I can understand how that would throw almost anyone off.
Oh, I can understand it too. I've gotten thrown off by people on slashdot and posted angry replies for much less. I'm human. After the fact and when I cool down, I always realize I could have handled it better and regret it.
His reply was...without inflamatory language
No, that's not true, and even he says so in his follow-up post. He goes on a tirade of accusations that the teacher had been "trained well" by her union which is apparently being bribed by microsoft. He apparently had some issues before with the NEA which made him angry enough to start making accusations.
The correct way to handle this was to simply tell her, "I can assure you nothing I'm doing is illegal. Here are some links to the license, some other links to introduce you to the concept of FOSS. I'll be glad to go over, in detail, any further concerns you might have." However, like I said, I understand that human beings sometimes can't help it when they're angry.
He did not use any four letter words, did not publish the teachers real name or ask for a real life DDoS on the competitor...
Although he didn't reveal her real name to us, but publishing the letter gave it enough publicity that her school probably knows about it. It won't exactly be humiliation-free. I grant you that this is mostly her own fault for acting without thinking in the first place, and I grant you that Starks could have handled the situation much, much worse than he actually did. However, he could also have handled it better.
...and did not make comments on offtopic points.
Except for the whole NEA and microsoft tirade, you mean?
I see way, WAY too many kids expected to do things that they don't have the developmental capability to do, and even more expected to know the potential consequences of actions before they happen.
Precisely. I think it's important to teach responsibility, and it's fair game to deny a replacement when there's been a warning, or when the treat / ice cream is spilled because of behavior you're want to discourage. In that case, the punishment is well deserved and there's a clear connection of action to consequences: "I told you not to jump up and down because you might spill it, and now you've spilled it." The lesson is clear.
On the other hand, it's also important to learn that when bad things happen, your life isn't over. The grandparent gave his "adult example" of driving irresponsibly and crashing, and he said that next time he's not going to just brush it off and perform the same irresponsible behavior again. However, notice he also didn't say, "oh, I wrecked my car, so I'm not going to get a new one." After you do something that has unintended consequences, you can't go back in time. You need to learn to accept the consequences, learn to avoid them in the future by changing your behavior, but without the need to punish yourself further.
Another conclusion can be to not believe an online blog like it's God's word. I've never actually seen a blog yet that was not one sided on the issues it cared about. This one especially screamed of flamebait, but I'm glad that they were able to open up communication channels and come to an understanding.
Actually, when I read the teacher's original e-mail, my first thought was that Ken Starks had been trolled. It's not that I don't think people can be ignorant of free software, it's that I the teacher had said she "experimented with Linux in college" which made it sound like somebody got greedy with their trolling, but Starks bit anyway.
His reaction was way over the top, but it's cool he calmed down and resumed discussion. Especially since it turned out to NOT be a troll, and that there was an actual teacher, who actually did confiscate frigging Linux CD's. In the end, looks like everyone gained something, even though all of this could have been avoided if the respective parties had kept their composure from the beginning: The teacher could have done a simple googling for linux before sending an inflamatory mail or, failing that, Starks could have not been an asshole with his original reply.
Your point is that accidents happen and we will give exemptions for them. In my household, accidents happen and you learn to be more careful so that they don't happen again.
No, my point is teaching that when you have an accident, you need to brush it off and try again. It's important to explain to them that the ice cream isn't free, that you're spending money, and to be careful. If the kid threw the ice cream on the ground, or was running around carrying the ice cream, that's another story, but kids have poor motor coordination. Accidents happen for no fault of their own.
If I'm buying a kid ice cream outside the house, and he accidentally drops it, I make him clean it up and buy another one. What you're doing is akin to telling you kid, "you fell off the bike. I'm not letting you ride anymore today" when you really should be teaching him to get back on the damn bike. No, if you make a mistake the lesson should be to think about what you did wrong, and then try again immediately after trying not to repeat that mistake without spending undue time thinking about how much the mistake hurt you. It has already happened, you can't change it, let's do it better this time.
Another poster who replied to me made a joke about making the kid pay for the second ice cream. He was joking and trying to make the opposite point, but I could actually get behind that. Kids who still drop ice cream are typically too young to have an allowance, but there's nothing stopping you from telling them to pay it back by doing some chore once you get back home. That's teaching responsibility: it's costing him something, but it's not dwelling on past mistakes.
It all started when he was a little kid and he dropped his ice cream. His mommy immediately gave him another one to make him quit crying.
To make him "quit" crying? If didn't assure your child that you would be getting him another ice cream immediately after he dropped his first one, you're a pretty goddamn horrible parent.
Look, I'm all about teaching responsibility and consequences of your actions, but why are you punishing a child for an accident? If the child purposefully dropped it you'd have a point, but if I dropped my ice cream, I'd get my wallet out and buy another one.
If you told your child to go to the person at the counter crying, and asking for another ice cream for free, that would be fostering entitlement. The correct thing to do here and say, "that was an accident, you dropped it. Accidents happen, but that's going to cost me money to replace it, so be more careful with the next one."
I believe he's saying that if, say, men could have the right to force (by court order) a pregnant girlfriend/spouse/whatever to get an abortion on his demand and expense (this right being based on the premise that it's his kid/DNA/whatever too, further based on equal rights to said kid/DNA/whatever, etc)... that the law would change in very short order to outlaw all abortions of convenience.
It's not what he said, and it wouldn't make sense. An abortion is a fairly painful procedure and the woman is the one that's going to have to go through it. Not only that, but if she wants the child, why should the father have the right to stop her from being a single mother?
