because i'm surprised. they never told us about this on "Wild Kingdom".;-) I knew that the "Florida panther" == cougar, but thought that the black panther was sui generis.
i presume that the black jaguar is the panther found in S.A., but where's the black leopard? And is the black leopard the same species as the spotted leopard, but just a different color? Ditto for jaguars? And what about Himalayan/Siberian tigers?
"Working with semaphores and locks... *shudder* keep the bad man away!!" http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11388 0&cid=964 7043
Actually, it's quite interesting. It forces you to conceptualize with a certain kind of rigor, and to code with particular vigilance for potential deadlocks, race-conditions, and mis-serialization of resource-updates.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've read or listened to a description of a design or architecture, and immediately said "uh-oh", to the surprise and dismay of developers who really should know better.
In a time of increasing processor parallelism, this is a skill-set which must be mastered by anyone who truly aspires to become (or remain) a serious professional-level developer. It's not just for kernel-hackers.
Taco, it just struck me that the mod system is seriously remiss in not having a way to mod a post as being "Eloquent". It's really something different from "Interesting", isn't it. (It would also be nice to be able to search comments by mod-type.)
I wish I could use it here: "You haven't made the kernel smaller, you've just pulled a part of it out because you think it'd be cool to hold its beating heart in your hand while it still runs."
. . . for being three minutes late. But my post re: privacy/government concerns wasn't yet redundant at the moment I started to write it. (me mutters "stupid modding system, must get a T1 . ..")
"most computers are so personalized . ..that borrowing someone's computer can seem as creepy as borrowing their underwear". Technology can overcome this.
But ask yourself this: even if all the posted objections regarding (hackers, virii, DRM, snooping by ISPs, etc.) could be conclusively satisfied; even if all the other posted objections of (convenience, usability, etc.) were overcome; would you THEN be comfortable with this?
My answer: NOT WHILE JOHN ASHCROFT IS ALIVE. (and the same for his EU lackies)
. . . would be one interpretation of your post saying, "We're exporting chefs to France, for crying out loud". Perhaps they're leaving to avoid their talents being wasted.;-)
But seriously, the issue is not, "Can good dining establishments be found in the UK?", or "How numerous are good British-born chefs?". Rather, the issue is, "How should one characterize the cuisine associated with the UK?", either traditionally, OR statistically vis-a-vis current practice. The traditional canard is, "To eat well in Britain, one must have breakfast three times daily." Now, most people can cite specific examples of fine *indigenous* cuisine traditionally associated with France, Italy, Spain, India, Thailand, Japan, selected regions of the USA, etc. But I doubt that the UK is exporting a taste for kidney pie, cornish pasties, bangers & mash, eel, or haggis.
You say, "Good British food is now among the best Europe has to offer." OK, I'll bite (no pun intended); educate me: if I were to hear of a restaurant described as offering "fine British food" -- whether located in London, or in Asia, the Americas, or the Continent -- what might I find on the menu?
P.S. -- aren't you making unwarranted assumptions in calling me "mister"?;-)
P.S. -- FYI, just so you'll know that I'm not a yahoo cuisine-chauvinist, one of my VERY favorite chefs is in England (Padstow): http://www.rickstein.com
Gee, why do you suppose that timothy even published the original article on slashdot?
Hint: "from the rational-actor-dept . . . The patent application was filed in the week preceding Amazon's Call for Patent Reform"
For the powers-of-deduction-challenged modder: the article is of interest to the/. community because of their strong feelings about the patents issue, with some feeling that software patents are carried to absurdity.
NOW do you see why the post isn't OT? It's called "s-a-t-i-r-e". If it's too "deep" for your comprehension, then ask someone to explain it to you.
