I concur. If it were possible to fabricate a cease-fire and have both parties held to it, then that seems to be the way to go.
OTOH, how plausible is that?
War is bad, war is evil, yadda, yadda. As long as there are humans on this rock and as long as they are self-aware, there will be war.
I've always thought that there should be an uninhabited area where wars should be fought. No civilians, no property to rebuild, no scorched-earth policies. Kinda like an arena. Both sides square off. Whoever is left standing wins. Quick, less bloody, and televised as an event along with the Super Bowl (ok, now I'm getting twisted;-)
Go here. Hit `Parent', or this. It's Signal 11's comment. He replied to your comment here.
To reiterate: Signal 11 made a comment. You replied to it. He replied to your reply. I replied to his. You became confused, replied to my reply thinking it was a reply to your original reply, when, in fact, it was a reply to a reply to your reply. Got it?:-)
"There are too many factors to even begin an analysis on the probability of any of these questions becoming an issue."
Wow, I wish I could have used that as an excuse not to answer exam essays; Since you are unable to provide me with ratio of probablitity for these essay questions happening with the likelyhood of where the world will be in an unspecified amount of time n, I must respectfully decine to answer them.
"Question 11 is particularily hard to determine because it assumes that an unnamed aircraft would be flying over a militaristic regime dropping computers. For what reason? Why would somebody do this, as opposed to dropping food? It's completely illogical!"
Since when has logic played a key role in what happens in this world?
"As such, I can't even begin to tell you the probability of such a thing happening - I can only tell you it never has happened before."
Ok, one more time...THAT'S NOT THE QUESTION!
"The probability of him successfully guessing anywhere even near where it really will be is remote.. "
Number one, he doesn't have to guess acurately. This isn't the freakin' stock market. Number two, he is giving you a question to answer. Are you trying to say that unless someone can accurately predict the future they will not receive an answer to their question from you? If not, then please correct me. If so, then I think you've had enogh crack for one day.
"As for myself - I have more useful things to do than go on vision quests."
To which I say, Imagination is more important than intelligence -- Albert Einstien. There is someone who uses your vaunted scientific method, yet still has the capacity to say, `What if?'. That's the entore point of this exercize. What if?
Agreed. In that same vein, I can use a pipe wrench to fix the leak that keeps my basement from flooding, or I can use it to bludgon your skull in;-)
"You have to do the research because you enjoy it--if you focus on the possible altruistic possibilities you set yourself up to be crushed by the petty and self-serving uses it will actually be put to."
Hrmmm...or not. Look at medicine. Just about any medicine can be used to hurt, maim, or kill, just as it can be used to kill. Do understand that I'm not trying to compare what we do with technology with what a medical researcher would do; however, I feel that if I'm focused on a problem, then trying to be the objective researcer brings me no closer to my goal.
I guess my point is that, pure objectivity notwithstanding, unless you have an underlying goal or purpose, the research that you do, though meaningfull, may not be as satisfying as it could be. If I'm doing research into encryption, I will be thinking about possible and probible uses/issues that revolve around individual privacy. I will not be thinking about political uses, nor will I be entirely objective.
"however atleast half the questions posed aren't relevant to today's 'net."
Ummm, one of the postulates of the exam is the 'net of the future.
"Provided it did occur, there would be precious little time to spend making pleas on usenet or elsewhere."
Ok. Let's think about this for a minute. Anyone dropping shiny boxes that talk and allow you to connect to the internet would (logically) be dropped by someone sympathetic to your plight. How hard would it be to make your home site the default homepage of the box? How tough would it be to build a GPS into the box? How about 512 bit encryption?
Here's my take on the scenario: "The time has come to solve your problem in the most fundamental sense, and save the life of your daughter." So, you read the instructions (in Korean) and fire up the box. You are immediately connected via ssl to the homepage for Free Korea(tm). They ask for your first name and if you are in any danger. You reply (speaking, of course, since you are illiterate) that your daughter is sick and that your family is starving. This is translated via voice recognition software into plain text (Uniocode), encrypted, and sent along with your exact coordinates (remember the GPS?) to Free Korea's site. The data is correlated, flight plans are made, and the next day another aircraft flys over. This time, it drops c-rats (icky, but they will get you by), medicine for your daughter, and instructions to call back in ASAP. So you eat the first real food you've had in days and your daughter's coughing lessens enough for her to sleep. When you call back in, you are told that you will have to move someplace and to start packing.
