History's filled with people who find others' notions of art "appalling." Obviously, what you think art is "meant to be" is different than some other people's.
Are you suggesting that it's impossible to have a different view of what art is than yours? That seems a bit arrogant.
"You can't try and slap some spiritual meaning or inner understanding to this "party". It's plain and simply a huge ass co-ed college party. Sex, drugs, things done for shock value."
This based on looking at some of the images on a website? That's a far, far cry from having actually *been* there. I'm also really curious where the "sex, drugs" part of your opinion came from, since neither are depicted in those pictures.
It's always fascinating to me how quickly some people will dismiss anything they don't understand (or just don't want to take the time and effort to understand), and will find a way to make any evidence they can find fit their preconceived prejudices.
There are a lot of elements of Burning Man that don't translate well to still photographs; things like the shared experience of the burning of the man come to mind, the camaraderie that develops in a vast, empty expanse of desert, and the *sounds* of the place -- everything from loud music to quiet conversations to distant drumbeats.
I'm not going to try too hard to convince anyone who thinks Burning Man is a load of crap otherwise -- it's not for everyone, and it's probably better off without those who think it's just some giant drug-induced orgy. As someone who's been several times, though, and has *yet* to run around naked, paint myself, or witness an orgy (though, admittedly, I have been known to take a drug or two), I can say that the experience is vastly different from anything you might be able to view in a browser window.
Re:You find what you look for.
on
Drama in the Desert
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm not sure how this got modded down, because it's very true. Maybe it was the overgeneralization of young American males... Anyway...
I've been to a few burns myself, and you're right -- there are a lot of people who go for drugs and fucking. However, there are also very many (probably many more than the D&F contingent, though I've never taken a poll) who *don't* think the art scene is BS. There are also people who look at Burning Man as a sort of spiritual pilgrimage, those who view it as an experiment in community-building, and those who see it as a giant bass-thumping rave.
That's one of the great things about Burning Man -- it's very hard to pin down what it is, because it's so many things to so many people. And, like the parent post mentioned, if you go looking for drugs and fucking, you'll probably be able to find plenty of evidence to reinforce your bias.
I'd go on a rant about how inaccurate Slashdot stories usually are (for examples in just the last two days, see the story about Microsoft changing its EULA when it didn't, the report that Mandrake was the first distro to say thay'd support the Hammer, and the dotGNU "we think the dates are wrong, but we're giving them to you anyway" piece), but I won't. In the interest of not being moderated down for being off-topic, I'm wondering about how this particular story got hosed in the translation.
The actual story only mentions a letter sent from Cage's publishers... there is no lawsuit, contrary to the header on the story. Who knows? For all we can tell from the actual story, the letter may have been just as much of a joke as the credit Batt gave Cage on his album.
So why was it reported as being a lawsuit? Is it just the usual Slashdot sloppiness in following a link before they post it, or are people so lawsuit-happy that we assume that where there's a letter, there's a court battle?
I really don't see much similarity with search engines. Yahoo, for example, will scan your site (within parameters you can specify via robots.txt) once in a blue moon. That's VERY different than a robot that scans the same site repeatedly 224 hours a day. I'd get pretty miffed, too, if Yahoo, Altavista, Google, and all the rest of 'em hammered away on my site constantly just to see if I'd changed anything.
On a lower-bandwidth site than eBay, you'd call it a DoS attack.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I'm with you there. Hell, even Star Office, made buy the guys who sell Sparcs, and who have a Linux version, doesn't do Sparc. It's annoying as hell.
And the next time I hear someone complain about their lack of browser choices, they get a boot to the head. Mozilla? Recent builds won't run. Opera? Forget it. Navigator? Stuck at 4.5.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Well, suppose the box was originally bought as an easy all-in-one server, as a lot of Cobalts are... Then somewhere down the road, the company hires someone with a bit more of a clue who doesn't need or want the GUI. How can having a choice between the stock OS and BSD be a bad thing then?
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
While there may be a few semi-ridiculous ports flying around, what I can't understand is how someone could get bent out of shape about someone porting BSD to a server platform. It makes all the sense in the world, and I could give you 1,000,000 reasons why someone might want to run BSD on a server.
