I think the more relevant issue is that this is a bit of a toy program. You fetch a page, pseudo-parse it, find links etc.
Why is this such a big source of news? The code is bad, the objective is somewhat simple and it's hardly a Linux specific thing (like someone else here mentioned).
I think the question is "why?". Indian (which is where I'm from incidentally) has a space program that's useful to it. Fine. Spending lots of money with the sole intention of "putting a man on the moon" sounds a little out of place for a country which has environmental and social problems that need to be fixed. The man on the moon is not going to help the masses that actually need help.
I'm in India but have quite a few friends working in the US and they tell me about how the system forces them to do lots of stuff that they don't really want to just to live. eg. Medical service where I'm from are quite cheap. If a casual labourer needs to get a tooth operation, he might have to borrow a little from a friend but he can get it done. He doesn't have to have a complex medical coverage policy. If I wanted a credit card here, I don't have to prove my credit history (for which I need to take loans which I don't need etc.). I just apply and get one. Life's a lot more simpler here. The government has it's problems but it's a lot more easier to just live here than it is in the US (or so I think from my limited experience).
I'd prefer to do that as well but when you have 15 positions for which 15000 people apply, your selection metrics have to become a little coarse to reduce the number of applicants. Here in India, if someone's from an IIT, there's a VERY good chance that he'd be pretty good. If I get 15000 applications in which 15 are IITians (which is hard since they usually get good jobs quite quickly and don't have to compete with the masses), I'd definitely shortlist them. It's not just the University/college which they went to. It's the amount of effort/skill/intelligence that's necessary to get into a place like that which people usually look at. A sort of quick rule of thumb when you have too much data to process.
The most effective education and learning, I believe has always been delivered in the most 'traditional' of ways despite what many experts may think.
Recently, I've been trying to learn Arabic from a teacher near where I live. I have started and given up a couple of times before mainly owing to lack of motivation. I figured that going to concrete classes would keep me running. Anyway, the last time I started, my teacher was someone who seriously believed in the traditional ways of teaching the language (memorising verb conjugations etc.). The modern variant which I sampled 2 days ago relies on giving students sample texts and teaching them things as they go along.
There are quite a few students of the language where I come from and I can say quite confidently that all the ones who studied the language in the boring traditional way are capable of speaking quite eloquently and the more creative ones can even write poetry. The ones who got the pre digested package can't translate a simple sentence without referring to their books.
I think you're right. Many people use "being religious" as a PR stunt to cover up a lot of unacceptable activities that they indulge in. I'm fairly serious about my faith and try to study and follow it's rules to the best of my ability and I've felt that the people in the above category are just hypocrites. On the other hand, I have met and do know people who regulate and watch everything they do just because they are convinced that God is watching them. It makes no difference to them whether they're dealing with older or younger people, in public or private etc. They behave the way they do because they're conviced that it's the right thing to do. I've also seen them go out of their way to make sure that the intention of their actions is not polluted by a "base" desire (eg. giving large amounts of money in charity absolutely secretly etc.). It gives them a certain kind of courage and fortitude that I've not been able to see anywhere else. People like this are few (in my experience) and they've been a source of inspiration for me.
Islam doesn't have an "official" authority to certify meat as halal. Many muslim countries (like Malaysia AFAIK) however, have a government agency that does this. They give restaurants a certificate which they can display. This is a convenience for observant muslims who want to make sure that the food they eat is Halal.
As for the rules of what's halal and what's not, the answer would vary (though not very much) based on the school you follow. For a situation (like this one) which you're not sure of, the recommended thing to do is to ask a qualified Islamic scholar for the ruling. So like you said, it's not exactly centralised but it's not a completely personal decision either.
Do let me know if you have any other questions regarding this. I'll do my best to answer them.
And how long until the Chinese government will require Google to remove the 'censored to comply with local laws' notification? it's not like that would be a difficult step to take once they see that Google would prefer to play by their rules rather than leave.
Well, that needn't be the case. The Chinese people don't live in China all their lives. There are lots of them abroad and who have seen uncensored information. If Google actively puts these messages on their search results page, the local population might get sufficiently annoyed to somehow pressurise the government into changing their policy.
This does however break the whole pro Google "don't do evil" thing. They're a company. They want money just as much as the others (M$ and Y!) do. If they can do it while confirming to some standards that make them appear "non evil", they'll do it. If they can't, they'll compromise. That's what it looks like now.
