I did use Word as far back as the late 80s. I kept having compatibility issues with other Microsoft products. I found third party software supported Microsoft formats better than Microsoft did.
This reminds me of my petition that everybody capable of contributing to the development of lifesaving drugs drop whatever their current career is--be it software developer, accountant, homemaker, whatever--and dedicate the rest of their lives to developing lifesaving medicines.
Because, hey, if we can, then it's immoral not to.
Fuck off with the legislating morality already. It doesn't work with the religious nuts, and it doesn't work with this. It's my life and you're not making me work in the mind numbing drudgery of drug discovery. This isn't the Soviet Union.
Tho I agree with your intent, thats not a fair example because you do pay for television via taxes for public broadcast and subscriptions for cable, etc
Not in the US you don't, not for over the air anyway. Over the air broadcast is not government subsidized as it is for instance in the UK.
The very notion that you would write something - software in this case - and then not (a) try to charge an arm and a leg for it,
Libre != Gratis. Companies are starting to see that Free software can be sold for quite a lot of money. This is coming at the same time as a shift where companies aren't selling what's in the shrink-wrapped box - they're selling what's in their support/analyst staff's heads.
This couldn't have come at a better time for the free software movement. The result is that business software alone is useless unless you really know what you're doing. As MySQL - making a fortune selling something that's also available, for free, on their website.
These days, you're as likely to see an OSS person in a suit as birkenstocks.
No, it makes sense.
on
The Zune Cometh
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That doesn't make any sense at all. If Murphey is trying to get people more interested in Zune and wanting to buy a Zune, why would he suggest that a new iPod is coming out. This would actually make people considering a Zune potentially abort that purchase waiting for Apple to produce an iPod with WiFi or something similar.
Actually, it does make some sense. Imagine you're a weak-minded consumer and you're going to buy an iPod tomorrow, and I'm selling Zunes. Now, if you buy that iPod tomorrow, there's no way you buy a Zune. Of course, I'm going to tell you about this Zune thing, but one day of my evangelism probably won't win you over. Unless I do something drastic, you buy that new iPod tomorrow.
So I bust out the big gun. I start an unfounded rumor that Apple is coming out with a Video iPod next month. You think, there's no way I'm buying a new iPod if there's a new one out next month. See, I just got you to postpone your iPod purchase! This gives me time to convince you that the Zune is great. It gives me time to get the Zune in people's hands, and allows you to *see* the Zune. If my marketing blitz worked, then it'll give you time to maybe think that this old Zune thing isn't so bad after all. The only problem is that you're still pining for that video iPod, and won't touch my Zune.
Next month, you're still holding out for that new Video iPod. By now, even though you're a weak-minded consumer, you've figured out that video iPod was just a rumor. Problem is, you still need a new music player. In the meantime, I've been telling every day you how great the Zune is.
If I've done my job, I've made you more likely to buy a Zune now that you've had a chance to see it and its marketing in action than you were before. With one little rumor, I got you not to buy an iPod at least until I've had a chance to demo my product. There was no chance you bought a Zune before, AND I would have lost you as a consumer for probably 2 years. Now, I at least get a crack at you.
The key here is that there isn't actually a video ipod coming soon, and the slick marketeer I am, I know that.;)
Some states go further and require that all write-in candidates declare their candidacy and file with the Board of Elections. It could be a race for Governor or dogcatcher. Otherwise you might as well vote for Donald Duck.
Considering that the other choices were Bush and Kerry, I would have voted for Mr. Duck.
> Is a Windows computer without network access in a locked room. I heard the NSA and/or CIA has a few of these highly secured systems.... which is only secure until I insert my USB key to .
Sure, it'd be a matter of
1) virus on removable media (1) infects "secure" machine
2) virus infects next removable media (2) with random text from secure machine as payload (along with itself)
3) virus infects next machine it comes across, with botnet instructions allowing it to spam that random text along with advertisements for pr0n or "hot stock tips".
Oh, believe me, there's pretty good safeguards against things like that. At higher classification levels, "removable media" don't exist. USB keys are banned. For the most part, this is for information compartmenalization, but computer security is an issue too.
