Numerous FAQs and warnings? I have to say I've seen plenty of information, but that none of it was in places a complete newbie is likely to see it, and certainly not when it's important, like during the installation itself. And maybe the default workstation on RH doesn't include these services, but it's just as easy to go into package selection mode when installing as it is to choose whether you want Gnome, KDE, or a server.
I've seen this complaint before, it's quite one thing to install an RPM (as many of us would be wont to do during an install, "hell yeah I want apache and sendmail and all these other cool looking things"), it's quite another thing for the installation to assume that choosing the packages means that they should be TURNED ON and LOADED when the system is restart, with no further intervention on the part of the user/sysadmin (which in a home use situation is likely the same person). So, the person who, during install, thinks they want to try something out at some point, so they install it, ends up with a system that is BY DESIGN insecure. The biggest insecurity comes from the operator not having full knowledge of the impacts of certain decisions and once knowledge is gained, control. If I don't realize that loaded packages will be turned on, I'm lacking the knowledge, and if the install program doesn't make this clear and offer me the choice to install but not activate, my control is diminished. The result is a system which can be very attractive to crackers, since the newbie operator may not know the services are running and probably won't know how to check for intrusions.
This is what happened to me, when I installed YellowDog (which is basically Red Hat for PPC). I knew I would want apache and some other server applications in the near future, so I installed them. It never crossed my mind that they would be started up by default every time I turned on my computer and visible to everyone who knew my IP address-- especially since I'd have thought they'd need at least minimal configuration before they'd work. I still have nightmares about being cracked again.
I'd have to say I'm in agreement. 99% of the time IE on Mac renders my HTML/CSS the way I thought it would be rendered when I wrote it (and this may be a problem with me, but HTML is not rocket science and I've been writing it since Mosaic was the most common browser), yet that same HTML is goofy as all get out on Netscape for Mac (not to mention that IE for Mac has great cookie management, the likes of which are only beaten by the new cookie piece in Konqueror/KDE2. IE5.5 on Win95, however, seems broken to me. It manages to screw up even simple pages when the graphics don't include height/width information (that is, redraws don't seem to be functional). My only concern about Gecko for KDE functionality is that it will impair development of the khtml library (if people are patching Konqueror to use Gecko for rendering, this is less people putting the khtml library through the paces), unless the KDE team makes the decision to abandon khtml in favor of Gecko. I mean, it's the rendering engine. In theory the end result should be exactly the same, right?
If you can't tell, I'm a grumpy ex-Mac-zealot (and frankly, they are still an exciting company, but they feel no better to me, ethically, than Microsoft) and if they've finally got an OS that doesn't crash on me daily, won't break all my old apps, will run my stupid horde of USB devices, AND give me many of the advantages of Unix (like real Perl, gcc, a command line, etc), then maybe it's worth it just to get my iMac to be a usable machine. Still, the feeling will be more of relief than of sheer exhuberance at this. Like, "finally, damn thing works the way it's supposed to."
I don't get what this device is so great for, although I think I'm going to go to RS near me and continue to play dumb until they hand one to me and I can take it home and play with it. It scans barcodes and creates a poorly scrambled stream of characters, which were intended to be sent to DC's web site so I could look at an online version of the catalog I had just scanned the barcode from? What a frippin' waste. Why wouldn't I just do my shopping the old-fashioned way, with a long coat and a crowded store? Or more conveniently, a hacked CC db and a few online stores? Is this device's whole stated purpose to help me, the luser, not have to type in something as complex as a URL from a print source?
Now, on the other hand, if they sold a household inventory application and I could subscribe to an online DB of UPC codes (like CDDB, but with UPC instead of embedded CD IDs), that would be a sensible application of this technology, and might justify giving out the device as a hook for the software/DB subscription. That way I could inventory my books, CDs, tapes, LPs, electronics purchases, etc etc for insurance/warranty/budget purposes. That would be very useful.
But they don't do that, so if I want to use this to do anything useful, I've got to run Linux and use hacked together drivers?
So are you lugging your laptop around the grocery store scanning everything? Does the store not notice/care? Wouldn't this be a lot easier with a barcode scanner and a Palm/Visor?