Can anyone else understand why some anonymous cowardly speed-reading clumsy-fingered moron modded this post "redundant"? http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid= 113744&cid=963 5577
It wasn't duplicative of any comment made previously, nor of any comment made since then. (The original post essentially opined that the KDE release-notice makes no effort to be interesting to non-geeks.)
someone posted, "I telecommute full time, so they pay for a telephone line, my DSL connection, and misc office equipment and supplies. They don't pay for my cell phone (except work-related call charges)"
I (and most of us, I'll wager) would gladly pay for those things ourselves, in return for being able to work from home *instead* of working at the company's location.
"we should also pay for blackberries, cell phones and pagers" Even if the job makes them mandatory?!
It's part of the trend created by a buyers' market for labor (like the companies which have been dropping the relaxed dress-codes of the nineties, "just because we CAN").
One solution is fake-sincere passive resistance: "sorry you couldn't reach me last weekend, boss -- my device and reception are s-o-o-o unreliable, and I'm locked into this service-contract and really can't afford anything better [whimper]".
And if they give you sh*t about it, contact the appropriate governmental body for labor affairs.
(And when will I-T people start waking-up to the true value of labor unions, dammit?!) (Hmmmm . . . I wonder if it might not improve wages of US/EU workers, to send someone to go to India and start labor-organizing *those* I-T workers . ..
It's about winning the "HEARTS and minds" of the wider (i.e. non-geek) world. OMG, take a look at the linked article's list of new features in KDE: how far down that list would a non-geek have to go, to find three consecutive items which are both useful AND INTELLIGIBLE to a non-geek? Can you imagine how much differently that list would be worded, if KDE were a commercial product?
so much of this thread has been, "Stealing is Wrong!" "It's not stealing." "yes it is!" "no it's not!" "shut up!" "no, YOU shut up!"
Those people are missing the point. It's not about p2p / stealing being right or wrong. It's about someone trying to make it illegal to OWN OR SELL OR MAKE hand-tools, merely because they can be used to commit burglary.
Like a lot of other p2p & DRM stories, this one would more properly have Tech / Net / Business / Media etc. (instead of "USA") as its "primary category".
Which, slashdotters, is just an oblique way of me saying the following (no, i wasn't just being an OT anal jerk) . .. Given recent history and trends in matters of -- global trade, trade agreements, -- trans-national law-enforcement / internet-regulation, -- and the covers-all-sins category of "fighting terrorism", NOTHING which the US government does (in these matters) is really USA-specific. The USA is the proverbial 400kg-gorilla-in-the-room. While it's true that it's the corporations who are really behind this stuff, and that those corporations are truly international, the fact remains that the US government is, far and away, the biggest weapon in the corporations' arsenal.
People outside the US really need to start giving their own governments more push-back about resisting US pressure on trade / tech / net issues.
(On the some-what related issue http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0 6/29/21 7209 about the USDOJ refusing to disclose its records of non-US lobbyists, non-USers should pressure *their* governments to disclose those lobbyists' activities.)
On the original topic of the US p2p legislation: remember how the US has made banking-outcasts of countries which won't betray the trust of their account-holders? Well, imagine this: "All ISPs and telcos who want to keep doing business in the US, must now start enforcing US standards for Net usage, in ANY other country they service." Do you REALLY think it would be such a stretch for the US to say something like that?
Hey, everyone -- hope it didn't sound like I'm against the idea. I'm all for public funding of things like this (as long as the recipients can maintain their philosophical independence, not get co-opted by the seduction of the government feeding trough, and don't abuse it [think NEA sponsoring "Piss Christ"]). I was just making a cynical comment on the nature of politicians.
"You do not need software to demo hardware. Make the hardware look cool. Show the guts."
ooh, yes! lots of neon-lit cables, fans coated with UV-sensitive paint, and window-panels (laser-etched with silhouettes of dragons and babes). And liquid-nitrogen cooling! And lots of blinkenlights! w00t!!
And after getting gov funding, just what do you think will happen, as soon as some politician's staff discovers something on the site which is publicly controversial or politically sensitive?
