This "I for one welcome..." thing is used many times a day, and stopped being funny a long, long time ago. Look, I accept the fact that an original joke is difficult to assemble, but please, people... exercise a little discretion. Stop modding this up.
...attempt to co-opt something "hip" and "cool" and totally out of context...
Oh please. I'm as much a geek as the next guy, but I'm not going to pretend there's anything "hip" or "cool" about open source.
I can see it now. "Hey baby. I'm hip. Check out my apache install. I'm so cool, I'm running linux. Now how about going back to your place? No? What... that guy? What's so great about him? Sure, he knows wines, plays tennis, and can dance, but seriously, isn't it cooler to know all the switches to the gnu c++ compiler?"
I'm not saying there's no appeal, but that appeal isn't widespread enough to cross into the realm of "hip" and "cool". We've all seen those terrible television spots where balding parents make terribly embarassing attempts to show how hip they are. Lets apply our adjectives a little more judiciously.
If I have a TV and it breaks because of a manufacturing defect, that is the fault of the manufacturer. If five years later I still have a broken TV, that's my fault. Why is this concept so difficult?
In my opinion you can only blame the existence of a fixable problem on its root cause for so long. At some point you take ownership. We already have a strong culture of victimhood. It's a pet peeve of mine. I'm not absolving Microsoft of their original responsibility.
To anyone who is going to suggest remedies to replace the drive/find a use for the X-Box, thank you, but I'm aware of most of them I just stopped caring
How about a free fix? For many people with Thomson drives, adjusting a potentiometer does the trick.
The fact that it was shipped with a crappy drive is Microsoft's fault. The fact that you currently have a large doorstop is yours.
I'm surprised at some of the uninformed drivel being passed around here.
People are actually suggesting that wanting to do something a lot somehow constitutes addiction. It doesn't. It just means they really enjoy it.
Myself, I had a cocaine problem for a year and a half. Despite the fact that a cocaine addiction is almost entirely psychological, there were physiological manifestations. When I knew I was going to buy some, my attention span would shorten, my mannerisms would change and become twitchy, I would be unable to sleep, and I would have to defecate more frequently. We're talking partial liquification. Without doubt a cocaine problem is the surest cure for constipation.
Just wanting to play games real bad doesn't cut it. People with a psychological addiction are not simply anxious to get back to the game.
I have no doubt at all that games can be psychologically addicting. I just question whether people who say, "Oh he's totally addicted to WoW", really have any idea what constitutes addiction.
"Here's a hint. You are disposable. You aren't worth shit to your employer."
No... YOU aren't worth shit to YOUR employer. I'm in the fortunate position of being worth something to my employer. I've been with them for 7 years, and I've had raises of 4 to 6 percent every year. Last year my annual bonus was about $10,000, thanks to a great performance evaluation.
Pro-union folks would have you believe... well, as you put it...
"You aren't worth shit to your employer. Think you have a lot of in house knowledge or specialised skills that you've built up over many years? Doesn't mean shit. Management will crap all over you given half the chance and replace you with two workers each being paid half your wage. And then they'll get paid a bonus for doing it."
That kind of blanket statement is ridiculous, overblown... and exactly what I expect from unions - the same people who vilify workers with family and mortgages who cross during extended strike disputes, likening them to soul-less leeches, claiming that their "union family" should somehow supercede the feeding of their "blood family". I've seen more stupidity and shortsightedness from unions than I have EVER seen from management.
I work in the oil pipeline industry. Of course, I'm in the IT division. Our company - one of the largest in the world - is not unionized, and yet somehow we are still treated extremely well.
Really, it seems like unions exist primarily to keep the marginal or substandard workers from being fired.
There's a lot of debate concerning the effect, if any, that violence in entertainment has on todays youth. It's a hot topic, certainly. After all, children are indeed the future.
Violence is everywhere. Television, movies, video games, comic books... and as many have pointed out, the natural and healthy act of sex is far more vilified. It doesn't make sense to me, but then not much does.
Do people learn violence from these sources? Wll, let's flip the question around. Do children learn good values such as sharing and cooperation from programs like Sesame Street? Do they learn lessons on family from such venerable shows as Little House on the Prairie?
If you believe that children have the capability of learning positive lessons from the media, then you cannot simultaneously believe that they are incapable of absorbing the negative ones. It's a huge contradiction, and it simply can't be right.
