Finally, comes the bull crap that you shouldn't smack them one when they're out of line, and all this touchy feely studies that claim corporal punishment is unnecessary.
I've never had to smack around a kid - any kid - to enforce my rules, nor threaten to do so. Restrain on rare occasions sure, but that's it.
Beatings are for losers who never should've had a kid in the first place. If you can't figure how to instill discipline in children without knocking them around, you really shouldn't be polluting the gene pool in the first place.
Far better than the extremely limited system of organizing things in folders.
I don't see how this is limited. If you compose a decent directory structure from the get-go you won't have any problem finding whatever it is you happen to be looking for. For example, I have more than 50,000 photos on my computer, organized and sub-organized into various categories and it doesn't take an inordinate length of time to find any one photo. The same goes for all of my music, the copious amount of information I have saved out on various topics, and so forth. And you can always link a single file to multiple directories if it happens to fit more than one category (at least in Linux; not sure about my Win2000 partition since I pretty much only use that for games).
My bookmarks and my program menu are set up exactly the same way.
Most of the people I know don't save every email under the sun, just the ones that have information they'd like to have a record of: phone numbers, addresses, tracking order numbers, etc. This is what I do, although I periodically transfer any of the data I want to keep to my home network and clean out my accounts.
I have encountered people who keep every single email ever sent to them, but I wonder why they do it. I'd hazard a guess that 95% of it is of no practical or even sentimental value, and I don't know of a single packrat that spends a wistful afternoon reading old, dull, boring emails. They just save the stuff, no matter how pointless it is, and never bother with it again.
When I was teaching middle school students the biggest problem wasn't money but psychology. And not the psychology of the bureaucrats but of the IT staff that serviced the district.
In that district the IT staff had an unswerving loyalty to all things Microsoft. It didn't really matter what MS did or how their products compared to others; so far as the IT folks were concerned MS could do no wrong. I got the distinct impression that some of the these folks had a shrine of Billy G. at their homes that they made burnt offerings to.
Any criticism of MS was roundly squashed. No attempt was made to review any competing product, open-source or proprietary, in anything remotely approaching an objective fashion.
Seems to me that their might be a correlation between general imcompetence and brand loyalty. The more fanatically brand-loyal a person is, the more likely they are to be imcompetent, and school district IT departments generally don't attract 'the best and brightest'....
Personally, if I forked something I'd have the decency to give it a unique name from the parent (I certainly wouldn't take the name and start refering to the origional by another name).
If you're going to get your panties in a wad over something as inconsequential as this, you've got problems far beyond the fact that Americans call their version of English "American English".
I can't say I'd be surprised to find an American automatically assuming something to be American unless they had specific reason to think otherwise, I'm not sure it's an attitude it's wise to be entirely complacent about though.
This is no different than the British assuming that "English" means their version of English. It's a perfectly valid assumption, if you happen to be in Britain. It's completely invalid if you happen to be in New York. Only an utter asswipe would claim otherwise.
I agree that it seems reasonable just to refer to it as English, as the previous poster says, 'English English' seems redundant.
I'm an American. If you're in America (and quite a few other places where American English is the norm, not British English) "English" refers to American English. In Britain (and those places where British English is the norm) I'm sure that "English" refers to the British version of the language.
It's all about context. Which is why on a forum frequented by people who speak both types of English I made the distinction. To an American or anyone who was taught the American version of English, the word "English" doesn't refer to the British version of the language. It's really that simple.
Or it would be, but I'm willing to be there's some wanker out there who'll shit a brick over the idea that Americans have had the gall to fork 'his' precious language.
It's also why so many geeks hate suits -- anyone who associates them with the cog-in-the-machine, corporate-drone, creativity-crushing attitude is naturally going to feel like they're wearing a straight jacket when they put one on.
Damn, Skippy! You got any empirical evidence to back up your sweeping generalization?
Didn't think so.
It could just be that most of us find that suits aren't nearly as comfortable as jeans and a t-shirt. But I guess that's too simple an explanation for people who like suits.
Christians don't have a monopoly on marriage. Nor do they have any business trying to use the state to impose their religious imperatives on anyone else.
And God has nothing to do with the Constitution. Get a grip, boy.
You libertarians are just conservatives who want to smoke pot and get away with it.
In a libertarian society government wouldn't be in the business of marriage in the first place. The anti-gay rhetoric has nothing to do with libertarianism.
If it is allowed against the will of the majority, it takes their freedom of self-detemination
Perhaps you should look up the word "self-determination". It has nothing to do with whether or not some other person has the right to get legally married.
The world is too full of books to read ones you hate.
