You really nailed it. It is very nuanced and the reason why the debate rages because people can play the semantics game and make either side sound plausible. Thing is, slashdot is *the* place for geeks, and geeks are normally more objective than this. I guess everyone (or community) has their blind spots. You'll probably catch a few undeserved troll/flamebait mods for stating what you did because you'll look like an RIAA stooge (and you obviously aren't). But at least what you said is objective.
That said, the RIAA should NOT be allowed to use questionable tactics to enforce their copyrights. They really do bully people. It's unfortunate that well connected and very wealthy organizations can do things that the average guy couldn't. The law should be enforced with a modicum of parity. If the law really falls short in addressing what downloading music illegally is defined as, at least it can be consistent in how far a corporation can go in defending its IP, as well as how much in damages it can seek in a civil trial. The story of the woman from Michigan who was successfully sued for >200K should have never happened. What sane court could grant such a sum for such a small crime? That should be as illegal as copyright infringement, I know the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment doesn't pertain to civil trials but in this case that's what it was.
Did you enjoy all the comments?...I sure did. In the end, we all learned that people already hate Google and Apple. Someday is now! Now where's my flying car?!
Have you ever used IETab? It's a Firefox extension that brings up pages in a tab that uses IE. Our intranet is such that many sites that I have to use require IE6 but I use Firefox for most dev work. Most of the time, that extension gets me in just fine. Don't remember which user-agent string it supplies, though, but you might find it helpful if you don't already have it.
One internal website went as far as to redirect you to 'this doesn't work with FF'
If there's one thing I hate more than company standard software boards who chronically Don't Get It, it's the self-proclaimed Intranet Hall Monitor buttholes. Show me someone who goes out of his way to intentionally deny users access to a site simply because he dislikes the user-agent...and I'll show you someone who just doesn't get the medium he is working with. "Internet? Shucks no, boy, I use that there big ole blue E! The one right there on my compooter screen!"
Where I work, the company standard IDEs for web development are Dreamweaver or Eclipse. Both are completely unacceptable. Yet, a F/OSS text editor like jEdit is nonstandard but allows me to be much more productive. Why? Because it allows me to work quickly. I have all of the powerful text editing tools of an IDE without the extreme overhead.
Also, as someone else replied, Firefox and certain plugins like Firebug and the Tidy validator are critical. I am a web developer, you see, and IE's ultracrappy javascript debugging capabilities are not even worth considering (even with the insanely useless MSFT Dev Toolbar installed). Profiling AJAX calls, or ANY HTTP request, is impossible without a tool like Firebug. And they are all nonstandard, but without them it would be more time consuming if not practically impossible for me to debug or optimize web pages.
I am not trying to install iTunes or GAIM or games. Stupid people install that stuff at work. I just want to use tools that will allow me to get the job done. The web and its technologies are rapidly changing. Company Standard Software committees do not seem to be able to keep up, at least where I work. So, you can either 1) fight the establishment and risk looking like an "OSS hippie troublemaker" and still never get what you need, 2) work with approved but ineffective and usually expensive tools, or 3) just install what you need and produce good work. Within reason, I go with option number 3.
Where I live the tap water is very good and I drink it all the time. I still buy bottled water. Not because it's better, but because it's convenient to grab a bottle of water when I am leaving my house (which is FAR better than grabbing a soda on the go). I'll usually refill the bottles at work and use em until they taste funny. Bottled water isn't necessarily a scam. It's just a convenience. I think more people buy bottled water these days for two reasons: 1) people are more conscious of the need to avoid soda, and 2) people are more on the go than they were 20 years ago.
I like Firefox a lot, but it is laughable to see all of these comparisons on "browser speed". It's also misleading to non geek users. I have been asked by many non geeks if Firefox is faster. Does it get pages faster? Of course not. That's dependent on the server, file size, the network, your connection speed, etc. Sure, you can tweak certain settings to make things render noticeably faster. But only geeks are going to mess with the config settings anyhow. When most people hear that the browser is "faster" they expect faster page load times. They aren't going to get that and will become frustrated with Firefox. That is unfortunate.
