1) How expensive was it to make this mirror?
2) How much energy does this collect/generate?
3) Can this be used to power a electricity-generating turbine?
4) If so, why are we even putzing around with solar cells?
Well, isn't Napster technically a "carrier", not really doing any distribution itself, and cannot be held responsible for what goes over it. If I find something I wrote on the internet, do I sue "the internet"? Or the ISP that hosts the content? Or the country the ISP is in? Most probably I go after the *person* who infringed on the copyright, not the medium itself.
Wow, you really think just talking to people is going to overcome the mass media pop culture brainwashing they are fed every single day. Good luck. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a "Fans of Britney Against RIAA" picket.
You sound overly optimistic. In reality many "free" community sites are drying up now that the ad revenue is gone (shacknews.com, Snowball/IGN network, SomethingAwful.com, Stomped.com, GameCenter.com).
We'll have to see if micropayments/benefactor/street performer's protocol programs actually work. Ain't nothing for free...
"Look at the actual differences between GW Bush and Al Gore. This is what would happen to every election race if you ignored the region."
Yes, look at Bush and Gore. This is what the *current* system gives us. I ranted about this around election time, but the problem is, although the electoral college was originally meant to normalize minority and majority power (majority power is dampened, minority power is boosted) it's actual implementation has done the *reverse*. Most states (all but, like, 2?) have a winner-takes-all electoral college. The does the exact *opposite* of protecting the minority from the majority. In fact, if you have a 0.001% lead you win the WHOLE STATE. The minority is screwed and the majority is amplified. This leads to ridiculous scenarios of campaigns ignoring vast vast numbers of the population, while catering to a few states in which they can tip the balance ("swing" states). So I guess my point is that you'd be exactly right, if the current situation wasn't already so screwed up. Since it *is* so screwed up, a more global/accross-the-board representation might actually have the benefit of consolidating minority groups accross states in which they would lose entirely due to winner-takes-all. If the electoral college worked as it was envisioned we would need such a thing, because people would be *proportionally* represented within their geographic region. Since they're not, the EC is worthless and/or harmful, and thus global (proportional!) representation might be better than the current situation.
Sheesh, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" and all. Be grateful this guy is up there dispensing clue instead of mongering legislature for campaign contributions.
Would *you* vote for an ambivalent politician? "Every day I will fight for you, unless of course somebody persuades me not to!"
"I wonder about people who teach their children that a medium is inherently bad."
Ok then: *American* television programming is inherently bad. It's a bunch of mindless, consumerist corporatist drivel. It's great that you get all that nice stuff up in Canada, but in the US $20 basic cable just gets you the basic pop crap. The only thing I watch these days is PBS (and CSPAN, god help me), and PBS is going corporate more every day.
"what's the message you're sending to your children then? Reliance/trust in technology and government ratings over developing their own critical viewing skills?"
The message is: I will not let you become a brainwashed consumer zombie until you develop reasoning skills. I hope they really declare TV as a risk for Alzheimer's (I think there is a study going on)...it is really soul-robbing mindnumbing shit (oh, unless you can shell out $50+/mo for quality programming).
Yeah, man, I get your point. But there *is* a reason things like this exist. It's so when I turn on the TV in the morning I sit down to the inane drivel of the morning show, instead of hardcore porn. You have to realize that one extreme is just as bad as another. If I had kids (and we even allowed them to watch TV), I would want to know for *damn* sure that there wasn't going to be stuff on during the times they'd be watching that I'd not want them to see (regardless of whether I "approve" or "disapprove" of it myself). So, yeah, maybe that means I have some chip in the tv that helps me prevent steaming piles of bullshit to be fed to my kids brains. In some European countries, they don't even allow *advertising* during any kids shows. Call me fascist, but I sure would like to outlaw that brainwashing crap at least during *kids shows*. The point is, it is a balancing act, and one has to draw the line carefully. Don't think I don't know or am not disgusted with moral supremicists tell me what I can or can't (or should or shouldn't) watch. It's just a matter of drawing the line correctly. Nothing is black and white. Here's a question for you: would you rather have optional ratings that you could use in combination with some chip to opt out of programs, or would you rather, as you describe, have TV stations themselves decide what they will pump to your TV? I'd rather have the former.
