I realize I risk being modded down, but there were many things that were NOT thoroughly explained in the HP books that the author of the lexicon explained rather clearly which is original conent. Also, JK herself has admitted to frequently using the lexicon while writing her later books to make sure she stayed consistent, so obviously the lexicon has value. JK also did NOT say she was going to make her own encyclopedia until AFTER the lexicon was going to be published. I love the HP books, but from all the interviews I've read with JK regarding this, it seems like a clear case of "that's a good idea, I want it for myself". The biggest thing that makes me roll my eyes and shout "OH COME ON!" is when JK said that if the lexicon was published, she'd never be able to write another book again.
Regardless of how this case turned out, after I found out about it I decided to never buy any more books written by JK Rowling due to her obvious insincerity when discussing why the lexicon needed to be prevented from being published.
I understand your point (though it's not 100% accurate). However, the point the parent is trying to make is the same one that I've been saying for years (I have a system running xp for games and a laptop running Ubuntu), that in the 21st century there is no reason to HAVE to use the CLI to install an application. That's the biggest thing keeping the moronic masses from being able to figure out Linux - the fact that they can't simply go to a website, download Generic_DVD_Codex, then click on the file they downloaded to install it and watch dvd's. Yes, there are apps like Synaptic Package Manager, but it's not entirely user friendly - it would be a lot easier to use for "normal" people if they had an easier way to browse the repositories with tabs like "office programs", "games", "multimedia", etc. Yes, the search function lets you find all this, but most of the average people out there won't be able to figure out what to search for if they want to watch dvd's.
I have a brother in law who's computer skills are about average for the US and he recently installed Ubuntu after seeing it on my laptop. Now, Ubuntu is simple enough to set up that he got it up and running without any problems at all. However, when he called for help trying to install basic things like dvd codecs and getting his wireless card working, it wasn't so easy for him to understand. You have to realize that even the average people out there who aren't 12 o'clock flashers still find learning commands for the CLI to be very difficult, and that's the biggest thing keeping them from using Linux.
"Why do I need to use a computer, and what is the big difference it's going to make in my life?"
Joe Shmoe the construction worker would see a big difference in his life when he uses a computer and realizes that going to mapquest and getting directions in 5 seconds is much better than having to pull out a map and look things up, or being able to buy movie tickets for opening night so that he can take his kids to see Hannah Montana and not show up to be told "sorry, we're sold out". There are countless things like this that make life infinitely easier than it was 10 years ago.
So you're saying that you, like most Americans, would want to harm someone because your kid did something incredibly dumb? No one made her kill herself, she had plenty of time to change her mind since her neck didn't break. She chose not to. Sure, this woman was mean to her. Big deal. People are mean all the time (especially here on slashdot). It's no one's fault if someone is dumb enough to kill them self because someone was mean to them (and no, "psychological disorder" is not an excuse, I suffered from extreme depression for years and never killed myself as a result of all the shit I got from people).
Maybe if Megan had better parents, she wouldn't have felt so unloved that she killed herself. So, how come they're not being charged too? They are even more to blame than this woman for what happened, but of course there's always got to be someone to be crucified so that the person / people who are really to blame can be martyred.
The real issue here is how people are wanting to make it a crime to talk to someone in a mean way. No one made Megan do anything - she chose to do it. I've spent my entire life with about 98% of the people I know (including family) treating me like shit - and if I'd go out and kill myself it would be MY fault because I was the one who chose to do it.
There's nothing wrong with screwing with someone who harmed you or a friend / relative in some way. I saw this case when it was first on the news months ago said (in reference to Megan) "Wow, what a f-ing moron". If you're old enough to be dating and you can't understand that the vast majority of online "relationships" are just people playing make believe, then in my book you're not intelligent enough to be alive. Any time you talk to someone that you've only known online you should be operating under the assumption (or at least suspicion) that they're just pretending.
Go ahead and mod me down for expecting people (in this case Megan) to be responsible for their actions instead of blaming someone else. The real question is - by you modding me down for my different opinoin, could YOU be sued if I went out and killed myself? That's pretty similar to the issue here and I don't think anyone here would be dumb enough to say that you should be sued for that.
You have a point about the filter settings -- however, the whole "two posts in 24 hours if you have bad karma" rule is purely designed to prevent people from speaking, which IS censorship.
I'd say at least 50% of people on slashdot are in the hive mind and are completely incapable of thinking for themselves. They also know that as a result, they're unable to make rational arguments a good deal of the time. The two post rule allows them to claim that they're right, even when they're not.
