On that topic, goat-rendering? Is it a 2D or 3D rendering of goats? Methinks he means goat-rending? It's hard to take someone seriously when they can't even use English properly when insulting your work.
Obligatory: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
Free market rule: two parties in an exchange will only exchange if both parties profit.
Which would be fine, if the world economy (or even national or local economies) was a free market. But it's not.
I won't get into the point that this sounds like you'd be happy to sell cigarettes to a 10-year-old, since it seems like other posters have already taken care of it.
You'd likely change your mind if you knew all my religious beliefs
Eh, not really. While I don't agree with a good number of the things on your list, it's certainly your right to believe in them, and my right to not believe in them. If you were trying to tell me that your way is the One True Way and that if I don't believe as you do I'm a bad person, then sure, I'd take exception to that. I think the parent poster was more pleased at your lack of desire to try to convert us heathens than anything else.
Hate to do this to you, but you don't need to put a comma between the word 'spelling' and the word 'and,' it is not necessary.
True, but that's not a grammar issue; it's a style issue. The "extra" comma is perfectly valid.
And to continue the trend... I hate to do this to you, but the last comma in your sentence should be a semicolon (and moved outside the single quotes).
All good points. I didn't look at the OP's posting history, so you're one-up on me there. Perhaps in this case, you're right: this guy is just trying to cultivate some sort of bad-ass reputation by spouting off about how much "the norm" is stupid. Knowing nothing about someone aside from a single Slashdot post, I'd that conclusion might be a bit presumptuous, but with a little more information, who knows...
I guess this is similar to this continuing thread: based on the single post of yours, you sounded basically exactly like the OP, at least from my perspective: someone trying to validate their life choices by publically putting down the opposite viewpoint. Now, after seeing a longer, more well-thought-out comment, my opinion changes. I'm not saying you were wrong in your previous post, or that you were wrong in how you said it, just that it was a one-off response that gave a bad (first) impression. Amusingly, that's somewhat similar to the topic at hand, the tendency for business types to get bad impressions from people who don't dress like they do.
Regarding your point about not running down the street exclaiming that I don't care what people think (nice funny image, btw), I tend to think it's hard to draw parallels that way: Slashdot is an easily-accessible soapbox where people can regularly let off steam in a quasi-anonymous manner. Someone who rants on Slashdot about something is unlikely to do the same in a (physically) public location. That's not to say you don't have a valid point -- quite the opposite -- but that kind of thing just bugs me a bit.
At any rate, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'd like to think that I, in your position, would have taken the time to do the same, but more likely I would have just moved on, or, depending on my mood, continued to flame.
Or maybe he just cares about not caring about what he wears, and is fed up with people like you who seem to think he should care. I'd venture to say even that it seems like your need to put down people who don't think like you do is a way for you to legitimize your life choices. Good luck with that.
Howard Stern was fined because he violated the rules set forth for use of a public resource: namely, the frequency spectrum. I don't see that as a freedom of speech issue.
Your quote from the EFF needs more context to have much use in this argument. So what if something is deemed "obscene"? What can and can't I do with that material that would actually be relevant to me? I'd imagine very little.
By the way, you might want to word things a bit clearer in your original post: "illegal" and "not protected by the first amendment" are not the same things.
Is it ideal? No, I don't think so. But your original point wasn't exactly valid: at best, you bent the truth so it favored your argument. At any rate, I'd much rather the situation where someone gets fined for saying "fuck" on the air, over being "suppressed" for expressing opinions critical of the government.
The parent is talking about general consequences. Unless I'm mistaken, the context under which we're calling speech "free" here is that the government can't punish you for saying things it doesn't like to hear. Getting beaten up by a private citizen because you're an asshole is an entirely different matter. The difference here is that the Jews were carted off to camps in Nazi Germany. Not in the US.
You can say anything, except you can't swear. And obscenity (defined by the local community standards) is also illegal. And you can't expose your breasts in public. Etc. etc. Freedom of speech/expression in the USA is a myth and you know it. So stop lying about it.
Really? I swear in public all the time. Obscenity, in general, is not illegal. Do you have a statute to back that up? The breast thing is a bit silly, but I don't really care all that much about it. A myth? Hardly. Grow up.
XFCE - the most Mac-like desktop for Linux, has a menubar at the top.
