That's interesting, I hadn't considered that people wouldn't look at names. Although I doubt our two personal experiences (I look at names, you don't) constitute a significant statistical sample:), what I should have said was that when I read a post that is insightful, interesting, etc. I usually go back and look at the name to see who it was. (I also tend to read the sig lines at the bottom.) If it's flamebait or noninteresting then I'm much less likely to go look at the name. But I would be curious to know how people generally handle this. Maybe a Slashdot poll would be useful for once.:)
The reason movie critics are "trusted" and you aren't is because you don't have the cachet associated with being in a newspaper for five, ten years.
On the other hand, if Roger Ebert showed up on Slashdot and started spouting about how much he disliked Dell computers, we wouldn't take HIM seriously for the same reason: within the Slashdot community, he has no reputation. People don't believe movie critics just because they're movie critics; they believe them because they've been reading their reviews for years and generally agree (or maybe disagree, but at least respect) them. (And, duh, obviously there are reviewers who you never agree with, think are idiots, etc., but that's the exception.)
I've been participating on Slashdot for almost six months now, and I don't post anywhere near as often or as intelligently as you do; I'm sure there are probably a couple thousand Slashdot readers who recognize your nick -- Signal11 -- on sight; I know I do. I doubt there are any who'd recognize mine. But the reason is that you have time and again given interesting viewpoints and opinions; I don't post very often and when I do it's usually not a discourse of any kind; most often it's a short response. (Well, not this time:)
Anyway, like I said, it's not a double standard; it's THE standard. If you don't have a reputation in an arena, even if you know what you're talking about, the people listening to you can't know that yet. It takes time to build up their respect.
I hope to God that Konqueror will do one thing and one thing only: browse web pages. The reason Mozilla got so fscked up and is taking so damn long to come out is because they thought they needed to put in all the crap that bloated Communicator.
ALL WE NEED IS A WEB BROWSER. To browse the web! It doesn't need to read email, or newsgroups, or edit HTML, or do my laundry!
Clearly Microsoft views Radio Shack as a competitor and by putting their mini-stores inside Radio Shacks the world over, they will attempt to drive Radio Shack out of business via negative association. Can we get Microsoft to open stores inside of Starbucks cafés?
Bill Joy seems to think that the goal of the GPL is, ultimately, profit:
if linux succeeds ultimately in having a single standard and profitable companies around it, it will be considered another successful model. both models can coexist, and microsoft too.
The goal of the SCSL is, obviously, for Sun to be able to take advantage of a volunteer development community, so as to improve their software as well as give them "street cred" with the open source/free software communit[y|ies]. But ultimately, their goal is to increase profits.
The GPL's goal, on the other hand, is to promote the development and growth of robust, stable, [insert positive adjective] software. Its primary goal is NOT profit. Ideally, once there is lots of good GPL software out there, people will use it. But Bill Joy is apparently stuck on the idea that the only successful software model is one that creates lots of money.
I've had X crash on me a bunch of times (or maybe it was Gnome, or Enlightenment, or something else -- irregardless, the GUI stops responding) so I just hit CTRL-ALT-F1 and kill the X server. It's happened more times than I can remember. X taking Linux with it? I don't think so.
THANK YOU!! That's EXACTLY what I was trying to say but didn't, because I really didn't want to type it for the billionth time.
I mean, he's right, of course, if your goal is to avoid as much death as possible... but if your entire society is based on the premise of ending all life on the planet, then damaging the biosphere (or whatever) is a GREAT idea!!
...in this project. The main problem stated, and valid it is, is that different languages have nuances, cultural references, double entendres, yadda yadda yadda that other languages do not have.
So why not establish a universal SUBSET of languages that can express as much of as many languages as possible? For example, I'd be willing to wager that there's a way of expressing the phrase "The red ball is resting atop the green book" in every language in the world. At least, every language used on the net. Relatively simple subsets of communication would at least allow for SOME measure of success for this project, but I don't know how useful it could be. But it's certainly worth a try.
To recap, obviously you aren't going to be able to translate haiku with this thing, but you could translate Linux installation instructions.
