To be honest, "fake" ads dragging you to a hateful, malware-spewing website is rather tame. The real fun was the banner ads that infected you directly, simply by viewing the flash.
*Sigh* Just another reason to use adblock and noscript.
.......except if the network goes down, you have no internet connection and can't do any of those things to begin with!
... unless you have some html files on your local hard drive that contain links to java apps, also on your local drive, with which to perform actual work in your browser?
Geez, does no one have an original thought any more? Browsers don't need network access in order to function, it simply increases the available amount of accessible information.
On a semi-related note, I'm still pissed at Microsoft for removing Active Desktop from Windows Vista. Not only does it kill the functionality of things like my web-enabled desktop pointing at a local html file with my most commonly used apps and documents as links (as well as my commonly-used web links), but it breaks purely aesthetic apps, like Drempels and Winamp (visualizations as desktop backgrounds, not the music-playing capability).
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it appeared to me that the BIOS-based "browser OS" idea was booting quickly into a limited-functionality system, then running that while your "monolithic OS of choice" was booting behind the scenes, so to speak. In other words, you go play on the net 4 seconds after pressing the power button, so you're not sitting there watching a colorful and skillfully created "loading..." animation for 3 minutes while your system wakes up - you're getting "fr1s+ ps0t" on slashdot, instead.
In addition, this makes some seriously slick OS-agnostic office productivity apps viable (with a little tinkering); imagine running your apps in a browser window connected to a server on the local subnet (can you say corporate intranet homepage?), so you can run into the office 3 minutes late, catch the phone that's ringing, and be booted into a functional database application by the time you sit down in your swivel chair and set down your coffee. No more "hang on a sec, my computer is slow this morning" when your customer wants to buy top-end hardware from you...
... I used to do that all the time when I was a kid...
I'm in my thirties, and still doing it - it's amazing just how powerful that 5-10 year old machine is, when it's "just" running a CLI mode "server" OS...
We should just run cat5 to all of our neighbors' houses, and sidestep the ISPs, doing the same for the internet that F/OSS has done for operating systems. Yes, someone has to have a good (ie, pricey) internet connection, but I'm willing to bet that a feed large enough for your block could be had for less than each individual connection is currently costing.
Doing it with wireless N routers instead would eliminate the cabling requirements, as well... admittedly, it increases the lag, but if the ISP suddenly starts losing customers a few blocks at a time, maybe the rates will drop on the lower-latency existing infrastructure.
Of course there are issues with this idea, but nothing is perfect. If you find this to be an untenable plan, come up with a better one (and share it with us).
Take the power away from the monopoly, and we start to see more/better competition in the marketplace.
So you'll stand by me when they try to censor my religion, but you're okay with censoring what your child gets because you don't agree with religion?
Hypocrite, you just fell into the typical stereo type for someone who claims they are atheists.
You aren't an atheist, you're afraid of religion. A true atheist wouldn't be afraid of it, they just wouldn't care. I'm not sure what priest molested you or raped you, but you need to look deeper into why you're so afraid of religion, and start practicing what you preach.
Read your post again, you are exactly what you are talking about in religious people.
Please stop claiming to be atheist until you confront your fears, you make the rest of us look stupid.
Actually, an atheist doesn't care about your God. I think all of us have many reasons to fear religion. Crusades, Jihads, what have you... religion has killed more people on this planet than money... oh, wait.
Theres a shocker, someone does something you don't agree with so you scream 'censorship by the evil company'.
Ever wonder why normal people don't care about this shit and look at you like your stupid when you whine about it?
Ever hear of the boy who cried wolf?
Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean its censorship.
From dictionary.com:
censorship [sen-ser-ship]
noun
1. the act or practice of censoring....
censor [sen-ser]
noun
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2. any person who supervises the manners or morality of others....
verb (used with object)
6. to examine and act upon as a censor.
7. to delete (a word or passage of text) in one's capacity as a censor.
(some text censored as irrelevant to the current discussion)
-- Next time, open your mind before you open your mouth.
So if we agree that Linux-as-a-product is ready for the desktop market, what is missing from the equation to give it even the 10%-of-the-market appeal that Apple has garnered?
Marketing.
I don't mean obvious basement dwellers touting its joy and beauty to their bosses; I'm talking newspaper and magazine ads, TV spots, places where it will sink into the common consciousness. Web ads are great, and all, but Joe Sixpack doesn't surf the net for his evening's entertainment - he watches the news, followed by a couple guys slugging it out or some cars driving in circles, maybe some steroid abusers throwing spheroids at one another and/or hitting it/each other with sticks. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about the KDE/Gnome debate, or the philosophical differences between vi/emacs. He wants to pop open a browser to get the latest scores, then email his buddy to tell him poker's on for Thursday night.
