Are there good tutorials on the language and/or GNUstep programming?
I don't know. Take a look at the GNUstep site; they also make mention of Apple's reference material, which includes an Obj-C overview. I don't know how good it is - I've perused it on and off for several weeks, but haven't tried even a HelloWorld.app as of yet. Maybe when those 28-hour days start, I'll have the time to...
a) VJ++ 6 was (IMO) great in theory, but hideous in intent; surely the Great Minds at MS could have made a Sun-compliant version that included the MS-specific stuff. Isn't the Yellow Box Java both Sun-proper and NeXTStep-capable?
b) there is no b).
c) if you listen closely, you'll hear the sound of an 800-pound octopus shooting itself in the foot.
Well, I'll be able to respond at length on Sunday or Monday. But, a couple of quick things (though as I proofread this, it looks a lot less brief than I'd planned it to be):
I think you're missing the issue in part; Creationists and Fundamentalists don't speak on behalf of all Christians, and they don't speak for me. If I regard the creation or flood accounts in Genesis as poetry (instead of scientific fact), it doesn't mean that I'm a heretic, and it doesn't mean that there isn't a truth or two to be gleaned from that poetry. Obviously the world isn't 5,000 years old - and I'm not sure the Bible explicitly says so (but I'll defer to you on that one).
On the future *cough* "Saint Teresa of Calcutta" *cough*: I've been described, in an Everything node as a Pinko Commie Bedwetter. That's probably not far from the truth. My qualms with the Mother were politically-oriented (no, I don't have insider info about her, if that was what you were asking about). But my point was, if I had any point at all, that I could take the Christopher Hitchens version of the truth about her (which is an account that I respect) and still use that as material with which I could teach a Sunday School class.
Gotta go! In the words of St Ahnuld: "I'll be back!"
(Unless Rob's database totally craps out in the interim:)
You don't know me either, but you are perfectly comfortable in judging me. Or have you forgotten what you have written?
Apparently so.
What did you do? Bomb an abortion clinic?
I'm pro-choice, actually.
I once took in a drug dealer after he got arrested by the cops. The cops stole his cash, his stash, and put a shotgun to his head, never charged him with anything and threatened to kill him. He works as an Oracle DBA now, of course he was just selling pot to get through college and sold to only those that wanted it. Like me.
I kept 2 people housed for 1 entire year. I was making very good money, they were still struggling through school. Does this make me a good person? NO. I receive similar help, from my parents, and I know how much it sucks to be really really poor.
I've done the same sort of things that you have, plus some hack^H^H^H^Hcracking (after a great deal of soul-searching) that I'm probably not at liberty to discuss. I don't do "good works" in order to prove myself to be a "good person" or to earn some place in heaven or something. That's not part of Christianity. The "good works" are simply part of one's responsibility as a Christian ("For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat..."); I've only scratched the surface of what I could or should be doing. If God provides the wherewithal and the venue (as He has done in the past), I'll do 1000x more. And I would still be only scratching the surface of what I could or should be doing. That's something I learned from the "evil" Mother Teresa, even though I'm well aware of dozens of complaints (often valid ones) about her - and not just in Calcutta.
I have done a great deal of "soul" searching you haven't done any.
Bully for you. I was born into a family that includes an Anglican minister and several church organists. Church stuff bored me and I became a 6-year-old atheist. Many years later, through studying Zen and Hinduism (and almost becoming a monk), I decided to look into the Bible after reading Gandhi's autobiography. I've done my homework; I've taken the Leap. I've been amazed; I've been disappointed. To this day, I'm annoyed at the Culture of Christianity here in the States - I feel, in some churches, like I'm crashing the party. There is a great deal of daily soul searching that goes into being a Christian. If you think there's some sort of blind, unthinking component to faith, then you haven't done your homework, you are the one being irrational. Faith != Sheepfulness. I think some pop-Xian theologian once said "Faith is a verb" or something like that; there's a grain of truth to it.
Note: previous use of the word "charitable" had nothing to do with money or charity-giving. It was in relation to being generous in terms of finding a good thing to say about one's enemy or foe.
My time's run out. Flame away. I wasn't trying to convert you or anything; I just get annoyed at times at both secular culture's lack of understanding about Christianity and (U.S. evangelical) Christian culture's lack of understanding about the secular world. It's been fun, and I hope you live a long, long time and revisit these issues. Have a nice weekend, fellow/.-er. I gotta go bomb an abortion clinic:)
I'm not condemning Christianity. I'm condemning all of religion. There is a big difference. All religion is bunk. If you are too stupid to realize that it is a method that has been employed in every culture to control the populace I don't care, it's your right to waste your life in pursuit of nothing like the billions before you.
Back to a distant, earlier point: You shouldn't attribute the actions of despots to religion. A despot uses whatever is at his disposal to control his subjects, be it religion or something totally unrelated.
A million prayers never put a single loaf of bread on a table. God doesn't help people, people help people.
