OK, it's been a joke/cliche/truism for years about OSS packages with crappy names, but... damn. I think we have a winner. 6 consonants in a row and two vowels at the end. No one will over beat that. It looks like someone's cat walked over the keyboard just as the owner was clicking 'create new project' on SourceForge.
Funny, I had only one question: "What color is the sky in their world where companies pass savings along to the consumer?" For about two decades, audio CDs have been much, much cheaper to make than cassettes, but since the quality is higher and there are more features (instant random access) they cost more. (I don't know if cassettes are even still made, but the point is, they passed that point a long time ago and CDs are still around $15.) If my ISP could give me 100x the throughput and it cost them half as much to do so I'd be happy if they ONLY doubled my rates.
Hope you'll read through all 1000+ comments and find this.:-)
It's too new to be a 'classic' but I just read Cory Docrorow's Little Brother and thought it was fantastic. I'm in my 30s but it's about teenagers and I think teens would love it. The best part is it is available online as a free e-book.
First, I did read the article. In fact I read the first article last month.
Second, how is "Safari will gleefully download whatever the hell you throw at it" not an Apple issue? IE doesn't do this. Firefox doesn't do this. It only happens with Safari. How again is this not Apple's fault? True, it's up to IE to run the files, but it's Safri that allows them to be put there in the first place. I'd say both are equally to blame.
Third, it's "old news" but it's still happening and it's still stupid. If there was a murderer loose in your neighborhood for a year, would you tell your wife "Don't worry honey, that's old news"?
Fourth, nice ad hominem. Let me repeat this: the files wouldn't be there for IE to execute if Apple's product didn't put them there in the first place. Ooh, yeah, Apple devs have to be real fucking miracle workers to make a preference checkbox NOT CHECKED BY DEFAULT. (OK, this isn't a switchable preference, but it would be the very definition of "trivial" to a) not make the app download by default, b) pop up a dialog saying "where do you want to save this file?", and, if they wanted to get really fancy, c) make this a changeable preference.)
Why oh why, in two-thousand-freaking-whatever, do we still have issues like this? It's bad enough that Apple has "Open 'safe' files after downloading" enabled by default (and yes, they are the ones who put 'safe' into quotes, so it's not like they don't know) and being set to download files without prompting for confirmation is just as bad. We're getting into MS "Hey, let's automatically run attached executables!" territory here. Internet-related things need to be secure by default, period. (Yes, I know 'secure' is not a single magical setting, but if the choice is between "convenient, but obviously a potential attack vector" and "has at least one step between 'click' and 'pwn3d!' " then the default setting should be for the more secure of the two.)
My first thought was that the headline was misleading. "Fixes" implies fixing existing bugs, like when Apple fixes things in KHTML. The proper headline should have been "Apple quietly un-fucks-up DTrace."
22 comments at +5 right now and every one (except for the Business Software Alliance jokes) is about the BSA's religious and sexual policies. I don't think I'll be able to steer this back to any meaningful technical conversation, but I'm curious how many former and current scouts we have here? Despite their bad policies (which started to "come out" (so to speak) around the time I was finishing) it's still an otherwise good organization and a lot of people, myself included (Eagle Scout from T178 here) have had good experiences with them.
Plans start at $59.99, so you're looking at a minimum outlay of $1638.76 plus tax over two years.
Whenever I see a comment like this, I feel compelled to point out that this is the TOTAL amount. 99% of iPhone purchasers ALREADY have a cell phone with a certain amount of minutes and messages, so the only ADDITIONAL costs are the price of the phone (duh) plus the DIFFERENCE in cost between their current plan and the new one. I had a $39.99 ATT plan so I'm only paying $20/month more for the data (and it's worth every penny, btw) so for me it was $249 (rfb. 4 GB phone right after the first price drop) plus $240/year--that's only $729 over two years. If I would have waited until 7/11/08 to buy, that would be just $679--almost a THOUSAND less than your number.
