"The Case for File Swapping"

[Peter Hickman]

Shlomi Fish wrote:

>Why so? Some uses of computers are ethical and possibly also moral. Others are 
>not moral or not even ethical. 
>
The same can be said for hedge trimmers, you could commit murder with
them, you could steal them, you could even trim hedges with them if they
seemed clean enough. The use of the words ethical and moral when talking
about computers is, in my experience, the domain of nutters and right
wing Americans.

>I realise that. However, the reason I said that was because I became 
>frustrated with getting stuff published in Slashdot. Often an article (by me 
>or otherwise) has hit the entire blogosphere, and was completely absent from 
>Slashdot.
>  
>
Why do you want to be published on Slashdot? Do you want validation?

>An essay is not supposed to show new data. Rather it is supposed to take 
>existing data and even existing opinions or manifests, and reach new 
>conclusions accordingly.
>  
>
I saw no new conclusions.

>As for "said nothing new" - I couldn't disagree more. It's the first time 
>where all these things are concentrated in one place, in a coherent, and 
>conclusive fashion. If I said nothing new, how come many people have 
>disagreed with me? (If you don't, and think you've already realise that, and 
>agree with it, then I can really use you on my side.)
>
>  
>
If people say you have said nothing new does not mean that they are
disagreeing with you and just because people disagree with you does not
mean you have said anything. If I was to say that George Bush was a
lesbian Eskimo many people would disagree with me. What would having a
lot of people disagreeing with me prove? That I was right?

>Well, when I wrote the article, I believed that in Commonwealth English (which 
>I do my best to use consistently) one uses Milliard for 10**9, Billion for 
>10**12, Trillion for 10**18, etc. Rather than the Billion for 10**9, Trillion 
>for 10**12, etc. which makes much less sense. This system is also used in 
>Hebrew, and I saw both of them in a book I have about Mathematics.
>
>Another advantage is that milliard is not ambigious while billion is.
>  
>
It is also unknown to most people, thus to be unambiguous and clear you
should have used 10^9 if you were that worried about being correct then
I wouldn't have had to google for the meaning of the word thus breaking
the flow of reading. Which is always a bad thing and again the sort of
habit that kooks seem to get into.