There's tons of examples of God helping people through the works of people. There was an orphanage in England, I believe, that never asked for a dime from anyone; the head of the place just prayed for the resources to be supplied. And for years those resources were supplied, no matter how obscure the request. People brought the money, food, materials, etc, in answer to the guy's prayers. I've seen and heard similar, though usually less spectacular, stories throughout my travels.
Instead of wasting your time going to Church once a week, donate some time to a charity instead. It's exceedingly easy to pray it's a lot more difficult to actually get off your self-righteous ass and do something.
You don't even know me. I've wheedled and schlepped produce to soup kitchens, I've given to charities, probably above and beyond the giving of most people; I've hung out with the homeless and counseled drug addicts (and aspiring drug addicts); I've even broken the law in attempts to help others. God doesn't necessarily just do spectacular things on his own to help people (e.g. things like unexplainable physical healings) - he often works through the actions of people like you and me. You don't even have to believe in God to be an unwitting tool for His purposes.
You call me selfish, look in the mirror you sanctimonious twit.
When did I call you selfish? You may have me confused with someone else. I've tried to keep the discourse on a somewhat polite level.
...Better talk to some Indian's about Mother Teresa. What an intelligent woman to state birth control is a sin in an overpopulated and starvation plagued place like India! Talk to a few natives before supporting that stupid illogical bitch. She was very faithful and hence completely impractical and illogical.
I already told you that I didn't endorse her 100%; I'm not Catholic, and my views on birth control are the same as most others - it doesn't take away my admiration for John Paul II and Mother Teresa; I don't necessarily have to like everything about a person I admire. I think you're letting your anger override your reading skills.
People who think like you forget one crucial fact: the folks in third-world countries who take these jobs are human, too.
They take the jobs because they are better and higher-paying than what's on offer. The alternative is usually subsistance agriculture, which makes computer assembly look awfully decent.
If those jobs weren't better, the third world folks wouldn't take 'em. That's the beauty of a free market.
But what we end up with, in time, is workforces everywhere being reduced to near-subsistence wages. Nike has moved its manufacturing from country to country in Asia in search of the lowest possible wage, competitors follow suit. "American" automakers become Mexican ones, as long as two-dollar-a-day labor increases shareholder value. Ross Perot's famed "Giant Sucking Sound" was old news before he even coined the catchphrase; given time, that Sound will suck for nearly everybody. In Perot-ian fashion, let me direct you to this chart.
I don't mean to start a flame war, or to extend this thread; this is just a two-cents thing. My fear is that even though Amalgamated Widgets is helping out their short-term bottom line, they're reducing the pool of people who can afford to buy their products (Vietnamese shoe-assemblers make better money than a subsistence farmer until the contract runs out and the manufacturer moves to, say, Myanmar, but it's not so much more of a wage that they can run out and buy all the Modern Conveniences that we're used to in the West).
If a new middle class in these new economies doesn't form/grow in both number and in purchasing power faster than the middle class shrinks in the West, there may be a problem in the long run. Of course, there's eleventy-jillion other factors at play; I just wanted to voice a concern about a couple. It all seems like a dollars-and-cents equivalent to the Behavioral Sink. I don't expect a well-fed venue like/. to give a damn about this, though. Thank you for your time.
Geez! I'm not even going to quote you - the better to preserve/. bandwidth. I'm no fan of religion either; I don't go to the verbose lengths that you have, though I did so when I was in 10th grade. (That's not meant as an insult to you).
Just as Jerry Falwell and his peers tend to make a mockery of Christianity with their petty non-Christian agendas, the various horror stories you've cited were incited by utterly bogus motivations - it would be inaccurate to attribute them to a religion. I don't condemn Islam because of the fatwah against Rushdie; I don't condemn Hinduism because of the sectarian violence in India - the same goes for Christianity and Ulster. The wrong-ness doesn't come from the religion; it comes from the mob of adherents who are trashing their own religion in order to achieve a secular "greater good" - the elimination of mob-defined (not God-defined) "infidels".
Just as you shouldn't let an insistence on rational thought or scientific proof get in the way of your relationship with God (...if I may be allowed a bit of Xian jargon), you shouldn't let politicians^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpreachers like Falwell get in the way either. They don't speak for all of Christianity, and, even worse, it's a rare day when they're on-topic enough to be able to speak for Jesus. Even Gandhi had a good word or three to say about Christianity; I'm sorry if things have happened to you to prevent you from being so charitable.
I would much rather have someone like Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, John Paul II, or Francis Schaeffer be the "public face of Christianity". Yes, they were/are flawed individuals. No, I don't always agree with their actions or writings. But at least they were on-topic, and none of them were/are the utter embarassment that people like Falwell are.
Rob the Party Pooper. Shooting down all the wonderful conspiracy theories. Well, this semi-downtime gives everybody a chance to rest up their flamethrowers. Right?
Gee whiz, I never realized that the Inquisition was a "good thing", nor did I realize the Children's Crusade was a "good thing", or burning a 'witch' at the stake was a "good thing". Perhaps I should rethink my position.
