(Meh, sorry to those I modded up, but I need to say this.) The article is (possibly intentionally) vague on what they mean by 'Windows OSS projects.' If you read into what DotNetNuke actually is, you'll discover that it is a Windows-only OSS project built on the.NET framework, and that they appear to be partly sponsored by Microsoft itself. The article is referring to Windows-only OSS projects, not OSS projects with Windows versions.
Though I imagine projects like VLC, Freeciv, and Gaim occasionally have someone whining about their supporting windows, that's not what this is talking about, and frankly, where DotNetNuke is concerned, I'm with the 'zealots', despite having nothing against proprietary software. OSS has built up a strong reputation for being cross-platform, so an OSS project that's for Windows-only and is dependant on Microsoft technology is understandably going be frowned upon by OSS purists. Windows-only OSS developers are, arguably, not helping the OSS communities much, and they are especially detrimental to the spread of Open-Source and Open-Source-based operating systems. It's not showing Windows users that they have something nifty that they could still have if they decided to try linux or get a Mac, it's just further miring people in the Windows platform.
Now, are these people against DotNetNuke still looking so much like zealots, or are they perhaps starting to look more like people against Microsoft who see this as yet another boost to Microsoft's power?
Do you want to pay more per month for it? That's what you're suggesting amounts to. An awful lot of characters are created on any given day, and screening every single name as they are created would require paying someone or more likely multiple people to hand-check every single name to prevent violation. Instead, they _hope_ people will avoid violating the rules, but otherwise rely on users to report violations.
Um, just a nitpick, but the people you are referring to are mostly trend-whores who wanted iPods for the 'coolness factor.' The Apple 'faithful' are more attracted to their products because of user-friendliness and reliability. We're not typically bothered by minor cosmetic damages unless there are quite a lot of them when we first receive the product. We consider the aesthetics to be a nice bonus, but not important enough to be involved in a bloody stupid lawsuit over.
Agreed. In all honesty, I'd say that list is bullshit. The Nintendo DS isn't on the list, yet it's actually innovative, has better battery life, is more durable, has more good games + ability to play GBA games, and it outsells the PSP worldwide.
World of Warcraft. It was made with the casual gamer--a previously untapped market in the MMORPG business--in mind. They wanted to attract people who don't play that kind of game. Where did it get them?
WoW is one of the best-selling games--that's right, not just MMORPGs, _games_--of all time. I play it. Half or more of the people I know play it. Why? Because they made it appeal to people one wouldn't think would want to play an MMORPG.
I like a lot of what Nintendo tries to do, but they certainly lost in the last round.
Actually, the funny thing is, it didn't. Nintendo continued profiting off its GC related products pretty much the entire time. Microsoft's Xbox gaming division never pulled an overall profit, and Sony's console gaming division didn't start profiting until recently. Nintendo's 'slow and steady' approach may not be making them much of a competitor against Sony and Microsoft, but it is keeping Nintendo healthy, and profitable, and that's what really matters in the end. It looks like they're taking the wise approach: let the fools invest billions onto trying desparately to have better specs than each other, and just concentrate on making a solid, inexpensive console that enough people will buy to make a profit from it.
Epitonic.com can help you find a whole lot of good indie/experimental music, and they even have free, full-track downloads of songs by the artists they have info on, so you can get a decent feel for the type of music before you go out and buy their CDs.
I'll also shamelessly plug a very useful LiveJournal, which has been finding good indie music downloads for a long time.
Encouragement to use IE is the last thing we want to give Windows users. If IE weren't the dominant browser, web designers couldn't get away with making pages that only work in IE. If a web page uses ActiveX, and you're not using IE and Windows, you're out of luck.
Not from my experience. It craps out due to dependancies that I can't be bothered to fix due to lack of documentation on how to fix the dependancy crapout.
