I love gift certificates for amazon! Geek books are always so freaking expensive. Always in the $35(amazon)-$50(msrp) range. Plus you get to send witty little animated cards.
I agree. I think it's especially lame that they said this to the accessibility guy. I mean, here I am, 20/20 vision and great hearing, and I still have trouble reading that awful spelling and grammar CmdrTaco puts out. Joe said alt tags are probably the single most important part in making accessible websites. He probably left out proper spelling of words because he thought it would be obvious for anyone who is responsible for the content they put on their website.
Alright, these all belong in different categories. JV is a certified asshole, and didn't respond to interview questions. I picked Bruce Campbell because the interview was totally botched by chrisd.
While it's almost so bad that it's an exception to the rule, I think the Bruce Campbell "Answers" is quite possibly the worst interview *ever* on Slashdot. Can anyone find one worse?
HAHAHA!! Wouldn't it be funny if he had a LEGO server. And while we were killing his LEGO server he took pictures of it, and put it on his site?? No. It wouldn't be funny. And neither is your joke.
Keep in mind that AI is saying what's right for humans from their own perspective. Someone who believes in the death penalty might throw that section out. Or in a country that doesn't allow handguns, they might point out how awful it is that Americans can be shot by police if they're pulling out something that looks like it could be a gun. I think the author's point goes more against the "AI said this" argument and no more, as oppose to new point saying "America is great/tame/perfect."
The problem with a generic name like "GNU Image Editor" is some other image editor can come along and people might think they're associated. A user might try some other generic "Image Editor" that sucks and assume that all other versions of generic "Image Editor", including "GNU Image Editor", sucks as well. No, what they don't need is generic names. What they need is *marketing*, so people know that Illustrator is vector editing, Quicken is money management software, and GIMP is an image editor. Killustrator tried to abuse the Illustrator name, so people knew it was for vector editing, without paying for it and got rightfully sued. The only problem is, unlike Quicken and Illustrator, projects like GIMP and Kontour have no money for marketing. I can't think of any open source project that has money to promote its name, except the generic "Linux" through IBM. And Linux isn't really a brand name. It'll be interesting to see how open source projects deal with that problem. Maybe they'll get sued by more big companies and get the story posted to Slashdot so people will remember them, that's the only way I remember Kontour.
Well, if you have a bunch of people pooling their money and you're paying into it, and there's a bunch of people that are cheating the system, the people that ARE paying have to make up for it. So if they can keep more people buying instead of pirating then the prices drop for everyone. So I feel if $10-$20 was saved (MS gave it to me free in exchange for playtest, but still), I wouldn't mind spending 5 minutes on the phone every once in a while. It's the same idea of having to wait for employees to remove tags and things on clothes. It's either that or higher prices from people stealing stuff.
It could be argued that the problem isn't there with free software because they usually don't charge for licenses. That's true, hard to argue with free. I'm also sure someone would argue that Microsoft would just pocket the money and not lower prices. That's true, but it was proved in the face of competition they will lower prices.
I am a tech for an ISP and regularly use Linux and open source software on the server. I've been using it for years, some Debian at home, Slackware/RedHat at school, and more RedHat at work. Still, it seems there's always some irritating Linux zealot lecturing me on the differences between free and Free. Despite all the jokes I hear about Billy, which should be very obscure as to who I am talking about, it's assumed Bill Gates. Same thing with Redmond/Microsoft. If I am making jokes about Linux and mention Matt, what percentage of Slashdot people would know who I'm talking about? What percentage would give a damn? How many people would laugh at a Matthew Szulik joke if Leno told it?
Here's what I'm trying to say. I've seen star trek geeks (Matrix seems to be more common, actually) talking about Linux because they heard it was some geeky thing. They have no freaking clue when it comes to computers but use Linux 'cause it's cool with their geek friends. The Linux name is arguably on its way to becoming mainstream. But after all these years of using open source software I'm still not sure I have a firm grasp on "Open Source".
The DRM in Windows XP, if it's there at all, has been completely transparent to me.
Product activation is really easy. When I upgraded from Windows 98 it had my LAN already configured and activated online automagically. When I upgraded my motherboard and changed my processor it didn't have a network connection, but activating consisted of calling the number, putting in the license number I had, and entering a new number that was read off to me by the machine. No waiting on hold or listening to some minimum wage tech with a hard to understand accent. Whole thing took maybe 5 minutes.
