3) There are always those people who are actually in the process of shopping for a new rig. If you are going to outfit your new computer with new gear then why not take the moment to figure out which card/hd/cpu/etc is best and buy it then.
While MS has declared Linux a cancer, people shrugged off Linux in it's early stages as just some sort of toy for geeks, and others even openly bashed it, it is now really facing it's first serious threat. (Mainly because it has a backer with money. Does anyone really think that this lawsuit would be around if IBM wasn't involved?)
So, after SCO shivers it's last death throw and leaves the arena forever we will be left where we were, but stronger! Any fool hardy pack of lawyers that think there is a buck to be made from Linux or OSS in this fashion will have to look back at SCO's debacle and think do I really want to go there?
If you will remember I specifically said, "Now I'm the last persun who needs to be bitching about spulling," in my original post.
My point is that it's a copy editors JOB to catch spelling mistakes and make sure the article looks professional. Not to put them into articles.
You, on the other hand, are just some grammar Nazi who does not understand the difference between writing and being an English teacher.
But hey, that's probably why you love making personal attacks at people for no real reason. Every English teacher I ever had did the same thing. Must come from the fact that reading people who have original thoughts all the time when you wouldn't know one if it bit you in the ass gets to ya eh?
(PS. I even spell checked this post for you so you can read it for what it is instead of trying to police my spelling. Do I get a gold star now teacher?)
Uh, no, then I'd have to say the copy editor is also a moron. If you want to work in a field where your job is to proof terms of the trade you better make an effort to understand what your writeing about.
Since you insunate that I have never published before and that you have I'm going to say that your part of the problem then. Allowing those kinds of mistakes to slip by means that any type of person in the know who reads your articals will start to question if you really know what your talking about. Just as I'm questioning why I'm even responding to this obvious troll.
It's hard to reconcile because for nearly 20 years I've mostly stayed on the one true Windows path.
I was a disciple from the beginning when it was called Dos, and kept the faith through the buggy, painful years of Windows 1.0 to 3.11.
Back when it was called Dos? (Now I'm the last persun who needs to be bitching about spulling, but it's DOS dammit.) I'm sorry but if he's going to include his MS DOS days in as part of the "Windows" era, then I'm going to start telling people that I've been using "Windows" systems since the early 80's when I had DOS 3.3 on my//e.
The rest of the artical is about as informative with no real information about his experiance with using his newly installed OS. Unless there is a follow up from this noob I'm going to have to rate this whole artical -1, Overrated.
I am wrong? Whats wrong is making assumtions about my, or anyone else's, viewing habits.
Just beacuse you feel that TV has nothing to offer does not mean that you are right, or even insightful for that matter. There are books out there that have little/nothing to offer but I don't see you slamming those who read them day in and out.
What is really wrong is having a closed mind. You view TV as all bad regardless of any good content it might provide. You also seem to be stuck in the mindset that having some form of peer review is required to actively further any sort of "learning process" that someone might have. While peer review and critical analays is always a good thing, there are plenty of people that can extract information and make value judgements without writing them down in an essay format. Not to mention that a good deal of the population on this planet are over the age where school is not really required for what they do, thus the review process that you suggest, "discussed it with your professor (teacher, parents, etc.)" is not really relevant for the majority of people.
Again, going off topic, the internets "little" interactivity is radically diffrent than what you talk about when you refer to calling a TV station or voting on some poll. This message is proof of that. When watching a debate on TV while you might be given the option to phone in you are far from being able to express exactly how you feel. Not to mention that you seem to feel that books give more information than TV or information that may be gained from a PC, as if false facts and valueless content are an exclusive to TV and the internet alone.
No, I'm not wrong but I have a feeling that your closed mind will continue to think that regardless of what I say and thats fine.
TV is not just the FOX, NBC or MTV network, it has a lot to offer these days and some of the programming is actually quite good. I have learned a great deal about other cultures, mechanical things, and animals due to some fine programming on channels like Discovery, TLC, and Animal Planet.
Now don't get me wrong, TV DOES have FOX, NBC, and MTV and they have some of the most inane, lowest common denominator type programming there is but as another posted pointed out everyone has free will. Nobody is forceing you to watch that dreck and so to say things like "TV rots the mind" when you can choose to watch something that might actually do just the opposite seems pretty silly.
As for the Internet and it's "channels" thats another story entirely. One of the big things about TV is that it is a one way medium. You basicly watch what is on and have no way to respond, other than turning it off, to what you are seeing. However many times on the internet you are given the option to respond and say what you think about an issue. (Kind of like what I'm doing right now.) I could go on with this point but it's a little off topic and I think that I've made myself clear enough.
