Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on slashdot? Come on - to know stuff like this, I would have had to do some sort of research. Me, I'm beyond that! Hell, I didn't even read the article, but look at me posting... I'm unstoppable!
On a slightly unrelated topic, stop moderating my parent post as funny! It's insightful! Insightful goddamit! Jeez people - I give you gold...
Now, as everyone has pointed out, just about anything on the internet will qualify as prior art. Seriously - pick any random common service that runs over the internet, and it's prior art. However, people are missing the deep point behind this move:
1) Borrow Skype stock. Sell it. 2) Sue Skype. Skype stock goes down 3) Buy Skype stock at low price (as much as you can). Return the stock you borrowed, keep the rest. 4) Get bitchslapped in court. Skype stock goes up. 5) Sell Skype stock at high price. 6) Profit!!
Notice the lack of the ??? step... this is foolproof. Hell, I should go sue someone for something - it doesn't even matter what, the way the market works all you need is a little publicity for your lawsuit, and you're golden!
Technically, it's more like proving P != NP, since that's the current accepted belief. Proving P=NP would be huge - this would give polynomial time algorithms for Travelling Salesman Problem, Boolean Satisiability Problem, and a slew of others (that all reduce to each other in polynomial time). Proving P != NP pretty much confirms what everyone believes to be true, similar to how the Poincaire conjecture was generally accepted to be true. Still, this is a major result, and clearly falls under the "News for nerds, stuff that matters" heading.
I agree with everything you say, except for the basic premise that this is the reason that our education is bad. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
1) As a Russian who also moved to Canada, I agree with a lot of what you say. As I graduate from the University of Waterloo this summer, I still don't think I ever worked as hard at any level of schhol as I did in grade 1 in Russia. I moved 3/4 through grade 1, but continued to study math with my parents until grade 5, which lasted me through most of highschool. 2) Education as it is structured in Russia and China is aimed at allowing the elite to develop as fast and as well as humanly possible. This, however is not necessarily a good thing. As you mentioned, those who do badly in school are looked upon as "failures". This is not particularly fair to these children, especially since we need many more construction/office/sales people than university professors. 3) Education where classes are not separated by ability is always a compromise: if you set the difficulty level at the average student, the bright ones will be bored with school. If you set the level to cater to bright students, most of the class will struggle, which is unnecessary when many of these students will not need strong math/science skills in their future vocations. In short, American/Canadian system leaves the kids with a worse education, but it also leaves them with a higher self esteem and in the end turns out happier people. 4) There are several ways to solve this problem. a) One is external to education system: if somehow we can make science cool, then the kids will want to learn, while at the same time not hurting their self esteem if they don't do too well - you can be good at science, or basketball, or music, and any one of these will make you "cool". b) Another way to solve this problem is to separate the classes by ability. This way the "gifted" students will have work set at their level. This can be done either by some sort of testing as it is now, or it can be done as in Germany, where the school at some point splits up into several streams - one for students who want to go to university and one for ones who do not. 5) From what I saw at UW, which is the best school in canada in terms of computer science education, and one of the best in north america, the truly bright kids do alright for themselves even with the bad education throughout highschool. They keep their minds sharp with hobbies, and are still able to do well in university and jobs. We have a *lot* of extremely hard working chinese students, many from china, but I would not say that they dominate here in terms of marks, so all is not so bad.
At the end of the day, I don't believe it's fair to children to tie their self esteem and popularity to their marks anymore than it's fair to tie them to their success in sports - we just don't need *that* many university professors. Yes, the ability to think critically should be encouraged, but it's not as cut and dry as "make school 8 times harder". Yes, for most of university i've felt that school would be a lot more fun for me if it was catered to a group of about 30 students or so from my year that took advanced math courses, theortical computer science courses etc. At the same time, the students themselves and their parents bear some responsibility for developing their talents, and trying to cater to the elite will create a society of people with inferiority complexes.
