It's really, really difficult to get people to follow rules. We're lazy, we're incompetent (yes), and some of us are evil. I still don't think I truly understand how RDF is supposed to work exactly, and it doesn't even seem like it will be fun to try.
It's not about following rules. It's about offering some kind of incentive. The major disincentives are that RDF is a confusing, poorly engineered spec and that it probably won't provide them any benefit. You can't call someone lazy or evil for having common sense.
Brilliant! Blame the user. No, it's not that you don't have a rational data model (you know, so that those "semantic" tags actually *mean* something) or that you haven't done squat to even suggest a proper UI, it's the user's fault.
And it *certainly* couldn't be that HTML is a piece of fucking garbage and that trying to kludge semantics into the spec is an effort doomed from the beginning.
To me the problem is very simple. If I lose my keys, I don't put a "key watch" on my door to see if someone attempts to use the lost keys. I change the locks on the door and get new keys.
You suck at analogies. A credit report is like a burglar alarm on your house.
If the confidentiality of my social security number is lost then I need to get a new social security number.
And you're going to hope that the thousands of agencies and tiny little companies that have your data will get the updates in a timely manner? It bears repeating: you suck at analogies.
Apparently, that was a ploy... a class action lawsuit was already started, and if you accepted their kind offer of trying to protect you, then it meant you opted out of the class action. heh.
Bullshit, I got their email and they're still working out who is going to provide the credit monitoring service.
This week, VA will solicit bids from qualified companies to provide a comprehensive credit monitoring solution. VA will ask these companies to provide expedited proposals and to be prepared to implement them rapidly once they are under contract.
It matters because ideology trumps everything to some people, and they won't get involved in open source if they think it is in some way "communist."
If I worried about whether someone was a commie I'd have to limit my musical tastes to Toby Keith and, uh, that one crazy fuck who's all into hunting. Sure, I do avoid some stupid moonbat musicians, but it's more on the principle that I'm not going to pay them money for the privilege of having them talk at me.
Now, do I think the GNU foundation is socialist? Yup. I won't donate money to them because of several of their stupid socialist ideas, like the software tax.
The way I explain it to people is that there are two different phenomena: the open source movement, which is heavily populated by socialists and anti-corporatists, and the open source effect, which is the natural economic result of the commoditization of mature technologies. (The commoditization I'm referring to is the fact that certain technologies like, say, word processors, really aren't all that fucking complicated. And since virtually no raw materials are expended in developing word processors, as we settle on the desired feature set for a word processor, the cost of an upgrade should fall to 0. I've noticed that the most successful open source projects involve such commodity software.)
Basically, your argument amounts to absolutely nothing, because it's no different from other programs.
Oh, bullshit. A script in a book omits all kinds of error-checking and security for brevity and clarity. A multi-megabyte download doesn't.
And I doubt the publisher is going to release security fixes for these scripts. You don't see bugtraq saying, "hey, we found a possible buffer overrun in some sample code from this book."
I predict that when they release their "office suite" that it will be exactly the same as Google's offerings. And I predict that credulous reporters will pass on the claim that they have 99% of the core functionality that Office users need, while eliminating all the worthless features.
You know, things like a decent set of formulas in your spreadsheet and style sheets in your word processor.
Re:Microsoft and/or Windows have hit the wall?
on
WinFS Gets the Axe
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· Score: 1
I think Microsoft may have reached the limits of their competence, at least as far as the Win32 platform goes.
How is that possible? Since there's only been NT, 2K and XP, Vista should only be the fourth major release.
Most of the fee-based services I evaluated cancel automatically at the end of the trial period, but XDrive rolls over to the pay plan without bothering to ask for your permission first.
Not only that, but XDrive ignored my emails requesting that my account be cancelled. There are better places to do business with.
Hey, if the "youth" voted, * The drinking age would be 18 again. * Publicly owned Colleges and Universities would be Free * Insurance rates would be equitable
If the youth were responsible enough to vote, they'd also be drinking responsibly, saving money for college and driving safely.
And that's why we can't serve on jury duty. Lawyers don't want reasoned, conscientious jurors. They want gullible, biased jurors.
Of course, if I were a crooked lawyer intent on manipulating a juror, I'd want someone who thought he was too smart, saavy and well educated to be manipulated.
They make winning a matter of science in all sports. They run full hydrodynamic analysis on their swimmer performance using an approach not dissimilar to the one used to analyse results from a wind tunnel. They use thermal imaging, P-NMR on muscles during load to optimise pre-even training, etc. They have something like 200+ PhDs a year in sports related biochemistry, medicine, physiology and a few other related fields all working in that sports institute (sorry forgot the name).
You don't suppose that with all those resources they could do something to make soccer interesting or (God forbid) entertaining?
Because osmotic pressure naturally goes one way, e.g. water goes from the ground into a tree's roots and up throughout the tree... it makes sense if you look at the equations for osmotic pressure and flip them around.
"pumping through a filter."
