The construction 'best-selling author' is used very frequently and is well established.
i'm not going to debate this particular situation, but i'd like to warn against this statement. just because something's used frequently and is well established, it doesn't mean it's correct. you could say the mafia was used frequently (for nefarious purposes) and was well-established. i doubt many people would consider them right.
yeah yeah, argue argue, i'm just playing devils' advocate because i'm bored. smile, it's heathier than arguing.
you _do_ make a good point, when you have long lists of files. however, for me, this isn't a problem, as the songs i listen to frequently are all pretty-well organised.
i think i'm just not a fan of the hand movement required to use it. i'd rather have a pressure/duration-sensitive button, or a small scrolling wheel, or something of that nature. just my preference. we can debate the merits of either approach all day, but the fact of the matter is that one works better for you, and one works better for me. in case you didn't notice, i was expressing an _opinion_ in my original post. in general, opinions based on personal taste can't be judged as right or wrong. my view on this is just as valid or 'correct' as yours.
as someone else already pointed out, holding down pause (sorry, forgot it was pause and not stop), supposedly turns the device off, but it would remain sucking battery for quite some time after that. and as for no stop button, yeah, that does bother me. you can think whatever you want about that, but it bothers _me_, and that's what matters to _me_.
finally, i'm not an "average user". and i'm not saying that the iPod isn't fine for average users. as with all other comments on/., mine was a _personal opinion_. you can argue with it all you want, but my opinion is just as correct as yours.
while you're making some gross oversimplifications and this is an obvious troll, i can't help but partially agree. i despise the stupid wheel, the non-responsive buttons (when i push a button, i like to feel it depressing), and the lack of an off button (no, holding down "stop" until i _think_ it's turned off is _not_ an off button). the on-screen UI is pretty well laid-out, but it feels more like a "ok, we have a limited number of buttons, let's see what we can design to fit into that restriction", rather than something designed in a less-restrictive manner. but hey, what do i know - it's wildly successful.
as for the fanaticism surrounding it, it's just your typical "in-crowd" fad. except that the in-crowd is a bit more geeky than usual. will something better come along? probably. but i don't really care. i'm just waiting until i can afford one of these.
i think it's the interface. i've heard some die-hard iPod fans say that it's "the only mp3 player out there with a usable interface". personally, i'm not a big fan of it. i dislike the wheel - i like buttons. nice responsive buttons that i can press and i know when they're pressed. but then again, i'm a geek and a software developer, so my interface tastes don't necessarily match up with what's considered mainstream...
Plus Verizon is the local telephone monopoly in this area, I don't want to voluntarially give additionnal business to any monopoly. They've sucessfully challanged the law which requires them to share their wires with competitors.
i don't have a beef with their legal challenge. they were basically required to share their infrastructure with their competitors at less than cost. yeah, sure, i want to go and plunk down billions of dollars to string up and bury cable, and then pay to maintain it while someone else profits off of it, all while getting paid a pittance in compensation. i think not.
i don't particularly understand why this is necessary. in a corporate environment, i don't see why it's a problem to just mandate that everyone use a particular service. why waste ridiculous amounts of money on an overpriced, most likely buggy, MS product, when you can solve the problem simply by saying "everyone will be required to use AIM for IM in this workplace". the only thing you lose is the centralised logging, which you could probably implement yourself with a proxy.
personally, i don't know why they want to use the commercial IM systems anyway. anything the employees say via an IM get sent to the IM network, in most cases in the clear. i wouldn't want this for possibly-sensitive communications. it would make more sense to me if i were a corporation to put up a jabber server and have it be for company use only. that way the traffic never leaves the corporate network (assuming we're not talking about WAN links). even if it does, i believe jabber supports SSL now, doesn't it?
do you see my point that there's a difference between having to rely on multiple, disparate, uncommunicative software vendors for a single task, (windows), and having a single point of contact, the distro, for packaging concerns (linux)? i'll give you a hint: one of them is more consistent and more likely to present the user with a coherent package management solution, and the other is not.