No it doesn't. And it's "Xfce" or "xfce", not "XFCE".
While we're talking about similarities, Xfce's design is actually heavily influenced by CDE, not the Mac. Granted, with successive 4.x releases, we've moved away from that heritage, but you can still see the CDEish roots.
Please, attempting to say my opinion is irrelevant based on my relative youth is a bit weak. I was still old enough to use MS-DOS 5.0, and old enough to upgrade the computer to 6.0 by myself. Either way, I don't read trade mags (not then, and not now). I'm not an IT guy. I'm sure today it would be front-page news on Slashdot, but there was no Slashdot back then.
At any rate, my own personal ignorance of the bug at the time is irrelevant. The bottom line is that your assertion that everyone used the compression feature and that that was the only reason people upgraded is just false.
The only mistake made here was the plaintiffs' lawyer's poor decision to use an overly-broad definition for members of the class. He lost. Get over it.
You totally missed my point. I don't care what features were marketed heavily. I was simply stating that I personally did not use the feature, and therefore there was no reason that I should have been eligible to be a member of this class (though I would have been). The law is riddled with loopholes and requires very precise language if you want to argue your position without leaving (too much) room to be shot down. A blanket inclusion for everyone who bought the product -- whether or not they used the feature or not -- was a bad move, and they paid for it by losing the case.
Man, what is it with people and bad analogies today? I think we can all reasonably say that it's impossible to use a car (safely!) without using the brakes. Therefore, defective brakes have the undeniable potential to cause real harm.
However, MS-DOS 6.0 was perfectly usable without the use of the disk compression software. I myself personally used 6.0, and never used the compression software (in fact, I didn't even know it was faulty until now). So people like me, who didn't use the compression software at all, and were not harmed by the flaw, deserve a free upgrade? I don't think so.
It has nothing to do with being a core feature. What matters is that the class specified something to the effect of "anyone who purchased MS-DOS 6.0 may join this class". This is the law we're talking about. You have to be more precise than that. The onus is on the plaintiffs' lawyer(s) to get the proper class certified. If they can't do that, it's really their fault that they lost. The defendant's lawyer was doing her job to the best of her ability.
And, for the record, I used MS-DOS 5.0, 6.0, and 6.22, and I never used the compression features; in fact, to this day I had no idea there was a problem with it in 6.0. So really, you can say all you want about how "everyone you know" was using it, but your tiny sample size makes your statistic meaningless. I used DOS 6.0, but I was not harmed by this software failure, so I had no business being a member of that class. Though I could have been one, and by your logic should have gotten a free upgrade to 6.22 to fix a bug that had caused me no harm.
That would be like arguing that not everyone who has potentially defective silicone-gel breast implants should have them removed - you've got to wait until they burst and you get all sorts of auto-immune diseases, and THEN you can sue for the cost of getting them removed, and your damages.
Your analogy is flawed. Allowing this class would be like saying that every woman who has small breasts -- even those who do not intend to get breast enhancement surgery -- should be allowed to be plaintiffs in a case about potentially-defective implants. Even that doesn't completely work, but that's what you get when you try to make analogies with a flawed premise, I suppose.
Bottom line is that people who bought MS-DOS 6.0 and had no intention of using the compression features were not and could not be harmed by the software bug, and thus had no place in the class action.
Perhaps it's not monopolistic in the sense that they used their market position to stifle competition, but they certainly successfully cornerned the market of "people who want to play Halo". With a single exchange of funds, anyone who wanted to play Halo 2 had to buy an XBox.
I know a guy who hates Microsoft, but bought an XBox because he just *had* to play Halo 2.
It's not even really his fault; it's just human nature. When people feel strongly about something the things that support their position tend to be the things that stick in their minds.
I'm really starting to wonder if this is even a bad thing. "The opposition" feeds the teeming masses loads and loads of crap to get what they want, so does it really hurt for "us" to bend the truth a little to make that crap seem a little scarier than it really is?
It's virtually impossible to make every consumer out there understand the fine details of why new-fangled rights-stealing technology X is bad (especially when X is followed by Y, Z, W K, L, and F), so why not simplify, and sure, lie a little if necessary?
I'll stop before this becomes an "ends justifying the means" discussion...
Have you noticed that programmers are not exactly ideal gramarians?
