I wonder if these are people that are too lazy to take their car in for a routine oil change? Computers require regular maintainance too.
Yes, they do, but you can bet that in the first decade or two of their introduction to the general public they didn't.
The problem is that people like me (and I assume you) have grown up with computers, and are technically minded. The vast majority of PC users did not and are not.
In my case, let's talk about cars. I know that they need to be serviced, but only distantly, and if my gf didn't take our car in to be serviced I dare say that it wouldn't get done. With the PCs, however, it's the reverse - if it weren't for me they'd never get updated, virus and malware scanned, etc. She can use a PC well enough, but the more techy/maintenance stuff, forget it.
As do many other applications - and IE, like any other not completely obnoxious app, has a checkbox you can use to tell it not to ask you again. Firefox behaves in exactly the same way.
The GPL doesn't make it mandatory. I can take Linux, modify it so that it runs Windows and OS X binaries unmodified at native speed, add in a whole host of other features that people would kill for, and never release a single line of code back to the community, just so long as I never release a binary either.
More to the point, a company could take a GPLed project, improve it immensely, only ever use it internally, and never give the improvements back.
The GPL does not mandate that contributions are released, only that the source is made available if you distribute binaries.
Yes, iirc XP ships with OpenGL support, but no-one who's planning on playing Doom 3 is going to be using it, as it won't be accelerated (it's purely a software implementation, as it has to be, as you can't guarantee that the machine has a GPU, let alone a specific type...). Graphics card drivers all provide support for OpenGL that replaces the system default.
It may be five year old technology but it was way ahead of it's time when it was launched.
I disagree. It was launched at around the same time as UT, which I still consider to be a superior game and engine. There's not a lot in it, and the two of them together were way ahead of their time, but I think it's misleading to say that about Q3 without mentioning UT.
That may well be a hardware problem - we bought a bunch of P3-based machines at work a few years ago, and the audio quality was dire. You could hear a constant background noise, that changed tone as you scrolled windows, or text scrolled over a console, etc. We switched the onboard audio off and put in Soundblasters, and it was fine.
my mom's P4's disk controller is a serious flake
Again, that sounds likely to be a hardware issue, although I have very little experience of flaky disk controllers (thankfully!).
Both are Dells.
Ah, well there's your problem then. At least they're not Compaqs, I guess...
Science has _no_ absolute set-in-stone sacred truths. In science you're _supposed_ to question everything, regardless of why.
While that's true in general, you must eventually accept things as true, leave them and move on. For example, you're not going to get very far trying to disprove the laws of thermodynamics. They may not be held as a "sacred truth", but you'd be hard pressed to find someone reputable who's willing to seriously dispute them.
Look at it this way - if there was a single country that was responsible for 50% of the world's total emissions, and they refused to ratfiy the treaty, would it still be pointless for everyone else to do so? Even though they could still cut the emissions by half?
I'm sorry, but "They're not going to sign so we're not going to sign either" is a pathetic excuse - your president doesn't *want* to sign, and is latching on to this as some half-baked justification.
Besides which, the US is the number one producer of CO2, not China, and will be for a long time at current rates of increase.
The only true benefit non-windows systems have to most users is the lack of spyware
How long do you expect that to last? Is there anything in the architecture of OS X or Linux that prevents a user who is authorised to install software from installing spyware?
(Serious question, because after 6+ years of using Linux, I haven't found it yet)
If I wanted photo-realism, I'd get up from my PC and head out the front door.
And if you wanted photo-realism while battling invading aliens, or stealing cars, or killing goblins, or any of a hugelist of things that are either illegal, dangerous or impossible?
I'm not saying that photo-realism is a requirement of a good game, just that the presence of photo-realism (or as near as is possible) doesn't automatically make a game bad.
Actually, all he demonstrated (he didn't prove anything) is that for that particular search, performed at that particular time, google's results were better according to his criteria.
That's it. You can't even extend it to searches for obscure Mongolian villages, as the sample size (1) is insufficient.
The way I read it, he's not taking the bullet, he's taking up the fight - he's not being subpoenad, he's subpoenaing (is that even a word?) them, to challenge their patent on prior art grounds.
That's where the "skilled in the art" bit comes in - a patent is supposed to describe the thing being patented in sufficient detail that someone skilled in the relevant art can implement the thing being described.
