"What car should I buy?" "You will buy a Ford." "Will?! I hate those! You know, Found On Road Dead." "No. You WILL buy a Ford." "Why?" "Because you will be arrested for buying anything else." "What does THAT mean?" "You are on Main Street, 734 Main or thereabouts within a 100 foot margin, near the Walmart block. Authorities have been alerted that if your credit card shows any other purchase of a motor vehicle other than Ford, you will be deemed a terrorist and treated accordingly. Have a nice day!"
Okay, in the spirit of discussion, let's try a counter-view
What happens if a user wants to "relax"? I'm still on XP because as far back as the MS "Longhorn" previews in 2004 to a fighting edge in 2009, XP was the workhorse, the OS that just got $hit done while MS fiddled with Vista. Sorry, I'll live with crap bugs in an App, but not an OS. So currently Win7 looks legit, sure, but I need more perspective than that. I need to know what's beyond Win8 Metro-iOS Wannabe. I need to see what Win9 becomes.
Back to Ubuntu. I got burned by Ubuntu TWICE, (with no data risk, fortunately just testing!) once with what later became a known bug in Dapper Drake in 2006, and one last year with whatever-damn-distro-year it was, my test machine was doing fine until one of the new releases completely melted it and it refused to boot. Nope. NOT HAVING THAT on anything resembling a "production" machine. That was the end of Ubuntu for me. Why can't they just do "updates that work" like (gasp, wait for it) MS? "Service Pack 1,2,3" are basically seamless updates to the XP core, and yes, it basically Just Works.
I refuse to remotely back up my data and re-install every six months because the Ubuntu Updater can't competently update between versions.
Maybe there needs to be a compromise, like one of those "Standard Install" / "Custom Install" division lines.
I am right in the zone to be a low end admin on my Win box. I'm moderately smart about knowing what I am installing if it looks like a reputable source, and I know to almost-always click "custom" install to keep unchecking the "install random toolbars". (Mostly - Internet Explorer has acquired a couple new ones, but FF is my daily browser.)
So sorry, with a reasonably competent user and 2 layers of malware protection, I don't want to click UAC buttons all day because I install 40 pieces of shareware per month from indie devs who didn't pay/whatever to get "certified". If it's a really nasty trojan I have to trust my AV to catch it, and so far I am at only like 97-3 on my guesses.
Isn't raw Debian supposed to be Free-Software-Holy as in theory, but missing a bunch of day to day drivers and stuff? While I think I'm stuck on Windows because of the zillion mini-apps I downloaded this year, I keep eyeing Mint with xfce as the underdog distro to move to - most of the Debian Goodness, but a few (gasp! horror) "blobs" that help Just Make Things Work, plus I keep hearing xfce is one of the better UI's for Ex-Windows users.
(Sorry, what's so hard about Right-Click/New/Make new folder or document type? None of the UI's I tried got that right!)
Also, I got burned twice by Ubuntu, but I keep hearing that Raw Debian while upstream-pure requires all kinds of installs that terrified newbies aren't ready to handle. I wan'na support the philosophy, not run a rigorously pure OS! Gimme a training wheel blob so I can use it today!
This is my attempt to do some rough prelim research to have a strategy on hand when it DOES die. I consider myself fortunate that my custom built comp is going on 7 years now, that's pretty good for the life of a comp. Meanwhile in OS land, I'm seeing all the long brewing warnings of XP fading from support. And slow bits of feature-support are being nudged from XP.
That's why I don't trust Win 8 Metro, it's MS's version of Negative-Tick -> Positive Tock, my emergency plan is Win7 because at work I had the chance to thoroughly pound it and maybe excepting whatever weird DRM horror stories were going on with Vista back in the day, it will do. But since I totally don't trust Metro, and given MS's Now Now Now marketing, it feels at risk to be another Zune, I want to see what the Post Win-8-Metro fallout becomes, and that's about as good as I'll get. By then it will be some 2013, and I'll admit with anyone that's about time to get serious preparing for a successor path. I have a good chance of making it - my buddy who built this comp urged me to spend about another $300 in "invisible quality components" to avoid the cheap fail points known on the Dell/other Price-Slicer-Specials, and basically I'm satisfied. Lemme squeak another 2 years out of this beast and then I'll be fairly satisfied.... But I DO need that 2 years perspective, I'm so feeling like on the Early-Zune Whitewash, I can't see what lies beyond Win-8 yet.
