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User: TKinias

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Comments · 533

  1. Re:My Favourite on Ex-Britannica Editor Reviews Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    scripsit AviLazar:

    Hopefully this person listened to his/her teachers in school (HS or college) and is not only citing wikipedia.

    Good Lord, what happened to refereed journals? Scholarly monographs?

    *sigh*

  2. Re:I'm guilty of that on Ex-Britannica Editor Reviews Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    scripsit selfdiscipline:

    I think that the information I used was accurate enough. It was about voting systems.

    At least as accurate as the systems themselves...

  3. Re:My Favourite on Ex-Britannica Editor Reviews Wikipedia · · Score: 1

    scripsit lukewarmfusion:

    None of the spellings -- encyclopedia, encyclopaedia, or encyclopædia -- are formally misspellings. Historically, however, the latter two represent a very old spelling mistake. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the spelling with the ae or æ is "pseudo-Greek" and "an erroneous form (said to be a false reading) occurring in MSS. of Quintilian, Pliny, and Galen". The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the æ is not found in the original Greek enkyklios paideia for "encyclical education", described as "the circle of arts and sciences considered by the Greeks as essential to a liberal education".

    Except that's not exactly what the OED says. The OED says:

    a. late L. encyclopædia, a. pseudo-Gr. [egkyklopaideia], an erroneous form (said to be a false reading) occurring in MSS. of Quintilian, Pliny, and Galen, for [egkyklios paideia] 'encyclical education', the circle of arts and sciences considered by the Greeks as essential to a liberal education (cf. ENCYCLICAL A. 1).

    The spelling with æ has been preserved from becoming obs. by the fact that many of the works so called have Latin titles, as Encyclopædia Britannica, Londinensis, etc.

    The æ is the normal Latin rendering of the Greek diphthong ai (alpha-iota) in many, many loan-words. OED is not saying that the æ comes from the misreading; it is saying that the word itself is a misreading or corruption of the original Greek phrase, the last word of which would be Latinized as pædia. The only thing anomalous about the æ is that it has not given way to a simple e in British orthography like the æ has in so many other words (ether, for example). American is more consistent in replacing the æ with an e in assimilated words, and Wikipedia, as a project with American origins, unsurprisingly used the American spelling (which is also more similar to the French, Spanish, and Italian spellings, incidentally).

    FWIW, OED (emphatically not an American source) gives both encyclopædia and encyclopedia but not encyclopaedia as correct for contemporary usage.

  4. Re:Of course not. on Are Usability & Security Opposites in Computing? · · Score: 1

    Johari window? Sounds more like a bog-standard Venn diagram...

  5. Re:Interesting insights... on Paul Graham On 'Great Hackers' · · Score: 1

    scripsit IrresponsibleUseOfFr:

    Great hackers [...] are out to change the world and how it works with their art.

    I think the key may be the art part... In my mind, a hacker views his work as an art form...

  6. Re:Apple helping out on Bash 3.0 Released · · Score: 1

    scripsit dfj225:

    However, it doesn't work when say...you want to get a wireless card working with Linux.

    Hmm. My experience with wireless cards is that they either don't work at all (i.e., there's no driver) or you just plug it in and it works automagically (my Orinoco, for example, and a couple I've borrowed here and there). I've never had to do any installation or config of anything...

    My point is, despite apt-get, it is still not as easy as dragging a file to a folder. How many non-geeks will know to use apt-get?

    For me, apt-get is easier than dragging stuff around with a mouse -- but I almost always prefer CLI to GUI. YMMV.

    But for the GUI-era types, there are GUI frontends to apt-get that make installation as easy as clicking on an icon. It's true that installing something that's not in Debian's repository is more difficult, but it's rare to find any FOSS that's not in Debian already. If you need something that's not there, you're almost definitely geek enough to be able to handle ./config && make && make install.

    None of this, of course, applies to proprietary software... but again, if you're installing Oracle you better be able to handle a bash prompt! ;)

  7. Re:Apple helping out on Bash 3.0 Released · · Score: 1

    scripsit dfj225:

    I have used linux in the past, and never has it been overly easy to install anything.

    Obligatory Debian plug:

    sudo apt-get install package

    It doesn't get much easier...

  8. Re:GNU/FreeBSD in the changelog on Bash 3.0 Released · · Score: 1

    scripsit r00t:

    Not content to rename Linux, the FSF has started in on FreeBSD too now.

