It's a catchy slogan. It's a metaphor. You're not supposed to take metaphors literally. What it means is that information, by its very nature, proliferates easily and is hard to lock down. It's called anthropomorphization. It's a figure of speech, look it up.
98% of the English-speaking world, naturally. That's why I prefer the term "software libre", calling upon a language in which there is no silly ambiguation between liberty and cheapness.
The ambiguity in 'free' that English affords is a problem, no doubt. But other languages have it worse. Translating anything FSF-related into Polish I have a major ambiguity issue: the Polish equivalent of 'free' also has two senses. One is 'libre', free as in speech. The other is slow, as in molasses. Try getting your PHB to deploy this cheap but powerful "Slow software":-)
Yeah, Alien as a precise and visionary view of the future: we are going to be chased around space ships by huge monsters.
I agree with you on all points except this one. Alien's vision is not a vision of the monster - it's much more a vision of a corporation, and of the people working for one. And Ridley Scott got pretty close on that. Much as I like _Aliens_, making the monsters the focus of the movie was a major step back into the conventional, stereotypical S-F.
It is, or rather was - the book, that is! - until critics decided Vonnegut was good enough to be promoted to "mainstream", whatever THAT is.
That, by the way, is one reason you so rarely hear of S-F _masterpieces_ in literature. Because anything deserving that description is pretty much automatically considered NOT to be s-f anymore. Of course another reason is that most S-F is pure entertainment trash:)
You're joking, but it's still worth pointing out that eye candy is relative to the times in which it first appears. There was a time when Nostromo's "Mother" was cool, too:)
So is the comparison invalid because Jordan is a pro, and they are unskilled workers? Or because he's an athlete, and they won't be doing sports anytime soon? Or because he's an American and they're, well, gooks?
Or is it because Jordan, the average American he is, needs to pay his chauffeur and his bodyguards and the Indonesians only need some chow?
Maybe Morpheus is completely lying about the "battery" explanation. Maybe some group of humans hosed the ecology so badly that the only way for a lot of people to survive was to climb into the pods voluntarily (heck, a lot of Slashdot readers would probably do it just to get into the nifty VR). Maybe the agents are the good guys -- or at least perceive themselves as good, with the mission of preserving human life.
-- This makes WAY more sense than the actual Matrix narrative. Seriously.
| They may be annoying, but if your software is good enough then I'm sure they'll comply.
When I'm downloading software for EVALUATION, I don't yet know if it's good enough, do I. If there's a form to fill out, I enter bogus info. If that doesn't work, too bad, I go elsewhere. I figure the company must be really strapped for cash if they need my personal info to sell. So maybe the soft ain't that good either.
|And in the end, you get all working e-mail addresses.
Yeah, and do exactly what with them? If they sell my info to third parties, they're scum. If they don't sell it, but start pestering me via email, they're spammers, i.e. scum again.
Regarding the hi-res site you linked: I said No to ActiveX content in IE, and all I get is a blank gray background. What a concept. It certainly makes me want to explore this site further... not.
(At least with frames, designers have the decency to put some meaningful warning in the NOFRAMES tag.)
There's a heck of a difference between modifying the way content is displayed (enlarging fonts, text-to-speech) and modifying the actual content (words on the page). The assumption is that the words were authored or comissioned by the owner of the website which you're viewing (with the obvious exception of clearly marked advertising). Toptext is subverting that assumption.
Does anyone have a screenshot, or better, a snippet of HTML with the yellow highlight tag (I'm assuming it is a tag) inserted?
If the BG color of a page is set to that exact shade of yellow, via the BODY tag or css, would this defeat the TopText highlight?
Users, or potential users, find my site via search engines, looking maybe for "notepad", maybe "address book", maybe "password manager". All my software is freeware (I make exactly zero money through coding), and some of it is open source'd. Do I want a for-profit company to pollute my pages with links to commercial notepads, addressbooks or password managers? Hell no!
Except Dmitry is NOT a corporation. He's only a guy working for one. This is a world of a difference. While prosecuting Microsoft for monopolist practices, they didn't arresr billg, did they?
I don't know, but it seems to me if it appears that a CD has only 1 or 3 good tracks on it, then maybe these 1 or 3 tracks aren't all that great, either. Or won't sound that great a month later, which is the same thing.
I read and speak English fine, thank you - but is it OK with you if I sign my posts with my name? I need ISO-8859-2 for that, or should I dumb down the spelling of my name to satisfy the "de facto standard"?
Re:What other MS-compatable alternatives are there
on
Mozilla 0.9 Out
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· Score: 1
Every time I read praises for Opera - especially as opposed to the "big two" browsers - I need to say this: Opera is up to 5.0 now, and it still only supports ISO-8859-1 character set. Something that MSIE and Netscape got right before versions 3.0 of each. Opera is a laugh.
That's weird. I thought a book was an instance of art and as such, one of its functions was to generate some sort of activity in the reader's brain.
This is not just aimed at the parent comment. I find the ubiquity of such anti-intellectual stance astonishing. Try any alt.books.* newsgroup and all people discuss is whether the story had a "good ending". Sigh.
That's funny. I thought what you really meant was that green markup around the ad - THAT's what's distracting me, plus the e-quill banner on top. Now ink.e-quill.com goes right into my block list, though it's probably not what you intended....
