Recently, my roommate got a renewal letter from Rolling Stone magazine that asked "What went wrong?" since he had no plans for renewal.
I remember the Gibson episode from either last year or the previous (the maniacal computer trying to destroy his creators) and thought that it was a well done episode. I missed the credits last night, and did not recall anything in the promos talking about Gibson, but if the prior post is correct and he was responsible for that episode, I must ask, "What went wrong?"
My answers, acting, plausibility, and acting. To start off, the acting in this episode was lackluster. The Lone Gunmen were not the usual paranoid freaks that we love. Their entrance is simply proof that we aren't in for the usual quality when they're involved. Next, Scully and Mulder seemed like hack jobs compared to the normal characterization Duchovny and Anderson give in "normal" episodes. And finally what was up with Phoebe? A programmer definitely does not just repeatedly hit one button to kill a program. (I usually use a variety of kill commands in an attempt to remove a process).
Next, plausibility. Gibson's previous X-File gave us a wild, if not always plausible, ride. A computer that gains the notion of intelligence and oversees the survival of the species rule. Definitely not unique in concept, but well written and exciting. This X-File started with a semi-plausible concept (albeit overdone) in a mix of Quake with Lazer Tag or Paintball. I've participated in the two styles (computer FPS and real-life FPS Lazer Tag) and the combination of the two would be interesting. But after the initial intro with the three guys in the arena, everything seemed inplausible. The Lone Gunmen didn't aid in plausibility by being drooling geeks. In fact, the only plausible moments come from the greedy project leader and the awe filled moment while watching the best FPS player go in. That was plausible cause we all know guys that would drool at the chance to watch John Carmack take on his own creation. We may even be those guys. Beyond those moments, nothing seemed to flow correctly.
Finally, the acting. Yeah, I've already gone over the acting, but it's worth mentioning once again how hacked the performances were. Like the tense moment in the fight for the keyboard, I was tensely waiting for the episode to begin shining. I'm still tense with anticipation, but the episode ended 16 hours ago, and it's not showing any signs of getting better.
Sorry if I spoiled the rerun for anybody, but you'll probably forget in the year it takes for them to replay it anyway. And then you too can truly groan at the horrible X-File that was aired last night.
Did anyone really expect the Bible name references? Or were you secretly hoping that the codename was a nod to the cult classic starring Matthew Broderick, "WarGames". Of course, I don't remember if there was a character || actor by the name of Samuel in that movie cause then maybe the guys at Ars just weren't thinking of WOPR. I know that everytime I hear the name Joshua, I think of Professor Falken.
I am on a crusade to complain about bad moderation. The recent crop of moderators has not been doing their job as detailed in the Guidelines. I was recently a moderator, and read the Guidelines. I moderated fairly. Yesterday I was moderated poorly, and today this post was moderated poorly.
The topic of this blurb is LINUX WORD PROCESSOR SHOWDOWN, thus a message about a problem that elflord is having whilst using KOffice, (a Word Processor reviewed in the above article, if you'd care to read it!) is in fact NOT OFFTOPIC. It is in fact personal experience. Maybe the moderators have complete mastery of Linux, and therefore don't need people to provide information about trials with software package x. However, most people using Linux rely on others to say what their experiences include. Then they make the decision to run the package.
I am on a crusade to stop bad moderation, and I will post responses to every response that is treated unfairly.
I am asking that the troll for my response below the AC response to this statement be fixed. If you will read this thread, my statement below (response back to AC) is in perfect condition due to the discussion here. I was not stating that Katz always writes drivel. I was stating that the previously pulled article was drivel. Thus why it was pulled. (READ THE FUCKING THREAD BEFORE YOU MODERATE, AND MAYBE PICK UP THE GUIDELINES EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.) Sorry about the shouting, but I just had moderator status last week, and well, the guidelines are nice and detailed about how you should use your responsibility. Plus, if you had seen that this thread was only about the disappearance, the worst it should get is Off topic, and definitely not Troll, if you read the thread.
Primarily I'm complaining cause I'm within context of this discussion stemming from my #2 post. please read it and then make your almighty decisions.
