One of the reasons I admire the ACLU is that they stick up for the privacy even of insane druggie assholes like Rush Limbaugh. For all those Republicans who think this is some sort of liberal propaganda, keep this up -- in the totalitarian state where the neocon policies are taking us, it won't matter too much what your political affiliations are.
And yet they *don't* intercede on issues that actually affect civil liberties. For instance, the ACLU doesn't oppose smoking bans. If you own a bar in Seattle, you can no longer decide whether or not you want to allow smoking or not, because the Government has removed that civil liberty from you, and the ACLU did nothing about it.
The theory behind the ACLU is fine, but I'd feel a lot better about the organization if it focused on civil liberties issues in a politically neutral way instead of just helping to enforce the liberal viewpoint.
The saddest thing is that as an adult... it isn't that I've been lucky enough to have never encountered a bad cop (because I have been lucky -- I've never met a bad cop -- every cop I've encountered has been both polite and professional)... but it's that I think my experience has been lucky.
But WHY do you think your experience has been lucky? You've only met good cops; what makes you think that there's this huge percentage of bad cops out there abusing the law?
My guess is that it's because when a bad cop does something bad, you see them in the news. That's fair enough, but think about this: when a good cop does something good, do you ever see it in this news? Never!
One of the biggest problems with this nation is that people don't realize that things on the news are *rare*. That's why they're on the news; good events, the kind of thing that happens every single day, don't get reported. The one guy in a million who shoots a suspect without cause does. Without any kind of statistical reporting, if you see a dozen news reports that say cops did bad things, you'll tend to think that the majority of cops are bad. Wrong. If the majority of cops were bad, you wouldn't see it on the news-- you'd see the opposite, that good cops are more newsworthy.
I think the market is more than ready for 'Exercise Games'. We should see some clones coming out pretty soon.
Clones? It sounds to me like WiiFit is just a clone of "Yourself Fitness" that's been out for Xbox for years now. Unless there's more to it than I've seen so far.
If anything, it's a rip-off of Bungie's second FPS, Marathon-- which had the compelling story, multiplayer and modding features of Half-Life before Half-Life 1 even existed. I wouldn't say Valve "ripped-off" Bungie when making Half-Life, but there's obviously influence there and there's no doubt that Marathon is a vastly under-rated title.
This is more flaming Dell, but the principle is the same. Now all we need is an article about how Nintendo is the second-coming of Jesus, and an article about software licenses with 75k of legalese comments, and the day will be complete.
I agree with your general sentiment, and I also agree that this project might be a dead-end. A better approach would have been to take the man-hours spent creating this software and instead use it on proper man-on-the-street usability studies. Grab someone, sit them in front of GIMP, and have them create a greeting card or something. Record it on video and watch it later on, they'll get a lot more information than this automated system can obtain.
My major gripe about the GIMP is that the filters that ship with the software are "destructive."
What I mean is that if you have your layers arranged a certain way, and a certain selection before running the filters, God only knows whether your layers will be the same, or what your selection is when it finishes. (IIRC, some of them would even move windows, change tool settings, etc) Would it have killed them to save that information and restore it when done?
No. Right now Google is getting a lot more credit for conversions than they deserve.
Consider this scenario: I see an ad for an iPod on SomethingAwful.com. Then I see an ad for an iPod for Fark.com. Then I see another ad for an iPod on Slashdot. Hey that looks cool, I think, so I go to buy one. How do I do that? By opening up Google and searching for 'iPod.'
Conversions calculations now give 100% of the credit to the last ad/sponsored search link you saw for that product. So Google gets credit for 100% of that sale, despite the fact that my Google search had virtually nothing to do with my decision to buy an iPod.
Google makes money from serving ads, yes. But right now, Google is vastly over-estimating their value to their clients because the only metric those clients are using to determine their value per dollar. With a more intelligent system, in the example above, Google would only have gotten 1/4th the credit while SomethingAwful.com, Fark.com, and Slashdot.org each got 1/4th the credit as well. If you don't think that affects Google's bottom line, you're crazy... they're going to fight this tooth and nail.
