Um... no. They're not supporting Threads for a start - which is pretty major. I had a read of the exclusions a while back and there were some significant omisions. I'd list them if I could find the page again, but no luck I'm afraid.
That said, I'm not sure if I see this as a major issue either.
...and further to that, the UN *isn't* a World Government. It does not have a standing army to enforce what it does, the only power it has it that which it's members grant it. So, blaming the UN for the wars in Africa is a little disingenuous - it has no power to directly act to stop those wars. All it can do is to provide a platform for nations to discuss the issues - any failure to act is a failure of the constituent countries, not the UN. Unless, of course, you completely misunderstand what the UN is for and what powers it actually has.
Moderators are abusing their power to filter ideas they don't agree with rather than to moderate fairly. I suppose that expecting some honesty amongst/. readers will get me modded into oblivion too?
Yup - I totally agree. I'm in the same boat and in fact I recently bought a second PS2 (first one had a dodgy power supply) and some wireless controllers rather than buy a PS3 SOLELY because of the lack of PS2 backwards compatibility. I would MUCH rather have bought a PS3 with BC - because I really wanted little big planet and MGS4, but without the BC it's not an option for me because I'm not going to have multiple consoles around the TV - that area's complicated enough as it is!
We use Lua at work. Your comment about being misused certainly resonates with me. That's one 'feature' that will be up against the wall when the revolution comes (or the rewrite, which will probably occur first)
If it is flawed to assume that humans are basically good, you need to explain why putting all the power in the hands of a small group of bad, self-interested humans is inherently superior to putting power into everyone's hands.
To my mind, if everyone is self interested and lacking in altruism, thats an argument for citizen-level democracy, not the current several year dictatorship that we get now between elections. The former is much less likely to get railroaded by a narrow special interest group.
This is the argument that is always brought out against actually enacting citizen-level democracy via referenda. It boils down to saying that people are too stupid for self-determination. My take on that is this: if people *are* too stupid for government by referenda, it's because they've never had to REALLY think for themselves. They can bitch and moan when Fox or some other media whores roll out some emotive crap opinion piece, but their bitching and moaning doesn't effect anything at all (except for opinion polls, which in themselves do have some small effect).
I believe that if people actually had to live by the results of their decisions, then they'd quickly learn to start making better decisions once they had to live with the consequences of making bad decisions.
Additionally, if you are going to seriously claim that citizens are too stupid for self-determination, then they're equally likely to be too stupid to elect candidates who genuinely have integrity and good judgment. It's hardly like elections are free from marketing influence and the usual FUD.
Only someone who has never seen a culture reborn through care of its language would make a statement like that.
Many years ago, I thought as you do, but I have come to see that I was wrong. Language matters because it is central to identity and therefore culture.
The value of a language is not in providing trivial insights to you, but in providing a sense of community to those to whom the language belongs.
The actual experience of the Maori language in New Zealand speaks exactly to the opposite of what you have said here. Maori cultural revival has gone hand in hand with language preservation and people who have gone through the Maori language schooling are emerging as cultural firebrands.
I think it's reasonable to question whether language and culture are intertwined, but the NZ experience certainly points to that being completely and utterly true.
In New Zealand, the Maori language was arguably "dying out" a few decades ago. It was certainly on the decline. It is likewise arguable that Maori culture was going the same way. A concerted effort was put in place to teach Maori language and culture both in purpose built schools (Kohanga Reo) and to a lesser extent in mainstream schooling.
Since the 70's, there has been a marked resurgence in Maori language, but more interestingly, in the culture itselft and pride in it. This has led to Maoridom pushing itself out onto the global stage in a much more assertive and confident manner than I think it had in the past. Something which I would argue has not only been of benefit to Maori, but to NZ society in general.
