Tired of winter? Visit beautiful tropical HD 189733b and bask in the sun; er, star. The sunsets; er, starsets, are gorgeous!
And the sunset; er, starset lasts all day long since one side always faces the sun; er, star.
And at only 63 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula you can be home by dinner! Well, by dinner 120 years from now at half the speed of light (our star cruisers' speed).
Get your ticket today! Only $9869854649868766987676786397862976279323099883836 2746333000990374623746328929928171783847.00 USD!
If you talk about sex, religion, or politics in a bar (or baseball if you live in Springfield) you risk a bar fight. Likewise, talk of these subjects on the internet when they are completely off topic is flamebait and trolling, pure and simple.
Use of the words "worship" and "religion" is flamebait. Nobody worships Linus, or IBM, or Sun. WTF is up with this incindiary prose?
This FA is flamebait (RTFFA?) here's how It would have read if I were Information Week's editor:
Why Doesn't Microsoft Get Any Enthusiasm from the Computing Community?
Apple has it. So does Java, Oracle, IBM, and Google. Lord knows anyone who uses Linux or free and open source software is dedicated to spreading the use of free and open source software. But is anyone the least bit enthusiastic about the goods from Redmond?
The question came up in a casual conversation I had at the JavaOne conference in San Francisco this past week.
I was chatting with some Sun Micro PR people who commented that Microsoft's problem these days is that it doesn't have a passionate user/developer base. (Hey, I thought the days of mudslinging were over.). The theory is that while Microsoft certainly owns the majority of user systems, no one seems to really be happy about its software: Windows Vista, Office, Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL Server, and certainly not IE. The same thing goes for Microsoft's hardware. Where are the legions of Zune users? Xbox may be the closest thing Microsoft has to a [strike "fanatical", it's redundant. -ed] fan base, but I'm pretty sure the lines were just as long for the PS3 and the Wii.
Think about it. When was the last time an editor was fired because of a scathing article entitled, "10 Things We Hate About Microsoft?" When was the last time a group of developers stood up at a VS Live show and shouted... "Yea, man! Orcas Rocks! Language Integrated Query is da' Bomb! New and improved ADO.Net? Oh, no you didn't!" It just doesn't happen.
Conversely, how many e-mails have you received (or written) because someone bashed your favorite operating system or software application? Chances are that you were defending something that wasn't made or acquired by Microsoft.
So while I expect Sun to mouth off, my biggest surprise was that Mary Jo Foley (of Microsoft Watch and ZDNet blogging fame) was standing right there and she validated the theory that customers and developers are just not that into Microsoft. Her take on it was that even Microsoft people she's spoken with acknowledge that developers and users have a lackluster passion when it comes to Microsoft products.
I can kind of support this theory. Last year, I spent time consulting for a Visual Studio group within Microsoft whose goal was to engage with more developers. The idea was to create a "community" effect similar to the one enjoyed by the Eclipse project. The group's budget included a contest and subsequent resource Web site. The contest garnered about two dozen entries (yawn) and the Microsoft group certainly considered the project a work in progress.
So my question is this:
Does the largest software vendor in the world have people who are actually excited by its products and drive themselves into a frenzy when the latest version comes out?
Rob Enderle, principal analyst and founder of the Enderle Group, suggests Microsoft did have a following and a passionate audience up until 1995, but Microsoft never really nurtured them and they died off.
"Now Windows is just part of the PC," Enderle said. "There are still those that admire the company and Gates, but the passion that exists around FreeBSD, Linux, and Apple simply has no analog in Windows. Great products come from passion -- when Windows lost that, it lost its heart."
What about this: Is Microsoft in such control over its own products that nobody really cares to innovate around Microsoft software? Do they just go through the motions because that's what they use at work?
The RIAA (and the MPAA and the BSA and others too numerous to mention) are all equating copyright infringement not only with theft, but murder and mayhem by calling copyright infringers "pirates". The RIAA makes copyright infringement sound worse than eating babies. Real pirates kill people.