What he said is that since women have the right to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me get an abortion" the man should be able to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me give up my rights and responsibilities as a father: she can't come to me for child support, and I can't request visitation rights or any such other thing."
Frankly, I think that's pretty fair. It takes two people to make a baby. If the man doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, he should wear a condom. If the woman doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, she should ensure her partner wears a condom or use some other form of birth control. Yes, birth control can fail, but if you're not willing to take that minimal risk, then don't have sex. There's no justification for a woman to force any responsibilities onto the father of an unplanned pregnancy: she had the ability to prevent the pregnancy all on her own, but was just as irresponsible as the father.
What I would like is a right for the father to prevent an abortion. If I got a woman pregnant and she doesn't want the baby, I don't think I have any legal recourse to stop her from having an abortion (and I don't really have any experience on the subject, so I could be wrong). In such a circumstance, I think she should be allowed to give up her responsibilities to the child once the child is born, and I would become the sole parent.
Basically, I'm pro-choice, but would never want a woman pregnant with my child to make that choice. I think it's a choice that should be made by both parents (except in a situation involving rape, of course).
It is sad that BASIC has fallen out of favor now. Complaints of bad code, lack of power, and old age have tarnished its good reputation with little real reason. Most of the complaints I hear stem from seeing BASIC code in environments where it simply doesn't make sense. As an educational tool, it's the perfect introduction.
I did my first programming in BASIC myself, and to tell you the truth, it's not that good as an education tool. You could do worse (like C...wonderful language to program in, horrible language to teach with), but it's not that great.
As a "perfect educational tool" I would go with Pascal. It was actually created for that purpose and it shows: the structure really encourages good programming practices.
If a "network administrator" told me I could not email all the faculty and staff at a university I was paying to attend concerning a change in university policy that affects everyone, I'd tell them to go piss up a rope, too.
I ended up reading the article because the comments were giving me diametrically opposed viewpoints of what's actually going on. Here's how I see it:
The network administrator didn't say that she couldn't email all the faculty and staff. According to the article and complaint, he informed her of the policy and told her how to obtain proper permissions in order to send the information to the faculty. At which point she "demanded" that charges be filed against her while assuring him that she would continue to bulk e-mail everyone.
Frankly, I think the contents of her e-mail are well-written and valid, and if she had been actually prevented from voicing her concerns, sending the e-mail anyway would have been a valid method of doing the right thing despite attempts at censorship. However, they didn't prevent her from sending the e-mail, they called her in and informed her of the proper procedure for sending such e-mails. She thought that acting hostile for no reason would give her the publicity of being charged and that this publicity would help her case.
Well, she's getting exactly the publicity that she wants, which sucks because it ends up validating her acting like an immature child. The bright side is that t also exemplifies the stupidity of prohibiting mass e-mailing the university staff. The proper way of handling internal spam is the same way you handle external spam. Once faculty reports it, the IT department filters it out. Once her dickish move stops working, and her e-mail no longer even reaches the faculty and staff, she'll have to resort to doing it properly.
Basically, they're both in the wrong. The university for trying to legislate spam control and the student for her attempt to get more people to listen to her plight through a publicity stunt instead of her arguments. Most people are apathetic to her cause and didn't give a shit, so she had to give them a different cause that they would care about. I'm sure she'll graduate and become a wonderful political advisor or fox news reporter.
Verifiability of sources, fact-checking, not publishing rumour or opinion as fact, at least some attempt at providing an unbiased view. Granted, this definition would exclude the tabloid press, and most of the US media too, while simultaneously including some of the more dedicated bloggers. That's no bad thing, I think.
I think that's the difference between responsible and irresponsible journalism. Like you said, most of the media is guilty of irresponsible journalism, but that doesn't stop them from getting the protections granted to the press.
Instead of trying to determine who is a journalist or who isn't, I'd rather just assume anyone disseminating information on current events is a journalist, regardless of their medium. As for irresponsible journalism, feel free to discredit all journalists guilty of it, bloggers or otherwise. We would all benefit from closer attention being paid to the sources of a story.
Government screws up everything it touches. Roads...
You actually think that you would have ANY TYPE of road system without the government? Private roads with tolls in places with enough traffic for there to be a profit. How do you GET there?
And if you just built roads leading to private roads, you'd never achieve something like the interstate system. The cost of investment is just too high for one company, and too expensive to travel over if you need to pay a different toll every time you get to a section owned by a different owner.
...military...
We should hire Blackwater to handle that stuff for us!
...mail...
When the hell hasn't the mail been both cheap and reliable? What's your beef with it?
I'm not advocating zero government here, but we need to be wary about giving the government more work to do on such basic services. The opportunities for corruption (intentional or due to negligence) are immense here.
I agree, but you picked the wrong examples there. You picked just the right services that I wouldn't want anybody BUT the government to provide (well, maybe not mail these days. At one point, it was quite necessary. You wouldn't have a private company delivering to a rural area).
where were you, when the term "Bushitler" was passed around?
Actually, that's the first time I've heard the term, so that may be a good question.
Face it, a mere allegation of any similarity with Hitler is a powerful assault and I don't remember much opposition to that before.
Valid similarities to Hitler's actions and policies are, of course, a powerful assault. Stuff like what you've posted are called "jokes." I won't bother to explain it, though...in the words of Saavik, "Humor. It is a difficult concept."
I have no idea why you didn't hear the opposition to comparisons of Bush with Hitler. They were there, and calls that the thread had been godwined were everywhere.
