This doesn't really take into account growth and scale-backs. Suppose Canadian Tire (just an example here... I know NOTHING of their true business goals) does go international. They are all of a sudden allowed to ditch the ".ca". Ok, all the tech dudes go into high gear to handle the request of the clueless pointy haireds and get it working.
Doh! The Canadian economy goes south, and Canadian Tire scales back, closes all international offices, cancels all international contracts... once again, the tech dudes have to get into high gear to get that ".ca" BACK on the domain name... this time at the behest of the law, rather than just the pointy-haireds.
I'm glad all my friends basements are handicap accessible, so I can just roll my caster-equipped case down the ramp, rather than have to worry about such things as those pesky stairs.;)
While I personally agree with your sentiment, this is, by and large, a site about computer technology and the like. If you want to see articles about social issues in general, go visit Kuro5hin.
The tech divide is important to many; just b/c it's subject is not directly life threatening does not mean it holds no value as a discussion piece.
The Computer Revolution was over in the mid 90's. We're more in sort of the Computer Middle Age now. Let's just hope we can avoid a 'Dark Age' by not making religous text out of historical fact.
Time will tell. To say that the "Computer Revolution was over in the mid 90's", when we are only now barely out of the 90's is, IMHO, grossly premature. Of course, you don't define "Computer Revolution", so it's hard to tell what you're really saying here.
So... before I go farther with this... what do you mean by "Computer Revolution", and what happened that the mid 90's marked it's end?
A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?
Oh, you mean like the media did when Bush... I mean Gore... wait, I mean Bush... won the presidency on the 7th?
I think you miss the point. He's not angry with Sony for failing to supply as per their hype, in fact, if I've read Dave Barry right for the last 15 years, he's not really angry at all. He's pointing out how absolutely ridiculous the entire craze is, b/c, after all... it's NOT about the material things... as he CLEARLY states.
He's making fun of Sony for failing to meet their own demand in such a dramatic way, but I'd hesitate to say he's MAD at them for it...
Funny (as in odd), that the ONE serious sentence in his ENTIRE essay is the one sentence that you ignore...
Also funny is that I agree with both you and Barry, at least on where the fault (such that it is) lays.
This is a good point, and I won't argue this with you (I was insulted (though not kicked) in those early linux channels as well... I'm a FreeBSD use now, thank you very much:P ). However, I think you're missing something crucial to this issue: while the Jocks and Cheerleaders have (in general) the acceptance and respect of the school administration, the geeks do not, ESPECIALLY after Columbine. These are, of course, very general terms, and don't apply across the board.
This inequality of respect, more than the behavior of any given peer group towards another, is the point of this story.
... or is the stated, relative speed increase of the Visor Platinum wrong? On the site, they say "50% faster than the Visor Deluxe", but with a new speed of 33MHz, and an old speed of 16MHz, doesn't that make it 206% faster? I read that and immediately thought "So what?" (I'll typically wait for cpu speeds to more than double before I upgrade)... but if what they're trying to say is "The Visor Deluxe is half the speed of the Platinum", then there's a little (not much) more cause for a double-take.
Please correct me here... I'm certainly no mathmetician.;)
It's been a rough day so far, so bear with me here, but this crap sickens me (yes, I know all about dumbing down for the audience... and I don't agree with it in the slightest in this case).
Third Paragraph: "In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, Switzerland, invented the World Wide Web."
Uh... pardon me, but... no... he didn't. He invented http, which combined with tcp/ip, hard and software out the wang, and a small pinch of timing, allowed the WWW to come into being over the next several years.
$WWW != 'http';
my $WWW = "A vast number of sites, on a vast number of computers, all strung together over miles of cable, all glued together by http and tcp/ip, and allowing for communication, collaboration, and personal expression on a scale never before seen.";
But that's just me. I could be wrong. If Gore has anything to do with it, I guess I am.
Paragraph Seven: "Petabytes of data means a thousand trillion bytes. This is the amount of data that can be stored by a million personal computer hard drives." Oh really. A million, eh? I guess the size of the drive doesn't matter then? W/o doing the actual math, I suppose I could fit a petabyte on a million of my old 120MB drives, just as easily as on a million of my new 75GB drives...
What if I think Jim Crow laws are illegal? Is it wrong to continuously and continually break those until they're repealed? What if I think it's wrong to ban [pick your race/gender] from attending public school? If I, being of the banned race/gender, force my way in as an attempt to get those laws repealed, is that wrong?
