Only an educated populace can appreciate the freedoms. It always was so and always will be.
"Teaching" about the First Amendment is pointless. The understanding of its role and importance can only come from reading the great books of Plato, Voltair and Hegel and learning about world history from books and museums. Watching History Channel (if even that) is not a valid substitute.
And which corporation will achieve this goal more efficiently - the one, which considers the ethical aspects and only does good things, or the one, which considers only the profits and does both good and evil things, depending on which is more profitable?
MSN had better desktop search than Google. Google still has the best results layout page, that's true (and it's easy to filter out the text ads, just block the javascript URLs), but I don't see the gap between Google and MSN as impossible to bridge. Give Microsoft and Yahoo a year or two and their search offerings might become not just "as good", but better.
They aren't pragmatic, they are just lazy. They expect someone else to come to them, explain what great new functionality is available (Bluetooth headset) and try to persuade them to try it.
This is not pragmatism, because the very same retarded morons occupy most management positions and they don't know jack shit about using IT to increase productivity. There are zillions of ways you can use simple, user-friendly, free applications that require no setup, no maintenance whatsoever, to do things more efficiently, but most people are too fucking retarded to learn, not even how to use them, but even about their existence.
And this is perpetuated by retarded CS/IT teachers who don't teach people about computers, but about some boring retarded shit.
A week ago I spent some time helping one girl to use Excel to enter lots of data and format it in a special way. Without my help she was going to spend about 4-6 hours entering data manually, sorting, adding more rows, etc. With my help (and 2 minutes of thinking on my part about how to do it the fastest) the job took about 30 minutes. It's not her personal fault that she didn't learn anything worthwhile about Excel, but it's the fault of "the people" in general.
After a while I just say "fuck you" to them (i.e. my parents) and force them to write down this elementary shit they can't remember. If they insist on not remembering it, fine, just look it the fuck up, ok?
Usually it turns out they can remember everything just fine. I say, the society is too tolerant to stupidity. We should say "fuck you", "you, dumbass" and "not my fucking problem" more often.
Simply saying that she is not retarded does not change the facts. A person that cannot be trained to distinguish between left and right mouse buttons is severally mentally handicaped without any doubt.
Most people (even old people without prior exposure to computers) can handle 2 buttons just fine. If your mother can't, there is something wrong with her. Instead of dumbing down the OS interface I suggest you look into giving her some nootropics, seeing a psychologist or may be just realising that pretty much all application (except Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, AutoCAD and some games) in Windows can be used with left mouse button only.
Because 99.9% of the potential customers already know that mice are supposed to have 2 buttons. If the Grandma doesn't know that, someone should simply explain it to her. Heck, there are lots of things a person should know about computers, it's not the responsibility of software developers to dumb down the interface to cater to the 0.1% of clueless newbies.
The parent's point is probably that if you need context menus, the argument about not complicating the interfact with "hidden" menus does not hold. If you make the user use a context menu anyway, why not make it convinient and add a 2nd button just for that purpose.
Look, if there was a compelling demand for simplicity, Logitech would carry a mouse with buttons marked LMB/RMB, Action/Menu or something like that. The cold fact is that most users have no problem with using a mouse and those few that have a problem can be ignored and/or told to FOAD.
Apple's insistence on a one button mouse is just arrogance and stubbornness.
OK, where would you put the functionality to copy the link address in a browser?
1) In a context menu activated by a RMB. 2) In a context menu activated by a Cmd+LMB. 3) On a toolbar. WTF? 4) It is contrary to HIG to copy link addresses.
Nonsense. In most windows applications the convention is simple - left click for action, right click for the context menu. I guess Gear Live doesn't really use anything besides OS X, because there is really nothing in Win/Lin world that would justify such FUD.
Mac software has context menus too. It's just that to access them you need to use both keyboard (press command key) and mouse, while with a 2-mouse button you just click the right button.
I suspect this is really bullshit. Those developers that want to pollute the interface with useless functions can rely on Cmd+click, which is basically the same as the right click, only more cumbersome. And those developers that understand the value of usability follow the Human Interface Guidelines voluntarily and then boast about it on their websites.
The real reason is that there is no compelling reason to change the official Apple policy, because everyone can get a 2-button mouse and everyone can use cmd+click, but there is a strong reason not to change anything, because Apple would look stupid for sticking so much to a stupid design decision.
It's not a problem at all. In this case it wouldn't be the GPL license that forces people to give credit to MS, it would be the patent law. So GPL would still work, only it wouldn't be sufficient to modify and redistribute the code, you would also need the permission from MS (which you can get automatically by giving them credit for the patents).
This may be contrary to the spirit of Free Software, but not contrary to the legal language of the GPL.
