No, what he's arguing is that the context is effectively destroyed. The methods are good enough to get 80% of the meaning, but the other 20% is lost if all you do is thumb through the search results. The only way to restore that other 20% is to read the actual documents themselves, using human reason and judgement to come to logical conclusions (assuming the reader is capable of such a thing in the first place).
Okay, let's start by going back to mail-bombing the service the spammer is using to dump his mail. Hey, it brings down the ISP and inconveniences the customers, but damn me if it isn't effective at getting a spam account closed down right quick. I did this a number of times in the 'old days' when an ISP proved unresponsive to reason.
Oh, wait - mailbombing is *illegal*, even if it's in retaliation for spam from a stupid or amoral ISP. But spamming, which is a mail-bomb en masse, *isn't*.
So I'm a terrorist; the spammer is a savvy capitalist.
Outlook??? Yeah, right; I use Outlook all the time at work and it's a disjointed pain in the ass, poorly organized and badly designed. Somebody really had their head up their ass when they thought this sucker up.
Which tells you just about everything you want to know about Microsoft employees, and explains a great many things about the software these employees 'innovate'....
The Segway should've been named "the Geekmobile". If anyone had any doubts about your status as an utter geek, this thing would put them to rest in a heartbeat.
But then, I live in the Pacific Northwest where it rains 9 months out of the year. Only a freakin' idiot would use one of these things during the rainy season, e.g., any month but June, July, or August.
a) assume your opinions on any topic are more important than they actually are, and
b) be enamored of your own opinions, especially when repeated expressed to your own personal choir.
Writers are the ultimate mental masturbators, eager to expound on the wisdom of their views while rarely getting off their asses and doing anything about them.
Ah, beautiful RuneQuest...I dumped D&D the day I found the original RuneQuest book. No levels, no experience points, no killing things to get better at skills, no ridiculous prohibitions ("dude, a mage can't wear plate armor" "Why not?" "Um, cuz, well, like it interferes with his magic or something....").
I took that game, promptly combined it with the best elements from "Aftermath", and made a game system that some of my friends and I played until I was 19. Damn, but that was a long time ago.
Still, if RQ were still around I'd buy some copies just for old times sake....
I wonder if Gary has gotten around to admitting that just about every single creative idea he incorporated into D&D was first stolen from Dave Arneson? And later, the guy who wrote "Metamorphosis: Alpha", Jim Ward?
Of course, y'all are probably so young these names mean nothing to you. Young geeks these days, they have no culture....
In case you haven't noticed, your argument against donated labor as undermining the software industry also applies to *all charity work which does the same thing*. Donated labor is donated labor regardless of where the donation is directed.
Really, now - are you going to claim that donating labor to charity, church, and neighborhood organization is promoting communism because otherwise that labor could be sold and profited from? Or does this only apply to projects which might threaten your personal livelihood?
Documentation. What I wouldn't give for good, comprehensive documentation written in plain English and rife with plenty of examples. Even a programmer like myself sometimes wonders if the documentation for a function or app wasn't deliberately written to confuse the reader. And most of the web sites that work to counter this basic lack of command of the English language often fall short in a number of ways.
Projects should work to enlist someone who has at least a minimal ability with the language to write documentation, as well as a non-programmer to work the app/function over and ask the questions that would never occur to a non-programmer. Examples, for those of you who want them:
- how do you turn the GNOME warnings off when you log into the desktop as root?
- in NFS how do you specify "mount the entire file system *except* for directories x, y, and z?"
- in NFS how to you mount machine b's window partition on machine a without having to specify a second NFS mount just for that partition (e.g., why doesn't a mounted windows partition show up on the first NFS mount, even if the mount specifies/)?
- what is a 'spurious 8259 interrupt on IRQ 7' and should I be concerned?
- why do I get a modprobe error relating to the sound card when I start KDE, but not GNOME? The error seems to have no effect on anything as sound works just fine.
So, not only good documentation but documentation that answers the questions that the 'average' user will come up with, like the ones above. (BTW: all of these have answers. But they rank as ones which took me awhile to find.)
Projects shouldn't dismiss the non-programmer but welcome them to write the documentation (and provide the pretty pictures) that so many programmers seem utterly atrocious at producing. And, of course, to ask the questions that just don't occur to computer-savvy folks.
