I dont think the point of it is to provide everyone with free computers right now, but its sort of a bolt-on tool thats out there should you get the means to use it.
I mean, if they have ubiquitous wireless, that would mean that schoools in lower income areas of town can just plop machines down and immediately be connected. The bookmobile can come around and have machines in it that are already connected.
Its like this - when electrical and water infrastructres were put in 100 and some odd years ago (timeline? i dunno), they were laying in a groundwork that people could connect to. Obviously, not everyone was connecting to the grid immediately, but it was there when they were ready for it.
$10 - $18 MILLION dollars? What are they using? Solid gold antennas?
Well, part of it is the hardware and then connecting it all up, but I bet a lot of it is going to be spent on hardening the wireless points against those everyday fools we all know and love that like to destroy shit just to destroy shit.
If its not locked down, people will steal it. If it IS locked down, they'll try to smash it.
This guy's blog is all about free wireless in his area of london and hes mentioned free points outside that barely work becuase damnfools can't resist ripping of an antenna.
So, there you go. Yes, it would be alot cheaper if we didnt have to protect stuff against assholes, but until we're allowed to shoot people dead on the spot for not playing nice and being civil, we have to do things like build armored access points.
Computers should be the Great Equalizer, but we (programmers) don't have our act together yet -- any ideas about how this can be changed?
Yeah, get the morketers and otehr suits out of the programming process and let the programmers build the compatale software they've been wanting to.
I realize one of you tools will come back with some silly "thats not how the world works" reply, so here's my answer to that - Fuck the status quo. Custom isnt always good.
"Cookies are critical from a business perspective," said Lorraine Ross, vice president for sales at USAToday.com. "They help us do things like track our profitability per unique visitor, for instance. But if you don't know how many people are coming in, you don't really have a handle on whether your profitability is improving or not."
This is, in a word, totally false. False as the day is long. Any site with a decent eingineering team can munge links with a session ID and track people without cookies all damn day long.
Love the technical speak from people that just dont know anything about it.
But Droopy, I still don't see how me wanting to send spammers to prison makes me a hypocrite.
I have never prettended to beleive that i do not think spammers should rot in jail.
Definitions: hypocrite: A person given to hypocrisy.
hypocrisy: when someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time:
more Definitions: Dumbfuck: A person that throws words around with exclamation points that only have a vague idea what that word means. See: DroopyStonx
However, filling up prisons with spammers is really overkill. Really, you think that throwing them in the mix with muderers and rapists is fitting?
Actually, I in fact, do. If you cannot play nice in soceity, then get fucked.
I would also make sure they were in a population of murderers and rapists who were fairly modern and had used the internet.
Then I would give a carton of smokes to any convict who ass-raped the spammer so badly that said spammer had spend a week sleeping on his stomach with his ass elevated so the reconstructive stitches could heal properly.
That, my friend, would be justice.
Yes, I also laughed and danced a little jig when they found that russian guy dead, too.
Of course parents don't pay attention to the game ratings. They're printed right on the box! in Letters, often Boldfaced, right there!
You'd have to actually read to learn what the rating is!
When's the last time you saw the masses pay attention to anything that has to be read?
As a correlary: How many of you went to see South Park, The movie in the theater? Now how many of you remember sitting within 20 feet of a bunch of little kids?
Exactly. A) People piss and moan that there aren't enough warnings. B) Then they ignore them so they can piss and moan about what they were warned about in the first place and demand bans. C) Then when the thing gets banned, they complain about how the government is too intrusive.
More importantly; fact of the matter is a lot of us get some pretty good ideas while kicking back with the coworkers over a beer or two, and I'm not quite sure why you had a such a knee-jerk reaction to this. I'm quite sure ol' timothy has some find out-of-geek social interaction, and even if he doesn't why the fuck do you care?
Little needy of something and all the MensaMens are too busy sitting around with their wine, cigars, and talkin about Proust to help you?
jesus christ. assumptions, assumptions. Take a pill.
