Totally offtopic note: I have been to crete and it is one of my favorite places in the world.
I used to feel the same, but a lot of it has been sadly MacDonaldised to the point of trashiness. I first visited the place in '79, before the tourist industry had had a chance to tighten its grip, and it was sublime in its authenticity. I can't really say the same now...
Unfortunately (from my point of view) this is true. The average (ex-)Windows user will not give a flying fart about the egregious sillinesses the Ubuntu developers have decided to let loose upon an unsuspecting or uninformed world. But Ubuntu will mostly "just work", which will in most cases be good enough, especially given the prevalence of Ubuntu users in forum postings if they run into trouble.
Years ago, I might have cringed as I said this, but Mandriva might be a good choice for a Windows user without a techie background.
Incidentally, just in case anyone's wondering, my own introduction to Linux was Soft Landing Systems (later Slackware), and I now run Arch Linux. Works well for me, but I'll understand if that particular learning curve is too steep.
I have a friend who has been operating what he calls a "startup" for the last 7 years. He has an MBA from a reputable university, and the business has had multiple injections of serious amounts of capital.
But it seems a lot of what I've come to regard as the "MBA Culture" is that the process is supposed to confer some sort of Midas touch: everything is supposed to "just work". From my (cynical) viewpoint, I see no stellar future for his business: if it was ever going to work, it should have taken off within a year or so of the product being developed, but for whatever reason, my friend can't or won't let go.
It's hard to tell a friend that he's being sucked into a Loss Of Perspective Vortex, especially since in this case he doesn't read enough to pick up on the allusion.:-{
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying "Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
...Which is particularly appropriate given that prior to the onset of WWII Churchill was pretty much a washed-up old soak. But (whatever else one may think about him) he was certainly formidable as a war-time leader.
...failure or success is more or less a choice, an activity you do.
This is true. It is also (contrary to popular assumptions) independent of wealth. For instance, I (no false modesty here) consider myself a success, even though by most standards I am actually a pauper. My activities, in conjunction with a certain amount of jiggery-pokery with the banks, just happen to more or less support the way I live and allow me to pursue my various interests.
On the other hand, I have a couple of good friends who are wealthy beyond my wildest dreams ($10^7+) who actually have no intellectual interests, and spend a predominant amount of their time channel-hopping on the TV. This always makes me a bit sad...
I think what these 'successful' people are saying is, "Look, I didn't do anything different in the times when I failed or succeeded. It looked like a good idea, I worked very hard, and nothing came of it.
Well, that's the way things actually work out in life. It also works the other way. My father, who left Reading University in 1959 with a degree in horticulture made a tremendous success of his career just (as he says) by "happening to be in the right place at the right time". Now I'm in my late 40s, I sometimes wish I could say the same, but then (a) I would have missed out on a load of cool things going down and (b) to be truthful, I lack his capacity for sheer dogged application.
Is this sort of thing legal?
Oh wait. Yeah, I guess not.
In one of the supplied links (video clip) there is a police car in the background. Given that the plods didn't lift a finger to stop this guy, that says everything we need to know about the state of our legal system.
The employees are covered for loss of wages by the GEERS scheme
Good luck with that. The Government's own figures tell us that only 54 per cent of claims are processed within 16 weeks, and that there are big shortfalls in the actual payments made. Nice try.
That's entirely the fault of socialism for enabling a conniving bastard like that guy to rise.
You really do not have a fucking clue what you're talking about, do you? Our Western Australian state government is in the power of the so-called "Liberal" party (read extreme right-wing-conservative). Not that the Labor party is any different. Either way, the role of government in Australia is currently deemed to be acting as a facilitator for business.
Which usually means throwing public money into private companies' hands. If you can think of a single definition of socialism that this even remotely fits, do please tell us.
All our democracy really means is that we get to elect our own group of robber barons.
Mike Turner's actions will be judged through the legal system, that is also part of the system, it's like a checks and balances thing.
His actions will not be judged, here in Perth or anywhere else. The Government officials responsible for handing him taxpayers' money will all duck to cover their asses as usual, while he sits in his office in the US rubbing his hands and saying "you is ma bitch! yuk yuk..."
Yes, but in those days BASIC was a toy for snotty-nosed kids. (Many would argue it still is, but that's another matter.)
