First, it's obvious that "trolling" in the context of an online FORUM is going to have definite negative connotations. It doesn't really matter what the original term meant, it matters what it means to those you are talking to.
Secondly, since when has buying companies been new, or been evil? Google has bought a ton of stuff, and while some are honest in their thinking about it, most seem to have a "Microsoft Bad, Other Companies Good" mentality that shades their opinion about, for example, "new acquisitions."
And as for complaining about Silverlight, there isn't much complain about Flash, a proprietary essentially monopoly in the market. As someone previously stated, maybe Silverlight will be horrible, but perhaps it will at least give Flash some competition. [sarcasm] Oh wait, I'm sorry, Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to be competition for anything, because competition ruins good software. [/sarcasm]
Seriously. If Microsoft is so horrible and so obviously horrid software and so obviously non-innovative, it will die out. I guess I'm just tired of the hypocritical way of thinking about Microsoft as opposed to Apple, Google, Adobe, or open source software.
And I'm also kinda tired of the apparent opinion that Microsoft is just in it for the money, whereas grand ol' companies like Yahoo and Novell and [insert favourite non-MS company here] are really in it for the good of mankind and whatever. Hogwash. They might like computers, as I'm sure many people in Microsoft's company do, too, and like doing software or hardware stuff, but they want money, too.
Am I defending Microsoft? No. But I refuse to get into the "everything MS does is evil because it is MS and Bill Gates is the devil" camp...
Three really quick simple things, since this is a dead item already... Firstly, I wasn't taught by theologians, I'm not sure where the idea comes from... that all Christians are taught by Bible teachers and that Christians are not taught by qualified teachers. Secondly, raw data doesn't support anything, data is interpreted. Thirdly, I never even said that there is no evidence for evolution or that nothing supports it...
As for biased sources... those are hard to come by, even science has presuppositions and biases. A lot of modern (secular, even anti-Christian) philosophers have talked about this.
lso, consider: Your assumption that your post would be modded up only because of its logic and quality, and down only because of its ideology demonstrates a willingness to inject comforting assumptions into your reasoning.
Seemed a somewhat logical assumption. It definitely would not be modded up for the ideology, so it'd only be modded up for logic and quality. Presumably, it could definitely be modded down for ideology. Yes, it could also be modded down for logic and quality (or lack thereof), but based on the responses, apparently wasn't; instead, primarily, the idea that I deny evolution was modded down, whereas most of my post was in response to the term "evolution" being vague or fuzzy. The initial part of my post, of course, was essentially in defense of the presupposition about my ideology and intellectual honesty.
Which is what I initially responded to. Yes, I even learned about "Punctured" (I think you mean "Punctuated") Equilibrium in my 'religion' science curriculum; those theories ARE quite specific in what they lay out. However, "evolution" is a pretty vague term that, when used, seems to generally refer to the idea of common descent.
Significant data about what? The word "evolution"? Or did you expect me to discount evolution in a single post on/.... my point was pretty much that evolution is a vague term, and that it has to be vague because it refers to several somewhat conflicting ideas about common descent and the origin of man and life and whatnot; furthermore, I did mean to imply that the data is not so obvious as some would like to tell me; if it were, there would not be such differing opinions (punctuated equilibrium, for example, seems to be quite different from the traditional "common" view of evolution, and indeed, different from most observed natural selective processes; and yet, it's apparently an accepted theory).
Yes, at least, to the scientists introducing the words. In fact, the third hit in a google search for "macroevolution" yielded a Berkeley evolution class, Evolution 101: Macroevolution.
"If you question theory, good for you, but you better have data. If you deny evolution, you probably don't care about data, or about the scientific process at all."
That is a very interesting set of statements. On one hand, you seem to be glad someone is doing some "free thinking" in the area of origins, but on the other hand you seem to be unwililng to really listen to data. Basically, from your statement, I would surmise that if I actually said "I deny evolution," you would immediately do several mental categorizations of me:
He is probably a religious idiot.
He doesn't care about data, or about true science, because it's common fact that evolution is universally supported by all data.
Therefore, his data is all going to be pretty much bogus anyway.
So, then, I've been written off before I've begun. Interestingly, this is my experience. Yes, I'm religious; yes, I deny evolution in the general use of the term; yes, I care about data and the scientific process; and yes, I am, in fact, somewhat intelligent and can use big words.
