Well, I got either brave or stupid since all of these other AT&T users were reporting rebooting and being assigned to a new network within AT&T broadband...
So I rebooted my router to clear everything out and see what I got assigned, and I got assigned nothing... Apparently, the DHCP servers for @home are no longer alive on this network segment, so if you lose your lease, you may or may not be able to get back on via AT&T.
In my case, in order to get back online, I've reconfigured the router to just assign the external ethernet port to a static IP (the @home static IP I've been using all along) rather than using DHCP, so for the time being, I'm back up. @home DNS servers for this area and the gateway I was explicitly assigned at signup appear to still be good. If DNS goes down, I'm going to switch to some AT&T DNS servers... We'll see what happens.
Seems pretty clear though that @home is going down and at some point AT&T users will be transitioning to AT&T broadband. I only hope this line stays live until the transition is complete in this area so that I won't be without net service too long...
Hmmm... Reading posts, it looks like some users with AT&T have been moved over to new networks and/or DNS servers. The http://www.attbi.com site, which previously said "this page will appear only if necessary" now contains what looks like a new AT&T Broadband portal.
A little frightening, because that says at least in some way that the old @Home network will not remain intact... and that's what I'm using right now. Same static IP which resolves to etc.etc.home.com, same DNS servers, no interruption in service yet. I don't use the e-mail or www servers, so I can't comment on that stuff...knock on wood.
Here's hoping nothing changes for me, and here's hoping (even more strongly) that if something *does* change, I will get assigned a new static IP, rather than rotating madly with DHCP.
Don't carry copy-protected shit and you'll be fine. If you're going to comply in this new RIAA-DMCA-Ashcroft-Nationalist world, you deserve everything you get.
I live in a newish city. I know nothing about the DSL technology, but we've been told we can't get DSL most anywhere except in the heart of the business district because entire neighborhoods are already on some kind of digital multiplexer for their phone service sharing a single copper line, and the technology doesn't yet exist (and apparently may never exist) to run DSL over these types of lines to each and every business or residence.
802.11b ISPs? What are you smoking and/or where do you live!?
Satellite doesn't work. I've seen it and used it with friends. It's about as slow as 56k and sometimes even worse for network lag and it seems to have horrible reliability compared to other connectivity methods.
T1... who's going to run this local ISP? We all have jobs... Who's going to donate the space in their house for the equipment? I certainly don't want to be fielding angry calls from my neighbors if I accidentally screw the gateway up or spill laundry detergent on it or something and lose them their e-mail for a day, and I don't think any of them have the technical knowledge to operate this "mini-ISP."
Dialup... 56k scads faster than Cable? Are you crazy? I pull down 2-3Mbits over my cable connection *all the time* and our loop is nearly full! I download ISO images at 550kb/sec! That's more than 100 times the speed of 56k under the best of conditions! Not to mention that nearly all of the local ISPs are either gone or *very* expensive now. Our most prominent local ISP is running $39.95/month for 56k dialup! Add to that the cost of a second phone line once again and it's actually *more* expensive than cable.
As remarkable as it sounds, many of the people in our neighborhood (myself included) may simply travel back in time to 1995 and have *no* ISP, using the library's computers or UUCP accounts on local BBSs (there are still one or two to offer it) instead.
Also remember that @Home users are some of the most clueless Windows users around -- sorry, but not a crime -- and many of them have been infected with Nimda and other worms and still don't know it, which leads to tons of the sort of network traffic you describe.
If Microsoft wasn't so brain-dead about security you may have had less to worry about.
As far as spammers go... Sorry, but you'll never get rid of spam, ever. It's here to stay. The SPAM we see and filter on our network comes from pretty much every other network everywhere, and we've given up on abuse@any network because these days most everybody ignores it, having thrown up their hands and given in.
I read them and got exactly the opposite view. It sounded to me like he was a regular guy getting the shaft and not wanting to take it lying down. And that little clip from IRC where he said:
Then I guess you are just stupid.
That made me laugh like mad. I love it. Sounds like me. Sounds like my friends. Hey, he cycles. He caves. He founds OpenBSD. He speaks his mind. He has a sense of humor. He sounds cool, not like an asshole at all.
Some of the other people I was reading... Like the guy who kept on about professionalism and representing your organization, even in private e-mail... sound like pricks/assholes to me. I've had to deal with people like that -- people who feel like the dollars and the "drive to succeed" are all that matter and that individuality and honesty have no place in America.
