Cube farms are offices designed by people who don't know how to design things. It's hardly surprising that they are shitty places to work.
Offices isolate the members of what should be a reasonably social job (software development) from one another, so that's no good either. who wants to work in a rabbit warren?
open-plan has problems too. some people need to have spaces where they can be approached discreetly. that's why many open-plan spaces still have some separated spaces. it's nothing to do with elitism. i have an isolated and private desk space, in a corner with a bookshelf between me and everyone else. i need this because at least half of my day is spent on the phone to clients, and even if the constant sound of my voice didn't drive my staff mad, the sound of my staff would send my clients away. my staff also need to be able to approach me with personal matters -- if not in complete privacy then at least with discretion.
if I have a developer complaining of a lack of productivity then i suggest that they work from home for a while. unfortunately, telecommuting comes with it's own set of problems, and if you let someone telecommute for too long then my experience has been that they start to disconnect from the other people in the office and become, effectively, an outsider (or worse: kind of paranoid). this situation is clearly not in anyone's interest, so my policy is that telecommuting be limited to distinct periods for specific jobs, and not be a regular way of work.
Speaking as one of "them", who was formerly one of "you", I think that offices are overrated. I've had them and I prefer the space we now share to any office I've ever had in the past.
I agree. Everyone knows a computer should have an 80x24, text-only monochrome display. That's the way the human mind works! These wasteful ideas like high-resolution colour moving images do not support any rational understanding of the human cognitive process. Computers are designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, and only elite programmers who have trained in the methods of the Great Masters from the 1950's should be permitted to use them. Any other use is an abomination.
I believe that more than 1 megabyte of memory is a waste. Indeed, I used to run a medical laboratory with 100 people in it on less memory than that! We didn't have fancy graphics or those ozone-polluting "laser" printers. We had to send people their test results using coded English on paper that didn't fit into any folder on the planet, and had lines on it. If patients need a graph to explain why they are sick then they simply should have stayed healthy!!
I believe that languages like Cocoa, Java and C# are abominations. Real programmers don't make mistakes. Real programmers don't write "garbage" that needs collection. If you make a mistake then you are, by definition, not a programmer. And you and the people you work for and all other people who don't even know who you are, should pay the price of your errors, indefinitely (yes, I do believe that Daniel Bernstein is the living Christ). I believe that all programming problems can be solved in assembly language, and that all other languages have no merit, except C, which can be used if you have urgent work to do.
I believe that we should return to teletypes and 110bps connections and 8 inch floppy disks, because these focussed the mind. I believe that if you can't keep everything that's important to you on a single disk then there is something wrong with you. I want to return the chemistry to photography and the "Super" to video. I want to wait 2 weeks to get my photos back from the drugstore -- only to have the police waiting for me when I pick them up.
I believe that only consumer computer system on the market which does not get regularly flattened by malware consists mostly of bloatware. I believe the design of the plastic that holds the computer is irrelevant, even if it means no protruding edges to break off and a single object to put on my desk. I believe that a computer that can go to sleep instantly is just lazy. I believe, contrary to all recent reviews, that Macs are more expensive than equivalent PCs. I believe that the actual value of the bloatware installed on a Mac, including all of the free applications, is zero.
I believe Vista contains no bloatware and that WINFS was, is and will be a great idea. I believe this because I believe in Market Share and the biggest Market Shareholder is Windows. For some reason I like to allude to market share and Linux in the same sentence, even though the two aren't related.
In short, like you, I am an ignorant, unthinking, luddite troll who makes baseless, disconnected assertions and appears to have lost my humanity. I console myself by knowing that I don't threaten people with violence because of a simple platform preference which is almost certainly based on a more rational analysis than yours.
Oh yeah, yeah, I went to the website and I am *so* excited about the YP-U1, it's better than an iPod and just as easy to say. I mean just the catchy name is gonna sell it to me but then I read the marketing.
