Never mess with groupthink, man. Groupthink still holds to the belief that conservatives believe Sadam Hussein bombed the WTC. You go and confront groupthink with actual facts and you'll get it all grumpy and everything...
It may not be the majority anymore, but it's still almost half of Americans (could that be the *conservative* half?), and considering that George W. Bush himself promoted the idea that Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, it's no wonder the rest of the country considers conservatives a bit... dim.
From all evidence, it seems conservatives are the fucking *worst* at groupthink. "What's that? Evidence that Iraq is *no threat whatsoever*? Evidence that President Bush fucking *lied* to us? Well, support the troops! And, ah, if you think bad of the President, you're a traitor! And a bed-wetter!"
To paraphrase "Get Fuzzy," do you want to be Pot, or Kettle for Hallowe'en?
Which of Cuthbert's rights were violated when he broke the law and was convicted of doing so, again? I missed that part.
I think the point of the GP post was simple: the "law" he broke infringes on basic rights. Just like watching CSS-encrypted DVDs on a Linux box is illegal, certain laws make criminals out of honest citizens.
If I were arrested in Fairbanks, AK, for carrying an ice-cream cone in my pocket, I would hope for some public outrage. Yes, there's a law against it; but that law infringes on my basic right to carry an ice-cream cone in whatever manner I desire.
"Hey! It's also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling!" -- Chief Wiggum
Not that I agree with the GP. I'm still undecided.
If you think I'm being pessimistic, take a trip to the non-tourist areas of India sometime. Then come back and tell me technology will save us. And India already is a utopia compared to some of the places on this planet right now.
You are 110% correct; life is hard for the vast majority of the human population.
Right now, we are in a disruptive era. Things progress quickly, and the good that comes from that progress benefits those closest to the progress. This increase in luxery for those of us fortunate enough to be part of that increase causes an even greater contrast between the haves and the have-nots. That said, the have-nots of today are generally better off that the have-nots of 100 years ago. Kurzweil postulates that the increase in technology will tip us past some "knee of the curve" that will cause us to fall uncontrollably toward utopia; this will have the consequence of pulling the have-nots along with us, even if they still trail us a bit.
The upheaval of today's world is caused partly by the move forward. We have asshats who think they can push their will on parts of the world simply because their technological kung-fu is greater, and their economic need appears greater. But as the weak get stronger, that will hopefully happen less frequently, and less dramatically.
That is the hope, anyway. We'll have to wait and see. I personally don't think human nature will progress at the rate of technology. I think we are all barbaric louts who will fuck over anyone for our own gain, to the point where there are more have-nots, with even less than they have now.
But that's me. I'm a pessimist. I hope I'm wrong. I want a flying car, goddamnit.
There still is one thing i miss: A *reason* why it's better to have an interpreted office suite than one written in plain C++?
Bah. Why use something as sloppy and inefficient as C++? Why not use C? Or, beter yet, pure ASM?
Language efficiency hasn't generally been an issue for a very, very long time (NOTE: blanket statement not valid for some OS development; embedded applications; bubblegum; the countries of Brazil, Spain, and Canada; or the pop-funk musical group Maktub). Otherwise, we wouldn't be using C++ on top of slow-assed libraries like MFC or Qt or GTK+. We'd be using pure C with Xt (for X-Windows) or something *not* MFC (for MS-Windows).
Your other points are valid. What's the point, other than It Can Be Done? Conversely, though, why *shouldn't* it be done? If it's good enough and easy enough and fast enough for some hypothetical Aunt Tilly (for sufficiently large enough sets of aunts), why shouldn't someone try it?
I'm tired of people making fun of products that don't even exist yet. It's short-sighted and shows a lack of imagination. Wait for the fucking product to come out.
*Then* we can cause shame and hurt when we make fun of the specific product.
Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats.
Mass. has made it abundantly clear they are not standardizing on the OpenDocument format; they are mandating open formats. They have stated that only document formats based on published specifications that are not controlled by a single company, nor encumbered by restrictive licensing, will be used.
That means most documents will probably be made available in PDF for the masses, and internal editing will occur with another standard, such as OpenDocument. If Microsoft were to hand over an unencumbered XML file format to a standards body, Mass. could quite possibly standardize on that format instead.
This is just more disinformation. Not that I'm accusing Fox of spreading disinformation, mind you. After all, they are the only Fair and Balanced out there.
Geez, everybody gets this all wrong. We pay the government taxes because they are *protecting* our land for us, something we could not do ourselves. We are paying the *protection* money.
This is how it liberates the 'standard' user from music being stuck on their iPod. Most consumers (and trust me the slashdot community IS NOT most consumers) have no idea how to remove DRM from their iTunes purchases or know how to get the songs on their iPod back off.
That's all well-and-good, but does it accomplish the stated objective of detering massive piracy? I submit it does not. As you imply, the people who *can* circumvent the DRM (and there will always be circumvention) will initiate the on-line propagation, and these "regular" citizens of whom you speak will download and continue to further "piracy."
In that case, they are merely providing another inconvenience for the "average" citizen, while not stopping, or even slowing, the massive "piracy" they are constantly whinging on about. As the average citizen can now download the songs they want (and *only* the songs they want, rather than a whole crappy album for a single good song), what is the benefit to the average citizen? What does it gain us, as society? Anything? Anything at all?
It is disingenuous to claim they are doing this to combat piracy. If anything, they are doing it to regain control of the distribution channel, and in the process to further their control over what a citizen can do with the music they lawfully purchased, essentially circumventing the doctrines of fair use and first-sale, two bugaboos of the music industry.
