Sharing music via MP3s is no different than sharing music via minicassettes...
<tongue planted firmly in cheek>
Um...it's on a computer, duh. That's like, way different, and stuff. Anything on a computer is probably controlled by, like, those geeky guys that we used to push into lockers when we were in high school. You know, the ones who were always smarter than us and stuff? Computers = BAD. Emmm-pee-three = BAD. Fire = BAD. If you support any of that stuff, the terrorists have won, and you don't want that, do you?
If you come over and play in my sandbox, you play by my rules, and that's okay with me. If you go play in a public sandbox that (*gasp*!) isn't owned by me or my buddies, that's not cool because you're playing by different rules. Different rules than mine are BAD, which means you're probably a terrorist, and we all know where that gets us.
I have two WinXP Pro machines with 2 Ghz+ processors and 1/2 Gig of RAM each, a Slackware Cyrix machine and a Win98 PIII that are both at about 700 Mhz with 256 MB RAM, and the wife (who has finally consented to try Fire-something in the wake of the recent IE security issues and much whining from me) has a 2.4 Ghz P4 running Win98 with 1/2 a gig of RAM. On all of the machines I've used, Firefox performs exceptionally well compared to IE with some exceptions:
When the Fox is slow to load some page or another, I will frequently try the same page in IE because I'm an impatient bastard. Almost invariably, IE loads the site as slowly as the Fox, telling me that it's a server issue & not the browser's fault.
Pages that use Java take a hundred years to load in Fox. Period. Maybe there are settings that I've neglected to tweak, but the Java environment seems to start loading at whatever point the page in question calls it, adding Java's start time to the time it would normally take the page to load. IE wins for speed hands down in this case, but if I'm doing something stupid and can fix it easily, I'd love to be corrected here.
Tabs. Right now, I have about a dozen tabs open. Can't live without 'em. However, if I try to quickly flip from tab to tab and reload or submit or follow a link or run a script, after the third or fourth page I try to load I notice a difference of up to a full second when loading or when I even try to switch to another tab. Should Fox be able to withstand this kind of abuse? Dunno. Should I be able to reconfigure the browser to fix this too? Dunno, but I'd like to think so.
Overall, I'm very happy with Firefox in the speed department (curse you, Java-reliant pages!), and can't imagine subjecting IE to the same treatment without getting hourly blue screens. It's not a perfect experience, but it sucks infinitely less than the Microsoft alternative IMHO.
I won't speak to people getting excited over a 1% drop in IE usage, because that just seems silly to me, but taking each of those FUD-sounding statements in turn I came up with the following:
"IE is insecure because of ActiveX"
According to
Microsoft,"An ActiveX control can be an extremely insecure way to provide a feature...the control may be vulnerable to attack because any Web application on the Internet can repurpose it, that is, use the control for its own ends whether sincere or malicious.". There are numerous other sources for the "ActiveX makes IE insecure" opinion, but if I were making a case for it I'd start with something directly from the company responsible for IE. To be fair, the article goes on to discuss what you can do as a developer to make your own ActiveX components secure, but I refer back to the first sentence and think about the old adage concerning chains and their weakest links...
"Microsoft has said they will never support CSS2"
Again, according to
Microsoft,"Stricter parsing is more consistent with the standards promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)--the CSS, Level 1 (CSS1) and CSS, Level 2 (CSS2) specifications.". This seems to imply that IE does, in fact, support CSS2, but if a dissenting opinion can be backed up with proof (i.e.- "insert this CSS2 compliant stuff into a simple HTML page and watch IE 6 vomit on it") I'd sooner believe that than the MS site. I'm just lazy and attempting to address each point using only Microsoft-approved information...so on this point, at least, I have to admit that it's FUD according to what MS would have you believe.
"IE runs faster than Mozilla because it's integrated in the kernel"
Again,
Microsoft has an archived news story that says, among other things, "DOJ's Request for New Court Order Shows that Internet Explorer is an Integrated Feature of Windows". Granted, this is from 1997 and refers to Win95/IE 3.0, but I'm lazy and couldn't find anything more current WRT IE's integrated/nonintegrated status. Given the assumption that IE's relationship to the OS has remained the same, I think it's reasonable to suggest that an application that's part of the OS will run faster than one that isn't.
So, through some very cursory research, it would appear that there is some factual basis for at least two of those three allegations according to sources at the organization that is the target of the supposed FUD.
And so, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, if Chewbacca does not make sense...
Well, I've never read FUD in a context other than the speculation and half-truths that you mention, but taken literally, I've always been told that it means "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". There may in fact be Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt surrounding Internet Explorer and a great many other Microsoft-related things, but they're based on a great deal more evidence than we usually think of when we say FUD. Maybe "legit-i-FUD" would be better? "Factual FUD"?
My first reaction was to make some kind of crack about you wearing a tinfoil hat, but then I thought about it for a second and asked myself: "How do you think some of these patents were granted in the first place?"