"Light and attractive, capable and compact, load it up and let it ride your side in style for revolution of senses...now that's flash!"
Brilliant! I... I feel like I was there!
With competition like this it's surprising Apple's still in business!
jesus fucking christ. read a book for fuck's sake. no wonder the world's fucked, with idiots like you running around hoisting the flag of the good ol' US of A whilst simultaneously invading the same countries whose inhabitants you've starved for the last ten years.
this has become a fucking lynch mob and it's fucking disgusting.
can anyone show ANY proof that cruise.com is a spammer?
i mean "proof". i know that mumma is/calling/ them spammers. but i've yet to see - in all these postings - anyone show that cruise.com has intentionally send unsolicited email, except this ONE SINGLE CASE from which the recipient intends to profit.
imagine - just for a moment - that cruise.com is innocent (i know it's hard for you to do this, but just try). imagine that mumma's address was put on the list by someone else.
remember that mumma NEVER GAVE HIS ADDRESS TO THE LAWYER for removal.
now consider what cruise.com would have to do to protect themselves. what the fuck could they do?
if crusie.com is innocent, then mumma has defamed them (the basis of the lawsuit) and the consequences of this defamation are this fucked-up lynch mob here at/. (and also over at ars). with rabid/. and ars readers ignoring everything except the fucking headline, their business is being ripped apart and their poor staff are being called and abused, their office network has been 0wn3d.
before you assert that "mumma asked to be removed from the list", read the fucking transcript. he NEVER GIVES CRUISE.COM HIS EMAIL ADDRESS, not even on the phone.
as far as i can see you're all blowing hot air out of your collective asses. read the fucking web site, read the transcript, and tell me why cruise.com deserves to be reamed when mumma didn't even attempt to provide his email address for removal. we all know that he could have been added by someone else (mumma, as an ISP, should also know this).
and finally, how the hell is this a SLAPP lawsuit?? mumma is not participating in a public debate, he is privately suing a company. how the hell is that "public participation"? if you want to see a REAL SLAPP lawsuit then check out http://www.greens.org.au/ and search for "gunns".
Human Rights record?? Can you say "guantanamo bay"?
I didn't think so.
Of course, at least the people held in guantanamo bay - against their will and without any legal proof of wrongdoing - are still alive. Unlike the (conservative, peer-reviewed estimate of) 100,000 dead people caused directly by the invasion of iraq - the vast majority of whom had done nothing wrong.
You Americans and your blatant hypocrisy make me want to puke.
The biggest menace in the world at the moment is not just red; it's red, white and blue.
Some people here reckon that "if it were Microsoft" suing rumour sites, then we here at/. would be ripping them a new bunghole. These people say that, because it's Apple doing the suing, we're letting them off with nary a flame.
But... MS rumour web sites must be pretty boring. Not only do most rumours come from Microsoft themselves... most of them/revoke/ previously announced features from previously announced products whose previously announced shipping dates have just been slipped by two years!! While Apple fansites try to guess what Apple will release next, MS fansites are left to try to guess what announced features might be left out!!
matey, let me tell you - you're speaking utter crap.
what YOU have written essentially translates to "the most conservative country in the world is the most successful and powerful, measured by conservative values". well, duh. when i'm looking for gems of tautological insight, i'll be sure to look you up.
to consider the USSR "left" by contemporary standards is ridiculous. it is ignorant to claim that their political system was the sole predicator of their downfall. you're just reciting pop history, but your point is lost because few people outside the US think Kerry is even remotely left-wing. it's always good to throw the totalitarian USSR into any debate with progressives, isn't it? very clever use of red herrings.
for what it's worth, karl marx certainly/did/ pay respect to an economic system. in fact he bloody well invented one - it was just different from ours (i also believe it was deeply flawed, but that's beside the point). so here you've gone from tautology and red herring to downright ignorance. impressive! ten out of ten!
while speaking of the rest of the world as "a monolithic block with a mass opinion" may be stereotypical and short-sighted... at least 75% of the published opinion of the rest of the western world was opposed to the most obvious foreign policy feature of the incumbent US administration - the war in iraq. so it might be stereotypical, but then you might just be being pedantic.
so basically i conclude that that you have no idea what you're talking about, but you like to use big words so that it sound like you do.
my guess is that you work for - or get your information exclusively from - a large US based media organisation.