Yeah, those pitiful little bands of raggedly dressed hackers huddled together for warmth, using an OS that actually emulates the widespread, large-scale UNIX system quite well. As soon as I see Oracle 8i for Mac OS X I'm going to give a rat's ass about Apple again. Until then they have cornered the market on shiny plastic toys.
Most of their major apps were ported to Windows years ago and the only thing keeping Mac users from switching platforms then was a basic dislike for Microsoft dependency and the fact that Mac OS hasn't changed it's basic look and feel for 25 years. Apple's strategy here is good in that it will allow existing hardware to function and make the transition slow and hopefully less painful (of course, I won't be surprised if any Mac over 12 months old is going to wish it had a major RAM upgrade and a 400+mhz CPU). They were successful in transition before and it seems like they'll be successful again.
But none of that changes the underlying fact that they have a fairly small market share, which looks even worse when you factor out the education market. In fact, Linux may have a bigger market share than Apple, and Linux is used by respectable businesses in a number of mission critical ways. Macs are used by schoolchildren and marketing consultants to play learning games and make shiny brochures. Last time I went to any of the major computer dealers or electronics megashops near me, I saw many machines that would never run Mac OS and they had at least three flavors of Linux on sale (although not pre-installed) for the machines they were selling. Heck, they even sell Linux at Target!
Daily Mac stories on Slashdot aren't news, they're free advertising.
First, I didn't pass judgement on her speech, which is now a famous article. I merely relayed the idea that the dictionary defines plagiarism pretty broadly and that the re-use need not be verbatim. And yeah, it was a speech, given in front of a large audience and reproduced in a very popular online forum. As such, it deserves to be held to a higher standard than a casual conversation. And still, I wouldn't have said anything to confirm or deny that I think her speech was plagiarism or that she is basically a leech on the alternative/punk music scene. Which I've thought since 1993 or whenever Hole first appeared, so I'm fine lowering my opinion of her back to its former position near the ground, which was temporarily raised after reading the Salon piece, but which I now suspect was heavily derivative of Albini's work and for which she appears to be glad to take the credit and the glory.
I'm sorry. My dictionary (Webster's) lists no definition of plagiarism which includes "line by line" copying. But it specifically mentions passing others' ideas as your own, using a source without credit, and presenting an idea as new, when it is actually derived from something else.
it's going to be time to get tired of all this crap, pull the plug and head outside to congregate with other live humans. Of course, I suspect we'll find that's been paved, and people found outdoors without a permit or a purpose will be subject to numerous stalking, lurking, and loitering laws. "I swear officer, I'm headed to the mall to buy a DVD, we weren't having a conversation!"
I second this heartily. KDE2, Konqueror and KOffice, are really doing a great job of blending the best ideas from lots of other packages, without just being a patched together clone of those ideas. The interface is exceptionally clean and easy to use. The whole quickly becomes more than the sum of its parts. KDE2 and associated apps make me very excited about using Linux for desktop applications-- especially coming from a Mac background and the bizarre direction Apple is going with their GUI.
Right, they will not license a player that can be a "legitimate" part of an OS system. However, there is nothing to prevent a non-OS player from working on Linux. Several similar tools already exist in a non-Open form, like Flash and RealPlayer, and the barriers to making a fully-compliant DVD player for Linux are cultural, not technological. One might argue that RealPlayer is actually more insidious than DVD. Not only is the player proprietary, but it discourages even the possibility of offloading content for time-shifting, backup purposes, or to reduce bandwidth pressure-- with presumably improved playback from local devices.
Considering how long Apple has been hyping this never-quite-released OS on its own website, I'm sure they're just trying to get rid of competition in the Apple/Mac rumor department.
You've been reading the MS Anti-Linux FAQ haven't you?
Let's see. The OS becomes more popular. So somehow the available knowledge pool shrinks to the point where developers are supporting newbie installations? The OS becomes more ubiquitous, therefore people stop developing for it and it's no longer cutting edge?
