Look, your arguments could also apply to many other world leaders, some of which are (or were) immensely respected. FDR comes to mind. He "used" Pearl Harbor to instigate massive changes in U.S. policies, one of which was the internment of Japanese-Americans (which was upheld by the Supreme Court at the time and still remains as "good law" on the books for a president in wartime, believe it or not). There was wartime censorship as well as an organized "propaganda" campaign designed to stir up nationalism and keep it at a fever pitch for as long as was needed. Yet he is held up as an icon of the ideal wartime U.S. president by many (including myself). I don't see you comparing him to Hitler (or GWB, for that matter) yet the parallels are even more obvious with FDR vs. Hitler as opposed to GWB vs. Hitler. Lincoln also comes to mind as someone far more Draconian, but someone else has already pointed that out.
The difference, of course, is that FDR is viewed through the prism of 50 years of history. One is taken to wondering if GWB will receive a similar treatment 50 years hence, when the long-term implications (good or bad) of his policies can be viewed more objectively once this fanatical hatred (and counter-hatred) of him dies down.
It's creepy as hell to watch the President deflect pertinent questions with patriotic jargon.
Why is it creepy? If you have the slightest grounding in U.S. history, you should know that every wartime president has done this. Yet we're still here today. The Constitution has not been "shredded" as some would wildly accuse. There is no KGB-like organization enforcing a police state where people are "disappeared" on a regular basis. There are no gulags full of political dissidents. DHS agents aren't banging on people's doors any more or less frequently than the FBI or Secret Service used to (or still does) under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Again, I'll point out that GWB hasn't taken measures anywhere near as sweeping as many past presidents have, yet he is amazingly demonized today by Democrats, liberals, and leftists in general. One is taken to wondering if this whole thing is being blown out of proportion simply in an attempt to hurt the president in some way. If so, such behavior is just plain childish.
There is no "uninstall" in the program group, and it does not show up in Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs.
I'm not sure what planet you're operating your computer on, but here on Earth I find there is an entry in the Add/Remove Programs list. It's at or near the very bottom because it begins with "Yahoo!" Try opening your eyes a bit before you complain next time.
Nintendo is not the #2 console vendor, Microsoft is. Nintendo is in third place, and a distant third at that according to market figures. Considering Nintendo created the modern console market, this is a considerable fall from grace.
Yes, he did lie to Nature about it, but I find his justification acceptable.
You do, do you? You admit the man is a liar, but then you freely take his word on what actual events transpired? Do you not see the naivety in your comment?
What you're completely discounting here is that things might not have been as Dr. Hwang says they were. What if the research assistants were "encouraged" to donate their eggs? As in "you will voluntarily donate your eggs to this research project or we'll find another person to replace you"? Wouldn't you find this ethically and morally reprehensible conduct? Yet you completely overlook this distinct possiblity.
There is a reason these people are barred from donating their genetic material to thse kinds of projects, and it's because it can easily devolve into a situation where people are being forced to do something like this. It doesn't matter if Dr. Hwang's motives were pure or not, he either (a) broke the rules or (b) assisted in the coverup of someone else breaking the rules. Either way, it's his project and his department, so ultimately the buck stops with him.
All they have to do here is to eventually get enough developer mindshare (and not just for games, but for the general home uses as a 'digital entertainment hub') to squeeze Sony out of the market as a serious player. Then, they can do what they want at the price they want because they own the mainstream market, and they've got the same level of control over the home entertainment market as they have the desktop OS marktet.
And how is this any different that, say, Sony? With the exception of the fact that Sony doesn't own the home PC market, Sony does own the console market, having dispatched Nintendo some time ago. Why do you think Microsoft got into the console market in the first place? Because Sony was making a killing there, of course! Remember when game consoles cost $200 more than they do now?
Microsoft's undercutting of Sony's pricing has resulted in consoles being sold at a loss. We should all be happy Microsoft has entered this market because, ironically, it's helping break up a near-monopoly formerly held by Sony.
Satan defended his practice of evil, scientists discovered water is wet, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
I mean, seriously, this guy is the head of the RIAA. What did you expect him to say? That covertly installing malware on your PC such that it will bring more dollars to his pocket is a bad thing? These guys are the enemy. They think nothing of engaging in hypocritical behavior so long as it's "good" (for them) behavior.
But then again, hypocritical behavior is not something the RIAA has a monopoly on. After all, just find any Linux vs. Anything-but-Linux flame war on/. and you'll find loads of hypocrisy from both sides.
This is just what I've been waiting for, Linux in pill form! For years and years we've had to take our Linux in bulky, hard-to-swallow formats. But now, thanks to the miracle of technology, Linux can be had in a tablet!
In other news, Linux makers indicated it will soon be available in capsule, caplet, and liquid forms.
What a pity you don't realize just how pathetic of a showing you've made for your Communist viewpoints. When confronted with the inconsistencies of your talking points and the blatant double standards, you are unable to form any kind of a cogent argument. Instead, you retreat into mockery and hyperbole.
