Re:But *programmers* should be licensed...
on
License to Surf
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· Score: 2
Yea, and so should other people who produce things, like painters and musicians. Think - if musicians had to be licnenced then we'd never have to listen to the spice girls!
The "efficiency" of those corporations is irrelevant - the salient point is accountability. Corporations are responsible for their deeds and misdeeds to their stockholders, and to nobody else.
They also have to be nice to their customers - for without their customers they don't earn money.
We are our government. It is an organization in whose operations we at least have a say - essentially, we are all stockholders.
I just wish it worked that way - but unfortunately it doesn't. The parts of the US government that actually do things are so far away from the people that the population really doesn't have any control over what they do at all.
Even the restrictions that the founders of the USA tried to put on the government don't do anything - Freedom to bear arms? Nope, it's restricted beyond belief - Freedom to a speedy trial? Well, it took Kevin Mitnick 6 years or so...
Except that if big business had its way, we'd be paying for the right to breathe.
No corporation has a way to restrict air, and I can't think of a good way for them to do it - but if air was a commodity, there'd at least be compitition.
Government on the other hand has no competition, so it can be as inefficient as it wants to. We can't even boycott them - if we don't pay taxes, they throw us in jail.
Re:The programs aren't bad, the implementation is.
on
Waiting for the Knock
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· Score: 1
I see no reason why a government run agency can't be as efficient as a private one, if you're allowed to be as ruthless as a corporation would in cutting out useless jobs and firing people for incompotence.
Verry simply because a government agency has no incentive to perform. The cash to pay the people who work there will keep coming reguardless of performance or efficiency - people don't have a choice about paying taxes. And, in the case of welfare, more people on welfare mean more pay and jobs for the welfare agency...
Just having "I agree to the licences for all the included software programs" above "Yes" and "No" buttons would probably have caused them less problems than an EULA.
I agree with you that a little bit of planning a desktop enviornment probably helps, but I disagree that that planning should be specific % of specific widgets.
I think that the planning should be the developers asking themselves "How does this look and work for user X?". A particular way of doing something isn't good unless it looks/works good for everyone who will be using it. It shouldn't be designed so a new user won't be able to use it - but neither should it be designed so that it'll drive experianced users working with it for the 50th time that day insane.
So, Since it's pretty obvious that the goal of the KDE project is to make an evolutionary Windows-type desktop enviornment for computer-illiterate to semi-literate users - what would it take to start a project to make a desktop enviornment for mid to wizard level unix users? Would you want to run such a project?
I ask because your complaints sound a lot like design issues, not something that the KDE people would be willing to redo after spending a lot of time on that way of doing things, and because it doesn't look like anyone's working on making an advanced UI with a powerful interface.
As someone famous and important said: "A lot of misinformation gets said when people put words in the mouth of those that they disagree with".
We libertarians believe that burocracy in a republic tends to be ineffective and inefficient. (Did you know that for every federal tax dollar earmarked for public schools, only 0.35 gets to a school - the other 0.65 is spent in collecting, processing, and distributing the money).
We tend to believe that corporations will be more efficient simply because if they aren't, they'll be driven out of buisnuess by the mechanics of the free market.
Do you really trust the government more than you trust yourself?
Both welfare and social security don't solve the problems they were intended to solve, and they actually cause major problems themselves.
Do you know how many forms you have to fill out , and how many qualifications you have to have to get your own money back from the government under social security? Let me tell you - it's absurd. Out of 100 people who put 15% of their wages into social security, mabie 12 actually get some money back.
The way that the laws are written, someone supported by eithor program can't re-enter the workforce. If someone on social security earns more than 2000 or so working, they loose their social security money - and have to completely re-submit all their forms from scratch.
Welfare is even worse - If someone's living fine off of government money, and can't get a job that would pay much more anyway - why would they ever bother to try to get a job?
If people could spend their own money how they want to spend it, poverty would be much less of an issue than it is now.
Don't make the problem worse - help solve the problem. Vote Libertarian - http://www.lp.org/
You can try to do something about this kind of thing. Get the government out of *your* decisions. Vote libertarian.
Remember: Only ~12% of Americans vote - and of those, they're split half/half between the two major parties. The libertarians only need 7% of the population to vote for them for them to win.
1> You've got to send a message now, that that kind of behavior will not be tolerated. It needs to be made clear that it is illegal, and you will be punished _severely_ if caught. This helps deter repeat offenders - and occasionally inspires more offenders who are irate about how big brother came down hard on some fool who broke the law.
It is not the purpoise of the criminal justice system to "send messages". Each case should be judged as a unit. Remember: Those who break the law still have rights - and if the punishment doesn't fit the crime it should be considered cruel and unusual.
