Oh, give me a break. I know that it's hard for you to admit that North Americans are becoming lazy illiterates at an alarming rate, but you're talking out of your ass.
As an English major, I tend to notice a person's grammar and spelling before almost anything else. For every ten people I meet who can't write above a sixth-grade level, eight of them are born and raised on this continent.
The bigger deal, in my opinion, is that these eight people will probably never improve, while the other two (who were born elsewhere) seem to have ambition to get better. At my part-time job during school, we employ a Japanese kid who is just travelling and working for a year or two. He knew two sentences of English upon arriving ("How are you?" and "I am [his name]"), but has adopted better spoken grammar than most of the other guys at work after only a year. More than once, I've been compelled to 'un-teach' him the brutal pidgin English that he has learned from everyone else. One time, and I am not exaggerating, one of the local boys said to him: "You've got to learn to speak English good, or you'll never get laid." I can only hope that it's true.
The examples in the linked article are, without a shadow of doubt, pure laziness from a bunch of slack-jawed cretins who would rather watch Reality TV than read a book. If you actually listen to the people you walk past in the streets, many of whom wear suits that are worth more than my car, you'll see that it's depressingly common.
As does Vorbis... Better quality at half the bitrate, or so.
Oh baloney. That's just more political rhetoric from the same people who claim that "linux makes use of old hardware," even though KDE needs more RAM than Windows XP to run without swapping with every mouse movement. Sure, linux runs on old hardware, but they conveniently neglect to mention that it's CLI only in those cases.
If you like Vorbis for whatever reason, that's fine... use it in good health, but don't piss in my ears and tell me it's raining. It's always stunning how political motivation can change the "facts".
1) I am not an OSS touter. In fact, I think it's a stupid and hilariously unsound business practice.
2) There are presently 999,995 OSS "idea" men and about 5 coders expected to make it happen. This is part of the reason why I think OSS is such a waste of time as anything but a hobby -- any moron can (and does) discuss what "someone should do".
It's very nice that you're able to see inside the mind of "the court". Unless, of course, you've closely read the original decision. Didn't think so.
They are like children always trying to slither and wriggle their way out of things. It's disgusting and dishonorable.
This Just In -- All companies do it, including ones you support. Can you believe it? Why do I have this bizarre hunch that you would suddenly be more forgiving if it weren't Microsoft?
Sometimes I'm not sure how you left-wing idealists manage to stay alive in this crazy world.
Hilariously misplaced loyalty is the only reason GM sells anything. Although, I suppose there really are people who figure that autonomous cruise control and three engines in less than 130k miles is no reason to look elsewhere.
I actually was taught that leaving a manual transmission car in gear while parked could cause damage if someone happened to bump your car while parking causing it to lurch forward.
That is correct. The sudden lurch puts a ton of strain on the gearbox gears. It can also hurt the CV shafts in a front-wheel drive car.
As romantic as I'm sure you find that little quip to be, it's brutally wrong in a situation where one has a small number (or no) allies.
Take, for example, the old linux chestnut of "more eyes find and fix problems faster" than closed solutions. How about if there were no "eyes" willing to fix the problems and countless willing to exploit this miraculous openness?
In such a case, zero freedom would mean increased security. Sure, the Bad Guys will still try, but they won't have a wide open map to the prize. The U.S. isn't exactly everyone's pal in this world, so one is reasonable to cringe at the idea of being wide open to inspection.
Of course, not being an American, I don't care that much.
I really like how you completely avoided his VERY valid criticism with a flippant comment there. Were you attempting to prove his point, or is it just serendipity?
Yeah, you're right... linux is more of a Chevy -- grossly, hilariously overrated and only made popular for purely political or historical reasons by people who can convince themselves of anything. Also, bloated, heavy and rattly.
Well, then you're a terrible system administrator, or are looking for reasons to slag Windows (probably the former).
There are millions of people around the world who run Windows 2000 and XP installs day and night for weeks or months at a time, only restarting to apply patches (yes, there are patches. Oooooo!)
