the bullied finally learning to stand up for themselves, much like the way you did, is the only way the bullying will ever stop.
Bullshit.
I've seen plenty of kids who -tried- standing up for themselves, they took a swing at the bully, and guess what?
Sometimes it doesn't connect. Just more fuel for the bully to mock with.
Sometimes it connects and the bully shrugs it off. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to haul off and hit someone who has 30 pounds and 10" of height on you, after all.
Sometimes it connects and the bully is knocked on his ass and even humiliated and then he and his three friends return the favor at the next opportunity, and the one after that, and the one after that...
The little guy getting bullied pulling a heroic move out of his ass and dropping the bully on his ass, ending the cycle, and being accepted by the group is a bullshit solution. Yes it happens, yes it can work, but life isn't hollywood and the little guy doesn't always get his hollywood ending when he grows a spine. Sometimes, in the real world, they just break his spine.
The Reena Virk swarming and murder for example was believed precipitated by some of the stuff Reena had done in a misguided attempt to establish herself as tough, trying to break the cycle of victimization she was stuck in.
Surely we can all understand the reasoning why your freedom to murder is curtailed.
The freedoms restricted by the GPL are done in precisely the same spirit - because if you exercise those freedoms the freedoms of others would be lessened.
Those restrictions are for your freedom. It is important to take freedom away to protect it. Truly allowing freedom would allow freedom to be taken away, and we can't allow that, so we've taken away some freedom to allow true freedom to flourish.
read through my first paragraph carefully and tell me what I've said differently than the GNU people.
Nothing. You got it right. But you apparently don't understand it yourself.
Your 'first' paragraph is EXACTLY the reason, and indeed the ONLY reason murder is illegal:
To paraphrase your 'first paragraph':
Those restrictions [we've outlawed murder] for your freedom [to live]. It is important to take away your freedom [to murder people] to protect your freedom [from being murdered]. Truly allowing freedom [to murder] would allow freedom to be taken away [ie everytime you excercise your freedom to murder someone else loses their freedom to live], and we can't allow that, so we've taken some freedom [to murder] to allow true freedom [to live] to flourish.
The FSF thinks the freedom of EVERYONE (including the people who got it from you) to modify and use GPL code trumps an individual developers freedom to prevent them.
If windos auto-update would conform to those standards, we'd have a billion spam bots out there. Instead of the half-a-billion we have now.
Windows auto-update is OFF by default.
It asks rather aggressively to be turned on (which is fine considering how important it is to be on for most people), and it won't stop asking until you explicitly tell it you don't want updates and to shut the hell up.
Yeah, so don't give me a speeding ticket either until they take care of the more important crimes.
No. You missed the point. The point isn't the enforcement of laws, its the relative punishment for them. If you were thrown in JAIL for sixteen months instead of given a modest fine next time you got a speeding ticket, what would you think of that?
I really hate stupid arguments. Either laws count, or they don't.
I really hate people who don't read. I never said copyright infringement shouldn't count, or that we had to actually lock up all the brutes and thugs and theives before we prosecute for copyright infringement.
The issue is that brutes, thugs, and theives don't usually go to JAIL when they get caught and convicted, even if they are convicted multiple times. If that isn't worthy of jail time, why is infringing copyright?
The versions it reports are for an autoupdate feature...
And everyone knows that this can done equally well by having the client request the current version number, and then the client can decide based on that whether an upgrade is needed. There is no reason for the server to need to know the version number to support an autoupdate feature.
and the $_SERVER and php/database settings are (I imagine) used to figure out what wordpress settings are common. How soon they can remove support for old versions of mysql and php, how many people use cgi instead of fastcgi instead of mod_php.
Which is fine, but it should be an opt-in feature. Lots of people are happy submit their data for statistical purposes, but there is no reason anybody should -have- to if they don't wish to, or that the software should do it without telling them.
It would be bad enough if it was on by default without asking and you had to turn it off. Its ridiculous that you have to hack / fork / or install a plugin to get around it.
Tempest in a teapot.
Its bad design compounded by arrogance. It wouldn't be a tempest anywhere if they'd simply agreed that end users should decide what and how much information is sent to the mothership, and that software should err on the side of privacy.
Matt Mullengweg is not being reasonable. He should simply make it an option. without requiring users to fork or install plug-ins or hack to overcome defective-by-design features.
It should be easy to turn on and off. It should default to off. It can ask one time during the upgrade, or first login after the upgrade, to be turned on, with an explanation of what it does and why he thinks it can be turned on.
There is no good reason the above cannot or should not be accomodated.
As for the number of users, I wonder how many of them actually USE facebook, vs simply having registered in order to see someone elses crap. I know a lot of people who've been roped into 'signing' up to these sights in order to see their cousins christmas pictures, or to rsvp to a wedding shower where the idiot hosting it sent out the invitations via facebook.
So far: I don't have a facebook profile; I don't want a facebook profile; and I'm dreading the day where I have to get a facebook profile because I need to see someone elses effing facebook crap. I just know that sooner or later an important client is going to send me a facebook invitation that I'll -have- to register on the site to properly respond to...
The only thing I'd like to add is that a FOSS project can't really die if the community wants it, even if its maintained by a couple people and is so dominant that forks can't get lift off.
