Trouble is, I spent way too much time messing with Linux before, and now I no longer have that patience. I didn't feel like going through the whole process again. Either it works, or it doesn't.
Oh thank god! I thought it was just me!
Debian cured me of Linux back in 2002, but after hearing everyone carry on about how good Ubuntu was, I figured I give Linux another shot. (I didn't want to be like one of those Linux zealots still making BSOD jokes.)
Blank screen. The boot screen would show up, but then the monitor would switch off as Ubuntu's video driver failed. Windows works fine on the hardware, PC-BSD works fine on the hardware, Ubuntu wouldn't even give me the "black DOS-ish screen" you got.
That was Ubuntu 7 point something. For me, the year Linux on the desktop is still a long way off.
3) The reason why electric cars bomb is the dreaded long trip. Even with 250 or so miles per charge, roughly equivalent to most cars' "full tank" range, the electric cars to date are utter fail for trips that are farther.
Wow, "most cars full tank range" is 250 miles? My car (diesel VW Polo) gets over 800km (500 miles) per 40 litre (10.6 gallon) tank.
But I agree with your general point. I can't drive from my home in Canberra, to friends in Wollongong or Sydney in an electric car. That's the killer. Unless you live in the centre of a major city, everywhere you go in Australia takes hours of driving.
My parents live 8 hours drive away (Tamworth). My boss lives in Goulburn (88km from work). I have friends that drive every weekend from Canberra to the central coast (4 hours) to visit friends and relatives. To country Australians, a half-day drive is par for the course.
Australian governments have a history of being good at bad ideas (the latest being the 'net filtering), but if this can actually be implemented, I'm really looking forward to it. Really.
Um.. Yes, it can be worse, a lot worse. Microsoft's UI and usability is orders of magnitude better than OpenOffice.org's.
Despite all the dodgy stuff Microsoft has done over the years to gain marketshare, they wouldn't be able to maintain their position if everybody felt they "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me" (as you put it).
If you'd rather use a pencil & paper than use Excel, then I'm really curious as to what it is you're trying to do. I genuinely believe you're not as "reasonably computer-savy" as you think.
And of course, you can throw anecdotes around, and name a thousand people that agree with you, but for every person that agrees with you, I can find a thousand that don't. And MS Office will remain the dominant productivity suite for home and business.
OpenOffice.org became usable around version 2.3 (well, the Writer at least), but it's still not is MS Office's league.
Umm.. ok. I'm sorry, Dennys48, it sounds like you're trying to rationalise away what you don't like.
If the Old Testament laws are meant to be a sharp contrast to New Testament grace, then why are so many Christians anti-gay?
If other Old Testament laws about stoning people that wear both wool and linen, or stoning disobedient children are cast aside by New Testament grace, then why would a Christian still think homosexuality is a sin? What's so different about that sin?
I mean this as a serious question, I'm very interested in your answer.
Citing increasing records as evidence of global warming is an example of a classic fallacy.
You've got it backwards. He's not citing increasing records as evidence for global warming, he's saying global warming will increase the number of records.
While he didn't explicitly say it, I took it as implied these records will become more frequent.
And with more energy in the system (after all, that's what "global warming" is), this is intuitive.
The founders believed that we have inalienable rights, which means that they are granted by God, not the government. The government is not allowed to try to take them away.
I applaud your optimism, yet must counter with:
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
- Ramsey Clark
If a government can take something from you, it's not a right, God-given or otherwise.
There's a depressing thought to start the weekend.
Nope. The only legal requirement is that Google not set foot on property if it is marked as private property.
Really? Here in Australia you are required by law to allow access to your front door.
The main reason (I believe) is to ensure police or ambulance have access. It doesn't mean anyone can just wonder onto your property, but if a neighbour has a legitimate reason to knock on your door (to ask for help, for example), you cannot block access with dogs or something.
The downside is that Mormons can knock on your door to see if your soul is safe.
pretty easy to spot the identical plots between the likes of Star Wars and Tron and just about every other movie you've ever enjoyed. The formula itself is not what makes or breaks the movie...
