Pay attention. You will be given a short string of characters that describes how to get from the prize to where you currently are, but from the directions it will be impossible to find your way back to the prize.
I'm so glad you asked that. This has been on my mind for quite some time, for some odd reason. Dvorak wrote about MorphOS (press release here, or you can go straight to the PDF here) quite a while ago, with much enthusiasm: "So far, I like what I see."
At the time this was written, I had no idea what he was talking about. I started watching for news on MorphOS, but of course stuff happened. Way back when I subscribed to PC Magazine, I read his article for information. Now, I follow the Slashdot posts for entertainment.
And what is the environmental impact of generating the electricity? This matters unless we're proposing exclusively renewable sources of electricity generation. It's not only what you actually do yourself after all.
Holding nearly any "belief" of consequence requires coping with and resolving the tension created by the criticism of those who do not hold that belief. If there isn't a good way to criticize something, I don't really think it's much of a belief... just a fact.
Sure, there is such a thing as "blind faith," and it is not particularly endorsed by many religious people with a strong history of study in their faith. For example, Jesus promoted a rigor of discovery modeled after "ask, seek, knock," indicating active participation and questioning by the believer. Of course, many other religions such as Buddhism have similar tenets of discovery and journey.
Your point is valid within a limited scope, but I think it is worth recognizing that we all make some kind of intellectual leap (of "faith") to get to certain beliefs we hold, be they ideas about parenting, religion, or the kind of car we like to drive. But, it's always our choice to ignore criticism blindly, blow back in forth in the wind whenever a countering viewpoint is presented, or continually question but hold the belief firmly and consistently.
To repeat one passage: "Nuisances such as blackouts and the rationing of food and clothes were trivial in comparison to the loss of life. Therefore, it was essential to think positively and to make the most of any diversions available to help them forget about the war, even if only for a short while."
I think everyone needs an outlet. You or I might think it's kind of pointless, but perhaps it brightens someone's day to be simply part of something goofy and yet important to them.
Putting more words on your slides also keeps you from looking at your audience, which in an educational setting means probably ignoring when your students aren't well engaged, paying attention, or even comprehending what you're saying. I have had situations where it was as bad as the dusty math professor who writes on the board and never looks back to take questions.
You also have the factor that presenters who feel their slides are self-contained may not be as motivated to prepare or practice their delivery and speech beforehand. In my experience, the most text-heavy presentations are prepared by the professors/presenters who wish to make a "golden set" of slides last them for 5+ years.
My guess is that people in the game design industry are there because they love it, not necessarily for excess compensation as compared to salaries paid in other fields within the industry. So, excess hours over the standard workweek are probably acceptable to many people.
IT can be a fairly arrogant profession, but I think this is a more common occurrence in technical fields than we might originally guess. The big driver, from what I've seen and heard, is the visibility of IT, and its importance to everyday life. The fact that many people are so perilously inept at operating and managing an increasingly core life staple prompts much of the snobby behavior.
Perhaps rampant irresponsibility is not quite as visible or dominant in other fields. For instance, imagine if a shocking percentage of the population drove their cars without any thought to changing their oil, airing their tires, or even filling their tank with gas. We would probably have a community of technicians and knowledgeable people ridiculing and advising these irresponsible "users."
IT has been an odd case, as normally the expense of adopting a new, non-user-friendly technology is prohibitive for people not prepared to maintain and operate the equipment. But, the drastic adoption and commoditization of IT has led this to be out of balance, with people trying to treat everything as a black box when at least comprehending the nuts and bolts is still essential for responsible use.
Sure, it would be great if all these licenses were innately compatible. However, since they're not, it would be a disservice to the entire free software community if we were to start ignoring the provisions of each license in a spirit of universal brotherhood. As much as we all worry about challenges to the GPL, etc., in courts by open source opponents, we should not dilute open source licenses' credibility within the free software community. How seriously could the legality of these licenses be considered then?
I think it's great that a developer took the time to notice a problem and begin the due diligence required to come to a legal, mutually-acceptable conclusion. That's the mark of a true community.
Reductio ad absurdum. The GP was speaking about removing the government from a mainstream market that is already filled by the private sector. You are speaking of a government service I cannot "purchase" from Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
In my opinion, the CDC is the perfect example of where the government should get involved. And, I would suspect that people opposed to direct government competition with the private sector would mostly agree.
It's probably not the coolest or most direct solution, but my whole family is enjoying a vanity domain from Domain Direct, which allows for adding IMAP-capable mailboxes to the hosting account for $0.75/month. They are spam filtered by a pretty good little off-site service, as an added bonus.