I've run Win2000 and now XP on the same brutally obsolete C433/256 machine (including junk budget hardware inside) for the last three years while I've been in school, and it's NEVER failed me. With a FREE software firewall, I've never been hacked, and with FREE A/V software, I've never been hit by a virus. I am typing this comment on the machine in question, and it's been up for 36 days. Can you imagine?
Want my IP address? You still couldn't do anything to me, because I've taken the time to set my system up right, and now it just works. Sound familiar? It should, because it's the rallying cry of linux zealots worldwide.
Am I some kind of Windows magician, or am I just not as full of shit as those who claim that anything by Microsoft is still wildly unstable? Let me guess -- you also won't buy Japanese cars because your 1976 Corolla rusted apart before your friend's Camaro.
Things change. Welcome to the 21st century, Timmy.
I don't think so. When was the last time you saw an IBM-brand computer in anyone's basement? IBM priced themselves out of the game in the early 90s and I haven't seen any rebound.
I have personally seen exponentially more Macs on home desktops than IBMs, so by calling Apple "[n]ot a big enough player to make any diffrence whatsoever," it sounds like IBM should mean even less.
all this free advertising goes to, well, the trash
What? After having given Rio roughly two hundred and fifty bucks, I'm ALSO supposed to advertise for them at no charge? I don't think so. It's like the dealership sticker on the back of cars. My buddy used to tell them that either they knock off, say, a thousand bucks off the cost of the car in exchange for advertising, or lose the sticker before the deal closed (properly... no razor blades). Stunningly, he never drove cars with dealership stickers.
Sure, he was being petty, but I completely agree with the point he made. Why would I advertise for Rio or their ilk? It's not as though they've done me any unilateral favours.
I would hope that moderators are fair enough to send comments up or down depending on their quality, not whether their point of view is agreeable.
Based upon their utter failure to act so nobly when it comes to the politics of computer software, I probably wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Slashdot may as well change the "troll" mod designation to "I disagree" and "insightful" to "I agree" for all that they're actually worth around here. And, meta-moderation is no better, as any worthless groupthink posts that I've ever negatively moderated have resulted in my being clobbered in meta.
Unless you're one of the Slashdot herd, moderation is hilariously ineffective -- to an extent where I've labelled myself as unwilling to moderate simply because it's not worth the punishment I'll take in meta-mod for being honest.
The Slashdot editors don't really think that the moderation system works as it's supposed to, do they? If so, that's pretty sad.
I'm curious why you would troll the web looking for a macro that does that as well, when it's a lot easier to just go to Tools->Word Count. Though, that might not be a fair statement to make, since you might not have used a recent version, which has a word count.
OK, I may have misspoken. The principle beef I have with OO in this area is that, as I recall (it's been about a year), I can't count the words in a highlighted selection without using a "hack-job macro". The last version of OO I used also lacked a means of counting words by using keyboard commands, which I also really, really appreciate while writing papers (Alt-T-W in Word).
...and on KDE it's downright sluggish-to-unresponsive if you let it sit there for a while and you switch back to it, but I'm not sure if that's the software or the window manager.
I agree (I last experiemented with OO in KDE as well), and I also have no idea which is truly to blame.
Though, to be fair to OO.org on loading times, I believe Office preloads some things on start up, like IE does, to give the illusion of a faster load time.
As I understand it, it's a Windows startup folder shortcut that is added by default with an Office install ("Office Startup"). I have long removed this "feature," and Word still takes no more than two seconds to open. I believe that's what you're referring to.
... Once I stopped trying to use it exactly like Word, things became easier.
I attempted to use OO with an open mind, as I attempt with any new piece of software, but it just didn't perform. With the exception of the word count and page numbering (the latter being my bigger peeve), it's just personal preference.
The lowdown: the advantage to OO.org is really the price, which can't be beat. And since it works pretty well, there's also some value there, as well.
I guess my bottom line is that Office amortizes well for me. The fact that Word97 still, again, in my opinion, performs better than the 2004 version of OO means that my investment years ago is still worthwhile.
The point I attempted to make (poorly, I suppose), is that "compassion" is turning the western world into a sewer of humans who are completely disinterested in standing up to stupid things they do. Illegal or not, all actions SHOULD have repercussions, both positive and negative.
