If it's any consolation, they do that shit in America too. I can't even count how many times I've been called "un-American" during the course of what should be polite political conversation.
Actually, I'm the current generation of "I don't even own a television."
That doesn't bother me much either, although I am considering a larger monitor so that I can watch movies from the sofa (which I currently use for just sitting and chatting with people... like, face to face, or reading books). You'll have to try again.
As for being too cool, quite the opposite. I am extremely uncool, but I choose not to broadcast my uncool life to the entire planet. Yeah, sure I could follow interesting people or events on Twitter, but for every one of those there are about 100,000 idiots droning on about how they just bought a t-shirt or watched a cat jump play with a leaf as though there is a single person in the world (including them, really) who gives a shit. That's some truly atrocious signal to noise, and I just don't care enough to trudge through in some idiotic attempt to stay "current" by using technologies I don't care about just for the sake of using them.
So, yes, I WILL be that guy, because that guy is often the only person with any fucking sense of self, or at least the only one with enough of a spine not to even pretend he buys into other peoples' bullshit just to look cool. You should join the party, the perspective is pretty rad.
Huh, that's weird... I still don't have any use for twitter whatsoever.
I mean, I guess I could update the entire world every time I eat something or run an errand... but to be honest, I can't see why anyone who doesn't already know would care, and if they did I think I'd be a bit creeped out by it.
I have been toying with the idea of building a GPS nav system out of a netbook, USB GPS receiver and Google Earth, but it's really not any cheaper than buying one (obviously I intend to multi-purpose the netbook, or the costing wouldn't even be comparable).
I don't go on Orkut and bitch that everyone is from Brazil, and nothing on the website specifies it is for Brazilians... but that's sometimes how things turn out.
Slashdot has the content that it has, serves the people that it serves, and the people who complain that it does not meet their tastes are perfectly within their rights to find another website that does. That is true regardless of whether those differing interests involve preference, cultural background, location, language, political views, educational background, or whatever other point of discrimination you can think of. That is neither inherently wrong nor inherently right, but it IS the way things actually work.
I don't care if there are more stories about Australia or not, so long as the stories that show up are interesting to me (and some of the ones about Australia are) I will keep reading and commenting. But the people who bitch that this site caters overwhelmingly to English speakers, Americans, Europeans and and Australians (generally in that order), and ignores $foo_culture or $foo_interest have the totally wrong idea.
If you're using tactical nuclear warheads like you really need to against a modern carrier, then I'd say probably yes.
Of course, if you only send one or two super-sonic nukes AND saturate with sub-sonic conventional warheads, you'll probably get the most reliable results.
>>implying that anyone thinks everything in Europe is perfect
Just because somebody thinks some part of how a nation or culture operates is good, even better than how their own does it, doesn't mean they blanket agree with everything.
It's kind of like how Tea Partiers will claim to hate Bush, then praise every single thing he did and said... only in reverse.
How so? I have nothing against other people, I simply acknowledge that we are simply different.
I am not fluent in Swedish, I have no interest in becoming fluent in Swedish, and it is of only very little interest to me what is happening in Sweden, and I expect that a non-English-speaking Swede feels very similarly about where I live. For what possible reason should either of us feel obligated to visit the same websites or take the same interests?
Google didn't start the censorship in China, it wasn't their idea, and they weren't the first group to comply with what is, in China, local law. They've also been pretty clearly repulsed by the rule, hence the issues they are now having with the Chinese government. They went into a crappy situation thinking that maybe they could improve things, or at least tolerate them until it had enough time to change (and it is just a matter of time, really)... apparently they were wrong, have seen the error of their ways, and are getting the heck out while they still can.
You seem to think that isn't good enough. So do you believe that because a nation makes laws which you don't agree with, private companies should be obligated to violate those laws in those countries? That failure to do so constitutes evil?
As of a month and a half ago (the last time I tried), FF in Linux wouldn't even let you attempt to log in. It's conceivable that this is a Linux issue, rather than a FF issue... but that is still completely inexplicable.
That said, you glossed over some other items in the list with an ellipsis, and I assure you that whether or not you personally find that to be troublesome, I know people who went back to IE for precisely those reasons... at least one each.