Rant-time is over, back to work, nothing to see here....
Or install Opera instead. It's a better browser than Mozilla and despite the 'black box' you can readily test it to see that it isn't sending your information anywhere.
It wasn't a joke intended for *your* benefit. After all, you're one of the religious cultists attempting to spread his radical beliefs by imposing them on the children of others via the vehicle of school.
What a crock. Disease was introduced *accidentally* in the early 1500's and pretty much wiped out most Native Americans by the beginning of the 1600's. Using polio-infected blankets against certain tribes didn't take place until the 1800's. By this time the flu had already done it's work.
There were no concentration camps, no ovens, no Gestapo. The number of people actually killed - as in, murdered - by Europeans can be measured in the tens of thousands. This isn't insignificant but it's by no means unique in history. As I said before the Assyrians did much, much worse and with more brutality than even the Spaniards were capable of. Hell, the Incans and the Aztecs *both* committed atrocities far beyond anything than Cortez and company envisioned, and these boys were complete lunatics.
This pathetic attempt at revisionist history isn't appreciated.
And please note: accepting historical fact by no means exempts people from moral action *today*. Passing laws to protect Native Americans and provide them with equal opportunity are a sign of ethical behavior; indulging in blame-fests is a way of avoiding concrete action which might affect one's pocketbook. Blaming ourselves for what thousands of peoples have done during the entirety of human history is a great way to 'accept responsility' without having to take corrective action to make the lives of Native Americans *alive now, today* more equitable - especially when self-blame is free and money is not.
I do not hold myself responsible for what my ancestors did to Native Americans, intentionally or unintentionally. Life isn't fair, and such is the lot of the conquered. I do, however, blame myself if I don't act to improve the lives of Native Americans in our nation today. So lets stop whining and start doing something constructive, eh?
To paraphrase my earlier reply: the original post was a joke for those who aren't humor-impaired.
Max
Anyone actually read Cluetrain Manifesto?
on
The Bombast Transcripts
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Anyone actually read this book? It's vague, overgeneralized bullshit littered with yuppie feel-good terms from start to finish. Wildly popular with the folks who don't want to deal with dry, boring economic facts - why bother when you can get excited over hype?
Of course, we know just how much of a clue the author had. Derive what little advice you can from the book amidst all that clever misdirection and non-speak and then compare that to what happened during the dot-bomb....
So what? How is this any different than what a conquering people have done to a conquered people a thousand times in the past? You're saying that scale alone somehow makes the whole thing more 'evil'?
And 80% of the Native American mortality wasn't due to slavery, or genocide, or the use of biological weapons. It was due to the fact that Native Americans had no resistance to common, resistable diseases among Europeans, like the flu. By the time Lewis and Clark reached the Willamette Valley - the first white guys to see alot of America - almost 90% of the valley population had been killed by diseases spread from Native American population to Native American population across the continent. Not smallpox, which never reached the Willamette valley, but primarily the flu.
The Native Americans were no more peaceful than any other people on earth. In fact, a half-dozen or so various confederations were bloodily at war when the Europeans arrived. The Incans and Aztects brutally enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands of people, allowing the Spaniards to pick up huge armies of allies when they marched upon these empires - because the Native Americans hated each other so much.
They were not peaceful or noble or any different than any other human population you care to look at. The only difference between them and, say, all the native peoples the Assyrians wiped out is that some subset of Americans has decided to engage in self-flagellation over the issue.
The desire to have the government control the schools is only a desire by evil people who insist on keeping the status quo, because it already suits them.
The desire to teach a particular brand of religion in public school regardless of the wishes of *all* parents is the purest expression of evil in it's insistence on forcing its religious beliefs on others. It's about power, control, and the indoctrination of children into the cult favored by the majority.
Jeez, and people keep telling me that's what the Christian god demands. Are you saying that Slashdot is a tool of god? Perhaps an addendum to the New Testament?
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the links! Can't wait to go through them.
Max
No, what he's arguing is that the context is effectively destroyed. The methods are good enough to get 80% of the meaning, but the other 20% is lost if all you do is thumb through the search results. The only way to restore that other 20% is to read the actual documents themselves, using human reason and judgement to come to logical conclusions (assuming the reader is capable of such a thing in the first place).