Aside from the fact that these operations are highly dependent on the hardware and OS, honestly, does it matter that Firefox is 10x faster than IE at opening a tab? It's past the point of diminishing returns. An operation like that is fast enough if it doesn't make the user wait a perceptibly long time. Taking 10msecs to perform a function like that is the same as the browser taking 100msecs. 100msecs is fast enough. Spending time accomplishing meaningless speed gains is a waste of the Mozilla devs' time. Why not spend time reducing memory usage or polishing the UI or working on other things like Thunderbird?
Accountability is a good thing. This is not a question of accountability, it's a question of whom you are accountable to.
It's a very short step from finding scammers and criminals and holding them accountable to finding political dissidents and persecuting them. You cannot have one without the strong likelihood of the other. If the potential for abuse occurs, then abuse is inevitable.
I remember the wobblies from various US history books I have read/listened to. Interesting group. They most certainly deserved respect, as they clung to their principles despite all of the persecution they endured. Thing is, I didn't even realize there were wobblies left. I have some questions:
Socialism in the US isn't what it used to be. Socialism used to be a bona-fide political party, just ask Eugene V Debbs, but now nobody who wants to be taken seriously from a political perspective in the US would label himself a socialist. The word now has a totally different connotation. Does the IWW still describe itself as socialist?
How did they get the name wobblies? I have wondered that, and cannot seem to understand why. The books I have read state that nobody knows.
My co-workers and I have long used Hobo slang to amuse ourselves. But then we found the page for wobbly lingo. Why is that called wobbly lingo? Were many migrant workers affiliated with the IWW, or did that just come out of the Great Depression?
Anyhow, just stuff I wondered about. Never thought I'd get to talk to a wobbly!
I hate the misconception that more time = more effort. Why does everyone (or maybe just my boss) equate effort and time? ARGH!
Who would you rather have working for you? Someone who is GONE by 4:30 everyday but who works hard all day and accomplishes much or someone who jacks around all day and has to work extra to keep up?
Some of us don't live for work and have lives outside of work, and thus do our best to prevent work from encroaching on that time. This is accomplished via good time management, proper prioritization of tasks, and most of all: NOT JACKING AROUND AT WORK! Except for the occasional/. post, of course.:)
Even if the RIAA weren't about what they are about, they'd still deserve it. Let's say the RIAA was all about giving out fluffy bunnies to children with Leukemia. If they chose to put a site on the hostile environment that are "teh intarwebs" which contained SQL injection vulnerabilities, they had it coming. Seriously. An SQL injection has to be the most well documented and easiest to use vulnerability of all time. It is also one of the easiest to fix, and if a site is vulnerable that raises *serious* doubts about the competence of the developer. And if something is easy to crack, then you have to assume it will be. Especially if you are the RIAA and have a massive bullseye mounted on your back.
The funniest part of it all is that I'd imagine that with an SQL injection-type attack it is really hard to prove malicious intent. So if they caught the people who did this and they walked because their lawyers were somehow able to cast doubt on malicious intentions, that would just be poetic justice for the RIAA (sir, I was just trying to create the userID ";truncate table users;"). Heck, XKCD just about says it all!
That last paragraph is kind of what I was talking about when I linked to Patrick Bateson's answer to "what did you change your mind about in 2007". I'd say that agnosticism is a null hypothesis. Atheism is not a null hypothesis any more than deism is a null hypothesis; it's just the other side of the coin.
Maybe it's just semantics. But I think it's important because I do get the feeling that atheists ridicule deists in much the same way that deists (especially in your face "christians", aka the religious right) look down on atheists. Both sides seem to be so sure of the "rightness" of their position, which from a pure scientific perspective, is rather unknowable. Both positions can impart a confirmation bias.