The idea that Linux is a small market OS that relies on spare time is a myth, although this has been true, it's quickly changing. There are several businesses who exist solely to develop and sell Linux solutions (whether they are viable is another question, but I think they will be). The Free Software Foundation (albeit a non-profit charity) has taken in several $100K in donations according to their "Thank GNUs" page, some of it from major hardware corps like IBM-- and their software is Free! As people start to realize that they don't have to be addicted to proprietary OS'es, the primary selling point of Linux won't be it's zero price tag, it will be the Freedom, something many of us are happy to spend a little money to preserve. In fact, some of the distro companies right now are basically using free ISO downloads as a loss-leader. It is not wise to clam up the servers right now, since it will alienate the people you need to hook the most, but there is nothing in the GPL that says they have to provide free downloads of compiled software in install-ready form-- certainly RMS encourages charging mightily for distribution costs, so that money can be given to developers. It's quite possible that at some point giving away binaries and whole distributions for free is going to be seen as doing the Free Software community a disservice, since it does nothing to help pay people for all their hard work.
If you read even 25% of the documents in the DeCSS case (which means you got past Touretsky's and 2600's testimony), you find that the plaintiff's attempted to demonstrate the harm that DeCSS caused them by doing exactly this process: using DeCSS to extract the video from the DVD, then using compression like DivX to make the file small enough to fit on a CD or more conveniently send over the wire. The judge also viewed a comparison of DVD played directly from the disc and this "pirated" file. Notwithstanding biases against the defendants from the outset, I think it was demonstrations like this and the widespread existence of a Windows.exe of DeCSS that convinced Judge Kaplan that DeCSS was primarily a tool for pirating. Furthermore, Open Source propaganda aside, there is nothing to stop any company from purchasing a license to produce an "authorized" DVD decoder/player for Linux. Finally, the case wasn't about piracy, really. It was about circumventing encryption techniques, and a fairly obscure portion of the DMCA which makes it illegal to spread devices/programs related to such techniques. While I, as a citizen, am outraged that the DMCA exists at all and feel that even if it is not unconstitutional that it is reprehensible, there is no defense here. If there are alternative tools that perform the same function as DeCSS, that does not somehow legitimize DeCSS. It merely points to the existence of other tools for "illegitimate" activity.
What's of interest to me, since I have no intention of purchasing a DVD player or DVD-ROM until the MPAA pulls its head out of its ass, is whether successful movie rips have been done using this or similar techniques from VHS, and how hard is that to get onto a CD?
When you support real Open Source and/or Free Software, then maybe I'll have sympathy for you as you are stuck with a single vendor and difficult transitions. As it is, there are several free/open solutions to the chat question. IRC being the first one that comes to mind. This would also allow the company to set up approved channels on the server, set bots on the channels, monitor activity, have departmental channels which can be logged and checked for trends/FAQ-making, etc etc-- based on your needs. As it is you are likely sending business-sensitive data out to AOL's server and then back inside the company firewall (unless I've totally got it wrong how AIM works). Your network people are right to eliminate this client. The sooner the better, imho. And I don't see what's wrong with using any peer-to-peer file sharing at work, it's bound to save on the e-mail server, which has to store, log, and hold all those attachments.
As a recovering Mac drone, I have to say I am not familiar with the "stability" of which you speak. I have been hard crashing Macintosh computers since 1988 and the situation has never improved-- in fact, I've grown tired of looking for a paperclip to restart my iMac, which lacks a sensible power-off or restart button. I'm sure you'll just call this "user error" and blame the victim. But when you make candy colored computers and force the usage of wiring schema like USB (the supposed remedy to all our device needs), the last thing I, as a user, should have to worry about is which device drivers or javascripted web pages are going to bomb the whole machine.
As a future GNU/Linux drone, I'm torn as to whether I want to spend the $30 to see if OS X is going to improve my life if it ever gets past beta (since I doubt they'll produce anything else resembling a test version, which would allow me to try the software before blowing $100 on it). But that's $30 I could be donating (tax deductibly) to the FSF, not furthering my proprietary software addiction. I'd respect Apple's OS upgrades a lot more if the last few weren't centered on giving me Sherlock, replete with lame searches that were no better than google, took longer than google, and were littered with so much advertising that it put pr0n sites and [insert portal wannabe] to shame. So forgive me for feeling burned by Apple, but I've never felt like they cared about helping me to help myself-- which is exactly the feeling I get as I've been making the transition to GNU/Linux.
