I use firefox. Can't live without it. I just wish it wasn't so slow, that it didn't choke on flash on Linux and that more extensions could be (un)loaded without restarting.
Pat Robertson has converted so many Christians to athiesm that Richard Dawkins should be jealous.
If this is true (and by the sheer popularity of Robertson might just be) it's a really sad truth. Because it doesn't matter how crappy Pat Robertson's god is, that doesn't make it false. Dawkins does give out good reasons to disbelive in it, and there are many other.
God is false because it doesn't exists, not because it is evil. Stressing the logical errors and moral attrocities of it is only intented to wake up Christians from their trance. In the end whether a god exists doesn't depend on whether you like it or not.
The sad truth I'm talking about is that people decide what to believe based on what they like, not what is real. I'm sure even a person who has had a religious experience (which are well understood and can be triggered by a machine on cue) can appreciate that truth is not what you like to believe, truth it's what remains there against all belief.
Well I'm an atheist and my intuitive thinking has never let me down, if any, my intuitive grasp of matters seems sharper than others, but that probably has more to do with experience than intelligence.
I'll make a wild guess and claim that analytical people are just as good at intuitive thinking than non analytical people, there is an evolutionary basis for this, intuition is more critical for survival, surely evolved first and is better established than analytical thinking.
My problem with Unity, as well as Gnome 3 for that matter, is that they let down poer users like me.
What makes me a power user? Well, basically the fact that I like to tweak and script my system. Tweaking, specially, has been getting harder and harder as of late. Tweaking shouldn't involve recompiling from source, turning off or on cimpile switches and suck. It shouldn't involve writing any code for that matter. Because for each programmer there is a 1000 power users and for each power user there 10 regular users. Power users make computers better for the rest of the world. we are the grease in the world personal computing. Standing between the casual user who can't even describe what they want and programmers, ther is an army of tech savvy cousings and geeky husbands and of course, IT crews that take care of fine tuning software for the tasks required.
Linux desktop used to be a power user's wet dream. It used to be the case that you could cause any behavior in any piece of software. Instead we are getting massive functionality regressions by complete software rewrites that forgo any customization in the name of standarization and "design". And now I'm happy that I can disable locking on suspend on a laptop without writing an startup script.
Configuration in modern desktop linux is getting so awkward that when it is possible at all, happens in third party applications like Gnome Tweak or Unity Tweak.
Goddamit, last time I had to install dedicated tweaking applications was when I was using Windows XP!
Is Steam really a DRM solution? I mean, so far I've noticed that the Steam games I've installed carry their own brand of DRM, and I have at least met with one Steam game that didn't have any useful form of DRM. I don't think Steam does DRM itself. It is more of a sales platform unified with installers and "social" stuff bolted in.
Yes, there will still be the cries of the "DRM is evil, keep it out of our holy land" zealots
Oh please, you yourself have admitted that there are degrees of DRM. The complaints about DRM are because of the problems it creates. Some DRM lock people out of their rightfully owned books music or movies as soon as the DRM goes offline, the company closes shop, or because of hardware hiccups. Some DRM is so aggressive as to overtake the system entirely, many of them are outright rootkits and render the system insecure with huge back doors, or conversely, completely block systems rendering your hard earned hardware into silicon bricks.
And this is no theory, it has already happened, multiple times. You can't complain about people who reject DRM and dismiss them as zealots when these problems are real.
I don't understand this bill, but if it's good we should get Wikipedia involved. Last time Google helped us because, like Dodd said, they weren't invited to the talks. Then he made the incredibly undemocratic statement than next time they want to make a law that affects the public they are going to take into consideration... more corporations, like Google, and that's exactly what they did. And of course it worked.
But chances are Wikipedia is still not corrupt, being the only non-profit with the traffic necessary to reach the audience levels required. Although I need to read more of this bill, that's basically our only hope.
If someone can write code better than you, that's your problem.
If you don't like it, -- gasp!! -- write your own code in the future.
Stop being all butt hurt cuz you can't take someone's work, make it better, and release to people who were willing to pay for it. In the end, your creation is obviously making the world a better place if you share it, so put it on your resume/cv and move on with life.
It's 70 episodes give it a surprising rewatch value and it's just adorable. I can't think of a better non-chemical antidepresant except perhaps a box of kittens.
