Marketing is not just the people who make advertisements and con people into buying stuff
Good point. Not all advertising is a con job, and marketing is not just about advertising. Marketing is about how you define your product. It encompasses everything from advertising, packaging, press releases, logos, all the way down to design specifications for the product you're building. So it's not just the communication of "why the product is better," but it's creating an identity for your product, finding a niche or carving a new niche.
So, yes, Firefox has been more successful in its marketing than the Mozilla suite, but not just because they say it's a "Faster and safer browsing experience", but because it is a faster and safer and more refined browsing experience. The developers built the software to fit a market of users that wanted a simplified (but advanced) no-nonsense browser-only piece of software, and everything from their site layout, their slogan, their advertising campaigns, their logo-- everything-- speaks well to the same audience.
That's what marketing is about.
Re:While this is great for open source advocates..
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TheOpenCD 2.0 Released
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· Score: 1
I come from a slightly different point of view when it comes to OSS. I'm not a developer who just wants to make it and use it himself. I'm not a vendor trying to make money off of these projects.
I'm just an open source advocate from the standpoint of a guy who fixes computers for his 9 to 5, and supports friends and family on the weekends. So I want to push open-source for two major reasons:
It's free (as in beer), so I can give the people I'm supporting the software they need without asking them to cough of a rediculous amount of money.
Poor software design (security), compatibility issues, and file-format-wars have been making many of the popular closed-source software packages a pain to support.
So, yes, I do want to get people to use this stuff. I don't want people to "ignore it if they don't want it." Many of the people who "don't want it" actually don't know what they want, and they make more work for me with that ignorance.
So, yeah, from a non-contributing member of the community, I'd like to see some "marketing", but I'd also say TheOpenCD is a good piece of marketing. It's appropriate for what it's "selling", and it makes some good OSS easily discoverable/accessible to relative novices.
wouldn't it make sense to automatically generate an iso of this collection on a weekly basis?
I think that would run somewhat contrary to the purpose of the CD. From my understanding, they've patched together known-stable builds of each of these apps for the purpose of introducing the less technical to the world of OSS. Anything automatically generated is bound to come up with a few extra quirks now and then.
Besides, all the software is freely available over the net. If you ever really want to generate a truly up-to-the-minute version, download all the apps independantly and burn them to CD.
Well, I'll say right off that I think you're on the right track. I know it's not a popular opinion among the geek crowd, but if you want opensource software to be taken seriously, you should use professional-sounding names instead of geek-cool names.
I've said it about The GIMP I've said it about Mozilla. I'm in IT, and I help out lots of friends/family, and I've had bosses who wouldn't take the "dinosaur browser" seriously because of the name and the icon (luckily, with all the press Firefox has gotten, people are taking "that fox internets" seriously). Can you imagine the look I got from my Mom when I asked if she wanted to try "The GIMP"?
So, I don't know, even if the community wants to keep the geek-cool names, I don't think it would be too hard to distribute a re-branded version with professional sounding names, even if they're identical except for a few strings of text.
That being said, it'd be easier to get people to overlook the name if the program were a little nicer to work with. I'm not trying to badmouth The GIMP, since it's come a long way and the developers should be proud, but I have to admit that I'd prefer to use Adobe Photoshop, JASC Paint Shop Pro, or Macromedia Fireworks. If The GIMP was good enough, if it were better/easier than these other editors, it wouldn't matter what it was called, people would use it.
"Is the problem with Palm devices really that the underpinnings of their OS are bad?
In short, yes. The GUI is nice, the desktop applications are decent, but the PalmOS kernel is awful."
I don't really think so. I know a lot of people (myself included) who have owned Palm devices, and find that it's just not worth carrying the things around. It's not because they crash all the time or anything. It's just, for the ways I might use a palm, I find either a laptop or a pen/paper combo work better. I could go into detail, but I'm not sure it's relevant.
I've heard that Palm devices are a pain in the butt to develop for, but that (again, from what I hear) has more to do with Palm changing specs regularly and not providing good documentation.
