Jedi's who are ruling the muther-phkin galaxy not realizing that one who will "bring balance to the force" would knock them down because at that time - it was out of balance - the GOOD side was winning!
Not sure where this became a bad plot device. I think the biggest problem with the original trilogy was that the Jedi were made out to be intellectually infallible (Obi Wan and Yoda), and the best (only good?) part of the new trilogy was the realization of the concept that the Jedi were a diverse group of sentient life forms, some of whom suffered from the same illusions of grandeur, ignorance, or poor decision making as non-Jedi. The Jedi pre-Clone War were self-absorbed and so dependent on the Force telling them everything, they failed to actually observe their surroundings; other than Obi-Wan and Yoda, of course, who could tell something was up but just didn't understand the magnitude.
This same concept is found all through other Star Wars lore.
Seriously, though, I used KDE and loved it until 4 came out. It was unstable, bloated, and difficult to use. I switched to Gnome2 and loved it. Then a dist upgrade put Gnome 3 on my laptop and suddenly my laptop was less usable than with KDE4. I switched to Fedora's KDE spin, more so because of a need to run some commercial software that was much better supported under Red Hat RPM-based distros. I realized that in the time I was away, KDE4 slimmed down somewhat and was much more stable. More importantly, I was able to fully customize my eye-candy unlike Gnome or even Windows 7.
I still think the KDE group's philosophy of making KDE 4.1-4.4 a prolonged, nasty beta period was a terribly poor idea and I hope they seriously reconsider when looking forward to KDE5. However, now that the beta period is over and we now have KDE4 release candidates (4.6-4.8) I think it's worth a second look for a lot of *nix users.
You are definitely the archetype... of people who really trust The Cloud (tm). I do not.
1) I used to have Netflix. Then they jacked up their price and lost something like 60% of their already mediocre streaming selection. Their boneheaded CEO is still there. I have not seen a press release from Netflix that has convinced me it's time to go back.
2) All of the Internet providers in my area are media companies that want to sell you TV service and have basically announced they don't believe in net neutrality. My service comes with a yet unenforced 250GB cap per month. If I were to go back to Netflix or a similar service, the majority of my movie viewing will be in high definition. I'm too lazy to do the math, but my streaming, my g/f's streaming, and our other Internet use (like Skype) would probably chew up our allotment pretty quickly. My future children will definitely make this a lot worse. Maybe caps will be raised by that point...
3) I like to own my movies and music. I'm such a luddite that I actually prefer having a physical copy that I can rip to disk, back up, and cuddle as I fall asleep.
I'm actually looking to put together a multi-terabyte FreeNAS server to serve as a backend to an XBMC console in my living room as well as convert my other servers to Xen virtual machines. Based on how popular home theater PC hardware is right now, along with the popularity of software like Windows Media Center, MythTV, and XBMC, I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.
And the most of the rest appear to be either unions (police and labor) and the content owners themselves like MPAA, ABC, CBS, NFL, and Disney (i.e. the usual suspects). GoDaddy seemed to be the only Internet based company on that list. I'm not sure I understand the motivation for all of the major drug and cosmetic companies, except to say that they rely heavily on copyright and patent to maintain their business models (no pun intended for the cosmetic companies).
Honestly, I was expecting that PDF to be a huge download, not 3 1/3 pages of companies I pretty much fully expected to see. If that's a mostly comprehensive list, I'm baffled as to why this sees so much support in Congress. The dollars must really be flowing from the usual suspects mentioned above.
FreeBSD is not hard to install, use, and configure. It has the best documentation out of any *NIX I've seen. It can easily utilize resources, great for server daemons, clusters, DB, and can run Xorg. There's so many damn distros to choose from nowadays, people see it for 30 seconds, download a new ISO of something completely different, install it, get bored, try another, etc. Maybe if you actually put some time in to making the system just the way you want, and RTFM, then you might be happy with the results you get from FreeBSD, or any other OS for that matter. Just tired of the ADD. Pay attention!
