Still, a factor of 100 difference in the startup overhead is hardly a negligable consideration.
That really depends on the application in question. If we're talking about startup times and user perception, 2ms v 200ms doen't really matter - the latter will be noticeably slower, but still damn fast. If we're talking about things where performance is critical then of course it's a different story.
Right click on the drive in My Computer, choose properties, choose Autoplay, disable it for each type. That'll switch it off for everything but "pure data" CDs. For them, either use TweakUI as another poster mentions, or hold down the shift key when inserting the disk.
Lock-down? Removing access to a setting from the GUI is a lock-down? What's gnome doing then?
True; however, the implication is that you cannot buy a PC without paying for a Windows licence, and that's simply not true. Stating things that are not true only serve to distract from the relevant facts and undermine everything else you have to say.
If you say "tax" to the average English speaker, 9 times out of 10 they're going to think along the lines of income tax, sales tax, etc. Calling it a "Microsoft tax" is specifically meant to invoke that sort of association; that the word also has other meanings is besides the point.
As far as the schools go, they'd be within their legal rights to tell MS where to go. At worst, it would go to court, with MS suing for supposed licence infringements; as long as the school was looking after its licencing properly, they'd have nothing to worry about. (If they weren't, well, that's their own fault) After MS lost a couple of cases like that, they'd stop being so stupid in short order.
As for the OEMs, that's crap. I am aware that MS would (and perhaps still does) agressively use preferential licencing deals to "persuade" OEMs not to ship PCs without a Windows licence, but that's not the same thing. OEMs are free to ship PCs running whatever they like, and MS are free to charge OEMs whatever prices they like for Windows. If the DOJ would get some backbone and actually punish MS for breaking anti-trust law, this sort of thing would stop.
Sure, MS are guilty, but by standing by and letting it happen, the authorities are guilty at least of negligence.
Then don't use it. If you do use it without properly licensing it, then don't complain if someone else does the same to something you produce, or to some piece of GPLed software.
If you don't respect other people's copyrights, you have no reason to expect others to respect yours, or anyone else's.
If you don't want to pay for a copy of Windows with your new PC, either buy one without an OS or with Linux pre-installed (there are plenty of people willing to sell you such things), or buy a bare-bones system and/or components and build your own.
Just do me a favour and stop referring to it as a tax, it just makes you look stupid. Income tax is a tax - you earn money, you pay it; you earn money but don't pay it, you're breaking the law. Windows licence fees a tax? Who's going to arrest yo for not paying for something you've not ordered or received?
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, I agree with you, but this made me wince:
99% of anti-nuclear activists don't have a clue what they're talking about.
Unless you can cite a source for a statistic, it's best not to use one - this one especially looks made up.
I don't remember protests over (N)MRI, but I do remember being taught about it at university, and the lecturer explaining that MRI used to be called NMRI, but people didn't like the user of the word "nuclear".
People can be stupid; over here in the UK, we had a massive outcry against paedophiles a couple of years back. Protests in the streets, people being hounded from their homes - including a paediarician. The ignorant mob saw the "paed" bit at the start and leapt to entirely the wrong conclusion; morons.
So, my points:
a) don't make up statistics, it only detracts from your argument b) people can be fucking stupid c) offtopic, but mob/vigilante justice is a really, really bad idea
What function of Oracle made it more useful than MySQL in this case?
MySQL is a fine db for hobbiest projects (and *yes*, I include slashdot in that category), but it's by no means an "enterprise-class" RDBMS.
I'm a little confused though - why did requiring Oracle mean having to run Windows? (No, I've not RTFA - but at work we run many instances of Oracle under Linux with no problems at all)
The most likely result of such a fracture would be a small number of rocks with diameters ranging from a few tens of meters to hundreds of thousands of meters
You're not going to get chunks with a diameter of "hundreds of thousands of metres" out of a rock 3 miles in diameter, as it only has a diameter of ~4800m to start with.
Other than that I agree - while landing on an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, planting a couple of nukes and blowing it to Hell makes for good(ish) cinema, the reality would be rather different.
Pushing the thing off course is about all we could do, and right now there's no way we'd see it in time. Hell, there was one a few months ago that we didn't even know about until it had passed by.