i'm not arguing with the fact that both relies on things being "properly configured" - i agree with you on that. but for windows it's an almost certain impossibility (at present), where on linux it's generally already the status quo (at least for distros that provide a large variety of packages).
not really. the point is that windows lacks both packages and package management.
with a "well-configured linux environment" you get a list of applications which are all written and maintained by different people, but you have a package management interface where the list of applications and the installation/uninstallation procedures are all managed by a single entity (or something close to one. RPM, apt, portage, etc. have an enforced way of keeping track of every file that a software package installs on the system, and then has a way of removing those files.
the closest analogue to package management that windows has is the "add/remove programs" control panel. unfortunately, the _mechanism_ for this removal relies on the individual software vendors. not only can the vendors neglect to supply a removal option, but they can also easily provide a substandard or incorrect removal procedure. and this says nothing of the install procedure, which can be very different depending on the vendor or pacakge. this also says nothing of the software _discovery_ procedure - you'r pretty much on your own in windows looking for software.
I've just had a hard time convincing people that this "dinosaur program" or something called 'Mozilla Firefox' are "real web-browsers".
really? i've never had any problems telling people that "dreamweaver" is a "real web developing application". i'm sure with a few minutes we could come up with a bunch more successful, real-world products with "silly" names.
i couldn't agree with this more. let's say for a minute that everything mentioned in the movie is an absolute fact. fine. but does it not occur to people that these facts are selected and presented in a specific way to elicit a specific reaction?
does that make the movie without value? certainly not. it represents a view of the facts. a very biased and directed view, but a view, nonetheless. it's something to use on which to base your opinions, nothing more. and, since the best opinions are based on the greatest number of facts and viewpoints, you'd do yourself a service by doing more research of your own, and by seeing what extremists on the other side of the spectrum have to say. as the cliche goes, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
for me, it's not really blatant dishonesty that bothers me, but it's the bending of the truth for the purposes of directing people's reactions.
i can't find it now, but moore had posted on his website that bill o'reilly had left the preview screening of fahrenheit 9/11 half-way through the movie. moore said he confronted o'reilly, and o'reilly tried to change the subject by asking "when are you going to come on my show?", to which moore responded, "i'll come on your show if you stay for the rest of the movie." moore says o'reilly left without another word. this was all moore said on his website about the incident.
on his show, o'reilly made mention of this, but included some information that moore "conveniently" left out. apparently, there were some delays - the screening of the movie started over an hour after it was supposed to, and o'reilly, being the busy man he is, was late for interviews and meetings - and he told moore this when he was confronted. had the screening run on time, he would have been able to stay for the whole thing.
now, this is all hearsay - moore says this happened, o'reilly says that happened. who can say what _really_ happened? i'll let you decide.
uh-uh. it is correct that the x.org server is a recent fork (of xfree86 4.3.99, i believe... or maybe it was 4.4.0rc-something). anyway, yes, the x.org release is almost identical to xfree86 4.4.0, so drivers should work with either. however, this has nothing to do with the X11 standard. the X11 standard is a wire protocol that details how clients communicate with the server. the drivers are entirely implementation-dependent. for example, xfree86/x.org drivers aren't going to work with keith packard's kdrive server (at least not at present; i recall some talk about porting xfree86's driver layer to kdrive...).
and the term light-year is a measurement of both time and distance: the distance that light travels in a year. hence the name light-year.
<pedant mode>
your definition is correct, but light-year is not a measure of both time and distance. it is a measure of distance that uses a property of a physical phenomenon as a metric. a light-year has _nothing_ to do with measuring intervals of time.
</pedant mode>
not sure, but perhaps you're actually thinking of "mano a mano", which means "hand to hand" (as in, hand-to-hand combat). still though, your point is valid ^_~.
not-so-random men in tights quote: "mano a mano, man to man, just you, and me, and my... GUARDS!"