Relax a little. This one makes sense.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Reading through the responses to this letter, I've noticed some confusion about one particular passage of the letter. I did a "View Source" on the page, and realized that several pieces of text had been inadvertantly removed from the page due to a bug in the ASP code. The originally intended version follows, with reinserted text in square brackets:
They [MCSEs] are the best trained [. It has been, I kid you not, at least two weeks since one of the MCSEs left a dump on the office floor, unless you count the time Eugene only got it half-way onto the newspaper. But I digress, these guys are the best] group [ -- actually, "group" is probably not the right word. A group of wolves is a pack. A group of lions is a pride. What's the word for a harem of Bill Gates's slave-bitches? Anyway, whatever you call them, they're the greatest bunch of whores, errr, I mean] networking professionals [. Not computer networking, of course, but they really excel (Excel... that's a little MCSE pun there) at calling each other for help, and getting together for lunch and stuff. That kind of networking)] on the planet [. Which planet? I'll let you know as soon as we decide which one we're claiming in Bill Gates' name. We're leading toward Neptune, which we plan on renaming "Eula"]; the world [("world," of course, meaning "management")] listens to them [whine and complain about having to come to work in the middle of the night because the goddamn server crashed again, and about how much easier networking would be if everyone would just use the same friggin' netmask. 255.255.255.248? What the hell is that in English? Why can't they use 0 like everyone else?], and follows [, like lemmings, ] their advice [ as well as the advice of the "Psychic Friends Network" whose psychics, coincidentally, often moonlight as MCSEs as a talent for bullshitting your customers is equally valuable in both fields ] and [ there will always be a market full of people who can't tell the difference between bullshit and ] insight.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
If you need something now, it's a no-brainer. Go with Caldera. You can always change your mind once Corel's is released.
For what it's worth, though, I can report the Corel's Beta 2 installs and runs just peachy on an IBM ThinkPad 600, with only a couple minor snags, which I'm sure will be ironed out before release.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
C'mon, guys -- Beta Two just went out to testers DAYS ago. Keep your pants on. It'll get finished eventually, but I can guarantee you it's not done yet.
A few new files sitting on an FTP server do not an early release make -- especially when one of the new files says in plain English "This is not Corel Linux."
Fact checking is a good thing in the journalism biz.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
My God -- you'd think the last place you'd find this kind of "journalism" would be Slashdot. The "modem tax" is as much a myth as it always has been, and I'm honestly disappointed that this site has seen fit to breathe any new life whatsoever into it.
All the article says is that the long distance companies are lobbying for the current exemption to access fees that is given to ISPs to be lifted. They've been doing this for years, and every time the FCC sees through their twists of logic and denies it. The FCC has also stated, very clearly, that they have *no* intention of lifting the exemption. That doesn't stop the telcos from complaining about it, but the proposal isn't any nearer to happening than it was the first time I saw a "modem tax" chain letter.
The FCC *knows* modem calls are *not* long-distance calls. The telcos might have a leg to stand on if all of the switching equipment (i.e., routers) on the 'net were theirs, but it's not. It doesn't make sense to allow them to charge for the use of equipment that doesn't belong to them. Fortunately, the FCC realizes that, and will probably deny them again and again until they give up asking.
Relax... as usual, the "modem tax" ain't gonna happen.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Well, Jay -- you might want to pass that on to the people answering the phones for support in Vienna. I've asked them, very directly, if such a thing could happen -- and I've received a very definite "yes."
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I used to run the internal systems for one of their web sites. And while I was pretty suspicious then the tech support guys in Virginia said "If you get e-mail with an attachment from someone you don't know, don't open it -- delete it immediately," I've seen people get their passwords stolen just by reading AOL mail.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
That's not true. AOL users (because of AOL's mail scripting) *can* get viruses simply by reading mail. They do *not* necessarily have to double-click the attachment.
It's scary, but it's true.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I've seen a few comments from people who read the thing about being able to have this thing infect your system simply by opening mail. I've seen some of those same people decide this must be misinformation, that surely the executable needs to be run after opening the mail for it to do damage.
