As opposed to most college students, who show up every day, give the professor an apple, answer the roll, and then recite in unison "good morning professor, we're all in our places with bright shiney faces".
All this tells me is that they managed to find a bitter liberal prof at Yale who was probably stuck teaching an 8 o'clock section for which lecture attendance was not required.
Now, if you're accusing the president of having purchased his grades, that's quite an accusation. If there were any truth to that I think we'd have heard from every liberal on the planet by now.
I use the command-line InfoZip in batch files to create archives. I use PKZip to unzip because the GUI makes it very easy to selectively remove files from a ZIP, to inspect a ZIP so I can see what it is without unzipping it, to just double-click instead of using the command line, etc. Both applications have their value.
Also, I wouldn't recommend a CLI program for most people. Chances are that if you know how to use CLI software you don't need my recommendations anyway.:)
The GUI InfoZip product, what is it... Wiz? It's just not very pleasing. The interface looks cobbled together, and it just doesn't feel right. I don't know how else to put it. A free solution is no good if it doesn't please you personally.
Best quote ever about Michael Moore (this was said sarcasticly): "Michael Moore, who dropped out of the University of Michigan, is a genius; and President Bush, who graduated from Yale, is an idiot".
Not sure who said this. Might have been Limbaugh or one of those other conservative talk radio guys.
Anyone know of a shareware site that lists crippleware as such, and not calling "X Lite" (where Lite means crippled) proper shareware when it's only a thinly veiled marketing release?
You might want to try the aptly named NoNags.com. Unfortunately, it only lists Freeware, not shareware, which has the potential to exclude some good things.
I pretty much agree with you. I used to recommend PKZip, but then they started installing an "adbot". Yuck. Nagware is a cold. Adware is the flu. Spyware is anthrax. No wonder shareware isn't what it used to be--it decided to make biological weapons so now a coalition of freeware, bundled software, and Open Source is bombing it to smithereens... sorry... too much war on all our minds.
Opening the code to legacy stuff like Windows 3.x would probably be the best route for them. That way, they are only giving away crap, not anything truly valuable, and if they establish that as a policy it would cement people's allegiance by taking away the "what if it becomes unavailable" argument.
Right now, they'd probably be foolish to give away Windows95 because it's still too useful. However, there will come a day when you can't get '95 compatable hardware anymore, when '95 looks as bad as 3.x. Then you give away '95.
The time for competition to hack '95 sources well enough to compete with Windows ZP '10 would be quite long, and it would just be a "fork" anyway so few people would use it.
In other words, the "service and support" model was, is, and always will be less lucrative, but establishing an open abandonware policy and/or a cost decrease policy for legacy products would help them. The trick is making sure that you cannablize virtually none of your sales going forward. Face it--Windows desktops don't require much support from MSFT. They've spent too much money making it so that it doesn't require much support, and too much time shifting support to OEMs. Most of the support issues are at install-time, and most installs are burned in by OEMs. There will always be the "I can't double-click" people, but you can't build a business like MSFT just by helping them. Servers are another matter, but why would anybody want to put Windows on a server anyway?:)
I'm a CS major at RIT, and in order to graduate I have to complete 4 co-ops. That means I have to work in the industry for 40 weeks, and get paid for it, before I get a degree.
OK, let me know how many people are in that situation and give me a few weeks. I'll check up on the going rate for low-rent flex office space, incorporation papers, basic office furnishings and other essentials. Then I can charge you and your buds double the cost (standard retail markup) for each cubicle. If you want to come in every day, you can, or you can just goof off. I'll be in the corner office reading/., playing games, coding for fun, etc.
If anybody asks, Istardco is a company focused on "scalable b2b infrastructure management processes". If you like, I can put you in charge of the (insert buzzword here) division.
I checked it against the 15 inch before I returned it. It was definitely the monitor. IIRC, the guy at CompuUSA said a few of these monitors had this problem; that he'd seen it before--apparently failure to properly coat the inside of the CRT with phosphors, or maybe a dirty shadow mask like the other guy said. The 2nd monitor had a far more common problem--some high voltage components in the CRT driver circuitry just burning out.
