Whoops. Sorry about that. I referenced the wrong people in my response-turned-rant. I am going to go and lay back down now. This sinus infection has me hearing voices.
"For the same reason people use IE in the first place: They are stupid and/or lazy."
Or...there are people who simply do not know about Firefox. Yes, believe it. There are users on the internet not as knowledgeable as your average Slashdot reader. Maybe a copy of OpenCD, then those less-learned folk can brought into the 21st century.
But, instead of calling 'them' stupid and/or lazy, MisterCookie, you could be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Insulting the people you want to convert to your side makes you no better than the enemy you condemn.
My brother had be rebuild his PC for his kids. I loaded it up with all sorts of open-source goodies. I am about to set up a second PC for them with similar goodies.
And here I thought it was the parent's job to monitor the video game habits of their children. Silly me. Thank goodness the government is here to save me.
"If it's going to save the government money, why should I pay for it?"
Um, because they are getting paid YOUR TAX DOLLARS to open the letter? You are paying the bill either way. It becomes a question of which bill you would rather pay. A small filing fee (which is free for the simpler cases), or a full-time temp worker making $12/hr?
"However, it's targeted at a very exclusive market: pure technology admirers who must have the latest and greatest, regardless of its real world functionality."
Um, is not that the point of creating a product, to define the market you want to capture. That would be like saying the iPhone is meant for the exclusive market: parents with too much spare cash and greedy kids who demand a $500 cell phone.
Okay, it is targeted at the technology admirers. Wait, isn't that almost all of the buyers out there who keeping upgrading their phones each time a new, slimmer model is announced? Or upgrades to the next great large screen TV? The sales folk at my company keep demanding the newest phone, the newest PDA, etc. I guess that makes them technology admirers, too.
Personally, I am shocked by this news. And here I thought Microsoft was becoming more open.
In another news thread, a poster noted that it was expensive to maintain a monopoly in the face of the Linux threat. News like this just seems to continue to support that theory.
I have friends that will mail their returns to the IRS if they owe money. They do their taxes early, February-ish like kannibal_klown (that is an awesome user id, btw). It is their way of "sticking it to the man" by mailing the check at the very last moment possible.
All of the e-filing, though, has got to be saving money (overall) for the taxpayers.
There are applications where CPU speed is a marginal component of the speed. Some apps require large memory to run correctly, or fast disk access, or fast graphics access.
Will this new processor benefit the tasks that 95% of do each day like e-mail, web browsing, word processor and slashdot posting? More speed will certainly allow me to open more windows at once, along with a increase in RAM. The performance should be a boon for gamer and science communities, though. Optimized your app for this processor and watch the simulation fly! Is there anything in most OSes that could benefit from these advanced optimizations?
I wish we could faster advances in the performance of memory and drive access to match all of this CPU wizardry. With the growing presence of solid-state disk drives, I wonder if we will see a new SATA/SAS version that can support the rates a RAM drive is truly capable of.
Nope, not surprised in the least. I am not surprised that the drive-by media is once again pouncing on anything that puts down the President and lifts up the democratic party. I am not surprised that the same press that allows Clinton to shag every office intern without note, loves to waste print on the democratic party-induced scandal investigations.
I would actually be surprised if the democratic party-controlled legislature would pass at least one bill of substance for the President to sign. Nope, we get an Iraq funding bill with $200 Billion in pork barrel spending attached. Way to Democrats! Woo hoo! Oh, how about that $400 Million increase in taxes they are proposing? I don't see the drive-by media storming the gates with that headline.
Surprised that the President's folks deleted e-mail. Not in the least. If this dragnet of conspiracy was cast over the entire government, both sides of the lines are just as guilty, just as stupid and just as fruitless in actually serving the people of this nation.
Here is my proposal: Stop the investigations! Work on funding for improving education, science, research, housing, nutrition. Hey, I have an idea, how about our government actually show itself as one body and one mind instead of handing over our nation to the terrorist on a silver platter.
It is all a ploy, I tell ya. Palm is just trying to engender the support of millions of unpaid Linux programmers to make their product better since they lack the resources to do it themselves. I can see right through this plan of theirs. Next thing you know, geeks will be arguing about which Linux will run better. And then, someone will mention BSD. And, of course, someone will turn a Palm into a web server just to strut their geekness to the world.
But, kudos to Palm to being able to admit their own home-grown product is no longer able to deliver the goods.
If Google really wants to keep on record and ill-tempered sea bass, they are more than welcome. Maybe I am being pessimistic, but I have given up on any true sense of privacy. One week after I purchased my house, I got an unsolicited sales call.
I asked, "And how would you know about me just buying my house?" She replied, "It is a public record." "Oh, and did it also indicate that I wanted your stupid unsolicited sales call to wake me up at 9 *AM*?" "I am sorry sir..." "Just remove me from your list and never call again."
