Why can't/. (and other websites, for that matter) have a "skinnable" interface that lets the user choose how they want the content displayed?
They can, but it's just more work that really isn't worth it. Slashdot isn't a one pager like csszengarden.com. If they do any major site mods, they need to change x number of stylesheets instead of just 1.
Yes, in the perfect ideal world, someone can build a flawless meta-data set, and someone can redo the site to use the new set, and everything will work the way it's *supposed* to work. But this is the real world, and the level of effort it takes to do the ideal just isn't worth it.
It used to be research was done primarily by private industry. Where did we get the transistor from?
My first instinct in reading your post is that you don't know what you're talking about. I think since WWII, the government, and specifically military has always been a big funder of academic and industry research. So... I decided to take 2 seconds and look up the history of the transitor. Now I know its a stretch sometimes looking to Wikipedia, but from here I see
"On 22 December 1947 William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain succeeded in building the first practical point-contact transistor at Bell Labs. This work followed from their war-time efforts to produce extremely pure germanium "crystal" mixer diodes, used in radar units as a frequency mixer element in microwave radar receivers."
Seriously dude, I know blaming the government for everything is cool and all, but at least try.
Related to that: A ton of people in the US come to work when they're sick. They would much rather "tough it out" than have to burn a precious sick day or holiday, meanwhile then end up infecting other people in the office. I work with a guy who is always coughing, hacking, and picking his ass. When he's his worst, someone else usually seems to get it.
It's even worse for the people who get crappy benefits such as minimum wage workers and waiters/waitresses. There are MANY waitresses, for example, who simply cannot afford to take a day off, especially single ones with kids. They have no choice but to drop their various chunks and bodily fluids into the toilet between orders.
Umm Windows is hard to install (well, not really) and Linux is easy to install, but if it turns out to be hard to install, then it's someone else's fault! Oh, and Linux applications are harder to install because Windows applications are easy to install, but that's a good thing because sometimes people do bad things, (even though they could also do bad things on Linux, they would just be harder to install, and it would be someone else's fault anyway). So, anyway, if you want easy, then you need to use a Mac(ignoring that the discussion is about the need for FOSS software to be more user-friendly).
So, in summary: If someone suggests that FOSS needs to be more user friendly, then the answer is that Windows sucks and if you want useability, go buy a Mac.
I can honestly say that you're pretty clueless on the issue
Oh look, here is an article from 2005, 3 years after the "Axis of Evil" speech, talking about the youth movements in Iran. You've taken some very common facts, tossed in a name in a lame attempt to give your opinion some weight, then just started just making shit up. Bush and Ahmadinejad shooting their mouths off from across the globe really doesn't show any insight into what is really going on. I plead that you actually do some reading on the issue before making shit up next time. Please.
Here is more of the quote: "
Here's another interesting example of where basic research can help change quality of life or provide practical applications for people. The government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the Ipod. I tune into the Ipod occasionally, you know? (Laughter.) Basic research to meet one set of objectives can lead to interesting ideas for our society. It helps us remain competitive. So the government should double the commitment to the most basic -- critical research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. I look forward to Congress to doubling that commitment."
You do realise they shoot suspected terrorist bombers and ask questions later don't you?
Now you're just getting wacky.
Your original argument concerned training methods. Now you're tossing out the overgeneralized propaganda arguments. Just because an unfortunate even happened in the UK, you don't employ less effective training as a solution.
We better nip this one, otherwise the "think of the children" arguments will come out:)
That's insane. Images to test their alertness sure, but images of bombs? That's just plain crazy. All you're doing is desensitising them and guaranteeing that even if they're alert they won't get the adrenaline rush they should. What brainiac thought this one up?
That doesn't even make any sense. This is training, you WANT people to see these things. You WANT them to have experience reacting to stuff they think is real. How do you expect them to identify bombs in suticases if they've never seen examples, especially in real world situations. Watching films in a classroom is nice and all, but not real enough. That "desensitising" comment is out of touch. You would rather them get an adrenaline rush and panic as opposed to getting maybe less of a rush, but have the experience to handle the situation?
