This is a fairly typical attitude among intelligent people, and is especially strong about their area of expertise. Unfortunately, in the real world, people are pretty much forced to use things they barely understand just to live a vaguely normal life. Many of these people simply do not have the mental capacity to address all the thing which they "should" understand. Even the most intelligent people are often dangerously ignorant in many areas (although they often fail to realise it).
No, to large extent it is up to the designers and overseers of complex (yet common) technology and systems that things behave in a relatively expected and benign way.
Sorry man, I have to agree with circletimessquare; you're a parasite. Claiming you're some sort of free-spirit that doesn't really care about money anyway is disingenuous. I suspect yo know that you could earn money (or even spend it!) without the systems and infrastructure that taxing entities provide. You're just trying to justify shirking your obvious responsibilities with some half-arsed attempt at radical libertarianism. Grow up and pay your damn taxes.
I don't think what they do is in any way a duty, and in many cases I think it is immoral. "But the companies do it" is a pathetically weak excuse.
That said, I am for a drastically simplified tax system, where there is no such thing as a tax deduction for businesses. You pay a certain (reduced) amount of tax, and that's it. No jiggery-pokery, no getting all of it back because of expenses, or losses, or whatever bullshit they make up to avoid tax now. In a free market, the cost of running your business is the cost of running your business. To compete, reduce your costs, not your tax kung-fu.
What gets my goat about (I think mostly American) libertarians is that they are most passionate about individualism pertaining to a necessarily communal system: money. On the other hand, they seem to go quiet and mumble shit about 'states rights' if pressed on social liberties, which are clearly much more private matters of conscience.
How the fuck does this outer-libertarian ranting get modded "interesting"? Guess what, the currencies are backed by the systems that tax you. I think Jesus said it best: render unto Caesar.
If you think it's your responsibility to not pay taxes, you should also consider it your responsibility to not use official currency, use roads, the power grid, water, etc., etc. If you do all that, then fine (I don't have a problem with survivalists, society needs an opt-out!), but otherwise stop justifying your greedy "I've got mine" attitude with a whole bunch of bullshit sophomoric philosophy.
The funny thing is that I think a lot of the shits and giggles type vandalism is done by (otherwise) productive editors of the Wikipedia. I've done a bit, practical joking sometimes, and I generally check that my vandalism didn't stick (it never does).
Wikipedia is facing marketeers and anti-wikipedia ideologues now, and they want their edits to stick. So the problem is harder.
That said, I think the problem of vandalism is overblown, and the reaction too strong in many cases. I've seen articles on my watchlist go under semi-protection for pretty minor and obvious vandalism that would have just been reverted without comment a few years ago (possibly by the same people that did it in the first place...)
It's not hyperbole, you can do this yourself. (Maybe the UK prices are different, but:), go spec a Mini with 4GB ram, 500GB HD, a Core 2 2.66Ghz, a normal Apple mouse, an Apple 24" screen, and an Apple keyboard: £1,645.01.
I made a mistake with the processor, I admit; it's a Quad Core i5, not i7. So, iMac with a Quad Core i5, 4GB ram, 27" Apple screen (built in, obviously), 4GB ram, 1TB HD, a wireless mouse, and a keyboard: £1,634.00.
You get a bigger screen, a bigger HD, much faster processor and a Apple Magic Mouse for less money. And in a package that's no less sleek if you include the screen in your calculation.
It's a crazy option if you're going to buy an Apple screen, as they show in their publicity shots. It used to be the cheapest.
I use a MacBook for that (bought is second, though), and I can see the sense in the Mini for the old price. The new price is pushing it into MacBook territory--which will do all the same things, but provide yo with a laptop if you ever need one.
Indeed. So they've made a very-expensive-indeed media PC. I don't see much point in that . I predict a spike in sales (they look very nice), followed by death (as Jobs himself has said, people don't actually want heaps of boxes attached to their TVs, and the HDs too small if you're storing TV and Films).
Troll? Come on, one of the big differences in this revision was the price hike (the vary first Mini was HALF the current UK price). This has got to the point where the Mini is not a cheap option, even if you don't care about specs.
