"Your original statems was that Conservatives want to save children and that Liberals want to kill them. This is the ultimate, prejudiced, obnoxious point of view. It takes the thing we are arguing about, assumes that you are right and I am wrong, then tries to portray me as evil. No liberal ever things "I want to kill children" "
Yeah, his argument is a strawman, but so is yours, so I'm not sure that you have much of a right to complain.
What scares me is that you seem to think that your im conversations are private in the first place. They don't need an insider to monitor your conversations, just decent hacking abilities.
"3. The company for which I work now (which has a fabulous environment, IMHO), is looking to hire people, so far with no great success. Of course, we're also looking for pretty decent people:)"
I think that probably sums it all up. This is not like in the 90's where if you knew a little C++ you could get a job paying 60 grand no problem. Now the demand has fallen to the point where you need to be actually qualified for the position. But as far as I can tell as a college student graduating in less than a month, there are jobs out there if you have a decent resume.
Here is a potential reason why electronic voting counties were more pro-Bush. Maybe those machines were just more accurate. Maybe Bush really did better in Florida but lost a number of votes in counties that had less accurate voting methods. You know, like what supposedly happened to Gore in 2000.
If we had paper trails the conspiracy theorists would just claim that they were faked. If it could somehow be proved that they were not faked, they would come up with some other claim. Bush used mind control devices or something.
"'Industrialised countries will have until 2012 to cut their collective emissions of six key greenhouse gases to 5.2% below the 1990 level.'""
Meaning if you were a huge polluter in 1990, you don't have to do shit to meet the treaty, and instead get to sell your pollution "rights" to other countries that have gone through growth in the past 14 years.
I think you are missing the point with regard to the teacher's pay problem. The thing people are complaining about is not that Ms White, the 5th grade teacher, isn't making enough money, its about whether or not we should be treating the profession as a whole better as teachers are critical for our society to function. The analogous situation does not hold for game developers, as game developers are not critical for our society to function. Whats more, most teachers do not become teachers because of some hidden personal desire, they want to help people (ok, some probably are just pedophiles). That is another major difference between teaching and writing games, which fucks up your entire argument. Again, trying to compare teachers with EA programmers is ludicrous.
And BTW, the problem with teachers is not that their pay rate is too low, in fact it is rather high. The problem is with the available hours. They only get to work 10 months a year, which means at the end of the year they don't take home as much as someone who works year round. That and salarly is based solely on experience, not performance. Thus the old crabby teachers that havn't been in school since the 70's make a lot while the young ones who kids relate to make much less.
Me personally? I don't give a shit, as I'm not in the tin foil hat crowd. I just didn't want to get mailed ads every week. But if you are trying to hide you wouldn't be using a credit card period, instead you would want to just pay for everything in cash.
I do hope you were not trying to compare video game developers with priests, teachers, firemen, policemen, or soldiers. People choose those jobs because they benefit mankind. People choose to write video games because they think such a job would be cool.
"And no, I don't have and never will have a "loyalty" (i.e. "We want to track you") card."
They can't track you to the level where it might effect you personally if you don't give them your personal information. You are not required to tell them anything (or anything truthful) when you fill out those little forms. I know I gave them a fake address and I don't think I even gave them a phone number. Thus they may know how customer #11235813 shops, but nothing about me personally (at least not with that card).
Those of us who actually RTFA last time know nowhere did it say Winamp was "down for the count", merely that the staff had been reduced. Which in the end is what happened in reality. Good job editors.
Although AOL could not yet comment on what to expect in the prototype, the revamped browser will likely extend Firefox's feature set with Netscape-specific extensions and retain Netscape's traditional green user interface.
Sounds like code for bloatware if you ask me. The exact same thing that killed Netscape's first run and that the Firefox project was made to get away from.
Ok, you have now read 1 paragraph. Thats a good start, but the article is longer than that.
"Are you so dense that you can't read? He's saying the whole idea is fundamentally flawed, not that it has some limitations."
Nope, wrong again. But you are getting closer.
"
You don't think that there's any other volunteer community orientated projects releasing information on the net? How about Debian, or Project Gutenberg?"
Very different projects. Debian is software, which is fundementally different from an encyclopedia, and Guttenburg does not require any additional material to be created.
"The use of that word alone shows bias."
It shows his opinion after he had investigaged the matter and decided to write an article about it. It shows nothing about how he approached the matter.
