I just bought a top of the line dell inspiron 9400 (well my boss bought it for me but...). Imagine my shock and awe when I found out that this expensive laptop with the multimedia buttons on the front didn't include a god damned microphone. Is the guy who made that decision fired yet?
Rails is great. Not just for web sites but for all types of programming because it really encourages you to use best practices like unit testing, MVC etc. Capistrano and migrations also rock.
The only problem with rails is that ruby is not ideal for windows, the interpreter has threading issues, you can't write COM objects with it, and it's the slowest of the big scripting languages.
Having said all that none of the rails clones come even close. Every language has now attempted to make a rails clone and they have all concentrated on activerecord. Activerecord is great but it's only one tiny part of rails.
Rails isn't perfect, they really should come up with a better way to integrate multiple rails applications on the same server. There should be a better way to carry your gems around and share them not only with other rails apps but other programs too, they need a report engine desparately, they need a really good message queue, more solid cached records etc. The community is active though and I am sure all those problems will be solved pretty soon. Cached records are already being worked on for example.
"I think the fundamental issue is one of freedom. Even if it doesn't benefit society as a whole at all, an argument can be made for libertarianism on the basis that it allows for greater freedom - this is in itself a benefit to society."
I call bullshit on both counts. Human beings learned very early on that without claws, scales, wings, thick hide, and horns they had to band together in order to survive. Banding together means giving up some freedoms and learning to live in a community to advance the community as a whole. This is why tribes were formed, this is why cities were formed, this is why countries were formed. It's the only way to organize that is proven to work.
Your brand of freedom leads to death.
As for all your claptrap about communism and socialism then I say put your money where mouth is.
1) Show me a statistical correlation between the any of the criterea I mentioned for happiness (longevity, wealth, infant mortality etc) and the degree of socialism. 2) Show me at least one liberterian culture anywhere or at any time in history that was able to exist for more then X number of years (let's say 10 to be nice even number).
Simple really. If your theories are correct then there should be a clear correlation between the amount of socialism in a country and the happiness of those citizens. You should be able to draw a chart and make it obvious to anybody.
I think I can make a chart that shows that MORE socialism in a country makes for better citizens, healthier babies, greater median income, less poverty, and a more desirable place to live pretty easily. Can you do the same to support your opnion?
Freedom is a great word, in this context it's meaningless. You don't get to have freedom fromt he laws of phyics, you don't get to have freedom from mathematics, you don't get to have freedom from nature.
You should stop using the word freedom, the word you are looking for is liberty. Liberty is freedom from the govt.
"That would be the nuclear option in the ongoing trade wars with the USA. America would retaliate in kind, and the likely outcome would merely be to increase the rate of economic decline in the West and economic growth in neutral powers such as India and China."
It would be a happy day for me. I would love to see all patents revoked everywhere.
BTW copyright, patents etc don't have much standing in china and india now, it would not make that much of a difference for them.
let's hope that MS jacks up their prices. They won't of course. A billion or two is nothing to them. They made ten times that in europe in the last two years while ignoring their verdict.
Business as usual here. Lie, cheat, steal, make lots of money, pay 1% of it back in fines, lie, cheat and steal some more.
"Microsoft owns what, 95+% of the global desktop OS market? How exactly do you shut down or prohibit a company from operating when they have that type of a market share?"
Easy. Refuse to honor their IP. All MS copyrights in europe become public domain, all patents are invalid. Done deal.
Well it's a corporation. You can't jail it so you have to fine it. The only other option would be to put gates and ballmer in jail. A couple of years in the klink and they should probably be reformed. Even if they go to a country club prison it would be a real hardship for billionaires like them.
"What exactly were you looking for here? You certainly don't mind sharing your opinion..."
Simply put I am sick and tired of people sprouting off the same memes over and over again even though there is no evidence for their pet theory whatsoever. Religion is one of these, liberterianism is another.
