The countries that succeeded most in the Industrial age were those where it was easy to set up industry. The countries that succeeded most in the agricultural age were those where it was easy to farm. The tribes that succeeded most in the bronze age were those where it was easy to smelt/trade bronze. And so forth.
Information is the most important commodity now. Artificial barriers to its exchange will therefore be crippling.
And the environment still suffers from a lack of appropriate artificial barriers to industrialization, and people still suffer from an inadequate regard for human dignity in some heavily industrialized nations (sweatshops, anyone?) The free market solves most problems. It does not solve all, and so some sort of artificial checks are in fact needed. That does not mean that everything connected with DRM (or whatever) is legitimate. It does mean that lassez faire-ism does not deal well with problems whose consequences do not show up in the short-to-mid term bottom line (e.g., there's no immediate business consequence to loss of privacy).
As we all know, today is the Information Age. For this reason, I believe that information should not be restricted anymore.
The author of the parent comment appears to think the connection between these two statements is obvious. Even if I grant the premise in the first statement (and is it accurate to claim that "the Information Age" is the correct characterization for our current society--enough to derive norms from it?), I do not see that the second conclusion immediately follows from it.
Furthermore, even if both the premise and the conclusion are granted, that still leaves open the question: "What is information?" Am I entitled to anything whatsoever that can be reduced to a bitstream? Privacy advocates would rightly scream at that idea. So in the end I doubt strongly that the parent author's conclusions truly follow from his premises.
I am not proposing a one-to-one correlation. I'm a gamer too, and I don't believe I'm a threat to society. Nor am I saying that all (or even most) video games can have destructive consequences.
The argument I'm proposing is simple: Either nothing we experience affects us (surely nonsense) or the potential for good or bad effect is present in everything we do, and that it is therefore possible that ultra-violent gaming has a negative effect on people.
The difference being rape, murder, and theft all affect another person.
Playing a game doesn't.
Not directly, no. But what you do affects the person you become. It's funny how people endorse that idea when it squares with what they want to believe ("Using Linux will make you a better person" [to pick an outlandish example) but not when it goes against a conclusion they'd like to hold.
But unless we want to believe that all things have only positive effects (and scanning headlines should take care of that belief in a hurry), then it is possible that video gaming could create bad habits of thought.
Please note that I'm not saying they do, and I'm aware of the dueling studies on the point. I'm saying that there's a possibility and even reason to suspect some such influence, even if its extent is way over-hyped.
I suppose it's not worth pointing out that the preposition "ad" takes the accusative, whereas publicae is either genitive or dative (assuming it's singular). Nah, probably not.
I asked thier tech support several times (after having to reinstal one of thier products and reactivating it because of an upgrade or it just stoped working)
Yup. I quit using Norton after it randomly deactivated itself repeatedly and then told my activation count was used up and I'd have to talk to tech support--and this was after I installed the patch that was supposed to fix it. AVG free all the way now, and cross off one hitherto faithful and satisfied customer.
The problem is that one person's skew is another person's correction of biased languaged and presentation. Call me post-modern, but the idea of objective reporting (outside of strictly quantitative areas) makes no sense for any lacking divine omniscience and understanding. The most I think we can reasonably hope is that all parties believe their viewpoint has been presented fairly.
The very fact that the above post got modded +5 Insightful provides strong evidence that it's anything but. If you've read./ for more than a few days, you know the power of groupthink: Microsoft is Evil, etc. etc. And yet, in an environment where the group has far more power to enforce group think (peer review, tenure applications) . . . I'm supposed to believe it's impossible? And I'm supposed to believe the standard line that liberals are better educated than the unwashed conservative masses? And that's insightful?
Newsflash #1: One cardinal speaking--even one in charge of a pontifical congregation--does not equate to an official statement from the Holy See.
Newsflash #2: Intelligent Design and the "fundamentalist" Creation theory are not the same. If you want to view them as equally unscientific, that's your choice--but they are not saying the same thing.
Newsflash #3: What the cardinal said was a statement against a literalist interpretation of Genesis. Only on Slashdot, major US media outlets, and (apparently) Italian and Australian papers with too much time on their hands, does saying "Genesis is not incompatible with evolution" equate to "Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design".
I'm probably going to get karma-ed into oblivion for this. So be it.
