I make a cute comment as humor, and I get one person saying the Web is not ALL open source (as if I said it was), and another person saying there's lots of proprietary stuff on the Web (as if I said otherwise) and that it wasn't built in the traditional sense (duh). Then I get moderators modding it down because they got offended that it was marked so high or marked as Insightful.
People, people, people. Chill out. What I said is true, the Web is built on open source. Not all of it but quite a bit. It was originally built on open source principles, long before the corporations even heard of it. It grew mostly through open source principles. And no, my comment wasn't meannt to be taken so seriously. I was using humor to illustrate a point. Too subtle humor, evidently.
"...won't release your spacecraft from the elevator without a 29B/6 form that's been stamped."
In triplicate. Oh yeah, form 29B/6 has been superseded by form 29C/3. No, we do not have any such forms yet in this branch; they are still at the printers. No, you cannot release a spacecraft without a 29C/3, what kind of sloppy operation do you think we're running here!
" The media act as a set of filters that propagate a particular set of ideas to the citizens. This set of ideas is just happens to be about the same as what the rich and the powerful believe and think."
And since all mainstream press and media has now been bought up by the rich and powerful, this should not be surprising to us. Of course the media filters the news in a way that is pleasing to the rich and powerful. That's how they get advertising dollars from companies that are owned by the rich and powerful. It's how they get greater and favorable access to politicians, the very definition of the rich and powerful.
This, by the way, is how you can tell that the Right Wing meme of the "liberal media" is false. They may not be as conservative as some on the Right Wing would like, but they most certainly are conservative in their essence. That's how the rich and powerful like it: the status quo, aka conservative.
The sale of MGM was of interest to fans of LOTR since if Time Warner had bought MGM it would have meant a fast track for filming of The Hobbit with Peter Jackson et al. MGM has the filming rights for the story, and New Line (owned by Time Warner) has been trying to negotiate to get the rights to do the film. Had TW bought MGM, presumably this would have smoothed the way for the film to proceed. Now with Sony owning, what is going to happen next? Will they negotiate with TW to work something out that should be quite a lucrative venture? Or will they dig in their heels?
Hey, if we're going to cut costs let's go all out:
"ATTENTION STAFF: From now on all developers will share a Jetway PT800TWIIN workstation. You can both log in to the same machine, thereby saving us hardware costs. A cost savings that you can imagine will get passed back to you in higher salaries, but there you would be wrong. Think executive bonuses for coming up with this idea in the first place.
In a further cost-cutting move, both developers sharing their PT800TWIN workstation will also share the same ergonomic chair. By getting our cleaning service personnel to sretch out your chairs in the off hours, we have found that two moderately overweight programmers can now fit into the same chair. Note the 'moderately' part. From now on all snacks from the kitchen will be removed to encourage proper weight maintenance...and to save costs.
Futher, you'll be happy to hear, we are discontinuing the practice of commuting. Both developers will now share their cubicles with two other developers in a shared work/sleep arrangement. You will work 12 hours, then utilize the new company-issued hammocks with corporate logo and mini pillows to sleep for 12 hours. During those sleep twelve hours, the other two developers will squeeze into the one chair to continue work. Note that you may need to nudge them out of the hammock first, as there will only be one hammock issued for each four developers.
We know you will appreciate the cost-cutting moves that will help yield higher profits and will be a boon to the executive V.P.s who thought of this move after reading an article in Forbes that called this the next big thing in business. You can thank the V.P. personally when he comes back from his 3-month trip to Fiji paid for by the bonus he received from suggesting this approach. Please join me in thanking him. And get back to work."
Valid point, but what I meant is the type of clueless manager who finds fault even with the good stuff, just so he can throw his weight around and make people jump. Jenkins probably did a bang-up job, but the manager has to meddle anyway.
That's a very good point. In fact, I use my email that way too, to have a permanent record of business decisions I can refer back to if needed. So yes, you're right, it probably is replacing the phone in people's minds. 'Get it in writing' is the mindset.
Still, no reason why it has to be a real-time communication form. You cannot assume that someone is a) at their desk at that moment; b) not too busy doing work to read their email at that moment. Of course, they do assume such things all the time, but I'm talking about what should be done.
There has been a disconnect occurring with regard to email in recent years. With the proliferation of Blackberry type devices, and the ever-present need of middle managers to feel important, email has been turned into a real-time form of communication. "Hey, I just sent you an email, didya get it?" "Hey, why haven't you answered my email yet?"
This is all wrong. Email is designed specifically to be the form of communication that lets you control when you read it. It's designed around you, not you around it. If you need to reach somebody immediately, use the phone -- that's what it's for.