Liberterianism doesn't work. It never has, it never will. It's a silly collection of "theories" based on no evidence whatsoever. There is no difference between saying "if the govt stops social security then everybody will be better off" and saying "if I put this crystal on this printer it will heal the circuits and the printer will work". Both are based on complete myths.
Show me one successful liberterian culture or society in all of human history. SHow me one study that shows that countries with no social programs are better off then countries with. SHow me one study that even correlates the median salary, rates of disease, rates of poverty, rates or crime, life expentecy, infant mortality, or any other measure of citizen happiness with a lack of social services.
It's fine if that's what you believe, lots of people believe in silly things based completely on faith. I am trying to understand why you have those beliefs? Is there some evidence someplace that I haven't seen yet?
"But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused then maybe a balance needs to be found which doesn't involve letting so many go."
If you read TFA you would have read the part about where MS abandoned IE for years. Where it didn't give a flying fuck about what was happening to their customers in terms of security and the features their customers wanted.
Do you really think MS track record with IE is better then firefox? If so you need to get educated. MS abandoned this project while their customers were suffering from a relentless assault of security problems.
"Even if this were so, there are no nations to look at out there which have first-world economies that lack social services."
Maybe that tells you something.
"Perhaps a good contrast would be the US/Europe - where social services exist to varying degrees. Overall, the US is clearly more prosperous despite spending 1000 times as much on its military."
What is your criterea? Surely the US could be even more prosperous if it enslaved half of it's population and made them work for free. Let's see your measurements and decide based on evidence if people are better off in Europe of US.
"However, it is an opinion that has the potential to create better lives for everybody "
It's just an opinion. Sorry. I am just not interested in opinions.
"hen again, I suppose my desire to have freedom to spend the money I earn in the manner in which I choose is also just an "opinion"..."
Yes, everybody is selfish, everybody wants to take and never give. That's human nature. Human beings have had thousands of years of experimenting with how to live with each other and liberterian option has never worked. In the end we always have to resort to living in societies where we have to overcome some of our selfish desires for the greater good.
But hell if you know of a society anywhere in the world or any time in the world where people kept all their money and the society actually stayed around for more then a year or two I am all ears. Evidence would be nice.
Bingo. Hence it has nothing to do with "people want their computers to just work". BTW corporate adoption is the key. It builds numbers, it encourages home buyers to buy the same thing. Get the corporations to use linux (cos it's cheaper) then all others will fall into place.
So let me get this straight. Because you didn't get a link from me you were not able to find any resources on how to run PS2 games in linux. From this you have deduced that you can not play PS2 games in linux and that linux is an inadequate platform for playing games.
The fact of the matter is that there are thousands of games for linux. SOmebody informed me that countestrike now runs under wine for example.
Why don't you go crying to the OSS developers and see if they can make wine work for any release of photopshop. If that doesn't work then you can piss on them on slashdot like all other photoshop trolls do.
"Now, my way my stop someone from switching today. Your way will stop someone from switching forever."
Who cares. I don't. Last thing I want is a bunch of people who stole photoshop to start using linux and start complaining that the finder is missing or that IE looks weird.
"Most people just want a computer that works and if they have to sell their soul to get it, they will."
This is the most often repeated meme on slashdot and it could not be more wrong. If what you say is true then Apple would be ruling the world today not MS. Every year for the last three decades apple products have been better at "just working" then MS products. They have always been easier, they have always been more cohesive. So why is MS ruling supreme and not the mac?
1) People want their computers cheap as possible. 2) People want their computers to run the same software they use at work so they can take work home. 3) People want their computers to be able to worked on by the neigbors kid or the guy across the street. 4) People want to be able their computers on impulse at the local best buy. 5) People want their computers to run the games they like.
That's it. "just works" doesn't come in to it. It never has, it never will. People do and have put up with crappy, unstable, unsecure, crash happy MS operating systems for years because of the five factors I have listed.
Because if we did then all the CEOs of the fortune 500 and 90% of the upper management would be in jail.
Come to think of it so would their lawyers.
Well I am in. When do we start the petition drive. Let's get the potheads out of jail and replace them with PHBs and lawyers. The world would be a better place I am sure.
