And what about the people like ME who want performance for basic functionality, instead of "animated menus" and all of the graphical crap that Microsoft is really referring to whey they claim an application is "Feature Rich"
And how is embedding a flight simulator into Excel 95 "Feature Rich?"
If applications were coded as if there were actual restrictions, if speed and efficency were a consideration, then this would be a valid option. 90% of the processing power in a computer would only be used when playing a game.
Sadly, we live in a world where the OPERATING SYSTEM will soon require a 3D card to even function. (Windows Longhorn)
The bottom line is, despite significant advances in hardware, the "User Experience" still feels as sluggish and slow as it did in the days of Windows 3.1 on a 386. How much does XP do that the average user needs that Windows 3.1 and Word 2.0 couldn't? Can you IMAGINE how fast Windows 3.1 would be on modern hardware if the drivers existed?
The funkiest solution I ever heard of was submerging the entire motherboard in Mineral Oil and using some aquarium filters. Have wires running out of the soup to the hard drive, floppy and the rest and you're good to go.
I'm told it was fun to watch as the mineral oil went through the filter and was cooled by the process of falling through the air.
Don't know how long it ran before a technical problem though.
It WAS something a coworker told me a college friend had told him about.
Yeah, because the fans were able to raise enough to pay for Farscape to stay on the air.
And you KNOW, Enterprise HAD to be better than Farscape, right? I mean, Enterprise has a hot Vulcan chick and Klingons! Farscape didn't have either.
All they had were those hot chicks with weird skin colors.
And what was up with all the work they put into different species? I mean come ON, we all know from Trek you save a FORTUNE when you create a new species by just giving them a few forehead ridges.
What's next, a sci-fi show with NO aliens and a wester theme? Sheesh!
Yea, like that plugin that supposedly extracted all the graphics form a web site, saved them to disk, and tried to "guess" what other images MIGHT be there based on the file name patterns.
Seemed like a great idea, right?
That's when I found out it was infected with that nasty "Piss off your wife" virus. The one where you're denied "marital benefits" for a while when she finds out what happened to all that hard drive space.
Assuming the average AOL user can FIND Google groups.
They DO have to o to a URL instead of an AOL keyword.
I used to provide tech support for AOL users trying to access a online Distance Learning site. Trying to walk the average AOL user through using a URL instead of an AOL keyword is a VERY painful process. There were a lot of people who used phrases like "Amatures", "Two bit operation," and "Mickey mouse incompitents" to describe our lack of an AOL keyword.
I'm not worried about AOL users finding Google Groups in real numbers. Most of them can't even understand that all e-mail addresses DON'T end in @aol.com
Let them sit in their little corner of cyber space, isolated from the rest of us so we can all be happy.
Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country?
Oh that's easily resolved.
Just arrange things so only the people who can earn enough money can actually make it into office. This acts as a "stage 1" filter.
Next, create a situation where anyone whose not of the desired political leanings can be depicted as a "Traitor", "Coward" or what have you, such as the threat of Terrorism.
"Think of the children" and "Why government should take over parenting from parents"
If you think liberals are the only ones using those lines, I want to know what you're smoking.
Both sides, to an extent, want to take parenting away from parents. Their motives and intended outcomes vary, but the bottom line is they want to raise the next generation to follow the leaders of their preferred political group.
It's just that the Liberals haven't started any wars over it in a few decades.
As for "Neocon"...
The way I've been reading the word:
Regular Conservative is just that. Anyone who is ethically, economically or otherwise conservative in regards to their political stance and voting.
NeoCon is "New Conservative." This is the Ultra conservative Religious right who wants to use their brand of religious values to eliminate gays and, while they'll never admit it, wage war on Islam.
Conservatives may oppose abortion, and even have protest marches on the topic.
NeoCons go out and shoot doctors who perform abortions.
Conservatives may be against legalized gay marriage.
NeoCons go out and beat gays to death.
NeoCon is also used to refer to the "Kinder Gentler" conservative that Bush claims to be.
If in doubt about someone being a scary NeoCon or a regular Conservative, just look at The Shrub. He's a NeoCon, and a fine example of the term.
I wonder which war will take longer to admit defeat in, Terror or Drugs.
HA! I caught you!
You thought you could fool us all, didn't you?
Defeat will never be admitted in either one!
We all know the conservative pundits in favor of the War on Drugs will NEVER give up, as the "Must protect the children by cutting everything out of life we don't want them to see" crowd would have their political heads on poles if they did.
