Is there a question in there somewhere? AIDS isn't the only virus that splices genes into our DNA, we even carry artifacts from viruses in the human genome.
'Sure he can mess with programming and hacking, but that doesn't get him outside like a model rocket does, and has a poor social stigma attached to it.'
AIDS is counter to the principle of natural selection. The fittest will mate more and therefore their potential for catching AIDS is greater. Sex is hardly something semi-intelligent and intelligent people avoid.
'unprotected sex, sex with a stranger, sharing needles'
Yay protected sex, that'll slime your odds by what, 5%? As for the rest, that is simply FUD. There are a million ways of getting aids. Order a rare steak and the butcher cut his hand. Use ground beef or any meat when the butcher cut himself. The cook could have cut himself as well. Medical personal in hospitals get AIDS all the time without sharing needles.
Anyone can get AIDS, being careful isn't enough and being careful enough to substantially reduce your chances means you aren't going to have very much enjoyment in life.
'Remember what Darwin said - survival of the fittest.'
A healthy Rhodes Scholar can get AIDS just as easily as a gang banger. How is that survival of the fittest? AIDS literally imbeds itself into your DNA and breaks your evolutionary code apart. The war on AIDS is far more legitimate than the war on terror. I don't blame Brazil. They tried to make a deal and the company was too greedy.
'However they're taking part in a moderated discussion that has mechanisms for dealing with such stuff. Second life just needs to come up with a policy for dealing with jerks, just like every other community has.'
Agreed. I am not a second lifer but my understanding is that second life is composed of numerous separate communities and within each of those the owner has the ability to kick and ban. Something like an IRC chat. If that is the case then there are likely some that are very active in policing abuse like this and some communities where it is totally ignored. I think many of these communities are for profit so ultimately the well moderated will win out in the marketplace.
'that's problem is it's horrid GUI that is constantly revamping itself to compete with Windows'
Apparently you aren't looking at the same GUI I am. I have beryl loaded on the latest Ubuntu and the GUI certainly blows away anything I saw on Vista or MacOS. Not just in function but its much prettier and the effects are much cooler. Somehow, it actually manages to use those cool effects in a functional way.
'And everything performs as well as it did with XP.'
So if I follow. You are saying that Vista is just as good as XP? My own experience differs but lets ignore that for a moment but before we pat MS on the back, lets wait until they can manage to come up with a system that is better than the last one when given 7 years to develop it.
A raving asshole is a raving asshole. The virtual rapist is no better or worse than any other form of troll.
My point was not what punishment should be taken, only that the action isn't criminal. It isn't just that it isn't 'severe' enough.
How you would feel in a club really isn't relevant, you don't make the rules in the club anymore than you make them on the street. If someone starts whispering a phone sex line in your girl's ear on the street then you can flag down a cop and have them arrested. Every time you have used foul language on the street you have broken the law. It may not always be enforced but using obscenities IS criminal in public.
In a club those same actions are 100% legal. Even if they are against the rules of the club they are legal. Your recourse is to notify the club and the club may ask them to leave but at no point is it illegal.
Of course you can choose to take matters in your own hands in either case but then it is you who will go to jail, not the pervert whisperer.
I believe that there are no absolutes, no cosmic good or cosmic evil. I believe we live in an uncaring cold and absolute universe and that our actions and our species are beneath its notice.
When I consider this philosophy and apply it to all that I have seen, heard, and read it all fits. One can not even make a logically consistent case for murder, rape, or theft as innately evil.
Then when I have probed and considered all the angles to the best of my intellect. An image then comes into my mind, something so innately evil that all the logic and reasoning suddenly seems hollow. It is goatse in all its glory.
Second Life is an adult community, Slashdot is an uncensored adult community. If you don't want your child violated by evil letter combinations or pictures of human bodies you shouldn't let them read this forum. Some of us think those things are part of normal development of a child, that words are just words and sex is a natural act.
Goatse is an exception of course. That scared me as an adult.
These people aren't in public. This is HBO not PBS. If they have a problem with obscenities they shouldn't be there. That said, cyber 'rape' is no better or worse than having any asshole annoying your online.
'I come from a family of teachers, know several universities, both public and private, from the inside. I have taught in one for a few years.'
That makes you part of the problem. It isn't something I would be proud of in your shoes. I am self-employed. I attended a University. The knowledge I gained there makes your appeal to authority in lieu of an argument fairly transparent.
