A lack of integrity is simple: it is a news organization acting as if they are giving us the 'real' news, the 'objective' news, when such a thing doesn't really exist. The fact is, every news organization is biased, but most don't admit their biases. The New York Times, arguably one of the best in the U.S., has an undeniable pro-Israeli slant, for example. But people think somehow that they are getting objective reporting from them about the Palestinean/Israeli conflict. In fact, just the choice of headlines, of regions of the world to cover, etc. displays a news organization's bias. And it's very rare in the states to find much differentiation in choice of major stories among the big news organizations. This goes to show you what really motivates most news organizations here: money. I can't speak as much for the rest of the world, but as much as I've heard suggests that all major news organizations across the globe are playing a similar game, in different ways.
So, let me ask you this; what is a journalistic source that has a lot of integrity, that doesn't suffer from some lapses of 'objectivity' or editorial slant? I think you'll be hard pressed to find one that we couldn't pick apart fairly quickly. At least the Reg has its biases up front, and attempts to be as honest as it can with the facts it does use.
I would suggest you read not only the Reg but all news sources with a critical eye...or else you are being suckered like all the rest.
Show me a journalist that isn't biased. There is no such thing as objective reporting. I'd rather have the bias right out front and honestly admitted to than to have a journalist pretend they have no biases.
I don't disagree with you there, but I hardly think that this warrants a comparison with the National Enquirer.
I for one don't mind the mixing of fact and opinion; in fact, I read the Register more as a big editorial board...I can assume that there is going to be some commentary in every article. But I also respect the fact that they will respond to my emails if I have a disagreement or comment on one of their pieces, they will offer different viewpoints on the same issue from different sources, and they look critically at what the big companies are saying--which is something I especially don't find at any of the other big tech news sites, like zdnet or cnn's tech section or msnbc's tech section or whatnot.
So, I guess I'm giving up a bit of 'just the facts ma'am' for 'just the facts and somewhat slanted, but critical analysis of the facts ma'am.'
I also need to make note, as you suggested, that it is very difficult to find objective news out there--we should be reading everything critically if we are to formulate our own opinions well. So, in a way, it is good have an obviously opinionated site like the Reg out there, as that gives us one perspective to compare against the others, whatever you want to say about them.
Many of the Register's stories tend to derive from anonymous, shadowy types
No, actually not many at all in my experience; and in fact you can forgive the Register for believing something that was posted by Eric S. Raymond--he is considered by many to be a reputable representative of the Open Source community whatever your personal opinion of him is (for the record I don't really care for him). And although the piece that he is commenting on has not been verified to be a bonified example of MS strategy, I fully would expect the Register to offer a loud, front page retraction if it turned out to be crap (which it might be, but it also might not be).
The fact is, most of their stories are from respected analysts, representatives of the companies themselves, or rebranded content from Newsforge, Security Focus, etc. As you said,
...(I don't read it regularly, so it tends to be that I only see those "Some guy overhead a guy on the train saying that he heard that Bill Gates likes to kick puppies").
Maybe you should read it more often before you speak about it authoritatively.
...of the net, and I'm really sick of people saying so. They definitely have an editorial slant, but that is not the same thing. In fact, it is the opposite, because by making the comparison with the Enquirer you are suggesting that they will publish anything as long as it is flashy. This is not the case; they publish stories that are true to the values of the people who run the site. They are definitely _for_ consumers' rights, anti-bad business practices, and this is their consistent party line. They are constantly making astute observations on industry trends and questioning motivations of the large companies in the IT field. Oh, but they have a sense of humor--is that what you are having a problem with?
In my experience, in the past they have had more journalistic integrity and readily admitted when they were wrong about something than many other organizations. But the fact is that they communicate regularly with many insiders in the IT field, they have been doing it for a while, and a lot of people who know what they are talking about both read the Reg AND supply them with information. Please stop spreading FUD about the Reg.
is a great example of fleshing out a sci-fi universe in an interesting, worthwhile manner. It doesn't rest upon the ringworld books to define itself, it is a very interesting story on its own. But it does help flesh out the character of the protectors and can help you understand better their role in the later books.
