I have been an opera fan, nay, fanatic since the 6.x days. I even paid for it, no joke. An integrated mail client plus browser plus rss reader AND it works on Windows and Linux!? These reasons kept me going up until this week, more or less. I realized that for years I've been making excuses and bitching about the way people write webpages (and me a web developer) and generally being irritated at -them- when I am forced to open up IE or Firefox to view a page. This very week, I snapped. It is ridiculous for a page to work in IE and Firefox and not Opera. And it's OPERAS FAULT. I know their excuses. I've used them myself time and time again and it just doesn't fly. As a application user I DON'T CARE. I should be able to go to a website and view it. If I can't then that browser is broken and needs a patch. It was easier to blame MS back in the day sites worked with it but not Mozilla or Opera. These days, I'm not sure I've ever seen something that works in IE only that Firefox can't handle. I've had it up to my eyebrows and as soon as I figure out how which rss reader to use, hopefuly something cross-platform for both Linux and Windows, I'm giving up.
I had some similar problems a few years ago when I first started programming full time. I went with the mouse you mentioned and it helped but then caused other weird pains in my hand. The perfect solution for me was their wireless trackball. This holds the hand in a more neutral position whilst mousing. Shortly after the mouse I also added a Kinesis keyboard and have been pain free for over 3 years now.
The card manufacturers insist that open sourcing the drivers lets valuable IP out into the open that could hurt their business. True or not, that's the company line and they aren't going to change it. I fall into the category of "I want my damn video card to work". And I want it to work with all it's bells and whistles. The solution is that I taint my kernel by installing the Nvidia drivers. I sleep just fine at night having done this dirty dirty thing. But every day I wake up and get 3D acceleration across both of my monitors and it makes me happy. I'm staunchly in the middle of the road on this one.
The Kinesis saved my hands, that's for sure. I've been wanting one since I first saw an article on one back in '95 or so but at the time there was no way I was going to swing $400 for a keyboard. I got one a few years ago for $200 on eBay and a month later had to get another one for home. I have pulled incredible hours typing (I'm a programmer) with not even a twitch from my wrists and fingers. I got a bunch of the other programmers at my place hooked as well. Worth every one of those many, many pennies.
Fast forwarding commercials is about getting on with the damn show without all the inturruptions. If they want to toss a banner up for the 3 seconds I'm fast forwading, so be it.
As an 11 year resident of the Las Vegas Valley myself, I also think that this is all a load of BS. I am repeatedly amazed by what people outside our state think about us. Yes we have strip clubse(as does 50 other states), yes we have gambling(as does 50 other states between riverboats, reservations and -other-) Yes we have prostitution(OK I think we are alone in this) but it isn't the only thing we all do any more than everyone in Maine catches crabs, everyone in California works in movies, everyone in Texas drills for oil or everyone in Florida is over 70 and has a broken hip. And should we all be a bunch of gambling addicted, sexaholic casino workers does that mean we have to get all the toxic waste form 39 other states? Just because you don't like someone isn't a reason to wish toxic avengance upon them. Like the man said 5 votes doesn't get you anywhere in congress and we got the brown end of this particular stick.I can only hope that when theres an accident, and there will be an accident, 77,000 tons of nuclear waste does not get moved with impunity to Murphys Law and/or general government incompetance, I can only hope that you remember we all told you years and years before they were allowed to truck it through your God fearing, non prostitution/gambling/strip club ridden state.
I decided to support this effort even though I am not a fan of her music. I went to the site and it failed horribly. I have posted my letter to mp3.com below. I hope no one else went through this idiocy. ================ After seeing all the information about the new "Earth" - Ben Watt/Lazy Dog Remix I signed in and put in my credit card information clicked on buy it now and got the following error... There has been an error: The charge has failed: Field amount has bad amount value Now I don't like this particular artist in the slightest but in an effort to spawn more of this sort of promotion I decided to pay my $.99 and get this in the hopes that music companies would get a clue and do this more often. Your site got too complicated though and I now am not going to buy this track. I had to sign up for an account. I had to sign in to the service and only then could I begin to try and purchase this song. Then on top of it I get that useless error message above. This is one of the most egregious error messages I have seen. What field has a bad value? How can I fix this message without writing you and having to go through this? There is no way for me to fix it on my own and in this day and age, if it takes me this long to buy something I give up and go somewhere else. At the very least I hope this message prompts you into telling your programmers about this message so they can change it from garbage to useful information. I really hope everyone else who tries to do this does not have the same results I did or this whole mp3 revolution you are trying to assist into profitability isn't going to go very far. You had a chance to convert me, you have a chance to convert a lot of people. You failed on my but I hope that you don't fail everyone else, customers, artists and record companies alike.