Patches are very easy to install in Windows XP. I'm prompted to update from the taskbar and it shows me a list of updates, and then I can choose to download and install them. It sucks that they have to be there. But... I have never had my machine hacked in any fashion. The first and last virus I had was over 4 years ago, which was able to be cleaned without wrecking the system. Keep in mind that the virus was from an online aquaintance that sent it with malice, not through anonymous scanning or email.
So maybe I'm just not as sensitive to those issues as you are, but of all the reasons to use Windows XP I wouldn't use any of those. I'd like to hear more opinions from people who use XP regularly and not from people who judge from what they hear on Slashdot.
You are either a Windows 98 user or not a Windows user at all, because you don't seem to know the first thing about Joe Schmoe security in Windows. Windows XP, Me, and quite possibly Windows 2000 all have auto update features. It notifies you when there are updates to be downloaded, then it will automatically download them, press again to install, and the changes will take effect next time you reboot. I never go more than a day without a security updates, all with less effort than checking my email. If you chose to you could also set it not to prompt you before installing updates, but with all the FUD slashdot likes to spread about XP running behind your back, I thought I'd let everyone know the process that *does* prompt you and shows you a list of the updates. And it does let you uninstall updates if for some ungodly reason it breaks some software.
How about getting everyone to drop their analog video for an encrypted format? They did it with DVD by making it cheaper, adding features, etc. It's quite possible that they could use legislation as well.
I thought with the whole english/metric conversion mixup that NASA had decided to stop using units altogether! But nooo, someone's copy and paste is having issues I guess. Here's the full quote, in case something else was missed:
"With its 2.4 meter diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across"
there will always be the "analog" hole. I can always take an embedded device like a CD player and pipe it straight into my sound card. 99.9% fidelity, copy-free recording.
What if a copy protection scheme requires trusted speakers? Then you'd be stuck with recording via a mic which doesn't have 99.9% fidelity. It's unlikely, but possible, and would stop the analog hole you're talking about.
Re:Electronic voting ... where's the code?
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 2
You don't trust them to write accurate polling software, why would you trust them to release accurate polling software code?
BTW... I didn't get the pictures of the server room. But... here are some pictures of the earthquake damage, all from walking distance of my office: here
to ensure it could withstand the island's regular earthquakes
Has anyone else been in a non-earthquake-prone place and then had an earthquake? Here at work our server room was completely unprepared for an earthquake. Some of the machines came off the racks, some of the whole racks fell, our T1s got damaged or disconnected somewhere in the process. The whole disaster showed us how stupid some users can be. First, the T1 provider calls from Boston or something, "Duh, we show that your T1 lines are down, blah blah blah..", "Uh... yeah... we just had a 6.2 earthquake and we're rebuilding the server room", then he gave a kinda "is he serious?/boy am I embarassed" pause and gave me his professional opinion: "Oh, okay, that might be the problem." And then the fucking dial-up users. They're on the TV saying We know there has been an earthquake, please do not call the police to tell them there has been an earthquake, try to use the phone for emergencies only!. And our users are trying to get on freaking AOL instant messenger via dial-up. I was half expecting them to say "Oh yeah, I tried to dial in and it doesn't work. The phone works fine because I just called the police to tell them there was an earthquake."
Anyway, we bolted down all the racks, shame on us for not doing it in the first place.
Re:I'm sorry to say I agree with the court ruling
on
ADA Doesn't Apply to Web
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Maybe this has already been answered, but I haven't seen it. What if you use Flash on your site, and the plugin doesn't implement the ADA standards. Who is responsible? What if you do a poor job of typing out the alt tags and it makes it's possible, but difficult to run through talking software? There's too much grey area and difficulty when dealing with the standards.
This info was given to me by an air force PR-type guy a year ago, so I'll tell ya what I remember from it:
Conventional radar *can* detect stealth craft. Most of the stelath craft around these days reduce the cross section of the plane, not masking it completely. So if the enemy has a net of radar sites surrounding its capital city, then you can make it easier to navigate between radar sites. So they either have to pack in the sites a lot tighter or just try and get the most out of the ones they have.
Which is a shame, because I'm sure the one person that doesn't need an article posted about his ranting is RMS. Is there anyone that was surprised by his response? Can you tell the difference between those people that read the article and those that didn't? If the story has both "RMS" and "proprietary", then you can be pretty confident on what his opinion is.
Prices in smaller lots and higher purity are slightly higher, ranging up to around $35/pound for analytical grade.
The $35 price he gave there was for analytical grade, that could maybe be used in a chemistry experiment or something where percent error becomes important. That quality of course doesn't matter if you're tossing it into a lake is his point.
