Where does the Government get their laptops?
on
Replacing a Thinkpad?
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Aside - am I alone in chuckling at the stream of people suggesting Apple products, even though the original poster specifically stated that he doesn't want a Chinese made laptop? Has no Mac user ever turned their machine upside down and looked at the little sticker on the bottom?
Anyhow, I have to think that somewhere in the US secuirity establishment there must be a company supplying laptop gear designed and built in the U.S. specifically because folks like the CIA might not want to trust hardware built in China.
Or, in other words, if all laptops are built in China, could the Chinese government be dumb enough not to include some super-secret features that they can use when needed?
Thinking back thirty-five odd years, I remember a friend with an impossibly cool HP, RPN of course, and a built in teeny card reader; I still recall the *click* of the keys. But what sold me on my first digital calculator in high school was realizing that you could type in numbers, turn it upside down, and spell out words.
Sort of.
I have to say that during the time a year or so back when I used Gmail a lot I always found the interface kind of irritating.
Every time I wanted to add a new Label and corresponding Filter it seemed like I had to trial and error because the process was less than obvious. And I don't care for the way that threads are collapsed, making it difficult to find one message out of the ten or twelve in a conversation.
I guess it just felt like everything took two or three or four more clicks than it should have. That may be a subjective assessment, but I can't see using Gmail as my primary e-mail client.
"many of which were not infringing on SFWA copyrights in any way.
So what you're saying is that yes the site does contain copyrighted materials for which no permission been obtained, and hence it does infringe on the works of some authors?
Sorry chief, but ya do the crime, ya do the time. Be more careful in the future.
Um, setting up one PC to record one phone line, and then speculating that maybe you could run the audio through NaturallySpeaking to generate keywords is rather a long way from building a "poor man's" Echelon.
When you've managed to capture your whole neighborhood's phone traffic and can pick keywords out of fifty or a hundred people's phone traffic, (which NaturallySpeaking won't do without training) call me.
This will get modded flamebait, but I doubt that this bump in sales will be sustainable.
I expect that lot of these new Apple buyers are people who, like me, just grew weary of Microsoft,their attitude, and the endless virus and other problems.
The problem for Apple is that they, and the fanboys, are selling the product as perfection, as complete out of the box, as seamless and needing no attention beyond plugging in the power supply once a day.
The reality of course is much different. Macs have some pretty serious deficiencies, even in the much vaunted user interface. Macs crash just like a Windows computer. Macs experience hardware issues. Macs, if you use them heavily, need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly.
After two years with a Mac I tell people that really it's no more or less easy to use than a Windows machine, and has just as many irritations and problems. They're just different irritations and problems.
Because Apple sells their computers as the most perfect thing in the world, all of those day to day issues seem that much more disappointing.
My guess is that a lot of these "switchers" will hang onto their MacBooks for one cycle, then revert back to Windows in order to avoid compatibility issues, cost issues, and in some situations the lack of specific software that isn't available on the Mac.
At the end of the day there just isn't that much about the Mac that makes it a slam dunk for every user.
Lord, I don't know which would be the worse nightmare - being behind the guys taking full size keyboards and though a TSA checkpoint on a bad day, or sitting beside them when they try to use the full size with number pad keyboard on typical tray table.
Surely the real surprise is that any serious computing magazine survived this long in a dead tree edition. I kind of figured that went Byte went under it was only a matter of time for everything else.
(Long live Jerry Pournelle!)
"Ideally, entertaining documentation should supplement standard documentation. However, I can appreciate that writing documentation can be very boring,"
Wrong. If you find that, then hire someone who knows how to do it. I suspect that those who find it "boring" just aren't willing, or lack the skills, to do the thoughtful and detailed work that is needed.
Every time I've tried to solve a linux problem I've run into docs that miss one, two or all three of those things
Documentation has to be very clear, very unambiguous, and very specific. When you're already up against a problem you don't want to be guessing at what the docs are trying to tell you.
Looking at TFA, my suggestion to not waste everyone's time with cutesy games - hire a real professional to write and edit your docs and get them right the first time.
Without even reading TFA, it's obvious that the author doesn't have clue.
The point of Facebook and similar networks is that access is controlled. The concept of a Friends list is what makes it work.