No, I've read all your posts on this thread arcade, and you are the one not making sense. You are attempting to justify your actions when really, all it is is that you want IRC to be a happy little land where everyone behaves according to your rules, and you don't want to really put forth any effort to accomodate opposing viewpoints. It is elitist, which you seem to acknowledge, but you're trying to say that that is okay and everyone else is elitist too. Bah.
In the real world, a committee would just hire a web design firm, and not be bothered with the intricate details of their site. accessability is one thing to mention, but dhtml is just a stupid arbitrary thing to require.
No, listen: an educational institution. You are thinking of a business where these decisions come down to one person saying: "we'll hire a design firm," or "we'll move this in house to (hopefully) save costs."--which does, BTW, happen...not everyone thinks contracting out is the best idea. In this case, at the place that I'm talking about, they are trying to budget as cheaply as possible (this is the _real_ world, remember!) and they don't want to pay a design firm to do it when they can do it (as much as possible) themselves, and save. There are a lot of departments which have some say, like IT and admissions and marketing. And they want it to look cool, so they got some DHTML--which, by the way, a lot of places use (ever seen a mouse over? How many sites have them? Uh...). I'm just following along. But why am I explaining this to you? You're just an insulting fool who's apparently never seen the inside of a college or university.
Are you over the age of 17 young man? You sound like you are designing a site for your highschool:)
Did I say I was designing a site? No. Implicit in my comment was that I had _not_ designed the site, someone else had. I explicitly said that I don't like working with DHTML. Learn to read, and watch what you say.
At the present moment I'm working on a cross-platform dhtml navigation for an educational institution (a really big famous one, you've heard of it). It's well and fine for you to decide that 'dhtml is used mostly for advertisements' but that just doesn't play itself out in the real world, where I live and work as a web developer. At the school that I'm doing this project for, they decide these things by committee (which is a pain in the ass, but that's how it's done...) and the committee decided they needed a cross-platform (for accessibility) dhtml (for their idea of usability as well as some "coolness" factor, I think) menu.
Perhaps if I had been able to choose, I would not have chosen a dhtml menu. Personally, I hate dealing with java^H^H^H^Hecmascript and the dom of various different browsers, but hey, I didn't choose. I am being paid to do this. So, I stole some script from the web, read it through, and customized it. Danny's first edition of _Dynamic HTML_ was invaluable in this endeavor, even being as old as it is.
So, let me reiterate: in the real world, where people are paid to do things for other people (we call it a _job_) books like this are actually useful! Go figure!
He followed ebay's policies to the word, and had his item repeatedly removed for a violation that he was not guilty of. When he complained, he received an auto-reply or a form letter. On the rare occasion he was given a human audience, his questions as to why his item kept getting removed were ignored. It stated clearly in their policy that items would be removed because of a complaint of the copyright holder; however he was the copyright holder, so he understandably wanted to know who was complaining. It was not apparent that having a listing with the term 'cdr' or whatnot would be a violation. If that is the case, it should be clearly stated in ebay's policy.
It's a very simple thing, it could have been easily resolved by ebay, but they barely tried. That is the real point. He put all the effort in to resolve the issue, they did not. He is trying to give their business money, and they give him nothing but disrespect. I'd be pissed too.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I read one of Kurzweil's book and just couldn't stop wondering what the fuck planet HE was living on; mine certainly wasn't like that.
I'm not sure exactly why but the idea of people making carreers based on this bullshit makes me so mad I could kick puppies.
Well, I can speak to that--at least as far as it's true for me: one of the big problems I have with this kind of thinking is that it seems so one-dimensional. I think a lot of people have been pointing that out by bringing up different sorts of blind spots that Kurzweil in particular seems to be afflicted with. I was going to make note of the fact that his joyless brain-on-a-chip AI-friend utopia also does not address any of the socio-economic problems existing in the world today. What about the HIV epidemic? What about infrastructure for struggling third world nations, what about stabilizing the governments of Africa? Frankly I find it somewhat offensive that he could be thinking this way when President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is starving his own peoples, president Mbeki of South Africa doesn't believe that HIV causes AIDS, etc...
