It then became co-opted by Republicans and enough right-wing extremists to drive away most moderates and all right-leaning Democrats.
Or more to the point: It became co-opted and taken over partially by Karl Rove and his cronies and then successfully painted by establishment Republicans and their Democratic peers as an extremist movement. All this because entrenched Republicans and Democrats neither want to be disrupted from their position of power or ousted by outsiders. Government by and for the government.
While third parties have historically done poorly in US elections, given how little functional difference there is between the two ruling parties, we're sorely in need of change.
Although my voter registration says "Republican," I have increasingly less and less respect for most "Republicans," including Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, many of the establishment incumbents, and dozens of others who happen to be as big (or bigger) spenders as their DNC compatriots they rail against. It's like someone else said earlier in the thread: It's not that either party is opposed to regulation, they just can't agree on what needs regulating.
So... why single out Whole Foods and compare them with creationists?
Because it works, for the most part. It elicits an emotional response in readers who have an irrational hatred for people who happen to ascribe to creationism. Like most "editorialisms," it's a race for the bottom.
If this is the kind of crap Slashdot is going to keep posting, maybe it's time to go elsewhere.
I quit reading Slashdot regularly about a year or two ago for this exact reason and started reading HN instead. Unfortunately, I've noticed that the left-of-center outgassing from Slashdot and elsewhere has caused many of these other sites to express the same symptoms within a short few months. The tech community is, at large, an echo chamber of Leftist ideology and ideologues who suffer from various degrees of disdain, disgust, or hatred for any who holds beliefs that run counter to majority views. Any suggestion that minority opinions may be welcome is a ruse.
Watch my comment for illustrations to this effect; within a few days, it'll likely have replies confirming my suggestions by denigrating common scapegoats for societal ills (the "extreme right," global warming "denialists," religious believers, etc.) painting them as the most vile of scum. Or observe the sibling comment just prior to my posting that illustrates the condescending pretentiousness that is endemic to these discussions.
My motive in leaving Slashdot was the fault of vitriol I observed directed toward those whose comments I've enjoyed over the years (and friended them). It was depressing, to say the least, and reflected poorly on the Slashdot community. So, packing up and leaving for a while seemed the only option. Except that it's inescapable. You cannot go anywhere without encountering this sort of vitriol. Maybe it's the fault of society in its present state, maybe it's the fault of Internet discussion and what behavior it encourages. I don't know.
Fortunately, with the libertarian revival as of late, I've noticed some Slashdot threads improving in balance. Or maybe it's because of how I left my thresholds configured to filter out mostly the people I enjoy (who are still posting, thankfully).
I agree. I think that's a tremendous part of it. I think your first statement hit the nail on the head though. Much of it is because people are too complacent or don't understand the implications of a massive surveillance state and the ills that such a monstrosity can bring upon our society. As long as they can eat and watch television, most people don't care what happens outside their own little bubble, and I think that's a damn shame.
If nothing else, it certainly explains why the US political climate is such as it is and why we continue to elect politicians who uphold the status quo, outright refusing to hold anyone accountable with regards to such constitutional violations. It's probably also at least partially to blame as to why our elected officials fail to agree with the assertion that extensive surveillance is a violation of the 4th Amendment (possibly others).
I don't know what the answer is, but I do think that at least a fraction of this responsibility should rest on the necks of the media giants. But it's almost as if they don't care either. Or maybe they're receiving threats/kickbacks to funnel information into the NSA.
Yeah I think the headline is a bit lame. It should read "most IT pros don't look at confidential info". I don't really have any interest in looking at confidential files when it's not required for the job. I also just have a personal sense of morality and honour that makes me want to live up to the responsibility that I have being able to do anything I want on the network.
Exactly this. I think the article headline was way too over-sensationalized (then again, this is Slashdot, right?). It could have also been titled "Most IT pros without personal integrity look at confidential info."
Big surprise there...
Beyond simply the moralistic reasons for not looking at information that one shouldn't be looking at to begin with there are also other possibilities including 1) not caring and 2) simply not wanting to know. Although, I do think it's rather disconcerting if an admin's job is to safeguard private info but snoops freely; that indicates to me a disturbing lack of self-control that has the potential to become harmful if not kept in check. While I personally see the privileges of a sysadmin as holding an extraordinarily high honor of trust and integrity, protecting data and assets as if they were his or her own, I realize that not everyone seems to agree. It's a shame, because I seem to remember there being a write up somewhere by one of the technology greats on the system administrator's code of conduct.
Reading through the responses to this article greatly disappoint me. It seems that there are some individuals who genuinely don't care about privacy. I wonder if they feel the same way about the TSA or border patrol check points? You know the type: If you're not doing anything illegal, why do you want your privacy?
I also stick with Steam for their insane and frequent sales, and their growing support for games in the various Humble Bundles. Its shocking the amount of cash I've split on random Steam impulse buys
This is a good reason to stick with Steam, and a good chunk of the reason why I refuse to go elsewhere anymore. The remainder had to so with the availability of indie games. Let's face it, there are a lot of indie developers who sell games through Steam and sometimes Steam alone.
Origin? No thanks, not with its horribly invasive nature, and the fact that it's an EA product. Screw that.
I'd like to see the poster you were replying to show statistics backing up his claim that Steam is losing customers in a "slow trickle," but I think he's simply repeating what he's been told. If anything, Steam is probably gaining sales. Every holiday, I buy up a bunch of game packs for family and friends as virtual stocking stuffers. I know I'm not alone.
What's annoying about sudo and apt? You don't have to use sudo if you don't want to, adding a real root user is easy. But using sudo is good practice on any Linux system. And apt? Apt is one of the major reasons to use a debian based distro.
