Sorry, you're rather off the mark there. But thank you kindly for making the assumption, I'm flattered. It may surprise you to learn that I'm aware that the terms militant and guerilla were previously used in contexts where terrorist is now employed.
While you may believe that this is underestimating their crimes, I would be of the opinion that journalists comprising the "world media" are merely employing their native language correctly. If you read my post rather than insulting me, you might have seen that I suggested that using the term "terrorist" actually serves to underestimate the crimes of these individuals.
Well, I bow to the "voice of experience", let us just label everyone a terrorist. It's so much simpler than actually distinguishing between individual and groups with different goals, so that we might understand what motivates them and prevent these atrocities from happening again and again.
Considering how long it takes to compile those packages
Perhaps you should consider a distro that provides pre-compiled binaries? I'm not trying to criticise, I've wasted far too much time myself compiling both KDE and Gnome from scratch in the past, it's really not worth it. For KDE the compile time is very significant, while the compliation order for the plethora of small packages required for Gnome is difficult to remember. As a suggestion, Ubuntu Hoary already has packages available for 2.10.
As for the issue with dependencies, it's safe to assume that that for KDE applications kde-base and kde-libs are generally required. However, this is not the case for pure QT applications such as Lyx or Opera. Assuming you have the bandwidth, a binary distribution with good dependency checking should install the packages you require, allowing you access to both Gtk and Qt-based applications. A "good" Linux desktop distribution should not require the user to worry about such dependency issues.
Perhaps this is because terrorist has become such a loaded term? It has been applied so frequently and in such arbitrary ways that it has lost its original meaning, just as communist is frequently used as a term of abuse rather than in reference to someone who specifically adheres of the theory of communism.
This is not to suggest that the murderers involved in this appaling act are not deserving of the highest level of scorn, but rather that the devaluation of the word terrorist makes it rather meaningless in this context.
You're trying to justify the benefits of a dangerous fad diet, and you criticise others of peddling pseudo-science? Perhaps you should look beyond the "evidence" provided by hearsay and biased short-term conjecture?
In other words you are providing opinions on a subject about which you know very little.
Your false assumption has been repeatedly made on Slashdot. To reiterate, Apple freely provides it's service packs (it has release 8 major updates for Panther, which is currently at 10.3.8). However, charging for Tiger, which has an abudance of new features, is no different than MS charging for Longhorn. In fact the new features in the two have often been likened).
This is not "Apple-Worship". Personally I have many issues with Apple in regard to the build quality of their hardware, along with their support and pricing in Europe. However, in this case I'm just pointing out that you have your facts wrong.
The current "human rights alert" is about whether a publicly funded college can fire a professor...
You are aware of Guantanamo, right? Most people in other "Westernised" countries would regard indefinite internment with trial as being a barbaric practice.
More generally, many would define a "Westernised" society as one that has a certain level of civil liberties. Consequently, should we "change" your nation to match our view point? Of course not. Essentially what you're suggesting is that a nation, if it has sufficient power, should enforce it's view of the world on others. The problem is that one nation's view of what constitutes a utopian society might not agree with another's.
I'm not trying to be a troll, but Western culture is the finest in the world.
I'm sure almost every major civilization believes that it is the most advanced and finest culture to have ever existed.
Like you, I certainly find the plight of women in the middle-east appalling. However, when viewed from the outside, many might say that Western culture is also deeply flawed. A random sample of these issues might include:
In most Western countries there remains a huge gulf between the wealthy and the poor.
Women in Western societies often feel compelled by the media to conform to a given body shape and appearance. It still seems that many base the value of a woman on her appearance.
Men in Western societies are often defined by their job and earning capacity.
The elderly are often disregarded and ignored. Perhaps this is because they no longer possess beauty or earning power, or perhaps people don't want to be reminded of infirmity or death.
A major portion of a individual's existence in the Western world is concerned with the accumulation of wealth and possessions.
I'm not trying to voice reactionary views, or suggest that I would rather live in a non-democratic state. However, regarding our Western culture as a being vastly superior and virtually flawless would seem to be dangerous. If we look carefully at the past, we might see that we share more in common with the previous fallen civilisations than we would like to admit. So you should not find it surprising if there are those who might fail to welcome the idea of being "Westernised".
Here in England we make jokes about the Irish (and, to a lesser extent, the Scottish and French).
Here in Ireland, it's still common for some people to make jokes about the English. It's unfortunate that cultural stereotypes live on so long after they become obsolete.
