If you don't like the message, don't watch the film.
That's a good point. I agree with you that there are some movies that are "uncleanable." I said I haven't seen one, not that they don't exist. I don't think clean flicks would even make an attempt at clockwork orange. If the message is something like, "Here's some evil guys who rape women and cut off cop's ears and we're gonna get them," then obviously someone like me will choose not to watch it. But if the message is something like, "A group overcomes incredible odds to achieve the impossible," and they only throw in a sex scene because they can't think of another way to keep the audience interested during a slow part in the story, then I'm not missing anything by skipping that part. Those are the movies that places like clean flicks target.
If you have to rely on your audience being stimulated by sex or violence in order to enjoy the movie instead of having them enjoy it solely on the merits of the plot, then you aren't a very good director or writer in my book.
Next time you go to a film and see a scene like that, I challenge you to take a step back and honestly ask yourself if they really needed that in the movie or if they are just insulting the audience's intelligence by appealing to their baser instincts. You'd be suprised how often the answer is the latter. If you enjoy being stimulated sexually rather than mentally at a movie, then you may not care, but us "prudes" actually enjoy a better sex life because we reserve those kinds of feelings for our spouse instead of some fictional character. Don't think so? Ask yourself if you'd rather have your wife turned on by you or by a naked guy on a movie you just watched.
a film that has a message that relies upon sex and/or violence
I don't think I've ever seen a film with a plot that relies upon images of sex and/or violence. Any plot that you couldn't follow without seeing those things just doesn't interest me. However, I have seen films with plots that are enhanced by knowing those things happened. Actually witnessing the event does nothing to help the plot at all, in my opinion.
Why do you have to see nudity to know the level of a couple's passion for each other? You see the couple kissing and they fall on the bed and then the next frame is the morning after. Did I miss anything crucial to the plot? Not in my opinion.
Why do you have to see someone's brains blown out to know how cold and ruthless the villian is? You see the pistol held up to someone's head and the next few frames are completely black with the sound of a shot ringing. Did I miss anything crucial to the plot? I don't think so.
Some of the best movies I've seen leave those things to my imagination instead of the director's. Like "Signs" where you don't even really see an alien until the last few minutes, but you're freaked out just watching the reactions of the other characters. Maybe that's why I prefer books to most recent movies.
The only reason I have win4lin is to run 1 windows app that my wife uses frequently and 3 apps that we use only occasionally, but that don't have a good linux alternative (greeting card programs, etc). I think most people use it in a similar manner.
Win4lin only uses one set of well-tested windows device drivers. There are no weird third party drivers to make things unstable. The 4 apps I use run really well under win4lin/win98se.
Basically, win4lin is not for you if you want an enterprise quality windows installation like win2k. However, if you want a stable environment for a couple of apps and leave the enterprise quality stuff for the linux side, then win4lin is a great solution.
The 4 windows apps my wife and I still are dependent on do not work in wine yet. That's why we have win4lin. I'm subscribed to wine-announce, though, and try out every new release. When wine is better, I'll switch for good. Until then, win4lin is a fast, stable solution for my family.
I hate seeing file~ whenever an editor wants to save a backup copy.
That's why I have
set backupdir=$HOME/.vim_backups
in my.vimrc. The backups are still there in case I ever do something stupid, but I don't have to look at them all the time. I'm sure emacs has something similar. I liked VMS versioning too, but my directories did fill up really fast.
I agree completely. There is definitely room in the market for both the big commercial distros and the independent support. However, my personal opinion is if you have enough in house expertise to make a non-standard system, that you probably have enough in house expertise to support the non-standard stuff (or at least you should).
For example, I really wanted the usb-storage updates in the new 2.4.21 kernel. However, I use Win4Lin and netraverse hadn't released a kernel patch for 2.4.21 yet (they have since, but I had no idea how long it was going to take). So, I applied the 2.4.20 patch (which succeeded with hunks) and hoped for the best.
Did I have a right to ask netraverse for support if Win4Lin didn't work under 2.4.21? Of course not. If I didn't have the personal expertise to make it work I should have backed out to 2.4.20 and waited for the official patch or hired someone who did have the expertise. That was a simple example, but you get the general idea.
If you are just modding up the interesting stuff already modded up, you are useless to the system.
