There's two types of agnostics: those that are between beliefs, as it were, and those that believe the entire argument is pointless. The key difference between atheists and these 'convinced' agnostics is that the agnostics also think the athiests are stupid for making a call, but the groups are otherwise fairly similar.
"Windows is not only the most expensive option, but the least secured."
Let's put aside the fact that Microsoft is certainly not beyond donating computer equipment to favoured candidates - the least secure box is one run by an admin who has no clue how security works, and that'll make ten times the difference the operating system makes. An Apache boxen run by an incompetent admin is far less secure than a IIS boxen run by a cluey admin.
"For these candidates to run Windows, says that they are incompetent and pay lip service to what they say."
It's just that sort of rhetoric, that tries to make out there's only one choice, that got America into the situation it is now. (So, uh, please don't vote.)
"In practice, a lot of games are poorly tuned for casual players, who want to see the high-level content without having to take a pay cut to grind hours a day."
Or, apparently, without having to see the lower-level content.
The thing that gets me about the Randi prize, and indeed about any claim that attempts to prove the validity of psychics, is much the same argument that's brought up about magic in Harry Potter - do you really want to paint a gigantic target on yourself as the only scientifically proven psychic? Any true psychic (as well as anyone who reads celebrity magazines) would know what huge amounts of fame would do to them, and then you have the nutjobs who believe they're true psychics and would go to this person for self-validation and yadda yadda yadda. And then they get kidnapped by the CIA in order to fight terrorism.
I mean, they're psychic. They know what will happen. And the only thing they get out of it is $1 million and a life forever ruined in the name of science.
Step #4) No one buys the Wii version because it controls like they tried to shoehorn crappy Xbox controls onto the Wii.
This conflicts with step #5, however.
While that's a finely-crafted link, I'm not convinced that the contents of the page linking to are exactly accurate. The Wikipedia fascism entry seems to suggest that one of the important elements of fascism is compulsory unions run by the captains of industry, and I don't see anything about that there. Other elements suggested as part of fascism look like it can be generally applied to dictatorships in general, and so calling them 'elements of fascism' isn't particularly useful as it doesn't distinguish fascism from any sort of totalitarianism.
Fascism these days is a polemic word, so it's probably unreasonable to expect people to know what it actually entails; but if one expects to stop fascism rising again it helps to know what to look for. (And whatever you say about the current American government, they're not fascist, and probably won't get a chance to be.)
The thing about net neutrality, though...
Well, okay, net neutrality is that all packets get treated the same no matter their particulars. The example that everyone fears (and rightly so) is if this expectation is taken away, packets from particular locations that pay for it will get preferential treatment, or could pay for their competitors to get deferential treatment. This is because American corporations hate their customers. But that's not the only thing a lack of net neutrality could result in.
Let's say an ISP decides that they're going to give preferential treatment to packets for particular port numbers, for example 666 and 3724 (the port numbers that Doom and World of Warcraft use, respectively). They can then sell themselves as a 'gaming ISP', claiming that one will get superior and more stable speeds on their network for games. Other ISPs might give preferential treatment to bandwidth-intensive sites like YouTube, not so they can charge YouTube for it, but for the purpose of making that ISP's connection *appear* faster than their competitors. People aren't going to notice the comparitive speed of webpages these days, but if their YouTube videos load 50% faster on one ISP it looks like you're getting a faster download speed. One facility I'd personally find a use for is a way to nominate whether to give deferential treatment to BitTorrent packets, as BitTorrent has a habit of eating all my bandwidth. (ISPs would almost certainly do this automatically, but then I use non-standard BT ports so it's all good.)
There are many things you can do with net neutrality, so in a way it's a real shame that we have to stop corporations from using it for evil.
"Linux, the leading example of the open-source model of software development"
I would have said Firefox, personally, but to explain why I'd have to make statements that could be construed as negative to Linux, and I'm not fool enough to do that on Slashdot.
And here I was thinking people hated it because it allowed their jobs to go to India.
I also thoroughly enjoy the implication that people not in the working class don't work. I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump regularly pulled twelve-hour days, and having known a couple of wealthy people (including my parents, sadly after I moved out), they got where they are by working hard and smart and taking risks.
So would it be true to say that the purpose of copyright is to mimic depreciation in real-world goods? Seeing as ideas don't age (the wheel is still just as good an idea now as it was when it was invented), forcing the value curve so that an idea is worth more when it is new, but less when it's old, makes it a lot more profitable to produce ideas.
I always thought the blue diode shortage had something to do with every other consumer electronics product trying to fit as many blue diodes as they could in there somewhere.