This reminds me of a weekend trip I took with the cub scouts a while back...
I mean, they were all cute little kids and they loved hiking and they'd get firewood all night long if you asked them to, it was just like having a team of little puppies with you that could actually DO things.
When that blizzard hit, though, we didn't have any problem at all with eating Fatty Joe. As a bonus, with his "diet" of non-stop candy bars and high blood sugar, the kid self-caramelized on the fire, and nobody really liked him anyway.
[ I mean, he was probably going to electrocute himself or get hit by lightening at the next jamboree, because God is pissed at the Scouts for kicking out the gays. ]
who needs to stay ontopic, really, when there's an awful joke to be made?
"Professor Ishiguro has signed an exclusive cross-branding deal with the makers of the Fleshlight. The professor was quoted as saying, 'Teaming up with Fleshlight will give our high-sensitivity tactile sensors a real use in everyday, or night, applications.' This was followed by Repliee Q1 emitting a high-pitched squealing laugh while covering her hand with her mouth, apparently her only real programmed function at this time."
most of you thought it, I just went ahead and said it
The best part of that article is the second photo, where RQ1 is giving the guy the sideways glance. You can almost hear the thought baloon: "I will so eat through your entire savings account."
...the death penalty has been instituted for people that wear "Big Johnson" and "Free moustache Rides" (or the more recent "SEX LESSONS: First lesson Free" updated version) t-shirts.
Well, in the tradition of referring to unsolicited commercial email as SPAM, the definition the journalists are trying to whip up FUD with is the one that counts, Mr PickyPants.
And theyre basically wrong.
So really, its:
- a non-story
- not SPAM in the FUD sense hat journalists refer to it as
- a fantastic thing sor nerds like us to feel smug about
- a more fantastic thing for nerds like us to get all semantic about
- another NOT front page worthy/. article.
- a total waste of time, but hey - its Sunday. ENJOY!
Who the fuck cares if youo get up at 0700 EST or 1500 Zulu? Its exactly the same damn time. My mother wouldnt have to do timezonemath every time she tried to figure out when to call me.
Want extra daylight hours of business? Open an hour later and stay open an hour longer, stupido.
Don't even get me going on the fucking 12 hour/24 hour clocks. 24 hour makes sense, but your average 'merikan thinks of it like is the "mindbendingly complex metric system."
so back to the point... why do they need this device that dails in for them then gives crappy wireles coverage when they could save $140 and just get a long phone cord.
I mean, ues, wireless is nice, but its not like you actually type with one hand, hold the laptop with the other, and pace all over the fucking house. You move, you plop down, and you get to it. Time passes, you move again. The chord isnt as big a deal as they make it out to be.
Whats next? A cigarette shaped box that lets you use your cell phone over POTS for when you dont have signal, just so you can dail directly from your adress book?
- - - - -
I really dont see any advantage to this. Is setting up DUN on your average businessman's machine that frikkin hard that they need the comfort of a webform to do their dailing in? Its not like they're entering in any LESS information.
I mean... just... *WOW*. Talk about creating a solution to a problem that really doesnt exist. You could just hit the local starbucks and pay for a days access 15 times for ths cost of this thing, and its immensely faster, or do your homework and dig up a list of FREE access points in an hour or so.
I especially liked the "Bonus" of having 128 bit encryption for the 20' of wireless you get, especially when they failed to note that your data still slams through the phone line in somplete plaintext unless you're using SSL.
MARKETING WEASELS!
The only way I can see the avantage of having a wireless connection to your phone line is for the guy who wants to sit on his cabin's porch in the great outdoors getting his email over a 40 year old phone line thats half chewed by varmints.
Then again, who the fuck wants email then? And still, why not just spend a few bucks on a long phone cord?
<unrelated note> Q: WHY would you go to a coffeeshop and get wireless there?