I decline to work at places which treat people like this. It's NOT because I think they're not entitled to protect their data -- they ARE entitled. But their implementation is just plain stupid: a miscreant could simply encode some sensitive data with PGP, walk out with a hard-copy, and then read it elsewhere with a scanner. So why do they insult their workers and associates, if they're not really serious about having air-tight data security?
Where are your priorities? Sincerely, not trying to flame, but this microsoft issue in this article is the only slashdot comment I find which has been authored by http://ask.slashdot.org/~LucasR
So I have to ask: with everything else which is happening to steal or threaten our medical confidentiality, our privacy, our freedom to travel, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and other civil liberties -- things which appear on/. almost every day, such as http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/05/16 3721 4 -- THIS issue (i.e. microsoft) is the issue you decide to worry about?!
But "standardizing **legislation** around the world" only takes us further down the troubling path of cross-national monolithic abuse-prone legislation, which has accelerated post-9/11, for example: -- security agreements which recently required EU citizens to sacrifice their traditional strong privacy standards and travel-records to the whims of John Ashcroft, even when *not* traveling in the USA; -- trade agreements concerning patents, IP & DRM; etc.
"A Novel Method Of Enhancing Consumer Privacy, By Preferentially Purchasing At Local Community Establishments, Using Uniquely Serialized Pieces Of Paper Currency Bearing Detailed Engraved Portraits Of Deceased National Leaders".
Soon to be followed by: "A Method For Consumers To Alter Shopping Behavior, For The Purpose Of Undermining The Market-Strength Of Philosophically Objectionable Corporations".
Slashdot Mirror
"Why do you ask?"
;-)
because i'm surprised.
they never told us about this on "Wild Kingdom".
I knew that the "Florida panther" == cougar, but thought that the black panther was sui generis.
i presume that the black jaguar is the panther found in S.A., but where's the black leopard?
And is the black leopard the same species as the spotted leopard, but just a different color? Ditto for jaguars?
And what about Himalayan/Siberian tigers?
. . . variously applied to leopards, cougars, and even jaguars"
really?
and which one of those comes in an all-black variety?
"Working with semaphores and locks... *shudder* keep the bad man away!!"8 0&cid=964 7043
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1138
Actually, it's quite interesting. It forces you to conceptualize with a certain kind of rigor, and to code with particular vigilance for potential deadlocks, race-conditions, and mis-serialization of resource-updates.
I can't tell you the number of times that I've read or listened to a description of a design or architecture, and immediately said "uh-oh", to the surprise and dismay of developers who really should know better.
In a time of increasing processor parallelism, this is a skill-set which must be mastered by anyone who truly aspires to become (or remain) a serious professional-level developer. It's not just for kernel-hackers.
Taco, it just struck me that the mod system is seriously remiss in not having a way to mod a post as being "Eloquent". It's really something different from "Interesting", isn't it.
(It would also be nice to be able to search comments by mod-type.)
I wish I could use it here:
"You haven't made the kernel smaller, you've just pulled a part of it out because you think it'd be cool to hold its beating heart in your hand while it still runs."
'sisyphean'.
("an average of 10 new stores are opened per week")
. . . for being three minutes late. .")
But my post re: privacy/government concerns wasn't yet redundant at the moment I started to write it.
(me mutters "stupid modding system, must get a T1 . .
"most computers are so personalized . . .that borrowing someone's computer can seem as creepy as borrowing their underwear".
Technology can overcome this.
But ask yourself this: even if all the posted objections regarding (hackers, virii, DRM, snooping by ISPs, etc.) could be conclusively satisfied;
even if all the other posted objections of (convenience, usability, etc.) were overcome;
would you THEN be comfortable with this?
My answer:
NOT WHILE JOHN ASHCROFT IS ALIVE.
(and the same for his EU lackies)
. . . would be one interpretation of your post saying, ;-)
;-)
"We're exporting chefs to France, for crying out loud".