You gotta be joking. The Media slanted left? Starbucks as a "liberal bastion"? Sweet Jesus, I can't stop laughing - you poor ignorant fool! Starbucks as a liberal bastion! Now I think I've heard it all!!
I'm not entirely certain why you think that having your air-separated email-specific PC 0wn3d doesn't present a massive security risk..? Or maybe there should be a third PC, for email that's not work related?
I just can't believe that I read an article on Slashdot where someone recommended that I use IE. Who does this michael person think reads slashdot? Seems to me that slashdot just became irrelevant to the free software community I thought I was part of.
I'm going to turn Michael off in my preferences as a protest against this article, and I'm seriously considering not being part of this "community" any more. After all, anyone who could even consider using IE has nothing in common with me.
Would you prefer not paying for culture, hence driving all culture works to the fringes of unemployed people working through government grants and donations?
I know quite a few professional musicians and not one of them makes enough money to support themselves - even though one of them made it to #1 in the indy charts in Brisbane recently. They all have at least one other non musical job. So they are already effectively in the position you describe. How is MP3 sharing going to make this worse?
Turning culture into a business has been very successful.
Rubbish. How do you measure "success"? In terms of the amount of money a vanishingly small number of individuals and corporations have made? Profit is not and can never be the same as culture (unless you want a culture that views money above all else, but surely most people would value love, security and happiness above money... right?). It seems to me that all the commercialisation of "culture" has done is made it more and more difficult to listen and see anything that is even slightly outside the tastes of Main Street USA. There must be a million great unsigned bands in the world but we won't get to hear any of them because if a record company releases too many tracks at once it's profits will be diluted. How the hell is that "successful"??
I reckon that there's something wrong with an industry that would use a term denoting rapists and murderers ("pirates") in order to describe someone who simply copies some electrical signals. Pirates kill people, MP3 users copy music.
Anyway, since when should we be forced to pay for our culture?! This makes me so angry. Record companies promote music which (like it or not) becomes integrated into our everyday lives, but it's not legal to own a copy of that music unless you give a whole bunch of people a whole pile of money - we don't even get to own our own culture. It'll probably soon be illegal to sit around a campfire singing spice girls songs (actually, if it was just spice girls songs that it was illegal to sing, I probably wouldn't mind so much;-).
Worst of all, personal copying of music is not the only avenue of income for these greedy companies and individuals who would persecute people for downloading files. Record companies and artists make money from the clubs, pubs, on-hold music, WAY overpriced concerts, and TV and radio stations that play their music in public for a profit. We the consumer get it from both ends - we buy our drinks and listen to the advertisments so we can hear the music in public with our friends, and then we have to pay again if we want to hear it at home in our own time. How does that work??
Sharing of MP3s means that less well known bands might actually get a chance to do a gig for 5000 people at $20 a pop. $100K is not bad for a night's work. Probably more money than most indy bands ever see from CD sales, anyway.
With respect, I found the Stoll book completely without point, a monotonous drone about how computers are bad. He says that sitting in front of a computer is bad, and that people should be out caving or knitting. But I have met more people online than whilst knitting, and I regard social intercorse as much more important than being outside. (Admittedly I prefer socialising in beer gardens, but that's just a personal thing...) Stoll continually put forth the idea that the computer somehow caused the poor behaviour of people. In the example you give, where people loved writing email to foreigners but didn't talk to the 11 physically present in the school, he makes us think that this is somehow the computer's fault. I do not believe for one moment that if you took the computers away, that those 11 students would be any less lonely. The problem had nothing to do with computers; Stoll continually presents arguments as though they are the fault of the computer, when in fact they are just a scapegoat for the things he sees are wrong with the world. His email addiction is a case in point. It is not the computer's fault that he felt the need to check his email on vacation.
