Slashdot Mirror

Works under windows pretty easily.. I'm a perl noob and I figured it out. You just need win32 wget, ActivePerl, and escape the filename a little differently:

system("wget -O \"$filename\" $download_link");

Throw wget on your path, and away you go..

Quick, learn too much for your own good

Look in to using TrueCrypt + TC Temp, this will setup a truecrypt volume at bootup, set windows to use this drive as the TMP and TEMP directories, make sure your user profile in windows uses it as temporary storage also (think IE cache). Set your windows swap file to use the TCTEMP volume also.

Setup a second truecrypt volume for your file sharing program and songs, do not copy the songs or other files to and unencrypted part of the hard drive. Run MRU blaster and Adaware to keep the recent file lists clear on your programs. Run an eraser program on the free space of your drive weekly as a percaution anyway.

Remember before you delete your filesharing programs and data, uninstall the program first, DO NOT connect to the internet at this time, many programs will register the uninstall on a remote server. After uninstalling the program and zaping the truecrypt volume search the windows registry for left over keys that would show that the program has been installed. Do a full free space wipe on the drive.

Now, hopefully you have a highspeed internet connection, get Wget for windows and set it to recursively download microsoft.com, slashdot.org, ibm.com and any other huge site you can think of till the drive is almost full. Delete these files (but not erase them) then defragment your drive.

Make sure you leave NO TRACE of TrueCrypt or any secure file erasing program on your hard drive.

And make sure your copy of windows is licenced!

And name your political speech and religious freedom mp3s deceptively so they have to listen to 40 hours of essays on freedom of speach and copy right to see if you have one copy of britanny!

In case you are a Windows user wondering about the easiest, quickest way to download the files and are not familiar with wget:

Get wget from http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wgetwin.html (scan the binaries before installing and executing, of course)

To download the files quickly and easily just copy & paste the filenames into a file (call it utilities.txt), preferably in a new directory (make it easy to ID the files)

Go to the command line in that directory and type:

wget -i utilities.txt

This will download every file in the list to your current working directory.

I suggest you do so ASAP because when Microsoft says that something will always be free, they cannot be trusted.

Depleted uranium (mostly U238) is extremely toxic and carcinogenic and has a half life of 4.46 × 10^9 years (wikipedia) so please don't tell us how it is going to get less dangerous - that's not going to happen for awhile. And despite the ability of DU to absorbs neutrons it is also naturally radioactive and pretty good at emitting them. It gets used in tank shells and is scattered across the Balkans, Kuwait and Iraq where it is definitely causes problems above background radiation. But nevermind over there, there are enough leaks (documented and undocumented) to cause worry here in North America. Take a look at Uranium City for instance... http://www.interlog.com/~grlaird/uraniumcity.html [interlog.com]

Uranium is chemically indeed quite toxic, much like lead or any other heavy metal, radioactive or otherwise. Furthermore small particles (such as those created by ammunition impacting a target) are prone to spontaneous combustion when exposed to air, exacerbating the spread of the toxicity.

DU is however--as the gigantic half-life indicates--simply not appreciably radioactive. Also, if I recall correctly, the form of radiation it emits is harmless from an external source (i.e., as long as it's not ingested or inhaled, in which case you'd still be in more trouble from the toxicity anyhow). Its dangers, not to be disregarded, are at least 99.9% chemical in nature. Radioactivity has precisely nothing to do with it, and any source claiming radiation hazards from DU is either deluded or intentionally deceptive.

Or to turn that around how much of the economic costs are born because nuclear power in any form is supported by scientific illterates? Once closing and storage costs are factored in nuclear plants are expensive even with the massive government subsidies they usually get. And its not like they are long-term viable, the world can run out of affordable uranium too - it will just take a couple of hundred years longer than oil. Right now wind power in many locations is cheaper and more viable long term than nuclear power. And BTW nulcear power is not a type of generator.

The statistic of the world running out of nuclear fuel in a few hundred years is based on the assumption that waste will be disposed of instead of being reprocessed into fuel. Using reprocessing and breeder reactors, we have more than enough nuclear fuel to last thousands of years. Conveniently, this also eliminates a great deal of the costs involved in disposing of waste.

