It would be a more appropriate analogy if one of the WTC towers was build of balsa wood on top of sand. Then I think it would be safe to say that the architect was just plain stupid.
This really irks me. The users of GNU/Linux wrote those fabulous (and freely available) manuals (HOWTOs, FAQs, infos, mans, etc.) to answer your questions. They *are* being helpful. And you complain because you want them to read the answers to you? I don't think it is rude to tell a lazy person to do their own homework.
And what about when the person doesn't understand the manuals? Sometimes it's nice to hear something explained in a slightly different manner.
I find it far more likely, though, that the original poster was referring to people that say "RTFM" and don't even say *where* TFM is. I've seen it happen quite a bit; somebody posts to a message board asking how to set up their 3dfx card, how to install KDE2, or how to get Samba running, and they get replies telling them to RTFM. When they ask where it is... Nobody says anything else. It's more than a little frustrating.
I'll admit freely -- for about four months after I installed Linux, I had no clue what a "man" page was. I'd ask how to do something, invariably get a reply telling me to read the man page, and I'd have no clue what the person was talking about. Fortunately, one day I discovered the forums at www.linuxnewbie.org, where people (tend to) give straight answers...
They claim it cares about monkies and juice?! Those are just words to it, you could just as easily raise it on gluons and dark matter, and I don't think it would notice a difference.
What are monkies are juice, more than just words? No one would notice the difference between juice, monkies, gluons, and dark matter, if they were taught those words from a young age.
Now, what would be impressive is if it associated those words with an object -- say, if it had some way to identify that a yellow liquid in a jar was probably "juice." Then it would need to know what you can do with juice, other properties of juice, how it relates to other objects, and so forth...
There's not really any difference between that and teaching it about gluons -- a human child would naturally learn about juice faster, but that's only because from a human point of view, juice, a source of nutrients, is more important than gluons, which you can't really do anything with.
This happened to me *twice*. Both times, suddenly I couldn't connect to the 'net at all -- whether it was via modem, local network, whatever. For *months* each time I worked at fixing it, surviving on my Mandrake partition. Both times, the only solution I found was just to reinstall Win2k. And now it all makes sense... Oh, how I hate spyware.
Ahh, spoken exactly like one who doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.
Would you describe to me how DeCSS can be used for "stealing"? It's just as easy -- easier, even -- to make a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD. Sure, one can use it to bypass region coding, but that can be done via simple hardware mods to many commercial DVD players, or downloading the right software for DVD-ROMs...
For that matter, how does DeCSS have anything to do with Napster? I think you're getting your FUD mixed up.
Would you believe that I was going to guess if it was Cobol before I read that? The physics department at my college is madly in love with it for some reason, but luckily, it's not required for a CS major...
I might recommend Mozilla rather than Netscape 6. I've got a 32 Mb Pentium 166 sitting next to me, and for quite a while the nightly builds have run faster than Netscape 4.x. But maybe that's just me.
Or, try Opera. Sure, if you don't want ads, you have to pay for it, and if you're used to the generic IE/Netscape/Mozilla/etc interface, it'll take some time to get used to, but it's *incredibly* fast. It loads in only a few seconds on that same Pentium 150, and the speed it renders pages at compared to my Athlon 950 is only barely noticeable. --
Exactly -- I don't *need* a driver for it. I can access it fine with Windows. I can program in C++, but I know nothing about coding drivers, let alone something as specialized as scanners. Considering that I work all day, when I get home I don't want to spend hours (probably more like weeks) attempting to teach myself how to do that. As nice as it would be, it's not worth the trouble when I can take 30 seconds to reboot. --
There's STILL no support for parallel-port scanners? Argh.
