I had to reactivate my girlfriend's PC after I upgraded some of the hardware, but was having problems. To cut a long story short, it turned out that the serial that XP had been installed with didn't match the one on the sticker on the case.
Thanks for that, Packard Bell; you wasted about an hour of my time because of that.
It's entirely possible that something similar has happened to you.
More than that - when he first started posting his stuff here, *all* the links went to his blog, there was no link direct to the actual article from here at all.
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
I can only conclude that you have almost zero education, because I seem to remember that my degree took significantly more effort than "nearly zero" to obtain.
I wonder why anything.net feeds generations of inept developers and python or perl or java or any other language don't.
They do, but this is slashdot and so the only reason to be reporting this release here at all is to allow the faithful to rip the piss out of it (despite having little or not actualy experience of it).
Besides, didn't you get the memo? Real programmers code in C with hand-crafted assembler for speed - anyone else is inept.</sarcasm>
as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality
No, what I've seen of the interface does appear to be better than that of Windows (or Linux).
However, very little of my software will run on it, and there isn't a wide enough range released for it (and I'm thinking especially of games here) so there's no point in me buying one.
Unwarranted? In every area Microsoft's products and/or its actions have warrranted an attack.
Did I say that all attacks are unwarranted? Just because some aspects deserve criticism doesn't mean that all criticisms are deserved.
it's "easier" for you, easier than learning or contributing
You keep coming back to this mythical unwillingness or inability to learn. Get this through your zealotry-induced blindness - I choose to use Windows because it does every I need it to at least as well as the available alternatives. If that situation were to change, I would switch, but people like you make it increasingly less likely that the change would be to Linux, and I speak as someone who used Linux exclusively for a couple of years.
You'll defend the DRM even though you don't really agree with it.
Bullshit. You know nothing about me, and have no basis on which to make such an assertion. I do not defend the indefensible. What I do do is wait until I am in full possession of the facts of the matter before shooting my mouth off.
If the DRM is as bad as you predict, then no I'll not defend it. If it's sufficiently onerous, then no, I'll not buy Vista.
Will your choices negatively affect my own freedom of choice? Yes, and *that* is a personal attack.
Again, bullshit. Nothing I do or say will make the least bit of difference to the situation. Even if every single slashdot user publicly boycotted Vista, MS would barely notice. The media companies pushing for ever tighter controls certainly wouldn't.
The physics of getting an object there is trivial - it's literally first year stuff. I completely agree that surviving the trip, getting back, being able to do anything useful, financing the whole thing, etc is a very much harder (and more expensive) proposition.
You guys actually get, like, a real.... document? Like with writing in it, describing in some detail what people actually want?
Yes. One of my jobs is to write that document.
Where I work, people's minds change, sometimes on a weekly or even daily basis.
Same here, and often they think that they can change already-written functionality without impacting the deadline. Then they learn how much it'll cost them.
Sometimes it's a good idea to plan ahead to be able to keep up with those changes.
Agreed - and that's why you pad the plan and estimates with contingency. If everything goes smoothly (and you don't wake up and realise you were dreaming), you don't charge them for it. Otherwise, well, at least they were expecting to pay that much anyway.
It's not an interruption - generally what's being performed is the act of accessing whatever's on the thing (disc, SD card, etc) that's just been inserted. You can certainly argue whether it's better to try to anticipate the user's next act or simply inform them that the medium is ready, but I fail to see how it's an interruption.
if you start pointing out the forced upgrade cycles
What forced upgrade cycles? My company has a site licence for Office 2000. Several of my clients use Office XP. I've had no problems opening and reading their documents, nor they mine.
My previous employer sent out a company-wide e-mail stating that we were not to install Office XP on any systems... from MS Developer Network CD's
Good, because the licence expressly prohibits using any of the included software for anything other than development and testing purposes. If you install Office, any of the OSes, etc for normal, day to day use you are in violation of the licence.