On that Burroughs machine we had a choice of FORTRAN, Assembler and COBOL. The latter was tedious and long-winded, but had the advantage of being able to produce bombproof code in very large suites of financial software. But fortunately my job as sysprog was to tie everything together, so I got to use the best tools for the job.
Actually, the idea isn't that implausible. I had my wife running Slackware on her computer for several years until she went over to the Dark Side and got a Mac. Actually, she had a good enough reason for the latter: she wanted to use EndNote with MSOffice to write her PhD thesis.
I know there are alternatives and all that, but my point is that so long as you set the machine up well, Linux boxes are just as accessible as any Windows (or indeed Mac) implementation.
Yeah. No operating system known to man prevents you from "writing software badly".
True, up to a point. The best-written software I ever produced was run on a Burroughs B3700 mainframe back in the late '70s, where spare RAM (not being used by the OS, MCP IV) was limited to around 300KB. The machine was running in a bureau situation (younger readers might have to look that up), so CPU time was charged for quite expensively.
COBOL was (and actually still is) perfectly acceptable and efficient for any commercial packages, but some of the Assembly routines I used to write only took up a few tens of bytes of codespace, but I had to think really hard about how they were meant to work. COBOL takes the fun out of life: it doesn't let you write self-modifying code...:-)
Googles interest is to route as much traffic as possible to their services so that they can earn the ad revenues
That was what immediately occurred to me too. Google isn't being *very* evil, it's just trying to maintain its income base. I don't have (or even particularly want) an iPhone, but given Apple's various ways of pursuing its business model, evilness seems to mean different things to different people.
Just to be clear, I'm not particularly bashing Apple (I'm typing this on a MacBook I inherited from my wife when she upgraded to a more recent model), I'm just saying let's not be hypocrites.
If they've burnt your fingers before, why did you go back to them? If any business fucks me over, even once, I NEVER go back to it, and I make a point of telling everybody why.
You must be confused, if you are unfamiliar with the term "democratic socialism."
No, actually I'm not. I've lived in France for many years, and there's still a wide streak of fascism prevalent in their culture. I'm well aware that "Socialism" is not regarded in Europe as the "dirty word" that it is in the US, but one has to remember that the term is used by both communists and fascists alike, but with different implications.
We shouldn't have to hide our information, people should just respect each other enough not to steal their stuff.
That would be a nice warm fuzzy world to live in, but the truth is that on this grossly overpopulated planet, we all HAVE to hide our personal information, because the world is just too full of asswipes to just pretend they don't exist.
So are a vast majority of people from between the hours of 9AM to 3PM every day.
Incidentally, the situation sometimes isn't helped by the legal system. Here in Western Australia, breaking into and stealing from property during the hours of daylight is regarded as a different crime from doing the same thing at night. Go figure. I didn't vote for the craniorectal that came up with that one.:-{
Their right wing is to the left of our left wing. Europeans, including the French, are ALWAYS bragging here about democratic socialism.
You might need to be a bit more careful with your terminology. Hitler's Nazi Party was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party", and we all know where they stood in the political spectrum.
The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing.
I wish I could say otherwise, but you're wrong about that. It will do nothing to stop the production or spread of child pornography, but it will constitute another erosion of freedom of speech or information.
Governments all over the world are using the child porn issue as a stick with which to beat their citizens (I am posting from Australia), but it seems the regular law enforcement bodies are actually pretty good at catching a lot of the malefactors without any such draconian legislation.
I should point out that Enlightenment puts a higher focus on having a light footprint than usability...
Funny you should say that - back in ~'97 or so I used to use Enlightenment as a WM with Gnome. In those days we all thought of it as a big badass resource-hungry monster. I never did get the hang of using Enlightenment as a full desktop environment, however. I have no problem with editing config files, but I never bothered spending the time learning how to get applications launched. Sort of defeats the object if you have to fire them up from an xterm...;-)
Slashdot Mirror
You are apparently not up to speed with policing laws here in Western Australia. Police have the powers to stop, search and question anyone.
Totally offtopic note: I have been to crete and it is one of my favorite places in the world.
I used to feel the same, but a lot of it has been sadly MacDonaldised to the point of trashiness. I first visited the place in '79, before the tourist industry had had a chance to tighten its grip, and it was sublime in its authenticity. I can't really say the same now...
