Pilots used to carry around a "computer" consisting of a set of concentric rotating disks with markings on them. You could use it to multiply, divide, calculate square roots, sines and cosines, wind components, standard temperatures and density at altitude, etc... Only 15 years ago the use of this computer was still taught to new airline pilots, it was even part of my ATPL exam (even though nobody actually used them in the cockpit anymore)
Private pilots are still trained to use an E6B, and mine is tucked neatly in my kneeboard every time I fly.
You can go into preferences and shut kdawson off if you like. So i fail to see the complaint.
Most of the stories posted by kdawson are absolute garbage. However, some of them are actually interesting stories that I'd like to read. Shutting kdawson off in preferences means sacrificing the good 20% to be rid of the bad 80%.
I would prefer to simply have a better quality editor who would post those good stories without also posting the other garbage. Is that really too much to ask?
I mean, I don't expect the editors to be perfect. But if I ran the site, and I had editors who were that bad, I'd do something about it.
The fact that I can't do simply things like watch a video in a VIDEO PLAYER is prof that VLC needs a GUI re-write.
Set VLC as default for selected file type in preferences, then double-click file.
Open VLC, then drag file onto VLC window.
Right-click file, select Open With, browse to VLC executable.
These are just a few completely standard ways (ie. they don't require you to know anything about VLC in particular, just general Windows usage).
VLC's GUI isn't the best out there, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone on Slashdot could actually be unable to figure out how to watch a video in VLC.
MPC is great. I used to use it, but now I use VLC for a number of reasons. If you prefer MPC, that's cool. But to say that VLC's GUI is "100% BAD" and in need of a complete re-write is just silly at best, and your attempts to paint VLC as completely unusable for basic tasks is ridiculous.
The problem's I've found with VLC over MPC, is that VLC does not support the Windows interface for media control buttons on keyboards.(Rather minor, but when watching something full screen, having a working hardware play/pause button is nice.)
But VLC does provide keyboard control using regular keys. The spacebar is your hardware play/pause button. Yes, if you've got media control buttons, it would be nice to be able to use them. But VLC's way of doing things works even for those who just have a plain old regular keyboard.
Okay, this is an attempt to get the April Fool achievement by posting a comment in the April Fool's thread. However, in order for it not to be a completely wasted posting in an otherwise insightful discussion, I am going to try for multiple achievements in this one post (well, at least two achievements).
The first achievement will be the "April Fool". Easy.
The second achievement will hopefully be the "Comment Modded Up" achievement, assuming someone sees this and is generous enough to mod it up.
The third achievement will hopefully be the "Comment Modded Down" achievement. The order of this and the previous achievement is unimportant. So, come on mods, abuse your powers. You know you wanna.
I suspect that the "Score 5" achievement is unlikely, but hey, I can dream.
I'm not sure what else I can get in just one comment, so let's just roll the dice and see what happens.
I (and many many others) have an achievement [slashdot.org] called "The Maker"... what does that mean? It's not listed in the FAQ.
I don't have that, so it's something you did that I didn't. Does that help?
You also got "The Contradictor". Any idea how you got that? And any idea how I got "The Tagger", considering I don't even know how to tag an article (I think you have to be a paid subscriber or something, which I'm not).
I'm beating you on the number of consecutive days of Slashdot reading. Wait, should I be proud of that?
Sweet, a link in a summary to the summary itself. Just what I've always wanted!
The link makes sense (sort of) if you click it from the main page, since it takes you to the summary, wherein the video is found (which is "TFA"). Of course, it's redundant if you click it from here.
FUCKING HELL is that an embedded video I see in the story!? Holy shit, the geek website is... in step with the times?
And in the process, they've created a bit of a mess. Here we have a situation where the summary and the "article" are on the same page. So, the summary contains a link... to this page.
We have a series of constitutional acts, which are not a true constitution. A Constitution, by definition, precedes a government, and defines it's structure, powers and limitations. A Constitution is the governing law of a government.
Our Constitution dates back to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and has undergone many amendments throughout the years, as constitutions often do. I'm not sure what exactly it is that you think is necessary for it to be a "true" constitution in your mind, but most of the rest of the world thinks of Canada as a Constitutional Monarchy, and our Government is bound by it.
