The main screwup by CNBC appears to be the issue with multiple accounts. There were at least 5-10 times the number of accounts as there were players.
One person, one account or one person, one entry are pretty common in contests like this. I stopped really trying when I saw the same person's name come up on the weekly top ten list 7 times one week.
But the data cache thing - yeah I found it out a few weeks in - it was pretty easy to figure out as well, since I was trading mostly around closing due to the time difference.(often would forget to post a trade until after hours) - and noticed a few trades were at the new price and some were at the old one. Evidently they had an enormous backlog of data cued up that would take hours each night to process and it was an obvious exploit point. That, and the data during the day was often half an hour old compared to a quick check over at eTrade or similar, which is a 3-5 minute delay.
Anyone with access to a real-time(down to the second) link with the exchange(numerous software applications - though usually quite pricey per month) who can see the market as such would be able to beat CNBC's system because of their caching/backlog, even without this exploit. Whether this is cheating or not is going to be hard to prove, though. Most companies post their returns and profits right at closing, or within a few minutes. Even the Exchange's computers run for hours with their backlogs, so CNBC should have known this was likely to happen.
Me? I'd have had a simple script that killed all net connections - with a note that the site would be back up at opening. Maybe even yank the cable from the main router itself. With a million on the line, of course people will behave badly - right down to trying to reverse engineer the code itself if you let them.(web based games are bad for this reason - you have to be very careful, say, in an online poker game, to not give out other player's data in the background, which a few sites have done in the past)
"If you use a GPL'ed library, suddenly, all your code is GPL." **** Well, l don't USE GPL then. I can off the top of my head name a dozen different programming suites that will allow you to do what you want to without touching GPL. But you need to actually do your own work or pay for it.
I find that 95%+ of the whiners about GPL are people who want a free ride. They are the programming equivalent of bittorrent mp3 leechers. They want an easy out due to someone else's hard work(or a no-cost one) and then complain that they can't do business as usual afterwards.
"As soon as you sold your first GPL license, your competitive advantage would be reduced to nothing because the person you sold it to could turn around and distribute it for any price, including for free." **** Absolutely not true. If your business is surviving only on software sales, you've already lost any competitive advantage that you had. Please actually talk to someone who runs a business about the term "value added". You make your money in real world business not on the product but on everything else you offer with it. Take a look at RedHat - their code is free, yet they make lots of money doing it somehow.
Okay, maybe not weird in a "the walls are green way.. but) Oh - wait it IS exactly like that...
In the latest Thief game, it's a typical day in the slums when you have to go to an insane asylum to gather some evidence. What happens next is probably the oddest and coolest thing that I've seen in a long time. And it gets odder and more twisted as time goes on... And the way you get out of it is the best(won't spoil it). Let's just say the game's mature rating comes completely from this section.
Very disturbing and very scary. Like playing a FPS version of a Twilight Zone episode. Way more disturbing than Fear. Best part of the game - and definitely worth checking out. You'll know when it starts to get weird - it's in your face obvious.
Then it was back to the Quake-like normal game as if nothing had happened. Total non-sequitor moment that made you wonder what in the world possessed the developers to actually come up with this gem.
- The other one that stuck in my mind was the game Alice. Not the game, mind you, which single-handedly destroyed any childhood image of Alice in Wonderland that you've ever had with a 2x4 upside your head, but the website. You can still find it on the wayback machine - without a doubt the most disturbing game site ever made. just... something so very wrong with how she looked and talked at you...
(yes, the computer world needs far more horror, IMO)
Yet exactly how often is commercial software available with the source code as well?
The issue of proprietary drivers alone is a major reason many people look for GPL version if they exist. This ability to go in, dig around, fix a couple of variables or lines of code and make it work is huge.
Yes, the commercial companies could do this. They never, ever do. That all are asses about it.
fyngyrz, your view of freedom is backwards here, because real life situations almost never involve a user nerfing other users. It's always the corporation who wants to take advantage if they can. The developers of GPL saw this a long time ago. They saw that one day companies would copyright everything in sight, even down to trying to patent life itself. This required aggressive action on their part to KEEP it from happening.
Yes, it's not as "free" as PD, but it's far more protected from being abused as well.
Let me say that again. It's not something most businesses want to touch. Who's your market? Do you want Linux to be adopted into the business community, or do you want it to remain the red headed stepchild hobby OS that Microsoft wants you to call it? It's already difficult to justify using it when there's ZERO support out there and thus any failure falls back to the developer/sysadmin in the local shop to fix. Now you're saying we also have to give away the code WE developed? But you see, you didn't develop it. You copied someone else's TV. Then you changed the color and added some new buttons, then called it a "Somy". If this was patent law, you'd get your ass sued off for not paying royalties and infringement.