You have a valid point, but in this case, both the Wii and the PS3 look like gourmet products. I think kids would appreciate any 3 of the systems, as long as they get a few games too. $600 doesn't leave much room for any games, but $250 certainly does.
You'd think that, but the other way of thinking would be, if you're going to spend $600 you'll damned sure buy some games for it! It's also effective market segmentation - restricted supply at the beginning with a high price tag, followed by increased supply and lower prices later.
I think what happened is they saw what went down with the Xbox 360. They see every unit being scraped up and sold on Ebay for between $600 and $1000. Sony probably figures if anyone is going to profit from the craze, it's going to be them. And if they have the sorts of supply problems that has plagued nearly every console launch in the history of mankind, demand WILL drive the price there anyway. No sense in watching someone else make the money instead.
Ah, but pricing is always more art than science. The other way to look at that issue is that Nintendo's making the cheap gaming console. And when Christmas rolls around, kids always want the impressive one.
Censorship sucks. I seem to remember when a certain commentator's television show got cancelled for what he said on the air about the 9/11 highjackers. Seems he made a politically incorrect statement and the network felt compelled to cancel his show. Yes, this is censorship. Even if the government does not do it.
Oh, horseshit. If someone says something completely moronic and his employer decides they don't want to pay to allow him to announce his views to the world, that's their right. If he doesn't like it, he can find someone who likes his views better (as he apparantly did), or he can start his own TV station.
I'm pretty sure that if I said something that stupid in front of very important clients, I'd get shitcanned in a second.
In a lot of cases all Scientology needs to do is send a notice. Slashdot caved rather quickly with just a notice, that cases never made it to the lawsuit stage.
After they crushed the first few, all the rest gave up without a fight. Nothing worse than a cult with a crack legal team.
... How the hell can you afford to stand in a line for over a week?? Are you taking vacation time from work? Are you unemployed? Unemployable? And why the hell would you stand in a line for a week even if you had the time? Stupid kids and their rock music.
I think it's implicit that the kids doing this aren't in the same demographic as people who have "jobs."
As if she'd discovered something either fantastic or fantastically gross, she leaned in and whispered, her voice full of wonder: "You're a Neanderthal!
Is that the point where you bashed her over the head with your club, ripped off your loincloth, and dragged her by the hair to your cave?
A couple of missions got repetitive now and then, but I thought most of the missions in all 3 games made you do something sufficiently different to make it worth it. Combine that with the sheer joy of driving around and wreaking havoc for a while, and you have a lot of gameplay.
God forbid that developers pack a game with too MUCH replay value.
Why would you assume I'm in Cuba or even Cuban? I'm just someone that has spent several years in Cuba and several years in the US. I see how the US has become a police state. I see how the Republicans have destroyed every freedom you people ever had. I see people that hate life and want to kill others simply because they don't want to live themselves. I see people that are so violent that they think they have the right to own a gun! A gun! There are many people in the US that even own weapons of war. Here in Boston there are murders every single day. When I was in Cuba, I don't remember hearing about a single one. In Cuba I saw a few people driving less than safely, but the roads here in Boston are a terror. You can tell the vast majority of people have no respect for life by the way they drive.
I thought that correlation does not equal causation, even in the presence of a (potential) mechanism - people tend to come up with mechanisms to rationalize outcomes, but the presence of a mechanism doesn't disprove the existence of another mediator correlating with the variables of interest, or of a reversal of the arrow of causation, or of other scenarios. We prefer simpler theories over complex theories that explain the same things, but the desire for simplicity doesn't constitute evidence.
Strictly speaking, any empirical relationship can never be truly *proven,* so at that point you can never prove causality. However, a mechanism is what one would use to indicate that a correlation might be due to an underlying causal relationship. It's then up to clever use of statistics and critical reasoning skills to determine whether A causes B, B causes A, or whether A and B are both due to C. Or whether it's coincidence.
That being said (being a Democrat), I would have a hard time buying a causal relationship between political bias and economic outcomes of companies, or one exists, could be causal in either direction.
