Quagmire's too gimmicky to be a main character. As a recurring secondary character the jokes work fine, but if you had them constantly for 22 minutes per show it'd grow old fast.
LOL, This is awesome. Especially since depicting nazis in a videogame will get it banned in Germany...
OUR censorship isn't bad, but other people's cencorship is... Do you have a source for that claim? I'm not aware of any ban on depicting Nazis in computer games in Germany. In fact from what I understand WW2 games have traditionally sold especially well in Germany where the Nazis are typically considered to be a separate entity and culture from modern Germany.
Why would terrorists use robots to replace suicide bombers? These people haven't even figured out how to use timers yet*, I don't think deathbringing robots will be their first foray into the world of technology.
*: Yes, OK, I know it probably isn't so much a case of "haven't figured out" as "chosen not to use", but in either case my point remains valid.
Right. But in the meantime we have to go ahead with the knowledge we have, safe in the knowledge that even if we are by some twist of fate completely wrong about the causes of climate change that we have at least weaned ourselves off fossil fuels in the meantime.
Going on the assumption that man is causing climate change means we win either way, doing nothing in the hope that we're somehow wrong means that the very best possible outcome is that we're still completely dependant on fossil fuels in 50 or 100 years time. And the worst possible outcome doesn't bear thinking about. So, while it's all well and good to say we should be investigate every possible cause of climate change, there is absolutely no excuse for us to not be acting now to minimise our our impact on the environment.
Yeah I know, but try finding the <initialism> tag in the HTML specs and you could be a while. I guess technically it should use the <abbr> element, but I'm still used to using <acronym>, largely because IE didn't support <abbr> until IE7.
Regardless of which tag they use, anything would be better than having to look up this stuff manually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LLVM Wikipedia, learn to use it. It wouldn't exactly kill Slashdot editors and contributors to get acquainted with the <acronym> tag though would it?
This is an O'Reilly book. If you don't know what that means maybe you are new around here. O'Reilly books are consistently authoritative 'cut through the crap' books on the topics they address.
O'Reilly has published _the_ authoritative books in so many software categories that it goes without saying that in this community (Slashdot) anybody who stumbles out of the woodwork attacking a book like this looks like, well, somebody stumbling out of the woodwork. O'Reilly is a traditional Unix book publisher. For instance, they published the X11 manual set. For Unix people trying to make sense out of the 'doze the O'Reilly books are often the first one to reach for. Further, the 'Annoyances' book series has been a cut-through-the-crap series for people forced to deal with Windows since the Windows 95 days. To me it goes without saying that anyone who would refuse to even question the usefulness of a book purely because they like the publisher behind it is someone who is not helping anyone or anything. Sadly, there are all too many people in this community who, like you, will refuse to even discuss certain things based on their own merits because they've already picked their "side" and decided that this thing or that thing is either with them or against them (Gee, where have I heard that before?) and will blissfully remain ignorant in favour of having their clearly defined lines of what is Good and what is Bad.
Does this book have a legitimate purpose? Maybe. Does it have a customer base? Probably, even if as others have stated it is more down to some people's own tendencies to prefer a non-judgemental block of paper than risk the chance of being thought stupid asking people online. Whatever the case, it would be nice if the book could be judged on its own instead of people throwing in the ridiculous notions that is must be good because it's from O'Reilly and declaring anyone who disagrees to not be part of the community.
First though I'll try and explain my point again since you obviously didn't get it the first time: Newbies are the ones who need the benefits of internet help the most because they can keep asking questions that are specific to their situation - specific to exactly what they errors/issues are seeing and experiencing. A book can prepare you well, but it cannot possibly pre-emptively respond to every hiccup and setback a user will experience, both in using Vista and attempting to fix those problems.
Do you understand now, or am I going to have to keep posting on the internet so I can try and force this concept into your little brain again?
But as the review explains, many of the fixes probably aren't suitable for the intended audience of the book, which kind of makes that a moot point.
That issue aside, when it comes to making changes that you're not entirely comfortable with (which presumably you wouldn't be if you needed a book to tell you how) it's usually a lot more useful to have an interactive environment (ie. IRC, web forum, mailing list) in which you can fire back questions if things don't go according to plan. Books are great for reference, great for providing large swathes of information that might be difficult to find all in one place online, but for troubleshooting problems on something as changeable as an operating system it seems like a book is simply the wrong medium.
