If this is a conference on spam, then shouldn't about 1000 random people show up and tell the hosts that they could make big bucks by charging everyone who attends one dollar, but let them in for free if they bring ten friends?
That was true in the 80s, yes. Sony used to be THE company for consumer electronics. We have a 1985 Sony TV Monitor, 25", that is still plugging along all these years of regular use later.
That was then, this is now. Sony's more recent stuff, and that of everyone else, is now crap. They've been cutting costs over and over again to feed the need for cheap impulse-buy equipment, and the result is stuff that lasts one or two years. And a company that makes stuff that lasts a decade will go out of business because after their first round is sold, they won't get any return buyers for another 10 years.:-)
Sony used to have a very good mid-range VCR line. For $300-$400 we got a solid workhorse of a VCR, lots of features, plenty of displays, excellent remote, fast rewrind, good video quality, all that other fun stuff. It lasted for 5-6 years of solid, heavy use. That was in the early 90s. We'd have bought another when it died if they still made them.
Now, Sony has two types of VCR. $1000 video toasters with more features than God that no one has any use for, and $50-$100 "um, it plays tapes?" models that break after a year.
What's a mindless, stupid consumer-drone to do? Well, we stopped buying Sony VCRs.
It's not feature glut that is driving the fall in quality. It's knowledge that return buyers are an important market. A $300 VCR that lasts 5 years averages out to $60/year for 5 years. A $100 VCR that last 1 year averages out to $100/year, or $500 over the course of 5 years. That's almost a 50% increase in profits for Sony (or RCA, or Phillips, or whoever, they all do it) over the course of five years, because the consumer is, on average, too stupid to figure out that he's being fleeced.
Executives pocket the difference, and you get a new model of VCR/DVD player/stereo/TV/CLIE handheld every year, feeding your gadget lust. Somehow I don't see that as an even trade, but that's just me.
I've read a lot of posts on this thread b&ming about how stupid the administration is. Guess what, folks. THIS IS THE GOVERNMENT THAT WE ELECTED. The US is still a democracy. Congressmen don't buy the election, the use campaign contributions to buy commercials that sway the opinions of mass numbers of people to support them. YOU are those people. On election day, it is YOU who punches the little hole in the ballot, and YOU who puts every single one of those 500-odd people in Congress in office, as well as the President. If you don't like it, get off your damned ass, close your web browser, and take control of your own government.
How many people here even know how their own representaives voted on Homeland Security? For the record, here is the official list of who in Congress voted for and against the creation of Homeland Security: House Roll Call Senate Roll Call
(Interesting note, Senator Hollywood voted against. There are no permanent allies, only permanent interests.)
Is your senator in favor of Homeland Security? Are you? If the answer to those is not the same, then write a one page letter to your senator expressing your extreme displeasure with his/her actions. No, not tomorrow, not when you have time, RIGHT F*ING NOW! Fax it or snail mail it to their local office. (Not their federal office, snail mail doesn't get through there any more due to extended antrax checks.) They represent YOU! If they're not doing it right, make it clear to them.
Is your congressman in favor of Homeland Security? Are you? If the answer to those is not the same, then write a one page letter to your congressman expressing your extreme displeasure with his/her actions. No, not tomorrow, not when you have time, RIGHT F*ING NOW! Fax it or snail mail it to their local office. They represent YOU! If they're not doing it right, make it clear to them.
But what if they did vote the way you wanted them to? WRITE THEM A LETTER OF THANK YOU! Everyone likes positive feedback from the people who control their job. If your senator was one of the nine dissenters, thank them for standing up for what is right! Include with the snail mail letter a check (not cash) for $100 to their campaign fund. Polticians speak two languages; votes and money. Speak your mind in both, in enough numbers, and they WILL listen.
While you're at it, write a short OpEd for the local newspaper. Short, sweet, to the point. Maybe they'll publish it, maybe they won't, but they definitely won't if you don't send it.
This is a democracy. Your government SPEAKS FOR YOU! Your representatives represent YOU. Remind them of it. Daily. Make them scared shitless of losing their job if they cross you. Their first thought when they wake up should be "am I pissing off the people who vote for me?" Their last thought before going to bed should be "am I pissing off the people who vote for me?" As a voter, it is YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to see to it that those who claim to represent you actually do.
250,000 Slashdot voters is 500 times the difference in Florida in 2000, for a Presidential election. Imagine the sheer power of that electorate in congressional elections, if only it would get up off its collective ass and do something.
