> yet when OPEC gets together and "FIXES" a price for oil we just bend over and take it up the tailpipe?
Do we? Some of us didn't. I moved to a town that has bike lanes on every road, high availability of alternative fuels (we even have biodiesel pumps!), and various levels of solar power, including commercial solar distribution and localized solar batteries and water heating. I do have a gasoline-powered car, but I adjusted my lifestyle so that I drive less than ten miles per week.
Others could take similar actions, but they choose to complain and "take it up the tailpipe" instead.
>Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history?
The SNR on this kind of material is seriously low. There is rarely any interest in maintaining this stuff (or even keeping track of it) until a story goes out that it's possibly lost. There is a LOT of NASA data that will deteriorate LONG before anyone analyzes it.
The same thing happened to most of the films of the 1920s, too. Concerned people with their bleeding hearts came out of the woodwork *after* the films were lost to neglect.
Okay, so Apollo XI was special, and its records should have been handled with even more care than the other missions, perhaps. But let's have a show of hands here, who actively pursued an interest in this material *before* it was reported lost?
Yes, yes, but by diminishing the availability of distribution media, governments can abridge the rights of independent producers, when they become too aggressive and when they promote the idea that all free music sharing is wrong.
The editing is beside the point. It's about the right to distribute the material, nothing more, nothing less. And it is absolutely clear that the person with the sole authority to distribute the material is the copyright holder, or a party to whom the copyright holder has delegated authority. Here we have a random party distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the party whose exclusive rights are being abridged. The fact that the material is being edited for content somewhere in the loop doesn't even enter into it. In fact, I'd be surprised to learn that such a defense was admitted in court at all. The "defense" is akin to claiming a right to distribute Microsoft Windows on the basis of the fact that you changed the splash screen to that of a hacker group and disabled the copy protection.
1. Van Gogh may have simply had about -4.50 myopia and was painting realism... 2. The Starry Night painting at the MoMA in NYC looks like crap... small, unfinished at the edges, and not breathtaking like certain other Van Gogh paintings I've seen. The posters are better than the original.
How do they resolve this against individuals that have a right to distribute their own material? I would certainly recognize this kind of rule as a violation of my own copyright, by abridging my right to disseminate my creative works.
>Getting the likes of IBM to recognize the usefulness of the Rails framework is a little more than > just another DBMS supported: rails used to be bashed, especially by java people, for not being >"enterprise ready".
Others of those Java people gave Rails a try, and quite a few of them have just showed off their successes in Chicago.
For all the talk, pro or con, there's the pesky matter of *results*.
Too many applications are built using very cumbersome frameworks, especially web presentation stuff, database binding, and scaling up to production levels, and of course some of these applications probably justify such architectures, but many can be developed, quite competently and successfully, using Rails. The people who are doing it, aren't really doing advocacy... they are just happily using it to go from idea to revenue stream, way faster and more consistently than they ever did with Java.
There's not really an excuse not to add Rails to your toolbox and personal knowledge base. Any competent Java programmer who has ever touched a webapp, should be able to go from tabula rasa to deployed application inside of 4 hours. It leaves a lot of time (and money!) available for *design*, which is (and should be) the expensive part that takes work...
>On what grounds are you going to detract from telecommuting in that statement?
There's the whole fundamental point that when he took this work home he committed a major crime; possibly "espionage", or something on that order.
When my company puts an ssh key on a server or gives me a webapp password, there is a certain level of consent and accoutability involved. This was just a plain screwup, or maybe an act of sedition, depending on the state of mind of the individual.
>Teaching people advanced technical skills... to solve problems and think for themselves...
Actually, Chinese students tend to have a very serious problem when they go to European or American schools. Their entire educational experience has been resolutely one-way. They do *not* speak in class, they are certainly not encouraged to engage in independent critical thinking or to take creative approaches to solving problems. They tend to be very, very good at rote memorization. They tend to struggle horribly in course formats where the student is expected to take the reins and be creative and responsible for his or her education. The idea of speaking up and challenging a professor is, pretty much, culturally unthinkable. In a course where this is expected, Chinese students in particular have a problem.
I have seen the phenomeon and discussed it at length with Chinese students, Chinese professors and postdocs, and American professors. It's a significant problem that has to be specifically addressed.
The problem goes the other way as well. It is very difficult for a Chinese student who has come to the US, to return to China. The educational format is so fundamentally different that Cinese students typically find themselves unable to compete in China. It is not because they are less intelligent or more poorly educated, but because the whole theory of education is executed differently.
There are lots of Chinese slashdotters who could express these ideas more clearly than I could.
