My previous car, a Pontiac Pheonix with about 4 inches of ground clearance, would get stuck in the snow regularly in mild snowstorms because it kept getting the underbody resting up on top of the snow without enough weight left on the wheels to have any traction. This lead to many towing bills. My current car, a Jeep Cherokee, can drive through up to 8 inches deep of snow (more, probably, but I don't want to push it too much), and I haven't gotten it stuck once. Call that image or vanity if you will, but I call it the difference between being stuck at home and being able to go to work.
Lots. There's mountains there. And while we are on the subject of stupid stereotypes of America, only the southern half of California is a desert. Get far enough away from Los Angeles (which is all most people see of California, via Hollywood's media influence) and the rest of the state extends all the way north to Oregon, you know.
Someone buying an SUV wants, among other things, ground clearance. That was my main reason for getting a jeep. When it snows, I don't want to be stuck at home relying on the local government to plow the roads so the citizenry can get out. I don't need to be dependant on that as much (although if the snow is really deep it's still a problem in any vehicle) with a vehicle that has good ground clearance. Anyone using an SUV off the main roads (which isn't me - I got it purely because of snow) might also want that clearance to save the underbody from damage on uneven surfaces.
If you force them to drop the bumper down to the level of other cars then that destroys the ground clearance. That's why manufacturers are reluctant to do it.
Sometimes safety is at odds with functionality. I could make just as much of a complaint about 18-wheeler semi-trailers, which also smash through windsheilds and hit people in the head with their height. They've tried putting in those bars that extend down in the back, but those don't really have a large effect in a collision. But I don't complain about this for two reasons: 1 - I realize that the trailers are high off the ground because that is needed for their function of carrying heavy loads - heavy loads require large diameter tires, which is why the trailers are raised so high off the ground. 2 - I realize that in a collision where a small car rear-ends a semi trailer, the driver of the small car is usually the one more at fault, because the trailer takes much longer to decellerate (There's not going to be a case where the trailer slams its brakes suddenly, causing the driver of the car behind to be unable to stop in time, unless said driver isn't paying attention.)
You aren't allowed to link to any site that contains the letter 'a', since the DECSS algorithm contains the letter 'a'. Anyone wishing to obtain special dispensation to allow linking to a site containing the letter 'a' may do so by filling out form MPAAOWNSTHENETNOWLOSERS-1 in triplicate.
To give you an example, I recently saw a person disparaging microsoft windows, only to admit a while later that he had never used a Microsoft product. IMHO that person had taken the key step from being a critic of Microsoft to being a member of the anti-Microsoft cult.
Your example is like saying, "How do you know you won't like jumping off this bridge if you've never tried it?" If you throw a filter in place that allows only those who tolerate MS enough to use their products to be valid critics of MS, you are filtering based on strength of opinion, NOT on what method was used to arrive at the opinion as you claim.
A.EXE file *is* source code - for the language known as "Intel x86 machine code" (linked to a Win32 library). Sure, it's a bitch of a language to understand by just reading it, but it still IS a langauge. So exactly what definition are they using of "source code" when they say you can't post DeCSS source code? Did they ever bother getting a legal definition so you can tell, because after all, the algoirithm implemented in Intel x86 machine source code is distributed all over the place in DvD software. My PC from IBM came with a tool that had DeCSS in x86 machine code inside. Most PC's sold today do. Is the definition that the code must be in it's executable form to not be "source"? Then what about Perl, or python, or any other such interpeted language where the human readable source code IS the executable form?
I've seen rational, intelligent grown up people act like children covering their ears when it comes to Microsoft related issues. And somehow they feel proud of their "independent" stance, when all they've done is join a different, perhaps smaller, cult and follow equally blindly.
And then your.sig said:
GNU is a free (beer) system with a not-free (speech) viral license. Go figure!