I'll just be in the corner, trying to position myself away from the mind-control rays, thank you very much.
Actually, I more or less agree with your definition of "sheeple", including (now that I've thought about it) the arrogant and condescending overtones. I've tried a couple of times to compose a comprehensive and coherent reply to this, but I keep failing, so I'll try to quickly sum up the things I wanted to mention:
Another important aspect of the "sheeple" mentality, as I see it, is that ignorance is bliss. Not "I choose to be ignorant of rocket science so that I can focus on genetic engineering, which makes me happy", but a sincere effort to remain as ignorant as possible of as much as possible, period. Your average sherson, in my view of the world, doesn't mind being part of the herd or trapped in "the system", because from their viewpoint there really is no herd and no system...the world that they see is the only one that could possibly exist, so it would be worse than stupid to consider any other possibility.
While my kneejerk response to the question "are you a sherson?" would be "of course not!", I have to admit that after a minute or so of reflecting I can identify attributes within myself or a couple of actions within the past week that I would label as "sheepish". The fact that I can identify those things as undesirable and make an effort to rid myself of that sort of behavior counts for something, I think, but am I 100% free of the thing that I mock? If I'm honest, no. Are any of us, come to that? Maybe, but I think that's a different and longer discussion...
The point that I wanted to make in my original offhand post was badly-phrased. The essential message I wanted to convey was "while it's possible that a person may have to be fairly bright to understand one joke or another, it seems more important to me that the person in question have interests that lie in the direction of computers and programming and OSS (basically, the typical Slashdot-reading geek stereotype) than the average member of society. for instance, here's an example of someone who I consider to be both fairly bright and non-standard in her interests, and she still doesn't get the jokes (let's ignore for now the discussion of how many bona fide 'jokes' get posted on a particular topic)."...I was just impressively careless with my choice of words.
So those are my thoughts in a nutshell. I could (and should) elaborate on this later to clarify things because I'm sure that half of this post makes me look like a babbling moron, but it's a lot more condensed & to the point than my earlier effort.
And don't get me started on people who use the word 'sheeple'.
For what it's worth, that's the first and probably last time that I intend to ever use that word in a sentence. It was based on the assumption that a reader would understand what I meant to say without feeling angry, unhappy, insecure, or morally superior while also not forcing that reader to wade through page after page of my thoughts on what it means to be an average member of society. Obviously, I was wrong on a number of levels.
Let me give you a hint, buddy. You're not as far above the average as you think you are.
Let me make certain that I understand this. I posted an offhand comment made up of something like four sentences to Slashdot, and you were able to determine me approximate level of intelligence or whatever you're measuring relative to the average, and have found me lacking with respect to my own self-proclaimed superiority. I'm in awe of...something.
To clarify, I can confidently say that I'm above and below a lot of averages, if you believe the statistics that various groups present as fact. I'm above average in terms of the years I've spent in higher education, but does that automatically mean that I'm more intelligent than an average person? Maybe, maybe not, but first I'm genuinely interested in how you determine "intelligence". I have below average debt. Does that say anything about my worth as a person, or does it simply imply that I'm lucky? I'm fairly certain that I'm above the average recommended weight for someone of my gender and height. Does that earn me a label of "fatty" to accompany the earlier derisive "buddy"? I don't know about "above average", but I take pride in being other-than-average in a lot of ways, period.
How do you do it? What exactly is the world like, seen from your perspective? I'm bored enough to be genuinely curious, and I'll go so far as to apologize if my response comes across sounding as snide as yours did because that was never my intention.
Funny you should say that. My wife, who definitely doesn't fit in with the rank-and-file sheeple that make up the bulk of society, looks at me blankly every time I laugh at something on/. and try to explain the jokes to her. This happens especially often when SCO appears in the headlines. Maybe it takes not just bright people, but a particular kind of person (*coughGEEKYcough*) to understand some of the/. humor.
The very ACs who would eat that comment alive are likely to fit into "the rest of society" anyway...just take one look at a "frosty piss" or "gnaa" post and you'll see my point.
Note to everyone not named "George Lucus": Star Wars isn't yours.
Boy, will Mr. Lucas be pissed when he hears that.
To quote Chaka Luther King in Jay and Silent Bob Stike Back: "I think George Lucas gonna sue somebody."
Thanks for pointing this out. As soon as I read the first post about C4, I remembered seeing some sort of disclaimer to that effect on my Father Ted DVD sets, so it made sense immediately. I've been trying not to fall into the trap of believing that any & all TV coming out of the UK is spawned by the beeb, but I think I got dazzled by the BBC logo and ignored the "distributed by" on the shiny packaging.
Hmmm...easily distracted by shiny packaging. Could this be the problem with the majority of TV viewers in the US?
I've never thought about it until recently, but here's the list of BBC-produced programs that I enjoy watching for one reason or another (many of these have wrapped up already, but it takes a while for me to become aware of them since I'm all the way across the stinkin' pond...):
Vicar of Dibley
Absolutely Fabulous
Father Ted
A Fine Romance
As Time Goes By
Ballykissangel
Bless Me Father
Last of the Summer Wine
My Hero
Chef!
