Why was this modded a troll when it's clearly saitre? I mean with gems like "They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?"
Science has never had anything to say about God (except reducing the need to have a supernatural explanation for things). As science becomes more accurate, it does so through the scientific process. Unless you feel God is going to become observable and testable it never will.
Evolution doesn't imply a philosophy of no God, plenty of people believe in both anyway. It does remove the need for God to explain different species, but if a new and better scientific theory comes along that will still be the case.
You may believe it, but I don't think many people do. Sometimes the results of science may be elegant such that a scientist may appreciate it on a aesthetic level.
Discovering something elegant doesn't seem to me the same process as creating something. The scientist isn't expressing something in the same way and science is bound by trying to model the universe, you can't change the equation to express something different.
So for me science completely fails to be art, however much I may admire the results.
Art can be created using science, or the results of science (technology) but plenty of art can be about expressing emotions. I studied theory of music, but many of my favourite songs are three cords and voice laden with emotion. I'll take the lyrical over the mathematical in music every time.
I write code, I can appricate the craft of a well written algorithm, but that doesn't make it art (to me, since art is such a subjective term).
Seems to me he was on the money, as the impression I got was that he sees 'techno-utopians' as seeing their computer as artistic tools, but was arguing most people don't.
I'm not sure I agree, I think most people are getting used to CGI, and know computers can make images an music.
I think people regard it as an artistic tool when it is used to create new things, but don't regard mixes and mashups as creative. Most people don't see taking part of someones song or picture on a part with particular notes or colours.
Mr. Orlowski's arguments are the same ones as get trotted out time and again against open source. Regardless of whether you think open source is awesome or overrated, it's tough to argue that open source is irrelevant, which is how Mr. Orlowski paints the Creative Commons.
Well, from what I got from the article the writer thinks that the problem with the CC crowd is they think of creative work a lot like code, and think a solution that works for code will work for artistic works.
If you accept that, then pointing out these arguments did work for Open Source doesn't really help you, since you have already accepted the situation is different. So Open Source can be relevant, but the Creative Commons may not be.
If the games cause children to be more violent, why don't we see the stastical effect of it?
Becuase the statistics for violent crime overall are effected by so many other factors that what ever you find, or don't, in linking them to numbers of kids playing violent vidoe games is useless.
How did you get modded +5 insightful when you clearly are talking about stuff you don't know about? Oh yes, bashed MS on Slashdot.
That's too hard for some people, and for them, I recommend that they stick to having a virus-infected Windows machine.
Oh some nice condescention there for people who don't want to re-learn things (i.e. those Windows users). Its quite easy to keep a Windows machine virus free (Windows Update on automatic, virus update and scan on automatic) so that isn't their choice. True many users don't, but I can't see the people who can't manage that managing emacs and LaTeX.
More importantly sometimes for what you want to do it isn't worth spending the time to learn a new way. I see enough users struggle with a GUI word processor.
All in all, learning emacs and LaTeX let me write better looking documents (and code) with less effort. It just takes a bit of initial learning and the willingness to change your mindset.
That's great... for you. The sort of documents I need to produce at work are simple, Word can do them just fine (in fact a simpler word processor could do them just fine, but Word is what we get, I use AbiWord at home).
As for code, I work on both Unix and Windows machines. Unix often makes hard things easy, but also often makes easy things hard (this is changing as people make more Windows/Mac influenced programs for *nix). If you don't need to do something hard, it is often not worth the time learning a complex tool.
I use vi for editing shell scripts and perl, but if I'm writing.Net I'll use a dedicated IDE. Right tool (for me, maybe not everyone) for the right job.
Personally, I think the hardcore gamers should just use consoles; they're cheaper than computers
What rubbish. I have an XBox and a PC, and the games I play in them are different, because the games released for them are different, and tend to focus on different genres. If I want third person action, or racing or beat 'em ups I'll go to the console. If I want fps, strategy or MMOG I'll go to the PC.
I'd guess becuase lots of testing has backed it up, and most people with alternate theories are kooks?
If someone offers actual, repeatable proof that it is wrong scientist will listen (well some will, always get some reistance to change) until then going with what works best and has worked is what science is supposed to do.
If it is wrong, well the facts will prove it like they did with Newton's Laws.