I'm not opposed to there being a 'lingua franca' of the modern world, and if that happens to be English, I will be all the more pleased. But I also see that there is a real cost of languages disappearing from the world, because the words are not all that is lost: there are whole lives, whole other worlds wrapped up in particular languages. It seems to me, however, that languages do not save themselves. Unless there are a group of people willing to actually teach and actively support the usage of languages (Maori is an official language of NZ) then the task will not be managed.
I don't think we can nor would want to save all languages, but where a significant chunk of unique culture is bound up with a disappearing language, I would encourage the guardians of the culture to make real moves to save it because the alternative is to lose much more than you bargained for.
NZ tops the tables for lack of corruption, and we have a free press which has as it's default position "be hard on the government".
There's lots of reason to trust the government here because the political structure makes it hard (not impossible) to get away with corrupt practices.
This whole "hate the government no matter what" is a dumb point of view. You should be *critical* of your government, *hating* your government is stupid unless they give you a good reason (and I have hated various NZ governments in the past, but because of what they did, not just because they were the govt.)
Seriously, how can your respect of a person change so DRASTICALLY based on a single expressed opinion? You're basically admitting that you were a fool ever to respect the person in the first place.
It's not just one opinion. The Mono debacle was dodgy enough. Now he's supporting the MS patent FUD and supporting a standard which many many people (not just in Slashdot) have pointed out is a very bad candidate for a standard.
That is NOT one incident. That is a worrying pattern of behaviour. The only thing that Miguel did that was useful for this community was working on Gnome, which frankly, sucks.
Slashdot Mirror
Um... no. They're not supporting Threads for a start - which is pretty major. I had a read of the exclusions a while back and there were some significant omisions. I'd list them if I could find the page again, but no luck I'm afraid.
That said, I'm not sure if I see this as a major issue either.
But... but! I want to be able to knock over evil The-UN-has-OTHER-people-in-it straw men!
How dare you let facts intrude on a good lynching!
...and further to that, the UN *isn't* a World Government. It does not have a standing army to enforce what it does, the only power it has it that which it's members grant it. So, blaming the UN for the wars in Africa is a little disingenuous - it has no power to directly act to stop those wars. All it can do is to provide a platform for nations to discuss the issues - any failure to act is a failure of the constituent countries, not the UN. Unless, of course, you completely misunderstand what the UN is for and what powers it actually has.
Christ! You're modded down too?!
Moderators are abusing their power to filter ideas they don't agree with rather than to moderate fairly. I suppose that expecting some honesty amongst /. readers will get me modded into oblivion too?
Christ, you get modded flamebait for that. What a load of shit. You hit the nail on the head.
You are a complete moron
Yup - I totally agree. I'm in the same boat and in fact I recently bought a second PS2 (first one had a dodgy power supply) and some wireless controllers rather than buy a PS3 SOLELY because of the lack of PS2 backwards compatibility. I would MUCH rather have bought a PS3 with BC - because I really wanted little big planet and MGS4, but without the BC it's not an option for me because I'm not going to have multiple consoles around the TV - that area's complicated enough as it is!
Scala *does* look cool.
We use Lua at work. Your comment about being misused certainly resonates with me. That's one 'feature' that will be up against the wall when the revolution comes (or the rewrite, which will probably occur first)
Um... Check the job stats - Java eclipses .NET
You must be new around here.
You're new to slashdot, then?
Netbeans
You fucking moron
That's a really important issue, if true. Has anyone investigated this?
I mean, we've accused the suck up of being a M$ shill, but could he *really* be on the take from the Evil Empire?
If it is flawed to assume that humans are basically good, you need to explain why putting all the power in the hands of a small group of bad, self-interested humans is inherently superior to putting power into everyone's hands.
To my mind, if everyone is self interested and lacking in altruism, thats an argument for citizen-level democracy, not the current several year dictatorship that we get now between elections. The former is much less likely to get railroaded by a narrow special interest group.
