The Adams family's lawyers are sending the takedown notice now... also, reading a slashdot story is now a felony, since the content is cryptographically protected by slashdot's patented Rot-13 DRM technology.
We are tossing a 19 year old kid into the system for 2 and 1/2 years over shining a light. Without a doubt he could have caused more harm than he did, but to take away the beginning of his adult life... just seems wrong. Make him do a few thousand hours of community service while on probation will do more good for everyone than teaching him to be a professional convict at this point in his life.
A retina is a thing for detecting images, not displaying them. Describing your camera or an element of your camera as a retina makes sense. Describing your display as a retina makes no sense.
That the people who thought "retina display" was a good thing sold displays that are less than good does not surprise me. That the people who purchased a "retina display" could tell the difference does.
I'm thinking this is done on purpose. I imagine it is very hard to fire the pope.
If the cardinals like the pope, it shouldn't be too hard to find a like-minded replacement. If on the other hand the pope falls out of favor, he won't be around to long in any case.
Plus they get all the positive buzz from the retirement/replacement process.
You can only complain if such requirements aren't publicized No, you can complain either way. This is a bad path for the games industry to be taking and the more people who bitch about it the better.
I don't disagree about the bad path, but I can guarantee bitching about it will not change a thing. Not buying games with onerous DRM and required server connections for single-player games and instead buying games without those features will stop the industry from falling further down the bad path.
Money talks. And these companies can't hear you over the sound of all the money they're making. Stop that money, and then your complaints can be heard.
We had the forced online and similarly unplayable launch of Diablo III.
We? We had no such thing. We had the option to not purchase the game. Many of us took that option.
You can only complain if such requirements aren't publicized. In most cases, these requirements were made clear not only prior to sale, but prior to the game's release. If you didn't want it, why did you buy it?
Someone could skin-swab you, clone you, patent the process with your DNA. I don't think they could sue you, but they could charge you for any unauthorized reproduction (children).
BTW, while I'm sure that scenario is unrealistic and display ignorance of patents and biology, given what we've seen from gene patents and folks like Monsanto, I'm sure we're not far off from the day when someone receives gene therapy and gets sued when patented genes are passed down to off-spring.
I know this is sorta trollish, I just thought it was interesting too There's no copyright for DNA. Someone could take a skin-swab from you, and clone you, without your permission. If they did, would you feel your rights had been violated?
No copyright (yet) but there is patent.
Someone could skin-swab you, clone you, patent the process with your DNA. I don't think they could sue you, but they could charge you for any unauthorized reproduction (children).
There is no replacement for a competent manager with high personal integrity that actually has a well-founded expert opinion about all of the ones he manages.
Right on. If you don't trust your managers, or don't know which managers to trust, you've already lost and all the metrics in the world won't help.
To me this is the same issue as standardized tests. If you don't (or can't) trust your teachers, testing won't change that feeling. But how does the governor of a state know which teachers can't be trusted or should be replaced? She doesn't and shouldn't need to.
The teacher in the classroom identifies which students are falling behind and need more help. The department head gets summary reports on student performance and monitors teachers. The school head gets summary reports on teacher performance and monitors the department heads. The head of the district gets summary reports on department performance and manages the school heads. And so one up to the governor, president, etc.
No one other than the teacher in the room and that student's parents should be involved with an individual student's day-to-day performance. Not that the department head doesn't care about students, but the best way to express that concern is by putting the best teachers in place and giving those teachers the resources they need.
Likewise, if the CEO is concerning herself with the day-to-day productivity of individual contributors, sounds like a company with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. The CEO should be able to pick trust-worthy executives. Those executives should be able to pick able department heads. Department heads should oversee managers. Managers should manage people.
That there may be a few slackers here and there is not a moral failing. But for the issues in a company to be so wide spread as to require a policy change of the magnitude we're seeing at Yahoo, you've got bad managers no able to motivate or replace bad workers, and bad department heads not able to identify bad managers, and bad executives not able to identify bad department heads, and a bad CEO not able to identify bad executives.
Now that may be the case with Yahoo, which is why there is a new CEO and that CEO is making these changes. But she is bound to fail. The CEO should be concerned with getting the right executives in place. Those executives can retrain/replace department heads as needed. The department heads can get the managers on the right track. And then those managers can decide who needs to be in the office and who can work best remotely.
