Slashdot Mirror

Simple answer then:
Ship a ClueBat with every Windows box.

...AOL owns Netscape, what possible reason could they have not to use their own product and use a competitor's instead?!...

Perhaps the $750 million payoff had something to do with it.

OK, Columbia Internet or whatever they're called, AJ and Miranda going to the South Pole. This week's userfriendly.org strip.

Heroic tech team just went there. http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040915

This userFriendly strip says it all. :)

Now, call me crazy, but I thought that UF was Canadian... I might be wrong, but you'd think that Illiad himself would know what country he's based in (Vancouver, BC for those who dont know...) just a pendantic point...

I could understand the initial charm of Anime, back in the '80s. I remember when Akira first came out in the cinema and caused quite a stir with its futuristic, Blade Runner Neo-Tokyo setting, engrossing storyline and revolutionary computer graphics mixed in traditional cell animation. I could see then why Anime and Manga were popular - they were fresh and interesting and the Japanese perspective, the different cultural traditions, made for cartoons which could really surprise you, or make you laugh, thinking "What the hell was THAT all about?".

But they've only grown in popularity and I find it surprising that so many slashdotters seemed to have jumped on the bandwagon. There was an odd dichotomy the other day with a story article about outsourcing alongside one about a new anime which made me uneasy, and I tried to reason out why. Do you guys not realise that there are fantastic American cartoons out there, that you could spend your money on as well?

The thing that worries me is that a lot of kids cartoons are imported direct from Japan. And they're the future consumers so things will only get worse. They've got pretty shoddy animation, panning across one cell for example, but because they are the anime style, they're popular. It's the mindless following of a particular style that gets to me, and I see it a lot in the anime fans on Slashdot. *Anything* anime is news. How often do you see any other style of animation being publicised on the main page?

How is a slashbot mindlessly buying japanese anime regardless of the quality different from a CEO of a large company mindlessly outsourcing to India regardless of the quality? They're both going offshore without looking at other alternatives, because it's suddenly fashionable. But on slashdot, anime cheerleading (zealotry is too strong a word) is good, but outsourcing is hideously evil. There's a bit of hypocrisy going on here, in my opinion.

Look into the American alternatives.

Heathan! Google doesn't go down!

(And yes, I know Google has gone down, but let's not let reality interefere with a good joke, shall we?)

Real admins plug the network cable directly into their brains to perform packet analysis

You mean like this?

Here's your solution. (look at the next few days' comics.)

"Can I just cover my computer with a rubber sheet? I could even use cherry flavored."

Link

Hah! The security of my Internet-enabled thermostat is impregnable! I hereby officially dare each and every little script kiddie out there to come and try and mess with it.

The IP address of my thermostat is 127.0.0.1! Bring it on!

P.S. Yeah, I know, this one is shamelessly stolen from here.

Once: Tie a rope between two fixing points. This is like unto your entire hard drive, with many config files interwoven. If a thread frays out of the rope, it doesn't break.

Now tie a thread between two fixing points. This is like unto your registry. If a thread frays out... it's game over.

Again: take a pile of gravel. This is like unto a pile of small files on your hard drive.

Now, carefully stack the individual pieces of gravel one atop another to build a thin, tall pillar. This is like unto your registry on your hard drive.

Take one piece of gravel from each system. Which lasts better?

Discussion: Similar principles apply elsewhere. Microsoft have a tendency to lose the plot when faced with a choice between "robust" and "shiny". They also fall victim to their own propaganda.

# Keyboard: with LOL, OMG, >_< and WTF keys

Most important feature, that.

They did that two years ago...have a look at this if you don't believe me. :-)

I seem to remember this from somwhere.....oh yeah:

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20020929

Apparently "great" ideas never die =P

The LPF has mentioned a cartoon about the U.S. Patent Office. The cartoon shows a military aircraft carrying a black monolith (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey) towards the USPTO building. The "sorely needed" delivery is being done by "two geeks."

"I'm looking to get out of IT after being in it since 1977."
Young kids think they know everything. You don't see Sid leaving IT, do you? How many punch cards do you still have? Is writing FORTRAN code still second nature to you? (COBOL? What is that?)

