Slashdot Mirror
New Year's Eve Wrap-Up of Wrap-Ups
SkeeterMac writes "CNN ran an article today listing the top dubious achievements in personal computing for the year... raising again the point that PC speed can not be measured only in megahertz! Too bad the author doesn't think so, because they slam Apple for pricing the iMac around $1,500 for "chugging along at 700 Mhz"..."
cwill1004 writes "Mary Jo Foley has written up a set of predictions for Microsoft in 2003. She suggests that the tablet PC will be a bust, MSN gaining on AOL, and Microsoft getting more flak for its DRM (digital rights management) offerings, much like it did for the Windows Product Activation. It's on Microsoft Watch."
angkor links to Shift's "stupid web moments of 2002."
And the good news -- sulli writes "Just in time for New Year's, the New York Times (register now, use a workaround, or forever hold your peace) discusses at length the health benefits of alcohol. Prevent heart attacks, not with drugs or diet, but with a good California Zinfandel! Avoid strokes with a Perfect Gin Martini! Just don't overdo it, and you'll be fine - too much alcohol, like too much caffeine, has well-known effects. But in moderation, bottoms up!"
Update: 01/01 01:07 GMT by T : Here's another. An anonymous reader submits: "The BBC News has an amusing article titled the 'E-cyclopedia's glossary of 2002'. One wonders what future generations will make of our 'Bollotics' and 'Euronating'... Even Slashdotting gets a mention."
I hadn't thought of that.
:)
*eyes the pack of Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade*
Well, I'm late, I'm sure, but... why not? So... happy new year to the European folks out there, and to everyone else when it gets to them.
It's new years eve! Do you people really not have anything more exciting to be doing than reading Slashdot? You'd never catch me posting on a geek news site on the party night of the year. Ever.
...of potential local time live webcasts from around the world.
/.ed first.
/. you better beleive I'm raising my glass every 2 mins.
What the hell does that mean? Oh, wait, you mean if it doesn't get
May be helpful for those who want to raise a glass to the New Year every hour on the hour.
I don't need a reason to raise my glass every hour. Its New Years Eve and I'm ranting on
I noticed that there were 1991 bytes in the full article. Could the /. editors raise that to 2003 bytes by adding a few spaces, spelling errors, etc.? It'd be a small touch that the whole community would appreciate.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
*eyes the pack of Mike's Hard Cranberry Lemonade*
Dude you'll be sick before you get drunk.
Just a thought :)
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
I hope you have your Fosters Oil Can and a Funnel!
For the new year, take a hint from our President! If you get pulled over, pass your alcohol poisoned self off as 'recovering from choking on a pretzel!' Watch the chucklefest begin!
(Drink safely, and don't drive wasted! What would I do without -1 Overrated and -1 Troll mods? I'd be unstoppable! So take care, you drunk bitches!)
The Imac looks really cool, but damn it is overpriced. With PC prices dropping like a stone, and even clever integrated PCs starting at $1000 (eg, Gateway's) and barebone PC chassis like the shuttle Cubes & motherboard for $300, the Jellybean is just not cost-effective unless you Gotta Have A Mac.
Test your net with Netalyzr
The really sobering news in that article was that they knew in 1972 that alcohol could help people at risk for cardiovascular disease but the government forbid publication of the study.
In other words, they suppressed information that would have reduced the number of people who died from this disease.
Nearly one million people died in 1999 from cardiovascular disease.
That's one in every 2.5 deaths.
Fucking unbelievable.
This goes well with the news that the government suppressed research into the marijuana's effectiveness in treating cancer. Since the 1973 study talked about in the linked story, there have been three separate studies demonstrating that THC holds promise in reducing or eradicating tumors, but still the government virtually prohibits the research.
The total number of dead worldwide may be in the hundreds of millions.
I'm glad to see the slashdot editors consider this news, even if they didn't bother giving it its own berth. Good thing nobody introduced a new MP3 player today.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
People have been pointing to cost as Apple's Achilles heel for decades now.
Apple knows their machines are more expensive. They always have been, and probably always will be.
People buy them anyway.
People who are buying Macs are willing to pay more because they believe they're getting their money's worth.
Why is this so hard to understand?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Slashdot are a little late on this then. I'm in Sydney and we have been in 2003 for the last 12 hours.
Learn to Improvise
Mary Jo Foley's article is worth a read, and free too! (You don't to know how much the Microsoft Watch Newsletter will cost you, trust me, it'll make your eyes water). And the predictions look to be spot-on too.
The E-cyclopedia is worth a read too, although some of the words probably won't make sense if you don't live in the UK (eg. 'archery' refers to Jeffrey Archer, sent down last year for perjury).
PS. 2003 in da house! (UK)
-MT.
A wee bit late.... (Score:1)
by lgftsa (617184) Alter Relationship on 2002.12.31 17:14 (#4991804)
It's 12:09pm 1/1/2003 here. This story is about 15 hours overdue.