"Nations other than the United States of America?"
I don't know about that...
"Nations which don't use English as the language of commerce and teaching?"
Alright, I get it now, you're yanking my chain... you can drop it.
"Nations which are not based on European culture or otherwise have majority white populations?"
Is that supposed to be some kind of sick joke? Well, it's not funny if it is.
Seriously though, such nations and cultures are more than welcome to have websites dealing with whatever issues they like in whatever language they like... many already do. Slashdot does not have to be that site. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a site most white, English speaking Americans are interested in.
I see your observation that Slashdot does not cater to the demographic of "everybody in the world" and raise you the observation that "it doesn't have to, and probably shouldn't".
So, your problem with his generalization is that he made it short, pithy and memorable, rather than long-winded and full of exceptions?
I'll bet you're the kind of person who gets upset when bumper stickers fail to adequately convey all the nuances of a person's opinion... "I'd rather be fishing" indeed.
Unless you think that the Citicards' website (which just recently started to allow FF from Windows, but still bugs out with Linux), Charter's cable internet activation website (which needs to be accessed at least once per service installation, and absolutely will not work under any other browser), a plethora of banking websites, a huge number of regional MLS sites (used by real estate agents to communicate between agents and agencies), and many other websites used for the large-scale management of data, finances and utilities are somehow irrelevant, such sites are pretty commonplace.
As Firefox and Safari become more prevalent, these are starting to switch out of IE-only into actual standards compliance (and often finding that the overall performance and stability of the site improves as they stop basing it, essentially, on bugs-as-features), but we're nowhere near 100% and aren't likely to be for many years.
If only we could set up a system where intelligent, educated individuals with knowledge in both the subject at hand and the law in general could sit down and, after careful deliberation and hearing the advice of people on both sides of each issue, come to some sort of a rational decision intended to balance between competing interests.
Perhaps we could give these individuals a fancy title, like arbiter, or decider... I don't know, something classy and prestigious to go with their important and honorable function. We should name the places and circumstances under which they operate something special, too, something that inspires respect and tradition... maybe forums? Also, we should have a bunch of levels of it, so that we can mitigate the effect any one bad decision or individual has, then let people make some sort of dispute if things aren't decided their way and they feel something wasn't appropriately dealt with.
Anyway, it could be a really cool system. Somebody should write up a document, and we could vote on whether or not to make that the highest law of the land.
Depends on the hardware. I saw a huge substantial performance improvement hen I went to 64-bit 7 from 64-bit XP (which was faster than 32-bit XP on a prior system when upgraded, which was faster than 2000 on the system before that when upgraded) on the same hardware, but that hardware was total overkill for XP.
You wouldn't really argue that DOS has better performance than Windows 7, even though it can run admirably on hardware so puny it would take weeks just to boot 7. Why would you argue that XP does?
Uh, no, he shouldn't. Not at all. I'm a liberal, pro-regulation kind of guy, and seriously... just no.
If anything, the regulation should be that agreeing to an "industry standard" that knowingly stifles adoption of safety features in an (incredibly misguided) attempt to avoid litigation is an antitrust issue. These companies are supposed to be competing, not conspiring to keep optional safety features off the market.
Sucks for Ryobi that they had to draw the black egg, but this should be a feature that they offer, at added cost to the consumer, on more expensive models.
The potential liability is huge, the likelihood they will have to pay on that liability is huge, but the likelihood that they will actually have to pay the potential liability is fairly low. Most likely they will pay pennies on the dollar in an out of court settlement, maybe Viacom will somewhat work their way into decision-making at Youtube. Also likely is that, once all is said and done, Youtube will become the exclusive online outlet for Viacom content (remember Apple Corp. vs. Apple Inc.?) and Google will see a greater return on their investment.
The real bottom line here is that Google is very unlikely to pay Viacom more than they've made from Youtube, and at the end of the day this will probably increase, not decrease, their profit potential.