So you've decided do join a cult to - the cult of those with the need to make up the bullshit "not-free" accusations against the GPL! Go figure. So do you like being in a cult? No? Go figure. Okay, do you think this doesn't make you a cultist? Really? Do you think your reasons are well thought out and it's not fair for someone to dismiss them as mere cultism just because they don't happen to agree? Really? GOOD! Then learn to stop doing it to those you don't agree with.
Yeah, people who post deliberate lies in public tend to get refuters posting replies. Gee. Imagine that. The myth of the troll culture is that they think this says something bad about the refuters.
That does not immeadiately brand them as bad company. They had to do something very right to be where they are.
Ahh. So you believe in that myth. Okay, you are a conservative after all.
'your God' means that thing that you worshiped, and is often only used when confronting someone with hypocricy in their own religion.
[...]
The third usage, 'your god' or 'that thing you worship' is not used in a common discussion because it's rude.
No. People use it a lot simply to differentiate from "my god". As in, "I believe in a god like so, but you believe in a god like so - that's your god, this is mine." That does not necessarily contain an implication of hypocricy. As an atheist, everyone's god is a "your god" to me. That doesn't mean I'm calling all theists hypocrites. Not at all. Accusations of hypocracy are an order of magnitude more rude than mere accusations of being mistaken. I can think someone is perfectly honest if I think they really believe what they claim to, regardless of if I agree with that belief.
To say it again: don't make an appeal to God, but don't do it becuase it's beyond the scope of defined terms for most discussions, not because there's any real doubt that the Supreme Being isn't the same one that someone else is thinking of.
To me that sounds like saying, "The answer is NOT two plus two. It's four", as if that was somehow something different. The fact that the term is not defined in most discussions is EQUAL TO the fact that someone else might not be thinking of the same thing you are when they use the word.
20 years ago because 95% of PCs weren't Microsoft software.
Well, they were, but it was just the BASIC interpeter. MS was writing BASICs for many of the small home computers of the day, and at the time the BASIC prompt pretty much WAS the main OS interface.
But people didn't hate them then because, really, Microsoft does know how a heck of a lot about BASIC and they managed to make some really good interpeters with very limited resources. The problem came when they shifted over into OS'es and ended up writing OS'es that were just as primitive an OS as BASIC is a language.
Jesus didn't change a thing about the world. Those who came later and grew a religion in his name did. And that's true regardless of whether you believe Jesus existed for real. Either way, the world-sweeping changes were done by others that came in the centuries that followed. I'd argue that the Roman Leader who chose to adopt Christianty to the empire, who is a person who WAS in political power, and not one of these quiet unassuming thinkers of which you speak, had a much greater impact on the world.
I would argue that some geek who activiely works to destroy geekdom in the userbase is a hypocrite. So a geek who works for Microsoft is "betraying his roots" so to speak.
And spammers? They spam because of the globalization of capital, regardless of the economic organization of their country of origin.
No - they spam because the economy is structured such that it doesn't make the one who CAUSES an e-mail to be the one that pays for it. It's the one that receives it that pays the cost (in disk space, time, etc). That's why pointless spam is more commonplace than physical paper junk mail. Physical paper junk mail costs the SENDER, so he's not going to send it out to millions of houses hoping to get one or two takers. With SPAM, such a low rate of return is worth it because the SPAMMER isn't incurring any price at all for what he's costing the infrastructure.
Here, here. I am one who distrusts BOTH monopoly companies AND monopoly governments. I'd side with the Libertarians if it wasn't for the blind eye they turn toward business. If they viewed it with the same scrutiny they view the government, they'd see the same sorts of problems exist in both.
The real problem is that there's a certain threshold a large organization can reach where beyond that threshold they are no longer beholden to the people who put them there, because the organization can use their power to keep new competitors down. That is the case regardless of whether the organization is a government or a company. New companies in the OS market, for example, have a hard time getting a foothold against Microsoft for exactly the same reason third parties have a hard time getting a foothold in the government agaisnt Dems and Repubs. The infrastructure of the entire industry (or government) is built on the implicit assumption that the established companies^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hparties are the only ones that matter to "sane" people and anyone who would consider anything else must be a fringe lunatic it's not worth paying attention to.
