But the priiiiize.
Seeing how Bioware's corny romance dialogue applied to on-screen theatrics. Will we get to see Shepherd: space gigolo or akward male-on-male bonding: nobody can resist the dwarf!
By all accounts, many of them get violent for much lesser things, as we've seen with the high school massacres that have taken place.
I might take offense. I wouldn't exactly threaten violence over it. I might disagree with what they say, but I support their right to say it. Besides, I'd rather they be out in the open where I can confront their ideas in dialogue rather than have their hatred pop up violently like an unseen cancer.
Oh, I see it now... you're basically saying violence is justified as long as it originates from an American!
I'm not saying it's justified. I'm simply pointing out that the extenuating circumstances building up to the violence in those cases is more significant than someone getting into a religious rage over a drawing of Mohammed. The former is a chronic problem while the latter is an mildly acute problem at best.
Of course it is, just like you have the "right" to go out in your can now and run someone over in you want to - but as a human, you face the consequences of those actions. And if you can't face the consequences, then don't do it in the first place - that's what you learn when you become a responsible adult.
There's a big distinction between me drawing a picture and running someone over. The former doesn't physically hurt anyone and the latter does. The point at which my rights come into conflict with other's rights is the point at which the law should come into play. Anything before that is just someone making up laws to be obeyed not to benefit society.
By all accounts, many of them get violent for much lesser things, as we've seen with the high school massacres that have taken place.
If you're referring to the Columbine massacres, that occurred with a small group of troubled teens who had a lack of parental supervision, the know-how to make or obtain weapons, and were harassed over a period of years. I fail see how constant emotional abuse is trivial to drawing a picture. If you're referring to some other massacre, most cases will point to some form of gang violence. The youths in those cases usually have a bleak future and are peer-pressured into violence to fit-in/survive.
Tolerance is a two way street. If they can't tolerate might rights, why should I tolerate their theological eccentricities? Especially when they're willing to be violent against a non-violent offender.
So they don't like caricatures of Mohammed, is it *REALLY* that important you somehow earn the right to be able to do it?
I shouldn't have to "earn" the right to draw a caricature of Mohammed. It is my inalienable human right to do so in the first place.
Grow up, boy. When you get to middle-age like me you begin to understand that life is about tolerating and making allowances for others and not letting insignificant bits of crap ruin your day.
Grow a pair of balls. Tyranny shouldn't be tolerated regardless of your age. I'm sure most Muslims are normal people. I don't have a grudge against them. I do however reserve the right to be a bigot against one who restricts my freedom of speech.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of religious violence, just how many gun-toting Christians are there in the US?
Plenty, but I have yet to see any of them get violent over a cartoon Jesus. Plus, most of the people I've actually met, who own guns, are dead serious in regards to their use of such a hunting tool. So, your implication that people who own guns and are Christian are prone to violence shows just how bigoted you are.
I'd love some feedback from the people who go on about kdawson only posting crap, too. Is this crap? Or maybe you prefer to cherry-pick the bad articles instead to hate on the hated editor of the month/year?
Ah, but you're making the erroneous assumption that things are made simpler or easier for the sake
of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Another point of view, is that people want simpler
tools for the sake of performing a few common and specific tasks. Not, everyone has the time to
fiddle around with installing sound drivers from source. They may just want to play some music
while their attention is focused on other tasks. The computer can be a tool to use and not a project
in and off itself. Just look at the ipad, kindle, or various mp3 players. They are essentially gimped
down computers that perform a few tasks very well. And, for that they are popular.
In fact, your reply kinda drives home my point. Some users believe that because they endured some
trail-by-fire, like hacking through a linux install for over a day, are somehow superior
in intelligence to the rest of the masses, that any efforts make those tasks easier are simply
appealing to dumb people. Because cearly, only a select few can do what you've done and you're
special. Not everyone is a programmer, artist, engineer, or clinician. Their interactions with
and needs of a computer will necissarily be different. This doesn't mean that ubuntu is cludgey
or that it's users are dumb, just that it serves a different audience.
You should keep in mind that a computer is only as fast as the user+computer. If a computer
performs blindingly fast, but has a crappy interface, it will never be used and never be useful.
E.g. if you had to use a computer in russian, or some other language you weren't immediately
familiar with, you'd bemoan having to learn another language just to write an email, and you'd
create or use something else. In conclusion, Ubuntu is sufficient for some people and your
comments are just downright rude for making assumptions about them.
