The slot machines have very clearly printed disclaimers that all malfunctions void the entire transaction. They will get the original bet returned.
Fine, so long as they refund ALL players that ever put money in that slot machine. You don't get to just pick and choose who gets a refund, and who does not.
If you don't want it heard by the public, don't broadcast it. If you need to broadcast it, encrypt it.
We tried that, so decryption tech was outlawed, but people around here hate that law with a passion.
So, you're saying: "If you want privacy on the air-waves, you need to go to great lengths to use theoretically unbreakable encryption. Otherwise, accept that everyone can listen to every word."
It's very Clintonesque. I could care less if Billy C. got some action from an intern, but it was the lying about it that made it heinous.
If you're caught, just admit it.
You know, if Clinton followed your advice, he never would have been elected in the first place. There was a scandal about him having an affair before he was elected. His lying was effective enough that most people didn't believe it, and voted for him.
As always, the only thing he did wrong was to get caught. Honestly, who keeps a soiled dress around? And yet, being a weirdo was the only thing that kept Monica from looking like a lying attention whore.
1. You didn't list a price. I'm pretty sure they aren't going to "solve" that one (by making it free).
2. If I could get better sound quality, fewer drop-outs, etc., I'd love to have a large (lightweight) antenna on my cell phone, provided it would work (as well as it does currently) if I happen to leave it retracted...
3. Li-Ion batteries are getting better all the time.
Yeah, like Ron Paul. The mainstream U.S. news media buried his campaign
Yes it was, and it's immensely ironic. He wants more corporate freedom, and corporations choose to use their current limited freedoms to undermine him. He (and his supporters) have no right to complain. That would be blatant hypocrisy.
Also, presidential politics is very different than any other political contests. Focus on the Presidency, at the expense of all else, is a great disservice.
The type of problem you describe can just as easily happen with Samba as it can with Windows Server.
Nope. I happen to know the described problem cannot happen with Samba.
(Not sure about the specific problem you're describing, but protocol negotiation problems in general between a Samba server and a Windows client are found in abundance in the Samba FAQs and on the Samba mailing lists, where I'm a regular) Part of the problem is that some aspects of the protocol can be controlled by the client as well as the server.
Nearly every protocol on earth involves negotiation of appropriate protocol settings between server and client... The same criticisms being made of Windows on the server applies to Windows clients to a much lesser degree, so you're not helping yourself here. There's still no denying all the criticisms. You don't even seem to try, just handwaving them away.
And, let's face it, the only reason you'd be serving CIFS from Unix as opposed to, say, NFS v4 is that you have some Microsoft clients.
I've seen plenty of unix-only networks using CIFS. Before NFSv4 stablized, NFS was pretty damn crufty, and plenty of people decided Samba looked like the best option at the time (wasn't me...).
finding these magickal Microsoft incantations you speak of is actually quite easy, especially in regard to CIFS. Oddly enough, the easiest way to find them is on the Samba Users' mailing list, however.
It's not my fault you didn't comprehend, or choose to ignore the point of my post...
Lucky for you, "parties" don't get elected. Individuals do. And you'll find plenty of politicians from both parties that disagree with their party on plenty of issues...
and just in case you left Javascript on with flash uninstalled, you get the benefit of it as well!
I hate to tell you, but that's what HTML5 is all about... Flash need not be involved. And HTML5 is trumpeted as the savior around here, so there's no end of people you can argue with if you'd like to complain about it...
Adobe makes their money on Flash development tools. They give the plug-ins away for free to sell more dev kits. I could see them kicking up a fuss over open source compilers, but not interpreters
And what happens when a 3rd party plugin gets popular, but omits feature X, or adds feature Y?
Adobe's dev tools then need to be modified to disable some favored feature, which will then piss of developers who use it and want it. Or perhaps Adobe can't add feature Y, giving some 3rd party an advantage in Flash dev tools. Or worse, a good Flash player gets developed, which automates the process of dumping a Flash object into some other format (eg. HTML5), which is then intended to be, or at least can be, modified from there with some other dev tools.
