I can see why people would reject evolution. For one thing, as was pointed out by an earlier articled linked to by slashdot, it's counterintuitive. It is not consistent with our every day experience, or at least not with aspects of our experience that we recognize as having those qualities. It's always hard to see these things from someone else's perspective, but ever since reading The Selfish Gene, the process of evolution (even without genetics) has always struck me as being pretty much inarguable. Things that are good at making copies of themselves tend to predominate. That's the basis, and the rest follows.
As for evolution "disproving" god? Well, as far as the Christian God goes, for christians who take the bible literally, it pretty much does, as do our dating techniques and a bunch of other things.
As for the others, it's a "surprising" coincidence that they tend to believe in roughly the same version of their god as their parents.
I have the DMR-EX85. I feel your pain. The menu system is a crime against usability, the performance makes me want to kick it, and it crashes fairly frequently. Panasonic was a good brand once, but that's their last sale to me.
If you didn't own a ZX81 then, well, you don't have a debilitating wrist injury*. It even made the "dead flesh" ZX Spectrum keyboard seem good by comparison.
Fail gracefully? I mean, at least attempt to close the open files, sockets and whatnot They weren't opened in the shown try block, so closing them in its catch block wouldn't be appropriate; there should be a higher level try/catch to handle this. At the point of failure shown there's nothing much that can be done, and I agree that the AC was adding complexity to bolster a completely bogus argument.
If you're designing web software, then read through the archives of Use It by Don Norman. I don't like his books - Designing Web Usability is the only paperback I've ever bought that had usability issues! But he's mostly on the ball.
His dumb little company VaporSet had this stupid setup where the people deploying Rails didn't have root access. I told Kevin that this was stupid...
And then I lost all interest in his sad little rant. Even getting that far, I suspect he's said actionable things - I hope his "enemies" aren't as unbalanced as he appears to be.
I also think it's a shame Slashdot published this article, as one man's personal diatribe is just rather distasteful.
When I am king you will be first against the wall With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
If I was king, I'd...
...but I'm not, and neither is this guy. Bloggers spouting off about how they'd change the rules is only news if they have a practicable way to get the rules changed.
What the hell will I do? Stick my hand into "teh tubes", grab their necks and then suck them into the abyss?
In other words, item#1 in your list should be removed, imho. Sorry, but until your country is statistically a good bet the fact that you personally are an honourable upstanding individual is completely irrelevant to me. Blacklists are unjust, but they're not for the benefit of the people on them - they're for the people who use them.
At the big bang (so far as we know) all of the energy (=mass) was concentrated in the same place at the same time. To be any hotter than that would require more energy than exists in the universe.
Don't OEM's actually use the machines they send out? Honestly, I think the answer's "no" to that.
When I got my R60e (bottom of the line, but still a nice bit of hardware), it was literally unusable. It was thrashing so badly that I couldn't get anything done. And that was with XP - after a reinstall (of XP) from my own disks it was absolutely fine. The task list went down from 90+ processes to fewer than 30.
Could they afford to sell the R60e at the price I bought it for without all the shiteware? I don't know, but if I had been an unsophisticated customer they'd have ruined the Thinkpad brand for me for life. After all, why buy a Thinkpad if it's as slow as a Dell?
In general publishers like authors to review their (other) books because they know the author is likely to have a bias in their favour. Plus they can, like, write.
Re:I have a question
on
Head First SQL
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Write some reviews, then ask nicely. Or know/be an author.
Wouldn't buy the Sony, not gonna buy the Kindle... Not interested in 'locked in' DRM from either, and the potential for 'interesting' spyware from either. I have the Sony Reader. There are a myriad of free texts for it. It can display TXT and RTF files just fine. The (unlocked) version of the LRF is well understood, so there are plenty of texts in that format and they work really well. It can display PDFs (but doesn't scale them well, so an A4 document will usually be unreadable).
I've never bought a DRM afflicted text and I never will. But the hardware's a different matter; the fact that it can display DRM doesn't preclude the device as long as it can display free texts.
Sony is kind of schizophrenic; their hardware is usually excellent but sometimes crippled by the media lobe of the company. In the case of the Sony Reader the hardware was left relatively unharmed, but the marketing of the device was absolutely crippled; they were so keen to push their online book store that most people don't realise it can display unencumbered texts just fine.
The Sony Reader is pretty damn good, though not perfect. For example, it doesn't have a page turn button on the right hand side more or less forcing you to hold it in your left hand or uncomfortably in your right. The iRex Iliad looks excellent, but it's pricier and the form-factor doesn't appeal to me.
