As far as I'm concerned Atheism doesn't need to be chosen as it's the natural state of human beings. Religion and Science are both learnt disciplines. They both come from that same human need to explanations for things, it's just religion is an earlier expression of those things we didn't quite understand. Like all the religions based around Sun worship for instance.
Now the philosophy of Atheism is definitely a taught thing, but from experience I'd say children are not born with any awareness of god. Or 3.5 year old son certainly has no conception of religious belief, loves stories and has a well developed sense of right and wrong for his age.
Maybe Science will one day respect Religion because Science will realize that Religion has answers to the "Why"
Are you not confusing philosophy and religion? Religion seems quite poor at a lot of the "Why" questions, frequently falling back on the "god's plan" argument when they don't know that answer. Instead of just saying "we don't know".
Would a book publisher seriously consider adding in some full page adds in the middle of a novel? Of course not, so why do they think they can get away with it games? They certainly used to in paperbacks. Adverts for Menthol cigarettes, Insurance, etc. They were normally in a postcard style page right in the middle of the book with a perforated edge so they could be torn out. They were really annoying to read around. I'm just glad the practise has disappeared.
"Too bad. I'd have bought one for my 5-year old nephew this x-mas. They should put out the distribution deal with Toys'R'Us. Vapourware is vapourware, no matter the intetion behind it."
Since when has vapourware been something that people have in their hands and are developing on. It'd be easier if it were vapourware, they could show flashy mockup prototypes rather than the real hardware. They could then promise one for your nephew for Christmas, take your pre-order money, and announce a delay at the last minute. Then disappear off into the sunset after numerous delays.
Whereas in reality it seems to be running on schedule and they never did promise one for your nephew at christmas.
Applications can't programmatically press the LUA prompt buttons, anymore than applications can sniff (and automatically enter at a later date) the password someone types into a sudo prompt.
Do these prompts not provide hooks for the accessibility API then? They need to be programmatically clickable or accessibility software will fail to work.
I think you're getting confused. Linus looks after the Linux kernel which doesn't contain GNU code. He does not look after Linux distributions which do. Not even the FSF suggest that the Linux kernel should be called GNU/Linux.
How well do people think the targetting of non-gamers will work out long term? I can see it causing a short term buzz and interest but wonder how many will stay as single game households, treating the console more like an appliance. Its success will likely depend on whether these people turn into regular purchasers of games, which is how you'd probably define current gamers, or if it is seen as a furby style craze that they'll lose interest in after a while. If few people buy anything other than launch titles then you may not find a big Wii games section in shops.
I've seen it with my parents. They may become interested in one game for a short period of time, and play it a lot, but it will be one game and not necessarily lead them into being interested in any other game.
"Yup. Just compare the Slashdot zeitgeist on whether we should respect the rights of OSS programmers who release stuff under the GPL, vs. whether we should respect the rights of musicians who release music for sale."
Those are two completely different things.
A = X downloaded for free, used freely, shared freely.
B = Y downloaded for free, modifed, distributed as original work.
Now X and Y can be replaced with "GPL software" and "Music". You're saying A=B. Whereas you could have a group of people that find A acceptable in all cases and B unacceptable in all cases. So they're being entirely consistant and not at all hypocritical.
"Another feature stolen from the Mac. Of course a lot of people have never used Macs (pity on them), so they'll never know that a ton of other things that Microsoft has "innovated" in Vista existed (sometimes for decades!) on the Mac."
That was in GNOME before it was in OSX. Nautilus has had that feature for years. So much for the much levelled acusation that free software just copies closed source platforms.
You should also remember Netscape used to be a commercial product that people paid for. When MS bundled IE for free it seriously dented their income. More importantly, by bundling it free they seriously damaged their ability to grow. They may have had 90% of the market at one time, but that was long before the surge in use of the internet. It was that surge MS took advantage of, rather than converting existing users.
"Microsoft is not a monopoly. A monopoly is, from Oxford Dictionary, a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service. Microsoft does not have exclusive control at all. They have very significant control, but anyone can and many have come out with a competing product. Not all that many people are looking for one, but they can and do exist."
What about the high street consumer PC market? As far as those shops go alternate operating systems may as well not exist, you'd struggle to buy even a "naked" PC because of the monopoly control Microsoft have in the market. You have an easier time finding a high street food outlet not selling Coke.
"Accept that some apps and library's need to be recompiled. Which means you need to always keep a copy of the latest headers, and a compiler on your system. As well as pray the app your using compiles nicely."
Since when? The only reason you'd want to keep kernel headers to compile stuff is if you've got a driver that needs to be compiled as a module against the current kernel. You don't need to recompile applications or libraries if you replace the kernel. Where on earth did you get that idea from?