IANAL, but my guess is the only "incompatibility" is that you can't grant your licensees the permission to use MS formats. They would still have your permission to distribute your code and to modify it, but if they want to distribute the modified code, they would have to include credit to MS. But it isn't really a big problem.
And it's also greater because the conditions would be similar. For example, if some part of retrofitting was done by some Joe Retard, who forgot the instructions, he would mess up both shuttles. Or if one shuttle was launched in cold weather (like Challenger), the second is likely to be launched in similar conditions, leading to the same problem with O-rings.
That's like sending a soldier into a street, having it wounded by a hidden sniper, sending another one to resque it, having it wounded by hidden sniper, and so on and so forth. The correct solution, of course, is to send a tank or an attack helicopter or a team of armed to the teeth paratroopers.
If a $1000 bill fell off his pocket it wouldn't be worth his time picking it up.
This is a very serious misconception. Promoting it paints a wrong picture of Mr. Gates. He is not so rich, because he constantly creates value. It's not like every word of his creates thousands of dollars of value for Microsoft. If he were to disappear tomorrow, Microsoft is unlikely to suffer much (once the initial shock passes). He is not a genius CEO, he simply made several good decisions in the past and got lucky.
Because of this if you compare the effect of picking up a 1000$ bill and spending that time on his CEO duties, the choice should be picking up the money. While being a CEO he doesn't do anything really worthwhile.
That's so true. For (a somewhat related) example, yesterday I've listened to an mp3 recording of radio conversations of Moscow metro traffic controller when one of the machinists was incapacitated by a large dose of vodka.:) The machinist stopped the train at the station and left the train, only to be stopped by the police. Eventually when another machinist stopped on the opposite track at the opposite track at the same station, the traffic controller asked him to takeover the first train and park it in one of the station tonnels, then go back to his train and continue.
Even though he was speaking quite clearly and in good Russian, even though the station-master went to the machinist to explain the situation in person, he was unable to comprehend what exactly he was asked to do.:) I imagine how bad it could get if they were on the battlefield.
Well, I don't think there is a way to translate a text into another language without
understanding the text
understanding both languages
understanding the socio-cultural context of both languages
But we must consider the fact that most humans can't produce a decent translation either, even if they think they understand both languages. I've been professionally translating movies (EN->RU) and I know to what extent the scripts are riddled with linguistic traps. An average professional human translator would be lucky to produce a 90% valid translation (much less a perfect one).
So if the developers of computer translation tools do not strive for perfection, but for an average human level, they might succeed rather soon, by using a combination of several approaches (including the one described in this paper). Of course, a translation program can confuse NATO with the Northern Alliance, or Thai with Tahitian but so can a human.
You are part of the problem. What do you mean "unlikely to ever be technology that would replace a dog/cane"? How about artificial eyes? Or computer vision system with an electronic map of all objects in the city slapped on it? Technology can solve any problem and it is extremely stupid and shortsighted to believe that dogs/canes are somehow not technology. What are they then? Magic?
No, dogs and canes are technologies just as well as computers and RFID tags. They are proven solutions tested by many years of extensive use, but they are inherently limited and it's time we replace them with something better. And "experts" like yourself would do much more good if they said "Yes, we can greatly enhance mobility of blind people by doing A, B and C. We need X millions per year." instead of saying "I don't see how it's likely". You have a worse case of blindness - the technological blindness to the future. Please try to fix it.
This is not the most important reason to resist DRM. If you had DRMed hardware, you would not have problems with availability and your system would be stable and compatible. But it would prevent all use of the software and content not implicitly sanctioned by the developer, which is unacceptable. For example, you would need a special license from Microsoft (and Bungie, and Sony) to make Halo machinima. And you would need a license (which would be expensive and come with strings attached) to make screenshots.
DRM is bad not because it prevents us from playing, but because it prevents us from doing everything else that we might want to.
It isn't a disclaimer when it proves you know what you are talking about. It's either a "disclosure" (especially if there is a possible conflict of interest, as in "I am a reviewer in a gaming magazine") or a "note".
A valid disclaimer would be: "I don't own any of the current generation systems and I don't play games."
Well, the idea is that copyright system was designed to prevent large-scale commercial piracy that competed directly with the legitimate publishers. Some people still believe that the legislators and judges may have enough sense to realise that the laws were not intended to stop small-scale non-commercial piracy that is targeted mostly at people who are not willing to pay full prices and would rather waste their time and efforts (i.e. those who can buy a 15$ DVD do it, those who can't - download).
Slashdot Mirror
Only an educated populace can appreciate the freedoms. It always was so and always will be.