You should have read my post before spewing. The things you've mentioned are obviously not good things, and I never said they were. The rest of your post damns the religion of a billion people (and religion in general) by selecting a bunch of wacko items and incidents dating back to the 6th Century.
But here's the riddle, here's the clue: I wasn't talking about religion.
Try to love Falwell and other men even if they hate your life style.
Agreed. I'm a Christian who detests Falwell's politics, but I find him a very charming individual. The U.S. is a secular republic, and gays and lesbians (and bisexuals and transgendered individuals, etc, etc, etc...) are due the same protections under the laws of the nation as everyone else has. If we are to hate anything, it should be the smear-and-obfuscation campaigns ("militant homosexuals are demanding special rights!") by Falwell, Bauer, Robertson, and Dobson - and a bunch of politician-lemmings and voter-lemmings - to deny the humanity of a segment of the populace.
I probably should have kept on with my lunch, but...
Let me suggest that the one true religion cannot be corrupted. We know that the Inquisition was corrupt religion and so was the Children's Crusade. This invalidates Christianity as being the true religion in my eyes.
Does a BSOD invalidate all of computing?
God can't be adequately "solved" or grasped via some sort of scientific study or legal cross-examination. If He created everything, his existence lies outside of everything (does Woz live inside of a Mac ROM in Peoria?), outside of our mundane temporal/spatial existence. Scriptures are a starting point, but to just stake one's belief upon dead-trees-and-ink will not be adequate either.
Christianity is not, first and foremost, about science and cross-examination. You're barking up the wrong tree. The diversity of expressions of Christianity is, despite doctrinal differences on the periphery, a Good Thing®, not an invalidation of the "user manual" - I would be somewhat turned off if it was all some Southern Baptist thing (Baptists, please don't take offense; I'm just talking about styles of, and cultural differences in, expressions of faith).
There may come a time when you get tired of the BSODs in your life. I hope you will, someday, rm -rf your preconceptions, and fdisk and install an open mind on the matter. Don't let media whores like Falwell drive you screaming from the notion of belief. I think he means well, to some extent, but he does get on one's nerves with thought-police garbage like this. Leave Tinky-Winky alone, Dr Falwell!
Disclaimer: I am neither a theologian, an evangelist, or an eloquent spokesperson for Christianity.
Personally, I think it'd be cool if this all pans out in the bands having to tour more and make their money that way.
Why is it illegitimate for bands to derive income from recordings?
I'm sick of bands showing up once every two years for a two-month tour of six major cities to promote a new album and raking it in through record sales.
The bands that tour like this constitute 0.0001% of bands. What about the rest?
...this page, which lists (with links) nearly every toolkit known in this solar system. As for printing support or other solar systems, I plead my usual ignorance.
How about FLTK? YMMV regarding the visual attractiveness of it compared to the Big Two toolkits. I think there's also mention of other toolkits in their mailing-list archives.
Yeah, it's partisan, but a little commentary adds some color. I wouldn't want/. to become too bland in its intros - there's plenty enough blandness out there as it is.
Having said that, maybe RandySC's bon mots are a wee bit OTT, but if you've experienced any of today's Threads From Hell (or read the non-OTT part of his submission), maybe you can excuse someone's MS-Disgust-o-Meter® running in the red.
I doubt you'll find "astroturfing" in a dictionary. It has roots in American baseball. A team called the Houston Colt 45s moved into the first indoor stadium, called the Astrodome. The team changed its name to the Astros - there was a Space Program motif, since the Johnson Space Center is in that part of Texas, I guess. Attempts to grow grass indoors failed (it's doable now - witness the '94 World Cup games played in Pontiac Stadium near Detroit), so they switched to artificial turf made by Monsanto, IIRC; they called it "AstroTurf", in keeping with the space/astro motif. "Astroturf" is nowadays used interchangeably with "artificial turf", though I suppose that most modern artificial turf is not AstroTurf®.
Anyway... "astroturfing" refers to the creation of fake "grass roots" support, something that many political organizations and corporations do in the US.
I suspect there's a lot of good AC posts emanating from microsoft.com (Hi, Randy!); the AC MS-shilling I've seen on/. consists usually of "govt don't belong in software industry" anti-DOJ rantings of teenage libertarians who are drunk with their newfound religion. If badly-done stuff like that came from MS, they have a lot more to worry about than just getting W2K out the door.
Astroturf is the last refuge of scoundrels whose hired-mouthpieces have failed them.
People who like Zappa are also likely to dig Rush, Dream Theater, and other bands that are better known for playing instruments than playing music.
Music consists of the playing of instruments. Pop music is generally what used to be called "vocals with musical accompaniment"; the music was/is subservient to the aims of the singer(s) and lyricist(s). That's generally not a good thing to do to music. But the voice is also an instrument, at least when the voice belongs to someone like Cecilia Bartoli (in Mariah Carey's case - and in pop in general - it's mostly an Inanity Device). I luv FZ, but I don't like Rush or Dream Theater. The few "illegal" MP3s I own are either Captain Beefheart bootlegs, the in-the-news Public Enemy stuff, or out-of-print Soft Machine recordings. The MP3s (or proprietary stuff, like Liquid Audio and such) out there in cyberspace are generally of the pop variety, be it electronica (rhythm tracks in search of a tune) or been-there-done-that pop junk ("underground" or not, it's all essentially the same if you strip away the subcultural baggage).