A CEO jumping over a half dozen (or more) layers of management to tell a worker how to do their job makes as much sense as having the Secretary of Education sit down with each individual 3rd grade to check their sums.
One of the important aspects of this story is the lengths to which a prosecutor will go to get a guilty plea. In this case Swartz is lucky the prosecutor didn't think the laptop used was a gift from Swartz's mother, or she would have been threatened with arrest as an accomplice.
The other important aspect, which is being missed in these/. conversations, is the implication of being a felon in 21st century USA. This case could very well have the same outcome even if the prosecutor made an offer of zero jail time. Depending on where he lived, he could have lost his right to vote, among other rights.
I think people are too focused on the " would have locked him away for most of his life" aspect. For one, Swartz was not facing 30 years behind bars. Two, I don't think we really want to take away discretion in sentencing. Yes, there are abuses, but is abuse by a prosecutor or judge worse than abuse by legislation? Would you rather have the proverbial 20 years for stealing a candy bar? Or someone who really breaks in to a system and takes some really sensitive information only get 6 months because of the fall-out from this case?
I don't pretend to know Swartz's mind, but my impression is an offer of 6 months in jail on a misdemeanor change would have gotten a guilty plea while a felony with no time behind bars would have had a similar outcome as we saw.
Now, like you said, an experienced cook might not *want* all the directions spelled out, but that's different; I'm just saying that if someone wanted the directions spelled out, so that a newbie obtains a good result, it could be done. But the market doesn't incentivize authors to do that.
It wouldn't be that hard to do this. The larger point I was making is that nobody does this -- and in general, nobody writes good newbie directions -- because the free market in general, and Google in particular, does not reward it. If Google (or eHow, or wikihow, or about.com, or anybody else with a large built-in test audience) were to implement the system I described (for sorting instructions by the quality of results, so that the best ones would bubble up to the top), then maybe people would find it worthwhile to write those kinds of directions with built-in hyperlinks for more detail on specific steps. Or they might find some other way of writing good directions. My tenet was that good directions are the ones that produce good results, and it doesn't matter *how* you achieve it.
Not true. There are "for Dummies" type books that assume the reader is someone with zero (or very, very little) experience. There are cook books that delve in to the details of preparing ingredients and basics like boiling water. So the point that nobody does this is not true.
What is true is it is generally not done in a single recipe just like the man page for a single function does not delve in to the details of basic programming technique. But that is not a problem, because the purpose of those things (recipes, man pages) is to guide the reader in making a specific dish or using a specific function, not general education.
Now with the web, as opposed to a paper cook book, you could link to more detailed instruction. But do you really want that? Take your post. You assumed I knew what you meant by "hyperlinked" and chose not to hyperlink to a definition. When you talk about a "recipe" you don't link to a definition of that word. In fact, for all the words and phrases you could have linked to a definition or detailed description, you did not. Even though, "it wouldn't be that hard to do this."
I would say, your post was meant to convey a particular thought, not serve as instruction for the English language. I would say, having every word as a hyperlink would be distracting to anyone trying to get that particular thought and not use your post as English language instruction. I would also say, you appear to agree with me because you did not include any hyperlinks or more detailed information on your post.
Slashdot Mirror
What steep drop in traffic? Looks like there's plenty of you morons here whining in the comments section to keep the traffic up.
I usually stop by /. several times per day during the work week. However I did not return after posting the above comment.
Yes. When you say "Adams family" to describe people related to the late author, it sounds like Addams Family, the creation of another dead author.
So no need to add a woosh. If you look up, it's right there.
Any chance the steep drop in traffic will be noticed and remembered for next April 1st?
Too much to hope for, I guess.
There is something to be said for sticking with a joke no mater how unfunny it is.
And that something is, "The joke is not funny. And becomes more unfunny each time."
The Adams family's lawyers are sending the takedown notice now... also, reading a slashdot story is now a felony, since the content is cryptographically protected by slashdot's patented Rot-13 DRM technology.
What do Gomez and Morticia have to do with it?
In the menatime...
or fher gb qevax lbhe binygvar!
Why the the parent post modded 'Funny'?
That was my first thought--Genesis tells 2 contradictory stories of creation. A literal interpretation of Genesis must be false.
If anyone on the list of approved judges has any intellectual integrity, this is $10k in easy money for someone.