The whole point is that it wasn't a grammatical error, it was intentional marketing-speak. People that use such language often don't have a clue what they are talking about. If you don't want to sound like a moron, don't talk like one.
Okay, completely off-topic, but the Titanic's watertight compartment design was pretty good. The ship was not divided along its long axis, which was a deliberate design decision to make sure it stay on an even keel (i.e. didn't capsize) even in the event of a catastrophic collision. The Titanic took hours to sink, even though it had a hole 1/3rd the length of its hull under the waterline. Compare this to some othersinkings, and I think the Titanic holds up pretty well.
Lack of lifeboats was, of course, the main problem. But it was one shared with all other large ocean liners of the period.
Re:how about long-term performance?
on
Safari 5 Released
·
· Score: 1
I don't know if you're using a Mac, but I think it's really strange how my experience of the various browsers differs from what I see here on Slashdot. In my experience, Firefox probably takes the longest to render a page (but we're still talking milliseconds here), but beats the shit out of Chrome and Safari for general responsiveness and reliability. Damn thing never crashes. Runs Flash much faster and more reliably too.
Chrome renders pages vary quickly, but can become unresponsive while chugging on graphical stuff. Safari crashes all the time (yes, mostly Flash).
You know, looking at that, I finally realised what I hate about flash sites so much. It's not that they are too flashy (though that does annoy me) or that my scroll wheel doesn't work (although that drives me nuts) it's that it completely breaks tabbed browsing. I am so used to opening "speculative" links in a new tab as a way of finding content on a site, that taking away that ability essentially makes the site unnavigable.
I don't think they will (or even can) fix that. HTML5 will win.
It isn't (Flash the content creator is nasty), but it's better than nothing at all which is the case for Javascript and HTMLx/SVG/Canvas. If designers are going to get on board completely with HTML5 as a Flash replacement, someone needs to write a nice tool for animating and writing games to the HTML5 spec.
I'm an artist, and I do a bit of motion graphics, animation and basic programming. I hate flash enough, and like standards enough, that I am working hard to produce interactive animated content in javascript/HTML. It's a freakin' pain in the arse, and takes a LOT more programming know-how than the vast majority of designers or artists out there.
And I have to ask myself why I bother, because what I create often wont run on IE6 (or IE7), sometimes wont run well on a standards-based browser, and costs me about as much time debugging as it does writing. "This is not flash" is not a huge selling point outside the nerd world.
You can predict (in principle at least) what mutations are more likely than others, based on the chemistry of genetic material. Ergo, they are not random. They are probably random with respect to fitness, but even here there may be evolutionary mechanisms which could minimise the likelihood of harmful mutations (I don't know, I'm not a geneticist).
The creationist argument is like saying, "you got a 7? the chance if you rolling a 7 with dice, as opposed to everything else that could of happened is minuscule." They fail to recognise the system is both constrained and controlled. We are playing with dice, not pumpkins or tables, and natural selection is picking the loaded ones.
Mutations are random with respect to fitness, but they are in themselves constrained by the laws and processes of organic chemistry, so cannot be said to be entirely random. Some base pairs are more fragile than others, for example.
It's a stupid old creationist argument based on the erroneous notion that evolution is random. The only significant part of the evolutionary mechanism that could be said to be random is the relation of mutation to fitness. Mutations aren't random, and selection certainly isn't.
Oh yeah that'd work! Put the whole system into shock and massive stress; I'm sure that will bring out the best in people, and make sure they mend their wicked, wicked, much-wickeder-than-the-old-days ways! I'm sure people wouldn't just cobble together whatever shit works kinda works -for now- in a mad scrabble.
Seriously, why do you think a disaster would improve the way people do things?
Slashdot Mirror
This is a fairly typical attitude among intelligent people, and is especially strong about their area of expertise. Unfortunately, in the real world, people are pretty much forced to use things they barely understand just to live a vaguely normal life. Many of these people simply do not have the mental capacity to address all the thing which they "should" understand. Even the most intelligent people are often dangerously ignorant in many areas (although they often fail to realise it).
