"People who wish to pirate the CD will just pop it in a Linux computer and rip it."
You don't need Linux to do this - they actually make machines specifically for copying CDs and DVDs. Any program/machine/OS that's capable of making a bit-for-bit copy of the CD (as opposed to just copying the files or tracks) can copy it - unless it has the stupid rootkit installed. This includes just about any Linux distro (K3B can do it, and I believe XCDRoast and whatever GNOME uses can too), most Windows programs (I know Nero can do it, and I'm sure Roxio can too), Macs (sorry, don't know what the hell they use but I'm sure it's capable), and those disc-copier machines.
"This is one of those moments where I wish TrollKore and The GNAA were still around."
I'm not sure what Trollkore is but the GNAA is still around - http://www.gnaa.us/.
Maybe we could help them out and hack Sony's homepage so it's something like goatse - I'm sure consumers would LOVE that:) - "Hey, I think I'm gonna buy the new Velvet Revolver CD. Let's see. . . www.sony.com aaaaand...... WHOOOooooah that is NOT what I wanted!"
Something important to remember about rootkits is that they're not viruses meaning they don't just "appear" on your computer - you have to install them.
And if all the program's used for is DRM then I don't know why they're trying to hide the process (which is something characteristic of a rootkit and some viruses). Not like you didn't know that you're playing MP3's or something like that. Why's it trying to hide itself - a process named "sonydrm.exe" when you're running "Sony DRM Tool" shouldn't be considered suspicious.
So yeah, maybe they told you they'd install the software - but they didn't tell you that they'd try to hide it like it's a virus or some other sort of malware. And you wouldn't expect them to try and hide it.
If I make an "unapproved" video/audio capture device. . . HOW THE HELL WILL THEY KNOW ABOUT IT? Can they read my mind? Are they willing to break the law by trying to hack into my TiVo and iPod? I mean it's not like I'm dumb enough to tell them about it - and if I'm a pirate I probably won't want anyone else to know how I did it anyway because then I won't be able to make as much money selling cheap copies to people.
Doesn't it occur to them that the only people this will stop are the people who already don't pirate music and movies because it's illegal?
"All of the technologies cited have been in Windows for a very long time."
Right, but they were taken from other OSes that were already available. Sure, NT 3.1 had symlinks, but so did UNIX - which was made in the '70s and was used quite a bit in the '80s. So what if NT 3.1 had it - 3.1 came out in 1993. So what if NT 4 had SFU - obviously UNIX had that in the '70s so who cares if MS had it in 1996? So what if NT 3.1 had limited rights user accounts - UNIX had that, too.
MS even had to copy their GUI - from their betrayed partner IBM, no less! Knowing them, they probably just copied the code they were using for OS/2.
And don't use the excuse that Linux didn't have some of these features until later - Linux didn't even come out until the '90s.
Well, right, they go about things differently, but they still do the same thing - try to explain things based on previously known facts/theories/ideas.
And the suffix -ology means "science". Science is the study of the world around us. Biology is the study of the biological world, chemistry is the study of the chemical world, zoology is the study of animals, psychology is the study of mental processes/behavior, sociology is the study of social behavior, geology is the study of the earth, oceanology/oceanography is the study of the ocean, theology is the study of religion. They all go about things differently - it wouldn't make sense for a psychologist to come to work with a microscope, would it? - but they're all sciences nonetheless.
And don't forget that theology isn't exactly the same as literalism. A literalist doesn't have to be a theologist to say "you're wrong because the Bible says you are" - correct me if I'm wrong, but theology has more to do with the ideas and history behind what's written than what's actually written. The Bible says the Antichrist's number was 666 and that he had 3 heads, but it doesn't take more than a class in Christian history to reveal that that's not literally what the Antichrist is or what he looks like, but rather that the Antichrist was a man playing God - aka the Emperor (the number 3 represents God or perfection in the Bible, and the number 6 represents man - so "3-headed" means he represents God - in Roman religion the emperor was a god - and the three 6's mean he was a man disguising himself as a god).
