If the airlines were interested in being more competitve the correct move would be to offer flyers a discount if they don't mind their luggage coming out last. You might argue that in a competitive cut-throat world, this "discount" is already included in the ticket price. People who are already going for cheap flights- regardless of what they'll say in questionnaires and surveys- are more likely to go for the upfront cheapest flight.
The company that says "oh, by the way, your baggage will come last if you but this cheap ticket" will likely lose out to the one that doesn't say that upfront. The company that doesn't implicitly "include" the discount in the price will appear at first glance to be more expensive and lose out- or if they explicitly mention the discount, they'll have the same problem as the company that makes clear your baggage will come last.
Better to keep it quiet, keep the price of the "basic" ticket very low and then make money charging for the "priority" gravy. Cynical, and it sucks but that's the way modern business works. And to be fair, when prices are being driven down to the bone, that's the sort of thing companies rely on to make money.
As I said, smart customers would realise all this- but real-world customers often don't, giving priority to obvious (and short term) savings over longer term ones. Either that or they know what's happening, but want to save every last cent on the ticket and *then* get annoyed when they actually have to live with the consequences of their decision.
IMHO, the companies are both victims and exploiters of this phenomenon.
Removing meals from planes is the same thing. Depends how long the flight is. I flew business class from Scotland to London (approx. 50 minutes), and while the meal (and seats) were nice, the difference in cost over a normal ticket wasn't remotely justified. I'd rather have flown economy and had my employer pay me the difference:) If Joe Public is paying for his own holiday flight, I'm sure he'd rather save a few pounds/dollars.
I don't doubt that the "cost" of the business class meal was inflated way beyond the cost price, but I still bet that the cost price for the company was significant enough that it would be a serious issue for economy-class tickets. Remember that not only do you have the cost of the food, you also have to store it, serve it and clean up the mess.
And if you think I'm being picky, bear in mind that Ryanair (cheap Irish airline that is popular in the UK) kept their costs down by removing the magazine holders on the backs of seats, simply because it was one less thing to clean up before flying again.
So yeah, the meal does make a difference, and I suspect that most people on short or medium-haul flights would rather just save the money. It's easy to bitch about this stuff, but the days in which everyone got a "free" meal were the days in which flying was far more expensive.
I don't think you get it. He doesn't want to express his willingness to do what others want. Well, I didn't express myself too well (too longwinded for a start), and as I said, there was an element of playing devil's advocate. However, in this case he wanted to influence a group of people- and dressing in an unconventional manner makes it more likely that they'll subconsciously (or consciously!) dismiss him as someone who isn't one of them, who has his own agenda. Or maybe not- you could be right.
However, I still maintain that in general, the wearing of a suit does have a logical purpose, contrary to what *many* people here are arguing. It might not be a purpose that suits them (or you or me), or is to everyone's taste, but it's there. The suit basically symbolises some form of conformity, and although it's not likely to get me much credibility saying this, there are cases where conformity is necessary and beneficial. And there are other cases (such as the ones you give) where it arguably isnt.
That's not to cast judgement either way on conformism or non-conformism.
I'm not sure how much of my response is playing devil's advocate and how much is my personal views, but anyway:-
How you dress usually has no effect on your ability to complete a task, and as such you should be evaluated based on that. Yes, but dressing to please another person's expectations can indicate a willingness to do things their way.
The idea that you need to wear particular clothes to show respect is completely contrived and totally ridiculous. It is purely down to conditioning and sheep-like herd behavior... True, but those in charge of companies could justifiably argue that they need people to behave in a reasonably team-like manner (whether this represents "sheep-like" behaviour may be a matter of opinion, and will vary from company to company anyway). It's all very well having people who *could* do the job, the question is whether they are *willing* to do the job in the manner most beneficial to the company, or will be more likely to scratch their intellectual itch and/or do things the way *they* want to.
This isn't necessarily saying that the way every company does things is the most sensible way. And great things have come from people scratching their intellectual itches, or- to put it more flatteringly- doing what really enthuses them. But the other side of the coin is that many companies would argue that they require more coherence from staff behaviour.