The plain and simple truth is that when you use GPL software, you are copying other people's work. Now, that's explicitly allowed as long as you return the favor. This always reminds me of listening to people trying to justify copying music they didn't pay for. It's illegal and immoral no matter how you dice it. You want a free ride and, well, you're not doing the majority of the real work yourself, or else you'd DO the work yourself and own it outright.
If you want to maintain absolute control over all code in a project, write it yourself or pay someone to assist you in writing it. If you ask for and accept the voluntary labor of others to advance your project, you lost the ability to have absolute control over all of the code in the project. That's the whole intent and purpose of the GPL **** I'd have given you points for this, but I'm out for today. This is exactly the point of GPL.
See, it comes down to the problem of people taking code that isn't their creation and using it as theirs. In journalism this is called plagiarism. You are stealing intellectual work from others.
IME, people in corporations turn to these vast libraries to solve a problem precisely because they are either too lazy, too time constrained, or too dumb to figure it out themselves. They cheat and use other people's work and hope nobody will notice. Then they bitch when they get found out, like the original person is doing on his site in this posting.
You *could* always write that piece of million dollar proprietary code in C++, you know - O'Riley has great books on it over at the local Borders.
I was going to comment about BoB taking over as well, but it's kind of a moot point. BoB will occupy at least half of the seats.
The real bad thing, though, is that it gives these players a level of access to the inner workings that normal players can't have.
EVE has a long history of implementing a new feature and giving no tutorial or information on how to actually use it, let alone things like the specific formulas and so on. So a lot of the game is word of mouth or trial and error. The chances that players on this council won't give the information to their friends is basically zero.
CCP does nothing to solve their image woes, and lets a huge hope open up that wasn't there. What they should do instead is actually grow a spine and clean up their own act.
At every job I've had, if we're considering incorporating an open source library, the license is the first thing to check. If the project page says GPL we immediately drop the library as a consideration. If it's a commercial license then we can use it but we have to do paperwork for accounting. And if we see BSD, then we right click, download the library, and start looking into it from there. ****
So essentially you want to copy someone else's work because you can't figure it out yourself and then expect to make a profit off of it? Free should remain free.
I've noticed that since they have implemented the changes in how articles are submitted, the signal to noise ratio has become markedly worse.
We need a real editor to double-check for FUD, Holy War/OS Spam, and the like - and remove it. This isn't newsworthy - it's just more flak from someone who won't even bother to name himself(and his site as pointed out is basically a huge wad of FUD and blathering.
As for the GPLV3? tough - suck it up. GPL by its nature was never intended to be worked around or filled with loopholes. The spirit of it is clear - no profit, no stealing, no typical corporate BS with the code. the current one locks it down much more tightly and I for one have no problem at all with it. Make your money off of your own code if you are so bright. Stop copying everyone else's work and claiming it as your own. Or better yet, learn to make your money through value-added techniques and services instead.
P.S. A good example of this is a company like Linspire. You pay for your Linux distro - but you also get a lot of back-end support with real people to call, everything easy to find if you are a newbie. You pay $50 for the ease of use and added value(s). Or get Freespire and do it yourself.
Yes, cell-lifespans wold be limited and of course, cancer would be much more likely. But say, for a heart transplant. If you gave a person a brand new 50 year old(biologically) heart to replace their failing one, it would still give them many, many years of service. Or a new Pancreas. Many of our organs have no "age" limit so much as a stress/workload limit. They wear out instead of "age-out". So this is a perfect example of how it could be applied - and probably within the next 5-10 years.
Monsanto is truly one of the few RIAA-like "evil" companies on the planet. They are vicious, predatory, and have no qualms about being that way.
PCBs - check.
Agent Orange - their creation, too. Most people forget these two facts. I can pull up links if you want to ads stating that Agent Orange was perfectly safe.
GMO Corn that causes liver damage in rats(and any other mammal, actually) - yep. Many unexplained cases of pets getting sick come from this, btw. The reason they have to pump cattle and chicken full of antibiotics? Because the corn they feed them destroys their immune system and they would otherwise be dead way before slaughter. Except - cats and dogs and people live a TAD longer than cows and chickens.(the meat is evidently fine, but the stuff they pump them full of to keep them alive till slaughter is another horrifying mess and why I don't eat non-organic meat anymore)
GMO Crops that cross-pollinate so that ONLY their pesticide works - you betcha.
Crops with an 80% die-off rate that happen to easily cross-pollinate? - Just invented!
And of course, as it was previously pointed out, Microsoft-type "deals" with other nations via our government. IE - a grant or money but only if they use the "approved" products. They currently spend billions every year trying to get GMO crops into Europe and India and everywhere around the planet that they can, despite the near universal rejection. They keep pounding away regardless because in the U.S., GMO crops from Monsanto and ADM(much less evil, though equally unenlightened) make up 80%+ of all crops other than wheat(though they are trying HARD to legalize GMO wheat as well right now - Corn, Canola, Soybeans, and half a dozen other crops are mostly GMO now in the U.S. Canola and Soybeans are virtually 100%.