Science and theology do conflict in a few areas, but then again so do quantum physics and regular physics. If you didn't know there are parts of quantum physics that say that it's possible to be two places at once - and there are some things that are two places at once, such as electrons.
Well, what I was saying was that it actually would be different from an end-user perspective. Maybe not a whole lot, but a little bit.
Say I had an app that always wanted to save files in a special directory created by the program (many older apps seem to have this tendency - I notice it when I make cards with Print Shop Deluxe). But I want it to always save to a different directory, without having to find that directory each time I save - I know where it is, but I don't want to have to navigate to it every time I save. I could symlink so that directory is a pointer to the directory I want it to save in.
I use this all the time in Linux - whenever I upgrade to a newer kernel, I don't want to just delete the old sources so I keep them and have/usr/src/linux as a pointer to the latest one and then keep all the other ones in case I decide to revert back to them.
So yeah, most end-users wouldn't notice the difference, but some of them would.
"It's not like Linux never copied an idea from another OS"
No, but we don't claim "Hey, Linux is better" and then five years later claim "Hey, Linux has (insert feature here), and it's a big deal and everyone should care about it and think we're gods, even though it's been available for 5 years in other OSes".
It's not a new feature. It's new to Windows users, but it's not new at all as far as other OSes go. Neither is journalized filesystem support, which is something MS still doesn't have support for. Neither is the idea of a 3d-accelerated GUI, which is something MS put in Vista with some extra code to make OpenGL not work.
Sure, maybe Linux copied some features from other OSes. But it didn't take us five years to do it.
Wait, are you trying to prove or disprove him? At first it sounds like you're trying to disprove him, but then you follow up by supporting him.
It is well-known that MS has used code from open-source projects in the past. For example, they used the BSD TCP/IP stack to create the Windows TCP/IP stack. There are other examples, but I can't think of them offhand.
And the features you mentioned have been in Linux for quite some time.
"Creating symlinks will just work like creating shortcuts."
No. A symlink lets programs work with the file/folder it points to. Say the "C:\My Stuff" folder is a symlink to the "D:\stuff" folder. If you run a program you can tell it to look for a file in the "C:\My Stuff" folder and it'll look for that file in the "D:\stuff" folder. AFAIK links don't work that way.
"Whether or not anybody actually uses them instead of shortcuts is another story."
I think people will. At least some of them, anyways. They're pretty useful in certain cases - say if I want, for example, the "Program Files" folder or the "Games" folder to be just a pointer to a folder on another hard drive - or if I have multiple versions of an app I'm programming in C++ on my hard drive and I want the folder "C++App-latest" to take me to the latest version without me having to remember the latest version number.
"Now that would be demanding a little bit much in so short time, wouldn't it?
We will have to wait at least until the avarage workstation has 30GHz dualcore CPUs and at least 10GBs of ram."
Don't forget that it'll require SLI because DirectX 13.0 will require it just to render the "Start" button.
Of course, MS will still put some stupid thing so that even with your new super-fast processor and your SLI technology, your OpenGL games will have trouble. Because it only makes sense that they should have trouble just because you made a new GUI.
Science is the study of the world around you - biology is the study of living organisms, anatomy/physiology are the study of the human body and how it works, chemistry is the study of chemicals, etc.
Well, religion is part of the world around you, and theology is the study of religion, so technically theology can't go against science because it is a science. Maybe certain religions - or certain parts of religion - can contradict certain things in the other sciences, but it can't contradict all sciences.
Really, science isn't that different from religion. Someone studies something, comes up with a theory, and then either it's accepted or it isn't. Same with religion - someone a long time ago said "Jesus is one with God" and others accepted it - and those who didn't agree were excommunicated.
The thing is, though, if you're a scientist and you don't believe in, say, string theory, you're still a scientist. But if you're part of a certain religion and you don't believe in part of it, they just kinda shut you down, say "no, you're wrong because of this theory we have" and then you're no longer part of the group if you don't agree. I don't really agree with that - I don't think it's good to just say "the official belief is this, and if you don't believe it you're not one of us".
Somehow I think there's something wrong here. Maybe part of Office is built into Windows or something, because I'm using Linux, and it takes 2 seconds before the OO.o 2.0 startup screen comes up and then another second before the actual office suite itself comes up.