And, for the record, "evolution" or even "theory of evolution" is very vague. Scientists don't agree on it universally - because there is a huge amount of data, and it doesn't all agree, and it doesn't even all fit into even the general Darwinian idea of origins. Example of fuzziness on the term "evolution:" does that mean pure atheistic evolution, including a theory like the Big Bang? Does it mean Darwin's theory of evolution, the current theory of evolution, or the theory of evolution back in the 1950's? Is it referring to biogenesis?
According to wikipedia: "In biology, evolution is a change in the inherited traits of a population from one generation to the next." Well, with this definition, I'd partially agree. It's obvious that genetic mutations do get carried on to the next generations; however, exactly how far these genetic mutations can go is what is debated. This is why the terms macro and micro have been applied to the theory of inherited characteristics.
so. The word "evolution" is extremely specific? I really don't think so.
[This post will be a test: will this post be modded based on my religion or on the post's logical and argumentative quality/content!]
Interesting that ++Linux posts get modded well and --Linux posts don't, just by default. And I even run Linux. Preferred.
Anyway. Anything on 512mb and a CELERON 1.7ghz is going to be bad. You can run compiz with ALL the eyecandy on? I sincerely doubt you. I have an ATI Mobility x1400 running the 8.46 (I think it's.46, I forget now) drivers, dual-core Intel (albeit in a year and a half old), with 2gb of RAM. I ran Compiz back with 1gb of RAM. I'm running OpenSUSE 10.3. I couldn't run "all the eyecandy using Compiz." It was really slow and xgl ended up using 500mb of ram.
Unless "very quickly" refers to text editing or something like that, I'd seriously wonder.
At any rate, XP would at least work on it. I remember helping someone pick out a laptop, and there were laptops that had those similar specs and were "running" Vista. I told her that she should not get a laptop with less than 1gb of RAM and no celeron processor, or she wouldn't be able to really do anything well.
On that note, the *minimum* RAM amount for Vista is 512mb... but, if I remmeber correctly, even most games nowadays require at least 512mb, and most everyone has at least 1gb, it would seem. It's cheap enough. I got 2gb for my laptop for $40, and my desktop has 4gb. I don't think the tech requirements for Vista are actually that unrealistic.
(may as well say that if the operating system requires something better than a P2 processor it's too much of a hog... hehe)
*anticipates troll-ness*
Re:"fair" would be "what users need"
on
Mac Hack Contest Redux
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I think this is an excellent point.
Default windows configuration is defaulted to... well, a very compatible set of options.
Not having actually done a Mac install, I don't know what the default is.
A default Linux partition, depending on the flavor, could be pretty minimal...
Here's what I think would make it more fair: make all the operating systems able to do the same things. Presumably, the normal Mac user, at some point, will want to opens a windows media file and an Office 2007 file. The typical Windows user will use quicktime at some point, and thus have it installed and have its possible security holes, too.
Otherwise, I could create a Linux distro that is THE safest operating system EVER... and just not let you do anything, no network connectivity, etc. Pretty safe! And useless.
Because a personal preference of an operating system has absolutely no bearing on politics whatsoever?
Ok, so it might have a tiny bit if he for some reason totally is supportive of monopolies and unethical business practices, but seriously, if someone is going to vote for a president simply because he uses Linux...:)
As far as question three is concerned, perhaps the difference is somewhat subjective, but still based on the actual site itself. It's one thing to have an entirely separate company that happens to be close (dall.com, or even dell.net instead of dell.com or something like that)... but it's another to be obviously exploiting a typo to a company simply to sell advertising, or even worse, to do some sort of phishing.
Example: www.microsft.com actually redirects to microsoft.com. del.com goes to dell.com. dell.net goes to an advertising thing, oddly enough.
It seems that there could be a case for essentially copyright infringement, because you are exploiting somebody's misspelling or typo of a copyrighted/tradmarked name. If someone is ripping off "rueger.com" by having "ruger.com" and selling advertising, one might claim that that is an infringement (presuming you trademarked it) on your trademark.
I'm guessing someone probably can't start selling computers from a company called Microsft... I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that that would be denied because it's essentially infringing on the trademarked Microsoft. On the other hand, something like MicroHardware seems like it'd be perfectly fine... and exists, in fact.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer and don't work for the government, so all this is pretty much an attempt at educated speculation. And to say that I can see where Dell is coming from. I wouldn't want someone ripping off my lucrative business either... of course, to worry about that, first I have to get one. Bother.
I could be wrong her, but it seems that people fear what they don't know. Are there reasons to fear some things on the internet? Yes, there certainly are... and there are tons of wastes of time on the internet, tons of bad things, etc. But when a parent decides the whole thing is incredibly dangerous - because the don't know any better - then there's a problem.