Most importantly, what I think is really frustrating about Kurzweil and what really makes me angry about this kind of thinking is that it's not just that he does it, but a bunch of other people who should know better put him up on a pedestal as if he _really_ knows what he is talking about!
Well, there are two types of security we could talk about here: one is the sort that you need to do to set up a box securely with any OS. That includes configuring ports to be shut down and starting only the services/daemons that you want running, implementing firewall rules, setting up intrusion detection, etc. OpenBSD doesn't really do so much of that either from what I know (probably more than most any other OS I guess...), but they don't start anything up out of the box if I recall correctly, so there is a basic level of configuration-dependent security.
However, it seems like Microsoft has a lot of security problems that are based around poor coding practices. This is definitely something the OpenBSD folks try to mitigate, with their constant code auditing. But MS doesn't seem to care if they toss out a product with numerous buffer overflow vulnerabilities, permission violations, etc. And these are the sorts of problems they are always releasing patches for.
Now, there are certainly plenty of patches going around for other products and certainly open source ones, but I don't think that anybody thinks that a patch due to poor programming should be something the user has to deal with. There are best practices involved with coding things securely, and they aren't necessarily things that you have to do that are outside of what it means to code something well.
So what I want to know is if they are going to be charging for these sorts of 'programmer error' fixes, or what? Are they going to start selling their OS in a 'non-sloppily' programmed version?
I find it pretty offensive that they would charge for patches to software that wasn't written well in the first place.
Well, it's already modded up as far as it will go, but let me also add my two cents to try and make this one of the questions that is given to Vint Cerf. Inquiring minds want to know.
Okay, in the first paragraph after the followup question to #1 "...how much of that price is going to pay for the advertising...etc.," there is another question smooshed in to the end of the paragraph that Janis answers: "Do you not find it strange that a 2-hour DVD, with commentary, subtitles, and extra scenes, can be sold for less than $10, while few audio CDs are that low priced?"
In the very next paragraph, Ms. Ian's answer to the previous question, there is another question tacked on to that paragraph:
"2) Radio Station consolidation by gorilla When you entered the music business, radio stations were diverse. In the last few years, this diversity has disappeared. Do you have any comments on this?"
I haven't gotten past that yet. I found egregious errors in the first answer in the interview.
I know we're (most of us at least) not paying for the fine service of slashdot, but could somebody please edit these f@$#ing articles!? I mean, let alone the question of what the readership is owed (not much, I guess...), where's the personal and professional pride? Aren't we computer geeks intelligent folks, who should be able to process the written word better than most? This low quality is shameful. It doesn't take that much time to have a few folks read over the piece before posting it, and that's not even real editing, but I'm sure it would catch 99% of the stupid mistakes that happen on these story postings.
A rowing machine is really nice. You set it up and go. Then you take it apart and put it away. It exercises your whole body, and is really great cardio-vascular exercise. I lost about 20-30 pounds in 3-4 months using one. I also do some calisthenics, like sit ups and pushups. A pull-up bar is good.
While the article did specify cheap, I should think that if anyone can afford this thing it would be a geek. However, I did get mine for a discount because I know someone who works at Concept2...
Hmm...I disagree with you and IPFreely, I do think the article is loaded. If you look into the kind of language that is used, you can see a bias toward the spammers. Here's some excerpts (my emphasis):
Spam, after all, is perfectly legal in most places -- as long as it isn't fraudulent.
Once they're up and running, the spammers face the hazards of the anger they generate.
Now, even though Balan keeps a database with 240 million e-mail addresses, only a fifth or fewer get through the filters. An average mailing earns him a paltry $250.
These types of qualifiers put a spin on a statement, in these cases making it seem as if these "innocent spammers" are the ones being attacked. It promotes sympathy toward the spammers. I would say that this is not very good journalism.