This is a blatant attempt to shore up the industry's control, and nothing more.
Every few months somebody makes the "discovery" that users can't remember all their various passwords, and that help-desks are swamped changing passwords, usually for the same dozen users that can't remember how to do their own job on the computer, and are always asking for help with some program called "Microsoft," as in, "Oh, I'm using Microsoft, and I need to know how to find out how many departments have gone over budget."
This is the same damned thing that's been going on for almost twenty years. And yes, corporate password policies add to the problem, rather than fixing it. As a superuser, I've been using "God as their password" as my password for years, since I heard that most 1337 h4ck3r6 use "God as their password." I've never been hacked. Or cracked. Or sniffed. Or snuffed. Go figure.
So, this is exactly the same thing they'll find out next year, too.
Stark staring bonkers. I particularly love the part about "all political parties of a certain dignity". You may be naive enough to trust your government to decide who does and doesn't get to be an official party, but I'm sure as hell not. Let me guess, you're Scandanavian, right?
The US government already does that. It's called the Two Party system, in which we get to choose between two equally retarded, equally corrupt bozos with a lot of money and a lot of corporate backing.
The US system is fucked beyond repair. There needs to be *major* changes if we are to see a return to democracy. The two-party system needs to be abolished, and replaced with *something* more sane. There are a lot of alternatives, including some interesting voting schemes that are derived from game theory.
It's time we US citizens salvage the tatters of the US Constitution from the bureaucratic corporate whores that are our politicians these days. We need more than campaign finance reforms; we need *election* reform.
It's time America puts up or shuts up: support democracy, or stop "spreading" it to the rest of the world.
That's the bitter irony of it all. MS is one of the most wildly successful companies of all time. They actually have done some good, a lot more people use PCs thanks to windows, it's hard to deny that. They've been good to shareholders. Why on earth they want to "kill" anyone is beyond me.
They've done very little good. MS-Windows was successful because Microsoft was in the right place at the right time; the success of the PC made MS-Windows successful, not the other way around.
Microsoft has a history of destroying competition. That's why they are top dog at the moment. People talk about the free market as if it is truly free; unfortunately, it isn't. A big company can exert control over smaller companies. As long as they are bigger, and are able to influence the market in which they operate, they do not have to build a better mousetrap; they just have to make sure citizens have little to no knowledge that there *are* other mousetraps.
That is the way Microsoft has typically operated. By various methods they learned from their mentor IBM (FUD, exclusionary market deals, astroturfing, etc), Microsoft has been able to control any other company, including Apple, that could potentially prove to be a threat.
Well, except IBM, with OS/2. IBM fucked that one up themselves.
Why would Microsoft destroy another company? Because they can. Like a medieval lord viciously guarding their turf, they destroy anyone who looks like they may challange their power. Right now, Google is challanging Microsoft's planned dominance of the internet.
I'm not particularly bleeding heart or anything like that, I'm not anti-corporation, but I'm just sick of all this kind of bullshit. Planning to build a monopoly or end your competition is just as bad as being a rober-baron; now some companies will kill themselves and they don't deserve to live but actively trying to cause that in the competition is wrong, I don't want to do business with those companies.
I've been sick of it for years, since Microsoft started dirty-dealing against DR-DOS. That event opened my eyes to the sheer evilness of Microsoft; since then, I've seen that same evil in other companies.
(Many of you will say that a corporation can't be evil. Others will say, "What is 'evil,' anyway? Evil is the willingness to fuck over another person for your own gain. And by that metric, corporations can be evil. If the people that make up the corporation continually demonstrate evil, the corporation itself is evil, and should be dissolved.)
Your kids at school do not control your PC buying decisions and if they did Apple would be the only brand in the USA and there'd be NO Internet as it back then DID NOT fit into Apple's (Job's) worldview.
It didn't fit into Microsoft's worldview, either. At the time, MSN was a tiny little dial-up service. Microsoft fought the internet; it did not create or help it. In fact, Microsoft didn't care about the internet until major magazines like Newsweek and Time started running feature articles on all the academic use of the internet.
Microsoft has not helped computing; it has hindered it. Gates, Ballmer, and Allen just happened to be in the right place at the right time to ride the wave better than anyone else. They did not cause the wave.
At the time, the most internet-connected, easiest to use desktop computer was the NeXT. You know, the computer on which the WWW was invented? The one created by Jobs' company, NeXT? Considering how the NeXT shipped with IP as the default network protocol, I think claiming Jobs was not interested in the internet is a bit wrong. Since he wasn't even at Apple at the time, to equate Apple's disinterest in the internet with Jobs is disingenuous.
As Apple was on the downhill slide *without* Jobs, I think things would have played out pretty much as they did. Jobs would have returned to Apple to save it, and he would have brought the internet with him. So, although most of your assessment is accurate, the idea that Apple would not now have the internet had they been the big boys is faulty.
Sorry to burst your fanciful bubbles, but the Tyranny of the Masses has been the rule and not the exception since before Hannibal crossed the Alps. We can just bring it to you faster and more efficiently than the Roman populace ever could to their wrongly pontificating intellectuals.
This is the most blatantly disregarded truth in the world right now. And so is the corollary: those that are able to manipulate the masses are able to control the world for their own gain.
This so-called user base would never contribute to profit.
This is a bald statement with no supporting argument or evidence. I am a member of that "user base." I purchase music. A lot of music. Thousands of dollars a year in music.
I will *NEVER* purchase a DRMd CD. Never. I will go without the music I would otherwise love to avoid profiting any company that feels the need to fuck me over.