"Teaching" about the First Amendment is pointless. The understanding of its role and importance can only come from reading the great books of Plato, Voltair and Hegel and learning about world history from books and museums. Watching History Channel (if even that) is not a valid substitute.
And which corporation will achieve this goal more efficiently - the one, which considers the ethical aspects and only does good things, or the one, which considers only the profits and does both good and evil things, depending on which is more profitable?
MSN had better desktop search than Google. Google still has the best results layout page, that's true (and it's easy to filter out the text ads, just block the javascript URLs), but I don't see the gap between Google and MSN as impossible to bridge. Give Microsoft and Yahoo a year or two and their search offerings might become not just "as good", but better.
They aren't pragmatic, they are just lazy. They expect someone else to come to them, explain what great new functionality is available (Bluetooth headset) and try to persuade them to try it.
This is not pragmatism, because the very same retarded morons occupy most management positions and they don't know jack shit about using IT to increase productivity. There are zillions of ways you can use simple, user-friendly, free applications that require no setup, no maintenance whatsoever, to do things more efficiently, but most people are too fucking retarded to learn, not even how to use them, but even about their existence.
And this is perpetuated by retarded CS/IT teachers who don't teach people about computers, but about some boring retarded shit.
A week ago I spent some time helping one girl to use Excel to enter lots of data and format it in a special way. Without my help she was going to spend about 4-6 hours entering data manually, sorting, adding more rows, etc. With my help (and 2 minutes of thinking on my part about how to do it the fastest) the job took about 30 minutes. It's not her personal fault that she didn't learn anything worthwhile about Excel, but it's the fault of "the people" in general.
After a while I just say "fuck you" to them (i.e. my parents) and force them to write down this elementary shit they can't remember. If they insist on not remembering it, fine, just look it the fuck up, ok?
Usually it turns out they can remember everything just fine. I say, the society is too tolerant to stupidity. We should say "fuck you", "you, dumbass" and "not my fucking problem" more often.
Simply saying that she is not retarded does not change the facts. A person that cannot be trained to distinguish between left and right mouse buttons is severally mentally handicaped without any doubt.
Most people (even old people without prior exposure to computers) can handle 2 buttons just fine. If your mother can't, there is something wrong with her. Instead of dumbing down the OS interface I suggest you look into giving her some nootropics, seeing a psychologist or may be just realising that pretty much all application (except Photoshop, 3D Studio Max, AutoCAD and some games) in Windows can be used with left mouse button only.
I dunno. I recall from a screenshot that some of the items on Apple menu in OS X require pressing 5 keys.
Care to provide a single example of a large Windows developer that seems not to care about "crap" in the context menus?
In all programs I am currently running the developers apparently paid enough attention, because the menus seem to be designed just fine.
Because 99.9% of the potential customers already know that mice are supposed to have 2 buttons. If the Grandma doesn't know that, someone should simply explain it to her. Heck, there are lots of things a person should know about computers, it's not the responsibility of software developers to dumb down the interface to cater to the 0.1% of clueless newbies.
The parent's point is probably that if you need context menus, the argument about not complicating the interfact with "hidden" menus does not hold. If you make the user use a context menu anyway, why not make it convinient and add a 2nd button just for that purpose.
Look, if there was a compelling demand for simplicity, Logitech would carry a mouse with buttons marked LMB/RMB, Action/Menu or something like that. The cold fact is that most users have no problem with using a mouse and those few that have a problem can be ignored and/or told to FOAD.
Apple's insistence on a one button mouse is just arrogance and stubbornness.
OK, where would you put the functionality to copy the link address in a browser?
1) In a context menu activated by a RMB.
2) In a context menu activated by a Cmd+LMB.
3) On a toolbar. WTF?
4) It is contrary to HIG to copy link addresses.
Pick your choice.
Nonsense. In most windows applications the convention is simple - left click for action, right click for the context menu. I guess Gear Live doesn't really use anything besides OS X, because there is really nothing in Win/Lin world that would justify such FUD.
Mac software has context menus too. It's just that to access them you need to use both keyboard (press command key) and mouse, while with a 2-mouse button you just click the right button.
I suspect this is really bullshit. Those developers that want to pollute the interface with useless functions can rely on Cmd+click, which is basically the same as the right click, only more cumbersome. And those developers that understand the value of usability follow the Human Interface Guidelines voluntarily and then boast about it on their websites.
The real reason is that there is no compelling reason to change the official Apple policy, because everyone can get a 2-button mouse and everyone can use cmd+click, but there is a strong reason not to change anything, because Apple would look stupid for sticking so much to a stupid design decision.
It's not a problem at all. In this case it wouldn't be the GPL license that forces people to give credit to MS, it would be the patent law. So GPL would still work, only it wouldn't be sufficient to modify and redistribute the code, you would also need the permission from MS (which you can get automatically by giving them credit for the patents).