You might be right. I'll be honest and say I've never really given FreeBSD much attention beyond the pretty wrapping paper of things like pfsense and FreeNAS. However, on my local LUG mailing list there used to be a guy who made no attempt to hide his love of FreeBSD and marginal disdain of Linux. I think he participated on the listserv just because our LUG was the closest thing to an open-source form/community in our area. He constantly referred to Linux distributions as 'forks' and when the topic of FreeBSD was discussed, it was made to be superior to Linux. Looking back, I don't think he was really trying to anger anyone, but after a while he did. Eventually he was shunned to the point of leaving the listserv. My conversations about FreeBSD and its user base almost always ended up with people saying "I tried it, but got tired of the condescending tone when I tried to get help."
I really try hard not to stereotype or generalize people, but the tone of your post falls right in line with this. Also, you say FreeBSD is "great for server daemons, clusters, DB, and can run Xorg." I'd like to point out that the first three things are exactly NOT what this article is about. Instead of bashing people, talk about how FreeBSD can run desktop environments just like Linux can, and talk about the virtues of portage. I know you're probably just venting so what I'm saying isn't exactly fair, but sadly perception is reality.
Yes. I use Gentoo and absolutely love it. That is, until an emerge of a package hoses my system and I spend the next six hours troubleshooting it. The Gentoo forums are sometimes helpful, but not always depending on the root cause of the problem. If I didn't read a news item after syncing my portage tree I can usually find the answer along with a proper scolding for not RTFM. If the problem is a Gentoo ebuild issue or an upstream bug, finding an answer is usually more difficult.
Because Gentoo is geared more towards a seasoned, savvy Linux user, I never would recommend it to someone switching from Windows, and hardly would recommend it to someone who's been using Ubuntu for the last year. I've been using Linux since 1998 and Gentoo since about 2003, and I struggle at times (see previous paragraph). I think that disqualifies Gentoo as a general-purpose desktop Linux distribution.
Also, remember that the Gentoo portage system is a direct kin of FreeBSD's ports. I guess you don't *need* FreeBSD around since it's the concept and not the code that makes portage, but what a slap in the face.
I haven't purchased a Linksys product since Cisco bought the company and promptly started pile driving them into the ground. My company has standardized on Cisco, but I am nowhere near involved in networking equipment purchases. I know I'll get blank stares if I bring this up to our Cisco rep the next time he steps in the building. Other than simply being outraged, I'm not sure what else to do.
In Warcraft, it consisted of sneaking a high level character to the opposing newbie area and then killing newbies as they spawned... for hours or until you were banned.
You must have never played Warcraft. Blizzard will not ban anyone for this. From their website:
We are unable to assist with the following issues:
Actions that would typically be considered "dishonorable" are considered legitimate PvP tactics and will not be addressed by our Game Master (GM) staff. "Dishonorable" actions include, but are not limited to:
* Corpse camping.
* Tricking players into getting flagged for PvP (i.e. jumping in the middle of another player's area effect spell).
* Killing players well below your level.
You have 6.5 gig of space on redundant remote servers. What are you backing up? Perhaps I do not understand what this application does and who needs it...
If 9/11 defines that generation, then I'm so happy to be an old fart. I never would let a terrorist act define me.
Let me guess. You were born after WWII? There were/still are a lot of people on both sides of the pond that would say that event defined their generation.
Last time I checked, it said "News for Nerds" at the top of this page. Why not write up the technical reasons why it's happening?
Mostly because the technical aspects of WoW are not something easily discussed. I'm a casual player, and by admission have spent a casual amount of time trying to research the technology that drives the game. So far, most of what I've read is speculation and conjecture, with the rest being statements like "multiple realms share the same database backend." I'd love to discuss the technical side of WoW, but I'd like to learn more about it. I'll admit that I'm probably not trying hard enough, but it's pretty obvious that Blizzard doesn't share much of its infrastructure in an "open" fashion.
