What's the point of reviving this species of Ibex, unless we also remove the conditions that caused it to go extinct in the first place? I'm guessing that condition is known by the name Homo sapiens?
It's guilt and sentimentalism driving this behavior, not pragmatism. Does anyone recall the movie "Silent Running"? We're continuing to motor headlong toward that consequence and not making the pragmatic changes necessary to avert it.
To hell with fighting global warming or terrorism: we need to be reversing human overpopulation, NOW, before Mother Nature finally finds a way to do it for us. Cloning a few members of this Ibex species is a waste of effort when the PROBLEM still exists and is GROWING. Are we going to put these Ibex in a space ark and fly them out to Jupiter?
The advantage of this new system accrues to Google, perhaps? I assume you still have to use a browser to access the GMail Web interface, right? Isn't that also a place where Google delivers targeted advertising to you? If Google can keep you in that Web interface, even "offline", that means more ads you're potentially going to view, right?
Does anyone know if Google is delivering pre-staged advertising to archive along with mail, to be displayed while you're in the Offline interface?
Did you try this filter before you suggested it? I've been getting completely new spam redirected to my Spam folder since I created the filter you described; it isn't being delivered via POP3 as it should.
IT DOES NOT WORK.
Since I know you'll refuse to believe that I configured it correctly, I have a screen capture for you:
At the very least there must be contributing factors about which you knew nothing, perhaps the effect of one of my other filters or the specific ordering of them. And no, I don't have any other filters which use a simple * wildcard by itself; that would be too obvious a conflict.
Whatever the reason, now my installation of PopFile and other changes was a waste because this doesn't work. I should have been more skeptical, but it certainly looked good on paper.
You see? It's like I said in the first place, apparently: Google demands the right to be the exclusive arbiter of what is and isn't spam so long as you agree to use their service. Perhaps Google does this because in the process of having to check that Spam folder you are exposed to some of Google's advertising within the GMail Web interface.
Damn you, Google! I was freaking out this morning, trying to figure out what I'd done to cause this. I had been setting up PopFile and some other stuff, and thought this was my doing!
What's worse it that, on the "interstitial" page that appears for the filtered URLs, it informs you that you have choices, but then doesn't give you an easy way to actually choose the first of the two choices! It informs you that you can either "continue on" to the dangerous site or visit Google's analysis of why it's believed dangerous, but the URL of the site as displayed isn't a clickable hypertext link. (There's a link to that analysis, but that link was also dead.) The consequence was that, unless you cut-and-pasted the link back into the browser, you had no easy way to actually get to the page you desired. In my case I was able to double-click on the URLs and get to the pages, but I believe that was because of a specific browser extension I had installed.
I'm glad this was just a temporary bug, because I *never* want to see those broken "interstitial" pages again.
Riiight. Michael Dell is just an incredibly nice and selfless guy trying to lend a hand with no strings attached. I'm sure that same egalitarianism and selflessness is also how be came to be CEO of a major competitive corporation.
What I'm saying, in case the above isn't obvious enough, is that your view of the motives here is delusional, not at all realistic. I at least recognize Dell's true motives, while at the same I recognize that my socialism is a GOAL to overcome motivation and behavior like Dell's. I have a self-centric nature just like Dell; the difference is that I fight it every minute of the day and don't manipulate people to my own selfish benefit. If Dell were to behave likewise, of course he would have to voluntarily agree to it, or it wouldn't be very socialistic. I'd be a lousy and hypocritical socialist if I tried to somehow force him.
You have the former wrong: socialism is an economic system, not a system of government. It has been misapplied as Socialism and Communism, which are forms of government. A true socialist would probably say, "Hey, I think we might be able to help each other equally well".
True socialism wouldn't FORCE redistribution of resources, it would happen voluntarily. "Communism" existed because humans aren't capable of doing that yet. As long as there are foxes like you in the socialist henhouse, the system can never work. You are selfish and would never voluntarily respect the rights of others to equal use of those resources; you would be trying to grab as large a chunk for yourself as you could manage, and presuming that everyone else was behaving just as selfishly. That is the descriptive basis of capitalism and libertarianism: competition to see who can disadvantage the other more. Socialism, by contrast, is prescriptive in that it proposes a fully cooperative way of doing things - absent the competition - that is still largely foreign to humans. Until we can transcend our innate selfishness, socialism can never work.
