I certainly get 75% of that much daily spam (an email address from 1997). In part, it came from college forwards and my naive signing up for those "funny" sites that forwarded jokes and random personality tests.
Mostly on freshman year, as I realized what was happening and began to ignore forwards. My college address, well known by my friends, was not as badly affected but around junior year it started showing signs of spam, but the Signal to noise ratio was pretty good. When I started seeing my college domain faked, I realized it was a bad thing. Coincidentally, all my email forwarding from the college ceases today, and I'm relieved and hopeful that at least some emails will stop dead halfway at the expired address.
I am guilty of having placed my address up on geocities back in 97 where the spambots got it for a good year or so. Other than that, I always obfuscate it or don't list it at all.
You know what? I have an unlisted address that gets spam. How? it's a 5 letter combination. My yahoo one is 6 letters. Lots of spammers use dictionary attacks and brute force generation. Verdict? I should place numbers and underscores. In yahoo I can see mass mailings CC'ed to dictionary "attackees" right before and after my own name. Yup, it's annoying. Another problem is if you ever list your addy in a jobsearch site. Monster.com got me "job spam" quicker than real email to my newly published, monster-only address. I know there's lots of fake "employer usage" accounts that could do real damage because spammers can get more data about a user by posing as a hiring source to job sites --and get your real name, phone, college name and all sorts of ID theft information based on your well-crafted, employment-hungry information disclosure thru online resumes and cover letters.
Just a thought for anyone who might benefit. I'm glad I could find the exact thread to post this.
this interface tech evolves into something that can connect you with other people and share memories and significant knowledge with others, like your SO?
Well, in the meantime, the US Government is getting a large email list. Can anyone guess how it will first be used?
Aw crap! Thanks a lot slashdot! X-|
I just realized I'm already in it 'cause I have been sending forwarding my SPAM to that antispam address, uce@ftc.gov. So they have my mailto: headers for about 3 active accounts. At least this one I can opt out of legally and be sure that govt email can't be "illegally" refusing opt outs. But still.
but I don't thin kit should be any more illegal to sell a CD with aggregated e-mail address than it should be to sell a phone book CD with telephone numbers
I agree with the rest of your post. This part seems a bit forced if you think about this reality that we come across:
When searching for a long lost friend, it is nearly impossible to find a phone number, or a working email address, and sometimes phonebooks list only partial names. Also, chances are that any user of a plain-old phone book will find a SINGLE # per private entity. So, if I had multiple phone lines, the secondary ones would stay hidden from the general public and allow us to avoid telemarketters or unsolicited calls from strangers.
With this in mind, think about email: Having multiple email addresses, thanks to AOL's 7+ emails per "account," (compare "7" to how many phone #'s you have) the public can easily have multiple email addresses, to use one for work, another one for spam and so forth. Yet they all catch spam sooner or later... Getting back to the phone book issue, when's the last time your fax line got a telemarketting call? So if emails are more prone to bulk requests than even our phones, email directories would simplify the task of cataloguing all my undisclosed, private addresses --and I get lots of spam even despite the lack of a "free phonebook for emails." Heck, if I could pay for removing my address from suck a phonebook the way I can do so for my phone #'s, I probably would.
I recall seing a keyboard with a calculator button before, a Compaq, if I recall well. My Dell Dimension keyboard has 3 buttons besides "suspend" that can be programmed.
I use "email" and "search" for volume and "Home" for the Windows Calculator. Every time I see a job posting online, I push the button and start typing my $salary * 2,080 to translate from hourly salary to yearly. It's pretty awesome, and loads instantly.
You're right, though. Win Calculator isn't like the old Texas Instrument 81 with the variable storage and all the neat features. Quick money and conversion things, though, are perfectly doable with a programmable keyboard.
but is secretly wondering why you're still using it on a P90 in 2094
Because Intel may never go out of business and at one point they will ditch their PII, PIII, PIV [...] scheme as soon as processor naming reaches PentiumXXX. Therefore, the shelves will once more say P5, P10, P60, P89...
Like this person, I am a MacOS user with access to Virtual PC, but when it comes to emulating older MacOS to run old freeware/games and code that OSX and 9 have "broken," I'm a bit at a loss. Don't get me wrong, he has a great documentation and his tests are encouraging to all of us mac users needing Windows and x86 support. I would like to see someone do this kinda thing with native MacOS emulation as well.
Since he is an APPLE powerbook user, I was hoping for more Mac systems on his list. He DID mention DOS 1 and Windows 1 with detail for five+ sequels each, which is a bit overkill for most people.
