Except that the book-a-minutes are neither automated filters nor (IMHO) do in fact capture the essence of the book. From what I can see they are generally a poorly defended criticism of the book, or a synopsis of one or two points in the plot.
Actually, text and art _are_ substantially different to a computer. The former has rules, the latter does not.
If a single pixel is off by a bit, you won't notice - your brain subconsciously blends the whole thing together anyway. If, on the other hand, the wrong word is chosen, it will stick out like a sore thumb - even if it's only a preposition.
Finally, I would posit that even if a filter could make your prose sound like Asimov or Hienlien, the real advantage both masters have is not in their actual prose but in the ideas they express - and no filter is going to be able to duplicate that.
If Unix had a great, working system in place for distributing source which was completely automated, handled missing dependencies gracefully and intelligently, and didn't frequently require you to be a Unix wizard just to get a basic application working, I'd be a lot more inclined to agree.
apt-get --compile source packagename
Re:Give credit where credit is due
on
Mozilla 0.9.1 Out
·
· Score: 5
Actually, you should blame MatriXOracle. He submitted the plagarized blurb without attributing it, and the slashdot editors merely posted it. They had no way of knowing it was from mozillazine.
You yourself said that "It may be unethical". I was merely pointing out that the fact that companies are in it for the profit does not trump the possibility that it is unethical.
You have to be careful with that. These figures typically represent contributions by employees of the company. So you can't necessarily attribute all of them to the company itself.
On the other hand, when Jack Valienti gives $200,000 to the Bush campaign, you know whose interests that represents.
According to the linked page, it dosen't work at all using Netscape 4.77 and Linux. It comes back and says my browser is "old" or "does not have the correct settings". I get the same using mozilla 0.9.
Fine. It still dosen't work with Linux. I tried it using Mozilla 0.9 and Netscape 4.77 (the SAME BROWSER they say you need), and it came back with a message that I was "using an old version of a browser", or that my browser "does not have the correct settings".
There's no reason whatsoever to support Netscape on Windows and not on Linux.
There are stereotypes that must be broken before continuing. Not all
persons who are new to the Internet are ignorant of the 'Net's
history and evolution, or its proper and ethical uses. Nor are all
experienced, long-term Netizens against the use of the Internet for
advertising, marketing, or other business purposes. Where these two
groups can find commonality is in their opposition to the use of the
Internet in irresponsible ways. Some of these irresponsible uses
include, but are not limited to, the sending of Unsolicited Bulk or
Commercial E-Mail to mailing lists, individuals, or netnews groups.
In the vernacular, this activity is called "spamming" (the sending of
"spam" [1]). To understand why such activities are irresponsible,
one must first understand the true cost and ramifications of such
actions.
The intellimouse I bought in 1996 is still working great. It occasionally gets gummed up with crap from the mousing surface, but when I clean that out its as good as new. The internals are well designed, and the casing, moving parts, and electronics are all very well built.
Plus they were the first company to deliver optical mice that don't need a reflective mousepad. And the first company to have a mouse with a scroll wheel.
I hear their joysticks are of comparable quality, but I haven't used them myself. But my experience with microsoft hardware has been quite excellent in all cases.
You could always use HTML character entities: For example, omega would be entered as ω, which appears as .
This works in any browser compliant with (I think) HTML since version 3, and XHTML 1.0. It at least works in Mozilla 0.8; I can't speak as to other browsers.
I especially like the idea of using this money to fund lawsuits, since I suspect the Freenet people are very likely to be sued by MPAA/RIAA et al. Probably next year they will have Congress pass a law making Freenet-like services illegal.
Except that to violate the patent, you only need to do something in ONE of the claims - they are ORed together, not ANDed together. Consequently, any GET URL that identifies a sender and a recipient is in violation.
Well, but releasing something under the GPL dosen't prohibit you from licensing the code under some other license as well. It is not uncommon for an author to release their code under a license such as the GPL, and then make availible a different license allowing the software to be used in a proprietary environment for a charge.
It's interesting you bring up narrative evaluations. The academic senate just voted to continue to have narrative evaluations for all classes. Unfortunately, sometimes my narrative evaluations are something like "Student's performance was excellent", which does not have any more content than an A.
Perhaps you are thinking of the recent vote to require grades for all new students? This does not affect narrative evaluations; Students merely get both.
It's possible to design a good standardized test. But the test won't stay good.
The problem is that tests like the SAT are based on the idea of correlation - you can find various things, such as the ability to make word analogies, that corelate well with the thing you're trying to measure, in this case, university aptitude.
But the problem is that once you've done this, everyone who wants to do well on your test will start studying the things that are on the tests. Over time, the cumulative effect is that your corelation is distorted.
The SAT has come to the point where teachers focus on it far too much. So, either drastic changes are needed now to the form of the test (e.g. different types of questions), in addition to ongoing periodic changes, or another method of identifying aptitude is necessary. It appears that the University of California (the Santa Cruz campus of which I am writing this from) is taking the latter approach, perhaps because ETS was unwilling to take the former.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that the book-a-minutes are neither automated filters nor (IMHO) do in fact capture the essence of the book. From what I can see they are generally a poorly defended criticism of the book, or a synopsis of one or two points in the plot.
