Although I haven't used the tool myself, Amazon's description says that "KindleGen is a command line tool which enables publishers to work in an automated environment with a variety of source content including HTML, XHTML or EPUB." So unless there is something more to the licensing terms than you're suggesting, there shouldn't be any problem with creating your content in an open format, and then using KindleGen to generate the content for the Amazon store.

It's a common problem in the programming field to make a virtue out of overgeneralization, even when it conflicts with other virtues, such as ease of use or security. What actual benefit do you get from allowing the inclusion of control characters in filenames? How does that benefit compare with the amount of pain and extra effort involved in dealing with those filenames?

The other thing is that "fixing the tools" is a complete non-starter. You're talking about "fixing" a large subset -- possibly even a majority -- of programs on Unix systems, in a way that will be incompatible with existing tools. The elegance of putting some minor restrictions on filenames into the filesystem is that it works with virtually all existing user-level software, with no changes to that software required.

Not saying there is evidence it has happened. Saying it is a great idea and should have happened.

Have you ever retired a riddle by mistake?

Roughly, not exactly. Pegging the price of a battery switch to the price of gas really wouldn't make any sense, although it might make sense to make it based on the cost of electricity in the area, assuming that that varies.

In other words, one group of "skeptics" has appointed themselves to be the gatekeepers of the definition of skepticism, and is now throwing a tantrum because there are other people using term that don't match the definition that this group came up with.

If this "Committee for Skeptical Inquiry" is worried that they'll be confused with the climate-change skeptics, then they need to come up with another term for themselves. Demanding that the English language change to suit their own preferences is stupid, and the only reason why it's getting any support here on Slashdot is because of the personal animosity that most of us have towards the climate-change skeptics.

And yes, I'm going to purposefully use the term "climate-change skeptics" from now on.

If you read the article, you'll find that writing shell scripts to handle filenames containing every possible character "properly" is so difficult that virtually everyone gets it wrong. When something's been around for close to 40 years and still nobody can get it right, maybe it's time to admit that it's the tool that's broken.

This article makes a pretty convincing case that we'd be better off with some restrictions on filenames. It's hard to argue the point that allowing certain characters in filenames causes more problems than it solves.

The context of this discussion is that TechyImmigrant claimed that someone who would support deporting an illegal immigrant "has something against immigrants." So TechyImmigrant was equating the two. I simply pointed out that doing that is dishonest.

I have several reasons for being against illegal immigration while not being against legal immigration. I did not expound on them in my post, as they were not relevant to the point I was making, but I still see no reason why you should immediately jump to the conclusion that those reasons do not exist.

I don't see how you could possibly make that assessment based on my statement, which was simply that you can be against illegal immigration without being against legal immigration.

Men and women from the same culture and class demonstrate very different behavior, as do young and old people. I have never seen any evidence to support the notion that there are significant behavioral differences associated with skin color. If you've got some evidence that shows that black people are more likely to commit crimes than white people that were raised the same way, I'd love to see it.

Right. The good old "the illegals just can't stop themselves from jumping the border!" argument.

I'd bet that they commit just as much crime as black people of similar social culture and class.

Told kid about nano-cam dust today. He's only 4 years old, so he didn't know about them yet, and I'm trying to teach him basic hygiene. I explained for that for nearly a a hundred years we have all lived in an environment where other peoples' cameras are always in our homes. We track them in, on our shoes. The AC intake blows them in. The servers the cameras send video too, aren't owned by people who are practicing subterfuge. It's not like they snuck "spy" dust onto our porches in the hopes we'd track them in. It just happens; it's an inevitable consequence of the stuff blowing around everywhere.

My great grandparents complained about it. They thought they had a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes, because nanotech was new. They didn't see the dust, so they didn't know it was there. In the absence of sensual confirmation, the default expectation (at least to the layman) was that it wasn't there. That was naive, but my grandparents didn't work with nanotech or even use consumer models themselves, so perhaps their ignorance could be forgiven. (Just as my own ignorance of hyperspace can perhaps be forgiven, since I'm not a miner.)

My grandparents, though, grew up with the stuff, though it was still a bit expensive, so it wasn't totally ubiquitous yet. By their time, almost everyone at least knew about it, and if in a gathering of any five people you were to say "nobody sees me inside my home," chances were there would have been a few guffaws and someone would likely point out that the statement was likely incorrect. Sometimes the stuff got innocently tracked into your house, and sometimes it was manipulated into getting there, through subterfuge. The law and social norms lagged, though, and people debated privacy a lot.

By the time their children (my parents) grew up, though, it was all over. Everyone knew about nano-cam dust, and unless you did a rad-flash a few minutes earlier, fucking in your own bed was just as public as doing it in Times Square.

And now my kid knows too. It's just something everyone is expected to know about and deal with. If I were to write a story about it, I think I would set the story in the time of my grandparents, back when society was truly conflicted and in the midst of change. I bet those were interesting times.