That last point is key, but not because cops will just say "screw it". No, the cops will be told to ignore the laws. That's the only way a government can really control its people - you can't control a man who has commited no crime. However, you make enough laws and suddenly you have dirt on everyone, but it doesn't seem that oppressive because the laws are only enforced against a select few. Think Yukos in Russia as an example - it had taxes due that were completely unreasonable (at some point higher than actual profits). However, those taxes weren't called in until the owner decided to go into politics - then Yukos and the man got ruined. That's how government can have true power.
Heh, nice. Interestingly enough, for a couple weeks now in southern ontario we've been hovering about 0 C, which *is* very warm for this time of the year. If we don't hit another cold spell, this will be the warmest winter I can remember.
Because 95% of the people (myself included) run windows. This is nothing like the.com and.net scammers, since it's not asking you to pay for anything, and it's officially endorsed by the suprnova.org team (sloncek). Once (if) this network is good, i'm sure linux clients and exeem lite clones will appear. This could be a great new p2p application, and to dismiss it because it doesn't support linux is pretty short-sighted.
p.s. Suprnova.org was also ad-driven. I'm going to wait and see how they implement these ads before i make a judgment. Hell, the free version of Opera has banner adds.
This seems to be another great release, but I think that the Qute theme was far superiour to this current one. Qute items were very sharp - these new bright green and blue items on the other hand remind me why I often dislike the look of open source programs. I'm wondering if Qute will be avaiable for download separately?
I hate to say this, but he's right. I've tried to switch to linux several times, but in the end i just ended up going back to XP. Most of the tools I need from linux I can get from cygwin, and as the parent said, XP works well enough for most users.
A point that most linux advocates seem to miss is that most windows software is pirated. As such, the fact that linux software is free is irrelevant. I can run Gimp, which is free, or I can run Photoshop, which is also free. Until the Linux applications (not the OS, applications!) beat their commerical counterparts on their own merits, linux will not be adopted on the desktop.
Keep in mind that the general economic rule for a new product to be adapted is that it has to be 10x better than the old widespread alternative. Linux is just not there yet
While I wouldn't say that "most modern terrorism is due to US foreign policy", I definitely agree that much of the hostility towards the US is due to US foreign policy and culture. I will now quote Neal Stephenson's exellent thoughts on the subject:
"It is obvious, to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords, multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or "honoring diversity" or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing) that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this or that set of qualities.
The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern culture. This is the fundamental message of television; it is the message that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long enough. It comes through as the presumption that all authority figures--teachers, generals, cops, ministers, politicians--are hypocritical buffoons, and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.
The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there's no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. When their sons come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways, the dads go out of their minds.
The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less likely--and that is actually a pretty good thing!"
Neal Stephenson, In The Beginning Was The Command Line. If you haven't yet, read this essay - it is long but extremely insightful and covers a lot of different (seemingly unrelated) things.
Well, they didn't really specify what kind of studies they will be running, so we can only guess. However, they may not include Outlook/IE in their studies, and they have every right to do so. Every company uses these products of their own accord - they could just as easily chose to use Mozilla/Lotus Notes instead.
The only scenario where Microsoft would need to include analysis of the viral damage is if they make an argument citing the lack of an outlook equivalent in the open source as an advantage for Windows.
Also, it's possible that Outlook is so critical for companies, that even with the viral damages sticking with it might still be better than switching to linux. It's one of the only programs that doesn't have a solid OSS counterpart. However, if Microsoft bases their studies on this, the viral damage should be clearly shown. Will it? Probably not, but we'll see. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Umm, that's not conformist behaviour. Conformist behaviour would be if the boss started wearing ties and then everyone else in the department started doing the same to immitate him. Here the boss requested that everyone wears ties. While you may have something against this request, doing what the boss said isn't conformity. Furthermore, i doubt you're scoring points with the management this way - refusing fairly trivial requests.
On the other hand, the secretary was still a bitch for being so uptight about it - it's not really her job to check what you're wearing.
Outstanding post. The key metaphor here is "thought children". This may not be completely new, but it's new to me. And it's very accurate too - just like your rights over your children are not absolute, your rights over your creations should not be absolute either. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Just like you have control over your children when they are young, you'd have control over your creations too. And they kids leaving home is analogous to the copyrights running out. The point is, they creations wouldn't be *just property* - they'd be a part of the world now.