Is it any wonder why your party isn't in power any more?
I see that you're incapable of holding an intelligent conversation on this subject, so it's not surprising that you're just whining and slinking away. What a pity, as I was so looking forward to verbally belittling your inadequacies when it comes to cognitive thought processes. Instead, you have cruelly denied me this pleasure by acting the coward. Oh, for shame!
I think that an uneducated god who is ignorant regarding copyright created your universe.
Ooooh...we're starting off with an insult. That's always a good way to make me sit up and pay attention to your logic. It also kind of reflects poorly on your intelligence.
Where did you get the idea that all of us are against copyrights? I say that you're the one having the knee jerk reaction.
Pot, meet kettle. I never said "all" of/. is against copyrights. However, if you're going to pretend that the vast majority of/. isn't in favor of sticking it to the MPAA/RIAA and Microsoft wherever possible -- usually via copyright violation -- then you're either fantastically naive or extremely disingenous. Either way it reflects poorly on your intelligence.
I've seen a wide spectrum of opinion on copyright here on slashdot. Indeed, if you are a linux proponent, you should be aware that the GPL gets it's muscle from, and is built upon, copyright law. And while others think copyrights are not morally valid, plenty of us would disagree. Our objection is to the twisting of copyright in the DCMA and in the never-ending extensions being granted by our legislators.
And I would agree with you that the DMCA is an inherently evil piece of legislation (signed into law, ironically, by that liberal iconoclast Bill Clinton). However, anyone who dares to speak up that violating a copyright is wrong no matter who owns the copyright is invariably shouted down, modded into oblivion, or otherwise ridiculed as a water boy for The Rich And Powerful. Here's a news flash: it's possible to despise the RIAA/MPAA and their ilk but also despise the means by which they are currently being "opposed." The reason I take this position is because pirates are actually hurting the "cause" they claim to be so fervently supporting.
When you violate a copyright -- any copyright -- it hurts all copyright owners, be they Sony Music or Linus Torvalds. You cannot draw arbitrary distinctions where these copyrights are "good" and these copyrights are "bad" depending upon your own personal code of morality. If that were the case, Bill Gates could easily violate the GPL because he views it as a "bad" copyright. In one fell swoop he could subsume Linux and pervert it to whatever purposes he wants, raping the work of thousands of programmers who released their work into the GPL because they thought people would respect the GPL. Nobody on/. would argue that should happen, but you'll have no difficulty finding people advocating that exact same course of action against the RIAA and MPAA. That whole "do unto others..." lesson was apparently lost on them.
The law must be blind to personal prejudices. Either copyrights are all good or they're all bad, you can't have it both ways. Copyrights do not have intentions, and attempting to violate them on moral grounds is just idiotic. If you want to break the RIAA/MPAA hegemony, boycott them. "Stealing" their music and movies as a form a vigilantism is ultimately suicidal because they will enact laws that will be amazingly harsh and technologies that will be amazingly difficult to break. It may hurt them, and it will certainly hurt legitimate users, but they have the cash, clout, lawyers, and politicans to win this battle. We don't. The more we goad them by illegal means, the more ammunition we give them to get laws passed against us. The smart move is the "non-violent resistance" option of the boycott, which gives us a win-win scenario: they start to lose money in a big way, yet they cannot blame piracy for it because nobody is pirating it. Yin and yang, perfect and equal.
Yet just try putting this kind of logic in a/. post on copyrights. See what happens. I've done it many times and I'll continue to do it until the cows come home, so I can tell you the responses are overwhelmingly purile, pedantic, and utterly devoid of intelligence.
You talk about double standards as if they are a bad thing.
And you talk about double standards as if they are a good thing, following it up shortly with anti-capitalist drivel that would make the Communist World Worker's Party proud.
I'm quite sure it's absolutely impossible for you to understand any sort of an objective, intelligent viewpoint on this issue since you're obviously willing to adopt a "do as I say not as I do" approach. In your world, the GPL should be stringently enforced because it's put forth by "good" people, but music and movie copyrights should be ruthlessly violated at every opportunity because they're put forth by "bad" people. Never mind that you have totally and arbitrarily defined "good" and "bad" in your own personal terms, simultaneously telling everyone else that if they disagree with you then they're ignorant fools. Yep, typical left-wing drivel. You want diversity, openness, tolerance...except for things you don't like. Never mind that such doublethink is the absolute antithesis of diversity, openness, and tolerance.
How about a little less finger-pointing and name-calling and a little more discussion of the issue.
Finger pointing? Name calling? I didn't call any names or point any fingers. Methinks thou art projecting thine own guilt into this matter. It's so refreshing to know that you realize you're a hypocrite without me having to point it out.
I don't think slashdot holds any pretense of being apolitical. I think all of the free software/open source stuff would tip you off.
Which jibes nicely with your whole "I'm abandoning all pretense of being subjective" frame of mind. You know, Stalin moralized his murder of millions as being "for the common good" as well. Doesn't it make you feel better to know you're ideologically in such good company?