My scanner is still the one thing tying me down to Windows -- there are Linux ports of most of my favorite games, and I've gotten the others mostly-working in Wine, but any time I want to scan something, I have to go into Windows. It's a great scanner. High-quality pictures, never given me any problems at all, all sorts of little widgets to customize stuff with. Except it won't work in Linux. Oh well... --
Erm... You do know it's not possible to have a hard drive that's *not* partitioned, right? (Well, you can, but you can't do anything with it) I'm assuming you're talking about a drive that is one big partition. Similary, you could have a big partition that doesn't fill the entire drive, and have the rest of it be unpartitioned space... And there's no reason why XP would freak out over that, right?
If you think about it, it wouldn't make any sense for it to freak out over multiple partitions, anyways. I know plenty of Windows-only people that like to have multiple partitions for one OS, although I've never understood the reasoning behind that. Likewise, many people like to have Win98 and Win2k on the same box -- Win2k runs best with the NTFS file system, but Win98 can't read that, so obviously it'd make sense to have multiple partitions there.
That means that, in order for it to freak out over there being a partition with Linux on it, MS would have to *design* the ability into XP for it to detect a Linux filesystem on another partition on the hard drive and *intentionally* start screwing up. That would be a heapload of fuel for the anti-trust case -- if something like that isn't anti-competitive, I don't know what is. --
So he didn't pick very good examples. I mean, if you want a common words, try "Windows." You don't see people running "Xwindows" on their computer, do you?
Although I'm certain people will buy a console just for a Final Fantasy game, this is Japan we're talking about. The series that determines what console wins is Dragon Quest. Now, it hasn't been announced yet what system it will be on, but there's a bit of speculation at The GIA at http://www.thegia.com/news/0106/n21a.html.
If DQ8 is announced for the GameCube, it's as good as a mandate from heaven saying that the GC will win. --
Mozilla has an excellent development team which is concerned solely with Mozilla's good functioning as a browser.
And that's what it has an e-mail client, newsreader, IRC client, and HTML composer, right? Really, as much as I love Mozilla -- I'm using it right now -- it's just plain delusional to pretend they're solely concerned with making a good browser... --
According to the owner of the local anime shop, yes, Berserk will be released in the US on DVD sometime this fall/winter. Several months ago Urban Vision first tried to get the rights to release it here; however, as it had not been released on DVD yet in Japan, its Japanese distributor denied UV the rights. However, since then, it has been released on DVD in Japan, so UV has successfully picked it up. --
You think that's strange -- I have a music CD that I burned for myself about a year ago. After burning it, I was driving around in my car listening to it, and when I stopped and left my car, I left it in the CD player. A few weeks later when I decided to change the CD out (I don't drive much), I noticed a big chunk of the metal was missing. Now, get this -- the plastic was still perfectly intact. It was almost as if somebody had cut out a chunk of the metal and pulled it out of the edge of the CD. Kinda freaky, but it hasn't happened to any other CDs of mine... --
Key phrase: I've been using slackware for 7 years. Try using Mandrake or Debian for seven years -- without using Slackware at all -- and *then* try to install Slackware again. See which is easier for you. --
Nope, ^_^ is just pretty much an anime thing. Typically, whenever an overly happy anime character shuts their eyes, they're shown in a shape similar to a ^ (but more curved, of course). Coincidentally, overly happy anime characters tend to shut their eyes a lot. I'm sure most people would prefer to have another curve for a smile instead of a _, but there isn't a character for that, really...
Also: Orienting an emoticon so that it is readable along with the text is unnecessary, especially if it doesn't show the range of emotions previously available.
Ah... How so does ^_^ not show the "range of emotions previously available"? Is it not as happy as:-)? (Actually, I think it looks happier, but that's just me) If you're referring to the fact that there are many variations upon:-), such as;-), >:-),:-D, and so forth, there are also a number of variations on ^_^. Ones that spring to mind include -_^ (winking), -_- (eyes drooping/frustrated), ^^; (anime sweatdrop -- nervous, apologetic. No, I don't know why the _ is typically dropped), O_O (amazed), o_o (frightened), =^_^= (cat-smiley; one of my favorites), and so forth. Many people also replace the _ with something else, so you could have ^.^ or ^o^. --
These government indoctrination centers aren't schools. School are places where people are tought how to gain skills such as math, reading, histroy, etc.