A lot of people want a place that will allow people to find them, to even follow what they're doing in their lives, but where they can also restrict who sees how much data. Facebook provides that.
Critical to understanding this is to realize that our ideas about privacy are changing rapidly, and different people have different expectations and comfort levels with respect to what they want to share, and who they want to share it.
What I place on my web site is different from what I blog, and is different from my Facebook profile and a Facebook group about a current romance. And each of those reaches a different population, some by chance, some by design and control.
No, the author lacks an understanding about all of this.
The 8 track was the superior format at the time that it peaked in popularity. At the time when 8 tracks were the format for car audio, cassette players were horrid little things with mediocre quality.
8-tracks also offered a true 4 channel audio system that was better than anything available on cassette or disc.
Once cassette tape moved to high end formulations like chrome tapes, and added Dolby etc, the game changed significantly and 8-tracks faded away.
The people who run down 8-track as a format usually have little experience with it and don't recall, or weren't born early enough, to recall that it represented the very earliest move away from radio towards a car audio that allowed an individual to choose what music they would listen to.
Arguably the 8-track is the ancestor of what would eventually become the iPod.
"Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions..."
Really, is there any point whatsoever in reporting stuff like this? I don't think that any of us have the foggiest notion where personal computing will be in three years, much the the five to seven that it likely will take for MS to deliver the next generation OS.
My prediction is that instead of hard drives and DVDs, the OS will be inserted into my head on a chip.
Hmmmm... what will a Blue Screen of Death look like from the inside out? Just imagine Windows on 'shrooms! Pretty screensaver......
Sure the innovative and groundbreaking iPhone will change the face of blending forever. Never before could you blend a full featured implementation of Apple's award winning Safari browser.
They keep coming into my coffee shop and demanding that I pay just to use electricity, even though it's just sitting around in their wires going to waste!
Lord, there are surely a hundred SERIOUS attacks on our privacy every day that deserve attention. Why is someone wasting time getting all paranoid because MS software sends back error reports?
Will we now see a companion story about how OS X, Firefox, and Thunderbird are all collecting "personal information" and transmitting it back to Apple and Mozilla.org?
There is no way they could keep a secret of this magnitude and cover it up for 60 years.
Ok, let me get this reasoning straight.
a) There's no way that the government could keep a secret that long.
b) How do we know that there's no way that the government could keep a secret that long?
c) Because if the government tried to keep a secret that long we would have beard about it.
Just for the sake of argument, what if the government managed to... um... keep a secret secret? Is it possible that we wouldn't have heard about it?
(especially if they used secret alien technology to keep it secret!)
Honestly I'd like to see the Slashdot Overlords spend less time on gewgaws like these, and more time on establishing some minimal editorial standards.
I'm assuming that the vast majority of readers are here for content, and the weaknesses in that content are a great frustration.
I'm not talking about hiring New York Times journalists, only asking for basic standards like:
Have someone, anyone check for dupes. Is it really possible that none of the "Editors" at Slashdot read their own site?
Have someone read TFA to make sure that the summary posted actually reflects what the originating article or page says. Too often the summary is entirely different from that actual article.
Have someone check TFA to weed out obvious self promotion. Really, there are times when this get's to be ridiculous. Same for the posts that are a restatement of some guys uninformed blog post.
Please, have someone take charge of basic spelling and grammar, and the headlines that seem to be created from random phrase generation.
Honestly this operation is large enough, and lucrative enough, and has enough paid subscribers that it is reasonable to insist on some level of professional editorial activity.
Adding AIM messaging is only useful if you can assure me that what you're delivering is good enough that my first instinct isn't to go to the source material to make sure that I'm not being misled.
IANAFL* but here come a 100 comments and criticisms based entirely on sketchy understandings of American copyright law, none of which have any relevance in France.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside - am I alone in chuckling at the stream of people suggesting Apple products, even though the original poster specifically stated that he doesn't want a Chinese made laptop? Has no Mac user ever turned their machine upside down and looked at the little sticker on the bottom?
Anyhow, I have to think that somewhere in the US secuirity establishment there must be a company supplying laptop gear designed and built in the U.S. specifically because folks like the CIA might not want to trust hardware built in China.