Meanwhile, back at Free Korea, your plight has been posted to the homepage in several languages along with stories from hundreds or thousands of other people. Free Korea, working with the G7 nations, have been putting pressure on North Korea to improve it's human rights practices; now they have hard evidence.
So you wake up the next morning to the sound of the aircraft again and eagerly check the package left in it's wake. This time, it's maps of the area (topo and symbol), water purification tablets, more food, more medicine, instructions, and something even more important: hope. You learn that millions of people are aware of your situation and that the superpowers are working to help you (gee, I didn't know they cared;-). The instructions direct you to some clear land close by; a refugee center with food, water, doctors, shelter, etc. By this time, you are too amazed by the help you have received to not go. Your daughter is actually up and moving around. The severity of the coughing has lessened and you feel ready to make this trip.
I'll stop now, but that's the point of the excercize. I believe you failed for failing to read the directions...
" It probably won't get an 'A', but atleast it'll get moderated up a point, maybe even two."
"However, don't be insinuating that I'm an evil person because I'm not devoting my life to helping that starving peasant in Korea and instead I'm helping to move technology forward."
Who's to say that you aren't doing both? Granted, technology and the net won't fix all of the world's problems. It does, however, have the potential to fix many of the world's problems. See where I'm going with this?
An analogy: If I work in the Chevy plant in Michigan and my specialty is building diesel vans, shold I feel guilty because I'm not helping out my local hospital in my free time? No, because the hospital uses the trucks that I build. The trucks are used as ambulances, delivery trucks, blood donation vehicles, breast cancer screening vehicles, etc. I am helping the hospital, though indirectly.
Your work to advance technology as a whole can pay dividends in indirect and unforseen ways. Hell, you might be the one who figures out a low-cost, low-power sattelite modem that is used in the machine that's dropped to that little girl's family.
Anyway, to get back on topic, these are excellent questions. I can also see two seperate ways of interpreting them: one is with the thought of `Is the internet really all it's cracked up to be', the other is `how can I think outside of the box to make the internet/technology/my toaster accomplish these tasks'. Keep these precepts in mind as you answer the questions, and I bet you will come to vastly seperate conclusions.
It would appear that I didn't make myself very clear. My bad;-)
I was actually thinking more along the lines of support, as opposed to merely getting copies of programs.
As an example, let's say that MS dropps off of the face of the Earth over the weekend. Come Monday morning, there is no campus in Redmond. Who are the people who use Microsoft products going to call for support? I do understand that there are a lot of other companies out there who do third party support, but Microsoft still does the lion's share.
Back to the SOL companies, what would they do? They have a crappy of options avaliable.
They can:
Keep using MS products until these products no longer meet the needs of the business. By that time, IT and management have done their research and come to a sensible solution. They then change platforms and experience the growing pains associated with this kind of major corporate change. This, IMHO, would be the best soloution, though neither a perfect one nor a terribly likely one.
Panick, switch immediately to Linux, *BSD, MacOS, or Amiga, pass all associated costs to the consumer, and promtly go out of business. Not a good thing when one business does this; devastating when half of Corporate America does this. While I doubt the `half of Corporate America' bit, it is possible and one cannot guage the effects of such a trauma. I also feel that this is the most unlikely scenario.
Begin migrating some systems over to an alternate OS (probably at the behest of the admins;-). Keep MS around for the Office Suite. Have a difficult time communicating with clients who only use Star Office. Adapt in a very non-linear way. Though there would be much confusion and loss of [business|money|face], businesses would survive. Microsoft products would start to be shunned, then go the way of the dinosaurs. This is the most likely option. It is one that would be very costly, but probably would not bring the economy to it's knees. Sooner or later, someone (or several someones) would fill the void and after ten years or so, Microsoft would be nothing more than a bad dream.
How does this relate to something like Standard Oil? Well, everyone uses oil. People need it distributed. There would be chaos for a while until everyone decided who owned which pipe and what-not. Someone else would come in to fill the void. The economy would take a hit, but it would not die (IMHO).
"It is obvious that the Microsoft case is vastly different than the Standard Oil and AT&T anti-trust cases."