I'm not offended by the profanity of the word so much as the frequent use of the word itself. Soon we will degrade into a society of cavement, but instead of grunts, will communicate through slight variations of the word 'fuck'. E.g. Fuck this fucking test. It fucking fucks. It's a fine word, when used in moderation. But it quickly becomes tiresome when used in place of creatively articulating the situation at hand.
Yeah, stupid ubuntu for trying to incorporate usability features into Linux. How's a linux user supposed to retain their air of smug supperiority if the average schmoe can install it. At least I have my HC11 microcontroller and assembly code to fall back on!
I think we need to learn how to live on earth with a minimal carbon footprint before we consider colonizing space. If the earth undergoes a cataclysmic event, it's highly unlikely, with current to near-future technology, that the colony would survive. Worrying about colonizing space seems like putting the destination before the cart before the horse. As of now, space colonization is expensive and there's little incentive of landing on a foreign chunk of rock aside from the prestige. At least in privatising space flight, you might be able to setup a sustainable market for advancing colonization like space tourism. It'll be interesting to see if it works before decrying that it's destroying our space programs.
That's not exactly a good thing. I know a few friends that say the hours can be pretty brutal, especially around crunch time and you get paid on contract, so no overtime or pay if things go past their due date. I.e. you have to be extremely passionate about it because your quality of life will suck.
Damn, I was hoping for some technical discussion on moving from small databases of a few hundred mb to largish ones of a few petabytes while maintaining some kind of low level latency. (side note, Eve online's server model is an interesting example of this).
Many of us can use a laptop for extended editing, for compiling, for video editing, for running statistics with R, but can also see the benefit of browsing the web, or working with our calendar, doing email, adding some data to a spreadsheet, or reading a book with a different (superior) interface and form factor -- even a different posture.
Yes, but for those who work with computers, those tasks are already tightly coupled to their work device. Hence, there is no added utility for them. It's not a lack of imagination, just a perceived redundancy. Why do I need to maintain a secondary gadget, when my primary device performs all those tasks, which are only unavailable when taking a break from the computer.
The iPad is an interesting device, and it's form factor is good. I just don't need to be attached to a computer 24/7. Going outside or reading a dead-tree book on my off time suits me just fine, thankyouverymuch. This is not a failure of imagination, just an immunity to the Apple hype machine based on pragmatic views..
The only incentive an iPad holds for me is the portability. If I need to access email, documents, literature, or do some programming, I can just use my computer which is fairly customizeable and has no restrictions on what I can install on it. Therefore, I can 'just use' it. It's not the only opinion out there, but I've seen many espouse similar feelings. To me, it's a fad-ish gadget that doesn't offer significant utility over what I have. For others, whose work environment is more mobile, it probably does. Since the majority of my time is spent in front of a computer, I usually don't have a computing task which a) cannot wait until I get to a computer and b) requires some portable device. Again, I should stress that those you view has 'haters' probably just don't have a need for such a device.
Not like fishermen who live off the coast have much to do now that their livelihood is ruined. As of now, there should be a sizeable workforce down in New Orleans with the incentive to actually volunteer to clean up those waters, given that the weather permits them to do so.
Yes, well I meant to imply that the opinion(s) of slashdot do not necessarily reflect general opinion(s). For the sake of clarity, it is much easier to say that the sample of opinions here are biased (read distinct) from the global population of opinions, rather than saying you are getting an opinion. I should have used it in the plural form to imply that I was thinking of populations of opinions and not one from a single entity.
Nah, most of the/. crowd is formed of IT admins, programmers, and engineers, whose environment is saturated with computers and probably do not need a device that has less functionality than the one they sit in front of all day long. For the basic end-user, it's a nifty device. You're just getting a biased opinion here.
They're really going for the lowest bidder if they want to crowd source this problem:
There is $USD500 up for grabs, and the winner(s) will also have the opportunity to co-author a paper with the competition host. The winner must supply their methodology before any prize money is awarded.
$500 amounts to around a week or so worth of work, not counting resources used like hardware and computing time. And also, the prize is you get to be a coauthor? If you develop a novel algorithm that has a statistically significant improvement over prior methods, you should damn well be the first author with the host being the coauthor. A more interesting crowd-sourced competition should involve a >$100k prize with a publication in some significant journal like nature, bioinformatics, or new england journal. That would at least attract the hardcore statisticians to your cause.