Or could it be that MS has something built into Windows to hinder Java? I know OO.o uses Java, and that wouldn't exactly be the first time MS used Windows to hurt competitors. . .
Firstly, it's rarely cool to shout whole sentences unless you're trying to make yourself look like a tool. Maybe that was your intention, if so I apologize.
As I tried to explain earlier, I wasn't shouting, I was emphasizing certain portions of my writing because they were key points that I was trying to make, so who's the tool now? And I didn't come to/. to be cool so I could care less if you don't think I'm cool.
And what do you consider a "professional editorial"? I used to have a subscription to PC Magazine - one day I opened it up to find an editorial called "Free sex! Cheap lasers!" even though the article had NOTHING to do with sex, free stuff, or cheap stuff - in fact, I don't think it even had anything to do with lasers. How's that for "professional" - I paid money to have it delivered to my doorstep and I got that? (And by the way a LOT of the PC Mag opinion pieces suck, IMO - I usually can only stand to read the first paragraph and maybe the section titles.) A lot of these were John Dvorak's "Linux sucks because I'm stupid" or other things. Many were pointless and stupid. But I didn't care because I just skipped over them and the rest of the magazine was good. Some of them I actually liked, but I don't remember a single one that I would consider to be very professional.
But being professional isn't really the point of an editorial. When you write an article or essay, you're really not supposed to use "I", "me", "we", or anything else to refer to yourself. You're supposed to give just facts - NOT opinions, unless they're quotes (yes, I know that writers' opinions sometimes show in their writing, but they're not supposed to give you their opinion flat-out).
When you're writing an editorial, you're supposed to express your opinion. That's what CmdrTaco was doing. You might not find it very important, but many of us do. Personally, I'm shocked that Blizzard would kick him for his name - I've never been kicked from a game server for my name, and I don't remember ever having a name that couldn't be taken offensively. And you might feel differently if it was, say, Hotmail making him change his e-mail address or if it was Vonage making him change his phone number because the last three digits were 666 or spelled out "sex" or something. Can you imagine having to tell everyone you know a new e-mail address just because it had the prefix "Cmdr" or a new phone number because it has some letter or number combination? That's just stupid.
And it doesn't much matter if Slashdot's owned by a company - it's still influenced by CmdrTaco. He's still the one who came up with the site and made it the way it is, and it just wouldn't be the same without him. Bill Gates might not be CEO anymore but he still plays a major role in the future of the company, doesn't he? MS just wouldn't be the same without him.
Like it or not, this is still basically CmdrTaco's site. Even though it is corporate-owned, it's still of the same essence - and I have a feeling that's the way VA wanted it. Imagine what Slashdot would be without the "Microsofties vs. the Linux zealots" and the "First posts" (don't be fooled by my UID# - I was coming to/. as "Anonymous Coward" for a long time off and on, from links on Linux-related sites) and any other/. jokes - it'd suck. With all this kind of stuff, you can't really tell that it's a corporate-owned site, and I, for one, like it that way. It might be more "professional" and more "politically correct" if it were different, but it would suck.
Maybe he put it on Slashdot because he thought we might be interested. I read it because I was interested - I knew it would be a rant, and I knew all it would talk about is Taco's experience with WoW. You could've gotten that much from simply reading the 4-5 line description on the front page. Even the newspapers have opinion columns - wanna yell at them, too? It's their newspaper, they can do what they want with it as far as I'm concerned - if I don't want to read the opinion columns, I'll skip them, they're not hard to spot even when they don't come out and say they're opinion columns. As far as I can tell, it's your own fault you wasted your time reading it because the description tells you that the whole thing is about CmdrTaco's experience with WoW and his opinion of what they did.
So/. isn't his personal site anymore. So what? He's still the one who made the site, and it's still his. It is the way it is because of him, and that's the way people like it, it seems. And I'm sure this isn't the first time he posted a rant either.