The Emulation.net site deals with Mac emulation for us. If you want a few more mac options, you need a link to vMac . Maybe someone here can go ahead and do this, and post a story on slashdot with their findings. My mac doesn't have enough room for storing CD images of emulated Operating Systems, and unlike him, I don't have resources to find system software:-| . Sometimes even hardware images are needed for Mac emulators, but I think this is only req'ed for PC users
should have been off by default already and enabled in a true lan/office environment
Funny. If you're running AOL in a LAN computer, you aren't doing any work, are you? If you truely need office instant messenging capabilities, install A0L's free IM client. You already have an internet connection, so if the full A0L goes ahead and turns off your LAN popups, then you got in trouble because of a few home-browser-intended side-effects;)
Face it, these new things AOL offers are good for the home user, and it will only make things better. Free "antivirus protection" and the registry cleaning may be offered in offices, where A0L won't be installed often --and at home, you will need but probably won't have access to these products. It's nice, then that someone is doing some work.
You know how many people's machines we dissinfected repeatedly who refused to switch from their ubiquitous virus-causing email program to a less ubiquitious one that our IT department REQUIRED? It became a nightmare to remove viruses because we could not just FORCE our own protection on the users, even if it meant involuntary countering measures because of their declining our "innoculation."
I say, if simply because it was 15 million computers A0L fixed, let them do it. These users won't notice, but savvy computer people will thank them that someone is taking some tedious friends'-system maintenance off their backs.
>>Microsoft, at least, has the decency to wait a few years between upgrades.
I know lame comments like these are essential to journalism and aren't meant to be taken seriously, [...] What is indecent about releasing a major upgrade to your operating system after a year?
It struck me as too alienating for a renowned and widely circulated paper such as The NY Times (read "diverse audience"). I found the comment careless and not worthy of the time of anyone who has seen their old computers and software systematically and intentionally left behind because of the scrolling MS upgrade from 98 to ME to 98SE to 2000, followed by XP. All these OS's were in concurrent demand of customer support back in 2001, and my IT job was a nightware because users knew only hazily what they were running anyway. Compare that with the almost-linear saga of the slow-moving macOS timeline.
Now, windows 2000 was a disparate version for businesses (remember corporate NT 5?) that many non-techies/home users wanted "just because!" and made IT support a new nightmare. What I'm saying is, users will find ways to upgrade because, as you say in your post, software upgrades are easier than automobile ones --because unlike new OS CD's, users can't just come home one day in a brand new Lexus or Lambourgini(sp) without the corresponding massive cash leakage. And demand IT support for it in spite of their "untimely" theft of a product intended and priced for corporate environments.
Since OS X is both a commercial and home OS in a single versioning scheme of Cardinal # nature, unlike NT and 2000, the versioning and lack of confusing upgrade paths is rather comforting because it is serial, rather than semi-random. Its price? Well, since they don't have as many viruses and security "features" to fix, the upgrades tend to fall more toward new inventions and extensions of the OS, such as the whole phenomenon responsible for the "Unixfication" of macintosh.
I just wrote this journal last night: http://slashdot.org/~fractaltiger/journal/44603
because I feel trapped by getting slammed every time I go on the web with my modem. I can't really download it since my connection has become suckier every year. I used to be able to download the 50 Meg Java SDKs in a couple days, but now I just get disconnected too much on this computer. I will have to go to a friend's to get the win2k service pack and hope like heck that nothing like this strikes down my current win98 system. Sorry, I'm rambling.
Thanks for your own reply. I spent a weekend with two friends at the auditions for a popular music show on Fox. People had cell phones and I heard someone brought a laptop. Other than that, we were stuck for three days camping in a big parking lot till they opened the doors to the building and let people in. I didn't audition, but we agreed that we missed real beds and internet access. I have barely even read slashdot this month because of how unstable my web connection is. I'll be getting DSL soon when our contract is over. Hopefully DSL won't bring me to the dark side;)
Remember the trademark of old Nintendo games like Mario Bros/Duck Hunt, Nintendo Golf, Excitebike, Kung Fu and many of the original pre 1990 games that were directly licensed by Nintendo rather than other companies (ie. Capcom or whatever) ? They were pixelated previews of the game, and they looked hideous, but still had some appeal.
I always did think that it was good to see those real images rather than some artist's conception of how the game SHOULD look. After all, those games didn't support antialiasing, today's infinite color depths and 3D models that are rendered realtime. Anyway, I kinda miss that trend.
It is interesting that in the third world there is no such thing as the nerd. Before coming to America, people who were socially inept and shy were just that, socially inept and shy... and studious. There is no derogatory term for them like nerds and geeks here in the us.
This brings up another point: why make a term for something that should be good for our society since it brings social change locally (a community grows more advanced and probably more educated) and globally at the scale of the country, when we can go into technical jobs that pull the economy forward?
Actually, if my parents knew of the connotations of the word geek or nerd when I was growing up, they would probably have rubbed it in and warned against it. But they just wonder why I spend so much time working on CPUs and reading and find it strange, not knowing how many equally conditioned people we have out there. Good that they could not call me a "geek" in spanish, even in good will because the lack of the CONCEPT helped me to not feel singled out in society.
Real AI? yes, but not with sequential computers
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
Surak is right in saying that switches are a bad way of simulating AI. When you look at people and think you recognize intelligence, and all of a sudden you see this new side of them that you did not know, is it really that that person's programming changed, or is it possible that JUST MAYBE a larger set of the BILLIONS of neurons that work independently are bending toward a different behavior?
