Belittle it all you like, but that doesn't mean this kind of attitude isn't a problem. It's not just about "convenient photo opportunities." It's a constant, slow-but-sure erosion of freedom and civil rights, all in the name of "security," when the truth is that these measures provide little or no security at all. Of all the photographs of bridges taken since 9/11, how many do you suppose were actually taken by saboteurs out to harm America?
If we take your approach, we end up hassling thousands of innocent Americans, and we're no safer for it. The only way anyone could actually think this is a good idea is if they really believe that America is full of "sleeper cells," secretly plotting day-in and day-out to commit acts of terror. The problem is, that's just a fiction -- a boogey man conjured by the Bush administration to scare people into compliance. Even the precious few instances where members of supposed "terror cells" have been arrested have ended up either being false alarms, or wannabes who didn't have the materials or skills to execute a terror attack. But where I see nothing but bullshit from the Bush administration, people like you go, "Oh noes!! That means the real terr'ists are so well-hidden that we can't even find them! Tap my phones, please!!" You're convinced the threat is real, immediate and huge, despite absolutely no evidence. There's just no arguing with that.
The real point of what I wrote is that there is a trade-off between freedom and security, and our Constitution tends to err on the side of freedom. It terrifies me that so many Americans are so willing to throw that away for some warm-and-fuzzy feeling that the government will protect us from the things that go bump in the night. But power corrupts, which is why we have checks and balances in government. Dismantling those checks and balances (Bush's abuse of presidential signing statements), or ignoring them (the illegal warrantless wiretapping program), leads to nothing but despotism and dictatorship.
Exactly how much freedom are we supposed to give up to preserve our freedom?
It's not that you're doing something wrong, it's that you're so inconsequential that you're not worth their time. Harrassment does happen to people who might actually draw unwanted attention, though. And that's only the example I happened to read about yesterday. This happens more often than you think.
Or are you one of those people who believes that the occasional blown-up bridge is worth it, so long as your desire to take pictures of bridges is not scrutinized?
You know, that argument isn't as preposterous as you seem to think it is. It's only because we Americans have gotten so lazy and apathetic that we're now so willing to put safety ahead of all other concerns. We're so afraid that "the terr'ists" will come blow up our big-screen TV's that we're practically begging to give up our freedoms, if only our government will assure that we'll still be able to get low, low prices at Wal*Mart tomorrow.
I've long held the belief that the people who died in the 9/11 attacks were heroes, but not for the reasons generally cited. It's very possible that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if we lived in a strict police state. But those people died because we chose not to live that way. They died for our freedom. And how dare we dishonor them by throwing those freedoms away in the name of fear now?
All those drooling imbiciles chanting "freedom isn't free!" should examine that statement a little more closely. Yes, sometimes our freedom costs us dearly -- not just in military casualties, but innocent civilians as well. But every single person who died because we're free died a hero, as far as I'm concerned, either because they're serving their country or just living a free life, fully aware of the risks. And we should honor those sacrifices by fighting against those who attempt to deprive us of our freedoms, whether that means the 9/11 hijackers or our own corrupt government.
Yes, in many ways, a police state is much safer than a free state -- assuming, of course, that you shut up, keep your head down, and don't draw attention to yourself. But since when has safety and security been more important than freedom? We're willing to engage in all sorts of risky behaviors for entertainment's sake: "x-treem" sports, unsafe sex, binge drinking, smoking, not wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets, even eating junk food. Those things are all far more likely to get you killed than some "terr'ist" blowing up a bridge, but we'll fight tooth and nail for our "right" to engage in all these risky behaviors, but we throw our freedoms away like cowards when scared by the boogey man. Someone, please, explain this to me.
That's a decent solution for now, if you're OK with getting e-mail without images. I know I am, but many people aren't. But if that practice became widespread, the marketers would just start running HTTP servers on the IMAP/POP3/SMTP ports. It's always an escalating arms race. The only real solution is to go back to the days where e-mail was text-only. Oh, how I yearn for those days...
