-Registry. I've said it before and I'll say it again:P, the registry is a good thing. Yes when win95 came out there were registry problems but I haven't had any problems since 1996. It's a great idea, it's like having a database to store all your settings.
I don't know how to say this kindly, so...
In my considered -- and, I hope, reasonably well-informed -- opinion, you are quite simply wrong.
Now I don't really care whether the registry is one huge file or several files (user and system) like in NT, but I just want some STANDARD APIs for reading writing settings - fast APIs. Ofcourse the registry has other uses too, like storing COM/CORBA UUIDs etc etc etc.
There have been standard APIs in Windows, ever since at least version 3, to do exactly that with.INI files. (Sure, just for strings, but any half-way decent class or function library wraps "GetProfileString", etc, in more user-friendly syntax that handles type conversions for you; e.g, Delphi's "TIniFile.ReadInteger".)
Being a database it'll definitely be faster than parsing text files, and even better it's much easier to programatically add/remove/change settings (trying to parse text files to do that sort of thing sucks).
Speed matters a lot less than stability and maintainability in this case -- do you need to update your settings a zillion times inside a tight loop, or do you need to be able to back-up, transfer, and maintain them? Does it matter more if users get to wait a millisecond more on starting your application, than if some other application (or a random Windows crash) clobbers the settings for your app for some unlucky users?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"The main one being I don't think developers (not just in the OSS community) don't know what they mean by the term "standards compliance". Do you know how many ambiguities are in the average standards document? (More than there should be.) What happens when the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. MS) zigs, and the rest of the community zags?"
I have a hard time believing that the HTML standards at the time were *SO* ambiguous that anybody could reasonably interpret them as permitting that excretion, the BLINK tag! And that's one eyesore Microsoft was (for once) not responsible for...
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"Roblimo's public statement that I as a geek should be looking for a woman who is most likely to want to do my bidding is insulting to me."
Only because you're stupidly PC. *Everybody* should be looking for that, not just "you as a geek". OK, not looking for someone "who is most likely to want to do my bidding" as in, "I want a slave" -- but then, only stupidly PC people read Roblimo that way. Read it this way in stead: Given a choice between two otherwise identical women, one of which *would* voluntarily (that's what he said, not "do my bidding") draw you a hot bath when you come home tired, the other wouldn't, what on Earth is better about the latter?!? That she demonstrates a PC sense of "independence" by being an uncaring asshole is *preferable* to you...?
"And while he is in his right in insulting me,"
He wouldn't only be "in his right" in insulting you (if that had beeen what he did, which it wasn't), he'd be *right* in insulting you. Stupidly PC wusses deserve nothing but scorn.
"he will then have to stand for my insulting, equal public, reply that I consider such a relationship nothing more than emotions for sale."
He *might* have to, if it weren't so obviously a moronic "Good day -- axe handles!" type of response. As it is, no he doesn't. You owe him, and above all his wife, a big fat apology.
"obviously it is unfortunate if his wife (who is no-doubt a nice person) should read this and be upset. But he dragged her into this public discussion, not I."
Bullshit, asshole. *He* said he loves her and she's a wonderful person; *you* called her a whore. And now you call that *his* fault? How f*cking Swedish can you get?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"I may be mistaken in my impression of how the KKK operates. But I am fairly certain that they are a Neo-Nazi hate group which bases their view of the 'Superior' Race on the tenets that Hitler put down. As usual, I could be wrong."
Why, you most certainly are very very wrong.
Sure, the KKK may have absorbed some of the Nazi's "scientific" justifications for race hatred. But to say it is "based" on them?!?
Hardly -- for one thing, the Klan and its tenets were around long *before* Hitler and the Nazis. So it couldn't very well be based on them, now could it?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"I watched A&E's top 100 people of the millenium the last couple nights. They picked the same #1 as a couple other lists I have seen, Johann Guttenberg (no relation to Steve), and for the same reason."
Well, for starters, Gutenberg's name wasn't Guttenberg...
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"When a member of society is offended by an idea espoused by a second there are two possible solutions. One is for the offended member not to listen to things that offend them. The other is to prevent the offender from speaking. I am saying the former course is preferable. Do you disagree?"
No, not with your arguments and conclusion.
But with the unspoken premise: In what way, exactly, is Katz a 'member of society'? Or rather, *what* society is he a member of? Not/., IMO.
"What is the effect if one of these suggestions that Katz go away is implemented? I and others who wish to listen are no longer able to."
Of course you'd be! You'd only have to follow him, to whatever "society" he goes to. (Something artsy-fartsy like Wired or Salon, I guess, is where he belongs.)