A: Cute young barristas, thats why. </unrelated note>
When you put something on a CD thats being sold, you're just asking for some fool that doesnt get it to start bothering you for support, even if you DO have big fat "not supported" disclaimers all over the place.
Linux installer for the client? What distro do you have? which version of which distro? what graphics card, and what version of windowing program do you have with which drivers? Gnome or KDE or something totally different? Do you USE windowing with this, or do we just take over the whole display? What networking API do we hook into? DirectX emulation? Which version of which kind? Sound? lets look at multiple card/driver combos....
Game companies are already churning out half-baked software as it is without trying to build decent linux support.
As far as "try before you buy," well, that's just economics. Go play it on a buddies machine if you don't want to slap down $40 on a game....and yes, If I was serious about graphics or video, i'd go get a mac because they're generally better at it than my windows tub. however, since I dont give a shit, its a moot point....and yes, I pulled those numbers out of my ass, because thats exactly what the corporations do. They make up numbers, pay some consultants a shitload of money to make up pretty reports, possible even read the reports, then throw them in the trash and go with the numbers that made up in the first place to rationalize getting their board of directors bigger bonuses for their management genuis. (but this is an entirely different argument.)
Slashdot Mirror
I dont think the point of it is to provide everyone with free computers right now, but its sort of a bolt-on tool thats out there should you get the means to use it.
I mean, if they have ubiquitous wireless, that would mean that schoools in lower income areas of town can just plop machines down and immediately be connected. The bookmobile can come around and have machines in it that are already connected.
Its like this - when electrical and water infrastructres were put in 100 and some odd years ago (timeline? i dunno), they were laying in a groundwork that people could connect to. Obviously, not everyone was connecting to the grid immediately, but it was there when they were ready for it.
$10 - $18 MILLION dollars? What are they using? Solid gold antennas?
Well, part of it is the hardware and then connecting it all up, but I bet a lot of it is going to be spent on hardening the wireless points against those everyday fools we all know and love that like to destroy shit just to destroy shit.
If its not locked down, people will steal it. If it IS locked down, they'll try to smash it.
This guy's blog is all about free wireless in his area of london and hes mentioned free points outside that barely work becuase damnfools can't resist ripping of an antenna.
So, there you go. Yes, it would be alot cheaper if we didnt have to protect stuff against assholes, but until we're allowed to shoot people dead on the spot for not playing nice and being civil, we have to do things like build armored access points.
Computers should be the Great Equalizer, but we (programmers) don't have our act together yet -- any ideas about how this can be changed?
Yeah, get the morketers and otehr suits out of the programming process and let the programmers build the compatale software they've been wanting to.
I realize one of you tools will come back with some silly "thats not how the world works" reply, so here's my answer to that - Fuck the status quo. Custom isnt always good.
They bookmark, or you look at IP addresses or even better, match it to a login on your site. This can be fairly easily done.
If youre just tracking visitors or clickthroughs, you DONT want to aggregate them, brcause you want to twist the humbers higher.
"Cookies are critical from a business perspective," said Lorraine Ross, vice president for sales at USAToday.com. "They help us do things like track our profitability per unique visitor, for instance. But if you don't know how many people are coming in, you don't really have a handle on whether your profitability is improving or not."
This is, in a word, totally false. False as the day is long. Any site with a decent eingineering team can munge links with a session ID and track people without cookies all damn day long.
Love the technical speak from people that just dont know anything about it.
Key phrase there: Even in Virginia
isnt that where AOL is/was based?
that fucking iPeople are iSenseless, iSelfish, and most iMportantly - iStupid.
Theyre gonna be iPissed when their iOld machines don't run iAnything.
so just exactly how long have you been waiting to work the term "Jhunkhad" into a post?
When we start hearing it on FOX news and CNN, we now know who to blame.
But Droopy, I still don't see how me wanting to send spammers to prison makes me a hypocrite.
I have never prettended to beleive that i do not think spammers should rot in jail.