I run my own mail server, and I'm always looking for something bigger or better than spamassassin. However, being the typical Slashdot pseudo-geek, I'm too lazy to try and seek out information on my own. Do you have any links to get me on my way?
How would it be dangerous to have a tracking device start recording anytime the car moves faster than 5mph? On the flip side, so what if they set it to 70mph? Doing 65 in a 25 zone is way more dangerous than doing 75 in a 65. This thing seems mostly irrelevant unless it can be made smarter.
I'm a mostly non-confrontational person. I feel weird telling a cashier that he/she mistakenly gave me some non-US currency as change, and I try to be polite as possible when calling someone for support since its a large part of what I do for a living. I'm also fortunate enough that I haven't had many issues that I've had to escalate, but I remember one several years ago where I had to do exactly this sort of thing. I bought a ginormous multimedia center to store CDs and DVDs. I could barely fit the box in my car. When I was trying to assemble it at home I found two pieces were missing; critical enough that the unit couldn't be used without them. I drove back to the store with the instructions and receipt to ask for these parts, and I was directed to the store manager. She explained that she would have to open up another box to get the parts and she wasn't willing to do that. So, in front of a store full of people on a Friday night I gradually kept raising my voice, saying I didn't care if she had to turn this store upside down to get the parts that I paid for, until every person in the store was staring at us. I got my parts, made sure to let everyone in the store know I was never shopping there again, and walked out with a big grin on my face, completely shocked at myself. But damn if that didn't feel good!
"Congress should outlaw EULA agreements altogether, even the part that says 'If this breaks we aren't responsible.' They wrote the software saying that it works, and if it breaks, they SHOULD be responsible."
Right, like this license?
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
I don't know how it works in other states, but we already have a use tax in Wisconsin:
"Use tax is the counterpart of sales tax. It must be paid on all taxable items purchased from retailers who do not collect Wisconsin sales tax and all taxable items brought into Wisconsin. It applies to purchases made in foreign countries as well as other states. Use tax only applies when Wisconsin sales tax is not charged."
What's great is you get double taxed for things you buy out-of-state but bring home to use. For example, I drive down to Gurnee Mills just north of Chicago and buy a CD. I pay the 6%+ IL sales tax, then drive home. According to WI law, when I file my taxes, I must pay the 5% use tax on that CD. This proposal by Gov. Doyle is just an extension of the current use tax.
Where in the article does it say that Waterview isn't owned by the university? In fact, this page would seem to indicate that the complex is in fact owned and operated by the university.
Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods, but in my house, DSL is on an RJ11 jack. The DSL modem then connects to my router via ethernet/RJ45.
"Why would you want to re-encode an AAC to an MP3?"
So I can put it on my mp3 player that doesn't and never will know how to decode AAC. As of right now, I have to burn the music to cd, then rip it to mp3. It would be nice to skip a step.
Someone in one of the umpteen million previous SCO vs. the World Slashdot articles explained this pretty well.
IIRC, IBM's new leadership labeled the IT industry as a media circus and vowed to take the high-road from now on. Instead of playing the immature game SCO wants them to play, they are going to wait until the right time and right venue (a court of law, perhaps?) to pound SCO into the ground.
I'd like to see this modded up... A friend of mine who has a number of birth defects is working on a auto-biographical project. My girlfriend, an amateur photographer, took a number of pictures of her scars from multiple surgeries. A couple pictures feature our friend's spinal scars with portraits of Rosalind in the background... it was very moving indeed.
It's not a player, but I noticed during the install of Unreal Tournament 2003 that the sound files had a.ogg extension. Commercial support is coming, albeit very slowly.
The reason it takes "CPU power" to add new codecs like FLAC or OGG is because the onboard mp3 or wma decoder is hardware. In order to play other formats the decoding work has to be done by the unit's processor. The people who are working on the project to provide an OSS firmware for Archos devices have stated this as their reason why they aren't planning on adding OGG support to their project. There needs to be a hardware FLAC/OGG decoder thats cheap and easy to program for. Does such an animal exist?