Perhaps they're leaving to avoid their talents being wasted.
But seriously, the issue is not, "Can good dining establishments be found in the UK?", or "How numerous are good British-born chefs?". Rather, the issue is, "How should one characterize the cuisine associated with the UK?", either traditionally, OR statistically vis-a-vis current practice.
The traditional canard is, "To eat well in Britain, one must have breakfast three times daily."
Now, most people can cite specific examples of fine *indigenous* cuisine traditionally associated with France, Italy, Spain, India, Thailand, Japan, selected regions of the USA, etc.
But I doubt that the UK is exporting a taste for kidney pie, cornish pasties, bangers & mash, eel, or haggis.
You say, "Good British food is now among the best Europe has to offer."
OK, I'll bite (no pun intended); educate me: if I were to hear of a restaurant described as offering "fine British food" -- whether located in London, or in Asia, the Americas, or the Continent -- what might I find on the menu?
P.S. -- aren't you making unwarranted assumptions in calling me "mister"?
P.S. -- FYI, just so you'll know that I'm not a yahoo cuisine-chauvinist, one of my VERY favorite chefs is in England (Padstow): http://www.rickstein.com
. . . this comment as "Off-Topic":
/. community because of their strong feelings about the patents issue, with some feeling that software patents are carried to absurdity.
Gee, why do you suppose that timothy even published the original article on slashdot?
Hint:
"from the rational-actor-dept . . . The patent application was filed in the week preceding Amazon's Call for Patent Reform"
For the powers-of-deduction-challenged modder:
the article is of interest to the
NOW do you see why the post isn't OT?
It's called "s-a-t-i-r-e".
If it's too "deep" for your comprehension, then ask someone to explain it to you.
Can anyone else understand why some anonymous cowardly speed-reading clumsy-fingered moron modded this post "redundant"?= 113744&cid=963 5577
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid
It wasn't duplicative of any comment made previously, nor of any comment made since then.
(The original post essentially opined that the KDE release-notice makes no effort to be interesting to non-geeks.)
someone posted,
"I telecommute full time, so they pay for a telephone line, my DSL connection, and misc office equipment and supplies. They don't pay for my cell phone (except work-related call charges)"
I (and most of us, I'll wager) would gladly pay for those things ourselves, in return for being able to work from home *instead* of working at the company's location.
are evil and should be shot.
.
"we should also pay for blackberries, cell phones and pagers"
Even if the job makes them mandatory?!
It's part of the trend created by a buyers' market for labor (like the companies which have been dropping the relaxed dress-codes of the nineties, "just because we CAN").
One solution is fake-sincere passive resistance: "sorry you couldn't reach me last weekend, boss -- my device and reception are s-o-o-o unreliable, and I'm locked into this service-contract and really can't afford anything better [whimper]".
And if they give you sh*t about it, contact the appropriate governmental body for labor affairs.
(And when will I-T people start waking-up to the true value of labor unions, dammit?!)
(Hmmmm . . . I wonder if it might not improve wages of US/EU workers, to send someone to go to India and start labor-organizing *those* I-T workers . .
It's about winning the "HEARTS and minds" of the wider (i.e. non-geek) world.
OMG, take a look at the linked article's list of new features in KDE:
how far down that list would a non-geek have to go, to find three consecutive items which are both useful AND INTELLIGIBLE to a non-geek?
Can you imagine how much differently that list would be worded, if KDE were a commercial product?
free British food, hmmmm?
Obviously, it's a clever plot to *eradicate* the descendants of the Khan.
So many problems would simply disappear . . . tax the storage
so much of this thread has been,
"Stealing is Wrong!" "It's not stealing." "yes it is!" "no it's not!" "shut up!" "no, YOU shut up!"
Those people are missing the point.
It's not about p2p / stealing being right or wrong.
It's about someone trying to make it illegal to OWN OR SELL OR MAKE hand-tools, merely because they can be used to commit burglary.
