Maybe so, but if I had an "e-dog" I would miss coming home and having my 100 lbs of dog acting like I am just the most wonderful person in the world. Watching her whole body wag with joy (I'm not kidding) is pretty uplifting. You aren't going to get that out of a computer chip.
Having installed lots of software on Windows, and having gone thru some attempts at software installs on the latest version Debian, I'd like a hit off whatever the article author was smoking.
My latest install on Debian of the X11 dev package did a few things I didn't expect (like going out over the Internet instead of using the disks I had bought) and then hung my whole system (e.g. power switch time). It apparently "successfully" installed, but I can't say it was a smooth user experience.
I'm not saying that Windows is wonderful or DRM is wonderful or we should all bow down to Bill, but let's keep the discussion somewhere close to reality.
I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species
IANAP (I Am Not A Paleontologist), but hasn't there been significant evidence recently linking dinosaurs and birds?
The problem with "Intelligent Design" is that by definition the designer could not have arisen naturally. I suppose you could say that the I.D. who created life on earth was designed by another I.D., but at some point you reach the end of the chain, otherwise known as "God". At which point you've left science and have entered religion, and teaching religion is simply not appropriate in public schools.
I'd love to see a level 1 human running to Teldrassil just to level. That would deserve respect.
Our guild did a naked newbie race from the gates of IronForge to the Darnassus bank. I won in about an hour and a half. Yeah, I died in some areas, but a lot of the road is pretty safe. If you want to do it, it's no big deal, as long as you have some idea what the route is.
This should set of alarm bells to game developers. There is a part of the game so unbearably dull that players will pay cold, hard cash to skip it.
Having played Everquest for years (up to a level 66 enchanter / level 56 druid) and WoW pretty much since it came out, I'd have to say that the issue is not that there is a part of the game that is unbearably dull. The truth is that the game really doesn't change much from low to high levels. I personally found the upper level raiding game to be incredibly boring.
I don't think people pay to "skip the boring parts", I think they want a high level, powerful character without really playing the game. And I suspect once they've got that high level character, they don't know what do... probably end up selling it again.
It could be argued that the civil war was not to free the slaves, but to protect Lincoln's investments. He had a lot of money in rail.
Ah yes, the classic X-files conspiracy theory of history. Lincoln sure pulled the wool over the South's eyes. They were convinced enough that he was anti-slavery to secede.
The truth is that Lincoln was anti-slavery, but he was also willing to do pretty much anything necessary to preserve the Union, including allowing the South to keep slaves. Anybody who doesn't call Lincoln great just hasn't read much history. Or has listened to too many X-Files episodes.
The purpose of the GPL is the encourage people to make their contributions available to the community. If you take some GPL'd code, modify it, and use it to sell stuff over the web, why shouldn't you be obligated to give back to the community whose work you are using to make money?
What if you use GPL software to print reports or invoices and snail-mail letters to your customers? Just how much of the result of a computation has to be visible before you decide that the GPL-ed software that performed that computation must be made available? If you are snail-mailing, presumably you are still making money off GPL software.
Too true... STV shouldn't even make the list (although given that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea made the list, I guess they weren't too picky), and Firefly has GOT to be in the top 10.
Maybe you don't have to rate DS/9 as the best of the Treks (though I think it was ). It was certainly infinitely better than the "lost in space meets Star Trek" that was ST: Voyager. To not even list it in the top 50 just blows my mind, especially when you consider some of the shows that did make the list. You can argue as to whether DS/9 should be high or low on the list, but if you are going to list the original Battlestar: Galactica (which was awful) you better list DS/9.
Extending everyone's commute by five minutes doesn't qualify as inconveniencing them?
Probably not as inconvienced as they'd be if a bomb went off in the train. Not to mention as inconvenienced as everyone else will be when the subway line is shut down for a few weeks to a few months while it's repaired.
So why can't Dr Brown (the USian) publish his discovery immediately and let the community to chip in and further investigate the finding?
