Right, if you are thinking of it in terms of probabilities, the probability of someone needing to take out their car seat is independent of the probability of someone killing their wife/ex-wife. The two acts being related is specious. Consider this: Of all the instances of someone removing their car seat, what is the percentage that it was to get rid of the evidence of a murder? Of all the instances that someone killed their wife/ex-wife in the passenger seat of their car, how often did that lead to them removing the seat as opposed to say abandoning it somewhere or torching it? You could go on for ever. I'm no authority but I would imagine that statistics generally confuse a subject in a courtroom more than help. That's an unfounded statement on my part but there is certainly a significant number of cases where expert witnesses were brought in and presented statistical data incorrectly to the jury.
There's no doubt that the car situation is going to be seen as a mighty strange coincidence to the jury, but the reasoning of the parent post is wrong. Juries get duped by this kind of thing quite frequently. A really great video of Peter Donnelly talking about this subject at TED can be found at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/67
Hmm, no I must have missed that story. That is indeed scary.
However there is a distinction here: These guys in ohio were breaking the law. These guys had broken the law, the ISPs knew it, had the proof, and brought in the law... though the result was totally over the top and quite scary for the equivalent of splicing your cable or something. It was a minor offense (from my point of view) and was not handled appropriately but this situation in Australia smells a bit different.
In Australia, a product/service provider (Kazaa), is being raided on the speculation of a 3rd party.
From the article:
MIPI obtained an Anton Pilar order - which allows a copyright holder to enter a premises to search for and seize material that breaches copyright without alerting the target [...]
It seems to me by reading the first sentence in the article that there is some unmentioned 3rd party which invoked this thing from the start. So it's as if some company _thinks_ you stole something or otherwise are interferring with their business, they can get the MIPI (are there other types of MIPIs for other fields in AU?) to raid your ass and disrupt your livelihood. The Kazaa owners and operators don't have anything to do with pirating music/warez/whatever. To me, this is not "a signal that Internet music piracy is finished in Australia" but rather a signal that product and service providers will soon be at the mercy of big money, whatever the reasons.
Much scarrier than Patriot Act...
on
Kazaa Offices Raided
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Of all the subtle and not-so-subtle evils of the Patriot act, it is, at least to my knowledge, employed soley by the government/gov agencies.
This situation in Australia seems not too dissimilar to SCO busting into Linus' house with presumeably armed gov. officials and confiscating everything.
If I want a point-and-click environment, Windows is where I want to be. If I want a command-line, stellar networking, and total control I go linux/freebsd.
Ok, but in case you haven't thought about it, maybe some people think it's not unreasonable to have both. Point-and-click stellar networking and total control.
You sound like the sys-admin type. I am too, I know most aspects of setting up mail/ web/ database/ file sharing/ et cetera backwards and forwards in an extremely efficient text-only world, it's great.
I also use Linux as an awesome Desktop/Office system. Linux can eventually be the best of both worlds.
Linux is under constant development by people who are out to write useful/solid code, not to make a quick buck. Where is it written that the current state of things is etched in stone? With the awesome development community Linux has that has brought us all of the things we love about Linux, what's to say that they can't continue forth, and bring everything together in one nice package without sacrificing either side?
Right tool for the right job? Agreed, but why can't Linux evolve to be the right tool for every job? No reason, just open your mind!
I see that a general assumption is that because Linux Geek X knows a whole bunch about Linux, that this somehow makes him a good teacher, or obligates him to teach. Just because a Linux Guru gives you what looks like the run-about to a simple question, doesn't automatically mean he's trying to be a mega-a'hole, or even that he's just trying to look super-smart and belittle you. It might simply mean that he is just not a good teacher, or is not eloquent enough to come off as such.
Take calculus as an example: There are many people who know calculus, they are not all just calculus teachers, and I'm sure if one went out there and selected Engineer X to explain some calculus to them, they wouldn't have a goddamn clue unless they already knew it.
It's of course a completely different issue when you are talking about people who are supposedly tech-support personel and give you that sort of crap, or even from people in a forum/chat channel supposedly dedicated to helping users. However if you are talking about educating people in general, I'd put money on the fact that there is just as large a percentage of professors that instead of explaining things (say relativity) in "college student" terms, they regurgitate Einstein's papers verbatim and expect everyone to understand.
