I can't wait for the diamond to lose it's monatary value.
Actually, the best way for diamomd to lose its value is to convince enough people there is no significant difference between a manufactured and a natural diamond. The value of a natural diamond is based on how few flaws there are (fewer->more value). Yet, the odd thing is, how you tell a manufactured diamond from a natural one is the manufactured ones often don't have flaws.
At least for the APs, a self-contained solar charging/battery powered AP with repeating ability is going to run $1k+ each, last I looked, the solar cells costed ~$700.
Right now, I'd rather have the relief workers use radios and send that $1000 and send that money's worth of food, water and other necessities than send electronics of questionable value to a relief effort. I think radios last a lot longer than laptops, in durability and in battery life per charge.
You are right. Damn them for using a Mac for this, despite Netcraft saying the server has been Linux/Apache. That'll teach them, they should have been using Windows XP running IIS.
Do the editors get a sense of pride in downing other people's servers? I mean, Slashdot probably points people to places such that they get 1000x their usual visit traffic, which means that they are simply unprepared for such an unpredictable load spike.
I think it might be possible to at least prevent the advertiser from knowing where they'll be printed.
One problem I have with this anonymity is that I know for sure that I'll get a flood of ads for bootlegs on my web site should I use Google's ad system. I don't want to be associated with those leeches, and from what I can tell, there's no way to prevent that.
Gentoo Linux is free. So above the energy, space, staffer requirements the GNU/Linux costs are ZERO.
Wrong. The code and OS itself is free. Even if the knowledge itself is free, learning it has some costs associated, even if the cost is just "time" (in a paying job, time costs money too).
Admins that know Linux can be more expensive, retraining said staff can mean a lot of down time during the training and so on. Frankly, it takes time to know the ins and outs of a new OS, and for an existing system with existing training, all those costs are already sunk.
I often find that scripting makes my life easier than point and grunt. Silly me:)
Not everyone has the time and skills to do that. There are a lot of competent people whose time and talents are far better used AWAY from the computer, yet they need to have these sorts of tools at their disposal. Not everyone can spend a considerable fraction of their time learning scripting. They leave that to the computer nerds that don't have better things to do with their time.
There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.
I wonder when Microsoft is going to quit caving. I don't think they can afford any big success stories, but so many cities and businesses are resorting to this to try to get a fair price for the product and support that I don't think any of them are truly prepared for such a transition.
Even when I was a windows user I used Winimp as it is free, compresses better [when making.imp
Why use yet another compression format? I hate it when people make/use completely new formats like that, where it is completely incompatible and doesn't improve enough to make it worth switching away from a widely used format. RAR is annoying enough, I'd much prefer sticking ZIP, gz or bz2.
Yeah, it seems pretty dumb to do it that way to boot, which makes it seem unlikely.
Why frustrate 90% of your visitors with an unnecessary 8MB download? Why front the bandwidth costs of pushing a copy of Firefox to a visitor that might not appreciate it?
I'm glad to know I'm not the only person out there who's used Firefox and still prefers IE, though I use IE because of speed and simplicity (couldn't care less about tabbed browsing).
There are a lot of people that do this, though I think it is unfortunate.
As for speed, I'm OK with Firefox all the way down to a 400MHz Pentium II. Sure, IE is faster but for the IMO minor speed increase you get the malware risk. I'd rather spend another sub-second waiting for a page to render than spend an evening removing malware or weekend reinstalling the OS.
As for simplicity, I use adblock and flashblock to hide the excessive ads. There are ad and flashblockers for IE too, but those aren't as elegant, IMO.
Yes. A lot of businesses stay behind. The licences for new software costs money, and that cost MUST be offset by a reduction in other costs in order to make it worth the cost of upgrading.
Good news is that they're not charging a restocking fee. Bad news is that you'll have to pay for the shipping if you send it back, the offer only applies to stock minis
I think the shipping is a lot cheaper than what it would cost to rent a mini for a month if there were places that rented them out.