This may be contrary to the spirit of Free Software, but not contrary to the legal language of the GPL.
IANAL, but my guess is the only "incompatibility" is that you can't grant your licensees the permission to use MS formats. They would still have your permission to distribute your code and to modify it, but if they want to distribute the modified code, they would have to include credit to MS. But it isn't really a big problem.
And it's also greater because the conditions would be similar. For example, if some part of retrofitting was done by some Joe Retard, who forgot the instructions, he would mess up both shuttles. Or if one shuttle was launched in cold weather (like Challenger), the second is likely to be launched in similar conditions, leading to the same problem with O-rings.
That's like sending a soldier into a street, having it wounded by a hidden sniper, sending another one to resque it, having it wounded by hidden sniper, and so on and so forth. The correct solution, of course, is to send a tank or an attack helicopter or a team of armed to the teeth paratroopers.
But they got boobies!
If a $1000 bill fell off his pocket it wouldn't be worth his time picking it up.
This is a very serious misconception. Promoting it paints a wrong picture of Mr. Gates. He is not so rich, because he constantly creates value. It's not like every word of his creates thousands of dollars of value for Microsoft. If he were to disappear tomorrow, Microsoft is unlikely to suffer much (once the initial shock passes). He is not a genius CEO, he simply made several good decisions in the past and got lucky.
Because of this if you compare the effect of picking up a 1000$ bill and spending that time on his CEO duties, the choice should be picking up the money. While being a CEO he doesn't do anything really worthwhile.
That's so true. For (a somewhat related) example, yesterday I've listened to an mp3 recording of radio conversations of Moscow metro traffic controller when one of the machinists was incapacitated by a large dose of vodka. :) The machinist stopped the train at the station and left the train, only to be stopped by the police. Eventually when another machinist stopped on the opposite track at the opposite track at the same station, the traffic controller asked him to takeover the first train and park it in one of the station tonnels, then go back to his train and continue.
:) I imagine how bad it could get if they were on the battlefield.
Even though he was speaking quite clearly and in good Russian, even though the station-master went to the machinist to explain the situation in person, he was unable to comprehend what exactly he was asked to do.
- understanding the text
- understanding both languages
- understanding the socio-cultural context of both languages
But we must consider the fact that most humans can't produce a decent translation either, even if they think they understand both languages. I've been professionally translating movies (EN->RU) and I know to what extent the scripts are riddled with linguistic traps. An average professional human translator would be lucky to produce a 90% valid translation (much less a perfect one).So if the developers of computer translation tools do not strive for perfection, but for an average human level, they might succeed rather soon, by using a combination of several approaches (including the one described in this paper). Of course, a translation program can confuse NATO with the Northern Alliance, or Thai with Tahitian but so can a human.
You are part of the problem. What do you mean "unlikely to ever be technology that would replace a dog/cane"? How about artificial eyes? Or computer vision system with an electronic map of all objects in the city slapped on it? Technology can solve any problem and it is extremely stupid and shortsighted to believe that dogs/canes are somehow not technology. What are they then? Magic?
No, dogs and canes are technologies just as well as computers and RFID tags. They are proven solutions tested by many years of extensive use, but they are inherently limited and it's time we replace them with something better. And "experts" like yourself would do much more good if they said "Yes, we can greatly enhance mobility of blind people by doing A, B and C. We need X millions per year." instead of saying "I don't see how it's likely". You have a worse case of blindness - the technological blindness to the future. Please try to fix it.
This is not the most important reason to resist DRM. If you had DRMed hardware, you would not have problems with availability and your system would be stable and compatible. But it would prevent all use of the software and content not implicitly sanctioned by the developer, which is unacceptable. For example, you would need a special license from Microsoft (and Bungie, and Sony) to make Halo machinima. And you would need a license (which would be expensive and come with strings attached) to make screenshots.
DRM is bad not because it prevents us from playing, but because it prevents us from doing everything else that we might want to.
It isn't a disclaimer when it proves you know what you are talking about. It's either a "disclosure" (especially if there is a possible conflict of interest, as in "I am a reviewer in a gaming magazine") or a "note".
A valid disclaimer would be: "I don't own any of the current generation systems and I don't play games."
Thanks for your attention, gentlemen.
Well, the idea is that copyright system was designed to prevent large-scale commercial piracy that competed directly with the legitimate publishers. Some people still believe that the legislators and judges may have enough sense to realise that the laws were not intended to stop small-scale non-commercial piracy that is targeted mostly at people who are not willing to pay full prices and would rather waste their time and efforts (i.e. those who can buy a 15$ DVD do it, those who can't - download).