It would be really ill advised to say that "this software may not be used by non-democratic governments". The definition is not just hairy, it's assuming that the governments you are thinking of are democratic, but by most definitions of a true democracy they fall short; the US is very heavily corporatist, for example. (See John Ralston Soul's book "The Unconscious Civilization" for more info).
"Democracy" is not synonymous with "lack of oppression". Almost all of us living in a democratic country simply have to look to the bad areas in our neighbourhoods to see this.
Really, don't you think that Linux might be useful because it would forge closer links between the chinese people and the rest of the world? Don't you think that this will eventually move us to a more understanding middle ground, where the real issues of "human rights" abuses are tackled - and not these rancid ideological battles between countries where the propoganda on both sides is enough to make me sick?
Sitting around waiting for the perfect person is never going to help you find him/her. You have to be proactive, and one way to do that is on the 'net. There are loads of other ways, but on the 'net your main focus is words... the words you say are the thing that is most important.
People say that the internet is full of liars and that you can't tell what someone is like unless you meet them. I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Five (read it: FIVE) of my former girlfriends have been physically abused in former or subsequent relationships; two of them have had weapons pointed at their heads. These girls did not meet their partners on the internet. My flatmates (2 girls) have both given their phone numbers away in a pub and then been hassled by the guys. In what way can this be better than email harrasment?
My point is that meeting people on the internet has exactly the same issues as meeting people any other way. People can lie and cheat regardless of the means with which you meet them. The internet brings it's own dangers (like the poor bugger who's love letter was distributed by a scornful chick in the army) but also reduces some of them - you're not going to get a random punch in your face at a nightclub, like a friend of mine did a few weeks ago.
Being lonely is a condition brought about by not meeting people, and you have to mingle to meet. I really don't think it matters where you mingle, be it in a dingy bar, a rave party, or on the 'net. The people you meet online are as likely as those you meet offline to be good or bad; at least the 'net gives those of us who need to build up their confidence an opportunity to mix with others in environments that they can escape from with the flick of a switch.
One thing that java detractors seem to forget is that in many cases the systems being written would formerly have been written in some other "4GL" language such as Oracle or Unify Accell or Powerbuilder, etc. You just can't use system programming in these environments. The "4GL" environments are form/database environments first and real languages second; Java is a real language first but has excellent database and form access (with a little bit of work).
This is largely in line with comments made by others; that programmer resources are more expensive than hardware in the long run. I also believe that the hardware is so changing so quickly that language decisions made on the basis of performance are generally meaningless within a couple of years.
Few big companies are going to build large multi-user applications from scratch; Java is like the "4GLs" in that they have a huge respository of useful things that are just standard. It is better than the 4GLs in that it is faster and more generalised - and it works everywhere.
It is great to be able to combine the two "obvious" (to me anyway) trends of the future, java and linux.
The Economist article has references at the bottom of the article: All the articles were published in The Journal of Law and Economics. "The Lighthouse in Economics" by Ronald Coase was in the issue of October 1974, and "The Fable of the Bees: An Economic Investigation" by Steven Cheung in April 1973. "The Fable of the Keys" by Stan Liebowitz and Stephen Margolis appeared in April 1990. It can be read on the Internet. Presumably the referenced journal is peer-reviewed, and presumably it will have further references - and maybe even a bibliography!
Anyway, it's a good thing I looked, or I might have dissed the Economist. I nearly accept an assertion on the authority of a/. reader! Yikes!
This is the first time I've posted anything in ages. The new moderation system seems to be working exceedingly well.
