I was about to say the same thing when I saw this. Everyone seems to think that the road to better sound quality is a higher sampling rate (e.g., 96K or whatever). Well, folks, to my human ears (and yours, too) 44.1K is plenty. If you want better fidelity, invest in the analog signal before it gets digitized.
And oh, yeah - go out and buy an amp that goes up to "11"...
I think this sums up the consensus of the article -- Linux is coming, but not to the desktop.
Well, after years of dual-booting with Windows, Linux is the now the only thing going on my desktop, and I've gotta tell ya, I'm doing just fine (better than ever, IMHO). Maybe I'm dreaming? Or maybe the Microsoft fuddites don't know what they're talking about.
I can easily believe that. I average around 100-120 SPD (spams per day) to my personal address, of which around 80% gets filtered. However, if you include the stuff that gets sent to invalid addresses on my domain (of which I'm the only user), it's been running around 1200-1300 SPD lately.
Because of the volume, and the fact that I frequently check my mail on the road with a dialup connection, I use mailfilter to delete spam on the server without having to download message bodies. Otherwise it can easily take 20 or 30 minutes to scarf it all down.
And here's an iron-clad rule: Never read mail online. Most spam is HTML-based, and not only does it phone home, but the dreck that it pulls in can be many times the size of the original message. I use the Mozilla mail client, and never open messages without first clicking on the handy connection icon in the lower right corner.
Of course, I'm sure there are other and better ways.
Seeing people referring to corporations as plural (rather than singular) entities, as in "Microsoft want X" or "RedHat give Y" is like hearing fingernails on a blackboard. So many people do it that somebody must have decided it's correct, but it just sounds moronic to my ears...
I have a relative who will be teaching a college class on the topic of ethical dilemmas brought about by new technology. Unfortunately, he doesn't keep up with technology news...
There's no rush to solve this problem. People often fall into the trap of thinking that Linux has to grow in order to survive. But Linux is not like other commerical platforms. Linux is the most successful user-developed platform in history. Because Linux development is so open and accessible, Linux does not need popular success in order to thrive.
I'll second that. I now use Linux just about exclusively, after having dual-booted with Windows for several years. I honestly don't think that Linux is significantly more "difficult" or inaccessible than Windows, although this was clearly true a few years ago before Gnome and KDE matured. Most of the Microsoft users I know have bought in to the FUD, and believe with almost religious fervor that they couldn't possibly ever learn to use Linux effectively. A couple that have looked over my shoulder while using Linux were blown away; one of them had been led to believe that Linux didn't have a graphical interface!
Microsoft will no doubt spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years convincing their users that they're simply too stupid to use anything else, and to a large extent they will succeed. Most people avoid learning the way many avoid physical exercise. As long as these folks are willing to pay for software that treats them accordingly, Microsoft will likely do just fine. They are a captive audience and MS will happily suck them dry.
There is a different attitude with Linux than with Microsoft. Linux and open-source users have complete control over the system and the software they run, and this makes a big difference whether or not we choose to exercise it directly. By contrast, every time I installed software on Windows, it was clear that the company that produced the software had the attitude that they were going to do whatever the hell they wanted on my machine, and that as a user of their program I was their property in some sense. Any abusiveness in an open-source program is going to be spotted by somebody, and a non-abusive version is likely to appear in short order. Closed-source software we use strictly on faith, and even reputable firms are feeling free to abuse it.
If gaining big market share for Linux means importing this attitude about software and users from the Microsoft world, then I say let them keep it.
Wasn't it Benito Mussolini who defined the essence of Fascism as the marriage of corporate and governmental power? Well, there you go.
And BTW, don't go running to the libertarians. Since they advocate the unbridled accumulation of private power, they'll just lead you right down the same path.
It won't be a cost-effective means of killing people, but it'll stiffen the nipples of all the SF fans because they'll see their fantasies finally coming to fruition. Then it'll become mundane and boring, of course...
Both initatives discuss technological challenges and fears of communication "safe havens" for criminals on broadband services such as Internet, VoIP, and wireless services.
The way things are going, that should read: "safe havens" for dissidents...