I was working on my PC, glanced over at the TV and saw all these orange mushroom clouds. I immediately unmuted the TV and stepped away from the PC. I support the war, but I'm not "happy" about seeing things and lives destroyed like this. I don't think many people who support the war are happy about it either. It's just that this is better than the alternative.
Re:Burned out pixels suck
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LCD Overtaking CRT
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Losing a pixel on a CRT is bad too. No, it doesn't happen as often, but I am typing this on a machine that uses a Philips CRT (model 107s 17 inch). The first unit I got had a missing pixel. I took it back to CompUSA and they replaced it. The next unit I got mysteriously went black after a month. Fortunately, I kept my old 15 inch as a backup, and the RMA process went very smoothly. Interesting to note is that the monitor I got via RMA was made in USA. You never see that in the store... so I guess if you have to sit through RMA, they make sure you get the best quality. I was able to put up with this, BTW, because at the time 17 inch CRTs were expensive and this one was a bargain. My Philips has now provided me with 5 years of uninterupted service under conditions including no A/C and daily power cycling (sometimes twice a day).
The point? Both technologies have their problems. What matters is the support. A good manufacturer won't leave you "stuck with an annoying glitch".
I'm sure Lessig is a very capable lawyer, but I wonder what he would say if I asked him who Nyquist and Fourier are. Could he explain the theories for which they are well known?
This "hydrogen boosting" is just adding a different fuel to the mix. Of course the "mileage" will increase because you are getting more power from the other fuel. The other fuel is probably more expensive than gasoline, so why bother? Not only that, but you are "misfueling" your vehicle, so unless you really know what you're doing it could impact the performance and/or lifetime of the engine and it certainly voids your warranty.
The article doesn't even mention GPL. It specificly mentions Open Source (TM), but nothing about the GPL. If the company gets to choose what license the software reverts to after the target, fine, but the/. story lead me to believe this might be a stealth attempt to foist the GPL on people. That doesn't appear to be the case.
Regardless, it's a moot point anyway. As others have pointed out, companies can just juggle the books to make it look like they never sold that much.
I'd also like to add that this would just be government duplicating a process that already is occuring quite nicely in the free market. For example, Unix was once proprietary, then BSD escaped but before that could happen it was cloned--Linux. Now the same thing is happening with desktops and office suites. This is the process known as "commoditization". It may not protect users of proprietary apps from file-format lockin, but that's OK because if you are concerned about lockin there is an incentive to become an early adapter to the OSS product. In the final stages of commoditization, the early proprietary vendors can no longer make money on their product. Most of them try to "lick the bowl clean" which is inconvenient for a tiny segment of the market that would like to cling to legacy apps, but I'd rather inconvenience that segment than inconvenience everybody by having the government meddle in the software business.
easy to use search-n-replace functions, Karma to burn, couldn't resist:
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *Hussein is dying One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *Hussein community when IDC confirmed that *Hussein market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *Hussein has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Hussein is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *Hussein's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Hussein faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Hussein because *Hussein is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Hussein. As many of us are already aware, *Hussein continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeHussein is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeHussein developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeHussein is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenHussein leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenHussein. How many users of NetHussein are there? Let's see. The number of OpenHussein versus NetHussein posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetHussein users. Hussein/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetHussein posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Hussein/OS. A recent article put FreeHussein at about 80 percent of the *Hussein market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeHussein users. This is consistent with the number of FreeHussein Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeHussein went out of business and was taken over by HusseinI who sell another troubled OS. Now HusseinI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *Hussein has steadily declined in market share. *Hussein is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *Hussein is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *Hussein continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this late point in time. For all practical purposes, *Hussein is dead.
Could you imagine an influenza strain that spreads through the air and causes chronic lung damage (and lots of deaths)? That would be devastating.
That doesn't scare me as much as the possibility of an airborne virus with long latency and high mortality. Imagine what it would be like if AIDS were airborne. Bugs like Ebola aren't actually that frightening on a global scale because as soon a a handful of people get it they immediately quarantine everybody who has contact. Ebola seldom spreads beyond the African villages where it breeds simply because it's so virulent. No, the really devestating viruses are the ones that bide their time.