Google is your friend. PS2 Emulaters exist as well.
I just don't get the "I can't play games on Linux" trolls. First of all who the hell cares, secondly you CAN play games, tons of them. DOS games, PS1 games, PS2 games, linux games and even lots of windows games. Stop bleating because you can't play THE game on linux, nobody gives a shit about your stupid game.
"Oh, they're happy alright. They just shouldn't be. In my opinion the purpose of socialism is to act as a safety net for those who are either unlucky for a time, or are disabled in some fashion. Therefore, the ultimate goal of any socialist program should be to try to get people off the program entirely. The best way to do that is to integrate recipients into society with payers - thus allowing them to network for jobs, develop skills, and hopefully appreciate the fact that there is a better way."
Yes, that's a nice opinion. Congratulations on having such a nice opinion. Really, I admire your opinion.
"Now, this is by far the worst possible use for social security - as a retirement plan. If you want to save up for retirement, just do it - you'll save far more privately than with social security"
I am tired of arguing this. Look there are places in the world where there is no social security. During most of the history of the US there was no social security. During most of the history of mankind there was no social security.
Why don't you point to either a place a in the world where there is no social security or some time in history where there was no social security and explain to me how those people were happier, healthier and wealthier then we are. In other words why don't you present some evidence that lack of social services leads to a more prosperous evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually quite like jedit for ruby editing. It's a bit involved but you can set it up to run pretty nicely. It's also great for XML/XSL work too.
There is a ruby plug in for it. It's not great but it's OK. Also check out radrails.
I just bought a top of the line dell inspiron 9400 (well my boss bought it for me but...). Imagine my shock and awe when I found out that this expensive laptop with the multimedia buttons on the front didn't include a god damned microphone. Is the guy who made that decision fired yet?
"I use OOo daily, and no one has ever sent
me a document in anything other than Word. I'd be amazed if it happened."
Nobody has ever sent you plain text? Nobody has ever sent you HTML (even in email?), nobody has ever sent you a PDF file?
I find that incredibly hard to believe.
Rails is great. Not just for web sites but for all types of programming because it really encourages you to use best practices like unit testing, MVC etc. Capistrano and migrations also rock.
The only problem with rails is that ruby is not ideal for windows, the interpreter has threading issues, you can't write COM objects with it, and it's the slowest of the big scripting languages.
Having said all that none of the rails clones come even close. Every language has now attempted to make a rails clone and they have all concentrated on activerecord. Activerecord is great but it's only one tiny part of rails.
Rails isn't perfect, they really should come up with a better way to integrate multiple rails applications on the same server. There should be a better way to carry your gems around and share them not only with other rails apps but other programs too, they need a report engine desparately, they need a really good message queue, more solid cached records etc. The community is active though and I am sure all those problems will be solved pretty soon. Cached records are already being worked on for example.
You don't get it. One pedophile is evil, his victims number in the single digits. Kenney lay is evil, his victims number in the tens of thousands.
"I think the fundamental issue is one of freedom. Even if it doesn't benefit society as a whole at all, an argument can be made for libertarianism on the basis that it allows for greater freedom - this is in itself a benefit to society."
I call bullshit on both counts. Human beings learned very early on that without claws, scales, wings, thick hide, and horns they had to band together in order to survive. Banding together means giving up some freedoms and learning to live in a community to advance the community as a whole. This is why tribes were formed, this is why cities were formed, this is why countries were formed. It's the only way to organize that is proven to work.
Your brand of freedom leads to death.
As for all your claptrap about communism and socialism then I say put your money where mouth is.
1) Show me a statistical correlation between the any of the criterea I mentioned for happiness (longevity, wealth, infant mortality etc) and the degree of socialism.
2) Show me at least one liberterian culture anywhere or at any time in history that was able to exist for more then X number of years (let's say 10 to be nice even number).
Simple really. If your theories are correct then there should be a clear correlation between the amount of socialism in a country and the happiness of those citizens. You should be able to draw a chart and make it obvious to anybody.