The Patriot Act of 2001 labels many so-called computer crimes "terrorism." I openly state, I am a terrorist. I seek to instill terror in the hearts of my government of trampling on my freedoms, or of voting against my will. I seek to make my government live in fear of me and my power over them. I seek to give George W. Bush nightmares of crossing me.
I voted early Tuesday morning, and spent the rest of the day as a poll watcher for an incumbant candidate who I personally and professionally admire, who was the very first politician I heard after 9/11 saying that we need to protect civil liberties, who voted against the (anti-)Patriot Act, and voted against the war on Iraq.
I am taking control of my government. How many people here can say the same?
Read a little basic microeconomics. All but the most ideologically radical economists acknowledge that a free market is a good thing but that free markets aren't really that great at keeping free markets free.
Precisely! That is what a government in a capitalistic economy is for; maintaining a free market by hack-and-slash methods on companies that get too big and become monopolies (Microsoft) or form oligopolic cartels (MPAA, RIAA, etc.). By definition, the US government is not interested in a free market, they're interested in corpoprate protectionism. That includes Congress, the President, and judges such as this.
The pro-capitalist conclusion to this case would have been to chop MS up into about 20 companies of 300 or fewer employees, prevent them from teaming up, and then let the wiles of the market figure it out. So much for having faith in the market.
It depends in a huge part on the type of program, but for general-public use (what some would term "consumer" but I'm trying to erase that word from my vocabulary) a Shareware/registration system is often the easiest, if you have some sort of unique identifier to use.
For example...
In the Palm OS world, most software is released in a Shareware fashion. Every Palm OS device has a HotSync ID that is used to identify it on a PC, and to keep that device's data separate from other Palms on the same PC. Two people could very well have the same ID, but not on the same PC, and the vast majority of users just use their own name as their ID, so the odds of two people with identical IDs meeting is neglibible.
What most developers do is release a single binary version of the program that includes all of the functionality, but sometimes blocks it with popups, disabled functions, timeouts, or whatever. If the user decides to register, they go to a web site (usually PalmGear.com) and enter their HotSync ID along with their credit card data and the web site generates a unique registration key for them based on their HotSync ID and some program-specific key, known only to the developer. The user enters that code into the Palm program and they're all set and registered. The program can then just generate what the reg code should be against the HotSync ID and the secret key (which it has compiled into it), and determine if the entered code is valid or not. The reg code is stored in the device's Preferences database (sorta kinda the Palm version of the Registry, though better implemented), so the user can easily beam the program to others and SHAZAAM!, the other user now has the unregistered, shareware version of the program! Yay, viral marketing!:-) It also means that you need to maintain only one binary version, and you can make it a simple direct URL which is compatible with every browser in existance.
Yes, it is possible for the user to fudge the HotSync ID with 3rd party programs, but that's not very common. And frankly, if someone is going to do that to "get around" your registration system, they would never have paid for the program in the first place, so you've lost nothing.
Of course, that is all predicated on the platform supporting that sort of unique ID. I don't know if that sort of user-defined, constant, pseudo-unique ID exists on any other platform. I wish it did, it would make it a lot easier to develop shareware-type apps. E-mail address is possible, but is subject to change more often.
[insert obligatory commentary about why you should be releasing GPLed software instead of commercial software here.]
I figured out the GAIM issue. The problem is in the autoadd module. Once I turned that off, everything worked perfectly. Yay! Since I have no special need for that module, I'll just leave it off. Now I just need to get rid of those damned default sounds and get something decent.;-)
OK, the author of the article clearly wasn't reviewing the product, she was whining. There is a difference. She convinced me of that when she started complaining about how "the default KDE isn't pretty enough for me". Lady, get a grip. I happen to think it looks quite nice, and I've left it at the default settings for the most part. So there.:-) (Besides, um, what default Desktop? The first time I logged in I was asked "which environment do you want" and given the choice of KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, and the assorted others I had installed. What's she talking about?)
Still, though, there are a few problems that I've found in the past few days since installing Mandrake 9.
Firstly, during the install, it hung for a long time on the kernel-source package, for reasons I do not understand. After I went to bed and woke up, it finally gave me the option to skip that package. It finished the install, then doubled back to package selection and went through the whole thing again, save for that 99% of everything was already installed, so it only took a few minutes (I selected a few extra packages:-) After that the install went smoothly.
Secondly, UserDrake when run on its own works fine, but if run through the Mandrake Control Center it will not clean up its temp files when closed, which will prevent it from opening next time. (It uses them as lock files.) They can be deleted manually, but it is annoying.
Thirdly, GAIM keeps imploding when I try to send an IM to someone. I think it may be a bug in the MSM module, since it only started after I installed that.:-) A friend of mine said the package is buggy and I should recompile from source, but I'm trying to avoid touching the command line for as long as possible, just to see how long I can last doing that.
