I have DLS through Speakeasy, which contracts it out to Covad. A few times, I have had to put up with the frustrating red tape that the poster mentioned. However, there is hope. Here are the rules that I live by (after putting up with much frustration).
1. When in doubt, call tech support. Phone techs are often overworked, and rarely know all that much about what's going on. The last time I had trouble, I finally resorted to asking a tech to call Covad while I waited on the line. She did this, and within minutes my problem was resolved! If I had left it up to chance or up to the average phone tech, my dsl would still be down and I'd be typing a somewhat different message over my dialup connection.
2. If you realize that you are talking with a phone support tech who knows what's going on, ask for his or her name and write a letter to his/her boss praising her. Also, ask for this tech the next time you have trouble. Unfortunately, people of this caliber often don't work tech support jobs for long.
3. Never trust the computer generated messages that appear on an 'account status' page. If a weird message (or repeting message) is generated, call up tech support and get to the bottom of it. Never hesitate to suggest that the tech might call Covad (or appropriate provider) just to clear things up... Again, offer to wait on the line.
If I had known the above things before trying to get DSL, i would have saved hours of time on the phone and hours of frustration.
I'd be interested in seeing some screenshots of the Tufte-influenced UI project that you worked on. I own two of his books, and while I haven't had the time to go into them in as much depth as I'd like, they seem highly insightful and I'd be interested to see software written by someone who appreciates Tufte's expertise.
if you can post a URL containing screenshots, please do. Otherwise, you could email some to me (remove the no-spam-today in my email address)...
What I am hoping Mozilla can provide for me is a browser that is small, fast, and stable. I don't care if I can use it to read news, read email, edit html, etc. etc. etc. I'll use emacs when I need a nuclear powered swiss army knife.
I also want my browser to support things like client side VBscript and ActiveX as well as JAVA 1.2.2. There are a lot of cool sites on the web that use ActiveX, and it's a shame that those of us who use linux don't have access to them.
I recently started browsing with Win2K/IE5, and no version of netscape (including 6) that I've used can come remotely close to the quality of browsing that I get from IE.
I would love to switch to Mozilla/Netscape 6, but I don't want some kind of gimmicky set of tools that supposedly does everything, I just want a browser that is stable, fast, and supports most content on the web.
Does Roblimo actually think that some of us believe that Slashdot has as wide an audience as Wired or Salon? It's one thing to appreciate open source software, but it's entirely another to become outraged that businesses have profitmaking as a motivation.
All business is not evil, and neither is AOL. AOL meets the needs of a lot of people, which is, plain and simple, why it exists.
Feel free to blame the hype, hysteria, big-business, desire for profit, etc., but realize that linux is a minority on the desktop for a number of very good reasons.
Rather than complaining that AOL doesn't work with linux, develop some cool software for linux that helps to make the platform desirable to the masses.
I don't agree with your argument that two products which are similar cannot both survive. Look at Coke and Pepsi, Dell and Gateway, Nike and Reebok, Wendy's and Burger King, etc.
It will probably help the palm platform to have two manufacturers of palm hardware. WinCE devices are manufactured by lots of companies, and although the OS may be a reason for poor sales, the fact that those devices all run the same OS is not.
Sure, 3Com could put Handspring out of business if it wanted to. 3com is probably happy to have another company expanding the palm platform as a whole.
Also, since the creators of Handspring are the original innovators who created the original Palm, there are positive social forces working in everyone's favor.
isn't that something like the famous nobody virus?
what about when geeks get fooled?
on
Hoax-a-go-go!
·
· Score: 2
The hoaxes mentioned in the article are those that sucker hundreds of thousands of people who have little or no computer knowledge.
My favorites are the ones that circulate in supposedly knowldgable circles.
For example, I have had several friends who bought into this teledildonics ad, but maybe that was wishful thinking.
At its core, a hoax is just a meme that reproduces without depending on the rationality of its host.
Hoaxes are clever hacks that take place in 'meatspace'. Maybe the biggest difference between a hoax and an urban legend is that hoaxes are created by someone while urban legends are memes that evolve in a common way.
There are a lot of different kinds of geeks. You have computer geeks, science geeks, hardware geeks, etc. Geeks and nerds are getting all this publicity, but what about us space-cadets?
It's suddenly so cool to be a geek. I suggest all you geeks remember what it was like before you were cool -- being a space-cadet still isn't thought of as cool, even by the geek and nerd populations, although its coolness does happen to be on the rise.
A note to Rob -- please change "news for nerds" to "news for nerds and space-cadets".