Specialist technical knowledge is fine; specialist legal knowledge is not.
the amount of information contained by a black hole is directly proportional to its surface area
I didn't cover black holes in much detail, but that certianly makes sense - the surface area of a black hole would be proportional to its mass, which in turn is a function of the amount of mass it's captured, and mass capture would be the way that it captured information. (Where for the purposes of this discussion (and most discussions of this sort:-) ), mass and energy are interchangeable - so captured photons contribute to the mass)
Therefore, it seems reasonable to this ex-physicist that the information content of a black hole would be proportional to its surface area. But like I said, we barely touched on black holes on my course.
Huge influx of cash or not, there's a hell of a difference between working out which of two pre-selected pictures a subject is looking at, and working out what they're actually thinking...
You do realise that most if not all graphics card/chipset manufacturers provide their own implementations of OpenGL with their drivers, don't you? That this is only going to apply to the system default drivers that no-one who cares in the least about performance is going to be using?
European governments are starting to wise up that transfering as much as 0.3% of GDP to the United States in Windows licenses is not a smart move.
Can you give any references for that figure please? According to the CIA world factbook, our GDP is $ 1,782,000,000,000 - are you really suggesting that we spend more than $5,300,000,000 on Windows licences? According to computerworld, MS's revenue for 2004 (total, not just for Windows) was $36.8 billion; that would mean (according to your figures) that the UK was providing well in excess of 14% of MS's revenue...
That graphics card/chipset manufacturers provided their own implementations of OpenGL through their drivers anyway. (That's definitely the case for NVidia-based cards at least) Therefore, this would only apply to the system default drivers, which almost no-one will be using anyway.
This is going to be a non-issue for the vast majority of people, and certainly for anyone who cares about 3D performance. Don't let that deny you an opportunity to bash "M$" though.
Lets realize the fact that 95% of the terrorists of 9/11 and more recent bombings in London had valid papers.
As I understand it, the London bombers were British citizens. They didn't just have valid papers, but a cast-iron legal right to be in the country. No amount of ID can protect from a legal citizen with no record "suddenly" turning suicide bomber.
Get chipped and you don't have to wait in line at the supermarket.
You're going to have to explain how that one would work, I'm afraid, as I just can't see it. How does being uniquely identifiable remove the need to queue to purchase things in a busy shop?
Get your kids chipped and you can tell where they are at all times and protect them from baddies...
Again, you'll have to explain it. You can tell where they are if and only if:
1) they are in an establishment that scans the chip 2) that establishment somehow publishes the list of people currently within it 3) there is no way to leave or enter without being scanned (eg bathroom window) 4) no "baddies" go for your kids at any point on their journey between such places 5) you can tell the difference between your kids leaving voluntarily and being forced to leave with a baddy
The list goes on. I despair of people as much as the next misanthrope, but even I can't see significant numbers of people being blind to the fact that there can be almost no safety benefits from having your kids chipped.
It's easy to be 100% efficient at turning useful energy into heat, after all.
Are you sure about that? Most electric heaters I've seen glow - that's using some of the input energy to generate light, which isn't typically experienced as heat.
Approximately 78% of the electorate did not vote for Tony Blair's Labour party at the recent UK general election.
In that figure you are of course including the people who did not vote at all, despite being eligible. According to the BBC, there was about a 60% turnout of voters. Therefore, 40% of that 78% didn't vote at all.
I'm not detracting from your main point - that the majority of us did not vote Labour - but the way you present it implies that something dishonest occurred, which is not the case.
We need to do something more than bitch on Slashdot, but apparently marching isn't it.
Our government isn't listening. It hears what it wants to - fears over immigration, terrorism, etc - and acts on that. On other matters - ID cards, the Iraq war, etc - it simply claims to know best and carrys on regardless.
And you know what? It's as much a fault of the 40% who didn't vote at all, as it is of those that voted Labour. (Not that the Tories are any better if you ask me, but that's a rant for another time)
Oh, and a disclaimer: it's my fault too, as in the end I didn't vote either. I didn't see that there was any real point; my constituency (Hornchurch) is split roughly 45/45 Tory/Labour, with the remaining 10% or so "other" (mainly Lib Dem). Not much of a choice, if you ask me.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if these are people that are too lazy to take their car in for a routine oil change? Computers require regular maintainance too.
Yes, they do, but you can bet that in the first decade or two of their introduction to the general public they didn't.