How long has it been since you were in school? As somebody who got out of high school just a year ago -- they didn't teach any of that. According to a test I took in fifth grade, I could then read better than most high school graduates. I learned nothing in history classes that I hadn't learned in prior grades. And although I admit I learned things in math classes, that was only because I tried -- in my high school, students were required to take no more than geometry, but I went ahead with trigonometry and calculus. I learned no grammatical skills in English classes that I didn't already have. I actually learned quite a bit about chemistry, but that was only because I took Chemistry 2 AP (commonly regarded as the second hardest class our school offers, behind Calculus AP) -- again, it was an optional class, and the required classes taught nothing I didn't already know.
High school is a popularity contest, plain and simple. Who were the most popular, widely-known, praised kids in school? The captains of the sports teams. Unfortunately, they were dumb as bricks. I also had friends on the various teams that could vouch for that -- it's not just a stereotype.
And as for the students that actually did things? I, for one, was president of TSA (technology students association) two years in a row, and won four "best in state" awards for various drafting projects. I've got quite a nice little portfolio of projects that I can include with a resume, as well as mechanical and architectural skills that I could apply in real-world situations. The projects also go nicely in a portfolio for resumes. I got mentioned twice over the school intercom during homeroom for those awards. I had friends with similar accomplishments, but much like me, all the got was a pat on the back, as opposed to other students that got full scholarships to the college of their choice because they could kick a ball really hard.
Rather, the most important thing I learned in high school was how to deal with people who don't know what they're doing. The old "smile and nod" method -- I'm sure others here know what I mean.
A responsible voter doesn't vote for the other guy becuase the media says a man is dumb. Nor do they vote for someone becuase they talk about a free drugs.
Unfortunately, it's a shame that I've almost never met any responsible voters -- they're all content to vote how the media tells them, or vote Republican/Democrat because that's how their parents voted, and they're parents' parents voted, and so forth. I might also point out that you're making the not-neccessarily-correct assumption that a responsible voter will always be against free drugs.
A great man once said "He who is willing to lose freedom for security, shall soon have either."
The quote you're thinking of is, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," by good ol' Benjamin Franklin.
As much as I'd like to respond to more of your post, it's 3:11 in the morning, and I really need some sleep -- but next time, please don't post as an AC; you make some interesting points, and I'm certain you would've been further modded up if you had a name. --
Actually -- my memory could be going, but I believe that the spell in question was Fire Wall, and the guy (Rainz, I believe), used it on both Lord British and Blackthorne... Blackthorne survived, though. In addition, they banned the guy for the remainder of the beta, but I think they let him back in to the full game...
Of course, I could be wrong, it's been a few years. --
but that shouldn't be that hard as long as you assume most people will have a 3dfx or Nvidia card, or Matrox.
There's just one problem with this statement. In a few years, you have no idea what kind of graphics cards people will be using.
For instance, back in the days of GLQuake, the field was dominated by 3Dfx. *Everybody* had a 3Dfx card. As such, there were a lot of games that supported only GLide for hardware rendering. A few years later, 3Dfx is dead, and now almost nobody has a 3Dfx card, and nobody can play GLide-based games anymore.
So, if we go with your theory, how will we play those games in the future when nobody has a 3Dfx, Nvidia, or Matrox card?
Not to mention you have dozens of other types of hardware to work with. Multiplayer games will need a modem or NIC -- should the game include drivers for every modem/NIC in existence? Again, what happens when somebody has an unsupported modem/NIC? Or an unsupported CD-ROM? Sound card? Etc...
While it's a nice idea, something like that simply couldn't work in practice. --
The Evangelion Thumbnail Theatre is available at http://www.toastyfrog.com/. There are also Princess Mononoke and Ghost in the Shell Thumbnail Theatres.
Also, you might also like to know that the author of that has admitted he likes Evangelion, he just thinks that the series takes itself far too seriously.;-) --
Slashdot Mirror
"AMD to Close Pants, Lay --" at this point I did a double-take and realized my error, but still, it was amusing.