This is not about piracy, it's about herding the sheep into a pen and extracting as much wool as possible. It's about controlling a new and emerging distribution system (the internet). It's about maintaining control over the distribution of music, while convincing everyone it's for their own damned good.
I for one do *not* welcome our new/old music-controlling overlords.
And deprive yourself from the music you like. Come on, you won't even fool my demented mother in law with this.
Believe it or not, there are people in the world with integrity. I am not going to purchase a DRMd CD. Ever. Even if that means I can't buy the new Ben Folds or Son Volt, or any other band I love.
I won't download it, either. I'll play the game by their rules, I guess. Will that cause much worry, one guy with some semblence of ethics not spending money on new music?
Probably not. But I can sleep at night. And, there's a lot of good old music available that I don't have yet. I still have to go back and pick up all the DBs, most Camper Van Beethoven, Posies, Odds, Amps, and a bunch of assorted others. Then there's the indie crowd-- you know, the ones making interesting music?
Fuck the music industry. Fuck them up the ass with their DRM. Glue some broken glass on that DRM. Drive some rusty nails through it. Then let them gang-bang each other with it, and while their bowels bleed, I'll be listening to music I can own, and that fucking rocks.
Sorry. I guess I've been listening to too much Bill Hicks.
I was forgot to read a book for a book report in Alaskan History (8th grade). The assignment was simple: once a week, read a book about Alaska, and write a report.
I forgot to read a book on Alaska that week, so I made a report up about a fictitious book. The result? I got a 'D,' because it "Sounds copied."
Granted, I deserved an 'F.' But for fuck's sake, fail me for the right reasons.
There *are* good teachers. During my school years in Thorne Bay, Alaska, I was allowed to use the computers any time I wanted. A friend of mine and I would get the key from the principal on the weekend, and we'd "hack" (that's 'code,' for you hack-means-break-in-to-the-system weenies) for hours on end. We were *encouraged* to use the computer systems to their utmost, and *trusted* in the school on our own, without supervision.
But those days were different, and Thorne Bay is different from most places on earth. Hell, I graduated with 3 other people; the entire HS had only 23 students (there were 10 sophomores, for some reason).
Back then, besides having to walk to school uphill and underwater both ways, manuals were printed with real technical information. The Apple ][ manuals had the system source code in the back. While learning 6502 assembly, I would study the code in the back of the manuals, looking for interesting system calls.
Now what do students get? Systems that spy on them, that lock them out of the interesting bits, that enforce what the teachers consider "education." There's no such thing as exploration, no such thing as learning on your own.
Damnit, I've got news for them. The only person who can teach you is... you. Teachers aren't there to teach students; they are there to interest students in teaching themselves, in guiding the student along paths of knowledge.
Now schools are taking legal actions against their students? What kind of a fucked-up fascist world *is* this?
Sorry. That's my rant. I could be all kinds of wrong about it, but it's mine.
Communications satellites are about one thing-- pushing as much data through with as little energy as possible. A *lot* of the mass of a satellite is in the power subsystem, and a lot of that won't scale down as well as it scales up.
Then there's the communications issue itself. If you have an array of satellites serving one area, you stand a greater chance of require *two* earth-satellite-earth hops, once through the satellite serving the source, and one for the destination. If you have a single satellite, you can reduce that to one hop (assuming the communications system is capable of point-to-point communications, and is not stuck with point-to-gateway communications).
I don't see pico sats affecting the communications industry right now-- perhaps in a couple of decades, but maybe not. Considering Shin satellite just launched the largest (most massive, with the most bandwidth) satellite ever, there still seems to be life left in the big boys.
Until Lunix gets to Mac-like levels of user friendlyness, one can only assume that the Lunixists actually enjoy the spurious complexity of their toy OS.
Actually, I *do* enjoy the complexity of my Linux operating system. Not for the sake of complexity, but because of the sheer flexibility it gives me.
Oh, sure, I like the MacOS X interface; but it has a few problems as well. It's not the Utopia most Mac fiends claim. (For instance, my wife's laptop keeps complaining it is no longer connected to the internet (through a wireless connection), even when all other wireless devices are working just fine. It's definitely not the network's fault.)
But your post is just plain wrong. Very rarely do I have to "fire up . . . vi" to get an internet connection to work. In almost *every* case, it Just Works.
The only times I have to fire up vi is when I am installing an odd network card and have to muck around with installing proprietary network drivers. And even *that's* getting less frequent these days.
And lastly-- that 35-year-old editor is *still* more powerful than most other editors out there, save Emacs. It's not like vi has been sitting still for 35 years.
There's this belief that if someone owns a standard, it can't be open.
A standard is open if anyone is allowed to use it without owing the standards owner anything at all.
In fact, even the W3C standards are owned by someone, they're copyright the W3C consortium.
The W3C requires nothing in return for use of their standards. They put no restrictions on implementation or use of the standards. This was made clear a couple of years ago when they were debating including some technology that was owned by a particular company. When it became clear that 'net developers in general would not agree to "fair, non-discriminatory" licensing that excluded the GPL, W3C modified the standard.
The opposite of open is not proprietary, it is secret.
No; the opposite of open is use-controlled. If someone puts a price on the *use* of knowledge, they are putting in place an artificial barrier to progress. The intent is blatantly to lock out certain groups; otherwise, what is the point of the barrier in the first place?
An open standard is available for anyone to implement, with or without approval of the copyright owner of the specification. "Open" means "unencumbered," not "available for people to read, but not implement."