Max
Okay, let's start by going back to mail-bombing the service the spammer is using to dump his mail. Hey, it brings down the ISP and inconveniences the customers, but damn me if it isn't effective at getting a spam account closed down right quick. I did this a number of times in the 'old days' when an ISP proved unresponsive to reason.
Oh, wait - mailbombing is *illegal*, even if it's in retaliation for spam from a stupid or amoral ISP. But spamming, which is a mail-bomb en masse, *isn't*.
So I'm a terrorist; the spammer is a savvy capitalist.
Go figure.
Max
Since when is being an MCSE anything other than an indication that you're too incompetent to be working in the field in the firts place?
Max
Outlook??? Yeah, right; I use Outlook all the time at work and it's a disjointed pain in the ass, poorly organized and badly designed. Somebody really had their head up their ass when they thought this sucker up.
Max
most people at MS love steveb and his tricks
Which tells you just about everything you want to know about Microsoft employees, and explains a great many things about the software these employees 'innovate'....
Max
Some of the letters supporting Microsoft are from people who have long since died.
Ah, so that's where the idea for the game "Resident Evil" came from....
Max
The Segway should've been named "the Geekmobile". If anyone had any doubts about your status as an utter geek, this thing would put them to rest in a heartbeat.
But then, I live in the Pacific Northwest where it rains 9 months out of the year. Only a freakin' idiot would use one of these things during the rainy season, e.g., any month but June, July, or August.
Max
I dunno if there's a slashdot anti-microsoft conspiracy, but I do know what BillG fanboys do in their spare time....
Max
Pots, kettles and all that.
I speak from experience.
Max
It's a common curse among writers to:
a) assume your opinions on any topic are more important than they actually are, and
b) be enamored of your own opinions, especially when repeated expressed to your own personal choir.
Writers are the ultimate mental masturbators, eager to expound on the wisdom of their views while rarely getting off their asses and doing anything about them.
Max
Ah, beautiful RuneQuest...I dumped D&D the day I found the original RuneQuest book. No levels, no experience points, no killing things to get better at skills, no ridiculous prohibitions ("dude, a mage can't wear plate armor" "Why not?" "Um, cuz, well, like it interferes with his magic or something....").
I took that game, promptly combined it with the best elements from "Aftermath", and made a game system that some of my friends and I played until I was 19. Damn, but that was a long time ago.
Still, if RQ were still around I'd buy some copies just for old times sake....
Max
Gygax a genius! Oooooh, but I had a good chuckle over that one!
Max
I wonder if Gary has gotten around to admitting that just about every single creative idea he incorporated into D&D was first stolen from Dave Arneson? And later, the guy who wrote "Metamorphosis: Alpha", Jim Ward?
Of course, y'all are probably so young these names mean nothing to you. Young geeks these days, they have no culture....
Max
But Why don't they try a little rebellion?
Perhaps because we like to eat?
Max
In case you haven't noticed, your argument against donated labor as undermining the software industry also applies to *all charity work which does the same thing*. Donated labor is donated labor regardless of where the donation is directed.
Really, now - are you going to claim that donating labor to charity, church, and neighborhood organization is promoting communism because otherwise that labor could be sold and profited from? Or does this only apply to projects which might threaten your personal livelihood?
Max
Documentation. What I wouldn't give for good, comprehensive documentation written in plain English and rife with plenty of examples. Even a programmer like myself sometimes wonders if the documentation for a function or app wasn't deliberately written to confuse the reader. And most of the web sites that work to counter this basic lack of command of the English language often fall short in a number of ways.
/)?
Projects should work to enlist someone who has at least a minimal ability with the language to write documentation, as well as a non-programmer to work the app/function over and ask the questions that would never occur to a non-programmer. Examples, for those of you who want them:
- how do you turn the GNOME warnings off when you log into the desktop as root?
- in NFS how do you specify "mount the entire file system *except* for directories x, y, and z?"
- in NFS how to you mount machine b's window partition on machine a without having to specify a second NFS mount just for that partition (e.g., why doesn't a mounted windows partition show up on the first NFS mount, even if the mount specifies
- what is a 'spurious 8259 interrupt on IRQ 7' and should I be concerned?
- why do I get a modprobe error relating to the sound card when I start KDE, but not GNOME? The error seems to have no effect on anything as sound works just fine.