As for wind power, it's only viable in a limited number of locations and will never supply remotely enough energy to replace other forms, and all the wishful thinking of wannabe "environmentalists" won't make that otherwise.

First, keep in mind that the longer it stays radioactive, by definition the less radioactive (and thus less dangerous) it is. Depleted Uranium, for instance, despite being technically radioactive, is actually used as radiation shielding!
Depleted uranium (mostly U238) is extremely toxic and carcinogenic and has a half life of 4.46 × 10^9 years (wikipedia) so please don't tell us how it is going to get less dangerous - that's not going to happen for awhile. And despite the ability of DU to absorbs neutrons it is also naturally radioactive and pretty good at emitting them. It gets used in tank shells and is scattered across the Balkans, Kuwait and Iraq where it is definitely causes problems above background radiation. But nevermind over there, there are enough leaks (documented and undocumented) to cause worry here in North America. Take a look at Uranium City for instance... http://www.interlog.com/~grlaird/uraniumcity.html

Yeah, and how much of the economic uncertainty comes from artificial barriers created by scientific illiterates who oppose nuclear power? Other than fossil fuels, nuclear is the only type of generator that is proven to be long-term viable and scalable to any capacity.
Or to turn that around how much of the economic costs are born because nuclear power in any form is supported by scientific illterates? Once closing and storage costs are factored in nuclear plants are expensive even with the massive government subsidies they usually get. And its not like they are long-term viable, the world can run out of affordable uranium too - it will just take a couple of hundred years longer than oil. Right now wind power in many locations is cheaper and more viable long term than nuclear power. And BTW nulcear power is not a type of generator.

I'm not saying nuclear is worse than coal (I'm honestly not sure) but these aren't good arguments for nuclear fission.

You missed some!

Network

putty for SSH (even commandline SCP which rules), wget for sucking down the web, opera if you don't like firefox, and some form of bittorrent client, like bitcomet.

Utilities

gvim, unxutils or in a pinch some downloads from the gnuwin32 tools, tools from SysInternals.

Multimedia

Don't forget Mediaplayer classic (MPC) which by happy coincedence is included in the k-lite mega codec pack (from codecpack.nl).

Security

grisoft AV, tools from SysInternals.

Heck, you don't even need to program.

Get a copy of Wget for windows and put it in the startup group with the address of your web site, like so...
wget http:/// mysite.com/laptop.htm
that should hit your site and download the file whenever the system is booted.
For more fun, use Srvany and run the little script above as a service. This way the crooks don't even need to login for it to work.

That appears to be a regular batch file, just install wget for windows

Yes, but Windows has Find and find /?, which works ok.

oh yea and Grep for windows.

Man, you actually paid for visual grep? :p

Seriously, though. This adds one more item to my list of things that make me wonder how people can ever work with Windows. You said it yourself, you need a Real OS. Or just grep for Windows, or a whole bunch of utilities while you're at it.

HTH

The real killer is that one has to get something useful going quickly; rather than the language itself. This helps to maintain interest in it.

Unlike BASIC, rexx is fairly easy to learn, while having structured programming, rather than goto's. Also, one does not have to invoke libraries for things.

If she has a mathematical bent, try also the rexx routines at the Album of Algorithmic Techniques.

Windows XP. (And a shower).
Ahem
wget -c
A geek downloads a long file and you assume he didn't shower?
If you use wget you don't need to watch the download (and yes there is a Windows port).
With his computer tied up and not needing any user supervison what is a geek to do?
Play video games? Computers tied up dorkwad.
(Well not really but it's Linux.. games? If it were Windows it'd be tied up)

Surf the web (bandwith eaten up.. downloading)
Umm girl friend (hahaha I'm so funny)
Shower....

Odds are he towled off and logged into slashdot.
Now if he were using Windows XP he'd probably be showing between the BSOD and reboots.

So, in closing. Downloading software is illegal. Fucking consumers is immoral.


Correction: Downloading illegally available software is illegal.

Case in point: I have a free, free-to-download test program available at my site (see sig) that checks if the PC you run it on is capable of running my retail program that is available for purchase there.

zerocool complains about high-priced (overpriced) software as is his/her right in the USA under the First Amendment to the Constitution Of America.