I really don't know about that. The whole Open Source way of doing things has this slow evolutionary style. I mean, you'll see so many small changes creeping in that finally result in lots of really neat stuff.
This is quite unlike a company which will make more discernable leaps with product releases. "Oh! Look at that, you can drag an mp3 into your music player now and it plays! The last version of Windows didn't have that" kind of thing.
There are some slick apps coming out these days that draw on lots of previous ones. To actually draw a line and say this is an innovation is quite hard. But at the end of a decent amount of time, you'll probably find that the original product and what you have now are totally different and that the latter one has lots of new ideas in it.
Writing them down initially and then entering them everyday for 10-15 days will probably make you memorise them anyway.
I used to write down a password a couple of times on a piece of paper to memoriese it and then destroy the paper.
Not to troll although given the state of affairs these days, this probably sounds like one.
I respect RMS primarily for his sincere devotion to what he believes in. He's not "pragmatic" (ability to sell out when the monetary gains are high enough) and is the most dependable point in the whole Free Software community as far as I know.
However, his reasons seem to be things like "morals" and "ethics" rather than ideas which are fashionable in the US like "reason" and "maximum profit".
How "American" are these values? After opportunists like Eric Raymond capitalised on the whole idea of Free Software and produced a watered down "pragmatic" version called Open Source where companies can get work done without paying for it, the whole deal seems to have been a lot more accepted.
In any case, I don't think we're going to see anyone as devoted to a cause as RMS anytime soon and even though given the present state of affairs, some of his opinions sound "cranky" to some people. He's one of the few people who absolutely refuse to sell out or water down their ideals it's wonderful to have such people around.
I think there's a difference between a statement like that from Microsoft that stands to gain from crippling the Free Software/Open Source community and from someone like Novell who has an interest in things like Gnome.
However, it *is* a commercial outfit and no one knows what they're attitude will be tomorrow. If it's in their financial interest to use these patents against the Free Software community, I don't think they will hesitate much (maybe more than M$ but they'll still do it).
Gnus d00d. That's the only way to go. But this is REALLY off topic.
I would think that large corporations are affected by things like support, integration with the mail server (M$ exchange) and things like that rather than functionality, extensibility and such features that appeal only to "geeks".
It is only when ESR took over that suddenly this became "strongly deprecated".
Well said. I guess it's not about terminology at all. If one defines what one means by a hacker before talking about it, they're on safe ground.
However, some people do take offense at the misuse of the term like eg. Richard Stallman in whose prime time, "hacker" was a badge of honour.
I don't know about IRC being categorically better than spoken discussions but I do feel that the sheer diversity of people and opinions that you find on IRC is hard to replicate in a real classroom
The internet is great at stripping the physical characteristics of our world
I couldn't agree more. I feel that the online community is one place where a common problem that's prevalent in the real world, that of unreasonable discrimination (religion,race etc.) are not there.
I hang out sometimes on #poetry on DALnet and It's nice to have people comment on things that I post and the like. I don't think that kind of experience can be replicated in real life.
It is kind of depressing that such even with protests all over the world by so many people, the US has decided to go ahead with the war.I don't think any of the "pre emptive" strike stuff is justification for actually bombing the country. No matter where it is. Saddam needs to be ousted true but bombing the place and hurting civilans is not the way to do that.
The number of people who actually opposed it sort of boosted my faith in humanity and reason but the fact that it didn't help much shook this faith.
Which is something to be said. I'm a GNOME user myself. KDE is definitely good and beats GNOME in lots of ways. But it does seem to be like the latter is getting there.
One thing I completely agree with is the removal of sawfish and the inclusion of metacity. A lot of the GNOME users I know loved sawfish. Removing it was a bad decision. Perhaps the developers had their reasons but.... *shrug*.
Perhaps it was a decision made for a reason that you might not have fathomed? Perhaps it was made for a need that didn't arise in the part of the world you come from. I don't want to judge you or the custom but I do think your comment is in bad taste and VERY judgemental.
To take this even further, supposing one WANTS to give up his/her freedom of speech for something which that person thinks is more valuable, would people like you let them?
Slashdot Mirror
I think the more relevant issue is that this is a bit of a toy program. You fetch a page, pseudo-parse it, find links etc. Why is this such a big source of news? The code is bad, the objective is somewhat simple and it's hardly a Linux specific thing (like someone else here mentioned).