No, to large extent it is up to the designers and overseers of complex (yet common) technology and systems that things behave in a relatively expected and benign way.
Sorry man, I have to agree with circletimessquare; you're a parasite. Claiming you're some sort of free-spirit that doesn't really care about money anyway is disingenuous. I suspect yo know that you could earn money (or even spend it!) without the systems and infrastructure that taxing entities provide. You're just trying to justify shirking your obvious responsibilities with some half-arsed attempt at radical libertarianism. Grow up and pay your damn taxes.
I don't think what they do is in any way a duty, and in many cases I think it is immoral. "But the companies do it" is a pathetically weak excuse.
That said, I am for a drastically simplified tax system, where there is no such thing as a tax deduction for businesses. You pay a certain (reduced) amount of tax, and that's it. No jiggery-pokery, no getting all of it back because of expenses, or losses, or whatever bullshit they make up to avoid tax now. In a free market, the cost of running your business is the cost of running your business. To compete, reduce your costs, not your tax kung-fu.
What gets my goat about (I think mostly American) libertarians is that they are most passionate about individualism pertaining to a necessarily communal system: money. On the other hand, they seem to go quiet and mumble shit about 'states rights' if pressed on social liberties, which are clearly much more private matters of conscience.
How the fuck does this outer-libertarian ranting get modded "interesting"? Guess what, the currencies are backed by the systems that tax you. I think Jesus said it best: render unto Caesar.
If you think it's your responsibility to not pay taxes, you should also consider it your responsibility to not use official currency, use roads, the power grid, water, etc., etc. If you do all that, then fine (I don't have a problem with survivalists, society needs an opt-out!), but otherwise stop justifying your greedy "I've got mine" attitude with a whole bunch of bullshit sophomoric philosophy.
Because price is the most important factor here? Reliability has got to good enough, what needs to happen now is a sharp reduction in price.
The funny thing is that I think a lot of the shits and giggles type vandalism is done by (otherwise) productive editors of the Wikipedia. I've done a bit, practical joking sometimes, and I generally check that my vandalism didn't stick (it never does).
Wikipedia is facing marketeers and anti-wikipedia ideologues now, and they want their edits to stick. So the problem is harder.
That said, I think the problem of vandalism is overblown, and the reaction too strong in many cases. I've seen articles on my watchlist go under semi-protection for pretty minor and obvious vandalism that would have just been reverted without comment a few years ago (possibly by the same people that did it in the first place...)
It's not hyperbole, you can do this yourself. (Maybe the UK prices are different, but:), go spec a Mini with 4GB ram, 500GB HD, a Core 2 2.66Ghz, a normal Apple mouse, an Apple 24" screen, and an Apple keyboard: £1,645.01.
I made a mistake with the processor, I admit; it's a Quad Core i5, not i7. So, iMac with a Quad Core i5, 4GB ram, 27" Apple screen (built in, obviously), 4GB ram, 1TB HD, a wireless mouse, and a keyboard: £1,634.00.
You get a bigger screen, a bigger HD, much faster processor and a Apple Magic Mouse for less money. And in a package that's no less sleek if you include the screen in your calculation.
It's a crazy option if you're going to buy an Apple screen, as they show in their publicity shots. It used to be the cheapest.
I use a MacBook for that (bought is second, though), and I can see the sense in the Mini for the old price. The new price is pushing it into MacBook territory--which will do all the same things, but provide yo with a laptop if you ever need one.
Absolutely. The "can x be art?" angle these sorts of stories pull is inane. "Yes" is the answer.
Indeed. So they've made a very-expensive-indeed media PC. I don't see much point in that . I predict a spike in sales (they look very nice), followed by death (as Jobs himself has said, people don't actually want heaps of boxes attached to their TVs, and the HDs too small if you're storing TV and Films).
It's like a G4 Cube, man.
Troll? Come on, one of the big differences in this revision was the price hike (the vary first Mini was HALF the current UK price). This has got to the point where the Mini is not a cheap option, even if you don't care about specs.
