Nah, they'd have to be a Butthole Surfers tribute band. NIN tribute bands need names like 'Nothingness' or 'The Broken'... names that convey an appropriate sense of woe and despair, and aren't the least bit funny (unless you find pretentious cover bands funny, which I do).
We've all tired of posts with no redeeming qualities beyond bashing Microsoft, particularly in those cases where they haven't actually done anything.
Google, Microsoft's main competitor at the moment for those keeping track, released a tool to do something of dubious value to much of the Slashdot community. They have opted to release the tool on Windows first, probably because it has a larger install base than all competitors combined, but have stated there will be Mac and Linux versions "real soon now". Precisely which part of this story involves Microsoft doing something that could or should be criticized?
I'm all about making fun of Microsoft when they do something stupid, and Dog knows it happens plenty, but sadly they've done nothing mockworthy in this story.
Yeas, and you'd better teach them the languages of the majority too: English and Spanish and probably Chinese if you want them to work. Plus C, and if you're 5 year old can't parse 1000 lines of PERL in less than 30 seconds you should both be shot. And if you don't know how to manually configure every modern OS by 26 you're a waste of oxygen.
Oh, that's just a common conversion mistake, happens when people use improper unit notation.
GP was actually using Internet months, which pass roughly 15 times faster than Meatspace months. Well, at least now they do, the conversion is increasing exponentially; for example, "All Your Base" was a popular meme for one Internet Month, but that worked out to about 3 months in meatspace, and presumably the next Internet Month-long meme (I predict it will have something to do with Anime, we haven't seen one of those in a while and we're about due) will only last in meatspace for a matter of days, if not hours.
Long version: it's easier for most people to fudge through something they vaguely remember doing by pictures than it is for them to memorize a set of arcane terminal they vaguely remember. People who do things other than program and learn Linux inside and out have all sorts of other random esoteric knowledge buried away, and there's only so much that a single person can keep in their head. These people are called end users, and frankly, if you don't understand why politely asking them to "simply" learn the terminal commands is a mind-numbingly stupid proposition, I seriously recommend staying the hell away from UI design.
Yes, and kids throwing rocks through windows provides work for the glazier, who then buys bread from the baker, who buys shoes from the shoemaker who...
Long story short, you just invented the broken Windows fallacy... congratulations?
Sure, but they also cost a few hundred thousand dollars and require some pretty exotic design features to be able to do that... and even they won't protect somebody who hits a wall head on, let alone another moving vehicle.
If you can afford that kind of safety then more power to you, but engineering that good costs money both to do and to produce.
"Maybe if cops spent less time enforcing laws that 95% of people disagree with (copyright enforcement, speed traps, etc)"
Copyright enforcement? Honestly, I've spoken to a lot of cops, and not once have I heard the word "copyright" come up in description of their work. I'm fairly confident that 99% of police never deal directly with copyright infringement a single time in the whole of their career. What I HAVE heard that they deal with a lot are minor drug offenses (which I, for one, would say are useless) and domestic disturbances (which range from pointless arguments between idiot spouses to serious violence, so it's sort of a mixed bag).
ABP is better if you really just want to hose ads, but NoScript is nice because it castrates drive-by installers and various other nasties as well.
Also, I hold the (apparently unpopular) opinion that advertising is not inherently evil or intrusive, and I'm perfectly happy to have ad-supported pages if it means I don't have to pay for them out of pocket. Granted, NoScript hoses most ads anyway, but i'm OK with the ones it doesn't.
I think, and the GP can correct me if I'm mistaken, his point is that it doesn't work. He seems to be saying that Linspire/Xandros have a business model which is largely broken and unworkable. This would seem to be at least partially borne out by the fact that Linspire has been bought out in the way described.
Maybe you should move out of the Bible belt to somewhere that actually wants to run decent public schools.