It would need some serious evidence for me to believe it too. Conventional wisdom (which is usually neither) is that Republicans are generally pro-business, which should (in theory) help stock prices. However, given the huge number of confounding issues, finding that trend (if it exists) in the noise would be questionable.
I really wouldn't read anything into that given a whole host of things:
1) Lag between policies and stock performance
2) Lack of adjustment for inflation
3) Small sample size
4) Lack of a mechanism (without which, correlation isn't causation)
5) Many non-repeatable events that affect performance (9/11, oil embargo, etc)
And so on. In particular, Clinton doesn't deserve credit for sitting on the run-up of the dot com bubble and happening to get out right before it crashed (the market was cresting and heading for descent right as he left). I don't blame him either, however, so this isn't a partisan thing.
In short, I wouldn't say there's sufficient evidence either way, but as a statistically-minded scientist, I have a serious hatred of studies like the one you cite claiming statistically-unsupported conclusions.
The problem with 'pedophile' is it's really tricky to define. In the UK, the age of consent it 16 (for heterosexuals, 18 for homosexuals). Is someone a pedophile if they have sex with someone who's 16? After all, they're a minor. What about someone who is attracted to someone who is 14, but looks 20? What about someone who is in their 20s, but looks well underage. I've met girls who fall into both categories.
The real problem is that age is not a very good indicator of physical or mental maturity. Some people enter puberty very young, but may not be emotionally mature enough to cope with sex until many years later - there are probably a lot of people of legal age in whatever jurisdiction you inhabit who are not sufficiently emotionally mature, and quite a few of these make the papers periodically having screwed up their lives because of it. Maybe we should require people to pass a psychological exam before they are allowed to have sex (good luck enforcing that).
If you join a friggin' *club* because you're systematically attracted to children, you're a pervert. That eliminates the accidental "but she *looked* 25!" argument.
Cuba is a great place where every citizen is taken care of. It is the exact opposite of the US under Bush. What is the point of your hateful troll? To show just how little you understand about Cuba?
My only question, El Presidente, is where you sent that post from, since your nation has no internet.
To be fair, we are talking here about strata that took millions of years to lay down. A thousand-year magnetic anomaly would be an eyeblink in a stratum of sufficient age and the 'average' value of a normal dipole would be very predominant.
Yeah, it occurred to me after I posted that the width of the layer would have encompassed multiple spin flips, so as long as their sampling is sound, the result is reasonable. Really, it is an interesting theory.
"Epifora, a Canadian ISP that hosts a number of (entirely legal) web sites offering support to minor-attracted adults."
You have got to love the way they say, "Minor-attracted adults".
The way we put that is pedophile.
Not even the person posting the story was willing to put their name on it.
Without knowing the websites it is hard to tell if they where legal in the US or not.
Notice no links to the sites, no titles of the sites, no nothing.
Yeah, no kidding. I spent about 5 seconds trying to parse "minor-attracted adult" before I realized they meant regular old perverts.
This may be the first ever recorded instance of an astroturf campaign by perverts. I'd say next time, if they want a nice story, find a better "aggrieved" party. This is one nobody's going to stand up for.
The reality is, there's a threshold at which "money talks" doesn't even come into play- that's what
the ADA was supposed to adjust. Once you're on the other side of the equation, you begin to realize
how badly the ADA's provisions are actually needed- because there's not enough people to hit the
thresholds in most cases for money to talk like you imply it always will.
It doesn't work- and I don't buy it. But then, you're probably never faced with issues of
the handicapped; I am all the time with my Grandmother, Mother, and my Wife, each with problems
that put them all into those protected classes.
To you, I will only say, "Try looking at it as if there was nothing there like the ADA- REALISTICALLY".
I'm OK with it to a certain extent, to allow people to do things they really need to do. Like making dips in sidewalks at intersections, that sort of thing. It's the notion that private businesses have to make it so the handicapped can do absolutely EVERYTHING that anyone else can do. And to me, there's a limit somewhere where government doesn't have that much business telling people what to do. At the point where the blind person can call Target and get help, I'm not concerned with their webpage.
