... because I believe in the principles of GNU. As a beginning CS student, I firmly believe that without FREE open standards the internet will never reach it's full potential.
There is potential for a pervasive, interractive, responsive, wireless data and service network.
The damage that buggy software providers like M$ does to the integrity of the internet is widespread. The more sloppy patches to legacy software we have, the more often those pesky "leaky abstractions" pop-up, thereby reducing available computer resources worldwide, and adding to the already enormous problem of cross-device compatibility.... however... it's installer SUCKS!!! It should be priority 1 of the GNU team to make an installer that will seamlessly migrate a windows system to a dual boot linux/windows system. I can't afford the downtime, or the incompatibilities (lots of college required software is Win only) I would have to face changing my whole system to Linux all at once. Also, I don't really understand HOW to set up dual boot manually.
So that's my reason. I actually have debian installed, however I haven't done anything with it, because I still haven't been able to figure out how to boot to it.
If anyone has good advice or links on how to get Win XP & Debian going at the same time, please contact me!
-peace.
Another point you might consider is that documentaries are not the same beast as mainstream music. You aren't paying for incompetence in signing bands, you're paying for advertising.
It costs almost nothing for a record company to pick up a small artists' moderately popular record and then shelve it. They don't like little fish making waves outside their system. Especially when you compare that cost to what a break out superstar they don't control would cost them in competition to their in house stars. Besides, if they buy your record, in some contracts they can take your best song and give it to the Backstreet Boys. Because the Backstreet Boys make the record companies more money singing it than you do.
(i.e. the RIAA's members are killing the competition, feeding their corpses to the pop-music beast, and drowning consumers in it's crap.)
In Austin TX, where I live, there are lots of local artists that none of you will ever hear even though their skills rival that of most "popular" musicians today. Or at least you wouldn't ever hear them except that we have KazaA. (Try downloading some "The Scabs" or "Pushmonkey", they're awesome.).
The businessmen are always bad for business. Because business men care about money, not quality. Look at every industry going... music, food, tv, oil. When will we stop trading money for quality of life?
If the music companies goal was to produce music and not to produce money, perhaps artists and music lovers would stop getting the shaft.
I don't think you read the article closely enough.
Statistical analysis gets more accurate the more complete the model becomes. This is why he is analyzing BOTH the spam and the 'innocent' mail.
The filter uses the most _interesting_ words not the most spam-likely words.
Even if twenty spammers were selling blunderbusses (some what unlikely) then my friend from New York who is a history major sends me an article he wrote about ancient firearms, this method would more than likely overlook the occurence of 'blunderbuss' or even several occurences based on much larger percentage of innocent words in the document.
So, if you care to investigate the statistical principles behind such a system, you know exactly why the choices are being made. It IS science, actually... applied to SPAM. The statistical principles involved have been around for much longer than email.
Slashdot Mirror
... because I believe in the principles of GNU. As a beginning CS student, I firmly believe that without FREE open standards the internet will never reach it's full potential. There is potential for a pervasive, interractive, responsive, wireless data and service network. The damage that buggy software providers like M$ does to the integrity of the internet is widespread. The more sloppy patches to legacy software we have, the more often those pesky "leaky abstractions" pop-up, thereby reducing available computer resources worldwide, and adding to the already enormous problem of cross-device compatibility. ... however... it's installer SUCKS!!! It should be priority 1 of the GNU team to make an installer that will seamlessly migrate a windows system to a dual boot linux/windows system. I can't afford the downtime, or the incompatibilities (lots of college required software is Win only) I would have to face changing my whole system to Linux all at once. Also, I don't really understand HOW to set up dual boot manually.
So that's my reason. I actually have debian installed, however I haven't done anything with it, because I still haven't been able to figure out how to boot to it.
If anyone has good advice or links on how to get Win XP & Debian going at the same time, please contact me!
-peace.
Another point you might consider is that documentaries are not the same beast as mainstream music. You aren't paying for incompetence in signing bands, you're paying for advertising. It costs almost nothing for a record company to pick up a small artists' moderately popular record and then shelve it. They don't like little fish making waves outside their system. Especially when you compare that cost to what a break out superstar they don't control would cost them in competition to their in house stars. Besides, if they buy your record, in some contracts they can take your best song and give it to the Backstreet Boys. Because the Backstreet Boys make the record companies more money singing it than you do. (i.e. the RIAA's members are killing the competition, feeding their corpses to the pop-music beast, and drowning consumers in it's crap.) In Austin TX, where I live, there are lots of local artists that none of you will ever hear even though their skills rival that of most "popular" musicians today. Or at least you wouldn't ever hear them except that we have KazaA. (Try downloading some "The Scabs" or "Pushmonkey", they're awesome.). The businessmen are always bad for business. Because business men care about money, not quality. Look at every industry going... music, food, tv, oil. When will we stop trading money for quality of life? If the music companies goal was to produce music and not to produce money, perhaps artists and music lovers would stop getting the shaft.
I don't think you read the article closely enough.
Statistical analysis gets more accurate the more complete the model becomes. This is why he is analyzing BOTH the spam and the 'innocent' mail.
The filter uses the most _interesting_ words not the most spam-likely words.
Even if twenty spammers were selling blunderbusses (some what unlikely) then my friend from New York who is a history major sends me an article he wrote about ancient firearms, this method would more than likely overlook the occurence of 'blunderbuss' or even several occurences based on much larger percentage of innocent words in the document.
So, if you care to investigate the statistical principles behind such a system, you know exactly why the choices are being made. It IS science, actually... applied to SPAM. The statistical principles involved have been around for much longer than email.
-truthspirit