"What is the effect if the complaining posters filter Katz? They are presumably happier in their new Katz-free world while those who wish to can still read Katz."
No -- we'd still know that on the default unfiltered/., *he* gets to take up room with his warmed-over drivel that other, more deserving members of *this* society, *don't* get to take up.
Can you be 100% sure that if Katz didn't have top-level posting privileges, something like Chris Johnson's game engine would still have been rejected from the front page? And are you sure that pushing stuff like that, in favour of stuff like Katz's, is what *this* "society" wants?
All I know is that something I might have wanted to read didn't make the front page, while stuff by Katz does. But I can *suspect* that these things are related.
"I don't regard these suggestions as equivalent. Suggestions not to listen are not equivalent to suggestions not to talk."
Nor are they equivalent to suggestions not to provide non-members of the society with a free bully pulpit to speak *from*.
That's what *I* suggest.
"Emotional ad hominem attacks do not promote consensus or add information, they are noise."
So are well-thought-out, elegantly argued, ideas -- if they are *irrelevant*.
"I'm not suggesting gagging, locking up, or shooting violaters, merely pointing out that they are actually degrading the quality of the discussion. Perhaps even driving away those with good ideas but weak stomachs for conflict."
Or perhaps just suggesting those with more or less good ideas of the wrong *kind* go somewhere where those kind of ideas are more relevant. What's wrong with that?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Oh and as for the contradictions thing, the people who wrote the Bible were for the most part men like any other, hence mistakes are possible, not to mention that the thing has been translated a dozen or so times over time...
Exactly.
And, considering the facts -- that these men who "wrote the Bible" were members of a primitive tribe of Middle Eastern nomadic herdsmen, superstitious and without any tradition of scientific thought -- the one mistake that lies nearest to hand to suspect them of having made...
...is probably their propensity to see supernatural explanations for everything; i.e, their belief that there *is* such a thing as a "God".
Too bad so many people alive today seem to feel a need to cling to the same primitive superstition. Being a living feeling thinking human, I was kind'a thinking that The Meaning Of Liff could have something to do with being a living feeling thinking human... I dunno, perhaps those (other!:-) Christians just don't trust their own character enough to even dare consider this alternative.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"By your rights his doctorate in a relevant specialty science doesn't earn him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed. He opposes the orthodoxy therefore he must be a kook."
No, you're misrepresenting my argument. In your terms, what I am saying is:
First, his doctorate in a relevant specialty science earns him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed, but then, those arguments being in favour of unscientific superstition disqualifies him of that right.
I'm all for opposing orthodoxy, if it is done intelligently, if it is in favour of new knowledge -- as opposed to old idiocy. Unfortunately, many people before him have showed the capability to aquire a doctorate, and *still* be kooks.
Say, what do you think of Keith Latimer's _Head of God_ theory...?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
This tells us that Microsoft Web Letter is sponsored by Microsoft...
And further down:
Why the puzzlement? My final quote:
'So, we're to believe that: -- Microsoft "sponsors" this "site", and paid unspecified fees to Gartner Group related to the content, but in no way did Microsoft fund the study.'
Fees are not mentioned anywhere, so if one chooses to believe that "unspecified fees" were involved, the evidence should first be presented. Failing that (the presentation of evidence), yes, one is to believe that in "no way" did Microsoft fund the study.
So what, dear Chasuk, does "sponsorship" mean in your dictionary?!?
One would imagine that it involves something like money changing hands (or bank accounts) -- a.k.a. "a fee", right?
But the amount this sponsorship costs wasn't mentioned -- i.e, the fee was not specified -- was it?
So yes, the evidence was presented; in a direct quote from (the "Microsoft WebLetter" subsite of) the Gartner Web site.
And, no, one is NOT to believe that in "no way" did Microsoft fund the study.
"The postings of Anonymous Cowards deserve no reply." - Chasuk
Which, IMnshO, further proves Chasuk to be something of a moron.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
The Chowder-head writes something about "...Gibraltar, a place known as 'The Rock' because of its impregnability..." Oh yeah? I thought it was known as 'The Rock' because, uh... because it *is* a rock!
(Yeah, so it's pretty impregnable, in military terms [or at least it was, back when fortifications still worked] -- but that is *because* it is a rock, not the other way around.)
What a nitwit, that Pankaj.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"I HATE direct bill pay systems. There's no way in hell I'm letting Vast Conglomerate A ask Vast Bank B for some of my money."
Where does it say Linus was talking about "direct bill pay systems"?
