I read the GP's post as more the enjoyment that comes from reading such a text, not the text itself. I have used the website before, but I much prefer to hold the book in my hands. Which was his point, I believe.
I downloaded Iron and Wine's album from 2004ish. Paid nothing for it. Six months later, they came to Brisbane, and I went with my brother, his friend, and my friend. We all bought shirts, and my friend bought three CDs. All this from me downloading an album. Money the band never would have seen.
Sure, it's anecdotal, but it's something. It isn't all darkness and terror. Not even close.
However. Saying that Microsoft needs to 'make a better OS' because a company has gone from just selling windows to also selling Linux, is hardly, at all, a victory. It's not even really a leveling of the playing field. It's a test.
It's a pretty sad outlook you have on a battlefield when simply being on it is apparently cause for victory. Don't you need to win, before you can win?
Re:This is my single biggest push to free software
on
Vista is Watching You
·
· Score: 1
Hmmmm,
I've heard the same thing about WoW, but my framerate drops from 30 to about 5 using wine. Latest version and all that, but I think a lot of it has to do with my onboard Intel graphics card. Windows didn't really give me any grief, but Linux is causing a bit of a hassle. WoW is playable, but only very very barely. I'm stumped.
Re:Mix this protein into a food chain and...
on
The Human Mutation
·
· Score: 1
My sister listens to a lot of the Top 40 music. I either find it offensive in its stupidity and crudity (The 'My Lumps' song, among others), or so bland that I cannot recognise the difference, as you said.
I don't think that music is any sort of demise - like a number of people here, I listen to smaller, independent bands. There I am able to find quality and quantity, in a wide variety of genres and sounds. I'm very happy with a constant flow of music from bands I have come to know and love, and bands I will discover.
But yes, the Top 40 I cannot understand. Bland and boring.
I remember that game. The little mini-games were probably the most fun, though overall I think it was just a great game. Many fond memories playing that with my brother as a kid...
Hi,
Try http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/. They are extremely cheap. From their site:
Data Transfers (Bandwidth): $1.00 per gigabyte
Disk Space (Storage): $0.01 per megabyte-month
And if you don't use it, they don't charge.
I have a small blog (http://dkell.nfshost.com/drupal/) that costs me something like 3 cents / month to keep up. It's great for me, because I don't expect to receive a huge amount of traffic, so I don't need to pay for any super great plan.
Of course, you don't have to have a blog. They don't care. It's whatever you like.
Anyway. Check it out. I'm happy with it.
Which of course begs the question of notes and explanations.
It's nice to have a translated/original language copy of something, but when it is philosophy, it's even nicer when it comes with footnotes and explanations of difficult terms. And yes, the ideas of philosophy to update and change as time goes on.
You miss out on all that with 'merely' the text, which is another reason why old works may need to be 'freed'.
My problem with that way of thinking is that it virtually implies that the successes of the past were a fluke, and that the person was going to fail sooner or later.
Why should this be the case? What about people who have brilliant careers to begin with, have a disappointing middle, and then become even more brilliant towards the end of their career? Philip Roth is a good example - he would have left on a very high note, had he died after publishing Portnoy's Complaint. The years after that produced good but not great books. But then, in the 90s, he began publishing masterpieces, books of much greater depth and scope than anything he produced before that.
Frank Sinatra is another good example. I'm sure we can all think of more.
Basically, the idea that people dying at the top of their game is somehow good is flawed. Most people don't understand genius, so how can we say it was the top? Couldn't it have been a mere stepping stone to further greatness? Why not assume that? Isn't it better to have that sort of faith in human achievement?
My problem is my laptop. I have a Toshiba Satellite, and for some reason, it becomes very cranky if I try to format and install anything else. I've tried Kubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, etc, but every time, my laptop hangs on the formatting stage of installation.
Why is this? I can't figure it out. I've installed various flavours of Linux (though mostly Mandrake, before it became Mandriva) on a grey box, but never a laptop. I want linux, but I can't get it. It's frustrating and I don't know why.
Any thoughts would be helpful - is this a Linus or a Toshiba problem? And if a Toshiba, why can't Linux give me an easy work around? And if Linux, well...
Eh, you probably don't need the recommendation, but try Paradox Entertainment. They've published:
Europa Universalis II Galactic Civilizations II Hearts of Iron II
As well as many other games, but these are their best known, and they are deep, deep strategy games. Hearts of Iron II in particular is ridiculously detailed. Great stuff!