Wake me when labels like FMP, Incus, Nato, or suit-addled Blue Note have MP3s on display.
Yes, that's the only thing i can think about that we are lacking..
Well, it'd be kinda nice to have GNU tools for set-top boxes and "smart" toasters and the like. And maybe a Free Software substitute for stuff like Pro Tools or Delphi. And maybe a fully-open implementation of streaming audio and video standards (and compression algorithms)... The list goes on and on, and it will grow and grow in the future.
The way I see it, free music can become very similar to free software.
Imagine for instance, that we allow free redistribution of the music, and that very little of it is actually sold.
Imagine, for instance, that the artists make their money from tangible goods that come as a result of their popularity.. Selling concert tickets, T Shirts, Merchandising their craft.
May I have a minute or two of your time? I'm sorry if I've come a little too late to this party.
Your solutions point to impossible examples; sure, the Stones and the Floyd can make tons of money this way, even while their recordings are yawn-inducing loss-leaders designed to promote the latest World Tour, but this has nothing to do with music, and everything to do with showbiz. Popular music has more to do with showbiz than it does with music; it's a distinction that goes largely unnoticed. Thanks to the suits who work at the large corporations affiliated with the dreaded RIAA (and the suits who work in showbiz management), Mick'n'Keef, and whomever's-left-in-Pink-Floyd-these-days have been able to establish brand names that are as powerful as brand names such as Microsoft and Oracle. This has little or nothing to do with music; we're talking about brand names and product. There are only subtle differences between Mariah Carey, Marilyn Manson, and whatever little-known band or DJ is appearing at your favorite local venue - but perhaps this flame-inducing statement probably belongs elsewhere.
Yeah, maybe it's OK for some just-started band to try to make their money off of ancillary merchandise - they've probably come up with a logo and an "angle" before they've even come up with a full set-list. And they've chosen a genre of music that is highly marketable, thanks (again) to the dreaded RIAA, the dreadful agent-weasels, and their henchmen in the radio industry (which, again, has little to do with music, even though their programming is rife with it). But what of those people who make "real" music - i.e., non-pop music. Do Ellery Eskelin (who?) or Fred van Hove (who?) now have to sell t-shirts and assorted tchotchkes? I've seen people wearing Coltrane or Beethoven t-shirts, but I don't think the licensing monies are doled out to them posthumously. As a kid, I remember reading an article about the (then pre-academe) composer/saxophonist Anthony Braxton (who?) in which it was mentioned that he was having trouble coming up with the money to pay his phone bill; Braxton at that point had already gained a worldwide reputation, with gigs and recordings in North America, Europe, and Japan. Gee, maybe if he'd come up with a "Braxton World Tour '73" logo and sold World Tour t-shirts at the concert halls, that phone bill wouldn't have been a problem! These individuals I've mentioned (and perhaps thousands of others) don't have any misconceptions about music being a "hobby" - they've spent a hell of a lot more time studying, formulating, practicing, rehearsing, and flat-out working than many of you will ever do in your chosen fields.
I'm getting a little tired of these "Let Them Eat Cake" arguments (i.e. "free your music, and the money will follow"). I respect and understand the arguments and rationales for Free Software, but it doesn't necessarily scale to all fields of endeavor. Is the sheet music equivalent to the source code, or is the recording equivalent to the source code? That simple question should tell you that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence. In the art world, a JPEG can't compare to the "hard copy" of an actual painting or sculpture - so there's no problem with having that JPEG freely distributable on the Web; there will, if the work in question is good, be someone out there who will want to purchase that actual painting or sculpture. With music - or, more specifically, a recorded work of music - the MP2/MP3/MPEG-4 digitized version can be "CD quality" if the bitrate is high enough and the source material is recorded and encoded well. That means there's less of an incentive to buy the "hard copy" version.
Those of you who write code for a living, how would you like it if your compensation came this way: you get paid a few cents each time someone runs your code, no matter how large or small that code was. If that doesn't bring in enough cash to buy all those nice toys, well... there's plenty of McJobs out there; maybe you're "just not working hard enough". Maybe you can supplement your income by selling screensavers and mouse pads with the wonderful logo you've designed for your shared library? Can we please put an end to these ivory-tower solutions for "helping" musicians in the digital age? I'll have a hell of a lot more respect for Ram Samudrala's Free Music Philosophy once he's spent a few years making a living solely through music-making.
The word "Monopoly" has become MEANINGLESS. Either a company needs to have *ONE HUNDRED EXPLETIVE PERCENT* of the market share, or be the ONLY company providing a product in that area, or the term is MEANINGLESS. A Monopoly is not 90% of the market, because that proves that there are other products out there. It's not 95% of the market. It's either all or nothing...
