Re:Is Michael allowed to smoke pot on the job?
on
Message in a Battle
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· Score: 3, Insightful
it's a bit hard to have an ultimate "good vs evil" struggle without a major conflict or two.
Lord of the Rings was not an ultimate "good vs evil" struggle.
The movies recast it as one, and it's understandable that a filmmaker aiming for a large audience would do this, but that's not what the book was about. In actuality, the "moral" of the story is that there is no such thing as ultimate evil, even if something may appear to be so for a time.
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
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· Score: 1
The problem isn't that it didn't look real, but that it looked silly and invulnerable.
When they got to battle, it looked like a glowing wave of green energy. It reminded me of a 3rd magnitude ectoplasmic manifestation from 1984's Ghostbusters. But, one could argue that their goofiness didn't matter, or that ghosts who glow bright green in broad daylight is just a matter of taste.
What was inarguably bad about their presentation, however, was the impression created that they were unstoppable. The arrival of 500-odd arrow-proof super-killers rendered everything else done by the valiant human (and wizard, and hobbit) defenders meaningless. Why did Legolas work so hard to jump around on oliphants, if the ghost horde could just swamp them in 5 seconds each?
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
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· Score: 1
I can understand where you might find it disconcerting - but it is in the book.
No, it's not in the book. Legolas riding a shield? There's nothing remotely like that. If you'd like to prove otherwise, please tell me which paragraph of LOTR's Book III Chapter VII ("Helm's Deep") contains this stunt.
Gimli needing human assistance to make a jump atop the castle wall- "dwarf tossing"- that is in the book, sorta.
GPL is a bad licence to begin with. the BSD licence would be a lot better, if they were to adopt anything at all.
No, GPL is a great license. It's the only way you can get major corporate investment in a Free Software project.
Look at big companies like IBM and SGI, or small ones like Red Hat. Why do they spend their own R&D dollars improving Linux, and then releasing the source code publicly? Why didn't they do the same thing with a BSD Unix?
It's because no rational company will willingly release code another company can close on them. With BSD licenses, corporations might use parts of Free Software projects in their work, but would only give out binaries.
But the GPL license gives them dual motivators: an obligation to release new code as payment for using old, and an assurance that code they do give out won't be turned against them by a competitor.
I'd wager it's the likes of ls, grep, sort, sed, awk, tar or uniq, not Apache, mozilla or any other big application. I don't have any numbers, however.
You're wagering wrong. Whether counted in total CPU cycles, time the user spends with it, or just overall importance, big apps win big. The only way small commands could win is if you count the number of times they're invoked, which means nothing (indeed, it inverts the refrain that "uptime is good"). The whole reason that Unix has survived for decades is the power of the server daemons it can run. Small commands that pipe together is a convenience for the power user and the script author, but is not what allowed that OS-family to survive.
How did the fact of being invented by a Unix company brand Corba as a Unix protocol?
If you can't even figure that out, I'm afraid I can't help you. (Hint: why do you call stdin/stdout/stderr a Unix protocol, when other environments implement it too?)
I restate that Windows developers tend to blindly follow whatever is dictated by Microsoft and be impervious to other technologies.
There you go, bringing up Windows(r) developers again. When did Windows have anything to do with it? You seem to be impervious to the idea of IPC mechanisms beyond anonymous pipes (and think only a Microsoftie could want such a thing).
Your lack of knowledge is probably the reason for the poor evaluation of the importance of common, simple, well documented interfaces on every application.
This is hilarious. You've somehow decided that I lack knowledge, when I repeatedly point out syntax errors in your own commands. (For example, you forgot not only that cdrecord needs "-" as a filename before it listens to stdin, but also that the dev and speed commandline options are mandatory)
You're typing at someone who's been a C programmer for 15 years, who hasn't ran a Microsoft OS since 1998, and who runs Linux both at home and work. I would seriously have no idea how to create a CD with xcdroast or WindowsXP explorer, but punch in mkisofs -rJ dir|cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=4 - whenever the need arises. I also ran ssh -lmyname host cat files.tar.bz2|tar jxv just the other day.
I am violently anti-Microsoft and pro-Linux. But far above that, I value the truth.