Hmmm... yeah, I guess you've got a point. But I'm not 8 anymore.
The first thing that struck me in that teaser were the visual cliches. I didn't have as much movie-watching history under my belt back in 1982, so I didn't notice the formula (I was born 1974).
But if I'm the target demographic (mid thirties, geeky, fan of the original), they've got to account for the fact I've grown up. The formula plus SPFX isn't enough anymore.
Did that really give you chills? I gotta back up houghi's comment - I don't wanna see another of my childhood memories get fucked over.
I'm in the target demographic, too. That video looks like another Hollywood formula movie, even down to the guy getting flipped out of his bike, coming right up to the "camera" before falling back again. We've all seen it before.
I'm really bummed out by that video. You're right about the original being a defining icon for our generation, but what the hell was that game advertisement about? Those weren't light cycles, the attraction of the original was how the cycles and tanks were familiar yet moved like they weren't part of this universe.
These more "realistic" yet obviously CGI bikes are not Tron. Maybe they should have called it "The Phantom Sequel", "Attack of the MCP", or perhaps "Revenge of Zark".
Heh, I used to work at Dick Smith Electronics, back in 1997/1998.
They used Windows 3.11 for their piece of shit devices. I still know a few people who work there, and thankfully, now that it's 2008, Dick Smith's has upgraded their systems to Windows 98.
Now, I'm not a Reiserfs user (I'm a BSDboi, softupdates FTW!), but my understanding is that Reiserfs is stagnating, and now that it's creator is imprisoned, it's looking at a slow death.
Reiserfs was once hugely popular (or at least, hugely talked about). Even though it's open source, nobody seams interested in maintaining it. There are now other/better options (so I'm told, I'm not trolling).
This tells me you're cherry-picking examples to prove Stallman right.
Here's another example. I was a Mozilla Suite user, and was quite disappointed when Mozilla abandoned the Suite to focus on Firefox. Firefox (up until version 3) was significantly slower than the suite, and still has quite a few annoyances that didn't exist in the Suite. The Seamonkey council was set up to maintain the Suite (as Seamonkey), but not only is Mozilla still providing the infrastructure, but the Suite was licensed under the more permissive MPL rather than the GPL.
Would I still have my beloved Mozilla Suite/Seamonkey if Stallman had his way (GPL), and Mozilla didn't want to support their old browser in some way?
Is open sourcing software really a way for a non-programmer like me to keep my stubborn ways?
Sorry if I was a bit harsh the other day. It was unnecessary, I'm sorry.
But you're still wrong. With only Linkscanner disabled, AVG 8 uses 8MB of RAM, and 0% CPU on my machine. I'm running 64bit Vista (and yes, I checked ALL processes, not just mine) on an older 939 Athlon64, and have had not a single problem since installing AVG 8.
You post makes you sound like you're jumping on the "me too" bandwagon, contributing to Slashdot groupthink. I believe you're telling the truth, but if your situation was common, AVG wouldn't have released the software.
Almost all of the complaints about AVG 8 are in reference to the Linkscanner. There are very few people making the claims that you are. Are you sure it's not an incompatibility with some other software you have installed?
I have had absolutely no trouble with AVG, and I don't know anybody else that has either.
I'd phrase it more like "and Slashdot joins the human race."
As soon as emotion is involved, humans tend to polarise into "Of course he did it!! Famous people think they can get away with anything!" and "He's innocent! It's tall-poppy syndrome!!"
I think your heroes are guilty, by default. You admire them for stupid reasons, otherwise I'd like them, too. Of course, my heroes are innocent, by default.
People very rarely re-evaluate their opinions until they're forced to (by, for example, a body being found). What I find more interesting is how the same people that espoused his innocence before, not only want him tortured or executed now, but they genuinely believe they've had that opinion all along.
I'm not trying to justify the troll's rhetoric, but extension's really aren't the nuggets of gold a lot of slashdotters say they are.
In both Seamonkey and Firefox, I change the default theme and... that's about it.