Slashdot Mirror
Jedi's who are ruling the muther-phkin galaxy not realizing that one who will "bring balance to the force" would knock them down because at that time - it was out of balance - the GOOD side was winning!
Not sure where this became a bad plot device. I think the biggest problem with the original trilogy was that the Jedi were made out to be intellectually infallible (Obi Wan and Yoda), and the best (only good?) part of the new trilogy was the realization of the concept that the Jedi were a diverse group of sentient life forms, some of whom suffered from the same illusions of grandeur, ignorance, or poor decision making as non-Jedi. The Jedi pre-Clone War were self-absorbed and so dependent on the Force telling them everything, they failed to actually observe their surroundings; other than Obi-Wan and Yoda, of course, who could tell something was up but just didn't understand the magnitude.
This same concept is found all through other Star Wars lore.
They already cloned Windows 7. It's called KDE4.
Seriously, though, I used KDE and loved it until 4 came out. It was unstable, bloated, and difficult to use. I switched to Gnome2 and loved it. Then a dist upgrade put Gnome 3 on my laptop and suddenly my laptop was less usable than with KDE4. I switched to Fedora's KDE spin, more so because of a need to run some commercial software that was much better supported under Red Hat RPM-based distros. I realized that in the time I was away, KDE4 slimmed down somewhat and was much more stable. More importantly, I was able to fully customize my eye-candy unlike Gnome or even Windows 7.
I still think the KDE group's philosophy of making KDE 4.1-4.4 a prolonged, nasty beta period was a terribly poor idea and I hope they seriously reconsider when looking forward to KDE5. However, now that the beta period is over and we now have KDE4 release candidates (4.6-4.8) I think it's worth a second look for a lot of *nix users.
You are definitely the archetype... of people who really trust The Cloud (tm). I do not.
1) I used to have Netflix. Then they jacked up their price and lost something like 60% of their already mediocre streaming selection. Their boneheaded CEO is still there. I have not seen a press release from Netflix that has convinced me it's time to go back.
2) All of the Internet providers in my area are media companies that want to sell you TV service and have basically announced they don't believe in net neutrality. My service comes with a yet unenforced 250GB cap per month. If I were to go back to Netflix or a similar service, the majority of my movie viewing will be in high definition. I'm too lazy to do the math, but my streaming, my g/f's streaming, and our other Internet use (like Skype) would probably chew up our allotment pretty quickly. My future children will definitely make this a lot worse. Maybe caps will be raised by that point...
3) I like to own my movies and music. I'm such a luddite that I actually prefer having a physical copy that I can rip to disk, back up, and cuddle as I fall asleep.
I'm actually looking to put together a multi-terabyte FreeNAS server to serve as a backend to an XBMC console in my living room as well as convert my other servers to Xen virtual machines. Based on how popular home theater PC hardware is right now, along with the popularity of software like Windows Media Center, MythTV, and XBMC, I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in this.
And the most of the rest appear to be either unions (police and labor) and the content owners themselves like MPAA, ABC, CBS, NFL, and Disney (i.e. the usual suspects). GoDaddy seemed to be the only Internet based company on that list. I'm not sure I understand the motivation for all of the major drug and cosmetic companies, except to say that they rely heavily on copyright and patent to maintain their business models (no pun intended for the cosmetic companies).
Honestly, I was expecting that PDF to be a huge download, not 3 1/3 pages of companies I pretty much fully expected to see. If that's a mostly comprehensive list, I'm baffled as to why this sees so much support in Congress. The dollars must really be flowing from the usual suspects mentioned above.
FreeBSD is not hard to install, use, and configure. It has the best documentation out of any *NIX I've seen. It can easily utilize resources, great for server daemons, clusters, DB, and can run Xorg. There's so many damn distros to choose from nowadays, people see it for 30 seconds, download a new ISO of something completely different, install it, get bored, try another, etc. Maybe if you actually put some time in to making the system just the way you want, and RTFM, then you might be happy with the results you get from FreeBSD, or any other OS for that matter. Just tired of the ADD. Pay attention!