Fortran, huh? Pretty much every (physical sciences) scientist educated within the last few decades should have at least a working knowledge of Fortran. For my part, we had to learn it as part of our Physics degrees, although the year I graduated they started teaching C instead (as well?) to the first years, so more recent grads may not have had much exposure to it...
It's a moot point though, as open-firmware is written in Forth:-)
Are you mad because you feel taking the 10 seconds to read an article headline is too much of your precious time?
Maybe it's because the editors on this site essentially have one job - choose which stories to post, avoiding dupes. Hell, we've long since given up on any hope of objectivity, or fact-checking, not posting redundant stories is all we have left.
This one is a duplicate of a story that was posted only 6 huors previously, and that was (and at time of writing this, still is) on the front page. That doesn't take much effort to check - load the site and scroll down.
Every duplicate takes the place of a different story on a different topic that could've been posted in its stead. It's a waste of time, effort and resources for all concerned. No, it doesn't waste *much* time or effort, but that's not the point - it's wholly avoidable waste. We're not talking about some obscure little story that was posted to a section a couple of weeks ago, it's right there in front of you when you load the site!
No, slashdot geeks want to believe that (almost) everyone agrees with them, but in my experience that's not the case. Almost everyone I know who has a feature-filled mobile bought it specifically for one or more of those features. For example, I bought mine because of the integrated camera, bluetooth and ability to run Java apps. A coworker tried for weeks before finally being able to get the phone he wanted, based on its capabilities. He hardly ever sends text messages and doesn't make or recieve many calls, but uses the PDA features and some of the available software all the time.
Maybe the situation really is different in the US, but here in the UK at least, people genuinely want these features.
I can think of one related application: temperature-controlled switch.
Possibly, but in what way would that be better than the bimetallic strips that have been being used in electric kettles (amongst other things) for decades?
Disney, on the other hand, uses what's in the public domain already and creates wonderful works of art and culture... you argue that copyrights are stifling creativity
You know, Disney using stuff from the public domain and copyrights stifling innovation are not mutually exclusive. In fact, if Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, etc were still under copyright, Disney may well not have been able to make their versions, would they?
Immigration policy
on
The Jobs Crunch
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
That's only part of the story though. Modern GPUs have more transistors than modern CPUs. Even if there were a dozen competing manufacturers, the competition could only drive the price so low before they were making a loss on the cards.
Your "simple economics" neglects the fact that the cards available today are far more complex and powerful than those available ten years ago. Hell, top-end cards today could outperform a room full of PCs of ten years ago with resources to spare....
So that they can price their O/S based on the speed of hardware running it.
"Hi, CompuTech? I'd like to buy Windows Longwait 2010, please." "Sure, what level is your computer?" "Oh, that old thing?" (looks at gleaming level 50 powerhouse under desk) "It's a level 25." "Are you sure? Longwait will be a bit slow on a system like that..." "Yeah, I know, but I need it" "Ok then, let me have your details..."
It's much more likely that this is so that people like my parents and my brother can look at a piece of software, check the level PC it needs, and immediately know whether or not it should run on their machine, rather than trying to work out what processor they have, how much RAM, etc etc. Nice people, but barely technically literate - you know, a good 75%+ of the population.
While it's beloved of (hardware-inclined) techies the world over, the Swiss Army Knife isn't exactly a tech gadget itself.
And speaking as the father of a four year old, I'm not sure whether I'd fear more for her or everything within her reach if she got her hands on one...
Well, YMMV, but in 5.5 years of working in the web, I've not once seen that happen. The closest I've got to that is one or two sites that relied on features only found in IE, and so required it (and they were exclusively intranet/extranet sites, and what the client wants (within reason and the constraints of time and money) the client gets)
Slashdot Mirror
Still, a factor of 100 difference in the startup overhead is hardly a negligable consideration.
That really depends on the application in question. If we're talking about startup times and user perception, 2ms v 200ms doen't really matter - the latter will be noticeably slower, but still damn fast. If we're talking about things where performance is critical then of course it's a different story.