Evolution is great for wiping up species when conditions change. If conditions change back then the survivors may find that they are not very well adapted to the new conditions.
Evolution doesn't wipe out anything. Changing conditions or better competitors coming along does.
If conditions change back new spcies will evolve to fill the new conditions.
Of course we don't have overpopulaton. We have the space and the ability to produce food for everyone on Earth (it may not get to the people who need it, but that is more politics) right now and a good deal more.
We may have to be more careful with polution, and we may run out of oil, but nothing suggests Earth can't support the current or greater human population.
Actually it pretty much is blamed at least partly on modern man, at leas the ancestors of the Native Americans, since the Megafauna becomes extinct shortly after they arrive.
Megafauna has relatively low number, and needs a lot of space and resources to survive. Consequently its in quite a precarious position and the extra pressure from humans hunting them could well have reduced them below viable numbers.
Of course this could have just accelerated a process that would have happened anyway, we can't really tell.
Apple don't want people to have bad experiences of OSX and tell that to other people. It doesn't matter if they did something unsupported or not, they don't want their brand tarnished by people's bad experiences.
I'm not saying they are right or wrong, just pointing out why they wouldn't want consumers to do something things with their product.
Yeah MS made loads of money on software (although they do make hardware, just not PCs).
Right now though Apple make money on hardware and software. They have to decide what gives them the best profit, selling their own hardware, or trying to compete as an OS for an x86 system with all the compatablity problems that could entail.
If staying with their own hardware makes them more money its exactly the right thing to do. It doesn't matter what MS did years ago, the question is what can Apple do now.
It isn't a stupid argument at all, just plain good business sense. And remember, raising the price of their OS reduces the demand.
Apple makes a lot of money from its hardware sales, so the question for them has to be if they let OS X run on generic x86 hardware, would the increased software sales make up for the loss of hardware sales?
Its taken a long time for windows drives to get to the point where most of them are pretty stable and reliable, and hardware comes with Windows drives that these days usually just work. If Apple were to release OS X for generic PCs, they would have lots of catching up to do here, all the nice just works stuff of the Mac would be lost.
Linux has been playing catch up here for years and isn't close (yes it supports more hardware out of the box, but user don't give a shit about that, they care they can go out and buy some hardware and it works on their computer, they don't care if that means the hardware comes with a CD of drivers). With a small market share I'm not sure Apple can do a whole lot better and without that I don't see it being a viable alternative to most people.
As it stands one of the selling points of Macs is its easier than Windows in terms of stuff just working. OS X on generic PCs is going to be worse than Windows here, and the in the public mind that may make a general impression about OS X not realising the distinction.
The one area the XBox kicked the crap out of the other consoles was online gaming. Everyone had the hard drive, everyone had the network connector, everyone with Live had the headset.
So all the games could take advantage of it because they knew what the customer had. They could offer updates to online games becuase they knew everyone could take advanage of it.
If the choice is make a game for all XBox 360s, or a better game for only the hard drives, well 99% of developers will go for 1.
There is no such thing as "nature" its just a term we use for all the stuff that happens that isn't done by humans.
The thing about being a (supposedly) intelligent species is we gave up on the whole waiting millions of years to evolve to adapt to something, and use our brain power to alter ourselves or our environment to deal with it.
You may as well complain our ancestors shouldn't have used tools or worn animal skins, because don't they allow people to survive when they otherwise would not? Shouldn't nature have "taken its course"?
One of the evolutionary advantages of intelligence, societies and communications is it only takes one individual to have the idea, and it can be spread and everyone can benefit. This is true for tools, clothes, shelter and medicine. The moment we started using them, we pretty much gave up on the whole "natural" survival of the fittest thing.
But you are welcome to give it all up and go live in the wilderness with only the things you, personally, can make.
If they have to write games as if a hard drive wasn't there, you loose at lot of the advantages of the hard drive.
Sure KotoR saves took up loads of space, but at least the game let you save anytime. Hard drives let you get away from the irritating save points, unless of course you can't rely on the hard drive being there.
And how is content download going to work? No more extra level, patches or bonus content on Live? If you can't rely on a hard drvie, where do you keep this stuff? The memomry card?
That's good--but transhumanist organizations deserve more as it is a far more pressing goal.