I'd imagine it's like parks. What if the only thing you heard about public parks was drugs, for example. Well, that's quite possibly true at 3am. This is probably not news to most parents - and if it is, they shouldn't be parents - letting your 13 year old daughter walk around the park at 3am is probably not a good idea. Now, if parents knew nothing about parks and figured that the whole thing was a bad place, that's totally different... whether or not your kid can ever go alone or not (during the day) is a personal decision, and I'm sure there are parks that probably are bad, period, but in general, ignorance of the park contributes to paranoia, if anything.
Applying that to the internet then, ignorance of it seems to be a huge problem. Giving a 9 year old complete access of the computer, not talking to him about anything, giving him a 1.5Mbit connection... uh, well, that seems pretty silly. Giving him nothing because you're afraid of the whole thing, that's also bad. Why is this so hard to figure out? Do you just give your kid a car when he turns 16 and hope he can end up driving safely? (sorry, had to use a car analogy). Nooo, seems like one of the points of parenting is to impart your wisdom from experience, and if you don't have experience in it, get experience in it and exercise wisdom, not paranoid behavior as if everything not around in 1975 is bad.
Oh, last comment. I find it interesting that parents think public schools are great places to send their kid and have no clue what goes on and get paranoid about the internet. I dunno. Maybe it's just that society is stupid now (parents included in that social generalization).
According to wikipedia they do a bit more that's a little more shady than simply linking to checksums... a torrent tracker? It was even started by an anti-copyright organization, apparently.
Knowing that theft will happen does not make the theft any better or more right. Seriously, what kind of argument is this? PirateBay links to illegally downloadable material. It is illegal for me to download the latest Harry Potter movie. Simple as that. Yes, the theft will happen; does that mean we should just pass over it when it happens and let sites like PirateBay alone (who, as has been previously pointed out, are definitely in it for the money)? That's pretty stupid. Murder is going to happen whether it's legal or illegal, but that doesn't mean it should be legal or we should just ignore it.
I'm not arguing FOR the RIAA, I'm arguing for SOMETHING. I think this particular instance is a good thing, though.
Uhhh... not every OSS "company" is in it for pure good will and peace toward mankind. For that matter, Apple isn't either.
I don't think everything Microsoft does is ethical, by a long shot, but hey, Starbucks isn't the nicest either.
But that doesn't really matter. A LOT of people use Microsoft Office. You can't just suddenly introduce a new OSS standard and expect someone to suddenly drop MS Office entirely and move. That's why Open Office has some success - it is somewaht compatible with MS Office files, and it works pretty well besides. Stuff like Samba HAS to exist, or it's not going to get adopted. Especially by businesses.
Personally, Samba is one reason I CAN use Linux. If I didn't have Samba, I wouldn't be able to print at my school. [sarcasm] But I guess you're right, it's a huge waste for talented programmers to waste time making something compatible with Windows so that I can actually choose to switch to Linux without having to go to great pains to simply print a research paper. [/sarcasm]
On the contrary: I think it's great when there are OSS alternatives to software. To all software.. including BOTH Microsoft and Apple, and whatever else... uh, Nero, AOL, [insert your favourite software maker here]
I've known two computer science majors out of about the ten at my school to have major problems getting Ubuntu (and Fedora for that matter) installed on their laptops. Either sound wasn't working, or wireless card, or the monitor, or in one case it wouldn't format/partition the hard drive correctly.
Frankly, I love Linux. I took Windows XP off my laptop and am doing a VirtualBox OSE virtual machine with XP installed and can even run Sibelius 5.1 on it. No 3D support is detrimental, but I have my desktops for that. But with all that, I can't honestly entirely recommend any Linux distro flat out to everyone. Myself, I've tried SuSE, Mandrake, Fedora, and Ubuntu, and I liked SuSE best and am running 10.3. It actually supports all my hardware well, except for my video card - the ATI linux drivers for the x1400 mobile don't work well, but I got it mostly working eventually.
All this to simply say one thing: when it comes down to application support and to ease of use, Windows has quite a lead on Linux. Yeah, you can talk about wine and virtualization all you want, but I couldn't even get iTunes to work correctly in wine (yes, I can do it virtualized, so I'm happy about that, but are we going to really expect every normal office user to learn to use a virtual machine and all that, too?). I'm NOT anti-linux, nor pro-microsoft, but from a person that likes Linux better, I have to give credit to Microsoft for XP and its Office products being pretty good in terms of usability, functionality, versatility, and compatibility. Compatibility, for me personally, is big: I mean, seriously, my laptop is a year and a half old, and the drivers for the video card (which is older still, to some extent) don't work completely? And a Dell E1505 isn't exactly an uncommon laptop.