Bold pronouncements that are flatly wrong just make you look simpleminded (or closeminded, depending). Mischaracterization of text-based interfaces (both exaggerating it's benefits, and slandering the alternatives) does nothing to promote better software in the future.
Got a reference for this? Or you just pulled it out of your ass?
Don't be lazy. Try any encyclopedia. Try Google, whatever websearch you like.
They'll tell you that English the 2nd most common language; but that's actually an understatement.
It does come in second in terms of # of people speaking it as their main language. Mandarin is first with 1000 million, both English and Hindi have about 500 million (hard to tell which is bigger, it'd only be by a few percent though)
However, if you look at the number of people who can speak a language, instead of have it for their first language, then English does much better. 100s of millions of people worldwide have English as a second language, blowing it way past Hindi.
And if you are counting how many people can read a language, English slips up to #1, because Madarin is more spoken than written.
Lead mathematicians used to be called computers. (No really, that was their job title.)
Incorrect, "computers" were the lowest of the junior mathematicians. Often they weren't even called a mathematician at all.
They just came in each day, took a stack of 12-digit arithmetic problems from the outbox, did the addition, multiplication, and division in longhand, then dropped it in the outbox and walk down to the cafeterian for 26 minutes before starting again.
The computers weren't the lead mathematicians- they didn't even have to know what problem their arthimetic was aimed towards solving. They only needed a high school education (plus lots of patience). Those people were obseleted by pocket-calculators.
largely because I suspect there are a lot of extremely good programmers without (formal) qualification.
Programmers are hardly ever engineers (by the modern usage of "engineer"). They're usually better categorized as scientists/mathematicians, or as technicians/craftsmen.
Actual software engineering is rarely performed (and rarely needed).
A SiFi convention held at the same time might have been enough to make Al Gores votes look even.
What is "SiFi"? Did you mean "SciFi"? But that doesn't make sense, because Gore is clearly bigger with scifi fans, and they've be distracted from voting for him (unless they somehow had polls booths right at the con).
I mean, Al Gore is a character on Futurama, for crying out loud!
It looks just like you say, although there's a propaganda message attached. This image is a demonstration of the hazards of forced quantization.
If the data-plotting had been more informative, the image would be less useful for spinsters. For example, if the counties had been drawn paler when they are less populated, then most of the big red zones would fade down to pale pink.
Or if they had been colored a mix of red and blue according to percentage of votes (rather than winner-takes all) the entire country would be purple, with only bluish splotches in a few areas.
500 years ago, Islam was the centre of knowledge and learning.
No, it wasn't. Maybe 800 years ago it was. But by 500 ago, Islam had gone way downhill. The poster chose "500 years ago" very deliberately, because that was when Europe became indisputably the most powerful place on Earth.
Both these areas had wild versions of a variety of domesticable staple agricultural products, readily domesticable draft animals, and room to spread out.
Those places had domesticable animals because they were the same places human cultural development began.
A good domesticable animal (like the horse or cow) needs to be both large and gentle. When humans who already have stone-age weapons move into a new area, they immediately kill and eat any large, gentle animals (the technical term for that is Megafaunal Megadeath). The only way those animals could survive was if the humans met them very early on, before learning efficient hunting.
North America, for example, had horses 20,000 years ago. When the first explorers tramped over from Siberia, they were more interested in food than transport, and the horse was eliminated from that continent until 1500 CE.
Basically yes. I recomend reading "Germs, Guns and Steel".
That book explicitly debunks the idea that any one ethnic group is more murderous or fiendish than another. Instead, it claims that the richness of the land they live on determines who will invade others.
It's hypothesis is that world domination by a Eurasian culture was inevitable, because people from the largest continent will automatically have an advantage. So it's just a toss-up as to whether the British or Japanese would've taken over the world.
(Europeans turned out to win over Asia, for a subtler reason: because Europe is more geographically diverse than China. The natural boundaries between areas increased the number of distinct states, rather than allowing one strong empire to form. This made the countries that did exist more competitive and aggressive)
If you discount Russia (East) and Japan (East), who have come up with their fair share, then the west has been the main innovator.
I'd be a little interested to hear what Russia's come up with (but don't bother, because I can look it up).
What Japan has invented between 1503-1953 CE I'd be very interested in hearing... since I already know it was nothing.