Consider these reworked versions of the above quotes:
Spam remains legal in most places -- as long as it isn't fraudulent.
Once they're up and running, the spammers must deal with the anger they generate.
Now, even though Balan keeps a database with 240 million e-mail addresses, only a fifth or fewer get through the filters. An average mailing now earns him $250.
Now we can see that the same statements can be made with a more bland (some might say accurate) tone without all the sympathetic spin.
Dunno, did this seem a bit...overboard to anyone else?
And I kind of feel like not enough reasoning and detail was given. I mean, why just talk to anyone about linux? Most people don't give a shit about what the hell is on their computer, as long as it does what they want it to. They don't want to think about whether they are running Windows XP or Red Hat Linux or MyCrunchyOS 19.34 or whatever. It seems to me to be more effective to target specific people. Target those hobbyists, target those people who are concerned about privacy, target those school teachers who want a cheap way to teach their students about computers and how to use computers without being beholden to Microsoft...I mean, we need to think a little bit about it if we want to be advocates, not just grab a big posterboard of Tux on a stick and go out and walk around. No one is going to have any idea what the hell the point is. Sure, the penguin is cute, sure maybe it'll stick in people's minds, but if you can actually get someone to INSTALL linux and USE it isn't that a little more worthwhile? Then again, maybe not, I'm not a marketing guru...
I also think there is an interesting debate that always pops up about "do we want to appeal to everyone." Now, this isn't the same as being a snob and telling all the newbies on the newsgroups to RTFM. It's more a question of focus, do we focus on making sure everyone knows that the little cute fat penguin = linux, or do we focus on making Linux really useful for our_own_satisfaction_ and everyone who likes it can come along for the ride? Do you see what I mean?
I do really wonder what the point is sometimes of these advocates; what is the benefit of 'controlling the world?' Is it more just an attitude that Microsoft needs to go? What's the real priority here?
My point is, is that society has created a backlash against this natural tendency - a backlash called "the feminist movement..."
So, feminism is inherently anti-biological? That's problematic. I mean, what you are implicitly suggesting then is that either women have been treated equally since the dawn of history, or that women shouldn't have equal rights and control over their bodies and minds. I mean, what do you think feminismis ?
It's one thing to say live and let live. I can agree with that. It's another to say that feminism is anti-natural or anti-biological. For many people, feminism is simply about making sure that women don't get beaten, raped, harrassed, have their rights taken away, etc. It's really that simple.
It's biology. You can fight it. But in the end, biology pumps your blood, regulates your hormones, and fires your neurons. You have free will, but there are certain things that are biologically engineered by nature to make you happy and content. It's often wise to listen to them.
IN ADDITION to the The Wire mag, try MODULATIONS
on
Electronic Music 101?
·
· Score: 1
Really great book about the history of the music: Modulations.
There's a movie that goes with it too, I believe. Sorry I don't have any pointers to that, got lazy. Don't know if anyone will read my posts anyways.;)
...but maybe I'm biased; I'm also working as a programmer but don't have a degree in the field (but I do have a degree--in music).
Frankly, your point doesn't seem very well thought out. Here's how I look at it: somebody with the determination to learn how the stuff works without sitting in class, i.e. doing it on their own, is showing a lot of motivation that many students can't muster without sitting in a class having a professor help them along. I'm not saying that those folks are lame, that is the way the vast majority of very smart computer geeks (and geeks of other varieties;) get their education. But it does speak to someone's capacity for initiative and working independently.
Point two is this: I've worked with many people in the field who had degrees in CS who seemed to know as much as I did or less(!) about some things, just as a result of experience. The experience that I gained working in the job put me at essentially the same level as those folks when it came to real-world situations. They don't hand you a lot of ugly legacy code in school and expect you to sort through it, it seems. They don't ask you to figure out how to migrate a web site set up for Apache to Netscape Enterprise (don't ask). Granted, I've read a lot. But the books I read were for the most part books I saw on other people's desks being read too, whether they had a degree or not. Maybe the point is that they can't possibly teach you everything in school, so you aren't _necessarily_ going to have an immediate advantage over someone because of that degree.