It's a nice principle, but lots of recent precedents (East Texas anyone?) are weakening that defense in favor of the trolls.
It might be interesting if they applied that to Copyright too.
Day 1: Guy starts cute little remake of a 2nd tier 60's SF story. Nothing happens Day 485: Guy finally gets viral and suddenly NOW the publishing company decides there's money to be had.
You have a +1 Funny phrasing, but I gotta believe the company that spawned its own Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan Movie had to have been innovative enough to have a few real doozy patents. But ya know? Of all the scuttle I remember about them, it wasn't vicious IP wars. We bitched about their Coaster Marketing, and Eternal September, sure, but Patent Wars? Surprisingly little that I heard of. (Maybe I didn't hear much, but nothing on today's scale.)
Okay, so I have been planning a long term computer strategy since 2006 when I got a decent first gen Quad Core.
So hopefully if I can hold out that long, I should wait for the Tock - Haswell architecture, at the same time waiting for the Post-Win8-Metro consensus, which might just be either a Tock for Microsoft or maybe even a paradigm explosion into Apple and/or Linux if by some Mayan Miracle Microsoft implodes as a company. Or, if there is no "Windows 9", then I'll have to think about what to do then.
To me, that's at least part of the "educational game". If you were really given carte blanche on topics, then chops to you for writing about the role of malnutrition in Ancient Egypt or something. No matter how exhausted, a Teacher-person looked at it, used their gut guess to decide it wasn't total spam, and gave it a grade.
Being graded by Robo-Graders just thunders "Belly of the Beast" and is so dehumanizing that it begs the smarter students to play Beat the System with the funniest paper to win. Mimsy were the Borogoves, or that Isaac Asimov Thimotiline (sp?) joke story-paper 50 years ago. That's if the student even bothers. Or, in the Business School (In the dream land if I had a Rich Dad) I'd purposely use one of the Essay Generator programs, submit that, wait for it to be kicked, then write a mock paper on the "Corporate CEO approach" and about how to "outsource" the paper. Then a third one about "Litigation as a Business Tool" with an attached lawsuit. "Isn't this how it's done in the real world?" "Uh.... yes?" "Good. Now Sudo give me my A."
Nah, they need to run their engine the other way and tailor it up for smart guys like you. How do I know? Anyone who wheels off "infer someone's cognitive level"... is way above "How Is Babby Formed".
I did a hobby-experiment with this - just set the Fleschâ"Kincaid Grade Level greater than 4th grade.
I thought the whole point of the GPL was a double barrelled barrelled move beyond copyright.
A. Small project to Small project - You use/"borrow" my song, I get to copy your resulting music mashup video from Youtube.
B. Vs. Big Companies: "Oh, you can use my component if you're going to release the whole package as also GPL free to copy. But no taking my free component then mashing it into your closed proprietary result and burying it under IP laws!"
Last I knew the "pure" problem was "Hard" because it counted minor variants that were off by a mile as "invalid answers". Whereas the "Approximations" came out really fast because in the real world you didn't care about an extra time.
Same thing here, while the classic problem bitches about the extra mile or not, in the real world, if you have one road with crushing traffic, many other solutions become better even if they are 5 miles longer. That's fairly true in my area.
Science/Math/Engineering are supposed to be the areas that relatively pure knowledge reign. I know, Academic backbiting and all, but 30 years ago (maybe?) Science was all about "Geeks, eew, who wants to talk to them?" but if they wheeled off "Calculations" they weren't far off. Your classic fun example was Doc Brown from Back to the Future. You called the Theory Total Bonkers, but you wrote that off as Mad-Science-Crazy, NOT Cheating.