Only after they were granted admittance to the "1st World" did they start to "create knowledge".
(Note: Of course they created all kinds of knowledge beforehand, in artistic and cultural fields. But all nations do that, including places currently labelled Third World. What I'm asking is, what creations of interest to the First World came from Japan in those centuries?)
Worked hard at invading other's homes with military equipment donated by the US.
Worked hard at narcissistically drenching wheat to coax it from the desert, while Palestinians haven't even enough to drink.
hoping to get back arbitrary land most of them have never lived in, than move on with their lives.
You're talking about the Zionists there, right? Because they're the ones who invaded arbitrary land that neither they, nor their ancestors for 50 generations back, had ever lived on. While by now, most Palestinian's who'd lived in Jerusalem have been killed, it's not 100% yet. And their parents certainly lived there.
Anyway, Israelis are paying Egypt for water in new agreements. But I wouldn't expect clueless leftists who hate Israel more than they love Palestine to actually be interested in real news.
That's not news. Nor is it mildly relevant. Even if they pay Egypt, they're not paying the Palestinians. (It's also unlikely to be significantly true, since Egypt is forbidden to sell their water)
The single gravest offense Israel is committing is refusing to allow adults who were born in their nation to vote, without a conversion certificate signed by an Orthodox (not Reform) Rabbi. Until they change this theocratic policy, they will never deserve support.
Their second-worse offense is government-ordered assasination (including, but not limited to, foreigners in their homelands)
Just because Bruce Perens attempted to hijack a common term
Oh yeah, Perens has nothing to do with it. He's not part of the Open Source group or anything. You may be confusing him with Eric Raymond- be careful, one of them is liable to hurt you for that.
Just because Bruce Perens attempted to hijack a common term and change the definition for ideological reasons doesn't make it so.
Just because Bill Gates attempted to hijack a common term for financial reasons doesn't make it so. "Windows" means exactly glass-covered holes in walls, and nothing else!
Oh wait, you mean the federal government has allowed groups to trademark normal words for centuries now? My mistake...
Someone's in someone else's private property without permission. Any questions?
Yes! Where does the RIAA find a spy small enought to get inside of someone's computer?
Ok, a more serious question: How does downloading a file from the P2P client someone is willingly running trespass on someone's property?
One more: If a person genuinely believes someone else is committing a felony against his property, is he allowed to do otherwise illegal acts (like waving a gun around) in defense?
(Don't bother to answer those, we already all know)
Actually they have. They shared your "papers" (records) publicly in fact.
No. They weren't your papers they shared, but theirs. Or do you think a store has no right to remember what it's sold?
But what I am getting at is the fact that the Constitution, rather than simply telling the government what it cannot do, tells the government exactly what it can do.
By that argument, there was no need for any Bill of Rights. Since the Bill of Rights was apparently needed, that argument is wrong.
stuck with the idea that governments grant rights to people, which is horrbly wrong.
Most people agree with that statement for rhetorical reasons, although it is factually incorrect. Did Virginia residents have in 1770 have the right to be secure in their effects, or to vote for their head of state? No, they did not. Only when the government granted those rights did they start to exist. 50 years later, did women living there have the right to vote? Again, they did not, until the government explicitly created it.
Governments are given rights and powers by the people, not the other way round.
Hello, and welcome to the amazing world of "democracy", where "the people" are "the government".
(In the modern US, "the government" is often used to refer to the Executive Branch as a separate entity. But that's a neologism)
There's a patch coming? Says who? Apple was alerted to the flaw more than two months ago, prior to the release of OS X 10.3. In that time they've put out 4 new security updates- but none of them fix this problem.
According to the latest contact between Apple and the hole's discoverer (scroll to the bottom of his page), they have no intention of fixing this.
I'm hopeful that they'll change their mind (and I expect vocal protest to push them that way), but that hasn't been announced yet.
Slashdot Mirror
it's a bit hard to have an ultimate "good vs evil" struggle without a major conflict or two.
Lord of the Rings was not an ultimate "good vs evil" struggle.
The movies recast it as one, and it's understandable that a filmmaker aiming for a large audience would do this, but that's not what the book was about. In actuality, the "moral" of the story is that there is no such thing as ultimate evil, even if something may appear to be so for a time.
