We chatted quite a bit about ten years ago on a.g.marathon and myth.b.org (I under a different name). Nice to see a familiar name years later, and even nicer that you're a voice of reason in this thread!
All the so-called great philosophy questions can be answered definitively if you allow for the terms to be properly defined.
Defined by whom? And what is this "properly"? You think the point of that comic is that if we'd only let the engineers handle philosophy, they'd figure it all out right-quick?
The profession of the philosopher is to refuse adequate definition to these questions, so that they are unanswerable by design; their work is no better or more useful than religions assertions.
This is about as ignorant as an engineer mocking theoretical physics ("Oh, so your particle accelerator's going to help me build bridges, huh?") or a programmer mocking theoretical mathematics ("Play with your pretty partition function approximations, we have Real Work to do on these databases").
If you truly think religion or philosophy offer nothing to human knowledge, you are even more blinkered and dogmatic -- not to mention foolish -- than the zealots you seek to ridicule.
Try to educate yourself before you go spewing off at the mouth. You seem to enjoy giving yourself a big pat on the back appealing to Slashdot's penchant for snark, but the shit you wrote is just ignorant.
Kids are still rebellious, to be sure, but they express their rebellion in stupid, unimportant ways like abusing drugs and alcohol or using the "wrong" words that they know adults don't want them to say. I'd much rather they rebelled by not accepting statements without proof.
First of all we aren't all American here so we don't all quite understand this paranoia about the Chinese. Secondly, I highly doubt the average Slashdotter, who is generally well educated, has the kind of irrational paranoia that Slashdot seems to be provoking in these articles.
It's pretty simple. Americans on/. tend to be young, libertarian and well-educated. Their youth means they don't remember a time when the US wasn't the sole world superpower. This makes them libertarian, because it's easy to be a selfish prick when you're king of the hill and are able to act unilaterally. But their education means they realize that Big Things are happening in China, things that might allow the Chinese to challenge US global hegemony in the not-so-distant future.
And that makes them nervous, because it threatens the foundations of their worldview. That nervousness comes out as paranoia about the Chinese. They have horrible censorship! They are planning an attack against us! They tried to rig our elections! If they gain power we're going to hell in a handbasket! Really, the subtext is just this: you can't try to be the boss! We're the boss!
Seriously, I can't stand all this faux-righteousness when it comes to copyright law. You don't want to pay $20 for an album or a movie? Fine, neither do I, it's absurd. But stop pretending like that makes downloading music for free something other than piracy. And stop pretending like piracy is some Robin Hood-esque act that only hurts the greedy cigar smoking industry fat cats.
If you're actually serious about changing the way the entertainment industry works, remove yourself from their system. Stop consuming their product. Where there is no demand, there is no market. By consuming their product en masse --albeit illegally -- you are simply validating their product and hence the way they do business in the grand scheme of things. You are telling them that as soon as they figure out how to do legal distribution a little better (like iTMS is doing), you'll be ready to slurp down their shit.
People act like they're bringing down Babylon by pirating stuff, like it's some kind of civil disobedience or something. And then an actual musician will come out and say something against filesharing, and the overwhelming reaction is to discredit their legitimacy. "Prince and Abba are just jealous because they're not in the limelight." Yeah, I'm sure that must be it. Because Prince is clearly a one-dimensional cartoon character who will stop at nothing to be the center of attention. He's never, you know, displayed any sort of nuance or interest in record label politics or the music industry.
All this leads me to one conclusion: the rabidly pro-p2p/. crowd is just a bunch of cheap and lazy bastards. Too cheap to shell out $20 for an album, too lazy to do anything about it because they don't want to give up the tunes and the flicks and the games. Cheap and lazy, but lucky enough to be in a position where they can (a.) pirate the shit for free with relative ease, and (b.) cover it up by making a lot of noise about how evil the *AA is. And whenever something comes along that takes the attention away from how horrible the *AA is, it's tarred and feathered into oblivion.
If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix, why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux? Is it because Apple has those magical UI fairies?
Um, yeah, kind of. Everyone raves about Apple's UI because (a.) they have really well thought out human interface guidelines, and (b.) they're really diligent about sticking to them. That's all.
All you gotta do is coerce the FOSS community into using a single set of UI guidelines using a top-down, single-authority approach. Totally doable, right?
Umm, I think the whole point is that only geeks give a shit whether the functionality is the domain of the OS and usability is the domain of the WM or whatever. Most people will go with whatever allows them to continue not caring.
But Congress already contemplated both of those details when they passed the DMCA.
Yes, I'm sure that the same group of people who couldn't be bothered to read the Patriot Act before passing it did some real deep contemplation.