It's been traditional in astronomy for hundreds of years to gather information about an object before releasing the data to the public. As I recall, folks like Kepler and Galileo released an anagram that described new discoveries, before they released the data. Thus w/o releasing any real data they had some way to establish priority if someone else made the same discovery.
The truth is, it's even worse that what you describe. I've been programming on UNIX systems, off and on, for 30 years. I recently decided to set up Linux on a spare PC and got a copy of Debian.
The maze of half-written documents, books, how-to's, web pages, posts, etc is just incredible. None of the damn things agree with each other, or with what the install put on my disk.
The typical case is that I work my way thru one document, follow a reference to something else to get more detail, which consists of someone says "Oh no, you don't want to use X, you want to use Y", so I start following documentation on Y, only to find "you don't want to use Y, you want to use Z"...
Sad truth is, there are STILL millions of "slaves" out there. Apparently a lot of "lifelong indentured servitude" (== slavery) in Africa. Interesting article in Smithsonian. One woman describes how she was supposed to hold the tent up during storms to make sure the family didn't get wet. And if she screwed up, she was beaten.
The comparison to TV falls under the "bad slashdot analogy" dept. Most people don't feel absolutely compelled to watch TV. Just try dragging a gamer away from the game that they play 6 or 7 hours a day. Or even just interrupting them. It's pretty close to trying to pull the needle away from an addict. Believe me, having interrupted my wife when she's gaming, I know.
I also question the "6-7 hours a day watching TV" because I don't know ANYBODY who spends that much time watching the tube. Not even my parents, who are in their 80s and physically can't get around that much. Yeah, I'm sure some people have the tube on all day as background, but they aren't sitting glued to the screen. For that matter, they probably don't have two or three TVs going so they can watch multiple programs at once, unlike the gamers who are simultaneously playing multiple characters.
For the record, I've played EQ, EQ2, and WoW. I've gone thru periods when I really really wanted to advance my character and played way more than I should. It was nothing like watching TV.
I played Everquest for longer than I want to think about (5 years? 6?) and I'm playing WoW now, so I know about the games. You don't have to farm. I never did. And at the point where I found EQ boring, I moved on.
Paying someone else to play the game for me still seems completely insane. If I don't want to camp something for a hundred hours to get the drop, I live without it. There's something about getting gear that I didn't earn that really bugs me, and most of the people I played with. We didn't have much respect for EBay'ers (well, actually, we didn't have any respect for them).
One comment that almost always pops up is that deragatory line "Some people have more money than sense". This is nothing more than jealousy. Virtual or not they are paying for effort and not necessarily the item they are receiving. What is done is weighing the cost of their play time versus what they would have to spend to have someone do it for them.
What doesn't make sense to some people (including myself) is that when you pay real money to buy in-game items, you are paying someone to play for you. Sort of like saying "I'd like to see the latest Star Wars movie, but the reviews aren't so hot, I'll pay someone to go see it for me".
I was amused at how many posts could be boiled down to "People who don't know that they have to configure the 'plug and play' router that they bought are really dumb" followed by "why do people care if I'm on their network".
The wireless network was inviting him to connect to it, and he obliged.
I live in (what used to be) a small town. Some folks leave their keys in the car and the car unlocked. Friend of mine had a stranger climb into his car and take it. Guess what... the guy was guilty of car theft. Just because the theft wasn't hard didn't mean it wasn't a crime.
(by the way can you run Windows as restricted user? Many programs just refuse to work, I think that restricted user account is useless, most of the people I know run Windows as Administrator, only that and makes a big difference.)
Yes you can run as a restricted user. I've run that way on my home machine for months now. There are a few program that I've had trouble with but overall it works.
My day job is with a software company and I can guarantee you that there are a lot of people running as restricted users, because our customers demanded that it work.
I haven't met Gosling, so I can't comment on him. I have met people who are brilliant. Folks who design O/S cores, network security protocols, programming languages. People who can hold their own with anybody. And none of them are jerks. They didn't necessarily suffer fools gladly, but they are decent human beings.
I've also met people who put on the "I'm so brilliant that I can treat you like dirt" attitude. And once you penetrate their attitude there isn't much underneath.