One can easily turn this argument around - it depends on buying the machine that will get you the games you like, and by the same argument if you don't like shooters, MMOs or RTS games it's a better proposition to buy a console. There's also more variety in your genres, and it's far easier to develop for and set up.
The stream should just work. For 90% of users, using WMV will do that. The average user running Linux is far more likely to be able to get hold of a Windows box than the average user running Windows is to get hold of something that will stream Ogg Theora.
The expensive, and important part of content production is actually producing the content. The cheaper all the other crap is that isn't actually creating content, the more people can create content, and the more competition there is. The more competition there is, the less power the big boys have.
You just want something expensive for free, don't you.
I actually tried out this software - it gathers an incredible amount of data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls.
"Microsoft Windows, as it is currently constructed, cannot compete in the long run with low- or no-cost software that is platform-neutral."
The fact that it's not doesn't mean it can't. The Internet as a platform is mostly successful because of its killer apps (Youtube, blogs, Wikipedia et al.) Consumers don't care about platforms nearly as much as IT professionals think they do or should.
This doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is boned because it's losing to the Internet, and it doesn't change any of the arguments based on that premise. But it just wanted to make clear that it's not the inherent nature of the platforms but the apps for them that usually decide how the consumer responds.
So, what, the State owns it but everyone, even those pesky Chinese, get to use it to?
Doesn't 'ownership' usually imply that there are people who aren't allowed to use it? Like if I own something, it's not everyone else's, and if the State owns it, no-one outside of the State gets to own it? I mean, usually the arguments about State-ownership come when the State decides not to allow people something, and that's nothing like public domain where no-one by default has rights to it so no-one can control it.
And anyways, ownership of intellectual property is a tricky beast because it copies itself into memory whenever it's accessed.
So private property might well be vital to political freedom, but copyright is a kludge provided by the state to shoehorn intellectual property onto private property rights, which worked okay right up until intellectual property and private property stopped being the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
There's two types of agnostics: those that are between beliefs, as it were, and those that believe the entire argument is pointless. The key difference between atheists and these 'convinced' agnostics is that the agnostics also think the athiests are stupid for making a call, but the groups are otherwise fairly similar.
"Windows is not only the most expensive option, but the least secured."
Let's put aside the fact that Microsoft is certainly not beyond donating computer equipment to favoured candidates - the least secure box is one run by an admin who has no clue how security works, and that'll make ten times the difference the operating system makes. An Apache boxen run by an incompetent admin is far less secure than a IIS boxen run by a cluey admin.
"For these candidates to run Windows, says that they are incompetent and pay lip service to what they say."
It's just that sort of rhetoric, that tries to make out there's only one choice, that got America into the situation it is now. (So, uh, please don't vote.)
"Yes, most people who buy a new console want better graphics."
I figured they wanted better games. Otherwise, the Dreamcast would have flown off the shelves because for the time those graphics were HAWT.
"In practice, a lot of games are poorly tuned for casual players, who want to see the high-level content without having to take a pay cut to grind hours a day."
Or, apparently, without having to see the lower-level content.
The thing that gets me about the Randi prize, and indeed about any claim that attempts to prove the validity of psychics, is much the same argument that's brought up about magic in Harry Potter - do you really want to paint a gigantic target on yourself as the only scientifically proven psychic? Any true psychic (as well as anyone who reads celebrity magazines) would know what huge amounts of fame would do to them, and then you have the nutjobs who believe they're true psychics and would go to this person for self-validation and yadda yadda yadda. And then they get kidnapped by the CIA in order to fight terrorism.
I mean, they're psychic. They know what will happen. And the only thing they get out of it is $1 million and a life forever ruined in the name of science.
Step #4) No one buys the Wii version because it controls like they tried to shoehorn crappy Xbox controls onto the Wii. This conflicts with step #5, however.
Maybe he could get the games company he works for to do it? Their games are in Java.
And it's not like you don't have to spend ages configuring games anyway.
Yeah! He's my type!
Get lost, you fangirls!
While that's a finely-crafted link, I'm not convinced that the contents of the page linking to are exactly accurate. The Wikipedia fascism entry seems to suggest that one of the important elements of fascism is compulsory unions run by the captains of industry, and I don't see anything about that there. Other elements suggested as part of fascism look like it can be generally applied to dictatorships in general, and so calling them 'elements of fascism' isn't particularly useful as it doesn't distinguish fascism from any sort of totalitarianism.
Fascism these days is a polemic word, so it's probably unreasonable to expect people to know what it actually entails; but if one expects to stop fascism rising again it helps to know what to look for. (And whatever you say about the current American government, they're not fascist, and probably won't get a chance to be.)