Nobody said anything about 'hating' the books, just that they didn't seem very funny. I did like "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish" but it had quite a bit less of the sort of humor that was present in the first three books. I thought it was better for it.
I'm in the minority that didn't think the Hitchhiker series was funny. Some bits were amusing but most of it was a series of bad jokes falling flat...or perhaps too British for me. Although I loved everything Monty Python so I'm not sure that's a factor.
Can't say I thought the movie would be any better, so I'm not terribly disappointed by the bad review. It isn't "The Holy Grail", after all.
There are some "examples" of "true" Communist states that have existed
My knowledge of history is pretty good, and I can't think of a single nation on Earth that's remotely approached actual communism. Examples would be nice.
How could there have been a fight between democracy and communism when neither exists anywhere in the world? There are no democracies, nor can I think of any state remotely approaching this ideal since ancient Athens; and even they didn't have universal democracy (slaves, women).
As for communism, none of the so-called 'communist' states are even remotely communist. They're dictatorships whose economic model is much closer to fascism than anything else. Communism is just a buzzword they use to promote their propaganda.
Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness.
This doesn't explain why people pay for Linux when they could easily download it and burn it to CD, or why they pay for music (iTunes) that they can get just as easily for free.
My guess is that most human beings (that means someone other than a bunch of college students) actually think paying for value is a good thing; even feel obliged to do it. And I'd suspect that the folks who go on about how humans are basically greedy or freeloaders or parasitical are themselves these things, and refuse to accept the fact that most people are simply more ethical than they are.
Slashdot Mirror
The bloggers are just writing about each other.
I think they're more interested in showing the world just how very important their opinions are. A form of public masturbation.
Max
Kids aren't slaves. And they don't owe you shit. It was your decision to have them, now fucking live with the consequences of that decision.
Max
Finally, comes the bull crap that you shouldn't smack them one when they're out of line, and all this touchy feely studies that claim corporal punishment is unnecessary.
I've never had to smack around a kid - any kid - to enforce my rules, nor threaten to do so. Restrain on rare occasions sure, but that's it.
Beatings are for losers who never should've had a kid in the first place. If you can't figure how to instill discipline in children without knocking them around, you really shouldn't be polluting the gene pool in the first place.
Max
When he's 14 or so, the nature of the situation can change.
Keep him away from games at this age, too. That way he'll spend his time on more important things, like learning how to get laid.
You don't want the little bastard to spend the next thirty years in your basement playing EverCrack, do you?
Max
The people who say "I don't care about desktop search" are the ones who don't understand the concept of multiple tags.
Or perhaps they've mastered symlinks and use the directories themselves as organizing tags.
Max
Far better than the extremely limited system of organizing things in folders.
I don't see how this is limited. If you compose a decent directory structure from the get-go you won't have any problem finding whatever it is you happen to be looking for. For example, I have more than 50,000 photos on my computer, organized and sub-organized into various categories and it doesn't take an inordinate length of time to find any one photo. The same goes for all of my music, the copious amount of information I have saved out on various topics, and so forth. And you can always link a single file to multiple directories if it happens to fit more than one category (at least in Linux; not sure about my Win2000 partition since I pretty much only use that for games).
My bookmarks and my program menu are set up exactly the same way.
Max
Most of the people I know don't save every email under the sun, just the ones that have information they'd like to have a record of: phone numbers, addresses, tracking order numbers, etc. This is what I do, although I periodically transfer any of the data I want to keep to my home network and clean out my accounts.
I have encountered people who keep every single email ever sent to them, but I wonder why they do it. I'd hazard a guess that 95% of it is of no practical or even sentimental value, and I don't know of a single packrat that spends a wistful afternoon reading old, dull, boring emails. They just save the stuff, no matter how pointless it is, and never bother with it again.
Max
That would be 'incompetent', but apparently I'm incompetent when it comes to spelling (all hail Our Lord Webster!).
Max
When I was teaching middle school students the biggest problem wasn't money but psychology. And not the psychology of the bureaucrats but of the IT staff that serviced the district.
In that district the IT staff had an unswerving loyalty to all things Microsoft. It didn't really matter what MS did or how their products compared to others; so far as the IT folks were concerned MS could do no wrong. I got the distinct impression that some of the these folks had a shrine of Billy G. at their homes that they made burnt offerings to.
Any criticism of MS was roundly squashed. No attempt was made to review any competing product, open-source or proprietary, in anything remotely approaching an objective fashion.
Seems to me that their might be a correlation between general imcompetence and brand loyalty. The more fanatically brand-loyal a person is, the more likely they are to be imcompetent, and school district IT departments generally don't attract 'the best and brightest'....
Max
The FSF tells us that "Free" in free software refers to freedom rather than price.