Except Opera5 is useless for anyone whose language falls outside the ISO-8859-1 character set. And Opera developers have the cheek to talk about *standards*.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a catchy slogan. It's a metaphor. You're not supposed to take metaphors literally. What it means is that information, by its very nature, proliferates easily and is hard to lock down. It's called anthropomorphization. It's a figure of speech, look it up.
But you already knew all that.
The ambiguity in 'free' that English affords is a problem, no doubt. But other languages have it worse. Translating anything FSF-related into Polish I have a major ambiguity issue: the Polish equivalent of 'free' also has two senses. One is 'libre', free as in speech. The other is slow, as in molasses. Try getting your PHB to deploy this cheap but powerful "Slow software"
I agree with you on all points except this one. Alien's vision is not a vision of the monster - it's much more a vision of a corporation, and of the people working for one. And Ridley Scott got pretty close on that. Much as I like _Aliens_, making the monsters the focus of the movie was a major step back into the conventional, stereotypical S-F.
It is, or rather was - the book, that is! - until critics decided Vonnegut was good enough to be promoted to "mainstream", whatever THAT is.
That, by the way, is one reason you so rarely hear of S-F _masterpieces_ in literature. Because anything deserving that description is pretty much automatically considered NOT to be s-f anymore. Of course another reason is that most S-F is pure entertainment trash :)
And oh, where's "Cube" in the Wired list?
You're joking, but it's still worth pointing out that eye candy is relative to the times in which it first appears. There was a time when Nostromo's "Mother" was cool, too :)
Except that all i get from mail.ru is spam. My procmail filter has been bouncing it for a year or so.
Not Kazaa. RadLight. They've been slapped for this and apparently stopped.
Or is it because Jordan, the average American he is, needs to pay his chauffeur and his bodyguards and the Indonesians only need some chow?
-- This makes WAY more sense than the actual Matrix narrative. Seriously.
| They may be annoying, but if your software is good enough then I'm sure they'll comply.
When I'm downloading software for EVALUATION, I don't yet know if it's good enough, do I. If there's a form to fill out, I enter bogus info. If that doesn't work, too bad, I go elsewhere. I figure the company must be really strapped for cash if they need my personal info to sell. So maybe the soft ain't that good either.
|And in the end, you get all working e-mail addresses.
Yeah, and do exactly what with them? If they sell my info to third parties, they're scum. If they don't sell it, but start pestering me via email, they're spammers, i.e. scum again.
Interesting snippet from http://www.netcaptor.com/tour/
"This screenshot demonstrates NetCaptor's patent-pending browser tab interface"
They applied for a patent 'cause they put tabs in it? Or are they just shitting people to get them to shell out the registration fee?
Regarding the hi-res site you linked: I said No to ActiveX content in IE, and all I get is a blank gray background. What a concept. It certainly makes me want to explore this site further... not.
(At least with frames, designers have the decency to put some meaningful warning in the NOFRAMES tag.)
There's a heck of a difference between modifying the way content is displayed (enlarging fonts, text-to-speech) and modifying the actual content (words on the page). The assumption is that the words were authored or comissioned by the owner of the website which you're viewing (with the obvious exception of clearly marked advertising). Toptext is subverting that assumption.
Does anyone have a screenshot, or better, a snippet of HTML with the yellow highlight tag (I'm assuming it is a tag) inserted?
If the BG color of a page is set to that exact shade of yellow, via the BODY tag or css, would this defeat the TopText highlight?
Users, or potential users, find my site via search engines, looking maybe for "notepad", maybe "address book", maybe "password manager". All my software is freeware (I make exactly zero money through coding), and some of it is open source'd. Do I want a for-profit company to pollute my pages with links to commercial notepads, addressbooks or password managers? Hell no!
Except Dmitry is NOT a corporation. He's only a guy working for one. This is a world of a difference. While prosecuting Microsoft for monopolist practices, they didn't arresr billg, did they?
I have opted out of moderating, but thank you for a truly insightful post.
No, the webbuggers do not have your data, because they didn't get the cookie.
I don't know, but it seems to me if it appears that a CD has only 1 or 3 good tracks on it, then maybe these 1 or 3 tracks aren't all that great, either. Or won't sound that great a month later, which is the same thing.
I read and speak English fine, thank you - but is it OK with you if I sign my posts with my name? I need ISO-8859-2 for that, or should I dumb down the spelling of my name to satisfy the "de facto standard"?
Every time I read praises for Opera - especially as opposed to the "big two" browsers - I need to say this: Opera is up to 5.0 now, and it still only supports ISO-8859-1 character set. Something that MSIE and Netscape got right before versions 3.0 of each. Opera is a laugh.
Except Finland.
That's weird. I thought a book was an instance of art and as such, one of its functions was to generate some sort of activity in the reader's brain.
This is not just aimed at the parent comment. I find the ubiquity of such anti-intellectual stance astonishing. Try any alt.books.* newsgroup and all people discuss is whether the story had a "good ending". Sigh.
The question is, how much is Sealand going to charge the Napster CloneCo., and who's going to put up the cash?
That's funny. I thought what you really meant was that green markup around the ad - THAT's what's distracting me, plus the e-quill banner on top. Now ink.e-quill.com goes right into my block list, though it's probably not what you intended....
Except Opera5 is useless for anyone whose language falls outside the ISO-8859-1 character set. And Opera developers have the cheek to talk about *standards*.