Likely a half-dozen more that I'm not thinking of right now...
Now, for the sake of fairness, let's have a list of US TV programs I will watch on purpose:
Firefly
Buffy
Charmed
Star Trek: I'll Watch Almost Any Series but DS9
Greg the Bunny
The Tick
Conclusion? The BBC will at least give some series a fighting chance instead of killing them in their infancy. Does this mean that the British shows are always higher quality? Not necessarily, but I'd be a lot happier to pay the TV tax than I would be to pay for American cable... I, for one, welcome our new cyber-BBC programming overlords.
I may have mentioned this in a post many months in the distant past, but I once spoke to a headhunter who asked "do you have any database development experience such as X?" I spent a minute or so explaining that I had done X, Y, Z, and $foo in environments such as Access (yes, I know, I'm doing penance for that), SQL Server, and MySQL. Her response?
"Yes, but have you actually done any development?"
Reminds me of a webcomic (Userfriendly? dunno) I read once where one of the guys tells a headhunter that he knows Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, and the dude says "but you don't have any MS Office experience, do you? Hm, too bad, because we really need you to have that."
I've only ever installed Office or MS stuff up to XP, so forgive me if they've fixed this for the 2003 versions, but didn't you forget
3a. Wait for software to phone home over your internet connection
3b (optional). Call 1-800-1UP-YRS2 to activate because you have no net connection, the connection died and left you with an unauthenticated install, or you're afraid your tinfoil hat won't protect you from whatever information the software sends when it phones home.
?
You can make a case that this is still not a "squirrelly" install process and that it's not terribly hard to master, and I'd agree with you. You can even make a case that Joe Sixpack's Grandma isn't going to care about that sort of thing, and I might agree with that as well depending on the circumstances.
Given a choice, however, between needing a "product activation key" to prove that I can legally use something I've purchased and getting free (as in "I don't have to hang on to a flimsy jewel case & ID sticker for the rest of the software's lifetime") stuff, I'll take the free if I think that it's as good as (or better than) the restricted alternative.
Disclaimer: I use MS Office products at my office because I have to support them, so I've done plenty of MS installs in my day. I also understand that MS Office may be much better than the alternatives for certain people performing certain tasks...that's just not me, and probably not Grandma most of the time.
Wrong state, you insensitive clod!
on
A Babe in Tuxland
·
· Score: 1
Well, not only was the quote taken a bit out of context, but the article clearly states that the author lives & works in the Austin, TX area.
For what you're implying, we'd have to have an article from a writer based in Arksansas, Alabama, or Missouri.*
*Disclaimer: I'm a Missouri native, I've got family (ick) in 'Bama, and I make no excuses for Arkansas whatsoever thank you very much.
You think that's gonna sell in the real world? How many commercial packages can afford to ship broken?
Let's see...MS Windows 95, Windows 98, Word, Excel, um...help me out here, guys?
Seriously, define "broken". I'm not going to engage in blind MS-bashing just because they're there, so I have to admit that there are some MS apps out of the box that haven't broken immediately or on really simple functions. At the same time, I have to admit that I've used some OSS at one time or another that I'd consider pretty "broken" by any standards. Until we set a baseline for breakage, though, any debate is doomed to devolve into "yeah, it's broken" and "no it's not".
I'll offer up a suggestion, though, that when MS Word crashes on a "print" command with a one-page plain text file open, that's a perfect example of the kind of "broken" we want to target.
No joke. I could post for pages and pages with antecdotal evidence, from my own experience and that of fellow geeks, that the quickest way to eliminate a policy or new set of particularly stupid regulations is to follow them to the letter. For instance:
POINTY-HAIRED BOSS: Why didn't you know that Server X, Application Y, and Cubicle Drone Z were all hosed and not responding to requests?
YOU: Well, sir, I get these notifications, see, and when I'm working in another part of the office or not sitting right at my desk, I know instantly if something goes wrong with anything that I'm responsible for and then I can fix it.
PHB: But...that doesn't explain why you didn't know about XYZ!!
YOU: Well, these alerts all come on my cell phone, you see, and since it's company policy that Cells Are Not Allowed...
The dumber it is, the more religiously you should follow it, and make darned sure that all of your buddies fall in line with the company's new direction as well. I'm assuming, of course, that you've already presented your case to a supervisor or HR person or something, and that you're not a Super Executive VP of Something. If you're at that level in the organization, just say "no" and have your department behave differently from everyone else...apparently this works in the real world if you're high enough on the food chain.
I'm sick of you people constantly misquoting reputable news sources and press releases from large companies, already. It wasn't a payment of seven figures at all...it was seven fingers, as made famous in the Neo/Agent Smith scene in the original Matrix film. As in "How about I give you the finger...and you give me my phone call."
It's just that EV1 had each of seven highly-placed executives give Darl the finger, resulting in a payment of seven fingers.