Unfortunately, with AOL, this is not true (and I'm not just talking out of my ass here -- another unfortunate thing is that I worked for AOL as a systems administrator for a few years). They've got some built-in scripting (a la VBScript in MS Outlook) that *can* be executed if a user does not open the attachment. The attachment is just there so the script has a file to install when it gets triggered.
If you're an AOL user, don't be too sure you're safe just because you don't actually *open* the attachments. All you have to do is read the mail, and someone might get your password.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Actually, my [c] was in response to your [c] which was probably referring to a [c] in the GPL which applies to binary-only non-commercial distributions, which is why I was saying that [c] didn't apply (at least, it doesn't appear to).
However, if they did [c] (not to comply with your original [c], but actually to your original [a] or [b], since [c] only applies of the source wasn't yours to begin with), then they'd be [a][o][k].
I really need to cut down on the coffee.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
O.K., I can deal with the concern about a Linux distribution not including source, even if it might be a bit premature.
What's with all this China-bashing, though? Sure, China's got its problems... but it's not like this is the first time someone's done this. To say it's happened because "the Chinese make their own rules" or "the Chinese don't believe in intellectual property" is speculation at best, and bigotry at worst.
They screwed up. Westerners have done the same thing, and I doubt anyone would argue that (as a possibly inaccurate example) the guys at Corel are godless commies because they didn't provide the source to their distribution.
--- Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Slashdot Mirror
"Anyone who takes drugs has severe personality problems anyway."
Thanks for the tip. That would explain why I turn into a murderous psychopath after a couple beers.
History's filled with people who find others' notions of art "appalling." Obviously, what you think art is "meant to be" is different than some other people's.
Are you suggesting that it's impossible to have a different view of what art is than yours? That seems a bit arrogant.
"You can't try and slap some spiritual meaning or inner understanding to this "party". It's plain and simply a huge ass co-ed college party. Sex, drugs, things done for shock value."
This based on looking at some of the images on a website? That's a far, far cry from having actually *been* there. I'm also really curious where the "sex, drugs" part of your opinion came from, since neither are depicted in those pictures.
It's always fascinating to me how quickly some people will dismiss anything they don't understand (or just don't want to take the time and effort to understand), and will find a way to make any evidence they can find fit their preconceived prejudices.
There are a lot of elements of Burning Man that don't translate well to still photographs; things like the shared experience of the burning of the man come to mind, the camaraderie that develops in a vast, empty expanse of desert, and the *sounds* of the place -- everything from loud music to quiet conversations to distant drumbeats.
I'm not going to try too hard to convince anyone who thinks Burning Man is a load of crap otherwise -- it's not for everyone, and it's probably better off without those who think it's just some giant drug-induced orgy. As someone who's been several times, though, and has *yet* to run around naked, paint myself, or witness an orgy (though, admittedly, I have been known to take a drug or two), I can say that the experience is vastly different from anything you might be able to view in a browser window.
I'm not sure how this got modded down, because it's very true. Maybe it was the overgeneralization of young American males... Anyway...
I've been to a few burns myself, and you're right -- there are a lot of people who go for drugs and fucking. However, there are also very many (probably many more than the D&F contingent, though I've never taken a poll) who *don't* think the art scene is BS. There are also people who look at Burning Man as a sort of spiritual pilgrimage, those who view it as an experiment in community-building, and those who see it as a giant bass-thumping rave.
That's one of the great things about Burning Man -- it's very hard to pin down what it is, because it's so many things to so many people. And, like the parent post mentioned, if you go looking for drugs and fucking, you'll probably be able to find plenty of evidence to reinforce your bias.
I'd go on a rant about how inaccurate Slashdot stories usually are (for examples in just the last two days, see the story about Microsoft changing its EULA when it didn't, the report that Mandrake was the first distro to say thay'd support the Hammer, and the dotGNU "we think the dates are wrong, but we're giving them to you anyway" piece), but I won't. In the interest of not being moderated down for being off-topic, I'm wondering about how this particular story got hosed in the translation.
