The only way to stop global warming were for the people of the world to collectively reduce their usage of energy and lower their standard of living.
Not necessarily... we could/should be working on developing cleaner energy sources. And this is definitely possible... getting enough energy to power our high living standards is not a problem, and won't be as long as we have the sun... we just need to be smarter as to how we utilise and control that energy.
The article is pure FUD, IMO. The writer is basically saying that managers should be 'scared' of buying OpenSource in case the product is "bought up and goes away or becomes proprietary". This neglects two extremely obvious points: (1) The alternative is to buy proprietary software anyway, which is already, uh, proprietary, and can also just as easily disappear, and (2) OpenSource cannot "disappear".
So in fact, using their logic for the reasons on which to base purchasing decisions, managers should actually be afraid of buying proprietary software, because the risk of the product "disappearing" is at least as great as with closed source, but if it does, you're totally screwed, unlike with OpenSource where you're at least sitting with the source code.
Yup, it comes with Safari, which, once OS X is installed, is more than enough to quickly download a p2p client and get hoardes of useful software like Camino, FireFox, MacTheRipper, Toast, SquidMan, VNC, VLC, Skype, HandBrake etc.
Some people (not me;) get off looking at things like feet. To them, that is porn. In other (e.g. cultural) contexts even images of topless women may not really be regarded sexually. Even so the very beauty of a woman is directly, intrinsically and inseparably tied to her sexuality --- thus it's part of art, and even something that would clearly be considered "art" is often at least partially titillating even while simultaneously being intellectually or emotionally stimulating. It's a very blurry line, and actually impossible to draw boundaries. 'Porn' is in the eye of the beholder. Almost anything can become the object of a fetish. Some people find pictures of condoms stimulating, yet we frequently see them on information sites for HIV/AIDS which we should hardly ban now. Pictures of breasts appear on breast cancer information sites - should those sites be blocked in libraries? Pictures of e.g. genitalia are frequently necessary on medical information sites (e.g. I recently had a prostate infection with related complications and needed some information on how my piping works... such sites as I visited would also be "pornographic" if viewed as such, yet it would be stupid to ban them).
Should we appoint some sort of central committee to "decide" what is porn (or rather what's "appropriate") and what isn't? Like China? That's not only expensive but can never really work. Ultimately the only answer is allowing freedom to do anything that doesn't harm others, and locking people up for actions that harm others.
Anyone looking at porn in a library filled with kids is bad. No one wants to be the Library where that guy was caught whacking off under the desk
Sure, but that's not what we're talking about: Looking at porn and masturbating are two completely different things, just like lusting after a woman and raping a woman are two completely different things. Don't equate the two. Masturbating in a library is wrong, regardless of whether the person doing it was looking at porn or perving after the 10-year olds in the library or after the hot 19yr old librarian behind the counter. By all means, punish and ban people who masturbate in libraries, for masturbating in the library. Not everyone who looks at porn is such a sicko, in fact only a miniscule percentage probably are, just like only a tiny percentage of people who look at porn are rapists.
There is no right that adults get to look at porn on tax payer expense... I get so damn tired of being told what rights others have, when it comes out of my pocket.
What makes you think those adults looking at the porn aren't also taxpayers? It's their money too.
Last time I asked my boss for a raise, I got declined. Two weeks later he hired another employee as my replacement (a n00b) and then laid me off a week later for some lame excuse.
Frankly that doesn't sound like the type of boss I would want to work for anyway. I assure you he'll just screw over the next guy, and when that person leaves he'll find someone else to screw over. (Depending on where you are now, if I were you I'd probably be looking back thinking "gosh it was for the best after all that I left then".)
To save even more money, let's never treat anyone - including you if you happen to catch something.
Thanks for the strawman, but ProfaneMF never said that at all - he/she said spend the money on something else instead, and I quote, "You could use the money to prevent a million kids from getting polio instead." Brush up on your reading skills.
ProfaneMF is correct... Ebola kills a miniscule number of people (a few dozen a year, give or take), while millions of people die each year from curable diseases like Tuberculosis. There is a 100% certainty that the amount of money spent on developing this vaccine could have saved more lives.
More people die of Tuberculosis every single hour than the total number of people that have died from Ebola so far, ever.
The real killers in the poor areas of Africa and elsewhere are mostly curable diseases, that's the great tragedy of it.
""Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.""
The fact is, ALL people behave differently not only when they know they're being watched, but even when they just think they're being watched. IMO this alone is enough to justify our right to privacy.