Anyway, it just occurred to me that perhaps these problems have existed and been discussed in the past by academics. There has been talk in these forums about "democracy" but I think the term is used without really understanding what it means. There are a lot of other political systems which might be more applicable to/., particularly in light of what Rob has suggested.
There are alternative political systems (such as anarchy, anarcho-syndicalism, and other left-wing systems) which are actually formal systems of government (i.e. control), with sets of rules for management of a community. Now, I am only suggesting that CmdrTaco could find some resources on the 'net (e.g. by Noam Chomsky) which might give him (and us) some more ideas for this moderation thing. I don't personaly know much about these systems, but I do know they exist and are proposed by some brilliant minds as solutions to some of our social problems. Perhaps they can be applied here first;)
Even rational talk about non-US political systems on/. is generally flame bait, and I'm trying to avoid that. All I'm saying is that there are lots of community systems already in existence IRL, and that maybe we could learn from them as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Cube farms are offices designed by people who don't know how to design things. It's hardly surprising that they are shitty places to work.
Offices isolate the members of what should be a reasonably social job (software development) from one another, so that's no good either. who wants to work in a rabbit warren?
open-plan has problems too. some people need to have spaces where they can be approached discreetly. that's why many open-plan spaces still have some separated spaces. it's nothing to do with elitism. i have an isolated and private desk space, in a corner with a bookshelf between me and everyone else. i need this because at least half of my day is spent on the phone to clients, and even if the constant sound of my voice didn't drive my staff mad, the sound of my staff would send my clients away. my staff also need to be able to approach me with personal matters -- if not in complete privacy then at least with discretion.
if I have a developer complaining of a lack of productivity then i suggest that they work from home for a while. unfortunately, telecommuting comes with it's own set of problems, and if you let someone telecommute for too long then my experience has been that they start to disconnect from the other people in the office and become, effectively, an outsider (or worse: kind of paranoid). this situation is clearly not in anyone's interest, so my policy is that telecommuting be limited to distinct periods for specific jobs, and not be a regular way of work.
Speaking as one of "them", who was formerly one of "you", I think that offices are overrated. I've had them and I prefer the space we now share to any office I've ever had in the past.
I agree. Everyone knows a computer should have an 80x24, text-only monochrome display. That's the way the human mind works! These wasteful ideas like high-resolution colour moving images do not support any rational understanding of the human cognitive process. Computers are designed for one purpose, and one purpose only, and only elite programmers who have trained in the methods of the Great Masters from the 1950's should be permitted to use them. Any other use is an abomination.
I believe that more than 1 megabyte of memory is a waste. Indeed, I used to run a medical laboratory with 100 people in it on less memory than that! We didn't have fancy graphics or those ozone-polluting "laser" printers. We had to send people their test results using coded English on paper that didn't fit into any folder on the planet, and had lines on it. If patients need a graph to explain why they are sick then they simply should have stayed healthy!!
I believe that languages like Cocoa, Java and C# are abominations. Real programmers don't make mistakes. Real programmers don't write "garbage" that needs collection. If you make a mistake then you are, by definition, not a programmer. And you and the people you work for and all other people who don't even know who you are, should pay the price of your errors, indefinitely (yes, I do believe that Daniel Bernstein is the living Christ). I believe that all programming problems can be solved in assembly language, and that all other languages have no merit, except C, which can be used if you have urgent work to do.
I believe that we should return to teletypes and 110bps connections and 8 inch floppy disks, because these focussed the mind. I believe that if you can't keep everything that's important to you on a single disk then there is something wrong with you. I want to return the chemistry to photography and the "Super" to video. I want to wait 2 weeks to get my photos back from the drugstore -- only to have the police waiting for me when I pick them up.
I believe that only consumer computer system on the market which does not get regularly flattened by malware consists mostly of bloatware. I believe the design of the plastic that holds the computer is irrelevant, even if it means no protruding edges to break off and a single object to put on my desk. I believe that a computer that can go to sleep instantly is just lazy. I believe, contrary to all recent reviews, that Macs are more expensive than equivalent PCs. I believe that the actual value of the bloatware installed on a Mac, including all of the free applications, is zero.