Since when did the FSF start printing dictionaries? Guess I'll just have to toss ol' Webster out on his ass.
Max
Personally, if I forked something I'd have the decency to give it a unique name from the parent (I certainly wouldn't take the name and start refering to the origional by another name).
If you're going to get your panties in a wad over something as inconsequential as this, you've got problems far beyond the fact that Americans call their version of English "American English".
I can't say I'd be surprised to find an American automatically assuming something to be American unless they had specific reason to think otherwise, I'm not sure it's an attitude it's wise to be entirely complacent about though.
This is no different than the British assuming that "English" means their version of English. It's a perfectly valid assumption, if you happen to be in Britain. It's completely invalid if you happen to be in New York. Only an utter asswipe would claim otherwise.
Max
I agree that it seems reasonable just to refer to it as English, as the previous poster says, 'English English' seems redundant.
I'm an American. If you're in America (and quite a few other places where American English is the norm, not British English) "English" refers to American English. In Britain (and those places where British English is the norm) I'm sure that "English" refers to the British version of the language.
It's all about context. Which is why on a forum frequented by people who speak both types of English I made the distinction. To an American or anyone who was taught the American version of English, the word "English" doesn't refer to the British version of the language. It's really that simple.
Or it would be, but I'm willing to be there's some wanker out there who'll shit a brick over the idea that Americans have had the gall to fork 'his' precious language.
Max
Don't bitch and moan just because you don't like something or don't see the importance of it.
So long as you don't bitch and moan when I see you in your suit and think "jumped up pole-in-the-ass egomaniac". It's all good, eh?
Max
It's also why so many geeks hate suits -- anyone who associates them with the cog-in-the-machine, corporate-drone, creativity-crushing attitude is naturally going to feel like they're wearing a straight jacket when they put one on.
Damn, Skippy! You got any empirical evidence to back up your sweeping generalization?
Didn't think so.
It could just be that most of us find that suits aren't nearly as comfortable as jeans and a t-shirt. But I guess that's too simple an explanation for people who like suits.
Max
Christians don't have a monopoly on marriage. Nor do they have any business trying to use the state to impose their religious imperatives on anyone else.
And God has nothing to do with the Constitution. Get a grip, boy.
Max
but non-Christians should not pick apart their neighbors belief structures
If you want to live in a place where your beliefs are beyond challenge, America is not the place to be.
Max
You libertarians are just conservatives who want to smoke pot and get away with it.
In a libertarian society government wouldn't be in the business of marriage in the first place. The anti-gay rhetoric has nothing to do with libertarianism.
Max
If it is allowed against the will of the majority, it takes their freedom of self-detemination
Perhaps you should look up the word "self-determination". It has nothing to do with whether or not some other person has the right to get legally married.
Max
The world is too full of books to read ones you hate.
Nobody said anything about 'hating' the books, just that they didn't seem very funny. I did like "So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish" but it had quite a bit less of the sort of humor that was present in the first three books. I thought it was better for it.
Max
How about I'll call it British English, and you call it English? That way we'll both be happy.
Max
only North Americans (I believe) say MATH.
No, that would be "anyone speaking American English".
In most of the world, MATHS is correct.
And this would be "anyone speaking British English."
Max
I'm in the minority that didn't think the Hitchhiker series was funny. Some bits were amusing but most of it was a series of bad jokes falling flat...or perhaps too British for me. Although I loved everything Monty Python so I'm not sure that's a factor.
Can't say I thought the movie would be any better, so I'm not terribly disappointed by the bad review. It isn't "The Holy Grail", after all.
Max
There are some "examples" of "true" Communist states that have existed
My knowledge of history is pretty good, and I can't think of a single nation on Earth that's remotely approached actual communism. Examples would be nice.
Max
How could there have been a fight between democracy and communism when neither exists anywhere in the world? There are no democracies, nor can I think of any state remotely approaching this ideal since ancient Athens; and even they didn't have universal democracy (slaves, women).
As for communism, none of the so-called 'communist' states are even remotely communist. They're dictatorships whose economic model is much closer to fascism than anything else. Communism is just a buzzword they use to promote their propaganda.
Max
Open source model does nto work well with this inherent greediness.
This doesn't explain why people pay for Linux when they could easily download it and burn it to CD, or why they pay for music (iTunes) that they can get just as easily for free.
My guess is that most human beings (that means someone other than a bunch of college students) actually think paying for value is a good thing; even feel obliged to do it. And I'd suspect that the folks who go on about how humans are basically greedy or freeloaders or parasitical are themselves these things, and refuse to accept the fact that most people are simply more ethical than they are.
Max