Well most of my friends are pretty tech savvy, so even though they might not know linux, they're not exactly representative of the general population.
I also realize that linux is not windows. However, I do think there's a problem when a person like me has a ton of trouble figuring out how to work linux. I was forced to learn linux when i was given a coop job of a linux administrator. At the time i knew nothing, so i had to learn pretty quick. I realize that it might have been an easier transition if I had time to just use linux for a while and adjust. And it didn't help that our company was using slackware - not the most userfriendly distro. I still think that the learning curve is too steep though.
I'm not sure why your dad had such problems with win2k. From all i've seen so far, win2k and winXP are very good operating systems. I have winXP professional as my main system right now, mostly because I like games and it does what I want. It's stable enough to run without crashing for weeks, and the viruses can mostly be avoided by not using outlook and administering it properly. My point is, that windows is now good enough that people who switch to linux will either do it for the principles of open source, or because it's actually *better* than windows. I don't think linux is better than windows right now - it's better for some things, but as a OS for the home it's not there yet. This distro makes a step in the right direction, and props to them for doing so.
No. Stupid people should not be allowed to use computers
You are confusing "stupid" and "does not know linux". Get a clue - most people *don't* know linux. They know windows. They know what a program is and how to use it and they know how to install programs on windows. Most people I know are aware of the lower level things too such as the dll's and the registry, and are generally able to troubleshoot problems when they arise.
Now what this distribution is doing is it's making the learning curve when moving to linux a *lot* gentler. Making something intuitive != dumbing it down. It just makes it so that a person can learn by installing and looking around, and doesn't need to know what ld.so.conf is right away.
When I started in linux, most of my problems could be solved by one line commands. Things like "to get sound to work, type in modprobe emu10k1". It wasn't me being stupid, it was me expecting the computer to work in a certain way, in this case to detect my hardware. I'm guessing that most people switching to linux have similar problems, and the easier we make the system to understand, the better linux will be for it.
No-one seems to have mentioned this yet, but school is not there to give you an education (at least not in Canada). I mean, if it was, it's pretty pathetic - we didn't really have to do *anything* until our final year.
School, in Canada, is used to develop study habits. That is why the material is so easy that anyone could do it. That's also why so much emphasis is put on homework, and so little on exams (the true test of whether you know your stuff).
With that in mind, the constant checking is *not* a good thing! The student must learn to force himself to study, instead of studying because he's being pushed to do so by his parents. What this new way will achieve, is that when students get to university, they will slack off because they've never developed the needed willpower and self-organization to get all the work done. That's *kind of* what's happening to me, though i just didn't do the schoolwork 'cause i found it too easy, and was still able to get good marks.
I think the old system of having 4 report cards is in fact optimal. It allows the parents to know the student's marks, but leaves earning those marks to the student. Knowing the marks after a term the parents can still control the student (for example, if my sister doesn't maintain an 80+ average, she will be pulled out of her ballet class). However, the student will still be able to learn the necessary skills (and trust me, those skills are *not* simply knowledge of calculus).
Exactly! And that's the reason why linux isn't gonna replace Windows on the desktop in the near future. Coding is fun, debugging/customer support isn't. Thus most of the open source projects never get to the same point as their closed counterparts - there just isn't the same motivation to get that last 10% of the work done (which as we know takes up 90% of the time =).
Now here comes the best part: windows IS free. Or it's free for anyone who isn't using it commercially. Just about everyone I know has a pirated version of windows, and i really don't think that Microsoft is concerned with this. Thus, Linux has no advantage in price, so it has to beat windows in quality. Now there will be many replies saying that it's not very hard, but guess what - Windows 2k/XP is a very solid operating system. It's a bit of a memory hog, but it crashes very rarely, which is all I need.
The software for windows is often more polished and more complete than it's linux counterparts. As a result, Linux will lag behind Windows on the desktop for years to come.