Anyway, there is an easy solution to all of this. Don't watch TV (or use your VCR and give the middle finger to DMCA, etc). Don't buy Hollywood hype (um, isn't that the evil MPAA *anyway*?).
"Such births to me (sorry if I offend) are not about loving a child, they are about people having a child for themselves. I actually do consider such acts selfish ones. Creation of a child out of Love comes only from God. There goes the Luddite side of me again."
Huh? I don't see how two homosexuals having a child, and loving that child are mutually exclusive. Is it only mutually exclusive for homosexuals? Does it apply to "unnaturally" conceived children, e.g. by in vitro fertilization, or test tube babies? And how is it any less selfish for heterosexuals to have children? I don't see the difference between the homo- and hetero- case. If it's selfish, it's selfish accross the board. The child will consume just as many resources whether it has hetero- or homo- parents. Births to bobo workaholic parents who leave their children to be raised by television and day care seem "selfish" to me.
"I sincerely do not get all excited about the possiblities of cloning."
Minus the religious bit there, I agree. Just because we *can* does not necessarily mean we *should*. Think of the case where we eventually figure out how to live forever. *Should* we? If we posit that there are finite resources in the universe (don't know if that is true), then we can't both live forever *and* reproduce forever. Is it "fair" to deny successive generations their chance to live? This is just one humongous can of worms that we are barreling towards full steam.
I'm no math wiz, but isn't CS basically all based on number theory, computability, and mathematics that were around before anybody actually assembled a physical computer (computers themselves were just thought experiments until they became a physical reality, right?).
And in turn, we just found that math is basically "full of holes".
I'll echo the voices of other and say that this is a Good Thing. In my opinion, the virtue of free software, and free information, is that it goes one way ("information wants to be free"). If sneaky evil proprietary co. wants to contribute to open source, let them. They haven't made the source any more proprietary - to the contrary, they have just become more open. So bring it on, NSA, FBI, KGB, super-tip-top-secret agency. I think we'll all benefit. I have a naive belief that techies are techies, and that once in a while NSA et. al. actually *aren't* trying to secretly backstab people, and are just trying to do something good.
Re:Its hard to take this kind of criticism serious
on
Another Look At OS X
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· Score: 2
"Has the software industry really sunk this low?"
It's always been this low.
"Has the meaning of software "release" and "purchase" become this perverted?"
Yes, actually it has. Into a "service", "support", "widget frosting". How do you think companies are making money off "free" software?
"Are we really expected to just accept that anything we buy is a work in progress?"
Yup. Unless of course you are willing to 1) wait forever for the company to put out a "perfect" product and then 2) be totally satisfied that the product will never ever reveal a bug (being "perfect" of course), and so you will never ever need any type of support. Unless you have an infinate lifespan, it is infeasible to wait for software to be "perfected". Releases are just snapshots in time of a fairly stable state.
"I honestly can't believe there are people out there who think that since you can't catch every bug, you aren't responsible for the quality of your software."
Who said just because you can't catch every bug you are not responsible for the quality of your software? You are responsible...that's what bugfixes, patches, and, imagine this - newer releases - are for.
You are clearly living on another planet if you think software is something you can just manufacture on an assembly line, slap an "inspected by #57" sticker on, and shove to the customer as a final, "perfect" product.
Shit...another post by you. I read your first one and agreed somewhat with you. But regardless of what the legal ramifications of actually using/stealing a key and "illegally" watching a DVD you own are, the DeCSS case is *NOT* about this. It is about posting this code which you so loudly and annoyingly proclaim to be irrelevant. Who the f*ck cares whether it is legally relevant or not to decoding a DVD - the case is about the legality of *publishing* it. Christ, if you are so damn concerned stop trolling slashdot "MORONS". Drop the l33ter-than-thou attitude, give a chunk of change to the EFF, shut up and sit back content that you've done your part, like the rest of us. Whether slashdotters have the technical aspects right or wrong they are still generating interest and money for the cause.
Is the Java support full-fledged? Until Mac OS X, MacOS has always been behind the Java boat, so we always have to be limited by the version of VM MacOS supports, and bend over backwards to accomodate any idiosynchrasies. If modern Java support on Mac OS is finally now non-vapor, Mac clients have immediately jumped from the end of the pack, straight to the top, in being both Unix, *and* Mac. In this ideal world, we program more towards Mac OS X, and then we have "free" *nix versions...or we can program to *nix and get "free" Mac OS applications. Windows becomes the ugly duckling then...although Windows support is currently the best...so I guess the world of Java development looks an order of magnitude more cheery;)
"Windows users aren't using Windows because it's got an x86 architecture."