Slashdot Mirror
I did use Word as far back as the late 80s. I kept having compatibility issues with other Microsoft products. I found third party software supported Microsoft formats better than Microsoft did.
Some things never change...Samba comes to mind
This reminds me of my petition that everybody capable of contributing to the development of lifesaving drugs drop whatever their current career is--be it software developer, accountant, homemaker, whatever--and dedicate the rest of their lives to developing lifesaving medicines. Because, hey, if we can, then it's immoral not to.
Fuck off with the legislating morality already. It doesn't work with the religious nuts, and it doesn't work with this. It's my life and you're not making me work in the mind numbing drudgery of drug discovery. This isn't the Soviet Union.
Tho I agree with your intent, thats not a fair example because you do pay for television via taxes for public broadcast and subscriptions for cable, etc
Not in the US you don't, not for over the air anyway. Over the air broadcast is not government subsidized as it is for instance in the UK.
The very notion that you would write something - software in this case - and then not (a) try to charge an arm and a leg for it,
Libre != Gratis. Companies are starting to see that Free software can be sold for quite a lot of money. This is coming at the same time as a shift where companies aren't selling what's in the shrink-wrapped box - they're selling what's in their support/analyst staff's heads.
This couldn't have come at a better time for the free software movement. The result is that business software alone is useless unless you really know what you're doing. As MySQL - making a fortune selling something that's also available, for free, on their website.
These days, you're as likely to see an OSS person in a suit as birkenstocks.
That doesn't make any sense at all. If Murphey is trying to get people more interested in Zune and wanting to buy a Zune, why would he suggest that a new iPod is coming out. This would actually make people considering a Zune potentially abort that purchase waiting for Apple to produce an iPod with WiFi or something similar.
Actually, it does make some sense. Imagine you're a weak-minded consumer and you're going to buy an iPod tomorrow, and I'm selling Zunes. Now, if you buy that iPod tomorrow, there's no way you buy a Zune. Of course, I'm going to tell you about this Zune thing, but one day of my evangelism probably won't win you over. Unless I do something drastic, you buy that new iPod tomorrow.
So I bust out the big gun. I start an unfounded rumor that Apple is coming out with a Video iPod next month. You think, there's no way I'm buying a new iPod if there's a new one out next month. See, I just got you to postpone your iPod purchase! This gives me time to convince you that the Zune is great. It gives me time to get the Zune in people's hands, and allows you to *see* the Zune. If my marketing blitz worked, then it'll give you time to maybe think that this old Zune thing isn't so bad after all. The only problem is that you're still pining for that video iPod, and won't touch my Zune.
Next month, you're still holding out for that new Video iPod. By now, even though you're a weak-minded consumer, you've figured out that video iPod was just a rumor. Problem is, you still need a new music player. In the meantime, I've been telling every day you how great the Zune is.
If I've done my job, I've made you more likely to buy a Zune now that you've had a chance to see it and its marketing in action than you were before. With one little rumor, I got you not to buy an iPod at least until I've had a chance to demo my product. There was no chance you bought a Zune before, AND I would have lost you as a consumer for probably 2 years. Now, I at least get a crack at you.
The key here is that there isn't actually a video ipod coming soon, and the slick marketeer I am, I know that. ;)
Some states go further and require that all write-in candidates declare their candidacy and file with the Board of Elections. It could be a race for Governor or dogcatcher. Otherwise you might as well vote for Donald Duck.
Considering that the other choices were Bush and Kerry, I would have voted for Mr. Duck.
I meant locally, pedant.
Wonder if they registered...
You cant even browse around without logging in. Sites which require logins for visiting should be boycotted and not promoted on Slashdot.
You forgot, logging in requires registering with Passport. That should not only be boycotted, the submitter should be tracked down and killed.
> Is a Windows computer without network access in a locked room. I heard the NSA and/or CIA has a few of these highly secured systems. ... which is only secure until I insert my USB key to .
Sure, it'd be a matter of
1) virus on removable media (1) infects "secure" machine
2) virus infects next removable media (2) with random text from secure machine as payload (along with itself)
3) virus infects next machine it comes across, with botnet instructions allowing it to spam that random text along with advertisements for pr0n or "hot stock tips".
