...a need already exists ("I need social acceptance" - or something along those lines). With this research, the marketers are merely helping you fulfill this need by pushing past other products' attempts to get you to purchase them.
Thats the point, the need they exploit has nothing to do with the product they sell. Budweiser doesn't make me more popular with the ladies, nor the life of the party (unless the lady is a urinal, and the party is the hopping mens room culture). Car X doesn't make me a sexy, rich, race car driver. Nikes and Gatorade don't make me any less of a nonathletic geek. And the last time I drank a liquor that was advertised I didn't get suave, unless suave really means rowdy, sweaty, and hitting on fat chicks.
Advertising usually goes for cheap psychological gimmicks, rather than actually explaining why Pepsi is better than Coke, or telling me why a crappy plastic mop is better than the one I own.
In short, they lie. Advertising is just manipulation, and I, for one, do not like to be manipulated. If advertising actually told me WHY I need the product, I might be convinced, giving a genuine need.
Also I think there is a backlash because it is EVERYWHERE. You can't escape it, EVER. Every bus (school, or public), every show, every game, every webpage, the sky, the roads, etc... all deluge us constantly with the same cheap psychological gimmicks. They are tacky, ugly, and distractive (the latter being the goal).
They also lead to a superficial culture, since people actually buy into them. I once knew a girl who had a Nike "swoosh" tattooed on her arm, and a Calvin pissing on a Chevy logo on her truck. I asked her why. She told me that she agreed with what Nike stood for (crappy over-priced tennis shoes mad in asian sweatshops?), and that anyone who didn't like Ford was a pussy. We are bombarded with these stupid images so much that they HAVE TO influence our psychology, self, and culture. Its another step away from reality. Branding isn't real./rant
I disagree. I know a couple of emerging (and kick ass) bands in the Phoenix area, and I always tell them to have at least one or two free tracks (as in downloadable) so people can put them on their iPods or such. It keeps things fresh between shows (especially if they tour), and reminds them that the band exists as more than an anomalous myspace friend or such. Say you have 5 recorded tracks, that one you give away isn't going to harm you, but will be a nice nod to your fans.
One of the bands I know are releasing a studio CD soon (indie), I told them to release a free track on their page. Free is a good draw, it makes people more willing to buy (social psych 101 there), also it gives the music time to grow on people who are not convinced they want to part with $10-15 bucks for an obscure indie band.
Granted I never say "give it all away for free", I want my friends to succeed, meaning they need profits. And the more albums they sell, the more rounds are on them.
I'll pay four cents every time I want to hear most songs.
Ouch. Some days I have music playing 24/7, that would add up DAMN fast. Until I reset last.fm was telling me I played 15,000 songs in the last year, this is a sum of money FAR beyond my means.
I know you suffixed this with being able to save to MP3 at will. Which makes more sense. But is a pipe dream. The only way I ever see 4c being a viable sum is if we completely removed the middle man (both on retail, distro, and RIAA), and even then it would be rather hard to justify that. If it was a popular band 4c might be able to clear the production costs (and hosting, etc...) and leave some profit for the band, but for any smaller act this would be impossible. With smaller acts they sell less, and thus have less revenue, also they need more promotion, meaning more overhead.
Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead (to name the two latest huge self-distributors) might have no problem with offering songs for 4c, and still pull off a profit. they don't even need to promote anymore, they have a fan base, and free publicity (fan sites). A small or middling band isn't this free though.
10-25c sounds fair to me, given independence of the artists. Low enough for a good impulse buy, but high enough to recoup costs. 50c with the current scheme is also pretty fair. 5.00 a CD is the point to shoot for.
As for the RIAA serving you... Your right. Subpoenas are on special today.
I really suspect that Strong AI is a myth, and a pipe dream, and that the Turing test is somewhat a hoax. I am rather fond of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, on this count. The appearance of intelligence does not necessarily mean intelligence. The turing test just proves that a machine can fool some people, but P.T. Barnum learned this long ago.
Off topic, but in regards to you sig...
While the viewing of child porn might be somewhat like thoughtcrime, the main problem is the CREATION of child porn, which is a real crime, and rather nasty to its victims. People consuming child porn are participating in this REAL crime by creating the demand. Thus people consuming child porn share at least some of the blame over the exploitation of children that the creators are guilty of.
If there is no market, there is no product. This, I guess, is the reasoning, outside of the natural abhorrence regular people have at the whole topic. Personally, even if it borders on thoughtcrime, I support cracking down on BOTH the consumers and creators of child porn. Sometimes this goes to far, but the cause is still just.
As for the terrorism bit, you probably are half right. I think that the government does half of it because we WANT them too, or at least they think we want them too. Also there is a prevalent thought in Washington that we the people are too dumb to look out for our own interests. At times I agree.