'If' tests try to assume very ISOLATED conditions and their expected repercussions, but I have another view. My view is that our gazillion neural switches are fighting for control and you never know which dominant set of those millions of millions of randomlike behaviors will assert themselves next and influence you to your very next action. We have some control of our actions but you can imagine countless little consciousnesses manipulating what you only perceive as one. Just think of the sincerity of the phrase, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." when you have used it after a big mess up.
It's not "one [brain] produces many" --it's "many [impulses] produce 'one'." Thanks for your time.
it is a good question. i witnessed some friends be disgusted after the first class because it was just a headache for all of us. one of them had to take the class to satisfy a requirement but she dropped it after a few labs, the same way that i dropped one of the classes in her major (i was a bit set back at the amount of reading on a dry subject.)
sometimes i think women want to have a more sociable subject to do a career on, because of the whole stereotype of the talkative wife and the too-quiet husband, kinda. i mean, if you do computer science, unlike any other subject so far, you are signing an implicit non-social life contract to work long hours in a lab in front of a computer, sort of fixing bugs of unknown origin that NO book can quite help fix.
other careers will make sense, and for some reason, i always compare cs to math because of the origins of cs: women are a LOT into the math major. ever noticed that? so it is not that they are not "smart," because they are the ones that will apparently teach more math at schools and stuff --um, they still have to put up with stupid abstract courses like mathematical analysis to get their degree to teach, though... so they ARE going at smart fields... and yet..
standing in front of a computer doesn't seem too attractive. i didn't find the girls who were at thte lab too girly, to tell you the truth. they would sit, work on code, make some comments and listen to the rock music in the lab like the rest of the guys. but they were upperclassmen, i believe, they were used to it.
anyway, i will blame it on the labs and woman's ability to get annoyed and just quit while they're ahead;) that we are too stubborn to use. we don't care that the reading is dull, the required math courses are mostly for gradschool acquaintance rather than practicallity in the field, and that there are lots of little evil things that come with the cs living that women do not fully accept... all the stealing, browsing, and all that stuff.
I am glad wireless is taking off. Unlike the shortlived free ISP's in 1998-9, free Wi-Fi may come her to stay. If you live in New York City, they just offered to add 9 more hotspots in downtown Manhattan by May.
http://www.nycwireless.net/ has info on NYC hotspots. I love the chance for free access. I wonder if my old laptop is worth a new wireless card. Bryant park and Battery park already enjoy people who hang around. Some City University Colleges also have limited access. It's possible to share wireless with nextdoor neighbors too. Cool. Go Wi-fi! Best of all, the trend toward free rather than payment based seems appropriate. (can you imagine the future of say, jetpacks, if you have to pay for personal fuel?)
Re:If Ars Technica is so concerned about usability
on
A Better Finder?
·
· Score: 1
Yup... here is an obligatory inclusion of my default stylesheet. Console Green on black, with gray links, cool highlit hovering and strikethrough for visited links. It's pretty nifty, give it a try. Sorry, Netscape flavors don't seem to support it, but since people here DO use IE and Galeon and Opera, chances are you can try it for free. Drop me a line at my journal!
Sorry if The lameness filter made me smush some stuff together... You may format and modify this at will...
to newer shows like DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. Don't believe me? It has been years since ST:TNG has been on mainstream TV, and it seems that when you get basic cable, some of these channels get dropped. I speak from the point of view of someone who got downgraded from family cable to basic in NY city. It really sucked but I had to move on and forget completely about cartoon network's shows (DBZ, Dexter...), SCIfi's whole lot of series and Comedy Central. Um, and of course, TNG and ST, which for some monetary reason have been the only trek shows pushing out movies.
Apparently normal people have less exposure to the aliens and people in weird makeup while channel surfing, because their cable is blocked and thus they can't get TNN's reruns of TNG. And also, SciFi's original Star Trek eps.
But if mainstream people are watching startrek, they don't remember Picard well already, the same way you start to ignore Bill Cosby or stars from the eighties. They think of the trek and hear all of us rambling, but they dont even realize that we ramble about the old shows, which like good programming languages or OS's won't pique our interest forever, or we are mute about the ones that nongeeks would actually be exposed to on syndicated TV.
I may be wrong, and even I thought I was farfetched writing this, but youre welcome to Reply. I wont slap your hands if your keystrokes seem to come from a different character-set;)
first: must have: freedict.com translator program for windows.
OK, upon reading my parent post, I apologize. It's very incoherent and ideas were abandoned or left hanging.
1- the mac filesystem depends on two forks, but only one is used for pc compatibility. I had problems getting schoolwork home *because* macs files dont need extensions while my pc gasped as I had to append them and change filenames. [MacOS 7 to-or-from windows 95 days sucked in both systems]
2- the system libraries comment... no, i meant my test pgms were small. the libraries reference is about having external code called and thus possible external dialogs and weird outofrange untranslatable message boxes.