Well, since I was modded down for being 'off topic', I guess I need to explain that I was (too subtly) noting that stating spam is healthy because spamming health-tips at people made them more healthy is like stating drinking alcohol of any sort is healthy because small amounts of red wine are healthy.
Instead of ditching them altogether, make the patent filer prove within 1 year that they have created the product they've patented, or licensed it to someone who creates the product, and that the product in question is actually being sold in the real world? Also, why not make it so that if a company can prove they have been making and selling a product in violation of the patent in the general market for more than 2 years, the patent owner loses the right to sue? Patents in and of themselves are not a horrible thing, but their ready allowance of legal ambushing is.
Light does not move instantaneously. Relativity shows that as matter gets closer to the speed of light, time dilates. That doesn't mean time-dilation would occur with 'FTL' travel, though, as it has to circumvent relativity in order to work at all. Time travel could possibly be done with FTL as a sort of means, but that doesn't imply FTL is time travel. I'm not sure if this is what you're thinking, but time dilation works like this: Say a ship leaves for a star 20 lightyears distant. Whatever speed the ship moves at is exactly how fast it moves in comparison to its surroundings. IE, if it's almost, but not quite, the speed of light, it would take slightly over 20 years to get from point A to point B. Now, within the vessel moving at relativistic speeds, time passes differently, to the point where 20 years externally passes in almost an instant internally. I suppose you could call this time travel in the sense that you are effectively moving the vessel and its contents into the future without subjecting it to the effects of aging over a full span of 20 years, but again, this doesn't necessarily apply to FTL travel.
I fail to see why you concluded that any reference frame used for FTL must be backwards in time compared to our own, as light does not travel instantaneously, therefore it is hypothetically possible for something to move faster than light without traveling backwards in time. (Actually, I believe some laboratories have managed to accellerate light to faster than its normal speed, though I can't be bothered to dig up any articles on it.)
As for the likelihood of time travel, there are hypothetical models that are possible, fit into modern physics, and which would allow for time travel to occur. (See a previous/. topic.)
And yes, FTL is often used for ambiance, as, quite frankly, it's rather difficult to have a multi-world society without FTL, as mere communications would take decades at the least, and interstellar trade would be pretty much nonexistant.
I'm moderately sure he does understand the problems. I do, yet I don't think FTL is impossible. The only thing I know to likely be impossible is to accellerate a mass to beyond the speed of light in normal spacetime. Any decent SF writer knows this, and will often note this in their work; any 'FTL' travel requires either the translation of mass to something without mass, or leaving normal spacetime in order to get from point A to point B faster than light. I've yet to have even read an SF novel in which a ship travels faster than light by accellerating a normal mass beyond the speed of light while keeping that mass within normal spacetime, and I've read hundreds of science fiction novels.
As for science fiction being fantasy... well, duh. There really isn't much difference between the two, except that science fiction is _usually_ speculative, and has more of a basis in our own reality, while other fantasy is free to explore the more farfetched. A careful writer can actually make it very difficult to tell the difference between SF and fantasy. (Frank Herbert, China Mieville, and others.)
As was kind of stated before in this topic, you can only make science fiction so 'realistic' before it's no longer science fiction, but simply realistic fiction.
Call me crazy, but I feel a far more comfortable dealing with people dressed as they want to be dressed, with whatever visible body modifications they have. In fact, I feel far more comfortable dealing with people who have piercings and/or visible tattoos, despite having none myself. Why? Because far more often than not, that type of work environment makes the employees comfortable and happy with their job, which is the best way to ensure they do their job well. Most of the employees at the best pizza place in this county (actually rated best by the newspapers, not just IMO) have tattoos, piercings, and non-standard haircuts, and they do their jobs well.
When I worked in customer service myself, I got very relieved whenever I got to deal with people who were visibly off-beat, because contrary to popular belief, they tend to be nice people. They go by their own standards instead of forcing themselves to conform to someone else's standards, which means less stress for them, and get this: most people would rather deal with someone who's actually friendly than someone being forced to fake it. Less stress = more relaxed = generally easier to deal with.