Yes, and what's your point? It's a lot harder to melt steel than butter.
It would be a more appropriate analogy if one of the WTC towers was build of balsa wood on top of sand. Then I think it would be safe to say that the architect was just plain stupid.
NO 3D EXCEL
That's not a big deal, anyways. Even with the proper drivers, to get 3D Excel Microsoft would have to release Office for Linux...
This really irks me. The users of GNU/Linux wrote those fabulous (and freely available) manuals (HOWTOs, FAQs, infos, mans, etc.) to answer your questions. They *are* being helpful. And you complain because you want them to read the answers to you? I don't think it is rude to tell a lazy person to do their own homework.
And what about when the person doesn't understand the manuals? Sometimes it's nice to hear something explained in a slightly different manner.
I find it far more likely, though, that the original poster was referring to people that say "RTFM" and don't even say *where* TFM is. I've seen it happen quite a bit; somebody posts to a message board asking how to set up their 3dfx card, how to install KDE2, or how to get Samba running, and they get replies telling them to RTFM. When they ask where it is... Nobody says anything else. It's more than a little frustrating. I'll admit freely -- for about four months after I installed Linux, I had no clue what a "man" page was. I'd ask how to do something, invariably get a reply telling me to read the man page, and I'd have no clue what the person was talking about. Fortunately, one day I discovered the forums at www.linuxnewbie.org, where people (tend to) give straight answers...
They claim it cares about monkies and juice?! Those are just words to it, you could just as easily raise it on gluons and dark matter, and I don't think it would notice a difference.
What are monkies are juice, more than just words? No one would notice the difference between juice, monkies, gluons, and dark matter, if they were taught those words from a young age.
Now, what would be impressive is if it associated those words with an object -- say, if it had some way to identify that a yellow liquid in a jar was probably "juice." Then it would need to know what you can do with juice, other properties of juice, how it relates to other objects, and so forth...
There's not really any difference between that and teaching it about gluons -- a human child would naturally learn about juice faster, but that's only because from a human point of view, juice, a source of nutrients, is more important than gluons, which you can't really do anything with.
This happened to me *twice*. Both times, suddenly I couldn't connect to the 'net at all -- whether it was via modem, local network, whatever. For *months* each time I worked at fixing it, surviving on my Mandrake partition. Both times, the only solution I found was just to reinstall Win2k. And now it all makes sense... Oh, how I hate spyware.
Ahh, spoken exactly like one who doesn't have a clue what they're talking about.
Would you describe to me how DeCSS can be used for "stealing"? It's just as easy -- easier, even -- to make a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD. Sure, one can use it to bypass region coding, but that can be done via simple hardware mods to many commercial DVD players, or downloading the right software for DVD-ROMs...
For that matter, how does DeCSS have anything to do with Napster? I think you're getting your FUD mixed up.
Would you believe that I was going to guess if it was Cobol before I read that? The physics department at my college is madly in love with it for some reason, but luckily, it's not required for a CS major...
I might recommend Mozilla rather than Netscape 6. I've got a 32 Mb Pentium 166 sitting next to me, and for quite a while the nightly builds have run faster than Netscape 4.x. But maybe that's just me.
Or, try Opera. Sure, if you don't want ads, you have to pay for it, and if you're used to the generic IE/Netscape/Mozilla/etc interface, it'll take some time to get used to, but it's *incredibly* fast. It loads in only a few seconds on that same Pentium 150, and the speed it renders pages at compared to my Athlon 950 is only barely noticeable.
--
Exactly -- I don't *need* a driver for it. I can access it fine with Windows. I can program in C++, but I know nothing about coding drivers, let alone something as specialized as scanners. Considering that I work all day, when I get home I don't want to spend hours (probably more like weeks) attempting to teach myself how to do that. As nice as it would be, it's not worth the trouble when I can take 30 seconds to reboot.
--
There's STILL no support for parallel-port scanners? Argh.
