Hell, the O-6 probably doesn't have much in the way of details of his/her own command's deployments. Sure, he/she can ask and have a half dozen O-4s and O-5s pop up with the answers, but knowing all the individual details is a bit below his/her level. They're not quite to "big picture" status, but they're not exactly down in the foxholes either.
Did you seriouisly just argue that police shouldn't be required to know the laws they're supposed to enforce?
Sure, I can understand them not knowing ALL the laws, but if they're a traffic cop, they should damn well know the traffic laws. After all, that is their JOB.
The problem in open-source world is the answer given to questions is usually some form of "Come back after you RTFM", and often not even phrased that nicely. Many programmers are not the best people-persons (people-people?) and lack tact. This isn't a problem most places, since as you say, programmers are usually kept away from the customers. This isn't the case in the open-source world, where QA and feedback is direct via forums.
I'll be the first to admit I don't have a solution to offer (because users to tend to have issues that are addressed in TFM), other than recognizing that even "helping" users is often the worst thing you can do if the person "helping" is missing tact.
I'm still with 2.x -- the awesomebar was enough reason for me to write off new versions of firefox. I might move to opera once FF 2.x becomes too obsolete. Until then, you can have your latest and greatest, I'll stick with what I like. Oh, and get off my lawn.
Except they're not obliged to provide anything. And even if they were, they always have lines in the contract allowing them to change the terms anytime they want.
Actually I was just pointing out that politics in general is a dirty game, and both groups are good at dishing out crap, and that neither group is good at receiving it.
And how are you supposed to hold the display and play while riding the subway/train/plane/donkey/whatever?
Games for portable systems tend to be the type you can pick up and play for a few minutes, and come back to later -- not the type that you spend hours in a sitting playing.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that as a whole, people still prefer reading dead-tree copies rather than online copies. Sure, the various ebook readers are trying to create a new market, but compared to dead-tree-book-sales, they're a very small drop in a very large bucket.
And as a student, I *hated* reading online -- I couldn't easily take a highlighter or pen to the article, which was the way I planned out arguments or points I needed to make in various papers I had to write. It could be done, yes, but it wasn't as easy as clicking "print" and then using my existing methods.
I'm in the US - land of the fees. When I had a phone through Sprint, calling my own number to check voicemail didn't count against the minutes in my plan. After I fired them and switched to AT&T and an iphone, I don't even have to call (although "visual" voicemail isn't really all that great) to get my voicemail, and the time listening to the messages still doesn't count as minutes used.
It probably isn't as cut and dried as evolution vs creationism -- the question included a mechanism -- "natural selection" so there were probably some that think evolution, but with some other mechanism (I have no idea what it might be, but I also don't give a damn about how we got to be here either).
Most people don't go to "the middle of nowhere" -- and those of us who do usually get around just fine (hint: there's just not that many roads). Additionally, for most people, the only time they're in "the middle of nowhere" they're on an interstate anyway.
Most people are more likely to get lost in the suburbs of a largish city -- in the city proper streets are usually named somewhat logically (numbers increasing in one direction, etc) and tend to run in straight lines. Suburbs, though, have street numberings that reset when you cross from one suburban city to another (and back again!), streets aren't straight, etc. And then when you get to the really large cities, public transportation will often take care of the problem for you.
That said, I hate the various phone implementations of gps, because of the feature set they lack, better listed in another post -- waypoints, saving routes, etc.
I was debating mentioning the rest of the cliches -- your watch has more computing power than their computers, slide rules, walking-uphill-in-the-snow-both-ways etc. As you said, however, this is slashdot, so I figured nothing needed to be said -- we're nerds, we should all know this already.
Slashdot Mirror
I even have CFLs outdoors and I never replaced them, they withstand temperatures from -2C to 40C along the year.
That's nice. I regularly see temperatures about -18C during the winter. CFLs don't work so great outdoors then.
Indoors, they're great -- not for any energy or cost savings, but because I'm lazy.
250 million pages of text. Or 10 one-page MS Word Documents.
Hell, the O-6 probably doesn't have much in the way of details of his/her own command's deployments. Sure, he/she can ask and have a half dozen O-4s and O-5s pop up with the answers, but knowing all the individual details is a bit below his/her level. They're not quite to "big picture" status, but they're not exactly down in the foxholes either.
Did you seriouisly just argue that police shouldn't be required to know the laws they're supposed to enforce?