Excellent point regarding the semantics of "puzzle" vs. "game". But if I distill your logic, I get the idea that the same game played against human opponents becomes a puzzle when played against game-playing (AI) routines in the computer. But isn't the game simply the interface for the competition-- whether the opponent is human or computer? Witness chess, where computer routines are capable of playing incredibly stimulating games and are known to win matches against human chess masters. So is this a game or a puzzle then? When I lose to GNU Chess is this really any differnt than when I lose to a human on FICS?
Thanks for the info. I didn't know that. With all the news about companies filing for patents and filing lawsuits over patents, that never occurred to me.
*sigh* I should have submitted my first response, which was longer. Film has been getting a lot better, both in terms of responsiveness (multispeed films, etc) and grain. Film thickness is a quality issue, why else would they go to the trouble to make APS film much thinner,except to allow for improved grain in a smaller frame size? Of course, I don't really consider it much of an enlargement unless the print is larger than 8x10-- and you start to run into the same issues doing partial frame prints at 8x10. But I like to print full frame-- since that's how I composed the image on the SLR. I also don't like having the photofinisher decide which end of my snapshots to cut off.
Yeah. Digital polaroid, what was I thinking? The solution is probably more coffee or less coffee, I'll figure out which after the next cup.
If you care about resolution and have the funds to consider hi-res digital alternatives, why are you even using 35mm? The film is thick, grainy (except at very low speeds), and the aspect ratio is goofy (it doesn't match standard print sizes at all). Contact prints are nearly inscrutable. Scratches and dust in printing become image wreckers quickly. Switch to large format, where contact prints are 4x5 and enlargements of 16x20 show no grain at all... then you'll really wonder when the digital revolution is going to catch up to analog.
Personally I think the film versus digital comparison is not really useful, since they are very different. What I'm waiting for is a digital Polaroid (a filmless camera), where you snap the shot and out spits a high resolution print.
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Numerous FAQs and warnings? I have to say I've seen plenty of information, but that none of it was in places a complete newbie is likely to see it, and certainly not when it's important, like during the installation itself. And maybe the default workstation on RH doesn't include these services, but it's just as easy to go into package selection mode when installing as it is to choose whether you want Gnome, KDE, or a server.
I've seen this complaint before, it's quite one thing to install an RPM (as many of us would be wont to do during an install, "hell yeah I want apache and sendmail and all these other cool looking things"), it's quite another thing for the installation to assume that choosing the packages means that they should be TURNED ON and LOADED when the system is restart, with no further intervention on the part of the user/sysadmin (which in a home use situation is likely the same person). So, the person who, during install, thinks they want to try something out at some point, so they install it, ends up with a system that is BY DESIGN insecure. The biggest insecurity comes from the operator not having full knowledge of the impacts of certain decisions and once knowledge is gained, control. If I don't realize that loaded packages will be turned on, I'm lacking the knowledge, and if the install program doesn't make this clear and offer me the choice to install but not activate, my control is diminished. The result is a system which can be very attractive to crackers, since the newbie operator may not know the services are running and probably won't know how to check for intrusions.
This is what happened to me, when I installed YellowDog (which is basically Red Hat for PPC). I knew I would want apache and some other server applications in the near future, so I installed them. It never crossed my mind that they would be started up by default every time I turned on my computer and visible to everyone who knew my IP address-- especially since I'd have thought they'd need at least minimal configuration before they'd work. I still have nightmares about being cracked again.
I'd have to say I'm in agreement. 99% of the time IE on Mac renders my HTML/CSS the way I thought it would be rendered when I wrote it (and this may be a problem with me, but HTML is not rocket science and I've been writing it since Mosaic was the most common browser), yet that same HTML is goofy as all get out on Netscape for Mac (not to mention that IE for Mac has great cookie management, the likes of which are only beaten by the new cookie piece in Konqueror/KDE2. IE5.5 on Win95, however, seems broken to me. It manages to screw up even simple pages when the graphics don't include height/width information (that is, redraws don't seem to be functional). My only concern about Gecko for KDE functionality is that it will impair development of the khtml library (if people are patching Konqueror to use Gecko for rendering, this is less people putting the khtml library through the paces), unless the KDE team makes the decision to abandon khtml in favor of Gecko. I mean, it's the rendering engine. In theory the end result should be exactly the same, right?
