Since I hack at Moodle for a living, I honestly hope Martin's right about this. We used Blackboard at our University for a few years but gave it up when the licensing costs and the number of bugs and security issues made it prohibitive.
Wikipedia is probably already under the gun by someone or other (possibly the massive conglomerate behemoth that is AT&T/Disney/Congress). After all, there is a lot of information available on Wikipedia being given away for free, and absolutely no one is making a profit on it. Truly an anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-God idea inspired by communists and terrorists and Linux hackers.
I think this is a fantastic idea. Like most of the current Administration's plans regarding public schools, any such project regarding control of Internet access should NOT be funded by the federal government. Eventually, the schools will be spending so much money and dedicating so many resources to federally-required Internet restrictions and such that they won't be able to spend any money on any actual education. Et voilá! All those students grow up to become Republican neocon Bush supporters!
It's absolutely brilliant!
(And a quick note to those who will inevitably mark this as "Flamebait" or "Troll" -- I've already run this past my many Republican friends, and they all found it funny. Of course, they're all college educated and they all hate Bush, too. And reality, as we all know, has a well-known liberal bias.)
If the article summary suggests that the film is bad, chances are the film doesn't even exist. So when you see something like that, you know that you have to read the article, just to find out what the/. editor is trying to say. If a headline reads, "OMG STAR WARS VIII SUXS LOL" you know for sure that article is probably about a new brand of laundry detergent.
In this case, of course, there is such a film as Silent Hill. My first reaction on reading Ebert's review was something like, "What? A video game movie that sucks? Say it ain't so!" Ebert's got a pretty good head on his shoulders, and has been known to give good reviews to films that other critics have panned for being too genre-specific, too predictable, or whatever. So given the industry's record with video game movies in the past and Ebert's sound criticism, I think it's fair to say that the movie Silent Hill probably will suck. Though it will probably look pretty.
I actually have no problem with this. For one thing, the/. headline is, as is often the case, misleading; LJ is actually introducing a new account level, "sponsored", which gives you some more features in exchange for allowing advertising on your LJ. You don't have to view the ads; if you have a free account and don't want ads, nothing will change for you. It's only if you want those extra features that you get ads on your LJ.
So, if you enter into an agreement to allow LJ to deliver advertising to you in exchange for more features, then what's wrong with asking that you follow through on your end of the agreement by not blocking the ads? How is it a violation of my rights to ask that I fulfill my end of an agreement? How is it not a violation of their rights if I take their services and refuse to do anything in exchange for them?
(And yes, I do have AdBlock installed, though primarily because much of the advertising on the web consists of flashy graphics and sounds that interfere with my ability to browse the web, and degrade my computer's performance. There's only so much I'm willing to do for the free stuff.)
The first question that came to my mind when I saw this was, "Which of Bush's big business buddies will this benefit the most?"
Of course, that's the first question that comes to my mind whenever I hear of anything the Administration comes up with these days.
One of my favorite podcasts is Escape Pod. Well worth a listen to. I also enjoy NASA's podcast as well as Space.com's. I also listen the the DragonPage shows as Mur Lafferty's two shows (I Should Be Writing and Geek Fu Action Grip).
As for my environment; well, I have a Creative Labs Zen Nomad XTra which my wife bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Since I use KDE as my desktop environment, I use KZenExplorer to hook up to it, and KPodder as my aggregator; it downloads the feeds into specific directories in my home directory, and I can just drag and drop them to my MP3 player. KZenExplorer is available for Kubuntu through the multiverse repositories, but I had to install KPodder from source.
The current system doesn't seem much like socialism to me, since the government tends to favor large corporations over smaller corporations and the needs of the consumers.
As it is, I believe that there does need to be a balance. While I'm not in favor of complete government control over industry, I am in favor of a fair marketplace. However, when the human tendency toward greed and excess eliminates the fair marketplace or starts to harm the public welfare, I believe that the government has a responsibility to intercede.
I used to believe in capitalism. Really, I did. But the more I see how the government favors large corporations with a patent system that lends itself to such horrific abuse and an FCC which favors corporations over the needs of the consumers, it seems that capitalism -- or, at least, the state-sponsored corporatism which passes for capitalism in the US today -- exists primarily to minimize competition and ensure that consumers are locked in to one particular vendor. The chairman's statemtns just reinforces my opinion.
