Windows 98 crashes an average of twice a workday. (or ten times a work week) Re-booting takes an average of one minute and thirty seconds. Five million (wild estimate) CA consumers use 98 at work. The average salary of such a worker breaks down to $12/hr. There are 52 weeks in a year.
That ends up being about $65,000,000 in lost productivity per year for one simgle product. Of course, this isn't counting the travesty of Marco virii. This is what monopoly does...
Of course, saying this on Slashdot is like preaching to the snake-handeling, tounge-speaking, chior. --
were drugs introduced into our society in order to prepare us for the emergence of technologies that would simulate heir same effect?
Yes exactly. As a matter of fact, I am the intelligence behind such an operation. I personally manipulated the DNA of the first hemp plants to ensure that they would produce THC. The actual process of fermentation, that was me too. It really just involved fucking with some yeast. Of course, then I introduced it to man, in the forms of mead and wine, long before recorded history. I also did LSD (at least, I did the real work behind it. In fact, you name it, I put it here, so your feeble little minds wouldn't explode when you saw a laser light show.
Believe me, before I altered space-time, the Disney light parade was an absolute killer.
(Yes, of course this post is sarcastic. My user number is far too high to have been able to do that stuff...) --
Connect the device to your home server via a phone line. Just let it dial into your server and get to the Internet that way.
I might be off base here, but I don't think that would work. If you connect a server and a device, the device still won't be able to dial into it. There would be no dial tone!
It would amount to adding a new field for mime types - something like 'info program' or something
You know, I had a similar idea recently about integrating that kind of feature into Gnutella. I mean, give the type of info Napster gives about mp3s about all sorts of files. This would be a great spam killer, and improve the quality of the network.
The interesting thing, though, is that after thinking of that idea, I realized that Gnutella was open source. If I wanted to add a feature like that, I was free to. Then, a kind of meloncoly set in. I have three years of high school Pascal under my belt, a little C, and I just recently finished the "Hello, World!" phaze of Java. (From a book which I hope will take me much farther.) I don't have the experience to add something like that to a program. I will, perhaps, in a few years, but by that time who's to say if that feature will already be added, or if gnutella will be replaced by something better totally. It's a kind of despair that hits with the increasing speed of the information age. Being one step back used to mean you had to work twice as hard to catch up, now, as things progress exponentially faster, you begin to wonder if it's even worth it. Ideas, even insightful ones, are a dime a dozen, it's implemintation that strikes gold.
I know I'm rambling, and things are getting off-topic, but I hope that I convey the kind of feelings that depress those of us in the early stages of learning, particularly those who started late in the game. I guess what I want to know is, what do you do to catch up? What's going to get those who always wanted to program but never got around to it off their asses and with skills that will become an asset to the various open source projects out there?
Who knows, maybe it comes down to straight motivation and drive. If you want it bad enough, you'll do it. I want it bad enough, and while it may take time, I'll get it, eventually.
Any *NIX variant demands a good deal of expertise to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. It demands a higher level of Technical Support knowledge than I usually see from most big manufacturing houses.
That's a good point, I would really enjoy being able to call Dell, and get the kind of step-by-step, "I'm-here-to-solve-your-problem", support that Windows users enjoy. Instead, because I run Linux, I generally have to google the error, usually sorting through some thread on an obscure University message board that hasn't been visited in several months, glean what information I can get from it, then re-enter more specific terms into google, wash-rinse-repeat. If I'm lucky, I'll run into a friendly guru on a lunch break, and get to not sound like a nag while I squeeze him or her for information and taking the best mental notes I can.
But, beyond the bitching and "me too-ing", what is there to do???
Well, there is the possibility of the Big Houses outsourcing their tech support to someone like RedHat, providing them with the hardware information (and hoping you've got the right distro.) There's also the less-tasty idea of buying a support package, where the less experienced (with cash) and buisness/education customers can pay more than a windows user would to get some quality tech support, providing funding for Dell and the rest to build a decent tech support structure with some seriously qualified *nix people.
Of course, I have the advantage of pipe-dreaming before most sane people are awake...
