The good thing is, he's an idiot politician who knows the terms "open source" and "source code" and can use them more or less coherently in a sentence. This shows that these concepts are becoming more mainstream.
Better, if a politician makes a comment like this, it starts a debate. People who didn't know what "open source" means might start to want to find out.
Even better, his arguments are ridiculously confused and easy to dismiss. "Public domain"? He may have power in Thailand, but governments in other countries looking seriously at open source software are not likely to be swayed by anything he's said. If Microsoft really were bribing him, you'd think they could have fed him some more convincing lines.
The only thing left is to look forward to the results of his policy. If for any reason things don't go as well as planned... perhaps it will be time for a different approach.
Slashdot editors don't check the affiliations of people who submit stories, and allow anonymous submissions, so Slashvertisements are possible. However, I don't think anyone expects anything different. The submitters are named, or the story starts "An anonymous reader writes...", and readers are left to draw their own conclusions about any potential bias.
On the other hand, news channels don't take submissions from just anyone when they make news stories. They're supposed to be deciding what to air themselves, with the aim of informing their viewers. If they use a corporate PR video that looks like a news report, they ought to know the source; the problem is when they deliberately fail to declare who made it, as this means that they are disguising advertisements as news.
Unstable Linux distributions can crash and bring down your server, if you're foolish enough to install them somewhere important. With a Wikipedia article, the worst that can happen is that you get false information, and you can always deal with that by checking with another source.
If you don't check it and end up writing nonsense about elephants tripling in your essay, you have no-one to blame but yourself. On the other hand, sometimes unreliable information is better than nothing. So all in all, I don't see that there's a problem that having releases would solve.
Also, the ratings in the current system do some of what "releases" would do anyway. The "NPA Personality" article made it to "Good Article", which some people are saying was a problem, but "Good Article" just means that the article is fairly thorough, and properly written and referenced. (This isn't an exact description of the criteria, though, just a rough summary.)
The problem article did, in my opinion, meet the standards for Good Article, but it should have had trouble getting beyond that because of the limited number of different references - almost all of the references were from the two major proponents of the theory.
For that reason, I'd only have been worried if it had got to "Featured Article". If you want a "stable release", I suggest only reading the Featured Articles, and accepting that anything else is a work in progress.
Well, those are fairly reasonable points, but if you're going to get into the finer details...
It's also generally an evolutionary advantage to live on a little to look after your offspring. Not much use spawning lots of babies and dropping dead. You only really become less important after your offspring have made it to adulthood.
As for not needing fat - it may be an unnecessary weight on the waists of the fast-food eating, TV-watching populations, but there must be many people around the world even today for whom fat reserves are a definite plus. Fat may be just be unhealthy if you're leading a safe, comfortable lifestyle, but if there's a disaster or a famine - when it counts - it makes a difference.
I agree that the human body isn't necessarily optimally adapted for life in the modern world, but trying to alter it is always going to involve some kind of tradeoff. I would have liked the article to discuss that, rather than simply holding out "staying cool" as the key to increasing longevity.
Despite the title, and all the comments talking about living in a low-temperature environment, I hope people realise that turning down the thermostat or moving to Alaska is not going to make a difference.
I'm sure most people remember, but just in case, internal body temperature is carefully regulated by your brain, and won't change unless you catch a fever, or start freezing, in which case you have other problems to worry about.
As for the results of this study, lab mice are not humans, and correlation does not imply cause... both mice and humans must have evolved to have their normal body temperature for a reason, so lowering it will undoubtedly have some negative effect on the chances of survival.
'it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government...'
I don't think this quote means "the government gets the last word on defining basic human rights". I think it means "government's job is to consider the natural rights which consumers ought to have (their rights in theory), and then decide what people are actually allowed to do based on this theory (their rights in practice)".
This is called 'making laws', which is exactly what the government's job is. Of course, the government isn't guaranteed to make the right decision - but then, in a democracy, if they get it wrong, it's then the people's job to complain loudly about that, and if necessary kick those in charge out.
