I agree with you about defending Hamas, but after reading the anon post I think it was not a defense of any group.
It looks more like criticism (even if badly worded) of how badly Israel reacted to the rockets, having killed many civilians, and there was practically no backslash from the international community.
While I can see the validity of your main point about Iran being "unstable" and not democratic, the way you present your argument has at least two deep flaws.
You have to also see it from the side of everyone else who isn't Iran.
Like every other country in the region that is not Israel? Are they as concerned as the west about Iran's nuclear program? What about their opinion on the fact that Israel secretly produced nuclear weapons and still has them?
And he not only denies gay rights, but denies that there were even homosexuals in Iran. Even America didn't deny the fact there were black people who were being oppressed. Some might have said that they weren't being oppressed but no one would be as stupid as to say that there is no such thing as black people.
Denying human rights to anyone is unacceptable. And of course denying the existence of people with different sexual orientations, when it is a well know fact of life, is stupid. But your analogy is simply wrong. One of the reasons why no one who practiced slavery (or oppressed black people) would deny their existence was simply because they treated black people as less than people. In their view, they were not equals.
Ah, BTW, a country leader making stupid and dangerous comments is in no way an Iranian privilege.
While I liked the intention of your joke on the Dems, left it is only left if to the left of the center. Being to the left or extreme right, but still very right, does not qualify.:-P
From a conversation I had at GDC a couple years ago with an army guy involved in the project, the main goal was not recruitment, quite the opposite.
He claimed that the army looses a lot of money and resources in training new people, who just give up somewhere along the training or right after it. So the game was originally developed to try to show that "real combat" is not what happens in FPSs and thus weed out some of the applicants.
These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video)
They are not talking about internet usage. They're talking about overall information consumption. So torrent users has not much to do with it at all.
Google's money that they pay into GSoC pales in comparison to their revenue. It wouldn't even be a rounding error. Furthermore, it's a tax break (they set up a charitable fund for this purpose) and the money put into it is considered marketing expenses. It's not altruism, it's just creative marketing.
Any kind of altruism, unless truly anonymous, is marketing, or egoism (or both).
In this case, as with many FOSS projects, the sub-1.0 numbers probably mean "there are still features to be added before we consider our work complete".
I'd change your definition to "before we consider the initial version of our work complete". This is exactly why I mentioned sub 1.0 version number in a piece of free software. It means there is no marketing department requiring bumping up the version number to impress anybody.
So, as you say, the devs themselves don't think it has the capabilities to be granted the 1.0 number. For whatever reasons they feel.
In other words, a 0.8 version might be perfectly stable, just not feature-complete from the author's point of view, and perfetly sufficient for a subset of potential users with less sophisticated needs.
The key word here is "might". It might, it might not. One also has to consider that even if the system does have all the features you want and seems stable, is it being properly tested and maintained? Has it been around long enough for it to count as some indication that the devs aren't going to just give up on it soon? Is there already a community around it?
All of this goes into choosing a sub-1.0 project for something important. This is what I meant. To depend on an early version of a piece of software is too big of a commitment without the proper analysis of these and many other issues, most of which are not related to the features per se.
And, in any case, it is free software. So anyone can fork the project and continue with it. And it seems there is actually a fork of this project to keep it running over FreeBSD.
None of this changes what I said. If whoever is using it and worried about its future did consider this issues, good for them. If not, well...
I don't want to be inflammatory, but having "concerns regarding the future of their existing setups" when using a piece of free software in version 0.7 for something as important as data storage?
I'd say that if your setup is so important you care so much for its future and you're facing this scenario, you have bigger concerns to take care than a move from FreeBSD to Linux.
On the other hand, if you mean Qt. It's a GUI (and much else) toolkit developed by Trolltech, which was acquired by Nokia some time ago.:-P Also, now Qt is LGPL.
The hypocrisy and faux outrage of the left wing in the US...
Left wing? What left wing?
But I do agree this whole story is hypocrisy. And Google has nothing to do with it. Google, or MS, or whoever, are not responsible for the sites they index. And they should not be.