The desktop market may actually be fading, for anyone not intimately involved in IT. Web appliances seem to be catching on in netcafes, and netbooks seem to be expanding the definition of "low end laptop". Linux definitely has a place in this new market (take a look at consumer-grade routers/wireless devices, for instance), but which desktop OS is in use on a particular machine is becoming less of an issue than whether a given device is compatible with a specific use. Microsoft dominates the software market, Apple has the "closed device" market sewn up, Dell pushes business hardware while HP peddles its wares to the home user. Linux just needs to find its niche, and "desktop OS" seems to be a good place to expand... while it's still around as a concept, anyway.
Perhaps we should be looking less at imitating the competition, and more at innovating what we do with our "grass roots, home grown" OS. Stop trying to make a better desktop OS, and build better networking hardware... or focus on gaming, or office productivity, or any number of other things. Make a $200 business machine, and give away a dozen of them to a local office - along with an "affordable support contract" for a year. Create a gaming rig that doesn't cost $1500, and show it off at your next LAN party. Purpose-built machines that perform one function spectacularly, while maybe not being quite so good in the general-purpose arena. No one needs a $1200 office machine to write up text documents and enter data into spreadsheets, but that's what Dell sells - along with the ability to play music, movies, and games on the machine that will end up doing nothing but running payroll, twice a month, and stays off the rest of the time. Sell the productivity of Linux, its efficiency; rather than touting its "multipurposefulness" and shouting about how it's "just as good". "Just as good" isn't "good enough" for Joe User, he wants "better" with plenty of "because". He doesn't want to save the world, he wants to make his life better.
Every time I hear this one, I am reminded of my tactic of running backwards in Quake2, killing my pursuers with ease... ... of course, it helps that I knew the levels backwards and forwards (literally!), and only played online on maps I knew.
Interestingly enough, this same tactic is extremely useful when playing Subspace (now called Continuum), Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress, and Counterstrike. Also a point: If you face the turret backwards while driving the tank in GTA3, you can get insane speed by continuously firing... coincidentally taking out huge numbers of pursuing police.
Does having 4 "reverse" gears seem like such a bad idea now?
Oh, and the original text of the joke was "4 for reverse, and 1 for forward... in case the enemy is behind you."
Second, this girl is 19 now. She was 13 when this happened. What happened to the concept of "statute of limitations"? Why wasn't the case brought up when she was 13?
It was. How quickly do you think our justice system moves? Hell, 6 years for it to go from "town courthouse" to SCOTUS is quick.
And yet Leibniz invented calculus too, independently and at about the same time. Methinks you need a better example.
Or you need to learn about Newton's theory of gravitation, which fits the GP's point much better: "He saw things in a way that others did not, and he advanced science dramatically."
Calculus is math, which is admittedly a large part of science... but I believe the GP's point was that figuring out that things fall down because "down" is relative to the large, relatively stationary object we stand on was probably completely inconsistent with the then-current accepted "truths". Think different, ya dig?
Badgerbadgerbadger.com is not connected with the creator of the flash movie, it is just some guy trying to profiteer over the meme. Stick with linking to the original authors, not the leeches.
Except that badgerbadgerbadger.com's little flash movie has a link in the bottom right-hand corner of it, pointing to www.weebls-stuff.com - the aforementioned original author.
I see no reason why it should take less in normal HTML. Any explanations why you think so?
You're reading it wrong. GP said:
There's no reason whatsoever that it should use more bandwidth to send an email (once the system has loaded) via that interface than through the simple HTML view; in fact, it should take less.
Therefore, you are making the same argument as the GP, but with less reading comprehension.
You do realize that there are tellurium supplies that are not currently being mined, because of cost?
Actually, there are no primary tellurium mines. It's mostly obtained as a byproduct of electro-refining gold and copper. That's right, this stuff we're arguing about is used in single-digit gram quantities per panel, and generated as a by-product of current operations at about 200 tons per year.
Looks like the price already did its little "massive production price increase"... partially due to its use in solar panels by First Solar, starting in 2005. (surprise!)