But then, I will never sell me soul to my employer or anyone else, no matter how much cash or recognition it would get me. Guess that makes me a commie.;) Of course, the whole open-source world has been accused of being nothing more than a communist plot...
Rant, rant, yaddah, yadda...
I dig Theo. OpenBSD just scored personality points in my book.
While I feel bad about the legitimate customers, seeing a provider who is utterly unresponsive to spam complaints disappear down the drain after circling a while isn't exactly breaking my heart.
Well then, you're an asshole. I live in a major metropolitan area, but DSL isn't available almost anywhere. Most of the local ISPs went down the drain years ago. I've got I don't know how many family and friends in the area and out who are using excite@home. They'll all have to go back to phone lines with a different ISP. Many of them don't even own a 56k modem.
Worse than technical issues, however -- if the service cuts off, many of them will be cut off as well from their family and friends around the globe, from their professors and schools, from their bill payment services and local banks and utilities. They will also likely lose their e-mail accounts in the middle of e-shopping-season, missing receipts, shipment notices, and other important e-commerce information, not to mention all of their e-mail if they've been using IMAP.
I'll bet there's a spammer on your network somewhere. I hope your network goes down so that I can laugh at you when you have to pony up to AOL because of some idiot spammer you had nothing to do with.
Cutting of someone's ISP without warning is like losing phone service without warning and not being able to get the same number again once phone service is resumed. It can screw your whole life up and I feel sorry for the people I know who aren't technical enough to buy and manage their own domain.
And that's most of them.
9 paranoia-steps for upgrading out of the bug.
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Linux 2.4.16 Released
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· Score: 5, Informative
0) Make sure you have compiled and installed a patched kernel.
1) "shutdown now" or "init 1" as root to go single-user.
2) sync
3) umount all non-busy filesystems (usually only root is busy for most people).
4) sync
5) mount -n -o remount,ro /
(so now the root filesystem is read-only -- this step *is* important).
6) e2fsck -f/dev/partiton
(once for each partition, starting with root [/] device, substitute e2fsck with reiserfsck, etc., as necessary -- force a check on each filesystem)
7) sync, hit reset
8) make sure not to ever boot into the buggy kernel again!
So they abandoned you and as a result you don't buy their products. What's so hard about that? That's the same reason Linux users don't buy parallel-port devices. But it's not an ethical problem per se to sell them to those who want them.
You're missing my point. I'm saying that if you're using Quake3 as your benchmark, you don't care about anything but frame rates anyway and you get what you deserve.
If you really care about image quality, you're sure as hell not paying attention to any of the Quake3 benchmark numbers because reality has taught us that 3D benchmarks are utterly meaningless except if you're an I-don't-care-about-quality 3D gamer anyway.
Yes, but you missed my point: there is nobody left playing Quake3 but the people who turn ALL IMAGE FEATURES off anyway because while they're playing, they're bragging about their frame rate, their overclock, etc. I just don't play Quake3 period. It's a boring game, my cash was wasted. I generally enjoy playing games that "hardcore gamers" hate with a passion. Ultima IX, Mask of Eternity, RealMyst, Rune, etc. And in these, ATI doesn't dick around with image quality. They turned the quality down in Quake3 because they realized that none of the Quake3 players would notice. Unfortunately, someone else did, and they told the Quake3 players and now in true dick-size-competition fashion they're all upset about it...
Neener. I can enjoy myself without having to constantly show off the size of my balls with faster frame rates, bigger cards, and borrrrriing games like Quake3.
So ATI runs Quake3 at lower visual quality to get a higher FPS score. So fscking what? The Quake3 crowd [quickly dons flame suit] are the ones who killed off 3DFX because nothing mattered but RAW FRAMES anyway. Now they're upset that ATI gives them more FAW FRAMES in Quake3 by sacrificing a teensy bit of image quality?
What's the difference? All the Quake3 players are playing at 640x480, no detail, low color depth anyway with their video cars cooled by liquid nitrogen so that they can overclock by 400% and get 500fps, which they can CLEARLY tell from the 488fps they get from the same card when only overclocked with an aluminum 44 lb. heatsink/fan combo.
Come on, ATI gave the crazy gamers exactly what they wanted: raw speed in Quake3 'cause that's all I play especially when showing frame rate off to my geek friends at lannies and who gives a fsck about anything else.
