The parent misunderstands instinctive fear. What it is about is that we can trivially learn to fear snakes, much more than most other kinds of animals or objects. The easiest reference I have for for snakes as a primal fear is Steven Pinkers "How the mind works"; alas, I don't have it here at the moment, so I can't give you references to the original papers introducing the concepts. The fact that you (and I) don't fear snakes more than intellectually is irrelevant.
I find this bad advice. I get job offers off what I do on the net, and I am actually proud of what I write. I want it associated with my name. Instead of "Never use your real name", I'd advice "Only write things on the net that it's OK that your mom read."
You're missing the point. You assume this is a question of *paying to eBay*, while the payment in reality is from Buyer to Seller, without eBay being involved.
In other words, the entire post is wrong and should be modded away again.
You sound like you've been numbed by using dumbed down systems that you memorize how work. (Read: Microsoft Windows.)
There is a need to see what is going on so we avoid magic stuff happening. Hiding file extensions means that I cannot know reasonably well what will happen when I try to use a file, except by memorizing icons (which will give me a quarter of an idea, as many programs handle many filetypes.)
From the view as a user, I agree that the updates are too frequent, especially as there has been no compelling reason for most users to upgrade from the 4.x branch, and we're now at 6.x. From the view of development, we *have* to do it that way. There are so many changes that it's impossible to merge and track across branches over the longer timeframe.
As for automagic updates: I've tried to do my part to make this work better, see e.g. etcmerge, and the options system for ports (so options are kept across updates automagically). I would like to do more, I've not been active for a while, though.
WRT Java, this has been closely tied with the licensing issues of Sun. A couple of months ago, Sun added a new licensing option, so I think this may change. I'm not sure, though - Java on FreeBSD has been such a pain that I've mostly avoided Java.
You say your servers "was FreeBSD" - what are they now?
"I'm still going to stick with OSX (which is now my server)."
Sorry, though I tried to see if I could find it in the post, I obviously didn't read it carefully enough. Happy to see you over on one of our derivaties, though. A lot of our best developers are now employed by Apple, anyway, and changes are shared back and forth (Apple are really good at syncing in the FreeBSD changes, so you get the best of both worlds.)
Eivind, who just wish Apple would actually DELIVER the box he ordered so he could test out OSX in practice...
Level and game design is critical. It requires a good team to work with for it to be worth anything, and it's still critical. And the game designer is very often the main creative force.
It is not theft. It is illegal copying. These are so different that anybody that can call illegal copying "theft" with a clear conscience haven't understood the issues yet, and should refrain from having an opinion. I've done long posts on this before.
I've got techniques for getting a life (assuming that you by "A life" mean friends, activities, and sex with real females). Pop me a mail at eeklund@gmail.com if you really want help.
I find it more ethically acceptable to pirate Microsoft software than to supply funding to Microsoft. (As usual, pragmatic risks also enter the picture.)
Actually, most of the US has an age of consent of 16. However, most of everywhere, including the US, has a different age of consent for sex and age for consent for participating in porn. The latter is 18 or more everywhere I know of. It used to be 16 in The Netherlands, but I believe that was increased to 18 some years back.
As for ethics, I have two points: I don't trust the mental development of teens below 18[1]. I don't trust that they will be able to mentally project what effects participating in porn will have on them, nor that they'll be able to see that they aren't able to project it. As a such, it would be unethical for me to support creation of porn with younger teens.
Anyway, when I wrote that I got turned on by pictures with younger kids, I meant pre-teens, which I've seen a couple of times randomly and once systematically (while busting a child porn ring). The second argument is semi-pragmatic and semi-ethical: If I spent my time looking at that kind of pictures, it would likely steer my sexuality more towards kids, both desensitizing me from "These are kids - they're not supposed to be sexual objects!" and in general boost my sexual reaction to kids. This is both unethical and pragmatically inconvenient - I like my sexuality tuned towards adult women that I can have a "symmetric" emotional connection to.
I see the privacy problems of trying to protect against the use of child porn; I also see the benefits from doing some things about it. These different priorities need to be balanced.
People who view child pornography are not all idiots - like the rest of the population, they're a mix of idiots and non-idiots. However, I suspect there's somewhat more idiots among them than the rest of the population.
I've randomly seen ("mild") child porn a couple of times, and I'll admit it turn me on. However, I'm smart enough that I still don't intentionally look it up, nor do I collect it, both for ethical and pragmatic reasons. Those that do look it up aren't smart enough to see and follow those pragmatic reasons.
According to the article, it is based on one way hashes - in other words, the image is not kept. Also, no matter what, this is a tradeoff. If we assume that the database is an effective tool for stopping distribution, then keeping an image in the database would be less of a violation of privacy than letting the images float free.