Interestingly, tellurium is most commonly produced as a by-product of electro-refining gold and copper. From the article I linked, we discover that "Annual global tellurium production is about 170 tons to 200 tons, based on various different estimates." Combine this with the use of approximately 8 grams per panel (also in the article), and we discover that the most massive solar panel production was using... almost 4% of the annual production. The following year, that dropped to 1.6%. Tellurium is also used in recordable optical media and electronics (it appears it is used to dope silicon to make it electrically conductive), to name just a few other uses. It would appear that its primary use is as an alloying agent in iron and steel to improve machinability.
While tellurium is likely to increase in value slightly over the next decade or so, this is not the makings of a "gold rush". To be quite honest, this isn't even really news, considering that First Solar has been using tellurium in their solar panels for 4 years now.
Ha. Pay me $300.00 per hour, and I'll correct your grammar and punctuation, as well. Proofreading services aren't free, and you are apparently in desperate need.
I'm typically not a grammar nazi, but when you corrected the easily overlooked mistake without noticing the glaring omission, I couldn't resist. Please don't take it personally that I found it amusing.
memtest86 may be the "hello world" of stress tests, it's true.
I'd like to spew my first slashdot car analogy:
If you run memtest, it might be said that you're doing the equivalent of kicking the tires of your vehicle. However... If the wheels fall off when you kick them, it's a good indication you need new ones. It may not be an "uber stress test" but it is a good way to give it a once-over, doesn't require one to even know what "compile" means, let alone wanting to generate md5 sums to "really thrash your RAM", and can be accomplished in an hour or so, rather than days. Besides, it comes on most LiveCD distros, and is therefore easily accessible to most "normal" people.
In other words, I'm glad you have a good super-duper stress test for your memory, but for those of us who have a life instead of a CS degree, memtest86 is good enough.
Slashdot Mirror
To be honest, "fake" ads dragging you to a hateful, malware-spewing website is rather tame. The real fun was the banner ads that infected you directly, simply by viewing the flash.
*Sigh*
Just another reason to use adblock and noscript.
"We need to hit them with a major and I mean MAJOR leaflet campaign."
.......except if the network goes down, you have no internet connection and can't do any of those things to begin with!
... unless you have some html files on your local hard drive that contain links to java apps, also on your local drive, with which to perform actual work in your browser?
Geez, does no one have an original thought any more? Browsers don't need network access in order to function, it simply increases the available amount of accessible information.
On a semi-related note, I'm still pissed at Microsoft for removing Active Desktop from Windows Vista. Not only does it kill the functionality of things like my web-enabled desktop pointing at a local html file with my most commonly used apps and documents as links (as well as my commonly-used web links), but it breaks purely aesthetic apps, like Drempels and Winamp (visualizations as desktop backgrounds, not the music-playing capability).
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but it appeared to me that the BIOS-based "browser OS" idea was booting quickly into a limited-functionality system, then running that while your "monolithic OS of choice" was booting behind the scenes, so to speak. In other words, you go play on the net 4 seconds after pressing the power button, so you're not sitting there watching a colorful and skillfully created "loading..." animation for 3 minutes while your system wakes up - you're getting "fr1s+ ps0t" on slashdot, instead.
In addition, this makes some seriously slick OS-agnostic office productivity apps viable (with a little tinkering); imagine running your apps in a browser window connected to a server on the local subnet (can you say corporate intranet homepage?), so you can run into the office 3 minutes late, catch the phone that's ringing, and be booted into a functional database application by the time you sit down in your swivel chair and set down your coffee. No more "hang on a sec, my computer is slow this morning" when your customer wants to buy top-end hardware from you...
... I used to do that all the time when I was a kid...
I'm in my thirties, and still doing it - it's amazing just how powerful that 5-10 year old machine is, when it's "just" running a CLI mode "server" OS...
... and who doesn't like pizza?
$30 and a $5 Little Caesars pizza if you find the right geek.
Bring the parts and the pizza, I'm good. Oh, and that "spare" machine you put in the garage after you let the magic smoke out last year.
So which is it? Did it need a fuse or not? Because while the fuse was broken, the Roadster was not "fully working".
What if you are driving and this happens and you do not have this fuse with you? By what definition is that "fully working"?
By the definition of "multiply redundant system", written in the same post you are mistakenly attacking. Reading comprehension for the win.
It's called compatibility mode.
Yes, but it's not compatible.
We should just run cat5 to all of our neighbors' houses, and sidestep the ISPs, doing the same for the internet that F/OSS has done for operating systems. Yes, someone has to have a good (ie, pricey) internet connection, but I'm willing to bet that a feed large enough for your block could be had for less than each individual connection is currently costing.
Doing it with wireless N routers instead would eliminate the cabling requirements, as well... admittedly, it increases the lag, but if the ISP suddenly starts losing customers a few blocks at a time, maybe the rates will drop on the lower-latency existing infrastructure.
