It's not. It's "entertainment". For somebody. I hope.
They're not close to running out of names, because they haven't even started on the Greek alphabet yet. If we had too many hurricanes to name, we'd number them, and then we'd get an article that says "what happens when there's more than we can count?"
Yesterday must have been a slow day in the world of watered-down science journalism.
This is the fundamental issue I have with the F/OSS mindeset--you have the source, so you can fix things yourself, and to hell with everyone else.
...
Second, the inherent selfishness and short sightedness of this F/OSS mindset is very damaging to the whole community's image, and ultimately, to the success of projects. What the hell ever happened to putting the user first, to valuing and maximizing the benefit the project provides to non-developers?
How is this a F/OSS mindset? I'd characterize it as an elitist mindset that occurs in many different communities and includes things like sysadmins' dislike of "lusers" and soldiers' or scientists' dislike of journalists.
I find it amusing that people who share their source code with everyone are being characterized as selfish. It's not enough that they give me access to their code; now they have to make the changes that I want, even if they don't want those changes?
The fact is, not every user request can be implemented. Unlike many other areas, however, F/OSS gives the user fewer obstacles to actually implementing their request themselves.
Wow- not to be an ass- but the US isn't a Democracy. It is a representative republic.
Note that the word "Democracy", when used in the context of government type, has multiple definitions. One of the definitions is "direct or indirect government by the people," which includes a representative republic. When people say "The US is a Democracy," they're not claiming that every government decision is put to a popular vote, they're claiming that the government is elected by voters.
What bothers me about writing open source code is simple: Where is my money.
Usually your money comes from your employer. You do what they want when you're on their time, and you do what you want when you're on your time. If your employer wants you to write FOSS on their time, great. If you want to write FOSS on your own time, great.
If you expect to sell your own FOSS, then maybe you should rethink things before going into business for yourself. If you can manage to make a living at it, great, but I'd expect you to find that "selling software" is not often a viable long-term business model.
what a lot of FOSS proponents seem incapable of grasping is that there's more to software and OS's than "power" and "technical elegance." There's user inteface design, documentation, and consistent professional support to be considered in any enterprise implementation. Saying that Bob's XYZ Library of Useful Widgets can do it all just as well as Bill & Steve's Really Expensive Library of Useful Widgets is only part of this equation. Just writing the damned software and slapping it in an RPM does not finish the project!
How is this different than what a lot of non-FOSS proponents seem to fail to be able to grasp?
I can't begin to tell you my frustration at the current state of a lot of FOSS projects. I see some really good ideas, some fantastic concepts, some really bright people...but by and large their efforts are uncoordinated, poorly documented, and lacking in professionalism.
How is this different than a lot of non-FOSS projects?
However, taken as a whole, so much of the FOSS we review looks more like the results of a college programming project and not like a serious business application.
One strength of FOSS is that it's possible for you to perform a more in-depth review. This will naturally give a deeper insight into any flaws that might be present. Lack of ability to observe a proprietary application's crusty internals is not evidence that it does not have crusty internals.
You haven't listed any ailments that are specific to FOSS. The problem of crappy software thrown together by a bunch of so-called "software engineers" who don't actually know what they're doing is an industry problem, not a FOSS problem. The fact is, there's tons more crappy software than good software, and this phenomenon is not limited to FOSS.
That isn't really what it's about. This line is about BITS, VoiP, and video services, not Internet access in general.
"The draft defines, for regulatory purposes, broadband Internet transmission services--or BITS--as "a packet-switched service that is offered to the public," regardless of the equipment or protocol used."
Using that definition, BITS is internet access in general.
To be fair, the dot-com bust negatively impacted many companies. Evaluation of the performance of a company's leadership should take that into account (which wouldn't necessarily change the conclusion in this case, but it wasn't taken into account at all in your post.)
Yes. Though for me, simply upgrading to a newer machine that was quieter (not "silent") helped a lot. Now the loudest thing in my office is my ethernet switch.
Another thing that's good to have is lots of desk surface area. I'm almost surrounded by desks, and half of them have a bunch of cheap shelves standing behind them, so I have a place to put stuff when I want to be less cluttered.
The example showed that an HD MythTV box is cost competitive with an HD Tivo, regardless of whether or not HD is worth the price premium.