Seems to me that much was done in the way of breaking laws of the early century that DID do a lot towards the cause...
Look at it this way. Let's say Windows 2000 was just as reliable as FreeBSD (or Linux or whatever). What would moving it from FreeBSD to Windows 2000 do for them? Really, nothing.
It would save them from having to employ people that know FreeBSD (or Linux or whatever), and allow them to support only one, rather than multiple O/S's. I can see the benefits of maintaining a single O/S shop. It may not MAKE them money, but it could SAVE them money (which can easily be translated to making it later).
STABLE is for those who want the most stable version of FreeBSD. CURRENT is for those who are willing to experment and don't mind if source tree is less than perfect from time to time.
This much I understand, but what (if any) is the difference between STABLE/CURRENT and RELEASE? Who is RELEASE for?
You say "A RELEASE is a snaphot in time in which the given state of the CURRENT branch is judged to stable enough to be a release. This becomes a.0 release and is then called STABLE instead of CURRENT. This how we got FreeBSD 4.0.", which makes sense, but what is the criteria by which a RELEASE becomes STABLE. If that's how we get 4.0, is "4.0 RELEASE" basically the same as "4.0 STABLE", and if so, why isn't it labelled as such?
This is more a statement on the "journalist" than anything else, but since when does an e'mail to NSI qualify as a "hacker attack"? Hell, if sending an e'mail makes a hacker, then I've been an 37337 h4X0r 60D since 1994, and never even realized it!
Such a site, almost inconceivable even five years ago, now seems a benchmark of the way new media evolve to recognize and shape new culture.
Huh? Really?!
I wish I would have known this 5 years ago, when I built my first site in college, the focus of which was on computer gaming and table-top role-playing. Where I wrote about my characters and their trials, tribulations, and triumphs. Where I wrote about the computer games I was playing, those I wanted to play, and those I'd soon play. Where I wrote about my own experiences in gaming, both computer gaming and table-top. Where I wrote about how I thought gaming shaped me, in part, into who and what I am today (or was at the time... though it tends to carry through the years in it's own funny way).
Katz, where were you five years ago to tell me that I couldn't put that old site up? You could have saved me a lot of time...
It is particularly interesting that the a company that is supposedly Open Source oriented is stating all sorts of plans about IPOs and such and little or no talk about technology.
I'm not savvy in the realm of business, but I'd bet this is pure Market-speak, and that the techies had little to no influence or involvement in it. It's Yahoo News, after all... they aren't geared towards tech-heads. They're geared towards the suits with their bottom lines and their investment portfolios.
That's my take on it, anyway, and I could be wrong...
Have you people forgotten Lynx?! Highlight the link to the movie, and hit "d" for download. Heh... there are even Win32 versions of Lynx available, so that's no excuse.;)
And if I'D actually done my research (unfiltered the level 1 comments for example, to see where this all started), I'd have seen that I was talking about JWZ himself, and that he DOES, in fact, use ALT="" for his images...
[ If they wanted to implemented tooltips, they [ should have used the TITLE attribute to the A [ tag. That's in the HTML 1.2 spec and everything.
ALT tags are required in HTML 4.0. Now, we all know that thanks to lazy browser implementation, HTML is nowhere near as strictly enforced as <pick your programming language>. I think it most definitely should be, but that's another thread altogether.
If you'd take the time follow through on the research you've already obviously done, you'd notice the following in the HTML 4.0 spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#ad ef-alt):
'The alt attribute must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements. It is optional for the INPUT and APPLET elements.
While alternate text may be very helpful, it must be handled with care. Authors should observe the following guidelines:
Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images intended to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would be inappropriate for an image that adds a red ball for decorating a heading or paragraph. In such cases, the alternate text should be the empty string (""). Authors are in any case advised to avoid using images to format pages; style sheets should be used instead. Do not specify meaningless alternate text (e.g., "dummy text"). Not only will this frustrate users, it will slow down user agents that must convert text to speech or braille output.'
So you see, while the ALT tag is required, you can simply put ALT="" and get around the crappy browser implementation, that is, until the browsers start requiring more intelligence of the people writing markup for the web.
For my Real Job, anywhere from 40 to 50 hours/week. For my Play Job (see URL), anywhere from 20 to 30 hours/week... and growing. I expect my Real Job to diminish some, while my Play Job grows a bit more real.
