This is listed by the author as a "clanger", or repeatedly offered mistruth. I wholehartedly agree with him. As an experienced Linux user, I feel that the KDE/GNOME choice does not confuse most newcomers to Linux, it confuses nearly all of them, as well as experienced users. What the students should have said was "the KDE/GNOME choice confuses everybody".
I know, that's so annoying. But you know what really bugs me?
It's that damn choice between Ford, Chevy, Honda, Toyota, etc. That confuses so many people, it's no wonder nobody buys cars.
Oh, and that damn choice between milk and orange juice. My cousin starved to death over that one.
I hate having choices. I wish Bill Gates would come to my house and pick out my clothes for me.
It is difficult to imagine that many of the industries that are profitable today would be so if they had to build their business model around the prices of even a few years ago.
You don't have to imagine it, in the vast majority of industries that has always been the case.
What, do you think every business that has ever existed has lost money on every sale and been propped up by tax dollars? If so, there wouldn't be any tax dollars to prop them up.
Almost no one would have broadband if they had to pay as much for T1 downloads as they would have in 1996.
This may come as a shock to you, but the government doesn't mandate low rates for broadband.
As for those companies that take a loss on it without making that loss up somewhere else; Excite@Home ring a bell?
Meanwhile, RoadRunner is doing fine, charging $10 more a month. Even at that, I doubt they'd be doing so well if they didn't have their cable services, with the vast majority of the subscribers getting more than the low-rate-mandated basic cable.
Re:Is it the price of bandwidth?
on
Adcritic Shuts Down
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If the cost of bandwidth is the main problem, is anybody anywhere trying to do anything about it?
Not every problem can or should be solved.
The primary problem that causes most convenience stores to go under is the cost of labor. Do you want the minimum wage repealed to fix it? (Note: some people do, I'm not attempting to argue the point, just to present the things you have to consider.)
The primary problem that causes MOST businesses to go under is the costs of something; labor, raw materials, bandwidth, something costs more than what they thought it would. That doesn't mean somebody needs to make it cost less; it often means the folks starting the business need to come up with a better business plan.
I can guarantee you that when Joe Sixpack tries to play his new CD on his DVD player (which he used to replace that outdated CD player a while back) and it doesn't work, he's gonna be pissed, and gonna be returning that crap back to Best Buy en masse.
Well, on the one hand, I have your personal guarantee. On the other, I have the statistics on return rates for when they did this Europe, which say 1%.
Do you honestly think they'd do this if it bankrupted them? They piloted it and it doesn't hurt them financially in Europe. Why would things be different in the US?
Obviously, both sides are biased and think their product is better.
True, but Lineo didn't say "Linux doesn't support plug and play".
Not only is it blatently untrue, Linux DOES support plug and play, but it's supported it longer than NT. And XP is NT 5.1; if you don't believe me, check your web-server logs.
You're both wrong. Whether you buy them or not, the RIAA won't notice dick, because there are maybe a thousand people who give enough of a shit about this to let it affect their CD purchasing for political reasons.
As for the masses, the only ones that will return the discs are the 1% who have it not work on one or more pieces of equipment, and give enough of a shit to return it.
Hell, Meatloaf's "Bat Out of Hell" doesn't work properly on half the CD-ROMS I've ever tried it on, skipping on several songs, and you know what I did about that? I didn't return it, I bought a SECOND copy just in case it was a defective disc, since I couldn't see any obvious scratches and it played on my stereo.
Guess what; they're all like that. Some players just won't play that disc properly. Skips in the exact same places on two different discs.
If you, and I, and every other geek who cares stops buying CDs, the music industry won't notice shit. And if they did, it'd all come out of the artists' shares, not the record companies'.
My solution is to purchase $100 dollars worth of the CDs one day and return the next day as being defective because they don't comply with the Red Book standard. Universal said they would honor the refunds to the retailers.
However, your retailer didn't say they would honor it.
If you try this, please let us know what happens; there's a very good chance that if they don't like your answer as to what's wrong with them, they'll blow you off.
What about the quality of the music that's being released? Did Universal, BMG, Sony, et al ever stop to wonder if part of the problem is that they're churning out bands that are carbon copies of each other?