For me, MythTV with an HD card is cost competitive with an analog Tivo because I watch most of my TV on my computer monitor, which has HD-like resolution (unlike my TV.) Since I already have the display and the computer, the additional cost to me is time + $170 for an HD-3000 vs $50 + subscription fees for the Tivo.
Answers presuming that I see a value in having HD recording capability are null and void.
I didn't notice any requirement that you see the value. The request said "describe why either of the units is worth two to four times the price of the Tivo plus a lifetime subscription". The response gave one scenario where a prebuilt MythTV box is cost-competitive with a Tivo. Whether or not you value that scenario is irrelevant; it exists.
You seem to be implying that the presence of a pleasant UI somehow precludes real functionality.
But he didn't say that. What he said was that prioritizing a pleasant UI over basic functionality is to completely disregard that basic functionality in the first place. The car analogy communicated this quite well: it doesn't matter (to him) if a widgit has a great interface, if it doesn't do what he needs it to do.
Nobody's said that the Tivo is bad because it has a good UI. Several people have stated that to them, a good UI is not by itself sufficient to justify a purchase. I fail to see how this is objectionable or surprising.
9/11 should have dispelled that idea. Say the US nukes Iranian territory or even all of Iranian cities. (For this is to whom this policy is geared in about 10 years or so when they can attack). Do you not think that Iranians living around the world would not try to retaliate? Do you not think that most middle easterners would not try to retaliate?
Yes, I do. The administration, on the other hand... the lesson they learned from 9/11 is that there are bad guys out there, and you have to get them before they get you, regardless of what world opinion says.
I have a hard time imagining a scenario where a nuclear first strike would be acceptable. How can you be *sure* that you're about to be attacked? OTOH, if they do develop "bunker-buster" nukes with minimal secondary effects (low radiation etc.), it becomes less terrible. Nuclear weapons aren't bad because of what they are; like any other tool, they can be used to do bad things or good things. If they're used to do bad things, it's not the fault of the nuclear weapons, it's the fault of the people who gave the orders to use them.
the idea of "preemptive nuclear strike" is not just radical, it's insane.
It's actually more sane against an enemy with fewer nuclear weapons. If (and that's a big if) you actually could destroy all of their weapons before they launch, then you could "win". It's a lot easier to do that if they only have a few dozen weapons, which fits several potential enemies.
What's insane is starting a nuclear war against a power that can wipe your country off the face of the earth, regardless of what you do.
The means for mutual assured destruction was already here. This new doctrine doesn't cause it to magically appear out of nowhere.
I'm not a big fan of MAD. It's fundamentally immoral to threaten to kill everybody. If it were possible for a first strike attack to be "successful", then a first strike doctrine might be morally superior to a MAD doctrine. Those are some big "if"s, of course, and obviously people will disagree about what constitutes "success", but it seems plausible that the current administration might believe that it has the ability to make what it considers to be a successful first strike attack.
To some people, the lesson of 9/11 is that ignoring international enemies doesn't cause them to go away, so you need to get them before they get you. The administration already has a "first strike" doctrine for the use of conventional military forces against perceived enemies, so it's only logical that they'd extend their doctrine to the use of nonconventional forces as well.
He completely fails to understand that the computer training you received in College will typically be obsolete in 5 years.
I hear this a lot, and while it's probably true, I was amazed to find out how often it's not true. Lots of scientists and engineers program in FORTRAN, and many don't have a very good programming background.
It would be nice if there was a SE minor program (or associate's degree from the local community college) that scientists and engineers could take to learn how to write code that doesn't suck. If it were a 3- or 4-course series, then a university could incorporate it into their CS curriculum and benefit from having CS students who know how to write programs that don't suck.
It's amazing to me how many people will defend the value of a CS degree as a preparation for software engineering, but it hardly makes sense.
A CS degree does have value as a preparation for software engineering. Before diving into project management, personal and team processes, process models and the like, it really helps to know how to program, to know what various data structures are (and how to use them), and to have some experience in actually writing non-CS-101 programs. It's also useful to know a bit about the construction and organization of computer architectures, programming languages, operating and network systems, compilers, etc. CS undergrad programs vary, but that's a good chunk of what mine covered.
Some CS undergrad programs certainly would benefit from the addition of an SE course or two, or from the extending out of the basic programming courses by a semester in order to include the essentials of SE. (Mine would have.) There is clearly an overlap between the subject matter of CS and the subject matter of SE.