I think the parent to this particular thread is right - Microsoft DOES have some really good products, And yes, some really bad ones. Like Vista, IMO.
What "torture" is defined as is quite the interesting discussion, maybe slashdot should have an article on it sometime. Suffice it to say, for now, that I'm not sure talking to terrorists or threatening trade embargos or things of that nature is very efficient at getting the attention of those who are willing to blow themselves up for their religious beliefs... and not in defense of them, but essentially to spread them. If I remember correctly, it was prophesied that Islam would take over the world, and it hasn't happened yet. This would irk those who believe it... peace talks are perhaps not the best way to go about settling our differences when the other side wants to settle differences with a bomb.
I refer primarily to Islamic religious beliefs here because it seems the primary source of terrorism, right now, comes from that demographic section.
I'm not sure the apparently extremely democratic-party-biased link is very helpful in this case. Yes, America is in debt, but it seems that you are attempting to push that the Democrat party is much less corrupt than the Republican party?
And the punishments for insulting are based pretty much on accusation. If you are accused of insulting Mohammad, you can be thrown in jail, as was seen recently with the British schoolteacher, who had the class vote (democratic thing, that was not a good idea in that country, either) on what to name the class teddy bear... there were mobs that wanted to hang her.
It's a huge difference from "In God We Trust." I would argue that what religious (which is closer to Deist than Christian) sentiment is left in the government is not really any sort of mind control.
And if it was meant to be some form of mind control, it's obviously not working very well.
It is, of course, infinitely true that all people within America are entirely deluded about what is going on with American politics and foreign policy, while all non-American countries have the American military secrets at their fingertips, know exactly what is going on in the minds of the American government officials, and in fact, should be allowed to throw America into a black hole somewhere for being so unfairly powerful.
Throw into this that, obviously, all American news sources are extremely slanted towards the conservative, pro-American world domination idea. Oh, and also that the internet must be censored, because American certainly can't have access to non-American news sites.
Well, this will be a "boring" post because it will be more or less in agreement.
I seem to remember reading stuff, way back in the 18th century, about a republic. There was a reason a republic was chosen and not a democracy. Greece tried pure democratic stuff. Mob rule didn't work well. Neither did monarchy, autocracy, or oligarchy. I think that's why the attempt was made at making America a democratic republic. Yes, that means a president can make mistakes, whether he is conservative or liberal.
Changing from a democratic republic to a direct democracy simply because you, or perhaps even a majority, if that is exactly the case (polls and statistics can be extremely inaccurate), disagree with what the current president is doing is... well, stupid. There are, in fact, ways built in to the system to deal with presidents that for one reason or another, the general populace has decided is doing a bad job. It usually starts with impeachment. The current system seems to have worked surprisingly well in the last 250 years... a 250 year old country becoming the primary world power is pretty weird.
As far as the US being a "christian" Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure that isn't exactly the way it'd go... say, rather, a more religiously free western-influenced Afghanistan. There isn't a whole lot of distinctly Christian religious influence in the US government. Maybe some moral stuff like marriage, but the "Christian nation" is a really just nominal, cultural thing... where as an "Islamic nation" is very much not just a nominal/cultural thing, but a law and government thing.
Can you play by ear at all? (curiousity again, because a lot of people that remember well, unless it's actually purely muscle memory, also seem to play oddly well by ear)
Lack of pressure equaling enjoying music, I can entirely relate to that. I actually dislike performing on the piano, generally.
It's interesting that you say what you say. I play the piano, also, but have always been taught that if you can't play the song slowly from memory, you don't truly remember it... and if your muscle memory fails, for some reason, you are in trouble.
That's not to say muscle memory doesn't take place, but simply to argue the point that not all pianists would agree with your method. For me, I know when I really know a song well when I can almost tell you exactly what note is where... that's as far as me actually knowing it - actually doing the physical activity of playing it is, in my mind, different from knowing the music. (for the record, I've played piano for 17 years and am a composer).
I don't remember much else about it. We played it on a PC-Junior... everything had to be loaded from 5.25" floppies.
My first game experience on a hard drive that I can still distinctly remember was probably The Secret of Monkey Island, which I just got done playing again while on a plane.
Other game experiences... Baldur's Gate totally sucked me in, it was amazing, I'd never played anything D&D before. I loved it. Probably one of my favourite game memories.