He is very reasonable and debates with him are always productive. He's also not out to invade peoples homes to find pirate movies and songs, though many of the people who side with him are.
while i'm sure we'll both agree on the premise that a debate that degenerates into petty namecalling and the like is a waste of time, and that valenti doesn't seem to be the kind of person to engage in that type of thing, i have to stop there.
valenti does what he does and acts how he acts for one reason only: to get what he wants. that's not, in and of itself, unreasonable. what he wants, however, is money. money at the expense consumers and their freedoms.
why does the MPAA not employ RIAA-esque tactics to try to control movie sharing? because they want to see how it goes with the RIAA. they know full well that their losses due to sharing are nowhere near what they allege. they can stand to wait a while. if the RIAA's 'sue everyone' tactics were to fail miserably, the MPAA could sit back and think "mmm, glad we didn't try that." the RIAA seems to be much more in the mood to stick its neck out to accomplish their goals. i think the MPAA would rather play it safe, and wait for a tested and proven strategy to emerge.
understand that if valenti was sure that invading people's homes to keep them from trading movies was the most sound _business_ decision to make, he wouldn't hesitate for a heartbeat.
Valenti does make a good point however. Building your own doesn't count. Try building your own car, not one from other auto makers parts. Make one from scratch using parts you engineered. Then try to get it licenced and street legal. It'll never happen. The same goes for movies. If you don't want to buy the products the industry puts out for watching the media then you don't get to watch the media. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
two points: the first, which i'm sure others have pointed out, is that there are plenty of people that build their own cars from "scratch" (where i define "scratch" to be from off-the-shelf components). i won't speak about people that literally do make their components from scratch, but if they have the capability and resources to do so, i see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to. secondly, the main reasons for the need to get a car inspected and licensed before it can be driven publically are those of safety and environmental protection. you're not going to kill a person with dvd decoder software. you can easily kill someone with a poorly-assembled car. you're not going to pollute the environment with a dvd decoder. you can easily violate emissions regulations by building a poorly-designed car.
put in a different way, if i can create a device to decode dvds, and that device isn't a health, safety, environmental, or any other kind of hazard, there is no reason why i should not be able to do so. economic reasons with hand-wavy 'proofs' will not suffice to change my mind on this.
know this: valenti doesn't care about you. he doesn't care about morality. he doesn't care about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." he only cares about money, and about keeping the empire he's built alive for the years to come.
sounds like you signed a really bad contract... if it were me (yeah, i know, it isn't, and i don't know your situation, etc., etc.), i'd be exercising that right to quit without delay.
while i won't argue with your premise (it's debatable), i will with your "facts." torvalds is indeed employed (getting paid to work in linux, IIRC), and out of all the major figures in the OSS arena, he's one of the last i'd ever label a zealot.
Slashdot Mirror
The construction 'best-selling author' is used very frequently and is well established. i'm not going to debate this particular situation, but i'd like to warn against this statement. just because something's used frequently and is well established, it doesn't mean it's correct. you could say the mafia was used frequently (for nefarious purposes) and was well-established. i doubt many people would consider them right.
yeah yeah, argue argue, i'm just playing devils' advocate because i'm bored. smile, it's heathier than arguing.
you _do_ make a good point, when you have long lists of files. however, for me, this isn't a problem, as the songs i listen to frequently are all pretty-well organised.
i think i'm just not a fan of the hand movement required to use it. i'd rather have a pressure/duration-sensitive button, or a small scrolling wheel, or something of that nature. just my preference. we can debate the merits of either approach all day, but the fact of the matter is that one works better for you, and one works better for me. in case you didn't notice, i was expressing an _opinion_ in my original post. in general, opinions based on personal taste can't be judged as right or wrong. my view on this is just as valid or 'correct' as yours.
as someone else already pointed out, holding down pause (sorry, forgot it was pause and not stop), supposedly turns the device off, but it would remain sucking battery for quite some time after that. and as for no stop button, yeah, that does bother me. you can think whatever you want about that, but it bothers _me_, and that's what matters to _me_. finally, i'm not an "average user". and i'm not saying that the iPod isn't fine for average users. as with all other comments on /., mine was a _personal opinion_. you can argue with it all you want, but my opinion is just as correct as yours.