I think the question is "why?". Indian (which is where I'm from incidentally) has a space program that's useful to it. Fine. Spending lots of money with the sole intention of "putting a man on the moon" sounds a little out of place for a country which has environmental and social problems that need to be fixed. The man on the moon is not going to help the masses that actually need help.
It was a "technique" used a lot earlier actually. The Tamil tigers pioneered the concealed bomb vest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_tigers#Suicide_ bombers
I'm in India but have quite a few friends working in the US and they tell me about how the system forces them to do lots of stuff that they don't really want to just to live. eg. Medical service where I'm from are quite cheap. If a casual labourer needs to get a tooth operation, he might have to borrow a little from a friend but he can get it done. He doesn't have to have a complex medical coverage policy. If I wanted a credit card here, I don't have to prove my credit history (for which I need to take loans which I don't need etc.). I just apply and get one. Life's a lot more simpler here. The government has it's problems but it's a lot more easier to just live here than it is in the US (or so I think from my limited experience).
Weird country...
Also, he forgot to ask Eric Raymond. The guy who wrote "How to be a hacker"! Man...
I'd prefer to do that as well but when you have 15 positions for which 15000 people apply, your selection metrics have to become a little coarse to reduce the number of applicants. Here in India, if someone's from an IIT, there's a VERY good chance that he'd be pretty good. If I get 15000 applications in which 15 are IITians (which is hard since they usually get good jobs quite quickly and don't have to compete with the masses), I'd definitely shortlist them. It's not just the University/college which they went to. It's the amount of effort/skill/intelligence that's necessary to get into a place like that which people usually look at. A sort of quick rule of thumb when you have too much data to process.
Recently, I've been trying to learn Arabic from a teacher near where I live. I have started and given up a couple of times before mainly owing to lack of motivation. I figured that going to concrete classes would keep me running. Anyway, the last time I started, my teacher was someone who seriously believed in the traditional ways of teaching the language (memorising verb conjugations etc.). The modern variant which I sampled 2 days ago relies on giving students sample texts and teaching them things as they go along.
There are quite a few students of the language where I come from and I can say quite confidently that all the ones who studied the language in the boring traditional way are capable of speaking quite eloquently and the more creative ones can even write poetry. The ones who got the pre digested package can't translate a simple sentence without referring to their books.
I think you're right. Many people use "being religious" as a PR stunt to cover up a lot of unacceptable activities that they indulge in. I'm fairly serious about my faith and try to study and follow it's rules to the best of my ability and I've felt that the people in the above category are just hypocrites. On the other hand, I have met and do know people who regulate and watch everything they do just because they are convinced that God is watching them. It makes no difference to them whether they're dealing with older or younger people, in public or private etc. They behave the way they do because they're conviced that it's the right thing to do. I've also seen them go out of their way to make sure that the intention of their actions is not polluted by a "base" desire (eg. giving large amounts of money in charity absolutely secretly etc.). It gives them a certain kind of courage and fortitude that I've not been able to see anywhere else. People like this are few (in my experience) and they've been a source of inspiration for me.
Islam doesn't have an "official" authority to certify meat as halal. Many muslim countries (like Malaysia AFAIK) however, have a government agency that does this. They give restaurants a certificate which they can display. This is a convenience for observant muslims who want to make sure that the food they eat is Halal.
As for the rules of what's halal and what's not, the answer would vary (though not very much) based on the school you follow. For a situation (like this one) which you're not sure of, the recommended thing to do is to ask a qualified Islamic scholar for the ruling. So like you said, it's not exactly centralised but it's not a completely personal decision either.
Do let me know if you have any other questions regarding this. I'll do my best to answer them.
Well, that needn't be the case. The Chinese people don't live in China all their lives. There are lots of them abroad and who have seen uncensored information. If Google actively puts these messages on their search results page, the local population might get sufficiently annoyed to somehow pressurise the government into changing their policy.
This does however break the whole pro Google "don't do evil" thing. They're a company. They want money just as much as the others (M$ and Y!) do. If they can do it while confirming to some standards that make them appear "non evil", they'll do it. If they can't, they'll compromise. That's what it looks like now.
What about this. The best of both worlds? :)
I really don't know about that. The whole Open Source way of doing things has this slow evolutionary style. I mean, you'll see so many small changes creeping in that finally result in lots of really neat stuff.