3- i love freeware, but by the time i got my mind set on trying to translate, someone already had translated the code and helped the creator. good for me, i guess. but seriously, many mac ppl feel comfortable about translations done to THEIR code because their SOURCE isn't leaked in the process. so they dont feel the threat of plagiarized utilities.
4- i feel good about Opera and some pgms that nowadays come with files containing languages. simple, one program file, different language files. it makes a compact and good-to-change setup. kudos. i love using alterante versions of windows and seeing that the menus arent in english. i feel like i got more out of my (free) downloads.
WARNING: Translating code is the most menial task since data input. Not for the faint hearted or those of you looking for a quick distraction from, er, computer science projects due soon.
Alright, now, to my humble expericence:
Back in 2001 or so I began using the MacOS as a testing ground. For those of you playing the home game, before OS X, each file consisted of a "resource fork" and a "data fork." This is part of the filesystem pain that made my highschool work impossible to take home: mac files use the proprietary resource fork for things like icons, filetype information (whoot, I love NOT needing extensios) and menu information.
To make the story short, I used Res[ource]Edit to peek the contents of strings that go in menus and dialog boxes, and if you know the Mac OS, it's NO DOS! So plenty of valuable data can be altered without needing source code, and it's frigging cool how you can "localize code" without needing the source.
Anyway, I used it for personal purposes with GerryIcq back when ICQ for the mac had been at version 1.72 for a whole year or so [this will be in my/. journal shortly, brings back memories], and then with a genealogy program that came in French. The translation wasn't to English, but here are two things I will tell you
1) It is very tedious! Those programs are very small indeed, around 1MB each. System 7 and System 8 programs dont rely as much on system libraries (*cough*,CarbonLib,*die*) and thus the process isn't intimidating systemwise. However, you get to face hundreds of small lines, requiring several mouseclicks and tabbing through modifiable textfields. Definitely NOT for single members or ppl needing a vacation.
2) I screwed up text a lot, because of wrong key presses. This is ResEdit's fault mostly, but the relevancy is that you may get the wrong translated text into the wrong dialog without realizing it till you test-run a few times. So be careful.
Well, it's late, but I like this topic because I love windows, but it never gave me the oportunity to edit code without dissasembling it first. However, I am speaking more about pet projects where you might wanna contribute to the program creator. Again, more in my journal before next week --I am sleepy now.
...damn few people use MSN Messenger or Yahoo I am not very sure if that's true outside the US. Remember that AOL has strongholds in Australia, England and the US. In all other places you have to rely on either local programs to communicate, or word of mouth and product loyalty from the internet giants back in early nineties. There come yahoo and hotmail and their respective IM services... but hold that thought
I think that most of the success of AOL IM here is that it was just forced onto the AOL system and there was nothing else to do to get messaging to work. So any newbie in the 90s with AOL could get the power of messaging in the US. As someone said here, AOL was probably "the training wheels" of a majority of us when the internet was still pretty young.
Well, anyway, I have friends in the Caribbean that have never heard the name of AOL. Their service there is MSN IM, or even Yahoo IM. In fact, I have been really annoyed at having to get Messenger on my system just because they don't know AIM. International students other than me, from Africa and Europe who I met in college were more likely to have an ICQ account and give it out. The American college system spoiled them into using AIM, though. First jointly, and then, uniquely.
Those students all know yahoo and microsoft's hotmail and therefore it's natural to have adopted their messengers. But I believe AOL didn't have a hold of the world in messaging, though I may be pulling this out of my butt;) ICQ was the leading worldwide messenger, perhaps, as you can see in their wide range of localization options.
just my 2 cents. i hope someone has a link to factual data so that i can see if this, is true after all these years of pondering about it.
Slashdot Mirror
I certainly get 75% of that much daily spam (an email address from 1997). In part, it came from college forwards and my naive signing up for those "funny" sites that forwarded jokes and random personality tests.
Mostly on freshman year, as I realized what was happening and began to ignore forwards. My college address, well known by my friends, was not as badly affected but around junior year it started showing signs of spam, but the Signal to noise ratio was pretty good. When I started seeing my college domain faked, I realized it was a bad thing. Coincidentally, all my email forwarding from the college ceases today, and I'm relieved and hopeful that at least some emails will stop dead halfway at the expired address.
I am guilty of having placed my address up on geocities back in 97 where the spambots got it for a good year or so. Other than that, I always obfuscate it or don't list it at all.
You know what? I have an unlisted address that gets spam. How? it's a 5 letter combination. My yahoo one is 6 letters. Lots of spammers use dictionary attacks and brute force generation. Verdict? I should place numbers and underscores. In yahoo I can see mass mailings CC'ed to dictionary "attackees" right before and after my own name. Yup, it's annoying. Another problem is if you ever list your addy in a jobsearch site. Monster.com got me "job spam" quicker than real email to my newly published, monster-only address. I know there's lots of fake "employer usage" accounts that could do real damage because spammers can get more data about a user by posing as a hiring source to job sites --and get your real name, phone, college name and all sorts of ID theft information based on your well-crafted, employment-hungry information disclosure thru online resumes and cover letters.
