How is paying bloggers to hype a product any different than paying a traditional advertising company (or companies) to hype a product. If anything, using bloggers *could* have backlash not usually induced by traditional advertisers.
Day 1: Microsoft hires blogger x for Longhorn adverts/hype.
Day 8: Microsoft unsatisfied with blog commentary.
Day 12: Microsoft pulls funding citing services paid for not provided.
Day 15: Blogger now blogs to anti-hype Longhorn out of spite.
Now, I'm sure that Microsoft will be using the medium in a way that probably won't bite them in the butt later on, but the possibility still exists. With traditional advert companies, losing the client means simply losing an account. With blogging, losing the client means making an enemy in many cases.
All that to say, "Why is this even a story on/.?" Oh wait, its an open invitation for more Microsoft bashing. We at/. can be quite pitiful sometimes, really.
I agree that it is unlikely, though I doubt it is entirely impossible. The reason I think this is because in order for such a brain to be used for useful research it would have to be as much like a normal human brain as possible... otherwise any research done on it to conclude on insights to actual human brains are inherently flawed. It would be pointless to develop a brain that wasn't as close to 'normal' as possible. The mere thought that this could be done implies that there is a desire to actually make a 'normal' brain come to fruition inside some other animal's skull. I don't know that sheep would be the best candidate... why not use a monkey who's other biological features are already very similar to that of a human's to begin with.
I'd agree that your logic process described is flawed. However, I disagree that this is the formula that many people like me (I = christian) come to believe in Intelligent Design.
Many christians simply believe that the words in the bible were inspired by God (don't start me on how some texts were included or not... gets particularly complicated at places and I'd rather not get off topic). As such, anything written in the texts could be thought of as 'by God' even if they were written by David, some prophet, or some Joe Schmoe that happenned to be "in the know" at the right time. Therefore, the statement "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" is taken by faith that it is true.
Describing laws of nature only stand as a testament to the power and intelligence of God, and theory's / pseudoproofs to disprove the existence of God are moot because it makes the baseline assumption that God is imposed by the very same laws of nature that he did/did not create. If he DID create them, then using these laws can't really disprove him because his creation of 'the ways of nature' implies that he is not bound by the limitations of that nature.
To adress another misconception about the bible, not mentioned in your post, but in many others, is that the bible should never be used literally for the purpose of history. It is telling a story, largely based on fact to be sure, but the dates and times given here and there are mereley to give a frame of reference for telling X story. On a specific example, the 'days' that God created everything can't have possibly actually been days as we know them to be. To start, the original words there imply not a single day, but a single 'span of time'... and not necesarily a periodic span of time. 'Days' is just a *translation* of the text to essentially make the storytelling process easier. If you wanted to be more precise in the terminology used there, I'd go with "stage of development".
Can creation be proven? Not likely. However, neither can the theory of big bang + evolution be proven or disproven. For all we know, they're both right and we're all just getting hung up by terminology used to describe how things went. You say 'product of selection', I say 'product of God's selection'. Semantics really. This leads me to a oft quoted exceprt out of Hitchhiker's concerning the argument between God and man concerning God's existence. While, I disagree with the statement that God does not exist without faith, I do believe it is in his best interest to keep his existence non-provable. As his argument goes, proof would deny faith.
Faith is the cornerstone of his godhood, ie. he created us with free will so that we could believe and follow him of our free will rather than be mindless slaves to do his bidding. Having faith also implies having love, therefore we can postulate (though not prove) that our existence is based on God's wanting to be loved... i mean... it must be lonely being the only one 'up there' (statement based upon christianity's monotheistic worldview). Proving God's existence would mean whether we decide to worship God or not, very few would actually do so out of love... just think of the mindless and brutal inquisitions that would ensue based upon a God proof in the hands of stupid men.
Returning back to the article, the attempts of the state to identify intelligent design (mind you, not necessarily christian creationism) as a legitimate option for the roots of life is merely an acknowledgement that although there is evidence of evloution having occured and still occuring (ie. micro-evolution) the teaching of evolution eliciting the roots of life cannot be proven and therefore should not be taught as fact... but theory. Us grownups, and quite a few bright highschoolers, can easily discern the difference between fact and theory, however would propose that a great many more highschool students are taught the principles of evolution with imprecise terminology and in an uncomprehensive fashion so as to gi
I wouldn't say the economy is poor so to speak... just slower, a little less stable, and altogether a different economy... but then that doesn't exactly stop me from consistently selling items at non-inflated/non-delfated prices time and time again. I have a fairly high track record of selling things that I put up if I set it to a 24hr auction. On the buying end you may have to wait an extra day if you don't immediately see the right item for the right prices, but its nothing to complain about... there's always questing, raiding, and now mass PvPing to do as a short distraction from sitting in IF all day long day-trading on the AH.
Eredar server, in case you were wondering. While it has generously grown of late the only time it reaches "Moderate" population is during many peak hours. The 'inconveniences' of such servers are usually depicted by people with so little patience that they need their caffeine fix yesterday. I'd say on average it takes me an extra hour or so to sell something on the AH as opposed to the HP servers I have chars on, and an average of 5 minutes longer to get a party organized for whatever instance/quest. The definite UPSIDES to this is that there are less people to compete with when trying to farm for tradeskill items, experience, or bodycounts for quests... not to mention a lower liklihood of being ganked in STV when you're trying to gather more troll ears or gorilla hairs (ie. you're not exactly in an 'I want to PvP' mindset)
The economy issue aside, lag does and will continue to persist even on the lower pop servers (just not nearly as bad as the high pops). Its the nature of it and just about every other MMORPG I've ever laid eyes upon. To expect a lagless experience (especially when massive amounts of people are on the same screen at the same time) or meaningful montly updates (regardless of what some marketing schmuck said once upon a time in la la land) is absurd. People want perfection in a game where the very nature of the platform it's build upon is imperfect. I just say its a whole bunch of whiney, naive people that couldn't care less what an extremely complex and inevitably delicate system it is they're complaining about.
I haven't played the game, but I thought I might like to mention that games don't have to be ground breaking or original to be fun. Also, not all games are intended to be fast paced dungeon crawl zergfests that never let up on intensity. There are TONS of games that are in fact just the opposite and still fun to their target audience... the Myst games come to mind.
As to trolls writing articles on/., its been happening since day one... I usually only find one or two pearls a day amidst a pile of irrelevant junk or otherwise propaganda material. See ya next time on the latest, greatest/. troll article challenge extravaganza!
Good points, but I'm sorry if you missed the jest intended in my description of a new network. I admit it was poorly conveyed as such.
Technically speaking it has already begun in the adoption Internet 2 by many university's and research institutions... kinda sorta mirroring the ARPANet events. I personally can't say how good I2 actually is as I've never used it, or even if it's 'open'. But then that isn't really the point I was trying to get at in my earlier post.
The point I was trying to make was that no matter what we do to try and remedy the situation, be it OS security lockdowns, a mass exodus to open source software, or even a complete replacement of the current network infrastructure, the problems and problem makers will persist... and likely get worse as time goes on... with only brief, scattered periods of reprieve
If you want my honest vision of where the internet is headed in an effort to curb the effects of virii and spam and such is paid-service network portals. It will evolve into a place with the 'open' network is considered no man's land filled with hooligans and people otherwise considered very brave, or very stupid. Try to envision if you will sets of disjoint networks all with singular themes, whose access is very tightly controlled internally and likely expensive to access (monetarily speaking). Imagine having NewsNet, CorpNet, DevNet, GovNet, PornNet, ChatNet, etc...
You would most likely be paying your ISP for access to different, smaller networks much like you pay for channels through a cable company... and there's no telling what kind of ethics/security tests they might require for access to some of them. This is not to say that the 'free' internet wouldn't still exist, but I imagine that it would have severe devolution in population and useful content.
It wouldn't stop the existence of all the internet unmentionables, but it would be a large step in minimizing their effect on the 'entire' internet.
Only if you're dead set on breathing the same air as everyone else.
Sure, its an exxageration, but I'm sure someone somewhere could very easily start establishing an 'open-only' network of sorts... grow from there. Eventually watch the lay-networks of yesteryear dwindle into clogged bandwidth filled with spam, spyware, and virii attacking everyone else assorted virii. Soon enough the only alternative is to participate and help develop the small, but powerful and effective 'open' intarweb back into something that's useable again.
I imagine that somewhere down the line something similar to this will probably happen, but its going to be cyclical as the current network becomes outdated and overused... almost like our old machines of yore can be. Its just a simple cylce of birth, progress, prime, corruption, death. Rinse and Repeat.
I guess what I'm getting at is that even if we converted the whole world to open source solutions that are 'better', the problem won't go away. Once our ideal solutions are broken and farmed systems plague the internet yet again where do we go? I'm fairly positive that virii, spyware, and congested networks are here to stay no matter how many people convert one way or another simply because every time you find a way to make something <noun> proof, the world makes a better (worse) <same noun>.