The only obligatory remark is of course re. "from the perhaps-a-swallow-brought-them-there dept.":
Would that be an African Swallow, or a European Swallow?
Most of the primitive tools here at Slashdot don't have any marks to indicate they had any kind of function at all. ;-)
Do you really need to ask?
Unfortunately (from my point of view) this is true. The average (ex-)Windows user will not give a flying fart about the egregious sillinesses the Ubuntu developers have decided to let loose upon an unsuspecting or uninformed world. But Ubuntu will mostly "just work", which will in most cases be good enough, especially given the prevalence of Ubuntu users in forum postings if they run into trouble.
Years ago, I might have cringed as I said this, but Mandriva might be a good choice for a Windows user without a techie background.
Incidentally, just in case anyone's wondering, my own introduction to Linux was Soft Landing Systems (later Slackware), and I now run Arch Linux. Works well for me, but I'll understand if that particular learning curve is too steep.
Apple now produces ducks?
Only iDucks, if you please...
I have a friend who has been operating what he calls a "startup" for the last 7 years. He has an MBA from a reputable university, and the business has had multiple injections of serious amounts of capital.
:-{
But it seems a lot of what I've come to regard as the "MBA Culture" is that the process is supposed to confer some sort of Midas touch: everything is supposed to "just work". From my (cynical) viewpoint, I see no stellar future for his business: if it was ever going to work, it should have taken off within a year or so of the product being developed, but for whatever reason, my friend can't or won't let go.
It's hard to tell a friend that he's being sucked into a Loss Of Perspective Vortex, especially since in this case he doesn't read enough to pick up on the allusion.
Winston Churchill is quoted as saying "Success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."
...Which is particularly appropriate given that prior to the onset of WWII Churchill was pretty much a washed-up old soak. But (whatever else one may think about him) he was certainly formidable as a war-time leader.
...failure or success is more or less a choice, an activity you do.
This is true. It is also (contrary to popular assumptions) independent of wealth. For instance, I (no false modesty here) consider myself a success, even though by most standards I am actually a pauper. My activities, in conjunction with a certain amount of jiggery-pokery with the banks, just happen to more or less support the way I live and allow me to pursue my various interests.
On the other hand, I have a couple of good friends who are wealthy beyond my wildest dreams ($10^7+) who actually have no intellectual interests, and spend a predominant amount of their time channel-hopping on the TV. This always makes me a bit sad...
I think what these 'successful' people are saying is, "Look, I didn't do anything different in the times when I failed or succeeded. It looked like a good idea, I worked very hard, and nothing came of it.
Well, that's the way things actually work out in life. It also works the other way. My father, who left Reading University in 1959 with a degree in horticulture made a tremendous success of his career just (as he says) by "happening to be in the right place at the right time". Now I'm in my late 40s, I sometimes wish I could say the same, but then (a) I would have missed out on a load of cool things going down and (b) to be truthful, I lack his capacity for sheer dogged application.
Is this sort of thing legal? Oh wait. Yeah, I guess not.
In one of the supplied links (video clip) there is a police car in the background. Given that the plods didn't lift a finger to stop this guy, that says everything we need to know about the state of our legal system.
The employees are covered for loss of wages by the GEERS scheme
Good luck with that. The Government's own figures tell us that only 54 per cent of claims are processed within 16 weeks, and that there are big shortfalls in the actual payments made. Nice try.
That's entirely the fault of socialism for enabling a conniving bastard like that guy to rise.
You really do not have a fucking clue what you're talking about, do you? Our Western Australian state government is in the power of the so-called "Liberal" party (read extreme right-wing-conservative). Not that the Labor party is any different. Either way, the role of government in Australia is currently deemed to be acting as a facilitator for business.
Which usually means throwing public money into private companies' hands. If you can think of a single definition of socialism that this even remotely fits, do please tell us.
All our democracy really means is that we get to elect our own group of robber barons.
Mike Turner's actions will be judged through the legal system, that is also part of the system, it's like a checks and balances thing.
His actions will not be judged, here in Perth or anywhere else. The Government officials responsible for handing him taxpayers' money will all duck to cover their asses as usual, while he sits in his office in the US rubbing his hands and saying "you is ma bitch! yuk yuk..."