Eh, it's a little late to bother responding to this, but I will anyway.
Um, no, they're not. Wikipedia has the advantage over dead-tree encyclopedias that its references can include hyperlinks.
Yes. I'm not denying that. But there are thousands of items of information that aren't hyperlinks, and the Wikipedia will never be able to reference them. That is what I am saying. Like a book can be criticised for being unable to reference (properly) hyperlinks, can't a website be criticised for the opposite?
The problem isn't that Wikipedia can't cite reliable sources, it's that it doesn't do so consistently. Wikipedia has many excellent, well-sourced articles on things that took place not only before the invention of the web, but even before the discovery of America, the development of English, or the evolution of human intelligence.
Yes. The Wikipedia exists only as a website, and thus has the limitations of all websites. It can reference something outside of its own dimensions as easily as anything else, which is to say, not very well at all. A movie citing a book can't do a great job of it. A book citing a webpage can't do a great job of it. A website citing a movie can't do a great job of it. It can be done - and is done - but it isn't perfect.
The only possible response to this is: you don't have a clue what you're talking about. If it's difficult to cite a work that's not on the web, how come billions of people across the globe have no problem whatsoever doing so on a daily basis?
Personal attacks aren't necessary, but fair enough. If the Wikipedia can't cite something that isn't available online, then it fails, doesn't it? Fails in that it isn't perfect - but the ability to become better is more than evident. The random crictism of Montaigne that I mentioned will, hopefully, be uploaded one day and can be cited with a direct link. Now, it can only be cited in the same way that anything else is cited - as a reference for the person reading to discover on their own. Nothing wrong with that, but it was a point I was making.
I don't know why you are so hostile to these criticisms. The Wikipedia is flawed - what isn't? That is the point I was making. I also wasn't making the comment so that someone reading would give up on the Wikipedia forever. That'd be pretty stupid. Instead, I was pointing out areas that I believe need improvement. What's wrong with that? Without criticism, how can something become better?
The wikipedia has a clear fault in that its references are only hyperlinks. It (obviously) can't reference film reels, newspapers, recorded sound bites and so forth, unless those sources have been added to the web. And have they all? No, of course not. There are thousands of such sources of information that have not, and probably will not, be added. Thus, it is difficult to properly reference everything that occured before say, 1990.
I don't think this is a huge problem, but I think about it sometimes. It's difficult to cite various articles of criticism on Montaigne, for example, unless they have been uploaded to Project Gutenberg or some such.
Does this destroy the Wikipedia's credibility? Of course not, but it should certainly add a sense of caution to those article that refer or reference events and people before the rise and rise of the internet.
I've used my own name in various areas, none of which I regret.
Recently, a very old friend of mine randomly typed my name into google. My first and last name aren't hugely rare, and the combination isn't so bad, but because of the sites I have used my real name on (Amazon, etc), the 'real' me is pretty high up on the list. Consequently, my friend found me, and we've regained contact.
Sure, that sort of thing can happen easily through myspace and facebook etc, but I'm not super keen on placing myself on there for reasons which are obvious.
The point of this post is that I can see the benefit of having your real name on the internet, because people can find you, but caution should be a person's friend. I have written a number of reviews for Amazon and, if I had (for example) reviewed some unsavoury products in my teenage years, this could theoretically return to harm me. I haven't, but the question certainly remains.
How long will it take people to realise that their online thoughts are (potentially) accessible forever? Should we then create a persona for the internet that is separate from our real selves, or should we simply monitor our behave online, as we would in a physica, actual arena? I suspect the latter, but my, isn't the capability to rant about something just grand?
(A series of minor thoughts. I realise this doesn't hugely respond to what you were saying, but it seemed to fit.)
For what it's worth, I found this to be a very interesting comment. I apologise on behalf of the moderation system that it is so low on the page, and thus will not receive the readership it deserves.
Slashdot Mirror
I read the GP's post as more the enjoyment that comes from reading such a text, not the text itself. I have used the website before, but I much prefer to hold the book in my hands. Which was his point, I believe.
Sure. And many don't.
