Who the hell really cares what way the social net wars go? Maybe if you're an active developer I can see it but otherwise it's like arguing over superman versus batman.
This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.
Why is it that some dude kidnaps a kid and gets virtually nothing, and these two punks (yes, they are punks) could get 20 years? I emphasize could, but still. We have such a skewed sense of justice in this country, it's really insane.
Actually, your understanding of the law is what's skewed. In most area kidnapping can get you a life sentence if not death. Let's wait for these kids to be sentenced before we go around screaming that justice is dead.
My guess? They're going to get 1 year or less of prison time. Probably not even prison but just to cover myself...
Laws need to have the ability to have flexible punishment or you'll create hardened criminals who see no reasonable way to get out of a situation. Criminals are drawn out of hard situations like stand offs and running from the police in the hopes of leniency. Also, being able to make offers of leniency also take a ton of work off the shoulders of the courts. It save manhours on the streets by cops when it's done right as well.
At the same time we need to have laws that can punish criminals who do commit serious offenses. We need to be able to throw hardtime at criminals who show nothing but disdain for society.
I would like to think that the slur wouldn't be taken so literally by any commonsense court. These guys were being called out for being homosexuals. It doesn't seem to be in the same manner as using a slur that normally is interpreted as being homosexual in some fashion. Mostly it's just a random slur.
That would be like me sueing someone for calling someone a bitch... I don't think they mean to insinuate that the other person is a female dog.
As soon as they do that, windows instantly loses market share.
Perhaps, but Apple would lose bigger amounts in hardware and by not having the OS coupled with the hardware Apple would also have to resort to similar measures as MS or they'd start to lose their shirts to piracy. Why do you think that MS is really having all these problems with their anti-piracy measures? Do you honestly think that if it weren't for piracy that they would bother at all with it? Apple would be in the same boat. Maybe more successful in some aspects but among some of their loyal customers they'd look like a bunch of buffoons.
So what would Apple gain?
I think you're looking at it too much as a "Apple should kill MS" instead of seeing it the way real businessmen would see it: "I want the highest profits". These little OS vendettas that are so prevalent on Slashdot don't play out in real life.
You know, my original comment was kind of meant as a joke but since you have to be so high on yourself and such a fanboi...
My experience (and yes, I have lots of it from friends with too much money and no real use or understanding for the technology they buy) is generally most early adoption problems are the users over the tech.
Marketing normally has much more to do with a products acceptance or failure than the product itself.
And it's easy to keep things running smooth as long as you don't let people mod your equipment or use it with a competitors hardware.
Well, firstly, aren't early adopters 'suffering for the rest of us' in pretty much all things that are new?
But you don't understand... since it's an Apple product the early adopters who are suffering are cool for it instead of just being jackass morons like those who are early adopters of other technology.
Once again we have evidence that the two big political parties are nothing short of the same cliques that most of us hated and detested in high school.
The Democrats (not to be confused with the democrats, small d) are thrilled to have someone like Steve on their side as long as he's not rocking the boat within their party. The second that he tries to cross the line from being the king's jester to trying to be a king he gets smacked down by the same people he supported for years and years. He's good enough to be their goof because he makes them laugh and be brings them free PR but he's not truely one of them. He's simply not a Democrat. He doesn't have the money nor does he do the same goosestep. He's the class clown that all the preps and jocks laughed at yet wasn't good enough to sit at their table during lunch. He has no chance within their exclusive socio-political structure to make any real headway. His role is defined and his attempt to leave that role is what really got him beat down. If he makes further attempts on this he'll find that those who use to laugh at him and praise him for being a stooge are going to be more than willing to feed him to the wolves. They're hoping that they've made their point and that Steve will go back to his old role. Otherwise he'll be doomed.