It's not a filter, per se, but a semipermeable membrane. (I think, it's been a while since Chemistry...)
It's fundamentally broken in that it's incredibly arcane. A sane standard would have examined what people actually did in web pages and other layouts and designed constructs that would accomodate those.
CSS gives you a bunch of tags and a "box model" that no one had ever heard of, that is incredibly hard to implement and that bears only a mathematical relationship to what the user wants to do.
If CSS let the user break the page into actual elements that humans deal with, like columns, headers and footers, it would be a good standard. It doesn't, and that's why it's broken.
Re:Ex-Military IT staff described in a nutshell.
on
The Living Dilbert?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Of course the end-users loved it, but when the tech was confronted with what he was doing he said that he knew he would not be the one getting in trouble for it, but rather his boss would and the sooner he could get the boss in trouble or fired, the better chance he thought he'd have to move up, take over and "rule with an iron fist".
Sounds like you've got an axe to grind.
You see, I agree with this part: "Yet every one of them thought they knew it all better than everyone else..."
In the military everyone you talk to is an expert. If some guy can change a fuse in a car, he's convinced that it's proof that he's an ace mechanic.
But there just isn't that much backstabbing in the enlisted ranks (which is where most of your IT people are) because the best route to promotion is patience and not screwing up. So I don't buy the rest of the AC's post.
The military works best when it's being a military
on
The Living Dilbert?
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· Score: 1
I was in a few different areas before I came into the military: small business, non-profit, academia, corporate. (Never worked directly for the government before, though.) To my mind, the military, being a microcosm of society, tends to have all the problems everyone else does.
And I think it's a pretty universal rule that when your organization, whether it's military or civilian, will work best when they are focused on some kind of mission. This is especially true for the military because so many of our rules and procedures exist because of the life and death nature of our job.
In short, when you're in the military, the further removed you are from combat, the more you are in a Dilbert environment.
Slashdot Mirror
They double the performance and lower energy requirements, improving performance per watt by 2.5 times compared to existing, single-core versions.
So does this mean that performance is 250% of the original or 350%?
How could the mugger have a gun if it's been banned?
Hmm, come to think of it, it's a strange coincidence that crime has been rising steadily since the ban...
It's really, really difficult to get people to follow rules. We're lazy, we're incompetent (yes), and some of us are evil. I still don't think I truly understand how RDF is supposed to work exactly, and it doesn't even seem like it will be fun to try.
It's not about following rules. It's about offering some kind of incentive. The major disincentives are that RDF is a confusing, poorly engineered spec and that it probably won't provide them any benefit. You can't call someone lazy or evil for having common sense.
Brilliant! Blame the user. No, it's not that you don't have a rational data model (you know, so that those "semantic" tags actually *mean* something) or that you haven't done squat to even suggest a proper UI, it's the user's fault.
And it *certainly* couldn't be that HTML is a piece of fucking garbage and that trying to kludge semantics into the spec is an effort doomed from the beginning.
To me the problem is very simple. If I lose my keys, I don't put a "key watch" on my door to see if someone attempts to use the lost keys. I change the locks on the door and get new keys.
You suck at analogies. A credit report is like a burglar alarm on your house.
If the confidentiality of my social security number is lost then I need to get a new social security number.
And you're going to hope that the thousands of agencies and tiny little companies that have your data will get the updates in a timely manner? It bears repeating: you suck at analogies.
Apparently, that was a ploy... a class action lawsuit was already started, and if you accepted their kind offer of trying to protect you, then it meant you opted out of the class action. heh.
Bullshit, I got their email and they're still working out who is going to provide the credit monitoring service.
So there's no offer to accept, yet.
Here's proof in the latest press releases.
From the June 21 press release:
This week, VA will solicit bids from qualified companies to provide a comprehensive credit monitoring solution. VA will ask these companies to provide expedited proposals and to be prepared to implement them rapidly once they are under contract.
A third document, also issued in 2002, gave the analyst permission to take a laptop computer and accessories for work outside of the VA building.
CYA.
It matters because ideology trumps everything to some people, and they won't get involved in open source if they think it is in some way "communist."
If I worried about whether someone was a commie I'd have to limit my musical tastes to Toby Keith and, uh, that one crazy fuck who's all into hunting. Sure, I do avoid some stupid moonbat musicians, but it's more on the principle that I'm not going to pay them money for the privilege of having them talk at me.
Now, do I think the GNU foundation is socialist? Yup. I won't donate money to them because of several of their stupid socialist ideas, like the software tax.
The way I explain it to people is that there are two different phenomena: the open source movement, which is heavily populated by socialists and anti-corporatists, and the open source effect, which is the natural economic result of the commoditization of mature technologies. (The commoditization I'm referring to is the fact that certain technologies like, say, word processors, really aren't all that fucking complicated. And since virtually no raw materials are expended in developing word processors, as we settle on the desired feature set for a word processor, the cost of an upgrade should fall to 0. I've noticed that the most successful open source projects involve such commodity software.)