And I quote, "Chandon's Rules of Life": 4) There exists nothing which is not a valid subject for humor.
I'm sorry, If you don't want to laugh at it, you don't have to. For some, making jokes is a coping mechanism, and in this case - that comment just had to be said.
Truth be told, what makes her death important is the fact that she did voices on South Park.
A lot of Slashdotters watch South Park, making the fact that someone new will have to be found to to those voices important to the readers of Slashdot.
So, the fact that someone has died isn't the important thing - the important thing is that the south park charactors are currently voiceless.
Death is so common in the world that it would be impossible to report on every death merely because someone died - but if a death effects a lot of people (however minorly), it'll be reported.
This is unlike the case of that Kennidy guy getting killed in a plane crash - your comment would have been valid for that story.
The usage of "virii" as the plural of virus is older than the script kiddie phenominon. It is an instance of standard hacker word play, like the usage of "boxen" as the plural of "box", unices as the plural of unix, etc...
You know, the Crusoe logo must look an aful lot like the Dreamcast logo then...
(As soon as I saw the Crusoe logo I immediately thought "Hey: Crusoe, Debian, Dreamcast - Whenever people can't think of a logo do they just put a little swirly on the product?")
If I read other posts in this thread right, the reason that the NT server performed so much better than the Linux server is due to the usage of 4 network cards. Supposedly, the TCP stack under Linux doesn't support talking to more than one network card at a time, so adding network cards doesn't increase performance. Basically I guess, this test was like giving Linux one card and NT 4 cards --- Linux performing 2.6 times better than NT isn't bad at all...
No -- it's socialist. Socialism is communism where instead of the government claiming everyone owns everything, the government claims you own it but it gets to decide how to spend it.
Re:This is absolutely ludicrous..
on
Usenet Gag Order
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· Score: 2
The police are there to prevent people from getting physically beat down, not to prevent people from communicating. Possible intent is no excuse for violating someone's rights.
Anyway, the whole thing is irrelevent --- no US court has jurisdiction over Usenet.
They are one of the best, if not *the* best, game company out there. If we can just get them to understand the benifiets of a Linux port, then I can ditch Windows and save myself 500 megabytes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, and so should other people who produce things, like painters and musicians. Think - if musicians had to be licnenced then we'd never have to listen to the spice girls!
Programmers are artists. Remember that.
The "efficiency" of those corporations is irrelevant - the salient point is accountability. Corporations are responsible for their deeds and misdeeds to their stockholders, and to nobody else.
They also have to be nice to their customers - for without their customers they don't earn money.
We are our government. It is an organization in whose operations we at least have a say - essentially, we are all stockholders.
I just wish it worked that way - but unfortunately it doesn't. The parts of the US government that actually do things are so far away from the people that the population really doesn't have any control over what they do at all.
Even the restrictions that the founders of the USA tried to put on the government don't do anything - Freedom to bear arms? Nope, it's restricted beyond belief - Freedom to a speedy trial? Well, it took Kevin Mitnick 6 years or so...
Except that if big business had its way, we'd be paying for the right to breathe.
No corporation has a way to restrict air, and I can't think of a good way for them to do it - but if air was a commodity, there'd at least be compitition.
Government on the other hand has no competition, so it can be as inefficient as it wants to. We can't even boycott them - if we don't pay taxes, they throw us in jail.
Verry simply because a government agency has no incentive to perform. The cash to pay the people who work there will keep coming reguardless of performance or efficiency - people don't have a choice about paying taxes. And, in the case of welfare, more people on welfare mean more pay and jobs for the welfare agency...
Normal copyright law would restrict you from distributing copies at all.
The GPL allows you to distribute copies under certain circumstances - thereby giving you more freedom than you would otherwise have.
Just having "I agree to the licences for all the included software programs" above "Yes" and "No" buttons would probably have caused them less problems than an EULA.
Not four, six =P
I agree with you that a little bit of planning a desktop enviornment probably helps, but I disagree that that planning should be specific % of specific widgets.
I think that the planning should be the developers asking themselves "How does this look and work for user X?". A particular way of doing something isn't good unless it looks/works good for everyone who will be using it. It shouldn't be designed so a new user won't be able to use it - but neither should it be designed so that it'll drive experianced users working with it for the 50th time that day insane.
So, Since it's pretty obvious that the goal of the KDE project is to make an evolutionary Windows-type desktop enviornment for computer-illiterate to semi-literate users - what would it take to start a project to make a desktop enviornment for mid to wizard level unix users? Would you want to run such a project?
I ask because your complaints sound a lot like design issues, not something that the KDE people would be willing to redo after spending a lot of time on that way of doing things, and because it doesn't look like anyone's working on making an advanced UI with a powerful interface.