I've never used PalmOS 6, but from what I understand, it's based on BeOS, which was terrific. So, if the underpinnings for PalmOS 6 is bad, then it seems that Palm's development efforts have in fact made the kernel worse and not better, in which case it's fair to expect they'd screw up with Linux, too.
Either way, I'll tell you this: The reason Palms are selling so poorly isn't that the OS doesn't have preemptive multitasking or hyperthreading or some such thing. Add a better kernel, and keep all the applications and the interface the same, and you won't sell one extra Palm based on that.
So, ignoring all this, my overall point is, if they aren't going to continue to use BeOS, then they should opensource it rather than leaving it to rot. As others have brought up, it would at least be worth it as a good PR move. If, on the other hand, the reason Linux looks attractive is that they really want the community support that comes with using an opensource OS, well.... all the more reason to GPL BeOS. Either way, switching to Linux, dropping BeOS, and leaving BeOS to rot in closed-source pergatory doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I thought part of the appeal of BeOS was that it was written completely from scratch-- no legacy code of any kind. Maybe that was just an exaggeration or marketing hype, but that was the word Be was putting out during the time I was using it.
Well, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Palm buy Be, along with all the rights to the software? Isn't that why there is no Be anymore?
I don't think they're licensing the code. I think they own the code and all copyrights associated, so they should be able to GPL it if they want.
My point is, Palm owns BeOS, and BeOS is the foundation for PalmOS 6.0 (at least from what I understand). So, if Palm is jumping ship and choosing Linux over BeOS, could they at least GPL BeOS to help out projects like Haiku?
But I'm sure they won't. It looks like nothing good will ever come of what was a great operating system.
I hate this stuff. Yet again some stupid company with a failing business model buys promising technology, squanders it, and then jumps ship. Is the problem with Palm devices really that the underpinnings of their OS are bad? If palm isn't going to use it anymore, could they at least, finally, gpl BeOS?
"Why on earth would IBM want a non Linux semi-open source alternative?
MS Office. The main reason you aren't seeing IBM-made POWER/PowerPC workstations in offices is that they don't run MS Office."
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I mean, that doesn't get IBM any less reliant on Microsoft, but instead makes them reliant on BOTH Microsoft and Apple to sell their PowerPC-based architecture. Don't you think it would be more cost-efficient for them to work with Novell to get OpenOffice more up-to-snuff?
Now, I'm not saying IBM isn't happy to have Macintoshes making the PowerPC architecture more prevalent, but what good would it do them to buy Apple? Either IBM would change Apple to make it more IBM-ish, which would hurt its success, or IBM would have no effect on Apple, in which case, why buy it at all? Perhaps IBM would do well to recommend Apple to their customers, but their best-case scenario would be to push a IBM-hardware/Novell-software solution.
I suppose I could see IBM licensing OSX to run on IBM PowerPC laptops and desktops, but why? I mean, why would Apple want to do that, when they make their money on hardware? Why would IBM want to do that when OSX has such a small market share? And why would I want to buy an OSX IBM laptop instead of a Powerbook?
All around, I see IBM continuing to support Apple as one of the big distributers of the POWER architecture. I see IBM continuing to support Novell, since if Linux gets a big market share, the POWER architecture becomes more feasible for laptops and desktops. But I doubt IBM has plans to buy either company.
Re:Somone get these ppl some free software!
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Given Up to Spyware?
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· Score: 1
Or, how about major download sites, such as Download.com, create policies which say they "will not distribute spyware infested software"? I mean, certification requires some sort of a certification group be created and all sorts of technicalities be evaluated for whether thus-and-so constitutes "spyware". And that still won't keep people from downloading Kazaa
However, Cnet could unilaterally pull all known-spyware-infested programs from their site, thereby making those programs harder to find. Really, if the only place to download spyware programs were on the spyware programs own home site or warez sites, I think you'd see much less of it. What happens is, people go to what they believe is a reputable site (download.com) and find these spyware-infested programs on the front-page in the "Most Popular" list. They assume it must be reputable software. Friggin' hypocritical Cnet.