Your typical Slashdotter might not like this, and I'm not going to demean their choice. I'm not sure that I personally like it either. But you have to realise that this is a reflection of our underlying personalities, that we like to do things our own way. I'm a great believer in diversity of personality types, and that there is no "right" or "wrong" one.
What does this have to do with such clothes? It's that they *are* a symbolic gesture- that you're willing to do things the way others want, even if it doesn't suit you. You might argue that this is stupid and illogical, that it doesn't change your ability to do the job. But human beings aren't that "logical" in that sense anyway.
And such visual symbolism does make sense- after all, the types of people who are most unwilling to wear suits may well be the types who (though brilliant) are like herding cats when it comes to managing them. And that's not going to suit every position in every company.
It might not be perfect, but as a "willingness to do what others want" indicator and visual shortcut, it does have some functionality.
Now, Stallman doesn't work for these people, that's true. But if he wants to influence them, to make them think he's got their own interests at heart, the symbolic wearing of a suit, or something similar may go a long way.
I'm well aware that people may perceive this in a knee-jerk manner as an attack on non-conformism, or consider me an apologist for the suit-wearing culture. It isn't, and I'm not. But it does grate that some people use superficial "logic" and "common sense" to justify one side of the argument, when considering the matter makes it evident that suits and similar workwear do serve a "logical" purpose. I dislike selective and superficial application of logic for purposes of self-justification. Personally, I'm not a great fit into the "suit wearing culture", but that reflects my underlying personality that I'm really not that great a team player anyway. So...
You may consider these people "sheep" or those that require such clothes stupid, but as I said before, consider that this may reflect your underlying personality- so in a way, such suits make logical sense.
At first glance, the above post may appear to be totally offtopic. However, it's not, because careful analysis has shown that it contains the following steganographically-hidden message:-
"I want the world to know this, but I can't bring myself to say it out loud. I am a total loser whose only thrills are lame attempts to troll Slashdot. And... I am a repressed furry. There, I said it, but no-one will ever know!" Thank you for your honesty, Mister AC.
memorizable is a word, you idiot Yes, several other people already mentioned that. I shouldn't have automatically assumed it wasn't, but the implication (by others) was originally just that, and the GP was implying that he could systematically "make up" words, which is what I was reacting against.
language fits a culture and changes day by day Which I already acknowledged above.
who the fuck decides what is a 'word' of english and what is not Not an illiterate cretin like you, thankfully:P
Maybe, but it doesn't seem to be an issue in Japan. True, but Japanese tastes are often very different to European and US ones, which probably reflects the major underlying cultural differences (despite the superficial hyper-Westernised appearance).
Basically, there's a whole load of weird shit that is massively successful in Japan that doesn't play nearly so well elsewhere.
I think it's a due to a combination of factors, namely: how graphics-oriented gamers are, the fact that arcades are pretty much dead in this country One of the attractions of arcades was that the games hardware was far more technologically advanced than home games consoles. If arcades were still popular in the US and Europe today, gamers would probably want cutting-edge graphics which in practice would be 3D anyway.
I'm not sure if it's actually being subsidised by the licence fee itself but I know the government is subsiding them Well, this analysis by the BBC on the economics of Tesco's £10 Freeview boxes mentions nothing whatsoever about any subsidy on the box itself. You'd have thought they'd mention that if this was the case.
Can you please let us know where you heard this claim that the government is subsidising the sale price of actual set-top boxes?
and so can safely assume it's the licence fee that's going towards it. Uh, no you can't "safely assume" that. Although the issue is complex, and money from the licence fee is undoubtedly going towards the BBC's new digital-only services, I very much doubt that the complete costs of the Freeview switchover are being met from this source. If nothing else, the BBC would have very publicly bitched if they had to hand over a large proportion of that year's licence fee to meet *all* the Freeview costs.
Even if it was, there are insufficient grounds for "safely assuming" this without evidence.
It's irrelevant really. That's a poor excuse for being hazy on details you presented as fact.
It's a shame that your original post was enough to mislead some people into thinking it was "informative" when it should clearly have been taken with a pinch of salt.