My scanner is still the one thing tying me down to Windows -- there are Linux ports of most of my favorite games, and I've gotten the others mostly-working in Wine, but any time I want to scan something, I have to go into Windows. It's a great scanner. High-quality pictures, never given me any problems at all, all sorts of little widgets to customize stuff with. Except it won't work in Linux. Oh well...
--
Erm... You do know it's not possible to have a hard drive that's *not* partitioned, right? (Well, you can, but you can't do anything with it) I'm assuming you're talking about a drive that is one big partition. Similary, you could have a big partition that doesn't fill the entire drive, and have the rest of it be unpartitioned space... And there's no reason why XP would freak out over that, right?
If you think about it, it wouldn't make any sense for it to freak out over multiple partitions, anyways. I know plenty of Windows-only people that like to have multiple partitions for one OS, although I've never understood the reasoning behind that. Likewise, many people like to have Win98 and Win2k on the same box -- Win2k runs best with the NTFS file system, but Win98 can't read that, so obviously it'd make sense to have multiple partitions there.
That means that, in order for it to freak out over there being a partition with Linux on it, MS would have to *design* the ability into XP for it to detect a Linux filesystem on another partition on the hard drive and *intentionally* start screwing up. That would be a heapload of fuel for the anti-trust case -- if something like that isn't anti-competitive, I don't know what is.
--
So he didn't pick very good examples. I mean, if you want a common words, try "Windows." You don't see people running "Xwindows" on their computer, do you?
Waaaaait....
--
Although I'm certain people will buy a console just for a Final Fantasy game, this is Japan we're talking about. The series that determines what console wins is Dragon Quest. Now, it hasn't been announced yet what system it will be on, but there's a bit of speculation at The GIA at http://www.thegia.com/news/0106/n21a.html.
If DQ8 is announced for the GameCube, it's as good as a mandate from heaven saying that the GC will win.
--
Mozilla has an excellent development team which is concerned solely with Mozilla's good functioning as a browser.
And that's what it has an e-mail client, newsreader, IRC client, and HTML composer, right? Really, as much as I love Mozilla -- I'm using it right now -- it's just plain delusional to pretend they're solely concerned with making a good browser...
--
According to the owner of the local anime shop, yes, Berserk will be released in the US on DVD sometime this fall/winter. Several months ago Urban Vision first tried to get the rights to release it here; however, as it had not been released on DVD yet in Japan, its Japanese distributor denied UV the rights. However, since then, it has been released on DVD in Japan, so UV has successfully picked it up.
--
You think that's strange -- I have a music CD that I burned for myself about a year ago. After burning it, I was driving around in my car listening to it, and when I stopped and left my car, I left it in the CD player. A few weeks later when I decided to change the CD out (I don't drive much), I noticed a big chunk of the metal was missing. Now, get this -- the plastic was still perfectly intact. It was almost as if somebody had cut out a chunk of the metal and pulled it out of the edge of the CD. Kinda freaky, but it hasn't happened to any other CDs of mine...
--
CTS and RSI are all in the mind. Why don't we go audit them away? You'll feel much better tomorrow...
--
Key phrase: I've been using slackware for 7 years. Try using Mandrake or Debian for seven years -- without using Slackware at all -- and *then* try to install Slackware again. See which is easier for you.
--
Also: Orienting an emoticon so that it is readable along with the text is unnecessary, especially if it doesn't show the range of emotions previously available.
Ah... How so does ^_^ not show the "range of emotions previously available"? Is it not as happy as :-)? (Actually, I think it looks happier, but that's just me) If you're referring to the fact that there are many variations upon :-), such as ;-), >:-), :-D, and so forth, there are also a number of variations on ^_^. Ones that spring to mind include -_^ (winking), -_- (eyes drooping/frustrated), ^^; (anime sweatdrop -- nervous, apologetic. No, I don't know why the _ is typically dropped), O_O (amazed), o_o (frightened), =^_^= (cat-smiley; one of my favorites), and so forth. Many people also replace the _ with something else, so you could have ^.^ or ^o^.