That's not to say that comparisons to Hitler are automatically invalid, but you need to justify the comparison with examples of the similar reprehensible actions. Not just any action that Hitler took, but the actions that caused him to be labeled "evil." Obviously Hitler took a shit every once in a while, but a comparison between you and Hitler because you also take a shit every once in a while doesn't tell anybody anything about what type of person you are. Other than admitting that Hitler was actually human, which is pretty offensive to the rest of us who are part of the same species, I suppose.
The point here was to simply remind, that Fascism and Socialism (whatever their merits) are no different from each other.
I know that's what you were trying to do, but my point was that not everything Hitler did or say was fascist or socialist just because he was pushing that agenda. So quoting him to make that point is an invalid argument.
In fact, Hitler's party was called "National Socialism Party". Thus pitching them as some sort of opposites is just that: a false dichotomy.
Oh please, that's called marketing. The Democratic Party call themselves democrats so the party can't POSSIBLY do anything undemocratic, huh? Google's motto is "do no evil" but that doesn't stop them from censoring web pages in China, right?
Well, honestly, what stronger evidence of something being Fascism can there be, than "Hitler said it"?
Ok, let me help you out. First, use the accepted definition of Fascism. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is a political philosophy that places the nation and/or race above the individual, with a centralized government, often a dictatorship, with strong control over social and economic aspects, and which forcefully supresses opposition.
Let's now take the accepted definition of a Socialism. According to Merriam-Webster that's a political philosophy that advocates collective or state ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods.
Let's examine one of your Hitler quotes, "We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class." That would obviously fall under Socialism, because the government is supplying the distribution of goods necessary to maintain the healthy middle class. That would not fall under fascism unless it is satisfy the other requirements, namely "silencing the opposition" and valuing the nation or race over the individuals. If "maintaining a healthy middle class" means confiscating every profit you make that place your worth above what is considered "middle class" that would fascism because it would be valuing the "good of the nation" over your rightfully earned money.
Also, this really doesn't need to be said, but I suspect you might bring it up. Confiscating your profits that place you over the middle-class does not mean you can't b
It's a logical fallacy to assume that an evil genocidal bastard like Hitler is incapable of saying or supporting anything that is good just because he is an evil genocidal bastard.
Some of stuff you quoted seems very logical to me, other stuff isn't. I'm definitely against nationalization of industries, but are you honestly going to tell me that we shouldn't prohibit child labor?
Argue against the points, individually, on their merits. Don't label it as fascism just because "Hitler said it."
Creative is still surviving because they were the standard back in the DOS days. People remember that if they didn't have a soundblaster, it just didn't work well with their games.
After serious issues with my own Audigy 2 I just realized that, honestly, the standard AC'97 on-board audio these days is most likely just as good, definitely more compatible with whatever operating system you use, and as advanced as you need an audio card to be (mine is 7.1 with digital out).
Once more people realize that, they're finally going to go bankrupt, and nothing of value will be lost.
...but you did a far better job of making him look foolish. Thank you:)
I wasn't going to bother replying to the above poster, but since you seem to think he validates your use of that statistic, I think I should reply to you.
There's a reason my original post claimed the chances of introducing a new bug were "just over zero" and not "exactly equal to zero." I knew somebody was going to reply with their anecdotal experience.
I was going to post a nasty reply to him for calling me a moron...
Try not to take internet insults that seriously. I have no idea who the hell you are, and I wasn't actually trying to insult you personally. If I offended you, I apologize, but that was my way of saying you made a really stupid mistake in your use of those statistics (before you get offended again, this time I'm saying that you made a stupid mistake, not that you're stupid). Let me explain:
What you did there is like taking a poll that says roughly 44% of people are republicans by sampling the entire US and then trying to use that statistic to determine how many people in California are republicans. Obviously, even though the poll was valid, it doesn't tell you anything about California, so you can't use it. Turns out that the overwhelming Democratic population of states like California is offset by the overwhelming republican population of states like South Carolina.
So 10-20 defects per 1000 lines of code is based on analyzing a lot of code, and you can expect it to be valid if you take a random sample of your program. However, you're likely to a much bigger number of defects per 1000 lines of complex code and a much smaller number of defects in simple code. That doesn't mean there will never be any bugs introduced in an About window, or a simple easter egg, in the same way that it doesn't mean that there are no democrats in South Carolina. I never tried to imply otherwise.
Just for fun I'm going to point out something else in his little example. It's only triggered if the user accesses the about box in the first place. That bug doesn't affect the program at all unless you go to the about box. The chances of a similar type of bug in an easter egg to affect an user is even smaller, because it would require the user to first find the Easter Egg. The chances of any other type of bug is also pretty small because, like the about window, the easter egg code doesn't typically really access or communicate with any operational part of your program. It would be pretty stupid to have one that does.
Not that it doesn't happen. I believe Microsoft had a bug in Outlook a long time ago that was related to an Easter Egg. I don't feel like looking it up right now. However, the chances are extremely small and can't be estimated by your quoted statistic.
The only real problem I have is there doesn't exist a modern journaling FS which would work just as well on all 3 platforms.
I agree with you that's really important. I'd also like zfs to be that filesystem. However, as long as you don't need that drive to be the root drive of your respective file system, you might be interested in some of these links:
I can use ext3, but cannot plug it into a Mac.
Give this a try. The latest news is that you get write support in Tiger, but I use it in Leopard without problems.
Also don't worry about the ext2 part. Ext3 is designed to be backwards compatible with ext2. It can be mounted as ext2 (it just won't get journaling)
You didn't ask for it, so you might already know about this windows driver. There are actually a couple out there, I think that one works the best (which is kind of unfortunate, because it's freeware, but proprietary).
I can use NTFS, but cannot write to it on a Mac.
Sure you can, same way you do it in Linux, through fuse and ntfs-3g.