I'm not particularly promoting their service over that of another company, but my experience with Domain Direct has been generally positive.
I find that defragging my house semi-weekly is a great way to keep my house running at optimal speed. You might not know it, but everyday house tasks cause household items to be rearranged strangely. This causes a significant decrease in performance.
No, stock options are out of favor because they have previously provided an excellent way to compensate employees without such a huge negative impact on the income statement. As public scrutiny and regulations tighten, the bad behaviors of various companies are coming to light.
This really is a big deal. Normally, your employee stock options are tied to you and cannot be sold. Since you have less "options," the value of these to employees is quite a bit less than normal stock options to normal investors. These limits are in place for a reason: you want to exercise the options as late as possible to capture the maximum benefit (especially when you predict the company will do great in the future), and you can't exercise if you quit your job and walk away without those limited options.
Giving up on stock options because they didn't make people money for a period of time would be irrational. The whole point of stock options is to provide incentive to employees to stay at the company (to be able to exercise, or even just to receive more options) and to work really hard so the company does well. While employees who worked for stock options during that time were victims of an economic swing, options did no more than what they were supposed to do: employees of the ultimately successful companies became rich just as they imagined when they accepted such a job offer.
And, if you read the article, you will see this quote:
But it does offer a different--and possibly more accurate--way to value stock options, an area of great debate even now, nearly a year after options were required to be logged as expenses on a company's books.
This is not about tax avoidance. It's about providing attractive compensation to employees. Google may actually over-report compensation expense due to the increased value and precision of these options.
Novell isn't filing a lawsuit; they are simply filing a motion for summary judgment. It would be a fairly irrational thing to let a case drag out in open court as legal fees continue to pile up during a trial. According to Wikipedia:
A party moving (applying) for summary judgment is attempting to eliminate its risk of losing at trial, and possibly avoid having to go through the directions by demonstrating to the judge, by sworn statements and documentary evidence, that there are no material issues of fact remaining to be tried.
Summary judgment is the best thing to do when a case has no merits. I'm sure the stockholders of every company involved (besides SCO) are glad to see this routine step of a civil trial being carried out with diligence.
Well, in Slackware's case it means that it is almost done. There is usually a new version of Slackware every summer, so for those of us familiar with the distro it's no surprise that things are where they are right now.
It goes without saying that Slackware is a completely different beast than Ubuntu, etc. A stable, server-oriented OS has the luxury to grab the best and most stable of what's around at a given time and ship it, without worrying if it has OMG translucent icon bars. I appreciate the diligence with which Pat provides us a new, improved system at predictable times.
Generally, growth right now is inside markets, not in new markets.
Apple basically "created" the mass-appeal MP3 player market. How many football team captains were carrying around the existing hard drive MP3 players before iPod?
If you're attacking existing markets, you're attacking existing market leaders. So, everything is billed as a "-killer" because it can't exactly be called a "new thing."
As a progressive, forward-looking individual, I scoff at all you reactionaries espousing your quote-unqoute "efficient markets" and "capitalist systems." What this world really needs is an accelerated advancement toward the economics of the future: barter.
Just think, I could earn twenty Betty Boop comics for some httpd.conf work and give them to some institution - say, a "bank" - in exchange for a piece of paper granting the bearer twenty Betty Boop comics. Then, we could all happily wear burlap sacks and live in a world of peace and harmony.
Or, you know, you could just confine yourself to an eternal world of cash-based corporate greed. Your choice.
Your point is understandable, but I think you are missing a key idea: I don't think nerds really appreciate something technologically if it involves destroying a perfectly good piece of equipment. If I wrote up an article about modding an Xbox 360 into a totally awesome endtable that fell over every time I put a can of coke on the edge of it, that would probably piss most nerds off.
Nerds see the potential in things. An ordinary person looks at a 400MHz computer with a faulty power supply and sees something heading to the junkyard. I might see it as a mailserver, after I put some work into it. If you take a good piece of hardware and mess it up to the point that it won't even hold a stable image from a game, you just destroyed a lot of potential.
If the box could parse the closed-captioning feed off of the programs, they could use Google Ads and/or Froogle to match product offerings with what is actually being said within the program.
This is interesting information. The machine I own that was rootkitted is a media center PC and is not often rebooted. It will be back from repairs tomorrow and I will test this out. I never would have thought that a reboot would remedy a problem like garbled CD rips. Such is Windows and DRM.
Thanks to the parent AC for clearing this up. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.
Slashdot Mirror
Pay attention. You will be given a short string of characters that describes how to get from the prize to where you currently are, but from the directions it will be impossible to find your way back to the prize.
