Be careful about wishing ill on other people. Your desire to force them to purchase American products might inadvertently end up forcing them to use Linux instead, and then not only will American lose sales form China, but other countries might follow suit. Things are just fine the way they are now, so just try to find some way to be happy about it.
Although it seems easy to accuse Symantec of receiving bribes form Microsoft to try to make piracy in China more difficult, this is unlikely to be the case. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
No, this is wrong. That has to be one of the most perpetuated misunderstandings about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is NOT an authoritative source for anything. However this doesn't make it useless. It is a summary of information collected from other (often authoritative) sources, collected all in one place. If you *need* something authoritative, you should find the citation and check it from the original source. Wikipedia is still a good starting place though, to find the other sources.
I still hold my claim that Wikipedia is not and does not pretend to be a textbook for schools. If you want to start such a project, you can do so however, and you can even use the material from Wikipedia as a starting point, since it is freely redistributable.
Exactly. If you want a 'Beginners Guide to Physics' go to the children's library. Wikipedia is something that the authors of the beginners guide can use to make sure that their facts are right (but unfortunately too few of them do this).
> In fact, I think most studies have shown that laptops actually have little or a negative impact on helping children learn.
Most of the failures reported so far are due to children using the computers to browse porn. If porn wasn't illegal and taboo for adults, then children wouldn't be so interested in it. I think porn reform is needed first before computers can be introduced to schools.
I'm disgusted that Uruguay would waste money on laptops while there are still homeless people in places like Africa and America. They shouldn't spend *any* money on education until all poverty is solved throughout the whole world. Whilst these lucky Uruguayans are busy watching porn in university, other people all round the world are dying. Selfish bastards!
OK, that made dying in a vacuum sound a lot worse than the article that I linked to, but I think we can agree that the molecules aren't ripped apart. If a bacterium can survive being frozen and defrosted then maybe it could survive the journey.
If there were almost 20 critical vulnerabilities patched for Linux in one month, I think that would be pretty significant news too. The fact that it has never happened is more to do with the either the lack of market share of Linux, or else the bias of the programmers putting more errors into Windows than Linux. Either way, not Slashdot's fault.
Nice +5 troll post though! I will probably save that one so I can use it when I feel like trolling. Hope you don't mind.:)
Vacuums are basically harmless. There isn't much difference in the forces involved between being in a vacuum and being at twice ordinary Earth pressure. In fact, humans can survive being unprotected in space for short periods of time, with no permanant damage:
You will of course die if you don't get some oxygen fast. Don't even try holding your breath to get an extra few minutes - the pressure will damage them. Just let the air escape and hope for rescue.
> To me she sounds like a girl who knows exactly what she wants, and what she wants to 'pay' for it.
> Now what's wrong with that?
I didn't say there is anything "wrong" with it, I just said it was prostitution... which it is. Prostitution is perfectly legal in many countries. You can make up your own mind whether it is wrong or not.
Using Social Security Numbers for everything isn't such a bad idea. It is a convenient way to identify someone, since it is guaranteed to be unique. The problem comes when the SSN is the only piece of information you need to take control over someone's life. There should be some more basic checks put in place to ensure the person is who they claim to be. An example could be mailing the person at their last known address and asking them to send a letter back with an authorised signature on a document that explains what is about to happen. When these basic checks are missing, it is no wonder it is so easy to steal another person's identity.
As far as I am aware, you can get arrested for doing that. Whether it is moral or not is irrelevant because it's illegal and you will get caught sooner or later.
You are unlikely to get caught price gouging, or copyright infringing so the law doesn't really enter the equation for either side. In this case, morals is a fall back. If one side acts immoral, the other side has to try that much harder to stay moral. It's very easy to slip into: 'Well if he can be bad and get away with it, I will be bad too.'
Slashdot Mirror
In other news, Montserrat has been renamed to Mont$errat.
Be careful about wishing ill on other people. Your desire to force them to purchase American products might inadvertently end up forcing them to use Linux instead, and then not only will American lose sales form China, but other countries might follow suit. Things are just fine the way they are now, so just try to find some way to be happy about it.
Although it seems easy to accuse Symantec of receiving bribes form Microsoft to try to make piracy in China more difficult, this is unlikely to be the case. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
> the fact that 2007 is already half over
Where are you? Here in Europe it is still only May.
> Everyone thought this was actually going to happen 5 or 10 years ago.
Really? 'Everyone' as in who? Slashdot? Sorry to have to break the news to you, but Slashdot isn't everyone.
No Microsoft cult? Rubbish!! What about all the shareholders?
We have a Microsoft cult right here in Slashdot. Wait until there is a story about a vulnerability in Linux.