How? Here's an example:
member of hive mind: "The sky is green!"
person 2: "No, it's blue, here's some pictures"
other members of the hive mind mod person 2 down
member of hive mind: "No, it's green because *some moron who happened to get a fancy degree by buying it with money or god knows what* says so!"
person 2: "No, look around you, you can clearly see that the sky is blue if you just look up!"
member of hive mind: "You must be some idiot christian wacko who hates science!"
person 2 can no longer post due to the two post rule
members of the hive mind: "Hah, we put that idiot in his place! He stopped arguing because we proved him wrong!"
Yes, that's an idiotic idea for an argument, but I was just making up something spur of the moment. However, the idea is the same in that the hive mind is allowed to stop dissenters from speaking PERIOD and they use this to maintain the illusion that they're always right. It's a very rare occurrence on slashdot for someone to disagree with the "capitalism is evil / MS is always wrong / rich people suck / anyone who disagrees with my position must be some idiot christian" mentality that is so prominent here and NOT get modded down.
It's stated in the rules for the car X-Prize that it needs to hold four people (or maybe they have two categories). Now, you and the other guy who replied to you talk about how so many people drive with just themselves in the car - which is true. However, sometimes you need to have more people or you have luggage and such. Do you really expect a family of 3-4 to buy two one seater cars (one each for the parents to drive to work) plus a sedan for when the whole family goes somewhere? Hardly.
I'm all against people who buy a freaking Panzer because once a decade they might actually put it to real use, but saying that a car seating five (a typical sedan) is excessive is just wrong because most people can't afford to have half a dozen cars for every conceivable occasion.
Little problem with that car and several other cars that site showed -- they're ignoring the "practical" (meaning seats four people) and "something people would want to buy" aspects of the X-Prize.
Sorry, but besides being horribly impractical, it's horribly ugly and few people would buy something like that.
It may have some cool things about it (such as the drag coefficient), but it's still completely unmarketable.
I'm in college and went to reformat and found out that my key no longer worked, so I had to buy a new copy. Not a big deal since I can get XP pro on campus for about $4. While I was there, I saw they had Vista Ultimate for about $12, so I picked up a copy and installed it.
First, Vista is unimaginably slow compared to XP. Sure, things that took advantage of the pre-cache feature (I forget what it's called) were fast, but anything else was noticeably slower. Second, there are way more processes running in the background (which goes along with the first point). Third (and this is why I switched back to XP), I had memory overflows 3-5 times per week. I hadn't seen the BSOD in the 5 or 6 years that I used XP and I saw it more times than I can remember on Vista. So I said "screw this" and switched back to XP -- now the only time I normally have problems is if I forget and leave firefox running before I leave to work or someplace else for a long period of time and the memory leak causes a reboot.
If he did, how does that contradict his recent statement? The pharmaceutical company would be charging for it and making a profit, it's just that Bill would be footing the bill for it. Just because he understands that a company exists to make a profit doesn't mean that he's against philanthropy (as evidenced by the tons of money he gives away each year, I know my high school received several million from him).
"I was the first to pull up to a stop light on a 4-lane road, with my wife beside me and my two year old daughter in the back seat."
See, now this is how we know this is flamebait -- no guy on slashdot has a wife or has had sex! Seriously, try to come up with a more plausible lie next time! = )
Oh come on. You show me one woman who's truly logical and I'm sure I can find a flying monkey to give her as a pet. You can complain all that you want, but women use "girl logic" -- which is typically the exact opposite of ACTUAL logic.
I know many SMART girls, just none that are truly logical.
Since the comment you're responding to seems to be deleted (or at least taken off the main comments page), I can't tell if the person ever mentioned religion. What I can tell is that you're being very typical and shouting "YOU DISAGREE! YOU MUST BE A STUPID CHRISTIAN!!" and providing few facts to support your argument. Granted, you've added more fluff to it so that at a glance it seems reasonable, but the meaning behind it is still the same.
I don't believe in evolution. I have no view on how life came to be. Now, if I love science, why don't I believe in evolution? Because everything I've ever read on it, from textbooks to articles posted by Darwinian Acolytes seem to have massive logical flaws. They'll provide evidence and then the conclusions just seem to be pulled out of their ass and have little, if anything, to do with the evidence presented. I have no problem with the concept of evolution - but I want conclusions that don't seem ludicrous based on the evidence they're basing said conclusions on.
I know I'll probably get modded down, but if you look at my karma, you'll notice that I'm not afraid to speak my mind instead of just cowering before the might of the moderators.
"There should be some semblance of openness and trust in a healthy household, particularly between parents and their children."
I've got to disagree. In a healthy household, parents aren't insisting on being privy to every thought, conversation, and action of their children.