This is the argument that is always brought out against actually enacting citizen-level democracy via referenda. It boils down to saying that people are too stupid for self-determination. My take on that is this: if people *are* too stupid for government by referenda, it's because they've never had to REALLY think for themselves. They can bitch and moan when Fox or some other media whores roll out some emotive crap opinion piece, but their bitching and moaning doesn't effect anything at all (except for opinion polls, which in themselves do have some small effect).
I believe that if people actually had to live by the results of their decisions, then they'd quickly learn to start making better decisions once they had to live with the consequences of making bad decisions.
Additionally, if you are going to seriously claim that citizens are too stupid for self-determination, then they're equally likely to be too stupid to elect candidates who genuinely have integrity and good judgment. It's hardly like elections are free from marketing influence and the usual FUD.
Only someone who has never seen a culture reborn through care of its language would make a statement like that.
Many years ago, I thought as you do, but I have come to see that I was wrong. Language matters because it is central to identity and therefore culture.
The value of a language is not in providing trivial insights to you, but in providing a sense of community to those to whom the language belongs.
At the risk of stating the obvious: no, it is not. Evolution involves genes, language clearly does not.
The actual experience of the Maori language in New Zealand speaks exactly to the opposite of what you have said here. Maori cultural revival has gone hand in hand with language preservation and people who have gone through the Maori language schooling are emerging as cultural firebrands.
I think it's reasonable to question whether language and culture are intertwined, but the NZ experience certainly points to that being completely and utterly true.
(a) It's not a tautology, it's redundant
(b) English is a juggernaut truck - it goes on regardless
In New Zealand, the Maori language was arguably "dying out" a few decades ago. It was certainly on the decline. It is likewise arguable that Maori culture was going the same way. A concerted effort was put in place to teach Maori language and culture both in purpose built schools (Kohanga Reo) and to a lesser extent in mainstream schooling.
Since the 70's, there has been a marked resurgence in Maori language, but more interestingly, in the culture itselft and pride in it. This has led to Maoridom pushing itself out onto the global stage in a much more assertive and confident manner than I think it had in the past. Something which I would argue has not only been of benefit to Maori, but to NZ society in general.
I'm not opposed to there being a 'lingua franca' of the modern world, and if that happens to be English, I will be all the more pleased. But I also see that there is a real cost of languages disappearing from the world, because the words are not all that is lost: there are whole lives, whole other worlds wrapped up in particular languages. It seems to me, however, that languages do not save themselves. Unless there are a group of people willing to actually teach and actively support the usage of languages (Maori is an official language of NZ) then the task will not be managed.
I don't think we can nor would want to save all languages, but where a significant chunk of unique culture is bound up with a disappearing language, I would encourage the guardians of the culture to make real moves to save it because the alternative is to lose much more than you bargained for.
NZ tops the tables for lack of corruption, and we have a free press which has as it's default position "be hard on the government".
There's lots of reason to trust the government here because the political structure makes it hard (not impossible) to get away with corrupt practices.
This whole "hate the government no matter what" is a dumb point of view. You should be *critical* of your government, *hating* your government is stupid unless they give you a good reason (and I have hated various NZ governments in the past, but because of what they did, not just because they were the govt.)
Netbeans is slow? Your advice is a couple of versions old. Version 5 and 6 are quite swift. Certainly, as swift as Eclipse v3+.
It's not just one opinion. The Mono debacle was dodgy enough. Now he's supporting the MS patent FUD and supporting a standard which many many people (not just in Slashdot) have pointed out is a very bad candidate for a standard.
That is NOT one incident. That is a worrying pattern of behaviour. The only thing that Miguel did that was useful for this community was working on Gnome, which frankly, sucks.
Don't be facetious. If the feature is not defined, it can't be implemented. If you can't implement the features, it cannot possibly be a standard.
That the feature is not used a lot is irrelevant.
And pointing out that the proposed "standard" is bogus is no more or less valid just because those pointing it out might not want to code it up.