Control of the player gives Adobe control of the dev tools.
All our admins and all of our users only know Microsoft systems. Training isn't free.
So... you don't have internet access? I don't know of any Microsoft routers, switches, firewalls, etc.
And I'd respond to your statement by saying that admins aren't free either. If you're using Windows on your servers, the overwhelming majority of studies say you have a lot more admins than you would need if you switched to some non-Windows server operating system.
Honestly, for the cost of a couple idiot MCSEs, you could get a pretty good Linux admin who can install and manage a good 100 servers.
I don't think that there is any real appreciable difference between the amount of knowledge and training needed on one vs. the other when comparing systems that perform similar functions.
I'm afraid I'd have to completely disagree with you there. My preferred example isn't Active Directory, but CIFS...
With Windows, you do all the user management, then click-through the painful server setup wizard to turn on file sharing, and everyone's happy and thinks it's oh so easy to do... Right up until some guy tries to upload a a big file, and for no reason everything hangs-up at about the 2GB mark.
Congratulations, you've been screwed by Microsoft. No way in hell will you be able to determine what's going wrong by examining the OS, logs, included help documentation, registry settings, etc. You are screwed. You must now find external sources of information to determine why this would possibly happen. After either buying some 3rd party books on the subject (Microsoft's books are crap), or scouring Microsoft's website for every possible keyword that might be in the description of this problem, you just might find the answer (or maybe not, it really does depend on luck).
The software from this the largest and most profitable company in the world, somehow consistently determines that your gigabit network is ACTUALLY a slow, high lag (most likely dial-up) link, and dynamically switched to some ancient version of the protocol to give you slightly less overhead, which seems to work fine at first blush, but just doesn't allow UPLOADING (downloading is okay) files over 2GBs. Armed with this knowledge, you now get to delve deep into the bowels of the registry, and find a half-dozen irrationally named keys and change some completely arbitrary DWORD values to some other completely arbitrary DWORD values that only those with the source code, and entire debugging teams, can determine for you.
You DO have to be just as intelligent as a Unix admin to setup a reliable Windows network, since the fundamental laws of computing still apply. Then, on top of all that, you have to memorize the magic Microsoft spell-book, learn all the magic incantations if you want to do anything other than the very basic default settings (eg., for when they perform badly, are terribly insecure, or just completely blow up on you, like the above).
There's really no debate about it. Samba has a config file that stays under 1K even in the complex setups. With Windows, you've got a 20MB+ registry to look through, and absolutely no way to know what each value might do... Even if you had to look through the full Samba source code, it wouldn't come close to being as cumbersome as the Windows registry, AND you'd actually know everything there is to know about it, rather than some anecdotes here and there, you get from the Microsoft spell book...
I say this as someone who knows it all extremely well... Admin for over 100 Windows systems for a lot of years, from NT4.0 to 2000, and 2003. More recently, doing everything I can to get positions as a Unix admin, even taking a pay cut, rather than put up with the nightmares that a Windows admin position brings. I still occasionally get dragged back into the Windows world, when my current employer has something that the idiot MCSEs can't figure out, on our dwindling number of Windows systems, or when a former employer or someone else who knows me by reputation gets desperate and throws enough money at me to come back and fix some show-stopper on the Windows systems I long ago told them they needed to get rid of.
In short, I agree with the GP. Windows Admin is inherently a job where you can only peek through the keyhole and turn one screw at a time, while a Unix admin can strip out entire components and work with them in isolation. A Linux (or BSD, or OpenSolaris) Admin in particular can get the blueprints to everything, and KNOW exactly how everything works, with a fairly modest amount of effort... Even if you were unbelievably lucky
Americans arm and fund the Taliban and Al Qaeda to overthrow the secular Afghani government in the 1970s and 1980s.
Except, of course, none of that is true.