Please. Go back and look at the Top 40 charts from 1991, 1981, 1971, and 1961. Half the songs have ALWAYS looked like clones to a segment of the population.
Britney Spears and N'Sync are popular because a large number of people who buy CDs like them, period.
Those of us who think they suck are also the most likely to think the entire record industry sucks, and refuse to buy CDs.
The fact that Universal promises to credit the retailer for returns does not force the retailer to accept returns.
The retailer might just tell you "sorry, no refunds, store credit only."
Or "get out of my store, jackass."
Of course, you could go file a small claims court case for that $15 CD. It'll cost you $35 to file, and the judge might say "get out of my court, jackass."
Dangle CDs from your car mirrors and prepare a 10-second explanation that you can deliver at stoplights.
Guess you've never been to Florida.
If you dangle a CD from your car mirror here the only thing people will wonder is where you hung the Cuban flag. Every third car has both a Cuban flag and a CD hanging from the mirror already.
And, BTW, those goddamn CDs reflect light into other drivers' eyes. A LOT of light. And sometimes into the owner's eyes, I suspect.
But I'm sure in that case it'll give you a great topic of conversation while you're waiting for the cops to come investigate your wreck.
Re:Not as easy as you might think
on
al Qaeda Hacks XP?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
In the first place, I notice that man is a "suspected" Al Qaeda member. From what I've been seeing lately, anyone who has the wrong kind of accent or a copy of the Koran is a suspected Al Qaeda Member.
Ok, but when you pick the suspected Al Qaeda member up, and he says "I'm an Al Qaeda member, and I'd like to enter a formal confession in court, so I can blather on about the evils of western 'civilization' before proudly marching off to die a martyr in your jails", you can excuse journalists for thinking he might really mean it.
Yesterday he was responsible for crashing the US economy. Today he is responsible for bugs in XP. Tommorow he will be responsible for sour milks, bad weather, disrespectfull children...
We'll know it terrorists slipped code into XP, because if they do, they'll make it support raw port access for non-priviledged users. Clearly only a terrorist would do that, so it'll be a dead giveaway.
What we need is a computer with a single user file, on a single desktop, manipulated with a mouse that has a single button! What will it do? I'm not sure, but I imagine it would look a lot like a TV set.
Except that TV remotes have an increasing number of buttons, allowing one to do many functions well.
TVs that require a difficult-to-navigate menu for every function, instead of having buttons for them, piss people off.
The best TVs, of course, have buttons for many common functions, and menus for uncommon functions. Kind of like, say, a modern desktop, with a hard drive icon handy.
One upon a time I made my living writing and maintaining client-specific accounting programs, and I can tell you from that experience that unless you're an accountant, you cannot do this properly yourself.
Just as a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, so too with accounting software.
The problem isn't in making the software work as your business requires; it's in making it work as the auditors will require.
I don't think it's actually necessary to reverse-engineer the games to find out genie codes, so it's probably not a DCMA offense. e.g in the MAME emulator, the cheat engine has a memory tracker where you can study the behavior of RAM for certain effects:
You think you can get a jury to understand why that isn't a DMCA offense?
Especially when the opposing counsel is going to challenge any potential juror who is a computer programmer?
For human society to so dramatically transform in 40 years for there to be "no more war" would make any of the changes of the 20th century appear tiny and irrelevant.
Since the only change that could occur in 40 years that would make war obsolete would be the complete destruction of the human race, I'd be very concerned about anybody that expresses the hope that it will no longer exist.
Slashdot Mirror
Saying "MP3 and MPG" communicates the same information as "MPEG Audio Layer 3 and MPEG Video", but consumes only 11 bytes, as opposed to 33.
It's three times as efficient, and EVERYBODY knows exactly what you're talking about.
Why would anybody want to change that? I certainly don't intend to change the extension on my MP3s to ".MPEG_Audio_Layer_3_Compression".
Get over it.
At least this letter is not in binary ...
Well, since it was emailed, technically it WAS in binary...
This is listed by the author as a "clanger", or repeatedly offered mistruth. I wholehartedly agree with him. As an experienced Linux user, I feel that the KDE/GNOME choice does not confuse most newcomers to Linux, it confuses nearly all of them, as well as experienced users. What the students should have said was "the KDE/GNOME choice confuses everybody".
