"Putting out 7,000 students who can't use the most widely used work software..."
Get real. Today's college students learned most of those programs in middle-school. The students are not going to suddenly stop using all MS products and forget all they know just because the student computer lab runs OpenOffice and the College Admin office runs Solaris, and the profs use a mix of OS X and Linux. The students will still own MS-based computers and will not be disadvantaged by exposure to non-ms stuff.
I don't think 2.8 mil is enough to overhaul the entire college, but that is a different point that has nothing to do with "Think of the Children!"
"By the way, the donor would be better off stating his point in a slightly different way: I make the donation if the University makes a commitment to use free software only. That's good enough. MS can in principle produce free (as in the GPL) software and offer it to the University;-)"
The donor here might not be a software-libre advocate. Perhaps they just hate MS, and they are fine with the College buying hardware from Sun and Apple, and proprietary software from all over. It might be really hard to run a college with only free software.
Wow. I must say you have a unique perspective. You fault the Prius for having an "overly complicated" drivetrain, and show us a much simpler diesel tractor engine that gets 64 mpg in urban traffic (the 128 mpg is for constant speed) as an example of how to do things right. Respectfully, I would like to say that I don't think you are seeing the big picture. It is true that the Centurian gets better milage. But one of these cars is a quiet, well-finished, safe, 4-seater, warrantied car with peppy acceleration from a stop, and the other is a 2-seat, 1200 lbs., kit-car with a 17hp diesel tractor engine. I reckon the Centurion wouldn't be described as peppy or quiet, and you have to build it yourself. The Centurion gets most of its milage performance by being light and underpowered. If you want one, good for you, its a free country, but I think the Prius is a more practical option for most people.
All phone calls are logged to every number, always, caller-id or not; you can't necessarily get that info just by asking though. In my state, the Oregon Attorney General's office goes after the violator FOR you. I'm pretty sure they won't have any trouble getting records from the phone company if you tell him the date and time of the call. What is the telemarketer going to say to the evidence that they called you? "I was trying to call my Grandmother and dialed the wrong number." And the fine is $25-grand here. Or at least it was. I expect that the Fedral list will get rid of the state lists, though I have not read the law.
"IE you spend 200 million building the plane but get thousands of shots from the system..."
chemical lasers eat themselves when they shoot. Thats why these examples only get 20 shots. Certainly the optics and targeting systems would have an extended life, but a significant part of the system gets used up, just like a missle or a bomb. So, I don't think you choose laser weapons to save money, but that is okay because there are plenty of other reasons to uses lasers.
Solid state lasers do not consume themselves when they shoot, and their ability to shoot over and over has obvious benefits. Currently, chemical lasers are much more powerfull than solid state lasers. However, solid state lasers are getting closer to deployment.
Motor City Online was a fairly low-commitment game. Oh you COULD spend lots of time in it if you wanted to score the top weekly times for the most tracks and win the weekly TOP GUN award, but most people just wanted to race each other in similar cars. You could set up a race with all kinds of car restrictions (Vintage D, Classic B) based on horsepower/weight and age, and other user restrictions (over 4000 lbs. only) so that the game wasn't just about who had accumulated the most money. I don't think I ever played it for more than 10 hours in a week, usually less. I played it for 3 months in the winter of 2000, until the sun came out and there were other things to do.
IMHO, that game failed for reasons other than gameplay. The box was not clear enough about the $10/mo fee, and there were pissed people on the forums all the time complaining that they had just wasted $30 and they didn't even have a credit card, then they would warn all their friends not to buy it. The box also promised features that didn't make it into the game before I quit playing, which again made people angry. So with the PISSEd people talking it down instead of telling all their friends how great it was, it never achieved critical mass that would have allowed it to get profitable and keep adding content.
It was a good idea that was even executed pretty well, but was marketed wrong. Alas.
I know you're just trying to be funny with the sarcasm, but if you don't mind my seriousness for a moment, I actually DO see a connection between the sentiments of that conservative christian and the snow-penis article. Please indulge me for a moment. The CC likes intelligent discourse, and is dismayed by reactionary, angry, antagonistic attitudes exemplified by the hate mail Salon receives.
