to no one uses Opera. I know perhaps 60 people who use Firefox on at least a casual basis (probably more like 40 who use it exclusively), and of those people I know no one who uses Opera regularly enough to count.
That's obviously not a useful way to conduct a survey, but I do think it's telling as a general sense that Firefox is VERY widely used, and almost certainly deserves its place as the second most popular browser.
The real question is: does Opera beat out Netscape 4 and Mozilla? I think the answer is yes, but I'm not sure.
He's not deflecting blame, he's pointing out that blaming your neighbor or your vendor is fine, but the lion's share of the blame for intrusions belong's square in the lap of the intruder.
To quote TFA:However, I'd like to point out that I disagree with something fairly fundamental in what he's saying. The people who are "annoying us" make us build better security, and I'm much rather have a numbskull try to poke at my security for bragging rights than have nothing for years and then a series of well-organized, well-hidden attacks that gain long-term access to sensitve data. I don't enjoy having to secure networks against boneheads, but I don't blame them for having to build good security, that should have been done from the day the first machine sent out a set of voltage modulations that could loosely be called "IP".
First off, I just want to say that I'm sorry. I was pretty harsh in my last message, and it was because I was typing at max baud in order to crank the message out while I waited for a report to generate at work. Not your fault, not an excuse, just the facts.
Ok, that said, I certainly see where we differ here. You look at Google's filing as a "promise" just like all the rest of the worthless promisses you are made in a day. I look at it as the freedom to do the right thing.
You see, no matter how good the intentions of your average CEO, he (or she) must admit that when push comes to shove, they MUST do anything legal within the bounds of their prospectus to maintain shareholder value. If that means being "evil", then evil is what they must be.
Google did a very smart thing: they put "don't be evil" in the S-1. To my knowledge, no one has ever done this. It doesn't mean you can trust them, but it DOES mean that you don't HAVE to assume that they will behave in as corrupt a manner as neccessary to keep the company profitable and meeting analyst expectations. It's the kind of clever hack I expect from Google, nothing more.
Now, on to the topic of the projects. I think there, we just didn't communicate very well. Partially, it is a clever ploy to get more work out of people. Personally, I have no problem with that, as long as it also improves the QUALITY of that work, and I think it does... you may not feel the same. That's cool.
Your comments about ecconomic motivation are well taken.
Thanks for the conversation!
"Forgive us. We've been burned many times in the past. Nor would you realize my employer is such a drag by only talking to me. :) Unless, of course, I told you."
No, you have never been burned in the past. Please, go find me any company in the past 50 years whose S-1 for their IPO includes a promise not to be evil.... I'll wait, go ahead.
You have NEVER been burned, because you've never had the chance. This is classic reverse-psychology. You walk up to someone and say, "I'm not going to be evil," and for the next decade they're watching you like a hawk to see you do something evil. Of course, if Google had filed an S-1 that said, "we intend on razing the Earth and building a little house out of the bones of innocent children," everyone would have chuckled and gone on with their lives.... we're so messed up.
"You take exactly what I said, and cast it in a positive light."
No, I don't. You said that Google was asking you to work on a personal project and that they then claimed ownership. No such process occurs. They ask you to spec your own Google project. VERY DIFFERENT. There is a clear understanding that what you are working on is just the same as every other project, just specified by you. Your manager even has to approve it!
"That's great and all, but let's get with it here. Google's asking you for unpaid work."
Nope.
"Yes, they pay you for one day of work on said project, but like all "independent projects", they're hoping you kick spare hours into it."
No, I think the hope is that enjoying your work will make you want to work longer on the things that they actually tell you to do. And, here's the shocking bit: that kind of sick "make your employees enjoy working" strategy actually works. Sheep! </sarcasm>
" But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.
No need to be defensive."
I'm not being defensive, and you dodged the point that Google's corporate culture, counter to your claims, does indeed accomplish the things you seem to think that it cannot.
"And if Google ever abuses the engineers who take part in this practice, or penalizes someone for not having an independent project"
Well, I'm sure that if you didn't take the time to write up an idea, they'd be concerned. It is, after all, one of the conditions under which you are hired, and you did agree to do so. If you were unhappy with specifying your own project, you could have negotiated that up-front. Dealing in good faith with your employer is ALWAYS a good idea.
"...Google is going to be publicly reamed over it. Working on projects like that is a powerful and significant display of trust that Google's employees have in their company."
What planet does that kind of attitude come from?! Why is it a display of trust to work on a project of your own choosing? Because you might enjoy it? When my boss lets me work on what I want to work on, I'm thrilled. I don't ask, "but will I be able to claim ownership over it?" or "you're not going to turn it into a product are you?!" I'm just happy to be able to call the shots on at least one project of mine (and at my company that doesn't happen as often as at Google, but it does happen).
Indeed, control over the server and browser is powerful, but the same can be done in the open source world. As long as it's done as an extension that's done in a way that allows incompatible browsers to work in a degreded mode (e.g. <img src="img.png" btsrc="img.torrent" />), then you're all set.