And the car thing: every damn American performance car is build for and sold on the basis of a 0-60 time, meaning that the 0-100 times and quarter mile may suffer so that 0-60 marketing hype can look good. It's the same thing. [2nd flame layer on by now]
Disclaimer: Yes, I own a Voodoo5 card. I bought it to *replace* a Geforce2 Ultra early this year after seeing the much better image quality, esp. FSAA, at a friend's house. Yes, I also own a foreign car. Down with applie pie!
How about drivers who don't care to ring your doorbell or check if you're actually home?
My first experience with this was with a $500 package that was late by two days... and then a week... and then a week-and-a-half. The tracking system said "delivery made" but there was no package. Repeated calls to the service center revealed nothing until finally one day a rep said "there's a note in the system that says 'green box' so do you have a green box around your house?"
A light bulb appeared above my head, and I went outside with a look of disbelief on my face. I found the box (containing a high-end RAID controller) at the bottom of one of my *recycle bin* at the side of the house, beneath tons of cardboard and plastic. Two more days and it would have been recycled. What sort of idiot delivers a package to a recycle bin?
Well, the second time this sort of thing happened (system says delivered, but I haven't seen the package), I *asked* the rep if there were any delivery notes in the system. This time the note was "tree" and I found a box containing a Sun 3/80 *up in the branches of my 14' pine tree* in the dead of winter. The driver actually seemed to have climbed the fence next to the tree to place the box in it. They're sturdy branches, but it still seems ridiculous to me.
Calls to UPS about these incidents resulted in the following explanation: sometimes when the individual isn't home and the address is difficult to reach, the driver may leave the package on the premesis in a "non-obvious" area so that he doesn't have to return. I guess a recycle bin and a tree are UPS's idea of protecting me from thieves... Of course all of this ignores the fact that I was home all day on the day that BOTH of these deliveries were supposedly made...
Bullshit. Customer buys a computer, it comes with a browser RIGHT NOW: Microsoft Internet Explorer. Netscape 3/4 is 5-6 hours away on a 14.4k modem, IF the customer can stay connected that long, IF they understand how to save files and find what they've saved afterward, and IF they're comfortable launching an installer.
I personally dealt with this problem on the phone with multiple individuals who wanted Netscape between '95 and '98 but just didn't have the means to get it, and their OEM couldn't install it for them because of Microsoft's tactics. In the end, they all throw up their hands and just use IE 3/4 because that's what they had available and they've got better things to do for a week than try to figure out how to satisfy their browser preference.
Then '98 comes out and even people with 32MB memory who had managed to download Netscape under '95 find that they can't "unload" IE, meaning that on their 32MB low-proc slow-disk machines with W'98 Netscape is DOG-SLOW while IE is still usable. End of game.
Not every guy on earth was a techie with a T1 back in '95 through '98 when the switch was happening. Most of the people in the marketplace at the time are CONSUMERS without the knowledge or the technical means to download and install Netscape alongside IE, much less figure out how to change registry entries, etc. to make Netscape the default browser even if sufficient hardware/bandwidth/install skill are available.
I'm not arguing about whether MSIE's win was "fair" or not, but it certainly was not purely on the basis of technical browser merit.
Slackware has always had BSD-like cleanliness and simplicity. No shit to dig through in scripts and packages and etc. etc. etc., just a nice, efficient Unix-like feel. I started using Linux with Slackware and for years saw Linux as just another Unix, albeit a newer, flashier one. The first time I tried Red Hat (at 5.0) I was totally startled to find that most people were seeing Linux as a whole other operating system...
And with Slackware, you'll get the extra drivers and hardware up-to-dateness that Linux offers -- the one place where *BSD really suffers, especially for desktop or small server applications. That's my FreeBSD horror story... trying to install it on modern (Athlon+AGP graphics) hardware and on my Thinkpad.
Thinkpad 560 = 16-bit TFT 800x600 color ultra-thin machine with an early Pentium and up to 40MB RAM using standard EDO SODIMMs.
Easy... Get ahold of one, disconnect the hinges, flip, glue, encase the whole thing in a thin wooden box, get some solid state storage on the order of 128MB or so for the PCMCIA slot, set the BIOS to boot from it, cheap NE2k for the other PCMCIA slot, install minimal Linux+X+ftp server and a script to just cycle all of the images in the incoming ftp directory.
Plug into network and power and hang on wall. 12.1" digital picture frame, total cost $100 or so, provided you get a good deal on the 560. I got mine for $150 but that was about a year ago now so depreciation is where I get the $100 figure... Beware that the backlights can fail from being on forever and ever and they're a pain to replace [tip -- if one blows on you, don't bother, just shop e-bay for a whole new 12.1" panel with backlight included, they're fairly cheap that way].