Children are sponges, as any parent can certainly confirm. They are constantly absorbing everything around them. There is NO way that a child can't be picking up the poison with the sugar.
The media is unlikely to change because adults - including me - want those violent programs. We like our fringe entertainment. Shows like CSI are popular for a reason. Likewise, video game companies are unlikely to change. The majority of video game purchases are made by people over eighteen, and again we like our combat simulations, crime wave games, and other adult titles.
So what can parents do? Well, for starters, they could turn on the content filters that have been included on new televisions for a number of years... but the best choice is to simply pay attention and stay involved with their children. I'm not a parent. I'm only a concerned citizen, so I know that's easy for me to say.
When I was a kid I don't recall reading about students shooting other students or teachers. Metal detectors in schools was a something that existed in the roughest of places in the United States. But the news these days scares me. I'm genuinely worried about what our children are learning.
We'd damn well better teach them compassion, because they will run the seniors homes that we will one day inhabit.
Taken from my blog, September 14. Yes, it's only partially on topic - I did read the FA.
A few million people play this game. Many of them are obsessed by it, and are extremely argumentative and vocal.
Did you expect something along the lines of specific flaw admissions or real technical discussions?
Anything they said will be seized upon by all sorts of aggravated pinheads. If they mention a technical issue, a couple thousand know-it-alls will chime in with ridiculous high-level responses claiming it's not a problem, and that Blizzard is just incompetent. In fact, any real discussion is going to result in nothing but lost time and face on their part, because everybody seems to think they know better.
In the end, the PR approach is simply the best way to handle this type of situation.
Sony (and other labels) are just distributors and promotors in this day and age when you can have a billion-track studio at home for peanuts, and hire in your mastering experts for a session. Yet, the labels want to own it all, for eternity. Bollocks.
Spoken like somebody without a clue.
A properly wired and isolated recording studio costs a great deal of money, not least for soundproofing. Add to that say, oh, $10,000 worth of microphones (at least), and the cost of GOOD hardware plus software, plus the cost for the engineers, and you start to understand why most people don't go that route. A pro-grade signal chain for vocals alone is gonna run you at least a few thousand.
A quality product demands quality hardware, space and skills. You can record a band in a basement with $1000 worth of gear, a $1000 audio interface and Cubase, but it's not going to be good enough for production no matter what you do with it.
Why taunt the slashdot dweebs? Most would feel out of place there even after taking the various pharmaceuticals available onsite. It's a party, and we know how well geeks do at parties.
Imagine two people arguing through a thick mental fog of ecstasy, pot and a little ketamine over the question of which linux distro is more secure out of the box. Somebody would be bound to pants you.
You managed to get in the monstrous size of your display, the massive strength of your computer hardware, the size of your ALTERNATE television - an LCD, and you even put "(not a typo)" in there, as if to suggest we might all suspect you mean 10.5 inches, or perhaps 15 inches, rather than 105 inches.
Your penis must be less than 2 inches. It's the only explanation.
They aren't. Spy satellites are intelligence-gathering devices that allow you to know where to point your weapons. They're no more a weapon themselves than your lungs are a weapon - hey, without lungs you'd have no oxygen to power your muscles to move your finger to press the button that fires the nuke that actually is a weapon...
Mentally separating high-tech weapons from the systems used to guide them seems like a stretch. If a weapon is guided by a satellite, and cannot fnction with reasonable accuracy without that data, then it seems to me that the satellite is part of the weapon.
It's akin to handing somebody a gun barrel without giving them a way to aim. While you could argue the hand pulling the trigger is not a weapon, it's much harder to argue the same for the sight/scope.
Kind a, thats why i lost all my data of 4 years because of the service pack 1 installer.
Actually, you didn't lose your data of 4 years because of the service pack 1 installer. You lost it because apparently you were too stupid to back up your data for four years.
...but of course the "kernal of truth" joking is often the funniest.
If I were him I would have immediately ignored anything along the lines of, "Do you think Microsoft is outright evil, or just misguided?", or "Why is Microsoft trying to [insert dastardly deed here]?"
I can't wait to see their contributions. Oh wait, you mean they are just demanding and doing nothing?
These companies are generally paying somebody, such as Red Hat. They aren't interested in development, nor should they be. They want to solve a business problem.
I can't think of a better way to stunt the further growth of linux than by ignoring people who can use the product but who don't want to develop.
Make your site warn away IE users, then post it to Slashdot. Clearly the guy is just trying to bolster his ego by being elitist, while looking for a pat on the back.
