Slashdot doesn't want to hear the realistic story published by a reputable newspaper, it wants to hear the alarmist, "anonymous source" based story published by a tabloid newspaper who's third page features a new topless lady everyday!
Next you'll be denying tomorrow's "exclusive" story in The Sun on how Tony Blair and George Bush are having a secret gay affair together!
"These analysts are as good at predicting the future as any random person off the street, they just get paid a lot more."
That's quite an ironic statement really considering that the predictions are based on polls, so the predictions are in fact the (collective) ones of "random people off the street".
The problem imho is that - with the exception of a small subset of people - most don't realistically know whether they will actually be playing x system in a year's time, There are also many possible ulterior reasons for given responses (e.g. if you have just brought a system or that system was extremely expensive, you are unlikely to want to believe, and therefore respond, that you won't be getting value from it in a year's time).
If the experiences from U.K. councils and schools looking to ditch Office and Windows is anything to go by, Microsoft will probably return to the New Zealand government with an even better offer!
Microsoft are terrified of the thought of educational and public authorities ditching MS products as they know that successful operation of non-MS products in these sort of institutions will lead others - and ultimately corporations (their biggest market) - to consider alternatives.
Several U.K. local councils and schools pay virtually nothing for MS products to prevent them trialling Linux.
"python is named for a sketch comedy troupe. i'll let you guess which one."
Hah, that is good to know. Actually, I've always been a big Monty Python fan and never realized that it mentions a snake in its name. Damn, now rather than use Python I'm probably going to not watch Monty Python either!
Only joking, the real reason I don't use python is I have never seen any real major advantage in using it over Perl/PHP/Java. Having said that, the couple of times I've played around with it I did keep on getting this creeping feeling that something was slithering around my legs under the desk!
Btw, welcome to the world of the slashdotter, all you have to do now is make sure you don't actually read linked articles before giving your opinion on them and then your journey towards the dark side will be complete.
I agree with the meta-moderators that you've provided an extremely insightful post there. I especially like the analogy between air/water pollution and trash being disposed "in your backyard".
I think also the virtual impossibility of universal "informed choice" is the folly of democracy as well as free trade (probably because both are so inter-linked). Of course the problem (as you state) is that the obvious alternative - communism - is equally (or possibly even more) flawed.
As a mathematically/computationally inclined person (read: nerd), I think though that surely it must somehow be possible to interpolate an optimal solution.
True to some extent I'm sure, but "be aware of cause and effect" implies complete independence between the cause and effect which isn't necessarily the case. It is easy to see how a "feedback loop" may be created, where an initial raised probability of winning causes more donations for that party, which causes an even higher probability of winning, which causes even more donations which causes an almost certainty of winning...
You need to get your facts straight before calling something "bs". It is the exact same situation as that which happens with most utilities, only one company usually has gas/electric/wayer pipes laid down every street in a city/area.
The monopoly problem is usually "semi-solved" by having virtual providers. Switching gas companies doesn't mean getting a new pipe laid between your home and the competitors refinery, instead you keep using the local utility provider's pipelines and pay the competitor who are then charged a wholesale rate by the utility provider
"that simply can't quite overpower (in votes) the majority that focuses on whatever the two major candidates have decided are important issues today"
Or the even larger majority who are basically conned into voting for whichever party based on misleading and one-sided campaign publicity (TV & radio adverts, billboards etc.).
It's funny how in almost all US elections for the past couple of decades, it is the party with the most campaign money behind it that gets into power.
"USA seems to be saying to the world, "we don't care about the planet""
I think the current US administration made this position pretty clear a couple of years ago when they struck down a WTO proposal for "origin of timber" certification to reduce illegally logged timber coming from protected rainforests.
In that case there was absolutely no doubt that striking down the proposal would cause deforestation within the designated national parks of third world countries, but it was still struck down by the Bush's representative "in the name of free trade".
"PHP is slower than Perl or Python for most stuff."
I'd say that in practice (i.e. when performing the vast majority of dynamic web functionality: e.g. database lookups) the opposite is true. Perl & Python are quicker at some tasks, but every-time I've rewritten a website between PHP and Perl (I don't program in Python because it's named after my most hated animal), PHP has come out slightly on top.
I would love to dump Apache, but Lighttpd and the other alternatives simply don't provide the power, functionality and customisation I need from my servers. Then there are the many inequitable Apache extensions which are simply a necessity in some situations.
Personally I feel Lighttpd is just too light, but I agree, Apache is too heavy. I would love to find a happy medium but I am yet to find a httpd server which even approaches Apache and its popularity shows that an awful lot of people agree with this.
Indeed. I agree that (as with many summaries posted to slashdot these days) there is absolutely no way the submitter could have read the referenced article and thought "this is a good summary of the article". As the article isn't from a particularly notable source of containing any unique info, it seems more like he wrote the summary and then did a Google search for an article which vaguely touched on the idea.