To back up the claims of others, in Lawrence, KS, our cable modem IP's are 24.124.x.x, while those next door in KC (Roadrunner) are 24.94.x.x., and neither are working in conjunction with @Home at the moment (though I can't speak for the past).
@Home may have bought 24.x.x.x, but they don't own them all now.
"(c) 1999 ZDNet. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of ZDNet is prohibited."
I'm not saying permission was given, only that the MSNBC version most likely originated at ZDNet.
I was hoping for an informative Q/A session with someone I consider to be a brilliant writer. No. I don't agree with everything he says, but admire his courage in saying it, and the intelligence of his conclusions.
Maybe it's just me, but Leonard's apparent "expertise" on Geeks [note the capital letter, as Leonard seems to imply] ("Lesson for would-be interviewers of geeks: Never ask them a yes-or-no question, because that's all you'll get in response.") was entirely too distracting in the context of this story (an interview it most certainly is not).
Yes, send Stephenson back to Seattle, he DOES have more writing to do... and while you're at it, send Leonard back to to the "La Prematentious Cafe" where he can enduldge himself without fear of witnesses.
Slashdot Mirror
This doesn't really take into account growth and scale-backs. Suppose Canadian Tire (just an example here... I know NOTHING of their true business goals) does go international. They are all of a sudden allowed to ditch the ".ca". Ok, all the tech dudes go into high gear to handle the request of the clueless pointy haireds and get it working.
Doh! The Canadian economy goes south, and Canadian Tire scales back, closes all international offices, cancels all international contracts... once again, the tech dudes have to get into high gear to get that ".ca" BACK on the domain name... this time at the behest of the law, rather than just the pointy-haireds.
It just seems like more work than it's worth...
I'm glad all my friends basements are handicap accessible, so I can just roll my caster-equipped case down the ramp, rather than have to worry about such things as those pesky stairs. ;)
Hmm.... I wonder if you could strip out all the hardware and replace it with PC compatible parts...
While I personally agree with your sentiment, this is, by and large, a site about computer technology and the like. If you want to see articles about social issues in general, go visit Kuro5hin.
The tech divide is important to many; just b/c it's subject is not directly life threatening does not mean it holds no value as a discussion piece.
The Computer Revolution was over in the mid 90's. We're more in sort of the Computer Middle Age now. Let's just hope we can avoid a 'Dark Age' by not making religous text out of historical fact.
Time will tell. To say that the "Computer Revolution was over in the mid 90's", when we are only now barely out of the 90's is, IMHO, grossly premature. Of course, you don't define "Computer Revolution", so it's hard to tell what you're really saying here.
So... before I go farther with this... what do you mean by "Computer Revolution", and what happened that the mid 90's marked it's end?
A full announcement is expected next week from NASA -- wouldn't it be nice if they would simply release news as it happens rather than create News Happenings?
;)
Oh, you mean like the media did when Bush... I mean Gore... wait, I mean Bush... won the presidency on the 7th?
Yeah, that'd be great!
"Flamebait"... this was moderated as "Flamebait"?
Uh...
I don' git it...
I think you miss the point. He's not angry with Sony for failing to supply as per their hype, in fact, if I've read Dave Barry right for the last 15 years, he's not really angry at all. He's pointing out how absolutely ridiculous the entire craze is, b/c, after all... it's NOT about the material things... as he CLEARLY states.
He's making fun of Sony for failing to meet their own demand in such a dramatic way, but I'd hesitate to say he's MAD at them for it...
Funny (as in odd), that the ONE serious sentence in his ENTIRE essay is the one sentence that you ignore...
Also funny is that I agree with both you and Barry, at least on where the fault (such that it is) lays.
This is a good point, and I won't argue this with you (I was insulted (though not kicked) in those early linux channels as well... I'm a FreeBSD use now, thank you very much :P ). However, I think you're missing something crucial to this issue: while the Jocks and Cheerleaders have (in general) the acceptance and respect of the school administration, the geeks do not, ESPECIALLY after Columbine. These are, of course, very general terms, and don't apply across the board.
This inequality of respect, more than the behavior of any given peer group towards another, is the point of this story.
... or is the stated, relative speed increase of the Visor Platinum wrong? On the site, they say "50% faster than the Visor Deluxe", but with a new speed of 33MHz, and an old speed of 16MHz, doesn't that make it 206% faster? I read that and immediately thought "So what?" (I'll typically wait for cpu speeds to more than double before I upgrade)... but if what they're trying to say is "The Visor Deluxe is half the speed of the Platinum", then there's a little (not much) more cause for a double-take.