You're confusing legal freedom with social freedom. Katz is NOT writing about legal freedom; this is evinced by the fact that he complains about people like Singer being censored. But they are not, at least, not in that sense. No government entity is restricting Katz's right to speak his mind, or hold classes. No one can arrest him for he has broken no laws.
What he HAS done is violate the moral sensibilities of a large number of people. I have no problem with that and to a certain degree I agree with his views. People try to "censor" him because they don't want to hear things like that; and it's fairly simple to understand the various reasons why. But the entirety of Katz's article makes it sound kind of like people in America don't have freedoms.
If that were true, none of us would ever have heard of Katz. But we have. Information *is* flowing freely, irregardless of the attempts of individual citizens to stop it. Keep that in mind; this IS a free country, which means that people on Slashdot have just as much right to tell Katz that his writings are irrelevant (I don't agree, I think this and similar topics are very important social discourse) as he does to write them in the first place. You don't have to like it, but there's no use shouting at the waves.
>It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that >degrading the value and significance of life is, >at best, seriously sick and diseased. What makes that point of view any more valid than one that says it's perfectly acceptable to degrade the value and significance of life? Logically there's no way you can defend this; all you can call upon is divine influence, which of course leads to a whole other can of wurms. Keep that in mind. That single statement practically negates your entire post!
Presumably they could use some kind of shielding around the launch device to prevent enormous magnetic fields from screwing with peoples' monitors... if that would happen, which it wouldn't. Remember that if they were doing this from Cape Canaveral, where they do now, they're miles from where anyone lives, so even the biggest magnetic field we could produce would still have a negligable effect at that distance. Unless they set off a nuke, or something... love those EMPs!
Do you think that the gaming industry could ever embrace free/open source software, in terms of the engine? A friend of mine has oft claimed that eventually game engines will become open-source projects, and games will be distinguished by the data that is created for them. What do you think?
I like the fact that these people will be on an island with at least two species of unbelievably deadly reptiles. Monitor lizards will tear you apart if they're hungry and see you, and a coral snake's poison will kill you inside of thirty seconds. People are dumb.
Say, maybe this is all an attempt by CBS to thin out the gene pool! I like it!
If *this* is what was causing hi-tech graphics folk to wet their pants, then we've seriously overestimated everyone in Silicon Valley. Go to the end of the article and click on the link to nervana.com, then download the demo... what a piece of nothing.
Once the e-mail is in plaintext format, the simple majesty of Print Scrn will allow you to save it in some format. You can't just copy and paste it into Notepad... and if these are too low-tech for whatever system they're using, well, there's no way to prevent someone from writing a program that simply drags the contents from RAM! Good grief, where do people come up with these ideas?
I've timed myself: I can type 80-90 WPM *WITH MY EYES CLOSED* (I am serious) using my good ol' QWERTY keyboard. And yes, that's taking errors into account. Now I am obviously not the average case, but does anyone seriously think that even if people could type twice as fast (seems unlikely even with a "perfect" kybd layout), much would change? Rarely do you type so much that it would be an issue, and even when you do, you'll inevitably hit those times when you miss every key by one position and end up yu[omh;olr yjod/.
The Dvorak keyboard may be superior but I doubt if the change would really be worth it. Here's an analogy. Microsoft products are inferior but we use them because everyone else uses them. (Well, we do at my job, unfortunately.) It's painful and agonizing to use Microsoft products! Every day I find another reason to hate them!
QWERTY, on the other hand, may be inferior, but I've never once in my life felt any anguish, agony, hatred, or fear because I was using a QWERTY keyboard.
Besides, on Dvorak keyboards, you can't type "QWERTY" nearly as fast!
2000 n 2010: Someone assassinates Bill Gates. The world is instantly transformed into an Eden-like paradise. I know, I know, dream the impossible dream...
I hate to nitpick things like that, but as I recall, Stephen Hawking didn't start suffering from his neurological disorder until he was around 20 years old. Until that point, he seemed normal (to all outward signs). (Obviously if you change "Stephen Hawking" to someone who was defective at birth, it makes more sense. But see below for why it matters not.)