Sometimes it has been used for power, fear has, but most the time I'm guessing its misguided "ends justify the means" reasoning (sexified by calling it realpolitik). Also a large bit of social dynamics come in, a lot of people would lose jobs and power if we were safe, and thus unconsciously they try to keep up safe, but not TOO safe. This probably isn't intentional. Viva la Foucault.
I'd say Descartes has prior art on the idea. More recently (and ignoring Gibson) Philip K. Dick.
As a philosophy buff the first Matrix had me, then they killed it with the latter two and their cave-raves and messianic imagery.
I got sick of Matrix analogies about the time my old college started forcing 101 kids to watch the Matrix on top of the section on Descartes, and I walked into a book store and saw "The Philosophy of the Matrix" book. Yes, it raises valid (and arguably historic) philosophical issue, but it is not the be-all-end-all, its more a cursory teaser that becomes moronic later on.
But what if I don't have a hammer? Should I be paralyzed, and unable to get my nails into wood if I only had a wrench?
Depending on what wrench you have at hand, it could do the task adequately given a lack of hammer. True intelligence and creativity is the ability to adapt.
I've hammered more than a fair share of nails with the pommel of my hiking knife, wrenches, the butts of screwdrivers, and large rocks. To extend this to OS politics, a true geek doesn't discount any OS, since they all can be useful in a pinch.
I agree with you points, sans the subjective one. But you can turn of UAC, and I think anyone here on/. would be insane not to, since it is the most obnoxious feature in an OS as long as I can remember, and serves no purpose for anyone with minor experience with computers.
I generally agree with the speed. On computers with similar specs Vista is going to lose every time. Though OS X isn't doing so well right now either. My girlfriend has a MacBook pro with almost the same specs as my Vista laptop (a little less ram) and it has a hard time multi-tasking and shifting windows. My old G4 was more snappy, ironically. Ubuntu though is nice, when the new version comes out of beta I'm going to try the new dual boot tactic. I have tons of respect for Ubuntu.
The new control panel is dumb. Its the opposite of good UI design.
I dig Aero, personally. It isn't as pretty as OS X, but it still looks much better than the odd plastic look of XP, and the ugly 80's-esque grey boxes of 95-98-2k. Yes, geeks will yell if I say I like pretty (pretty AND functional, to be exact), but I have to stare at it for 8+ hours a day, it might as well be nice to look at. But that is completely subjective, and doesn't make good analysis, as you state.
Vista is better than I thought it would be, but not as good as it could be.
I really don't see any compelling new feature or reason to upgrade from XP
Thats the crux of my issue too. I got a decent deal on a laptop with Vista pre-installed, my original plan was to throw my old XPpro installation onto it and use it as my travel computer (got a perfectly functional Mac as my main). But Vista grew on me, so it wasn't worth migrating back to XP. It also wouldn't be worth it to me to go upgrade my XP box to Vista. Meaning I'm ambivalent.
I don't use the laptop for gaming, so 3 gigs of RAM has been sufficient. I can run Aero with no decrease in performance, even with a slew of applications open. The Mac trained me not to care about free RAM, so I don't really mind how high its profile is (right now at 1.14GB).
I've actually been surprised that I use it as much as my Mac, since for some reason the Intel change is still treating me badly. Though I still prefer the OS X interface over Aero, Aero is pretty nice looking, and pretty easy to use.
I have no real large complaints, especially after they fix the annoying copy time bug. But it isn't really worth spending money, and install time on.
Before someone calls me a fanboy let me restate that my main box is a Mac. I see windows as the mediocre (but funtional) medium between the simplicity and just-works-ishness of OS X, and the power and flexibility of *nix. All have their strengths and weaknesses, its a matter of preference, learning, and style, all subjective.
I don't know much about the demographics of the area, but I really doubt that a signifigant portion of the population are meth addicts, nor probably a large percentage of those evil poor people. I rather doubt that this tax money would be quickly sent to that small portion of meth addicts (or even those damn people poorer than you), but would probably be distributed to other programs, like... hmmm.. roads, hospitals, police, fire, etc... You might, though, have to share these with those damn slackers, which is sad, since I'm sure they would rather not be burdened with more elitist, faux bourgeoisie, greedy rich people bandying about their self-interested ideas of entitlement.
Why should corporations pay taxes, or at least obey the law? The society in which corporations are enmeshed are largely responsible for their prosperity, and thus they owe some level of entitlement towards the society as a whole.
I'm not a socialist, I just think some people fail to realize that in many cases poverty is outside of the control of the individual. Either that or they have to decide this to justify their own crass greed. But then again I'm one of those loons that puts human life, health, and happiness above little green slips of paper.
I know I'm trying to be logical when it comes to the various recording industries, but...
If I got this right, the DJ has to buy, and pay royalties towards music purchased in format X, and potentially the venue also must pay royalties. So music X is bought and paid for, correct?
Now if the DJ decided to shift X into Y he must pay AGAIN, noticing that X was already completely paid up and legit.