I think it's unfortunate, but there are people that judge their value by the car they own, the computer they own and so on.
I also think it is also unfortunate that people assume "compensating". I consider it an Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacy.
The ponycar era died for several good reasons. Current cars are faster and more powerful anyway, and don't guzzle as much gasolene and don't polute nearly as much. Pre-1971 all the engine ratings were in gross horsepower anyway, where power robbing accessories, water pumps, alternators and such weren't used in their testing. Some current I-4s are more powerful than V-8s in the ponycar era.
Good luck getting your congressmen and senators to vote for this. First the auto-lobby will scream bloody-murder because it would require extra systems in every car, which raises their costs. They sure as heck aren't going to eat into their own profits, so that means the price increases are passed along to the consumers, who want to know why their honda accords now cost $35,000 for a feature they don't want anyhow.
Automakers said the same for every other mandatory safety and emmission system currently standard in autos today. When adjusted for household income, the average price of a new car has not increased.
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
I think it should be noted that this isn't an easy feat to perform.
BTW: I think cell towers run on emergency generators when without power, but those don't work if there's water in the intake. Lots of electronics don't like working when submerged in water, hence a lot of telecomm devices are down.
I think the first three points in the article are entirely valid reasons to stay away from it as a desktop. I use Linux for servers, in a MythTV system, in my APs, but not as my desktop.
And the claim that Windows is a prohibitive fraction of the computer's price, it isn't. Scuttlebutt is that the OEM licence is around $40 in volume.
You can say Linux is free in several senses, but time getting used to the new system, and frurstration are costs that Linux proponents don't consider. Relearning how to use every type of program is a daunting task for someone that just wants to USE their computer, not fiddle with it. I simply have gotten used to Windows, know how to keep it stable and how to protect it, and very little of that knowledge transfers.
Part of the problem is that the price of the gadget, the phone, is subsidized by the service contract. So the price looks good but only because you have to buy the service. If you don't want the contract or the benefit of that subsidy, you have to buy an unlocked phone, which can be a lot more expensive. The problem there is I don't know if the unlocked device will work with the no-contract services.
But then, phone services don't require that you use the same phone during the entire contract, buy a new phone and they'll switch it over to the new phone.
I think it is wasteful to go through a new phone every year. I hope not too many good phones just get recycled.
I've never considered it a problem to use unsupported software. A lot of people still use 98SE. I think MS reps said security fixes will still be made available for W2K.
So long as the third party software you need still supports it, it should be fine. IE and OE issues aren't a problem if you use alternatives, and firewalls can block ports, so security isn't a problem. After five years of tweaks and bug fixes, Windows 2000 is mature and stable software, IMO.
I think to this day, XP and 2K3 formats the filesystems as FAT32, and converts them to NTFS before installing the OS. (Win2K may have been the last OS to do this, so please verify)
This is the first I've never heard of this, so please excuse my skepticism. Why format FAT32 then change it to NTFS before installing the OS? Wouldn't it be simpler to just go straight to NTFS?
I know the Alpha version of NT4.0 kind of liked having a FAT boot partition, but that's just a tiny thing to hold the ARC loader, the rest of the drive can be whatever. I used the same partition to hold MILO and the kernel.
I would expect that software makers should provide universal binaries for several years because the Macs currently being sold still need updated software from time to time. It would be silly for the third party publishers would require a switch to a new machine arch just to use the latest version.
Maybe the smarter installers will install only the necessary binaries.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait for the diamond to lose it's monatary value.
Actually, the best way for diamomd to lose its value is to convince enough people there is no significant difference between a manufactured and a natural diamond. The value of a natural diamond is based on how few flaws there are (fewer->more value). Yet, the odd thing is, how you tell a manufactured diamond from a natural one is the manufactured ones often don't have flaws.
They need power first.
"Wi-Fi" needs power. Laptops need power.
At least for the APs, a self-contained solar charging/battery powered AP with repeating ability is going to run $1k+ each, last I looked, the solar cells costed ~$700.