It really isn't much of a surprise. Your stance is essentially that of the conservative party in American politics and usually devolves to nothing but rhetoric in the end. I had a number of fathers (I don't care to explain) one of them firmly believed in the conservative view of economics and life in general. The most valuable piece of wisdom he ever imparted to me was something his father had told him. He said that life was a big game and shekels were how you keep score. When he had a stroke and no longer was able to earn shekels he found out his so called friends were only interested in his shekels and he ultimately died alone.
Life is not a game, life is absurd but devoid of meaning. There is no goal or purpose unless you make one up. Shekels aren't a very fulfilling goal.
'I state that the higher learning provided by universities isn't hollow. It has a purpose, which is to add value to the students.'
Certainly and I agree with this statement entirely. A University is a hardware store. As a student I go to the University to get a tool knowledge (a wrench). My grade should reflect the quality of the wrench (the knowledge gained in a class). Now I might tell the hardware store that I am working on a certain project and want them to give me the right set of tools, I might not. Once I have the right set of tools I have more capabilities and am therefore more valuable, both to myself and others. I may choose to sell that value to someone else, utilize it for myself, or use my tools to devise and craft yet more tools. What I plan to do with my tools might define which tools I get but it doesn't have any impact on the quality of the individual tools (again, my grade in an individual class).
'I completely understand your position. I believe you are wrong, but can't for the life of me make you see another perspective.'
Non-sense, my understanding of your position has been demonstrated in the process of thoroughly debunking it. It doesn't hurt to recognize how things currently are, to follow the prevalent thoughts that makes them that way, and to be a realist in general. But one should never lose sight of how things should be. After all, all things change and move forward. How do you know which direction to go if you lose sight of the ideal?
'It's simple logic which you have never contradicted, relying instead in faith to support your point. Faith is a poor logic fellow.'
Hardly, your premises are not valid and therefore the logic that relies on them is invalid. I don't need to depend upon faith because I am correct by default. I am claiming nothing more than that a university is what the dictionary, society, and the universities themselves claim to be; an institution of HIGHER LEARNING. If your logic were proven valid then university would be synonymous with trade school and trade schools would simply offer different classes.
'The students motive challenges this affirmation.'
The students motive is again irrelevant. Further, you have not proven what the students motive is.
" 'That may be the reason the students have chosen to benefit themselves...'
Not 'may be'. That is the reason, for the majority of students, if only because of the pressure created by university fees."
Either it is the reason and every student has the same motivation or it may be the reason. If its the reason for a simple majority then it is 'may be'. Simply restating this is another way doesn't make your point stronger. Not that it matters, because again, the motivation of the students is a strawman argument since the students do not define what a university is.
" 'None of that changes the purpose of the institution. The institution exists to TEACH the students information.'
You leap unfounded to this conclusion out of personal belief."
You are right, except for the unfounded part. I have personal belief in the ability of the dictionary to give me an accurate definition of a word. Like the word university, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
1 : an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees.
Or School:
1 : an organization that provides instruction 2 : Omitted because it defines school when used in a different way, by this definition I am schooling you now. 3 : a source of knowledge
And of course teach, which you seemed to think means something other than imparting knowledge:
1 : to cause to know something
I believe that determining the purpose of a university or school is as simple as looking up the meaning of the words university and school. If we discuss an institution with a different purpose then it isn't a university and a school. Students do not define the words university and school and neither do their motivations. At least they don't define them anymore than the rest of us. Sorry, once again, universities do not exist to make life easy for employers.
'Universities without students make no sense, so the objective of the university is aligned with that of the students'
This is a leap you are making out of personal belief. Universities without students make no sense to you because they are impractical. They are universities just the same. You say a car wash without customers makes no sense. I say a car wash without customers is an entity that exists for the purpose of washing cars. That is what a car wash is. The car wash might have been created because someone hopes a car wash will make them money, and they might adjust the policies of said car wash, even open and close said car wash based upon how well the car wash succeeds in their goal. If the car wash stops washing cars and starts selling peanuts it becomes a peanut vendor, even though the goals of its owners have probably remained the same. Practicality and utility to do not define.
Further, even if universities without students make no sense, that doesn't mean the objective of the university is magically aligned with that of the students. The objective of the university remains the same whether there are any students or not. Like the car wash policies might change to attract students with different objectives, but when the objective of the university changes it will no longer be a university.
