I'll probably get modded down because this might seem anti-Linux and anti-open source, but here goes...
It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
No. It's not silly to bitch about this. Whether we like it or not, M$ is the standard. The vast majority of the public uses M$ products. Period. End of story. We might not like it and we can try to change it, but it's not silly to bitch about this. If they schools want their students to actually know how to use the computing products that businesses use in the real world, they need to teach and use Microsoft products in the schools.
I'm all for teaching kids to use open source products. In fact, I think it's a great idea. We need to get them while they're young and teach them all the things I wish I had learned at that age. But, but not also teaching them to use Microsoft products, we are only serving to handicap them. We should have the kids learn both. Linux, Unix and other *nix operating systems just don't have the kind of market share that warrants the kind of exclusive teaching that you're talking about.
Let me give you an example. I work for my state government here. In our office (just our office, not sure about the other offices here in the capitol) we have only one maching not running a M$ OS, and that's our Sun server. Everybody else just uses X-Windows clients to access the one piece of software run on the machine. We don't even have a Unix system admin. In fact, I know more about Unix than anybody else that works here, and I'm just a summer intern. Whenever our sys admin sets up the X-Win client software on a new computer, she has to use a "cheat sheet" that was written up by the people that installed the system. If something ever goes wrong, they have to call somebody in to come and fix it.
When the goverment, one of the largest (if not the largest) employer in the state runs Microsoft software, that's probably an indication that people wanting jobs should know how to use it.
I'm all for teaching kids to use Linux in schools. It's a great idea. But, we also cannot neglect the instruction of Microsoft software. Until Linux gains a larger software base, there's no reason to warrant its exclusive teaching in schools. If we do that, we are only serving to handicap the students. So yes. It is worth bitching about Microsoft's "extortion" tactics. They are wrong, and we should do something to stop them.
I'm sorry for sounding inflamatory or insulting, but sometimes some of you Linux zealots can be just as bad as Microsoft's corporate zombies. Before Linux can be exclusvely taught in schools, it needs to be able to succeed as a consumer OS. Some of you people just need to get your head out of you ass and realize that this will not happen over night. We need to first promote Operating System equality. Teach Linux, Windows, and whatever other OS we deem necessary together. Then we can let the consumers decide what OS is right for them.
This article reminds me of possibly one of the coolest easter eggs ever included in a game. That of Nessie randomly appearing in some of you lakes in Simcity 2000.:)
While I don't agree with M$ linking various words in a web page to whatever the hell they want to, Smarttags is still an interesting idea. Has anybody ever thought of how useful this could be to Joe Consumer. Allow them to define what words get highlited/linked and where that link goes. Could be useful
I know that people have registed accuonts at NYTimes before for/., but I can't remember any of the usernames and passwords. So, for anybody who cares I registered another/. user accuont.
($10 says I'll get modded down for flamebait as this is a potentially Linux bashing comment.)
Exactly why would using Linux make it "perfect." Aside from the fact that Linux is freely available, what makes it that much better than using Windoze? Or for that matter, why not create a proprietary OS to run the software at home? I just really don't see why "using Linux would make it perfect."
I think that were I to build something like this, instead of putting time and effort into modifying Linux, I would just create my own software to run my little boxes. That way I could be more sure that these boxes would only work on my cable network. Think about it. Proprietary software = harder/longer to hack. There'd have to be some kind of learning curve before people managed to get the box to run on another cable network.
(Disclaimer: I am still a novice when it comes to programming skills. So, maybe the cost savings of using Linux would far out way the ability to better protect your propietary product.)
I thought I'd through my two cents in here. At my University we are taught C/C++ in our CS course. Even non computer majors in the engineering department are required to take the introductory level class on C. Anyway, when one of my professors was asked why C/C++ was used as opposed another language he said,"Because if you know C, you can learn many other languages." And that's not just OOP languages.
Personally, I think this is a great reason. Once somebody gets out in the real world, they'll find that many other languages are based on C/C++. In fact, I believe Java is. I've also had one or two occasions where, although I have not known the specific language, I have been able to understand some pieces of code because the language is build around C.
Teaching C just teaches good basic programming skills. If you teach only Java to a student, they'll be great OO programmers. But, what about other languages? How well will they fare if they get out in the job world and are forced to learn a non Object Oriented language?