Fourthly, several of the OpenGL games, for some reason, still manage to lock my system up cold. I do not understand why, though I'm not sure if it's a Mandrake problem specifically. I have an ATI Radeon 5000 video card, which at least in 8.2 was, somehow, the ONLY Radeon card in existance that lacked OpenGL support.:-) (If someone can explain why BZFlag kill the entire system but TuxRacer works perfectly fine, please let me know.)
Fifthly, I STILL like Mandrake 9. I've yet to have to visit a command line to do ANYTHING since the system was installed. (Though I may have to so that I can get GAIM working.) The Mandrake Control Center is light years ahead of Linuxconf and the assorted other collection of poorly implemented "tools". KDE 3 is also sweet. (I've not tried GNOME 2 yet, I confess.) I LIKE having the distribution come with everything I could possibly want. If I don't like it, I won't install ir or will uninstall it. Duh. (Note to reviewer: In the install you can pick which terminals to install. You must have chosen to install all 7.)
Distro to end all Distros? No. But still overall quite nice.
When TV came out (circa 1950s), people from the movie studios claimed it would be the death of the big screen cinema. They adapted and survived and made more money than before.
When VCRs came out (circa 1980), people from the movie studios claimed it would be the death of the big screen cinema. They adapted and survived and made more money than before.
When so-called piracy came out (circa 1980s), people from the movie studios claimed it would be the death of the big screen cinema. They adapted and survived and made more money than before.
Now that DVDs and overly expensive home theaters are out, someone from the movie studios is claiming it will be the death of the big screen cinema.
These people really have no clue what they're talking about, do they?
Come on, people. Yeah, cinemas are grossly overpriced, but people keep going to them in droves. There's a very heavy social aspect there that no one seems to realize. Your family isn't "going out together" if you rent a movie (or stream it from a server) onto your own 30" screen. It's not really a date with your girlfriend if you're not paying for her rip-off slime popcorn at a theater.
Yeah, I'm sure this guy is speaking for himself, not for the company. That doesn't make him any less of a short-sighted dork for saying it.
I have full faith and confidence in the ability of American business to figure out how to make a buck no matter what the technology is.
Good. So now if someone trips an easter egg by accident, instead of crashing the boss's computer, they total the car in front of them. Can I sue the manufacturer for this little gem if that happens?
Easter Eggs Bad, people. Easter Eggs major source of bugs. Easter Eggs source of strange, unexplained behavior. Easter Eggs source of the GDMF Doom clone in Excel. Sorry, I've got Doom alredy, I don't need another one taking up hard disk space.
Delete the automotive easter egg and put in something useful. Preferably something that won't raise my insurance rates (anymore than driving a car like this already will).
But what if *gasp!* I don't LIKE the Outlook philosophy. Right now, the nicest thing about KMail for me is that it is much closer to Netscape or Mozilla's mail clients, an interface that I prefer by far. I have never liked Outlooks way of doing things. Just because it's from Microsoft doesn't mean you have to mimic it. You've already got something better, don't mess with it just to make it more Microsoft-esque!
It boggles the mind why OSS/FS word processors keep developing new formats. Who cares if the format is "open" if no one uses it? MS Word.Doc files are insufficent as a standard because they're undocumented, which is why converters are still flakey in many cases.
RTF, on the other hand, does almost everything you need. It's missing OLE (99.999% of don't people need that), and it's missing VB Macros (100% of people don't need that), but it covers everything that most people are going to do. It's fully and completely documented. It's Word-compatible. It's WordPerfect-compatible. It's compatible with most OSS word processors. Heck, with the right software it's Palm OS compatible!
Yet some OSS word processors (read: KWord) still don't support it. And they all invent their own formats. How does that encourage progression away from Ubiquitous MS Word?
"Random rich guy", played by Ed Bagley Jr., who is a major computer mogul who supposedly created the "modern" (1996) computer revolution using stolen future technology and was completely convinced that he was doing the best thing for mankind, even if he had to crush the little people (Voyager crew, various 1996-era friends of theirs) to do it.
Rule #1 about Star Trek time travel plots: If the crew goes back in time, it's good. If the crew is visited by someone from the future, it's bad.
Seriously, think about it. "Voyage Home", good. "Time's Arrow" (TNG, Mark Twain), ok. "Past Tense" (DS9, American ghetos in the 21st centry), good. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS, airforce thinks Enterprise is UFO), ok.