Step 2--words of caution. Pouring a flat concrete roof is easy, but if water leaks through a pitched roof over that, acid rain will eat the concrete, allow cracks to develop, and then thermal cycles (possibly even freeze-thaw if it's cold enough) will do the rest. Periodic inspection will prevent this. Figuring out some way to put a slight slope to the concrete would help more. Obviously you can't pour it that way without some kind of mold. If there is a living space between the concrete floor and the pitched roof, the thermal cycling won't be a problem, and leak inspection will be performed daily.:)
Step 3--Lexan+weather=cloudiness after a while. This would be especially true in a dusty, harsh chemical, or maybe even in some forest environments where saps do a number on it. Glass outer panes are good, Lexan as an inner insulating pane is probably fine.
Arcades "Back In The Day"
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Lucky Wander Boy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
If you played in the days when primitive graphics and freshly-minuted archetypes made gameplay somehow even more addictive, this book will cause howls of recognition.
I feel priveleged to have been born in '68, because I got to experience arcades at the height of their glory. Best arcade I ever went to: Spaceway Raceway in Springfield Mall. Actually, there were *two* arcades in Springfield mall during the 80s--IIRC, they were both called "Timeout" at one point. The Spaceway Raceway was the one that was remodeled to include a circular electric bumper-car track.
The important thing is that the arcades were DARK. This cannot be stressed too much. Also, games were new, we were young, and this was "cutting edge technology that nobodoy knew where it would take us". It was soooo... easy to get "lost" in this fantasy world... perhaps too easy. I honestly believe I was addicted to games at one point.
Timeout is still there, but SWRW was turned into something else... not sure what. The beginning of the end came for me when games started getting "cartoony" and I learned to drive. Then they started turning on lights in Time Out. They started turning on lights in all the arcades, reason given was that drug deals and pick-pocketing were going down. Lousy people always have to spoil it... but perhaps this was part of the "Star Wars Cantina" low-grade danger that made the places so appealing... that, and the fact that I had to ride my bike pretty far to get there.
It all fell apart when I went to college. Even before that, they were losing their luster. And, when you can drive a car, there are much more interesting places to go...
Of course kids these days have better tech, but I can't help but think they are deprived. There tech is too good. No epic bike rides for gaming... they sit on their butts too long... the effect of the tech and the direction it will take seems more predictable.
Games now? I fire up Quake once in a while when I'm frustrated with something, but that's it. The addiction left, as mysteriously as it came.
If you are a citizen of Cyberia, and there is crime in Cyberia, and all the citizens have enough money to pay the tax, then why not tax everybody the same ammount to pay for police?
Now, I understand and sympathize with the "if I'm paying for piracy I should be allowed to pirate" argument. However, if they are only charging the equivalent of $13/box, that sounds more like a charge for policing. A charge for "unlimited file sharing" would have to be a lot higher.
If they made piracy legal, that would be more like:
The citizens of Cyberia all agree that art is good, so they agree to pay a tax to subsidize all the arts.
Once again, under those circumstances, the tax would be considerably higher, and achieving the desired results considerably more difficult. Much of the money would end up being spent processing applications from, say... somebody who takes a picture of himself with a bananna peal on his head and bills himself as a "performance artist" so he can get a subsidy check. If you think writing laws to avoid crap like that is easy, think again.
I never payed any attention to baseball when I was a kid. Football (American football) was everything. Then, in college I was with people watching the World Series, and I kinda liked it. That little seed sorta stayed there for a while, and blossomed when the Baltimore Orioles (the closest thing Washington has to a team) started doing really well in 1994. Guess what happened? Yep. Strike. No World Series. Would Baltimore have hung on and played in it? I'll never know. I don't care. Baseball wooed me, and then refused to consumate the relationship. So long, baseball.
1) I don't have any experience to refute that. 2) I don't think they are talking about just backend admin stuff here. They're talking about a lot of end-user stuff. 3) Freedom from audits sounds great, until you have to run one of the many apps that only runs on Windows. The last thing we need is more people at colleges suffering because the administrators are ideologicly bent. It doesn't matter which direction they're bent in either. Ideological bending, from any direction, sucks. 4) Your son may have other ideas.