I think I can make a chart that shows that MORE socialism in a country makes for better citizens, healthier babies, greater median income, less poverty, and a more desirable place to live pretty easily. Can you do the same to support your opnion?
Freedom is a great word, in this context it's meaningless. You don't get to have freedom fromt he laws of phyics, you don't get to have freedom from mathematics, you don't get to have freedom from nature.
You should stop using the word freedom, the word you are looking for is liberty. Liberty is freedom from the govt.
"That would be the nuclear option in the ongoing trade wars with the USA. America would retaliate in kind, and the likely outcome would merely be to increase the rate of economic decline in the West and economic growth in neutral powers such as India and China."
It would be a happy day for me. I would love to see all patents revoked everywhere.
BTW copyright, patents etc don't have much standing in china and india now, it would not make that much of a difference for them.
let's hope that MS jacks up their prices. They won't of course. A billion or two is nothing to them. They made ten times that in europe in the last two years while ignoring their verdict.
Business as usual here. Lie, cheat, steal, make lots of money, pay 1% of it back in fines, lie, cheat and steal some more.
"Microsoft owns what, 95+% of the global desktop OS market? How exactly do you shut down or prohibit a company from operating when they have that type of a market share?"
Easy. Refuse to honor their IP. All MS copyrights in europe become public domain, all patents are invalid. Done deal.
Well it's a corporation. You can't jail it so you have to fine it. The only other option would be to put gates and ballmer in jail. A couple of years in the klink and they should probably be reformed. Even if they go to a country club prison it would be a real hardship for billionaires like them.
MS doesn't have to pay a cent. All they have to do is to document some specs and remove some software from the default install.
Simple really. I don't see why don't do it.
"What exactly were you looking for here? You certainly don't mind sharing your opinion..."
Simply put I am sick and tired of people sprouting off the same memes over and over again even though there is no evidence for their pet theory whatsoever. Religion is one of these, liberterianism is another.
Liberterianism doesn't work. It never has, it never will. It's a silly collection of "theories" based on no evidence whatsoever. There is no difference between saying "if the govt stops social security then everybody will be better off" and saying "if I put this crystal on this printer it will heal the circuits and the printer will work". Both are based on complete myths.
Show me one successful liberterian culture or society in all of human history. SHow me one study that shows that countries with no social programs are better off then countries with. SHow me one study that even correlates the median salary, rates of disease, rates of poverty, rates or crime, life expentecy, infant mortality, or any other measure of citizen happiness with a lack of social services.
It's fine if that's what you believe, lots of people believe in silly things based completely on faith. I am trying to understand why you have those beliefs? Is there some evidence someplace that I haven't seen yet?
"But if you want to compete against MS, who are too customer focused then maybe a balance needs to be found which doesn't involve letting so many go."
If you read TFA you would have read the part about where MS abandoned IE for years. Where it didn't give a flying fuck about what was happening to their customers in terms of security and the features their customers wanted.
Do you really think MS track record with IE is better then firefox? If so you need to get educated. MS abandoned this project while their customers were suffering from a relentless assault of security problems.
"Why can't OpenSource projects break out and make usable products. "
Are you really saying that firefox is not usable? Are you seriously saying IE is?
"Even if this were so, there are no nations to look at out there which have first-world economies that lack social services."
Maybe that tells you something.
"Perhaps a good contrast would be the US/Europe - where social services exist to varying degrees. Overall, the US is clearly more prosperous despite spending 1000 times as much on its military."
What is your criterea? Surely the US could be even more prosperous if it enslaved half of it's population and made them work for free. Let's see your measurements and decide based on evidence if people are better off in Europe of US.
"However, it is an opinion that has the potential to create better lives for everybody "
It's just an opinion. Sorry. I am just not interested in opinions.
"hen again, I suppose my desire to have freedom to spend the money I earn in the manner in which I choose is also just an "opinion"..."