Before I get flamed, a disclaimer: I *like* Linux. I like many things about it. I've used it in my work, and i've tried several times to make it my primary OS. However, i've gone back to windows because in Linux things just take a lot longer to set up and use.
Interestingly enough, as bloated as WMP is supposed to be, it still takes up far less memory than mplayer2. I've just tested this out, and WMP took up only 8,800 K of memory as compared to mplayer2 which took 35,500 when playing a 700mb divx movie. This is physical memory usage - the CPU and VM usage is roughly the same for both.
Your ideology is irrelevant, and I suggest you come back to Earth with the rest of us. It is illegal. Those people are benefiting without compensating the owners.
Here's the thing. Most people (including me) don't actually care about legallity - only reprecasions (sp?). The law is an abstract idea unless there's a real threat of me being caught and persecuted.
However, this begs the question of how to determine if something can/should be done. And the answer is - personal beliefs. And thus comes the comparison to shoplifting. Right now, filesharing is regarded as a victimless crime, like speeding or smoking pot. And it will continue until it is impossible, or enforced by the law.
On a personal note, someone whould have to *prove* to me that filesharing isn't a victimless crime - as far as i can tell right now, the only one hurt is the middle man, which shouldn't be there in the first place.
That's an interesting theory, but i doubt that this is how the child-porn industry works. You say they make it because they
1) like it - doubtful. People WATCH porn because they like it, to make it though is too much financial and legal trouble to just do it for fun. This also applies for most industries (ie, many drug dealers don't actually do drugs).
2) trade it for more child porn - i don't see why the would go back to the bartering system, when they could just use money. And anyways, if it's freely shared, then there is no need for people to trade for it, so the economic argument works in this case too.
I don't think what you're saying is what the original poster meant. His argument (badly articulated ) goes like this: no-one would go throught the trouble of making child porn if he didn't intend to get payed for it. Stealing the child porn and putting it on freenet harms the creator since he isn't getting payed. Thus, in theory, it HELPS the children by economically harming the porn making bastard.
SCO - those bastards! Using Neal Stephenson's analogy AGAINST linux!
"Hacker with bullhorn: 'Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!'
Prospective station wagon buyer: 'I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!'
Bullhorn: 'You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!'
Buyer: 'But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music.'
Bullhorn: 'But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!'
Buyer: 'Stay away from my house, you freak!'
Bullhorn: 'But...'
Buyer: 'Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?'"
-Neal Stephenson, "In the beginning there was the command line"
A few random points that poped in my head after reading this:
1) The telecom companies may have a point in their claims that it's anti-competitive. I mean, no private company would go into business with the goal of "breaking even". How is this much different from a monopoly selling their products at cost to drive out competition?
2) That being said, the power companies have great potential in the telecom business if, as mentioned in the article, cable/internet could be offered over power cables. The network in the article is run over power-monitoring wires, and i'm not sure how widespread this type of wire is... Cable (and broadband interenet to a lesser extent) are so widespread now, that it may not be a bad idea to offer them as city-sponsored commodities, like power, and hopefully even run them over power lines.
3) This is going AGAINST the trend of privatization of publicly owned ventures. That means that the only reason that this is cheaper is that the prices set by cable/telecom companies are inflated. This could lead to a huge drop in cable/internet prices... and the telecoms are trying to fight this through legal means. Fighting a new distribution model through courts - **AA anyone?
Slashdot Mirror
Who the hell are you, and what are you doing on slashdot? Come on - to know stuff like this, I would have had to do some sort of research. Me, I'm beyond that! Hell, I didn't even read the article, but look at me posting... I'm unstoppable!
On a slightly unrelated topic, stop moderating my parent post as funny! It's insightful! Insightful goddamit! Jeez people - I give you gold...
Now, as everyone has pointed out, just about anything on the internet will qualify as prior art. Seriously - pick any random common service that runs over the internet, and it's prior art. However, people are missing the deep point behind this move:
1) Borrow Skype stock. Sell it.
2) Sue Skype. Skype stock goes down
3) Buy Skype stock at low price (as much as you can). Return the stock you borrowed, keep the rest.
4) Get bitchslapped in court. Skype stock goes up.