You see, both of the big political parties have this going on. Either you're a Republican or Democrat or a republican or a democrat. If you're not among their power elite they'll humor you into thinking that you're part of their structure but if you try to advance in their structure without being the power elite you're going to get flogged for being a bad dog and getting out of line. Their affluence and exclusivity are not to be questioned or approached. Especially within the ranks. As outsiders we can scoff but if you're inside there is a consequence for this. Stevie is finding that out. I'd like to think he's smart enough to have already known it. It'll be a dark day for him if he decides to rock the boat more.
The really sad thing is that the lemmings of the Republicans and Democrats are the ones who let this structure exist and regardless of how discontent these people are in their role they refuse to start supporting people who'd be willing to support them. This isn't to say that third parties could not fall into the same ruts but only having two choices makes it easy to stay in power when you're in the rut.
Imagine that. Is that why fireworks are still legal? Seriously, think about this kind of thing before you post it.
To the best of my knowledge most of the things that are missing out of today's chemistry sets are still legal. If you really take the time to examine the situation (and about half the posts here) you'd have seen that this isn't a problem with restrictions but rather lawsuits. Please, stop trying to turn this into something it's not. We have had TONS of evidence in this thread that counter just about all of the tin foil hat crowd and still we have to read post after post of misinformation.
Bad statistical analogy there. You see, 18585 is your chances of dying in an auto accident in your entire life. Multiply this by the number of car trips you take and take the odds on winning any lottery and divide that by the number of times/sets of numbers you play. I'm sure someone can come up with some variations on that.
But as we both know it's all just a bit crapshoot anyhow... when the Great Cthulhu "calls you home" there is no winning odds for an escape.
It always kills me to read the specs on a site like Dell.com and see all these machines described as "suitable for web browsing, email..." Today, they make it sound like a 3 GHz machine is usable only if you're a complete simpleton and will never have more than 2 apps open at once.
Actually, they're letting Joe Sixpack know that they don't have to run out and buy a 2000 USD PC for pr0n surfing and e-mail.
You wouldn't believe the number of people I know who have owned a PC for a few years but can't tell you what the amount of memory, HD capacity or what processor is in the machine. This normally comes up in conversation since they're also standing there with a Dell/Best Buy/WalMart ad and asking if a certain PC would be able to do everything they do with their existing five year old machine. These people who don't understand the technology need this confirmation.
It's still somewhere between voodoo and rocket science to them. It's pathetic and sad but it still a fact. Dell knows this as well as anyone here, they know their customer and putting these laughable* notations on the ad is what it sometimes takes to make a sale without having someone "buying a computer for the grandkids" tugging at the sales reps ear for 20 minutes affirming that they're making the right choice. The faster the sale the less it costs in overhead.
* Laughable to us but this is serious business for people who average about 100-200 USD per year on PC hardware. These are the same people who consider 150 USD laser printers an expensive waste in the face of their fine Canon ink jet that costs 40 USD + another 40 USD for each ink cartridge.
Instead, they were blown off, and now you can't buy a decent chemistry set
Maybe if a moron who gets burnt on a cup of hot coffee from McDonalds wasn't awarded big cash for her own stupidity we could buy a decent chemistry set. I'm sure that one case had a lot more to do with the outlook on potentially hazardous materials being sold to the public more than anything else.
I just love how everyone gets in line and screams "war on terror" when this has been a trend that has been a long time in coming.
I guess the people who are screaming that people who believe the war on terror is useful and valid aren't looking in the mirror too much. They're serving the needs of another group that are just as anti-freedom but no one seems to talk about it much.
A sensible choice? Bah! What an unpatriotic, liberal, and surely "educated" response.
Did you tag the sensible choice as liberal because you consider yourself a liberal? What happens if the sensible choice is conservative? What happens to the liberals?
The fact is that there is no universal sensible choice and if you label the "sensible" choice as liberal it has more to say about you then the choice.
What is reasonable varies so much from person to person that it would be ridiculous to even try to come to a consensus of what is reasonable! Don't try to make it seem like there are commonsense measures that are going to satisfy the masses. We have had issues in our society for damn near it's entire existence that people still can't get their heads together on and come to an agreement that doesn't have some party howling about something or other being unjust the second that things quiet down. Especially the media who makes it their job to point out any little missed step and try to represent it as the next downfall of man.