If you don't want someone making rules on what is and isn't allowed, the only solution is not to have a government at all.
Designing an exploit is not reckless - the only thing that can be reckless is using the exploit you've designed in the wrong way, or giving it to the wrong people.
As a security company, Authentium ought to know how to handle exploits properly. Presumably if they had a trusting relationship with Microsoft, they'd let them know about it quietly. Instead, they announced it publicly, using it as a bargaining chip against Microsoft in case it reneges on its promise to provide adequate APIs for security vendors.
Microsoft, on the other hand, didn't say "thanks for letting us know, so we can patch it - just make sure you disclose the information in the proper way". Instead they're quoted as asking Authentium to "abandon the tactic" - clearly they view the very existence of the exploit as an embarrassment, even as a threat, and don't expect Authentium to play friendly and just hand over the details.
Ideally, the two companies should be working together against malicious software writers to secure users' computers. Seen from that point of view, isn't the whole situation a little weird?
" there's no way to figure that into a game at this point. Maybe somebody else can do it and maybe somebody will, but that wasn't really what this game was about.
He deliberately left open the possibility that maybe in the future someone will make a game with the kind of depth and narrative he's talking about. That seems pretty open-minded to me. (OK, so he ignored the possibility that there might be a game like that already that he just didn't know about, but that's a minor oversight.)
I think he did a good job of being diplomatic about the possibilities of computer games, while trying to explain why, in this particular case, he doesn't want this game to end with Tony Soprano walking out as the final boss and you having to dropkick him, becase it will make his drama look ridiculous. That's his real point.
The article makes it sound very mysterious, but it seems like the "red ring of light" is just the LEDs on the power switch changing from green to red, indicating a hardware failure. It's been nicknamed the Red Ring of Death.
Yes, but the poster makes an important point. google.be is blocking the sites, but google.com is not. google.fr is not either.
It seems like the block has no practical effect, since you can find everything by going to google.com or.fr instead. It would be different if Google were removing lesoir.be and other sites from all searches (including google.com searches) by computers with Belgian IP addresses, but are they? If not, Belgians will probably switch to google.fr/.com rather than MSN.
I don't know why they did this for.be. Could it be because.be servers are actually in Belgium, and thus are somehow legally affected? That's the only way I can think of that this block makes sense.
Is that really what you call a fork? I'm afraid I can't accept your point.
This is why the two are different
Forks - serve the same purpose. Different language wikipedias - serve different purposes (they give information to speakers of different languages, since not everyone speaks all languages). Your statement that you read Wikipedia in three languages shows that they're not forks in the usual sense, but complement each other, because the extra information you get from each is helpful to you. Do you know anyone who uses both Emacs and XEmacs for the same task, because they want to use different features from both?
Forks - are generally created because of disagreement about the direction of the project, or a major design decision. Different language wikipedias - may have slightly different rules but in essence were created with the same purpose, to complement the other wikipedias.
Forks - are disapproved of because they divide the developer community in two. Different language wikipedias - have different developer communities anyway, because people can only contribute in languages they speak.
I agree that in many cases different languages may have different content. However, this is a natural result of the fact that there are more editors than translators, and does not mean that the information cannot be shared if necessary. If there is information which was felt to be truly necessary for other language versions, there is no reason why it cannot be moved to the other languages.
It is entirely possible that as Wikipedia matures, more articles will grow long enough that there will be fewer obvious gaps, and there will be more interest in comparing the different language versions and translating them to create more informative articles generally.
Versions of Wikipedia in other languages are not forks.
They may be run by different people, but they serve an obviously different and complementary purpose - catering for speakers of different languages. Of course not all the articles will contain the same material, but since they are interlinked, good material is likely to be shared among them.
Where is the evidence for the assertion that translation is "for article creation only"? One of the typical reasons given for requesting a translation is "to add material not in the English version".
Rewarding laziness? An excellent idea. If laziness is a virtue in programming, why not here too?
If skipping lectures and watching the video version saves you time and effort, you ought to skip lectures. That means you're making the most efficient use of your time - which you can then use to study more.