5) Sell Skype stock at high price.
6) Profit!!
Notice the lack of the ??? step... this is foolproof. Hell, I should go sue someone for something - it doesn't even matter what, the way the market works all you need is a little publicity for your lawsuit, and you're golden!
Technically, it's more like proving P != NP, since that's the current accepted belief. Proving P=NP would be huge - this would give polynomial time algorithms for Travelling Salesman Problem, Boolean Satisiability Problem, and a slew of others (that all reduce to each other in polynomial time). Proving P != NP pretty much confirms what everyone believes to be true, similar to how the Poincaire conjecture was generally accepted to be true. Still, this is a major result, and clearly falls under the "News for nerds, stuff that matters" heading.
I agree with everything you say, except for the basic premise that this is the reason that our education is bad. Here are some of my thoughts on the matter:
1) As a Russian who also moved to Canada, I agree with a lot of what you say. As I graduate from the University of Waterloo this summer, I still don't think I ever worked as hard at any level of schhol as I did in grade 1 in Russia. I moved 3/4 through grade 1, but continued to study math with my parents until grade 5, which lasted me through most of highschool.
2) Education as it is structured in Russia and China is aimed at allowing the elite to develop as fast and as well as humanly possible. This, however is not necessarily a good thing. As you mentioned, those who do badly in school are looked upon as "failures". This is not particularly fair to these children, especially since we need many more construction/office/sales people than university professors.
3) Education where classes are not separated by ability is always a compromise: if you set the difficulty level at the average student, the bright ones will be bored with school. If you set the level to cater to bright students, most of the class will struggle, which is unnecessary when many of these students will not need strong math/science skills in their future vocations. In short, American/Canadian system leaves the kids with a worse education, but it also leaves them with a higher self esteem and in the end turns out happier people.
4) There are several ways to solve this problem.
a) One is external to education system: if somehow we can make science cool, then the kids will want to learn, while at the same time not hurting their self esteem if they don't do too well - you can be good at science, or basketball, or music, and any one of these will make you "cool".
b) Another way to solve this problem is to separate the classes by ability. This way the "gifted" students will have work set at their level. This can be done either by some sort of testing as it is now, or it can be done as in Germany, where the school at some point splits up into several streams - one for students who want to go to university and one for ones who do not.
5) From what I saw at UW, which is the best school in canada in terms of computer science education, and one of the best in north america, the truly bright kids do alright for themselves even with the bad education throughout highschool. They keep their minds sharp with hobbies, and are still able to do well in university and jobs. We have a *lot* of extremely hard working chinese students, many from china, but I would not say that they dominate here in terms of marks, so all is not so bad.
At the end of the day, I don't believe it's fair to children to tie their self esteem and popularity to their marks anymore than it's fair to tie them to their success in sports - we just don't need *that* many university professors. Yes, the ability to think critically should be encouraged, but it's not as cut and dry as "make school 8 times harder". Yes, for most of university i've felt that school would be a lot more fun for me if it was catered to a group of about 30 students or so from my year that took advanced math courses, theortical computer science courses etc. At the same time, the students themselves and their parents bear some responsibility for developing their talents, and trying to cater to the elite will create a society of people with inferiority complexes.
That last point is key, but not because cops will just say "screw it". No, the cops will be told to ignore the laws. That's the only way a government can really control its people - you can't control a man who has commited no crime. However, you make enough laws and suddenly you have dirt on everyone, but it doesn't seem that oppressive because the laws are only enforced against a select few. Think Yukos in Russia as an example - it had taxes due that were completely unreasonable (at some point higher than actual profits). However, those taxes weren't called in until the owner decided to go into politics - then Yukos and the man got ruined. That's how government can have true power.
Heh, nice. Interestingly enough, for a couple weeks now in southern ontario we've been hovering about 0 C, which *is* very warm for this time of the year. If we don't hit another cold spell, this will be the warmest winter I can remember.
More like a doctor hooker, were you *pay* to get herpes and then pay for the treatment.