I would argue that taking money--any ammount of money--in exchange for a commitment to follow an ideology blindly, is a terrible blunder. If it turns out that Windows is the smart way to go, they will continue to go that way and find themselves breathing a sign of relief. However, even if Linux dominates both desktop and server 5 years from now, they should not feel bad for having refused the offer because they will have retained their freedom of choice and not bent to the will of some wealthy ideologue.
This reminds me of that bit from an Ayn Rand novel where this guy invites people into an office and offers them money to "sell out" and they are invariably reduced to underachieving according to their potential. In this case, a whole university is being asked to "sell out" to the fashionable hatred du jour.
I already explained what I think the answer is earlier today.
Trouble transitioning to alternative fuels? My concept of a standards-based component engine approach solves that too. If you're carrying multiple fuel->electricity converters under the hood, and if you have smaller, redundant converters, it's much more practical to build a dual-fuel vehicle. It's also easier to innovate in the fuel technology... heck, what will it take industry to see this? Maybe if we explain to them that it would make it possible to sell proprietary fuel technologies, just as we have proprietary OSs... ummm... better not give them any bright ideas.
It's a political story. Death of the EV-1 is pure politics and economics. Patent politics. Market share politics. Regulor old government politics. As others have mentioned, GM was trying to forc their proprietary charger on people. GM was never really wanted the EV-1. The lease-only business model has been a bone of contention in the EV community for years. Leases suck. Most people want to own. It's no secret that GM set the EV-1 up to fall from day 1. End of story.
As for what the "best technology" for engines is, there isn't one. What's needed is for somebody to design a modular engine--think RAID for cars. Instead of one engine under the hoold that costs $5000, you need several easily removeable components under the hood that cost several hundred dollars. I'd like to see these components cost $200, but even $500 would be beneficial. Notice, I'm not talking about the actual tech of these components--I'm leaving that as a total abstraction for a very specific reason. Stop and think before you read the next paragraph.
Now think about your computer. A hot system can cost $3000, but none of the components in that system is more than $500, except maybe the monitor.
Computer tech is driven in part by the ability of geeks to swap inexpensive components out of their chassis and have them all interface together. Now imagine the same thing with cars:
Standard pressurized fuel system. Standard battery rack. Standard fuel to electricity converters. Standard exhaust bus. Standard computer monitoring and control interfaces.
Do that, and in no time at all you'll have dozens of companies striving to offer gasoline to hydrogen reformers that are just a little cheaper, or a little quiter, or a little more efficient. Geeks will be reprogramming their control units every other day, and RMS will be saying "GNU/Car", but that's about the only downside I can think of.
Something like this won't come from the incumbent manufacturers; certainly not in the US. Even the Asians are probably more interested in protecting the current business model--nobody wants their cars "cloned".
A revolution like this will have to come from someplace like North Carolina, where there are machine-shop workers, mechanics, and NASCAR techs who know how to build cars without "the man" getting in the way. A lot of NASCAR vehicles are losing sponsorship. There's nothing like unemployment to breed new ideas sometimes.
Regardless of who does this, it needs to be done. Only through interoperation of standard components can the automobile shake itself out of the ossified corporate tool inspired funk in which it is mired. Modular components could be the engine (no pun intended) of the next economic boom--but only if we can sneek them under the RADAR.
Seems pretty cut-n-dry to me. Maybe they can fast track this. AFAIK, the Constitution says you can print anything you want*, not that I have to buy your newspaper. There is a direct analogy between spending my time and spending my money.
I'm disappointed that pollsters, telcos and non-profits get breaks. They bother us as much as the others, and there is no compelling public benefit to granting them an exception. Alas... this is associated with the lobbying/campaign finance issues that currently plague the US government, which present much more difficult issues from the constitutional standpoint.
*subject to certain established constraints like obscenity, slander, etc. Of course, that's not the issue here.
Slashdot Mirror
he never bothered turning up for class
As opposed to most college students, who show up every day, give the professor an apple, answer the roll, and then recite in unison "good morning professor, we're all in our places with bright shiney faces".