So, not only good documentation but documentation that answers the questions that the 'average' user will come up with, like the ones above. (BTW: all of these have answers. But they rank as ones which took me awhile to find.)
Projects shouldn't dismiss the non-programmer but welcome them to write the documentation (and provide the pretty pictures) that so many programmers seem utterly atrocious at producing. And, of course, to ask the questions that just don't occur to computer-savvy folks.
Rant-time is over, back to work, nothing to see here....
Max
Or install Opera instead. It's a better browser than Mozilla and despite the 'black box' you can readily test it to see that it isn't sending your information anywhere.
Max
It wasn't a joke intended for *your* benefit. After all, you're one of the religious cultists attempting to spread his radical beliefs by imposing them on the children of others via the vehicle of school.
You, sir, are an anti-Constitutional nutcase.
Max
What a crock. Disease was introduced *accidentally* in the early 1500's and pretty much wiped out most Native Americans by the beginning of the 1600's. Using polio-infected blankets against certain tribes didn't take place until the 1800's. By this time the flu had already done it's work.
There were no concentration camps, no ovens, no Gestapo. The number of people actually killed - as in, murdered - by Europeans can be measured in the tens of thousands. This isn't insignificant but it's by no means unique in history. As I said before the Assyrians did much, much worse and with more brutality than even the Spaniards were capable of. Hell, the Incans and the Aztecs *both* committed atrocities far beyond anything than Cortez and company envisioned, and these boys were complete lunatics.
This pathetic attempt at revisionist history isn't appreciated.
And please note: accepting historical fact by no means exempts people from moral action *today*. Passing laws to protect Native Americans and provide them with equal opportunity are a sign of ethical behavior; indulging in blame-fests is a way of avoiding concrete action which might affect one's pocketbook. Blaming ourselves for what thousands of peoples have done during the entirety of human history is a great way to 'accept responsility' without having to take corrective action to make the lives of Native Americans *alive now, today* more equitable - especially when self-blame is free and money is not.
I do not hold myself responsible for what my ancestors did to Native Americans, intentionally or unintentionally. Life isn't fair, and such is the lot of the conquered. I do, however, blame myself if I don't act to improve the lives of Native Americans in our nation today. So lets stop whining and start doing something constructive, eh?
Max
To paraphrase my earlier reply: the original post was a joke for those who aren't humor-impaired.
Max
Anyone actually read this book? It's vague, overgeneralized bullshit littered with yuppie feel-good terms from start to finish. Wildly popular with the folks who don't want to deal with dry, boring economic facts - why bother when you can get excited over hype?
Of course, we know just how much of a clue the author had. Derive what little advice you can from the book amidst all that clever misdirection and non-speak and then compare that to what happened during the dot-bomb....
Max
So what? How is this any different than what a conquering people have done to a conquered people a thousand times in the past? You're saying that scale alone somehow makes the whole thing more 'evil'?
And 80% of the Native American mortality wasn't due to slavery, or genocide, or the use of biological weapons. It was due to the fact that Native Americans had no resistance to common, resistable diseases among Europeans, like the flu. By the time Lewis and Clark reached the Willamette Valley - the first white guys to see alot of America - almost 90% of the valley population had been killed by diseases spread from Native American population to Native American population across the continent. Not smallpox, which never reached the Willamette valley, but primarily the flu.
The Native Americans were no more peaceful than any other people on earth. In fact, a half-dozen or so various confederations were bloodily at war when the Europeans arrived. The Incans and Aztects brutally enslaved and murdered hundreds of thousands of people, allowing the Spaniards to pick up huge armies of allies when they marched upon these empires - because the Native Americans hated each other so much.
They were not peaceful or noble or any different than any other human population you care to look at. The only difference between them and, say, all the native peoples the Assyrians wiped out is that some subset of Americans has decided to engage in self-flagellation over the issue.
Max
The desire to have the government control the schools is only a desire by evil people who insist on keeping the status quo, because it already suits them.
The desire to teach a particular brand of religion in public school regardless of the wishes of *all* parents is the purest expression of evil in it's insistence on forcing its religious beliefs on others. It's about power, control, and the indoctrination of children into the cult favored by the majority.
Max
and *YOU* *MUST* *OBEY*.
Jeez, and people keep telling me that's what the Christian god demands. Are you saying that Slashdot is a tool of god? Perhaps an addendum to the New Testament?
Max