Having come from a BSD background as my first *nix-like OS exposure and later migrating to Gentoo for desktop use--and more recently to Arch, which I love--apt and friends seem spread out and feel somewhat inferior. They're not, of course, but given package managers I like, that's my opinion.
Fundamentally, of course, it's all very subjective; what's annoying to you might be reasonable to me and vice versa. I've become exceptionally fond of Arch and single-point-of-reference package managers like pacman (or emerge for those who still stick with Gentoo and maybe yum for Red Hat-based persuasions, though I don't know much about it). Single-point package managers arguably beat the requirement of installing extra apt-* packages for edge cases like reverse dependency resolution or discovering which file belongs to what package. While utilities like apt-file are easy to install, the package name isn't immediately obvious to newcomers, and sometimes the only way to figure out the best solution to a given package-related problem is to trawl forums, blogs, and mailing lists. I admit that this demonstrates the advantage of having everything in a single manpage (e.g. pacman), because it's feasible to figure out everything reasonably quickly without having to Google it; though, the obvious disadvantage for users accustomed to the "one action, one command" mindset is that dozens of command line options can potentially be intimidating. Also, not everyone agrees with the philosophy.
I won't hazard guessing what the OP's implications were, because apt isn't terribly annoying to use. It's just different. It's not the kind of different I like, and that's perfectly fine! apt is a better match for the way some people think; pacman/emerge/yum are better for others. And others still would rather stick with cd/usr/ports/$packagename && make && make install. Again, though, it's fundamentally a personal preference, with the exception of systems under your care. Then you should know everything you feasibly can.;)
That said, I still blame Red Hat for the train wreck that is NetworkManager.
Don't try to bring climate change denial in here as though it somehow creates support for your viewpoint.
The OP probably included that with the expectation that moderators might not carefully follow his argument and instead offer a positive mod simply on the premise that he's opposed to "climate deniers" and so are they. I conclude this based partly on the fact that he even goes so far as to use very similar language to that echoed frequently in the climate change debates here on Slashdot such as (quoting immediately from his post) "'what is the effect', 'how do we mitigate it', and 'how certain are we of the linkage'." There's no attempt provide evidence supporting the claim that video games might cause ASD (instead, he chooses to indirectly mock anyone who might disagree) and almost coincidentally, neither does Professor Greenfield provide evidence. mevets ought to be modded down for intellectual dishonesty and attempting to implicitly tie causation to something that has yet to be supported by research findings.
Given that his post is currently at +4, Insightful, the tactic of tacking on a statement relating disputes with video game-caused ASD to climate change "deniers" in order to attract sympathetic moderators seems to be working and that is unfortunate.
take a look a apple... marketing wizards. you may love their products, or hate it, but their growth and sales tell the story for itself. this may not end up to be such a good move for AMD in the long run.
The problem is vastly different, as many posters here are pointing out: AMD has (had?) a lousy marketing department.
The illustration you're making is apples (heh) to oranges. Apple has an extremely strong and talented marketing wing--so much so that the actual real world quality of their products almost doesn't matter (much). AMD is quite the opposite. Their marketing department has dropped the ball and pretty much failed the company.
Considering how much higher quality Intel chips have been the last two years, they don't even need to bribe anyone.
That's true.
The unfortunate truth for Intel, though, is that their chips have historically been fairly overpriced in contrast with comparable offerings from AMD. Of course, AMD is beaten into a pulp by Intel's high end offerings and can't even compete in that market segment, but I can't think of anyone much who'd fork out $1,000+ for a desktop processor unless they had a business-related reason to or had more money than sense. Certainly not in this economy clime.
I recently spent a fair bit less than $200 on a CPU upgrading my desktop to AMD's then near top of the line offering. Sure, it wasn't near as capable as Intel's chips (and I've historically always purchased Intel CPUs), but the problem is that Intel's comparable offering was over $100 more expensive--never mind how much more expensive Intel motherboards were. I'm not a regular gamer, I often write code in my spare time, and I have no real need for anything ridiculously fast (just more cores). I did want something reasonably future-proof without breaking the bank, which is why I went with AMD for the first time ever. I know of at least one friend of mine who recently did the same thing. I've been extremely pleased with the results.
On the other hand, I know of someone in my circle of acquaintances who purportedly forked out almost $4,000 to build an Intel rig with their latest CPU offering at the time. Yet, in spite of the investment, he never played anything other than WoW on his hardware. To each his own, mind you, but it seemed like something of a waste to me. He had his reasons, and that's fine.
I expect Intel to continue dropping the price on their low- to medium-end offerings in order to compete, but I also don't expect to see them drop very far since 1) the low end has tighter profit margins and 2) Intel has volume (in terms of production capabilities) plus market share in their favor--don't expect that combination to allow for much generosity on their behalf.
To my untrained eye, I have a hard time seeing how they could sue over the logo. It looks nothing like the Apple Computer, Inc. logo! I realize your intentions were to attempt to absolve Apple of wrongdoing, but I think that link has succeeded in helping me decide that this suit is/was even more petty than I gleaned from TFA.
Yes, there's the issue of trademark dilution, but I think this is far beyond ridiculous.
Maybe they learned the lesson about rare earth mining, but wanna bet the same situation will have to be repeated in a dozen fields before there are any larger changes in technology policy.
That's also a possibility, and I suspect the Chinese were banking on two things: 1) our complacency with increase price pressure on rare earths and 2) the length of time and start up costs for restarting mining operations. Both of these will only benefit the Chinese, and in the time #2 takes, they'll be able to decide just how much to subsidize their exports and have time to restart their own mining operations to push the price back down.
