It's human nature, sadly, to stereotype. Fact is, most stereotypes (at least of groups or cultures that people have actually encountered personally, as opposed to ones they've only seen pictures of or heard jokes about) have a basis in fact. Most old people don't understand iphones, Linux, etc. The vast majority of females care about shoes way more than the vast majority of males, too. That doesn't mean no old person understands technology, or that every female cares about shoes more than every male, but a lot of people - consciously or unconsciously - act like it does.
No, I'm just saying it's not really big news. Still good of them, and I'm sure from the perspective of the Linux Foundation it's great money, I'm just saying from the perspective of HP, it'd be like me donating some change that fell out of my pocket.
If a random stranger walked up to me and asked me those questions, I would be confused and annoyed, and would tell him to screw off, this is true. If a random stranger emailed me those questions in a survey, I'd do the same thing. The annoyance wouldn't be that people know that information - I'm totally alright with people knowing it, you could probably figure out a lot about me just by googling, and I don't care at all. The annoyance would be someone coming up to me and bugging me, when I would expect to be left alone. Which I gather is what this guy is doing, too. I totally don't mind people (or corporations) knowing things about me, or even telling other people (or corporations) those things, things including pictures - I just don't want to be -bothered- by people (or corporations) for that information, unless they first identify themselves as to why they're asking, I agree that they're asking for a good reason, and they use the information for the agreed upon purposes. But if they can get it without bugging me, power to them.
I would be pissed if I knew someone was taking pictures of me through the window of my apartment without my permission. Once I enter space I don't own, though, I have absolutely no reason to expect I won't be photographed, nor should I care (if I didn't want to be photographed doing whatever I was doing, I shouldn't have been doing it in a public space). I do, however, have an expectation not to be harassed by a guy (or corporation) with a camera. And that is the difference that the original post asked for: a guy following you around is obtrusive, cameras mounted on walls above you aren't.
If I were in the same position of "being a tech support person looking at someone's phone", I certainly would not go around snooping into someone's private folders. If I were in the same position of "looking at someone's phone and just happening by accident to see pictures with file names obviously indicating that they contained adult content created personally by the person whose phone it was"... I admit I would probably be forced by raw curiosity to check whether the file names accurately depicted their contents. If they did, I certainly wouldn't keep a copy, though I might laugh about it with my friends (though not telling them whose phone it was I found it on).
All moot, though, given that I'm not and never will be a tech support person, of phones or otherwise.
Thought someone had stolen some "cellphone databases", whatever those were, and had just gotten around to switching on the databases they'd stolen. Clicked because I was curious what a "cellphone database" was.
Having used both quite a lot, I actually prefer 16:10 to 4:3 on laptops. In fact, the first time I got a 16:10 laptop, back when 4:3 was still fairly common, the first day I used it I decided I was never going back. Not that I have a choice anymore... I grabbed one of the last 16:10 laptops still on the market at the time (it's not anymore:(), now I have to hope it'll last forever, or at least until at least one laptop manufacturer realizes that it would make sense to give consumers choice again. (I'd love it if 4:3 screens were available, too, for people who love it the way I love 16:10; I just wouldn't buy them myself.)
> "Everything about star wars has sucked 100% for the past couple decades to the point where I dont have any interest or even care about it."
The final book in the Thrawn trilogy, a trilogy widely considered to be -the- high point in the SW extended universe, was released in hardcover in 1993, which you will note is less than two decades ago. While it was certainly the high point, it wasn't the only good series, either; I remember enjoying, for instance, the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, completed in 1999. I'm not arguing with your main premise, just the date (I'd give it about 1 decade of nothing but suck, rather than two; even Zahn's more recent SW books have been pretty craptacular, though still infinitely better than the new-movietrilogy-that-never-existed.)
Neat. I will definitely look into that - I don't do much coding in Java, for which I am extremely grateful, but I use one open source tool for personal use that's written in Java and occasionally I have need to poke at it, and every time, having to debug in Eclipse makes me sad.
I can't imagine living without an IDE. Having the ability to actually debug my code in-place from the same place I'm editing it, increases coding productivity like crazy, and I can't even imagine anyone seriously trying to argue otherwise. I do agree that it's commonly thought that you should put each class in its own file, and that that's just silly, that it's a lot more readable when multiple classes that are tightly related are put in the same file so you can see them all at once and see the tightly-relatedness. I'm not sure that really has anything to do with having an IDE or not, though.