    I suspect that is a reference to the Debian port, which is in fact GNU/FreeBSD -- that is, an implementation of GNU using the FreeBSD kernel...

  9. Re:what is the point on Advertising Hits Arizona County Government Website · · Score: 1

    scripsit nadaou:

    Bonus chuckle [non-county residents only]:
    Spot the apostrophe disaster in the error message.

    Um, some of us residents can use an apostrophe correctly... we're just not in county government...

  10. Best run? on Advertising Hits Arizona County Government Website · · Score: 1

    As the county is one of the best-run in the nation,...

    As a resident of Maricopa County for almost twenty years -- and one who has been waiting about that long for a proper public transit system -- I cry Bullshit. Phoenix has a wide variety of things going for it... but good government is not one of them...
  11. Re:Free Software on Examining Some Open Source Myths · · Score: 1

    scripsit HeyLaughingBoy:

    But since most customers aren't so philantropic, this is unlikely to happen. I doubt most people would pay $500 for something they need and then turn around and give it away to strangers for free.

    Perhaps not, but it only takes one customer willing to redistribute for free (or very cheaply) to put pretty significant downward pressure on the price the developer can charge...

  12. Re:Free Software on Examining Some Open Source Myths · · Score: 1

    scripsit Quarters:

    You buy my $500.00 piece of software, you get the source. You don't buy, no source for you.

    But if I do pay you $500 I can give it to anyone I want, provided I am also willing to provide source. So you can charge whatever you want, but the first time you sell a copy the customer can redistribute for free -- driving the cost the market will bear close to zero...

  13. Re:fascinating on 526 Years On, Da Vinci's Clockwork Car Constructed · · Score: 1

    scripsit master_p:

    They just did not know that Earth was not the center of the universe.

    That was a debated point, actually. Ptolemy, whose model came to be dominant until the Copernican revolution, had a geocentric model. Pythagoras, however, had a heliocentric model, IIRC; there were probably others, too.

  14. Not all that new on Morphing Plane Wings for Efficient Flights · · Score: 4, Informative

    The U.S. F-14 and F-111, European Tornado, and a bunch of Russian Tupolev and Sukhoi models have had variable-geometry wings for decades. This is hardly a new concept -- just snazzier ways of doing it.

  15. Re:fascinating on 526 Years On, Da Vinci's Clockwork Car Constructed · · Score: 1

    scripsit killjoe:

    The ancient greeks not only knew the earth was a sphere they also pretty accurately calculated the size. Way before the bible.

    Um, the referenences were to the Jewish Bible (i.e., Old Testament) -- and parts of that are quite a bit older than classical Greece.

  16. Re:Computers are much better for looking things up on How The Web Ruined The Encyclopedia Business · · Score: 1

    scripsit Mose250:

    I'm not sure exactly how you'd define "young people," but it's been my experience that the fallability of internet resources has been one of the most common topics drilled into the heads of middle- and high-school students, at least in the past decade or so.

    My familiarity is only with undergrads, as I don't really have any contact with younger students. I find that too many of our students seem to think that research begins and ends with an AOL or MSN search. There's very little use even of something like JSTOR, much less actual paper (gasp!) journals...

  17. Re:Students are supposedly taught English as well. on How The Web Ruined The Encyclopedia Business · · Score: 1

    scripsit blorg:

    ...but that doesn't mean that they can spell, construct a grammatical sentence, or logically and coherently advance an argument. My experience was teaching undergraduate level in Ireland. I wasn't teaching English, but found that most of my efforts in correcting papers had to be directed towards fixing these elements.

    Y'know, that saddens me. I do grading for upper-division history courses at an American university, and I something similar. All too often, I can't even get to grading the content of the papers, because the writing is so bad. It isn't just mechanical flaws (misspellings, run-on sentences, etc.), but often near-total incoherence.

    I would have hoped, honestly, that the situation in Ireland was better. You're supposed to have a pretty good education system over there...

    Part of the problem is that here (in my experience- in the humanities), any half-serious research methodology classes only appear at the postgraduate level. It might be touched on slightly earlier in certain subjects such as history, if you chose a manuscripts option.

    FWIW, our department requires two historical methods (research and writing) courses for undergraduate majors, one in the third year and one in the fourth.

  18. Re:Oh great... on Super Tuesday Not So Super For Electronic Voting · · Score: 1

    scripsit LearnToSpell:

    Why is anybody selling this stuff? Does everything have to be privatized? You'd think something like voting, that is as critical to the health of a so-called democracy as anything else, would be fully open for inspection.