My parents never monitored me using the internet when we got it (I'm mid 20's) and I had several friends who had the internet pretty much as soon as you could get it at home. None of my friends were monitored by their parents either. And you know what? None of us got arrested. None of us met up with strangers. None of us got raped or traumatized for life. All this is merely over-reacting to the media blowing the whole "evil internet" stuff way out of proportion.
Exactly! Well, that's one of the main reasons at least. The other big thing is that there are still too many times when you HAVE to type in commands to do something that Windows and OS X let you do with a simple click. I understand why some people like it and why it could arguably be necessary in some instances, but any basic use of a system shouldn't require remembering the right 2-3 lines to type into the command prompt. I've repeatedly toyed with Linux over the last few years, but have never done a solitary install (I've always run either dual boot or virtual machines) because I don't want to go to do something simple and then have to say "Whoops! I've got to dig around on the internet for 4 hours to find out how to do what I can do in Windows and OS X in 2 seconds with just the mouse...."
I'd love to be able to run Linux all the time except for when I want to play games. But while it's improved a LOT in usability since I first tried it, it's still not where I want it to be for every day use. Maybe by 2010 it'll be there. That's not too far, especially since many distros, like Ubuntu, release new versions every 6 months or so.
I'm well aware of it's uses, but historically the reason why gold was used to back currency was purely about bling. Pre-industrial revolution (and I'm pushing the time frame back a bit by saying that even), gold was pretty much useless (unless you're talking about money).
Gold is valuable because the typical person goes "OOH! SHINY! ME WANT!!" and once it's scarcity is factored in, it makes it very valuable. It's been that way for what....a few thousand years?
........don't advertise that you're having a super bowl party online or in print. Either just tell people in person or on the phone about it or have a "church barbecue".
Also, how the hell can they claim that they're losing ad revenue for this? Has anyone alive EVER been contacted for a survey on what shows they watch? No, I'm being serious, has anyone? I really think they just make the Nielson numbers up.
"It is part of the parenting process; this is just a tool for such, like the V-chip."
I disagree that any such censorship technology is a "tool for parenting". They're tools to AVOID parenting. With V-chip it's *push a couple buttons* "Ok, now we can but the dumb brat in front of the tv for 14 hours while we go off and do whatever". These things don't have anything to do with good parents, because good parents don't need them. One purpose of them is so that the companies can get a gold star by saying "Look, we can keep your children safe from *fill in some exaggerated thing here*" and so that some crappy parents will pay them some extra money to be able to pretend they're a good parent while avoiding any work and responsibility.
"However, in my house we practice this apparently rare thing called, 'mutual respect' whereby he doesn't do such things, and I don't invade his privacy."
You mean you don't invade his privacy by doing something like saving his log-on and password? Do you have cameras recording in every room of the house 24/7 too? Seriously -- they're kids, not inmates.
"What if your parents caught you doing something illegal? Should they not punish you?"
I know this is hard for many to understand, but schools are NOT parents. You can't compare a parent to a school teacher when it comes to discipline or values. You talk about "who wants to live in a police state", yet you apparently condone the school acting in the place of parents and exceeding their authority.
True, but for many things that normal people use, it's nowhere near as good as OS X / Windows. I'm probably going to switch my laptop to Ubuntu only - but it's still annoying as hell that I can't just double click on a file I downloaded and install it.
I totally understand being able to do everything from the command line. I also understand why some would want certain advanced features to be command line only. However, there's no reason in the 21st century why there aren't more GUI driven things in Linux (especially installing and removing programs). Sure, SOME programs can be installed and removed through GUI's in Linux using certain packages, but that's only for certain programs - not all. I would definitely say that the lack of being able to just install a program by double clicking it is a big thing keeping normal people (and no, not just the morons using the one button mouse Apple's, but people who just don't want to be hassled because they downloaded a new program) from using Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
Regardless of how this case turned out, after I found out about it I decided to never buy any more books written by JK Rowling due to her obvious insincerity when discussing why the lexicon needed to be prevented from being published.
I have a brother in law who's computer skills are about average for the US and he recently installed Ubuntu after seeing it on my laptop. Now, Ubuntu is simple enough to set up that he got it up and running without any problems at all. However, when he called for help trying to install basic things like dvd codecs and getting his wireless card working, it wasn't so easy for him to understand. You have to realize that even the average people out there who aren't 12 o'clock flashers still find learning commands for the CLI to be very difficult, and that's the biggest thing keeping them from using Linux.