Additionally, The Canadian Constitutional Acts are all covered by the 'Notwithstanding Clause', which in a nutshell states that the Government can ignore or abrogate any or all sections of the Acts at their whim.
Well, not quite. The notwithstanding clause, as flawed as it is, is actually somewhat limited. It only applies to certain rights, leaving others inalienable, and automatically expires after five years, giving the citizens a chance to speak their mind on the issue. I agree that does diminish the power of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it does not render the entire Constitution a "sham".
Due to the fact that rights tend to overlap, rights always have limitations. The old saying "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins" comes to mind.
Free speech, therefore, has limitations. This is even true in the United States. For example: slander.
We do have a constitutional right to free speech within the legal limitations, just as the Americans have a constitutional right to free speech within their legal limitations. Yes, we have more limitations than the Americans do, and yes I believe that Canadian law goes too far with its limitations on speech. However, this doesn't change the fact that Mr. Steacy's assertion that free speech is "an American concept" and that "Canada doesn't have free speech" is incorrect.
Ummm, I believe that would be 6,000 years ago, not 10,000. Get your numbers straight.
I took my number from the article. The article says: "Dr. McLeroy believes that God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago."
Admittedly, it does say "less than", so I suppose they may have been rounding up a bit (well, a lot). Whatever the case, I used the number in the article.
Don't blame me if the guy behind this whole thing is so stupid he can't even get Creationism right.
You are right that the headline is not accurate, since Canada doesn't have free speech. "Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." -Canadian Human Rights Investigator Dean Steacy, responding to the question "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?"
Mr. Steacy is wrong. Free speech is in our Constitution — specifically section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yes, there is the somewhat controversial "limitation clause", but to say that free speech is "an American concept" is just flat out wrong.
All predictions of "the death of X" are stupid for the simple reason that no "X" ever truly dies. I mean, people still buy vinyl LPs, even though the record "died" decades ago.
However, things do become less important to the point that they become niches when previously they were the standard, and in a way this has already happened, to a certain extent, with the desktop. Two of the applications I use almost more than any others exist "in the cloud" — Slashdot and GMail.
Although home use is a bit of a different story, it wouldn't surprise me if in five years time your average cubicle dweller wrote all his documents and spreadsheets on something like Google Apps, while communicating through web-based email and IM clients, as well as working on custom-built web applications (which is already pretty much the norm).
The desktop won't "die", but the majority of office employees will be using "the cloud" (or whatever they may decide to call it in a few years).
Let me know when a mobile phone can serve as a CAD workstation, video editing workstation, or other high performance need. We have plenty of those around here where I work. Also need to mention dual wide screen monitors in imaging departments like radiology (they rotate them vertically for x-rays, etc.) It's more likely that thin clients will become the norm again before mobile devices replace desktops. We have a lot of Citrix thin clients here and that number is growing steadily...
Whitehurst is a CEO. He thinks that all anyone uses a computer for is sending and receiving email.
The real problem with this discussion is that you seem to be operating under the assumption that I am arguing for the status quo. I tried to stress in my last post that I agree with you about what's fundamentally wrong with the world today. My point was that our disagreement isn't in you wanting to fix it and me wanting to leave it as it is, but rather in how to fix it.
Some points we agree on:
Or at least stop busting the street drug pusher for selling his killer products.
Agreed.
So let's fix it instead of settling for the flaws.
Agreed.
The entire concept of Voting is flawed at a fundamental level, nevermind all the games that are played.
Well, the implementation is definitely flawed. This is an area that needs significant work.
Of course corporations have too much power.
As do governments.
In some areas, yes. In other areas, governments have too little power. The issue is more that governments have their priorities all out of whack.
Nothing will ever be perfect. We must work toward perfection.
Absolutely agreed.
I find it supremely ironic that everyone understands that there's a problem, yet so many are so willing to throw up their hands in the air and allow the problem to continue.
I'm sure it feels good to think that you're the only one willing to do anything about the problem. I just don't think that taking power away from individuals is the right approach — and, whether you realize it or not, that is exactly what you are proposing. You want the power of the individual to be manifest in spending power. I want the power of the individual to be manifest in a strong community with a useful representative organization (which doesn't preclude also having the power to effect change through spending habits — I'm personally a big believer and practitioner of consumer activism). We already have that organization, we've just disconnected it from the community it's supposed to represent. I want to restore that connection, while you want to take away the organization's power.