I can use Mac's FS, but cannot plug it into Windows (unless I pay for a proprietary driver every time I use that disk on a different machine)
Yeah, you got me there. MacDrive works really well, but I'd like a non-proprietary version myself.
For a removable drive that you can plug in anywhere, I'd go with ntfs actually. No FAT size restrictions, no permissions (actually a plus for a removable drive), and most linux distributions come with ntfs-3g installed by default. That means you only have to install the driver in mac os x
which is the case with most Easter Eggs... if they're authorized, they're not Easter Eggs
What the hell are you talking about? The reason it's called an Easter Egg is because finding them requires the equivalent of an "egg hunt." It's undocumented for the user. The developing company isn't going through an egg hunt, what would be the point?
Take my favorite example of an Easter Egg. If you play the T2 Ultimate Edition DVD, select "Special Edition" at the menu, and then type in the the date of Judgement Day (82997), an "extended edition" option shows up, with more scenes that were cut and an alternate ending (the alternate ending sucks, some of the extra scenes are actually quite good). The option doesn't show up anywhere without going though this convoluted process, the feature is not in the insert...it's an easter egg, and I'm sure it was done with authorization.
I would agree that you shouldn't put anything in code that's not authorized by the company you're working for, but your assumption that an easter egg must be unauthorized is pretty weird. I have no idea where you got that from. The reason it's not an "undocumented feature" is because they're usually not features. They display a picture of the development team, it plays a theme song, they do something unrelated to the function of the software.
You're also evincing a complete lack of understanding of how end users perceive software. They don't want it to do anything but what it's supposed to do, and if it starts playing jokes on them they're likely to lose confidence in it.
ut to extend it to absurdity, if the nipple coloured ones were feed-forward and the white ones feed-back but you didn't know what colour they were (let's say you're wearing a blindfold!), the issue of trust in your MD is probably the more important factor.
An easter egg isn't something that is seen during normal operation of the program. You're suppose to do something that you wouldn't normally do, at a non-time critical junction. If you do such a thing by accident, nothing you were working on will break, and it's not going to trigger on a real-time task. You close the irrelevant window and move on. Most of us would be close the irrelevant window with a smile in our faces for breaking the routine.
Let me give your doctor analogy a try. It's like having a doctor that is usually all business all the time. Then one day you show up with an injury and mention that you got it while fishing. This "triggers" the easter egg: turns out your doctor is an ardent fisherman in his spare time, and he starts trading stories with you. All the while, he still does his doctoring job.
Most of us would consider that good bedside manners in our doctors. Those of us who don't care would change the subject (close the easter egg window, go back to work). I don't think any sane person would quit going to that doctor because he exchanged an unexpected friendly conversation with you, and perhaps a few jokes. Similarly, the conversation shouldn't hinder you from changing doctors if you find one that's better at his job.
I'd discourage actual functionality easter eggs too, in most programs. The industry average is estimated to be 10-20 defects per 1000 lines of code. Every non-essential line of code you write risks introducing a bug.
You're a moron for not understanding statistics. That may be true for a random sample, but if you're adding extremely simple code that just displays some type of notice or picture, and doesn't interact with any other aspect of the software (why would it?), then the chances of introducing a bug is just over zero.
When was the last time that you tracked down a bug in your software to the About box?
I'm 27 with 20/20 vision and I can't tell the difference really between HD and SD...There just isn't that much of a quality jump to make it super obvious.
I find that remark insane. The quality jump is most certainly high enough to make it super obvious. It's high enough that my ex-roommate and I gave up watching anything that wasn't available in HD once he got his HDTV. We simply couldn't stand watching anything else after getting used to HD.
I have a few explanations for the possible discrepancy people people like me and people like you:
You've seen really crappy HD sources. I've seen over-compressed crap coming from some cable channels. From the comments around here, comcast seems especially bad in that area.
You haven't seen HD in a really good HDTV. I've seen really crappy LCD's for sale at stores.
There's an actual genetic difference between people and their ability to detect that type of detail. Like some people can see the rainbow effect in DSP TV's, while others can't. The same roommate I mentioned above can detect flickering in frame rates high above what I can detect (the man could tell if a CRT was at 75Hz refresh rate because it annoyed him. I have that issue with 60Hz--like most people--but 75Hz is indistinguishable from anything above it for me).
I can most definately tell if what I'm watching is from a crappy VHS or from a DVD. That was obvious the first time I ever saw a movie on DVD...An HD source vs an SD source (to be fair, I'm talking about a movie or TV show... other kinds of content will be easier) gets a lot trickier.
The difference between HD content and SD content is FAR more dramatic than the difference between VHS and DVD. If you believe otherwise, you haven't seen a proper HD source, or a good HDTV.
Then again, the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between a DVD and VHS by the video quality. The reason DVD caught on was for its other advantages. No more rewinding, being able to skip directly to a scene, no degrading of quality after multiple viewings, etc.
Sure it does, but then they have to stop calling themselves atheists. Its like saying fire doesn't work for gasoline, just because if it works there isn't any gasoline left.
Look, I'm not a religious man, but I'm not beyond admitting that there are no benefits for some people. Whether or not your religion is "true", if it helps you kick an addiction, by all means believe in something.
However, the truly religious sometimes fail to understand that some people are completely incapable of having that type of faith. Trust me, if I really wanted to believe in God or other supernatural higher power, I'd be no more capable of doing it then you are capable of believing in the wizard Merlin if you really want to.
That's not something I need to be pitied for. I'm perfectly happy in my current state. However, it does mean that if I'm ever in need of a support structure for an addiction problem, I'll need a different strategy.