The Flash specification is not secret, if it was there wouldn't be Open Source Flash authoring tools.
Unfortunately, just like the SMB "standard," the Flash(tm) specification cannot be used to implement an open viewer*. Flash(tm) must be reverse-engineered, because of the afore-mentioned artificial barriers that keep Flash(tm) from being an open standard.
* Specifically, the license page states that "This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback."
There are many growth issues that need solved before we can start augmenting kids. Hardware as we know it will have to change to grow with the child; otherwise, every few years (every few months in the first couple of years) the kid would require a refit. Not a good idea when talking about the brain.
We need to get rid of the wires altogether. Something like bluetooth might work (NOT the insecure bluetooth, but something *like* bluetooth). Put several nanos in the brain that will grow out with the expanding cranium. The kid would still need an arm or leg refit every few years (in the case of a lost limb), but the controlling device could remain in place.
Hm. Lots of tech possibilities here, fun things to explore.
Me, I hope to see a world in which the morality issues of augmentation amount to, "Damned Luddites won't augment their kids. Don't they know what's good for them?" Personally, I want to be augmented to the point were I am wrapped up in photosynthetic material to feed me, with photoreceptors around the perimeter so I can see around me in every direction without moving my head, and with organic plasma propulsion so I can move around in space, without the need for spacesuit (I *am* the spacesuit) or spacecraft.
Give me solar sails, the ability to slow my mind down a billionfold, and drop me off at the nearest La Grange point.
Oh, and I also want a pony augmented to be a liger.
Although a study like this does nothing productive, I would assume that on average women are not as intelligent (ie, score higher on IQ tests) than men.
If we were all as intelligent as we think, we *could* make productive use of the results (assuming the test itself was unbiased and accurate).
For instance, we could ask, "Why are women, on average, slightly less able to solve logic puzzles than men?" (Assuming logic puzzles were a core part of the test-- used here as an example only.)
The answer might very well be, "Because we encourage women to become hair dressers and nurses, and we encourage men to become mechanics and doctors. Of course, we also encourage men to become CEOs and President of the US, so that evens things out substantially."
Once we've discovered the root cause (societal influence, Barbie, genetics, whatever), we might be able to do something about it. Then we can work together to eradicate the societal influences, raise our collective IQ a couple of points, invent FTL travel, cure all diseases, fix the inequities in the world, get rid of Celine Dion, and make our lives generally better.
That is, if we weren't too fucked up to take advantage of honest self-evaluations (assuming this is an honest self-evaluation).
Why does EVERYTHING have to deteriorate into how bad US culture is? Don't you realize that VIRTUALLY EVERY REALITY SHOW ON TELEVISION STARTED IN THE UK? Get a clue.
Dude, I made no mention of the UK. Nor do I care how bad the UK culture is, or isn't. I care about the culture in which I participate. Just because we import a lot of our tasty badness does not mean our culture isn't bad.
Once we fix our own culture (those of us here in the states), we can worry about other cultures. I don't care that there are states more fascist states than the US; I worry about the country that affects *me*, because I'm a big fat selfish bastard.
MS-Windows gets in the way by trying to be too damned helpful. Take the menus. Menu bloat (caused by feature bloat) in MS-Office caused MS to "hide" menu items that haven't been used recently. This causes the menu to change as you use different features; when forced to use MS-Office, I often have to hunt for the right menu item, and it's a pain in the ass, especially as the menus change.
Then, there's the whole "arrange start menu by vendor" paradigm, which is just fucked up to start with. I want my menus to be organized by type, rather like Gnome, KDE, and most other desktops. The problem isn't that I can't organize it (I can, and do); it's the thinking that led to that design in the first place gets in my way.
The thinking? Put businesses before the users.
This thinking makes itself apperant throughout the MS-Windows design, from the start menu organisation down to the menu layout and the little mini-dock on the (by default) right-hand side of the task bar.
System management is also a pain, with MS-Windows constantly auto-detecting new devices, whether you want it to or not, and whether it's detecting the correct device or not.
MS-Windows assumes it knows better than you about your own computer, and that provides a very unpleasant experience for many people. I don't like to be condescended to, by man *or* machine. Especially machine.
Yes, I know a lot of those complaints can be "fixed" by jumping through a lot of registry hoops, but the underlying philosophy is unfixable, because it is a problem with Microsoft, not just MS-Windows.
There are tons of other misfeatures, as well: file type is still determined by an arbitrary three-letter name suffix. MS-Windows and most Microsoft products play with other systems and documents only sullenly, if at all. Basically, Microsoft is out to *beat* everyone else, not *work* with everyone else, and it shows.
Of course, I don't use MS-Windows or any MS-Window-based product unless absolutely necessary, so my view might be biased. I just find the entire system painful to use in a fingernail-on-the-chalkboard way.
Anyway, that's all just a rant. Some people find MS-Windows a pleasure to use. Some people get off on facial defecation. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
I started in about 2000 with hidden frames, Javascript, and DOM. I got the idea from someone else on the web; I thought it was brilliant at the time. I was able to auto-update forms without clearing the form, etc. All the stuff that AJAX is doing now.
I think the point was, "niggardly" is not a bad word. It means being a cheapskate, like Ebeneezer Scrooge. People who take offense at it are ignorant and thin-skinned.
And we shouldn't avoid doing things that are perfectly innocent just because it might offend someone. Yes, we might be polite and take our hat off; but if we don't, folks shouldn't get upset.
Slashdot Mirror
If by "balanced" you mean the report both the conservative *and* the republican agenda, you are correct.