"Although this proposal, and the people behind it, are certifiable, the idea that a theory of evolution holds some special uncriticizable position because of the 'preponderance of evidence' is just as stifling to scientific progress as the dogmatic fervor with which academia held to Newton's theory of gravitation. A theory should always be accepted as necessarily conjectural, and all efforts should be made to falsify the accepted 'best' theory and replace it with a better theory." -Me
This isn't about attacking evolution as dogma. This isn't about attempting to falsify it. This isn't about fighting those who refuse to challenge it. This isn't about halting science by consensus.
This is about a group of non-biologists, led by a dentist who believes that God created all species as they exist today 10,000 years ago, trying to force biology teachers to teach Creationism. These people aren't even pushing for Intelligent Design — they're explicitly against that as well. They want pure Creationism taught as science.
The introduction of profit motive makes a pretty big ethical difference.
Slightly off-topic, I know, but this is why I personally advocate copyright reform along the lines of the creation of a "commercial copyright". Essentially, in addition to shortening the length of copyright protection, unauthorized copying should only be considered an infringement if it's done for commercial purposes.
This would create a world wherein it's legal to: download a song for your digital audio device, install a cracked Photoshop for personal use, copy a DVD borrowed from a friend; but illegal to: download a song to put in a commercial, install a cracked Photoshop for business use, copy a DVD to sell on a street corner.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that it is always bad to subvert or exploit the voting process when it is made available.
When voting on something that actually matters, I agree. This is not something that actually matters.
I have no problem with demonstrating fundamental flaws in the democratic process by making a joke about a vote on something trivial.
Pilots used to carry around a "computer" consisting of a set of concentric rotating disks with markings on them. You could use it to multiply, divide, calculate square roots, sines and cosines, wind components, standard temperatures and density at altitude, etc... Only 15 years ago the use of this computer was still taught to new airline pilots, it was even part of my ATPL exam (even though nobody actually used them in the cockpit anymore)
Private pilots are still trained to use an E6B, and mine is tucked neatly in my kneeboard every time I fly.
So, you want people in the government who throw morals out the window and do things that are questionably legal at the first sign of a dollar?
You've just defined "lawyer". Who do you want in the Department of Justice if not lawyers?
You can go into preferences and shut kdawson off if you like. So i fail to see the complaint.
Most of the stories posted by kdawson are absolute garbage. However, some of them are actually interesting stories that I'd like to read. Shutting kdawson off in preferences means sacrificing the good 20% to be rid of the bad 80%.
I would prefer to simply have a better quality editor who would post those good stories without also posting the other garbage. Is that really too much to ask?
I mean, I don't expect the editors to be perfect. But if I ran the site, and I had editors who were that bad, I'd do something about it.
The fact that I can't do simply things like watch a video in a VIDEO PLAYER is prof that VLC needs a GUI re-write.
These are just a few completely standard ways (ie. they don't require you to know anything about VLC in particular, just general Windows usage).
VLC's GUI isn't the best out there, but I find it difficult to believe that anyone on Slashdot could actually be unable to figure out how to watch a video in VLC.
MPC is great. I used to use it, but now I use VLC for a number of reasons. If you prefer MPC, that's cool. But to say that VLC's GUI is "100% BAD" and in need of a complete re-write is just silly at best, and your attempts to paint VLC as completely unusable for basic tasks is ridiculous.
The problem's I've found with VLC over MPC, is that VLC does not support the Windows interface for media control buttons on keyboards.(Rather minor, but when watching something full screen, having a working hardware play/pause button is nice.)
But VLC does provide keyboard control using regular keys. The spacebar is your hardware play/pause button. Yes, if you've got media control buttons, it would be nice to be able to use them. But VLC's way of doing things works even for those who just have a plain old regular keyboard.
To prove my point, I will be modded down.
Score:4, Insightful (as of 2009-04-02 15:37 UTC)
I guess your point has been solidly refuted. :)
You should have used your real name. This will now have be known as "Anonymous Cowards Law". Think of the fame and fortune you could have had.
That was me posting anonymously. Call it Rary's Law.
