So I should base my choice in music based solely off of how it's distributed?
No, you must take a more holistic view encompassing lots of variables... you should find all that matters to you about music, such as distribution, quality, lyrics, medium (CD, mp3, ogg, stream, etc),... then decide how important each parameter is for you, and use all parameters in your evaluation, not just one. I maintain however that some parameters are worthy of much more consideration than currently enjoy by most people.
More specifically, people nowadays would even buy or listen to music created by Hitler or bin Laden if it were good. But music is a kind of communication, and you should take into account who created each piece of music and why. You should prefer to listen to music created by ethical people who respect you (and this respect is shown with a licence such as Creative Commons).
If people were willing to make that kind of sacrifice
If people were willing to make that kind of intelligent choices and stick to them they would be free. Because they aren't, other people enslave them in various ways (of variable ethical acceptance).
However just because the other people aren't willing to take such choices, it doesn't mean that you should also not do so. People must be individuals, not cattle following one another.
I personally pick the bands I like based on how good they are.
How do you define good? Is music created by people who don't respect their audience good?
I once knew a band... they went to a big record company and gave them their music to listen... the manager then told them "kids, you are good, but this music won't sell as it is - if you change it in such and such way we can discuss a contract". The band disagreed and told all their friends how bad the big companies are. They don't just select the good bands, they actively force the bands to change their music. They don't let them just create anything they want the way they want it, they tell them "your music must be louder" or "your music must have more beat". This destroys the art in the music.
Music is a kind of communication... the musician communicates their inner emotions and mind states to you through the music. If someone communicates with you in order to make you pay that's not art. If they communicate what they really want to express, then this is art. Many people today think that buying an audio CD means buying something to listen to and feel happy. That's not music, that's sound... it may make people feel happy but it isn't true art. Music is an art and expression, it allows people communicate emotions and mind states, and it isn't something you can change to make it more popular.
If you listen to an audio CD produced by a person who signed a contract with a megacorp and they let them tell them how to make their music more "saleable", then you don't listen to music (expression), you listen to some sounds designed to make you feel happy. If that's what you want to listen to, then it's okay. But please call it sound, not music. If, however, you want to listen to true music in the sense that you want to be the recipient of the expression of the emotional mind state of the musician, then you should listen to music produced by people who express exactly what they feel without changing it to suit the audience. These people are the independents, either on the Internet or offline. Most of them give their music (their communication) to you for no payment, often under free licences such as Creative Commons. A few of them may not know some technical aspects of music creation, but overall their music is better and more genuine since it is produced with love.
And although most independents make their music freely available, there is nothing wrong with making money in some way as well. I don't say that all music should be gratis (no pay). I say that it is more human and more genuine to g
There is of course another solution: Stop listening to music RIAA is associated with and instead only listen to music made by independents who freely share their work under Creative Commons and other licences on the net.
Why fight to listen to something that is of low quality anyway? Independents make better music because they love what they do! And if you want to thank them you can always offer them a donation.
is to listen to music made by independents who freely share their creations on the Internet often under Creative Commons, and reject any music made by people who are associated with big labels or the RIAA.
The security partly comes from using an uncommon OS, not just a more secure one. It's a security by obscurity thing... and although obscurity may not be a perfect measure, it's good when it's coupled with a truly more secure OS.
This implies that the perfect obscurity would come from a homebrew computer system, designed and built in its entirety in one's home. And if it were designed to be secure by default and its creator was a perfect mathematician and engineer, then it would probably be the most secure system in the world.
Or maybe not. If we maintain that no one is perfect and that bugs will creep in anywhere, then we can only hope to solve security holes with the "when there are enough eyeballs" law.
But then again why not try an open-source homebrew system...
And if we think for a while about it, modern free OSes as such homebrews that just became more popular after some years in existence. So, perhaps the best security can be found in free OSes that are popular enough to attract many bug fixers but unknown enough to not attract a lot of crackers (yet).
What I find intriguing is how similar security is to life and evolution. The whole security field can be modelled with positive and negative feedback. Crackers come to eat your lunch, just like predators in nature do, and you try to protect against them, just like all life does... Then whitehats and researchers come to help fix the security holes, just like animals in symbiosis (you get fixed software, they get jobs or recognition or a warm fuzzy feeling). Software that adapts to its environment (crackers) lives on and on (GNU/Linux and *BSD), and software that is stubborn and refuses to adapt dies (Win9x anyone?). Of course there is nothing special that makes security similar to life, because both are just examples of dynamic systems and all such systems have this behaviour.