Small sample I realize, but I know two different people whose ability to do optical astronomy has been severely impacted by eye surgery. Combined with an increased risk of glaucoma (and no end in sight to the prohibition of the one medication that is effectively indicated for glaucoma), I believe I will continue to make myself be satisfied with the highest quality glasses I can get.
The big grocery stores appear to have gotten the idea from food co-ops, who have been doing this kind of order/delivery service forever. Plug into the co-op (e.g., with labor) and get your groceries at cost. My local co-op even does certain kinds of perishables. It was a good deal for a church soup kitchen, but it doesn't really do much for my 2-person family.
> I always thought video games were just a passing fad.
They were!
If you try to describe to kids today, what the video arcade was like until 1984 or so, they won't believe you. Oh sure, they've seen Game Works and so on, but that's quite different.
Other example; my friends and I used to go to Taco Bueno instead of Taco Bell for no reason other than the fact that Taco Bueno had a Galaga console table.
I remember when the mechanical games *were* the arcade. Electro-mechanical driving games, shooting games, tank games, submarine games, and of course, pinball.
I even had a pinball machine for a while, a table with a mechanical horse race with six horses. It was too much for me to maintain, so I sold it. That's how I got my first Fender Rhodes...
>It wasn't just difficult, it was frustratingly impossible.
It was also embarassingly easy, once you were clued-in. The gameplay was totally linear, and there were clear cues for all the actions; you just had to know what they were, and of course, have the motor skills to actually play it. No worse than the skills needed to own robotron or centipede, really.
Slashdot Mirror
> yet when OPEC gets together and "FIXES" a price for oil we just bend over and take it up the tailpipe?
Do we? Some of us didn't. I moved to a town that has bike lanes on every road, high availability of alternative fuels (we even have biodiesel pumps!), and various levels of solar power, including commercial solar distribution and localized solar batteries and water heating. I do have a gasoline-powered car, but I adjusted my lifestyle so that I drive less than ten miles per week.
Others could take similar actions, but they choose to complain and "take it up the tailpipe" instead.
>Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history?
The SNR on this kind of material is seriously low. There is rarely any interest in maintaining this stuff (or even keeping track of it) until a story goes out that it's possibly lost. There is a LOT of NASA data that will deteriorate LONG before anyone analyzes it.
The same thing happened to most of the films of the 1920s, too. Concerned people with their bleeding hearts came out of the woodwork *after* the films were lost to neglect.
Okay, so Apollo XI was special, and its records should have been handled with even more care than the other missions, perhaps. But let's have a show of hands here, who actively pursued an interest in this material *before* it was reported lost?
>This is a clear case of cracking, not hacking.
Bless your heart for continuing to fight that lost cause.
Yes, yes, but by diminishing the availability of distribution media, governments can abridge the rights of independent producers, when they become too aggressive and when they promote the idea that all free music sharing is wrong.
>Sorry, I don't buy it.
Someone who didn't realize the popularity of slashdot wouldn't believe you if you described the phenomenon.
The editing is beside the point. It's about the right to distribute the material, nothing more, nothing less. And it is absolutely clear that the person with the sole authority to distribute the material is the copyright holder, or a party to whom the copyright holder has delegated authority. Here we have a random party distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the party whose exclusive rights are being abridged. The fact that the material is being edited for content somewhere in the loop doesn't even enter into it. In fact, I'd be surprised to learn that such a defense was admitted in court at all. The "defense" is akin to claiming a right to distribute Microsoft Windows on the basis of the fact that you changed the splash screen to that of a hacker group and disabled the copy protection.
As far as I know, District Attorneys do not generally read slashdot looking for possible cases to prosecute, hint, hint.
>That seems a bit far-fetched if you ask me. Without having any sort of real data, I'd have to bet that all of these sites get
>more US traffic:
Consider this... practically every geek who works at the companies you listed, has a facebook account...
>Its really tacky of the employeer. Did they ask: "I see here you like heavy metal music, are you in league with the devil?
Does this employer acknowledge discrimination on the basis of religious beliefs? That's a pretty serious crime, you know.
Two observations.
1. Van Gogh may have simply had about -4.50 myopia and was painting realism...
2. The Starry Night painting at the MoMA in NYC looks like crap... small, unfinished at the edges, and not
breathtaking like certain other Van Gogh paintings I've seen. The posters are better than the original.
How do they resolve this against individuals that have a right to distribute their own material?
I would certainly recognize this kind of rule as a violation of my own copyright, by abridging my
right to disseminate my creative works.
>Getting the likes of IBM to recognize the usefulness of the Rails framework is a little more than
> just another DBMS supported: rails used to be bashed, especially by java people, for not being
>"enterprise ready".
