Comment Re:Anecdote from folklore.org (Score 1) 597
the sad part of that story is that they asked bill to stop filling out the form instead of acknowledging the pointlessness of the metric and dropping it for everyone.
the sad part of that story is that they asked bill to stop filling out the form instead of acknowledging the pointlessness of the metric and dropping it for everyone.
You have to hold a four or five digit UID to wake them from the darkness, otherwise they won't listen and will continue to hide.
I have a five digit UID and am nihilistic enough to awaken eldritch horrors purely out of curiosity to see what would happen.
Is there a man page for it?
It's top gear; you aren't supposed to be basing anything on it.
The purpose of tests on top gear is to "prove" whatever position they have decided to take on some subject...usually in the most ridiculous and dubious way possible.
Top Gear is about entertainment and spectacle. It is for seeing the new and innovative ways that Jeremy Clarkson can make an ass of himself.
If you want actual information, you watch 5th Gear.
They are definitely not denying the existence of history. When I was in Germany, everyone there was very aware of their history. I agree that suppression of symbols isn't helping, but they aren't doing it in an attempt to deny the Nazis existed.
Believe it or not, some people who read/post here are a little on the nerdy side. And some of them read comic books.
Not a troll, just being honest.
I have always wondered, why exactly, because for me, comic books are for those who are literacy-challenged and/or don't have a developed fantasy. Nerds should be neither and rather go for real books.
Then again, I grew up in a country where comics were considered medieval junk.
Well, the literacy challenged people without a developed fantasy include :
Emma Bull, Orson Scott Card, Richard Laymon, Faren Miller and Darrell Schweitzer
They gave Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess the short fiction award in the 1991 World Fiction awards for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (an issue of the Sandman comic)
I'm sure Orson Scott Card will be crushed to know he's not a nerd. Any recommendations on what he should read to develop his sense of fantasy? Maybe Ender's Game would be a good start for him?
The horror writers association had a whole category of the bram stoker awards for comics, so i guess they're illiterate tools too.
Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have both won Hugo awards for comics, but those are voted on by Worldcon members. It's theoretically possible that the 700 (out of several thousand) or so people who are members or attendees of worldcon and take the time to submit votes for literary awards are literacy challenged and lack a developed sense of fantasy.
Or maybe the worldview you grew up with is inaccurate.
But hey, believe whatever you want.
Wrong. Suicide is terrible for society.
why?
Also, it has a detrimental effect on the economy (the dead don't tend to spend much).
Yes...If only the money the person had accumulated was transferred to his next of kin, or something, it would still be part of the economy. But no; when you die all of your worldly assets are removed forever from the economy.
And have you heard of Darwin? It's really no good for evolution.
The guy was in his 70s. I don't think he was really relevant from an evolutionary standpoint anymore. Besides, it is really no different than any other choice you might make that could kill you (from an evolutionary standpoint). A segment of the population self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool could be the natural result of some genetic mutation that should be lost.
Unless in protest, suicide is the single most selfish act a person can commit.
Your distinction between suicide in protest and suicide in general is arbitrary.
Why is it not selfish to say that you find someone else's actions so abhorrent it is preferable to you to die than live with the results; but it is selfish to say you find the circumstances nature has levied against you so abhorrent it is preferable to you to die than live with the results?
I do tend to agree that suicide is an incredibly selfish action, but i also accept the notion that people have a right to be selfish and feel that freedom includes the freedom to quit if you want to.
So they think since the people that play WoW, which is online only, have Internet that SC2 players don't need LAN support? That's great logic.
No, they know how many people play WoW so they know that they don't need the people who need LAN support for the game to be incredibly successful. Basically, what they are saying is that the benefit to them as a company of forcing everyone through battle.net is worth the cost of losing the people who need LAN support because the percentage of the total potential customer base they represent is negligible.
What does Rupert Murdoch, of all people, know about Quality Journalism?
he knows it isn't cheap. That's why he produces shoddy journalism. It makes his margins much nicer.
you should use the Dropkick Murphys cover of it.
a combination of algorithms is also an algorithm. if the algorithms that make it up are math, then the algorithm they are as subset of is also math. If math is not patentable, then that algorithm is not patentable.