To a point, I agree. However, when you look at how much businesses rely on MS products in the US alone, and compare the cases on purely econimical terms, you would notice that they really aren't that different from each other. If any one of these companies were to fall off of the face of the planet at the height of their power, I believe that there would be a severe econimic problem (for a while, anyway).
"Well, isn't this a stronger case to leave this market alone... and that it will eventually situate itself for the better? Close to the same thing happened with IBM. The trial of IBM lasted for over a decade!! In the end, what they were fighting about was next to a moot point and the case was essentially thrown out by Reagan."
Maybe. But as someone else pointed out, one of the reasons Compaq has been allowing an alternate OS onto some of their machines is because MS cannot afford to enfore predatory business practices while they are under such scrutiny. I think that if the Government just keeps the Microsoft case in the open for five years, that will be enough to break the monopoly and restore a sembalance of competition. In that respect, the government wouldn't actually do anything and the market would correct itself. Too bad it takes Uncle Sam playing nanny...
"It can be argued that this is merely the cycle of business. IBM is still doing well, but they do not have the absolute control they were feared to have in the (then) future."
IBM is also a completely different company now. This is what I would like to see happen to MS (that, and forcing them to open up their `standards'). In five years' time, the company would be a leaner, better company releasing better products that compete well in the market on their technical merits.
...bendawg is simply trying to check his understanding...
"Answer me this question: do you need root privileges to create or delete files?"
Irrelevant to the original post. The logic goes something like...
if (user.name == "root"){ program.delete("/usr/bin/something_really_import ant_to_the_system"); }else if (user.name == "Joe Luser"){ program.delete("/home/stuff_he_didn't_need_anywa y"); }else{ program.delete("nothing_because_it_can't_run"); }
It just doesn't seem to have come out that way. Be nice to germinating thoughts and you may find that they eventually germinate into really good insights...
In any event, yes *nix is a better designed system. But, if you have Joe Luser reading his mail as root, the system is just as vulnerable to attack as any Win* system.
<shudder> I know that girl. 23. 5'3". 125 on a rainy day. Green eyes to die for. Wavy, thick, chessnut hair. Name's Beth. I went to school with her. I had the biggest crush on her known to man!;-) Then she broke my heart and moved to Colorado Springs to go to school. Last I heard, she was moving to Boulder.
I feel your pain. I work for NTT right now (as a developer, not a phone tech). Packard Bells fail so consistantly that, given a model number, I can tell you what is going to break and in which order.
Legend 428CD: CD-Rom, combo card, mobo, power supply
Multimedia S606 power supply, power supply, mobo
General Packard Bell System: CD-Rom, combo card, power supply, mobo.
"When the techniques are refined sufficiently, it will be just about as easy as mixing the ingredients and stirring."
Kind of like the first compiler? IOW, they had to hand code the assembler in binary to assemble the real compiler so that the compiler could compile.
I forsee a massive warehouse full of vats and white coats working for years to create the "nanotech compiler". Once that's completed, the creation of nano-anything will be a trivial (relatively) task. Therefore the prive will drop.
"Everyone is making the dangerous assumption here that RealNetworks is *combining* this information for their evil spying practices."
Nope. Everyone is pissed because the information is being gathered without your consent! Ok, let's say that I download this product. I pay for it and as I'm unlocking it with the key that they've given me, a dialog box comes up and says, "Hi, were going to gather a bit of information about you to be better able to provide you withe the products and services that fit your lifestyle. We won't keep this information very long and we won't sell it.". I'd be more than happy to give out my particulars.
However
That's not the case. The company says, "here's your product. Enjoy.". Then the product gathers whatever information it wants to and sends it back home. To put it another way, if you put a stereo in your car, you don't expect it to use your antenna to communicate with the stereo manufacturer, do you? Would you feel better about it if you gave consent?
This is more about common courtesy than anything...
"I must say, I lose a bit of respect for/. every time I see such a childish, selfish rant like this one marked as "Insightful". "
Just remember that this is a different insight than yours. The fact that it is different does not necesarily make it wrong. That mode of thinking is dangerous...
" want a "Maximum Threshold" to complement the "Minimum Threshold", and I would set my range from -1 to 3"
Yeah, but then you would never see Signal 11's comments!;-)
Seriously, having a max threshold would prevent you from seeing (IMHO) a lot of insightful stuff. Not to mention all of Bruce Perens' and Eric Raymond's comments. I don't know if I personally could live with that trade; YMMV.