The reality: Software development costs MONEY and should be compensated for if desired by the creators of said software.

The facts....

The computer(s) the software is developed on costs money (unless said computer(s) were donated for free).

The electricity powering the computer costs money (unless it is being generated from a free and/or donated source).

The programmer(s) who programmed the software cost money (unless they are donating their time and skills for free).

The advertising for the software costs money (unless it is being done for free somehow).

The distribution expenses to distribute the software to the recipients cost money (unless it is being done for free somehow).

Companies and individuals have invested lots of time and money in the software they create and sell. They found needs/markets for certain kinds of software and wrote the software to fill those needs/markets. Big companies have to sell software for big bucks to recoup the expenses in creating, maintaining, and distributing said software. They also are entitled to profit from their software which should be reinvested back into the company--not wasted.

For example, look at the 'gross profit margin' on a retail CD copy of Windows: $179.00 or so for a round thin sandwich of plastics and metal that has an intrinsic value of maybe $1.00. That $179.00 Windows CD allowed everybody, from the end user/customer up to Microsoft itself, to profit and benefit from the manpower and technology invested in it to create it and to benefit from its power as a computer operating system.

Ok, let's cut to the chase....

Windows is a kludge, based on code dating back to the dawn of the PC era.

Microsoft is a monopoly.

Even in this environment, the customer STILL has alternatives such as Apple and Linux -- SCO problems with commercial Linux use aside (which can be resolved.

If you want to avoid paying for high-priced software, use cheaper/free software or buy/legally get for free the necessary software tools to write your own custom programmed software solutions.

To address the second part of zerocool's comment, I offer the the following as some of the societal results of 'people as consumers -- not customers'. This has created a desparate, adversarial environment in which commerce and 'consumers' meet in an inevitable clusterfsck....

Wal-Mart, their business practices and its consequenses.

Ad creep. Even on the Internet. a technique coined and first implemented in 1996.

Email spam.

Heh... That's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. And I used to work in pro audio. And a lot of that time was spent doing broadcasting and simultaneous interpretation of Canadian federal government meetings. Yours was worthy of an ambassadorship to Portugal, at the very least.

Yes, speaker technology has come a *long* way over the years. But so has manufacturing technology. Ever notice that "they don't build 'em like they used to"? That applies to speakers as much as it applies to cars.

Some of the most highly sought-after audiophile (Note that a real audiophile has technical knowledge. audiophile != the sort of idiot who buys "Monster Cable" because the sound has "more presence") speakers are vintage speakers from brands like Klipsch, Acoustic Research, Celestion. These things tend to have thick and heavy particleboard cases, overbuilt drivers, and big oil-filled non-electrolytic capacitors in the crossovers. And because they're built well, the cabinets are less affected by standing waves, the driver baskets flex less, and the horrible ESR of non-polarized electrolytics in the crossovers isn't an issue.

You will not be able to replace stuff like this by wandering into Best Buy and dropping the Visa card.

What you said is equivalent to saying, "If your tires are worn out, chances are your car is so old that significant advances in automotive technology would get you a better car for less money."

I'll pit a 1968 Dodge Dart Hemi against *any* modern car for acceleration, and if I put on a set of modern shocks and radial tires I'll also take out most competitors in the slalom.

Lots of the time, vintage is better than new. Manufacturers have learned better machining and manufacturing processes, but they've also learned how to optimize a design and cut costs better, too. Guess who that *doesn't* help.

Both with the same actual RMS wattage rating, which one is gonna pump out the bass better:

• A modern amplifier with a MOSFET output stage (ooh! MOSFETs! It *must* be good!) mounted on the PC board, 18-gauge wire to the speaker jacks, and a 6lb power transformer, or
• A 35-year-old boat anchor with a bipolar output stage hand-wired and bolted to a big heatsink, 12-gauge wire to the speaker jacks, and an 12lb power transformer

Same sorts of stuff applies with speakers...