Not that the opinion of Al Gore matters significantly, but if you take a look at the images of his new acquisition, it's quite clear the "ocean view" is a far cry from "down at the beach". Given that Gore is 63, at best he can hope to live maybe another 50 years. That's about half a meter of projected sea level rise. I'm sure he will be safe.
But you should wonder who made this subtle shift from "ocean view" to "beach front" and why they made it in this context.
I admit that comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek, although I should also point out that Al Gore popularized the notion of a drastic increase in sea levels. Montecito is about 180 feet ASL, so given actual measurements, it's doubtful he'd have to worry for another few thousand years.
I'm not so much concerned in this post about the "evil, dark forces" behind renaming the location of his property as much as the humor I see in the proponents of extreme global climate change, hence why Al Gore was a good target to pick on (and I do know what you're getting at with regards to "this context," and no I don't agree--that's being far too conspiratorial for my taste).
Boiling oceans? Really? What a ridiculous strawman.
Not my words. It's an example of some of the extreme point of views I've seen espoused here on Slashdot. Don't believe me? Google it.
This is an idiot's point. I say that because only an idiot would believe that radically fast climate change is automatically going to be accommodated quickly in the biosphere.
If you've already established that I'm an idiot, there's no point continuing this discussion, is there? No wonder you posted as an AC.:)
Given your gross error in reporting global mean temperature trends, I highly doubt your claims about what climate scientists say with respect to weather patterns.
That 5% number was pulled from here which dates back to 2005, so that's likely old enough to not warrant consideration.
Either way, your post seems unreasonably venomous and not at all interested in reasonable discourse, which is unfortunately just as dangerous as the extreme views of some anti-AGW posters here. More importantly, you resorted to insults halfway through--clearly a sign of someone who is too emotionally involved in a debate and not worth further consideration.
But I don't expect to change your mind because you already dismissed my opinion is worthless as stated above. I just thought I'd call you out on your BS.
Based on what I've read in responses to both comments I've left here and those you've left, those who dislike KDE for whatever reason have generally either already made up their minds or they have exceptionally bizarre use cases that encompass exceedingly ancient hardware or don't fully understand the scope of the problem they're describing and ignore any alternative solutions. One example that comes to mind involved a post complaining about KDE's IM client; while I admit I don't use it because it seems lacking for my needs, such a complaint seems to go against the spirit of FOSS (and reasonable-mindedness). I use Pidgin rather than any environment-specific IM client, and I find it to be a good general purpose solution that works in *nix and Windows equally well. But again, I can only assume that actual solutions aren't at all interesting to these people--they simply want to voice their complaints. Not that there's anything wrong with complaining about something in particular, but it does seem to reach a level where one wonders if the line of reasonableness has been crossed and the realm of outright pettiness has been entered.
I think what bothers me most about the responses I've seen that have accumulated in the days since this article ran is that there are a vocal minority here on Slashdot that are willing to argue with others about something as subjective as tastes and preferences. If someone is incapable of understanding that someone else might actually like something they don't, then there's no point in entertaining any form of discussion. After all, one of the responses I received when I stated "I like KDE 4.7" was a rather terse and most decidedly pointless "Good for you?"
That should tell you everything you need to know about the caliber of person who happens to be disagreeing with us.
most idiots don't see a problem with "ATM Machine", so i'm not surprised there are idiots that don't see a problem with "GMO Rice" enjoy your organism fried chicken for dinner. maybe have some organism corn on the side.
Though, I do think you're being somewhat unfair, and probably intentionally so. It seems useful to classify precisely what type of organism we're talking about. Would you prefer if someone were to state, instead, "Would you like some GMO?"
I'm joking, of course. You'd probably prefer if they simply dropped the O and stated "Would you like some GM rice?" This option would make the most linguistic sense and is much more descriptive.
That said, I would disagree that it's necessarily the same thing as RAS, simply because the exact contents of the acronym are not being repeated in some form (unless you had Genetically Modified Organism Rice and asked if anyone was interested in GMOR rice). It does sound awkward, and even a little redundant, but it's nowhere near as bad as "ATM machine" or "FOSS software." And again, I would argue that it's somewhat helpful: By stating GMO rice, it should be reasonable to understand without much fuss that the rice is genetically modified, and that the organism in question is, well, rice. Arguing over that is almost as absurd as arguing over precisely what shade of blue the sky happens to be on any given day.
In other words: I do think you're splitting hairs unnecessarily.:)
This. One time a skunk sprayed underneath the cabin my family was staying in. It was in the middle of the night, and woke all of us up. We searched the whole place, afraid an appliance was burning out or something It was an awful chemical plastic burning smell that was nothing like the "skunky" whiff you get passing one on the road.
Exactly. Onions, garlic, plastic, rubber--basically anything noxious you can think of left on the stove to burn. It's completely alien to you the first time you smell it, and for most people it's the most unpleasant experience you'll ever have.
Thanks to a local vet, I did discover that neither tomato juice nor vinegar are effective at neutralizing the spray. Instead, I was told that the best solution is equal parts baking soda, water, and hydrogen peroxide with a dash of dish soap (optionally diluted with more water if required). It works wonders, and when I had a cat get skunked (he mistook it for a raccoon and was inside a fully enclosed but meshed-in porch with the skunk outside--and since he's always loved scaring the raccoons half to death by slamming down on a bench... you can see where this is going). On exterior structures, a solution with mostly dish soap seems to work reasonably well since skunk spray is oil-based.
My dog got sprayed once, directly in the face, and he ran into the house and we had to give him a bath for hours. The smell was just a stronger version of what you normally smell when a skunk has sprayed "somewhere" nearby. It wasn't horrendous at all (I've posted already that I find it pleasant and peppery). Just more of the same.
