It's a valid question to ask, though. Doing a complete environmental impact makes sense.
If you drive to a bottle bank to get your empty bottles recycled, are you doing the world a favour? Probably not. If you do it as part of another journey, maybe.
Actually, I've never understood why recycling glass is important. It's made of sand, and putting it in a landfill is like returning it to the earth. It's not like plastic (tough to recycle) or aluminium (valuable).
Next time you turn on the lights, you can be damned glad that the government bothered to subsidize the deployment of the power grid that makes them work.
Yeah, thanks. That's because government magically makes the funding for such things appear out of thin air. It's out of my taxes, so I won't be "damned glad", I'll be more concerned about why they aren't delivering services that I have been forced to pay for.
Some services make sense to be government run - the stuff that's national and basically has to be monopolized. Roads, fire services, police, defence, emergency health care are good examples. As a libertarian, I declare these as practical and you won't find many libertarians suggesting introducing customer choice in these.
But, you don't need government to run schools or hospitals. And you maybe shouldn't. Government comes loaded with ideological baggage. The educational curriculum is shaped by government, and therefore is likely to be taught partly based on the ideology of the government at the time.
I saw a lot of stuff about the 1.0.3 vulns. I know that it wasn't good, but I didn't really understand how it got rated as "critical". You had to already have a site on your list of trusted sites to get XPIs from.
I would guess that maybe less than 10% of all users download XPIs from anywhere but Mozilla.org. Add to that that if you downloaded an XPI from someone already, why would they post maliciously this time, and not the previous time.
As far as I know, the speed of resolution meant that not a single machine out there suffered from an attack.
I do find it a really odd thing to say. Considering he made American Graffiti which did fantastic box office, the mighty original star wars trilogy and working on Indiana Jones, now, after making 2 (maybe 3) pieces of complete shite, he feels like he can go and experiment.
The other thing is, he is saying all this at the age of 60. Much younger directors with much smaller bank balances have gone out and made the movies they wanted to make. Look at people like Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino.
Is this really the biggest priority out there? The platforms that I know of that have a JVM (either Sun or 3rd party) are Linux, Windows, OSX, Solaris. Seriously, how many people are out there not using one of those 4 on a desktop?
I'm not saying it's an ideal situation, but dealing with issues like open document formats rates way above this.
Getting more switchers to OOo has a number of effects. Mainly, it helps to raise the number of users, and therefore gives more credibility to the OASIS document standards. That's a good thing for freedom.
A lot of people don't use OOo for one reason - it doesn't have 100% compatibility with Word. I have met one person who uses Word because of more advanced features. Most people don't touch the advanced features.
I find it ludicrous that there's a debate about using Java which a) Isn't going away soon b) Is implemented on a lot of platforms and c) Is a documented spec whilst the major document formats for business are secret.
If people want to help OOo, they can send them a few bucks, or maybe find a local business and rewrite some macros so they can convert, or maybe help some users on a forum.
I am really fed up with these assholes doing this. If they won the lottery, they'd probably complain that the amount wasn't a prime number.
This is open source. That means, that any of you whiners who don't like java being in there can fork it and take it out. That's right, instead of sniping about something being given to you that doesn't meet your needs 100%, why not hack the code to make it how you want it?
For once, can any of you purist whiners step out of your ivory towers, stand up and applaud the people who are working hard and donating time and money to make projects like OpenOffice.org better. Sure, raise the points, but remember the good work being done.
Remember that OpenOffice.org is really important. It's one of maybe 4 things that can help bring about more choice in the world (Linux, Firefox and Apache being 3 others) of computing and lower the barriers to entry both in terms of cost and freedom. That's a pretty big thing - the idea that the people control the document formats, not a single company. Just remember that before you start your purist attacks.
I know people who just love their blackberries. I personally use a Palm Tungsten and love it.
I had a Windows CE device and really hated it. Accidentally trashed it. I went back to Palm because I just prefer the simplicity of them. The WinCE device just felt too feature loaded to be useful for what I needed it for.
I'm amazed at the amount of crap on these machines. I don't want to do Office work or software development using a handheld. It's there for address books/tasks/calendar for me (and a few little 3rd party apps).