Or not, I think we are at a breaking point in history where it could go either way.
On the one hand, more and more alternative sources of content have arisen. People spend a lot of their time doing things other than watching movies and television. Social media and user generated content is growing strong, and together with that, advances in technology are making encrypted darknets more and more feasible. Piracy is ubiquitous in the third world and the MAFIAA and RIAA are almost uniformly hated by everyone who knows who they are and what they do, except the people who directly benefit from them. The rejection of SOPA/PIPA marked an historical event where a huge mass of people aligned to make an International protest that effectively stopped a horrible set of laws from being enacted.
However, modern versions of Windows, as well as Android and iOS are getting increasingly draconian. We now have hardware that can't dual boot and extensive DRM support in both software and hardware. Videogame consoles are becoming just encrypted hard drives where "content" is rented in smaller and smaller pieces to milk as much possible from the gamers. Each day more and more people are surrendering more of their live to "the cloud" and the cloud is getting more and more aggressive about what it can do with your information. It is quite possible that we are heading to a new dark age where all computers are nothing but telescreens out of the control of their users. Sure, you will always be able to install ubuntu/mint/debian on your devices, if you want to, but if you install the distro of your choice, the DRM won't work, you won't be able to watch the movies youpaid for, your hacked phone won't connect to the VOIP service of your choice, maybe your ISP will deny you service for using a "rouge OS" known to enable piracy and terrorism. Hell, maybe you won't even be able to see your friends' pictures on facebook once facebooks makes a mandatory app for accessing pictures, obviously a security feature against Child Porn and also send them to the printer with cute virtual stickers and BTW it is the *only* way to print them, on your printer which also refuses to work without DRM and can only be used with the factory approved OS.
Many Shinto and Buddhist men have commited attrocities, and a lot of nice guys self identify as muslims.
The truth is that Islam has many teachings that could be considered peaceful as well as many violent ones. Same could be said about Judaism, and even Christianity isn't perfect (in fact it's horrible, it just seems good in comparison). However it doesn't really matter much how violent is your religion if you manage to reinterpret it and selectively learn it to minimise the bad parts. After all most jews today don't recur to animal sacrifices when sick.
The question is not why are so many muslims violent, but why are so many muslims following more violent interpretations of Islam. Of course more violent interpretations are closer to the original intent, no need to stress that, but that doesn't explain why jews refuse to murder people for working on sabat, and the answer is that jews are actually just europeans of hebrew descent. Israel is a middle-eastern country but its culture is closer to European culture.
I think that's the point of the multiculturalist movement, they want to retain the good parts of Islam and broom the bad parts under the rug. And in many ways that is the best solution, because you can't argue people out of their religion and genocide is too harsh of an option.
It's being said that you can change an opinion that people didn't arrive at themselves, the solution is to tame Islam with the ideals of kindness, truth, rationality and peace, just like we tamed Christianity, Judaism, and most other religions.
Indeed, Comcast should offer Netflix the option to establish a local cache within their network, and the cost of that cache should be equal to amount Comcast pays itself to host Xfinity. Except Comcast does not charge itself to host its own content beyond the mere floor space and electricity bills. If Comcast ever does agree to host a Netflix cache, which is unlikely, they'll surely will expect to get a profit from that.
This is just monopoly abuse, anti-trust laws should be taking care of this right now.
Which in theory shouldn't be a problem. To get to use the Xfinity service you need a tv cable subscription so you have to pay extra to Comcast. Presumably to pay the cost of the extra bandwidth consumption. In a way, Comcast --the tv cable company-- has to pay Comcast --the ISP-- to deliver its content. The question then is, does Comcast --the tv cable company-- pay less for badwidth than would Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo, etc?
Net Neutrality is at its heart, a problem of anti-trust, of monopoly abuse, of a corporation using its power in one market to further another market.
Slashdot Mirror
Please, keep making it easier to convert people to Linux.
I use firefox. Can't live without it. I just wish it wasn't so slow, that it didn't choke on flash on Linux and that more extensions could be (un)loaded without restarting.
Seriously, it's 2012 and slashdot of all sites isn't up to this technological marvel known as characters sets.
Not this shit again. How many times are going to have the same article over and over and over? Can we just move on please? This is getting stupid.
