The argument is that we should've investigated. Are you honestly arguing that we shouldn't investigate until we have proof? The whole point of an investigation is to find proof, one way or the other!
Please read this until you understand. Please do not reply with the same illogical line you keep repeating.
So name an older democracy? America is new as a country, but the other democracies that are around now just seem older because their countries weren't always democracies.
I know it's been done before (Rome, etc), but I believe we're the oldest democracy/republic that's still around.
There is some truth to this instinct to want a physical thing. Ordinary users are used to hearing about, and occasionally experiencing, problems with computers. This is especially true with DRM, which gives Apple the ability to disable all of your access to your music, effectively stealing all of your songs back.
So, for now, a physical CD or DVD is nice, because you buy it once and it works as long as it physically lasts.
I suspect that the common person doesn't know or care about DRM, because they don't really understand the concept. It's the effects that they understand and loathe. When I want to explain DRM to someone who has no clue, I start with DVDs. "You ever push a button on your DVD remote and it tells you you're not allowed to do that? You know, won't let you skip their logo, or the previews, or something? I can skip those on my computer, but it's illegal."
The common person may not care about DRM yet, but they will hate it if we let DRM go where the **AA wants it to go.
most people prefer to own a CD version of their digital music. Perhaps because they can encode either lossless or at a higher bitrate than offered by iTunes?
Good point. And yet, why doesn't the iTunes music store offer higher bitrate stuff?
I'm guessing this has to do with the mentality. Stores which are used to locking customers in (DRM) aren't likely to go out of their way to provide choices (higher bitrate). Stores which exist to provide choices (no DRM; Magnatune) seem much more likely to provide choices (flac/lossless).
Explain to me how Kuartet solves anything. From the screenshot you link to, it looks like it's just a nice transparent, rounded-corner Start menu. How's it different?
For the record, I don't use either. On OS X, I fill the Dock and have it expand, and that's good enough. On Linux, I use a commandline, and make reasonably short commands for anything I need to run.
...did just the opposite. They gave public IPs to all the students, seemingly with no restrictions -- I could have as many IPs as I had network adapters, even on the University wireless. They blocked inbound Windows filesharing ports and outbound SMTP, and throttled BitTorrent, but other than that, I could just about saturate the 10 mbit pipe to my dorm room. I could saturate BitTorrent if I turned on header encryption.
Basically, they decided that the web (port 80) needed to be as fast as possible, because that's where real work gets done.
I actually knew someone who had both. She used satellite for work, basically anything that needed fast Internet, but dialup for gaming. And we were playing an MMO -- if you're into any kind of FPS, forget it, satellite won't work.
They do both, but so slowly it can be difficult to see. I do still hear war stories from people playing Halo 2 on Legendary about how insanely good the AI can be. As in, you see two elites sort of grunt at each other, then they come at you in a pincer attack...
Still, my favorite gameplay comes from games like Natural Selection. It doesn't need good AI, it's online. Not much plot to get in the way, they just focus on mapping and balancing the gameplay.
MS is far too jealous. If I so much as look at another OS, he'll get all in their face, like "How DARE you look at my user base! I'll sue your ass for patent infringement!"
That's if I had to date any of them. The only OS I can think of as female is OS X, and she's an ice queen...
He says it's "doubtful their plan would have succeeded." But in the very next essay, he writes, "However, the threat was real. And it seems pretty clear that it would have bypassed all existing airport security systems."
It's not really a flip-flop, the point is that while the threat was real, it should've been handled quietly, not more of this PANIC PANIC PANIC fear addiction we seem to have.
The point is, increasing airport security, after a certain point, is kind of like escalating DRM. The real terrorists will get around it, you'll only inconvenience ordinary people and waste resources better spent elsewhere.
I think that when Bush says "The terrorists HATE FREEDOM!!!" I'm perfectly justified in saying "You also appear to hate freedom, you arrogant fuckwad." It's just that to avoid calling Bush an arrogant fuckwad, we've got a more politically correct slogan: "You're letting the terrorists win, you fucktards!"
Oh, did I say "fucktards" out loud? Oh well, so much for PC...