I know, that's so annoying. But you know what really bugs me?
It's that damn choice between Ford, Chevy, Honda, Toyota, etc. That confuses so many people, it's no wonder nobody buys cars.
Oh, and that damn choice between milk and orange juice. My cousin starved to death over that one.
I hate having choices. I wish Bill Gates would come to my house and pick out my clothes for me.
It is difficult to imagine that many of the industries that are profitable today would be so if they had to build their business model around the prices of even a few years ago.
You don't have to imagine it, in the vast majority of industries that has always been the case.
What, do you think every business that has ever existed has lost money on every sale and been propped up by tax dollars? If so, there wouldn't be any tax dollars to prop them up.
Almost no one would have broadband if they had to pay as much for T1 downloads as they would have in 1996.
This may come as a shock to you, but the government doesn't mandate low rates for broadband.
As for those companies that take a loss on it without making that loss up somewhere else; Excite@Home ring a bell?
Meanwhile, RoadRunner is doing fine, charging $10 more a month. Even at that, I doubt they'd be doing so well if they didn't have their cable services, with the vast majority of the subscribers getting more than the low-rate-mandated basic cable.
If the cost of bandwidth is the main problem, is anybody anywhere trying to do anything about it?
Not every problem can or should be solved.
The primary problem that causes most convenience stores to go under is the cost of labor. Do you want the minimum wage repealed to fix it? (Note: some people do, I'm not attempting to argue the point, just to present the things you have to consider.)
The primary problem that causes MOST businesses to go under is the costs of something; labor, raw materials, bandwidth, something costs more than what they thought it would. That doesn't mean somebody needs to make it cost less; it often means the folks starting the business need to come up with a better business plan.
I didn't realize an embedded system NEEDED plug 'n play support.
I mean, how many devices are going to be plugging into your toaster?
None. But how many are you going to plug into your PDA?
I can guarantee you that when Joe Sixpack tries to play his new CD on his DVD player (which he used to replace that outdated CD player a while back) and it doesn't work, he's gonna be pissed, and gonna be returning that crap back to Best Buy en masse.
Well, on the one hand, I have your personal guarantee. On the other, I have the statistics on return rates for when they did this Europe, which say 1%.
Do you honestly think they'd do this if it bankrupted them? They piloted it and it doesn't hurt them financially in Europe. Why would things be different in the US?
Obviously, both sides are biased and think their product is better.
True, but Lineo didn't say "Linux doesn't support plug and play".
Not only is it blatently untrue, Linux DOES support plug and play, but it's supported it longer than NT. And XP is NT 5.1; if you don't believe me, check your web-server logs.
You're both wrong. Whether you buy them or not, the RIAA won't notice dick, because there are maybe a thousand people who give enough of a shit about this to let it affect their CD purchasing for political reasons.
As for the masses, the only ones that will return the discs are the 1% who have it not work on one or more pieces of equipment, and give enough of a shit to return it.
Hell, Meatloaf's "Bat Out of Hell" doesn't work properly on half the CD-ROMS I've ever tried it on, skipping on several songs, and you know what I did about that? I didn't return it, I bought a SECOND copy just in case it was a defective disc, since I couldn't see any obvious scratches and it played on my stereo.
Guess what; they're all like that. Some players just won't play that disc properly. Skips in the exact same places on two different discs.
If you, and I, and every other geek who cares stops buying CDs, the music industry won't notice shit. And if they did, it'd all come out of the artists' shares, not the record companies'.
My solution is to purchase $100 dollars worth of the CDs one day and return the next day as being defective because they don't comply with the Red Book standard. Universal said they would honor the refunds to the retailers.
However, your retailer didn't say they would honor it.
If you try this, please let us know what happens; there's a very good chance that if they don't like your answer as to what's wrong with them, they'll blow you off.
What about the quality of the music that's being released? Did Universal, BMG, Sony, et al ever stop to wonder if part of the problem is that they're churning out bands that are carbon copies of each other?
Please. Go back and look at the Top 40 charts from 1991, 1981, 1971, and 1961. Half the songs have ALWAYS looked like clones to a segment of the population.