Others of those Java people gave Rails a try, and quite a few of them have just showed off their successes in Chicago.
For all the talk, pro or con, there's the pesky matter of *results*.
Too many applications are built using very cumbersome frameworks, especially web presentation stuff, database binding, and scaling up to production levels, and of course some of these applications probably justify such architectures, but many can be developed, quite competently and successfully, using Rails. The people who are doing it, aren't really doing advocacy... they are just happily using it to go from idea to revenue stream, way faster and more consistently than they ever did with Java.
There's not really an excuse not to add Rails to your toolbox and personal knowledge base. Any competent Java programmer who has ever touched a webapp, should be able to go from tabula rasa to deployed application inside of 4 hours. It leaves a lot of time (and money!) available for *design*, which is (and should be) the expensive part that takes work...
>On what grounds are you going to detract from telecommuting in that statement?
There's the whole fundamental point that when he took this work home he committed a major crime; possibly "espionage", or something on
that order.
When my company puts an ssh key on a server or gives me a webapp password, there is a certain level of consent and accoutability involved.
This was just a plain screwup, or maybe an act of sedition, depending on the state of mind of the individual.
You listed at least 6 reasons, plus your general attitude, that ensures if it were up to me, you'd remain stuck.
Do you honestly believe you have no share of the responsibility for your lack of career development?
>And why dont we just print more money to solve poverty?
Why do that when your great great grandchildren are happy to give loans so the richest people today can be richer?
>Teaching people advanced technical skills... to solve problems and think for themselves...
Actually, Chinese students tend to have a very serious problem when they go to European or American schools. Their entire educational experience has been resolutely one-way. They do *not* speak in class, they are certainly not encouraged to engage in independent critical thinking or to take creative approaches to solving problems. They tend to be very, very good at rote memorization. They tend to struggle horribly in course formats where the student is expected to take the reins and be creative and responsible for his or her education. The idea of speaking up and challenging a professor is, pretty much, culturally unthinkable. In a course where this is expected, Chinese students in particular have a problem.
I have seen the phenomeon and discussed it at length with Chinese students, Chinese professors and postdocs, and American professors. It's a significant problem that has to be specifically addressed.
The problem goes the other way as well. It is very difficult for a Chinese student who has come to the US, to return to China. The educational format is so fundamentally different that Cinese students typically find themselves unable to compete in China. It is not because they are less intelligent or more poorly educated, but because the whole theory of education is executed differently.
There are lots of Chinese slashdotters who could express these ideas more clearly than I could.
Small sample I realize, but I know two different people whose ability to do optical astronomy has been severely impacted by
eye surgery. Combined with an increased risk of glaucoma (and no end in sight to the prohibition of the one medication that is effectively indicated for glaucoma), I believe I will continue to make myself be satisfied with the highest quality glasses I can get.
The big grocery stores appear to have gotten the idea from food co-ops, who have been doing this kind of order/delivery service forever. Plug into the co-op (e.g., with labor) and get your groceries at cost. My local co-op even does certain kinds of perishables. It was a good deal for a church soup kitchen, but it doesn't really do much for my 2-person family.
>...there's many more hot women walking around than there are crimes.
You've neve been to LA.
Since getting a DVR, I am only vaguely aware that they still broadcast commercials on TV.
>there is no creation date in Unix-land: "ctime on unix isn't creation but change time"
Ok. So the ctime reflects the creation date of the inode that is created by the cp.
It's still not a flaw.
> I always thought video games were just a passing fad.
They were!
If you try to describe to kids today, what the video arcade was like until 1984 or so, they won't believe you.
Oh sure, they've seen Game Works and so on, but that's quite different.
Other example; my friends and I used to go to Taco Bueno instead of Taco Bell for no reason other than the fact that Taco Bueno had a Galaga console table.
I remember when the mechanical games *were* the arcade. Electro-mechanical driving games, shooting games, tank games, submarine games, and of course, pinball.
I even had a pinball machine for a while, a table with a mechanical horse race with six horses. It was too much for me to maintain, so I sold it. That's how I got my first Fender Rhodes...
>It wasn't just difficult, it was frustratingly impossible.
It was also embarassingly easy, once you were clued-in. The gameplay was totally linear, and there were
clear cues for all the actions; you just had to know what they were, and of course, have the motor skills to actually play it. No worse than the skills needed to own robotron or centipede, really.
>I cannot imagine why anyone would want that so much that it is the default behaviour.
Any other behavior would essentially be forgery of the file creation date.
Yes, but it's still depressing to be north of Steamboat Springs and still be able to find Denver and Cheyenne by the light pollution.