I joined Slashdot probably in 1998 or 99, can't recall. At that time, I had already been using computers for over 10 years and was using Slackware 3.4 Linux. I still have my install Cd's to prove it!
Anyone with a 3 digit UID must have been there from the very beginning of Slashdot.
Yes, I saw her live once. She was off-key. I can appreciate that she doesn't use autotune, but the sad fact is that she still relies heavily on post-production and her live performances are not as good as her studio work.
I ran out of mod points last night, so I'll post instead.
You're spot on. You can easily tell which artists heavily rely on post-production techniques based on their live performances. Some shine, and for those that fail miserably(Jessica Simpson, Nelly Furtado, here's looking at you) it is easy to tell why.
I'm already considering this. I just got a new laptop with Vista Home Premium. In numerous places, Microsoft has touted the security of Vista, yet Home Premium doesn't even include the Local Security Policy MMC snap-in.
Without the basic tools to manage my own local security, it is impossible to set up my laptop securely. This wasn't removed because Home Premium is incompatible, it was done as an up-sell opportunity. I've searched Microsoft's website extensively and there is little mention of the LSP snap-in being missing from Home Premium.
Interesting there is all this discussion about FOSS PDF readers when really everyone should be discussing the lack of good PDF EDITORS.
For people who design PDF's with intentions on using some of the more useful features in PDF's including embedded javascript, calculated form fields, etc., there really is NO program that comes close to Adobe Acrobat in terms of functionality or polish.
There is a pure java program that comes close but takes an eternity to open, is bug prone on x64 and is a bit quirky.
A more poignant realization would be that most people could use Adobe Reader 5 and almost never notice their reader doesn't support some newer features.
I also had extensive issues with this matter when obtaining my Federal Subidized Stafford student loans. The websites for my MPN wanted to determine if I could view a PDF in a browser and even with the Adobe plugin installed under Firefox in Ubuntu, the site failed miserably and neither forwarded me back to print a copy nor allowed me to click back.
I had to actually call my loan servicer to have them delete the MPN so I could start over on my girlfriends laptop. I had some issues with the adobe reader being slow also, but I dug in and deleted a bunch of plugins and that made it open MUCH faster.
Not much new there. EULA's often have numerous unenforceable provisions relating to intellectual property rights as well. I've seen several that even include provisions against reverse engineering even for compatibility reasons, which is a fair use requirement of copyright law.
That someone would improperly force a user to accept a license needlessly isn't much of a surprise.
The GPL displayed as a click-through license is especially prevalent on open source Windows software. It is unfortunate that they force users to accept it to run the software, since they do not have to. This is a good opportunity to explain what a GPL is also and that their software is open source.
Perceptions change over time. I started using Linux in 1997, dual booting routinely until about 2005. At that point, I began using Ubuntu almost exclusively and didn't use Windows for quite some time.
I just bought a new laptop yesterday and Vista has been a headache and a half, more complex even than using Ubuntu. The compatibility issues I've had with some programs, the constant UAC annoyances and for fucks sakes the complete lack of an MMC snap-in for modifying my local security policy like I had on XP... it's a huge frustration.
As my perceptions about Linux complexity have changed, I believe others will also. It just takes time. If Windows 7 is half as bizarrely annoying and incompatible as Vista, it will just be a matter of time before more people make the switch.
The confusion is quite ridiculous. I mean really, when the fscking salespeople need to look up tables to determine which windows versions include which features, you can tell someone somewhere in marketing has screwed the pooch badly.
Maybe MS is preying on the fact that most consumers will be too stupid to know they're buying more than they need, or too elitist to buy just what they will use instead of getting "Ultimate". Either way, they make more money.
I have nothing against them making money, but hawking feature incomplete operating systems at rock bottom price just to artificially create the appearance of choice drives me nuts.
The CPSC is responsible for enforcing consumer product recalls in the US, which would give them broader enforcement rights than the police trying to individually enforce this proposed law.
It's the right way to go anyway, since regardless of any law, any sufficiently resourceful individual can bypass the mandatory camera-phone click with a small screwdriver and about 2 minutes of time.
That's a common mistake really. Most people do not understand product safety certifications. Many recognize the different safety marks, such as UL, CSA, ETL, etc. but do not know the significance of those marks.
