Okay, so I look through the headlines for stuff which interests me. And I find this. Ubuntu has been released. Great. Cool. But......what exactly *is* Ubuntu?
How about writing this in here as well? How about simply telling us that "Ubuntu" Linux has released a new version?
Instead, you're forcing me to RTFA, which doesn't interest me, increasing their server load...
TV again. Great idea, placing your kids in front of your TV just to shut them up. Going on a trip? Take the TV with you, enjoy the blissful silence of your kids brains leaking out their ears.
How about your wife handling the kids? Playing a game with them? Cards? Boardgames? Reading them a book?
Keep the TV out of your home. Keep the TV out of your car. Keep the TV away from your kids.
...is pretty useless to me. If I call somebody, I press the phone to my ear. And you get a big smeary blob on the screen, which needs to be wiped off. Which irritates me, quite apart from the uncomfortable shape.
(Very funny. No, it's perfectly normal stuff from your skin, and not mud, blood, or whatever;)
So, guess what: I have a PDA with everything on it. And a simple phone. To call people with, nothing else.
>why do you block ads? You are asking me why I block things I do not wish to see?
Advertisements are usually aimed at the lowest common denominator, i.e. idiots. While there certainly are exceptions, they are few and far between. Most slashdotters will have grown up with TV and radio. And thus are used to being saturated with ads. I did not - no TV, no radio, no colorful magazines. Simply books and now the net.
Thus I am not as used to ads, and I see them as irritating and highly intrusive.
>And with what?
AdBlock works great. Together with my refusal to download Shockwave or Flash, I see hardly any of this garbage. And if I do, a few simple keypresses will assure that I never see it again.
>Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads?
Both are massively irritating. TV ads disturb watching a movie (little experience, I'm afraid; as said, no TV - I watch DVDs on my 21" TFT), while online ads try to take my attention from the data I'm looking for. Surprisingly, the Google ads don't bother me at all - simple text, and at times even useful.
>What about in a magazine?
Do yourself a favour: take a magazine, and cut all ads from it. See what's left? Nearly nothing. Now take out all articles with hidden ads or agendas in them. Anything left at all? Didn't think so. If you want to find useful information, look through solid newspapers and the internet. You wish to enjoy some reading, find a good book. Magazines themselves are useless.
And I might add: ads before movies made sure that I hardly go to the cinema anymore (although I used to enjoy it). Paying the equivalent of two DVDs to see a single film with 40 minutes of ads at the begining is simply not worth it.
Here in Munich, Germany, I pay 8,50 Euros (about $10) to see a film. That's quite a bit of money, especially as I can buy a new DVD for this price.
Worse, however, are the adverts. Before the film starts, I sit there for 40 (fourty!) minutes, watching ads. I hate ads. Aimed at the lowest common demominator (i.e. morons), they deeply insult me.
And, of course, many movies simply aren't worth watching.
So I show up there, waste three hours, pay a heck of a lot of money and have my mood ruined by endless advertising. Not to mention the idiotic "If you dare to even photograph this, we'll put you in prison for many years" garbage.
So? Cut the third party stuff out, and drop the messy endresult into our lap. Let's see what we can do with it, even if it's just learning something new!
After the war, Germany had a similar problem. Entire factories were either burned in the war or carted off afterwards. Heck, the russians even tore up huge sections of railway track and took it home.
So it was all replaced. With, of course, the best and most modern systems available. Obviously the quality rocketed up fast.
Ciao, Klaus
PS: The stamp "Made in Germany" used to be forced upon us, to warn people about the products. It quickly turned into a quality mark. Now everybody used it.
* An enormous whiteboard (you can cover a wall with these things) * Pens of different color. I can write stuff, comment it in a different color, comment my comments... several layers of data on a single page, so to speak;)
And get a good keyboard. I recommend these near-indestructible IBM PS/2 keyboards with the lovely feel from the late 80s. You can get them at eBay.
So there's yet another more-or-less-standard computer to be sold. Oh, wait. It's just being sold at a different price.
And there's an ad campaign for it.
People, I don't give a flying rats sh*t about advertisements. Have a look at any newspaper. It's full of that crap. I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for AdBlock for my browser. I don't have a TV, simply because of ads. I don't listen to the radio for the same reason. Last time I went to the movies, I saw 40 (!) minutes of ads - haven't been in a cinema since.
I hate adverts. Loathe them. So here's one which is not quite as terminally moronic as most of them (and I did like the idea of the plane). But is it NEWS?
After running after lots of useless ideas, here's a seriously useless one. Huge thing, lovely target (yes, yes, you can't take it down with an RPG-7), heavier than air (i.e. using lots of fuel), and slow.
I keep seeing references to aircraft carriers. Keep in mind that, during the last NATO north sea manouvers (been a while), all of them were (marked) sunk ON THE FIRST DAY by diesel subs.