My comments aren't starting at Score:2 anymore though, despite my karma still being high. Did Rob remove this feature or is it broken?
I don't think Rob took it out. I do think he's trying to do more of a graduated thing, though. I also think he's upped the hard threshold for the bonus (as evidenced by the fact that I don't have it yet, even though I've seen people with lower karma than me with the bonus).
I also think he's tweaking the bonus system. The "moderate this down" option for replies doesn't seem to be working (I get this from reading other posts, not because I've experienced it). IMVHO, I think that if your karma's that high, you should have complete control over your bonus points and how they are spent.
Be careful with the blanket generalizations. The way I do this is by checking the comment ID. If it's low (pre 50) I mark it as unfair. If it's in a median range (mid 75% of the number of articles) then I'll look through the thread and base the decision on context. If it's in the last 50 or so comments I'll usually mark it as fair.
Posts that contain "Me too!" always get marked fair...;-)
Posts that enlighten me to a topic almost always get marked as unfair. We are all different, and a comment that restates something in a slightly different way may do me more good than an earlier comment. These are usually also based on context, but not always.
On another topic, I've always had a problem with semmantics when I M2. Let's say that there's a comment that's marked as "Insightful" when it is just based on factual information. Was that an unfair moderation? Even worse, I've seen a "First Post!" that was marked as "Redundant" even though it was the first post! Is that bad moderation? Is that a moderator who was too in a hurry to select the proper moderation? Should I mark it as unfair? Comments?
WRT the above blurb, I usually say that it's fair. If I'm that tied in knots about it, I'll leave it alone.
Well, I must say that my karma has gone up spontaneously over the past couple of days. I took note of the last time I was moderated up, and karma was at 21. Now I look and it's 22. The only reason that I can see is that I meta-moderate religiously (Rob's given me the opportunity; I'm certainly going to take it;-).
Therefore, unless it's a bug, M2 does give you more karma. I just wish Rob would tell us how many time you have to M2 before you get another point...
On second thought, no, I'm glad we don't know. Then it would seem to be more of a chore than a previlege...
And before I get flamed as a "karma competitor", the reason why I check my user page so frequently is because it's the easiest way for me to keep track of whose responded to my posts.
Slashdot Mirror
I concur. If it were possible to fabricate a cease-fire and have both parties held to it, then that seems to be the way to go.
;-)
OTOH, how plausible is that?
War is bad, war is evil, yadda, yadda. As long as there are humans on this rock and as long as they are self-aware, there will be war.
I've always thought that there should be an uninhabited area where wars should be fought. No civilians, no property to rebuild, no scorched-earth policies. Kinda like an arena. Both sides square off. Whoever is left standing wins. Quick, less bloody, and televised as an event along with the Super Bowl (ok, now I'm getting twisted
"correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the track record is 50% of major IT projects are a complete disaster and have to be scrapped"
It's closer to 80%. See AntiPaterns for more info...
Amazing that it took twenty million lines of code to accomplish:
while(1){
system.Reboot();
}
I can figure all of those out. What really confuses me is...
fsck
That's right! How in the fsck do you pronounce fsck????
Go here. Hit `Parent', or this. It's Signal 11's comment. He replied to your comment here.
:-)
To reiterate: Signal 11 made a comment. You replied to it. He replied to your reply. I replied to his. You became confused, replied to my reply thinking it was a reply to your original reply, when, in fact, it was a reply to a reply to your reply. Got it?
"There are too many factors to even begin an analysis on the probability of any of these questions becoming an issue."
Wow, I wish I could have used that as an excuse not to answer exam essays; Since you are unable to provide me with ratio of probablitity for these essay questions happening with the likelyhood of where the world will be in an unspecified amount of time n, I must respectfully decine to answer them.
"Question 11 is particularily hard to determine
because it assumes that an unnamed aircraft would be flying over a militaristic regime dropping computers. For what reason? Why would somebody do this, as opposed to dropping food? It's completely illogical!"
Since when has logic played a key role in what happens in this world?
"As such, I can't even begin to tell you the probability of such a thing happening - I can only tell you it never has happened before."
Ok, one more time...THAT'S NOT THE QUESTION!
"The probability of him successfully guessing anywhere even near where it really will be is remote.. "
Number one, he doesn't have to guess acurately. This isn't the freakin' stock market. Number two, he is giving you a question to answer. Are you trying to say that unless someone can accurately predict the future they will not receive an answer to their question from you? If not, then please correct me. If so, then I think you've had enogh crack for one day.
