OK, OK. Fair point well made. I never took History GCSE (I chose Geography instead, mainly because the field trips were to York and Mallham instead of some dull industrial museum 10 miles away).
Perhaps we should form a pedants society.
I just know you're dying to tell me where the apostrophe should have gone in the last sentence;)
I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but AOL offer a package for the same price per month that doesn't have a time limit. Course, the connection does occasionally get dropped, but at least you don't have the 2 hour limit.
Access speeds vary in sync with the rest of the UK (between 7pm and 11pm can be a bitch) between 33K and 45K (which is rather annoying, but at least they tell you the truth). You do have to install their annoying client to open the connection (under Windows at least, I dunno about their Linux support), but I always minimise it and use a proper browser.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to use a less lame ISP, but at least I don't have to worry about prices etc. with them. And since there's neither cable or DSL available in my area, I'm kinda limited in my options.
And I'd rather give AOL money than give it to BT - at least AOL know how to run a profitable business, and would dearly love to charge me for DSL if only BT would get around to letting them.
Well, except when I am surfing at work. Flashy stuff is OK then.
No it's not - that's the second best way to attract the boss' attention (best is waving around something shiny and expensive looking)! I want more entertaining sites with gray backgrounds and meaningless tables of figures or technical diagrams that look like I'm working from the other end of the office.
...it was just a counter to the suggestion that the U.K. is too broke to implement a wireless network in London (back up the thread a way). I accept that GNP per capita is a pretty basic means of comparison, but it does give you an idea of the situation. Please don't mis-interpret my defence of the U.K. economy as a slur on the Portugese economy.
I thinking more of the RIAA (what? the net's unregulated? Ban it!) than previous attempts to use tech to sell movies in new ways.
But yeah, I wholly agree that at the moment most of the people who could use such a service are not the people who would use the service. But it's a step in the right direction and it could eventually lead to a worthwhile distribution model.
And do you really have a distribution chain called "Nobody Beats the Wiz"?:)
UK GNP = $1042.7 billion
Portugal GNP = $77.7 billion
UK Population = 58.2 million
Portugal Population = 9.8 million
Therefore, GNP per capita =
$17,900 in UK
$7,900 in Portugal
Sure, there's a lot of poverty, but there's a lot of rich people too. With a population of 58.2 million (probably more now) there's always going to be a lot of people at either end of the bell curve. It sucks that we can't all be well off and have a high standard of living, but we're a G7 country for goodness sake - there's not really much question of whether we're a first-world country or not.
Yes, the telecomms infrastructure is still lagging at the moment (cellular networks not included, because they're pretty good) - that's largely a hangover from the days of British Telecom's rule. But every major aspect of the telecomms that's opened up has been invaded by companies who're willing and able to offer cheaper options. And there's plenty of companies (particularly in London, but elsewhere too, like Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester) who're prepared to invest in telecomms.
I'd also like to know how many people (percentage) in Portugal use the net, and what percentage of those are on broadband, and how that compares to the UK, but since I've already looked up some statistics, I think it's your turn.
We've only been putting photos on driving licences for a few years now (I forget when they were introduced, but it was =5 years ago). Most of the population still doesn't have them. Furthermore, IIRC you can't be hung for treason (e.g. burning bank notes) anymore, though this law was rarely used when it was in place anyway.
To be honest, the monarchy only has a symbolic power over the government. Technically, the monarch has the final say in which party gets elected, but I don't imagine they'd be too popular if they tried to go against public opinion. And we've got rid of monarchs before after all (search for British Civil War).
You are, however, pretty much spot on about the prevalence of CCTV - I hear us Brits (particularly Londoners) get our picture taken by these cameras more frequently than most Americans. And our government seems to be just as willing as as the US one to eat away at our rights.
I know you were only joking (or at least both I and the moderators thought so), but I just felt like being pedantic.
Well, as several people here have stated, the format is going to get cracked sooner or later, and at the moment it's still a bit costly, but at least they're actually trying to embrace the tech instead of burying their heads in the sand.