No, they're using it because it's the most popular. And what better way to get your operating system into the hands of the populace, than by porting it to *popular* hardware?
"The reason why the MacOS is so nice and tight is because they control the hardware and the software."
You forgot "...and expensive". Sure Mr. Techo-Elitist, perhaps you can afford to pay a premium to get "blessed" hardware from Apple. But most users don't *care* if their hardware was designed elegantly or not. They look at value. They don't want to have to pay a premium for a whole new machine every year just because brilliant Apple engineers thought, in their professional engineering opinion that it would be more elegant to obsolete a piece of hardware or software. <soup-nazi>NO UPGRADE FOR YOU!</soup-nazi>
"x86 hardware has price going for it, and that's all."
And in this case, by all, you must mean *everything*. Why isn't everybody driving Mercedes and BMWs, instead of Ford Tauruses and Chevy Caveliers? They're better designed right?
"Windows users use Windows because they think its the best"
Windows users use Windows because they don't know any better, don't care, or are too lazy to change something they've already grown accustomed to. If I ask my mother why she uses Windows I will guarantee you the words "Because it's best" will not come out of her mouth (more like "Because it runs Word". Or "Because it runs game XYZ". Or "Because it came with the computer").
But you've forgotten that Mind_Control == Profit. If it weren't for Jobs' reality distortion field, I'm sure Apple would have gone under a while ago. Not to say that's a good or bad thing...but Apple is basically just a small superset of Jobs (and NeXT).
Well that's it, party's over. No more constructing secret underground bunkers of round-the-clock keg parties with swimsuit models, all under the guise of "government research". Thanks *alot* guys.
"it does what it's supposed to do, and it does it well"
Yes, but did it ever occur to you that what it does (well, at that) might not be exactly what everybody wants?? X is great for network display server. But guess what, there are some people who couldn't give a sh*t about a network display server. There are some people (um, 98% of desktop users?) that just want a fast (*fast*!) gui, which can do all the neato stuff like opengl, directx, etc. as close to the hardware as possible, while having at least some basic GUI semantics built-in, so every application doesn't look and behave differently. Oh yeah, it needs to be easy to configure (X is a bitch...I never ever want to deal with scanlines and refresh rates!!). You may consider these people wackos, but these are desktop users, who would never run a display over a network in their lifetime. Explain to Joe Sixpack Gamer why his GUI has been built on a framework for network-based display. If anything the remote display stuff should be built on the gui, not the other way around. There is *plenty* of room for another display server. Um, isn't "choice" defined as GOOD around here anyway?
For every innovation that has become an effortless part of people's lives -- the microwave oven, the fiber-tip pen -- there are hundreds of new technologies every year arriving faster than users can assimilate them or their makers can perfect them.
Now a line has been crossed. With gizmos mutating at wild rates, engineers love the endless stomach-churning ride of creating the firstest with the newest. They've dragged us along with them. We're climbing a slope of interlocking innovations so steep as to seem more like a cliff: Connections that won't, upgrades that can't, hot syncs that don't, standards that never are, wireless transmitters radiating who knows what, new seeds and life-forms burrowing in the ground and whisking through the air.
Before Bill Joy and Lanier, somebody had already written about this. Read it before offhandedly disregarding and flaming...I think it has many valid points.
This whole user community is not new (does "mod" sound familiar?). First person shooters have had a "mod" community since their inception. Those silly "Catz" and "Dogz" games, have a small user community. The only difference in "The Sims" is the additionaly metaphore between the user community and the actual game. Now this metaphor is being defined even more, in Sims Online. I can't wait to see what happens in Sims Online...it seems like one humongous social experiment. Sociologists take note: Maxis has created the simulation to model society that you have been dreaming about!
All that spell-checking and completion stuff has been available in tcsh. Except for *csh basically sucking for shell scripts (aren't most scripts in ksh/bash style syntax?), tcsh does fine for my needs. After all, scripts are supposed to have that first-line program declarator, so ksh/bash scripts still run fine under tcsh.