Actually, you're right. Now I think about it, I do look like a criminal...of the "cyber crime" variety. I don't really look like the type of person who would be doing anything, legally or illegally, that involves the outdoors or being away from a computer or anything like that. I think it's the monitor tan that gives it away.
By some odd coincidence, you did just describe my seventh-grade science teacher and this transsexual I knew in college...
So I'm walking home from my high school, which is less than a mile's worth of walking. It was about 8 PM in a small town in the Midwest, and the cop/me conversation went kind of the same way yours did. Lots of spotlight shining, then a second cop walks up and asks the same questions that the first cop did. Lots of running their hands along the utility belt and holster area. Finally, they revealed that two guys about 6 feet tall in dark clothing had been reported breaking into cars, hence their reason for stopping me.
I was about 5'6 at the time, if that, and wearing a white t-shirt and these silly light-colored jeans. Before they let me go, after asking where I was headed ("home"), they asked for my name and my parents' names. I gave them my name & mentioned my parents as "Mayor and Mrs. $firstname $lastname" (which was true). I had no problem tattling to daddy when I got home, that's for sure. Small town politics rock. Dumb bastards.
Couple of years later, I was in college but visiting a friend back home. We had been hanging out with these sluts (yes, Beavis, sluts are like, cool and stuff) and we were driving one of them home in my buddy's car. It was pretty late at night, but we were all sober and my friend was driving at or slightly below the speed limit, because he's paranoid like that. He pulls over to park so the cop car that's been following us for several blocks can pass us by. Cop car pulls up, blocking the road, rolls down his window. Looks at us, spotlight-thingy shining right in our eyes. My friend rolls down the window, says "Can I help you?", and my friend responds quietly, politely, and very briefly to every question, offering no more information than the cop asks for. Cop never asked our names, but asked a lot of questions repeatedly, then drove off after he decided he'd hassled us enough.
I don't look like a criminal. I look like a pitiful little harmless dork. I also looked like a kid, however, and my experience tells me that in a cop's mind kid = easily hassled = less real law enforcement gets done, because that's sometimes dangerous and we don't like it = profit!
Or, for all of you Vampire: The Masquerade devotees in the audience tonight, a true classic. Can't remember the original tune offhand, though.
Suddenly, all my blood is running out of me
I'm not half the vamp I used to be
'Cause you believe in Diablerie
How much did you drink? I don't know, I couldn't say
But I think it's much more than I drank all yesterday...
Well, I don't remember the "official" Alpha Complex song, but there was one that got bounced around a bunch of my college buddies that was sung to the tune of the "Oscar Meyer Weiner" song. Oh, I'm glad I'm not an Alpha Complex commie,
That is what I'd really hate to be
Cuz if I were an Alpha Complex commie,
All the citizens would shoot at me.
Or this one, to the tune of Billy Joel's "Piano Man": It's 9 o'clock in Computer time,
A communist crowd shuffles in
There's a White-Class sitting next to me
But I'm not cleared to look straight at him...
Let's not go there, though. That was a silly time.
I read and agreed completely with your post. Then I noticed the URL to the photo, followed it, and hoped it wasn't goatse. Intrigued, I clicked the "Home" link in the upper-left corner of the page and skimmed the text. In the context of a lot of the posts I've seen, yours included, this line almost had me falling off my chair laughing.
"Helping People Drive Safely, One Breath At a Time."
No, really. April 1st isn't for more than a month. Can we mod the state of New Mexico -10, Dumbass?
I can't think of a scenario in which someone's career could be ruined by a Slashdot troll.
In principle I agree with you, but for the sake of an alternate viewpoint, here's one for you: Somebody's reading/. from work, which I admit is a stupid thing to begin with if the work policy forbids non-work activities on company time. Person looks at an article with very few posts, or browses at -1 so that one of the "GNAA" trolls comes up. HR person walks by, looks at screen. HR person takes offense to...well, everything in the GNAA-troll's post, brands the employee as a "white supremacist" who actively engages in anti-minority activity on company time with company equipment. Depending on the person's line of work and the amount of BS the HR person can wield, that could ruin part or all of someone's career, I guess.
Hey, it could happen. That scenario, or something oddly similar, is more likely to happen now than it was 20 years ago...okay, I feel kind of sick now.
Though I have to admit, for my typical browsing experience I don't see a whole lot of difference between Firebird's latest 0.7 release and Firefox. I'll explore the new tweaks and nifties sooner or later, I suppose.
Now, somebody tell me at what point the name's going to change again and I can run Firefly 0.9 as my browser of choice? That would be sweet, the icon could be a tiny image of the Serenity...for the current icon, has anyone else wondered if that fox is having a little too much fun with the globe?
But I digress. I'm looking forward to the 1.0 release, whatever the name ends up being. I'd be interested in knowing what the official marketshare (as far as these things can be determined) is for Fire-[$animal_name]/Mozilla browsers. I know that I've had more stability/popup-blocking goodness out of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox than I usually get out of IE, and far fewer crashes (Firebird crashed on me once on my XP Pro box. Once in how many months? Let's not even think about IE's crash frequency...)