All in the last ten to fifteen years, no less. They don't test it, they don't care - they just make the stuff and lie to our faces like the tobacco companies did(and still do).
This just came in via the firehose. A real review by the looks of it. Vote for it. This is the sort of review that most of us are interested in anyways.
I was talking to a friend the other day about genetically modified crops and terrorism and so on and he mentioned that there isn't a way to really do damage to an entire crop short of spraying entire swaths of the country or similar.
But this adds a new dimension. You have genetically modified crops that now nuke the other crops that it cross-pollinates with in a generation. Something like this seems to be an obvious point of attack for a possible terrorist. What happens if Monsanto's main grain supplies are attacked? Suddenly you have an entire *year* without several crops???
Actually - it would be several as there wouldn't be enough seeds to cover the demand for a while, which would mean low-yield years or a decade or so, because you can't save the seed for the next year's crop. Oops.
I agree that the simple answer obviously is that their tech support staff doesn't know enough to cope. See, you can't script out things like in Windows - or outsource most of it. You have to employ people who actually know a bit about unix (basic *ix knowledge is mandatory, though Linux is obviously better).
Outsourcing bites them in the rear. That didn't take long, did it?;)
Before I used Windows, I used Macs for years of and on - probably a decade or more(far, far longer than Windows in any case) and there are a myriad of pieces of software out there that run under Classic mode(OS8/9) that you cannot find anywhere. but this is true of most OSs I guess.
Now, I can't really fault him for not knowing where the old pre-OSx archives are. Apple should make a link to them right off. Or better yet, put the archive on a CD, compressed, and ship it with the macs) And make OS9 available to run those legacy apps.(missing from their store!) Drop OS9 on the machine and get into one of the archives for shareware and suddenly you have tens of thousands of options you never knew existed. But Apple really needs to make this known to the average person.
The quality of software and even shareware though is astounding. And many programs originally or only came out for Mac as well. Photoshop?(Adobe originally was Mac only!) BBedit(still haven't found ANY Windows app that works better and is more stable)? The first workable GUI anti-virus program?(Disinfectant - circa OS6.x?) And that isn't even considering DTP applications, which make the Windows versions feel like a console port they're so kludgy. And the integration is superb as well. If I can't copy and paste almost anything from one program to another, I wonder why it DOESN'T work right. Not wonder if it can work at all like with Windows.(ie - where's my translator-does it HAVE one?)
And of course, there are games. Bungee's older catalog - not on PC. Ambrosia Software? 90% also on Mac only. Then there are classics like Spectre and Bolo, which while dated, still are amazing fun. And of course, Unreal Tournament and most more modern games are on Mac as well(OSX is a lot easier to port to). Now, something like Command and Conquer 3 won't be on OSX, but trust me - you're missing nothing special. And of course, you can dual-boot on the new ones to play those few legacy games.
In short, 90% of the software that we complained that the Mac didn't have for gaming - it's all too old now to run on XP anyways! Most of the rest is on a console or on both platforms by now. It's really no different than say, choosing a PS3 over an XBox360 - some games are for both, some are for one but not the other. But it's a closer race now than it ever was.
And of course, he also misses the other benefit. Windows has done an entire generation of users a disservice in making them think that your computer crashing every day or two is a normal thing. Apple may not have as many options to tinker with it, but it's nearly as reliable as a PS2 because of the standardized hardware. It only crashes when there's something really wrong with it that needs fixing.(or you purposely did something wrong yourself) Not as a normal part of the way it runs.
It's essentially a proper version of Xandros on steriods. It's *IX that works for the average home user. It is funny that he liked Linux but hates Mac, considering how similar both are.
Ok, this guy is a journalist. Not a geek so he is speaking from the average user point of view and doesn't need your credibility card. All he was trying to do is see if an average business USER would be able to use the OS effectively. **** The problem he has is that he isn't a true novice. He lives and breathes Windows and uses it all the time for his work, so everything is filtered through a "is this like Winodws or not?" lens.
Read all three reviews. It's clear that he's anything but a typical home user or average person.
Now, my parents - they are. My mom can't figure out how to scan a photo and attach it to an email half of the time. So I recommended a Mac precisely because all they had to do was buy a copy of MS Word and an antivirus/firewall and the rest of the machine came with the basic apps to run everything. (Okay I cheated and downloaded thunderbird for their email for free).
Me? I love my games. I run Windows and Linux. Can't live without either right now. But I've also used almost 20 different OSs over the last 28 years. So I have a very broad perspective on what a good OS is and what isn't. I've been using Windows for 7 years now, btw - and yes, that leaves 21 years, or 3/4 of my time computing, using other OSs.
I log in this morning and it's yet another piece of rubbish review about an OS written by a hack that turns into a revision of an OS holy war.