And this was the result of a simple paper record. That pretty much removed any thought I had to privacy. The Do-Not-Call List seems to have worked in Ohio, but that fact that I had to report my number to a list, just so it wouldn't be called, bugged me.
I suppose privacy is possible. Only use cash. Don't subscribe to any magazine. Switch e-mail address every month. Don't buy anything on-line. Don't get a credit card. Turn off the cookies in your browser. Register your new PC as "Bob Smith".
Or, one could revel in the public nature of your records. Create some fake web pages that talk about fetishes you don't really have. Subscribe to the strangest of the strange web sites. Subscribe to every single magazine you can get for free. Drive the marketers crazy as they try to categorize you. "sir, where does a straight bisexual transvestite biker vampire ruby programmer fit into your database?"
On the face of it, the idea is not completely awful. As usage of the internet grows, the organization of the domain names will grow in complexity and scope.
We have.gov for the US government sites. This makes sense. All government-owned web sites are then managed in one place. We have.edu for education institutions.
Financial institutions are a major power in our society, like government, so maybe they should have a specific domain. This would make looking for a financial place predictable. "I need to find my bank's web site. Ah, I will try bankname.bank" knowing that you will at least get a real bank, and not a phishing scam built on a typo in a name..shop for on-line shops that actually sell through their web site. eg. Amazon, TigerDirect
There are other major market segments which could justify a TLD like libraries (.lib?) and medical (.med?).
We should not let a fear of abusers stop us from trying to organize things in a predictably way. With more TLD options, we could possibly avoid domain names having to be ever longer because their name was already taken.
Actually, I like to read tech manuals. I revel is my geekiness. My wife doesn't mind. There is nothing more romantic than curling up on the couch each night, watching Racing or Bull Riding, and reading a good technical book.
A well-written book is a joy to read. I most recently read Pragmatic Programmer's Programming Ruby. I liked it so much, I am picking up more of their books.
How about: Bathe, get a girlfriend, go outside, read a 20 minute FAQ and learn more than most *nix sysadmins seem to know. My wife might have a problem with the second item...
The FTC should file a lawsuit against those two worms. In this day and age, we should have the freedom to choose whichever worm we prefer to infect our system. What if I want a completely different family of worm on my system? Did these virus writers think of that? Feh on them.
zrobotics wrote, "I'm not advocating that you change the way you raise your kids, I'm just making a point"
My post does seem like it is splitting hairs. As I think back and try to remember, the most violent games I had access to on Commodore 64 weren't really all that violent. I was big into sports and driving games. I had a western game that would probably qualify as the most violent of the video games I played. In one scene, you had to shoot the bad guys as they popped out of windows and from behind the brush before they shot you.
I do think that the funnest games I played were the ones played with other people. I loved it when my dad and I would play the golf game. Ah, the glory days. My dad is gone now and it moments like this make me really miss him. He became quite the video game fanatic during his last 12 months of cancer suffering. He owned every hunting and fishing game on the market.
When I was a kid, the "violent" games where 8-bit pixelated. The games now are much different. With graphics approaching nearly the realism it is, the games take on a new light.
I probably won't let my kids play the violent games of their day. Racing games and sports games, yes. FPS with gruesome graphics showing blood spurting from a beheaded body? No. Not until they are older and have the intelligence to understand the different between games and reality.
The day is just beginning for the Americans, surely something worthy of ranting about will be posted. Or, maybe the companies are taking weekend off for Easter and it will be boring news all weekend!
The coward wrote, "yup you can do that in win just fine, YOU can do it just fine, which you should add to your installation time then, as it's costing YOU time. When you download the latest disk of your distro it's allready been done FOR you, so no additional time required by YOU."
Then finished his babbling with, "(Disclaimer: yes gentoo takes ages to do it's thing, but I generally don't mind. It's the computer doing work, not me, and not getting in my way while doing so.)"
Um, how is that different an XP SP2 install? I start the install and walk away. The computer does all the work while I do something else. You contradicted yourself inside of 15 seconds. Impressive. I think you can do better than that next time.
Once XP is booted up, I let it sit over-night, since I start such installs near the end of the day. By the next morning, it has downloaded 100Mb worth of updates and I click on install. Then walk away. All told, of the time it takes to install XP before I have to truly sit down with it to install apps, I have only spent 5 minutes of my own time away from other more important tasks like reading slashdot, getting another can of Pepsi or pondering why slashdot allows anonymous posting.
Slashdot Mirror
Whoops. Sorry about that. I referenced the wrong people in my response-turned-rant. I am going to go and lay back down now. This sinus infection has me hearing voices.
"For the same reason people use IE in the first place: They are stupid and/or lazy."
Or...there are people who simply do not know about Firefox. Yes, believe it. There are users on the internet not as knowledgeable as your average Slashdot reader. Maybe a copy of OpenCD, then those less-learned folk can brought into the 21st century.