I'm also rather saddened that some would call body modification immature. Though I'm sure some immature people modify themselves, it is by no means an indicator; as implied above, I've found a greater degree of maturity in those who are into it than those against it. It's not usually whoring for attention any more than wearing a shirt because you find it aesthetic. It is an aspect of individuality, and individuality is what drives humanity, like it or not. Entrepeneurs and inventors aren't conformists, and I don't think anyone else needs to be either. We're humans, not robots. Frankly, I'd rather my potential jobs be replaced by machines than have to make myself as machinelike as possible to obtain and keep those jobs.
Actually, what he's most likely referring to is the stock hardware in Macs. You can put any manufacture of compatible RAM you like in your machine, and pretty much any ATA HD in, but the components that come by default installed in Macs tend to be high-quality. This is not as often true for x86 PCs, especially the cheaper ones.
Heh. This has been gone over many, many, many times, and it's utter bullshit. Think of how much legal software gets ported to OS X. It's not the whole pie, but it's quite a lot. Why do people port it? Because there's a market there. Now, think really hard about that. Why would all of the virus and spyware writers pass up another opportunity to do their business? I'll give you a hint: It's not because OS X is a smaller market share. Maybe, just maybe, it's because it's exceedingly difficult to successfully create and implement viruses and spyware for OS X. I'll grant you, if OS X had the market share that Windows does, there would be some viruses and spyware, as being the dominant platform encourages people to write them. However, if Windows were in the same market share as OS X is currently, and it still posessed the vulnerabilities it has, it would still be rife with viruses and spyware.
Slashdot Mirror
Next thing you know, they'll start trying to sell us in bottles what comes out of our faucets. ...wait.
(Meh, sorry to those I modded up, but I need to say this.) The article is (possibly intentionally) vague on what they mean by 'Windows OSS projects.' If you read into what DotNetNuke actually is, you'll discover that it is a Windows-only OSS project built on the .NET framework, and that they appear to be partly sponsored by Microsoft itself. The article is referring to Windows-only OSS projects, not OSS projects with Windows versions.
Though I imagine projects like VLC, Freeciv, and Gaim occasionally have someone whining about their supporting windows, that's not what this is talking about, and frankly, where DotNetNuke is concerned, I'm with the 'zealots', despite having nothing against proprietary software. OSS has built up a strong reputation for being cross-platform, so an OSS project that's for Windows-only and is dependant on Microsoft technology is understandably going be frowned upon by OSS purists. Windows-only OSS developers are, arguably, not helping the OSS communities much, and they are especially detrimental to the spread of Open-Source and Open-Source-based operating systems. It's not showing Windows users that they have something nifty that they could still have if they decided to try linux or get a Mac, it's just further miring people in the Windows platform.
Now, are these people against DotNetNuke still looking so much like zealots, or are they perhaps starting to look more like people against Microsoft who see this as yet another boost to Microsoft's power?
Do you want to pay more per month for it? That's what you're suggesting amounts to. An awful lot of characters are created on any given day, and screening every single name as they are created would require paying someone or more likely multiple people to hand-check every single name to prevent violation. Instead, they _hope_ people will avoid violating the rules, but otherwise rely on users to report violations.
(Link Not Work/Children Safe) The real reason they're putting a stop to it.
Um, just a nitpick, but the people you are referring to are mostly trend-whores who wanted iPods for the 'coolness factor.' The Apple 'faithful' are more attracted to their products because of user-friendliness and reliability. We're not typically bothered by minor cosmetic damages unless there are quite a lot of them when we first receive the product. We consider the aesthetics to be a nice bonus, but not important enough to be involved in a bloody stupid lawsuit over.
Agreed. In all honesty, I'd say that list is bullshit. The Nintendo DS isn't on the list, yet it's actually innovative, has better battery life, is more durable, has more good games + ability to play GBA games, and it outsells the PSP worldwide.