Interesting. I wonder if you might be lacking (or have extra?) receptors that detect the rancid part of the smell or bind to a different part of the oil? It might be worth researching if any of your immediate relatives also find it similarly pleasant.
As an aside, owls are one of the skunk's main predators. They can't smell the spray, because they lack receptors for it.
Gee, I make a single (okay, a couple) posts praising KDE, and every single clown who has an axe to grind with the project feels that they need to speak up about their bizarre edge cases all while attempting to poke holes in my "argument" when my points were essentially (and I'll simplify this so you can follow more easily):
1) I like KDE 4 better than alternatives, because it meshes well with my use cases and my tastes and preferences. This is entirely subjective and debating this is about as stupid as debating which colors in the spectrum are superior.
2) KDE 4 works well on comparable hardware to what Windows 7 does. I'm qualifying that because I know there are people like you out there who would probably try to run it on ancient hardware, and the best way to offer a decent starting point is to point out a reasonable comparison.
I'm pleased that you've found LXDE to work well for your particular case. That's fantastic. I don't use it because it's too minimalistic for my taste. Again, this is subjective. It does work exceedingly well with old hardware; in fact, you'll probably find that with older hardware, you have no other choice but to use something like LXDE. I don't think the KDE project misrepresents themselves as being a superior choice for antiquated hardware.
other OSes like Windows 7 likely won't work well on very old hardware either.
In what way is that relevant? The laptop of which I spoke came with original XP (pre SP1), which ran OK on it, but sucked in so many ways (starting with the applications). I can't imagine running Win7 on it; probably more like staggering or slithering than running, actually.
Look at the blockquote. Now, look at the parts of your comment I've emphasized. Here's a hint: You've answered your own question. The reason for comparing KDE to Windows 7 is precisely because hardware that works well under Windows 7 is likely to work well in KDE. If you weren't able to extract that from what I wrote, then I'm afraid there's not much else I can do to explain it to you.
Your response to me in this thread twice is somewhat interesting.
My points have been that 1) it's personal preference (which you agreed with me on) and 2) KDE 4 has improved. So you imply you don't agree with me, agree with me in one response, and then you continue to seem intent on arguing what, exactly?
I thought about as much. Your responses to other posters resort to ad hominem attacks, name calling, and straw men. I suspect you're perhaps a little too emotionally involved in this debate, even though most of the people (like myself) don't really care a great deal.
Yes, I prefer KDE. It works great for me. You don't like it: That's fantastic! It's great that we have different tastes and preferences, which you have agreed to here. Yet twice you've replied to me with relatively negative responses that are mostly meaningless. To think that I was going to write a reply to the comment I cited in that link (#37924856) praising you for agreeing with my sentiment until I realized that your motives were simply to attack myself and others.
Early KDE 4 releases weren't up to par, but 4.7 is very, very well done.
I did not say that KDE 4.7 is up to par completely with 3.x's later releases, but I did state that it's "very, very well done." While I appreciate your efforts at putting words into my mouth, I'm somewhat disappointed that you had to twist my words to do so. Not that I'm surprised; this is Slashdot, after all.
1) I will concede that KDE 4 is not as feature complete as it should be. 2) I have stated before that I prefer KDE over Gnome, and prefer KDE in general.
But perhaps the most important thing is this:
And I could cite you the bug database all day, giving you an example of bugs that make features really uncomfortable to use. I am subscribed to at least a dozen bugs, all that affect my productivity, while in KDE 3.5 I had little or no issues.
You would be willing to spend the time citing a bug database (yes, I know this is tongue-in-cheek) but not at all interested in offering patches/bugs to the KDE project?
Here's the other side of the coin:
- I have issues with network shares.
I don't. They work fine for me.
- I have issues with instant messaging (granted, some of them existed with 3.5, but the fixes were commited right before the KDE 4 fiasco started)
I've never used Kopete, nor do I use a lot of KDE software. I've always used Pidgin. It works fine for my particular case, because I also use it under Windows. Having the same instant messenger across multiple OSes (Arch, Ubuntu, Windows) is of more utility to me than using whatever is "best integrated" with the environment.
- I have issues with the text editors
I don't. Kate works fine for me, and I tend to use Eclipse quite regularly otherwise.
- I have issues with using KDE over SSH
Not part of my use case.
- I have issues with performance (maybe I should upgrade my ancient quad-core PC with 8 GB RAM)
Never had issues with it on a Core 2 Duo with 6 gigs of RAM, and I don't have issues with it on my current system, either. Both had fairly recent video cards, though. Plus, you can turn off the eye candy with a shortcut.
Either way, what this suggests to me is that most problems with KDE are largely subjective and the topic of edge-cases that I've never personally encountered. Yes, these are issues that should be fixed, but you know what they say... patches welcome.:)
Okay, I'll bite. Let's take this article as a fine example of his work:
Allow me to illustrate by turning the argument around in an equally cynical way, with an equally inflammatory rhetorical flourish:
People who make their living in the Linux ecosystem are demanding that Microsoft disable a key security feature planned for Windows 8 so that malware authors can continue to infect those PCs and drive their owners to alternate operating systems.
Oh, wait. Now that I think about it, thatâ(TM)s actually pretty close to the truth.
Bott takes a provocative approach by claiming to "turn the argument around" using "equally inflammatory rhetorical flourish"--then implicitly claims it's "close to the truth." In other words, he's essentially linking malware authors with people who are attempting to drive users toward alternative OSes like Linux. Is it a joke? Maybe, but his last statement leaves one wondering if he really does believe it.