But, instead of calling 'them' stupid and/or lazy, MisterCookie, you could be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. Insulting the people you want to convert to your side makes you no better than the enemy you condemn.
My brother had be rebuild his PC for his kids. I loaded it up with all sorts of open-source goodies. I am about to set up a second PC for them with similar goodies.
"You're saying Microsoft is a rogue company?"
Microsoft is multi-classed. One of their weapons is a Greatsword of Backstabbing, +20. It ignores armor, too.
And here I thought it was the parent's job to monitor the video game habits of their children. Silly me. Thank goodness the government is here to save me.
This is the first time I have ever had taxation explained that way. It is certainly an interesting twist on the common perceived notion.
"If it's going to save the government money, why should I pay for it?"
Um, because they are getting paid YOUR TAX DOLLARS to open the letter? You are paying the bill either way. It becomes a question of which bill you would rather pay. A small filing fee (which is free for the simpler cases), or a full-time temp worker making $12/hr?
"However, it's targeted at a very exclusive market: pure technology admirers who must have the latest and greatest, regardless of its real world functionality."
Um, is not that the point of creating a product, to define the market you want to capture. That would be like saying the iPhone is meant for the exclusive market: parents with too much spare cash and greedy kids who demand a $500 cell phone.
Okay, it is targeted at the technology admirers. Wait, isn't that almost all of the buyers out there who keeping upgrading their phones each time a new, slimmer model is announced? Or upgrades to the next great large screen TV? The sales folk at my company keep demanding the newest phone, the newest PDA, etc. I guess that makes them technology admirers, too.
*shrug*
(tongue firmly in cheek this entire post)
Personally, I am shocked by this news. And here I thought Microsoft was becoming more open.
In another news thread, a poster noted that it was expensive to maintain a monopoly in the face of the Linux threat. News like this just seems to continue to support that theory.
I have friends that will mail their returns to the IRS if they owe money. They do their taxes early, February-ish like kannibal_klown (that is an awesome user id, btw). It is their way of "sticking it to the man" by mailing the check at the very last moment possible.
All of the e-filing, though, has got to be saving money (overall) for the taxpayers.
As with all computing benchmarks, YMMV.
There are applications where CPU speed is a marginal component of the speed. Some apps require large memory to run correctly, or fast disk access, or fast graphics access.
Will this new processor benefit the tasks that 95% of do each day like e-mail, web browsing, word processor and slashdot posting? More speed will certainly allow me to open more windows at once, along with a increase in RAM. The performance should be a boon for gamer and science communities, though. Optimized your app for this processor and watch the simulation fly! Is there anything in most OSes that could benefit from these advanced optimizations?
I wish we could faster advances in the performance of memory and drive access to match all of this CPU wizardry. With the growing presence of solid-state disk drives, I wonder if we will see a new SATA/SAS version that can support the rates a RAM drive is truly capable of.
Move along, there is nothing to see here.
Warning: Political Rant Mode
Nope, not surprised in the least. I am not surprised that the drive-by media is once again pouncing on anything that puts down the President and lifts up the democratic party. I am not surprised that the same press that allows Clinton to shag every office intern without note, loves to waste print on the democratic party-induced scandal investigations.
I would actually be surprised if the democratic party-controlled legislature would pass at least one bill of substance for the President to sign. Nope, we get an Iraq funding bill with $200 Billion in pork barrel spending attached. Way to Democrats! Woo hoo! Oh, how about that $400 Million increase in taxes they are proposing? I don't see the drive-by media storming the gates with that headline.
Surprised that the President's folks deleted e-mail. Not in the least. If this dragnet of conspiracy was cast over the entire government, both sides of the lines are just as guilty, just as stupid and just as fruitless in actually serving the people of this nation.
Here is my proposal: Stop the investigations! Work on funding for improving education, science, research, housing, nutrition. Hey, I have an idea, how about our government actually show itself as one body and one mind instead of handing over our nation to the terrorist on a silver platter.
End of Political Rant.
Move along, there is nothing to see here.
It is all a ploy, I tell ya. Palm is just trying to engender the support of millions of unpaid Linux programmers to make their product better since they lack the resources to do it themselves. I can see right through this plan of theirs. Next thing you know, geeks will be arguing about which Linux will run better. And then, someone will mention BSD. And, of course, someone will turn a Palm into a web server just to strut their geekness to the world.
But, kudos to Palm to being able to admit their own home-grown product is no longer able to deliver the goods.
If Google really wants to keep on record and ill-tempered sea bass, they are more than welcome. Maybe I am being pessimistic, but I have given up on any true sense of privacy. One week after I purchased my house, I got an unsolicited sales call.
I asked, "And how would you know about me just buying my house?"
She replied, "It is a public record."