I think it was something else entirely he meant: Easy bill paying in ATM-like machines. Once you've pushed in your ATM card and validated it with your PIN code, follow the easy on-screen prompts and type in the recieving account number, amount, optional reference number for the receiver's bookkeeping, and desired payment day. Of course the account number is translated into the account holder's name on the next screen, and there's a quick-select "immediately" option for the date, stuff like that. And even better: All that is encoded in a printed bar code on most bills, so you just hold it in front of the machine's bar code reader, check that what the machine thinks it read is what it says on the bill, and press OK.
Sure, I suppose stuff like that exists in America too -- now. But in Finland, they've had stuff like that since well before I moved here. Something like a DECADE, I think, perhaps more. The things are on every damn street corner, like ATMs.
Now isn't *that* being "ahead of Silicon Valley" on the technology curve?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
I suppose most Americans agree with us Europeans that Iran and Afghanistan and places like that are spooky, with their religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. After all, we're both part of the modern, cultured, Western World.
But then, in your own country shit like this can even be an *issue*?!? The Bible-thumpers have the power to get their medieval superstition declared "The Truth As It Shall Be Taught To The Children" in some entire *states*?!? The rational modern mind is reduced to celebrating it as some kind of "victory" when some state does *not* succumb to the kooks?!?
Geeze, talk about shades of Heinlein's _Revolt in 2100_ ! (Only, the Mongol invasion he postulated as a backdrop doesn't seem to be necessary at all.)
To an inhabitant of what more and more seems to be the only Cultured Continent, in some ways America looks no less weird than Iran or Afghanistan...
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"The Catholic and Orthodox churches are huge parts of christianity and they do not subscribe to the literalist points that you claim they do. Heck, the pope doesn't have a problem with the idea of God using the mechanism of evolution to bring about his glorious creation. There is no 7,000 year chronology in Catholic doctrine so your point on carbon dating is untrue for a huge chunk of christianity. Ditto for the Orthodox and that section of protestantism that does not use a literalist interpretation of the Bible."
...if you, or "some" Christians, can accept *that* much science, then why not the rest of it? If you find that science goes so far towards explaining the world, why not trust those who are trying to tell you it can explain the rest, too? After all, the people who say that -- the "scientific community" at large -- are the same ones who brought you the bits you *do* accept.
And presumably, you accepted them, whatever parts of science you did accept, on the *evidence*. What evidence is there for creationism? None, even you say you accept that. So, what evidence is there for all the rest of the Bible?!? So why believe in that?!?
"Science and religion do not necessarily have to be in contradiction."
No; especially since religion isn't needed at all. It's irrelevant to science, and should be so to modern humans, too -- like all other medieval superstition.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"Could it be that what creationists want is for evolution to not be given a state endorsement? Could it be that it isn't ramming creationism down people's throats that is the current situation but ramming evolution down people's throats?"
Then let's stop "ramming" arithmetics and simple physics "down people's throats", too, while we're at it, why don't we? Oh, and geography, above all! Hey, they're ramming the round-earth theory down people's throats...
"Read Darwin's Black Box and tell me that evolution is proven enough that we want the state to endorse it as a mandatory part of instruction and that it should be on the mandatory state tests."
Yes, it is proven enough, and no amount of "learned" books by kooks is about to change that fact. You know, there are books by kooks that set out to explain how the Earth is flat, too... Or, which seems more popular nowadays, it's a *hollow* sphere, and we live on the *inside* of it.
Demanding "equal time" for such idiocy is demanding that children NOT be taught what we, to the best of our knowledge, call the TRUTH. People who advocate that should be ashamed of themselves.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"Sure, there's rationing that occurs because of scarcity that also determines who lives or dies, but I prefer this kind of 'natural' rationing (natural because we observe it in nature) over allowing some tyrant this power"
How is the -- utterly UN-natural, BTW -- "rationing" of life, health, and freedom exclusively to those with the greenbacks to pay for it any less tyrannical?
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
HeghmoH writes: "If anything, these people deserve more money, because they contributed altruistically."
Yeah, sure, in a way...
But if they are so altruistic, it's not *too* far-fetched to think that they might want to donate the money to charity, too, is it? IOW, to turn your argument around: Did they only do it "from the heart" as long as there were no monetary earnings in the picture -- but as soon as such a possibility emerges, they *do* want to get paid? What the heck kind of "altruism" is that?!?
The other point is that since these guys (probably very few, if any, gals) posted as Anonymous Cowards, they probably *wanted* to be exactly that -- Anonymous! Someone suggested using Web logs (and cookies, not that I'm sure how that would work) to track them down; and while that might be technically feasible, I wonder whether most ACs would think it was worth it. If/. is prepared to break their anonymity for this, for what else would they then be prepared to break it in the future? I'm fairly sure that if I had elected to post as an AC in stead of getting my own user ID, then I wouldn't want my anonymity to be broken so easily.