If reaches the point that the dominant project isn't meeting peoples needs anymore, then it will lose its momentum, and then a forked version can gain the critical mass it needs to succeed and even replace the former dominant version.
Its happened before.
So yeah, right now a big OOo fork might be a bit of wasted effort, and doomed to die, but if Sun implodes and the project stagnates and nobody can get important functionality patched into OOo, at that point an OOo fork becomes viable.
that because you don't make a living from IP. for some people, their IP is their salary, their savings and their pension. Now imagine having that stolen from you. still don't care?
I make a living from IP, and no I still don't care.
The average brute who beats his wife and kids probably won't end up in jail for the first several incidents.
Your average petty thug mugger who confronts people and takes their wallet and watch at knife or gunpoint rarely ends up in jail for more than a few hours, no matter how often they get caught. Despite the threat of violence, the theft of real property, and the substantial emotional distress they cause their victims.
Your average retail convenience stores are shoplifted from on a daily basis. Real goods, that cost real money, being stolen for real. Every day. When the pricks get caught, how many of THEM end up in jail for more than a few hours? Practically none.
So why should a guy who makes copies in a nonviolent way, that don't take anything real away from me, and potentially don't usually even mean a lost sale -- what exactly has he done that he should he go to jail when other criminals who do much worse things do not?
Once we've got a policy of locking up all the brutes, thugs, drug dealers, thieves, and shoplifters then we can look at raising the penalty for crimes like jay-walking and copyright infringement.
Now, of course, if this guy is at the commericial/industrial scale of infringement, complete with counterfeiting discs, and laundering the money made, then yeah, he's costing his victims and society enough to treated like a serious criminal and deserves jail time.
But your average schmuck with an ftp server or some such nonsense... give me a break. I'd rather be funding the police to track down bigger fish than that.
Buy a magazine - ads Rent/Buy a movie - ads Go see a movie - ads Pay TV - ads Buy a news paper - ads Satellite radio - ads, not many, but they're creeping in Rent/Buy video games - ads, not many, but they're creeping in
Really, paying for content does not make it ad free, and content providers, even the ones that made 'ad free' part of the proposition eventually succumb and show you ads -- few ads maybe, but capitalism dictates they'll show you just as many ads as is profitable. Sure as they add ads to sat-radio some people are going to quit - but as longs as its not the cesspool of bland music and advertising that makes up terrestrial radio they'll keep more people than they lose, and the people they lose will be more than made up for by the ad revenue.
Still won't mean anything. Until you can run every program you can run on Windows on Linux the average user won't adopt it. Also, people don't care about it being stable and secure, they want it to be user friendly.
The average user won't PAY for Vista, and the average user can't steal it. If it comes bundled with their PC, they never know they paid for it, but if they walk into a best buy and a Ubuntu model sits next to a Vista model, and users can browse the web in the store on either, and the price is $180 bucks apart from $399 to $579, the ubuntu boxes will sell.
The real question is how much is MS discounting Vista Home Basic to OEMs, and of -that- amount, how much is further being subsidized by all the crap that normally comes pre-installed. e.g. Is Norton paying dell $1 to put a Norton trial on each desktop? Is MusicMatch Jukebox? Is AOL? Is Adobe? Most of that crap that the dell's of the world preinstall was paid to be put there by someone.
So if MS lowers the OEM Vista Home Basic to $35, and the OEM can pickup $20 bucks a desktop by pre-loading it with crap then the difference between genuine Windows and this unheard of 'ooobooontooo' is $15. And most users will pay $15 bucks more for Vista.
but then they go overboard with their "web 2.0ness" and become more effort than they're worth.
And their lock-in-ness. I don't want to join a private web site to talk to people. I already have email that works everywhere.
And their personal information vacuuming. I don't want to pay for my ability to talk to my friends with my personal information. Again, email is free. And if I want a fancy blog and don't want to host it myself I'd like the option to fucking pay for it with my money instead of my data.
My take, was that the article isn't against Ruby at all. But rather that its against "Ruby on Rails". Rails, the framework, is very easy to use but if you come up against the limitations of the framework. Then you're stuck having to re-invent big parts of the wheel from scratch, outside of the framework.
It's not like it's especially hard to drill down to real sources from most WP articles.
The hell it isn't. The average stuff the average school project is based on would be nearly impossible to find the original sources.
School libraries are small, most of them aren't even interconnected. And even the public library system, which is interconnected, is slow. I recall trying to find the sources listed once in a britannica article in school so that I didn't have to cite britannica - (note it wasn't that i didn't want to cite briticannica, but rather that I was required to cite 10 different sources as requirement of the assignment).
I couldn't find a single one, anywhere. Zilch in the school library. And the public library didn't fare much better. Only one book was in the province, and it would have taken weeks to get through the inter-library system. The only place I could find the papers was if I wanted to pay.
Drilling down to the cite sources ought to be its own assignment. Its harder than writing the paper.
Do you really believe that or are you just plain ignorant? The same reasons you don't hire the hobbyist to head your IT department, he's not qualified. I won't even waste my time trying to explain to you why they're not qualified.