OK, for now there's not going to be a huge amount of people who want this, but as it becomes more popular I can see that the mainstream will pick it up much more willingly. There'll always be people with cracked movies just like there's still people who sell pirate videos, but if this service is simple enough then people will use it. People use Pay-Per-View when they could go and buy a priate copy of a movie for less money, so why shouldn't this work.
Additionally, they could eventually extend this to their whole movie library. Want to see some obscure flick from the 50's that never made it onto VHS? Well all you'll need to do is swing by IMDB, click on a link, and you'll be able to download it. This is a good idea (definitely better than just ignoring the problem and letting other people distribute your movies for free), and once they work out this niggles and broadband becomes more widespread I can see the service becoming incredibly popular.
Well, when you're trying to run a profitable company and please your brand new shareholders you can't just rely on a bunch of Slashdot regulars to keep you afloat, because a lot of them are just going to go d/l the ISO's.
So who do you go after? The Big Money - PHBs. But in general PHBs are considerably less willing to ditch what they know in favour of some upstart OS like Linux, so you need to appeal directly to them.
Now, believe it or not, M$ have actually spent a large amount of money in the past figuring out how to make stuff user friendly - even basic things like buttons illuminated from the top and _left_ rather than top and right were decided on by focus groups. But since M$ can't really claim to have been first out of the blocks with the WIMP GUI (I imagine Apple, and Xerox would have a lot to say if they did), it's difficult for them to lay claim to a lot of the desktop elements that they developed. Which means that companies like Mandrake can rip them off.
All of which makes their OS more familiar to those PHBs with fat wallets. But while the PHBs may have fat wallets, they usually have a big padlock on them too. And if, for example, their current OS vendors decided that they were only going to rent the new version of the OS to them, the PHBs might finally start looking around for a cheaper option.
Enter Mandrake, stage right, saying "Look, we look like XP, only we're all stable and won't cost you nearly as much". It's just business. And hopefully it'll improve the market penetration in the lucrative corporate desktop sector. If you want to stay 1337 then you can always use a different window manager (IIRC, Mandrake comes with quite a few in the default install, and nothing's stopping you adding more).
_Duh!_ It's an /in/, not a golden ticket.
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I've already mentioned it in a post lower down (so bonus removed due to redundancy), but this is just an opening. Think about it; would you rather be a stranger in a club competing with other guys, or would you rather be someone who's invited to the girl's room to do her a favour for a half hour or whatever?
Suuuuure, if you just sit there, communicating only in grunts and Tech-Speak(TM), eating her pizza, drinking her beer, then bolt when you're done, then they won't really be interested in you as a person. You've gotta show them that you are a person, and a person that they'd like to get to know.
Personally, I've hardly ever pulled in a single night, but I've done just fine meeting girls and building on that. And this is a great opportunity to meet girls.
They're not going to sleep with you just cos you can recite the IP address of two dozen warez sites. But while you're fixing their machine you can talk to them. It's surely not that difficult to comprehend....
Re:Don't just be "The Guy who....."
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· Score: 2
You knew what I meant. Stop being so pedantic. And yes, buff nerds are the exception, rather than the rule - check out The Portrait Of J Random Hacker over at The Jargon File - it's not just me who thinks that geeks are somewhat less inclined towards, say, becoming the star quarterback or whatever.
I do actually take exercise, but I'm more inclined towards individual pursuits (stop giggling at the back) like running and mountain biking (I used to lift weights too, but I'm lazy). When I said "Jock" I was talking about your stereotypical biceps-much-better-exercised-than-brain type. I hope that since you also recognise the value of study, and are familiar enough with Slashdot to post here, physical fitness isn't your only pursuit in life. Which, as far as I'm concerned, puts you in the "Athlete" category, not the "Jock" category. Unless you actually enjoy crushing beer cans on your head and beating on people who're smaller than you....
Nah, it's not that I take safety tips from the movies; it's more that I take survival tips from them. I'm not worried about visiting the cities you mention (actually, I intend to once I've got a proper job and can afford it).
But the way I see it is like this; if the boat I'm on sinks I can at least grab a life preserver and not sink with it. If the car I'm in crashes, then at least I've got a chance of walking away (and I've already been hit by a car [his fault] and a van [my fault] so I'm not too scared by that). But if a plane I'm in takes a dive then the chances of me actually surviving it are pretty slim. Kinda unnerving really. I know that's not the most rational way to look at things (especially when you consider the satistics), and perhaps I have control issues, but that's just the way my brain works.