When you call something rare your not just talking about how often something happens, but what % of the time it happens.
Well, duh. What you fail to understand here, genius, is that you cannot talk of "how often" something happens without first defining the time period under discussion. If you're talking geological or cosmological time then this even isn't even remotely rare or unusual. If you're talking femtosecond time periods then this is an unparalleled rarity. The article says this is an "unusual" event without going into any discussion about what constitutes unusual. So, you're argument is basically worthless because, like the original poster, you fail to understand the meaning of "unusual" or "rare."
Copyrights are bad when Big Evil Companies use them, but copyrights are good when Noble Intellectuals use them. Nothing like a nice, hot cup of double standards to wake yourself up to in the morning.
Look, I know this is/. where the vast majority of adherents are left-of-center, athiest, or both, but is this really "news for nerds"? When did/. become a PAW (Political Action Website)?
"Unusual" can also mean "rare"-I think that's the context it's used in here.
Rare is entirely subjective here. On the time scale of the history of humanity, this event is not particularly rare. On the time scale of the cosmos it is exceedingly common. On the time scale of a fruit fly it is unheard of.
The usage in the article was sloppy. This even is neither "rare" nor "unusual." It should've said "Mars reaches point in orbit closest to Earth," no more, no less.
Closed, ever changing file format - I have old word files I inherited that don't open in any program I can get my hands on, and others that only open in OpenOffice. These were created on an old version of Word. I don't trust.doc files to be usable in the future.
I find this the most interesting demerit you assign to Word because Microsoft hasn't "broken" it's file format since it moved everyone from Office 97 to Office 2000. The current Word 2003 is completely backwards compatible with all prior Word document formats. Perhaps you failed to load the appropriate import filter when you first installed Office? Otherwise I cannot fathom why you can't open these files. We've been using Office since well before Office 95 and are now on Office 2003 Pro. There are ten-year-old documents out there that we have no difficulty opening whatsoever.
Large documents - at about 200 pages with the occasional graphic, Word consistently fails to properly save or open files. Sometimes it will save a file and the file will no longer open at all. Sometimes it will corrupt the document beyond all hope of recovery. At one point I was saving files, closing them, and then re-opening them before making a back-up every time I edited the files.
This could potentially be a machine resource issue and not a Word issue at all. We have purchasing contracts that run in excess of 200 pages and we've never had any difficulty opening such files. Our machines are Dell Precision 370 workstations with 3GHz P4's and 1GB of RAM, but even older systems with a 733MHz P-III and 512MB of RAM don't have any problems.
Output formats - In order to get decent XML, properly formatted from word you need to buy an expensive add on program, like Webworks pro. Ditto for usable HTML.
You'd have to quantify what constitutes "decent XML" and "usable HTML" for this comment to make much sense. Word 2003 can export in both formats and they look just fine to us.
Formats stored in carriage returns - what could be more annoying than storing all the formatting info for a paragraph in the carriage return of that paragraph? Why does all this info disappear if I merge two paragraphs. How can this have not been fixed yet?
I haven't experienced this issue, so I can't comment on it. However, if it's true and not peculiar to your installation I could certainly see why it would be annoying.
mages - Word messes up images for me regularly and inserting large numbers of images consumes enormous resources, making the whole program slow down considerably.
The nebulous "messes up images for me" comment leaves much to be desired. We place bitmaps of all sorts in Word docs with no problem at all. Admittedly it does make the file size bloat dramatically, but that's hardly Word's fault as graphical data is obviously much larger than textual data. The slowdown could again be a machine resources issue since Word may no longer be able to hold the entire contents of the document in RAM at once. Our responses are snappy even with lots of images, although it is slightly slower than text-only.
Spellchecking, grammar checking, translation, dictionary, thesaurus - Word still can't use the standard services available to other applications on my system forcing me to use their inferior spellchecking, etc. or to copy and paste text out of word, into another program, and then back if I want to lookup a word in an online dictionary, or translate a paragraph from or to another language.
I'm a bit confused as to what constitutes "inferior spellchecking." Are you saying the spell check feature does not work? Obviously that is not true. Are you saying it doesn't do what you need it to do? Well, that's very subjective so you can hardly call it a generalized problem with Word, now, can you? If you don't like the default dictionary, you can customize it.
As for "standard services" elsewhere on your system, I believe it's up to the third-party providers to figure out how to integrate their software into Word, not the other way around.
I suppose I should've known that one can't possible raise the specter of an ideological double standard without being modded "flamebait" within 30 seconds. Thus the irony is illustrated: proponents of free speech get all lathered up when someone tries to silence their dissent, yet when someone dissents with their ideology, that person is silenced, censored, ostracized, or -- in this case -- modded down into oblivion. Are those of you who modded this down really that oblivious to your own hypocrisy?
Why is it that when a right-wing school goes out of its way to interfere with free speech -- such as banning blogs -- it makes front page news on Slashdot, but when a left-wing school does similar things it gets nary a mention? All free speech restrictions are equally heinous whether its a religious extremist doing things in the name of "protection" or a liberal extremist doing it in the name of "diversity" or "politcal correctness." This is not meant as a troll or flamebait, I'd really just like to hear some intellectual arguments as to why there appears to be a double standard.