Especially since this probably isn't a fortune we're talking about, here. First of all, mr Ingles-le Nobel or somebody will have to edit all the comments into a coherent whole, and that person will then probably stand as the main auhor from Janes' point of view. You could perhaps even say that any payment to/.ers has to come out of the author's own pocket. Second, I don't think the fee as a whole is all that big -- the original piece they submitted was what, a few pages in a print magazine? What's the going rate for that; more than hundreds, but definitely less than tens of thousands of pounds; perhaps a thousand or so?
I would guess that for each quote -- a line or two apiece, perhaps a short paragraph, out of x pages? -- an appropriate remuneration, calculated as a corresponding percentage of the compiling author's reward (minus something for him alone, for the compiling and editing!) would come down to a few quid, perhaps a tenner or two. And I know that if I had contributed an anonymous comment out of the sheer goodness of my heart, then I would CERTAINLY rank the altruistic buzz of having the money donated to charity in my name (eh... non-name?:-) much higher than having my anonymity broken, just to receive such a comparatively paltry amount.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"Yes, but CARCASSES? I mean, if they're already dead, you'd want to take em out of the heard anyway, right?"
Yup.
And if you go out in a distant field, where you keep a few hundred of your thousands-of-heads herd and find a carcass, it would perhaps be nice to know which of your [cows / horses / ostriches / whatever] it was. For instance, if since you were last in that field you had found out that Critter #5432 had possibly contracted hoof-and-mouth disease, because your logs show that it had previously been in the same field as Critter #6543 -- does this bloated, rotting, half-eaten carcass where you can't see any ear markings or tattoos any more mean you better kill off the dogs you had running in that field? Stuff like that.
(Then of course, if the chip itself is missing, you still have a chance of finding it by scanning the dogs -- in case it got lodged in the stomach of one!;^)
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"Bio Identification is much more reliable and accurate, and is tougher to fake (rip an eye out or laser off a tattoo...)"
Just so nobody comes up with a Patented Method For Fooling Retina Scanners, Wesley Snipes did that already, in _Demolition Man_. (Prior Art, Prior Art!:-)
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"David Brin talked alot about issues of privacy and surveillance in his book "The Transparent Society". The impression I took away from the book was this: Due to technological advances in cameras, satellites, and so forth, privacy is probably not going to be maintainable over the next few decades."
Remember the furore Scott McNealy of Sun (Or was it Oracle's Larry Ellison?) caused a while ago, with a remark that went something like "Privacy? There is no privacy any more; get over it, already!"? It just struck me, wouldn't it be kind of ironic if he had been reading Brin, found his thoughts to be reasonable and agreed with (most of) them, and in whatever context the subject came up, he just gave a somewhat too compressed summary of them...
"But it has been the ability of the government to conduct its own business in secret which has allowed it to perpetrate all the abuses it has. Brin points out that if surveillance is uniform and bi-lateral, it can be used to enforce accountability upon the government."
Interesting thought, and I'd kind of like to be able to believe in it, but I can't help it -- it still feels kind'a creepy.
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"I clicked on the parent link to see the parent of a comment to put things in context. The problem however was when I hit my back button to to say the moderation was fair.
Since it's being generated with a perl script it gave me a new set of 10 moderations making looking at the parent useless since I now had a whole new set of moderations to deal with."
I too have noticed how most CGI scripts re-execute when you go back to the page they generated. It's especially annoying in discussion forums like this, where posting an answer to someone's post can return you to the main page for yet another 147 KB download...
The simple workaround I've settled on is to use my browser's "Open in New Window" function -- that's what I did with *this* posting, I right-clicked the "reply" link, selected "Open in New Window" from the context menu (I use Netscape on Windows NT), and am now writing this in a separate window.
After I'm done, I'll just close this window and the original thread will be there in the original window, which at the moment is hidden under this one (I [almost] always maximize every window; just because Windows can do [or rather, more or less convincingly fake] multitasking doesn't mean *I* can, so why should I waste screen real-estate to see something I'm not using at the moment?).
HTH -- try it!
Christian R. Conrad MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Slashdot Mirror
Brett Glass writes:
"There is no point in arguing with such pronouncements."
That's why this will be my first and last reply to you in this thread.
"However, there is some value in throwing them into sharp relief via satire."
That only works if the "satire" -- in your case, snide sarcasm -- is *funny*. So scratch that, then...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
And yes, Hannover is in Germany.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"TummyX" writes:
I don't know how to say this kindly, so...