Funny you mention that. Katie Couric was just interviewing Charlton Heston this morning, and cited a fact that more American kids are killed by guns that the next top 12 (or 25? I forget) industrialized countries combined. She then proceeded to ask if Heston really thought that American kids were just 12 times more fscked up than everybody else in the world, or perhaps could the availability of guns be a factor. He said the former, that American kids were indeed more screwed up. While this may be true, I find it hard to deny the fact that *guns* certainly have something to do with deaths by *guns*. The NRA's bible (or perhaps their second bible at least), is the 2nd Amendment. They take it without even questioning it. If the founding fathers had said everybody has the right to drive around downtown in pink elephants, well, I guess that would be beyond reproach then. It seems to me that (as with most of the constitution) the second amendment has to be viewed in the context of the time. Now I'm not getting nambsy pambsy cultural-relativist here. In 1776, it was feasible that an armed citizenry could conquer oppression by the government (whatever government). But this in this day and age, what the hell use is a gun, short of hunting (and short of the protect-your-self-from-gun-toters vicious tragedy of the commons cycle)? If Bush annoints himself king, are all righteous gun-toters going to march and re-take the government? Fat chance. Perhaps the 2nd amendment should be reworded to include artillery, apache helicopters, jet fighters, tanks, and ICBMs? The simple fact is that you are plainly open to screwage from your government. Doesn't matter if you think you are rambo with your little.38 or hunting rifle.
Given that firearms will do absolutely squat (technical term) against an oppressive government (or at least MY government, the US), what exactly *is* the ethical justification (besides that founding fathers sprung from Zeus's head and they only speak the truth)? No matter how "good" people are, if they are trained correctly, have been brought up to respect guns, etc...bad stupid accidents will always happen. Except these days, it doesn't take five minutes to clean, load, and fire a 20 pound gun.
"How often do we discuss employment contracts and non-competes? The lack of talk on this issue here seems to show that NDAs aren't taken very seriously."
Man, we've had like 3 articles in the last week or so just on NDA, and employee's IP, etc.
"1.Programs == Data. John von Neumann proved this way back in the 50s"
Huh? Somebody actually tried "proving" this? I thought some guy (forget his name) who was working with old batch machines in the 60s decided to store actual programs in main memory, just like data.
An acquaintance of mine is fond of saying "everything is data!". Well, of course...but everything can ALSO be "programs", if you consider data just to be the result of a simple function, e.g. f(x) = C, and other data the results of functions on functions, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
1) How expensive was it to make this mirror?
2) How much energy does this collect/generate?
3) Can this be used to power a electricity-generating turbine?
4) If so, why are we even putzing around with solar cells?
Well, isn't Napster technically a "carrier", not really doing any distribution itself, and cannot be held responsible for what goes over it. If I find something I wrote on the internet, do I sue "the internet"? Or the ISP that hosts the content? Or the country the ISP is in? Most probably I go after the *person* who infringed on the copyright, not the medium itself.
Wow, you really think just talking to people is going to overcome the mass media pop culture brainwashing they are fed every single day. Good luck. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for a "Fans of Britney Against RIAA" picket.
You sound overly optimistic. In reality many "free" community sites are drying up now that the ad revenue is gone (shacknews.com, Snowball/IGN network, SomethingAwful.com, Stomped.com, GameCenter.com).
We'll have to see if micropayments/benefactor/street performer's protocol programs actually work. Ain't nothing for free...
"Look at the actual differences between GW Bush and Al Gore. This is what would happen to every election race if you ignored the region."
Yes, look at Bush and Gore. This is what the *current* system gives us. I ranted about this around election time, but the problem is, although the electoral college was originally meant to normalize minority and majority power (majority power is dampened, minority power is boosted) it's actual implementation has done the *reverse*. Most states (all but, like, 2?) have a winner-takes-all electoral college. The does the exact *opposite* of protecting the minority from the majority. In fact, if you have a 0.001% lead you win the WHOLE STATE. The minority is screwed and the majority is amplified. This leads to ridiculous scenarios of campaigns ignoring vast vast numbers of the population, while catering to a few states in which they can tip the balance ("swing" states). So I guess my point is that you'd be exactly right, if the current situation wasn't already so screwed up. Since it *is* so screwed up, a more global/accross-the-board representation might actually have the benefit of consolidating minority groups accross states in which they would lose entirely due to winner-takes-all. If the electoral college worked as it was envisioned we would need such a thing, because people would be *proportionally* represented within their geographic region. Since they're not, the EC is worthless and/or harmful, and thus global (proportional!) representation might be better than the current situation.