I've often heard it said that it's silly to expect a university freshman at age 18 to decide on a course of study that leads to a specific career before they actually know what real work is like (and, therefore, before they know if they would actually enjoy working in that field.)
The second paragraph was the spoof of past Microsoft slogans, but the first paragraph was serious. I downloaded an iso, booted off of it and installed with no difficulty. My hardware was recognized and all the programs that I normally use were available in my chosen distribution's apt repository. (In contrast, getting Solaris 10 to recognize all my hardware took lots of googling.)
Not only is it easy for me to use as a desktop, but now I find that I actually prefer it. Just two days ago I freed myself from the windows laptop my employer provides for me by configuring a couple programs and writing a barely nontrivial ssh script (I had to consult the man page to get the port forwarding options right.) Now I only have to listen to the laptop's annoying high-pitched fan whine on days when I'm expected to videoconference.
It's not "fan-boi nonsense" to say that I haven't had any OS/environment problems, because I haven't. YMMV.
Easy to install? Sure. Easy to use everyday as a desktop?
It's easy for me to use as a desktop. My distribution of choice worked "out of the box" (out of the iso?), and installing new software is a breeze. I don't claim that that is true for everybody, but for me, it is.
Desktop linux has made my computing experience easier, faster and more fun. It is where I want to go today. It just works, and now I'm prepared to fly. Now I can do more with less.
No, it's virtually never that clear cut. There'll be some attribute(s) that confer a marginal increase or decrease in the likelihood of individuals to reproduce, or not. It's not all or nothing. Over a hundred generations, though, even a 1% marginal difference adds up to a significant population shift.
In practice, does any single genetic change give as high as a 1% improvement in one's chances of reproducing? (Clearly some small genetic changes can hurt one's chances of reproducing by more than 1%.)
I'm not an expert, but it's my understanding that current evolutionary theory says that changes come in clumps, and that there are occasionally periods of relatively rapid genetic change. I don't know if the reasons for this uneven rate of change are known, but given how much change has occurred over how few billions of years, attributing all life that we observe to gradual change over time is just not convincing to me.
(My understanding of the Intelligent Design position is that those periods of rapid genetic change are due to divine intervention. If you already believe in God, then that seems like a plausible hypothesis, but I don't know how you'd ever prove it. Then again, "scientific proof" isn't quite the same when you're talking about historical events like which species evolved into which other species. The best we can do is come up with theories that match our observations.)
A more plausible hypothesis, I think, is that if a person has religious parents, they are more likely to be religious themselves.
Obviously there is a correlation between your genes and your parents' genes. If there's correlation between the religious beliefs of child and parents, then there's also correlation between religious beliefs and genetics.
You think it's funny, but there ought to be some standard for parenthood. While regulating people's right to reproduce may not sit very well with some (myself included), I can't help thinking that a lot of social ills might be benefited.
An acquaintance of mine was preparing to adopt. This involved all kinds of "pre-parental" counselling that he found to be very useful. He said something like "It would be nice if everybody took parenting classes before becoming a parent."
The lesson I take from that is that parenting, just like anything else in life, works out better if you don't assume from the start that you have all the answers.
I also had a professor in college who did this, but it was through mental calibration over years. Yes, this does mean you can not give out the tests after for the students to review... but the test was surprisingly fair.
I had a professor in college who did this, and he regularly gave out past exams for students to study from. He said before each test that even though he often reuses test questions, the result had always been a standard grade curve.
A good exercise for students: Take a daily paper, discard all the ad sections, then cross out all remaining ads, then cross out all stories that promote products, then cross out all stories based on political figures saying something, and see what's left.
Sounds like you are one of those old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud conservatives who thinks "newspapers" should have "news". The main benefit of my newspaper to me is that I get a bunch of ads and coupons delivered to my door every Sunday morning for a small monthly fee (which is usually made up for by coupon savings.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's not. It's "entertainment". For somebody. I hope.
They're not close to running out of names, because they haven't even started on the Greek alphabet yet. If we had too many hurricanes to name, we'd number them, and then we'd get an article that says "what happens when there's more than we can count?"
Yesterday must have been a slow day in the world of watered-down science journalism.
How is this a F/OSS mindset? I'd characterize it as an elitist mindset that occurs in many different communities and includes things like sysadmins' dislike of "lusers" and soldiers' or scientists' dislike of journalists.