He claims that UEFI will magically prevent rootkits from working simply because the BIOS will then be able to detect mangled files. I'm not sure Bott fully understands the purpose of a rootkit, but if one were well designed, UEFI will achieve nothing toward this goal. Indeed, unless UEFI contained signatures for all Windows system files, I'm quite certain that it would be fairly easy for an interested party to circumvent. After all, the objective of a rootkit is to hide the rootkit from examination, and running one under UEFI would simply require hooking into the OS at points that the UEFI does not check. But no, Bott seems to espouse this technology as magical!
Let's not stop there.
In this article, Bott's original post immediately presumes that the reports of MSE incorrectly flagging Chrome as malware were the fault of the users downloading compromised versions or installing on a compromised Windows install. It seems that it never occurred to him that it could have been a false positive in MSE until after it was confirmed with MS.
Now, before you tell me that I'm nitpicking, consider this: False positives are not at all unheard of with antivirus software. Avira, Avast, AVG, et al, have been known to flag valid, clean software as potentially dangerous, and most sensible people installing something from a known-good source that claims the source file is not compromised will immediately assume it's a false positive and submit it to the AV company. While Bott did the correct thing in submitting it, he dismissed it as the fault of users simply because he couldn't recreate the problem. Ah yes, not a chance that MS could do anything wrong...
Oh, and then there's thiswonderful masterpiece in which Bott proudly declares Microsoft's victory. While this may be true--Linux on the desktop is unlikely to become a reality--you have to dig a bit to find that he concedes, quote, "On the server side, of course, Microsoft continues to acknowledge that Unix and Linux are strong competitors." You can tell he was salivating over the prospect, though, never mind that Android is, essentially, Linux under the hood.
And what about his article The Hidden Costs of Running Windows on a Mac? Not only does he go out of his way to point out that you have to buy licenses (hint to you, Mr Bott: you're still buying OEM Windows licenses when you buy a Dell), but he points out possible performance issues and the likes. Honestly, I think this is a true shill piece; if someone has decided that they want to run Windows on their
Slashdot Mirror
I'll leave this here.
Or more to the point: It became co-opted and taken over partially by Karl Rove and his cronies and then successfully painted by establishment Republicans and their Democratic peers as an extremist movement. All this because entrenched Republicans and Democrats neither want to be disrupted from their position of power or ousted by outsiders. Government by and for the government.
While third parties have historically done poorly in US elections, given how little functional difference there is between the two ruling parties, we're sorely in need of change.
Although my voter registration says "Republican," I have increasingly less and less respect for most "Republicans," including Karl Rove, Ann Coulter, many of the establishment incumbents, and dozens of others who happen to be as big (or bigger) spenders as their DNC compatriots they rail against. It's like someone else said earlier in the thread: It's not that either party is opposed to regulation, they just can't agree on what needs regulating.
This is probably true. There are extremists on both sides, but I suspect I'm just in a regretfully pessimistic mood. ;)
Because it works, for the most part. It elicits an emotional response in readers who have an irrational hatred for people who happen to ascribe to creationism. Like most "editorialisms," it's a race for the bottom.
I quit reading Slashdot regularly about a year or two ago for this exact reason and started reading HN instead. Unfortunately, I've noticed that the left-of-center outgassing from Slashdot and elsewhere has caused many of these other sites to express the same symptoms within a short few months. The tech community is, at large, an echo chamber of Leftist ideology and ideologues who suffer from various degrees of disdain, disgust, or hatred for any who holds beliefs that run counter to majority views. Any suggestion that minority opinions may be welcome is a ruse.
Watch my comment for illustrations to this effect; within a few days, it'll likely have replies confirming my suggestions by denigrating common scapegoats for societal ills (the "extreme right," global warming "denialists," religious believers, etc.) painting them as the most vile of scum. Or observe the sibling comment just prior to my posting that illustrates the condescending pretentiousness that is endemic to these discussions.
My motive in leaving Slashdot was the fault of vitriol I observed directed toward those whose comments I've enjoyed over the years (and friended them). It was depressing, to say the least, and reflected poorly on the Slashdot community. So, packing up and leaving for a while seemed the only option. Except that it's inescapable. You cannot go anywhere without encountering this sort of vitriol. Maybe it's the fault of society in its present state, maybe it's the fault of Internet discussion and what behavior it encourages. I don't know.
Fortunately, with the libertarian revival as of late, I've noticed some Slashdot threads improving in balance. Or maybe it's because of how I left my thresholds configured to filter out mostly the people I enjoy (who are still posting, thankfully).
I agree. I think that's a tremendous part of it. I think your first statement hit the nail on the head though. Much of it is because people are too complacent or don't understand the implications of a massive surveillance state and the ills that such a monstrosity can bring upon our society. As long as they can eat and watch television, most people don't care what happens outside their own little bubble, and I think that's a damn shame.
If nothing else, it certainly explains why the US political climate is such as it is and why we continue to elect politicians who uphold the status quo, outright refusing to hold anyone accountable with regards to such constitutional violations. It's probably also at least partially to blame as to why our elected officials fail to agree with the assertion that extensive surveillance is a violation of the 4th Amendment (possibly others).
I don't know what the answer is, but I do think that at least a fraction of this responsibility should rest on the necks of the media giants. But it's almost as if they don't care either. Or maybe they're receiving threats/kickbacks to funnel information into the NSA.
Exactly this. I think the article headline was way too over-sensationalized (then again, this is Slashdot, right?). It could have also been titled "Most IT pros without personal integrity look at confidential info."
Big surprise there...