So you're suggesting either trusting Paypal, or actually going and verifying not only that the url matches Newegg.com, but that they are trustworthy and reliable? I mean, I try to do that a little bit, but really, I shouldn't have to be the one doing background checks on the company. Knowing the f*ing URL is from floobysoft.com doesn't tell me anything about floobysoft.com.
So, not impossible, but much more difficult than it should be.
And all that's assuming we're using SSL, and that no Certificate Authority has been compromised, or that my DNS is secure (hint: DNS isn't)...
Hmm, but it seems like just about anywhere you pick is going to have some sort of disaster that could happen. Coastline: Hurricane. Mountains: Volcano, avalanches. Fault lines: Volcano, earthquakes. Midwest: Tornados. New York: Terrorism. LA: Hurricane, volcano, earthquakes, AND terrorism.
So where's a safe place to live? Canada? Oh wait: Polar bears.
However, as for your last two, those ammendments ONLY apply to U.S. citizens, and when you can point me to U.S. Citizens who have been branded as Terrorists and swept off to Guantanamo and NOT given their rights
I don't remember, actually. I do know that unreasonable searches and seizures do happen -- otherwise, why is it built into the Patriot Act?
Hmm, I can't quite place the language, but in any language I know, your program has a severe bug -- the first case will always be true, and we'll always post "Bush is evil!" posts. That's because you're using an assignment operator, not a comparison operator.
For what it's worth, if I don't read the article, I don't post a new topic. If anything, I reply to someone else. The reason I appear to follow the first two points of your switch statement is that Bush and MS both have horrible track records. Also, different Slashdotters post different things, which is probably why you couldn't finish that "topic = linux" bit -- I would post that Linux is the best we've got for most things, but that I still keep a Windows partition for games. Someone else would post that there's no point to Linux, since Windows does everything they actually want to do, and Linux doesn't quite do everything yet. And you'd get people much more extreme on both sides.
But let me put it this way -- the Bush admin wants to complain about the liberal bias in the media? Guess what: Honest media now has a liberal bias. This is because reality now has a liberal bias.
You are right, you were quoted out of context on at least a couple of things. And you probably had some insightful things to say, so I'm just going to use this as an excuse to rant:
What I find especially annoying is that it seems that the Web is more broken because of PHP than in spite of it. Valid to wake people up to a 9am talk -- when you're presenting Ruby to a PHP conference.
My own personal gripes are:
While it's possible to call $self->method() from a method (or maybe that's $this->method?), if your function is called as a static class method, it has no way I've found of discovering what class it's in. Yet, you're forced to call static class methods as MyClass::Method. This defeats the main purpose of using a class as a namespace -- you still end up with your namespace referred to throughout the code, meaning you still have to use grep to change it, which can be unreliable.
The syntax, in general, is clumsy at best. It basically feels more or less like any other C-like language. But this is web programming. I thought we were taking a speed hit to make things easier. I like Perl, Python, and Ruby for tons of syntactic sugar that PHP never had. preg_match is definitely clumsy when compared to =~.
In order to access a global variable, I must have a line that says "global $variable". Forcing people to declare a variable is good, it means you'll probably notice your typos. If you're declaring a variable anyway, it saves a lot of typing, especially if you're using lots of tiny functions, to do this the Perl way -- say "my $variable" if you want it to be local, and just say "$variable" if you want it to check for a global one first.
Prefixing every variable with a $ doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. Ok, so I can have a variable called $variable and a function called "function". I could do that anyway. It means you don't have to define variables to use them -- same with Ruby, except Ruby doesn't use prefixes. Perl uses prefixes, but it also uses them for interpolation in strings -- I don't think PHP can do that. Ruby manages that interpolation without prefixing variables except when they're in a string.
Not a lot of scope choices. In fact, there seems to only be method scope and global scope, and maybe loop scope (foreach and friends), unless I'm missing something. What I miss is easy access to, say, class scope and object scope.
A history of being seen as the easiest language for web programming, to where now many think "web backend programming" is always PHP, means you have lots of clueless newbie web programmers. The advantage of PHP was being easy to learn and having some nice features for web programming, but many of these (register_globals, anyone?) have been found to be security flaws, and are no longer reasons to use it. Yet, and I know this isn't your fault, given the choice between a PHP app and a Python|Perl|Ruby|C|ASP app, I won't choose PHP, because PHP developers tend to be the ones who say "If our app gives you security errors, just chmod 777..."