Not too long after the London bus bombings a local TV crew took it on themselves to see if they could infiltrate a local bus depot. So they get in and film themselves walking around buses and sitting in a couple of them. The go and disclose this on TV but never get brought up on charges themselves since it's such an embarrassment to the local transit authority.
So what's it going to be, folks? Police, guards and cameras on every corner to satisfy the media? How much longer can the media get away with watching everyone but having no recourse to actually being honest and fair in their offerings?
The media is, for the most part, a bunch of shitballs. It's unbelievable how much they're able to get away with and how little they're accountable for.
More likely the kind of reactions he's talking about has to deal with thrill killers. The 9/11 guys didn't do so much that was out of the norm to ring any real bells (yeah, yeah, I know, if you were there it would have set off the alarms in your head. yeah, I know that.) but the actions of thrill killers is often noticeable by those around them because of long time association and a change in behavior.
But my real wondering is: Since when has Slashdot become the outpost for the war on terror articles? Everything posted here anymore seems to be political. What was that Taco was saying the other day about loosing control of his website? Dude, it's already happened.
Currently, yes, I'd mod someone down for making anti-Google comments, because right now, they all center around the same old issues. ... A "fanboy" treats a business like a religion, and claims it is "perfect in every way", basically.
Most religions use the dodge of "these is the same thing we've heard before" when it comes to having their faith questioned. This sounds like the same thing to me. From what you have said here you qualify as a fanboi to me. Maybe you don't like the label but the blind moderation of a post that criticizes a business is fanboism in my book.
Claiming it's a contradiction to like OSS but like Apple is an over-simplification too. Apple computers have a really good OS today because they were able to build on the strengths of open source.
Without getting too far off topic; Building on open source and being open source are oceans apart. From what I've seen here the open source crowd is up in arms over the concept that Microsoft's dealings with Linux vendors may be leading to close source ventures. So how is that different from Apple? Also, I've never seen an open source venture who has bashed or made moves against those who hacked their design. Let's see... iPod, iPhone and OSX? How many people have gotten hosed by Apple in some form for creating modifications their design? Come on now, that screams of being against the same ideology that made open source a movement instead of just a couple of guys cranking out code.
They may have taken ideas from the open source crowd but they certainly aren't friendly to the concept in their business practice.
This site has value because of interesting stories, where I define interesting as relevant, nerdy, and possibly controversial.
No, this site had value because of being able to speak ones mind and not being modded down for it. That has changed and if the conversation can't be free and open than the submission is useless. Would you submit if you knew that people who wanted to have intelligent conversation about the subject at hand would be met with +5 Insightfuls that read "Balmer throws another chair" or "OMG Ponies!!!oneone!!!" while the truely insightful comments get modded down as troll or overrated and the replies are mostly "You god damn shill! This is nothing but astroturf!"
It's my form of protest. Why feed the troll that's become slashdot?
And if you ever find a way back from never-mod-again land, please drop me a line! It's been five frakkin' years, Slashdot. Grow up.
Yeah, you know it burns my ass too. It's the kind of thing that common high school jocks would think is cool to do to another person. All the while people keep praising Taco for being "so wise" and shit like that. Really? If opposing voices aren't to be heard and respected here it can only show that the argument is weak on every level.
Slashdot Mirror
Who the hell really cares what way the social net wars go? Maybe if you're an active developer I can see it but otherwise it's like arguing over superman versus batman.
This kind of bickering will hopefully turn some people against social networks and get some kids back to doing their own pages again instead of using lame ass templates.
Why is it that some dude kidnaps a kid and gets virtually nothing, and these two punks (yes, they are punks) could get 20 years? I emphasize could, but still. We have such a skewed sense of justice in this country, it's really insane.