I completely misunderstood your post. I don't consider rejection for a job for not being qualified as form of 'discrimination'; (Although I concede it is not an incorrect usage of the word.) but I went the other way thought you somehow thought discrimination based on image wasn't a bad thing.
However, I don't think the examples are as bad as all that. Because in both cases a qualified applicant may be rejected. A 'stereo-type' engineer type will be rejected for the restaurant job, even if qualified, based on his 'look'. Meanwhile a 'pretty girl' will be rejected for the engineering job based on her 'look'.
I agree, of course, that hiring a pretty girl or anyone else for that matter, for any job, without regard to qualification is idiotic.
Because those jobs actually depend on looks. They are all about presentation, and if you don't worry about what it is you're presenting, you fail.
Exactly. If you don't have the right look, you fail. Our society needs improvement.
Engineering, on the other hand, is supposed to be all about the math, the product. If you care more about how someone looks than about the quality of the math they churn out, you fail.
Exactly. If you don't have the right look, you fail. Our society needs improvement.
You're talking about two completely different industries with opposite requirements for profitability.
Nope. You evidently need the right look in both. The only thing that changes is which look.
I suppose you could argue is that engineering might be harder because not only do you need the right look, but you also need the math skills. But then again, with hosting a restaurant, you need good interpersonal skills in addition to the right look. Ever try to teach a roomful of engineers good interpersonal skills?
It certainly isn't rocket science, but its not something just anybody can do well, even brilliant rocket scientists.
You know that NONE of your examples are remotely comparable
It sounds like my examples aren't "identical". What would you suggest as being comparable, without being pretty much exactly the same thing?.. to wearing a device (occupying standard "worn IED position" pointing outward) with an open, dangling battery to the sort of place that has been a popular bombing target for DECADES.
Besides, how many airports in the US have been bombed (or even attempted to be bombed) by a someone blantantly 'wearing a device (occupying standard "worn IED position" pointing outward) with an open, dangling battery' in, say, the history of flight?
Not saying it can't or won't happen, nor that we shouldn't take it seriously when it -might- be happening, but its hardly near the scale of problem you suggest it is.
The bottom line is security wants to save face, by making it out like this person was deliberately looking to create a bomb scare, when at worst it was a honest/thoughtless mistake. Making tech-art like this is something she does, and she had this particular garment for a quite a while, so it clearly wasn't a case of doing it to stir shit up.
FTFA: "FYI, friends at MIT say she wears the hoodie on a regular basis- it's just unfortunate that she had it on while trying to pick a friend up at the airport. MIT students don't really do mornings, or worry about what they're wearing, so I can't imagine she'd even think about her clothes before heading out to pick up a friend at the airport before 8am."
Do I think security acted appropriate when they confronted her? Yes. Its their job to be careful. Should she should be charged with something criminal? Hell no. It was a harmless fucking shirt. You can bet your ass we're going to see more and more tech-art like this as time goes on. Its only a matter of time before a Versace sticks a breadboard/LED package onto their fall lineup and calls it fashion art, and it goes mainstream.
I think that stepping on stupid people who think they are being cute is a reasonable way to deter such conduct in future.
This incident made me think. My kids have shoes with blinking red LED's in them. I wouldn't normally think twice about letting them go anywhere with them, including an airport. I would be appalled, and outraged if some dimwit called security to 'take me down'. But, I'd forgive that, even laugh, if they dropped the issue once they understood the situation -- as I understand their situation too.
But 'stepping on me', slapping me with a criminal charge for a hoax bomb and trying to cause a panic, resulting in doing 'hard time'?? Because my kids spiderman shoes have useless red led? Don't be a fucktard.
If I were a passenger whose flight was delayed by this moron, I'd want her doing hard time to set an example for others.
And I'd like to see you do some "hard time" next time you cause someone else a delay, even if only incidently, for doing something that is at worst 'suspicious'. Maybe you'll change your idiotic tune.
You know; like driving slowly at night, making hesitant actions. Sure, maybe your just lost and trying to get your bearings. But hey, you stopped the car behind you from making the light, and you might be casing the area in preparation to blow it up.
Or maybe something truly deviant, like adjusting your hearing aide with a tiny screwdriver in a public place. God knows what you've got in your hands there -- nevermind that it not being in your ear meant that you couldn't hear the person behind some desk asking you what it was.
Or perhaps something downright malevalent, like carrying your kid's portable lite brite toy under your arm while listening to an ipod.
Clearly you'd deserve some hard time in any one of these scenarios.
At what point to you think that this is a worthwhile expenditure.
This isn't really about what I think is worthwhile. Everyone gets to choose for themselves which charities they feel are most worthwhile donating to, and how much they wish to donate to them.
If you wish to donate $120.00/year in support of Alzheimer's research, and you think F@H is the best Alzheimer's related charity to donate that money too, that is entirely your perogative. While I may disagree that its the best use of $120, even for Alzheimer's, its your money, your charity, and your choice.
I merely think F@H is morally responsible for ensuring people are actually *aware* that they are donating $120/year or $250 or $500/year a year when they sign up! They are profiting on the ignorance of the very people that contribute. Most people don't realize what F@H is costing them; they assume its neglible. Why isn't F@H upfront about the cost?!
If its a good cause (and it is), people (like yourself) will still contribute. Allowing people to contribute knowing full well most the "hidden" electrical cost is surprisingly high is unethical.