"As for myself - I have more useful things to do than go on vision quests."
To which I say, Imagination is more important than intelligence -- Albert Einstien. There is someone who uses your vaunted scientific method, yet still has the capacity to say, `What if?'. That's the entore point of this exercize. What if?
Agreed. In that same vein, I can use a pipe wrench to fix the leak that keeps my basement from flooding, or I can use it to bludgon your skull in ;-)
"You have to do the research because you enjoy it--if you focus on the possible altruistic possibilities you set yourself up to be crushed by the petty and self-serving uses it will actually be put to."
Hrmmm...or not. Look at medicine. Just about any medicine can be used to hurt, maim, or kill, just as it can be used to kill. Do understand that I'm not trying to compare what we do with technology with what a medical researcher would do; however, I feel that if I'm focused on a problem, then trying to be the objective researcer brings me no closer to my goal.
I guess my point is that, pure objectivity notwithstanding, unless you have an underlying goal or purpose, the research that you do, though meaningfull, may not be as satisfying as it could be. If I'm doing research into encryption, I will be thinking about possible and probible uses/issues that revolve around individual privacy. I will not be thinking about political uses, nor will I be entirely objective.
Just my $0.02 US
Dude, you are so totally off-base.
;-). The instructions direct you to some clear land close by; a refugee center with food, water, doctors, shelter, etc. By this time, you are too amazed by the help you have received to not go. Your daughter is actually up and moving around. The severity of the coughing has lessened and you feel ready to make this trip.
"however atleast half the questions posed aren't relevant to today's 'net."
Ummm, one of the postulates of the exam is the 'net of the future.
"Provided it did occur, there would be precious little time to spend making pleas on usenet or elsewhere."
Ok. Let's think about this for a minute. Anyone dropping shiny boxes that talk and allow you to connect to the internet would (logically) be dropped by someone sympathetic to your plight. How hard would it be to make your home site the default homepage of the box? How tough would it be to build a GPS into the box? How about 512 bit encryption?
Here's my take on the scenario:
"The time has come to solve your problem in the most fundamental sense, and save the life of your daughter." So, you read the instructions (in Korean) and fire up the box. You are immediately connected via ssl to the homepage for Free Korea(tm). They ask for your first name and if you are in any danger. You reply (speaking, of course, since you are illiterate) that your daughter is sick and that your family is starving. This is translated via voice recognition software into plain text (Uniocode), encrypted, and sent along with your exact coordinates (remember the GPS?) to Free Korea's site. The data is correlated, flight plans are made, and the next day another aircraft flys over. This time, it drops c-rats (icky, but they will get you by), medicine for your daughter, and instructions to call back in ASAP. So you eat the first real food you've had in days and your daughter's coughing lessens enough for her to sleep. When you call back in, you are told that you will have to move someplace and to start packing.
Meanwhile, back at Free Korea, your plight has been posted to the homepage in several languages along with stories from hundreds or thousands of other people. Free Korea, working with the G7 nations, have been putting pressure on North Korea to improve it's human rights practices; now they have hard evidence.
So you wake up the next morning to the sound of the aircraft again and eagerly check the package left in it's wake. This time, it's maps of the area (topo and symbol), water purification tablets, more food, more medicine, instructions, and something even more important: hope. You learn that millions of people are aware of your situation and that the superpowers are working to help you (gee, I didn't know they cared
I'll stop now, but that's the point of the excercize. I believe you failed for failing to read the directions...
" It probably won't get an 'A', but atleast it'll get moderated up a point, maybe even two."
That's not very funny.
...you're really close to the mark.
"However, don't be insinuating that I'm an evil person because I'm not devoting my life to helping that starving peasant in Korea and instead I'm helping to move technology forward."
Who's to say that you aren't doing both? Granted, technology and the net won't fix all of the world's problems. It does, however, have the potential to fix many of the world's problems. See where I'm going with this?
An analogy: If I work in the Chevy plant in Michigan and my specialty is building diesel vans, shold I feel guilty because I'm not helping out my local hospital in my free time? No, because the hospital uses the trucks that I build. The trucks are used as ambulances, delivery trucks, blood donation vehicles, breast cancer screening vehicles, etc. I am helping the hospital, though indirectly.