You might be right. I'll be honest and say I've never really given FreeBSD much attention beyond the pretty wrapping paper of things like pfsense and FreeNAS. However, on my local LUG mailing list there used to be a guy who made no attempt to hide his love of FreeBSD and marginal disdain of Linux. I think he participated on the listserv just because our LUG was the closest thing to an open-source form/community in our area. He constantly referred to Linux distributions as 'forks' and when the topic of FreeBSD was discussed, it was made to be superior to Linux. Looking back, I don't think he was really trying to anger anyone, but after a while he did. Eventually he was shunned to the point of leaving the listserv. My conversations about FreeBSD and its user base almost always ended up with people saying "I tried it, but got tired of the condescending tone when I tried to get help."
I really try hard not to stereotype or generalize people, but the tone of your post falls right in line with this. Also, you say FreeBSD is "great for server daemons, clusters, DB, and can run Xorg." I'd like to point out that the first three things are exactly NOT what this article is about. Instead of bashing people, talk about how FreeBSD can run desktop environments just like Linux can, and talk about the virtues of portage. I know you're probably just venting so what I'm saying isn't exactly fair, but sadly perception is reality.
Yes. I use Gentoo and absolutely love it. That is, until an emerge of a package hoses my system and I spend the next six hours troubleshooting it. The Gentoo forums are sometimes helpful, but not always depending on the root cause of the problem. If I didn't read a news item after syncing my portage tree I can usually find the answer along with a proper scolding for not RTFM. If the problem is a Gentoo ebuild issue or an upstream bug, finding an answer is usually more difficult.
Because Gentoo is geared more towards a seasoned, savvy Linux user, I never would recommend it to someone switching from Windows, and hardly would recommend it to someone who's been using Ubuntu for the last year. I've been using Linux since 1998 and Gentoo since about 2003, and I struggle at times (see previous paragraph). I think that disqualifies Gentoo as a general-purpose desktop Linux distribution.
Also, remember that the Gentoo portage system is a direct kin of FreeBSD's ports. I guess you don't *need* FreeBSD around since it's the concept and not the code that makes portage, but what a slap in the face.
I haven't purchased a Linksys product since Cisco bought the company and promptly started pile driving them into the ground. My company has standardized on Cisco, but I am nowhere near involved in networking equipment purchases. I know I'll get blank stares if I bring this up to our Cisco rep the next time he steps in the building. Other than simply being outraged, I'm not sure what else to do.
In Warcraft, it consisted of sneaking a high level character to the opposing newbie area and then killing newbies as they spawned... for hours or until you were banned.
You must have never played Warcraft. Blizzard will not ban anyone for this. From their website:
We are unable to assist with the following issues: Actions that would typically be considered "dishonorable" are considered legitimate PvP tactics and will not be addressed by our Game Master (GM) staff. "Dishonorable" actions include, but are not limited to:
* Corpse camping.
* Tricking players into getting flagged for PvP (i.e. jumping in the middle of another player's area effect spell).
* Killing players well below your level.
You have 6.5 gig of space on redundant remote servers. What are you backing up? Perhaps I do not understand what this application does and who needs it...
Redundancy is never a replacement for backups.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/25/1535226
If 9/11 defines that generation, then I'm so happy to be an old fart. I never would let a terrorist act define me.
Let me guess. You were born after WWII? There were/still are a lot of people on both sides of the pond that would say that event defined their generation.
Last time I checked, it said "News for Nerds" at the top of this page. Why not write up the technical reasons why it's happening?
Mostly because the technical aspects of WoW are not something easily discussed. I'm a casual player, and by admission have spent a casual amount of time trying to research the technology that drives the game. So far, most of what I've read is speculation and conjecture, with the rest being statements like "multiple realms share the same database backend." I'd love to discuss the technical side of WoW, but I'd like to learn more about it. I'll admit that I'm probably not trying hard enough, but it's pretty obvious that Blizzard doesn't share much of its infrastructure in an "open" fashion.