Right now, I'd rather have the relief workers use radios and send that $1000 and send that money's worth of food, water and other necessities than send electronics of questionable value to a relief effort. I think radios last a lot longer than laptops, in durability and in battery life per charge.
I don't know the setup of that web site, but Netcraft says it is pretty much a LAMP system.
Being free isn't an excuse to be malicious like this though, it's an abuse of freedom.
The issue I have is that it seems the Slashdot editors are being malicious, especially when they have Coralcache and Mirrordot available to them.
That's what happens when you use a Mac.
You are right. Damn them for using a Mac for this, despite Netcraft saying the server has been Linux/Apache. That'll teach them, they should have been using Windows XP running IIS.
Do the editors get a sense of pride in downing other people's servers? I mean, Slashdot probably points people to places such that they get 1000x their usual visit traffic, which means that they are simply unprepared for such an unpredictable load spike.
Aren't there secure USB key standards, where only authenticated software can even retrieve the data? I'm sure something like that can be done.
I think it could be used to implement a "use twice" key, so that if the valets try to use it on a joyride, the owner would know.
I think it might be possible to at least prevent the advertiser from knowing where they'll be printed.
One problem I have with this anonymity is that I know for sure that I'll get a flood of ads for bootlegs on my web site should I use Google's ad system. I don't want to be associated with those leeches, and from what I can tell, there's no way to prevent that.
Gentoo Linux is free. So above the energy, space, staffer requirements the GNU/Linux costs are ZERO.
Wrong. The code and OS itself is free. Even if the knowledge itself is free, learning it has some costs associated, even if the cost is just "time" (in a paying job, time costs money too).
Admins that know Linux can be more expensive, retraining said staff can mean a lot of down time during the training and so on. Frankly, it takes time to know the ins and outs of a new OS, and for an existing system with existing training, all those costs are already sunk.
I often find that scripting makes my life easier than point and grunt. Silly me :)
Not everyone has the time and skills to do that. There are a lot of competent people whose time and talents are far better used AWAY from the computer, yet they need to have these sorts of tools at their disposal. Not everyone can spend a considerable fraction of their time learning scripting. They leave that to the computer nerds that don't have better things to do with their time.
For me to lose my work I'd have to have five hardrives fail and my CDR collection evaporate.
What kind of RAID setup do you have where you have to have five hard drives fail to lose the RAID data?
There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.
I wonder when Microsoft is going to quit caving. I don't think they can afford any big success stories, but so many cities and businesses are resorting to this to try to get a fair price for the product and support that I don't think any of them are truly prepared for such a transition.
Windows includes zip and unzip utilities.
.imp
I've never used the paid version of WinZip.
Even when I was a windows user I used Winimp as it is free, compresses better [when making
Why use yet another compression format? I hate it when people make/use completely new formats like that, where it is completely incompatible and doesn't improve enough to make it worth switching away from a widely used format. RAR is annoying enough, I'd much prefer sticking ZIP, gz or bz2.
Yeah, it seems pretty dumb to do it that way to boot, which makes it seem unlikely.
Why frustrate 90% of your visitors with an unnecessary 8MB download? Why front the bandwidth costs of pushing a copy of Firefox to a visitor that might not appreciate it?
I'm glad to know I'm not the only person out there who's used Firefox and still prefers IE, though I use IE because of speed and simplicity (couldn't care less about tabbed browsing).
There are a lot of people that do this, though I think it is unfortunate.
As for speed, I'm OK with Firefox all the way down to a 400MHz Pentium II. Sure, IE is faster but for the IMO minor speed increase you get the malware risk. I'd rather spend another sub-second waiting for a page to render than spend an evening removing malware or weekend reinstalling the OS.
As for simplicity, I use adblock and flashblock to hide the excessive ads. There are ad and flashblockers for IE too, but those aren't as elegant, IMO.
