So in one place Taco says that spelling and grammar are of secondary importance. I completely agree. But note that that statement does say that they are of importance. Which means that it would be better if they were correct than if they weren't.
Then in the Update Taco says that he actually prefers some bad spelling and grammar, since it gives the site a grittier feeling. It's not that they don't get around to fix these errors, it's that they enjoy them being there. In effect, Slashdot is like pre-torn fashion punk jeans.
These two conflicting statements from the same man probably reflects two conflicting views on the issue within himself. Maybe this debate can help him figure out which side he's on and make a conscious and coherent decision on it.
In other news, oxygen tank expert Bronchito McCougherson chastised non smokers for being too smug thinking they were immune from emphysema and lung cancer.
I don't comfortably have the room for two computers, and wouldn't enjoy the noise or power bills of two of them running at the same time. Nor would I enjoy having to maintain a network to access my files from both machines.
And I'm not even in the majority of computer users who use portables.
You're looking too close. When we think of the color of a furred animal, we think of the color of their fur. Black cats don't have black skin. Sure, monkeys have a few bald patches, but they're still 95% the color of their fur when you look at them.
Now, from a scientific standpoint of determening hertage, your argument makes sense, but from a gut feeling standpoint, I think the other way holds more water. Especially if we're talking about a white racist rationalizing his ideas.
I agree it's a silly thing to argue about. And no argument can really claim any stringency in this area, and we're probably splitting hairs beyond any reasonableness by now...
From the actual perspective of a racist, it makes obvious sense.
They're black or brown. They've got that flat nose thing going. They wear little or no clothing. They come from Africa, living side by side with each other. They're clearly related to us, but also clearly more primitive.
On a continent with many different primate species, it would make sense if they were all related, and the fact that one of them can interbreed with us doesn't mean they're the same, any more than it means that horses and donkeys are the same. Who knows, since they are an intermediate race, they can also interbreed with some monkey species.
Hopefully unneeded disclaimer: Those are not my opinions, but those I believe are/were typical racist thoughts on the matter
The real question is "If I unsubsrcibe to the service, does every song in my collection just disappear?" If the answer is "yes" then my answer is "no thanks."
If the answer was anything else, you could for one monthly fee get their whole X million song collection. Regardless of the fee, that cannot possibly work as a business.
In online music services you can sell individual songs permanently, or you can sell timed access to a huge song library. Either model has its pros and cons, but you have to pick one.
Just to go all the way with the offtopicness, I want to point out that this is the reason spell checkers don't work nearly as well in these languages as in English.
The infinite vocabulary doesn't fit well into a data base.
And the other immediate question people in the area will ask is how they can steal this laptop shipment from the local kids before somebody else does. A few guys with AK-47s could harvest a few hundred of these from the local school without much trouble.
A major reason much of the third world is poor is that it has no reliable system of private property for poor people, and armed thugs will take anything of even marginal value that they happen to possess. Of course, the kids know this, and it's half the reason they'd want to sell it before it gets stolen.
Well meaning people from the rich world often make the mistake of assuming it's just like their societies, filled with people just like themselves who just happen to have less money than they/we do. This sounds like yet another solution that could work really well in this, sadly nonexistent, scenario.
Not that there aren't more civilized places where this could possibly work, but don't imagine it will do anything for those suffering under cleptocracy.
There actually aren't that many other poor places they can go. Not in terms of number of people, anyway. India and China are about 1/3 of the world population,and 1/2 of the poor world. Once they have joined the rich world, there's only so many poor nations left.
This doesn't mean that the quest for the most effective labour for the lowest price will end, of course. It just means that that lowest price will rise.
I want to talk about the argument that this is not due to piracy, but to the fact that the music is getting worse. You can see it being claimed in post all around this one.
I find it hard to believe. It means that just at the same time as piracy in different forms became convenient and commonly accessible, popular music culture hit an unprecedented quality slump. What are the odds for that coincidence? It reminds me of global warming-deniers who think that the climate just happened to grow warmer from other causes, right when we started pumping out CO2 by the megagigaton.