I don't know. It's always kind of good to get whatever information I can, but if I'm looking for any kind of computer equipment, whether desktop or server or anything, my concern is something I can't really imagine being tested in a simulated environment.
What I mean is, when I have home stuff or testing equipment or generally anything that's "for play", my requirements are erratic, and usually any single requirement can be overcome if the product has a certain "coolness" factor. But that's not what you're talking about anyway.
When you're talking about being on the job, my concerns are often not an issue of benchmarking or anything of the sort. I'm not interested in, "I've tried it in some simulated ideal environment, so it should work great in the real world!" The question are always, "but what about a non-simulated environment?" and "What about a non-ideal environment?"
Speed and performance are important, but ultimately I want to know, when you stick this machine in the rest of my network, which is held together with duct-tape and the cat-in-the-jar, and give limited access to users who are going to be using it for real-world purposes, and give limited users who are going to try to do things they shouldn't be doing and whatnot-- in that environment, how does it work? If it remains secure and stable and working, that's what I want to hear. I want it to keep working with as little headache as possible, and I want the administration to be easy. If it's fast, that's gravy.
For that, I always rely on my own real-world experience, the real-world experience of geeks that I trust, and "word around the street" in places like/.
And how long has it been going on the [supposedly] reputable computer news sites have been simultaneously writing articles about the danger of spyware and distributing spyware? Why doesn't anyone talk about the fact that Cnet/ZDnet put known spyware on Download.com? They write stories about what a big problem spyware is, and write stories about spyware removers. They've even recently included a whole "spyware removal" section on Download.com, so it's not as if people in their organization are unaware of the problem.
Personally, I think these sorts of download sites should have policies that, "if your software includes spyware, we won't post it on our site." But, whatever, they should at least be putting big, noticable warnings somewhere before you download it that, "This program contains adware" or "this program contains spyware", and make you click "OK, I understand" before it downloads.
I mean, you can't expect the spyware makers to discourage you from using spyware infested programs, but most people think of Cnet as being a reputable company, so they trust that downloads from Download.com are reputable programs, and not virus/trojan/spyware infested crap.
I certainly don't think that, at this point, *a blog* will replace *a newspaper* for anyone. However, the act of checking news portal blog-type-things, such as/. and FARK, is replacing, for many people, the act of watching the news or picking up a newspaper. Of course, it should be noticed that these stories often link to professional/reputable news sources, so the major media is still in play, but I can see a possibility that some portion of the major media will be replaced by internet news portals that collect and filter sources from a healthy combination of interested amateur news-bloggers and professional sources. If bloggers wanted to, they could write stories that were more news articles and less editorializing. I think part of the reason they're so editorialized now is that they are linking to the already-written story that set them off, and then replying.
Major news outlets aren't fact-checked. How many times has a satire posted on FARK shown up on the evening news? For as long as the media keeps getting their news from blogs, there's no chance that it will be any more reliable.
If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five, you say? No, the answer is four: calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so.
You're right, that calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so. However, when I talk about Crime and Punishment, I say it's a great piece of literature. Someone else might come along and say it's not great literature, it's just a stupid book. Who's right? Of course, I'm going to say I am. However, when I argue with the man who says it's just a book, it will do me no good to deny that it is, in fact, just a book. It is just a book, but it's also other things, including a great work of literature.
Maybe you won't understand this example, so I'll give another that's more solid. Arguing about which it is-- it's not like arguing whether something is a leg or a tail. It's more like arguing whether a coke can is a coke can or if it's a hollow cylindrical object made of aluminum and filled with carbonated sugar water. The whole argument is a little stupid, but if each side would just stop and listen to the other, they'd find the other side wasn't so wrong in what they were saying, and that neither side's way of talking about it was exclusively true.
I appreciate the effort, but you need to learn a LOT more about stem cells, I think.
Forgive me if I don't believe you outright, but you're going against many reputable sources that I've read and heard speak, and I've run into my fair share of people on/. who speak authoritatively about things they don't really know all that much about. (even me a little) I'm not even saying you're necessarily wrong on all the facts, but implying that embryonic stem cells are useless in the field of medicine goes against too much that I've heard from researchers, and fits too nicely with your apparent political views.