I don't see where this is different from me doing the same, even if my use is not commercial. The main similarity, of course, is that X is completely legal, legit, and paid for. What the difference from me playing the CD containing a song, and me playing an mp3 of the same song, ripped from the same album. Where does the industry lose money? Is there something in the process of encoding and ripping that takes back all the money I paid in the first place?
Off topic, but relevant: WTF is up with the new comment boxes and format? The comments make me feel like I'm using a ghetto version of Reddit, and the actual page format is just UGLY. The huge gray buttons are... well... And the new way of displaying threads is more moronic than the last version...
I don't think he was talking about Afghanistan, which is the only war we're fighting over 9/11. I'm sure Gore would have done the same, I don't think any president would really have had a choice in the matter with the public and congress breathing down his spine.
Iraq though Gore wouldn't have touched with a 10 foot pole. I rather doubt he would have run a Nixon-esque imperial presidency either. I rather doubt he would have burnt the constitution either because of the CO2 emissions (I kid, he seems sane if the true answer), either.
It really doesn't matter though, since Bush was our unelected president and not Gore, so anything to the contrary is pointless to discus. Its hard to imagine a much worse president, thus we all can imagine Gore would have been better without stretching the bounds of logic.
I don't get how enviromentalism is now a character weakness. Only in America.
I think the point is that it is impossible to define because it doesn't actually mean anything. Its an arbitrary label we can throw onto other people we don't like. Each word is packed full of idiotic stereotypes, and psychological fallacies.
Left = commie Right = fascist.
We might not admit to these translations, but I think that they are the general image we get when either term is used. And I don't think any person, or political ideology, ever actually can fall into a pure left/right schema. Its almost as moronic as the "red" and "blue" state myth, which serves no purpose than to pigeon hole people for the derision of other people.
I find it very easy to hold views from the so-called left and right at the same time. Many of them are not as contradictory as this simplistic classification would grant.
Out of curiosity where would famous political philosophers fall in this? Is John Locke, and J.S. Mill a leftist, while Thomas Hobbs is a righty?
If it gets caught by AV and firewalls, then the target computer probably doesn't need the patch as bad as the ones where the "helpful virus" can get through.
Though I'm guessing that botnet worm writers will just find ways to circumvent it, just like virus writers and spyware authors have been being malicious towards AV and spyware detectors/scrubbers for years.
From my experience with beta 4 it works fine when you turn off compatibility checking. The only broken extension I'm run into is Cookie Safe, but CS Lite fixes most of the problems (not all it seems, it still hangs but rarely enough to be hard to isolate). As said this is with beta 4, not beta 5, so your mileage my differ.
So far these betas have been surprisingly good. Once I isolated the Cookie Safe issue, I hardly break 300k of memory usage (6 hours of regular browsing). I still get some odd CPU usage spikes everyonce in a while (a little more often than with Firefox 2), but that isn't too much a deal breaker. The odd address bar has kind of grown on me, as have the IE style navigation buttons.
My only real complaint is the history/bookmarks window. Dragging and dropping between panes is... it sucks. And not having unfiled bookmarks available in a menu is also obnoxious.
Perhaps this years theme is to not do April Fools, and then all of us slashbots will be even more paranoid than usual, since we will keep expecting to be fooled, but won't, but are by the fact that we are expecting it.
It does give all the normal articles a penumbra of dread, at least.
I think the parent is correct about much of modern protest, but not all. But even if it is abused, or done for no real reason, it still is a handy tool that we may need someday (or, arguably now).
I remember in college I had a bunch of friends telling me about the "die in" (basically laying down, acting dead-ish in the student union) they were holding. This was fine an noble, but they were completely unable to actually tell anyone what it was over, but they still got around 70-100 people to participate. I think, in the end, it was over the food supplier for the university or something, but I'm not sure since the organizers still won't tell me.
Yearly PRISM (the gay activist club) would organize demostations and protests for equal rights and gay marriage, one year it was then doing some stupid musical/play thing in the middle of campus. All it served was to make it impossible to study there, and to set them further apart from the rest of us (making it easier to single them out). Though the year previous they organized my favorite demonstration ever, "Gay people being gay", and it consisted of them sitting around the commons, studying, and socializing normally, while surrounded by yellow police tape, showing people that they were just people. I actually signed their petition that year.
Most protesters act outragious, and thus can pointed out at deviants and oddballs, which weakens to position that people are protesting. It makes it easier for someone to point at them and discredit them. By acting like morons they discredit their own cause. Ideally protesters should wear business attire, have professional signs, and offer and eloquent message, this way they have the image of at least treating their issue seriously, and don't come off as a bunch of mentally unstable ex-hippies wearing hemp pants who actually believe that the GOP eats babies.
I think there is an expectation of privacy because people view SMS in the same light as they view a person-to-person telephone conversation. I don't think they're wrong in this, either, since this is more akin to an internal organizational memo than a soap box. When I CC an email to 10 of my friends about something going on, I have the same expectation of privacy as sending it to any single one of them. It is that group's business, not anyone else's.