You can argue that for any subject, there are a ton of people who can't give you a straight answer to a simple question, or think they have something better to do at the moment. There are plenty of a'holes out there, just because some of them use Linux, doesn't mean we're all a'holes. That's just like saying, "All of the -insert minority here- people I've ever met have been a'holes, they must all be a'holes!"
I sort of lost where I was going with this, but hopefully you see that "Linux users are arrogant" is completely unsubstantiated.
I get the feeling that a lot of my fellow Linux geeks assume that because Windows users feel more at home in a GUI and are scared of a shell (duh, they've been using a GUI, and not a shell), that they are somehow not intelligent enough, or somehow incapable of reading documentation... of any sort.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that most Windows users believe that us Linux geeks have purposely encrypted current linux documentation in our own esoterica so that we can feel special when nobody else understands; We also explain things extra difficultly so we can feel better about ourselves, like we all have some sort of inferiority complex.
Of course neither is correct. Here are some of the underlying reasons I believe this situation has come about:
Until VERY recently Linux has been pretty much a system administrator's thing, or a serious code hacker's thing. Because nobody outside of the circle probably ever even heard of Linux, why the hell would the documentation have been written for those outside of the circle? It was generally (and correctly) assumed that anyone else reading the documentation was either a sys-admin, hacker, or similar type, who knew Linux/Unix and simply wanted some configuration details or command line arguments. There's no reason our HOWTOs and man pages should have been written any differently, at the time they were written.
Now suddenly Linux got some time under the spotlight and a lot of people are trying Linux for various purposes, Server, Desktop, or for the reason maybe a good portion of us started playing with Linux, just to tinker around. They "grew up" in GUI land for the most part, don't know jack about using a command line, and are now confronted with something that's somewhere between both. They are obviously interested or they wouldn't have bothered, but they are completely frustrated because all of the documentation is really just there for configuration details or usage details. Maybe we don't see it that way, but they probably do. It seems like a lot of energy is being spent in finger pointing when it could be spent writing migration-documentation (I don't know if I just made that up or not). If I did, what I mean is that for the transition from Windows to Linux to be easy we need documentation that not only explains how to do things, why you are doing each step, and what exactly it's going to do, but also what the equivelant would have been in Windows.
Just my $0.02
P.S. Yes this nick is completely unoriginal, but you jerks already stole all of the good nicks! =)
Slashdot Mirror
Right, if you are thinking of it in terms of probabilities, the probability of someone needing to take out their car seat is independent of the probability of someone killing their wife/ex-wife. The two acts being related is specious. Consider this: Of all the instances of someone removing their car seat, what is the percentage that it was to get rid of the evidence of a murder? Of all the instances that someone killed their wife/ex-wife in the passenger seat of their car, how often did that lead to them removing the seat as opposed to say abandoning it somewhere or torching it? You could go on for ever. I'm no authority but I would imagine that statistics generally confuse a subject in a courtroom more than help. That's an unfounded statement on my part but there is certainly a significant number of cases where expert witnesses were brought in and presented statistical data incorrectly to the jury.
There's no doubt that the car situation is going to be seen as a mighty strange coincidence to the jury, but the reasoning of the parent post is wrong. Juries get duped by this kind of thing quite frequently. A really great video of Peter Donnelly talking about this subject at TED can be found at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/67
Every line indented to some screwy level? I have four things to say about that (since you seem to be a vi user)...
;) It has quirks but usually works quite well! Just don't expect it to work if you have perl programs that use 'print <EOT;' and the like.
1G=G
However there is a distinction here: These guys in ohio were breaking the law. These guys had broken the law, the ISPs knew it, had the proof, and brought in the law... though the result was totally over the top and quite scary for the equivalent of splicing your cable or something. It was a minor offense (from my point of view) and was not handled appropriately but this situation in Australia smells a bit different.
In Australia, a product/service provider (Kazaa), is being raided on the speculation of a 3rd party.
From the article: It seems to me by reading the first sentence in the article that there is some unmentioned 3rd party which invoked this thing from the start. So it's as if some company _thinks_ you stole something or otherwise are interferring with their business, they can get the MIPI (are there other types of MIPIs for other fields in AU?) to raid your ass and disrupt your livelihood. The Kazaa owners and operators don't have anything to do with pirating music/warez/whatever. To me, this is not "a signal that Internet music piracy is finished in Australia" but rather a signal that product and service providers will soon be at the mercy of big money, whatever the reasons.