Yes. A lot of businesses stay behind. The licences for new software costs money, and that cost MUST be offset by a reduction in other costs in order to make it worth the cost of upgrading.
Good news is that they're not charging a restocking fee. Bad news is that you'll have to pay for the shipping if you send it back, the offer only applies to stock minis
I think the shipping is a lot cheaper than what it would cost to rent a mini for a month if there were places that rented them out.
If it really would lead to much less expensive colocation, why would the operators switch to a new standard so they can charge less?
I think it's unfortunate, but there are people that judge their value by the car they own, the computer they own and so on.
I also think it is also unfortunate that people assume "compensating". I consider it an Appeal to Ridicule logical fallacy.
The ponycar era died for several good reasons. Current cars are faster and more powerful anyway, and don't guzzle as much gasolene and don't polute nearly as much. Pre-1971 all the engine ratings were in gross horsepower anyway, where power robbing accessories, water pumps, alternators and such weren't used in their testing. Some current I-4s are more powerful than V-8s in the ponycar era.
Good luck getting your congressmen and senators to vote for this. First the auto-lobby will scream bloody-murder because it would require extra systems in every car, which raises their costs. They sure as heck aren't going to eat into their own profits, so that means the price increases are passed along to the consumers, who want to know why their honda accords now cost $35,000 for a feature they don't want anyhow.
Automakers said the same for every other mandatory safety and emmission system currently standard in autos today. When adjusted for household income, the average price of a new car has not increased.
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
I think it should be noted that this isn't an easy feat to perform.
BTW: I think cell towers run on emergency generators when without power, but those don't work if there's water in the intake. Lots of electronics don't like working when submerged in water, hence a lot of telecomm devices are down.
I think the first three points in the article are entirely valid reasons to stay away from it as a desktop. I use Linux for servers, in a MythTV system, in my APs, but not as my desktop.
And the claim that Windows is a prohibitive fraction of the computer's price, it isn't. Scuttlebutt is that the OEM licence is around $40 in volume.
You can say Linux is free in several senses, but time getting used to the new system, and frurstration are costs that Linux proponents don't consider. Relearning how to use every type of program is a daunting task for someone that just wants to USE their computer, not fiddle with it. I simply have gotten used to Windows, know how to keep it stable and how to protect it, and very little of that knowledge transfers.
Gadgets really shouldn't require contracts.
Part of the problem is that the price of the gadget, the phone, is subsidized by the service contract. So the price looks good but only because you have to buy the service. If you don't want the contract or the benefit of that subsidy, you have to buy an unlocked phone, which can be a lot more expensive. The problem there is I don't know if the unlocked device will work with the no-contract services.
But then, phone services don't require that you use the same phone during the entire contract, buy a new phone and they'll switch it over to the new phone.
I think it is wasteful to go through a new phone every year. I hope not too many good phones just get recycled.
I've never considered it a problem to use unsupported software. A lot of people still use 98SE. I think MS reps said security fixes will still be made available for W2K.
So long as the third party software you need still supports it, it should be fine. IE and OE issues aren't a problem if you use alternatives, and firewalls can block ports, so security isn't a problem. After five years of tweaks and bug fixes, Windows 2000 is mature and stable software, IMO.
I think to this day, XP and 2K3 formats the filesystems as FAT32, and converts them to NTFS before installing the OS. (Win2K may have been the last OS to do this, so please verify)
This is the first I've never heard of this, so please excuse my skepticism. Why format FAT32 then change it to NTFS before installing the OS? Wouldn't it be simpler to just go straight to NTFS?
I know the Alpha version of NT4.0 kind of liked having a FAT boot partition, but that's just a tiny thing to hold the ARC loader, the rest of the drive can be whatever. I used the same partition to hold MILO and the kernel.
I would expect that software makers should provide universal binaries for several years because the Macs currently being sold still need updated software from time to time. It would be silly for the third party publishers would require a switch to a new machine arch just to use the latest version.
Maybe the smarter installers will install only the necessary binaries.