Compare those to the Voyager finale, crap. The episode where Worf's son comes back from the future to kill himself, dumb. Anything in Voyager involving the Starfleet Time Cops from the future, ugh.
The weird one is the Voyager episode where the crew is attacked by someone from the 29th century and is thrown back to 1996. It has a little of each, but in the end they kill Bill Gates, so that episode officially rocks.:-)
Think about it, it really is true. Of course, that does not bode well for "Enterprise", as their big plot arc is all about being visited by the Voyager Time Cops over and over again. *groan*
When you send one of our diamonds to De Beers, right, the only way they can detect that this is not a natural diamond is really through phosphorescence. They take this, and they put in, they hit it with a UV light, and after the UV light goes off, this thing will phosphoresce for about three to five seconds. That is typical of a synthetic diamond versus a natural diamond.
Dude, a diamond ring that glows in the dark under blacklight? That's BETTER than a slave mine diamond, who are they kidding?:-)
Requiring everyone to broadcast in digital is not as evil a concept as some people think. Part of the reason for it is to get people to stop using the analog channels, so that they can be reclaimed. There's only a limited amount of frequency out there, all of it in the public space regulated by the FCC (a public agency), and we need to be frugal with it. By moving everything to digital, we can take the bandwidth used currently for analog broadcasts (the VHF and UHF bands) and use them for something else. That's a good thing! As for the price, expect the cost to come WAY down around 2006, when companies start pumping out sets at a high rate. By 2007 or 2008, the price will only be marginally higher than it is now for a high end analog set.
Now, if the FCC also mandates that it has to be a DRM-encrypted digital, I'll go apeshit along with everyone else. That stuff is bad for your health, and it's THAT which would turn all current digital sets into expensive paperweights. As long as the DRM crap is kept out of it, it's a perfectly legitimate action to take.
It would be good if software companies here in the US provide alternative prices for developing countries.
But if they did that, there would very quickly be a large market for people to buy the Malasian edition of 3D Studio Max ($100 USD equivalent), bring it to the US, and sell it for $150, as compared to the $$$$ USD it sells for normally. Of course, the way to prevent that is.... region codes like in DVDs. Eh, sorry, what was that about free trade again?:-)
I'll assume for the moment that everything you said above is perfectly valid and accurate... for a piano keyboard. I've never played the piano, so I will defer to your expertise in the matter. However, a piano keyboard and a computer keyboard are two very very different things, and as such I'm not surprised that they have different "typing" characteristics.
A piano keyboard consists of two rows of keys, each row an average of about 2 inches long by a quarter or half inch (black or white keys) wide, and each row runs for well over a meter. (Yes, we are mixing Imperial and Metric measurements, woot!) There are 88 keys, all of which are used on a regular basis (depending on the music). For that, a semi-free form setup makes sense. You can't have a perfectly stable home row, because the keyboard is simply too wide to keep your hands in the same place all the time. You can also travel with one hand, because you can go on for a long way with one hand with that many keys and many musical pieces have a climbing scale that asks you to play 9 keys in consecutive order. There are 3 shift keys... for the feet.
A computer keyboard, by contrast, is a set of some 40 primary keys plus a ton of auxiliary keys that are used far less frequently (arrows, function keys, number pad, PgUp/PgDn, etc.). There are 3 shift keys, also for the hands. Each key is 18 mm square, and arranged in 4 disjoint rows of about 10 keys. (I'm including numbers and some puncutation keys here.) There are a few common runs in the English language and different ones in other languages, but they are not as long as in music, and the keyboard itself is a quarter as wide. Optimizing for runs is far more difficult. And there is one extra key that is hit more than any other, the space bar, that is oriented specifically to make it the easiest to hit.
Computer typists probably do free-form a little from time to time. I know I do on occation, espeically when typing short things. But as I type this, I'm touch typing and doing just fine. I'm sure your method works wonderfully on a piano. But that doesn't mean it will work on a computer keyboard.
So let me see. If you're a doctor with a cell phone or pager that is to be used in an emergency, you can never go to a movie because the hospital will not be able to reach you. And this is a good thing?
Everyone who wants to avoid cell phones will create "pockets" of "no-phone-zones" around public places, making the mobile nature of the phones useless. "Not in my theater", "not in my restaurant", "not in my pub", etc. That will also create interference for phones in "legit" areas. (Right outside that theater, restaurant, etc.)
So the phone companies will, of course, modify their system with "new and improved, block-proof service!" Higher power, different frequency, more sensitive equipment, etc. All at a higher price for consumers. So we have buildings that make it difficult to use cell phones, and expensive phones that will work despite the buildings designed to keep them from working. And what have we gained, exactly?