It really isn't
Space isn't all the pressing given the problems we have on Earth, but I do recognise the value in getting people off Earth for our survivability, science and technology we learn, and less tangible benefits like inspiration and wonder.
Transhumanism though? A tiny, tiny group of people want to turn themselves into something else. Great, you go work on that, but it isn't a priority at all to the vast bulk of humankind, who wants to stay that way.
I'll add even if it were to solve current problems, its naive to think there wouldn't be new one. Biological viruses don't kill you but computer ones do. If you "transhumanist" looks like a machine, others will have a lots less inhibitions killing it. I do think some humans will choose to modify themselves in the future, but I don't see any sort of utopia there.
Okay, vertical positioning, I'll give you. But fluid layouts? That's not hard at all. Websites are fluid by default, they only stop being fluid when you set explicit widths using fixed units. You can do that with CSS or tables.
I once tried to do some of our corporate intranet pages to use pure CSS, but couldn't. The mixture of headers, footers, fixed and flowing columns I just couldn't get to work.
CSS seems nice for simple layouts, or complex ones using fixed positioning. Complex ones with some fixed some flow though it seems to struggle with.
If you are an experienced designer, then you've already done similar layouts a hundred times before, so you have the code and bug workarounds memorised and making it "work across all the common browsers" is at the very least least as easy as dumping a load of table code into each page.
I'm an experienced designer but if I can't get CSS to do what I want (or find an example on the web) where does this code come from?
Er, no. Not semantic. Not at all. If you are using tables for anything other than tabular data, it's not semantic.
True, but HTML isn't semantic, never was, and doesn't look like it ever will be.
I've heard that before. Exclusively from developers that have years of experience with tables and who haven't spent any significant amount of time with CSS.
Multi columns in tables still seems much easier to me than CSS. Plus if its tricky lots of HTML editors will do a GUI interface for layout with tables behind the scenes. The code is nasty but it wins hands down for speed and being intuitive.
CSS is certainly great for fonts, sizes, colours and the like and I use it all the time. Complex flowing page layout though? Not there, not yet at least for me.
One of the ideas of CSS is it does strip out all the presentation stuff, and puts it into the CSS file. Since most browsers allow you to overide the sites CSS file with a local one, you could make a "plain" CSS file and you get what you want.
Unfortantely CSS as implimented is up to doing serous layout stuff, so sites still use nested tables and things that replacing the CSS won't remove.
While the original list was plain silly, I have to laugh at this.
Because the US is the single greatest defender of democracy in the history of the world.
Given the history of the US in backing non-democratic governments that overthrow democratic but socialist governments, (nd remember that doesn't mean communist or want to become communist, lots of countries elect socialist governments from time to time, much of Europe for example.
Look at the brutal un-democratic regimes the US still backs. If someone from Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan hates the US its unlikely to be because they hate it for its freedom and democracy but more likely because it backs a deeply unpopular regime (of course that is just one reason, there may be others rational and irrational).
We are all grateful for what the US did in WWII, but remember was against a democratic election there since the result would probably have been something it didn't want.
The US is no worse than most countries in the way it acts in its own interest, but it isn't really much better either. If you look at its history it isn't some great bastion of worldwide democracy and freedom, just self interested like everyone else.
To come vaguely back on topic, when the rest of the world sees a US reluctance to do anything about climate change, a lot of people see that same self-interest, although very short term, again. It seems to largely be US scientist (and a minority of them) who don't think humans are having an effect. Many of which work for US companies that give large donations to US politicians. This makes people pretty sceptical.
I think its advantage is it is very simple to impliment. The RSS feed is just an xml file on the webserver. No new technology is needed to set it up, no new protocols or software.
I think that is why it was caught on. Remember previous attempts at "push" technology on the web were supposed to be the next big thing, and never went anywhere becuase nobody set them up.
I'm not sure why IPv6 would have any impact. It's just more IP addresses available.
Slashdot Mirror
No I'm not, I wasn't aware it had been posted before, which several people have now pointed out.
So once would have been funny, but if it keeps getting posted, troll is fair enough.
Why was this modded a troll when it's clearly saitre? I mean with gems like "They have fought the War on Drugs with skill, so why not the War on Piracy?"
I thought it was pretty funny myself.