If you can't tell, I'm a grumpy ex-Mac-zealot (and frankly, they are still an exciting company, but they feel no better to me, ethically, than Microsoft) and if they've finally got an OS that doesn't crash on me daily, won't break all my old apps, will run my stupid horde of USB devices, AND give me many of the advantages of Unix (like real Perl, gcc, a command line, etc), then maybe it's worth it just to get my iMac to be a usable machine. Still, the feeling will be more of relief than of sheer exhuberance at this. Like, "finally, damn thing works the way it's supposed to."
This isn't censorship, it's because they're using vi to edit their MySQL code, instead of emacs and postgreSQL!
I don't get what this device is so great for, although I think I'm going to go to RS near me and continue to play dumb until they hand one to me and I can take it home and play with it. It scans barcodes and creates a poorly scrambled stream of characters, which were intended to be sent to DC's web site so I could look at an online version of the catalog I had just scanned the barcode from? What a frippin' waste. Why wouldn't I just do my shopping the old-fashioned way, with a long coat and a crowded store? Or more conveniently, a hacked CC db and a few online stores? Is this device's whole stated purpose to help me, the luser, not have to type in something as complex as a URL from a print source?
Now, on the other hand, if they sold a household inventory application and I could subscribe to an online DB of UPC codes (like CDDB, but with UPC instead of embedded CD IDs), that would be a sensible application of this technology, and might justify giving out the device as a hook for the software/DB subscription. That way I could inventory my books, CDs, tapes, LPs, electronics purchases, etc etc for insurance/warranty/budget purposes. That would be very useful.
But they don't do that, so if I want to use this to do anything useful, I've got to run Linux and use hacked together drivers?
So are you lugging your laptop around the grocery store scanning everything? Does the store not notice/care? Wouldn't this be a lot easier with a barcode scanner and a Palm/Visor?
You mean the tiny open source Linux crowd?
Yeah, those pitiful little bands of raggedly dressed hackers huddled together for warmth, using an OS that actually emulates the widespread, large-scale UNIX system quite well. As soon as I see Oracle 8i for Mac OS X I'm going to give a rat's ass about Apple again. Until then they have cornered the market on shiny plastic toys.
Most of their major apps were ported to Windows years ago and the only thing keeping Mac users from switching platforms then was a basic dislike for Microsoft dependency and the fact that Mac OS hasn't changed it's basic look and feel for 25 years. Apple's strategy here is good in that it will allow existing hardware to function and make the transition slow and hopefully less painful (of course, I won't be surprised if any Mac over 12 months old is going to wish it had a major RAM upgrade and a 400+mhz CPU). They were successful in transition before and it seems like they'll be successful again.
But none of that changes the underlying fact that they have a fairly small market share, which looks even worse when you factor out the education market. In fact, Linux may have a bigger market share than Apple, and Linux is used by respectable businesses in a number of mission critical ways. Macs are used by schoolchildren and marketing consultants to play learning games and make shiny brochures. Last time I went to any of the major computer dealers or electronics megashops near me, I saw many machines that would never run Mac OS and they had at least three flavors of Linux on sale (although not pre-installed) for the machines they were selling. Heck, they even sell Linux at Target!
Daily Mac stories on Slashdot aren't news, they're free advertising.
They seem to be doing so to provide legacy support to specialized DOS applications.
I don't know, which one is more likely to cause a purchase and bring a higher price?
First, I didn't pass judgement on her speech, which is now a famous article. I merely relayed the idea that the dictionary defines plagiarism pretty broadly and that the re-use need not be verbatim. And yeah, it was a speech, given in front of a large audience and reproduced in a very popular online forum. As such, it deserves to be held to a higher standard than a casual conversation. And still, I wouldn't have said anything to confirm or deny that I think her speech was plagiarism or that she is basically a leech on the alternative/punk music scene. Which I've thought since 1993 or whenever Hole first appeared, so I'm fine lowering my opinion of her back to its former position near the ground, which was temporarily raised after reading the Salon piece, but which I now suspect was heavily derivative of Albini's work and for which she appears to be glad to take the credit and the glory.