MS drastically changed the user interface for their suite of office tools. Instead of having toolbars (with tiny icons) and menus, they have a 'ribbon' with many larger icons that are used most often. Essentially, they removed the menu bar and improved the taskbar by making icons bigger and grouping those that fall under a similar task together.. Many people do not like this because they've become accustomed to a traditional office interface, with file/edit/preference menus and some shortcut buttons for common 1-click actions. For them the ribbon is a hindrance because because they were more efficient with the classic interface.
Personally I like the ribbon. If one takes the time to get used to it, the ribbon makes many common operations more efficient because of how the buttons are grouped together. Some buttons/operations take time to hunt down, but they're usually not the frequently-used ones. There is a learning curve if you're comming from office 2000 to 2007, but it's not much compared to office vs LaTeX.
I always found lectures to have mixed effectiveness. If the class is small enough that you can have a discussion with the professor, you can get some good information; provided everyone isn't mute. For large lectures (>50 people) that are predominantly slides or talking, I never got anything out of them. For some classes I got better grades sitting at home and reading the book during that period. Reading, for me at least, was more engaging than trying to absorb information through osmosis.
I feel your pain. I was in that situation right out of college and near the recession point. I sent out a lot of resumes picked up a few odd jobs temping, but remained largely unemployed. For me, it was pretty frustrating, because not having a job leads to not having a job, i.e. the catch-22 you were talking about. It gets kinda depressing when your career hits a deadend before it starts. Another contingent to having spare cash is family. They can help you through the rough times if you're really in dire straits. As lame as it sounds, having a family or moving in with your parents/extended fairly can help stretch your spare cash by quite a bit. A good lesson is to always treat family and other people with respect, because it's not hard (especially nowadays) to find oneself in that position.
Slashdot Mirror
But the priiiiize.
Seeing how Bioware's corny romance dialogue applied to on-screen theatrics. Will we get to see Shepherd: space gigolo or akward male-on-male bonding: nobody can resist the dwarf!
By all accounts, many of them get violent for much lesser things, as we've seen with the high school massacres that have taken place.
I might take offense. I wouldn't exactly threaten violence over it. I might disagree with what they say, but I support their right to say it. Besides, I'd rather they be out in the open where I can confront their ideas in dialogue rather than have their hatred pop up violently like an unseen cancer.
Oh, I see it now... you're basically saying violence is justified as long as it originates from an American!
I'm not saying it's justified. I'm simply pointing out that the extenuating circumstances building up to the violence in those cases is more significant than someone getting into a religious rage over a drawing of Mohammed. The former is a chronic problem while the latter is an mildly acute problem at best.
Of course it is, just like you have the "right" to go out in your can now and run someone over in you want to - but as a human, you face the consequences of those actions. And if you can't face the consequences, then don't do it in the first place - that's what you learn when you become a responsible adult.
There's a big distinction between me drawing a picture and running someone over. The former doesn't physically hurt anyone and the latter does. The point at which my rights come into conflict with other's rights is the point at which the law should come into play. Anything before that is just someone making up laws to be obeyed not to benefit society.
By all accounts, many of them get violent for much lesser things, as we've seen with the high school massacres that have taken place.
If you're referring to the Columbine massacres, that occurred with a small group of troubled teens who had a lack of parental supervision, the know-how to make or obtain weapons, and were harassed over a period of years. I fail see how constant emotional abuse is trivial to drawing a picture. If you're referring to some other massacre, most cases will point to some form of gang violence. The youths in those cases usually have a bleak future and are peer-pressured into violence to fit-in/survive.
One word... tolerance.
Tolerance is a two way street. If they can't tolerate might rights, why should I tolerate their theological eccentricities? Especially when they're willing to be violent against a non-violent offender.
So they don't like caricatures of Mohammed, is it *REALLY* that important you somehow earn the right to be able to do it?
I shouldn't have to "earn" the right to draw a caricature of Mohammed. It is my inalienable human right to do so in the first place.
Grow up, boy. When you get to middle-age like me you begin to understand that life is about tolerating and making allowances for others and not letting insignificant bits of crap ruin your day.