These magnets are toys with no functional value. Nothing of value is lost by banning them.
You contradict yourself. Are they toys? Or do they have no functional value?
We are tossing a 19 year old kid into the system for 2 and 1/2 years over shining a light. Without a doubt he could have caused more harm than he did, but to take away the beginning of his adult life... just seems wrong. Make him do a few thousand hours of community service while on probation will do more good for everyone than teaching him to be a professional convict at this point in his life.
My he serve as warning to others.
Simply put: if the average reader doesn't know what the summary is talking about, ...
...welcome to slashdot.
A retina is a thing for detecting images, not displaying them. Describing your camera or an element of your camera as a retina makes sense. Describing your display as a retina makes no sense.
That the people who thought "retina display" was a good thing sold displays that are less than good does not surprise me. That the people who purchased a "retina display" could tell the difference does.
Well people could choose to stop with the religion thing in response.
And people could choose to stop with software with DRM in response.
But some folks have to have their games, just as some will have their religion.
I'm thinking this is done on purpose. I imagine it is very hard to fire the pope.
If the cardinals like the pope, it shouldn't be too hard to find a like-minded replacement. If on the other hand the pope falls out of favor, he won't be around to long in any case.
Plus they get all the positive buzz from the retirement/replacement process.
Morgan Fairchild could have made mad passionate love to me last night as my house supports an environment an actress could survive in.
I suppose she could...but if course, she didn't.
After all, she is my wife!
You can only complain if such requirements aren't publicized
No, you can complain either way. This is a bad path for the games industry to be taking and the more people who bitch about it the better.
I don't disagree about the bad path, but I can guarantee bitching about it will not change a thing. Not buying games with onerous DRM and required server connections for single-player games and instead buying games without those features will stop the industry from falling further down the bad path.
Money talks. And these companies can't hear you over the sound of all the money they're making. Stop that money, and then your complaints can be heard.
We had the forced online and similarly unplayable launch of Diablo III.
We? We had no such thing. We had the option to not purchase the game. Many of us took that option.
You can only complain if such requirements aren't publicized. In most cases, these requirements were made clear not only prior to sale, but prior to the game's release. If you didn't want it, why did you buy it?
No copyright (yet) but there is patent.
Someone could skin-swab you, clone you, patent the process with your DNA. I don't think they could sue you, but they could charge you for any unauthorized reproduction (children).
BTW, while I'm sure that scenario is unrealistic and display ignorance of patents and biology, given what we've seen from gene patents and folks like Monsanto, I'm sure we're not far off from the day when someone receives gene therapy and gets sued when patented genes are passed down to off-spring.
I know this is sorta trollish, I just thought it was interesting too
There's no copyright for DNA. Someone could take a skin-swab from you, and clone you, without your permission. If they did, would you feel your rights had been violated?
No copyright (yet) but there is patent.
Someone could skin-swab you, clone you, patent the process with your DNA. I don't think they could sue you, but they could charge you for any unauthorized reproduction (children).
There is no replacement for a competent manager with high personal integrity that actually has a well-founded expert opinion about all of the ones he manages.
Right on. If you don't trust your managers, or don't know which managers to trust, you've already lost and all the metrics in the world won't help.
To me this is the same issue as standardized tests. If you don't (or can't) trust your teachers, testing won't change that feeling. But how does the governor of a state know which teachers can't be trusted or should be replaced? She doesn't and shouldn't need to.
The teacher in the classroom identifies which students are falling behind and need more help. The department head gets summary reports on student performance and monitors teachers. The school head gets summary reports on teacher performance and monitors the department heads. The head of the district gets summary reports on department performance and manages the school heads. And so one up to the governor, president, etc.
No one other than the teacher in the room and that student's parents should be involved with an individual student's day-to-day performance. Not that the department head doesn't care about students, but the best way to express that concern is by putting the best teachers in place and giving those teachers the resources they need.
Likewise, if the CEO is concerning herself with the day-to-day productivity of individual contributors, sounds like a company with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. The CEO should be able to pick trust-worthy executives. Those executives should be able to pick able department heads. Department heads should oversee managers. Managers should manage people.
That there may be a few slackers here and there is not a moral failing. But for the issues in a company to be so wide spread as to require a policy change of the magnitude we're seeing at Yahoo, you've got bad managers no able to motivate or replace bad workers, and bad department heads not able to identify bad managers, and bad executives not able to identify bad department heads, and a bad CEO not able to identify bad executives.