I'm sorry. My dictionary (Webster's) lists no definition of plagiarism which includes "line by line" copying. But it specifically mentions passing others' ideas as your own, using a source without credit, and presenting an idea as new, when it is actually derived from something else.
it's going to be time to get tired of all this crap, pull the plug and head outside to congregate with other live humans. Of course, I suspect we'll find that's been paved, and people found outdoors without a permit or a purpose will be subject to numerous stalking, lurking, and loitering laws. "I swear officer, I'm headed to the mall to buy a DVD, we weren't having a conversation!"
I second this heartily. KDE2, Konqueror and KOffice, are really doing a great job of blending the best ideas from lots of other packages, without just being a patched together clone of those ideas. The interface is exceptionally clean and easy to use. The whole quickly becomes more than the sum of its parts. KDE2 and associated apps make me very excited about using Linux for desktop applications-- especially coming from a Mac background and the bizarre direction Apple is going with their GUI.
So use the CVS tree and write a script to iterate over the packages you want. This way updates will be a lot faster as well.
Right, they will not license a player that can be a "legitimate" part of an OS system. However, there is nothing to prevent a non-OS player from working on Linux. Several similar tools already exist in a non-Open form, like Flash and RealPlayer, and the barriers to making a fully-compliant DVD player for Linux are cultural, not technological. One might argue that RealPlayer is actually more insidious than DVD. Not only is the player proprietary, but it discourages even the possibility of offloading content for time-shifting, backup purposes, or to reduce bandwidth pressure-- with presumably improved playback from local devices.
Considering how long Apple has been hyping this never-quite-released OS on its own website, I'm sure they're just trying to get rid of competition in the Apple/Mac rumor department.
You've been reading the MS Anti-Linux FAQ haven't you?
Let's see. The OS becomes more popular. So somehow the available knowledge pool shrinks to the point where developers are supporting newbie installations? The OS becomes more ubiquitous, therefore people stop developing for it and it's no longer cutting edge?
The idea that Linux is a small market OS that relies on spare time is a myth, although this has been true, it's quickly changing. There are several businesses who exist solely to develop and sell Linux solutions (whether they are viable is another question, but I think they will be). The Free Software Foundation (albeit a non-profit charity) has taken in several $100K in donations according to their "Thank GNUs" page, some of it from major hardware corps like IBM-- and their software is Free! As people start to realize that they don't have to be addicted to proprietary OS'es, the primary selling point of Linux won't be it's zero price tag, it will be the Freedom, something many of us are happy to spend a little money to preserve. In fact, some of the distro companies right now are basically using free ISO downloads as a loss-leader. It is not wise to clam up the servers right now, since it will alienate the people you need to hook the most, but there is nothing in the GPL that says they have to provide free downloads of compiled software in install-ready form-- certainly RMS encourages charging mightily for distribution costs, so that money can be given to developers. It's quite possible that at some point giving away binaries and whole distributions for free is going to be seen as doing the Free Software community a disservice, since it does nothing to help pay people for all their hard work.
If you read even 25% of the documents in the DeCSS case (which means you got past Touretsky's and 2600's testimony), you find that the plaintiff's attempted to demonstrate the harm that DeCSS caused them by doing exactly this process: using DeCSS to extract the video from the DVD, then using compression like DivX to make the file small enough to fit on a CD or more conveniently send over the wire. The judge also viewed a comparison of DVD played directly from the disc and this "pirated" file. Notwithstanding biases against the defendants from the outset, I think it was demonstrations like this and the widespread existence of a Windows .exe of DeCSS that convinced Judge Kaplan that DeCSS was primarily a tool for pirating. Furthermore, Open Source propaganda aside, there is nothing to stop any company from purchasing a license to produce an "authorized" DVD decoder/player for Linux. Finally, the case wasn't about piracy, really. It was about circumventing encryption techniques, and a fairly obscure portion of the DMCA which makes it illegal to spread devices/programs related to such techniques. While I, as a citizen, am outraged that the DMCA exists at all and feel that even if it is not unconstitutional that it is reprehensible, there is no defense here. If there are alternative tools that perform the same function as DeCSS, that does not somehow legitimize DeCSS. It merely points to the existence of other tools for "illegitimate" activity.