I have a question to the person who wrote the article: Q: If every review that you do is merely comparing itself to your experience with Windows XP and 2000, then exactly how can you claim to be objective?
Basically your reviews are this: - Take a new computer. - Cram on all the Windows applications you can find(Office and such) - Look around for exact copies of the same windows programs you are used to and complain when there are no 100% identical replacements. - Complain that your outdated email client doesn't work right.(Who uses only Outlook these days, anyways? Email is email is email to 99% of home users, afterall. Your inability to adjust to a non-proprietary email format is your own fault. - Proclaim each OS other than XP to be flawed and not as good.
My point is that, this, like so many other reviews, is basically a "how well does this emulate Windows?" diatribe. Yet, if you really understood computing in a larger sense, you would see that all OSs offer advantages and disadvantages over the others. Each one is a unique experience that cannot be judged based upon how well you can try to cram it into the Windows cookie-cutter mold. As it is, I'm getting tired of seeing you blather on and on about how poor a job it does. You want to run Windows apps in on a Mac? Dual boot or run an emulator and there you go. Problem solved - all of your stuff runs like you want it.
Case in point: I can think of a dozen or more things that you can easily do on a Mac, even a pre OSX model, that would be extremely difficult to do on a Windows box. The same holds true with Ubuntu/Linux/etc. Shoot, try copying 20,000 tiny files in Windows to a server and back. Now try it with Linux. Or for an easier example, open a window in Windows with 20,000 items in it. Now do the same in Linux.
Could you please write a review next time from a neutral standpoint and actually compare specific generic tasks that show the strengths and weaknesses of each OS. One that doesn't use Windows as the control/litmus test?
I know that - but short of having a microchip in your brain or something, always keeping the data with you is a lot more secure. Besides, nobody expects one of those beat-up keyfob type SUB devices(or a CF card). They think it's for your camera or MP3 player.
It sounds like you'd just move the problem from one device to another - if the point is to protect the data in the event of theft then you'd still have to encrypt the external drive. Also you now have two devices you need to look after instead of one. *** No - the drive would be the ONLY drive in the computer. What you leave behind is essentially a fancy terminal with no drive in it. The disk can be locked in a secure room at the company or just taken with you. In theory, since it's a PCMCIA card, it could be slipped in your wallet or whatever like a USB flash drive.
The best way to do this sort of thing is to just use a swappable drive bay.*
The trick is to use a PCMCIA Type III slot with the setup. Your boot drive is actually a pocket-sized HD.(flash would also work, but it has problems with read/write number of cycles). Time to go home? Take your drive with you.
You could also use an external USB/Firewire pocket drive as well. They can't snoop on it if the drive isn't there(and the advantage of all of these is the quickness that they can be yanked in an emergency.
Of course, they really should test an old Mac IIFX running system 8.1.(yes, it WILL run 8.1, and 8.6.x with a third party USB card added!) This is a better comparison, since they both can do pretty much the same things from getting online to running a few games, having support for color monitors, and so on...
I had one of those, actually - very quick and stable machine. 40mhz 68030, support for 8 simms, a math-co processor, and so on.
Consider for a moment at the plots they need to finish for one:
Rani is still out there. She was turned into a tree, IIRC, but she'll probably be back.
Romana is as well. It was never known what happened to her, but according to the books, she was the head of the Timelords during the war with the Daleks. If you want to know where his real love interest is... she's it. She'll guaranteed be back.
Of course, there is The Master - He's still alive. Can't possibly not be alive.
And lastly, the 12.5th version of himself, the Valleyard.(evil Doctor who goes amok and breaks the rule against attempting to "re-do" time among other things. Tom Baker himself has inted at a possible comeback for this role(!) - And he looks eerily like the actor who originally played him, byw)
You can't do this all in one season. They've hinted at The Master as a possibility and of course, Evil Doctor(tm) is canon - and will happen.
But there's of course more. Unresolved issues:(btw, Rose is gone - the actress herself is doing other things now)
The Daleks are still alive - well, one of them is... Obvious lead-in into a future episode. The Voidship is another biggie - it has all the markings of a timelord design - probably a method to escape the war. This means potentially dozens of old people could still be out there. And of course, there are dozens of old enemies that need to be revisited. Cybermen in his own universe are still creeping around in the periphery, for instance. Plus, it looks like he re-created his dog again - which is cool, really - it's not bad for him to do his own thing for a while, either.
What Dr. Who needs to do is make a clean break and get away from "Present-Day-Earth". For instance, the best part of the 5th Doctor was that almost none of it took palce on Earth - it was all future Earth or some outpost or station or alien planet. I thought with the episode where he showed her New Earth, they would take off and do non-present day Earth(tm) crap.
Visit ancient Rome. Visit Atlantis again. Get stuck in some alien planet again. Visit any number of the old famous haunts from the past again - surely there is mileage in that. Or do another "hits the fan" arc like the "Key of Time" or "trials of a Timelord"
This series has tons of life in it - so don't worry too much.