On the other hand, Eclipse certainly does have a massive smell of its own. He says "if you suffer from tool frustration, it's not necessary your tools that are poor, it may be that your language sucks, or you're not using it correctly", but no, if you're talking about Java, where the only real IDE is Eclipse... it's because your tool sucks.
I don't think they -are- technically requiring you to pledge that you will vote for one of the two parties, just by pledging that you'll vote? A vote for a third-party candidate is (sadly) basically a vote to state that you don't like either of the candidates, but nothing else... but it is still a vote. I'm pretty sure I'm responding to a troll, though, given that -loads- of places, all over, are bothering me to vote, I'm getting flooded with people bugging me to vote (I'm already registered), and on top of that, it appears to be free to everyone at this point whether they say they'll vote or not.
Also just because both parties espouse some policies I don't like, just because two parties is not nearly enough gradation to accurately reflect every citizen's views, just because both parties spend a jillion dollars campaigning, that doesn't really mean the two parties are identical on every issue, because they sure frelling aren't. Don't vote if you hate them both, but I sure as frack will continue to vote for the lesser of two evils.:p
I'm pretty sure this is the only time I've ever felt the need to say "me too", so I apologize, but: me too.
I have the bassline firmly stuck in my head now. Thanks a frelling lot, slashdot! (Well, it's sharing the space with Enter Sandman, what with them having similar basslines. One gets in my head, the other goes along with it.)
The only problem: all kinds of video games already do that. Their civilians, though, tend to be the sort of complete moron you get saddled with in escort quests, that think if you're in the middle of a shootout, the absolute most fun thing to do would be to jump right into the middle of it and wave their arms around. That makes for decidedly annoying gameplay. See also: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfFun
(I'm not arguing against your premise, mind, just its usual implementation.)
For kids too young to know the difference, I would happily put a tracking device on them if it were cheap, nonobvious, nonharmful, and unlikely to get damaged by regular small child activities, or hinder their activities in any way (a sticker on their clothing or something). Once they were old enough to care, I would give it to them and let them decide if/when they wanted to let me track them.
Personally, I'd be happy giving one of these to my GF to track me if we were out of town, and putting one on myself for her, too. I think people tracking you without your knowledge and permission is kind of creepy and rather wrong, but (certain) people tracking me with my knowledge and permission seems like a totally good idea.
If my mom had given me one of these even in high school, I would've made fun of her, and then I would've worn it anyway, cause it wouldn't bother me if she did know where I was (generally nowhere terribly interesting), and that way she would have perhaps stopped freaking out if I was home late cause I was out with friends, which she did with alarming regularity.
I don't think any sane person, here or anywhere else, would argue "I am incapable of figuring out how to use the Windows 8 interface". Obviously we are, we're all intelligent people, and the Windows 8 interface does behave deterministically and all. The argument is simply that it gets in your face far more than 7 or previous, making it take longer to do any real work with it by virtue of its not being designed for that purpose. Which means, sorry, the 3 year old doesn't really matter, given that I doubt the 3 year old was -trying- to get real work done.
It probably is a great toy for playing toddler games on, though. Perhaps they should have marketed it for that purpose.
Why the frack would it -not- be ethical? Let people ingest whatever the frack they want, if it's not hurting anyone else? Now, what wouldn't be ethical is for anyone to -force- people to take drugs of pretty much any sort, including these (i.e. take them if you want to graduate college, take them if you want to keep your job, etc.), but if you want to take them of your own free will, how the frell would that possibly be considered not "ethical"? Where does ethics even freaking factor in? (Other than perhaps if they got them from a doctor, rather than on the black market, and the doctor didn't disclose side effects...)
> "Ron Paul is most definitely not in favor of gay marriage. He wants the gov't to stop recognizing marriage entirely so that people don't get the married rate for taxation."
No? From what I can understand, he wants the government to "stop recognizing marriage entirely" for completely logical, completely non-tax-related reasons that, while I am not completely libertarian, I agree with completely. What he and most libertarians, and a number of other people who aren't libertarian, are arguing, is that there should be something, not called "marriage", that two people could get from the government to describe their partnership, and which would have all the effects of being married, but which wouldn't require them to be heterosexual. Then "marriage" could go back to being entirely a religious thing, as it belongs. Quoth Paul, "I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever they want."