No, actually, I hadn't. Some of the better programmers I know are above average in their language skills. I'm not surprised, either. After all, when you break it down, it's just ordered syntax: something programmers can generally handle pretty well.
Hell, a good number of the programmers I know don't even speak English as their native language, and yet their written English skills are better than many native speakers.
And I'm sure "they" do pay to use the port: docking fees, leasing piers, etc., etc. As I said, nothing comes for free.
My point isn't necessarily that the federal gov't shouldn't help, it's just that I've seen a lot of ill will thrown at the feds for not sufficiently preparing for the disaster, when it seems that the more local sources of preparation were not used to their fullest extent either.
I'm no fan of Bush or his administration, but why does this need to be the federal gov't's responsibility? Why didn't Louisiana work harder to put up the money? What about the city itself? So maybe the people that live there would have to pay some extra taxes, but nothing comes for free. If you want to live in a high-risk area like that, you have to pay for the infrastructure that protects you.
Actually, the pcHDTV HD3000 DVB drivers (yes, the DVB, not the V4L) have been in the mainline kernel since 2.6.12rc2. I have one and I've been using the in-kernel drivers for a while now.
Slashdot Mirror
On that topic, goat-rendering? Is it a 2D or 3D rendering of goats? Methinks he means goat-rending? It's hard to take someone seriously when they can't even use English properly when insulting your work.
Obligatory: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."
I won't get into the point that this sounds like you'd be happy to sell cigarettes to a 10-year-old, since it seems like other posters have already taken care of it.
And to continue the trend... I hate to do this to you, but the last comma in your sentence should be a semicolon (and moved outside the single quotes).
All good points. I didn't look at the OP's posting history, so you're one-up on me there. Perhaps in this case, you're right: this guy is just trying to cultivate some sort of bad-ass reputation by spouting off about how much "the norm" is stupid. Knowing nothing about someone aside from a single Slashdot post, I'd that conclusion might be a bit presumptuous, but with a little more information, who knows...
I guess this is similar to this continuing thread: based on the single post of yours, you sounded basically exactly like the OP, at least from my perspective: someone trying to validate their life choices by publically putting down the opposite viewpoint. Now, after seeing a longer, more well-thought-out comment, my opinion changes. I'm not saying you were wrong in your previous post, or that you were wrong in how you said it, just that it was a one-off response that gave a bad (first) impression. Amusingly, that's somewhat similar to the topic at hand, the tendency for business types to get bad impressions from people who don't dress like they do.
Regarding your point about not running down the street exclaiming that I don't care what people think (nice funny image, btw), I tend to think it's hard to draw parallels that way: Slashdot is an easily-accessible soapbox where people can regularly let off steam in a quasi-anonymous manner. Someone who rants on Slashdot about something is unlikely to do the same in a (physically) public location. That's not to say you don't have a valid point -- quite the opposite -- but that kind of thing just bugs me a bit.
At any rate, thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'd like to think that I, in your position, would have taken the time to do the same, but more likely I would have just moved on, or, depending on my mood, continued to flame.
Or maybe he just cares about not caring about what he wears, and is fed up with people like you who seem to think he should care. I'd venture to say even that it seems like your need to put down people who don't think like you do is a way for you to legitimize your life choices. Good luck with that.
Howard Stern was fined because he violated the rules set forth for use of a public resource: namely, the frequency spectrum. I don't see that as a freedom of speech issue.
Your quote from the EFF needs more context to have much use in this argument. So what if something is deemed "obscene"? What can and can't I do with that material that would actually be relevant to me? I'd imagine very little.
By the way, you might want to word things a bit clearer in your original post: "illegal" and "not protected by the first amendment" are not the same things.
Is it ideal? No, I don't think so. But your original point wasn't exactly valid: at best, you bent the truth so it favored your argument. At any rate, I'd much rather the situation where someone gets fined for saying "fuck" on the air, over being "suppressed" for expressing opinions critical of the government.
The parent is talking about general consequences. Unless I'm mistaken, the context under which we're calling speech "free" here is that the government can't punish you for saying things it doesn't like to hear. Getting beaten up by a private citizen because you're an asshole is an entirely different matter. The difference here is that the Jews were carted off to camps in Nazi Germany. Not in the US.
While we're talking about similarities, Xfce's design is actually heavily influenced by CDE, not the Mac. Granted, with successive 4.x releases, we've moved away from that heritage, but you can still see the CDEish roots.