Thanks for the intelligent, well-reasoned reply. I figured I'd either be ignored, or I'd ignite some sort of flame war. I'm glad that didn't happen.
First of all, I didn't mean to imply that all morality should be thrown out. I do believe that all morality originates from people, ultimately, but I also believe that a moral code is a necessary, good thing. People are social creatures, we have to live together and depend on each other for survival, so we're going to need a set of rules we mostly agree on for that to happen. There are clear, obvious benefits to rules like "don't kill" and "don't steal" and "treat others with respect." But when it comes to morality that has no basis in logic (or, for which the logic derived from a historical context that ceased to exist 2000 years ago), there's just no reason we can't discard those rules and be better for it. Almost all sexual taboos (except, I'd say, those against rape, incest and sex with children) generally fall into that category. The same is true of rules against gambling. These things make about as much logical sense as not eating meat on Friday.
For the record, as much as I see swearing as basically harmless, I also totally agree with your point about choosing words carefully. I try very hard to say exactly what I mean and I'm generally appalled when people don't see the value of doing so. But really, these days swear words have evolved past simple expressions of anger. They're still used that way, sure, but they're also used for everything from friendly greetings to meaningless verbal punctuation (e.g. using "fuck" as every third word in a sentence). Diluting the meaning of swear words only diminishes their power, which derives from their shock value and taboo. I see nothing but good in that.
Video games may be t3h d3v1l, but not because they incite violence. It's because they're just another opiate to keep people sleepwalking through life, with their brains only half switched on. Our world is so full of blinking plastic distractions that very few of us have the will to stand up for anything any more. I'm still fighting the apathy in myself, but at least I'm working on it. Video games can be a fun distraction, but too often they're abused, like any other addictive substance or behavior.
As for whether your views are "conservative" or not, that depends a lot on the frame of reference of the reader, I suspect. I'd say your beliefs are middle-of-the-road, politically. You're certainly not one of the rabid, fire-breathing Neocon darlings of the religious right - the ones who get all the press these days. Instead, you seem to be someone who's actually thought about why you believe what you believe. Very few people seem to take that rather important step these days. I wish intelligent, moderate Christians like yourself got more attention in the media, that's for sure. But then, that wouldn't accomplish the goal of polarizing the populace for easy and convenient control, would it?
This is one of many reasons I will never have kids. Somehow, giving birth, or becoming a sperm donor, slowly but surely transforms one from the kind of person I might actually want to talk to into the kind of person who posts on Slashdot about their kid's progress in the taking-a-shit department and uses phrases like "age appropriate" in everyday conversation. As life becomes more routine and mundane the brain atrophies, conservative tendencies sprout and grow, and within 3 years of producing a child, the parents are agonizing over the fact that they're turning into carbon-copies of their own parents. I'd rather be dead than sleepwalk through a life of PTA meetings and play-dates.
Someone's going to have to explain to me some day how, exactly, swearing "hurts" kids. Or how nudity or knowledge of sexuality "hurts" kids. I'm willing to bet one of two things: either no honest, unbiased study of such things has ever shown any such harm, or that any harm shown is the result of puritanical societal attitudes that, despite being wholly irrational, are so deeply ingrained that psychological harm can actually result from contravening them. In either case, the solution is to become more, not less, permissive about these things until those archaic remnants of Judeo-Christian authoritarian morality fade away. We'll all be better off for it.
If people want to be oversensitive about something, they should try violence. It truly is abhorrant and harmful. Bitch to the FCC about the torture and killing on TV, not Janet Jackson's nipple.
tfinniga, I'm sorry to single you out like this. You may well be the kind of person I'd enjoy talking to, parental status notwithstanding. But your post reminded me once again of a phenomenon I see everywhere, all the time, and it bugs me, so I rant about it. I find myself bugged by more and more these days, so rather than just accept it all with a sigh of resignation, I exercise what free-speech rights the Bush administration has left me and I say something. Maybe a lot of people disagree with me, but I'm OK with that. I still intend to stand up for, and speak out about, what I believe in.