Point three? Less debt. Yay. Right now I'm contemplating going back to school, but part of me is thinking "why bother, why get in debt like that?" I mean, maybe I will, because doing research level work in school to get a masters or greater I think is a different thing than undergrad CS. But I've had three different jobs in the three years I've been a computer geek and I've never had to explain that I don't have a CS degree.
Again, I want to stress the point that I don't think that _by_default_ you are going to be in the same boat as someone with a degree, but it's not such a bad thing not to have one and can work in your favor in some ways.
Maybe I'm just missing something or didn't RTFM enough times, but just calling someone in the Palm phone book is a real pain
Well, I don't find it too difficult - I set some of the numbers from my palm address book on speed dial, so this is real quick. And to access numbers that aren't on the speed dial, you just hit down on the shuttle, and then press a key (2:abc, 3:def, etc.) to get you closer to that name. It doesn't really get much easier than that, sorry to say--I previously had a Samsung SCH-1500(I think that's the model number) and it was just as easy (difficult) to pull up a number. I'd be interested to find out if there is a faster user interface methodology than this because I haven't thought of one (granted, I'm not the most gifted user interface designer in the world;).
I do think you didn't RTFM as far as speed dial; but I figured out the shuttle trick from just messing around, so I don't remember if that is in the manual.
Slashdot Mirror
A lack of integrity is simple: it is a news organization acting as if they are giving us the 'real' news, the 'objective' news, when such a thing doesn't really exist. The fact is, every news organization is biased, but most don't admit their biases. The New York Times, arguably one of the best in the U.S., has an undeniable pro-Israeli slant, for example. But people think somehow that they are getting objective reporting from them about the Palestinean/Israeli conflict. In fact, just the choice of headlines, of regions of the world to cover, etc. displays a news organization's bias. And it's very rare in the states to find much differentiation in choice of major stories among the big news organizations. This goes to show you what really motivates most news organizations here: money. I can't speak as much for the rest of the world, but as much as I've heard suggests that all major news organizations across the globe are playing a similar game, in different ways.
So, let me ask you this; what is a journalistic source that has a lot of integrity, that doesn't suffer from some lapses of 'objectivity' or editorial slant? I think you'll be hard pressed to find one that we couldn't pick apart fairly quickly. At least the Reg has its biases up front, and attempts to be as honest as it can with the facts it does use.
I would suggest you read not only the Reg but all news sources with a critical eye...or else you are being suckered like all the rest.
Show me a journalist that isn't biased. There is no such thing as objective reporting. I'd rather have the bias right out front and honestly admitted to than to have a journalist pretend they have no biases.
I don't disagree with you there, but I hardly think that this warrants a comparison with the National Enquirer.
I for one don't mind the mixing of fact and opinion; in fact, I read the Register more as a big editorial board...I can assume that there is going to be some commentary in every article. But I also respect the fact that they will respond to my emails if I have a disagreement or comment on one of their pieces, they will offer different viewpoints on the same issue from different sources, and they look critically at what the big companies are saying--which is something I especially don't find at any of the other big tech news sites, like zdnet or cnn's tech section or msnbc's tech section or whatnot.
So, I guess I'm giving up a bit of 'just the facts ma'am' for 'just the facts and somewhat slanted, but critical analysis of the facts ma'am.'
I also need to make note, as you suggested, that it is very difficult to find objective news out there--we should be reading everything critically if we are to formulate our own opinions well. So, in a way, it is good have an obviously opinionated site like the Reg out there, as that gives us one perspective to compare against the others, whatever you want to say about them.
The fact is, most of their stories are from respected analysts, representatives of the companies themselves, or rebranded content from Newsforge, Security Focus, etc. As you said,
Maybe you should read it more often before you speak about it authoritatively.
