What's at issue is resources, not opensources. eBay could be run on Linux, Windows NT, whatever - the underlying code is irrelevant to why they don't want people spidering their database. With the bandwidth that eBay consumes every day, having several (and more popping up every day) meta-search sites grabbing all their info several times per day is tantamount to an unplanned DOS attack against their servers. Again, this has nothing to do with code, just the operating costs of maintaining their site.
Maybe in Comp Sci classes or something, but I think you'd be hard pressed to show any decent percentage of professors in the humanities or social sciences who would prefer LaTeX to Word or WordPerfect.
Unfortunately, the ideology of open source doesn't work as well with corporate wealth as some might like. Look at the RedHat --> Mandrake issue. Mandrake is essentially a copy of Redhat customized in some ways. When Macmillian was looking for a Linux distrbution, they went with Mandrake instead of RedHat, though Mandrake does not exist with out the RedHat. For a company like Corel, they're going to try to differentiate their OS from the others. Its a lot harder to do if the pieces of source you release end up soon thereafter in other distributions.
Over the next few years, I think we're going to see several Linux distributions do this - look at Caldera and their install program. Caldera released their code only after its product had been on the market for a few months. ITs only a matter of time before REdHat holds its innovation tight to its chest until its had time to propagate as a RedHat technology.
Of course, that's accepting the premise that intelligence=wisdom. From all my practical experience, that doesn't seem to be true. (look at factions in University faculties, etc, to see what great intelligence is capable of - scary!)
When M2 appeared, the first thing I thought it that it opens up a pandora's box of moderation levels. The moderation system tends to work well, and the M2 system should compensate for rogue moderators. but there will be calls against "bad" M2 moderators. This is inevitable. But what can be done to moderate the moderator's moderators?
Simple - instead of (possibly) adding additional M's of moderation, maybe it would be better to solicit feedback from the people who post to/. On a separate page - accessable only to users with accounts - allow all users to view a sample of M2 moderated posts and comment on their fairness.
This could work kinds like the quizzes that appear on the sidebar of the main page. There might be five or ten M1 and M2 moderated comments that people could look at and vote on fairness. If an M2 moderator consistently (over the space of weeks, months?) is out of line according to the/. users, then their priviledge to M2 moderate will diminish accordingly.
Now here's a (possible) catch. In addition to real M2 moderated posts, a few fake posts - the specifics of this are a little beyond me right now - would be included. These posts would serve to gauge the response of the/. users (some would be obviousally biased, others not so much so) and would just throw some randomness into the equation.
There's not going to be any one final solution to keeping any forum free of worthless posts, but this system would do much to bring the/.'ers back into the fold of self-administration. Any thoughts?
Of course, that's assuming that the planet's creation, life, whatever, are happening on the same timeline as Earth's. However, us humans have been playing around with technology and stuff for only about 6000 years. Not a lot of time in a discipline that can be off by a billion or more. seeing as stars are of all different ages, some planets out there could have a billion years or more of evolution over us, which lends itself (hopefully) to some fantastic discoveries on their part.
Just to play devil's advocate here, but why couldn't this Solar System be the anomaly? Granted, on a bell curve we have a statistical likelihood to be in the middle, but that does not rule out the possibility that we might be at one of the extremes - even one percent of 300,000,000,000 stars (your number) is still a lot of stars.
For all the bad press MS is getting, is it possible that they made the second key weak for a reason? Think about it - by making this second key relatively easy to change, that means that non US/Canadian servers running WinNT could implement high security - a feature many outside these countries want. Although MS can't officially sell their software with this encryption, they can "mess up" and allow others to do it for them, thereby sticking it to the government.
I guess the only question I have is, then why bother making the movie? Why waste over two hours of the audience's time to just hint at what is going to happen next? It seems like a real waste. Had they condensed the rescue of Anakin into a smaller piece, Lucas could have left plenty of time for plot/character development.
Granted, mundane things must happen in the galaxy all the time - trade ships plying their wares, gov't officials moving around constantly. But this wasn't what star wars was about. Look at the title - Star Wars - it says a lot about what you should expect. Its not Land Wars, just Star Wars.
Furthermore, does anyone know of the rumor that the second film takes place exclusively on Tatooine is true? The thing I always loved about SW were the space battles - the scene in TES where Han is flying through the asteroid field still blows me away. With no space flight, it seems almost pointless.
Well, I imagine that Rob is doing meta-moderation first for two reasons: 1. Its a little easier to implement than spell checking, seeing as the code for moderation is already there 2. Immediacy - Given the volume of posts, and the increased complaints about bad posts and bad moderations, trying to fix the moderation system is a little more important than some of the other things. How often is/. down for you anyway?