All this tells me is that they managed to find a bitter liberal prof at Yale who was probably stuck teaching an 8 o'clock section for which lecture attendance was not required.
Now, if you're accusing the president of having purchased his grades, that's quite an accusation. If there were any truth to that I think we'd have heard from every liberal on the planet by now.
I use the command-line InfoZip in batch files to create archives. I use PKZip to unzip because the GUI makes it very easy to selectively remove files from a ZIP, to inspect a ZIP so I can see what it is without unzipping it, to just double-click instead of using the command line, etc. Both applications have their value.
Also, I wouldn't recommend a CLI program for most people. Chances are that if you know how to use CLI software you don't need my recommendations anyway. :)
The GUI InfoZip product, what is it... Wiz? It's just not very pleasing. The interface looks cobbled together, and it just doesn't feel right. I don't know how else to put it. A free solution is no good if it doesn't please you personally.
Best quote ever about Michael Moore (this was said sarcasticly): "Michael Moore, who dropped out of the University of Michigan, is a genius; and President Bush, who graduated from Yale, is an idiot".
Not sure who said this. Might have been Limbaugh or one of those other conservative talk radio guys.
Anyone know of a shareware site that lists crippleware as such, and not calling "X Lite" (where Lite means crippled) proper shareware when it's only a thinly veiled marketing release?
You might want to try the aptly named NoNags.com. Unfortunately, it only lists Freeware, not shareware, which has the potential to exclude some good things.
I pretty much agree with you. I used to recommend PKZip, but then they started installing an "adbot". Yuck. Nagware is a cold. Adware is the flu. Spyware is anthrax. No wonder shareware isn't what it used to be--it decided to make biological weapons so now a coalition of freeware, bundled software, and Open Source is bombing it to smithereens... sorry... too much war on all our minds.
Opening the code to legacy stuff like Windows 3.x would probably be the best route for them. That way, they are only giving away crap, not anything truly valuable, and if they establish that as a policy it would cement people's allegiance by taking away the "what if it becomes unavailable" argument.
Right now, they'd probably be foolish to give away Windows95 because it's still too useful. However, there will come a day when you can't get '95 compatable hardware anymore, when '95 looks as bad as 3.x. Then you give away '95.
The time for competition to hack '95 sources well enough to compete with Windows ZP '10 would be quite long, and it would just be a "fork" anyway so few people would use it.
In other words, the "service and support" model was, is, and always will be less lucrative, but establishing an open abandonware policy and/or a cost decrease policy for legacy products would help them. The trick is making sure that you cannablize virtually none of your sales going forward. Face it--Windows desktops don't require much support from MSFT. They've spent too much money making it so that it doesn't require much support, and too much time shifting support to OEMs. Most of the support issues are at install-time, and most installs are burned in by OEMs. There will always be the "I can't double-click" people, but you can't build a business like MSFT just by helping them. Servers are another matter, but why would anybody want to put Windows on a server anyway? :)
Well of course everybody writing OSS is White. Most Blacks are trying to work their way out of poverty.
I'm a CS major at RIT, and in order to graduate I have to complete 4 co-ops. That means I have to work in the industry for 40 weeks, and get paid for it, before I get a degree.
OK, let me know how many people are in that situation and give me a few weeks. I'll check up on the going rate for low-rent flex office space, incorporation papers, basic office furnishings and other essentials. Then I can charge you and your buds double the cost (standard retail markup) for each cubicle. If you want to come in every day, you can, or you can just goof off. I'll be in the corner office reading /., playing games, coding for fun, etc.
If anybody asks, Istardco is a company focused on "scalable b2b infrastructure management processes". If you like, I can put you in charge of the (insert buzzword here) division.
I checked it against the 15 inch before I returned it. It was definitely the monitor. IIRC, the guy at CompuUSA said a few of these monitors had this problem; that he'd seen it before--apparently failure to properly coat the inside of the CRT with phosphors, or maybe a dirty shadow mask like the other guy said. The 2nd monitor had a far more common problem--some high voltage components in the CRT driver circuitry just burning out.
