Thank you. I have actually read the entire bill and I really fail to see what all the hatred is about. That said, I tend to agree partially with Rackspace in that I don't believe the bill will actually be very effective to the end of Stopping Online Piracy but it could provide some modicum of relief for copyright holders, e.g. shutting down access to allofmp3 clones, etc. I would invite everyone to actually read the entire bill for themselves.

But this is Slashdot. So, barring that I would invite everyone to at least assume that laws are not generally drafted by the specifically and only evil and stupid for a negative end. They are likewise not generally passed by the specifically and only evil and stupid for a negative end. And they are not generally to be enforced by the specifically and only evil and stupid for a negative end. That kind of shrill dialog only serves to dumb down any discussion.

I am not digging. Your original statement remains incorrect. You are correct, IDE does not equal interface design. But, as you also point out, some IDEs are used for interface design. It is this very real case that I used as a counter example to your original post, where you suggested that in no case was an IDE better than vim. That was then and remains an inflammatory, ill-informed, misguided, and incorrect statement. There are, as I mentioned, other counter examples. I will not provide them, however. A single counter example will suffice to disprove your suggestion. If you would like others, I suggest you gather some software development experience.

Here's the conclusion I jumped to: you felt there are no benefits to ever using a graphical IDE because no graphical IDE works better than vim. This was based on what you said:

The conclusion I drew was correct. Also correct was where I mentioned that if you believe that, you are wrong. You have gone on now to point out why for your particular situation a console only approach is best. Fantastic. Some specific cases are best suited that way. In other cases however, there are a number of uses for graphical IDEs, even if you lack the experience to have ever been able to see the benefit of one. Also, one day, with some experience, you may find that suggesting that different solutions have no benefit for different requirements is foolish.

Stop this. Forever. If you need to design GUIs in your software development, a console only approach is undoubtedly inferior. Not using an unquestionably inferior development environment would be a benefit. There are loads of other examples. For some development, absolutely, a console meets the needs perfectly. But different requirements often require different solutions. If you don't know that as a developer, I do not want to use your software.

Right, I agree, there may be some ease of use by having it built-in and officially supported, but I think the failure rate of Siri to this point has perhaps rendered that moot. In this case: doesn't work? Join the club, it's failing for many.

To be fair, saying that Siri is better than Android's voice functionality is not really a meaningful comparison of device capability. It is more a comparison of out of the box capability; there are several applications out there, Edwin and Vlingo are free examples, that provide very similar functionality for Android phones. And, of course, that is all Siri is: a 3rd party application for iOS available for some time, that Apple bought and pre-installed on their newer devices and is no longer available for their older devices. It is a marketing approach to convince people of the inherent superiority of the device based on it's bundled software, but not anything to do with actual capability. And that may well have some merit for ease of use, but the rather disappointing failure rate of Siri to date probably mitigates that ease of use.

xkcd reference

By what definition? I provided no definition. But the provision of air is not a cost directly paid by anyone and would be hard to pin down. The costs of providing a university education are explicit and well known and most decidedly not 'free' no matter if the government subsidizes it or not.

While it does sound more positive to say so, and is in the general case is probably the case, it would only be true to say that education is paid by those who have already received it if all those who currently pay to subsidize the formal, government provided education received a formal, government provided education. And in this case, that would be a formal, government provided, university education. It's a quibble, though; what you say is the more likely case.

No, digital education is not new. But are you suggesting that there are no resources involved in providing it? No professors spending time creating the material and reviewing the coursework of the students? No costs of providing the online bandwidth? No costs of providing the student with the tools and environment in which to learn?

I think the grade and the associated credits do matter. Otherwise, Stanford would have some explaining to do as to why they are still charging people for those things.

To be fair, I think it is neat that they are allowing people to view their course material and provide feedback to people attempting to learn the material. In this case this is Computer Science. However, in this case, there are already many existing resources, both offline and online, that can provide people with the ability to learn. The difference here is that some of those same materials are being provided by a renowned university. However, while the knowledge to be gained is not enhanced by that, the marketability of those who do get a grade and credit is.

Correction: In many parts of the world, the costs associated with university level educations provided to students are subsidized by those who are not attending university.

Correction: Free education would be something new, since finding a way to provide education without a cost of resources that could be applied elsewhere would be entirely unheard of.

These are not free courses. The ability to audit these courses is what is free. If you are not a Stanford student, you will receive neither credit nor a grade.

...in my opinion. To me, it seems clear that a good formal education is simply a vetting process. Specifically, a provision of a certification of work completed by an accredited, dispassionate entity. It has very little to do with teaching. Universities expect students to achieve passing grades in their classes regardless of how much or little the professors of those classes are interested in actively teaching versus simply requiring students to cover the material on their own. It also has very little to do with learning. Anyone can learn, say, architecture or mathematics independently of a university. While that is great it, in reality, means very little if there is no one can verify that you did in fact learn it, i.e. no one is going to have you design their building just because you say you know how. While employers or even universities (for advanced degrees) could attempt to verify this knowledge independently, it costs a lot of money and quality of that would be all over the board. However, universities really can't say that students learned the material, either. They can just say that students completed work that should require knowledge of that material. This is why cheating wrecks the system, i.e. it is a way to complete the work without the knowledge.

Universities exist for this verification process and are accredited based on the quality of this verification process. That is, they are not just trying to be greedy or hoard knowledge nor are they trying to provide great environments and contacts and experiences. Rather, when they issue a degree they are signing off on a person. If that person doesn't know what they said the person should, it diminishes the perceived quality of their degree.

The point: it is very difficult, and costly, to provide the same quality of verification with online classes as you can with face to face classes. Cheating becomes a much more prevalent factor. Getting more and more students through the courses increases the likelihood that a false positive will be issued. Evaluating a student's commitment to their education is more difficult when it is impossible to determine how much time the student has spent "in class", i.e. viewing lectures. And more. This is why universities hesitate to go that route.

I think you have missed the point as well. WrongSizeGlass was not saying that Macs are secure because they are less prevalent but rather they are less vulnerable because they are less prevalent. You seem to be conflating the two concepts of vulnerability and security. Vulnerability is the possibility of attack and security is how well such an attack may be thwarted. Attacking more prevalent systems provides a much greater reward of exploit. This makes the most popular operating system far more vulnerable, that is more likely to be attacked, regardless of whether or not it is more or less secure than any other.

The real canard here is what WrongSizeGlass alluded to: the notion that Macs are less vulnerable because they are more secure. They could be more secure, but they are less vulnerable because they are less prevalent.