Hmmmm. I can't claim to be right here, but in my opinion the most likely explanation is as follows:
Maybe because the Panama isthmus is a continual strip of land. If one wants to arbitrarily cut the American continent in two, it could be cut anywhere in Central America. And the division raises a lot of questions about Panama. Why should it be part of North America? Why not part of South America? Why not split the country?
In the case of Suez peninsula, it is much more of a "touching point" between two huge landmasses. And it "feels" much more like a natural division. Before people had accurate maps, it would seem that the Red Sea almost reached the Mediterranean Sea (when comparing the width of the peninsula to the whole of Africa or even the Arabic peninsula). This without taking into consideration the huge cultural/ethnic differences between Africa and Eurasia (remember, we're talking about why people think of them as separate, not of geological facts).
A-) America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica. B-) America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica.
But my main point, in the message you're replying to, was that the division into continents (with or without subcontinents) has nothing to do with plate tectonics as the GP implied.
Asia and Europe, probably. That's why lots of people call it Eurasia, including geographers. They even have two "cross-continental" countries (Russia and Turkey).
If you read your own link, there are several conventions. Which means, no consensus.
Second, from that link, lots of Europe also consider America as just one. From personal experience, people in Africa also consider America as just one continent.
And last, calling Australia a continent? WTF? Oceania at least includes New Zealand and all the other islands.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you about defending Hamas, but after reading the anon post I think it was not a defense of any group.
It looks more like criticism (even if badly worded) of how badly Israel reacted to the rockets, having killed many civilians, and there was practically no backslash from the international community.
While I can see the validity of your main point about Iran being "unstable" and not democratic, the way you present your argument has at least two deep flaws.
You have to also see it from the side of everyone else who isn't Iran.
Like every other country in the region that is not Israel? Are they as concerned as the west about Iran's nuclear program? What about their opinion on the fact that Israel secretly produced nuclear weapons and still has them?
And he not only denies gay rights, but denies that there were even homosexuals in Iran. Even America didn't deny the fact there were black people who were being oppressed. Some might have said that they weren't being oppressed but no one would be as stupid as to say that there is no such thing as black people.
Denying human rights to anyone is unacceptable. And of course denying the existence of people with different sexual orientations, when it is a well know fact of life, is stupid. But your analogy is simply wrong. One of the reasons why no one who practiced slavery (or oppressed black people) would deny their existence was simply because they treated black people as less than people. In their view, they were not equals.
Ah, BTW, a country leader making stupid and dangerous comments is in no way an Iranian privilege.
While I liked the intention of your joke on the Dems, left it is only left if to the left of the center. Being to the left or extreme right, but still very right, does not qualify. :-P
From a conversation I had at GDC a couple years ago with an army guy involved in the project, the main goal was not recruitment, quite the opposite.
He claimed that the army looses a lot of money and resources in training new people, who just give up somewhere along the training or right after it. So the game was originally developed to try to show that "real combat" is not what happens in FPSs and thus weed out some of the applicants.
Of course, the PR impact was welcome.
From TFS:
These estimates are from an analysis of more than 20 different sources of information, from very old (newspapers and books) to very new (portable computer games, satellite radio, and Internet video)
They are not talking about internet usage. They're talking about overall information consumption. So torrent users has not much to do with it at all.
Not that I believe their number.
I thought gods were supposed to have CREATED the processes that govern life, the universe and everything, not merely trying to understand them.
Unless it's the God of Reverse Engineering. :-P
Why? Retaliation for the pigeons having shot the LHC first?
Wait for the conflict escalation. WW3 here we go.
How the hell is the parent post offtopic for giving an example of how waiting to be worried "later" is a slippery slope?
Someone with mod points, please mod parent up.
Google's money that they pay into GSoC pales in comparison to their revenue. It wouldn't even be a rounding error. Furthermore, it's a tax break (they set up a charitable fund for this purpose) and the money put into it is considered marketing expenses. It's not altruism, it's just creative marketing.
Any kind of altruism, unless truly anonymous, is marketing, or egoism (or both).
... a dead-tree-killer.
Oh no! We're doomed. How do you kill a tree zombie? They don't have heads to shoot at.
Aaaahhhhh
What part of me saying
the devs themselves don't think it has the capabilities to be granted the 1.0 number. For whatever reasons they feel.
makes you think I'm trying to guess how they number their releases?