Actually, text and art _are_ substantially different to a computer. The former has rules, the latter does not.
If a single pixel is off by a bit, you won't notice - your brain subconsciously blends the whole thing together anyway. If, on the other hand, the wrong word is chosen, it will stick out like a sore thumb - even if it's only a preposition.
Finally, I would posit that even if a filter could make your prose sound like Asimov or Hienlien, the real advantage both masters have is not in their actual prose but in the ideas they express - and no filter is going to be able to duplicate that.
Actually, you should blame MatriXOracle. He submitted the plagarized blurb without attributing it, and the slashdot editors merely posted it. They had no way of knowing it was from mozillazine.
You yourself said that "It may be unethical". I was merely pointing out that the fact that companies are in it for the profit does not trump the possibility that it is unethical.
You seem to be implying that it's OK for ethics to be compromised in favor of higher profits.
Does that extend to murder, extortion, kidnapping, slave labor, or unfair competition?
I'm surprised to hear you can't get a T1. I thought you could get that anywhere.
You have to be careful with that. These figures typically represent contributions by employees of the company. So you can't necessarily attribute all of them to the company itself.
On the other hand, when Jack Valienti gives $200,000 to the Bush campaign, you know whose interests that represents.
Er, except that I do, and it dosen't.
According to the linked page, it dosen't work at all using Netscape 4.77 and Linux. It comes back and says my browser is "old" or "does not have the correct settings". I get the same using mozilla 0.9.
Fine. It still dosen't work with Linux. I tried it using Mozilla 0.9 and Netscape 4.77 (the SAME BROWSER they say you need), and it came back with a message that I was "using an old version of a browser", or that my browser "does not have the correct settings".
There's no reason whatsoever to support Netscape on Windows and not on Linux.
I couldn't find any bugs in Bugzilla under your email address. Do you have the bug #?
It works fine for me. If you're having problems, why not report a bug?
Well, you couldn't really put an ergonomic keyboard in a laptop, since they take up so much space.
I'm skeptical that you could do a folding ergonomic keyboard, but I suppose it's theoretically possible. Wouldn't save you much space though.
The intellimouse I bought in 1996 is still working great. It occasionally gets gummed up with crap from the mousing surface, but when I clean that out its as good as new. The internals are well designed, and the casing, moving parts, and electronics are all very well built.
Plus they were the first company to deliver optical mice that don't need a reflective mousepad. And the first company to have a mouse with a scroll wheel.
I hear their joysticks are of comparable quality, but I haven't used them myself. But my experience with microsoft hardware has been quite excellent in all cases.
You could always use HTML character entities: For example, omega would be entered as ω, which appears as .
This works in any browser compliant with (I think) HTML since version 3, and XHTML 1.0. It at least works in Mozilla 0.8; I can't speak as to other browsers.
This is a good thing. Great mission statement.
I especially like the idea of using this money to fund lawsuits, since I suspect the Freenet people are very likely to be sued by MPAA/RIAA et al. Probably next year they will have Congress pass a law making Freenet-like services illegal.
Except that to violate the patent, you only need to do something in ONE of the claims - they are ORed together, not ANDed together. Consequently, any GET URL that identifies a sender and a recipient is in violation.
Well, but releasing something under the GPL dosen't prohibit you from licensing the code under some other license as well. It is not uncommon for an author to release their code under a license such as the GPL, and then make availible a different license allowing the software to be used in a proprietary environment for a charge.
Since CVS falls under the patent, there's pretty clearly prior art into the 80s.
Eh? This year we had over 20,000 applicants, of which only about 3000 will be accepted.
I don't know where you got that statistic from, but it's not even close to the truth.
It's interesting you bring up narrative evaluations. The academic senate just voted to continue to have narrative evaluations for all classes. Unfortunately, sometimes my narrative evaluations are something like "Student's performance was excellent", which does not have any more content than an A.
Perhaps you are thinking of the recent vote to require grades for all new students? This does not affect narrative evaluations; Students merely get both.
It's possible to design a good standardized test. But the test won't stay good.
The problem is that tests like the SAT are based on the idea of correlation - you can find various things, such as the ability to make word analogies, that corelate well with the thing you're trying to measure, in this case, university aptitude.
But the problem is that once you've done this, everyone who wants to do well on your test will start studying the things that are on the tests. Over time, the cumulative effect is that your corelation is distorted.
The SAT has come to the point where teachers focus on it far too much. So, either drastic changes are needed now to the form of the test (e.g. different types of questions), in addition to ongoing periodic changes, or another method of identifying aptitude is necessary. It appears that the University of California (the Santa Cruz campus of which I am writing this from) is taking the latter approach, perhaps because ETS was unwilling to take the former.
Not necessarily. I stream MP3s from my home machine to wherever I happen to be; this does still not count as distribution under copyright law.