The laws of physics limit the amount of detail an orbiting camera can get. IIRC, the max is about a 2" resolution... and that's a HUGE lens orbiting at the absolute minimum altitude required to stay aloft. In any case, that's not enough to read a license plate, see if a penny on the sidewalk is heads or tails, or recognize a face.
If he doesn't get the reference, he's not going to know what "DBZ" stands for.
It's a cartoon named "Dragonball Z", which has an alien race of superheroes named "Saiyans." I'm not a fan of the show, but when the Saiyans get angry, they start glowing or something and become Super-Saiyans. Thus the pun.
The cartoon was super-popular among people who like really boring, poorly-animated cartoons for a decade. Per usual, since it's a pointless useless topic, there's an extensive Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z
Some people don't have a "few hours" to get things working. Moreover, the only reason it took you a "few hours" is because of the thousands of hours you have learning how computers work and how to write software for them.
My console has never been in the repair shop, and I've never been unable to use my Live account. In fact, I'm quite pleased that I can use the same Live account with both my regular Xbox and my Xbox 360.
For Windows: FoxIt PDF Reader is about 500k and runs about 50,000 times quicker than Adobe Reader. Use it, love it. There's no need to switch your OS just to read a file format-- PDF is an open formet, just use another reader.
That explains why the demand for programmers is higher than its ever been. That explains why Microsoft is desperately raiding universities around the US (and all over the world) for decent candidates. That explains why almost every company is running, relying on, software written in Excel or Access as a past-time of one of the secretaries who was 'good with technical stuff.'
Arguably, we need existing programmers to be of higher caliber, but limiting the NUMBER of programmers is stupid.
Maybe professional certification would help somewhat.
All a certification would do is guarantee ALL programming jobs get outsourced to India instead of just 75% of them. Dumb idea.
Last time I tried it, TeX doesn't render crap on screen, and Steve Jobs' prediction would have come true: if TeX was all there was, there may never have been a computer with real WYSIWYG capability. (Or at least it would be long-delayed.)
More to the point: it's just an illustrative example, not gospel. Pull the stick out of your ass and let one teeny inaccuracy past once in a while so that other readers might focus on the *point* of Jobs' speech, not the stupid, pointless details. Try the forest instead of the trees.
In this case, Microsoft is explicitly reselling a support and update contract. More than 40,000 of those certificates have already been activated, so they will be distributing GPL3 code.
Gah, this thread is going around in circles.
Microsoft is selling the support contract, I get that, I'm not a retard. What I don't get is how the fact that Microsoft is selling it means that Microsoft is the one distributing the code.
If I sell someone a ticket to Hawaii, am *I* the one checking their baggage? No, the airline is. If Best Buy sells me a MacBook, is Best Buy distributing the security update? No, Apple is.
Please don't bother replying to this post if you're just going to restate that Microsoft is selling the vouchers. I know this already.
The transaction is between Microsoft and their customer. Microsoft is just using a third-party (Novell) to provide the service. It's not uncommon.
Ok, but that isn't a counter-example to anything I just said. The transaction was between my fictional sweepstakes company and myself, Apple's just providing the service. But the point is: the service comes FROM Apple. That's true regardless of who the transaction is between, right? Or is there some hidden message to what you just said that's supposed to enlighten me?
Say the transaction is between me and Best Buy. I go into Best Buy and buy a Macbook Pro. Now Apple releases a security update. Why would Best Buy have any responsibility whatsoever for Apple's security update?
Um, is anyone else wondering how the 360 will ever profit given how much money the XBox project has already burned? I would never buy a product which wasn't designed to make money off of me because any alterior motive for a company to give me a product I don't trust. How many thousands of dollars has Microsoft spent on each XBox/360 owner? It's like a rich dork courting an amazing girl - throwing money all over the place for her and not giving a shit that she's using him for $$$. How does this benefit the rich dork? He makes her depend on him and marry him and write a prenumpt to keep her around.
This is a common tactic used to bash the Xbox, and I have a simple response to it:
Why the hell should any consumer care about the profit margins of the products they buy? Seriously, what difference does it make when I buy a toaster whether or not the toaster maker is pulling in a profit or not? This is not even in the top 10,000 things I look for when buying a product, whether it's a game console or anything else.