The more your staff makes the better you are. By paying the highest salaries you attract the most qualified and talented IT staff around. Just tell them it is the free market at work. That's economics, CEO's understand that stuff.
Also explain that another useful metric is the numbers of hours worked. If salaried IT staff are working fewer hours it is because they are operating more efficiently and doing a better job of earning their salaries.
Thats ridiculous, nobody is arguing against developing new technology. There are certainly non-military funding applications that need the money first, let someone else pay to develop the next big weapon and let us be the one who buys them for a dime a dozen after the fact for once.
Even if you want to spend on developing technology that has no potential for use anytime within the next few decades, you don't do it in the middle of a war where the biggest problem is that soldiers are dying because they don't have gear. Not that there isn't enough to be had, or there isn't enough money to get said gear. Its just that said money is being spent on a nifty spider senses project that won't be in production anytime this century and will likely be cut along with most of the other projects we are working on now.
Neglecting to set aside funds for your child's education is not wise. But, if you put your money in a fund for education while your children and wife are starving today you are an idiot.
Again, how about we give the defense department NO money, and when they come back because there are no lobster dinners for the generals THEN we buy first the armor they need in case we have an armed conflict elsewhere. Finally, after all that, during peacetime, we can then work on cool spiderman senses technology. It is doubtful this will ultimately end up being used by the military but the only way to get conservatives to spend on developing technology that doesn't have an immediate commercial use is to put it in the defense budget.
P.S. That's a terrible analogy, cannons were cheap, rugged, simple, and easy to mass produce once perfected. Here is a hint, every other successful military innovation has shared those characteristics.
The soldiers don't even have enough of the existing technology and we are wasting money on spider sensing devices that will cost millions of dollars AFTER being developed. This will never be in the hands of more than a dozen soldiers if the tech makes it that far.
Forget this AND forget the armor they don't have. We don't need enough armored vehicles for a large scale offensive anyway. What we need to preserve what we have. Congress needs to grow some balls and recall the troops by refusing to grant additional funding.
Men and Women are perfectly capable to deciding ethical implication of sex and sexual acts for themselves. Even if a female were to become preggers it doesn't take much to deliver a baby. It can be done in a truck stop, let alone an environment that is about as clean a room as you can get.
If there isn't enough of a food fudge factor to support the kid then you send along birth control and morning after pills. If its a one way mission and there is a mistake, well the kid has to live with the decisions of the parents just like any other.
There problem solved, now bring on the space porn.
There have been a lot of people suggesting that I would post the names of people who simply have another view. Of course that is a risk, even with the official backing of the editors it would be hard to prove a corporate shill.
I am not talking about posts with dissenting viewpoints. The viewpoints might even agree with the turn of the tide. Often the posts are so blatant that they actually make comments saying they don't work for company x. Generally though, real people and marketing text don't sound alike. Real people write Slashdot comments that sound like a human being speaking, it may be an anal grammar troll human being but it reflects spoken language and rarely includes buzzwords.
Shills often ring clear because their post includes buzzwords, perfect writing and grammar (on the level of a Communication or English related Masters), and just that right combination of rhetoric that tells you this person has a job writing marketing copy. It isn't something that is especially easy to define. For instance, I can (and I suspect most can) distinguish a friend, a wrong number, a lawyer, a collection, and a sales call after hearing the caller say just a few words. The same is true of writing, people have a voice in their writing and the style of that writing.
'Hopefully it will... but as I put my entire CD collection onto my machine, that will only alleviate MS's part in the wasted space issue...:-('
They would never do it and the reason why is the answer to your next question.
'Much of the other issues a larger sector size alleviate would also be addressed if MS would revise NTFS so it wouldnt fragment. They know how, as they have access to the HPFS internals (HPFS rarely exceeds 1 or 2% fragmentation). That is something else I dont understand... they have the answers to many complaints about Windows (that being only one of them) and do nothing about it.'
You are right that it is a matter of economics but it isn't about a defrag tool. It is about hardware. If your drive gets fragmented and slows (and you don't know about fragmentation) you will think your computer is getting slow. For most people this takes a long time. If you have a slow computer, you buy a new one. That means you just bought a new computer and made the hardware manufacturers happy and bought a new copy of windows and made Microsoft happy.