"Why do I need to use a computer, and what is the big difference it's going to make in my life?" Joe Shmoe the construction worker would see a big difference in his life when he uses a computer and realizes that going to mapquest and getting directions in 5 seconds is much better than having to pull out a map and look things up, or being able to buy movie tickets for opening night so that he can take his kids to see Hannah Montana and not show up to be told "sorry, we're sold out". There are countless things like this that make life infinitely easier than it was 10 years ago.
Maybe if Megan had better parents, she wouldn't have felt so unloved that she killed herself. So, how come they're not being charged too? They are even more to blame than this woman for what happened, but of course there's always got to be someone to be crucified so that the person / people who are really to blame can be martyred.
There's nothing wrong with screwing with someone who harmed you or a friend / relative in some way. I saw this case when it was first on the news months ago said (in reference to Megan) "Wow, what a f-ing moron". If you're old enough to be dating and you can't understand that the vast majority of online "relationships" are just people playing make believe, then in my book you're not intelligent enough to be alive. Any time you talk to someone that you've only known online you should be operating under the assumption (or at least suspicion) that they're just pretending.
Go ahead and mod me down for expecting people (in this case Megan) to be responsible for their actions instead of blaming someone else. The real question is - by you modding me down for my different opinoin, could YOU be sued if I went out and killed myself? That's pretty similar to the issue here and I don't think anyone here would be dumb enough to say that you should be sued for that.
I'd say at least 50% of people on slashdot are in the hive mind and are completely incapable of thinking for themselves. They also know that as a result, they're unable to make rational arguments a good deal of the time. The two post rule allows them to claim that they're right, even when they're not.
How? Here's an example:
member of hive mind: "The sky is green!"
person 2: "No, it's blue, here's some pictures"
other members of the hive mind mod person 2 down
member of hive mind: "No, it's green because *some moron who happened to get a fancy degree by buying it with money or god knows what* says so!"
person 2: "No, look around you, you can clearly see that the sky is blue if you just look up!"
member of hive mind: "You must be some idiot christian wacko who hates science!"
person 2 can no longer post due to the two post rule
members of the hive mind: "Hah, we put that idiot in his place! He stopped arguing because we proved him wrong!"
Yes, that's an idiotic idea for an argument, but I was just making up something spur of the moment. However, the idea is the same in that the hive mind is allowed to stop dissenters from speaking PERIOD and they use this to maintain the illusion that they're always right. It's a very rare occurrence on slashdot for someone to disagree with the "capitalism is evil / MS is always wrong / rich people suck / anyone who disagrees with my position must be some idiot christian" mentality that is so prominent here and NOT get modded down.
True, I had my internet shut off for a while for uploading (bittorrent) episodes of Heroes.
I'm all against people who buy a freaking Panzer because once a decade they might actually put it to real use, but saying that a car seating five (a typical sedan) is excessive is just wrong because most people can't afford to have half a dozen cars for every conceivable occasion.
Sorry, but besides being horribly impractical, it's horribly ugly and few people would buy something like that.
It may have some cool things about it (such as the drag coefficient), but it's still completely unmarketable.
First, Vista is unimaginably slow compared to XP. Sure, things that took advantage of the pre-cache feature (I forget what it's called) were fast, but anything else was noticeably slower. Second, there are way more processes running in the background (which goes along with the first point). Third (and this is why I switched back to XP), I had memory overflows 3-5 times per week. I hadn't seen the BSOD in the 5 or 6 years that I used XP and I saw it more times than I can remember on Vista. So I said "screw this" and switched back to XP -- now the only time I normally have problems is if I forget and leave firefox running before I leave to work or someplace else for a long period of time and the memory leak causes a reboot.
If he did, how does that contradict his recent statement? The pharmaceutical company would be charging for it and making a profit, it's just that Bill would be footing the bill for it. Just because he understands that a company exists to make a profit doesn't mean that he's against philanthropy (as evidenced by the tons of money he gives away each year, I know my high school received several million from him).
In other news, I'm off to download Hardy Heron.
See, now this is how we know this is flamebait -- no guy on slashdot has a wife or has had sex! Seriously, try to come up with a more plausible lie next time! = )
"Trying to silence the people who disagree? Sounds like a typical supporter of free speech to me."
It has nothing to do with "people who disagree". It has to do with people who want to violate others rights.
Because they have ACTUAL DONUTS to eat and ACTUAL BRIBES to take!
Oh come on. You show me one woman who's truly logical and I'm sure I can find a flying monkey to give her as a pet. You can complain all that you want, but women use "girl logic" -- which is typically the exact opposite of ACTUAL logic.
I know many SMART girls, just none that are truly logical.