In my considered -- and, I hope, reasonably well-informed -- opinion, you are quite simply wrong.
There have been standard APIs in Windows, ever since at least version 3, to do exactly that with .INI files. (Sure, just for strings, but any half-way decent class or function library wraps "GetProfileString", etc, in more user-friendly syntax that handles type conversions for you; e.g, Delphi's "TIniFile.ReadInteger".)
Speed matters a lot less than stability and maintainability in this case -- do you need to update your settings a zillion times inside a tight loop, or do you need to be able to back-up, transfer, and maintain them? Does it matter more if users get to wait a millisecond more on starting your application, than if some other application (or a random Windows crash) clobbers the settings for your app for some unlucky users?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
LeviLevi writes:
"The main one being I don't think developers (not just in the OSS community) don't know what they mean by the term "standards compliance". Do you know how many ambiguities are in the average standards document? (More than there should be.) What happens when the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. MS) zigs, and the rest of the community zags?"
I have a hard time believing that the HTML standards at the time were *SO* ambiguous that anybody could reasonably interpret them as permitting that excretion, the BLINK tag! And that's one eyesore Microsoft was (for once) not responsible for...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
A cheap mail-order outfit from Sweden wrote:
"Roblimo's public statement that I as a geek should be looking for a woman who is most likely to want to do my bidding is insulting to me."
Only because you're stupidly PC. *Everybody* should be looking for that, not just "you as a geek". OK, not looking for someone "who is most likely to want to do my bidding" as in, "I want a slave" -- but then, only stupidly PC people read Roblimo that way. Read it this way in stead: Given a choice between two otherwise identical women, one of which *would* voluntarily (that's what he said, not "do my bidding") draw you a hot bath when you come home tired, the other wouldn't, what on Earth is better about the latter?!? That she demonstrates a PC sense of "independence" by being an uncaring asshole is *preferable* to you...?
"And while he is in his right in insulting me,"
He wouldn't only be "in his right" in insulting you (if that had beeen what he did, which it wasn't), he'd be *right* in insulting you. Stupidly PC wusses deserve nothing but scorn.
"he will then have to stand for my insulting, equal public, reply that I consider such a relationship nothing more than emotions for sale."
He *might* have to, if it weren't so obviously a moronic "Good day -- axe handles!" type of response. As it is, no he doesn't. You owe him, and above all his wife, a big fat apology.
"obviously it is unfortunate if his wife (who is no-doubt a nice person) should read this and be upset. But he dragged her into this public discussion, not I."
Bullshit, asshole. *He* said he loves her and she's a wonderful person; *you* called her a whore. And now you call that *his* fault? How f*cking Swedish can you get?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Kintanon writes:
"I may be mistaken in my impression of how the KKK operates. But I am fairly certain that they are a Neo-Nazi hate group which bases their view of the 'Superior' Race on the tenets that Hitler put down. As usual, I could be wrong."
Why, you most certainly are very very wrong.
Sure, the KKK may have absorbed some of the Nazi's "scientific" justifications for race hatred. But to say it is "based" on them?!?
Hardly -- for one thing, the Klan and its tenets were around long *before* Hitler and the Nazis. So it couldn't very well be based on them, now could it?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
The Wah writes:
"I watched A&E's top 100 people of the millenium the last couple nights. They picked the same #1 as a couple other lists I have seen, Johann Guttenberg (no relation to Steve), and for the same reason."
Well, for starters, Gutenberg's name wasn't Guttenberg...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
jflynn writes:
/., IMO.
/., *he* gets to take up room with his warmed-over drivel that other, more deserving members of *this* society, *don't* get to take up.
"When a member of society is offended by an idea espoused by a second there are two possible solutions. One is for the offended member not to listen to things that offend them. The other is to prevent the offender from speaking. I am saying the former course is preferable. Do you disagree?"
No, not with your arguments and conclusion.
But with the unspoken premise: In what way, exactly, is Katz a 'member of society'? Or rather, *what* society is he a member of? Not
"What is the effect if one of these suggestions that Katz go away is implemented? I and others who wish to listen are no longer able to."
Of course you'd be! You'd only have to follow him, to whatever "society" he goes to. (Something artsy-fartsy like Wired or Salon, I guess, is where he belongs.)
"What is the effect if the complaining posters filter Katz? They are presumably happier in their new Katz-free world while those who wish to can still read Katz."
No -- we'd still know that on the default unfiltered
Can you be 100% sure that if Katz didn't have top-level posting privileges, something like Chris Johnson's game engine would still have been rejected from the front page? And are you sure that pushing stuff like that, in favour of stuff like Katz's, is what *this* "society" wants?