Actually, your understanding of the law is what's skewed. In most area kidnapping can get you a life sentence if not death. Let's wait for these kids to be sentenced before we go around screaming that justice is dead.
My guess? They're going to get 1 year or less of prison time. Probably not even prison but just to cover myself...
Laws need to have the ability to have flexible punishment or you'll create hardened criminals who see no reasonable way to get out of a situation. Criminals are drawn out of hard situations like stand offs and running from the police in the hopes of leniency. Also, being able to make offers of leniency also take a ton of work off the shoulders of the courts. It save manhours on the streets by cops when it's done right as well.
At the same time we need to have laws that can punish criminals who do commit serious offenses. We need to be able to throw hardtime at criminals who show nothing but disdain for society.
He was given life imprisonment on that garbage scowl known as the Enterprise, right Scottie?
I would like to think that the slur wouldn't be taken so literally by any commonsense court. These guys were being called out for being homosexuals. It doesn't seem to be in the same manner as using a slur that normally is interpreted as being homosexual in some fashion. Mostly it's just a random slur.
That would be like me sueing someone for calling someone a bitch... I don't think they mean to insinuate that the other person is a female dog.
As soon as they do that, windows instantly loses market share.
Perhaps, but Apple would lose bigger amounts in hardware and by not having the OS coupled with the hardware Apple would also have to resort to similar measures as MS or they'd start to lose their shirts to piracy. Why do you think that MS is really having all these problems with their anti-piracy measures? Do you honestly think that if it weren't for piracy that they would bother at all with it? Apple would be in the same boat. Maybe more successful in some aspects but among some of their loyal customers they'd look like a bunch of buffoons.
So what would Apple gain?
I think you're looking at it too much as a "Apple should kill MS" instead of seeing it the way real businessmen would see it: "I want the highest profits". These little OS vendettas that are so prevalent on Slashdot don't play out in real life.
Isn't this what most jocks call "Third and out"? How fitting.
You know, my original comment was kind of meant as a joke but since you have to be so high on yourself and such a fanboi...
My experience (and yes, I have lots of it from friends with too much money and no real use or understanding for the technology they buy) is generally most early adoption problems are the users over the tech.
Marketing normally has much more to do with a products acceptance or failure than the product itself.
And it's easy to keep things running smooth as long as you don't let people mod your equipment or use it with a competitors hardware.
Do you really think a couple of hyperactive mice are going to stop General Zod?
You guys really need to check your definition of what a super villain is.
They just don't want it to be DRM-ed crap that stops working when you stop paying that fee.
Umm.. that's called buying music.
Well, firstly, aren't early adopters 'suffering for the rest of us' in pretty much all things that are new?
But you don't understand... since it's an Apple product the early adopters who are suffering are cool for it instead of just being jackass morons like those who are early adopters of other technology.
It's an Apple thing, you wouldn't understand.
Once again we have evidence that the two big political parties are nothing short of the same cliques that most of us hated and detested in high school.
The Democrats (not to be confused with the democrats, small d) are thrilled to have someone like Steve on their side as long as he's not rocking the boat within their party. The second that he tries to cross the line from being the king's jester to trying to be a king he gets smacked down by the same people he supported for years and years. He's good enough to be their goof because he makes them laugh and be brings them free PR but he's not truely one of them. He's simply not a Democrat. He doesn't have the money nor does he do the same goosestep. He's the class clown that all the preps and jocks laughed at yet wasn't good enough to sit at their table during lunch. He has no chance within their exclusive socio-political structure to make any real headway. His role is defined and his attempt to leave that role is what really got him beat down. If he makes further attempts on this he'll find that those who use to laugh at him and praise him for being a stooge are going to be more than willing to feed him to the wolves. They're hoping that they've made their point and that Steve will go back to his old role. Otherwise he'll be doomed.