Beyond simply the moralistic reasons for not looking at information that one shouldn't be looking at to begin with there are also other possibilities including 1) not caring and 2) simply not wanting to know. Although, I do think it's rather disconcerting if an admin's job is to safeguard private info but snoops freely; that indicates to me a disturbing lack of self-control that has the potential to become harmful if not kept in check. While I personally see the privileges of a sysadmin as holding an extraordinarily high honor of trust and integrity, protecting data and assets as if they were his or her own, I realize that not everyone seems to agree. It's a shame, because I seem to remember there being a write up somewhere by one of the technology greats on the system administrator's code of conduct.
Reading through the responses to this article greatly disappoint me. It seems that there are some individuals who genuinely don't care about privacy. I wonder if they feel the same way about the TSA or border patrol check points? You know the type: If you're not doing anything illegal, why do you want your privacy?
This is a good reason to stick with Steam, and a good chunk of the reason why I refuse to go elsewhere anymore. The remainder had to so with the availability of indie games. Let's face it, there are a lot of indie developers who sell games through Steam and sometimes Steam alone.
Origin? No thanks, not with its horribly invasive nature, and the fact that it's an EA product. Screw that.
I'd like to see the poster you were replying to show statistics backing up his claim that Steam is losing customers in a "slow trickle," but I think he's simply repeating what he's been told. If anything, Steam is probably gaining sales. Every holiday, I buy up a bunch of game packs for family and friends as virtual stocking stuffers. I know I'm not alone.
Carry a jar of pickled brains.
The residents were probably party officials.
Having come from a BSD background as my first *nix-like OS exposure and later migrating to Gentoo for desktop use--and more recently to Arch, which I love--apt and friends seem spread out and feel somewhat inferior. They're not, of course, but given package managers I like, that's my opinion.
Fundamentally, of course, it's all very subjective; what's annoying to you might be reasonable to me and vice versa. I've become exceptionally fond of Arch and single-point-of-reference package managers like pacman (or emerge for those who still stick with Gentoo and maybe yum for Red Hat-based persuasions, though I don't know much about it). Single-point package managers arguably beat the requirement of installing extra apt-* packages for edge cases like reverse dependency resolution or discovering which file belongs to what package. While utilities like apt-file are easy to install, the package name isn't immediately obvious to newcomers, and sometimes the only way to figure out the best solution to a given package-related problem is to trawl forums, blogs, and mailing lists. I admit that this demonstrates the advantage of having everything in a single manpage (e.g. pacman), because it's feasible to figure out everything reasonably quickly without having to Google it; though, the obvious disadvantage for users accustomed to the "one action, one command" mindset is that dozens of command line options can potentially be intimidating. Also, not everyone agrees with the philosophy.
I won't hazard guessing what the OP's implications were, because apt isn't terribly annoying to use. It's just different. It's not the kind of different I like, and that's perfectly fine! apt is a better match for the way some people think; pacman/emerge/yum are better for others. And others still would rather stick with cd /usr/ports/$packagename && make && make install. Again, though, it's fundamentally a personal preference, with the exception of systems under your care. Then you should know everything you feasibly can. ;)
That said, I still blame Red Hat for the train wreck that is NetworkManager.
The OP probably included that with the expectation that moderators might not carefully follow his argument and instead offer a positive mod simply on the premise that he's opposed to "climate deniers" and so are they. I conclude this based partly on the fact that he even goes so far as to use very similar language to that echoed frequently in the climate change debates here on Slashdot such as (quoting immediately from his post) "'what is the effect', 'how do we mitigate it', and 'how certain are we of the linkage'." There's no attempt provide evidence supporting the claim that video games might cause ASD (instead, he chooses to indirectly mock anyone who might disagree) and almost coincidentally, neither does Professor Greenfield provide evidence. mevets ought to be modded down for intellectual dishonesty and attempting to implicitly tie causation to something that has yet to be supported by research findings.
Given that his post is currently at +4, Insightful, the tactic of tacking on a statement relating disputes with video game-caused ASD to climate change "deniers" in order to attract sympathetic moderators seems to be working and that is unfortunate.
The problem is vastly different, as many posters here are pointing out: AMD has (had?) a lousy marketing department.
The illustration you're making is apples (heh) to oranges. Apple has an extremely strong and talented marketing wing--so much so that the actual real world quality of their products almost doesn't matter (much). AMD is quite the opposite. Their marketing department has dropped the ball and pretty much failed the company.
That's true.
The unfortunate truth for Intel, though, is that their chips have historically been fairly overpriced in contrast with comparable offerings from AMD. Of course, AMD is beaten into a pulp by Intel's high end offerings and can't even compete in that market segment, but I can't think of anyone much who'd fork out $1,000+ for a desktop processor unless they had a business-related reason to or had more money than sense. Certainly not in this economy clime.
I recently spent a fair bit less than $200 on a CPU upgrading my desktop to AMD's then near top of the line offering. Sure, it wasn't near as capable as Intel's chips (and I've historically always purchased Intel CPUs), but the problem is that Intel's comparable offering was over $100 more expensive--never mind how much more expensive Intel motherboards were. I'm not a regular gamer, I often write code in my spare time, and I have no real need for anything ridiculously fast (just more cores). I did want something reasonably future-proof without breaking the bank, which is why I went with AMD for the first time ever. I know of at least one friend of mine who recently did the same thing. I've been extremely pleased with the results.
On the other hand, I know of someone in my circle of acquaintances who purportedly forked out almost $4,000 to build an Intel rig with their latest CPU offering at the time. Yet, in spite of the investment, he never played anything other than WoW on his hardware. To each his own, mind you, but it seemed like something of a waste to me. He had his reasons, and that's fine.
I expect Intel to continue dropping the price on their low- to medium-end offerings in order to compete, but I also don't expect to see them drop very far since 1) the low end has tighter profit margins and 2) Intel has volume (in terms of production capabilities) plus market share in their favor--don't expect that combination to allow for much generosity on their behalf.