If you're to the point of arguing that the Xbox is a bad product because that weak-ass reason then just give up, ok? Save us all a bunch of time.
Now more than ever the Microsoft assimilation jokes should be going on but apparently everyone's okay with Microsoft being devious as long as it's in the name of Halo.
And how exactly is Microsoft being devious? They say it costs $400, you go to the store and pay $400 and you have one. I see no scheming or dishonesty there.
Microsoft has done nothing but exploit the weaknesses of capitalism
Really, I thought they were in the business of creating and selling computer software and related hardware. The very fact that the Xbox exists proves that they do more than 'exploit the weaknesses of capitalism.' (I think you were thinking of Enron or perhaps the RIAA when you came up with this little gem of an argument. In fact there are tons of companies that exist only to shuffle paper around and never produce any products, but Microsoft ain't one of them.)
This is why they have their Windows monopoly, their Office monopoly,
It's unthinkable that they might have these monopolies because they had a better product than the competition?
It's because the Slashdot geeks who are supposed to be boycotting this shit and supporting non-evil (yeah, I said evil) alternatives are too busy playing Halo on their 360 or Half-Life on the Windows PC.
Maybe some Slashdot geeks don't think like you do. Again, it's unthinkable that people might independently come to their own opinions instead of entrusting the anonymous coward who unilaterally declares their favorite past-time "evil"!
It doesn't piss me off when Joe-Shmoe-I-don't-know-a-HardDrive-from-HighDefini tion buys a Microsoft product because he's an uniformed consumer. It pisses me off when someone who knows how fucked up Microsoft is buys their products anyway. You make assimilation jokes then jack yourselves in.
It's a free country, I'll buy whatever game system I like. Even if I didn't like my Xbox, I'd half consider buying one now just to spite you-- nothing entertains me more than pissing off geeks like you who can't do anything but engage in spit-flying lectures on how evil Microsoft is.
Also: No I don't make assimilation jokes; I have a better sense of humor than that.
Maybe I'm a retard, and maybe I don't have a mind for legal stuff, but answer me this:
Microsoft is distributing certificates entitling their customers to support and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Fair enough.
When Microsoft customers who're entitled to updates on their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server installs get GPL3 updates, Microsoft will have distributed GPL3 code.
Huh? How does that follow? The updates are coming from SUSE, not Microsoft... right? (I mean, why would Microsoft set up servers to distrbute SUSE's update?)
Let's say I win a free MacBook from a sweepstakes by, I dunno, Company Co. You're saying that when Apple releases a security update for it, from Apple web servers using Apple's software, the update is actually coming from Company Co. Again, I'm certainly no lawyer, but that doesn't make any sense at all to me.
GPL3 includes patent defenses which prevent a distributor suing for patent infringement in the software they're distributing.
Let's assume your second point applies, this third point seems to rely on Microsoft being run by retards escaped from an institution. If distributing GPL3 software would invalidate or harm Microsoft's position, and considering that they (apparently) have control over what gets distrbuted or not, why would they do it? They'd stick with software that's licensed the way they like instead of GPL3 software.
Except you're missing a point that most Linux advocates miss.
Windows and Mac OS are also getting progressively better. The only way Linux could displace either is it was getting better as a much faster rate than either of those, and considering that copy and paste* is still problematic, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
* Yes, yes, give me the big lecture on how it works just fine. Then try to copy a vector image around in Linux. They try copying a spreadsheet cell into a bitmap program in Linux. Then try those same things on Mac OS and Windows. THEN tell me copy and paste works in Linux. Then write me angry posts about how copying a spreadsheet cell into a bitmap program "doesn't need to work" because there's "no possible reason anybody would want to do that."
Slashdot Mirror
One of the reasons I admire the ACLU is that they stick up for the privacy even of insane druggie assholes like Rush Limbaugh. For all those Republicans who think this is some sort of liberal propaganda, keep this up -- in the totalitarian state where the neocon policies are taking us, it won't matter too much what your political affiliations are.