I was all keyed up to see how the new system works, but the first thing that caught my eye was the use of Shuttle-era solid rocket boosters (SRB's) for the crew launch option. This is not a Good Thing.
Solid boosters have plenty of inherent disadvantages when compared to their liquid-fueled cousins. First and foremost, when you light an SRB, it's going to take off no matter what. They can't be stopped. If something goes wrong at any point, your only option is the range safety destruction charges. SRB's cannot be throttled, either. In short, they don't give you a lot of options. They are, however, simpler, requiring no cryogenic turbopumps or internal tanks, and they can be prepped well in advance of the launch.
Using SRB's for cargo is no problem. Using them for crewed vehicles gives me the heebie jeebies. The "old" Saturn V system used liquid-fueled engines for many reasons, and safety and flexibility were high on that list.
Okay genius, how about this one? If you're trying to insinuate that I couldn't find a DoS exploit for IE 6.x, guess again. At some point, proving a point that's obvious becomes tiresome. Next time, go look up your owned damned exploits, because I was right to begin with and I'm still right.
No, I didn't prove your point at all. You claimed/. is harder on OSS than it is on MS software. I pointed out that, by and large, IE flaws get top billing and scathing comments whereas Firefox flaws get rationalizations and lame excuses from OSS zealots if it gets an article on it at all. And anyone pointing out that both FF and IE have had numerous serious security flaws gets a verbal load of buckshot from the zealots claiming that all the IE flaws are serious flaws but all the FF flaws are trivial. It's one sided. It's hypocritical. It's rabidly commonplace.
I have no problem whatsoever with taking MS to task for all the crap they've done, but you can't remain honest and objective if you don't give FF that very same treatment.
Show me the stories of bugs that simply crash IE. Really. I'm curious. Because there are literally hundreds of ways to crash IE with a malformed webpage.
And there are hundreds of ways to do this with Firefox as well, no doubt, but for some reason this story made "news." Comments saying this is "no big deal because it happens all the time" are right, in my opinion. What's bothersome is that many of these same people sing completely different tunes with IE under similar circumstances. I've also seen far too much commentary on/. where major exploits like remote code execution on Firefox are downplayed, usually by the same people mentioned above.
If anything, the double standard is that we're far more critical of OSS here than MS.
I'm sorry but I cannot agree with your interpretation here. Microsoft is given absolutely no quarter on/., but Firefox is routinely given a pass whenever it has a major bug or a slew of patches released.
1. A bug in a browser is found. 2. Regardless of the type of bug, if it's an Open Source browser, you can say any of the following:
"It's an insignificant bug!"
"It'll be fixed faster than Microsoft would fix it!"
"At least you have the source code so you can figure out a fix on your own!"
"Hey, these guys aren't being paid so quit complaining."
"This is news?" 3. Regardless of the type of bug, if it's a Microsoft browser, you can say any of the following:
"Bill Gates sucks!"
"Microsoft sucks!"
"I hate Microsoft!"
"IE is for losers!"
"This is a huge exploit that will cause global chaos!"
"This is the biggest piece of news ever!"
Note the double standard, folks. If it's OSS, it's "good" software and thus automatically immune from any kind of criticism. Indeed, it's given the exact opposite: flaws are actually excused with lame rationalizations. If it's Microsoft software, it's "bad" software and thus every flaw must be expounded upon, exaggerated, and endlessly repeated.
A flaw is a flaw is a flaw. If it's a flaw that crashes your browser, we should heap the same criticism (or give the same excuses) regardless of whether that software comes from Mozilla.org or Microsoft.com. Without criticism, there is no incentive to change. By calling these exploits and bugs by their right name, we are helping the OSS cause. Do not think you're helping things by saying "hey, it's no big deal when a Firefox bug crashes my browser" but then say something completely opposite when a similar bug crashes IE.
FYI, 1 Athlon XP, 1 Duron, 1 G4, 2 Xenon, and 1 P4M at home.
Xenon processors? Wow, those sound really neat! Who makes them? Whoever they are, they should look out because Intel just happens to make a chip called a Xeon. With names so similar I'm sure a Cease & Desist order is on the way already.
As a result, you sound like another whiney neo-con who can't take criticism of Bush
You know, if you didn't have such an enormous chip on your shoulder, we might be able to actually have "an intelligent discussion" as you put it. However, your knee-jerk reaction smacks of someone who is itching for a fight about ideology of some kind. Sorry, I'm not interested in that, especially since you're already wheeling out the "whiney neo-con" labels. For someone who bristles so quickly at being termed left-of-center, you sure don't mind slinging around right-wing nutjob labels yourself. But, then again, this is/., where hypocrisy is high art.
Slashdot Mirror
The key similarities between Bush and Hitler...
Snipped for brevity.