And maybe he wanted to hear the opinion of his fellow nerds on the matter. Few people know about cmdrtaco.net, but any true nerd or Linux geek knows about/. - AFAIK people can't post their own opinions to his personal site. If he wanted people to see it, certainly it would get read more on/. than on his personal site - and if people didn't want to read it, they could just skip over it.
And FWIW it's a little hard to have people hear how your words are supposed to sound through the Internet unless it's using VoIP, so you use bold, italics, underlining, and capitalization to emphasize what you would emphasize in speech to get your point across. You're guilty of it, too - don't think I didn't notice your italics - just I tend to not like underlining or italics except when quoting someone, so what do I do when I want to emphasize both a sentence and specific words in the sentence or when I want to REALLY emphasize something? I use bold and caps.
"There is nothing about the site that makes it a personal blog, except maybe the distinct lack of professionalism and the overinflated sense of importance of the people running it."
Isn't it strange how people get SO pissed off at Slashdot and say how much it sucks, how irrational everyone on/. is, blah blah blah. . . yet they KEEP COMING BACK FOR MORE.
IF YOU DON'T LIKE SLASHDOT, THEN THAT'S FINE - but DON'T keep coming back to/. and keep bitching about it. I like Slashdot. If you don't, that's fine - I don't care - but if you don't like the site (ANY site, not just/.) then just don't go there - I don't like MSN.com, and that's why I don't go there.
And let's not forget that/.'s current owners bought it off of CmdrTaco. There's a reason that they chose/. - because it's got a LOT of regular visitors because whether you agree with people or not, it's interesting to see what posters say about certain topics. Why did you click on the link to see Taco's rant? Because you were wondering what he said, whether you agreed with it or not, and maybe wondered what others thought of it. Why else would you read it?
"This is pretty much the video game equivalent of going to a baseball game, getting 3 strikes and then complaining that you should get a 4th."
No, it's not. The point of baseball is to hit the ball, and you get 3 chances to do it. But the point of WoW isn't to come up with a name that they approve of, is it? I don't own WoW, but I know that when I play video games my nickname is just there as something for other players to identify me by (and maybe to make them laugh at my nickname too). Because when I play DOOM3 or DOD or any other game online, I do it to have fun. I could see them telling me to change my nickname if it's something offensive, but not simply because it's the same name as someone famous, because it "breaks fantasy convention", or because it has a prefixed title.
This is more like getting kicked out of a baseball game because you say your name is Richard Petty. People who don't know who he is probably won't care, and people who do know who he is know that you're not really him. Sure, mentioning Richard Petty in a baseball stadium is a little out of place, but people shouldn't make a big deal out of it.
Even though MythBusters "disproved" it, it's probably still possible.
First off, we've all played with - or at least watched someone else play with - magnifying glasses before, burning leaves or torturing ants, haven't we? This is the same idea. What happens when you do that is that the lens refracts the sun's rays so that they focus into a small point on the material where it gets very hot. If you leave it there for an hour or so (assuming there's enough sunlight and no wind) you could probably even burn, say, a notebook or something else that's flammable.
Now if you use a bigger lens, you can capture even more of the sun's rays, meaning that the material will get hotter quicker. Seeing as Archimedes probably used a lens AT LEAST 50-100x bigger, he probably could've roasted the whole anthill in the time it takes us to kill just one ant. Also, as the project's FAQ says, the ships probably would've been anchored while attacking, so Archimedes would've had all the time in the world to burn the ships - they weren't going anywhere, so he wouldn't have had to refocus the lens or anything - and he probably built quite a few of these machines and had maybe 10-20 Death Rays all focused on different ships and just checked up on each one every couple hours or so. Or made it so that all of them focused on the same point on the ship and therefore all worked together as one "super Death Ray" (imagine a Beowulf cluster of Death Rays!:) ).
Also, magnifying glasses have a lens for MAGNIFYING things, not burning them. Different lenses will refract the light in different ways, and I'm sure Archimedes not only knew this but also found a way to calculate EXACTLY what the ideal curve of the lens would be.
Second of all, things were different in Archimedes' time. I've read that the Earth may actually be slowly moving away from the sun - if that's the case, then maybe a couple thousand years ago the sun was closer. Maybe it gave off more energy, too - this also would've given Archimedes an advantage.