That is the same reason windows vista is so bloated, other systems implemented greater new functionality (read linux and macosx) using a small fraction of the system resources. Microsoft's top paid programmers really aren't that bad, the system is intentionally inefficient. Being inefficient means it sells more hardware. Selling more hardware makes PC manufacturers happy and they are the ones who provide Microsoft's bread and butter by preloading windows on PCs.
Slashdot has better overall content but that is largely because it has been taken over by a different class of trolls. Anyone who reads through Slashdot comments can tell you that there are no if's about it, there are definitely corporate paid propaganda posters from large tech companies.
Anytime you have negative PR coming to a large tech company (particularly software companies and the larger the more prevelent the problem) there are dozens of posts defending the company in the comments here that could have come right off an official press release.
If you have ever attended the sales seminars and meetings from these companies you will recognize their material being used both defensively and offensively all over Slashdot. The biggest companies respond to highly moderated negative posts about them even if the story isn't about them. It's pretty clear these companies have full time Slashdotters.
I once put an intentional grammar error in my sig to catch grammar trolls and forced them into ACdom. Maybe now I should do a similar hunt for corporate shills and list the ones I've found in my journal.
But they know and they know they lose customers over it. Now that they have something that runs well on those systems do you really think they will keep selling them with Vista?
Of course not but Joe Sixpack isn't looking at the price of Ubuntu vs Vista. He is looking at the price of the computer that is required to run Vista versus the $300 less hardware it takes to get the same performance out of Ubuntu.
It depends on the generic. Coke is too acidic, Pepsi is not acidic enough. You have to go for a generic cola to get anything that tastes decent. Sams Cola tastes like ass though.
Joe Blow doesn't play games (unless you count spider). In most cases his kid doesn't play games on PC either, that is what the XBox 360 is for. Joe Blow is also unlikely to be personally attached to applications since he doesn't even know what a web browser is. Joe Blow has icons put on his desktop that are renamed to "Internet" and "E-Mail" and a change to Linux will be no more dramatic than a change to Vista as long as you name the icons similarly.
Joe Blow runs a serious risk of being unwittingly attached to those applications if he uses the computer for work however since work might require proprietary windows only applications. Schools are also notorious for this.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a question in there somewhere? AIDS isn't the only virus that splices genes into our DNA, we even carry artifacts from viruses in the human genome.
'Sure he can mess with programming and hacking, but that doesn't get him outside like a model rocket does, and has a poor social stigma attached to it.'
Not anymore. Being a geek is cool now.
AIDS is counter to the principle of natural selection. The fittest will mate more and therefore their potential for catching AIDS is greater. Sex is hardly something semi-intelligent and intelligent people avoid.
'unprotected sex, sex with a stranger, sharing needles'
Yay protected sex, that'll slime your odds by what, 5%? As for the rest, that is simply FUD. There are a million ways of getting aids. Order a rare steak and the butcher cut his hand. Use ground beef or any meat when the butcher cut himself. The cook could have cut himself as well. Medical personal in hospitals get AIDS all the time without sharing needles.
Anyone can get AIDS, being careful isn't enough and being careful enough to substantially reduce your chances means you aren't going to have very much enjoyment in life.
'Remember what Darwin said - survival of the fittest.'
A healthy Rhodes Scholar can get AIDS just as easily as a gang banger. How is that survival of the fittest? AIDS literally imbeds itself into your DNA and breaks your evolutionary code apart. The war on AIDS is far more legitimate than the war on terror. I don't blame Brazil. They tried to make a deal and the company was too greedy.
'However they're taking part in a moderated discussion that has mechanisms for dealing with such stuff. Second life just needs to come up with a policy for dealing with jerks, just like every other community has.'
Agreed. I am not a second lifer but my understanding is that second life is composed of numerous separate communities and within each of those the owner has the ability to kick and ban. Something like an IRC chat. If that is the case then there are likely some that are very active in policing abuse like this and some communities where it is totally ignored. I think many of these communities are for profit so ultimately the well moderated will win out in the marketplace.
'that's problem is it's horrid GUI that is constantly revamping itself to compete with Windows'
Apparently you aren't looking at the same GUI I am. I have beryl loaded on the latest Ubuntu and the GUI certainly blows away anything I saw on Vista or MacOS. Not just in function but its much prettier and the effects are much cooler. Somehow, it actually manages to use those cool effects in a functional way.
'And everything performs as well as it did with XP.'
