Nope. I read an article t'other day that came right out and said most tech reporters are fairly clueless about what they're reporting on, the tech changes too fast for them to even hope to keep up, and the need to scoop the competition keeps them from checking sources and doing research on stories.
Basically, it confirmed what everyone on/. has suspected about tech reporters for quite some time now.:P
Actually, I think Billgatus was saying that the only good free programs are the simple ones like word processors and spreadsheets. And Linux, the Little Toy OS(tm).
What I want to know is, if word processors and spreadsheets are simple, why do some of them require 100+ MB and cost umpteen bajillion dollars?
What are the five windowing systems? KDE, Gnome, Afterstep, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, FVWM, FVWM95? Oh wait, that's MORE than five!!! But I think his point was we're all slack-jawed mouth breathers, and choices confuse us. He is so right. That's why I have the LiteStep shell replacement on my Win95 (gag) machine at work.;)
What exactly is a "university-type environment"? One that supports the open exchange of ideas, I guess. Can't have that. Problems might get solved that way. Then how do we charge for support and fixes, if everything runs right?
Oh, and who is charging for their browser now? Opera and, according to some, Microsoft. Though M$ doesn't do it directly. Because they're so complicated they have to be sold, apparently. My IE browser at home was so complicated I removed it, and now I have 98lite (used only for Quake2, thanks to nVidia). Much less complicated. Much faster, too.
I also find it interesting (as did AC) that now Linux, the mega-hit per day server, the firewall, the router, the mailserver, the Beowulf cluster monster, my desktop at home, blah blah blah is really only a very simple product, because it is free. I'll have to remember that tomorrow when something hangs on my machine here at work and takes all of Win95 with it. I, as a consumer, asked for that level of integration, of course. It's not instability, it's innovation. FUUUUUDFUDFUDFUDFUDFUDFUD!!!
Good thing this is all such blatant bullshite only the pointiest of PHBs will buy it.:P
. . . to all you non-Americans out there. I know many expressed disbelief when the victims' families sued Hollywood, etc. in the "Doom Kills Kids" article. At least THAT one had a serious crime at the root of it. THIS, on the other hand, is just plain stupid, with absolutely zero justification. The American legal system is a crock of shite.
There's something about the word "volunteer" that makes me strongly suspect no one can make you do it against your will. Oh! It must be the definition! Yes, that must be it!
If I had to guess (which I don't, but I will), I would say these people realized that they were spending too much time in their volunteer efforts, but didn't want to give up their free accounts. That brings up a definition to another word: cheap. (well, once AOL switched to a flat rate)
If I were the judge of this case (should it somehow make it to court), I'd paraphrase Bloom County and say, "Bailiff, kick these nuts in the butt." Then I'd throw them all out. I really don't think Slashdot or IRC need to worry too much about this one.
If it turns out they do need to worry, then it is truly a sad, sad world we live in.
I was raised on a non-commercial farm, if that counts. Through the years we grew just about everything you can, either for income or sustenance: cows, hogs, chickens, ducks, guineas, goats, numerous garden crops, hay, timber, etc. And from 1 - 15 cats at any given time. The cats were neither income nor sustenance. *heh*
I got a wildlife conservation degree in college, and now work as a terrestrial ecologist. I'm gradually mutating into a geek in my spare time.
By the way, guinea fowl are the Spawn of Satan(tm), but they sure keep the ticks away!;)
That is the sound of my point whizzing by you. I was not dissing the TNT, nor any Riva product. Rather I was trying to make a point about Diamond's apparent approach to making hardware: usually fairly half-assed. The Viper 550 could have been a lot more, as evidenced by Asus' TNT card.
But why bother making something excellent, when you can make something "okay" for cheaper and still sell a bazillion of them?:P
It seems they've done the same with the Rio Pimp, based on what people are saying.
So, how is this supposed to work again? How do the genes from plant species A wind up in species B?
That penicillin reference is really, really BAD, too. Penicillin is nigh-worthless in some parts of the world today not because of some mysterious gene-sharing between types of bacteria. They just all migrated down similar paths to resistance. Was it evolution? Yes. Was it some nefarious evolutionary plot designed to get back at us? No.
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but what's the problem here?