Actually, I never mod something up that someone has already moderated up. And I used to read at -1 when I had mod points, but never modded up anything below 1 anyway, so I stopped doing it. I just feel personally that AC's don't deserve to be moderated up and I don't want to read all the crap that gets modded down to -1. There's a reason I read at +2 normally. I think M2 should be used to prevent M1 abuses instead of opposing M1, but that's just me.
Basically, I moderate to make slashdot more interesting by my standards and hope that everyone else does the same, even if their standards differ from mine.
I have to work tonight, and may not be able to join in. Can someone ask my question (more like a feature request) for me?
Can we get the ability to have different settings depending upon whether we have mod points or not? For example, I normally read at +2, highest scores first, but when I have mod points I read at +1, newest first. It's annoying to have to change those all the time.
As someone who has used NetFlix almost since its inception, I can tell you that the only thing that would make me switch to WalMart would be if I could rent/return rentals online or in the store for the same monthly flat rate. Netflix is fast, convenient, and inexpensive, but I still rent at another place on those nights where I want to watch a new movie, but forgot to mail back a DVD at the start of the week. I would only switch if I could get the best of both worlds.
I bet you are less against complex object reuse than you think. When is the last time you implemented your own I/O library or windowing system? Or those annoying objects called device drivers? Don't confuse a class with an object -- they aren't the same thing.
You couldn't write software as complex as you write now without reusing other people's code. The whole point of the article is that we've hit another threshold where we won't be able to make more complex software without more reuse of higher-level code.
Same thing goes for my master's at University of Southern California. There is a real live class that the teacher lectures to. You can watch it live if you want to phone in and ask questions, or watch it later when you have time. I take the exams at my local community college at the same time as the rest of the class and turn in my homework at the same time. Almost like being in the class. I just spend a little more on long distance calls for when I need to chat with the professor. There's even a toll free number for in-class questions.
The only thing I miss is the "what didja get" discussions after tests and homeworks are handed back and the other interactions with other students. Other than that, the experience is identical to my traditional undergrad education and much more convenient.
Exactly why I do online classes. If I don't feel good one day, I can either watch my class while laying down on my couch, or wait for another day. Fast forward is definitely a must if you have one of those know-it-alls in class. Watching that one lecture you were unclear about helps a lot when studying for finals.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the middle clicking opening a link taking precedence. I use it all the time. However, you wouldn't need to do some weird button combination to activate autoscroll instead in this case. If you middle click on a link, open link in a new tab. If you middle click off of a link, activate the autoscroll. Simple as that.
My only question was how do you verify a priori that you aren't copying someone's source if you can't look at their source? The only person who can possibly know is the one who submits the patch. This problem also exists with closed source companies. As far as I know most closed source IP suits are not "you copied my source code" suits, but are "you used my patented algorithm" suits. The problem also goes the other way. How does the company know to sue for copied source if they can't look at the source? The answer is they can't. They can only guess based on the binary and hope they're right when they get to court.
submit a patch. Seriously, with all the talented slashdotters out there I'm surprised the Mozilla bug wasn't fixed before the story even posted for non-subscribers.
I couldn't agree with you more. We have one guy in our department who pretty much is paid to be the liason to the support department of the Ada compiler suite we use. Between filing the bug report, communicating with the company, waiting for a fix, and applying and testing the patch, it takes at least a week per issue. And there may be other problems caused by the first patch that then have to be worked out. Most of the issues require less than 10 LOC patches.
It is sort of ironic because I work in a software engineering department full of people who could write a patch to the compiler in almost the same amount of time it takes to figure out that it is a compiler problem.
The other interesting fact is that I use an open source compiler (gnat) to send libraries to a vendor. The problems I have personally found with the proprietary compiler suite were verified to be compiler problems because they worked fine with gnat. At least for my issues, no support would have even been necessary if we had gone with the open source solution. I realize that is just anecdotal evidence, but it is pretty strong evidence from my point of view.
The only possible independent verification method I can think of is to compile the code in question and compare the binaries, which are "published". Of course, the exact same compiler, assembler, and linker will have to be used and the only entity who knows what they are is the organization being verified. As long as the build tools were also publicly distributed it's not an impossible task.