All my statements don't even take into account the fact that C/C++ is a much more versatile language. Hell, I can't see many advantages that Java has over C. I feel that by teaching Java instead of C, schools and universities are merely serving to handicap their students.
This very much reminds me of what some production companies are doing with DVDs these days. As many of you who prefer to watch DVDs on set boxes (I don't know if PC based DVD drives have the same problem), many DVDs will not allow you to skip past the usual FBI warning and Liscensing agreements. Furthermore, I've come across one or two DVDs where some (rather unscrupulous, IMHO) companies have set it up so that you cannot skip past the preview trailers. Frankly, things like this piss me off, and I wish I had some kind of protection against stuff like this.
Actually, my reason for using Hotmail is as kind of a "safer" web based address. I give that adderss to any place I think might be likely to send me spam. Also, since it is web based, I get some protection from any Outlook and Outlook Express based viri. I only give my POP3 addresses to people I know and trust.
Disclaimer:Most people wouldn't give a crap about the stuff I'm about to speil. So, don't read it if you don't want to.
Several things happened to change my tastes in music when I went away to college a couple of years ago.
1) The first and major thing that changed was that I was no longer in High School worrying about such trivial things such as fitting in with the "cool" group. Not that I really cared all that much for such things anyway, but when everybody in school was listening to a certain CD and were exclaiming how good it was I would go out and pick up the CD too. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So, I mostly listened to what was popular at the time. I listened to what everybody else listened to. Of course, that just happened to be the pre-packaged crap that the music industry was spewing out, and paying good money to do so. But, once I got to college I stopped caring as much about such things
2)I went to college out of state and met many new friends who had come from different areas of the nation. Namely, they came from areas where there is something of a local music scene. (If there's any kind of local music scene here in Arkansas, I wish somebody would clue me in as to where to find it. All we ever get is the mindless, corporate crap.) As such, they had chances to see some of the lesser known bands and experience music that I'd never heard before. And these friends introduced me to this new music. I didn't realize that there could be such good music out there, and that it was good music that I'd never heard of. I had just assumed that if it were any good, then it would be played on the radio.
3)I went to school in a city that had a bit of a local music scene of its own. As such, I was able to experience a much wider array of music in person, than I ever had before. These were bands that had never come to Arkansas and probably never would.
4)Napster. Let's face it. Whether the record companies like it or not, Napster has changed the face of music forever. Now(or rather then; Napster is useless now), any time somebody mentions a band that I might like, I simply had to fire up Napster and download a few of their songs. If I liked them, I went out and bought the CD. If I didn't, oh well, nothing lost.
It is because of these four factors that I was able to discover a whole new breed of music: that of the non-prepackaged, corporatized crap. I found good music by talented artists who, more often than not, were making music to make music and not making music to make money. (Don't get me wrong on this point. Making good music can be very time consuming and can be very hard work. Good artists should get paid for their work.) I look at the popular music scene these days and I'm glad my music tastes have changed. I don't think I could have stomached the current boy band trend otherwise. Don't they remember New Kids On The Block? They know how it ends. Anyway, I encourage everybody who doesn't already to go out and give some lesser bands a try. You might like them.
In the article they said that four companies, AOL, M$, Yahoo!, and Napster account for half the internet traffic. Everybody here is assuming that the article meant aol.com, microsoft.com, yahoo.com, and (I guess) napster.com. However, if you consider just the various other sites owned and ran by these companies, I can very well see where these statistics could be true.
AOL: Although I almost never go to AOL's main site (except for the occasional use of AIM Express) I do spend a lot of time at cnn.com, which is owned by AOL-Time Warner. Hell, I spend as much time at CNN as I do at/. and it's my homepage. But, if you conisder the vast numbers of AOL users who probably do have aol.com as their homepage, you can see where a lot of the web time comes from. Also, conisder some of the other sites ran by AOL. They own netscape.com, which just happens to be the default start page for Netscape browsers. Also, you can't discount the fact that netscape.com has been turned into the "convienient" (for the internet impaired, anyway) web portal. AOL also owns the two most popular instant messaging clients on the internet: AIM and ICQ. I'd put money that the corresponding web sites are visited fairly often.