After months of me planning on building a home application that would include a desktop, web, and PalmOS component and never doing so, my wife and I finally gave in and purchased a license for Readerware. It's written in Java, so it's cross-platform. I tried the server component but I wasn't too impressed by it, since it required X to run (and I prefer not to run X on my server). It can connect to many, many different bibliographic databases (including Amazon's), and can search all those databases for books based on ISBN numbers. It can also accept input from a barcode reader, though I haven't tried that.
That certainly depends. My father-in-law works for Oracle in their CRM unit. He survived Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft; prior to that, he survived PeopleSoft's acquisition of Vantive; prior to that, Vantive's acquisition of Systar; prior to that, Systar's acquisition of Scotch-Bonnett Intl; and prior to that, SBI's acquisition of Moebius. A true worker of the late 20th/early 21st centuries, he's worked at the same job for five different companies.
He's worked that job since he retired from the Air Force. He's now close to sixty years old, and his health is starting to fail. He's certainly spry enough to endure the constant travel the job entails, but diabetes and depression are starting to take their toll. Because of all these factors, he will most likely to considered unemployable in his field, especially since he's so close to retirement anyway. Sure he's got savings and investments, but he will be ineligible for some of the benefits he and my mother-in-law have been hoping for from his actual retirement.
So. Go ahead and tell him that a man like him who gets laid off from Oracle will go on to a better job. Go ahead. I dare you.
I dare Larry Ellison too.
Given this Administration's behavior and appointees of late... Well, any theory that President Bush really wants the US to lead in science and global competitiveness is just that: a theory. And one that has absolutely no evidence supporting it (and which seems to be pretty well falsified at this point, actually).
On the other hand, it's comforting to remember that the judge who ruled against ID in the Dover, PA case was a Republican and a Bush appointee. So perhaps all is not lost.
Slashdot Mirror
Since I hack at Moodle for a living, I honestly hope Martin's right about this. We used Blackboard at our University for a few years but gave it up when the licensing costs and the number of bugs and security issues made it prohibitive.
Wikipedia is probably already under the gun by someone or other (possibly the massive conglomerate behemoth that is AT&T/Disney/Congress). After all, there is a lot of information available on Wikipedia being given away for free, and absolutely no one is making a profit on it. Truly an anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-God idea inspired by communists and terrorists and Linux hackers.
I think this is a fantastic idea. Like most of the current Administration's plans regarding public schools, any such project regarding control of Internet access should NOT be funded by the federal government. Eventually, the schools will be spending so much money and dedicating so many resources to federally-required Internet restrictions and such that they won't be able to spend any money on any actual education. Et voilá! All those students grow up to become Republican neocon Bush supporters!
It's absolutely brilliant!
(And a quick note to those who will inevitably mark this as "Flamebait" or "Troll" -- I've already run this past my many Republican friends, and they all found it funny. Of course, they're all college educated and they all hate Bush, too. And reality, as we all know, has a well-known liberal bias.)
If the article summary suggests that the film is bad, chances are the film doesn't even exist. So when you see something like that, you know that you have to read the article, just to find out what the /. editor is trying to say. If a headline reads, "OMG STAR WARS VIII SUXS LOL" you know for sure that article is probably about a new brand of laundry detergent.
In this case, of course, there is such a film as Silent Hill. My first reaction on reading Ebert's review was something like, "What? A video game movie that sucks? Say it ain't so!" Ebert's got a pretty good head on his shoulders, and has been known to give good reviews to films that other critics have panned for being too genre-specific, too predictable, or whatever. So given the industry's record with video game movies in the past and Ebert's sound criticism, I think it's fair to say that the movie Silent Hill probably will suck. Though it will probably look pretty.
I actually have no problem with this. For one thing, the /. headline is, as is often the case, misleading; LJ is actually introducing a new account level, "sponsored", which gives you some more features in exchange for allowing advertising on your LJ. You don't have to view the ads; if you have a free account and don't want ads, nothing will change for you. It's only if you want those extra features that you get ads on your LJ.
