That site is real, isn't it? For the first few minutes of reading I convinced myself that it was just a funny hoax site, but the deeper I went into it the more scared I became...
Don't underestimate the creativity of our US friends. Some of their hoaxes are so intricate that they sometimes turn into new cults. There was such a backfire in the 19th century that still makes waves in the NW US.
Regarding the aformentionned site (which I didn't know and caused many a facepalm as I browsed it), I think this bit sums it up best:
The Bible is a collection of short books recording the history of the world, the Jewish people, the life of Jesus, and the early Christian Church. Creationists hold a number of views regarding the Reliability of the Bible, ranging from strict inerrancy to substantive accuracy. However, all creationists agree that the Bible is history, not mythology or allegory, because the text itself is so obviously historical in style and content.
(emphasis mine)
Nice to know there's at least one source everybody agrees upon. I tend find the Mahabarata (sorry no conservapedia page;) ) more entertaining as far as recordings of early "facts" go, but to each his own...
As I recall, 25 years ago modern science scoffed at acupuncture and said it was voo doo. Now, respectable medical institutions endorse the application of acupuncture as a valid medical procedure.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of actually looking into it. And, then looking into it more than you initially did.
From all that I've read, that's what they did with acupuncture (as in looking and more looking).
Which is why it would be extremely interesting to find a respectable medical institution actually endorsing it. As with any (mostly) harmless "alternative" therapy, most of them just let it happen in order not to alienate their patients.
(a "respectable institution" that once promoted operating with the patient holding the "little red book" and -supposedly- no anaesthesia as a proof that politics solve everything isn't going to fly)
That's a little silly. These allocations were made in the 70s and 80s, before the Internet really existed outside of the US. At the time, the recipients of the addresses were those who were most likely to use them. No hoarding is going on.
While the fact that A classes were given away like balloons at one point is now a bit of a problem, it didn't stop there. Even later, back when, here in Paris, I sed to regularly ask for addresses. There used to e that form that you sent upriver in the network "attn" the IANA (or whoever it was at the time) where all you had to say was "I have a few machines to hook up, there might be more later on" and you'd basically get as many class C nets as you requested (they had stopped handing out As and Bs by then). I know we (and most other orgs I knew of) only requested what we actually used. But I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a bit of abuse at the time.
The young' uns might also want to remember that for quite some time, we were stuck with HTTP 1.0 where there was no "host" request. A server serving Web pages often had tens of addresses. One per hosted site.
Of course, back then, it wasn't entirely clear how people would access the network, or even if they would want to. So presumably there was no real need to save addresses. Then IPv6 came along, as well as NATs. The latter being IMO the main reason we're still with 32 bit addresses.
Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection?
Yeah, well come back when my candles can have a data connection. And my lawn. And my walking stick. Now get off the first one or I'll wave the second !
My matte Macbook Pro took a trip off of my couch armrest one night and the screen got busted. I decided to go with a glossy replacement screen. Honestly, I love the way it looks. I have no regrets (except for kicking it off the couch).
Well, it jst goes to show that there's no "one size fits all". I still believe you're in the minority though.
FWIW, every user I know hates the glossy display on their laptop as well. Unfortunately there's no choice in the matter. I've never seen *one* who liked it better than a matte one.
That means that unless the tech knows how to tell which fix to use (and only needs the cheat-sheet as a memory aid) they're going to pick one at random and hope for the best. Then, they'll either guess again or escalate the call and let some more senior tech try to clean up the mess.
Sounds like pretty much every tech support I've ever dealt with. I thought they all worked like that.
The MS keys on your keyboard are an example. By my best estimate, about 1% of users ever use them for anything not an accident.
I find them useful. One of them is "Super" and the other is set to be a "Compose key". It would probably be better if they were labelled properly, but I suppose that's too much to expect (or I should get one of those OLED keyboards that costs more than my computer). I don't really know what they're for in Windows though.
You don't need to "support" it, you don't need to spend money, you don't have to give up "trade secrets" or anything, just a couple of fairly harmless questions to make you MORE money...for free."
For free ? What do they expect ? You can't offer something for free. Why do they hate America so ?
In everybody's mind, free is worthless, especially in business. They should charge, even a little. They got it all wrong.
Linux has one real problem I see left. It lacks an effective way to market software. The differences in distributions still makes selling off the shelf software a challenge.
