Re:The reviewer is missing the point of the book
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 1
"The biggest issue, though, is this complaint that is levied about the language and the made-up words. If you have completed the book, please finish it before slamming the words themselves. You cannot understand the reason that he uses these words until you understand the larger message of the book."
Agreed. Some novelists use made-up words to no good purpose and for no good reason. This is not one of those occasions.
"Yeah. I'd really like to like OpenBSD. Technically, it's superb. It's smooth, polished, well documented --- it's got a level of consistency that most Linux distros can only hope to dream of. The kernel is well designed and fast, with excellent hardware support. System setup is consistent and well-thought out. Above all, it doesn't confuse easy-to-use with easy-to-learn --- everything is as simple as possible without oversimplifying, which makes it a joy to admin."
So you give up on a perfectly good OS because you don't like someone's attitude? You are full of shit.
[A footnote for the humor impaired: This post is meant to be funny, not serious. Thank you.]
"Would the community feel comfortable buying version '6.3' software (and paying tens of thousands of dollars for it) knowing that it was the first release of the product?"
I would have the impression that the vendor was trying to deceive me, and wonder what else the vendor might be lying about.
It's possible that Yahoo could produce a backup dating from before the account was known to be compromised. (I'd guess it's unlikely, but who knows?) Even so, a prosecutor would have to work very hard to convince a judge - let a lone a jury - that any recovered data was untainted.
To the extent that there may have been e-mail there that was intended to avoid Alaska's public records law, there could have been a crime. However, we will now never know if that alleged illegal activity was taking place, because by compromising the account, this bozo gave Palin a perfect excuse to close the account and (presumably) destroy all the evidence. (And any evidence that can be recovered will be tainted.)
Given the presumption of innocence in US law, we now must presume that she did nothing wrong... even if she had in fact been doing exactly what is alleged. Way to go, fella!
Yeah, it is (well, was) Fossett. Considering that, I think the question is not "Did he use a parachute?" but rather "Why didn't he use a radio?" With his experience, I find it hard to imagine that he would not have managed to trigger a beacon or make a distress call unless whatever happened was very sudden... too sudden for a parachute to help.
"There is no way winning this way would "help" Obama, unless winning the Presidency is worth throwing the country into turmoil"
Well, it's irrelevant if Obama gets 270 EVs. Texans would be pissed off, but it would not be terribly relevant because he would have won outright regardless of Texas's outcome. (Although another poster's comment about downticket races has quite a lot of merit.) If he doesn't win outright and no one gets a majority of the EVs, then thing would get off the rails in the manner suggested.
But really, there's no way in either Hell or God's green Earth that Texas will allow their EVs to remain unused. Barr could win this suit, and the Texas legislature will find a way to make the election work anyway. Denying the Texas EVs to McCain is not the point.
The point of withdrawing would be to visibly and clearly show Obama upholding The Rules. It would be in many ways an empty gesture (as he's gonna lose there anyway) but I think still a powerful one.
Removing them from the ballot would only hurt McCain; Obama's not gonna win Texas anyway. Supporting Barr's suit by voluntarily withdrawing might even be a good strategy for him. (Assuming he hasn't screwed up in a similar manner elsewhere.)
But still, Texas will figure something out. It's up to the states to choose their electors and you can bet they'll not let their state go unrepresented in the electoral college. They could pass emergency legislation to choose their electors in a different way, or to ease the filing limit, or hold a special election at a different time. Ultimately this is unlikely to affect the outcome of the race.
I'd suggest using more than one format. Paper + USB thumb Drive + CD-ROM seems like it'd cover the bases pretty well for a 25-year timescale.
(Of course you need to use archival-quality versions of each media where available, and make sure the environment doesn't include any hazards particularly deadly to any one.)
"[...] it's unlikely that many academics are going want to tackle something as big as a survey-level textbook for free (with the occasional exception like the professor in the article)"
Only takes one per subject, though, dunnit? And that one will potentially get to put their stamp on a truly vast number of students in the field for a long time to come. All that's needed is an established professor who cares more about prestige than money (got tenure?) or a young turk who wants to build a reputation (want tenure?). Or even just some idealist who values actual, you know, learning and stuff.
All the reasons people write free software would be mirrored or even amplified when the notion is applied to academia.
As outlined here, "[...] you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population." The margin of error of the poll surely accounts for the relatively high crazification on this issue.
"VMWare licenses for ESX server cost something like $5k apiece."
That's an exaggeration by a factor of five. Admittedly it ain't cheap, but one can get three dual-processor (unlimited core) ESX licenses and a management software license for $2700, or just ESX server for $1000.
Of course, today it doesn't look real attractive...
Maybe, but I doubt it. The Joker's game there was not without a point; he wanted to show that people were only one step away from selfish barbarism. The best way to do that would be to leave the survivors alive to live with their guilt.
Slashdot Mirror
'What resolves this issue?"
OpenBSD, of course.
"The biggest issue, though, is this complaint that is levied about the language and the made-up words. If you have completed the book, please finish it before slamming the words themselves. You cannot understand the reason that he uses these words until you understand the larger message of the book."
Agreed. Some novelists use made-up words to no good purpose and for no good reason. This is not one of those occasions.
Of course there's an element of vigilantism. This is the sort of situation that vigilantism is for.
Hopefully better ways to deal with the problem will come along soon. In the meantime, I hope the body count among innocent bystanders stays small.