I'm so glad you asked that. This has been on my mind for quite some time, for some odd reason. Dvorak wrote about MorphOS (press release here, or you can go straight to the PDF here) quite a while ago, with much enthusiasm: "So far, I like what I see."
At the time this was written, I had no idea what he was talking about. I started watching for news on MorphOS, but of course stuff happened. Way back when I subscribed to PC Magazine, I read his article for information. Now, I follow the Slashdot posts for entertainment.
And what is the environmental impact of generating the electricity? This matters unless we're proposing exclusively renewable sources of electricity generation. It's not only what you actually do yourself after all.
Holding nearly any "belief" of consequence requires coping with and resolving the tension created by the criticism of those who do not hold that belief. If there isn't a good way to criticize something, I don't really think it's much of a belief... just a fact.
Sure, there is such a thing as "blind faith," and it is not particularly endorsed by many religious people with a strong history of study in their faith. For example, Jesus promoted a rigor of discovery modeled after "ask, seek, knock," indicating active participation and questioning by the believer. Of course, many other religions such as Buddhism have similar tenets of discovery and journey.
Your point is valid within a limited scope, but I think it is worth recognizing that we all make some kind of intellectual leap (of "faith") to get to certain beliefs we hold, be they ideas about parenting, religion, or the kind of car we like to drive. But, it's always our choice to ignore criticism blindly, blow back in forth in the wind whenever a countering viewpoint is presented, or continually question but hold the belief firmly and consistently.
I thought this article on World War II was interesting.
To repeat one passage: "Nuisances such as blackouts and the rationing of food and clothes were trivial in comparison to the loss of life. Therefore, it was essential to think positively and to make the most of any diversions available to help them forget about the war, even if only for a short while."
I think everyone needs an outlet. You or I might think it's kind of pointless, but perhaps it brightens someone's day to be simply part of something goofy and yet important to them.
Hip Hip Hooray? I think you mean...
Hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo.
Hoo hoo, hoo hoo hoo.
Hoo hoo, hoo hoo.
Woo hoo, Woo hoo hoo.
Putting more words on your slides also keeps you from looking at your audience, which in an educational setting means probably ignoring when your students aren't well engaged, paying attention, or even comprehending what you're saying. I have had situations where it was as bad as the dusty math professor who writes on the board and never looks back to take questions.
You also have the factor that presenters who feel their slides are self-contained may not be as motivated to prepare or practice their delivery and speech beforehand. In my experience, the most text-heavy presentations are prepared by the professors/presenters who wish to make a "golden set" of slides last them for 5+ years.
My guess is that people in the game design industry are there because they love it, not necessarily for excess compensation as compared to salaries paid in other fields within the industry. So, excess hours over the standard workweek are probably acceptable to many people.
That was Gentoo/FreeBSD.
IT can be a fairly arrogant profession, but I think this is a more common occurrence in technical fields than we might originally guess. The big driver, from what I've seen and heard, is the visibility of IT, and its importance to everyday life. The fact that many people are so perilously inept at operating and managing an increasingly core life staple prompts much of the snobby behavior.
Perhaps rampant irresponsibility is not quite as visible or dominant in other fields. For instance, imagine if a shocking percentage of the population drove their cars without any thought to changing their oil, airing their tires, or even filling their tank with gas. We would probably have a community of technicians and knowledgeable people ridiculing and advising these irresponsible "users."
IT has been an odd case, as normally the expense of adopting a new, non-user-friendly technology is prohibitive for people not prepared to maintain and operate the equipment. But, the drastic adoption and commoditization of IT has led this to be out of balance, with people trying to treat everything as a black box when at least comprehending the nuts and bolts is still essential for responsible use.
Sure, it would be great if all these licenses were innately compatible. However, since they're not, it would be a disservice to the entire free software community if we were to start ignoring the provisions of each license in a spirit of universal brotherhood. As much as we all worry about challenges to the GPL, etc., in courts by open source opponents, we should not dilute open source licenses' credibility within the free software community. How seriously could the legality of these licenses be considered then?
I think it's great that a developer took the time to notice a problem and begin the due diligence required to come to a legal, mutually-acceptable conclusion. That's the mark of a true community.
Reductio ad absurdum. The GP was speaking about removing the government from a mainstream market that is already filled by the private sector. You are speaking of a government service I cannot "purchase" from Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
In my opinion, the CDC is the perfect example of where the government should get involved. And, I would suspect that people opposed to direct government competition with the private sector would mostly agree.