I find it amusing that people who share their source code with everyone are being characterized as selfish. It's not enough that they give me access to their code; now they have to make the changes that I want, even if they don't want those changes?
The fact is, not every user request can be implemented. Unlike many other areas, however, F/OSS gives the user fewer obstacles to actually implementing their request themselves.
Note that the word "Democracy", when used in the context of government type, has multiple definitions. One of the definitions is "direct or indirect government by the people," which includes a representative republic. When people say "The US is a Democracy," they're not claiming that every government decision is put to a popular vote, they're claiming that the government is elected by voters.
And "therefore, my gravy train should be legislated into permanent existence." Insert Heinlein quote here.
Usually your money comes from your employer. You do what they want when you're on their time, and you do what you want when you're on your time. If your employer wants you to write FOSS on their time, great. If you want to write FOSS on your own time, great.
If you expect to sell your own FOSS, then maybe you should rethink things before going into business for yourself. If you can manage to make a living at it, great, but I'd expect you to find that "selling software" is not often a viable long-term business model.
How is this different than what a lot of non-FOSS proponents seem to fail to be able to grasp?
How is this different than a lot of non-FOSS projects?
One strength of FOSS is that it's possible for you to perform a more in-depth review. This will naturally give a deeper insight into any flaws that might be present. Lack of ability to observe a proprietary application's crusty internals is not evidence that it does not have crusty internals.
You haven't listed any ailments that are specific to FOSS. The problem of crappy software thrown together by a bunch of so-called "software engineers" who don't actually know what they're doing is an industry problem, not a FOSS problem. The fact is, there's tons more crappy software than good software, and this phenomenon is not limited to FOSS.
"The draft defines, for regulatory purposes, broadband Internet transmission services--or BITS--as "a packet-switched service that is offered to the public," regardless of the equipment or protocol used."
Using that definition, BITS is internet access in general.
To be fair, the dot-com bust negatively impacted many companies. Evaluation of the performance of a company's leadership should take that into account (which wouldn't necessarily change the conclusion in this case, but it wasn't taken into account at all in your post.)
Another thing that's good to have is lots of desk surface area. I'm almost surrounded by desks, and half of them have a bunch of cheap shelves standing behind them, so I have a place to put stuff when I want to be less cluttered.
For me, MythTV with an HD card is cost competitive with an analog Tivo because I watch most of my TV on my computer monitor, which has HD-like resolution (unlike my TV.) Since I already have the display and the computer, the additional cost to me is time + $170 for an HD-3000 vs $50 + subscription fees for the Tivo.
I didn't notice any requirement that you see the value. The request said "describe why either of the units is worth two to four times the price of the Tivo plus a lifetime subscription". The response gave one scenario where a prebuilt MythTV box is cost-competitive with a Tivo. Whether or not you value that scenario is irrelevant; it exists.
But he didn't say that. What he said was that prioritizing a pleasant UI over basic functionality is to completely disregard that basic functionality in the first place. The car analogy communicated this quite well: it doesn't matter (to him) if a widgit has a great interface, if it doesn't do what he needs it to do.
Nobody's said that the Tivo is bad because it has a good UI. Several people have stated that to them, a good UI is not by itself sufficient to justify a purchase. I fail to see how this is objectionable or surprising.
Yes, I do. The administration, on the other hand... the lesson they learned from 9/11 is that there are bad guys out there, and you have to get them before they get you, regardless of what world opinion says.
I have a hard time imagining a scenario where a nuclear first strike would be acceptable. How can you be *sure* that you're about to be attacked? OTOH, if they do develop "bunker-buster" nukes with minimal secondary effects (low radiation etc.), it becomes less terrible. Nuclear weapons aren't bad because of what they are; like any other tool, they can be used to do bad things or good things. If they're used to do bad things, it's not the fault of the nuclear weapons, it's the fault of the people who gave the orders to use them.
It's actually more sane against an enemy with fewer nuclear weapons. If (and that's a big if) you actually could destroy all of their weapons before they launch, then you could "win". It's a lot easier to do that if they only have a few dozen weapons, which fits several potential enemies.
What's insane is starting a nuclear war against a power that can wipe your country off the face of the earth, regardless of what you do.