You need to learn the difference between education and training. Education is a good start, but "first responder" types need training to know how to apply their education to a crisis situation.
1. Kiddie-porn can be manufactured without children and it is legal to do it. The SCOTUS ruled that virtual kiddie porn is legal. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp ?documentID=16075
2. Images are non-rivalarous - you can make as many copies as you want. Thus if a kiddie-porn-pervert is, on average, satisified with 1000 photos and videos, then all it takes is the SAME 1000 photos and videos to satisfy 1 or 1,000,000 kiddie-porn-perverts. No new demand is created.
Nice, but your points do nothing to disprove mine.
1) ok, virtual porn. Well, we have virtual kiddie porn and it is legal. Guess what? The real kiddie porn is still being manufactured.
2) That is a ridiculous example. You know that the internet thrives on new content. Just look at the outcry here when a dupe article is posted. A lifelong pedophile won't be happy with the same thousand pictures, and you know it.
You misspelled fascist.
Tell me, please, where is the breaking point? What is the happy medium? Are the laws from pre 9/11 good enough for you, even though they really don't address anything in the virtual world?
Realize that in the US, you need a photo driver's license to drive, and that the license is used for a ton of things. If we did not previously have that until now, would you be screaming about it, or would you like it? Do you want photo ids abolished? If so, then how far back do we go? How many laws do we undo?
Note that my arguments here are not to support the data retention law of the main article. My point is about pedophilia, and that another poster suggested that the problem be ignored. My point is that you cannot have lawlessness, that some things are important enough to go after. Do be lazy and toss out "facism" everytime someone makes a point that some laws are necessary.
Look at it this way: Assume there is a demand for underage pictures. If you wish to fill this demand, you can (1) force young kids to pose for you, (2) find somebody that LOOKS young, but is old enough so you don't get busted, or (3) use some creative ability to otherwise simulate underage pictures realistically. Which choice has the most risk? Which choice(s) can cover your ass?
When I say kiddie porn, I mean the freaks looking at naked pre-teens, not high school or college age women. Pretty hard to confuse a your average 10 year old with an 18 year old
rest of your rant...
If you follow the thread, I was replying to someone who was suggesting not going after pedophiles at all. My point is that it is ridiculous to give total freedom to people who will abuse it. If that's the case, them remove the organized army and police force. Just don't come crying to me when your family members are raped and murdered by roving gangs (see Congo). You always need *some* controls in place.
I would say that the inability of many slashdotters to spell correctly is a much more serious problem to worry about. I won't even go into the issue of incorrectly extrapolating statistics based on your little slice of heaven on earth, or the morality of using said statistics to justify a police state in the name of saving the children.
I know police who catch these bastards. Either you're so distant from reality that you think people don't really do evil things and it's all just "Big Brother"'s fault, or you just don't want the police to find your underage porn collection.
Should we be trying to catch online predators? You're asking if we should be trying to catch the guys who use the internet to setup meeting to have sex with children? Umm...
If you just talking about the freaks who wack off to pics of little girls, then think of this: People searching for pics of little kids creates a demand for pics of little kids. If the demand is there, then someone posts pics of little kids. Where do you think this pics come from? People sexually absuing and exploiting little kids and posting pictures of them online.
Pure freedom is nice and all in theory, but when people are still too uncivilized to handle it, then it's unrealistic.
Maybe if the city would figure out a way to get the 14000 homeless people in San Francisco off the street, there would be less stolen laptops. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
Ahh, Soylent Green powered laptop fuel cells. Some problems just solve themselves.
I agree. Not only are there more people with laptops, particularly with the addition of wifi, a lot more people who wander off when using the internet in libraries, coffee shops, and campuses. I bet there's been a substantial increase in cell phone theft since 1990 as well, that doesn't mean it's headline-worthy.
Wow, you must have never heard of the cell phone theft ring of 1897. That, my friend, was newsworthy.