Look, your arguments could also apply to many other world leaders, some of which are (or were) immensely respected. FDR comes to mind. He "used" Pearl Harbor to instigate massive changes in U.S. policies, one of which was the internment of Japanese-Americans (which was upheld by the Supreme Court at the time and still remains as "good law" on the books for a president in wartime, believe it or not). There was wartime censorship as well as an organized "propaganda" campaign designed to stir up nationalism and keep it at a fever pitch for as long as was needed. Yet he is held up as an icon of the ideal wartime U.S. president by many (including myself). I don't see you comparing him to Hitler (or GWB, for that matter) yet the parallels are even more obvious with FDR vs. Hitler as opposed to GWB vs. Hitler. Lincoln also comes to mind as someone far more Draconian, but someone else has already pointed that out.
The difference, of course, is that FDR is viewed through the prism of 50 years of history. One is taken to wondering if GWB will receive a similar treatment 50 years hence, when the long-term implications (good or bad) of his policies can be viewed more objectively once this fanatical hatred (and counter-hatred) of him dies down.
It's creepy as hell to watch the President deflect pertinent questions with patriotic jargon.
Why is it creepy? If you have the slightest grounding in U.S. history, you should know that every wartime president has done this. Yet we're still here today. The Constitution has not been "shredded" as some would wildly accuse. There is no KGB-like organization enforcing a police state where people are "disappeared" on a regular basis. There are no gulags full of political dissidents. DHS agents aren't banging on people's doors any more or less frequently than the FBI or Secret Service used to (or still does) under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Again, I'll point out that GWB hasn't taken measures anywhere near as sweeping as many past presidents have, yet he is amazingly demonized today by Democrats, liberals, and leftists in general. One is taken to wondering if this whole thing is being blown out of proportion simply in an attempt to hurt the president in some way. If so, such behavior is just plain childish.
There is no "uninstall" in the program group, and it does not show up in Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs.
I'm not sure what planet you're operating your computer on, but here on Earth I find there is an entry in the Add/Remove Programs list. It's at or near the very bottom because it begins with "Yahoo!" Try opening your eyes a bit before you complain next time.
Nintendo is not the #2 console vendor, Microsoft is. Nintendo is in third place, and a distant third at that according to market figures. Considering Nintendo created the modern console market, this is a considerable fall from grace.
Yes, he did lie to Nature about it, but I find his justification acceptable.
You do, do you? You admit the man is a liar, but then you freely take his word on what actual events transpired? Do you not see the naivety in your comment?
What you're completely discounting here is that things might not have been as Dr. Hwang says they were. What if the research assistants were "encouraged" to donate their eggs? As in "you will voluntarily donate your eggs to this research project or we'll find another person to replace you"? Wouldn't you find this ethically and morally reprehensible conduct? Yet you completely overlook this distinct possiblity.
There is a reason these people are barred from donating their genetic material to thse kinds of projects, and it's because it can easily devolve into a situation where people are being forced to do something like this. It doesn't matter if Dr. Hwang's motives were pure or not, he either (a) broke the rules or (b) assisted in the coverup of someone else breaking the rules. Either way, it's his project and his department, so ultimately the buck stops with him.
All they have to do here is to eventually get enough developer mindshare (and not just for games, but for the general home uses as a 'digital entertainment hub') to squeeze Sony out of the market as a serious player. Then, they can do what they want at the price they want because they own the mainstream market, and they've got the same level of control over the home entertainment market as they have the desktop OS marktet.
And how is this any different that, say, Sony? With the exception of the fact that Sony doesn't own the home PC market, Sony does own the console market, having dispatched Nintendo some time ago. Why do you think Microsoft got into the console market in the first place? Because Sony was making a killing there, of course! Remember when game consoles cost $200 more than they do now?
Microsoft's undercutting of Sony's pricing has resulted in consoles being sold at a loss. We should all be happy Microsoft has entered this market because, ironically, it's helping break up a near-monopoly formerly held by Sony.
Satan defended his practice of evil, scientists discovered water is wet, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
/. and you'll find loads of hypocrisy from both sides.
I mean, seriously, this guy is the head of the RIAA. What did you expect him to say? That covertly installing malware on your PC such that it will bring more dollars to his pocket is a bad thing? These guys are the enemy. They think nothing of engaging in hypocritical behavior so long as it's "good" (for them) behavior.
But then again, hypocritical behavior is not something the RIAA has a monopoly on. After all, just find any Linux vs. Anything-but-Linux flame war on
This is just what I've been waiting for, Linux in pill form! For years and years we've had to take our Linux in bulky, hard-to-swallow formats. But now, thanks to the miracle of technology, Linux can be had in a tablet!
In other news, Linux makers indicated it will soon be available in capsule, caplet, and liquid forms.
What a pity you don't realize just how pathetic of a showing you've made for your Communist viewpoints. When confronted with the inconsistencies of your talking points and the blatant double standards, you are unable to form any kind of a cogent argument. Instead, you retreat into mockery and hyperbole.
Is it any wonder why your party isn't in power any more?