In my analogy the only legitimate circumvention would be to actually ask a recipient.
That said, this is absurd, even if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. These emails were organizing a protest, something that is constitutionally protected, and good for society as a whole. This was not, from the sounds of it, a "terrorist" event, or a plot to blow up Madison Square Gardens, but just a regular act of civil disobedience and protest. This could, and might be geared towards, have a chilling effect on the organization of demonstrations, and those who provide the tools to do so. Thus even if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, I still don't think that it is the governments business.
Damnit, never been rickrolled before. Good job good sir, good job.
I still don't get the humor or terror of it though... If 2girls1cup is a 10, Goatse and Tubgirl a 7, a Rickroll is a 2 on the international trolling chart.
I have a question with all of these studies, how much of this is purely cultural? A more interesting study would to be to take all the historically popular/attractive models and run them through some algorithm to find commonalities. Its rather well known that attractive morphologies change through time (compare the heroin chic of the 90s to the painting of Rubin), but does this also hold true for facial structures. A cross cultural analysis would remove much of the cultural bias.
This is one of those major pain in the ass questions that will never be answered I feel, like abortion and the death penalty. Probably because there is no really good answer.
I see your reasoning, I'm just not sure if it is actually better, or just the same. I fear if it was legalized it would be a business mans DREAM product, much better than cigarettes, I also still would fear for the collateral damage. People still will be neglecting their children, catching HIV (though a clean needle exchange would help a bit), giving themselves major brain damage, and (most troubling to society at large) being economic drains. Its hard to be a junkie and have a 9-5, thus this money will STILL have to come from somewhere, even if it is less money, and going to less violent sources.
Though, I suppose, we could try it, and repeal it if it didn't work, just like prohibition. Not much harm in that (though I'm sure the commercial opium poppy lobby would buy a fair share of congress critters).
Thanks for the good argument, last time I had this conversation it was with an incoherent libertarian whose whole position was "my body, can do what I want, there are no external consequences that matter!" Sometimes I forget that/. has rational people.:)
No matter what OS your manhood is dependent on, reasoning and argumentation is your friend.
The gp gave reasoning behind his opinion, then you hop in and scream "fanboy!" and expect this to be sufficient. It isn't. How is the gp wrong? OS X DOES have an objectively, and verifiable, track record than Windows. This could be called "actual security", whereas Windows more rapid response time and great amount of patches, with a large amount of recorded exploits, could be called "virtual security", since it still is full of holes.
I'm sure Linux fairs better, but sadly that has nothing to do with the story.
Both Linux and OS X probably fair better in this because they are smaller targets, though I'm guessing being built on some flavor of *nix probably helps.
This is a nice flamebait story for the OS X fanboys, and the MS fanboys. No one else cares. Your emotional commitment to a pro OS X statement, in this context, just makes you a Windows fanboy, which isn't a step up from an OS X fanboy (perhaps a step down even). All fanboys are equally moronic in my opinion.
I really don't care, since 90% of exploits depend on the user being ignorant, or stupid. So far my Vista laptop has given me as many problems as my OS X box, meaning none. Patch schedule is tertiary to good initial programming.
$50 a year on beer? Thats less than a dollar a week, that means I don't even get malt liquor (Mickeys), much less a single can of PBR at the local pub ($2 not counting tip). $1000 sounds more like a fun night in Vegas, sans hookers and blow.
If your going to make the accusation that "Google is giving everything to the government" please supply proof. I haven't seen any documented evidence or allegations of this presented by reputable sources (or even disreputable), and thus I'd say the burden of proof lies on you.
Also I don't see how your political rhetoric (which may or may not be true)is actually connected to the story, or to Google (outside of an unsupported allegation). I'm getting sick of people inserting their politics into every medium that they can possibly think of, even if it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Most people on Slashdot are more intelligent than the base population, and have either strong pre-existing political beliefs, or are intelligent enough to form their own well-founded political beliefs. Those of us who do not will still probably not give you any credence since you served to impeach yourself as a valid source of political insight by opening with sensationalist claims, and using a sensationalist tone, and by not actually including reasoned points that are valid to the topic at hand.
So if you really want to influence the common Slashdotter your going to have to convince us with an actual, and referenced, argument. If you are unwilling to do this, but still want to be some form of web-based activist, please go to forums inhabited by people who are more likely less informed than your average Slashdot geek.
As an aside I'm sick of people telling me what to believe. I'll take uninterpreted facts, so I can found my own opinions. I've even given up listening to music with lyrics, because everything is getting to politically evangelical for my tastes.
Slashdot Mirror
...a need already exists ("I need social acceptance" - or something along those lines). With this research, the marketers are merely helping you fulfill this need by pushing past other products' attempts to get you to purchase them.