I feel the difference today - blatantly biased reports, ludicrous sample sizes, all kinds of Semi Science (maybe good ideas in there) being smashed out for 1 day blog article news.
The best explanation I ever saw for this is that with the advent of the photograph, art felt threatened. What was the point of spending a month or even a year painting realism if you could just photograph it? I know, it's different for the high end fine arts, but just to want to know what Edgar A. Poe looked like, it used to be a ritual to try to commission a portrait. Now it's just "Click on a phone camera".
So then with one of its original purposes swept away, Art has ever since moved out of Realism and into Interpretation.
The problem of course, is that poorly done modern art is sometimes indistinguishable from the really good stuff - it risks elitist obscurism.
Nice try, full credit, but to play... uh... something-advocate to you, let's try a counter theory.
We've seen a real shift in law towards Corporatism/AggressionWins/ whatever.
So arguments that should be thrown out under "Old School" law theory are suddenly (last 7 years ish?) winning actual big ticket cases. So Oracle bought Sun with the sole purpose of the lawsuit. They went for the aggressive approach, because if it landed they would have secured a gorgeous payday and smaller paydays for a decade. *There is no penalty yet for over-reaching*. So why not go for a "X Billion Dollar" lawsuit if there's no downside at all? "Oh well, that didn't work. Next Time Gadget, Next Time!"
So then for once we got a smart judge who wasn't in East Texas (I think! - Too lazy, sorry!), so this case might actually be tried under "legit law". So then the correct thing happened, Oracle's crap patents got smashed. Oracle's got like 2-3 real doozy tricks left or they wouldn't still be in the case, but I'll say they didn't go for a 7th level 12 ply SuperTheory like yours - they swung for the easy home run and missed. On another judge it might have worked.
Right, can we please assume that at this level they stop being stupid?
I posted this opinion above too, it felt like a "sneak shot slam" question, "torpedo your case on day 1" because of course we know that Oracle has been the aggressor but a facile answer on day 1 like "Of course this is valuable property" leads to strange disasters 7 weeks later and 19 threads of interlocked Legal Logic.
Nah, this is a world class lawsuit, it's one of those lawyer tricks, try to get a sneak shot in so fast the other side doesn't realize they torpedoed their case on day 1.
"'Don't Know" means that of course Oracle wants every last dollar, but in Legal Speak saying "yes it is a valuable/priceless property" leads to strange backfires 7 weeks of presentations later.
Trying for both a +1 Funny and +1 Underrated, here goes!
I just realized that Corporations are "People" that can buy other "People".
So does Oracle Beat its concubine wife Sun?
Topic Change Alert:
This is in some ways some of the most exciting times for law, (even if some of it is abused horribly), simply because you just didn't cases like some of the modern ones Back In The Day when Law Was Law.
Beautiful Quote: Judge Alsup: "...no Googling the case, although I probably shouldn't use that term here."
Elliptical Translation: "No using the service by the Defendant to gain unprecendented access to information to the case about the Defendant."
Slashdot Mirror
Won't we be able to read these on our desktops too?
So wouldn't that be at least two platforms?
Sarcastic/Satirical Futuristic Surrealism ahead:
"What car should I buy?"
"You will buy a Ford."
"Will?! I hate those! You know, Found On Road Dead."
"No. You WILL buy a Ford."
"Why?"
"Because you will be arrested for buying anything else."
"What does THAT mean?"
"You are on Main Street, 734 Main or thereabouts within a 100 foot margin, near the Walmart block. Authorities have been alerted that if your credit card shows any other purchase of a motor vehicle other than Ford, you will be deemed a terrorist and treated accordingly. Have a nice day!"