while you're making some gross oversimplifications and this is an obvious troll, i can't help but partially agree. i despise the stupid wheel, the non-responsive buttons (when i push a button, i like to feel it depressing), and the lack of an off button (no, holding down "stop" until i _think_ it's turned off is _not_ an off button). the on-screen UI is pretty well laid-out, but it feels more like a "ok, we have a limited number of buttons, let's see what we can design to fit into that restriction", rather than something designed in a less-restrictive manner. but hey, what do i know - it's wildly successful.
as for the fanaticism surrounding it, it's just your typical "in-crowd" fad. except that the in-crowd is a bit more geeky than usual. will something better come along? probably. but i don't really care. i'm just waiting until i can afford one of these.
i think it's the interface. i've heard some die-hard iPod fans say that it's "the only mp3 player out there with a usable interface". personally, i'm not a big fan of it. i dislike the wheel - i like buttons. nice responsive buttons that i can press and i know when they're pressed. but then again, i'm a geek and a software developer, so my interface tastes don't necessarily match up with what's considered mainstream...
i don't particularly understand why this is necessary. in a corporate environment, i don't see why it's a problem to just mandate that everyone use a particular service. why waste ridiculous amounts of money on an overpriced, most likely buggy, MS product, when you can solve the problem simply by saying "everyone will be required to use AIM for IM in this workplace". the only thing you lose is the centralised logging, which you could probably implement yourself with a proxy.
personally, i don't know why they want to use the commercial IM systems anyway. anything the employees say via an IM get sent to the IM network, in most cases in the clear. i wouldn't want this for possibly-sensitive communications. it would make more sense to me if i were a corporation to put up a jabber server and have it be for company use only. that way the traffic never leaves the corporate network (assuming we're not talking about WAN links). even if it does, i believe jabber supports SSL now, doesn't it?
do you see my point that there's a difference between having to rely on multiple, disparate, uncommunicative software vendors for a single task, (windows), and having a single point of contact, the distro, for packaging concerns (linux)? i'll give you a hint: one of them is more consistent and more likely to present the user with a coherent package management solution, and the other is not.
i'm not arguing with the fact that both relies on things being "properly configured" - i agree with you on that. but for windows it's an almost certain impossibility (at present), where on linux it's generally already the status quo (at least for distros that provide a large variety of packages).
not really. the point is that windows lacks both packages and package management.
with a "well-configured linux environment" you get a list of applications which are all written and maintained by different people, but you have a package management interface where the list of applications and the installation/uninstallation procedures are all managed by a single entity (or something close to one. RPM, apt, portage, etc. have an enforced way of keeping track of every file that a software package installs on the system, and then has a way of removing those files.
the closest analogue to package management that windows has is the "add/remove programs" control panel. unfortunately, the _mechanism_ for this removal relies on the individual software vendors. not only can the vendors neglect to supply a removal option, but they can also easily provide a substandard or incorrect removal procedure. and this says nothing of the install procedure, which can be very different depending on the vendor or pacakge. this also says nothing of the software _discovery_ procedure - you'r pretty much on your own in windows looking for software.
i don't necessarily agree with them, but the wine folks have their own opinion about that argument.
i couldn't agree with this more. let's say for a minute that everything mentioned in the movie is an absolute fact. fine. but does it not occur to people that these facts are selected and presented in a specific way to elicit a specific reaction?
does that make the movie without value? certainly not. it represents a view of the facts. a very biased and directed view, but a view, nonetheless. it's something to use on which to base your opinions, nothing more. and, since the best opinions are based on the greatest number of facts and viewpoints, you'd do yourself a service by doing more research of your own, and by seeing what extremists on the other side of the spectrum have to say. as the cliche goes, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
for me, it's not really blatant dishonesty that bothers me, but it's the bending of the truth for the purposes of directing people's reactions.
i can't find it now, but moore had posted on his website that bill o'reilly had left the preview screening of fahrenheit 9/11 half-way through the movie. moore said he confronted o'reilly, and o'reilly tried to change the subject by asking "when are you going to come on my show?", to which moore responded, "i'll come on your show if you stay for the rest of the movie." moore says o'reilly left without another word. this was all moore said on his website about the incident.
on his show, o'reilly made mention of this, but included some information that moore "conveniently" left out. apparently, there were some delays - the screening of the movie started over an hour after it was supposed to, and o'reilly, being the busy man he is, was late for interviews and meetings - and he told moore this when he was confronted. had the screening run on time, he would have been able to stay for the whole thing.
now, this is all hearsay - moore says this happened, o'reilly says that happened. who can say what _really_ happened? i'll let you decide.
sure, i'll take a few seconds to feed the troll.