"A standard Windows user" (since when MS-Windows is a standard? I don't think it is POSIX compliant.)
Uh oh. I think someone has been living in a time warp for a while. Better peak out and see that all those dumb terminals have switched over to a leigon of PCs, most of which run some form of MS Windows. (And pssst, they don't care about POSIX either! Gasp!)
I always care about MS-Windows users. I don't see any reason to ignore them just because they are usually misinformed. This would just not be professional.
Taking with one hand while giving with the other. Classic, bravo! Bonus troll points!
I can assure you, that, no matter how strongly you are trying to implicate it, I would never ignore the reality of the situation.
Ok, I'll just come out and say it. You are not viewing the reality of the ZIP format in it's proper terms. It has been around since the DOS days of the x86 platform and has been used by proably more people over time than TAR ever has. To say that just beacuse it is not POSIX compliant or whatever other Unix buzzwords you want to pull out of the sack does not mean it's any less valid.
Gzip is a standard. Bzip2 is a standard. Tar is a standard. Zip is NOT a standard.
If you only use *nix systems then yes, that is correct.
However for many years the Windows standard of compressing files has been the zip. Ask a standard Windows user what a tar, bz2, or tgz file is and will have no clue.
While it's always good to have a *nix perspective on things here on/., to say that zip is not a standard in the Windows world is to ignore the reality of the situation.
It won't work Stun guns have a poor record in police work. Even the manufacturers say that you should hold the stun gun against the eyes, throat or genitals for 4-5 seconds. I maintain that if you can hold a shocker against someone's goolies for the count of four you aren't in a fight. Look at the video on the home site. It doesn't incapacitate. It just gives a little spark.
Your telling me that the manuals for stun guns tell people to aim for the eyes? Call me crazy but I'd almost rather someone shoot me than zap my eyes.
You seem to have contently forgotten the ESRB that is already in place to deal with this.
So I'm not sure what you mean by such phrases as:
...but the video game industry, on the whole, has been pretty unresponsive to this issue.
I'd rather the video game industry had taken this up themselves and done something reasonable and responsible and respectable, but as they have consistently failed to acknowledge the issue...
I'm sure the industry tries to do as much as they can to try and make their products marketable to as large a segment of the population as possible but when a game gets stamped with the Mature rating, I would say that pretty much sends a clear signal to the publisher that the content in that game is for an adult audience.
And just to show you that I think they are doing a pretty fair job without the need for the government to come in and start some sort of slippery slope here:
Grand Theft Auto 3 -- Mature (17+)
Grand Theft Auto Vice City -- Mature (17+)
Age of Empires -- Teen
Neverwinter Nights -- Teen
Quake III Arena -- Mature (17+)
SimCity 4 -- Everyone
Freelancer -- Teen
Postal 2 -- Mature (17+)
Lilo and Stitch Pinball -- Everyone
I've played all of those games at one point or another and think that the rateings are pretty fair.
Oh, and by the way. I'm a 30 something year old college grad who has been playing video games since the original Pong. Not all of us are "indignant high school age geeks."
A Google search for even the word "website" came back with: Results 1 - 10 of about 68,800,000.
Even with that number, which I would estimate to be low of the total number of websites in existance, that puts the 70 site survay at.0000102% of all the websites (Granted those are pages but you get the idea.) in the world.
Cause if I do this, it's going to be on my GOOD computer, not some back alley thing I abandoned 3 years ago.
While if you want to run X you will need at least a decent computer, one of the great things about *nix is that it can run great on just about anything.
But of course it all depends on what you want from the OS. If you want to run X with all sorts of stuff then your going to need a decent computer. (Mind you I didn't say GOOD because really, even with a bunch of stuff turned on in X it's still more efficent than Windows.)
Some very good points but I'd like to reply to at least one of them.
Ditch 3 of the 4 programs that do the same thing. Seriously. Why do I need 4 CD-R burning programs?
As a poweruser of all software platforms I often have multiple programs that do similar things. One I might fire up if I just need to do something quick, another if I need something more powerful, and still another that might offer a unique feature that I need every now and then.
One of the great strenghts of OSS software is the many diffrent packages it offers. If you don't like how program X does things, try program Y. Or program Z if you still haven't found what your looking for. However you did touch upon a problem that some packages do suffer from, and not just OSS ones at that...
...and make sure it's labeled "CD Burner" so I don't have to decipher "gkdesbUISO."
I don't mind searching Freshmeat for programs, but your average user might tend to scoff at some of the names that are given to some packages. While I don't want them to be as generic as Program #1, Program #2, etc. I do think that they should be clearly labeled and allow the user to quickly know what they are getting. (And getting into!)