Therefore, using a biology example, we can say that a computer running a mainstream popular OS is in a mainstream ecology which has already attracted many predators (and if the OS is an insecure one, the ecology does not offer any natural hiding places... it's kinda like an open field where you have nowhere to hide, and it would be really stupid to live in such an open field filled with predators if you had choices). But a computer running an alternative less-known OS like GNU/Linux is in an ecological niche which has not attracted many predators yet. And since the OS is more secure as well, this ecological niche offers you lots of places to hide when a predator finally comes, eg you can go underwater or hide among bushes.
So, start seeing OSes like ecological niches... If one ecology is filled with predators and does not offer any hiding opportunities, it would be dumb to choose it. Choose an ecological niche that is free of predators and it works in such a way that even when predators come you can defend.. That's the most intelligent choice..
Even though I always consistently with no single exception pause with great surprise upon reading this word, I think my pattern classifier is correct to place it in the category it always does, perhaps it better describes the value of their contribution to society.
Do we talk about the same Delta Air Lines that once employed Ellen Simonetti, who was fired for material on her blog that the company found inappropriate? Of course this does not mean anything bad about their COO, but I would be interested to hear his opinion on the blogger's incident, if he has an opinion (however, it probably was an issue outside his area of work). Anyway. Good to know the new CEO is a GNU/Linux user, and I wish them well.
I mainly use a Flybook subnotebook at 8.9", with enough batteries for about 15 hours of use (if I carry all batteries with me). An HTC Universal, with more than 15 hours of use (again if I carry both of its batteries) is a helpful alternative in cases I need something smaller. A few times I use other devices as well, but these are the ones most useful for ebooks. Coupled with 3G UMTS or 3.5G HSDPA they ar wonderful, especially the Flybook, which can be used easily even while walking. It isn't the "perfect" machine of course (nothing is perfect), but it works reasonably well and thanks to being a full PC it can run GNU/Linux and read all formats and do everything. In fact it's what I mainly use for all kinds of work while out of my home office (ie every day, I am the nomad kind of person), not only ebooks (it's only in code compile that it sucks, but I do most bug compiles on the server remotely so no big problem).
If I pay a few millions and buy or even build an innovative R&D lab and let the PhDs there crank out super ideas every day and I never use them, I am not an innovative company. One department does not represent the whole company.
I have extreme difficulty to read ClearType text. I think this is related to the way the eyes of some people work and that other people also have similar problems.
I always thought that everyone was seeing the same things as me (fuzzy text hidden in an abyss of colours) and I thought well, maybe the whole world turned crazy or what, until I told what I were seeing to some other people and I asked them what they were seeing and they said "soft black letters", and then I read about the issue a bit and confirmed that yes, I am one of these people who can't read this stuff.
One would assume that the purpose of text is to be read rather than to look pretty. In this regard, ClearType creates difficulties for some people whose eyes can discern colour in more "resolution" than other people (ie it penalises people who have better eyes).
Why do you need NCAA anyway? And why specifically do you need to play or watch games they are associated with? Do they have a copyright on baseball or whatever? No. So, you can play your own baseball and ignore their games whenever this is practical and possible.
Bloggers who write about NCAA games would do a much more useful service to their favourite sports if they mobilised people to play alternative games outside the jurisdiction of NCAA.
Software users do the same with free software. Music listeners do the same with freely licensed music. Why not do the same with sports as well? If an authority claims ownership of sports data or coverage, just avoid to be subjected to said authority by running your own games.
If every aeroplane and helicopter had a nice air-to-surface missile preprogrammed to launch at the direction of light beams that enter the cockpit, no one would be targetting them with lasers purposefully*.
Any way, Wikipedia has some info on airspace laser safety here. Anyone who targets people with lasers, especially pilots, is probably mad. Even regular light can be dangerous in the cockpit.
* That's a joke. and I speak generally, I have no idea whether this incident was an accident or not.