Basic will.
Yes, but in those days BASIC was a toy for snotty-nosed kids. (Many would argue it still is, but that's another matter.)
On that Burroughs machine we had a choice of FORTRAN, Assembler and COBOL. The latter was tedious and long-winded, but had the advantage of being able to produce bombproof code in very large suites of financial software. But fortunately my job as sysprog was to tie everything together, so I got to use the best tools for the job.
Linux... For the inexperienced?
Actually, the idea isn't that implausible. I had my wife running Slackware on her computer for several years until she went over to the Dark Side and got a Mac. Actually, she had a good enough reason for the latter: she wanted to use EndNote with MSOffice to write her PhD thesis.
I know there are alternatives and all that, but my point is that so long as you set the machine up well, Linux boxes are just as accessible as any Windows (or indeed Mac) implementation.
Yeah. No operating system known to man prevents you from "writing software badly".
:-)
True, up to a point. The best-written software I ever produced was run on a Burroughs B3700 mainframe back in the late '70s, where spare RAM (not being used by the OS, MCP IV) was limited to around 300KB. The machine was running in a bureau situation (younger readers might have to look that up), so CPU time was charged for quite expensively.
COBOL was (and actually still is) perfectly acceptable and efficient for any commercial packages, but some of the Assembly routines I used to write only took up a few tens of bytes of codespace, but I had to think really hard about how they were meant to work. COBOL takes the fun out of life: it doesn't let you write self-modifying code...
Googles interest is to route as much traffic as possible to their services so that they can earn the ad revenues
That was what immediately occurred to me too. Google isn't being *very* evil, it's just trying to maintain its income base. I don't have (or even particularly want) an iPhone, but given Apple's various ways of pursuing its business model, evilness seems to mean different things to different people.
Just to be clear, I'm not particularly bashing Apple (I'm typing this on a MacBook I inherited from my wife when she upgraded to a more recent model), I'm just saying let's not be hypocrites.
If they've burnt your fingers before, why did you go back to them? If any business fucks me over, even once, I NEVER go back to it, and I make a point of telling everybody why.
You must be confused, if you are unfamiliar with the term "democratic socialism."
;-)
No, actually I'm not. I've lived in France for many years, and there's still a wide streak of fascism prevalent in their culture. I'm well aware that "Socialism" is not regarded in Europe as the "dirty word" that it is in the US, but one has to remember that the term is used by both communists and fascists alike, but with different implications.
Think of the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front.
We shouldn't have to hide our information, people should just respect each other enough not to steal their stuff.
That would be a nice warm fuzzy world to live in, but the truth is that on this grossly overpopulated planet, we all HAVE to hide our personal information, because the world is just too full of asswipes to just pretend they don't exist.
So are a vast majority of people from between the hours of 9AM to 3PM every day.
:-{
Incidentally, the situation sometimes isn't helped by the legal system. Here in Western Australia, breaking into and stealing from property during the hours of daylight is regarded as a different crime from doing the same thing at night. Go figure. I didn't vote for the craniorectal that came up with that one.
Their right wing is to the left of our left wing. Europeans, including the French, are ALWAYS bragging here about democratic socialism.
You might need to be a bit more careful with your terminology. Hitler's Nazi Party was the "National Socialist German Workers' Party", and we all know where they stood in the political spectrum.
The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing.
I wish I could say otherwise, but you're wrong about that. It will do nothing to stop the production or spread of child pornography, but it will constitute another erosion of freedom of speech or information.
Governments all over the world are using the child porn issue as a stick with which to beat their citizens (I am posting from Australia), but it seems the regular law enforcement bodies are actually pretty good at catching a lot of the malefactors without any such draconian legislation.
I should point out that Enlightenment puts a higher focus on having a light footprint than usability...
;-)
Funny you should say that - back in ~'97 or so I used to use Enlightenment as a WM with Gnome. In those days we all thought of it as a big badass resource-hungry monster. I never did get the hang of using Enlightenment as a full desktop environment, however. I have no problem with editing config files, but I never bothered spending the time learning how to get applications launched. Sort of defeats the object if you have to fire them up from an xterm...
Hopefully it's come along a bit since then.