To be fair, I have found some advantages:
Easy insertion of HTML code. This is nice for developing an app quickly. I still don't find it too incredibly useful in larger apps, though, because it makes more sense to split most of the HTML out into a separate file, and generate the rest, maybe even through some XML API.
Powerful templates. Being able to embed real code into a mostly HTML template is a beautiful thing. And yet, I find myself both wishing it was a more powerful language, and thinking a better design (separating logic from presentation, using an existing template engine) would be better than what PHP offers.
Good apps. As much as I hate the poorly-written PHP apps, I'm starting to work on Drupal... In this way, apps are a bit like game consoles, you get the one that plays the games you want. I think PHP attracting newbies probably leads to more decent web apps being written in PHP than in o
I think it should be him for the voice, and maybe anonymous stuntmen in a suit, depending on whether he can or wants to actually play the walking role of the Chief.
I mean, let's face it, he doesn't exactly look like the Chief.
Slashdot Mirror
You have no point, just propaganda.
The argument is that we should've investigated. Are you honestly arguing that we shouldn't investigate until we have proof? The whole point of an investigation is to find proof, one way or the other!
Please read this until you understand. Please do not reply with the same illogical line you keep repeating.
So name an older democracy? America is new as a country, but the other democracies that are around now just seem older because their countries weren't always democracies.
I know it's been done before (Rome, etc), but I believe we're the oldest democracy/republic that's still around.
There is some truth to this instinct to want a physical thing. Ordinary users are used to hearing about, and occasionally experiencing, problems with computers. This is especially true with DRM, which gives Apple the ability to disable all of your access to your music, effectively stealing all of your songs back.
So, for now, a physical CD or DVD is nice, because you buy it once and it works as long as it physically lasts.
I suspect that the common person doesn't know or care about DRM, because they don't really understand the concept. It's the effects that they understand and loathe. When I want to explain DRM to someone who has no clue, I start with DVDs. "You ever push a button on your DVD remote and it tells you you're not allowed to do that? You know, won't let you skip their logo, or the previews, or something? I can skip those on my computer, but it's illegal."
The common person may not care about DRM yet, but they will hate it if we let DRM go where the **AA wants it to go.
Good point. And yet, why doesn't the iTunes music store offer higher bitrate stuff?
I'm guessing this has to do with the mentality. Stores which are used to locking customers in (DRM) aren't likely to go out of their way to provide choices (higher bitrate). Stores which exist to provide choices (no DRM; Magnatune) seem much more likely to provide choices (flac/lossless).
This may not be possible, certainly not desirable. Consider the conditions under which you need to reinstall an OS.
That's what freedom is supposed to mean.
Fuck finding a voice, fuck "not looking like criminals". Go watch "V for Vendetta."
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
Riot in the streets, do whatever you want, just make sure there are enough people with you that you make a point.
Explain to me how Kuartet solves anything. From the screenshot you link to, it looks like it's just a nice transparent, rounded-corner Start menu. How's it different?
For the record, I don't use either. On OS X, I fill the Dock and have it expand, and that's good enough. On Linux, I use a commandline, and make reasonably short commands for anything I need to run.
...did just the opposite. They gave public IPs to all the students, seemingly with no restrictions -- I could have as many IPs as I had network adapters, even on the University wireless. They blocked inbound Windows filesharing ports and outbound SMTP, and throttled BitTorrent, but other than that, I could just about saturate the 10 mbit pipe to my dorm room. I could saturate BitTorrent if I turned on header encryption.
Basically, they decided that the web (port 80) needed to be as fast as possible, because that's where real work gets done.
I actually knew someone who had both. She used satellite for work, basically anything that needed fast Internet, but dialup for gaming. And we were playing an MMO -- if you're into any kind of FPS, forget it, satellite won't work.
Harrr, ye lubberly Fools days be stealin' what rightfully be the 19th of septembarrrrr
Arrrr, how'd ye come by that thar insightful moderation? Yer comment be not insightful, ye scurrvy dog!