The US armed and funded the Mujahideen in the war against the Soviet military... They won, and a large number of them subsequently left the country. Those that remained fought each other for control of the country, and the Taliban regime won. They allied themselves with the Al Quaeda, and no country in the world chose to do anything about it...
The mere idea violates many fundamental laws of physics. It defies logic. Therefore, There are NO gods.
That's called a circular argument. Our understanding of X is based on observations, God has not been observed in X, therefore god is not included in X, therefore X confirms god does not exist.
History explains how gods where invented,
History explains when, where, and in which context some religions were formed.
We certainly don't have enough historical information about ANY event thousands of years ago, to reach a conclusion as sweeping as you claim exists... You are, in fact misrepresenting historical facts to suit your beliefs, which seems to be exactly what you're condemning the religious for.
Psychology explains why,
Psychology explains no more than the simple observation that religion is wide-spread (ie. that people have a preference to believe), and that it has positive side-effects.
The only thing you've said is that God has not been observed. Other than that, it's just you trying to justify your dogma, and twisting facts to suit...
Why not just open it up and make it compatible with the GPL version in question?
The problem is with the GPL, not Google.
Google's license is BSD, EXCEPT for the one clause that says anyone can use it, UNLESS they try to assert patent rights over something in libvpx. It was a smart clause to have, and taking the teeth out of it would be a disservice to everyone, all to humor rabid GPL advocates who can't handle the real world.
Vorbis has about the same quality per bit as AAC (unlike theora vs h264), and it's established long enough to not have patent issues.
The current generation of AAC (HE-AAC/aacPlus/etc) is undeniably vastly better than Vorbis. In fact, the parallels with H.264 are stunning. HE-AAC is part of the MPEG-4 standard, it's not particularly impressive at high bitrates, but vastly superior at low bitrates, etc.
The only difference is that people have been rushing to put H.264 everywhere, while they've been reluctant to put HE-AAC anywhere, limiting their devices and software to simple-profile AAC, so it doesn't (yet) have the same death-grip.
I don't buy it. It's too inherently limited to replace any large class of regular applications.
I fully expect the web-app trend will be just that... every bit as short-lived as every other stupid trend. This time it's Flash and Javascript. Last time it was Java Applets. Next time... who knows?
I think you will find that there are plenty of well-educated, intelligent IT workers in Oklahoma who choose to be here because they are willing to trade off 25% lower salaries for being able to buy a home for less than 1/4 what it costs in larger markets.
Just so you know, I chose Oklahoma specifically because I have some first-hand experience. Now, I have no doubt there are a few world class people available there, but they would be the exception rather than the rule. My experience may be anecdotal, but no more than yours...
I enjoy living in Oklahoma. Relatively balmy winters, a little hot in the summer, but not unbearably so
Sure, it's great if you happen to HATE mountains, trees, wildlife, etc. Historical early maps of the country labeled the plains as the Great American Desert for good reason. I'll take my (expensive) Mediterranean climate, mountain view, river-front location, etc., any day. The key to California's success has always been that people actually want to live there...
Swapping failed parts, running cabling, upgrading components, etc. doesn't need expensive PhDs.
No, and indeed a datacenter has a lot of junior employees doing just that grunt work...
HOWEVER, when redoing the cabling doesn't solve the network issue, then you need to call-in the "PhDs" (as you call them). And with a sufficiently large environment, not only is there steady work, but more than enough work for several of those same "PhDs" to be gainfully employed full-time...
The biggest operating cost is power, by a large margin. Not land, not parts, not people: Power.
So, people are constructing new data centers on some of the most expensive real estate in the USA, in an area with highly paid IT workers
The price of the land is pretty trivial, as relatively little is needed, and lots of money will be made with it over the next few years.