The summary really doesn't reflect the story at all. Plus, the article itself takes a few factual statements and then adds a large amount of speculation on the matter also.
Ironic that an extremely misleading program should be examined in an extremely misleading article (not to mention the summary being completely wrong, but we've come to expect that nowadays on Slashdot).
"Personally I find the EU government snooping worse than Google,"
This is the difference between USA and EU citizens' privacy worries. On the most part, very few people in Europe worry about what government agencies do with their personal info, but are extremely worried about how corporations use it. As opposed to the USA where it's the opposite way around.
It seems to be related to wider cultural differences. Europeans tend to trust public institutions a lot more than they trust large corporations whereas Americans tend to trust corporations a lot more than public institutions. This can be seen in many areas, such as: Health-care, gun control, social/welfare security, general security, control of public infrastructure, media ownership, political funding etc.
Neither cultural viewpoint can be declared flat-out better or worse though as there are valid arguments for both. Companies from either side of the Atlantic need to take into account the attitudes prevalent on the other side however otherwise these sorts of problems occur.
Many Slashdotters are heavily involved in the aluminium foil hat business. If you start pointing out that actually everyone isn't out to get them then they will be put out of business.
It is pretty scary how fast the dollar's value has gone downhill!
The government don't seem to have any solution. Sure, a weak dollar makes our exports cheaper, but that also means that they are simply less valuable and imports (which we have a lot of) will continue to become more and more expensive.
People said similar sort of things when the internet was being developed.
Innovation isn't always immediately obvious, but I think it IS obvious to any foresighted individual that technology such as this could, one day, have amazing uses for the individual wearing it. Of course, if you want to live in a world of paranoia you can join all those who won't touch the internet for fear of "government agents".
Not via iTunes. It could probably be done via some 3rd party softare and then imported into iTunes, but downloading the albums via bittorrent proved easier in the end.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot doesn't want to hear the realistic story published by a reputable newspaper, it wants to hear the alarmist, "anonymous source" based story published by a tabloid newspaper who's third page features a new topless lady everyday!
Next you'll be denying tomorrow's "exclusive" story in The Sun on how Tony Blair and George Bush are having a secret gay affair together!
"These analysts are as good at predicting the future as any random person off the street, they just get paid a lot more."
That's quite an ironic statement really considering that the predictions are based on polls, so the predictions are in fact the (collective) ones of "random people off the street".
The problem imho is that - with the exception of a small subset of people - most don't realistically know whether they will actually be playing x system in a year's time, There are also many possible ulterior reasons for given responses (e.g. if you have just brought a system or that system was extremely expensive, you are unlikely to want to believe, and therefore respond, that you won't be getting value from it in a year's time).
If the experiences from U.K. councils and schools looking to ditch Office and Windows is anything to go by, Microsoft will probably return to the New Zealand government with an even better offer!
Microsoft are terrified of the thought of educational and public authorities ditching MS products as they know that successful operation of non-MS products in these sort of institutions will lead others - and ultimately corporations (their biggest market) - to consider alternatives.
Several U.K. local councils and schools pay virtually nothing for MS products to prevent them trialling Linux.
That website is ace!
...and is that a midget painting in the top-left corner?
It is actually quite interesting atm, there is a guy painting the ceiling.
Loads of scandals being reported on the "paint blog" also!
I mean the articles linked to from within the stories on Slashdot's main-page.
"python is named for a sketch comedy troupe. i'll let you guess which one."
Hah, that is good to know. Actually, I've always been a big Monty Python fan and never realized that it mentions a snake in its name. Damn, now rather than use Python I'm probably going to not watch Monty Python either!
Only joking, the real reason I don't use python is I have never seen any real major advantage in using it over Perl/PHP/Java. Having said that, the couple of times I've played around with it I did keep on getting this creeping feeling that something was slithering around my legs under the desk!
Btw, welcome to the world of the slashdotter, all you have to do now is make sure you don't actually read linked articles before giving your opinion on them and then your journey towards the dark side will be complete.
I agree with the meta-moderators that you've provided an extremely insightful post there. I especially like the analogy between air/water pollution and trash being disposed "in your backyard".
I think also the virtual impossibility of universal "informed choice" is the folly of democracy as well as free trade (probably because both are so inter-linked). Of course the problem (as you state) is that the obvious alternative - communism - is equally (or possibly even more) flawed.
As a mathematically/computationally inclined person (read: nerd), I think though that surely it must somehow be possible to interpolate an optimal solution.
True to some extent I'm sure, but "be aware of cause and effect" implies complete independence between the cause and effect which isn't necessarily the case. It is easy to see how a "feedback loop" may be created, where an initial raised probability of winning causes more donations for that party, which causes an even higher probability of winning, which causes even more donations which causes an almost certainty of winning...