In my experience, in the past they have had more journalistic integrity and readily admitted when they were wrong about something than many other organizations. But the fact is that they communicate regularly with many insiders in the IT field, they have been doing it for a while, and a lot of people who know what they are talking about both read the Reg AND supply them with information. Please stop spreading FUD about the Reg.
Yes, but which 10 games does it come with? I can't seem to find that information anywhere on that site.
is a great example of fleshing out a sci-fi universe in an interesting, worthwhile manner. It doesn't rest upon the ringworld books to define itself, it is a very interesting story on its own. But it does help flesh out the character of the protectors and can help you understand better their role in the later books.
No, I've read all your posts on this thread arcade, and you are the one not making sense. You are attempting to justify your actions when really, all it is is that you want IRC to be a happy little land where everyone behaves according to your rules, and you don't want to really put forth any effort to accomodate opposing viewpoints. It is elitist, which you seem to acknowledge, but you're trying to say that that is okay and everyone else is elitist too. Bah.
No, listen: an educational institution. You are thinking of a business where these decisions come down to one person saying: "we'll hire a design firm," or "we'll move this in house to (hopefully) save costs."--which does, BTW, happen...not everyone thinks contracting out is the best idea. In this case, at the place that I'm talking about, they are trying to budget as cheaply as possible (this is the _real_ world, remember!) and they don't want to pay a design firm to do it when they can do it (as much as possible) themselves, and save. There are a lot of departments which have some say, like IT and admissions and marketing. And they want it to look cool, so they got some DHTML--which, by the way, a lot of places use (ever seen a mouse over? How many sites have them? Uh...). I'm just following along. But why am I explaining this to you? You're just an insulting fool who's apparently never seen the inside of a college or university.
Did I say I was designing a site? No. Implicit in my comment was that I had _not_ designed the site, someone else had. I explicitly said that I don't like working with DHTML. Learn to read, and watch what you say.
At the present moment I'm working on a cross-platform dhtml navigation for an educational institution (a really big famous one, you've heard of it). It's well and fine for you to decide that 'dhtml is used mostly for advertisements' but that just doesn't play itself out in the real world, where I live and work as a web developer. At the school that I'm doing this project for, they decide these things by committee (which is a pain in the ass, but that's how it's done...) and the committee decided they needed a cross-platform (for accessibility) dhtml (for their idea of usability as well as some "coolness" factor, I think) menu.
Perhaps if I had been able to choose, I would not have chosen a dhtml menu. Personally, I hate dealing with java^H^H^H^Hecmascript and the dom of various different browsers, but hey, I didn't choose. I am being paid to do this. So, I stole some script from the web, read it through, and customized it. Danny's first edition of _Dynamic HTML_ was invaluable in this endeavor, even being as old as it is.
So, let me reiterate: in the real world, where people are paid to do things for other people (we call it a _job_) books like this are actually useful! Go figure!
He followed ebay's policies to the word, and had his item repeatedly removed for a violation that he was not guilty of. When he complained, he received an auto-reply or a form letter. On the rare occasion he was given a human audience, his questions as to why his item kept getting removed were ignored. It stated clearly in their policy that items would be removed because of a complaint of the copyright holder; however he was the copyright holder, so he understandably wanted to know who was complaining. It was not apparent that having a listing with the term 'cdr' or whatnot would be a violation. If that is the case, it should be clearly stated in ebay's policy.
It's a very simple thing, it could have been easily resolved by ebay, but they barely tried. That is the real point. He put all the effort in to resolve the issue, they did not. He is trying to give their business money, and they give him nothing but disrespect. I'd be pissed too.
Thanks!
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I read one of Kurzweil's book and just couldn't stop wondering what the fuck planet HE was living on; mine certainly wasn't like that.