So if I follow. You are saying that Vista is just as good as XP? My own experience differs but lets ignore that for a moment but before we pat MS on the back, lets wait until they can manage to come up with a system that is better than the last one when given 7 years to develop it.
A raving asshole is a raving asshole. The virtual rapist is no better or worse than any other form of troll.
My point was not what punishment should be taken, only that the action isn't criminal. It isn't just that it isn't 'severe' enough.
How you would feel in a club really isn't relevant, you don't make the rules in the club anymore than you make them on the street. If someone starts whispering a phone sex line in your girl's ear on the street then you can flag down a cop and have them arrested. Every time you have used foul language on the street you have broken the law. It may not always be enforced but using obscenities IS criminal in public.
In a club those same actions are 100% legal. Even if they are against the rules of the club they are legal. Your recourse is to notify the club and the club may ask them to leave but at no point is it illegal.
Of course you can choose to take matters in your own hands in either case but then it is you who will go to jail, not the pervert whisperer.
I believe that there are no absolutes, no cosmic good or cosmic evil. I believe we live in an uncaring cold and absolute universe and that our actions and our species are beneath its notice.
When I consider this philosophy and apply it to all that I have seen, heard, and read it all fits. One can not even make a logically consistent case for murder, rape, or theft as innately evil.
Then when I have probed and considered all the angles to the best of my intellect. An image then comes into my mind, something so innately evil that all the logic and reasoning suddenly seems hollow. It is goatse in all its glory.
Could you rate this offense in terms of libraries of congress please?
Second Life is an adult community, Slashdot is an uncensored adult community. If you don't want your child violated by evil letter combinations or pictures of human bodies you shouldn't let them read this forum. Some of us think those things are part of normal development of a child, that words are just words and sex is a natural act.
Goatse is an exception of course. That scared me as an adult.
These people aren't in public. This is HBO not PBS. If they have a problem with obscenities they shouldn't be there. That said, cyber 'rape' is no better or worse than having any asshole annoying your online.
'I come from a family of teachers, know several universities, both public and private, from the inside. I have taught in one for a few years.'
That makes you part of the problem. It isn't something I would be proud of in your shoes. I am self-employed. I attended a University. The knowledge I gained there makes your appeal to authority in lieu of an argument fairly transparent.
It really isn't much of a surprise. Your stance is essentially that of the conservative party in American politics and usually devolves to nothing but rhetoric in the end. I had a number of fathers (I don't care to explain) one of them firmly believed in the conservative view of economics and life in general. The most valuable piece of wisdom he ever imparted to me was something his father had told him. He said that life was a big game and shekels were how you keep score. When he had a stroke and no longer was able to earn shekels he found out his so called friends were only interested in his shekels and he ultimately died alone.
Life is not a game, life is absurd but devoid of meaning. There is no goal or purpose unless you make one up. Shekels aren't a very fulfilling goal.
'I state that the higher learning provided by universities isn't hollow. It has a purpose, which is to add value to the students.'
Certainly and I agree with this statement entirely. A University is a hardware store. As a student I go to the University to get a tool knowledge (a wrench). My grade should reflect the quality of the wrench (the knowledge gained in a class). Now I might tell the hardware store that I am working on a certain project and want them to give me the right set of tools, I might not. Once I have the right set of tools I have more capabilities and am therefore more valuable, both to myself and others. I may choose to sell that value to someone else, utilize it for myself, or use my tools to devise and craft yet more tools. What I plan to do with my tools might define which tools I get but it doesn't have any impact on the quality of the individual tools (again, my grade in an individual class).
'I completely understand your position. I believe you are wrong, but can't for the life of me make you see another perspective.'
Non-sense, my understanding of your position has been demonstrated in the process of thoroughly debunking it. It doesn't hurt to recognize how things currently are, to follow the prevalent thoughts that makes them that way, and to be a realist in general. But one should never lose sight of how things should be. After all, all things change and move forward. How do you know which direction to go if you lose sight of the ideal?
'It's simple logic which you have never contradicted, relying instead in faith to support your point. Faith is a poor logic fellow.'
Hardly, your premises are not valid and therefore the logic that relies on them is invalid. I don't need to depend upon faith because I am correct by default. I am claiming nothing more than that a university is what the dictionary, society, and the universities themselves claim to be; an institution of HIGHER LEARNING. If your logic were proven valid then university would be synonymous with trade school and trade schools would simply offer different classes.