I started using a hosts file to kill ads years ago, around 2001, I think. That blocked ads in both IE and the Mozilla Suite (Firefox didn't exist back then). It's what I still use now.
Most exentions are rubbish. "Social" add-ons like StumbleUpon slow the browser to a crawl, while VideoDownloader add-ons usually stop working after a couple of months, never to regain functionallity.
I use Seamonkey because it's fast and secure, and has all the functionallity and usability I need. Finally with version 3, Firefox isn't an unstable pig, so I might move across to that permanently. Extensions and add-ons have nothing to do with why some of us don't use IE.
In the big money sector... business IT... Microsoft was still a bit player until the 90's
I'll back that up with an anecdote. When I started working at the National Australia Bank in 2001, I was shocked to see what I thought was Windows 3.1 being used.
Turned out to be OS/2 Warp. That's right, in 2001 the second largest bank in Australia was using OS/2 as their main desktop system in their lending offices.
Don't worry, though. By September 2001 they had finally upgraded to Windows NT 4.0.
I'm not trying to justify the GP's whinge, I've found FF 1 & 2 crash every few days on me. And while it's a fairly regular occurance, I can't reproduce it on demand.
I'm guessing it's a JS error, as it usually crashes when I'm browsing DeviantART (it's a pretty JS heavy site).
FF crashed on me so often, I returned to Seamonkey. I'm now trying FF3, and will see how that goes. My initial impression is good.
No, I'm guessing the websites you go to don't use javascript or something the same way.
Without any extensions added (other than Pinball theme) I can hit 400MB in half hour of browsing a site like DeviantART. Closing all but one window drops memory usage to around 340MB.
I've just checked memory usage again, I'm sitting at 583MB with three windows open.
I assume different methods of doing things will leak through holes in the software in different ways. You'll need some pretty good evidence that extensions are to blame when I don't have any. The fact that a lot of people don't seem to have memory usage issues indicate to me that it's browsing habits. Oh, and blaming websites for the fact that a browser is so badly written that it needs to be restarted every day is poor form.
I haven't tried FF3 at all yet, but I'm *hoping* it's not going to disappoint like the others have.
remember when Windows 7 was supposed to be a clean new start?
No, but I do remember when Windows 5 was supposed to be.
In the late 90's I read a fair bit about how the new Windows was going to 80% new code, more stable, more flexible, better security, better networking, more more more better better better!!
And it was! Windows 2000 was orders of magnitude more stable than the Win9x line, worked with NT enterprise software as well as played games (I loved Alien vs Predator and Elite Force), implemented an actual security model (unlike the DOS based Win9x), introduced Active Directory, replaced the inefficient memory manager with the FreeBSD one, and successfully merged the NT codebase with the basic Win9x functionality like having a device manager (which NT lacked).
WinXP then tweaked all this.
MS has said virtually nothing about Windows 7, apart from the standard marketing rhetoric you'd expect. You really shouldn't make completely untrue, unjustified, and vague statements simply to jab at MS. All it does is reduce you're credibility and any other argument you make.
"This is fun to watch, but remember - people lie."
Dude! That's a bit negative! While it's often true, I think it might have been a little more constructive to say "This is fun to watch, but remember - people are often wrong, and some in particular, lie."
People do lie, but most of the time when someone says something untrue, it's not through deceit, it's unintentional. It's good he's now got a built-in BS detector, but how cynical (as opposed to sceptical) is he?
Whilst I *generally* agree with the premise that "critical thinking and logic are anathema to anyone who believes in god", it's not that black and white.
You also fail in your logic. You have an assumption in Given 3, which is false, and leads you to an incorrect conclusion.
Given 3: Earning dual degrees in computer engineering and computer science and working as a computer engineer require strong critical thinking and logical skills. They also require having taken classes in logic and critical thinking.
No, earning those degrees does not require "strong critical thinking and logical skills", it requires getting correct answers in assignments and exams, and telling the lecturer/tutor what they want to hear. (Having strong critical thinking and logical skills will help, but are not necessary.)
This error flows through to your Step 1, 2, and conclusion. By making this error, you're also demonstrating a lack of understanding in logical thought.