The problem isn't that it didn't look real, but that it looked silly and invulnerable.
When they got to battle, it looked like a glowing wave of green energy. It reminded me of a 3rd magnitude ectoplasmic manifestation from 1984's Ghostbusters. But, one could argue that their goofiness didn't matter, or that ghosts who glow bright green in broad daylight is just a matter of taste.
What was inarguably bad about their presentation, however, was the impression created that they were unstoppable. The arrival of 500-odd arrow-proof super-killers rendered everything else done by the valiant human (and wizard, and hobbit) defenders meaningless. Why did Legolas work so hard to jump around on oliphants, if the ghost horde could just swamp them in 5 seconds each?
I can understand where you might find it disconcerting - but it is in the book.
No, it's not in the book. Legolas riding a shield? There's nothing remotely like that. If you'd like to prove otherwise, please tell me which paragraph of LOTR's Book III Chapter VII ("Helm's Deep") contains this stunt.
Gimli needing human assistance to make a jump atop the castle wall- "dwarf tossing"- that is in the book, sorta.
GPL is a bad licence to begin with. the BSD licence would be a lot better, if they were to adopt anything at all.
No, GPL is a great license. It's the only way you can get major corporate investment in a Free Software project.
Look at big companies like IBM and SGI, or small ones like Red Hat. Why do they spend their own R&D dollars improving Linux, and then releasing the source code publicly? Why didn't they do the same thing with a BSD Unix?
It's because no rational company will willingly release code another company can close on them. With BSD licenses, corporations might use parts of Free Software projects in their work, but would only give out binaries.
But the GPL license gives them dual motivators: an obligation to release new code as payment for using old, and an assurance that code they do give out won't be turned against them by a competitor.
I'd wager it's the likes of ls, grep, sort, sed, awk, tar or uniq, not Apache, mozilla or any other big application. I don't have any numbers, however.
You're wagering wrong. Whether counted in total CPU cycles, time the user spends with it, or just overall importance, big apps win big. The only way small commands could win is if you count the number of times they're invoked, which means nothing (indeed, it inverts the refrain that "uptime is good"). The whole reason that Unix has survived for decades is the power of the server daemons it can run. Small commands that pipe together is a convenience for the power user and the script author, but is not what allowed that OS-family to survive.
How did the fact of being invented by a Unix company brand Corba as a Unix protocol?
If you can't even figure that out, I'm afraid I can't help you. (Hint: why do you call stdin/stdout/stderr a Unix protocol, when other environments implement it too?)
I restate that Windows developers tend to blindly follow whatever is dictated by Microsoft and be impervious to other technologies.
There you go, bringing up Windows(r) developers again. When did Windows have anything to do with it? You seem to be impervious to the idea of IPC mechanisms beyond anonymous pipes (and think only a Microsoftie could want such a thing).
Your lack of knowledge is probably the reason for the poor evaluation of the importance of common, simple, well documented interfaces on every application.
This is hilarious. You've somehow decided that I lack knowledge, when I repeatedly point out syntax errors in your own commands. (For example, you forgot not only that cdrecord needs "-" as a filename before it listens to stdin, but also that the dev and speed commandline options are mandatory)
You're typing at someone who's been a C programmer for 15 years, who hasn't ran a Microsoft OS since 1998, and who runs Linux both at home and work. I would seriously have no idea how to create a CD with xcdroast or WindowsXP explorer, but punch in mkisofs -rJ dir|cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=4 - whenever the need arises. I also ran ssh -lmyname host cat files.tar.bz2|tar jxv just the other day.
I am violently anti-Microsoft and pro-Linux. But far above that, I value the truth.
Bold pronouncements that are flatly wrong just make you look simpleminded (or closeminded, depending). Mischaracterization of text-based interfaces (both exaggerating it's benefits, and slandering the alternatives) does nothing to promote better software in the future.
Who is a troll -- a person who follows what Linus says in official annoucements, or some random person who says, "works for me" in a rude way?
The troll is the one who asks a false dichotomy.
Got a reference for this? Or you just pulled it out of your ass?
Don't be lazy. Try any encyclopedia. Try Google, whatever websearch you like.
They'll tell you that English the 2nd most common language; but that's actually an understatement.