Just a thought for anyone who might benefit. I'm glad I could find the exact thread to post this.
this interface tech evolves into something that can connect you with other people and share memories and significant knowledge with others, like your SO?
Aw crap! Thanks a lot slashdot! X-|
I just realized I'm already in it 'cause I have been sending forwarding my SPAM to that antispam address, uce@ftc.gov. So they have my mailto: headers for about 3 active accounts. At least this one I can opt out of legally and be sure that govt email can't be "illegally" refusing opt outs. But still.
What are those creatures viewing the Rover from the top and scheming destruction plans in the polar view picture?. They're a step ahead of us!
I agree with the rest of your post. This part seems a bit forced if you think about this reality that we come across:
When searching for a long lost friend, it is nearly impossible to find a phone number, or a working email address, and sometimes phonebooks list only partial names. Also, chances are that any user of a plain-old phone book will find a SINGLE # per private entity.
So, if I had multiple phone lines, the secondary ones would stay hidden from the general public and allow us to avoid telemarketters or unsolicited calls from strangers.
With this in mind, think about email: Having multiple email addresses, thanks to AOL's 7+ emails per "account," (compare "7" to how many phone #'s you have) the public can easily have multiple email addresses, to use one for work, another one for spam and so forth. Yet they all catch spam sooner or later... Getting back to the phone book issue, when's the last time your fax line got a telemarketting call? So if emails are more prone to bulk requests than even our phones, email directories would simplify the task of cataloguing all my undisclosed, private addresses --and I get lots of spam even despite the lack of a "free phonebook for emails." Heck, if I could pay for removing my address from suck a phonebook the way I can do so for my phone #'s, I probably would.
I recall seing a keyboard with a calculator button before, a Compaq, if I recall well. My Dell Dimension keyboard has 3 buttons besides "suspend" that can be programmed.
I use "email" and "search" for volume and "Home" for the Windows Calculator. Every time I see a job posting online, I push the button and start typing my $salary * 2,080 to translate from hourly salary to yearly. It's pretty awesome, and loads instantly.
You're right, though. Win Calculator isn't like the old Texas Instrument 81 with the variable storage and all the neat features. Quick money and conversion things, though, are perfectly doable with a programmable keyboard.
but is secretly wondering why you're still using it on a P90 in 2094
;)
Because Intel may never go out of business and at one point they will ditch their PII, PIII, PIV [...] scheme as soon as processor naming reaches PentiumXXX. Therefore, the shelves will once more say P5, P10, P60, P89...
Like this person, I am a MacOS user with access to Virtual PC, but when it comes to emulating older MacOS to run old freeware/games and code that OSX and 9 have "broken," I'm a bit at a loss. Don't get me wrong, he has a great documentation and his tests are encouraging to all of us mac users needing Windows and x86 support. I would like to see someone do this kinda thing with native MacOS emulation as well.
:-| . Sometimes even hardware images are needed for Mac emulators, but I think this is only req'ed for PC users
Since he is an APPLE powerbook user, I was hoping for more Mac systems on his list. He DID mention DOS 1 and Windows 1 with detail for five+ sequels each, which is a bit overkill for most people.
The Emulation.net site deals with Mac emulation for us. If you want a few more mac options, you need a link to vMac . Maybe someone here can go ahead and do this, and post a story on slashdot with their findings. My mac doesn't have enough room for storing CD images of emulated Operating Systems, and unlike him, I don't have resources to find system software
Good luck!
1 START cellphone
10 SAY Can you hear me now? Good!
20 STEP
30 SAY Can you hear me *now*? Good!!
40 STEP
50 GOTO 10
We've seen this done on the VZ wireless commercials. The guy has been trying to do this same US "mapping" thing for months, the poor little man!
I wonder how many "footsteps" it will take to cover the entire USA surface area. C'mon, friends! Someone's gotta know
should have been off by default already and enabled in a true lan/office environment
;)
Funny. If you're running AOL in a LAN computer, you aren't doing any work, are you? If you truely need office instant messenging capabilities, install A0L's free IM client. You already have an internet connection, so if the full A0L goes ahead and turns off your LAN popups, then you got in trouble because of a few home-browser-intended side-effects
Face it, these new things AOL offers are good for the home user, and it will only make things better. Free "antivirus protection" and the registry cleaning may be offered in offices, where A0L won't be installed often --and at home, you will need but probably won't have access to these products. It's nice, then that someone is doing some work.
You know how many people's machines we dissinfected repeatedly who refused to switch from their ubiquitous virus-causing email program to a less ubiquitious one that our IT department REQUIRED? It became a nightmare to remove viruses because we could not just FORCE our own protection on the users, even if it meant involuntary countering measures because of their declining our "innoculation."