Of course there are issues with this idea, but nothing is perfect. If you find this to be an untenable plan, come up with a better one (and share it with us).
Take the power away from the monopoly, and we start to see more/better competition in the marketplace.
So you'll stand by me when they try to censor my religion, but you're okay with censoring what your child gets because you don't agree with religion?
Hypocrite, you just fell into the typical stereo type for someone who claims they are atheists.
You aren't an atheist, you're afraid of religion. A true atheist wouldn't be afraid of it, they just wouldn't care. I'm not sure what priest molested you or raped you, but you need to look deeper into why you're so afraid of religion, and start practicing what you preach.
Read your post again, you are exactly what you are talking about in religious people.
Please stop claiming to be atheist until you confront your fears, you make the rest of us look stupid.
Actually, an atheist doesn't care about your God. I think all of us have many reasons to fear religion. Crusades, Jihads, what have you... religion has killed more people on this planet than money... oh, wait.
Theres a shocker, someone does something you don't agree with so you scream 'censorship by the evil company'.
Ever wonder why normal people don't care about this shit and look at you like your stupid when you whine about it?
Ever hear of the boy who cried wolf?
Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean its censorship.
From dictionary.com:
censorship [sen-ser-ship] ...
noun
1. the act or practice of censoring.
censor [sen-ser] ...
noun
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2. any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
verb (used with object)
6. to examine and act upon as a censor.
7. to delete (a word or passage of text) in one's capacity as a censor.
(some text censored as irrelevant to the current discussion)
--
Next time, open your mind before you open your mouth.
The point to Apple for "sound" is perhaps most dubious of all, since the Sony has some slick specs in this department as well.
My $1200 HP laptop has a subwoofer. No, this is not a joke. Look up the DV7 series.
So if we agree that Linux-as-a-product is ready for the desktop market, what is missing from the equation to give it even the 10%-of-the-market appeal that Apple has garnered?
Marketing.
I don't mean obvious basement dwellers touting its joy and beauty to their bosses; I'm talking newspaper and magazine ads, TV spots, places where it will sink into the common consciousness. Web ads are great, and all, but Joe Sixpack doesn't surf the net for his evening's entertainment - he watches the news, followed by a couple guys slugging it out or some cars driving in circles, maybe some steroid abusers throwing spheroids at one another and/or hitting it/each other with sticks. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about the KDE/Gnome debate, or the philosophical differences between vi/emacs. He wants to pop open a browser to get the latest scores, then email his buddy to tell him poker's on for Thursday night.
The desktop market may actually be fading, for anyone not intimately involved in IT. Web appliances seem to be catching on in netcafes, and netbooks seem to be expanding the definition of "low end laptop". Linux definitely has a place in this new market (take a look at consumer-grade routers/wireless devices, for instance), but which desktop OS is in use on a particular machine is becoming less of an issue than whether a given device is compatible with a specific use. Microsoft dominates the software market, Apple has the "closed device" market sewn up, Dell pushes business hardware while HP peddles its wares to the home user. Linux just needs to find its niche, and "desktop OS" seems to be a good place to expand... while it's still around as a concept, anyway.
Perhaps we should be looking less at imitating the competition, and more at innovating what we do with our "grass roots, home grown" OS. Stop trying to make a better desktop OS, and build better networking hardware... or focus on gaming, or office productivity, or any number of other things. Make a $200 business machine, and give away a dozen of them to a local office - along with an "affordable support contract" for a year. Create a gaming rig that doesn't cost $1500, and show it off at your next LAN party. Purpose-built machines that perform one function spectacularly, while maybe not being quite so good in the general-purpose arena. No one needs a $1200 office machine to write up text documents and enter data into spreadsheets, but that's what Dell sells - along with the ability to play music, movies, and games on the machine that will end up doing nothing but running payroll, twice a month, and stays off the rest of the time. Sell the productivity of Linux, its efficiency; rather than touting its "multipurposefulness" and shouting about how it's "just as good". "Just as good" isn't "good enough" for Joe User, he wants "better" with plenty of "because". He doesn't want to save the world, he wants to make his life better.
Want to see more Linux-as-a-product? Sell it.
How many gears does a french tank have?
5...one for forward, 4 for reverse.
Every time I hear this one, I am reminded of my tactic of running backwards in Quake2, killing my pursuers with ease...
... of course, it helps that I knew the levels backwards and forwards (literally!), and only played online on maps I knew.
