Effectiveness ould breed less resentment if Firefox wouldn't suck so much. (Yes, mod me troll now without reading the rest of this post... go ahead, you know you want to because I dared criticise your toy.) Or, more precisely, it wouldn't if it actually was effective, but in the case of Firefox at least, it isn't, and certainly, a lack of consensus or a "popularity contest" does not automatically make things effective.
Of course, things *can* work that way. The Linux kernel and the notion of Linus Torvalds as a "benevolent dictator" is probably a good example, and it stands to reason that if there wasn't one person who's ultimately in charge of what goes into the vanilla tree and what doesn't, it wouldn't be where it is now. Can you imagine a "Linux steering committee" debating endlessly over the relative merits (or lack thereof) of certain things? I can, and it's not pretty, so I'm glad Linus does the job he does.
But - and this is important - Linus is not on a power trip. He does not approve things because people suck up to him, he does not reject things because he's on a personal vendetta, and so on; in short, he's not the "mwahaha, I've got power over you, tremble before me!" kind of guy. And while there are good (in every sense of the word) Mozilla developers, not all of them are, and it often seems that the relative amount of developers more interested in politics and their little games is higher than it should be - and higher than in other projects, too. (asa, anyone?)
Ultimately, the only thing that should matter when you develop a piece of software is technical merit. With Linux, it does, and that's why Linux is - basically - great (and successful); with Firefox, it's politics more than anything else, and that's why Firefox - ultimately - sucks. Just check out bug #18574 for a prime example of what's wrong with certain Firefox developers.
I think I'll actually have to defend Slashdot here - as far as I can see, the reason why they're carrying this is not that they agree with it (or think that we would), but rather that they want to give us something to rip to shreds. And admit it: doing so is fun.:)
Yes, still laughing, simply because "RAID" stands for "redundant array of independent disks". In other words, when you talk about a "redundant RAID array", you're talking about a "redundant redundant array of independent disks array", and that *is* redundant (doubly so, even), even though the "redundant" part of "RAID" is not always actually true.
This is so typical of what is wrong with the open source movement.
No, no, no! That's a typical example of what's wrong with some people, but it isn't fair to decry all of the "open source movement" (itself a misleading term, BTW, since there is no single, coherent movement) just because of some comment some random schmuck makes on Slashdot. Really, before making comments like that, just try substituting something else for "open source movement" first - "closed source movement", for example -, and if the whole thing doesn't make sense anymore then, then it probably didn't before, either.:)
That being said, the rest of your comment was very insightful, so thanks for that.
Support civil liberties, wear a kilt to the next SuperBowl!
(If you're wondering how this would help civil liberties. well, let's just say it will probably cause naughty camera operators to go blind. Or at least wish they had.)
Einstein's theories (I assume you mean general relativity) are nice, but unfortunately, they're also incompatible with quantum mechanics. That's not to say they're totally invalid, of course, but clearly, they're not the end of it all, either.
(That being said, I would be surprised if information transfer with speeds >c would be possible in any new theory that successfully integrates GR and QM.)
Re:Firefox is the most unstable program in common
on
Firefox Slides, IE Gains?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You raise a good point. I hate to say it (no, really, I do), but Firefox - and Mozilla in general - is a piece of crap. I'm using the monolithic Mozilla suite (tried Firefox, but didn't like it), and it crashes or locks up on my pretty much daily; and when it doesn't, it typically eats about 200 to 300 MB of RAM, unless I close it every day (which is possible, of course, but inconvenient).
I have filed bugs in the past for crashes, too - those few cases where I could actually work out a consistent trigger condition. Nothing ever happened, though; the bugs were auto-closed in the end since no developer had ever done even so much as acknowledge them. I do understand that the developers are swamped, of course, but don't CRASHES deserve a bit more attention?
I'm seriously considering switching to Opera. About the only things that still holds me back are AdBlock, and the fact that I'm used to Mozilla and generally find Opera a bit unwieldy.
Indeed, and the reason for that is that Rolls Royce and Ferrari are pretty much unaffordable for the unwashed masses - it's not like people don't *want* Ferraris, it's just that they don't have the money for them.
That obviously isn't a concern with Firefox, so the example isn't a good one.