Today I was in a bar and a middle aged couple I know were asking me about their computer. She works for a local public school and needed to access her school email account. She thought since they were Apple and she had Dell she needed some sort of specialized Apple software to check ger mail (hang in there, this really is on topic). She uses Yahoo's web based mail at home. I explained that email was email and computer brand had nothing to do with it and she just needed an email client and suggested Thunderbird.
Then she asked about Kazaa. I suggested Morpheus because you can download your music into a folder other than her shared folder, and explained the RIAA lawsuits and how the music industry had the world's sleaziest people.
They had been bar owners and had had dealings with ASCAP, who wanted money from both them AND the kareoke people. They wanted money even after they got rid of the bar!
Amyway, it turns out that they were using iTunes at her school; she thought iTunes and Kazaa were the same! Most normal people (not you or me, obviously) have no clue about any of this shit.
They know all about how our government is for sale to the RIAA, though, having been bar owners before.
Don't these damned college kids vote? Look, if you don't vote, get off my lawn you damned kids!
I know it was the stone age but when I was growing up people saved up for a record album, yes I mean vinyl records. If they couldn't aford it they just listened to the radio.
And when I was growing up in the stone age, we all had cassette recorders. We not only recorded LPs and swapped the cassettes we had recorded with our friends, we recorded the damned radio, too!
And since I grew up in St. Louis, home of KSHE, the first FM stereo rock station ("Real Rock Radio"), who played entire albums (and still do, seven of them every Sunday night), we recorded entire albums off the radio.
Where do you come from that you never legally swapped cassettes? This USED to be considered "fair use", later legally codified as such under the 1976 Audio Home Recording Act (the linked article refers to a 1992 change to the law and isn't entirely correct or accurate)
You said: "I like free video as much as the next guy, but people *own* this stuff. And Google does not."
No, they do not "own this stuff". nobody owns artistic works. You can own a painting, but not its image. You can own a film, but not the movie imprinted on that film. You can own a book, but not its story. Viacom is a (supposedly) US company, as is Google, and suit is being brought in a US court. Your laws may vary but the US Constitution is clear.
I quote:"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
There is no legal "intellectual property" in the US. "Intellectual Property" is unconstitutional. Yes, Viacom owns the copyright. NOT the works themselves (which also puts the lie to calling copyright infringers "thieves". If you don't own it, I can't steal it from you).
Despite the fact that you're sitting at "score 5 insightful" you SHOULD, as you say, have been modded down, as it shows no insight whatever. "Interesting, perhaps, but not insoghtful.
Google has become less and less relevant. Way too often I google for a search item, and that item isn't anywhere in the results page at all.
So... this ain't my day. I tried to find a very good example of this, so I put, in quotes, the name of what I thought was a little known group even when they were still together 35 years ago and googled ["joe byrd and the field hippies" lyrics].
Damn, Google must have fixed it. The last time I googled for that I got tons of lyrics sites, none of which had Joe Byrd. This time the first entry is Wikipedia (which is the first place I look for lyrics or track listings any more) and all the rest are relevant as well.
Kudos to Google, good luck to Wales. I'm still hopeful, and besides, an open source search engine can only be a GOOD thing.
Do you have the slightest hint of how a computer works? If you do, answer me this: how mant beads do I have to put on my abacus before it becomes self-aware?
You misunderstand freedom. I blame the media. You are NOT guaranteed life; indeed, you are guaranteed death. You WILL die, and unless you murder someone and are (mercifully) killed by the State, your death will most likely be horrible; cancer, congestive heart failure, Alzheimer's, auto accident (living fifty more years in pain and in a wheelchair)'.
Our (US) Constitution does not guarantee freedom FROM, it guarantees freedom OF. The second amendment assures the rest of the amendments (porvided the populace isn't cowardly).
You are under sentence of death and it won't be fun. And nothing whatever that you do in this life will ever matter.