The problem is that people like me (and I assume you) have grown up with computers, and are technically minded. The vast majority of PC users did not and are not.
In my case, let's talk about cars. I know that they need to be serviced, but only distantly, and if my gf didn't take our car in to be serviced I dare say that it wouldn't get done. With the PCs, however, it's the reverse - if it weren't for me they'd never get updated, virus and malware scanned, etc. She can use a PC well enough, but the more techy/maintenance stuff, forget it.
As do many other applications - and IE, like any other not completely obnoxious app, has a checkbox you can use to tell it not to ask you again. Firefox behaves in exactly the same way.
The GPL doesn't make it mandatory. I can take Linux, modify it so that it runs Windows and OS X binaries unmodified at native speed, add in a whole host of other features that people would kill for, and never release a single line of code back to the community, just so long as I never release a binary either.
More to the point, a company could take a GPLed project, improve it immensely, only ever use it internally, and never give the improvements back.
The GPL does not mandate that contributions are released, only that the source is made available if you distribute binaries.
Yes, iirc XP ships with OpenGL support, but no-one who's planning on playing Doom 3 is going to be using it, as it won't be accelerated (it's purely a software implementation, as it has to be, as you can't guarantee that the machine has a GPU, let alone a specific type...). Graphics card drivers all provide support for OpenGL that replaces the system default.
It may be five year old technology but it was way ahead of it's time when it was launched.
I disagree. It was launched at around the same time as UT, which I still consider to be a superior game and engine. There's not a lot in it, and the two of them together were way ahead of their time, but I think it's misleading to say that about Q3 without mentioning UT.
My P3's audio quality sucks
That may well be a hardware problem - we bought a bunch of P3-based machines at work a few years ago, and the audio quality was dire. You could hear a constant background noise, that changed tone as you scrolled windows, or text scrolled over a console, etc. We switched the onboard audio off and put in Soundblasters, and it was fine.
my mom's P4's disk controller is a serious flake
Again, that sounds likely to be a hardware issue, although I have very little experience of flaky disk controllers (thankfully!).
Both are Dells.
Ah, well there's your problem then. At least they're not Compaqs, I guess...
Science has _no_ absolute set-in-stone sacred truths. In science you're _supposed_ to question everything, regardless of why.
While that's true in general, you must eventually accept things as true, leave them and move on. For example, you're not going to get very far trying to disprove the laws of thermodynamics. They may not be held as a "sacred truth", but you'd be hard pressed to find someone reputable who's willing to seriously dispute them.
Look at it this way - if there was a single country that was responsible for 50% of the world's total emissions, and they refused to ratfiy the treaty, would it still be pointless for everyone else to do so? Even though they could still cut the emissions by half?
I'm sorry, but "They're not going to sign so we're not going to sign either" is a pathetic excuse - your president doesn't *want* to sign, and is latching on to this as some half-baked justification.
Besides which, the US is the number one producer of CO2, not China, and will be for a long time at current rates of increase.
The only true benefit non-windows systems have to most users is the lack of spyware
How long do you expect that to last? Is there anything in the architecture of OS X or Linux that prevents a user who is authorised to install software from installing spyware?
(Serious question, because after 6+ years of using Linux, I haven't found it yet)
To start with, Google is the most well-known poster-child of Linux success.
But does anyone outside of the Linux/slashdot/techy community *know* that google uses Linux?
If I wanted photo-realism, I'd get up from my PC and head out the front door.
And if you wanted photo-realism while battling invading aliens, or stealing cars, or killing goblins, or any of a hugelist of things that are either illegal, dangerous or impossible?
I'm not saying that photo-realism is a requirement of a good game, just that the presence of photo-realism (or as near as is possible) doesn't automatically make a game bad.
Actually, all he demonstrated (he didn't prove anything) is that for that particular search, performed at that particular time, google's results were better according to his criteria.
That's it. You can't even extend it to searches for obscure Mongolian villages, as the sample size (1) is insufficient.
Yes, because buying CD-Rs is illegal, just like speeding...
The way I read it, he's not taking the bullet, he's taking up the fight - he's not being subpoenad, he's subpoenaing (is that even a word?) them, to challenge their patent on prior art grounds.
That's where the "skilled in the art" bit comes in - a patent is supposed to describe the thing being patented in sufficient detail that someone skilled in the relevant art can implement the thing being described.