It's all free but you have to get a set top box (which are subsidised by the licence fee we pay). Are you claiming the Freeview boxes are subsidised by the licence fee themselves? I've never heard that before. The service, yes. The boxes, no.
That having been said, a few years back I thought that the government should have considered subsidising the cheapest Freeview boxes if it wasn't possible to buy one for 20 quid or less close to switch-off time. (Though I thought it more likely that prices would have fallen on their own anyway, which they did).
What about the forthcoming "Freesat" satellite TV (the BBC service of that name, not the unrelated "Freesat from Sky")? Okay, it might cost you a bit, but I doubt it'll be horrendous, and it'll be a solution.
TV will a blip in history between the 1930's and 2050's. It probably will be, but not for the reason you think probably. YouTube has risen to prominence incredibly fast, and although the quality is poor, it points the way to the future. I'm already used to being able to search for any old dreck I feel like watching (within reason), and despite having lots of Freeview channels to choose from (I remember when it was just BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, and Channel 4 launching was a big deal- yeah, I'm old), I can easily go up and down the channels and find nothing I want to watch.
TV just f****** *annoys* me these days, I just can't be arsed watching it. (YouTube is also better for my short attention span). But anyway... HDD PVRs (Tivo in the US, Sky Plus and the like here) are already here and cheap, hard drive capacities are going way up. Given enough hard drive space and six or so tuners, you could record the whole of Freeview's output for a day, week, month, etc. (Remember that Freeview broadcasts and receives several channels in a single multiplex, so you don't need a tuner for each channel).
So, it's getting to the stage where we can record whatever we want and watch it later; and ironically, the many repeats that fill those channels will become unnecessary because we won't even need to consciously decide to record it the first time it's on. We can just check the archive of recent programmes. And so on.
This is happening today. What will happen in 10 or 20 years time? I think that "watching TV" will still exist as a concept, but the lines between digital downloads, archived TV transmissions, DVDs (or whatever) and actual "live" transmitted TV will become blurred.
I wouldn't even dare to consider where we'll be in the 2050s(!)
I will miss the white noise from my TV. You must have an old TV then; the analogue tuners in most TVs built in the past 20 years or so suppress static (both picture and noise) when they can't detect a signal.
I kind of miss it too, but not really; looking back, it was pretty annoying when for whatever reason you tuned to an empty channel and got an earful of static.
Well, Serbs just had bad luck with their former president. This is possibly the most pathetic (and disgusting) attempt at an apologist whitewash that I've ever heard. There is no way on this earth that the genocidal actions of Serbia during the 1990s could have been carried out without the willing support of the people.
Slobodan Milosevic may have been responsible for inciting the wave of hatred that led to the conflict, its continuation, and directly or indirectly responsible for numerous war crimes, but this sure as hell does not wash the blood off the hands of the country as a whole.
For them, the US intervention was not fair. I'll assume that you meant that "they considered the invasion to be unfair". Well, tough fucking shit. The UN-supported actions (i.e. not unilateral US actions, as in Iraq) were entirely justified to stop what was going on there.
So yeah, it is easy to have an opinion when all that you can hear is CNN. My opinion came from BBC news and documentaries, and from reading newspapers. Probably not entirely free from bias, but unless I was reading nothing but the "Pro-Serbia Daily" (and gullible as hell), I still doubt I'd agree with your apologist ramblings.
Whether or not the US's actions elsewhere in the world are justified or correct does not excuse the Serbs actions during the conflict.
I see you like to back up your arguments with Wikipedia. Fine. Here's mine: América Which isn't in English. And rightly or wrongly, whether or not the English-speakers messed it up, the commonly accepted names in English are North America and South America. It's generally accepted that things like countries and continents can have different names in different languages.
And if you're arguing that North and South America are "one" continent; well, to quote myself from this post
at its thinnest point, the connection between North and South America is significantly narrower than that between Africa and Asia and
I have *never* seen a truly convincing argument or explanation as to why Europe and Asia are (or were ever) considered separate continents- it seems to be a cultural distinction, which has nothing to do with physical geography. So if you consider North and South America to be one, you must consider mainland Europe, Asia and Africa to be a single entity. If not, I'd be interested to hear why.