Of all the subtle and not-so-subtle evils of the Patriot act, it is, at least to my knowledge, employed soley by the government/gov agencies.
This situation in Australia seems not too dissimilar to SCO busting into Linus' house with presumeably armed gov. officials and confiscating everything.
It's corporate terrorism.
Ok, but in case you haven't thought about it, maybe some people think it's not unreasonable to have both. Point-and-click stellar networking and total control.
You sound like the sys-admin type. I am too, I know most aspects of setting up mail/ web/ database/ file sharing/ et cetera backwards and forwards in an extremely efficient text-only world, it's great.
I also use Linux as an awesome Desktop/Office system. Linux can eventually be the best of both worlds.
Linux is under constant development by people who are out to write useful/solid code, not to make a quick buck. Where is it written that the current state of things is etched in stone? With the awesome development community Linux has that has brought us all of the things we love about Linux, what's to say that they can't continue forth, and bring everything together in one nice package without sacrificing either side?
Right tool for the right job? Agreed, but why can't Linux evolve to be the right tool for every job? No reason, just open your mind!
I see that a general assumption is that because Linux Geek X knows a whole bunch about Linux, that this somehow makes him a good teacher, or obligates him to teach. Just because a Linux Guru gives you what looks like the run-about to a simple question, doesn't automatically mean he's trying to be a mega-a'hole, or even that he's just trying to look super-smart and belittle you. It might simply mean that he is just not a good teacher, or is not eloquent enough to come off as such.
Take calculus as an example: There are many people who know calculus, they are not all just calculus teachers, and I'm sure if one went out there and selected Engineer X to explain some calculus to them, they wouldn't have a goddamn clue unless they already knew it.
It's of course a completely different issue when you are talking about people who are supposedly tech-support personel and give you that sort of crap, or even from people in a forum/chat channel supposedly dedicated to helping users. However if you are talking about educating people in general, I'd put money on the fact that there is just as large a percentage of professors that instead of explaining things (say relativity) in "college student" terms, they regurgitate Einstein's papers verbatim and expect everyone to understand.
You can argue that for any subject, there are a ton of people who can't give you a straight answer to a simple question, or think they have something better to do at the moment. There are plenty of a'holes out there, just because some of them use Linux, doesn't mean we're all a'holes. That's just like saying, "All of the -insert minority here- people I've ever met have been a'holes, they must all be a'holes!"
I sort of lost where I was going with this, but hopefully you see that "Linux users are arrogant" is completely unsubstantiated.
I get the feeling that a lot of my fellow Linux geeks assume that because Windows users feel more at home in a GUI and are scared of a shell (duh, they've been using a GUI, and not a shell), that they are somehow not intelligent enough, or somehow incapable of reading documentation... of any sort.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that most Windows users believe that us Linux geeks have purposely encrypted current linux documentation in our own esoterica so that we can feel special when nobody else understands; We also explain things extra difficultly so we can feel better about ourselves, like we all have some sort of inferiority complex.
Of course neither is correct. Here are some of the underlying reasons I believe this situation has come about:
Until VERY recently Linux has been pretty much a system administrator's thing, or a serious code hacker's thing. Because nobody outside of the circle probably ever even heard of Linux, why the hell would the documentation have been written for those outside of the circle? It was generally (and correctly) assumed that anyone else reading the documentation was either a sys-admin, hacker, or similar type, who knew Linux/Unix and simply wanted some configuration details or command line arguments. There's no reason our HOWTOs and man pages should have been written any differently, at the time they were written.
Now suddenly Linux got some time under the spotlight and a lot of people are trying Linux for various purposes, Server, Desktop, or for the reason maybe a good portion of us started playing with Linux, just to tinker around. They "grew up" in GUI land for the most part, don't know jack about using a command line, and are now confronted with something that's somewhere between both. They are obviously interested or they wouldn't have bothered, but they are completely frustrated because all of the documentation is really just there for configuration details or usage details. Maybe we don't see it that way, but they probably do. It seems like a lot of energy is being spent in finger pointing when it could be spent writing migration-documentation (I don't know if I just made that up or not). If I did, what I mean is that for the transition from Windows to Linux to be easy we need documentation that not only explains how to do things, why you are doing each step, and what exactly it's going to do, but also what the equivelant would have been in Windows.
Just my $0.02
P.S. Yes this nick is completely unoriginal, but you jerks already stole all of the good nicks! =)