I believe Vista contains no bloatware and that WINFS was, is and will be a great idea. I believe this because I believe in Market Share and the biggest Market Shareholder is Windows. For some reason I like to allude to market share and Linux in the same sentence, even though the two aren't related.
In short, like you, I am an ignorant, unthinking, luddite troll who makes baseless, disconnected assertions and appears to have lost my humanity. I console myself by knowing that I don't threaten people with violence because of a simple platform preference which is almost certainly based on a more rational analysis than yours.
Oh yeah, yeah, I went to the website and I am *so* excited about the YP-U1, it's better than an iPod and just as easy to say. I mean just the catchy name is gonna sell it to me but then I read the marketing.
"Light and attractive, capable and compact, load it up and let it ride your side in style for revolution of senses...now that's flash!"
Brilliant! I... I feel like I was there!
With competition like this it's surprising Apple's still in business!
what exactly was the US doing before 9/11????
jesus fucking christ. read a book for fuck's sake. no wonder the world's fucked, with idiots like you running around hoisting the flag of the good ol' US of A whilst simultaneously invading the same countries whose inhabitants you've starved for the last ten years.
No I didn't!!!
.. I'm typing this on my PowerBook.
oh hang on
d'oh!
this has become a fucking lynch mob and it's fucking disgusting.
/calling/ them spammers. but i've yet to see - in all these postings - anyone show that cruise.com has intentionally send unsolicited email, except this ONE SINGLE CASE from which the recipient intends to profit.
/. (and also over at ars). with rabid /. and ars readers ignoring everything except the fucking headline, their business is being ripped apart and their poor staff are being called and abused, their office network has been 0wn3d.
can anyone show ANY proof that cruise.com is a spammer?
i mean "proof". i know that mumma is
imagine - just for a moment - that cruise.com is innocent (i know it's hard for you to do this, but just try). imagine that mumma's address was put on the list by someone else.
remember that mumma NEVER GAVE HIS ADDRESS TO THE LAWYER for removal.
now consider what cruise.com would have to do to protect themselves. what the fuck could they do?
if crusie.com is innocent, then mumma has defamed them (the basis of the lawsuit) and the consequences of this defamation are this fucked-up lynch mob here at
before you assert that "mumma asked to be removed from the list", read the fucking transcript. he NEVER GIVES CRUISE.COM HIS EMAIL ADDRESS, not even on the phone.
as far as i can see you're all blowing hot air out of your collective asses. read the fucking web site, read the transcript, and tell me why cruise.com deserves to be reamed when mumma didn't even attempt to provide his email address for removal. we all know that he could have been added by someone else (mumma, as an ISP, should also know this).
and finally, how the hell is this a SLAPP lawsuit?? mumma is not participating in a public debate, he is privately suing a company. how the hell is that "public participation"? if you want to see a REAL SLAPP lawsuit then check out http://www.greens.org.au/ and search for "gunns".
Human Rights record?? Can you say "guantanamo bay"?
I didn't think so.
Of course, at least the people held in guantanamo bay - against their will and without any legal proof of wrongdoing - are still alive. Unlike the (conservative, peer-reviewed estimate of) 100,000 dead people caused directly by the invasion of iraq - the vast majority of whom had done nothing wrong.
You Americans and your blatant hypocrisy make me want to puke.
The biggest menace in the world at the moment is not just red; it's red, white and blue.
Some people here reckon that "if it were Microsoft" suing rumour sites, then we here at /. would be ripping them a new bunghole. These people say that, because it's Apple doing the suing, we're letting them off with nary a flame.
/revoke/ previously announced features from previously announced products whose previously announced shipping dates have just been slipped by two years!! While Apple fansites try to guess what Apple will release next, MS fansites are left to try to guess what announced features might be left out!!