Well, they did at least make a half-arsed effort at sprucing it up, but I think they could have done a lot better. From personal experience (buying their hardware) it seems Diamond really has a "good enough" mentality. They don't try to be the best darned Diamond they can be. "Ah hell, let's just take that TNT crap and slap it on a board and ship it. They'll buy it." "Let's just dump some more memory in the damn thing, and make it all pretty-like. They'll buy it." I'm not impressed.
Besides, don't they realize this thing is just asking to be called the "Rio PiMP-300?";)
Good thoughts, by the way. I agree 100%. I grew up playing AD&D, video games, watching all sorts of movies, but my parents were fairly involved in the whole process, even though they were divorced. I view Quake2 as stress relief. I viewed AD&D as stress relief in high school (Mmmmmm...fireballing goblins). Both give me zero desire to go out and kill other people.
Only sue people with money. From an old "Bloom County" strip (recall the strip and win a prize!). That means you CAN'T sue the killer's parents. While proper, they can't cough up the big bucks necessary for a "proper" settlement.
Don't get me wrong, I really feel for the parents of the dead children, but COME ON! Sometimes shitty stuff happens for shitty reasons, and there isn't someone conveniently standing around waiting to have a finger pointed at them! Yes, your kid is dead, and yes, that sucks . . . but that doesn't entitle you to money!
This whold damn American "tradition" of putting a price on suffering is pretty lame. What effing good is it, being rich, if a member of your family is gone?
I could go on and on, but I shan't. I think I'll go read "Bloom County."
1) Please don't over-generalize. Not all Americans are stupid fu*ks not willing to take responsibility for their actions. It's just the ones that are that get all the press.:P
2) What next? Warning labels like, "Do not iron clothes while on body." Yay!
Heaven forbid that MS has competition and consumers have to choose which products they buy...
That would be just TOO scary, wouldn't it? Here is a humorous summation of that thought, in.PDF format, from Dumbentia.
I dream of the day when consumers get to choose which products they buy in the computer world. Tied into that dream, of course, is Microsoft having to update Office to conform to open standards, lest it be left behind.
Because now it's been proven that cute little computers sell like hotcakes.
New and risky ideas are often poo-pooed and mocked, because people are either unsure that they'll work, or afraid that they'll work. Dell is attempting to cash in on idea that has already been proven to work, so they seem wise (from a business standpoint, anyway).
Indeed, I do not run a server, nor own a 486. It was just a freakin' example of what Linux is capable of.
Though if I had any decent web connection at home, I can see getting some crappy lower-end machine to take over the serving duties. Maybe my mom's old P-75. =)
"Oh! You don't need to buy cheap Linux servers! Soon good ol' Microsoft will give you all the cheap servers you need! Friendly! Easy! Microsoft! You can click and drool through all your intranet needs! No scary text from Microsoft!"
Six months later. . .
"Oh, we found the implementation of thin servers to be too limiting. Our small business customers demand a more complete, robust, crappy, expensive solution. Just get NT 4* and a few P-III 600s."
*Y...er, W2K will have been pushed back to a March '00 release by then.
Because it runs so damn well on old hardware, I'd guess. Why upgrade now to Intel's latest and greatest overhyped, extra-cached money sponge when you can serve your needs (and your webpages!) with that old 486 you had in the closet?
Linux does NOT encourage the "upgrade cycle" that mainstream computing has fallen into. That could very well make Intel nervous.
Salon says it made the move from NT to a customized version of the Red Hat 5.2 distribution of Linux "in order to support Salon.com's growing needs."
"For a growing company like Salon, Linux is the best of all worlds," Chad Dickerson, Salon's vice president of technology, said in a statement. "It's a proven technology, it's low cost and high performance, and it's broadly supported. The robustness and stability of the Linux operating system make it ideal for mission-critical applications."
[IDC crap snipped]
Dickerson noted that Linux will offer Salon a "solid technical backbone" to support its move from a magazine format to a network of sites. Gartner Group analyst Tom Henkel said today that scalability and reliability are among Linux's advantages.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's not leave that out.
--
Nope. I read an article t'other day that came right out and said most tech reporters are fairly clueless about what they're reporting on, the tech changes too fast for them to even hope to keep up, and the need to scoop the competition keeps them from checking sources and doing research on stories.
/. has suspected about tech reporters for quite some time now. :P
Basically, it confirmed what everyone on
--
Actually, I think Billgatus was saying that the only good free programs are the simple ones like word processors and spreadsheets. And Linux, the Little Toy OS(tm).