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The main screwup by CNBC appears to be the issue with multiple accounts. There were at least 5-10 times the number of accounts as there were players.
One person, one account or one person, one entry are pretty common in contests like this. I stopped really trying when I saw the same person's name come up on the weekly top ten list 7 times one week.
But the data cache thing - yeah I found it out a few weeks in - it was pretty easy to figure out as well, since I was trading mostly around closing due to the time difference.(often would forget to post a trade until after hours) - and noticed a few trades were at the new price and some were at the old one. Evidently they had an enormous backlog of data cued up that would take hours each night to process and it was an obvious exploit point. That, and the data during the day was often half an hour old compared to a quick check over at eTrade or similar, which is a 3-5 minute delay.
Anyone with access to a real-time(down to the second) link with the exchange(numerous software applications - though usually quite pricey per month) who can see the market as such would be able to beat CNBC's system because of their caching/backlog, even without this exploit. Whether this is cheating or not is going to be hard to prove, though. Most companies post their returns and profits right at closing, or within a few minutes. Even the Exchange's computers run for hours with their backlogs, so CNBC should have known this was likely to happen.
Me? I'd have had a simple script that killed all net connections - with a note that the site would be back up at opening. Maybe even yank the cable from the main router itself. With a million on the line, of course people will behave badly - right down to trying to reverse engineer the code itself if you let them.(web based games are bad for this reason - you have to be very careful, say, in an online poker game, to not give out other player's data in the background, which a few sites have done in the past)
"If you use a GPL'ed library, suddenly, all your code is GPL."
****
Well, l don't USE GPL then. I can off the top of my head name a dozen different programming suites that will allow you to do what you want to without touching GPL. But you need to actually do your own work or pay for it.
I find that 95%+ of the whiners about GPL are people who want a free ride. They are the programming equivalent of bittorrent mp3 leechers. They want an easy out due to someone else's hard work(or a no-cost one) and then complain that they can't do business as usual afterwards.
"As soon as you sold your first GPL license, your competitive advantage would be reduced to nothing because the person you sold it to could turn around and distribute it for any price, including for free."
****
Absolutely not true. If your business is surviving only on software sales, you've already lost any competitive advantage that you had. Please actually talk to someone who runs a business about the term "value added". You make your money in real world business not on the product but on everything else you offer with it. Take a look at RedHat - their code is free, yet they make lots of money doing it somehow.
Okay, maybe not weird in a "the walls are green way.. but) Oh - wait it IS exactly like that...
In the latest Thief game, it's a typical day in the slums when you have to go to an insane asylum to gather some evidence. What happens next is probably the oddest and coolest thing that I've seen in a long time. And it gets odder and more twisted as time goes on... And the way you get out of it is the best(won't spoil it). Let's just say the game's mature rating comes completely from this section.
Very disturbing and very scary. Like playing a FPS version of a Twilight Zone episode. Way more disturbing than Fear. Best part of the game - and definitely worth checking out. You'll know when it starts to get weird - it's in your face obvious.
Then it was back to the Quake-like normal game as if nothing had happened. Total non-sequitor moment that made you wonder what in the world possessed the developers to actually come up with this gem.
- The other one that stuck in my mind was the game Alice. Not the game, mind you, which single-handedly destroyed any childhood image of Alice in Wonderland that you've ever had with a 2x4 upside your head, but the website. You can still find it on the wayback machine - without a doubt the most disturbing game site ever made. just... something so very wrong with how she looked and talked at you...
(yes, the computer world needs far more horror, IMO)
Yet exactly how often is commercial software available with the source code as well?
The issue of proprietary drivers alone is a major reason many people look for GPL version if they exist. This ability to go in, dig around, fix a couple of variables or lines of code and make it work is huge.
Yes, the commercial companies could do this. They never, ever do. That all are asses about it.
fyngyrz, your view of freedom is backwards here, because real life situations almost never involve a user nerfing other users. It's always the corporation who wants to take advantage if they can. The developers of GPL saw this a long time ago. They saw that one day companies would copyright everything in sight, even down to trying to patent life itself. This required aggressive action on their part to KEEP it from happening.
Yes, it's not as "free" as PD, but it's far more protected from being abused as well.
If you want to maintain absolute control over all code in a project, write it yourself or pay someone to assist you in writing it. If you ask for and accept the voluntary labor of others to advance your project, you lost the ability to have absolute control over all of the code in the project. That's the whole intent and purpose of the GPL
****
I'd have given you points for this, but I'm out for today. This is exactly the point of GPL.
See, it comes down to the problem of people taking code that isn't their creation and using it as theirs. In journalism this is called plagiarism. You are stealing intellectual work from others.