Well, I can speak to that--at least as far as it's true for me: one of the big problems I have with this kind of thinking is that it seems so one-dimensional. I think a lot of people have been pointing that out by bringing up different sorts of blind spots that Kurzweil in particular seems to be afflicted with. I was going to make note of the fact that his joyless brain-on-a-chip AI-friend utopia also does not address any of the socio-economic problems existing in the world today. What about the HIV epidemic? What about infrastructure for struggling third world nations, what about stabilizing the governments of Africa? Frankly I find it somewhat offensive that he could be thinking this way when President Mugabe of Zimbabwe is starving his own peoples, president Mbeki of South Africa doesn't believe that HIV causes AIDS, etc...Most importantly, what I think is really frustrating about Kurzweil and what really makes me angry about this kind of thinking is that it's not just that he does it, but a bunch of other people who should know better put him up on a pedestal as if he _really_ knows what he is talking about!
Well, there are two types of security we could talk about here: one is the sort that you need to do to set up a box securely with any OS. That includes configuring ports to be shut down and starting only the services/daemons that you want running, implementing firewall rules, setting up intrusion detection, etc. OpenBSD doesn't really do so much of that either from what I know (probably more than most any other OS I guess...), but they don't start anything up out of the box if I recall correctly, so there is a basic level of configuration-dependent security.
However, it seems like Microsoft has a lot of security problems that are based around poor coding practices. This is definitely something the OpenBSD folks try to mitigate, with their constant code auditing. But MS doesn't seem to care if they toss out a product with numerous buffer overflow vulnerabilities, permission violations, etc. And these are the sorts of problems they are always releasing patches for.
Now, there are certainly plenty of patches going around for other products and certainly open source ones, but I don't think that anybody thinks that a patch due to poor programming should be something the user has to deal with. There are best practices involved with coding things securely, and they aren't necessarily things that you have to do that are outside of what it means to code something well.
So what I want to know is if they are going to be charging for these sorts of 'programmer error' fixes, or what? Are they going to start selling their OS in a 'non-sloppily' programmed version?
I find it pretty offensive that they would charge for patches to software that wasn't written well in the first place.
Well, it's already modded up as far as it will go, but let me also add my two cents to try and make this one of the questions that is given to Vint Cerf. Inquiring minds want to know.
Okay, in the first paragraph after the followup question to #1 "...how much of that price is going to pay for the advertising...etc.," there is another question smooshed in to the end of the paragraph that Janis answers: "Do you not find it strange that a 2-hour DVD, with commentary, subtitles, and extra scenes, can be sold for less than $10, while few audio CDs are that low priced?"
In the very next paragraph, Ms. Ian's answer to the previous question, there is another question tacked on to that paragraph:
I haven't gotten past that yet. I found egregious errors in the first answer in the interview.
I know we're (most of us at least) not paying for the fine service of slashdot, but could somebody please edit these f@$#ing articles!? I mean, let alone the question of what the readership is owed (not much, I guess...), where's the personal and professional pride? Aren't we computer geeks intelligent folks, who should be able to process the written word better than most? This low quality is shameful. It doesn't take that much time to have a few folks read over the piece before posting it, and that's not even real editing, but I'm sure it would catch 99% of the stupid mistakes that happen on these story postings.
*sigh*
Man, google would've given you this answer in a second!! God I'm sick of these obvious ask slashdot questions...
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22what+would+dave+ give+up+to+keep+his+broadband%22
A rowing machine is really nice. You set it up and go. Then you take it apart and put it away. It exercises your whole body, and is really great cardio-vascular exercise. I lost about 20-30 pounds in 3-4 months using one. I also do some calisthenics, like sit ups and pushups. A pull-up bar is good.
While the article did specify cheap, I should think that if anyone can afford this thing it would be a geek. However, I did get mine for a discount because I know someone who works at Concept2...
Hmm...I disagree with you and IPFreely, I do think the article is loaded. If you look into the kind of language that is used, you can see a bias toward the spammers. Here's some excerpts (my emphasis):
These types of qualifiers put a spin on a statement, in these cases making it seem as if these "innocent spammers" are the ones being attacked. It promotes sympathy toward the spammers. I would say that this is not very good journalism.