Yahoo.com is reporting yet another DoS type attack. It appears that the attack was based from Holland, MI company slashdot.org, a site owned by andover.net. A mid-level spokesperson was quoted as saying, "Why does this keep happening?"
In an unrelated incident, a new breed of DeCSS, the program developed by hacker Jon Johannsen to allow copying of DVDs, has begun to appear on several mirrors. Internet users have reported that their favorite sites seem to look different after running the program. A hacker by the name of "Kry848y" wrote, "We finally decided we'd had enough of the MPAA's shit, so we decided to fsck with them some more."
Meanwhile, Natalia Portman was unavailable for comment.
Re:More harm than good?
on
A New DeCSS
·
· Score: 1
My take on it was that it's better this way. Most everyone has their copy of the code, and if you don't Cryptome.org was still carrying the DVD-Hoy-Reply.htm a few days ago (like late last week) complete with Exhibit B. So it's still available. i think the time for letting everyone get their copy isn't over, but if you've missed the ball by now, then you're living sans internet. That said, I think it's time to pull this hack in as many ways we can. I think there should be multiple languages used in both DeCSS versions, that we should create converters to switch it all back to the original format. Anything to have fun with their heads. There may be 100s of them working on this, even 1000s but how long does it take for me to put up a page with 5 links on it?
point is, we now have a simple way to cause them delays. let's do it and give the EFF more time to strengthen their case.
But I've never heard of anyone getting coke instead of dr. pepper. AFAIK in the south it's the 'default' soda that's generic. So you can order a coke and get a pepsi and have recieved what you ordered. But dr. pepper, rc cola, mello yello, etc. are generally ordered specifically.
Well, the only time I have ever had that happen to me was while I was in Wisconsin, and of course, I'm not sure if they even had Dr. Pepper up there. But that's into my dialect diatribe, (and yes, I do believe that vernacular disparities are a form of dialect instances).
It may also change from areas in the south. In Texas, a coke can mean a Dr. Pepper, but Dr. Pepper being a Texas thing also attributes to the fact that most Texans won't disparage the Dr. Pepper name by asking for a coke first. I'm a quasi-Texan (I've lived here longer than any other state).
Trademark law has one important difference from copyright law, and that's the "enforce it or lose it" clause. If Apple didn't go after these and other unauthorized uses of its trademarks, it could end up losing the rights to them. It's much worse with words, and Xerox has a never-ending battle to avoid having their company name become a generic word.
I agree that it's important to police the use of your rights. But in the case of Xerox, I wonder just a few things. You folks in the north (US) call a carbonated beverage either a soda or pop (depends where you are) in general. But the people from the south call a carbonated beverage coke. It's really confusing when you switch locales, because if I go up there and order a coke, I get a Coke, but I really wanted a Dr. Pepper. Likewise, you come here, and ask for a Coke, and then are mystified when you learn that we have more than one "flavor" of coke.
In the case of business use (like Kinko's) offering Xerox copies, they better be using Xerox, I agree. But interestingly enough, they didn't focus on the same sort of approach as Coke. The term xerox has found a way into the vernacular as a verb and should be appreciated by Xerox. It means they are the de facto, and are therefore respected (hopefully). Thus if a usage involves the verb xerox and not Xerox, they should be pleased. I don't go canonize a few copies, not only is it sacreligious, but it sounds silly. I go xerox a few copies.
Note: the use of upper and lower case is important to my message.
Just a side note, you could of course "double"* your speed to hard drive access by going to Ultra66. This assumes two things, 1) you haven't done so, 2) you have Ultra66 capable hard drives.
* This does not double your drive access speed, but does increase performance, and it's pretty common in new hard drives, but can't say that it's standard yet on the boards. I've only recently been seeing daughtercards for connecting these. And all the stuff I've read is of course for Windows, so i don't know linux's capabilities.
Just a side note, resume with discussion about AMD's awesome processor and Intel's inability to keep up.
