We absolutely cannot directly control the behavior of all the spammers.
snip
we need to implement (or lobby for) verified-sender mail delivery systems everywhere, and get it to be the default delivery mechanism for new accounts.
Umm... You say that we cannot control the behavior of spammers everywhere, but you are suggesting that we *are* able to control the behavior of every single SMTP server *everywhere*.
Your solution fails on the exact same reasoning as the anti-SPAM laws do.
Anti-SPAM laws, at least, have a financial/punitive reprocusions.
[Replying to my own comment so as to not have to reply to people individually]
While kiosks and everything sound nice, remember that we almost already have those. I can buy DVDs right now and a ton of places, at least in the U.S, and I am willing to guess most industrialized nations.
So your local kiosk, currently selling DVDs for anywhere from $10-$30 (at a 100% mark-up) is going to use *the exact same business plan*, but instead sell the same product for $4?
To use the example of a typical movie ($25 on DVD), that means that the kiosk is going to have to sell six times as many movies on the new format ($12 profit on the original vs. $2 profit on the new discs) to make the same amount of money.
I just do not see that happening.
One of the problems of releasing this new format is that DVDs were intorduced and priced with "home movie libraries" in mind. Studios realized they could make a lot more money on these movies pricing them were they are affordable ($10-$25) and getting people to buy them (instead of selling one copy to a rental place, even at high prices).
The best comparison to this technology is renting a DVD from your local Blockbuster. While I am not a big fan of Blockbuster, per se, I see absolutely *NO* advantages of this technology over renting at Blockbuster.
At Blockbuster, I walk in, give my $4, and walk home with any movie on DVD. I can watch this movie any number of times in a certain time period. With these discs, I walk into Blockbuster, put down my $4, and walk out with a movie on DVD that I can watch any number of times in a certain amount of time.
Why, then, would anyone get one of these?
Well, I suppose you do not have to return these new movies, but is that a big enough incentive?
If you charge $3.99 for one of these movies, I assume that Blockbuster is going to walk away with $2 per disk. That is a 100% return. On the other hand, if Blockbuster buys a new DVD for $20 and rents it 15 times at $4/rent, that is Blockbuster walking away with a 300% return on the investment.
On top of that, Blockbuster still has the movie! They can continue to rent it out, or sell it as a previewed move for $10, making even more.
No, this makes no sense for consumers or for the rental people.
The nice thing about Usenet is how it is divided up in different groups.
To start small, you could just use *.moderated groups. This will help assure that you are going to get really good signal/noise ratio.
From there you could do some relatively easy research to see what groups tend to keep better signal/noise ratio. The group I keep the FAQ for, for example, comp.mail.eudora.mac, has a really good ratio.
From well researched groups, you could move on to the the entire comp.* and sci.* groups.
Of course you would almost have to save alt.* for last.
The other thing you could do is divide it by time. For example, stuff posted before 1992 or so is going to have a better ratio stuff posted after 1998 or so.
Hopefully your system would be good enough to be able to throw out some of the trash.
it would not be easy, but I think that it would be a great use of that stored information.
I have had thoughts in this matter, especially since Google now has a fairly complete archive of Usenet postings. These are discussions between two or more individuals, for the most part.
Imagine what a neural net, geared towards looking at online communication between people, could do with that amount of discussion.
It would also help that Usenet postings tend to be better sorted and, up until just a few years ago, had a relatively high signal/noise ratio.
Well, I said that Microsoft was part of the "public," which I suppose depends on your definition of "public." Note that I never used the term "citizen." None of the issues I bring up have to do with Constitutionality, so most of your arguments fall flat.
The last I checked, corporations, while not "people," do pay taxes and can own things, which is a large part of my point.
No, publically funded code should end up in the public's hands. The last I checked, Microsoft was part of the "public." According to the government, they pay taxes every year based on the government's way of determining corporate tax (in addition to the numerous taxes paid each year by stockholders and others)
So Microsoft, for example, is helping to fund research at public institutions just like everyone else.