Could you pilot a submarine through a planet's core?
"If it were possible to have a water core at the center of a planet, then perhaps, but the pressures would be significant," Imahara explains. "That would have to be some submarine."
"Would the inside of a planet be water?" Savage asks. "I don't think so."
Indeed, the pressure *would* be significant, and the water would either be in a solid or supercritical liquid phase - it'd be pretty unlikely that you'd find it possible to drive a submarine through it in either case, though, even if the submarine itself would be constructed to withstand the pressure and temperature at the core.
It even tagged an Apache2 404 error page as a phishing site.
Honi soit qui mal y pense...
Re:No raw sockets in XP?
on
Nmap 4.00 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I wonder what's the logic in disabling raw sockets...
Oh! Can't you see? It's all done to protect you from the evil intarweb hackers!
That being said, the lowest level you can use now is raw ethernet frames, and that's just what nmap does - in other words, the disabling of raw sockets is completely useless...
Please get your facts straight. It was not a glbt-ONLY guild; it was a glbt-FRIENDLY guild. Big difference there, isn't it? All that they were essentially saying is "homophobes aren't welcome here". I fail to see why anyone could possibly take offense at that.
So my question is, why haven't they taken any action against the Christian guilds?
Money. There's a large right-wing christian lobby in the USA that would jump on Blizzard if they cracked down on these guilds - so they would lose real money. On the other hand, gay people are pretty much in the minority, so the losses from banning gay-friendly guilds won't even cause a blip on their profit radar. (And in fact, this might even encourage some homophobes and other reactionists to sign up for the game, so it might well even increase profits, or at least offset the potential losses.)
That's all there is to it really. Blizzard very much deserves to be criticised, of course, but if you want to understand *why* they are acting the way they are, you have to keep in mind that they don't have any ethics whatsoever and only care about one thing: money.
It doesn't mean you *have* to, but I don't see why Blizzard or anyone should be opposed to a "lopsided arm-hair colour friendly" guild, either. Do they really expect that members of that guild will suddenly go around and harass others for not having lopsidedly-coloured arm-hair? That seems pretty far-fetched to me, and even more so when the guild is only LAHC-_friendly_, not LAHC-_only_. Big difference...
I don't have personal experiences with the rest, but Conner and Micropolis are names that should be purged from all history, unless it's a hall of shame.
I wager it's just to give citizens the illusion of privacy while they are scanned from afar.
You probably hit the nail on the head there. Many (most?) people seem to have a gut reaction of saying "hey, up yours!" when somebody proposes something that would, in essence, lead to a "papers please!" scenario (real or perceived), but they're too naive and/or stupid to realise that it's not being *asked* for papers that's the problem, but the fact that you're being identified, probably against your will, and with drawbacks/sanctions/repercussions if you do not agree to it.
In other words, people are complaining about the symptoms rather than the underlying problem, and RFID arguably makes the symptoms go away; nobody will ask you for your papers after all, but that's not because they don't want to identify you - it's because it's not necessary to ask anymore. Rather, your data will just be read from afar, without you even being aware of it.
Those politicians pushing for these things are probably drooling over the possibilities. It's even trivially possible to automate the entire process; you could scan entire crowds without them ever noticing, you could track people and build movement databases, and do just about everything that shouldn't be possible (or at least allowed) in a free society.
Considering that there is absolutely zero advantage in RFID passports for those who'll be required to carry them, it's hard for me to believe that these things are not the reason why there's a push for these.
A pirate? You mean he sailed the seven seas, sunk other ships, stole their goods, raped their women and murdered the crew?
I agree that the headline is typical Slashdot flamebait and that it's important to point out the difference between hackers and crackers, but it's also important to point out the difference between copyright infringment, stealing and piracy - those are three very distinct things (and only two of them are criminal offenses, too, FWIW).
It has long since existed - anyone with a bit of sanity left (that is, anyone who's not a raving Sun fanboy) will replace Sun's own toolchain with the GNU tools right after installing Solaris on a new box. Most people don't call the result "GNU/Solaris", though, for some reason, and even the usual suspects like RMS are strangely quiet on that matter - which makes you wonder if the insistence on terms like "GNU/Linux" really is purely based on rational, technical reasoning.
