"What people tend to forget is that there are gatekeepers in the open-source community, too"
This is subtle but very, very important. Open Source "gatekeepers," like Linus, only get the job of gatekeeper because they are the most popular. And there is nothing stopping anyone else from releasing their own version and taking over the project. However, non-Linus releases must COMPETE with Linus' releases for MINDSHARE based on MERIT. This is truly an evolutionary process.
MS is simply the gate keeper because they have a monopoly. There is no competition based on merit, no evolution takes place. If MS is the default gate keeper, what you contribute automatically belongs to them. Congratulations, you are now the most poorly paid employee at MS.
If you honestly believe that political parties have more influence than $, then there is no reason to argue with you because you have clearly lost touch with reality.
Show me a Republican (or whatever "party" you think is the answer to all worldly problems (read as: don't need to think for myself because party thinks for me) with a similar effort to create a grassroot supported campaign, and I will gladly visit their site and consider supporting them.
I don't care about "political parties." It seems like a completely obsolete way to get one's message out cheaply. The Internet exists now. Don't you think it is time you started thinking for yourself?
"Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be"
This is America . . . Money walks, right? Almost all politicians get their money from rich, influential groups. Letters might make the politicians aware of the problem but only money will win their support. Howard Dean is the only politician I am aware to receive most of his $ support from regular individuals (if there are others, please post here). We should support these types of politicians and ignore the rest. Remember, the best way to kill a politician is to ignore them.
I think you meant, "Not when you pay your legal team on commission."
Yeah, I wonder how many parents are going to be sued for thousands of dollars before an angry mob takes over DC. The RIAA is randomly polarizing people against themselves. And, in a country where power is distributed so unequally, there is a good chance they will cross someone with the money and the will to take political action (either way, the politicians get rich . ..).
However, if you are "little people," I might check out Howard Dean who is getting most of his money from poor slobs like us.
"It sounds as if being easy to learn is quite an important facet of a language to the extent that the earliest use of a language will produce the greatest and most influential effects."
When individuality and self-expression are valued highly, an easy to learn language is probably desirable. When cooperation and harmony are valued highly, a language that eventually provides the reader more information is probably desirable. Thus, even on the level of complexity, language is a reflection of the values held by the culture and tend to gravitate thought towards the ideals held.
Everyone knows that our politicians are bought by a wealthy minority of corporations, but if you are not contributing to the guys who are the most willing to listen to "little people" like us, then you have noone to blame but yourself.
Howard Dean has been "bought" but bought by around 80,000 individuals who donated the most to his compaign. When did YOU last buy a politician?
"There is significant evidence suggesting that phonetic alphabets (such as Hiragana) are easier to learn and extend."
-Have you learned a non-phonetic alphabet before? Personally, I have great trouble reading only "hiragana." Kanji (chinese characters) set the flow of the sentence and helps the reader find the important ideas easily. I believe that once mastered, non-phonetic alphabets allow for faster and more accurate transfer of information. Since language is such an important tool throughout an individual's life, being easy to learn is probably the least important aspect of a good language.
"I could go into what Wittgenstein would say about that, but instead I'll just assert that conversations are not stored in plain-text, they're compressed. That's why you remember the gist long after the specific phrasing is gone."
-Maybe you should go into what Wittgenstein said . . . To me there has always been a clear distinction to me between speakers that are constantly converting languages in their heads and speakers that are actually using the second language to think. I have seen students understand things in Japanese (hw assignments) but when they return to the English speaking world for a week, they never retrieved that information (in time to do their hw). It is almost like in such cases the brain is storing this information in slightly different places.
"The Strong Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has been largely discredited."
-Again, you might want to give a little more information than "so and so said so." Japanese as a second language speakers who do not change the way they think when speaking Japanese are very often misunderstood and rejected. Proper usage of a language requires certain assumptions which effects human thought. Just the type of words you will learn first (becuase they are considered the most important) will limit the type of thought possible when communicating with others.