Since the comment you're responding to seems to be deleted (or at least taken off the main comments page), I can't tell if the person ever mentioned religion. What I can tell is that you're being very typical and shouting "YOU DISAGREE! YOU MUST BE A STUPID CHRISTIAN!!" and providing few facts to support your argument. Granted, you've added more fluff to it so that at a glance it seems reasonable, but the meaning behind it is still the same.
I don't believe in evolution. I have no view on how life came to be. Now, if I love science, why don't I believe in evolution? Because everything I've ever read on it, from textbooks to articles posted by Darwinian Acolytes seem to have massive logical flaws. They'll provide evidence and then the conclusions just seem to be pulled out of their ass and have little, if anything, to do with the evidence presented. I have no problem with the concept of evolution - but I want conclusions that don't seem ludicrous based on the evidence they're basing said conclusions on.
I know I'll probably get modded down, but if you look at my karma, you'll notice that I'm not afraid to speak my mind instead of just cowering before the might of the moderators.
"There should be some semblance of openness and trust in a healthy household, particularly between parents and their children."
I've got to disagree. In a healthy household, parents aren't insisting on being privy to every thought, conversation, and action of their children.
My parents never monitored me using the internet when we got it (I'm mid 20's) and I had several friends who had the internet pretty much as soon as you could get it at home. None of my friends were monitored by their parents either. And you know what? None of us got arrested. None of us met up with strangers. None of us got raped or traumatized for life. All this is merely over-reacting to the media blowing the whole "evil internet" stuff way out of proportion.
Exactly! Well, that's one of the main reasons at least. The other big thing is that there are still too many times when you HAVE to type in commands to do something that Windows and OS X let you do with a simple click. I understand why some people like it and why it could arguably be necessary in some instances, but any basic use of a system shouldn't require remembering the right 2-3 lines to type into the command prompt. I've repeatedly toyed with Linux over the last few years, but have never done a solitary install (I've always run either dual boot or virtual machines) because I don't want to go to do something simple and then have to say "Whoops! I've got to dig around on the internet for 4 hours to find out how to do what I can do in Windows and OS X in 2 seconds with just the mouse...."
I'd love to be able to run Linux all the time except for when I want to play games. But while it's improved a LOT in usability since I first tried it, it's still not where I want it to be for every day use. Maybe by 2010 it'll be there. That's not too far, especially since many distros, like Ubuntu, release new versions every 6 months or so.
I'm well aware of it's uses, but historically the reason why gold was used to back currency was purely about bling. Pre-industrial revolution (and I'm pushing the time frame back a bit by saying that even), gold was pretty much useless (unless you're talking about money).
Gold is valuable because the typical person goes "OOH! SHINY! ME WANT!!" and once it's scarcity is factored in, it makes it very valuable. It's been that way for what....a few thousand years?
........don't advertise that you're having a super bowl party online or in print. Either just tell people in person or on the phone about it or have a "church barbecue".
Also, how the hell can they claim that they're losing ad revenue for this? Has anyone alive EVER been contacted for a survey on what shows they watch? No, I'm being serious, has anyone? I really think they just make the Nielson numbers up.
I disagree that any such censorship technology is a "tool for parenting". They're tools to AVOID parenting. With V-chip it's *push a couple buttons* "Ok, now we can but the dumb brat in front of the tv for 14 hours while we go off and do whatever". These things don't have anything to do with good parents, because good parents don't need them. One purpose of them is so that the companies can get a gold star by saying "Look, we can keep your children safe from *fill in some exaggerated thing here*" and so that some crappy parents will pay them some extra money to be able to pretend they're a good parent while avoiding any work and responsibility.
"However, in my house we practice this apparently rare thing called, 'mutual respect' whereby he doesn't do such things, and I don't invade his privacy."
You mean you don't invade his privacy by doing something like saving his log-on and password? Do you have cameras recording in every room of the house 24/7 too? Seriously -- they're kids, not inmates.
I know this is hard for many to understand, but schools are NOT parents. You can't compare a parent to a school teacher when it comes to discipline or values. You talk about "who wants to live in a police state", yet you apparently condone the school acting in the place of parents and exceeding their authority.
I totally understand being able to do everything from the command line. I also understand why some would want certain advanced features to be command line only. However, there's no reason in the 21st century why there aren't more GUI driven things in Linux (especially installing and removing programs). Sure, SOME programs can be installed and removed through GUI's in Linux using certain packages, but that's only for certain programs - not all. I would definitely say that the lack of being able to just install a program by double clicking it is a big thing keeping normal people (and no, not just the morons using the one button mouse Apple's, but people who just don't want to be hassled because they downloaded a new program) from using Linux.