As a result, they should have free access to do whatever they want with the code. If they want to sell it with the latest copy of Windows, let them.
At the same time, though, everyone else should have that same access to the code.
Trying to treat big businesses differently will only come back to smack you in the face, and will only cause more problems.
I believe there are some difficulties with multiple-AGP motherboards. I think that memory access is currently one of them (although I might be wrong).
As far as PCI goes, there have been some developments. You are starting to see more 66mHz and/or 64 bit PCI slots (most of the older PCI slots are 33mHz/32-bit).
I run dual CRTs now and plan on running dual LCDs on my next computer. While good 3D is important to me, I realize that it is *most* important on one screen.
So my second screen is not quite as fast as my primary screen. I can live with that.
I agree completely. About four years ago I bought a discontinued SuperMac S900. I got it for a little under $1000. Since that time I have thrown in another processor, thrown in more RAM (8 empty RAM slots from the factory means never having to throw an older DIMM out), thrown in USB cards, thrown in another video card, and attached almost a dozen devices (via SCSI, USB, and serial). Upgraded from 7.5.1 to 8.6 to 9.1.
The computer is showing over 10,000 hours on the clock.
It is still going strong and can still run most everything I need.
My previous computer, also a Mac, was bought in 1993 and is still in use by a friend of mine.
I was recently talking with some friends (Intel-architecture) about getting a new computer. I mentioned I was going to be spending about $3000 for a decent G4 and LCD. They mocked me, mentioning what a great PC I could get for under $1000. Of course, none of them had ever had a computer half as long as any of my computer.
Getting a Mac is an investment that pays off in ease-of-use and life-span.
Interestingly enough, Apple seems to have extended their rebate plans for the LCD monitors, at least in the Education store. They had been running this since late last year, allowing a rebate if you bought both a G4 and one of Apple's LCD displays. It is a pretty nice deal, knocking off $300 off of a G4+17" LCD, meaning you could get the 17" for under $700.
Most people were expecting the rebates to end shortly before the introduction of the new machines.
In all I am glad to see the speed bumbs, if for no other reason than it will allow me to pick up a refurb 867 mHz pretty cheap.
Only about 1/4 the way through the book...
on
A Beautiful Mind
·
· Score: 2
As a person who graduated with almost a dual-degree in math and psychology, I was interested to read Naser's recounting of Nash's story. About a quarter of the way through, however, I am having trouble continuing.
The book is a dedicated biography and reads a lot more like a text book than "the actual story of his life." (emphasis on "story"). It is not a very easy read, even for someone used to reading biographies (especially of mathematicians) and pscyhology textbooks.
Be forewarned: It is an interesting book, but not an easy one to tackle.
On a completely different note, one problem I had with the movie (of many, I did not think very highly of the movie) is the phrase "Based on a true story." I think that a much better phrase would have been "Inspired from a true story." I think that the English language, and Hollywood, have agreed on what these two phrases mean. Having seen the movie, and having known a bit of Nash's life, I think that "inspired" is a much closer description of what the movie is.
It is a nitpick,but an important one, especially for people out there who are not going to research Nash's exact life.
"I don't know if AOL distributes IE, but they still require it. I believe with version 7.0 they now also support Netscape. Nothing to do with agreements rather just convenience."
"In 1996, AOL agreed to bundle Netscape in its software package but backed away from the deal when Microsoft upped the ante, offering AOL a prime piece of Windows screen real estate. AOL's decision is a primary element of the government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft."
There may be a more relevant article, this was one of the first that appeared in a Google search.
As others have pointed out, it was not so much that Netscape was not able to keep up with Microsoft and IE, but rather that IE was being given away for free.
So Netscape starts giving away their browser for free. Their profit idea? To make money instead from the server software. This did not work either, since IE had a larger and larger grasp of the market, and it was easier to talk companies into buying things like IIS when you could show that more people had IE installed than Netscape (this was easy to do - IE was being installed with each new Windows install).
