I'm withholding judgment until I read Chomsky's thoughts on this (always a solid analysis whenever there's a claimed breakthrough in linguistics). I'm not sure how much weight to place on conclusions drawn from computational analysis of phonemes.
Anyone know if this can have a residual effect on the way the WikiLeaks bank data might be handled when that goes public? Does this ruling give WikiLeaks a little more breathing room? And, for that matter, what about the HBGary data?
...for a tech corporation on the way out. Make everything look fine and dandy in the short term by filling your coffers in any way possible (in this case, Microsoft's doing the pumping). Make a big announcement about some new product and/or "partnership". When the product bombs, as it will (Microsoft's underwhelming OS, bad rep in this market, limited app store, and ideological idiocy in regard to F/OSS), Nokia's new CEO and all his buddies will jump ship. Nokia's share of the market will rapidly decline, and Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo will go into the same dustbin as OS/2. The Microsoft parasite will then find another host to attach itself to, if it can.
We all knew making Symbian F/OSS was a last-ditch effort to make Symbian competitive for the future conflict with the rising Android, and that MeeGo didn't seem to be going anywhere. The press criticism of these OS's, from the same sources that loved the Nokia N900 (running Maemo) so much, basically amounts to "Symbian is soooo 90's and MaeMeego is not Android". What Nokia could have done is challenge that situation...they still have a helluva large chunk of the smartphone market. If Meego development, or updating Symbian to look more 2012, was really gonna dig into their pockets so much, then go with Android and be done with it. Windows Phone 7 is the Zune of cellphones. No one wants a Microsoft gadget now that the other options are so slick; if nothing else, Microsoft can't compete with the hysteria over Apple and Google brands.
Microsoft shipped somewhere between 1.5-2 million units of WP7, but that's not units sold and, if I remember correctly, a hundred thousand or so of those were given to Microsoft employees/partners. The number of handsets activated must be dismal for MS not to want to talk about it. In the same quarter, Nokia shipped 5 million Symbian 3 devices (on top of how ever many Meego devices they shipped). How is this a "partnership" again? MS is just riding the Nokia train as long as it can before it crashes into Android's foot.
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
Watchmen was extremely disappointing for a number of reasons. As an Alan Moore fan who reread Watchmen compulsively (didn't we all?:P ), it was a bad experience.
The good: The movie started well, especially visually. The camera work was consciously mimicking the comics, and there were some pretty clever ways of going over the backstory without hitting the audience over the head with it. Also, the soundtrack was badass.
The bad: Dialogue directly lifted from the comic was stiff and sometimes out-of-place without the correct context of scenes missing from the movie. The pacing was awful, and the scenes were seemingly cherry-picked from the comic and strung together.
The ugly: The silly CG Dr. Manhattan.
There's more to say, but I've admittedly wiped much of the movie from memory. It was bad as a solitary piece of art, and it was bad as an adaptation of the comic. The source material deserved better treatment and so did the audience.
Go Groningen! Best city in the Netherlands!
Er gaat niets boven Groningen!
(There is nothing better than (litt. above, latt/long-joke combined with language pun) Groningen!)
"There were times when it had a bad odour, like in the seventh month," he said. "That's when I threw it in the freezer and magically when it came out it was odourless." ^ that's a cop-out, and it ruins the results. Not that it's much of an experiment anyway.
It was a good strategy when there was no strong alternative to windows, but it is much too late to squeeze now.
MS gambled that pirated windows would keep any competition down until IP laws favoring US were adopted in china.
Any pressure applied now would just shift chinese users to linux, which would have worldwide consequences for MS and their partners.
I think its just being used as a bargaining chip.
My thoughts exactly...but what kind of bargaining chip could it possibly be?! The Chinese must be laughing at it.
Bill Gates, 1998: "About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-212942.html
Steve Ballmer, 2001: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works." "Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times" (1 June 2001) Chicago Sun Times
Barack Obama, 2011: "So we were just in a meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their estimate is that only one customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in China. And so can we get better enforcement, since that is an area where America excels -- intellectual property and high-value added products and services." http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/19/press-conference-president-obama-and-president-hu-peoples-republic-china
Microsoft wants hegemony in China over free (and freedom-respecting) options like GNU/Linux. It has always viewed piracy as a way to achieve this goal, but it doesn't have any real plan to turn those pirated copies of Windows and MS Office into revenue. Are they changing strategies and trying to muscle China now? Or is the U.S. gov't playing hardball for its own reasons? Or is it all just bullshit sabre-rattling? A real crackdown on Windows bootlegging would almost certainly make GNU/Linux the dominant platform in China. Parts of the Chinese gov't have pushed the Red Flag Linux distro in the past (specifically to avoid Windows licensing costs in Internet cafes), and there has been plenty of talk about the arrogance of Microsoft and the West, along with fears of potential backdoors in Windows. I'm sure the Chinese would prefer to be distributing a homegrown distro rather than having to pay up when Microsoft and the U.S. gov't come to collect.