This is quite unlike a company which will make more discernable leaps with product releases. "Oh! Look at that, you can drag an mp3 into your music player now and it plays! The last version of Windows didn't have that" kind of thing.
There are some slick apps coming out these days that draw on lots of previous ones. To actually draw a line and say this is an innovation is quite hard. But at the end of a decent amount of time, you'll probably find that the original product and what you have now are totally different and that the latter one has lots of new ideas in it.
So, I do not really believe that they do not plan to use SW patents offensively.
;)
Too many negatives.
Let's see how MSFT's presentation is, when it comes to fruit!
:)
They're really worried about Google. Aren't they? They've even brought out the Vapourware dept. to fight.
Writing them down initially and then entering them everyday for 10-15 days will probably make you memorise them anyway. I used to write down a password a couple of times on a piece of paper to memoriese it and then destroy the paper.
Not to troll although given the state of affairs these days, this probably sounds like one.
I respect RMS primarily for his sincere devotion to what he believes in. He's not "pragmatic" (ability to sell out when the monetary gains are high enough) and is the most dependable point in the whole Free Software community as far as I know.
However, his reasons seem to be things like "morals" and "ethics" rather than ideas which are fashionable in the US like "reason" and "maximum profit".
How "American" are these values? After opportunists like Eric Raymond capitalised on the whole idea of Free Software and produced a watered down "pragmatic" version called Open Source where companies can get work done without paying for it, the whole deal seems to have been a lot more accepted.
In any case, I don't think we're going to see anyone as devoted to a cause as RMS anytime soon and even though given the present state of affairs, some of his opinions sound "cranky" to some people. He's one of the few people who absolutely refuse to sell out or water down their ideals it's wonderful to have such people around.
I think there's a difference between a statement like that from Microsoft that stands to gain from crippling the Free Software/Open Source community and from someone like Novell who has an interest in things like Gnome.
However, it *is* a commercial outfit and no one knows what they're attitude will be tomorrow. If it's in their financial interest to use these patents against the Free Software community, I don't think they will hesitate much (maybe more than M$ but they'll still do it).
Gnus d00d. That's the only way to go. But this is REALLY off topic.
I would think that large corporations are affected by things like support, integration with the mail server (M$ exchange) and things like that rather than functionality, extensibility and such features that appeal only to "geeks".
It is only when ESR took over that suddenly this became "strongly deprecated".
Well said. I guess it's not about terminology at all. If one defines what one means by a hacker before talking about it, they're on safe ground.
However, some people do take offense at the misuse of the term like eg. Richard Stallman in whose prime time, "hacker" was a badge of honour.
IIRC, many companies provide Linux support agreements. The submitter should look into those.
RedHat is probably an example.
Probably in an incident that involves one of 'em Plasma conduits. They're all over the place.
I don't know about IRC being categorically better than spoken discussions but I do feel that the sheer diversity of people and opinions that you find on IRC is hard to replicate in a real classroom
The internet is great at stripping the physical characteristics of our world
I couldn't agree more. I feel that the online community is one place where a common problem that's prevalent in the real world, that of unreasonable discrimination (religion,race etc.) are not there.
I hang out sometimes on #poetry on DALnet and It's nice to have people comment on things that I post and the like. I don't think that kind of experience can be replicated in real life.
It is kind of depressing that such even with protests all over the world by so many people, the US has decided to go ahead with the war.I don't think any of the "pre emptive" strike stuff is justification for actually bombing the country. No matter where it is. Saddam needs to be ousted true but bombing the place and hurting civilans is not the way to do that.
The number of people who actually opposed it sort of boosted my faith in humanity and reason but the fact that it didn't help much shook this faith.
One thing I completely agree with is the removal of sawfish and the inclusion of metacity. A lot of the GNOME users I know loved sawfish. Removing it was a bad decision. Perhaps the developers had their reasons but.... *shrug*.
What makes you so sure? http://ccminc.faithweb.com/islam/05veil.html
Perhaps it was a decision made for a reason that you might not have fathomed? Perhaps it was made for a need that didn't arise in the part of the world you come from. I don't want to judge you or the custom but I do think your comment is in bad taste and VERY judgemental.
To take this even further, supposing one WANTS to give up his/her freedom of speech for something which that person thinks is more valuable, would people like you let them?