Re:The thing disruptive about these technologies..
on
What to Watch for in 2007
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Amen. DRM is going to be waaaay more disruptive than virtualization or, uh, shiny graphics.
Do you use a computer? Are you in any way involved in the consumer computer industry? How about the creation of digital media content? Do you like music, movies or pictures? If you said yes to any of these, DRM is going to be a major pain in YOUR ass.
*No offence meant, the US has it's merits and is unique in it's own way, but American culture is very different from European culture; When some one says "American culture", my first thought is of McDonalds if some one talks about "European culture" I think of the Renaissance. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just a very different one. As for History, this link sums up my thoughts: http://www.fatbadgers.co.uk/Britain/old.htm;)
I don't want to get caught up in a penis-measuring contest about the relative cultural merits of Europe and the U.S... if age is your metric, then the Chinese are hung down to their knees anyway.;)
I will say, however, that there is something odd about the charges of "ultra-consumerism" that are often leveled by Europeans against the U.S. I flew across the Atlantic this holiday season and noticed the following: American airports are packed with Burger Kings, Starbucks and news stands--all of them basically services intended to make traveling a bit more convenient. European airports, on the other hand, are just as packed with shops--but they're Versace, Tag Heuer and the booze n' smokes Duty Free shops. Who in the world feels the need to buy a $500 pair of pants while they're waiting around for their flight to leave?
Just a strange incongruity in my mind, I guess. And Americans are also grade-A hypocrites, of course: we like to think of ourselves as practical and down-to-earth, but apparently we respond to fear politics like it's our job. Reaction formation and all that.
I suppose my point is this: of course you think that Europe is, in a certain sense, the best. That's where you're from, and I'd expect no less. But realize that everyone else in the world is thinking the exact same thing about their respective places of origin, too. Instead of pretending that this is an objective debate, let's move on to more pressing matters like world hunger and how hard Windows sucks.
That's a great point, but the trust issue emerges no matter what method is used. Suppose we return to a paper ballot system. Someone has to count up those pieces of paper at the end of the day. Why should those people be trusted? There's really no practical way to ensure absolute fairness.
The real issue, I think, is how to distribute the trust. Spreading it across many people (e.g., thousands of volunteer paper-vote counters) increases the changes that someone will try something nefarious, but reduces the damage that a single person can infict. Giving the power to a few Diebold technicians and programmers lowers the chances that one of them will try to hijack the election, but makes the consequences worse if they do.
Personally, I'd go for the constant but low-grade tampering. Just like I'd rather be governed by a few hundred slightly foolish men and women than a single despot who might turn out to be a complete fuckup.
Maybe because the "PC revolution" was a compromise between cost and performance? That is, maybe some people prefer a mainframe/terminal paradigm, but it hasn't been useful and feasible on a large scale until now?
I dunno. Some people love the idea of public transportation; some love the idea of owning a car. People in most big cities have a choice. I imagine the same thing will happen in the computer and communications industries.
No, your response shows why so much of the non-technically-savvy population won't take Linux seriously. This guy wants to switch from Windows to Linux--he's already decided, you don't even have to try to convince him!--and yet your response to his perfectly valid question is "Figure it out yourself, asshole, and stop asking retarded questions."
Sure, everyone has their own needs and every distro fills its own niche. This guy gave a pretty good description his needs, and is trying to figure out what fits. Surprise--not everyone thinks that fucking around with various Linux distros is a good use of their time. Most people use computers for things OTHER THAN figuring out how computers work.
It's like asking the waiter for a recommendation and being told, "Why don't you just get everything on the menu and see what you like?"
Not quite--
Self-defence is not unrestricted as to weapon. If someone is threatening you with a gun, you can shoot them, but if some old lady is tapping you with her cane demanding her loaf of bread back, well.. you cant cut out her jugular and shoot her through the new cavity.
I know this is/. and all, but really, what is the purpose of your post? We always get the posts like "I invented the computer" etc, but at least they sometimes contribute to the discussion.
your post in a nutshell : im good at what i do, im white collar, me me, union bad because i'm special.
Get a better friend than your right hand and then let's discuss.
A programmer's union, for the specially talented few like yourself, would not necessarily be a really bad thing.
If implemented correctly, it would be an assurance of your skills and therby simplify job search on both ends. It would also be a powerful force for benefits across an industry. If you are so good, so irreplaceable, then you and your elite brethren would be quite a strike threat, no?
I know a guy who works with marble and granite-- very blue collar. But his skill set is such that he is also very valuable to his company. Should he declare he is therefore some elite worker, and face his company without his union?
I hate unions, don't get me wrong. Not at all in their idea, but in their implementation. But, your post said nothing more than what i summarized earlier, never making any kind of conclusions about your great skills and why you shoudlnt unionize.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you completely.