Microsoft: Although I'll agree that microsoft.com sucks big donkey balls (I still can't find the software to my intellimouse there) the biggest site for microsoft is possibly hotmail.com. It is the largest web based email site on the internet. I have a hotmail address and I visit their site several times a day to check my email. However, they too probably fall under the "default home page" category, with msn.com. But, hell I even spend time at the MSN gaming zone as I have gotten hooked on Bejewled lately. And, you can't discount the portal factor for those who don't like to (or don't know how to) type in URL's.
Yahoo!: I actually wouldn't be surprised if yahoo.com accounted for a lot of Yahoo!'s web traffic. It was one of the first and most popular web portals. And, I believe that it still is one of the most popular. It's more than just a search engine these days. It's your "gateway to the rest of the internet." They offer their own classified listings, their own very popular web-based email system, their popular system of chat rooms, and their popular online gaming section. Although, I prefer google for searching, the average web user is probably just content with yahoo.com, who liscenses Google's search engine, by the way. Furthermore, you can't discount some of Yahoo!'s attempts to break into other markets with thing like their Yahoo! branded "internet keyboards." Like the hardware or not, that's still some free publicity. Lastly, when it comes to Yahoo!, you cannot forget that they own geoshit^H^H^H^Hcities.com: the web's largest and one of the web's oldest providers of free web space. Geocities probably generates at least 1/3 of Yahoo!'s portion of the time spent online pie.
Finally, Napster: I am a little surprised that Napster's web site would account for much of the intenet traffic. It's just the site you go to when you want to download the Napster client. However, once one takes in to account that the latest versions of the Napster client all connect to Napster's site to download the html content that you see when you log on, I'm no longer surprised. With the number of people out there using Napster, that's a hell of a lot of hits.
So, in conclusion I wish everybody here would just RTFA (read the f***in' article). They never once said that aol.com, microsoft.com, yahoo.com, and napster.com specifically got all the traffic. Only that those four companies could account for 40% of the traffic. Furthermore, we must realize that we as geeks, are in the minority of the web users and as such, do not visit the same sites that the average computer illiterate internet user visits. In such a light, these statistics aren't surprising at all.
I wish my capus IT department did that. Then again, I even heard a rumor that my University sold their email list to some spammers. The sad thing is that I really wouldn't put it past the money hungry sob's to do something like that.
Is it just me or does it seem like notebooks catch on fire too often? Granted it doesn't happen all that often. But even once is too often. Perhaps a little more testing is in order before they ship these things off.
I'm wondering what this will mean for user created mods. The only one I know about is http://www.whatisexistence.com/, but I would not be surprised to hear of a similar mod under development for Unreal Tournament of Quake 3.
Yeah, so Existence doesn't really use any outright copyrighted stuff from the Matrix. But the similarities are enough that the evil empire might decide to slap the (unpaid I might add) designers with a lawsuit.
It would be a shame to see these guys have to just stop after all the hard work they've done, and hopefully that won't happtn. But, I wouldn't put it past M$ to sue their sorry asses real soon here.
Does anybody else have doubts that this is something Microsoft would do?
Actually, you are forgetting about the Intellimouse Explorer. It has 7 buttons. The two standard, the wheel, and the two side buttons. Although under X the two side buttons currently only work as an extra mouse 2 and mouse 3, there are more uses for them in Windoze (of course). But where they really shine is when playing games such as Counter-Strike and TFC. In fact, gaming is the main reason I bought this mouse.
This is why I've said before that we the slashdot readers should institute a system of mirrors for sites linked to in postings. Usually, the only effect is that many people who don't refresh every five minutes usually have to fight through the slashdot effect in order to view the material. But sometimes there are cases such as this where this poor Apple fan might have to pay out the wazoo for our slashdotting.
If anybody is willing to organize a system of mirrors for slashdot, I would be willing to contribute what resources I can. Namely, my web space and bandwidth from two different accounts here at my university. Hell, I'd even offer to server the stuff off my own box if it weren't for the fact that I still have to boot to Windows for a few select pieces of software and games.
If anybody wants to attempt to set up a mirror system, give me an email: caldwell@NOSPAM.eecs.tulane.edu. And remove the obvious to mail me.