Or even worse, what about a charity that lets 12 year old gamers effectively commit to donating $10-$40/month to Alzheimer's research, and have the donation amount get invisibly tacked onto their parents electrical bill with no disclosure whatsoever.
That's another more cynical way of looking at F@H.
A charity like F@H should be above such criticism, and it should take steps to be as absolutely frank and upfront on the discussion of cost as possible.
they're facing a lot more obstacles than you deal with as a pasty male geek with no fashion sense
Really? I'd contend that pasty female geeks with no fashion sense fit right in. The pastier and geekier the less resistance they experience.
Its the pretty people that face the obstacles. But those are the same obstacles us pasty geeks (male and female) with no fashion sense run into when we try to get jobs that favour the beautiful people. How often do you see a pasty geek hosting a restaurant? Anchoring a news team? Modeling swimwear?
I'm not saying its right, and I agree it should be changed, but its a bigger problem than just the 'geeks reject women'. Its that discrimination still occurs at all levels and between all segments of society.
It should really be common sense that using something that requires electricity...wait for it...costs money for the electricity being used.
Fair enough. But considering how MUCH electricity is being used, especially considering that its far in excess of what most people would think, I think it should be better disclosed.
I mean, should all lightbulbs be stamped with a warning that if they use it it will cost X dollars to do so in electricity?
Yes. Absolutely.
Nothing would motivate people to switch to CFL's faster than if right on the label the 60W incandescent said that:
1 year of continuous operation would cost:
$50.00 @.10/kWh and $100.00 @.20/kWh
and the CFLs beside it were labeled:
$11.00 @.10kWh and $22.00 @.20/kWh
I think the information would be of interest to people buying HDTV's, computers, and other items that spend a lot of time on.
While its not 'interesting' or 'noteworthy' that electrical devices use electricity; it is interesting to know how much, and what it will actually cost, especially when its far beyond what most people would imagine.
Fridges and other major appliances already have large labels disclosing electrical usage; consumers want to know this because they know these devices are on all the time and use a lot of electricity.
Given that the PS3 uses more electricity than their fridge (several times as much) and users are being encouraged to leave it on 24x7; don't you think consumers ought to be informed? Most of them operate under the assumption that when they aren't playing games its negligable - about on par with what their VCR consumes to display the time. They really don't realize F@H is running their PS3 at maximum load 24x7 consuming a boatload of power to do that.
Given F@H is a charity, they really have a moral obligation to fully disclose the cost of participating; especially when the magnitude of the cost is non-obvious. Or worse, in the case of kids, teens, and mothers-basement-dwelling-slashdotters installing it, the cost is not even borne by the person subscribing.
They don't pay the electrical bill, they don't even see it, and since the bill arrives as an arbitrary lump sum, there is no real way for the person paying the bill to know that their kids F@H is costing them 20 bucks a month, assuming they even know what F@H is, or that they have it.
You must be using a different Shaw Cable than I am.
You start with basic cable: CBC, CityTV, CTV, Global, abc, clt, vision, cbc, pbs, nbc, much, fox, mtv, weather, cpac, bn, aptn, ctvnn, YTV etc.
I only want maybe 1/3 of them, if that, but its basic cable. Ok. Cool.
Now I want: Family, Comedy, Food, Teletoon, Space, Treehouse, TSN, and TCM, Showcase, A&E, Bravo.
But those are all in a bundle with Slice!, TVtropolis, TV5, W, MuchMore, CNN, OLN, Speed which I don't want.
I also want: BBC World, but for that I have to get the digital bundle that includes MSNBC, Star!, The Golf Channel, The Shopping Channel, Mandarin Talentvision...
Worse, although abc/cbc/fox/pbs/nbc are part of basic cable, if I want the timeshifting I have to get the digital bundle too. So... I can live without BBC world, and the timeshifting.
But I have an HDTV, so I want CBC/CTV/ABC/CBS/NBC/ etc in HD of course. But for that I need HD Basic which bundles in all those digital channels I just said I didn't want. But at least I've got the timeshifting and bbc world.
However, even though I've now got a whack of channels beyond basic cable that I don't want and can't avoid getting, and I've got TSN. I still don't have TSN in HD. Have to add the HD Plus, or HD Sports bundle for that...
So now I've got basic cable, classic cable bundle, digital cable bundle, hd basic bundle, ad hd plus bundle. (note also you can't just get the hd versions and drop the non-hd channels -- because at this point I don't really need basic cable as I'm paying extra for the hd versions of those channels). I dunno 50-60 channels, of which I want maybe 15-20. So much for individual choices.
Sure, they have some a la carte on top of all that. So now that I've got 5 bundles to get the 20 channels I want along with 40 channels I don't - I can pay a few bucks more to add IFC and Scream individually.
Slashdot Mirror
the bullied finally learning to stand up for themselves, much like the way you did, is the only way the bullying will ever stop.
Bullshit.
I've seen plenty of kids who -tried- standing up for themselves, they took a swing at the bully, and guess what?
Sometimes it doesn't connect. Just more fuel for the bully to mock with.
Sometimes it connects and the bully shrugs it off. Maybe it wasn't such a great idea to haul off and hit someone who has 30 pounds and 10" of height on you, after all.