About your.sig: You cannot assume from a voluntary poll most people will ignore, that "47% of slashdot loves windows". First of all, most slashdot readers ignore the polls, and secondly as usual the poll question made it impossible to give the truthful answer for many people. In this case it didn't have any options for dual-booters and I bet dual-booting is a very common config among slashdotters. How many of those answering "Windows" use ONLY windows on their machine 100% of the time? The poll doesn't say.
You fit my image of a geek, but NOT my image of a conservative. Now, granted the definition of "conservative" is always relative to the history of the country in question (becuase it means "wants things to remain traditional"), but here in the USA it means assuming companies have more rights than individuals (which means SUPPORTING the RIAA's attempts to ruin all P2P networks regardless of content). The only exception being when companies are in conflict with religion - there conservatives might side with religion, depending on the issue.
Your words make you sound like a moderate to me, not a conservative.
Geeks of today seem to love the political scene and enjoy engaging in the fray.
Hardly. Geeks generally don't like the political scene but feel compelled to participate because of what the "political scene" is doing to them. If the political scene remained as unaware of computer technology as it was 20 years ago, geeks would still be a-political. But today every common person knows the internet exists, knows how to use it, knows what a "URL" is, and so on, even if they don't have a clue how any of it actually works. That paves the way for ignorant fools in congress to start wanting to legislate computers without knowing anything about them beyond what the paid lobbyists tell them.
The trend of geeks to get political is purely a defensive move, to try to save the geekdom that used to not even register on the government's radar screen.
This guy answered his rhetorical question right away in his second paragraph and didn't realize it.
Let me repeat the first two paragraphs to illustrate my point:
Meet a man with a pony-tail, a pasty complexion, and a faded black t-shirt emblazoned with a logo involving the word *NIX, and you will normally be able to guess his techno-politics pretty easily. For a start, he's going to resent attempts to record his emails, hate attempts to stop him swapping MP3s, and despise Microsoft's attempts to do anything at all. He's going to kick up a fuss if his ISP blocks any ports, and is likely to advocate software written under Open Source licences. Why should it be so easy to guess his mind? Well, because he's a geek, and these are things geeks believe.
But why so? In the 1980s geeks and hackers were tied together by a love of machine and code, with fierce and regular rifts developing between those who believed in the PC or the minicomputer, the keyboard or the mouse, Intel or Motorola. This frequent infighting didn't change the most important thing. We were geeks, in it together until the monitors burned scanlines into our retinas.
Now, he's claiming that in the past geeks were tied by love of machine and code not they aren't anymore because they started having recognizable similar stances on electronic rights, and similar stances on whether or not Microsoft is a good choice.
HELLOOOOO!!! Mcfly! - Anybody home!?!?!
If you are a geek because you derive fun from technical geeky activities then OF COURSE you are going to oppose laws that make the fun technical geek activities illegal, and oppose companies that try to move the fun technical geeky activities out of the hands of the consumer. DUHH. I can't believe this guy is under the impression that this represents some kind of shift in thinking. It's just the logical continuation of the same mindset.
(So you're right, just not for the reason you said.;) )
I said it was a bad idea to use the term universally because it has conflicting definitions. You respond with an example of exactly what I'm talking about when you list three different definitions. Then you go on to say I was right for some "different reason" than the one I gave, even though everything you said up until that point backed up exactly what I said. I'm confused.
Japan isn't even close to being filled to capacity.
Yes it is. 335.5 people per square kilometer is over capacity. But it makes up for it by the fact that much of the REST of the world is under capacity, which was my whole point. The reason 335.5 people per square mile can live in Japan is because much of their food production (including fishing) occurs elsewhere, outside the country's political boundry.
Slashdot Mirror
In places with real winter weather, you don't need to go "off road" to find ground clearance useful. You just have to wait until it snows.