Well, ok, I did.. Had a quick look at the sidux.com Software forum. Didn't see anything I haven't experienced myself, crashes, high CPU loads etc... The usual stuff:)
poor quality control the iceweasel releases have apparently had
In fact right now I'm writing this on such an Iceweasel release (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.10) Gecko/20071115 Iceweasel/2.0.0.10 (Debian-2.0.0.10-0etch1)) just now on Debian etch... Yea this fscking thing keeps crashing every day... but it is a gift, and instead of whining I say loudly *thanks*, and that if I get some time available I'd certainly help. And I think they do need some help, look 547 freakin bugs are there and only 7 people track the PTS (maillist to get info about what happens in a package). The maintainer looks like he has many other things to do in Debian as well and I think he is also in the GNUTLS team. Surely they have other things to do as well, they may have jobs or families for example.
Of course I should say that most of the problems in Iceweasel probably come from upstream (Firefox), although without proper analysis it is difficult many times to know for sure whether a problem is in the browser code or in some lib.
Even though I have suffered from the bugs, I don't think it's right to whine about it as if volunteers had an obligation to build my free software. They do what they do for their beliefs or sometimes for fun, we shouldn't whine at these people even if sometimes the produced software is sloppy.
It is M$ that has an obligation to create software that at least partially works, since you pay for it, and yet its own software is much more buggy than free software. It is because they don't write code for the love (they don't even try to combine coding for the love with business, which is perfectly possible, for example they could release open-source and then get business as support/customisation contracts... but no, they keep the code closed as if code is like cattle in corrals).
The way free software works socially is not to have distinctions between developers and users. Such distinctions exist in closed source. In free software, every user should aspire to become a devel at some point and contribute actively. And the mindset "oh look this stuff is full of bugs, they don't do a proper job" means that somewhere in the mind of people who say this exists a small thought that says "I am a consumer, I only consume, and I expect others to feed me good software". In free software we should see ourselves as both producers and consumers, and we should specifically say "ok, this software is crap, but I can help fix it, and even if it's written in a language I don't know I can sit down and learn it".
He is a volunteer, right? Then what they do is a gift from their heart, not a job. Stop expecting perfection, and sit down and think how you can help these people improve your software.
Such a shame that we occupy such a small blink in the process
In some sense the smaller the are the most likely we are to survive and the less resources we are going to need to maintain ourselves. So maybe small size is a virtue (and ants or small microorganisms have more evolutionary potential to survive from a supernova or asteroid, maybe).
I don't live in the US, but I have an interest in the US politics in the sense that US is in fact the only superpower and in our globalised (and Americanised) world, everything that happens in the US quickly spreads elsewhere as well because of the global interconnectedness and the special position of the US in the world. Of course there is a personal reason for my interest in the US politics as well, as it is a place I would enjoy living if it were run by a sane president (such as Dr Ron Paul).
Of much more relevance to geeks and nerds is to see who well-known free software and open source activists support. RMS, for instance, supports Kucinich (who is off the magazine's matrix, why? and by the way he is a candidate that I do not support, but I think that even those who I disagree with have a right to have their views heard) and the Green Party (on which I have a slightly positive opinion, but I haven't researched it much). However, he also partially supports the one and only candidate that I also support*, Dr Ron Paul, and he explains his reasoning here: "The only Democratic or Republican candidate, aside from Kucinich, that clearly stands for human rights, democracy, and an end to torture, secret prisons and the occupation of Iraq is Ron Paul. I urge Republicans to support him for that party's nomination".
* Saying "support" however must be understood as "support among the available and reasonable options", and I also generally believe that politicians in general are not the most ethical people of the planet, and I know that most of them change their ways after they get elected and don't carry out their programmes, but some are better than others, and I think Ron Paul is the best among all the candidates (albeit I have some disagreements over his positions on the UN), and I actually should also say that I like him as a person, at least based on his writings. Unfortunately I can't vote for him, as I am in EU and not an American, although if he wins and makes the US a reasonable country to live in and removes all stupid laws introduced by Bush et al, I would certainly consider instant relocation, as I regard US among the best places to run a business (especially compared to here in EU where entrepreneurship is many times seen with suspicion)... in fact the presence of Bush was one of the primary objections to me even visiting the US for travel or business, let alone living there. I have a special interest in the 2008 elections because these are the elections that will determine whether the fascist reforms introduced by the Bush administration are going to be repealed as a historical paranoid mistake or kept as the new gospel. Apart from Kucinich and Dr Ron Paul, the other candidates who are well-known and have a chance of winning are most likely going to keep a few or most of Bush policies. Kucinich and Dr Ron Paul are the two only candidates who are most likely to reverse the trends that currently destroy the American culture and civics, and I think the most sane choice among those available is Dr Ron Paul. By the way Dr Ron Paul supports homeschooling, which is the best way to educate gifted future geeks and nerds.