In the future, children will have their genitals removed at birth, to prevent them from asking their parents about them in the future.
World of Warcraft. It was made with the casual gamer--a previously untapped market in the MMORPG business--in mind. They wanted to attract people who don't play that kind of game. Where did it get them? WoW is one of the best-selling games--that's right, not just MMORPGs, _games_--of all time. I play it. Half or more of the people I know play it. Why? Because they made it appeal to people one wouldn't think would want to play an MMORPG.
Yeah, you can. It doesn't show up on the login screen, but you can log in as 'Other' and enter any username and password, including root.
As a redheaded, left-handed midget, I am highly offended that you would compare us to Mac users.
I like a lot of what Nintendo tries to do, but they certainly lost in the last round. Actually, the funny thing is, it didn't. Nintendo continued profiting off its GC related products pretty much the entire time. Microsoft's Xbox gaming division never pulled an overall profit, and Sony's console gaming division didn't start profiting until recently. Nintendo's 'slow and steady' approach may not be making them much of a competitor against Sony and Microsoft, but it is keeping Nintendo healthy, and profitable, and that's what really matters in the end. It looks like they're taking the wise approach: let the fools invest billions onto trying desparately to have better specs than each other, and just concentrate on making a solid, inexpensive console that enough people will buy to make a profit from it.
Epitonic.com can help you find a whole lot of good indie/experimental music, and they even have free, full-track downloads of songs by the artists they have info on, so you can get a decent feel for the type of music before you go out and buy their CDs. I'll also shamelessly plug a very useful LiveJournal, which has been finding good indie music downloads for a long time.
Encouragement to use IE is the last thing we want to give Windows users. If IE weren't the dominant browser, web designers couldn't get away with making pages that only work in IE. If a web page uses ActiveX, and you're not using IE and Windows, you're out of luck.
And you can't spell 'slaughter' without laughter!
Not from my experience. It craps out due to dependancies that I can't be bothered to fix due to lack of documentation on how to fix the dependancy crapout.
Well, since I was modded down for being 'off topic', I guess I need to explain that I was (too subtly) noting that stating spam is healthy because spamming health-tips at people made them more healthy is like stating drinking alcohol of any sort is healthy because small amounts of red wine are healthy.
A glass of red wine a day is good for you.
In Soviet Russia, computer uses YOU!
Instead of ditching them altogether, make the patent filer prove within 1 year that they have created the product they've patented, or licensed it to someone who creates the product, and that the product in question is actually being sold in the real world? Also, why not make it so that if a company can prove they have been making and selling a product in violation of the patent in the general market for more than 2 years, the patent owner loses the right to sue? Patents in and of themselves are not a horrible thing, but their ready allowance of legal ambushing is.
Light does not move instantaneously. Relativity shows that as matter gets closer to the speed of light, time dilates. That doesn't mean time-dilation would occur with 'FTL' travel, though, as it has to circumvent relativity in order to work at all. Time travel could possibly be done with FTL as a sort of means, but that doesn't imply FTL is time travel. I'm not sure if this is what you're thinking, but time dilation works like this: Say a ship leaves for a star 20 lightyears distant. Whatever speed the ship moves at is exactly how fast it moves in comparison to its surroundings. IE, if it's almost, but not quite, the speed of light, it would take slightly over 20 years to get from point A to point B. Now, within the vessel moving at relativistic speeds, time passes differently, to the point where 20 years externally passes in almost an instant internally. I suppose you could call this time travel in the sense that you are effectively moving the vessel and its contents into the future without subjecting it to the effects of aging over a full span of 20 years, but again, this doesn't necessarily apply to FTL travel.
/. topic.)
I fail to see why you concluded that any reference frame used for FTL must be backwards in time compared to our own, as light does not travel instantaneously, therefore it is hypothetically possible for something to move faster than light without traveling backwards in time. (Actually, I believe some laboratories have managed to accellerate light to faster than its normal speed, though I can't be bothered to dig up any articles on it.)