Okay, in the spirit of discussion, let's try a counter-view
What happens if a user wants to "relax"? I'm still on XP because as far back as the MS "Longhorn" previews in 2004 to a fighting edge in 2009, XP was the workhorse, the OS that just got $hit done while MS fiddled with Vista. Sorry, I'll live with crap bugs in an App, but not an OS. So currently Win7 looks legit, sure, but I need more perspective than that. I need to know what's beyond Win8 Metro-iOS Wannabe. I need to see what Win9 becomes.
Back to Ubuntu. I got burned by Ubuntu TWICE, (with no data risk, fortunately just testing!) once with what later became a known bug in Dapper Drake in 2006, and one last year with whatever-damn-distro-year it was, my test machine was doing fine until one of the new releases completely melted it and it refused to boot. Nope. NOT HAVING THAT on anything resembling a "production" machine. That was the end of Ubuntu for me. Why can't they just do "updates that work" like (gasp, wait for it) MS? "Service Pack 1,2,3" are basically seamless updates to the XP core, and yes, it basically Just Works.
I refuse to remotely back up my data and re-install every six months because the Ubuntu Updater can't competently update between versions.
Maybe there needs to be a compromise, like one of those "Standard Install" / "Custom Install" division lines.
I am right in the zone to be a low end admin on my Win box. I'm moderately smart about knowing what I am installing if it looks like a reputable source, and I know to almost-always click "custom" install to keep unchecking the "install random toolbars". (Mostly - Internet Explorer has acquired a couple new ones, but FF is my daily browser.)
So sorry, with a reasonably competent user and 2 layers of malware protection, I don't want to click UAC buttons all day because I install 40 pieces of shareware per month from indie devs who didn't pay/whatever to get "certified". If it's a really nasty trojan I have to trust my AV to catch it, and so far I am at only like 97-3 on my guesses.
Scared wannabe-Linux-user here -
Isn't raw Debian supposed to be Free-Software-Holy as in theory, but missing a bunch of day to day drivers and stuff? While I think I'm stuck on Windows because of the zillion mini-apps I downloaded this year, I keep eyeing Mint with xfce as the underdog distro to move to - most of the Debian Goodness, but a few (gasp! horror) "blobs" that help Just Make Things Work, plus I keep hearing xfce is one of the better UI's for Ex-Windows users.
(Sorry, what's so hard about Right-Click/New/Make new folder or document type? None of the UI's I tried got that right!)
Also, I got burned twice by Ubuntu, but I keep hearing that Raw Debian while upstream-pure requires all kinds of installs that terrified newbies aren't ready to handle. I wan'na support the philosophy, not run a rigorously pure OS! Gimme a training wheel blob so I can use it today!
Oh, it's still doing the job.
This is my attempt to do some rough prelim research to have a strategy on hand when it DOES die. I consider myself fortunate that my custom built comp is going on 7 years now, that's pretty good for the life of a comp. Meanwhile in OS land, I'm seeing all the long brewing warnings of XP fading from support. And slow bits of feature-support are being nudged from XP.
That's why I don't trust Win 8 Metro, it's MS's version of Negative-Tick -> Positive Tock, my emergency plan is Win7 because at work I had the chance to thoroughly pound it and maybe excepting whatever weird DRM horror stories were going on with Vista back in the day, it will do. But since I totally don't trust Metro, and given MS's Now Now Now marketing, it feels at risk to be another Zune, I want to see what the Post Win-8-Metro fallout becomes, and that's about as good as I'll get. By then it will be some 2013, and I'll admit with anyone that's about time to get serious preparing for a successor path. I have a good chance of making it - my buddy who built this comp urged me to spend about another $300 in "invisible quality components" to avoid the cheap fail points known on the Dell/other Price-Slicer-Specials, and basically I'm satisfied. Lemme squeak another 2 years out of this beast and then I'll be fairly satisfied. ... But I DO need that 2 years perspective, I'm so feeling like on the Early-Zune Whitewash, I can't see what lies beyond Win-8 yet.
Will Java drop even further because of the whole Oracle mess?