Nope, you are 6+ hours early.
Adjusted for my timezone that is....
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Let the vast right-wing conspiracy begin! ;)
From the NYT article on the beneficial health effects of moderate alcohol consumption:
Moderate drinking can help prevent strokes, amputated limbs and dementia.
I'm sorry, for a second there I thought that said... AMPUTATED LIMBS?!? I'd think the correlation between alcohol consumption and severed limbs would run the other direction. I mean, I grew up in white-trash East Texas and an informal study of most of my classmates seemed to indicate that those who had the highest alcohol consumption also tended to accidentally lose or damage appendages. Whereas I, who drank virtually none, still have... um... "all the parts God gave me."
Graham "Teach" Mitchell, computer science teacher, Leander HS
My favorite year-in-review so far is the one put up by news parody site Ridiculopathy-Dot-Com.
Blah blah blah, they're not The Onion. Blah Blah blah, mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Blah blah blah, shut up and read it.
you'd be chugging a can of [insert caffeinated beverage here] every two minutes. Real geeks don't have time for glasses.
/me swallows two tins of penguin mints. Match this caffeine high!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Metric Time will herald a new dawn of productivity and quick figuring of time sheets.
Janet from Allentown says, "I've been waiting for metric time for 25.35 Decamonths! TeeHee!"
Let the celebration begin! (At exactly 0.01 days!) Metric Time is here!
I'm afraid the government has been lying to you again my child, and you've bought it, hook, line and sinker. Well, it'll make you a happy little timeclock puncher so I guess I should just leave you alone.
x,y,z,t. Not just a good idea. It's the law.
KFG
It's because of a little thing called physics, with a hint of cosmology thrown in for good measure.
Time zones are just a logical construct with no real basis in reality whose only function is to give the illusion that trains run on time.
If they DID there might even be a point to them. Why on earth do they print train schedules with times like "1:37" on them when we all know it's really "Half past one to two somthing or other, depending on the phase of the moon and whether the crick rose any during the night"?
KFG
It turned 5763 nearly four months ago. Is this some sort of new thing that someone forgot to tell me about?
Sheesh, I just can't keep up with the rate of social change these days.
KFG
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
It's Not 2002, it's really the year 6007, since, as we all (should) know, the Earth, the universe, and everything else was created in 4004 B.C.
tee hee, tee hee.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
How about some slashdot hangover remedies for those of us that will need them tomorrow. The tried and true remedy is to sleep until January 3rd, but what about for those of us that have to get up tomorrow?
Actually. Just hit submit. . . and there you go.
KFG
The DLAPAPA (Designed Like A Picasso And Priced Accordingly) award goes to Apple Computer for the design of its latest iMac, the one that looks like half a round melon impaled with a bent easel. You have to shell out $1,499 to get one with a CD-RW drive, chugging along on a 700-megahertz processor.
Oh yeah, this iMac is a total rip off at $1,499.00... Wait, you mean the 700 MHz model is actually only $1,199.00 including CD-RW? Way to go, CNN.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
Like any real geek, I'm coding on new years eve and day you insensitive clod!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
a clear distinction between the reality and the *model.* A clock may be analog or digital. A clock, or a time zone, is just a model of time. In fact, analog *means* model. *Time* is neither analog nor digital. It's reality. Time existed long before clocks. Plants can tell time. There is no such thing as a time "zone." x,y,z,t is literally true. Take one step to the left in space and you also "travel" in time.
For that matter, clocks don't even really measure what time it *is,* they really just measure the passage of time as a dynamic entity.
If you *really* want to know what "time" it *is* the best you can do is look up.
KFG
That's NZST, dontchya know.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
It's just an excuse to get off work and drink like an idiot.
I'll drink to that.
Game... blouses.
Props to H1B's and Indian Programmers
Ya ya, sieg heil.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Could we please keep the original conspiracy that alcohol is bad for you? This article blows my whole excuse that I use for not drinking. Do I give a rat's fuzzy posterior about my health? Not really - but saying I don't drink for reasons of my health WAS an excuse that was hard to refute. Sheesh, now I'll have to go through the long process of explaining how I don't like the taste of alcohol. Sure, there's acquired tastes, and then there's camping stove fuel.
As I've learned from experience, the "I don't like the taste of alcohol." excuse is usually met with "Well, neither do I, but I love how it makes me feel.". Well, guess what - it makes me feel light-headed and nauseous. Kudos to you if you enjoy that feeling - I don't.
As you can imagine, I'm not much for social gatherings where drinking is the primary activity. I honestly wish more people were mature enough to find better social common grounds than the vile substances they're putting into their bodies. Pop culture says otherwise.
You smoke, I smoke, I drink, me too, well good
Cause we gon get high tonight - Cam'ron "Hey Ma"
Screw pop culture. I'm a geek.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I know that several countries have timezones on the half-hour relative to GMT, such as Iran, so you should be able to get at least 26 celebrations in!