(I think libertarianism is generally too extreme on a lot of things, but they also espouse some great ideas...)
Quoth, for instance: "Theyâ(TM)re like folders or labels, but managed through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, and allowing users to decide that they want to make large swaths of their email bypass the main inbox entirely, to be saved in Stacks where they can be read later."
So... like folders or labels, but with filters on them! You know, filters, like Thunderbird and gmail have both supported since basically the beginning of time?
I think that the ability to read and write is generally taught at a much lower grade level than was being discussed in this topic. If you get to high school, and don't know how to read and write (and I mean actually, how to read and write, not how to understand 20th century postmodernist gibberish and how to write boring 5 page essays on the supposed themes therein), there was clearly either something wrong with either your brain or your elementary school.
In 1st grade, though, I don't really recall it being called "English" class. Granted, my memories of first grade are a bit hazy, what with being like 6 years old, but still. I don't recall classes having specific names like that until at least 3rd grade (at which point "English" class, while not yet for the most part having us read horrible "literature", did still already start to acquire the pointless busywork aspects that would later dominate that subject's work.)
Oh, certainly. Everyone should have to understand the scientific method and how it applies to darn near everything, before they leave high school. That doesn't -necessarily- require an entire semester of specifically chemistry, though (especially since, as I mentioned, I do think physics should be required regardless, and the scientific method is just as necessary for physics as for any other science). I have nothing -against- chemistry being a required class in high school, but if it were offered as a suggested elective instead (as, for instance, calculus was at my high school; me and most of my friends took it, but it wasn't required), I don't think our school system would be significantly worse off. Especially considering my high school chem class was a bad joke anyway; I really didn't learn much. (Which sucked royally when I got to (a science/tech) college and was dropped into frosh chem, which assumed knowledge of all kinds of things I had never learned anything about.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's human nature, sadly, to stereotype. Fact is, most stereotypes (at least of groups or cultures that people have actually encountered personally, as opposed to ones they've only seen pictures of or heard jokes about) have a basis in fact. Most old people don't understand iphones, Linux, etc. The vast majority of females care about shoes way more than the vast majority of males, too. That doesn't mean no old person understands technology, or that every female cares about shoes more than every male, but a lot of people - consciously or unconsciously - act like it does.
No, I'm just saying it's not really big news. Still good of them, and I'm sure from the perspective of the Linux Foundation it's great money, I'm just saying from the perspective of HP, it'd be like me donating some change that fell out of my pocket.
Durp, wasted what turns out to have been a first post, on failing to remember that slashdot doesn't use bbcode in time. Awesome.
According to wikipedia, in 2011 HP was worth about 130 billion dollars. They probably spend 500k on [i]toilet paper[/i] in a year.
If a random stranger walked up to me and asked me those questions, I would be confused and annoyed, and would tell him to screw off, this is true. If a random stranger emailed me those questions in a survey, I'd do the same thing. The annoyance wouldn't be that people know that information - I'm totally alright with people knowing it, you could probably figure out a lot about me just by googling, and I don't care at all. The annoyance would be someone coming up to me and bugging me, when I would expect to be left alone. Which I gather is what this guy is doing, too. I totally don't mind people (or corporations) knowing things about me, or even telling other people (or corporations) those things, things including pictures - I just don't want to be -bothered- by people (or corporations) for that information, unless they first identify themselves as to why they're asking, I agree that they're asking for a good reason, and they use the information for the agreed upon purposes. But if they can get it without bugging me, power to them.
I would be pissed if I knew someone was taking pictures of me through the window of my apartment without my permission. Once I enter space I don't own, though, I have absolutely no reason to expect I won't be photographed, nor should I care (if I didn't want to be photographed doing whatever I was doing, I shouldn't have been doing it in a public space). I do, however, have an expectation not to be harassed by a guy (or corporation) with a camera. And that is the difference that the original post asked for: a guy following you around is obtrusive, cameras mounted on walls above you aren't.
If I were in the same position of "being a tech support person looking at someone's phone", I certainly would not go around snooping into someone's private folders. If I were in the same position of "looking at someone's phone and just happening by accident to see pictures with file names obviously indicating that they contained adult content created personally by the person whose phone it was"... I admit I would probably be forced by raw curiosity to check whether the file names accurately depicted their contents. If they did, I certainly wouldn't keep a copy, though I might laugh about it with my friends (though not telling them whose phone it was I found it on).