Or, in other words, if all laptops are built in China, could the Chinese government be dumb enough not to include some super-secret features that they can use when needed?
Thinking back thirty-five odd years, I remember a friend with an impossibly cool HP, RPN of course, and a built in teeny card reader; I still recall the *click* of the keys. But what sold me on my first digital calculator in high school was realizing that you could type in numbers, turn it upside down, and spell out words. Sort of.
I have to say that during the time a year or so back when I used Gmail a lot I always found the interface kind of irritating.
Every time I wanted to add a new Label and corresponding Filter it seemed like I had to trial and error because the process was less than obvious. And I don't care for the way that threads are collapsed, making it difficult to find one message out of the ten or twelve in a conversation.
I guess it just felt like everything took two or three or four more clicks than it should have. That may be a subjective assessment, but I can't see using Gmail as my primary e-mail client.
"many of which were not infringing on SFWA copyrights in any way.
So what you're saying is that yes the site does contain copyrighted materials for which no permission been obtained, and hence it does infringe on the works of some authors?
Sorry chief, but ya do the crime, ya do the time. Be more careful in the future.
Oh boy, now instead of mediocre YouTube video quality, we can enjoy second or even third generation copies of bad video of frat boys and drunks.....
Um, setting up one PC to record one phone line, and then speculating that maybe you could run the audio through NaturallySpeaking to generate keywords is rather a long way from building a "poor man's" Echelon.
When you've managed to capture your whole neighborhood's phone traffic and can pick keywords out of fifty or a hundred people's phone traffic, (which NaturallySpeaking won't do without training) call me.
This will get modded flamebait, but I doubt that this bump in sales will be sustainable.
I expect that lot of these new Apple buyers are people who, like me, just grew weary of Microsoft,their attitude, and the endless virus and other problems.
The problem for Apple is that they, and the fanboys, are selling the product as perfection, as complete out of the box, as seamless and needing no attention beyond plugging in the power supply once a day.
The reality of course is much different. Macs have some pretty serious deficiencies, even in the much vaunted user interface. Macs crash just like a Windows computer. Macs experience hardware issues. Macs, if you use them heavily, need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly.
After two years with a Mac I tell people that really it's no more or less easy to use than a Windows machine, and has just as many irritations and problems. They're just different irritations and problems.
Because Apple sells their computers as the most perfect thing in the world, all of those day to day issues seem that much more disappointing.
My guess is that a lot of these "switchers" will hang onto their MacBooks for one cycle, then revert back to Windows in order to avoid compatibility issues, cost issues, and in some situations the lack of specific software that isn't available on the Mac.
At the end of the day there just isn't that much about the Mac that makes it a slam dunk for every user.
Lord, I don't know which would be the worse nightmare - being behind the guys taking full size keyboards and though a TSA checkpoint on a bad day, or sitting beside them when they try to use the full size with number pad keyboard on typical tray table.
Surely the real surprise is that any serious computing magazine survived this long in a dead tree edition. I kind of figured that went Byte went under it was only a matter of time for everything else. (Long live Jerry Pournelle!)
"Ideally, entertaining documentation should supplement standard documentation. However, I can appreciate that writing documentation can be very boring,"
Wrong. If you find that, then hire someone who knows how to do it. I suspect that those who find it "boring" just aren't willing, or lack the skills, to do the thoughtful and detailed work that is needed.
Should be clear, complete and timely.
Every time I've tried to solve a linux problem I've run into docs that miss one, two or all three of those things
Documentation has to be very clear, very unambiguous, and very specific. When you're already up against a problem you don't want to be guessing at what the docs are trying to tell you.
Looking at TFA, my suggestion to not waste everyone's time with cutesy games - hire a real professional to write and edit your docs and get them right the first time.
Without even reading TFA, it's obvious that the author doesn't have clue.
The point of Facebook and similar networks is that access is controlled. The concept of a Friends list is what makes it work.
A lot of people want a place that will allow people to find them, to even follow what they're doing in their lives, but where they can also restrict who sees how much data. Facebook provides that.
Critical to understanding this is to realize that our ideas about privacy are changing rapidly, and different people have different expectations and comfort levels with respect to what they want to share, and who they want to share it.