It was only a matter of time until 64bit got engineered to run much faster than 32bit in standard applications. If you ask a company representative why they haven't moved to 64bit yet and they cite the speed issue, it means they are probably trying to save their company's name. The problem is, this is a stupid response, and it neither explains the engineering issues behind the move to 64bit nor is believable to an audience which probably has already conditioned (rightly in my view) that 64bit is always better (hence the question). Even saying that the company would produce 64bit when there was sufficient market demand would be much better.
HTML or CSS, as those should be handed over to DESIGNERS
Me thinks (X)HTML and CSS should be handed to engineers who work together with a designer (assuming that designer means graphic designer or artist).
sometimes training is not done for the training
on
Your Worst IT Workshop?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
pay me the $750 and I'd purchase and read the appropriate book
You are of course correct, but if you speak with some business people you will be surprised why some businesses (and even individuals) take courses and enroll their staff to workshops and training sessions. Sometimes training is done not in order to actually learn something, but only because of various external requirements (eg legal, or requirements imposed or recommended by professional bodies), obscure accounting motives, publicity or advertising reasons ("we spent a million in staff training last year!"), hierarchical or careerist reasons ("manager: I will enroll my staff in extensive training so that my boss can't use their lack of skills as an excuse to fire me for hiring incompetent employees" or even "I, as the training manager, must make everyone attend training sessions because it's good for making me more important within the company"), or sometimes even irrational psychological reasons ("if we lose, it won't be because we didn't try hard but because out training was useless, so it's the trainer's problem not ours"). Yea I know all this is completely anti-productive and irrational, but I have actually seen all this being done in dysfunctional companies (sometimes even required by external agencies or bodies).
Slashdot Mirror
So I should base my choice in music based solely off of how it's distributed?
No, you must take a more holistic view encompassing lots of variables... you should find all that matters to you about music, such as distribution, quality, lyrics, medium (CD, mp3, ogg, stream, etc), ... then decide how important each parameter is for you, and use all parameters in your evaluation, not just one. I maintain however that some parameters are worthy of much more consideration than currently enjoy by most people.
More specifically, people nowadays would even buy or listen to music created by Hitler or bin Laden if it were good. But music is a kind of communication, and you should take into account who created each piece of music and why. You should prefer to listen to music created by ethical people who respect you (and this respect is shown with a licence such as Creative Commons).
If people were willing to make that kind of sacrifice
If people were willing to make that kind of intelligent choices and stick to them they would be free. Because they aren't, other people enslave them in various ways (of variable ethical acceptance).
However just because the other people aren't willing to take such choices, it doesn't mean that you should also not do so. People must be individuals, not cattle following one another.
I personally pick the bands I like based on how good they are.
How do you define good? Is music created by people who don't respect their audience good?
I once knew a band... they went to a big record company and gave them their music to listen... the manager then told them "kids, you are good, but this music won't sell as it is - if you change it in such and such way we can discuss a contract". The band disagreed and told all their friends how bad the big companies are. They don't just select the good bands, they actively force the bands to change their music. They don't let them just create anything they want the way they want it, they tell them "your music must be louder" or "your music must have more beat". This destroys the art in the music.
Music is a kind of communication... the musician communicates their inner emotions and mind states to you through the music. If someone communicates with you in order to make you pay that's not art. If they communicate what they really want to express, then this is art. Many people today think that buying an audio CD means buying something to listen to and feel happy. That's not music, that's sound... it may make people feel happy but it isn't true art. Music is an art and expression, it allows people communicate emotions and mind states, and it isn't something you can change to make it more popular.
If you listen to an audio CD produced by a person who signed a contract with a megacorp and they let them tell them how to make their music more "saleable", then you don't listen to music (expression), you listen to some sounds designed to make you feel happy. If that's what you want to listen to, then it's okay. But please call it sound, not music. If, however, you want to listen to true music in the sense that you want to be the recipient of the expression of the emotional mind state of the musician, then you should listen to music produced by people who express exactly what they feel without changing it to suit the audience. These people are the independents, either on the Internet or offline. Most of them give their music (their communication) to you for no payment, often under free licences such as Creative Commons. A few of them may not know some technical aspects of music creation, but overall their music is better and more genuine since it is produced with love.