    <kneejerk>That's Commie talk!</kneejerk>

  19. Re:Ignorant Americans on Super Tuesday Not So Super For Electronic Voting · · Score: 1

    scripsit handy_vandal:

    Speaking as an American, I have to say ... yes, we are more ignorant than Europeans.

    Speaking as, among other groups I claim membership in, an American... I've been witness to this more times than I care to admit. I've seen a German beat all (American) comers at U.S. trivia (from how many states there are [!] to all their capitals). Find me a literate German who doesn't know Colin Powell's name; now, how many Americans know who Joschka Fischer is? Dominique de Villepin? How about Bill Graham? (The last one I had to look up, I admit...) I'll bet I could walk around this coffeehouse and find ten people here who can't tell me what Colin Powell's job is.

  20. Re:Ignorant Americans. on Super Tuesday Not So Super For Electronic Voting · · Score: 3, Interesting

    scripsit CleverNickName:

    Gosh, I'd love to spend some time answering this, but I have Average Joe II on TIVO and I have to finish watching it to make room for American Idol.

    Oh! Gotta go get the door. It's Domino's.

    ... and some dumb bastard modded it Offtopic. If the discussion is about ignorance of politics, how is an ironic comment about citiz^H^H^H^H^Hconsumers' apathy for the topic Offtopic? It strikes right at the central point the grandparent was making...

    Unfortunately, I've already wasted my mod points for today...

  21. Re:But... does "rebooting" a zone fix issues? on Zones are in Solaris Express (Solaris 10) · · Score: 1

    scripsit Spoing:

    This "rebooting" that you speak of...tell me more...it is forign to me.

    Hmm... What kernel version is that? And what's your IP?

  22. Re:How does it come? on Germany Muzzles SCO · · Score: 1

    IANAL, but AFAIK "Innocent until proven guilty" is about criminal justice.

    This appears to be one place where US and DE law differ. In the U.S. the there is a presumption of innocence in criminal law, combined with the `beyond reasonable doubt' provision; in civil law, there only a `preponderance of evidence' is needed. That means there is no presumption of innocence in a lawsuit. The German system seems to apply a more similar standard to civil and criminal cases -- for which the Germans should be applauded, IMNSHO.

    (IANAL, YMMV, etc., etc.)

  23. Re:How does it come? on Germany Muzzles SCO · · Score: 1

    scripsit geoffspear:

    Lobbying the judicial system with money is, in fact, a felony. You can lobby the legislature all you want, though.

    Only if you're crude about it. So long as you do it indirectly, it's perfectly legal. That is, you ``lobby'' the president who is in charge of judicial appointments and the legislature which is in charge of confirmation. The result is the same, only this way it's legal.

  24. Re:Good to see... on Germany Muzzles SCO · · Score: 1

    scripsit schon:

    For GPL software, you may f.ex. not redistribute binaries without source.

    I think you're mistaken on this part.

    You most certainly can distribute binaries of GPL'ed software, without including source, as long as you include an offer to provide the source if asked (it says other things, this is the basic gist of it, though.)

    s/without source/without making source available/. I think this is what the grandparent is trying to say; of course there are various permitted means of making source available to the recipient of binaries, in addition to putting it on the same media or Internet node.

    This is obviously a restriction of your freedom.

    No, actually it's not. Copyright law imposes the restriction of copying/distribution, not the GPL.

    The GPL grants you freedom, by saying that you are allowed to distribute someone else's copyrighted work, as long as you include with it the promise of source (and other things.)

    The grandparent is comparing GPL licensing with BSD-style licensing, not with vanilla copyright provisions. Compared with BSD-style licensing, that the GPL prevents you from redistributing in certain ways (incorporating into proprietary software, for example) can be seen as a restriction. The grandparent is arguing that this is a restriction meant to ensure more freedom in the long term, much like the German or French restrictions on Nazi speech are meant to ensure the survival of freedom in the long term.

    Vanilla copyright law, which grants the user almost no freedom, is not even part of the discussion, except insofar as it creates the mechanisms through which -- or against which -- all FOSS licenses act.

  25. Re:Space Technology on Debugging The Spirit Rover · · Score: 1

    scripsit roman_mir:

    So what you are saying is that in 10 years time a new Mars rover will only be as good as today's Fords, but it will have electronic cup holders?

    Electronic cup holders are already old tech. My old Pentium had one a decade ago -- and it was even retractable!