I'm okay with end users who just want to "learn the minimum necessary" and expect others to find the bugs. What I'm not okay with is end users who whine about software bugs on slashdot endlessly but won't take 5 minutes to submit a bug report to the developer. Most developers I have submitted bug reports to are like this one; they are well versed in their software and can fix a bug in about 5 minutes if you give them a chance.
Bottom line is: Don't complain about bugs in free-as-in-beer software if you haven't made a minimum effort to fix it.
They do not realize that they are taking food out of their future mouths.
I have been programming professionally for 10 years and have never sold a single copy of the software I have worked on. How do I survive, you might ask.
My company pays for the service of writing custom embedded software for the product they sell. My previous company paid me for the service of writing custom software for their internal use and for their web site. A vast majority of programmers work this way.
Other than that, I think you make a good analogy. What you fail to mention is that scientists get the benefit of the scientific research of others. My main motivation when I contribute to open source projects is that I want the free software that others contribute. I realize that if everyone just leached off of the system then Linux wouldn't exist at all so I try to do my part.
I'm not talking about one off small business ops where the IT manager is a Mac fanatic, I'm talking about companies with >100 employees for instance, and that isn't entirely media based. Ie virtually all companies.
Is Motorola big enough for you? (Okay they use a lot of PCs now, but worked exclusively and successfully with Macs on the desktop for a long time). How about Apple?
What if this guy spoke harshly about the government, would you feel the same?
If he stood on my front lawn and yelled with a bullhorn through my window, yes.
If he was an abortion doctor would he feel the same?
If he performed abortions on women who didn't want them, yes.
If he was a communist would you feel the same?
If he forced me to be a communist, yes.
People hate spammers precisely because they inflict their views and solicitations upon others and use subversive means to do so, not because they hate people who sell their kind of products. Also, their actions increase the cost of my internet service. Would you still stand up for the rights of an abortion doctor if his services significantly increased the cost of your health insurance, whether you used his services or not?
Submitting a detailed bug report to the mplayer developers will work much better than submitting a bug report to slashdot:)
I think you'll be pleasantly suprised at the response you will get to a thorough and appreciative bug report. Just think of submitting a report as the cost of free software.
Some of your issues are more feature requests than bugs, which open source developers are somewhat less responsive to. However, someone may just decide to give you what you want! If not, my view is if they don't accept your patch, at least your personal version has the features you want. If you can't do it yourself, I'm sure there are many talented but out of work slashdotters that would be willing to add a feature for a reasonable price.
As I recall I spent a few hours with my in-law's computer on similar problems when Windows XP was new.
Just yesterday, my compact flash reader wouldn't work on the Win2k machine at work because service pack 3 hasn't been installed. It works just fine at home with Linux 2.4.20.
People don't seem to notice that hardware driver development falls behind the curve of Windows releases too. The difference is that I can still use my old scanner on my brand new Linux installation. I can't use it with Windows XP because the company went out of business before XP was released and the old driver won't work anymore.
Eventually, enough people will want to use their legacy accessories that Linux will actually be more attractive overall than Windows for hardware support. Most people on their second or third computer don't want to replace their scanner, printer, webcam, etc. every time they replace their computer. I find it interesting that the same people who criticize Linux for not supporting bleeding edge hardware don't seem to mind the fact that they have to replace some perfectly usable accessories in order to use the latest Windows release.
I can agree with you that a large number of programming tasks do not require creativity to simply get it to work.
However, most programming tasks do require creativity to create robust, easy to maintain, and secure software.
Have you ever looked at a piece of code that hurt your head because it was so difficult to read, but nonetheless managed to work somehow?
On the other hand, to me, the biggest compliment someone can give me is "You write beautiful code." If you have ever worked on a complex problem for hours and at the end it has boiled down to an extremely elegant, easy to read, easy to maintain, self documenting, and easy to follow solution, then you know what I am talking about. Every once in a while at the end of the day I sit back and say to myself, "Wow, that's beautiful code." Those are the times when I know I was a creative programming artist that day instead of merely a code monkey grunt.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have to rely on your audience being stimulated by sex or violence in order to enjoy the movie instead of having them enjoy it solely on the merits of the plot, then you aren't a very good director or writer in my book.