I'm not a big fan of MAD. It's fundamentally immoral to threaten to kill everybody. If it were possible for a first strike attack to be "successful", then a first strike doctrine might be morally superior to a MAD doctrine. Those are some big "if"s, of course, and obviously people will disagree about what constitutes "success", but it seems plausible that the current administration might believe that it has the ability to make what it considers to be a successful first strike attack.
To some people, the lesson of 9/11 is that ignoring international enemies doesn't cause them to go away, so you need to get them before they get you. The administration already has a "first strike" doctrine for the use of conventional military forces against perceived enemies, so it's only logical that they'd extend their doctrine to the use of nonconventional forces as well.
I hear this a lot, and while it's probably true, I was amazed to find out how often it's not true. Lots of scientists and engineers program in FORTRAN, and many don't have a very good programming background.
It would be nice if there was a SE minor program (or associate's degree from the local community college) that scientists and engineers could take to learn how to write code that doesn't suck. If it were a 3- or 4-course series, then a university could incorporate it into their CS curriculum and benefit from having CS students who know how to write programs that don't suck.
A CS degree does have value as a preparation for software engineering. Before diving into project management, personal and team processes, process models and the like, it really helps to know how to program, to know what various data structures are (and how to use them), and to have some experience in actually writing non-CS-101 programs. It's also useful to know a bit about the construction and organization of computer architectures, programming languages, operating and network systems, compilers, etc. CS undergrad programs vary, but that's a good chunk of what mine covered.
Some CS undergrad programs certainly would benefit from the addition of an SE course or two, or from the extending out of the basic programming courses by a semester in order to include the essentials of SE. (Mine would have.) There is clearly an overlap between the subject matter of CS and the subject matter of SE.
I've often heard it said that it's silly to expect a university freshman at age 18 to decide on a course of study that leads to a specific career before they actually know what real work is like (and, therefore, before they know if they would actually enjoy working in that field.)
Not only is it easy for me to use as a desktop, but now I find that I actually prefer it. Just two days ago I freed myself from the windows laptop my employer provides for me by configuring a couple programs and writing a barely nontrivial ssh script (I had to consult the man page to get the port forwarding options right.) Now I only have to listen to the laptop's annoying high-pitched fan whine on days when I'm expected to videoconference.
It's not "fan-boi nonsense" to say that I haven't had any OS/environment problems, because I haven't. YMMV.
It's easy for me to use as a desktop. My distribution of choice worked "out of the box" (out of the iso?), and installing new software is a breeze. I don't claim that that is true for everybody, but for me, it is.
Desktop linux has made my computing experience easier, faster and more fun. It is where I want to go today. It just works, and now I'm prepared to fly. Now I can do more with less.
In practice, does any single genetic change give as high as a 1% improvement in one's chances of reproducing? (Clearly some small genetic changes can hurt one's chances of reproducing by more than 1%.)
I'm not an expert, but it's my understanding that current evolutionary theory says that changes come in clumps, and that there are occasionally periods of relatively rapid genetic change. I don't know if the reasons for this uneven rate of change are known, but given how much change has occurred over how few billions of years, attributing all life that we observe to gradual change over time is just not convincing to me.
(My understanding of the Intelligent Design position is that those periods of rapid genetic change are due to divine intervention. If you already believe in God, then that seems like a plausible hypothesis, but I don't know how you'd ever prove it. Then again, "scientific proof" isn't quite the same when you're talking about historical events like which species evolved into which other species. The best we can do is come up with theories that match our observations.)
Obviously there is a correlation between your genes and your parents' genes. If there's correlation between the religious beliefs of child and parents, then there's also correlation between religious beliefs and genetics.
An acquaintance of mine was preparing to adopt. This involved all kinds of "pre-parental" counselling that he found to be very useful. He said something like "It would be nice if everybody took parenting classes before becoming a parent."
The lesson I take from that is that parenting, just like anything else in life, works out better if you don't assume from the start that you have all the answers.
I had a professor in college who did this, and he regularly gave out past exams for students to study from. He said before each test that even though he often reuses test questions, the result had always been a standard grade curve.
Sounds like you are one of those old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud conservatives who thinks "newspapers" should have "news". The main benefit of my newspaper to me is that I get a bunch of ads and coupons delivered to my door every Sunday morning for a small monthly fee (which is usually made up for by coupon savings.)