I am one of those people who defends Windows from unwarranted attacks. My first Linux install was in '97 or so - I downloaded Slackware at university and took it home on floppies; a metric fuckload of floppies. I have upgraded kernels across major version changes, upgraded gcc, switched from libc5 to glibc2 - all from source - hand-hacked XFree86 modeline settings when my monitor wasn't recognised, installed production servers, etc.
I've since stopped using Linux. XP does everything I need it to, is perfectly stable for my needs, and (to my eyes at least) looks better than KDE or gnome. I've also found that in general, I have fewer little niggling problems with it than I did with Mandrake; again, YMMV.
But you go ahead and feel smugly superior to the rest of us mindless sheeple; you're right, you're so much more intelligent and knowledgable than us Windows using drones.
You forgot hard drive(s), optical drive(s), soundcard, the motherboard is going to be drawing power too... Ok, so it doesn't add up to hundreds of Watts, but it does raise your figure and point out at least some things you've not considered.
You're also assuming that power consumption scales linearly with CPU speed. Just because the 500MHz ARM manages to use that little power, doesn't mean that a 3GHz 64 bit desktop CPU can. Yes, Intel and - to a lesser extent - AMD have power consumption problems, but they're working on it and making headway.
The PSP manages a SEVERAL processors, 3d graphics on a decent size screen,
I'm not familiar with the specs of the PSP, but how does that screen match up to the at least 1024x768 I run my 19" monitor at? (Higher, depending on what I'm doing)
It's about choice and free market.
Which is a fine thing, but that's not how the original post came across. If I misread it, then I apologise, but it seemed to me to be a rant aimed at high-power PCs rather than a call for more choice.
Something you yuppy americans should like.
Oh, now why the ad-hominem? What makes you think I'm American, let alone a yuppy?
If desktop computers were made of APPROPRIATE parts instead of the "my computer has to be faster than yours" parts
Speak for yourself. My computers are made of "my computer has to be fast enough for my needs" parts. Of course, my needs include all the processing power I can lay my hands on.
You may use your PC for little more than email and slashdot, but don't think that means that we all do. Even those of us who require high performance would prefer it didn't come at the cost of deafening us.
we'd have silent desktops that run in under 20 Watts of power
That's an extraodinary claim; got any proof, or did you just pull that figure out of the air?
He wasn't gunned down while running into the Tube station, he was pinned to the ground then shot in the head while immobilised.
And yes, 50-odd innocent people lost their lives on the 7th of July; well, another one just lost his. The former does not make the latter any less serious.
You've lost that fight; time to move on to one you have a chance of winning. Language use changes, and hacker has changed to mean cracker, as well as programmer or other similar geeky type. For that matter, the former is *all* it means to the public. Carry on calling people hackers if you wish, but most people will get entirely the impression.
Would you prefer that google had no competition? Competition can be a powerful drive to improvement, after all.
I think it's rather obvious that the creative type who comes up with the ideas usually prevails over those trying to play catch up.
I don't think that's obvious at all. It's perfectly possible to take someone else's idea, improve upon it, and produce a superior product. After all, they've just done most of the hard work and expensive R&D for you.
No, we are never asked to take the word of a scientist, that's why they publish their research. It's not (just) to show how clever they are, and how much they're doing, it's so others can read what they did and attempt to either confirm or refute it. That's the way science works - by peer review.
If their methods are sound and their conclusions correct, it really doesn't matter who paid for it - they're *right*.
mikerowsoft was actually in the software business, though, and while Mike Row might've been the guy's name, mikerowsoft was clearly chosen for its similarity with microsoft, which also came first by a good few years.
In other words, there's very little similarity between the two situations.
Slashdot Mirror
I had to reactivate my girlfriend's PC after I upgraded some of the hardware, but was having problems. To cut a long story short, it turned out that the serial that XP had been installed with didn't match the one on the sticker on the case.
Thanks for that, Packard Bell; you wasted about an hour of my time because of that.
It's entirely possible that something similar has happened to you.
More than that - when he first started posting his stuff here, *all* the links went to his blog, there was no link direct to the actual article from here at all.
It is simply my position that knowlege has, or rather, ought to have, no monetary value since it takes nearly zero effort to reproduce.