So having your car read you email is really only useful for a tiny subset of the population. For the rest it's just another way to distract yourself from your own thoughts while driving, or a way to make yourself feel important, or a way to harass your underlings at work ("Jenkins, I just got your email, and that's not at all the way I wanted you to proceed on that project!").
I enjoyed your comment very much, and don't want to argue or anything. But this sentence struck me funny:
"My wife recently remarked that Bush stands for his values unwaiveringly, and he should be respected for that alone."
A lot of people think that, so it's not surprising she does. Of course the reality is that he "flip-flops" more than anyone, but hey, facts shouldn't interfere with propaganda, as I'm sure you know. No, but what I thought was funny about seeing this common idea actually put down in print is this: So do two-year-olds. They also stick to what they want/believe unwaiveringly. Right or wrong, they stick to their guns and no matter what you tell them they say, "NO!"
We don't respect two-year-olds for refusing to budge. Why people like that in Bush is beyond me. Give me an emotional adult who can see a situation, figure out where he needs to learn, learn and grow and adapt. Hey, sorry to lecture you. I agree with you. I'm just talking out loud based on what you wrote and the way it struck me.
"The answer is a resounding "no". He is free to travel by foot, bike, motorcycle, car, boat, or other device himself while not violating applicable pedestrian or traffic laws, or by bus or train, entirely anonymously."
I don't think you have to worry about non-U.S. citizens complaining about this section. When you have a president who shows an inclination to attack and occupy any other country he feels like without feeling the need to provide reasons that stand up to scrutiny, you'd better believe the rest of the world sits up and notices!
One of the reasons I like Apple hardware and switched to it several years ago is how often Apple leads the way. I read a story like this and I think, "Huh? Floppies? Who still uses those?" I got the same reaction last year to all those Intel wireless billboards. "Huh? They're just now pushing wireless?" So go ahead and whine and moan about higher prices and one-button mice. I'll keep moving into the future and watching Bill eat my dust.:)
Over the years I recall studies of rats subjected to stressful circumstances, and by stressful I mean things such as excessive noise. Inevitably the rats suffered for it -- it took a toll, and why not? Isn't that what you would expect? How would you like, to use an extreme example, to work right next to a construction worker using a pile driver? Might make you irritable too.
Now there is the factor of adaptation. The MTV effect and all whereby we all learn to accept sub-second images in our commercials and music videos, lots of jump cuts, and so on. The brain does adapt, no question. So it wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear anecdotally of people who love this sort of hypertasking, and prove to be very productive at it. Good for them. But if you find yourself feeling stressed as you continually do three things at once, keep in mind that the brain is the brain and there is a limit to how far you can push it and still be productive and happy. We are all just rats in the corporate maze of life and sometimes we get irritated by the stresses.
When that happens, remember that many of you have the option to step back a bit. OK, so don't read the company email while sitting at Starbucks with an iPod blaring in your ear while you text your buddies on your cell phone. Makes you jumpy? Then pull out the ear plugs, sit in a quiet area instead of Starbucks, whatever you need to do. Leave the cell phone behind now and again. You are in control of your world, right, not the other way around?
Now I said "many of you" have that option so that I don't get flamed by the "you insensitive clod" types who feel trapped in a job that forces them into stressful circumstances. Do what you can. But remember, you do not have to feel like an experiment in evolution to see how far your brain can be stretched to cope with stress. Step back now and then and enjoy life.
Read my own post. I never said it was running the full version of Windows, nor do their handhelds run the full version of Windows. ANY version of Windows is absurd for this sort of thing.
All right, all right, I know, of course it does...consider the source. But it's so overkill for a device like this (not to mention that unnecessary complexity introduces bug situations and security vulnerabilities). Look at the iPod. Did Apple port a stripped down OS X for it, or even a Darwin framework? No, of course not. It's an entertainment device, so it gets its own custom OS that fits just right. It's the same philosophy that Palm has with its handhelds -- don't overload it with junk, just provide what you need and no more.
Microsoft always wants to extend Windows even into areas where it does not belong. A handheld running Windows? What on earth for? Now this too? No thanks. Give me a Palm, give me an iPod, give me a simple tool that works well and elegantly.
"the only draw back to AbiWord is that it currently does not feature a grammar checker,"
Are you kidding? This is not a draw back, this is a selling point of high order. The Word grammar checker is worse than worthless. It creates more problems than it solves. It is so by the book that it cannot distinguish well-structured grammar from incorrect grammar at times. It offers suggestions that can be downright wrong. For every thing it catches correctly, it nags you with a dozen worthless suggestions.
I know of no writer who uses it. It gets turned off immediately, just to save hassles. If Abiword does not have this feature, it's worth more!
