a weird disease where they are decent political strategists during the elections then they immediately become absolutely horrible at it in every way
That's because once the elections are over, the minority party doesn't feel any responsibility to govern and can concentrate 100% on spin and political attacks. The majority party has to divide its time between defending itself and trying to salvage a recognizable vestige of its agenda. The Republicans are more effective at playing this minority position due to the leadership of Karl Rove and, formerly, New Gingrich, but Nancy Pelosi tried the same thing for eight years under George W. Bush.
There are probably no inherent benefits to using Hurd over Linux - and there are certainly many reasons for picking Linux over Hurd, support being just one of them.
At this stage of Hurd's development, parent is correct. For daily desktop use, Linux is clearly mature enough and Hurd is very probably not.
From the perspective of design, Hurd has some good ideas, as the GNU Web site explains. My favorite is:
the Hurd goes one step further in that most of the components that constitute the whole kernel are running as separate user-space processes and are thus using different address spaces that are isolated from each other. This is a multi-server design based on a microkernel. It is not possible that a faulty memory dereference inside the TCP/IP stack can bring down the whole kernel, and thus the whole system, which is a real problem in a monolothic Unix kernel architecture.
So there are design features of the Hurd that make it attractive to developers. I can foresee the Hurd maturing to the point where embedded device makers would seriously consider it, for example.
More accurately, it is easy to see how to make money being evil and doing stuff like this. When was the last time you saw customers actually reject an evil product? We, the consumers, make evil the low-risk option.
Yes, but that is marketing-speak and even more worthy of derision. The thing about the real numbers is they have a natural total order that is independent of whatever brand identity the marketing department wants to create. Naming this Xbox "One" makes as much sense in terms of numbers as does naming it "Xbox -317.4564896078." I wonder how many of the people responsible for naming versions of Java ended up at Microsoft.
Of course, it will result in a cat and mouse game, but in a cat and mouse game, the cat almost always wins.
Sorry for the digression, but real predator-prey dynamics are more complicated than that. Predators are far short of 100% efficient (citation needed; I am lazy!), and predator and prey populations are interdependent. I can only speculate about the analogy to regulation and disobedience, but it seems possible that it still holds up. There could be the same back-and-forth between the success of regulators and the success of those who circumvent or evade the regulation.
My first thought when I read the summary was that hell had frozen over: Congress is thinking about privacy!
My second thought was that *Congress is thinking about privacy*. This can only be a good thing. I think we should encourage them, saying "you're on the right track, keep going that way" rather than being derisive.
Parent is right, government surveillance/data collection is a huge privacy issue. That does not mean it's the only privacy issue. It is easier for our inherently timid Congresscritters to start by pointing the finger outward from Washington, and I'm OK with that because it at least starts the policy discussion we so desperately need.
97% almost exactly the portion of biologists who believe in evolution according to one survey. The Slashdot community seems perfectly ready to accept evolution as fact, yet anthropogenic global warming remains "controversial."
So you say publication bias, and I say confirmation bias.
Theories, predictions, observation, refinement - repeat as needed until the theory and observations reach equilibrium.
I think the point is: that has already happened. 97% concurrence among researches is about as close to objective truth as we can get in the postmodern world.
News flash: cosmopolitan urban centers are also full of greedy, stupid people. I know because I live in one. You can't escape them by changing your location.
The original show is far out of date. I watched a couple of episodes a few years ago. The visual effects were dated of course, but a lot of the science had gaps as well. When the original Cosmos was produced, the Hubble Space Telescope had not been launched. Exoplanets had not been discovered. The universe was known to be expanding but its rate of expansion was presumed to be decreasing, not increasing. The source of gamma-ray bursts had not been identified. We knew a lot less about black holes. I don't think dark matter was considered important. And, back then, Pluto was a planet.;-) (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
All that is just off the top of my head. Astrophysics has really advanced since 1980.
I think the key word here is "sold." In the old-fashioned days, when you bought a physical object, it would become yours to do with as you will: to eat, plant, or whatever else you may want to do (including silly things like using them as alternative flooring in your house).
In other words, by the strict definition of the verb "to sell," the seller loses control over what the buyer does with the item once the item has changed hands. IANAL but what worries me about this case is that the idea of selling something for limited set of purposes seems to be implicitly accepted. Why? How can the elevator sell seeds "for" one purpose but not another, and why is the court willing to respect those conditions? It seems like a huge backward step for property rights and a worrisome precedent from that perspective.
If you look at what Bill Gates has been doing with his time and money since he quit Microsoft, it's hard to make the case that he is lacking compassion and humanity. He is doing more and higher-profile philanthropy than any other billionaire I can think of, and doing a lot more good in the world than an average citizen like me is in a position to.
Which is not to say he's a saint. How he got his money is certainly open to criticism: I certainly disapprove of that.
If you feel {compelled, qualified, entitled} to assess the man's character, please consider all the facts. Myself, I don't really know the guy.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that is what Google is saying to us, its customer^H^H^H^H^H^H product.