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I can understand how that would throw almost anyone off.
Oh, I can understand it too. I've gotten thrown off by people on slashdot and posted angry replies for much less. I'm human. After the fact and when I cool down, I always realize I could have handled it better and regret it.
His reply was...without inflamatory language
No, that's not true, and even he says so in his follow-up post. He goes on a tirade of accusations that the teacher had been "trained well" by her union which is apparently being bribed by microsoft. He apparently had some issues before with the NEA which made him angry enough to start making accusations.
The correct way to handle this was to simply tell her, "I can assure you nothing I'm doing is illegal. Here are some links to the license, some other links to introduce you to the concept of FOSS. I'll be glad to go over, in detail, any further concerns you might have." However, like I said, I understand that human beings sometimes can't help it when they're angry.
He did not use any four letter words, did not publish the teachers real name or ask for a real life DDoS on the competitor...
Although he didn't reveal her real name to us, but publishing the letter gave it enough publicity that her school probably knows about it. It won't exactly be humiliation-free. I grant you that this is mostly her own fault for acting without thinking in the first place, and I grant you that Starks could have handled the situation much, much worse than he actually did. However, he could also have handled it better.
...and did not make comments on offtopic points.
Except for the whole NEA and microsoft tirade, you mean?
I see way, WAY too many kids expected to do things that they don't have the developmental capability to do, and even more expected to know the potential consequences of actions before they happen.
Precisely. I think it's important to teach responsibility, and it's fair game to deny a replacement when there's been a warning, or when the treat / ice cream is spilled because of behavior you're want to discourage. In that case, the punishment is well deserved and there's a clear connection of action to consequences: "I told you not to jump up and down because you might spill it, and now you've spilled it." The lesson is clear.
On the other hand, it's also important to learn that when bad things happen, your life isn't over. The grandparent gave his "adult example" of driving irresponsibly and crashing, and he said that next time he's not going to just brush it off and perform the same irresponsible behavior again. However, notice he also didn't say, "oh, I wrecked my car, so I'm not going to get a new one." After you do something that has unintended consequences, you can't go back in time. You need to learn to accept the consequences, learn to avoid them in the future by changing your behavior, but without the need to punish yourself further.
Another conclusion can be to not believe an online blog like it's God's word. I've never actually seen a blog yet that was not one sided on the issues it cared about. This one especially screamed of flamebait, but I'm glad that they were able to open up communication channels and come to an understanding.
Actually, when I read the teacher's original e-mail, my first thought was that Ken Starks had been trolled. It's not that I don't think people can be ignorant of free software, it's that I the teacher had said she "experimented with Linux in college" which made it sound like somebody got greedy with their trolling, but Starks bit anyway.
His reaction was way over the top, but it's cool he calmed down and resumed discussion. Especially since it turned out to NOT be a troll, and that there was an actual teacher, who actually did confiscate frigging Linux CD's. In the end, looks like everyone gained something, even though all of this could have been avoided if the respective parties had kept their composure from the beginning: The teacher could have done a simple googling for linux before sending an inflamatory mail or, failing that, Starks could have not been an asshole with his original reply.
Your point is that accidents happen and we will give exemptions for them. In my household, accidents happen and you learn to be more careful so that they don't happen again.
No, my point is teaching that when you have an accident, you need to brush it off and try again. It's important to explain to them that the ice cream isn't free, that you're spending money, and to be careful. If the kid threw the ice cream on the ground, or was running around carrying the ice cream, that's another story, but kids have poor motor coordination. Accidents happen for no fault of their own.
If I'm buying a kid ice cream outside the house, and he accidentally drops it, I make him clean it up and buy another one. What you're doing is akin to telling you kid, "you fell off the bike. I'm not letting you ride anymore today" when you really should be teaching him to get back on the damn bike. No, if you make a mistake the lesson should be to think about what you did wrong, and then try again immediately after trying not to repeat that mistake without spending undue time thinking about how much the mistake hurt you. It has already happened, you can't change it, let's do it better this time.
Another poster who replied to me made a joke about making the kid pay for the second ice cream. He was joking and trying to make the opposite point, but I could actually get behind that. Kids who still drop ice cream are typically too young to have an allowance, but there's nothing stopping you from telling them to pay it back by doing some chore once you get back home. That's teaching responsibility: it's costing him something, but it's not dwelling on past mistakes.
It all started when he was a little kid and he dropped his ice cream. His mommy immediately gave him another one to make him quit crying.
To make him "quit" crying? If didn't assure your child that you would be getting him another ice cream immediately after he dropped his first one, you're a pretty goddamn horrible parent.
Look, I'm all about teaching responsibility and consequences of your actions, but why are you punishing a child for an accident? If the child purposefully dropped it you'd have a point, but if I dropped my ice cream, I'd get my wallet out and buy another one.
If you told your child to go to the person at the counter crying, and asking for another ice cream for free, that would be fostering entitlement. The correct thing to do here and say, "that was an accident, you dropped it. Accidents happen, but that's going to cost me money to replace it, so be more careful with the next one."
I believe he's saying that if, say, men could have the right to force (by court order) a pregnant girlfriend/spouse/whatever to get an abortion on his demand and expense (this right being based on the premise that it's his kid/DNA/whatever too, further based on equal rights to said kid/DNA/whatever, etc)... that the law would change in very short order to outlaw all abortions of convenience.
It's not what he said, and it wouldn't make sense. An abortion is a fairly painful procedure and the woman is the one that's going to have to go through it. Not only that, but if she wants the child, why should the father have the right to stop her from being a single mother?