I live in the UK and have a phone and it tries to take me into "services". If I press a button twice instead of once, I end up there. Then, I have to wait for the WAP browser selling me ringtones, wallpaper and other junk to close down. Sometimes, I just drop the back off the phone to drop the power in frustration.
I like Bluetooth. That's a useful feature. That's the only recent feature that I like. If I could have the phone I had 7 years ago + bluetooth, I'd be happy.
Video phones are a joke, as are the 3G data services. Have you seen the price for datacards? £170 for the card + £10/month to get 7mb. Compare it to hotspots, and it's rubbish.
Remember videophones were marketed "watch premiership goals". Like there's millions of people who will pay to watch goals on a tiny screen when they can go home and watch Match of the Day for nothing.
I know one guy with a videophone and he got it because it worked out as a great deal for... voice calls.
Exactly. And people are swallowing this whole PG-13=more serious movie stuff. Some people would pay to see Hayden Christian reading the telephone directory if it was called "Episode III".
I'm not going to do what I did with EP2 (which sucked even more than Police Academy IV). Lucas has to earn my ticket this time.. If it doesn't get outstanding reviews from proper film journalists (so no paid shills or fanboys), I'll wait for it on DVD to rent.
Absolutely true: Yesterday, after months of feeling pissed off, I decided to go and buy the SW Trilogy on DVD, and put up with all the rubbish that Lucas has added.
Then I read your post...
I'd rather put a steaming dog turd on my DVD shelf than a DVD with a gungan in.
There are films that just look different. The Matrix, Blade, Alien. All visually stunning, and worth watching just for the design work (Blade isn't that great a movie IMO). The prequels may be technically interesting but visually, they are dull.
How are the prequels "movies about ideas". There's not a single interesting idea in all the movies.
If you just like watching what is, little more than a bunch of flashy images, then fine. Enjoy.
Most big awards feel pretty corrupt anyway. It's one of those things - once something gets big, the parasites try and work out a way to make a buck/promotion out of it.
I imagine the first Oscars were more like a golf club dinner handing out awards, a social occassion. It's an industry now.
I never see open source as communism, because there is no compulsion. You have a choice, use it or not. Contribute or not. It's mostly being used as a scare tactic, that "because there's no business and no profit, then it's communism".
It's more like public-spiritedness, charity and opting into a community. I work at beer festivals occassionally in the UK, and we don't do it for the money. We do it for the love of it. We give something of ourselves in time and effort to promote the cause of real ale (OK, we get a few free pints too).
Better example - a friend of mine works on a soup kitchen. No doubt, giving away soup means that someone may not go to the store to buy some, but that's not communism, that's charity. That's been going on forever. It's also a foundation of strong libertarians - that charities funded by people's goodness can do a better job than government in acting as a safety net.
It could go that way, or it could go the other - that once a blogger is shown to be corrupt, that the traffic tails off.
Often, when someone or something gets 'bought', the attitude changes. I can think of great little companies that got bought and became dull. What made them great goes. People reading blogs are mostly not Joe Sixpacks. They are people seeking out something other than a press release, something closer to the bone.
I've read blogs that are basically PR, and they are soulless. Soul in companies is in the little things, in decisions made because they feel right, not because someone has done the math. People sometime try to do things that appear like real buzz, and it falls flat.
Will people be able to sniff that the content doesn't seem to add up? My guess is that it will just read a little bit dull, because opinions not founded in the heart can be like that.
That said, even discredited journalists on a subject get read. I can think of computer journalists who I just won't read, but other people have cited to me at work. Even when I explain why their opinion counts for shit, they still won't listen.
I've met quite a lot of MBAs, and they almost universally fall into the "sharp but useless" school of management. They'll make sure all the ISO9000 documentation is up to date, but few of them are leaders. You learn leadership from life experience.
There's a human solution to it - have a single point of client contact (normally a project manager). This person acts as a vet for communications in and out.
I know it sounds draconian, but it can also help with internal project communication. I've seen companies do it, so as a developer, I talk to no-one but the project team and the PM. The upside is that nothing gets agreed without the PM knowing about it.
It's a bit similar to movies. Lucas has put a ton of money and CG into Star Wars prequels and they sucked.
I do worry that FPS has us cornered now. I think that the way people had to create games that were quite abstract and fun (think platforms, map games) is in danger.