In a world that reinforces the negative, we have to shore up our self-image when we can. Leave him his outlet.
A lock-out is the situation where the workers are ready to negotiate a deal, but management refuses to talk to them at all, and refuses to allow them work in the meantime under the old contract.
Management has allowed them to continue working without a contract for a number of years now.
What the union wants is guaranteed job security. Problem is, they're clinging to contracts written back when they were working under a government-owned business with 20 year old technology. Now they work for a for-profit company in a truly global technical world. They want to barricade the door and keep out the future.
Alas, I can't see it.
Nor do I care. Telus staff have screwed up everything I've ever asked of them.
The new contract is long on everything else, including a promise to try to relocate within the company if outsourcing occurs. I have no sympathy for these people.
Unions were necessary at one point. I don't believe they are necessary now. Especially at Telus. Non-union workers at Telus are not underpaid and are looked after pretty well. It's the union that is responsible for the stagnant wages.
The problem is not linux, it is manufacturer support.
Sure you can buy ice cream. Just remember that this ice cream doesn't work with a lot of cups, cones, bowls or spoons. And even if it claims to work, it may only allow you to take bites in 1/2 teaspoon sizes or less. But if you wait long enough, it's sure to improve.
But it's totally worth it because you're no longer giving your hard-earned money to those bastards at Baskin-Robbins.
Most anime fails to connect with Americans because the two cultures have dramatically different requirements from their media.
Americans like their dotted lines in place. Japanese are much more forgiving of the unexplained.
At the same time, in Anime so much of the implied spiritualism is unexplained (if it really exists at all) that American's are just lost when trying to interpret it.
Slashdot Mirror
This "I for one welcome..." thing is used many times a day, and stopped being funny a long, long time ago. Look, I accept the fact that an original joke is difficult to assemble, but please, people... exercise a little discretion. Stop modding this up.
...attempt to co-opt something "hip" and "cool" and totally out of context...
Oh please. I'm as much a geek as the next guy, but I'm not going to pretend there's anything "hip" or "cool" about open source.
I can see it now. "Hey baby. I'm hip. Check out my apache install. I'm so cool, I'm running linux. Now how about going back to your place? No? What... that guy? What's so great about him? Sure, he knows wines, plays tennis, and can dance, but seriously, isn't it cooler to know all the switches to the gnu c++ compiler?"
I'm not saying there's no appeal, but that appeal isn't widespread enough to cross into the realm of "hip" and "cool". We've all seen those terrible television spots where balding parents make terribly embarassing attempts to show how hip they are. Lets apply our adjectives a little more judiciously.
If I have a TV and it breaks because of a manufacturing defect, that is the fault of the manufacturer. If five years later I still have a broken TV, that's my fault. Why is this concept so difficult?
In my opinion you can only blame the existence of a fixable problem on its root cause for so long. At some point you take ownership. We already have a strong culture of victimhood. It's a pet peeve of mine. I'm not absolving Microsoft of their original responsibility.
To anyone who is going to suggest remedies to replace the drive/find a use for the X-Box, thank you, but I'm aware of most of them I just stopped caring
How about a free fix? For many people with Thomson drives, adjusting a potentiometer does the trick.
The fact that it was shipped with a crappy drive is Microsoft's fault. The fact that you currently have a large doorstop is yours.
I'm surprised at some of the uninformed drivel being passed around here.
People are actually suggesting that wanting to do something a lot somehow constitutes addiction. It doesn't. It just means they really enjoy it.
Myself, I had a cocaine problem for a year and a half. Despite the fact that a cocaine addiction is almost entirely psychological, there were physiological manifestations. When I knew I was going to buy some, my attention span would shorten, my mannerisms would change and become twitchy, I would be unable to sleep, and I would have to defecate more frequently. We're talking partial liquification. Without doubt a cocaine problem is the surest cure for constipation.
Just wanting to play games real bad doesn't cut it. People with a psychological addiction are not simply anxious to get back to the game.
I have no doubt at all that games can be psychologically addicting. I just question whether people who say, "Oh he's totally addicted to WoW", really have any idea what constitutes addiction.
...to live in a world where you have carte blanche, no accountability, and no process auditors to report to.
In my world substituting infrastructure without due diligence and approvals gets you fired.
"Here's a hint. You are disposable. You aren't worth shit to your employer."