You need to get your facts straight before calling something "bs". It is the exact same situation as that which happens with most utilities, only one company usually has gas/electric/wayer pipes laid down every street in a city/area.
The monopoly problem is usually "semi-solved" by having virtual providers. Switching gas companies doesn't mean getting a new pipe laid between your home and the competitors refinery, instead you keep using the local utility provider's pipelines and pay the competitor who are then charged a wholesale rate by the utility provider
"that simply can't quite overpower (in votes) the majority that focuses on whatever the two major candidates have decided are important issues today"
Or the even larger majority who are basically conned into voting for whichever party based on misleading and one-sided campaign publicity (TV & radio adverts, billboards etc.).
It's funny how in almost all US elections for the past couple of decades, it is the party with the most campaign money behind it that gets into power.
I think it is yourself who needs to gain a bit of maturity. While your at it maybe you could learn to spot obvious jokes.
"USA seems to be saying to the world, "we don't care about the planet""
I think the current US administration made this position pretty clear a couple of years ago when they struck down a WTO proposal for "origin of timber" certification to reduce illegally logged timber coming from protected rainforests.
In that case there was absolutely no doubt that striking down the proposal would cause deforestation within the designated national parks of third world countries, but it was still struck down by the Bush's representative "in the name of free trade".
"PHP is slower than Perl or Python for most stuff."
I'd say that in practice (i.e. when performing the vast majority of dynamic web functionality: e.g. database lookups) the opposite is true. Perl & Python are quicker at some tasks, but every-time I've rewritten a website between PHP and Perl (I don't program in Python because it's named after my most hated animal), PHP has come out slightly on top.
"I suggest you move to a more civilized region."
I challenge you to find an Insurance company which would pay out in such a situation.
I would love to dump Apache, but Lighttpd and the other alternatives simply don't provide the power, functionality and customisation I need from my servers. Then there are the many inequitable Apache extensions which are simply a necessity in some situations.
Personally I feel Lighttpd is just too light, but I agree, Apache is too heavy. I would love to find a happy medium but I am yet to find a httpd server which even approaches Apache and its popularity shows that an awful lot of people agree with this.
Indeed. I agree that (as with many summaries posted to slashdot these days) there is absolutely no way the submitter could have read the referenced article and thought "this is a good summary of the article". As the article isn't from a particularly notable source of containing any unique info, it seems more like he wrote the summary and then did a Google search for an article which vaguely touched on the idea.
"...it is a feeble theory surviving on tax dollars made up and supported by people who want to justify their wicked lifestyles."
Are you referring to evolution or Christianity?
Because that's a pretty darn accurate summary of the last 2000 years of Christianity!
Either that or the guy's just really, really stupid.
The summary really doesn't reflect the story at all. Plus, the article itself takes a few factual statements and then adds a large amount of speculation on the matter also.
Ironic that an extremely misleading program should be examined in an extremely misleading article (not to mention the summary being completely wrong, but we've come to expect that nowadays on Slashdot).
"Personally I find the EU government snooping worse than Google,"
This is the difference between USA and EU citizens' privacy worries. On the most part, very few people in Europe worry about what government agencies do with their personal info, but are extremely worried about how corporations use it. As opposed to the USA where it's the opposite way around.
It seems to be related to wider cultural differences. Europeans tend to trust public institutions a lot more than they trust large corporations whereas Americans tend to trust corporations a lot more than public institutions. This can be seen in many areas, such as: Health-care, gun control, social/welfare security, general security, control of public infrastructure, media ownership, political funding etc.
Neither cultural viewpoint can be declared flat-out better or worse though as there are valid arguments for both. Companies from either side of the Atlantic need to take into account the attitudes prevalent on the other side however otherwise these sorts of problems occur.
Many Slashdotters are heavily involved in the aluminium foil hat business. If you start pointing out that actually everyone isn't out to get them then they will be put out of business.
It is pretty scary how fast the dollar's value has gone downhill!
The government don't seem to have any solution. Sure, a weak dollar makes our exports cheaper, but that also means that they are simply less valuable and imports (which we have a lot of) will continue to become more and more expensive.
People said similar sort of things when the internet was being developed.
Innovation isn't always immediately obvious, but I think it IS obvious to any foresighted individual that technology such as this could, one day, have amazing uses for the individual wearing it. Of course, if you want to live in a world of paranoia you can join all those who won't touch the internet for fear of "government agents".
Not via iTunes. It could probably be done via some 3rd party softare and then imported into iTunes, but downloading the albums via bittorrent proved easier in the end.
Uhh, in case you didn't notice the article is about who is the "Best Presidential Candidate for Nerds?".
What on earth has a presidential candidate's foreign policy got to do with the matter?