I see that you're incapable of holding an intelligent conversation on this subject, so it's not surprising that you're just whining and slinking away. What a pity, as I was so looking forward to verbally belittling your inadequacies when it comes to cognitive thought processes. Instead, you have cruelly denied me this pleasure by acting the coward. Oh, for shame!
Those who can't argue their points, whine and skulk away. How typical. Disappointing, purile, but very, very typical.
I think that an uneducated god who is ignorant regarding copyright created your universe.
/. is against copyrights. However, if you're going to pretend that the vast majority of /. isn't in favor of sticking it to the MPAA/RIAA and Microsoft wherever possible -- usually via copyright violation -- then you're either fantastically naive or extremely disingenous. Either way it reflects poorly on your intelligence.
/. would argue that should happen, but you'll have no difficulty finding people advocating that exact same course of action against the RIAA and MPAA. That whole "do unto others..." lesson was apparently lost on them.
/. post on copyrights. See what happens. I've done it many times and I'll continue to do it until the cows come home, so I can tell you the responses are overwhelmingly purile, pedantic, and utterly devoid of intelligence.
Ooooh...we're starting off with an insult. That's always a good way to make me sit up and pay attention to your logic. It also kind of reflects poorly on your intelligence.
Where did you get the idea that all of us are against copyrights? I say that you're the one having the knee jerk reaction.
Pot, meet kettle. I never said "all" of
I've seen a wide spectrum of opinion on copyright here on slashdot. Indeed, if you are a linux proponent, you should be aware that the GPL gets it's muscle from, and is built upon, copyright law. And while others think copyrights are not morally valid, plenty of us would disagree. Our objection is to the twisting of copyright in the DCMA and in the never-ending extensions being granted by our legislators.
And I would agree with you that the DMCA is an inherently evil piece of legislation (signed into law, ironically, by that liberal iconoclast Bill Clinton). However, anyone who dares to speak up that violating a copyright is wrong no matter who owns the copyright is invariably shouted down, modded into oblivion, or otherwise ridiculed as a water boy for The Rich And Powerful. Here's a news flash: it's possible to despise the RIAA/MPAA and their ilk but also despise the means by which they are currently being "opposed." The reason I take this position is because pirates are actually hurting the "cause" they claim to be so fervently supporting.
When you violate a copyright -- any copyright -- it hurts all copyright owners, be they Sony Music or Linus Torvalds. You cannot draw arbitrary distinctions where these copyrights are "good" and these copyrights are "bad" depending upon your own personal code of morality. If that were the case, Bill Gates could easily violate the GPL because he views it as a "bad" copyright. In one fell swoop he could subsume Linux and pervert it to whatever purposes he wants, raping the work of thousands of programmers who released their work into the GPL because they thought people would respect the GPL. Nobody on
The law must be blind to personal prejudices. Either copyrights are all good or they're all bad, you can't have it both ways. Copyrights do not have intentions, and attempting to violate them on moral grounds is just idiotic. If you want to break the RIAA/MPAA hegemony, boycott them. "Stealing" their music and movies as a form a vigilantism is ultimately suicidal because they will enact laws that will be amazingly harsh and technologies that will be amazingly difficult to break. It may hurt them, and it will certainly hurt legitimate users, but they have the cash, clout, lawyers, and politicans to win this battle. We don't. The more we goad them by illegal means, the more ammunition we give them to get laws passed against us. The smart move is the "non-violent resistance" option of the boycott, which gives us a win-win scenario: they start to lose money in a big way, yet they cannot blame piracy for it because nobody is pirating it. Yin and yang, perfect and equal.
Yet just try putting this kind of logic in a
You talk about double standards as if they are a bad thing.
And you talk about double standards as if they are a good thing, following it up shortly with anti-capitalist drivel that would make the Communist World Worker's Party proud.
I'm quite sure it's absolutely impossible for you to understand any sort of an objective, intelligent viewpoint on this issue since you're obviously willing to adopt a "do as I say not as I do" approach. In your world, the GPL should be stringently enforced because it's put forth by "good" people, but music and movie copyrights should be ruthlessly violated at every opportunity because they're put forth by "bad" people. Never mind that you have totally and arbitrarily defined "good" and "bad" in your own personal terms, simultaneously telling everyone else that if they disagree with you then they're ignorant fools. Yep, typical left-wing drivel. You want diversity, openness, tolerance...except for things you don't like. Never mind that such doublethink is the absolute antithesis of diversity, openness, and tolerance.
How about a little less finger-pointing and name-calling and a little more discussion of the issue.
Finger pointing? Name calling? I didn't call any names or point any fingers. Methinks thou art projecting thine own guilt into this matter. It's so refreshing to know that you realize you're a hypocrite without me having to point it out.
I don't think slashdot holds any pretense of being apolitical. I think all of the free software/open source stuff would tip you off.
Which jibes nicely with your whole "I'm abandoning all pretense of being subjective" frame of mind. You know, Stalin moralized his murder of millions as being "for the common good" as well. Doesn't it make you feel better to know you're ideologically in such good company?