Definitions:
hypocrite: A person given to hypocrisy.
hypocrisy: when someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time:
more Definitions:
Dumbfuck: A person that throws words around with exclamation points that only have a vague idea what that word means.
See: DroopyStonx
However, filling up prisons with spammers is really overkill. Really, you think that throwing them in the mix with muderers and rapists is fitting?
Actually, I in fact, do. If you cannot play nice in soceity, then get fucked.
I would also make sure they were in a population of murderers and rapists who were fairly modern and had used the internet.
Then I would give a carton of smokes to any convict who ass-raped the spammer so badly that said spammer had spend a week sleeping on his stomach with his ass elevated so the reconstructive stitches could heal properly.
That, my friend, would be justice.
Yes, I also laughed and danced a little jig when they found that russian guy dead, too.
It just doesn't apply to "M" games, only "AO".
and if you put Mature and Adult only games together, you see what you get?
MAO!
I for one, welcome our Chineese Videogame Oppressors.
Yes, Virginia, There IS such a thing as "too much coffee."
I mean, come on, people.
Of course parents don't pay attention to the game ratings. They're printed right on the box! in Letters, often Boldfaced, right there!
You'd have to actually read to learn what the rating is!
When's the last time you saw the masses pay attention to anything that has to be read?
As a correlary: How many of you went to see South Park, The movie in the theater? Now how many of you remember sitting within 20 feet of a bunch of little kids?
Exactly.
A) People piss and moan that there aren't enough warnings.
B) Then they ignore them so they can piss and moan about what they were warned about in the first place and demand bans.
C) Then when the thing gets banned, they complain about how the government is too intrusive.
[Almost forgot: D) Profit!]
one word: fucking people.
--obligatory bad joke post--
I for one welcome our remote controlling overlords...
In Soviet Russia, Humans remotely controll YOU
[ Insert ANY George W Bush/Dick Cheney joke here ]
In South Korea, only old people use remote controlls.
Roses are Red
Voilets are Blus
All my movements
Are controlled by you
karma. feh.
I thought you weren't going to be able to post for some time?
More importantly; fact of the matter is a lot of us get some pretty good ideas while kicking back with the coworkers over a beer or two, and I'm not quite sure why you had a such a knee-jerk reaction to this. I'm quite sure ol' timothy has some find out-of-geek social interaction, and even if he doesn't why the fuck do you care?
Little needy of something and all the MensaMens are too busy sitting around with their wine, cigars, and talkin about Proust to help you?
jesus christ. assumptions, assumptions. Take a pill.
This reminds me of a weekend trip I took with the cub scouts a while back...
I mean, they were all cute little kids and they loved hiking and they'd get firewood all night long if you asked them to, it was just like having a team of little puppies with you that could actually DO things.
When that blizzard hit, though, we didn't have any problem at all with eating Fatty Joe. As a bonus, with his "diet" of non-stop candy bars and high blood sugar, the kid self-caramelized on the fire, and nobody really liked him anyway.
[ I mean, he was probably going to electrocute himself or get hit by lightening at the next jamboree, because God is pissed at the Scouts for kicking out the gays. ]
who needs to stay ontopic, really, when there's an awful joke to be made?
Not printing right?
I always take a screenshot, dump it into a graphics program, then print the bitmap of it, or just save it for later viewing.
Allows you to stick your own little notes into the image, too. Highly useful for driving in new areas with your laptop in the navigators seat.
NOTE: DO NOT LOOK AT YOUR LAPTOP UNTIL YOU'VE COME TO A COMPLETE STOP.
The best part of that article is the second photo, where RQ1 is giving the guy the sideways glance. You can almost hear the thought baloon: "I will so eat through your entire savings account."
...the death penalty has been instituted for people that wear "Big Johnson" and "Free moustache Rides" (or the more recent "SEX LESSONS: First lesson Free" updated version) t-shirts.
Yeah. What He Said.
Well, in the tradition of referring to unsolicited commercial email as SPAM, the definition the journalists are trying to whip up FUD with is the one that counts, Mr PickyPants.