Now, if your speakers need new surrounds:

• Decide if you want to repair the speakers. Generally, if they're a decent brand, it's worth it; a decent pair of bookshelf speakers will cost you >$500 now. (No wonder I spent $200 reconing my 1970s Acoustic Research AR-4x.) If the drivers have transparent polypropylene cones or aren't round (ie. 6x9"), throw out the speakers and pick up a pair of good used speakers on ebay.
• Decide if you're the sort of person who can recone/resurround them. If you could do this and have a working Palm afterwards, you're probably capable enough with tools, dexterity and patience to be able to fix the surrounds yourself. Otherwise, don't even attempt it; send out the drivers to be resurrounded.
• You need to do both drivers at once. If only your left speaker needs a surround, you still have to do the right one at the same time. Even if the foam in the other one is fine, it will have worn in and won't be as stiff as the new foam you're putting into the other driver. You want to keep them matching. Procure the surrounds and suitable adhesives.
• Remove both drivers. Solder a piece of wire across the terminals of each (reduces cone deflection by EMF). Last chance to clean your workbench and get the cat out of the room.
• With a very sharp knife (ie. Al Qaeda's Wrecking Ball), remove the dust cap by slicing between it and the cone. Be very careful not to hit the vo

You live and you learn. Maybe Granny Brooks was secretly a member of the Stunt Smocking Team or something, she always did seem unnaturally peaceful at home. (-:

BTW, nice to see PJ make it into the Jargon file with that article. (-:

"Don't have wget on your Windows box? Install Cygwin"

Or just don't bother pissing around with Cygwin (still haven't managed to get it working properly) and use wget.exe

The issue of what will happen when land covered by ice sees a melting is curious. Most people assume that water/ice sitting on land will raise ocean levels when it runs into the ocean. This is not so. The reason has to do with the exact same reason for which the land sticks above the ocean. Frankly it is floating just as the ICE in the water. When the ice or water on land runs off into the ocean, the land it was on rises in a process called isostatic rebound. This makes more room for the water in the ocean and as such makes the net effect zero.

Geez, where to begin. First of all, IWAGP (I was a geophysicist), so I'm not purely talking out my behind here. Yes, you are correct, land DOES rebound after glaciers recede... after about 10^5 years. Formerly glaciated parts of North America and Europe are STILL rebounding from the last glacial period. If Greenland got de-glaciated tomorrow, I've got news for you... the sea level would rise, well, tomorrow, and the land under the former ice sheet wouldn't rebound for many, many years, and in the meantime, coastal areas would be inundated.

The Isostatic rebound is pretty profound. In areas where glaciers have recently melted off, land masses have risen as much as 200 or 300 feet. These have been observed in the past 100 years.

Name one place where this has happened. Provide references.

The land would rise serveral thousand feet by best estimates revealing mountains as high possibly as the Smoky Mountains or higher in places.

Yeah, over a timescale of about 10,000 years. A great comfort to our families whose houses may be flooding 50 years from now.

For those of us who live in the eastern USA our mountains have massive cliffs cut by deep rivers of ice. These glaciers had north America looking like the south polar regions do today.

And?

The warming that took out those glaciers is probably echoing back on us right now.

The warming is echoing back on us? WTF does that mean?

The Hate America First crowd is out front on this one.

Geez, what can I say. Watch out for black helicopters.

Sean

So, where exactly did you look? I usually start with Google. From the numerous possibilities I'd recommend this one because of the support for subdir-searches.

You're right about the piping of course, but an outright lie like that (not to mention using terms like winshit) kind of lowers the value of the whole post.

http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wgetwin.html

This is probably the first thing I get when I'm doing a new windows installation. For larger files, its a must. You also don't have to deal with browsers using their cache directory to download, and then *copying* it to the directory you really wanted. (Who the hell thought of doing it that way?)

From the Congo during WWII? Well that's an interesting theory. As for afterwards, where was all the output from Uranium City going?

I work for a small ISP (mostly dialup, a few ADSL). Incoming limit for email is, I believe, 8MB, which I think works out to 5MB for a binary file when encoded. (Feel free to correct me, people.) We have more than a few business customers on dialup, and every now and then we'll get a secretary calling up asking why the quarterly report got rejected by our mail server. The answer, of course, is that it's a 10MB Excel spreadsheet, it's too big, and our mail server refused it.