All moot, though, given that I'm not and never will be a tech support person, of phones or otherwise.
Thought someone had stolen some "cellphone databases", whatever those were, and had just gotten around to switching on the databases they'd stolen. Clicked because I was curious what a "cellphone database" was.
Having used both quite a lot, I actually prefer 16:10 to 4:3 on laptops. In fact, the first time I got a 16:10 laptop, back when 4:3 was still fairly common, the first day I used it I decided I was never going back. Not that I have a choice anymore... I grabbed one of the last 16:10 laptops still on the market at the time (it's not anymore :(), now I have to hope it'll last forever, or at least until at least one laptop manufacturer realizes that it would make sense to give consumers choice again. (I'd love it if 4:3 screens were available, too, for people who love it the way I love 16:10; I just wouldn't buy them myself.)
> "Everything about star wars has sucked 100% for the past couple decades to the point where I dont have any interest or even care about it."
The final book in the Thrawn trilogy, a trilogy widely considered to be -the- high point in the SW extended universe, was released in hardcover in 1993, which you will note is less than two decades ago. While it was certainly the high point, it wasn't the only good series, either; I remember enjoying, for instance, the Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy, completed in 1999. I'm not arguing with your main premise, just the date (I'd give it about 1 decade of nothing but suck, rather than two; even Zahn's more recent SW books have been pretty craptacular, though still infinitely better than the new-movietrilogy-that-never-existed.)
Neat. I will definitely look into that - I don't do much coding in Java, for which I am extremely grateful, but I use one open source tool for personal use that's written in Java and occasionally I have need to poke at it, and every time, having to debug in Eclipse makes me sad.
I can't imagine living without an IDE. Having the ability to actually debug my code in-place from the same place I'm editing it, increases coding productivity like crazy, and I can't even imagine anyone seriously trying to argue otherwise. I do agree that it's commonly thought that you should put each class in its own file, and that that's just silly, that it's a lot more readable when multiple classes that are tightly related are put in the same file so you can see them all at once and see the tightly-relatedness. I'm not sure that really has anything to do with having an IDE or not, though.
On the other hand, Eclipse certainly does have a massive smell of its own. He says "if you suffer from tool frustration, it's not necessary your tools that are poor, it may be that your language sucks, or you're not using it correctly", but no, if you're talking about Java, where the only real IDE is Eclipse... it's because your tool sucks.
I don't think they -are- technically requiring you to pledge that you will vote for one of the two parties, just by pledging that you'll vote? A vote for a third-party candidate is (sadly) basically a vote to state that you don't like either of the candidates, but nothing else... but it is still a vote. I'm pretty sure I'm responding to a troll, though, given that -loads- of places, all over, are bothering me to vote, I'm getting flooded with people bugging me to vote (I'm already registered), and on top of that, it appears to be free to everyone at this point whether they say they'll vote or not.
Also just because both parties espouse some policies I don't like, just because two parties is not nearly enough gradation to accurately reflect every citizen's views, just because both parties spend a jillion dollars campaigning, that doesn't really mean the two parties are identical on every issue, because they sure frelling aren't. Don't vote if you hate them both, but I sure as frack will continue to vote for the lesser of two evils. :p
I'm pretty sure this is the only time I've ever felt the need to say "me too", so I apologize, but: me too.
I have the bassline firmly stuck in my head now. Thanks a frelling lot, slashdot! (Well, it's sharing the space with Enter Sandman, what with them having similar basslines. One gets in my head, the other goes along with it.)
The only problem: all kinds of video games already do that. Their civilians, though, tend to be the sort of complete moron you get saddled with in escort quests, that think if you're in the middle of a shootout, the absolute most fun thing to do would be to jump right into the middle of it and wave their arms around. That makes for decidedly annoying gameplay. See also: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfFun
(I'm not arguing against your premise, mind, just its usual implementation.)
Obligatory song link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eIUOUfhoJ8
For kids too young to know the difference, I would happily put a tracking device on them if it were cheap, nonobvious, nonharmful, and unlikely to get damaged by regular small child activities, or hinder their activities in any way (a sticker on their clothing or something). Once they were old enough to care, I would give it to them and let them decide if/when they wanted to let me track them.