The "missed potential" argument is entirely faulty, anyhow. If fewer people died prematurely, well, a certain percentage of them would surely be Hawkings, and a certain percentage of them would surely be Hitlers. It doesn't change the percentages of geniuses (evil or otherwise), simply the quantity.
On the other hand, the more geniuses we have, the faster technology progresses, and the faster we discover cures for diseases, disorders, etc. and put this issue to rest. On the third hand, the more evil people we have, the more likely massive genocide occurs, and then the population goes down anyhow. It's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't scenario.
Slashdot Mirror
That's interesting, I hadn't considered that people wouldn't look at names. Although I doubt our two personal experiences (I look at names, you don't) constitute a significant statistical sample :), what I should have said was that when I read a post that is insightful, interesting, etc. I usually go back and look at the name to see who it was. (I also tend to read the sig lines at the bottom.) If it's flamebait or noninteresting then I'm much less likely to go look at the name. But I would be curious to know how people generally handle this. Maybe a Slashdot poll would be useful for once. :)
On the other hand, if Roger Ebert showed up on Slashdot and started spouting about how much he disliked Dell computers, we wouldn't take HIM seriously for the same reason: within the Slashdot community, he has no reputation. People don't believe movie critics just because they're movie critics; they believe them because they've been reading their reviews for years and generally agree (or maybe disagree, but at least respect) them. (And, duh, obviously there are reviewers who you never agree with, think are idiots, etc., but that's the exception.)
I've been participating on Slashdot for almost six months now, and I don't post anywhere near as often or as intelligently as you do; I'm sure there are probably a couple thousand Slashdot readers who recognize your nick -- Signal11 -- on sight; I know I do. I doubt there are any who'd recognize mine. But the reason is that you have time and again given interesting viewpoints and opinions; I don't post very often and when I do it's usually not a discourse of any kind; most often it's a short response. (Well, not this time :)
Anyway, like I said, it's not a double standard; it's THE standard. If you don't have a reputation in an arena, even if you know what you're talking about, the people listening to you can't know that yet. It takes time to build up their respect.
I think Katz needs to stick with the social issues and leave movie reviews to someone else.
ALL WE NEED IS A WEB BROWSER. To browse the web! It doesn't need to read email, or newsgroups, or edit HTML, or do my laundry!
--- Dirtside
Clearly Microsoft views Radio Shack as a competitor and by putting their mini-stores inside Radio Shacks the world over, they will attempt to drive Radio Shack out of business via negative association. Can we get Microsoft to open stores inside of Starbucks cafés?
--- Dirtside
So does the Queen camp when you play Quake on the Royal LAN, or what?
--- Dirtside
They're not targeting you, bozo, they're targeting people who can't think for themselves. Pay attention.
--- Dirtside
if linux succeeds ultimately in having a single standard and profitable companies around it, it will be considered another successful model. both models can coexist, and microsoft too.
The goal of the SCSL is, obviously, for Sun to be able to take advantage of a volunteer development community, so as to improve their software as well as give them "street cred" with the open source/free software communit[y|ies]. But ultimately, their goal is to increase profits.
The GPL's goal, on the other hand, is to promote the development and growth of robust, stable, [insert positive adjective] software. Its primary goal is NOT profit. Ideally, once there is lots of good GPL software out there, people will use it. But Bill Joy is apparently stuck on the idea that the only successful software model is one that creates lots of money.
--- Dirtside
You might want to check before spewing bullshit next time, English Nazi.
--- Dirtside
I've had X crash on me a bunch of times (or maybe it was Gnome, or Enlightenment, or something else -- irregardless, the GUI stops responding) so I just hit CTRL-ALT-F1 and kill the X server. It's happened more times than I can remember. X taking Linux with it? I don't think so.
--- Dirtside
And Italian... Il Slashiodotto!
--- Dirtside
I mean, he's right, of course, if your goal is to avoid as much death as possible... but if your entire society is based on the premise of ending all life on the planet, then damaging the biosphere (or whatever) is a GREAT idea!!