While everyone was busy harping about Mozilla, Konqueror grew up. It's now tantalizingly close to being an IE-killer. I shit you not. It's a very pleasant browsing experience, standards compliant, and to top it all off it's a great file manager as well.
No doubt! A year or so ago, each time I booted in to Linux I would find myself missing Internet Explorer and thinking that if Linux only ran IE everything would be great.
Those days are over... the tables have turned. Now when I'm in Windows 2000, I find myself dying for the features of Konqueror, and even just for the Konqueror web browser component. Konqueror is my favorite browser right now among all browsers, for any platform, hands down.
Re:God damned MP3 anti-pirate busybodies...
on
80 Gig MP3 Player
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· Score: 1
Works great. I routinely get 50-60MB.zip files as e-mail attachments, do my part with them, and then forward them on to production or someone else. E-mail is actually a great filesharing tool if you're not stuck at home with a 56k modem...
God damned MP3 anti-pirate busybodies...
on
80 Gig MP3 Player
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· Score: 4, Interesting
This pisses me off too. The anti-piracy busybodies where I work have been up my skirt a few times about my bringing MP3 files from home to listen to at work. They have no problem with music on the job -- they're just convinced that MP3 is a "pirate-only" format because there has been so god damn much news about Napster and pirates.
I personally archive any CD I buy IMMEDIATELY as a high quality (256kbps or -r3mix) MP3 because CDs are just too damn fragile. I've had to buy some CDs twice (and #$Y&^@ Tidal by Fiona Apple FOUR times) because they developed serious skips/scratches before I started encoding everything to MP3. And YES, I do share my MP3 files sometimes. More than once I've sent a song to a friend in e-mail with a subject like "HOLY SHIT, I just bought a CD and *kicks ass*, LISTEN TO THIS!"
And do you know what? I don't feel guilty about doing it.
These could be wonderful times -- we have the ability to reproduce information endlessly, so no information, be it music or paperwork or video or photos or whatever ever has to die or disappear -- and instead of preserving and sharing all this bounty of knowledge, we're even being prevented from perserving our OWN data for PERSONAL use by the likes of Microsoft, RIAA, SDMI, and all of those damned MP3 BUSYBODIES!
Yes, I need more MP3 space, my CD collection online is now up to 48 gigs and growing by two CDs a week! GIVE ME 80 GIGS OR GIVE ME DEATH!
Back in the late '80s for a while I owned a small OS-9 computer (some of you will guess which one) which used to lay its windows out this way. As time went on and Windows and X became bigger items, I started to desire those "overlapping windows" and eventually moved to Linux in '93 or so to get them.
Now you're telling me that tiled, edge-to-edge windows are the wave of the future? I don't know. How about some sort of compromise which allows overlapping windows but doesn't "require" them to the same extent as today's desktops? I'm not sure I'd really like to do away with them altogether... sometimes you just run out of display space, and I'm not really interested in 45" of computer display.
It is the fundamental premise of this scenario that is wrong. Somehow in the west we inevitably make the assumption that all nations without a western-style workforce and labor system are "underdeveloped" and that subsistence must always give way to organized labor.
Many will argue that local peoples can no longer subsist and invariably want a western lifestyle, but this is only because of the continued encroachment of the capital economy on traditionally subsistence-oriented populations (which throughout history have made up the bulk of the geographic distribution of humans).
In short, we "develop" right to their doorstep (or even right over it), in so doing destabilize both the local means of production and the local environment to the point that subsistence at existing levels is no longer possible, and then offer them a job as a contingency -- a job in which the bulk of the fruits of labor will return to the nation from which McDonalds springs, rather than being available to the local economy.
We are both trying to make the same point, but only one of us is making it correctly. You are entirely correct that resource scarcity is the result of consumerism and market capitalism. I am as disgusted with a 3,500 calorie/day meat-loaded diet as you are; that was the point of my post!
However, you are not correct in stating that resource scarcity is therefore a "myth".
In fact, consumerism and market capitalism are stronger than they ever have been and they show no signs of waning. Both are very real, and thus, resource shortages are are both real and inevitable as well unless we can change reality for the better while we have the chance.
Only when capitalism and consumerism are finally destroyed will be finally be able to manage our resources for the benefit of all. We are both on the same page -- but I think you're being a little idealistic in thinking that scarcity is not real. As of now, because we are trying to bring the "American lifestyle" to the world, it is very, very real and very frightening as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I got either brave or stupid since all of these other AT&T users were reporting rebooting and being assigned to a new network within AT&T broadband...