[tangent]Back in 1990 or so, my mother had her own programming and consulting business that she ran out of the house. Anyway, during this time she was hired by my dad's company to write a piece of software for them. I don't remember what it does, but it was fairly complex. (She also wrote it in Foxpro. Yech!) Anyway, a couple of months somebody asked my dad if my mom would be able to add a feature to this software that she had written for them. They've been using this software for something like 11 years, with no problems. That's more than can be said for a lot of software these days.[/tangent]
(However, a question could be asked why they are still using such old software, but I guess "if it's not broken, then don't fix it.")
Well, here in New Orleans (the drinking capital of the world, or maybe it just seems like that since I'm in college) the legal age to drink is 18, if you're in a private residence. You can't buy alcohol and you can't transport it, but you sure as heck can drink all of it you want, as long as it isn't out in public. This does lead to some grey areas, like wheter or not a bar is considered a private residence, but at least if you drink yourself silly, you don't have to worry about being arrested by the cops when you go out.:)
[I'm sure to get flamed for this one, so please don't take offense.]
Well, if we want to play "amatuer sociologist" (and I'm sure that I just mispelled that) we can probably determine why there aren't many Slashdotters in Congress. I think the main factor is that a large portion of geeks just aren't as socially adept as the vast majority of congressmen. I mean, let's face it guys. An election is simply a popularity contest, and I'd be willing to bet that a lot of us were never popular in either high school or college. (Myself not included, of course.;) It usually takes a certain kind of person to make a good politician, and those people typically aren't geeks. The traits of 'being popular and knowing how to work people' and 'being a good coder and knowing how to work a UNIX system' are usually mutually exclusive.
That said, I myself will be interning as a basic all around computer geek for a state legislator this summer, who just happens to be a good friend of my grandmother. So, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to help her to make informed decisions on various technology related policies. Yeah, it's not the same as a Slashdotter in Congress, but it's a start. In fact, I think that what we might really need are some geeks to advise the politicians. That could work.
Infoseek? I'd totally forgotten about them. Weren't they eventually acquired by the Go network? Well, no matter, I quickly stopped visiting once the decline in quality became evident.
As for search engines, not that anybody cares, but... these days I like to use 1) Google, 2) Northern Light (a lot of people don't know about this one but it tied for top honors with Google in PC Magazine's test of search engines), and 3) Altavista for it's incredible flexibility. Although, at one time, I did use Yahoo, it's transition into a portal kind of turned me off. Not to mention the little period where their search engine just generally sucked. And, although they do use Google now, it just seems like Google does a better job at being Google than Yahoo does. Go figure.
On a related note, did anybody else ever use Magellan?
I have a really cheap computer with loads of cheap, non-standard hardware. (I didn't pay for it, mom and dad did. I tried to tell them that there was something wrong with a computer/moniter/scanner/printer bundle for only $800 but they don't always listen to me.) Anyway, many emulators don't run correctly on my machine. I've upgraded my video card, so the sound card seems to be the main culprit these days. I can only get 1 hour max out of Nesticle before my sound card seizes up and my emulator crashes. Genecyst, Nesticle's little brother, won't even play any sound except for some kind of repeating interference tone. It's totally useless. I've also tried dgen, but I get loads of slowdown on my PC (a K6-2/400 w/ 128 MB RAM, and a Voodoo3 3000) when I try to run in anything other than a 640 X 480 window. I'm not even going to go into the particulars of the other emulators.
Basically, unless you have some of the more popular hardware with better driver support, emulators can be a pain in the ass. It's just much easier for me to go play my NES or Genesis, then it is to try and find that working, stable emulator. Not to mention that I don't have a descent gamepad, something that's absolutely essential for most old console games.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll probably get modded down because this might seem anti-Linux and anti-open source, but here goes...
It seems silly to bitch about this - work at getting schools to use Free and free software instead.
No. It's not silly to bitch about this. Whether we like it or not, M$ is the standard. The vast majority of the public uses M$ products. Period. End of story. We might not like it and we can try to change it, but it's not silly to bitch about this. If they schools want their students to actually know how to use the computing products that businesses use in the real world, they need to teach and use Microsoft products in the schools.