IME, people in corporations turn to these vast libraries to solve a problem precisely because they are either too lazy, too time constrained, or too dumb to figure it out themselves. They cheat and use other people's work and hope nobody will notice. Then they bitch when they get found out, like the original person is doing on his site in this posting.
You *could* always write that piece of million dollar proprietary code in C++, you know - O'Riley has great books on it over at the local Borders.
I was going to comment about BoB taking over as well, but it's kind of a moot point. BoB will occupy at least half of the seats.
The real bad thing, though, is that it gives these players a level of access to the inner workings that normal players can't have.
EVE has a long history of implementing a new feature and giving no tutorial or information on how to actually use it, let alone things like the specific formulas and so on. So a lot of the game is word of mouth or trial and error. The chances that players on this council won't give the information to their friends is basically zero.
CCP does nothing to solve their image woes, and lets a huge hope open up that wasn't there. What they should do instead is actually grow a spine and clean up their own act.
At every job I've had, if we're considering incorporating an open source library, the license is the first thing to check. If the project page says GPL we immediately drop the library as a consideration. If it's a commercial license then we can use it but we have to do paperwork for accounting. And if we see BSD, then we right click, download the library, and start looking into it from there.
****
So essentially you want to copy someone else's work because you can't figure it out yourself and then expect to make a profit off of it? Free should remain free.
When I heard of this, I immediately thought of this old horrible movie.
Essentially you have a group of people who provide oversight that act as a small cabal. And they violate the #1 rule - they play at the same time.
How about this CCP? Clean up the way you run things and stop trying to put a band-aid on it.
I've noticed that since they have implemented the changes in how articles are submitted, the signal to noise ratio has become markedly worse.
We need a real editor to double-check for FUD, Holy War/OS Spam, and the like - and remove it. This isn't newsworthy - it's just more flak from someone who won't even bother to name himself(and his site as pointed out is basically a huge wad of FUD and blathering.
As for the GPLV3? tough - suck it up. GPL by its nature was never intended to be worked around or filled with loopholes. The spirit of it is clear - no profit, no stealing, no typical corporate BS with the code. the current one locks it down much more tightly and I for one have no problem at all with it. Make your money off of your own code if you are so bright. Stop copying everyone else's work and claiming it as your own. Or better yet, learn to make your money through value-added techniques and services instead.
P.S. A good example of this is a company like Linspire. You pay for your Linux distro - but you also get a lot of back-end support with real people to call, everything easy to find if you are a newbie. You pay $50 for the ease of use and added value(s). Or get Freespire and do it yourself.
Yes, cell-lifespans wold be limited and of course, cancer would be much more likely. But say, for a heart transplant. If you gave a person a brand new 50 year old(biologically) heart to replace their failing one, it would still give them many, many years of service. Or a new Pancreas. Many of our organs have no "age" limit so much as a stress/workload limit. They wear out instead of "age-out". So this is a perfect example of how it could be applied - and probably within the next 5-10 years.
https://store.station.sony.com/digitalDistribution /base/detail.jsp?SKU=EQMAC-DD-SW0605-EQMACD
There you go. Sony DOES mane Evercrack for OSX.
Monsanto is truly one of the few RIAA-like "evil" companies on the planet. They are vicious, predatory, and have no qualms about being that way.
PCBs - check.
Agent Orange - their creation, too. Most people forget these two facts. I can pull up links if you want to ads stating that Agent Orange was perfectly safe.
GMO Corn that causes liver damage in rats(and any other mammal, actually) - yep. Many unexplained cases of pets getting sick come from this, btw. The reason they have to pump cattle and chicken full of antibiotics? Because the corn they feed them destroys their immune system and they would otherwise be dead way before slaughter. Except - cats and dogs and people live a TAD longer than cows and chickens.(the meat is evidently fine, but the stuff they pump them full of to keep them alive till slaughter is another horrifying mess and why I don't eat non-organic meat anymore)
GMO Crops that cross-pollinate so that ONLY their pesticide works - you betcha.
Crops with an 80% die-off rate that happen to easily cross-pollinate? - Just invented!
And of course, as it was previously pointed out, Microsoft-type "deals" with other nations via our government. IE - a grant or money but only if they use the "approved" products. They currently spend billions every year trying to get GMO crops into Europe and India and everywhere around the planet that they can, despite the near universal rejection. They keep pounding away regardless because in the U.S., GMO crops from Monsanto and ADM(much less evil, though equally unenlightened) make up 80%+ of all crops other than wheat(though they are trying HARD to legalize GMO wheat as well right now - Corn, Canola, Soybeans, and half a dozen other crops are mostly GMO now in the U.S. Canola and Soybeans are virtually 100%.
All in the last ten to fifteen years, no less. They don't test it, they don't care - they just make the stuff and lie to our faces like the tobacco companies did(and still do).
http://linux-noob.com/review/ubuntu/7.04/
This just came in via the firehose. A real review by the looks of it. Vote for it. This is the sort of review that most of us are interested in anyways.