Somebody actually wrote a book on the things they don't like about Vista? A subject that doesn't even make for an interesting blog entry has been padded out to 641 pages and is being sold for $20+? Unbelievable.
Personally I just use a straight IDE-to-USB 2.0 cable. It seems so wrong having a hard drive out in the open while it's running - it's probably not good for the drive in the longterm vibration-wise, but if you're just doing this to check the drives out before you dump them that's no big deal.
You could get an external drive caddy but if you've got a lot of drives to go through then it's probably not worth the hassle of having to switch them in and out.
but if these drives/chips are solid state with no moving parts what is there to "wear out" ? can this be fixed or is it a design flaw ? I'm not a solid-state expert or anything, but as far as I know it is an inherent limitation of the technology, so it is not something that can be fixed without moving to another technology (and there are several future technologies waiting in the wings which don't seem to have this issue, eg. MRAM). Instead of trying to explain it poorly myself, I'll just steal a whole chunk out of this 'Flash Quality' summary[PDF]:
Write Endurance
The one common issue of concern to most media designers is write endurance. Media write integrity
of a flash device now greatly exceeds that of a magnetic disk drive; however this comparison is rarely
acknowledged.
Data is stored on a flash device by the injection and depletion of a charge on a floating gate. Each time
a write or erase operation occurs, there is an infinitesimal breakdown of the oxide layer on the floating
gate that holds the data bit charge. This phenomenon doesn't occur in a read operation. This slow
breakdown eventually degrades the cell where it does not allow an exchange of a charge and can no
longer be erased or written to. In early years of flash technology "Write Endurance" was limited to
only a few thousand cycles but over the years semiconductor manufacturers have improved this
technology where typical limits of a flash cell endurance now vary between 300,000 and 2 million
erase/write cycles depending on the technology.
Come on EA, dip into that huge bank account you have and fully fund Baldur's Gate III! You mean Baldur's Gate 2009 (to be released Autumn 2008). Or as it's known internally 'BG2 with facial expressions'. And I've heard rumours of plans for a followup, known only by it's secret codename 'BG2 with facial expressions and realistic grass effects'
And of course there'll be no more text feedback to read in battles, it'll all be provided by commentary from Andy Gray and Martin Tyler (Americans can insert whoever commentates on whatever games EA whores over there).
I swear at least one person has asked this question in every flash-drive related article on/. for the last 5 years. Yes, there is a limited number of writes - usually in the 100,000 to 1 million range depending on the quality of flash used. No, it isn't a problem in any practical terms for common uses. Using wear-levelling a flash drive should work out a great deal more durable than existing hard drive technology.
Have you filed bugs for these problems? Not personally, but both things I mentioned specifically have been reported numerous times. Plus, as far as I know both issues occur irrespective of system/OS/settings so it's not like anyone involved with the app can claim to not know these problems exist.
How about basic useability improvements that I've been hoping for since Firefox 0.8 (Firebird back then, or maybe Phoenix even) such as page-created modal dialogs (eg. javascript:alert("");) being tab-modal instead of application-wide, or how about the Downloads dialog being useful? I'm not talking about making it a Download Manager or anything, I mean stuff like actually telling me if a download fails instead of reporting "Complete" even if the download URL resulted in an error or if it cuts out before downloading Content-Length bytes. And I'm sure there are plenty more things like these I could think of if it wasn't 5am right now.
I know this stuff may be considered trivial things to some people, but it strikes me as basic functionality. I would hope that Firefox won't make it to a third supposedly major version change without these kinds of things being addressed.
Its not about running away with their phone..Its about a call to a person about whom the owner has no idea & in case any trouble,the phone owner will be the first to face it. I think you're being paranoid. What exactly do you think they're gonna do? Bomb threats? Call the Paedophile Hotline? Doesn't seem to be a very likely scenario, especially given that you'd more or less be in earshot of the conversation. If someone was going to make a seriously "trouble-making" phone call I think it'd be much more likely they'd use a non-contract pay-as-you-go phone with calltime paid for in cash* - that way there's no chance of it being linked back to them by you remembering their face etc. Kinda off the subject now, but honestly I do think that's a bit of a crazy reason not to let someone borrow your phone.
Thats when assuming there are always buildings around you, open & welcoming you at Night anywhere! Well like I said, if there are no buildings then it's quite unlikely there would've been any payphones there anyway. As for things being open, you don't have late night bars? OK, so you don't get them everywhere but, here in Britain at least, you're about twice as likely to find an open bar/pub/club which would let you use their phone in an emergency then you are to find a payphone that hasn't been vandalised.