My previous car, a Pontiac Pheonix with about 4 inches of ground clearance, would get stuck in the snow regularly in mild snowstorms because it kept getting the underbody resting up on top of the snow without enough weight left on the wheels to have any traction. This lead to many towing bills. My current car, a Jeep Cherokee, can drive through up to 8 inches deep of snow (more, probably, but I don't want to push it too much), and I haven't gotten it stuck once. Call that image or vanity if you will, but I call it the difference between being stuck at home and being able to go to work.
Lots. There's mountains there. And while we are on the subject of stupid stereotypes of America, only the southern half of California is a desert. Get far enough away from Los Angeles (which is all most people see of California, via Hollywood's media influence) and the rest of the state extends all the way north to Oregon, you know.
Someone buying an SUV wants, among other things, ground clearance. That was my main reason for getting a jeep. When it snows, I don't want to be stuck at home relying on the local government to plow the roads so the citizenry can get out. I don't need to be dependant on that as much (although if the snow is really deep it's still a problem in any vehicle) with a vehicle that has good ground clearance. Anyone using an SUV off the main roads (which isn't me - I got it purely because of snow) might also want that clearance to save the underbody from damage on uneven surfaces.
If you force them to drop the bumper down to the level of other cars then that destroys the ground clearance. That's why manufacturers are reluctant to do it.
Sometimes safety is at odds with functionality. I could make just as much of a complaint about 18-wheeler semi-trailers, which also smash through windsheilds and hit people in the head with their height. They've tried putting in those bars that extend down in the back, but those don't really have a large effect in a collision. But I don't complain about this for two reasons: 1 - I realize that the trailers are high off the ground because that is needed for their function of carrying heavy loads - heavy loads require large diameter tires, which is why the trailers are raised so high off the ground. 2 - I realize that in a collision where a small car rear-ends a semi trailer, the driver of the small car is usually the one more at fault, because the trailer takes much longer to decellerate (There's not going to be a case where the trailer slams its brakes suddenly, causing the driver of the car behind to be unable to stop in time, unless said driver isn't paying attention.)
You aren't allowed to link to any site that contains the letter 'a', since the DECSS algorithm contains the letter 'a'. Anyone wishing to obtain special dispensation to allow linking to a site containing the letter 'a' may do so by filling out form MPAAOWNSTHENETNOWLOSERS-1 in triplicate.
Your example is like saying, "How do you know you won't like jumping off this bridge if you've never tried it?" If you throw a filter in place that allows only those who tolerate MS enough to use their products to be valid critics of MS, you are filtering based on strength of opinion, NOT on what method was used to arrive at the opinion as you claim.
A .EXE file *is* source code - for the language known as "Intel x86 machine code" (linked to a Win32 library). Sure, it's a bitch of a language to understand by just reading it, but it still IS a langauge. So exactly what definition are they using of "source code" when they say you can't post DeCSS source code? Did they ever bother getting a legal definition so you can tell, because after all, the algoirithm implemented in Intel x86 machine source code is distributed all over the place in DvD software. My PC from IBM came with a tool that had DeCSS in x86 machine code inside. Most PC's sold today do. Is the definition that the code must be in it's executable form to not be "source"? Then what about Perl, or python, or any other such interpeted language where the human readable source code IS the executable form?
What the hell are these "Graf"s you are talking about?
Yeah, people who post deliberate lies in public tend to get refuters posting replies. Gee. Imagine that. The myth of the troll culture is that they think this says something bad about the refuters.
That does not immeadiately brand them as bad company. They had to do something very right to be where they are. Ahh. So you believe in that myth. Okay, you are a conservative after all.
Well, they were, but it was just the BASIC interpeter. MS was writing BASICs for many of the small home computers of the day, and at the time the BASIC prompt pretty much WAS the main OS interface. But people didn't hate them then because, really, Microsoft does know how a heck of a lot about BASIC and they managed to make some really good interpeters with very limited resources. The problem came when they shifted over into OS'es and ended up writing OS'es that were just as primitive an OS as BASIC is a language.