Broken driver compatibility, unavoidable, but few people really understood that and Microsoft could have been much clearer. Broken print/file sharing with XP peers (broken in the "takes more than 2 minutes to set up and requires any research whatsoever to get working properly" sense, which given that between XP machines it really did work that way actually counts). An irritating, intrusive, meddlesome and often cloying UI that continually found ways to spit new and perplexing pointless dialogs and options. A disappointingly implemented and generally underwhelming security model (though they some credit for at least doing something in that regard). Hardware requirements which can only be charitably described as "uncalled for" matched with actual performance that is, again, charitably described as "not great".
Vista was just a revisit to the days of ME. Almost there, but not quite. The problem isn't that Vista has good stuff and people knock it unfairly, the problem is that Vista has good stuff and it still sucks, just not for the big glaring reasons people tend to look for. Again, see Windows ME.
That one and several others. Lincoln declared Martial law, suspended Habeas Corpus, and openly ignored huge chunks of the Constitution and US law.
If it weren't for the issue of slavery, and the fact that the South didn't behave all that much better, it would be very hard for anyone to honestly side with Lincoln and the North.
And no, I'm not a Southerner, secessionist, KKK member, or any of that nonsense.
You must be new here. Overrated is for when somebody makes a valid point that you disagree with, and you would rather shove them down and hope that nobody else catches it than actually deal with it. It's the fanboy rage mod.
For the record, I support removing over/under-rated altogether, as I don't think they actually contribute anything positive or useful. Posts with high ratings and poor content are rare, and also not that big a problem. The only use I've even seen for underrated is to achieve lulzy comment scores, like "+5, Off-Topic", but I don't think anybody has a serious use for it.
This is anticipated to take at least a decade. They could just as easily avoid building into those areas until things settle down on that kind of time line. Plus, one of the things those countries have in common is oil, and one of the things China just doesn't have enough of is, drumroll please, oil.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's any consolation, they do that shit in America too. I can't even count how many times I've been called "un-American" during the course of what should be polite political conversation.
Actually, I'm the current generation of "I don't even own a television."
That doesn't bother me much either, although I am considering a larger monitor so that I can watch movies from the sofa (which I currently use for just sitting and chatting with people... like, face to face, or reading books). You'll have to try again.
As for being too cool, quite the opposite. I am extremely uncool, but I choose not to broadcast my uncool life to the entire planet. Yeah, sure I could follow interesting people or events on Twitter, but for every one of those there are about 100,000 idiots droning on about how they just bought a t-shirt or watched a cat jump play with a leaf as though there is a single person in the world (including them, really) who gives a shit. That's some truly atrocious signal to noise, and I just don't care enough to trudge through in some idiotic attempt to stay "current" by using technologies I don't care about just for the sake of using them.
So, yes, I WILL be that guy, because that guy is often the only person with any fucking sense of self, or at least the only one with enough of a spine not to even pretend he buys into other peoples' bullshit just to look cool. You should join the party, the perspective is pretty rad.
Huh, that's weird... I still don't have any use for twitter whatsoever.
I mean, I guess I could update the entire world every time I eat something or run an errand... but to be honest, I can't see why anyone who doesn't already know would care, and if they did I think I'd be a bit creeped out by it.
Guess I'm just crazy.
You can run it outside of a browser?
That's all I've got.
I have been toying with the idea of building a GPS nav system out of a netbook, USB GPS receiver and Google Earth, but it's really not any cheaper than buying one (obviously I intend to multi-purpose the netbook, or the costing wouldn't even be comparable).
fr1st ps0t!!!
Can't wait to see if I actually got it in 3 months or so!
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who did a double take on that...
No, should it?
I don't go on Orkut and bitch that everyone is from Brazil, and nothing on the website specifies it is for Brazilians... but that's sometimes how things turn out.
Slashdot has the content that it has, serves the people that it serves, and the people who complain that it does not meet their tastes are perfectly within their rights to find another website that does. That is true regardless of whether those differing interests involve preference, cultural background, location, language, political views, educational background, or whatever other point of discrimination you can think of. That is neither inherently wrong nor inherently right, but it IS the way things actually work.
