The largest UK newsgroup; One of the largest in the world.
Almost no spam. Why? Because spammers get flamed mercilessly, their accounts get cancelled and the advertisers accounts also get cancelled. Plus the cancelbots of course.
No top posting. Why? Because newbies and OE morons get flamed mercilessly for doing it.
The FAQ does get read. Why? Because for a start, it's useful and newbies and morons get flamed mercilessly for not reading and absorbing it.
Crossposting is limited. Why? Because crossposters get flamed mercilessly for doing it.
It's the usenet equivalent of New York's zero tolerance campaign.
In short, usenet has degenerated to crap because people don't stand up for the use of their groups. Basically, don't be so fucking polite. If you don't like it, feel free to fuck off and die.
An emergent property[1], while interesting, doesn't imply that a decision has been made or is capable of being made. In order to make a decision, the entity must be able to consciously comprehend the choices available to it. Society itself would have to be a conscious, intelligent entity. I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case.
[1] I would actually argue that intelligence, consiousness is actually an emergent property of the activity of our neurons. However, there are 100 billion neurons in the human brain, only 6 billion people on earth contributing to the emergent behaviour of society as a whole, which makes it somewhat less intelligent than a cat.
Computers, ants don't make descisions, they react to stimuli. If your definition of making a decision is reacting to a stimulus (and it seems to be) then you are correct, neurons make decisions.
Making a decision requires that you consider choices. It requires concious thought. Neither ants nor computers are capable of conscious thought and therefore cannot and do not make decisions.
What can I say. I've got a Zaurus, I also have a Psion S5 and the Psion software is at least 3 years ahead of the Zaurus. Unfortunately, the screen died on the Psion after 5 years of constant use, prompting a replacement.
That's OK though, cos the main competition (Palm and WinCE) are just as shit as well.
It's really difficult to go from a high quality palmtop like the Psion to something that's been cobbled together like the Zaurus. I mean, for christ's sake, the spreadsheet can't even draw charts or graphs. The word processor can barely be called a word processor, it doesn't support styles, never mind embedding charts or tables. It doesn't even spellcheck. The agenda and addressbook are similarly basic compared to the Psion equivalents.
The keyboard on the Zaurus sucks, but is better than not having a keyboard at all. The Zaurus UI requires constant switching between keys and pen taps, there's no quick way to switch between applications. In short, it's a shite system for day to day use as a PDA, a real step backwards.
And you know what? The Psion does it better in 8Mb of RAM (with plenty spare) and an 18MHz CPU.
The one benefit the Zaurus has over the 6 year old Psion S5 is connectivity.
ssh client available, pop/imap client, synchronises over tcp/ip, so can sync with your PC over usb, wifi, ethernet etc. Has a CF camera, can act as a camera server.
Having said that and having been impressed with the connectability and flexibility of having a linux box as a palmtop, the Psion Series 5 and Revo are miles better as personal productivity tools. Try creating a pie chart in the Zaurus spreadsheet, try pasting the pie chart into the word processor. Try adding voice notes to a document, to a presentation. The software which comes with the Zaurus is fairly limited.
It's damned near criminal that Psion killed their consumer range in preference to Symbian. I can't get anything with a decent keyboard now.
Still, the Zaurus is only 180 quid plus VAT at the moment.
Highly redundant distributed filesystem.
on
The Virus Did It
·
· Score: 1
I could see a lot of people interested in a very high capacity distributed filesystem which could make use of hundreds of trojan'd PCs out on the internet to store information which you didn't want found on your own computer.
Make it highly redundant, self healing, replicating data as the "servers" go offline to make sure the information remains available. Hell, I could use something like that here at work.
WINE is also not a properly licensed MS OS.
on
Catching up with Wine
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Some of the EULAs require that the software be run on a fully licensed microsoft operating system. IIRC some of the EULAs even go as far as to require that you access the software *from* a fully licensed microsoft operating system.
Just because you have paid for a license to use some software doesn't mean you can use it any way you like. Towel boy.
Compound interest is a really nasty, evil concept that causes untold grief worldwide. I don't agree with it at all. However, it's a fact of life and since it's a fact of life, plan to be on it's good side.
It doesn't matter how good NDS/eDir is, OpenLDAP doesn't have to be better than or even as good as the commercial equivalents, it *only* has to be good enough.
Novell and Microsoft are irrelevant *today*, right now. I don't need them, *at all*. I can replace entire Windows and Novell architectures with a highly available, massively scalable open source/Linux based one *today*, right now.
All of the bug hulking dinosaurs of the last 20 years are irrelevant, they squeezed a little too much and caused a whole other ecology to spring up, one which is consuming them. They no longer control the hardware, they no longer control the networks, they no longer control the operating systems and they no longer control the application software...