So Microsoft cut off that stream of revenue, simply by giving away a product, and including it with their already established OS.
Make the same argument, but replace "server software" with "portal," and you see another way that Microsoft cut off Netscape.
This is what the monopoly thing is all about. This behavior could very easily be found to be monopolistic.
One thought did cross my mind reading trough these different articles.
Is it possible that AOL bought Netscape, at least in part, as a possible revenue stream because of the possibility of future lawsuits against Microsoft? I mean, for a while I believe that AOL was still distributing IE with AOL (due to a prior agreement), and quickly turned Netscape open source (so as to minimize costs?).
Putting these things together, it would seem that AOL bought something and then did not use it that much. Now, however, with the Department of Justice and this lawsuit, it would seem that AOL is getting more use out of the Netscape name in the lawsuits than it ever did as an actual product.
These things are all about money. Is is not possible that AOL saw Netscape as a way to get some settlement money from Microsoft?
As witnissed by "A Beautiful Mind," (and previously by the wonderful movie "Pi") there seems to be a significant number of mathematicians (talking about people who spend their lives doing math research) who have mental problems.
One book to read would be Paul Hoffman's _The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos_. Erdos was a nomadic mathematician, wondering from university to university (and from math professor house to math professor house), working on mathematics. On average, he spent about 19 hours a day working just on math. The story is rather humorous, and a good read for math people and non-math people alike. Erdos survived until very late in his life, and commented that many of his fellow mathematicians had died or were going crazy.
I also read a short book on the life of Godel. Godel was such an example of a mathematician going crazy. He became so paranoid that he refused to eat, and ended up dying of starvation.
Sylvia Nasar's _A Beautiful Mind_, the biography of John Forbes Nash Jr. on which the movie is, apparently, very loosely based, is another such example. Nash was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia later in life.
One of the authors comments that it is possible that mathematicians are more likely to go crazy than other scientists is that, in math, there are no definite absolutes. Sure you can say that two parallel lines never meet, and prove things off of that, but then you can wonder "What happens if they do, eventually, meet?"
By Godel's second incompleteness theorem, we can't know that mathematics is consistent. Godel's theorem shows that there can't be any complete and consistent theories in mathematics. Imagine basing your view of the world on a system that you know cannot be complete or consistent.
After attempting to get W3.org's HTML validator to check the entire page, I finally just checked the main frame. Notice that I had to force HTML 4.01 Frameset, since the document does not include its own DOCTYPE.
Results can be found at this link. Needless to say, the site failed miserably, even with Frameset set.
iCab's built in HTML checker found 238 errors in the main frame alone, not to mention the dozens of errors in the surrounding frames.
Note that I am not suggesting that the writers are ever going to write strict HTML or XHTML (although they should for accessability), but that writing *such bad* HTML that some browsers choke on it is simply unacceptable *for anyone*, especially a web page like the Winter Olympics site.
Whether it is worth it to give users more freedom?
I agree with the original post. Anything that allows people to more easily use their freedom with OSS is only a god thing. I cannot even believe there is an argument about it.
The original article, with its reference to the "educational elite," is just crazy.
I am not a big fan of companies being able to use research done at institutions to the exclusion of others.
However, I think that they should have a right, just as everyone else does, to take the code and use it in whatever way they want, even if they want to modify the code and then not release it.
It should truly enter the public domain, with no restrictions on its use.
In other words, I would not want the code released under a restrictive code like the GPL that would require the company to do certain things in order to use the code.
My thoughts?
1) The company pays taxes and has an equal right to the code.
2) Relate computer code (and other research) to things in mathematics. If I take a method of mathematical approximation, for example, and impliment it in my calculator, should I have to release the code simply because the mathematical algrithm was previously published by a university? Where do you draw the line?
I have been looking to buy a 15" LCD in the near future. I had heard good things about the Samsung but I was disappointed to hear that they refused to provide Tom with a unit.