Timothy McVeigh had a chance to make peace with his maker before dying painlessly. You or I won't be so lucky; we'll die horribly, in old age or by accident, and we won't know when it will happen. You have only the slimmest chance of dying by gunshot, which is far less cruel a fate than most deaths.
The problem is that the two look exactly alike to me.
The Republicans and Democrats look exactly alike to me, both are financed by corporations and do their bidding. Two party system? Who are they kidding?
Otherwise, why would so many Democrats have voted for bankrupcy "reform"? Why did BOTH parties overwhelmingly vote for the DMCA and the Bono act?
You have to know somebody who is into Linux to get it running
So... are you using Windows or a Mac? Because if you ever actually TRIED Linux you would know that what you just wrote is bullshit.
I'm posting this on Mandriva 2005. The only other people I know in meatspace that use Linux are ones I set Linux up for becaise I was sick of reinstalling Windoes for them. And most of them like it BETTER than Windows.
Your ignorance, sir, is astounding. If you only knew how embarrassed you should be!
You could, you know, look it up in the Dictonary. Or an enscyclopedia (which may not do you much good: "This article is about the philosophical position. For the Russian political and revolutionary movement, see Nihilist movement. The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. Some information in this article or section does not attribute its sources and may not be reliable. Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.")
If Microsoft's defenders think free software is the road to socialism, why don't the left seem to agree?
Duh. If Bush's opponents think the Iraq war is the road to fascism, why don't the right seem to agree?
Perhaps because the left and the right are diametrically opposed? Perhaps the Republicans love Microsoft, the Democrats love Apple, and people with more than ten brain cells like Linux?
Fuck it, mod me troll and flamebait, I'm drunk and have karma to burn. But I'm right nonetheless. And I'm done with the Republicans AND Democrats; I'm splitting my vote between the Greens and the Libertarians, i.e. "none of the above". Both the right and left are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Yes, I'm aware this is a UK thing but I can't vote there, and my vote here is meaningless. We (US) need more parties, we need for it to be against the law to bribe (contribute to) more than one candidate in any given race, and if I or my union or xorporation isn't eligible to vote for a candidate I (or my union or corporation) shouldn't be eligible to contribute.
And copyright should only last twenty years dammit!!!
Jesus H. Christ, how damned stupid! I'm getting really, really tired of this crap. I've been ranting against the incredibly ignorant notion that computers will someday "think" for years. BUt I've been ranting against it for this very reason; that some addled backward besotted brainless daft dense dim-witted doltish dumb feeble-minded half-witted imbecilic indolent insensate moronic numskulled obtuse scatterbrained simple-minded slow thick unintellectual vacuous wearisome witless twit will anthrophomphise that machines can think or feel and pass some really stupid "machine rights" law like TFA speaks of. </rant>
A machine is only going to demand human rights if some mentally perverted retard programs one to demand rights.
They have been calling computers "thinking machines" since a pocket calculator took a three story building to house back in the forties. But they don't think, never will think.
We don't even know what thought is. Sure, we can simulate thought - you can simulate anything. But your flight simulator won't take you to London, and you won't die when you've been shot in a counterstrike game. There is no radiation released in a simulation of an atom blast, and no structural damage even to the building that houses it, let alone destruction of a city.
Thought is not binary, it's analog, as everything in nature is. It is electrochemical, not electronic. If you kick your robot, the only thing that will hurt is your foot.
If you think a computer will ever think, you know little or nothing about how computers work, how the mind works, or either.
I wrote a Turing Test program way back in 1983 on a Timex Sinclair computer with no hard drive and only 20k of ram just to demonstrate how stupid the idea of machine thought is. The premise of the program is that people get tired, cranky, make mistakes, and are smartasses, so my thought simulatior is a tired, cranky smartass that makes mistakes. It answers your questions and statements in context. Curse at it and see what happens. I ported it to DOS back in 1989; that version is mostly identical to the TS1000 version, except I converted it from BASIC to Clipper. The Clipper source is about 20k, but compiler overhead expanded it to about 400k (about as small a file as Clipper would write). You can download a free copy at http://mcgrew.info/ArtificialInsanity.htm ; I no longer charge for it (but if you charge for a copy or make money on it, I'll have my lawyer on your ass; I've registered the copyright).