--
These government indoctrination centers aren't schools. School are places where people are tought how to gain skills such as math, reading, histroy, etc.
How long has it been since you were in school? As somebody who got out of high school just a year ago -- they didn't teach any of that. According to a test I took in fifth grade, I could then read better than most high school graduates. I learned nothing in history classes that I hadn't learned in prior grades. And although I admit I learned things in math classes, that was only because I tried -- in my high school, students were required to take no more than geometry, but I went ahead with trigonometry and calculus. I learned no grammatical skills in English classes that I didn't already have. I actually learned quite a bit about chemistry, but that was only because I took Chemistry 2 AP (commonly regarded as the second hardest class our school offers, behind Calculus AP) -- again, it was an optional class, and the required classes taught nothing I didn't already know.
High school is a popularity contest, plain and simple. Who were the most popular, widely-known, praised kids in school? The captains of the sports teams. Unfortunately, they were dumb as bricks. I also had friends on the various teams that could vouch for that -- it's not just a stereotype.
And as for the students that actually did things? I, for one, was president of TSA (technology students association) two years in a row, and won four "best in state" awards for various drafting projects. I've got quite a nice little portfolio of projects that I can include with a resume, as well as mechanical and architectural skills that I could apply in real-world situations. The projects also go nicely in a portfolio for resumes. I got mentioned twice over the school intercom during homeroom for those awards. I had friends with similar accomplishments, but much like me, all the got was a pat on the back, as opposed to other students that got full scholarships to the college of their choice because they could kick a ball really hard.
Rather, the most important thing I learned in high school was how to deal with people who don't know what they're doing. The old "smile and nod" method -- I'm sure others here know what I mean.
A responsible voter doesn't vote for the other guy becuase the media says a man is dumb. Nor do they vote for someone becuase they talk about a free drugs.
Unfortunately, it's a shame that I've almost never met any responsible voters -- they're all content to vote how the media tells them, or vote Republican/Democrat because that's how their parents voted, and they're parents' parents voted, and so forth. I might also point out that you're making the not-neccessarily-correct assumption that a responsible voter will always be against free drugs.
A great man once said "He who is willing to lose freedom for security, shall soon have either."
The quote you're thinking of is, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," by good ol' Benjamin Franklin.
As much as I'd like to respond to more of your post, it's 3:11 in the morning, and I really need some sleep -- but next time, please don't post as an AC; you make some interesting points, and I'm certain you would've been further modded up if you had a name.
--
Actually -- my memory could be going, but I believe that the spell in question was Fire Wall, and the guy (Rainz, I believe), used it on both Lord British and Blackthorne... Blackthorne survived, though. In addition, they banned the guy for the remainder of the beta, but I think they let him back in to the full game...
Of course, I could be wrong, it's been a few years.
--
There's just one problem with this statement. In a few years, you have no idea what kind of graphics cards people will be using.
For instance, back in the days of GLQuake, the field was dominated by 3Dfx. *Everybody* had a 3Dfx card. As such, there were a lot of games that supported only GLide for hardware rendering. A few years later, 3Dfx is dead, and now almost nobody has a 3Dfx card, and nobody can play GLide-based games anymore.
So, if we go with your theory, how will we play those games in the future when nobody has a 3Dfx, Nvidia, or Matrox card?
Not to mention you have dozens of other types of hardware to work with. Multiplayer games will need a modem or NIC -- should the game include drivers for every modem/NIC in existence? Again, what happens when somebody has an unsupported modem/NIC? Or an unsupported CD-ROM? Sound card? Etc...
While it's a nice idea, something like that simply couldn't work in practice.
--
The Evangelion Thumbnail Theatre is available at http://www.toastyfrog.com/. There are also Princess Mononoke and Ghost in the Shell Thumbnail Theatres.
;-)
Also, you might also like to know that the author of that has admitted he likes Evangelion, he just thinks that the series takes itself far too seriously.
--