'The students motive challenges this affirmation.'
The students motive is again irrelevant. Further, you have not proven what the students motive is.
"
'That may be the reason the students have chosen to benefit themselves...'
Not 'may be'. That is the reason, for the majority of students, if only because of the pressure created by university fees."
Either it is the reason and every student has the same motivation or it may be the reason. If its the reason for a simple majority then it is 'may be'. Simply restating this is another way doesn't make your point stronger. Not that it matters, because again, the motivation of the students is a strawman argument since the students do not define what a university is.
"
'None of that changes the purpose of the institution. The institution exists to TEACH the students information.'
You leap unfounded to this conclusion out of personal belief."
You are right, except for the unfounded part. I have personal belief in the ability of the dictionary to give me an accurate definition of a word. Like the word university, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as:
1 : an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees.
Or School:
1 : an organization that provides instruction
2 : Omitted because it defines school when used in a different way, by this definition I am schooling you now.
3 : a source of knowledge
And of course teach, which you seemed to think means something other than imparting knowledge:
1 : to cause to know something
I believe that determining the purpose of a university or school is as simple as looking up the meaning of the words university and school. If we discuss an institution with a different purpose then it isn't a university and a school. Students do not define the words university and school and neither do their motivations. At least they don't define them anymore than the rest of us. Sorry, once again, universities do not exist to make life easy for employers.
'Universities without students make no sense, so the objective of the university is aligned with that of the students'
This is a leap you are making out of personal belief. Universities without students make no sense to you because they are impractical. They are universities just the same. You say a car wash without customers makes no sense. I say a car wash without customers is an entity that exists for the purpose of washing cars. That is what a car wash is. The car wash might have been created because someone hopes a car wash will make them money, and they might adjust the policies of said car wash, even open and close said car wash based upon how well the car wash succeeds in their goal. If the car wash stops washing cars and starts selling peanuts it becomes a peanut vendor, even though the goals of its owners have probably remained the same. Practicality and utility to do not define.
Further, even if universities without students make no sense, that doesn't mean the objective of the university is magically aligned with that of the students. The objective of the university remains the same whether there are any students or not. Like the car wash policies might change to attract students with different objectives, but when the objective of the university changes it will no longer be a university.
'under pena
The more your staff makes the better you are. By paying the highest salaries you attract the most qualified and talented IT staff around. Just tell them it is the free market at work. That's economics, CEO's understand that stuff.
Also explain that another useful metric is the numbers of hours worked. If salaried IT staff are working fewer hours it is because they are operating more efficiently and doing a better job of earning their salaries.
I for one welcome our new brewery waste fuel cell overlords.
Thats ridiculous, nobody is arguing against developing new technology. There are certainly non-military funding applications that need the money first, let someone else pay to develop the next big weapon and let us be the one who buys them for a dime a dozen after the fact for once.
Even if you want to spend on developing technology that has no potential for use anytime within the next few decades, you don't do it in the middle of a war where the biggest problem is that soldiers are dying because they don't have gear. Not that there isn't enough to be had, or there isn't enough money to get said gear. Its just that said money is being spent on a nifty spider senses project that won't be in production anytime this century and will likely be cut along with most of the other projects we are working on now.
Neglecting to set aside funds for your child's education is not wise. But, if you put your money in a fund for education while your children and wife are starving today you are an idiot.
Again, how about we give the defense department NO money, and when they come back because there are no lobster dinners for the generals THEN we buy first the armor they need in case we have an armed conflict elsewhere. Finally, after all that, during peacetime, we can then work on cool spiderman senses technology. It is doubtful this will ultimately end up being used by the military but the only way to get conservatives to spend on developing technology that doesn't have an immediate commercial use is to put it in the defense budget.
P.S. That's a terrible analogy, cannons were cheap, rugged, simple, and easy to mass produce once perfected. Here is a hint, every other successful military innovation has shared those characteristics.
The soldiers don't even have enough of the existing technology and we are wasting money on spider sensing devices that will cost millions of dollars AFTER being developed. This will never be in the hands of more than a dozen soldiers if the tech makes it that far.
Forget this AND forget the armor they don't have. We don't need enough armored vehicles for a large scale offensive anyway. What we need to preserve what we have. Congress needs to grow some balls and recall the troops by refusing to grant additional funding.