I feel unsafe knowing that 12-year-old girls can get me in a ton of trouble by saying that I made sexual remarks to them. I don't trust 12-year olds to be stable, and I've actually had an unstable girl (of 18-19) accuse me of attemped rape. She did this to cover up her own misbehaviour (to justify picking up my best friend while in a beginning relationship with me). Fortunately, this was just on the gossip level, not to the police - yet I still don't feel completely safe. People *will* abuse power, and 12-year-olds aren't yet properly socialized.
Actually, it's at least half a lie, and you've just not programmed enough to know it. Come back in 10, maybe 15 years.
The point is that it takes time to learn how to do idiomatic programming in a language. There's all manner of care that a craftsperson that's used the language for a year or five will do that a beginner won't do. The beginner will not see these aspects of the craft, and think that he's good.
In addition, this lateness has another effect: we generally believe and base our ideas off the first information we get.
We do in the case of information that has high personal relevance. For information that has low personal relevance, the later message is more important. See
Haugtvedt, C. P., & Wegener, D. T. (1994). Message order effects in persuasion: An attitude strength
perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, 21, 205-218.
For an overview of strongly related topics, see "Multiple Routes To Resisting Attitude Change" by Wegner, Petty, Smoak and Fabrigar in Resistance And Persuation (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004, Edited by Eric S. Knowles and Jay A. Linn.)
Slashdot Mirror
Eivind.
Eivind.
In other words, the entire post is wrong and should be modded away again.
Eivind.
Eivind.
There is a need to see what is going on so we avoid magic stuff happening. Hiding file extensions means that I cannot know reasonably well what will happen when I try to use a file, except by memorizing icons (which will give me a quarter of an idea, as many programs handle many filetypes.)
Eivind.
As for automagic updates: I've tried to do my part to make this work better, see e.g. etcmerge, and the options system for ports (so options are kept across updates automagically). I would like to do more, I've not been active for a while, though.
WRT Java, this has been closely tied with the licensing issues of Sun. A couple of months ago, Sun added a new licensing option, so I think this may change. I'm not sure, though - Java on FreeBSD has been such a pain that I've mostly avoided Java.
Eivind.
Eivind, who just wish Apple would actually DELIVER the box he ordered so he could test out OSX in practice...
Eivind, doing user research.
Eivind, former game developer.
It is not theft. It is illegal copying. These are so different that anybody that can call illegal copying "theft" with a clear conscience haven't understood the issues yet, and should refrain from having an opinion. I've done long posts on this before.
I've got techniques for getting a life (assuming that you by "A life" mean friends, activities, and sex with real females). Pop me a mail at eeklund@gmail.com if you really want help.
Eivind.
As for ethics, I have two points: I don't trust the mental development of teens below 18[1]. I don't trust that they will be able to mentally project what effects participating in porn will have on them, nor that they'll be able to see that they aren't able to project it. As a such, it would be unethical for me to support creation of porn with younger teens.
Anyway, when I wrote that I got turned on by pictures with younger kids, I meant pre-teens, which I've seen a couple of times randomly and once systematically (while busting a child porn ring). The second argument is semi-pragmatic and semi-ethical: If I spent my time looking at that kind of pictures, it would likely steer my sexuality more towards kids, both desensitizing me from "These are kids - they're not supposed to be sexual objects!" and in general boost my sexual reaction to kids. This is both unethical and pragmatically inconvenient - I like my sexuality tuned towards adult women that I can have a "symmetric" emotional connection to.
I see the privacy problems of trying to protect against the use of child porn; I also see the benefits from doing some things about it. These different priorities need to be balanced.
Eivind.
I've randomly seen ("mild") child porn a couple of times, and I'll admit it turn me on. However, I'm smart enough that I still don't intentionally look it up, nor do I collect it, both for ethical and pragmatic reasons. Those that do look it up aren't smart enough to see and follow those pragmatic reasons.
Eivind.
Apart from that, I still recommend Perl 7 (Ruby) instead of Perl 5.
Eivind.
Eivind.
Eivind.
It's not even obvious it should be followed up. There is no "right not to be offended".
I've found it able to handle all I've wanted to do, and I'm curious at what the cases that aren't possible to handle are.
Eivind.
The point is that it takes time to learn how to do idiomatic programming in a language. There's all manner of care that a craftsperson that's used the language for a year or five will do that a beginner won't do. The beginner will not see these aspects of the craft, and think that he's good.
Eivind.
Eivind,
You've bough into the rethoric. The subsidies came from the 1930s, and are kept purely on a lobby basis from the farmers.
Mod parent up.
Eivind.
Haugtvedt, C. P., & Wegener, D. T. (1994). Message order effects in persuasion: An attitude strength perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, 21, 205-218.
For an overview of strongly related topics, see "Multiple Routes To Resisting Attitude Change" by Wegner, Petty, Smoak and Fabrigar in Resistance And Persuation (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004, Edited by Eric S. Knowles and Jay A. Linn.)
Eivind.