The CC shows us how combative activism (the conservative hate mail) can drive away people that might otherwise be sympathetic, and how it can create a backlash that does more harm than good.
IMHO, the snow-penis incident shows us the same thing. The two women who destroyed the sculpture MIGHT have had a point to make about the Harvard being overwhelmingly male, and about male viewpoints, but destroying the sculpture certainly didn't promote their "cause." It made the entire women's studies (or is it womyn's studies?) look militant, and anti-male. They should have found a creative way to promote their own message instead of just destroying something they think is symbolic. One should try not to be defined by what they are against. Or at the very least they should have found a way to take the high road and make the snow penis look stupid and the sculptors look childish, using humor. More people would understand their point that way.
So perhaps the CC would enjoy the snow-penis article, even if it isn't "important" news.
"It is stating under penalty of perjury that it has the authority to act on behalf of Joe Bob Copyright holder."
No, not Joe Bob, they say they represent the specific copyright holder of OpenOffice. But they don't really have that right, do they. There ought to be some legal repercussions to alleging some legal authority when there isn't any, or for being negligent in their accusations.
As much fun as the open gameplay is, the most fun I had playing GTA3 (the PC version) came from altering the cars. I made Borgnine's "Escape From New York" taxi AWD, 300mph, 9000lbs, max. acceleration, max. traction, and max. durability. Then I put the center-of-gravity 2 feet below the bottom of the tires so it would always roll back to rubber-side-down like weeble-wobbles. Finally I lowered it until the bumper scraped the ground so that I could get under the other cars and trucks and pop them up in the air.
I could then ram even the big box vans and send them flying through the air in lazy circles, while I would giggle with glee like a 3 year old. The challange became to see how far from the river I could hit another car and still get it into the drink on the fly. The danger became getting your own car stopped, and you couldn't stop if you were airborne or on your side.
So that is why I am waiting for the PC version of Vice City, and I bet I'm not the only one.
I wonder what would happen if you were to tell the telemarketers that you are on your state's No Call List and that they can be fined $25,000 per incident for calling you. EVEN IF YOUR STATE DOESNT HAVE A LIST, I think you could bluff them into leaving you alone. I'd try it, but I actually am on a No Call List.
One problem is that no company would be interested in servicing the rural lines, its too much work for too little pay. So you have to package profitable lines with unprofitable ones, somehow.
Your post is confusing. Under the new rules, they don't have to share fiber at all, and only have to share local loops with phone companies. Isn't the fiber part exactly what you are arguing FOR?
I'm mad because there is a chance the judge will say "Yes, these are vital tools." I'm mad because polygraphs are asinine, and people are trying to use laws to protect/promote them.
The more I think about this the madder I get. Can you imagine the argument brought before the judge? "Your Honor, I'd like to have the factual and scholastic discussions that would normally be protected by our free speech guarantees quashed because they threaten our ability to use a totally unreliable and unscientific interrogation system to trick people into confessing. The false confidence in the system is vital to law enforcement and anti-terrorism interests. False positives are unfortunate but acceptable and any discussion of the weaknesses of polygraphs serves no good purpose."
And in my dream the Judge says: "The polygraph system is completely without merit and denies citizens of their civil rights. Motion denied."
"Anyways, let's not pretend that there's anything beyond Gilligan's Island science by calling them "polygraphs". They're lie detectors."
Isn't "polygraph" more accurate. These machines don't really detect lies, they just graph breathing and heartrate and stuff. I think that we're on the same side here, but "lie detector" is the term that seems completely false to me.
All of you out there that have not yet read "The lie behind the Lie Detector" really, really should. Its free. And it is very informative. It will probably piss you off though to find out that anyone ever uses these things after you know how they are supposed to work.
Ok briefly: They ASSUME that you lie and/or feel badly about something that most people do, like "Have you every cheated on a test?" and then if you don't react less to the pertinent question (i.e.: Are you a member of Al-Qaeda?) you fail. Inconslusive is also usually treated the same as fail. So if you REALLY never cheated on a test or if you tell the truth "Yes I cheated on a test" and you dont' feel bad about it, then you are screwed. It seems inconceivable that the ef bee eye still uses polygraph.