The solution is so much simplier. Tell the jerk next to you in the theater to get a phone with a vibrate mode and to actually use it, and to have some repect for those around him. Turn off your own phone in the theater. In general, use common sense and common courtesy.
You can't solve a the problem of people being rude with technology. They'll find some way to be rude anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
If this is a conference on spam, then shouldn't about 1000 random people show up and tell the hosts that they could make big bucks by charging everyone who attends one dollar, but let them in for free if they bring ten friends?
That was true in the 80s, yes. Sony used to be THE company for consumer electronics. We have a 1985 Sony TV Monitor, 25", that is still plugging along all these years of regular use later.
:-)
That was then, this is now. Sony's more recent stuff, and that of everyone else, is now crap. They've been cutting costs over and over again to feed the need for cheap impulse-buy equipment, and the result is stuff that lasts one or two years. And a company that makes stuff that lasts a decade will go out of business because after their first round is sold, they won't get any return buyers for another 10 years.
Sony used to have a very good mid-range VCR line. For $300-$400 we got a solid workhorse of a VCR, lots of features, plenty of displays, excellent remote, fast rewrind, good video quality, all that other fun stuff. It lasted for 5-6 years of solid, heavy use. That was in the early 90s. We'd have bought another when it died if they still made them.
Now, Sony has two types of VCR. $1000 video toasters with more features than God that no one has any use for, and $50-$100 "um, it plays tapes?" models that break after a year.
What's a mindless, stupid consumer-drone to do? Well, we stopped buying Sony VCRs.
It's not feature glut that is driving the fall in quality. It's knowledge that return buyers are an important market. A $300 VCR that lasts 5 years averages out to $60/year for 5 years. A $100 VCR that last 1 year averages out to $100/year, or $500 over the course of 5 years. That's almost a 50% increase in profits for Sony (or RCA, or Phillips, or whoever, they all do it) over the course of five years, because the consumer is, on average, too stupid to figure out that he's being fleeced.
Executives pocket the difference, and you get a new model of VCR/DVD player/stereo/TV/CLIE handheld every year, feeding your gadget lust. Somehow I don't see that as an even trade, but that's just me.
How many people here even know how their own representaives voted on Homeland Security? For the record, here is the official list of who in Congress voted for and against the creation of Homeland Security:
House Roll Call
Senate Roll Call
(Interesting note, Senator Hollywood voted against. There are no permanent allies, only permanent interests.)
Is your senator in favor of Homeland Security? Are you? If the answer to those is not the same, then write a one page letter to your senator expressing your extreme displeasure with his/her actions. No, not tomorrow, not when you have time, RIGHT F*ING NOW! Fax it or snail mail it to their local office. (Not their federal office, snail mail doesn't get through there any more due to extended antrax checks.) They represent YOU! If they're not doing it right, make it clear to them.
Is your congressman in favor of Homeland Security? Are you? If the answer to those is not the same, then write a one page letter to your congressman expressing your extreme displeasure with his/her actions. No, not tomorrow, not when you have time, RIGHT F*ING NOW! Fax it or snail mail it to their local office. They represent YOU! If they're not doing it right, make it clear to them.
But what if they did vote the way you wanted them to? WRITE THEM A LETTER OF THANK YOU! Everyone likes positive feedback from the people who control their job. If your senator was one of the nine dissenters, thank them for standing up for what is right! Include with the snail mail letter a check (not cash) for $100 to their campaign fund. Polticians speak two languages; votes and money. Speak your mind in both, in enough numbers, and they WILL listen.
While you're at it, write a short OpEd for the local newspaper. Short, sweet, to the point. Maybe they'll publish it, maybe they won't, but they definitely won't if you don't send it.
This is a democracy. Your government SPEAKS FOR YOU! Your representatives represent YOU. Remind them of it. Daily. Make them scared shitless of losing their job if they cross you. Their first thought when they wake up should be "am I pissing off the people who vote for me?" Their last thought before going to bed should be "am I pissing off the people who vote for me?" As a voter, it is YOUR PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to see to it that those who claim to represent you actually do.
250,000 Slashdot voters is 500 times the difference in Florida in 2000, for a Presidential election. Imagine the sheer power of that electorate in congressional elections, if only it would get up off its collective ass and do something.
The Patriot Act of 2001 labels many so-called computer crimes "terrorism." I openly state, I am a terrorist. I seek to instill terror in the hearts of my government of trampling on my freedoms, or of voting against my will. I seek to make my government live in fear of me and my power over them. I seek to give George W. Bush nightmares of crossing me.
I am a voter. Are you?