And remember, I'm not against you. It was me who originally used the terminology of "grinding up babies" here. I just think that when you look at things fairly, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
Also correct, except for your word "necessary." It'll never be necessary to kill a baby. It may be beneficial in ways that outweigh the obvious ethical problems, however.
Fair enough.
Embryos are little babies. It's not so much a matter of a point of view as it is a matter of dispassionately facing up to an uncomfortable fact of life.
Ah, but you see, many of those who don't see a problem with embryonic stem cell research don't view it that way. To them, an embryo is some tissue, a piece of organic material, that, in some circumstances could become a baby. It really isn't a simple case of one side or the other being in denial. Whole world views are tied up in it. The question of what life is is tied up in it. It's not so easy to resolve definitively, and I think we would do well to accept that these are two ways of looking at things, each determining a different set of "ethically acceptable actions".
To those who are in favor of embryonic stem cell research, viewing this as simple biological material, not proceding with the research is viewed as unethical. They tend to believe something like that this material is equivalent to "medicine", and we're throwing the medicine away rather than making use of it. After all, you're often talking about samples that, if they are not used for stem cell research, these samples will be destroyed/trashed anyhow.
However, as I've mentioned, on the other side, you're talking about grinding up babies. The idea is so repugnant that talk of positive consequences is ghoulish. It doesn't matter if you can save people with ground-up babies, you just don't go around grinding up babies.
So the question becomes, how do we resolve this in a way that best satisfies as many ethical points of view as possible. I think that's what Bush has been trying to do (at least that's what he says he's trying to do), and it makes sense to me to look for some sort of a balance.
Ah, you have that backwards, I think. See, we already use adult stem cells to treat lots of maladies. Some scientists hope that stem cells harvested from babies can be used to treat even more maladies, but that sort of begs the important ethical questions.
Well, IANAE, but the strength of stem cells in treatments seem to be that they are not yet differentiated, and so they can fill in and take the place of other damaged cells. Embryos have long been the obvious choice for undifferentiated cells, and the face that you can pull stem cells from the placenta is largely an extention of this idea (being involved in reproduction and all). However, it is relatively recent that it's been found that undifferentiated stem cells can be pulled from adults. It is still widely held (at least since last I've heard) that undifferentiated cells pulled from adults is not as flexible as those from embryonic sources. What I mean by "not as flexible" is, though they're not differeniated, there seem to be greater limits on adult stem cells as to what sort of tissue they can become, which limits their uses. However, there are a lot of unknowns thrown in here, and we're getting outside my areas of expertise.
I think what I'm working around to saying is, this is not an uncomplicated issue. I think we'd be better off if both sides would at least acknowledge this. I don't trust people who oversimplify and dumb-down in order to convince me, even though they may be trying to convince me of something they believe is true.
Well, it's not clear how his position would change with more evidence. Maybe it would, and maybe it wouldn't. His position seems to be that act of destroying embryos, itself, is ethically dicey, and he doesn't want the government to be encouraging it (by funding it) unless it's really necessary.
I think a person can honestly disagree, but I hope such a person keeps in mind that many people think of "embryos" as "little babies". It's not so much of a stretch, and that really re-frames the discussion. If I suggested that scientists should try grinding up little babies because it's possible that the ground-little-baby paste might possibly help some people with certain medical disorders to some degree, I think everyone would realize where the ethical concerns are coming from. Those concerns are accentuated by the hope that similar results may be possible by using relatively small tissue samples from adults instead.
So, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the president's position, but I think it's far from radical, possibly a wise position to take, and considering he's of the view that "life begins at conception", it's pretty progressive.
Cord Blood Stem cells are NOT embryonic stem cells. ONLY embryonic stem cells are opposed by President Bush.
It's not even that Bush is against embryonic stem cells. His policy is that he doesn't think it's appropriate for government funding should go to harvesting new stem cell lines. So, the material that they already have, they can continue to do research with. Privately funded studies can still develop new lines. It's really not as radical a stance as people make it out to be.