It seems that there is a minor backlash against Firefox on various pointless blogs at the moment. The arguments are understandable, though hardly cogently argued. For example:
So wanting fair recompense for one's work, or wanting to have time for any kind of a life outside one's place of work is "whining"? How about EA cut their profits so that they can hire a sufficient number of developers? It speaks volumes about you that you fail to even consider that as a possibility.
Your complete lack of compassion for other people is appalling. When will people learn that "global competition" should not be used as an excuse to cow the average worker into working in sub-standard conditions for the benefit of shareholders.
I have disagree to some extent that the Internet is out for serious research, at least for CS. Citeseer is generally my first point of call for research papers. For journal articles, depending upon the publisher, an ACM or IEEE subscription may be required. However, I find that an increasing number of researchers are making their publications freely available on their home pages.
Either way, I generally find it useful to trawl Google - the sheer volume of indexed PDFs containing citations can often suggest other relevant papers. Of course, anything pre-1996 can be difficult to find, though companies such as IBM still provide online access to papers dating back to the early 1970's.
The rest of the world does not take a "blind eye to terrorism". Contrary to what you may believe, people in Britain, Ireland, Spain and many other nations have been dealing with violent radical groups for decades. You seem to suggest that failing to blunder blindly into knee-jerk reactions against such groups is somehow cowardly.
The reason that most of the world outside the US is concerned by the re-election of Bush is that he seems to conduct his "war on terror" in a short-sighted manner, regardless on what the ramifications will be for future generations. The reason that anti-American ideologies are rife in Islamic states is largely due to US foreign policy in the past. It is disturbing to even hypothesise what kind of problems will result from four more years of Bush's terrorist pogrom.
While false positives are really unacceptable, compared to existing filtering systems 1/25000 is incredibly low. This number is certainly far lower than the rate of human error if the mail were classified manually.
The rate is so low in fact that it seems rather suspicious. I would be interested to see independent comparison of this scheme to existing filters such as SpamAssasin or IBM's evolutionary filtering scheme.
You sound rather bitter. Is it perhaps because you have found that real companies actually like to meet deadlines and produce reliable software in a structured manner, rather than letting "A coders" (based on whatever ad-hoc criteria you use) like you waste time doing some "cool hacks"?
I would certainly argue that the ability to understand complex problems and implement novel solutions is what separates good coders from those who might be more suited to other jobs. However, surely "doing cool shit" does not depend on your choice of language, but on the individual. If you're unable to do that in Java, is it really the language's fault? Do you believe that no developer is capable of originality or creativity merely because they use Java as their primary language?
The level of language bigotry in this thread is amazing. Ironically it was Paul Graham, the champion of oft-rediculed language, who started this discussion.
I'm not sure you really understand how Genetic Algorithms (GA's) work. While they do contain a random element, they follow an evolutionary process that produces improved solutions in each "generation", based on genetic operations such as 'mutation'. So rather than just selecting "some" flags, the algorithm gradually proceeds toward an optimal combination. These algorithms are already commonly used in the analysis of medical and engineering data, so their use in compiler optimisation is hardly a major risk.
I can actually see GA's being quite effective for this purpose, as improvement in terms of performance measure by profiling would be very useful in identifying the best combination of GCC flags for a given set of code.
As for your suggestion that the developer should be able to make optimisation decisions manually, should that apply to all the other optimisation techniques already employed by modern compilers?
A free ride? You seem to be completely missing the point. Public health is vital for those who are live on or below the poverty line. Those underpriviledge who are in minimum-wage jobs or terminally unemployed will never be able to afford private health care. It's easy to blame them, but just as often economic or social factors are often responsible.
This is not about "stealing a doctor's label", nobody suggested they work for free. This is about a government being responsible for the welfare of its citizens - including the health, not just the "security of their homeland" or whatever. You seem to be rather smug about this topic, so obviously you're comfortable financially. If one of your loved ones needed a life-saving operation, but could not afford it, would you tell him/her that they have to deal with it because they're a "burden" who doesn't deserve a "free ride"?
I really cannot understand your attitude, which unfortunately seems to be quite prevalent among the affluent in the US. Many people are unable to "take care of themselves", due to their financial circumstances or the cost of the ridiculously overpriced drugs & treatments that they require. Would you rather have those people who cannot meet these costs die quietly in their own homes, so that your Medicare bills are slightly reduced?
Health care, just like education, should be a right for all citizens, NOT just a luxury for the rich.
As others pointed out, this article referers to citations made in research papers to online sources which become obsolete over time. Unless your 4 year old is regularly publishing work referenced in academic journals, this probably isn't an issue.
Incidentally, try Citeseer for an example of a stable online repository of research papers.