Europe's penis, most likely. I didn't realise people who answered that spam were likely to get on the European of the Year ballot.
Why is word count such an important feature? I'm not trying to troll or flame; I'm not a professional or academic writer and I'm honestly curious.
Please, attempting to say my opinion is irrelevant based on my relative youth is a bit weak. I was still old enough to use MS-DOS 5.0, and old enough to upgrade the computer to 6.0 by myself. Either way, I don't read trade mags (not then, and not now). I'm not an IT guy. I'm sure today it would be front-page news on Slashdot, but there was no Slashdot back then.
At any rate, my own personal ignorance of the bug at the time is irrelevant. The bottom line is that your assertion that everyone used the compression feature and that that was the only reason people upgraded is just false.
The only mistake made here was the plaintiffs' lawyer's poor decision to use an overly-broad definition for members of the class. He lost. Get over it.
You totally missed my point. I don't care what features were marketed heavily. I was simply stating that I personally did not use the feature, and therefore there was no reason that I should have been eligible to be a member of this class (though I would have been). The law is riddled with loopholes and requires very precise language if you want to argue your position without leaving (too much) room to be shot down. A blanket inclusion for everyone who bought the product -- whether or not they used the feature or not -- was a bad move, and they paid for it by losing the case.
Man, what is it with people and bad analogies today? I think we can all reasonably say that it's impossible to use a car (safely!) without using the brakes. Therefore, defective brakes have the undeniable potential to cause real harm.
However, MS-DOS 6.0 was perfectly usable without the use of the disk compression software. I myself personally used 6.0, and never used the compression software (in fact, I didn't even know it was faulty until now). So people like me, who didn't use the compression software at all, and were not harmed by the flaw, deserve a free upgrade? I don't think so.
It has nothing to do with being a core feature. What matters is that the class specified something to the effect of "anyone who purchased MS-DOS 6.0 may join this class". This is the law we're talking about. You have to be more precise than that. The onus is on the plaintiffs' lawyer(s) to get the proper class certified. If they can't do that, it's really their fault that they lost. The defendant's lawyer was doing her job to the best of her ability.
And, for the record, I used MS-DOS 5.0, 6.0, and 6.22, and I never used the compression features; in fact, to this day I had no idea there was a problem with it in 6.0. So really, you can say all you want about how "everyone you know" was using it, but your tiny sample size makes your statistic meaningless. I used DOS 6.0, but I was not harmed by this software failure, so I had no business being a member of that class. Though I could have been one, and by your logic should have gotten a free upgrade to 6.22 to fix a bug that had caused me no harm.
Bottom line is that people who bought MS-DOS 6.0 and had no intention of using the compression features were not and could not be harmed by the software bug, and thus had no place in the class action.
Perhaps it's not monopolistic in the sense that they used their market position to stifle competition, but they certainly successfully cornerned the market of "people who want to play Halo". With a single exchange of funds, anyone who wanted to play Halo 2 had to buy an XBox.
I know a guy who hates Microsoft, but bought an XBox because he just *had* to play Halo 2.
It's virtually impossible to make every consumer out there understand the fine details of why new-fangled rights-stealing technology X is bad (especially when X is followed by Y, Z, W K, L, and F), so why not simplify, and sure, lie a little if necessary?
I'll stop before this becomes an "ends justifying the means" discussion...
Hell, a good number of the programmers I know don't even speak English as their native language, and yet their written English skills are better than many native speakers.
And I'm sure "they" do pay to use the port: docking fees, leasing piers, etc., etc. As I said, nothing comes for free.
My point isn't necessarily that the federal gov't shouldn't help, it's just that I've seen a lot of ill will thrown at the feds for not sufficiently preparing for the disaster, when it seems that the more local sources of preparation were not used to their fullest extent either.
I'm no fan of Bush or his administration, but why does this need to be the federal gov't's responsibility? Why didn't Louisiana work harder to put up the money? What about the city itself? So maybe the people that live there would have to pay some extra taxes, but nothing comes for free. If you want to live in a high-risk area like that, you have to pay for the infrastructure that protects you.
Actually, the pcHDTV HD3000 DVB drivers (yes, the DVB, not the V4L) have been in the mainline kernel since 2.6.12rc2. I have one and I've been using the in-kernel drivers for a while now.