But... MS rumour web sites must be pretty boring. Not only do most rumours come from Microsoft themselves... most of them
matey, let me tell you - you're speaking utter crap.
/did/ pay respect to an economic system. in fact he bloody well invented one - it was just different from ours (i also believe it was deeply flawed, but that's beside the point). so here you've gone from tautology and red herring to downright ignorance. impressive! ten out of ten!
what YOU have written essentially translates to "the most conservative country in the world is the most successful and powerful, measured by conservative values". well, duh. when i'm looking for gems of tautological insight, i'll be sure to look you up.
to consider the USSR "left" by contemporary standards is ridiculous. it is ignorant to claim that their political system was the sole predicator of their downfall. you're just reciting pop history, but your point is lost because few people outside the US think Kerry is even remotely left-wing. it's always good to throw the totalitarian USSR into any debate with progressives, isn't it? very clever use of red herrings.
for what it's worth, karl marx certainly
while speaking of the rest of the world as "a monolithic block with a mass opinion" may be stereotypical and short-sighted... at least 75% of the published opinion of the rest of the western world was opposed to the most obvious foreign policy feature of the incumbent US administration - the war in iraq. so it might be stereotypical, but then you might just be being pedantic.
so basically i conclude that that you have no idea what you're talking about, but you like to use big words so that it sound like you do.
my guess is that you work for - or get your information exclusively from - a large US based media organisation.
You gotta be joking. The Media slanted left? Starbucks as a "liberal bastion"? Sweet Jesus, I can't stop laughing - you poor ignorant fool! Starbucks as a liberal bastion! Now I think I've heard it all!!
Same could be said about one's bank account, eh?
I'm going to turn Michael off in my preferences as a protest against this article, and I'm seriously considering not being part of this "community" any more. After all, anyone who could even consider using IE has nothing in common with me.
M.
I know quite a few professional musicians and not one of them makes enough money to support themselves - even though one of them made it to #1 in the indy charts in Brisbane recently. They all have at least one other non musical job. So they are already effectively in the position you describe. How is MP3 sharing going to make this worse?
Turning culture into a business has been very successful.
Rubbish. How do you measure "success"? In terms of the amount of money a vanishingly small number of individuals and corporations have made? Profit is not and can never be the same as culture (unless you want a culture that views money above all else, but surely most people would value love, security and happiness above money... right?). It seems to me that all the commercialisation of "culture" has done is made it more and more difficult to listen and see anything that is even slightly outside the tastes of Main Street USA. There must be a million great unsigned bands in the world but we won't get to hear any of them because if a record company releases too many tracks at once it's profits will be diluted. How the hell is that "successful"??
M.
Anyway, since when should we be forced to pay for our culture?! This makes me so angry. Record companies promote music which (like it or not) becomes integrated into our everyday lives, but it's not legal to own a copy of that music unless you give a whole bunch of people a whole pile of money - we don't even get to own our own culture. It'll probably soon be illegal to sit around a campfire singing spice girls songs (actually, if it was just spice girls songs that it was illegal to sing, I probably wouldn't mind so much ;-).
Worst of all, personal copying of music is not the only avenue of income for these greedy companies and individuals who would persecute people for downloading files. Record companies and artists make money from the clubs, pubs, on-hold music, WAY overpriced concerts, and TV and radio stations that play their music in public for a profit. We the consumer get it from both ends - we buy our drinks and listen to the advertisments so we can hear the music in public with our friends, and then we have to pay again if we want to hear it at home in our own time. How does that work??
Sharing of MP3s means that less well known bands might actually get a chance to do a gig for 5000 people at $20 a pop. $100K is not bad for a night's work. Probably more money than most indy bands ever see from CD sales, anyway.
M.