Datamining would be a piece of cake if all data were kept in clear, standard XML dialects. See Visualising the Semantic Web , ed Geroimenko and Chen (Spring Verlag, 2004). Some of the possibilities of combing through information and elucidating it, combining it and converting it described in that book are simply awesome. Too bad that the Semantic Web is a pipe dream at the moment.
Well, XML is not really import. The problem lies in going from the infinite real world to a well defined ontology or whatever. I can make the greatest data model ever, and the first time someone tries to put a large data set into it, it just won't fit. You hit a bazillion, "I have this as two fields, you have this as one" issues. You can jump a meta-level up to store all the data, but then you just lost a handle on context. The Semantci Web people have tackled the issue, but have yet to solve world hunger. Tossing a bunch of web and AI/ontology experts into a room produces great things, but they haven't gotten there yet. And the stuff they've produced is still academic level. The average high school kid isn't going to be hacking OWL into his web pages.
As with most things, we'll get closer and closer, and better and better things will happen. We'll never find the holy grail, but some pretty cool and useful technologies will eventually emerge. It just takes time.
Hmmm, why don't the developers and biologists...gasp!....work together to design something? Yes, the developers may have to actually listen to the biologists and not spend their days doing cool programming tricks, and the biologists may actually have to do real requirememns work. If no one wants to put the effort in, then no one has the right to bitch about the results.
Slashdot Mirror
It's easy to follow the Big Lies handed down by the sensationalist press
... ooohhhh rich people!! ooooooo corporations!!11!!!! oooooohhhhhh
How is that any worse than following sensationalist whiners on the internet?
Ooooh.. government is evil!
Why can't /. (and other websites, for that matter) have a "skinnable" interface that lets the user choose how they want the content displayed?
They can, but it's just more work that really isn't worth it. Slashdot isn't a one pager like csszengarden.com. If they do any major site mods, they need to change x number of stylesheets instead of just 1.
Yes, in the perfect ideal world, someone can build a flawless meta-data set, and someone can redo the site to use the new set, and everything will work the way it's *supposed* to work. But this is the real world, and the level of effort it takes to do the ideal just isn't worth it.
Talk is cheap, so suck it up and live with green.
It used to be research was done primarily by private industry. Where did we get the transistor from?
My first instinct in reading your post is that you don't know what you're talking about. I think since WWII, the government, and specifically military has always been a big funder of academic and industry research.
So... I decided to take 2 seconds and look up the history of the transitor. Now I know its a stretch sometimes looking to Wikipedia, but from here I see
"On 22 December 1947 William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain succeeded in building the first practical point-contact transistor at Bell Labs. This work followed from their war-time efforts to produce extremely pure germanium "crystal" mixer diodes, used in radar units as a frequency mixer element in microwave radar receivers."
Seriously dude, I know blaming the government for everything is cool and all, but at least try.
u need to tellk them to practicr complainiing in teh internet it wurked for me!!!!+++++
Related to that: A ton of people in the US come to work when they're sick. They would much rather "tough it out" than have to burn a precious sick day or holiday, meanwhile then end up infecting other people in the office. I work with a guy who is always coughing, hacking, and picking his ass. When he's his worst, someone else usually seems to get it.
It's even worse for the people who get crappy benefits such as minimum wage workers and waiters/waitresses. There are MANY waitresses, for example, who simply cannot afford to take a day off, especially single ones with kids. They have no choice but to drop their various chunks and bodily fluids into the toilet between orders.
Hooray for propaganda!
Umm Windows is hard to install (well, not really) and Linux is easy to install, but if it turns out to be hard to install, then it's someone else's fault! Oh, and Linux applications are harder to install because Windows applications are easy to install, but that's a good thing because sometimes people do bad things, (even though they could also do bad things on Linux, they would just be harder to install, and it would be someone else's fault anyway). So, anyway, if you want easy, then you need to use a Mac(ignoring that the discussion is about the need for FOSS software to be more user-friendly).
So, in summary: If someone suggests that FOSS needs to be more user friendly, then the answer is that Windows sucks and if you want useability, go buy a Mac.