Science has never had anything to say about God (except reducing the need to have a supernatural explanation for things). As science becomes more accurate, it does so through the scientific process. Unless you feel God is going to become observable and testable it never will.
Evolution doesn't imply a philosophy of no God, plenty of people believe in both anyway. It does remove the need for God to explain different species, but if a new and better scientific theory comes along that will still be the case.
You may believe it, but I don't think many people do. Sometimes the results of science may be elegant such that a scientist may appreciate it on a aesthetic level.
Discovering something elegant doesn't seem to me the same process as creating something. The scientist isn't expressing something in the same way and science is bound by trying to model the universe, you can't change the equation to express something different.
So for me science completely fails to be art, however much I may admire the results.
Art can be created using science, or the results of science (technology) but plenty of art can be about expressing emotions. I studied theory of music, but many of my favourite songs are three cords and voice laden with emotion. I'll take the lyrical over the mathematical in music every time.
I write code, I can appricate the craft of a well written algorithm, but that doesn't make it art (to me, since art is such a subjective term).
Seems to me he was on the money, as the impression I got was that he sees 'techno-utopians' as seeing their computer as artistic tools, but was arguing most people don't.
I'm not sure I agree, I think most people are getting used to CGI, and know computers can make images an music.
I think people regard it as an artistic tool when it is used to create new things, but don't regard mixes and mashups as creative. Most people don't see taking part of someones song or picture on a part with particular notes or colours.
Mr. Orlowski's arguments are the same ones as get trotted out time and again against open source. Regardless of whether you think open source is awesome or overrated, it's tough to argue that open source is irrelevant, which is how Mr. Orlowski paints the Creative Commons.
Well, from what I got from the article the writer thinks that the problem with the CC crowd is they think of creative work a lot like code, and think a solution that works for code will work for artistic works.
If you accept that, then pointing out these arguments did work for Open Source doesn't really help you, since you have already accepted the situation is different. So Open Source can be relevant, but the Creative Commons may not be.
If the games cause children to be more violent, why don't we see the stastical effect of it?
Becuase the statistics for violent crime overall are effected by so many other factors that what ever you find, or don't, in linking them to numbers of kids playing violent vidoe games is useless.
I would expect a typical user wouldn't give a new OS that long.
It may not be fair most users are familar with Windows, but they are. If they can' pick up a new OS quickly they will probably just give up on it.
If people want Linux to compete on the desktop it has to deal with this reality.
How did you get modded +5 insightful when you clearly are talking about stuff you don't know about? Oh yes, bashed MS on Slashdot.
That's too hard for some people, and for them, I recommend that they stick to having a virus-infected Windows machine.
Oh some nice condescention there for people who don't want to re-learn things (i.e. those Windows users). Its quite easy to keep a Windows machine virus free (Windows Update on automatic, virus update and scan on automatic) so that isn't their choice. True many users don't, but I can't see the people who can't manage that managing emacs and LaTeX.
More importantly sometimes for what you want to do it isn't worth spending the time to learn a new way. I see enough users struggle with a GUI word processor.
All in all, learning emacs and LaTeX let me write better looking documents (and code) with less effort. It just takes a bit of initial learning and the willingness to change your mindset.
That's great... for you. The sort of documents I need to produce at work are simple, Word can do them just fine (in fact a simpler word processor could do them just fine, but Word is what we get, I use AbiWord at home).
As for code, I work on both Unix and Windows machines. Unix often makes hard things easy, but also often makes easy things hard (this is changing as people make more Windows/Mac influenced programs for *nix). If you don't need to do something hard, it is often not worth the time learning a complex tool.
I use vi for editing shell scripts and perl, but if I'm writing .Net I'll use a dedicated IDE. Right tool (for me, maybe not everyone) for the right job.
Personally, I think the hardcore gamers should just use consoles; they're cheaper than computers
What rubbish. I have an XBox and a PC, and the games I play in them are different, because the games released for them are different, and tend to focus on different genres. If I want third person action, or racing or beat 'em ups I'll go to the console. If I want fps, strategy or MMOG I'll go to the PC.
I'd guess becuase lots of testing has backed it up, and most people with alternate theories are kooks?
If someone offers actual, repeatable proof that it is wrong scientist will listen (well some will, always get some reistance to change) until then going with what works best and has worked is what science is supposed to do.