Slashdot Mirror
While you may believe that this is underestimating their crimes, I would be of the opinion that journalists comprising the "world media" are merely employing their native language correctly. If you read my post rather than insulting me, you might have seen that I suggested that using the term "terrorist" actually serves to underestimate the crimes of these individuals.
Well, I bow to the "voice of experience", let us just label everyone a terrorist. It's so much simpler than actually distinguishing between individual and groups with different goals, so that we might understand what motivates them and prevent these atrocities from happening again and again.
As for the issue with dependencies, it's safe to assume that that for KDE applications kde-base and kde-libs are generally required. However, this is not the case for pure QT applications such as Lyx or Opera. Assuming you have the bandwidth, a binary distribution with good dependency checking should install the packages you require, allowing you access to both Gtk and Qt-based applications. A "good" Linux desktop distribution should not require the user to worry about such dependency issues.
Perhaps this is because terrorist has become such a loaded term? It has been applied so frequently and in such arbitrary ways that it has lost its original meaning, just as communist is frequently used as a term of abuse rather than in reference to someone who specifically adheres of the theory of communism.
This is not to suggest that the murderers involved in this appaling act are not deserving of the highest level of scorn, but rather that the devaluation of the word terrorist makes it rather meaningless in this context.
You're trying to justify the benefits of a dangerous fad diet, and you criticise others of peddling pseudo-science? Perhaps you should look beyond the "evidence" provided by hearsay and biased short-term conjecture?
Is this a different Ubisoft from the purveyors of "Pro-Tennis Tour" that graced the Spectrum, Amiga, Atari and PC around 1990?
And, more importantly, will they be including a purse in this one?
In other words you are providing opinions on a subject about which you know very little.
Your false assumption has been repeatedly made on Slashdot. To reiterate, Apple freely provides it's service packs (it has release 8 major updates for Panther, which is currently at 10.3.8). However, charging for Tiger, which has an abudance of new features, is no different than MS charging for Longhorn. In fact the new features in the two have often been likened).
This is not "Apple-Worship". Personally I have many issues with Apple in regard to the build quality of their hardware, along with their support and pricing in Europe. However, in this case I'm just pointing out that you have your facts wrong.
You are aware of Guantanamo, right? Most people in other "Westernised" countries would regard indefinite internment with trial as being a barbaric practice.
More generally, many would define a "Westernised" society as one that has a certain level of civil liberties. Consequently, should we "change" your nation to match our view point? Of course not. Essentially what you're suggesting is that a nation, if it has sufficient power, should enforce it's view of the world on others. The problem is that one nation's view of what constitutes a utopian society might not agree with another's.
Like you, I certainly find the plight of women in the middle-east appalling. However, when viewed from the outside, many might say that Western culture is also deeply flawed. A random sample of these issues might include:
In most Western countries there remains a huge gulf between the wealthy and the poor.
Women in Western societies often feel compelled by the media to conform to a given body shape and appearance. It still seems that many base the value of a woman on her appearance.
Men in Western societies are often defined by their job and earning capacity.
The elderly are often disregarded and ignored. Perhaps this is because they no longer possess beauty or earning power, or perhaps people don't want to be reminded of infirmity or death.
A major portion of a individual's existence in the Western world is concerned with the accumulation of wealth and possessions.
I'm not trying to voice reactionary views, or suggest that I would rather live in a non-democratic state. However, regarding our Western culture as a being vastly superior and virtually flawless would seem to be dangerous. If we look carefully at the past, we might see that we share more in common with the previous fallen civilisations than we would like to admit. So you should not find it surprising if there are those who might fail to welcome the idea of being "Westernised".
In Firefox it's still possible to search from the location box by using smart keywords. I believe the same feature exists in Mozilla.
Personally I find it invaluable to have the ability to search dozens of search engines from the location bar using a short prefix that I can select.
Here in Ireland, it's still common for some people to make jokes about the English. It's unfortunate that cultural stereotypes live on so long after they become obsolete.
It seems that there is a minor backlash against Firefox on various pointless blogs at the moment. The arguments are understandable, though hardly cogently argued. For example:
b elieve-hype.html
http://blog.u2u.info/DottextWeb/patrick
http://jrh1972.blogspot.com/2004/12/firefox-dont-
It seems to amount to: Someone told me "Firefox is cool", but I don't want to cool, so I'm going to use IE.
So wanting fair recompense for one's work, or wanting to have time for any kind of a life outside one's place of work is "whining"? How about EA cut their profits so that they can hire a sufficient number of developers? It speaks volumes about you that you fail to even consider that as a possibility.