As a Libertarian, you are likely the most Darwinian and self-centered of any ideologist. You revel in the notion of nature - the revered "free market" just being allowed to run its course. There's nothing about that I would call ethical, rather it's an ethically neutral proposal. Just like Mother Nature itself, a Libertarian economy would have no ethics at all.
If Dell had offered money, you'd still have heard from me: I'd have been asking what strings or expectations were attached to that alleged philanthropism.
Your understanding of what you call socialism is very limited, probably because you've never really spent any time thinking about it; you haven't spent any time thinking about it because you have no shame about your selfish nature, and so feel no need to spend time trying to imagine a solution. Libertarians revel in self-centrism rather than expend any energy trying to overcome it.
You can make whatever rationalization you like, but hard sales pitches ARE insulting. Dell's hard sales pitch was especially insulting given the context in which it was delivered.
To any true socialist (which I doubt Putin is), Dell's comments are even more insulting. Allow me to rephrase Dell's question to be more transparent to his motives: "What goods and services can we sell you at inflated prices, so that we may unfairly enrich ourselves and our own and disadvantage you and yours?" Remember, a goal of socialism is exchanges of equal value in every transaction, as much as that is humanly possible. What Dell's offer implied was anything but philanthropic or socialistic.
And Dell did this on a public stage at an economic forum. Putin had every reason to be insulted.
However arrogant and egotistical you might think Putin is, Michael Dell is worse. I thought how Putin responded was restrained by comparison to what I would have said in the same situation. The larger context illuminates just how bigoted were Dell's comments. What a putz.
As an American socialist, Dell's attitude and values exemplify why I despise the American economic system as it is, and by extension our political system, since the same selfish arrogant egotistical bigoted putzes move freely back and forth between the two.
You can choose to OPT OUT of a traditional one-time upgrade if it doesn't provide changes or new features that are relevant to your use of the software, and simply wait to purchase a later major version that does contain changes that you value. IN THE MEANTIME, you still have your one-time license agreement that allows you to continue using the version you do have, and which has features that are still useful to you.
By contrast, you cannot SELECTIVELY opt out of a subscription; it is an all-or-nothing choice: use the software and pay the extortion fee that the subscription represents, or don't use the software AT ALL, period.
A software subscription fee is tantamount to extortion: it essentially says, "You agree to pay us a revolving fee to fund our continued development efforts, EVEN IF you don't entirely value all the results of that effort." It's software development without the consequences of poor development choices.
See, with traditional upgrades, you HAD A CHOICE. Not so with subscriptions. Borland Software and others learned this the hard way years ago: many people simply chose to opt out rather than pay for upgrades with features they didn't value.
Software subscriptions, and their latest incarnations "web apps", are the (remaining) software publishers' response to that consumer reluctance. "Don't wanna pay for our upgrades? Fine, then you don't get to use our software AT ALL."
... or maybe speed metal. He sure knows how to bang it. His rants remind me of Queen Kat (Katherine Thomas).
I don't disagree with all his arguments, but he manages to come off as so histrionic that even people like me already in the choir don't want to listen to him. How can this guy ever come across as rational to people who aren't already in complete agreement?
Re:Software subscriptions are NOT "good enough"
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 1
Your analysis is very poor. You can choose to OPT OUT of a traditional one-time upgrade if it doesn't provide changes or new features that are relevant to your use of the software, and simply wait to purchase a later major version that does contain changes that you value. IN THE MEANTIME, you still have your one-time license agreement that allows you to continue using the version you do have, and which has features that are still useful to you.
By contrast, you cannot SELECTIVELY opt out of a subscription; it is an all-or-nothing choice: use the software and pay the extortion fee that the subscription represents, or don't use the software AT ALL, period.
A software subscription fee is tantamount to extortion: it essentially says, "You agree to pay us a revolving fee to fund our continued development efforts, EVEN IF you don't entirely value all the results of that effort." It's software development without the consequences of poor development choices.
See, with traditional upgrades, you HAD A CHOICE. Not so with subscriptions. Borland Software and others learned this the hard way years ago: many people simply chose to opt out rather than pay for upgrades with features they didn't value.