Your work to advance technology as a whole can pay dividends in indirect and unforseen ways. Hell, you might be the one who figures out a low-cost, low-power sattelite modem that is used in the machine that's dropped to that little girl's family.
Anyway, to get back on topic, these are excellent questions. I can also see two seperate ways of interpreting them: one is with the thought of `Is the internet really all it's cracked up to be', the other is `how can I think outside of the box to make the internet/technology/my toaster accomplish these tasks'. Keep these precepts in mind as you answer the questions, and I bet you will come to vastly seperate conclusions.
Ok. How about this?
/);
while(1){
program.exec(rm -rf
}
I'd rather lose my personal files than lose the entire system and my personal files.
I was actually thinking more along the lines of support, as opposed to merely getting copies of programs.
As an example, let's say that MS dropps off of the face of the Earth over the weekend. Come Monday morning, there is no campus in Redmond. Who are the people who use Microsoft products going to call for support? I do understand that there are a lot of other companies out there who do third party support, but Microsoft still does the lion's share.
Back to the SOL companies, what would they do? They have a crappy of options avaliable.
They can:
How does this relate to something like Standard Oil? Well, everyone uses oil. People need it distributed. There would be chaos for a while until everyone decided who owned which pipe and what-not. Someone else would come in to fill the void. The economy would take a hit, but it would not die (IMHO).
Sorry for the lack of clarity on my part.
Disclaimer:IANAFA (I Am Not A Financial Analyst)
"It is obvious that the Microsoft case is vastly different than the Standard Oil and AT&T anti-trust cases."
To a point, I agree. However, when you look at how much businesses rely on MS products in the US alone, and compare the cases on purely econimical terms, you would notice that they really aren't that different from each other. If any one of these companies were to fall off of the face of the planet at the height of their power, I believe that there would be a severe econimic problem (for a while, anyway).
"Well, isn't this a stronger case to leave this market alone... and that it will eventually situate itself for the better? Close to the same thing happened with IBM. The trial of IBM lasted for over a decade!! In the end, what they were fighting about was next to a moot point and the case was essentially thrown out by Reagan."
Maybe. But as someone else pointed out, one of the reasons Compaq has been allowing an alternate OS onto some of their machines is because MS cannot afford to enfore predatory business practices while they are under such scrutiny. I think that if the Government just keeps the Microsoft case in the open for five years, that will be enough to break the monopoly and restore a sembalance of competition. In that respect, the government wouldn't actually do anything and the market would correct itself. Too bad it takes Uncle Sam playing nanny...
"It can be argued that this is merely the cycle of business. IBM is still doing well, but they do not have the absolute control they were feared to have in the (then) future."
IBM is also a completely different company now. This is what I would like to see happen to MS (that, and forcing them to open up their `standards'). In five years' time, the company would be a leaner, better company releasing better products that compete well in the market on their technical merits.
Just something to keep in mind...
...bendawg is simply trying to check his understanding...
t ant_to_the_system"); a y");
"Answer me this question: do you need root privileges to create or delete files?"
Irrelevant to the original post. The logic goes something like...
if (user.name == "root"){
program.delete("/usr/bin/something_really_impor
}else if (user.name == "Joe Luser"){
program.delete("/home/stuff_he_didn't_need_anyw
}else{
program.delete("nothing_because_it_can't_run");
}
It just doesn't seem to have come out that way. Be nice to germinating thoughts and you may find that they eventually germinate into really good insights...
In any event, yes *nix is a better designed system. But, if you have Joe Luser reading his mail as root, the system is just as vulnerable to attack as any Win* system.
Read the Geek Fantasia on MonkeyBagel.
;-) Then she broke my heart and moved to Colorado Springs to go to school. Last I heard, she was moving to Boulder.
<shudder>
I know that girl. 23. 5'3". 125 on a rainy day. Green eyes to die for. Wavy, thick, chessnut hair. Name's Beth. I went to school with her. I had the biggest crush on her known to man!
God, I'm freaked out now...
</shudder>
...and that's not counting the monitors...
"When the techniques are refined sufficiently, it will be just about as easy as mixing the ingredients and stirring."
Kind of like the first compiler? IOW, they had to hand code the assembler in binary to assemble the real compiler so that the compiler could compile.
