I find Our system of commerce is based on transparency. The customer has all the relevant facts so that he or she can make an informed decision. When sellers keep information secret that system breaks down.
Since when did a car dealer provide all of the relevant facts in a trasparent way? MSRP is a joke on most cars, but it's only word of mouth that informed me so, I've never seen anything at a car dealer to make me think I shouldn't pay sticker unless there's some incentive sale or something.
You cannot haggle on the internet. Most sites do not have a way to offer an alternative price. So the price posted is the one you have to accept if you want to purchase from that site.
I don't think you can haggle at a department store. But if you want to haggle with an online entity, call their toll-free number and haggle with the customer help desk.
Most of this is off the topic of the article, since it really pointed to a differences in wealth and access to the school rather than the amount of homework as the deciding factor.
Anyway, I can see how you got yourself to view this as a massive cultural failure, but I would tend to disagree.
It seems to me that despite having hundreds of years of schooling/teaching experience to draw from the educational system still fails to recognize how to teach children differently. What I mean is that some learn by listening to the lecture, some learn by reading the text, etc. Not only does the teacher make a difference but so does the child. Gross generalizations are not helping.
In addition there's no real help for the parents, whether they're willing or not. We teach our kids based on our experiences and not much else. Did I do homework? Not until College when I paid for every class myself. I finished high school in the bottom half of 500+ students, but I'm no failure. What frustrates me now is that I can get books to help me be a better parent, but where do I go to be a better at facilitating my childs education? And what if they don't care? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I can force my child to school, but I can't make them learn.
By the way the personal responsibility is hard to convey to children, who really can't fathom how learning geometry, Shakespear, or Astronoym is goint to adversely affect their life, when they haven't lived one yet.
By the way (again) having read certain books (like Shakespear) has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just a culturally weighted topic that let's snobs think you're uneducated.
Good points. You're looking for the given balance in what is RMS extremism. However, from the quote on his home page
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
You can see how he's pushing hard to one side to make an effect on the extremists of the other side, and I would even say that for RMS it's not just about ethics it's about principles, which is the difference between him and us. Not that we don't have principles, our are just different. Anything less consistent from RMS would not only be less effective, but he would then be viewed as hypocritical and "lose face" if you will. So while you and I comfortably live in our reality, it may not be so comfortable without people like RMS willing to fight the good (hard, continuous) fight. There's a great saying in America - "Freedom is not free".
Be well! And I'd still respect your opinion no matter the size of your/. userid:)
Interesting post. I follow the logic, but here's my beef with what you've stated.
The problem is that though Free Software has become much more mainstream, that mainstreaming has been led by the Open Source banner, because they are open to economic argumentation.
I may be wrong, but Stallman isn't against making money. He's against losing freedom. The point of open source, to me anyway, is that you can make a business model around it without locking up the source code. Open source code should lead to shared ideas, common formats, and configurable software (meaning you can modify it for you without waiting for the owner to decide your needs are worth developing for). Freedom comes in lots of forms, like travelling the U.S. without having to show papers. Yes bus, train and airline companies can all make money off of your travel. Hopefully you get the idea.
Just a counterpoint and question to an insightful post.
Counterpoint: I find that Linux (Debian) with KDE to have 3rd party applications that cause it to hang, just like some non-MS created applications cause Win 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP to hang. This never seems to happen on my Mac. Maybe I don't use it enough, maybe there aren't 3rd party apps developed by substandard programmers calling routines poorly or managing memory in odd ways that cause these problems, or maybe it really is a superior product proving that the OS and the hardware need high levels of QA together - although the Mac mini is an odd move away from that.
Question: Does MS testing include the download and use of 3rd party products when possible? As this seems to be the largest cause of hangs, reboots, etc.
There are many different types of people in the world. I don't know which one you are, but not everyone can manage well, nor wants to. You sound like you've found what you're happy with. The money you get with a managerial role and no formal training may be offset by increased stress, and frustration at a job that's not necessarily as easy for you nor makes you as happy.