"Oh, and did it also indicate that I wanted your stupid unsolicited sales call to wake me up at 9 *AM*?"
"I am sorry sir..."
"Just remove me from your list and never call again."
And this was the result of a simple paper record. That pretty much removed any thought I had to privacy. The Do-Not-Call List seems to have worked in Ohio, but that fact that I had to report my number to a list, just so it wouldn't be called, bugged me.
I suppose privacy is possible. Only use cash. Don't subscribe to any magazine. Switch e-mail address every month. Don't buy anything on-line. Don't get a credit card. Turn off the cookies in your browser. Register your new PC as "Bob Smith".
Or, one could revel in the public nature of your records. Create some fake web pages that talk about fetishes you don't really have. Subscribe to the strangest of the strange web sites. Subscribe to every single magazine you can get for free. Drive the marketers crazy as they try to categorize you. "sir, where does a straight bisexual transvestite biker vampire ruby programmer fit into your database?"
On the face of it, the idea is not completely awful. As usage of the internet grows, the organization of the domain names will grow in complexity and scope.
.gov for the US government sites. This makes sense. All government-owned web sites are then managed in one place. We have .edu for education institutions.
.shop for on-line shops that actually sell through their web site. eg. Amazon, TigerDirect
We have
Financial institutions are a major power in our society, like government, so maybe they should have a specific domain. This would make looking for a financial place predictable. "I need to find my bank's web site. Ah, I will try bankname.bank" knowing that you will at least get a real bank, and not a phishing scam built on a typo in a name.
There are other major market segments which could justify a TLD like libraries (.lib?) and medical (.med?).
We should not let a fear of abusers stop us from trying to organize things in a predictably way. With more TLD options, we could possibly avoid domain names having to be ever longer because their name was already taken.
Actually, I like to read tech manuals. I revel is my geekiness. My wife doesn't mind. There is nothing more romantic than curling up on the couch each night, watching Racing or Bull Riding, and reading a good technical book.
A well-written book is a joy to read. I most recently read Pragmatic Programmer's Programming Ruby. I liked it so much, I am picking up more of their books.
Do no evil, or don't get caught.
We redefine evil.
Emulate or Innovate, which ever is more convenient.
The FTC should file a lawsuit against those two worms. In this day and age, we should have the freedom to choose whichever worm we prefer to infect our system. What if I want a completely different family of worm on my system? Did these virus writers think of that? Feh on them.
zrobotics wrote, "I'm not advocating that you change the way you raise your kids, I'm just making a point"
My post does seem like it is splitting hairs. As I think back and try to remember, the most violent games I had access to on Commodore 64 weren't really all that violent. I was big into sports and driving games. I had a western game that would probably qualify as the most violent of the video games I played. In one scene, you had to shoot the bad guys as they popped out of windows and from behind the brush before they shot you.
I do think that the funnest games I played were the ones played with other people. I loved it when my dad and I would play the golf game. Ah, the glory days. My dad is gone now and it moments like this make me really miss him. He became quite the video game fanatic during his last 12 months of cancer suffering. He owned every hunting and fishing game on the market.
When I was a kid, the "violent" games where 8-bit pixelated. The games now are much different. With graphics approaching nearly the realism it is, the games take on a new light.
I probably won't let my kids play the violent games of their day. Racing games and sports games, yes. FPS with gruesome graphics showing blood spurting from a beheaded body? No. Not until they are older and have the intelligence to understand the different between games and reality.
That is awesome. At that speed capability, these little rockets could make for a competitive racing league. Oval, road or street courses.
These half-way to the vision of Car Wars. Just add some weapons...
So, how long until Google just builds their own town?
The day is just beginning for the Americans, surely something worthy of ranting about will be posted. Or, maybe the companies are taking weekend off for Easter and it will be boring news all weekend!
The coward wrote, "yup you can do that in win just fine, YOU can do it just fine, which you should add to your installation time then, as it's costing YOU time. When you download the latest disk of your distro it's allready been done FOR you, so no additional time required by YOU."
Then finished his babbling with, "(Disclaimer: yes gentoo takes ages to do it's thing, but I generally don't mind. It's the computer doing work, not me, and not getting in my way while doing so.)"
Um, how is that different an XP SP2 install? I start the install and walk away. The computer does all the work while I do something else. You contradicted yourself inside of 15 seconds. Impressive. I think you can do better than that next time.
Once XP is booted up, I let it sit over-night, since I start such installs near the end of the day. By the next morning, it has downloaded 100Mb worth of updates and I click on install. Then walk away. All told, of the time it takes to install XP before I have to truly sit down with it to install apps, I have only spent 5 minutes of my own time away from other more important tasks like reading slashdot, getting another can of Pepsi or pondering why slashdot allows anonymous posting.
I read over the patent. The first image that came to mind was...your typical cubicle farm office.