I'm all for teaching kids to use open source products. In fact, I think it's a great idea. We need to get them while they're young and teach them all the things I wish I had learned at that age. But, but not also teaching them to use Microsoft products, we are only serving to handicap them. We should have the kids learn both. Linux, Unix and other *nix operating systems just don't have the kind of market share that warrants the kind of exclusive teaching that you're talking about.
Let me give you an example. I work for my state government here. In our office (just our office, not sure about the other offices here in the capitol) we have only one maching not running a M$ OS, and that's our Sun server. Everybody else just uses X-Windows clients to access the one piece of software run on the machine. We don't even have a Unix system admin. In fact, I know more about Unix than anybody else that works here, and I'm just a summer intern. Whenever our sys admin sets up the X-Win client software on a new computer, she has to use a "cheat sheet" that was written up by the people that installed the system. If something ever goes wrong, they have to call somebody in to come and fix it.
When the goverment, one of the largest (if not the largest) employer in the state runs Microsoft software, that's probably an indication that people wanting jobs should know how to use it.
I'm all for teaching kids to use Linux in schools. It's a great idea. But, we also cannot neglect the instruction of Microsoft software. Until Linux gains a larger software base, there's no reason to warrant its exclusive teaching in schools. If we do that, we are only serving to handicap the students. So yes. It is worth bitching about Microsoft's "extortion" tactics. They are wrong, and we should do something to stop them.
I'm sorry for sounding inflamatory or insulting, but sometimes some of you Linux zealots can be just as bad as Microsoft's corporate zombies. Before Linux can be exclusvely taught in schools, it needs to be able to succeed as a consumer OS. Some of you people just need to get your head out of you ass and realize that this will not happen over night. We need to first promote Operating System equality. Teach Linux, Windows, and whatever other OS we deem necessary together. Then we can let the consumers decide what OS is right for them.
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This article reminds me of possibly one of the coolest easter eggs ever included in a game. That of Nessie randomly appearing in some of you lakes in Simcity 2000. :)
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Here's an article at ZDnet about it. At least they're bound to be a little more impartial in the article than a press release from Intel.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5093 197,00.html
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While I don't agree with M$ linking various words in a web page to whatever the hell they want to, Smarttags is still an interesting idea. Has anybody ever thought of how useful this could be to Joe Consumer. Allow them to define what words get highlited/linked and where that link goes. Could be useful
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I know that people have registed accuonts at NYTimes before for /., but I can't remember any of the usernames and passwords. So, for anybody who cares I registered another /. user accuont.
user: slashdotaccount
password: slashdotaccount
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You're referring to the Kobiashi Maru(sp??) test. And IIRC, Kirk was the only one to win the no-win simulation. Because he did rig the simulation.
Yes. I'm a Star Trek geek. What are you going to do about it?
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($10 says I'll get modded down for flamebait as this is a potentially Linux bashing comment.)
Exactly why would using Linux make it "perfect." Aside from the fact that Linux is freely available, what makes it that much better than using Windoze? Or for that matter, why not create a proprietary OS to run the software at home? I just really don't see why "using Linux would make it perfect."
I think that were I to build something like this, instead of putting time and effort into modifying Linux, I would just create my own software to run my little boxes. That way I could be more sure that these boxes would only work on my cable network. Think about it. Proprietary software = harder/longer to hack. There'd have to be some kind of learning curve before people managed to get the box to run on another cable network.
(Disclaimer: I am still a novice when it comes to programming skills. So, maybe the cost savings of using Linux would far out way the ability to better protect your propietary product.)
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I thought I'd through my two cents in here. At my University we are taught C/C++ in our CS course. Even non computer majors in the engineering department are required to take the introductory level class on C. Anyway, when one of my professors was asked why C/C++ was used as opposed another language he said,"Because if you know C, you can learn many other languages." And that's not just OOP languages.
Personally, I think this is a great reason. Once somebody gets out in the real world, they'll find that many other languages are based on C/C++. In fact, I believe Java is. I've also had one or two occasions where, although I have not known the specific language, I have been able to understand some pieces of code because the language is build around C.
Teaching C just teaches good basic programming skills. If you teach only Java to a student, they'll be great OO programmers. But, what about other languages? How well will they fare if they get out in the job world and are forced to learn a non Object Oriented language?