Personally, I'd be happy giving one of these to my GF to track me if we were out of town, and putting one on myself for her, too. I think people tracking you without your knowledge and permission is kind of creepy and rather wrong, but (certain) people tracking me with my knowledge and permission seems like a totally good idea.
If my mom had given me one of these even in high school, I would've made fun of her, and then I would've worn it anyway, cause it wouldn't bother me if she did know where I was (generally nowhere terribly interesting), and that way she would have perhaps stopped freaking out if I was home late cause I was out with friends, which she did with alarming regularity.
I don't think any sane person, here or anywhere else, would argue "I am incapable of figuring out how to use the Windows 8 interface". Obviously we are, we're all intelligent people, and the Windows 8 interface does behave deterministically and all. The argument is simply that it gets in your face far more than 7 or previous, making it take longer to do any real work with it by virtue of its not being designed for that purpose. Which means, sorry, the 3 year old doesn't really matter, given that I doubt the 3 year old was -trying- to get real work done.
It probably is a great toy for playing toddler games on, though. Perhaps they should have marketed it for that purpose.
Why the frack would it -not- be ethical? Let people ingest whatever the frack they want, if it's not hurting anyone else? Now, what wouldn't be ethical is for anyone to -force- people to take drugs of pretty much any sort, including these (i.e. take them if you want to graduate college, take them if you want to keep your job, etc.), but if you want to take them of your own free will, how the frell would that possibly be considered not "ethical"? Where does ethics even freaking factor in? (Other than perhaps if they got them from a doctor, rather than on the black market, and the doctor didn't disclose side effects...)
It's on my 4-function desktop calculator. You didn't specify what the OS had to be able to -do-...
[/obligatory]
Your observation is, in fact, a trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny
> "Ron Paul is most definitely not in favor of gay marriage. He wants the gov't to stop recognizing marriage entirely so that people don't get the married rate for taxation."
No? From what I can understand, he wants the government to "stop recognizing marriage entirely" for completely logical, completely non-tax-related reasons that, while I am not completely libertarian, I agree with completely. What he and most libertarians, and a number of other people who aren't libertarian, are arguing, is that there should be something, not called "marriage", that two people could get from the government to describe their partnership, and which would have all the effects of being married, but which wouldn't require them to be heterosexual. Then "marriage" could go back to being entirely a religious thing, as it belongs. Quoth Paul, "I am supportive of all voluntary associations and people can call it whatever they want."
(I think libertarianism is generally too extreme on a lot of things, but they also espouse some great ideas...)
Quoth, for instance: "Theyâ(TM)re like folders or labels, but managed through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, and allowing users to decide that they want to make large swaths of their email bypass the main inbox entirely, to be saved in Stacks where they can be read later."
So... like folders or labels, but with filters on them! You know, filters, like Thunderbird and gmail have both supported since basically the beginning of time?
Yep, everyone is going to buy a 40 dollar screen cover, and 30 dollars of Office apps.
I think that the ability to read and write is generally taught at a much lower grade level than was being discussed in this topic. If you get to high school, and don't know how to read and write (and I mean actually, how to read and write, not how to understand 20th century postmodernist gibberish and how to write boring 5 page essays on the supposed themes therein), there was clearly either something wrong with either your brain or your elementary school.
In 1st grade, though, I don't really recall it being called "English" class. Granted, my memories of first grade are a bit hazy, what with being like 6 years old, but still. I don't recall classes having specific names like that until at least 3rd grade (at which point "English" class, while not yet for the most part having us read horrible "literature", did still already start to acquire the pointless busywork aspects that would later dominate that subject's work.)
Oh, certainly. Everyone should have to understand the scientific method and how it applies to darn near everything, before they leave high school. That doesn't -necessarily- require an entire semester of specifically chemistry, though (especially since, as I mentioned, I do think physics should be required regardless, and the scientific method is just as necessary for physics as for any other science). I have nothing -against- chemistry being a required class in high school, but if it were offered as a suggested elective instead (as, for instance, calculus was at my high school; me and most of my friends took it, but it wasn't required), I don't think our school system would be significantly worse off. Especially considering my high school chem class was a bad joke anyway; I really didn't learn much. (Which sucked royally when I got to (a science/tech) college and was dropped into frosh chem, which assumed knowledge of all kinds of things I had never learned anything about.)