Sounds like a perfect example of how our idea of "securing for limited times... the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" is utterly failing to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," which is the only justification for patent and copyright given in the Constitution.
and most importantly it's been shown that Bush would have ultimately won any Florida recount anyway!
That is a lie. Also, anyone -- anyone -- who supports unverifiable electronic voting should be shot.
What the heck? How does an assertion about the vote count of Florida automatically mean the person supports electronic voting, verifiable or unverifiable??
Or are particular judges just considered "swing votes" because they aren't consistent in the leaning of their decisions?
Uh, it's sort of like that. Basically, if you assume that every person and every issue fit into a linear liberal-conservative spectrum, the "swing votes" are the ones who tend to wind up on different sides of the midpoints at different times.
Another way they are classified is by assuming that any justice appointed by a Republican is or should be expected to be conservative/Republican, and any justice appointed by a Democrat is or should be expected to be liberal/Democratic. Given that assumption, I believe there's two or three justices who sometimes don't line up with where they would be expected to vote.
I've got lots of pet peeves about grammar and spelling, but none so much as seeing the word "ammendment." Folks, after you "amend" something, you have an "amendment," not an "ammendment." There are ten "amendments" in the Bill of Rights, but there are no "ammendments" there at all to protect our freedoms.
Geeks discuss politics a lot, at least nowadays, and one thing that particularly troubles me is that this spelling seems to come from otherwise well-educated people, the kind of people who know that "should've" is not "should of," who know that "a lot" is the opposite of "a little" and is definitely not "alot," and who can find the grammar mistake I left in this sentence due to being too lazy to reword it.
Given that I keep seeing this mistake from people who obviously take some measure of care with their spelling and grammar, I'm constantly led to wonder if "ammendment" is a correct but archaic spelling, or a spelling from Commonwealth English or something. If someone can verify this, I would love to know, because then it might stop bothering me.
The number one draw for me is the ability to save to DVD. Several DVRs offer that now, and my wife and I own a Tivo with DVD-recorder, currently on extended loan to my inlaws. We liked it a lot, but there were some bugs in the implementation.
For example, if you record two three hour shows and want to burn them to DVD, each show will be split into a two-hour segment for the first DVD and a one-hour segment for the second. You should be able to combine two one-hour second segments to make one DVD, but you cannot. The minute you select a show longer than two hours, you are stuck in a sequence of events that has you select which segment to burn, and then burn, with no option to get back and add another segment. (At least if you have shows shorter than two hours, you can combine them.)
So I guess it's no longer the DVD-burning feature that's a draw for me, but the hackability. Tivo may never fix that problem, but if it exists in MythTV or Freevo I know it will be an annoyance to other people as well and will eventually be fixed. (Or I could take a stab at it myself.)
The other big draw, as you mentioned, is the commercial skipping, which is all the more important when you're talking about burning DVDs. Basically what I want to do is collect television shows I like and make my own season sets.
(Another minor draw I can think of is the ability to add chapter breaks. I don't know if that exists, yet, but I bet it will.)
Weird. I read a lot of stuff I enjoy on weblogs, none of which are supported by advertisements. Those and other sites leapt immediately to mind the minute I read your question about what would we do if the advertising supported sites went away.
Is there like an objective definition of what deserves to be "content" out there? Or is it only those who actually think of advertising as a good thing who are allowed to say?
Maybe you think there's nothing of value on the web, but maybe not everyone thinks like you?/p
I understand the marketing concept just fine and have used it myself on occasion. But I'm saying that most stuff of the type you spewed is just hoopla. And I'm betting there's better than even odds yours is, too. Like I said, you probably think Flash is cool.
BTW, if you're not distributing an open source application, why is it that your original post mentioned closed source as an alternative?
How can you say slashdot hasn't had advertising in a while unless you are blocking it...I see it just fine.
have you noticed that our favorite little site here has advertising?
Not in a while.
So, maybe you can use a program to block the ad images and such, but all you are doing is killing the site you love so much just a little.
Oh, I see. You didn't even read my post.
You know, the biggest fallacy in your troll post is the idea that you need ads to give open source software away. Once it's released and under the license, anyone can redistribute it. Remember? Or you can put it up on sourceforge. Remind me again why you need ads?
Point 1: put up or shut up. All you can say is that it's kickass and would make us all happy. This is just as bad as marketroid buzzwords. Instead of "fully-enabled-proactive" crap, we get "kickass" crap. What are you implementing? Let the public decide if they agree that it's great. Your probably one of those people who still can't figure out why Flash is not the be-all and end-all for web USERS (since you think it is for the web DEVELOPERS).