They are simply, unnecessary, and have been for a good few years now. It'll take them a while to work through their financial reserves, but eventually they will wither and die like the dinosaurs they are.
Open source is like the asteroid which smashed into the earth destroying the ecosystem the dinosaurs needed to survive. It's literally pulling the financial flora out from underneath them. What will rise up in the aftermath? Mammals. Small, fast and flexible companies which can thrive on resources which wouldn't have fed a dinosaur for a day.
Just keep out of their way as they go through their death throes.
If GW go bust, it'll do the RPG industry a world of good.
They decimate local gaming scenes when they open a store. The independant retailers in the area can't compete on price and also suddenly have enormous difficulty getting GW products which were till then profitable lines for them, they fairly quickly go out of business. Then the product lines available in the GW stores become very very limited and rather expensive.
The independant retailers weren't just shops, they were enthusiasts as well, hosting gaming evenings and with wide choice of rpg products from many companies small and large.
If GW want to commit financial suicide, I'll do everything I can to help them.
It's only the last 200 years that the human animal has been able to guarantee 3 square meals per day. It's only the last 50 years that the human animal hasn't had to perform significant physical effort on a day to day basis.
There's a hundred thousand years of evolution where your ancestors bodies have coped admirably with low food and no food conditions. Simply changing from a must eat every day to an eat when hungry mentality i've gone from 112kg (245lbs) to 90kg (196lbs) in around 6 months.
Slashdot Mirror
They will only follow if morons continue to buy their products. If you buy someone else's products, they lose money and stop doing it.
If you continue to buy HP inkjets then you obviously don't really care and deserve everything you get.
If you don't like it, buy someone else's product.
The largest UK newsgroup; One of the largest in the world.
Almost no spam. Why? Because spammers get flamed mercilessly, their accounts get cancelled and the advertisers accounts also get cancelled. Plus the cancelbots of course.
No top posting. Why? Because newbies and OE morons get flamed mercilessly for doing it.
The FAQ does get read. Why? Because for a start, it's useful and newbies and morons get flamed mercilessly for not reading and absorbing it.
Crossposting is limited. Why? Because crossposters get flamed mercilessly for doing it.
It's the usenet equivalent of New York's zero tolerance campaign.
In short, usenet has degenerated to crap because people don't stand up for the use of their groups. Basically, don't be so fucking polite. If you don't like it, feel free to fuck off and die.
An emergent property[1], while interesting, doesn't imply that a decision has been made or is capable of being made. In order to make a decision, the entity must be able to consciously comprehend the choices available to it. Society itself would have to be a conscious, intelligent entity. I haven't seen any evidence that this is the case.
[1] I would actually argue that intelligence, consiousness is actually an emergent property of the activity of our neurons. However, there are
100 billion neurons in the human brain, only 6 billion people on earth contributing to the emergent behaviour of society as a whole, which makes it somewhat less intelligent than a cat.
Computers, ants don't make descisions, they react to stimuli. If your definition of making a decision is reacting to a stimulus (and it seems to be) then you are correct, neurons make decisions.
Making a decision requires that you consider choices. It requires concious thought. Neither ants nor computers are capable of conscious thought and therefore cannot and do not make decisions.
Bush is not a society, he is an individual.
Individuals do.
Society is the aggregation of the decisions we make as individuals.
Not good enough for them anymore I guess. If they did bother to read the articles posted, there wouldn't be any duplicates...
Like say, directly from the sun for instance, well known for being a damp, cold place Australia is.
What can I say. I've got a Zaurus, I also have a Psion S5 and the Psion software is at least 3 years ahead of the Zaurus. Unfortunately, the screen died on the Psion after 5 years of constant use, prompting a replacement.
That's OK though, cos the main competition (Palm and WinCE) are just as shit as well.
It's really difficult to go from a high quality palmtop like the Psion to something that's been cobbled together like the Zaurus. I mean, for christ's sake, the spreadsheet can't even draw charts or graphs. The word processor can barely be called a word processor, it doesn't support styles, never mind embedding charts or tables. It doesn't even spellcheck. The agenda and addressbook are similarly basic compared to the Psion equivalents.
The keyboard on the Zaurus sucks, but is better than not having a keyboard at all. The Zaurus UI requires constant switching between keys and pen taps, there's no quick way to switch between applications. In short, it's a shite system for day to day use as a PDA, a real step backwards.
And you know what? The Psion does it better in 8Mb of RAM (with plenty spare) and an 18MHz CPU.
The one benefit the Zaurus has over the 6 year old Psion S5 is connectivity.