Slashdot Mirror
First, it's obvious that "trolling" in the context of an online FORUM is going to have definite negative connotations. It doesn't really matter what the original term meant, it matters what it means to those you are talking to.
Secondly, since when has buying companies been new, or been evil? Google has bought a ton of stuff, and while some are honest in their thinking about it, most seem to have a "Microsoft Bad, Other Companies Good" mentality that shades their opinion about, for example, "new acquisitions."
And as for complaining about Silverlight, there isn't much complain about Flash, a proprietary essentially monopoly in the market. As someone previously stated, maybe Silverlight will be horrible, but perhaps it will at least give Flash some competition. [sarcasm] Oh wait, I'm sorry, Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to be competition for anything, because competition ruins good software. [/sarcasm]
Seriously. If Microsoft is so horrible and so obviously horrid software and so obviously non-innovative, it will die out. I guess I'm just tired of the hypocritical way of thinking about Microsoft as opposed to Apple, Google, Adobe, or open source software.
And I'm also kinda tired of the apparent opinion that Microsoft is just in it for the money, whereas grand ol' companies like Yahoo and Novell and [insert favourite non-MS company here] are really in it for the good of mankind and whatever. Hogwash. They might like computers, as I'm sure many people in Microsoft's company do, too, and like doing software or hardware stuff, but they want money, too.
Am I defending Microsoft? No. But I refuse to get into the "everything MS does is evil because it is MS and Bill Gates is the devil" camp...
[/rant]
Three really quick simple things, since this is a dead item already... Firstly, I wasn't taught by theologians, I'm not sure where the idea comes from... that all Christians are taught by Bible teachers and that Christians are not taught by qualified teachers. Secondly, raw data doesn't support anything, data is interpreted. Thirdly, I never even said that there is no evidence for evolution or that nothing supports it...
As for biased sources... those are hard to come by, even science has presuppositions and biases. A lot of modern (secular, even anti-Christian) philosophers have talked about this.
lso, consider: Your assumption that your post would be modded up only because of its logic and quality, and down only because of its ideology demonstrates a willingness to inject comforting assumptions into your reasoning.
Seemed a somewhat logical assumption. It definitely would not be modded up for the ideology, so it'd only be modded up for logic and quality. Presumably, it could definitely be modded down for ideology. Yes, it could also be modded down for logic and quality (or lack thereof), but based on the responses, apparently wasn't; instead, primarily, the idea that I deny evolution was modded down, whereas most of my post was in response to the term "evolution" being vague or fuzzy. The initial part of my post, of course, was essentially in defense of the presupposition about my ideology and intellectual honesty.
"True, the *word* evolution is vague. "
Which is what I initially responded to. Yes, I even learned about "Punctured" (I think you mean "Punctuated") Equilibrium in my 'religion' science curriculum; those theories ARE quite specific in what they lay out. However, "evolution" is a pretty vague term that, when used, seems to generally refer to the idea of common descent.
Significant data about what? The word "evolution"? Or did you expect me to discount evolution in a single post on /. ... my point was pretty much that evolution is a vague term, and that it has to be vague because it refers to several somewhat conflicting ideas about common descent and the origin of man and life and whatnot; furthermore, I did mean to imply that the data is not so obvious as some would like to tell me; if it were, there would not be such differing opinions (punctuated equilibrium, for example, seems to be quite different from the traditional "common" view of evolution, and indeed, different from most observed natural selective processes; and yet, it's apparently an accepted theory).
[/beating dead horse]
Yes, at least, to the scientists introducing the words. In fact, the third hit in a google search for "macroevolution" yielded a Berkeley evolution class, Evolution 101: Macroevolution.
"If you question theory, good for you, but you better have data. If you deny evolution, you probably don't care about data, or about the scientific process at all."
That is a very interesting set of statements. On one hand, you seem to be glad someone is doing some "free thinking" in the area of origins, but on the other hand you seem to be unwililng to really listen to data. Basically, from your statement, I would surmise that if I actually said "I deny evolution," you would immediately do several mental categorizations of me:
So, then, I've been written off before I've begun. Interestingly, this is my experience. Yes, I'm religious; yes, I deny evolution in the general use of the term; yes, I care about data and the scientific process; and yes, I am, in fact, somewhat intelligent and can use big words.
And, for the record, "evolution" or even "theory of evolution" is very vague. Scientists don't agree on it universally - because there is a huge amount of data, and it doesn't all agree, and it doesn't even all fit into even the general Darwinian idea of origins. Example of fuzziness on the term "evolution:" does that mean pure atheistic evolution, including a theory like the Big Bang? Does it mean Darwin's theory of evolution, the current theory of evolution, or the theory of evolution back in the 1950's? Is it referring to biogenesis?