And although most independents make their music freely available, there is nothing wrong with making money in some way as well. I don't say that all music should be gratis (no pay). I say that it is more human and more genuine to g
There is of course another solution: Stop listening to music RIAA is associated with and instead only listen to music made by independents who freely share their work under Creative Commons and other licences on the net.
Why fight to listen to something that is of low quality anyway? Independents make better music because they love what they do! And if you want to thank them you can always offer them a donation.
is to listen to music made by independents who freely share their creations on the Internet often under Creative Commons, and reject any music made by people who are associated with big labels or the RIAA.
The security partly comes from using an uncommon OS, not just a more secure one. It's a security by obscurity thing... and although obscurity may not be a perfect measure, it's good when it's coupled with a truly more secure OS.
This implies that the perfect obscurity would come from a homebrew computer system, designed and built in its entirety in one's home. And if it were designed to be secure by default and its creator was a perfect mathematician and engineer, then it would probably be the most secure system in the world.
Or maybe not. If we maintain that no one is perfect and that bugs will creep in anywhere, then we can only hope to solve security holes with the "when there are enough eyeballs" law.
But then again why not try an open-source homebrew system...
And if we think for a while about it, modern free OSes as such homebrews that just became more popular after some years in existence. So, perhaps the best security can be found in free OSes that are popular enough to attract many bug fixers but unknown enough to not attract a lot of crackers (yet).
What I find intriguing is how similar security is to life and evolution. The whole security field can be modelled with positive and negative feedback. Crackers come to eat your lunch, just like predators in nature do, and you try to protect against them, just like all life does... Then whitehats and researchers come to help fix the security holes, just like animals in symbiosis (you get fixed software, they get jobs or recognition or a warm fuzzy feeling). Software that adapts to its environment (crackers) lives on and on (GNU/Linux and *BSD), and software that is stubborn and refuses to adapt dies (Win9x anyone?). Of course there is nothing special that makes security similar to life, because both are just examples of dynamic systems and all such systems have this behaviour.
Therefore, using a biology example, we can say that a computer running a mainstream popular OS is in a mainstream ecology which has already attracted many predators (and if the OS is an insecure one, the ecology does not offer any natural hiding places... it's kinda like an open field where you have nowhere to hide, and it would be really stupid to live in such an open field filled with predators if you had choices). But a computer running an alternative less-known OS like GNU/Linux is in an ecological niche which has not attracted many predators yet. And since the OS is more secure as well, this ecological niche offers you lots of places to hide when a predator finally comes, eg you can go underwater or hide among bushes.
So, start seeing OSes like ecological niches... If one ecology is filled with predators and does not offer any hiding opportunities, it would be dumb to choose it. Choose an ecological niche that is free of predators and it works in such a way that even when predators come you can defend.. That's the most intelligent choice..
I can't resist. I'll say it!
PhonographicEven though I always consistently with no single exception pause with great surprise upon reading this word, I think my pattern classifier is correct to place it in the category it always does, perhaps it better describes the value of their contribution to society.
If the universe is mathematical, then everything can be explained with maths, so I'm not surprised :)
Do we talk about the same Delta Air Lines that once employed Ellen Simonetti, who was fired for material on her blog that the company found inappropriate? Of course this does not mean anything bad about their COO, but I would be interested to hear his opinion on the blogger's incident, if he has an opinion (however, it probably was an issue outside his area of work). Anyway. Good to know the new CEO is a GNU/Linux user, and I wish them well.
gosh... of course I meant big compiles...!
I mainly use a Flybook subnotebook at 8.9", with enough batteries for about 15 hours of use (if I carry all batteries with me). An HTC Universal, with more than 15 hours of use (again if I carry both of its batteries) is a helpful alternative in cases I need something smaller. A few times I use other devices as well, but these are the ones most useful for ebooks. Coupled with 3G UMTS or 3.5G HSDPA they ar wonderful, especially the Flybook, which can be used easily even while walking. It isn't the "perfect" machine of course (nothing is perfect), but it works reasonably well and thanks to being a full PC it can run GNU/Linux and read all formats and do everything. In fact it's what I mainly use for all kinds of work while out of my home office (ie every day, I am the nomad kind of person), not only ebooks (it's only in code compile that it sucks, but I do most bug compiles on the server remotely so no big problem).
