Oh and by the way, it's an interesting discussion how the combination "chr" (as used in 'Christiaan' and 'Christ') should be pronnounced. Most people just pronounce it is like the English and Americans: "Kr".
But christian fundamentalists in the Netherlands usually pronounce it like "gr" (where the 'g' sounds as in Scottish 'Loch'). So there are two types of followers of Christ in the Netherlands, called respectively "christenen" (the normal ones) and "gristenen" (the fundamentalists).
Now only if it was that easy to tell islam terrorists from peaceloving people. It's probably worth a study.
Being Dutch I was interested to hear the MP3. Here's my judgement: Only the third voice does it right.
first voice. Does not pronounce the "g" of Huygens right, it's too hard. In Dutch the "g" should have a tone, while the "ch" is toneless. She pronounces the "g" as a "ch".
Also she mispronounces de "eeuw" sound in Leeuwenhoek. But compared to voice #2 and #4 she's isn't that bad.
I don't know exactly where that dialect is from.
second voice. Clearly from around Amsterdam, very bad accent. People from Amsterdam pronounce consonants much too hard, saying "fan Lefenhoek" in stead of "van Leeuwenhoek". Also the last syllable (how the hell do you spell that) of "Huygens" should be like the last vowels in "vegetable". She pronounces (as most people from around Amsterdam) it too much as "Huygans", with an "a" as in "clerk". Anyway, she sounds terribly.
third voice. She is pronouncing both names right. Although, as someone has noticed, the pronouncation of the "g" is from above the rivers. But the much softer "g" from below the rivers is a deviation.
fourth voice. She must have been very nervous, as she pronounces the names as no one from the Netherlands would pronounce it.
I guess they have never wanted to look something up on google in the car, or connect their laptop to the internet wirelessly, check their email, or take a picture of something funny or important.....reminds me when i am supposed to be places......such as contact and calendar events
I don't have a car
I don't have a laptop
I have a camera to take pictures
I have a conscience to remind me where i should have been, and that is bad enough
I have an old-fashioned paper calendar which is mostly empty. Usually I remember an appointment, or I forget it when it wasn't important enough to remember
The point is that being a nerd is something different then letting your life be ruled by equipment.
After we have started blowing up comets, we should be able to make the Earth's astronomical cycles better fit for human rhythm.
The goal is to make one year exactly 360 days. The options are:
1. Shorten the duration of the time it takes for the Earth to orbit around the sun.
2. Slow down the Earth's spin around itself.
3. A combination of both.
It might be required to redefine the length of a second, in order to keep the definition of hours and minutes as we have it now.
In communism, all property is owned by the community as a whole
I don't know who wrote that in the wikipedia, but it surely gives the wrong definition of communism. Communism is not about ownership in general, but about ownership of means of production. It's basic roots are in the observation that those who have money earn money by doing nothing. Means of production are: 1. capital, 2. labour, 3. natural resources. Now Marx thought that it would be fair that people get paid for their actual labour, not for possession of capital and natural resources.
In the Sovjet Union the "experiment" to put Marx's ideas into practice has failed - as we all have been able to observe.
OSS is quite according to Marx's ideas. You get paid for doing the work (or you volunteer to not get paid). But once the work is done, you can't use it to make money except for charging for "added value" like distribution - which is the labour you are actually doing.
But even in the Sovjet Union people had private property, they could own their house, their cloths, their furniture. And "theft" was really something you could be punished for.
First of all this is a USA thing. I am in Europe and I could not care less. This whole patent thing is just another case of spending efforts on stuff that isn't doing anything else then reducing the value of the US Dollar.
I don't see how this would change the internet. Does one really think that users will exchange their "old" browser that supports plugins for an "upgraded" version that does not support plugin? Or will we have a US version of browsers without plugin-support?
The best would be if all software development would legally move to India or so. Then the US can have their own patent-protected internet (and software in general), and the rest of the world can carry on without having to even read this kind of stuff.
BTW now that we're talking about the subject: where did all the talk go about the US elections? I really miss those 5 articles/day about that subject.
Hey come on, the elections are over. It's time to focus on other things. Slashdot politics has been solely posting about USA elections for 5 days. It's getting boring. There's a lot more going on in the world.