Slashdot Mirror
Effectiveness ould breed less resentment if Firefox wouldn't suck so much. (Yes, mod me troll now without reading the rest of this post... go ahead, you know you want to because I dared criticise your toy.) Or, more precisely, it wouldn't if it actually was effective, but in the case of Firefox at least, it isn't, and certainly, a lack of consensus or a "popularity contest" does not automatically make things effective.
Of course, things *can* work that way. The Linux kernel and the notion of Linus Torvalds as a "benevolent dictator" is probably a good example, and it stands to reason that if there wasn't one person who's ultimately in charge of what goes into the vanilla tree and what doesn't, it wouldn't be where it is now. Can you imagine a "Linux steering committee" debating endlessly over the relative merits (or lack thereof) of certain things? I can, and it's not pretty, so I'm glad Linus does the job he does.
But - and this is important - Linus is not on a power trip. He does not approve things because people suck up to him, he does not reject things because he's on a personal vendetta, and so on; in short, he's not the "mwahaha, I've got power over you, tremble before me!" kind of guy. And while there are good (in every sense of the word) Mozilla developers, not all of them are, and it often seems that the relative amount of developers more interested in politics and their little games is higher than it should be - and higher than in other projects, too. (asa, anyone?)
Ultimately, the only thing that should matter when you develop a piece of software is technical merit. With Linux, it does, and that's why Linux is - basically - great (and successful); with Firefox, it's politics more than anything else, and that's why Firefox - ultimately - sucks. Just check out bug #18574 for a prime example of what's wrong with certain Firefox developers.
Some kids do, yes, but obviously, this isn't one of them.
I think I'll actually have to defend Slashdot here - as far as I can see, the reason why they're carrying this is not that they agree with it (or think that we would), but rather that they want to give us something to rip to shreds. And admit it: doing so is fun. :)
Yes, still laughing, simply because "RAID" stands for "redundant array of independent disks". In other words, when you talk about a "redundant RAID array", you're talking about a "redundant redundant array of independent disks array", and that *is* redundant (doubly so, even), even though the "redundant" part of "RAID" is not always actually true.
No, no, no! That's a typical example of what's wrong with some people, but it isn't fair to decry all of the "open source movement" (itself a misleading term, BTW, since there is no single, coherent movement) just because of some comment some random schmuck makes on Slashdot. Really, before making comments like that, just try substituting something else for "open source movement" first - "closed source movement", for example -, and if the whole thing doesn't make sense anymore then, then it probably didn't before, either. :)
That being said, the rest of your comment was very insightful, so thanks for that.
Support civil liberties, wear a kilt to the next SuperBowl!
(If you're wondering how this would help civil liberties. well, let's just say it will probably cause naughty camera operators to go blind. Or at least wish they had.)
Einstein's theories (I assume you mean general relativity) are nice, but unfortunately, they're also incompatible with quantum mechanics. That's not to say they're totally invalid, of course, but clearly, they're not the end of it all, either.
(That being said, I would be surprised if information transfer with speeds >c would be possible in any new theory that successfully integrates GR and QM.)
You raise a good point. I hate to say it (no, really, I do), but Firefox - and Mozilla in general - is a piece of crap. I'm using the monolithic Mozilla suite (tried Firefox, but didn't like it), and it crashes or locks up on my pretty much daily; and when it doesn't, it typically eats about 200 to 300 MB of RAM, unless I close it every day (which is possible, of course, but inconvenient).
I have filed bugs in the past for crashes, too - those few cases where I could actually work out a consistent trigger condition. Nothing ever happened, though; the bugs were auto-closed in the end since no developer had ever done even so much as acknowledge them. I do understand that the developers are swamped, of course, but don't CRASHES deserve a bit more attention?
I'm seriously considering switching to Opera. About the only things that still holds me back are AdBlock, and the fact that I'm used to Mozilla and generally find Opera a bit unwieldy.
Maybe I should give Sleipnir a try...
Indeed, and the reason for that is that Rolls Royce and Ferrari are pretty much unaffordable for the unwashed masses - it's not like people don't *want* Ferraris, it's just that they don't have the money for them.