What's of interest to me, since I have no intention of purchasing a DVD player or DVD-ROM until the MPAA pulls its head out of its ass, is whether successful movie rips have been done using this or similar techniques from VHS, and how hard is that to get onto a CD?
When you support real Open Source and/or Free Software, then maybe I'll have sympathy for you as you are stuck with a single vendor and difficult transitions. As it is, there are several free/open solutions to the chat question. IRC being the first one that comes to mind. This would also allow the company to set up approved channels on the server, set bots on the channels, monitor activity, have departmental channels which can be logged and checked for trends/FAQ-making, etc etc-- based on your needs. As it is you are likely sending business-sensitive data out to AOL's server and then back inside the company firewall (unless I've totally got it wrong how AIM works). Your network people are right to eliminate this client. The sooner the better, imho. And I don't see what's wrong with using any peer-to-peer file sharing at work, it's bound to save on the e-mail server, which has to store, log, and hold all those attachments.
You're right. They way they've absolutely shut down IRC is a goddam shame!
*remembering wistfully the days when AOL was not internet anything* *sigh*
As a recovering Mac drone, I have to say I am not familiar with the "stability" of which you speak. I have been hard crashing Macintosh computers since 1988 and the situation has never improved-- in fact, I've grown tired of looking for a paperclip to restart my iMac, which lacks a sensible power-off or restart button. I'm sure you'll just call this "user error" and blame the victim. But when you make candy colored computers and force the usage of wiring schema like USB (the supposed remedy to all our device needs), the last thing I, as a user, should have to worry about is which device drivers or javascripted web pages are going to bomb the whole machine.
As a future GNU/Linux drone, I'm torn as to whether I want to spend the $30 to see if OS X is going to improve my life if it ever gets past beta (since I doubt they'll produce anything else resembling a test version, which would allow me to try the software before blowing $100 on it). But that's $30 I could be donating (tax deductibly) to the FSF, not furthering my proprietary software addiction. I'd respect Apple's OS upgrades a lot more if the last few weren't centered on giving me Sherlock, replete with lame searches that were no better than google, took longer than google, and were littered with so much advertising that it put pr0n sites and [insert portal wannabe] to shame. So forgive me for feeling burned by Apple, but I've never felt like they cared about helping me to help myself-- which is exactly the feeling I get as I've been making the transition to GNU/Linux.
Excellent point regarding the semantics of "puzzle" vs. "game". But if I distill your logic, I get the idea that the same game played against human opponents becomes a puzzle when played against game-playing (AI) routines in the computer. But isn't the game simply the interface for the competition-- whether the opponent is human or computer? Witness chess, where computer routines are capable of playing incredibly stimulating games and are known to win matches against human chess masters. So is this a game or a puzzle then? When I lose to GNU Chess is this really any differnt than when I lose to a human on FICS?
Thanks for the info. I didn't know that. With all the news about companies filing for patents and filing lawsuits over patents, that never occurred to me.
*sigh* I should have submitted my first response, which was longer. Film has been getting a lot better, both in terms of responsiveness (multispeed films, etc) and grain. Film thickness is a quality issue, why else would they go to the trouble to make APS film much thinner,except to allow for improved grain in a smaller frame size? Of course, I don't really consider it much of an enlargement unless the print is larger than 8x10-- and you start to run into the same issues doing partial frame prints at 8x10. But I like to print full frame-- since that's how I composed the image on the SLR. I also don't like having the photofinisher decide which end of my snapshots to cut off.
Yeah. Digital polaroid, what was I thinking? The solution is probably more coffee or less coffee, I'll figure out which after the next cup.
If you care about resolution and have the funds to consider hi-res digital alternatives, why are you even using 35mm? The film is thick, grainy (except at very low speeds), and the aspect ratio is goofy (it doesn't match standard print sizes at all). Contact prints are nearly inscrutable. Scratches and dust in printing become image wreckers quickly. Switch to large format, where contact prints are 4x5 and enlargements of 16x20 show no grain at all... then you'll really wonder when the digital revolution is going to catch up to analog.
Personally I think the film versus digital comparison is not really useful, since they are very different. What I'm waiting for is a digital Polaroid (a filmless camera), where you snap the shot and out spits a high resolution print.