/rant
Thats the point, the need they exploit has nothing to do with the product they sell. Budweiser doesn't make me more popular with the ladies, nor the life of the party (unless the lady is a urinal, and the party is the hopping mens room culture). Car X doesn't make me a sexy, rich, race car driver. Nikes and Gatorade don't make me any less of a nonathletic geek. And the last time I drank a liquor that was advertised I didn't get suave, unless suave really means rowdy, sweaty, and hitting on fat chicks.
Advertising usually goes for cheap psychological gimmicks, rather than actually explaining why Pepsi is better than Coke, or telling me why a crappy plastic mop is better than the one I own.
In short, they lie. Advertising is just manipulation, and I, for one, do not like to be manipulated. If advertising actually told me WHY I need the product, I might be convinced, giving a genuine need.
Also I think there is a backlash because it is EVERYWHERE. You can't escape it, EVER. Every bus (school, or public), every show, every game, every webpage, the sky, the roads, etc... all deluge us constantly with the same cheap psychological gimmicks. They are tacky, ugly, and distractive (the latter being the goal).
They also lead to a superficial culture, since people actually buy into them. I once knew a girl who had a Nike "swoosh" tattooed on her arm, and a Calvin pissing on a Chevy logo on her truck. I asked her why. She told me that she agreed with what Nike stood for (crappy over-priced tennis shoes mad in asian sweatshops?), and that anyone who didn't like Ford was a pussy. We are bombarded with these stupid images so much that they HAVE TO influence our psychology, self, and culture. Its another step away from reality. Branding isn't real.
And free tracks doesn't make much sense either
I disagree. I know a couple of emerging (and kick ass) bands in the Phoenix area, and I always tell them to have at least one or two free tracks (as in downloadable) so people can put them on their iPods or such. It keeps things fresh between shows (especially if they tour), and reminds them that the band exists as more than an anomalous myspace friend or such. Say you have 5 recorded tracks, that one you give away isn't going to harm you, but will be a nice nod to your fans.
One of the bands I know are releasing a studio CD soon (indie), I told them to release a free track on their page. Free is a good draw, it makes people more willing to buy (social psych 101 there), also it gives the music time to grow on people who are not convinced they want to part with $10-15 bucks for an obscure indie band.
Granted I never say "give it all away for free", I want my friends to succeed, meaning they need profits. And the more albums they sell, the more rounds are on them.
I'll pay four cents every time I want to hear most songs.
Ouch. Some days I have music playing 24/7, that would add up DAMN fast. Until I reset last.fm was telling me I played 15,000 songs in the last year, this is a sum of money FAR beyond my means.
I know you suffixed this with being able to save to MP3 at will. Which makes more sense. But is a pipe dream. The only way I ever see 4c being a viable sum is if we completely removed the middle man (both on retail, distro, and RIAA), and even then it would be rather hard to justify that. If it was a popular band 4c might be able to clear the production costs (and hosting, etc...) and leave some profit for the band, but for any smaller act this would be impossible. With smaller acts they sell less, and thus have less revenue, also they need more promotion, meaning more overhead.
Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead (to name the two latest huge self-distributors) might have no problem with offering songs for 4c, and still pull off a profit. they don't even need to promote anymore, they have a fan base, and free publicity (fan sites). A small or middling band isn't this free though.
10-25c sounds fair to me, given independence of the artists. Low enough for a good impulse buy, but high enough to recoup costs. 50c with the current scheme is also pretty fair. 5.00 a CD is the point to shoot for.
As for the RIAA serving you... Your right. Subpoenas are on special today.
I really suspect that Strong AI is a myth, and a pipe dream, and that the Turing test is somewhat a hoax. I am rather fond of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment, on this count. The appearance of intelligence does not necessarily mean intelligence. The turing test just proves that a machine can fool some people, but P.T. Barnum learned this long ago.
Off topic, but in regards to you sig...
While the viewing of child porn might be somewhat like thoughtcrime, the main problem is the CREATION of child porn, which is a real crime, and rather nasty to its victims. People consuming child porn are participating in this REAL crime by creating the demand. Thus people consuming child porn share at least some of the blame over the exploitation of children that the creators are guilty of.
If there is no market, there is no product. This, I guess, is the reasoning, outside of the natural abhorrence regular people have at the whole topic. Personally, even if it borders on thoughtcrime, I support cracking down on BOTH the consumers and creators of child porn. Sometimes this goes to far, but the cause is still just.
As for the terrorism bit, you probably are half right. I think that the government does half of it because we WANT them too, or at least they think we want them too. Also there is a prevalent thought in Washington that we the people are too dumb to look out for our own interests. At times I agree.
Sometimes it has been used for power, fear has, but most the time I'm guessing its misguided "ends justify the means" reasoning (sexified by calling it realpolitik). Also a large bit of social dynamics come in, a lot of people would lose jobs and power if we were safe, and thus unconsciously they try to keep up safe, but not TOO safe. This probably isn't intentional. Viva la Foucault.