No... YOU aren't worth shit to YOUR employer. I'm in the fortunate position of being worth something to my employer. I've been with them for 7 years, and I've had raises of 4 to 6 percent every year. Last year my annual bonus was about $10,000, thanks to a great performance evaluation.
Pro-union folks would have you believe... well, as you put it...
"You aren't worth shit to your employer. Think you have a lot of in house knowledge or specialised skills that you've built up over many years? Doesn't mean shit. Management will crap all over you given half the chance and replace you with two workers each being paid half your wage. And then they'll get paid a bonus for doing it."
That kind of blanket statement is ridiculous, overblown... and exactly what I expect from unions - the same people who vilify workers with family and mortgages who cross during extended strike disputes, likening them to soul-less leeches, claiming that their "union family" should somehow supercede the feeding of their "blood family". I've seen more stupidity and shortsightedness from unions than I have EVER seen from management.
I work in the oil pipeline industry. Of course, I'm in the IT division. Our company - one of the largest in the world - is not unionized, and yet somehow we are still treated extremely well.
Really, it seems like unions exist primarily to keep the marginal or substandard workers from being fired.
There's nothing about being a doctor or lawyer that intrinsically requires a MS operating system or software.
You're right to a point. Being a doctor or lawyer does not mean you need MS software.
But if you want to use one of the many of industry-specific, specialized software libraries, you might just have to run Windows.
There's a lot of debate concerning the effect, if any, that violence in entertainment has on todays youth. It's a hot topic, certainly. After all, children are indeed the future.
Violence is everywhere. Television, movies, video games, comic books... and as many have pointed out, the natural and healthy act of sex is far more vilified. It doesn't make sense to me, but then not much does.
Do people learn violence from these sources? Wll, let's flip the question around. Do children learn good values such as sharing and cooperation from programs like Sesame Street? Do they learn lessons on family from such venerable shows as Little House on the Prairie?
If you believe that children have the capability of learning positive lessons from the media, then you cannot simultaneously believe that they are incapable of absorbing the negative ones. It's a huge contradiction, and it simply can't be right.
Children are sponges, as any parent can certainly confirm. They are constantly absorbing everything around them. There is NO way that a child can't be picking up the poison with the sugar.
The media is unlikely to change because adults - including me - want those violent programs. We like our fringe entertainment. Shows like CSI are popular for a reason. Likewise, video game companies are unlikely to change. The majority of video game purchases are made by people over eighteen, and again we like our combat simulations, crime wave games, and other adult titles.
So what can parents do? Well, for starters, they could turn on the content filters that have been included on new televisions for a number of years... but the best choice is to simply pay attention and stay involved with their children. I'm not a parent. I'm only a concerned citizen, so I know that's easy for me to say.
When I was a kid I don't recall reading about students shooting other students or teachers. Metal detectors in schools was a something that existed in the roughest of places in the United States. But the news these days scares me. I'm genuinely worried about what our children are learning.
We'd damn well better teach them compassion, because they will run the seniors homes that we will one day inhabit.
Taken from my blog, September 14. Yes, it's only partially on topic - I did read the FA.
A few million people play this game. Many of them are obsessed by it, and are extremely argumentative and vocal.
Did you expect something along the lines of specific flaw admissions or real technical discussions?
Anything they said will be seized upon by all sorts of aggravated pinheads. If they mention a technical issue, a couple thousand know-it-alls will chime in with ridiculous high-level responses claiming it's not a problem, and that Blizzard is just incompetent. In fact, any real discussion is going to result in nothing but lost time and face on their part, because everybody seems to think they know better.
In the end, the PR approach is simply the best way to handle this type of situation.
Sony (and other labels) are just distributors and promotors in this day and age when you can have a billion-track studio at home for peanuts, and hire in your mastering experts for a session. Yet, the labels want to own it all, for eternity. Bollocks.
Spoken like somebody without a clue.
A properly wired and isolated recording studio costs a great deal of money, not least for soundproofing. Add to that say, oh, $10,000 worth of microphones (at least), and the cost of GOOD hardware plus software, plus the cost for the engineers, and you start to understand why most people don't go that route. A pro-grade signal chain for vocals alone is gonna run you at least a few thousand.
A quality product demands quality hardware, space and skills. You can record a band in a basement with $1000 worth of gear, a $1000 audio interface and Cubase, but it's not going to be good enough for production no matter what you do with it.
Why taunt the slashdot dweebs? Most would feel out of place there even after taking the various pharmaceuticals available onsite. It's a party, and we know how well geeks do at parties.