Case in point, as a manager with people under you, you'll have to rate them, listen to them, and be responsible to make them play nicely together. Are you stong with social interaction? Do you listen well? Do people respect you and see you as a leader?
The "Peter Principle" says good people get promoted to their "level of incompetence". Make sure that never applies to you, because you'll be miserable and that will affect the people you manage as well as your new set of co-workers.
Money isn't everything. One serious illness caused by stress can wipe it all out faster than the IRS.
Agreed. So what if the scientists can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans have changed the climate of the world. That's not what will make policy makers change their ways. Wait for the rising tides, cancer rates, and whatever ill natured effects of global warming cause your voter district to move or die so that a politician won't get reelected, and THEN maybe some change will come about. The other option is for big business to lose enough customers that their forced to reduce emissions, but apparently there's not enough people willing to boycott every offending industry due to dependence, which means we're all just killing ourselves. Won't vote them out, won't put them out of business. Will suffer and complain actively!
me. If you RTFA you'll see that unless you were there in the 60's at PARC and other places - Dr. Kay has not only seen way more than you're average slashdotter (pardon the gross generalization I really don't know you that well), unless of course you received a Phd in 1969 and have continually headed some of the brightest technology think tanks in the U.S. I believe Dr. Kay's thoughts are fairly accurate (not that I know what I'm talking about either) and just prove the point that all programmers know - it's always about tradeoffs. Listen to what he says, and if you want to be a better programmer learn more about the history of computer languages.
I'm wondering how the effort it takes to keep all 3 devices sync'd so that they're all valid backups of each other is easier than backing up one all purpose device? Sure there's a time delay in getting a replacement and syncing it up vs. having a less functional backup ready to go immediately (if you happen to be carrying it with you at the time), but how does that justify sync'ing 3 devices rather than backing up 1?
Upper management doesn't need to cut headcount, by firing employees and replacing them with consultants. The great trick with consultants was that it affects a company's accounting by removing long term overhead with something else (I'm certainly no accountant, but one of the company accountants sure made ). That something else is in a different accounting column, which is not a minus (or at least the same kind of minus) when the SEC looks at your balance sheet.
I've seen some of the initial comments here and if you notice that the price of the book is $25 for the printed version, of which Mr. Basham get's $5 (20%) and the publisher gets the rest. Honestly I don't have the time to figure out what LuLu.com's expenses might be (since I have no idea the cost of bandwidth to download 5MB), but this seems like a VERY valid business model for homegrown authors to go to. Good luck to LuLu.com and my they break open the gates of good reading at reasonable costs!!!
Paper, snail mail, hiking boots and such will always exist as needed elements of human life. Thesse predictions are not only short sighted of how it deepens the gap between the have and have nots, but the driving forces in evolution of computer technology are Military and Gaming IMHO. The driving force in real world implementation is probably the online porn industry. And as always the prime force against most of what Dr. Mockapetris states is privacy concerns. Otherwise projects like this April Fools note would already be underway.
Note that my information is just as scientific as his predictions:)
I heard that more people voted for American Idol than the 2000 presidential elections, and it was all done over the phone! This just shouldn't be so difficult.
The real trick to the X prize, if you read the whole article, is that everyone has to get the FAA approval. So if there are any thoughts to other teams forgoing safety to try and beat the clock, think again. Indeed as a long time fan of Rutan, he's been the only real contender in my mind, due to his ability to solve any challenge presented because he thinks completely out of the box. That tail fin which flips up to control descent is a mark of true genius.
I'm always amazed at the ignorance of easily offended people. It's easier to go into a public library and pick up mystery/thriller books by James Patterson (and many many other authors), which I would state are more violent and graphic by way of explicit details in what was done (murder), how it was done and why. Just go look at some of the published Editorials available on his books. The point is that apparently the first ammendment stopped these offended people from making noise about the authors! I fail to see the difference in video games.