If I pay a few millions and buy or even build an innovative R&D lab and let the PhDs there crank out super ideas every day and I never use them, I am not an innovative company. One department does not represent the whole company.
I have extreme difficulty to read ClearType text. I think this is related to the way the eyes of some people work and that other people also have similar problems.
I always thought that everyone was seeing the same things as me (fuzzy text hidden in an abyss of colours) and I thought well, maybe the whole world turned crazy or what, until I told what I were seeing to some other people and I asked them what they were seeing and they said "soft black letters", and then I read about the issue a bit and confirmed that yes, I am one of these people who can't read this stuff.
One would assume that the purpose of text is to be read rather than to look pretty. In this regard, ClearType creates difficulties for some people whose eyes can discern colour in more "resolution" than other people (ie it penalises people who have better eyes).
Why do you need NCAA anyway? And why specifically do you need to play or watch games they are associated with? Do they have a copyright on baseball or whatever? No. So, you can play your own baseball and ignore their games whenever this is practical and possible.
Bloggers who write about NCAA games would do a much more useful service to their favourite sports if they mobilised people to play alternative games outside the jurisdiction of NCAA.
Software users do the same with free software. Music listeners do the same with freely licensed music. Why not do the same with sports as well? If an authority claims ownership of sports data or coverage, just avoid to be subjected to said authority by running your own games.
Don't let the US of A become the US of AA!
If every aeroplane and helicopter had a nice air-to-surface missile preprogrammed to launch at the direction of light beams that enter the cockpit, no one would be targetting them with lasers purposefully*.
Any way, Wikipedia has some info on airspace laser safety here. Anyone who targets people with lasers, especially pilots, is probably mad. Even regular light can be dangerous in the cockpit.
* That's a joke. and I speak generally, I have no idea whether this incident was an accident or not.
Well, ok, I did.. Had a quick look at the sidux.com Software forum. Didn't see anything I haven't experienced myself, crashes, high CPU loads etc... The usual stuff :)
poor quality control the iceweasel releases have apparently hadIn fact right now I'm writing this on such an Iceweasel release (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.10) Gecko/20071115 Iceweasel/2.0.0.10 (Debian-2.0.0.10-0etch1)) just now on Debian etch... Yea this fscking thing keeps crashing every day... but it is a gift, and instead of whining I say loudly *thanks*, and that if I get some time available I'd certainly help. And I think they do need some help, look 547 freakin bugs are there and only 7 people track the PTS (maillist to get info about what happens in a package). The maintainer looks like he has many other things to do in Debian as well and I think he is also in the GNUTLS team. Surely they have other things to do as well, they may have jobs or families for example.
Of course I should say that most of the problems in Iceweasel probably come from upstream (Firefox), although without proper analysis it is difficult many times to know for sure whether a problem is in the browser code or in some lib.
Even though I have suffered from the bugs, I don't think it's right to whine about it as if volunteers had an obligation to build my free software. They do what they do for their beliefs or sometimes for fun, we shouldn't whine at these people even if sometimes the produced software is sloppy.
It is M$ that has an obligation to create software that at least partially works, since you pay for it, and yet its own software is much more buggy than free software. It is because they don't write code for the love (they don't even try to combine coding for the love with business, which is perfectly possible, for example they could release open-source and then get business as support/customisation contracts... but no, they keep the code closed as if code is like cattle in corrals).
The way free software works socially is not to have distinctions between developers and users. Such distinctions exist in closed source. In free software, every user should aspire to become a devel at some point and contribute actively. And the mindset "oh look this stuff is full of bugs, they don't do a proper job" means that somewhere in the mind of people who say this exists a small thought that says "I am a consumer, I only consume, and I expect others to feed me good software". In free software we should see ourselves as both producers and consumers, and we should specifically say "ok, this software is crap, but I can help fix it, and even if it's written in a language I don't know I can sit down and learn it".
He is a volunteer, right? Then what they do is a gift from their heart, not a job. Stop expecting perfection, and sit down and think how you can help these people improve your software.