That obviously isn't a concern with Firefox, so the example isn't a good one.
Just think of the possibilities for kancho... >_>
Good thing we're not talking about Myth Busters , either...
Indeed, the pressure *would* be significant, and the water would either be in a solid or supercritical liquid phase - it'd be pretty unlikely that you'd find it possible to drive a submarine through it in either case, though, even if the submarine itself would be constructed to withstand the pressure and temperature at the core.
Of course, IANAP, though, so YMMV.
Gnapster - I actually like the sound of that. Kinda reminiscent of "Gnab Gib"...
Honi soit qui mal y pense...
Oh! Can't you see? It's all done to protect you from the evil intarweb hackers!
That being said, the lowest level you can use now is raw ethernet frames, and that's just what nmap does - in other words, the disabling of raw sockets is completely useless...
Please get your facts straight. It was not a glbt-ONLY guild; it was a glbt-FRIENDLY guild. Big difference there, isn't it? All that they were essentially saying is "homophobes aren't welcome here". I fail to see why anyone could possibly take offense at that.
Money. There's a large right-wing christian lobby in the USA that would jump on Blizzard if they cracked down on these guilds - so they would lose real money. On the other hand, gay people are pretty much in the minority, so the losses from banning gay-friendly guilds won't even cause a blip on their profit radar. (And in fact, this might even encourage some homophobes and other reactionists to sign up for the game, so it might well even increase profits, or at least offset the potential losses.)
That's all there is to it really. Blizzard very much deserves to be criticised, of course, but if you want to understand *why* they are acting the way they are, you have to keep in mind that they don't have any ethics whatsoever and only care about one thing: money.
It doesn't mean you *have* to, but I don't see why Blizzard or anyone should be opposed to a "lopsided arm-hair colour friendly" guild, either. Do they really expect that members of that guild will suddenly go around and harass others for not having lopsidedly-coloured arm-hair? That seems pretty far-fetched to me, and even more so when the guild is only LAHC-_friendly_, not LAHC-_only_. Big difference...
I don't have personal experiences with the rest, but Conner and Micropolis are names that should be purged from all history, unless it's a hall of shame.
There you have it, then. Why ask a question when you already know the answer? :)
If MySQL works for you, stick with it. If you want something better and less brain-dead, switch to PostgreSQL. :)
You probably hit the nail on the head there. Many (most?) people seem to have a gut reaction of saying "hey, up yours!" when somebody proposes something that would, in essence, lead to a "papers please!" scenario (real or perceived), but they're too naive and/or stupid to realise that it's not being *asked* for papers that's the problem, but the fact that you're being identified, probably against your will, and with drawbacks/sanctions/repercussions if you do not agree to it.
In other words, people are complaining about the symptoms rather than the underlying problem, and RFID arguably makes the symptoms go away; nobody will ask you for your papers after all, but that's not because they don't want to identify you - it's because it's not necessary to ask anymore. Rather, your data will just be read from afar, without you even being aware of it.
Those politicians pushing for these things are probably drooling over the possibilities. It's even trivially possible to automate the entire process; you could scan entire crowds without them ever noticing, you could track people and build movement databases, and do just about everything that shouldn't be possible (or at least allowed) in a free society.
Considering that there is absolutely zero advantage in RFID passports for those who'll be required to carry them, it's hard for me to believe that these things are not the reason why there's a push for these.
A pirate? You mean he sailed the seven seas, sunk other ships, stole their goods, raped their women and murdered the crew?
I agree that the headline is typical Slashdot flamebait and that it's important to point out the difference between hackers and crackers, but it's also important to point out the difference between copyright infringment, stealing and piracy - those are three very distinct things (and only two of them are criminal offenses, too, FWIW).
It has long since existed - anyone with a bit of sanity left (that is, anyone who's not a raving Sun fanboy) will replace Sun's own toolchain with the GNU tools right after installing Solaris on a new box. Most people don't call the result "GNU/Solaris", though, for some reason, and even the usual suspects like RMS are strangely quiet on that matter - which makes you wonder if the insistence on terms like "GNU/Linux" really is purely based on rational, technical reasoning.
318? Wow, you've beaten even Commander Keen (*and* Mortimer McMire).