Grow a pair of balls. Tyranny shouldn't be tolerated regardless of your age. I'm sure most Muslims are normal people. I don't have a grudge against them. I do however reserve the right to be a bigot against one who restricts my freedom of speech.
Oh, and while we're on the subject of religious violence, just how many gun-toting Christians are there in the US?
Plenty, but I have yet to see any of them get violent over a cartoon Jesus. Plus, most of the people I've actually met, who own guns, are dead serious in regards to their use of such a hunting tool. So, your implication that people who own guns and are Christian are prone to violence shows just how bigoted you are.
I'd love some feedback from the people who go on about kdawson only posting crap, too. Is this crap? Or maybe you prefer to cherry-pick the bad articles instead to hate on the hated editor of the month/year?
Clearly they have Alzheimer's :D.
Ah, but you're making the erroneous assumption that things are made simpler or easier for the sake of appealing to the lowest common denominator. Another point of view, is that people want simpler tools for the sake of performing a few common and specific tasks. Not, everyone has the time to fiddle around with installing sound drivers from source. They may just want to play some music while their attention is focused on other tasks. The computer can be a tool to use and not a project in and off itself. Just look at the ipad, kindle, or various mp3 players. They are essentially gimped down computers that perform a few tasks very well. And, for that they are popular.
In fact, your reply kinda drives home my point. Some users believe that because they endured some trail-by-fire, like hacking through a linux install for over a day, are somehow superior in intelligence to the rest of the masses, that any efforts make those tasks easier are simply appealing to dumb people. Because cearly, only a select few can do what you've done and you're special. Not everyone is a programmer, artist, engineer, or clinician. Their interactions with and needs of a computer will necissarily be different. This doesn't mean that ubuntu is cludgey or that it's users are dumb, just that it serves a different audience.
You should keep in mind that a computer is only as fast as the user+computer. If a computer performs blindingly fast, but has a crappy interface, it will never be used and never be useful. E.g. if you had to use a computer in russian, or some other language you weren't immediately familiar with, you'd bemoan having to learn another language just to write an email, and you'd create or use something else. In conclusion, Ubuntu is sufficient for some people and your comments are just downright rude for making assumptions about them.
I'm not offended by the profanity of the word so much as the frequent use of the word itself. Soon we will degrade into a society of cavement, but instead of grunts, will communicate through slight variations of the word 'fuck'. E.g. Fuck this fucking test. It fucking fucks. It's a fine word, when used in moderation. But it quickly becomes tiresome when used in place of creatively articulating the situation at hand.
That's like eating the plant's babies. You animal!
Yeah, stupid ubuntu for trying to incorporate usability features into Linux. How's a linux user supposed to retain their air of smug supperiority if the average schmoe can install it. At least I have my HC11 microcontroller and assembly code to fall back on!
I think we have a ways to go until a third of the sea dies and we kill of a third of the creatures. But at least he's setting a goal.
I think we need to learn how to live on earth with a minimal carbon footprint before we consider colonizing space. If the earth undergoes a cataclysmic event, it's highly unlikely, with current to near-future technology, that the colony would survive. Worrying about colonizing space seems like putting the destination before the cart before the horse. As of now, space colonization is expensive and there's little incentive of landing on a foreign chunk of rock aside from the prestige. At least in privatising space flight, you might be able to setup a sustainable market for advancing colonization like space tourism. It'll be interesting to see if it works before decrying that it's destroying our space programs.
That's not exactly a good thing. I know a few friends that say the hours can be pretty brutal, especially around crunch time and you get paid on contract, so no overtime or pay if things go past their due date. I.e. you have to be extremely passionate about it because your quality of life will suck.
Damn, I was hoping for some technical discussion on moving from small databases of a few hundred mb to largish ones of a few petabytes while maintaining some kind of low level latency. (side note, Eve online's server model is an interesting example of this).
Urg, damn you, I actually clicked on that Darwin Reedy link. It made me wished I was rick-rolled instead.
Many of us can use a laptop for extended editing, for compiling, for video editing, for running statistics with R, but can also see the benefit of browsing the web, or working with our calendar, doing email, adding some data to a spreadsheet, or reading a book with a different (superior) interface and form factor -- even a different posture.
Yes, but for those who work with computers, those tasks are already tightly coupled to their work device. Hence, there is no added utility for them. It's not a lack of imagination, just a perceived redundancy. Why do I need to maintain a secondary gadget, when my primary device performs all those tasks, which are only unavailable when taking a break from the computer.