"I find that the "personal projects" aspect of Google is one of the more sinister."
Every time someone uses some variant of the word "evil" in association with Google, I just have to laugh. Have you met anyone from Google? This is a company fascinated with the technology of the Internet. This is a company full of people (from founders to trenches) that honestly believe that technology can make people's lives better.
"Remember that Google can take your personal project if they want it."
Go do some research. The personal project thing is highly confused outside of the company. Inside the company, you are asked to work on a project that has a benefit to Google. It's not your chance to write something for yourself, it's a chance to get paid to work on the Google project YOU WANT. This is no more sinister than not having such a project and having you work on a project of your manager's choosing.
"It's part of the way Google tries to stay agile. By insinuating ownership over projects that their corporate culture couldn't create"
But, that's just the thing. Their corproate culture CAN create these things because their corporate culture allows employees to spec their own project.
"Add to that the rumblings we've been hearing about how Google "strongly encourages" employees to have such a project"
You're really reaching for some dirt. My Advice? Give up.
Fair enough, and a vaild thing to do. If you do do this, I suggest you point that out. It will help resolve some confusion up-front.
"For the record, the US is NOT a democracy."
Hi, welcome to the 20th century... well, you're a bit late, but that's OK.
Here in 20th-land we call any form of government where the people elect leaders, and where any citizen (with minimal restrictions, usually based on age, nation of origin, etc.) can campaign for those offices, a "democracy".
Yes, this does NOT fit the classical definition, but since no one has founded a democracy in a VERY long time (arguably never), it's not going to be very confusing as we continue to use the new definition.
If you're going to stamp your feet and hold your breath over it, you're really going to be unhappy, since most of the world started using the new definition (also, check out Wikipedia's excellent article on the topic of the modern usage of the word "democracy") at some point last century.
Let's say that in a slightly different way: companies that are non-technical now treat IT as they should: a necessary evil that they must absorb as best they can.
There are still highly technical companies in which computer science and software engneering ARE the bottom-line. I happen to work for one such company
"Learning darkroom technique teaches masking and burning which, for me, is the magic touch of photography."
I find this statement emblematic of your post. Isn't the "magic touch" of photography the act of recording an image on some sort of media? Anything beyond that is called painting in my book (and, I don't care if you do it in a lab or in PhotoShop).
Of course, there are "painting" techniques that need to be learned, but the fundamentals are all about learning how, when and why to point and shoot. The how is a mechanical process that involves everything about your gear; the when is a matter of composition and understanding the physical as well as aesthetic and emotional content of your pictures; and the why personal... it cannot be taught.
What you do after pressing the button is interesting (and an art form unto itself), but is NOT what I consider photography to be all about.
IMHO, the purest form of photography would be practiced WITHOUT film in the camera, but that's perhaps a tad too detached....
Folks, the parent is WRONG, so why is it still modded up?! Clearly, this is someone who just did a quick search with Google and didn't actually understand what he was reading. "Slashdot lies" indeed.
There's an "overrated" option available to you....
Taking pics by point and shoot is to photography what using Windows and using a mouse to point and click is to computer literacy.
Both are quite acceptable, and I think you'll find that the majority of up-and-coming masters in both fields will have started with the "easy stuff".
Personally, I'd get a newbie to computers started on a Mac these days, specifically because it is trivial to use. Same thing with photography: I'd go for a digital SLR system like the Digital Rebel.
In both cases, I'd encourage any enthusiasm they brought to it, and if they showed a tendancy to explore what the device was capable of, I'd help them to understand the tool and the art involved.
Darkroom work is a fine thing to learn about, but let's face it: photography is the art of seeing for other people, and you can do that just as well with a digital SLR as a pinhole box.
Why does this have to be a competition? Why would Linux have to adapt OR die? Why not just keep improving?
"Using google hit counts is about as dumb as thinking that boxen is a real word simply by sticking a B on the front of the plural of Ox."
You didn't actually read the original message of mine in this thread, did you? It's a nice idea, but that's NOT the origin of the word.
"You do realize that the majority of computer users out there still refer to their computer as a "computer", not a "box""
Not only do I realize that, but I've already pointed it out.
You and I seem to agree on so many points that I think you might want to read a bit of what I wrote before replying.
"Shall we remind you of the word "Jargon"? Existence in the world of jargon does not imply accepted use in the larger language."
Jargon is a word that people who like to think that the English language will be the same tomorrow as it was today use. "Google" is jargon. "Ain't" is jargon. "Bloody" is jargon. It's all part of this soup that we like to call English. Cope or don't but don't get mad at me about it.
Yes, but that's completely vague. For example, if I translate my code into some unreadable mess and then make a trivial change to it and compile that, I can easily defend the idea that that unreadable mess is the prefered form of the work for making modifications. I might continue to modify the original source, but I've never distributed THAT software....