Killing one of these whales is going to be rather simple indeed.
Oh, any by the way: of course you can afford to research/build these worthless but amazingly expensive things. I'm sure Halliburton will be most delighted to take this project. No, really. Go ahead. It'll speed up your collapse, something deperately hoped for by nearly everybody outside the USA.
Well, I liked the german movie theaters. The people are polite and quiet, it is considered VERY bad manners to not switch off your phone, the sound is good, and the picture as well.
But... firstly, the price has shot up (8,50 Euro?!), and - worse - the adverts are up. Here in Munich I sat through 40 (fourty!) minutes of advertising before the film starts.
Sorry. Not interested in paying money to watch ads. Especially since they're all aimed at the lowest common nominator, i.e. are really dumb.
DVDs have become cheap. Renting a DVD (over 24h) is really cheap. Since I don't need to see a movie when it comes out, I simply sit at home, in front of my 21" PC screen. Good enough.
Quite a long time ago I worked as a consultant/salesguy/toiletcleaner in a computershop to finance my life as a student.
Olivetti had recently brought out its M24, which was a lovely computer (except for the dust-sensitive keyboard).
Having sold yet another one, the customer asked to see it running first. Hey, no problem: I unpack the whole thing, put it on the desk, turn it on and: BANG! Nice black smoke coming up from the power supply...
I don't remember if the power supply could be switched from the world-standard 220V to the weird US 120V*, but it certainly seemed that way.
Having a display room full of stinking hardware smoke gives a really warm fuzzy feeling to your customers.
Friend of mine owned a Commodore 64 (yeah, well, it's been a while) and had just bought an external floppy drive for it.
And now he wanted to lock that thing, so his little brother couldn't mess with it. I got him one of these neato-cool-brand-new tubular computer locks, which he worked into the back of the drive, using it to switch of the power.
Sadly, when switching it on, it somehow managed to connect to power connector to the data bus... zZzap.
>Pakistan is the country most likely in my book to use them
Nope. The USA is the most likely to use them. You've heard that they have created a plan on how to use a nuclear first strike on Iran if another terrorist act happens on US soil?
Also quite important is the Thing About Powerful Weapons: You can only carry them from a certain level onwards.
So, if an ebaying, cheating, overly-rich worthless Level 15 player goes and attacks a Level 25 player using the very best weapons/armor/etc for his level - he'll end up as a stain on the ground.
Be honest now. If somebody offered you a fat juicy six-figure income - would you really, truly turn it down? Six figures, to work with computers and software, something you seriously enjoy?
Do you really think you won't? I remember saying that I'd never, ever work for a bureucracy block like, say, Siemens. Until they offered me an outside project for a humongous (for me) sum of money. Doing VisualBasic 3.1. I jumped for it.
I'm not going to flame about here, but I find that some other OS does what I need to do, gives me some fun games, allows me to play some older DOS/Windows games (which are *fun*, even if the graphics are not exactly top notch), and allows me to watch DVDs I borrow from friends.
Well, I *loved* HL1. Played it a lot, spend (much too much too much) time designing maps and generally having fun with it. Played it through several times since then, too.
HL2 blew me away. I was amazed, loved it. Played all the way through it slowly, enjoying each place.
Steam irritated me, though. And then, when I was through and wanted to play with maps and the like, it became a Major Hassle. Every time I loaded up a map, I got into trouble. I couldn't simply apply a crack and play and edit and design away. I couldn't design on my laptop, sitting outside somewhere (no WiFi). It was never a 'just fire it up quickly and do something for a few minutes'.
And so... I just stopped. Lost my interest. Haven't played it again. Haven't designed any maps. Haven't even looked at it for a long time, and am probably not going to.
I don't care about small (they all are), stylish (who cares?), games (cards are okay, for the rest I have my PC), multimedia, etc, etc.
I care about battery life. A lot. And thus I use a very simple Palm device to keep all my data, telephone numbers, addresses, events. What good is a big thing playing DOOM and video files, when I have to recharge it all the time?
Depends on which games you play. The latest ones - nope, forget it.
But the older ones... aaah, yes. Things like "Settlers II" or "HoMM", "Omega" or "Dungeon Master". Good games. Not the latest graphics, but a heck of a lot of fun - and cheap.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, so I look through the headlines for stuff which interests me. ...what exactly *is* Ubuntu?
And I find this. Ubuntu has been released. Great. Cool. But...
How about writing this in here as well? How about simply telling us that "Ubuntu" Linux has released a new version?
Instead, you're forcing me to RTFA, which doesn't interest me, increasing their server load...
TV again. Great idea, placing your kids in front of your TV just to shut them up.
Going on a trip? Take the TV with you, enjoy the blissful silence of your kids brains leaking out their ears.