Britney Spears and N'Sync are popular because a large number of people who buy CDs like them, period.
Those of us who think they suck are also the most likely to think the entire record industry sucks, and refuse to buy CDs.
The fact that Universal promises to credit the retailer for returns does not force the retailer to accept returns.
The retailer might just tell you "sorry, no refunds, store credit only."
Or "get out of my store, jackass."
Of course, you could go file a small claims court case for that $15 CD. It'll cost you $35 to file, and the judge might say "get out of my court, jackass."
Dangle CDs from your car mirrors and prepare a 10-second explanation that you can deliver at stoplights.
Guess you've never been to Florida.
If you dangle a CD from your car mirror here the only thing people will wonder is where you hung the Cuban flag. Every third car has both a Cuban flag and a CD hanging from the mirror already.
And, BTW, those goddamn CDs reflect light into other drivers' eyes. A LOT of light. And sometimes into the owner's eyes, I suspect.
But I'm sure in that case it'll give you a great topic of conversation while you're waiting for the cops to come investigate your wreck.
In the first place, I notice that man is a "suspected" Al Qaeda member. From what I've been seeing lately, anyone who has the wrong kind of accent or a copy of the Koran is a suspected Al Qaeda Member.
Ok, but when you pick the suspected Al Qaeda member up, and he says "I'm an Al Qaeda member, and I'd like to enter a formal confession in court, so I can blather on about the evils of western 'civilization' before proudly marching off to die a martyr in your jails", you can excuse journalists for thinking he might really mean it.
Yesterday he was responsible for crashing the US economy. Today he is responsible for bugs in XP. Tommorow he will be responsible for sour milks, bad weather, disrespectfull children...
Not if we kill him.
We'll know it terrorists slipped code into XP, because if they do, they'll make it support raw port access for non-priviledged users. Clearly only a terrorist would do that, so it'll be a dead giveaway.
Every unit of what? You didn't specify what constituted a "unit."
Yes, I did, quite clearly, in English. Go back and READ the post this time, before replying.
What we need is a computer with a single user file, on a single desktop, manipulated with a mouse that has a single button! What will it do? I'm not sure, but I imagine it would look a lot like a TV set.
Except that TV remotes have an increasing number of buttons, allowing one to do many functions well.
TVs that require a difficult-to-navigate menu for every function, instead of having buttons for them, piss people off.
The best TVs, of course, have buttons for many common functions, and menus for uncommon functions. Kind of like, say, a modern desktop, with a hard drive icon handy.
I'd write my own using MySQL, and HTML::Embperl.
One upon a time I made my living writing and maintaining client-specific accounting programs, and I can tell you from that experience that unless you're an accountant, you cannot do this properly yourself.
Just as a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, so too with accounting software.
The problem isn't in making the software work as your business requires; it's in making it work as the auditors will require.
You quoted the words "shipping every unit", but somehow you managed to miss reading them.
mispelt? Is that a joke? It is not a word. I am no English major, but I don't think this is correct.
It is a word. However, it's misspelt, presumably as a joke.
You obviously have a web browser, because you posted that comment. How hard would it have been to look it up before posting?
I don't think it's actually necessary to reverse-engineer the games to find out genie codes, so it's probably not a DCMA offense. e.g in the MAME emulator, the cheat engine has a memory tracker where you can study the behavior of RAM for certain effects:
You think you can get a jury to understand why that isn't a DMCA offense?
Especially when the opposing counsel is going to challenge any potential juror who is a computer programmer?
What's the big deal with this? You can sometimes find stuff with strings or a hex program.
And when exactly did the Sony Playstation start shipping every unit with a copy of strings and a hex editor?
For human society to so dramatically transform in 40 years for there to be "no more war" would make any of the changes of the 20th century appear tiny and irrelevant.
Since the only change that could occur in 40 years that would make war obsolete would be the complete destruction of the human race, I'd be very concerned about anybody that expresses the hope that it will no longer exist.
Wow, the answers you've gotten.
A window unit air conditioner can be found for under a hundred dollars if you catch it on sale.
Everybody from Lowes and Home Depot to K-Mart and Wal-Mart sells them.