I say, if simply because it was 15 million computers A0L fixed, let them do it. These users won't notice, but savvy computer people will thank them that someone is taking some tedious friends'-system maintenance off their backs.
It struck me as too alienating for a renowned and widely circulated paper such as The NY Times (read "diverse audience"). I found the comment careless and not worthy of the time of anyone who has seen their old computers and software systematically and intentionally left behind because of the scrolling MS upgrade from 98 to ME to 98SE to 2000, followed by XP. All these OS's were in concurrent demand of customer support back in 2001, and my IT job was a nightware because users knew only hazily what they were running anyway. Compare that with the almost-linear saga of the slow-moving macOS timeline.
Now, windows 2000 was a disparate version for businesses (remember corporate NT 5?) that many non-techies/home users wanted "just because!" and made IT support a new nightmare. What I'm saying is, users will find ways to upgrade because, as you say in your post, software upgrades are easier than automobile ones --because unlike new OS CD's, users can't just come home one day in a brand new Lexus or Lambourgini(sp) without the corresponding massive cash leakage. And demand IT support for it in spite of their "untimely" theft of a product intended and priced for corporate environments.
Since OS X is both a commercial and home OS in a single versioning scheme of Cardinal # nature, unlike NT and 2000, the versioning and lack of confusing upgrade paths is rather comforting because it is serial, rather than semi-random. Its price? Well, since they don't have as many viruses and security "features" to fix, the upgrades tend to fall more toward new inventions and extensions of the OS, such as the whole phenomenon responsible for the "Unixfication" of macintosh.
I just wrote this journal last night: http://slashdot.org/~fractaltiger/journal/44603
because I feel trapped by getting slammed every time I go on the web with my modem. I can't really download it since my connection has become suckier every year. I used to be able to download the 50 Meg Java SDKs in a couple days, but now I just get disconnected too much on this computer. I will have to go to a friend's to get the win2k service pack and hope like heck that nothing like this strikes down my current win98 system. Sorry, I'm rambling.
Yeah.
;)
Thanks for your own reply. I spent a weekend with two friends at the auditions for a popular music show on Fox. People had cell phones and I heard someone brought a laptop. Other than that, we were stuck for three days camping in a big parking lot till they opened the doors to the building and let people in. I didn't audition, but we agreed that we missed real beds and internet access. I have barely even read slashdot this month because of how unstable my web connection is. I'll be getting DSL soon when our contract is over. Hopefully DSL won't bring me to the dark side
I swear nobody I knew ever thought of just setting back the clock when Y2K was coming. I did! But who would listen?
Remember the trademark of old Nintendo games like Mario Bros/Duck Hunt, Nintendo Golf, Excitebike, Kung Fu and many of the original pre 1990 games that were directly licensed by Nintendo rather than other companies (ie. Capcom or whatever) ? They were pixelated previews of the game, and they looked hideous, but still had some appeal.
I always did think that it was good to see those real images rather than some artist's conception of how the game SHOULD look. After all, those games didn't support antialiasing, today's infinite color depths and 3D models that are rendered realtime. Anyway, I kinda miss that trend.
It is interesting that in the third world there is no such thing as the nerd. Before coming to America, people who were socially inept and shy were just that, socially inept and shy... and studious. There is no derogatory term for them like nerds and geeks here in the us.
This brings up another point: why make a term for something that should be good for our society since it brings social change locally (a community grows more advanced and probably more educated) and globally at the scale of the country, when we can go into technical jobs that pull the economy forward?
Actually, if my parents knew of the connotations of the word geek or nerd when I was growing up, they would probably have rubbed it in and warned against it. But they just wonder why I spend so much time working on CPUs and reading and find it strange, not knowing how many equally conditioned people we have out there. Good that they could not call me a "geek" in spanish, even in good will because the lack of the CONCEPT helped me to not feel singled out in society.
Surak is right in saying that switches are a bad way of simulating AI. When you look at people and think you recognize intelligence, and all of a sudden you see this new side of them that you did not know, is it really that that person's programming changed, or is it possible that JUST MAYBE a larger set of the BILLIONS of neurons that work independently are bending toward a different behavior?
..." when you have used it after a big mess up.
'If' tests try to assume very ISOLATED conditions and their expected repercussions, but I have another view. My view is that our gazillion neural switches are fighting for control and you never know which dominant set of those millions of millions of randomlike behaviors will assert themselves next and influence you to your very next action. We have some control of our actions but you can imagine countless little consciousnesses manipulating what you only perceive as one. Just think of the sincerity of the phrase, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to
It's not "one [brain] produces many" --it's "many [impulses] produce 'one'."
Thanks for your time.
it is a good question. i witnessed some friends be disgusted after the first class because it was just a headache for all of us. one of them had to take the class to satisfy a requirement but she dropped it after a few labs, the same way that i dropped one of the classes in her major (i was a bit set back at the amount of reading on a dry subject.)