The Sims 3?
I'd say Descartes has prior art on the idea. More recently (and ignoring Gibson) Philip K. Dick.
As a philosophy buff the first Matrix had me, then they killed it with the latter two and their cave-raves and messianic imagery.
I got sick of Matrix analogies about the time my old college started forcing 101 kids to watch the Matrix on top of the section on Descartes, and I walked into a book store and saw "The Philosophy of the Matrix" book. Yes, it raises valid (and arguably historic) philosophical issue, but it is not the be-all-end-all, its more a cursory teaser that becomes moronic later on.
Look ma, Neo is Jesus! Lord...
But what if I don't have a hammer? Should I be paralyzed, and unable to get my nails into wood if I only had a wrench?
Depending on what wrench you have at hand, it could do the task adequately given a lack of hammer. True intelligence and creativity is the ability to adapt.
I've hammered more than a fair share of nails with the pommel of my hiking knife, wrenches, the butts of screwdrivers, and large rocks. To extend this to OS politics, a true geek doesn't discount any OS, since they all can be useful in a pinch.
I agree with you points, sans the subjective one. But you can turn of UAC, and I think anyone here on /. would be insane not to, since it is the most obnoxious feature in an OS as long as I can remember, and serves no purpose for anyone with minor experience with computers.
I generally agree with the speed. On computers with similar specs Vista is going to lose every time. Though OS X isn't doing so well right now either. My girlfriend has a MacBook pro with almost the same specs as my Vista laptop (a little less ram) and it has a hard time multi-tasking and shifting windows. My old G4 was more snappy, ironically. Ubuntu though is nice, when the new version comes out of beta I'm going to try the new dual boot tactic. I have tons of respect for Ubuntu.
The new control panel is dumb. Its the opposite of good UI design.
I dig Aero, personally. It isn't as pretty as OS X, but it still looks much better than the odd plastic look of XP, and the ugly 80's-esque grey boxes of 95-98-2k. Yes, geeks will yell if I say I like pretty (pretty AND functional, to be exact), but I have to stare at it for 8+ hours a day, it might as well be nice to look at. But that is completely subjective, and doesn't make good analysis, as you state.
Vista is better than I thought it would be, but not as good as it could be.
I really don't see any compelling new feature or reason to upgrade from XP
Thats the crux of my issue too. I got a decent deal on a laptop with Vista pre-installed, my original plan was to throw my old XPpro installation onto it and use it as my travel computer (got a perfectly functional Mac as my main). But Vista grew on me, so it wasn't worth migrating back to XP. It also wouldn't be worth it to me to go upgrade my XP box to Vista. Meaning I'm ambivalent.
I don't use the laptop for gaming, so 3 gigs of RAM has been sufficient. I can run Aero with no decrease in performance, even with a slew of applications open. The Mac trained me not to care about free RAM, so I don't really mind how high its profile is (right now at 1.14GB).
I've actually been surprised that I use it as much as my Mac, since for some reason the Intel change is still treating me badly. Though I still prefer the OS X interface over Aero, Aero is pretty nice looking, and pretty easy to use.
I have no real large complaints, especially after they fix the annoying copy time bug. But it isn't really worth spending money, and install time on.
Before someone calls me a fanboy let me restate that my main box is a Mac. I see windows as the mediocre (but funtional) medium between the simplicity and just-works-ishness of OS X, and the power and flexibility of *nix. All have their strengths and weaknesses, its a matter of preference, learning, and style, all subjective.
Your sig agrees with your sentiment.
I don't know much about the demographics of the area, but I really doubt that a signifigant portion of the population are meth addicts, nor probably a large percentage of those evil poor people. I rather doubt that this tax money would be quickly sent to that small portion of meth addicts (or even those damn people poorer than you), but would probably be distributed to other programs, like... hmmm.. roads, hospitals, police, fire, etc... You might, though, have to share these with those damn slackers, which is sad, since I'm sure they would rather not be burdened with more elitist, faux bourgeoisie, greedy rich people bandying about their self-interested ideas of entitlement.
Why should corporations pay taxes, or at least obey the law? The society in which corporations are enmeshed are largely responsible for their prosperity, and thus they owe some level of entitlement towards the society as a whole.
I'm not a socialist, I just think some people fail to realize that in many cases poverty is outside of the control of the individual. Either that or they have to decide this to justify their own crass greed. But then again I'm one of those loons that puts human life, health, and happiness above little green slips of paper.
down mod at will.
I know I'm trying to be logical when it comes to the various recording industries, but...
If I got this right, the DJ has to buy, and pay royalties towards music purchased in format X, and potentially the venue also must pay royalties. So music X is bought and paid for, correct?
Now if the DJ decided to shift X into Y he must pay AGAIN, noticing that X was already completely paid up and legit.