...Why do we need a whole program for this? It seems like the kind of thing you could easily do manually. Or better, a Firefox extension.
They do both, but so slowly it can be difficult to see. I do still hear war stories from people playing Halo 2 on Legendary about how insanely good the AI can be. As in, you see two elites sort of grunt at each other, then they come at you in a pincer attack...
Still, my favorite gameplay comes from games like Natural Selection. It doesn't need good AI, it's online. Not much plot to get in the way, they just focus on mapping and balancing the gameplay.
The web can implement email. It's considerably harder for email to implement the web. Webmail sucks, but using SMTP as a web browser would suck more.
MS is far too jealous. If I so much as look at another OS, he'll get all in their face, like "How DARE you look at my user base! I'll sue your ass for patent infringement!"
That's if I had to date any of them. The only OS I can think of as female is OS X, and she's an ice queen...
Wow. I need a life, don't I?
It's not really a flip-flop, the point is that while the threat was real, it should've been handled quietly, not more of this PANIC PANIC PANIC fear addiction we seem to have.
The point is, increasing airport security, after a certain point, is kind of like escalating DRM. The real terrorists will get around it, you'll only inconvenience ordinary people and waste resources better spent elsewhere.
So do it anyway. If you're feeling bold, label them "terrorist targets" or something.
I think that when Bush says "The terrorists HATE FREEDOM!!!" I'm perfectly justified in saying "You also appear to hate freedom, you arrogant fuckwad." It's just that to avoid calling Bush an arrogant fuckwad, we've got a more politically correct slogan: "You're letting the terrorists win, you fucktards!"
Oh, did I say "fucktards" out loud? Oh well, so much for PC...
So you're suggesting either trusting Paypal, or actually going and verifying not only that the url matches Newegg.com, but that they are trustworthy and reliable? I mean, I try to do that a little bit, but really, I shouldn't have to be the one doing background checks on the company. Knowing the f*ing URL is from floobysoft.com doesn't tell me anything about floobysoft.com.
So, not impossible, but much more difficult than it should be.
And all that's assuming we're using SSL, and that no Certificate Authority has been compromised, or that my DNS is secure (hint: DNS isn't)...
Hmm, but it seems like just about anywhere you pick is going to have some sort of disaster that could happen. Coastline: Hurricane. Mountains: Volcano, avalanches. Fault lines: Volcano, earthquakes. Midwest: Tornados. New York: Terrorism. LA: Hurricane, volcano, earthquakes, AND terrorism.
So where's a safe place to live? Canada? Oh wait: Polar bears.
I don't remember, actually. I do know that unreasonable searches and seizures do happen -- otherwise, why is it built into the Patriot Act?
Try this, then: The guy who was kicked off an airplane for praying.
RTFA.
Hmm, I can't quite place the language, but in any language I know, your program has a severe bug -- the first case will always be true, and we'll always post "Bush is evil!" posts. That's because you're using an assignment operator, not a comparison operator.
For what it's worth, if I don't read the article, I don't post a new topic. If anything, I reply to someone else. The reason I appear to follow the first two points of your switch statement is that Bush and MS both have horrible track records. Also, different Slashdotters post different things, which is probably why you couldn't finish that "topic = linux" bit -- I would post that Linux is the best we've got for most things, but that I still keep a Windows partition for games. Someone else would post that there's no point to Linux, since Windows does everything they actually want to do, and Linux doesn't quite do everything yet. And you'd get people much more extreme on both sides.
But let me put it this way -- the Bush admin wants to complain about the liberal bias in the media? Guess what: Honest media now has a liberal bias. This is because reality now has a liberal bias.
You are right, you were quoted out of context on at least a couple of things. And you probably had some insightful things to say, so I'm just going to use this as an excuse to rant:
What I find especially annoying is that it seems that the Web is more broken because of PHP than in spite of it. Valid to wake people up to a 9am talk -- when you're presenting Ruby to a PHP conference.
My own personal gripes are:
To be fair, I have found some advantages:
I think it should be him for the voice, and maybe anonymous stuntmen in a suit, depending on whether he can or wants to actually play the walking role of the Chief.
I mean, let's face it, he doesn't exactly look like the Chief.