Let me just state up front that I think this is a great idea and that it's implementation could only do good things for the market and the communities involved.
Having said that...
(puts on tin foil hat)
Does anyone really expect this, or any other administration really, pass control of a piece of communications infrastructure from a nice monopolistic group of companies to the communities who's loyalties they might not be so sure of? Why if states think they can do such thing as legalize medicinal marijuana and other crazy things like trying to count their ballets correctly who knows what they might do with all that copper.
No no, it's much better to keep control of communications when it's in the hands of a group of companies that were so bad at screwing over the customer that they had to be split up.
(adds a few more layers of foil to the hat) (does this thing go with my tan or white shirt?)
Would it be too much to ask some currently unemployed geek to walk into their local Mi police station and proclaim that they are in violation of his law?
When the cops where to arrive at his/her house and find only a NAT setup, make sure the press and the ACLU/ERF are well notified.
Since the damn media (And sadly to a lesser extent, the public.) only responds to this type of sensationalistic beating over the heads of what might be wrong with something, is it time to take this plunge?
(Yeah, sinking down to their level and all but you can't make a Soviet omelet without breaking some eggs.)
Part of the reason from a tech standpoint comes from the pool of geeks who have worked in tech support for ISPs other than AOL.
While they have gotten better about it, during the mid-late 90's AOL-was-evil. They hosed up many systems with all sorts of DLL, registry, and other nonsence that made switching from them (Or even just getting their crap off the box after some kid decides to stick their CD in your computer to "see what it is".) a true nightmare.
And to be fair to some of those AOL users, they got understandabily pissed off at AOL too. They might have been newbs upon joining AOL, but some of them were pretty sharp and quickly learned that they did not need the 9 sets of training wheels that AOL forced upon them. So when confronted with the mess that it took to switch to a new provider they also became pissed.
Now AOL did wise up a bit and realize that all those keep their software on the persons computer at any cost was in fact costing them more good will than it was worth, they still did it. And it was a bad thing.
Slashdot Mirror
3) There are always those people who are actually in the process of shopping for a new rig. If you are going to outfit your new computer with new gear then why not take the moment to figure out which card/hd/cpu/etc is best and buy it then.
Is what will happen when SCO loses.
While MS has declared Linux a cancer, people shrugged off Linux in it's early stages as just some sort of toy for geeks, and others even openly bashed it, it is now really facing it's first serious threat. (Mainly because it has a backer with money. Does anyone really think that this lawsuit would be around if IBM wasn't involved?)
So, after SCO shivers it's last death throw and leaves the arena forever we will be left where we were, but stronger! Any fool hardy pack of lawyers that think there is a buck to be made from Linux or OSS in this fashion will have to look back at SCO's debacle and think do I really want to go there?
If you will remember I specifically said, "Now I'm the last persun who needs to be bitching about spulling," in my original post.
My point is that it's a copy editors JOB to catch spelling mistakes and make sure the article looks professional. Not to put them into articles.
You, on the other hand, are just some grammar Nazi who does not understand the difference between writing and being an English teacher.
But hey, that's probably why you love making personal attacks at people for no real reason. Every English teacher I ever had did the same thing. Must come from the fact that reading people who have original thoughts all the time when you wouldn't know one if it bit you in the ass gets to ya eh?
(PS. I even spell checked this post for you so you can read it for what it is instead of trying to police my spelling. Do I get a gold star now teacher?)
Uh, no, then I'd have to say the copy editor is also a moron. If you want to work in a field where your job is to proof terms of the trade you better make an effort to understand what your writeing about.
Since you insunate that I have never published before and that you have I'm going to say that your part of the problem then. Allowing those kinds of mistakes to slip by means that any type of person in the know who reads your articals will start to question if you really know what your talking about. Just as I'm questioning why I'm even responding to this obvious troll.
But this guy is a moron.
//e.
It's hard to reconcile because for nearly 20 years I've mostly stayed on the one true Windows path.
I was a disciple from the beginning when it was called Dos, and kept the faith through the buggy, painful years of Windows 1.0 to 3.11.
Back when it was called Dos? (Now I'm the last persun who needs to be bitching about spulling, but it's DOS dammit.) I'm sorry but if he's going to include his MS DOS days in as part of the "Windows" era, then I'm going to start telling people that I've been using "Windows" systems since the early 80's when I had DOS 3.3 on my
The rest of the artical is about as informative with no real information about his experiance with using his newly installed OS. Unless there is a follow up from this noob I'm going to have to rate this whole artical -1, Overrated.
It didn't take long for the /. effect to melt the linked servers.
Shrug, it worked for me.