Whether payphones are necessary or not, AT&T are still just a business and profit is their only aim. If payphones are considered to provide a necessary public service then it's not up to AT&T to be a charity. Exactly who it's up to depends on your point of view I guess. Maybe there's a market for an innovative company to buy up the payphones and create a more profitable market, or maybe communities should band together to foot the bill for them, or maybe the government should subsidise the costs to keep them running. In any case, in answer again to your question from the original post: It is about profit and it always will be. That's the economic system you've got and to expect anything else from a company would be madness.
*: I assume that's at least possible in the U.S. - if not, it should be and that would also be the answer to the "cellphones are too expensive" argument some others have made for the necessity of payphones
Oh its about profit...ok.. Well... yes, yes it is. AT&T are a business, profit is their general goal.
Even if someone won't lend you a cellphone in case you run off with it, just go into a building and ask if you can use their landline. Most people are pretty reasonable. OK... some people are pretty reasonable. But even if you had to try two or three places it's hardly a big deal for this life-and-death call you just have to make, right?
That is, unless you find yourself alone without a cellphone in the middle of nowhere. But then again there probably wouldn't be a pay phone there anyway.
Calling it "redcrap" really makes your point seem considered and well thought out. And who's this "we" you're referring to?
Then again I don't know who the enemy in the GP's post is supposed to be. I guess I'm one of those ignorant fools who thinks that open source software development isn't a war to be won, but rather about providing the best possible software for users.
Since when is pr0n illegal? Well, why would you need to erase your entire drive for anyone besides the police? You'd have to have a serious lack of crisis management skills to erase your hard drive every time you heard your wife coming. It wouldn't exactly avert suspicion either...
'What are you doing in here honey? Why is the screen black?' 'Oh I'm just err.. reformatting it. Damn thing got corrupted' 'That new "solid state" thingie is useless, this is the third time this week you've had to do that!'
And yes, I know what you're thinking: With convincing dialogue writing skills like that I could make millions as a script writer in Hollywood.
Right, because when your house gets raided and the police see you erased your hard drive they just turn around and say "well played". 'Obstruction of justice' ringing any bells?
Not to mention the British police will assume it's just encrypted and you'll get 5 years jail-time for not providing the key.
This comes up every single time flash drives get mentioned on Slashdot. Go search around and you'll dozens of posts in every article asking and answering this question. The short answer is that with the wear levelling used on all modern flash drives they work out at at least an order of magnitude more reliable than current HDDs despite the write limit.
It depends on the games. If you want to run the newest stuff then yeah, you're kinda stuck. For older games there are a number of options.
- For DOS games DOSBox is an easy solution. Should work every time.
- For Windows games you've got WINE. If your game doesn't work then the next port of call is...
- Virtualisation. Set up a virtual machine, install Windows, and run your games from there. Speed is an issue, but if you're running a newish multi-core CPU then I would imagine it isn't such a problem (unfortunately my Ubuntu box runs off a Sempron 3100+ so I can't test that theory myself). In any case even on my rather modest machine I can run Win9x-era games without much trouble. Obviously the drawback is that you need to own Windows in order to install it on the virtual machine - but anyone who's owned a PC in the last 12 year has a copy of Windows at their disposal. At an idealogical level it's not much of a solution since you need to own Windows, but from a practical standpoint it can be very useful for a large subset of games. At the very least, "booting" to the Windows desktop in 10 seconds while still have ready access to your Linux desktop sure as hell beats dual-booting.
Slashdot Mirror
Quagmire's too gimmicky to be a main character. As a recurring secondary character the jokes work fine, but if you had them constantly for 22 minutes per show it'd grow old fast.
OUR censorship isn't bad, but other people's cencorship is... Do you have a source for that claim? I'm not aware of any ban on depicting Nazis in computer games in Germany. In fact from what I understand WW2 games have traditionally sold especially well in Germany where the Nazis are typically considered to be a separate entity and culture from modern Germany.
Why would terrorists use robots to replace suicide bombers? These people haven't even figured out how to use timers yet*, I don't think deathbringing robots will be their first foray into the world of technology.
*: Yes, OK, I know it probably isn't so much a case of "haven't figured out" as "chosen not to use", but in either case my point remains valid.
Right. But in the meantime we have to go ahead with the knowledge we have, safe in the knowledge that even if we are by some twist of fate completely wrong about the causes of climate change that we have at least weaned ourselves off fossil fuels in the meantime.