When you call something rare your not just talking about how often something happens, but what % of the time it happens.
Well, duh. What you fail to understand here, genius, is that you cannot talk of "how often" something happens without first defining the time period under discussion. If you're talking geological or cosmological time then this even isn't even remotely rare or unusual. If you're talking femtosecond time periods then this is an unparalleled rarity. The article says this is an "unusual" event without going into any discussion about what constitutes unusual. So, you're argument is basically worthless because, like the original poster, you fail to understand the meaning of "unusual" or "rare."
Here, let me help you out a bit.
Copyrights are bad when Big Evil Companies use them, but copyrights are good when Noble Intellectuals use them. Nothing like a nice, hot cup of double standards to wake yourself up to in the morning.
/. where the vast majority of adherents are left-of-center, athiest, or both, but is this really "news for nerds"? When did /. become a PAW (Political Action Website)?
Look, I know this is
"Unusual" can also mean "rare"-I think that's the context it's used in here.
Rare is entirely subjective here. On the time scale of the history of humanity, this event is not particularly rare. On the time scale of the cosmos it is exceedingly common. On the time scale of a fruit fly it is unheard of.
The usage in the article was sloppy. This even is neither "rare" nor "unusual." It should've said "Mars reaches point in orbit closest to Earth," no more, no less.
Closed, ever changing file format - I have old word files I inherited that don't open in any program I can get my hands on, and others that only open in OpenOffice. These were created on an old version of Word. I don't trust .doc files to be usable in the future.
I find this the most interesting demerit you assign to Word because Microsoft hasn't "broken" it's file format since it moved everyone from Office 97 to Office 2000. The current Word 2003 is completely backwards compatible with all prior Word document formats. Perhaps you failed to load the appropriate import filter when you first installed Office? Otherwise I cannot fathom why you can't open these files. We've been using Office since well before Office 95 and are now on Office 2003 Pro. There are ten-year-old documents out there that we have no difficulty opening whatsoever.
Large documents - at about 200 pages with the occasional graphic, Word consistently fails to properly save or open files. Sometimes it will save a file and the file will no longer open at all. Sometimes it will corrupt the document beyond all hope of recovery. At one point I was saving files, closing them, and then re-opening them before making a back-up every time I edited the files.
This could potentially be a machine resource issue and not a Word issue at all. We have purchasing contracts that run in excess of 200 pages and we've never had any difficulty opening such files. Our machines are Dell Precision 370 workstations with 3GHz P4's and 1GB of RAM, but even older systems with a 733MHz P-III and 512MB of RAM don't have any problems.
Output formats - In order to get decent XML, properly formatted from word you need to buy an expensive add on program, like Webworks pro. Ditto for usable HTML.
You'd have to quantify what constitutes "decent XML" and "usable HTML" for this comment to make much sense. Word 2003 can export in both formats and they look just fine to us.
Formats stored in carriage returns - what could be more annoying than storing all the formatting info for a paragraph in the carriage return of that paragraph? Why does all this info disappear if I merge two paragraphs. How can this have not been fixed yet?
I haven't experienced this issue, so I can't comment on it. However, if it's true and not peculiar to your installation I could certainly see why it would be annoying.
mages - Word messes up images for me regularly and inserting large numbers of images consumes enormous resources, making the whole program slow down considerably.
The nebulous "messes up images for me" comment leaves much to be desired. We place bitmaps of all sorts in Word docs with no problem at all. Admittedly it does make the file size bloat dramatically, but that's hardly Word's fault as graphical data is obviously much larger than textual data. The slowdown could again be a machine resources issue since Word may no longer be able to hold the entire contents of the document in RAM at once. Our responses are snappy even with lots of images, although it is slightly slower than text-only.
Spellchecking, grammar checking, translation, dictionary, thesaurus - Word still can't use the standard services available to other applications on my system forcing me to use their inferior spellchecking, etc. or to copy and paste text out of word, into another program, and then back if I want to lookup a word in an online dictionary, or translate a paragraph from or to another language.
I'm a bit confused as to what constitutes "inferior spellchecking." Are you saying the spell check feature does not work? Obviously that is not true. Are you saying it doesn't do what you need it to do? Well, that's very subjective so you can hardly call it a generalized problem with Word, now, can you? If you don't like the default dictionary, you can customize it.
As for "standard services" elsewhere on your system, I believe it's up to the third-party providers to figure out how to integrate their software into Word, not the other way around.
I suppose I should've known that one can't possible raise the specter of an ideological double standard without being modded "flamebait" within 30 seconds. Thus the irony is illustrated: proponents of free speech get all lathered up when someone tries to silence their dissent, yet when someone dissents with their ideology, that person is silenced, censored, ostracized, or -- in this case -- modded down into oblivion. Are those of you who modded this down really that oblivious to your own hypocrisy?