I can see how the contrast might be a problem, since the background is more of an off-white. But I don't have problems with it. My father seems to find it ok too (though he may just be being polite since it was a gift from me).
The big plus for me is that I can have dozens of books to choose from without the associated weight problems when travelling. Plus I can read it outside in strong light and it's actually clearer than in a typical IT cave; I may actually get my quota of vitamin D this year!
Actually the Sony Reader does nicely render unDRM'ed PDFs and features good bookmarking! It's pretty neat. The DRM'ed books suck, of course, but I've never bought one. Guttenburg texts pre-formatted for it rock.
I don't understand why so many people are frothing at the mouth about this. Juveniles do not have the same rights as adults. A school wanting to track pupils to help prevent truancy does not automatically lead to 1984 surveillance in every home.
The people who complain that it won't work are, in my opinion, over-rating the cooperative intelligence of schoolkids, but even if they're right that doesn't mean it can't be trialled.
Same here - OK Computer was one of my favourite albums. I'm more than happy to pay for their music. I bought the big fat box set (which came with a free download) and I bought an additional download for £10 to make the point.
If I could buy all the music I like in this manner I would do so.
In what context did he get it wrong? Are you contending that 600 Linux users is the correct figure for the number of users of bbc.co.uk? He cited that figure and it was very obviously not correct. Given that his job title is "Director, Future Media & Technology" this is not a mistake he can legitimately make unless he mis-spoke. So far I have seen nothing to suggest that he did not accept this idiotic figure on face value.
Don't, say, confuse being not being able to come up with an accurate number off the top of his head with actually making critical decisions on faulty numbers. When a decision maker cites ridiculous figures for an audience sector when justifying a decision, we have every reason to believe that faulty numbers were used. So far no information has been provided to the contrary.
And, in case you're forgetting, we're still talking about a very small minority of the BBC website's user base. Linux users are certainly a minority. The issue is not that they are not explicitly supported, but rather that the use of proprietary solutions is locking out users of a variety of platforms. The justifications given for this are weak and the BBC's close relationship with Microsoft is not in question. The use of inaccurate figures to justify the decision suggests at the very least post facto rationalisation of the matter.
Just why are you suggesting that this is worthy of a resignation? This is exactly the sort of hysterical overreaction that I referred to earlier. I think that a senior manager who cites incorrect figures in his justification for the use of a proprietary commercial product to the detriment of a legitimate part of his audience should, at the very least, issue a formal apology.
If pressure from the commercial interest turns out to have influenced his decision, then he should certainly resign.
Or do you think that this is appropriate behaviour for a public institution?
He got it wrong, he was man enough to admit that he got it wrong. Why do you have to make such a big deal out of it? He didn't just "get it wrong", he got it wrong by three orders of magnitude. It was so wrong that anyone with even the faintest clue what they were talking about should have realised that the figures were wildly inaccurate.
Having been so wrong, why should we trust the revised figure? There is absolutely no reason to believe that this figure has been produced in a more reliable manner. It happens to be a plausible figure, but that doesn't prove it to be correct. It could still be out by an order of magnitude - if he's not prepared to give his methodology, I'm not prepared to take his word for it.
Moreover he has apparently been making decisions about the direction of the BBC based upon this sort of ridiculously incompetent assessment of his audience. If the controller of one of the TV channels were to make this kind of decision based upon this kind of broken assessment of a minority audience, and if there were the same suspicions of taint from an external commercial organisation he'd be tendering his resignation.
But because it's "just" the internet site and "just" Linux users apparently it's all just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
As for evolution "disproving" god? Well, as far as the Christian God goes, for christians who take the bible literally, it pretty much does, as do our dating techniques and a bunch of other things.
As for the others, it's a "surprising" coincidence that they tend to believe in roughly the same version of their god as their parents.
I have the DMR-EX85. I feel your pain. The menu system is a crime against usability, the performance makes me want to kick it, and it crashes fairly frequently. Panasonic was a good brand once, but that's their last sale to me.
Clarkson's job is to be entertaining, something he's very good at.
Part of the job of revenue and customs is to protect the data that they're entrusted with. Something they're not so good at.
Yep, glad to see that was in the list.
If you didn't own a ZX81 then, well, you don't have a debilitating wrist injury*. It even made the "dead flesh" ZX Spectrum keyboard seem good by comparison.
*Do your own joke here.
For me, and other trackpoint addicts,
No trackpoint = no sale.
I particularly User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky.
If you're designing web software, then read through the archives of Use It by Don Norman. I don't like his books - Designing Web Usability is the only paperback I've ever bought that had usability issues! But he's mostly on the ball.