Pat Robertson has converted so many Christians to athiesm that Richard Dawkins should be jealous.
If this is true (and by the sheer popularity of Robertson might just be) it's a really sad truth. Because it doesn't matter how crappy Pat Robertson's god is, that doesn't make it false. Dawkins does give out good reasons to disbelive in it, and there are many other.
God is false because it doesn't exists, not because it is evil. Stressing the logical errors and moral attrocities of it is only intented to wake up Christians from their trance. In the end whether a god exists doesn't depend on whether you like it or not.
The sad truth I'm talking about is that people decide what to believe based on what they like, not what is real. I'm sure even a person who has had a religious experience (which are well understood and can be triggered by a machine on cue) can appreciate that truth is not what you like to believe, truth it's what remains there against all belief.
Well I'm an atheist and my intuitive thinking has never let me down, if any, my intuitive grasp of matters seems sharper than others, but that probably has more to do with experience than intelligence.
I'll make a wild guess and claim that analytical people are just as good at intuitive thinking than non analytical people, there is an evolutionary basis for this, intuition is more critical for survival, surely evolved first and is better established than analytical thinking.
You call it parody, I call it Fox News.
My problem with Unity, as well as Gnome 3 for that matter, is that they let down poer users like me.
What makes me a power user? Well, basically the fact that I like to tweak and script my system. Tweaking, specially, has been getting harder and harder as of late. Tweaking shouldn't involve recompiling from source, turning off or on cimpile switches and suck. It shouldn't involve writing any code for that matter. Because for each programmer there is a 1000 power users and for each power user there 10 regular users. Power users make computers better for the rest of the world. we are the grease in the world personal computing. Standing between the casual user who can't even describe what they want and programmers, ther is an army of tech savvy cousings and geeky husbands and of course, IT crews that take care of fine tuning software for the tasks required.
Linux desktop used to be a power user's wet dream. It used to be the case that you could cause any behavior in any piece of software. Instead we are getting massive functionality regressions by complete software rewrites that forgo any customization in the name of standarization and "design". And now I'm happy that I can disable locking on suspend on a laptop without writing an startup script.
Configuration in modern desktop linux is getting so awkward that when it is possible at all, happens in third party applications like Gnome Tweak or Unity Tweak.
Goddamit, last time I had to install dedicated tweaking applications was when I was using Windows XP!
Maybe it is innate for some people and not for some others. Wouldn't be the first time.
Relevant video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mky11UJb9AY
Is Steam really a DRM solution? I mean, so far I've noticed that the Steam games I've installed carry their own brand of DRM, and I have at least met with one Steam game that didn't have any useful form of DRM. I don't think Steam does DRM itself. It is more of a sales platform unified with installers and "social" stuff bolted in.
Yes, there will still be the cries of the "DRM is evil, keep it out of our holy land" zealots
Oh please, you yourself have admitted that there are degrees of DRM. The complaints about DRM are because of the problems it creates. Some DRM lock people out of their rightfully owned books music or movies as soon as the DRM goes offline, the company closes shop, or because of hardware hiccups. Some DRM is so aggressive as to overtake the system entirely, many of them are outright rootkits and render the system insecure with huge back doors, or conversely, completely block systems rendering your hard earned hardware into silicon bricks.
And this is no theory, it has already happened, multiple times. You can't complain about people who reject DRM and dismiss them as zealots when these problems are real.
I don't understand this bill, but if it's good we should get Wikipedia involved. Last time Google helped us because, like Dodd said, they weren't invited to the talks. Then he made the incredibly undemocratic statement than next time they want to make a law that affects the public they are going to take into consideration... more corporations, like Google, and that's exactly what they did. And of course it worked.
But chances are Wikipedia is still not corrupt, being the only non-profit with the traffic necessary to reach the audience levels required. Although I need to read more of this bill, that's basically our only hope.
Errant Story, First Blood, Marry Me.
If someone can write code better than you, that's your problem.
If you don't like it, -- gasp!! -- write your own code in the future.
Stop being all butt hurt cuz you can't take someone's work, make it better, and release to people who were willing to pay for it. In the end, your creation is obviously making the world a better place if you share it, so put it on your resume/cv and move on with life.
sorry
s/It's/Its/
It's 70 episodes give it a surprising rewatch value and it's just adorable. I can't think of a better non-chemical antidepresant except perhaps a box of kittens.