And yet they *don't* intercede on issues that actually affect civil liberties. For instance, the ACLU doesn't oppose smoking bans. If you own a bar in Seattle, you can no longer decide whether or not you want to allow smoking or not, because the Government has removed that civil liberty from you, and the ACLU did nothing about it.
The theory behind the ACLU is fine, but I'd feel a lot better about the organization if it focused on civil liberties issues in a politically neutral way instead of just helping to enforce the liberal viewpoint.
The saddest thing is that as an adult... it isn't that I've been lucky enough to have never encountered a bad cop (because I have been lucky -- I've never met a bad cop -- every cop I've encountered has been both polite and professional)... but it's that I think my experience has been lucky.
But WHY do you think your experience has been lucky? You've only met good cops; what makes you think that there's this huge percentage of bad cops out there abusing the law?
My guess is that it's because when a bad cop does something bad, you see them in the news. That's fair enough, but think about this: when a good cop does something good, do you ever see it in this news? Never!
One of the biggest problems with this nation is that people don't realize that things on the news are *rare*. That's why they're on the news; good events, the kind of thing that happens every single day, don't get reported. The one guy in a million who shoots a suspect without cause does. Without any kind of statistical reporting, if you see a dozen news reports that say cops did bad things, you'll tend to think that the majority of cops are bad. Wrong. If the majority of cops were bad, you wouldn't see it on the news-- you'd see the opposite, that good cops are more newsworthy.
I think the market is more than ready for 'Exercise Games'. We should see some clones coming out pretty soon.
Clones? It sounds to me like WiiFit is just a clone of "Yourself Fitness" that's been out for Xbox for years now. Unless there's more to it than I've seen so far.
In what way is Halo 2 a rip-off of Half-Life?
If anything, it's a rip-off of Bungie's second FPS, Marathon-- which had the compelling story, multiplayer and modding features of Half-Life before Half-Life 1 even existed. I wouldn't say Valve "ripped-off" Bungie when making Half-Life, but there's obviously influence there and there's no doubt that Marathon is a vastly under-rated title.
This is more flaming Dell, but the principle is the same. Now all we need is an article about how Nintendo is the second-coming of Jesus, and an article about software licenses with 75k of legalese comments, and the day will be complete.
Yes, yes, but imagine if those apps were named:
* Deafy
* Retard
* Dumbass
* Drooler
GIMP isn't a bad name because it doesn't describe what the program does, GIMP is a bad name because nobody wants to use gimped software.
I agree with your general sentiment, and I also agree that this project might be a dead-end. A better approach would have been to take the man-hours spent creating this software and instead use it on proper man-on-the-street usability studies. Grab someone, sit them in front of GIMP, and have them create a greeting card or something. Record it on video and watch it later on, they'll get a lot more information than this automated system can obtain.
My major gripe about the GIMP is that the filters that ship with the software are "destructive."
What I mean is that if you have your layers arranged a certain way, and a certain selection before running the filters, God only knows whether your layers will be the same, or what your selection is when it finishes. (IIRC, some of them would even move windows, change tool settings, etc) Would it have killed them to save that information and restore it when done?
No. Right now Google is getting a lot more credit for conversions than they deserve.
Consider this scenario: I see an ad for an iPod on SomethingAwful.com. Then I see an ad for an iPod for Fark.com. Then I see another ad for an iPod on Slashdot. Hey that looks cool, I think, so I go to buy one. How do I do that? By opening up Google and searching for 'iPod.'
Conversions calculations now give 100% of the credit to the last ad/sponsored search link you saw for that product. So Google gets credit for 100% of that sale, despite the fact that my Google search had virtually nothing to do with my decision to buy an iPod.
Google makes money from serving ads, yes. But right now, Google is vastly over-estimating their value to their clients because the only metric those clients are using to determine their value per dollar. With a more intelligent system, in the example above, Google would only have gotten 1/4th the credit while SomethingAwful.com, Fark.com, and Slashdot.org each got 1/4th the credit as well. If you don't think that affects Google's bottom line, you're crazy... they're going to fight this tooth and nail.
"for a decade" was another part of the sentence. So the category is just "people who like really boring, poorly-animated cartoons."