Never mess with groupthink, man. Groupthink still holds to the belief that conservatives believe Sadam Hussein bombed the WTC. You go and confront groupthink with actual facts and you'll get it all grumpy and everything...
Facts are funny things.
It may not be the majority anymore, but it's still almost half of Americans (could that be the *conservative* half?), and considering that George W. Bush himself promoted the idea that Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks, it's no wonder the rest of the country considers conservatives a bit... dim.
From all evidence, it seems conservatives are the fucking *worst* at groupthink. "What's that? Evidence that Iraq is *no threat whatsoever*? Evidence that President Bush fucking *lied* to us? Well, support the troops! And, ah, if you think bad of the President, you're a traitor! And a bed-wetter!"
To paraphrase "Get Fuzzy," do you want to be Pot, or Kettle for Hallowe'en?
Which of Cuthbert's rights were violated when he broke the law and was convicted of doing so, again? I missed that part.
I think the point of the GP post was simple: the "law" he broke infringes on basic rights. Just like watching CSS-encrypted DVDs on a Linux box is illegal, certain laws make criminals out of honest citizens.
If I were arrested in Fairbanks, AK, for carrying an ice-cream cone in my pocket, I would hope for some public outrage. Yes, there's a law against it; but that law infringes on my basic right to carry an ice-cream cone in whatever manner I desire.
"Hey! It's also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling!" -- Chief Wiggum
Not that I agree with the GP. I'm still undecided.
If you think I'm being pessimistic, take a trip to the non-tourist areas of India sometime. Then come back and tell me technology will save us. And India already is a utopia compared to some of the places on this planet right now.
You are 110% correct; life is hard for the vast majority of the human population.
Right now, we are in a disruptive era. Things progress quickly, and the good that comes from that progress benefits those closest to the progress. This increase in luxery for those of us fortunate enough to be part of that increase causes an even greater contrast between the haves and the have-nots. That said, the have-nots of today are generally better off that the have-nots of 100 years ago. Kurzweil postulates that the increase in technology will tip us past some "knee of the curve" that will cause us to fall uncontrollably toward utopia; this will have the consequence of pulling the have-nots along with us, even if they still trail us a bit.
The upheaval of today's world is caused partly by the move forward. We have asshats who think they can push their will on parts of the world simply because their technological kung-fu is greater, and their economic need appears greater. But as the weak get stronger, that will hopefully happen less frequently, and less dramatically.
That is the hope, anyway. We'll have to wait and see. I personally don't think human nature will progress at the rate of technology. I think we are all barbaric louts who will fuck over anyone for our own gain, to the point where there are more have-nots, with even less than they have now.
But that's me. I'm a pessimist. I hope I'm wrong. I want a flying car, goddamnit.
There still is one thing i miss: A *reason* why it's better to have an interpreted office suite than one written in plain C++?
Bah. Why use something as sloppy and inefficient as C++? Why not use C? Or, beter yet, pure ASM?
Language efficiency hasn't generally been an issue for a very, very long time (NOTE: blanket statement not valid for some OS development; embedded applications; bubblegum; the countries of Brazil, Spain, and Canada; or the pop-funk musical group Maktub). Otherwise, we wouldn't be using C++ on top of slow-assed libraries like MFC or Qt or GTK+. We'd be using pure C with Xt (for X-Windows) or something *not* MFC (for MS-Windows).
Your other points are valid. What's the point, other than It Can Be Done? Conversely, though, why *shouldn't* it be done? If it's good enough and easy enough and fast enough for some hypothetical Aunt Tilly (for sufficiently large enough sets of aunts), why shouldn't someone try it?
I'm tired of people making fun of products that don't even exist yet. It's short-sighted and shows a lack of imagination. Wait for the fucking product to come out.
*Then* we can cause shame and hurt when we make fun of the specific product.
Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats.
Mass. has made it abundantly clear they are not standardizing on the OpenDocument format; they are mandating open formats. They have stated that only document formats based on published specifications that are not controlled by a single company, nor encumbered by restrictive licensing, will be used.
That means most documents will probably be made available in PDF for the masses, and internal editing will occur with another standard, such as OpenDocument. If Microsoft were to hand over an unencumbered XML file format to a standards body, Mass. could quite possibly standardize on that format instead.
This is just more disinformation. Not that I'm accusing Fox of spreading disinformation, mind you. After all, they are the only Fair and Balanced out there.
Geez, everybody gets this all wrong. We pay the government taxes because they are *protecting* our land for us, something we could not do ourselves. We are paying the *protection* money.
I wish people would get this straight.
This is how it liberates the 'standard' user from music being stuck on their iPod. Most consumers (and trust me the slashdot community IS NOT most consumers) have no idea how to remove DRM from their iTunes purchases or know how to get the songs on their iPod back off.
That's all well-and-good, but does it accomplish the stated objective of detering massive piracy? I submit it does not. As you imply, the people who *can* circumvent the DRM (and there will always be circumvention) will initiate the on-line propagation, and these "regular" citizens of whom you speak will download and continue to further "piracy."
In that case, they are merely providing another inconvenience for the "average" citizen, while not stopping, or even slowing, the massive "piracy" they are constantly whinging on about. As the average citizen can now download the songs they want (and *only* the songs they want, rather than a whole crappy album for a single good song), what is the benefit to the average citizen? What does it gain us, as society? Anything? Anything at all?
It is disingenuous to claim they are doing this to combat piracy. If anything, they are doing it to regain control of the distribution channel, and in the process to further their control over what a citizen can do with the music they lawfully purchased, essentially circumventing the doctrines of fair use and first-sale, two bugaboos of the music industry.