Where are my mod point when I need them?! :)
In this case, as with many FOSS projects, the sub-1.0 numbers probably mean "there are still features to be added before we consider our work complete".
I'd change your definition to "before we consider the initial version of our work complete". This is exactly why I mentioned sub 1.0 version number in a piece of free software. It means there is no marketing department requiring bumping up the version number to impress anybody.
So, as you say, the devs themselves don't think it has the capabilities to be granted the 1.0 number. For whatever reasons they feel.
In other words, a 0.8 version might be perfectly stable, just not feature-complete from the author's point of view, and perfetly sufficient for a subset of potential users with less sophisticated needs.
The key word here is "might". It might, it might not. One also has to consider that even if the system does have all the features you want and seems stable, is it being properly tested and maintained? Has it been around long enough for it to count as some indication that the devs aren't going to just give up on it soon? Is there already a community around it?
All of this goes into choosing a sub-1.0 project for something important. This is what I meant. To depend on an early version of a piece of software is too big of a commitment without the proper analysis of these and many other issues, most of which are not related to the features per se.
And, in any case, it is free software. So anyone can fork the project and continue with it. And it seems there is actually a fork of this project to keep it running over FreeBSD.
None of this changes what I said. If whoever is using it and worried about its future did consider this issues, good for them. If not, well...
I don't want to be inflammatory, but having "concerns regarding the future of their existing setups" when using a piece of free software in version 0.7 for something as important as data storage?
I'd say that if your setup is so important you care so much for its future and you're facing this scenario, you have bigger concerns to take care than a move from FreeBSD to Linux.
Apple QuickTime.
On the other hand, if you mean Qt. It's a GUI (and much else) toolkit developed by Trolltech, which was acquired by Nokia some time ago. :-P
Also, now Qt is LGPL.
Pirates... check!
Cannons... check!
Guess history really repeats itself as people say.
What now? With this many pirates, I guess the solution to the whole global warming is coming, right?
IIRC MS hired most of Borland devs. Not that I think there is anything wrong with that.
The first versions of Visual Studio were crap, but it really improved quickly.
Hey, let's stop making fun of Bush Jr. :-P
The hypocrisy and faux outrage of the left wing in the US...
Left wing? What left wing?
But I do agree this whole story is hypocrisy. And Google has nothing to do with it. Google, or MS, or whoever, are not responsible for the sites they index. And they should not be.
Hmmmm. I can't claim to be right here, but in my opinion the most likely explanation is as follows:
Maybe because the Panama isthmus is a continual strip of land. If one wants to arbitrarily cut the American continent in two, it could be cut anywhere in Central America. And the division raises a lot of questions about Panama. Why should it be part of North America? Why not part of South America? Why not split the country?
In the case of Suez peninsula, it is much more of a "touching point" between two huge landmasses.
And it "feels" much more like a natural division. Before people had accurate maps, it would seem that the Red Sea almost reached the Mediterranean Sea (when comparing the width of the peninsula to the whole of Africa or even the Arabic peninsula). This without taking into consideration the huge cultural/ethnic differences between Africa and Eurasia (remember, we're talking about why people think of them as separate, not of geological facts).
I was actually taught two models when in school.
A-) America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica.
B-) America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica.
But my main point, in the message you're replying to, was that the division into continents (with or without subcontinents) has nothing to do with plate tectonics as the GP implied.
Sorry for replying to myself.
Just to complete my sentence about Eurasia. I forgot the former soviet republics.
So the list of countries in both Europe and Asia is:
Russia, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan.
Not to mention that Cyprus and Armenia, although in Asia are sometimes considered Europe for some reason.
Asia and Europe, probably. That's why lots of people call it Eurasia, including geographers. They even have two "cross-continental" countries (Russia and Turkey).
Africa I guess is another beast entirely.
If you read your own link, there are several conventions. Which means, no consensus.
Second, from that link, lots of Europe also consider America as just one. From personal experience, people in Africa also consider America as just one continent.
And last, calling Australia a continent? WTF?
Oceania at least includes New Zealand and all the other islands.