I quit soda every 6 months (cold turkey, be prepared with headache medicine when it's unbearable, done when I don't have to work for a few days). The problem is I can't stay away. I don't drink coffee or tea, and decaffeinated soda just doesn't do it, nor is it readily found everywhere regular soda is. The problem with food addictions is that you can't escape them - you've always got to eat and drink. All of the sudden you quit and now you have to be prepared whenever you go somewhere new. So every 6 months or so I quit again, but as a lazy programmer I'm a lazy quitter. Know your limitations, try and plan accordingly.
It's your life, if you only want to stop because other tell you its a good idea, then your probably doomed to failure - it's pretty hard to stop something even when it's your own idea.
What is being challenged through the DMCA? Is it that anyone who tampers with security to exploit the system is to prosecuted?
The problem with that is the reason for checking (tampering with) the security is obviously a sign of malicious intent. How does anyone propose to show that it is not for such? And when giving a talk about vulnerabilities, the DMCA seems to think that you are sharing this information so that everyone will know how to circumvent the security - rather than displaying a problem that needs to be fixed AND avoided by other systems.
Therefore, how could the DMCA be rephrased to show differences in intent, and how do you avoid an abuse of such language - I was only stealing to show how insecure the system was OR no you can't browse my computer files to see if anything there is illegal!
I've read most of the posts at this point in time, and I can't help thinking that the OpenSource methodology is the best way to bring about an intelligent solution at the user and ISP level.
Why screw around with the cost and time of laws that can be hard to write, hard to pass and harder to enforce.
I haven't checked for any opensource projects at the moment, but let's get cracking! Email, ISPs and whatnot are not my forte so I'm going to pay lip service to this idea. But I would think that Slashdot and the other OSDN sites have to deal with this problem, how about sponsoring the place where we can work together to solve it.
Or what about Barry Shein? What have you done to organize a place/project for what seems to me a "very cooperative and willing community" to work on this problem?
Why is open source so freaking stuck on flaming against Microsoft? Is that the reason opensource exists? Isn't LINUX a (forgive the phrase) rip off of UNIX - high cost, great stability, sucky common user (Joe Blow) interface?
Microsoft should be allowed to present because they challenge that open source solutions are not as viable for this or other governments. I beg them to make a good case and convince us all that they have a point. Either the win the debate or they don't. It's really about fair competition no matter what their own objectives/practices are/may be.
Please remember open source is not just freeware for cheapskates. The idea of open source to allow as many inputs to the project as possible is an asset analagous to letting immigrants from many nations into the USA to help make this country great! Does the analogy hold that if a terrorist gets into our country that the overall product is bad? If you believe in free speech than you have to be able to defend the KKK ability to their point of view - also believing that their viewpoint will not dominate the world.
Re:XML frees us from Perl
on
XML and Perl
·
· Score: 1
How do you tell when anything has a false positive match...TESTING
The interesting thing is that MS has been working on strangling the marketplace for years, while the US needed a terrorist attack as the reason to strangle itself. Is this a case of society following the corporations?
Smart seamless technology is fine for engineers, but pratically speacking what happens when your floor filters break and have to pay through the nose to fix them? You go out and buy some little robot to pick up the slack. It's more like a object oriented approach, I put the robot in any room and it does it's task. If it breaks, everything else still works (including the floor).
Great designs need to be practical, I don't want a 500HP engine in my car if I have to remove the alternator to change the oil (no matter what the cost)!
I concur with the assessment. It lies within the realm of monitoring all phone conversations in America let alone the World. Generating contantly growing databases for stupid people isn't worth my tax dollars.
9/11 was sniffed out before it ever happened. There was talk on NPR about something big coming. The trouble is figuring out the specifics, which takes an active spy network. There's no automated solution to catch spies and terrorists. AND there's certainly no way to search all Internet data for suspects. The Whitehouse has enough trouble with presidential death threats coming through email.
Slashdot Mirror
That sir, is an excellent piece of advice. I will strive to do that.
Thank you kindly.