I remember, it was about eight months ago, as I was using Napster, that I began to fully contemplate what this 'digital age' was going to do to the media. I mean, when you break it down, music, television, and film are all information. The internet exists essentially to make accessing information as easy as possible. Therefor, whatever control used to exist over these forms of information will have to adapt and accept that this information can now be transferred over the net.
Basically, things are in the very early iterations of a change that we are all just begining to contemplate.
I mean, look at the cultures and industries that have been created in the last hundred years because of broadcast media and film. The total cultural change that has existed because of these mediums. Now think of that as a firecracker. The digital era, which we're barely even stepped into, comparitivly, is a nuclear bomb.
Yes, this is going to affect television, yes, it's going to affect music, yes, it's going to affect film, and the real kicker is, the total inevitability of it. --
A Linux port is good news. The article mentioned, however, that it would take some time. Anyone want to start a pool for how long "some time" will be? Ah well, looks like I'm back to duel-booting. --
You're looking at this in the wrong way. You should really reconsider how you think about science. It's much closer to the etherial realms of philosophy than the practical realms of engineering. In fact, when you boil it all down, science is mearly a way of thinking. It it science's ability to rationally comtemplate and understand the world that allows others to take the understanding that science has brought and apply it to practical, material gains. In fact, if it wasn't for simple, purely scientific research like this, engineers probably wouldn't have gotten the human race out of the hunt and gather phase.
So, if you don't enjoy science, why not try turning to other methods of thought. Occultism is ready and waiting for you.
(Side note, I'm not meaning to put down occultism, I'm simply saying that the scientific thought process is much more likely to lend results that can be used towards practical applications.) --
My Comp Sci teacher faced a similar problem back when I was in High School. (Actually, her problem was that the cirriculum required that she leave paschal and start teaching C, but she didn't know C.) She had us divide into groups, and entered us in a competition. I don't remember the name, but the jist of it was that we each had to come up with an idea for a program, then develop and impliment it. We did this for six weeks, and there was some great diversity. One group did an HTML editor, one an asteriods game (I did the sound system on that one) and other great ideas same out. It gave us a chance to be creative, do what we liked, and get an idea of what it's like to code as a team...
They are going to get the terms "hacker" and "cracker" straight.
Okay, I've sat through "Hacker" and "Cracker" semantical arguments for five years now, and I've just about had it. I'm sorry, but guess what, you don't always get to pick what label is put on you, or what that label is associated with. You want "Hacker" to retain its "classical" meaning, then put more high-profile examples of it out there in the media, but don't just sit back and bitch and moan every time something gets defined in a way you don't like.
Well, if there's no Slashdot conspiracy now, there should be in the future! Or maybe just slashdot entertainment.
Say, for example... There are six of you, all at the compound, all working on Slashdot. What if you couldn't leave the compound? Now, what if, as we all watched on with webcams, you voted off on Slashdotter every two weeks?!? Slashdot Surviver! It would be genius! Whoever is the final Slashdotter left gets one-million bucks from Andover.
So, what are you waiting for, posting legitimate stories and informing us!! Get out there and entertain!!!
Mix this technology with the recently discovered fact that the speed of light can be broken, and you've got the makings for an experience that, while using the net, doesn't focus around it. That's pretty cool.
Of course, all the typical disclaimers about how the development will take forever should be included here...
Knowing how touchy the MPAA etc. are about digital outputs from DVD, what kind of "copy protection" provisions are built into this new connector? DVD-RAM can't be played in a DVD player. Also, the media costs around $40, far more than just buying a DVD. Basically, copy protection isn't that big of a deal...
I think the access forbidden is when the apple sites are updating... For example... I had the site open before the keynote webcast. It was the powerbook "movies to go" splash image. Then, around the time that the keynote began, I reloaded the site. I got the 403, access forbidden. But, in another window, where the quicktime site was open, I reloaded, and everything was just fine. I think it was just that the main page and store were updating.
Of course, this is all congecture, and might not be the case.
Remember the CD-RW RAID hack that was featured a while back... I think it's time to get cracking on some of these babies. Anyone want to lend me about 5 grand?
electric cars may avoid the gasoline problem up front, but they still need to get electricity from *somewhere*
That's what the regenerative braking is all about. Instead of getting your electricity from the power plant, you're generating it yourself.