I downloaded Iron and Wine's album from 2004ish. Paid nothing for it. Six months later, they came to Brisbane, and I went with my brother, his friend, and my friend. We all bought shirts, and my friend bought three CDs. All this from me downloading an album. Money the band never would have seen.
Sure, it's anecdotal, but it's something. It isn't all darkness and terror. Not even close.
I've seen Jolt at the Lucky Seven store in the Valley, on Wickham Terrace. I think it's called Lucky Seven. A convenience store, anyway.
I run Ubuntu
However. Saying that Microsoft needs to 'make a better OS' because a company has gone from just selling windows to also selling Linux, is hardly, at all, a victory. It's not even really a leveling of the playing field. It's a test.
It's a pretty sad outlook you have on a battlefield when simply being on it is apparently cause for victory. Don't you need to win, before you can win?
Hmmmm,
I've heard the same thing about WoW, but my framerate drops from 30 to about 5 using wine. Latest version and all that, but I think a lot of it has to do with my onboard Intel graphics card. Windows didn't really give me any grief, but Linux is causing a bit of a hassle. WoW is playable, but only very very barely. I'm stumped.
I hadn't seen that before, it was pretty neat.
I completely agree.
My sister listens to a lot of the Top 40 music. I either find it offensive in its stupidity and crudity (The 'My Lumps' song, among others), or so bland that I cannot recognise the difference, as you said.
I don't think that music is any sort of demise - like a number of people here, I listen to smaller, independent bands. There I am able to find quality and quantity, in a wide variety of genres and sounds. I'm very happy with a constant flow of music from bands I have come to know and love, and bands I will discover.
But yes, the Top 40 I cannot understand. Bland and boring.
I remember that game. The little mini-games were probably the most fun, though overall I think it was just a great game. Many fond memories playing that with my brother as a kid...
Thanks, e e cummings
Hi, Try http://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/. They are extremely cheap. From their site: Data Transfers (Bandwidth): $1.00 per gigabyte Disk Space (Storage): $0.01 per megabyte-month And if you don't use it, they don't charge. I have a small blog (http://dkell.nfshost.com/drupal/) that costs me something like 3 cents / month to keep up. It's great for me, because I don't expect to receive a huge amount of traffic, so I don't need to pay for any super great plan. Of course, you don't have to have a blog. They don't care. It's whatever you like. Anyway. Check it out. I'm happy with it.
It's a poor army that needs to pick their enemy's fighting condition before they have an opportunity to win, no?
Which of course begs the question of notes and explanations.
It's nice to have a translated/original language copy of something, but when it is philosophy, it's even nicer when it comes with footnotes and explanations of difficult terms. And yes, the ideas of philosophy to update and change as time goes on.
You miss out on all that with 'merely' the text, which is another reason why old works may need to be 'freed'.
Excelled post.
My problem with that way of thinking is that it virtually implies that the successes of the past were a fluke, and that the person was going to fail sooner or later.
Why should this be the case? What about people who have brilliant careers to begin with, have a disappointing middle, and then become even more brilliant towards the end of their career? Philip Roth is a good example - he would have left on a very high note, had he died after publishing Portnoy's Complaint. The years after that produced good but not great books. But then, in the 90s, he began publishing masterpieces, books of much greater depth and scope than anything he produced before that.
Frank Sinatra is another good example. I'm sure we can all think of more.
Basically, the idea that people dying at the top of their game is somehow good is flawed. Most people don't understand genius, so how can we say it was the top? Couldn't it have been a mere stepping stone to further greatness? Why not assume that? Isn't it better to have that sort of faith in human achievement?
Yes, all good points.
My problem is my laptop. I have a Toshiba Satellite, and for some reason, it becomes very cranky if I try to format and install anything else. I've tried Kubuntu, OpenSUSE, Fedora, etc, but every time, my laptop hangs on the formatting stage of installation.
Why is this? I can't figure it out. I've installed various flavours of Linux (though mostly Mandrake, before it became Mandriva) on a grey box, but never a laptop. I want linux, but I can't get it. It's frustrating and I don't know why.
Any thoughts would be helpful - is this a Linus or a Toshiba problem? And if a Toshiba, why can't Linux give me an easy work around? And if Linux, well...
I think this post is buried too far down, but thanks for taking the time to type it out. I found it interesting.