I don't see where this is different from me doing the same, even if my use is not commercial. The main similarity, of course, is that X is completely legal, legit, and paid for. What the difference from me playing the CD containing a song, and me playing an mp3 of the same song, ripped from the same album. Where does the industry lose money? Is there something in the process of encoding and ripping that takes back all the money I paid in the first place?
Off topic, but relevant: WTF is up with the new comment boxes and format? The comments make me feel like I'm using a ghetto version of Reddit, and the actual page format is just UGLY. The huge gray buttons are... well... And the new way of displaying threads is more moronic than the last version...
Who taught the monkey to play with code?
I don't think he was talking about Afghanistan, which is the only war we're fighting over 9/11. I'm sure Gore would have done the same, I don't think any president would really have had a choice in the matter with the public and congress breathing down his spine.
Iraq though Gore wouldn't have touched with a 10 foot pole. I rather doubt he would have run a Nixon-esque imperial presidency either. I rather doubt he would have burnt the constitution either because of the CO2 emissions (I kid, he seems sane if the true answer), either.
It really doesn't matter though, since Bush was our unelected president and not Gore, so anything to the contrary is pointless to discus. Its hard to imagine a much worse president, thus we all can imagine Gore would have been better without stretching the bounds of logic.
I don't get how enviromentalism is now a character weakness. Only in America.
Something is hard, so trying it isn't worthwhile?
I think the point is that it is impossible to define because it doesn't actually mean anything. Its an arbitrary label we can throw onto other people we don't like. Each word is packed full of idiotic stereotypes, and psychological fallacies.
Left = commie
Right = fascist.
We might not admit to these translations, but I think that they are the general image we get when either term is used. And I don't think any person, or political ideology, ever actually can fall into a pure left/right schema. Its almost as moronic as the "red" and "blue" state myth, which serves no purpose than to pigeon hole people for the derision of other people.
I find it very easy to hold views from the so-called left and right at the same time. Many of them are not as contradictory as this simplistic classification would grant.
Out of curiosity where would famous political philosophers fall in this? Is John Locke, and J.S. Mill a leftist, while Thomas Hobbs is a righty?
If it gets caught by AV and firewalls, then the target computer probably doesn't need the patch as bad as the ones where the "helpful virus" can get through.
Though I'm guessing that botnet worm writers will just find ways to circumvent it, just like virus writers and spyware authors have been being malicious towards AV and spyware detectors/scrubbers for years.
From my experience with beta 4 it works fine when you turn off compatibility checking. The only broken extension I'm run into is Cookie Safe, but CS Lite fixes most of the problems (not all it seems, it still hangs but rarely enough to be hard to isolate). As said this is with beta 4, not beta 5, so your mileage my differ.
So far these betas have been surprisingly good. Once I isolated the Cookie Safe issue, I hardly break 300k of memory usage (6 hours of regular browsing). I still get some odd CPU usage spikes everyonce in a while (a little more often than with Firefox 2), but that isn't too much a deal breaker. The odd address bar has kind of grown on me, as have the IE style navigation buttons.
My only real complaint is the history/bookmarks window. Dragging and dropping between panes is... it sucks. And not having unfiled bookmarks available in a menu is also obnoxious.
Perhaps this years theme is to not do April Fools, and then all of us slashbots will be even more paranoid than usual, since we will keep expecting to be fooled, but won't, but are by the fact that we are expecting it.
It does give all the normal articles a penumbra of dread, at least.
Like an anti-April Fools April Fools.
I think the parent is correct about much of modern protest, but not all. But even if it is abused, or done for no real reason, it still is a handy tool that we may need someday (or, arguably now).
I remember in college I had a bunch of friends telling me about the "die in" (basically laying down, acting dead-ish in the student union) they were holding. This was fine an noble, but they were completely unable to actually tell anyone what it was over, but they still got around 70-100 people to participate. I think, in the end, it was over the food supplier for the university or something, but I'm not sure since the organizers still won't tell me.
Yearly PRISM (the gay activist club) would organize demostations and protests for equal rights and gay marriage, one year it was then doing some stupid musical/play thing in the middle of campus. All it served was to make it impossible to study there, and to set them further apart from the rest of us (making it easier to single them out). Though the year previous they organized my favorite demonstration ever, "Gay people being gay", and it consisted of them sitting around the commons, studying, and socializing normally, while surrounded by yellow police tape, showing people that they were just people. I actually signed their petition that year.
Most protesters act outragious, and thus can pointed out at deviants and oddballs, which weakens to position that people are protesting. It makes it easier for someone to point at them and discredit them. By acting like morons they discredit their own cause. Ideally protesters should wear business attire, have professional signs, and offer and eloquent message, this way they have the image of at least treating their issue seriously, and don't come off as a bunch of mentally unstable ex-hippies wearing hemp pants who actually believe that the GOP eats babies.