Also, for a good look at one of these from the eyes of a non-technical consumer, you might want to check out this article from the Viridian mailing archives. It shows that the very design of the car not only promotes fuel efficiency mechanically, but also promotes the user to be more fuel efficient.
"Men, I know the task ahead is difficult. I know that some of your bank accounts may not survive, but we must forge on. We will make this PS/2 play Quake!"
The internet is still in its infancy. When 99% of the U.S. is broadband-connected and have a PC at home for every person, really radical changes will occur.
Right now, not even 99% of US homes have telephone service. This is a problem I seem to find in most musings on technology's place in the future. The tech-class seems to forget that not everyone can afford their toys, and that people really don't care about a 'digital revolution' or 'freedom of information' when they can't even afford the things that would make those freedoms relevent to them.
Until we have a proper social saftey net in place, and people in this nation don't have to worry about how they're going to pay for their next meal, or what will happen if they get sick, we will never have these utopian technological situations that seem to matter so much to the/.ers out there.
It would have been interesting to see a new, radically different design that does not keep the pathetic x86 compatibilty, but hey marketing is always more important....
Okay, I assume you haven't seen this article. So, let me give you the long and short...
Unless you want to build an entire platform from the ground up, including OS, apps, and all, you have to stick with a legacy isa. (In this case, x86.)
So, basically, it's not just a marketing stratagy, it's common sense.
The only proper analogy I can think of is someone paying an obscene amount of money to stay onboard a '77 El camino floating in the middle of the pacific.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see the settlement figured out now...
Windows 98 crashes an average of twice a workday. (or ten times a work week)
Re-booting takes an average of one minute and thirty seconds.
Five million (wild estimate) CA consumers use 98 at work.
The average salary of such a worker breaks down to $12/hr.
There are 52 weeks in a year.
So...
10 * 52 = 520
520 * 1.5 = 780
780 * 5000000 = 3900000000
3900000000 / 60 = 65000000
65000000 * 10 = 650000000
That ends up being about $65,000,000 in lost productivity per year for one simgle product. Of course, this isn't counting the travesty of Marco virii. This is what monopoly does...
Of course, saying this on Slashdot is like preaching to the snake-handeling, tounge-speaking, chior.
--
were drugs introduced into our society in order to prepare us for the emergence of technologies that would simulate heir same effect?
Yes exactly. As a matter of fact, I am the intelligence behind such an operation. I personally manipulated the DNA of the first hemp plants to ensure that they would produce THC. The actual process of fermentation, that was me too. It really just involved fucking with some yeast. Of course, then I introduced it to man, in the forms of mead and wine, long before recorded history. I also did LSD (at least, I did the real work behind it. In fact, you name it, I put it here, so your feeble little minds wouldn't explode when you saw a laser light show.
Believe me, before I altered space-time, the Disney light parade was an absolute killer.
(Yes, of course this post is sarcastic. My user number is far too high to have been able to do that stuff...)
--
Connect the device to your home server via a phone line. Just let it dial into your server and get to the Internet that way.
I might be off base here, but I don't think that would work. If you connect a server and a device, the device still won't be able to dial into it. There would be no dial tone!
--
It would amount to adding a new field for mime types - something like 'info program' or something
You know, I had a similar idea recently about integrating that kind of feature into Gnutella. I mean, give the type of info Napster gives about mp3s about all sorts of files. This would be a great spam killer, and improve the quality of the network.
The interesting thing, though, is that after thinking of that idea, I realized that Gnutella was open source. If I wanted to add a feature like that, I was free to. Then, a kind of meloncoly set in. I have three years of high school Pascal under my belt, a little C, and I just recently finished the "Hello, World!" phaze of Java. (From a book which I hope will take me much farther.) I don't have the experience to add something like that to a program. I will, perhaps, in a few years, but by that time who's to say if that feature will already be added, or if gnutella will be replaced by something better totally. It's a kind of despair that hits with the increasing speed of the information age. Being one step back used to mean you had to work twice as hard to catch up, now, as things progress exponentially faster, you begin to wonder if it's even worth it. Ideas, even insightful ones, are a dime a dozen, it's implemintation that strikes gold.