The trust of intelligent people in the current administration was lost the day Homeland Security was created. Joseph Stalin would be proud.
They've got more news on the new watch, as well as some nice pictures.
I voted early Tuesday morning, and spent the rest of the day as a poll watcher for an incumbant candidate who I personally and professionally admire, who was the very first politician I heard after 9/11 saying that we need to protect civil liberties, who voted against the (anti-)Patriot Act, and voted against the war on Iraq.
I am taking control of my government. How many people here can say the same?
Precisely! That is what a government in a capitalistic economy is for; maintaining a free market by hack-and-slash methods on companies that get too big and become monopolies (Microsoft) or form oligopolic cartels (MPAA, RIAA, etc.). By definition, the US government is not interested in a free market, they're interested in corpoprate protectionism. That includes Congress, the President, and judges such as this.
The pro-capitalist conclusion to this case would have been to chop MS up into about 20 companies of 300 or fewer employees, prevent them from teaming up, and then let the wiles of the market figure it out. So much for having faith in the market.
Ah! It's the Commie Reds! They have an All-Red telegraph line, and they've had it for a century! Mr. President, we cannot allow a telegraph gap!
Hm. Can we moderate stories as Redundant? :-)
It depends in a huge part on the type of program, but for general-public use (what some would term "consumer" but I'm trying to erase that word from my vocabulary) a Shareware/registration system is often the easiest, if you have some sort of unique identifier to use.
:-) It also means that you need to maintain only one binary version, and you can make it a simple direct URL which is compatible with every browser in existance.
For example...
In the Palm OS world, most software is released in a Shareware fashion. Every Palm OS device has a HotSync ID that is used to identify it on a PC, and to keep that device's data separate from other Palms on the same PC. Two people could very well have the same ID, but not on the same PC, and the vast majority of users just use their own name as their ID, so the odds of two people with identical IDs meeting is neglibible.
What most developers do is release a single binary version of the program that includes all of the functionality, but sometimes blocks it with popups, disabled functions, timeouts, or whatever. If the user decides to register, they go to a web site (usually PalmGear.com) and enter their HotSync ID along with their credit card data and the web site generates a unique registration key for them based on their HotSync ID and some program-specific key, known only to the developer. The user enters that code into the Palm program and they're all set and registered. The program can then just generate what the reg code should be against the HotSync ID and the secret key (which it has compiled into it), and determine if the entered code is valid or not. The reg code is stored in the device's Preferences database (sorta kinda the Palm version of the Registry, though better implemented), so the user can easily beam the program to others and SHAZAAM!, the other user now has the unregistered, shareware version of the program! Yay, viral marketing!
Yes, it is possible for the user to fudge the HotSync ID with 3rd party programs, but that's not very common. And frankly, if someone is going to do that to "get around" your registration system, they would never have paid for the program in the first place, so you've lost nothing.
Of course, that is all predicated on the platform supporting that sort of unique ID. I don't know if that sort of user-defined, constant, pseudo-unique ID exists on any other platform. I wish it did, it would make it a lot easier to develop shareware-type apps. E-mail address is possible, but is subject to change more often.
[insert obligatory commentary about why you should be releasing GPLed software instead of commercial software here.]
I figured out the GAIM issue. The problem is in the autoadd module. Once I turned that off, everything worked perfectly. Yay! Since I have no special need for that module, I'll just leave it off. Now I just need to get rid of those damned default sounds and get something decent. ;-)
OK, the author of the article clearly wasn't reviewing the product, she was whining. There is a difference. She convinced me of that when she started complaining about how "the default KDE isn't pretty enough for me". Lady, get a grip. I happen to think it looks quite nice, and I've left it at the default settings for the most part. So there. :-) (Besides, um, what default Desktop? The first time I logged in I was asked "which environment do you want" and given the choice of KDE, GNOME, WindowMaker, and the assorted others I had installed. What's she talking about?)
:-) After that the install went smoothly.
:-) A friend of mine said the package is buggy and I should recompile from source, but I'm trying to avoid touching the command line for as long as possible, just to see how long I can last doing that.
:-) (If someone can explain why BZFlag kill the entire system but TuxRacer works perfectly fine, please let me know.)
Still, though, there are a few problems that I've found in the past few days since installing Mandrake 9.
Firstly, during the install, it hung for a long time on the kernel-source package, for reasons I do not understand. After I went to bed and woke up, it finally gave me the option to skip that package. It finished the install, then doubled back to package selection and went through the whole thing again, save for that 99% of everything was already installed, so it only took a few minutes (I selected a few extra packages
Secondly, UserDrake when run on its own works fine, but if run through the Mandrake Control Center it will not clean up its temp files when closed, which will prevent it from opening next time. (It uses them as lock files.) They can be deleted manually, but it is annoying.