Actually, I think English (at least American:) puts a very low barrier to accepting new words that are created according to the standard rules. I would definitely consider memorizable a valid word. That as may be, it's still nowhere near low enough to let you make something up and on that basis alone claim that it's a "valid word" because you "definitely consider" this to be the case(!)
Are you sure? Something which can be memorized is ________? Why wouldn't "memorizable" apply? Uh, because it isn't an English word in currently accepted usage, perhaps?!
(Hint; not all words that can be "logically" constructed are valid English- whether you like that or not).
I'm going to order it from Holland. Customs get a DVD-shaped package from the Netherlands, first thing they're going to do is check to see if it's hardcore pornography.:) It might not be, but they're aware of what you've got now anyway...
Whereas American ratings mean nothing in law, and they are treated as guidance, the BBFC's refusal to rate it means that it legally cannot be sold in the UK. If the same applies here as it does to films, then in theory city and district councils can ignore the BBFC's rating and allow the game to be sold (or the film shown) anyway. It just happens that in the overwhelming majority of cases that's the guide they use.
BBFC's response has almost sold me on the game. Great work guys! Yes; the BBFC's de facto ban on sales will sell the game to lots of people. Oh, hang on....:)
It wasn't so much a question of skimming over stuff I didn't understand; I just didn't feel that the process itself particularly encouraged or hinted at exploration, or indeed suggested things one might like to look into or explore. It was just very... linear. It was a year or two back though, I may be being too harsh on LFS, that's just my memory of it and it might not be that accurate.
I sometimes try to encourage myself to learn stuff as you suggested, but in cases where I'm essentially motivating that whole thing myself it feels a bit contrived and as a result my subconscious is rejecting it and I don't learn as well.
Compiling LFS on my P-233 also messed things up. Although the whole thing in one go probably would have taken 24-36 hours (still really slow), it actually took over a week for me. The amount of time it was taking to compile individual parts was still longer than the amount of time I was at my computer(s), so by the time it had finished, I was away doing something else and not back until much later. Or it was left to finish compiling overnight, so even though it was finished long before I woke up, I wasn't going to do all that in the middle of the night.
Yeah; on reflection, the (fair) point could be made that this wasn't LFS's fault. It would definitely have been better done as a coherent whole.
You have a good point here, but with the way metamoderation is supposed to work, shouldn't the rabid religious types, over time, lose their moderation ability if this system worked properly? It doesn't seem to be working. That's why I think most Slashdotters are extremely religious. You're basing your assumption that Slashdotters are religious on a very simplified model of what people are doing in moderation, how it works, and so on. It's quite possible there's something you've overlooked, or that their other behaviour counters this loss of karma, and so on.
I don't see enough actual evidence through comments that "most" Slashdotters are "extremely religious". It's possible that there's a large, but fairly quiet religious contingent, but I'm not convinced that this is likely.
I'd say that casual experience of the evidence goes against what you're saying; it suggests that your modelling is over-simplistic if not very flawed. You assume that the metamoderation system *does* work "properly", but what if the other stuff they're saying is insightful or something and they're just being cancelled out, or.... whatever. I just think it's silly to make a half-guess model of user behaviour, and draw assumptions (contrary to the evidence) from that.
Many, many Slashdotters believe the earth is 6500 years old, for instance And many, many, many seem to be the type who would criticise this.
I'm sorry, but I think your assumption that Slashdotters are- on the whole- very religious is incorrect.
After all, how many people find it worthwhile to use Linux From Scratch? Sure, it's a great learning experience I really hate to say this, but I didn't find Linux From Scratch much of a learning experience at all. It was basically "do this, then do this, then do this.....", and if you didn't already know what was going on, it wasn't really teaching you much.
My experience with it was somewhat tedious because I made the mistake of trying to install it on my P-233 (sloooow); but even if I'd done it on my P4, I doubt I'd have learned much more. I got a working Linux system out of it, but it wasn't remotely satisfying to be honest.