Actually, nowadays it's not much of a challenge. You aren't saying if you're using any commercial products, but as I'm doing a bit of photography, I bought BibblePro and the Linux install was fairly painless. Same thing with other photo apps I've tested. I also bought Antidote (grammar/spell checker for French) where the installation got a bit clunky when you went into installing the applets binding the program into other software (such as OOo or web browsers). That bit should have been done automatically (it was perfectly documented, but there's no reason the installer couldn't have dealt with it).
"OSX? What real advantage does it have?" [ real actual OS X benefits ] Dell's are not bad machines and I think Apple can match them for price for quality any day. I think you are way under estimating the benefits of OS/X.
When I got my Mac laptop with 10.4, it lasted a year before I gave up and went back to KDE. It's now a trendy paperweight.
There were lots of interesting ideas in MacOS (most of them poorly implemented, like i18n support) but the interface was way too much like Windows (mostly because it's designed for only one app on the screen), and the lack of X11 integration was the last straw for me.
I've been using what I consider to be a high end interface for too long (and I agree that some of those were way clunky such as tvwm or OpenLook back when). Beyond the usual sloppy focus, virtual desktops, network transparency and other X11 interfaces basics, a basic example of mine is binding mouse3 (aka the right button for Windows users) on the border/title of a window to toggle raise and lower (in the window stack). This is such an integral part of my desktop use that running MS Windows or MacOS just feel like some kind of mild BSDM experience.
Just to say that Apple isn't *the* answer. It's merely one among many. And one size certainly doesn't fit all.
While most of my IT activity is moving small companies from Windows to FOSS, I'm not being anal about it and reckon that sometimes Windows is what you want to run. Because "better" isn't an absolute.
Actually, many people are just unaware of the options they have. Truthfully, people dont care a much about OS as they do hardware. Programs and applications are fine and all, but a average user judges a computer based on its hardware specs.
Most real world users don't have the slightest idea what their hardware specs are. They don't know what CPU they have, if it's 32 or 64 bits, they don't know how much RAM they have or how large their disks are. Best case they know that they're running Windows, although probably not what exact version.
Users couldn't care less about computers. They find computers roughly as exciting as vacuum cleaners. Computers are a class of device that sometimes helps, sometimes (often) is a hindrance in their daily chores. After a while, they got used to some kind of software. If you change that software, they'll be lost and bawling like newborns without their bottle.
For most of them, selecting files (dis)continuously in a GUI with (Ctrl)Shift-Mouse1 is the hight of hackerdom (and most of them have no idea you can do this).
I wish people would just see GUIs as being essentially interchangeable. But that's certainly know how it goes in real life.
Go tour and support a few real world companies, meet real users in the workplace. They are not what you think they are.
Well, there wasn't terroists flying airplanes into skyscrapers when the Magna Carta was written so that's a moot point.
That's the stupidest thing I've read today - does anyone actually buy that sort of argument?
Pretty much every body every where apparently. That's how all those inane laws get voted worldwide, often with the approval of a majority of the populace.
While it may not behave that well on PC, the quicktime/itunes framework on the apple platform works incredibly well.
Most people outside the PC world stare down their nose the same way at windows media files.
I don't really know about Windows (I assume that's what you mean by "PC") which I don't use much and where Apple software seems to misbehave so that I never installed anything from them there. Granted it works "fairly well" in Mac OS but keeps on hinting that "hey you should check our online store" (and upgrade to Quicktime pro while you're at it). Which I found really old really fast.
The constant nagging for commercial products, from.mac to the printing services to iTunes and whatnot by all the Apple software was really annoying to me. That and the fact that I never really got into the "this interface is so great" mindset made it a no brainer to swap my iBook (now a doorstop) for a Samsung lappy with KDE (I used a Sony PictureBook w/ KDE before the Apple). I guess their stuff isn't for me.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm now worried that mine's at risk.
That was my first question as well. At least I'm not in the US so maybe my cyber is safe.
That site is real, isn't it? For the first few minutes of reading I convinced myself that it was just a funny hoax site, but the deeper I went into it the more scared I became...
Don't underestimate the creativity of our US friends. Some of their hoaxes are so intricate that they sometimes turn into new cults. There was such a backfire in the 19th century that still makes waves in the NW US.