Well, I for one bought TurboTax without knowing about the new licensing scheme. Now I know and I won't buy it next year unless they significantly change their terms.
Merced was due in '99, so IA-64 isn't really all that new and this isn't really the first generation. Having the best product doesn't matter very much if it is so late that a "good enough" alternative is already entrenched. Neither one of us is really dealing with Linus' point though.
"Well, the PPro turned out to be one of the best chips of its day, and the 200Mhz version performed within 5% of the Pentium II 300mhzs that were released 18 months later."
The difference this time is that the equivalent desktop processor isn't 18 months behind, it is ahead. That is was killed Intel's first try back when it was called Merced it was so late that it underperformed against the P3s and cost a lot more. Another interesting point about your P-Pro there is that (so I am told by people who probably know) it failed because putting a large amount of cache right on the die instead of separate tested cache outside the CPU package improves the speed of the cache, but increases the scrap, because any time cache is bad you have to throw out the entire processor. That made the P-Pro more expensive and ensured that it wouldn't sell well. Gee, that sounds just like the newest IA-64 chip with giant amounts of cache and matching high price, doesn't it?
You make a good point, and it is well thought out and expressed. It is possible that Linus is biased and isn't aware of his bias. However, you are still just saying that he MIGHT be biased, without actually dealing with the substance of his arguement, or showing us any evidence of bias. That seems like unfair criticism to me.
Now to all of slashdot I would say, "Be aware that Linus works for Transmeta, go ahead and look for bias, but don't allege it unless you have good reason." But thats just my opinion.
here is a balance sheet for AOL. It shows the 54 BILLION dollar write off in the second quarter. These giant write offs have been fairly common recently and I think many people don't understand what they really mean.
I am not an expert, but this is how I understand it. Companies are worth more that just the book value of their assets, since they have intellectual property and future earning potential. I've heard a rule-of-thumb of $1M per engineer for a product development type company, for example, even though their equipment and real property, etc. might only be worth hundreds of thousands. The general term for this is called Goodwill. So when the buying company merges the bought company into their books, they have to account for the difference between what they paid out (in cash or stock usually) and the value they get to add to their asset line. This is a goodwill write-off.
It used to be that the buying company could stretch this write-off process out, taking a bit at a time so as not to completely wreck their earnings report. The government recently changed the rules, so that the buying company has to take the entire goodwill write-off all at once and not hide it by stretching it out forever. So we have seen many companies take unimaginabley huge losses recently, and people wonder, "How can they possibly lose all that money and stay in business?"
The answer is that it was never real money (not cash) and AOL is a perfect example. AOL bought Time-Warner with ridiculously over-valued stock, so the $54B didn't really cost them anything. When you understand it, it makes the Time-Warner executives look like monumental idiots. I imagine a scene like this:
AOL Exec:I'll give you 57 trillion elbonian dollars for your company. T-W Captain:Ooh, that's a lot of money. T-W Ens.:Uh, Sir, I don't think Elbonian money is a g... T-W Captian:(interrupting) Nonsense. Its 57 trillion. And this internet thingy is the future, we have to get into it. T-W Ens.:But Sir, T-W Captain:Shut up, Wesley! ...time passes... T-W CFO:Captain, Elbonian dollars are now worth.00002 USD each. The T-W shareholders have formed a mob to have you shot. T-W Captain:Damn, fetch me my golden parachute.
"and so open-source sits too at the precipice, but its penultimate creative spark blew apart at its evolution, splitting into various organisms wading the primordial ooze."
To quote Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
I can understand why a California resident should pay sales tax for goods they buy from a California company on the Internet. The thing that wasn't clear to me from the article is: Is California going to ask that residents of other states pay CA sales tax on goods the buy from a CA company on the internet? The article seemed to hint at that possibility.
If it comes to pass, I predict the rise of an Online-only retailer in Oregon. The ads will say "Come shop in Oregon, where we don't have any sales tax." Powell's will get a leg up on Amazon, who will complain mightily.
Slashdot Mirror
"Putting out 7,000 students who can't use the most widely used work software..."