The laws of physics limit the amount of detail an orbiting camera can get. IIRC, the max is about a 2" resolution... and that's a HUGE lens orbiting at the absolute minimum altitude required to stay aloft. In any case, that's not enough to read a license plate, see if a penny on the sidewalk is heads or tails, or recognize a face.
If he doesn't get the reference, he's not going to know what "DBZ" stands for.
It's a cartoon named "Dragonball Z", which has an alien race of superheroes named "Saiyans." I'm not a fan of the show, but when the Saiyans get angry, they start glowing or something and become Super-Saiyans. Thus the pun.
The cartoon was super-popular among people who like really boring, poorly-animated cartoons for a decade. Per usual, since it's a pointless useless topic, there's an extensive Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball_Z
Some people don't have a "few hours" to get things working. Moreover, the only reason it took you a "few hours" is because of the thousands of hours you have learning how computers work and how to write software for them.
My console has never been in the repair shop, and I've never been unable to use my Live account. In fact, I'm quite pleased that I can use the same Live account with both my regular Xbox and my Xbox 360.
Application software can't bluescreen Windows, only drivers can.
The bug is in your printer driver, not in FoxIt.
For Windows: FoxIt PDF Reader is about 500k and runs about 50,000 times quicker than Adobe Reader. Use it, love it. There's no need to switch your OS just to read a file format-- PDF is an open formet, just use another reader.
How did Xbox 360 customers get screwed? I just got a free 3-year warranty on a machine that functions perfectly-- not my definition of "screwed."
And perhaps if sanitation had never been invented, we'd all be super-geniuses. As we wallowed in our own filth and died at the age of 35.
We need fewer programmers, not more.
That explains why the demand for programmers is higher than its ever been. That explains why Microsoft is desperately raiding universities around the US (and all over the world) for decent candidates. That explains why almost every company is running, relying on, software written in Excel or Access as a past-time of one of the secretaries who was 'good with technical stuff.'
Arguably, we need existing programmers to be of higher caliber, but limiting the NUMBER of programmers is stupid.
Maybe professional certification would help somewhat.
All a certification would do is guarantee ALL programming jobs get outsourced to India instead of just 75% of them. Dumb idea.
Last time I tried it, TeX doesn't render crap on screen, and Steve Jobs' prediction would have come true: if TeX was all there was, there may never have been a computer with real WYSIWYG capability. (Or at least it would be long-delayed.)
More to the point: it's just an illustrative example, not gospel. Pull the stick out of your ass and let one teeny inaccuracy past once in a while so that other readers might focus on the *point* of Jobs' speech, not the stupid, pointless details. Try the forest instead of the trees.
In this case, Microsoft is explicitly reselling a support and update contract. More than 40,000 of those certificates have already been activated, so they will be distributing GPL3 code.
Gah, this thread is going around in circles.
Microsoft is selling the support contract, I get that, I'm not a retard. What I don't get is how the fact that Microsoft is selling it means that Microsoft is the one distributing the code.
If I sell someone a ticket to Hawaii, am *I* the one checking their baggage? No, the airline is. If Best Buy sells me a MacBook, is Best Buy distributing the security update? No, Apple is.
Please don't bother replying to this post if you're just going to restate that Microsoft is selling the vouchers. I know this already.
The transaction is between Microsoft and their customer. Microsoft is just using a third-party (Novell) to provide the service. It's not uncommon.
Ok, but that isn't a counter-example to anything I just said. The transaction was between my fictional sweepstakes company and myself, Apple's just providing the service. But the point is: the service comes FROM Apple. That's true regardless of who the transaction is between, right? Or is there some hidden message to what you just said that's supposed to enlighten me?
Say the transaction is between me and Best Buy. I go into Best Buy and buy a Macbook Pro. Now Apple releases a security update. Why would Best Buy have any responsibility whatsoever for Apple's security update?
Um, is anyone else wondering how the 360 will ever profit given how much money the XBox project has already burned? I would never buy a product which wasn't designed to make money off of me because any alterior motive for a company to give me a product I don't trust. How many thousands of dollars has Microsoft spent on each XBox/360 owner? It's like a rich dork courting an amazing girl - throwing money all over the place for her and not giving a shit that she's using him for $$$. How does this benefit the rich dork? He makes her depend on him and marry him and write a prenumpt to keep her around.
i tion buys a Microsoft product because he's an uniformed consumer. It pisses me off when someone who knows how fucked up Microsoft is buys their products anyway. You make assimilation jokes then jack yourselves in.