Software subscriptions, and their latest incarnations "web apps", are the (remaining) software publishers' response to that consumer reluctance. "Don't wanna pay for our upgrades? Fine, then you don't get to use our software AT ALL."
You certainly bought their arguments hook, line, and sinker, didn't you? Or are you one of the people who hopes to profit from it?
Only it's very Darwinian: it's our government officials supporting their friends and former colleagues in big business/finance, and not giving a crap about the millions of lower- and middle-class folks they've never met and don't know personally. It's about "taking care of one's own" at the expense of The Others; that's very, very Darwinian. The very un-Darwinian - and Jesus-like - thing to do would be to give those Others the same respect and consideration given to close family and associates. This latest "Wall Street bailout" is so-called government pork favoritism at its finest.
The whole idea that "economic growth" (relative to birthrate) is required to keep the sky from falling is complete bullshit. It's only good for the people at the top of the food chain who are profiting from the unnecessary spending and overpricing. An economic status quo would be far better for the half-decent folks who make up the rest of the population.
Software subscriptions are NOT "good enough"
on
Less Is Moore
·
· Score: 1
So paying some corporation EVERY MONTH for my software, aka "web app", is now suddenly somehow cheaper and more practical just because of a recession? WTF? It's entirely the reverse! That's why software publishers are so eager to sucker people into using web apps aka software-by-subscription: they want the extra profits it will bring.
Web apps are to software publishers what fries-and-a-coke are to fast food: PURE PROFIT.
Folks, you do SEE what they're doing here? They're now trying to use the recession, in a perverse twist of logic, to sell you on the notion of software subscriptions! Take Nancy Reagan's advice, and "JUST SAY NO." Please, don't give in and ruin it for the rest of us.
So does this mean you'll also be advocating cloning your wife just before she croaks from cancer, or your kid after she gets hit by a bus? Even though the result will only LOOK like your dead wife or kid, and not actually BE them? How shallow are you?
I'd be all in favor of teaching critical thinking discipline in public schools. That, and getting the soda machines and corporate advertising out of them.
When I Google mine (not the "me" I use here), I get a bunch of Star Trek pseudo-history and references to Spock's home planet. That, and vacation package offers and passport services. Nifty!
Perhaps we could start by teaching the next generation some critical thinking skills? It's a mental discipline that requires training and focus, just like martial arts.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as I can get Bruce Dern to captain the thing, I'm on board with that.
Haven't you heard? You're not supposed to shoot the messenger.
What's the point of reviving this species of Ibex, unless we also remove the conditions that caused it to go extinct in the first place? I'm guessing that condition is known by the name Homo sapiens?
It's guilt and sentimentalism driving this behavior, not pragmatism. Does anyone recall the movie "Silent Running"? We're continuing to motor headlong toward that consequence and not making the pragmatic changes necessary to avert it.
To hell with fighting global warming or terrorism: we need to be reversing human overpopulation, NOW, before Mother Nature finally finds a way to do it for us. Cloning a few members of this Ibex species is a waste of effort when the PROBLEM still exists and is GROWING. Are we going to put these Ibex in a space ark and fly them out to Jupiter?
The advantage of this new system accrues to Google, perhaps? I assume you still have to use a browser to access the GMail Web interface, right? Isn't that also a place where Google delivers targeted advertising to you? If Google can keep you in that Web interface, even "offline", that means more ads you're potentially going to view, right?
Does anyone know if Google is delivering pre-staged advertising to archive along with mail, to be displayed while you're in the Offline interface?
Did you try this filter before you suggested it? I've been getting completely new spam redirected to my Spam folder since I created the filter you described; it isn't being delivered via POP3 as it should.
IT DOES NOT WORK.
Since I know you'll refuse to believe that I configured it correctly, I have a screen capture for you:
http://s137.photobucket.com/albums/q211/macraig/Slashdot/?action=view¤t=Gmail-Searchresults-markacraiggmail.png
At the very least there must be contributing factors about which you knew nothing, perhaps the effect of one of my other filters or the specific ordering of them. And no, I don't have any other filters which use a simple * wildcard by itself; that would be too obvious a conflict.
Whatever the reason, now my installation of PopFile and other changes was a waste because this doesn't work. I should have been more skeptical, but it certainly looked good on paper.