"No, you need an interchange format. I assert that programming languages are a low-bandwidth method for communicating between brain-machines and computer-machines."
I think he is trying to point out that people can talk to one another easily because they have similar assumptions and machines can talk to one another easily because they are similar in design. However, when people and machines try to talk there is a "culture gap" that needs to also be addressed.
Maybe your and my comments are a result of culture gap? In which case we have further proven Matsumoto san's point about the importance of the assumptions (ways of thought, culture, human components) behind all languages, in which case I thank you for your participation.
but I hardly think we are winning this war through traditional strategies, no matter how emotional we get over it.
I personally know about 10 people who were sexually abused in their childhoods. The majority were abused by family members or friends of family. The majority of those incidences were never successfully brought to court and none of them appeared to have a connection with kiddy porn.
Most of those incidences occurred when these kids had reached puberty, in which case "regular" porn could also be seen as contributing to the problem (why aren't we banning that!?).
The fact is, this issue is much too pervasive than people are willing to admit. The majority of it is opportunistic (not premeditated) and effects a wide and diverse group of individuals (making profiling nearly impossible). And, if you did some research, you would know that drugs/alcohol are often associated with all forms of child abuse. To really address the issue the state would need to intrude even further into "family territory."
I think it is great that the really sick people who spend their time looking up kiddy porn are getting busted, but this is a small percentage of the actual problem. However, since such sickos usually have few friends and are already outcasts, there is the tendency to stereotype them as the typical culprit. Meanwhile, the opportunistic types that make up the majority get by simply because the measures necessary to bust them would mean making serious changes that would make too many people unconformtable.
But go ahead, condemn freenet. Just remember, the real reason you are against it is because it threatens the traditional view of how things work and condemning new technology is always an easy way to lull oneself into a state of complacency.
Diatribes are inane.
Wrong reaction to kiddy porn possibility . . .
on
Freenet 0.5.2 Released
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
"It's one thing to steal songs and software, but it's another thing to host pictures of some 7 year old getting raped. I don't want to even have the possibility of that happening, so I think I'll stick with another distributed client."
I always thought the reason that kiddy porn was illegal was in order to destroy a market for a good that was created through an atrocious crime. However, as with the illegal drug market, simply making something illegal does not make demand go away and can create a lucrative black market. So it seems to me that if you really wanted the market to be destroyed for such a good, you would not give it the same protection that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to give their products.
Futhermore, it seems that as a society we might need to accept that child abuse is a problem that will not go away by agency enforcement alone. Maybe we should be giving parents and guardians less legal control over their children and investing money in alternative places for children to grow up?
I don't know . . . the kiddy porn issue always seems to be a scape goat for a more fundamental flaw in our society.
when you are going to be forced to upgrade at some particular time that you have no control over?
How can a company afford to pay programmers to customize after paying monopolistic prices to get basic functionality?
What if some of the tools I want to use are not part of the MS collective, how will I get the MS parts to talk to the non-MS parts (I have actually taken an Excel file, dumped it into.csv in both Excel and Open Office? I don't know if my version of Excel has some kind of bug, but its output was too messed up to deal with).
And, yes, I have modified APPLICATION (let's compare apples to apples, here) source code in order to get the kind of output I wanted (and it would have been a real bitch if I couldn't have).
No, it is not impossible to customize MS software, it just is not as economical.
Basic international economics. Without barriers, prices eventually reach an equilibrium. Country A has many peaches, so peaches are cheap. Country B does not have some many peaches, so peaches are not so cheap. The countries trade, Country A peach farmers win and country B farmer lose. Country A consumers win, while country B consumers most pay a bit higher price due to the increase in demand. However, the OVERALL QUANTITY OF CONSUMPTION INCREASES. That means the economy wins as a whole.
Other countries have cheaper labor so they "export" it by hosting foreign companies. Americans may have less to spend due to the weakening of their local monopoly on labor, but as consumers they will win with cheaper goods and services coming from these cheap labor countries. Also, the foreign countries will now actually have some money to spend on American goods. Overall effect: the overall economy grows at a faster rate.