This is a blatant attempt to shore up the industry's control, and nothing more.
Every few months somebody makes the "discovery" that users can't remember all their various passwords, and that help-desks are swamped changing passwords, usually for the same dozen users that can't remember how to do their own job on the computer, and are always asking for help with some program called "Microsoft," as in, "Oh, I'm using Microsoft, and I need to know how to find out how many departments have gone over budget."
This is the same damned thing that's been going on for almost twenty years. And yes, corporate password policies add to the problem, rather than fixing it. As a superuser, I've been using "God as their password" as my password for years, since I heard that most 1337 h4ck3r6 use "God as their password." I've never been hacked. Or cracked. Or sniffed. Or snuffed. Go figure.
So, this is exactly the same thing they'll find out next year, too.
Stark staring bonkers. I particularly love the part about "all political parties of a certain dignity". You may be naive enough to trust your government to decide who does and doesn't get to be an official party, but I'm sure as hell not. Let me guess, you're Scandanavian, right?
The US government already does that. It's called the Two Party system, in which we get to choose between two equally retarded, equally corrupt bozos with a lot of money and a lot of corporate backing.
The US system is fucked beyond repair. There needs to be *major* changes if we are to see a return to democracy. The two-party system needs to be abolished, and replaced with *something* more sane. There are a lot of alternatives, including some interesting voting schemes that are derived from game theory.
It's time we US citizens salvage the tatters of the US Constitution from the bureaucratic corporate whores that are our politicians these days. We need more than campaign finance reforms; we need *election* reform.
It's time America puts up or shuts up: support democracy, or stop "spreading" it to the rest of the world.
That's the bitter irony of it all. MS is one of the most wildly successful companies of all time. They actually have done some good, a lot more people use PCs thanks to windows, it's hard to deny that. They've been good to shareholders. Why on earth they want to "kill" anyone is beyond me.
They've done very little good. MS-Windows was successful because Microsoft was in the right place at the right time; the success of the PC made MS-Windows successful, not the other way around.
Microsoft has a history of destroying competition. That's why they are top dog at the moment. People talk about the free market as if it is truly free; unfortunately, it isn't. A big company can exert control over smaller companies. As long as they are bigger, and are able to influence the market in which they operate, they do not have to build a better mousetrap; they just have to make sure citizens have little to no knowledge that there *are* other mousetraps.
That is the way Microsoft has typically operated. By various methods they learned from their mentor IBM (FUD, exclusionary market deals, astroturfing, etc), Microsoft has been able to control any other company, including Apple, that could potentially prove to be a threat.
Well, except IBM, with OS/2. IBM fucked that one up themselves.
Why would Microsoft destroy another company? Because they can. Like a medieval lord viciously guarding their turf, they destroy anyone who looks like they may challange their power. Right now, Google is challanging Microsoft's planned dominance of the internet.
I'm not particularly bleeding heart or anything like that, I'm not anti-corporation, but I'm just sick of all this kind of bullshit. Planning to build a monopoly or end your competition is just as bad as being a rober-baron; now some companies will kill themselves and they don't deserve to live but actively trying to cause that in the competition is wrong, I don't want to do business with those companies.
I've been sick of it for years, since Microsoft started dirty-dealing against DR-DOS. That event opened my eyes to the sheer evilness of Microsoft; since then, I've seen that same evil in other companies.
(Many of you will say that a corporation can't be evil. Others will say, "What is 'evil,' anyway? Evil is the willingness to fuck over another person for your own gain. And by that metric, corporations can be evil. If the people that make up the corporation continually demonstrate evil, the corporation itself is evil, and should be dissolved.)
Your kids at school do not control your PC buying decisions and if they did Apple would be the only brand in the USA and there'd be NO Internet as it back then DID NOT fit into Apple's (Job's) worldview.
It didn't fit into Microsoft's worldview, either. At the time, MSN was a tiny little dial-up service. Microsoft fought the internet; it did not create or help it. In fact, Microsoft didn't care about the internet until major magazines like Newsweek and Time started running feature articles on all the academic use of the internet.
Microsoft has not helped computing; it has hindered it. Gates, Ballmer, and Allen just happened to be in the right place at the right time to ride the wave better than anyone else. They did not cause the wave.
At the time, the most internet-connected, easiest to use desktop computer was the NeXT. You know, the computer on which the WWW was invented? The one created by Jobs' company, NeXT? Considering how the NeXT shipped with IP as the default network protocol, I think claiming Jobs was not interested in the internet is a bit wrong. Since he wasn't even at Apple at the time, to equate Apple's disinterest in the internet with Jobs is disingenuous.
As Apple was on the downhill slide *without* Jobs, I think things would have played out pretty much as they did. Jobs would have returned to Apple to save it, and he would have brought the internet with him. So, although most of your assessment is accurate, the idea that Apple would not now have the internet had they been the big boys is faulty.
Sorry to burst your fanciful bubbles, but the Tyranny of the Masses has been the rule and not the exception since before Hannibal crossed the Alps. We can just bring it to you faster and more efficiently than the Roman populace ever could to their wrongly pontificating intellectuals.
This is the most blatantly disregarded truth in the world right now. And so is the corollary: those that are able to manipulate the masses are able to control the world for their own gain.
This so-called user base would never contribute to profit.
This is a bald statement with no supporting argument or evidence. I am a member of that "user base." I purchase music. A lot of music. Thousands of dollars a year in music.
I will *NEVER* purchase a DRMd CD. Never. I will go without the music I would otherwise love to avoid profiting any company that feels the need to fuck me over.