This is a common tactic used to bash the Xbox, and I have a simple response to it:
Why the hell should any consumer care about the profit margins of the products they buy? Seriously, what difference does it make when I buy a toaster whether or not the toaster maker is pulling in a profit or not? This is not even in the top 10,000 things I look for when buying a product, whether it's a game console or anything else.
If you're to the point of arguing that the Xbox is a bad product because that weak-ass reason then just give up, ok? Save us all a bunch of time.
Now more than ever the Microsoft assimilation jokes should be going on but apparently everyone's okay with Microsoft being devious as long as it's in the name of Halo.
And how exactly is Microsoft being devious? They say it costs $400, you go to the store and pay $400 and you have one. I see no scheming or dishonesty there.
Microsoft has done nothing but exploit the weaknesses of capitalism
Really, I thought they were in the business of creating and selling computer software and related hardware. The very fact that the Xbox exists proves that they do more than 'exploit the weaknesses of capitalism.' (I think you were thinking of Enron or perhaps the RIAA when you came up with this little gem of an argument. In fact there are tons of companies that exist only to shuffle paper around and never produce any products, but Microsoft ain't one of them.)
This is why they have their Windows monopoly, their Office monopoly,
It's unthinkable that they might have these monopolies because they had a better product than the competition?
It's because the Slashdot geeks who are supposed to be boycotting this shit and supporting non-evil (yeah, I said evil) alternatives are too busy playing Halo on their 360 or Half-Life on the Windows PC.
Maybe some Slashdot geeks don't think like you do. Again, it's unthinkable that people might independently come to their own opinions instead of entrusting the anonymous coward who unilaterally declares their favorite past-time "evil"!
It doesn't piss me off when Joe-Shmoe-I-don't-know-a-HardDrive-from-HighDefin
It's a free country, I'll buy whatever game system I like. Even if I didn't like my Xbox, I'd half consider buying one now just to spite you-- nothing entertains me more than pissing off geeks like you who can't do anything but engage in spit-flying lectures on how evil Microsoft is.
Also: No I don't make assimilation jokes; I have a better sense of humor than that.
Maybe I'm a retard, and maybe I don't have a mind for legal stuff, but answer me this:
Microsoft is distributing certificates entitling their customers to support and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Fair enough.
When Microsoft customers who're entitled to updates on their SUSE Linux Enterprise Server installs get GPL3 updates, Microsoft will have distributed GPL3 code.
Huh? How does that follow? The updates are coming from SUSE, not Microsoft... right? (I mean, why would Microsoft set up servers to distrbute SUSE's update?)
Let's say I win a free MacBook from a sweepstakes by, I dunno, Company Co. You're saying that when Apple releases a security update for it, from Apple web servers using Apple's software, the update is actually coming from Company Co. Again, I'm certainly no lawyer, but that doesn't make any sense at all to me.
GPL3 includes patent defenses which prevent a distributor suing for patent infringement in the software they're distributing.
Let's assume your second point applies, this third point seems to rely on Microsoft being run by retards escaped from an institution. If distributing GPL3 software would invalidate or harm Microsoft's position, and considering that they (apparently) have control over what gets distrbuted or not, why would they do it? They'd stick with software that's licensed the way they like instead of GPL3 software.
Except you're missing a point that most Linux advocates miss.
Windows and Mac OS are also getting progressively better. The only way Linux could displace either is it was getting better as a much faster rate than either of those, and considering that copy and paste* is still problematic, it's not going to happen anytime soon.
* Yes, yes, give me the big lecture on how it works just fine. Then try to copy a vector image around in Linux. They try copying a spreadsheet cell into a bitmap program in Linux. Then try those same things on Mac OS and Windows. THEN tell me copy and paste works in Linux. Then write me angry posts about how copying a spreadsheet cell into a bitmap program "doesn't need to work" because there's "no possible reason anybody would want to do that."