Next time you go to a film and see a scene like that, I challenge you to take a step back and honestly ask yourself if they really needed that in the movie or if they are just insulting the audience's intelligence by appealing to their baser instincts. You'd be suprised how often the answer is the latter. If you enjoy being stimulated sexually rather than mentally at a movie, then you may not care, but us "prudes" actually enjoy a better sex life because we reserve those kinds of feelings for our spouse instead of some fictional character. Don't think so? Ask yourself if you'd rather have your wife turned on by you or by a naked guy on a movie you just watched.
I don't think I've ever seen a film with a plot that relies upon images of sex and/or violence. Any plot that you couldn't follow without seeing those things just doesn't interest me. However, I have seen films with plots that are enhanced by knowing those things happened. Actually witnessing the event does nothing to help the plot at all, in my opinion.
Why do you have to see nudity to know the level of a couple's passion for each other? You see the couple kissing and they fall on the bed and then the next frame is the morning after. Did I miss anything crucial to the plot? Not in my opinion.
Why do you have to see someone's brains blown out to know how cold and ruthless the villian is? You see the pistol held up to someone's head and the next few frames are completely black with the sound of a shot ringing. Did I miss anything crucial to the plot? I don't think so.
Some of the best movies I've seen leave those things to my imagination instead of the director's. Like "Signs" where you don't even really see an alien until the last few minutes, but you're freaked out just watching the reactions of the other characters. Maybe that's why I prefer books to most recent movies.
Win4lin only uses one set of well-tested windows device drivers. There are no weird third party drivers to make things unstable. The 4 apps I use run really well under win4lin/win98se.
Basically, win4lin is not for you if you want an enterprise quality windows installation like win2k. However, if you want a stable environment for a couple of apps and leave the enterprise quality stuff for the linux side, then win4lin is a great solution.
The 4 windows apps my wife and I still are dependent on do not work in wine yet. That's why we have win4lin. I'm subscribed to wine-announce, though, and try out every new release. When wine is better, I'll switch for good. Until then, win4lin is a fast, stable solution for my family.
set backupdir=$HOME/.vim_backups
in my
For example, I really wanted the usb-storage updates in the new 2.4.21 kernel. However, I use Win4Lin and netraverse hadn't released a kernel patch for 2.4.21 yet (they have since, but I had no idea how long it was going to take). So, I applied the 2.4.20 patch (which succeeded with hunks) and hoped for the best.
Did I have a right to ask netraverse for support if Win4Lin didn't work under 2.4.21? Of course not. If I didn't have the personal expertise to make it work I should have backed out to 2.4.20 and waited for the official patch or hired someone who did have the expertise. That was a simple example, but you get the general idea.
Basically, I moderate to make slashdot more interesting by my standards and hope that everyone else does the same, even if their standards differ from mine.
Can we get the ability to have different settings depending upon whether we have mod points or not? For example, I normally read at +2, highest scores first, but when I have mod points I read at +1, newest first. It's annoying to have to change those all the time.
As someone who has used NetFlix almost since its inception, I can tell you that the only thing that would make me switch to WalMart would be if I could rent/return rentals online or in the store for the same monthly flat rate. Netflix is fast, convenient, and inexpensive, but I still rent at another place on those nights where I want to watch a new movie, but forgot to mail back a DVD at the start of the week. I would only switch if I could get the best of both worlds.
You couldn't write software as complex as you write now without reusing other people's code. The whole point of the article is that we've hit another threshold where we won't be able to make more complex software without more reuse of higher-level code.
The only thing I miss is the "what didja get" discussions after tests and homeworks are handed back and the other interactions with other students. Other than that, the experience is identical to my traditional undergrad education and much more convenient.
Exactly why I do online classes. If I don't feel good one day, I can either watch my class while laying down on my couch, or wait for another day. Fast forward is definitely a must if you have one of those know-it-alls in class. Watching that one lecture you were unclear about helps a lot when studying for finals.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the middle clicking opening a link taking precedence. I use it all the time. However, you wouldn't need to do some weird button combination to activate autoscroll instead in this case. If you middle click on a link, open link in a new tab. If you middle click off of a link, activate the autoscroll. Simple as that.
My only question was how do you verify a priori that you aren't copying someone's source if you can't look at their source? The only person who can possibly know is the one who submits the patch. This problem also exists with closed source companies. As far as I know most closed source IP suits are not "you copied my source code" suits, but are "you used my patented algorithm" suits. The problem also goes the other way. How does the company know to sue for copied source if they can't look at the source? The answer is they can't. They can only guess based on the binary and hope they're right when they get to court.