This is not about piracy, it's about herding the sheep into a pen and extracting as much wool as possible. It's about controlling a new and emerging distribution system (the internet). It's about maintaining control over the distribution of music, while convincing everyone it's for their own damned good.
I for one do *not* welcome our new/old music-controlling overlords.
And deprive yourself from the music you like. Come on, you won't even fool my demented mother in law with this.
Believe it or not, there are people in the world with integrity. I am not going to purchase a DRMd CD. Ever. Even if that means I can't buy the new Ben Folds or Son Volt, or any other band I love.
I won't download it, either. I'll play the game by their rules, I guess. Will that cause much worry, one guy with some semblence of ethics not spending money on new music?
Probably not. But I can sleep at night. And, there's a lot of good old music available that I don't have yet. I still have to go back and pick up all the DBs, most Camper Van Beethoven, Posies, Odds, Amps, and a bunch of assorted others. Then there's the indie crowd-- you know, the ones making interesting music?
Fuck the music industry. Fuck them up the ass with their DRM. Glue some broken glass on that DRM. Drive some rusty nails through it. Then let them gang-bang each other with it, and while their bowels bleed, I'll be listening to music I can own, and that fucking rocks .
Sorry. I guess I've been listening to too much Bill Hicks.
I was forgot to read a book for a book report in Alaskan History (8th grade). The assignment was simple: once a week, read a book about Alaska, and write a report.
I forgot to read a book on Alaska that week, so I made a report up about a fictitious book. The result? I got a 'D,' because it "Sounds copied."
Granted, I deserved an 'F.' But for fuck's sake, fail me for the right reasons.
There *are* good teachers. During my school years in Thorne Bay, Alaska, I was allowed to use the computers any time I wanted. A friend of mine and I would get the key from the principal on the weekend, and we'd "hack" (that's 'code,' for you hack-means-break-in-to-the-system weenies) for hours on end. We were *encouraged* to use the computer systems to their utmost, and *trusted* in the school on our own, without supervision.
But those days were different, and Thorne Bay is different from most places on earth. Hell, I graduated with 3 other people; the entire HS had only 23 students (there were 10 sophomores, for some reason).
Back then, besides having to walk to school uphill and underwater both ways, manuals were printed with real technical information. The Apple ][ manuals had the system source code in the back. While learning 6502 assembly, I would study the code in the back of the manuals, looking for interesting system calls.
Now what do students get? Systems that spy on them, that lock them out of the interesting bits, that enforce what the teachers consider "education." There's no such thing as exploration, no such thing as learning on your own.
Damnit, I've got news for them. The only person who can teach you is... you. Teachers aren't there to teach students; they are there to interest students in teaching themselves, in guiding the student along paths of knowledge.
Now schools are taking legal actions against their students? What kind of a fucked-up fascist world *is* this?
Sorry. That's my rant. I could be all kinds of wrong about it, but it's mine.
Communications satellites are about one thing-- pushing as much data through with as little energy as possible. A *lot* of the mass of a satellite is in the power subsystem, and a lot of that won't scale down as well as it scales up.
Then there's the communications issue itself. If you have an array of satellites serving one area, you stand a greater chance of require *two* earth-satellite-earth hops, once through the satellite serving the source, and one for the destination. If you have a single satellite, you can reduce that to one hop (assuming the communications system is capable of point-to-point communications, and is not stuck with point-to-gateway communications).
I don't see pico sats affecting the communications industry right now-- perhaps in a couple of decades, but maybe not. Considering Shin satellite just launched the largest (most massive, with the most bandwidth) satellite ever, there still seems to be life left in the big boys.
Until Lunix gets to Mac-like levels of user friendlyness, one can only assume that the Lunixists actually enjoy the spurious complexity of their toy OS.
Actually, I *do* enjoy the complexity of my Linux operating system. Not for the sake of complexity, but because of the sheer flexibility it gives me.
Oh, sure, I like the MacOS X interface; but it has a few problems as well. It's not the Utopia most Mac fiends claim. (For instance, my wife's laptop keeps complaining it is no longer connected to the internet (through a wireless connection), even when all other wireless devices are working just fine. It's definitely not the network's fault.)
But your post is just plain wrong. Very rarely do I have to "fire up . . . vi" to get an internet connection to work. In almost *every* case, it Just Works.
The only times I have to fire up vi is when I am installing an odd network card and have to muck around with installing proprietary network drivers. And even *that's* getting less frequent these days.
And lastly-- that 35-year-old editor is *still* more powerful than most other editors out there, save Emacs. It's not like vi has been sitting still for 35 years.
Uhm, dude?
There's this belief that if someone owns a standard, it can't be open.
A standard is open if anyone is allowed to use it without owing the standards owner anything at all.
In fact, even the W3C standards are owned by someone, they're copyright the W3C consortium.
The W3C requires nothing in return for use of their standards. They put no restrictions on implementation or use of the standards. This was made clear a couple of years ago when they were debating including some technology that was owned by a particular company. When it became clear that 'net developers in general would not agree to "fair, non-discriminatory" licensing that excluded the GPL, W3C modified the standard.
The opposite of open is not proprietary, it is secret.
No; the opposite of open is use-controlled. If someone puts a price on the *use* of knowledge, they are putting in place an artificial barrier to progress. The intent is blatantly to lock out certain groups; otherwise, what is the point of the barrier in the first place?
An open standard is available for anyone to implement, with or without approval of the copyright owner of the specification. "Open" means "unencumbered," not "available for people to read, but not implement."