It's probably not the coolest or most direct solution, but my whole family is enjoying a vanity domain from Domain Direct, which allows for adding IMAP-capable mailboxes to the hosting account for $0.75/month. They are spam filtered by a pretty good little off-site service, as an added bonus.
I'm not particularly promoting their service over that of another company, but my experience with Domain Direct has been generally positive.
I find that defragging my house semi-weekly is a great way to keep my house running at optimal speed. You might not know it, but everyday house tasks cause household items to be rearranged strangely. This causes a significant decrease in performance.
No, stock options are out of favor because they have previously provided an excellent way to compensate employees without such a huge negative impact on the income statement. As public scrutiny and regulations tighten, the bad behaviors of various companies are coming to light.
This really is a big deal. Normally, your employee stock options are tied to you and cannot be sold. Since you have less "options," the value of these to employees is quite a bit less than normal stock options to normal investors. These limits are in place for a reason: you want to exercise the options as late as possible to capture the maximum benefit (especially when you predict the company will do great in the future), and you can't exercise if you quit your job and walk away without those limited options.
Giving up on stock options because they didn't make people money for a period of time would be irrational. The whole point of stock options is to provide incentive to employees to stay at the company (to be able to exercise, or even just to receive more options) and to work really hard so the company does well. While employees who worked for stock options during that time were victims of an economic swing, options did no more than what they were supposed to do: employees of the ultimately successful companies became rich just as they imagined when they accepted such a job offer.
And, if you read the article, you will see this quote:
This is not about tax avoidance. It's about providing attractive compensation to employees. Google may actually over-report compensation expense due to the increased value and precision of these options.
Novell isn't filing a lawsuit; they are simply filing a motion for summary judgment. It would be a fairly irrational thing to let a case drag out in open court as legal fees continue to pile up during a trial. According to Wikipedia:
Summary judgment is the best thing to do when a case has no merits. I'm sure the stockholders of every company involved (besides SCO) are glad to see this routine step of a civil trial being carried out with diligence.
Well, in Slackware's case it means that it is almost done. There is usually a new version of Slackware every summer, so for those of us familiar with the distro it's no surprise that things are where they are right now.
It goes without saying that Slackware is a completely different beast than Ubuntu, etc. A stable, server-oriented OS has the luxury to grab the best and most stable of what's around at a given time and ship it, without worrying if it has OMG translucent icon bars. I appreciate the diligence with which Pat provides us a new, improved system at predictable times.
Generally, growth right now is inside markets, not in new markets.
Apple basically "created" the mass-appeal MP3 player market. How many football team captains were carrying around the existing hard drive MP3 players before iPod?
If you're attacking existing markets, you're attacking existing market leaders. So, everything is billed as a "-killer" because it can't exactly be called a "new thing."
As a progressive, forward-looking individual, I scoff at all you reactionaries espousing your quote-unqoute "efficient markets" and "capitalist systems." What this world really needs is an accelerated advancement toward the economics of the future: barter.
Just think, I could earn twenty Betty Boop comics for some httpd.conf work and give them to some institution - say, a "bank" - in exchange for a piece of paper granting the bearer twenty Betty Boop comics. Then, we could all happily wear burlap sacks and live in a world of peace and harmony.
Or, you know, you could just confine yourself to an eternal world of cash-based corporate greed. Your choice.
Maybe we should change Taco's Slashdot makeover contest to a challenge to create the coolest "OMG!!! KITTIES!!!" theme for the Apple section. :)
Substance? Probably somewhere between C and DD.
Your point is understandable, but I think you are missing a key idea: I don't think nerds really appreciate something technologically if it involves destroying a perfectly good piece of equipment. If I wrote up an article about modding an Xbox 360 into a totally awesome endtable that fell over every time I put a can of coke on the edge of it, that would probably piss most nerds off.
Nerds see the potential in things. An ordinary person looks at a 400MHz computer with a faulty power supply and sees something heading to the junkyard. I might see it as a mailserver, after I put some work into it. If you take a good piece of hardware and mess it up to the point that it won't even hold a stable image from a game, you just destroyed a lot of potential.
You can use PowerDNS and any number of administrative tools to manage the domains with a SQL database rather than flat text files.
If the box could parse the closed-captioning feed off of the programs, they could use Google Ads and/or Froogle to match product offerings with what is actually being said within the program.
This is interesting information. The machine I own that was rootkitted is a media center PC and is not often rebooted. It will be back from repairs tomorrow and I will test this out. I never would have thought that a reboot would remedy a problem like garbled CD rips. Such is Windows and DRM.
Thanks to the parent AC for clearing this up. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.