It does come in second in terms of # of people speaking it as their main language. Mandarin is first with 1000 million, both English and Hindi have about 500 million (hard to tell which is bigger, it'd only be by a few percent though)
However, if you look at the number of people who can speak a language, instead of have it for their first language, then English does much better. 100s of millions of people worldwide have English as a second language, blowing it way past Hindi.
And if you are counting how many people can read a language, English slips up to #1, because Madarin is more spoken than written.
Lead mathematicians used to be called computers. (No really, that was their job title.)
Incorrect, "computers" were the lowest of the junior mathematicians. Often they weren't even called a mathematician at all.
They just came in each day, took a stack of 12-digit arithmetic problems from the outbox, did the addition, multiplication, and division in longhand, then dropped it in the outbox and walk down to the cafeterian for 26 minutes before starting again.
The computers weren't the lead mathematicians- they didn't even have to know what problem their arthimetic was aimed towards solving. They only needed a high school education (plus lots of patience). Those people were obseleted by pocket-calculators.
largely because I suspect there are a lot of extremely good programmers without (formal) qualification.
Programmers are hardly ever engineers (by the modern usage of "engineer"). They're usually better categorized as scientists/mathematicians, or as technicians/craftsmen.
Actual software engineering is rarely performed (and rarely needed).
A SiFi convention held at the same time might have been enough to make Al Gores votes look even.
What is "SiFi"? Did you mean "SciFi"? But that doesn't make sense, because Gore is clearly bigger with scifi fans, and they've be distracted from voting for him (unless they somehow had polls booths right at the con).
I mean, Al Gore is a character on Futurama, for crying out loud!
Umm... in other words, it determines who
is more murderous and fiendish.
No... it says who will win fights, not who will start them.
The ability to come out on top doesn't mean you're "murderous" (or would you say that Bush is more fiendish than Saddam?)
I'd venture to guess that Al Gores supporters are more clustered where as Bush Jrs supporters more evenly distributed.
Don't bother to guess. Just read the map.
It looks just like you say, although there's a propaganda message attached. This image is a demonstration of the hazards of forced quantization.
If the data-plotting had been more informative, the image would be less useful for spinsters. For example, if the counties had been drawn paler when they are less populated, then most of the big red zones would fade down to pale pink.
Or if they had been colored a mix of red and blue according to percentage of votes (rather than winner-takes all) the entire country would be purple, with only bluish splotches in a few areas.
that maybe if they were more "innovative" they'd be better off
G.W. Bush said so, so it must be true!
500 years ago, Islam was the centre of knowledge and learning.
No, it wasn't. Maybe 800 years ago it was. But by 500 ago, Islam had gone way downhill. The poster chose "500 years ago" very deliberately, because that was when Europe became indisputably the most powerful place on Earth.
Both these areas had wild versions of a variety of domesticable staple agricultural products, readily domesticable draft animals, and room to spread out.
Those places had domesticable animals because they were the same places human cultural development began.
A good domesticable animal (like the horse or cow) needs to be both large and gentle. When humans who already have stone-age weapons move into a new area, they immediately kill and eat any large, gentle animals (the technical term for that is Megafaunal Megadeath). The only way those animals could survive was if the humans met them very early on, before learning efficient hunting.
North America, for example, had horses 20,000 years ago. When the first explorers tramped over from Siberia, they were more interested in food than transport, and the horse was eliminated from that continent until 1500 CE.
Basically yes. I recomend reading "Germs, Guns and Steel".
That book explicitly debunks the idea that any one ethnic group is more murderous or fiendish than another. Instead, it claims that the richness of the land they live on determines who will invade others.
It's hypothesis is that world domination by a Eurasian culture was inevitable, because people from the largest continent will automatically have an advantage. So it's just a toss-up as to whether the British or Japanese would've taken over the world.
(Europeans turned out to win over Asia, for a subtler reason: because Europe is more geographically diverse than China. The natural boundaries between areas increased the number of distinct states, rather than allowing one strong empire to form. This made the countries that did exist more competitive and aggressive)
They independently invented the concept (which is a worthy achievement), but were not the first. (Or if they were, they left no old records of it)
I dunno, man, they made some pretty gnarly swords ...
True, in 1500 Japan lead the world in the quality of both swords and guns- two things that were invented elsewhere, but perfected (or enhanced) there.