Imagine two people arguing through a thick mental fog of ecstasy, pot and a little ketamine over the question of which linux distro is more secure out of the box. Somebody would be bound to pants you.
You managed to get in the monstrous size of your display, the massive strength of your computer hardware, the size of your ALTERNATE television - an LCD, and you even put "(not a typo)" in there, as if to suggest we might all suspect you mean 10.5 inches, or perhaps 15 inches, rather than 105 inches.
Your penis must be less than 2 inches. It's the only explanation.
They aren't. Spy satellites are intelligence-gathering devices that allow you to know where to point your weapons. They're no more a weapon themselves than your lungs are a weapon - hey, without lungs you'd have no oxygen to power your muscles to move your finger to press the button that fires the nuke that actually is a weapon...
Mentally separating high-tech weapons from the systems used to guide them seems like a stretch. If a weapon is guided by a satellite, and cannot fnction with reasonable accuracy without that data, then it seems to me that the satellite is part of the weapon.
It's akin to handing somebody a gun barrel without giving them a way to aim. While you could argue the hand pulling the trigger is not a weapon, it's much harder to argue the same for the sight/scope.
Kind a, thats why i lost all my data of 4 years because of the service pack 1 installer.
Actually, you didn't lose your data of 4 years because of the service pack 1 installer. You lost it because apparently you were too stupid to back up your data for four years.
You know, hardware fails too. FYI.
...but of course the "kernal of truth" joking is often the funniest.
If I were him I would have immediately ignored anything along the lines of, "Do you think Microsoft is outright evil, or just misguided?", or "Why is Microsoft trying to [insert dastardly deed here]?"
I can't wait to see their contributions. Oh wait, you mean they are just demanding and doing nothing?
These companies are generally paying somebody, such as Red Hat. They aren't interested in development, nor should they be. They want to solve a business problem.
I can't think of a better way to stunt the further growth of linux than by ignoring people who can use the product but who don't want to develop.
Make your site warn away IE users, then post it to Slashdot. Clearly the guy is just trying to bolster his ego by being elitist, while looking for a pat on the back.
In a world that reinforces the negative, we have to shore up our self-image when we can. Leave him his outlet.
A lock-out is the situation where the workers are ready to negotiate a deal, but management refuses to talk to them at all, and refuses to allow them work in the meantime under the old contract.
Management has allowed them to continue working without a contract for a number of years now.
What the union wants is guaranteed job security. Problem is, they're clinging to contracts written back when they were working under a government-owned business with 20 year old technology. Now they work for a for-profit company in a truly global technical world. They want to barricade the door and keep out the future.
Alas, I can't see it.
Nor do I care. Telus staff have screwed up everything I've ever asked of them.
The new contract is long on everything else, including a promise to try to relocate within the company if outsourcing occurs. I have no sympathy for these people.
Unions were necessary at one point. I don't believe they are necessary now. Especially at Telus. Non-union workers at Telus are not underpaid and are looked after pretty well. It's the union that is responsible for the stagnant wages.
The problem is not linux, it is manufacturer support.
Sure you can buy ice cream. Just remember that this ice cream doesn't work with a lot of cups, cones, bowls or spoons. And even if it claims to work, it may only allow you to take bites in 1/2 teaspoon sizes or less. But if you wait long enough, it's sure to improve.
But it's totally worth it because you're no longer giving your hard-earned money to those bastards at Baskin-Robbins.
Slashdot DOS Attacks Cost User His Provider!
Most anime fails to connect with Americans because the two cultures have dramatically different requirements from their media.
Americans like their dotted lines in place. Japanese are much more forgiving of the unexplained.
At the same time, in Anime so much of the implied spiritualism is unexplained (if it really exists at all) that American's are just lost when trying to interpret it.
I tried really hard to make BSD work on our hardware. I finally gave up and tried Linux at another friend's suggestion. It just worked.
And yet when people same the same thing linux/windows, linux advocates blow their stack.
The BSD community chased people away (that's not an indictment of the community, it's just the effect of how things were handled).
And lots of people searching for help get chased away by the linux community. Especially on Usenet.
I was flamed by a core BSD developer for not just writing a driver. HELLO! I need to run a business, not write drivers!
Actually, I'll just stop going through it. But the parallels should be immediately obvious.
You can read obscure rants from marginally intelligent blogs that have only three readers.
Or less than three...