Is there anyway to filter out topics with summaries that end in a '?'
So... can anyone explain *what's the point* then?
So some lonely dude spending all his $$ on computer toys can get a few brief seconds of joy as he posts his specs on a message board somewhere.
Not dissimilar to the feeling I get when I make fun of other people. Ooooohhhhhh what a rush.
Why are people still have WoW installed?
"So what are you gonna do tonight Joe?"
"Oh, I'm leaving work early so I can spend all night not playing World of Warcraft"
I can honestly say that you're pretty clueless on the issue
Oh look, here is an article from 2005, 3 years after the "Axis of Evil" speech, talking about the youth movements in Iran.
You've taken some very common facts, tossed in a name in a lame attempt to give your opinion some weight, then just started just making shit up. Bush and Ahmadinejad shooting their mouths off from across the globe really doesn't show any insight into what is really going on. I plead that you actually do some reading on the issue before making shit up next time. Please.
It was a joke. I dug up the speech
Here is more of the quote:
" Here's another interesting example of where basic research can help change quality of life or provide practical applications for people. The government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the Ipod. I tune into the Ipod occasionally, you know? (Laughter.) Basic research to meet one set of objectives can lead to interesting ideas for our society. It helps us remain competitive. So the government should double the commitment to the most basic -- critical research programs in the physical sciences over the next 10 years. I look forward to Congress to doubling that commitment."
You do realise they shoot suspected terrorist bombers and ask questions later don't you?
:)
Now you're just getting wacky.
Your original argument concerned training methods. Now you're tossing out the overgeneralized propaganda arguments. Just because an unfortunate even happened in the UK, you don't employ less effective training as a solution.
We better nip this one, otherwise the "think of the children" arguments will come out
It will be interesting to see what weapon the BSD crowd will retaliate with.
I would just prefer that their response is to release a stable system using their method.
That's insane. Images to test their alertness sure, but images of bombs? That's just plain crazy. All you're doing is desensitising them and guaranteeing that even if they're alert they won't get the adrenaline rush they should. What brainiac thought this one up?
That doesn't even make any sense. This is training, you WANT people to see these things. You WANT them to have experience reacting to stuff they think is real. How do you expect them to identify bombs in suticases if they've never seen examples, especially in real world situations. Watching films in a classroom is nice and all, but not real enough. That "desensitising" comment is out of touch. You would rather them get an adrenaline rush and panic as opposed to getting maybe less of a rush, but have the experience to handle the situation?
You need to learn the difference between education and training. Education is a good start, but "first responder" types need training to know how to apply their education to a crisis situation.
If SF Fandom appeals to you
Sorry, I prefer sex.
This is why we have summaries: to summarize the story.
Pffft. Then there's no room left for the propaganda. Like use Google man if you want facts and stuff.
1. Kiddie-porn can be manufactured without children and it is legal to do it. The SCOTUS ruled that virtual kiddie porn is legal. http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp ?documentID=16075
2. Images are non-rivalarous - you can make as many copies as you want. Thus if a kiddie-porn-pervert is, on average, satisified with 1000 photos and videos, then all it takes is the SAME 1000 photos and videos to satisfy 1 or 1,000,000 kiddie-porn-perverts. No new demand is created.
Nice, but your points do nothing to disprove mine.
1) ok, virtual porn. Well, we have virtual kiddie porn and it is legal. Guess what? The real kiddie porn is still being manufactured.
2) That is a ridiculous example. You know that the internet thrives on new content. Just look at the outcry here when a dupe article is posted. A lifelong pedophile won't be happy with the same thousand pictures, and you know it.
You misspelled fascist.
Tell me, please, where is the breaking point? What is the happy medium? Are the laws from pre 9/11 good enough for you, even though they really don't address anything in the virtual world?
Realize that in the US, you need a photo driver's license to drive, and that the license is used for a ton of things. If we did not previously have that until now, would you be screaming about it, or would you like it? Do you want photo ids abolished? If so, then how far back do we go? How many laws do we undo?