So, if you enter into an agreement to allow LJ to deliver advertising to you in exchange for more features, then what's wrong with asking that you follow through on your end of the agreement by not blocking the ads? How is it a violation of my rights to ask that I fulfill my end of an agreement? How is it not a violation of their rights if I take their services and refuse to do anything in exchange for them?
(And yes, I do have AdBlock installed, though primarily because much of the advertising on the web consists of flashy graphics and sounds that interfere with my ability to browse the web, and degrade my computer's performance. There's only so much I'm willing to do for the free stuff.)
The first question that came to my mind when I saw this was, "Which of Bush's big business buddies will this benefit the most?" Of course, that's the first question that comes to my mind whenever I hear of anything the Administration comes up with these days.
The review REALLY isn't for us! Apparently the FBI feels very strongly about that.
One of my favorite podcasts is Escape Pod. Well worth a listen to. I also enjoy NASA's podcast as well as Space.com's. I also listen the the DragonPage shows as Mur Lafferty's two shows (I Should Be Writing and Geek Fu Action Grip). As for my environment; well, I have a Creative Labs Zen Nomad XTra which my wife bought me for Christmas a couple of years ago. Since I use KDE as my desktop environment, I use KZenExplorer to hook up to it, and KPodder as my aggregator; it downloads the feeds into specific directories in my home directory, and I can just drag and drop them to my MP3 player. KZenExplorer is available for Kubuntu through the multiverse repositories, but I had to install KPodder from source.
The current system doesn't seem much like socialism to me, since the government tends to favor large corporations over smaller corporations and the needs of the consumers. As it is, I believe that there does need to be a balance. While I'm not in favor of complete government control over industry, I am in favor of a fair marketplace. However, when the human tendency toward greed and excess eliminates the fair marketplace or starts to harm the public welfare, I believe that the government has a responsibility to intercede.
I'm not sure I see your point.
I used to believe in capitalism. Really, I did. But the more I see how the government favors large corporations with a patent system that lends itself to such horrific abuse and an FCC which favors corporations over the needs of the consumers, it seems that capitalism -- or, at least, the state-sponsored corporatism which passes for capitalism in the US today -- exists primarily to minimize competition and ensure that consumers are locked in to one particular vendor. The chairman's statemtns just reinforces my opinion.
After months of me planning on building a home application that would include a desktop, web, and PalmOS component and never doing so, my wife and I finally gave in and purchased a license for Readerware. It's written in Java, so it's cross-platform. I tried the server component but I wasn't too impressed by it, since it required X to run (and I prefer not to run X on my server). It can connect to many, many different bibliographic databases (including Amazon's), and can search all those databases for books based on ISBN numbers. It can also accept input from a barcode reader, though I haven't tried that.
That certainly depends. My father-in-law works for Oracle in their CRM unit. He survived Oracle's acquisition of PeopleSoft; prior to that, he survived PeopleSoft's acquisition of Vantive; prior to that, Vantive's acquisition of Systar; prior to that, Systar's acquisition of Scotch-Bonnett Intl; and prior to that, SBI's acquisition of Moebius. A true worker of the late 20th/early 21st centuries, he's worked at the same job for five different companies. He's worked that job since he retired from the Air Force. He's now close to sixty years old, and his health is starting to fail. He's certainly spry enough to endure the constant travel the job entails, but diabetes and depression are starting to take their toll. Because of all these factors, he will most likely to considered unemployable in his field, especially since he's so close to retirement anyway. Sure he's got savings and investments, but he will be ineligible for some of the benefits he and my mother-in-law have been hoping for from his actual retirement. So. Go ahead and tell him that a man like him who gets laid off from Oracle will go on to a better job. Go ahead. I dare you. I dare Larry Ellison too.
Well, I was using a Republican definition of "theory".
Sir, I am insulted by your insinuation!
Given this Administration's behavior and appointees of late... Well, any theory that President Bush really wants the US to lead in science and global competitiveness is just that: a theory. And one that has absolutely no evidence supporting it (and which seems to be pretty well falsified at this point, actually). On the other hand, it's comforting to remember that the judge who ruled against ID in the Dover, PA case was a Republican and a Bush appointee. So perhaps all is not lost.