Just some counter points
I find Our system of commerce is based on transparency. The customer has all the relevant facts so that he or she can make an informed decision. When sellers keep information secret that system breaks down.
Since when did a car dealer provide all of the relevant facts in a trasparent way? MSRP is a joke on most cars, but it's only word of mouth that informed me so, I've never seen anything at a car dealer to make me think I shouldn't pay sticker unless there's some incentive sale or something.
You cannot haggle on the internet. Most sites do not have a way to offer an alternative price. So the price posted is the one you have to accept if you want to purchase from that site.
I don't think you can haggle at a department store. But if you want to haggle with an online entity, call their toll-free number and haggle with the customer help desk.
Most of this is off the topic of the article, since it really pointed to a differences in wealth and access to the school rather than the amount of homework as the deciding factor.
Anyway, I can see how you got yourself to view this as a massive cultural failure, but I would tend to disagree.
It seems to me that despite having hundreds of years of schooling/teaching experience to draw from the educational system still fails to recognize how to teach children differently. What I mean is that some learn by listening to the lecture, some learn by reading the text, etc. Not only does the teacher make a difference but so does the child. Gross generalizations are not helping.
In addition there's no real help for the parents, whether they're willing or not. We teach our kids based on our experiences and not much else. Did I do homework? Not until College when I paid for every class myself. I finished high school in the bottom half of 500+ students, but I'm no failure. What frustrates me now is that I can get books to help me be a better parent, but where do I go to be a better at facilitating my childs education? And what if they don't care? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. I can force my child to school, but I can't make them learn.
By the way the personal responsibility is hard to convey to children, who really can't fathom how learning geometry, Shakespear, or Astronoym is goint to adversely affect their life, when they haven't lived one yet.
By the way (again) having read certain books (like Shakespear) has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just a culturally weighted topic that let's snobs think you're uneducated.
Good points. You're looking for the given balance in what is RMS extremism. However, from the quote on his home page
/. userid :)
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
You can see how he's pushing hard to one side to make an effect on the extremists of the other side, and I would even say that for RMS it's not just about ethics it's about principles, which is the difference between him and us. Not that we don't have principles, our are just different. Anything less consistent from RMS would not only be less effective, but he would then be viewed as hypocritical and "lose face" if you will. So while you and I comfortably live in our reality, it may not be so comfortable without people like RMS willing to fight the good (hard, continuous) fight. There's a great saying in America - "Freedom is not free".
Be well! And I'd still respect your opinion no matter the size of your
Interesting post. I follow the logic, but here's my beef with what you've stated.
The problem is that though Free Software has become much more mainstream, that mainstreaming has been led by the Open Source banner, because they are open to economic argumentation.
I may be wrong, but Stallman isn't against making money. He's against losing freedom. The point of open source, to me anyway, is that you can make a business model around it without locking up the source code. Open source code should lead to shared ideas, common formats, and configurable software (meaning you can modify it for you without waiting for the owner to decide your needs are worth developing for). Freedom comes in lots of forms, like travelling the U.S. without having to show papers. Yes bus, train and airline companies can all make money off of your travel. Hopefully you get the idea.
Just a counterpoint and question to an insightful post.
Counterpoint: I find that Linux (Debian) with KDE to have 3rd party applications that cause it to hang, just like some non-MS created applications cause Win 3.1, 95, 98, 2000, XP to hang. This never seems to happen on my Mac. Maybe I don't use it enough, maybe there aren't 3rd party apps developed by substandard programmers calling routines poorly or managing memory in odd ways that cause these problems, or maybe it really is a superior product proving that the OS and the hardware need high levels of QA together - although the Mac mini is an odd move away from that.
Question: Does MS testing include the download and use of 3rd party products when possible? As this seems to be the largest cause of hangs, reboots, etc.
There are many different types of people in the world. I don't know which one you are, but not everyone can manage well, nor wants to. You sound like you've found what you're happy with. The money you get with a managerial role and no formal training may be offset by increased stress, and frustration at a job that's not necessarily as easy for you nor makes you as happy.