Plato, Diogenes, Jesus, Gutenberg...
Jesus didn't change a thing about the world. Those who came later and grew a religion in his name did. And that's true regardless of whether you believe Jesus existed for real. Either way, the world-sweeping changes were done by others that came in the centuries that followed. I'd argue that the Roman Leader who chose to adopt Christianty to the empire, who is a person who WAS in political power, and not one of these quiet unassuming thinkers of which you speak, had a much greater impact on the world.
I would argue that some geek who activiely works to destroy geekdom in the userbase is a hypocrite. So a geek who works for Microsoft is "betraying his roots" so to speak.
No - they spam because the economy is structured such that it doesn't make the one who CAUSES an e-mail to be the one that pays for it. It's the one that receives it that pays the cost (in disk space, time, etc). That's why pointless spam is more commonplace than physical paper junk mail. Physical paper junk mail costs the SENDER, so he's not going to send it out to millions of houses hoping to get one or two takers. With SPAM, such a low rate of return is worth it because the SPAMMER isn't incurring any price at all for what he's costing the infrastructure.
Ironic that some idiot thinks progress and dislike of Microsoft are contradictory? Yeah, I find that pretty ironic too.
The real problem is that there's a certain threshold a large organization can reach where beyond that threshold they are no longer beholden to the people who put them there, because the organization can use their power to keep new competitors down. That is the case regardless of whether the organization is a government or a company. New companies in the OS market, for example, have a hard time getting a foothold against Microsoft for exactly the same reason third parties have a hard time getting a foothold in the government agaisnt Dems and Repubs. The infrastructure of the entire industry (or government) is built on the implicit assumption that the established companies^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hparties are the only ones that matter to "sane" people and anyone who would consider anything else must be a fringe lunatic it's not worth paying attention to.
You seem to have access to a lot of imformation about slashdotters and what makes them tick. Where did you get your powers of ESP?
About your .sig: You cannot assume from a voluntary poll most people will ignore, that "47% of slashdot loves windows". First of all, most slashdot readers ignore the polls, and secondly as usual the poll question made it impossible to give the truthful answer for many people. In this case it didn't have any options for dual-booters and I bet dual-booting is a very common config among slashdotters. How many of those answering "Windows" use ONLY windows on their machine 100% of the time? The poll doesn't say.
Your words make you sound like a moderate to me, not a conservative.
Hardly. Geeks generally don't like the political scene but feel compelled to participate because of what the "political scene" is doing to them. If the political scene remained as unaware of computer technology as it was 20 years ago, geeks would still be a-political. But today every common person knows the internet exists, knows how to use it, knows what a "URL" is, and so on, even if they don't have a clue how any of it actually works. That paves the way for ignorant fools in congress to start wanting to legislate computers without knowing anything about them beyond what the paid lobbyists tell them.
The trend of geeks to get political is purely a defensive move, to try to save the geekdom that used to not even register on the government's radar screen.
HELLOOOOO!!! Mcfly! - Anybody home!?!?!
If you are a geek because you derive fun from technical geeky activities then OF COURSE you are going to oppose laws that make the fun technical geek activities illegal, and oppose companies that try to move the fun technical geeky activities out of the hands of the consumer. DUHH. I can't believe this guy is under the impression that this represents some kind of shift in thinking. It's just the logical continuation of the same mindset.
I said it was a bad idea to use the term universally because it has conflicting definitions. You respond with an example of exactly what I'm talking about when you list three different definitions. Then you go on to say I was right for some "different reason" than the one I gave, even though everything you said up until that point backed up exactly what I said. I'm confused.
Yes it is. 335.5 people per square kilometer is over capacity. But it makes up for it by the fact that much of the REST of the world is under capacity, which was my whole point. The reason 335.5 people per square mile can live in Japan is because much of their food production (including fishing) occurs elsewhere, outside the country's political boundry.