AT&T was a monopoly, but it didn't have 100% market share; there were competitors like MCI and GTE, who probably weren't very pleased to be permanently consigned to "niche" status by the near-omnipotence of The 800-Pound Octopus Known As Ma Bell. OS/2 wasn't designed to be a "niche" OS; it was supposed to be the successor to the ubiquitous DOS, no? It ended up a victim of IBM's cluelessness and Microsoft's predatory practices. But the fact that there are still passionate (or nostalgic) OS/2 users out there may be a clue that a superior OS got muscled out of a chance to really succeed in the MS-tainted marketplace.
Windows 95-98-NT,2002.4, are all property of Microsoft. They own it, they can sell it at any damn price or any damn way that they want to. They don't HAVE to sell you what you want to buy. In return, you don't HAVE to buy what they want to sell...
MS can do whatever they want, as long as it can't be construed to be an act of flexing their OS-monopoly muscle to extend their dominance to other spheres of activity. Like the browser market, for instance.
I've got to go to class, I'll finish this rant later.
There's probably better things to do on a Friday:)
I agree. Editorials should be proofread more carefully. It looks like this was posted after not too carefully running a spell checker, hence invented/invited etc.
Actually, "invited" is spelled correctly. A spell checker would not have flagged a mischosen word. It takes actual human intervention to catch that one.
Disclaimer: I don't use a spell checker, so I'm assuming that it only checks for spelling mistakes.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know. Take a look at the GNUstep site; they also make mention of Apple's reference material, which includes an Obj-C overview. I don't know how good it is - I've perused it on and off for several weeks, but haven't tried even a HelloWorld.app as of yet. Maybe when those 28-hour days start, I'll have the time to...
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b) there is no b).
c) if you listen closely, you'll hear the sound of an 800-pound octopus shooting itself in the foot.
d) Bull [sic] Gates calls it "The Daily".
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I think you're missing the issue in part; Creationists and Fundamentalists don't speak on behalf of all Christians, and they don't speak for me. If I regard the creation or flood accounts in Genesis as poetry (instead of scientific fact), it doesn't mean that I'm a heretic, and it doesn't mean that there isn't a truth or two to be gleaned from that poetry. Obviously the world isn't 5,000 years old - and I'm not sure the Bible explicitly says so (but I'll defer to you on that one).
On the future *cough* "Saint Teresa of Calcutta" *cough*: I've been described, in an Everything node as a Pinko Commie Bedwetter. That's probably not far from the truth. My qualms with the Mother were politically-oriented (no, I don't have insider info about her, if that was what you were asking about). But my point was, if I had any point at all, that I could take the Christopher Hitchens version of the truth about her (which is an account that I respect) and still use that as material with which I could teach a Sunday School class.
Gotta go! In the words of St Ahnuld: "I'll be back!"
(Unless Rob's database totally craps out in the interim :)
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Apparently so.
What did you do? Bomb an abortion clinic?
I'm pro-choice, actually.
I once took in a drug dealer after he got arrested by the cops. The cops stole his cash, his stash, and put a shotgun to his head, never charged him with anything and threatened to kill him. He works as an Oracle DBA now, of course he was just selling pot to get through college and sold to only those that wanted it. Like me.
I kept 2 people housed for 1 entire year. I was making very good money, they were still struggling through school. Does this make me a good person? NO. I receive similar help, from my parents, and I know how much it sucks to be really really poor.
I've done the same sort of things that you have, plus some hack^H^H^H^Hcracking (after a great deal of soul-searching) that I'm probably not at liberty to discuss. I don't do "good works" in order to prove myself to be a "good person" or to earn some place in heaven or something. That's not part of Christianity. The "good works" are simply part of one's responsibility as a Christian ("For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat..."); I've only scratched the surface of what I could or should be doing. If God provides the wherewithal and the venue (as He has done in the past), I'll do 1000x more. And I would still be only scratching the surface of what I could or should be doing. That's something I learned from the "evil" Mother Teresa, even though I'm well aware of dozens of complaints (often valid ones) about her - and not just in Calcutta.
I have done a great deal of "soul" searching you haven't done any.
Bully for you. I was born into a family that includes an Anglican minister and several church organists. Church stuff bored me and I became a 6-year-old atheist. Many years later, through studying Zen and Hinduism (and almost becoming a monk), I decided to look into the Bible after reading Gandhi's autobiography. I've done my homework; I've taken the Leap. I've been amazed; I've been disappointed. To this day, I'm annoyed at the Culture of Christianity here in the States - I feel, in some churches, like I'm crashing the party. There is a great deal of daily soul searching that goes into being a Christian. If you think there's some sort of blind, unthinking component to faith, then you haven't done your homework, you are the one being irrational. Faith != Sheepfulness. I think some pop-Xian theologian once said "Faith is a verb" or something like that; there's a grain of truth to it.
Note: previous use of the word "charitable" had nothing to do with money or charity-giving. It was in relation to being generous in terms of finding a good thing to say about one's enemy or foe.