"Yeah. I'd really like to like OpenBSD. Technically, it's superb. It's smooth, polished, well documented --- it's got a level of consistency that most Linux distros can only hope to dream of. The kernel is well designed and fast, with excellent hardware support. System setup is consistent and well-thought out. Above all, it doesn't confuse easy-to-use with easy-to-learn --- everything is as simple as possible without oversimplifying, which makes it a joy to admin."
So you give up on a perfectly good OS because you don't like someone's attitude? You are full of shit.
[A footnote for the humor impaired: This post is meant to be funny, not serious. Thank you.]
Yes, please, I want specifics! I have several of that model, and I'd love to have some workable option other than XP.
I dunno about this repackaging, but I've been booting OpenBSD off of CF cards since 3.5 or so.
'Course, the latest one hasn't shut down and rebooted in 600-ish days, so I guess I haven't been testing that very well. :-)
"Would the community feel comfortable buying version '6.3' software (and paying tens of thousands of dollars for it) knowing that it was the first release of the product?"
I would have the impression that the vendor was trying to deceive me, and wonder what else the vendor might be lying about.
It's possible that Yahoo could produce a backup dating from before the account was known to be compromised. (I'd guess it's unlikely, but who knows?) Even so, a prosecutor would have to work very hard to convince a judge - let a lone a jury - that any recovered data was untainted.
To the extent that there may have been e-mail there that was intended to avoid Alaska's public records law, there could have been a crime. However, we will now never know if that alleged illegal activity was taking place, because by compromising the account, this bozo gave Palin a perfect excuse to close the account and (presumably) destroy all the evidence. (And any evidence that can be recovered will be tainted.)
Given the presumption of innocence in US law, we now must presume that she did nothing wrong... even if she had in fact been doing exactly what is alleged. Way to go, fella!
"Fourth graders will be up in arms!"
And this differs from the baseline condition of fourth graders in school... how, exactly?
Yeah, it is (well, was) Fossett. Considering that, I think the question is not "Did he use a parachute?" but rather "Why didn't he use a radio?" With his experience, I find it hard to imagine that he would not have managed to trigger a beacon or make a distress call unless whatever happened was very sudden... too sudden for a parachute to help.
That's one of the better "Made you look!" trolls I've seen. (The simple ones are the best.) Bravo!
The assertion that over-regulation cause the current financial problems is not well supported by the facts. See this rebuttal.
"There is no way winning this way would "help" Obama, unless winning the Presidency is worth throwing the country into turmoil"
Well, it's irrelevant if Obama gets 270 EVs. Texans would be pissed off, but it would not be terribly relevant because he would have won outright regardless of Texas's outcome. (Although another poster's comment about downticket races has quite a lot of merit.) If he doesn't win outright and no one gets a majority of the EVs, then thing would get off the rails in the manner suggested.
But really, there's no way in either Hell or God's green Earth that Texas will allow their EVs to remain unused. Barr could win this suit, and the Texas legislature will find a way to make the election work anyway. Denying the Texas EVs to McCain is not the point.
The point of withdrawing would be to visibly and clearly show Obama upholding The Rules. It would be in many ways an empty gesture (as he's gonna lose there anyway) but I think still a powerful one.
Removing them from the ballot would only hurt McCain; Obama's not gonna win Texas anyway. Supporting Barr's suit by voluntarily withdrawing might even be a good strategy for him. (Assuming he hasn't screwed up in a similar manner elsewhere.)
But still, Texas will figure something out. It's up to the states to choose their electors and you can bet they'll not let their state go unrepresented in the electoral college. They could pass emergency legislation to choose their electors in a different way, or to ease the filing limit, or hold a special election at a different time. Ultimately this is unlikely to affect the outcome of the race.
And bravo to whomever got the outsidecontextproblem tag to stick.
Probably Meatfu.... I mean, Gray Area messing about.
It would appear that the design goal is to scale down, not to scale up.
I'd suggest using more than one format. Paper + USB thumb Drive + CD-ROM seems like it'd cover the bases pretty well for a 25-year timescale.
(Of course you need to use archival-quality versions of each media where available, and make sure the environment doesn't include any hazards particularly deadly to any one.)
"[...] it's unlikely that many academics are going want to tackle something as big as a survey-level textbook for free (with the occasional exception like the professor in the article)"
Only takes one per subject, though, dunnit? And that one will potentially get to put their stamp on a truly vast number of students in the field for a long time to come. All that's needed is an established professor who cares more about prestige than money (got tenure?) or a young turk who wants to build a reputation (want tenure?). Or even just some idealist who values actual, you know, learning and stuff.
All the reasons people write free software would be mirrored or even amplified when the notion is applied to academia.
As outlined here, "[...] you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population." The margin of error of the poll surely accounts for the relatively high crazification on this issue.
I believe that was the ESXi product, but yeah. (The price I quoted for the bundle was the price I paid in April.)
"VMWare licenses for ESX server cost something like $5k apiece."
That's an exaggeration by a factor of five. Admittedly it ain't cheap, but one can get three dual-processor (unlimited core) ESX licenses and a management software license for $2700, or just ESX server for $1000.
Of course, today it doesn't look real attractive...
Wow, recursive grammar pwnage.
That was pure awesome. A perfectly horrible Joker moment.
Maybe, but I doubt it. The Joker's game there was not without a point; he wanted to show that people were only one step away from selfish barbarism. The best way to do that would be to leave the survivors alive to live with their guilt.