All I know is that something I might have wanted to read didn't make the front page, while stuff by Katz does. But I can *suspect* that these things are related.
"I don't regard these suggestions as equivalent. Suggestions not to listen are not equivalent to suggestions not to talk."
Nor are they equivalent to suggestions not to provide non-members of the society with a free bully pulpit to speak *from*.
That's what *I* suggest.
"Emotional ad hominem attacks do not promote consensus or add information, they are noise."
So are well-thought-out, elegantly argued, ideas -- if they are *irrelevant*.
"I'm not suggesting gagging, locking up, or shooting violaters, merely pointing out that they are actually degrading the quality of the discussion. Perhaps even driving away those with good ideas but weak stomachs for conflict."
Or perhaps just suggesting those with more or less good ideas of the wrong *kind* go somewhere where those kind of ideas are more relevant. What's wrong with that?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Kintanon writes:
Exactly.
And, considering the facts -- that these men who "wrote the Bible" were members of a primitive tribe of Middle Eastern nomadic herdsmen, superstitious and without any tradition of scientific thought -- the one mistake that lies nearest to hand to suspect them of having made...
...is probably their propensity to see supernatural explanations for everything; i.e, their belief that there *is* such a thing as a "God".
Too bad so many people alive today seem to feel a need to cling to the same primitive superstition. Being a living feeling thinking human, I was kind'a thinking that The Meaning Of Liff could have something to do with being a living feeling thinking human... I dunno, perhaps those (other! :-) Christians just don't trust their own character enough to even dare consider this alternative.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Kintanon writes:
Not quite -- I am "a" Christian, but I don't believe or follow the teachings of that Nazarean carpenter...
This is a pretty damn inconvenient name to be saddled with, for an atheist / agnostic / whatever the hell kind of non-believer I am...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
dbrutus (TML?) writes:
"By your rights his doctorate in a relevant specialty science doesn't earn him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed. He opposes the orthodoxy therefore he must be a kook."
No, you're misrepresenting my argument. In your terms, what I am saying is:
First, his doctorate in a relevant specialty science earns him the right to have his arguments seriously discussed, but then, those arguments being in favour of unscientific superstition disqualifies him of that right.
I'm all for opposing orthodoxy, if it is done intelligently, if it is in favour of new knowledge -- as opposed to old idiocy. Unfortunately, many people before him have showed the capability to aquire a doctorate, and *still* be kooks.
Say, what do you think of Keith Latimer's _Head of God_ theory...?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Chasuk writes:
And further down:
So what, dear Chasuk, does "sponsorship" mean in your dictionary?!?
One would imagine that it involves something like money changing hands (or bank accounts) -- a.k.a. "a fee", right?
But the amount this sponsorship costs wasn't mentioned -- i.e, the fee was not specified -- was it?
So yes, the evidence was presented; in a direct quote from (the "Microsoft WebLetter" subsite of) the Gartner Web site.
And, no, one is NOT to believe that in "no way" did Microsoft fund the study.
"The postings of Anonymous Cowards deserve no reply." - Chasuk
Which, IMnshO, further proves Chasuk to be something of a moron.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
The Chowder-head writes something about "...Gibraltar, a place known as 'The Rock' because of its impregnability..." Oh yeah? I thought it was known as 'The Rock' because, uh... because it *is* a rock!
(Yeah, so it's pretty impregnable, in military terms [or at least it was, back when fortifications still worked] -- but that is *because* it is a rock, not the other way around.)
What a nitwit, that Pankaj.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"FascDot Killed My Pr" writes:
"I HATE direct bill pay systems. There's no way in hell I'm letting Vast Conglomerate A ask Vast Bank B for some of my money."
Where does it say Linus was talking about "direct bill pay systems"?
I think it was something else entirely he meant: Easy bill paying in ATM-like machines. Once you've pushed in your ATM card and validated it with your PIN code, follow the easy on-screen prompts and type in the recieving account number, amount, optional reference number for the receiver's bookkeeping, and desired payment day. Of course the account number is translated into the account holder's name on the next screen, and there's a quick-select "immediately" option for the date, stuff like that. And even better: All that is encoded in a printed bar code on most bills, so you just hold it in front of the machine's bar code reader, check that what the machine thinks it read is what it says on the bill, and press OK.
Sure, I suppose stuff like that exists in America too -- now. But in Finland, they've had stuff like that since well before I moved here. Something like a DECADE, I think, perhaps more. The things are on every damn street corner, like ATMs.