...apparently the pre-Abine version of TACO has been forked as Beef TACO, so I'm giving it a second chance on this machine...hopefully it doesn't ever get updated with the Abine crapola.
Too bad TACO/Abine had a release in June that was ridiculously bloated and annoying. I got a dozen or so e-mails/phone calls/IMs in the days the update went through, and I told everyone whose comp I had recommended/installed it on to get rid of it. There's no reason to trust that it won't happen again. As far as trustworthy ad-blockers go, I'd add Privacy Plus, Optimize Google (formerly Customize Google), and Facebook Beacon Blocker (although I don't know if Beacon is defunct or not, and this add-on hasn't been updated recently).
If I say CSS, those who work in video and broadcasting will think Content Scramble System, those who work with websites will think Cascading Style Sheets, others will probably have yet another meaning for it.
You mean like Cross Site Scripting or, um...Corn Syrup Solids? YMMV:P
I'm surprised I don't see more on/.; baseball depends heavily on a very controlled environment (batter vs pitcher) and is accessible to extensive statistical analysis. For those interested, I recommend Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Think Factory, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and the writings of Bill James, the great modern popularizer of the statistical analysis of baseball (I think of him as the Bruce Schneier of baseball -- very insightful, clear analysis).
I can't think of any open source project where it was completely community designed/programmed from the beginning. Most communities don't care enough to do that, bicker too much to do that, would have way too many different ideas to do that, etc.
I can be corrected, of course... but aren't most open-source projects started with just a couple people?
There are certainly a lot of complications with community development and all projects do things a little differently. Even if development was something like VLC (where the majority of changes come from developers at the same university in France), you can have a loose meritocracy where people work their way into the development process by virtue of the quality of their code. All you have to do is have the source code available in a repository from the beginning, and then you try to figure things out as time goes on. How you organize depends on how much interest there is in your project, but I view a project like this as software activism and I think it needs to be handled accordingly; not with the "cathedral" model. As such, I've been awaiting the release of this code with baited breath.
This isn't a symptom of closed or open development model. This is a symptom of young, inexperienced programmers who, frankly, it seems don't really even care about the security holes as much. Sounds kinda like Facebook?
This project was a response to a call to arms by Eben Moglen, and has received so much attention because of his influence as well as others associated with the FSF, SFLC, ISOC-NY, etc. To be fair, this is an alpha release. But to people like me who were waiting for months for this code to become available, it's a bit of a disappointment. I was planning on using at least pieces of it for a project I call Foojbook, with similar aims, and maybe I still will. But there's definitely cause for concern.
Maybe the "community" could have helped, but I didn't see any highly experienced and wise open source programmers begging to spend their time (for free) programming this... I'd assume most of them have other things on their list of things to do, and an even longer list of things they want to do eventually. Diaspora, a Facebook-ish application that appeals to young people, probably isn't high on either of those lists:)
There were quite a few people who wanted to work on this project, even before it was called Diaspora. I was one of those people, although I can't claim to be highly experienced or wise. Interest was very high in Diaspora, and still is. The Diaspora crew has done some great work; however, it seems like this was managed way too much like a young startup, and now we'll see what the result is with the code available to all.
I respect what's been done so far with Diaspora, but for all the hype and money poured into this project, this is a bit embarrassing. To me, it looks like a byproduct of a closed development model with a small team...I'm glad there can be community participation on the project now but I don't understand why the community wasn't involved in the beginning.
I wouldn't be surprised if the title was also an offhanded swipe at Russell, since the author is ultra religious and everybody knows Russell's views on religion. Not that they had anything to do with his work in mathematics.
Maybe I should start work on "Über Mega Supercool Principia Mathematica" instead of spending so much time on/.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm withholding judgment until I read Chomsky's thoughts on this (always a solid analysis whenever there's a claimed breakthrough in linguistics). I'm not sure how much weight to place on conclusions drawn from computational analysis of phonemes.
Anyone know if this can have a residual effect on the way the WikiLeaks bank data might be handled when that goes public? Does this ruling give WikiLeaks a little more breathing room? And, for that matter, what about the HBGary data?
...for a tech corporation on the way out. Make everything look fine and dandy in the short term by filling your coffers in any way possible (in this case, Microsoft's doing the pumping). Make a big announcement about some new product and/or "partnership". When the product bombs, as it will (Microsoft's underwhelming OS, bad rep in this market, limited app store, and ideological idiocy in regard to F/OSS), Nokia's new CEO and all his buddies will jump ship. Nokia's share of the market will rapidly decline, and Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo will go into the same dustbin as OS/2. The Microsoft parasite will then find another host to attach itself to, if it can.