I went to public school, and that's not at all what my curriculum sounded like. In fact, I seem to recall that my 10th grade U.S. History teacher was the first person to ever suggest reading Howard Zinn. It came up early in the semester when he was describing how bad the previous textbook had been in terms of pro-Anglo-American bias and hawkishness; he'd apparently tried to instead of merely replacing it with something less bad bring in A People's History and use both and also give us a lesson in finding a reasonable middle ground between extremes. I'm kind of sad he failed.
I also had an economics teacher who, when asked what type of economy he supported, would basically say that if he weren't a highly educated member of the upper middle class who'd been born into reasonable privilege and never really been a part of the underclass, he'd probably be more comfortable describing himself as a Communist, but as it was felt like something of a fraud. I admit my school holds a place on the tail end of a bell curve.
Sorry to nitpick a certain line out of an otherwise decent post, but when I read "The few uses of a AI that has not morality are for military [killing] purposes." I shuddered a bit. If there is any one field where a deployed AI absolutely MUST have a sense of morality, it is in the field of killing people and breaking things. I couldn't care less if my toaster is an amoral bastard of a computer, because the worst it can reasonably accomplish is to burn my breakfast.
In fact, I'm troubled by some of the things our military does in training actual humans. The attitude seems to be that a conscience simply gets in the way of killing, and that the ideal soldier is neither interested in nor capable of moral judgments, particularly for their own actions. Taking human life is a very serious moral issue, and the notion of removing the tools to treat it as such from soldiers is actually a very disturbing idea to me.
Yes, damn them for forcing automobiles to not be death traps at a relatively small dollar cost.
Why not bitch that your seat belt restricts your movement while you're at it... we'll just pretend that paralysis isn't such a huge restriction on movement too.
The real reason that India has $3000 cars and we don't is that it simply costs more to manufacture and sell a car here than it does in India, no matter what features or devices are included or required. A single US dollar is simply worth more in India than it is the US.
As for motorcycles... I've known paramedics who just assume any motorcyclist who gets in a crash is likely to be an organ donor by the time they get to the scene. They probably should be illegal on safety grounds, but it's just such an unpopular proposition that it will never fly.
Yeah, but there really needs to be better introduction to the basics. It's very hard to talk new tech with somebody who can't differentiate between files that are on a local (hard) drive, removable media (cd, SD card, thumb drive) and somewhere on the internet.
I work in a 1-hour photo lab, and I shit you not, I've heard of people insisting that the pictures are "right on their computers" only to find out that they are, in fact, on some internet photo site. Then they usually have the gall to yell at my coworkers and I for making everything so difficult and giving them incorrect information, rather than owning the fact that we gave them the correct answer for the information THEY provided, which was (charitaBly described as) faulty, and that if they had half of a clue what was going on with their own stuff the problem likely would have never come up in the first place.
I'd much rather explain to somebody what Linux is and why it's awesome to a person who can successfully store and retrieve documents from a thumb drive on multiple computers than have to explain why a CD-ROM drive can't burn a CD to somebody purporting to be tech savvy.
The exception that proves the rule. Sony got behind the one that was worse for the consumer and finally won one.
I think Sony must have sent some of their upper management to the Microsoft/Big Oil/Ma Bell School of Ungodly Profit... conventional wisdom says that pissing off paying customers and then charging them extra for the "privilege" will lead to failure, but the SoUP teaches that such a tactic will, in fact, lead to otherwise impossible success.
Of course, if they want their doctorates in screwing people over they'll still have to go to the Steve Jobs School of Making People Think Your Overpriced Crap Will Actually Make Them Cool.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're buying their exported goods, and they are making a profit from it, then they are not actually Communists.
Does that help some?
Nah, they'd have to be a Butthole Surfers tribute band. NIN tribute bands need names like 'Nothingness' or 'The Broken'... names that convey an appropriate sense of woe and despair, and aren't the least bit funny (unless you find pretentious cover bands funny, which I do).
We've all tired of posts with no redeeming qualities beyond bashing Microsoft, particularly in those cases where they haven't actually done anything.