Eh, you probably don't need the recommendation, but try Paradox Entertainment. They've published:
Europa Universalis II
Galactic Civilizations II
Hearts of Iron II
As well as many other games, but these are their best known, and they are deep, deep strategy games. Hearts of Iron II in particular is ridiculously detailed. Great stuff!
That was pretty interesting.
Thanks for taking the time to find the link. I was curious.
Um, no, they're not. Wikipedia has the advantage over dead-tree encyclopedias that its references can include hyperlinks.
Yes. I'm not denying that. But there are thousands of items of information that aren't hyperlinks, and the Wikipedia will never be able to reference them. That is what I am saying. Like a book can be criticised for being unable to reference (properly) hyperlinks, can't a website be criticised for the opposite?
The problem isn't that Wikipedia can't cite reliable sources, it's that it doesn't do so consistently. Wikipedia has many excellent, well-sourced articles on things that took place not only before the invention of the web, but even before the discovery of America, the development of English, or the evolution of human intelligence.
Yes. The Wikipedia exists only as a website, and thus has the limitations of all websites. It can reference something outside of its own dimensions as easily as anything else, which is to say, not very well at all. A movie citing a book can't do a great job of it. A book citing a webpage can't do a great job of it. A website citing a movie can't do a great job of it. It can be done - and is done - but it isn't perfect.
The only possible response to this is: you don't have a clue what you're talking about. If it's difficult to cite a work that's not on the web, how come billions of people across the globe have no problem whatsoever doing so on a daily basis?
Personal attacks aren't necessary, but fair enough. If the Wikipedia can't cite something that isn't available online, then it fails, doesn't it? Fails in that it isn't perfect - but the ability to become better is more than evident. The random crictism of Montaigne that I mentioned will, hopefully, be uploaded one day and can be cited with a direct link. Now, it can only be cited in the same way that anything else is cited - as a reference for the person reading to discover on their own. Nothing wrong with that, but it was a point I was making.
I don't know why you are so hostile to these criticisms. The Wikipedia is flawed - what isn't? That is the point I was making. I also wasn't making the comment so that someone reading would give up on the Wikipedia forever. That'd be pretty stupid. Instead, I was pointing out areas that I believe need improvement. What's wrong with that? Without criticism, how can something become better?
The wikipedia has a clear fault in that its references are only hyperlinks. It (obviously) can't reference film reels, newspapers, recorded sound bites and so forth, unless those sources have been added to the web. And have they all? No, of course not. There are thousands of such sources of information that have not, and probably will not, be added. Thus, it is difficult to properly reference everything that occured before say, 1990.
I don't think this is a huge problem, but I think about it sometimes. It's difficult to cite various articles of criticism on Montaigne, for example, unless they have been uploaded to Project Gutenberg or some such.
Does this destroy the Wikipedia's credibility? Of course not, but it should certainly add a sense of caution to those article that refer or reference events and people before the rise and rise of the internet.
Yeah, that's exactly what I like about it, too.
Granted, I could've just typed that up myself but you know, the gauntlet was thrown down and whatnot.
Wouldn't just one reason be nice? I'm only saying so that you give a person an incentive to switch...
I've used my own name in various areas, none of which I regret.
Recently, a very old friend of mine randomly typed my name into google. My first and last name aren't hugely rare, and the combination isn't so bad, but because of the sites I have used my real name on (Amazon, etc), the 'real' me is pretty high up on the list. Consequently, my friend found me, and we've regained contact.
Sure, that sort of thing can happen easily through myspace and facebook etc, but I'm not super keen on placing myself on there for reasons which are obvious.
The point of this post is that I can see the benefit of having your real name on the internet, because people can find you, but caution should be a person's friend. I have written a number of reviews for Amazon and, if I had (for example) reviewed some unsavoury products in my teenage years, this could theoretically return to harm me. I haven't, but the question certainly remains.
How long will it take people to realise that their online thoughts are (potentially) accessible forever? Should we then create a persona for the internet that is separate from our real selves, or should we simply monitor our behave online, as we would in a physica, actual arena? I suspect the latter, but my, isn't the capability to rant about something just grand?
(A series of minor thoughts. I realise this doesn't hugely respond to what you were saying, but it seemed to fit.)
For what it's worth, I found this to be a very interesting comment. I apologise on behalf of the moderation system that it is so low on the page, and thus will not receive the readership it deserves.
I don't have mod points. So all I can really do is say that I agree. Good post.