"I wasn't talking about democracy, but the system behind democracy, the concept that people matter and can make intelligent choices."
Oh no, I'm afraid the system is a bit more complicated than that.
"Doing that shows that you actually considered the item and saw where it succeeded and where it failed, instead of just writing a slam."
I'll take that as your answer to the question of whether or not you RTFA. He actually did mention that it can be useful for some purposes if you can recognize its limitations. What he was criticizing was that some people do not recognize those limitations.
Regardless, we are not talking about whether or not the article was effective which is what you are discussing. We are discussing whether or not he approached the Wikipedia with a bias. Failure to include positive points (had that been what he did) does not establish a bias. Thus your origional claim remains false.
"
You can prove anything that way. That there exists a foo with property bar does not mean that every foo or most foos has propery bar."
Jesus Christ, did you read anything I wrote in my last post? Or are you so dense you cannot understand basic concepts? He was not trying to prove that every article was inaccurate, nor was he trying to prove that most articles are inaccurate. Is that really so hard for you to get?
"Again, if he was criticizing the system behind it, he should have included other projects with similar systems and how they failed and succeeded."
Ok, if you are going to be that dense, name another example of a large scale open source encyclopedia. I'll email it to the author of the article for him to review.
"There are many criticisms of the system behind democracy, but the proponents of democracy don't need to go through and refute them one by one; they can point to the success of the system."
Oh, I hope you never hold elected office. In the real world, we do address the problems within a democracy everyday. Thats why we have a shitload of people running around DC working to adjust the system when needed. In other cases we will recognize a problem but also recognize that alternatives have bigger problems. That doesn't mean the problems with democracies do not exist. Saying "Its done ok so far, we don't need to do anything else" is not a viable defense of the current system.
Even if something in your code is technically patented (and remember, most of these patents are rather specific, the scare headlines you read on/. are not always accurate), that doesn't automatically translate to a lawsuit.
First the individual/company holding the patent must find out that you are "infringing" on it. Thats probably not going to happen if you are a lone coder selling a program that may be used by rather small crowd.
Then they have to justify the legal expenses and other costs related to pursuing the case. Again, if you are just a little guy who is not much of a threat to them, it would be hard to justify those costs.
And finally, just because the Patent Office readily grants software patents doesn't mean the courts will agree. Unless the patent in question is obviously novel, there would be a good chance the judge would throw it out. Whats more the patent holder would know that risk, so add in the potential for losing their patent (which could otherwise be used to sell to other large companies with large bank accounts) to the cost mentioned above.
Slashdot Mirror
You are confusing cause and effect buddy.
Would you prefer it to have a more invasive system including a video camera watching you and the road the entire time you are driving?
Complaining is more fun than actually solving problems.
I know its been suggested before, but would it be so difficult to change the title of this section?
Gee, its almost as if you were not supposed to drive them in an unsafe manner. Those bastards, trying to make sure you don't damage their car.
Yeah, his argument is a strawman, but so is yours, so I'm not sure that you have much of a right to complain.
What scares me is that you seem to think that your im conversations are private in the first place. They don't need an insider to monitor your conversations, just decent hacking abilities.
Of course that doesn't neccessarily mean they would cook the books.
I think that probably sums it all up. This is not like in the 90's where if you knew a little C++ you could get a job paying 60 grand no problem. Now the demand has fallen to the point where you need to be actually qualified for the position. But as far as I can tell as a college student graduating in less than a month, there are jobs out there if you have a decent resume.
Here is a potential reason why electronic voting counties were more pro-Bush. Maybe those machines were just more accurate. Maybe Bush really did better in Florida but lost a number of votes in counties that had less accurate voting methods. You know, like what supposedly happened to Gore in 2000.
If we had paper trails the conspiracy theorists would just claim that they were faked. If it could somehow be proved that they were not faked, they would come up with some other claim. Bush used mind control devices or something.
I would have used a different word.
Meaning if you were a huge polluter in 1990, you don't have to do shit to meet the treaty, and instead get to sell your pollution "rights" to other countries that have gone through growth in the past 14 years.
And the UN still thinks this is a good treaty.
Some of us still like to leave the house once in a while. Even for purposes that have nothing to do with work.
How sad is it that we have gotten to the point where we have forgotten that the word 'web' has meanings other than the World Wide Web?