You know when things will really have changed for women? When this isn't news. Look at the summary of this story: It trumpets the fact that a woman has taken a role of great prominence and responsiblity...but doesn't mention her name. As long as women are identified as generic "woman" instead of personalized as the actual women they are as individuals with their own skills and talents, things have not changed as much as they should have.
The headline of the article screams "Piracy" and there is this quote:
"The MPAA said the suits against Sigma Designs Inc. and MediaTek Inc. followed testing that it said proved the two were selling microchips to companies, whose DVD players lack what the MPAA called "appropriate security features."
What rubbish! If you want to be a "pirate" (and let's call it something else, please), you can copy a DVD any time you want. Just do a bit-by-bit copy, and voila! A copied DVD. These manufacturers do not enable theft in any way.
And what's with all this Orwellian "piracy" anyway? Those manufacturers don't conform to the precise specs the industry wants, so off with their heads? How about what the consumer wants? Oh, right, we don't count.
"During the 1998 warming, fewer than 5% of the natural reef corals survived. But on the artificial reefs, 80% of corals not only survived, they flourished."
And then kept on growing ever larger and more extensively until it covered Cleveland! Ruuuuuuun!!
Slashdot Mirror
People, people, people. Chill out. What I said is true, the Web is built on open source. Not all of it but quite a bit. It was originally built on open source principles, long before the corporations even heard of it. It grew mostly through open source principles. And no, my comment wasn't meannt to be taken so seriously. I was using humor to illustrate a point. Too subtle humor, evidently.
Uh, like, you mean the Web itself? That's large scale, certainly was built, and is most certainly built on open source.
So, yeah, I reckon it can be done. I'm using the proof-of-concept to submit this comment.
In triplicate. Oh yeah, form 29B/6 has been superseded by form 29C/3. No, we do not have any such forms yet in this branch; they are still at the printers. No, you cannot release a spacecraft without a 29C/3, what kind of sloppy operation do you think we're running here!
And since all mainstream press and media has now been bought up by the rich and powerful, this should not be surprising to us. Of course the media filters the news in a way that is pleasing to the rich and powerful. That's how they get advertising dollars from companies that are owned by the rich and powerful. It's how they get greater and favorable access to politicians, the very definition of the rich and powerful.
This, by the way, is how you can tell that the Right Wing meme of the "liberal media" is false. They may not be as conservative as some on the Right Wing would like, but they most certainly are conservative in their essence. That's how the rich and powerful like it: the status quo, aka conservative.
Geeks everywhere want to know!
"ATTENTION STAFF: From now on all developers will share a Jetway PT800TWIIN workstation. You can both log in to the same machine, thereby saving us hardware costs. A cost savings that you can imagine will get passed back to you in higher salaries, but there you would be wrong. Think executive bonuses for coming up with this idea in the first place.
In a further cost-cutting move, both developers sharing their PT800TWIN workstation will also share the same ergonomic chair. By getting our cleaning service personnel to sretch out your chairs in the off hours, we have found that two moderately overweight programmers can now fit into the same chair. Note the 'moderately' part. From now on all snacks from the kitchen will be removed to encourage proper weight maintenance...and to save costs.
Futher, you'll be happy to hear, we are discontinuing the practice of commuting. Both developers will now share their cubicles with two other developers in a shared work/sleep arrangement. You will work 12 hours, then utilize the new company-issued hammocks with corporate logo and mini pillows to sleep for 12 hours. During those sleep twelve hours, the other two developers will squeeze into the one chair to continue work. Note that you may need to nudge them out of the hammock first, as there will only be one hammock issued for each four developers.
We know you will appreciate the cost-cutting moves that will help yield higher profits and will be a boon to the executive V.P.s who thought of this move after reading an article in Forbes that called this the next big thing in business. You can thank the V.P. personally when he comes back from his 3-month trip to Fiji paid for by the bonus he received from suggesting this approach. Please join me in thanking him. And get back to work."
I'll thank you to leave your love life out of this political discussion.
Well, bah bah, then!
Valid point, but what I meant is the type of clueless manager who finds fault even with the good stuff, just so he can throw his weight around and make people jump. Jenkins probably did a bang-up job, but the manager has to meddle anyway.
Still, no reason why it has to be a real-time communication form. You cannot assume that someone is a) at their desk at that moment; b) not too busy doing work to read their email at that moment. Of course, they do assume such things all the time, but I'm talking about what should be done.
This is all wrong. Email is designed specifically to be the form of communication that lets you control when you read it. It's designed around you, not you around it. If you need to reach somebody immediately, use the phone -- that's what it's for.