Humans have an incredible ability to "compartmentalise" rational thought. We hold one set or rules for *this* and a different set of rules for *that*. Rational and irrational thought can co-exist inside the human mind, without it affecting your ability to functionally operate in a practical world.
I'm sure you're telling us the truth when you say you're an excellent computer engineer, but how do you know you're using strong critical thinking and logical skills in *all* part of your belief system?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh thank god! I thought it was just me!
Debian cured me of Linux back in 2002, but after hearing everyone carry on about how good Ubuntu was, I figured I give Linux another shot. (I didn't want to be like one of those Linux zealots still making BSOD jokes.)
Blank screen. The boot screen would show up, but then the monitor would switch off as Ubuntu's video driver failed. Windows works fine on the hardware, PC-BSD works fine on the hardware, Ubuntu wouldn't even give me the "black DOS-ish screen" you got.
That was Ubuntu 7 point something. For me, the year Linux on the desktop is still a long way off.
Here in Australia we've had limits on most accounts since the beginning, and I still share.
Obviously, not everyone is quite as... narrow as you. Think outside the box, dude.
Wow, "most cars full tank range" is 250 miles? My car (diesel VW Polo) gets over 800km (500 miles) per 40 litre (10.6 gallon) tank.
But I agree with your general point. I can't drive from my home in Canberra, to friends in Wollongong or Sydney in an electric car. That's the killer. Unless you live in the centre of a major city, everywhere you go in Australia takes hours of driving.
My parents live 8 hours drive away (Tamworth). My boss lives in Goulburn (88km from work). I have friends that drive every weekend from Canberra to the central coast (4 hours) to visit friends and relatives. To country Australians, a half-day drive is par for the course.
Australian governments have a history of being good at bad ideas (the latest being the 'net filtering), but if this can actually be implemented, I'm really looking forward to it. Really.
Really.
Yep. You gotta think about Average Joe, don't cha know.
You betcha.
Um.. Yes, it can be worse, a lot worse. Microsoft's UI and usability is orders of magnitude better than OpenOffice.org's.
Despite all the dodgy stuff Microsoft has done over the years to gain marketshare, they wouldn't be able to maintain their position if everybody felt they "have to work against it, instead of having it do work for me" (as you put it).
If you'd rather use a pencil & paper than use Excel, then I'm really curious as to what it is you're trying to do. I genuinely believe you're not as "reasonably computer-savy" as you think.
And of course, you can throw anecdotes around, and name a thousand people that agree with you, but for every person that agrees with you, I can find a thousand that don't. And MS Office will remain the dominant productivity suite for home and business.
OpenOffice.org became usable around version 2.3 (well, the Writer at least), but it's still not is MS Office's league.
Umm.. ok. I'm sorry, Dennys48, it sounds like you're trying to rationalise away what you don't like.
If the Old Testament laws are meant to be a sharp contrast to New Testament grace, then why are so many Christians anti-gay?
If other Old Testament laws about stoning people that wear both wool and linen, or stoning disobedient children are cast aside by New Testament grace, then why would a Christian still think homosexuality is a sin? What's so different about that sin?
I mean this as a serious question, I'm very interested in your answer.
You've got it backwards. He's not citing increasing records as evidence for global warming, he's saying global warming will increase the number of records.
.
While he didn't explicitly say it, I took it as implied these records will become more frequent
And with more energy in the system (after all, that's what "global warming" is), this is intuitive.
I applaud your optimism, yet must counter with:
If a government can take something from you, it's not a right, God-given or otherwise.
There's a depressing thought to start the weekend.
Really? Here in Australia you are required by law to allow access to your front door.
The main reason (I believe) is to ensure police or ambulance have access. It doesn't mean anyone can just wonder onto your property, but if a neighbour has a legitimate reason to knock on your door (to ask for help, for example), you cannot block access with dogs or something.
The downside is that Mormons can knock on your door to see if your soul is safe.
Hmmm... yeah, I guess you've got a point. But I'm not 8 anymore.