What he said is that since women have the right to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me get an abortion" the man should be able to say, "I don't want the responsibility of a baby right now, let me give up my rights and responsibilities as a father: she can't come to me for child support, and I can't request visitation rights or any such other thing."
Frankly, I think that's pretty fair. It takes two people to make a baby. If the man doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, he should wear a condom. If the woman doesn't want to risk a pregnancy, she should ensure her partner wears a condom or use some other form of birth control. Yes, birth control can fail, but if you're not willing to take that minimal risk, then don't have sex. There's no justification for a woman to force any responsibilities onto the father of an unplanned pregnancy: she had the ability to prevent the pregnancy all on her own, but was just as irresponsible as the father.
What I would like is a right for the father to prevent an abortion. If I got a woman pregnant and she doesn't want the baby, I don't think I have any legal recourse to stop her from having an abortion (and I don't really have any experience on the subject, so I could be wrong). In such a circumstance, I think she should be allowed to give up her responsibilities to the child once the child is born, and I would become the sole parent.
Basically, I'm pro-choice, but would never want a woman pregnant with my child to make that choice. I think it's a choice that should be made by both parents (except in a situation involving rape, of course).
It is sad that BASIC has fallen out of favor now. Complaints of bad code, lack of power, and old age have tarnished its good reputation with little real reason. Most of the complaints I hear stem from seeing BASIC code in environments where it simply doesn't make sense. As an educational tool, it's the perfect introduction.
I did my first programming in BASIC myself, and to tell you the truth, it's not that good as an education tool. You could do worse (like C...wonderful language to program in, horrible language to teach with), but it's not that great.
As a "perfect educational tool" I would go with Pascal. It was actually created for that purpose and it shows: the structure really encourages good programming practices.
That would be NCC 1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D. Or even E.
If a "network administrator" told me I could not email all the faculty and staff at a university I was paying to attend concerning a change in university policy that affects everyone, I'd tell them to go piss up a rope, too.
I ended up reading the article because the comments were giving me diametrically opposed viewpoints of what's actually going on. Here's how I see it:
The network administrator didn't say that she couldn't email all the faculty and staff. According to the article and complaint, he informed her of the policy and told her how to obtain proper permissions in order to send the information to the faculty. At which point she "demanded" that charges be filed against her while assuring him that she would continue to bulk e-mail everyone.
Frankly, I think the contents of her e-mail are well-written and valid, and if she had been actually prevented from voicing her concerns, sending the e-mail anyway would have been a valid method of doing the right thing despite attempts at censorship. However, they didn't prevent her from sending the e-mail, they called her in and informed her of the proper procedure for sending such e-mails. She thought that acting hostile for no reason would give her the publicity of being charged and that this publicity would help her case.
Well, she's getting exactly the publicity that she wants, which sucks because it ends up validating her acting like an immature child. The bright side is that t also exemplifies the stupidity of prohibiting mass e-mailing the university staff. The proper way of handling internal spam is the same way you handle external spam. Once faculty reports it, the IT department filters it out. Once her dickish move stops working, and her e-mail no longer even reaches the faculty and staff, she'll have to resort to doing it properly.
Basically, they're both in the wrong. The university for trying to legislate spam control and the student for her attempt to get more people to listen to her plight through a publicity stunt instead of her arguments. Most people are apathetic to her cause and didn't give a shit, so she had to give them a different cause that they would care about. I'm sure she'll graduate and become a wonderful political advisor or fox news reporter.
Verifiability of sources, fact-checking, not publishing rumour or opinion as fact, at least some attempt at providing an unbiased view. Granted, this definition would exclude the tabloid press, and most of the US media too, while simultaneously including some of the more dedicated bloggers. That's no bad thing, I think.
I think that's the difference between responsible and irresponsible journalism. Like you said, most of the media is guilty of irresponsible journalism, but that doesn't stop them from getting the protections granted to the press.
Instead of trying to determine who is a journalist or who isn't, I'd rather just assume anyone disseminating information on current events is a journalist, regardless of their medium. As for irresponsible journalism, feel free to discredit all journalists guilty of it, bloggers or otherwise. We would all benefit from closer attention being paid to the sources of a story.
Calling someone a journalist just because they write a blog does not make them a journalist...
Enlighten us. Just what makes somebody a journalist?
Government screws up everything it touches. Roads...
You actually think that you would have ANY TYPE of road system without the government? Private roads with tolls in places with enough traffic for there to be a profit. How do you GET there?
And if you just built roads leading to private roads, you'd never achieve something like the interstate system. The cost of investment is just too high for one company, and too expensive to travel over if you need to pay a different toll every time you get to a section owned by a different owner.
...military...
We should hire Blackwater to handle that stuff for us!
...mail...
When the hell hasn't the mail been both cheap and reliable? What's your beef with it?
I'm not advocating zero government here, but we need to be wary about giving the government more work to do on such basic services. The opportunities for corruption (intentional or due to negligence) are immense here.
I agree, but you picked the wrong examples there. You picked just the right services that I wouldn't want anybody BUT the government to provide (well, maybe not mail these days. At one point, it was quite necessary. You wouldn't have a private company delivering to a rural area).
where were you, when the term "Bushitler" was passed around?
Actually, that's the first time I've heard the term, so that may be a good question.
Face it, a mere allegation of any similarity with Hitler is a powerful assault and I don't remember much opposition to that before.
Valid similarities to Hitler's actions and policies are, of course, a powerful assault. Stuff like what you've posted are called "jokes." I won't bother to explain it, though...in the words of Saavik, "Humor. It is a difficult concept."
I have no idea why you didn't hear the opposition to comparisons of Bush with Hitler. They were there, and calls that the thread had been godwined were everywhere.