I find myself agreeing with the article (and the one prior still on 32Bits) but a big why is surfacing in my head. Not why are they doing this... That much is obvious if you actually care to read the articles like the one above and you're not nuts enough to think that it sounds too conspiratorial. But my why involves the fact that this sort of thing has happened elsewhere, and that this is the first time it's been made into a federal case. Why didn't Sony ever go after the mod chip business? is an example of what I'm trying to get at. This attack seems like a big corporation or association attempting to protect the region blocks in place. (PAL/NTSC should always be in everyone's mind) So what makes a hardware piece less legitimate for the type of lawsuit they're bringing? The mod chip lets you play games designed for use only in Japan or burned copies. There exists PAL/NTSC converters. What's really different about this piece of software? Why go after someone who reverse engineers in software rather than hardware? That's what's bugging me.
<i>If other American companies adopted Ford's model, the technological gap looming between the middle-class and underclass would begin to close. The United States workforce would become the most technologically sophisticated in the world. The high-tech workforce would expand dramatically, along with the educational, cultural, social and economic benefits of computing still unavailable to more than half the American population.
New kinds of programmers and computer users would surge online, perhaps bringing new ideas and approaches to programming, software and the nature of the Net and Web.</i>
Examining it further will truly show that he failed to consider a few things. A factory worker or any other worker who receives a shiny new PC from his corporation is not going to magically transform into a superflying, hotshot programming ace. This move is not going to spur bouts of creativity, other than that of the innovative ways that MSMoney lets you manage your checkbook.
However, Jon's statement also holds truth. For many of us who ended up in IT/Dev positions, it's because we had access to computers as children. But back then it was different. MS BSOD didn't pop up every time we tried to push harder on the computer, and many of us probably ignored the limits that were "imposed". But windows, the glut of computer games, and the lack of tools to muck with the interior stuff changed that. It is a sad state of affairs when the kids today don't have even an introductory programming language like BASIC on their home PCs because I believe learning the logic required for good programming helps skills all around.
Yes and no, the move by Ford was good. But the past errors (like removing BASIC programming tools) won't help make up for crafty programmers anytime in the near future.
Forgive me if we've done this one before. I have a short term memory for most of them. But then again this has a twist that really shows AMD's primary problem.
My computer is: Intel & Retail store bought Intel & I built it AMD & Retail store bought AMD & I built it
where Retail store bought covers all cases where you bought a prepackaged, preassembled machine (even Dell and Gateway count, even though you "select your components". Technically you're not selecting components unless you can choose anything you want, not from a dropdown list of three items.) I built it thus means the opposite. You had full control of what went into your system, even if you didn't actually physically connect components etc.
jon, I've been both a fan and a critic. Your recent writing really seems an attempt to grab a motivation as powerful as the Hellmouth series.
my question then is,
Are you attempting to be the head of this beast for political guidance or are you attempting to be the tail to concisely package the actual news that does filter through this system and our opinions for the mainstream media readership that uses/. for breaking tech stories?
1. Read Slashdot story X. 2. Read Slashdot story Y. 3. Read Slashdot story Z. 4. Read into Slashdot story X. Let this affect you personally. 5. Read into Slashdot story Y. Let this affect you personally. 6. Read into Slashdot story Z. Find (usually contrive) a common plot. 7. Reread Slashdot stories X and Y. Use contrived plot to aid in providing desired results. 8. Create new words to aid in describing plot. 9. Write story. 10. Liberally use the word 'Net' in rewrite. 11. Post story. 12. Wait for comments to pour in. 13. Remember comments are useful in next article, so select a choice few. 14. Repeat process.
The Chinese already have firewalls in place to control incoming content (or at least I read that somewhere a while back, so it's probably already come to fruition). Thus, while they may be able to get out, I would guess that those types of plans by radicals are already taken into acct, and don't occur. I don't know, though. Anyone done a search of Geocities (et. al) to determine if Chinese nationals can put up negative sites about China?
I'm not sure about nVidia. Glide was a proprietary driver from 3Dfx (it's OS now too). But OpenGL was initially drafted as a standard 3D lib. Not quite sure on much of the other details, but simply put, it's a matter of one standard across the board irregardless of whether you've got a TNT or a VooDoo (or whatever).
Thank you. I just stared at that and thought "HUH?!?!"
Plus now I'd like to contend something in relevance to that sentence. I'd say that while the internet was never intended to be the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men, it was in fact intended to be the sole preserve of technologically skilled people. It still remains that way in many fashions.