I know I'm rambling, and things are getting off-topic, but I hope that I convey the kind of feelings that depress those of us in the early stages of learning, particularly those who started late in the game. I guess what I want to know is, what do you do to catch up? What's going to get those who always wanted to program but never got around to it off their asses and with skills that will become an asset to the various open source projects out there?
Who knows, maybe it comes down to straight motivation and drive. If you want it bad enough, you'll do it. I want it bad enough, and while it may take time, I'll get it, eventually.
--
Any *NIX variant demands a good deal of expertise to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. It demands a higher level of Technical Support knowledge than I usually see from most big manufacturing houses.
That's a good point, I would really enjoy being able to call Dell, and get the kind of step-by-step, "I'm-here-to-solve-your-problem", support that Windows users enjoy. Instead, because I run Linux, I generally have to google the error, usually sorting through some thread on an obscure University message board that hasn't been visited in several months, glean what information I can get from it, then re-enter more specific terms into google, wash-rinse-repeat. If I'm lucky, I'll run into a friendly guru on a lunch break, and get to not sound like a nag while I squeeze him or her for information and taking the best mental notes I can.
But, beyond the bitching and "me too-ing", what is there to do???
Well, there is the possibility of the Big Houses outsourcing their tech support to someone like RedHat, providing them with the hardware information (and hoping you've got the right distro.)
There's also the less-tasty idea of buying a support package, where the less experienced (with cash) and buisness/education customers can pay more than a windows user would to get some quality tech support, providing funding for Dell and the rest to build a decent tech support structure with some seriously qualified *nix people.
Of course, I have the advantage of pipe-dreaming before most sane people are awake...
--
I remember, it was about eight months ago, as I was using Napster, that I began to fully contemplate what this 'digital age' was going to do to the media. I mean, when you break it down, music, television, and film are all information. The internet exists essentially to make accessing information as easy as possible. Therefor, whatever control used to exist over these forms of information will have to adapt and accept that this information can now be transferred over the net.
Basically, things are in the very early iterations of a change that we are all just begining to contemplate.
I mean, look at the cultures and industries that have been created in the last hundred years because of broadcast media and film. The total cultural change that has existed because of these mediums. Now think of that as a firecracker. The digital era, which we're barely even stepped into, comparitivly, is a nuclear bomb.
Yes, this is going to affect television, yes, it's going to affect music, yes, it's going to affect film, and the real kicker is, the total inevitability of it.
--
A Linux port is good news. The article mentioned, however, that it would take some time. Anyone want to start a pool for how long "some time" will be?
Ah well, looks like I'm back to duel-booting.
--
You're looking at this in the wrong way. You should really reconsider how you think about science. It's much closer to the etherial realms of philosophy than the practical realms of engineering. In fact, when you boil it all down, science is mearly a way of thinking. It it science's ability to rationally comtemplate and understand the world that allows others to take the understanding that science has brought and apply it to practical, material gains. In fact, if it wasn't for simple, purely scientific research like this, engineers probably wouldn't have gotten the human race out of the hunt and gather phase.
So, if you don't enjoy science, why not try turning to other methods of thought. Occultism is ready and waiting for you.
(Side note, I'm not meaning to put down occultism, I'm simply saying that the scientific thought process is much more likely to lend results that can be used towards practical applications.)
--
My Comp Sci teacher faced a similar problem back when I was in High School. (Actually, her problem was that the cirriculum required that she leave paschal and start teaching C, but she didn't know C.) She had us divide into groups, and entered us in a competition. I don't remember the name, but the jist of it was that we each had to come up with an idea for a program, then develop and impliment it. We did this for six weeks, and there was some great diversity. One group did an HTML editor, one an asteriods game (I did the sound system on that one) and other great ideas same out. It gave us a chance to be creative, do what we liked, and get an idea of what it's like to code as a team...
Well, that's my two cents...
--
They are going to get the terms "hacker" and "cracker" straight.