Get real. Today's college students learned most of those programs in middle-school. The students are not going to suddenly stop using all MS products and forget all they know just because the student computer lab runs OpenOffice and the College Admin office runs Solaris, and the profs use a mix of OS X and Linux. The students will still own MS-based computers and will not be disadvantaged by exposure to non-ms stuff.
I don't think 2.8 mil is enough to overhaul the entire college, but that is a different point that has nothing to do with "Think of the Children!"
"By the way, the donor would be better off stating his point in a slightly different way: I make the donation if the University makes a commitment to use free software only. That's good enough. MS can in principle produce free (as in the GPL) software and offer it to the University ;-)"
The donor here might not be a software-libre advocate. Perhaps they just hate MS, and they are fine with the College buying hardware from Sun and Apple, and proprietary software from all over. It might be really hard to run a college with only free software.
Wow. I must say you have a unique perspective. You fault the Prius for having an "overly complicated" drivetrain, and show us a much simpler diesel tractor engine that gets 64 mpg in urban traffic (the 128 mpg is for constant speed) as an example of how to do things right. Respectfully, I would like to say that I don't think you are seeing the big picture. It is true that the Centurian gets better milage. But one of these cars is a quiet, well-finished, safe, 4-seater, warrantied car with peppy acceleration from a stop, and the other is a 2-seat, 1200 lbs., kit-car with a 17hp diesel tractor engine. I reckon the Centurion wouldn't be described as peppy or quiet, and you have to build it yourself. The Centurion gets most of its milage performance by being light and underpowered. If you want one, good for you, its a free country, but I think the Prius is a more practical option for most people.
All phone calls are logged to every number, always, caller-id or not; you can't necessarily get that info just by asking though. In my state, the Oregon Attorney General's office goes after the violator FOR you. I'm pretty sure they won't have any trouble getting records from the phone company if you tell him the date and time of the call. What is the telemarketer going to say to the evidence that they called you? "I was trying to call my Grandmother and dialed the wrong number." And the fine is $25-grand here. Or at least it was. I expect that the Fedral list will get rid of the state lists, though I have not read the law.
"Amazing what Republicans not in the pockets of trial lawyers do when they run the show."
5 Republicans voted against, and 2 Democrats did.Look for youself.
"IE you spend 200 million building the plane but get thousands of shots from the system..."
chemical lasers eat themselves when they shoot. Thats why these examples only get 20 shots. Certainly the optics and targeting systems would have an extended life, but a significant part of the system gets used up, just like a missle or a bomb. So, I don't think you choose laser weapons to save money, but that is okay because there are plenty of other reasons to uses lasers.
Solid state lasers do not consume themselves when they shoot, and their ability to shoot over and over has obvious benefits. Currently, chemical lasers are much more powerfull than solid state lasers. However, solid state lasers are getting closer to deployment.
Motor City Online was a fairly low-commitment game. Oh you COULD spend lots of time in it if you wanted to score the top weekly times for the most tracks and win the weekly TOP GUN award, but most people just wanted to race each other in similar cars. You could set up a race with all kinds of car restrictions (Vintage D, Classic B) based on horsepower/weight and age, and other user restrictions (over 4000 lbs. only) so that the game wasn't just about who had accumulated the most money. I don't think I ever played it for more than 10 hours in a week, usually less. I played it for 3 months in the winter of 2000, until the sun came out and there were other things to do.
IMHO, that game failed for reasons other than gameplay. The box was not clear enough about the $10/mo fee, and there were pissed people on the forums all the time complaining that they had just wasted $30 and they didn't even have a credit card, then they would warn all their friends not to buy it. The box also promised features that didn't make it into the game before I quit playing, which again made people angry. So with the PISSEd people talking it down instead of telling all their friends how great it was, it never achieved critical mass that would have allowed it to get profitable and keep adding content.
It was a good idea that was even executed pretty well, but was marketed wrong. Alas.
I know you're just trying to be funny with the sarcasm, but if you don't mind my seriousness for a moment, I actually DO see a connection between the sentiments of that conservative christian and the snow-penis article. Please indulge me for a moment. The CC likes intelligent discourse, and is dismayed by reactionary, angry, antagonistic attitudes exemplified by the hate mail Salon receives.