OpenVPN is a godsend. I use it in a variety of contexts - to link my home network with my work network (with appropriate firewalling, of course), for remote access to my home network or work networks from anywhere on the internet, and as a secure replacement for WEP/WPA on my wifi access point. I have used it on both Windows and Linux. It's rock solid stable, fast, easy to set up, and works beautifully. Even on Windows it seems to have no trouble. The Windows GUI is nice, too - just a tiny little management app in the system tray; no annoying minimized DOS windows on the taskbar. Double-click to connect and you're good to go.
I don't even bother with WEP or WPA - I figure it'll just slow things down. My home wireless router is running OpenWRT, so setting up WPA is an ass-ache anyway. I MAC-locked the wireless to keep the drooling masses from connecting (clueless neighbors, etc.) If the client has a correct MAC, they can get an address from DHCP and talk to my OpenVPN port. That's all. If someone were determined to DoS me, they certainly could do so in this arrangement, but then you can DoS wifi even if it's running WEP or WPA, too - those provide no protection against a flood of forged disassocate packets, for example. And I do have to worry about security holes in OpenVPN or dnsmasq (which does DHCP from the OpenWRT box), but this is an acceptable security/convenience trade-off for me. It's just a home network, after all.
For what it's worth, I have a SanDisk SDMX1 MP3/WMA player (256M version) and it's really pretty nice. The physical design is no marvel of engineering, but it worked flawlessly with Linux with no effort. It appears as a standard USB mass storage device. It's got an FM tuner and voice recorder (only records WAV format, though), too. The best part is that I paid $15 (yes, fifteen dollars) for it on Woot a couple weeks ago. Hell of a deal. I bought one for my girlfriend, too (and only paid $5 shipping for the whole order).
I live in Florida. We have one Democratic senator and one Republican. When I write to them (and I do) to bitch about some issue, you can bet I frame my arguments very differently, depending on their political affiliation. It makes me feel a little dirty, but it's more likely to be effective.
I haven't used either site extensively, but when it came to searching for videos of dudes being punched in the nuts, Google Video definitely came out ahead. YouTube had no shortage of nut-punches, but nothing they had to offer compared to this.
Thank you so much for pointing this out! Every time I read about video drivers on Slashdot, the discussion seems to consist of a bunch of people screaming, "OMFG DA GAMEZ!!1!" I run Linux pretty much everywhere, I use my computers for all sorts of fun geeking-around as well as serious work, but I don't play games - not anything beyond the occasional stupid Flash game on the web or something, anyway. I really, really don't care if my video cards have kick-ass 3D or not. Yes, I'd like to be able to run Google Earth, but until they released a version that ran on Linux a few weeks back, I didn't have any use for 3D acceleration. I just wanted a simple video card with stable drivers and good enough 2D support for video playback. My main desktop machine at home is still running on my circa-2000 Matrox G400 Dual Head for this reason (although even that involves a stupid hack to get the dual head working). I'd so love to be able to get a more modern video card that supported my LCD monitors with their DVI capabilities, but I've been afraid to because everything these days is from nVidia or ATI and I keep hearing nightmare stories about instability and craptastic support.
I cannot get over the fact that so many people are so obsessed with video games, as if that were some absolutely essential aspect of computing. I realize there's a hardcore enthusiast niche, sure, but it seems much broader than that. A lot of people even stick with Windoze because they can't give up their games. Do people these days really have nothing better to do than shell out metric fucktons of money for the next flashy digital distraction?? Christ-on-crutch!
He whined about how much he hates voice mail - leaving it, getting it, the blinkey light that compels him to pick up his voice mail, etc. And all the while he tries desperately to be funny and creative. "Ooh, ooh, look at me! I'm clever! I'm like, an artistic type! Yeah, I know I'm podcasting, and that's, like, so 2005, but check it out - I have this neo-luddite streak in me: I hate voice mail! Tee-hee! I told you I was clever!"
Yeah, I know I'm no better. Therein lies the irony. Oh, woe be unto the irony, and all who read it!