--- Dirtside
So why not establish a universal SUBSET of languages that can express as much of as many languages as possible? For example, I'd be willing to wager that there's a way of expressing the phrase "The red ball is resting atop the green book" in every language in the world. At least, every language used on the net. Relatively simple subsets of communication would at least allow for SOME measure of success for this project, but I don't know how useful it could be. But it's certainly worth a try.
To recap, obviously you aren't going to be able to translate haiku with this thing, but you could translate Linux installation instructions.
--- Dirtside
What he HAS done is violate the moral sensibilities of a large number of people. I have no problem with that and to a certain degree I agree with his views. People try to "censor" him because they don't want to hear things like that; and it's fairly simple to understand the various reasons why. But the entirety of Katz's article makes it sound kind of like people in America don't have freedoms.
If that were true, none of us would ever have heard of Katz. But we have. Information *is* flowing freely, irregardless of the attempts of individual citizens to stop it. Keep that in mind; this IS a free country, which means that people on Slashdot have just as much right to tell Katz that his writings are irrelevant (I don't agree, I think this and similar topics are very important social discourse) as he does to write them in the first place. You don't have to like it, but there's no use shouting at the waves.
--- Dirtside
>It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that >degrading the value and significance of life is, >at best, seriously sick and diseased. What makes that point of view any more valid than one that says it's perfectly acceptable to degrade the value and significance of life? Logically there's no way you can defend this; all you can call upon is divine influence, which of course leads to a whole other can of wurms. Keep that in mind. That single statement practically negates your entire post!
--- Dirtside
Presumably they could use some kind of shielding around the launch device to prevent enormous magnetic fields from screwing with peoples' monitors... if that would happen, which it wouldn't. Remember that if they were doing this from Cape Canaveral, where they do now, they're miles from where anyone lives, so even the biggest magnetic field we could produce would still have a negligable effect at that distance. Unless they set off a nuke, or something... love those EMPs!
--- Dirtside
Yeah, but the genetically engineered superhumans will easily defeat the normals in such a war! And it's Gattaca, not GATTAGA.
--- Dirtside
Do you think that the gaming industry could ever embrace free/open source software, in terms of the engine? A friend of mine has oft claimed that eventually game engines will become open-source projects, and games will be distinguished by the data that is created for them. What do you think?
--- Dirtside
Say, maybe this is all an attempt by CBS to thin out the gene pool! I like it!
--- Dirtside
If *this* is what was causing hi-tech graphics folk to wet their pants, then we've seriously overestimated everyone in Silicon Valley. Go to the end of the article and click on the link to nervana.com, then download the demo... what a piece of nothing.
--- Dirtside
Argh! I meant you CAN paste it into Notepad. Stupid keyboard.
--- Dirtside
Once the e-mail is in plaintext format, the simple majesty of Print Scrn will allow you to save it in some format. You can't just copy and paste it into Notepad... and if these are too low-tech for whatever system they're using, well, there's no way to prevent someone from writing a program that simply drags the contents from RAM! Good grief, where do people come up with these ideas?
--- Dirtside
The Dvorak keyboard may be superior but I doubt if the change would really be worth it. Here's an analogy. Microsoft products are inferior but we use them because everyone else uses them. (Well, we do at my job, unfortunately.) It's painful and agonizing to use Microsoft products! Every day I find another reason to hate them!
QWERTY, on the other hand, may be inferior, but I've never once in my life felt any anguish, agony, hatred, or fear because I was using a QWERTY keyboard.
Besides, on Dvorak keyboards, you can't type "QWERTY" nearly as fast!
--- Dirtside
2000 n 2010: Someone assassinates Bill Gates. The world is instantly transformed into an Eden-like paradise. I know, I know, dream the impossible dream...
--- Dirtside
The "missed potential" argument is entirely faulty, anyhow. If fewer people died prematurely, well, a certain percentage of them would surely be Hawkings, and a certain percentage of them would surely be Hitlers. It doesn't change the percentages of geniuses (evil or otherwise), simply the quantity.
On the other hand, the more geniuses we have, the faster technology progresses, and the faster we discover cures for diseases, disorders, etc. and put this issue to rest. On the third hand, the more evil people we have, the more likely massive genocide occurs, and then the population goes down anyhow. It's a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't scenario.
--- Dirtside