Note that my arguments here are not to support the data retention law of the main article. My point is about pedophilia, and that another poster suggested that the problem be ignored. My point is that you cannot have lawlessness, that some things are important enough to go after. Do be lazy and toss out "facism" everytime someone makes a point that some laws are necessary.
Look at it this way: Assume there is a demand for underage pictures. If you wish to fill this demand, you can (1) force young kids to pose for you, (2) find somebody that LOOKS young, but is old enough so you don't get busted, or (3) use some creative ability to otherwise simulate underage pictures realistically. Which choice has the most risk? Which choice(s) can cover your ass?
When I say kiddie porn, I mean the freaks looking at naked pre-teens, not high school or college age women. Pretty hard to confuse a your average 10 year old with an 18 year old
rest of your rant...
If you follow the thread, I was replying to someone who was suggesting not going after pedophiles at all. My point is that it is ridiculous to give total freedom to people who will abuse it. If that's the case, them remove the organized army and police force. Just don't come crying to me when your family members are raped and murdered by roving gangs (see Congo). You always need *some* controls in place.
I would say that the inability of many slashdotters to spell correctly is a much more serious problem to worry about. I won't even go into the issue of incorrectly extrapolating statistics based on your little slice of heaven on earth, or the morality of using said statistics to justify a police state in the name of saving the children.
I know police who catch these bastards. Either you're so distant from reality that you think people don't really do evil things and it's all just "Big Brother"'s fault, or you just don't want the police to find your underage porn collection.
So... which is it?
Why should we be trying to catch them?
Should we be trying to catch online predators? You're asking if we should be trying to catch the guys who use the internet to setup meeting to have sex with children? Umm...
If you just talking about the freaks who wack off to pics of little girls, then think of this: People searching for pics of little kids creates a demand for pics of little kids. If the demand is there, then someone posts pics of little kids. Where do you think this pics come from? People sexually absuing and exploiting little kids and posting pictures of them online.
Pure freedom is nice and all in theory, but when people are still too uncivilized to handle it, then it's unrealistic.
Maybe if the city would figure out a way to get the 14000 homeless people in San Francisco off the street, there would be less stolen laptops. Priorities, priorities, priorities.
Ahh, Soylent Green powered laptop fuel cells. Some problems just solve themselves.
I agree. Not only are there more people with laptops, particularly with the addition of wifi, a lot more people who wander off when using the internet in libraries, coffee shops, and campuses. I bet there's been a substantial increase in cell phone theft since 1990 as well, that doesn't mean it's headline-worthy.
Wow, you must have never heard of the cell phone theft ring of 1897. That, my friend, was newsworthy.
Datamining would be a piece of cake if all data were kept in clear, standard XML dialects. See Visualising the Semantic Web , ed Geroimenko and Chen (Spring Verlag, 2004). Some of the possibilities of combing through information and elucidating it, combining it and converting it described in that book are simply awesome. Too bad that the Semantic Web is a pipe dream at the moment.
Well, XML is not really import. The problem lies in going from the infinite real world to a well defined ontology or whatever. I can make the greatest data model ever, and the first time someone tries to put a large data set into it, it just won't fit. You hit a bazillion, "I have this as two fields, you have this as one" issues. You can jump a meta-level up to store all the data, but then you just lost a handle on context. The Semantci Web people have tackled the issue, but have yet to solve world hunger. Tossing a bunch of web and AI/ontology experts into a room produces great things, but they haven't gotten there yet. And the stuff they've produced is still academic level. The average high school kid isn't going to be hacking OWL into his web pages.
As with most things, we'll get closer and closer, and better and better things will happen. We'll never find the holy grail, but some pretty cool and useful technologies will eventually emerge. It just takes time.
Hmmm, why don't the developers and biologists...gasp!....work together to design something? Yes, the developers may have to actually listen to the biologists and not spend their days doing cool programming tricks, and the biologists may actually have to do real requirememns work. If no one wants to put the effort in, then no one has the right to bitch about the results.
Why contribute when you can control.