Regarding the aformentionned site (which I didn't know and caused many a facepalm as I browsed it), I think this bit sums it up best :
(emphasis mine)
Nice to know there's at least one source everybody agrees upon. I tend find the Mahabarata (sorry no conservapedia page ;) ) more entertaining as far as recordings of early "facts" go, but to each his own...
As I recall, 25 years ago modern science scoffed at acupuncture and said it was voo doo. Now, respectable medical institutions endorse the application of acupuncture as a valid medical procedure.
Sometimes, it's just a matter of actually looking into it. And, then looking into it more than you initially did.
From all that I've read, that's what they did with acupuncture (as in looking and more looking).
Which is why it would be extremely interesting to find a respectable medical institution actually endorsing it. As with any (mostly) harmless "alternative" therapy, most of them just let it happen in order not to alienate their patients.
(a "respectable institution" that once promoted operating with the patient holding the "little red book" and -supposedly- no anaesthesia as a proof that politics solve everything isn't going to fly)
That's a little silly. These allocations were made in the 70s and 80s, before the Internet really existed outside of the US. At the time, the recipients of the addresses were those who were most likely to use them. No hoarding is going on.
While the fact that A classes were given away like balloons at one point is now a bit of a problem, it didn't stop there.
Even later, back when, here in Paris, I sed to regularly ask for addresses. There used to e that form that you sent upriver in the network "attn" the IANA (or whoever it was at the time) where all you had to say was "I have a few machines to hook up, there might be more later on" and you'd basically get as many class C nets as you requested (they had stopped handing out As and Bs by then). I know we (and most other orgs I knew of) only requested what we actually used. But I wouldn't be surprised if there had been a bit of abuse at the time.
The young' uns might also want to remember that for quite some time, we were stuck with HTTP 1.0 where there was no "host" request. A server serving Web pages often had tens of addresses. One per hosted site.
Of course, back then, it wasn't entirely clear how people would access the network, or even if they would want to. So presumably there was no real need to save addresses. Then IPv6 came along, as well as NATs. The latter being IMO the main reason we're still with 32 bit addresses.
Your programming skills should not be tied to the language you use.
Quite. I use harsh language and it hasn't interfered with my programing skills whatsoever.
Stupid git.
Why would anyone want to have a light bulb with a data connection?
Yeah, well come back when my candles can have a data connection.
And my lawn. And my walking stick.
Now get off the first one or I'll wave the second !
My matte Macbook Pro took a trip off of my couch armrest one night and the screen got busted. I decided to go with a glossy replacement screen. Honestly, I love the way it looks. I have no regrets (except for kicking it off the couch).
Well, it jst goes to show that there's no "one size fits all". I still believe you're in the minority though.
FWIW, every user I know hates the glossy display on their laptop as well. Unfortunately there's no choice in the matter. I've never seen *one* who liked it better than a matte one.
Not to mention that a number of nerds don't *have* sperm because their ovaries don't produce any.
That means that unless the tech knows how to tell which fix to use (and only needs the cheat-sheet as a memory aid) they're going to pick one at random and hope for the best. Then, they'll either guess again or escalate the call and let some more senior tech try to clean up the mess.
Sounds like pretty much every tech support I've ever dealt with. I thought they all worked like that.
The MS keys on your keyboard are an example. By my best estimate, about 1% of users ever use them for anything not an accident.
I find them useful. One of them is "Super" and the other is set to be a "Compose key". It would probably be better if they were labelled properly, but I suppose that's too much to expect (or I should get one of those OLED keyboards that costs more than my computer).
I don't really know what they're for in Windows though.
You don't need to "support" it, you don't need to spend money, you don't have to give up "trade secrets" or anything, just a couple of fairly harmless questions to make you MORE money...for free."
For free ? What do they expect ?
You can't offer something for free. Why do they hate America so ?
In everybody's mind, free is worthless, especially in business. They should charge, even a little. They got it all wrong.
Linux has one real problem I see left. It lacks an effective way to market software.
The differences in distributions still makes selling off the shelf software a challenge.
Actually, nowadays it's not much of a challenge. You aren't saying if you're using any commercial products, but as I'm doing a bit of photography, I bought BibblePro and the Linux install was fairly painless. Same thing with other photo apps I've tested.