That's not to say that comparisons to Hitler are automatically invalid, but you need to justify the comparison with examples of the similar reprehensible actions. Not just any action that Hitler took, but the actions that caused him to be labeled "evil." Obviously Hitler took a shit every once in a while, but a comparison between you and Hitler because you also take a shit every once in a while doesn't tell anybody anything about what type of person you are. Other than admitting that Hitler was actually human, which is pretty offensive to the rest of us who are part of the same species, I suppose.
The point here was to simply remind, that Fascism and Socialism (whatever their merits) are no different from each other.
I know that's what you were trying to do, but my point was that not everything Hitler did or say was fascist or socialist just because he was pushing that agenda. So quoting him to make that point is an invalid argument.
In fact, Hitler's party was called "National Socialism Party". Thus pitching them as some sort of opposites is just that: a false dichotomy.
Oh please, that's called marketing. The Democratic Party call themselves democrats so the party can't POSSIBLY do anything undemocratic, huh? Google's motto is "do no evil" but that doesn't stop them from censoring web pages in China, right?
Well, honestly, what stronger evidence of something being Fascism can there be, than "Hitler said it"?
Ok, let me help you out. First, use the accepted definition of Fascism. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is a political philosophy that places the nation and/or race above the individual, with a centralized government, often a dictatorship, with strong control over social and economic aspects, and which forcefully supresses opposition.
Let's now take the accepted definition of a Socialism. According to Merriam-Webster that's a political philosophy that advocates collective or state ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods.
Let's examine one of your Hitler quotes, "We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class." That would obviously fall under Socialism, because the government is supplying the distribution of goods necessary to maintain the healthy middle class. That would not fall under fascism unless it is satisfy the other requirements, namely "silencing the opposition" and valuing the nation or race over the individuals. If "maintaining a healthy middle class" means confiscating every profit you make that place your worth above what is considered "middle class" that would fascism because it would be valuing the "good of the nation" over your rightfully earned money.
Also, this really doesn't need to be said, but I suspect you might bring it up. Confiscating your profits that place you over the middle-class does not mean you can't b
It's a logical fallacy to assume that an evil genocidal bastard like Hitler is incapable of saying or supporting anything that is good just because he is an evil genocidal bastard.
Some of stuff you quoted seems very logical to me, other stuff isn't. I'm definitely against nationalization of industries, but are you honestly going to tell me that we shouldn't prohibit child labor?
Argue against the points, individually, on their merits. Don't label it as fascism just because "Hitler said it."
Creative is still surviving because they were the standard back in the DOS days. People remember that if they didn't have a soundblaster, it just didn't work well with their games.
After serious issues with my own Audigy 2 I just realized that, honestly, the standard AC'97 on-board audio these days is most likely just as good, definitely more compatible with whatever operating system you use, and as advanced as you need an audio card to be (mine is 7.1 with digital out).
Once more people realize that, they're finally going to go bankrupt, and nothing of value will be lost.
...but you did a far better job of making him look foolish. Thank you :)
I wasn't going to bother replying to the above poster, but since you seem to think he validates your use of that statistic, I think I should reply to you.
There's a reason my original post claimed the chances of introducing a new bug were "just over zero" and not "exactly equal to zero." I knew somebody was going to reply with their anecdotal experience.
I was going to post a nasty reply to him for calling me a moron...
Try not to take internet insults that seriously. I have no idea who the hell you are, and I wasn't actually trying to insult you personally. If I offended you, I apologize, but that was my way of saying you made a really stupid mistake in your use of those statistics (before you get offended again, this time I'm saying that you made a stupid mistake, not that you're stupid). Let me explain:
What you did there is like taking a poll that says roughly 44% of people are republicans by sampling the entire US and then trying to use that statistic to determine how many people in California are republicans. Obviously, even though the poll was valid, it doesn't tell you anything about California, so you can't use it. Turns out that the overwhelming Democratic population of states like California is offset by the overwhelming republican population of states like South Carolina.
So 10-20 defects per 1000 lines of code is based on analyzing a lot of code, and you can expect it to be valid if you take a random sample of your program. However, you're likely to a much bigger number of defects per 1000 lines of complex code and a much smaller number of defects in simple code. That doesn't mean there will never be any bugs introduced in an About window, or a simple easter egg, in the same way that it doesn't mean that there are no democrats in South Carolina. I never tried to imply otherwise.
Just for fun I'm going to point out something else in his little example. It's only triggered if the user accesses the about box in the first place. That bug doesn't affect the program at all unless you go to the about box. The chances of a similar type of bug in an easter egg to affect an user is even smaller, because it would require the user to first find the Easter Egg. The chances of any other type of bug is also pretty small because, like the about window, the easter egg code doesn't typically really access or communicate with any operational part of your program. It would be pretty stupid to have one that does.
Not that it doesn't happen. I believe Microsoft had a bug in Outlook a long time ago that was related to an Easter Egg. I don't feel like looking it up right now. However, the chances are extremely small and can't be estimated by your quoted statistic.
The only real problem I have is there doesn't exist a modern journaling FS which would work just as well on all 3 platforms.
I agree with you that's really important. I'd also like zfs to be that filesystem. However, as long as you don't need that drive to be the root drive of your respective file system, you might be interested in some of these links:
I can use ext3, but cannot plug it into a Mac.
Give this a try. The latest news is that you get write support in Tiger, but I use it in Leopard without problems.
Also don't worry about the ext2 part. Ext3 is designed to be backwards compatible with ext2. It can be mounted as ext2 (it just won't get journaling)
You didn't ask for it, so you might already know about this windows driver. There are actually a couple out there, I think that one works the best (which is kind of unfortunate, because it's freeware, but proprietary).