The moderators are regular Slashdotters, not some individuals unrepresentative of the whole group, and the metamoderators are the same bunch. Rabid religious types are more likely to spend their mod points specifically on comments that agree with or oppose their view. Others who don't have a position that they'll kneejerk defend (by attacking those who disagree with it) are less likely to focus on the same comments for moderation in the opposite direction.
By way of contrast, metamoderation gives you a range of arbitrary moderated comments to look at and agree/disagree with; you don't have a choice to the same extent.
Slashdotters are an extremely religious bunch I'd say that they run the range. I certainly notice a lot of religious types whining about Slashdot's suppose anti-religion tendency.
Just look at VHS tapes, we were on this while the rest of the world was on laserdisc. Bullshit- from what I've heard it was pretty successful in Japan, but that's hardly "the rest of the world." Apparently it was popular in some of the "more affluent regions of South East Asia" (acc. Wikipedia), but I very much doubt that Joe Average there had one in the same way that his American counterpart had a VHS video recorder.
Laserdisc was even more of a niche product in Europe. It didn't flop completely, but it was tiny relative to VHS.
(IIRC Video CD was genuinely popular in South East Asia in part because it was less prone to humidity problems. But that's a different case altogether. It's questionable as to whether Video CD's better than- or even as good as- VHS. Even if it was, the benefits wouldn't have been enough to warrant replacing/augmenting VCRs in Western markets where everyone already had VHS. (It's not even recordable- and I'm talking about when it came out, not the late-90s/early-00s period when Video CD-Rs were used as a poor-man's recordable DVD).
Slashdot Mirror
The company that says "oh, by the way, your baggage will come last if you but this cheap ticket" will likely lose out to the one that doesn't say that upfront. The company that doesn't implicitly "include" the discount in the price will appear at first glance to be more expensive and lose out- or if they explicitly mention the discount, they'll have the same problem as the company that makes clear your baggage will come last.
Better to keep it quiet, keep the price of the "basic" ticket very low and then make money charging for the "priority" gravy. Cynical, and it sucks but that's the way modern business works. And to be fair, when prices are being driven down to the bone, that's the sort of thing companies rely on to make money.
As I said, smart customers would realise all this- but real-world customers often don't, giving priority to obvious (and short term) savings over longer term ones. Either that or they know what's happening, but want to save every last cent on the ticket and *then* get annoyed when they actually have to live with the consequences of their decision.
IMHO, the companies are both victims and exploiters of this phenomenon. Removing meals from planes is the same thing. Depends how long the flight is. I flew business class from Scotland to London (approx. 50 minutes), and while the meal (and seats) were nice, the difference in cost over a normal ticket wasn't remotely justified. I'd rather have flown economy and had my employer pay me the difference
I don't doubt that the "cost" of the business class meal was inflated way beyond the cost price, but I still bet that the cost price for the company was significant enough that it would be a serious issue for economy-class tickets. Remember that not only do you have the cost of the food, you also have to store it, serve it and clean up the mess.
And if you think I'm being picky, bear in mind that Ryanair (cheap Irish airline that is popular in the UK) kept their costs down by removing the magazine holders on the backs of seats, simply because it was one less thing to clean up before flying again.
So yeah, the meal does make a difference, and I suspect that most people on short or medium-haul flights would rather just save the money. It's easy to bitch about this stuff, but the days in which everyone got a "free" meal were the days in which flying was far more expensive.
However, I still maintain that in general, the wearing of a suit does have a logical purpose, contrary to what *many* people here are arguing. It might not be a purpose that suits them (or you or me), or is to everyone's taste, but it's there. The suit basically symbolises some form of conformity, and although it's not likely to get me much credibility saying this, there are cases where conformity is necessary and beneficial. And there are other cases (such as the ones you give) where it arguably isnt.
That's not to cast judgement either way on conformism or non-conformism.
This isn't necessarily saying that the way every company does things is the most sensible way. And great things have come from people scratching their intellectual itches, or- to put it more flatteringly- doing what really enthuses them. But the other side of the coin is that many companies would argue that they require more coherence from staff behaviour.