But remember that the original version was written on an incredibly primitive computer; your phone is far, far more powerful than the computer it was originally written for.
Have none of you read Dune? "Thinking machines" were outlawed because evil men used them to enslave other men, which is exactly what this nonsense will lead to.
TFA's author is a fucking lawyer! WTF does a lawyer know about computers or animal brains? Thank God I'll be safely dead in fifty years before this insanity gets worse!
Slashdot Mirror
"Life... don't talk to me about life! Hate it or loathe it, you can't ignore it."
Tired of winter? Visit beautiful tropical HD 189733b and bask in the sun; er, star. The sunsets; er, starsets, are gorgeous!
6 2746333000990374623746328929928171783847.00 USD!
And the sunset; er, starset lasts all day long since one side always faces the sun; er, star.
And at only 63 light years away in the constellation Vulpecula you can be home by dinner! Well, by dinner 120 years from now at half the speed of light (our star cruisers' speed).
Get your ticket today! Only $986985464986876698767678639786297627932309988383
True, but he is the exception. There is no cult of McNealy, yet Sun is highly regarded. The point still stands.
Use of the words "worship" and "religion" is flamebait. Nobody worships Linus, or IBM, or Sun. WTF is up with this incindiary prose?
This FA is flamebait (RTFFA?) here's how It would have read if I were Information Week's editor:
The RIAA (and the MPAA and the BSA and others too numerous to mention) are all equating copyright infringement not only with theft, but murder and mayhem by calling copyright infringers "pirates". The RIAA makes copyright infringement sound worse than eating babies. Real pirates kill people.
To this layman it sounds like slander.
Can she sue for slander? If so, can she win?
I've been splitting my vote between the Greens and Libertarians; i.e., "none of the above".
Today I was in a bar and a middle aged couple I know were asking me about their computer. She works for a local public school and needed to access her school email account. She thought since they were Apple and she had Dell she needed some sort of specialized Apple software to check ger mail (hang in there, this really is on topic). She uses Yahoo's web based mail at home. I explained that email was email and computer brand had nothing to do with it and she just needed an email client and suggested Thunderbird.
Then she asked about Kazaa. I suggested Morpheus because you can download your music into a folder other than her shared folder, and explained the RIAA lawsuits and how the music industry had the world's sleaziest people.
They had been bar owners and had had dealings with ASCAP, who wanted money from both them AND the kareoke people. They wanted money even after they got rid of the bar!
Amyway, it turns out that they were using iTunes at her school; she thought iTunes and Kazaa were the same! Most normal people (not you or me, obviously) have no clue about any of this shit.
They know all about how our government is for sale to the RIAA, though, having been bar owners before.
Don't these damned college kids vote? Look, if you don't vote, get off my lawn you damned kids!
I know it was the stone age but when I was growing up people saved up for a record album, yes I mean vinyl records. If they couldn't aford it they just listened to the radio.
And when I was growing up in the stone age, we all had cassette recorders. We not only recorded LPs and swapped the cassettes we had recorded with our friends, we recorded the damned radio, too!
And since I grew up in St. Louis, home of KSHE, the first FM stereo rock station ("Real Rock Radio"), who played entire albums (and still do, seven of them every Sunday night), we recorded entire albums off the radio.
Where do you come from that you never legally swapped cassettes? This USED to be considered "fair use", later legally codified as such under the 1976 Audio Home Recording Act (the linked article refers to a 1992 change to the law and isn't entirely correct or accurate)
You might want to check out an article I wrote at K5 a few years ago, Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station. Check out the comments, IIRC one of KSHE's original DJs responded.
You said: "I like free video as much as the next guy, but people *own* this stuff. And Google does not."