IT workers are highly paid as a side-effect of being the most highly skilled people available. Put a data center in Oklahoma, and you'll find some nice cheap IT workers, who have very little idea what they are doing. In a competitive market, the employees have to be just as competitive as the employers. The ample supply of highly-skilled labor is exactly why companies want to be there.
with zero company loyalty
See above. "Company loyalty" is actually a negative symptom. All those I've seen who have been employed at a company for a decade or more, do so because they are sufficiently incompetent to not find better pay or challenges elsewhere, but are just good enough to provide some value to the company.
There have been many papers written on the fact that, as pay increases over the years, the relative cost/benefit to employees goes down. Short-term employees is actually a preferred option. And frankly, if companies needed or sufficiently wanted employee loyalty, they just need to reverse the past 20+ years of taking away all benefits, but they'd rather not do that. Only a fool is loyal to a company in this day and age.
and an area of high electricity rates.
We're talking, what, 50% more expensive than the cheapest reliable electricity in the country? While it's not the cheapest, it isn't terrible.
Ironically, Adobe owes its existence to Apple adopting PostScript as the standard for the Apple LaserWriter printer.
It's not really ironic at all... Adobe didn't invent Flash. Adobe merely bought the company that did (Macromedia) for their other assets, and simply allows the group behind Flash to continue to behave the way they always have.
Slashdot Mirror
Fine, so long as they refund ALL players that ever put money in that slot machine. You don't get to just pick and choose who gets a refund, and who does not.
Ummm... Because YOU suggested buying the WinCE version? That's what this whole thread is about.
Also because for less than 2X that price, you could get a REAL netbook.
We tried that, so decryption tech was outlawed, but people around here hate that law with a passion.
So, you're saying: "If you want privacy on the air-waves, you need to go to great lengths to use theoretically unbreakable encryption. Otherwise, accept that everyone can listen to every word."
Sufficiently draconian for your taste?
You know, if Clinton followed your advice, he never would have been elected in the first place. There was a scandal about him having an affair before he was elected. His lying was effective enough that most people didn't believe it, and voted for him.
As always, the only thing he did wrong was to get caught. Honestly, who keeps a soiled dress around? And yet, being a weirdo was the only thing that kept Monica from looking like a lying attention whore.
I think you've greatly underestimated just how difficult that step is...
1. You didn't list a price. I'm pretty sure they aren't going to "solve" that one (by making it free).
2. If I could get better sound quality, fewer drop-outs, etc., I'd love to have a large (lightweight) antenna on my cell phone, provided it would work (as well as it does currently) if I happen to leave it retracted...
3. Li-Ion batteries are getting better all the time.
Yes it was, and it's immensely ironic. He wants more corporate freedom, and corporations choose to use their current limited freedoms to undermine him. He (and his supporters) have no right to complain. That would be blatant hypocrisy.
Also, presidential politics is very different than any other political contests. Focus on the Presidency, at the expense of all else, is a great disservice.
Try continuing to read on to the next sentence, then get back to me.
Nope. I happen to know the described problem cannot happen with Samba.
Nearly every protocol on earth involves negotiation of appropriate protocol settings between server and client... The same criticisms being made of Windows on the server applies to Windows clients to a much lesser degree, so you're not helping yourself here. There's still no denying all the criticisms. You don't even seem to try, just handwaving them away.
I've seen plenty of unix-only networks using CIFS. Before NFSv4 stablized, NFS was pretty damn crufty, and plenty of people decided Samba looked like the best option at the time (wasn't me...).
It's not my fault you didn't comprehend, or choose to ignore the point of my post...
Lucky for you, "parties" don't get elected. Individuals do. And you'll find plenty of politicians from both parties that disagree with their party on plenty of issues...
I hate to tell you, but that's what HTML5 is all about... Flash need not be involved. And HTML5 is trumpeted as the savior around here, so there's no end of people you can argue with if you'd like to complain about it...
And what happens when a 3rd party plugin gets popular, but omits feature X, or adds feature Y?