My time's run out. Flame away. I wasn't trying to convert you or anything; I just get annoyed at times at both secular culture's lack of understanding about Christianity and (U.S. evangelical) Christian culture's lack of understanding about the secular world. It's been fun, and I hope you live a long, long time and revisit these issues. Have a nice weekend, fellow /.-er. I gotta go bomb an abortion clinic :)
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Back to a distant, earlier point: You shouldn't attribute the actions of despots to religion. A despot uses whatever is at his disposal to control his subjects, be it religion or something totally unrelated.
A million prayers never put a single loaf of bread on a table. God doesn't help people, people help people.
There's tons of examples of God helping people through the works of people. There was an orphanage in England, I believe, that never asked for a dime from anyone; the head of the place just prayed for the resources to be supplied. And for years those resources were supplied, no matter how obscure the request. People brought the money, food, materials, etc, in answer to the guy's prayers. I've seen and heard similar, though usually less spectacular, stories throughout my travels.
Instead of wasting your time going to Church once a week, donate some time to a charity instead. It's exceedingly easy to pray it's a lot more difficult to actually get off your self-righteous ass and do something.
You don't even know me. I've wheedled and schlepped produce to soup kitchens, I've given to charities, probably above and beyond the giving of most people; I've hung out with the homeless and counseled drug addicts (and aspiring drug addicts); I've even broken the law in attempts to help others. God doesn't necessarily just do spectacular things on his own to help people (e.g. things like unexplainable physical healings) - he often works through the actions of people like you and me. You don't even have to believe in God to be an unwitting tool for His purposes.
You call me selfish, look in the mirror you sanctimonious twit.
When did I call you selfish? You may have me confused with someone else. I've tried to keep the discourse on a somewhat polite level.
I already told you that I didn't endorse her 100%; I'm not Catholic, and my views on birth control are the same as most others - it doesn't take away my admiration for John Paul II and Mother Teresa; I don't necessarily have to like everything about a person I admire. I think you're letting your anger override your reading skills.
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They take the jobs because they are better and higher-paying than what's on offer. The alternative is usually subsistance agriculture, which makes computer assembly look awfully decent.
If those jobs weren't better, the third world folks wouldn't take 'em. That's the beauty of a free market.
But what we end up with, in time, is workforces everywhere being reduced to near-subsistence wages. Nike has moved its manufacturing from country to country in Asia in search of the lowest possible wage, competitors follow suit. "American" automakers become Mexican ones, as long as two-dollar-a-day labor increases shareholder value. Ross Perot's famed "Giant Sucking Sound" was old news before he even coined the catchphrase; given time, that Sound will suck for nearly everybody. In Perot-ian fashion, let me direct you to this chart.
I don't mean to start a flame war, or to extend this thread; this is just a two-cents thing. My fear is that even though Amalgamated Widgets is helping out their short-term bottom line, they're reducing the pool of people who can afford to buy their products (Vietnamese shoe-assemblers make better money than a subsistence farmer until the contract runs out and the manufacturer moves to, say, Myanmar, but it's not so much more of a wage that they can run out and buy all the Modern Conveniences that we're used to in the West).
If a new middle class in these new economies doesn't form/grow in both number and in purchasing power faster than the middle class shrinks in the West, there may be a problem in the long run. Of course, there's eleventy-jillion other factors at play; I just wanted to voice a concern about a couple. It all seems like a dollars-and-cents equivalent to the Behavioral Sink. I don't expect a well-fed venue like /. to give a damn about this, though. Thank you for your time.
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Just as Jerry Falwell and his peers tend to make a mockery of Christianity with their petty non-Christian agendas, the various horror stories you've cited were incited by utterly bogus motivations - it would be inaccurate to attribute them to a religion. I don't condemn Islam because of the fatwah against Rushdie; I don't condemn Hinduism because of the sectarian violence in India - the same goes for Christianity and Ulster. The wrong-ness doesn't come from the religion; it comes from the mob of adherents who are trashing their own religion in order to achieve a secular "greater good" - the elimination of mob-defined (not God-defined) "infidels".
Just as you shouldn't let an insistence on rational thought or scientific proof get in the way of your relationship with God (...if I may be allowed a bit of Xian jargon), you shouldn't let politicians^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpreachers like Falwell get in the way either. They don't speak for all of Christianity, and, even worse, it's a rare day when they're on-topic enough to be able to speak for Jesus. Even Gandhi had a good word or three to say about Christianity; I'm sorry if things have happened to you to prevent you from being so charitable.
I would much rather have someone like Thomas Merton, Mother Teresa, John Paul II, or Francis Schaeffer be the "public face of Christianity". Yes, they were/are flawed individuals. No, I don't always agree with their actions or writings. But at least they were on-topic, and none of them were/are the utter embarassment that people like Falwell are.
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Rob the Party Pooper. Shooting down all the wonderful conspiracy theories. Well, this semi-downtime gives everybody a chance to rest up their flamethrowers. Right?
BURP!!
(with apologies to... M**PT!!)
