As someone else pointed out in this thread: by that reasoning, celebrity gossip wouldn't exist. People gossip all the time, and they often believe it when they should not. They will even do this when they have been bit by it themselves. I'm not antropologist (or whatever you need to be) but it seems this is one of those things that's inherent to our social system. It also needs some correction I guess.
I agree with you but I think in this case they're quite representative. Public harassment after the breaking of a news story about someone being suspected of a certain crime is quite normal. The way the media pound on the people involved, the talk about these people in all sorts of fora (electronic or not), the hate calls, hate mail,... While we assert that you are innocent till proven guilty, the majority of people don't really believe that. They don't even believe it when someone is judged innocent by an established court with a jury even though they have no valid reason to do so unless they're close to the case.
The kind of shaming that this story talks about is already going on, I think the internet just gives it a new dimension.
Come on now, if you install linux the first thing you'll likely learn about is using a package manager. A normal person who installs linux will at least take the time to find out how software is installed. A normal person from your definition ("most people") will probably let someone else do the install for them, and they can ask those people to find an iPod program for them. If they don't know anyone who is at the very least slightly knowledgeable with linux, they just won't bother.
That is keeping linux more from adoption then anything else. The attitude of "but everyone uses windows so...". This approach is quite rational; even if windows gives you lots of trouble you still have several people you could ask for help. If you're looking for a good program to do something, chances are you know someone who can get it for you. On the other hand, with linux's low penetration you're not likely to know many people who use it and can help you with any problems.
(GNU/)Linux as a software platform is IMHO quite ready for the desktop, it's just not beyond the stage of early adopters in this area.
I'd personally have posted it as anonymous though since you get a lot of karma with little effort now, while not really adding anything to the discussion. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with that, but it seems to be the consensus that reprinting stories should be done anonymous and this seems to fall under the same category.
There are some nice games out there. Mostly look-a-likes to older well-known games. In the strategy genre I've recently discovered wesnoth and more adventure like is uqm (the urquan masters) which is actually Star Control 2, with a different name because of licensing. While some of these are older there are many to be found if you spend some time looking. I'd suggest browsing the debian package lists in the game section.
The value of human life is apparently regarded more highly in Europe. The chance that a burglar is coming in your house to shoot you is pretty small compared to the chance that we'll suddenly have to deal with a lot of corpses if citizens are allowed to just shoot anyone who gains unlawful entrance to their house. I'm sure you think killing a burglar is more than okay, but then again you still have the death penalty and we don't. It's a cultural difference at the very least.
The problem is that there is no mechanism that can filter the very damaging software patents from the less-damaging ones.
Wrong. The problem is that patents are meant to foster innovation and drive research. To do this they impose a cost on the economy (virtual monopoly on a certain technology) which is traded for the expected benefits of higher innovation levels (economical growth through innovation). The problem with software patents is that there is a very small amount of research that would not have been done without software patents and a much bigger amount of basic software development that is being hampered by their existence, therefore representing a danger to our capitalist economies that should have never been allowed in the first place.
Many people seem to think that they somehow have a "right" to patent their ideas while the whole idea behind patents is that you don't have that right, but that you are given extraordinary benefits for the good of the economy, and thus society. Software patents have been shown many times not to do this and the instances where they are actually beneficial to the economy are few and far between. Therefore, they have to go.
AOL. I know a couple of real life women who play World of Warcraft and they universally agree that the men are just uninteresting to look at. None of them play a male character either. Perhaps game companies should get some women designing the male toons so the situation is a bit more balanced.
Then again, perhaps they shouldn't make lvl 60 priests wear dresses. That would probably increase the amount of males in that particular class a bit. (I'm not talking about robes here, they look like actual dresses, even on males)
If someone sends your parents a shell script saying something like: sudo rm -rf / then it will still affect them. I don't see how your "solution" solves anything on the long term. It might be a viable alternative on the short term.
Sorry but the article is about being suspected == crime. Your comment is about copyright infringement == crime. (after you've been convicted) I fail to see how this could be informative or even on-topic for this thread.
Exactly. From their point of view, refusing medical treatment is a rational choice.
The question is whether people should be given the choice. If the doctors are actually sure the children's chances of survival drop considerably, I'd permit them (by law) to disregard whatever the parents say. I do wonder why they don't do that already.
Exactly. I personally have my screenshots on there but I don't really care about the searching. The reliability and easy browsing is the major reason for me to put them on there. As long as they allow that, I didn't think anyone would actually mind. Perhaps neither did they.
I think anyone who has worked in a large company anywhere can concur that at least 10% of their workers are dead weight anyway. So when a company says they are going to increase efficiency they really mean "We are going to throw out all the lazy asses who are costing us money but not doing anything". Considering that, I don't really think a massive lay-off would mean Sun would just fall back to one of the domains they're succesful in. Unless, of course, they fire the wrong people.
Does anybody have a link to a good technical discussion of this thing? This article really is fluff and doesn't get into any details. I would very much like to know how they intend to bar un-authorized people from playing their files. After all, the program is open source (or is it?) so can be easily modified to allow the audio output to be written to an unprotected file somewhere. Obviously they would need to encrypt their files in some way, but then how do they intent to prevent people from getting at the keys?