Now isn't *that* being "ahead of Silicon Valley" on the technology curve?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
I suppose most Americans agree with us Europeans that Iran and Afghanistan and places like that are spooky, with their religious fundamentalism and fanaticism. After all, we're both part of the modern, cultured, Western World.
But then, in your own country shit like this can even be an *issue*?!? The Bible-thumpers have the power to get their medieval superstition declared "The Truth As It Shall Be Taught To The Children" in some entire *states*?!? The rational modern mind is reduced to celebrating it as some kind of "victory" when some state does *not* succumb to the kooks?!?
Geeze, talk about shades of Heinlein's _Revolt in 2100_ ! (Only, the Mongol invasion he postulated as a backdrop doesn't seem to be necessary at all.)
To an inhabitant of what more and more seems to be the only Cultured Continent, in some ways America looks no less weird than Iran or Afghanistan...
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
dbrutus writes:
"The Catholic and Orthodox churches are huge parts of christianity and they do not subscribe to the literalist points that you claim they do. Heck, the pope doesn't have a problem with the idea of God using the mechanism of evolution to bring about his glorious creation. There is no 7,000 year chronology in Catholic doctrine so your point on carbon dating is untrue for a huge chunk of christianity. Ditto for the Orthodox and that section of protestantism that does not use a literalist interpretation of the Bible."
...if you, or "some" Christians, can accept *that* much science, then why not the rest of it? If you find that science goes so far towards explaining the world, why not trust those who are trying to tell you it can explain the rest, too? After all, the people who say that -- the "scientific community" at large -- are the same ones who brought you the bits you *do* accept.
And presumably, you accepted them, whatever parts of science you did accept, on the *evidence*. What evidence is there for creationism? None, even you say you accept that. So, what evidence is there for all the rest of the Bible?!? So why believe in that?!?
"Science and religion do not necessarily have to be in contradiction."
No; especially since religion isn't needed at all. It's irrelevant to science, and should be so to modern humans, too -- like all other medieval superstition.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
dbrutus writes:
"Could it be that what creationists want is for evolution to not be given a state endorsement? Could it be that it isn't ramming creationism down people's throats that is the current situation but ramming evolution down people's throats?"
Then let's stop "ramming" arithmetics and simple physics "down people's throats", too, while we're at it, why don't we? Oh, and geography, above all! Hey, they're ramming the round-earth theory down people's throats...
"Read Darwin's Black Box and tell me that evolution is proven enough that we want the state to endorse it as a mandatory part of instruction and that it should be on the mandatory state tests."
Yes, it is proven enough, and no amount of "learned" books by kooks is about to change that fact. You know, there are books by kooks that set out to explain how the Earth is flat, too... Or, which seems more popular nowadays, it's a *hollow* sphere, and we live on the *inside* of it.
Demanding "equal time" for such idiocy is demanding that children NOT be taught what we, to the best of our knowledge, call the TRUTH. People who advocate that should be ashamed of themselves.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
"There are relatively few projects that leap, fully grown from the thigh of Zeus, fully formed like Athena."
...projects that leap, fully formed, from the HEAD of Zeus -- like Athena did.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
Jordan Henderson writes:
"Sure, there's rationing that occurs because of scarcity that also determines who lives or dies, but I prefer this kind of 'natural' rationing (natural because we observe it in nature) over allowing some tyrant this power"
How is the -- utterly UN-natural, BTW -- "rationing" of life, health, and freedom exclusively to those with the greenbacks to pay for it any less tyrannical?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
SomeoneElse wrote:
"For a 'Next Generation' system to include ISA slots is a joke. Why not build it on a MCA bus while you are at it."
Are you somehow under the impression that MCA was/is an old-fashioned and inefficient bus architecture?
If you are, then you are sorely mistaken -- it just got beaten in the market, even though it *was* technically better.
And in one market it's still alive and well: It's the bus architecture IBM's R/S 6000 RISC workstations use -- quite successfully, AFAIK.
Your statement is somewhat akin to saying "For a 'Next Generation' system to use Linux is a joke. Why not base it on NeXTstep while you are at it."
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
HeghmoH writes: "If anything, these people deserve more money, because they contributed altruistically."
/. is prepared to break their anonymity for this, for what else would they then be prepared to break it in the future? I'm fairly sure that if I had elected to post as an AC in stead of getting my own user ID, then I wouldn't want my anonymity to be broken so easily.
/.ers has to come out of the author's own pocket. Second, I don't think the fee as a whole is all that big -- the original piece they submitted was what, a few pages in a print magazine? What's the going rate for that; more than hundreds, but definitely less than tens of thousands of pounds; perhaps a thousand or so?