According to wikipedia: "In biology, evolution is a change in the inherited traits of a population from one generation to the next." Well, with this definition, I'd partially agree. It's obvious that genetic mutations do get carried on to the next generations; however, exactly how far these genetic mutations can go is what is debated. This is why the terms macro and micro have been applied to the theory of inherited characteristics.
so. The word "evolution" is extremely specific? I really don't think so.
[This post will be a test: will this post be modded based on my religion or on the post's logical and argumentative quality/content!]
Interesting that ++Linux posts get modded well and --Linux posts don't, just by default. And I even run Linux. Preferred.
Anyway. Anything on 512mb and a CELERON 1.7ghz is going to be bad. You can run compiz with ALL the eyecandy on? I sincerely doubt you. I have an ATI Mobility x1400 running the 8.46 (I think it's .46, I forget now) drivers, dual-core Intel (albeit in a year and a half old), with 2gb of RAM. I ran Compiz back with 1gb of RAM. I'm running OpenSUSE 10.3. I couldn't run "all the eyecandy using Compiz." It was really slow and xgl ended up using 500mb of ram.
Unless "very quickly" refers to text editing or something like that, I'd seriously wonder.
At any rate, XP would at least work on it. I remember helping someone pick out a laptop, and there were laptops that had those similar specs and were "running" Vista. I told her that she should not get a laptop with less than 1gb of RAM and no celeron processor, or she wouldn't be able to really do anything well.
On that note, the *minimum* RAM amount for Vista is 512mb... but, if I remmeber correctly, even most games nowadays require at least 512mb, and most everyone has at least 1gb, it would seem. It's cheap enough. I got 2gb for my laptop for $40, and my desktop has 4gb. I don't think the tech requirements for Vista are actually that unrealistic.
(may as well say that if the operating system requires something better than a P2 processor it's too much of a hog... hehe)
*anticipates troll-ness*
I think this is an excellent point.
Default windows configuration is defaulted to... well, a very compatible set of options.
Not having actually done a Mac install, I don't know what the default is.
A default Linux partition, depending on the flavor, could be pretty minimal...
Here's what I think would make it more fair: make all the operating systems able to do the same things. Presumably, the normal Mac user, at some point, will want to opens a windows media file and an Office 2007 file. The typical Windows user will use quicktime at some point, and thus have it installed and have its possible security holes, too.
Otherwise, I could create a Linux distro that is THE safest operating system EVER... and just not let you do anything, no network connectivity, etc. Pretty safe! And useless.
I thought they were just slashdot-asked questions, hehe.
Because a personal preference of an operating system has absolutely no bearing on politics whatsoever?
Ok, so it might have a tiny bit if he for some reason totally is supportive of monopolies and unethical business practices, but seriously, if someone is going to vote for a president simply because he uses Linux... :)
As far as question three is concerned, perhaps the difference is somewhat subjective, but still based on the actual site itself. It's one thing to have an entirely separate company that happens to be close (dall.com, or even dell.net instead of dell.com or something like that)... but it's another to be obviously exploiting a typo to a company simply to sell advertising, or even worse, to do some sort of phishing.
Example: www.microsft.com actually redirects to microsoft.com. del.com goes to dell.com. dell.net goes to an advertising thing, oddly enough.
It seems that there could be a case for essentially copyright infringement, because you are exploiting somebody's misspelling or typo of a copyrighted/tradmarked name. If someone is ripping off "rueger.com" by having "ruger.com" and selling advertising, one might claim that that is an infringement (presuming you trademarked it) on your trademark.
I'm guessing someone probably can't start selling computers from a company called Microsft ... I'm not entirely sure, but it seems that that would be denied because it's essentially infringing on the trademarked Microsoft. On the other hand, something like MicroHardware seems like it'd be perfectly fine... and exists, in fact.
Of course, I'm not a lawyer and don't work for the government, so all this is pretty much an attempt at educated speculation. And to say that I can see where Dell is coming from. I wouldn't want someone ripping off my lucrative business either... of course, to worry about that, first I have to get one. Bother.
I could be wrong her, but it seems that people fear what they don't know. Are there reasons to fear some things on the internet? Yes, there certainly are... and there are tons of wastes of time on the internet, tons of bad things, etc. But when a parent decides the whole thing is incredibly dangerous - because the don't know any better - then there's a problem.