I'm not saying this is the law of the universe, but it's sure been my experience.
I'm not sure what bad social skills you speak of, but here's how I usually approach that: if someone is really capable, they can be eccentric, even arrogant. If they're stupid, forget it. Gosling is definately a skilled individual, so he gets some asshole points, imho.
What I've found is that people who are really, really sharp don't need to be assholes. They're smart, everyone knows they are smart, and they don't have anything to prove. It's the wanna-be's who try to pull off the "I'm a brooding genius" ploy that tend to be assholes.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe so, but if I had an "e-dog" I would miss coming home and having my 100 lbs of dog acting like I am just the most wonderful person in the world. Watching her whole body wag with joy (I'm not kidding) is pretty uplifting. You aren't going to get that out of a computer chip.
Having installed lots of software on Windows, and having gone thru some attempts at software installs on the latest version Debian, I'd like a hit off whatever the article author was smoking.
My latest install on Debian of the X11 dev package did a few things I didn't expect (like going out over the Internet instead of using the disks I had bought) and then hung my whole system (e.g. power switch time). It apparently "successfully" installed, but I can't say it was a smooth user experience.
I'm not saying that Windows is wonderful or DRM is wonderful or we should all bow down to Bill, but let's keep the discussion somewhere close to reality.
IANAP (I Am Not A Paleontologist), but hasn't there been significant evidence recently linking dinosaurs and birds?
The problem with "Intelligent Design" is that by definition the designer could not have arisen naturally. I suppose you could say that the I.D. who created life on earth was designed by another I.D., but at some point you reach the end of the chain, otherwise known as "God". At which point you've left science and have entered religion, and teaching religion is simply not appropriate in public schools.
Our guild did a naked newbie race from the gates of IronForge to the Darnassus bank. I won in about an hour and a half. Yeah, I died in some areas, but a lot of the road is pretty safe. If you want to do it, it's no big deal, as long as you have some idea what the route is.
Someone please mod the parent up to +5. It certainly has the crux of the issue.
Having played Everquest for years (up to a level 66 enchanter / level 56 druid) and WoW pretty much since it came out, I'd have to say that the issue is not that there is a part of the game that is unbearably dull. The truth is that the game really doesn't change much from low to high levels. I personally found the upper level raiding game to be incredibly boring.
I don't think people pay to "skip the boring parts", I think they want a high level, powerful character without really playing the game. And I suspect once they've got that high level character, they don't know what do... probably end up selling it again.
Ah yes, the classic X-files conspiracy theory of history. Lincoln sure pulled the wool over the South's eyes. They were convinced enough that he was anti-slavery to secede.
The truth is that Lincoln was anti-slavery, but he was also willing to do pretty much anything necessary to preserve the Union, including allowing the South to keep slaves. Anybody who doesn't call Lincoln great just hasn't read much history. Or has listened to too many X-Files episodes.
What if you use GPL software to print reports or invoices and snail-mail letters to your customers? Just how much of the result of a computation has to be visible before you decide that the GPL-ed software that performed that computation must be made available? If you are snail-mailing, presumably you are still making money off GPL software.
Too true... STV shouldn't even make the list (although given that Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea made the list, I guess they weren't too picky), and Firefly has GOT to be in the top 10.
Maybe you don't have to rate DS/9 as the best of the Treks (though I think it was ). It was certainly infinitely better than the "lost in space meets Star Trek" that was ST: Voyager. To not even list it in the top 50 just blows my mind, especially when you consider some of the shows that did make the list. You can argue as to whether DS/9 should be high or low on the list, but if you are going to list the original Battlestar: Galactica (which was awful) you better list DS/9.
Probably not as inconvienced as they'd be if a bomb went off in the train. Not to mention as inconvenienced as everyone else will be when the subway line is shut down for a few weeks to a few months while it's repaired.
It's been traditional in astronomy for hundreds of years to gather information about an object before releasing the data to the public. As I recall, folks like Kepler and Galileo released an anagram that described new discoveries, before they released the data. Thus w/o releasing any real data they had some way to establish priority if someone else made the same discovery.