I can only conclude that you have almost zero education, because I seem to remember that my degree took significantly more effort than "nearly zero" to obtain.
I wonder why anything .net feeds generations of inept developers and python or perl or java or any other language don't.
They do, but this is slashdot and so the only reason to be reporting this release here at all is to allow the faithful to rip the piss out of it (despite having little or not actualy experience of it).
Besides, didn't you get the memo? Real programmers code in C with hand-crafted assembler for speed - anyone else is inept.</sarcasm>
as much as x86 users do not want to admit it, the Mac OS is already better than Windows in its modern look and feel as well as its functionality
No, what I've seen of the interface does appear to be better than that of Windows (or Linux).
However, very little of my software will run on it, and there isn't a wide enough range released for it (and I'm thinking especially of games here) so there's no point in me buying one.
Unwarranted? In every area Microsoft's products and/or its actions have warrranted an attack.
Did I say that all attacks are unwarranted? Just because some aspects deserve criticism doesn't mean that all criticisms are deserved.
it's "easier" for you, easier than learning or contributing
You keep coming back to this mythical unwillingness or inability to learn. Get this through your zealotry-induced blindness - I choose to use Windows because it does every I need it to at least as well as the available alternatives. If that situation were to change, I would switch, but people like you make it increasingly less likely that the change would be to Linux, and I speak as someone who used Linux exclusively for a couple of years.
You'll defend the DRM even though you don't really agree with it.
Bullshit. You know nothing about me, and have no basis on which to make such an assertion. I do not defend the indefensible. What I do do is wait until I am in full possession of the facts of the matter before shooting my mouth off.
If the DRM is as bad as you predict, then no I'll not defend it. If it's sufficiently onerous, then no, I'll not buy Vista.
Will your choices negatively affect my own freedom of choice? Yes, and *that* is a personal attack.
Again, bullshit. Nothing I do or say will make the least bit of difference to the situation. Even if every single slashdot user publicly boycotted Vista, MS would barely notice. The media companies pushing for ever tighter controls certainly wouldn't.
The physics of getting an object there is trivial - it's literally first year stuff. I completely agree that surviving the trip, getting back, being able to do anything useful, financing the whole thing, etc is a very much harder (and more expensive) proposition.
because the systems of government used in the Warsaw Pact countries from 1917-1991 was - to many people, myself included - "evil".
McCarthyism wasn't exactly a walk in the park for a lot of people either.
You guys actually get, like, a real.... document? Like with writing in it, describing in some detail what people actually want?
Yes. One of my jobs is to write that document.
Where I work, people's minds change, sometimes on a weekly or even daily basis.
Same here, and often they think that they can change already-written functionality without impacting the deadline. Then they learn how much it'll cost them.
Sometimes it's a good idea to plan ahead to be able to keep up with those changes.
Agreed - and that's why you pad the plan and estimates with contingency. If everything goes smoothly (and you don't wake up and realise you were dreaming), you don't charge them for it. Otherwise, well, at least they were expecting to pay that much anyway.
It's not an interruption - generally what's being performed is the act of accessing whatever's on the thing (disc, SD card, etc) that's just been inserted. You can certainly argue whether it's better to try to anticipate the user's next act or simply inform them that the medium is ready, but I fail to see how it's an interruption.
if you start pointing out the forced upgrade cycles
What forced upgrade cycles? My company has a site licence for Office 2000. Several of my clients use Office XP. I've had no problems opening and reading their documents, nor they mine.
My previous employer sent out a company-wide e-mail stating that we were not to install Office XP on any systems... from MS Developer Network CD's
Good, because the licence expressly prohibits using any of the included software for anything other than development and testing purposes. If you install Office, any of the OSes, etc for normal, day to day use you are in violation of the licence.
No, to me *this* is a personal attack.
I am one of those people who defends Windows from unwarranted attacks. My first Linux install was in '97 or so - I downloaded Slackware at university and took it home on floppies; a metric fuckload of floppies. I have upgraded kernels across major version changes, upgraded gcc, switched from libc5 to glibc2 - all from source - hand-hacked XFree86 modeline settings when my monitor wasn't recognised, installed production servers, etc.