I don't care if there are more stories about Australia or not, so long as the stories that show up are interesting to me (and some of the ones about Australia are) I will keep reading and commenting. But the people who bitch that this site caters overwhelmingly to English speakers, Americans, Europeans and and Australians (generally in that order), and ignores $foo_culture or $foo_interest have the totally wrong idea.
If you're using tactical nuclear warheads like you really need to against a modern carrier, then I'd say probably yes.
Of course, if you only send one or two super-sonic nukes AND saturate with sub-sonic conventional warheads, you'll probably get the most reliable results.
>>implying that anyone thinks everything in Europe is perfect
Just because somebody thinks some part of how a nation or culture operates is good, even better than how their own does it, doesn't mean they blanket agree with everything.
It's kind of like how Tea Partiers will claim to hate Bush, then praise every single thing he did and said... only in reverse.
Good effort, though.
How so? I have nothing against other people, I simply acknowledge that we are simply different.
I am not fluent in Swedish, I have no interest in becoming fluent in Swedish, and it is of only very little interest to me what is happening in Sweden, and I expect that a non-English-speaking Swede feels very similarly about where I live. For what possible reason should either of us feel obligated to visit the same websites or take the same interests?
Bigotry doesn't mean what you think it means.
Google didn't start the censorship in China, it wasn't their idea, and they weren't the first group to comply with what is, in China, local law. They've also been pretty clearly repulsed by the rule, hence the issues they are now having with the Chinese government. They went into a crappy situation thinking that maybe they could improve things, or at least tolerate them until it had enough time to change (and it is just a matter of time, really)... apparently they were wrong, have seen the error of their ways, and are getting the heck out while they still can.
You seem to think that isn't good enough. So do you believe that because a nation makes laws which you don't agree with, private companies should be obligated to violate those laws in those countries? That failure to do so constitutes evil?
You can't possibly think that would end well.
As of a month and a half ago (the last time I tried), FF in Linux wouldn't even let you attempt to log in. It's conceivable that this is a Linux issue, rather than a FF issue... but that is still completely inexplicable.
That said, you glossed over some other items in the list with an ellipsis, and I assure you that whether or not you personally find that to be troublesome, I know people who went back to IE for precisely those reasons... at least one each.
"Nations other than the United States of America?"
I don't know about that...
"Nations which don't use English as the language of commerce and teaching?"
Alright, I get it now, you're yanking my chain... you can drop it.
"Nations which are not based on European culture or otherwise have majority white populations?"
Is that supposed to be some kind of sick joke? Well, it's not funny if it is.
Seriously though, such nations and cultures are more than welcome to have websites dealing with whatever issues they like in whatever language they like... many already do. Slashdot does not have to be that site. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a site most white, English speaking Americans are interested in.
I see your observation that Slashdot does not cater to the demographic of "everybody in the world" and raise you the observation that "it doesn't have to, and probably shouldn't".
So, your problem with his generalization is that he made it short, pithy and memorable, rather than long-winded and full of exceptions?
I'll bet you're the kind of person who gets upset when bumper stickers fail to adequately convey all the nuances of a person's opinion... "I'd rather be fishing" indeed.
Unless you think that the Citicards' website (which just recently started to allow FF from Windows, but still bugs out with Linux), Charter's cable internet activation website (which needs to be accessed at least once per service installation, and absolutely will not work under any other browser), a plethora of banking websites, a huge number of regional MLS sites (used by real estate agents to communicate between agents and agencies), and many other websites used for the large-scale management of data, finances and utilities are somehow irrelevant, such sites are pretty commonplace.
As Firefox and Safari become more prevalent, these are starting to switch out of IE-only into actual standards compliance (and often finding that the overall performance and stability of the site improves as they stop basing it, essentially, on bugs-as-features), but we're nowhere near 100% and aren't likely to be for many years.
If only we could set up a system where intelligent, educated individuals with knowledge in both the subject at hand and the law in general could sit down and, after careful deliberation and hearing the advice of people on both sides of each issue, come to some sort of a rational decision intended to balance between competing interests.