Also, if I would have bought a 3G iPhone, I would have not spent $130 on a used GPS a few months ago. And for some people this replaces an iPod as well. Hell, I could literally sell a handful of gadgets that I own and pay for the whole thing.
PLUS: Figure there's a whole bunch of people who will buy new phones (who cares if it's a new contract, I've been with ATT/Cingular/ATT for over ten years anyway; if I were to replace my iPhone with a new one (probably won't, not sure yet) I wouldn't even blink at the thought of two more years) so there will be a whole bunch of used iPhones all of a sudden, and they'll all be selling for less than $200, maybe as low as $100. I imagine that if you buy and activate a used iPhone, you are not bound to a two year contract. (Anyone know for sure?) You may not even be required to purchase a data plan.
The Internet does not make us stupid. Lazy, perhaps, but not stupid.
I don't even think it does that. Am I lazy because I don't ride my bike down to the library when I want to find out something? Information being easier to get is a GOOD thing. The fact that it comes with nearly no effort makes me MORE likely to go ahead and get the answer to something, rather than saying "Ooh, it would be hard to find out which was completed first, the SF Bay Bridge or the Golden Gate, never mind." And as often as not, I learn more in a few lost hours at Wikipedia than I ever did in an average day at school.
... the answer is simple and obvious, at least to me. I wish they would JUST, START, POSTING STUFF. In particular, for any news or talk show--things like The Daily Show, Nightline, and Oprah--they should just post EVERY SINGLE SHOW, 100% FREE, period. (Maaaybe with one or two 30-second ads. But it'd be better without--see below.)
- it's time-sensitive, so there's not much of a demand for reruns or DVDs. Maybe there are things like showing The Daily Show at 11pm and again at 5 or 6pm the next day. In that case, a 24-48 hour delay would keep cable channels happy. Ideally there would be a 23 hour delay so you could catch the previous night's show if you missed it right before watching the new one live.
- plus since there's five new shows a week, it's not like anyone could ever possibly sit down and watch ALL new episodes. Conservatively, 5 new 30 minute (22 minute) shows 48 weeks per year is 88 hours of content per year. That's more hours than the entire six-season run of Sex and the City. There is enough Oprah recorded each year that it would take over one week of 24-hour viewing to see it all.
- on the other hand, they cover a lot of stuff that is important down the road, or useful later (like Oprah's health stuff, Nightline on housing, etc.) and whoever makes this content available for free first will become the default "paper of record" for this new era. If they split it into chunks on YouTube and don't go down the messy path of ads, custom video formats and players, etc., it would be very easy to link to or refer to individual segments--increasing the likelihood of quotes, and thus INCREASING VISIBILITY, which is, of course, the number one goal.
I block it at the hosts level too (thanks to these guys) because whenever Safari is pinwheeling on a site, it's usually because it's waiting for some bullshit like this. Ooh, wow, you're going to slow down my browsing experience for something totally worthless like this? No thanks. I'm close to blocking Digg for the same reason--every so often those little embedded counters take *forever* to come in.
Favorite line from Night Court: Defense attorney: "You had a gun?" Crook: (sheepishly) "Just a little one." District attorney: "The term is sawed-off."
My only problem with Ubuntu's website is that it is a.com--I've been using Linux for ten years and every time I want to download Ubuntu, I go to ubuntu.org first.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
If you can read Portuguese, check my blog
If you can use Babelfish, check out his blog :-)
Surprised none of the other grammar nazis* picked up on this:
"...neither Steve nor Woz..."
Erm, isn't Steve Wozniak one person?** Perhaps he meant "...neither Jobs nor Woz..."?
* sorry if I mis-capitalized/mis-punctuated "Nazi's"
** spare the fat jokes
OK, it's been a joke/cliche/truism for years about OSS packages with crappy names, but... damn. I think we have a winner. 6 consonants in a row and two vowels at the end. No one will over beat that. It looks like someone's cat walked over the keyboard just as the owner was clicking 'create new project' on SourceForge.