Basically, your argument amounts to absolutely nothing, because it's no different from other programs.
Oh, bullshit. A script in a book omits all kinds of error-checking and security for brevity and clarity. A multi-megabyte download doesn't.
And I doubt the publisher is going to release security fixes for these scripts. You don't see bugtraq saying, "hey, we found a possible buffer overrun in some sample code from this book."
Let me get this straight:
You have a question. ATC gave you some straightforward answers.
Now, an intelligent person might find that the answers raised new questions.
But you just asked the same question again.
I predict that when they release their "office suite" that it will be exactly the same as Google's offerings. And I predict that credulous reporters will pass on the claim that they have 99% of the core functionality that Office users need, while eliminating all the worthless features.
You know, things like a decent set of formulas in your spreadsheet and style sheets in your word processor.
I think Microsoft may have reached the limits of their competence, at least as far as the Win32 platform goes.
How is that possible? Since there's only been NT, 2K and XP, Vista should only be the fourth major release.
From the article:
Most of the fee-based services I evaluated cancel automatically at the end of the trial period, but XDrive rolls over to the pay plan without bothering to ask for your permission first.
Not only that, but XDrive ignored my emails requesting that my account be cancelled. There are better places to do business with.
Hey, if the "youth" voted,
* The drinking age would be 18 again.
* Publicly owned Colleges and Universities would be Free
* Insurance rates would be equitable
If the youth were responsible enough to vote, they'd also be drinking responsibly, saving money for college and driving safely.
And that's why we can't serve on jury duty. Lawyers don't want reasoned, conscientious jurors. They want gullible, biased jurors.
Of course, if I were a crooked lawyer intent on manipulating a juror, I'd want someone who thought he was too smart, saavy and well educated to be manipulated.
Ray Nagin is better than Mitch Landrieu, but he's still a douche.
I'd vote for General Honore for mayor, but at the same time I wouldn't want him to retire early either.
They know speed increases with temperature.
Don't you mean "decreases"?
They make winning a matter of science in all sports. They run full hydrodynamic analysis on their swimmer performance using an approach not dissimilar to the one used to analyse results from a wind tunnel. They use thermal imaging, P-NMR on muscles during load to optimise pre-even training, etc. They have something like 200+ PhDs a year in sports related biochemistry, medicine, physiology and a few other related fields all working in that sports institute (sorry forgot the name).
You don't suppose that with all those resources they could do something to make soccer interesting or (God forbid) entertaining?
If your short of drinking water in the US.. stop watering your lawn...
Yeah! Screw topsoil, I'd rather live in a barren wasteland.
Why do they bother calling it "reverse osmosis?"
Because osmotic pressure naturally goes one way, e.g. water goes from the ground into a tree's roots and up throughout the tree... it makes sense if you look at the equations for osmotic pressure and flip them around.
"pumping through a filter."
It's not a filter, per se, but a semipermeable membrane. (I think, it's been a while since Chemistry...)
The blind don't deal with "headers" and "footers".
Wow, so when reading a page of braile there's no top and bottom? You're full of shit.
Tools for processing semantic markup don't either.
Right, and the current clusterfuck is so much better.
CSS is broken in some obscure ways
It's fundamentally broken in that it's incredibly arcane. A sane standard would have examined what people actually did in web pages and other layouts and designed constructs that would accomodate those.
CSS gives you a bunch of tags and a "box model" that no one had ever heard of, that is incredibly hard to implement and that bears only a mathematical relationship to what the user wants to do.
If CSS let the user break the page into actual elements that humans deal with, like columns, headers and footers, it would be a good standard. It doesn't, and that's why it's broken.
Of course the end-users loved it, but when the tech was confronted with what he was doing he said that he knew he would not be the one getting in trouble for it, but rather his boss would and the sooner he could get the boss in trouble or fired, the better chance he thought he'd have to move up, take over and "rule with an iron fist".
Sounds like you've got an axe to grind.
You see, I agree with this part: "Yet every one of them thought they knew it all better than everyone else..."
In the military everyone you talk to is an expert. If some guy can change a fuse in a car, he's convinced that it's proof that he's an ace mechanic.
But there just isn't that much backstabbing in the enlisted ranks (which is where most of your IT people are) because the best route to promotion is patience and not screwing up. So I don't buy the rest of the AC's post.
I was in a few different areas before I came into the military: small business, non-profit, academia, corporate. (Never worked directly for the government before, though.) To my mind, the military, being a microcosm of society, tends to have all the problems everyone else does.
And I think it's a pretty universal rule that when your organization, whether it's military or civilian, will work best when they are focused on some kind of mission. This is especially true for the military because so many of our rules and procedures exist because of the life and death nature of our job.
In short, when you're in the military, the further removed you are from combat, the more you are in a Dilbert environment.
our solar system is easiest to understand if you realize it's composed of the following
Isn't there a star in there, somewhere?