"Unfortunately, that issue combined with the zero ability to play games (and wine in no-way counts) makes the decision easy for me."
I don't know where you've got the zero ability to play games from, Linux is a great gaming platform and technically more than up to the challenge. I've got a shelf of native Linux games and they all run without problems. My most purchase recent being Cold War.
There is a scarcity of games compared to Windows, but that's not because Linux is incapable of running games. I don't buy Windows games at all now, even ones that work under emulation, if I buy a PC game it'll be because it has native linux binaries. If it's Windows only they no longer get my money. So my gaming time now is split between native Linux games and the PS2.
I like games as well, so I've spent a few years shopping at Tux Games or buy direct from Linux Game Publishing.
Other than that I've also got a PS2. As far as PC games go, if they don't do a Linux version then they don't get my money. It's as simple as that.
At my workplace they did a pilot for Windows SP2 of about that size. It's still being rolled out and I'm still on SP1. There have been a lot of problems due to software compatibility issues.
I find some of this stuff like revisionist history as I used Opera in the early days, back when the links all looked like raised buttons. The concept of tabbed browsing didn't exist then. Opera had MDI, and I'm not sure at which version but you eventually had a task bar type interface to switch between maximised windows which was no different to any other MDI application. Like Arachnophilia, an HTML editor I still used occasionally.
Now when I used tabbed browsing in Mozilla it really felt like something new, at the time I think it was a feature borrowed from a Mozilla-based browser called Skipstone. Which is the first place I saw what I'd call tabbed browsing. What made it different to MDI was it's workflow, it really felt more in tune with the browser, something more natural than MDI.
For instance, you could have a tab bar even if you had just one document open. You could have multiple tabs in each browser window. There was no containing window, pages were not seperate documents, they were tabs. That's what was "different" about tabbed browsing, pages were like tabs.
Frankly I couldn't care who invented it first, which project did it before Skipstone, whether open or closed source; but what I do disagree with is the fact that Opera's MDI was tabbed browsing. It was just MDI. Tabbed browsing was a step forward from MDI. MDI was something I always hated. Even though Opera gave you cool features like being able to set up parent/child relationships between windows that meant a link in one always opened in the other. Now that's an innovative feature I've not seen elsewhere. Does Opera still have it?
The data protection act should in theory stop abuses like that, data collected is not allowed to be used for any reason other than for what it is collected. And you have to be upfront about what the data will be used for.
Well maybe because sitting down on a comfortable sofa watching a DVD on a big TV is nicer than watching a tiny pixelated video on YouTube. I've seen a few music videos on their I'd love to buy, but no one will sell them because they're ten years old and by defunct artists.
It's mostly not true. Your best weapon in the IE hack arsenal is the IF IE conditional "comments". Lots of people are currently using hacks that would best be replaced with IF IE.
They don't work in CSS files though do they? So require you to provide a separate stylesheet. We would rather not maintain a seperate stylesheet for each version of IE.
If you could do:/* [if(ie6)] body { background: red } */
then that would be great, but the last time I looked the best they could manage was conditional HTML comments which are a lot less useful.
What I'd like to see statistics on gun crime that show an actual breakdown of the figures:
1) how many gun related deaths are criminal on criminal 2) how many civilians are killed/attacked in their homes, and how often have these civilians been saved by their guns 3) how often do people have their own guns used against them 4) how many gun deaths are due to accidents
and how these compare to the UK.
I think something that is an anathema here is the idea of carrying around a gun to prevent mugging or to protect you home. It just assumes a certain level of distrust in your community that will make your community a much less pleasant place to live in. That sustained level of fear cannot be good for you and can surely only lead to accidents.
The amusing thing is, most gun crime is caused by unoriginal people trying to copy american gang culture. So it has little to do with the sudden illegality of guns, and more to do with a growing copycat gang culture since the ban was brought in. We've certainly had no more school shootings since the ban.
You don't have that, "I need a gun because I don't trust my neighbours and might need to shoot them" attitude, instead you get the, "I'm in a gang and deal drugs so need a gun to shoot other gang members who deal drugs" attitude.
The industry always wants to have it both ways though. They want to create this desire to have the hottest new things they are producing at the time. While pushing this desire at a group that doesn't necessarily have the resources to buy what they're demanding they "must have". So this whole sharing situation is a natural result of that marketing.
They want teens to buy CDs, DVDs and games by getting hold of as much of their part time job or parents money as possible. That's why the losses to piracy figures are so laughable, they're claiming loss of money that just isn't there. It's the money budgeted for luxuries that has already been absorbed by another one of their arms.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I'm concerned Atheism doesn't need to be chosen as it's the natural state of human beings. Religion and Science are both learnt disciplines. They both come from that same human need to explanations for things, it's just religion is an earlier expression of those things we didn't quite understand. Like all the religions based around Sun worship for instance.