You see, both of the big political parties have this going on. Either you're a Republican or Democrat or a republican or a democrat. If you're not among their power elite they'll humor you into thinking that you're part of their structure but if you try to advance in their structure without being the power elite you're going to get flogged for being a bad dog and getting out of line. Their affluence and exclusivity are not to be questioned or approached. Especially within the ranks. As outsiders we can scoff but if you're inside there is a consequence for this. Stevie is finding that out. I'd like to think he's smart enough to have already known it. It'll be a dark day for him if he decides to rock the boat more.
The really sad thing is that the lemmings of the Republicans and Democrats are the ones who let this structure exist and regardless of how discontent these people are in their role they refuse to start supporting people who'd be willing to support them. This isn't to say that third parties could not fall into the same ruts but only having two choices makes it easy to stay in power when you're in the rut.
Imagine that. Is that why fireworks are still legal? Seriously, think about this kind of thing before you post it.
To the best of my knowledge most of the things that are missing out of today's chemistry sets are still legal. If you really take the time to examine the situation (and about half the posts here) you'd have seen that this isn't a problem with restrictions but rather lawsuits. Please, stop trying to turn this into something it's not. We have had TONS of evidence in this thread that counter just about all of the tin foil hat crowd and still we have to read post after post of misinformation.
Chance of dying from a car accident: 1 in 18,585
Bad statistical analogy there. You see, 18585 is your chances of dying in an auto accident in your entire life. Multiply this by the number of car trips you take and take the odds on winning any lottery and divide that by the number of times/sets of numbers you play. I'm sure someone can come up with some variations on that.
But as we both know it's all just a bit crapshoot anyhow... when the Great Cthulhu "calls you home" there is no winning odds for an escape.
It always kills me to read the specs on a site like Dell.com and see all these machines described as "suitable for web browsing, email..."
Today, they make it sound like a 3 GHz machine is usable only if you're a complete simpleton and will never have more than 2 apps open at once.
Actually, they're letting Joe Sixpack know that they don't have to run out and buy a 2000 USD PC for pr0n surfing and e-mail.
You wouldn't believe the number of people I know who have owned a PC for a few years but can't tell you what the amount of memory, HD capacity or what processor is in the machine. This normally comes up in conversation since they're also standing there with a Dell/Best Buy/WalMart ad and asking if a certain PC would be able to do everything they do with their existing five year old machine. These people who don't understand the technology need this confirmation.
It's still somewhere between voodoo and rocket science to them. It's pathetic and sad but it still a fact. Dell knows this as well as anyone here, they know their customer and putting these laughable* notations on the ad is what it sometimes takes to make a sale without having someone "buying a computer for the grandkids" tugging at the sales reps ear for 20 minutes affirming that they're making the right choice. The faster the sale the less it costs in overhead.
* Laughable to us but this is serious business for people who average about 100-200 USD per year on PC hardware. These are the same people who consider 150 USD laser printers an expensive waste in the face of their fine Canon ink jet that costs 40 USD + another 40 USD for each ink cartridge.
. --Radio
(Shown larger than actual size)
Instead, they were blown off, and now you can't buy a decent chemistry set
Maybe if a moron who gets burnt on a cup of hot coffee from McDonalds wasn't awarded big cash for her own stupidity we could buy a decent chemistry set. I'm sure that one case had a lot more to do with the outlook on potentially hazardous materials being sold to the public more than anything else.
I just love how everyone gets in line and screams "war on terror" when this has been a trend that has been a long time in coming.
I guess the people who are screaming that people who believe the war on terror is useful and valid aren't looking in the mirror too much. They're serving the needs of another group that are just as anti-freedom but no one seems to talk about it much.
A sensible choice? Bah! What an unpatriotic, liberal, and surely "educated" response.
Did you tag the sensible choice as liberal because you consider yourself a liberal? What happens if the sensible choice is conservative? What happens to the liberals?
The fact is that there is no universal sensible choice and if you label the "sensible" choice as liberal it has more to say about you then the choice.
This administration? Do you really think that this is where all of this started? Man, you're fairly naive.
Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City.
And even that's not the beginning.
What is reasonable varies so much from person to person that it would be ridiculous to even try to come to a consensus of what is reasonable! Don't try to make it seem like there are commonsense measures that are going to satisfy the masses. We have had issues in our society for damn near it's entire existence that people still can't get their heads together on and come to an agreement that doesn't have some party howling about something or other being unjust the second that things quiet down. Especially the media who makes it their job to point out any little missed step and try to represent it as the next downfall of man.
You know there is a stinging truth to this:
Not too long after the London bus bombings a local TV crew took it on themselves to see if they could infiltrate a local bus depot. So they get in and film themselves walking around buses and sitting in a couple of them. The go and disclose this on TV but never get brought up on charges themselves since it's such an embarrassment to the local transit authority.
So what's it going to be, folks? Police, guards and cameras on every corner to satisfy the media? How much longer can the media get away with watching everyone but having no recourse to actually being honest and fair in their offerings?
The media is, for the most part, a bunch of shitballs. It's unbelievable how much they're able to get away with and how little they're accountable for.
More likely the kind of reactions he's talking about has to deal with thrill killers. The 9/11 guys didn't do so much that was out of the norm to ring any real bells (yeah, yeah, I know, if you were there it would have set off the alarms in your head. yeah, I know that.) but the actions of thrill killers is often noticeable by those around them because of long time association and a change in behavior.
But my real wondering is: Since when has Slashdot become the outpost for the war on terror articles? Everything posted here anymore seems to be political. What was that Taco was saying the other day about loosing control of his website? Dude, it's already happened.
Currently, yes, I'd mod someone down for making anti-Google comments, because right now, they all center around the same old issues.
...
A "fanboy" treats a business like a religion, and claims it is "perfect in every way", basically.
Most religions use the dodge of "these is the same thing we've heard before" when it comes to having their faith questioned. This sounds like the same thing to me. From what you have said here you qualify as a fanboi to me. Maybe you don't like the label but the blind moderation of a post that criticizes a business is fanboism in my book.
Claiming it's a contradiction to like OSS but like Apple is an over-simplification too. Apple computers have a really good OS today because they were able to build on the strengths of open source.
Without getting too far off topic; Building on open source and being open source are oceans apart. From what I've seen here the open source crowd is up in arms over the concept that Microsoft's dealings with Linux vendors may be leading to close source ventures. So how is that different from Apple? Also, I've never seen an open source venture who has bashed or made moves against those who hacked their design. Let's see... iPod, iPhone and OSX? How many people have gotten hosed by Apple in some form for creating modifications their design? Come on now, that screams of being against the same ideology that made open source a movement instead of just a couple of guys cranking out code.
They may have taken ideas from the open source crowd but they certainly aren't friendly to the concept in their business practice.
This site has value because of interesting stories, where I define interesting as relevant, nerdy, and possibly controversial.
No, this site had value because of being able to speak ones mind and not being modded down for it. That has changed and if the conversation can't be free and open than the submission is useless. Would you submit if you knew that people who wanted to have intelligent conversation about the subject at hand would be met with +5 Insightfuls that read "Balmer throws another chair" or "OMG Ponies!!!oneone!!!" while the truely insightful comments get modded down as troll or overrated and the replies are mostly "You god damn shill! This is nothing but astroturf!"
It's my form of protest. Why feed the troll that's become slashdot?
And if you ever find a way back from never-mod-again land, please drop me a line! It's been five frakkin' years, Slashdot. Grow up.
Yeah, you know it burns my ass too. It's the kind of thing that common high school jocks would think is cool to do to another person. All the while people keep praising Taco for being "so wise" and shit like that. Really? If opposing voices aren't to be heard and respected here it can only show that the argument is weak on every level.
Just wait a couple years, it will be the same stories only most of the names will have changed.
I don't play many MMOs but when I heard that EQ2 was giving up on corpse retrieval and death shards it seemed pretty much the same to me.