After looking around their web pages for about ten minutes, I finally was able to find an email address to express my displeasure.
I came across an old stash of 5.25" disks from my first Apple//c (1984 or so). After seeing this article, I went and did a search to see if anyone was still making those, as well.
Imation and Maxell, at least, are still producing them.
http://www.intimecatalog.com/supplies/DISKETTES_ MA XELL.phtml
If you go back and look at the original Slashdot article, you would see that part of what Gracenote was complaining about was that Gracenote *helped* Roxio write some of the code to access the, and helped Roxio out with some of the protocols they were using.
Roxio takes the help, and then turns around and make the default *another* DB - a free one that Gracenote is trying to compete with.
Gracenote had a decent case against Roxio. Gracenote could make a case that there was an understanding that the help Gracenote was providing would help Gracenote out in the end.
According to http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ , the combo drive is also faster, at 8x8x8x24x (CD-R/CD-RW/DVD/CD-ROM), compared to 4x4x6x24x for the older one.
I could not agree more. Working with high school students, I make sure to try to get one point across to them - you need to choose not only a major, but also a college that you are going to be somewhat happy with for four (or more) years.
This means that if you choose a programming-related degree, you had better be content sitting in front of a computer three years from now, at 3am on a cold February night, working on a program that is due the next morning.
If you would rather be doing something else at that time (working on a business presentation, for example) - DO THAT INSTEAD.
I started CS Engineering at an Ivy League school before dropping out and finishing a degree in mathematics. Math was something I wanted to be doing, and did not mind doing semester after semester.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to play a game on my Apple //gs called "Reach for the Stars." This was released in 1988.
f or_the_stars.html
Players were given planets, and could build space ships to meet certain objectives. A *very* basic Starcraft, I suppose.
A quick review and download at http://www.inwards.com/~fairway/game_pages/reach_
We absolutely cannot directly control the behavior of all the spammers.
snip
we need to implement (or lobby for) verified-sender mail delivery systems everywhere, and get it to be the default delivery mechanism for new accounts.
Umm... You say that we cannot control the behavior of spammers everywhere, but you are suggesting that we *are* able to control the behavior of every single SMTP server *everywhere*.
Your solution fails on the exact same reasoning as the anti-SPAM laws do.
Anti-SPAM laws, at least, have a financial/punitive reprocusions.
[Replying to my own comment so as to not have to reply to people individually]
While kiosks and everything sound nice, remember that we almost already have those. I can buy DVDs right now and a ton of places, at least in the U.S, and I am willing to guess most industrialized nations.
So your local kiosk, currently selling DVDs for anywhere from $10-$30 (at a 100% mark-up) is going to use *the exact same business plan*, but instead sell the same product for $4?
To use the example of a typical movie ($25 on DVD), that means that the kiosk is going to have to sell six times as many movies on the new format ($12 profit on the original vs. $2 profit on the new discs) to make the same amount of money.
I just do not see that happening.
One of the problems of releasing this new format is that DVDs were intorduced and priced with "home movie libraries" in mind. Studios realized they could make a lot more money on these movies pricing them were they are affordable ($10-$25) and getting people to buy them (instead of selling one copy to a rental place, even at high prices).
Economically, this will be a failure.
The best comparison to this technology is renting a DVD from your local Blockbuster. While I am not a big fan of Blockbuster, per se, I see absolutely *NO* advantages of this technology over renting at Blockbuster.
At Blockbuster, I walk in, give my $4, and walk home with any movie on DVD. I can watch this movie any number of times in a certain time period. With these discs, I walk into Blockbuster, put down my $4, and walk out with a movie on DVD that I can watch any number of times in a certain amount of time.
Why, then, would anyone get one of these?
Well, I suppose you do not have to return these new movies, but is that a big enough incentive?
If you charge $3.99 for one of these movies, I assume that Blockbuster is going to walk away with $2 per disk. That is a 100% return. On the other hand, if Blockbuster buys a new DVD for $20 and rents it 15 times at $4/rent, that is Blockbuster walking away with a 300% return on the investment.