Worse yet, many people in the US mistake the CE mark to be a 3rd party testing certification mark. The truth is that CE is applicable only to the European Union, and furthermore for most product types is self-declaratory meaning its not even verified by a 3rd party.
Even those companies in low profit margin industries, need to maintain a rainy day fund for cash flow shortfalls. Its just good business. Any business who has so seriously depleted their rainy day fund, assuming they had one to begin with, was not truly in good health. If a company works on DOR or net30 terms and their customers decide to pay in 3 months or 6 months, they need to anticipate that and have a plan to mitigate it.
I'm also 28, with over 11 years in business experience working for multinational and regional corporations. Disregarding what I say just because I'm a student does not make a lot of sense.
I'm a student now because I decided CNC machining was more exciting than being a desk jockey the rest of my life. The fact that I will be making less money out of college then I was working in an office does suck, but I will be having more fun.
To the RIAA, everyone who ISN'T a customer is a thief, because nobody in their right mind would choose to simply not listen to music from their crappy member corporations./sarcasm
If they're sticking with the same hardware, making the second machine they have now a replication or backup solution may already be part of their plan.
How many years ago was this? I'll keep my negative comments about VB6 and Jet to myself, but that this was on NT4 then I would imagine your anecdotal experience is from some time ago.
Samba has made tremendous improvements in the last couple of years in a lot of areas.
1) Large sums of money have been given to a relatively small number of companies. Only a small percentage of the populace directly work for recipients of federal bailout money. Taking the money back wouldn't have a direct effect on most americans for quite some time(6 months or more).
2) Companies that need credit to cover payroll would have been in trouble before the credit crunch anyway, as this is usually a last ditch effort to save a company.
3) I'm a student. I don't foresee getting kicked out of school because of the financial market being in the shitter unless the feds cut off stafford loan subsidization, which is very unlikely to happen under a democratic or even republican administration.
4) Blowing over a trillion bucks to save companies who participated in a delusional pyramid scheme of realty market overvaluations isn't a good way to spend taxpayer money, especially considering the money IS BEING SAT ON. That money should have been given directly to homeowners under a grant program to keep people in their homes.
Right now, thousands of homeowners are evicted every day despite the $750B given to the banks that own the homes. It's a fucking tragedy.
Wal-mart is a funny example. They do a lot of things right(warehousing, distribution, workers safety) but they also screw their employees badly and are destructive to small town economies.
As for these companies that just got big bailouts, well, I really wish the feds would just take all the money back and we can all roll on the floor laughing at them for it.
Patent holding companies need to disappear forever. Let me define that for you - businesses whose primary source of revenue is generated from the purchase, sale, litigation and licensing of patent rights.
If a company wants to protect their patents, they should be forced to demonstrate that they are intent on manufacturing devices that utilize that patent's claims. I don't mean "manufacture" like auto companies homologate race cars(build 1, call it a production car...). A company should be planning to manufacture the widget utilizing the patent in an attempt to generate revenue.
We've seen in many financial markets how destructive short term prospectors can be(stock market, oil futures specifically). These IP holding companies are identical and equally destructive to innovation. The "use it or lose it" trademark rules should naturally apply to patents also.
The mere fact that six companies independently developed products that allegedly meet the claims of this companies patents should be indicative of the lack of innovation in this patent. User interfaces on mobile devices often replicate UI cues from a cross of computers, embedded industrial devices and regular telephones. This is often a natural technological progression, not innovation.
You can't know for sure. Both philosophy and science depend on assumptions. In science, our assumptions are based on experimentation.
Basically, from each basic experiment we gain knowledge that defines even more assumptions to experiment upon further. Over time we build a cathedral of knowledge like a house of cards where each more complicated piece of knowledge is based on observations from previous experimentation. When a fundamental assumption changes, the whole house of cards is in danger of falling down.
There are very basic differences about assumptions in philosophy and science and shouldn't really be discussed together. Unless of course we find where god parked his car, then I welcome anyone to discuss philosophy and science at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
I joined Slashdot probably in 1998 or 99, can't recall. At that time, I had already been using computers for over 10 years and was using Slackware 3.4 Linux. I still have my install Cd's to prove it!