Email Is Not How You Transfer Large Files, Especially Over Dialup: It takes forever, people use crappy modems (I *hate* hearing the words "ess emm fifty-six") that get disconnected in the middle of a download, and there's no way for them to start where they left off. *Plus*, inna meantime their other email, which is inevitably of the highest importance, is sitting behind said quarterly report, and they can't get at it.

FTP or HTTP, by contrast, combined w/a download manager of some description, would be great. (I was going to moan about how I'd love a Windows version of the insanely great wget, but hey! turns out there is one...sweet!) It would be The Right Thing, it wouldn't hold up their email, and you'd be able to resume if you were disconnected.

I agree that teaching the user is also The Right Thing, and I try to do so when I can. But -- I'm thinking about one customer in particular; I haven't had to talk to her in a while, but she's a good example -- how do I explain this to someone who just wants the frigging report, and to whom it's obvious that her ISP is only standing in her way, and is pissed off as a result?

Part of the problem, I'll admit, is that we don't have a ready alternative right now to hand her: we don't offer FTP space at the moment for our users. I'd love it if we had the intranet-/internet-facing FTP + Samba space mentioned in a post above, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. (Though now that I think of it, it would be easy to set up some space and just tell people about it when they need it; give them access for, say, 24 hours, then kill the account. Hm...)

I'm asking for help on this, not throwing up my hands and giving up. I've figured out the Right (quickest) way to talk people through setting up a dialup connection, or changing their modem settings, or getting the information from them I need to figure out what's wrong. But I haven't been able to figure out how to explain Email + Multi-Megabyte Attachments + Dialup == Bad yet. How do you guys do it?

>Why does everybody want to vote on-line?

This is simple. Jean Chretien is straining to leave a "legacy" behind in this country after 3 terms of heavy-handed rule. He doesn't like what his opposition paints as his legacy -- A liar on the GST "The GST is history!", a thug with his shawinigan handshake, a bumbling moron infront of cameras, a person who can't even keep himself safe from break-ins no matter how much security he can pay for, a man who puts the lives of the Canadian military in jeopardy without them even being on a mission, a man who can't handle being wrong, a man who doesn't believe in your chartered right to free speech, a man who wrongfully invests your money, a man who supports things by doing nothing, such as the CD-Levy that assumes all Canadians are criminals, and the anti-piracy laws that leave at least 3 million Canadians with the inability to be multicultural in their television watching.

The rubber suit is wearing thin, finally.

• OS Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
• Editors Sucks-Rules-o-Meter
• Vegetarion Sucks-Rules-O-Meter
• What [Programming] Languages Rule (alternative)
• Linux Distribution Comparison

Check out the work of Jeffrey Shaw, David Rokeby, and Chista Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau.

Use this...

1) Abolition of Time Zones
Sure, it sucks that I live in Eastern time, my family is in Central, and my sister is in Mountain, but time zones are essential to the way we function. It's a way of transferring a standardized day schedule around the world. It doesn't matter whether I'm in New York or Los Angeles, the typical work day is 9 to 5. If there were no time zones, we would have to come up with some other way to enforce the standard work day (amongst other things) based on your locale. If the work day where I live was considered to be 12 to 8, there would be a point at which 1 to 9 would be preferred, but where is the distinct line? Time zones give a hard and fast point for the change to occur, requiring you to remember only which one you happen to be in.

2) Months and weeks are just as arbitrary as hours and minutes. Why not change them instead. Remembering 60/60/24 is much easier than memorizing the old nursery school rhyme "30 days has September, April, June..." Other than obsoliting my old friend the Doomsday Algorithm, that makes a lot more sense to me.

some cool capabilities like download an entire directory, automatically retries until it gets the entire file, etc.

Or let the guy who wrote "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" write it

He also appearead as Eddie Van Blundht in the episode Small Potatoes, which he did not write.

This would be an excellent idea. The guy, Darin Morgan, directed my favorite X Files episodes. My absolute favorite was Humbug. Man, that was a funny eps.

See this for more info on Darin.

I have petitioned management to institute the celebration of Festivus .

I think that a corporate celebration of Festivus gives a brilliant opportunity for the traditional "Airing of grievances".

pstools

strings

grep

Are people still pulling that scam? :P (Giving money in a friends name).

Dear Bob,
I donated $200 in your name to the National Human Fund.