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What's at issue is resources, not opensources. eBay could be run on Linux, Windows NT, whatever - the underlying code is irrelevant to why they don't want people spidering their database. With the bandwidth that eBay consumes every day, having several (and more popping up every day) meta-search sites grabbing all their info several times per day is tantamount to an unplanned DOS attack against their servers. Again, this has nothing to do with code, just the operating costs of maintaining their site.
Maybe in Comp Sci classes or something, but I think you'd be hard pressed to show any decent percentage of professors in the humanities or social sciences who would prefer LaTeX to Word or WordPerfect.
Over the next few years, I think we're going to see several Linux distributions do this - look at Caldera and their install program. Caldera released their code only after its product had been on the market for a few months. ITs only a matter of time before REdHat holds its innovation tight to its chest until its had time to propagate as a RedHat technology.
Of course, that's accepting the premise that intelligence=wisdom. From all my practical experience, that doesn't seem to be true. (look at factions in University faculties, etc, to see what great intelligence is capable of - scary!)
When M2 appeared, the first thing I thought it that it opens up a pandora's box of moderation levels. The moderation system tends to work well, and the M2 system should compensate for rogue moderators. but there will be calls against "bad" M2 moderators. This is inevitable. But what can be done to moderate the moderator's moderators?
Simple - instead of (possibly) adding additional M's of moderation, maybe it would be better to solicit feedback from the people who post to /. On a separate page - accessable only to users with accounts - allow all users to view a sample of M2 moderated posts and comment on their fairness.
This could work kinds like the quizzes that appear on the sidebar of the main page. There might be five or ten M1 and M2 moderated comments that people could look at and vote on fairness. If an M2 moderator consistently (over the space of weeks, months?) is out of line according to the /. users, then their priviledge to M2 moderate will diminish accordingly.
Now here's a (possible) catch. In addition to real M2 moderated posts, a few fake posts - the specifics of this are a little beyond me right now - would be included. These posts would serve to gauge the response of the /. users (some would be obviousally biased, others not so much so) and would just throw some randomness into the equation.
There's not going to be any one final solution to keeping any forum free of worthless posts, but this system would do much to bring the /.'ers back into the fold of self-administration. Any thoughts?
Of course, that's assuming that the planet's creation, life, whatever, are happening on the same timeline as Earth's. However, us humans have been playing around with technology and stuff for only about 6000 years. Not a lot of time in a discipline that can be off by a billion or more. seeing as stars are of all different ages, some planets out there could have a billion years or more of evolution over us, which lends itself (hopefully) to some fantastic discoveries on their part.
Just to play devil's advocate here, but why couldn't this Solar System be the anomaly? Granted, on a bell curve we have a statistical likelihood to be in the middle, but that does not rule out the possibility that we might be at one of the extremes - even one percent of 300,000,000,000 stars (your number) is still a lot of stars.
For all the bad press MS is getting, is it possible that they made the second key weak for a reason? Think about it - by making this second key relatively easy to change, that means that non US/Canadian servers running WinNT could implement high security - a feature many outside these countries want. Although MS can't officially sell their software with this encryption, they can "mess up" and allow others to do it for them, thereby sticking it to the government.
How's that for a conspiracy theory?
Nothing really big is happening right now.
I guess the only question I have is, then why bother making the movie? Why waste over two hours of the audience's time to just hint at what is going to happen next? It seems like a real waste. Had they condensed the rescue of Anakin into a smaller piece, Lucas could have left plenty of time for plot/character development.
Granted, mundane things must happen in the galaxy all the time - trade ships plying their wares, gov't officials moving around constantly. But this wasn't what star wars was about. Look at the title - Star Wars - it says a lot about what you should expect. Its not Land Wars, just Star Wars.
Furthermore, does anyone know of the rumor that the second film takes place exclusively on Tatooine is true? The thing I always loved about SW were the space battles - the scene in TES where Han is flying through the asteroid field still blows me away. With no space flight, it seems almost pointless.
Enough ranting, I have to get back to work
I think WAY TOO MANY of us have been reading Goedel, Escher, Bach to fall for this one.
Well, I imagine that Rob is doing meta-moderation first for two reasons: 1. Its a little easier to implement than spell checking, seeing as the code for moderation is already there 2. Immediacy - Given the volume of posts, and the increased complaints about bad posts and bad moderations, trying to fix the moderation system is a little more important than some of the other things. How often is /. down for you anyway?