In other words, when I see posts on/. that say something like "There is no god. Deal with it", to me, it's the same thing as "if you don't accept Jesus, you'll burn in hell". I have actually seen both here on/. Both are assumptions about the universe which are based on faith. That's OK, I am what you'd call a deist and I acknowledge that my beliefs are based on faith (and not all faith is blind). But let's call things what they are. Atheism requires faith just like deism does. True, deism usually involves a creed of belief. But to an admittedly lesser extent, atheism does too, if that only creed of belief is the truly unknowable "fact" that there is no god.
But, man...Dawkins site reminds me EXACTLY of many fundie sites out there. Same thing, different name. I've read some of his work, actually. It sure didn't convince me to become an atheist. It's just some guy's reasoning on life, and IMO it's flawed. I do think he has a bit of a cult of personality due to his scientific credentials. If he were just some dude who never did anything significant with his life, then he'd not get the attention he gets. In that sense, he is a charismatic leader.
charismatic leader? check. book? sure, lots of em! Try "The God Delusion". ceremonies? check. hierarchy? Sure. There a several preeminent atheists that are followed by the rest. Atheists, being human, tend to follow people they admire. Who knew?
This flavor of atheism even has its own ministry. Care to go door-to-door and hand out these "religious" tracts? Actually, the message there is similar to that of some religious groups.
I sometimes see people make statements like "atheism is a religion like *not* collecting stamps is a hobby" and so on. It's just word games. If you define a religion as a body of people who adhere to a set of beliefs which are based on faith (and atheism is just that because you cannot *know* there is no God), then by that standard modern Atheism is a religion. One could reasonably argue that not believing in a god is not a religion, but we all know that the movement called Atheism is more than that.
In other words, know why you are going to school. Many people go just because it's just what you do after high school. These same people wander aimlessly through college, obtaining no real education along the way and having no real desire to learn. You then have college grads who don't know what they want to be when they grow up. You cannot just expect a job because you have a degree.
"Piffle. You are equating software engineering talent with a propensity to participate in shouting (or its equivalent) matches. Those things are, to say the least, incommensurate."
After I read GP's post, I had a totally different opinion on that statement. I think you are getting hung up on a stray statement in a well written post.
One thing that I have noticed about good programmers, and geeks in general: they like to argue. I am not saying I am a great programmer, but I have been at it for a while and have been pretty successful. And my wife will tell you I love to argue. Arguments are, for us, not heated angerfests, but opportunities to test our logic against a worthy opponent. The more worthy the opponent, the better. Me, I love to argue not because I hate people and want to tell them they are wrong and stupid and blind, but rather because it is a wonderful mental exercise. I have learned more from the flamewars or arguments I have been in than any one course I have ever taken. Arguments and flamewars have the effect of making you think about your viewpoint on a matter. You may doggedly cling to your viewpoint during the argument, but afterwards you critically evaluate your position. If you find you need to adjust your opinion about a topic, then this is where you do just that.
I think the point he was making that someone willing to challenge a professor probably also has what it takes to be a good software engineer.
Disagree with me? Fine...but the very site you are on is a veritable monument to geeks who like to argue with one another.
The loudness war is a result of one fundamental problem, which the article states in a quite offhand way: "And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3"
Did you catch that? Listeners "consume" music. NO they don't. Listeners listen to music. Listeners enjoy music. Many listeners care about music. When you stop viewing music as something meant to be enjoyed, as the major record companies have, and start viewing it as a consumer product, then of course all you are going to care about is selling more units.
Don't let the RIAA lie to you and say that they protect "artists" interests. They do not view musicians as artists, because if they did they'd treat their work as art and render it true to form. To the RIAA, musicians are factories pumping out product which is to then be slapped in garish packages and consumed by the masses. Let's call it what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
"How do you clean up spilled data?"
With the mop and bit bucket, of course!
If you think data wants to be free now, wait till it's in your small intestine!
You really nailed it. It is very nuanced and the reason why the debate rages because people can play the semantics game and make either side sound plausible. Thing is, slashdot is *the* place for geeks, and geeks are normally more objective than this. I guess everyone (or community) has their blind spots. You'll probably catch a few undeserved troll/flamebait mods for stating what you did because you'll look like an RIAA stooge (and you obviously aren't). But at least what you said is objective.