Right click on the drive in My Computer, choose properties, choose Autoplay, disable it for each type. That'll switch it off for everything but "pure data" CDs. For them, either use TweakUI as another poster mentions, or hold down the shift key when inserting the disk.
Lock-down? Removing access to a setting from the GUI is a lock-down? What's gnome doing then?
True; however, the implication is that you cannot buy a PC without paying for a Windows licence, and that's simply not true. Stating things that are not true only serve to distract from the relevant facts and undermine everything else you have to say.
If you say "tax" to the average English speaker, 9 times out of 10 they're going to think along the lines of income tax, sales tax, etc. Calling it a "Microsoft tax" is specifically meant to invoke that sort of association; that the word also has other meanings is besides the point.
As far as the schools go, they'd be within their legal rights to tell MS where to go. At worst, it would go to court, with MS suing for supposed licence infringements; as long as the school was looking after its licencing properly, they'd have nothing to worry about. (If they weren't, well, that's their own fault) After MS lost a couple of cases like that, they'd stop being so stupid in short order.
As for the OEMs, that's crap. I am aware that MS would (and perhaps still does) agressively use preferential licencing deals to "persuade" OEMs not to ship PCs without a Windows licence, but that's not the same thing. OEMs are free to ship PCs running whatever they like, and MS are free to charge OEMs whatever prices they like for Windows. If the DOJ would get some backbone and actually punish MS for breaking anti-trust law, this sort of thing would stop.
Sure, MS are guilty, but by standing by and letting it happen, the authorities are guilty at least of negligence.
No, I don't.
The upheaval inherent in moving country vastly overshadows buying a PC from one of the smaller vendors. Get a sense of perspective.
it's really not worth it.
Then don't use it. If you do use it without properly licensing it, then don't complain if someone else does the same to something you produce, or to some piece of GPLed software.
If you don't respect other people's copyrights, you have no reason to expect others to respect yours, or anyone else's.
If you don't want to pay for a copy of Windows with your new PC, either buy one without an OS or with Linux pre-installed (there are plenty of people willing to sell you such things), or buy a bare-bones system and/or components and build your own.
Just do me a favour and stop referring to it as a tax, it just makes you look stupid. Income tax is a tax - you earn money, you pay it; you earn money but don't pay it, you're breaking the law. Windows licence fees a tax? Who's going to arrest yo for not paying for something you've not ordered or received?
Well, I agree with you, but this made me wince:
99% of anti-nuclear activists don't have a clue what they're talking about.
Unless you can cite a source for a statistic, it's best not to use one - this one especially looks made up.
I don't remember protests over (N)MRI, but I do remember being taught about it at university, and the lecturer explaining that MRI used to be called NMRI, but people didn't like the user of the word "nuclear".
People can be stupid; over here in the UK, we had a massive outcry against paedophiles a couple of years back. Protests in the streets, people being hounded from their homes - including a paediarician. The ignorant mob saw the "paed" bit at the start and leapt to entirely the wrong conclusion; morons.
So, my points:
a) don't make up statistics, it only detracts from your argument
b) people can be fucking stupid
c) offtopic, but mob/vigilante justice is a really, really bad idea
What function of Oracle made it more useful than MySQL in this case?
MySQL is a fine db for hobbiest projects (and *yes*, I include slashdot in that category), but it's by no means an "enterprise-class" RDBMS.
I'm a little confused though - why did requiring Oracle mean having to run Windows? (No, I've not RTFA - but at work we run many instances of Oracle under Linux with no problems at all)
That guys games are always over hyped.
I assume you're too young to have played Populous then. It's not many people who invent a whole new genre...
I can't seem to find the "smite with righteous vengeance" option in my girlfriend's copy...
You're dealing with tens of billions of tons of material; better make them *huge* nukes.
Agreed, with one nit:
The most likely result of such a fracture would be a small number of rocks with diameters ranging from a few tens of meters to hundreds of thousands of meters
You're not going to get chunks with a diameter of "hundreds of thousands of metres" out of a rock 3 miles in diameter, as it only has a diameter of ~4800m to start with.
Other than that I agree - while landing on an asteroid on a collision course with Earth, planting a couple of nukes and blowing it to Hell makes for good(ish) cinema, the reality would be rather different.