Third of all is, once again, the very bad assumption that we're smarter than Archimedes. I'm sure there are a few things Archimedes knew that we don't - maybe some things he knew that only he knew and he didn't tell anybody else. I could easily see why he wouldn't want to give away any secrets about the Death Ray - if you found a way to fry a boat like that, would YOU want to risk your enemies finding out how?
Right, but I doubt the "casual gamer" cares that much about shading. Plus, even my old Voodoo3 had hardware shading. And you're going to have to pay for SwiftShader anyway, aren't you? Or buy a subscription, like you have to for Cedega?
I think I'd rather get a Geforce2 for $20 than pay $5 a month (I believe that's what the Cedega subscription costs) - and I doubt that a casual gamer is going to be willing to pay more for software emulation than a hardware upgrade. Upgrading your video card isn't hard - check the system's specs when you're buying the card to make sure it'll work, then pull the old one out and put the new one in.
And some laptops do allow you to upgrade the graphics card (from what I've heard, you can do this with many Dells - although these graphics cards are hard to find in stores but you might have luck on eBay or something).
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You don't need Linux to do this - they actually make machines specifically for copying CDs and DVDs. Any program/machine/OS that's capable of making a bit-for-bit copy of the CD (as opposed to just copying the files or tracks) can copy it - unless it has the stupid rootkit installed. This includes just about any Linux distro (K3B can do it, and I believe XCDRoast and whatever GNOME uses can too), most Windows programs (I know Nero can do it, and I'm sure Roxio can too), Macs (sorry, don't know what the hell they use but I'm sure it's capable), and those disc-copier machines.
I'm not sure what Trollkore is but the GNAA is still around - http://www.gnaa.us/.
Maybe we could help them out and hack Sony's homepage so it's something like goatse - I'm sure consumers would LOVE that :) - "Hey, I think I'm gonna buy the new Velvet Revolver CD. Let's see. . . www.sony.com aaaaand...... WHOOOooooah that is NOT what I wanted!"
And if all the program's used for is DRM then I don't know why they're trying to hide the process (which is something characteristic of a rootkit and some viruses). Not like you didn't know that you're playing MP3's or something like that. Why's it trying to hide itself - a process named "sonydrm.exe" when you're running "Sony DRM Tool" shouldn't be considered suspicious.
So yeah, maybe they told you they'd install the software - but they didn't tell you that they'd try to hide it like it's a virus or some other sort of malware. And you wouldn't expect them to try and hide it.
Doesn't it occur to them that the only people this will stop are the people who already don't pirate music and movies because it's illegal?
"All of the technologies cited have been in Windows for a very long time."
Right, but they were taken from other OSes that were already available. Sure, NT 3.1 had symlinks, but so did UNIX - which was made in the '70s and was used quite a bit in the '80s. So what if NT 3.1 had it - 3.1 came out in 1993. So what if NT 4 had SFU - obviously UNIX had that in the '70s so who cares if MS had it in 1996? So what if NT 3.1 had limited rights user accounts - UNIX had that, too.
MS even had to copy their GUI - from their betrayed partner IBM, no less! Knowing them, they probably just copied the code they were using for OS/2.
And don't use the excuse that Linux didn't have some of these features until later - Linux didn't even come out until the '90s.
And the suffix -ology means "science". Science is the study of the world around us. Biology is the study of the biological world, chemistry is the study of the chemical world, zoology is the study of animals, psychology is the study of mental processes/behavior, sociology is the study of social behavior, geology is the study of the earth, oceanology/oceanography is the study of the ocean, theology is the study of religion. They all go about things differently - it wouldn't make sense for a psychologist to come to work with a microscope, would it? - but they're all sciences nonetheless.
And don't forget that theology isn't exactly the same as literalism. A literalist doesn't have to be a theologist to say "you're wrong because the Bible says you are" - correct me if I'm wrong, but theology has more to do with the ideas and history behind what's written than what's actually written. The Bible says the Antichrist's number was 666 and that he had 3 heads, but it doesn't take more than a class in Christian history to reveal that that's not literally what the Antichrist is or what he looks like, but rather that the Antichrist was a man playing God - aka the Emperor (the number 3 represents God or perfection in the Bible, and the number 6 represents man - so "3-headed" means he represents God - in Roman religion the emperor was a god - and the three 6's mean he was a man disguising himself as a god).