Google, Microsoft's main competitor at the moment for those keeping track, released a tool to do something of dubious value to much of the Slashdot community. They have opted to release the tool on Windows first, probably because it has a larger install base than all competitors combined, but have stated there will be Mac and Linux versions "real soon now". Precisely which part of this story involves Microsoft doing something that could or should be criticized?
I'm all about making fun of Microsoft when they do something stupid, and Dog knows it happens plenty, but sadly they've done nothing mockworthy in this story.
I dunno... exploding 12" butt plugs sound funny to me.
Yeas, and you'd better teach them the languages of the majority too: English and Spanish and probably Chinese if you want them to work. Plus C, and if you're 5 year old can't parse 1000 lines of PERL in less than 30 seconds you should both be shot. And if you don't know how to manually configure every modern OS by 26 you're a waste of oxygen.
How about you not go building straw men?
Oh, that's just a common conversion mistake, happens when people use improper unit notation.
GP was actually using Internet months, which pass roughly 15 times faster than Meatspace months. Well, at least now they do, the conversion is increasing exponentially; for example, "All Your Base" was a popular meme for one Internet Month, but that worked out to about 3 months in meatspace, and presumably the next Internet Month-long meme (I predict it will have something to do with Anime, we haven't seen one of those in a while and we're about due) will only last in meatspace for a matter of days, if not hours.
You are correct, I meant to respond to the person who brought up F1 cars being able to withstand crashes at >=200 mph. Oops.
Short answer? Mnemonics.
Long version: it's easier for most people to fudge through something they vaguely remember doing by pictures than it is for them to memorize a set of arcane terminal they vaguely remember. People who do things other than program and learn Linux inside and out have all sorts of other random esoteric knowledge buried away, and there's only so much that a single person can keep in their head. These people are called end users, and frankly, if you don't understand why politely asking them to "simply" learn the terminal commands is a mind-numbingly stupid proposition, I seriously recommend staying the hell away from UI design.
Yes, and kids throwing rocks through windows provides work for the glazier, who then buys bread from the baker, who buys shoes from the shoemaker who...
Long story short, you just invented the broken Windows fallacy... congratulations?
Sure, but they also cost a few hundred thousand dollars and require some pretty exotic design features to be able to do that... and even they won't protect somebody who hits a wall head on, let alone another moving vehicle.
If you can afford that kind of safety then more power to you, but engineering that good costs money both to do and to produce.
"Maybe if cops spent less time enforcing laws that 95% of people disagree with (copyright enforcement, speed traps, etc)"
Copyright enforcement? Honestly, I've spoken to a lot of cops, and not once have I heard the word "copyright" come up in description of their work. I'm fairly confident that 99% of police never deal directly with copyright infringement a single time in the whole of their career. What I HAVE heard that they deal with a lot are minor drug offenses (which I, for one, would say are useless) and domestic disturbances (which range from pointless arguments between idiot spouses to serious violence, so it's sort of a mixed bag).
Congratulations, you can willfully misread another persons statement by latching onto any grammatical vagueness. Have a fucking cookie.
GP didn't use any improper wording, you're just being an idiot.
ABP is better if you really just want to hose ads, but NoScript is nice because it castrates drive-by installers and various other nasties as well.
Also, I hold the (apparently unpopular) opinion that advertising is not inherently evil or intrusive, and I'm perfectly happy to have ad-supported pages if it means I don't have to pay for them out of pocket. Granted, NoScript hoses most ads anyway, but i'm OK with the ones it doesn't.
I think, and the GP can correct me if I'm mistaken, his point is that it doesn't work. He seems to be saying that Linspire/Xandros have a business model which is largely broken and unworkable. This would seem to be at least partially borne out by the fact that Linspire has been bought out in the way described.
Maybe you should move out of the Bible belt to somewhere that actually wants to run decent public schools.
I went to public school, and that's not at all what my curriculum sounded like. In fact, I seem to recall that my 10th grade U.S. History teacher was the first person to ever suggest reading Howard Zinn. It came up early in the semester when he was describing how bad the previous textbook had been in terms of pro-Anglo-American bias and hawkishness; he'd apparently tried to instead of merely replacing it with something less bad bring in A People's History and use both and also give us a lesson in finding a reasonable middle ground between extremes. I'm kind of sad he failed.