If it is wrong, well the facts will prove it like they did with Newton's Laws.
But humans are part of nature, and if humans decide to kill species X becuase of the way it looks thats as natural as changing climate.
Evolution is great for wiping up species when conditions change. If conditions change back then the survivors may find that they are not very well adapted to the new conditions.
Evolution doesn't wipe out anything. Changing conditions or better competitors coming along does.
If conditions change back new spcies will evolve to fill the new conditions.
Yeah a fee lion deaths will solve overpopulation.
Of course we don't have overpopulaton. We have the space and the ability to produce food for everyone on Earth (it may not get to the people who need it, but that is more politics) right now and a good deal more.
We may have to be more careful with polution, and we may run out of oil, but nothing suggests Earth can't support the current or greater human population.
Actually it pretty much is blamed at least partly on modern man, at leas the ancestors of the Native Americans, since the Megafauna becomes extinct shortly after they arrive.
Megafauna has relatively low number, and needs a lot of space and resources to survive. Consequently its in quite a precarious position and the extra pressure from humans hunting them could well have reduced them below viable numbers.
Of course this could have just accelerated a process that would have happened anyway, we can't really tell.
Apple don't want people to have bad experiences of OSX and tell that to other people. It doesn't matter if they did something unsupported or not, they don't want their brand tarnished by people's bad experiences.
I'm not saying they are right or wrong, just pointing out why they wouldn't want consumers to do something things with their product.
Yeah MS made loads of money on software (although they do make hardware, just not PCs).
Right now though Apple make money on hardware and software. They have to decide what gives them the best profit, selling their own hardware, or trying to compete as an OS for an x86 system with all the compatablity problems that could entail.
If staying with their own hardware makes them more money its exactly the right thing to do. It doesn't matter what MS did years ago, the question is what can Apple do now.
It isn't a stupid argument at all, just plain good business sense. And remember, raising the price of their OS reduces the demand.
Apple makes a lot of money from its hardware sales, so the question for them has to be if they let OS X run on generic x86 hardware, would the increased software sales make up for the loss of hardware sales?
Its taken a long time for windows drives to get to the point where most of them are pretty stable and reliable, and hardware comes with Windows drives that these days usually just work. If Apple were to release OS X for generic PCs, they would have lots of catching up to do here, all the nice just works stuff of the Mac would be lost.
Linux has been playing catch up here for years and isn't close (yes it supports more hardware out of the box, but user don't give a shit about that, they care they can go out and buy some hardware and it works on their computer, they don't care if that means the hardware comes with a CD of drivers). With a small market share I'm not sure Apple can do a whole lot better and without that I don't see it being a viable alternative to most people.
As it stands one of the selling points of Macs is its easier than Windows in terms of stuff just working. OS X on generic PCs is going to be worse than Windows here, and the in the public mind that may make a general impression about OS X not realising the distinction.
Yeah that worked so well for Sony...
The one area the XBox kicked the crap out of the other consoles was online gaming. Everyone had the hard drive, everyone had the network connector, everyone with Live had the headset.
So all the games could take advantage of it because they knew what the customer had. They could offer updates to online games becuase they knew everyone could take advanage of it.
If the choice is make a game for all XBox 360s, or a better game for only the hard drives, well 99% of developers will go for 1.
There is no such thing as "nature" its just a term we use for all the stuff that happens that isn't done by humans.
The thing about being a (supposedly) intelligent species is we gave up on the whole waiting millions of years to evolve to adapt to something, and use our brain power to alter ourselves or our environment to deal with it.
You may as well complain our ancestors shouldn't have used tools or worn animal skins, because don't they allow people to survive when they otherwise would not? Shouldn't nature have "taken its course"?
One of the evolutionary advantages of intelligence, societies and communications is it only takes one individual to have the idea, and it can be spread and everyone can benefit. This is true for tools, clothes, shelter and medicine. The moment we started using them, we pretty much gave up on the whole "natural" survival of the fittest thing.
But you are welcome to give it all up and go live in the wilderness with only the things you, personally, can make.
If they have to write games as if a hard drive wasn't there, you loose at lot of the advantages of the hard drive.
Sure KotoR saves took up loads of space, but at least the game let you save anytime. Hard drives let you get away from the irritating save points, unless of course you can't rely on the hard drive being there.