Also, movie franchises for video gamescause a lot of damage. They are an easy sell, regardless of quality.
Count me in as one of those who say that it's not a "media invention". In fact, I've not met many people who loved the first movies, or even liked them that much.
I found EP1 bearable as a cinema experience. I bought the video of EP1. Know how many times I watched it? Once. Then it collected dust. It doesn't take multiple viewings.
EP2 was truly appalling, though. Numerous daft plot points that made me go "huh?" or led nowhere, lifeless CG, terrible acting and direction all round. Overall, not a single character that I cared about. No word of a lie, it's the worst film that I've paid money to see at the cinema, beating out Police Academy IV.
You think people want to hate these movies? They certainly don't. They wanted them to be great. I still think that they could have been great - there was an interesting story that could have been told. It was wasted, though.
I'm tired of hearing about how "dark" it is. It smacks of hype to get people who feel cheated out of money for EP1 and 2 to think this is going to be another "Empire".
When the buzz is that it's great, I'll go. Otherwise, I'll be renting it.
Slashdot Mirror
If you drive to a bottle bank to get your empty bottles recycled, are you doing the world a favour? Probably not. If you do it as part of another journey, maybe.
Actually, I've never understood why recycling glass is important. It's made of sand, and putting it in a landfill is like returning it to the earth. It's not like plastic (tough to recycle) or aluminium (valuable).
The article actually says 9.3% is made up of wind, hydro and other renewables, of which 44% was wind. Which means that about 4.1% is wind.
Yeah, thanks. That's because government magically makes the funding for such things appear out of thin air. It's out of my taxes, so I won't be "damned glad", I'll be more concerned about why they aren't delivering services that I have been forced to pay for.
Some services make sense to be government run - the stuff that's national and basically has to be monopolized. Roads, fire services, police, defence, emergency health care are good examples. As a libertarian, I declare these as practical and you won't find many libertarians suggesting introducing customer choice in these.
But, you don't need government to run schools or hospitals. And you maybe shouldn't. Government comes loaded with ideological baggage. The educational curriculum is shaped by government, and therefore is likely to be taught partly based on the ideology of the government at the time.
Secondly, this wasn't about opinion, but about fact.
Thirdly, your opponents will seize every opportunity to discredit what you say and find holes.
Fourthly, it's up to you to make sure that there are no holes in there.
I would guess that maybe less than 10% of all users download XPIs from anywhere but Mozilla.org. Add to that that if you downloaded an XPI from someone already, why would they post maliciously this time, and not the previous time.
As far as I know, the speed of resolution meant that not a single machine out there suffered from an attack.
The other thing is, he is saying all this at the age of 60. Much younger directors with much smaller bank balances have gone out and made the movies they wanted to make. Look at people like Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino.
I'm not saying it's an ideal situation, but dealing with issues like open document formats rates way above this.
A lot of people don't use OOo for one reason - it doesn't have 100% compatibility with Word. I have met one person who uses Word because of more advanced features. Most people don't touch the advanced features.
I find it ludicrous that there's a debate about using Java which a) Isn't going away soon b) Is implemented on a lot of platforms and c) Is a documented spec whilst the major document formats for business are secret.
If people want to help OOo, they can send them a few bucks, or maybe find a local business and rewrite some macros so they can convert, or maybe help some users on a forum.
This is open source. That means, that any of you whiners who don't like java being in there can fork it and take it out. That's right, instead of sniping about something being given to you that doesn't meet your needs 100%, why not hack the code to make it how you want it?
For once, can any of you purist whiners step out of your ivory towers, stand up and applaud the people who are working hard and donating time and money to make projects like OpenOffice.org better. Sure, raise the points, but remember the good work being done.
Remember that OpenOffice.org is really important. It's one of maybe 4 things that can help bring about more choice in the world (Linux, Firefox and Apache being 3 others) of computing and lower the barriers to entry both in terms of cost and freedom. That's a pretty big thing - the idea that the people control the document formats, not a single company. Just remember that before you start your purist attacks.
...and is his attitude changing anything?
Because throughout history, newspapers have lied and been biased. I'd quote some examples, but seriously, it doesn't take much digging to find them.