> In fact, I used to feel the same way about Linux until nothing ever came of the "year of Linux on the desktop" claims every year.
Linux got on my desktop a couple of years back.
Dell (the company that always only ever sell Windows to get better contracts with Microsoft) are now selling Linux to home users.
Last Thursday Uruguay started distributing Linux computers to kids.
So when will your Linux on the desktop be?
> Wiki is meant to be authoritive
No, this is wrong. That has to be one of the most perpetuated misunderstandings about Wikipedia. Wikipedia is NOT an authoritative source for anything. However this doesn't make it useless. It is a summary of information collected from other (often authoritative) sources, collected all in one place. If you *need* something authoritative, you should find the citation and check it from the original source. Wikipedia is still a good starting place though, to find the other sources.
I still hold my claim that Wikipedia is not and does not pretend to be a textbook for schools. If you want to start such a project, you can do so however, and you can even use the material from Wikipedia as a starting point, since it is freely redistributable.
Exactly. If you want a 'Beginners Guide to Physics' go to the children's library. Wikipedia is something that the authors of the beginners guide can use to make sure that their facts are right (but unfortunately too few of them do this).
I don't know, because I am not one. Ask one, and see what they say about it.
> it doesn't means that I'm more educated than people like you but a little bit more respectful.
If you want to be respectful, you should not use offensive words like 'yankees'. You shouldn saying that yankees have no culture. Have a nice day!
> In fact, I think most studies have shown that laptops actually have little or a negative impact on helping children learn.
Most of the failures reported so far are due to children using the computers to browse porn. If porn wasn't illegal and taboo for adults, then children wouldn't be so interested in it. I think porn reform is needed first before computers can be introduced to schools.
Oops, sorry. I didn't mean that to be a troll, I just forgot the sarcasm tag.
I'm disgusted that Uruguay would waste money on laptops while there are still homeless people in places like Africa and America. They shouldn't spend *any* money on education until all poverty is solved throughout the whole world. Whilst these lucky Uruguayans are busy watching porn in university, other people all round the world are dying. Selfish bastards!
OK, that made dying in a vacuum sound a lot worse than the article that I linked to, but I think we can agree that the molecules aren't ripped apart. If a bacterium can survive being frozen and defrosted then maybe it could survive the journey.
If there were almost 20 critical vulnerabilities patched for Linux in one month, I think that would be pretty significant news too. The fact that it has never happened is more to do with the either the lack of market share of Linux, or else the bias of the programmers putting more errors into Windows than Linux. Either way, not Slashdot's fault.
:)
Nice +5 troll post though! I will probably save that one so I can use it when I feel like trolling. Hope you don't mind.
> Being exposed to the near-vacuum of space for an extended period of time, aren't the bacteria likely to be "pulled apart" at the molecular level?
r s/970603.html
No.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answe
Vacuums are basically harmless. There isn't much difference in the forces involved between being in a vacuum and being at twice ordinary Earth pressure. In fact, humans can survive being unprotected in space for short periods of time, with no permanant damage:
You will of course die if you don't get some oxygen fast. Don't even try holding your breath to get an extra few minutes - the pressure will damage them. Just let the air escape and hope for rescue.
8 months old?! Shame. I guess that most of the information about the history of the telephone network is out-of-date already.
> To me she sounds like a girl who knows exactly what she wants, and what she wants to 'pay' for it.
> Now what's wrong with that?
I didn't say there is anything "wrong" with it, I just said it was prostitution... which it is. Prostitution is perfectly legal in many countries. You can make up your own mind whether it is wrong or not.
I'm sick of people whinging about people whinging about slashdot on slashdot on Slashdot. If you don't like it, don't use it.
That is nothing more than prostitution.
Using Social Security Numbers for everything isn't such a bad idea. It is a convenient way to identify someone, since it is guaranteed to be unique. The problem comes when the SSN is the only piece of information you need to take control over someone's life. There should be some more basic checks put in place to ensure the person is who they claim to be. An example could be mailing the person at their last known address and asking them to send a letter back with an authorised signature on a document that explains what is about to happen. When these basic checks are missing, it is no wonder it is so easy to steal another person's identity.
Then it can run Windows too.
... and then they will sue them for patent infringement.
You can't win.
As far as I am aware, you can get arrested for doing that. Whether it is moral or not is irrelevant because it's illegal and you will get caught sooner or later.
You are unlikely to get caught price gouging, or copyright infringing so the law doesn't really enter the equation for either side. In this case, morals is a fall back. If one side acts immoral, the other side has to try that much harder to stay moral. It's very easy to slip into: 'Well if he can be bad and get away with it, I will be bad too.'
It's human nature.