And BTW, the problem with teachers is not that their pay rate is too low, in fact it is rather high. The problem is with the available hours. They only get to work 10 months a year, which means at the end of the year they don't take home as much as someone who works year round. That and salarly is based solely on experience, not performance. Thus the old crabby teachers that havn't been in school since the 70's make a lot while the young ones who kids relate to make much less.
Not mine. I was responding to another post who had compared the motives of game developers to those of the professions on that list.
"I don't think those I'm thinking about chose their profession for benefitting mankind."
I'm sure there is a wide variety of motivations for every profession. We were talking about generalizations.
"Most of them do a good job as entertainers, is there anything wrong with that?"
No, as long as you don't try to claim their motivations are the same as those for policemen, soldiers, teachers, etc.
Me personally? I don't give a shit, as I'm not in the tin foil hat crowd. I just didn't want to get mailed ads every week. But if you are trying to hide you wouldn't be using a credit card period, instead you would want to just pay for everything in cash.
I do hope you were not trying to compare video game developers with priests, teachers, firemen, policemen, or soldiers. People choose those jobs because they benefit mankind. People choose to write video games because they think such a job would be cool.
They can't track you to the level where it might effect you personally if you don't give them your personal information. You are not required to tell them anything (or anything truthful) when you fill out those little forms. I know I gave them a fake address and I don't think I even gave them a phone number. Thus they may know how customer #11235813 shops, but nothing about me personally (at least not with that card).
Even in its corrections /. acts like a tabloid...
Sounds like code for bloatware if you ask me. The exact same thing that killed Netscape's first run and that the Firefox project was made to get away from.
"Are you so dense that you can't read? He's saying the whole idea is fundamentally flawed, not that it has some limitations."
Nope, wrong again. But you are getting closer.
" You don't think that there's any other volunteer community orientated projects releasing information on the net? How about Debian, or Project Gutenberg?"
Very different projects. Debian is software, which is fundementally different from an encyclopedia, and Guttenburg does not require any additional material to be created.
"The use of that word alone shows bias."
It shows his opinion after he had investigaged the matter and decided to write an article about it. It shows nothing about how he approached the matter.
"I wasn't talking about democracy, but the system behind democracy, the concept that people matter and can make intelligent choices."
Oh no, I'm afraid the system is a bit more complicated than that.
I'll take that as your answer to the question of whether or not you RTFA. He actually did mention that it can be useful for some purposes if you can recognize its limitations. What he was criticizing was that some people do not recognize those limitations.
Regardless, we are not talking about whether or not the article was effective which is what you are discussing. We are discussing whether or not he approached the Wikipedia with a bias. Failure to include positive points (had that been what he did) does not establish a bias. Thus your origional claim remains false.
" You can prove anything that way. That there exists a foo with property bar does not mean that every foo or most foos has propery bar."
Jesus Christ, did you read anything I wrote in my last post? Or are you so dense you cannot understand basic concepts? He was not trying to prove that every article was inaccurate, nor was he trying to prove that most articles are inaccurate. Is that really so hard for you to get?
"Again, if he was criticizing the system behind it, he should have included other projects with similar systems and how they failed and succeeded."
Ok, if you are going to be that dense, name another example of a large scale open source encyclopedia. I'll email it to the author of the article for him to review.
"There are many criticisms of the system behind democracy, but the proponents of democracy don't need to go through and refute them one by one; they can point to the success of the system."
Oh, I hope you never hold elected office. In the real world, we do address the problems within a democracy everyday. Thats why we have a shitload of people running around DC working to adjust the system when needed. In other cases we will recognize a problem but also recognize that alternatives have bigger problems. That doesn't mean the problems with democracies do not exist. Saying "Its done ok so far, we don't need to do anything else" is not a viable defense of the current system.
First the individual/company holding the patent must find out that you are "infringing" on it. Thats probably not going to happen if you are a lone coder selling a program that may be used by rather small crowd.
Then they have to justify the legal expenses and other costs related to pursuing the case. Again, if you are just a little guy who is not much of a threat to them, it would be hard to justify those costs.
And finally, just because the Patent Office readily grants software patents doesn't mean the courts will agree. Unless the patent in question is obviously novel, there would be a good chance the judge would throw it out. Whats more the patent holder would know that risk, so add in the potential for losing their patent (which could otherwise be used to sell to other large companies with large bank accounts) to the cost mentioned above.