It's always good to see big companies embracing linux. It will be interesting to see what happens if there are multiple certification programs. Will certification tend to be distro-specific (or even hardware specific)? Or will businesses (the people hiring those who bother to get the certification) just consider linux to be linux?
Yours is an interesting point. Interestingly, the 'soup' in which life began was arguably not very conducive to replication. Silicon and microchips are, however, extremely conducive to repilication.
Many people erroneously believe that mutation is counter to evolution. On the contrary, mutation is the driving force behind evolutionary change.
I wonder if evolving AI would form first in areas where information copying fidelity is imperfect. Perhaps it would stem out of the chaos of colliding packets, and slowly but surely evolve into something sentient.
Something tells me that sentient computers won't resemble HAL.
"There there...," I say to my computer. The year is 2034, and due to advances in everything from artificial life to nanotech, the blue plastic cube with rounded corners on my desk emits a soft, meloncholy glow. "We need to get some work done," I explain. Without warning, the image of an oriental garden appears on the screen, and the sound of soft rain flows from the speakers. Suddenly, words appear on the screen. They are rendered in a font that is so pleasing to my eye that it could only have been created through some kind of evolutionary algorithm which must have observed the dilation of my pupils as I read thousands of existing fonts. The words form the most beautiful haiku I have ever seen. I am mesmerized and begin to cry.
I find myself curled up beneath a blanket in an easy chair beside my computer. The meloncholy glow is finally gone. It seems, the machine just needed to bond. My therapist insists this is normal, and has recently reccommended a few books written late last century by Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec.
> as if the marginalization of it were a >distinct action by some external force with >sinister motivation
I do not make that assumption. I used the term marginalization to describe an emergent cultural phenomenon. While aspects of pop culture change quickly, it takes longer for there to be a shift in people's underlying beliefs.
> a reeking pile of shit is a reeking pile of shit
Based on this, I doubt you are persuadable by logic.
I agree that his comment was insensitive, but I think his statement was intended not to make light of columbine, but to point out the way that violence against and among blacks fails to incite a similar level of outrage, both from the public and the media.
Chris Rock is a much needed voice and ingenious social critic.
How would the average person respond if you replaced their entire music collection with rap music?
Probably about the same way they would respond if you fdisked their hard drive and installed linux.
Despite the fact that rap music has become at least as commercialized as other types of music, the culture that created rap music is still heavily margainalized in society.
Chris Rock made a good point about the margainalization of black culture. He said something like, "yes, I make a lot of money doing what I do, but how many white people out there would trade places with me?
The question to be asked about linux is, while there are a lot of people willing to invest in a heavily-hyped company like Redhat, how many of those people would install linux on their computer?
Linux, like rap in its early days, needs glitz to survive. I remember wondering why MC Hammer decided to drop the MC from his name. I hope we don't see companies like Redhat and VA dropping linux from theirs.
Different flavors of unix share a lot of the same design elements. Sure, you can stretch Windows so that it superficially resembles Unix, but you cannot recreate the startling formal elegance of a unix system just by ading ls.exe, grep.exe, and awk.exe to your c:\winnt\system32 directory.
The thing about Unix that is most clear, that sets it apart from other OS's, is its well thought-out design. It was noticably not designed so that any newbie could use it. I'm sure that Microsoft came to realize the high cost of 'newbie usability' when it had to resort to releasing another successor to Win98 instead of merging the 9x and NT OS lines with the release of 2000.
I thought the net was supposed to be something that people could surf in, kind of like water. But utility companies sell water as a commodity, and governments own harbors and seaports and resevoirs.
But rain effects all of us. I wonder how many people take their surfboards into international waters.
Maybe spam=rain in the extended analogy. Everybody has to put up with rain. Or maybe the net in some places will become cause Montezuma's revenge.
A greater man that I once said, "Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink"
Have machines finally entered into the realm of that which can be endangered? I never thought I'd see the day...
Maybe an astronaut activist will abandon the shuttle and attach him/herself to one of the iridium satellites, kind of like those activists who climb up redwoods and refuse to climb down until logging companies consent to stop clearcutting forests.
In the past, outdated technology tended to end up in a museum. Space, it seems, offers us a new frontier for activism.
If I owned the satellites, I'd first start a cult, and then send satellites into the atmosphere whenever I needed a miracle.
I just started doing this a few weeks ago. So far, everything has worked well. Probably the best thing about it is that I can enjoy the DSL when I'm not 'in the office'.
It remains to be seen whether I will consider the arrangement ideal, and for that matter, whether my employer will.
We do make heavy use of dialpad.com to cut down on phone costs.