With respect, I found the Stoll book completely without point, a monotonous drone about how computers are bad. He says that sitting in front of a computer is bad, and that people should be out caving or knitting. But I have met more people online than whilst knitting, and I regard social intercorse as much more important than being outside. (Admittedly I prefer socialising in beer gardens, but that's just a personal thing...) Stoll continually put forth the idea that the computer somehow caused the poor behaviour of people. In the example you give, where people loved writing email to foreigners but didn't talk to the 11 physically present in the school, he makes us think that this is somehow the computer's fault. I do not believe for one moment that if you took the computers away, that those 11 students would be any less lonely. The problem had nothing to do with computers; Stoll continually presents arguments as though they are the fault of the computer, when in fact they are just a scapegoat for the things he sees are wrong with the world. His email addiction is a case in point. It is not the computer's fault that he felt the need to check his email on vacation.
"Democracy" is not synonymous with "lack of oppression". Almost all of us living in a democratic country simply have to look to the bad areas in our neighbourhoods to see this.
Really, don't you think that Linux might be useful because it would forge closer links between the chinese people and the rest of the world? Don't you think that this will eventually move us to a more understanding middle ground, where the real issues of "human rights" abuses are tackled - and not these rancid ideological battles between countries where the propoganda on both sides is enough to make me sick?
People say that the internet is full of liars and that you can't tell what someone is like unless you meet them. I don't know what this is supposed to mean. Five (read it: FIVE) of my former girlfriends have been physically abused in former or subsequent relationships; two of them have had weapons pointed at their heads. These girls did not meet their partners on the internet. My flatmates (2 girls) have both given their phone numbers away in a pub and then been hassled by the guys. In what way can this be better than email harrasment?
My point is that meeting people on the internet has exactly the same issues as meeting people any other way. People can lie and cheat regardless of the means with which you meet them. The internet brings it's own dangers (like the poor bugger who's love letter was distributed by a scornful chick in the army) but also reduces some of them - you're not going to get a random punch in your face at a nightclub, like a friend of mine did a few weeks ago.
Being lonely is a condition brought about by not meeting people, and you have to mingle to meet. I really don't think it matters where you mingle, be it in a dingy bar, a rave party, or on the 'net. The people you meet online are as likely as those you meet offline to be good or bad; at least the 'net gives those of us who need to build up their confidence an opportunity to mix with others in environments that they can escape from with the flick of a switch.
This is largely in line with comments made by others; that programmer resources are more expensive than hardware in the long run. I also believe that the hardware is so changing so quickly that language decisions made on the basis of performance are generally meaningless within a couple of years.
Few big companies are going to build large multi-user applications from scratch; Java is like the "4GLs" in that they have a huge respository of useful things that are just standard. It is better than the 4GLs in that it is faster and more generalised - and it works everywhere.
It is great to be able to combine the two "obvious" (to me anyway) trends of the future, java and linux.
Just MHO of course.
Anyway, it's a good thing I looked, or I might have dissed the Economist. I nearly accept an assertion on the authority of a /. reader! Yikes!
Anyway, it just occurred to me that perhaps these problems have existed and been discussed in the past by academics. There has been talk in these forums about "democracy" but I think the term is used without really understanding what it means. There are a lot of other political systems which might be more applicable to /., particularly in light of what Rob has suggested.
There are alternative political systems (such as anarchy, anarcho-syndicalism, and other left-wing systems) which are actually formal systems of government (i.e. control), with sets of rules for management of a community. Now, I am only suggesting that CmdrTaco could find some resources on the 'net (e.g. by Noam Chomsky) which might give him (and us) some more ideas for this moderation thing. I don't personaly know much about these systems, but I do know they exist and are proposed by some brilliant minds as solutions to some of our social problems. Perhaps they can be applied here first ;)
Even rational talk about non-US political systems on /. is generally flame bait, and I'm trying to avoid that. All I'm saying is that there are lots of community systems already in existence IRL, and that maybe we could learn from them as well.
It all makes sense now!