Interest groups will be adversely effected, so you will hear people screaming bloody murder, but the U.S. economy will by no means be terminated. It may grow more slowly, but at a much less inflated rate which should help us avoid recessions like the one we are having now.
I guess just being an MSCE will not mean much anymore. IT guys will have to be like the rest of us, constantly trying to acquire a magical set of skills (languages, accredited degrees, certificates from professional organizations (not single companies . ..)). Yes, it sucks. But it is just starting to suck for you and has sucked much longer for the rest of us. No, the world is not ending, you are just joining.
1. More of the money you spend actually goes to improving the distro 2. You get to actually vote on what packages get included in the distro 3. Other members will be more willing to help you when you go to the site for help 4. The environment is less impacted 5.
As a Silver member living IN the U.S., I must say I disagree about the importance of Channel Sales for Free software. There are currently more than 15,000 paying members supporting Mandrake. I don't consider myself a non-freeloader, but someone with enough invested in the distro that it is worth me paying some $ in order to have some say in what direction it goes. Also, club member get great support from other members and VIP members (usually developers). This gives me a valuable advantage in my profession.
I don't think channel sales have the kind of profit margins club memberships have, so why bother? I don't care if 99% of the users are freeloading, as long as there are enough "power-users" to support the distro, and it looks like we are coming up on that number nicely.
Anyway, it shows a lot where the/. mentality is when a post claiming that Channel Sales are the key to survival gets modded up. Let me guess,/. will never be successful until it is sold at Bestbuy, and I am a moron for subscribing to it. I am amazed you people are even able to connect to the internet . . . oh yeah, AOL. . .
Linux is an Open Standard, much like the Internet, e-mail, etc . ..
If all types of people use e-mail, doesn't logic dictate that all types of people will also use LINUX? Did spam slowdown the adoption of e-mail in the business world? Why would this kind of activity slowdown the adoption of linux in the business world, then?
People keep on posting as if they belong to some kind of club, "thanks guys, now we all look bad . .." Reality check, this is no club. If there are some people you dislike in this world, get ready 'cause some of them are going to start using Linux. You better just get used to it.
If you want to differentiate yourself from these type of people then form a club, get certified. The AICPA revokes CPA's licenses all the time. Why not form a club like that instead of just posting your complaints here (I might take my own advice and beat you to it).
"I know about lots of extremely smart and knowledgable people that are just as (if not even more so) greedy, corrupt and violent as average Joe."
on your definition of "smart and knowledgable." Personally, I always attribute greed, corruption and violence to an individual's inability to internalize some important concept, such as post-modernization.
"I don't generally buy the notion that education for everyone would lead to world peace."
Probably not world peace, but you can point out places where a larger percentage of the population is educated, and observe a relatively high standard of living, across the board. Personally, I see education as merely a process of "networking" minds to mainstream society, so that a mutual relationship of benefiting and contributing can be established. Otherwise, people look elsewhere to get what they want, which is usually detrimental to main stream society.
Besides, democracy is only as strong as the masses are knowledgable and free to make decisions for themselves.
However, I believe that it is impossible to measure intelligence. Tests of intelligence will always be tainted by the tester's ego and self-delusion. I think we should treat minds like genes and encourage the widest "mind pool" we can, in case catastrophic events require some creative thinking. Yet, at the same time, we need to make main stream society as flexible as possible, so as many people as possible can get plugged in at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
"What people tend to forget is that there are gatekeepers in the open-source community, too"
This is subtle but very, very important. Open Source "gatekeepers," like Linus, only get the job of gatekeeper because they are the most popular. And there is nothing stopping anyone else from releasing their own version and taking over the project. However, non-Linus releases must COMPETE with Linus' releases for MINDSHARE based on MERIT. This is truly an evolutionary process.