And how is content download going to work? No more extra level, patches or bonus content on Live? If you can't rely on a hard drvie, where do you keep this stuff? The memomry card?
That's good--but transhumanist organizations deserve more as it is a far more pressing goal.
It really isn't
Space isn't all the pressing given the problems we have on Earth, but I do recognise the value in getting people off Earth for our survivability, science and technology we learn, and less tangible benefits like inspiration and wonder.
Transhumanism though? A tiny, tiny group of people want to turn themselves into something else. Great, you go work on that, but it isn't a priority at all to the vast bulk of humankind, who wants to stay that way.
I'll add even if it were to solve current problems, its naive to think there wouldn't be new one. Biological viruses don't kill you but computer ones do. If you "transhumanist" looks like a machine, others will have a lots less inhibitions killing it. I do think some humans will choose to modify themselves in the future, but I don't see any sort of utopia there.
Okay, vertical positioning, I'll give you. But fluid layouts? That's not hard at all. Websites are fluid by default, they only stop being fluid when you set explicit widths using fixed units. You can do that with CSS or tables.
I once tried to do some of our corporate intranet pages to use pure CSS, but couldn't. The mixture of headers, footers, fixed and flowing columns I just couldn't get to work.
CSS seems nice for simple layouts, or complex ones using fixed positioning. Complex ones with some fixed some flow though it seems to struggle with.
If you are an experienced designer, then you've already done similar layouts a hundred times before, so you have the code and bug workarounds memorised and making it "work across all the common browsers" is at the very least least as easy as dumping a load of table code into each page.
I'm an experienced designer but if I can't get CSS to do what I want (or find an example on the web) where does this code come from?
Er, no. Not semantic. Not at all. If you are using tables for anything other than tabular data, it's not semantic.
True, but HTML isn't semantic, never was, and doesn't look like it ever will be.
I've heard that before. Exclusively from developers that have years of experience with tables and who haven't spent any significant amount of time with CSS.
Multi columns in tables still seems much easier to me than CSS. Plus if its tricky lots of HTML editors will do a GUI interface for layout with tables behind the scenes. The code is nasty but it wins hands down for speed and being intuitive.
CSS is certainly great for fonts, sizes, colours and the like and I use it all the time. Complex flowing page layout though? Not there, not yet at least for me.
One of the ideas of CSS is it does strip out all the presentation stuff, and puts it into the CSS file. Since most browsers allow you to overide the sites CSS file with a local one, you could make a "plain" CSS file and you get what you want.
Unfortantely CSS as implimented is up to doing serous layout stuff, so sites still use nested tables and things that replacing the CSS won't remove.
Of course web sites did that in HTML3.2 as well.
While the original list was plain silly, I have to laugh at this.
Because the US is the single greatest defender of democracy in the history of the world.
Given the history of the US in backing non-democratic governments that overthrow democratic but socialist governments, (nd remember that doesn't mean communist or want to become communist, lots of countries elect socialist governments from time to time, much of Europe for example.
Look at the brutal un-democratic regimes the US still backs. If someone from Saudi Arabia or Uzbekistan hates the US its unlikely to be because they hate it for its freedom and democracy but more likely because it backs a deeply unpopular regime (of course that is just one reason, there may be others rational and irrational).
We are all grateful for what the US did in WWII, but remember was against a democratic election there since the result would probably have been something it didn't want.
The US is no worse than most countries in the way it acts in its own interest, but it isn't really much better either. If you look at its history it isn't some great bastion of worldwide democracy and freedom, just self interested like everyone else.
To come vaguely back on topic, when the rest of the world sees a US reluctance to do anything about climate change, a lot of people see that same self-interest, although very short term, again. It seems to largely be US scientist (and a minority of them) who don't think humans are having an effect. Many of which work for US companies that give large donations to US politicians. This makes people pretty sceptical.
I think its advantage is it is very simple to impliment. The RSS feed is just an xml file on the webserver. No new technology is needed to set it up, no new protocols or software.
I think that is why it was caught on. Remember previous attempts at "push" technology on the web were supposed to be the next big thing, and never went anywhere becuase nobody set them up.
I'm not sure why IPv6 would have any impact. It's just more IP addresses available.