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You should have read my post before spewing. The things you've mentioned are obviously not good things, and I never said they were. The rest of your post damns the religion of a billion people (and religion in general) by selecting a bunch of wacko items and incidents dating back to the 6th Century.
But here's the riddle, here's the clue: I wasn't talking about religion.
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Agreed. I'm a Christian who detests Falwell's politics, but I find him a very charming individual. The U.S. is a secular republic, and gays and lesbians (and bisexuals and transgendered individuals, etc, etc, etc...) are due the same protections under the laws of the nation as everyone else has. If we are to hate anything, it should be the smear-and-obfuscation campaigns ("militant homosexuals are demanding special rights!") by Falwell, Bauer, Robertson, and Dobson - and a bunch of politician-lemmings and voter-lemmings - to deny the humanity of a segment of the populace.
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Let me suggest that the one true religion cannot be corrupted. We know that the Inquisition was corrupt religion and so was the Children's Crusade. This invalidates Christianity as being the true religion in my eyes.
Does a BSOD invalidate all of computing?
God can't be adequately "solved" or grasped via some sort of scientific study or legal cross-examination. If He created everything, his existence lies outside of everything (does Woz live inside of a Mac ROM in Peoria?), outside of our mundane temporal/spatial existence. Scriptures are a starting point, but to just stake one's belief upon dead-trees-and-ink will not be adequate either.
Christianity is not, first and foremost, about science and cross-examination. You're barking up the wrong tree. The diversity of expressions of Christianity is, despite doctrinal differences on the periphery, a Good Thing®, not an invalidation of the "user manual" - I would be somewhat turned off if it was all some Southern Baptist thing (Baptists, please don't take offense; I'm just talking about styles of, and cultural differences in, expressions of faith).
There may come a time when you get tired of the BSODs in your life. I hope you will, someday, rm -rf your preconceptions, and fdisk and install an open mind on the matter. Don't let media whores like Falwell drive you screaming from the notion of belief. I think he means well, to some extent, but he does get on one's nerves with thought-police garbage like this. Leave Tinky-Winky alone, Dr Falwell!
Disclaimer: I am neither a theologian, an evangelist, or an eloquent spokesperson for Christianity.
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Why is it illegitimate for bands to derive income from recordings?
I'm sick of bands showing up once every two years for a two-month tour of six major cities to promote a new album and raking it in through record sales.
The bands that tour like this constitute 0.0001% of bands. What about the rest?
How is your band doing?
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Having said that, maybe RandySC's bon mots are a wee bit OTT, but if you've experienced any of today's Threads From Hell (or read the non-OTT part of his submission), maybe you can excuse someone's MS-Disgust-o-Meter® running in the red.
Disclaimer: I'm asleep.
Rants Are Optional
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Anyway... "astroturfing" refers to the creation of fake "grass roots" support, something that many political organizations and corporations do in the US.
Long-winded, yes, but I hope this helps.
NP: Soft Machine 4 :) (r.m.p lurker!)
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Astroturf is the last refuge of scoundrels whose hired-mouthpieces have failed them.
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Music consists of the playing of instruments. Pop music is generally what used to be called "vocals with musical accompaniment"; the music was/is subservient to the aims of the singer(s) and lyricist(s). That's generally not a good thing to do to music. But the voice is also an instrument, at least when the voice belongs to someone like Cecilia Bartoli (in Mariah Carey's case - and in pop in general - it's mostly an Inanity Device). I luv FZ, but I don't like Rush or Dream Theater. The few "illegal" MP3s I own are either Captain Beefheart bootlegs, the in-the-news Public Enemy stuff, or out-of-print Soft Machine recordings. The MP3s (or proprietary stuff, like Liquid Audio and such) out there in cyberspace are generally of the pop variety, be it electronica (rhythm tracks in search of a tune) or been-there-done-that pop junk ("underground" or not, it's all essentially the same if you strip away the subcultural baggage).
Wake me when labels like FMP, Incus, Nato, or suit-addled Blue Note have MP3s on display.
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Well, it'd be kinda nice to have GNU tools for set-top boxes and "smart" toasters and the like. And maybe a Free Software substitute for stuff like Pro Tools or Delphi. And maybe a fully-open implementation of streaming audio and video standards (and compression algorithms)... The list goes on and on, and it will grow and grow in the future.
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Imagine for instance, that we allow free redistribution of the music, and that very little of it is actually sold.
Imagine, for instance, that the artists make their money from tangible goods that come as a result of their popularity.. Selling concert tickets, T Shirts, Merchandising their craft.
May I have a minute or two of your time? I'm sorry if I've come a little too late to this party.
Your solutions point to impossible examples; sure, the Stones and the Floyd can make tons of money this way, even while their recordings are yawn-inducing loss-leaders designed to promote the latest World Tour, but this has nothing to do with music, and everything to do with showbiz. Popular music has more to do with showbiz than it does with music; it's a distinction that goes largely unnoticed. Thanks to the suits who work at the large corporations affiliated with the dreaded RIAA (and the suits who work in showbiz management), Mick'n'Keef, and whomever's-left-in-Pink-Floyd-these-days have been able to establish brand names that are as powerful as brand names such as Microsoft and Oracle. This has little or nothing to do with music; we're talking about brand names and product. There are only subtle differences between Mariah Carey, Marilyn Manson, and whatever little-known band or DJ is appearing at your favorite local venue - but perhaps this flame-inducing statement probably belongs elsewhere.