I was working on my PC, glanced over at the TV and saw all these orange mushroom clouds. I immediately unmuted the TV and stepped away from the PC. I support the war, but I'm not "happy" about seeing things and lives destroyed like this. I don't think many people who support the war are happy about it either. It's just that this is better than the alternative.
Losing a pixel on a CRT is bad too. No, it doesn't happen as often, but I am typing this on a machine that uses a Philips CRT (model 107s 17 inch). The first unit I got had a missing pixel. I took it back to CompUSA and they replaced it. The next unit I got mysteriously went black after a month. Fortunately, I kept my old 15 inch as a backup, and the RMA process went very smoothly. Interesting to note is that the monitor I got via RMA was made in USA. You never see that in the store... so I guess if you have to sit through RMA, they make sure you get the best quality. I was able to put up with this, BTW, because at the time 17 inch CRTs were expensive and this one was a bargain. My Philips has now provided me with 5 years of uninterupted service under conditions including no A/C and daily power cycling (sometimes twice a day).
The point? Both technologies have their problems. What matters is the support. A good manufacturer won't leave you "stuck with an annoying glitch".
I'm sure Lessig is a very capable lawyer, but I wonder what he would say if I asked him who Nyquist and Fourier are. Could he explain the theories for which they are well known?
This "hydrogen boosting" is just adding a different fuel to the mix. Of course the "mileage" will increase because you are getting more power from the other fuel. The other fuel is probably more expensive than gasoline, so why bother? Not only that, but you are "misfueling" your vehicle, so unless you really know what you're doing it could impact the performance and/or lifetime of the engine and it certainly voids your warranty.
The article doesn't even mention GPL. It specificly mentions Open Source (TM), but nothing about the GPL. If the company gets to choose what license the software reverts to after the target, fine, but the /. story lead me to believe this might be a stealth attempt to foist the GPL on people. That doesn't appear to be the case.
Regardless, it's a moot point anyway. As others have pointed out, companies can just juggle the books to make it look like they never sold that much.
I'd also like to add that this would just be government duplicating a process that already is occuring quite nicely in the free market. For example, Unix was once proprietary, then BSD escaped but before that could happen it was cloned--Linux. Now the same thing is happening with desktops and office suites. This is the process known as "commoditization". It may not protect users of proprietary apps from file-format lockin, but that's OK because if you are concerned about lockin there is an incentive to become an early adapter to the OSS product. In the final stages of commoditization, the early proprietary vendors can no longer make money on their product. Most of them try to "lick the bowl clean" which is inconvenient for a tiny segment of the market that would like to cling to legacy apps, but I'd rather inconvenience that segment than inconvenience everybody by having the government meddle in the software business.
easy to use search-n-replace functions, Karma to burn, couldn't resist:
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *Hussein is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *Hussein community when IDC confirmed that *Hussein market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *Hussein has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *Hussein is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict *Hussein's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *Hussein faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *Hussein because *Hussein is dying. Things are looking very bad for *Hussein. As many of us are already aware, *Hussein continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeHussein is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeHussein developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeHussein is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenHussein leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenHussein. How many users of NetHussein are there? Let's see. The number of OpenHussein versus NetHussein posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetHussein users. Hussein/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetHussein posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Hussein/OS. A recent article put FreeHussein at about 80 percent of the *Hussein market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeHussein users. This is consistent with the number of FreeHussein Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeHussein went out of business and was taken over by HusseinI who sell another troubled OS. Now HusseinI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *Hussein has steadily declined in market share. *Hussein is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *Hussein is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *Hussein continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this late point in time. For all practical purposes, *Hussein is dead.
Fact: *Hussein is dying
Could you imagine an influenza strain that spreads through the air and causes chronic lung damage (and lots of deaths)? That would be devastating.
That doesn't scare me as much as the possibility of an airborne virus with long latency and high mortality. Imagine what it would be like if AIDS were airborne. Bugs like Ebola aren't actually that frightening on a global scale because as soon a a handful of people get it they immediately quarantine everybody who has contact. Ebola seldom spreads beyond the African villages where it breeds simply because it's so virulent. No, the really devestating viruses are the ones that bide their time.