I think there is an expectation of privacy because people view SMS in the same light as they view a person-to-person telephone conversation. I don't think they're wrong in this, either, since this is more akin to an internal organizational memo than a soap box. When I CC an email to 10 of my friends about something going on, I have the same expectation of privacy as sending it to any single one of them. It is that group's business, not anyone else's.
In my analogy the only legitimate circumvention would be to actually ask a recipient.
That said, this is absurd, even if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. These emails were organizing a protest, something that is constitutionally protected, and good for society as a whole. This was not, from the sounds of it, a "terrorist" event, or a plot to blow up Madison Square Gardens, but just a regular act of civil disobedience and protest. This could, and might be geared towards, have a chilling effect on the organization of demonstrations, and those who provide the tools to do so. Thus even if there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, I still don't think that it is the governments business.
Damnit, never been rickrolled before. Good job good sir, good job.
I still don't get the humor or terror of it though... If 2girls1cup is a 10, Goatse and Tubgirl a 7, a Rickroll is a 2 on the international trolling chart.
I have a question with all of these studies, how much of this is purely cultural? A more interesting study would to be to take all the historically popular/attractive models and run them through some algorithm to find commonalities. Its rather well known that attractive morphologies change through time (compare the heroin chic of the 90s to the painting of Rubin), but does this also hold true for facial structures. A cross cultural analysis would remove much of the cultural bias.
This is one of those major pain in the ass questions that will never be answered I feel, like abortion and the death penalty. Probably because there is no really good answer.
/. has rational people. :)
I see your reasoning, I'm just not sure if it is actually better, or just the same. I fear if it was legalized it would be a business mans DREAM product, much better than cigarettes, I also still would fear for the collateral damage. People still will be neglecting their children, catching HIV (though a clean needle exchange would help a bit), giving themselves major brain damage, and (most troubling to society at large) being economic drains. Its hard to be a junkie and have a 9-5, thus this money will STILL have to come from somewhere, even if it is less money, and going to less violent sources.
Though, I suppose, we could try it, and repeal it if it didn't work, just like prohibition. Not much harm in that (though I'm sure the commercial opium poppy lobby would buy a fair share of congress critters).
Thanks for the good argument, last time I had this conversation it was with an incoherent libertarian whose whole position was "my body, can do what I want, there are no external consequences that matter!" Sometimes I forget that
No matter what OS your manhood is dependent on, reasoning and argumentation is your friend.
The gp gave reasoning behind his opinion, then you hop in and scream "fanboy!" and expect this to be sufficient. It isn't. How is the gp wrong? OS X DOES have an objectively, and verifiable, track record than Windows. This could be called "actual security", whereas Windows more rapid response time and great amount of patches, with a large amount of recorded exploits, could be called "virtual security", since it still is full of holes.
I'm sure Linux fairs better, but sadly that has nothing to do with the story.
Both Linux and OS X probably fair better in this because they are smaller targets, though I'm guessing being built on some flavor of *nix probably helps.
This is a nice flamebait story for the OS X fanboys, and the MS fanboys. No one else cares. Your emotional commitment to a pro OS X statement, in this context, just makes you a Windows fanboy, which isn't a step up from an OS X fanboy (perhaps a step down even). All fanboys are equally moronic in my opinion.
I really don't care, since 90% of exploits depend on the user being ignorant, or stupid. So far my Vista laptop has given me as many problems as my OS X box, meaning none. Patch schedule is tertiary to good initial programming.
$50 a year on beer? Thats less than a dollar a week, that means I don't even get malt liquor (Mickeys), much less a single can of PBR at the local pub ($2 not counting tip). $1000 sounds more like a fun night in Vegas, sans hookers and blow.
But we won't be here, so why should I care?
It would be very amusing for the folks on the ISS though.
If your going to make the accusation that "Google is giving everything to the government" please supply proof. I haven't seen any documented evidence or allegations of this presented by reputable sources (or even disreputable), and thus I'd say the burden of proof lies on you.
Also I don't see how your political rhetoric (which may or may not be true)is actually connected to the story, or to Google (outside of an unsupported allegation). I'm getting sick of people inserting their politics into every medium that they can possibly think of, even if it is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Most people on Slashdot are more intelligent than the base population, and have either strong pre-existing political beliefs, or are intelligent enough to form their own well-founded political beliefs. Those of us who do not will still probably not give you any credence since you served to impeach yourself as a valid source of political insight by opening with sensationalist claims, and using a sensationalist tone, and by not actually including reasoned points that are valid to the topic at hand.
So if you really want to influence the common Slashdotter your going to have to convince us with an actual, and referenced, argument. If you are unwilling to do this, but still want to be some form of web-based activist, please go to forums inhabited by people who are more likely less informed than your average Slashdot geek.
As an aside I'm sick of people telling me what to believe. I'll take uninterpreted facts, so I can found my own opinions. I've even given up listening to music with lyrics, because everything is getting to politically evangelical for my tastes.
Sorry if this came off trollish.