;) that we are too stubborn to use. we don't care that the reading is dull, the required math courses are mostly for gradschool acquaintance rather than practicallity in the field, and that there are lots of little evil things that come with the cs living that women do not fully accept... all the stealing, browsing, and all that stuff.
sometimes i think women want to have a more sociable subject to do a career on, because of the whole stereotype of the talkative wife and the too-quiet husband, kinda. i mean, if you do computer science, unlike any other subject so far, you are signing an implicit non-social life contract to work long hours in a lab in front of a computer, sort of fixing bugs of unknown origin that NO book can quite help fix.
other careers will make sense, and for some reason, i always compare cs to math because of the origins of cs: women are a LOT into the math major. ever noticed that? so it is not that they are not "smart," because they are the ones that will apparently teach more math at schools and stuff --um, they still have to put up with stupid abstract courses like mathematical analysis to get their degree to teach, though... so they ARE going at smart fields... and yet..
standing in front of a computer doesn't seem too attractive. i didn't find the girls who were at thte lab too girly, to tell you the truth. they would sit, work on code, make some comments and listen to the rock music in the lab like the rest of the guys. but they were upperclassmen, i believe, they were used to it.
anyway, i will blame it on the labs and woman's ability to get annoyed and just quit while they're ahead
I am glad wireless is taking off. Unlike the shortlived free ISP's in 1998-9, free Wi-Fi may come her to stay. If you live in New York City, they just offered to add 9 more hotspots in downtown Manhattan by May.
http://www.nycwireless.net/ has info on NYC hotspots. I love the chance for free access. I wonder if my old laptop is worth a new wireless card. Bryant park and Battery park already enjoy people who hang around. Some City University Colleges also have limited access. It's possible to share wireless with nextdoor neighbors too. Cool. Go Wi-fi! Best of all, the trend toward free rather than payment based seems appropriate. (can you imagine the future of say, jetpacks, if you have to pay for personal fuel?)
Yup... here is an obligatory inclusion of
/* line-height: 105%; */
/* relative to the parent */
/* tight formatting */
/* 'border-bottom' could also have been used */
/* unvisited link */ /* visited links */ /* active links */ /* strikethrough's reaction to hovering */
my default stylesheet. Console Green on black, with gray links, cool highlit hovering and strikethrough for visited links. It's pretty nifty, give it a try. Sorry, Netscape flavors don't seem to support it, but since people here DO use IE and Galeon and Opera, chances are you can try it for free. Drop me a line at my journal!
Sorry if The lameness filter made me smush some stuff together... You may format and modify this at will...
BODY {
background: black;
color: #00FF00;
}
H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, P, UL, OL, DIR, MENU, DIV,
DT, DD, ADDRESS, BLOCKQUOTE, PRE, BR, HR, FORM, DL {
color: #00FF00 !important;
background-color: #000000;
}
B, STRONG, I, EM, CITE, VAR, TT, CODE, KBD, SAMP,
SPAN {
color: #00FF00;
background-color: #000000;
}
IMG { color: #00FF00; background-color: #222222 }
LI { display: list-item }
B, STRONG { font-weight: bolder }
I, CITE, EM, VAR, ADDRESS, BLOCKQUOTE { font-style: italic }
PRE, TT, CODE, KBD, SAMP { font-family: monospace }
PRE { white-space: pre }
ADDRESS { margin-left: 2em } BLOCKQUOTE { marg {
display: block } }
H1 { font-size: xx-large } H2 { font-size: x-large } H3 { font-size: large } H4 { font-size: normal } H5 { font-size: small} H6 { font-size: x-small}
UL, DIR { list-style: disc } OL { list-style: decimal }
MENU { margin: 0 }
DT { margin-bottom: 0 } DD { margin-top: 0; margin-left: 3em }
HR { border-top: solid }
A B {color: red; text-decoration: underline;}
A:hover B { background: red; color: white; text-decoration: overline}
A:link { color: #B0C6E2 }
A:visited { color: #8090AF; text-decoration: line-through }
A:active { color: gray }
A:visited:hover { text-decoration: overline; }
A:hover {color: white; text-decoration: underline; background: #01809F; font-style: bold}
/* setting the anchor border around IMG elements
requires contextual selectors */
A:link IMG { border: 1px solid blue }
A:visited IMG { border: 1px solid red }
A:active IMG { border: 1px solid lime }
A:hover IMG {border: 1px solid white }
table {
color: #00FF00; background-color: black;
}
TD { border-bottom: 1px dotted Scrollbar}
to newer shows like DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. Don't believe me? It has been years since ST:TNG has been on mainstream TV, and it seems that when you get basic cable, some of these channels get dropped. I speak from the point of view of someone who got downgraded from family cable to basic in NY city. It really sucked but I had to move on and forget completely about cartoon network's shows (DBZ, Dexter...), SCIfi's whole lot of series and Comedy Central. Um, and of course, TNG and ST, which for some monetary reason have been the only trek shows pushing out movies.
;)
Apparently normal people have less exposure to the aliens and people in weird makeup while channel surfing, because their cable is blocked and thus they can't get TNN's reruns of TNG. And also, SciFi's original Star Trek eps.