What I place on my web site is different from what I blog, and is different from my Facebook profile and a Facebook group about a current romance. And each of those reaches a different population, some by chance, some by design and control.
No, the author lacks an understanding about all of this.
They claim they lost $18.2 billion last year through taping in cinemas?
Easy - Cop Math! Yep, them there six marihuana plants has a street value of forty gazillion dollars!
No seriously, this is troll, right? Not even the RIAA would be dumb enough to sue someone named "Sgt. Paternoster."
... I believe that the technical term for this is F*CKING IDIOT!
Not in a car. That's where 8-tracks took off before cassettes became good enough to replace them.
The 8 track was the superior format at the time that it peaked in popularity. At the time when 8 tracks were the format for car audio, cassette players were horrid little things with mediocre quality.
8-tracks also offered a true 4 channel audio system that was better than anything available on cassette or disc.
Once cassette tape moved to high end formulations like chrome tapes, and added Dolby etc, the game changed significantly and 8-tracks faded away.
The people who run down 8-track as a format usually have little experience with it and don't recall, or weren't born early enough, to recall that it represented the very earliest move away from radio towards a car audio that allowed an individual to choose what music they would listen to.
Arguably the 8-track is the ancestor of what would eventually become the iPod.
"Windows 7 will ship in consumer and business versions, and in 32-bit and 64-bit versions..."
Really, is there any point whatsoever in reporting stuff like this? I don't think that any of us have the foggiest notion where personal computing will be in three years, much the the five to seven that it likely will take for MS to deliver the next generation OS.
My prediction is that instead of hard drives and DVDs, the OS will be inserted into my head on a chip.
Hmmmm... what will a Blue Screen of Death look like from the inside out? Just imagine Windows on 'shrooms! Pretty screensaver......
Sure the innovative and groundbreaking iPhone will change the face of blending forever. Never before could you blend a full featured implementation of Apple's award winning Safari browser.
This device could very well stand as a competitor to the more expensive Apple iPhone,
I'm sorry, but can we get just a little reality check here? And I'm someone who thinks the iPhone is 80% hype.
They keep coming into my coffee shop and demanding that I pay just to use electricity, even though it's just sitting around in their wires going to waste!
Man, the RIAA has their fingers in everything!
Lord, there are surely a hundred SERIOUS attacks on our privacy every day that deserve attention. Why is someone wasting time getting all paranoid because MS software sends back error reports?
Will we now see a companion story about how OS X, Firefox, and Thunderbird are all collecting "personal information" and transmitting it back to Apple and Mozilla.org?
There is no way they could keep a secret of this magnitude and cover it up for 60 years.
... keep a secret secret? Is it possible that we wouldn't have heard about it?
Ok, let me get this reasoning straight.
a) There's no way that the government could keep a secret that long.
b) How do we know that there's no way that the government could keep a secret that long?
c) Because if the government tried to keep a secret that long we would have beard about it.
Just for the sake of argument, what if the government managed to... um
(especially if they used secret alien technology to keep it secret!)
I'm assuming that the vast majority of readers are here for content, and the weaknesses in that content are a great frustration.
I'm not talking about hiring New York Times journalists, only asking for basic standards like:
- Have someone, anyone check for dupes. Is it really possible that none of the "Editors" at Slashdot read their own site?
- Have someone read TFA to make sure that the summary posted actually reflects what the originating article or page says. Too often the summary is entirely different from that actual article.
- Have someone check TFA to weed out obvious self promotion. Really, there are times when this get's to be ridiculous. Same for the posts that are a restatement of some guys uninformed blog post.
- Please, have someone take charge of basic spelling and grammar, and the headlines that seem to be created from random phrase generation.
Honestly this operation is large enough, and lucrative enough, and has enough paid subscribers that it is reasonable to insist on some level of professional editorial activity.Adding AIM messaging is only useful if you can assure me that what you're delivering is good enough that my first instinct isn't to go to the source material to make sure that I'm not being misled.
IANAFL* but here come a 100 comments and criticisms based entirely on sketchy understandings of American copyright law, none of which have any relevance in France.
* I Am Not A French Lawyer