I agree with a lot of the sentiments you're expressing, and your post is fairly eloquent and articulate. The only minor and unfortunate gripe I have is that it has almost nothing to do with the particular topic being discussed.
Cue bragging about IQ followed by arguments about whether IQ measures intelligence.
Neither of those subjects interests me as much as the question of what exactly is the inherent value in obtaining an IQ score for a given person, even assuming for a moment that we had a perfectly accurate way to do so. To be quite honest, I think if you give it a few moments thought you will quickly conclude, as I have, that we're all really quite fortunate that it isn't possible to do so. Human nature being what it is and all that, nothing good would come of it.
Oh, I don't know, maybe because its intuitive, infinitely scalable in either direction, doesn't require a gigantic list of esoteric nouns to be memorized... hell, it even maps directly to the number of fingers you have!
I'm probably going to show my age and/or a great deal of naiveté here, but can someone please explain why this service is even a thing? I just can't think of a situation in which I would send a photo to someone and subsequently care whether they saved it or not. I mean, if I want them to see it I send it, if I don't want them to see it then I don't send it. How is it more complicated than that?
Is Microsoft Office "real" or not?
People pay a fee to use code. Whether that code produces a word processing application or the sword of 1,000 truths doesn't really make much difference at the end of the day, does it? You can argue that the word processor is more "useful" than the sword, but then you're basically arguing against anyone spending their money on things that are fun instead of useful.
I've had them from Comcast in the past. They send you a letter that basically accuses you of whatever, and all you've got to do is reply and say, "Prove it." Since the only reason they're contacting you is because someone has contacted -them-, they don't have any proof - they're just going on what AOL Time Warner or whoever has told them because its easier than fighting it.
Gah. Why is it that these people insist on calling anything not found on the main options page "hacking"?
As for the above questions - usually the reason things like that are 'hidden' is to stop people fiddling with them. A good example is the old 'coolbits' entry in the registry for nVidia cards - the overclocking functionality was there, but you had to do something non-standard to enable it. That way, the company's ass is covered if you melt your card; you can't pretend you enabled the options accidentally.
Since Firefox is free and nobody is paying tech-support, I'm not sure why these things aren't available - but the fact of the matter is, anyone messing around with fundamental parameters should _not_ be the kind of person who lets random articles on the internet tell them what to change.
Hah, yes. I showed my wife (who is competent in C++ and is currently learning Java) this story and her reaction wasn't pretty. I've never really agreed with the so-called 'affirmative action' movement. There should be no consideration given to a person's race, gender, hair color or favorite cheese - the only thing that matters is their ability and enthusiasm for the course.
Hopefully, someday these people will realize that saying "OMGWTF there's not enough women/blacks/OAPs/russians/mexicans/space invaders doing X!" is almost as bigoted as denying them the right to do X in the first place.
I always thought that the whole idea of copyright law was basically to make sure that people who create things, whatever they may be, have the opportunity to profit from their time and effort. Given the previous statement, I have to admit that I feel fifty years is a pretty good run, and whatever royalties the aforementioned _might_ lose because of this expiration will be relatively small. They'll just have to go without that fourth ferrari.
Yes, and don't forget that since torrent files themselves are so small, its very easy to distribute them via IRC - which was how it was done initially, before the big centralized listing sites.
Hell, you can even use a mailing list and e-mail them out. It's so easy to setup a tracker on any machine with a broadband connection, and so easy to distribute the small torrents themselves, that any online group, game, MUD or forum can start their own BT network without ever needing to post the torrents to a website.
Slashdot Mirror
Same, except it was a MUD and our 10th was last Feb. :)
I agree with a lot of the sentiments you're expressing, and your post is fairly eloquent and articulate. The only minor and unfortunate gripe I have is that it has almost nothing to do with the particular topic being discussed.
Wasn't that the plot of Pirates of Silicon Valley?
Hipsters were hacking their glasses before it was cool.
Cue bragging about IQ followed by arguments about whether IQ measures intelligence.
Neither of those subjects interests me as much as the question of what exactly is the inherent value in obtaining an IQ score for a given person, even assuming for a moment that we had a perfectly accurate way to do so. To be quite honest, I think if you give it a few moments thought you will quickly conclude, as I have, that we're all really quite fortunate that it isn't possible to do so. Human nature being what it is and all that, nothing good would come of it.
Why is everyone so bent on this metric system?
Oh, I don't know, maybe because its intuitive, infinitely scalable in either direction, doesn't require a gigantic list of esoteric nouns to be memorized... hell, it even maps directly to the number of fingers you have!
I'm probably going to show my age and/or a great deal of naiveté here, but can someone please explain why this service is even a thing? I just can't think of a situation in which I would send a photo to someone and subsequently care whether they saved it or not. I mean, if I want them to see it I send it, if I don't want them to see it then I don't send it. How is it more complicated than that?
Is Microsoft Office "real" or not? People pay a fee to use code. Whether that code produces a word processing application or the sword of 1,000 truths doesn't really make much difference at the end of the day, does it? You can argue that the word processor is more "useful" than the sword, but then you're basically arguing against anyone spending their money on things that are fun instead of useful.
Yes, but it still threw a slightly better pitch than Mariah Carey, so that was alright.
I've had them from Comcast in the past. They send you a letter that basically accuses you of whatever, and all you've got to do is reply and say, "Prove it." Since the only reason they're contacting you is because someone has contacted -them-, they don't have any proof - they're just going on what AOL Time Warner or whoever has told them because its easier than fighting it.
Gah. Why is it that these people insist on calling anything not found on the main options page "hacking"? As for the above questions - usually the reason things like that are 'hidden' is to stop people fiddling with them. A good example is the old 'coolbits' entry in the registry for nVidia cards - the overclocking functionality was there, but you had to do something non-standard to enable it. That way, the company's ass is covered if you melt your card; you can't pretend you enabled the options accidentally. Since Firefox is free and nobody is paying tech-support, I'm not sure why these things aren't available - but the fact of the matter is, anyone messing around with fundamental parameters should _not_ be the kind of person who lets random articles on the internet tell them what to change.
Hopefully, someday these people will realize that saying "OMGWTF there's not enough women/blacks/OAPs/russians/mexicans/space invaders doing X!" is almost as bigoted as denying them the right to do X in the first place.
I always thought that the whole idea of copyright law was basically to make sure that people who create things, whatever they may be, have the opportunity to profit from their time and effort. Given the previous statement, I have to admit that I feel fifty years is a pretty good run, and whatever royalties the aforementioned _might_ lose because of this expiration will be relatively small. They'll just have to go without that fourth ferrari.
Yes, and don't forget that since torrent files themselves are so small, its very easy to distribute them via IRC - which was how it was done initially, before the big centralized listing sites.
Hell, you can even use a mailing list and e-mail them out. It's so easy to setup a tracker on any machine with a broadband connection, and so easy to distribute the small torrents themselves, that any online group, game, MUD or forum can start their own BT network without ever needing to post the torrents to a website.