This violates the spirit of the GPL, clearly, but not it's letter.
There are others, but those are the biggies. Essentially someone just figured out version number 1 all over again. I hope that they consider this news because they have come up with some particularly interesting math to back it up, not just because they thought it was original....
"However, the bombings weren't exactly simultaneous. Three days seem long enough to verify exactly what had happened to Hiroshima (it was obvious that the damage was done by a single catastrophic blast rather than a carpet-bombing campaign). And even after Nagasaki, it took six more days of waffling on the part of the Japanese government to get around to surrendering."
This was a result of the fact that the Japanese had little real data to go on. Today, we might find this fantastic, but imagine if you will that no one has cell phones; there are not satelite images; most people who try to survey the damage don't come back; most everyone in the city proper is dead; you're in the middle of running a war; and there are a whole lot of very confused people running around.
As you can imagine, there's more than 3 days of figuring out what the hell is going on to be done. It could have been that a large earthquake just struck, and the US is trying to take advantage of that fact to get you to surrender under false pretenses. It could be that the US was just using conventional explosives, and reports are wrong. You need to confirm that before you hand the welfare of your citizens over to your enemy.
We should have waited a week and offered to test a second bomb with Japanese observers as a condition to surrender, but we did not, and I for one am glad that Truman did end the war if for no other reason then the US was butchering Japan's citizens, and it NEEDED to stop. We (the US) had gone completely insane, and forcing a Japanese surrender was the only thing that I could see stopping us. It's a horrible, horrible blot on our already tainted history as a nation, but at least Japan still exists.
You are posting on Slashdot, in response to an article that has interest only to those who find the politics of open source to be compelling news... and you have refered to someone other than yourself as a fanboy. How... interesting.
Colorful metaphor, though. I like the "hanging off his balls" thing. I have no idea what it means, but still a cool turn of phrase.
"Results 1 - 10 of about 46,800,000 for BOXES."
Woefully, you cannot trivially extract the correct usage there. I never said that "boxen" was used as the plural for "box" in the general case, in fact I explicitly qualified that statement, refering only to computers that come in box-shaped cases (e.g. any non-embeded computer). Most of these reference will be to boxes of the more traditional kind, which I've never heard anyone refer to as "boxen".
Now, I'd be happy to be wrong here, and that's possible. The scenarios where I could imagine this would be:
* I'm exposed to a limited sample of people who refer to computers as a "box", and a larger sample use the more traditional plural from other contexts (exposure)
* I find "boxen" somewhat grating, so I might notice it more (perception)
* There has bee a recent change in usage (say, last 3-5 years), and I just didn't notice that "boxen" went away (old data)
Any of these is possible, so I'm not deluding myself into thinking I have an irrefutable point here.
"The difference is that there are already proper words for the ones you are attempting to fabricate"
That's just the thing! I'm not fabricating anything. I don't WANT "boxen" to be a word. I think it's kind of odd sounding. I also don't like that "what's up!" is an appropriate response to "what's up?"; that "buzz" means "word of mouth"; that words spelled with numbers instead of letters have subtly different meanings; etc.
The fact that I don't *like* these things, and would choose to prevent them from becoming part of the common usage language if I could has nothing to do with the fact that they are in common usage, and we all know what they mean at this point.
Those are my two definitions of a language element. I don't go check a dead tree (because it only knows when someone who writes for the dead tree happens to notice), and I don't really care what someone on Slashdot thinks of me because I pointed it out. The fact of the matter is that it's out there, and you can cope or not as you wish.
PS: I wonder how pr0n will be sorted in the OED....
Good point, you do have to provide source to your customers if you wish to refuse all comers. Easy enough requirement, though. There's also a loop-hole in part a, if you look closely.
For example, a CD containing "complete corresponding machine-readable source code" might well contain a heavily obfuscated intermediate stage (e.g. the results of a language-to-language translator) as long as that was what you compiled their binary from. There's no provision that says you have to give them the version that you MADE YOUR CHANGES TO, only the version that their binary was created from.
"are you actually trying to make the argument that most people say "boxen" when referring to more than one pc case?"
"Most people"? No. "Most people" say "PCs" or "computers". Those who refer to such things as a "box" tend, in my rather lengthy experience, to use "boxen" rather than "boxes", though it certainly is a mix.
"Yes, it is the plural in common usage of box as a class"
This is a lie.
Look, troll-boy, don't call me a liar unless you're willing to quote me IN-CONTEXT:
"Yes, it is the plural in common usage of box as a class, when refering to the type of computers which are classically placed inside rectangular (either stand-alone or rack-mounted) cases."
And yes, the common usage that I've heard for a good 5-6 years now is "boxen". This is wide-spread (as evidenced by the fact that its use triggered this thread).
To quote Google:
Results 1 - 10 of about 272,000 English pages for boxen.
True enough, and VAXstations existed in pizza-box and shoe-box form-factors. We called THOSE "Vaxen" and "VMS/Ultrix boxen" as well.