Adobe's dev tools then need to be modified to disable some favored feature, which will then piss of developers who use it and want it. Or perhaps Adobe can't add feature Y, giving some 3rd party an advantage in Flash dev tools. Or worse, a good Flash player gets developed, which automates the process of dumping a Flash object into some other format (eg. HTML5), which is then intended to be, or at least can be, modified from there with some other dev tools.
Control of the player gives Adobe control of the dev tools.
So... you don't have internet access? I don't know of any Microsoft routers, switches, firewalls, etc.
And I'd respond to your statement by saying that admins aren't free either. If you're using Windows on your servers, the overwhelming majority of studies say you have a lot more admins than you would need if you switched to some non-Windows server operating system.
Honestly, for the cost of a couple idiot MCSEs, you could get a pretty good Linux admin who can install and manage a good 100 servers.
I'm afraid I'd have to completely disagree with you there. My preferred example isn't Active Directory, but CIFS...
With Windows, you do all the user management, then click-through the painful server setup wizard to turn on file sharing, and everyone's happy and thinks it's oh so easy to do... Right up until some guy tries to upload a a big file, and for no reason everything hangs-up at about the 2GB mark.
Congratulations, you've been screwed by Microsoft. No way in hell will you be able to determine what's going wrong by examining the OS, logs, included help documentation, registry settings, etc. You are screwed. You must now find external sources of information to determine why this would possibly happen. After either buying some 3rd party books on the subject (Microsoft's books are crap), or scouring Microsoft's website for every possible keyword that might be in the description of this problem, you just might find the answer (or maybe not, it really does depend on luck).
The software from this the largest and most profitable company in the world, somehow consistently determines that your gigabit network is ACTUALLY a slow, high lag (most likely dial-up) link, and dynamically switched to some ancient version of the protocol to give you slightly less overhead, which seems to work fine at first blush, but just doesn't allow UPLOADING (downloading is okay) files over 2GBs. Armed with this knowledge, you now get to delve deep into the bowels of the registry, and find a half-dozen irrationally named keys and change some completely arbitrary DWORD values to some other completely arbitrary DWORD values that only those with the source code, and entire debugging teams, can determine for you.
You DO have to be just as intelligent as a Unix admin to setup a reliable Windows network, since the fundamental laws of computing still apply. Then, on top of all that, you have to memorize the magic Microsoft spell-book, learn all the magic incantations if you want to do anything other than the very basic default settings (eg., for when they perform badly, are terribly insecure, or just completely blow up on you, like the above).
There's really no debate about it. Samba has a config file that stays under 1K even in the complex setups. With Windows, you've got a 20MB+ registry to look through, and absolutely no way to know what each value might do... Even if you had to look through the full Samba source code, it wouldn't come close to being as cumbersome as the Windows registry, AND you'd actually know everything there is to know about it, rather than some anecdotes here and there, you get from the Microsoft spell book...
I say this as someone who knows it all extremely well... Admin for over 100 Windows systems for a lot of years, from NT4.0 to 2000, and 2003. More recently, doing everything I can to get positions as a Unix admin, even taking a pay cut, rather than put up with the nightmares that a Windows admin position brings. I still occasionally get dragged back into the Windows world, when my current employer has something that the idiot MCSEs can't figure out, on our dwindling number of Windows systems, or when a former employer or someone else who knows me by reputation gets desperate and throws enough money at me to come back and fix some show-stopper on the Windows systems I long ago told them they needed to get rid of.
In short, I agree with the GP. Windows Admin is inherently a job where you can only peek through the keyhole and turn one screw at a time, while a Unix admin can strip out entire components and work with them in isolation. A Linux (or BSD, or OpenSolaris) Admin in particular can get the blueprints to everything, and KNOW exactly how everything works, with a fairly modest amount of effort... Even if you were unbelievably lucky
Except, of course, none of that is true.
The US armed and funded the Mujahideen in the war against the Soviet military... They won, and a large number of them subsequently left the country. Those that remained fought each other for control of the country, and the Taliban regime won. They allied themselves with the Al Quaeda, and no country in the world chose to do anything about it...