To my untrained eye, I have a hard time seeing how they could sue over the logo. It looks nothing like the Apple Computer, Inc. logo! I realize your intentions were to attempt to absolve Apple of wrongdoing, but I think that link has succeeded in helping me decide that this suit is/was even more petty than I gleaned from TFA.
Yes, there's the issue of trademark dilution, but I think this is far beyond ridiculous.
That's also a possibility, and I suspect the Chinese were banking on two things: 1) our complacency with increase price pressure on rare earths and 2) the length of time and start up costs for restarting mining operations. Both of these will only benefit the Chinese, and in the time #2 takes, they'll be able to decide just how much to subsidize their exports and have time to restart their own mining operations to push the price back down.
I admit that comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek, although I should also point out that Al Gore popularized the notion of a drastic increase in sea levels. Montecito is about 180 feet ASL, so given actual measurements, it's doubtful he'd have to worry for another few thousand years.
I'm not so much concerned in this post about the "evil, dark forces" behind renaming the location of his property as much as the humor I see in the proponents of extreme global climate change, hence why Al Gore was a good target to pick on (and I do know what you're getting at with regards to "this context," and no I don't agree--that's being far too conspiratorial for my taste).
Not my words. It's an example of some of the extreme point of views I've seen espoused here on Slashdot. Don't believe me? Google it.
If you've already established that I'm an idiot, there's no point continuing this discussion, is there? No wonder you posted as an AC. :)
That 5% number was pulled from here which dates back to 2005, so that's likely old enough to not warrant consideration.
Either way, your post seems unreasonably venomous and not at all interested in reasonable discourse, which is unfortunately just as dangerous as the extreme views of some anti-AGW posters here. More importantly, you resorted to insults halfway through--clearly a sign of someone who is too emotionally involved in a debate and not worth further consideration.
Have a nice day. :)
Based on what I've read in responses to both comments I've left here and those you've left, those who dislike KDE for whatever reason have generally either already made up their minds or they have exceptionally bizarre use cases that encompass exceedingly ancient hardware or don't fully understand the scope of the problem they're describing and ignore any alternative solutions. One example that comes to mind involved a post complaining about KDE's IM client; while I admit I don't use it because it seems lacking for my needs, such a complaint seems to go against the spirit of FOSS (and reasonable-mindedness). I use Pidgin rather than any environment-specific IM client, and I find it to be a good general purpose solution that works in *nix and Windows equally well. But again, I can only assume that actual solutions aren't at all interesting to these people--they simply want to voice their complaints. Not that there's anything wrong with complaining about something in particular, but it does seem to reach a level where one wonders if the line of reasonableness has been crossed and the realm of outright pettiness has been entered.
I think what bothers me most about the responses I've seen that have accumulated in the days since this article ran is that there are a vocal minority here on Slashdot that are willing to argue with others about something as subjective as tastes and preferences. If someone is incapable of understanding that someone else might actually like something they don't, then there's no point in entertaining any form of discussion. After all, one of the responses I received when I stated "I like KDE 4.7" was a rather terse and most decidedly pointless "Good for you?"
That should tell you everything you need to know about the caliber of person who happens to be disagreeing with us.
There's actually a term for that.
Though, I do think you're being somewhat unfair, and probably intentionally so. It seems useful to classify precisely what type of organism we're talking about. Would you prefer if someone were to state, instead, "Would you like some GMO?"
I'm joking, of course. You'd probably prefer if they simply dropped the O and stated "Would you like some GM rice?" This option would make the most linguistic sense and is much more descriptive.
That said, I would disagree that it's necessarily the same thing as RAS, simply because the exact contents of the acronym are not being repeated in some form (unless you had Genetically Modified Organism Rice and asked if anyone was interested in GMOR rice). It does sound awkward, and even a little redundant, but it's nowhere near as bad as "ATM machine" or "FOSS software." And again, I would argue that it's somewhat helpful: By stating GMO rice, it should be reasonable to understand without much fuss that the rice is genetically modified, and that the organism in question is, well, rice. Arguing over that is almost as absurd as arguing over precisely what shade of blue the sky happens to be on any given day.
In other words: I do think you're splitting hairs unnecessarily. :)
Exactly. Onions, garlic, plastic, rubber--basically anything noxious you can think of left on the stove to burn. It's completely alien to you the first time you smell it, and for most people it's the most unpleasant experience you'll ever have.
Thanks to a local vet, I did discover that neither tomato juice nor vinegar are effective at neutralizing the spray. Instead, I was told that the best solution is equal parts baking soda, water, and hydrogen peroxide with a dash of dish soap (optionally diluted with more water if required). It works wonders, and when I had a cat get skunked (he mistook it for a raccoon and was inside a fully enclosed but meshed-in porch with the skunk outside--and since he's always loved scaring the raccoons half to death by slamming down on a bench... you can see where this is going). On exterior structures, a solution with mostly dish soap seems to work reasonably well since skunk spray is oil-based.
Interesting. I wonder if you might be lacking (or have extra?) receptors that detect the rancid part of the smell or bind to a different part of the oil? It might be worth researching if any of your immediate relatives also find it similarly pleasant.
As an aside, owls are one of the skunk's main predators. They can't smell the spray, because they lack receptors for it.
Gee, I make a single (okay, a couple) posts praising KDE, and every single clown who has an axe to grind with the project feels that they need to speak up about their bizarre edge cases all while attempting to poke holes in my "argument" when my points were essentially (and I'll simplify this so you can follow more easily):
1) I like KDE 4 better than alternatives, because it meshes well with my use cases and my tastes and preferences. This is entirely subjective and debating this is about as stupid as debating which colors in the spectrum are superior.