George Costanza

Anyone else notice this?

Get wget for windows here. And there is a Pico clone called Nano which runs on Windows and is almost identical.

--

The reason was that PSINet was known for extremely poor customer service. Interlog basically fell under control of iStar, a horrible ISP which PSI had bought some time earlier. Interlog had been the best ISP in the area for years, but only a few months later, various problems started (bad modem pools, server failures, etc), and just over a year later, it was unusable. I would not be suprized if the same happens to Qwest.

Um, that URL again: New Century Gospel

It is not a christian site as the name implies, but rather a general NGE info site. Cheers...

I've used tarpitting to reduce the flow of spam through my mailserver, and it seems to work pretty well. There are patches out there for QMail (awesome) that seem to do the trick. There are other various recipes and such for procmail that work well. If you're looking to poison their spamlists, take a look at sugarplum, a spamlist poisoner for webservers. On a totally unrelated note, but on the same vein (poisonbots), take a look at peachpit, a censorware spider trap.

How pleased I am to see IFComp finally mentioned on Slashdot! I know people in the IF community have been trying to have this happen for at least the past couple of comps. I hope that this will help to not only generate more IF players, but also authors.

One that note: I see folks have mentioned 'em, but nobody has done the service to the truly lazy and linked to 'em, so allow me then then to list off some favorite sophisticated interactive fiction authorship engines:

Inform, based on the parser Infocom used in its games (as of the late 80s), is a fully object-oriented language with a C-like syntax. It's my personal language of choice for the little bit of IF dabbling I've done; you can see the source for a small and silly game called 'Calliope' I wrote for last year's competition (I came in 23rd, heh (but I got to win an Honest Bob CD anyway, hurrah)) linked from my own IF info page(which also has the compiled game, and links to lots of other modern IF games (much better than mine!) and authors I like). Inform is also open-source, and binaries exist for any platform you might reasonably care to name.

There's also TADS and Hugo, about which I know little, but are both popular enough with other authors to be worth checking out for the interested newcomer.

Have fun!
J
MacOS Open Source

For a solution to this, I would recommend Hugo, whihc is an engine with the potential to combine the level of descriptive storyline available in text adv entures with the visual cues that help make the gaming experience more intuitive.

According to their site information, apparently this has the potential to deal with multiple storyline branches as well, which is something I'd like to see. For that matter, once I've had a chance to play with it a bit, I may consider working on something along those lines.

This site is for hacking the IIIe/IIIx if anyone gives a fuck.

I saw someone did the conversion in a computer mall in Hong Kong for around US $50. You pay the money and the guy will crack open your PalmV, pull the memory and resolder a new chip right in front of you in less than 15 minutes. It's really amazing. I think maybe these guys just have very steady hands. You can see more infomation about Palm upgrade here which is linked to the Singapore Palm User's Group Linked Web Pages.

why the ??&@*@* is Bender's head red?
That don't make no sense.
The picture on the site isnt' red.
I made a wallpaper with the signs a while back (800x600) when some of the images weren't bigger.

Pope

Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!

Oh, they provide the source too. Check it:

http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/blat. html

-the spoony fork

but if something is free I dont see how it can be copyright infringed.. especially if i am not making a profit.

That something is distrubuted for free (as in beer) does not mean it can't also be a copyright violation. Just ask John Oswald.

And even if it isn't legally a copyright violation, that fact is not a sufficient enough insulation against a lawsuit claiming that it actually is a violation.

VBRUN.DLL is covered by it's own license that you'll need to comply with if you plan on including it as part of any software you distribute, regardless of whether you charge a fee for it or not. This is the same mechanism that gives the GPL its strength.

Besides, even if something isn't legally a copyright violation, that fact just isn't a sufficient enough insulation against a lawsuit claiming that it actually is a violation.

I hated this deletion of incomplete downloads too. wget kicks a lot of ass in *nix, but for those of you condemned to windows, you can use wget for windows:
http://www.interlog.com/~tcharron/wg etwin.html

Heh, I'm posting this from a 3 1/2 year old PowerTower 180e!
I bought this particular machine because it was cheaper/faster than what Apple had at the time. My Micropolis HD died after 3 months, and I got it replaced. You'll notice Micropolis is no longer in business. The replacement Seagate is a trooper and a half!
How many of you have 3 1/2 year old "PC's" that work well for what you want to do these days?