In some sense the smaller the are the most likely we are to survive and the less resources we are going to need to maintain ourselves. So maybe small size is a virtue (and ants or small microorganisms have more evolutionary potential to survive from a supernova or asteroid, maybe).
Come on, we all know everything was created by a flying spaghetti monster, not a freaking fairy!
I don't live in the US, but I have an interest in the US politics in the sense that US is in fact the only superpower and in our globalised (and Americanised) world, everything that happens in the US quickly spreads elsewhere as well because of the global interconnectedness and the special position of the US in the world. Of course there is a personal reason for my interest in the US politics as well, as it is a place I would enjoy living if it were run by a sane president (such as Dr Ron Paul).
Of much more relevance to geeks and nerds is to see who well-known free software and open source activists support. RMS, for instance, supports Kucinich (who is off the magazine's matrix, why? and by the way he is a candidate that I do not support, but I think that even those who I disagree with have a right to have their views heard) and the Green Party (on which I have a slightly positive opinion, but I haven't researched it much). However, he also partially supports the one and only candidate that I also support*, Dr Ron Paul , and he explains his reasoning here: "The only Democratic or Republican candidate, aside from Kucinich, that clearly stands for human rights, democracy, and an end to torture, secret prisons and the occupation of Iraq is Ron Paul. I urge Republicans to support him for that party's nomination".
* Saying "support" however must be understood as "support among the available and reasonable options", and I also generally believe that politicians in general are not the most ethical people of the planet, and I know that most of them change their ways after they get elected and don't carry out their programmes, but some are better than others, and I think Ron Paul is the best among all the candidates (albeit I have some disagreements over his positions on the UN), and I actually should also say that I like him as a person, at least based on his writings. Unfortunately I can't vote for him, as I am in EU and not an American, although if he wins and makes the US a reasonable country to live in and removes all stupid laws introduced by Bush et al, I would certainly consider instant relocation, as I regard US among the best places to run a business (especially compared to here in EU where entrepreneurship is many times seen with suspicion)... in fact the presence of Bush was one of the primary objections to me even visiting the US for travel or business, let alone living there. I have a special interest in the 2008 elections because these are the elections that will determine whether the fascist reforms introduced by the Bush administration are going to be repealed as a historical paranoid mistake or kept as the new gospel. Apart from Kucinich and Dr Ron Paul, the other candidates who are well-known and have a chance of winning are most likely going to keep a few or most of Bush policies. Kucinich and Dr Ron Paul are the two only candidates who are most likely to reverse the trends that currently destroy the American culture and civics, and I think the most sane choice among those available is Dr Ron Paul. By the way Dr Ron Paul supports homeschooling, which is the best way to educate gifted future geeks and nerds.
It was only a matter of time until 64bit got engineered to run much faster than 32bit in standard applications. If you ask a company representative why they haven't moved to 64bit yet and they cite the speed issue, it means they are probably trying to save their company's name. The problem is, this is a stupid response, and it neither explains the engineering issues behind the move to 64bit nor is believable to an audience which probably has already conditioned (rightly in my view) that 64bit is always better (hence the question). Even saying that the company would produce 64bit when there was sufficient market demand would be much better.
It's because quantum mechanics is so passe... they better use their time by lecturing on time cubes.
like?
The Spanish university all these years was preparing the perfect frivolous lawsuit for libel and Slashdot was under a gag order.
Me thinks (X)HTML and CSS should be handed to engineers who work together with a designer (assuming that designer means graphic designer or artist).
You are of course correct, but if you speak with some business people you will be surprised why some businesses (and even individuals) take courses and enroll their staff to workshops and training sessions. Sometimes training is done not in order to actually learn something, but only because of various external requirements (eg legal, or requirements imposed or recommended by professional bodies), obscure accounting motives, publicity or advertising reasons ("we spent a million in staff training last year!"), hierarchical or careerist reasons ("manager: I will enroll my staff in extensive training so that my boss can't use their lack of skills as an excuse to fire me for hiring incompetent employees" or even "I, as the training manager, must make everyone attend training sessions because it's good for making me more important within the company"), or sometimes even irrational psychological reasons ("if we lose, it won't be because we didn't try hard but because out training was useless, so it's the trainer's problem not ours"). Yea I know all this is completely anti-productive and irrational, but I have actually seen all this being done in dysfunctional companies (sometimes even required by external agencies or bodies).