The rights to his software maybe? I have no idea if that's even possible though.
I read this far:
His dumb little company VaporSet had this stupid setup where the people deploying Rails didn't have root access. I told Kevin that this was stupid...And then I lost all interest in his sad little rant. Even getting that far, I suspect he's said actionable things - I hope his "enemies" aren't as unbalanced as he appears to be.
I also think it's a shame Slashdot published this article, as one man's personal diatribe is just rather distasteful.
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
If I was king, I'd...
...but I'm not, and neither is this guy. Bloggers spouting off about how they'd change the rules is only news if they have a practicable way to get the rules changed.
In other words, item#1 in your list should be removed, imho. Sorry, but until your country is statistically a good bet the fact that you personally are an honourable upstanding individual is completely irrelevant to me. Blacklists are unjust, but they're not for the benefit of the people on them - they're for the people who use them.
At the big bang (so far as we know) all of the energy (=mass) was concentrated in the same place at the same time. To be any hotter than that would require more energy than exists in the universe.
When I got my R60e (bottom of the line, but still a nice bit of hardware), it was literally unusable. It was thrashing so badly that I couldn't get anything done. And that was with XP - after a reinstall (of XP) from my own disks it was absolutely fine. The task list went down from 90+ processes to fewer than 30.
Could they afford to sell the R60e at the price I bought it for without all the shiteware? I don't know, but if I had been an unsophisticated customer they'd have ruined the Thinkpad brand for me for life. After all, why buy a Thinkpad if it's as slow as a Dell?
Oh, the earth shattering wit.
In general publishers like authors to review their (other) books because they know the author is likely to have a bias in their favour. Plus they can, like, write.
Write some reviews, then ask nicely. Or know/be an author.
I've never bought a DRM afflicted text and I never will. But the hardware's a different matter; the fact that it can display DRM doesn't preclude the device as long as it can display free texts.
Sony is kind of schizophrenic; their hardware is usually excellent but sometimes crippled by the media lobe of the company. In the case of the Sony Reader the hardware was left relatively unharmed, but the marketing of the device was absolutely crippled; they were so keen to push their online book store that most people don't realise it can display unencumbered texts just fine.
The Sony Reader is pretty damn good, though not perfect. For example, it doesn't have a page turn button on the right hand side more or less forcing you to hold it in your left hand or uncomfortably in your right. The iRex Iliad looks excellent, but it's pricier and the form-factor doesn't appeal to me.
I can see how the contrast might be a problem, since the background is more of an off-white. But I don't have problems with it. My father seems to find it ok too (though he may just be being polite since it was a gift from me).
The big plus for me is that I can have dozens of books to choose from without the associated weight problems when travelling. Plus I can read it outside in strong light and it's actually clearer than in a typical IT cave; I may actually get my quota of vitamin D this year!
Thanks for the tip - reading it now; the Sony Reader does RTF just fine too :-)
Actually the Sony Reader does nicely render unDRM'ed PDFs and features good bookmarking! It's pretty neat. The DRM'ed books suck, of course, but I've never bought one. Guttenburg texts pre-formatted for it rock.
Will this do?
I don't understand why so many people are frothing at the mouth about this. Juveniles do not have the same rights as adults. A school wanting to track pupils to help prevent truancy does not automatically lead to 1984 surveillance in every home.
The people who complain that it won't work are, in my opinion, over-rating the cooperative intelligence of schoolkids, but even if they're right that doesn't mean it can't be trialled.
Same here - OK Computer was one of my favourite albums. I'm more than happy to pay for their music. I bought the big fat box set (which came with a free download) and I bought an additional download for £10 to make the point.
If I could buy all the music I like in this manner I would do so.
If pressure from the commercial interest turns out to have influenced his decision, then he should certainly resign.
Or do you think that this is appropriate behaviour for a public institution?
Having been so wrong, why should we trust the revised figure? There is absolutely no reason to believe that this figure has been produced in a more reliable manner. It happens to be a plausible figure, but that doesn't prove it to be correct. It could still be out by an order of magnitude - if he's not prepared to give his methodology, I'm not prepared to take his word for it.
Moreover he has apparently been making decisions about the direction of the BBC based upon this sort of ridiculously incompetent assessment of his audience. If the controller of one of the TV channels were to make this kind of decision based upon this kind of broken assessment of a minority audience, and if there were the same suspicions of taint from an external commercial organisation he'd be tendering his resignation.
But because it's "just" the internet site and "just" Linux users apparently it's all just fine.
Actually I believe you'll find it's Istanbul, not Constantinople.