Here is a quick gude, to disableing Flash in IE.
I am wrong? Whats wrong is making assumtions about my, or anyone else's, viewing habits.
Just beacuse you feel that TV has nothing to offer does not mean that you are right, or even insightful for that matter. There are books out there that have little/nothing to offer but I don't see you slamming those who read them day in and out.
What is really wrong is having a closed mind. You view TV as all bad regardless of any good content it might provide. You also seem to be stuck in the mindset that having some form of peer review is required to actively further any sort of "learning process" that someone might have. While peer review and critical analays is always a good thing, there are plenty of people that can extract information and make value judgements without writing them down in an essay format. Not to mention that a good deal of the population on this planet are over the age where school is not really required for what they do, thus the review process that you suggest, "discussed it with your professor (teacher, parents, etc.)" is not really relevant for the majority of people.
Again, going off topic, the internets "little" interactivity is radically diffrent than what you talk about when you refer to calling a TV station or voting on some poll. This message is proof of that. When watching a debate on TV while you might be given the option to phone in you are far from being able to express exactly how you feel. Not to mention that you seem to feel that books give more information than TV or information that may be gained from a PC, as if false facts and valueless content are an exclusive to TV and the internet alone.
No, I'm not wrong but I have a feeling that your closed mind will continue to think that regardless of what I say and thats fine.
TV is not just the FOX, NBC or MTV network, it has a lot to offer these days and some of the programming is actually quite good. I have learned a great deal about other cultures, mechanical things, and animals due to some fine programming on channels like Discovery, TLC, and Animal Planet.
Now don't get me wrong, TV DOES have FOX, NBC, and MTV and they have some of the most inane, lowest common denominator type programming there is but as another posted pointed out everyone has free will. Nobody is forceing you to watch that dreck and so to say things like "TV rots the mind" when you can choose to watch something that might actually do just the opposite seems pretty silly.
As for the Internet and it's "channels" thats another story entirely. One of the big things about TV is that it is a one way medium. You basicly watch what is on and have no way to respond, other than turning it off, to what you are seeing. However many times on the internet you are given the option to respond and say what you think about an issue. (Kind of like what I'm doing right now.) I could go on with this point but it's a little off topic and I think that I've made myself clear enough.
That is I think the best flamebait response that I have seen in a while.
"A standard Windows user" (since when MS-Windows is a standard? I don't think it is POSIX compliant.)
Uh oh. I think someone has been living in a time warp for a while. Better peak out and see that all those dumb terminals have switched over to a leigon of PCs, most of which run some form of MS Windows. (And pssst, they don't care about POSIX either! Gasp!)
I always care about MS-Windows users. I don't see any reason to ignore them just because they are usually misinformed. This would just not be professional.
Taking with one hand while giving with the other. Classic, bravo! Bonus troll points!
I can assure you, that, no matter how strongly you are trying to implicate it, I would never ignore the reality of the situation.
Ok, I'll just come out and say it. You are not viewing the reality of the ZIP format in it's proper terms. It has been around since the DOS days of the x86 platform and has been used by proably more people over time than TAR ever has. To say that just beacuse it is not POSIX compliant or whatever other Unix buzzwords you want to pull out of the sack does not mean it's any less valid.
Gzip is a standard. Bzip2 is a standard. Tar is a standard. Zip is NOT a standard.
/., to say that zip is not a standard in the Windows world is to ignore the reality of the situation.
If you only use *nix systems then yes, that is correct.
However for many years the Windows standard of compressing files has been the zip. Ask a standard Windows user what a tar, bz2, or tgz file is and will have no clue.
While it's always good to have a *nix perspective on things here on
It won't work Stun guns have a poor record in police work. Even the manufacturers say that you should hold the stun gun against the eyes, throat or genitals for 4-5 seconds. I maintain that if you can hold a shocker against someone's goolies for the count of four you aren't in a fight. Look at the video on the home site. It doesn't incapacitate. It just gives a little spark.
Your telling me that the manuals for stun guns tell people to aim for the eyes? Call me crazy but I'd almost rather someone shoot me than zap my eyes.
You seem to have contently forgotten the ESRB that is already in place to deal with this.
...but the video game industry, on the whole, has been pretty unresponsive to this issue.
So I'm not sure what you mean by such phrases as:
I'd rather the video game industry had taken this up themselves and done something reasonable and responsible and respectable, but as they have consistently failed to acknowledge the issue...
I'm sure the industry tries to do as much as they can to try and make their products marketable to as large a segment of the population as possible but when a game gets stamped with the Mature rating, I would say that pretty much sends a clear signal to the publisher that the content in that game is for an adult audience.