Perhaps we could give these individuals a fancy title, like arbiter, or decider... I don't know, something classy and prestigious to go with their important and honorable function. We should name the places and circumstances under which they operate something special, too, something that inspires respect and tradition... maybe forums? Also, we should have a bunch of levels of it, so that we can mitigate the effect any one bad decision or individual has, then let people make some sort of dispute if things aren't decided their way and they feel something wasn't appropriately dealt with.
Anyway, it could be a really cool system. Somebody should write up a document, and we could vote on whether or not to make that the highest law of the land.
Depends on the hardware. I saw a huge substantial performance improvement hen I went to 64-bit 7 from 64-bit XP (which was faster than 32-bit XP on a prior system when upgraded, which was faster than 2000 on the system before that when upgraded) on the same hardware, but that hardware was total overkill for XP.
You wouldn't really argue that DOS has better performance than Windows 7, even though it can run admirably on hardware so puny it would take weeks just to boot 7. Why would you argue that XP does?
Uh, no, he shouldn't. Not at all. I'm a liberal, pro-regulation kind of guy, and seriously... just no.
If anything, the regulation should be that agreeing to an "industry standard" that knowingly stifles adoption of safety features in an (incredibly misguided) attempt to avoid litigation is an antitrust issue. These companies are supposed to be competing, not conspiring to keep optional safety features off the market.
Sucks for Ryobi that they had to draw the black egg, but this should be a feature that they offer, at added cost to the consumer, on more expensive models.
The potential liability is huge, the likelihood they will have to pay on that liability is huge, but the likelihood that they will actually have to pay the potential liability is fairly low. Most likely they will pay pennies on the dollar in an out of court settlement, maybe Viacom will somewhat work their way into decision-making at Youtube. Also likely is that, once all is said and done, Youtube will become the exclusive online outlet for Viacom content (remember Apple Corp. vs. Apple Inc.?) and Google will see a greater return on their investment.
The real bottom line here is that Google is very unlikely to pay Viacom more than they've made from Youtube, and at the end of the day this will probably increase, not decrease, their profit potential.
Correction to your sig: Bush killed the economy. Obama hasn't resurrected it.
Can't kill what's already dead, champ.
Broken driver compatibility, unavoidable, but few people really understood that and Microsoft could have been much clearer. Broken print/file sharing with XP peers (broken in the "takes more than 2 minutes to set up and requires any research whatsoever to get working properly" sense, which given that between XP machines it really did work that way actually counts). An irritating, intrusive, meddlesome and often cloying UI that continually found ways to spit new and perplexing pointless dialogs and options. A disappointingly implemented and generally underwhelming security model (though they some credit for at least doing something in that regard). Hardware requirements which can only be charitably described as "uncalled for" matched with actual performance that is, again, charitably described as "not great".
Vista was just a revisit to the days of ME. Almost there, but not quite. The problem isn't that Vista has good stuff and people knock it unfairly, the problem is that Vista has good stuff and it still sucks, just not for the big glaring reasons people tend to look for. Again, see Windows ME.
As with most Australians, they are unrepentant criminal scum. They simply pirate the games they want anyway.
That one and several others. Lincoln declared Martial law, suspended Habeas Corpus, and openly ignored huge chunks of the Constitution and US law.
If it weren't for the issue of slavery, and the fact that the South didn't behave all that much better, it would be very hard for anyone to honestly side with Lincoln and the North.
And no, I'm not a Southerner, secessionist, KKK member, or any of that nonsense.
You must be new here. Overrated is for when somebody makes a valid point that you disagree with, and you would rather shove them down and hope that nobody else catches it than actually deal with it. It's the fanboy rage mod.
For the record, I support removing over/under-rated altogether, as I don't think they actually contribute anything positive or useful. Posts with high ratings and poor content are rare, and also not that big a problem. The only use I've even seen for underrated is to achieve lulzy comment scores, like "+5, Off-Topic", but I don't think anybody has a serious use for it.
And only cowards are afraid to do so...
This is anticipated to take at least a decade. They could just as easily avoid building into those areas until things settle down on that kind of time line. Plus, one of the things those countries have in common is oil, and one of the things China just doesn't have enough of is, drumroll please, oil.