Example time, boys and girls, so sit down and listen...
Both my girlfriend and I have graduated college. I have a BSCS and she has a BA-International Studies. We have both used monster.com as a resource for finding a job, but while I can solely rely on putting my resume on monster and then sitting around sipping Martinis, she actually has to search for a job. Her search words include "development" in the sense of developing programs/initiatives in the non-profit world. My search words include "development" in the sense of programs in the software industry.
Guess which types of jobs get sent to both of us? Even though monster is intended to be a job board in general, high-tech drives it.
The internet is still a preserve for technologically skilled people, because we are in the driver's seat. And arguably the majority of developers do fall into the category of young white male. Likewise, in earlier forms of media, the industry drivers tended to be older white males (and still do).
I will concede that now the Internet is a good communication tool for everyone, but to outright state that is was never meant as the preserve of technologically skilled people is ludicrous. Jon, please review your subject's history (where your subject is almost always "The Net") and tell me honestly that you can stand by that statement.
The Internet was never conceived as the sole preserve anyone as a the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men.
I'm not sure that it is actually a sentence by definition of grammar. Sure it has a subject and a verb, but I'm not sure about the object of this sentence. Please elaborate.
OTOH, I've read the past 3 days of articles by Mr. Katz, and I've determined that if he dares call himself a libertarian, then I've got issues with that. YES, there is a problem with ACs at times, and YES there are some people who abuse by flaming. More moderation is _not_ needed. The system is working fine. Esp. with the addition of Karma.
I learned long ago that you cannot set your standard of people too high, lest you wish to be constantly disappointed. You can however set what you will tolerate exposure to, especially at/. It's that little dropdown box on each page that orders comments, and filters them.
Since it is user initiated, it is a wonderful system. So, if you are disappointed with the way things are going in a thread, and wish to increase your S/N ratio, use it! But as already mentioned, the S/N ratio is already high. I would almost stake all of my karma points on this one wager: Online or offline, the amount of crap you hear/take is equivalent. (One caveat, this equivalence relies on the fact that you will act the same online as offline and choose what you wish to actually listen to)
Honestly, I thought Transmeta was going to announce their intentions to destroy the world by rereleasing "New Coke" in the form of a giant stream from outer space unless the monopoly known as Microsoft was brought to their knees and humbled. Thoroughly.
BeOS 4.5 used a similar method, and no harmful partitioning was necessary. It did ship with a special version of Partition Magic or something like that (not fips unfortunately), and left an icon on your desktop that when you clicked it, Windows would shut down and Be would magically start up. It probably works like the previous procedure.
I'm wanting to know how they manage Linux+Be on one box (no Window$), because it's obviously not going to sit on my desktop as a.exe(cutable) so I'm not going to be able (maybe) to get away with not partitioning for Be.
I'm going to guess they haven't thought this one through all the way, or at least the author of the FAQ doesn't have all the info.
Okay, I recall the "Geeks" story. It seems to me it's been in print before, but I can't recall where. Anyone seen it before?
They end up in Chicago, livin' la vida malo for a while and finally get hired and then things turn around. Nice heartstring tugging story... really. One of the five archetypal stories (Horatio Alger style).
Anyway, did Katz originally do this in a Wired or Time mag? And besides the obvious draw for wonderful artistic license (not the Artistic License Perl has) with Hollywood dramatization, do we really need another Rags to Riches story (only this time ala Geek)?
This will not go down as one of the top ten geek movies. Those spaces are reserved for classics like Tron, Wargames, Sneakers, The Matrix, and the original trilogy, etc.
Maybe this movie will bolster public opinion that geeks are people too, but I'm going to say that they still want action like the nefarious identity thief in The Net (a movie that has no doubt influenced Katz greatly).
In short, Katz has continued to follow the rules set by many English teachers. And no writer can become great until s/he can understand those rules to a point where s/he can break them.
Slashdot Mirror
Recently, my roommate got a renewal letter from Rolling Stone magazine that asked "What went wrong?" since he had no plans for renewal.