It's base-64 encoded, but when I decode the message body the only readable part is:
Science and Human Rights Program <shrp@aaas.org>
There is nothing meaningful in the title, but perhaps it's a foreign character set or a binary that just happens to have a string embedded in it.
Step 2--words of caution. Pouring a flat concrete roof is easy, but if water leaks through a pitched roof over that, acid rain will eat the concrete, allow cracks to develop, and then thermal cycles (possibly even freeze-thaw if it's cold enough) will do the rest. Periodic inspection will prevent this. Figuring out some way to put a slight slope to the concrete would help more. Obviously you can't pour it that way without some kind of mold. If there is a living space between the concrete floor and the pitched roof, the thermal cycling won't be a problem, and leak inspection will be performed daily. :)
Step 3--Lexan+weather=cloudiness after a while. This would be especially true in a dusty, harsh chemical, or maybe even in some forest environments where saps do a number on it. Glass outer panes are good, Lexan as an inner insulating pane is probably fine.
If you played in the days when primitive graphics and freshly-minuted archetypes made gameplay somehow even more addictive, this book will cause howls of recognition.
I feel priveleged to have been born in '68, because I got to experience arcades at the height of their glory. Best arcade I ever went to: Spaceway Raceway in Springfield Mall. Actually, there were *two* arcades in Springfield mall during the 80s--IIRC, they were both called "Timeout" at one point. The Spaceway Raceway was the one that was remodeled to include a circular electric bumper-car track.
The important thing is that the arcades were DARK. This cannot be stressed too much. Also, games were new, we were young, and this was "cutting edge technology that nobodoy knew where it would take us". It was soooo... easy to get "lost" in this fantasy world... perhaps too easy. I honestly believe I was addicted to games at one point.
Timeout is still there, but SWRW was turned into something else... not sure what. The beginning of the end came for me when games started getting "cartoony" and I learned to drive. Then they started turning on lights in Time Out. They started turning on lights in all the arcades, reason given was that drug deals and pick-pocketing were going down. Lousy people always have to spoil it... but perhaps this was part of the "Star Wars Cantina" low-grade danger that made the places so appealing... that, and the fact that I had to ride my bike pretty far to get there.
It all fell apart when I went to college. Even before that, they were losing their luster. And, when you can drive a car, there are much more interesting places to go...
Of course kids these days have better tech, but I can't help but think they are deprived. There tech is too good. No epic bike rides for gaming... they sit on their butts too long... the effect of the tech and the direction it will take seems more predictable.
Games now? I fire up Quake once in a while when I'm frustrated with something, but that's it. The addiction left, as mysteriously as it came.
If you are a citizen of Cyberia, and there is crime in Cyberia, and all the citizens have enough money to pay the tax, then why not tax everybody the same ammount to pay for police?
Now, I understand and sympathize with the "if I'm paying for piracy I should be allowed to pirate" argument. However, if they are only charging the equivalent of $13/box, that sounds more like a charge for policing. A charge for "unlimited file sharing" would have to be a lot higher.
If they made piracy legal, that would be more like:
The citizens of Cyberia all agree that art is good, so they agree to pay a tax to subsidize all the arts.
Once again, under those circumstances, the tax would be considerably higher, and achieving the desired results considerably more difficult. Much of the money would end up being spent processing applications from, say... somebody who takes a picture of himself with a bananna peal on his head and bills himself as a "performance artist" so he can get a subsidy check. If you think writing laws to avoid crap like that is easy, think again.
I never payed any attention to baseball when I was a kid. Football (American football) was everything. Then, in college I was with people watching the World Series, and I kinda liked it. That little seed sorta stayed there for a while, and blossomed when the Baltimore Orioles (the closest thing Washington has to a team) started doing really well in 1994. Guess what happened? Yep. Strike. No World Series. Would Baltimore have hung on and played in it? I'll never know. I don't care. Baseball wooed me, and then refused to consumate the relationship. So long, baseball.
Or, if he has a TV tuner card, he wouldn't even have to step away from the PC--just use a different piece of software.