The thing about net neutrality, though... Well, okay, net neutrality is that all packets get treated the same no matter their particulars. The example that everyone fears (and rightly so) is if this expectation is taken away, packets from particular locations that pay for it will get preferential treatment, or could pay for their competitors to get deferential treatment. This is because American corporations hate their customers. But that's not the only thing a lack of net neutrality could result in. Let's say an ISP decides that they're going to give preferential treatment to packets for particular port numbers, for example 666 and 3724 (the port numbers that Doom and World of Warcraft use, respectively). They can then sell themselves as a 'gaming ISP', claiming that one will get superior and more stable speeds on their network for games. Other ISPs might give preferential treatment to bandwidth-intensive sites like YouTube, not so they can charge YouTube for it, but for the purpose of making that ISP's connection *appear* faster than their competitors. People aren't going to notice the comparitive speed of webpages these days, but if their YouTube videos load 50% faster on one ISP it looks like you're getting a faster download speed. One facility I'd personally find a use for is a way to nominate whether to give deferential treatment to BitTorrent packets, as BitTorrent has a habit of eating all my bandwidth. (ISPs would almost certainly do this automatically, but then I use non-standard BT ports so it's all good.) There are many things you can do with net neutrality, so in a way it's a real shame that we have to stop corporations from using it for evil.
"Linux, the leading example of the open-source model of software development"
I would have said Firefox, personally, but to explain why I'd have to make statements that could be construed as negative to Linux, and I'm not fool enough to do that on Slashdot.
I fear a one vote per person system ala Ancient Greece. Haven't you seen American Idol? Imagine that system applied to something important!
And here I was thinking people hated it because it allowed their jobs to go to India.
I also thoroughly enjoy the implication that people not in the working class don't work. I wouldn't be surprised if Donald Trump regularly pulled twelve-hour days, and having known a couple of wealthy people (including my parents, sadly after I moved out), they got where they are by working hard and smart and taking risks.
So would it be true to say that the purpose of copyright is to mimic depreciation in real-world goods? Seeing as ideas don't age (the wheel is still just as good an idea now as it was when it was invented), forcing the value curve so that an idea is worth more when it is new, but less when it's old, makes it a lot more profitable to produce ideas.
I always thought the blue diode shortage had something to do with every other consumer electronics product trying to fit as many blue diodes as they could in there somewhere.
One can easily turn this argument around - it depends on buying the machine that will get you the games you like, and by the same argument if you don't like shooters, MMOs or RTS games it's a better proposition to buy a console. There's also more variety in your genres, and it's far easier to develop for and set up.
"Why not use: 100 sec an hour, 10 hour a day, 100 hours a month and so on?"
Because then you'd be screwed on how many months in a year, wouldn't you?
The stream should just work. For 90% of users, using WMV will do that. The average user running Linux is far more likely to be able to get hold of a Windows box than the average user running Windows is to get hold of something that will stream Ogg Theora.
The expensive, and important part of content production is actually producing the content. The cheaper all the other crap is that isn't actually creating content, the more people can create content, and the more competition there is. The more competition there is, the less power the big boys have.
You just want something expensive for free, don't you.
And if you try and tell kids these days how good they have it, they won't believe you.
I actually tried out this software - it gathers an incredible amount of data about the surrounding environment, then discards it and drives into walls.
Heh, if I knew that I wouldn't be telling people on Slashdot, I'd be out making megabuck$ from it.
"Microsoft Windows, as it is currently constructed, cannot compete in the long run with low- or no-cost software that is platform-neutral."
The fact that it's not doesn't mean it can't. The Internet as a platform is mostly successful because of its killer apps (Youtube, blogs, Wikipedia et al.) Consumers don't care about platforms nearly as much as IT professionals think they do or should.
This doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is boned because it's losing to the Internet, and it doesn't change any of the arguments based on that premise. But it just wanted to make clear that it's not the inherent nature of the platforms but the apps for them that usually decide how the consumer responds.
If it's not a crime to have a gun, criminals *and* potential criminals will have guns. More people to defend oneself from.
So, what, the State owns it but everyone, even those pesky Chinese, get to use it to?
Doesn't 'ownership' usually imply that there are people who aren't allowed to use it? Like if I own something, it's not everyone else's, and if the State owns it, no-one outside of the State gets to own it? I mean, usually the arguments about State-ownership come when the State decides not to allow people something, and that's nothing like public domain where no-one by default has rights to it so no-one can control it.
And anyways, ownership of intellectual property is a tricky beast because it copies itself into memory whenever it's accessed.
So private property might well be vital to political freedom, but copyright is a kludge provided by the state to shoehorn intellectual property onto private property rights, which worked okay right up until intellectual property and private property stopped being the same thing.