Sheesh, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" and all. Be grateful this guy is up there dispensing clue instead of mongering legislature for campaign contributions.
Would *you* vote for an ambivalent politician? "Every day I will fight for you, unless of course somebody persuades me not to!"
"I wonder about people who teach their children that a medium is inherently bad."
Ok then: *American* television programming is inherently bad. It's a bunch of mindless, consumerist corporatist drivel. It's great that you get all that nice stuff up in Canada, but in the US $20 basic cable just gets you the basic pop crap. The only thing I watch these days is PBS (and CSPAN, god help me), and PBS is going corporate more every day.
"what's the message you're sending to your children then? Reliance/trust in technology and government ratings over developing their own critical viewing skills?"
The message is: I will not let you become a brainwashed consumer zombie until you develop reasoning skills. I hope they really declare TV as a risk for Alzheimer's (I think there is a study going on)...it is really soul-robbing mindnumbing shit (oh, unless you can shell out $50+/mo for quality programming).
Wah Wah F*cking Wah.
Yeah, man, I get your point. But there *is* a reason things like this exist. It's so when I turn on the TV in the morning I sit down to the inane drivel of the morning show, instead of hardcore porn. You have to realize that one extreme is just as bad as another. If I had kids (and we even allowed them to watch TV), I would want to know for *damn* sure that there wasn't going to be stuff on during the times they'd be watching that I'd not want them to see (regardless of whether I "approve" or "disapprove" of it myself). So, yeah, maybe that means I have some chip in the tv that helps me prevent steaming piles of bullshit to be fed to my kids brains. In some European countries, they don't even allow *advertising* during any kids shows. Call me fascist, but I sure would like to outlaw that brainwashing crap at least during *kids shows*. The point is, it is a balancing act, and one has to draw the line carefully. Don't think I don't know or am not disgusted with moral supremicists tell me what I can or can't (or should or shouldn't) watch. It's just a matter of drawing the line correctly. Nothing is black and white. Here's a question for you: would you rather have optional ratings that you could use in combination with some chip to opt out of programs, or would you rather, as you describe, have TV stations themselves decide what they will pump to your TV? I'd rather have the former.
Anyway, there is an easy solution to all of this. Don't watch TV (or use your VCR and give the middle finger to DMCA, etc). Don't buy Hollywood hype (um, isn't that the evil MPAA *anyway*?).
"Such births to me (sorry if I offend) are not about loving a child, they are about people having a child for themselves. I actually do consider such acts selfish ones. Creation of a child out of Love comes only from God. There goes the Luddite side of me again."
Huh? I don't see how two homosexuals having a child, and loving that child are mutually exclusive. Is it only mutually exclusive for homosexuals? Does it apply to "unnaturally" conceived children, e.g. by in vitro fertilization, or test tube babies? And how is it any less selfish for heterosexuals to have children? I don't see the difference between the homo- and hetero- case. If it's selfish, it's selfish accross the board. The child will consume just as many resources whether it has hetero- or homo- parents. Births to bobo workaholic parents who leave their children to be raised by television and day care seem "selfish" to me.
"I sincerely do not get all excited about the possiblities of cloning."
Minus the religious bit there, I agree. Just because we *can* does not necessarily mean we *should*. Think of the case where we eventually figure out how to live forever. *Should* we? If we posit that there are finite resources in the universe (don't know if that is true), then we can't both live forever *and* reproduce forever. Is it "fair" to deny successive generations their chance to live? This is just one humongous can of worms that we are barreling towards full steam.
I'm no math wiz, but isn't CS basically all based on number theory, computability, and mathematics that were around before anybody actually assembled a physical computer (computers themselves were just thought experiments until they became a physical reality, right?).
And in turn, we just found that math is basically "full of holes".