I had a Windows CE device and really hated it. Accidentally trashed it. I went back to Palm because I just prefer the simplicity of them. The WinCE device just felt too feature loaded to be useful for what I needed it for.
I'm amazed at the amount of crap on these machines. I don't want to do Office work or software development using a handheld. It's there for address books/tasks/calendar for me (and a few little 3rd party apps).
I like Bluetooth. That's a useful feature. That's the only recent feature that I like. If I could have the phone I had 7 years ago + bluetooth, I'd be happy.
Video phones are a joke, as are the 3G data services. Have you seen the price for datacards? £170 for the card + £10/month to get 7mb. Compare it to hotspots, and it's rubbish.
Remember videophones were marketed "watch premiership goals". Like there's millions of people who will pay to watch goals on a tiny screen when they can go home and watch Match of the Day for nothing.
I know one guy with a videophone and he got it because it worked out as a great deal for... voice calls.
I'm not going to do what I did with EP2 (which sucked even more than Police Academy IV). Lucas has to earn my ticket this time.. If it doesn't get outstanding reviews from proper film journalists (so no paid shills or fanboys), I'll wait for it on DVD to rent.
Then I read your post...
I'd rather put a steaming dog turd on my DVD shelf than a DVD with a gungan in.
There are films that just look different. The Matrix, Blade, Alien. All visually stunning, and worth watching just for the design work (Blade isn't that great a movie IMO). The prequels may be technically interesting but visually, they are dull.
How are the prequels "movies about ideas". There's not a single interesting idea in all the movies.
If you just like watching what is, little more than a bunch of flashy images, then fine. Enjoy.
The lightsabre scene in ROTJ is a great cinema moment.
I imagine the first Oscars were more like a golf club dinner handing out awards, a social occassion. It's an industry now.
It's more like public-spiritedness, charity and opting into a community. I work at beer festivals occassionally in the UK, and we don't do it for the money. We do it for the love of it. We give something of ourselves in time and effort to promote the cause of real ale (OK, we get a few free pints too).
Better example - a friend of mine works on a soup kitchen. No doubt, giving away soup means that someone may not go to the store to buy some, but that's not communism, that's charity. That's been going on forever. It's also a foundation of strong libertarians - that charities funded by people's goodness can do a better job than government in acting as a safety net.
Often, when someone or something gets 'bought', the attitude changes. I can think of great little companies that got bought and became dull. What made them great goes. People reading blogs are mostly not Joe Sixpacks. They are people seeking out something other than a press release, something closer to the bone.
I've read blogs that are basically PR, and they are soulless. Soul in companies is in the little things, in decisions made because they feel right, not because someone has done the math. People sometime try to do things that appear like real buzz, and it falls flat.
Will people be able to sniff that the content doesn't seem to add up? My guess is that it will just read a little bit dull, because opinions not founded in the heart can be like that.
That said, even discredited journalists on a subject get read. I can think of computer journalists who I just won't read, but other people have cited to me at work. Even when I explain why their opinion counts for shit, they still won't listen.
I've met quite a lot of MBAs, and they almost universally fall into the "sharp but useless" school of management. They'll make sure all the ISO9000 documentation is up to date, but few of them are leaders. You learn leadership from life experience.
I know it sounds draconian, but it can also help with internal project communication. I've seen companies do it, so as a developer, I talk to no-one but the project team and the PM. The upside is that nothing gets agreed without the PM knowing about it.
I do worry that FPS has us cornered now. I think that the way people had to create games that were quite abstract and fun (think platforms, map games) is in danger.
Also, movie franchises for video gamescause a lot of damage. They are an easy sell, regardless of quality.
I found EP1 bearable as a cinema experience. I bought the video of EP1. Know how many times I watched it? Once. Then it collected dust. It doesn't take multiple viewings.
EP2 was truly appalling, though. Numerous daft plot points that made me go "huh?" or led nowhere, lifeless CG, terrible acting and direction all round. Overall, not a single character that I cared about. No word of a lie, it's the worst film that I've paid money to see at the cinema, beating out Police Academy IV.
You think people want to hate these movies? They certainly don't. They wanted them to be great. I still think that they could have been great - there was an interesting story that could have been told. It was wasted, though.
When the buzz is that it's great, I'll go. Otherwise, I'll be renting it.