The truth is, it's even worse that what you describe. I've been programming on UNIX systems, off and on, for 30 years. I recently decided to set up Linux on a spare PC and got a copy of Debian.
The maze of half-written documents, books, how-to's, web pages, posts, etc is just incredible. None of the damn things agree with each other, or with what the install put on my disk.
The typical case is that I work my way thru one document, follow a reference to something else to get more detail, which consists of someone says "Oh no, you don't want to use X, you want to use Y", so I start following documentation on Y, only to find "you don't want to use Y, you want to use Z"...
Sad truth is, there are STILL millions of "slaves" out there. Apparently a lot of "lifelong indentured servitude" (== slavery) in Africa. Interesting article in Smithsonian. One woman describes how she was supposed to hold the tent up during storms to make sure the family didn't get wet. And if she screwed up, she was beaten.
The comparison to TV falls under the "bad slashdot analogy" dept. Most people don't feel absolutely compelled to watch TV. Just try dragging a gamer away from the game that they play 6 or 7 hours a day. Or even just interrupting them. It's pretty close to trying to pull the needle away from an addict. Believe me, having interrupted my wife when she's gaming, I know.
I also question the "6-7 hours a day watching TV" because I don't know ANYBODY who spends that much time watching the tube. Not even my parents, who are in their 80s and physically can't get around that much. Yeah, I'm sure some people have the tube on all day as background, but they aren't sitting glued to the screen. For that matter, they probably don't have two or three TVs going so they can watch multiple programs at once, unlike the gamers who are simultaneously playing multiple characters.
For the record, I've played EQ, EQ2, and WoW. I've gone thru periods when I really really wanted to advance my character and played way more than I should. It was nothing like watching TV.
I played Everquest for longer than I want to think about (5 years? 6?) and I'm playing WoW now, so I know about the games. You don't have to farm. I never did. And at the point where I found EQ boring, I moved on.
Paying someone else to play the game for me still seems completely insane. If I don't want to camp something for a hundred hours to get the drop, I live without it. There's something about getting gear that I didn't earn that really bugs me, and most of the people I played with. We didn't have much respect for EBay'ers (well, actually, we didn't have any respect for them).
What doesn't make sense to some people (including myself) is that when you pay real money to buy in-game items, you are paying someone to play for you. Sort of like saying "I'd like to see the latest Star Wars movie, but the reviews aren't so hot, I'll pay someone to go see it for me".
If you find WoW so boring and static and easy, why on earth do you play it???
I was amused at how many posts could be boiled down to "People who don't know that they have to configure the 'plug and play' router that they bought are really dumb" followed by "why do people care if I'm on their network".
Or to put it another way:
SlashDotNerd = TechKnowledge + CompleteSocialIneptitude
Bet he didn't have to do that too often
I live in (what used to be) a small town. Some folks leave their keys in the car and the car unlocked. Friend of mine had a stranger climb into his car and take it. Guess what... the guy was guilty of car theft. Just because the theft wasn't hard didn't mean it wasn't a crime.
All I know is that I run that way and a bunch of our customers run that way. If your mileage has varied I'm sorry to hear that.
Yes you can run as a restricted user. I've run that way on my home machine for months now. There are a few program that I've had trouble with but overall it works.
My day job is with a software company and I can guarantee you that there are a lot of people running as restricted users, because our customers demanded that it work.
So yeah, restricted users work fine.
I haven't met Gosling, so I can't comment on him. I have met people who are brilliant. Folks who design O/S cores, network security protocols, programming languages. People who can hold their own with anybody. And none of them are jerks. They didn't necessarily suffer fools gladly, but they are decent human beings.
I've also met people who put on the "I'm so brilliant that I can treat you like dirt" attitude. And once you penetrate their attitude there isn't much underneath.
I'm not saying this is the law of the universe, but it's sure been my experience.
What I've found is that people who are really, really sharp don't need to be assholes. They're smart, everyone knows they are smart, and they don't have anything to prove. It's the wanna-be's who try to pull off the "I'm a brooding genius" ploy that tend to be assholes.