True. The beliefs that people of the past were primative know-nothings and that we are now on the verge of knowing everything are both highly overrated.
My biggest complaint would probably be, if 1 thing fails, portage should continue on where it can (dropping packages that are dependent on the one that failed would be ok, I guess, but it should at least continue with the rest) I hate leaving a long update running, walking away, and finding out it stopped after an error 30 seconds into it. If one package causes an error that keeps it from being installed, it should go to the next item on the list, and continue until it's done, and then you get an error report at the end.
It was just an (admittedly unfunny) off-the-cuff joke... In any event, compiling from source is never going to be as fast as copying binaries. I'm not bashing Portage, it works really well, and is easy, and produces a very nice/stable system. (I'm a Gentoo user) Just, you know, as a matter of fact.... compiling from source can take a while.
Anyway, it's far off topic. When I read "...combining all the shortcomings of everything (except Portage, apparently)." I thought, "Now how can we get portage's shortcomings in there?" Frankly, I'm just happy you got the joke, that it was a dig on portage, instead of responding, "WTF are you talking about?"
In other news, michael buys car and is shocked to discover must buy gas for it continue working.
And what if Michael buys a car and is shocked to discover that it won't work unless it remains connected to a very long cable which stretches back to the dealership and constantly confirms that it is, in fact, Michael's car...? What then? Same thing?
Slashdot Mirror
Good point. Not all advertising is a con job, and marketing is not just about advertising. Marketing is about how you define your product. It encompasses everything from advertising, packaging, press releases, logos, all the way down to design specifications for the product you're building. So it's not just the communication of "why the product is better," but it's creating an identity for your product, finding a niche or carving a new niche.
So, yes, Firefox has been more successful in its marketing than the Mozilla suite, but not just because they say it's a "Faster and safer browsing experience", but because it is a faster and safer and more refined browsing experience. The developers built the software to fit a market of users that wanted a simplified (but advanced) no-nonsense browser-only piece of software, and everything from their site layout, their slogan, their advertising campaigns, their logo-- everything-- speaks well to the same audience.
That's what marketing is about.
I'm just an open source advocate from the standpoint of a guy who fixes computers for his 9 to 5, and supports friends and family on the weekends. So I want to push open-source for two major reasons:
- It's free (as in beer), so I can give the people I'm supporting the software they need without asking them to cough of a rediculous amount of money.
- Poor software design (security), compatibility issues, and file-format-wars have been making many of the popular closed-source software packages a pain to support.
So, yes, I do want to get people to use this stuff. I don't want people to "ignore it if they don't want it." Many of the people who "don't want it" actually don't know what they want, and they make more work for me with that ignorance.So, yeah, from a non-contributing member of the community, I'd like to see some "marketing", but I'd also say TheOpenCD is a good piece of marketing. It's appropriate for what it's "selling", and it makes some good OSS easily discoverable/accessible to relative novices.
I think that would run somewhat contrary to the purpose of the CD. From my understanding, they've patched together known-stable builds of each of these apps for the purpose of introducing the less technical to the world of OSS. Anything automatically generated is bound to come up with a few extra quirks now and then.
Besides, all the software is freely available over the net. If you ever really want to generate a truly up-to-the-minute version, download all the apps independantly and burn them to CD.
I've said it about The GIMP I've said it about Mozilla. I'm in IT, and I help out lots of friends/family, and I've had bosses who wouldn't take the "dinosaur browser" seriously because of the name and the icon (luckily, with all the press Firefox has gotten, people are taking "that fox internets" seriously). Can you imagine the look I got from my Mom when I asked if she wanted to try "The GIMP"?
So, I don't know, even if the community wants to keep the geek-cool names, I don't think it would be too hard to distribute a re-branded version with professional sounding names, even if they're identical except for a few strings of text.
That being said, it'd be easier to get people to overlook the name if the program were a little nicer to work with. I'm not trying to badmouth The GIMP, since it's come a long way and the developers should be proud, but I have to admit that I'd prefer to use Adobe Photoshop, JASC Paint Shop Pro, or Macromedia Fireworks. If The GIMP was good enough, if it were better/easier than these other editors, it wouldn't matter what it was called, people would use it.