I grew up in the 60s. Lots of kids everywhere, and we just flew out the door every day and played with other kids with minimal adult supervision. These days, the media has scared parents so much that they feel obliged to monitor their kids every minute of every day. Free-form play, wherein children make up their own rules and form their own associations, has been replaced by tightly scheduled, highly supervised activities supervised by adults. So, kids become accustomed to constant adult supervision, and while this does teach them things like cooperation and how to live in a world of prescribed rules, it does not teach them leadership or creativity.
We live in a time where our civil liberties are in great peril, and it seems that so very few people seem to care (present company excepted, of course). Are we raising a generation of kids that have been so tightly supervised by parents that they see nothing amiss when government takes over the same supervisory role as they mature to adulthood? Sometimes I wonder...
IIRC, administration officials admitted that the documents (pertaining to nuclear issues) were indeed forged, but claimed that they were duped along with everyone else. 5 minutes of fact-checking would have revealed that, but we all know that an ounce of perception is worth more than a pound of truth...
While I believe that Saddam really ia a Bad Dude and I'll be as pleased as anyone when he's outta there, it's also true that the Bush administration has not hesitated to use lies and deception in order to justify this war to the American people and to the world.
It may be true that 70% of the American public favors the war, but I've found that most people also believe that the Iraqis were behind 9/11 and haven't heard that much of the "evidence" cited by Colin Powell in his "brilliant" speach to the UN was forged, and crudely at that. For that we can thank our free press, which feels its role is to function as publicist for the current leadership.
In short, if you're really concerned about truth, I'd be careful about believing any information disseminated by either side.
I believe you're right about these illnesses being more psychiatric than physical. However, that doesn't mean that they're not real in terms of the suffering that these people go through. The "crackpot" label is a little harsh. This guy probably has a mental illness, but it's an illness all the same...
I'd also say that about 20% of rich people are rich because they're shrewd, and the other 80% are rich because they're priveleged.
Certainly the Republicans are using tax policy to reinforce this. Here's a thought experiment: (1) List the major sources of income for the wealthiest people; e.g., inheritance, capital gains, dividends, etc. (2) Now do the same for middle- and lower-income folks; i.e., wages.
This is all you need to know to predict which taxes will rise (i.e., payroll taxes) and which will be reduced (high-bracket income taxes) or eliminated altogether (inheritance, dividends, capital gains) if they get their way...
Maybe the problem is that advertisers have unrealistic expectations of online advertising. I.e., that people en masse will forget about what they were looking for and immediately click the ad. Nothing like that happens in other media - newspapers, television, radio. I've never thrown down a magazine in the middle of reading an article so I could run out and immediately purchase something I'd seen advertised there.
Re:Not All's Well that Ends Well ...
on
The Linux Uprising
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's about more than cost. I've been using Linux for years; I used to dual-boot with WinNT but I don't even do that anymore. And it's not because I'm too cheap to blow $99 on an OS.
Businesses are finding that the administrators and lawyers they need to stay clear of MS's software audits cost money, too. And that their initial investments will be multiplied many times over by frequent forced upgrades. And that closed-source software cannot be trusted to work on behalf of the user only and not be riddled with spyware and other affronts. And that companies like MS cannot be trusted not to trap and manipulate their customers, thus setting them up for subsequent extortion.
In short, my use of Linux has a lot more to do with security, privacy, and control than cost (although being free doesn't exactly hurt, either).
When you follow his 'programming is art' argument you drag every coder into the pretentious arthouse bullshit. The guy starving in the gutter for his 'art' is good, the graphic artist who makes money designing magazine ads is a 'sellout'.
I can't speak for Perens, but by "art" I only mean something the creation of which is a cause for pleasure, pride, or what have you. Are you telling me that you've never in your life written a program that you weren't being paid to write to someone elses specification? You've never developed software for your own purposes, following your own interests, and then took pride in it afterwards? Well, that's OK if you haven't - to each, his/her own, I guess - but why is creation without compensation "pretentious arthouse bullshit"? You sound like a Republican!
We need to find a way so that people can make money producing (as opposed to "using") free software, without compromising the spirit of free software.