You're joking, right? I live in Africa, so maybe it's a little closer to home, but just Tuberculosis and Malaria kill more people than HIV/AIDS (over 3 million per year). (And yes, these are by and large curable.) Ebola? Marburg? Come on, those may make the news in the West, but deaths from those number only in the hundreds.
More people die of TB or Malaria every hour than have died from Ebola and Marburg in total. God knows why the focus of Western media is so incredibly distorted.
Apparently he's not too concerned about giving them clean air, though.
"Giving them"? Firstly it's a product, not a gift. Secondly it's a free market, so it's up to "them" whether or not they want to use it --- if "they" want clean air more than they want the benefits of this product then they will choose that way. Nobody is forcing them to dirty their air. Let people decide what's best for themselves, they don't need any of us telling us what's 'best' for them unless something they do negatively impacts us.
Heh... thx, it's true it was "absurd overkill", but I wanted to get the point across, and a more subtle example might not have made it clear (i.e. resulted in the same 'muddled thinking' that created the original surface appearance of hypocrisy).
Actually, funnily enough, the first example that came into my head was in fact:
(1) George Bush as president of the US? Good idea.
(2) Osama bin Laden as president of the US? Good idea.
But I realised that to a good proportion of people (myself included) both of those would seem like bad ideas. Taking past presidents seemed out of place, and taking potential future candidates would invoke partisan bias, so I thought 'ok something else' and that was the next thing that came to mind.
"Greenman"!? WTF, I meant, "Greenspan", of course.:)
Also I see those were not "hypothetical" moderations, sorry. They linked to actual posts. However if one looks at the current moderations one sees the "hypocrisy" point crumble to dust anyway:
"Windows on a mac? That's just expensive hardware.":
40% Insightful, 30% Flamebait, 20% Troll
"Linux on a mac? That's just expensive hardware":
30% Troll, 30% Insightful, 20% Overrated
Where's the hypocrisy now? Those look like fairly equivalent moderations to me.
The only difference is the OS referred to in each statement - they are otherwise identical. So tell us how the difference between the OSes referred to completely changes the meaning.
Um, because they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT operating systems? You're basically saying "they're the same, except for the fact that they refer to different things and hence two completely different scenarios".
By your logic, the following two sentences are also the same, and rating them differently would also constitute hypocrisy:
(1) Alan Greenman as chairman of the fed? Good idea.
(2) Osama bin Laden as chairman of the fed? Good idea.
To use your words: 'The only difference is the person referred to in each statement - they are otherwise identical.' Come on. These are two totally different scenarios.
All operating systems are not created equal; 99% of "oh woe slashdot hypocrisy" posts are based on a flawed implication that all operating systems are actually equal and that considering any one "better" or even different to another must constitute an ideological bias.
Perhaps you might want to explain why Linux and Windows should be regarded as equivalent in the above statement, because it is not obvious as it stands, and without such an explanation there is no evidence of hypocrisy. Surely there must be some relevant common denominator other than "they are both operating systems". (I mean, in my example, "they are both people" too.) OS X is an operating system too. Why not "OS X on a mac? That's just expensive hardware"? What are the aspects that Windows and Linux have in common that OS X lacks?
I notice you also neglected to respond to my other point, that it was probably two totally different sets of people doing the moderating. There is no "slashdot" entity that goes around moderating (or making) posts, as has been pointed out many many times before here. This is a community of thousands of different people. That kind of makes all the other arguments moot.
Yeah, just imagine, two probably totally different groups of people, rating two different statements with totally different meanings, differently --- can you believe it!?
WTF... so is it also "not news" when soldiers get killed in Iraq because "it's already known that soldiers keep getting in Iraq"? Or it's not news when there's a hurricane because "it's known that we have hurricanes"?
If you carry through the logic of the slashdot "this is not news" crowd ('X is not news because (generalisation_of_X) is known'), then nothing is actually news. I mean nearly all news boils down to a few same generalisations that have been occuring since human history began... why bother with the details?
I know you people think it makes you look clever, but really, it's tiresome hearing the same distorted arguments over and over about why each and every bloody slashdot story ever posted "isn't news".
Slashdot Mirror
The only way to stop global warming were for the people of the world to collectively reduce their usage of energy and lower their standard of living.
Not necessarily ... we could/should be working on developing cleaner energy sources. And this is definitely possible ... getting enough energy to power our high living standards is not a problem, and won't be as long as we have the sun ... we just need to be smarter as to how we utilise and control that energy.
The article is pure FUD, IMO. The writer is basically saying that managers should be 'scared' of buying OpenSource in case the product is "bought up and goes away or becomes proprietary". This neglects two extremely obvious points: (1) The alternative is to buy proprietary software anyway, which is already, uh, proprietary, and can also just as easily disappear, and (2) OpenSource cannot "disappear".