In short, yes. The GUI is nice, the desktop applications are decent, but the PalmOS kernel is awful. "
I don't really think so. I know a lot of people (myself included) who have owned Palm devices, and find that it's just not worth carrying the things around. It's not because they crash all the time or anything. It's just, for the ways I might use a palm, I find either a laptop or a pen/paper combo work better. I could go into detail, but I'm not sure it's relevant.
I've heard that Palm devices are a pain in the butt to develop for, but that (again, from what I hear) has more to do with Palm changing specs regularly and not providing good documentation.
I've never used PalmOS 6, but from what I understand, it's based on BeOS, which was terrific. So, if the underpinnings for PalmOS 6 is bad, then it seems that Palm's development efforts have in fact made the kernel worse and not better, in which case it's fair to expect they'd screw up with Linux, too.
Either way, I'll tell you this: The reason Palms are selling so poorly isn't that the OS doesn't have preemptive multitasking or hyperthreading or some such thing. Add a better kernel, and keep all the applications and the interface the same, and you won't sell one extra Palm based on that.
So, ignoring all this, my overall point is, if they aren't going to continue to use BeOS, then they should opensource it rather than leaving it to rot. As others have brought up, it would at least be worth it as a good PR move. If, on the other hand, the reason Linux looks attractive is that they really want the community support that comes with using an opensource OS, well.... all the more reason to GPL BeOS. Either way, switching to Linux, dropping BeOS, and leaving BeOS to rot in closed-source pergatory doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
I thought part of the appeal of BeOS was that it was written completely from scratch-- no legacy code of any kind. Maybe that was just an exaggeration or marketing hype, but that was the word Be was putting out during the time I was using it.
I don't think they're licensing the code. I think they own the code and all copyrights associated, so they should be able to GPL it if they want.
But I'm sure they won't. It looks like nothing good will ever come of what was a great operating system.
I hate this stuff. Yet again some stupid company with a failing business model buys promising technology, squanders it, and then jumps ship. Is the problem with Palm devices really that the underpinnings of their OS are bad? If palm isn't going to use it anymore, could they at least, finally, gpl BeOS?
MS Office. The main reason you aren't seeing IBM-made POWER/PowerPC workstations in offices is that they don't run MS Office."
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I mean, that doesn't get IBM any less reliant on Microsoft, but instead makes them reliant on BOTH Microsoft and Apple to sell their PowerPC-based architecture. Don't you think it would be more cost-efficient for them to work with Novell to get OpenOffice more up-to-snuff?
Now, I'm not saying IBM isn't happy to have Macintoshes making the PowerPC architecture more prevalent, but what good would it do them to buy Apple? Either IBM would change Apple to make it more IBM-ish, which would hurt its success, or IBM would have no effect on Apple, in which case, why buy it at all? Perhaps IBM would do well to recommend Apple to their customers, but their best-case scenario would be to push a IBM-hardware/Novell-software solution.
I suppose I could see IBM licensing OSX to run on IBM PowerPC laptops and desktops, but why? I mean, why would Apple want to do that, when they make their money on hardware? Why would IBM want to do that when OSX has such a small market share? And why would I want to buy an OSX IBM laptop instead of a Powerbook?
All around, I see IBM continuing to support Apple as one of the big distributers of the POWER architecture. I see IBM continuing to support Novell, since if Linux gets a big market share, the POWER architecture becomes more feasible for laptops and desktops. But I doubt IBM has plans to buy either company.
However, Cnet could unilaterally pull all known-spyware-infested programs from their site, thereby making those programs harder to find. Really, if the only place to download spyware programs were on the spyware programs own home site or warez sites, I think you'd see much less of it. What happens is, people go to what they believe is a reputable site (download.com) and find these spyware-infested programs on the front-page in the "Most Popular" list. They assume it must be reputable software. Friggin' hypocritical Cnet.