"the majority of the population now favours integration"e ment_of_the_Eu ropean_Union#Norway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlarg
Like a lot of other p2p & DRM stories, this one would more properly have Tech / Net / Business / Media etc. (instead of "USA") as its "primary category".
.
0 6/29/21 7209
Which, slashdotters, is just an oblique way of me saying the following (no, i wasn't just being an OT anal jerk) . .
Given recent history and trends in matters of
-- global trade, trade agreements,
-- trans-national law-enforcement / internet-regulation,
-- and the covers-all-sins category of "fighting terrorism",
NOTHING which the US government does (in these matters) is really USA-specific. The USA is the proverbial 400kg-gorilla-in-the-room.
While it's true that it's the corporations who are really behind this stuff, and that those corporations are truly international, the fact remains that the US government is, far and away, the biggest weapon in the corporations' arsenal.
People outside the US really need to start giving their own governments more push-back about resisting US pressure on trade / tech / net issues.
(On the some-what related issue
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/
about the USDOJ refusing to disclose its records of non-US lobbyists, non-USers should pressure *their* governments to disclose those lobbyists' activities.)
On the original topic of the US p2p legislation: remember how the US has made banking-outcasts of countries which won't betray the trust of their account-holders?
Well, imagine this:
"All ISPs and telcos who want to keep doing business in the US, must now start enforcing US standards for Net usage, in ANY other country they service."
Do you REALLY think it would be such a stretch for the US to say something like that?
Hey, everyone -- hope it didn't sound like I'm against the idea.
I'm all for public funding of things like this (as long as the recipients can maintain their philosophical independence, not get co-opted by the seduction of the government feeding trough, and don't abuse it [think NEA sponsoring "Piss Christ"]).
I was just making a cynical comment on the nature of politicians.
"You do not need software to demo hardware. Make the hardware look cool. Show the guts."
ooh, yes! lots of neon-lit cables, fans coated with UV-sensitive paint, and window-panels (laser-etched with silhouettes of dragons and babes).
And liquid-nitrogen cooling!
And lots of blinkenlights! w00t!!
And after getting gov funding, just what do you think will happen, as soon as some politician's staff discovers something on the site which is publicly controversial or politically sensitive?
I decline to work at places which treat people like this.
It's NOT because I think they're not entitled to protect their data -- they ARE entitled.
But their implementation is just plain stupid: a miscreant could simply encode some sensitive data with PGP, walk out with a hard-copy, and then read it elsewhere with a scanner.
So why do they insult their workers and associates, if they're not really serious about having air-tight data security?
Where are your priorities?
/. almost every day, such as6 3721 4
Sincerely, not trying to flame, but this microsoft issue in this article is the only slashdot comment I find which has been authored by http://ask.slashdot.org/~LucasR
So I have to ask:
with everything else which is happening to steal or threaten our medical confidentiality, our privacy, our freedom to travel, freedom of speech, freedom of association, and other civil liberties -- things which appear on
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/05/1
-- THIS issue (i.e. microsoft) is the issue you decide to worry about?!
Standardizing mail *protocols* would do the job.
But "standardizing **legislation** around the world" only takes us further down the troubling path of cross-national monolithic abuse-prone legislation, which has accelerated post-9/11, for example:
-- security agreements which recently required EU citizens to sacrifice their traditional strong privacy standards and travel-records to the whims of John Ashcroft, even when *not* traveling in the USA;
-- trade agreements concerning patents, IP & DRM; etc.
. . . because *i've* already filed for it:
"A Novel Method Of Enhancing Consumer Privacy, By Preferentially Purchasing At Local Community Establishments, Using Uniquely Serialized Pieces Of Paper Currency Bearing Detailed Engraved Portraits Of Deceased National Leaders".
Soon to be followed by:
"A Method For Consumers To Alter Shopping Behavior, For The Purpose Of Undermining The Market-Strength Of Philosophically Objectionable Corporations".