I'd imagine it's like parks. What if the only thing you heard about public parks was drugs, for example. Well, that's quite possibly true at 3am. This is probably not news to most parents - and if it is, they shouldn't be parents - letting your 13 year old daughter walk around the park at 3am is probably not a good idea. Now, if parents knew nothing about parks and figured that the whole thing was a bad place, that's totally different... whether or not your kid can ever go alone or not (during the day) is a personal decision, and I'm sure there are parks that probably are bad, period, but in general, ignorance of the park contributes to paranoia, if anything.
Applying that to the internet then, ignorance of it seems to be a huge problem. Giving a 9 year old complete access of the computer, not talking to him about anything, giving him a 1.5Mbit connection... uh, well, that seems pretty silly. Giving him nothing because you're afraid of the whole thing, that's also bad. Why is this so hard to figure out? Do you just give your kid a car when he turns 16 and hope he can end up driving safely? (sorry, had to use a car analogy). Nooo, seems like one of the points of parenting is to impart your wisdom from experience, and if you don't have experience in it, get experience in it and exercise wisdom, not paranoid behavior as if everything not around in 1975 is bad.
Oh, last comment. I find it interesting that parents think public schools are great places to send their kid and have no clue what goes on and get paranoid about the internet. I dunno. Maybe it's just that society is stupid now (parents included in that social generalization).
According to wikipedia they do a bit more that's a little more shady than simply linking to checksums... a torrent tracker? It was even started by an anti-copyright organization, apparently.
Knowing that theft will happen does not make the theft any better or more right. Seriously, what kind of argument is this? PirateBay links to illegally downloadable material. It is illegal for me to download the latest Harry Potter movie. Simple as that. Yes, the theft will happen; does that mean we should just pass over it when it happens and let sites like PirateBay alone (who, as has been previously pointed out, are definitely in it for the money)? That's pretty stupid. Murder is going to happen whether it's legal or illegal, but that doesn't mean it should be legal or we should just ignore it.
I'm not arguing FOR the RIAA, I'm arguing for SOMETHING. I think this particular instance is a good thing, though.
Uhhh... not every OSS "company" is in it for pure good will and peace toward mankind. For that matter, Apple isn't either.
I don't think everything Microsoft does is ethical, by a long shot, but hey, Starbucks isn't the nicest either.
But that doesn't really matter. A LOT of people use Microsoft Office. You can't just suddenly introduce a new OSS standard and expect someone to suddenly drop MS Office entirely and move. That's why Open Office has some success - it is somewaht compatible with MS Office files, and it works pretty well besides. Stuff like Samba HAS to exist, or it's not going to get adopted. Especially by businesses.
Personally, Samba is one reason I CAN use Linux. If I didn't have Samba, I wouldn't be able to print at my school. [sarcasm] But I guess you're right, it's a huge waste for talented programmers to waste time making something compatible with Windows so that I can actually choose to switch to Linux without having to go to great pains to simply print a research paper. [/sarcasm]
On the contrary: I think it's great when there are OSS alternatives to software. To all software.. including BOTH Microsoft and Apple, and whatever else... uh, Nero, AOL, [insert your favourite software maker here]
I've known two computer science majors out of about the ten at my school to have major problems getting Ubuntu (and Fedora for that matter) installed on their laptops. Either sound wasn't working, or wireless card, or the monitor, or in one case it wouldn't format/partition the hard drive correctly.
Frankly, I love Linux. I took Windows XP off my laptop and am doing a VirtualBox OSE virtual machine with XP installed and can even run Sibelius 5.1 on it. No 3D support is detrimental, but I have my desktops for that. But with all that, I can't honestly entirely recommend any Linux distro flat out to everyone. Myself, I've tried SuSE, Mandrake, Fedora, and Ubuntu, and I liked SuSE best and am running 10.3. It actually supports all my hardware well, except for my video card - the ATI linux drivers for the x1400 mobile don't work well, but I got it mostly working eventually.
All this to simply say one thing: when it comes down to application support and to ease of use, Windows has quite a lead on Linux. Yeah, you can talk about wine and virtualization all you want, but I couldn't even get iTunes to work correctly in wine (yes, I can do it virtualized, so I'm happy about that, but are we going to really expect every normal office user to learn to use a virtual machine and all that, too?). I'm NOT anti-linux, nor pro-microsoft, but from a person that likes Linux better, I have to give credit to Microsoft for XP and its Office products being pretty good in terms of usability, functionality, versatility, and compatibility. Compatibility, for me personally, is big: I mean, seriously, my laptop is a year and a half old, and the drivers for the video card (which is older still, to some extent) don't work completely? And a Dell E1505 isn't exactly an uncommon laptop.