What I mean is, when I have home stuff or testing equipment or generally anything that's "for play", my requirements are erratic, and usually any single requirement can be overcome if the product has a certain "coolness" factor. But that's not what you're talking about anyway.
When you're talking about being on the job, my concerns are often not an issue of benchmarking or anything of the sort. I'm not interested in, "I've tried it in some simulated ideal environment, so it should work great in the real world!" The question are always, "but what about a non-simulated environment?" and "What about a non-ideal environment?"
Speed and performance are important, but ultimately I want to know, when you stick this machine in the rest of my network, which is held together with duct-tape and the cat-in-the-jar, and give limited access to users who are going to be using it for real-world purposes, and give limited users who are going to try to do things they shouldn't be doing and whatnot-- in that environment, how does it work? If it remains secure and stable and working, that's what I want to hear. I want it to keep working with as little headache as possible, and I want the administration to be easy. If it's fast, that's gravy.
For that, I always rely on my own real-world experience, the real-world experience of geeks that I trust, and "word around the street" in places like /.
Personally, I think these sorts of download sites should have policies that, "if your software includes spyware, we won't post it on our site." But, whatever, they should at least be putting big, noticable warnings somewhere before you download it that, "This program contains adware" or "this program contains spyware", and make you click "OK, I understand" before it downloads.
I mean, you can't expect the spyware makers to discourage you from using spyware infested programs, but most people think of Cnet as being a reputable company, so they trust that downloads from Download.com are reputable programs, and not virus/trojan/spyware infested crap.
I certainly don't think that, at this point, *a blog* will replace *a newspaper* for anyone. However, the act of checking news portal blog-type-things, such as /. and FARK, is replacing, for many people, the act of watching the news or picking up a newspaper. Of course, it should be noticed that these stories often link to professional/reputable news sources, so the major media is still in play, but I can see a possibility that some portion of the major media will be replaced by internet news portals that collect and filter sources from a healthy combination of interested amateur news-bloggers and professional sources. If bloggers wanted to, they could write stories that were more news articles and less editorializing. I think part of the reason they're so editorialized now is that they are linking to the already-written story that set them off, and then replying.
Major news outlets aren't fact-checked. How many times has a satire posted on FARK shown up on the evening news? For as long as the media keeps getting their news from blogs, there's no chance that it will be any more reliable.
You're right, that calling a tail a leg doesn't make it so. However, when I talk about Crime and Punishment, I say it's a great piece of literature. Someone else might come along and say it's not great literature, it's just a stupid book. Who's right? Of course, I'm going to say I am. However, when I argue with the man who says it's just a book, it will do me no good to deny that it is, in fact, just a book. It is just a book, but it's also other things, including a great work of literature.
Maybe you won't understand this example, so I'll give another that's more solid. Arguing about which it is-- it's not like arguing whether something is a leg or a tail. It's more like arguing whether a coke can is a coke can or if it's a hollow cylindrical object made of aluminum and filled with carbonated sugar water. The whole argument is a little stupid, but if each side would just stop and listen to the other, they'd find the other side wasn't so wrong in what they were saying, and that neither side's way of talking about it was exclusively true.
I appreciate the effort, but you need to learn a LOT more about stem cells, I think.
Forgive me if I don't believe you outright, but you're going against many reputable sources that I've read and heard speak, and I've run into my fair share of people on /. who speak authoritatively about things they don't really know all that much about. (even me a little) I'm not even saying you're necessarily wrong on all the facts, but implying that embryonic stem cells are useless in the field of medicine goes against too much that I've heard from researchers, and fits too nicely with your apparent political views.
And remember, I'm not against you. It was me who originally used the terminology of "grinding up babies" here. I just think that when you look at things fairly, you will find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
Fair enough.
Embryos are little babies. It's not so much a matter of a point of view as it is a matter of dispassionately facing up to an uncomfortable fact of life.
Ah, but you see, many of those who don't see a problem with embryonic stem cell research don't view it that way. To them, an embryo is some tissue, a piece of organic material, that, in some circumstances could become a baby. It really isn't a simple case of one side or the other being in denial. Whole world views are tied up in it. The question of what life is is tied up in it. It's not so easy to resolve definitively, and I think we would do well to accept that these are two ways of looking at things, each determining a different set of "ethically acceptable actions".