We all knew making Symbian F/OSS was a last-ditch effort to make Symbian competitive for the future conflict with the rising Android, and that MeeGo didn't seem to be going anywhere. The press criticism of these OS's, from the same sources that loved the Nokia N900 (running Maemo) so much, basically amounts to "Symbian is soooo 90's and MaeMeego is not Android". What Nokia could have done is challenge that situation...they still have a helluva large chunk of the smartphone market. If Meego development, or updating Symbian to look more 2012, was really gonna dig into their pockets so much, then go with Android and be done with it. Windows Phone 7 is the Zune of cellphones. No one wants a Microsoft gadget now that the other options are so slick; if nothing else, Microsoft can't compete with the hysteria over Apple and Google brands.
Microsoft shipped somewhere between 1.5-2 million units of WP7, but that's not units sold and, if I remember correctly, a hundred thousand or so of those were given to Microsoft employees/partners. The number of handsets activated must be dismal for MS not to want to talk about it. In the same quarter, Nokia shipped 5 million Symbian 3 devices (on top of how ever many Meego devices they shipped). How is this a "partnership" again? MS is just riding the Nokia train as long as it can before it crashes into Android's foot.
Also, don't mod me down as a troll for giving my opinion. The damn summary gives an opinion about the movie, /. can't expect us not to comment on it.
The most frustrating part of this is that Watchmen was actually *good*.
Watchmen was extremely disappointing for a number of reasons. As an Alan Moore fan who reread Watchmen compulsively (didn't we all? :P ), it was a bad experience.
The good: The movie started well, especially visually. The camera work was consciously mimicking the comics, and there were some pretty clever ways of going over the backstory without hitting the audience over the head with it. Also, the soundtrack was badass.
The bad: Dialogue directly lifted from the comic was stiff and sometimes out-of-place without the correct context of scenes missing from the movie. The pacing was awful, and the scenes were seemingly cherry-picked from the comic and strung together.
The ugly: The silly CG Dr. Manhattan.
There's more to say, but I've admittedly wiped much of the movie from memory. It was bad as a solitary piece of art, and it was bad as an adaptation of the comic. The source material deserved better treatment and so did the audience.
Go Groningen! Best city in the Netherlands! Er gaat niets boven Groningen! (There is nothing better than (litt. above, latt/long-joke combined with language pun) Groningen!)
But what is that in Gronings?
"There were times when it had a bad odour, like in the seventh month," he said. "That's when I threw it in the freezer and magically when it came out it was odourless."
^ that's a cop-out, and it ruins the results. Not that it's much of an experiment anyway.
It was a good strategy when there was no strong alternative to windows, but it is much too late to squeeze now. MS gambled that pirated windows would keep any competition down until IP laws favoring US were adopted in china. Any pressure applied now would just shift chinese users to linux, which would have worldwide consequences for MS and their partners.
I think its just being used as a bargaining chip.
My thoughts exactly...but what kind of bargaining chip could it possibly be?! The Chinese must be laughing at it.
Bill Gates, 1998: "About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-212942.html
Bill Gates, 2007: "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not."
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article2098235.ece
Steve Ballmer, 2001: "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works."
"Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times" (1 June 2001) Chicago Sun Times
Barack Obama, 2011: "So we were just in a meeting with business leaders, and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft pointed out that their estimate is that only one customer in every 10 of their products is actually paying for it in China. And so can we get better enforcement, since that is an area where America excels -- intellectual property and high-value added products and services."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/19/press-conference-president-obama-and-president-hu-peoples-republic-china
The numbers, 2009: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/software-piracy-in-china/
Microsoft wants hegemony in China over free (and freedom-respecting) options like GNU/Linux. It has always viewed piracy as a way to achieve this goal, but it doesn't have any real plan to turn those pirated copies of Windows and MS Office into revenue. Are they changing strategies and trying to muscle China now? Or is the U.S. gov't playing hardball for its own reasons? Or is it all just bullshit sabre-rattling? A real crackdown on Windows bootlegging would almost certainly make GNU/Linux the dominant platform in China. Parts of the Chinese gov't have pushed the Red Flag Linux distro in the past (specifically to avoid Windows licensing costs in Internet cafes), and there has been plenty of talk about the arrogance of Microsoft and the West, along with fears of potential backdoors in Windows. I'm sure the Chinese would prefer to be distributing a homegrown distro rather than having to pay up when Microsoft and the U.S. gov't come to collect.