Far be it from me to prevent people from trying to make the internet a nicer place, but all it really does is postpone the inevitable.
After being trained to take over two of my universities Intro to Programming courses, I was granted the almighty insight as to why the curriculum (and thus graders) require such innane comments all over the place in history's most inconsequential programs to date.
I'd have to wager that many of us found the process quite annoying... and it is. Especially so for those who already have a knack for programming. For these people, the intro classes only serve as an intro to the language the rest of the more meaningful classes use. However, for those who are less talented, or are completely clueless to the field to begin with the commenting process becomes very crucial.
In this case, the commenting becomes a tool for student and teacher/grader alike to assess how much the student understands just what it is they're doing. Unfortunately in most cases where the student is gifted, they feel it is just a mundane practice since they're commenting things that are 'obviously' obvious to everyone else... which actually isn't the case in the intro courses.
I've graded more programs than I care to think about where the program, while performing as requested, was littered with code that essentially did nothing. The use of comments allows teachers to understand why a piece of code was written by the student, and also acts as a preemptive remedy for useless code when the student realizes that a line of code he thought was needed, or had a hunch on, actually wasn't.
Past that primary focus of the commenting process in the intro classes, the object of commenting is very minimally for the purpose of developing good commenting skills for later use in collaborative projects. This is because, it is assumed that all future 'good' employers already have different standards for good commenting in place, and becoming a 'good' commenter, not to mention organizer of code, depends solely upon the framework your organization allows you to work in. In other words, they opt out of strictly teaching 'good' commenting in favor of a "Practice makes perfect" approach.
... at least from my university's perspective.
Also, I believe it is dangerous to assume what is obvious and what is not. If we compiled a list of what everyone thought every 'good' programmer should know, i would imagine the list of things would come close to an effectual "a good programmer should know... well... everything". Thus, it is safer to assume nothing.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Lets say a VB programmer was the only resource on hand to tackle a project originally written in C by a very saavy C programmer... and this VB programmer had never written or read a single line of C to that point. Beside the fact that he would have to learn the language on the fly, many of the things that the C programmer might consider obvious would likely present themselves as huge stumbling blocks to the VB programmer. I mean... you gotta start learning somewhere.
That may be an extreme case, but I've seen it happen more times than one might think it could happen. The principle essentially holds when writing in languages otherwise not considered 'popular' at the time, or if you're updating old code that WAS 'popular' at the time, but no longer is... kinda like COBOL.
To reiterate in one last statement, "Never assume ANYTHING!"
I admit that there are people out there who would present the message of "homosexuality = sin" in such a way that would drive many to depression and/or suicide. It is a sad, sad fact. For instance, I would never say that 'inclinations' to do a sinful act are sinful in themselves, except in a few instances where a mindset IS the particular sin (think lusting after another woman... "... you have already commited adultery in your heart...").
No, it is my firm belief that 'inclinations' are not only not sinful, but so commonplace that were someone to claim they were sinful would condemn the entire human race in one fell swoop. Sadly, the existence of such tragedies based upon flawed teaching methods will continue for ages, but it doesn't change the heart of the message presented in the Bible for everyone to read and interpret for themselves.
Now, who said that what Lot did was right? There are many passages in scripture where Lot's credibility of being faithful is questioned. The Lot example served as a reference in the sense of "Lot's horrible actions barely touched the the tip of iceburg of the things going on there", and also showed the existence of the rampant homosexuality as they refused the women demanding the two men. The OT thinking that you refer to is the inherently flawed thinking of 'man', not God, but still served well as an object lesson useful for God's instruction of mankind.
Also, my non-adherence to levitican law is a non-issue as it was laid out by the priesthood (ie. government) to govern the Jewish people. While God allowed the system to be in place it does not mean he issued levitican law or put his stamp of approval on it even. His was only to the extent of the 10 commandments I believe. However, this does not change the incident of Sodom and Ghomorrah where God himself did the punishing rather than a priestly government that 'thought' they were doing God's bidding.
The Levitican law is essentially the reason that the New Testament is important to Christians as it abolishes many of the 'unnecessary' and 'outdated' laws in favor of a forgiveness based salvation structure rather than a merit based salvation structure.
Now, my mention of my belief that "homosexuality = sin" was strictly for the presentation of the argument that participation in homosexual acts is something you choose to do, inclination or no. I believe I also said that nobody is bound to share my belief, though I'll always share my beliefs to present the opportunity for someone else who might otherwise disagree to change his/her mind.
As to homosexuality not hurting anyone, perhaps not directly. However, it would not surprise me if there were social problems that arose from a child that was brought up with homosexual parents. Not specifically their attitued towards homosexuality or heterosexuality, but there are any number of possibilities that could go wrong for the kid in a social or psychological sense. Being that heterosexuality is the defacto standard for human sexuality and reproduction, it would not surprise me than an alteration in the formula might produce unseen characteristics. So while it does not directly hurt the participants of homosexuality, it has yet to be seen if homosexuality could actually hurt other people indirectly.
To your last comment: Some things are worth dying for. To many, death is hardly a punishment compared to a lifetime of torture, agony, and persecution. I believe I mentioned that I don't agree with aggregious punishment of homosexual individuals, but I cannot deny that it does not exist in other places. It would not surprise me though that in these places there are those who feel so strongly about their sexual preference as to choose to act upon it regardless of the harsh consequences ensured. I know you don't like me comparing homosexuality to murder, but those who murder (do not read involunary manslaughter or the like) choose to do so for whatever reason even though they realize that the death penalty is possible should they ever get caught.
Isn't one of the defining characteristics of maturity and/or morality that of self-discipline in the face of 'primal' instincts and/or emotion?
One thing you neglect to realize is that you have ALWAYS had the choice to be homosexual, heterosexual, non-sexual (either through abstinence or procedure), or whatever have you. Just because you have not felt 'inclined' to address the decision, being perfectly happy with your current sexual situation, does not mean the option to choose didn't exist.
Now, specifically, it is my religious belief that homosexuality is a sin. If you're familiar with the Sodom and Ghomorrah incident depicted in the bible, you have to realize incident would STRONGLY suggest that God doesn't really look highly upon homosexuality. This is not to say that he would never accept and love those who have homosexual 'inclinations', only that he detests the act.
Self-discipline is a recurring requirement of my religion, as it is with most religions. It would be equally required that person X abstain from homosexuality regardless of his/her inclinations as it would be for person Y to abstain from extramarital sexual relations with someone regardless of his/her inclinations.
Obviously, though, nobody is forced to adhere to my personal beliefs, or even that of Christianity (whichever flavor you tend to prefer). But the argument rests that regardless of 'inclination', participating in homosexual acts IS a choice.
If you need proof of this, I know several people, including my own brother, who ascribed to being homosexual in their early years of life who have now, through self-discipline, been able to not only be in a heterosexual relationship, but even marriage, kids, family vacations... Temptations from time to time? You bet. Are they happy? You bet.
Now, this does not mean that I support the heavy discrimination of people of non-heterosexual orientation. This country does value its freedom to choose things, and it needs to protect people's choices (those that don't go against law anyways) from aggregious actions. These include termination of employment, personal injury, blah blah blah, but I don't think that those who actively participate in homosexuality and aknowledge it openly should be surprised that people around them might 'treat them differently'.
In all likelihood, those people may find a homosexual's actions to be detestable, much like a serial killer, or child molester... both of which maintian that their actions are mandated by 'inclination' in most cases by the way. As such, there may be cases where a boss ends up 'not liking' someone based on sexual orientation, and I can't possibly see how that can be helped. As we all know, not being liked by the community you work with can create a hostile environment, both with the person not liked as well as the rest of the community, which I think cannot be helped. To expect anything less would be absurd.
And then back to my original point, in order for someone with homosexual 'inclinations' to remedy the situation is to DECIDE not to act upon or embrace those 'inclinations' of homosexuality. If your moral code does not look down upon homosexuality, and you can live with ridicule from people whose moral code(s) do then so be it. But just as it is not expected that my moral code be forced upon everyone else (ie. homosexuality is bad), it is equally absurd to suggest that another moral code (ie. homosexuality is good/normal) should be forced upon me. Sure, it will create conflicts, but then I hope that in all cases that differences can be settled with civility... but the conflicts will ALWAYS exist.
I would have to emphasize this. And I *think* I know the reason. Interface is everything.
OO may be functionally sophisticated in many respects, but it doesn't have visual sophistication. Now i'm not saying that MSOffice is worlds better or anything, but just as a case in point every time i have heard of a new OO release and said, "Lets try it this time", I am always greeted by an annoyingly large box of styles that gets in the way of what I'm writing and trying to look at. Someone somewhere must think its better to stare at a list of styles, but not the average joe schmoe. I hardly get 10 paces into the program before I say "fuck it" and head back to MS Office where I can at least see what I'm typing all the time.
Essentially, I think the entire UI for OO needs to be revamped before it can ever be considered a contender. Take a lesson from the user interface of AppleWorks and the Mac version of MSOffice... now those are headed in the right direction... still not perfect, but then I don't think there is such a thing as a perfect UI for an office suite.