To those who are in favor of embryonic stem cell research, viewing this as simple biological material, not proceding with the research is viewed as unethical. They tend to believe something like that this material is equivalent to "medicine", and we're throwing the medicine away rather than making use of it. After all, you're often talking about samples that, if they are not used for stem cell research, these samples will be destroyed/trashed anyhow.
However, as I've mentioned, on the other side, you're talking about grinding up babies. The idea is so repugnant that talk of positive consequences is ghoulish. It doesn't matter if you can save people with ground-up babies, you just don't go around grinding up babies.
So the question becomes, how do we resolve this in a way that best satisfies as many ethical points of view as possible. I think that's what Bush has been trying to do (at least that's what he says he's trying to do), and it makes sense to me to look for some sort of a balance.
Ah, you have that backwards, I think. See, we already use adult stem cells to treat lots of maladies. Some scientists hope that stem cells harvested from babies can be used to treat even more maladies, but that sort of begs the important ethical questions.
Well, IANAE, but the strength of stem cells in treatments seem to be that they are not yet differentiated, and so they can fill in and take the place of other damaged cells. Embryos have long been the obvious choice for undifferentiated cells, and the face that you can pull stem cells from the placenta is largely an extention of this idea (being involved in reproduction and all). However, it is relatively recent that it's been found that undifferentiated stem cells can be pulled from adults. It is still widely held (at least since last I've heard) that undifferentiated cells pulled from adults is not as flexible as those from embryonic sources. What I mean by "not as flexible" is, though they're not differeniated, there seem to be greater limits on adult stem cells as to what sort of tissue they can become, which limits their uses. However, there are a lot of unknowns thrown in here, and we're getting outside my areas of expertise.
I think what I'm working around to saying is, this is not an uncomplicated issue. I think we'd be better off if both sides would at least acknowledge this. I don't trust people who oversimplify and dumb-down in order to convince me, even though they may be trying to convince me of something they believe is true.
I think a person can honestly disagree, but I hope such a person keeps in mind that many people think of "embryos" as "little babies". It's not so much of a stretch, and that really re-frames the discussion. If I suggested that scientists should try grinding up little babies because it's possible that the ground-little-baby paste might possibly help some people with certain medical disorders to some degree, I think everyone would realize where the ethical concerns are coming from. Those concerns are accentuated by the hope that similar results may be possible by using relatively small tissue samples from adults instead.
So, I'm not entirely sure I agree with the president's position, but I think it's far from radical, possibly a wise position to take, and considering he's of the view that "life begins at conception", it's pretty progressive.
It's not even that Bush is against embryonic stem cells. His policy is that he doesn't think it's appropriate for government funding should go to harvesting new stem cell lines. So, the material that they already have, they can continue to do research with. Privately funded studies can still develop new lines. It's really not as radical a stance as people make it out to be.
True. The beliefs that people of the past were primative know-nothings and that we are now on the verge of knowing everything are both highly overrated.
My biggest complaint would probably be, if 1 thing fails, portage should continue on where it can (dropping packages that are dependent on the one that failed would be ok, I guess, but it should at least continue with the rest) I hate leaving a long update running, walking away, and finding out it stopped after an error 30 seconds into it. If one package causes an error that keeps it from being installed, it should go to the next item on the list, and continue until it's done, and then you get an error report at the end.
Anyway, it's far off topic. When I read "...combining all the shortcomings of everything (except Portage, apparently)." I thought, "Now how can we get portage's shortcomings in there?" Frankly, I'm just happy you got the joke, that it was a dig on portage, instead of responding, "WTF are you talking about?"
So, what.... you're suggesting we make it run really slowly, too?
And what if Michael buys a car and is shocked to discover that it won't work unless it remains connected to a very long cable which stretches back to the dealership and constantly confirms that it is, in fact, Michael's car...? What then? Same thing?
Um... How about when I "steal" any game by downloading it off of the internet, I haven't really stolen anything...?