Science and theology do conflict in a few areas, but then again so do quantum physics and regular physics. If you didn't know there are parts of quantum physics that say that it's possible to be two places at once - and there are some things that are two places at once, such as electrons.
Say I had an app that always wanted to save files in a special directory created by the program (many older apps seem to have this tendency - I notice it when I make cards with Print Shop Deluxe). But I want it to always save to a different directory, without having to find that directory each time I save - I know where it is, but I don't want to have to navigate to it every time I save. I could symlink so that directory is a pointer to the directory I want it to save in.
I use this all the time in Linux - whenever I upgrade to a newer kernel, I don't want to just delete the old sources so I keep them and have /usr/src/linux as a pointer to the latest one and then keep all the other ones in case I decide to revert back to them.
So yeah, most end-users wouldn't notice the difference, but some of them would.
No, but we don't claim "Hey, Linux is better" and then five years later claim "Hey, Linux has (insert feature here), and it's a big deal and everyone should care about it and think we're gods, even though it's been available for 5 years in other OSes".
It's not a new feature. It's new to Windows users, but it's not new at all as far as other OSes go. Neither is journalized filesystem support, which is something MS still doesn't have support for. Neither is the idea of a 3d-accelerated GUI, which is something MS put in Vista with some extra code to make OpenGL not work.
Sure, maybe Linux copied some features from other OSes. But it didn't take us five years to do it.
It is well-known that MS has used code from open-source projects in the past. For example, they used the BSD TCP/IP stack to create the Windows TCP/IP stack. There are other examples, but I can't think of them offhand.
And the features you mentioned have been in Linux for quite some time.
No. A symlink lets programs work with the file/folder it points to. Say the "C:\My Stuff" folder is a symlink to the "D:\stuff" folder. If you run a program you can tell it to look for a file in the "C:\My Stuff" folder and it'll look for that file in the "D:\stuff" folder. AFAIK links don't work that way.
I think people will. At least some of them, anyways. They're pretty useful in certain cases - say if I want, for example, the "Program Files" folder or the "Games" folder to be just a pointer to a folder on another hard drive - or if I have multiple versions of an app I'm programming in C++ on my hard drive and I want the folder "C++App-latest" to take me to the latest version without me having to remember the latest version number.
We will have to wait at least until the avarage workstation has 30GHz dualcore CPUs and at least 10GBs of ram."
Don't forget that it'll require SLI because DirectX 13.0 will require it just to render the "Start" button.
Of course, MS will still put some stupid thing so that even with your new super-fast processor and your SLI technology, your OpenGL games will have trouble. Because it only makes sense that they should have trouble just because you made a new GUI.
MS is probably still trying to figure out how to do the "^W" thing and make everyone think they invented it.
Maybe they'll invent the first journalized filesystem one day, too!
Well, religion is part of the world around you, and theology is the study of religion, so technically theology can't go against science because it is a science. Maybe certain religions - or certain parts of religion - can contradict certain things in the other sciences, but it can't contradict all sciences.
Really, science isn't that different from religion. Someone studies something, comes up with a theory, and then either it's accepted or it isn't. Same with religion - someone a long time ago said "Jesus is one with God" and others accepted it - and those who didn't agree were excommunicated.
The thing is, though, if you're a scientist and you don't believe in, say, string theory, you're still a scientist. But if you're part of a certain religion and you don't believe in part of it, they just kinda shut you down, say "no, you're wrong because of this theory we have" and then you're no longer part of the group if you don't agree. I don't really agree with that - I don't think it's good to just say "the official belief is this, and if you don't believe it you're not one of us".
Or could it be that MS has something built into Windows to hinder Java? I know OO.o uses Java, and that wouldn't exactly be the first time MS used Windows to hurt competitors. . .