The actual story only mentions a letter sent from Cage's publishers... there is no lawsuit, contrary to the header on the story. Who knows? For all we can tell from the actual story, the letter may have been just as much of a joke as the credit Batt gave Cage on his album.
So why was it reported as being a lawsuit? Is it just the usual Slashdot sloppiness in following a link before they post it, or are people so lawsuit-happy that we assume that where there's a letter, there's a court battle?
I can't help hearing Meryl Streep saying "A gecko ate my baby!"
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I really don't see much similarity with search engines. Yahoo, for example, will scan your site (within parameters you can specify via robots.txt) once in a blue moon. That's VERY different than a robot that scans the same site repeatedly 224 hours a day. I'd get pretty miffed, too, if Yahoo, Altavista, Google, and all the rest of 'em hammered away on my site constantly just to see if I'd changed anything.
On a lower-bandwidth site than eBay, you'd call it a DoS attack.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Damn, I wasn't completely sure and tried to find a page like that, but couldn't. Must've been thinking of the D tickets.
Probably 'cuz, when I was a kid, by the time we got the books home you could be damn sure there weren't any E's left.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
O.K., here's the proof that I'm getting old:
E tickets weren't pink if I remember right; they were the orange ones.
Also, if memory serves me correctly, they stopped using 'em sometime around 1982.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I'm with you there. Hell, even Star Office, made buy the guys who sell Sparcs, and who have a Linux version, doesn't do Sparc. It's annoying as hell.
And the next time I hear someone complain about their lack of browser choices, they get a boot to the head. Mozilla? Recent builds won't run. Opera? Forget it. Navigator? Stuck at 4.5.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Well, suppose the box was originally bought as an easy all-in-one server, as a lot of Cobalts are... Then somewhere down the road, the company hires someone with a bit more of a clue who doesn't need or want the GUI. How can having a choice between the stock OS and BSD be a bad thing then?
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
While there may be a few semi-ridiculous ports flying around, what I can't understand is how someone could get bent out of shape about someone porting BSD to a server platform. It makes all the sense in the world, and I could give you 1,000,000 reasons why someone might want to run BSD on a server.
Relax a little. This one makes sense.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Reading through the responses to this letter, I've noticed some confusion about one particular passage of the letter. I did a "View Source" on the page, and realized that several pieces of text had been inadvertantly removed from the page due to a bug in the ASP code. The originally intended version follows, with reinserted text in square brackets:
They [MCSEs] are the best trained [. It has been, I kid you not, at least two weeks since one of the MCSEs left a dump on the office floor, unless you count the time Eugene only got it half-way onto the newspaper. But I digress, these guys are the best] group [ -- actually, "group" is probably not the right word. A group of wolves is a pack. A group of lions is a pride. What's the word for a harem of Bill Gates's slave-bitches? Anyway, whatever you call them, they're the greatest bunch of whores, errr, I mean] networking professionals [. Not computer networking, of course, but they really excel (Excel... that's a little MCSE pun there) at calling each other for help, and getting together for lunch and stuff. That kind of networking)] on the planet [. Which planet? I'll let you know as soon as we decide which one we're claiming in Bill Gates' name. We're leading toward Neptune, which we plan on renaming "Eula"]; the world [("world," of course, meaning "management")] listens to them [whine and complain about having to come to work in the middle of the night because the goddamn server crashed again, and about how much easier networking would be if everyone would just use the same friggin' netmask. 255.255.255.248? What the hell is that in English? Why can't they use 0 like everyone else?], and follows [, like lemmings, ] their advice [ as well as the advice of the "Psychic Friends Network" whose psychics, coincidentally, often moonlight as MCSEs as a talent for bullshitting your customers is equally valuable in both fields ] and [ there will always be a market full of people who can't tell the difference between bullshit and ] insight.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Not quite "never." I was really disappointed that they broke the rule in... ummm... what was that one called? The one where they go to Italy...
Anyway, it included adults *and* adult voices (as well as one obscene (in Italy) gesture from Snoopy.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
If you need something now, it's a no-brainer. Go with Caldera. You can always change your mind once Corel's is released.