Going on the assumption that man is causing climate change means we win either way, doing nothing in the hope that we're somehow wrong means that the very best possible outcome is that we're still completely dependant on fossil fuels in 50 or 100 years time. And the worst possible outcome doesn't bear thinking about. So, while it's all well and good to say we should be investigate every possible cause of climate change, there is absolutely no excuse for us to not be acting now to minimise our our impact on the environment.
What, you mean you don't pronounce it lulivim?
Yeah I know, but try finding the <initialism> tag in the HTML specs and you could be a while. I guess technically it should use the <abbr> element, but I'm still used to using <acronym>, largely because IE didn't support <abbr> until IE7.
Regardless of which tag they use, anything would be better than having to look up this stuff manually.
Wikipedia, learn to use it. It wouldn't exactly kill Slashdot editors and contributors to get acquainted with the <acronym> tag though would it?
O'Reilly has published _the_ authoritative books in so many software categories that it goes without saying that in this community (Slashdot) anybody who stumbles out of the woodwork attacking a book like this looks like, well, somebody stumbling out of the woodwork. O'Reilly is a traditional Unix book publisher. For instance, they published the X11 manual set. For Unix people trying to make sense out of the 'doze the O'Reilly books are often the first one to reach for. Further, the 'Annoyances' book series has been a cut-through-the-crap series for people forced to deal with Windows since the Windows 95 days. To me it goes without saying that anyone who would refuse to even question the usefulness of a book purely because they like the publisher behind it is someone who is not helping anyone or anything. Sadly, there are all too many people in this community who, like you, will refuse to even discuss certain things based on their own merits because they've already picked their "side" and decided that this thing or that thing is either with them or against them (Gee, where have I heard that before?) and will blissfully remain ignorant in favour of having their clearly defined lines of what is Good and what is Bad.
Does this book have a legitimate purpose? Maybe. Does it have a customer base? Probably, even if as others have stated it is more down to some people's own tendencies to prefer a non-judgemental block of paper than risk the chance of being thought stupid asking people online. Whatever the case, it would be nice if the book could be judged on its own instead of people throwing in the ridiculous notions that is must be good because it's from O'Reilly and declaring anyone who disagrees to not be part of the community.
Sure, I'll get right on that.
First though I'll try and explain my point again since you obviously didn't get it the first time: Newbies are the ones who need the benefits of internet help the most because they can keep asking questions that are specific to their situation - specific to exactly what they errors/issues are seeing and experiencing. A book can prepare you well, but it cannot possibly pre-emptively respond to every hiccup and setback a user will experience, both in using Vista and attempting to fix those problems.
Do you understand now, or am I going to have to keep posting on the internet so I can try and force this concept into your little brain again?
But as the review explains, many of the fixes probably aren't suitable for the intended audience of the book, which kind of makes that a moot point.
That issue aside, when it comes to making changes that you're not entirely comfortable with (which presumably you wouldn't be if you needed a book to tell you how) it's usually a lot more useful to have an interactive environment (ie. IRC, web forum, mailing list) in which you can fire back questions if things don't go according to plan. Books are great for reference, great for providing large swathes of information that might be difficult to find all in one place online, but for troubleshooting problems on something as changeable as an operating system it seems like a book is simply the wrong medium.
Somebody actually wrote a book on the things they don't like about Vista? A subject that doesn't even make for an interesting blog entry has been padded out to 641 pages and is being sold for $20+? Unbelievable.
Personally I just use a straight IDE-to-USB 2.0 cable. It seems so wrong having a hard drive out in the open while it's running - it's probably not good for the drive in the longterm vibration-wise, but if you're just doing this to check the drives out before you dump them that's no big deal.
You could get an external drive caddy but if you've got a lot of drives to go through then it's probably not worth the hassle of having to switch them in and out.
The one common issue of concern to most media designers is write endurance. Media write integrity
of a flash device now greatly exceeds that of a magnetic disk drive; however this comparison is rarely
acknowledged.
Data is stored on a flash device by the injection and depletion of a charge on a floating gate. Each time
a write or erase operation occurs, there is an infinitesimal breakdown of the oxide layer on the floating
gate that holds the data bit charge. This phenomenon doesn't occur in a read operation. This slow
breakdown eventually degrades the cell where it does not allow an exchange of a charge and can no
longer be erased or written to. In early years of flash technology "Write Endurance" was limited to
only a few thousand cycles but over the years semiconductor manufacturers have improved this
technology where typical limits of a flash cell endurance now vary between 300,000 and 2 million
erase/write cycles depending on the technology.