MS is simply the gate keeper because they have a monopoly. There is no competition based on merit, no evolution takes place. If MS is the default gate keeper, what you contribute automatically belongs to them. Congratulations, you are now the most poorly paid employee at MS.
If you honestly believe that political parties have more influence than $, then there is no reason to argue with you because you have clearly lost touch with reality.
Show me a Republican (or whatever "party" you think is the answer to all worldly problems (read as: don't need to think for myself because party thinks for me) with a similar effort to create a grassroot supported campaign, and I will gladly visit their site and consider supporting them.
I don't care about "political parties." It seems like a completely obsolete way to get one's message out cheaply. The Internet exists now. Don't you think it is time you started thinking for yourself?
If you are paying $50 a month for a Time Warner cable connection, it also includes free music downloads! ;)
"Write your congressperson and tell him or her it's time to turn copyright protections back into what they were designed to be"
This is America . . . Money walks, right? Almost all politicians get their money from rich, influential groups. Letters might make the politicians aware of the problem but only money will win their support. Howard Dean is the only politician I am aware to receive most of his $ support from regular individuals (if there are others, please post here). We should support these types of politicians and ignore the rest. Remember, the best way to kill a politician is to ignore them.
I think you meant, "Not when you pay your legal team on commission."
.).
Yeah, I wonder how many parents are going to be sued for thousands of dollars before an angry mob takes over DC. The RIAA is randomly polarizing people against themselves. And, in a country where power is distributed so unequally, there is a good chance they will cross someone with the money and the will to take political action (either way, the politicians get rich . .
However, if you are "little people," I might check out Howard Dean who is getting most of his money from poor slobs like us.
"It sounds as if being easy to learn is quite an important facet of a language to the extent that the earliest use of a language will produce the greatest and most influential effects."
When individuality and self-expression are valued highly, an easy to learn language is probably desirable. When cooperation and harmony are valued highly, a language that eventually provides the reader more information is probably desirable. Thus, even on the level of complexity, language is a reflection of the values held by the culture and tend to gravitate thought towards the ideals held.
Why don't you check out Howard Dean's site (especially the blog):
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer>
Everyone knows that our politicians are bought by a wealthy minority of corporations, but if you are not contributing to the guys who are the most willing to listen to "little people" like us, then you have noone to blame but yourself.
Howard Dean has been "bought" but bought by around 80,000 individuals who donated the most to his compaign. When did YOU last buy a politician?
"There is significant evidence suggesting that phonetic alphabets (such as Hiragana) are easier to learn and extend."
-Have you learned a non-phonetic alphabet before? Personally, I have great trouble reading only "hiragana." Kanji (chinese characters) set the flow of the sentence and helps the reader find the important ideas easily. I believe that once mastered, non-phonetic alphabets allow for faster and more accurate transfer of information. Since language is such an important tool throughout an individual's life, being easy to learn is probably the least important aspect of a good language.
"I could go into what Wittgenstein would say about that, but instead I'll just assert that conversations are not stored in plain-text, they're compressed. That's why you remember the gist long after the specific phrasing is gone."
-Maybe you should go into what Wittgenstein said . . . To me there has always been a clear distinction to me between speakers that are constantly converting languages in their heads and speakers that are actually using the second language to think. I have seen students understand things in Japanese (hw assignments) but when they return to the English speaking world for a week, they never retrieved that information (in time to do their hw). It is almost like in such cases the brain is storing this information in slightly different places.
"The Strong Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has been largely discredited."
-Again, you might want to give a little more information than "so and so said so." Japanese as a second language speakers who do not change the way they think when speaking Japanese are very often misunderstood and rejected. Proper usage of a language requires certain assumptions which effects human thought. Just the type of words you will learn first (becuase they are considered the most important) will limit the type of thought possible when communicating with others.
"No, you need an interchange format. I assert that programming languages are a low-bandwidth method for communicating between brain-machines and computer-machines."
I think he is trying to point out that people can talk to one another easily because they have similar assumptions and machines can talk to one another easily because they are similar in design. However, when people and machines try to talk there is a "culture gap" that needs to also be addressed.