That's called a circular argument. Our understanding of X is based on observations, God has not been observed in X, therefore god is not included in X, therefore X confirms god does not exist.
History explains when, where, and in which context some religions were formed.
We certainly don't have enough historical information about ANY event thousands of years ago, to reach a conclusion as sweeping as you claim exists... You are, in fact misrepresenting historical facts to suit your beliefs, which seems to be exactly what you're condemning the religious for.
Psychology explains no more than the simple observation that religion is wide-spread (ie. that people have a preference to believe), and that it has positive side-effects.
The only thing you've said is that God has not been observed. Other than that, it's just you trying to justify your dogma, and twisting facts to suit...
The problem is with the GPL, not Google.
Google's license is BSD, EXCEPT for the one clause that says anyone can use it, UNLESS they try to assert patent rights over something in libvpx. It was a smart clause to have, and taking the teeth out of it would be a disservice to everyone, all to humor rabid GPL advocates who can't handle the real world.
I can see why they wouldn't want you to have a faster system, at work...
The current generation of AAC (HE-AAC/aacPlus/etc) is undeniably vastly better than Vorbis. In fact, the parallels with H.264 are stunning. HE-AAC is part of the MPEG-4 standard, it's not particularly impressive at high bitrates, but vastly superior at low bitrates, etc.
The only difference is that people have been rushing to put H.264 everywhere, while they've been reluctant to put HE-AAC anywhere, limiting their devices and software to simple-profile AAC, so it doesn't (yet) have the same death-grip.
I don't buy it. It's too inherently limited to replace any large class of regular applications.
I fully expect the web-app trend will be just that... every bit as short-lived as every other stupid trend. This time it's Flash and Javascript. Last time it was Java Applets. Next time... who knows?
Just so you know, I chose Oklahoma specifically because I have some first-hand experience. Now, I have no doubt there are a few world class people available there, but they would be the exception rather than the rule. My experience may be anecdotal, but no more than yours...
Sure, it's great if you happen to HATE mountains, trees, wildlife, etc. Historical early maps of the country labeled the plains as the Great American Desert for good reason. I'll take my (expensive) Mediterranean climate, mountain view, river-front location, etc., any day. The key to California's success has always been that people actually want to live there...
No, and indeed a datacenter has a lot of junior employees doing just that grunt work...
HOWEVER, when redoing the cabling doesn't solve the network issue, then you need to call-in the "PhDs" (as you call them). And with a sufficiently large environment, not only is there steady work, but more than enough work for several of those same "PhDs" to be gainfully employed full-time...
I'd like to see some numbers on that...
The price of the land is pretty trivial, as relatively little is needed, and lots of money will be made with it over the next few years.
IT workers are highly paid as a side-effect of being the most highly skilled people available. Put a data center in Oklahoma, and you'll find some nice cheap IT workers, who have very little idea what they are doing. In a competitive market, the employees have to be just as competitive as the employers. The ample supply of highly-skilled labor is exactly why companies want to be there.
See above. "Company loyalty" is actually a negative symptom. All those I've seen who have been employed at a company for a decade or more, do so because they are sufficiently incompetent to not find better pay or challenges elsewhere, but are just good enough to provide some value to the company.
There have been many papers written on the fact that, as pay increases over the years, the relative cost/benefit to employees goes down. Short-term employees is actually a preferred option. And frankly, if companies needed or sufficiently wanted employee loyalty, they just need to reverse the past 20+ years of taking away all benefits, but they'd rather not do that. Only a fool is loyal to a company in this day and age.
We're talking, what, 50% more expensive than the cheapest reliable electricity in the country? While it's not the cheapest, it isn't terrible.
FlashPaper has no relevance to anything... The question was Flash player support for Apple platforms over the years.
It's not really ironic at all... Adobe didn't invent Flash. Adobe merely bought the company that did (Macromedia) for their other assets, and simply allows the group behind Flash to continue to behave the way they always have.