Funny, I had only one question: "What color is the sky in their world where companies pass savings along to the consumer?" For about two decades, audio CDs have been much, much cheaper to make than cassettes, but since the quality is higher and there are more features (instant random access) they cost more. (I don't know if cassettes are even still made, but the point is, they passed that point a long time ago and CDs are still around $15.) If my ISP could give me 100x the throughput and it cost them half as much to do so I'd be happy if they ONLY doubled my rates.
Hi there,
Hope you'll read through all 1000+ comments and find this. :-)
It's too new to be a 'classic' but I just read Cory Docrorow's Little Brother and thought it was fantastic. I'm in my 30s but it's about teenagers and I think teens would love it. The best part is it is available online as a free e-book.
Also, Lois' Lowry's The Giver is absolutely fantastic.
Both are bordering on the light edge of Sci-Fi but they're both great books.
2008 will be the year of XP on the desktop!
Er, laptop. whatever.
This won't fly. Any device that requires two hands to use is ill-suited for porn. :-)
About to prove I'm one of the biggest geeks here, and that's saying something: AFAIK, Lego boxes have never been shrinkwrapped.
They've still got six and a half months to sell the other 149,630,000 laptops.
And I bet the room fills every time. :-)
Will it be fixed in 3.0, or will I have to wait for 3.1?
You'll probably have to wait for 3.11 for Workgroups. Or possibly Firefox 95.
Hell, I already shudder stepping onto anything with a COCK PIT. Whatever happens in there, it can't be good.
First, I did read the article. In fact I read the first article last month.
Second, how is "Safari will gleefully download whatever the hell you throw at it" not an Apple issue? IE doesn't do this. Firefox doesn't do this. It only happens with Safari. How again is this not Apple's fault? True, it's up to IE to run the files, but it's Safri that allows them to be put there in the first place. I'd say both are equally to blame.
Third, it's "old news" but it's still happening and it's still stupid. If there was a murderer loose in your neighborhood for a year, would you tell your wife "Don't worry honey, that's old news"?
Fourth, nice ad hominem. Let me repeat this: the files wouldn't be there for IE to execute if Apple's product didn't put them there in the first place. Ooh, yeah, Apple devs have to be real fucking miracle workers to make a preference checkbox NOT CHECKED BY DEFAULT. (OK, this isn't a switchable preference, but it would be the very definition of "trivial" to a) not make the app download by default, b) pop up a dialog saying "where do you want to save this file?", and, if they wanted to get really fancy, c) make this a changeable preference.)
Why oh why, in two-thousand-freaking-whatever, do we still have issues like this? It's bad enough that Apple has "Open 'safe' files after downloading" enabled by default (and yes, they are the ones who put 'safe' into quotes, so it's not like they don't know) and being set to download files without prompting for confirmation is just as bad. We're getting into MS "Hey, let's automatically run attached executables!" territory here. Internet-related things need to be secure by default, period. (Yes, I know 'secure' is not a single magical setting, but if the choice is between "convenient, but obviously a potential attack vector" and "has at least one step between 'click' and 'pwn3d!' " then the default setting should be for the more secure of the two.)
My first thought was that the headline was misleading. "Fixes" implies fixing existing bugs, like when Apple fixes things in KHTML. The proper headline should have been "Apple quietly un-fucks-up DTrace."
Homer: Marge, you can stand there finding faults or you can knit me some seatbelts.
22 comments at +5 right now and every one (except for the Business Software Alliance jokes) is about the BSA's religious and sexual policies. I don't think I'll be able to steer this back to any meaningful technical conversation, but I'm curious how many former and current scouts we have here? Despite their bad policies (which started to "come out" (so to speak) around the time I was finishing) it's still an otherwise good organization and a lot of people, myself included (Eagle Scout from T178 here) have had good experiences with them.
Plans start at $59.99, so you're looking at a minimum outlay of $1638.76 plus tax over two years.