Okay, I've sat through "Hacker" and "Cracker" semantical arguments for five years now, and I've just about had it. I'm sorry, but guess what, you don't always get to pick what label is put on you, or what that label is associated with. You want "Hacker" to retain its "classical" meaning, then put more high-profile examples of it out there in the media, but don't just sit back and bitch and moan every time something gets defined in a way you don't like.
Show me a way to use spare CPU cycles to feed the third world.
Crack rc5-64, and donate the prize money.
I'm a smartass...
Well, if there's no Slashdot conspiracy now, there should be in the future! Or maybe just slashdot entertainment.
Say, for example... There are six of you, all at the compound, all working on Slashdot. What if you couldn't leave the compound? Now, what if, as we all watched on with webcams, you voted off on Slashdotter every two weeks?!? Slashdot Surviver! It would be genius! Whoever is the final Slashdotter left gets one-million bucks from Andover.
So, what are you waiting for, posting legitimate stories and informing us!! Get out there and entertain!!!
Mix this technology with the recently discovered fact that the speed of light can be broken, and you've got the makings for an experience that, while using the net, doesn't focus around it. That's pretty cool.
Of course, all the typical disclaimers about how the development will take forever should be included here...
Knowing how touchy the MPAA etc. are about digital outputs from DVD, what kind of "copy protection" provisions are built into this new connector? DVD-RAM can't be played in a DVD player. Also, the media costs around $40, far more than just buying a DVD. Basically, copy protection isn't that big of a deal...
I think the access forbidden is when the apple sites are updating... For example... I had the site open before the keynote webcast. It was the powerbook "movies to go" splash image. Then, around the time that the keynote began, I reloaded the site. I got the 403, access forbidden. But, in another window, where the quicktime site was open, I reloaded, and everything was just fine. I think it was just that the main page and store were updating.
Of course, this is all congecture, and might not be the case.
Remember the CD-RW RAID hack that was featured a while back... I think it's time to get cracking on some of these babies. Anyone want to lend me about 5 grand?
electric cars may avoid the gasoline problem up front, but they still need to get electricity from *somewhere*
That's what the regenerative braking is all about. Instead of getting your electricity from the power plant, you're generating it yourself.
Also, for a good look at one of these from the eyes of a non-technical consumer, you might want to check out this article from the Viridian mailing archives. It shows that the very design of the car not only promotes fuel efficiency mechanically, but also promotes the user to be more fuel efficient.
I just tried to sign up for an at-large membership, and it's telling me that the database is overloaded...
Damnit! Did we just slashdot icann?
"Men, I know the task ahead is difficult. I know that some of your bank accounts may not survive, but we must forge on. We will make this PS/2 play Quake!"
The internet is still in its infancy. When 99% of the U.S. is broadband-connected and have a PC at home for every person, really radical changes will occur.
/.ers out there.
Right now, not even 99% of US homes have telephone service. This is a problem I seem to find in most musings on technology's place in the future. The tech-class seems to forget that not everyone can afford their toys, and that people really don't care about a 'digital revolution' or 'freedom of information' when they can't even afford the things that would make those freedoms relevent to them.
Until we have a proper social saftey net in place, and people in this nation don't have to worry about how they're going to pay for their next meal, or what will happen if they get sick, we will never have these utopian technological situations that seem to matter so much to the
(-1, realizes that not everyone had a computer.)
This 'Ask Slashdot' is really a psych test, to see how many people read the article before posting...
Damn you, you clever bastards!
It would have been interesting to see a new, radically different design that does not keep the pathetic x86 compatibilty, but hey marketing is always more important ....
Okay, I assume you haven't seen this article. So, let me give you the long and short...
Unless you want to build an entire platform from the ground up, including OS, apps, and all, you have to stick with a legacy isa. (In this case, x86.)
So, basically, it's not just a marketing stratagy, it's common sense.
God, I wish I hadn't already posted in this talkback so I could moderate this up.
All I can say now is, God Bless the Internet. (hell, even if it's a prank, the sheer laugh value is worth it...)
The only proper analogy I can think of is someone paying an obscene amount of money to stay onboard a '77 El camino floating in the middle of the pacific.
That, and I dislike the idea that a single langauge is ideal for all situations.
Yes there is... Machine Code.
(-1, pretentious)