So I rebooted my router to clear everything out and see what I got assigned, and I got assigned nothing... Apparently, the DHCP servers for @home are no longer alive on this network segment, so if you lose your lease, you may or may not be able to get back on via AT&T.
In my case, in order to get back online, I've reconfigured the router to just assign the external ethernet port to a static IP (the @home static IP I've been using all along) rather than using DHCP, so for the time being, I'm back up. @home DNS servers for this area and the gateway I was explicitly assigned at signup appear to still be good. If DNS goes down, I'm going to switch to some AT&T DNS servers... We'll see what happens.
Seems pretty clear though that @home is going down and at some point AT&T users will be transitioning to AT&T broadband. I only hope this line stays live until the transition is complete in this area so that I won't be without net service too long...
Hmmm... Reading posts, it looks like some users with AT&T have been moved over to new networks and/or DNS servers. The http://www.attbi.com site, which previously said "this page will appear only if necessary" now contains what looks like a new AT&T Broadband portal.
A little frightening, because that says at least in some way that the old @Home network will not remain intact... and that's what I'm using right now. Same static IP which resolves to etc.etc.home.com, same DNS servers, no interruption in service yet. I don't use the e-mail or www servers, so I can't comment on that stuff...knock on wood.
Here's hoping nothing changes for me, and here's hoping (even more strongly) that if something *does* change, I will get assigned a new static IP, rather than rotating madly with DHCP.
Don't carry copy-protected shit and you'll be fine. If you're going to comply in this new RIAA-DMCA-Ashcroft-Nationalist world, you deserve everything you get.
I live in a newish city. I know nothing about the DSL technology, but we've been told we can't get DSL most anywhere except in the heart of the business district because entire neighborhoods are already on some kind of digital multiplexer for their phone service sharing a single copper line, and the technology doesn't yet exist (and apparently may never exist) to run DSL over these types of lines to each and every business or residence.
802.11b ISPs? What are you smoking and/or where do you live!?
Satellite doesn't work. I've seen it and used it with friends. It's about as slow as 56k and sometimes even worse for network lag and it seems to have horrible reliability compared to other connectivity methods.
T1... who's going to run this local ISP? We all have jobs... Who's going to donate the space in their house for the equipment? I certainly don't want to be fielding angry calls from my neighbors if I accidentally screw the gateway up or spill laundry detergent on it or something and lose them their e-mail for a day, and I don't think any of them have the technical knowledge to operate this "mini-ISP."
Dialup... 56k scads faster than Cable? Are you crazy? I pull down 2-3Mbits over my cable connection *all the time* and our loop is nearly full! I download ISO images at 550kb/sec! That's more than 100 times the speed of 56k under the best of conditions! Not to mention that nearly all of the local ISPs are either gone or *very* expensive now. Our most prominent local ISP is running $39.95/month for 56k dialup! Add to that the cost of a second phone line once again and it's actually *more* expensive than cable.
As remarkable as it sounds, many of the people in our neighborhood (myself included) may simply travel back in time to 1995 and have *no* ISP, using the library's computers or UUCP accounts on local BBSs (there are still one or two to offer it) instead.
Some good points from other users.
Also remember that @Home users are some of the most clueless Windows users around -- sorry, but not a crime -- and many of them have been infected with Nimda and other worms and still don't know it, which leads to tons of the sort of network traffic you describe.
If Microsoft wasn't so brain-dead about security you may have had less to worry about.
As far as spammers go... Sorry, but you'll never get rid of spam, ever. It's here to stay. The SPAM we see and filter on our network comes from pretty much every other network everywhere, and we've given up on abuse@any network because these days most everybody ignores it, having thrown up their hands and given in.
I read them and got exactly the opposite view. It sounded to me like he was a regular guy getting the shaft and not wanting to take it lying down. And that little clip from IRC where he said:
;) Of course, the whole open-source world has been accused of being nothing more than a communist plot...
Then I guess you are just stupid.
That made me laugh like mad. I love it. Sounds like me. Sounds like my friends. Hey, he cycles. He caves. He founds OpenBSD. He speaks his mind. He has a sense of humor. He sounds cool, not like an asshole at all.
Some of the other people I was reading... Like the guy who kept on about professionalism and representing your organization, even in private e-mail... sound like pricks/assholes to me. I've had to deal with people like that -- people who feel like the dollars and the "drive to succeed" are all that matter and that individuality and honesty have no place in America.