Sometimes it connects and the bully is knocked on his ass and even humiliated and then he and his three friends return the favor at the next opportunity, and the one after that, and the one after that...
The little guy getting bullied pulling a heroic move out of his ass and dropping the bully on his ass, ending the cycle, and being accepted by the group is a bullshit solution. Yes it happens, yes it can work, but life isn't hollywood and the little guy doesn't always get his hollywood ending when he grows a spine. Sometimes, in the real world, they just break his spine.
The Reena Virk swarming and murder for example was believed precipitated by some of the stuff Reena had done in a misguided attempt to establish herself as tough, trying to break the cycle of victimization she was stuck in.
I fail to see how its murky.
Surely we can all understand the reasoning why your freedom to murder is curtailed.
The freedoms restricted by the GPL are done in precisely the same spirit - because if you exercise those freedoms the freedoms of others would be lessened.
It is precisely the same reasoning.
Those restrictions are for your freedom. It is important to take freedom away to protect it. Truly allowing freedom would allow freedom to be taken away, and we can't allow that, so we've taken away some freedom to allow true freedom to flourish.
read through my first paragraph carefully and tell me what I've said differently than the GNU people.
Nothing. You got it right. But you apparently don't understand it yourself.
Your 'first' paragraph is EXACTLY the reason, and indeed the ONLY reason murder is illegal:
To paraphrase your 'first paragraph':
Those restrictions [we've outlawed murder] for your freedom [to live]. It is important to take away your freedom [to murder people] to protect your freedom [from being murdered]. Truly allowing freedom [to murder] would allow freedom to be taken away [ie everytime you excercise your freedom to murder someone else loses their freedom to live], and we can't allow that, so we've taken some freedom [to murder] to allow true freedom [to live] to flourish.
The FSF thinks the freedom of EVERYONE (including the people who got it from you) to modify and use GPL code trumps an individual developers freedom to prevent them.
Its not terribly complicated.
Except that by 'periodically', you'd have to do it every few seconds. Or better still just before you visit each URL.
If windos auto-update would conform to those standards, we'd have a billion spam bots out there.
Instead of the half-a-billion we have now.
Windows auto-update is OFF by default.
It asks rather aggressively to be turned on (which is fine considering how important it is to be on for most people), and it won't stop asking until you explicitly tell it you don't want updates and to shut the hell up.
But it starts out OFF.
Pretty sad when even windows gets it right.
Yeah, so don't give me a speeding ticket either until they take care of the more important crimes.
No. You missed the point. The point isn't the enforcement of laws, its the relative punishment for them.
If you were thrown in JAIL for sixteen months instead of given a modest fine next time you got a speeding ticket, what would you think of that?
I really hate stupid arguments. Either laws count, or they don't.
I really hate people who don't read. I never said copyright infringement shouldn't count, or that we had to actually lock up all the brutes and thugs and theives before we prosecute for copyright infringement.
The issue is that brutes, thugs, and theives don't usually go to JAIL when they get caught and convicted, even if they are convicted multiple times. If that isn't worthy of jail time, why is infringing copyright?
The versions it reports are for an autoupdate feature...
And everyone knows that this can done equally well by having the client request the current version number, and then the client can decide based on that whether an upgrade is needed. There is no reason for the server to need to know the version number to support an autoupdate feature.
and the $_SERVER and php/database settings are (I imagine) used to figure out what wordpress settings are common. How soon they can remove support for old versions of mysql and php, how many people use cgi instead of fastcgi instead of mod_php.
Which is fine, but it should be an opt-in feature. Lots of people are happy submit their data for statistical purposes, but there is no reason anybody should -have- to if they don't wish to, or that the software should do it without telling them.
It would be bad enough if it was on by default without asking and you had to turn it off. Its ridiculous that you have to hack / fork / or install a plugin to get around it.
Tempest in a teapot.
Its bad design compounded by arrogance. It wouldn't be a tempest anywhere if they'd simply agreed that end users should decide what and how much information is sent to the mothership, and that software should err on the side of privacy.
Matt Mullengweg is not being reasonable. He should simply make it an option. without requiring users to fork or install plug-ins or hack to overcome defective-by-design features.
It should be easy to turn on and off.
It should default to off.
It can ask one time during the upgrade, or first login after the upgrade, to be turned on, with an explanation of what it does and why he thinks it can be turned on.
There is no good reason the above cannot or should not be accomodated.
Great. Just another reason not to use facebook.
As for the number of users, I wonder how many of them actually USE facebook, vs simply having registered in order to see someone elses crap. I know a lot of people who've been roped into 'signing' up to these sights in order to see their cousins christmas pictures, or to rsvp to a wedding shower where the idiot hosting it sent out the invitations via facebook.
So far: I don't have a facebook profile; I don't want a facebook profile; and I'm dreading the day where I have to get a facebook profile because I need to see someone elses effing facebook crap. I just know that sooner or later an important client is going to send me a facebook invitation that I'll -have- to register on the site to properly respond to...
I hate social^H^H^H^H^H^H viral networking sites.
Pretty much bang on.
The only thing I'd like to add is that a FOSS project can't really die if the community wants it, even if its maintained by a couple people and is so dominant that forks can't get lift off.