I also had an economics teacher who, when asked what type of economy he supported, would basically say that if he weren't a highly educated member of the upper middle class who'd been born into reasonable privilege and never really been a part of the underclass, he'd probably be more comfortable describing himself as a Communist, but as it was felt like something of a fraud. I admit my school holds a place on the tail end of a bell curve.
"Also, who reads the comments?"
Well... you, apparently. And I thought nobody ever RTFA, not RTFC.
Hey, if it goes down like SCO, then I'd be all for it.
It was funny the first time around, so I'm sure it would be even funnier the second time around.
Sorry to nitpick a certain line out of an otherwise decent post, but when I read "The few uses of a AI that has not morality are for military [killing] purposes." I shuddered a bit. If there is any one field where a deployed AI absolutely MUST have a sense of morality, it is in the field of killing people and breaking things. I couldn't care less if my toaster is an amoral bastard of a computer, because the worst it can reasonably accomplish is to burn my breakfast.
In fact, I'm troubled by some of the things our military does in training actual humans. The attitude seems to be that a conscience simply gets in the way of killing, and that the ideal soldier is neither interested in nor capable of moral judgments, particularly for their own actions. Taking human life is a very serious moral issue, and the notion of removing the tools to treat it as such from soldiers is actually a very disturbing idea to me.
Oh, fuck off already.
"If you learn of an Apple-Google-Nintendo merger, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and are already dead!"
I'd be very troubled dead or otherwise. I like two of those companies and strongly dislike the third, so I'd be rather pissed.
Yes, damn them for forcing automobiles to not be death traps at a relatively small dollar cost.
Why not bitch that your seat belt restricts your movement while you're at it... we'll just pretend that paralysis isn't such a huge restriction on movement too.
The real reason that India has $3000 cars and we don't is that it simply costs more to manufacture and sell a car here than it does in India, no matter what features or devices are included or required. A single US dollar is simply worth more in India than it is the US.
As for motorcycles... I've known paramedics who just assume any motorcyclist who gets in a crash is likely to be an organ donor by the time they get to the scene. They probably should be illegal on safety grounds, but it's just such an unpopular proposition that it will never fly.
89k/year is the LOW end of middle class?
WTF middle class are you talking about?
Sorry dude, but that's some serious money, and definitely NOT lower middle class. Try closer to 30k/year.
Yeah, but there really needs to be better introduction to the basics. It's very hard to talk new tech with somebody who can't differentiate between files that are on a local (hard) drive, removable media (cd, SD card, thumb drive) and somewhere on the internet.
I work in a 1-hour photo lab, and I shit you not, I've heard of people insisting that the pictures are "right on their computers" only to find out that they are, in fact, on some internet photo site. Then they usually have the gall to yell at my coworkers and I for making everything so difficult and giving them incorrect information, rather than owning the fact that we gave them the correct answer for the information THEY provided, which was (charitaBly described as) faulty, and that if they had half of a clue what was going on with their own stuff the problem likely would have never come up in the first place.
I'd much rather explain to somebody what Linux is and why it's awesome to a person who can successfully store and retrieve documents from a thumb drive on multiple computers than have to explain why a CD-ROM drive can't burn a CD to somebody purporting to be tech savvy.
You really want /.ers in that getup? Really?
The exception that proves the rule. Sony got behind the one that was worse for the consumer and finally won one.
I think Sony must have sent some of their upper management to the Microsoft/Big Oil/Ma Bell School of Ungodly Profit... conventional wisdom says that pissing off paying customers and then charging them extra for the "privilege" will lead to failure, but the SoUP teaches that such a tactic will, in fact, lead to otherwise impossible success.
Of course, if they want their doctorates in screwing people over they'll still have to go to the Steve Jobs School of Making People Think Your Overpriced Crap Will Actually Make Them Cool.