Yes, everybody is selfish, everybody wants to take and never give. That's human nature. Human beings have had thousands of years of experimenting with how to live with each other and liberterian option has never worked. In the end we always have to resort to living in societies where we have to overcome some of our selfish desires for the greater good.
But hell if you know of a society anywhere in the world or any time in the world where people kept all their money and the society actually stayed around for more then a year or two I am all ears. Evidence would be nice.
Bingo. Hence it has nothing to do with "people want their computers to just work". BTW corporate adoption is the key. It builds numbers, it encourages home buyers to buy the same thing. Get the corporations to use linux (cos it's cheaper) then all others will fall into place.
So let me get this straight. Because you didn't get a link from me you were not able to find any resources on how to run PS2 games in linux. From this you have deduced that you can not play PS2 games in linux and that linux is an inadequate platform for playing games.
The fact of the matter is that there are thousands of games for linux. SOmebody informed me that countestrike now runs under wine for example.
Why don't you go crying to the OSS developers and see if they can make wine work for any release of photopshop. If that doesn't work then you can piss on them on slashdot like all other photoshop trolls do.
"Now, my way my stop someone from switching today. Your way will stop someone from switching forever."
Who cares. I don't. Last thing I want is a bunch of people who stole photoshop to start using linux and start complaining that the finder is missing or that IE looks weird.
Yes. There are thousands of games you can play on linux. What's your damage? Is counterstrike the most important thing in your life or what?
"Most people just want a computer that works and if they have to sell their soul to get it, they will."
This is the most often repeated meme on slashdot and it could not be more wrong. If what you say is true then Apple would be ruling the world today not MS. Every year for the last three decades apple products have been better at "just working" then MS products. They have always been easier, they have always been more cohesive. So why is MS ruling supreme and not the mac?
1) People want their computers cheap as possible.
2) People want their computers to run the same software they use at work so they can take work home.
3) People want their computers to be able to worked on by the neigbors kid or the guy across the street.
4) People want to be able their computers on impulse at the local best buy.
5) People want their computers to run the games they like.
That's it. "just works" doesn't come in to it. It never has, it never will. People do and have put up with crappy, unstable, unsecure, crash happy MS operating systems for years because of the five factors I have listed.
Time to put that meme to bed.
Because if we did then all the CEOs of the fortune 500 and 90% of the upper management would be in jail.
Come to think of it so would their lawyers.
Well I am in. When do we start the petition drive. Let's get the potheads out of jail and replace them with PHBs and lawyers. The world would be a better place I am sure.
Waaaaaaahh. Mommy. Those evil linux coders will only let me run photoshop up to version 7 on their operating system. Make them stop!.
I love it when you guys are reduced to whining about versions of photoshop!.
Google is your friend. PS2 Emulaters exist as well.
I just don't get the "I can't play games on Linux" trolls. First of all who the hell cares, secondly you CAN play games, tons of them. DOS games, PS1 games, PS2 games, linux games and even lots of windows games. Stop bleating because you can't play THE game on linux, nobody gives a shit about your stupid game.
"Oh, they're happy alright. They just shouldn't be. In my opinion the purpose of socialism is to act as a safety net for those who are either unlucky for a time, or are disabled in some fashion. Therefore, the ultimate goal of any socialist program should be to try to get people off the program entirely. The best way to do that is to integrate recipients into society with payers - thus allowing them to network for jobs, develop skills, and hopefully appreciate the fact that there is a better way."
Yes, that's a nice opinion. Congratulations on having such a nice opinion. Really, I admire your opinion.
"Now, this is by far the worst possible use for social security - as a retirement plan. If you want to save up for retirement, just do it - you'll save far more privately than with social security"
I am tired of arguing this. Look there are places in the world where there is no social security. During most of the history of the US there was no social security. During most of the history of mankind there was no social security.
Why don't you point to either a place a in the world where there is no social security or some time in history where there was no social security and explain to me how those people were happier, healthier and wealthier then we are. In other words why don't you present some evidence that lack of social services leads to a more prosperous evidence.