If you discount Russia (East) and Japan (East), who have come up with their fair share, then the west has been the main innovator.
I'd be a little interested to hear what Russia's come up with (but don't bother, because I can look it up).
What Japan has invented between 1503-1953 CE I'd be very interested in hearing... since I already know it was nothing.
Only after they were granted admittance to the "1st World" did they start to "create knowledge".
(Note: Of course they created all kinds of knowledge beforehand, in artistic and cultural fields. But all nations do that, including places currently labelled Third World. What I'm asking is, what creations of interest to the First World came from Japan in those centuries?)
they got on with their lives and worked hard.
Worked hard at invading other's homes with military equipment donated by the US.
Worked hard at narcissistically drenching wheat to coax it from the desert, while Palestinians haven't even enough to drink.
hoping to get back arbitrary land most of them have never lived in, than move on with their lives.
You're talking about the Zionists there, right? Because they're the ones who invaded arbitrary land that neither they, nor their ancestors for 50 generations back, had ever lived on. While by now, most Palestinian's who'd lived in Jerusalem have been killed, it's not 100% yet. And their parents certainly lived there.
Anyway, Israelis are paying Egypt for water in new agreements. But I wouldn't expect clueless leftists who hate Israel more than they love Palestine to actually be interested in real news.
That's not news. Nor is it mildly relevant. Even if they pay Egypt, they're not paying the Palestinians. (It's also unlikely to be significantly true, since Egypt is forbidden to sell their water)
The single gravest offense Israel is committing is refusing to allow adults who were born in their nation to vote, without a conversion certificate signed by an Orthodox (not Reform) Rabbi. Until they change this theocratic policy, they will never deserve support.
Their second-worse offense is government-ordered assasination (including, but not limited to, foreigners in their homelands)
Just because Bruce Perens attempted to hijack a common term
Oh yeah, Perens has nothing to do with it. He's not part of the Open Source group or anything. You may be confusing him with Eric Raymond- be careful, one of them is liable to hurt you for that.
Just because Bruce Perens attempted to hijack a common term and change the definition for ideological reasons doesn't make it so.
Just because Bill Gates attempted to hijack a common term for financial reasons doesn't make it so. "Windows" means exactly glass-covered holes in walls, and nothing else!
Oh wait, you mean the federal government has allowed groups to trademark normal words for centuries now? My mistake...
Someone's in someone else's private property without permission. Any questions?
Yes! Where does the RIAA find a spy small enought to get inside of someone's computer?
Ok, a more serious question: How does downloading a file from the P2P client someone is willingly running trespass on someone's property?
One more: If a person genuinely believes someone else is committing a felony against his property, is he allowed to do otherwise illegal acts (like waving a gun around) in defense?
(Don't bother to answer those, we already all know)
Actually they have. They shared your "papers" (records) publicly in fact.
No. They weren't your papers they shared, but theirs. Or do you think a store has no right to remember what it's sold?
But what I am getting at is the fact that the Constitution, rather than simply telling the government what it cannot do, tells the government exactly what it can do.
By that argument, there was no need for any Bill of Rights. Since the Bill of Rights was apparently needed, that argument is wrong.
stuck with the idea that governments grant rights to people, which is horrbly wrong.
Most people agree with that statement for rhetorical reasons, although it is factually incorrect. Did Virginia residents have in 1770 have the right to be secure in their effects, or to vote for their head of state? No, they did not. Only when the government granted those rights did they start to exist. 50 years later, did women living there have the right to vote? Again, they did not, until the government explicitly created it.
Governments are given rights and powers by the people, not the other way round.
Hello, and welcome to the amazing world of "democracy", where "the people" are "the government".
(In the modern US, "the government" is often used to refer to the Executive Branch as a separate entity. But that's a neologism)
and a known patch is on the way.
There's a patch coming? Says who? Apple was alerted to the flaw more than two months ago, prior to the release of OS X 10.3. In that time they've put out 4 new security updates- but none of them fix this problem.
According to the latest contact between Apple and the hole's discoverer (scroll to the bottom of his page), they have no intention of fixing this.
I'm hopeful that they'll change their mind (and I expect vocal protest to push them that way), but that hasn't been announced yet.