I agree. Now if only every unix vendor in the world would open their source code, it would be easy to comply.
Just how do you propose accomplishing this?
submit a patch. Seriously, with all the talented slashdotters out there I'm surprised the Mozilla bug wasn't fixed before the story even posted for non-subscribers.
It is sort of ironic because I work in a software engineering department full of people who could write a patch to the compiler in almost the same amount of time it takes to figure out that it is a compiler problem.
The other interesting fact is that I use an open source compiler (gnat) to send libraries to a vendor. The problems I have personally found with the proprietary compiler suite were verified to be compiler problems because they worked fine with gnat. At least for my issues, no support would have even been necessary if we had gone with the open source solution. I realize that is just anecdotal evidence, but it is pretty strong evidence from my point of view.
The only possible independent verification method I can think of is to compile the code in question and compare the binaries, which are "published". Of course, the exact same compiler, assembler, and linker will have to be used and the only entity who knows what they are is the organization being verified. As long as the build tools were also publicly distributed it's not an impossible task.
Bottom line is: Don't complain about bugs in free-as-in-beer software if you haven't made a minimum effort to fix it.
My company pays for the service of writing custom embedded software for the product they sell. My previous company paid me for the service of writing custom software for their internal use and for their web site. A vast majority of programmers work this way.
Other than that, I think you make a good analogy. What you fail to mention is that scientists get the benefit of the scientific research of others. My main motivation when I contribute to open source projects is that I want the free software that others contribute. I realize that if everyone just leached off of the system then Linux wouldn't exist at all so I try to do my part.
What if this guy spoke harshly about the government, would you feel the same?
If he stood on my front lawn and yelled with a bullhorn through my window, yes.
If he was an abortion doctor would he feel the same?
If he performed abortions on women who didn't want them, yes.
If he was a communist would you feel the same?
If he forced me to be a communist, yes.
People hate spammers precisely because they inflict their views and solicitations upon others and use subversive means to do so, not because they hate people who sell their kind of products. Also, their actions increase the cost of my internet service. Would you still stand up for the rights of an abortion doctor if his services significantly increased the cost of your health insurance, whether you used his services or not?
I think you'll be pleasantly suprised at the response you will get to a thorough and appreciative bug report. Just think of submitting a report as the cost of free software.
Some of your issues are more feature requests than bugs, which open source developers are somewhat less responsive to. However, someone may just decide to give you what you want! If not, my view is if they don't accept your patch, at least your personal version has the features you want. If you can't do it yourself, I'm sure there are many talented but out of work slashdotters that would be willing to add a feature for a reasonable price.
As I recall I spent a few hours with my in-law's computer on similar problems when Windows XP was new.
Just yesterday, my compact flash reader wouldn't work on the Win2k machine at work because service pack 3 hasn't been installed. It works just fine at home with Linux 2.4.20.
People don't seem to notice that hardware driver development falls behind the curve of Windows releases too. The difference is that I can still use my old scanner on my brand new Linux installation. I can't use it with Windows XP because the company went out of business before XP was released and the old driver won't work anymore.
Eventually, enough people will want to use their legacy accessories that Linux will actually be more attractive overall than Windows for hardware support. Most people on their second or third computer don't want to replace their scanner, printer, webcam, etc. every time they replace their computer. I find it interesting that the same people who criticize Linux for not supporting bleeding edge hardware don't seem to mind the fact that they have to replace some perfectly usable accessories in order to use the latest Windows release.
However, most programming tasks do require creativity to create robust, easy to maintain, and secure software.
Have you ever looked at a piece of code that hurt your head because it was so difficult to read, but nonetheless managed to work somehow?
On the other hand, to me, the biggest compliment someone can give me is "You write beautiful code." If you have ever worked on a complex problem for hours and at the end it has boiled down to an extremely elegant, easy to read, easy to maintain, self documenting, and easy to follow solution, then you know what I am talking about. Every once in a while at the end of the day I sit back and say to myself, "Wow, that's beautiful code." Those are the times when I know I was a creative programming artist that day instead of merely a code monkey grunt.