No, we don't. As Bruce Perens points out in his interview, programming is an act of creation - like art - and (many/most) programmers are ultimately motivated by getting their creations seen and used by others. I doubt that very much Open Source software at all was written with direct financial return in mind (although that's always nice if it happens).
Most commercial software development is done in large teams where very few individual programmers have much influence over the final product. Very often, projects are cancelled and there is no final product...
I like the Bruce Perens interview, Programmers are like Artists, where he explains the motivation behind open source from a developer's viewpoint. Imagine you're a talented painter, but the only way to make a living at it was to work on a corporate art assembly line, where each artist is responsible for a few specific brush strokes in a particular color (which is actually how "starving artist" paintings are done). Of course you'd be working on your own canvases in your spare time, and giving them away if that were the only way to be seen.
Slashdot Mirror
And oh, yeah - go out and buy an amp that goes up to "11"...
How ironic. Here are the top 10 sources of spam sent to my domain over a recent 8-day period:
987 aol.com
819 yahoo.com
556 hotmail.com
220 recessionspecials.com
179 yeah.net
175 msn.com
165 earthlink.net
129 21cn.com
123 migada.com
123 cm02.net
As a result, except for a few specific addresses, aol.com now gets filtered out...
Well, after years of dual-booting with Windows, Linux is the now the only thing going on my desktop, and I've gotta tell ya, I'm doing just fine (better than ever, IMHO). Maybe I'm dreaming? Or maybe the Microsoft fuddites don't know what they're talking about.
If these fire actual projectiles (as opposed to just a light beam), then I want one for my girlfriend's cats!
Because of the volume, and the fact that I frequently check my mail on the road with a dialup connection, I use mailfilter to delete spam on the server without having to download message bodies. Otherwise it can easily take 20 or 30 minutes to scarf it all down.
And here's an iron-clad rule: Never read mail online. Most spam is HTML-based, and not only does it phone home, but the dreck that it pulls in can be many times the size of the original message. I use the Mozilla mail client, and never open messages without first clicking on the handy connection icon in the lower right corner.
Of course, I'm sure there are other and better ways.
Seeing people referring to corporations as plural (rather than singular) entities, as in "Microsoft want X" or "RedHat give Y" is like hearing fingernails on a blackboard. So many people do it that somebody must have decided it's correct, but it just sounds moronic to my ears...
Well, there's a problem right there...
I'll second that. I now use Linux just about exclusively, after having dual-booted with Windows for several years. I honestly don't think that Linux is significantly more "difficult" or inaccessible than Windows, although this was clearly true a few years ago before Gnome and KDE matured. Most of the Microsoft users I know have bought in to the FUD, and believe with almost religious fervor that they couldn't possibly ever learn to use Linux effectively. A couple that have looked over my shoulder while using Linux were blown away; one of them had been led to believe that Linux didn't have a graphical interface!
Microsoft will no doubt spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years convincing their users that they're simply too stupid to use anything else, and to a large extent they will succeed. Most people avoid learning the way many avoid physical exercise. As long as these folks are willing to pay for software that treats them accordingly, Microsoft will likely do just fine. They are a captive audience and MS will happily suck them dry.
There is a different attitude with Linux than with Microsoft. Linux and open-source users have complete control over the system and the software they run, and this makes a big difference whether or not we choose to exercise it directly. By contrast, every time I installed software on Windows, it was clear that the company that produced the software had the attitude that they were going to do whatever the hell they wanted on my machine, and that as a user of their program I was their property in some sense. Any abusiveness in an open-source program is going to be spotted by somebody, and a non-abusive version is likely to appear in short order. Closed-source software we use strictly on faith, and even reputable firms are feeling free to abuse it.
If gaining big market share for Linux means importing this attitude about software and users from the Microsoft world, then I say let them keep it.
And BTW, don't go running to the libertarians. Since they advocate the unbridled accumulation of private power, they'll just lead you right down the same path.
It won't be a cost-effective means of killing people, but it'll stiffen the nipples of all the SF fans because they'll see their fantasies finally coming to fruition. Then it'll become mundane and boring, of course...