I remember the Gibson episode from either last year or the previous (the maniacal computer trying to destroy his creators) and thought that it was a well done episode. I missed the credits last night, and did not recall anything in the promos talking about Gibson, but if the prior post is correct and he was responsible for that episode, I must ask, "What went wrong?"
My answers, acting, plausibility, and acting. To start off, the acting in this episode was lackluster. The Lone Gunmen were not the usual paranoid freaks that we love. Their entrance is simply proof that we aren't in for the usual quality when they're involved. Next, Scully and Mulder seemed like hack jobs compared to the normal characterization Duchovny and Anderson give in "normal" episodes. And finally what was up with Phoebe? A programmer definitely does not just repeatedly hit one button to kill a program. (I usually use a variety of kill commands in an attempt to remove a process).
Next, plausibility. Gibson's previous X-File gave us a wild, if not always plausible, ride. A computer that gains the notion of intelligence and oversees the survival of the species rule. Definitely not unique in concept, but well written and exciting. This X-File started with a semi-plausible concept (albeit overdone) in a mix of Quake with Lazer Tag or Paintball. I've participated in the two styles (computer FPS and real-life FPS Lazer Tag) and the combination of the two would be interesting. But after the initial intro with the three guys in the arena, everything seemed inplausible. The Lone Gunmen didn't aid in plausibility by being drooling geeks. In fact, the only plausible moments come from the greedy project leader and the awe filled moment while watching the best FPS player go in. That was plausible cause we all know guys that would drool at the chance to watch John Carmack take on his own creation. We may even be those guys. Beyond those moments, nothing seemed to flow correctly.
Finally, the acting. Yeah, I've already gone over the acting, but it's worth mentioning once again how hacked the performances were. Like the tense moment in the fight for the keyboard, I was tensely waiting for the episode to begin shining. I'm still tense with anticipation, but the episode ended 16 hours ago, and it's not showing any signs of getting better.
Sorry if I spoiled the rerun for anybody, but you'll probably forget in the year it takes for them to replay it anyway. And then you too can truly groan at the horrible X-File that was aired last night.
Maybe they're not the scanning tunneling microscopes of days long past, but I remember seeing atoms in 1993 (Carbon atoms I believe).
Do these get us down to hydrogen and helium sized atoms? What's so special, in other words?
Now give me a microscope to view electrons or smaller, and then we'll talk about revolutionary.
Did anyone really expect the Bible name references? Or were you secretly hoping that the codename was a nod to the cult classic starring Matthew Broderick, "WarGames". Of course, I don't remember if there was a character || actor by the name of Samuel in that movie cause then maybe the guys at Ars just weren't thinking of WOPR. I know that everytime I hear the name Joshua, I think of Professor Falken.
Oh well. It would have been cool though.
I am on a crusade to complain about bad moderation. The recent crop of moderators has not been doing their job as detailed in the Guidelines. I was recently a moderator, and read the Guidelines. I moderated fairly. Yesterday I was moderated poorly, and today this post was moderated poorly.
The topic of this blurb is LINUX WORD PROCESSOR SHOWDOWN, thus a message about a problem that elflord is having whilst using KOffice, (a Word Processor reviewed in the above article, if you'd care to read it!) is in fact NOT OFFTOPIC. It is in fact personal experience. Maybe the moderators have complete mastery of Linux, and therefore don't need people to provide information about trials with software package x. However, most people using Linux rely on others to say what their experiences include. Then they make the decision to run the package.
I am on a crusade to stop bad moderation, and I will post responses to every response that is treated unfairly.
Karma:19 and dropping???
I am asking that the troll for my response below the AC response to this statement be fixed. If you will read this thread, my statement below (response back to AC) is in perfect condition due to the discussion here. I was not stating that Katz always writes drivel. I was stating that the previously pulled article was drivel. Thus why it was pulled. (READ THE FUCKING THREAD BEFORE YOU MODERATE, AND MAYBE PICK UP THE GUIDELINES EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.) Sorry about the shouting, but I just had moderator status last week, and well, the guidelines are nice and detailed about how you should use your responsibility. Plus, if you had seen that this thread was only about the disappearance, the worst it should get is Off topic, and definitely not Troll, if you read the thread.