How about your wife handling the kids? Playing a game with them? Cards? Boardgames? Reading them a book?
Keep the TV out of your home. Keep the TV out of your car. Keep the TV away from your kids.
...is pretty useless to me.
;)
If I call somebody, I press the phone to my ear. And you get a big smeary blob on the screen, which needs to be wiped off. Which irritates me, quite apart from the uncomfortable shape.
(Very funny. No, it's perfectly normal stuff from your skin, and not mud, blood, or whatever
So, guess what: I have a PDA with everything on it. And a simple phone. To call people with, nothing else.
>why do you block ads?
You are asking me why I block things I do not wish to see?
Advertisements are usually aimed at the lowest common denominator, i.e. idiots. While there certainly are exceptions, they are few and far between.
Most slashdotters will have grown up with TV and radio. And thus are used to being saturated with ads. I did not - no TV, no radio, no colorful magazines. Simply books and now the net.
Thus I am not as used to ads, and I see them as irritating and highly intrusive.
>And with what?
AdBlock works great. Together with my refusal to download Shockwave or Flash, I see hardly any of this garbage. And if I do, a few simple keypresses will assure that I never see it again.
>Do you view internet ads as different from say, TV ads?
Both are massively irritating. TV ads disturb watching a movie (little experience, I'm afraid; as said, no TV - I watch DVDs on my 21" TFT), while online ads try to take my attention from the data I'm looking for.
Surprisingly, the Google ads don't bother me at all - simple text, and at times even useful.
>What about in a magazine?
Do yourself a favour: take a magazine, and cut all ads from it. See what's left? Nearly nothing. Now take out all articles with hidden ads or agendas in them. Anything left at all? Didn't think so.
If you want to find useful information, look through solid newspapers and the internet. You wish to enjoy some reading, find a good book. Magazines themselves are useless.
And I might add: ads before movies made sure that I hardly go to the cinema anymore (although I used to enjoy it). Paying the equivalent of two DVDs to see a single film with 40 minutes of ads at the begining is simply not worth it.
Price and Adverts.
Here in Munich, Germany, I pay 8,50 Euros (about $10) to see a film. That's quite a bit of money, especially as I can buy a new DVD for this price.
Worse, however, are the adverts. Before the film starts, I sit there for 40 (fourty!) minutes, watching ads. I hate ads. Aimed at the lowest common demominator (i.e. morons), they deeply insult me.
And, of course, many movies simply aren't worth watching.
So I show up there, waste three hours, pay a heck of a lot of money and have my mood ruined by endless advertising. Not to mention the idiotic "If you dare to even photograph this, we'll put you in prison for many years" garbage.
Bah.
So?
Cut the third party stuff out, and drop the messy endresult into our lap.
Let's see what we can do with it, even if it's just learning something new!
After the war, Germany had a similar problem. Entire factories were either burned in the war or carted off afterwards. Heck, the russians even tore up huge sections of railway track and took it home.
So it was all replaced. With, of course, the best and most modern systems available. Obviously the quality rocketed up fast.
Ciao,
Klaus
PS: The stamp "Made in Germany" used to be forced upon us, to warn people about the products. It quickly turned into a quality mark. Now everybody used it.
Well, instead of pencils, I use:
;)
* An enormous whiteboard (you can cover a wall with these things)
* Pens of different color. I can write stuff, comment it in a different color, comment my comments... several layers of data on a single page, so to speak
And get a good keyboard. I recommend these near-indestructible IBM PS/2 keyboards with the lovely feel from the late 80s. You can get them at eBay.
So there's yet another more-or-less-standard computer to be sold. Oh, wait. It's just being sold at a different price.
And there's an ad campaign for it.
People, I don't give a flying rats sh*t about advertisements.
Have a look at any newspaper. It's full of that crap. I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for AdBlock for my browser. I don't have a TV, simply because of ads. I don't listen to the radio for the same reason. Last time I went to the movies, I saw 40 (!) minutes of ads - haven't been in a cinema since.
I hate adverts. Loathe them.
So here's one which is not quite as terminally moronic as most of them (and I did like the idea of the plane).
But is it NEWS?
After running after lots of useless ideas, here's a seriously useless one. Huge thing, lovely target (yes, yes, you can't take it down with an RPG-7), heavier than air (i.e. using lots of fuel), and slow.
I keep seeing references to aircraft carriers.
Keep in mind that, during the last NATO north sea manouvers (been a while), all of them were (marked) sunk ON THE FIRST DAY by diesel subs.
Killing one of these whales is going to be rather simple indeed.
Oh, any by the way: of course you can afford to research/build these worthless but amazingly expensive things. I'm sure Halliburton will be most delighted to take this project.