Oh, believe me, there's pretty good safeguards against things like that. At higher classification levels, "removable media" don't exist. USB keys are banned. For the most part, this is for information compartmenalization, but computer security is an issue too.
You have a valid point, but in this case, both the Wii and the PS3 look like gourmet products. I think kids would appreciate any 3 of the systems, as long as they get a few games too. $600 doesn't leave much room for any games, but $250 certainly does.
You'd think that, but the other way of thinking would be, if you're going to spend $600 you'll damned sure buy some games for it! It's also effective market segmentation - restricted supply at the beginning with a high price tag, followed by increased supply and lower prices later.
I think what happened is they saw what went down with the Xbox 360. They see every unit being scraped up and sold on Ebay for between $600 and $1000. Sony probably figures if anyone is going to profit from the craze, it's going to be them. And if they have the sorts of supply problems that has plagued nearly every console launch in the history of mankind, demand WILL drive the price there anyway. No sense in watching someone else make the money instead.
For me it's all about the price
Ah, but pricing is always more art than science. The other way to look at that issue is that Nintendo's making the cheap gaming console. And when Christmas rolls around, kids always want the impressive one.
Censorship sucks. I seem to remember when a certain commentator's television show got cancelled for what he said on the air about the 9/11 highjackers. Seems he made a politically incorrect statement and the network felt compelled to cancel his show. Yes, this is censorship. Even if the government does not do it.
Oh, horseshit. If someone says something completely moronic and his employer decides they don't want to pay to allow him to announce his views to the world, that's their right. If he doesn't like it, he can find someone who likes his views better (as he apparantly did), or he can start his own TV station.
I'm pretty sure that if I said something that stupid in front of very important clients, I'd get shitcanned in a second.
In a lot of cases all Scientology needs to do is send a notice. Slashdot caved rather quickly with just a notice, that cases never made it to the lawsuit stage.
After they crushed the first few, all the rest gave up without a fight. Nothing worse than a cult with a crack legal team.
I think it's implicit that the kids doing this aren't in the same demographic as people who have "jobs."
As if she'd discovered something either fantastic or fantastically gross, she leaned in and whispered, her voice full of wonder: "You're a Neanderthal!
Is that the point where you bashed her over the head with your club, ripped off your loincloth, and dragged her by the hair to your cave?
A couple of missions got repetitive now and then, but I thought most of the missions in all 3 games made you do something sufficiently different to make it worth it. Combine that with the sheer joy of driving around and wreaking havoc for a while, and you have a lot of gameplay.
God forbid that developers pack a game with too MUCH replay value.
Now you want *repetitive*, I give you Max Payne.
Why would you assume I'm in Cuba or even Cuban? I'm just someone that has spent several years in Cuba and several years in the US. I see how the US has become a police state. I see how the Republicans have destroyed every freedom you people ever had. I see people that hate life and want to kill others simply because they don't want to live themselves. I see people that are so violent that they think they have the right to own a gun! A gun! There are many people in the US that even own weapons of war. Here in Boston there are murders every single day. When I was in Cuba, I don't remember hearing about a single one. In Cuba I saw a few people driving less than safely, but the roads here in Boston are a terror. You can tell the vast majority of people have no respect for life by the way they drive.
Shut up troll.
I thought that correlation does not equal causation, even in the presence of a (potential) mechanism - people tend to come up with mechanisms to rationalize outcomes, but the presence of a mechanism doesn't disprove the existence of another mediator correlating with the variables of interest, or of a reversal of the arrow of causation, or of other scenarios. We prefer simpler theories over complex theories that explain the same things, but the desire for simplicity doesn't constitute evidence.
Strictly speaking, any empirical relationship can never be truly *proven,* so at that point you can never prove causality. However, a mechanism is what one would use to indicate that a correlation might be due to an underlying causal relationship. It's then up to clever use of statistics and critical reasoning skills to determine whether A causes B, B causes A, or whether A and B are both due to C. Or whether it's coincidence.