Primarily I'm complaining cause I'm within context of this discussion stemming from my #2 post. please read it and then make your almighty decisions.
Karma:19 and dropping???
I didn't spend enough time to read it... I figured I would just give my two cents without wasting my time reading his drivel.
What happened to Jon's article about importance of newspapers?
RUETERS: February 18, 2000
Yahoo.com is reporting yet another DoS type attack. It appears that the attack was based from Holland, MI company slashdot.org, a site owned by andover.net. A mid-level spokesperson was quoted as saying, "Why does this keep happening?"
In an unrelated incident, a new breed of DeCSS, the program developed by hacker Jon Johannsen to allow copying of DVDs, has begun to appear on several mirrors. Internet users have reported that their favorite sites seem to look different after running the program. A hacker by the name of "Kry848y" wrote, "We finally decided we'd had enough of the MPAA's shit, so we decided to fsck with them some more."
Meanwhile, Natalia Portman was unavailable for comment.
My take on it was that it's better this way. Most everyone has their copy of the code, and if you don't Cryptome.org was still carrying the DVD-Hoy-Reply.htm a few days ago (like late last week) complete with Exhibit B. So it's still available. i think the time for letting everyone get their copy isn't over, but if you've missed the ball by now, then you're living sans internet. That said, I think it's time to pull this hack in as many ways we can. I think there should be multiple languages used in both DeCSS versions, that we should create converters to switch it all back to the original format. Anything to have fun with their heads. There may be 100s of them working on this, even 1000s but how long does it take for me to put up a page with 5 links on it?
point is, we now have a simple way to cause them delays. let's do it and give the EFF more time to strengthen their case.
Well, the only time I have ever had that happen to me was while I was in Wisconsin, and of course, I'm not sure if they even had Dr. Pepper up there. But that's into my dialect diatribe, (and yes, I do believe that vernacular disparities are a form of dialect instances).
It may also change from areas in the south. In Texas, a coke can mean a Dr. Pepper, but Dr. Pepper being a Texas thing also attributes to the fact that most Texans won't disparage the Dr. Pepper name by asking for a coke first. I'm a quasi-Texan (I've lived here longer than any other state).
I agree that it's important to police the use of your rights. But in the case of Xerox, I wonder just a few things. You folks in the north (US) call a carbonated beverage either a soda or pop (depends where you are) in general. But the people from the south call a carbonated beverage coke. It's really confusing when you switch locales, because if I go up there and order a coke, I get a Coke, but I really wanted a Dr. Pepper. Likewise, you come here, and ask for a Coke, and then are mystified when you learn that we have more than one "flavor" of coke.
In the case of business use (like Kinko's) offering Xerox copies, they better be using Xerox, I agree. But interestingly enough, they didn't focus on the same sort of approach as Coke. The term xerox has found a way into the vernacular as a verb and should be appreciated by Xerox. It means they are the de facto, and are therefore respected (hopefully). Thus if a usage involves the verb xerox and not Xerox, they should be pleased. I don't go canonize a few copies, not only is it sacreligious, but it sounds silly. I go xerox a few copies.
Note: the use of upper and lower case is important to my message.
Just a side note, you could of course "double"* your speed to hard drive access by going to Ultra66. This assumes two things, 1) you haven't done so, 2) you have Ultra66 capable hard drives.
* This does not double your drive access speed, but does increase performance, and it's pretty common in new hard drives, but can't say that it's standard yet on the boards. I've only recently been seeing daughtercards for connecting these. And all the stuff I've read is of course for Windows, so i don't know linux's capabilities.
Just a side note, resume with discussion about AMD's awesome processor and Intel's inability to keep up.
Or were you wishing that there were shareware products to change the ? to the proper character?