I mean, no one can prove it wasn't me, right? ;)
Now, where do I collect my fortune?
Oh, hey, I wonder if there's a "Replied To Own Post" achievement....
Okay, this is an attempt to get the April Fool achievement by posting a comment in the April Fool's thread. However, in order for it not to be a completely wasted posting in an otherwise insightful discussion, I am going to try for multiple achievements in this one post (well, at least two achievements).
The first achievement will be the "April Fool". Easy.
The second achievement will hopefully be the "Comment Modded Up" achievement, assuming someone sees this and is generous enough to mod it up.
The third achievement will hopefully be the "Comment Modded Down" achievement. The order of this and the previous achievement is unimportant. So, come on mods, abuse your powers. You know you wanna.
I suspect that the "Score 5" achievement is unlikely, but hey, I can dream.
I'm not sure what else I can get in just one comment, so let's just roll the dice and see what happens.
I (and many many others) have an achievement [slashdot.org] called "The Maker" ... what does that mean? It's not listed in the FAQ.
I don't have that, so it's something you did that I didn't. Does that help?
You also got "The Contradictor". Any idea how you got that? And any idea how I got "The Tagger", considering I don't even know how to tag an article (I think you have to be a paid subscriber or something, which I'm not).
I'm beating you on the number of consecutive days of Slashdot reading. Wait, should I be proud of that?
It's a good thing the Supreme Court uses a better system of analysis than grep.
I have no idea what I'd do with almost 100 gig of RAM, except maybe turn-off the hard drive caching to speed things up.
Forget turning off the hard drive caching, turn off the hard drive. Keep all your files in RAM. :)
Sweet, a link in a summary to the summary itself. Just what I've always wanted!
The link makes sense (sort of) if you click it from the main page, since it takes you to the summary, wherein the video is found (which is "TFA"). Of course, it's redundant if you click it from here.
FUCKING HELL is that an embedded video I see in the story!? Holy shit, the geek website is ... in step with the times?
And in the process, they've created a bit of a mess. Here we have a situation where the summary and the "article" are on the same page. So, the summary contains a link... to this page.
Canada does not have a constitution.
Yes it does.
We have a series of constitutional acts, which are not a true constitution. A Constitution, by definition, precedes a government, and defines it's structure, powers and limitations. A Constitution is the governing law of a government.
Our Constitution dates back to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, and has undergone many amendments throughout the years, as constitutions often do. I'm not sure what exactly it is that you think is necessary for it to be a "true" constitution in your mind, but most of the rest of the world thinks of Canada as a Constitutional Monarchy, and our Government is bound by it.
Additionally, The Canadian Constitutional Acts are all covered by the 'Notwithstanding Clause', which in a nutshell states that the Government can ignore or abrogate any or all sections of the Acts at their whim.
Well, not quite. The notwithstanding clause, as flawed as it is, is actually somewhat limited. It only applies to certain rights, leaving others inalienable, and automatically expires after five years, giving the citizens a chance to speak their mind on the issue. I agree that does diminish the power of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but it does not render the entire Constitution a "sham".
We don't have a constitution. Please turn in your passport...
Uh, yes we do. Please attend a Canadian History class. Or at least do some trivial research.
Due to the fact that rights tend to overlap, rights always have limitations. The old saying "your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins" comes to mind.
Free speech, therefore, has limitations. This is even true in the United States. For example: slander.
We do have a constitutional right to free speech within the legal limitations, just as the Americans have a constitutional right to free speech within their legal limitations. Yes, we have more limitations than the Americans do, and yes I believe that Canadian law goes too far with its limitations on speech. However, this doesn't change the fact that Mr. Steacy's assertion that free speech is "an American concept" and that "Canada doesn't have free speech" is incorrect.
Ummm, I believe that would be 6,000 years ago, not 10,000. Get your numbers straight.
I took my number from the article. The article says: "Dr. McLeroy believes that God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago."
Admittedly, it does say "less than", so I suppose they may have been rounding up a bit (well, a lot). Whatever the case, I used the number in the article.
Don't blame me if the guy behind this whole thing is so stupid he can't even get Creationism right.
You are right that the headline is not accurate, since Canada doesn't have free speech.
"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value." -Canadian Human Rights Investigator Dean Steacy, responding to the question "What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?"