No, really. Go ahead. It'll speed up your collapse, something deperately hoped for by nearly everybody outside the USA.
Well, I liked the german movie theaters.
The people are polite and quiet, it is considered VERY bad manners to not switch off your phone, the sound is good, and the picture as well.
But... firstly, the price has shot up (8,50 Euro?!), and - worse - the adverts are up.
Here in Munich I sat through 40 (fourty!) minutes of advertising before the film starts.
Sorry. Not interested in paying money to watch ads. Especially since they're all aimed at the lowest common nominator, i.e. are really dumb.
DVDs have become cheap. Renting a DVD (over 24h) is really cheap. Since I don't need to see a movie when it comes out, I simply sit at home, in front of my 21" PC screen. Good enough.
Quite a long time ago I worked as a consultant/salesguy/toiletcleaner in a computershop to finance my life as a student.
Olivetti had recently brought out its M24, which was a lovely computer (except for the dust-sensitive keyboard).
Having sold yet another one, the customer asked to see it running first. Hey, no problem: I unpack the whole thing, put it on the desk, turn it on and: BANG! Nice black smoke coming up from the power supply...
I don't remember if the power supply could be switched from the world-standard 220V to the weird US 120V*, but it certainly seemed that way.
Having a display room full of stinking hardware smoke gives a really warm fuzzy feeling to your customers.
*Yeah, yeah, I know.
Friend of mine owned a Commodore 64 (yeah, well, it's been a while) and had just bought an external floppy drive for it.
And now he wanted to lock that thing, so his little brother couldn't mess with it.
I got him one of these neato-cool-brand-new tubular computer locks, which he worked into the back of the drive, using it to switch of the power.
Sadly, when switching it on, it somehow managed to connect to power connector to the data bus... zZzap.
>Pakistan is the country most likely in my book to use them
Nope. The USA is the most likely to use them.
You've heard that they have created a plan on how to use a nuclear first strike on Iran if another terrorist act happens on US soil?
Thanks, Land Of The Free. Appreciated.
"It can respond to people touching it. It's very satisfying"
I... see.
So now every time you see 'Ford', you're reminded of a huge, empty tank falling away to a fiery death... right?
Also quite important is the Thing About Powerful Weapons:
You can only carry them from a certain level onwards.
So, if an ebaying, cheating, overly-rich worthless Level 15 player goes and attacks a Level 25 player using the very best weapons/armor/etc for his level - he'll end up as a stain on the ground.
Oh, come on.
Be honest now. If somebody offered you a fat juicy six-figure income - would you really, truly turn it down?
Six figures, to work with computers and software, something you seriously enjoy?
Do you really think you won't?
I remember saying that I'd never, ever work for a bureucracy block like, say, Siemens. Until they offered me an outside project for a humongous (for me) sum of money. Doing VisualBasic 3.1.
I jumped for it.
Sure you wouldn't?
Sorry, I don't have Windows.
I'm not going to flame about here, but I find that some other OS does what I need to do, gives me some fun games, allows me to play some older DOS/Windows games (which are *fun*, even if the graphics are not exactly top notch), and allows me to watch DVDs I borrow from friends.
DRM it? Loose me as a customer.
Yes. Mine.
I use cooling towers for the water (no, really - sorry, can't think of the name right now).
It's perfectly noiseless.
Yes. One word: patents.
Try something new in the states, get sued into the ground.
Well, I *loved* HL1. Played it a lot, spend (much too much too much) time designing maps and generally having fun with it. Played it through several times since then, too.
HL2 blew me away. I was amazed, loved it. Played all the way through it slowly, enjoying each place.
Steam irritated me, though. And then, when I was through and wanted to play with maps and the like, it became a Major Hassle. Every time I loaded up a map, I got into trouble. I couldn't simply apply a crack and play and edit and design away. I couldn't design on my laptop, sitting outside somewhere (no WiFi). It was never a 'just fire it up quickly and do something for a few minutes'.
And so... I just stopped. Lost my interest. Haven't played it again. Haven't designed any maps. Haven't even looked at it for a long time, and am probably not going to.
I don't care about small (they all are), stylish (who cares?), games (cards are okay, for the rest I have my PC), multimedia, etc, etc.
I care about battery life. A lot.
And thus I use a very simple Palm device to keep all my data, telephone numbers, addresses, events.
What good is a big thing playing DOOM and video files, when I have to recharge it all the time?
Cool.
So... we'll see even more FPS, right? I mean, there are way too few of them around anyway.
Frankly, I want to see some new ideas instead of YAQ (Yet Another QUAKE).
Depends on which games you play. The latest ones - nope, forget it.
But the older ones... aaah, yes. Things like "Settlers II" or "HoMM", "Omega" or "Dungeon Master". Good games. Not the latest graphics, but a heck of a lot of fun - and cheap.