I was talking to a friend the other day about genetically modified crops and terrorism and so on and he mentioned that there isn't a way to really do damage to an entire crop short of spraying entire swaths of the country or similar.
But this adds a new dimension. You have genetically modified crops that now nuke the other crops that it cross-pollinates with in a generation. Something like this seems to be an obvious point of attack for a possible terrorist. What happens if Monsanto's main grain supplies are attacked? Suddenly you have an entire *year* without several crops???
Actually - it would be several as there wouldn't be enough seeds to cover the demand for a while, which would mean low-yield years or a decade or so, because you can't save the seed for the next year's crop. Oops.
Bad, bad idea no matter how you look at it.
I agree that the simple answer obviously is that their tech support staff doesn't know enough to cope. See, you can't script out things like in Windows - or outsource most of it. You have to employ people who actually know a bit about unix (basic *ix knowledge is mandatory, though Linux is obviously better).
;)
Outsourcing bites them in the rear. That didn't take long, did it?
Heh. Try that in Windows. :) Gotta love what a simple command line can do for you.
Before I used Windows, I used Macs for years of and on - probably a decade or more(far, far longer than Windows in any case) and there are a myriad of pieces of software out there that run under Classic mode(OS8/9) that you cannot find anywhere. but this is true of most OSs I guess.
Now, I can't really fault him for not knowing where the old pre-OSx archives are. Apple should make a link to them right off. Or better yet, put the archive on a CD, compressed, and ship it with the macs) And make OS9 available to run those legacy apps.(missing from their store!) Drop OS9 on the machine and get into one of the archives for shareware and suddenly you have tens of thousands of options you never knew existed. But Apple really needs to make this known to the average person.
The quality of software and even shareware though is astounding. And many programs originally or only came out for Mac as well. Photoshop?(Adobe originally was Mac only!) BBedit(still haven't found ANY Windows app that works better and is more stable)? The first workable GUI anti-virus program?(Disinfectant - circa OS6.x?) And that isn't even considering DTP applications, which make the Windows versions feel like a console port they're so kludgy. And the integration is superb as well. If I can't copy and paste almost anything from one program to another, I wonder why it DOESN'T work right. Not wonder if it can work at all like with Windows.(ie - where's my translator-does it HAVE one?)
And of course, there are games. Bungee's older catalog - not on PC. Ambrosia Software? 90% also on Mac only. Then there are classics like Spectre and Bolo, which while dated, still are amazing fun. And of course, Unreal Tournament and most more modern games are on Mac as well(OSX is a lot easier to port to). Now, something like Command and Conquer 3 won't be on OSX, but trust me - you're missing nothing special. And of course, you can dual-boot on the new ones to play those few legacy games.
In short, 90% of the software that we complained that the Mac didn't have for gaming - it's all too old now to run on XP anyways! Most of the rest is on a console or on both platforms by now. It's really no different than say, choosing a PS3 over an XBox360 - some games are for both, some are for one but not the other. But it's a closer race now than it ever was.
And of course, he also misses the other benefit. Windows has done an entire generation of users a disservice in making them think that your computer crashing every day or two is a normal thing. Apple may not have as many options to tinker with it, but it's nearly as reliable as a PS2 because of the standardized hardware. It only crashes when there's something really wrong with it that needs fixing.(or you purposely did something wrong yourself) Not as a normal part of the way it runs.
It's essentially a proper version of Xandros on steriods. It's *IX that works for the average home user. It is funny that he liked Linux but hates Mac, considering how similar both are.
Ok, this guy is a journalist. Not a geek so he is speaking from the average user point of view and doesn't need your credibility card. All he was trying to do is see if an average business USER would be able to use the OS effectively.
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The problem he has is that he isn't a true novice. He lives and breathes Windows and uses it all the time for his work, so everything is filtered through a "is this like Winodws or not?" lens.
Read all three reviews. It's clear that he's anything but a typical home user or average person.
Now, my parents - they are. My mom can't figure out how to scan a photo and attach it to an email half of the time. So I recommended a Mac precisely because all they had to do was buy a copy of MS Word and an antivirus/firewall and the rest of the machine came with the basic apps to run everything. (Okay I cheated and downloaded thunderbird for their email for free).
Me? I love my games. I run Windows and Linux. Can't live without either right now. But I've also used almost 20 different OSs over the last 28 years. So I have a very broad perspective on what a good OS is and what isn't. I've been using Windows for 7 years now, btw - and yes, that leaves 21 years, or 3/4 of my time computing, using other OSs.
I log in this morning and it's yet another piece of rubbish review about an OS written by a hack that turns into a revision of an OS holy war.
I have a question to the person who wrote the article:
Q: If every review that you do is merely comparing itself to your experience with Windows XP and 2000, then exactly how can you claim to be objective?