Interestingly enough, this same tactic is extremely useful when playing Subspace (now called Continuum), Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress, and Counterstrike.
Also a point: If you face the turret backwards while driving the tank in GTA3, you can get insane speed by continuously firing... coincidentally taking out huge numbers of pursuing police.
Does having 4 "reverse" gears seem like such a bad idea now?
Oh, and the original text of the joke was "4 for reverse, and 1 for forward... in case the enemy is behind you."
Second, this girl is 19 now. She was 13 when this happened. What happened to the concept of "statute of limitations"? Why wasn't the case brought up when she was 13?
It was. How quickly do you think our justice system moves? Hell, 6 years for it to go from "town courthouse" to SCOTUS is quick.
And yet Leibniz invented calculus too, independently and at about the same time. Methinks you need a better example.
Or you need to learn about Newton's theory of gravitation, which fits the GP's point much better:
"He saw things in a way that others did not, and he advanced science dramatically."
Calculus is math, which is admittedly a large part of science... but I believe the GP's point was that figuring out that things fall down because "down" is relative to the large, relatively stationary object we stand on was probably completely inconsistent with the then-current accepted "truths". Think different, ya dig?
Badgerbadgerbadger.com is not connected with the creator of the flash movie, it is just some guy trying to profiteer over the meme. Stick with linking to the original authors, not the leeches.
Except that badgerbadgerbadger.com's little flash movie has a link in the bottom right-hand corner of it, pointing to www.weebls-stuff.com - the aforementioned original author.
I see no reason why it should take less in normal HTML. Any explanations why you think so?
You're reading it wrong. GP said:
There's no reason whatsoever that it should use more bandwidth to send an email (once the system has loaded) via that interface than through the simple HTML view; in fact, it should take less.
Therefore, you are making the same argument as the GP, but with less reading comprehension.
You do realize that there are tellurium supplies that are not currently being mined, because of cost?
Actually, there are no primary tellurium mines. It's mostly obtained as a byproduct of electro-refining gold and copper. That's right, this stuff we're arguing about is used in single-digit gram quantities per panel, and generated as a by-product of current operations at about 200 tons per year.
Dang, I had the same idea... now the price is gonna shoot up overnight as all the slashdotters rush to fill their basements with tellurium!
Actually, a little googling came up with this tidbit of info:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/55959-the-tellurium-supernova
Looks like the price already did its little "massive production price increase"... partially due to its use in solar panels by First Solar, starting in 2005. (surprise!)
Interestingly, tellurium is most commonly produced as a by-product of electro-refining gold and copper. From the article I linked, we discover that "Annual global tellurium production is about 170 tons to 200 tons, based on various different estimates." Combine this with the use of approximately 8 grams per panel (also in the article), and we discover that the most massive solar panel production was using... almost 4% of the annual production. The following year, that dropped to 1.6%. Tellurium is also used in recordable optical media and electronics (it appears it is used to dope silicon to make it electrically conductive), to name just a few other uses. It would appear that its primary use is as an alloying agent in iron and steel to improve machinability.
While tellurium is likely to increase in value slightly over the next decade or so, this is not the makings of a "gold rush". To be quite honest, this isn't even really news, considering that First Solar has been using tellurium in their solar panels for 4 years now.
Ha. Pay me $300.00 per hour, and I'll correct your grammar and punctuation, as well. Proofreading services aren't free, and you are apparently in desperate need.
I'm typically not a grammar nazi, but when you corrected the easily overlooked mistake without noticing the glaring omission, I couldn't resist. Please don't take it personally that I found it amusing.
Fark, "clients" not "client's"
and yet you missed "and that their instructions to their reflect it"...
Which legal firm did you say you represent, again?
Thanks for the heads-up. I had a feeling something like that was the case, but I also feel that my response stood on its own merits.
memtest86 may be the "hello world" of stress tests, it's true.
I'd like to spew my first slashdot car analogy:
If you run memtest, it might be said that you're doing the equivalent of kicking the tires of your vehicle. However... If the wheels fall off when you kick them, it's a good indication you need new ones. It may not be an "uber stress test" but it is a good way to give it a once-over, doesn't require one to even know what "compile" means, let alone wanting to generate md5 sums to "really thrash your RAM", and can be accomplished in an hour or so, rather than days. Besides, it comes on most LiveCD distros, and is therefore easily accessible to most "normal" people.
In other words, I'm glad you have a good super-duper stress test for your memory, but for those of us who have a life instead of a CS degree, memtest86 is good enough.
You are reinforcing my point.
Never claimed to be arguing.