Whenever I see a comment like this, I feel compelled to point out that this is the TOTAL amount. 99% of iPhone purchasers ALREADY have a cell phone with a certain amount of minutes and messages, so the only ADDITIONAL costs are the price of the phone (duh) plus the DIFFERENCE in cost between their current plan and the new one. I had a $39.99 ATT plan so I'm only paying $20/month more for the data (and it's worth every penny, btw) so for me it was $249 (rfb. 4 GB phone right after the first price drop) plus $240/year--that's only $729 over two years. If I would have waited until 7/11/08 to buy, that would be just $679--almost a THOUSAND less than your number.
Also, if I would have bought a 3G iPhone, I would have not spent $130 on a used GPS a few months ago. And for some people this replaces an iPod as well. Hell, I could literally sell a handful of gadgets that I own and pay for the whole thing.
PLUS: Figure there's a whole bunch of people who will buy new phones (who cares if it's a new contract, I've been with ATT/Cingular/ATT for over ten years anyway; if I were to replace my iPhone with a new one (probably won't, not sure yet) I wouldn't even blink at the thought of two more years) so there will be a whole bunch of used iPhones all of a sudden, and they'll all be selling for less than $200, maybe as low as $100. I imagine that if you buy and activate a used iPhone, you are not bound to a two year contract. (Anyone know for sure?) You may not even be required to purchase a data plan.
The Internet does not make us stupid. Lazy, perhaps, but not stupid.
I don't even think it does that. Am I lazy because I don't ride my bike down to the library when I want to find out something? Information being easier to get is a GOOD thing. The fact that it comes with nearly no effort makes me MORE likely to go ahead and get the answer to something, rather than saying "Ooh, it would be hard to find out which was completed first, the SF Bay Bridge or the Golden Gate, never mind." And as often as not, I learn more in a few lost hours at Wikipedia than I ever did in an average day at school.
... the answer is simple and obvious, at least to me. I wish they would JUST, START, POSTING STUFF. In particular, for any news or talk show--things like The Daily Show, Nightline, and Oprah--they should just post EVERY SINGLE SHOW, 100% FREE, period. (Maaaybe with one or two 30-second ads. But it'd be better without--see below.)
- it's time-sensitive, so there's not much of a demand for reruns or DVDs. Maybe there are things like showing The Daily Show at 11pm and again at 5 or 6pm the next day. In that case, a 24-48 hour delay would keep cable channels happy. Ideally there would be a 23 hour delay so you could catch the previous night's show if you missed it right before watching the new one live.
- plus since there's five new shows a week, it's not like anyone could ever possibly sit down and watch ALL new episodes. Conservatively, 5 new 30 minute (22 minute) shows 48 weeks per year is 88 hours of content per year. That's more hours than the entire six-season run of Sex and the City. There is enough Oprah recorded each year that it would take over one week of 24-hour viewing to see it all.
- on the other hand, they cover a lot of stuff that is important down the road, or useful later (like Oprah's health stuff, Nightline on housing, etc.) and whoever makes this content available for free first will become the default "paper of record" for this new era. If they split it into chunks on YouTube and don't go down the messy path of ads, custom video formats and players, etc., it would be very easy to link to or refer to individual segments--increasing the likelihood of quotes, and thus INCREASING VISIBILITY, which is, of course, the number one goal.
Nice one. And me without mod points.
I block it at the hosts level too (thanks to these guys) because whenever Safari is pinwheeling on a site, it's usually because it's waiting for some bullshit like this. Ooh, wow, you're going to slow down my browsing experience for something totally worthless like this? No thanks. I'm close to blocking Digg for the same reason--every so often those little embedded counters take *forever* to come in.
Favorite line from Night Court:
Defense attorney: "You had a gun?"
Crook: (sheepishly) "Just a little one."
District attorney: "The term is sawed-off."
I know a guy who is very happy that at least one robot arm is safely millions of miles away.
My only problem with Ubuntu's website is that it is a .com--I've been using Linux for ten years and every time I want to download Ubuntu, I go to ubuntu.org first. :-)