Case in point, as a manager with people under you, you'll have to rate them, listen to them, and be responsible to make them play nicely together. Are you stong with social interaction? Do you listen well? Do people respect you and see you as a leader?
The "Peter Principle" says good people get promoted to their "level of incompetence". Make sure that never applies to you, because you'll be miserable and that will affect the people you manage as well as your new set of co-workers.
Money isn't everything. One serious illness caused by stress can wipe it all out faster than the IRS.
Good luck in whatever you decide!
Agreed. So what if the scientists can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans have changed the climate of the world. That's not what will make policy makers change their ways. Wait for the rising tides, cancer rates, and whatever ill natured effects of global warming cause your voter district to move or die so that a politician won't get reelected, and THEN maybe some change will come about. The other option is for big business to lose enough customers that their forced to reduce emissions, but apparently there's not enough people willing to boycott every offending industry due to dependence, which means we're all just killing ourselves. Won't vote them out, won't put them out of business. Will suffer and complain actively!
me. If you RTFA you'll see that unless you were there in the 60's at PARC and other places - Dr. Kay has not only seen way more than you're average slashdotter (pardon the gross generalization I really don't know you that well), unless of course you received a Phd in 1969 and have continually headed some of the brightest technology think tanks in the U.S. I believe Dr. Kay's thoughts are fairly accurate (not that I know what I'm talking about either) and just prove the point that all programmers know - it's always about tradeoffs. Listen to what he says, and if you want to be a better programmer learn more about the history of computer languages.
I'm wondering how the effort it takes to keep all 3 devices sync'd so that they're all valid backups of each other is easier than backing up one all purpose device? Sure there's a time delay in getting a replacement and syncing it up vs. having a less functional backup ready to go immediately (if you happen to be carrying it with you at the time), but how does that justify sync'ing 3 devices rather than backing up 1?
Popular Science last month had an article on de Grey.
At what point do the odds of surgery to lengthen your life begin to lessen your odds of surviving the surgery?
Upper management doesn't need to cut headcount, by firing employees and replacing them with consultants. The great trick with consultants was that it affects a company's accounting by removing long term overhead with something else (I'm certainly no accountant, but one of the company accountants sure made ). That something else is in a different accounting column, which is not a minus (or at least the same kind of minus) when the SEC looks at your balance sheet.
I've seen some of the initial comments here and if you notice that the price of the book is $25 for the printed version, of which Mr. Basham get's $5 (20%) and the publisher gets the rest. Honestly I don't have the time to figure out what LuLu.com's expenses might be (since I have no idea the cost of bandwidth to download 5MB), but this seems like a VERY valid business model for homegrown authors to go to. Good luck to LuLu.com and my they break open the gates of good reading at reasonable costs!!!
Paper, snail mail, hiking boots and such will always exist as needed elements of human life. Thesse predictions are not only short sighted of how it deepens the gap between the have and have nots, but the driving forces in evolution of computer technology are Military and Gaming IMHO. The driving force in real world implementation is probably the online porn industry. And as always the prime force against most of what Dr. Mockapetris states is privacy concerns. Otherwise projects like this April Fools note would already be underway. Note that my information is just as scientific as his predictions :)
I heard that more people voted for American Idol than the 2000 presidential elections, and it was all done over the phone! This just shouldn't be so difficult.
The real trick to the X prize, if you read the whole article, is that everyone has to get the FAA approval. So if there are any thoughts to other teams forgoing safety to try and beat the clock, think again. Indeed as a long time fan of Rutan, he's been the only real contender in my mind, due to his ability to solve any challenge presented because he thinks completely out of the box. That tail fin which flips up to control descent is a mark of true genius.
I'm always amazed at the ignorance of easily offended people. It's easier to go into a public library and pick up mystery/thriller books by James Patterson (and many many other authors), which I would state are more violent and graphic by way of explicit details in what was done (murder), how it was done and why. Just go look at some of the published Editorials available on his books. The point is that apparently the first ammendment stopped these offended people from making noise about the authors! I fail to see the difference in video games.