Also, while the piracy opportunities are easily verifiable, I don't know how to measure the average music output quality in any rational way. Individual people over 20 will almost without exception feel that music is not as interesting as when they were 15. It's just how the human music taste works, for whatever reason. To someone going through those ages while the music industry slump is going on, I can well understand that it must feel like their taste is universally correct, but I doubt the kids turing 15 today share that view.
I'm babbling, but in short, until I see some objective proof that music quality is actually going down, I will believe in the simple explanation of this.
According to the MSNBC article, white dwarfs are the result of "Type Ia supernovas".
Is that really true?
It seems like an event like that only 8 light years away would have fried our little pitiful planet in a away that would be very noticeble today, or more likely exterminate all life.
I assume it's for the same reason they want sites with chords and/or notes for songs off the net, which is that it would affect sales of sheet music.
For chords etc, that is definitely true. I wouldn't buy any if I could get the same thing online. For the texts I think it's much less valid, but it probably has some small effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Can we go over this again?
The stupid part of the story (as told by the poster) is that these IT "professionals" didn't seem to understand that Linux is incompatible with XP.
Why are people who don't comprehend - or can't communicate - this employed in an IT organization??
Had they just explained things the way you explain them in your post, there would be no problem.
So in one place Taco says that spelling and grammar are of secondary importance. I completely agree. But note that that statement does say that they are of importance. Which means that it would be better if they were correct than if they weren't.
Then in the Update Taco says that he actually prefers some bad spelling and grammar, since it gives the site a grittier feeling. It's not that they don't get around to fix these errors, it's that they enjoy them being there. In effect, Slashdot is like pre-torn fashion punk jeans.
These two conflicting statements from the same man probably reflects two conflicting views on the issue within himself. Maybe this debate can help him figure out which side he's on and make a conscious and coherent decision on it.
You're right, there are records for that as well, and the average records are taken far more seriously by the cubers themselves.
But there is no way to make the media write about that concept.
In other news, oxygen tank expert Bronchito McCougherson chastised non smokers for being too smug thinking they were immune from emphysema and lung cancer.
Here are the two sides of this.
A. Macs are no more expensive than similarly equipped computers from PC quality brands.
B. There are no cheap macs built to less stringent quality and feature standards, while the PC world overflows with these things.
I know it's confusing, but the fact is that both statements are true at the same time in this world.
I don't comfortably have the room for two computers, and wouldn't enjoy the noise or power bills of two of them running at the same time. Nor would I enjoy having to maintain a network to access my files from both machines.
And I'm not even in the majority of computer users who use portables.
What makes you think it is in orbit in the first place?
It's just basic gravity. Things fall down. Even gas. Just look at Earth.
You're looking too close. When we think of the color of a furred animal, we think of the color of their fur. Black cats don't have black skin. Sure, monkeys have a few bald patches, but they're still 95% the color of their fur when you look at them.
Now, from a scientific standpoint of determening hertage, your argument makes sense, but from a gut feeling standpoint, I think the other way holds more water. Especially if we're talking about a white racist rationalizing his ideas.
I agree it's a silly thing to argue about. And no argument can really claim any stringency in this area, and we're probably splitting hairs beyond any reasonableness by now...
From the actual perspective of a racist, it makes obvious sense.
They're black or brown. They've got that flat nose thing going. They wear little or no clothing. They come from Africa, living side by side with each other. They're clearly related to us, but also clearly more primitive.
On a continent with many different primate species, it would make sense if they were all related, and the fact that one of them can interbreed with us doesn't mean they're the same, any more than it means that horses and donkeys are the same. Who knows, since they are an intermediate race, they can also interbreed with some monkey species.
Hopefully unneeded disclaimer: Those are not my opinions, but those I believe are/were typical racist thoughts on the matter
Dashboard steels the look of Konfabulator, itself a stolen idea. Yahoo buys Konfabulator and steals the name of Dashboard. What ever next?