Other than that, I think it severely falls behind in not being able to translate and operate on MSOffice made macros... And considering just about every record keeping document used in my company is riddled with macros to make the data entry as painless as possible....
One of the reasons I think Firefox works so well is because it is similar in interface to that of its contenders while offering a slick, simplified interface for customization and a nice boost in default security features to boot. It is something that average joe can easily pick up and feel like they haven't actually changed software. Granted, this is an easy thing for a browser to do compared to an entire office suite, but that should be the aim.
I think the motto "Don't Imitate, Innovate." can be misconstrued, too. Innovation doesn't mean that you can't start out by imitating things on the surface... it allows room to make it better than it currently is. It is not necessary to be completely different to be innovative. Especially when dealing with an entire office suite, I think it is fairly imperative that the innovation comes in slow, but eventual improvements rather than stunning change... Few people can easily adapt to change even when it is minor change. Simply put, make it better without them noticing too much beyond the realization that they like this one better than the last.
I think the problem here is not whether or not the OS community can come up with a 'better' document or a comprehensive office platform to create, edit, and view said documents, but whether the OS community can come up with ONE and ONLY ONE 'better' document.
One of the recurring principles of the OS community holds them back in mainstream competition of 'universal formats'. The principle? Choice.
The pattern is already evident in which text editor people consider to be the best for one reason or another, or Linux distro, or network sniffing tool... the list goes on and on. This is not to say that any of these tools are bad tools, but there's not a universal set of 'official' tools to use. The same could be said with the proposition of competing with MS file formats. I guarantee you that if anyone cited a specific file format as being a candidate for competing, there would be at least 5 other people representing significant populations of the OS community saying that their favorite file format would be a better candidate for X or Y reason.
The bottom line is, who among the OS community is going to have the authority to decide which format will be the competing candidate? The instant such a person / body of people is determined they will have to put themselves in the same position that MS is in. Controlling the file format's capabilities, along with the capabilities of applications using said file format, would be a necessity in order for it to be a standard format and application. Sure it might be 'open-source' and open format, but without ONE tool that does it all on that ONE format... it simply won't compete.
And lets not kid ourselves here. The vast majority of people who would like to compete with the MS formats would not be satisfied with simply coexisting with it at some level. It would have to be a near complete replacement of the format to be of any use. Why? The same reason that people have so many problems trying to communicate via docs nowadays. If there's two types of documents and person A uses doc X and person B uses doc Y and there's no real conversion between the two...
No, it would have to be a landslide replacement of the format. Competing on the operating system level is a whole different ballgame than competing on the file format level. With an OpSys you can use it for countless things under countless configurations. With a file format you have but a single purpose... create a document to communicate to others with. There's not really room for 'multiple alternatives' here, especially because of the nature of a document. If the person you're trying to communicate with cannot read it, then the existence of such a document is moot.
So then how do you go about doing this? Simple. Ignore its existence and create a file format and office suite that doesn't do any doc importing or exporting whatsoever. Then stop using Office altogether and request that employees who send you doc files to use X piece of software instead since you can't read what they gave you. And of course it would have to be a somewhat globally orchestrated effort. They'd all be pissed... and management especially, because these people don't like change being imposed on them even if it costs nothing.
Which brings me to my final point? Who are we to impose change on everyone else simply because we thing our solution is better... even if it IS better? By doing so we become what we hate by doing what our enemy does, but at the opposite spectrum. And then once we've gained market dominance we begin to impose adherence to our standard just as MS currently does. Even if such software was 'free' we'd be charging people their soul just as MS does now.
Let's face it. The very principles that define who we are prevent us from succeeding at such an effort. To do so would be paradox.
Well stated, and I think we can both come to a compromise.
While my solution is absurd out of being idealistic and the your earlier argument to not have one at all is equally absurd, we can both agree that the only fix to the current state of things (among other things) is a big red pill that cures mentally and morally inept people.
... heh, too bad arsenic isn't considered 'medicine'.
Forgive me if I neglected to expand upon what I envision 'checked' censorship to be. First, there already exists methods of obtaining reparations from persons who have released private information through the court system. Person X posts information, person Y sues, and person X pays damages. However, there are many times where the information that was posted is not actually addressed and remains available long after punishment has been dished out. To remove that information then falls under the jurisdiction of censorship, because if the courts rule that the information must be removed then they are potentially violating freedom of speech... which as we all know, most courts try not to touch at all costs because of its conflicting nature with most of the rest of law out there which is restrictive in nature rather than enabling in nature.
Which brings us to the need of having a censorship mechanism that can be 'checked'. This body doesn't necessarily need the power to DECIDE what gets censored though. This organization can simply produce a guideline for censorable material and then the courts as well as private citizens can then put in the orders to censor something. It also opens the ability for those who have been wrongfully censored to 'appeal' and have the censorship reversed.
In such an appeal, the person responsible for the act of censorship (read: citizen that filed a complaint) would be the defendant. Should the plaintiff win the case, he is allowed to republish at the expense of the defendant as well as have all his legal fees paid by the defendant. Lose an appeal?... you're censored that time... live with it.
The only time this oversight organization comes into play is deciding what CAN be censored if challenged, and enforcing censorship upon request and on a case by case situation. The citizens or other organizations along with judicial review can also challenge their definitions of what can be censored.
It's not a perfect system by any means... and I'm sure if something like it were ever implemented there would be tons and tons of loopholes just like most regulation related law nowadays. However, I still stand by my argument that it is still a 'safer' system to have in place even with the possibility of aggregious abuse, than not having one in place at all. To go without a system in place until a perfect one is found is rediculous because there's NOT a perfect solution when it comes to conflicting freedoms (ie. privacy vs. speech).
That aside, your depiction of "what this country has and will become" is exaggerated. While I hardly consider myself as politically 'compassionate', I at least understand that one of the primary reasons for existence of government and its pencil-necked bureaucrats is to protect its citizens, not only from threats beyond the state's borders, but also from themselves. A few of those badasses that hacked and slashed their way across the country did so not only through thick brush and trees, but other people in a cut-throat "what I say is mine IS mine" fashion... and usually got away with it. May I remind you that this country, as flawed as it may be, presents us with a plethora of freedoms and usually only interferes when someone ABUSES a freedom to the extent that someone else's freedoms are compromised.
It is true that censorship can actually be abused... nobody will deny it, but the question is where does the greater concern lie: an occasional statement being silenced because somebody didn't like it leading to a bad mood and a bad taste in your mouth, or the occasional release of 'private' information that could lead to long-term anxiety and/or more tragic outcomes.
I'd have to say I fall on the 'safe' side of allowing censorship to be put in place. However, this is not to say that I would accept aggregious abuses of the system either. There obviously would have to be a way to challenge an act of censorship... and ideally fork the bill for any legal fees and/or other reparations back on the censoring body in the case that they made an error. This makes them liable for their occasional mistakes.
I think the more pertinent question to ask rather than "Is censorship of bloggers/websites the right thing to do?" is "Is censorship of bloggers/websites feasible and/or worth the effort?" The idea here is that it is perfectly fine for someone to post 'private' information or any other information that might otherwise be censored on servers located out of this country (think inside a 'less than reputable' country) and little could be done to stop the information flow. Sure you could sue the guy that put it up there, but the information is still there for everyone to see afterwards. To try and censor that information there would essentially have to be filters on all the 'out of country' access... much like China has set up. I guarantee that nobody would go for that because it is simply too expensive and ultimately too restrictive by the nature of how slow it would have to be to 'approve' 'out of country' venues of information.
But again, this is not to say that it isn't pertinent to establish 'checked' censorship within the country. The point to be made here is that, just as there would always be a possible venue to find 'private' information somewhere, there would also always be a venue to place other information without being censored... it just may not be as easy as signing up for a blog account.
Ever since buying a $50 router from Best Buy 3 years ago, my several windows installations and subsequent updates during after have gone virus/spyware free without exception according to McAfee, AVG, AdAware, Spybot, and a wide assortment of other apps. On top of that, I have found myself confronted with less instances of virii/spyware than I can count on my fingers... and those times were only because my stupid little brother used my machine behind my back to look at porn.
Now, I'm not such an emblazened supporter of Microsoft Windows to deny that it has holes, but by the same measure I'm not so naive to think that *nix and MacOS don't.
At Mississippi State University, the security portion of the Computer Science graduate program (from which i come from) ran a multitude of tests on both windows machines and *nix, patched and unpatched, router protected and otherwise. While we found that the windows machines ended up with more infections... much MUCH more... the *nix machines had the more severe infections... very VERY severe. A handful of linux machines of assorted distros (inluding RedHat and Gentoo), "fully patched", were left on the outside of a router/firewall and infected within 5 minutes. A handful of these machines even had rogue processes running under root. THAT kind of scenario scares me more than any onslaught of slave windows machines, because the vast majority of windows machines lack many tools i would consider "useful for hacking, cracking, or otherwise devious behavior", an in any case would simply be too damned slow to do much more than annoy anyways.