Here in the west (I don't know where you live), negative repercussions are virtually nonexistent. I witnessed it today when I attended the long-overdue eviction of a tenant from an apartment building owned by a company for which I work. He hadn't paid rent for two months, had been visited by the cops fifteen(!) times in that time period and had destroyed his suite entirely. The courts, citing "compassion" for someone who couldn't find somewhere else to live (I wonder why, not that he actually tried) had to be forced by the corporate lawyer to finally get him out. What did this cost him, other than a ruined credit rating? Zero. Cost to the company? $2000. Sure, they'll sue him for damages, but what are the odds they'll collect a nickel?
Since I doubt that his credit is a huge concern, this cretin danced away with a smile on his face (literally) with no repercussions. Frankly, by this point in the western world, I'd have been surprised to see it end any other way.
There's little reason for a home user (or student) to need to pay so much for MS Office (or even just Word alone) when basic functionality is all that's required
No. I am a student and, as such, absolutely require a simple word count function when writing papers. Why must I troll the web looking for some hack-job macro to do this in OO? Word97 (the seven year old Word97) has it, and it also loads in about two seconds on my sadly obsolete Celeron 433, while OO pokes along for an additional ten or fifteen seconds before I see anything, not to mention its comparatively logy nature during actual usage. I won't even start with the hassles of "skip the first" page numbering in OO.
After spending two weeks and two papers staggering through OO, I am afraid it is no competition for what Microsoft offered last century.
Fact is that M$ still gets money from me and if I don't use their software I can at least call them with the name I'm most familiar with.
OK, fair enough, but understand that it also means that virtually all of the non-Linux fanboy demographic immediately writes you off as being one of "those people". Don't care? Great! Enjoy your dollar signs, for it means naught to me.
I'd like to encourage you to take your compassion and jam it.
Modern "compassion" leads to the little fucker who breaks into my car being back on the streets to do it again before I am done cleaning up the glass. Modern "compassion" leads to a driver who has been convicted of DUI a half-dozen times mowing down your family before he's actually punished (if then).
If western society becomes any more "compassionate," one may as well just throw away the hilariously ineffective laws we still have. There is no fear of repercussions in this world, because repercussions hardly exist anymore. Stupid little Becky is suffering the repercussions of her act, and I, for one, refuse to give it any more consideration than the brief laughter it deserves.
This increasingly filthy world needs MORE people who are willing to raise children with an understanding that one must accept the blame for one's own idiocy or shortcomings, and LESS who immediately sue the school when his obviously prize-winning kid is cut from the soccer team.
It is true that everyone makes mistakes as a kid, but only those who are forced to endure the fallout learn to look before they leap.
Slashdot Mirror
As an English major, I tend to notice a person's grammar and spelling before almost anything else. For every ten people I meet who can't write above a sixth-grade level, eight of them are born and raised on this continent.
The bigger deal, in my opinion, is that these eight people will probably never improve, while the other two (who were born elsewhere) seem to have ambition to get better. At my part-time job during school, we employ a Japanese kid who is just travelling and working for a year or two. He knew two sentences of English upon arriving ("How are you?" and "I am [his name]"), but has adopted better spoken grammar than most of the other guys at work after only a year. More than once, I've been compelled to 'un-teach' him the brutal pidgin English that he has learned from everyone else. One time, and I am not exaggerating, one of the local boys said to him: "You've got to learn to speak English good, or you'll never get laid." I can only hope that it's true.
The examples in the linked article are, without a shadow of doubt, pure laziness from a bunch of slack-jawed cretins who would rather watch Reality TV than read a book. If you actually listen to the people you walk past in the streets, many of whom wear suits that are worth more than my car, you'll see that it's depressingly common.
Oh baloney. That's just more political rhetoric from the same people who claim that "linux makes use of old hardware," even though KDE needs more RAM than Windows XP to run without swapping with every mouse movement. Sure, linux runs on old hardware, but they conveniently neglect to mention that it's CLI only in those cases.