Now the philosophy of Atheism is definitely a taught thing, but from experience I'd say children are not born with any awareness of god. Or 3.5 year old son certainly has no conception of religious belief, loves stories and has a well developed sense of right and wrong for his age.
Maybe Science will one day respect Religion because Science will realize that Religion has answers to the "Why"
Are you not confusing philosophy and religion? Religion seems quite poor at a lot of the "Why" questions, frequently falling back on the "god's plan" argument when they don't know that answer. Instead of just saying "we don't know".
What like:
System -> Administration -> Printing
followed by "Add New Printer".
Which takes you to a Wizard. So it's part of GNOME already.
"Too bad. I'd have bought one for my 5-year old nephew this x-mas. They should put out the distribution deal with Toys'R'Us. Vapourware is vapourware, no matter the intetion behind it."
Since when has vapourware been something that people have in their hands and are developing on. It'd be easier if it were vapourware, they could show flashy mockup prototypes rather than the real hardware. They could then promise one for your nephew for Christmas, take your pre-order money, and announce a delay at the last minute. Then disappear off into the sunset after numerous delays.
Whereas in reality it seems to be running on schedule and they never did promise one for your nephew at christmas.
Applications can't programmatically press the LUA prompt buttons, anymore than applications can sniff (and automatically enter at a later date) the password someone types into a sudo prompt.
Do these prompts not provide hooks for the accessibility API then? They need to be programmatically clickable or accessibility software will fail to work.I think you're getting confused. Linus looks after the Linux kernel which doesn't contain GNU code. He does not look after Linux distributions which do. Not even the FSF suggest that the Linux kernel should be called GNU/Linux.
How well do people think the targetting of non-gamers will work out long term? I can see it causing a short term buzz and interest but wonder how many will stay as single game households, treating the console more like an appliance. Its success will likely depend on whether these people turn into regular purchasers of games, which is how you'd probably define current gamers, or if it is seen as a furby style craze that they'll lose interest in after a while. If few people buy anything other than launch titles then you may not find a big Wii games section in shops.
I've seen it with my parents. They may become interested in one game for a short period of time, and play it a lot, but it will be one game and not necessarily lead them into being interested in any other game.
"Yup. Just compare the Slashdot zeitgeist on whether we should respect the rights of OSS programmers who release stuff under the GPL, vs. whether we should respect the rights of musicians who release music for sale."
Those are two completely different things.
A = X downloaded for free, used freely, shared freely.
B = Y downloaded for free, modifed, distributed as original work.
Now X and Y can be replaced with "GPL software" and "Music". You're saying A=B. Whereas you could have a group of people that find A acceptable in all cases and B unacceptable in all cases. So they're being entirely consistant and not at all hypocritical.
"Another feature stolen from the Mac. Of course a lot of people have never used Macs (pity on them), so they'll never know that a ton of other things that Microsoft has "innovated" in Vista existed (sometimes for decades!) on the Mac."
That was in GNOME before it was in OSX. Nautilus has had that feature for years. So much for the much levelled acusation that free software just copies closed source platforms.
"Why they're in the CJK Unified Ideograph section isn't too obvious, but they're there."
It's because it's an ancient symbol in the east. You'll see it all over the place in the Tibet etc. The Nazis just appropriated a much older symbol.
You should also remember Netscape used to be a commercial product that people paid for. When MS bundled IE for free it seriously dented their income. More importantly, by bundling it free they seriously damaged their ability to grow. They may have had 90% of the market at one time, but that was long before the surge in use of the internet. It was that surge MS took advantage of, rather than converting existing users.
"Microsoft is not a monopoly. A monopoly is, from Oxford Dictionary, a company or group having exclusive control over a commodity or service. Microsoft does not have exclusive control at all. They have very significant control, but anyone can and many have come out with a competing product. Not all that many people are looking for one, but they can and do exist."
What about the high street consumer PC market? As far as those shops go alternate operating systems may as well not exist, you'd struggle to buy even a "naked" PC because of the monopoly control Microsoft have in the market. You have an easier time finding a high street food outlet not selling Coke.
"Accept that some apps and library's need to be recompiled. Which means you need to always keep a copy of the latest headers, and a compiler on your system. As well as pray the app your using compiles nicely."
Since when? The only reason you'd want to keep kernel headers to compile stuff is if you've got a driver that needs to be compiled as a module against the current kernel. You don't need to recompile applications or libraries if you replace the kernel. Where on earth did you get that idea from?
"of course, you cant play games, so you've lost the more mainstream early adopter/experimenter types, which i think is a massive Achilles heel."