I also bought Antidote (grammar/spell checker for French) where the installation got a bit clunky when you went into installing the applets binding the program into other software (such as OOo or web browsers). That bit should have been done automatically (it was perfectly documented, but there's no reason the installer couldn't have dealt with it).
"OSX? What real advantage does it have?"
[ real actual OS X benefits ]
Dell's are not bad machines and I think Apple can match them for price for quality any day. I think you are way under estimating the benefits of OS/X.
When I got my Mac laptop with 10.4, it lasted a year before I gave up and went back to KDE. It's now a trendy paperweight.
There were lots of interesting ideas in MacOS (most of them poorly implemented, like i18n support) but the interface was way too much like Windows (mostly because it's designed for only one app on the screen), and the lack of X11 integration was the last straw for me.
I've been using what I consider to be a high end interface for too long (and I agree that some of those were way clunky such as tvwm or OpenLook back when). Beyond the usual sloppy focus, virtual desktops, network transparency and other X11 interfaces basics, a basic example of mine is binding mouse3 (aka the right button for Windows users) on the border/title of a window to toggle raise and lower (in the window stack). This is such an integral part of my desktop use that running MS Windows or MacOS just feel like some kind of mild BSDM experience.
Just to say that Apple isn't *the* answer. It's merely one among many. And one size certainly doesn't fit all.
While most of my IT activity is moving small companies from Windows to FOSS, I'm not being anal about it and reckon that sometimes Windows is what you want to run. Because "better" isn't an absolute.
Actually, many people are just unaware of the options they have. Truthfully, people dont care a much about OS as they do hardware. Programs and applications are fine and all, but a average user judges a computer based on its hardware specs.
Most real world users don't have the slightest idea what their hardware specs are. They don't know what CPU they have, if it's 32 or 64 bits, they don't know how much RAM they have or how large their disks are. Best case they
know that they're running Windows, although probably not what exact version.
Users couldn't care less about computers. They find computers roughly as exciting as vacuum cleaners. Computers are a class of device that sometimes helps, sometimes (often) is a hindrance in their daily chores. After a while, they got used to some kind of software. If you change that software, they'll be lost and bawling like newborns without their bottle.
For most of them, selecting files (dis)continuously in a GUI with (Ctrl)Shift-Mouse1 is the hight of hackerdom (and most of them have no idea you can do this).
I wish people would just see GUIs as being essentially interchangeable. But that's certainly know how it goes in real life.
Go tour and support a few real world companies, meet real users in the workplace.
They are not what you think they are.
I've been using the Internet since 1993 on WfW...
Maybe it's high time you considered upgrading to Windows 98 ?
The new version much simplifies the interface and should fix this. The core routine is :
Works every time (or at leasts keep users off the phone, which is the point, really).
Wow, that was eerily like my weekend !
Which would you rather: a bit of fuel economy (dubious anyway), or a large funeral bill?
Hmmm... Of course on one hand I wouldn't be the one paying my funeral bill and fuel is getting quite expensive.
This requires careful consideration.
In other words, it's socially rewarding to be stupid.
Well, there wasn't terroists flying airplanes into skyscrapers when the Magna Carta was written so that's a moot point.
That's the stupidest thing I've read today - does anyone actually buy that sort of argument?
Pretty much every body every where apparently. That's how all those inane laws get voted worldwide, often with the approval of a majority of the populace.
While it may not behave that well on PC, the quicktime/itunes framework on the apple platform works incredibly well.
Most people outside the PC world stare down their nose the same way at windows media files.
I don't really know about Windows (I assume that's what you mean by "PC") which I don't use much and where Apple software seems to misbehave so that I never installed anything from them there. Granted it works "fairly well" in Mac OS but keeps on hinting that "hey you should check our online store" (and upgrade to Quicktime pro while you're at it). Which I found really old really fast.
The constant nagging for commercial products, from .mac to the printing services to iTunes and whatnot by all the Apple software was really annoying to me. That and the fact that I never really got into the "this interface is so great" mindset made it a no brainer to swap my iBook (now a doorstop) for a Samsung lappy with KDE (I used a Sony PictureBook w/ KDE before the Apple). I guess their stuff isn't for me.
I demoed a sandwich powered bicycle once but it never worked out because of potential gas emissions.
Isn't that the library ?
... always stop around 1995 DOS attacks or you'll be indicted !
Better safe than sorry !