Maybe your and my comments are a result of culture gap? In which case we have further proven Matsumoto san's point about the importance of the assumptions (ways of thought, culture, human components) behind all languages, in which case I thank you for your participation.
but I hardly think we are winning this war through traditional strategies, no matter how emotional we get over it.
I personally know about 10 people who were sexually abused in their childhoods. The majority were abused by family members or friends of family. The majority of those incidences were never successfully brought to court and none of them appeared to have a connection with kiddy porn.
Most of those incidences occurred when these kids had reached puberty, in which case "regular" porn could also be seen as contributing to the problem (why aren't we banning that!?).
The fact is, this issue is much too pervasive than people are willing to admit. The majority of it is opportunistic (not premeditated) and effects a wide and diverse group of individuals (making profiling nearly impossible). And, if you did some research, you would know that drugs/alcohol are often associated with all forms of child abuse. To really address the issue the state would need to intrude even further into "family territory."
I think it is great that the really sick people who spend their time looking up kiddy porn are getting busted, but this is a small percentage of the actual problem. However, since such sickos usually have few friends and are already outcasts, there is the tendency to stereotype them as the typical culprit. Meanwhile, the opportunistic types that make up the majority get by simply because the measures necessary to bust them would mean making serious changes that would make too many people unconformtable.
But go ahead, condemn freenet. Just remember, the real reason you are against it is because it threatens the traditional view of how things work and condemning new technology is always an easy way to lull oneself into a state of complacency.
Diatribes are inane.
"It's one thing to steal songs and software, but it's another thing to host pictures of some 7 year old getting raped. I don't want to even have the possibility of that happening, so I think I'll stick with another distributed client."
I always thought the reason that kiddy porn was illegal was in order to destroy a market for a good that was created through an atrocious crime. However, as with the illegal drug market, simply making something illegal does not make demand go away and can create a lucrative black market. So it seems to me that if you really wanted the market to be destroyed for such a good, you would not give it the same protection that the RIAA and MPAA are trying to give their products.
Futhermore, it seems that as a society we might need to accept that child abuse is a problem that will not go away by agency enforcement alone. Maybe we should be giving parents and guardians less legal control over their children and investing money in alternative places for children to grow up?
I don't know . . . the kiddy porn issue always seems to be a scape goat for a more fundamental flaw in our society.
when it is time to retreat from gnutella. Any good indicators?
"Is that really going to make online voting secure?"
As if any other security mattered . . .
when you are going to be forced to upgrade at some particular time that you have no control over?
.csv in both Excel and Open Office? I don't know if my version of Excel has some kind of bug, but its output was too messed up to deal with).
How can a company afford to pay programmers to customize after paying monopolistic prices to get basic functionality?
What if some of the tools I want to use are not part of the MS collective, how will I get the MS parts to talk to the non-MS parts (I have actually taken an Excel file, dumped it into
And, yes, I have modified APPLICATION (let's compare apples to apples, here) source code in order to get the kind of output I wanted (and it would have been a real bitch if I couldn't have).
No, it is not impossible to customize MS software, it just is not as economical.
Basic international economics. Without barriers, prices eventually reach an equilibrium. Country A has many peaches, so peaches are cheap. Country B does not have some many peaches, so peaches are not so cheap. The countries trade, Country A peach farmers win and country B farmer lose. Country A consumers win, while country B consumers most pay a bit higher price due to the increase in demand. However, the OVERALL QUANTITY OF CONSUMPTION INCREASES. That means the economy wins as a whole.
.)). Yes, it sucks. But it is just starting to suck for you and has sucked much longer for the rest of us. No, the world is not ending, you are just joining.
Other countries have cheaper labor so they "export" it by hosting foreign companies. Americans may have less to spend due to the weakening of their local monopoly on labor, but as consumers they will win with cheaper goods and services coming from these cheap labor countries. Also, the foreign countries will now actually have some money to spend on American goods. Overall effect: the overall economy grows at a faster rate.