Because what you or your parents consider a fault, I or your children may well consider a merit.
"Overclocking the Human brain", the occasional segfault/psychosis OK for you then eh?
I mean, a CF camera is available for it... separately.
ssh client available, pop/imap client, synchronises over tcp/ip, so can sync with your PC over usb, wifi, ethernet etc. Has a CF camera, can act as a camera server.
Having said that and having been impressed with the connectability and flexibility of having a linux box as a palmtop, the Psion Series 5 and Revo are miles better as personal productivity tools. Try creating a pie chart in the Zaurus spreadsheet, try pasting the pie chart into the word processor. Try adding voice notes to a document, to a presentation. The software which comes with the Zaurus is fairly limited.
It's damned near criminal that Psion killed their consumer range in preference to Symbian. I can't get anything with a decent keyboard now.
Still, the Zaurus is only 180 quid plus VAT at the moment.
I could see a lot of people interested in a very high capacity distributed filesystem which could make use of hundreds of trojan'd PCs out on the internet to store information which you didn't want found on your own computer.
Make it highly redundant, self healing, replicating data as the "servers" go offline to make sure the information remains available. Hell, I could use something like that here at work.
Some of the EULAs require that the software be run on a fully licensed microsoft operating system. IIRC some of the EULAs even go as far as to require that you access the software *from* a fully licensed microsoft operating system.
Just because you have paid for a license to use some software doesn't mean you can use it any way you like. Towel boy.
<i><blockquote>
It's sure starting to look like Syria is queued up for the next liberation.
</blockquote></i>
<p>Nah, they don't have large enough oil reserves to make it worth the public relations problems.</p>
Not your enemy.
Simple.
Compound interest is a really nasty, evil concept that causes untold grief worldwide. I don't agree with it at all. However, it's a fact of life and since it's a fact of life, plan to be on it's good side.
American pilots do a good enough job of providing friendly fire for everyone on the battlefield.
This looks like a pretty blatant Nokia advertisement to me.
Is that what Slashdot has come to now?
Cos AIX, Darwin, Linux, Digital Unix, HP-UX, Irix, MacOS X 10, Solaris, *BSD and Windows all have free client software...
So, by "majority of OSes"... Did you mean DOS?
Don't like NFS, AFS is nicer, though a bit quirky to the uninitiated.
It doesn't matter how good NDS/eDir is, OpenLDAP doesn't have to be better than or even as good as the commercial equivalents, it *only* has to be good enough.
Novell and Microsoft are irrelevant *today*, right now. I don't need them, *at all*. I can replace entire Windows and Novell architectures with a highly available, massively scalable open source/Linux based one *today*, right now.
All of the bug hulking dinosaurs of the last 20 years are irrelevant, they squeezed a little too much and caused a whole other ecology to spring up, one which is consuming them. They no longer control the hardware, they no longer control the networks, they no longer control the operating systems and they no longer control the application software...
Life is good.
Seems to be their claim to fame these days.
They are simply, unnecessary, and have been for a good few years now. It'll take them a while to work through their financial reserves, but eventually they will wither and die like the dinosaurs they are.
Open source is like the asteroid which smashed into the earth destroying the ecosystem the dinosaurs needed to survive. It's literally pulling the financial flora out from underneath them. What will rise up in the aftermath? Mammals. Small, fast and flexible companies which can thrive on resources which wouldn't have fed a dinosaur for a day.
Just keep out of their way as they go through their death throes.
If GW go bust, it'll do the RPG industry a world of good.
They decimate local gaming scenes when they open a store. The independant retailers in the area can't compete on price and also suddenly have enormous difficulty getting GW products which were till then profitable lines for them, they fairly quickly go out of business. Then the product lines available in the GW stores become very very limited and rather expensive.
The independant retailers weren't just shops, they were enthusiasts as well, hosting gaming evenings and with wide choice of rpg products from many companies small and large.
If GW want to commit financial suicide, I'll do everything I can to help them.
It's only the last 200 years that the human animal has been able to guarantee 3 square meals per day. It's only the last 50 years that the human animal hasn't had to perform significant physical effort on a day to day basis.
There's a hundred thousand years of evolution where your ancestors bodies have coped admirably with low food and no food conditions. Simply changing from a must eat every day to an eat when hungry mentality i've gone from 112kg (245lbs) to 90kg (196lbs) in around 6 months.
Another 10kg (22lbs) to lose, no bother at all.
Bog standard $7000 sports bike 0-60 in 3.2 seconds, sub 10 second quarter mile.
:)
http://www.syclone.freeserve.co.uk/rivals.htm
Come back and play when you've spent quarter of a million on your extraneous wheels.