So, no, I'm so inclined to believe that Windows is so much "worse" than *nix or MacOS... simlpy more popular and more widely used, and thus a bigger target (at least if you're going from a security angle... i REALLY don't see the argument from an applications or UI angle as "better" is then simply based on acceptance and/or preference). To believe otherwise, only shows how insidiously brainwashed or ignorant you have become.
Back to the topic at hand though, the real lesson to be learned is this:
GET YOURSELF A FUCKING ROUTER, STOP VISITING X AND Y PORN SITE, AND STOP OPENING ATTACHMENTS WITHOUT HAVING FIRST SCANNED THEM FOR VIRII!!! IT IS CALLED COMMON SENSE YOU FUCKING TROGLODYTES!!!
Common sense may not be a perfect solution, or even a solution to the problem at all. But it IS a big enough roadblock to deter all but the most dedicated attempts to breach security.
...in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes...
Since when was there a useful percentage of the Slashdot population that didn't fall into the category of jobless, mostly-educated, Linux fanboy/junkie/lackey... none of which qualify the vast majority of us as "pro". Nor are you actually going to find a single Holy Grail among us as we all pretty much swear up and down by the one or two distros that we use and feel comfortable with. Since there's a bazillion of us and even more obscure linux distros of this flavor or that, the question at hand is moot.
Yet another shining example of how Slashdot is declining in its usefulness... to the point that many circles see the Slashdot crowd as the black sheep of the "true Linux advocates". Not that I'm necessarily one of these people, but I have ears just like everybody else.
The US is a priveledged nation. Only basic freedoms are provided, and even then they are only recognized because a fancy, formal document says so. Our "freedoms", as many would call them, are simply priveledges granted by the government either through explicit guarantees or through a lack of speaking on the topic... and you can be pretty sure that the government will eventually get around to speaking on the topic. With these priveledges comes the responsibility of not abusing them. That's where law and regulation comes into play. They have to determine what constitutes abuse, and what to do in the case that a priveledge is abused. You may ask why they are the ones that determine that... and well its because we as the people kinda sorta gave them that power by voting them into power (for the most part). As further recognition of thier power and authority, we pay taxes to fund the decisions of the government.
Therefore there are two options for someone that doesn't agree with what the government is doing... vote their conscience at voting time (and recognize that if your opinion doesn't win out then that's just life)... or you can simply leave the country, thus showing your non-support by not paying the taxes.
On the other hand though, there are few other places I would rather live than in the US, regardless of the amount of government that exists. I am in no way in favor of big government, or big brother or anything, but I still recognize that the government has power and that if I want to remain a lawful citizen I should abide by the dictates of that government.
Just remember that its not about living in an ideal world here in the US... its just trying to produce peaceful co-existence.
This particularly deals with the argument against instancing. While I would agree that a wholesale implementation of instancing would likely become bland and tiresome after a while, a nice blend (such as that expected out of World of Warcraft and a few others still in the works) offers the best of both worlds in my opinion. However, one of his arguments against instancing is illustrated through the simulated conversation between the player (assumed noobie) and a developer. The author tries to make the point that making new friends = good and doing otherwise = bad. I (currently playing FFXI) sure as hell could care less about making new friends with the vast majority of the people that play with me... and yet I still manage to have plenty of fun and have a very diverse adventuring/questing experience even when not playing with my friends. Then again, maybe I'm just an exception to the rule or something... I am a Meyers-Brigg INTJ with a huge emphasis on the I (even scored "perfect" Introvert on two seperate occasions while under hypnosis... not sure if that skews the results though).
The way I see it the roads are public property. Thus you should expect minimal to no amount of privacy while using those roads. You basically waver your privacy on the road by opting for travel by X where X is not in the set of {on foot} U {private, non-licenseable vehicles (ie. bicycle, skateboard, scooter, etc...)}
Whatever is hidden in your car can stay hidden in your car.... as long as its not on my or "our" property. I don't trust anyone enough to simply presume that everyone is law abiding all the time. Thus it only makes sense that I allow myself to be open to public scrutiny at all times if it ensures that everyone else is too.
Do whatever the hell "you" want to do on private property AND out of the awareness of the public... the second "you" cross the line and demand privacy when amongst "us", "we" will assume that due to human nature "you" are obviously hiding something that "we" need to know about... it either isn't legal or safe for the rest of "us"... or both.
Just remember this little quick quip when addressing the issue of privacy. "We" are more important than "you". And if you don't like that "you" are always free to leave. Though... I'm not sure there exists ANY place where "you" are more important than "them".
We have a story about two relatively insignificant companies switching their infrastructure over to Linux
So are you saying that small-time businesses with little market influence should get any less attention from a support standpoint than bigger companies such as Amazon?
The article conveys to me that if you have enough money to initially invest in the training and staffing of Linux pros then you will eventually be cost effective. If you don't have that money though, what's to ensure that you're going to be successful let alone have return on investment. Unless you're lucky enough to have a Linux pro already staffed then you're pretty much screwed, simply because you'll be losing money on creating a solution that you may never get to work due to unfamiliarity.
Now I don't mean to bash Linux or anything, but in order for solutions to work well under Linux you have to have a handful of somewhat special people... and those special people are both in short supply and hired by the highest bidder more often than not. This leaves out the little man. Sure Windows costs a bunch out of the box, but the stark majority of IT professionals can get a windows box up and running much faster than a Linux box simply due to familiarity and general ease of use. Thus Windows will continue to have a large market share until Linux proliferates the education system enough to "drown out" Windows and generally becomes easier to use (ie. incredibly reduced selection of apps that perform exceedingly well and constitute a defacto usage standard on Linux environments as opposed to the vast selection of apps that currently exist on almost every distro where you have to pick and choose your own favorite app for x activity.... ugh).
As it stands Linux with all the usability perks that have been added by different distros is still a developer-centric OS. Until it becomes user-centric (yah right... like that'll ever happen... users = T3H 3V1L) I don't forsee any kind of sweeping overthrow of MS except in the area of high end servers where the company can afford an initial investment (ie. big companies).
Well... there's simply two kind of gamers out there.
The first, which I am and assume you are, marvel at the exerience a game has to offer. From the aural and visual wonders the game presents to how well it "sucks you in" to the environment making you temporarily forget that you're sitting in front of a computer and instead hacking away at zombies, aliens, evil marines, and other such enemies.
The second, which my best friend would be, view a game purely as a challenge of mastery. My friend has a fairly hoss machine by most standards, but only keeps the visual and audio quality high for the first few days where he is introducing himself with the game... or beating the singleplayer. Then he gets serious, stripping away all the fancy bells and whistles in order to get to the core of competition without any kind of distractions. This includes turning down resolutions, reducing color spectrum in some cases, using compressed textures when available... all in an effort to squeeze out as much performance possible (even after the point that more performance really won't make any difference). One technique in HL and most Quake based games that relies on such tweaking is the bunny hop. Without going into a whole lot of details you can generally say that the higher your fps the more successful you will be at bunny hopping (it gets easier in a way).
For those of us who could care less about bunny hopping or other performance related aspects of gaming, higher visual and aural quality will usually abound.
All in all, the gaming community seems to be divided somewhere down the middle on this kind of thing.
While I agree that the cloning option stifles any kind of exploratory drive for people moving to new software, I would disagree that learning something new is any kind of benifit in and of itself. If I were to learn "underwater basketweaving", which is just as foreign a concept to me as reading heiroglyphics, I daresay that I would not have benefitted in any way for having learned it. There has to be purpose behind learning something new that makes it beneficial.
Also you have to note that companies like Microsoft and Apple have spent years upon years doing interface useability/likeability research and have both come up with and refined their product. Essentially the FOSS community is so behind in doing their own independent research that they simply HAVE to rely on the research done by others as a starting place. The conclusions (and thus interface design) may end up different, but there will be so many similarities that it will seem like 'cloning' in most places. The only way to get away from the 'cloning' is to do your own independent research with existing research as a basis and years down the road we will finally see something that is sleek, usable, consistent, and yet noticably different from the other options.
Then of course there's the beast of familiarity. Even if years from now the FOSS has a dream interface it will still have to rival with the familiarity of the Windows and Apple platforms to existing users. You have to find some way to convince them to come out of their nice, cozy comfort zone. This means that in addition to a very refined interface standard, the FOSS has to remain better (power/efficiency/security wise) at doing job X than the other platforms.
It is not an impossible feat by any means, but it won't be a cakewalk either as it would likely mean some sort of consolidation of all the existing distros and applications where all functionality is dealt with comprehensively by a very small set of "standard" applications. BTW, application choice is often an interface problem that is often overlooked... and the "good" interface tends to defy the general feeling of most FOSS devs/supporters of "give me options and my ability to change them how I see fit"
Slashdot Mirror
How is paying bloggers to hype a product any different than paying a traditional advertising company (or companies) to hype a product. If anything, using bloggers *could* have backlash not usually induced by traditional advertisers.