1) I don't have any experience to refute that. 2) I don't think they are talking about just backend admin stuff here. They're talking about a lot of end-user stuff. 3) Freedom from audits sounds great, until you have to run one of the many apps that only runs on Windows. The last thing we need is more people at colleges suffering because the administrators are ideologicly bent. It doesn't matter which direction they're bent in either. Ideological bending, from any direction, sucks. 4) Your son may have other ideas.
I would argue that taking money--any ammount of money--in exchange for a commitment to follow an ideology blindly, is a terrible blunder. If it turns out that Windows is the smart way to go, they will continue to go that way and find themselves breathing a sign of relief. However, even if Linux dominates both desktop and server 5 years from now, they should not feel bad for having refused the offer because they will have retained their freedom of choice and not bent to the will of some wealthy ideologue.
This reminds me of that bit from an Ayn Rand novel where this guy invites people into an office and offers them money to "sell out" and they are invariably reduced to underachieving according to their potential. In this case, a whole university is being asked to "sell out" to the fashionable hatred du jour.
I already explained what I think the answer is earlier today.
Trouble transitioning to alternative fuels? My concept of a standards-based component engine approach solves that too. If you're carrying multiple fuel->electricity converters under the hood, and if you have smaller, redundant converters, it's much more practical to build a dual-fuel vehicle. It's also easier to innovate in the fuel technology... heck, what will it take industry to see this? Maybe if we explain to them that it would make it possible to sell proprietary fuel technologies, just as we have proprietary OSs... ummm... better not give them any bright ideas.
It's a political story. Death of the EV-1 is pure politics and economics. Patent politics. Market share politics. Regulor old government politics. As others have mentioned, GM was trying to forc their proprietary charger on people. GM was never really wanted the EV-1. The lease-only business model has been a bone of contention in the EV community for years. Leases suck. Most people want to own. It's no secret that GM set the EV-1 up to fall from day 1. End of story.
As for what the "best technology" for engines is, there isn't one. What's needed is for somebody to design a modular engine--think RAID for cars. Instead of one engine under the hoold that costs $5000, you need several easily removeable components under the hood that cost several hundred dollars. I'd like to see these components cost $200, but even $500 would be beneficial. Notice, I'm not talking about the actual tech of these components--I'm leaving that as a total abstraction for a very specific reason. Stop and think before you read the next paragraph.
Now think about your computer. A hot system can cost $3000, but none of the components in that system is more than $500, except maybe the monitor.
Computer tech is driven in part by the ability of geeks to swap inexpensive components out of their chassis and have them all interface together. Now imagine the same thing with cars:
Standard pressurized fuel system. Standard battery rack. Standard fuel to electricity converters. Standard exhaust bus. Standard computer monitoring and control interfaces.
Do that, and in no time at all you'll have dozens of companies striving to offer gasoline to hydrogen reformers that are just a little cheaper, or a little quiter, or a little more efficient. Geeks will be reprogramming their control units every other day, and RMS will be saying "GNU/Car", but that's about the only downside I can think of.
Something like this won't come from the incumbent manufacturers; certainly not in the US. Even the Asians are probably more interested in protecting the current business model--nobody wants their cars "cloned".
A revolution like this will have to come from someplace like North Carolina, where there are machine-shop workers, mechanics, and NASCAR techs who know how to build cars without "the man" getting in the way. A lot of NASCAR vehicles are losing sponsorship. There's nothing like unemployment to breed new ideas sometimes.
Regardless of who does this, it needs to be done. Only through interoperation of standard components can the automobile shake itself out of the ossified corporate tool inspired funk in which it is mired. Modular components could be the engine (no pun intended) of the next economic boom--but only if we can sneek them under the RADAR.
Seems pretty cut-n-dry to me. Maybe they can fast track this. AFAIK, the Constitution says you can print anything you want*, not that I have to buy your newspaper. There is a direct analogy between spending my time and spending my money.
I'm disappointed that pollsters, telcos and non-profits get breaks. They bother us as much as the others, and there is no compelling public benefit to granting them an exception. Alas... this is associated with the lobbying/campaign finance issues that currently plague the US government, which present much more difficult issues from the constitutional standpoint.
*subject to certain established constraints like obscenity, slander, etc. Of course, that's not the issue here.