Specialist technical knowledge is fine; specialist legal knowledge is not.
the amount of information contained by a black hole is directly proportional to its surface area
:-) ), mass and energy are interchangeable - so captured photons contribute to the mass)
I didn't cover black holes in much detail, but that certianly makes sense - the surface area of a black hole would be proportional to its mass, which in turn is a function of the amount of mass it's captured, and mass capture would be the way that it captured information. (Where for the purposes of this discussion (and most discussions of this sort
Therefore, it seems reasonable to this ex-physicist that the information content of a black hole would be proportional to its surface area. But like I said, we barely touched on black holes on my course.
Huge influx of cash or not, there's a hell of a difference between working out which of two pre-selected pictures a subject is looking at, and working out what they're actually thinking...
You do realise that most if not all graphics card/chipset manufacturers provide their own implementations of OpenGL with their drivers, don't you? That this is only going to apply to the system default drivers that no-one who cares in the least about performance is going to be using?
European governments are starting to wise up that transfering as much as 0.3% of GDP to the United States in Windows licenses is not a smart move.
Can you give any references for that figure please? According to the CIA world factbook, our GDP is $ 1,782,000,000,000 - are you really suggesting that we spend more than $5,300,000,000 on Windows licences? According to computerworld, MS's revenue for 2004 (total, not just for Windows) was $36.8 billion; that would mean (according to your figures) that the UK was providing well in excess of 14% of MS's revenue...
That graphics card/chipset manufacturers provided their own implementations of OpenGL through their drivers anyway. (That's definitely the case for NVidia-based cards at least) Therefore, this would only apply to the system default drivers, which almost no-one will be using anyway.
This is going to be a non-issue for the vast majority of people, and certainly for anyone who cares about 3D performance. Don't let that deny you an opportunity to bash "M$" though.
Lets realize the fact that 95% of the terrorists of 9/11 and more recent bombings in London had valid papers.
As I understand it, the London bombers were British citizens. They didn't just have valid papers, but a cast-iron legal right to be in the country. No amount of ID can protect from a legal citizen with no record "suddenly" turning suicide bomber.
Get chipped and you don't have to wait in line at the supermarket.
You're going to have to explain how that one would work, I'm afraid, as I just can't see it. How does being uniquely identifiable remove the need to queue to purchase things in a busy shop?
Get your kids chipped and you can tell where they are at all times and protect them from baddies...
Again, you'll have to explain it. You can tell where they are if and only if:
1) they are in an establishment that scans the chip
2) that establishment somehow publishes the list of people currently within it
3) there is no way to leave or enter without being scanned (eg bathroom window)
4) no "baddies" go for your kids at any point on their journey between such places
5) you can tell the difference between your kids leaving voluntarily and being forced to leave with a baddy
The list goes on. I despair of people as much as the next misanthrope, but even I can't see significant numbers of people being blind to the fact that there can be almost no safety benefits from having your kids chipped.
It's easy to be 100% efficient at turning useful energy into heat, after all.
Are you sure about that? Most electric heaters I've seen glow - that's using some of the input energy to generate light, which isn't typically experienced as heat.
That's because someone's taking the piss.
But it already does work in the real world. I use it almost every day, and it's often the best source on the Internet for a given topic.
How do you know that the information is correct?
Approximately 78% of the electorate did not vote for Tony Blair's Labour party at the recent UK general election.
In that figure you are of course including the people who did not vote at all, despite being eligible. According to the BBC, there was about a 60% turnout of voters. Therefore, 40% of that 78% didn't vote at all.
I'm not detracting from your main point - that the majority of us did not vote Labour - but the way you present it implies that something dishonest occurred, which is not the case.
We need to do something more than bitch on Slashdot, but apparently marching isn't it.
Our government isn't listening. It hears what it wants to - fears over immigration, terrorism, etc - and acts on that. On other matters - ID cards, the Iraq war, etc - it simply claims to know best and carrys on regardless.
And you know what? It's as much a fault of the 40% who didn't vote at all, as it is of those that voted Labour. (Not that the Tories are any better if you ask me, but that's a rant for another time)
Oh, and a disclaimer: it's my fault too, as in the end I didn't vote either. I didn't see that there was any real point; my constituency (Hornchurch) is split roughly 45/45 Tory/Labour, with the remaining 10% or so "other" (mainly Lib Dem). Not much of a choice, if you ask me.