/.?" Oh wait, its an open invitation for more Microsoft bashing. We at /. can be quite pitiful sometimes, really.
Day 1: Microsoft hires blogger x for Longhorn adverts/hype.
Day 8: Microsoft unsatisfied with blog commentary.
Day 12: Microsoft pulls funding citing services paid for not provided.
Day 15: Blogger now blogs to anti-hype Longhorn out of spite.
Now, I'm sure that Microsoft will be using the medium in a way that probably won't bite them in the butt later on, but the possibility still exists. With traditional advert companies, losing the client means simply losing an account. With blogging, losing the client means making an enemy in many cases.
All that to say, "Why is this even a story on
I agree that it is unlikely, though I doubt it is entirely impossible. The reason I think this is because in order for such a brain to be used for useful research it would have to be as much like a normal human brain as possible... otherwise any research done on it to conclude on insights to actual human brains are inherently flawed. It would be pointless to develop a brain that wasn't as close to 'normal' as possible. The mere thought that this could be done implies that there is a desire to actually make a 'normal' brain come to fruition inside some other animal's skull. I don't know that sheep would be the best candidate... why not use a monkey who's other biological features are already very similar to that of a human's to begin with.
I'd agree that your logic process described is flawed. However, I disagree that this is the formula that many people like me (I = christian) come to believe in Intelligent Design.
Many christians simply believe that the words in the bible were inspired by God (don't start me on how some texts were included or not... gets particularly complicated at places and I'd rather not get off topic). As such, anything written in the texts could be thought of as 'by God' even if they were written by David, some prophet, or some Joe Schmoe that happenned to be "in the know" at the right time. Therefore, the statement "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" is taken by faith that it is true.
Describing laws of nature only stand as a testament to the power and intelligence of God, and theory's / pseudoproofs to disprove the existence of God are moot because it makes the baseline assumption that God is imposed by the very same laws of nature that he did/did not create. If he DID create them, then using these laws can't really disprove him because his creation of 'the ways of nature' implies that he is not bound by the limitations of that nature.
To adress another misconception about the bible, not mentioned in your post, but in many others, is that the bible should never be used literally for the purpose of history. It is telling a story, largely based on fact to be sure, but the dates and times given here and there are mereley to give a frame of reference for telling X story. On a specific example, the 'days' that God created everything can't have possibly actually been days as we know them to be. To start, the original words there imply not a single day, but a single 'span of time'... and not necesarily a periodic span of time. 'Days' is just a *translation* of the text to essentially make the storytelling process easier. If you wanted to be more precise in the terminology used there, I'd go with "stage of development".
Can creation be proven? Not likely. However, neither can the theory of big bang + evolution be proven or disproven. For all we know, they're both right and we're all just getting hung up by terminology used to describe how things went. You say 'product of selection', I say 'product of God's selection'. Semantics really. This leads me to a oft quoted exceprt out of Hitchhiker's concerning the argument between God and man concerning God's existence. While, I disagree with the statement that God does not exist without faith, I do believe it is in his best interest to keep his existence non-provable. As his argument goes, proof would deny faith.
Faith is the cornerstone of his godhood, ie. he created us with free will so that we could believe and follow him of our free will rather than be mindless slaves to do his bidding. Having faith also implies having love, therefore we can postulate (though not prove) that our existence is based on God's wanting to be loved... i mean... it must be lonely being the only one 'up there' (statement based upon christianity's monotheistic worldview). Proving God's existence would mean whether we decide to worship God or not, very few would actually do so out of love... just think of the mindless and brutal inquisitions that would ensue based upon a God proof in the hands of stupid men.
Returning back to the article, the attempts of the state to identify intelligent design (mind you, not necessarily christian creationism) as a legitimate option for the roots of life is merely an acknowledgement that although there is evidence of evloution having occured and still occuring (ie. micro-evolution) the teaching of evolution eliciting the roots of life cannot be proven and therefore should not be taught as fact... but theory. Us grownups, and quite a few bright highschoolers, can easily discern the difference between fact and theory, however would propose that a great many more highschool students are taught the principles of evolution with imprecise terminology and in an uncomprehensive fashion so as to gi
wtf... aparently the preview was working fine, but not the submission? I dont *think* i messed with the italics tag.
grrr.
I wouldn't say the economy is poor so to speak... just slower, a little less stable, and altogether a different economy... but then that doesn't exactly stop me from consistently selling items at non-inflated/non-delfated prices time and time again. I have a fairly high track record of selling things that I put up if I set it to a 24hr auction. On the buying end you may have to wait an extra day if you don't immediately see the right item for the right prices, but its nothing to complain about... there's always questing, raiding, and now mass PvPing to do as a short distraction from sitting in IF all day long day-trading on the AH.
Eredar server, in case you were wondering. While it has generously grown of late the only time it reaches "Moderate" population is during many peak hours. The 'inconveniences' of such servers are usually depicted by people with so little patience that they need their caffeine fix yesterday. I'd say on average it takes me an extra hour or so to sell something on the AH as opposed to the HP servers I have chars on, and an average of 5 minutes longer to get a party organized for whatever instance/quest. The definite UPSIDES to this is that there are less people to compete with when trying to farm for tradeskill items, experience, or bodycounts for quests... not to mention a lower liklihood of being ganked in STV when you're trying to gather more troll ears or gorilla hairs (ie. you're not exactly in an 'I want to PvP' mindset)
The economy issue aside, lag does and will continue to persist even on the lower pop servers (just not nearly as bad as the high pops). Its the nature of it and just about every other MMORPG I've ever laid eyes upon. To expect a lagless experience (especially when massive amounts of people are on the same screen at the same time) or meaningful montly updates (regardless of what some marketing schmuck said once upon a time in la la land) is absurd. People want perfection in a game where the very nature of the platform it's build upon is imperfect. I just say its a whole bunch of whiney, naive people that couldn't care less what an extremely complex and inevitably delicate system it is they're complaining about.
I haven't played the game, but I thought I might like to mention that games don't have to be ground breaking or original to be fun. Also, not all games are intended to be fast paced dungeon crawl zergfests that never let up on intensity. There are TONS of games that are in fact just the opposite and still fun to their target audience... the Myst games come to mind.
/., its been happening since day one... I usually only find one or two pearls a day amidst a pile of irrelevant junk or otherwise propaganda material. See ya next time on the latest, greatest /. troll article challenge extravaganza!
As to trolls writing articles on
Good points, but I'm sorry if you missed the jest intended in my description of a new network. I admit it was poorly conveyed as such.
Technically speaking it has already begun in the adoption Internet 2 by many university's and research institutions... kinda sorta mirroring the ARPANet events. I personally can't say how good I2 actually is as I've never used it, or even if it's 'open'. But then that isn't really the point I was trying to get at in my earlier post.
The point I was trying to make was that no matter what we do to try and remedy the situation, be it OS security lockdowns, a mass exodus to open source software, or even a complete replacement of the current network infrastructure, the problems and problem makers will persist... and likely get worse as time goes on... with only brief, scattered periods of reprieve
If you want my honest vision of where the internet is headed in an effort to curb the effects of virii and spam and such is paid-service network portals. It will evolve into a place with the 'open' network is considered no man's land filled with hooligans and people otherwise considered very brave, or very stupid. Try to envision if you will sets of disjoint networks all with singular themes, whose access is very tightly controlled internally and likely expensive to access (monetarily speaking). Imagine having NewsNet, CorpNet, DevNet, GovNet, PornNet, ChatNet, etc...
You would most likely be paying your ISP for access to different, smaller networks much like you pay for channels through a cable company... and there's no telling what kind of ethics/security tests they might require for access to some of them. This is not to say that the 'free' internet wouldn't still exist, but I imagine that it would have severe devolution in population and useful content.
It wouldn't stop the existence of all the internet unmentionables, but it would be a large step in minimizing their effect on the 'entire' internet.
Only if you're dead set on breathing the same air as everyone else.
Sure, its an exxageration, but I'm sure someone somewhere could very easily start establishing an 'open-only' network of sorts... grow from there. Eventually watch the lay-networks of yesteryear dwindle into clogged bandwidth filled with spam, spyware, and virii attacking everyone else assorted virii. Soon enough the only alternative is to participate and help develop the small, but powerful and effective 'open' intarweb back into something that's useable again.
I imagine that somewhere down the line something similar to this will probably happen, but its going to be cyclical as the current network becomes outdated and overused... almost like our old machines of yore can be. Its just a simple cylce of birth, progress, prime, corruption, death. Rinse and Repeat.
I guess what I'm getting at is that even if we converted the whole world to open source solutions that are 'better', the problem won't go away. Once our ideal solutions are broken and farmed systems plague the internet yet again where do we go? I'm fairly positive that virii, spyware, and congested networks are here to stay no matter how many people convert one way or another simply because every time you find a way to make something <noun> proof, the world makes a better (worse) <same noun>.