Anyone with a 3 digit UID must have been there from the very beginning of Slashdot.
Yes, I saw her live once. She was off-key. I can appreciate that she doesn't use autotune, but the sad fact is that she still relies heavily on post-production and her live performances are not as good as her studio work.
I ran out of mod points last night, so I'll post instead.
You're spot on. You can easily tell which artists heavily rely on post-production techniques based on their live performances. Some shine, and for those that fail miserably(Jessica Simpson, Nelly Furtado, here's looking at you) it is easy to tell why.
I'm already considering this. I just got a new laptop with Vista Home Premium. In numerous places, Microsoft has touted the security of Vista, yet Home Premium doesn't even include the Local Security Policy MMC snap-in.
Without the basic tools to manage my own local security, it is impossible to set up my laptop securely. This wasn't removed because Home Premium is incompatible, it was done as an up-sell opportunity. I've searched Microsoft's website extensively and there is little mention of the LSP snap-in being missing from Home Premium.
Look on the bright side. He could get struck by lightning or hit by a bus randomly.
Fingers crossed...
Interesting there is all this discussion about FOSS PDF readers when really everyone should be discussing the lack of good PDF EDITORS.
For people who design PDF's with intentions on using some of the more useful features in PDF's including embedded javascript, calculated form fields, etc., there really is NO program that comes close to Adobe Acrobat in terms of functionality or polish.
There is a pure java program that comes close but takes an eternity to open, is bug prone on x64 and is a bit quirky.
A more poignant realization would be that most people could use Adobe Reader 5 and almost never notice their reader doesn't support some newer features.
I also had extensive issues with this matter when obtaining my Federal Subidized Stafford student loans. The websites for my MPN wanted to determine if I could view a PDF in a browser and even with the Adobe plugin installed under Firefox in Ubuntu, the site failed miserably and neither forwarded me back to print a copy nor allowed me to click back.
I had to actually call my loan servicer to have them delete the MPN so I could start over on my girlfriends laptop. I had some issues with the adobe reader being slow also, but I dug in and deleted a bunch of plugins and that made it open MUCH faster.
Not much new there. EULA's often have numerous unenforceable provisions relating to intellectual property rights as well. I've seen several that even include provisions against reverse engineering even for compatibility reasons, which is a fair use requirement of copyright law.
That someone would improperly force a user to accept a license needlessly isn't much of a surprise.
The GPL displayed as a click-through license is especially prevalent on open source Windows software. It is unfortunate that they force users to accept it to run the software, since they do not have to. This is a good opportunity to explain what a GPL is also and that their software is open source.
I find it amusing in the same way train wrecks are amusing... until you find out it was a passenger rail.
Perceptions change over time. I started using Linux in 1997, dual booting routinely until about 2005. At that point, I began using Ubuntu almost exclusively and didn't use Windows for quite some time.
I just bought a new laptop yesterday and Vista has been a headache and a half, more complex even than using Ubuntu. The compatibility issues I've had with some programs, the constant UAC annoyances and for fucks sakes the complete lack of an MMC snap-in for modifying my local security policy like I had on XP... it's a huge frustration.
As my perceptions about Linux complexity have changed, I believe others will also. It just takes time. If Windows 7 is half as bizarrely annoying and incompatible as Vista, it will just be a matter of time before more people make the switch.
The confusion is quite ridiculous. I mean really, when the fscking salespeople need to look up tables to determine which windows versions include which features, you can tell someone somewhere in marketing has screwed the pooch badly.
Maybe MS is preying on the fact that most consumers will be too stupid to know they're buying more than they need, or too elitist to buy just what they will use instead of getting "Ultimate". Either way, they make more money.
I have nothing against them making money, but hawking feature incomplete operating systems at rock bottom price just to artificially create the appearance of choice drives me nuts.
The CPSC is responsible for enforcing consumer product recalls in the US, which would give them broader enforcement rights than the police trying to individually enforce this proposed law.
It's the right way to go anyway, since regardless of any law, any sufficiently resourceful individual can bypass the mandatory camera-phone click with a small screwdriver and about 2 minutes of time.