I've since stopped using Linux. XP does everything I need it to, is perfectly stable for my needs, and (to my eyes at least) looks better than KDE or gnome. I've also found that in general, I have fewer little niggling problems with it than I did with Mandrake; again, YMMV.
But you go ahead and feel smugly superior to the rest of us mindless sheeple; you're right, you're so much more intelligent and knowledgable than us Windows using drones.
If you don't want to respect their licence terms then fine, but don't whine if other people choose not to respect yours.
What on earth are you talking about? He was ripping on the article posted here, not on the Chinese...
Let me ask you a question: do you think that the fact that he was a spammer makes his death acceptable?
how... sad...ish
The unnecessary death of a human being? Yeah, I'd say it's sad.
It was rather ironic that in the middle of ripping into NASA for perceived lack of competence, you screw up elementary XML syntax...
All in all you're upto ~10Wh or so.
You forgot hard drive(s), optical drive(s), soundcard, the motherboard is going to be drawing power too... Ok, so it doesn't add up to hundreds of Watts, but it does raise your figure and point out at least some things you've not considered.
You're also assuming that power consumption scales linearly with CPU speed. Just because the 500MHz ARM manages to use that little power, doesn't mean that a 3GHz 64 bit desktop CPU can. Yes, Intel and - to a lesser extent - AMD have power consumption problems, but they're working on it and making headway.
The PSP manages a SEVERAL processors, 3d graphics on a decent size screen,
I'm not familiar with the specs of the PSP, but how does that screen match up to the at least 1024x768 I run my 19" monitor at? (Higher, depending on what I'm doing)
It's about choice and free market.
Which is a fine thing, but that's not how the original post came across. If I misread it, then I apologise, but it seemed to me to be a rant aimed at high-power PCs rather than a call for more choice.
Something you yuppy americans should like.
Oh, now why the ad-hominem? What makes you think I'm American, let alone a yuppy?
If desktop computers were made of APPROPRIATE parts instead of the "my computer has to be faster than yours" parts
Speak for yourself. My computers are made of "my computer has to be fast enough for my needs" parts. Of course, my needs include all the processing power I can lay my hands on.
You may use your PC for little more than email and slashdot, but don't think that means that we all do. Even those of us who require high performance would prefer it didn't come at the cost of deafening us.
we'd have silent desktops that run in under 20 Watts of power
That's an extraodinary claim; got any proof, or did you just pull that figure out of the air?
He wasn't gunned down while running into the Tube station, he was pinned to the ground then shot in the head while immobilised.
And yes, 50-odd innocent people lost their lives on the 7th of July; well, another one just lost his. The former does not make the latter any less serious.
The is no smoke without fire.
Oh bullshit. The Met has issued a statement confirming that the man had absolutely no connection to the bombings.
+ A cracker - not a hacker.
You've lost that fight; time to move on to one you have a chance of winning. Language use changes, and hacker has changed to mean cracker, as well as programmer or other similar geeky type. For that matter, the former is *all* it means to the public. Carry on calling people hackers if you wish, but most people will get entirely the impression.
Would you prefer that google had no competition? Competition can be a powerful drive to improvement, after all.
I think it's rather obvious that the creative type who comes up with the ideas usually prevails over those trying to play catch up.
I don't think that's obvious at all. It's perfectly possible to take someone else's idea, improve upon it, and produce a superior product. After all, they've just done most of the hard work and expensive R&D for you.
No, we are never asked to take the word of a scientist, that's why they publish their research. It's not (just) to show how clever they are, and how much they're doing, it's so others can read what they did and attempt to either confirm or refute it. That's the way science works - by peer review.
If their methods are sound and their conclusions correct, it really doesn't matter who paid for it - they're *right*.
mikerowsoft was actually in the software business, though, and while Mike Row might've been the guy's name, mikerowsoft was clearly chosen for its similarity with microsoft, which also came first by a good few years.
In other words, there's very little similarity between the two situations.