For what it's worth, though, I can report the Corel's Beta 2 installs and runs just peachy on an IBM ThinkPad 600, with only a couple minor snags, which I'm sure will be ironed out before release.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
C'mon, guys -- Beta Two just went out to testers DAYS ago. Keep your pants on. It'll get finished eventually, but I can guarantee you it's not done yet.
A few new files sitting on an FTP server do not an early release make -- especially when one of the new files says in plain English "This is not Corel Linux."
Fact checking is a good thing in the journalism biz.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I don't know how the US goverment handles stuff like that but over here in Europe they can be darn slippery from time to time.
Then there's nothing to worry about. That never happens here in the U.S.
Damn. The lightning was really close that time.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
My God -- you'd think the last place you'd find this kind of "journalism" would be Slashdot. The "modem tax" is as much a myth as it always has been, and I'm honestly disappointed that this site has seen fit to breathe any new life whatsoever into it.
All the article says is that the long distance companies are lobbying for the current exemption to access fees that is given to ISPs to be lifted. They've been doing this for years, and every time the FCC sees through their twists of logic and denies it. The FCC has also stated, very clearly, that they have *no* intention of lifting the exemption. That doesn't stop the telcos from complaining about it, but the proposal isn't any nearer to happening than it was the first time I saw a "modem tax" chain letter.
The FCC *knows* modem calls are *not* long-distance calls. The telcos might have a leg to stand on if all of the switching equipment (i.e., routers) on the 'net were theirs, but it's not. It doesn't make sense to allow them to charge for the use of equipment that doesn't belong to them. Fortunately, the FCC realizes that, and will probably deny them again and again until they give up asking.
Relax... as usual, the "modem tax" ain't gonna happen.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Well, Jay -- you might want to pass that on to the people answering the phones for support in Vienna. I've asked them, very directly, if such a thing could happen -- and I've received a very definite "yes."
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I used to run the internal systems for one of their web sites. And while I was pretty suspicious then the tech support guys in Virginia said "If you get e-mail with an attachment from someone you don't know, don't open it -- delete it immediately," I've seen people get their passwords stolen just by reading AOL mail.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
That's not true. AOL users (because of AOL's mail scripting) *can* get viruses simply by reading mail. They do *not* necessarily have to double-click the attachment.
It's scary, but it's true.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
I've seen a few comments from people who read the thing about being able to have this thing infect your system simply by opening mail. I've seen some of those same people decide this must be misinformation, that surely the executable needs to be run after opening the mail for it to do damage.
Unfortunately, with AOL, this is not true (and I'm not just talking out of my ass here -- another unfortunate thing is that I worked for AOL as a systems administrator for a few years). They've got some built-in scripting (a la VBScript in MS Outlook) that *can* be executed if a user does not open the attachment. The attachment is just there so the script has a file to install when it gets triggered.
If you're an AOL user, don't be too sure you're safe just because you don't actually *open* the attachments. All you have to do is read the mail, and someone might get your password.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Just to burst your last bubble -- Those right-click menus were on OS/2 long before they ever showed up on Windows. :)
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
Actually, my [c] was in response to your [c] which was probably referring to a [c] in the GPL which applies to binary-only non-commercial distributions, which is why I was saying that [c] didn't apply (at least, it doesn't appear to).
However, if they did [c] (not to comply with your original [c], but actually to your original [a] or [b], since [c] only applies of the source wasn't yours to begin with), then they'd be [a][o][k].
I really need to cut down on the coffee.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
O.K., I can deal with the concern about a Linux distribution not including source, even if it might be a bit premature.
What's with all this China-bashing, though? Sure, China's got its problems... but it's not like this is the first time someone's done this. To say it's happened because "the Chinese make their own rules" or "the Chinese don't believe in intellectual property" is speculation at best, and bigotry at worst.
They screwed up. Westerners have done the same thing, and I doubt anyone would argue that (as a possibly inaccurate example) the guys at Corel are godless commies because they didn't provide the source to their distribution.
---
Consult, v. t. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.