Sure, I can understand them not knowing ALL the laws, but if they're a traffic cop, they should damn well know the traffic laws. After all, that is their JOB.
The problem in open-source world is the answer given to questions is usually some form of "Come back after you RTFM", and often not even phrased that nicely. Many programmers are not the best people-persons (people-people?) and lack tact. This isn't a problem most places, since as you say, programmers are usually kept away from the customers. This isn't the case in the open-source world, where QA and feedback is direct via forums.
I'll be the first to admit I don't have a solution to offer (because users to tend to have issues that are addressed in TFM), other than recognizing that even "helping" users is often the worst thing you can do if the person "helping" is missing tact.
I'm still with 2.x -- the awesomebar was enough reason for me to write off new versions of firefox. I might move to opera once FF 2.x becomes too obsolete. Until then, you can have your latest and greatest, I'll stick with what I like. Oh, and get off my lawn.
As it should be. But here in the US, since you also invariably have to agree to arbitration (and they pick the mediator), you're still screwed.
Except they're not obliged to provide anything. And even if they were, they always have lines in the contract allowing them to change the terms anytime they want.
Actually I was just pointing out that politics in general is a dirty game, and both groups are good at dishing out crap, and that neither group is good at receiving it.
And how are you supposed to hold the display and play while riding the subway/train/plane/donkey/whatever?
Games for portable systems tend to be the type you can pick up and play for a few minutes, and come back to later -- not the type that you spend hours in a sitting playing.
And democrats, since they were so polite over the last 8 years or so
Then man up and post the URL. Otherwise, your personal blog that no one reads anyway doesn't count.
I didn't see where the gp suggested continuing to pollute, merely that it might be possible to clean it up.
Apparently, taking efforts to clean up our mess offends you. I think most of the rest of us agree that cleaning up after ourselves is a good thing.
And I noted that it could be done. It just couldn't be done as easily as clicking print.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that as a whole, people still prefer reading dead-tree copies rather than online copies. Sure, the various ebook readers are trying to create a new market, but compared to dead-tree-book-sales, they're a very small drop in a very large bucket.
And as a student, I *hated* reading online -- I couldn't easily take a highlighter or pen to the article, which was the way I planned out arguments or points I needed to make in various papers I had to write. It could be done, yes, but it wasn't as easy as clicking "print" and then using my existing methods.
I'm in the US - land of the fees. When I had a phone through Sprint, calling my own number to check voicemail didn't count against the minutes in my plan. After I fired them and switched to AT&T and an iphone, I don't even have to call (although "visual" voicemail isn't really all that great) to get my voicemail, and the time listening to the messages still doesn't count as minutes used.
Done first, and IIRC, longer, by the Soviets / Russians on MIR.
Well, maybe then enough highly-placed people would finally see what the RIAA is up to.
Then again, they'd probably just require a larger campaign donation to continue to look the other way.
It probably isn't as cut and dried as evolution vs creationism -- the question included a mechanism -- "natural selection" so there were probably some that think evolution, but with some other mechanism (I have no idea what it might be, but I also don't give a damn about how we got to be here either).
If they can compress your health and your life down into a dollar amount don't think they can't do it in this case.
By that measure, copyright is vastly more valuable than human health and life.
Actually, most of those also don't need much in the way of GPS, because they already know the land.
Most people don't go to "the middle of nowhere" -- and those of us who do usually get around just fine (hint: there's just not that many roads). Additionally, for most people, the only time they're in "the middle of nowhere" they're on an interstate anyway.
Most people are more likely to get lost in the suburbs of a largish city -- in the city proper streets are usually named somewhat logically (numbers increasing in one direction, etc) and tend to run in straight lines. Suburbs, though, have street numberings that reset when you cross from one suburban city to another (and back again!), streets aren't straight, etc. And then when you get to the really large cities, public transportation will often take care of the problem for you.
That said, I hate the various phone implementations of gps, because of the feature set they lack, better listed in another post -- waypoints, saving routes, etc.
and idspispopd if you wanted to just walk in a straight line to the exit.
No. Surveyor (the rover) was there first. The lander parked near it.
I was debating mentioning the rest of the cliches -- your watch has more computing power than their computers, slide rules, walking-uphill-in-the-snow-both-ways etc. As you said, however, this is slashdot, so I figured nothing needed to be said -- we're nerds, we should all know this already.