I've never been able to figure out how people manage to scratch a disc so badly that it causes read errors. I've been using CD's as long as anyone and I have yet to screw one up badly enough to notice. The only thing I can think of is maybe these people have, or are, children. That's one of the best arguments for fair-use copying of a DVD you already own, too - your 4-year-old kid wants to watch the latest Disney monstrosity 871 times a day and you just know one day your kid's going to decide to "make toast" and use the DVD in lieu of a slice of bread...
I'm a high school drop-out with a 2-year liberal arts degree from a community college. But I am also a self-taught programmer since age 10. And I'm the Chief Technical Officer of a small but successful company. Two friends of mine started the company 10 years ago and I joined about 8 years ago when they decided to do everything online rather than via phone/fax. At the time I was the only tech guy in the company; now I'm in charge of the IT department.
Even before this job, my lack of a degree never hurt me. I just took the opportunities that presented themselves as they came up. In college I hung out in the computer labs a lot, which led to a job as a computer lab consultant. I also got hired as a contract programmer for one of the research groups at the school. Eventually I got a full-time position at a nearby university doing PC support, network administration, and other such things. By the time I got sick of the university office politics, I was offered the job I have now, and I took it.
In my opinion, the degree thing only really matters if you're trying to break into big business cold, without any connections or knowing anyone. I'm a pretty typical socially introverted geek type, but I still managed to have a few friends, know a few people, and use that to my advantage. If I can do it, anyone can.
Uh... why not? I've been banking online for years and never once had a single incidence of fraud. Of course, I switched to running Linux full-time a year or so ago, but even when I was running WinXP I had no problems. Of course, I also somehow avoided getting spyware or viruses, too (probably due to the fact that I was a devotee of Mozilla/Firefox). It's surprising to me to hear this kind of attitude on Slashdot, since most people here are clueful enough about security to know how to avoid getting burned.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I haven't used a mouse pad since I got my first optical mouse. They track pretty much flawlessly on any surface. Others here have mentioned that they use them for gaming (which I haven't done on a PC in years) or that they use trackballs. I love my Kensington Expert Mouse trackball, but it's about 10 years old and mechanical, thus requires frequent cleanings. I could get a new one, but $100 seems like a lot to spend on something that's not functionally any better than the $20 Logitech 3-button scroll-wheel-equipped optical mouse I have right now.
OK, since I don't have the Lucida fonts specifically used, I end up falling back to Helvetica. And that's a butt-ugly bitmapped font with no anti-aliasing. As a result, the new design looks like ass warmed over. Where can I get a decent Helvetica TrueType font?
I only wish I could honestly claim that was a myth and that amateur radio was full of vibrant young geeks. But I'm 34 and I'm the youngest guy in the local radio club by a good 10 years, easily. That's OK, though - I still love everything about amateur radio. The FCC is poised to drop the Morse code requirement altogether, yet I still want to achieve proficiency in code just because it's fun. And while it's not strictly amateur radio, I still like listening to the nutjobs on the shortwave broadcast stations, too.
...jaggies or pixelation in fast-moving scenes in Spider Man or when the Discovery-HD feed showed waterfalls...
Actually, that's an artifact of MPEG encoding. I watch a lot of nature shows and can't tell you how many times I've seen that in shots of running/rippling water, even on my vintage-2000 56" SDTV. On smaller or blurrier screens you don't tend to notice it as much, but on any sort of large or higher-quality display, it's painfully obvious. So if you feed an SD signal to a very high quality plasma display, it's going to stick out like you wouldn't believe. But that's just a testimony to the quality of the display more than anything. It'll faithfully reproduce all the flaws in your source material in excruciating detail. Heh...
Slashdot Mirror
Belittle it all you like, but that doesn't mean this kind of attitude isn't a problem. It's not just about "convenient photo opportunities." It's a constant, slow-but-sure erosion of freedom and civil rights, all in the name of "security," when the truth is that these measures provide little or no security at all. Of all the photographs of bridges taken since 9/11, how many do you suppose were actually taken by saboteurs out to harm America?