Slashdot was a hobby site started by a bunch of geeks. It got popular. They started selling adspace. They made some money. Not a lot but enough to pay rent and keep the site going. They got bought. Now they don't pay the bills, they just get paid to do a job i.e. maintain and improve a website that handles 300,000 hits a day.
I work for a company and I have absolutely no clue how much it takes to run this company on a monthly basis. I don't know what we pay in utilities, I don't know what we pay in rent. What I know is how much I get paid and how to do my job.
I don't believe I am alone in this respect. When Slashdot got sold all that paperwork and administrative spaghetti got shoved of onto the parent company. I think calling Hemos and CmdrTaco division heads may be a bit of a stretch in this case. Put another way, asking questions like this is akin to asking you how much you spent of gas last month and was it more or less that what you spent 2 years ago. I think you know you had enough money for gas last month and you had enough for gas 2 years ago and thats about as much as you need to know.
This whole discussion is a tempest in a teapot anyway. Its a penny for 2 page views for fuckssake. It is not the end of free enterprise in the western world.
Todd
My money always goes to Toshiba
on
Which Laptop To Buy?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I first used a Satellite system in Nicaragua a few years ago and we had Gateways, Dells, Sagers and Toshibas and the only ones we never had to send in were the Toshibas. All the other ones were real finicky about the abuse being dished upon them. We had lots of dust and humidity down there which was a real killer. The one I used had a crack down the backside of the monitor and still never gave me a problem. I am back in America now but still buy Satellite systems for their durability. I had a Vaio provided to me by work and proceeded to loose all my external port flaps and get a crack down front of the screen. Not to mention the fact that I never could get Win2k installed on it properly. The driver support was iffy. I am not nice to my laptop. It gets tossed in my bag which in turn gets slung, thrown, bounced and slid from here to kingdom come in my wanderings every day. The best part, as far as I am concerned, is the money aspect. I just bought a 700Mhz with 64MB Ram and a 8 GB HD from Circuit City about a month ago for $899. You can't beat it with a price like that. Also the pieces and parts are relatively inexpensive ($120 for a battery, $15 for another 64MB memory) There are two caveats, however. 1. They aren't the lightest laptops I've ever seen (allthough way lighter than the gargantua Dells I saw last week) 2. They aren't the fastest laptops even accounting for it's clock speed. Laptops always seem slow to me and Toshibas just a hair slower. I am definitly an evangelist but that doesn't blind me to the facts. For my money Toshiba wins, until they start to suck.
Went through this myself
on
CS vs CIS
·
· Score: 1
I did 4 years as CS before the math and physics got the better of me. I loved programming and was good at it but I couldn't wrap my brain around why Calc III and Physics for Engineers (I and II) was necesary to make me a better programmer. I switched to MIS because I actualy like dealing with more hands things like training of users, tech support and networking. Defnitly networking. I can spend hours configuring routers and switches and be happy as a man can be, and CS wasn't leading me there.
My MIS degree falls under the business college and once I got there I realized the added bonus of learning all the other stuff of the business world such as Accounting, Marketing, Finance and Management.These skills have already served me quite well in the job I have while completing my degree. In truth all the MIS stuff I have taken was mostly so much BS and common sense. I have yet to learn something technical or interesting that I didn't already know by reading websites and picking stuff up on my own. But people love to see those credentials on a resume, nu? The business classes are by far more useful IMHO. Not having to ask the accountants for explanations on the budget is a GOOD THING.
Todd Huish
Eternal Student (7 years and counting!!)