Because 95% of the people (myself included) run windows. This is nothing like the .com and .net scammers, since it's not asking you to pay for anything, and it's officially endorsed by the suprnova.org team (sloncek). Once (if) this network is good, i'm sure linux clients and exeem lite clones will appear. This could be a great new p2p application, and to dismiss it because it doesn't support linux is pretty short-sighted.
p.s. Suprnova.org was also ad-driven. I'm going to wait and see how they implement these ads before i make a judgment. Hell, the free version of Opera has banner adds.
What if your family doesn't like bread? What if your family likes sigaretts?
This seems to be another great release, but I think that the Qute theme was far superiour to this current one. Qute items were very sharp - these new bright green and blue items on the other hand remind me why I often dislike the look of open source programs. I'm wondering if Qute will be avaiable for download separately?
I hate to say this, but he's right. I've tried to switch to linux several times, but in the end i just ended up going back to XP. Most of the tools I need from linux I can get from cygwin, and as the parent said, XP works well enough for most users.
A point that most linux advocates seem to miss is that most windows software is pirated. As such, the fact that linux software is free is irrelevant. I can run Gimp, which is free, or I can run Photoshop, which is also free. Until the Linux applications (not the OS, applications!) beat their commerical counterparts on their own merits, linux will not be adopted on the desktop.
Keep in mind that the general economic rule for a new product to be adapted is that it has to be 10x better than the old widespread alternative. Linux is just not there yet
While I wouldn't say that "most modern terrorism is due to US foreign policy", I definitely agree that much of the hostility towards the US is due to US foreign policy and culture. I will now quote Neal Stephenson's exellent thoughts on the subject:
"It is obvious, to everyone outside of the United States, that our arch-buzzwords, multiculturalism and diversity, are false fronts that are being used (in many cases unwittingly) to conceal a global trend to eradicate cultural differences. The basic tenet of multiculturalism (or "honoring diversity" or whatever you want to call it) is that people need to stop judging each other-to stop asserting (and, eventually, to stop believing) that this is right and that is wrong, this true and that false, one thing ugly and another thing beautiful, that God exists and has this or that set of qualities.
The lesson most people are taking home from the Twentieth Century is that, in order for a large number of different cultures to coexist peacefully on the globe (or even in a neighborhood) it is necessary for people to suspend judgment in this way. Hence (I would argue) our suspicion of, and hostility towards, all authority figures in modern culture. This is the fundamental message of television; it is the message that people take home, anyway, after they have steeped in our media long enough. It comes through as the presumption that all authority figures--teachers, generals, cops, ministers, politicians--are hypocritical buffoons, and that hip jaded coolness is the only way to be.
The problem is that once you have done away with the ability to make judgments as to right and wrong, true and false, etc., there's no real culture left. All that remains is clog dancing and macrame. The ability to make judgments, to believe things, is the entire it point of having a culture. I think this is why guys with machine guns sometimes pop up in places like Luxor, and begin pumping bullets into Westerners. When their sons come home wearing Chicago Bulls caps with the bills turned sideways, the dads go out of their minds.
The global anti-culture that has been conveyed into every cranny of the world by television is a culture unto itself, and by the standards of great and ancient cultures like Islam and France, it seems grossly inferior, at least at first. The only good thing you can say about it is that it makes world wars and Holocausts less likely--and that is actually a pretty good thing!"
Neal Stephenson, In The Beginning Was The Command Line. If you haven't yet, read this essay - it is long but extremely insightful and covers a lot of different (seemingly unrelated) things.
Well, they didn't really specify what kind of studies they will be running, so we can only guess. However, they may not include Outlook/IE in their studies, and they have every right to do so. Every company uses these products of their own accord - they could just as easily chose to use Mozilla/Lotus Notes instead.
The only scenario where Microsoft would need to include analysis of the viral damage is if they make an argument citing the lack of an outlook equivalent in the open source as an advantage for Windows.