I guess I am surprised that Python is ahead of C#, and that Ruby is so low given its underground buzz.
Ooh, a nice argument.
I'm not being cynical - "better a Filipino speak fluent English than Chinese" - it's a nice theory.
All that we have to navigate is the local tactics of "Filipinos work for $2 an hour" long enough for those boats to rise on the tide.
It's a VERY tough game.
It's a nice principle, but lots of recent precedents (East Texas anyone?) are weakening that defense in favor of the trolls.
It might be interesting if they applied that to Copyright too.
Day 1: Guy starts cute little remake of a 2nd tier 60's SF story. Nothing happens
Day 485: Guy finally gets viral and suddenly NOW the publishing company decides there's money to be had.
You have a +1 Funny phrasing, but I gotta believe the company that spawned its own Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan Movie had to have been innovative enough to have a few real doozy patents. But ya know? Of all the scuttle I remember about them, it wasn't vicious IP wars. We bitched about their Coaster Marketing, and Eternal September, sure, but Patent Wars? Surprisingly little that I heard of. (Maybe I didn't hear much, but nothing on today's scale.)
Okay, so I have been planning a long term computer strategy since 2006 when I got a decent first gen Quad Core.
So hopefully if I can hold out that long, I should wait for the Tock - Haswell architecture, at the same time waiting for the Post-Win8-Metro consensus, which might just be either a Tock for Microsoft or maybe even a paradigm explosion into Apple and/or Linux if by some Mayan Miracle Microsoft implodes as a company. Or, if there is no "Windows 9", then I'll have to think about what to do then.
I'll reply to you.
To me, that's at least part of the "educational game". If you were really given carte blanche on topics, then chops to you for writing about the role of malnutrition in Ancient Egypt or something. No matter how exhausted, a Teacher-person looked at it, used their gut guess to decide it wasn't total spam, and gave it a grade.
Being graded by Robo-Graders just thunders "Belly of the Beast" and is so dehumanizing that it begs the smarter students to play Beat the System with the funniest paper to win. Mimsy were the Borogoves, or that Isaac Asimov Thimotiline (sp?) joke story-paper 50 years ago. That's if the student even bothers. Or, in the Business School (In the dream land if I had a Rich Dad) I'd purposely use one of the Essay Generator programs, submit that, wait for it to be kicked, then write a mock paper on the "Corporate CEO approach" and about how to "outsource" the paper. Then a third one about "Litigation as a Business Tool" with an attached lawsuit. "Isn't this how it's done in the real world?" "Uh.... yes?" "Good. Now Sudo give me my A."
Nah, they need to run their engine the other way and tailor it up for smart guys like you. How do I know? Anyone who wheels off "infer someone's cognitive level" ... is way above "How Is Babby Formed".
I did a hobby-experiment with this - just set the Fleschâ"Kincaid Grade Level greater than 4th grade.
Watch how fast THAT rules out junk results!
I thought the whole point of the GPL was a double barrelled barrelled move beyond copyright.
A. Small project to Small project - You use/"borrow" my song, I get to copy your resulting music mashup video from Youtube.
B. Vs. Big Companies: "Oh, you can use my component if you're going to release the whole package as also GPL free to copy. But no taking my free component then mashing it into your closed proprietary result and burying it under IP laws!"
Am I close?
It might get easier.
Last I knew the "pure" problem was "Hard" because it counted minor variants that were off by a mile as "invalid answers". Whereas the "Approximations" came out really fast because in the real world you didn't care about an extra time.
Same thing here, while the classic problem bitches about the extra mile or not, in the real world, if you have one road with crushing traffic, many other solutions become better even if they are 5 miles longer. That's fairly true in my area.
I'm replying but Mods, mod him up!
See that other thread about Science Cheating!
We have a classic case here!
(Subset of Activity) proves results!
But the broader activity is not tested! So they should have tested some 100 games, to see if Sparx is special.
It should be different.