This is a good line. Someone told me this was a good movie so I picked it up. It happened to be the first Anime I ever saw. The problem with that is that most other films pale in comparison. There is other good stuff out there but I had to look for it. Before I figured this out I was under the impression that all Anime was this freaking good. It would be a wonderful addition to the DVD collection.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been an opera fan, nay, fanatic since the 6.x days. I even paid for it, no joke. An integrated mail client plus browser plus rss reader AND it works on Windows and Linux!? These reasons kept me going up until this week, more or less. I realized that for years I've been making excuses and bitching about the way people write webpages (and me a web developer) and generally being irritated at -them- when I am forced to open up IE or Firefox to view a page. This very week, I snapped. It is ridiculous for a page to work in IE and Firefox and not Opera. And it's OPERAS FAULT. I know their excuses. I've used them myself time and time again and it just doesn't fly. As a application user I DON'T CARE. I should be able to go to a website and view it. If I can't then that browser is broken and needs a patch. It was easier to blame MS back in the day sites worked with it but not Mozilla or Opera. These days, I'm not sure I've ever seen something that works in IE only that Firefox can't handle. I've had it up to my eyebrows and as soon as I figure out how which rss reader to use, hopefuly something cross-platform for both Linux and Windows, I'm giving up.
I had some similar problems a few years ago when I first started programming full time. I went with the mouse you mentioned and it helped but then caused other weird pains in my hand. The perfect solution for me was their wireless trackball. This holds the hand in a more neutral position whilst mousing. Shortly after the mouse I also added a Kinesis keyboard and have been pain free for over 3 years now.
The card manufacturers insist that open sourcing the drivers lets valuable IP out into the open that could hurt their business. True or not, that's the company line and they aren't going to change it. I fall into the category of "I want my damn video card to work". And I want it to work with all it's bells and whistles. The solution is that I taint my kernel by installing the Nvidia drivers. I sleep just fine at night having done this dirty dirty thing. But every day I wake up and get 3D acceleration across both of my monitors and it makes me happy. I'm staunchly in the middle of the road on this one.
The Kinesis saved my hands, that's for sure. I've been wanting one since I first saw an article on one back in '95 or so but at the time there was no way I was going to swing $400 for a keyboard. I got one a few years ago for $200 on eBay and a month later had to get another one for home. I have pulled incredible hours typing (I'm a programmer) with not even a twitch from my wrists and fingers. I got a bunch of the other programmers at my place hooked as well. Worth every one of those many, many pennies.
Fast forwarding commercials is about getting on with the damn show without all the inturruptions. If they want to toss a banner up for the 3 seconds I'm fast forwading, so be it.
As an 11 year resident of the Las Vegas Valley myself, I also think that this is all a load of BS. I am repeatedly amazed by what people outside our state think about us. Yes we have strip clubse(as does 50 other states), yes we have gambling(as does 50 other states between riverboats, reservations and -other-) Yes we have prostitution(OK I think we are alone in this) but it isn't the only thing we all do any more than everyone in Maine catches crabs, everyone in California works in movies, everyone in Texas drills for oil or everyone in Florida is over 70 and has a broken hip. And should we all be a bunch of gambling addicted, sexaholic casino workers does that mean we have to get all the toxic waste form 39 other states? Just because you don't like someone isn't a reason to wish toxic avengance upon them. Like the man said 5 votes doesn't get you anywhere in congress and we got the brown end of this particular stick.I can only hope that when theres an accident, and there will be an accident, 77,000 tons of nuclear waste does not get moved with impunity to Murphys Law and/or general government incompetance, I can only hope that you remember we all told you years and years before they were allowed to truck it through your God fearing, non prostitution/gambling/strip club ridden state.
I decided to support this effort even though I am not a fan of her music. I went to the site and it failed horribly. I have posted my letter to mp3.com below. I hope no one else went through this idiocy.
================
After seeing all the information about the new
"Earth" - Ben Watt/Lazy Dog Remix
I signed in and put in my credit card information clicked on buy it now and got the following error...