Thirdly, GAIM keeps imploding when I try to send an IM to someone. I think it may be a bug in the MSM module, since it only started after I installed that.
Fourthly, several of the OpenGL games, for some reason, still manage to lock my system up cold. I do not understand why, though I'm not sure if it's a Mandrake problem specifically. I have an ATI Radeon 5000 video card, which at least in 8.2 was, somehow, the ONLY Radeon card in existance that lacked OpenGL support.
Fifthly, I STILL like Mandrake 9. I've yet to have to visit a command line to do ANYTHING since the system was installed. (Though I may have to so that I can get GAIM working.) The Mandrake Control Center is light years ahead of Linuxconf and the assorted other collection of poorly implemented "tools". KDE 3 is also sweet. (I've not tried GNOME 2 yet, I confess.) I LIKE having the distribution come with everything I could possibly want. If I don't like it, I won't install ir or will uninstall it. Duh. (Note to reviewer: In the install you can pick which terminals to install. You must have chosen to install all 7.)
Distro to end all Distros? No. But still overall quite nice.
When TV came out (circa 1950s), people from the movie studios claimed it would be the death of the big screen cinema. They adapted and survived and made more money than before.
When VCRs came out (circa 1980), people from the movie studios claimed it would be the death of the big screen cinema. They adapted and survived and made more money than before.
When so-called piracy came out (circa 1980s), people from the movie studios claimed it would be the death of the big screen cinema. They adapted and survived and made more money than before.
Now that DVDs and overly expensive home theaters are out, someone from the movie studios is claiming it will be the death of the big screen cinema.
These people really have no clue what they're talking about, do they?
Come on, people. Yeah, cinemas are grossly overpriced, but people keep going to them in droves. There's a very heavy social aspect there that no one seems to realize. Your family isn't "going out together" if you rent a movie (or stream it from a server) onto your own 30" screen. It's not really a date with your girlfriend if you're not paying for her rip-off slime popcorn at a theater.
Yeah, I'm sure this guy is speaking for himself, not for the company. That doesn't make him any less of a short-sighted dork for saying it.
I have full faith and confidence in the ability of American business to figure out how to make a buck no matter what the technology is.
Good. So now if someone trips an easter egg by accident, instead of crashing the boss's computer, they total the car in front of them. Can I sue the manufacturer for this little gem if that happens?
Easter Eggs Bad, people. Easter Eggs major source of bugs. Easter Eggs source of strange, unexplained behavior. Easter Eggs source of the GDMF Doom clone in Excel. Sorry, I've got Doom alredy, I don't need another one taking up hard disk space.
Delete the automotive easter egg and put in something useful. Preferably something that won't raise my insurance rates (anymore than driving a car like this already will).
But what if *gasp!* I don't LIKE the Outlook philosophy. Right now, the nicest thing about KMail for me is that it is much closer to Netscape or Mozilla's mail clients, an interface that I prefer by far. I have never liked Outlooks way of doing things. Just because it's from Microsoft doesn't mean you have to mimic it. You've already got something better, don't mess with it just to make it more Microsoft-esque!
It boggles the mind why OSS/FS word processors keep developing new formats. Who cares if the format is "open" if no one uses it? MS Word .Doc files are insufficent as a standard because they're undocumented, which is why converters are still flakey in many cases.
RTF, on the other hand, does almost everything you need. It's missing OLE (99.999% of don't people need that), and it's missing VB Macros (100% of people don't need that), but it covers everything that most people are going to do. It's fully and completely documented. It's Word-compatible. It's WordPerfect-compatible. It's compatible with most OSS word processors. Heck, with the right software it's Palm OS compatible!
Yet some OSS word processors (read: KWord) still don't support it. And they all invent their own formats. How does that encourage progression away from Ubiquitous MS Word?
"Random rich guy", played by Ed Bagley Jr., who is a major computer mogul who supposedly created the "modern" (1996) computer revolution using stolen future technology and was completely convinced that he was doing the best thing for mankind, even if he had to crush the little people (Voyager crew, various 1996-era friends of theirs) to do it.
:-)
Sounds like Bill Gates to me.
Rule #1 about Star Trek time travel plots: If the crew goes back in time, it's good. If the crew is visited by someone from the future, it's bad.
:-)
Seriously, think about it. "Voyage Home", good. "Time's Arrow" (TNG, Mark Twain), ok. "Past Tense" (DS9, American ghetos in the 21st centry), good. "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS, airforce thinks Enterprise is UFO), ok.