The iPad is an interesting device, and it's form factor is good. I just don't need to be attached to a computer 24/7. Going outside or reading a dead-tree book on my off time suits me just fine, thankyouverymuch. This is not a failure of imagination, just an immunity to the Apple hype machine based on pragmatic views..
The only incentive an iPad holds for me is the portability. If I need to access email, documents, literature, or do some programming, I can just use my computer which is fairly customizeable and has no restrictions on what I can install on it. Therefore, I can 'just use' it. It's not the only opinion out there, but I've seen many espouse similar feelings. To me, it's a fad-ish gadget that doesn't offer significant utility over what I have. For others, whose work environment is more mobile, it probably does. Since the majority of my time is spent in front of a computer, I usually don't have a computing task which a) cannot wait until I get to a computer and b) requires some portable device. Again, I should stress that those you view has 'haters' probably just don't have a need for such a device.
Not like fishermen who live off the coast have much to do now that their livelihood is ruined. As of now, there should be a sizeable workforce down in New Orleans with the incentive to actually volunteer to clean up those waters, given that the weather permits them to do so.
Yes, well I meant to imply that the opinion(s) of slashdot do not necessarily reflect general opinion(s). For the sake of clarity, it is much easier to say that the sample of opinions here are biased (read distinct) from the global population of opinions, rather than saying you are getting an opinion. I should have used it in the plural form to imply that I was thinking of populations of opinions and not one from a single entity.
Nah, most of the /. crowd is formed of IT admins, programmers, and engineers, whose environment is saturated with computers and probably do not need a device that has less functionality than the one they sit in front of all day long. For the basic end-user, it's a nifty device. You're just getting a biased opinion here.
There is $USD500 up for grabs, and the winner(s) will also have the opportunity to co-author a paper with the competition host. The winner must supply their methodology before any prize money is awarded.
$500 amounts to around a week or so worth of work, not counting resources used like hardware and computing time. And also, the prize is you get to be a coauthor? If you develop a novel algorithm that has a statistically significant improvement over prior methods, you should damn well be the first author with the host being the coauthor. A more interesting crowd-sourced competition should involve a >$100k prize with a publication in some significant journal like nature, bioinformatics, or new england journal. That would at least attract the hardcore statisticians to your cause.
MS drastically changed the user interface for their suite of office tools. Instead of having toolbars (with tiny icons) and menus, they have a 'ribbon' with many larger icons that are used most often. Essentially, they removed the menu bar and improved the taskbar by making icons bigger and grouping those that fall under a similar task together.. Many people do not like this because they've become accustomed to a traditional office interface, with file/edit/preference menus and some shortcut buttons for common 1-click actions. For them the ribbon is a hindrance because because they were more efficient with the classic interface.
Personally I like the ribbon. If one takes the time to get used to it, the ribbon makes many common operations more efficient because of how the buttons are grouped together. Some buttons/operations take time to hunt down, but they're usually not the frequently-used ones. There is a learning curve if you're comming from office 2000 to 2007, but it's not much compared to office vs LaTeX.
I always found lectures to have mixed effectiveness. If the class is small enough that you can have a discussion with the professor, you can get some good information; provided everyone isn't mute. For large lectures (>50 people) that are predominantly slides or talking, I never got anything out of them. For some classes I got better grades sitting at home and reading the book during that period. Reading, for me at least, was more engaging than trying to absorb information through osmosis.
Because it's fun. Carmack just programs a quake AI to kick your ass. It's a bit more time consuming to setup, but far less repetative.
Now the RIAA can use google's services to determine if you're singing a copyrighted song and hunt you down : D.
I feel your pain. I was in that situation right out of college and near the recession point. I sent out a lot of resumes picked up a few odd jobs temping, but remained largely unemployed. For me, it was pretty frustrating, because not having a job leads to not having a job, i.e. the catch-22 you were talking about. It gets kinda depressing when your career hits a deadend before it starts. Another contingent to having spare cash is family. They can help you through the rough times if you're really in dire straits. As lame as it sounds, having a family or moving in with your parents/extended fairly can help stretch your spare cash by quite a bit. A good lesson is to always treat family and other people with respect, because it's not hard (especially nowadays) to find oneself in that position.