And the war on terror? Why on EARTH would the Conservatives give up an enemy like Terrorists after losing Communism as a "Give me power so I can protect you" bogeyman. No, as ling as there is political gain to be made from it, the War on Terror will continue, and everyone who opposes it will be portrayed as a weak willed coward incapable of taking a stand and begging for the world to take advantage of them.
I'm sure this story will generate a slew of positive responses about Google supporting the Open Source Community, and how Linux is one of the technologies they rely upon. there will be some concern, but not much.
What I'm wondering, is how would the Slashdot community respond if it were Microsoft doing the hiring, and THEY were promising Ben's day to day tasks wouldn't change much.
How would people react?
What would be the theories of WHY Microsoft would be supporting a Firefox developer?
Let's set aside the arguments about why this is an implausible scenario and the obvious Microsoft bashing and ask, aside from the exceptions above, what would be the reaction to such an announcement?
Damn. I really need to stop posting before my morning cup of coffee or tea.
A quick note, I don't actually believe that another sentient species evolved on Earth at some point in the past, at least not one that left behind anything. If there were sentient dinosaurs, their lack of an opposable thumb kept them from building anything.
And yes, I'm making cracks about sentient dinosaurs in a tongue in cheek manner.:)
We've only been recording and passing down history for about 6,000 years. There may have been some damn mighty civilizations before then, but all knowledge of them is lost. (No Atlantis comments from the peanut gallery, it was a made up country Plato concocted for use in one of his books, and if he'd suspected people would have taken it seriously, he probably would have killed himself in despair)
We've already managed to drive a number of species to extinction, and filled the planet with toxins that are killing us off by various means, cancer among them.
A lot of people think we're likely to make the planet uninhabitable for our species withing a few generations.
Oh well. Whatever we do, we can't sterilize the planet. So long as there's enough bacteria and food left to keep going, it will evolve. We many not even be the first sentient species to evolve on this planet. There may have been something before us that polluted the world to the point where they died off. Our oil fields may very well be their landfills.
Hence, Bush's war on the middle class, and the strengthening of Corporations as the new rulers and monarchs of the economy.
Remember, Robocop and Robocop II were not Science-Fiction movies, but a prediction of the social future of the country, with a science fiction B plot about cyborgs thrown in to keep people interested.
And the USSR showed us nicely that when one human has power over another, someone gets oppressed.
Then there's anarchy. After about 20 minutes of Anarchy, feudalism ensues.
All things considered, at least having to pretend that the law is designed to make things fair gives the masses an edge. The existence of the middle class really is a good thing. It means the power and might of the wealthy relies at least partially on the economic welfare of the masses. IF you oppress the middle class too much, your own fortunes begin to decline. That's one reason Communism needed to do away with the middle class, such as it was in Russia. If they could get rid of it, the main source of "New Money" would be gone.
Keep in mind, the commercialization of technology is one of the things that made it possible for the US to develop so much of it. Boeing has a Hell of a lot more money to spend on the next fighter plane if it's bottom line was kept strong by the sale of passenger planes, and those passenger planes need middle class businessmen riding in them for any economy of scale to kick in.
Is it Capitalism combined with a democracy a terrible arrangement?
Yes.
Is there anything better out there that gives the masses more freedom, safety and "rights"?
Wonder why we bother with all the equality and all that bullshit, though.
Because peasant revolts have always been messy affairs that are best avoided.
If the masses think the laws are there to enforce justice, and the media is "Fair and Biased" they won't notice they're being manipulated and controlled for the benefit of the wealthy.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't argue with you there, but Excel 95 runs faster than OO.o on it's best day.
My point exactly. No one optimizes their code anymore.
And what about the people like ME who want performance for basic functionality, instead of "animated menus" and all of the graphical crap that Microsoft is really referring to whey they claim an application is "Feature Rich"
And how is embedding a flight simulator into Excel 95 "Feature Rich?"
Mmmmm. That reminds me, time to go get lunch.
OK, that clearly and definitively qualifies as Cool.
:)
Of course, you don't have the $20 aquarium filter to keep the oil in motion.
The problem is software bloat.
If applications were coded as if there were actual restrictions, if speed and efficency were a consideration, then this would be a valid option. 90% of the processing power in a computer would only be used when playing a game.