2) KDE 4 works well on comparable hardware to what Windows 7 does. I'm qualifying that because I know there are people like you out there who would probably try to run it on ancient hardware, and the best way to offer a decent starting point is to point out a reasonable comparison.
I'm pleased that you've found LXDE to work well for your particular case. That's fantastic. I don't use it because it's too minimalistic for my taste. Again, this is subjective. It does work exceedingly well with old hardware; in fact, you'll probably find that with older hardware, you have no other choice but to use something like LXDE. I don't think the KDE project misrepresents themselves as being a superior choice for antiquated hardware.
Look at the blockquote. Now, look at the parts of your comment I've emphasized. Here's a hint: You've answered your own question. The reason for comparing KDE to Windows 7 is precisely because hardware that works well under Windows 7 is likely to work well in KDE. If you weren't able to extract that from what I wrote, then I'm afraid there's not much else I can do to explain it to you.
Your response to me in this thread twice is somewhat interesting.
My points have been that 1) it's personal preference (which you agreed with me on) and 2) KDE 4 has improved. So you imply you don't agree with me, agree with me in one response, and then you continue to seem intent on arguing what, exactly?
I thought about as much. Your responses to other posters resort to ad hominem attacks, name calling, and straw men. I suspect you're perhaps a little too emotionally involved in this debate, even though most of the people (like myself) don't really care a great deal.
Yes, I prefer KDE. It works great for me. You don't like it: That's fantastic! It's great that we have different tastes and preferences, which you have agreed to here. Yet twice you've replied to me with relatively negative responses that are mostly meaningless. To think that I was going to write a reply to the comment I cited in that link (#37924856) praising you for agreeing with my sentiment until I realized that your motives were simply to attack myself and others.
It's a shame.
Here's what you said:
Here's what I actually said.
I did not say that KDE 4.7 is up to par completely with 3.x's later releases, but I did state that it's "very, very well done." While I appreciate your efforts at putting words into my mouth, I'm somewhat disappointed that you had to twist my words to do so. Not that I'm surprised; this is Slashdot, after all.
1) I will concede that KDE 4 is not as feature complete as it should be.
2) I have stated before that I prefer KDE over Gnome, and prefer KDE in general.
But perhaps the most important thing is this:
You would be willing to spend the time citing a bug database (yes, I know this is tongue-in-cheek) but not at all interested in offering patches/bugs to the KDE project?
Here's the other side of the coin:
I don't. They work fine for me.
I've never used Kopete, nor do I use a lot of KDE software. I've always used Pidgin. It works fine for my particular case, because I also use it under Windows. Having the same instant messenger across multiple OSes (Arch, Ubuntu, Windows) is of more utility to me than using whatever is "best integrated" with the environment.
I don't. Kate works fine for me, and I tend to use Eclipse quite regularly otherwise.
Not part of my use case.
Never had issues with it on a Core 2 Duo with 6 gigs of RAM, and I don't have issues with it on my current system, either. Both had fairly recent video cards, though. Plus, you can turn off the eye candy with a shortcut.
Either way, what this suggests to me is that most problems with KDE are largely subjective and the topic of edge-cases that I've never personally encountered. Yes, these are issues that should be fixed, but you know what they say... patches welcome. :)
Okay, I'll bite. Let's take this article as a fine example of his work:
Bott takes a provocative approach by claiming to "turn the argument around" using "equally inflammatory rhetorical flourish"--then implicitly claims it's "close to the truth." In other words, he's essentially linking malware authors with people who are attempting to drive users toward alternative OSes like Linux. Is it a joke? Maybe, but his last statement leaves one wondering if he really does believe it.
He claims that UEFI will magically prevent rootkits from working simply because the BIOS will then be able to detect mangled files. I'm not sure Bott fully understands the purpose of a rootkit, but if one were well designed, UEFI will achieve nothing toward this goal. Indeed, unless UEFI contained signatures for all Windows system files, I'm quite certain that it would be fairly easy for an interested party to circumvent. After all, the objective of a rootkit is to hide the rootkit from examination, and running one under UEFI would simply require hooking into the OS at points that the UEFI does not check. But no, Bott seems to espouse this technology as magical!
Let's not stop there.
In this article, Bott's original post immediately presumes that the reports of MSE incorrectly flagging Chrome as malware were the fault of the users downloading compromised versions or installing on a compromised Windows install. It seems that it never occurred to him that it could have been a false positive in MSE until after it was confirmed with MS.
Now, before you tell me that I'm nitpicking, consider this: False positives are not at all unheard of with antivirus software. Avira, Avast, AVG, et al, have been known to flag valid, clean software as potentially dangerous, and most sensible people installing something from a known-good source that claims the source file is not compromised will immediately assume it's a false positive and submit it to the AV company. While Bott did the correct thing in submitting it, he dismissed it as the fault of users simply because he couldn't recreate the problem. Ah yes, not a chance that MS could do anything wrong...
Oh, and then there's this wonderful masterpiece in which Bott proudly declares Microsoft's victory. While this may be true--Linux on the desktop is unlikely to become a reality--you have to dig a bit to find that he concedes, quote, "On the server side, of course, Microsoft continues to acknowledge that Unix and Linux are strong competitors." You can tell he was salivating over the prospect, though, never mind that Android is, essentially, Linux under the hood.
And what about his article The Hidden Costs of Running Windows on a Mac? Not only does he go out of his way to point out that you have to buy licenses (hint to you, Mr Bott: you're still buying OEM Windows licenses when you buy a Dell), but he points out possible performance issues and the likes. Honestly, I think this is a true shill piece; if someone has decided that they want to run Windows on their