Stupid quote of the day: "That browser sucks...it doesn't even support VBScript!"
a) "In order to stick it to da man, you must eventually become da man yourself"?
b) "Strike me down, and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine"?
c) "If you really want to succeed, drop out of college. Just look what happened to little Billy from that nice house down the street"?
Maybe we need to see a "Butterfly Effect"-style film that explores the possibilities of different paths the computing world could have taken. (no, Bill, you should make that screen pink, then people will really know that something's wrong with their computer. what should we call it, then? Pink screen...of death? hm...)
Slashdot Mirror
Sharing music via MP3s is no different than sharing music via minicassettes...
<tongue planted firmly in cheek>
Um...it's on a computer, duh. That's like, way different, and stuff. Anything on a computer is probably controlled by, like, those geeky guys that we used to push into lockers when we were in high school. You know, the ones who were always smarter than us and stuff? Computers = BAD. Emmm-pee-three = BAD. Fire = BAD. If you support any of that stuff, the terrorists have won, and you don't want that, do you?
If you come over and play in my sandbox, you play by my rules, and that's okay with me. If you go play in a public sandbox that (*gasp*!) isn't owned by me or my buddies, that's not cool because you're playing by different rules. Different rules than mine are BAD, which means you're probably a terrorist, and we all know where that gets us.
</tongue planted firmly in cheek>
When the Fox is slow to load some page or another, I will frequently try the same page in IE because I'm an impatient bastard. Almost invariably, IE loads the site as slowly as the Fox, telling me that it's a server issue & not the browser's fault.
Pages that use Java take a hundred years to load in Fox. Period. Maybe there are settings that I've neglected to tweak, but the Java environment seems to start loading at whatever point the page in question calls it, adding Java's start time to the time it would normally take the page to load. IE wins for speed hands down in this case, but if I'm doing something stupid and can fix it easily, I'd love to be corrected here.
Tabs. Right now, I have about a dozen tabs open. Can't live without 'em. However, if I try to quickly flip from tab to tab and reload or submit or follow a link or run a script, after the third or fourth page I try to load I notice a difference of up to a full second when loading or when I even try to switch to another tab. Should Fox be able to withstand this kind of abuse? Dunno. Should I be able to reconfigure the browser to fix this too? Dunno, but I'd like to think so.
Overall, I'm very happy with Firefox in the speed department (curse you, Java-reliant pages!), and can't imagine subjecting IE to the same treatment without getting hourly blue screens. It's not a perfect experience, but it sucks infinitely less than the Microsoft alternative IMHO.
I won't speak to people getting excited over a 1% drop in IE usage, because that just seems silly to me, but taking each of those FUD-sounding statements in turn I came up with the following:
"IE is insecure because of ActiveX"
According to Microsoft,"An ActiveX control can be an extremely insecure way to provide a feature...the control may be vulnerable to attack because any Web application on the Internet can repurpose it, that is, use the control for its own ends whether sincere or malicious.". There are numerous other sources for the "ActiveX makes IE insecure" opinion, but if I were making a case for it I'd start with something directly from the company responsible for IE. To be fair, the article goes on to discuss what you can do as a developer to make your own ActiveX components secure, but I refer back to the first sentence and think about the old adage concerning chains and their weakest links...
"Microsoft has said they will never support CSS2"
Again, according to Microsoft,"Stricter parsing is more consistent with the standards promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)--the CSS, Level 1 (CSS1) and CSS, Level 2 (CSS2) specifications.". This seems to imply that IE does, in fact, support CSS2, but if a dissenting opinion can be backed up with proof (i.e.- "insert this CSS2 compliant stuff into a simple HTML page and watch IE 6 vomit on it") I'd sooner believe that than the MS site. I'm just lazy and attempting to address each point using only Microsoft-approved information...so on this point, at least, I have to admit that it's FUD according to what MS would have you believe.
"IE runs faster than Mozilla because it's integrated in the kernel"
Again, Microsoft has an archived news story that says, among other things, "DOJ's Request for New Court Order Shows that Internet Explorer is an Integrated Feature of Windows". Granted, this is from 1997 and refers to Win95/IE 3.0, but I'm lazy and couldn't find anything more current WRT IE's integrated/nonintegrated status. Given the assumption that IE's relationship to the OS has remained the same, I think it's reasonable to suggest that an application that's part of the OS will run faster than one that isn't.
So, through some very cursory research, it would appear that there is some factual basis for at least two of those three allegations according to sources at the organization that is the target of the supposed FUD.
And so, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, if Chewbacca does not make sense...
Well, I've never read FUD in a context other than the speculation and half-truths that you mention, but taken literally, I've always been told that it means "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". There may in fact be Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt surrounding Internet Explorer and a great many other Microsoft-related things, but they're based on a great deal more evidence than we usually think of when we say FUD. Maybe "legit-i-FUD" would be better? "Factual FUD"?