But then, I will never sell me soul to my employer or anyone else, no matter how much cash or recognition it would get me. Guess that makes me a commie.
Rant, rant, yaddah, yadda...
I dig Theo. OpenBSD just scored personality points in my book.
While I feel bad about the legitimate customers, seeing a provider who is utterly unresponsive to spam complaints disappear down the drain after circling a while isn't exactly breaking my heart.
Well then, you're an asshole. I live in a major metropolitan area, but DSL isn't available almost anywhere. Most of the local ISPs went down the drain years ago. I've got I don't know how many family and friends in the area and out who are using excite@home. They'll all have to go back to phone lines with a different ISP. Many of them don't even own a 56k modem.
Worse than technical issues, however -- if the service cuts off, many of them will be cut off as well from their family and friends around the globe, from their professors and schools, from their bill payment services and local banks and utilities. They will also likely lose their e-mail accounts in the middle of e-shopping-season, missing receipts, shipment notices, and other important e-commerce information, not to mention all of their e-mail if they've been using IMAP.
I'll bet there's a spammer on your network somewhere. I hope your network goes down so that I can laugh at you when you have to pony up to AOL because of some idiot spammer you had nothing to do with.
Cutting of someone's ISP without warning is like losing phone service without warning and not being able to get the same number again once phone service is resumed. It can screw your whole life up and I feel sorry for the people I know who aren't technical enough to buy and manage their own domain.
And that's most of them.
0) Make sure you have compiled and installed a patched kernel.
/dev/partiton
1) "shutdown now" or "init 1" as root to go single-user.
2) sync
3) umount all non-busy filesystems (usually only root is busy for most people).
4) sync
5) mount -n -o remount,ro /
(so now the root filesystem is read-only -- this step *is* important).
6) e2fsck -f
(once for each partition, starting with root [/] device, substitute e2fsck with reiserfsck, etc., as necessary -- force a check on each filesystem)
7) sync, hit reset
8) make sure not to ever boot into the buggy kernel again!
An alternate fix from Al Viro is here.
I'm using it now.
So they abandoned you and as a result you don't buy their products. What's so hard about that? That's the same reason Linux users don't buy parallel-port devices. But it's not an ethical problem per se to sell them to those who want them.
You're missing my point. I'm saying that if you're using Quake3 as your benchmark, you don't care about anything but frame rates anyway and you get what you deserve.
If you really care about image quality, you're sure as hell not paying attention to any of the Quake3 benchmark numbers because reality has taught us that 3D benchmarks are utterly meaningless except if you're an I-don't-care-about-quality 3D gamer anyway.
It's the magazine shootouts that are flawed, and you if you buy video cards based on magazine shootouts that only involve Quake3.
Is that all you play?
So why is that all you care about?
Yes, but you missed my point: there is nobody left playing Quake3 but the people who turn ALL IMAGE FEATURES off anyway because while they're playing, they're bragging about their frame rate, their overclock, etc. I just don't play Quake3 period. It's a boring game, my cash was wasted. I generally enjoy playing games that "hardcore gamers" hate with a passion. Ultima IX, Mask of Eternity, RealMyst, Rune, etc. And in these, ATI doesn't dick around with image quality. They turned the quality down in Quake3 because they realized that none of the Quake3 players would notice. Unfortunately, someone else did, and they told the Quake3 players and now in true dick-size-competition fashion they're all upset about it...
Neener. I can enjoy myself without having to constantly show off the size of my balls with faster frame rates, bigger cards, and borrrrriing games like Quake3.
Hate that spelling stuff.
So ATI runs Quake3 at lower visual quality to get a higher FPS score. So fscking what? The Quake3 crowd [quickly dons flame suit] are the ones who killed off 3DFX because nothing mattered but RAW FRAMES anyway. Now they're upset that ATI gives them more FAW FRAMES in Quake3 by sacrificing a teensy bit of image quality?
What's the difference? All the Quake3 players are playing at 640x480, no detail, low color depth anyway with their video cars cooled by liquid nitrogen so that they can overclock by 400% and get 500fps, which they can CLEARLY tell from the 488fps they get from the same card when only overclocked with an aluminum 44 lb. heatsink/fan combo.
Come on, ATI gave the crazy gamers exactly what they wanted: raw speed in Quake3 'cause that's all I play especially when showing frame rate off to my geek friends at lannies and who gives a fsck about anything else.