That's a common mistake really. Most people do not understand product safety certifications. Many recognize the different safety marks, such as UL, CSA, ETL, etc. but do not know the significance of those marks.
Worse yet, many people in the US mistake the CE mark to be a 3rd party testing certification mark. The truth is that CE is applicable only to the European Union, and furthermore for most product types is self-declaratory meaning its not even verified by a 3rd party.
You win 1000 internets.
Even those companies in low profit margin industries, need to maintain a rainy day fund for cash flow shortfalls. Its just good business. Any business who has so seriously depleted their rainy day fund, assuming they had one to begin with, was not truly in good health. If a company works on DOR or net30 terms and their customers decide to pay in 3 months or 6 months, they need to anticipate that and have a plan to mitigate it.
I'm also 28, with over 11 years in business experience working for multinational and regional corporations. Disregarding what I say just because I'm a student does not make a lot of sense.
I'm a student now because I decided CNC machining was more exciting than being a desk jockey the rest of my life. The fact that I will be making less money out of college then I was working in an office does suck, but I will be having more fun.
Priceless.
To the RIAA, everyone who ISN'T a customer is a thief, because nobody in their right mind would choose to simply not listen to music from their crappy member corporations. /sarcasm
If they're sticking with the same hardware, making the second machine they have now a replication or backup solution may already be part of their plan.
How many years ago was this? I'll keep my negative comments about VB6 and Jet to myself, but that this was on NT4 then I would imagine your anecdotal experience is from some time ago.
Samba has made tremendous improvements in the last couple of years in a lot of areas.
I've on this subject frequently really.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1086449&cid=26406327
1) Large sums of money have been given to a relatively small number of companies. Only a small percentage of the populace directly work for recipients of federal bailout money. Taking the money back wouldn't have a direct effect on most americans for quite some time(6 months or more).
2) Companies that need credit to cover payroll would have been in trouble before the credit crunch anyway, as this is usually a last ditch effort to save a company.
3) I'm a student. I don't foresee getting kicked out of school because of the financial market being in the shitter unless the feds cut off stafford loan subsidization, which is very unlikely to happen under a democratic or even republican administration.
4) Blowing over a trillion bucks to save companies who participated in a delusional pyramid scheme of realty market overvaluations isn't a good way to spend taxpayer money, especially considering the money IS BEING SAT ON. That money should have been given directly to homeowners under a grant program to keep people in their homes.
Right now, thousands of homeowners are evicted every day despite the $750B given to the banks that own the homes. It's a fucking tragedy.
Wal-mart is a funny example. They do a lot of things right(warehousing, distribution, workers safety) but they also screw their employees badly and are destructive to small town economies.
As for these companies that just got big bailouts, well, I really wish the feds would just take all the money back and we can all roll on the floor laughing at them for it.
Patent holding companies need to disappear forever. Let me define that for you - businesses whose primary source of revenue is generated from the purchase, sale, litigation and licensing of patent rights.
If a company wants to protect their patents, they should be forced to demonstrate that they are intent on manufacturing devices that utilize that patent's claims. I don't mean "manufacture" like auto companies homologate race cars(build 1, call it a production car...). A company should be planning to manufacture the widget utilizing the patent in an attempt to generate revenue.
We've seen in many financial markets how destructive short term prospectors can be(stock market, oil futures specifically). These IP holding companies are identical and equally destructive to innovation. The "use it or lose it" trademark rules should naturally apply to patents also.
The mere fact that six companies independently developed products that allegedly meet the claims of this companies patents should be indicative of the lack of innovation in this patent. User interfaces on mobile devices often replicate UI cues from a cross of computers, embedded industrial devices and regular telephones. This is often a natural technological progression, not innovation.
You can't know for sure. Both philosophy and science depend on assumptions. In science, our assumptions are based on experimentation.
Basically, from each basic experiment we gain knowledge that defines even more assumptions to experiment upon further. Over time we build a cathedral of knowledge like a house of cards where each more complicated piece of knowledge is based on observations from previous experimentation. When a fundamental assumption changes, the whole house of cards is in danger of falling down.
There are very basic differences about assumptions in philosophy and science and shouldn't really be discussed together. Unless of course we find where god parked his car, then I welcome anyone to discuss philosophy and science at the same time.