The CC shows us how combative activism (the conservative hate mail) can drive away people that might otherwise be sympathetic, and how it can create a backlash that does more harm than good.
IMHO, the snow-penis incident shows us the same thing. The two women who destroyed the sculpture MIGHT have had a point to make about the Harvard being overwhelmingly male, and about male viewpoints, but destroying the sculpture certainly didn't promote their "cause." It made the entire women's studies (or is it womyn's studies?) look militant, and anti-male. They should have found a creative way to promote their own message instead of just destroying something they think is symbolic. One should try not to be defined by what they are against. Or at the very least they should have found a way to take the high road and make the snow penis look stupid and the sculptors look childish, using humor. More people would understand their point that way.
So perhaps the CC would enjoy the snow-penis article, even if it isn't "important" news.
"It is stating under penalty of perjury that it has the authority to act on behalf of Joe Bob Copyright holder."
No, not Joe Bob, they say they represent the specific copyright holder of OpenOffice. But they don't really have that right, do they. There ought to be some legal repercussions to alleging some legal authority when there isn't any, or for being negligent in their accusations.
As much fun as the open gameplay is, the most fun I had playing GTA3 (the PC version) came from altering the cars. I made Borgnine's "Escape From New York" taxi AWD, 300mph, 9000lbs, max. acceleration, max. traction, and max. durability. Then I put the center-of-gravity 2 feet below the bottom of the tires so it would always roll back to rubber-side-down like weeble-wobbles. Finally I lowered it until the bumper scraped the ground so that I could get under the other cars and trucks and pop them up in the air.
I could then ram even the big box vans and send them flying through the air in lazy circles, while I would giggle with glee like a 3 year old. The challange became to see how far from the river I could hit another car and still get it into the drink on the fly. The danger became getting your own car stopped, and you couldn't stop if you were airborne or on your side.
So that is why I am waiting for the PC version of Vice City, and I bet I'm not the only one.
I wonder what would happen if you were to tell the telemarketers that you are on your state's No Call List and that they can be fined $25,000 per incident for calling you. EVEN IF YOUR STATE DOESNT HAVE A LIST, I think you could bluff them into leaving you alone. I'd try it, but I actually am on a No Call List.
And they aren't copying it. They are just ignoring a fake sign that says "this number has been disconnected."
One problem is that no company would be interested in servicing the rural lines, its too much work for too little pay. So you have to package profitable lines with unprofitable ones, somehow.
Your post is confusing. Under the new rules, they don't have to share fiber at all, and only have to share local loops with phone companies. Isn't the fiber part exactly what you are arguing FOR?
I'm mad because there is a chance the judge will say "Yes, these are vital tools." I'm mad because polygraphs are asinine, and people are trying to use laws to protect/promote them.
The more I think about this the madder I get. Can you imagine the argument brought before the judge? "Your Honor, I'd like to have the factual and scholastic discussions that would normally be protected by our free speech guarantees quashed because they threaten our ability to use a totally unreliable and unscientific interrogation system to trick people into confessing. The false confidence in the system is vital to law enforcement and anti-terrorism interests. False positives are unfortunate but acceptable and any discussion of the weaknesses of polygraphs serves no good purpose."
And in my dream the Judge says: "The polygraph system is completely without merit and denies citizens of their civil rights. Motion denied."
"Anyways, let's not pretend that there's anything beyond Gilligan's Island science by calling them "polygraphs". They're lie detectors."
Isn't "polygraph" more accurate. These machines don't really detect lies, they just graph breathing and heartrate and stuff. I think that we're on the same side here, but "lie detector" is the term that seems completely false to me.
All of you out there that have not yet read "The lie behind the Lie Detector" really, really should. Its free. And it is very informative. It will probably piss you off though to find out that anyone ever uses these things after you know how they are supposed to work.
Ok briefly: They ASSUME that you lie and/or feel badly about something that most people do, like "Have you every cheated on a test?" and then if you don't react less to the pertinent question (i.e.: Are you a member of Al-Qaeda?) you fail. Inconslusive is also usually treated the same as fail. So if you REALLY never cheated on a test or if you tell the truth "Yes I cheated on a test" and you dont' feel bad about it, then you are screwed. It seems inconceivable that the ef bee eye still uses polygraph.