What I want to know is, if word processors and spreadsheets are simple, why do some of them require 100+ MB and cost umpteen bajillion dollars?
--
What are the five windowing systems? ;)
:P
KDE, Gnome, Afterstep, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, FVWM, FVWM95? Oh wait, that's MORE than five!!! But I think his point was we're all slack-jawed mouth breathers, and choices confuse us. He is so right. That's why I have the LiteStep shell replacement on my Win95 (gag) machine at work.
What exactly is a "university-type environment"?
One that supports the open exchange of ideas, I guess. Can't have that. Problems might get solved that way. Then how do we charge for support and fixes, if everything runs right?
Oh, and who is charging for their browser now?
Opera and, according to some, Microsoft. Though M$ doesn't do it directly. Because they're so complicated they have to be sold, apparently. My IE browser at home was so complicated I removed it, and now I have 98lite (used only for Quake2, thanks to nVidia). Much less complicated. Much faster, too.
I also find it interesting (as did AC) that now Linux, the mega-hit per day server, the firewall, the router, the mailserver, the Beowulf cluster monster, my desktop at home, blah blah blah is really only a very simple product, because it is free. I'll have to remember that tomorrow when something hangs on my machine here at work and takes all of Win95 with it. I, as a consumer, asked for that level of integration, of course. It's not instability, it's innovation.
FUUUUUDFUDFUDFUDFUDFUDFUD!!!
Good thing this is all such blatant bullshite only the pointiest of PHBs will buy it.
--
Wow. You people scare me. I'm impressed! =D
--
. . . to all you non-Americans out there. I know many expressed disbelief when the victims' families sued Hollywood, etc. in the "Doom Kills Kids" article. At least THAT one had a serious crime at the root of it. THIS, on the other hand, is just plain stupid, with absolutely zero justification. The American legal system is a crock of shite.
There's something about the word "volunteer" that makes me strongly suspect no one can make you do it against your will. Oh! It must be the definition! Yes, that must be it!
If I had to guess (which I don't, but I will), I would say these people realized that they were spending too much time in their volunteer efforts, but didn't want to give up their free accounts. That brings up a definition to another word: cheap. (well, once AOL switched to a flat rate)
If I were the judge of this case (should it somehow make it to court), I'd paraphrase Bloom County and say, "Bailiff, kick these nuts in the butt." Then I'd throw them all out. I really don't think Slashdot or IRC need to worry too much about this one.
If it turns out they do need to worry, then it is truly a sad, sad world we live in.
--
They also said WoNT 4 outperformed a Sun server (forget what it was running, or even what it was), and had a 10x superior price/performance ratio.
--
Maybe they forgot to enable TCP/IP support when they compiled the 2.2.2?
=D
--
You would be amazed at the number of people that would rather pull their own teeth (sans whiskey, even!) than face your #3.
--
I was raised on a non-commercial farm, if that counts. Through the years we grew just about everything you can, either for income or sustenance: cows, hogs, chickens, ducks, guineas, goats, numerous garden crops, hay, timber, etc. And from 1 - 15 cats at any given time. The cats were neither income nor sustenance. *heh*
;)
I got a wildlife conservation degree in college, and now work as a terrestrial ecologist. I'm gradually mutating into a geek in my spare time.
By the way, guinea fowl are the Spawn of Satan(tm), but they sure keep the ticks away!
--
Yes, but is this DNA sharing inter- or intra-specific?
--
That is the sound of my point whizzing by you. I was not dissing the TNT, nor any Riva product. Rather I was trying to make a point about Diamond's apparent approach to making hardware: usually fairly half-assed. The Viper 550 could have been a lot more, as evidenced by Asus' TNT card.
:P
But why bother making something excellent, when you can make something "okay" for cheaper and still sell a bazillion of them?
It seems they've done the same with the Rio Pimp, based on what people are saying.
--
So, how is this supposed to work again? How do the genes from plant species A wind up in species B?
That penicillin reference is really, really BAD, too. Penicillin is nigh-worthless in some parts of the world today not because of some mysterious gene-sharing between types of bacteria. They just all migrated down similar paths to resistance. Was it evolution? Yes. Was it some nefarious evolutionary plot designed to get back at us? No.
Maybe I haven't had enough coffee, but what's the problem here?