You are forgetting the fatal flaw of the Hindenberg...
Didn't forget - I never actually knew that. Very interesting; I'll be sure to remember that. Hope you get a mod point or two for your very informative post.
Don't just be "The Guy who....."
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Look, if all you do is show up, sit down, say very little, and eat all her pizza or bolt like a scared rabbit once the job's done, then you'll be nothing more than the Computer Guy.
Don't look at having geek-skills as a way to guarantee you'll score. All it is is an opening. Other guys usually have to buy her a drink (or several), compete with a dozen other guys, get her away from her friends, impress her with dance-skills and somehow manage to charm her over the noise of a nightclub. As a geek, you get invited into her room, get to do her a favour, and have a perfect opportunity to chat to her and show her that you're an actual human being, and can be witty, interesting and smart.
And most girls (particularly university girls) really do value brains more than guys do. If she's after a jock, then you're wasting your time trying to pull her, but she may have friends who're more interested in someone who looks OK and can actually hold a conversation and make them laugh than they are in someone who's on the football team, but who's more interested in being a drunken-caveman-fratboy.
Oh, and one piece of advice - download some file recovery software. You have no idea how grateful someone who's fairly inexperienced with computers will be when you magic a deleted file back into existance from their floppy drive. A common problem that need not be the disaster it seems.
Re:Believe it or not...
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· Score: 2
Well, he (probably) was dropping a fair hint with that XX, XY reference - male and female chromosones; XX=girl, XY=boy, IIRC (though it was 7 years since I finished GCSE Biology, and I've not done any genetics since then).
Yup, I know you're in Europe - aren't you in Ireland? Either way, your ISP will still have some sort of connection to the European mainland. It could well be different to the connection over to/. and it could possibly be down. Alternatively, someone from California might connect across the Pacific instead of the Atlantic, and thus avoid any connection problems on the daylight half of the world.
Realistically though, I'd guess it was just a case of trying to fit several thousand news-hungry geeks down a relatively small bandwidth connection. Some connection requests are bound to go unanswered, which would make it look like someone had just pulled the plug out. Incidentally, I connected from Yorkshire, and didn't get 404'd at all. But I might be helped by the big fat pipe that my workplace has to the net : )
It may not be the web server - remember that there's lots of stuff between you and that server. It could well be a router that's swamped from our slashdotting, which would make the server look like it wasn't there even if it was. Alternatively, it could be a problem with your ISP's connection to Europe, yadda yadda yadda.
Or, it might depend on your browser; IE just says that the page is unavailable if the server is/.ed or down or you typed the address wrong.
Wouldn't the hydrogen have made at least some contribution, what with it being flammable and all? And if helium had been used, would it have had any fire-fighting effect (i.e. like CO2 or halon), or would it's lack of density have just meant it all rose straight up when the ship caught fire w/o any real effect?
Still, your point is very interesting - I'll be sure to mention it at some point in the future.
No no no - this is how you use geek skills;
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· Score: 5, Funny
Dude, you're doing it all wrong.
Firstly, don't make it look easy if you're trying to impress a girl. Furrow that brow in as manly a way as you're able. If you have an opportunity to take the cover off then do - actual physical work is always more impressive than clicking thru a windows wizard.
Secondly, don't finish the job. I know; you're a perfectionist, but just fight that urge. For example, get her connected to the network and browsing the web, but *ahem* "forget" to set up her mail client properly - leave out some SMTP settings in Outlook so she can't get her mail. Then leave your number with her (be casual - scribble it on a post-it and stick it to her screen just before you leave) saying "There you go, that looks to be working OK, but if you notice any other problems then just give me a call and I'll pop back round, OK?". Of course, she will need to call you (assuming she doesn't use hotmail instead), and after that you become the person she calls first when she has problems. And with a bit of luck she'll tell her friends too : )
Yeah, so it's totally immoral, but do you really care? Just try to act like a regular human (very few teenage girls care about how their POP3 account works or why M$ suck or what happened in last night's Gundam episode). Don't bombard her with Simpsons quotes. Smile. Take a shower at some point in the 24 hours before.