The first thing that struck me in that teaser were the visual cliches. I didn't have as much movie-watching history under my belt back in 1982, so I didn't notice the formula (I was born 1974).
But if I'm the target demographic (mid thirties, geeky, fan of the original), they've got to account for the fact I've grown up. The formula plus SPFX isn't enough anymore.
Did that really give you chills? I gotta back up houghi's comment - I don't wanna see another of my childhood memories get fucked over.
I'm in the target demographic, too. That video looks like another Hollywood formula movie, even down to the guy getting flipped out of his bike, coming right up to the "camera" before falling back again. We've all seen it before.
I'm really bummed out by that video. You're right about the original being a defining icon for our generation, but what the hell was that game advertisement about? Those weren't light cycles, the attraction of the original was how the cycles and tanks were familiar yet moved like they weren't part of this universe.
These more "realistic" yet obviously CGI bikes are not Tron. Maybe they should have called it "The Phantom Sequel", "Attack of the MCP", or perhaps "Revenge of Zark".
Heh, I used to work at Dick Smith Electronics, back in 1997/1998.
They used Windows 3.11 for their piece of shit devices. I still know a few people who work there, and thankfully, now that it's 2008, Dick Smith's has upgraded their systems to Windows 98.
Ok, you got me thinking.
Now, I'm not a Reiserfs user (I'm a BSDboi, softupdates FTW!), but my understanding is that Reiserfs is stagnating, and now that it's creator is imprisoned, it's looking at a slow death.
Reiserfs was once hugely popular (or at least, hugely talked about). Even though it's open source, nobody seams interested in maintaining it. There are now other/better options (so I'm told, I'm not trolling).
This tells me you're cherry-picking examples to prove Stallman right.
Here's another example. I was a Mozilla Suite user, and was quite disappointed when Mozilla abandoned the Suite to focus on Firefox. Firefox (up until version 3) was significantly slower than the suite, and still has quite a few annoyances that didn't exist in the Suite. The Seamonkey council was set up to maintain the Suite (as Seamonkey), but not only is Mozilla still providing the infrastructure, but the Suite was licensed under the more permissive MPL rather than the GPL.
Would I still have my beloved Mozilla Suite/Seamonkey if Stallman had his way (GPL), and Mozilla didn't want to support their old browser in some way?
Is open sourcing software really a way for a non-programmer like me to keep my stubborn ways?
Sorry if I was a bit harsh the other day. It was unnecessary, I'm sorry.
But you're still wrong. With only Linkscanner disabled, AVG 8 uses 8MB of RAM, and 0% CPU on my machine. I'm running 64bit Vista (and yes, I checked ALL processes, not just mine) on an older 939 Athlon64, and have had not a single problem since installing AVG 8.
You post makes you sound like you're jumping on the "me too" bandwagon, contributing to Slashdot groupthink. I believe you're telling the truth, but if your situation was common, AVG wouldn't have released the software.
Almost all of the complaints about AVG 8 are in reference to the Linkscanner. There are very few people making the claims that you are. Are you sure it's not an incompatibility with some other software you have installed?
I have had absolutely no trouble with AVG, and I don't know anybody else that has either.
But as you say, YMMV.
I'd phrase it more like "and Slashdot joins the human race."
As soon as emotion is involved, humans tend to polarise into "Of course he did it!! Famous people think they can get away with anything!" and "He's innocent! It's tall-poppy syndrome!!"
I think your heroes are guilty, by default. You admire them for stupid reasons, otherwise I'd like them, too. Of course, my heroes are innocent, by default.
People very rarely re-evaluate their opinions until they're forced to (by, for example, a body being found). What I find more interesting is how the same people that espoused his innocence before, not only want him tortured or executed now, but they genuinely believe they've had that opinion all along.
How does that work?
I wish I hadn't already abused some other whinger, and could vote you up.
./ population must be 12. Talk about mob mentality.
I swear the average age of the current
Rubbish, you karma whore.
After disabling linkscanning, you simply right-click on the component and choose "Ignore component state". The tray icon goes back to normal.
"Blah blah blah! I'm too computer illiterate to find this on my own! How am I supposed to know what the options are?!"
