I've come close to crossing swords with that group in the past, and I must say I'm not keen on doing so in the future.
Given that there's nothing Scientology-related about the NeoPets game, that the internal work practices there seem to be at worst weird and that the Scientology angle only came up from someone looking to (mildly) badmouth the company -- I don't see any need to "cross swords" with people who are minding their own business and certainly not harming you.
Numerous other third party studies show that the Reovirus should be an important discovery in the treatment of 2/3 of all human cancers.
I'm not one of the people always yelling about advertisements maquerading as stories. (Either it's interesting or it isn't.) But I would be astonished if this ludicrous overhyping of a moderately interesting Phase I result from a small-cap biotech isn't being submitted by someone with a financial interest in the stock.
Results like this are daily occurrences, and if this site is going to start flogging particular ones as being the cure for "2/3 of all human cancers" I should submitting my own. After buying the stock, of course.
Bloggers are hot shit the same way desktop linux is hot shit. Everybody doing it thinks it's the coolest damned thing since the toaster. Nobody else gives a shit.
Sure, but wait until I have Linux running on my toaster! Maybe I should blog about it...
Realistically, you only use a tiny subset of scientific vocabulary. OK, as an undergrad you face more breadth than a researcher does, but still.
Just suck it up. Add words to your dictionary as you go, and within a month you'll rarely see those squiggly red lines. For some reason, people are too intimidated to just start into it.
Most importantly though, they were made from chalk: "It washes right off, so it will be removed the next time it rains." Total non-issue.
The IBM graffiti may have been chalk-based but they sure as hell didn't wash off after one rain. The Boston-area ones were around for at least 18 months, in a city with no shortage of rain and snow.
In my country a settlement is made after a conviction involving proof and evidence, mere allegations mean nothing?
This deal makes no sense to me, either, but here's a quick clarification of US legal terminology:
This is a civil suit, not a criminal case. There is no "conviction", despite the total inability of Slashbots to grasp that, for example, Bill Gates isn't "a convicted monopolist". Civil suits also require a preponderance of evidence, not proof, as is necessary for a criminal conviction.
Settlement is when the parties in a civil suit agree to drop it after reaching an agreement. So this settlement was at least sort of "for allegations" since Ellison and his lawyers decided not to let it get to the point of showing evidence in court.
Or, if the problem is that if 1/4 of the payment goes back to him, multiply it by...uhh, what the hell am I trying to post at 7am for...? -- multiply it by 4/3 or 5/4 or whatever number it is to normalize the redistributed amount?
This sounds like straight-up innumeracy on the part of the judge.
I don't disagree with any of that. My point is that given what you've just said, and given that Linux certainly hasn't been hindered by a lack of media attention, it's surprising how little headway has been made in adoption by anyone but enthusiasts.
Of course it does! That's why having source code is so important!
No, my point is this: Over the past eight years, we've heard story after story about how enormous numbers of people were going to be changed over to Linux desktops, but I have yet to see a particle of evidence that such has happened. It doesn't show up in Google Zeitgeist, it doesn't show up on IRC, it doesn't show up on Freshmeat. Now, if someone were to demonstrate that there really are an enormous number of government secretaries in Peru using Linux, then the code issue becomes irrelevant. But at the moment, I've seen nothing, on any of those fronts.
Anyway, if there really were hundreds of thousands of desktop Linux users in Spain or China, we'd be seeing something! I'm not expecting proof of P=NP, but at least some desktop pictures of Tux GIMPed onto lingerie models!
Europe has the Extremadura (sp?) project in Spain, the postal service in Poland, and Munich. South America has OSS projects going in Peru and Argentina. In Asia,there's a relatively large OSS effort going on in China.
And in North America, there's IBM, the Million Mexican School Computers... Has any of this actually happened? Has even the Munich changeover, which I'd say is the most plausible of those, happened? All these things get a lot of hype and then disappear.
What I know is not coming out of any of those places (except for Germany) is any code or anything else useful, which makes me wonder how many people are really sitting in front of a Linux system, after all that noise.
Yes, yes, we know. There's nothing wrong with Linux, it's only the users that are broken.
Nonetheless, the users are the constant and unless you want to be reading today's "Linux Desktop Deployment Postmortems?" again in five years it's the software, that has to change.
I want an email app that autocorrects my "Thakns," to Thanks,". If you think using mutt is proof of superior intelligence on your part, enjoy, but I'm going to stick with the notion that computers are here to work for me, not the other way around.
First, be patient. I don't think the IBM migration is as dead as it appears. Most of the commercial migrations I have seen take 2-3 years to accomplish assuming that a fair amount of resources are thrown at the problem.
First, some credentializing:
~ > uname -a
Linux xxx 2.6.9-11.EL #1 Fri May 20 18:17:57 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
Second -- it's almost 2006, and the only major Linux desktop deployments anyone can name are a small city in Florida that converted from Unix thin-clients years ago and a 300 person company controlled by an owner with a raging grievance against Microsoft. Next stop after that is a couple of guys saying "Ubuntu rulez!" At this point, I think it's fair to say that it's astonishing how little penetration Linux has made on the desktop. It certainly has advantages, even if they're not as overwhelming as the zealots make out, and I'm surprised at how little has changed since the fabled Million GNOME Desktops In Mexican Schools hype of 1998.
"We started with text, we now offer graphic ads and are moving into print advertising," Armstrong said. Google has been selling print advertisements in a select number of technology trade publications and is talking to major publishers about expanding this approach across a variety of niche markets.
Huh? Google selling print advertising? Did their "caste system" of engineers come up with that one?