/. article.
And theyre basically wrong.
So really, its:
- a non-story
- not SPAM in the FUD sense hat journalists refer to it as
- a fantastic thing sor nerds like us to feel smug about
- a more fantastic thing for nerds like us to get all semantic about
- another NOT front page worthy
- a total waste of time, but hey - its Sunday. ENJOY!
AMEN TO THAT, Seriously.
Who the fuck cares if youo get up at 0700 EST or 1500 Zulu? Its exactly the same damn time. My mother wouldnt have to do timezonemath every time she tried to figure out when to call me.
Want extra daylight hours of business? Open an hour later and stay open an hour longer, stupido.
Don't even get me going on the fucking 12 hour/24 hour clocks. 24 hour makes sense, but your average 'merikan thinks of it like is the "mindbendingly complex metric system."
so back to the point... why do they need this device that dails in for them then gives crappy wireles coverage when they could save $140 and just get a long phone cord.
I mean, ues, wireless is nice, but its not like you actually type with one hand, hold the laptop with the other, and pace all over the fucking house. You move, you plop down, and you get to it. Time passes, you move again. The chord isnt as big a deal as they make it out to be.
You'd be surprised how many urban broadband users get their DSL over 40, 50, or 60-year-old phone lines.
/. isn't FUN anymore?)
Good point, Mr. AC. But i DID note the "chewed by varmints" part.
Youre also correct abuot the clientelle, but I was speaking more from immediate surroundings.
Offtopic... Offtopic... Offtopic...
(Who said
Whats next? A cigarette shaped box that lets you use your cell phone over POTS for when you dont have signal, just so you can dail directly from your adress book?
- - - - -
I really dont see any advantage to this. Is setting up DUN on your average businessman's machine that frikkin hard that they need the comfort of a webform to do their dailing in? Its not like they're entering in any LESS information.
I mean... just... *WOW*. Talk about creating a solution to a problem that really doesnt exist. You could just hit the local starbucks and pay for a days access 15 times for ths cost of this thing, and its immensely faster, or do your homework and dig up a list of FREE access points in an hour or so.
I especially liked the "Bonus" of having 128 bit encryption for the 20' of wireless you get, especially when they failed to note that your data still slams through the phone line in somplete plaintext unless you're using SSL.
MARKETING WEASELS!
The only way I can see the avantage of having a wireless connection to your phone line is for the guy who wants to sit on his cabin's porch in the great outdoors getting his email over a 40 year old phone line thats half chewed by varmints.
Then again, who the fuck wants email then? And still, why not just spend a few bucks on a long phone cord?
<unrelated note>
Q: WHY would you go to a coffeeshop and get wireless there?
A: Cute young barristas, thats why.
</unrelated note>
When you put something on a CD thats being sold, you're just asking for some fool that doesnt get it to start bothering you for support, even if you DO have big fat "not supported" disclaimers all over the place.
...and yes, If I was serious about graphics or video, i'd go get a mac because they're generally better at it than my windows tub. however, since I dont give a shit, its a moot point. ...and yes, I pulled those numbers out of my ass, because thats exactly what the corporations do. They make up numbers, pay some consultants a shitload of money to make up pretty reports, possible even read the reports, then throw them in the trash and go with the numbers that made up in the first place to rationalize getting their board of directors bigger bonuses for their management genuis.
Linux installer for the client? What distro do you have? which version of which distro? what graphics card, and what version of windowing program do you have with which drivers? Gnome or KDE or something totally different? Do you USE windowing with this, or do we just take over the whole display? What networking API do we hook into? DirectX emulation? Which version of which kind? Sound? lets look at multiple card/driver combos....
Game companies are already churning out half-baked software as it is without trying to build decent linux support.
As far as "try before you buy," well, that's just economics. Go play it on a buddies machine if you don't want to slap down $40 on a game.
(but this is an entirely different argument.)