Buy it with a screen and a keyboard ant it will cost you more that a 27" iMac with a quad Core i7.
The whole point is that it wasn't a grammatical error, it was intentional marketing-speak. People that use such language often don't have a clue what they are talking about. If you don't want to sound like a moron, don't talk like one.
Okay, completely off-topic, but the Titanic's watertight compartment design was pretty good. The ship was not divided along its long axis, which was a deliberate design decision to make sure it stay on an even keel (i.e. didn't capsize) even in the event of a catastrophic collision. The Titanic took hours to sink, even though it had a hole 1/3rd the length of its hull under the waterline. Compare this to some other sinkings, and I think the Titanic holds up pretty well.
Lack of lifeboats was, of course, the main problem. But it was one shared with all other large ocean liners of the period.
I don't know if you're using a Mac, but I think it's really strange how my experience of the various browsers differs from what I see here on Slashdot. In my experience, Firefox probably takes the longest to render a page (but we're still talking milliseconds here), but beats the shit out of Chrome and Safari for general responsiveness and reliability. Damn thing never crashes. Runs Flash much faster and more reliably too.
Chrome renders pages vary quickly, but can become unresponsive while chugging on graphical stuff. Safari crashes all the time (yes, mostly Flash).
You know, looking at that, I finally realised what I hate about flash sites so much. It's not that they are too flashy (though that does annoy me) or that my scroll wheel doesn't work (although that drives me nuts) it's that it completely breaks tabbed browsing. I am so used to opening "speculative" links in a new tab as a way of finding content on a site, that taking away that ability essentially makes the site unnavigable.
I don't think they will (or even can) fix that. HTML5 will win.
I think this is just arguing for better (Flash quality) authoring tools for HTML5 technology?
NOOOOO!!!! Please make an authoring tool that does not suck giant donkey balls. That's what we need.
It isn't (Flash the content creator is nasty), but it's better than nothing at all which is the case for Javascript and HTMLx/SVG/Canvas. If designers are going to get on board completely with HTML5 as a Flash replacement, someone needs to write a nice tool for animating and writing games to the HTML5 spec.
I'm an artist, and I do a bit of motion graphics, animation and basic programming. I hate flash enough, and like standards enough, that I am working hard to produce interactive animated content in javascript/HTML. It's a freakin' pain in the arse, and takes a LOT more programming know-how than the vast majority of designers or artists out there.
And I have to ask myself why I bother, because what I create often wont run on IE6 (or IE7), sometimes wont run well on a standards-based browser, and costs me about as much time debugging as it does writing. "This is not flash" is not a huge selling point outside the nerd world.
You're not quite right, I think.
You can predict (in principle at least) what mutations are more likely than others, based on the chemistry of genetic material. Ergo, they are not random. They are probably random with respect to fitness, but even here there may be evolutionary mechanisms which could minimise the likelihood of harmful mutations (I don't know, I'm not a geneticist).
The creationist argument is like saying, "you got a 7? the chance if you rolling a 7 with dice, as opposed to everything else that could of happened is minuscule." They fail to recognise the system is both constrained and controlled. We are playing with dice, not pumpkins or tables, and natural selection is picking the loaded ones.
Mutations are random with respect to fitness, but they are in themselves constrained by the laws and processes of organic chemistry, so cannot be said to be entirely random. Some base pairs are more fragile than others, for example.
It's a stupid old creationist argument based on the erroneous notion that evolution is random. The only significant part of the evolutionary mechanism that could be said to be random is the relation of mutation to fitness. Mutations aren't random, and selection certainly isn't.
Gull wing doors will get you laid, man. Okay, probably with a weird subset of pimply Back to the Future geeks, but still!
Oh yeah that'd work! Put the whole system into shock and massive stress; I'm sure that will bring out the best in people, and make sure they mend their wicked, wicked, much-wickeder-than-the-old-days ways! I'm sure people wouldn't just cobble together whatever shit works kinda works -for now- in a mad scrabble.
Seriously, why do you think a disaster would improve the way people do things?
I'm waiting for the A5 Powerbook, it's gonna be awesome!