Ahhh yes... How I long for the Good Old Days, when a president getting his cock sucked was the biggest scandal we Americans could possibly imagine...
The way things are going, that should read: "safe havens" for dissidents...
We live in a time where our civil liberties are in great peril, and it seems that so very few people seem to care (present company excepted, of course). Are we raising a generation of kids that have been so tightly supervised by parents that they see nothing amiss when government takes over the same supervisory role as they mature to adulthood? Sometimes I wonder...
Link: See this item in the Washington Post.
IIRC, administration officials admitted that the documents (pertaining to nuclear issues) were indeed forged, but claimed that they were duped along with everyone else. 5 minutes of fact-checking would have revealed that, but we all know that an ounce of perception is worth more than a pound of truth...
It may be true that 70% of the American public favors the war, but I've found that most people also believe that the Iraqis were behind 9/11 and haven't heard that much of the "evidence" cited by Colin Powell in his "brilliant" speach to the UN was forged, and crudely at that. For that we can thank our free press, which feels its role is to function as publicist for the current leadership.
In short, if you're really concerned about truth, I'd be careful about believing any information disseminated by either side.
I believe you're right about these illnesses being more psychiatric than physical. However, that doesn't mean that they're not real in terms of the suffering that these people go through. The "crackpot" label is a little harsh. This guy probably has a mental illness, but it's an illness all the same...
Certainly the Republicans are using tax policy to reinforce this. Here's a thought experiment: (1) List the major sources of income for the wealthiest people; e.g., inheritance, capital gains, dividends, etc. (2) Now do the same for middle- and lower-income folks; i.e., wages.
This is all you need to know to predict which taxes will rise (i.e., payroll taxes) and which will be reduced (high-bracket income taxes) or eliminated altogether (inheritance, dividends, capital gains) if they get their way...
Wouldn't bother me at all. Besides, I doubt that the pro-Windows zealots could even imagine an alternative OS, much less create one...
Let's all agree to a moratorium on the use of the word "Washington" in the names of future universities...
Maybe the problem is that advertisers have unrealistic expectations of online advertising. I.e., that people en masse will forget about what they were looking for and immediately click the ad. Nothing like that happens in other media - newspapers, television, radio. I've never thrown down a magazine in the middle of reading an article so I could run out and immediately purchase something I'd seen advertised there.
Businesses are finding that the administrators and lawyers they need to stay clear of MS's software audits cost money, too. And that their initial investments will be multiplied many times over by frequent forced upgrades. And that closed-source software cannot be trusted to work on behalf of the user only and not be riddled with spyware and other affronts. And that companies like MS cannot be trusted not to trap and manipulate their customers, thus setting them up for subsequent extortion.
In short, my use of Linux has a lot more to do with security, privacy, and control than cost (although being free doesn't exactly hurt, either).
I can't speak for Perens, but by "art" I only mean something the creation of which is a cause for pleasure, pride, or what have you. Are you telling me that you've never in your life written a program that you weren't being paid to write to someone elses specification? You've never developed software for your own purposes, following your own interests, and then took pride in it afterwards? Well, that's OK if you haven't - to each, his/her own, I guess - but why is creation without compensation "pretentious arthouse bullshit"? You sound like a Republican!
No, we don't. As Bruce Perens points out in his interview, programming is an act of creation - like art - and (many/most) programmers are ultimately motivated by getting their creations seen and used by others. I doubt that very much Open Source software at all was written with direct financial return in mind (although that's always nice if it happens).
Most commercial software development is done in large teams where very few individual programmers have much influence over the final product. Very often, projects are cancelled and there is no final product...
Everyone knows that Microsoft invented e-mail! Those Unix/Linux programmers must have reverse-engineered it or something...
I like the Bruce Perens interview, Programmers are like Artists, where he explains the motivation behind open source from a developer's viewpoint. Imagine you're a talented painter, but the only way to make a living at it was to work on a corporate art assembly line, where each artist is responsible for a few specific brush strokes in a particular color (which is actually how "starving artist" paintings are done). Of course you'd be working on your own canvases in your spare time, and giving them away if that were the only way to be seen.