SPF uses DNS TXT records, and doesn't need any special support from the DNS server. djbdns can handle SPF just fine.
i think what the OP means is that the port NTP runs on (37, is it?) is blocked (outgoing) at the firewall.
uh-uh. it is correct that the x.org server is a recent fork (of xfree86 4.3.99, i believe... or maybe it was 4.4.0rc-something). anyway, yes, the x.org release is almost identical to xfree86 4.4.0, so drivers should work with either. however, this has nothing to do with the X11 standard. the X11 standard is a wire protocol that details how clients communicate with the server. the drivers are entirely implementation-dependent. for example, xfree86/x.org drivers aren't going to work with keith packard's kdrive server (at least not at present; i recall some talk about porting xfree86's driver layer to kdrive...).
i understand you seem to think that the british are god's gift to humour, irony, and satire, but please - grow up.
your definition is correct, but light-year is not a measure of both time and distance. it is a measure of distance that uses a property of a physical phenomenon as a metric. a light-year has _nothing_ to do with measuring intervals of time.
</pedant mode>
not sure, but perhaps you're actually thinking of "mano a mano", which means "hand to hand" (as in, hand-to-hand combat). still though, your point is valid ^_~.
not-so-random men in tights quote: "mano a mano, man to man, just you, and me, and my... GUARDS!"
valenti does what he does and acts how he acts for one reason only: to get what he wants. that's not, in and of itself, unreasonable. what he wants, however, is money. money at the expense consumers and their freedoms.
why does the MPAA not employ RIAA-esque tactics to try to control movie sharing? because they want to see how it goes with the RIAA. they know full well that their losses due to sharing are nowhere near what they allege. they can stand to wait a while. if the RIAA's 'sue everyone' tactics were to fail miserably, the MPAA could sit back and think "mmm, glad we didn't try that." the RIAA seems to be much more in the mood to stick its neck out to accomplish their goals. i think the MPAA would rather play it safe, and wait for a tested and proven strategy to emerge.
understand that if valenti was sure that invading people's homes to keep them from trading movies was the most sound _business_ decision to make, he wouldn't hesitate for a heartbeat. two points: the first, which i'm sure others have pointed out, is that there are plenty of people that build their own cars from "scratch" (where i define "scratch" to be from off-the-shelf components). i won't speak about people that literally do make their components from scratch, but if they have the capability and resources to do so, i see no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to. secondly, the main reasons for the need to get a car inspected and licensed before it can be driven publically are those of safety and environmental protection. you're not going to kill a person with dvd decoder software. you can easily kill someone with a poorly-assembled car. you're not going to pollute the environment with a dvd decoder. you can easily violate emissions regulations by building a poorly-designed car.
put in a different way, if i can create a device to decode dvds, and that device isn't a health, safety, environmental, or any other kind of hazard, there is no reason why i should not be able to do so. economic reasons with hand-wavy 'proofs' will not suffice to change my mind on this.
know this: valenti doesn't care about you. he doesn't care about morality. he doesn't care about "the land of the free and the home of the brave." he only cares about money, and about keeping the empire he's built alive for the years to come.
hey, at least that OS comes with a text editor. that's #1...
sounds like you signed a really bad contract... if it were me (yeah, i know, it isn't, and i don't know your situation, etc., etc.), i'd be exercising that right to quit without delay.
while i won't argue with your premise (it's debatable), i will with your "facts." torvalds is indeed employed (getting paid to work in linux, IIRC), and out of all the major figures in the OSS arena, he's one of the last i'd ever label a zealot.
i'm not really expecting too much from this movie either way. might as well get a hot chick to play samus and at least make it enjoyable to watch.