Slashdot Mirror
1. When in doubt, call tech support. Phone techs are often overworked, and rarely know all that much about what's going on. The last time I had trouble, I finally resorted to asking a tech to call Covad while I waited on the line. She did this, and within minutes my problem was resolved! If I had left it up to chance or up to the average phone tech, my dsl would still be down and I'd be typing a somewhat different message over my dialup connection.
2. If you realize that you are talking with a phone support tech who knows what's going on, ask for his or her name and write a letter to his/her boss praising her. Also, ask for this tech the next time you have trouble. Unfortunately, people of this caliber often don't work tech support jobs for long.
3. Never trust the computer generated messages that appear on an 'account status' page. If a weird message (or repeting message) is generated, call up tech support and get to the bottom of it. Never hesitate to suggest that the tech might call Covad (or appropriate provider) just to clear things up... Again, offer to wait on the line.
If I had known the above things before trying to get DSL, i would have saved hours of time on the phone and hours of frustration.
Who needs reviews? Go to www.moviecritic.com and find out how much the collaborative filtering engine thinks you'll like the movie.
try searching for: 'from the house at outspar ave' on altavista (without the quotes). It's weird.
but I've always thought that Metallica sucked, and the
recent events only reinforced my belief.
Needless to say, I don't have to worry about
getting caught downloading any of their garbage.
if you can post a URL containing screenshots, please do. Otherwise, you could email some to me (remove the no-spam-today in my email address)...
What I am hoping Mozilla can provide for me
is a browser that is small, fast, and
stable. I don't care if I can use it to
read news, read email, edit html, etc. etc. etc.
I'll use emacs when I need a nuclear
powered swiss army knife.
I also want my browser to support things like
client side VBscript and ActiveX as well as
JAVA 1.2.2. There are a lot of cool sites
on the web that use ActiveX, and it's
a shame that those of us who use linux
don't have access to them.
I recently started browsing with Win2K/IE5,
and no version of netscape (including 6) that
I've used can come remotely close to the
quality of browsing that I get from IE.
I would love to switch to Mozilla/Netscape 6,
but I don't want some kind of gimmicky
set of tools that supposedly does everything,
I just want a browser that is stable, fast,
and supports most content on the web.
believe that Slashdot has as wide an audience
as Wired or Salon? It's one thing to appreciate
open source software, but it's entirely
another to become outraged that businesses
have profitmaking as a motivation.
All business is not evil, and neither is AOL. AOL meets
the needs of a lot of people, which is,
plain and simple, why it exists.
Feel free to blame the hype, hysteria, big-business, desire for profit, etc.,
but realize that linux is a minority on the desktop for a number of very good reasons.
Rather than complaining that AOL doesn't work with linux,
develop some cool software for linux
that helps to make the platform desirable to
the masses.
I like most of Hemos's stories, and
this one might have been funny. But
something about this story made me
think about piping hot gritz.
two products which are similar cannot
both survive. Look at Coke and Pepsi,
Dell and Gateway, Nike and Reebok, Wendy's
and Burger King, etc.
It will probably help the palm platform to
have two manufacturers of palm hardware.
WinCE devices are manufactured by lots of
companies, and although the OS may be a reason
for poor sales, the fact that those devices all
run the same OS is not.
Sure, 3Com could put Handspring out of business
if it wanted to. 3com is probably
happy to have another company expanding the palm
platform as a whole.
Also, since the creators of Handspring are the original innovators who created
the original Palm, there are
positive social forces working in everyone's favor.
When I loaded slashdot this morning, did
I load a page generated by slash 1.0? That is
the question.
isn't that something like the famous nobody virus?
that sucker hundreds of thousands of people who
have little or no computer knowledge.
My favorites are the ones that circulate in
supposedly knowldgable circles.
For example, I have had several friends who
bought into this teledildonics ad, but maybe that was wishful thinking.
At its core, a hoax is just a meme that
reproduces without depending on the rationality
of its host.
Hoaxes are clever hacks that take place
in 'meatspace'. Maybe the biggest difference
between a hoax and an urban legend is that
hoaxes are created by someone while urban legends
are memes that evolve in a
common way.
kinds of geeks. You have computer
geeks, science geeks, hardware geeks, etc.
Geeks and nerds are
getting all this publicity,
but what about us space-cadets?
It's suddenly so cool to be a geek.
I suggest all you geeks remember
what it was like before you were
cool -- being a space-cadet still isn't
thought of as cool, even by the geek and
nerd populations, although its coolness does
happen to be on the rise.