Slashdot Mirror
I love gift certificates for amazon! Geek books are always so freaking expensive. Always in the $35(amazon)-$50(msrp) range. Plus you get to send witty little animated cards.
Are seatbelts+US airbags still safer than just a seatbelt?
I agree. I think it's especially lame that they said this to the accessibility guy. I mean, here I am, 20/20 vision and great hearing, and I still have trouble reading that awful spelling and grammar CmdrTaco puts out. Joe said alt tags are probably the single most important part in making accessible websites. He probably left out proper spelling of words because he thought it would be obvious for anyone who is responsible for the content they put on their website.
Alright, these all belong in different categories. JV is a certified asshole, and didn't respond to interview questions. I picked Bruce Campbell because the interview was totally botched by chrisd.
While it's almost so bad that it's an exception to the rule, I think the Bruce Campbell "Answers" is quite possibly the worst interview *ever* on Slashdot. Can anyone find one worse?
What I don't understand is why they feel they aren't being compensated enough from commercials. It works for everyone else.
HAHAHA!! Wouldn't it be funny if he had a LEGO server. And while we were killing his LEGO server he took pictures of it, and put it on his site?? No. It wouldn't be funny. And neither is your joke.
Keep in mind that AI is saying what's right for humans from their own perspective. Someone who believes in the death penalty might throw that section out. Or in a country that doesn't allow handguns, they might point out how awful it is that Americans can be shot by police if they're pulling out something that looks like it could be a gun. I think the author's point goes more against the "AI said this" argument and no more, as oppose to new point saying "America is great/tame/perfect."
The problem with a generic name like "GNU Image Editor" is some other image editor can come along and people might think they're associated. A user might try some other generic "Image Editor" that sucks and assume that all other versions of generic "Image Editor", including "GNU Image Editor", sucks as well. No, what they don't need is generic names. What they need is *marketing*, so people know that Illustrator is vector editing, Quicken is money management software, and GIMP is an image editor. Killustrator tried to abuse the Illustrator name, so people knew it was for vector editing, without paying for it and got rightfully sued. The only problem is, unlike Quicken and Illustrator, projects like GIMP and Kontour have no money for marketing. I can't think of any open source project that has money to promote its name, except the generic "Linux" through IBM. And Linux isn't really a brand name. It'll be interesting to see how open source projects deal with that problem. Maybe they'll get sued by more big companies and get the story posted to Slashdot so people will remember them, that's the only way I remember Kontour.
Well, if you have a bunch of people pooling their money and you're paying into it, and there's a bunch of people that are cheating the system, the people that ARE paying have to make up for it. So if they can keep more people buying instead of pirating then the prices drop for everyone. So I feel if $10-$20 was saved (MS gave it to me free in exchange for playtest, but still), I wouldn't mind spending 5 minutes on the phone every once in a while. It's the same idea of having to wait for employees to remove tags and things on clothes. It's either that or higher prices from people stealing stuff.
It could be argued that the problem isn't there with free software because they usually don't charge for licenses. That's true, hard to argue with free. I'm also sure someone would argue that Microsoft would just pocket the money and not lower prices. That's true, but it was proved in the face of competition they will lower prices.
I am a tech for an ISP and regularly use Linux and open source software on the server. I've been using it for years, some Debian at home, Slackware/RedHat at school, and more RedHat at work. Still, it seems there's always some irritating Linux zealot lecturing me on the differences between free and Free. Despite all the jokes I hear about Billy, which should be very obscure as to who I am talking about, it's assumed Bill Gates. Same thing with Redmond/Microsoft. If I am making jokes about Linux and mention Matt, what percentage of Slashdot people would know who I'm talking about? What percentage would give a damn? How many people would laugh at a Matthew Szulik joke if Leno told it?
Here's what I'm trying to say. I've seen star trek geeks (Matrix seems to be more common, actually) talking about Linux because they heard it was some geeky thing. They have no freaking clue when it comes to computers but use Linux 'cause it's cool with their geek friends. The Linux name is arguably on its way to becoming mainstream. But after all these years of using open source software I'm still not sure I have a firm grasp on "Open Source".
The DRM in Windows XP, if it's there at all, has been completely transparent to me.
... I have never had my machine hacked in any fashion. The first and last virus I had was over 4 years ago, which was able to be cleaned without wrecking the system. Keep in mind that the virus was from an online aquaintance that sent it with malice, not through anonymous scanning or email.
Product activation is really easy. When I upgraded from Windows 98 it had my LAN already configured and activated online automagically. When I upgraded my motherboard and changed my processor it didn't have a network connection, but activating consisted of calling the number, putting in the license number I had, and entering a new number that was read off to me by the machine. No waiting on hold or listening to some minimum wage tech with a hard to understand accent. Whole thing took maybe 5 minutes.