Why should I prefer one propietary solution (Flash) over another one (ActiveX)? Several people here have pointed out that flashblock is one of the most popular firefox plugins. Why? Flash is used to deliver ads, bad music and possibly anything that can abuse the binary blob I am loading into my browser. What's most likely to happen with this development is that most flash developers will learn to use only one flash window on a site that only needs to be clicked once to activate. Sure, this might destroy advertising in flash. Is that a bad thing for the average slashdot user? I think not.
And ajax is not being used for anything people use flash for anyway, so it's not a real competitor. (video streaming in ajax? animations in ajax?) If you're seriously suggesting all sites should be coded in flash you have a thing or two to learn about accessibility and the end user experience.
I disagree, coding conventions (good ones) can be essential for the success of a project. For one because programmers will have an easier time learning the code if the conventions are good (less training time == less money wasted). Also other factors such as they will feel better when working on the code/not cussing at it all the time (a happy employee == a productive employee), it might be easier to catch bugs, some bugs can be avoided,...
You don't want to go too far in your coding conventions (e.g. the whole \t versus 2-4-8 spaces discussion, although that has its place) but some well-designed rules might make a project cheaper and more amenable to work on. Which in the end will definitely save you time, money and grief.
Your comment really illustrates my biggest problem with Linux folk. Point out an issue and they'll do a song and dance about how that issue really isn't an issue because no one who's "intelligent" really needs to do it that way anyway.
That's not really any different IMHO from what Microsoft or Apple sometimes say about certain features. ("It's not a bug, it's a feature!"). Actually, especially in Windows I've found that there's one way of doing anything and would you like to do it the other way then you're on your own.
It's also a classic technique you see used in lots of debates.("That's not the issue here...") I'm sure there's a name in latin for it or something. So I'd say your problem with Linux folk is really a problem with folk in general.
Debian by default does different, but although it's a bit more effort you can also just boot knoppix, as root mount the partition with/etc on it and nullify the password field for root in/etc/shadow. More trouble for joe random user but not very hard from the teenage "haxor" point of view.
I agree. I would actually have to side with the city on this one, they were pretty correct in wanting to keep e-mail adresses hidden. Consider a spammer taking this case as a precedent and going all over the country(or state,depending) collecting e-mail adresses. Many of those adresses will probably not be on a do-not-call list (why add an address on which you receive no spam?) so this hypothethical person could be sitting on a veritable gold mine, pawning it of to other spammers for big bucks.
According to catholic doctrine, you go straight to hell when you kill yourself. I assume this is what most anti-suicide laws in the west are actually based on.
Slashdot Mirror
As someone else pointed out in this thread: by that reasoning, celebrity gossip wouldn't exist. People gossip all the time, and they often believe it when they should not. They will even do this when they have been bit by it themselves. I'm not antropologist (or whatever you need to be) but it seems this is one of those things that's inherent to our social system. It also needs some correction I guess.
I agree with you but I think in this case they're quite representative. Public harassment after the breaking of a news story about someone being suspected of a certain crime is quite normal. The way the media pound on the people involved, the talk about these people in all sorts of fora (electronic or not), the hate calls, hate mail, ... While we assert that you are innocent till proven guilty, the majority of people don't really believe that. They don't even believe it when someone is judged innocent by an established court with a jury even though they have no valid reason to do so unless they're close to the case.
The kind of shaming that this story talks about is already going on, I think the internet just gives it a new dimension.
Come on now, if you install linux the first thing you'll likely learn about is using a package manager. A normal person who installs linux will at least take the time to find out how software is installed. A normal person from your definition ("most people") will probably let someone else do the install for them, and they can ask those people to find an iPod program for them. If they don't know anyone who is at the very least slightly knowledgeable with linux, they just won't bother.
That is keeping linux more from adoption then anything else. The attitude of "but everyone uses windows so...". This approach is quite rational; even if windows gives you lots of trouble you still have several people you could ask for help. If you're looking for a good program to do something, chances are you know someone who can get it for you. On the other hand, with linux's low penetration you're not likely to know many people who use it and can help you with any problems.
(GNU/)Linux as a software platform is IMHO quite ready for the desktop, it's just not beyond the stage of early adopters in this area.
I'd personally have posted it as anonymous though since you get a lot of karma with little effort now, while not really adding anything to the discussion. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with that, but it seems to be the consensus that reprinting stories should be done anonymous and this seems to fall under the same category.
There are some nice games out there. Mostly look-a-likes to older well-known games. In the strategy genre I've recently discovered wesnoth and more adventure like is uqm (the urquan masters) which is actually Star Control 2, with a different name because of licensing. While some of these are older there are many to be found if you spend some time looking. I'd suggest browsing the debian package lists in the game section.
The value of human life is apparently regarded more highly in Europe. The chance that a burglar is coming in your house to shoot you is pretty small compared to the chance that we'll suddenly have to deal with a lot of corpses if citizens are allowed to just shoot anyone who gains unlawful entrance to their house. I'm sure you think killing a burglar is more than okay, but then again you still have the death penalty and we don't. It's a cultural difference at the very least.