If reaches the point that the dominant project isn't meeting peoples needs anymore, then it will lose its momentum, and then a forked version can gain the critical mass it needs to succeed and even replace the former dominant version.
Its happened before.
So yeah, right now a big OOo fork might be a bit of wasted effort, and doomed to die, but if Sun implodes and the project stagnates and nobody can get important functionality patched into OOo, at that point an OOo fork becomes viable.
Same goes for Mozilla, or even the kernel.
that because you don't make a living from IP. for some people, their IP is their salary, their savings and their pension. Now imagine having that stolen from you. still don't care?
... give me a break. I'd rather be funding the police to track down bigger fish than that.
I make a living from IP, and no I still don't care.
The average brute who beats his wife and kids probably won't end up in jail for the first several incidents.
Your average petty thug mugger who confronts people and takes their wallet and watch at knife or gunpoint rarely ends up in jail for more than a few hours, no matter how often they get caught. Despite the threat of violence, the theft of real property, and the substantial emotional distress they cause their victims.
Your average retail convenience stores are shoplifted from on a daily basis. Real goods, that cost real money, being stolen for real. Every day. When the pricks get caught, how many of THEM end up in jail for more than a few hours? Practically none.
So why should a guy who makes copies in a nonviolent way, that don't take anything real away from me, and potentially don't usually even mean a lost sale -- what exactly has he done that he should he go to jail when other criminals who do much worse things do not?
Once we've got a policy of locking up all the brutes, thugs, drug dealers, thieves, and shoplifters then we can look at raising the penalty for crimes like jay-walking and copyright infringement.
Now, of course, if this guy is at the commericial/industrial scale of infringement, complete with counterfeiting discs, and laundering the money made, then yeah, he's costing his victims and society enough to treated like a serious criminal and deserves jail time.
But your average schmuck with an ftp server or some such nonsense
Please start paying for content.
Been there. Done that.
Buy a magazine - ads
Rent/Buy a movie - ads
Go see a movie - ads
Pay TV - ads
Buy a news paper - ads
Satellite radio - ads, not many, but they're creeping in
Rent/Buy video games - ads, not many, but they're creeping in
Really, paying for content does not make it ad free, and content providers, even the ones that made 'ad free' part of the proposition eventually succumb and show you ads -- few ads maybe, but capitalism dictates they'll show you just as many ads as is profitable. Sure as they add ads to sat-radio some people are going to quit - but as longs as its not the cesspool of bland music and advertising that makes up terrestrial radio they'll keep more people than they lose, and the people they lose will be more than made up for by the ad revenue.
Still won't mean anything. Until you can run every program you can run on Windows on Linux the average user won't adopt it. Also, people don't care about it being stable and secure, they want it to be user friendly.
The average user won't PAY for Vista, and the average user can't steal it. If it comes bundled with their PC, they never know they paid for it, but if they walk into a best buy and a Ubuntu model sits next to a Vista model, and users can browse the web in the store on either, and the price is $180 bucks apart from $399 to $579, the ubuntu boxes will sell.
The real question is how much is MS discounting Vista Home Basic to OEMs, and of -that- amount, how much is further being subsidized by all the crap that normally comes pre-installed. e.g. Is Norton paying dell $1 to put a Norton trial on each desktop? Is MusicMatch Jukebox? Is AOL? Is Adobe? Most of that crap that the dell's of the world preinstall was paid to be put there by someone.
So if MS lowers the OEM Vista Home Basic to $35, and the OEM can pickup $20 bucks a desktop by pre-loading it with crap then the difference between genuine Windows and this unheard of 'ooobooontooo' is $15. And most users will pay $15 bucks more for Vista.
but then they go overboard with their "web 2.0ness" and become more effort than they're worth.
And their lock-in-ness. I don't want to join a private web site to talk to people. I already have email that works everywhere.
And their personal information vacuuming. I don't want to pay for my ability to talk to my friends with my personal information. Again, email is free. And if I want a fancy blog and don't want to host it myself I'd like the option to fucking pay for it with my money instead of my data.
My take, was that the article isn't against Ruby at all. But rather that its against "Ruby on Rails". Rails, the framework, is very easy to use but if you come up against the limitations of the framework. Then you're stuck having to re-invent big parts of the wheel from scratch, outside of the framework.
/framework/ not the /language/.
The issue is the
It's not like it's especially hard to drill down to real sources from most WP articles.
The hell it isn't. The average stuff the average school project is based on would be nearly impossible to find the original sources.
School libraries are small, most of them aren't even interconnected. And even the public library system, which is interconnected, is slow. I recall trying to find the sources listed once in a britannica article in school so that I didn't have to cite britannica - (note it wasn't that i didn't want to cite briticannica, but rather that I was required to cite 10 different sources as requirement of the assignment).
I couldn't find a single one, anywhere. Zilch in the school library. And the public library didn't fare much better. Only one book was in the province, and it would have taken weeks to get through the inter-library system. The only place I could find the papers was if I wanted to pay.
Drilling down to the cite sources ought to be its own assignment. Its harder than writing the paper.
Do you really believe that or are you just plain ignorant? The same reasons you don't hire the hobbyist to head your IT department, he's not qualified. I won't even waste my time trying to explain to you why they're not qualified.