I find myself agreeing with the article (and the one prior still on 32Bits) but a big why is surfacing in my head. Not why are they doing this... That much is obvious if you actually care to read the articles like the one above and you're not nuts enough to think that it sounds too conspiratorial. But my why involves the fact that this sort of thing has happened elsewhere, and that this is the first time it's been made into a federal case. Why didn't Sony ever go after the mod chip business? is an example of what I'm trying to get at. This attack seems like a big corporation or association attempting to protect the region blocks in place. (PAL/NTSC should always be in everyone's mind) So what makes a hardware piece less legitimate for the type of lawsuit they're bringing? The mod chip lets you play games designed for use only in Japan or burned copies. There exists PAL/NTSC converters. What's really different about this piece of software? Why go after someone who reverse engineers in software rather than hardware? That's what's bugging me.
Jon's statement here is reaching:
<i>If other American companies adopted Ford's model, the technological gap looming between the middle-class and underclass would begin to close. The United States workforce would become the most technologically sophisticated in the world. The high-tech workforce would expand dramatically, along with the educational, cultural, social and economic benefits of computing still unavailable to more than half the American population.
New kinds of programmers and computer users would surge online, perhaps bringing new ideas and approaches to programming, software and the nature of the Net and Web.</i>
Examining it further will truly show that he failed to consider a few things. A factory worker or any other worker who receives a shiny new PC from his corporation is not going to magically transform into a superflying, hotshot programming ace. This move is not going to spur bouts of creativity, other than that of the innovative ways that MSMoney lets you manage your checkbook.
However, Jon's statement also holds truth. For many of us who ended up in IT/Dev positions, it's because we had access to computers as children. But back then it was different. MS BSOD didn't pop up every time we tried to push harder on the computer, and many of us probably ignored the limits that were "imposed". But windows, the glut of computer games, and the lack of tools to muck with the interior stuff changed that. It is a sad state of affairs when the kids today don't have even an introductory programming language like BASIC on their home PCs because I believe learning the logic required for good programming helps skills all around.
Yes and no, the move by Ford was good. But the past errors (like removing BASIC programming tools) won't help make up for crafty programmers anytime in the near future.
Forgive me if we've done this one before. I have a short term memory for most of them. But then again this has a twist that really shows AMD's primary problem.
My computer is:
Intel & Retail store bought
Intel & I built it
AMD & Retail store bought
AMD & I built it
where Retail store bought covers all cases where you bought a prepackaged, preassembled machine (even Dell and Gateway count, even though you "select your components". Technically you're not selecting components unless you can choose anything you want, not from a dropdown list of three items.) I built it thus means the opposite. You had full control of what went into your system, even if you didn't actually physically connect components etc.
Therein lies AMD's problem.
jon, I've been both a fan and a critic. Your recent writing really seems an attempt to grab a motivation as powerful as the Hellmouth series.
/. for breaking tech stories?
my question then is,
Are you attempting to be the head of this beast for political guidance or are you attempting to be the tail to concisely package the actual news that does filter through this system and our opinions for the mainstream media readership that uses
Mike Ford
Apologies to any current HOWTO maintainer...
1. Read Slashdot story X.
2. Read Slashdot story Y.
3. Read Slashdot story Z.
4. Read into Slashdot story X. Let this affect you personally.
5. Read into Slashdot story Y. Let this affect you personally.
6. Read into Slashdot story Z. Find (usually contrive) a common plot.
7. Reread Slashdot stories X and Y. Use contrived plot to aid in providing desired results.
8. Create new words to aid in describing plot.
9. Write story.
10. Liberally use the word 'Net' in rewrite.
11. Post story.
12. Wait for comments to pour in.
13. Remember comments are useful in next article, so select a choice few.
14. Repeat process.
The Chinese already have firewalls in place to control incoming content (or at least I read that somewhere a while back, so it's probably already come to fruition). Thus, while they may be able to get out, I would guess that those types of plans by radicals are already taken into acct, and don't occur. I don't know, though. Anyone done a search of Geocities (et. al) to determine if Chinese nationals can put up negative sites about China?
Glide 2/3 != OpenGL (in the case of 3Dfx)
I'm not sure about nVidia. Glide was a proprietary driver from 3Dfx (it's OS now too). But OpenGL was initially drafted as a standard 3D lib. Not quite sure on much of the other details, but simply put, it's a matter of one standard across the board irregardless of whether you've got a TNT or a VooDoo (or whatever).
Thank you. I just stared at that and thought "HUH?!?!"