All my statements don't even take into account the fact that C/C++ is a much more versatile language. Hell, I can't see many advantages that Java has over C. I feel that by teaching Java instead of C, schools and universities are merely serving to handicap their students.
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This very much reminds me of what some production companies are doing with DVDs these days. As many of you who prefer to watch DVDs on set boxes (I don't know if PC based DVD drives have the same problem), many DVDs will not allow you to skip past the usual FBI warning and Liscensing agreements. Furthermore, I've come across one or two DVDs where some (rather unscrupulous, IMHO) companies have set it up so that you cannot skip past the preview trailers. Frankly, things like this piss me off, and I wish I had some kind of protection against stuff like this.
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Since this guy beat me to the punch on the submission, here's the link to the CNN story that I included: http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/06/08/ibm.silic on.ap/index.html. Just in case anybody wanted it.
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Actually, my reason for using Hotmail is as kind of a "safer" web based address. I give that adderss to any place I think might be likely to send me spam. Also, since it is web based, I get some protection from any Outlook and Outlook Express based viri. I only give my POP3 addresses to people I know and trust.
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Disclaimer:Most people wouldn't give a crap about the stuff I'm about to speil. So, don't read it if you don't want to.
Several things happened to change my tastes in music when I went away to college a couple of years ago.
1) The first and major thing that changed was that I was no longer in High School worrying about such trivial things such as fitting in with the "cool" group. Not that I really cared all that much for such things anyway, but when everybody in school was listening to a certain CD and were exclaiming how good it was I would go out and pick up the CD too. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So, I mostly listened to what was popular at the time. I listened to what everybody else listened to. Of course, that just happened to be the pre-packaged crap that the music industry was spewing out, and paying good money to do so. But, once I got to college I stopped caring as much about such things
2)I went to college out of state and met many new friends who had come from different areas of the nation. Namely, they came from areas where there is something of a local music scene. (If there's any kind of local music scene here in Arkansas, I wish somebody would clue me in as to where to find it. All we ever get is the mindless, corporate crap.) As such, they had chances to see some of the lesser known bands and experience music that I'd never heard before. And these friends introduced me to this new music. I didn't realize that there could be such good music out there, and that it was good music that I'd never heard of. I had just assumed that if it were any good, then it would be played on the radio.
3)I went to school in a city that had a bit of a local music scene of its own. As such, I was able to experience a much wider array of music in person, than I ever had before. These were bands that had never come to Arkansas and probably never would.
4)Napster. Let's face it. Whether the record companies like it or not, Napster has changed the face of music forever. Now(or rather then; Napster is useless now), any time somebody mentions a band that I might like, I simply had to fire up Napster and download a few of their songs. If I liked them, I went out and bought the CD. If I didn't, oh well, nothing lost.
It is because of these four factors that I was able to discover a whole new breed of music: that of the non-prepackaged, corporatized crap. I found good music by talented artists who, more often than not, were making music to make music and not making music to make money. (Don't get me wrong on this point. Making good music can be very time consuming and can be very hard work. Good artists should get paid for their work.) I look at the popular music scene these days and I'm glad my music tastes have changed. I don't think I could have stomached the current boy band trend otherwise. Don't they remember New Kids On The Block? They know how it ends. Anyway, I encourage everybody who doesn't already to go out and give some lesser bands a try. You might like them.
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In the article they said that four companies, AOL, M$, Yahoo!, and Napster account for half the internet traffic. Everybody here is assuming that the article meant aol.com, microsoft.com, yahoo.com, and (I guess) napster.com. However, if you consider just the various other sites owned and ran by these companies, I can very well see where these statistics could be true.
AOL: Although I almost never go to AOL's main site (except for the occasional use of AIM Express) I do spend a lot of time at cnn.com, which is owned by AOL-Time Warner. Hell, I spend as much time at CNN as I do at /. and it's my homepage. But, if you conisder the vast numbers of AOL users who probably do have aol.com as their homepage, you can see where a lot of the web time comes from. Also, conisder some of the other sites ran by AOL. They own netscape.com, which just happens to be the default start page for Netscape browsers. Also, you can't discount the fact that netscape.com has been turned into the "convienient" (for the internet impaired, anyway) web portal. AOL also owns the two most popular instant messaging clients on the internet: AIM and ICQ. I'd put money that the corresponding web sites are visited fairly often.