And just to show you that I think they are doing a pretty fair job without the need for the government to come in and start some sort of slippery slope here:
Grand Theft Auto 3 -- Mature (17+)
Grand Theft Auto Vice City -- Mature (17+)
Age of Empires -- Teen
Neverwinter Nights -- Teen
Quake III Arena -- Mature (17+)
SimCity 4 -- Everyone
Freelancer -- Teen
Postal 2 -- Mature (17+)
Lilo and Stitch Pinball -- Everyone
I've played all of those games at one point or another and think that the rateings are pretty fair. Oh, and by the way. I'm a 30 something year old college grad who has been playing video games since the original Pong. Not all of us are "indignant high school age geeks."
Indeed.
.0000102% of all the websites (Granted those are pages but you get the idea.) in the world.
A Google search for even the word "website" came back with: Results 1 - 10 of about 68,800,000.
Even with that number, which I would estimate to be low of the total number of websites in existance, that puts the 70 site survay at
Cause if I do this, it's going to be on my GOOD computer, not some back alley thing I abandoned 3 years ago.
While if you want to run X you will need at least a decent computer, one of the great things about *nix is that it can run great on just about anything.
But of course it all depends on what you want from the OS. If you want to run X with all sorts of stuff then your going to need a decent computer. (Mind you I didn't say GOOD because really, even with a bunch of stuff turned on in X it's still more efficent than Windows.)
Some very good points but I'd like to reply to at least one of them.
...and make sure it's labeled "CD Burner" so I don't have to decipher "gkdesbUISO."
Ditch 3 of the 4 programs that do the same thing. Seriously. Why do I need 4 CD-R burning programs?
As a poweruser of all software platforms I often have multiple programs that do similar things. One I might fire up if I just need to do something quick, another if I need something more powerful, and still another that might offer a unique feature that I need every now and then.
One of the great strenghts of OSS software is the many diffrent packages it offers. If you don't like how program X does things, try program Y. Or program Z if you still haven't found what your looking for. However you did touch upon a problem that some packages do suffer from, and not just OSS ones at that...
I don't mind searching Freshmeat for programs, but your average user might tend to scoff at some of the names that are given to some packages. While I don't want them to be as generic as Program #1, Program #2, etc. I do think that they should be clearly labeled and allow the user to quickly know what they are getting. (And getting into!)
Let me just state up front that I think this is a great idea and that it's implementation could only do good things for the market and the communities involved.
Having said that...
(puts on tin foil hat)
Does anyone really expect this, or any other administration really, pass control of a piece of communications infrastructure from a nice monopolistic group of companies to the communities who's loyalties they might not be so sure of? Why if states think they can do such thing as legalize medicinal marijuana and other crazy things like trying to count their ballets correctly who knows what they might do with all that copper.
No no, it's much better to keep control of communications when it's in the hands of a group of companies that were so bad at screwing over the customer that they had to be split up.
(adds a few more layers of foil to the hat)
(does this thing go with my tan or white shirt?)
The forums at PA makes /. looks like a collection of rocket scientists.
...to Australia for laws about the internet?
Given their track-record in legislating the internet. Are we really sure we want to look to them for guidelines on this?
Would it be too much to ask some currently unemployed geek to walk into their local Mi police station and proclaim that they are in violation of his law?
When the cops where to arrive at his/her house and find only a NAT setup, make sure the press and the ACLU/ERF are well notified.
Since the damn media (And sadly to a lesser extent, the public.) only responds to this type of sensationalistic beating over the heads of what might be wrong with something, is it time to take this plunge?
(Yeah, sinking down to their level and all but you can't make a Soviet omelet without breaking some eggs.)
Part of the reason from a tech standpoint comes from the pool of geeks who have worked in tech support for ISPs other than AOL.
While they have gotten better about it, during the mid-late 90's AOL-was-evil. They hosed up many systems with all sorts of DLL, registry, and other nonsence that made switching from them (Or even just getting their crap off the box after some kid decides to stick their CD in your computer to "see what it is".) a true nightmare.
And to be fair to some of those AOL users, they got understandabily pissed off at AOL too. They might have been newbs upon joining AOL, but some of them were pretty sharp and quickly learned that they did not need the 9 sets of training wheels that AOL forced upon them. So when confronted with the mess that it took to switch to a new provider they also became pissed.
Now AOL did wise up a bit and realize that all those keep their software on the persons computer at any cost was in fact costing them more good will than it was worth, they still did it. And it was a bad thing.
I wish I had some mod points because even this AC comment is worthy of more than a 0.
I'll just get it out of the way...
1. Promise to do one thing.
2. Do your best to undo those promises.
3. Profit!