Well, I for one bought TurboTax without knowing about the new licensing scheme. Now I know and I won't buy it next year unless they significantly change their terms.
Merced was due in '99, so IA-64 isn't really all that new and this isn't really the first generation. Having the best product doesn't matter very much if it is so late that a "good enough" alternative is already entrenched. Neither one of us is really dealing with Linus' point though.
"Well, the PPro turned out to be one of the best chips of its day, and the 200Mhz version performed within 5% of the Pentium II 300mhzs that were released 18 months later."
The difference this time is that the equivalent desktop processor isn't 18 months behind, it is ahead. That is was killed Intel's first try back when it was called Merced it was so late that it underperformed against the P3s and cost a lot more. Another interesting point about your P-Pro there is that (so I am told by people who probably know) it failed because putting a large amount of cache right on the die instead of separate tested cache outside the CPU package improves the speed of the cache, but increases the scrap, because any time cache is bad you have to throw out the entire processor. That made the P-Pro more expensive and ensured that it wouldn't sell well. Gee, that sounds just like the newest IA-64 chip with giant amounts of cache and matching high price, doesn't it?
You make a good point, and it is well thought out and expressed. It is possible that Linus is biased and isn't aware of his bias. However, you are still just saying that he MIGHT be biased, without actually dealing with the substance of his arguement, or showing us any evidence of bias. That seems like unfair criticism to me.
Now to all of slashdot I would say, "Be aware that Linus works for Transmeta, go ahead and look for bias, but don't allege it unless you have good reason." But thats just my opinion.
We should learn Spanish too, just to have all the bases covered. One good stereotype deserves another.
here is a balance sheet for AOL. It shows the 54 BILLION dollar write off in the second quarter. These giant write offs have been fairly common recently and I think many people don't understand what they really mean.
...time passes... .00002 USD each. The T-W shareholders have formed a mob to have you shot.
I am not an expert, but this is how I understand it. Companies are worth more that just the book value of their assets, since they have intellectual property and future earning potential. I've heard a rule-of-thumb of $1M per engineer for a product development type company, for example, even though their equipment and real property, etc. might only be worth hundreds of thousands. The general term for this is called Goodwill. So when the buying company merges the bought company into their books, they have to account for the difference between what they paid out (in cash or stock usually) and the value they get to add to their asset line. This is a goodwill write-off.
It used to be that the buying company could stretch this write-off process out, taking a bit at a time so as not to completely wreck their earnings report. The government recently changed the rules, so that the buying company has to take the entire goodwill write-off all at once and not hide it by stretching it out forever. So we have seen many companies take unimaginabley huge losses recently, and people wonder, "How can they possibly lose all that money and stay in business?"
The answer is that it was never real money (not cash) and AOL is a perfect example. AOL bought Time-Warner with ridiculously over-valued stock, so the $54B didn't really cost them anything. When you understand it, it makes the Time-Warner executives look like monumental idiots. I imagine a scene like this:
AOL Exec: I'll give you 57 trillion elbonian dollars for your company.
T-W Captain: Ooh, that's a lot of money.
T-W Ens.: Uh, Sir, I don't think Elbonian money is a g...
T-W Captian:(interrupting) Nonsense. Its 57 trillion. And this internet thingy is the future, we have to get into it.
T-W Ens.: But Sir,
T-W Captain: Shut up, Wesley!
T-W CFO: Captain, Elbonian dollars are now worth
T-W Captain: Damn, fetch me my golden parachute.
"and so open-source sits too at the precipice, but its penultimate creative spark blew apart at its evolution, splitting into various organisms wading the primordial ooze."
To quote Inigo Montoya, "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
I can understand why a California resident should pay sales tax for goods they buy from a California company on the Internet. The thing that wasn't clear to me from the article is: Is California going to ask that residents of other states pay CA sales tax on goods the buy from a CA company on the internet? The article seemed to hint at that possibility.
If it comes to pass, I predict the rise of an Online-only retailer in Oregon. The ads will say "Come shop in Oregon, where we don't have any sales tax." Powell's will get a leg up on Amazon, who will complain mightily.