You see? It's like I said in the first place, apparently: Google demands the right to be the exclusive arbiter of what is and isn't spam so long as you agree to use their service. Perhaps Google does this because in the process of having to check that Spam folder you are exposed to some of Google's advertising within the GMail Web interface.
Damn... you mean they were pretending? That bursts a bubble!
Damn you, Google! I was freaking out this morning, trying to figure out what I'd done to cause this. I had been setting up PopFile and some other stuff, and thought this was my doing!
What's worse it that, on the "interstitial" page that appears for the filtered URLs, it informs you that you have choices, but then doesn't give you an easy way to actually choose the first of the two choices! It informs you that you can either "continue on" to the dangerous site or visit Google's analysis of why it's believed dangerous, but the URL of the site as displayed isn't a clickable hypertext link. (There's a link to that analysis, but that link was also dead.) The consequence was that, unless you cut-and-pasted the link back into the browser, you had no easy way to actually get to the page you desired. In my case I was able to double-click on the URLs and get to the pages, but I believe that was because of a specific browser extension I had installed.
I'm glad this was just a temporary bug, because I *never* want to see those broken "interstitial" pages again.
Ummm, nope. There Can Be Only One.
That's still illegal, though Bush was working on it behind closed doors.
At what point does Big Business learn enough about human psychology and "psychohistory" that it's malignant and no longer arguably neutral or benign?
News like this is a reminder that we passed that threshold some time ago.
Riiight. Michael Dell is just an incredibly nice and selfless guy trying to lend a hand with no strings attached. I'm sure that same egalitarianism and selflessness is also how be came to be CEO of a major competitive corporation.
What I'm saying, in case the above isn't obvious enough, is that your view of the motives here is delusional, not at all realistic. I at least recognize Dell's true motives, while at the same I recognize that my socialism is a GOAL to overcome motivation and behavior like Dell's. I have a self-centric nature just like Dell; the difference is that I fight it every minute of the day and don't manipulate people to my own selfish benefit. If Dell were to behave likewise, of course he would have to voluntarily agree to it, or it wouldn't be very socialistic. I'd be a lousy and hypocritical socialist if I tried to somehow force him.
You have the former wrong: socialism is an economic system, not a system of government. It has been misapplied as Socialism and Communism, which are forms of government. A true socialist would probably say, "Hey, I think we might be able to help each other equally well".
True socialism wouldn't FORCE redistribution of resources, it would happen voluntarily. "Communism" existed because humans aren't capable of doing that yet. As long as there are foxes like you in the socialist henhouse, the system can never work. You are selfish and would never voluntarily respect the rights of others to equal use of those resources; you would be trying to grab as large a chunk for yourself as you could manage, and presuming that everyone else was behaving just as selfishly. That is the descriptive basis of capitalism and libertarianism: competition to see who can disadvantage the other more. Socialism, by contrast, is prescriptive in that it proposes a fully cooperative way of doing things - absent the competition - that is still largely foreign to humans. Until we can transcend our innate selfishness, socialism can never work.
As a Libertarian, you are likely the most Darwinian and self-centered of any ideologist. You revel in the notion of nature - the revered "free market" just being allowed to run its course. There's nothing about that I would call ethical, rather it's an ethically neutral proposal. Just like Mother Nature itself, a Libertarian economy would have no ethics at all.
If Dell had offered money, you'd still have heard from me: I'd have been asking what strings or expectations were attached to that alleged philanthropism.
Your understanding of what you call socialism is very limited, probably because you've never really spent any time thinking about it; you haven't spent any time thinking about it because you have no shame about your selfish nature, and so feel no need to spend time trying to imagine a solution. Libertarians revel in self-centrism rather than expend any energy trying to overcome it.
Revolutions are never child's play.
You can make whatever rationalization you like, but hard sales pitches ARE insulting. Dell's hard sales pitch was especially insulting given the context in which it was delivered.
To any true socialist (which I doubt Putin is), Dell's comments are even more insulting. Allow me to rephrase Dell's question to be more transparent to his motives: "What goods and services can we sell you at inflated prices, so that we may unfairly enrich ourselves and our own and disadvantage you and yours?" Remember, a goal of socialism is exchanges of equal value in every transaction, as much as that is humanly possible. What Dell's offer implied was anything but philanthropic or socialistic.