What strikes me all the time when it comes to Linux products: all names are so very geek. Does anyone really think that such names give a feeling of trust, or awaken the will to try something out? At least Microsoft knows how to make people understand what a product does: IE = Internet, Media Player = Media Player, Messenger = Messenger. Open Source projects often chose some strange recursive acronym which is unpronouncable (how do you tell your friends: spell it out every time you mention it?), and suggests that insiders knowledge is not only preferred but required to use it. Also very often the webpages don't tell you what the application is about at all. Look at the mentioned http://www.agnula.org/ project. It does something with Audio presumable, but the main thing i remember is that it is funded by the EU. Now that is not a reason to try it out.
Just the names that MS gives to applications give them a very very big advantage over Linux Open Source applications.
Gates: What the consumer wants is pretty clear: a single remote control that lets them navigate photos, music, videos, TV in a very rich way.
What is this "very rich way" ??
Already now in most households people disagree about which TV program to watch. The usual solution is that female watches TV, male browses internet. Integrating TV and Internet into a single remote control causes a lot of domestic troubles.
Only Windows XP or Windows 2000 SP3
That was a vain download.
I did not read this before downloading:
4. What are the system requirements for running Google Desktop Search?
Google Desktop Search is currently available for Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. To install, you must have administrator privileges (home users shouldn't have this problem; people in offices might). It also requires 500MB of space available on your hard disk. We also recommend a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz Pentium processor.
MXS Releases Cherry OS PC to Mac Conversion Software.
Their article points to MXS, which is also down, but it has a cache in google. Nothing about Cherry OS in that cache. The wayback machine is down, so nothing to check there either.
I just read an article (in Dutch) that in Sweden there is a proposal for "male tax": only males you should pay this to compensate for the male violence against women in society.
But the url is probably temporary. I wonder if the code in the url is meaningfull or just just a random string. "Meaningfull" in the sense that it holds some encoded information.
"You are a fucking moron"
Geez, i don't know about the moron, but fucking isn't that bad.
"Now go read a fucking book or something."
Doing a simple substitution, i should read a copulating book. I tried. It didn't let me.
But let me guess from the high frequency of a certain word you are using: your woman did not understand what you wanted from her this morning, probably because you chose such words that she did not get the meaning of your suggestion.
What the hack is that supposed to mean? Is "stellar performance" something good, or something bad? And is "less-then-stellar" then something good or something bad. I am sorry, but the meaning of this phrase escapes me.
wordreference says "stellar" means "leading" or "starring". It still makes no sense.
Can we please use language that is understandable by more people then just the author and his friends?
Just do a search on +multitasking +productivity
You'll find articles like this one:
Study: Multitasking is counterproductive. (published in 2001)
Also Zen Buddhists have known this for a long time. In fact they claim that spending every day some time doing nothing (meditating) increases your productivity. See:
Zen and the Art of Corporate Productivity
The "uncorrected" version of the parliament's session is here. Of course it's in Dutch, and you have to find the issue between the other topics that have been debated.
The discussion starts with this text
"Aan de orde is het debat naar aanleiding van een algemeen overleg op 24 juni 2004 over software octrooien.", which is at about page 21.
>> I disagree with a lot of the premises in this post.
You disagree (at least in your post) on one point: Linux is for nerds.
I believe that once you got a Linux box running, it's ok, especially for basic activities. But installing it is more troublesome then installing Windows. Also if you go and buy a game for your PC (which many people do at least once), you buy a Windows game, and it is questionable whether you can get it running on Linux at all.
I have also read for example this recent article which shows that it isn't that easy to make Linux print just as fast as in Windows. At least not with any printer.
My point is however not to disgrace Linux (quite on the contrary, I am pleased that something like Linux exists), but
1) to argue that a cheaper (or even free) Windows OS is an interesting idea.
2) to say that the bashing of MS with every move that this company makes is pointless, predictable and very boring.
I don't understand why most people are bashing MS about this. This is only good. Now imagine that MS is going to offer a Windows version for free. MS could maybe still make enough profit from their other products.
Or what would happen if MS would publish Windows 98 under the GPL. For many users, Windows 98 is good enough, it would need some upgrades to support newer hardware.