Yeah, maybe it's OK for some just-started band to try to make their money off of ancillary merchandise - they've probably come up with a logo and an "angle" before they've even come up with a full set-list. And they've chosen a genre of music that is highly marketable, thanks (again) to the dreaded RIAA, the dreadful agent-weasels, and their henchmen in the radio industry (which, again, has little to do with music, even though their programming is rife with it). But what of those people who make "real" music - i.e., non-pop music. Do Ellery Eskelin (who?) or Fred van Hove (who?) now have to sell t-shirts and assorted tchotchkes? I've seen people wearing Coltrane or Beethoven t-shirts, but I don't think the licensing monies are doled out to them posthumously. As a kid, I remember reading an article about the (then pre-academe) composer/saxophonist Anthony Braxton (who?) in which it was mentioned that he was having trouble coming up with the money to pay his phone bill; Braxton at that point had already gained a worldwide reputation, with gigs and recordings in North America, Europe, and Japan. Gee, maybe if he'd come up with a "Braxton World Tour '73" logo and sold World Tour t-shirts at the concert halls, that phone bill wouldn't have been a problem! These individuals I've mentioned (and perhaps thousands of others) don't have any misconceptions about music being a "hobby" - they've spent a hell of a lot more time studying, formulating, practicing, rehearsing, and flat-out working than many of you will ever do in your chosen fields.
I'm getting a little tired of these "Let Them Eat Cake" arguments (i.e. "free your music, and the money will follow"). I respect and understand the arguments and rationales for Free Software, but it doesn't necessarily scale to all fields of endeavor. Is the sheet music equivalent to the source code, or is the recording equivalent to the source code? That simple question should tell you that there isn't a one-to-one correspondence. In the art world, a JPEG can't compare to the "hard copy" of an actual painting or sculpture - so there's no problem with having that JPEG freely distributable on the Web; there will, if the work in question is good, be someone out there who will want to purchase that actual painting or sculpture. With music - or, more specifically, a recorded work of music - the MP2/MP3/MPEG-4 digitized version can be "CD quality" if the bitrate is high enough and the source material is recorded and encoded well. That means there's less of an incentive to buy the "hard copy" version.
Those of you who write code for a living, how would you like it if your compensation came this way: you get paid a few cents each time someone runs your code, no matter how large or small that code was. If that doesn't bring in enough cash to buy all those nice toys, well... there's plenty of McJobs out there; maybe you're "just not working hard enough". Maybe you can supplement your income by selling screensavers and mouse pads with the wonderful logo you've designed for your shared library? Can we please put an end to these ivory-tower solutions for "helping" musicians in the digital age? I'll have a hell of a lot more respect for Ram Samudrala's Free Music Philosophy once he's spent a few years making a living solely through music-making.
Fin du rant. Thanks for stopping by.
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AT&T was a monopoly, but it didn't have 100% market share; there were competitors like MCI and GTE, who probably weren't very pleased to be permanently consigned to "niche" status by the near-omnipotence of The 800-Pound Octopus Known As Ma Bell. OS/2 wasn't designed to be a "niche" OS; it was supposed to be the successor to the ubiquitous DOS, no? It ended up a victim of IBM's cluelessness and Microsoft's predatory practices. But the fact that there are still passionate (or nostalgic) OS/2 users out there may be a clue that a superior OS got muscled out of a chance to really succeed in the MS-tainted marketplace.
Windows 95-98-NT,2002.4, are all property of Microsoft. They own it, they can sell it at any damn price or any damn way that they want to. They don't HAVE to sell you what you want to buy. In return, you don't HAVE to buy what they want to sell...
MS can do whatever they want, as long as it can't be construed to be an act of flexing their OS-monopoly muscle to extend their dominance to other spheres of activity. Like the browser market, for instance.
I've got to go to class, I'll finish this rant later.
There's probably better things to do on a Friday :)
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Microsoft | "Windows 3.1" | (Microsoft & Windows) | Win95 | Win98 | "Windows NT" | WinNT | "Win NT" | w2k | "Windows 2000" | Windows2000
3,332,724
java & !(indonesia | island)
1,794,448
linux | GNU
744,700
(Apple & (computer | Macintosh | Mac | Gershwin | Rhapsody)) | MacOS | "Yellow Box" | iMac
590,037
Solaris | SunOS | "Sun Microsystems"
483,895
freebsd | netbsd | openbsd
117,799
"hp/ux"
101,940
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Actually, "invited" is spelled correctly. A spell checker would not have flagged a mischosen word. It takes actual human intervention to catch that one.
Disclaimer: I don't use a spell checker, so I'm assuming that it only checks for spelling mistakes.
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