Apologies to anyone who's offended by this, but it worked for me. You fix the problems that you overlook soon enough, you get to meet girls [insert non-gender/sexuality-specific stuff here] and they get their computers working quicker and cheaper than they otherwise would. Everyone's a winner.
And remember what Kevin Smith says - "Personality counts for a lot"
After seeing all those aeroplane disaster movies (especially Final Destination and Cast Away) and having my fear of flying go from nothing to almost irrational, this is very appealing. But that cabin's teeny - this isn't exactly suited to economy passengers. Anyone got any ideas what the chances of me getting around in one of these without going broke are? How long till they become common enough for regular commercial flights?
BTW, I still use aeroplanes, but only out of convenience (if I could afford to go by boat [hah! Like I'll ever afford that!] I would).
Well, having a single nationalised utility setting up the system can be a good thing - no conflicting standards and roll-out to everyone (not just people in cities, large businesses, etc.). The real problem with BT is that it was privatised. Then it was no longer directly answerable to the public - shareholders and profit came first. And since it was the only telco on the scene at that point it had a monopoly, so it didn't matter what it did - everyone had to use them.
Nowadays, everything beyond the local loop has been opened up to competition, and I'm enjoying much cheaper phone bills thanks to NTL/Cable&Wireless, while BT is acting worse than ever (over priced, poor quality service [it took them a week to un-block calls thru Cable & Wireless from my phone line after they blocked it without any warning]) - acting with all the worst points of it's old days, none of the better points, and simply grasping desperately at any immediate profit.
And last I heard they were in about £30 billion debt. They don't seem to know how to compete, as though the management can't get out of the monopoly mind-set. And, IMHO, that's why BT sucks.
Indeed. I'll bet those Germans who invented Enigma are kicking themselves (posthumously, natch) that they didn't legislate against the Allies cracking it : )
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps we should form a pedants society.
I just know you're dying to tell me where the apostrophe should have gone in the last sentence ;)
Access speeds vary in sync with the rest of the UK (between 7pm and 11pm can be a bitch) between 33K and 45K (which is rather annoying, but at least they tell you the truth). You do have to install their annoying client to open the connection (under Windows at least, I dunno about their Linux support), but I always minimise it and use a proper browser.
Don't get me wrong - I'd love to use a less lame ISP, but at least I don't have to worry about prices etc. with them. And since there's neither cable or DSL available in my area, I'm kinda limited in my options.
And I'd rather give AOL money than give it to BT - at least AOL know how to run a profitable business, and would dearly love to charge me for DSL if only BT would get around to letting them.
....yet. Let's do what we can to make sure we don't ever get it. Write to your MP!
...it was just a counter to the suggestion that the U.K. is too broke to implement a wireless network in London (back up the thread a way). I accept that GNP per capita is a pretty basic means of comparison, but it does give you an idea of the situation. Please don't mis-interpret my defence of the U.K. economy as a slur on the Portugese economy.
But yeah, I wholly agree that at the moment most of the people who could use such a service are not the people who would use the service. But it's a step in the right direction and it could eventually lead to a worthwhile distribution model.
And do you really have a distribution chain called "Nobody Beats the Wiz"? :)
UK GNP = $1042.7 billion
Portugal GNP = $77.7 billion
UK Population = 58.2 million
Portugal Population = 9.8 million
Therefore, GNP per capita =
$17,900 in UK
$7,900 in Portugal
Sure, there's a lot of poverty, but there's a lot of rich people too. With a population of 58.2 million (probably more now) there's always going to be a lot of people at either end of the bell curve. It sucks that we can't all be well off and have a high standard of living, but we're a G7 country for goodness sake - there's not really much question of whether we're a first-world country or not.
Yes, the telecomms infrastructure is still lagging at the moment (cellular networks not included, because they're pretty good) - that's largely a hangover from the days of British Telecom's rule. But every major aspect of the telecomms that's opened up has been invaded by companies who're willing and able to offer cheaper options. And there's plenty of companies (particularly in London, but elsewhere too, like Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester) who're prepared to invest in telecomms.