Microsoft: Although I'll agree that microsoft.com sucks big donkey balls (I still can't find the software to my intellimouse there) the biggest site for microsoft is possibly hotmail.com. It is the largest web based email site on the internet. I have a hotmail address and I visit their site several times a day to check my email. However, they too probably fall under the "default home page" category, with msn.com. But, hell I even spend time at the MSN gaming zone as I have gotten hooked on Bejewled lately. And, you can't discount the portal factor for those who don't like to (or don't know how to) type in URL's.
Yahoo!: I actually wouldn't be surprised if yahoo.com accounted for a lot of Yahoo!'s web traffic. It was one of the first and most popular web portals. And, I believe that it still is one of the most popular. It's more than just a search engine these days. It's your "gateway to the rest of the internet." They offer their own classified listings, their own very popular web-based email system, their popular system of chat rooms, and their popular online gaming section. Although, I prefer google for searching, the average web user is probably just content with yahoo.com, who liscenses Google's search engine, by the way. Furthermore, you can't discount some of Yahoo!'s attempts to break into other markets with thing like their Yahoo! branded "internet keyboards." Like the hardware or not, that's still some free publicity. Lastly, when it comes to Yahoo!, you cannot forget that they own geoshit^H^H^H^Hcities.com: the web's largest and one of the web's oldest providers of free web space. Geocities probably generates at least 1/3 of Yahoo!'s portion of the time spent online pie.
Finally, Napster: I am a little surprised that Napster's web site would account for much of the intenet traffic. It's just the site you go to when you want to download the Napster client. However, once one takes in to account that the latest versions of the Napster client all connect to Napster's site to download the html content that you see when you log on, I'm no longer surprised. With the number of people out there using Napster, that's a hell of a lot of hits.
So, in conclusion I wish everybody here would just RTFA (read the f***in' article). They never once said that aol.com, microsoft.com, yahoo.com, and napster.com specifically got all the traffic. Only that those four companies could account for 40% of the traffic. Furthermore, we must realize that we as geeks, are in the minority of the web users and as such, do not visit the same sites that the average computer illiterate internet user visits. In such a light, these statistics aren't surprising at all.
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I wish my capus IT department did that. Then again, I even heard a rumor that my University sold their email list to some spammers. The sad thing is that I really wouldn't put it past the money hungry sob's to do something like that.
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So that's where all those PS2s are going to. They're using them for robotic planes!
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Is it just me or does it seem like notebooks catch on fire too often? Granted it doesn't happen all that often. But even once is too often. Perhaps a little more testing is in order before they ship these things off.
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I'm wondering what this will mean for user created mods. The only one I know about is http://www.whatisexistence.com/, but I would not be surprised to hear of a similar mod under development for Unreal Tournament of Quake 3.
Yeah, so Existence doesn't really use any outright copyrighted stuff from the Matrix. But the similarities are enough that the evil empire might decide to slap the (unpaid I might add) designers with a lawsuit.
It would be a shame to see these guys have to just stop after all the hard work they've done, and hopefully that won't happtn. But, I wouldn't put it past M$ to sue their sorry asses real soon here.
Does anybody else have doubts that this is something Microsoft would do?
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Actually, you are forgetting about the Intellimouse Explorer. It has 7 buttons. The two standard, the wheel, and the two side buttons. Although under X the two side buttons currently only work as an extra mouse 2 and mouse 3, there are more uses for them in Windoze (of course). But where they really shine is when playing games such as Counter-Strike and TFC. In fact, gaming is the main reason I bought this mouse.
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This is why I've said before that we the slashdot readers should institute a system of mirrors for sites linked to in postings. Usually, the only effect is that many people who don't refresh every five minutes usually have to fight through the slashdot effect in order to view the material. But sometimes there are cases such as this where this poor Apple fan might have to pay out the wazoo for our slashdotting.
If anybody is willing to organize a system of mirrors for slashdot, I would be willing to contribute what resources I can. Namely, my web space and bandwidth from two different accounts here at my university. Hell, I'd even offer to server the stuff off my own box if it weren't for the fact that I still have to boot to Windows for a few select pieces of software and games.