If we take your approach, we end up hassling thousands of innocent Americans, and we're no safer for it. The only way anyone could actually think this is a good idea is if they really believe that America is full of "sleeper cells," secretly plotting day-in and day-out to commit acts of terror. The problem is, that's just a fiction -- a boogey man conjured by the Bush administration to scare people into compliance. Even the precious few instances where members of supposed "terror cells" have been arrested have ended up either being false alarms, or wannabes who didn't have the materials or skills to execute a terror attack. But where I see nothing but bullshit from the Bush administration, people like you go, "Oh noes!! That means the real terr'ists are so well-hidden that we can't even find them! Tap my phones, please!!" You're convinced the threat is real, immediate and huge, despite absolutely no evidence. There's just no arguing with that.
The real point of what I wrote is that there is a trade-off between freedom and security, and our Constitution tends to err on the side of freedom. It terrifies me that so many Americans are so willing to throw that away for some warm-and-fuzzy feeling that the government will protect us from the things that go bump in the night. But power corrupts, which is why we have checks and balances in government. Dismantling those checks and balances (Bush's abuse of presidential signing statements), or ignoring them (the illegal warrantless wiretapping program), leads to nothing but despotism and dictatorship.
Exactly how much freedom are we supposed to give up to preserve our freedom?
It's not that you're doing something wrong, it's that you're so inconsequential that you're not worth their time. Harrassment does happen to people who might actually draw unwanted attention, though. And that's only the example I happened to read about yesterday. This happens more often than you think.
Or are you one of those people who believes that the occasional blown-up bridge is worth it, so long as your desire to take pictures of bridges is not scrutinized?
You know, that argument isn't as preposterous as you seem to think it is. It's only because we Americans have gotten so lazy and apathetic that we're now so willing to put safety ahead of all other concerns. We're so afraid that "the terr'ists" will come blow up our big-screen TV's that we're practically begging to give up our freedoms, if only our government will assure that we'll still be able to get low, low prices at Wal*Mart tomorrow.
I've long held the belief that the people who died in the 9/11 attacks were heroes, but not for the reasons generally cited. It's very possible that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if we lived in a strict police state. But those people died because we chose not to live that way. They died for our freedom. And how dare we dishonor them by throwing those freedoms away in the name of fear now?
All those drooling imbiciles chanting "freedom isn't free!" should examine that statement a little more closely. Yes, sometimes our freedom costs us dearly -- not just in military casualties, but innocent civilians as well. But every single person who died because we're free died a hero, as far as I'm concerned, either because they're serving their country or just living a free life, fully aware of the risks. And we should honor those sacrifices by fighting against those who attempt to deprive us of our freedoms, whether that means the 9/11 hijackers or our own corrupt government.
Yes, in many ways, a police state is much safer than a free state -- assuming, of course, that you shut up, keep your head down, and don't draw attention to yourself. But since when has safety and security been more important than freedom? We're willing to engage in all sorts of risky behaviors for entertainment's sake: "x-treem" sports, unsafe sex, binge drinking, smoking, not wearing seat belts or motorcycle helmets, even eating junk food. Those things are all far more likely to get you killed than some "terr'ist" blowing up a bridge, but we'll fight tooth and nail for our "right" to engage in all these risky behaviors, but we throw our freedoms away like cowards when scared by the boogey man. Someone, please, explain this to me.
HEY!! What are you doing talking to my mom!?
That's a decent solution for now, if you're OK with getting e-mail without images. I know I am, but many people aren't. But if that practice became widespread, the marketers would just start running HTTP servers on the IMAP/POP3/SMTP ports. It's always an escalating arms race. The only real solution is to go back to the days where e-mail was text-only. Oh, how I yearn for those days...
Thanks for the intelligent, well-reasoned reply. I figured I'd either be ignored, or I'd ignite some sort of flame war. I'm glad that didn't happen.