As for the likelihood of time travel, there are hypothetical models that are possible, fit into modern physics, and which would allow for time travel to occur. (See a previous
And yes, FTL is often used for ambiance, as, quite frankly, it's rather difficult to have a multi-world society without FTL, as mere communications would take decades at the least, and interstellar trade would be pretty much nonexistant.
I'm moderately sure he does understand the problems. I do, yet I don't think FTL is impossible. The only thing I know to likely be impossible is to accellerate a mass to beyond the speed of light in normal spacetime. Any decent SF writer knows this, and will often note this in their work; any 'FTL' travel requires either the translation of mass to something without mass, or leaving normal spacetime in order to get from point A to point B faster than light. I've yet to have even read an SF novel in which a ship travels faster than light by accellerating a normal mass beyond the speed of light while keeping that mass within normal spacetime, and I've read hundreds of science fiction novels.
As for science fiction being fantasy... well, duh. There really isn't much difference between the two, except that science fiction is _usually_ speculative, and has more of a basis in our own reality, while other fantasy is free to explore the more farfetched. A careful writer can actually make it very difficult to tell the difference between SF and fantasy. (Frank Herbert, China Mieville, and others.)
As was kind of stated before in this topic, you can only make science fiction so 'realistic' before it's no longer science fiction, but simply realistic fiction.
It fails to mention that The Lion King is not Disney's original story, but was instead plagiarized from Kimba the White Lion.
Call me crazy, but I feel a far more comfortable dealing with people dressed as they want to be dressed, with whatever visible body modifications they have. In fact, I feel far more comfortable dealing with people who have piercings and/or visible tattoos, despite having none myself. Why? Because far more often than not, that type of work environment makes the employees comfortable and happy with their job, which is the best way to ensure they do their job well. Most of the employees at the best pizza place in this county (actually rated best by the newspapers, not just IMO) have tattoos, piercings, and non-standard haircuts, and they do their jobs well.
When I worked in customer service myself, I got very relieved whenever I got to deal with people who were visibly off-beat, because contrary to popular belief, they tend to be nice people. They go by their own standards instead of forcing themselves to conform to someone else's standards, which means less stress for them, and get this: most people would rather deal with someone who's actually friendly than someone being forced to fake it. Less stress = more relaxed = generally easier to deal with.
I'm also rather saddened that some would call body modification immature. Though I'm sure some immature people modify themselves, it is by no means an indicator; as implied above, I've found a greater degree of maturity in those who are into it than those against it. It's not usually whoring for attention any more than wearing a shirt because you find it aesthetic. It is an aspect of individuality, and individuality is what drives humanity, like it or not. Entrepeneurs and inventors aren't conformists, and I don't think anyone else needs to be either. We're humans, not robots. Frankly, I'd rather my potential jobs be replaced by machines than have to make myself as machinelike as possible to obtain and keep those jobs.
Actually, what he's most likely referring to is the stock hardware in Macs. You can put any manufacture of compatible RAM you like in your machine, and pretty much any ATA HD in, but the components that come by default installed in Macs tend to be high-quality. This is not as often true for x86 PCs, especially the cheaper ones.
Heh. This has been gone over many, many, many times, and it's utter bullshit. Think of how much legal software gets ported to OS X. It's not the whole pie, but it's quite a lot. Why do people port it? Because there's a market there. Now, think really hard about that. Why would all of the virus and spyware writers pass up another opportunity to do their business? I'll give you a hint: It's not because OS X is a smaller market share. Maybe, just maybe, it's because it's exceedingly difficult to successfully create and implement viruses and spyware for OS X. I'll grant you, if OS X had the market share that Windows does, there would be some viruses and spyware, as being the dominant platform encourages people to write them. However, if Windows were in the same market share as OS X is currently, and it still posessed the vulnerabilities it has, it would still be rife with viruses and spyware.