That being said (being a Democrat), I would have a hard time buying a causal relationship between political bias and economic outcomes of companies, or one exists, could be causal in either direction.
It would need some serious evidence for me to believe it too. Conventional wisdom (which is usually neither) is that Republicans are generally pro-business, which should (in theory) help stock prices. However, given the huge number of confounding issues, finding that trend (if it exists) in the noise would be questionable.
1) Lag between policies and stock performance
2) Lack of adjustment for inflation
3) Small sample size
4) Lack of a mechanism (without which, correlation isn't causation)
5) Many non-repeatable events that affect performance (9/11, oil embargo, etc)
And so on. In particular, Clinton doesn't deserve credit for sitting on the run-up of the dot com bubble and happening to get out right before it crashed (the market was cresting and heading for descent right as he left). I don't blame him either, however, so this isn't a partisan thing.
In short, I wouldn't say there's sufficient evidence either way, but as a statistically-minded scientist, I have a serious hatred of studies like the one you cite claiming statistically-unsupported conclusions.
The problem with 'pedophile' is it's really tricky to define. In the UK, the age of consent it 16 (for heterosexuals, 18 for homosexuals). Is someone a pedophile if they have sex with someone who's 16? After all, they're a minor. What about someone who is attracted to someone who is 14, but looks 20? What about someone who is in their 20s, but looks well underage. I've met girls who fall into both categories. The real problem is that age is not a very good indicator of physical or mental maturity. Some people enter puberty very young, but may not be emotionally mature enough to cope with sex until many years later - there are probably a lot of people of legal age in whatever jurisdiction you inhabit who are not sufficiently emotionally mature, and quite a few of these make the papers periodically having screwed up their lives because of it. Maybe we should require people to pass a psychological exam before they are allowed to have sex (good luck enforcing that).
If you join a friggin' *club* because you're systematically attracted to children, you're a pervert. That eliminates the accidental "but she *looked* 25!" argument.
Cuba is a great place where every citizen is taken care of. It is the exact opposite of the US under Bush. What is the point of your hateful troll? To show just how little you understand about Cuba?
My only question, El Presidente, is where you sent that post from, since your nation has no internet.
To be fair, we are talking here about strata that took millions of years to lay down. A thousand-year magnetic anomaly would be an eyeblink in a stratum of sufficient age and the 'average' value of a normal dipole would be very predominant.
Yeah, it occurred to me after I posted that the width of the layer would have encompassed multiple spin flips, so as long as their sampling is sound, the result is reasonable. Really, it is an interesting theory.
"Epifora, a Canadian ISP that hosts a number of (entirely legal) web sites offering support to minor-attracted adults." You have got to love the way they say, "Minor-attracted adults". The way we put that is pedophile. Not even the person posting the story was willing to put their name on it. Without knowing the websites it is hard to tell if they where legal in the US or not. Notice no links to the sites, no titles of the sites, no nothing.
Yeah, no kidding. I spent about 5 seconds trying to parse "minor-attracted adult" before I realized they meant regular old perverts.
This may be the first ever recorded instance of an astroturf campaign by perverts. I'd say next time, if they want a nice story, find a better "aggrieved" party. This is one nobody's going to stand up for.
The reality is, there's a threshold at which "money talks" doesn't even come into play- that's what the ADA was supposed to adjust. Once you're on the other side of the equation, you begin to realize how badly the ADA's provisions are actually needed- because there's not enough people to hit the thresholds in most cases for money to talk like you imply it always will. It doesn't work- and I don't buy it. But then, you're probably never faced with issues of the handicapped; I am all the time with my Grandmother, Mother, and my Wife, each with problems that put them all into those protected classes. To you, I will only say, "Try looking at it as if there was nothing there like the ADA- REALISTICALLY".
I'm OK with it to a certain extent, to allow people to do things they really need to do. Like making dips in sidewalks at intersections, that sort of thing. It's the notion that private businesses have to make it so the handicapped can do absolutely EVERYTHING that anyone else can do. And to me, there's a limit somewhere where government doesn't have that much business telling people what to do. At the point where the blind person can call Target and get help, I'm not concerned with their webpage.