You can't play games? On what planet. Unless my native Linux copy of Cold War is completely imaginary then you can play games.
"Unfortunately, that issue combined with the zero ability to play games (and wine in no-way counts) makes the decision easy for me."
I don't know where you've got the zero ability to play games from, Linux is a great gaming platform and technically more than up to the challenge. I've got a shelf of native Linux games and they all run without problems. My most purchase recent being Cold War.
There is a scarcity of games compared to Windows, but that's not because Linux is incapable of running games. I don't buy Windows games at all now, even ones that work under emulation, if I buy a PC game it'll be because it has native linux binaries. If it's Windows only they no longer get my money. So my gaming time now is split between native Linux games and the PS2.
That should be Linux Game Publishing.
I like games as well, so I've spent a few years shopping at Tux Games or buy direct from Linux Game Publishing. Other than that I've also got a PS2. As far as PC games go, if they don't do a Linux version then they don't get my money. It's as simple as that.
At my workplace they did a pilot for Windows SP2 of about that size. It's still being rolled out and I'm still on SP1. There have been a lot of problems due to software compatibility issues.
I find some of this stuff like revisionist history as I used Opera in the early days, back when the links all looked like raised buttons. The concept of tabbed browsing didn't exist then. Opera had MDI, and I'm not sure at which version but you eventually had a task bar type interface to switch between maximised windows which was no different to any other MDI application. Like Arachnophilia, an HTML editor I still used occasionally.
Now when I used tabbed browsing in Mozilla it really felt like something new, at the time I think it was a feature borrowed from a Mozilla-based browser called Skipstone. Which is the first place I saw what I'd call tabbed browsing. What made it different to MDI was it's workflow, it really felt more in tune with the browser, something more natural than MDI.
For instance, you could have a tab bar even if you had just one document open. You could have multiple tabs in each browser window. There was no containing window, pages were not seperate documents, they were tabs. That's what was "different" about tabbed browsing, pages were like tabs.
Frankly I couldn't care who invented it first, which project did it before Skipstone, whether open or closed source; but what I do disagree with is the fact that Opera's MDI was tabbed browsing. It was just MDI. Tabbed browsing was a step forward from MDI. MDI was something I always hated. Even though Opera gave you cool features like being able to set up parent/child relationships between windows that meant a link in one always opened in the other. Now that's an innovative feature I've not seen elsewhere. Does Opera still have it?
The data protection act should in theory stop abuses like that, data collected is not allowed to be used for any reason other than for what it is collected. And you have to be upfront about what the data will be used for.
Well maybe because sitting down on a comfortable sofa watching a DVD on a big TV is nicer than watching a tiny pixelated video on YouTube. I've seen a few music videos on their I'd love to buy, but no one will sell them because they're ten years old and by defunct artists.
It's mostly not true. Your best weapon in the IE hack arsenal is the IF IE conditional "comments". Lots of people are currently using hacks that would best be replaced with IF IE.
/* [if(ie6)] body { background: red } */
They don't work in CSS files though do they? So require you to provide a separate stylesheet. We would rather not maintain a seperate stylesheet for each version of IE.
If you could do:
then that would be great, but the last time I looked the best they could manage was conditional HTML comments which are a lot less useful.
What I'd like to see statistics on gun crime that show an actual breakdown of the figures:
1) how many gun related deaths are criminal on criminal
2) how many civilians are killed/attacked in their homes, and how often have these civilians been saved by their guns
3) how often do people have their own guns used against them
4) how many gun deaths are due to accidents
and how these compare to the UK.
I think something that is an anathema here is the idea of carrying around a gun to prevent mugging or to protect you home. It just assumes a certain level of distrust in your community that will make your community a much less pleasant place to live in. That sustained level of fear cannot be good for you and can surely only lead to accidents.
The amusing thing is, most gun crime is caused by unoriginal people trying to copy american gang culture. So it has little to do with the sudden illegality of guns, and more to do with a growing copycat gang culture since the ban was brought in. We've certainly had no more school shootings since the ban.
You don't have that, "I need a gun because I don't trust my neighbours and might need to shoot them" attitude, instead you get the, "I'm in a gang and deal drugs so need a gun to shoot other gang members who deal drugs" attitude.
The industry always wants to have it both ways though. They want to create this desire to have the hottest new things they are producing at the time. While pushing this desire at a group that doesn't necessarily have the resources to buy what they're demanding they "must have". So this whole sharing situation is a natural result of that marketing.
They want teens to buy CDs, DVDs and games by getting hold of as much of their part time job or parents money as possible. That's why the losses to piracy figures are so laughable, they're claiming loss of money that just isn't there. It's the money budgeted for luxuries that has already been absorbed by another one of their arms.