My lectures at university mainly consisted of the lecturer writing stuff up on the board, and everyone writing it down. Sometimes the notes would be on a projector, and the lecturer would hide the part we hadn't come to yet with a piece of paper, so that we couldn't copy it down too fast. I spent all of those lectures trying to get all the notes down in time, and very little actually sunk into my head. I had to read over my hastily scribbled notes afterwards to actually digest any of the information. I count myself a prize fool for not realising during my years there how much of a waste of time it all was.
Of course, this kind of lecture is a true lecture in the traditional sense, since "lecture" originally meant "reading" - a textbook would be read out, so that students could copy it down to read for themselves. In other words, in this age of podcasts, we are still using a data distribution method which predates the printing press. Does no one think that strange?
Reading these comments, it seems like a lot of people have bought into the idea that getting up, turning up at lectures and writing down notes are signs of diligence and goodness, worth doing for their own sake. But surely they are only worth doing if they are the best way, the only way to learn? If not, they are a waste of time. Or would you prefer that students go to lectures in the morning with weights chained to their feet, to make it that little bit harder and squeeze out a little bit more virtuous hard work?
There is a way to make lectures worth attending - by eliminating note-taking, and having questions, or discussions, or some way to make students use their brains and participate. If a lecture doesn't have any of that, hand me the notes, or the podcast, whichever makes for more efficient learning.
Here's the quote, cut-and pasted from the Sun Times.
Q. I've been a gamer since I was very young, and I haven't been satisfied with most of the movies based on video games, with the exception of the first "Mortal Kombat" and "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." These were successful as films because they did not try to be a tribute to the game, but films in their own right.
I have not seen "Doom," but don't plan to, nor do I think that it's fair to say that it pleases all gamers. Some of us appreciate film, too. That said, I was surprised at your denial of video games as a worthwhile use of your time. Are you implying that books and film are better mediums, or just better uses of your time?
Films and books have their scabs, as do games, but there are beautiful examples of video games out there -- see "Shadow of the Colossus," "Rez" or the forthcoming "PeaceMaker."
Josh Fishburn, Denver
A. [Ebert:] I believe books and films are better mediums, and better uses of my time. But how can I say that when I admit I am unfamiliar with video games? Because I have recently seen classic films by Fassbinder, Ozu, Herzog, Scorsese and Kurosawa, and have recently read novels by Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Bellow, Nabokov and Hugo, and if there were video games in the same league, someone somewhere who was familiar with the best work in all three mediums would have made a convincing argument in their defense.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so he's an idiot politician.
The good thing is, he's an idiot politician who knows the terms "open source" and "source code" and can use them more or less coherently in a sentence. This shows that these concepts are becoming more mainstream.
Better, if a politician makes a comment like this, it starts a debate. People who didn't know what "open source" means might start to want to find out.
Even better, his arguments are ridiculously confused and easy to dismiss. "Public domain"? He may have power in Thailand, but governments in other countries looking seriously at open source software are not likely to be swayed by anything he's said. If Microsoft really were bribing him, you'd think they could have fed him some more convincing lines.
The only thing left is to look forward to the results of his policy. If for any reason things don't go as well as planned... perhaps it will be time for a different approach.
Yes, but these are worse.
Slashdot editors don't check the affiliations of people who submit stories, and allow anonymous submissions, so Slashvertisements are possible. However, I don't think anyone expects anything different. The submitters are named, or the story starts "An anonymous reader writes...", and readers are left to draw their own conclusions about any potential bias.
On the other hand, news channels don't take submissions from just anyone when they make news stories. They're supposed to be deciding what to air themselves, with the aim of informing their viewers. If they use a corporate PR video that looks like a news report, they ought to know the source; the problem is when they deliberately fail to declare who made it, as this means that they are disguising advertisements as news.
Unstable Linux distributions can crash and bring down your server, if you're foolish enough to install them somewhere important. With a Wikipedia article, the worst that can happen is that you get false information, and you can always deal with that by checking with another source.