Far be it from me to prevent people from trying to make the internet a nicer place, but all it really does is postpone the inevitable.
After being trained to take over two of my universities Intro to Programming courses, I was granted the almighty insight as to why the curriculum (and thus graders) require such innane comments all over the place in history's most inconsequential programs to date.
... at least from my university's perspective.
I'd have to wager that many of us found the process quite annoying... and it is. Especially so for those who already have a knack for programming. For these people, the intro classes only serve as an intro to the language the rest of the more meaningful classes use. However, for those who are less talented, or are completely clueless to the field to begin with the commenting process becomes very crucial.
In this case, the commenting becomes a tool for student and teacher/grader alike to assess how much the student understands just what it is they're doing. Unfortunately in most cases where the student is gifted, they feel it is just a mundane practice since they're commenting things that are 'obviously' obvious to everyone else... which actually isn't the case in the intro courses.
I've graded more programs than I care to think about where the program, while performing as requested, was littered with code that essentially did nothing. The use of comments allows teachers to understand why a piece of code was written by the student, and also acts as a preemptive remedy for useless code when the student realizes that a line of code he thought was needed, or had a hunch on, actually wasn't.
Past that primary focus of the commenting process in the intro classes, the object of commenting is very minimally for the purpose of developing good commenting skills for later use in collaborative projects. This is because, it is assumed that all future 'good' employers already have different standards for good commenting in place, and becoming a 'good' commenter, not to mention organizer of code, depends solely upon the framework your organization allows you to work in. In other words, they opt out of strictly teaching 'good' commenting in favor of a "Practice makes perfect" approach.
Also, I believe it is dangerous to assume what is obvious and what is not. If we compiled a list of what everyone thought every 'good' programmer should know, i would imagine the list of things would come close to an effectual "a good programmer should know... well... everything". Thus, it is safer to assume nothing.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Lets say a VB programmer was the only resource on hand to tackle a project originally written in C by a very saavy C programmer... and this VB programmer had never written or read a single line of C to that point. Beside the fact that he would have to learn the language on the fly, many of the things that the C programmer might consider obvious would likely present themselves as huge stumbling blocks to the VB programmer. I mean... you gotta start learning somewhere.
That may be an extreme case, but I've seen it happen more times than one might think it could happen. The principle essentially holds when writing in languages otherwise not considered 'popular' at the time, or if you're updating old code that WAS 'popular' at the time, but no longer is... kinda like COBOL.
To reiterate in one last statement, "Never assume ANYTHING!"
You misspelled "misspelled", wanker.
I admit that there are people out there who would present the message of "homosexuality = sin" in such a way that would drive many to depression and/or suicide. It is a sad, sad fact. For instance, I would never say that 'inclinations' to do a sinful act are sinful in themselves, except in a few instances where a mindset IS the particular sin (think lusting after another woman ... "... you have already commited adultery in your heart...").
No, it is my firm belief that 'inclinations' are not only not sinful, but so commonplace that were someone to claim they were sinful would condemn the entire human race in one fell swoop. Sadly, the existence of such tragedies based upon flawed teaching methods will continue for ages, but it doesn't change the heart of the message presented in the Bible for everyone to read and interpret for themselves.
Now, who said that what Lot did was right? There are many passages in scripture where Lot's credibility of being faithful is questioned. The Lot example served as a reference in the sense of "Lot's horrible actions barely touched the the tip of iceburg of the things going on there", and also showed the existence of the rampant homosexuality as they refused the women demanding the two men. The OT thinking that you refer to is the inherently flawed thinking of 'man', not God, but still served well as an object lesson useful for God's instruction of mankind.
Also, my non-adherence to levitican law is a non-issue as it was laid out by the priesthood (ie. government) to govern the Jewish people. While God allowed the system to be in place it does not mean he issued levitican law or put his stamp of approval on it even. His was only to the extent of the 10 commandments I believe. However, this does not change the incident of Sodom and Ghomorrah where God himself did the punishing rather than a priestly government that 'thought' they were doing God's bidding.
The Levitican law is essentially the reason that the New Testament is important to Christians as it abolishes many of the 'unnecessary' and 'outdated' laws in favor of a forgiveness based salvation structure rather than a merit based salvation structure.
Now, my mention of my belief that "homosexuality = sin" was strictly for the presentation of the argument that participation in homosexual acts is something you choose to do, inclination or no. I believe I also said that nobody is bound to share my belief, though I'll always share my beliefs to present the opportunity for someone else who might otherwise disagree to change his/her mind.
As to homosexuality not hurting anyone, perhaps not directly. However, it would not surprise me if there were social problems that arose from a child that was brought up with homosexual parents. Not specifically their attitued towards homosexuality or heterosexuality, but there are any number of possibilities that could go wrong for the kid in a social or psychological sense. Being that heterosexuality is the defacto standard for human sexuality and reproduction, it would not surprise me than an alteration in the formula might produce unseen characteristics. So while it does not directly hurt the participants of homosexuality, it has yet to be seen if homosexuality could actually hurt other people indirectly.
To your last comment: Some things are worth dying for. To many, death is hardly a punishment compared to a lifetime of torture, agony, and persecution. I believe I mentioned that I don't agree with aggregious punishment of homosexual individuals, but I cannot deny that it does not exist in other places. It would not surprise me though that in these places there are those who feel so strongly about their sexual preference as to choose to act upon it regardless of the harsh consequences ensured. I know you don't like me comparing homosexuality to murder, but those who murder (do not read involunary manslaughter or the like) choose to do so for whatever reason even though they realize that the death penalty is possible should they ever get caught.
Who cares about having "inclination"?
Isn't one of the defining characteristics of maturity and/or morality that of self-discipline in the face of 'primal' instincts and/or emotion?
One thing you neglect to realize is that you have ALWAYS had the choice to be homosexual, heterosexual, non-sexual (either through abstinence or procedure), or whatever have you. Just because you have not felt 'inclined' to address the decision, being perfectly happy with your current sexual situation, does not mean the option to choose didn't exist.
Now, specifically, it is my religious belief that homosexuality is a sin. If you're familiar with the Sodom and Ghomorrah incident depicted in the bible, you have to realize incident would STRONGLY suggest that God doesn't really look highly upon homosexuality. This is not to say that he would never accept and love those who have homosexual 'inclinations', only that he detests the act.
Self-discipline is a recurring requirement of my religion, as it is with most religions. It would be equally required that person X abstain from homosexuality regardless of his/her inclinations as it would be for person Y to abstain from extramarital sexual relations with someone regardless of his/her inclinations.
Obviously, though, nobody is forced to adhere to my personal beliefs, or even that of Christianity (whichever flavor you tend to prefer). But the argument rests that regardless of 'inclination', participating in homosexual acts IS a choice.
If you need proof of this, I know several people, including my own brother, who ascribed to being homosexual in their early years of life who have now, through self-discipline, been able to not only be in a heterosexual relationship, but even marriage, kids, family vacations... Temptations from time to time? You bet. Are they happy? You bet.
Now, this does not mean that I support the heavy discrimination of people of non-heterosexual orientation. This country does value its freedom to choose things, and it needs to protect people's choices (those that don't go against law anyways) from aggregious actions. These include termination of employment, personal injury, blah blah blah, but I don't think that those who actively participate in homosexuality and aknowledge it openly should be surprised that people around them might 'treat them differently'.
In all likelihood, those people may find a homosexual's actions to be detestable, much like a serial killer, or child molester... both of which maintian that their actions are mandated by 'inclination' in most cases by the way. As such, there may be cases where a boss ends up 'not liking' someone based on sexual orientation, and I can't possibly see how that can be helped. As we all know, not being liked by the community you work with can create a hostile environment, both with the person not liked as well as the rest of the community, which I think cannot be helped. To expect anything less would be absurd.
And then back to my original point, in order for someone with homosexual 'inclinations' to remedy the situation is to DECIDE not to act upon or embrace those 'inclinations' of homosexuality. If your moral code does not look down upon homosexuality, and you can live with ridicule from people whose moral code(s) do then so be it. But just as it is not expected that my moral code be forced upon everyone else (ie. homosexuality is bad), it is equally absurd to suggest that another moral code (ie. homosexuality is good/normal) should be forced upon me. Sure, it will create conflicts, but then I hope that in all cases that differences can be settled with civility... but the conflicts will ALWAYS exist.
I would have to emphasize this. And I *think* I know the reason. Interface is everything.
OO may be functionally sophisticated in many respects, but it doesn't have visual sophistication. Now i'm not saying that MSOffice is worlds better or anything, but just as a case in point every time i have heard of a new OO release and said, "Lets try it this time", I am always greeted by an annoyingly large box of styles that gets in the way of what I'm writing and trying to look at. Someone somewhere must think its better to stare at a list of styles, but not the average joe schmoe. I hardly get 10 paces into the program before I say "fuck it" and head back to MS Office where I can at least see what I'm typing all the time.