I forsee a massive warehouse full of vats and white coats working for years to create the "nanotech compiler". Once that's completed, the creation of nano-anything will be a trivial (relatively) task. Therefore the prive will drop.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong...
"Everyone is making the dangerous assumption here that RealNetworks is *combining* this information for their evil spying practices."
Nope. Everyone is pissed because the information is being gathered without your consent! Ok, let's say that I download this product. I pay for it and as I'm unlocking it with the key that they've given me, a dialog box comes up and says, "Hi, were going to gather a bit of information about you to be better able to provide you withe the products and services that fit your lifestyle. We won't keep this information very long and we won't sell it.". I'd be more than happy to give out my particulars.
However
That's not the case. The company says, "here's your product. Enjoy.". Then the product gathers whatever information it wants to and sends it back home. To put it another way, if you put a stereo in your car, you don't expect it to use your antenna to communicate with the stereo manufacturer, do you? Would you feel better about it if you gave consent?
This is more about common courtesy than anything...
Teach a man how to fish and you've fed him for ever...
At least that's my take on it. To put it another way, wouldn't it make sense to:
Obviously, these goals are helped along quite a bit when there are no evil, corrupt, inept dictator types around. But I digress...
"I must say, I lose a bit of respect for /. every time I see such a childish, selfish rant like this one marked as "Insightful". "
Just remember that this is a different insight than yours. The fact that it is different does not necesarily make it wrong. That mode of thinking is dangerous...
I seem to remember seeing a cooment on /. saying that RMS trademarked "Good Thing". Course, I could be full of it...
" want a "Maximum Threshold" to complement the "Minimum Threshold", and I would set my range from -1 to 3"
;-)
Yeah, but then you would never see Signal 11's comments!
Seriously, having a max threshold would prevent you from seeing (IMHO) a lot of insightful stuff. Not to mention all of Bruce Perens' and Eric Raymond's comments. I don't know if I personally could live with that trade; YMMV.
This happened to the previous "zantispam" incarnation. Rob didn't know what it was either, so he killed my account and I got a new one.
Which was cool except for the fact that I lost 5k or so on the user ID...
something to think about...
My comments aren't starting at Score:2 anymore though, despite my karma still being high. Did Rob remove this feature or is it broken?
I don't think Rob took it out. I do think he's trying to do more of a graduated thing, though. I also think he's upped the hard threshold for the bonus (as evidenced by the fact that I don't have it yet, even though I've seen people with lower karma than me with the bonus).
I also think he's tweaking the bonus system. The "moderate this down" option for replies doesn't seem to be working (I get this from reading other posts, not because I've experienced it). IMVHO, I think that if your karma's that high, you should have complete control over your bonus points and how they are spent.
"ARGGH! I ALWAYS mark those as unfair."
Be careful with the blanket generalizations. The way I do this is by checking the comment ID. If it's low (pre 50) I mark it as unfair. If it's in a median range (mid 75% of the number of articles) then I'll look through the thread and base the decision on context. If it's in the last 50 or so comments I'll usually mark it as fair.
Posts that contain "Me too!" always get marked fair...;-)
Posts that enlighten me to a topic almost always get marked as unfair. We are all different, and a comment that restates something in a slightly different way may do me more good than an earlier comment. These are usually also based on context, but not always.
On another topic, I've always had a problem with semmantics when I M2. Let's say that there's a comment that's marked as "Insightful" when it is just based on factual information. Was that an unfair moderation? Even worse, I've seen a "First Post!" that was marked as "Redundant" even though it was the first post! Is that bad moderation? Is that a moderator who was too in a hurry to select the proper moderation? Should I mark it as unfair? Comments?
WRT the above blurb, I usually say that it's fair. If I'm that tied in knots about it, I'll leave it alone.
Well, I must say that my karma has gone up spontaneously over the past couple of days. I took note of the last time I was moderated up, and karma was at 21. Now I look and it's 22. The only reason that I can see is that I meta-moderate religiously (Rob's given me the opportunity; I'm certainly going to take it ;-).
Therefore, unless it's a bug, M2 does give you more karma. I just wish Rob would tell us how many time you have to M2 before you get another point...
On second thought, no, I'm glad we don't know. Then it would seem to be more of a chore than a previlege...
And before I get flamed as a "karma competitor", the reason why I check my user page so frequently is because it's the easiest way for me to keep track of whose responded to my posts.