Now THAT would mean real competition for Linux. I don't see Linux winning that, at least not for the consumers market. Linux is still an OS for nerds, not for the average user who only wants a PC to work and finds no joy at all in making it work.
Only few Linux adapts do see that consumers choose Windows because it's easier, more user friendly, supports more programs, gives fewer installation trouble etc etc. The downside of the security holes and the price is just a small argument compared to these advantages. Now if the price argument will disappeare then there's no way Linux is going to win any share on the consumer market as long as it stays a nerd OS.
MS profits are going to drop because they won't have any income from selling OSes to consumers, but maybe the company can handle that profit drop.
The Linux developers should see this as a challenge to focus on consumer friendliness, now that the development of Linux has caused MS to lower its prices for OSes.
This is only good for consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
But christian fundamentalists in the Netherlands usually pronounce it like "gr" (where the 'g' sounds as in Scottish 'Loch'). So there are two types of followers of Christ in the Netherlands, called respectively "christenen" (the normal ones) and "gristenen" (the fundamentalists).
Now only if it was that easy to tell islam terrorists from peaceloving people. It's probably worth a study.
first voice. Does not pronounce the "g" of Huygens right, it's too hard. In Dutch the "g" should have a tone, while the "ch" is toneless. She pronounces the "g" as a "ch".
Also she mispronounces de "eeuw" sound in Leeuwenhoek. But compared to voice #2 and #4 she's isn't that bad.
I don't know exactly where that dialect is from.
second voice. Clearly from around Amsterdam, very bad accent. People from Amsterdam pronounce consonants much too hard, saying "fan Lefenhoek" in stead of "van Leeuwenhoek". Also the last syllable (how the hell do you spell that) of "Huygens" should be like the last vowels in "vegetable". She pronounces (as most people from around Amsterdam) it too much as "Huygans", with an "a" as in "clerk". Anyway, she sounds terribly.
third voice. She is pronouncing both names right. Although, as someone has noticed, the pronouncation of the "g" is from above the rivers. But the much softer "g" from below the rivers is a deviation.
fourth voice. She must have been very nervous, as she pronounces the names as no one from the Netherlands would pronounce it.
I don't have a car
I don't have a laptop
I have a camera to take pictures
I have a conscience to remind me where i should have been, and that is bad enough
I have an old-fashioned paper calendar which is mostly empty. Usually I remember an appointment, or I forget it when it wasn't important enough to remember
The point is that being a nerd is something different then letting your life be ruled by equipment.
The goal is to make one year exactly 360 days.
The options are:
1. Shorten the duration of the time it takes for the Earth to orbit around the sun.
2. Slow down the Earth's spin around itself.
3. A combination of both.
It might be required to redefine the length of a second, in order to keep the definition of hours and minutes as we have it now.
I don't know who wrote that in the wikipedia, but it surely gives the wrong definition of communism. Communism is not about ownership in general, but about ownership of means of production. It's basic roots are in the observation that those who have money earn money by doing nothing. Means of production are: 1. capital, 2. labour, 3. natural resources. Now Marx thought that it would be fair that people get paid for their actual labour, not for possession of capital and natural resources.
In the Sovjet Union the "experiment" to put Marx's ideas into practice has failed - as we all have been able to observe.
OSS is quite according to Marx's ideas. You get paid for doing the work (or you volunteer to not get paid). But once the work is done, you can't use it to make money except for charging for "added value" like distribution - which is the labour you are actually doing.
But even in the Sovjet Union people had private property, they could own their house, their cloths, their furniture. And "theft" was really something you could be punished for.
I don't see how this would change the internet. Does one really think that users will exchange their "old" browser that supports plugins for an "upgraded" version that does not support plugin? Or will we have a US version of browsers without plugin-support?
The best would be if all software development would legally move to India or so. Then the US can have their own patent-protected internet (and software in general), and the rest of the world can carry on without having to even read this kind of stuff.
BTW now that we're talking about the subject: where did all the talk go about the US elections? I really miss those 5 articles/day about that subject.
Hey come on, the elections are over. It's time to focus on other things. Slashdot politics has been solely posting about USA elections for 5 days. It's getting boring. There's a lot more going on in the world.