My first reaction was to make some kind of crack about you wearing a tinfoil hat, but then I thought about it for a second and asked myself: "How do you think some of these patents were granted in the first place?"
I'll just be in the corner, trying to position myself away from the mind-control rays, thank you very much.
Another important aspect of the "sheeple" mentality, as I see it, is that ignorance is bliss. Not "I choose to be ignorant of rocket science so that I can focus on genetic engineering, which makes me happy", but a sincere effort to remain as ignorant as possible of as much as possible, period. Your average sherson, in my view of the world, doesn't mind being part of the herd or trapped in "the system", because from their viewpoint there really is no herd and no system...the world that they see is the only one that could possibly exist, so it would be worse than stupid to consider any other possibility.
While my kneejerk response to the question "are you a sherson?" would be "of course not!", I have to admit that after a minute or so of reflecting I can identify attributes within myself or a couple of actions within the past week that I would label as "sheepish". The fact that I can identify those things as undesirable and make an effort to rid myself of that sort of behavior counts for something, I think, but am I 100% free of the thing that I mock? If I'm honest, no. Are any of us, come to that? Maybe, but I think that's a different and longer discussion...
The point that I wanted to make in my original offhand post was badly-phrased. The essential message I wanted to convey was "while it's possible that a person may have to be fairly bright to understand one joke or another, it seems more important to me that the person in question have interests that lie in the direction of computers and programming and OSS (basically, the typical Slashdot-reading geek stereotype) than the average member of society. for instance, here's an example of someone who I consider to be both fairly bright and non-standard in her interests, and she still doesn't get the jokes (let's ignore for now the discussion of how many bona fide 'jokes' get posted on a particular topic)."...I was just impressively careless with my choice of words.
So those are my thoughts in a nutshell. I could (and should) elaborate on this later to clarify things because I'm sure that half of this post makes me look like a babbling moron, but it's a lot more condensed & to the point than my earlier effort.
I smell a troll, but I'll bite.
And don't get me started on people who use the word 'sheeple'.
For what it's worth, that's the first and probably last time that I intend to ever use that word in a sentence. It was based on the assumption that a reader would understand what I meant to say without feeling angry, unhappy, insecure, or morally superior while also not forcing that reader to wade through page after page of my thoughts on what it means to be an average member of society. Obviously, I was wrong on a number of levels.
Let me give you a hint, buddy. You're not as far above the average as you think you are.
Let me make certain that I understand this. I posted an offhand comment made up of something like four sentences to Slashdot, and you were able to determine me approximate level of intelligence or whatever you're measuring relative to the average, and have found me lacking with respect to my own self-proclaimed superiority. I'm in awe of...something.
To clarify, I can confidently say that I'm above and below a lot of averages, if you believe the statistics that various groups present as fact. I'm above average in terms of the years I've spent in higher education, but does that automatically mean that I'm more intelligent than an average person? Maybe, maybe not, but first I'm genuinely interested in how you determine "intelligence". I have below average debt. Does that say anything about my worth as a person, or does it simply imply that I'm lucky? I'm fairly certain that I'm above the average recommended weight for someone of my gender and height. Does that earn me a label of "fatty" to accompany the earlier derisive "buddy"? I don't know about "above average", but I take pride in being other-than-average in a lot of ways, period.
How do you do it? What exactly is the world like, seen from your perspective? I'm bored enough to be genuinely curious, and I'll go so far as to apologize if my response comes across sounding as snide as yours did because that was never my intention.
Funny you should say that. My wife, who definitely doesn't fit in with the rank-and-file sheeple that make up the bulk of society, looks at me blankly every time I laugh at something on /. and try to explain the jokes to her. This happens especially often when SCO appears in the headlines. Maybe it takes not just bright people, but a particular kind of person (*coughGEEKYcough*) to understand some of the /. humor.
The very ACs who would eat that comment alive are likely to fit into "the rest of society" anyway...just take one look at a "frosty piss" or "gnaa" post and you'll see my point.
Note to everyone not named "George Lucus": Star Wars isn't yours.
Boy, will Mr. Lucas be pissed when he hears that.
To quote Chaka Luther King in Jay and Silent Bob Stike Back: "I think George Lucas gonna sue somebody."
*sigh*
Thanks for pointing this out. As soon as I read the first post about C4, I remembered seeing some sort of disclaimer to that effect on my Father Ted DVD sets, so it made sense immediately. I've been trying not to fall into the trap of believing that any & all TV coming out of the UK is spawned by the beeb, but I think I got dazzled by the BBC logo and ignored the "distributed by" on the shiny packaging.
Hmmm...easily distracted by shiny packaging. Could this be the problem with the majority of TV viewers in the US?
Now, for the sake of fairness, let's have a list of US TV programs I will watch on purpose:
Conclusion? The BBC will at least give some series a fighting chance instead of killing them in their infancy. Does this mean that the British shows are always higher quality? Not necessarily, but I'd be a lot happier to pay the TV tax than I would be to pay for American cable...