Consider these reworked versions of the above quotes:
Now we can see that the same statements can be made with a more bland (some might say accurate) tone without all the sympathetic spin.
"Amen Brother!"
Dunno, did this seem a bit...overboard to anyone else?
And I kind of feel like not enough reasoning and detail was given. I mean, why just talk to anyone about linux? Most people don't give a shit about what the hell is on their computer, as long as it does what they want it to. They don't want to think about whether they are running Windows XP or Red Hat Linux or MyCrunchyOS 19.34 or whatever. It seems to me to be more effective to target specific people. Target those hobbyists, target those people who are concerned about privacy, target those school teachers who want a cheap way to teach their students about computers and how to use computers without being beholden to Microsoft...I mean, we need to think a little bit about it if we want to be advocates, not just grab a big posterboard of Tux on a stick and go out and walk around. No one is going to have any idea what the hell the point is. Sure, the penguin is cute, sure maybe it'll stick in people's minds, but if you can actually get someone to INSTALL linux and USE it isn't that a little more worthwhile? Then again, maybe not, I'm not a marketing guru...
I also think there is an interesting debate that always pops up about "do we want to appeal to everyone." Now, this isn't the same as being a snob and telling all the newbies on the newsgroups to RTFM. It's more a question of focus, do we focus on making sure everyone knows that the little cute fat penguin = linux, or do we focus on making Linux really useful for our_own_satisfaction_ and everyone who likes it can come along for the ride? Do you see what I mean?
I do really wonder what the point is sometimes of these advocates; what is the benefit of 'controlling the world?' Is it more just an attitude that Microsoft needs to go? What's the real priority here?
It's one thing to say live and let live. I can agree with that. It's another to say that feminism is anti-natural or anti-biological. For many people, feminism is simply about making sure that women don't get beaten, raped, harrassed, have their rights taken away, etc. It's really that simple.
Does biology dictate, like the Taliban, that we can beat and rape women? Please choose your words more carefully, and do some reading on feminism.
Really great book about the history of the music: Modulations.
There's a movie that goes with it too, I believe. Sorry I don't have any pointers to that, got lazy. Don't know if anyone will read my posts anyways. ;)
It's got great reviews of a lot of cutting edge electronic music, plus lots of other stuff. Really good.
Check out their website: http://www.thewire.co.uk/.
Frankly, your point doesn't seem very well thought out. Here's how I look at it: somebody with the determination to learn how the stuff works without sitting in class, i.e. doing it on their own, is showing a lot of motivation that many students can't muster without sitting in a class having a professor help them along. I'm not saying that those folks are lame, that is the way the vast majority of very smart computer geeks (and geeks of other varieties ;) get their education. But it does speak to someone's capacity for initiative and working independently.
Point two is this: I've worked with many people in the field who had degrees in CS who seemed to know as much as I did or less(!) about some things, just as a result of experience. The experience that I gained working in the job put me at essentially the same level as those folks when it came to real-world situations. They don't hand you a lot of ugly legacy code in school and expect you to sort through it, it seems. They don't ask you to figure out how to migrate a web site set up for Apache to Netscape Enterprise (don't ask). Granted, I've read a lot. But the books I read were for the most part books I saw on other people's desks being read too, whether they had a degree or not. Maybe the point is that they can't possibly teach you everything in school, so you aren't _necessarily_ going to have an immediate advantage over someone because of that degree.
Point three? Less debt. Yay. Right now I'm contemplating going back to school, but part of me is thinking "why bother, why get in debt like that?" I mean, maybe I will, because doing research level work in school to get a masters or greater I think is a different thing than undergrad CS. But I've had three different jobs in the three years I've been a computer geek and I've never had to explain that I don't have a CS degree.
Again, I want to stress the point that I don't think that _by_default_ you are going to be in the same boat as someone with a degree, but it's not such a bad thing not to have one and can work in your favor in some ways.
I do think you didn't RTFM as far as speed dial; but I figured out the shuttle trick from just messing around, so I don't remember if that is in the manual.