Sadly, we live in a world where the OPERATING SYSTEM will soon require a 3D card to even function. (Windows Longhorn)
The bottom line is, despite significant advances in hardware, the "User Experience" still feels as sluggish and slow as it did in the days of Windows 3.1 on a 386. How much does XP do that the average user needs that Windows 3.1 and Word 2.0 couldn't? Can you IMAGINE how fast Windows 3.1 would be on modern hardware if the drivers existed?
The funkiest solution I ever heard of was submerging the entire motherboard in Mineral Oil and using some aquarium filters. Have wires running out of the soup to the hard drive, floppy and the rest and you're good to go.
I'm told it was fun to watch as the mineral oil went through the filter and was cooled by the process of falling through the air.
Don't know how long it ran before a technical problem though.
It WAS something a coworker told me a college friend had told him about.
Yeah, because the fans were able to raise enough to pay for Farscape to stay on the air.
And you KNOW, Enterprise HAD to be better than Farscape, right? I mean, Enterprise has a hot Vulcan chick and Klingons! Farscape didn't have either.
All they had were those hot chicks with weird skin colors.
And what was up with all the work they put into different species? I mean come ON, we all know from Trek you save a FORTUNE when you create a new species by just giving them a few forehead ridges.
What's next, a sci-fi show with NO aliens and a wester theme? Sheesh!
Yea, like that plugin that supposedly extracted all the graphics form a web site, saved them to disk, and tried to "guess" what other images MIGHT be there based on the file name patterns.
Seemed like a great idea, right?
That's when I found out it was infected with that nasty "Piss off your wife" virus. The one where you're denied "marital benefits" for a while when she finds out what happened to all that hard drive space.
http://switch.atdmt.com/action/apple_g5_powerbook
As we've all known, a 1x1 pixel graphic is proof of a product!
And it gets better!
http://switch.atdmt.com/action/apple_g5_newton
http://switch.atdmt.com/action/anti_gravity_fusion
Not only is it real, but Apple must be getting ready to market it.
They have a place holder graphic up now, so they must be getting ready to release it REAL SOON!
Sure the graphic is only a 1x1 pixel, but it's there!!!!
Wahoo!!!
That's it. I'm done with The Register.
n
They can't tell a typo from an actual story.
http://switch.atdmt.com/action/anti_gravity_fusio
Look! Apple is going to come out with an Anti-Gravity Fusion device!
The URL doesn't give a 404, so it MUST be true!
But I almost always post form my gmail account...
Oh.
Assuming the average AOL user can FIND Google groups.
They DO have to o to a URL instead of an AOL keyword.
I used to provide tech support for AOL users trying to access a online Distance Learning site. Trying to walk the average AOL user through using a URL instead of an AOL keyword is a VERY painful process. There were a lot of people who used phrases like "Amatures", "Two bit operation," and "Mickey mouse incompitents" to describe our lack of an AOL keyword.
I'm not worried about AOL users finding Google Groups in real numbers. Most of them can't even understand that all e-mail addresses DON'T end in @aol.com
Let them sit in their little corner of cyber space, isolated from the rest of us so we can all be happy.
Is it presumable, that every man, the instant he took his seat in the national Senate or House of Representatives, would commence a traitor to his constituents and to his country?
Oh that's easily resolved.
Just arrange things so only the people who can earn enough money can actually make it into office. This acts as a "stage 1" filter.
Next, create a situation where anyone whose not of the desired political leanings can be depicted as a "Traitor", "Coward" or what have you, such as the threat of Terrorism.
Man, you conservative trolls are EASY to bait.
"Think of the children" and "Why government should take over parenting from parents"
If you think liberals are the only ones using those lines, I want to know what you're smoking.
Both sides, to an extent, want to take parenting away from parents. Their motives and intended outcomes vary, but the bottom line is they want to raise the next generation to follow the leaders of their preferred political group.
It's just that the Liberals haven't started any wars over it in a few decades.
As for "Neocon"...
The way I've been reading the word:
Regular Conservative is just that. Anyone who is ethically, economically or otherwise conservative in regards to their political stance and voting.
NeoCon is "New Conservative." This is the Ultra conservative Religious right who wants to use their brand of religious values to eliminate gays and, while they'll never admit it, wage war on Islam.
Conservatives may oppose abortion, and even have protest marches on the topic.
NeoCons go out and shoot doctors who perform abortions.
Conservatives may be against legalized gay marriage.
NeoCons go out and beat gays to death.
NeoCon is also used to refer to the "Kinder Gentler" conservative that Bush claims to be.