On top of that, Blockbuster still has the movie! They can continue to rent it out, or sell it as a previewed move for $10, making even more.
No, this makes no sense for consumers or for the rental people.
The nice thing about Usenet is how it is divided up in different groups.
To start small, you could just use *.moderated groups. This will help assure that you are going to get really good signal/noise ratio.
From there you could do some relatively easy research to see what groups tend to keep better signal/noise ratio. The group I keep the FAQ for, for example, comp.mail.eudora.mac, has a really good ratio.
From well researched groups, you could move on to the the entire comp.* and sci.* groups.
Of course you would almost have to save alt.* for last.
The other thing you could do is divide it by time. For example, stuff posted before 1992 or so is going to have a better ratio stuff posted after 1998 or so.
Hopefully your system would be good enough to be able to throw out some of the trash.
it would not be easy, but I think that it would be a great use of that stored information.
I have had thoughts in this matter, especially since Google now has a fairly complete archive of Usenet postings. These are discussions between two or more individuals, for the most part.
Imagine what a neural net, geared towards looking at online communication between people, could do with that amount of discussion.
It would also help that Usenet postings tend to be better sorted and, up until just a few years ago, had a relatively high signal/noise ratio.
Well, I said that Microsoft was part of the "public," which I suppose depends on your definition of "public." Note that I never used the term "citizen." None of the issues I bring up have to do with Constitutionality, so most of your arguments fall flat.
The last I checked, corporations, while not "people," do pay taxes and can own things, which is a large part of my point.
No, publically funded code should end up in the public's hands. The last I checked, Microsoft was part of the "public." According to the government, they pay taxes every year based on the government's way of determining corporate tax (in addition to the numerous taxes paid each year by stockholders and others)
So Microsoft, for example, is helping to fund research at public institutions just like everyone else.
As a result, they should have free access to do whatever they want with the code. If they want to sell it with the latest copy of Windows, let them.
At the same time, though, everyone else should have that same access to the code.
Trying to treat big businesses differently will only come back to smack you in the face, and will only cause more problems.
I believe there are some difficulties with multiple-AGP motherboards. I think that memory access is currently one of them (although I might be wrong).
As far as PCI goes, there have been some developments. You are starting to see more 66mHz and/or 64 bit PCI slots (most of the older PCI slots are 33mHz/32-bit).
I run dual CRTs now and plan on running dual LCDs on my next computer. While good 3D is important to me, I realize that it is *most* important on one screen.
So my second screen is not quite as fast as my primary screen. I can live with that.
I agree completely. About four years ago I bought a discontinued SuperMac S900. I got it for a little under $1000. Since that time I have thrown in another processor, thrown in more RAM (8 empty RAM slots from the factory means never having to throw an older DIMM out), thrown in USB cards, thrown in another video card, and attached almost a dozen devices (via SCSI, USB, and serial). Upgraded from 7.5.1 to 8.6 to 9.1.
The computer is showing over 10,000 hours on the clock.
It is still going strong and can still run most everything I need.
My previous computer, also a Mac, was bought in 1993 and is still in use by a friend of mine.
I was recently talking with some friends (Intel-architecture) about getting a new computer. I mentioned I was going to be spending about $3000 for a decent G4 and LCD. They mocked me, mentioning what a great PC I could get for under $1000. Of course, none of them had ever had a computer half as long as any of my computer.
Getting a Mac is an investment that pays off in ease-of-use and life-span.
Interestingly enough, Apple seems to have extended their rebate plans for the LCD monitors, at least in the Education store. They had been running this since late last year, allowing a rebate if you bought both a G4 and one of Apple's LCD displays. It is a pretty nice deal, knocking off $300 off of a G4+17" LCD, meaning you could get the 17" for under $700.
Most people were expecting the rebates to end shortly before the introduction of the new machines.