Essentially, I think the entire UI for OO needs to be revamped before it can ever be considered a contender. Take a lesson from the user interface of AppleWorks and the Mac version of MSOffice... now those are headed in the right direction... still not perfect, but then I don't think there is such a thing as a perfect UI for an office suite.
Other than that, I think it severely falls behind in not being able to translate and operate on MSOffice made macros... And considering just about every record keeping document used in my company is riddled with macros to make the data entry as painless as possible....
One of the reasons I think Firefox works so well is because it is similar in interface to that of its contenders while offering a slick, simplified interface for customization and a nice boost in default security features to boot. It is something that average joe can easily pick up and feel like they haven't actually changed software. Granted, this is an easy thing for a browser to do compared to an entire office suite, but that should be the aim.
I think the motto "Don't Imitate, Innovate." can be misconstrued, too. Innovation doesn't mean that you can't start out by imitating things on the surface... it allows room to make it better than it currently is. It is not necessary to be completely different to be innovative. Especially when dealing with an entire office suite, I think it is fairly imperative that the innovation comes in slow, but eventual improvements rather than stunning change... Few people can easily adapt to change even when it is minor change. Simply put, make it better without them noticing too much beyond the realization that they like this one better than the last.
I think the problem here is not whether or not the OS community can come up with a 'better' document or a comprehensive office platform to create, edit, and view said documents, but whether the OS community can come up with ONE and ONLY ONE 'better' document.
One of the recurring principles of the OS community holds them back in mainstream competition of 'universal formats'. The principle? Choice.
The pattern is already evident in which text editor people consider to be the best for one reason or another, or Linux distro, or network sniffing tool... the list goes on and on. This is not to say that any of these tools are bad tools, but there's not a universal set of 'official' tools to use. The same could be said with the proposition of competing with MS file formats. I guarantee you that if anyone cited a specific file format as being a candidate for competing, there would be at least 5 other people representing significant populations of the OS community saying that their favorite file format would be a better candidate for X or Y reason.
The bottom line is, who among the OS community is going to have the authority to decide which format will be the competing candidate? The instant such a person / body of people is determined they will have to put themselves in the same position that MS is in. Controlling the file format's capabilities, along with the capabilities of applications using said file format, would be a necessity in order for it to be a standard format and application. Sure it might be 'open-source' and open format, but without ONE tool that does it all on that ONE format... it simply won't compete.
And lets not kid ourselves here. The vast majority of people who would like to compete with the MS formats would not be satisfied with simply coexisting with it at some level. It would have to be a near complete replacement of the format to be of any use. Why? The same reason that people have so many problems trying to communicate via docs nowadays. If there's two types of documents and person A uses doc X and person B uses doc Y and there's no real conversion between the two...
No, it would have to be a landslide replacement of the format. Competing on the operating system level is a whole different ballgame than competing on the file format level. With an OpSys you can use it for countless things under countless configurations. With a file format you have but a single purpose... create a document to communicate to others with. There's not really room for 'multiple alternatives' here, especially because of the nature of a document. If the person you're trying to communicate with cannot read it, then the existence of such a document is moot.
So then how do you go about doing this? Simple. Ignore its existence and create a file format and office suite that doesn't do any doc importing or exporting whatsoever. Then stop using Office altogether and request that employees who send you doc files to use X piece of software instead since you can't read what they gave you. And of course it would have to be a somewhat globally orchestrated effort. They'd all be pissed... and management especially, because these people don't like change being imposed on them even if it costs nothing.
Which brings me to my final point? Who are we to impose change on everyone else simply because we thing our solution is better... even if it IS better? By doing so we become what we hate by doing what our enemy does, but at the opposite spectrum. And then once we've gained market dominance we begin to impose adherence to our standard just as MS currently does. Even if such software was 'free' we'd be charging people their soul just as MS does now.
Let's face it. The very principles that define who we are prevent us from succeeding at such an effort. To do so would be paradox.
Well stated, and I think we can both come to a compromise.
... heh, too bad arsenic isn't considered 'medicine'.
While my solution is absurd out of being idealistic and the your earlier argument to not have one at all is equally absurd, we can both agree that the only fix to the current state of things (among other things) is a big red pill that cures mentally and morally inept people.
Forgive me if I neglected to expand upon what I envision 'checked' censorship to be. First, there already exists methods of obtaining reparations from persons who have released private information through the court system. Person X posts information, person Y sues, and person X pays damages. However, there are many times where the information that was posted is not actually addressed and remains available long after punishment has been dished out. To remove that information then falls under the jurisdiction of censorship, because if the courts rule that the information must be removed then they are potentially violating freedom of speech... which as we all know, most courts try not to touch at all costs because of its conflicting nature with most of the rest of law out there which is restrictive in nature rather than enabling in nature.
Which brings us to the need of having a censorship mechanism that can be 'checked'. This body doesn't necessarily need the power to DECIDE what gets censored though. This organization can simply produce a guideline for censorable material and then the courts as well as private citizens can then put in the orders to censor something. It also opens the ability for those who have been wrongfully censored to 'appeal' and have the censorship reversed.
In such an appeal, the person responsible for the act of censorship (read: citizen that filed a complaint) would be the defendant. Should the plaintiff win the case, he is allowed to republish at the expense of the defendant as well as have all his legal fees paid by the defendant. Lose an appeal?... you're censored that time... live with it.
The only time this oversight organization comes into play is deciding what CAN be censored if challenged, and enforcing censorship upon request and on a case by case situation. The citizens or other organizations along with judicial review can also challenge their definitions of what can be censored.
It's not a perfect system by any means... and I'm sure if something like it were ever implemented there would be tons and tons of loopholes just like most regulation related law nowadays. However, I still stand by my argument that it is still a 'safer' system to have in place even with the possibility of aggregious abuse, than not having one in place at all. To go without a system in place until a perfect one is found is rediculous because there's NOT a perfect solution when it comes to conflicting freedoms (ie. privacy vs. speech).
That aside, your depiction of "what this country has and will become" is exaggerated. While I hardly consider myself as politically 'compassionate', I at least understand that one of the primary reasons for existence of government and its pencil-necked bureaucrats is to protect its citizens, not only from threats beyond the state's borders, but also from themselves. A few of those badasses that hacked and slashed their way across the country did so not only through thick brush and trees, but other people in a cut-throat "what I say is mine IS mine" fashion... and usually got away with it. May I remind you that this country, as flawed as it may be, presents us with a plethora of freedoms and usually only interferes when someone ABUSES a freedom to the extent that someone else's freedoms are compromised.
It is true that censorship can actually be abused... nobody will deny it, but the question is where does the greater concern lie: an occasional statement being silenced because somebody didn't like it leading to a bad mood and a bad taste in your mouth, or the occasional release of 'private' information that could lead to long-term anxiety and/or more tragic outcomes.
I'd have to say I fall on the 'safe' side of allowing censorship to be put in place. However, this is not to say that I would accept aggregious abuses of the system either. There obviously would have to be a way to challenge an act of censorship... and ideally fork the bill for any legal fees and/or other reparations back on the censoring body in the case that they made an error. This makes them liable for their occasional mistakes.
I think the more pertinent question to ask rather than "Is censorship of bloggers/websites the right thing to do?" is "Is censorship of bloggers/websites feasible and/or worth the effort?" The idea here is that it is perfectly fine for someone to post 'private' information or any other information that might otherwise be censored on servers located out of this country (think inside a 'less than reputable' country) and little could be done to stop the information flow. Sure you could sue the guy that put it up there, but the information is still there for everyone to see afterwards. To try and censor that information there would essentially have to be filters on all the 'out of country' access... much like China has set up. I guarantee that nobody would go for that because it is simply too expensive and ultimately too restrictive by the nature of how slow it would have to be to 'approve' 'out of country' venues of information.
But again, this is not to say that it isn't pertinent to establish 'checked' censorship within the country. The point to be made here is that, just as there would always be a possible venue to find 'private' information somewhere, there would also always be a venue to place other information without being censored... it just may not be as easy as signing up for a blog account.
Ever since buying a $50 router from Best Buy 3 years ago, my several windows installations and subsequent updates during after have gone virus/spyware free without exception according to McAfee, AVG, AdAware, Spybot, and a wide assortment of other apps. On top of that, I have found myself confronted with less instances of virii/spyware than I can count on my fingers... and those times were only because my stupid little brother used my machine behind my back to look at porn.
Now, I'm not such an emblazened supporter of Microsoft Windows to deny that it has holes, but by the same measure I'm not so naive to think that *nix and MacOS don't.
At Mississippi State University, the security portion of the Computer Science graduate program (from which i come from) ran a multitude of tests on both windows machines and *nix, patched and unpatched, router protected and otherwise. While we found that the windows machines ended up with more infections... much MUCH more... the *nix machines had the more severe infections... very VERY severe. A handful of linux machines of assorted distros (inluding RedHat and Gentoo), "fully patched", were left on the outside of a router/firewall and infected within 5 minutes. A handful of these machines even had rogue processes running under root. THAT kind of scenario scares me more than any onslaught of slave windows machines, because the vast majority of windows machines lack many tools i would consider "useful for hacking, cracking, or otherwise devious behavior", an in any case would simply be too damned slow to do much more than annoy anyways.