Pushing the thing off course is about all we could do, and right now there's no way we'd see it in time. Hell, there was one a few months ago that we didn't even know about until it had passed by.
Fortran, huh? Pretty much every (physical sciences) scientist educated within the last few decades should have at least a working knowledge of Fortran. For my part, we had to learn it as part of our Physics degrees, although the year I graduated they started teaching C instead (as well?) to the first years, so more recent grads may not have had much exposure to it...
:-)
It's a moot point though, as open-firmware is written in Forth
Are you mad because you feel taking the 10 seconds to read an article headline is too much of your precious time?
Maybe it's because the editors on this site essentially have one job - choose which stories to post, avoiding dupes. Hell, we've long since given up on any hope of objectivity, or fact-checking, not posting redundant stories is all we have left.
This one is a duplicate of a story that was posted only 6 huors previously, and that was (and at time of writing this, still is) on the front page. That doesn't take much effort to check - load the site and scroll down.
Every duplicate takes the place of a different story on a different topic that could've been posted in its stead. It's a waste of time, effort and resources for all concerned. No, it doesn't waste *much* time or effort, but that's not the point - it's wholly avoidable waste. We're not talking about some obscure little story that was posted to a section a couple of weeks ago, it's right there in front of you when you load the site!
No, slashdot geeks want to believe that (almost) everyone agrees with them, but in my experience that's not the case. Almost everyone I know who has a feature-filled mobile bought it specifically for one or more of those features. For example, I bought mine because of the integrated camera, bluetooth and ability to run Java apps. A coworker tried for weeks before finally being able to get the phone he wanted, based on its capabilities. He hardly ever sends text messages and doesn't make or recieve many calls, but uses the PDA features and some of the available software all the time.
Maybe the situation really is different in the US, but here in the UK at least, people genuinely want these features.
I can think of one related application: temperature-controlled switch.
Possibly, but in what way would that be better than the bimetallic strips that have been being used in electric kettles (amongst other things) for decades?
How is that any different to being robbed of a number of single-purpose devices? Or are you advocating that we abandon technology altogether?
Disney, on the other hand, uses what's in the public domain already and creates wonderful works of art and culture... you argue that copyrights are stifling creativity
You know, Disney using stuff from the public domain and copyrights stifling innovation are not mutually exclusive. In fact, if Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, etc were still under copyright, Disney may well not have been able to make their versions, would they?
Yeah, it's always the fault of those pesky foreigners...
That's only part of the story though. Modern GPUs have more transistors than modern CPUs. Even if there were a dozen competing manufacturers, the competition could only drive the price so low before they were making a loss on the cards.
Your "simple economics" neglects the fact that the cards available today are far more complex and powerful than those available ten years ago. Hell, top-end cards today could outperform a room full of PCs of ten years ago with resources to spare....
Besides the "problem" of pedophiles in "chat rooms" being completely overblown
That's just what they want you to think! In reality, they've taken over a part of the internet the size of Wales!!
So that they can price their O/S based on the speed of hardware running it.
"Hi, CompuTech? I'd like to buy Windows Longwait 2010, please."
"Sure, what level is your computer?"
"Oh, that old thing?" (looks at gleaming level 50 powerhouse under desk) "It's a level 25."
"Are you sure? Longwait will be a bit slow on a system like that..."
"Yeah, I know, but I need it"
"Ok then, let me have your details..."
It's much more likely that this is so that people like my parents and my brother can look at a piece of software, check the level PC it needs, and immediately know whether or not it should run on their machine, rather than trying to work out what processor they have, how much RAM, etc etc. Nice people, but barely technically literate - you know, a good 75%+ of the population.
While it's beloved of (hardware-inclined) techies the world over, the Swiss Army Knife isn't exactly a tech gadget itself.
And speaking as the father of a four year old, I'm not sure whether I'd fear more for her or everything within her reach if she got her hands on one...
Well, YMMV, but in 5.5 years of working in the web, I've not once seen that happen. The closest I've got to that is one or two sites that relied on features only found in IE, and so required it (and they were exclusively intranet/extranet sites, and what the client wants (within reason and the constraints of time and money) the client gets)