As I tried to explain earlier, I wasn't shouting, I was emphasizing certain portions of my writing because they were key points that I was trying to make, so who's the tool now? And I didn't come to /. to be cool so I could care less if you don't think I'm cool.
And what do you consider a "professional editorial"? I used to have a subscription to PC Magazine - one day I opened it up to find an editorial called "Free sex! Cheap lasers!" even though the article had NOTHING to do with sex, free stuff, or cheap stuff - in fact, I don't think it even had anything to do with lasers. How's that for "professional" - I paid money to have it delivered to my doorstep and I got that? (And by the way a LOT of the PC Mag opinion pieces suck, IMO - I usually can only stand to read the first paragraph and maybe the section titles.) A lot of these were John Dvorak's "Linux sucks because I'm stupid" or other things. Many were pointless and stupid. But I didn't care because I just skipped over them and the rest of the magazine was good. Some of them I actually liked, but I don't remember a single one that I would consider to be very professional.
But being professional isn't really the point of an editorial. When you write an article or essay, you're really not supposed to use "I", "me", "we", or anything else to refer to yourself. You're supposed to give just facts - NOT opinions, unless they're quotes (yes, I know that writers' opinions sometimes show in their writing, but they're not supposed to give you their opinion flat-out).
When you're writing an editorial, you're supposed to express your opinion. That's what CmdrTaco was doing. You might not find it very important, but many of us do. Personally, I'm shocked that Blizzard would kick him for his name - I've never been kicked from a game server for my name, and I don't remember ever having a name that couldn't be taken offensively. And you might feel differently if it was, say, Hotmail making him change his e-mail address or if it was Vonage making him change his phone number because the last three digits were 666 or spelled out "sex" or something. Can you imagine having to tell everyone you know a new e-mail address just because it had the prefix "Cmdr" or a new phone number because it has some letter or number combination? That's just stupid.
And it doesn't much matter if Slashdot's owned by a company - it's still influenced by CmdrTaco. He's still the one who came up with the site and made it the way it is, and it just wouldn't be the same without him. Bill Gates might not be CEO anymore but he still plays a major role in the future of the company, doesn't he? MS just wouldn't be the same without him.
Like it or not, this is still basically CmdrTaco's site. Even though it is corporate-owned, it's still of the same essence - and I have a feeling that's the way VA wanted it. Imagine what Slashdot would be without the "Microsofties vs. the Linux zealots" and the "First posts" (don't be fooled by my UID# - I was coming to /. as "Anonymous Coward" for a long time off and on, from links on Linux-related sites) and any other /. jokes - it'd suck. With all this kind of stuff, you can't really tell that it's a corporate-owned site, and I, for one, like it that way. It might be more "professional" and more "politically correct" if it were different, but it would suck.
So /. isn't his personal site anymore. So what? He's still the one who made the site, and it's still his. It is the way it is because of him, and that's the way people like it, it seems. And I'm sure this isn't the first time he posted a rant either.
And maybe he wanted to hear the opinion of his fellow nerds on the matter. Few people know about cmdrtaco.net, but any true nerd or Linux geek knows about /. - AFAIK people can't post their own opinions to his personal site. If he wanted people to see it, certainly it would get read more on /. than on his personal site - and if people didn't want to read it, they could just skip over it.
And FWIW it's a little hard to have people hear how your words are supposed to sound through the Internet unless it's using VoIP, so you use bold, italics, underlining, and capitalization to emphasize what you would emphasize in speech to get your point across. You're guilty of it, too - don't think I didn't notice your italics - just I tend to not like underlining or italics except when quoting someone, so what do I do when I want to emphasize both a sentence and specific words in the sentence or when I want to REALLY emphasize something? I use bold and caps.
Walks over to thermostat
Hmm. . . well it's set at 76 . . . I wonder why. . . GOOD LORD! 386 degrees?!
Two spies are outside in van.
One spy to the other: Dammit! I thought I told you to put it on "defrost"!
Isn't it strange how people get SO pissed off at Slashdot and say how much it sucks, how irrational everyone on /. is, blah blah blah. . . yet they KEEP COMING BACK FOR MORE.