Mr. Steacy is wrong. Free speech is in our Constitution — specifically section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yes, there is the somewhat controversial "limitation clause", but to say that free speech is "an American concept" is just flat out wrong.
All predictions of "the death of X" are stupid for the simple reason that no "X" ever truly dies. I mean, people still buy vinyl LPs, even though the record "died" decades ago.
However, things do become less important to the point that they become niches when previously they were the standard, and in a way this has already happened, to a certain extent, with the desktop. Two of the applications I use almost more than any others exist "in the cloud" — Slashdot and GMail.
Although home use is a bit of a different story, it wouldn't surprise me if in five years time your average cubicle dweller wrote all his documents and spreadsheets on something like Google Apps, while communicating through web-based email and IM clients, as well as working on custom-built web applications (which is already pretty much the norm).
The desktop won't "die", but the majority of office employees will be using "the cloud" (or whatever they may decide to call it in a few years).
Let me know when a mobile phone can serve as a CAD workstation, video editing workstation, or other high performance need. We have plenty of those around here where I work. Also need to mention dual wide screen monitors in imaging departments like radiology (they rotate them vertically for x-rays, etc.) It's more likely that thin clients will become the norm again before mobile devices replace desktops. We have a lot of Citrix thin clients here and that number is growing steadily...
Whitehurst is a CEO. He thinks that all anyone uses a computer for is sending and receiving email.
The real problem with this discussion is that you seem to be operating under the assumption that I am arguing for the status quo. I tried to stress in my last post that I agree with you about what's fundamentally wrong with the world today. My point was that our disagreement isn't in you wanting to fix it and me wanting to leave it as it is, but rather in how to fix it.
Some points we agree on:
Or at least stop busting the street drug pusher for selling his killer products.
Agreed.
So let's fix it instead of settling for the flaws.
Agreed.
The entire concept of Voting is flawed at a fundamental level, nevermind all the games that are played.
Well, the implementation is definitely flawed. This is an area that needs significant work.
Of course corporations have too much power.
As do governments.
In some areas, yes. In other areas, governments have too little power. The issue is more that governments have their priorities all out of whack.
Nothing will ever be perfect. We must work toward perfection.
Absolutely agreed.
I find it supremely ironic that everyone understands that there's a problem, yet so many are so willing to throw up their hands in the air and allow the problem to continue.
I'm sure it feels good to think that you're the only one willing to do anything about the problem. I just don't think that taking power away from individuals is the right approach — and, whether you realize it or not, that is exactly what you are proposing. You want the power of the individual to be manifest in spending power. I want the power of the individual to be manifest in a strong community with a useful representative organization (which doesn't preclude also having the power to effect change through spending habits — I'm personally a big believer and practitioner of consumer activism). We already have that organization, we've just disconnected it from the community it's supposed to represent. I want to restore that connection, while you want to take away the organization's power.
"Although this proposal, and the people behind it, are certifiable, the idea that a theory of evolution holds some special uncriticizable position because of the 'preponderance of evidence' is just as stifling to scientific progress as the dogmatic fervor with which academia held to Newton's theory of gravitation. A theory should always be accepted as necessarily conjectural, and all efforts should be made to falsify the accepted 'best' theory and replace it with a better theory." -Me
This isn't about attacking evolution as dogma. This isn't about attempting to falsify it. This isn't about fighting those who refuse to challenge it. This isn't about halting science by consensus.
This is about a group of non-biologists, led by a dentist who believes that God created all species as they exist today 10,000 years ago, trying to force biology teachers to teach Creationism. These people aren't even pushing for Intelligent Design — they're explicitly against that as well. They want pure Creationism taught as science.
The introduction of profit motive makes a pretty big ethical difference.
Slightly off-topic, I know, but this is why I personally advocate copyright reform along the lines of the creation of a "commercial copyright". Essentially, in addition to shortening the length of copyright protection, unauthorized copying should only be considered an infringement if it's done for commercial purposes.
This would create a world wherein it's legal to: download a song for your digital audio device, install a cracked Photoshop for personal use, copy a DVD borrowed from a friend; but illegal to: download a song to put in a commercial, install a cracked Photoshop for business use, copy a DVD to sell on a street corner.