Plus now I'd like to contend something in relevance to that sentence. I'd say that while the internet was never intended to be the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men, it was in fact intended to be the sole preserve of technologically skilled people. It still remains that way in many fashions.
Example time, boys and girls, so sit down and listen...
Both my girlfriend and I have graduated college. I have a BSCS and she has a BA-International Studies. We have both used monster.com as a resource for finding a job, but while I can solely rely on putting my resume on monster and then sitting around sipping Martinis, she actually has to search for a job. Her search words include "development" in the sense of developing programs/initiatives in the non-profit world. My search words include "development" in the sense of programs in the software industry.
Guess which types of jobs get sent to both of us? Even though monster is intended to be a job board in general, high-tech drives it.
The internet is still a preserve for technologically skilled people, because we are in the driver's seat. And arguably the majority of developers do fall into the category of young white male. Likewise, in earlier forms of media, the industry drivers tended to be older white males (and still do).
I will concede that now the Internet is a good communication tool for everyone, but to outright state that is was never meant as the preserve of technologically skilled people is ludicrous. Jon, please review your subject's history (where your subject is almost always "The Net") and tell me honestly that you can stand by that statement.
I can't figure this one out. Can you?
/. It's that little dropdown box on each page that orders comments, and filters them.
The Internet was never conceived as the sole preserve anyone as a the sole preserve of technologically skilled young white men.
I'm not sure that it is actually a sentence by definition of grammar. Sure it has a subject and a verb, but I'm not sure about the object of this sentence. Please elaborate.
OTOH, I've read the past 3 days of articles by Mr. Katz, and I've determined that if he dares call himself a libertarian, then I've got issues with that. YES, there is a problem with ACs at times, and YES there are some people who abuse by flaming. More moderation is _not_ needed. The system is working fine. Esp. with the addition of Karma.
I learned long ago that you cannot set your standard of people too high, lest you wish to be constantly disappointed. You can however set what you will tolerate exposure to, especially at
Since it is user initiated, it is a wonderful system. So, if you are disappointed with the way things are going in a thread, and wish to increase your S/N ratio, use it! But as already mentioned, the S/N ratio is already high. I would almost stake all of my karma points on this one wager: Online or offline, the amount of crap you hear/take is equivalent. (One caveat, this equivalence relies on the fact that you will act the same online as offline and choose what you wish to actually listen to)
Honestly, I thought Transmeta was going to announce their intentions to destroy the world by rereleasing "New Coke" in the form of a giant stream from outer space unless the monopoly known as Microsoft was brought to their knees and humbled. Thoroughly.
But I guess a webpad is cool too.
BeOS 4.5 used a similar method, and no harmful partitioning was necessary. It did ship with a special version of Partition Magic or something like that (not fips unfortunately), and left an icon on your desktop that when you clicked it, Windows would shut down and Be would magically start up. It probably works like the previous procedure.
.exe(cutable) so I'm not going to be able (maybe) to get away with not partitioning for Be.
I'm wanting to know how they manage Linux+Be on one box (no Window$), because it's obviously not going to sit on my desktop as a
I'm going to guess they haven't thought this one through all the way, or at least the author of the FAQ doesn't have all the info.
Okay, I recall the "Geeks" story. It seems to me it's been in print before, but I can't recall where. Anyone seen it before?
They end up in Chicago, livin' la vida malo for a while and finally get hired and then things turn around. Nice heartstring tugging story... really. One of the five archetypal stories (Horatio Alger style).
Anyway, did Katz originally do this in a Wired or Time mag? And besides the obvious draw for wonderful artistic license (not the Artistic License Perl has) with Hollywood dramatization, do we really need another Rags to Riches story (only this time ala Geek)?
This will not go down as one of the top ten geek movies. Those spaces are reserved for classics like Tron, Wargames, Sneakers, The Matrix, and the original trilogy, etc.
Maybe this movie will bolster public opinion that geeks are people too, but I'm going to say that they still want action like the nefarious identity thief in The Net (a movie that has no doubt influenced Katz greatly).
In short, Katz has continued to follow the rules set by many English teachers. And no writer can become great until s/he can understand those rules to a point where s/he can break them.