But if mainstream people are watching startrek, they don't remember Picard well already, the same way you start to ignore Bill Cosby or stars from the eighties. They think of the trek and hear all of us rambling, but they dont even realize that we ramble about the old shows, which like good programming languages or OS's won't pique our interest forever, or we are mute about the ones that nongeeks would actually be exposed to on syndicated TV.
I may be wrong, and even I thought I was farfetched writing this, but youre welcome to Reply. I wont slap your hands if your keystrokes seem to come from a different character-set
first: must have: freedict.com translator program for windows.
OK, upon reading my parent post, I apologize. It's very incoherent and ideas were abandoned or left hanging.
1- the mac filesystem depends on two forks, but only one is used for pc compatibility. I had problems getting schoolwork home *because* macs files dont need extensions while my pc gasped as I had to append them and change filenames. [MacOS 7 to-or-from windows 95 days sucked in both systems]
2- the system libraries comment... no, i meant my test pgms were small. the libraries reference is about having external code called and thus possible external dialogs and weird outofrange untranslatable message boxes.
3- i love freeware, but by the time i got my mind set on trying to translate, someone already had translated the code and helped the creator. good for me, i guess. but seriously, many mac ppl feel comfortable about translations done to THEIR code because their SOURCE isn't leaked in the process. so they dont feel the threat of plagiarized utilities.
4- i feel good about Opera and some pgms that nowadays come with files containing languages. simple, one program file, different language files. it makes a compact and good-to-change setup. kudos. i love using alterante versions of windows and seeing that the menus arent in english. i feel like i got more out of my (free) downloads.
WARNING: Translating code is the most menial task since data input. Not for the faint hearted or those of you looking for a quick distraction from, er, computer science projects due soon.
/. journal shortly, brings back memories], and then with a genealogy program that came in French. The translation wasn't to English, but here are two things I will tell you
Alright, now, to my humble expericence:
Back in 2001 or so I began using the MacOS as a testing ground. For those of you playing the home game, before OS X, each file consisted of a "resource fork" and a "data fork." This is part of the filesystem pain that made my highschool work impossible to take home: mac files use the proprietary resource fork for things like icons, filetype information (whoot, I love NOT needing extensios) and menu information.
To make the story short, I used Res[ource]Edit to peek the contents of strings that go in menus and dialog boxes, and if you know the Mac OS, it's NO DOS! So plenty of valuable data can be altered without needing source code, and it's frigging cool how you can "localize code" without needing the source.
Anyway, I used it for personal purposes with GerryIcq back when ICQ for the mac had been at version 1.72 for a whole year or so [this will be in my
1) It is very tedious! Those programs are very small indeed, around 1MB each. System 7 and System 8 programs dont rely as much on system libraries (*cough*,CarbonLib,*die*) and thus the process isn't intimidating systemwise. However, you get to face hundreds of small lines, requiring several mouseclicks and tabbing through modifiable textfields. Definitely NOT for single members or ppl needing a vacation.
2) I screwed up text a lot, because of wrong key presses. This is ResEdit's fault mostly, but the relevancy is that you may get the wrong translated text into the wrong dialog without realizing it till you test-run a few times. So be careful.
Well, it's late, but I like this topic because I love windows, but it never gave me the oportunity to edit code without dissasembling it first. However, I am speaking more about pet projects where you might wanna contribute to the program creator. Again, more in my journal before next week --I am sleepy now.
...damn few people use MSN Messenger or Yahoo
;) ICQ was the leading worldwide messenger, perhaps, as you can see in their wide range of localization options.
I am not very sure if that's true outside the US. Remember that AOL has strongholds in Australia, England and the US. In all other places you have to rely on either local programs to communicate, or word of mouth and product loyalty from the internet giants back in early nineties. There come yahoo and hotmail and their respective IM services... but hold that thought
I think that most of the success of AOL IM here is that it was just forced onto the AOL system and there was nothing else to do to get messaging to work. So any newbie in the 90s with AOL could get the power of messaging in the US. As someone said here, AOL was probably "the training wheels" of a majority of us when the internet was still pretty young.
Well, anyway, I have friends in the Caribbean that have never heard the name of AOL. Their service there is MSN IM, or even Yahoo IM. In fact, I have been really annoyed at having to get Messenger on my system just because they don't know AIM. International students other than me, from Africa and Europe who I met in college were more likely to have an ICQ account and give it out. The American college system spoiled them into using AIM, though. First jointly, and then, uniquely.
Those students all know yahoo and microsoft's hotmail and therefore it's natural to have adopted their messengers. But I believe AOL didn't have a hold of the world in messaging, though I may be pulling this out of my butt
just my 2 cents. i hope someone has a link to factual data so that i can see if this, is true after all these years of pondering about it.
I had just made a journal entry about this issue: :)
how can i set a quota on solitaire's use on my box?
dad will now have to find a second hobby or some other box. thanks, slashdot!