Yes. St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this in ST II-II.66.7. "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need." Although this would not be a "secret" taking (it's in the headlines!), the principle still replies. IF (and I stress the "if" because I have no idea what the price tag was) Roche is truly being unreasonable in their demands, and IF (ditto) the need to act now is truly extreme, then the Taiwanese government does have the right to act in violation of the patent.
Internet Explorer has slipped below 90% usage share for the first time.
Since it started out with a market share of 0%, this obviously cannot be the case (nor does the original article say that it is). This might be the first time it's slipped below 90% since Netscape went more-or-less under.
I notice a false dichotomy at play in far, far too many of these comments. The assumption would seem to be either that one accepts evolutionary theory or one is a caricatured raving fundamentalist who thinks that every word of the Bible is meant to be read as a 19th Century work of science. That is not the case, as a person who wishes to investigate the question for himself may easily ascertain (or, for a simpler example: I myself hold to neither position). Whether or not a person agrees with their conclusions about evolutionary theory, many of the leading figures in the Intelligent Design movement do not hold to flatly literal readings of the creation narratives.
Famous last words, I know, but Wikipedia really does need the help. Even ignoring any./-ing, their response time is degrading. If Google wants to help, more power to them, says I.
I can understand the need for compression. But why not zip compress it? That's available on both platforms, and it would remove what seems to me like a needless barrier. Your choice, though.
If the idea is to get wide distribution . . . why is the bittorrent version BZ2 encrypted? Like your average Windows user is going to have the tools to use it, or care enough to hunt one down if he doesn't.
I've used macros more in spreadsheets than in text documents, for automating those pain-in-the-rear repetitive tasks, or for setting a sheet up so that a person without great computer skills can get something done without understanding how the spreadsheet works.
Macros in text files are useful for those automation functions that Bill's marketing minions didn't need but that make your life easier (such as including the full path name of the file in the footer).
I'm no fan of MS (I'm browsing from FireFox within Linux), but he gives short shrift to the problem of macro/VBA conversion. The fact of the matter is that the documentation on the OO API absolutely stinks, and any business with a substantial investment in its current automation would have to think not once, not twice, but long and hard about the costs of conversion.
Slashdot Mirror
Information is the most important commodity now. Artificial barriers to its exchange will therefore be crippling.
And the environment still suffers from a lack of appropriate artificial barriers to industrialization, and people still suffer from an inadequate regard for human dignity in some heavily industrialized nations (sweatshops, anyone?) The free market solves most problems. It does not solve all, and so some sort of artificial checks are in fact needed. That does not mean that everything connected with DRM (or whatever) is legitimate. It does mean that lassez faire-ism does not deal well with problems whose consequences do not show up in the short-to-mid term bottom line (e.g., there's no immediate business consequence to loss of privacy).
The author of the parent comment appears to think the connection between these two statements is obvious. Even if I grant the premise in the first statement (and is it accurate to claim that "the Information Age" is the correct characterization for our current society--enough to derive norms from it?), I do not see that the second conclusion immediately follows from it.
Furthermore, even if both the premise and the conclusion are granted, that still leaves open the question: "What is information?" Am I entitled to anything whatsoever that can be reduced to a bitstream? Privacy advocates would rightly scream at that idea. So in the end I doubt strongly that the parent author's conclusions truly follow from his premises.
The argument I'm proposing is simple: Either nothing we experience affects us (surely nonsense) or the potential for good or bad effect is present in everything we do, and that it is therefore possible that ultra-violent gaming has a negative effect on people.
I'm not dealing with "thoughtcrimes". Thoughts lead to actions.
Playing a game doesn't.
Not directly, no. But what you do affects the person you become. It's funny how people endorse that idea when it squares with what they want to believe ("Using Linux will make you a better person" [to pick an outlandish example) but not when it goes against a conclusion they'd like to hold. But unless we want to believe that all things have only positive effects (and scanning headlines should take care of that belief in a hurry), then it is possible that video gaming could create bad habits of thought.
Please note that I'm not saying they do, and I'm aware of the dueling studies on the point. I'm saying that there's a possibility and even reason to suspect some such influence, even if its extent is way over-hyped.
I suppose it's not worth pointing out that the preposition "ad" takes the accusative, whereas publicae is either genitive or dative (assuming it's singular). Nah, probably not.