Also, it's possible that Outlook is so critical for companies, that even with the viral damages sticking with it might still be better than switching to linux. It's one of the only programs that doesn't have a solid OSS counterpart. However, if Microsoft bases their studies on this, the viral damage should be clearly shown. Will it? Probably not, but we'll see. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Umm, that's not conformist behaviour. Conformist behaviour would be if the boss started wearing ties and then everyone else in the department started doing the same to immitate him. Here the boss requested that everyone wears ties. While you may have something against this request, doing what the boss said isn't conformity. Furthermore, i doubt you're scoring points with the management this way - refusing fairly trivial requests.
On the other hand, the secretary was still a bitch for being so uptight about it - it's not really her job to check what you're wearing.
Outstanding post. The key metaphor here is "thought children". This may not be completely new, but it's new to me. And it's very accurate too - just like your rights over your children are not absolute, your rights over your creations should not be absolute either. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Just like you have control over your children when they are young, you'd have control over your creations too. And they kids leaving home is analogous to the copyrights running out. The point is, they creations wouldn't be *just property* - they'd be a part of the world now.
Well most of my friends are pretty tech savvy, so even though they might not know linux, they're not exactly representative of the general population.
I also realize that linux is not windows. However, I do think there's a problem when a person like me has a ton of trouble figuring out how to work linux. I was forced to learn linux when i was given a coop job of a linux administrator. At the time i knew nothing, so i had to learn pretty quick. I realize that it might have been an easier transition if I had time to just use linux for a while and adjust. And it didn't help that our company was using slackware - not the most userfriendly distro. I still think that the learning curve is too steep though.
I'm not sure why your dad had such problems with win2k. From all i've seen so far, win2k and winXP are very good operating systems. I have winXP professional as my main system right now, mostly because I like games and it does what I want. It's stable enough to run without crashing for weeks, and the viruses can mostly be avoided by not using outlook and administering it properly. My point is, that windows is now good enough that people who switch to linux will either do it for the principles of open source, or because it's actually *better* than windows. I don't think linux is better than windows right now - it's better for some things, but as a OS for the home it's not there yet. This distro makes a step in the right direction, and props to them for doing so.
No. Stupid people should not be allowed to use computers
You are confusing "stupid" and "does not know linux". Get a clue - most people *don't* know linux. They know windows. They know what a program is and how to use it and they know how to install programs on windows. Most people I know are aware of the lower level things too such as the dll's and the registry, and are generally able to troubleshoot problems when they arise.
Now what this distribution is doing is it's making the learning curve when moving to linux a *lot* gentler. Making something intuitive != dumbing it down. It just makes it so that a person can learn by installing and looking around, and doesn't need to know what ld.so.conf is right away.
When I started in linux, most of my problems could be solved by one line commands. Things like "to get sound to work, type in modprobe emu10k1". It wasn't me being stupid, it was me expecting the computer to work in a certain way, in this case to detect my hardware. I'm guessing that most people switching to linux have similar problems, and the easier we make the system to understand, the better linux will be for it.
No-one seems to have mentioned this yet, but school is not there to give you an education (at least not in Canada). I mean, if it was, it's pretty pathetic - we didn't really have to do *anything* until our final year.
School, in Canada, is used to develop study habits. That is why the material is so easy that anyone could do it. That's also why so much emphasis is put on homework, and so little on exams (the true test of whether you know your stuff).
With that in mind, the constant checking is *not* a good thing! The student must learn to force himself to study, instead of studying because he's being pushed to do so by his parents. What this new way will achieve, is that when students get to university, they will slack off because they've never developed the needed willpower and self-organization to get all the work done. That's *kind of* what's happening to me, though i just didn't do the schoolwork 'cause i found it too easy, and was still able to get good marks.
I think the old system of having 4 report cards is in fact optimal. It allows the parents to know the student's marks, but leaves earning those marks to the student. Knowing the marks after a term the parents can still control the student (for example, if my sister doesn't maintain an 80+ average, she will be pulled out of her ballet class). However, the student will still be able to learn the necessary skills (and trust me, those skills are *not* simply knowledge of calculus).
Exactly! And that's the reason why linux isn't gonna replace Windows on the desktop in the near future. Coding is fun, debugging/customer support isn't. Thus most of the open source projects never get to the same point as their closed counterparts - there just isn't the same motivation to get that last 10% of the work done (which as we know takes up 90% of the time =).