If you don't check it and end up writing nonsense about elephants tripling in your essay, you have no-one to blame but yourself. On the other hand, sometimes unreliable information is better than nothing. So all in all, I don't see that there's a problem that having releases would solve.
Also, the ratings in the current system do some of what "releases" would do anyway. The "NPA Personality" article made it to "Good Article", which some people are saying was a problem, but "Good Article" just means that the article is fairly thorough, and properly written and referenced. (This isn't an exact description of the criteria, though, just a rough summary.)
The problem article did, in my opinion, meet the standards for Good Article, but it should have had trouble getting beyond that because of the limited number of different references - almost all of the references were from the two major proponents of the theory.
For that reason, I'd only have been worried if it had got to "Featured Article". If you want a "stable release", I suggest only reading the Featured Articles, and accepting that anything else is a work in progress.
Well, those are fairly reasonable points, but if you're going to get into the finer details...
It's also generally an evolutionary advantage to live on a little to look after your offspring. Not much use spawning lots of babies and dropping dead. You only really become less important after your offspring have made it to adulthood.
As for not needing fat - it may be an unnecessary weight on the waists of the fast-food eating, TV-watching populations, but there must be many people around the world even today for whom fat reserves are a definite plus. Fat may be just be unhealthy if you're leading a safe, comfortable lifestyle, but if there's a disaster or a famine - when it counts - it makes a difference.
I agree that the human body isn't necessarily optimally adapted for life in the modern world, but trying to alter it is always going to involve some kind of tradeoff. I would have liked the article to discuss that, rather than simply holding out "staying cool" as the key to increasing longevity.
Despite the title, and all the comments talking about living in a low-temperature environment, I hope people realise that turning down the thermostat or moving to Alaska is not going to make a difference.
I'm sure most people remember, but just in case, internal body temperature is carefully regulated by your brain, and won't change unless you catch a fever, or start freezing, in which case you have other problems to worry about.
As for the results of this study, lab mice are not humans, and correlation does not imply cause... both mice and humans must have evolved to have their normal body temperature for a reason, so lowering it will undoubtedly have some negative effect on the chances of survival.
This is called 'making laws', which is exactly what the government's job is. Of course, the government isn't guaranteed to make the right decision - but then, in a democracy, if they get it wrong, it's then the people's job to complain loudly about that, and if necessary kick those in charge out.
If you don't want someone making rules on what is and isn't allowed, the only solution is not to have a government at all.
Designing an exploit is not reckless - the only thing that can be reckless is using the exploit you've designed in the wrong way, or giving it to the wrong people.
As a security company, Authentium ought to know how to handle exploits properly. Presumably if they had a trusting relationship with Microsoft, they'd let them know about it quietly. Instead, they announced it publicly, using it as a bargaining chip against Microsoft in case it reneges on its promise to provide adequate APIs for security vendors.
Microsoft, on the other hand, didn't say "thanks for letting us know, so we can patch it - just make sure you disclose the information in the proper way". Instead they're quoted as asking Authentium to "abandon the tactic" - clearly they view the very existence of the exploit as an embarrassment, even as a threat, and don't expect Authentium to play friendly and just hand over the details.
Ideally, the two companies should be working together against malicious software writers to secure users' computers. Seen from that point of view, isn't the whole situation a little weird?
One day while sending an e-mail, Steve Jobs accidentally hit the "i" key before typing Mac.
No, that was An Wang (and his son). Wang's a fairly common name.
" there's no way to figure that into a game at this point. Maybe somebody else can do it and maybe somebody will, but that wasn't really what this game was about.
He deliberately left open the possibility that maybe in the future someone will make a game with the kind of depth and narrative he's talking about. That seems pretty open-minded to me. (OK, so he ignored the possibility that there might be a game like that already that he just didn't know about, but that's a minor oversight.)
I think he did a good job of being diplomatic about the possibilities of computer games, while trying to explain why, in this particular case, he doesn't want this game to end with Tony Soprano walking out as the final boss and you having to dropkick him, becase it will make his drama look ridiculous. That's his real point.