We chatted quite a bit about ten years ago on a.g.marathon and myth.b.org (I under a different name). Nice to see a familiar name years later, and even nicer that you're a voice of reason in this thread!
This reminds me of a comic about an engineer at a philosopher conference.
All the so-called great philosophy questions can be answered definitively if you allow for the terms to be properly defined.
Defined by whom? And what is this "properly"? You think the point of that comic is that if we'd only let the engineers handle philosophy, they'd figure it all out right-quick?
The profession of the philosopher is to refuse adequate definition to these questions, so that they are unanswerable by design; their work is no better or more useful than religions assertions.
This is about as ignorant as an engineer mocking theoretical physics ("Oh, so your particle accelerator's going to help me build bridges, huh?") or a programmer mocking theoretical mathematics ("Play with your pretty partition function approximations, we have Real Work to do on these databases"). If you truly think religion or philosophy offer nothing to human knowledge, you are even more blinkered and dogmatic -- not to mention foolish -- than the zealots you seek to ridicule.
Try to educate yourself before you go spewing off at the mouth. You seem to enjoy giving yourself a big pat on the back appealing to Slashdot's penchant for snark, but the shit you wrote is just ignorant.
Dunno about the flashing green, but in most of Europe the light turns from red to yellow and then to green. It's useful.
Kids are still rebellious, to be sure, but they express their rebellion in stupid, unimportant ways like abusing drugs and alcohol or using the "wrong" words that they know adults don't want them to say. I'd much rather they rebelled by not accepting statements without proof.
Aren't the things you cited exactly that?
MPU. Wise indeed.
So by doing this, CNN is tacitly admitting that blogs are a valid source of journalism, yes?
It's pretty simple. Americans on /. tend to be young, libertarian and well-educated. Their youth means they don't remember a time when the US wasn't the sole world superpower. This makes them libertarian, because it's easy to be a selfish prick when you're king of the hill and are able to act unilaterally. But their education means they realize that Big Things are happening in China, things that might allow the Chinese to challenge US global hegemony in the not-so-distant future.
And that makes them nervous, because it threatens the foundations of their worldview. That nervousness comes out as paranoia about the Chinese. They have horrible censorship! They are planning an attack against us! They tried to rig our elections! If they gain power we're going to hell in a handbasket! Really, the subtext is just this: you can't try to be the boss! We're the boss!
Full disclosure: US citizen.
Finally, a sane comment in this thread.
Seriously, I can't stand all this faux-righteousness when it comes to copyright law. You don't want to pay $20 for an album or a movie? Fine, neither do I, it's absurd. But stop pretending like that makes downloading music for free something other than piracy. And stop pretending like piracy is some Robin Hood-esque act that only hurts the greedy cigar smoking industry fat cats.
If you're actually serious about changing the way the entertainment industry works, remove yourself from their system. Stop consuming their product. Where there is no demand, there is no market. By consuming their product en masse --albeit illegally -- you are simply validating their product and hence the way they do business in the grand scheme of things. You are telling them that as soon as they figure out how to do legal distribution a little better (like iTMS is doing), you'll be ready to slurp down their shit.
People act like they're bringing down Babylon by pirating stuff, like it's some kind of civil disobedience or something. And then an actual musician will come out and say something against filesharing, and the overwhelming reaction is to discredit their legitimacy. "Prince and Abba are just jealous because they're not in the limelight." Yeah, I'm sure that must be it. Because Prince is clearly a one-dimensional cartoon character who will stop at nothing to be the center of attention. He's never, you know, displayed any sort of nuance or interest in record label politics or the music industry.
All this leads me to one conclusion: the rabidly pro-p2p /. crowd is just a bunch of cheap and lazy bastards. Too cheap to shell out $20 for an album, too lazy to do anything about it because they don't want to give up the tunes and the flicks and the games. Cheap and lazy, but lucky enough to be in a position where they can (a.) pirate the shit for free with relative ease, and (b.) cover it up by making a lot of noise about how evil the *AA is. And whenever something comes along that takes the attention away from how horrible the *AA is, it's tarred and feathered into oblivion.
Um, yeah, kind of. Everyone raves about Apple's UI because (a.) they have really well thought out human interface guidelines, and (b.) they're really diligent about sticking to them. That's all.
All you gotta do is coerce the FOSS community into using a single set of UI guidelines using a top-down, single-authority approach. Totally doable, right?
Umm, I think the whole point is that only geeks give a shit whether the functionality is the domain of the OS and usability is the domain of the WM or whatever. Most people will go with whatever allows them to continue not caring.