So in fact, using their logic for the reasons on which to base purchasing decisions, managers should actually be afraid of buying proprietary software, because the risk of the product "disappearing" is at least as great as with closed source, but if it does, you're totally screwed, unlike with OpenSource where you're at least sitting with the source code.
Have you seen what comes by default with Mac OS
Yup, it comes with Safari, which, once OS X is installed, is more than enough to quickly download a p2p client and get hoardes of useful software like Camino, FireFox, MacTheRipper, Toast, SquidMan, VNC, VLC, Skype, HandBrake etc.
Maybe there was some humour in your post that went over my head, but I think the unpossible part was the "having a girlfriend" a bit ..
Some people (not me ;) get off looking at things like feet. To them, that is porn. In other (e.g. cultural) contexts even images of topless women may not really be regarded sexually. Even so the very beauty of a woman is directly, intrinsically and inseparably tied to her sexuality --- thus it's part of art, and even something that would clearly be considered "art" is often at least partially titillating even while simultaneously being intellectually or emotionally stimulating. It's a very blurry line, and actually impossible to draw boundaries. 'Porn' is in the eye of the beholder. Almost anything can become the object of a fetish. Some people find pictures of condoms stimulating, yet we frequently see them on information sites for HIV/AIDS which we should hardly ban now. Pictures of breasts appear on breast cancer information sites - should those sites be blocked in libraries? Pictures of e.g. genitalia are frequently necessary on medical information sites (e.g. I recently had a prostate infection with related complications and needed some information on how my piping works ... such sites as I visited would also be "pornographic" if viewed as such, yet it would be stupid to ban them).
Should we appoint some sort of central committee to "decide" what is porn (or rather what's "appropriate") and what isn't? Like China? That's not only expensive but can never really work. Ultimately the only answer is allowing freedom to do anything that doesn't harm others, and locking people up for actions that harm others.
Anyone looking at porn in a library filled with kids is bad. No one wants to be the Library where that guy was caught whacking off under the desk
Sure, but that's not what we're talking about: Looking at porn and masturbating are two completely different things, just like lusting after a woman and raping a woman are two completely different things. Don't equate the two. Masturbating in a library is wrong, regardless of whether the person doing it was looking at porn or perving after the 10-year olds in the library or after the hot 19yr old librarian behind the counter. By all means, punish and ban people who masturbate in libraries, for masturbating in the library. Not everyone who looks at porn is such a sicko, in fact only a miniscule percentage probably are, just like only a tiny percentage of people who look at porn are rapists.
There is no right that adults get to look at porn on tax payer expense ... I get so damn tired of being told what rights others have, when it comes out of my pocket.
What makes you think those adults looking at the porn aren't also taxpayers? It's their money too.
Last time I asked my boss for a raise, I got declined. Two weeks later he hired another employee as my replacement (a n00b) and then laid me off a week later for some lame excuse.
Frankly that doesn't sound like the type of boss I would want to work for anyway. I assure you he'll just screw over the next guy, and when that person leaves he'll find someone else to screw over. (Depending on where you are now, if I were you I'd probably be looking back thinking "gosh it was for the best after all that I left then".)
To save even more money, let's never treat anyone - including you if you happen to catch something.
Thanks for the strawman, but ProfaneMF never said that at all - he/she said spend the money on something else instead, and I quote, "You could use the money to prevent a million kids from getting polio instead." Brush up on your reading skills.
ProfaneMF is correct ... Ebola kills a miniscule number of people (a few dozen a year, give or take), while millions of people die each year from curable diseases like Tuberculosis. There is a 100% certainty that the amount of money spent on developing this vaccine could have saved more lives.
More people die of Tuberculosis every single hour than the total number of people that have died from Ebola so far, ever.
The real killers in the poor areas of Africa and elsewhere are mostly curable diseases, that's the great tragedy of it.
To quote Ayn Rand (from Atlas Shrugged)
""Did you really think we want those laws observed?" said Dr. Ferris. "We want them to be broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against... We're after power and we mean it... There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with.""
The fact is, ALL people behave differently not only when they know they're being watched, but even when they just think they're being watched. IMO this alone is enough to justify our right to privacy.
The problem cropped up on Windows machines, why would anyone fault Apple or Linux in this case?
It's Friday night, maybe some of the mods have been drinking :)
Excellent site, btw --- thx! You paying for the bw? Very generous of you!