I can use NTFS, but cannot write to it on a Mac.
Sure you can, same way you do it in Linux, through fuse and ntfs-3g.
I can use Mac's FS, but cannot plug it into Windows (unless I pay for a proprietary driver every time I use that disk on a different machine)
Yeah, you got me there. MacDrive works really well, but I'd like a non-proprietary version myself.
For a removable drive that you can plug in anywhere, I'd go with ntfs actually. No FAT size restrictions, no permissions (actually a plus for a removable drive), and most linux distributions come with ntfs-3g installed by default. That means you only have to install the driver in mac os x
which is the case with most Easter Eggs ... if they're authorized, they're not Easter Eggs
What the hell are you talking about? The reason it's called an Easter Egg is because finding them requires the equivalent of an "egg hunt." It's undocumented for the user. The developing company isn't going through an egg hunt, what would be the point?
Take my favorite example of an Easter Egg. If you play the T2 Ultimate Edition DVD, select "Special Edition" at the menu, and then type in the the date of Judgement Day (82997), an "extended edition" option shows up, with more scenes that were cut and an alternate ending (the alternate ending sucks, some of the extra scenes are actually quite good). The option doesn't show up anywhere without going though this convoluted process, the feature is not in the insert...it's an easter egg, and I'm sure it was done with authorization.
I would agree that you shouldn't put anything in code that's not authorized by the company you're working for, but your assumption that an easter egg must be unauthorized is pretty weird. I have no idea where you got that from. The reason it's not an "undocumented feature" is because they're usually not features. They display a picture of the development team, it plays a theme song, they do something unrelated to the function of the software.
You're also evincing a complete lack of understanding of how end users perceive software. They don't want it to do anything but what it's supposed to do, and if it starts playing jokes on them they're likely to lose confidence in it.
Yeah. NOBODY uses MS Office or other Microsoft products. They've lost confidence in the damn thing.
ut to extend it to absurdity, if the nipple coloured ones were feed-forward and the white ones feed-back but you didn't know what colour they were (let's say you're wearing a blindfold!), the issue of trust in your MD is probably the more important factor.
An easter egg isn't something that is seen during normal operation of the program. You're suppose to do something that you wouldn't normally do, at a non-time critical junction. If you do such a thing by accident, nothing you were working on will break, and it's not going to trigger on a real-time task. You close the irrelevant window and move on. Most of us would be close the irrelevant window with a smile in our faces for breaking the routine.
Let me give your doctor analogy a try. It's like having a doctor that is usually all business all the time. Then one day you show up with an injury and mention that you got it while fishing. This "triggers" the easter egg: turns out your doctor is an ardent fisherman in his spare time, and he starts trading stories with you. All the while, he still does his doctoring job.
Most of us would consider that good bedside manners in our doctors. Those of us who don't care would change the subject (close the easter egg window, go back to work). I don't think any sane person would quit going to that doctor because he exchanged an unexpected friendly conversation with you, and perhaps a few jokes. Similarly, the conversation shouldn't hinder you from changing doctors if you find one that's better at his job.
when putting =GAME("Star Wars") in any cell actually displays the text "say what?".
Remove the space. Should be =Game("StarWars")
I'd discourage actual functionality easter eggs too, in most programs. The industry average is estimated to be 10-20 defects per 1000 lines of code. Every non-essential line of code you write risks introducing a bug.
You're a moron for not understanding statistics. That may be true for a random sample, but if you're adding extremely simple code that just displays some type of notice or picture, and doesn't interact with any other aspect of the software (why would it?), then the chances of introducing a bug is just over zero.
When was the last time that you tracked down a bug in your software to the About box?
I really want to kill you now just to see your system in action!
I wonder if your post is going to now be included among his other death threats on the next CD he sends to his attorney :)
I'm 27 with 20/20 vision and I can't tell the difference really between HD and SD...There just isn't that much of a quality jump to make it super obvious.
I find that remark insane. The quality jump is most certainly high enough to make it super obvious. It's high enough that my ex-roommate and I gave up watching anything that wasn't available in HD once he got his HDTV. We simply couldn't stand watching anything else after getting used to HD.
I have a few explanations for the possible discrepancy people people like me and people like you:
I can most definately tell if what I'm watching is from a crappy VHS or from a DVD. That was obvious the first time I ever saw a movie on DVD...An HD source vs an SD source (to be fair, I'm talking about a movie or TV show... other kinds of content will be easier) gets a lot trickier.
The difference between HD content and SD content is FAR more dramatic than the difference between VHS and DVD. If you believe otherwise, you haven't seen a proper HD source, or a good HDTV.
Then again, the vast majority of people can't tell the difference between a DVD and VHS by the video quality. The reason DVD caught on was for its other advantages. No more rewinding, being able to skip directly to a scene, no degrading of quality after multiple viewings, etc.
Sure it does, but then they have to stop calling themselves atheists. Its like saying fire doesn't work for gasoline, just because if it works there isn't any gasoline left.
Look, I'm not a religious man, but I'm not beyond admitting that there are no benefits for some people. Whether or not your religion is "true", if it helps you kick an addiction, by all means believe in something.
However, the truly religious sometimes fail to understand that some people are completely incapable of having that type of faith. Trust me, if I really wanted to believe in God or other supernatural higher power, I'd be no more capable of doing it then you are capable of believing in the wizard Merlin if you really want to.
That's not something I need to be pitied for. I'm perfectly happy in my current state. However, it does mean that if I'm ever in need of a support structure for an addiction problem, I'll need a different strategy.