And of course there'll be no more text feedback to read in battles, it'll all be provided by commentary from Andy Gray and Martin Tyler (Americans can insert whoever commentates on whatever games EA whores over there).
I swear at least one person has asked this question in every flash-drive related article on /. for the last 5 years. Yes, there is a limited number of writes - usually in the 100,000 to 1 million range depending on the quality of flash used. No, it isn't a problem in any practical terms for common uses. Using wear-levelling a flash drive should work out a great deal more durable than existing hard drive technology.
How about basic useability improvements that I've been hoping for since Firefox 0.8 (Firebird back then, or maybe Phoenix even) such as page-created modal dialogs (eg. javascript:alert("");) being tab-modal instead of application-wide, or how about the Downloads dialog being useful? I'm not talking about making it a Download Manager or anything, I mean stuff like actually telling me if a download fails instead of reporting "Complete" even if the download URL resulted in an error or if it cuts out before downloading Content-Length bytes. And I'm sure there are plenty more things like these I could think of if it wasn't 5am right now.
I know this stuff may be considered trivial things to some people, but it strikes me as basic functionality. I would hope that Firefox won't make it to a third supposedly major version change without these kinds of things being addressed.
Whether payphones are necessary or not, AT&T are still just a business and profit is their only aim. If payphones are considered to provide a necessary public service then it's not up to AT&T to be a charity. Exactly who it's up to depends on your point of view I guess. Maybe there's a market for an innovative company to buy up the payphones and create a more profitable market, or maybe communities should band together to foot the bill for them, or maybe the government should subsidise the costs to keep them running. In any case, in answer again to your question from the original post: It is about profit and it always will be. That's the economic system you've got and to expect anything else from a company would be madness.
*: I assume that's at least possible in the U.S. - if not, it should be and that would also be the answer to the "cellphones are too expensive" argument some others have made for the necessity of payphones
Even if someone won't lend you a cellphone in case you run off with it, just go into a building and ask if you can use their landline. Most people are pretty reasonable. OK... some people are pretty reasonable. But even if you had to try two or three places it's hardly a big deal for this life-and-death call you just have to make, right?
That is, unless you find yourself alone without a cellphone in the middle of nowhere. But then again there probably wouldn't be a pay phone there anyway.
Calling it "redcrap" really makes your point seem considered and well thought out. And who's this "we" you're referring to?
Then again I don't know who the enemy in the GP's post is supposed to be. I guess I'm one of those ignorant fools who thinks that open source software development isn't a war to be won, but rather about providing the best possible software for users.
'What are you doing in here honey? Why is the screen black?'
'Oh I'm just err.. reformatting it. Damn thing got corrupted'
'That new "solid state" thingie is useless, this is the third time this week you've had to do that!'
And yes, I know what you're thinking: With convincing dialogue writing skills like that I could make millions as a script writer in Hollywood.
Right, because when your house gets raided and the police see you erased your hard drive they just turn around and say "well played". 'Obstruction of justice' ringing any bells?
Not to mention the British police will assume it's just encrypted and you'll get 5 years jail-time for not providing the key.
This comes up every single time flash drives get mentioned on Slashdot. Go search around and you'll dozens of posts in every article asking and answering this question. The short answer is that with the wear levelling used on all modern flash drives they work out at at least an order of magnitude more reliable than current HDDs despite the write limit.
It depends on the games. If you want to run the newest stuff then yeah, you're kinda stuck. For older games there are a number of options.
- For DOS games DOSBox is an easy solution. Should work every time.
- For Windows games you've got WINE. If your game doesn't work then the next port of call is...
- Virtualisation. Set up a virtual machine, install Windows, and run your games from there. Speed is an issue, but if you're running a newish multi-core CPU then I would imagine it isn't such a problem (unfortunately my Ubuntu box runs off a Sempron 3100+ so I can't test that theory myself). In any case even on my rather modest machine I can run Win9x-era games without much trouble. Obviously the drawback is that you need to own Windows in order to install it on the virtual machine - but anyone who's owned a PC in the last 12 year has a copy of Windows at their disposal. At an idealogical level it's not much of a solution since you need to own Windows, but from a practical standpoint it can be very useful for a large subset of games. At the very least, "booting" to the Windows desktop in 10 seconds while still have ready access to your Linux desktop sure as hell beats dual-booting.