If you like Vorbis for whatever reason, that's fine... use it in good health, but don't piss in my ears and tell me it's raining. It's always stunning how political motivation can change the "facts".
I, too, have very few problems without Linux.
1) I am not an OSS touter. In fact, I think it's a stupid and hilariously unsound business practice.
2) There are presently 999,995 OSS "idea" men and about 5 coders expected to make it happen. This is part of the reason why I think OSS is such a waste of time as anything but a hobby -- any moron can (and does) discuss what "someone should do".
I can't remember what song I wanted to hear by the time that iTunes finally loads.
Shouldn't you be writing rap lyrics or hanging out on an Acura Integra forum instead of wasting your valuable time here?
Great idea! Let me know when you're done.
Oh, you meant someone else should do it, didn't you? From someone advocating open source, why am I not surprised?
It's very nice that you're able to see inside the mind of "the court". Unless, of course, you've closely read the original decision. Didn't think so.
They are like children always trying to slither and wriggle their way out of things. It's disgusting and dishonorable.
This Just In -- All companies do it, including ones you support. Can you believe it? Why do I have this bizarre hunch that you would suddenly be more forgiving if it weren't Microsoft?
Sometimes I'm not sure how you left-wing idealists manage to stay alive in this crazy world.
A glimpse inside the mind of American car buyers.
That is correct. The sudden lurch puts a ton of strain on the gearbox gears. It can also hurt the CV shafts in a front-wheel drive car.
Take, for example, the old linux chestnut of "more eyes find and fix problems faster" than closed solutions. How about if there were no "eyes" willing to fix the problems and countless willing to exploit this miraculous openness?
In such a case, zero freedom would mean increased security. Sure, the Bad Guys will still try, but they won't have a wide open map to the prize. The U.S. isn't exactly everyone's pal in this world, so one is reasonable to cringe at the idea of being wide open to inspection.
Of course, not being an American, I don't care that much.
I really like how you completely avoided his VERY valid criticism with a flippant comment there. Were you attempting to prove his point, or is it just serendipity?
That better?
There are millions of people around the world who run Windows 2000 and XP installs day and night for weeks or months at a time, only restarting to apply patches (yes, there are patches. Oooooo!)
I've run Win2000 and now XP on the same brutally obsolete C433/256 machine (including junk budget hardware inside) for the last three years while I've been in school, and it's NEVER failed me. With a FREE software firewall, I've never been hacked, and with FREE A/V software, I've never been hit by a virus. I am typing this comment on the machine in question, and it's been up for 36 days. Can you imagine?
Want my IP address? You still couldn't do anything to me, because I've taken the time to set my system up right, and now it just works. Sound familiar? It should, because it's the rallying cry of linux zealots worldwide.
Am I some kind of Windows magician, or am I just not as full of shit as those who claim that anything by Microsoft is still wildly unstable? Let me guess -- you also won't buy Japanese cars because your 1976 Corolla rusted apart before your friend's Camaro.
Things change. Welcome to the 21st century, Timmy.
Valid point.
I don't think so. When was the last time you saw an IBM-brand computer in anyone's basement? IBM priced themselves out of the game in the early 90s and I haven't seen any rebound.
I have personally seen exponentially more Macs on home desktops than IBMs, so by calling Apple "[n]ot a big enough player to make any diffrence whatsoever," it sounds like IBM should mean even less.
Come and visit me at the office some time, and you'll change your tune.
What? After having given Rio roughly two hundred and fifty bucks, I'm ALSO supposed to advertise for them at no charge? I don't think so. It's like the dealership sticker on the back of cars. My buddy used to tell them that either they knock off, say, a thousand bucks off the cost of the car in exchange for advertising, or lose the sticker before the deal closed (properly... no razor blades). Stunningly, he never drove cars with dealership stickers.
Sure, he was being petty, but I completely agree with the point he made. Why would I advertise for Rio or their ilk? It's not as though they've done me any unilateral favours.
Based upon their utter failure to act so nobly when it comes to the politics of computer software, I probably wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Slashdot may as well change the "troll" mod designation to "I disagree" and "insightful" to "I agree" for all that they're actually worth around here. And, meta-moderation is no better, as any worthless groupthink posts that I've ever negatively moderated have resulted in my being clobbered in meta.