I completely misunderstood your post. I don't consider rejection for a job for not being qualified as form of 'discrimination'; (Although I concede it is not an incorrect usage of the word.) but I went the other way thought you somehow thought discrimination based on image wasn't a bad thing.
However, I don't think the examples are as bad as all that. Because in both cases a qualified applicant may be rejected. A 'stereo-type' engineer type will be rejected for the restaurant job, even if qualified, based on his 'look'. Meanwhile a 'pretty girl' will be rejected for the engineering job based on her 'look'.
I agree, of course, that hiring a pretty girl or anyone else for that matter, for any job, without regard to qualification is idiotic.
Because those jobs actually depend on looks. They are all about presentation, and if you don't worry about what it is you're presenting, you fail.
Exactly. If you don't have the right look, you fail. Our society needs improvement.
Engineering, on the other hand, is supposed to be all about the math, the product. If you care more about how someone looks than about the quality of the math they churn out, you fail.
Exactly. If you don't have the right look, you fail. Our society needs improvement.
You're talking about two completely different industries with opposite requirements for profitability.
Nope. You evidently need the right look in both. The only thing that changes is which look.
I suppose you could argue is that engineering might be harder because not only do you need the right look, but you also need the math skills. But then again, with hosting a restaurant, you need good interpersonal skills in addition to the right look. Ever try to teach a roomful of engineers good interpersonal skills?
It certainly isn't rocket science, but its not something just anybody can do well, even brilliant rocket scientists.
You know that NONE of your examples are remotely comparable
.. to wearing a device (occupying standard "worn IED position" pointing outward) with an open, dangling battery to the sort of place that has been a popular bombing target for DECADES.
It sounds like my examples aren't "identical". What would you suggest as being comparable, without being pretty much exactly the same thing?
Besides, how many airports in the US have been bombed (or even attempted to be bombed) by a someone blantantly 'wearing a device (occupying standard "worn IED position" pointing outward) with an open, dangling battery' in, say, the history of flight?
Not saying it can't or won't happen, nor that we shouldn't take it seriously when it -might- be happening, but its hardly near the scale of problem you suggest it is.
The bottom line is security wants to save face, by making it out like this person was deliberately looking to create a bomb scare, when at worst it was a honest/thoughtless mistake. Making tech-art like this is something she does, and she had this particular garment for a quite a while, so it clearly wasn't a case of doing it to stir shit up.
FTFA:
"FYI, friends at MIT say she wears the hoodie on a regular basis- it's just unfortunate that she had it on while trying to pick a friend up at the airport. MIT students don't really do mornings, or worry about what they're wearing, so I can't imagine she'd even think about her clothes before heading out to pick up a friend at the airport before 8am."
Do I think security acted appropriate when they confronted her? Yes. Its their job to be careful. Should she should be charged with something criminal? Hell no. It was a harmless fucking shirt. You can bet your ass we're going to see more and more tech-art like this as time goes on. Its only a matter of time before a Versace sticks a breadboard/LED package onto their fall lineup and calls it fashion art, and it goes mainstream.
And if you didn't mean to imply that then next time choose some better examples, because not one of them was a form of bad discrimination.
How do you figure?
How is it 'good discrimination'? How is it 'good' that our culture is that fixated on image?
I think that stepping on stupid people who think they are being cute is a reasonable way to deter such conduct in future.
This incident made me think. My kids have shoes with blinking red LED's in them. I wouldn't normally think twice about letting them go anywhere with them, including an airport. I would be appalled, and outraged if some dimwit called security to 'take me down'. But, I'd forgive that, even laugh, if they dropped the issue once they understood the situation -- as I understand their situation too.
But 'stepping on me', slapping me with a criminal charge for a hoax bomb and trying to cause a panic, resulting in doing 'hard time'?? Because my kids spiderman shoes have useless red led? Don't be a fucktard.
If I were a passenger whose flight was delayed by this moron, I'd want her doing hard time to set an example for others.
And I'd like to see you do some "hard time" next time you cause someone else a delay, even if only incidently, for doing something that is at worst 'suspicious'. Maybe you'll change your idiotic tune.
You know; like driving slowly at night, making hesitant actions. Sure, maybe your just lost and trying to get your bearings. But hey, you stopped the car behind you from making the light, and you might be casing the area in preparation to blow it up.
Or maybe something truly deviant, like adjusting your hearing aide with a tiny screwdriver in a public place. God knows what you've got in your hands there -- nevermind that it not being in your ear meant that you couldn't hear the person behind some desk asking you what it was.
Or perhaps something downright malevalent, like carrying your kid's portable lite brite toy under your arm while listening to an ipod.
Clearly you'd deserve some hard time in any one of these scenarios.
At what point to you think that this is a worthwhile expenditure.
This isn't really about what I think is worthwhile. Everyone gets to choose for themselves which charities they feel are most worthwhile donating to, and how much they wish to donate to them.
If you wish to donate $120.00/year in support of Alzheimer's research, and you think F@H is the best Alzheimer's related charity to donate that money too, that is entirely your perogative. While I may disagree that its the best use of $120, even for Alzheimer's, its your money, your charity, and your choice.