Point 2: if you want to support your site with ads, great. Where did you get the idea that I said you shouldn't be allowed to put ads on your site? (Now, whether or not I want to view them is my decision.)
Point 3: if it's really so great, ask for user donations. Set up a paypal tip jar. If you don't think that can handle it, what the heck kind of bandwidth costs are you expecting? And, referencing point 1, do you think you might be overestimating.
Advertising to fund content is not a sustainable business model as too many people are willing to provide genuinely free content.
Thank you! That one sentence alone is the most important response in this entire thread!
If all advertising supported content went away tomorrow, I wouldn't care. I doubt it will go away.
Yes, slashdot is advertising supported, but it's also community supported. It could survive. Or something better could come around.
I'm now blocking all ads. I was being nice about it; for awhile I only blocked ads on sites that showed me images my wife didn't want me to see. But then folks found a way around Firefox's popup blocking, and I declared fullscale war, installing Adblock and using Filterset.G.
Now, just this morning, I've installed Noscript, to get rid of annoying Javascript. (Some of which was actually preventing sites from loading.) I just visited a USA today article that had 23 script tags! What is up with this non-value-adding web crap?
Anyone reading the first page of the original Star Wars novel will know that the Emperor's name is Palpatine. Of course, many won't read the novels. (But I'd say there's a good chance some might pick it up and see the first page.)
Obiwan shouldn't have even told Owen and Beru who the child was.
Maybe he didn't.
Even if they insisted that they wouldn't take in a strange baby he could have said that he was Annakin's son but they had a Naboo marriage and they take the name of the mother so he's Luke Amidala or whatever.
That probably wouldn't have been much more of an effective name to hide under. In that case it probably would have been best to try that story but lie and give Amidala a different surname, hoping that the Lars family either never heard her name or forgot it.
Besides, if Owen wasn't too keen on Luke's father wouldn't he also want Luke's last name as far from possible to his true name?
Makes sense to me, and having his nephew carry that name probably grated on him all those years. But sometimes a man caves in when his wife insists.:)
Besides, Owen's stepmother's maiden name was Skywalker, and it's clear from at least the novelization of Attack of the Clones that he did think fondly of her.
Anyway, this is all just theoretical. My feeling is that Obi-Wan knew through either the force or through logic (perhaps Skywalker is a common name, or perhaps Tatooine is just so remote there was no chance) that it would be safe to call Luke "Skywalker," and that he gave him that name so that when the time came Luke and Anakin would have no doubt that they were father and son. That was important to the final plan (of the Force, at least, if not of Obi-Wan) that Luke would redeem his father.
BTW, when was the time going to be right?
Ah, you only know that when you listen to the Living Force, my young padawan.;)
Why not have Obiwan give little Luke some Jedi lessons while he was growing up on Tantooine to prepare him to fight two of the most powerful dark Jedi ever rather than a few sage lessons from Yoda?
When you're a Skywalker chock-full of midi-chlorians, you're a fast learner.:)
Besides, maybe Obi-Wan was there behind the scenes manipulating things to provide some subconscious training. Luke did learn to be quite a pilot shooting wamp-rats in Beggar's Canyon. Luke observes in one of the novels that he suspects Obi-Wan was occasionally conversing secretly with Beru behind Owen's back to give her advice on raising a Force-sensitive child.
And in the end, Luke didn't need to know to fight. He needed to know to refuse to fight.
The Emperor, apparently. Would you really go to all the trouble of saving the child of the second in command of the Evil Empire and not say, "Oh, call him Luke Bumpkin just for safety's sake ok?"
Perhaps Obi-Wan did and Beru and Owen didn't listen. (Or perhaps just Beru. Owen didn't seem to keen on Luke's father.)
Nowhere that I know of in the entire Star Wars universe is it stated that it was Obi-Wan's choice for Luke to retain his father's surname.
Not to mention a couple of hundred comments from trolls saying, "See? I told you Wikipedia would never work! They need to make a lot of changes if they want to be considered professional. I'm so snooty I could never contribute to a project like this!
Given that the page will not be updated and there are no active users on it whose privacy has been compromised, why do you persist in branding this an ongoing activity?
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like a perfect example of how our idea of "securing for limited times ... the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" is utterly failing to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts," which is the only justification for patent and copyright given in the Constitution.
and most importantly it's been shown that Bush would have ultimately won any Florida recount anyway!
That is a lie. Also, anyone -- anyone -- who supports unverifiable electronic voting should be shot.
What the heck? How does an assertion about the vote count of Florida automatically mean the person supports electronic voting, verifiable or unverifiable??
American citizens, this is why the rest of the world has problems with your country.
For that matter, that is why I have problems with my country.
You'd think I wouldn't have to have that kind of fear, with my own party in power.