First of all, I didn't mean to imply that all morality should be thrown out. I do believe that all morality originates from people, ultimately, but I also believe that a moral code is a necessary, good thing. People are social creatures, we have to live together and depend on each other for survival, so we're going to need a set of rules we mostly agree on for that to happen. There are clear, obvious benefits to rules like "don't kill" and "don't steal" and "treat others with respect." But when it comes to morality that has no basis in logic (or, for which the logic derived from a historical context that ceased to exist 2000 years ago), there's just no reason we can't discard those rules and be better for it. Almost all sexual taboos (except, I'd say, those against rape, incest and sex with children) generally fall into that category. The same is true of rules against gambling. These things make about as much logical sense as not eating meat on Friday.
For the record, as much as I see swearing as basically harmless, I also totally agree with your point about choosing words carefully. I try very hard to say exactly what I mean and I'm generally appalled when people don't see the value of doing so. But really, these days swear words have evolved past simple expressions of anger. They're still used that way, sure, but they're also used for everything from friendly greetings to meaningless verbal punctuation (e.g. using "fuck" as every third word in a sentence). Diluting the meaning of swear words only diminishes their power, which derives from their shock value and taboo. I see nothing but good in that.
Video games may be t3h d3v1l, but not because they incite violence. It's because they're just another opiate to keep people sleepwalking through life, with their brains only half switched on. Our world is so full of blinking plastic distractions that very few of us have the will to stand up for anything any more. I'm still fighting the apathy in myself, but at least I'm working on it. Video games can be a fun distraction, but too often they're abused, like any other addictive substance or behavior.
As for whether your views are "conservative" or not, that depends a lot on the frame of reference of the reader, I suspect. I'd say your beliefs are middle-of-the-road, politically. You're certainly not one of the rabid, fire-breathing Neocon darlings of the religious right - the ones who get all the press these days. Instead, you seem to be someone who's actually thought about why you believe what you believe. Very few people seem to take that rather important step these days. I wish intelligent, moderate Christians like yourself got more attention in the media, that's for sure. But then, that wouldn't accomplish the goal of polarizing the populace for easy and convenient control, would it?
What the fuck, I have karma to burn...
Currently we're working on pooping in the potty.
This is one of many reasons I will never have kids. Somehow, giving birth, or becoming a sperm donor, slowly but surely transforms one from the kind of person I might actually want to talk to into the kind of person who posts on Slashdot about their kid's progress in the taking-a-shit department and uses phrases like "age appropriate" in everyday conversation. As life becomes more routine and mundane the brain atrophies, conservative tendencies sprout and grow, and within 3 years of producing a child, the parents are agonizing over the fact that they're turning into carbon-copies of their own parents. I'd rather be dead than sleepwalk through a life of PTA meetings and play-dates.
Someone's going to have to explain to me some day how, exactly, swearing "hurts" kids. Or how nudity or knowledge of sexuality "hurts" kids. I'm willing to bet one of two things: either no honest, unbiased study of such things has ever shown any such harm, or that any harm shown is the result of puritanical societal attitudes that, despite being wholly irrational, are so deeply ingrained that psychological harm can actually result from contravening them. In either case, the solution is to become more, not less, permissive about these things until those archaic remnants of Judeo-Christian authoritarian morality fade away. We'll all be better off for it.
If people want to be oversensitive about something, they should try violence. It truly is abhorrant and harmful. Bitch to the FCC about the torture and killing on TV, not Janet Jackson's nipple.
tfinniga, I'm sorry to single you out like this. You may well be the kind of person I'd enjoy talking to, parental status notwithstanding. But your post reminded me once again of a phenomenon I see everywhere, all the time, and it bugs me, so I rant about it. I find myself bugged by more and more these days, so rather than just accept it all with a sigh of resignation, I exercise what free-speech rights the Bush administration has left me and I say something. Maybe a lot of people disagree with me, but I'm OK with that. I still intend to stand up for, and speak out about, what I believe in.