Your typical Slashdotter might not like this, and I'm not going to demean their choice. I'm not sure that I personally like it either. But you have to realise that this is a reflection of our underlying personalities, that we like to do things our own way. I'm a great believer in diversity of personality types, and that there is no "right" or "wrong" one.
What does this have to do with such clothes? It's that they *are* a symbolic gesture- that you're willing to do things the way others want, even if it doesn't suit you. You might argue that this is stupid and illogical, that it doesn't change your ability to do the job. But human beings aren't that "logical" in that sense anyway.
And such visual symbolism does make sense- after all, the types of people who are most unwilling to wear suits may well be the types who (though brilliant) are like herding cats when it comes to managing them. And that's not going to suit every position in every company.
It might not be perfect, but as a "willingness to do what others want" indicator and visual shortcut, it does have some functionality. Now, Stallman doesn't work for these people, that's true. But if he wants to influence them, to make them think he's got their own interests at heart, the symbolic wearing of a suit, or something similar may go a long way.
I'm well aware that people may perceive this in a knee-jerk manner as an attack on non-conformism, or consider me an apologist for the suit-wearing culture. It isn't, and I'm not. But it does grate that some people use superficial "logic" and "common sense" to justify one side of the argument, when considering the matter makes it evident that suits and similar workwear do serve a "logical" purpose. I dislike selective and superficial application of logic for purposes of self-justification. Personally, I'm not a great fit into the "suit wearing culture", but that reflects my underlying personality that I'm really not that great a team player anyway. So...
You may consider these people "sheep" or those that require such clothes stupid, but as I said before, consider that this may reflect your underlying personality- so in a way, such suits make logical sense.
Basically, there's a whole load of weird shit that is massively successful in Japan that doesn't play nearly so well elsewhere.
Can you please let us know where you heard this claim that the government is subsidising the sale price of actual set-top boxes? and so can safely assume it's the licence fee that's going towards it. Uh, no you can't "safely assume" that. Although the issue is complex, and money from the licence fee is undoubtedly going towards the BBC's new digital-only services, I very much doubt that the complete costs of the Freeview switchover are being met from this source. If nothing else, the BBC would have very publicly bitched if they had to hand over a large proportion of that year's licence fee to meet *all* the Freeview costs.
Even if it was, there are insufficient grounds for "safely assuming" this without evidence. It's irrelevant really. That's a poor excuse for being hazy on details you presented as fact.
It's a shame that your original post was enough to mislead some people into thinking it was "informative" when it should clearly have been taken with a pinch of salt.
That having been said, a few years back I thought that the government should have considered subsidising the cheapest Freeview boxes if it wasn't possible to buy one for 20 quid or less close to switch-off time. (Though I thought it more likely that prices would have fallen on their own anyway, which they did).
TV just f****** *annoys* me these days, I just can't be arsed watching it. (YouTube is also better for my short attention span). But anyway... HDD PVRs (Tivo in the US, Sky Plus and the like here) are already here and cheap, hard drive capacities are going way up. Given enough hard drive space and six or so tuners, you could record the whole of Freeview's output for a day, week, month, etc. (Remember that Freeview broadcasts and receives several channels in a single multiplex, so you don't need a tuner for each channel).
So, it's getting to the stage where we can record whatever we want and watch it later; and ironically, the many repeats that fill those channels will become unnecessary because we won't even need to consciously decide to record it the first time it's on. We can just check the archive of recent programmes. And so on.
This is happening today. What will happen in 10 or 20 years time? I think that "watching TV" will still exist as a concept, but the lines between digital downloads, archived TV transmissions, DVDs (or whatever) and actual "live" transmitted TV will become blurred.
I wouldn't even dare to consider where we'll be in the 2050s(!)
I kind of miss it too, but not really; looking back, it was pretty annoying when for whatever reason you tuned to an empty channel and got an earful of static.