Two words: Path Finder
Amen. DRM is going to be waaaay more disruptive than virtualization or, uh, shiny graphics.
Do you use a computer? Are you in any way involved in the consumer computer industry? How about the creation of digital media content? Do you like music, movies or pictures? If you said yes to any of these, DRM is going to be a major pain in YOUR ass.
I will say, however, that there is something odd about the charges of "ultra-consumerism" that are often leveled by Europeans against the U.S. I flew across the Atlantic this holiday season and noticed the following: American airports are packed with Burger Kings, Starbucks and news stands--all of them basically services intended to make traveling a bit more convenient. European airports, on the other hand, are just as packed with shops--but they're Versace, Tag Heuer and the booze n' smokes Duty Free shops. Who in the world feels the need to buy a $500 pair of pants while they're waiting around for their flight to leave?
Just a strange incongruity in my mind, I guess. And Americans are also grade-A hypocrites, of course: we like to think of ourselves as practical and down-to-earth, but apparently we respond to fear politics like it's our job. Reaction formation and all that.
I suppose my point is this: of course you think that Europe is, in a certain sense, the best. That's where you're from, and I'd expect no less. But realize that everyone else in the world is thinking the exact same thing about their respective places of origin, too. Instead of pretending that this is an objective debate, let's move on to more pressing matters like world hunger and how hard Windows sucks.
That's a great point, but the trust issue emerges no matter what method is used. Suppose we return to a paper ballot system. Someone has to count up those pieces of paper at the end of the day. Why should those people be trusted? There's really no practical way to ensure absolute fairness.
The real issue, I think, is how to distribute the trust. Spreading it across many people (e.g., thousands of volunteer paper-vote counters) increases the changes that someone will try something nefarious, but reduces the damage that a single person can infict. Giving the power to a few Diebold technicians and programmers lowers the chances that one of them will try to hijack the election, but makes the consequences worse if they do.
Personally, I'd go for the constant but low-grade tampering. Just like I'd rather be governed by a few hundred slightly foolish men and women than a single despot who might turn out to be a complete fuckup.
Maybe because the "PC revolution" was a compromise between cost and performance? That is, maybe some people prefer a mainframe/terminal paradigm, but it hasn't been useful and feasible on a large scale until now?
I dunno. Some people love the idea of public transportation; some love the idea of owning a car. People in most big cities have a choice. I imagine the same thing will happen in the computer and communications industries.
No, your response shows why so much of the non-technically-savvy population won't take Linux seriously. This guy wants to switch from Windows to Linux--he's already decided, you don't even have to try to convince him!--and yet your response to his perfectly valid question is "Figure it out yourself, asshole, and stop asking retarded questions." Sure, everyone has their own needs and every distro fills its own niche. This guy gave a pretty good description his needs, and is trying to figure out what fits. Surprise--not everyone thinks that fucking around with various Linux distros is a good use of their time. Most people use computers for things OTHER THAN figuring out how computers work. It's like asking the waiter for a recommendation and being told, "Why don't you just get everything on the menu and see what you like?"
It's not my fault you're a racist pig.
Fuck you, you neo-Nazi fuck. Fuck you.
I love it when racist white people blame being firing from jobs on the desire of their employer to hire minorities.
You were fired because you're an incompetent jackass, not because they wanted more black/asian/hispanic/etc., people there.
Face it. That reverse discimination card is overplayed by you crackerass motherfuckers.
GNAA forever.
Cliff sux. And this article is 3 days late (MLK day was Monday - it's thursday
Not quite-- Self-defence is not unrestricted as to weapon. If someone is threatening you with a gun, you can shoot them, but if some old lady is tapping you with her cane demanding her loaf of bread back, well.. you cant cut out her jugular and shoot her through the new cavity.
I know this is /. and all, but really, what is the purpose of your post? We always get the posts like "I invented the computer" etc, but at least they sometimes contribute to the discussion.
your post in a nutshell : im good at what i do, im white collar, me me, union bad because i'm special.
Get a better friend than your right hand and then let's discuss.
A programmer's union, for the specially talented few like yourself, would not necessarily be a really bad thing.
If implemented correctly, it would be an assurance of your skills and therby simplify job search on both ends. It would also be a powerful force for benefits across an industry. If you are so good, so irreplaceable, then you and your elite brethren would be quite a strike threat, no?
I know a guy who works with marble and granite-- very blue collar. But his skill set is such that he is also very valuable to his company. Should he declare he is therefore some elite worker, and face his company without his union?
I hate unions, don't get me wrong. Not at all in their idea, but in their implementation. But, your post said nothing more than what i summarized earlier, never making any kind of conclusions about your great skills and why you shoudlnt unionize.