I quit soda every 6 months (cold turkey, be prepared with headache medicine when it's unbearable, done when I don't have to work for a few days). The problem is I can't stay away. I don't drink coffee or tea, and decaffeinated soda just doesn't do it, nor is it readily found everywhere regular soda is. The problem with food addictions is that you can't escape them - you've always got to eat and drink. All of the sudden you quit and now you have to be prepared whenever you go somewhere new. So every 6 months or so I quit again, but as a lazy programmer I'm a lazy quitter. Know your limitations, try and plan accordingly.
It's your life, if you only want to stop because other tell you its a good idea, then your probably doomed to failure - it's pretty hard to stop something even when it's your own idea.
What is being challenged through the DMCA? Is it that anyone who tampers with security to exploit the system is to prosecuted?
The problem with that is the reason for checking (tampering with) the security is obviously a sign of malicious intent. How does anyone propose to show that it is not for such? And when giving a talk about vulnerabilities, the DMCA seems to think that you are sharing this information so that everyone will know how to circumvent the security - rather than displaying a problem that needs to be fixed AND avoided by other systems.
Therefore, how could the DMCA be rephrased to show differences in intent, and how do you avoid an abuse of such language - I was only stealing to show how insecure the system was OR no you can't browse my computer files to see if anything there is illegal!
I've read most of the posts at this point in time, and I can't help thinking that the OpenSource methodology is the best way to bring about an intelligent solution at the user and ISP level.
Why screw around with the cost and time of laws that can be hard to write, hard to pass and harder to enforce.
I haven't checked for any opensource projects at the moment, but let's get cracking! Email, ISPs and whatnot are not my forte so I'm going to pay lip service to this idea. But I would think that Slashdot and the other OSDN sites have to deal with this problem, how about sponsoring the place where we can work together to solve it.
Or what about Barry Shein? What have you done to organize a place/project for what seems to me a "very cooperative and willing community" to work on this problem?
Why is open source so freaking stuck on flaming against Microsoft? Is that the reason opensource exists? Isn't LINUX a (forgive the phrase) rip off of UNIX - high cost, great stability, sucky common user (Joe Blow) interface?
Microsoft should be allowed to present because they challenge that open source solutions are not as viable for this or other governments. I beg them to make a good case and convince us all that they have a point. Either the win the debate or they don't. It's really about fair competition no matter what their own objectives/practices are/may be.
Please remember open source is not just freeware for cheapskates. The idea of open source to allow as many inputs to the project as possible is an asset analagous to letting immigrants from many nations into the USA to help make this country great! Does the analogy hold that if a terrorist gets into our country that the overall product is bad? If you believe in free speech than you have to be able to defend the KKK ability to their point of view - also believing that their viewpoint will not dominate the world.
How do you tell when anything has a false positive match...TESTING
The interesting thing is that MS has been working on strangling the marketplace for years, while the US needed a terrorist attack as the reason to strangle itself. Is this a case of society following the corporations?
Smart seamless technology is fine for engineers, but pratically speacking what happens when your floor filters break and have to pay through the nose to fix them? You go out and buy some little robot to pick up the slack. It's more like a object oriented approach, I put the robot in any room and it does it's task. If it breaks, everything else still works (including the floor).
Great designs need to be practical, I don't want a 500HP engine in my car if I have to remove the alternator to change the oil (no matter what the cost)!
I concur with the assessment. It lies within the realm of monitoring all phone conversations in America let alone the World. Generating contantly growing databases for stupid people isn't worth my tax dollars.
9/11 was sniffed out before it ever happened. There was talk on NPR about something big coming. The trouble is figuring out the specifics, which takes an active spy network. There's no automated solution to catch spies and terrorists. AND there's certainly no way to search all Internet data for suspects. The Whitehouse has enough trouble with presidential death threats coming through email.