I always thought he was a scumbag. I don't understand why Slashdot and others treat him like some kind of folk hero.
I seriously doubt Kim Dotcom is in a position to actually litigate his patent claim. Financially, that is.
That's because once the elections are over, the minority party doesn't feel any responsibility to govern and can concentrate 100% on spin and political attacks. The majority party has to divide its time between defending itself and trying to salvage a recognizable vestige of its agenda. The Republicans are more effective at playing this minority position due to the leadership of Karl Rove and, formerly, New Gingrich, but Nancy Pelosi tried the same thing for eight years under George W. Bush.
True. He was also leftmost viable candidate available.
At this stage of Hurd's development, parent is correct. For daily desktop use, Linux is clearly mature enough and Hurd is very probably not.
From the perspective of design, Hurd has some good ideas, as the GNU Web site explains. My favorite is:
So there are design features of the Hurd that make it attractive to developers. I can foresee the Hurd maturing to the point where embedded device makers would seriously consider it, for example.
More accurately, it is easy to see how to make money being evil and doing stuff like this. When was the last time you saw customers actually reject an evil product? We, the consumers, make evil the low-risk option.
Nothing, that is, except their business model.
Isn't putting a safety feature on a handgun totally missing the point of handguns?
Yes, but that is marketing-speak and even more worthy of derision. The thing about the real numbers is they have a natural total order that is independent of whatever brand identity the marketing department wants to create. Naming this Xbox "One" makes as much sense in terms of numbers as does naming it "Xbox -317.4564896078." I wonder how many of the people responsible for naming versions of Java ended up at Microsoft.
Sorry for the digression, but real predator-prey dynamics are more complicated than that. Predators are far short of 100% efficient (citation needed; I am lazy!), and predator and prey populations are interdependent. I can only speculate about the analogy to regulation and disobedience, but it seems possible that it still holds up. There could be the same back-and-forth between the success of regulators and the success of those who circumvent or evade the regulation.
My first thought when I read the summary was that hell had frozen over: Congress is thinking about privacy!
My second thought was that *Congress is thinking about privacy*. This can only be a good thing. I think we should encourage them, saying "you're on the right track, keep going that way" rather than being derisive.
Parent is right, government surveillance/data collection is a huge privacy issue. That does not mean it's the only privacy issue. It is easier for our inherently timid Congresscritters to start by pointing the finger outward from Washington, and I'm OK with that because it at least starts the policy discussion we so desperately need.
OK, let's take a look at it. Show us some of this evidence.
97% almost exactly the portion of biologists who believe in evolution according to one survey. The Slashdot community seems perfectly ready to accept evolution as fact, yet anthropogenic global warming remains "controversial."
So you say publication bias, and I say confirmation bias.
I think the point is: that has already happened. 97% concurrence among researches is about as close to objective truth as we can get in the postmodern world.
The grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence.
The fact that bad ideas dominate the set of proposed solutions does not make the problem invalid.
There are plenty of things we can do. There's very little we *want* to do.
That explains so much ... :-)
News flash: cosmopolitan urban centers are also full of greedy, stupid people. I know because I live in one. You can't escape them by changing your location.
The original show is far out of date. I watched a couple of episodes a few years ago. The visual effects were dated of course, but a lot of the science had gaps as well. When the original Cosmos was produced, the Hubble Space Telescope had not been launched. Exoplanets had not been discovered. The universe was known to be expanding but its rate of expansion was presumed to be decreasing, not increasing. The source of gamma-ray bursts had not been identified. We knew a lot less about black holes. I don't think dark matter was considered important. And, back then, Pluto was a planet. ;-) (Sorry, couldn't resist!)
All that is just off the top of my head. Astrophysics has really advanced since 1980.
Mike Tyson is more into medieval history than since, last I heard.
I think the key word here is "sold." In the old-fashioned days, when you bought a physical object, it would become yours to do with as you will: to eat, plant, or whatever else you may want to do (including silly things like using them as alternative flooring in your house).
In other words, by the strict definition of the verb "to sell," the seller loses control over what the buyer does with the item once the item has changed hands. IANAL but what worries me about this case is that the idea of selling something for limited set of purposes seems to be implicitly accepted. Why? How can the elevator sell seeds "for" one purpose but not another, and why is the court willing to respect those conditions? It seems like a huge backward step for property rights and a worrisome precedent from that perspective.
If you look at what Bill Gates has been doing with his time and money since he quit Microsoft, it's hard to make the case that he is lacking compassion and humanity. He is doing more and higher-profile philanthropy than any other billionaire I can think of, and doing a lot more good in the world than an average citizen like me is in a position to.
Which is not to say he's a saint. How he got his money is certainly open to criticism: I certainly disapprove of that.
If you feel {compelled, qualified, entitled} to assess the man's character, please consider all the facts. Myself, I don't really know the guy.
And here I thought the first rule in business was "do things that will make money." ;-)
I've read Google's privacy policy. To say privacy is a concern with Google's services is not FUD. It's a gross understatement.