If in doubt about someone being a scary NeoCon or a regular Conservative, just look at The Shrub. He's a NeoCon, and a fine example of the term.
I'm happy to see the AOL Morons leave Usenet once and for all. I've had my news reader delete all posts involving @aol.com addresses for years.
Me Too!
I wonder which war will take longer to admit defeat in, Terror or Drugs.
HA! I caught you!
You thought you could fool us all, didn't you?
Defeat will never be admitted in either one!
We all know the conservative pundits in favor of the War on Drugs will NEVER give up, as the "Must protect the children by cutting everything out of life we don't want them to see" crowd would have their political heads on poles if they did.
And the war on terror? Why on EARTH would the Conservatives give up an enemy like Terrorists after losing Communism as a "Give me power so I can protect you" bogeyman. No, as ling as there is political gain to be made from it, the War on Terror will continue, and everyone who opposes it will be portrayed as a weak willed coward incapable of taking a stand and begging for the world to take advantage of them.
I'm sure this story will generate a slew of positive responses about Google supporting the Open Source Community, and how Linux is one of the technologies they rely upon. there will be some concern, but not much.
What I'm wondering, is how would the Slashdot community respond if it were Microsoft doing the hiring, and THEY were promising Ben's day to day tasks wouldn't change much.
How would people react?
What would be the theories of WHY Microsoft would be supporting a Firefox developer?
Let's set aside the arguments about why this is an implausible scenario and the obvious Microsoft bashing and ask, aside from the exceptions above, what would be the reaction to such an announcement?
I know cancer itself isn't a toxin, but that various factors can increase the risk
It has become clear that I just can't express myself very well today. I'll shut up now.
Damn. I really need to stop posting before my morning cup of coffee or tea.
:)
A quick note, I don't actually believe that another sentient species evolved on Earth at some point in the past, at least not one that left behind anything. If there were sentient dinosaurs, their lack of an opposable thumb kept them from building anything.
And yes, I'm making cracks about sentient dinosaurs in a tongue in cheek manner.
We learned to talk less than 100,000 years ago.
We've only been recording and passing down history for about 6,000 years. There may have been some damn mighty civilizations before then, but all knowledge of them is lost. (No Atlantis comments from the peanut gallery, it was a made up country Plato concocted for use in one of his books, and if he'd suspected people would have taken it seriously, he probably would have killed himself in despair)
We've already managed to drive a number of species to extinction, and filled the planet with toxins that are killing us off by various means, cancer among them.
A lot of people think we're likely to make the planet uninhabitable for our species withing a few generations.
Oh well. Whatever we do, we can't sterilize the planet. So long as there's enough bacteria and food left to keep going, it will evolve. We many not even be the first sentient species to evolve on this planet. There may have been something before us that polluted the world to the point where they died off. Our oil fields may very well be their landfills.
Hence, Bush's war on the middle class, and the strengthening of Corporations as the new rulers and monarchs of the economy.
Remember, Robocop and Robocop II were not Science-Fiction movies, but a prediction of the social future of the country, with a science fiction B plot about cyborgs thrown in to keep people interested.
OCP, the new rulers of the world.
This is basically the core idea of Leninism.
And the USSR showed us nicely that when one human has power over another, someone gets oppressed.
Then there's anarchy. After about 20 minutes of Anarchy, feudalism ensues.
All things considered, at least having to pretend that the law is designed to make things fair gives the masses an edge. The existence of the middle class really is a good thing. It means the power and might of the wealthy relies at least partially on the economic welfare of the masses. IF you oppress the middle class too much, your own fortunes begin to decline. That's one reason Communism needed to do away with the middle class, such as it was in Russia. If they could get rid of it, the main source of "New Money" would be gone.
Keep in mind, the commercialization of technology is one of the things that made it possible for the US to develop so much of it. Boeing has a Hell of a lot more money to spend on the next fighter plane if it's bottom line was kept strong by the sale of passenger planes, and those passenger planes need middle class businessmen riding in them for any economy of scale to kick in.
Is it Capitalism combined with a democracy a terrible arrangement?
Yes.
Is there anything better out there that gives the masses more freedom, safety and "rights"?
Nope.
Wonder why we bother with all the equality and all that bullshit, though.
Because peasant revolts have always been messy affairs that are best avoided.
If the masses think the laws are there to enforce justice, and the media is "Fair and Biased" they won't notice they're being manipulated and controlled for the benefit of the wealthy.