I think the parent to this particular thread is right - Microsoft DOES have some really good products, And yes, some really bad ones. Like Vista, IMO.
What "torture" is defined as is quite the interesting discussion, maybe slashdot should have an article on it sometime. Suffice it to say, for now, that I'm not sure talking to terrorists or threatening trade embargos or things of that nature is very efficient at getting the attention of those who are willing to blow themselves up for their religious beliefs... and not in defense of them, but essentially to spread them. If I remember correctly, it was prophesied that Islam would take over the world, and it hasn't happened yet. This would irk those who believe it... peace talks are perhaps not the best way to go about settling our differences when the other side wants to settle differences with a bomb.
I refer primarily to Islamic religious beliefs here because it seems the primary source of terrorism, right now, comes from that demographic section.
I'm not sure the apparently extremely democratic-party-biased link is very helpful in this case. Yes, America is in debt, but it seems that you are attempting to push that the Democrat party is much less corrupt than the Republican party?
Precisely.
And the punishments for insulting are based pretty much on accusation. If you are accused of insulting Mohammad, you can be thrown in jail, as was seen recently with the British schoolteacher, who had the class vote (democratic thing, that was not a good idea in that country, either) on what to name the class teddy bear... there were mobs that wanted to hang her.
It's a huge difference from "In God We Trust." I would argue that what religious (which is closer to Deist than Christian) sentiment is left in the government is not really any sort of mind control.
And if it was meant to be some form of mind control, it's obviously not working very well.
I should have used "Greek city-states," not just "ancient Greece," but I assumed this level of knowledge about Greece.
It is, of course, infinitely true that all people within America are entirely deluded about what is going on with American politics and foreign policy, while all non-American countries have the American military secrets at their fingertips, know exactly what is going on in the minds of the American government officials, and in fact, should be allowed to throw America into a black hole somewhere for being so unfairly powerful.
Throw into this that, obviously, all American news sources are extremely slanted towards the conservative, pro-American world domination idea. Oh, and also that the internet must be censored, because American certainly can't have access to non-American news sites.
([/sarcasm])
Well, this will be a "boring" post because it will be more or less in agreement.
I seem to remember reading stuff, way back in the 18th century, about a republic. There was a reason a republic was chosen and not a democracy. Greece tried pure democratic stuff. Mob rule didn't work well. Neither did monarchy, autocracy, or oligarchy. I think that's why the attempt was made at making America a democratic republic. Yes, that means a president can make mistakes, whether he is conservative or liberal.
Changing from a democratic republic to a direct democracy simply because you, or perhaps even a majority, if that is exactly the case (polls and statistics can be extremely inaccurate), disagree with what the current president is doing is ... well, stupid. There are, in fact, ways built in to the system to deal with presidents that for one reason or another, the general populace has decided is doing a bad job. It usually starts with impeachment. The current system seems to have worked surprisingly well in the last 250 years... a 250 year old country becoming the primary world power is pretty weird.
As far as the US being a "christian" Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure that isn't exactly the way it'd go... say, rather, a more religiously free western-influenced Afghanistan. There isn't a whole lot of distinctly Christian religious influence in the US government. Maybe some moral stuff like marriage, but the "Christian nation" is a really just nominal, cultural thing... where as an "Islamic nation" is very much not just a nominal/cultural thing, but a law and government thing.
Can you play by ear at all? (curiousity again, because a lot of people that remember well, unless it's actually purely muscle memory, also seem to play oddly well by ear)
Lack of pressure equaling enjoying music, I can entirely relate to that. I actually dislike performing on the piano, generally.
It's interesting that you say what you say. I play the piano, also, but have always been taught that if you can't play the song slowly from memory, you don't truly remember it... and if your muscle memory fails, for some reason, you are in trouble.
That's not to say muscle memory doesn't take place, but simply to argue the point that not all pianists would agree with your method. For me, I know when I really know a song well when I can almost tell you exactly what note is where... that's as far as me actually knowing it - actually doing the physical activity of playing it is, in my mind, different from knowing the music. (for the record, I've played piano for 17 years and am a composer).
I don't remember much else about it. We played it on a PC-Junior... everything had to be loaded from 5.25" floppies.
My first game experience on a hard drive that I can still distinctly remember was probably The Secret of Monkey Island, which I just got done playing again while on a plane.
Other game experiences... Baldur's Gate totally sucked me in, it was amazing, I'd never played anything D&D before. I loved it. Probably one of my favourite game memories.