I want SW-patents to go the way of the dodo as much as the next
this is not the same thing. Atoms would be analogous to numbers in this argument. They are both items. Math is what you do with numbers. Algorithms are sets of mathematical instructions to achieve a goal.
Since what you build with atoms is patentable, given constraints about novelty and obviousness, what you build with things made of atoms can be patentable.
In my opinion, it actually highlights the accuracy of his argument.
Music industry outfit GEMA asked the court to ban Rapidshare from making 5,000 tracks from its catalogue available on the Internet.
thank god....when i read the headline i was afraid this might affect my ability to download porn.
on a more serious note, can we please get a court to force restaurants to stop playing '80s music as well?
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay?
Slashdot is a community made up of thousands of people. I doubt there is any subject, including whether or not slashdot sucks, that the community has a consensus on.
You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right?
I'm not aware of that at all. Considering they do not handle any copyrighted information and no copyrighted information flows through any servers they control, i'd say it's a pretty big stretch to say they are running a major piracy ring.
That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
They provided text files that told people where people were providing files to download. Some of those people were providing copyrighted content.
Telling someone that someone else is selling or giving away content is not illegal, at least not where i am. Nor should it be illegal in my opinion.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Because he's busy building space ships?
Have you had specific conversations with Mr. Carmack about his posting habits or are you just making shit up? My suspicion is that you are making shit up.
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
Again, Slashdot, as a community, doesn't really have a consensus about anything, including if Microsoft is evil and if the GPL is a good thing.
Also, if the goal is to drive up page views, the best way to do that is to post articles that are at odds with the consensus as that will cause flame wars. Nothing generates page views and comments like a contrarian point of view stated as if it were a fact.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
Do you have a citation for this? I do not recall that ever happening, which is not to say it didn't, but that i don't know what you are talking about.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
In some slashdotters that apparent dichotomy does exist. I would guess it has to do with intent. People who favour the GPL see it as an important tool for protecting the freedoms of the users of software. Some of these people probably also view the behaviour of the record and movie industries as an abuse of the users of their products and consider the nullification of their copyrights as an appropriate punishment for their actions.
Of course some people also just want stuff for free.
But to try to make sweeping conclusions about the thousands of people who read slashdot based on the one or two hundred people who post on these stories is not in any way valid.
For my part, i am on the side of the pirate bay because i don't think they've done anything illegal. The police and copyright holders should be going after the people seeding the files, not the people saying "those guys are seeding files". If getting the seeders is too technically hard for them, that's too bad. They shouldn't get to go after innocent people just because it's easier.
I think that perhaps everyone has skeletons in their closet, because the perception of appropriateness in society is a fabrication of an ideal that not only doesn't exist, but that nobody really wants to exist.
The deliciousness of the skeletons in the closets of people like Mr. Yee comes from the perception that they are the instigators and promoters of the fabrication that we all quietly disagree with. The exposure of their hypocrisy is enjoyable in a very schadenfreudian way.
In my opinion, they are largely just catering to the societal fraud of morality to get elected and stay elected. In that respect the hypocrisy is ours as members of society as much is it is his for catering to it, probably moreso.
I try to avoid this by not telling other people what they can and cannot do, within the limits of causing indisputable harm to one another (and i'm fine with that if it's consentual).
It is still satisfying and entertaining to see snake oil salesmen exposed as charlatans, though.
a long, long, long brief
it takes a robust legal system to make a phrase like that make sense.
If we look at MySQL for example
MySQL would be a bad example with which to try to assert your point. MySQL AB did not lose control of MySQL because they open sourced their main product. They were a very profitable company that grew large enough to be sought after for acquisition by major international corporations because they open sourced their main product.
They lost control of it because they sold control to Sun. Sun is losing control not because people are unhappy that Sun owns MySQL now, but because Sun is not providing their customers with what they want.
Part of the problem is that MySQL is not the main product of Sun so it gets less attention and resources than its customers require.
So when it was the main product of the controlling company, it was profitable and successful. Now that it is just one element of a portfolio of products of a company, it is languishing and its customer base is talking about forking it. That doesn't support your premise at all.
Open source removes the ability for the company to use lock-in to control their customers. It forces the company to provide what their customers want and manage the perception that their involvement is valuable.
This is not intended as a flame. I just disagree with your assertion in general and your example specifically and am trying to articulate intelligently why i think you are incorrect.
Hackers of the world, unite!