IF YOU DON'T LIKE SLASHDOT, THEN THAT'S FINE - but DON'T keep coming back to /. and keep bitching about it. I like Slashdot. If you don't, that's fine - I don't care - but if you don't like the site (ANY site, not just /.) then just don't go there - I don't like MSN.com, and that's why I don't go there.
And let's not forget that /.'s current owners bought it off of CmdrTaco. There's a reason that they chose /. - because it's got a LOT of regular visitors because whether you agree with people or not, it's interesting to see what posters say about certain topics. Why did you click on the link to see Taco's rant? Because you were wondering what he said, whether you agreed with it or not, and maybe wondered what others thought of it. Why else would you read it?
No, it's not. The point of baseball is to hit the ball, and you get 3 chances to do it. But the point of WoW isn't to come up with a name that they approve of, is it? I don't own WoW, but I know that when I play video games my nickname is just there as something for other players to identify me by (and maybe to make them laugh at my nickname too). Because when I play DOOM3 or DOD or any other game online, I do it to have fun. I could see them telling me to change my nickname if it's something offensive, but not simply because it's the same name as someone famous, because it "breaks fantasy convention", or because it has a prefixed title.
This is more like getting kicked out of a baseball game because you say your name is Richard Petty. People who don't know who he is probably won't care, and people who do know who he is know that you're not really him. Sure, mentioning Richard Petty in a baseball stadium is a little out of place, but people shouldn't make a big deal out of it.
First off, we've all played with - or at least watched someone else play with - magnifying glasses before, burning leaves or torturing ants, haven't we? This is the same idea. What happens when you do that is that the lens refracts the sun's rays so that they focus into a small point on the material where it gets very hot. If you leave it there for an hour or so (assuming there's enough sunlight and no wind) you could probably even burn, say, a notebook or something else that's flammable.
Now if you use a bigger lens, you can capture even more of the sun's rays, meaning that the material will get hotter quicker. Seeing as Archimedes probably used a lens AT LEAST 50-100x bigger, he probably could've roasted the whole anthill in the time it takes us to kill just one ant. Also, as the project's FAQ says, the ships probably would've been anchored while attacking, so Archimedes would've had all the time in the world to burn the ships - they weren't going anywhere, so he wouldn't have had to refocus the lens or anything - and he probably built quite a few of these machines and had maybe 10-20 Death Rays all focused on different ships and just checked up on each one every couple hours or so. Or made it so that all of them focused on the same point on the ship and therefore all worked together as one "super Death Ray" (imagine a Beowulf cluster of Death Rays! :) ).
Also, magnifying glasses have a lens for MAGNIFYING things, not burning them. Different lenses will refract the light in different ways, and I'm sure Archimedes not only knew this but also found a way to calculate EXACTLY what the ideal curve of the lens would be.
Second of all, things were different in Archimedes' time. I've read that the Earth may actually be slowly moving away from the sun - if that's the case, then maybe a couple thousand years ago the sun was closer. Maybe it gave off more energy, too - this also would've given Archimedes an advantage.
Third of all is, once again, the very bad assumption that we're smarter than Archimedes. I'm sure there are a few things Archimedes knew that we don't - maybe some things he knew that only he knew and he didn't tell anybody else. I could easily see why he wouldn't want to give away any secrets about the Death Ray - if you found a way to fry a boat like that, would YOU want to risk your enemies finding out how?
Sorta brings a whole new meaning to "Houston, we have a problem!" :)
Osama's sheep, after a day in the poppy field: "To-cra-a-a-a-a-cko!"
Law and order in the Middle East. . . hah. . .
I think I'd rather get a Geforce2 for $20 than pay $5 a month (I believe that's what the Cedega subscription costs) - and I doubt that a casual gamer is going to be willing to pay more for software emulation than a hardware upgrade. Upgrading your video card isn't hard - check the system's specs when you're buying the card to make sure it'll work, then pull the old one out and put the new one in.
And some laptops do allow you to upgrade the graphics card (from what I've heard, you can do this with many Dells - although these graphics cards are hard to find in stores but you might have luck on eBay or something).