I'll echo the voices of other and say that this is a Good Thing. In my opinion, the virtue of free software, and free information, is that it goes one way ("information wants to be free"). If sneaky evil proprietary co. wants to contribute to open source, let them. They haven't made the source any more proprietary - to the contrary, they have just become more open. So bring it on, NSA, FBI, KGB, super-tip-top-secret agency. I think we'll all benefit. I have a naive belief that techies are techies, and that once in a while NSA et. al. actually *aren't* trying to secretly backstab people, and are just trying to do something good.
"Has the software industry really sunk this low?"
It's always been this low.
"Has the meaning of software "release" and "purchase" become this perverted?"
Yes, actually it has. Into a "service", "support", "widget frosting". How do you think companies are making money off "free" software?
"Are we really expected to just accept that anything we buy is a work in progress?"
Yup. Unless of course you are willing to 1) wait forever for the company to put out a "perfect" product and then 2) be totally satisfied that the product will never ever reveal a bug (being "perfect" of course), and so you will never ever need any type of support. Unless you have an infinate lifespan, it is infeasible to wait for software to be "perfected". Releases are just snapshots in time of a fairly stable state.
"I honestly can't believe there are people out there who think that since you can't catch every bug, you aren't responsible for the quality of your software."
Who said just because you can't catch every bug you are not responsible for the quality of your software? You are responsible...that's what bugfixes, patches, and, imagine this - newer releases - are for.
You are clearly living on another planet if you think software is something you can just manufacture on an assembly line, slap an "inspected by #57" sticker on, and shove to the customer as a final, "perfect" product.
Shit...another post by you. I read your first one and agreed somewhat with you. But regardless of what the legal ramifications of actually using/stealing a key and "illegally" watching a DVD you own are, the DeCSS case is *NOT* about this. It is about posting this code which you so loudly and annoyingly proclaim to be irrelevant. Who the f*ck cares whether it is legally relevant or not to decoding a DVD - the case is about the legality of *publishing* it. Christ, if you are so damn concerned stop trolling slashdot "MORONS". Drop the l33ter-than-thou attitude, give a chunk of change to the EFF, shut up and sit back content that you've done your part, like the rest of us. Whether slashdotters have the technical aspects right or wrong they are still generating interest and money for the cause.
Is the Java support full-fledged? Until Mac OS X, MacOS has always been behind the Java boat, so we always have to be limited by the version of VM MacOS supports, and bend over backwards to accomodate any idiosynchrasies. If modern Java support on Mac OS is finally now non-vapor, Mac clients have immediately jumped from the end of the pack, straight to the top, in being both Unix, *and* Mac. In this ideal world, we program more towards Mac OS X, and then we have "free" *nix versions...or we can program to *nix and get "free" Mac OS applications. Windows becomes the ugly duckling then...although Windows support is currently the best...so I guess the world of Java development looks an order of magnitude more cheery ;)
"Windows users aren't using Windows because it's got an x86 architecture."
No, they're using it because it's the most popular. And what better way to get your operating system into the hands of the populace, than by porting it to *popular* hardware?
"The reason why the MacOS is so nice and tight is because they control the hardware and the software."
You forgot "...and expensive". Sure Mr. Techo-Elitist, perhaps you can afford to pay a premium to get "blessed" hardware from Apple. But most users don't *care* if their hardware was designed elegantly or not. They look at value. They don't want to have to pay a premium for a whole new machine every year just because brilliant Apple engineers thought, in their professional engineering opinion that it would be more elegant to obsolete a piece of hardware or software. <soup-nazi>NO UPGRADE FOR YOU!</soup-nazi>
"x86 hardware has price going for it, and that's all."
And in this case, by all, you must mean *everything*. Why isn't everybody driving Mercedes and BMWs, instead of Ford Tauruses and Chevy Caveliers? They're better designed right?
"Windows users use Windows because they think its the best"
Windows users use Windows because they don't know any better, don't care, or are too lazy to change something they've already grown accustomed to. If I ask my mother why she uses Windows I will guarantee you the words "Because it's best" will not come out of her mouth (more like "Because it runs Word". Or "Because it runs game XYZ". Or "Because it came with the computer").
"Steve has forgotten that (Control != Profit)."
But you've forgotten that Mind_Control == Profit. If it weren't for Jobs' reality distortion field, I'm sure Apple would have gone under a while ago. Not to say that's a good or bad thing...but Apple is basically just a small superset of Jobs (and NeXT).