I run my own mail server, and I'm always looking for something bigger or better than spamassassin. However, being the typical Slashdot pseudo-geek, I'm too lazy to try and seek out information on my own. Do you have any links to get me on my way?
How would it be dangerous to have a tracking device start recording anytime the car moves faster than 5mph? On the flip side, so what if they set it to 70mph? Doing 65 in a 25 zone is way more dangerous than doing 75 in a 65. This thing seems mostly irrelevant unless it can be made smarter.
I'm a mostly non-confrontational person. I feel weird telling a cashier that he/she mistakenly gave me some non-US currency as change, and I try to be polite as possible when calling someone for support since its a large part of what I do for a living. I'm also fortunate enough that I haven't had many issues that I've had to escalate, but I remember one several years ago where I had to do exactly this sort of thing. I bought a ginormous multimedia center to store CDs and DVDs. I could barely fit the box in my car. When I was trying to assemble it at home I found two pieces were missing; critical enough that the unit couldn't be used without them. I drove back to the store with the instructions and receipt to ask for these parts, and I was directed to the store manager. She explained that she would have to open up another box to get the parts and she wasn't willing to do that. So, in front of a store full of people on a Friday night I gradually kept raising my voice, saying I didn't care if she had to turn this store upside down to get the parts that I paid for, until every person in the store was staring at us. I got my parts, made sure to let everyone in the store know I was never shopping there again, and walked out with a big grin on my face, completely shocked at myself. But damn if that didn't feel good!
"Congress should outlaw EULA agreements altogether, even the part that says 'If this breaks we aren't responsible.' They wrote the software saying that it works, and if it breaks, they SHOULD be responsible."
Right, like this license?
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
"Use tax is the counterpart of sales tax. It must be paid on all taxable items purchased from retailers who do not collect Wisconsin sales tax and all taxable items brought into Wisconsin. It applies to purchases made in foreign countries as well as other states. Use tax only applies when Wisconsin sales tax is not charged."
What's great is you get double taxed for things you buy out-of-state but bring home to use. For example, I drive down to Gurnee Mills just north of Chicago and buy a CD. I pay the 6%+ IL sales tax, then drive home. According to WI law, when I file my taxes, I must pay the 5% use tax on that CD. This proposal by Gov. Doyle is just an extension of the current use tax.
Where in the article does it say that Waterview isn't owned by the university? In fact, this page would seem to indicate that the complex is in fact owned and operated by the university.
Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods, but in my house, DSL is on an RJ11 jack. The DSL modem then connects to my router via ethernet/RJ45.
And yet somehow it made the front page of Slashdot...
"Why would you want to re-encode an AAC to an MP3?"
So I can put it on my mp3 player that doesn't and never will know how to decode AAC. As of right now, I have to burn the music to cd, then rip it to mp3. It would be nice to skip a step.
Someone in one of the umpteen million previous SCO vs. the World Slashdot articles explained this pretty well.
IIRC, IBM's new leadership labeled the IT industry as a media circus and vowed to take the high-road from now on. Instead of playing the immature game SCO wants them to play, they are going to wait until the right time and right venue (a court of law, perhaps?) to pound SCO into the ground.
I'd like to see this modded up... A friend of mine who has a number of birth defects is working on a auto-biographical project. My girlfriend, an amateur photographer, took a number of pictures of her scars from multiple surgeries. A couple pictures feature our friend's spinal scars with portraits of Rosalind in the background... it was very moving indeed.
The reason it takes "CPU power" to add new codecs like FLAC or OGG is because the onboard mp3 or wma decoder is hardware. In order to play other formats the decoding work has to be done by the unit's processor. The people who are working on the project to provide an OSS firmware for Archos devices have stated this as their reason why they aren't planning on adding OGG support to their project. There needs to be a hardware FLAC/OGG decoder thats cheap and easy to program for. Does such an animal exist?