Compare those to the Voyager finale, crap. The episode where Worf's son comes back from the future to kill himself, dumb. Anything in Voyager involving the Starfleet Time Cops from the future, ugh.
The weird one is the Voyager episode where the crew is attacked by someone from the 29th century and is thrown back to 1996. It has a little of each, but in the end they kill Bill Gates, so that episode officially rocks.
Think about it, it really is true. Of course, that does not bode well for "Enterprise", as their big plot arc is all about being visited by the Voyager Time Cops over and over again. *groan*
Why? We've been calling it the Slashdot Effect for years. :-)
Dude, a diamond ring that glows in the dark under blacklight? That's BETTER than a slave mine diamond, who are they kidding? :-)
Requiring everyone to broadcast in digital is not as evil a concept as some people think. Part of the reason for it is to get people to stop using the analog channels, so that they can be reclaimed. There's only a limited amount of frequency out there, all of it in the public space regulated by the FCC (a public agency), and we need to be frugal with it. By moving everything to digital, we can take the bandwidth used currently for analog broadcasts (the VHF and UHF bands) and use them for something else. That's a good thing! As for the price, expect the cost to come WAY down around 2006, when companies start pumping out sets at a high rate. By 2007 or 2008, the price will only be marginally higher than it is now for a high end analog set.
Now, if the FCC also mandates that it has to be a DRM-encrypted digital, I'll go apeshit along with everyone else. That stuff is bad for your health, and it's THAT which would turn all current digital sets into expensive paperweights. As long as the DRM crap is kept out of it, it's a perfectly legitimate action to take.
But if they did that, there would very quickly be a large market for people to buy the Malasian edition of 3D Studio Max ($100 USD equivalent), bring it to the US, and sell it for $150, as compared to the $$$$ USD it sells for normally. Of course, the way to prevent that is.... region codes like in DVDs. Eh, sorry, what was that about free trade again? :-)
I'll assume for the moment that everything you said above is perfectly valid and accurate... for a piano keyboard. I've never played the piano, so I will defer to your expertise in the matter. However, a piano keyboard and a computer keyboard are two very very different things, and as such I'm not surprised that they have different "typing" characteristics.
A piano keyboard consists of two rows of keys, each row an average of about 2 inches long by a quarter or half inch (black or white keys) wide, and each row runs for well over a meter. (Yes, we are mixing Imperial and Metric measurements, woot!) There are 88 keys, all of which are used on a regular basis (depending on the music). For that, a semi-free form setup makes sense. You can't have a perfectly stable home row, because the keyboard is simply too wide to keep your hands in the same place all the time. You can also travel with one hand, because you can go on for a long way with one hand with that many keys and many musical pieces have a climbing scale that asks you to play 9 keys in consecutive order. There are 3 shift keys... for the feet.
A computer keyboard, by contrast, is a set of some 40 primary keys plus a ton of auxiliary keys that are used far less frequently (arrows, function keys, number pad, PgUp/PgDn, etc.). There are 3 shift keys, also for the hands. Each key is 18 mm square, and arranged in 4 disjoint rows of about 10 keys. (I'm including numbers and some puncutation keys here.) There are a few common runs in the English language and different ones in other languages, but they are not as long as in music, and the keyboard itself is a quarter as wide. Optimizing for runs is far more difficult. And there is one extra key that is hit more than any other, the space bar, that is oriented specifically to make it the easiest to hit.
Computer typists probably do free-form a little from time to time. I know I do on occation, espeically when typing short things. But as I type this, I'm touch typing and doing just fine. I'm sure your method works wonderfully on a piano. But that doesn't mean it will work on a computer keyboard.
Everyone who wants to avoid cell phones will create "pockets" of "no-phone-zones" around public places, making the mobile nature of the phones useless. "Not in my theater", "not in my restaurant", "not in my pub", etc. That will also create interference for phones in "legit" areas. (Right outside that theater, restaurant, etc.)
So the phone companies will, of course, modify their system with "new and improved, block-proof service!" Higher power, different frequency, more sensitive equipment, etc. All at a higher price for consumers. So we have buildings that make it difficult to use cell phones, and expensive phones that will work despite the buildings designed to keep them from working. And what have we gained, exactly?
The solution is so much simplier. Tell the jerk next to you in the theater to get a phone with a vibrate mode and to actually use it, and to have some repect for those around him. Turn off your own phone in the theater. In general, use common sense and common courtesy.
You can't solve a the problem of people being rude with technology. They'll find some way to be rude anyway.