The main issue here is not law enforcement, but stalkers.
The Patriot Act has many flaws, but enabling stalking is not one of them.
I'm sure that's doable, but I can't imagine that "most europeans" do this. I'd be surprised if it's more than 0.1%.
The real question is "If I unsubsrcibe to the service, does every song in my collection just disappear?" If the answer is "yes" then my answer is "no thanks."
If the answer was anything else, you could for one monthly fee get their whole X million song collection. Regardless of the fee, that cannot possibly work as a business.
In online music services you can sell individual songs permanently, or you can sell timed access to a huge song library. Either model has its pros and cons, but you have to pick one.
If iTunes store songs are indeed made from CD versions, that's a relevant argument. But Apple claims that they're produced from the original masters.
If so, it's not really a question of lossiness, but if whether the CD encoding or the AAC encoding sounds better.
There is no lossless audio format around. CDs are only sampled at 16 bit resolution.
I suspect AAC files can actually do better than that if given enough bandwidth.
Just to go all the way with the offtopicness, I want to point out that this is the reason spell checkers don't work nearly as well in these languages as in English.
The infinite vocabulary doesn't fit well into a data base.
And the other immediate question people in the area will ask is how they can steal this laptop shipment from the local kids before somebody else does. A few guys with AK-47s could harvest a few hundred of these from the local school without much trouble.
A major reason much of the third world is poor is that it has no reliable system of private property for poor people, and armed thugs will take anything of even marginal value that they happen to possess. Of course, the kids know this, and it's half the reason they'd want to sell it before it gets stolen.
Well meaning people from the rich world often make the mistake of assuming it's just like their societies, filled with people just like themselves who just happen to have less money than they/we do. This sounds like yet another solution that could work really well in this, sadly nonexistent, scenario.
Not that there aren't more civilized places where this could possibly work, but don't imagine it will do anything for those suffering under cleptocracy.
The languages and libraries are - intentionally - very similar. Once you know one of them well, you can pick up the other in an afternoon.
There actually aren't that many other poor places they can go. Not in terms of number of people, anyway. India and China are about 1/3 of the world population,and 1/2 of the poor world. Once they have joined the rich world, there's only so many poor nations left.
This doesn't mean that the quest for the most effective labour for the lowest price will end, of course. It just means that that lowest price will rise.
I want to talk about the argument that this is not due to piracy, but to the fact that the music is getting worse. You can see it being claimed in post all around this one.
I find it hard to believe. It means that just at the same time as piracy in different forms became convenient and commonly accessible, popular music culture hit an unprecedented quality slump. What are the odds for that coincidence? It reminds me of global warming-deniers who think that the climate just happened to grow warmer from other causes, right when we started pumping out CO2 by the megagigaton.
Also, while the piracy opportunities are easily verifiable, I don't know how to measure the average music output quality in any rational way. Individual people over 20 will almost without exception feel that music is not as interesting as when they were 15. It's just how the human music taste works, for whatever reason. To someone going through those ages while the music industry slump is going on, I can well understand that it must feel like their taste is universally correct, but I doubt the kids turing 15 today share that view.
I'm babbling, but in short, until I see some objective proof that music quality is actually going down, I will believe in the simple explanation of this.
According to the MSNBC article, white dwarfs are the result of "Type Ia supernovas".
Is that really true?
It seems like an event like that only 8 light years away would have fried our little pitiful planet in a away that would be very noticeble today, or more likely exterminate all life.
Anyone know?
We must fight them on Itokawa so we don't have to fight them on the streets of Tokyo!
Besides, there might be oil there.
I assume it's for the same reason they want sites with chords and/or notes for songs off the net, which is that it would affect sales of sheet music.
For chords etc, that is definitely true. I wouldn't buy any if I could get the same thing online. For the texts I think it's much less valid, but it probably has some small effect.
According to the article, they have won dozens of millions of dollars.
You're right. That's not shit.