Buy me a hat and I'll pocket you all night long.
Or not, I think we are at a breaking point in history where it could go either way.
On the one hand, more and more alternative sources of content have arisen. People spend a lot of their time doing things other than watching movies and television. Social media and user generated content is growing strong, and together with that, advances in technology are making encrypted darknets more and more feasible. Piracy is ubiquitous in the third world and the MAFIAA and RIAA are almost uniformly hated by everyone who knows who they are and what they do, except the people who directly benefit from them. The rejection of SOPA/PIPA marked an historical event where a huge mass of people aligned to make an International protest that effectively stopped a horrible set of laws from being enacted.
However, modern versions of Windows, as well as Android and iOS are getting increasingly draconian. We now have hardware that can't dual boot and extensive DRM support in both software and hardware. Videogame consoles are becoming just encrypted hard drives where "content" is rented in smaller and smaller pieces to milk as much possible from the gamers. Each day more and more people are surrendering more of their live to "the cloud" and the cloud is getting more and more aggressive about what it can do with your information. It is quite possible that we are heading to a new dark age where all computers are nothing but telescreens out of the control of their users. Sure, you will always be able to install ubuntu/mint/debian on your devices, if you want to, but if you install the distro of your choice, the DRM won't work, you won't be able to watch the movies youpaid for, your hacked phone won't connect to the VOIP service of your choice, maybe your ISP will deny you service for using a "rouge OS" known to enable piracy and terrorism. Hell, maybe you won't even be able to see your friends' pictures on facebook once facebooks makes a mandatory app for accessing pictures, obviously a security feature against Child Porn and also send them to the printer with cute virtual stickers and BTW it is the *only* way to print them, on your printer which also refuses to work without DRM and can only be used with the factory approved OS.
It really could go both ways at this point.
Please Microsoft, keep making more and more free Linux features premium on Windows.
Piracy is worng! Artists deserve to be paid!
Wait... what you mean... they are getting paid? It's been licensed? Ok well...
Competition is worng! I shouldn't have to compete to stay un business!
Sort of, it's actually kind of complex.
Many Shinto and Buddhist men have commited attrocities, and a lot of nice guys self identify as muslims.
The truth is that Islam has many teachings that could be considered peaceful as well as many violent ones. Same could be said about Judaism, and even Christianity isn't perfect (in fact it's horrible, it just seems good in comparison). However it doesn't really matter much how violent is your religion if you manage to reinterpret it and selectively learn it to minimise the bad parts. After all most jews today don't recur to animal sacrifices when sick.
The question is not why are so many muslims violent, but why are so many muslims following more violent interpretations of Islam. Of course more violent interpretations are closer to the original intent, no need to stress that, but that doesn't explain why jews refuse to murder people for working on sabat, and the answer is that jews are actually just europeans of hebrew descent. Israel is a middle-eastern country but its culture is closer to European culture.
I think that's the point of the multiculturalist movement, they want to retain the good parts of Islam and broom the bad parts under the rug. And in many ways that is the best solution, because you can't argue people out of their religion and genocide is too harsh of an option.
It's being said that you can change an opinion that people didn't arrive at themselves, the solution is to tame Islam with the ideals of kindness, truth, rationality and peace, just like we tamed Christianity, Judaism, and most other religions.
You don't know how right you are...
Indeed, Comcast should offer Netflix the option to establish a local cache within their network, and the cost of that cache should be equal to amount Comcast pays itself to host Xfinity. Except Comcast does not charge itself to host its own content beyond the mere floor space and electricity bills. If Comcast ever does agree to host a Netflix cache, which is unlikely, they'll surely will expect to get a profit from that.
This is just monopoly abuse, anti-trust laws should be taking care of this right now.
Which in theory shouldn't be a problem. To get to use the Xfinity service you need a tv cable subscription so you have to pay extra to Comcast. Presumably to pay the cost of the extra bandwidth consumption. In a way, Comcast --the tv cable company-- has to pay Comcast --the ISP-- to deliver its content. The question then is, does Comcast --the tv cable company-- pay less for badwidth than would Netflix, Youtube, Vimeo, etc?
Net Neutrality is at its heart, a problem of anti-trust, of monopoly abuse, of a corporation using its power in one market to further another market.