--
Well, they did at least make a half-arsed effort at sprucing it up, but I think they could have done a lot better. From personal experience (buying their hardware) it seems Diamond really has a "good enough" mentality. They don't try to be the best darned Diamond they can be. "Ah hell, let's just take that TNT crap and slap it on a board and ship it. They'll buy it." "Let's just dump some more memory in the damn thing, and make it all pretty-like. They'll buy it." I'm not impressed.
;)
Besides, don't they realize this thing is just asking to be called the "Rio PiMP-300?"
--
statistical blip
;)
We call that an "outlier."
Good thoughts, by the way. I agree 100%. I grew up playing AD&D, video games, watching all sorts of movies, but my parents were fairly involved in the whole process, even though they were divorced. I view Quake2 as stress relief. I viewed AD&D as stress relief in high school (Mmmmmm...fireballing goblins). Both give me zero desire to go out and kill other people.
Only sue people with money. From an old "Bloom County" strip (recall the strip and win a prize!). That means you CAN'T sue the killer's parents. While proper, they can't cough up the big bucks necessary for a "proper" settlement.
Don't get me wrong, I really feel for the parents of the dead children, but COME ON! Sometimes shitty stuff happens for shitty reasons, and there isn't someone conveniently standing around waiting to have a finger pointed at them! Yes, your kid is dead, and yes, that sucks . . . but that doesn't entitle you to money!
This whold damn American "tradition" of putting a price on suffering is pretty lame. What effing good is it, being rich, if a member of your family is gone?
I could go on and on, but I shan't. I think I'll go read "Bloom County."
--
1) Please don't over-generalize. Not all Americans are stupid fu*ks not willing to take responsibility for their actions. It's just the ones that are that get all the press. :P
2) What next? Warning labels like, "Do not iron clothes while on body." Yay!
Heaven forbid that MS has competition and consumers have to choose which products they buy...
.PDF format, from Dumbentia.
That would be just TOO scary, wouldn't it? Here is a humorous summation of that thought, in
I dream of the day when consumers get to choose which products they buy in the computer world. Tied into that dream, of course, is Microsoft having to update Office to conform to open standards, lest it be left behind.
Well, I said it was a dream, didn't I?
--
Because now it's been proven that cute little computers sell like hotcakes.
New and risky ideas are often poo-pooed and mocked, because people are either unsure that they'll work, or afraid that they'll work.
Dell is attempting to cash in on idea that has already been proven to work, so they seem wise (from a business standpoint, anyway).
Indeed, I do not run a server, nor own a 486. It was just a freakin' example of what Linux is capable of.
Though if I had any decent web connection at home, I can see getting some crappy lower-end machine to take over the serving duties. Maybe my mom's old P-75. =)
--
"Oh! You don't need to buy cheap Linux servers! Soon good ol' Microsoft will give you all the cheap servers you need! Friendly! Easy! Microsoft! You can click and drool through all your intranet needs! No scary text from Microsoft!"
Six months later. . .
"Oh, we found the implementation of thin servers to be too limiting. Our small business customers demand a more complete, robust, crappy, expensive solution. Just get NT 4* and a few P-III 600s."
*Y...er, W2K will have been pushed back to a March '00 release by then.
Because it runs so damn well on old hardware, I'd guess. Why upgrade now to Intel's latest and greatest overhyped, extra-cached money sponge when you can serve your needs (and your webpages!) with that old 486 you had in the closet?
Linux does NOT encourage the "upgrade cycle" that mainstream computing has fallen into. That could very well make Intel nervous.
--
Uh....maybe click on the link?
Or if that is impossible for some unfathomable reason, it can also be had at w w w . 9 8 l i t e . n e t
Only without all the spaces, of course.
--
Here it is. Works really well, too.
--
Salon says it made the move from NT to a customized version of the Red Hat 5.2 distribution of Linux "in order to support Salon.com's growing
needs."
"For a growing company like Salon, Linux is the best of all worlds," Chad Dickerson, Salon's vice president of technology, said in a statement.
"It's a proven technology, it's low cost and high performance, and it's broadly supported. The robustness and stability of the Linux operating
system make it ideal for mission-critical applications."
[IDC crap snipped]
Dickerson noted that Linux will offer Salon a "solid technical backbone" to support its move from a magazine format to a network of sites. Gartner
Group analyst Tom Henkel said today that scalability and reliability are among Linux's advantages.
Ring-a-ling!
--