No, they do not "own this stuff". nobody owns artistic works. You can own a painting, but not its image. You can own a film, but not the movie imprinted on that film. You can own a book, but not its story. Viacom is a (supposedly) US company, as is Google, and suit is being brought in a US court. Your laws may vary but the US Constitution is clear.
I quote: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"
There is no legal "intellectual property" in the US. "Intellectual Property" is unconstitutional. Yes, Viacom owns the copyright. NOT the works themselves (which also puts the lie to calling copyright infringers "thieves". If you don't own it, I can't steal it from you).
Despite the fact that you're sitting at "score 5 insightful" you SHOULD, as you say, have been modded down, as it shows no insight whatever. "Interesting, perhaps, but not insoghtful.
Your post is now "2, insightful". It will probably go higher as well.
Google has become less and less relevant. Way too often I google for a search item, and that item isn't anywhere in the results page at all.
So... this ain't my day. I tried to find a very good example of this, so I put, in quotes, the name of what I thought was a little known group even when they were still together 35 years ago and googled ["joe byrd and the field hippies" lyrics].
Damn, Google must have fixed it. The last time I googled for that I got tons of lyrics sites, none of which had Joe Byrd. This time the first entry is Wikipedia (which is the first place I look for lyrics or track listings any more) and all the rest are relevant as well.
Kudos to Google, good luck to Wales. I'm still hopeful, and besides, an open source search engine can only be a GOOD thing.
Same continent. If I tell you what US state I live in you could probably find me.
how long before it becomes self aware?
Do you have the slightest hint of how a computer works? If you do, answer me this: how mant beads do I have to put on my abacus before it becomes self-aware?
Hi, I'm Steve McGrew. Good luck finding me with a common name like that. On the internet, even using my real name Im anonymous.
Imagine if my name were John Smith?
You misunderstand freedom. I blame the media. You are NOT guaranteed life; indeed, you are guaranteed death. You WILL die, and unless you murder someone and are (mercifully) killed by the State, your death will most likely be horrible; cancer, congestive heart failure, Alzheimer's, auto accident (living fifty more years in pain and in a wheelchair)'.
Our (US) Constitution does not guarantee freedom FROM, it guarantees freedom OF. The second amendment assures the rest of the amendments (porvided the populace isn't cowardly).
You are under sentence of death and it won't be fun. And nothing whatever that you do in this life will ever matter.
Timothy McVeigh had a chance to make peace with his maker before dying painlessly. You or I won't be so lucky; we'll die horribly, in old age or by accident, and we won't know when it will happen. You have only the slimmest chance of dying by gunshot, which is far less cruel a fate than most deaths.
Why are "pro choice" people for the drug laws? Why do REPUBLICANS promote loss of liberty? And to quote Bill Cosby, why is there air?
The problem is that the two look exactly alike to me.
The Republicans and Democrats look exactly alike to me, both are financed by corporations and do their bidding. Two party system? Who are they kidding?
Otherwise, why would so many Democrats have voted for bankrupcy "reform"? Why did BOTH parties overwhelmingly vote for the DMCA and the Bono act?
Apperantly you've forgotten about anarchists, who are on the far end of the left.
Huh? Anarchists are against both the left AND the right. But since anarchy always leads to monarchy, I'd say that anarchy leads to cake.
And no, I'm not going to trust some random stranger on the internet (you).
Most engineers and mathematicians I know are liberal leaning.
You never took statistics, did you?
So, here in the US, is it the Republicans or Democrats who want to set up cameras and take our rights away? Seems it's BOTH parties!
You have to know somebody who is into Linux to get it running
So... are you using Windows or a Mac? Because if you ever actually TRIED Linux you would know that what you just wrote is bullshit.
I'm posting this on Mandriva 2005. The only other people I know in meatspace that use Linux are ones I set Linux up for becaise I was sick of reinstalling Windoes for them. And most of them like it BETTER than Windows.
Your ignorance, sir, is astounding. If you only knew how embarrassed you should be!