So, no, I'm so inclined to believe that Windows is so much "worse" than *nix or MacOS... simlpy more popular and more widely used, and thus a bigger target (at least if you're going from a security angle... i REALLY don't see the argument from an applications or UI angle as "better" is then simply based on acceptance and/or preference). To believe otherwise, only shows how insidiously brainwashed or ignorant you have become.
Back to the topic at hand though, the real lesson to be learned is this:
GET YOURSELF A FUCKING ROUTER, STOP VISITING X AND Y PORN SITE, AND STOP OPENING ATTACHMENTS WITHOUT HAVING FIRST SCANNED THEM FOR VIRII!!! IT IS CALLED COMMON SENSE YOU FUCKING TROGLODYTES!!!
Common sense may not be a perfect solution, or even a solution to the problem at all. But it IS a big enough roadblock to deter all but the most dedicated attempts to breach security.
...in the experience of the Slashdot pros, is that Holy Grail of Linuxes...
Since when was there a useful percentage of the Slashdot population that didn't fall into the category of jobless, mostly-educated, Linux fanboy/junkie/lackey... none of which qualify the vast majority of us as "pro". Nor are you actually going to find a single Holy Grail among us as we all pretty much swear up and down by the one or two distros that we use and feel comfortable with. Since there's a bazillion of us and even more obscure linux distros of this flavor or that, the question at hand is moot.
Yet another shining example of how Slashdot is declining in its usefulness... to the point that many circles see the Slashdot crowd as the black sheep of the "true Linux advocates". Not that I'm necessarily one of these people, but I have ears just like everybody else.
Wrong.
The US is a priveledged nation. Only basic freedoms are provided, and even then they are only recognized because a fancy, formal document says so. Our "freedoms", as many would call them, are simply priveledges granted by the government either through explicit guarantees or through a lack of speaking on the topic... and you can be pretty sure that the government will eventually get around to speaking on the topic. With these priveledges comes the responsibility of not abusing them. That's where law and regulation comes into play. They have to determine what constitutes abuse, and what to do in the case that a priveledge is abused. You may ask why they are the ones that determine that... and well its because we as the people kinda sorta gave them that power by voting them into power (for the most part). As further recognition of thier power and authority, we pay taxes to fund the decisions of the government.
Therefore there are two options for someone that doesn't agree with what the government is doing... vote their conscience at voting time (and recognize that if your opinion doesn't win out then that's just life)... or you can simply leave the country, thus showing your non-support by not paying the taxes.
On the other hand though, there are few other places I would rather live than in the US, regardless of the amount of government that exists. I am in no way in favor of big government, or big brother or anything, but I still recognize that the government has power and that if I want to remain a lawful citizen I should abide by the dictates of that government.
Just remember that its not about living in an ideal world here in the US... its just trying to produce peaceful co-existence.
This particularly deals with the argument against instancing. While I would agree that a wholesale implementation of instancing would likely become bland and tiresome after a while, a nice blend (such as that expected out of World of Warcraft and a few others still in the works) offers the best of both worlds in my opinion. However, one of his arguments against instancing is illustrated through the simulated conversation between the player (assumed noobie) and a developer. The author tries to make the point that making new friends = good and doing otherwise = bad. I (currently playing FFXI) sure as hell could care less about making new friends with the vast majority of the people that play with me... and yet I still manage to have plenty of fun and have a very diverse adventuring/questing experience even when not playing with my friends. Then again, maybe I'm just an exception to the rule or something... I am a Meyers-Brigg INTJ with a huge emphasis on the I (even scored "perfect" Introvert on two seperate occasions while under hypnosis... not sure if that skews the results though).
The way I see it the roads are public property. Thus you should expect minimal to no amount of privacy while using those roads. You basically waver your privacy on the road by opting for travel by X where X is not in the set of {on foot} U {private, non-licenseable vehicles (ie. bicycle, skateboard, scooter, etc...)}
Whatever is hidden in your car can stay hidden in your car.... as long as its not on my or "our" property. I don't trust anyone enough to simply presume that everyone is law abiding all the time. Thus it only makes sense that I allow myself to be open to public scrutiny at all times if it ensures that everyone else is too.
Do whatever the hell "you" want to do on private property AND out of the awareness of the public... the second "you" cross the line and demand privacy when amongst "us", "we" will assume that due to human nature "you" are obviously hiding something that "we" need to know about... it either isn't legal or safe for the rest of "us"... or both.
Just remember this little quick quip when addressing the issue of privacy. "We" are more important than "you". And if you don't like that "you" are always free to leave. Though... I'm not sure there exists ANY place where "you" are more important than "them".
We have a story about two relatively insignificant companies switching their infrastructure over to Linux
So are you saying that small-time businesses with little market influence should get any less attention from a support standpoint than bigger companies such as Amazon?
The article conveys to me that if you have enough money to initially invest in the training and staffing of Linux pros then you will eventually be cost effective. If you don't have that money though, what's to ensure that you're going to be successful let alone have return on investment. Unless you're lucky enough to have a Linux pro already staffed then you're pretty much screwed, simply because you'll be losing money on creating a solution that you may never get to work due to unfamiliarity.
Now I don't mean to bash Linux or anything, but in order for solutions to work well under Linux you have to have a handful of somewhat special people... and those special people are both in short supply and hired by the highest bidder more often than not. This leaves out the little man. Sure Windows costs a bunch out of the box, but the stark majority of IT professionals can get a windows box up and running much faster than a Linux box simply due to familiarity and general ease of use. Thus Windows will continue to have a large market share until Linux proliferates the education system enough to "drown out" Windows and generally becomes easier to use (ie. incredibly reduced selection of apps that perform exceedingly well and constitute a defacto usage standard on Linux environments as opposed to the vast selection of apps that currently exist on almost every distro where you have to pick and choose your own favorite app for x activity.... ugh).
As it stands Linux with all the usability perks that have been added by different distros is still a developer-centric OS. Until it becomes user-centric (yah right... like that'll ever happen... users = T3H 3V1L) I don't forsee any kind of sweeping overthrow of MS except in the area of high end servers where the company can afford an initial investment (ie. big companies).
Well... there's simply two kind of gamers out there.
The first, which I am and assume you are, marvel at the exerience a game has to offer. From the aural and visual wonders the game presents to how well it "sucks you in" to the environment making you temporarily forget that you're sitting in front of a computer and instead hacking away at zombies, aliens, evil marines, and other such enemies.
The second, which my best friend would be, view a game purely as a challenge of mastery. My friend has a fairly hoss machine by most standards, but only keeps the visual and audio quality high for the first few days where he is introducing himself with the game... or beating the singleplayer. Then he gets serious, stripping away all the fancy bells and whistles in order to get to the core of competition without any kind of distractions. This includes turning down resolutions, reducing color spectrum in some cases, using compressed textures when available... all in an effort to squeeze out as much performance possible (even after the point that more performance really won't make any difference). One technique in HL and most Quake based games that relies on such tweaking is the bunny hop. Without going into a whole lot of details you can generally say that the higher your fps the more successful you will be at bunny hopping (it gets easier in a way).
For those of us who could care less about bunny hopping or other performance related aspects of gaming, higher visual and aural quality will usually abound.
All in all, the gaming community seems to be divided somewhere down the middle on this kind of thing.
While I agree that the cloning option stifles any kind of exploratory drive for people moving to new software, I would disagree that learning something new is any kind of benifit in and of itself. If I were to learn "underwater basketweaving", which is just as foreign a concept to me as reading heiroglyphics, I daresay that I would not have benefitted in any way for having learned it. There has to be purpose behind learning something new that makes it beneficial.
Also you have to note that companies like Microsoft and Apple have spent years upon years doing interface useability/likeability research and have both come up with and refined their product. Essentially the FOSS community is so behind in doing their own independent research that they simply HAVE to rely on the research done by others as a starting place. The conclusions (and thus interface design) may end up different, but there will be so many similarities that it will seem like 'cloning' in most places. The only way to get away from the 'cloning' is to do your own independent research with existing research as a basis and years down the road we will finally see something that is sleek, usable, consistent, and yet noticably different from the other options.
Then of course there's the beast of familiarity. Even if years from now the FOSS has a dream interface it will still have to rival with the familiarity of the Windows and Apple platforms to existing users. You have to find some way to convince them to come out of their nice, cozy comfort zone. This means that in addition to a very refined interface standard, the FOSS has to remain better (power/efficiency/security wise) at doing job X than the other platforms.
It is not an impossible feat by any means, but it won't be a cakewalk either as it would likely mean some sort of consolidation of all the existing distros and applications where all functionality is dealt with comprehensively by a very small set of "standard" applications. BTW, application choice is often an interface problem that is often overlooked... and the "good" interface tends to defy the general feeling of most FOSS devs/supporters of "give me options and my ability to change them how I see fit"