I'd also like to know how many people (percentage) in Portugal use the net, and what percentage of those are on broadband, and how that compares to the UK, but since I've already looked up some statistics, I think it's your turn.
We've only been putting photos on driving licences for a few years now (I forget when they were introduced, but it was =5 years ago). Most of the population still doesn't have them. Furthermore, IIRC you can't be hung for treason (e.g. burning bank notes) anymore, though this law was rarely used when it was in place anyway.
To be honest, the monarchy only has a symbolic power over the government. Technically, the monarch has the final say in which party gets elected, but I don't imagine they'd be too popular if they tried to go against public opinion. And we've got rid of monarchs before after all (search for British Civil War).
You are, however, pretty much spot on about the prevalence of CCTV - I hear us Brits (particularly Londoners) get our picture taken by these cameras more frequently than most Americans. And our government seems to be just as willing as as the US one to eat away at our rights.
I know you were only joking (or at least both I and the moderators thought so), but I just felt like being pedantic.
I thought that was fairly obvious ;)
OK, for now there's not going to be a huge amount of people who want this, but as it becomes more popular I can see that the mainstream will pick it up much more willingly. There'll always be people with cracked movies just like there's still people who sell pirate videos, but if this service is simple enough then people will use it. People use Pay-Per-View when they could go and buy a priate copy of a movie for less money, so why shouldn't this work.
Additionally, they could eventually extend this to their whole movie library. Want to see some obscure flick from the 50's that never made it onto VHS? Well all you'll need to do is swing by IMDB, click on a link, and you'll be able to download it. This is a good idea (definitely better than just ignoring the problem and letting other people distribute your movies for free), and once they work out this niggles and broadband becomes more widespread I can see the service becoming incredibly popular.
So who do you go after? The Big Money - PHBs. But in general PHBs are considerably less willing to ditch what they know in favour of some upstart OS like Linux, so you need to appeal directly to them.
Now, believe it or not, M$ have actually spent a large amount of money in the past figuring out how to make stuff user friendly - even basic things like buttons illuminated from the top and _left_ rather than top and right were decided on by focus groups. But since M$ can't really claim to have been first out of the blocks with the WIMP GUI (I imagine Apple, and Xerox would have a lot to say if they did), it's difficult for them to lay claim to a lot of the desktop elements that they developed. Which means that companies like Mandrake can rip them off.
All of which makes their OS more familiar to those PHBs with fat wallets. But while the PHBs may have fat wallets, they usually have a big padlock on them too. And if, for example, their current OS vendors decided that they were only going to rent the new version of the OS to them, the PHBs might finally start looking around for a cheaper option.
Enter Mandrake, stage right, saying "Look, we look like XP, only we're all stable and won't cost you nearly as much". It's just business. And hopefully it'll improve the market penetration in the lucrative corporate desktop sector. If you want to stay 1337 then you can always use a different window manager (IIRC, Mandrake comes with quite a few in the default install, and nothing's stopping you adding more).
Suuuuure, if you just sit there, communicating only in grunts and Tech-Speak(TM), eating her pizza, drinking her beer, then bolt when you're done, then they won't really be interested in you as a person. You've gotta show them that you are a person, and a person that they'd like to get to know.
Personally, I've hardly ever pulled in a single night, but I've done just fine meeting girls and building on that. And this is a great opportunity to meet girls.
They're not going to sleep with you just cos you can recite the IP address of two dozen warez sites. But while you're fixing their machine you can talk to them. It's surely not that difficult to comprehend....
I do actually take exercise, but I'm more inclined towards individual pursuits (stop giggling at the back) like running and mountain biking (I used to lift weights too, but I'm lazy). When I said "Jock" I was talking about your stereotypical biceps-much-better-exercised-than-brain type. I hope that since you also recognise the value of study, and are familiar enough with Slashdot to post here, physical fitness isn't your only pursuit in life. Which, as far as I'm concerned, puts you in the "Athlete" category, not the "Jock" category. Unless you actually enjoy crushing beer cans on your head and beating on people who're smaller than you....