And the car thing: every damn American performance car is build for and sold on the basis of a 0-60 time, meaning that the 0-100 times and quarter mile may suffer so that 0-60 marketing hype can look good. It's the same thing. [2nd flame layer on by now]
Disclaimer: Yes, I own a Voodoo5 card. I bought it to *replace* a Geforce2 Ultra early this year after seeing the much better image quality, esp. FSAA, at a friend's house. Yes, I also own a foreign car. Down with applie pie!
How about drivers who don't care to ring your doorbell or check if you're actually home?
My first experience with this was with a $500 package that was late by two days... and then a week... and then a week-and-a-half. The tracking system said "delivery made" but there was no package. Repeated calls to the service center revealed nothing until finally one day a rep said "there's a note in the system that says 'green box' so do you have a green box around your house?"
A light bulb appeared above my head, and I went outside with a look of disbelief on my face. I found the box (containing a high-end RAID controller) at the bottom of one of my *recycle bin* at the side of the house, beneath tons of cardboard and plastic. Two more days and it would have been recycled. What sort of idiot delivers a package to a recycle bin?
Well, the second time this sort of thing happened (system says delivered, but I haven't seen the package), I *asked* the rep if there were any delivery notes in the system. This time the note was "tree" and I found a box containing a Sun 3/80 *up in the branches of my 14' pine tree* in the dead of winter. The driver actually seemed to have climbed the fence next to the tree to place the box in it. They're sturdy branches, but it still seems ridiculous to me.
Calls to UPS about these incidents resulted in the following explanation: sometimes when the individual isn't home and the address is difficult to reach, the driver may leave the package on the premesis in a "non-obvious" area so that he doesn't have to return. I guess a recycle bin and a tree are UPS's idea of protecting me from thieves... Of course all of this ignores the fact that I was home all day on the day that BOTH of these deliveries were supposedly made...
Bullshit. Customer buys a computer, it comes with a browser RIGHT NOW: Microsoft Internet Explorer. Netscape 3/4 is 5-6 hours away on a 14.4k modem, IF the customer can stay connected that long, IF they understand how to save files and find what they've saved afterward, and IF they're comfortable launching an installer.
I personally dealt with this problem on the phone with multiple individuals who wanted Netscape between '95 and '98 but just didn't have the means to get it, and their OEM couldn't install it for them because of Microsoft's tactics. In the end, they all throw up their hands and just use IE 3/4 because that's what they had available and they've got better things to do for a week than try to figure out how to satisfy their browser preference.
Then '98 comes out and even people with 32MB memory who had managed to download Netscape under '95 find that they can't "unload" IE, meaning that on their 32MB low-proc slow-disk machines with W'98 Netscape is DOG-SLOW while IE is still usable. End of game.
Not every guy on earth was a techie with a T1 back in '95 through '98 when the switch was happening. Most of the people in the marketplace at the time are CONSUMERS without the knowledge or the technical means to download and install Netscape alongside IE, much less figure out how to change registry entries, etc. to make Netscape the default browser even if sufficient hardware/bandwidth/install skill are available.
I'm not arguing about whether MSIE's win was "fair" or not, but it certainly was not purely on the basis of technical browser merit.
Slackware has always had BSD-like cleanliness and simplicity. No shit to dig through in scripts and packages and etc. etc. etc., just a nice, efficient Unix-like feel. I started using Linux with Slackware and for years saw Linux as just another Unix, albeit a newer, flashier one. The first time I tried Red Hat (at 5.0) I was totally startled to find that most people were seeing Linux as a whole other operating system...
And with Slackware, you'll get the extra drivers and hardware up-to-dateness that Linux offers -- the one place where *BSD really suffers, especially for desktop or small server applications. That's my FreeBSD horror story... trying to install it on modern (Athlon+AGP graphics) hardware and on my Thinkpad.
Thinkpad 560 = 16-bit TFT 800x600 color ultra-thin machine with an early Pentium and up to 40MB RAM using standard EDO SODIMMs.
Easy... Get ahold of one, disconnect the hinges, flip, glue, encase the whole thing in a thin wooden box, get some solid state storage on the order of 128MB or so for the PCMCIA slot, set the BIOS to boot from it, cheap NE2k for the other PCMCIA slot, install minimal Linux+X+ftp server and a script to just cycle all of the images in the incoming ftp directory.