Basically your reviews are this:
- Take a new computer.
- Cram on all the Windows applications you can find(Office and such)
- Look around for exact copies of the same windows programs you are used to and complain when there are no 100% identical replacements.
- Complain that your outdated email client doesn't work right.(Who uses only Outlook these days, anyways? Email is email is email to 99% of home users, afterall. Your inability to adjust to a non-proprietary email format is your own fault.
- Proclaim each OS other than XP to be flawed and not as good.
My point is that, this, like so many other reviews, is basically a "how well does this emulate Windows?" diatribe. Yet, if you really understood computing in a larger sense, you would see that all OSs offer advantages and disadvantages over the others. Each one is a unique experience that cannot be judged based upon how well you can try to cram it into the Windows cookie-cutter mold. As it is, I'm getting tired of seeing you blather on and on about how poor a job it does. You want to run Windows apps in on a Mac? Dual boot or run an emulator and there you go. Problem solved - all of your stuff runs like you want it.
Case in point: I can think of a dozen or more things that you can easily do on a Mac, even a pre OSX model, that would be extremely difficult to do on a Windows box. The same holds true with Ubuntu/Linux/etc. Shoot, try copying 20,000 tiny files in Windows to a server and back. Now try it with Linux. Or for an easier example, open a window in Windows with 20,000 items in it. Now do the same in Linux.
Could you please write a review next time from a neutral standpoint and actually compare specific generic tasks that show the strengths and weaknesses of each OS. One that doesn't use Windows as the control/litmus test?
I know that - but short of having a microchip in your brain or something, always keeping the data with you is a lot more secure. Besides, nobody expects one of those beat-up keyfob type SUB devices(or a CF card). They think it's for your camera or MP3 player.
It sounds like you'd just move the problem from one device to another - if the point is to protect the data in the event of theft then you'd still have to encrypt the external drive. Also you now have two devices you need to look after instead of one.
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No - the drive would be the ONLY drive in the computer. What you leave behind is essentially a fancy terminal with no drive in it. The disk can be locked in a secure room at the company or just taken with you. In theory, since it's a PCMCIA card, it could be slipped in your wallet or whatever like a USB flash drive.
The best way to do this sort of thing is to just use a swappable drive bay.*
The trick is to use a PCMCIA Type III slot with the setup. Your boot drive is actually a pocket-sized HD.(flash would also work, but it has problems with read/write number of cycles). Time to go home? Take your drive with you.
You could also use an external USB/Firewire pocket drive as well. They can't snoop on it if the drive isn't there(and the advantage of all of these is the quickness that they can be yanked in an emergency.
Of course, they really should test an old Mac IIFX running system 8.1.(yes, it WILL run 8.1, and 8.6.x with a third party USB card added!) This is a better comparison, since they both can do pretty much the same things from getting online to running a few games, having support for color monitors, and so on...
I had one of those, actually - very quick and stable machine. 40mhz 68030, support for 8 simms, a math-co processor, and so on.
Consider for a moment at the plots they need to finish for one:
Rani is still out there. She was turned into a tree, IIRC, but she'll probably be back.
Romana is as well. It was never known what happened to her, but according to the books, she was the head of the Timelords during the war with the Daleks. If you want to know where his real love interest is... she's it. She'll guaranteed be back.
Of course, there is The Master - He's still alive. Can't possibly not be alive.
And lastly, the 12.5th version of himself, the Valleyard.(evil Doctor who goes amok and breaks the rule against attempting to "re-do" time among other things. Tom Baker himself has inted at a possible comeback for this role(!) - And he looks eerily like the actor who originally played him, byw)
You can't do this all in one season. They've hinted at The Master as a possibility and of course, Evil Doctor(tm) is canon - and will happen.
But there's of course more. Unresolved issues:(btw, Rose is gone - the actress herself is doing other things now)
The Daleks are still alive - well, one of them is... Obvious lead-in into a future episode.
The Voidship is another biggie - it has all the markings of a timelord design - probably a method to escape the war. This means potentially dozens of old people could still be out there.
And of course, there are dozens of old enemies that need to be revisited. Cybermen in his own universe are still creeping around in the periphery, for instance. Plus, it looks like he re-created his dog again - which is cool, really - it's not bad for him to do his own thing for a while, either.
What Dr. Who needs to do is make a clean break and get away from "Present-Day-Earth". For instance, the best part of the 5th Doctor was that almost none of it took palce on Earth - it was all future Earth or some outpost or station or alien planet. I thought with the episode where he showed her New Earth, they would take off and do non-present day Earth(tm) crap.
Visit ancient Rome. Visit Atlantis again. Get stuck in some alien planet again. Visit any number of the old famous haunts from the past again - surely there is mileage in that. Or do another "hits the fan" arc like the "Key of Time" or "trials of a Timelord"
This series has tons of life in it - so don't worry too much.