Why is it that when a right-wing school goes out of its way to interfere with free speech -- such as banning blogs -- it makes front page news on Slashdot, but when a left-wing school does similar things it gets nary a mention? All free speech restrictions are equally heinous whether its a religious extremist doing things in the name of "protection" or a liberal extremist doing it in the name of "diversity" or "politcal correctness." This is not meant as a troll or flamebait, I'd really just like to hear some intellectual arguments as to why there appears to be a double standard.
I was all keyed up to see how the new system works, but the first thing that caught my eye was the use of Shuttle-era solid rocket boosters (SRB's) for the crew launch option. This is not a Good Thing.
Solid boosters have plenty of inherent disadvantages when compared to their liquid-fueled cousins. First and foremost, when you light an SRB, it's going to take off no matter what. They can't be stopped. If something goes wrong at any point, your only option is the range safety destruction charges. SRB's cannot be throttled, either. In short, they don't give you a lot of options. They are, however, simpler, requiring no cryogenic turbopumps or internal tanks, and they can be prepped well in advance of the launch.
Using SRB's for cargo is no problem. Using them for crewed vehicles gives me the heebie jeebies. The "old" Saturn V system used liquid-fueled engines for many reasons, and safety and flexibility were high on that list.
Okay genius, how about this one? If you're trying to insinuate that I couldn't find a DoS exploit for IE 6.x, guess again. At some point, proving a point that's obvious becomes tiresome. Next time, go look up your owned damned exploits, because I was right to begin with and I'm still right.
Thank you for proving my point so eloquently :)
/. is harder on OSS than it is on MS software. I pointed out that, by and large, IE flaws get top billing and scathing comments whereas Firefox flaws get rationalizations and lame excuses from OSS zealots if it gets an article on it at all. And anyone pointing out that both FF and IE have had numerous serious security flaws gets a verbal load of buckshot from the zealots claiming that all the IE flaws are serious flaws but all the FF flaws are trivial. It's one sided. It's hypocritical. It's rabidly commonplace.
No, I didn't prove your point at all. You claimed
I have no problem whatsoever with taking MS to task for all the crap they've done, but you can't remain honest and objective if you don't give FF that very same treatment.
Show me the stories of bugs that simply crash IE. Really. I'm curious. Because there are literally hundreds of ways to crash IE with a malformed webpage.
/. where major exploits like remote code execution on Firefox are downplayed, usually by the same people mentioned above.
/., but Firefox is routinely given a pass whenever it has a major bug or a slew of patches released.
And there are hundreds of ways to do this with Firefox as well, no doubt, but for some reason this story made "news." Comments saying this is "no big deal because it happens all the time" are right, in my opinion. What's bothersome is that many of these same people sing completely different tunes with IE under similar circumstances. I've also seen far too much commentary on
If anything, the double standard is that we're far more critical of OSS here than MS.
I'm sorry but I cannot agree with your interpretation here. Microsoft is given absolutely no quarter on
1. A bug in a browser is found.
2. Regardless of the type of bug, if it's an Open Source browser, you can say any of the following:
"It's an insignificant bug!"
"It'll be fixed faster than Microsoft would fix it!"
"At least you have the source code so you can figure out a fix on your own!"
"Hey, these guys aren't being paid so quit complaining."
"This is news?"
3. Regardless of the type of bug, if it's a Microsoft browser, you can say any of the following:
"Bill Gates sucks!"
"Microsoft sucks!"
"I hate Microsoft!"
"IE is for losers!"
"This is a huge exploit that will cause global chaos!"
"This is the biggest piece of news ever!"
Note the double standard, folks. If it's OSS, it's "good" software and thus automatically immune from any kind of criticism. Indeed, it's given the exact opposite: flaws are actually excused with lame rationalizations. If it's Microsoft software, it's "bad" software and thus every flaw must be expounded upon, exaggerated, and endlessly repeated.
A flaw is a flaw is a flaw. If it's a flaw that crashes your browser, we should heap the same criticism (or give the same excuses) regardless of whether that software comes from Mozilla.org or Microsoft.com. Without criticism, there is no incentive to change. By calling these exploits and bugs by their right name, we are helping the OSS cause. Do not think you're helping things by saying "hey, it's no big deal when a Firefox bug crashes my browser" but then say something completely opposite when a similar bug crashes IE.
FYI, 1 Athlon XP, 1 Duron, 1 G4, 2 Xenon, and 1 P4M at home.
Xenon processors? Wow, those sound really neat! Who makes them? Whoever they are, they should look out because Intel just happens to make a chip called a Xeon. With names so similar I'm sure a Cease & Desist order is on the way already.
(/sarcasm)
As a result, you sound like another whiney neo-con who can't take criticism of Bush
/., where hypocrisy is high art.
You know, if you didn't have such an enormous chip on your shoulder, we might be able to actually have "an intelligent discussion" as you put it. However, your knee-jerk reaction smacks of someone who is itching for a fight about ideology of some kind. Sorry, I'm not interested in that, especially since you're already wheeling out the "whiney neo-con" labels. For someone who bristles so quickly at being termed left-of-center, you sure don't mind slinging around right-wing nutjob labels yourself. But, then again, this is