Well that's it, party's over. No more constructing secret underground bunkers of round-the-clock keg parties with swimsuit models, all under the guise of "government research". Thanks *alot* guys.
"it does what it's supposed to do, and it does it well"
Yes, but did it ever occur to you that what it does (well, at that) might not be exactly what everybody wants?? X is great for network display server. But guess what, there are some people who couldn't give a sh*t about a network display server. There are some people (um, 98% of desktop users?) that just want a fast (*fast*!) gui, which can do all the neato stuff like opengl, directx, etc. as close to the hardware as possible, while having at least some basic GUI semantics built-in, so every application doesn't look and behave differently. Oh yeah, it needs to be easy to configure (X is a bitch...I never ever want to deal with scanlines and refresh rates!!). You may consider these people wackos, but these are desktop users, who would never run a display over a network in their lifetime. Explain to Joe Sixpack Gamer why his GUI has been built on a framework for network-based display. If anything the remote display stuff should be built on the gui, not the other way around. There is *plenty* of room for another display server. Um, isn't "choice" defined as GOOD around here anyway?
Write the descriptions on $100 dollar bills.
This whole user community is not new (does "mod" sound familiar?). First person shooters have had a "mod" community since their inception. Those silly "Catz" and "Dogz" games, have a small user community. The only difference in "The Sims" is the additionaly metaphore between the user community and the actual game. Now this metaphor is being defined even more, in Sims Online. I can't wait to see what happens in Sims Online...it seems like one humongous social experiment. Sociologists take note: Maxis has created the simulation to model society that you have been dreaming about!
All that spell-checking and completion stuff has been available in tcsh. Except for *csh basically sucking for shell scripts (aren't most scripts in ksh/bash style syntax?), tcsh does fine for my needs. After all, scripts are supposed to have that first-line program declarator, so ksh/bash scripts still run fine under tcsh.
Funny you mention that. Katie Couric was just interviewing Charlton Heston this morning, and cited a fact that more American kids are killed by guns that the next top 12 (or 25? I forget) industrialized countries combined. She then proceeded to ask if Heston really thought that American kids were just 12 times more fscked up than everybody else in the world, or perhaps could the availability of guns be a factor. He said the former, that American kids were indeed more screwed up. While this may be true, I find it hard to deny the fact that *guns* certainly have something to do with deaths by *guns*. The NRA's bible (or perhaps their second bible at least), is the 2nd Amendment. They take it without even questioning it. If the founding fathers had said everybody has the right to drive around downtown in pink elephants, well, I guess that would be beyond reproach then. It seems to me that (as with most of the constitution) the second amendment has to be viewed in the context of the time. Now I'm not getting nambsy pambsy cultural-relativist here. In 1776, it was feasible that an armed citizenry could conquer oppression by the government (whatever government). But this in this day and age, what the hell use is a gun, short of hunting (and short of the protect-your-self-from-gun-toters vicious tragedy of the commons cycle)? If Bush annoints himself king, are all righteous gun-toters going to march and re-take the government? Fat chance. Perhaps the 2nd amendment should be reworded to include artillery, apache helicopters, jet fighters, tanks, and ICBMs? The simple fact is that you are plainly open to screwage from your government. Doesn't matter if you think you are rambo with your little .38 or hunting rifle.
Given that firearms will do absolutely squat (technical term) against an oppressive government (or at least MY government, the US), what exactly *is* the ethical justification (besides that founding fathers sprung from Zeus's head and they only speak the truth)? No matter how "good" people are, if they are trained correctly, have been brought up to respect guns, etc...bad stupid accidents will always happen. Except these days, it doesn't take five minutes to clean, load, and fire a 20 pound gun.
"How often do we discuss employment contracts and non-competes? The lack of talk on this issue here seems to show that NDAs aren't taken very seriously."
Man, we've had like 3 articles in the last week or so just on NDA, and employee's IP, etc.
"1.Programs == Data. John von Neumann proved this way back in the 50s"
Huh? Somebody actually tried "proving" this? I thought some guy (forget his name) who was working with old batch machines in the 60s decided to store actual programs in main memory, just like data.
An acquaintance of mine is fond of saying "everything is data!". Well, of course...but everything can ALSO be "programs", if you consider data just to be the result of a simple function, e.g. f(x) = C, and other data the results of functions on functions, etc.