Slobodan Milosevic may have been responsible for inciting the wave of hatred that led to the conflict, its continuation, and directly or indirectly responsible for numerous war crimes, but this sure as hell does not wash the blood off the hands of the country as a whole. For them, the US intervention was not fair. I'll assume that you meant that "they considered the invasion to be unfair". Well, tough fucking shit. The UN-supported actions (i.e. not unilateral US actions, as in Iraq) were entirely justified to stop what was going on there. So yeah, it is easy to have an opinion when all that you can hear is CNN. My opinion came from BBC news and documentaries, and from reading newspapers. Probably not entirely free from bias, but unless I was reading nothing but the "Pro-Serbia Daily" (and gullible as hell), I still doubt I'd agree with your apologist ramblings.
Whether or not the US's actions elsewhere in the world are justified or correct does not excuse the Serbs actions during the conflict.
And if you're arguing that North and South America are "one" continent; well, to quote myself from this post at its thinnest point, the connection between North and South America is significantly narrower than that between Africa and Asia and I have *never* seen a truly convincing argument or explanation as to why Europe and Asia are (or were ever) considered separate continents- it seems to be a cultural distinction, which has nothing to do with physical geography. So if you consider North and South America to be one, you must consider mainland Europe, Asia and Africa to be a single entity. If not, I'd be interested to hear why.
(Hint; not all words that can be "logically" constructed are valid English- whether you like that or not).
It wasn't so much a question of skimming over stuff I didn't understand; I just didn't feel that the process itself particularly encouraged or hinted at exploration, or indeed suggested things one might like to look into or explore. It was just very... linear. It was a year or two back though, I may be being too harsh on LFS, that's just my memory of it and it might not be that accurate.
I sometimes try to encourage myself to learn stuff as you suggested, but in cases where I'm essentially motivating that whole thing myself it feels a bit contrived and as a result my subconscious is rejecting it and I don't learn as well.
Compiling LFS on my P-233 also messed things up. Although the whole thing in one go probably would have taken 24-36 hours (still really slow), it actually took over a week for me. The amount of time it was taking to compile individual parts was still longer than the amount of time I was at my computer(s), so by the time it had finished, I was away doing something else and not back until much later. Or it was left to finish compiling overnight, so even though it was finished long before I woke up, I wasn't going to do all that in the middle of the night.
Yeah; on reflection, the (fair) point could be made that this wasn't LFS's fault. It would definitely have been better done as a coherent whole.
I don't see enough actual evidence through comments that "most" Slashdotters are "extremely religious". It's possible that there's a large, but fairly quiet religious contingent, but I'm not convinced that this is likely.
I'd say that casual experience of the evidence goes against what you're saying; it suggests that your modelling is over-simplistic if not very flawed. You assume that the metamoderation system *does* work "properly", but what if the other stuff they're saying is insightful or something and they're just being cancelled out, or.... whatever. I just think it's silly to make a half-guess model of user behaviour, and draw assumptions (contrary to the evidence) from that. Many, many Slashdotters believe the earth is 6500 years old, for instance And many, many, many seem to be the type who would criticise this.
I'm sorry, but I think your assumption that Slashdotters are- on the whole- very religious is incorrect.
My experience with it was somewhat tedious because I made the mistake of trying to install it on my P-233 (sloooow); but even if I'd done it on my P4, I doubt I'd have learned much more. I got a working Linux system out of it, but it wasn't remotely satisfying to be honest.
By way of contrast, metamoderation gives you a range of arbitrary moderated comments to look at and agree/disagree with; you don't have a choice to the same extent. Slashdotters are an extremely religious bunch I'd say that they run the range. I certainly notice a lot of religious types whining about Slashdot's suppose anti-religion tendency.
Okay, now it's your turn.
Laserdisc was even more of a niche product in Europe. It didn't flop completely, but it was tiny relative to VHS.
(IIRC Video CD was genuinely popular in South East Asia in part because it was less prone to humidity problems. But that's a different case altogether. It's questionable as to whether Video CD's better than- or even as good as- VHS. Even if it was, the benefits wouldn't have been enough to warrant replacing/augmenting VCRs in Western markets where everyone already had VHS. (It's not even recordable- and I'm talking about when it came out, not the late-90s/early-00s period when Video CD-Rs were used as a poor-man's recordable DVD).