Plug into network and power and hang on wall. 12.1" digital picture frame, total cost $100 or so, provided you get a good deal on the 560. I got mine for $150 but that was about a year ago now so depreciation is where I get the $100 figure... Beware that the backlights can fail from being on forever and ever and they're a pain to replace [tip -- if one blows on you, don't bother, just shop e-bay for a whole new 12.1" panel with backlight included, they're fairly cheap that way].
Good luck.
While everyone was busy harping about Mozilla, Konqueror grew up. It's now tantalizingly close to being an IE-killer. I shit you not. It's a very pleasant browsing experience, standards compliant, and to top it all off it's a great file manager as well.
No doubt! A year or so ago, each time I booted in to Linux I would find myself missing Internet Explorer and thinking that if Linux only ran IE everything would be great.
Those days are over... the tables have turned. Now when I'm in Windows 2000, I find myself dying for the features of Konqueror, and even just for the Konqueror web browser component. Konqueror is my favorite browser right now among all browsers, for any platform, hands down.
Works great. I routinely get 50-60MB .zip files as e-mail attachments, do my part with them, and then forward them on to production or someone else. E-mail is actually a great filesharing tool if you're not stuck at home with a 56k modem...
This pisses me off too. The anti-piracy busybodies where I work have been up my skirt a few times about my bringing MP3 files from home to listen to at work. They have no problem with music on the job -- they're just convinced that MP3 is a "pirate-only" format because there has been so god damn much news about Napster and pirates.
I personally archive any CD I buy IMMEDIATELY as a high quality (256kbps or -r3mix) MP3 because CDs are just too damn fragile. I've had to buy some CDs twice (and #$Y&^@ Tidal by Fiona Apple FOUR times) because they developed serious skips/scratches before I started encoding everything to MP3. And YES, I do share my MP3 files sometimes. More than once I've sent a song to a friend in e-mail with a subject like "HOLY SHIT, I just bought a CD and *kicks ass*, LISTEN TO THIS!"
And do you know what? I don't feel guilty about doing it.
These could be wonderful times -- we have the ability to reproduce information endlessly, so no information, be it music or paperwork or video or photos or whatever ever has to die or disappear -- and instead of preserving and sharing all this bounty of knowledge, we're even being prevented from perserving our OWN data for PERSONAL use by the likes of Microsoft, RIAA, SDMI, and all of those damned MP3 BUSYBODIES!
Yes, I need more MP3 space, my CD collection online is now up to 48 gigs and growing by two CDs a week! GIVE ME 80 GIGS OR GIVE ME DEATH!
Back in the late '80s for a while I owned a small OS-9 computer (some of you will guess which one) which used to lay its windows out this way. As time went on and Windows and X became bigger items, I started to desire those "overlapping windows" and eventually moved to Linux in '93 or so to get them.
Now you're telling me that tiled, edge-to-edge windows are the wave of the future? I don't know. How about some sort of compromise which allows overlapping windows but doesn't "require" them to the same extent as today's desktops? I'm not sure I'd really like to do away with them altogether... sometimes you just run out of display space, and I'm not really interested in 45" of computer display.
It is the fundamental premise of this scenario that is wrong. Somehow in the west we inevitably make the assumption that all nations without a western-style workforce and labor system are "underdeveloped" and that subsistence must always give way to organized labor.
Many will argue that local peoples can no longer subsist and invariably want a western lifestyle, but this is only because of the continued encroachment of the capital economy on traditionally subsistence-oriented populations (which throughout history have made up the bulk of the geographic distribution of humans).
In short, we "develop" right to their doorstep (or even right over it), in so doing destabilize both the local means of production and the local environment to the point that subsistence at existing levels is no longer possible, and then offer them a job as a contingency -- a job in which the bulk of the fruits of labor will return to the nation from which McDonalds springs, rather than being available to the local economy.
We are both trying to make the same point, but only one of us is making it correctly. You are entirely correct that resource scarcity is the result of consumerism and market capitalism. I am as disgusted with a 3,500 calorie/day meat-loaded diet as you are; that was the point of my post!
However, you are not correct in stating that resource scarcity is therefore a "myth".
In fact, consumerism and market capitalism are stronger than they ever have been and they show no signs of waning. Both are very real, and thus, resource shortages are are both real and inevitable as well unless we can change reality for the better while we have the chance.
Only when capitalism and consumerism are finally destroyed will be finally be able to manage our resources for the benefit of all. We are both on the same page -- but I think you're being a little idealistic in thinking that scarcity is not real. As of now, because we are trying to bring the "American lifestyle" to the world, it is very, very real and very frightening as well.