Or are particular judges just considered "swing votes" because they aren't consistent in the leaning of their decisions?
Uh, it's sort of like that. Basically, if you assume that every person and every issue fit into a linear liberal-conservative spectrum, the "swing votes" are the ones who tend to wind up on different sides of the midpoints at different times.
Another way they are classified is by assuming that any justice appointed by a Republican is or should be expected to be conservative/Republican, and any justice appointed by a Democrat is or should be expected to be liberal/Democratic. Given that assumption, I believe there's two or three justices who sometimes don't line up with where they would be expected to vote.
I've got lots of pet peeves about grammar and spelling, but none so much as seeing the word "ammendment." Folks, after you "amend" something, you have an "amendment," not an "ammendment." There are ten "amendments" in the Bill of Rights, but there are no "ammendments" there at all to protect our freedoms.
Geeks discuss politics a lot, at least nowadays, and one thing that particularly troubles me is that this spelling seems to come from otherwise well-educated people, the kind of people who know that "should've" is not "should of," who know that "a lot" is the opposite of "a little" and is definitely not "alot," and who can find the grammar mistake I left in this sentence due to being too lazy to reword it.
Given that I keep seeing this mistake from people who obviously take some measure of care with their spelling and grammar, I'm constantly led to wonder if "ammendment" is a correct but archaic spelling, or a spelling from Commonwealth English or something. If someone can verify this, I would love to know, because then it might stop bothering me.
The number one draw for me is the ability to save to DVD. Several DVRs offer that now, and my wife and I own a Tivo with DVD-recorder, currently on extended loan to my inlaws. We liked it a lot, but there were some bugs in the implementation.
For example, if you record two three hour shows and want to burn them to DVD, each show will be split into a two-hour segment for the first DVD and a one-hour segment for the second. You should be able to combine two one-hour second segments to make one DVD, but you cannot. The minute you select a show longer than two hours, you are stuck in a sequence of events that has you select which segment to burn, and then burn, with no option to get back and add another segment. (At least if you have shows shorter than two hours, you can combine them.)
So I guess it's no longer the DVD-burning feature that's a draw for me, but the hackability. Tivo may never fix that problem, but if it exists in MythTV or Freevo I know it will be an annoyance to other people as well and will eventually be fixed. (Or I could take a stab at it myself.)
The other big draw, as you mentioned, is the commercial skipping, which is all the more important when you're talking about burning DVDs. Basically what I want to do is collect television shows I like and make my own season sets.
(Another minor draw I can think of is the ability to add chapter breaks. I don't know if that exists, yet, but I bet it will.)
It would seem that the entire field of machine learning is prior art...
19 titles by Graham Green. Sounds nice. But missing One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Incomplete.
Weird. I read a lot of stuff I enjoy on weblogs, none of which are supported by advertisements. Those and other sites leapt immediately to mind the minute I read your question about what would we do if the advertising supported sites went away.
Is there like an objective definition of what deserves to be "content" out there? Or is it only those who actually think of advertising as a good thing who are allowed to say?
Maybe you think there's nothing of value on the web, but maybe not everyone thinks like you?/p
I understand the marketing concept just fine and have used it myself on occasion. But I'm saying that most stuff of the type you spewed is just hoopla. And I'm betting there's better than even odds yours is, too. Like I said, you probably think Flash is cool.
BTW, if you're not distributing an open source application, why is it that your original post mentioned closed source as an alternative?
How can you say slashdot hasn't had advertising in a while unless you are blocking it...I see it just fine.
Wake up, pay attention, and try to follow, okay?
But keep in mind, they can always take their toys and go home, and where will that leave you?
Playing with the better toys that never used this model, in a cleaner room.
have you noticed that our favorite little site here has advertising?
Not in a while.
So, maybe you can use a program to block the ad images and such, but all you are doing is killing the site you love so much just a little.
Oh, I see. You didn't even read my post.
You know, the biggest fallacy in your troll post is the idea that you need ads to give open source software away. Once it's released and under the license, anyone can redistribute it. Remember? Or you can put it up on sourceforge. Remind me again why you need ads?
For those bitching about having to view ANY ads, please elaborate on all of the free content you have contributed to the web.
As of now, 1358 comments to slashdot.
I run a user-donation-supported web forum.Two or three small open source programs.
My presence. :)
Same old troll.
Point 1: put up or shut up. All you can say is that it's kickass and would make us all happy. This is just as bad as marketroid buzzwords. Instead of "fully-enabled-proactive" crap, we get "kickass" crap. What are you implementing? Let the public decide if they agree that it's great. Your probably one of those people who still can't figure out why Flash is not the be-all and end-all for web USERS (since you think it is for the web DEVELOPERS).