It's not spectacular, but I have some basic classroom materials up here: http://seandiggity.dreamhosters.com/cll
...apparently the pre-Abine version of TACO has been forked as Beef TACO, so I'm giving it a second chance on this machine...hopefully it doesn't ever get updated with the Abine crapola.
Noscript, Taco with Abine, BetterPrivacy.
Too bad TACO/Abine had a release in June that was ridiculously bloated and annoying. I got a dozen or so e-mails/phone calls/IMs in the days the update went through, and I told everyone whose comp I had recommended/installed it on to get rid of it. There's no reason to trust that it won't happen again. As far as trustworthy ad-blockers go, I'd add Privacy Plus, Optimize Google (formerly Customize Google), and Facebook Beacon Blocker (although I don't know if Beacon is defunct or not, and this add-on hasn't been updated recently).
How does it save gas when you have to drive back home anyway?
Not everyone drives, especially in cities.
If I say CSS, those who work in video and broadcasting will think Content Scramble System, those who work with websites will think Cascading Style Sheets, others will probably have yet another meaning for it.
You mean like Cross Site Scripting or, um...Corn Syrup Solids? YMMV :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nigRT2KmCE
I'm surprised I don't see more on /.; baseball depends heavily on a very controlled environment (batter vs pitcher) and is accessible to extensive statistical analysis. For those interested, I recommend Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Think Factory, the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), and the writings of Bill James, the great modern popularizer of the statistical analysis of baseball (I think of him as the Bruce Schneier of baseball -- very insightful, clear analysis).
/. has enough problems, it doesn't need to become Professor Frink's crew hanging out in the back of Moe's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoneyBART
...everyone cared so much about the Banksy couch gag that no one watched the episode :P
^
Sensationalism. Trolling. Flamebait.
Welcome to the machine.
Slashdot comments are being posted at an enormous rate. If this trend continues, we'll need at least two Cowboy Neals to power that machine by 2030.
You might be interested in Apache Shindig.
I can't think of any open source project where it was completely community designed/programmed from the beginning. Most communities don't care enough to do that, bicker too much to do that, would have way too many different ideas to do that, etc. I can be corrected, of course... but aren't most open-source projects started with just a couple people?
There are certainly a lot of complications with community development and all projects do things a little differently. Even if development was something like VLC (where the majority of changes come from developers at the same university in France), you can have a loose meritocracy where people work their way into the development process by virtue of the quality of their code. All you have to do is have the source code available in a repository from the beginning, and then you try to figure things out as time goes on. How you organize depends on how much interest there is in your project, but I view a project like this as software activism and I think it needs to be handled accordingly; not with the "cathedral" model. As such, I've been awaiting the release of this code with baited breath.
This isn't a symptom of closed or open development model. This is a symptom of young, inexperienced programmers who, frankly, it seems don't really even care about the security holes as much. Sounds kinda like Facebook?
This project was a response to a call to arms by Eben Moglen, and has received so much attention because of his influence as well as others associated with the FSF, SFLC, ISOC-NY, etc. To be fair, this is an alpha release. But to people like me who were waiting for months for this code to become available, it's a bit of a disappointment. I was planning on using at least pieces of it for a project I call Foojbook, with similar aims, and maybe I still will. But there's definitely cause for concern.
Maybe the "community" could have helped, but I didn't see any highly experienced and wise open source programmers begging to spend their time (for free) programming this... I'd assume most of them have other things on their list of things to do, and an even longer list of things they want to do eventually. Diaspora, a Facebook-ish application that appeals to young people, probably isn't high on either of those lists :)
There were quite a few people who wanted to work on this project, even before it was called Diaspora. I was one of those people, although I can't claim to be highly experienced or wise. Interest was very high in Diaspora, and still is. The Diaspora crew has done some great work; however, it seems like this was managed way too much like a young startup, and now we'll see what the result is with the code available to all.
I respect what's been done so far with Diaspora, but for all the hype and money poured into this project, this is a bit embarrassing. To me, it looks like a byproduct of a closed development model with a small team...I'm glad there can be community participation on the project now but I don't understand why the community wasn't involved in the beginning.
I don't know whether I love or hate the fact that you're modded "3, Informative" right now.
I wouldn't be surprised if the title was also an offhanded swipe at Russell, since the author is ultra religious and everybody knows Russell's views on religion. Not that they had anything to do with his work in mathematics.
/.
Maybe I should start work on "Über Mega Supercool Principia Mathematica" instead of spending so much time on
...on a jailbroken iPhone :)
...if he had been wearing that Incredible Hulk tie the media loved so much.
The only bright side to all this is that Irish babies are, in fact, delicious.
I hate to explain a good joke, but I know someone's gonna ask you what the hell you mean by that.