Now here comes the best part: windows IS free. Or it's free for anyone who isn't using it commercially. Just about everyone I know has a pirated version of windows, and i really don't think that Microsoft is concerned with this. Thus, Linux has no advantage in price, so it has to beat windows in quality. Now there will be many replies saying that it's not very hard, but guess what - Windows 2k/XP is a very solid operating system. It's a bit of a memory hog, but it crashes very rarely, which is all I need. The software for windows is often more polished and more complete than it's linux counterparts. As a result, Linux will lag behind Windows on the desktop for years to come.
Before I get flamed, a disclaimer: I *like* Linux. I like many things about it. I've used it in my work, and i've tried several times to make it my primary OS. However, i've gone back to windows because in Linux things just take a lot longer to set up and use.
Interestingly enough, as bloated as WMP is supposed to be, it still takes up far less memory than mplayer2. I've just tested this out, and WMP took up only 8,800 K of memory as compared to mplayer2 which took 35,500 when playing a 700mb divx movie. This is physical memory usage - the CPU and VM usage is roughly the same for both.
Your ideology is irrelevant, and I suggest you come back to Earth with the rest of us. It is illegal. Those people are benefiting without compensating the owners.
Here's the thing. Most people (including me) don't actually care about legallity - only reprecasions (sp?). The law is an abstract idea unless there's a real threat of me being caught and persecuted.
However, this begs the question of how to determine if something can/should be done. And the answer is - personal beliefs. And thus comes the comparison to shoplifting. Right now, filesharing is regarded as a victimless crime, like speeding or smoking pot. And it will continue until it is impossible, or enforced by the law.
On a personal note, someone whould have to *prove* to me that filesharing isn't a victimless crime - as far as i can tell right now, the only one hurt is the middle man, which shouldn't be there in the first place.
That's an interesting theory, but i doubt that this is how the child-porn industry works. You say they make it because they 1) like it - doubtful. People WATCH porn because they like it, to make it though is too much financial and legal trouble to just do it for fun. This also applies for most industries (ie, many drug dealers don't actually do drugs). 2) trade it for more child porn - i don't see why the would go back to the bartering system, when they could just use money. And anyways, if it's freely shared, then there is no need for people to trade for it, so the economic argument works in this case too.
I don't think what you're saying is what the original poster meant. His argument (badly articulated ) goes like this: no-one would go throught the trouble of making child porn if he didn't intend to get payed for it. Stealing the child porn and putting it on freenet harms the creator since he isn't getting payed. Thus, in theory, it HELPS the children by economically harming the porn making bastard.
SCO - those bastards! Using Neal Stephenson's analogy AGAINST linux!
"Hacker with bullhorn: 'Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!'
Prospective station wagon buyer: 'I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!'
Bullhorn: 'You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!'
Buyer: 'But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music.'
Bullhorn: 'But if you accept one of our free tanks we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!'
Buyer: 'Stay away from my house, you freak!'
Bullhorn: 'But...'
Buyer: 'Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?'"
-Neal Stephenson, "In the beginning there was the command line"
A few random points that poped in my head after reading this:
1) The telecom companies may have a point in their claims that it's anti-competitive. I mean, no private company would go into business with the goal of "breaking even". How is this much different from a monopoly selling their products at cost to drive out competition?
2) That being said, the power companies have great potential in the telecom business if, as mentioned in the article, cable/internet could be offered over power cables. The network in the article is run over power-monitoring wires, and i'm not sure how widespread this type of wire is... Cable (and broadband interenet to a lesser extent) are so widespread now, that it may not be a bad idea to offer them as city-sponsored commodities, like power, and hopefully even run them over power lines.
3) This is going AGAINST the trend of privatization of publicly owned ventures. That means that the only reason that this is cheaper is that the prices set by cable/telecom companies are inflated. This could lead to a huge drop in cable/internet prices... and the telecoms are trying to fight this through legal means. Fighting a new distribution model through courts - **AA anyone?