I run Windows 2000 and Firefox 0.10.1 and Firefox crashes on mozilla_die 1 and 2, but not on 3.
Just the names that MS gives to applications give them a very very big advantage over Linux Open Source applications.
I did not read this before downloading:
4. What are the system requirements for running Google Desktop Search?
Google Desktop Search is currently available for Windows XP and Windows 2000 Service Pack 3 and above. To install, you must have administrator privileges (home users shouldn't have this problem; people in offices might). It also requires 500MB of space available on your hard disk. We also recommend a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz Pentium processor.
MXS Releases Cherry OS PC to Mac Conversion Software.
Their article points to MXS, which is also down, but it has a cache in google. Nothing about Cherry OS in that cache. The wayback machine is down, so nothing to check there either.
The Dutch article is here
}
But the url is probably temporary. I wonder if the code in the url is meaningfull or just just a random string. "Meaningfull" in the sense that it holds some encoded information.
Geez, i don't know about the moron, but fucking isn't that bad.
"Now go read a fucking book or something."
Doing a simple substitution, i should read a copulating book. I tried. It didn't let me.
But let me guess from the high frequency of a certain word you are using: your woman did not understand what you wanted from her this morning, probably because you chose such words that she did not get the meaning of your suggestion.
What the hack is that supposed to mean? Is "stellar performance" something good, or something bad? And is "less-then-stellar" then something good or something bad. I am sorry, but the meaning of this phrase escapes me.
wordreference says "stellar" means "leading" or "starring". It still makes no sense.
Can we please use language that is understandable by more people then just the author and his friends?
1 normal H-bomb
1 anti H-bomb
both explode creating resp Helium and anti-Helium, which then reacts with each other.
Just do a search on +multitasking +productivity You'll find articles like this one: Study: Multitasking is counterproductive. (published in 2001)
Also Zen Buddhists have known this for a long time. In fact they claim that spending every day some time doing nothing (meditating) increases your productivity. See: Zen and the Art of Corporate Productivity
Here's the result of the votes quoted from the proceedings. There wasn't an individual vote. One party, the VVD, voted against, all other parties were in favor. The VVD has 28/150 seats. On the English site of the Dutch parliament, you can find a list of all members.
The "uncorrected" version of the parliament's session is here. Of course it's in Dutch, and you have to find the issue between the other topics that have been debated. The discussion starts with this text "Aan de orde is het debat naar aanleiding van een algemeen overleg op 24 juni 2004 over software octrooien.", which is at about page 21.
You disagree (at least in your post) on one point: Linux is for nerds.
I believe that once you got a Linux box running, it's ok, especially for basic activities. But installing it is more troublesome then installing Windows. Also if you go and buy a game for your PC (which many people do at least once), you buy a Windows game, and it is questionable whether you can get it running on Linux at all. I have also read for example this recent article which shows that it isn't that easy to make Linux print just as fast as in Windows. At least not with any printer.
My point is however not to disgrace Linux (quite on the contrary, I am pleased that something like Linux exists), but
1) to argue that a cheaper (or even free) Windows OS is an interesting idea.
2) to say that the bashing of MS with every move that this company makes is pointless, predictable and very boring.
I don't understand why most people are bashing MS about this. This is only good. Now imagine that MS is going to offer a Windows version for free. MS could maybe still make enough profit from their other products. Or what would happen if MS would publish Windows 98 under the GPL. For many users, Windows 98 is good enough, it would need some upgrades to support newer hardware. Now THAT would mean real competition for Linux. I don't see Linux winning that, at least not for the consumers market. Linux is still an OS for nerds, not for the average user who only wants a PC to work and finds no joy at all in making it work. Only few Linux adapts do see that consumers choose Windows because it's easier, more user friendly, supports more programs, gives fewer installation trouble etc etc. The downside of the security holes and the price is just a small argument compared to these advantages. Now if the price argument will disappeare then there's no way Linux is going to win any share on the consumer market as long as it stays a nerd OS. MS profits are going to drop because they won't have any income from selling OSes to consumers, but maybe the company can handle that profit drop. The Linux developers should see this as a challenge to focus on consumer friendliness, now that the development of Linux has caused MS to lower its prices for OSes. This is only good for consumers.