Men and Women are perfectly capable to deciding ethical implication of sex and sexual acts for themselves. Even if a female were to become preggers it doesn't take much to deliver a baby. It can be done in a truck stop, let alone an environment that is about as clean a room as you can get.
If there isn't enough of a food fudge factor to support the kid then you send along birth control and morning after pills. If its a one way mission and there is a mistake, well the kid has to live with the decisions of the parents just like any other.
There problem solved, now bring on the space porn.
There have been a lot of people suggesting that I would post the names of people who simply have another view. Of course that is a risk, even with the official backing of the editors it would be hard to prove a corporate shill.
I am not talking about posts with dissenting viewpoints. The viewpoints might even agree with the turn of the tide. Often the posts are so blatant that they actually make comments saying they don't work for company x. Generally though, real people and marketing text don't sound alike. Real people write Slashdot comments that sound like a human being speaking, it may be an anal grammar troll human being but it reflects spoken language and rarely includes buzzwords.
Shills often ring clear because their post includes buzzwords, perfect writing and grammar (on the level of a Communication or English related Masters), and just that right combination of rhetoric that tells you this person has a job writing marketing copy. It isn't something that is especially easy to define. For instance, I can (and I suspect most can) distinguish a friend, a wrong number, a lawyer, a collection, and a sales call after hearing the caller say just a few words. The same is true of writing, people have a voice in their writing and the style of that writing.
'Hopefully it will... but as I put my entire CD collection onto my machine, that will only alleviate MS's part in the wasted space issue... :-('
They would never do it and the reason why is the answer to your next question.
'Much of the other issues a larger sector size alleviate would also be addressed if MS would revise NTFS so it wouldnt fragment. They know how, as they have access to the HPFS internals (HPFS rarely exceeds 1 or 2% fragmentation). That is something else I dont understand... they have the answers to many complaints about Windows (that being only one of them) and do nothing about it.'
You are right that it is a matter of economics but it isn't about a defrag tool. It is about hardware. If your drive gets fragmented and slows (and you don't know about fragmentation) you will think your computer is getting slow. For most people this takes a long time. If you have a slow computer, you buy a new one. That means you just bought a new computer and made the hardware manufacturers happy and bought a new copy of windows and made Microsoft happy.
That is the same reason windows vista is so bloated, other systems implemented greater new functionality (read linux and macosx) using a small fraction of the system resources. Microsoft's top paid programmers really aren't that bad, the system is intentionally inefficient. Being inefficient means it sells more hardware. Selling more hardware makes PC manufacturers happy and they are the ones who provide Microsoft's bread and butter by preloading windows on PCs.
Slashdot has better overall content but that is largely because it has been taken over by a different class of trolls. Anyone who reads through Slashdot comments can tell you that there are no if's about it, there are definitely corporate paid propaganda posters from large tech companies.
Anytime you have negative PR coming to a large tech company (particularly software companies and the larger the more prevelent the problem) there are dozens of posts defending the company in the comments here that could have come right off an official press release.
If you have ever attended the sales seminars and meetings from these companies you will recognize their material being used both defensively and offensively all over Slashdot. The biggest companies respond to highly moderated negative posts about them even if the story isn't about them. It's pretty clear these companies have full time Slashdotters.
I once put an intentional grammar error in my sig to catch grammar trolls and forced them into ACdom. Maybe now I should do a similar hunt for corporate shills and list the ones I've found in my journal.
But they know and they know they lose customers over it. Now that they have something that runs well on those systems do you really think they will keep selling them with Vista?
Of course not but Joe Sixpack isn't looking at the price of Ubuntu vs Vista. He is looking at the price of the computer that is required to run Vista versus the $300 less hardware it takes to get the same performance out of Ubuntu.
It depends on the generic. Coke is too acidic, Pepsi is not acidic enough. You have to go for a generic cola to get anything that tastes decent. Sams Cola tastes like ass though.
Joe Blow doesn't play games (unless you count spider). In most cases his kid doesn't play games on PC either, that is what the XBox 360 is for. Joe Blow is also unlikely to be personally attached to applications since he doesn't even know what a web browser is. Joe Blow has icons put on his desktop that are renamed to "Internet" and "E-Mail" and a change to Linux will be no more dramatic than a change to Vista as long as you name the icons similarly.
Joe Blow runs a serious risk of being unwittingly attached to those applications if he uses the computer for work however since work might require proprietary windows only applications. Schools are also notorious for this.