I believe Fred Gallagher still has a "day job" but it would not surprise me if someday MagaToyko pays his bills (e.g. books (of MegaToyko strips), conventions (e.g. Dallas, June 2004)).
Does UF take care of Illiad? (I hope so. How many video cards is YOUR kingdom worth?)
I think the future in a lot of "IT employment" will come from the knowledge/creativity of individuals and will use IT as a tool. If you live in a small city (say 500,000) and you would like to be an "artist", your opportunities would have been very limited ten years ago but are much better now; MegaToyko and UserFriendly are two examples of opportunities (i.e. content/entertainment offered without a middleman) which were not available 10-20 years ago .
I think the "future" (a future) lies in content rather than delivery. So you are a great "flash programmer"; who cares? Do you have something worth seeing or reading? Do you have specialized knowledge? Are you a leet mathematician or chemist with something interesting to say? (Mandatory link.) (If you want to hear my talk at ANU later, there is no charge.)
Anyway, I think outsourcing is bad (e.g. call a credit card company or airline and try to get good service) but it is reality. I think content (mostly from people in the US/Canada or Europe, although there are extremely smart people everywhere) is the real opportunity. Copy Illiad or create your own path. Your content might be humor or entertainment. It might be your specialized knowledge of the XYZ industry. "We" are all over-weight; who is using the Internet and making money by poking fun at us and offering us free "health advice" (and selling books with the "health strips" strips ala UF)?

PS If I had any really good ideas, I would be working on them rather than posting here. You "guys" are the smart ones; find a niche market so you can get rich and afford a "Doom 3 computer".

Why does it run WinXP? Easy!

try a link that works

Whomever created that image is in a lot of trouble, because SCO owns the copyright to the Daleks and isn't afraid to use it!

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20010321

by the way, how well does doom 3 run under wine?

User Friendly found this out

I really loved last year's UserFriendly for SysAd day. I actually printed two copies and gave it to my two SysAds (love you guys!)

In honor of today

Don't forget Doom3 has Gone Gold! :D
Duke Nukem Forever however, seems to be taking.. well.. forever., or maybe thats the whole point.. hmm..

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20020320

Userfriendly.org had a funny take on the payment of this bet.

can someone explain how gyros work w/o talking about calculus and conservation of angular momentum?

Your post was so awful, I had to reply to it twice.

You sir are an idiot.

LK

I was talking about the comic.

This story has already been touched upon elsewhere.

"skills" beyond "new ways to insult users without them noticing".
I think the crew at User Friendly (except Stef) would be insulted at your tone; these are important skills.

This is kind of cute (and weird); I love "Link of the Day."

What, like Vigor? (original UF strip here)

MCSE Certification

Here's a better explanation for non-geeks.

Modern phones have infrared, right? So what if you combine the worm with this idea? >:)

this /. article does come on the heels of userfriendly's current discussion userfriendly.org

Finally, now I know Sid's slashdot ID!

Whaddya mean he's not a real person ??

Wow, but the art wasn't as good back then...

Good thing the jokes were funnier, eh?

But don't forget, hardware will be free in the future!!!

You need to familiarize yourself with the comic strip search feature. Don't be shy, you know you've always wanted a strip search.

"Ode to spam"

"Second Ode to spam"

-Adam

You need to familiarize yourself with the comic strip search feature. Don't be shy, you know you've always wanted a strip search.

"Ode to spam"

"Second Ode to spam"

-Adam

"An Ode To Spam"
by Irwin

I quiver at an early hour
Awash in electron aura:
Debating life and Godly power,
Staring at Eudora.

What is all my mail worth?
Do I risk my mind?
What if spam should issue forth,
And leave my soul behind?

And thus beside this stream of life,
From whence my mail is plucked.
I decide within my inner strife,
That spammers should be...

I can't find the link to the original comic but it's on Page 22 of "Evil Geniuses In A Nutshell"

but when you're 60 and you can say "I've found the Amulet of Yendor" it will all be worth it. hehe

The first web site I ever worked on was for a realty company. We weren't the greatest graphic designers in the world, and we never claimed to be, but we gave them (IMHO) a pretty good site that worked well and did all they asked. It was standards-compliant, displayed well cross-platform, accounted for those with disabilities, and did the job effectively. We leave the company on less than spectacular terms.

Six months later, they've replaced most of our hard work with web pages created in Microsoft Word. Thankfully, they hadn't yet found the <lamejoke> tag I had unintentionally left in one of the pages that they had given us the text for... Unfortunately, they have left our company's name on at least one page of the site. I didn't want to be associated with lame Word-generated pages.

Six more months later, all of our code is gone. They have replaced the CGI scripts with a technology so obscure that none of us had heard of it, and NONE of our browsers supported it. All this for a realty company.

Now, several years later, someone has set their pages up with some obfuscated JavaScript and some ridiculous use of iframes. The front page alone has 54 HTML errors and 3 CSS errors. A quick check with Bobby shows around 100 accessibility problems on the front page alone. The new page was written in FrontPage, which explains why they use a rather large (kb-wise) repeating background image that is completely invisible to the user.

Sigh...

Basically the time will probably come when we will treat spam like bacteria - it's there, but that doesnt mean we have to like it or care.

No filter is perfect, not even this one.

... here

No, This is the story of LINUX.

"It's clear, then. We must immediately ban all seemingly innocent objects."

Indeed