Wrong. The problem is that patents are meant to foster innovation and drive research. To do this they impose a cost on the economy (virtual monopoly on a certain technology) which is traded for the expected benefits of higher innovation levels (economical growth through innovation). The problem with software patents is that there is a very small amount of research that would not have been done without software patents and a much bigger amount of basic software development that is being hampered by their existence, therefore representing a danger to our capitalist economies that should have never been allowed in the first place.
Many people seem to think that they somehow have a "right" to patent their ideas while the whole idea behind patents is that you don't have that right, but that you are given extraordinary benefits for the good of the economy, and thus society. Software patents have been shown many times not to do this and the instances where they are actually beneficial to the economy are few and far between. Therefore, they have to go.
AOL. I know a couple of real life women who play World of Warcraft and they universally agree that the men are just uninteresting to look at. None of them play a male character either. Perhaps game companies should get some women designing the male toons so the situation is a bit more balanced.
Then again, perhaps they shouldn't make lvl 60 priests wear dresses. That would probably increase the amount of males in that particular class a bit. (I'm not talking about robes here, they look like actual dresses, even on males)
Here's a new thing you might not have heard of yet: paragraphs.
If someone sends your parents a shell script saying something like:
sudo rm -rf /
then it will still affect them. I don't see how your "solution" solves anything on the long term. It might be a viable alternative on the short term.
He got modded up for going through the trouble of finding that article and copy pasting the paragraph, saving us lazy losers the effort.
Sorry but the article is about being suspected == crime. Your comment is about copyright infringement == crime. (after you've been convicted) I fail to see how this could be informative or even on-topic for this thread.
Exactly. From their point of view, refusing medical treatment is a rational choice.
The question is whether people should be given the choice. If the doctors are actually sure the children's chances of survival drop considerably, I'd permit them (by law) to disregard whatever the parents say. I do wonder why they don't do that already.
Exactly. I personally have my screenshots on there but I don't really care about the searching. The reliability and easy browsing is the major reason for me to put them on there. As long as they allow that, I didn't think anyone would actually mind. Perhaps neither did they.
We slashdotters are no different. We're fanatical about being anti-fanatical :)
Slashdotters not fanatical? You must be new here...
It's the one with the red X AFAICT.
Does anybody have a link to a good technical discussion of this thing? This article really is fluff and doesn't get into any details. I would very much like to know how they intend to bar un-authorized people from playing their files. After all, the program is open source (or is it?) so can be easily modified to allow the audio output to be written to an unprotected file somewhere. Obviously they would need to encrypt their files in some way, but then how do they intent to prevent people from getting at the keys?
:/
Totally confusing.
Why should I prefer one propietary solution (Flash) over another one (ActiveX)? Several people here have pointed out that flashblock is one of the most popular firefox plugins. Why? Flash is used to deliver ads, bad music and possibly anything that can abuse the binary blob I am loading into my browser. What's most likely to happen with this development is that most flash developers will learn to use only one flash window on a site that only needs to be clicked once to activate. Sure, this might destroy advertising in flash. Is that a bad thing for the average slashdot user? I think not.
And ajax is not being used for anything people use flash for anyway, so it's not a real competitor. (video streaming in ajax? animations in ajax?) If you're seriously suggesting all sites should be coded in flash you have a thing or two to learn about accessibility and the end user experience.
I disagree, coding conventions (good ones) can be essential for the success of a project. For one because programmers will have an easier time learning the code if the conventions are good (less training time == less money wasted). Also other factors such as they will feel better when working on the code/not cussing at it all the time (a happy employee == a productive employee), it might be easier to catch bugs, some bugs can be avoided, ...
You don't want to go too far in your coding conventions (e.g. the whole \t versus 2-4-8 spaces discussion, although that has its place) but some well-designed rules might make a project cheaper and more amenable to work on. Which in the end will definitely save you time, money and grief.
It's also a classic technique you see used in lots of debates.("That's not the issue here...") I'm sure there's a name in latin for it or something. So I'd say your problem with Linux folk is really a problem with folk in general.
Debian by default does different, but although it's a bit more effort you can also just boot knoppix, as root mount the partition with /etc on it and nullify the password field for root in /etc/shadow. More trouble for joe random user but not very hard from the teenage "haxor" point of view.
I agree. I would actually have to side with the city on this one, they were pretty correct in wanting to keep e-mail adresses hidden. Consider a spammer taking this case as a precedent and going all over the country(or state,depending) collecting e-mail adresses. Many of those adresses will probably not be on a do-not-call list (why add an address on which you receive no spam?) so this hypothethical person could be sitting on a veritable gold mine, pawning it of to other spammers for big bucks.
Hmm, come to think of it...
Now if I could only shake this addiction, I might actually go out there and put these newfound skills to good use. :->
According to catholic doctrine, you go straight to hell when you kill yourself. I assume this is what most anti-suicide laws in the west are actually based on.