So having your car read you email is really only useful for a tiny subset of the population. For the rest it's just another way to distract yourself from your own thoughts while driving, or a way to make yourself feel important, or a way to harass your underlings at work ("Jenkins, I just got your email, and that's not at all the way I wanted you to proceed on that project!").
"My wife recently remarked that Bush stands for his values unwaiveringly, and he should be respected for that alone."
A lot of people think that, so it's not surprising she does. Of course the reality is that he "flip-flops" more than anyone, but hey, facts shouldn't interfere with propaganda, as I'm sure you know. No, but what I thought was funny about seeing this common idea actually put down in print is this: So do two-year-olds. They also stick to what they want/believe unwaiveringly. Right or wrong, they stick to their guns and no matter what you tell them they say, "NO!"
We don't respect two-year-olds for refusing to budge. Why people like that in Bush is beyond me. Give me an emotional adult who can see a situation, figure out where he needs to learn, learn and grow and adapt. Hey, sorry to lecture you. I agree with you. I'm just talking out loud based on what you wrote and the way it struck me.
So far...
I don't think you have to worry about non-U.S. citizens complaining about this section. When you have a president who shows an inclination to attack and occupy any other country he feels like without feeling the need to provide reasons that stand up to scrutiny, you'd better believe the rest of the world sits up and notices!
One of the reasons I like Apple hardware and switched to it several years ago is how often Apple leads the way. I read a story like this and I think, "Huh? Floppies? Who still uses those?" I got the same reaction last year to all those Intel wireless billboards. "Huh? They're just now pushing wireless?" So go ahead and whine and moan about higher prices and one-button mice. I'll keep moving into the future and watching Bill eat my dust. :)
Now there is the factor of adaptation. The MTV effect and all whereby we all learn to accept sub-second images in our commercials and music videos, lots of jump cuts, and so on. The brain does adapt, no question. So it wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear anecdotally of people who love this sort of hypertasking, and prove to be very productive at it. Good for them. But if you find yourself feeling stressed as you continually do three things at once, keep in mind that the brain is the brain and there is a limit to how far you can push it and still be productive and happy. We are all just rats in the corporate maze of life and sometimes we get irritated by the stresses.
When that happens, remember that many of you have the option to step back a bit. OK, so don't read the company email while sitting at Starbucks with an iPod blaring in your ear while you text your buddies on your cell phone. Makes you jumpy? Then pull out the ear plugs, sit in a quiet area instead of Starbucks, whatever you need to do. Leave the cell phone behind now and again. You are in control of your world, right, not the other way around?
Now I said "many of you" have that option so that I don't get flamed by the "you insensitive clod" types who feel trapped in a job that forces them into stressful circumstances. Do what you can. But remember, you do not have to feel like an experiment in evolution to see how far your brain can be stretched to cope with stress. Step back now and then and enjoy life.
I did state a fact, so there's no need to make empty insults that just make you look ignorant.
LOL, I did not know that. Well, I guess it's just lucky they failed.
Read my own post. I never said it was running the full version of Windows, nor do their handhelds run the full version of Windows. ANY version of Windows is absurd for this sort of thing.
Microsoft always wants to extend Windows even into areas where it does not belong. A handheld running Windows? What on earth for? Now this too? No thanks. Give me a Palm, give me an iPod, give me a simple tool that works well and elegantly.
Are you kidding? This is not a draw back, this is a selling point of high order. The Word grammar checker is worse than worthless. It creates more problems than it solves. It is so by the book that it cannot distinguish well-structured grammar from incorrect grammar at times. It offers suggestions that can be downright wrong. For every thing it catches correctly, it nags you with a dozen worthless suggestions.
I know of no writer who uses it. It gets turned off immediately, just to save hassles. If Abiword does not have this feature, it's worth more!
You know when things will really have changed for women? When this isn't news. Look at the summary of this story: It trumpets the fact that a woman has taken a role of great prominence and responsiblity...but doesn't mention her name. As long as women are identified as generic "woman" instead of personalized as the actual women they are as individuals with their own skills and talents, things have not changed as much as they should have.
"The MPAA said the suits against Sigma Designs Inc. and MediaTek Inc. followed testing that it said proved the two were selling microchips to companies, whose DVD players lack what the MPAA called "appropriate security features."
What rubbish! If you want to be a "pirate" (and let's call it something else, please), you can copy a DVD any time you want. Just do a bit-by-bit copy, and voila! A copied DVD. These manufacturers do not enable theft in any way.
And what's with all this Orwellian "piracy" anyway? Those manufacturers don't conform to the precise specs the industry wants, so off with their heads? How about what the consumer wants? Oh, right, we don't count.
You've caught on to his moviemaking method!
And then kept on growing ever larger and more extensively until it covered Cleveland! Ruuuuuuun!!