I merely think F@H is morally responsible for ensuring people are actually *aware* that they are donating $120/year or $250 or $500/year a year when they sign up! They are profiting on the ignorance of the very people that contribute. Most people don't realize what F@H is costing them; they assume its neglible. Why isn't F@H upfront about the cost?!
If its a good cause (and it is), people (like yourself) will still contribute. Allowing people to contribute knowing full well most the "hidden" electrical cost is surprisingly high is unethical.
Or even worse, what about a charity that lets 12 year old gamers effectively commit to donating $10-$40/month to Alzheimer's research, and have the donation amount get invisibly tacked onto their parents electrical bill with no disclosure whatsoever.
That's another more cynical way of looking at F@H.
A charity like F@H should be above such criticism, and it should take steps to be as absolutely frank and upfront on the discussion of cost as possible.
they're facing a lot more obstacles than you deal with as a pasty male geek with no fashion sense
Really? I'd contend that pasty female geeks with no fashion sense fit right in. The pastier and geekier the less resistance they experience.
Its the pretty people that face the obstacles. But those are the same obstacles us pasty geeks (male and female) with no fashion sense run into when we try to get jobs that favour the beautiful people. How often do you see a pasty geek hosting a restaurant? Anchoring a news team? Modeling swimwear?
I'm not saying its right, and I agree it should be changed, but its a bigger problem than just the 'geeks reject women'. Its that discrimination still occurs at all levels and between all segments of society.
It should really be common sense that using something that requires electricity...wait for it...costs money for the electricity being used.
.10/kWh and $100.00 @ .20/kWh
.10kWh and $22.00 @ .20/kWh
Fair enough. But considering how MUCH electricity is being used, especially considering that its far in excess of what most people would think, I think it should be better disclosed.
I mean, should all lightbulbs be stamped with a warning that if they use it it will cost X dollars to do so in electricity?
Yes. Absolutely.
Nothing would motivate people to switch to CFL's faster than if right on the label the 60W incandescent said that:
1 year of continuous operation would cost:
$50.00 @
and the CFLs beside it were labeled:
$11.00 @
I think the information would be of interest to people buying HDTV's, computers, and other items that spend a lot of time on.
While its not 'interesting' or 'noteworthy' that electrical devices use electricity; it is interesting to know how much, and what it will actually cost, especially when its far beyond what most people would imagine.
Fridges and other major appliances already have large labels disclosing electrical usage; consumers want to know this because they know these devices are on all the time and use a lot of electricity.
Given that the PS3 uses more electricity than their fridge (several times as much) and users are being encouraged to leave it on 24x7; don't you think consumers ought to be informed? Most of them operate under the assumption that when they aren't playing games its negligable - about on par with what their VCR consumes to display the time. They really don't realize F@H is running their PS3 at maximum load 24x7 consuming a boatload of power to do that.
Given F@H is a charity, they really have a moral obligation to fully disclose the cost of participating; especially when the magnitude of the cost is non-obvious. Or worse, in the case of kids, teens, and mothers-basement-dwelling-slashdotters installing it, the cost is not even borne by the person subscribing.
They don't pay the electrical bill, they don't even see it, and since the bill arrives as an arbitrary lump sum, there is no real way for the person paying the bill to know that their kids F@H is costing them 20 bucks a month, assuming they even know what F@H is, or that they have it.
You must be using a different Shaw Cable than I am.
You start with basic cable:
CBC, CityTV, CTV, Global, abc, clt, vision, cbc, pbs, nbc, much, fox, mtv, weather, cpac, bn, aptn, ctvnn, YTV etc.
I only want maybe 1/3 of them, if that, but its basic cable. Ok. Cool.
Now I want:
Family, Comedy, Food, Teletoon, Space, Treehouse, TSN, and TCM, Showcase, A&E, Bravo.
But those are all in a bundle with Slice!, TVtropolis, TV5, W, MuchMore, CNN, OLN, Speed which I don't want.
I also want: BBC World, but for that I have to get the digital bundle that includes MSNBC, Star!, The Golf Channel, The Shopping Channel, Mandarin Talentvision...
Worse, although abc/cbc/fox/pbs/nbc are part of basic cable, if I want the timeshifting I have to get the digital bundle too. So... I can live without BBC world, and the timeshifting.
But I have an HDTV, so I want CBC/CTV/ABC/CBS/NBC/ etc in HD of course. But for that I need HD Basic which bundles in all those digital channels I just said I didn't want. But at least I've got the timeshifting and bbc world.
However, even though I've now got a whack of channels beyond basic cable that I don't want and can't avoid getting, and I've got TSN. I still don't have TSN in HD. Have to add the HD Plus, or HD Sports bundle for that...
So now I've got basic cable, classic cable bundle, digital cable bundle, hd basic bundle, ad hd plus bundle. (note also you can't just get the hd versions and drop the non-hd channels -- because at this point I don't really need basic cable as I'm paying extra for the hd versions of those channels). I dunno 50-60 channels, of which I want maybe 15-20. So much for individual choices.
Sure, they have some a la carte on top of all that. So now that I've got 5 bundles to get the 20 channels I want along with 40 channels I don't - I can pay a few bucks more to add IFC and Scream individually.