The Flash specification is not secret, if it was there wouldn't be Open Source Flash authoring tools.
Unfortunately, just like the SMB "standard," the Flash(tm) specification cannot be used to implement an open viewer*. Flash(tm) must be reverse-engineered, because of the afore-mentioned artificial barriers that keep Flash(tm) from being an open standard.
* Specifically, the license page states that "This license does not permit the usage of the specification to create software which supports SWF file playback."
There are many growth issues that need solved before we can start augmenting kids. Hardware as we know it will have to change to grow with the child; otherwise, every few years (every few months in the first couple of years) the kid would require a refit. Not a good idea when talking about the brain.
We need to get rid of the wires altogether. Something like bluetooth might work (NOT the insecure bluetooth, but something *like* bluetooth). Put several nanos in the brain that will grow out with the expanding cranium. The kid would still need an arm or leg refit every few years (in the case of a lost limb), but the controlling device could remain in place.
Hm. Lots of tech possibilities here, fun things to explore.
Me, I hope to see a world in which the morality issues of augmentation amount to, "Damned Luddites won't augment their kids. Don't they know what's good for them?" Personally, I want to be augmented to the point were I am wrapped up in photosynthetic material to feed me, with photoreceptors around the perimeter so I can see around me in every direction without moving my head, and with organic plasma propulsion so I can move around in space, without the need for spacesuit (I *am* the spacesuit) or spacecraft.
Give me solar sails, the ability to slow my mind down a billionfold, and drop me off at the nearest La Grange point.
Oh, and I also want a pony augmented to be a liger.
Although a study like this does nothing productive, I would assume that on average women are not as intelligent (ie, score higher on IQ tests) than men.
If we were all as intelligent as we think, we *could* make productive use of the results (assuming the test itself was unbiased and accurate).
For instance, we could ask, "Why are women, on average, slightly less able to solve logic puzzles than men?" (Assuming logic puzzles were a core part of the test-- used here as an example only.)
The answer might very well be, "Because we encourage women to become hair dressers and nurses, and we encourage men to become mechanics and doctors. Of course, we also encourage men to become CEOs and President of the US, so that evens things out substantially."
Once we've discovered the root cause (societal influence, Barbie, genetics, whatever), we might be able to do something about it. Then we can work together to eradicate the societal influences, raise our collective IQ a couple of points, invent FTL travel, cure all diseases, fix the inequities in the world, get rid of Celine Dion, and make our lives generally better.
That is, if we weren't too fucked up to take advantage of honest self-evaluations (assuming this is an honest self-evaluation).
Why does EVERYTHING have to deteriorate into how bad US culture is? Don't you realize that VIRTUALLY EVERY REALITY SHOW ON TELEVISION STARTED IN THE UK? Get a clue.
Dude, I made no mention of the UK. Nor do I care how bad the UK culture is, or isn't. I care about the culture in which I participate. Just because we import a lot of our tasty badness does not mean our culture isn't bad.
Once we fix our own culture (those of us here in the states), we can worry about other cultures. I don't care that there are states more fascist states than the US; I worry about the country that affects *me*, because I'm a big fat selfish bastard.
MS-Windows gets in the way by trying to be too damned helpful. Take the menus. Menu bloat (caused by feature bloat) in MS-Office caused MS to "hide" menu items that haven't been used recently. This causes the menu to change as you use different features; when forced to use MS-Office, I often have to hunt for the right menu item, and it's a pain in the ass, especially as the menus change.
Then, there's the whole "arrange start menu by vendor" paradigm, which is just fucked up to start with. I want my menus to be organized by type, rather like Gnome, KDE, and most other desktops. The problem isn't that I can't organize it (I can, and do); it's the thinking that led to that design in the first place gets in my way.
The thinking? Put businesses before the users.
This thinking makes itself apperant throughout the MS-Windows design, from the start menu organisation down to the menu layout and the little mini-dock on the (by default) right-hand side of the task bar.
System management is also a pain, with MS-Windows constantly auto-detecting new devices, whether you want it to or not, and whether it's detecting the correct device or not.
MS-Windows assumes it knows better than you about your own computer, and that provides a very unpleasant experience for many people. I don't like to be condescended to, by man *or* machine. Especially machine.
Yes, I know a lot of those complaints can be "fixed" by jumping through a lot of registry hoops, but the underlying philosophy is unfixable, because it is a problem with Microsoft, not just MS-Windows.
There are tons of other misfeatures, as well: file type is still determined by an arbitrary three-letter name suffix. MS-Windows and most Microsoft products play with other systems and documents only sullenly, if at all. Basically, Microsoft is out to *beat* everyone else, not *work* with everyone else, and it shows.
Of course, I don't use MS-Windows or any MS-Window-based product unless absolutely necessary, so my view might be biased. I just find the entire system painful to use in a fingernail-on-the-chalkboard way.
Anyway, that's all just a rant. Some people find MS-Windows a pleasure to use. Some people get off on facial defecation. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
- Tony
I started in about 2000 with hidden frames, Javascript, and DOM. I got the idea from someone else on the web; I thought it was brilliant at the time. I was able to auto-update forms without clearing the form, etc. All the stuff that AJAX is doing now.
It's nothing new. Other folks just think it is.
. . . watch your language . . .
I think the point was, "niggardly" is not a bad word. It means being a cheapskate, like Ebeneezer Scrooge. People who take offense at it are ignorant and thin-skinned.
And we shouldn't avoid doing things that are perfectly innocent just because it might offend someone. Yes, we might be polite and take our hat off; but if we don't, folks shouldn't get upset.