OpenVPN is a godsend. I use it in a variety of contexts - to link my home network with my work network (with appropriate firewalling, of course), for remote access to my home network or work networks from anywhere on the internet, and as a secure replacement for WEP/WPA on my wifi access point. I have used it on both Windows and Linux. It's rock solid stable, fast, easy to set up, and works beautifully. Even on Windows it seems to have no trouble. The Windows GUI is nice, too - just a tiny little management app in the system tray; no annoying minimized DOS windows on the taskbar. Double-click to connect and you're good to go.
I don't even bother with WEP or WPA - I figure it'll just slow things down. My home wireless router is running OpenWRT, so setting up WPA is an ass-ache anyway. I MAC-locked the wireless to keep the drooling masses from connecting (clueless neighbors, etc.) If the client has a correct MAC, they can get an address from DHCP and talk to my OpenVPN port. That's all. If someone were determined to DoS me, they certainly could do so in this arrangement, but then you can DoS wifi even if it's running WEP or WPA, too - those provide no protection against a flood of forged disassocate packets, for example. And I do have to worry about security holes in OpenVPN or dnsmasq (which does DHCP from the OpenWRT box), but this is an acceptable security/convenience trade-off for me. It's just a home network, after all.
For what it's worth, I have a SanDisk SDMX1 MP3/WMA player (256M version) and it's really pretty nice. The physical design is no marvel of engineering, but it worked flawlessly with Linux with no effort. It appears as a standard USB mass storage device. It's got an FM tuner and voice recorder (only records WAV format, though), too. The best part is that I paid $15 (yes, fifteen dollars) for it on Woot a couple weeks ago. Hell of a deal. I bought one for my girlfriend, too (and only paid $5 shipping for the whole order).
I live in Florida. We have one Democratic senator and one Republican. When I write to them (and I do) to bitch about some issue, you can bet I frame my arguments very differently, depending on their political affiliation. It makes me feel a little dirty, but it's more likely to be effective.
I haven't used either site extensively, but when it came to searching for videos of dudes being punched in the nuts, Google Video definitely came out ahead. YouTube had no shortage of nut-punches, but nothing they had to offer compared to this.
Thank you so much for pointing this out! Every time I read about video drivers on Slashdot, the discussion seems to consist of a bunch of people screaming, "OMFG DA GAMEZ!!1!" I run Linux pretty much everywhere, I use my computers for all sorts of fun geeking-around as well as serious work, but I don't play games - not anything beyond the occasional stupid Flash game on the web or something, anyway. I really, really don't care if my video cards have kick-ass 3D or not. Yes, I'd like to be able to run Google Earth, but until they released a version that ran on Linux a few weeks back, I didn't have any use for 3D acceleration. I just wanted a simple video card with stable drivers and good enough 2D support for video playback. My main desktop machine at home is still running on my circa-2000 Matrox G400 Dual Head for this reason (although even that involves a stupid hack to get the dual head working). I'd so love to be able to get a more modern video card that supported my LCD monitors with their DVI capabilities, but I've been afraid to because everything these days is from nVidia or ATI and I keep hearing nightmare stories about instability and craptastic support.
I cannot get over the fact that so many people are so obsessed with video games, as if that were some absolutely essential aspect of computing. I realize there's a hardcore enthusiast niche, sure, but it seems much broader than that. A lot of people even stick with Windoze because they can't give up their games. Do people these days really have nothing better to do than shell out metric fucktons of money for the next flashy digital distraction?? Christ-on-crutch!
I'll just uhh, stand by the side lines in total support.. Don't worry, I have flags and everything, surly that's be enough encouragement!
Sorry, no. You'll need to be a female with big boobs, too.
He whined about how much he hates voice mail - leaving it, getting it, the blinkey light that compels him to pick up his voice mail, etc. And all the while he tries desperately to be funny and creative. "Ooh, ooh, look at me! I'm clever! I'm like, an artistic type! Yeah, I know I'm podcasting, and that's, like, so 2005, but check it out - I have this neo-luddite streak in me: I hate voice mail! Tee-hee! I told you I was clever!"
Yeah, I know I'm no better. Therein lies the irony. Oh, woe be unto the irony, and all who read it!