There has been an error:
The charge has failed: Field amount has bad amount value
Now I don't like this particular artist in the slightest but in an effort to spawn more of this sort of promotion I decided to pay my $.99 and get this in the hopes that music companies would get a clue and do this more often. Your site got too complicated though and I now am not going to buy this track. I had to sign up for an account. I had to sign in to the service and only then could I begin to try and purchase this song. Then on top of it I get that useless error message above. This is one of the most egregious error messages I have seen. What field has a bad value? How can I fix this message without writing you and having to go through this? There is no way for me to fix it on my own and in this day and age, if it takes me this long to buy something I give up and go somewhere else. At the very least I hope this message prompts you into telling your programmers about this message so they can change it from garbage to useful information. I really hope everyone else who tries to do this does not have the same results I did or this whole mp3 revolution you are trying to assist into profitability isn't going to go very far. You had a chance to convert me, you have a chance to convert a lot of people. You failed on my but I hope that you don't fail everyone else, customers, artists and record companies alike.
Slashdot was a hobby site started by a bunch of geeks. It got popular. They started selling adspace. They made some money. Not a lot but enough to pay rent and keep the site going. They got bought. Now they don't pay the bills, they just get paid to do a job i.e. maintain and improve a website that handles 300,000 hits a day.
I work for a company and I have absolutely no clue how much it takes to run this company on a monthly basis. I don't know what we pay in utilities, I don't know what we pay in rent. What I know is how much I get paid and how to do my job.
I don't believe I am alone in this respect. When Slashdot got sold all that paperwork and administrative spaghetti got shoved of onto the parent company. I think calling Hemos and CmdrTaco division heads may be a bit of a stretch in this case. Put another way, asking questions like this is akin to asking you how much you spent of gas last month and was it more or less that what you spent 2 years ago. I think you know you had enough money for gas last month and you had enough for gas 2 years ago and thats about as much as you need to know.
This whole discussion is a tempest in a teapot anyway. Its a penny for 2 page views for fuckssake. It is not the end of free enterprise in the western world.
Todd
I first used a Satellite system in Nicaragua a few years ago and we had Gateways, Dells, Sagers and Toshibas and the only ones we never had to send in were the Toshibas. All the other ones were real finicky about the abuse being dished upon them. We had lots of dust and humidity down there which was a real killer. The one I used had a crack down the backside of the monitor and still never gave me a problem. I am back in America now but still buy Satellite systems for their durability. I had a Vaio provided to me by work and proceeded to loose all my external port flaps and get a crack down front of the screen. Not to mention the fact that I never could get Win2k installed on it properly. The driver support was iffy. I am not nice to my laptop. It gets tossed in my bag which in turn gets slung, thrown, bounced and slid from here to kingdom come in my wanderings every day. The best part, as far as I am concerned, is the money aspect. I just bought a 700Mhz with 64MB Ram and a 8 GB HD from Circuit City about a month ago for $899. You can't beat it with a price like that. Also the pieces and parts are relatively inexpensive ($120 for a battery, $15 for another 64MB memory)
There are two caveats, however.
1. They aren't the lightest laptops I've ever seen (allthough way lighter than the gargantua Dells I saw last week)
2. They aren't the fastest laptops even accounting for it's clock speed. Laptops always seem slow to me and Toshibas just a hair slower.
I am definitly an evangelist but that doesn't blind me to the facts. For my money Toshiba wins, until they start to suck.
My MIS degree falls under the business college and once I got there I realized the added bonus of learning all the other stuff of the business world such as Accounting, Marketing, Finance and Management.These skills have already served me quite well in the job I have while completing my degree. In truth all the MIS stuff I have taken was mostly so much BS and common sense. I have yet to learn something technical or interesting that I didn't already know by reading websites and picking stuff up on my own. But people love to see those credentials on a resume, nu? The business classes are by far more useful IMHO. Not having to ask the accountants for explanations on the budget is a GOOD THING.
Todd Huish
Eternal Student (7 years and counting!!)
This is a good line. Someone told me this was a good movie so I picked it up. It happened to be the first Anime I ever saw. The problem with that is that most other films pale in comparison. There is other good stuff out there but I had to look for it. Before I figured this out I was under the impression that all Anime was this freaking good. It would be a wonderful addition to the DVD collection.