If anybody wants to attempt to set up a mirror system, give me an email: caldwell@NOSPAM.eecs.tulane.edu. And remove the obvious to mail me.
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[tangent]Back in 1990 or so, my mother had her own programming and consulting business that she ran out of the house. Anyway, during this time she was hired by my dad's company to write a piece of software for them. I don't remember what it does, but it was fairly complex. (She also wrote it in Foxpro. Yech!) Anyway, a couple of months somebody asked my dad if my mom would be able to add a feature to this software that she had written for them. They've been using this software for something like 11 years, with no problems. That's more than can be said for a lot of software these days.[/tangent]
(However, a question could be asked why they are still using such old software, but I guess "if it's not broken, then don't fix it.")
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Many of the small programs that I've written for my computer science courses are more complex than "Hello World" and yet are still bug free.
Now, they occasionally contain undocumented features, but not bugs. No-sir-ee.
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Yeah, this is offtopic
Well, here in New Orleans (the drinking capital of the world, or maybe it just seems like that since I'm in college) the legal age to drink is 18, if you're in a private residence. You can't buy alcohol and you can't transport it, but you sure as heck can drink all of it you want, as long as it isn't out in public. This does lead to some grey areas, like wheter or not a bar is considered a private residence, but at least if you drink yourself silly, you don't have to worry about being arrested by the cops when you go out. :)
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We need some Slashdotters in Congress, I guess...
[I'm sure to get flamed for this one, so please don't take offense.]
Well, if we want to play "amatuer sociologist" (and I'm sure that I just mispelled that) we can probably determine why there aren't many Slashdotters in Congress. I think the main factor is that a large portion of geeks just aren't as socially adept as the vast majority of congressmen. I mean, let's face it guys. An election is simply a popularity contest, and I'd be willing to bet that a lot of us were never popular in either high school or college. (Myself not included, of course. ;) It usually takes a certain kind of person to make a good politician, and those people typically aren't geeks. The traits of 'being popular and knowing how to work people' and 'being a good coder and knowing how to work a UNIX system' are usually mutually exclusive.
That said, I myself will be interning as a basic all around computer geek for a state legislator this summer, who just happens to be a good friend of my grandmother. So, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to help her to make informed decisions on various technology related policies. Yeah, it's not the same as a Slashdotter in Congress, but it's a start. In fact, I think that what we might really need are some geeks to advise the politicians. That could work.
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Infoseek? I'd totally forgotten about them. Weren't they eventually acquired by the Go network? Well, no matter, I quickly stopped visiting once the decline in quality became evident.
As for search engines, not that anybody cares, but... these days I like to use 1) Google, 2) Northern Light (a lot of people don't know about this one but it tied for top honors with Google in PC Magazine's test of search engines), and 3) Altavista for it's incredible flexibility. Although, at one time, I did use Yahoo, it's transition into a portal kind of turned me off. Not to mention the little period where their search engine just generally sucked. And, although they do use Google now, it just seems like Google does a better job at being Google than Yahoo does. Go figure.
On a related note, did anybody else ever use Magellan?
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I love emulators, but...
I have a really cheap computer with loads of cheap, non-standard hardware. (I didn't pay for it, mom and dad did. I tried to tell them that there was something wrong with a computer/moniter/scanner/printer bundle for only $800 but they don't always listen to me.) Anyway, many emulators don't run correctly on my machine. I've upgraded my video card, so the sound card seems to be the main culprit these days. I can only get 1 hour max out of Nesticle before my sound card seizes up and my emulator crashes. Genecyst, Nesticle's little brother, won't even play any sound except for some kind of repeating interference tone. It's totally useless. I've also tried dgen, but I get loads of slowdown on my PC (a K6-2/400 w/ 128 MB RAM, and a Voodoo3 3000) when I try to run in anything other than a 640 X 480 window. I'm not even going to go into the particulars of the other emulators.
Basically, unless you have some of the more popular hardware with better driver support, emulators can be a pain in the ass. It's just much easier for me to go play my NES or Genesis, then it is to try and find that working, stable emulator. Not to mention that I don't have a descent gamepad, something that's absolutely essential for most old console games.
I'll just stick to my NES and Genesis, thank you.
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