You're joking, right? I live in Africa, so maybe it's a little closer to home, but just Tuberculosis and Malaria kill more people than HIV/AIDS (over 3 million per year). (And yes, these are by and large curable.) Ebola? Marburg? Come on, those may make the news in the West, but deaths from those number only in the hundreds.
More people die of TB or Malaria every hour than have died from Ebola and Marburg in total. God knows why the focus of Western media is so incredibly distorted.
Apparently he's not too concerned about giving them clean air, though.
"Giving them"? Firstly it's a product, not a gift. Secondly it's a free market, so it's up to "them" whether or not they want to use it --- if "they" want clean air more than they want the benefits of this product then they will choose that way. Nobody is forcing them to dirty their air. Let people decide what's best for themselves, they don't need any of us telling us what's 'best' for them unless something they do negatively impacts us.
Another good point, indeed ... a possible selection bias.
Heh ... thx, it's true it was "absurd overkill", but I wanted to get the point across, and a more subtle example might not have made it clear (i.e. resulted in the same 'muddled thinking' that created the original surface appearance of hypocrisy).
Actually, funnily enough, the first example that came into my head was in fact:
(1) George Bush as president of the US? Good idea.
(2) Osama bin Laden as president of the US? Good idea.
But I realised that to a good proportion of people (myself included) both of those would seem like bad ideas. Taking past presidents seemed out of place, and taking potential future candidates would invoke partisan bias, so I thought 'ok something else' and that was the next thing that came to mind.
Could we stop chauking up the lack of virii to the quality of the OS?
Can we all stop spreading the lie that the number of viruses is only related to market share and not to quality?
Seriously, around the time Windows 3 came out, OS/2 had a pretty large market share, and yet DOS still had all the viruses, even back then.
Another OS is the last thing we need at this hour.
How is more OSs a bad thing? Should we also push for, say, fewer makes of cars?
"Greenman"!? WTF, I meant, "Greenspan", of course. :)
Also I see those were not "hypothetical" moderations, sorry. They linked to actual posts. However if one looks at the current moderations one sees the "hypocrisy" point crumble to dust anyway:
"Windows on a mac? That's just expensive hardware.":
40% Insightful, 30% Flamebait, 20% Troll
"Linux on a mac? That's just expensive hardware":
30% Troll, 30% Insightful, 20% Overrated
Where's the hypocrisy now? Those look like fairly equivalent moderations to me.
The only difference is the OS referred to in each statement - they are otherwise identical. So tell us how the difference between the OSes referred to completely changes the meaning.
Um, because they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT operating systems? You're basically saying "they're the same, except for the fact that they refer to different things and hence two completely different scenarios".
By your logic, the following two sentences are also the same, and rating them differently would also constitute hypocrisy:
(1) Alan Greenman as chairman of the fed? Good idea.
(2) Osama bin Laden as chairman of the fed? Good idea.
To use your words: 'The only difference is the person referred to in each statement - they are otherwise identical.' Come on. These are two totally different scenarios.
All operating systems are not created equal; 99% of "oh woe slashdot hypocrisy" posts are based on a flawed implication that all operating systems are actually equal and that considering any one "better" or even different to another must constitute an ideological bias.
Perhaps you might want to explain why Linux and Windows should be regarded as equivalent in the above statement, because it is not obvious as it stands, and without such an explanation there is no evidence of hypocrisy. Surely there must be some relevant common denominator other than "they are both operating systems". (I mean, in my example, "they are both people" too.) OS X is an operating system too. Why not "OS X on a mac? That's just expensive hardware"? What are the aspects that Windows and Linux have in common that OS X lacks?
I notice you also neglected to respond to my other point, that it was probably two totally different sets of people doing the moderating. There is no "slashdot" entity that goes around moderating (or making) posts, as has been pointed out many many times before here. This is a community of thousands of different people. That kind of makes all the other arguments moot.
Yeah, just imagine, two probably totally different groups of people, rating two different statements with totally different meanings, differently --- can you believe it!?
</sarcasm>
There is no logic ... the problem is that people are simply not taught by our education system how to think or how to reason.
WTF ... so is it also "not news" when soldiers get killed in Iraq because "it's already known that soldiers keep getting in Iraq"? Or it's not news when there's a hurricane because "it's known that we have hurricanes"?
If you carry through the logic of the slashdot "this is not news" crowd ('X is not news because (generalisation_of_X) is known'), then nothing is actually news. I mean nearly all news boils down to a few same generalisations that have been occuring since human history began ... why bother with the details?
I know you people think it makes you look clever, but really, it's tiresome hearing the same distorted arguments over and over about why each and every bloody slashdot story ever posted "isn't news".