:-) much higher than having my anonymity broken, just to receive such a comparatively paltry amount.
Yeah, sure, in a way...
But if they are so altruistic, it's not *too* far-fetched to think that they might want to donate the money to charity, too, is it? IOW, to turn your argument around: Did they only do it "from the heart" as long as there were no monetary earnings in the picture -- but as soon as such a possibility emerges, they *do* want to get paid? What the heck kind of "altruism" is that?!?
The other point is that since these guys (probably very few, if any, gals) posted as Anonymous Cowards, they probably *wanted* to be exactly that -- Anonymous! Someone suggested using Web logs (and cookies, not that I'm sure how that would work) to track them down; and while that might be technically feasible, I wonder whether most ACs would think it was worth it. If
Especially since this probably isn't a fortune we're talking about, here. First of all, mr Ingles-le Nobel or somebody will have to edit all the comments into a coherent whole, and that person will then probably stand as the main auhor from Janes' point of view. You could perhaps even say that any payment to
I would guess that for each quote -- a line or two apiece, perhaps a short paragraph, out of x pages? -- an appropriate remuneration, calculated as a corresponding percentage of the compiling author's reward (minus something for him alone, for the compiling and editing!) would come down to a few quid, perhaps a tenner or two. And I know that if I had contributed an anonymous comment out of the sheer goodness of my heart, then I would CERTAINLY rank the altruistic buzz of having the money donated to charity in my name (eh... non-name?
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
QuMa writes:
;^)
"Yes, but CARCASSES? I mean, if they're already dead, you'd want to take em out of the heard anyway, right?"
Yup.
And if you go out in a distant field, where you keep a few hundred of your thousands-of-heads herd and find a carcass, it would perhaps be nice to know which of your [cows / horses / ostriches / whatever] it was. For instance, if since you were last in that field you had found out that Critter #5432 had possibly contracted hoof-and-mouth disease, because your logs show that it had previously been in the same field as Critter #6543 -- does this bloated, rotting, half-eaten carcass where you can't see any ear markings or tattoos any more mean you better kill off the dogs you had running in that field? Stuff like that.
(Then of course, if the chip itself is missing, you still have a chance of finding it by scanning the dogs -- in case it got lodged in the stomach of one!
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
try67 writes:
:-)
"Bio Identification is much more reliable and accurate, and is tougher to fake (rip an eye out or laser off a tattoo...)"
Just so nobody comes up with a Patented Method For Fooling Retina Scanners, Wesley Snipes did that already, in _Demolition Man_. (Prior Art, Prior Art!
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
WillWare writes:
"David Brin talked alot about issues of privacy and surveillance in his book "The Transparent Society". The impression I took away from the book was this: Due to technological advances in cameras, satellites, and so forth, privacy is probably not going to be maintainable over the next few decades."
Remember the furore Scott McNealy of Sun (Or was it Oracle's Larry Ellison?) caused a while ago, with a remark that went something like "Privacy? There is no privacy any more; get over it, already!"? It just struck me, wouldn't it be kind of ironic if he had been reading Brin, found his thoughts to be reasonable and agreed with (most of) them, and in whatever context the subject came up, he just gave a somewhat too compressed summary of them...
"But it has been the ability of the government to conduct its own business in secret which has allowed it to perpetrate all the abuses it has. Brin points out that if surveillance is uniform and bi-lateral, it can be used to enforce accountability upon the government."
Interesting thought, and I'd kind of like to be able to believe in it, but I can't help it -- it still feels kind'a creepy.
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.
rstewart writes:
"I clicked on the parent link to see the parent of a comment to put things in context. The problem however was when I hit my back button to to say the moderation was fair.
Since it's being generated with a perl script it gave me a new set of 10 moderations making looking at the parent useless since I now had a whole new set of moderations to deal with."
I too have noticed how most CGI scripts re-execute when you go back to the page they generated. It's especially annoying in discussion forums like this, where posting an answer to someone's post can return you to the main page for yet another 147 KB download...
The simple workaround I've settled on is to use my browser's "Open in New Window" function -- that's what I did with *this* posting, I right-clicked the "reply" link, selected "Open in New Window" from the context menu (I use Netscape on Windows NT), and am now writing this in a separate window.
After I'm done, I'll just close this window and the original thread will be there in the original window, which at the moment is hidden under this one (I [almost] always maximize every window; just because Windows can do [or rather, more or less convincingly fake] multitasking doesn't mean *I* can, so why should I waste screen real-estate to see something I'm not using at the moment?).
HTH -- try it!
Christian R. Conrad
MY opinions, not my employer's - Hedengren, Finland.