But the way I see it is like this; if the boat I'm on sinks I can at least grab a life preserver and not sink with it. If the car I'm in crashes, then at least I've got a chance of walking away (and I've already been hit by a car [his fault] and a van [my fault] so I'm not too scared by that). But if a plane I'm in takes a dive then the chances of me actually surviving it are pretty slim. Kinda unnerving really. I know that's not the most rational way to look at things (especially when you consider the satistics), and perhaps I have control issues, but that's just the way my brain works.
Don't look at having geek-skills as a way to guarantee you'll score. All it is is an opening. Other guys usually have to buy her a drink (or several), compete with a dozen other guys, get her away from her friends, impress her with dance-skills and somehow manage to charm her over the noise of a nightclub. As a geek, you get invited into her room, get to do her a favour, and have a perfect opportunity to chat to her and show her that you're an actual human being, and can be witty, interesting and smart.
And most girls (particularly university girls) really do value brains more than guys do. If she's after a jock, then you're wasting your time trying to pull her, but she may have friends who're more interested in someone who looks OK and can actually hold a conversation and make them laugh than they are in someone who's on the football team, but who's more interested in being a drunken-caveman-fratboy.
Oh, and one piece of advice - download some file recovery software. You have no idea how grateful someone who's fairly inexperienced with computers will be when you magic a deleted file back into existance from their floppy drive. A common problem that need not be the disaster it seems.
Well, he (probably) was dropping a fair hint with that XX, XY reference - male and female chromosones; XX=girl, XY=boy, IIRC (though it was 7 years since I finished GCSE Biology, and I've not done any genetics since then).
Realistically though, I'd guess it was just a case of trying to fit several thousand news-hungry geeks down a relatively small bandwidth connection. Some connection requests are bound to go unanswered, which would make it look like someone had just pulled the plug out. Incidentally, I connected from Yorkshire, and didn't get 404'd at all. But I might be helped by the big fat pipe that my workplace has to the net : )
Or, it might depend on your browser; IE just says that the page is unavailable if the server is /.ed or down or you typed the address wrong.
Still, your point is very interesting - I'll be sure to mention it at some point in the future.
Firstly, don't make it look easy if you're trying to impress a girl. Furrow that brow in as manly a way as you're able. If you have an opportunity to take the cover off then do - actual physical work is always more impressive than clicking thru a windows wizard.
Secondly, don't finish the job. I know; you're a perfectionist, but just fight that urge. For example, get her connected to the network and browsing the web, but *ahem* "forget" to set up her mail client properly - leave out some SMTP settings in Outlook so she can't get her mail. Then leave your number with her (be casual - scribble it on a post-it and stick it to her screen just before you leave) saying "There you go, that looks to be working OK, but if you notice any other problems then just give me a call and I'll pop back round, OK?". Of course, she will need to call you (assuming she doesn't use hotmail instead), and after that you become the person she calls first when she has problems. And with a bit of luck she'll tell her friends too : )
Yeah, so it's totally immoral, but do you really care? Just try to act like a regular human (very few teenage girls care about how their POP3 account works or why M$ suck or what happened in last night's Gundam episode). Don't bombard her with Simpsons quotes. Smile. Take a shower at some point in the 24 hours before.
Apologies to anyone who's offended by this, but it worked for me. You fix the problems that you overlook soon enough, you get to meet girls [insert non-gender/sexuality-specific stuff here] and they get their computers working quicker and cheaper than they otherwise would. Everyone's a winner.
And remember what Kevin Smith says - "Personality counts for a lot"
BTW, I still use aeroplanes, but only out of convenience (if I could afford to go by boat [hah! Like I'll ever afford that!] I would).
Nowadays, everything beyond the local loop has been opened up to competition, and I'm enjoying much cheaper phone bills thanks to NTL/Cable&Wireless, while BT is acting worse than ever (over priced, poor quality service [it took them a week to un-block calls thru Cable & Wireless from my phone line after they blocked it without any warning]) - acting with all the worst points of it's old days, none of the better points, and simply grasping desperately at any immediate profit.
And last I heard they were in about £30 billion debt. They don't seem to know how to compete, as though the management can't get out of the monopoly mind-set. And, IMHO, that's why BT sucks.
Indeed. I'll bet those Germans who invented Enigma are kicking themselves (posthumously, natch) that they didn't legislate against the Allies cracking it : )