Interest groups will be adversely effected, so you will hear people screaming bloody murder, but the U.S. economy will by no means be terminated. It may grow more slowly, but at a much less inflated rate which should help us avoid recessions like the one we are having now.
I guess just being an MSCE will not mean much anymore. IT guys will have to be like the rest of us, constantly trying to acquire a magical set of skills (languages, accredited degrees, certificates from professional organizations (not single companies . .
"it on lake Travis and we go to hippy hollow with it."
What does it mean if I actually KNOW these places . . .
I don't believe a word you say . . .
(if you don't know Japanese, don't mod this)
That way:
1. More of the money you spend actually goes to improving the distro
2. You get to actually vote on what packages get included in the distro
3. Other members will be more willing to help you when you go to the site for help
4. The environment is less impacted
5.
As a Silver member living IN the U.S., I must say I disagree about the importance of Channel Sales for Free software. There are currently more than 15,000 paying members supporting Mandrake. I don't consider myself a non-freeloader, but someone with enough invested in the distro that it is worth me paying some $ in order to have some say in what direction it goes. Also, club member get great support from other members and VIP members (usually developers). This gives me a valuable advantage in my profession.
/. mentality is when a post claiming that Channel Sales are the key to survival gets modded up. Let me guess, /. will never be successful until it is sold at Bestbuy, and I am a moron for subscribing to it. I am amazed you people are even able to connect to the internet . . . oh yeah, AOL. . .
I don't think channel sales have the kind of profit margins club memberships have, so why bother? I don't care if 99% of the users are freeloading, as long as there are enough "power-users" to support the distro, and it looks like we are coming up on that number nicely.
Anyway, it shows a lot where the
British Empire
U.S. Empire
Microsoft Empire
All have one thing in common:
"controlled violence"
Linux is an Open Standard, much like the Internet, e-mail, etc . . .
." Reality check, this is no club. If there are some people you dislike in this world, get ready 'cause some of them are going to start using Linux. You better just get used to it.
If all types of people use e-mail, doesn't logic dictate that all types of people will also use LINUX? Did spam slowdown the adoption of e-mail in the business world? Why would this kind of activity slowdown the adoption of linux in the business world, then?
People keep on posting as if they belong to some kind of club, "thanks guys, now we all look bad . .
If you want to differentiate yourself from these type of people then form a club, get certified. The AICPA revokes CPA's licenses all the time. Why not form a club like that instead of just posting your complaints here (I might take my own advice and beat you to it).
So indirectly, investment in space can have an adverse affect on war, depending on whay you believe causes war.
http://www.linare.com/linos.htm
Is it just me, or did someone in Marketing get mixed up?
"I know about lots of extremely smart and knowledgable people that are just as (if not even more so) greedy, corrupt and violent as average Joe."
on your definition of "smart and knowledgable." Personally, I always attribute greed, corruption and violence to an individual's inability to internalize some important concept, such as post-modernization.
"I don't generally buy the notion that education for everyone would lead to world peace."
Probably not world peace, but you can point out places where a larger percentage of the population is educated, and observe a relatively high standard of living, across the board. Personally, I see education as merely a process of "networking" minds to mainstream society, so that a mutual relationship of benefiting and contributing can be established. Otherwise, people look elsewhere to get what they want, which is usually detrimental to main stream society.
Besides, democracy is only as strong as the masses are knowledgable and free to make decisions for themselves.
However, I believe that it is impossible to measure intelligence. Tests of intelligence will always be tainted by the tester's ego and self-delusion. I think we should treat minds like genes and encourage the widest "mind pool" we can, in case catastrophic events require some creative thinking. Yet, at the same time, we need to make main stream society as flexible as possible, so as many people as possible can get plugged in at the same time.
For instance, we now all know that when we see aliens, we are just seeing the Matrix assimilate some rogue program . . . takes all the fun out of it.
where's the fun in that? ;)