Yup. I quit using Norton after it randomly deactivated itself repeatedly and then told my activation count was used up and I'd have to talk to tech support--and this was after I installed the patch that was supposed to fix it. AVG free all the way now, and cross off one hitherto faithful and satisfied customer.
The problem is that one person's skew is another person's correction of biased languaged and presentation. Call me post-modern, but the idea of objective reporting (outside of strictly quantitative areas) makes no sense for any lacking divine omniscience and understanding. The most I think we can reasonably hope is that all parties believe their viewpoint has been presented fairly.
The very fact that the above post got modded +5 Insightful provides strong evidence that it's anything but. If you've read ./ for more than a few days, you know the power of groupthink: Microsoft is Evil, etc. etc. And yet, in an environment where the group has far more power to enforce group think (peer review, tenure applications) . . . I'm supposed to believe it's impossible? And I'm supposed to believe the standard line that liberals are better educated than the unwashed conservative masses? And that's insightful?
Google Earth?
FWIW, I enjoyed the PC version of it, too.
Newsflash #1: One cardinal speaking--even one in charge of a pontifical congregation--does not equate to an official statement from the Holy See. Newsflash #2: Intelligent Design and the "fundamentalist" Creation theory are not the same. If you want to view them as equally unscientific, that's your choice--but they are not saying the same thing. Newsflash #3: What the cardinal said was a statement against a literalist interpretation of Genesis. Only on Slashdot, major US media outlets, and (apparently) Italian and Australian papers with too much time on their hands, does saying "Genesis is not incompatible with evolution" equate to "Vatican Rejects Intelligent Design". I'm probably going to get karma-ed into oblivion for this. So be it.
Yes. St. Thomas Aquinas addresses this in ST II-II.66.7. "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need." Although this would not be a "secret" taking (it's in the headlines!), the principle still replies. IF (and I stress the "if" because I have no idea what the price tag was) Roche is truly being unreasonable in their demands, and IF (ditto) the need to act now is truly extreme, then the Taiwanese government does have the right to act in violation of the patent.
Since it started out with a market share of 0%, this obviously cannot be the case (nor does the original article say that it is). This might be the first time it's slipped below 90% since Netscape went more-or-less under.
I notice a false dichotomy at play in far, far too many of these comments. The assumption would seem to be either that one accepts evolutionary theory or one is a caricatured raving fundamentalist who thinks that every word of the Bible is meant to be read as a 19th Century work of science. That is not the case, as a person who wishes to investigate the question for himself may easily ascertain (or, for a simpler example: I myself hold to neither position). Whether or not a person agrees with their conclusions about evolutionary theory, many of the leading figures in the Intelligent Design movement do not hold to flatly literal readings of the creation narratives.
According to Thomistic philosophy, being and good are equivalent. Therefore, not-being is evil. Therefore Microsoft is attempting to patent evil.
That depends on your prescription. I have a harder time without mine on. Maybe it's a nearsighted/farsighted thing?
Famous last words, I know, but Wikipedia really does need the help. Even ignoring any ./-ing, their response time is degrading. If Google wants to help, more power to them, says I.
I can understand the need for compression. But why not zip compress it? That's available on both platforms, and it would remove what seems to me like a needless barrier. Your choice, though.
If the idea is to get wide distribution . . . why is the bittorrent version BZ2 encrypted? Like your average Windows user is going to have the tools to use it, or care enough to hunt one down if he doesn't.
Stop sending catalogs and sale invitations.
Leech neurons? Are you sure this wasn't an April Fools joke? (I was tempted to say, "Mmmmmmmm . . . leech neurons," but that's too obvious a joke.)
I've used macros more in spreadsheets than in text documents, for automating those pain-in-the-rear repetitive tasks, or for setting a sheet up so that a person without great computer skills can get something done without understanding how the spreadsheet works.
Macros in text files are useful for those automation functions that Bill's marketing minions didn't need but that make your life easier (such as including the full path name of the file in the footer).
I'm no fan of MS (I'm browsing from FireFox within Linux), but he gives short shrift to the problem of macro/VBA conversion. The fact of the matter is that the documentation on the OO API absolutely stinks, and any business with a substantial investment in its current automation would have to think not once, not twice, but long and hard about the costs of conversion.