Science/Math/Engineering are supposed to be the areas that relatively pure knowledge reign. I know, Academic backbiting and all, but 30 years ago (maybe?) Science was all about "Geeks, eew, who wants to talk to them?" but if they wheeled off "Calculations" they weren't far off. Your classic fun example was Doc Brown from Back to the Future. You called the Theory Total Bonkers, but you wrote that off as Mad-Science-Crazy, NOT Cheating.
I feel the difference today - blatantly biased reports, ludicrous sample sizes, all kinds of Semi Science (maybe good ideas in there) being smashed out for 1 day blog article news.
Nah, this all went to hell in the lawyer zone.
Many quality employees send recommendations to management all the time. It's up to Legal to *REPLY* and say "nice suggestion, we don't need to".
In Verbal Culture companies you get hosed because you are *missing* documentation because no one tells the right people stuff.
Then when $%#$ hits Fans you get questions like "he declined our contract and we never made a new one? WTF?"
The best explanation I ever saw for this is that with the advent of the photograph, art felt threatened. What was the point of spending a month or even a year painting realism if you could just photograph it? I know, it's different for the high end fine arts, but just to want to know what Edgar A. Poe looked like, it used to be a ritual to try to commission a portrait. Now it's just "Click on a phone camera".
So then with one of its original purposes swept away, Art has ever since moved out of Realism and into Interpretation.
The problem of course, is that poorly done modern art is sometimes indistinguishable from the really good stuff - it risks elitist obscurism.
I watched it yesterday and a nice tip is to threaten to make their lives irritating so they can't get an easy win.
Yep, and I bet this was the prepped answer, "say nothing". As posted above, don't sinkhole your case on day 1 with a grand slam question.
Nice try, full credit, but to play ... uh ... something-advocate to you, let's try a counter theory.
We've seen a real shift in law towards Corporatism/AggressionWins/ whatever.
So arguments that should be thrown out under "Old School" law theory are suddenly (last 7 years ish?) winning actual big ticket cases. So Oracle bought Sun with the sole purpose of the lawsuit. They went for the aggressive approach, because if it landed they would have secured a gorgeous payday and smaller paydays for a decade. *There is no penalty yet for over-reaching*. So why not go for a "X Billion Dollar" lawsuit if there's no downside at all? "Oh well, that didn't work. Next Time Gadget, Next Time!"
So then for once we got a smart judge who wasn't in East Texas (I think! - Too lazy, sorry!), so this case might actually be tried under "legit law". So then the correct thing happened, Oracle's crap patents got smashed. Oracle's got like 2-3 real doozy tricks left or they wouldn't still be in the case, but I'll say they didn't go for a 7th level 12 ply SuperTheory like yours - they swung for the easy home run and missed. On another judge it might have worked.
Right, can we please assume that at this level they stop being stupid?
I posted this opinion above too, it felt like a "sneak shot slam" question, "torpedo your case on day 1" because of course we know that Oracle has been the aggressor but a facile answer on day 1 like "Of course this is valuable property" leads to strange disasters 7 weeks later and 19 threads of interlocked Legal Logic.
Nah, this is a world class lawsuit, it's one of those lawyer tricks, try to get a sneak shot in so fast the other side doesn't realize they torpedoed their case on day 1.
"'Don't Know" means that of course Oracle wants every last dollar, but in Legal Speak saying "yes it is a valuable/priceless property" leads to strange backfires 7 weeks of presentations later.
Trying for both a +1 Funny and +1 Underrated, here goes!
I just realized that Corporations are "People" that can buy other "People".
So does Oracle Beat its concubine wife Sun?
Topic Change Alert:
This is in some ways some of the most exciting times for law, (even if some of it is abused horribly), simply because you just didn't cases like some of the modern ones Back In The Day when Law Was Law.
Beautiful Quote: Judge Alsup: "...no Googling the case, although I probably shouldn't use that term here."
Elliptical Translation: "No using the service by the Defendant to gain unprecendented access to information to the case about the Defendant."