Your complete lack of compassion for other people is appalling. When will people learn that "global competition" should not be used as an excuse to cow the average worker into working in sub-standard conditions for the benefit of shareholders.
I have disagree to some extent that the Internet is out for serious research, at least for CS. Citeseer is generally my first point of call for research papers. For journal articles, depending upon the publisher, an ACM or IEEE subscription may be required. However, I find that an increasing number of researchers are making their publications freely available on their home pages.
Either way, I generally find it useful to trawl Google - the sheer volume of indexed PDFs containing citations can often suggest other relevant papers. Of course, anything pre-1996 can be difficult to find, though companies such as IBM still provide online access to papers dating back to the early 1970's.
You do realise that people exist outside of America, right?
The rest of the world does not take a "blind eye to terrorism". Contrary to what you may believe, people in Britain, Ireland, Spain and many other nations have been dealing with violent radical groups for decades. You seem to suggest that failing to blunder blindly into knee-jerk reactions against such groups is somehow cowardly.
The reason that most of the world outside the US is concerned by the re-election of Bush is that he seems to conduct his "war on terror" in a short-sighted manner, regardless on what the ramifications will be for future generations. The reason that anti-American ideologies are rife in Islamic states is largely due to US foreign policy in the past. It is disturbing to even hypothesise what kind of problems will result from four more years of Bush's terrorist pogrom.
Perhaps this might be relevant?
Imendio Planner
While false positives are really unacceptable, compared to existing filtering systems 1/25000 is incredibly low. This number is certainly far lower than the rate of human error if the mail were classified manually.
The rate is so low in fact that it seems rather suspicious. I would be interested to see independent comparison of this scheme to existing filters such as SpamAssasin or IBM's evolutionary filtering scheme.
You sound rather bitter. Is it perhaps because you have found that real companies actually like to meet deadlines and produce reliable software in a structured manner, rather than letting "A coders" (based on whatever ad-hoc criteria you use) like you waste time doing some "cool hacks"?
I would certainly argue that the ability to understand complex problems and implement novel solutions is what separates good coders from those who might be more suited to other jobs. However, surely "doing cool shit" does not depend on your choice of language, but on the individual. If you're unable to do that in Java, is it really the language's fault? Do you believe that no developer is capable of originality or creativity merely because they use Java as their primary language?
The level of language bigotry in this thread is amazing. Ironically it was Paul Graham, the champion of oft-rediculed language, who started this discussion.
I'm not sure you really understand how Genetic Algorithms (GA's) work. While they do contain a random element, they follow an evolutionary process that produces improved solutions in each "generation", based on genetic operations such as 'mutation'. So rather than just selecting "some" flags, the algorithm gradually proceeds toward an optimal combination. These algorithms are already commonly used in the analysis of medical and engineering data, so their use in compiler optimisation is hardly a major risk.
I can actually see GA's being quite effective for this purpose, as improvement in terms of performance measure by profiling would be very useful in identifying the best combination of GCC flags for a given set of code.
As for your suggestion that the developer should be able to make optimisation decisions manually, should that apply to all the other optimisation techniques already employed by modern compilers?
This is +5 Interesting? Seriously, what a crock of paranoid shit.
No, I think it's just a spelling error.
A free ride? You seem to be completely missing the point. Public health is vital for those who are live on or below the poverty line. Those underpriviledge who are in minimum-wage jobs or terminally unemployed will never be able to afford private health care. It's easy to blame them, but just as often economic or social factors are often responsible.
This is not about "stealing a doctor's label", nobody suggested they work for free. This is about a government being responsible for the welfare of its citizens - including the health, not just the "security of their homeland" or whatever. You seem to be rather smug about this topic, so obviously you're comfortable financially. If one of your loved ones needed a life-saving operation, but could not afford it, would you tell him/her that they have to deal with it because they're a "burden" who doesn't deserve a "free ride"?
I really cannot understand your attitude, which unfortunately seems to be quite prevalent among the affluent in the US. Many people are unable to "take care of themselves", due to their financial circumstances or the cost of the ridiculously overpriced drugs & treatments that they require. Would you rather have those people who cannot meet these costs die quietly in their own homes, so that your Medicare bills are slightly reduced?
Health care, just like education, should be a right for all citizens, NOT just a luxury for the rich.
As others pointed out, this article referers to citations made in research papers to online sources which become obsolete over time. Unless your 4 year old is regularly publishing work referenced in academic journals, this probably isn't an issue.
Incidentally, try Citeseer for an example of a stable online repository of research papers.
The parent is +5 Funny? Very poor attempt at humour.