A note to Rob -- please change "news for nerds"
to "news for nerds and space-cadets".
embracing linux. It will be interesting
to see what happens if there are multiple
certification programs. Will certification
tend to be distro-specific (or even hardware
specific)? Or will businesses (the people hiring
those who bother to get the certification)
just consider linux to be linux?
In my opinion, linux is linux.
the 'soup' in which life began was arguably
not very conducive to replication. Silicon
and microchips are, however, extremely
conducive to repilication.
Many people erroneously believe that mutation
is counter to evolution. On the contrary,
mutation is the driving force behind
evolutionary change.
I wonder if evolving AI would form first in areas
where information copying fidelity is
imperfect. Perhaps it would stem out of the
chaos of colliding packets, and slowly but
surely evolve into something sentient.
Something tells me that sentient computers
won't resemble HAL.
computer. The year is 2034, and
due to advances in everything from
artificial life to nanotech, the blue
plastic cube with rounded corners on my
desk emits a soft, meloncholy glow.
"We need to get some work done," I explain.
Without warning, the image of an oriental garden
appears on the screen, and the sound of soft
rain flows from the speakers. Suddenly, words
appear on the screen. They are rendered in a
font that is so pleasing to my eye that it could
only have been created through some kind of
evolutionary algorithm which must have observed
the dilation of my pupils as I read thousands of
existing fonts. The words form the most
beautiful haiku I have ever seen. I am mesmerized
and begin to cry.
I find myself curled up beneath a blanket in an
easy chair beside my computer. The meloncholy
glow is finally gone. It seems, the machine just
needed to bond. My therapist insists this is normal,
and has recently reccommended a few books
written late last century by Ray Kurzweil and Hans
Moravec.
>distinct action by some external force with
>sinister motivation
I do not make that assumption. I used the
term marginalization to describe an
emergent cultural phenomenon. While aspects
of pop culture change quickly, it takes
longer for there to be a shift in people's
underlying beliefs.
> a reeking pile of shit is a reeking pile of shit
Based on this, I doubt you are persuadable by logic.
but I think his statement was intended not
to make light of columbine, but to point out
the way that violence against and among blacks
fails to incite a similar level of outrage,
both from the public and the media.
Chris Rock is a much needed voice and ingenious social critic.
if you replaced their entire music
collection with rap music?
Probably about the same way they would
respond if you fdisked their hard drive
and installed linux.
Despite the fact that rap music has become
at least as commercialized as other types
of music, the culture that created rap music
is still heavily margainalized in society.
Chris Rock made a good point about the
margainalization of black culture. He said
something like, "yes, I make a lot of money doing
what I do, but how many white people out there
would trade places with me?
The question to be asked about linux is,
while there are a lot of people willing to
invest in a heavily-hyped company like Redhat,
how many of those people would install
linux on their computer?
Linux, like rap in its early days, needs glitz
to survive. I remember wondering why MC Hammer
decided to drop the MC from his name. I hope
we don't see companies like Redhat and VA
dropping linux from theirs.
the same design elements. Sure, you can
stretch Windows so that it superficially
resembles Unix, but you cannot recreate
the startling formal elegance of a unix
system just by ading ls.exe, grep.exe,
and awk.exe to your c:\winnt\system32
directory.
The thing about Unix that is most clear,
that sets it apart from other OS's, is
its well thought-out design. It was
noticably not designed so that any
newbie could use it. I'm sure that Microsoft
came to realize the high cost of 'newbie usability'
when it had to resort to releasing another
successor to Win98 instead of merging the
9x and NT OS lines with the release of 2000.
be something that people could surf in,
kind of like water. But utility companies
sell water as a commodity, and governments
own harbors and seaports and resevoirs.
But rain effects all of us. I wonder
how many people take their surfboards
into international waters.
Maybe spam=rain in the extended analogy.
Everybody has to put up with rain.
Or maybe the net in some places will become
cause Montezuma's revenge.
A greater man that I once said,
"Water, water everywhere, but
not a drop to drink"
into the realm of that which
can be endangered? I never
thought I'd see the day...
Maybe an astronaut activist will
abandon the shuttle and attach
him/herself to one of the iridium
satellites, kind of like those
activists who climb up redwoods
and refuse to climb down until
logging companies consent to stop
clearcutting forests.
In the past, outdated technology tended
to end up in a museum. Space, it seems,
offers us a new frontier for activism.
If I owned the satellites, I'd first start
a cult, and then send satellites into
the atmosphere whenever I needed a miracle.
sincerely,
most slashdotters
It remains to be seen whether I will consider the arrangement ideal, and for that matter, whether my employer will.
We do make heavy use of dialpad.com to cut down on phone costs.