Patches are very easy to install in Windows XP. I'm prompted to update from the taskbar and it shows me a list of updates, and then I can choose to download and install them. It sucks that they have to be there. But
So maybe I'm just not as sensitive to those issues as you are, but of all the reasons to use Windows XP I wouldn't use any of those. I'd like to hear more opinions from people who use XP regularly and not from people who judge from what they hear on Slashdot.
You are either a Windows 98 user or not a Windows user at all, because you don't seem to know the first thing about Joe Schmoe security in Windows. Windows XP, Me, and quite possibly Windows 2000 all have auto update features. It notifies you when there are updates to be downloaded, then it will automatically download them, press again to install, and the changes will take effect next time you reboot. I never go more than a day without a security updates, all with less effort than checking my email. If you chose to you could also set it not to prompt you before installing updates, but with all the FUD slashdot likes to spread about XP running behind your back, I thought I'd let everyone know the process that *does* prompt you and shows you a list of the updates. And it does let you uninstall updates if for some ungodly reason it breaks some software.
How about getting everyone to drop their analog video for an encrypted format? They did it with DVD by making it cheaper, adding features, etc. It's quite possible that they could use legislation as well.
"With its 2.4 diameter mirror ..."
I thought with the whole english/metric conversion mixup that NASA had decided to stop using units altogether! But nooo, someone's copy and paste is having issues I guess. Here's the full quote, in case something else was missed:
"With its 2.4 meter diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across"
there will always be the "analog" hole. I can always take an embedded device like a CD player and pipe it straight into my sound card. 99.9% fidelity, copy-free recording.
What if a copy protection scheme requires trusted speakers? Then you'd be stuck with recording via a mic which doesn't have 99.9% fidelity. It's unlikely, but possible, and would stop the analog hole you're talking about.
You don't trust them to write accurate polling software, why would you trust them to release accurate polling software code?
My favorite part of that interview is when the interviewer said "Lets see that again in zero gravity", and just slowed the video down a bit
BTW
to ensure it could withstand the island's regular earthquakes
... yeah ... we just had a 6.2 earthquake and we're rebuilding the server room", then he gave a kinda "is he serious?/boy am I embarassed" pause and gave me his professional opinion: "Oh, okay, that might be the problem." And then the fucking dial-up users. They're on the TV saying We know there has been an earthquake, please do not call the police to tell them there has been an earthquake, try to use the phone for emergencies only!. And our users are trying to get on freaking AOL instant messenger via dial-up. I was half expecting them to say "Oh yeah, I tried to dial in and it doesn't work. The phone works fine because I just called the police to tell them there was an earthquake."
Has anyone else been in a non-earthquake-prone place and then had an earthquake? Here at work our server room was completely unprepared for an earthquake. Some of the machines came off the racks, some of the whole racks fell, our T1s got damaged or disconnected somewhere in the process. The whole disaster showed us how stupid some users can be. First, the T1 provider calls from Boston or something, "Duh, we show that your T1 lines are down, blah blah blah..", "Uh
Anyway, we bolted down all the racks, shame on us for not doing it in the first place.
Maybe this has already been answered, but I haven't seen it. What if you use Flash on your site, and the plugin doesn't implement the ADA standards. Who is responsible? What if you do a poor job of typing out the alt tags and it makes it's possible, but difficult to run through talking software? There's too much grey area and difficulty when dealing with the standards.
Hey, just FYI. The PR-type guy was out of McChord AFB.
This info was given to me by an air force PR-type guy a year ago, so I'll tell ya what I remember from it:
Conventional radar *can* detect stealth craft. Most of the stelath craft around these days reduce the cross section of the plane, not masking it completely. So if the enemy has a net of radar sites surrounding its capital city, then you can make it easier to navigate between radar sites. So they either have to pack in the sites a lot tighter or just try and get the most out of the ones they have.
Which is a shame, because I'm sure the one person that doesn't need an article posted about his ranting is RMS. Is there anyone that was surprised by his response? Can you tell the difference between those people that read the article and those that didn't? If the story has both "RMS" and "proprietary", then you can be pretty confident on what his opinion is.
Prices in smaller lots and higher purity are slightly higher, ranging up to around $35/pound for analytical grade.
The $35 price he gave there was for analytical grade, that could maybe be used in a chemistry experiment or something where percent error becomes important. That quality of course doesn't matter if you're tossing it into a lake is his point.