You could, you know, look it up in the Dictonary. Or an enscyclopedia (which may not do you much good: "This article is about the philosophical position. For the Russian political and revolutionary movement, see Nihilist movement. The factual accuracy of this article is disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. Some information in this article or section does not attribute its sources and may not be reliable. Please check for inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.")
Yay wiki, teh REAL nihilist!
And you, sir, are a libertarian.
If Microsoft's defenders think free software is the road to socialism, why don't the left seem to agree?
Duh. If Bush's opponents think the Iraq war is the road to fascism, why don't the right seem to agree?
Perhaps because the left and the right are diametrically opposed? Perhaps the Republicans love Microsoft, the Democrats love Apple, and people with more than ten brain cells like Linux?
Fuck it, mod me troll and flamebait, I'm drunk and have karma to burn. But I'm right nonetheless. And I'm done with the Republicans AND Democrats; I'm splitting my vote between the Greens and the Libertarians, i.e. "none of the above". Both the right and left are morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Yes, I'm aware this is a UK thing but I can't vote there, and my vote here is meaningless. We (US) need more parties, we need for it to be against the law to bribe (contribute to) more than one candidate in any given race, and if I or my union or xorporation isn't eligible to vote for a candidate I (or my union or corporation) shouldn't be eligible to contribute.
And copyright should only last twenty years dammit!!!
Yes, I'm drunk. mod me -1, incohenernt.
Jesus H. Christ, how damned stupid! I'm getting really, really tired of this crap. I've been ranting against the incredibly ignorant notion that computers will someday "think" for years. BUt I've been ranting against it for this very reason; that some addled backward besotted brainless daft dense dim-witted doltish dumb feeble-minded half-witted imbecilic indolent insensate moronic numskulled obtuse scatterbrained simple-minded slow thick unintellectual vacuous wearisome witless twit will anthrophomphise that machines can think or feel and pass some really stupid "machine rights" law like TFA speaks of.
</rant>
A machine is only going to demand human rights if some mentally perverted retard programs one to demand rights.
They have been calling computers "thinking machines" since a pocket calculator took a three story building to house back in the forties. But they don't think, never will think.
We don't even know what thought is. Sure, we can simulate thought - you can simulate anything. But your flight simulator won't take you to London, and you won't die when you've been shot in a counterstrike game. There is no radiation released in a simulation of an atom blast, and no structural damage even to the building that houses it, let alone destruction of a city.
Thought is not binary, it's analog, as everything in nature is. It is electrochemical, not electronic. If you kick your robot, the only thing that will hurt is your foot.
If you think a computer will ever think, you know little or nothing about how computers work, how the mind works, or either.
I wrote a Turing Test program way back in 1983 on a Timex Sinclair computer with no hard drive and only 20k of ram just to demonstrate how stupid the idea of machine thought is. The premise of the program is that people get tired, cranky, make mistakes, and are smartasses, so my thought simulatior is a tired, cranky smartass that makes mistakes. It answers your questions and statements in context. Curse at it and see what happens. I ported it to DOS back in 1989; that version is mostly identical to the TS1000 version, except I converted it from BASIC to Clipper. The Clipper source is about 20k, but compiler overhead expanded it to about 400k (about as small a file as Clipper would write). You can download a free copy at http://mcgrew.info/ArtificialInsanity.htm ; I no longer charge for it (but if you charge for a copy or make money on it, I'll have my lawyer on your ass; I've registered the copyright).
But remember that the original version was written on an incredibly primitive computer; your phone is far, far more powerful than the computer it was originally written for.
Have none of you read Dune? "Thinking machines" were outlawed because evil men used them to enslave other men, which is exactly what this nonsense will lead to.
TFA's author is a fucking lawyer! WTF does a lawyer know about computers or animal brains? Thank God I'll be safely dead in fifty years before this insanity gets worse!
That didn't make a lot of sense. Capone was a murderous gangster, what did Clinton do besides lie about a blow job?
As to his wife, if she runs I'm voting Republican. Or Libertarian. Or for anybody but her, she sucks worse than Monica.