And Dell did this on a public stage at an economic forum. Putin had every reason to be insulted.
However arrogant and egotistical you might think Putin is, Michael Dell is worse. I thought how Putin responded was restrained by comparison to what I would have said in the same situation. The larger context illuminates just how bigoted were Dell's comments. What a putz.
As an American socialist, Dell's attitude and values exemplify why I despise the American economic system as it is, and by extension our political system, since the same selfish arrogant egotistical bigoted putzes move freely back and forth between the two.
That type is what I argued again here yesterday:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1107509&cid=26650341
Ummm... I meant GREAT Kat. Sorry.
... or maybe speed metal. He sure knows how to bang it. His rants remind me of Queen Kat (Katherine Thomas).
I don't disagree with all his arguments, but he manages to come off as so histrionic that even people like me already in the choir don't want to listen to him. How can this guy ever come across as rational to people who aren't already in complete agreement?
Your analysis is very poor. You can choose to OPT OUT of a traditional one-time upgrade if it doesn't provide changes or new features that are relevant to your use of the software, and simply wait to purchase a later major version that does contain changes that you value. IN THE MEANTIME, you still have your one-time license agreement that allows you to continue using the version you do have, and which has features that are still useful to you.
By contrast, you cannot SELECTIVELY opt out of a subscription; it is an all-or-nothing choice: use the software and pay the extortion fee that the subscription represents, or don't use the software AT ALL, period.
A software subscription fee is tantamount to extortion: it essentially says, "You agree to pay us a revolving fee to fund our continued development efforts, EVEN IF you don't entirely value all the results of that effort." It's software development without the consequences of poor development choices.
See, with traditional upgrades, you HAD A CHOICE. Not so with subscriptions. Borland Software and others learned this the hard way years ago: many people simply chose to opt out rather than pay for upgrades with features they didn't value.
Software subscriptions, and their latest incarnations "web apps", are the (remaining) software publishers' response to that consumer reluctance. "Don't wanna pay for our upgrades? Fine, then you don't get to use our software AT ALL."
You certainly bought their arguments hook, line, and sinker, didn't you? Or are you one of the people who hopes to profit from it?
Only it's very Darwinian: it's our government officials supporting their friends and former colleagues in big business/finance, and not giving a crap about the millions of lower- and middle-class folks they've never met and don't know personally. It's about "taking care of one's own" at the expense of The Others; that's very, very Darwinian. The very un-Darwinian - and Jesus-like - thing to do would be to give those Others the same respect and consideration given to close family and associates. This latest "Wall Street bailout" is so-called government pork favoritism at its finest.
The whole idea that "economic growth" (relative to birthrate) is required to keep the sky from falling is complete bullshit. It's only good for the people at the top of the food chain who are profiting from the unnecessary spending and overpricing. An economic status quo would be far better for the half-decent folks who make up the rest of the population.
So paying some corporation EVERY MONTH for my software, aka "web app", is now suddenly somehow cheaper and more practical just because of a recession? WTF? It's entirely the reverse! That's why software publishers are so eager to sucker people into using web apps aka software-by-subscription: they want the extra profits it will bring.
Web apps are to software publishers what fries-and-a-coke are to fast food: PURE PROFIT.
Folks, you do SEE what they're doing here? They're now trying to use the recession, in a perverse twist of logic, to sell you on the notion of software subscriptions! Take Nancy Reagan's advice, and "JUST SAY NO." Please, don't give in and ruin it for the rest of us.
So does this mean you'll also be advocating cloning your wife just before she croaks from cancer, or your kid after she gets hit by a bus? Even though the result will only LOOK like your dead wife or kid, and not actually BE them? How shallow are you?
I'd be all in favor of teaching critical thinking discipline in public schools. That, and getting the soda machines and corporate advertising out of them.
When I Google mine (not the "me" I use here), I get a bunch of Star Trek pseudo-history and references to Spock's home planet. That, and vacation package offers and passport services. Nifty!
Perhaps we could start by teaching the next generation some critical thinking skills? It's a mental discipline that requires training and focus, just like martial arts.
Sounds like we agree quite a bit more than you seem to realize. Education, not legislation.