Now that may be the case with Yahoo, which is why there is a new CEO and that CEO is making these changes. But she is bound to fail. The CEO should be concerned with getting the right executives in place. Those executives can retrain/replace department heads as needed. The department heads can get the managers on the right track. And then those managers can decide who needs to be in the office and who can work best remotely.
A CEO jumping over a half dozen (or more) layers of management to tell a worker how to do their job makes as much sense as having the Secretary of Education sit down with each individual 3rd grade to check their sums.
One of the important aspects of this story is the lengths to which a prosecutor will go to get a guilty plea. In this case Swartz is lucky the prosecutor didn't think the laptop used was a gift from Swartz's mother, or she would have been threatened with arrest as an accomplice.
The other important aspect, which is being missed in these /. conversations, is the implication of being a felon in 21st century USA. This case could very well have the same outcome even if the prosecutor made an offer of zero jail time. Depending on where he lived, he could have lost his right to vote, among other rights.
I think people are too focused on the " would have locked him away for most of his life" aspect. For one, Swartz was not facing 30 years behind bars. Two, I don't think we really want to take away discretion in sentencing. Yes, there are abuses, but is abuse by a prosecutor or judge worse than abuse by legislation? Would you rather have the proverbial 20 years for stealing a candy bar? Or someone who really breaks in to a system and takes some really sensitive information only get 6 months because of the fall-out from this case?
I don't pretend to know Swartz's mind, but my impression is an offer of 6 months in jail on a misdemeanor change would have gotten a guilty plea while a felony with no time behind bars would have had a similar outcome as we saw.
Apple doesn't do jewelry.
o_O
Apple doesn't do precious metals and gem stones, but Apple certainly does fashion accessories, aka jewelry.
Click the "Hide/Show Transcript" link under the video.
Yeah, not very clear.
These days, who gets excited over pictures of Anna Kournikova?
How anyone can discuss this case and not bring up Catch-22 boggles my mind.
Folks need to do some reading, especially the folks that think a FOIA request is the answer to FISA.
Now, like you said, an experienced cook might not *want* all the directions spelled out, but that's different; I'm just saying that if someone wanted the directions spelled out, so that a newbie obtains a good result, it could be done. But the market doesn't incentivize authors to do that.
I suppose you could look at it that way.
Perhaps...and I may be going out on a limb here...but perhaps cooking is like other skills where practice is involved.
If you're still in the beginer phase, try making the same recipe 3 times rather than 3 different recipes once each.
It wouldn't be that hard to do this. The larger point I was making is that nobody does this -- and in general, nobody writes good newbie directions -- because the free market in general, and Google in particular, does not reward it. If Google (or eHow, or wikihow, or about.com, or anybody else with a large built-in test audience) were to implement the system I described (for sorting instructions by the quality of results, so that the best ones would bubble up to the top), then maybe people would find it worthwhile to write those kinds of directions with built-in hyperlinks for more detail on specific steps. Or they might find some other way of writing good directions. My tenet was that good directions are the ones that produce good results, and it doesn't matter *how* you achieve it.
Not true. There are "for Dummies" type books that assume the reader is someone with zero (or very, very little) experience. There are cook books that delve in to the details of preparing ingredients and basics like boiling water. So the point that nobody does this is not true.
What is true is it is generally not done in a single recipe just like the man page for a single function does not delve in to the details of basic programming technique. But that is not a problem, because the purpose of those things (recipes, man pages) is to guide the reader in making a specific dish or using a specific function, not general education.
Now with the web, as opposed to a paper cook book, you could link to more detailed instruction. But do you really want that? Take your post. You assumed I knew what you meant by "hyperlinked" and chose not to hyperlink to a definition. When you talk about a "recipe" you don't link to a definition of that word. In fact, for all the words and phrases you could have linked to a definition or detailed description, you did not. Even though, "it wouldn't be that hard to do this."
I would say, your post was meant to convey a particular thought, not serve as instruction for the English language. I would say, having every word as a hyperlink would be distracting to anyone trying to get that particular thought and not use your post as English language instruction. I would also say, you appear to agree with me because you did not include any hyperlinks or more detailed information on your post.