In all I am glad to see the speed bumbs, if for no other reason than it will allow me to pick up a refurb 867 mHz pretty cheap.
As a person who graduated with almost a dual-degree in math and psychology, I was interested to read Naser's recounting of Nash's story. About a quarter of the way through, however, I am having trouble continuing.
The book is a dedicated biography and reads a lot more like a text book than "the actual story of his life." (emphasis on "story"). It is not a very easy read, even for someone used to reading biographies (especially of mathematicians) and pscyhology textbooks.
Be forewarned: It is an interesting book, but not an easy one to tackle.
On a completely different note, one problem I had with the movie (of many, I did not think very highly of the movie) is the phrase "Based on a true story." I think that a much better phrase would have been "Inspired from a true story." I think that the English language, and Hollywood, have agreed on what these two phrases mean. Having seen the movie, and having known a bit of Nash's life, I think that "inspired" is a much closer description of what the movie is.
It is a nitpick,but an important one, especially for people out there who are not going to research Nash's exact life.
"I don't know if AOL distributes IE, but they still require it. I believe with version 7.0 they now also support Netscape. Nothing to do with agreements rather just convenience."
From a Wired article from 1998:
"In 1996, AOL agreed to bundle Netscape in its software package but backed away from the deal when Microsoft upped the ante, offering AOL a prime piece of Windows screen real estate. AOL's decision is a primary element of the government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft."
There may be a more relevant article, this was one of the first that appeared in a Google search.
As others have pointed out, it was not so much that Netscape was not able to keep up with Microsoft and IE, but rather that IE was being given away for free.
So Netscape starts giving away their browser for free. Their profit idea? To make money instead from the server software. This did not work either, since IE had a larger and larger grasp of the market, and it was easier to talk companies into buying things like IIS when you could show that more people had IE installed than Netscape (this was easy to do - IE was being installed with each new Windows install).
So Microsoft cut off that stream of revenue, simply by giving away a product, and including it with their already established OS.
Make the same argument, but replace "server software" with "portal," and you see another way that Microsoft cut off Netscape.
This is what the monopoly thing is all about. This behavior could very easily be found to be monopolistic.
One thought did cross my mind reading trough these different articles.
Is it possible that AOL bought Netscape, at least in part, as a possible revenue stream because of the possibility of future lawsuits against Microsoft? I mean, for a while I believe that AOL was still distributing IE with AOL (due to a prior agreement), and quickly turned Netscape open source (so as to minimize costs?).
Putting these things together, it would seem that AOL bought something and then did not use it that much. Now, however, with the Department of Justice and this lawsuit, it would seem that AOL is getting more use out of the Netscape name in the lawsuits than it ever did as an actual product.
These things are all about money. Is is not possible that AOL saw Netscape as a way to get some settlement money from Microsoft?
As witnissed by "A Beautiful Mind," (and previously by the wonderful movie "Pi") there seems to be a significant number of mathematicians (talking about people who spend their lives doing math research) who have mental problems.
One book to read would be Paul Hoffman's _The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos_. Erdos was a nomadic mathematician, wondering from university to university (and from math professor house to math professor house), working on mathematics. On average, he spent about 19 hours a day working just on math. The story is rather humorous, and a good read for math people and non-math people alike. Erdos survived until very late in his life, and commented that many of his fellow mathematicians had died or were going crazy.
I also read a short book on the life of Godel. Godel was such an example of a mathematician going crazy. He became so paranoid that he refused to eat, and ended up dying of starvation.
Sylvia Nasar's _A Beautiful Mind_, the biography of John Forbes Nash Jr. on which the movie is, apparently, very loosely based, is another such example. Nash was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia later in life.
One of the authors comments that it is possible that mathematicians are more likely to go crazy than other scientists is that, in math, there are no definite absolutes. Sure you can say that two parallel lines never meet, and prove things off of that, but then you can wonder "What happens if they do, eventually, meet?"