Are you sure you're on the right website?
I'm not trying to justify the troll's rhetoric, but extension's really aren't the nuggets of gold a lot of slashdotters say they are.
In both Seamonkey and Firefox, I change the default theme and... that's about it.
I started using a hosts file to kill ads years ago, around 2001, I think. That blocked ads in both IE and the Mozilla Suite (Firefox didn't exist back then). It's what I still use now.
Most exentions are rubbish. "Social" add-ons like StumbleUpon slow the browser to a crawl, while VideoDownloader add-ons usually stop working after a couple of months, never to regain functionallity.
I use Seamonkey because it's fast and secure, and has all the functionallity and usability I need. Finally with version 3, Firefox isn't an unstable pig, so I might move across to that permanently. Extensions and add-ons have nothing to do with why some of us don't use IE.
Turned out to be OS/2 Warp. That's right, in 2001 the second largest bank in Australia was using OS/2 as their main desktop system in their lending offices.
Don't worry, though. By September 2001 they had finally upgraded to Windows NT 4.0.
I'm not trying to justify the GP's whinge, I've found FF 1 & 2 crash every few days on me. And while it's a fairly regular occurance, I can't reproduce it on demand.
I'm guessing it's a JS error, as it usually crashes when I'm browsing DeviantART (it's a pretty JS heavy site).
FF crashed on me so often, I returned to Seamonkey. I'm now trying FF3, and will see how that goes. My initial impression is good.
You're shitting me. Firefox 2 will use 450MB on my machine after a while with only three windows open.
No, I'm guessing the websites you go to don't use javascript or something the same way.
Without any extensions added (other than Pinball theme) I can hit 400MB in half hour of browsing a site like DeviantART. Closing all but one window drops memory usage to around 340MB.
I've just checked memory usage again, I'm sitting at 583MB with three windows open.
I assume different methods of doing things will leak through holes in the software in different ways. You'll need some pretty good evidence that extensions are to blame when I don't have any. The fact that a lot of people don't seem to have memory usage issues indicate to me that it's browsing habits. Oh, and blaming websites for the fact that a browser is so badly written that it needs to be restarted every day is poor form.
I haven't tried FF3 at all yet, but I'm *hoping* it's not going to disappoint like the others have.
In the late 90's I read a fair bit about how the new Windows was going to 80% new code, more stable, more flexible, better security, better networking, more more more better better better!!
And it was! Windows 2000 was orders of magnitude more stable than the Win9x line, worked with NT enterprise software as well as played games (I loved Alien vs Predator and Elite Force), implemented an actual security model (unlike the DOS based Win9x), introduced Active Directory, replaced the inefficient memory manager with the FreeBSD one, and successfully merged the NT codebase with the basic Win9x functionality like having a device manager (which NT lacked).
WinXP then tweaked all this.
MS has said virtually nothing about Windows 7, apart from the standard marketing rhetoric you'd expect. You really shouldn't make completely untrue, unjustified, and vague statements simply to jab at MS. All it does is reduce you're credibility and any other argument you make.
People do lie, but most of the time when someone says something untrue, it's not through deceit, it's unintentional. It's good he's now got a built-in BS detector, but how cynical (as opposed to sceptical) is he?
You also fail in your logic. You have an assumption in Given 3, which is false, and leads you to an incorrect conclusion. No, earning those degrees does not require "strong critical thinking and logical skills", it requires getting correct answers in assignments and exams, and telling the lecturer/tutor what they want to hear. (Having strong critical thinking and logical skills will help, but are not necessary.)
This error flows through to your Step 1, 2, and conclusion. By making this error, you're also demonstrating a lack of understanding in logical thought.
Humans have an incredible ability to "compartmentalise" rational thought. We hold one set or rules for *this* and a different set of rules for *that*. Rational and irrational thought can co-exist inside the human mind, without it affecting your ability to functionally operate in a practical world.
I'm sure you're telling us the truth when you say you're an excellent computer engineer, but how do you know you're using strong critical thinking and logical skills in *all* part of your belief system?