That said, the RIAA should NOT be allowed to use questionable tactics to enforce their copyrights. They really do bully people. It's unfortunate that well connected and very wealthy organizations can do things that the average guy couldn't. The law should be enforced with a modicum of parity. If the law really falls short in addressing what downloading music illegally is defined as, at least it can be consistent in how far a corporation can go in defending its IP, as well as how much in damages it can seek in a civil trial. The story of the woman from Michigan who was successfully sued for >200K should have never happened. What sane court could grant such a sum for such a small crime? That should be as illegal as copyright infringement, I know the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment doesn't pertain to civil trials but in this case that's what it was.
Did you enjoy all the comments?...I sure did. In the end, we all learned that people already hate Google and Apple. Someday is now! Now where's my flying car?!
Have you ever used IETab? It's a Firefox extension that brings up pages in a tab that uses IE. Our intranet is such that many sites that I have to use require IE6 but I use Firefox for most dev work. Most of the time, that extension gets me in just fine. Don't remember which user-agent string it supplies, though, but you might find it helpful if you don't already have it.
If there's one thing I hate more than company standard software boards who chronically Don't Get It, it's the self-proclaimed Intranet Hall Monitor buttholes. Show me someone who goes out of his way to intentionally deny users access to a site simply because he dislikes the user-agent...and I'll show you someone who just doesn't get the medium he is working with. "Internet? Shucks no, boy, I use that there big ole blue E! The one right there on my compooter screen!"
Where I work, the company standard IDEs for web development are Dreamweaver or Eclipse. Both are completely unacceptable. Yet, a F/OSS text editor like jEdit is nonstandard but allows me to be much more productive. Why? Because it allows me to work quickly. I have all of the powerful text editing tools of an IDE without the extreme overhead.
Also, as someone else replied, Firefox and certain plugins like Firebug and the Tidy validator are critical. I am a web developer, you see, and IE's ultracrappy javascript debugging capabilities are not even worth considering (even with the insanely useless MSFT Dev Toolbar installed). Profiling AJAX calls, or ANY HTTP request, is impossible without a tool like Firebug. And they are all nonstandard, but without them it would be more time consuming if not practically impossible for me to debug or optimize web pages.
I am not trying to install iTunes or GAIM or games. Stupid people install that stuff at work. I just want to use tools that will allow me to get the job done. The web and its technologies are rapidly changing. Company Standard Software committees do not seem to be able to keep up, at least where I work. So, you can either 1) fight the establishment and risk looking like an "OSS hippie troublemaker" and still never get what you need, 2) work with approved but ineffective and usually expensive tools, or 3) just install what you need and produce good work. Within reason, I go with option number 3.
So...unauthorized software isn't always better; authorized software isn't always better.
Where I live the tap water is very good and I drink it all the time. I still buy bottled water. Not because it's better, but because it's convenient to grab a bottle of water when I am leaving my house (which is FAR better than grabbing a soda on the go). I'll usually refill the bottles at work and use em until they taste funny. Bottled water isn't necessarily a scam. It's just a convenience. I think more people buy bottled water these days for two reasons: 1) people are more conscious of the need to avoid soda, and 2) people are more on the go than they were 20 years ago.
Thank you. These benchmarks _are_ meaningless.
I like Firefox a lot, but it is laughable to see all of these comparisons on "browser speed". It's also misleading to non geek users. I have been asked by many non geeks if Firefox is faster. Does it get pages faster? Of course not. That's dependent on the server, file size, the network, your connection speed, etc. Sure, you can tweak certain settings to make things render noticeably faster. But only geeks are going to mess with the config settings anyhow. When most people hear that the browser is "faster" they expect faster page load times. They aren't going to get that and will become frustrated with Firefox. That is unfortunate.
Aside from the fact that these operations are highly dependent on the hardware and OS, honestly, does it matter that Firefox is 10x faster than IE at opening a tab? It's past the point of diminishing returns. An operation like that is fast enough if it doesn't make the user wait a perceptibly long time. Taking 10msecs to perform a function like that is the same as the browser taking 100msecs. 100msecs is fast enough. Spending time accomplishing meaningless speed gains is a waste of the Mozilla devs' time. Why not spend time reducing memory usage or polishing the UI or working on other things like Thunderbird?