By Godel's second incompleteness theorem, we can't know that mathematics is consistent. Godel's theorem shows that there can't be any complete and consistent theories in mathematics. Imagine basing your view of the world on a system that you know cannot be complete or consistent.
After attempting to get W3.org's HTML validator to check the entire page, I finally just checked the main frame. Notice that I had to force HTML 4.01 Frameset, since the document does not include its own DOCTYPE.
Results can be found at this link. Needless to say, the site failed miserably, even with Frameset set.
iCab's built in HTML checker found 238 errors in the main frame alone, not to mention the dozens of errors in the surrounding frames.
Note that I am not suggesting that the writers are ever going to write strict HTML or XHTML (although they should for accessability), but that writing *such bad* HTML that some browsers choke on it is simply unacceptable *for anyone*, especially a web page like the Winter Olympics site.
Whether it is worth it to give users more freedom?
I agree with the original post. Anything that allows people to more easily use their freedom with OSS is only a god thing. I cannot even believe there is an argument about it.
The original article, with its reference to the "educational elite," is just crazy.
I am not a big fan of companies being able to use research done at institutions to the exclusion of others.
However, I think that they should have a right, just as everyone else does, to take the code and use it in whatever way they want, even if they want to modify the code and then not release it.
It should truly enter the public domain, with no restrictions on its use.
In other words, I would not want the code released under a restrictive code like the GPL that would require the company to do certain things in order to use the code.
My thoughts?
1) The company pays taxes and has an equal right to the code.
2) Relate computer code (and other research) to things in mathematics. If I take a method of mathematical approximation, for example, and impliment it in my calculator, should I have to release the code simply because the mathematical algrithm was previously published by a university? Where do you draw the line?
I have been looking to buy a 15" LCD in the near future. I had heard good things about the Samsung but I was disappointed to hear that they refused to provide Tom with a unit.
After looking around their web pages for about ten minutes, I finally was able to find an email address to express my displeasure.
Contact Samsung's PR department.
I believe that Samsung makes the highly regarded Apple Studio monitors, as well.
One question I have (as I read through Tom's article) is why a DVI connection will put you back about $100 more than a similar VGA-only LCD.
Actually, if you check the site I reference, most manufacturers are still making 8" disks.
http://www.intimecatalog.com/disk.phtml and click on almost any of the manufacturers.
I came across an old stash of 5.25" disks from my first Apple //c (1984 or so). After seeing this article, I went and did a search to see if anyone was still making those, as well.
_ MA XELL.phtml
Imation and Maxell, at least, are still producing them.
http://www.intimecatalog.com/supplies/DISKETTES
Any guesses when those will stop being produced?
If you go back and look at the original Slashdot article, you would see that part of what Gracenote was complaining about was that Gracenote *helped* Roxio write some of the code to access the, and helped Roxio out with some of the protocols they were using.
Roxio takes the help, and then turns around and make the default *another* DB - a free one that Gracenote is trying to compete with.
Gracenote had a decent case against Roxio. Gracenote could make a case that there was an understanding that the help Gracenote was providing would help Gracenote out in the end.
According to http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ , the combo drive is also faster, at 8x8x8x24x (CD-R/CD-RW/DVD/CD-ROM), compared to 4x4x6x24x for the older one.
So there are a few more differences, as well.
I could not agree more. Working with high school students, I make sure to try to get one point across to them - you need to choose not only a major, but also a college that you are going to be somewhat happy with for four (or more) years.
This means that if you choose a programming-related degree, you had better be content sitting in front of a computer three years from now, at 3am on a cold February night, working on a program that is due the next morning.
If you would rather be doing something else at that time (working on a business presentation, for example) - DO THAT INSTEAD.
I started CS Engineering at an Ivy League school before dropping out and finishing a degree in mathematics. Math was something I wanted to be doing, and did not mind doing semester after semester.
Not only that, but it is connected to the Internet via an iMac with a 56k modem. Slashdot will easily saturate that line with requests alone.
Kill the computer and the Internet connection (and probably the iMac doing the routing)