I, for one, welcome our new cyber-BBC programming overlords.
I may have mentioned this in a post many months in the distant past, but I once spoke to a headhunter who asked "do you have any database development experience such as X?" I spent a minute or so explaining that I had done X, Y, Z, and $foo in environments such as Access (yes, I know, I'm doing penance for that), SQL Server, and MySQL. Her response?
"Yes, but have you actually done any development?"
Reminds me of a webcomic (Userfriendly? dunno) I read once where one of the guys tells a headhunter that he knows Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, and the dude says "but you don't have any MS Office experience, do you? Hm, too bad, because we really need you to have that."
I've only ever installed Office or MS stuff up to XP, so forgive me if they've fixed this for the 2003 versions, but didn't you forget
3a. Wait for software to phone home over your internet connection
3b (optional). Call 1-800-1UP-YRS2 to activate because you have no net connection, the connection died and left you with an unauthenticated install, or you're afraid your tinfoil hat won't protect you from whatever information the software sends when it phones home.
?
You can make a case that this is still not a "squirrelly" install process and that it's not terribly hard to master, and I'd agree with you. You can even make a case that Joe Sixpack's Grandma isn't going to care about that sort of thing, and I might agree with that as well depending on the circumstances.
Given a choice, however, between needing a "product activation key" to prove that I can legally use something I've purchased and getting free (as in "I don't have to hang on to a flimsy jewel case & ID sticker for the rest of the software's lifetime") stuff, I'll take the free if I think that it's as good as (or better than) the restricted alternative.
Disclaimer: I use MS Office products at my office because I have to support them, so I've done plenty of MS installs in my day. I also understand that MS Office may be much better than the alternatives for certain people performing certain tasks...that's just not me, and probably not Grandma most of the time.
Well, not only was the quote taken a bit out of context, but the article clearly states that the author lives & works in the Austin, TX area.
For what you're implying, we'd have to have an article from a writer based in Arksansas, Alabama, or Missouri.*
*Disclaimer: I'm a Missouri native, I've got family (ick) in 'Bama, and I make no excuses for Arkansas whatsoever thank you very much.
You think that's gonna sell in the real world? How many commercial packages can afford to ship broken?
Let's see...MS Windows 95, Windows 98, Word, Excel, um...help me out here, guys?
Seriously, define "broken". I'm not going to engage in blind MS-bashing just because they're there, so I have to admit that there are some MS apps out of the box that haven't broken immediately or on really simple functions. At the same time, I have to admit that I've used some OSS at one time or another that I'd consider pretty "broken" by any standards. Until we set a baseline for breakage, though, any debate is doomed to devolve into "yeah, it's broken" and "no it's not".
I'll offer up a suggestion, though, that when MS Word crashes on a "print" command with a one-page plain text file open, that's a perfect example of the kind of "broken" we want to target.
No joke. I could post for pages and pages with antecdotal evidence, from my own experience and that of fellow geeks, that the quickest way to eliminate a policy or new set of particularly stupid regulations is to follow them to the letter. For instance:
POINTY-HAIRED BOSS: Why didn't you know that Server X, Application Y, and Cubicle Drone Z were all hosed and not responding to requests?
YOU: Well, sir, I get these notifications, see, and when I'm working in another part of the office or not sitting right at my desk, I know instantly if something goes wrong with anything that I'm responsible for and then I can fix it.
PHB: But...that doesn't explain why you didn't know about XYZ!!
YOU: Well, these alerts all come on my cell phone, you see, and since it's company policy that Cells Are Not Allowed...
The dumber it is, the more religiously you should follow it, and make darned sure that all of your buddies fall in line with the company's new direction as well. I'm assuming, of course, that you've already presented your case to a supervisor or HR person or something, and that you're not a Super Executive VP of Something. If you're at that level in the organization, just say "no" and have your department behave differently from everyone else...apparently this works in the real world if you're high enough on the food chain.
No, no, no.
I'm sick of you people constantly misquoting reputable news sources and press releases from large companies, already. It wasn't a payment of seven figures at all...it was seven fingers, as made famous in the Neo/Agent Smith scene in the original Matrix film. As in "How about I give you the finger...and you give me my phone call."
It's just that EV1 had each of seven highly-placed executives give Darl the finger, resulting in a payment of seven fingers.
I do so hate having to correct you people.
Actually, you're right. Now I think about it, I do look like a criminal...of the "cyber crime" variety. I don't really look like the type of person who would be doing anything, legally or illegally, that involves the outdoors or being away from a computer or anything like that. I think it's the monitor tan that gives it away.
By some odd coincidence, you did just describe my seventh-grade science teacher and this transsexual I knew in college...
So I'm walking home from my high school, which is less than a mile's worth of walking. It was about 8 PM in a small town in the Midwest, and the cop/me conversation went kind of the same way yours did. Lots of spotlight shining, then a second cop walks up and asks the same questions that the first cop did. Lots of running their hands along the utility belt and holster area. Finally, they revealed that two guys about 6 feet tall in dark clothing had been reported breaking into cars, hence their reason for stopping me.