You really think that socialism is more effective than the free market?
Remember, socialist programs are going to be run by a government, which has absolutely no incentive to be efficient...
As someone famous and important said:
"A lot of misinformation gets said when people put words in the mouth of those that they disagree with".
We libertarians believe that burocracy in a republic tends to be ineffective and inefficient. (Did you know that for every federal tax dollar earmarked for public schools, only 0.35 gets to a school - the other 0.65 is spent in collecting, processing, and distributing the money).
We tend to believe that corporations will be more efficient simply because if they aren't, they'll be driven out of buisnuess by the mechanics of the free market.
Do you really trust the government more than you trust yourself?
Both welfare and social security don't solve the problems they were intended to solve, and they actually cause major problems themselves.
Do you know how many forms you have to fill out , and how many qualifications you have to have to get your own money back from the government under social security? Let me tell you - it's absurd. Out of 100 people who put 15% of their wages into social security, mabie 12 actually get some money back.
The way that the laws are written, someone supported by eithor program can't re-enter the workforce. If someone on social security earns more than 2000 or so working, they loose their social security money - and have to completely re-submit all their forms from scratch.
Welfare is even worse - If someone's living fine off of government money, and can't get a job that would pay much more anyway - why would they ever bother to try to get a job?
If people could spend their own money how they want to spend it, poverty would be much less of an issue than it is now.
Don't make the problem worse - help solve the problem. Vote Libertarian - http://www.lp.org/
You can try to do something about this kind of thing. Get the government out of *your* decisions. Vote libertarian.
Remember: Only ~12% of Americans vote - and of those, they're split half/half between the two major parties. The libertarians only need 7% of the population to vote for them for them to win.
It is not the purpoise of the criminal justice system to "send messages". Each case should be judged as a unit. Remember: Those who break the law still have rights - and if the punishment doesn't fit the crime it should be considered cruel and unusual.
And I quote, "Chandon's Rules of Life":
4) There exists nothing which is not a valid subject for humor.
I'm sorry, If you don't want to laugh at it, you don't have to. For some, making jokes is a coping mechanism, and in this case - that comment just had to be said.
Truth be told, what makes her death important is the fact that she did voices on South Park.
A lot of Slashdotters watch South Park, making the fact that someone new will have to be found to to those voices important to the readers of Slashdot.
So, the fact that someone has died isn't the important thing - the important thing is that the south park charactors are currently voiceless.
Death is so common in the world that it would be impossible to report on every death merely because someone died - but if a death effects a lot of people (however minorly), it'll be reported.
This is unlike the case of that Kennidy guy getting killed in a plane crash - your comment would have been valid for that story.
"Virii" isn't a word: true
"Virii" is used by script kiddies: true
"Virii" was coined by script kiddies: false
The usage of "virii" as the plural of virus is older than the script kiddie phenominon. It is an instance of standard hacker word play, like the usage of "boxen" as the plural of "box", unices as the plural of unix, etc...
For more info, see the Jargon file.
You know, the Crusoe logo must look an aful lot like the Dreamcast logo then...
(As soon as I saw the Crusoe logo I immediately thought "Hey: Crusoe, Debian, Dreamcast - Whenever people can't think of a logo do they just put a little swirly on the product?")
Isn't that only if Troll tech doesn't update Qt for more than a year?
If I read other posts in this thread right, the reason that the NT server performed so much better than the Linux server is due to the usage of 4 network cards. Supposedly, the TCP stack under Linux doesn't support talking to more than one network card at a time, so adding network cards doesn't increase performance. Basically I guess, this test was like giving Linux one card and NT 4 cards --- Linux performing 2.6 times better than NT isn't bad at all...
As easy to use as you make an app, some people are still going to want tech support and hand-holding.
There's no way that they'll make as much money as Microsoft makes from MS-Office, but they shouldn't have any problems making enough to live on.
No -- it's socialist. Socialism is communism where instead of the government claiming everyone owns everything, the government claims you own it but it gets to decide how to spend it.
The police are there to prevent people from getting physically beat down, not to prevent people from communicating. Possible intent is no excuse for violating someone's rights.
Anyway, the whole thing is irrelevent --- no US court has jurisdiction over Usenet.
I think the way it works is that all the matter that would be causing the drag on it becomes part of the planet...
Diablo II is currently the only reason I still have a licence for Windows 98, but I don't want to have to reboot to play it.
They've got a Battle.net forum for suggestions for Diablo II, (at http://www.battle.net/forums/diab lo2-suggestions/), so I'm off to suggest that they port to Linux.
They are one of the best, if not *the* best, game company out there. If we can just get them to understand the benifiets of a Linux port, then I can ditch Windows and save myself 500 megabytes.