Accountability is a good thing. This is not a question of accountability, it's a question of whom you are accountable to.
It's a very short step from finding scammers and criminals and holding them accountable to finding political dissidents and persecuting them. You cannot have one without the strong likelihood of the other. If the potential for abuse occurs, then abuse is inevitable.
Interesting. Thanks for the response!
Wow, the Wobblies!
I remember the wobblies from various US history books I have read/listened to. Interesting group. They most certainly deserved respect, as they clung to their principles despite all of the persecution they endured. Thing is, I didn't even realize there were wobblies left. I have some questions:
Socialism in the US isn't what it used to be. Socialism used to be a bona-fide political party, just ask Eugene V Debbs, but now nobody who wants to be taken seriously from a political perspective in the US would label himself a socialist. The word now has a totally different connotation. Does the IWW still describe itself as socialist?
How did they get the name wobblies? I have wondered that, and cannot seem to understand why. The books I have read state that nobody knows.
I am not trying to be funny, but look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wobbly_lingo
and here: http://www.hobotraveler.com/hoboslang.shtml
My co-workers and I have long used Hobo slang to amuse ourselves. But then we found the page for wobbly lingo. Why is that called wobbly lingo? Were many migrant workers affiliated with the IWW, or did that just come out of the Great Depression?
Anyhow, just stuff I wondered about. Never thought I'd get to talk to a wobbly!
It's scary that I get your sig (well, part of it at least). My kids love that book! Heck, I like it too. It _is_ Dr Seuss, after all.
extra effort != more time.
/. post, of course. :)
I hate the misconception that more time = more effort. Why does everyone (or maybe just my boss) equate effort and time? ARGH!
Who would you rather have working for you? Someone who is GONE by 4:30 everyday but who works hard all day and accomplishes much or someone who jacks around all day and has to work extra to keep up?
Some of us don't live for work and have lives outside of work, and thus do our best to prevent work from encroaching on that time. This is accomplished via good time management, proper prioritization of tasks, and most of all: NOT JACKING AROUND AT WORK! Except for the occasional
Even if the RIAA weren't about what they are about, they'd still deserve it. Let's say the RIAA was all about giving out fluffy bunnies to children with Leukemia. If they chose to put a site on the hostile environment that are "teh intarwebs" which contained SQL injection vulnerabilities, they had it coming. Seriously. An SQL injection has to be the most well documented and easiest to use vulnerability of all time. It is also one of the easiest to fix, and if a site is vulnerable that raises *serious* doubts about the competence of the developer. And if something is easy to crack, then you have to assume it will be. Especially if you are the RIAA and have a massive bullseye mounted on your back.
The funniest part of it all is that I'd imagine that with an SQL injection-type attack it is really hard to prove malicious intent. So if they caught the people who did this and they walked because their lawyers were somehow able to cast doubt on malicious intentions, that would just be poetic justice for the RIAA (sir, I was just trying to create the userID ";truncate table users;"). Heck, XKCD just about says it all!
I bark at people like you.
No, seriously.
Someone came to ask me a stupid question that a Google search could have answered, and yes, you guessed it: I had a deadline.
So I started barking.
He never came back again.
That last paragraph is kind of what I was talking about when I linked to Patrick Bateson's answer to "what did you change your mind about in 2007". I'd say that agnosticism is a null hypothesis. Atheism is not a null hypothesis any more than deism is a null hypothesis; it's just the other side of the coin.
/. that say something like "There is no god. Deal with it", to me, it's the same thing as "if you don't accept Jesus, you'll burn in hell". I have actually seen both here on /. Both are assumptions about the universe which are based on faith. That's OK, I am what you'd call a deist and I acknowledge that my beliefs are based on faith (and not all faith is blind). But let's call things what they are. Atheism requires faith just like deism does. True, deism usually involves a creed of belief. But to an admittedly lesser extent, atheism does too, if that only creed of belief is the truly unknowable "fact" that there is no god.