I actually look to see if there are people in parked cars so I can leave more room and watch if they are going to open the door. It's a lot safer than relying on being able to hear the door open and gives you more reaction time.
Sure -- I'd be doored every week if I didn't look into cars as I go. But sometimes I don't see them (SUVs, tinted windows, they're low in the seat, or my attention was simply diverted for a second) and I would never, ever give up any warning I can get.
1) I'm not a fan of video game-to-lousy-movies either, but comparing them to life in North Korea is, to put it mildly, demented.
2) Whatever one thinks of Hollywood executives, their ability to pour money into their own pockets is pretty much beyond question. To present them as helpless pawns of "rich Germans" seems implausible.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that there's nothing Scientology-related about the NeoPets game, that the internal work practices there seem to be at worst weird and that the Scientology angle only came up from someone looking to (mildly) badmouth the company -- I don't see any need to "cross swords" with people who are minding their own business and certainly not harming you.
That's really, really classy there, Zonk.
I like his innovation of using a bathroom as a cleanroom. Maybe it could be combined with the RSS toilet from three stories ago? Look out, Intel!
I'm not one of the people always yelling about advertisements maquerading as stories. (Either it's interesting or it isn't.) But I would be astonished if this ludicrous overhyping of a moderately interesting Phase I result from a small-cap biotech isn't being submitted by someone with a financial interest in the stock.
Results like this are daily occurrences, and if this site is going to start flogging particular ones as being the cure for "2/3 of all human cancers" I should submitting my own. After buying the stock, of course.
My objection is more the number of topics for which story after identical story is posted:
This particular story is novel and interesting, though -- I'm surprised you picked to complain on.
Sure, but wait until I have Linux running on my toaster! Maybe I should blog about it...
Just suck it up. Add words to your dictionary as you go, and within a month you'll rarely see those squiggly red lines. For some reason, people are too intimidated to just start into it.
IIRC, freeze does this on a variety of platforms.
This is obviously a case of A Feature, Not A Bug. It may not be a superdesirable feature, but it's clearly intended to be one.
The IBM graffiti may have been chalk-based but they sure as hell didn't wash off after one rain. The Boston-area ones were around for at least 18 months, in a city with no shortage of rain and snow.
No offense, assholes, but your vandalism is unwelcome, corporate or otherwise.
Ridicule aside -- this achievement broke what record?
I realize you guys are incapable of grasping that there's anything in the world besides software, but how exactly does one "write" a laptop?
A loudly-publicized, world-transforming project from the MIT Media Lab turns out to be a lot of hot air? Gee, what were the chances?
This deal makes no sense to me, either, but here's a quick clarification of US legal terminology:
This sounds like straight-up innumeracy on the part of the judge.
I don't disagree with any of that. My point is that given what you've just said, and given that Linux certainly hasn't been hindered by a lack of media attention, it's surprising how little headway has been made in adoption by anyone but enthusiasts.
No, my point is this: Over the past eight years, we've heard story after story about how enormous numbers of people were going to be changed over to Linux desktops, but I have yet to see a particle of evidence that such has happened. It doesn't show up in Google Zeitgeist, it doesn't show up on IRC, it doesn't show up on Freshmeat. Now, if someone were to demonstrate that there really are an enormous number of government secretaries in Peru using Linux, then the code issue becomes irrelevant. But at the moment, I've seen nothing, on any of those fronts.
Anyway, if there really were hundreds of thousands of desktop Linux users in Spain or China, we'd be seeing something! I'm not expecting proof of P=NP, but at least some desktop pictures of Tux GIMPed onto lingerie models!
And in North America, there's IBM, the Million Mexican School Computers... Has any of this actually happened? Has even the Munich changeover, which I'd say is the most plausible of those, happened? All these things get a lot of hype and then disappear.
What I know is not coming out of any of those places (except for Germany) is any code or anything else useful, which makes me wonder how many people are really sitting in front of a Linux system, after all that noise.
Nonetheless, the users are the constant and unless you want to be reading today's "Linux Desktop Deployment Postmortems?" again in five years it's the software, that has to change.
I want an email app that autocorrects my "Thakns," to Thanks,". If you think using mutt is proof of superior intelligence on your part, enjoy, but I'm going to stick with the notion that computers are here to work for me, not the other way around.
First, some credentializing:
~ > uname -a
Linux xxx 2.6.9-11.EL #1 Fri May 20 18:17:57 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
Second -- it's almost 2006, and the only major Linux desktop deployments anyone can name are a small city in Florida that converted from Unix thin-clients years ago and a 300 person company controlled by an owner with a raging grievance against Microsoft. Next stop after that is a couple of guys saying "Ubuntu rulez!" At this point, I think it's fair to say that it's astonishing how little penetration Linux has made on the desktop. It certainly has advantages, even if they're not as overwhelming as the zealots make out, and I'm surprised at how little has changed since the fabled Million GNOME Desktops In Mexican Schools hype of 1998.
Huh? Google selling print advertising? Did their "caste system" of engineers come up with that one?
C'mon, there is not the slightest possibility that RIM is going to commit corporate suicide in the name of anti-patent martyrdom. None.
Sure -- I'd be doored every week if I didn't look into cars as I go. But sometimes I don't see them (SUVs, tinted windows, they're low in the seat, or my attention was simply diverted for a second) and I would never, ever give up any warning I can get.
2) Whatever one thinks of Hollywood executives, their ability to pour money into their own pockets is pretty much beyond question. To present them as helpless pawns of "rich Germans" seems implausible.