The PPC 603-based clones were the most problematic, and unfortunately, those were the ones aimed at the Consumer market. Jeez, I'd take an iMac over a Starmax anyday.

I am a loyal MacOS user, because I hate Windows, and the Mac lets me get my work done the way I want to with the least amount of hassle! I was happier than hell to get rid of my 386 (and Windows) and get a 68040 Mac, and I've never looked back. Now I'm saving for a G4.
I'm not a hard-core gamer who thinks that 48fps is much better than 44fps and is worth spending hours to configure my hardware and software to make it happen, and I'm not a programmer.

I mean, jeez, can your OS/WM do this??
Yep, I create and organize my work flow my COLOUR. Sorting by Name, Date or Kind won't work, because I work with other people and need to keep their work separate from mine, but together in the hierarchy of the web server. For other work, I label by colour to indicate new or old versions. Until there's another OS that can do this, I'll stick with my Mac, thank you very much!

PS. Futurama fans might like this 800x600 desktop I made.

Pope

Heh, I'm posting this from a 3 1/2 year old PowerTower 180e!
I bought this particular machine because it was cheaper/faster than what Apple had at the time. My Micropolis HD died after 3 months, and I got it replaced. You'll notice Micropolis is no longer in business. The replacement Seagate is a trooper and a half!
How many of you have 3 1/2 year old "PC's" that work well for what you want to do these days?

The PPC 603-based clones were the most problematic, and unfortunately, those were the ones aimed at the Consumer market. Jeez, I'd take an iMac over a Starmax anyday.

I am a loyal MacOS user, because I hate Windows, and the Mac lets me get my work done the way I want to with the least amount of hassle! I was happier than hell to get rid of my 386 (and Windows) and get a 68040 Mac, and I've never looked back. Now I'm saving for a G4.
I'm not a hard-core gamer who thinks that 48fps is much better than 44fps and is worth spending hours to configure my hardware and software to make it happen, and I'm not a programmer.

I mean, jeez, can your OS/WM do this??
Yep, I create and organize my work flow my COLOUR. Sorting by Name, Date or Kind won't work, because I work with other people and need to keep their work separate from mine, but together in the hierarchy of the web server. For other work, I label by colour to indicate new or old versions. Until there's another OS that can do this, I'll stick with my Mac, thank you very much!

PS. Futurama fans might like this 800x600 desktop I made.

Pope

Is not that there is no good way to input Chinese character. It's just that there are 20-50+ decent methods and no one is significantly better than the other.

Since there are a few thousand common chinese character, a page of chinese contain more information than a page of English. How many people need to type high speed at work anyway? I don't think that's a big problem.

I use pin-yin too. Any other methods need some training, it's not worth it if you don't write everyday. Even shorthand pin-yin or dumb-proof pin-yin is much faster, I just too lazy to learn (the distinction between "sh" and "s" is killing us cantonese, not that cantonese pronounciation spelling is better.) I always think that voice regoniztion can leap over the chinese input issue. I think it needs a rather powerful machine like a pentium III and such. It's reachable in 5 years.

btw, a lot of culture has given up Pictographic writing like Vietnam, Korean and (sort of) Japanese. Chinese are not likely to change Shu-Fa (calligraphy) any time soon.

Chen Ye

"Just press delete". That's fine in places where you have flat rate phone calls to download the stuff.

Even then, it's not fine. I guess my "Just press delete" graphic doesn't make as much sense to someone who didn't spend the summer of 1996 (?) wired up to news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail, where plenty of jokes were going around about exactly what, ideally, that Delete key would be hooked up to. That's why the background for the slogan is an over-saturated photo of a mushroom cloud: the idea is that we've just deleted the spammer.

Newsgroups do breed in-jokes. Sorry about that...

I'm happy to see spammers pay, but how far could this go?

Far enough that people start behaving responsibly on the network? Hey, I can dream...

Aside from the self-serving "free speach [sic]" arguments of the spammers themselves, I can't imagine anything bad to say about this.

Time to plug my spam solution again.