Unless you're one of the Slashdot herd, moderation is hilariously ineffective -- to an extent where I've labelled myself as unwilling to moderate simply because it's not worth the punishment I'll take in meta-mod for being honest.
The Slashdot editors don't really think that the moderation system works as it's supposed to, do they? If so, that's pretty sad.
Perhaps we shall.
Have a nice evening.
And you as well.
OK, I may have misspoken. The principle beef I have with OO in this area is that, as I recall (it's been about a year), I can't count the words in a highlighted selection without using a "hack-job macro". The last version of OO I used also lacked a means of counting words by using keyboard commands, which I also really, really appreciate while writing papers (Alt-T-W in Word).
I agree (I last experiemented with OO in KDE as well), and I also have no idea which is truly to blame.
Though, to be fair to OO.org on loading times, I believe Office preloads some things on start up, like IE does, to give the illusion of a faster load time.
As I understand it, it's a Windows startup folder shortcut that is added by default with an Office install ("Office Startup"). I have long removed this "feature," and Word still takes no more than two seconds to open. I believe that's what you're referring to.
I attempted to use OO with an open mind, as I attempt with any new piece of software, but it just didn't perform. With the exception of the word count and page numbering (the latter being my bigger peeve), it's just personal preference.
The lowdown: the advantage to OO.org is really the price, which can't be beat. And since it works pretty well, there's also some value there, as well.
I guess my bottom line is that Office amortizes well for me. The fact that Word97 still, again, in my opinion, performs better than the 2004 version of OO means that my investment years ago is still worthwhile.
Here in the west (I don't know where you live), negative repercussions are virtually nonexistent. I witnessed it today when I attended the long-overdue eviction of a tenant from an apartment building owned by a company for which I work. He hadn't paid rent for two months, had been visited by the cops fifteen(!) times in that time period and had destroyed his suite entirely. The courts, citing "compassion" for someone who couldn't find somewhere else to live (I wonder why, not that he actually tried) had to be forced by the corporate lawyer to finally get him out. What did this cost him, other than a ruined credit rating? Zero. Cost to the company? $2000. Sure, they'll sue him for damages, but what are the odds they'll collect a nickel?
Since I doubt that his credit is a huge concern, this cretin danced away with a smile on his face (literally) with no repercussions. Frankly, by this point in the western world, I'd have been surprised to see it end any other way.
Ha ha ha ha ha! That's a handsome tinfoil hat you have there.
No. I am a student and, as such, absolutely require a simple word count function when writing papers. Why must I troll the web looking for some hack-job macro to do this in OO? Word97 (the seven year old Word97) has it, and it also loads in about two seconds on my sadly obsolete Celeron 433, while OO pokes along for an additional ten or fifteen seconds before I see anything, not to mention its comparatively logy nature during actual usage. I won't even start with the hassles of "skip the first" page numbering in OO.
After spending two weeks and two papers staggering through OO, I am afraid it is no competition for what Microsoft offered last century.
OK, fair enough, but understand that it also means that virtually all of the non-Linux fanboy demographic immediately writes you off as being one of "those people". Don't care? Great! Enjoy your dollar signs, for it means naught to me.
Modern "compassion" leads to the little fucker who breaks into my car being back on the streets to do it again before I am done cleaning up the glass. Modern "compassion" leads to a driver who has been convicted of DUI a half-dozen times mowing down your family before he's actually punished (if then).
If western society becomes any more "compassionate," one may as well just throw away the hilariously ineffective laws we still have. There is no fear of repercussions in this world, because repercussions hardly exist anymore. Stupid little Becky is suffering the repercussions of her act, and I, for one, refuse to give it any more consideration than the brief laughter it deserves.
This increasingly filthy world needs MORE people who are willing to raise children with an understanding that one must accept the blame for one's own idiocy or shortcomings, and LESS who immediately sue the school when his obviously prize-winning kid is cut from the soccer team.
It is true that everyone makes mistakes as a kid, but only those who are forced to endure the fallout learn to look before they leap.