Dear God, did you just use the word dealio in a sentence??
I've never been able to figure out how people manage to scratch a disc so badly that it causes read errors. I've been using CD's as long as anyone and I have yet to screw one up badly enough to notice. The only thing I can think of is maybe these people have, or are, children. That's one of the best arguments for fair-use copying of a DVD you already own, too - your 4-year-old kid wants to watch the latest Disney monstrosity 871 times a day and you just know one day your kid's going to decide to "make toast" and use the DVD in lieu of a slice of bread...
"Oh em eff gee-zors double-you tee eff!"
Yeah, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it?
I'm a high school drop-out with a 2-year liberal arts degree from a community college. But I am also a self-taught programmer since age 10. And I'm the Chief Technical Officer of a small but successful company. Two friends of mine started the company 10 years ago and I joined about 8 years ago when they decided to do everything online rather than via phone/fax. At the time I was the only tech guy in the company; now I'm in charge of the IT department.
Even before this job, my lack of a degree never hurt me. I just took the opportunities that presented themselves as they came up. In college I hung out in the computer labs a lot, which led to a job as a computer lab consultant. I also got hired as a contract programmer for one of the research groups at the school. Eventually I got a full-time position at a nearby university doing PC support, network administration, and other such things. By the time I got sick of the university office politics, I was offered the job I have now, and I took it.
In my opinion, the degree thing only really matters if you're trying to break into big business cold, without any connections or knowing anyone. I'm a pretty typical socially introverted geek type, but I still managed to have a few friends, know a few people, and use that to my advantage. If I can do it, anyone can.
Yup! I always end up reading it that way. I chalk it up to years of exposure to Beavis & Butt-head.
6. DO NOT bank online. Evar
Uh... why not? I've been banking online for years and never once had a single incidence of fraud. Of course, I switched to running Linux full-time a year or so ago, but even when I was running WinXP I had no problems. Of course, I also somehow avoided getting spyware or viruses, too (probably due to the fact that I was a devotee of Mozilla/Firefox). It's surprising to me to hear this kind of attitude on Slashdot, since most people here are clueful enough about security to know how to avoid getting burned.
Yeah, I don't get it either. I haven't used a mouse pad since I got my first optical mouse. They track pretty much flawlessly on any surface. Others here have mentioned that they use them for gaming (which I haven't done on a PC in years) or that they use trackballs. I love my Kensington Expert Mouse trackball, but it's about 10 years old and mechanical, thus requires frequent cleanings. I could get a new one, but $100 seems like a lot to spend on something that's not functionally any better than the $20 Logitech 3-button scroll-wheel-equipped optical mouse I have right now.
OK, since I don't have the Lucida fonts specifically used, I end up falling back to Helvetica. And that's a butt-ugly bitmapped font with no anti-aliasing. As a result, the new design looks like ass warmed over. Where can I get a decent Helvetica TrueType font?
I only wish I could honestly claim that was a myth and that amateur radio was full of vibrant young geeks. But I'm 34 and I'm the youngest guy in the local radio club by a good 10 years, easily. That's OK, though - I still love everything about amateur radio. The FCC is poised to drop the Morse code requirement altogether, yet I still want to achieve proficiency in code just because it's fun. And while it's not strictly amateur radio, I still like listening to the nutjobs on the shortwave broadcast stations, too.
...jaggies or pixelation in fast-moving scenes in Spider Man or when the Discovery-HD feed showed waterfalls...
Actually, that's an artifact of MPEG encoding. I watch a lot of nature shows and can't tell you how many times I've seen that in shots of running/rippling water, even on my vintage-2000 56" SDTV. On smaller or blurrier screens you don't tend to notice it as much, but on any sort of large or higher-quality display, it's painfully obvious. So if you feed an SD signal to a very high quality plasma display, it's going to stick out like you wouldn't believe. But that's just a testimony to the quality of the display more than anything. It'll faithfully reproduce all the flaws in your source material in excruciating detail. Heh...