The article makes it sound very mysterious, but it seems like the "red ring of light" is just the LEDs on the power switch changing from green to red, indicating a hardware failure. It's been nicknamed the Red Ring of Death.
Yes, but the poster makes an important point. google.be is blocking the sites, but google.com is not. google.fr is not either.
.fr instead. It would be different if Google were removing lesoir.be and other sites from all searches (including google.com searches) by computers with Belgian IP addresses, but are they? If not, Belgians will probably switch to google.fr/.com rather than MSN.
.be. Could it be because .be servers are actually in Belgium, and thus are somehow legally affected? That's the only way I can think of that this block makes sense.
It seems like the block has no practical effect, since you can find everything by going to google.com or
I don't know why they did this for
Is that really what you call a fork? I'm afraid I can't accept your point.
This is why the two are different
Forks - serve the same purpose.
Different language wikipedias - serve different purposes (they give information to speakers of different languages, since not everyone speaks all languages). Your statement that you read Wikipedia in three languages shows that they're not forks in the usual sense, but complement each other, because the extra information you get from each is helpful to you. Do you know anyone who uses both Emacs and XEmacs for the same task, because they want to use different features from both?
Forks - are generally created because of disagreement about the direction of the project, or a major design decision.
Different language wikipedias - may have slightly different rules but in essence were created with the same purpose, to complement the other wikipedias.
Forks - are disapproved of because they divide the developer community in two.
Different language wikipedias - have different developer communities anyway, because people can only contribute in languages they speak.
I agree that in many cases different languages may have different content. However, this is a natural result of the fact that there are more editors than translators, and does not mean that the information cannot be shared if necessary. If there is information which was felt to be truly necessary for other language versions, there is no reason why it cannot be moved to the other languages.
It is entirely possible that as Wikipedia matures, more articles will grow long enough that there will be fewer obvious gaps, and there will be more interest in comparing the different language versions and translating them to create more informative articles generally.
Versions of Wikipedia in other languages are not forks.
They may be run by different people, but they serve an obviously different and complementary purpose - catering for speakers of different languages. Of course not all the articles will contain the same material, but since they are interlinked, good material is likely to be shared among them.
Where is the evidence for the assertion that translation is "for article creation only"? One of the typical reasons given for requesting a translation is "to add material not in the English version".
Rewarding laziness? An excellent idea. If laziness is a virtue in programming, why not here too?
If skipping lectures and watching the video version saves you time and effort, you ought to skip lectures. That means you're making the most efficient use of your time - which you can then use to study more.
My lectures at university mainly consisted of the lecturer writing stuff up on the board, and everyone writing it down. Sometimes the notes would be on a projector, and the lecturer would hide the part we hadn't come to yet with a piece of paper, so that we couldn't copy it down too fast. I spent all of those lectures trying to get all the notes down in time, and very little actually sunk into my head. I had to read over my hastily scribbled notes afterwards to actually digest any of the information. I count myself a prize fool for not realising during my years there how much of a waste of time it all was.
Of course, this kind of lecture is a true lecture in the traditional sense, since "lecture" originally meant "reading" - a textbook would be read out, so that students could copy it down to read for themselves. In other words, in this age of podcasts, we are still using a data distribution method which predates the printing press. Does no one think that strange?
Reading these comments, it seems like a lot of people have bought into the idea that getting up, turning up at lectures and writing down notes are signs of diligence and goodness, worth doing for their own sake. But surely they are only worth doing if they are the best way, the only way to learn? If not, they are a waste of time. Or would you prefer that students go to lectures in the morning with weights chained to their feet, to make it that little bit harder and squeeze out a little bit more virtuous hard work?
There is a way to make lectures worth attending - by eliminating note-taking, and having questions, or discussions, or some way to make students use their brains and participate. If a lecture doesn't have any of that, hand me the notes, or the podcast, whichever makes for more efficient learning.
Ebert got quite a few responses, it seems.
How about: this one?.
The article links to a piece in Edge Magazine.
Yes, I want the karma that badly. Pretty please?