I was about 5'6 at the time, if that, and wearing a white t-shirt and these silly light-colored jeans. Before they let me go, after asking where I was headed ("home"), they asked for my name and my parents' names. I gave them my name & mentioned my parents as "Mayor and Mrs. $firstname $lastname" (which was true). I had no problem tattling to daddy when I got home, that's for sure. Small town politics rock. Dumb bastards.
Couple of years later, I was in college but visiting a friend back home. We had been hanging out with these sluts (yes, Beavis, sluts are like, cool and stuff) and we were driving one of them home in my buddy's car. It was pretty late at night, but we were all sober and my friend was driving at or slightly below the speed limit, because he's paranoid like that. He pulls over to park so the cop car that's been following us for several blocks can pass us by. Cop car pulls up, blocking the road, rolls down his window. Looks at us, spotlight-thingy shining right in our eyes. My friend rolls down the window, says "Can I help you?", and my friend responds quietly, politely, and very briefly to every question, offering no more information than the cop asks for. Cop never asked our names, but asked a lot of questions repeatedly, then drove off after he decided he'd hassled us enough.
I don't look like a criminal. I look like a pitiful little harmless dork. I also looked like a kid, however, and my experience tells me that in a cop's mind kid = easily hassled = less real law enforcement gets done, because that's sometimes dangerous and we don't like it = profit!
Suddenly, all my blood is running out of me
I'm not half the vamp I used to be
'Cause you believe in Diablerie
How much did you drink? I don't know, I couldn't say
But I think it's much more than I drank all yesterday...
Well, I don't remember the "official" Alpha Complex song, but there was one that got bounced around a bunch of my college buddies that was sung to the tune of the "Oscar Meyer Weiner" song.
Oh, I'm glad I'm not an Alpha Complex commie,
That is what I'd really hate to be
Cuz if I were an Alpha Complex commie,
All the citizens would shoot at me.
Or this one, to the tune of Billy Joel's "Piano Man":
It's 9 o'clock in Computer time,
A communist crowd shuffles in
There's a White-Class sitting next to me
But I'm not cleared to look straight at him...
Let's not go there, though. That was a silly time.
I read and agreed completely with your post. Then I noticed the URL to the photo, followed it, and hoped it wasn't goatse. Intrigued, I clicked the "Home" link in the upper-left corner of the page and skimmed the text. In the context of a lot of the posts I've seen, yours included, this line almost had me falling off my chair laughing.
"Helping People Drive Safely, One Breath At a Time."
No, really. April 1st isn't for more than a month.
Can we mod the state of New Mexico -10, Dumbass?
I can't think of a scenario in which someone's career could be ruined by a Slashdot troll.
/. from work, which I admit is a stupid thing to begin with if the work policy forbids non-work activities on company time. Person looks at an article with very few posts, or browses at -1 so that one of the "GNAA" trolls comes up. HR person walks by, looks at screen. HR person takes offense to...well, everything in the GNAA-troll's post, brands the employee as a "white supremacist" who actively engages in anti-minority activity on company time with company equipment. Depending on the person's line of work and the amount of BS the HR person can wield, that could ruin part or all of someone's career, I guess.
In principle I agree with you, but for the sake of an alternate viewpoint, here's one for you:
Somebody's reading
Hey, it could happen. That scenario, or something oddly similar, is more likely to happen now than it was 20 years ago...okay, I feel kind of sick now.
Though I have to admit, for my typical browsing experience I don't see a whole lot of difference between Firebird's latest 0.7 release and Firefox. I'll explore the new tweaks and nifties sooner or later, I suppose.
Now, somebody tell me at what point the name's going to change again and I can run Firefly 0.9 as my browser of choice? That would be sweet, the icon could be a tiny image of the Serenity...for the current icon, has anyone else wondered if that fox is having a little too much fun with the globe?
But I digress. I'm looking forward to the 1.0 release, whatever the name ends up being. I'd be interested in knowing what the official marketshare (as far as these things can be determined) is for Fire-[$animal_name]/Mozilla browsers. I know that I've had more stability/popup-blocking goodness out of Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox than I usually get out of IE, and far fewer crashes (Firebird crashed on me once on my XP Pro box. Once in how many months? Let's not even think about IE's crash frequency...)
Stupid quote of the day: "That browser sucks...it doesn't even support VBScript!"
a) "In order to stick it to da man, you must eventually become da man yourself"?
b) "Strike me down, and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine"?
c) "If you really want to succeed, drop out of college. Just look what happened to little Billy from that nice house down the street"?
Maybe we need to see a "Butterfly Effect"-style film that explores the possibilities of different paths the computing world could have taken. (no, Bill, you should make that screen pink, then people will really know that something's wrong with their computer. what should we call it, then? Pink screen...of death? hm...)