Point 2: if you want to support your site with ads, great. Where did you get the idea that I said you shouldn't be allowed to put ads on your site? (Now, whether or not I want to view them is my decision.)
Point 3: if it's really so great, ask for user donations. Set up a paypal tip jar. If you don't think that can handle it, what the heck kind of bandwidth costs are you expecting? And, referencing point 1, do you think you might be overestimating.
Advertising to fund content is not a sustainable business model as too many people are willing to provide genuinely free content.
Thank you! That one sentence alone is the most important response in this entire thread!
If all advertising supported content went away tomorrow, I wouldn't care. I doubt it will go away.
Yes, slashdot is advertising supported, but it's also community supported. It could survive. Or something better could come around.
I'm now blocking all ads. I was being nice about it; for awhile I only blocked ads on sites that showed me images my wife didn't want me to see. But then folks found a way around Firefox's popup blocking, and I declared fullscale war, installing Adblock and using Filterset.G.
Now, just this morning, I've installed Noscript, to get rid of annoying Javascript. (Some of which was actually preventing sites from loading.) I just visited a USA today article that had 23 script tags! What is up with this non-value-adding web crap?
My company is now blocking BugMeNot. The SmartFilter category is "Criminal Skills."
Trying to port Linux to various portable devices is hot nowadays.
You're new here, aren't you?
Yes, the article considers GRUB only in the context of Open Source code imported into Solaris. Of course, that got lost in the edit summary...
Anyone reading the first page of the original Star Wars novel will know that the Emperor's name is Palpatine. Of course, many won't read the novels. (But I'd say there's a good chance some might pick it up and see the first page.)
I'm glad to find I'm not the only one out there who has an issue with that.
Given the term "Wintel," I prefer "Aintel."
Obiwan shouldn't have even told Owen and Beru who the child was.
Maybe he didn't.
Even if they insisted that they wouldn't take in a strange baby he could have said that he was Annakin's son but they had a Naboo marriage and they take the name of the mother so he's Luke Amidala or whatever.
That probably wouldn't have been much more of an effective name to hide under. In that case it probably would have been best to try that story but lie and give Amidala a different surname, hoping that the Lars family either never heard her name or forgot it.
Besides, if Owen wasn't too keen on Luke's father wouldn't he also want Luke's last name as far from possible to his true name?
Makes sense to me, and having his nephew carry that name probably grated on him all those years. But sometimes a man caves in when his wife insists. :)
Besides, Owen's stepmother's maiden name was Skywalker, and it's clear from at least the novelization of Attack of the Clones that he did think fondly of her.
Anyway, this is all just theoretical. My feeling is that Obi-Wan knew through either the force or through logic (perhaps Skywalker is a common name, or perhaps Tatooine is just so remote there was no chance) that it would be safe to call Luke "Skywalker," and that he gave him that name so that when the time came Luke and Anakin would have no doubt that they were father and son. That was important to the final plan (of the Force, at least, if not of Obi-Wan) that Luke would redeem his father.
BTW, when was the time going to be right?
Ah, you only know that when you listen to the Living Force, my young padawan. ;)
Why not have Obiwan give little Luke some Jedi lessons while he was growing up on Tantooine to prepare him to fight two of the most powerful dark Jedi ever rather than a few sage lessons from Yoda?
When you're a Skywalker chock-full of midi-chlorians, you're a fast learner. :)
Besides, maybe Obi-Wan was there behind the scenes manipulating things to provide some subconscious training. Luke did learn to be quite a pilot shooting wamp-rats in Beggar's Canyon. Luke observes in one of the novels that he suspects Obi-Wan was occasionally conversing secretly with Beru behind Owen's back to give her advice on raising a Force-sensitive child.
And in the end, Luke didn't need to know to fight. He needed to know to refuse to fight.
The Emperor, apparently. Would you really go to all the trouble of saving the child of the second in command of the Evil Empire and not say, "Oh, call him Luke Bumpkin just for safety's sake ok?"
Perhaps Obi-Wan did and Beru and Owen didn't listen. (Or perhaps just Beru. Owen didn't seem to keen on Luke's father.)
Nowhere that I know of in the entire Star Wars universe is it stated that it was Obi-Wan's choice for Luke to retain his father's surname.
And this merits a slashdot front-page story?
Not to mention a couple of hundred comments from trolls saying, "See? I told you Wikipedia would never work! They need to make a lot of changes if they want to be considered professional. I'm so snooty I could never contribute to a project like this!
It's a slashdot tradition, now.
Given that the page will not be updated and there are no active users on it whose privacy has been compromised, why do you persist in branding this an ongoing activity?