Maybe it's just semantics. But I think it's important because I do get the feeling that atheists ridicule deists in much the same way that deists (especially in your face "christians", aka the religious right) look down on atheists. Both sides seem to be so sure of the "rightness" of their position, which from a pure scientific perspective, is rather unknowable. Both positions can impart a confirmation bias.
In other words, when I see posts on
But, man...Dawkins site reminds me EXACTLY of many fundie sites out there. Same thing, different name. I've read some of his work, actually. It sure didn't convince me to become an atheist. It's just some guy's reasoning on life, and IMO it's flawed. I do think he has a bit of a cult of personality due to his scientific credentials. If he were just some dude who never did anything significant with his life, then he'd not get the attention he gets. In that sense, he is a charismatic leader.
Oh, and btw...the AC wasn't me.
"In short, [Atheism] has none of the hallmarks of a religion."
I disagree. Ever go here? Let's see...
charismatic leader? check.
book? sure, lots of em! Try "The God Delusion".
ceremonies? check.
hierarchy? Sure. There a several preeminent atheists that are followed by the rest. Atheists, being human, tend to follow people they admire. Who knew?
This flavor of atheism even has its own ministry. Care to go door-to-door and hand out these "religious" tracts? Actually, the message there is similar to that of some religious groups.
I sometimes see people make statements like "atheism is a religion like *not* collecting stamps is a hobby" and so on. It's just word games. If you define a religion as a body of people who adhere to a set of beliefs which are based on faith (and atheism is just that because you cannot *know* there is no God), then by that standard modern Atheism is a religion. One could reasonably argue that not believing in a god is not a religion, but we all know that the movement called Atheism is more than that.
And what, he let the sailors swing from them?
That Galileo was one virile fellow, for sure, but...jeez!
feeding the trolls *and* looking good while doing it, eh?
In other words, know why you are going to school. Many people go just because it's just what you do after high school. These same people wander aimlessly through college, obtaining no real education along the way and having no real desire to learn. You then have college grads who don't know what they want to be when they grow up. You cannot just expect a job because you have a degree.
"Piffle. You are equating software engineering talent with a propensity to participate in shouting (or its equivalent) matches. Those things are, to say the least, incommensurate."
After I read GP's post, I had a totally different opinion on that statement. I think you are getting hung up on a stray statement in a well written post.
One thing that I have noticed about good programmers, and geeks in general: they like to argue. I am not saying I am a great programmer, but I have been at it for a while and have been pretty successful. And my wife will tell you I love to argue. Arguments are, for us, not heated angerfests, but opportunities to test our logic against a worthy opponent. The more worthy the opponent, the better. Me, I love to argue not because I hate people and want to tell them they are wrong and stupid and blind, but rather because it is a wonderful mental exercise. I have learned more from the flamewars or arguments I have been in than any one course I have ever taken. Arguments and flamewars have the effect of making you think about your viewpoint on a matter. You may doggedly cling to your viewpoint during the argument, but afterwards you critically evaluate your position. If you find you need to adjust your opinion about a topic, then this is where you do just that.
I think the point he was making that someone willing to challenge a professor probably also has what it takes to be a good software engineer.
Disagree with me? Fine...but the very site you are on is a veritable monument to geeks who like to argue with one another.
The loudness war is a result of one fundamental problem, which the article states in a quite offhand way:
"And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3"
Did you catch that? Listeners "consume" music. NO they don't. Listeners listen to music. Listeners enjoy music. Many listeners care about music. When you stop viewing music as something meant to be enjoyed, as the major record companies have, and start viewing it as a consumer product, then of course all you are going to care about is selling more units.
Don't let the RIAA lie to you and say that they protect "artists" interests. They do not view musicians as artists, because if they did they'd treat their work as art and render it true to form. To the RIAA, musicians are factories pumping out product which is to then be slapped in garish packages and consumed by the masses. Let's call it what it is.
Now, that was about the funniest thing I have heard all day!
Zing!