;)
Please correct me here... I'm certainly no mathmetician.
It's been a rough day so far, so bear with me here, but this crap sickens me (yes, I know all about dumbing down for the audience... and I don't agree with it in the slightest in this case).
Third Paragraph: "In late 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva, Switzerland, invented the World Wide Web."
Uh... pardon me, but... no... he didn't. He invented http, which combined with tcp/ip, hard and software out the wang, and a small pinch of timing, allowed the WWW to come into being over the next several years.
$WWW != 'http';
my $WWW = "A vast number of sites, on a vast number of computers, all strung together over miles of cable, all glued together by http and tcp/ip, and allowing for communication, collaboration, and personal expression on a scale never before seen.";
But that's just me. I could be wrong. If Gore has anything to do with it, I guess I am.
Paragraph Seven: "Petabytes of data means a thousand trillion bytes. This is the amount of data that can be stored by a million personal computer hard drives." Oh really. A million, eh? I guess the size of the drive doesn't matter then? W/o doing the actual math, I suppose I could fit a petabyte on a million of my old 120MB drives, just as easily as on a million of my new 75GB drives...
Audience, schmaudience...
What if I think Jim Crow laws are illegal? Is it wrong to continuously and continually break those until they're repealed? What if I think it's wrong to ban [pick your race/gender] from attending public school? If I, being of the banned race/gender, force my way in as an attempt to get those laws repealed, is that wrong?
Seems to me that much was done in the way of breaking laws of the early century that DID do a lot towards the cause...
Just a thought.
I'm not really replying to this, and by not replying, I'm stating that I agree and am with you.
I wasn't here, you never read this.
Look at it this way. Let's say Windows 2000 was just as reliable as FreeBSD (or Linux or whatever). What would moving it from FreeBSD to Windows 2000 do for them? Really, nothing.
It would save them from having to employ people that know FreeBSD (or Linux or whatever), and allow them to support only one, rather than multiple O/S's. I can see the benefits of maintaining a single O/S shop. It may not MAKE them money, but it could SAVE them money (which can easily be translated to making it later).
STABLE is for those who want the most stable version of FreeBSD. CURRENT is for those who are willing to experment and don't mind if source tree is less than perfect from time to time.
.0 release and is then called STABLE instead of CURRENT. This how we got FreeBSD 4.0.", which makes sense, but what is the criteria by which a RELEASE becomes STABLE. If that's how we get 4.0, is "4.0 RELEASE" basically the same as "4.0 STABLE", and if so, why isn't it labelled as such?
This much I understand, but what (if any) is the difference between STABLE/CURRENT and RELEASE? Who is RELEASE for?
You say "A RELEASE is a snaphot in time in which the given state of the CURRENT branch is judged to stable enough to be a release. This becomes a
Sincerely wanting to understand...
This is more a statement on the "journalist" than anything else, but since when does an e'mail to NSI qualify as a "hacker attack"? Hell, if sending an e'mail makes a hacker, then I've been an 37337 h4X0r 60D since 1994, and never even realized it!
I will 0WNJ U!!
Such a site, almost inconceivable even five years ago, now seems a benchmark of the way new media evolve to recognize and shape new culture.
Huh? Really?!
I wish I would have known this 5 years ago, when I built my first site in college, the focus of which was on computer gaming and table-top role-playing. Where I wrote about my characters and their trials, tribulations, and triumphs. Where I wrote about the computer games I was playing, those I wanted to play, and those I'd soon play. Where I wrote about my own experiences in gaming, both computer gaming and table-top. Where I wrote about how I thought gaming shaped me, in part, into who and what I am today (or was at the time... though it tends to carry through the years in it's own funny way).
Katz, where were you five years ago to tell me that I couldn't put that old site up? You could have saved me a lot of time...
It is particularly interesting that the a company that is supposedly Open Source oriented is stating all sorts of plans about IPOs and such and little or no talk about technology.
I'm not savvy in the realm of business, but I'd bet this is pure Market-speak, and that the techies had little to no influence or involvement in it. It's Yahoo News, after all... they aren't geared towards tech-heads. They're geared towards the suits with their bottom lines and their investment portfolios.
That's my take on it, anyway, and I could be wrong...
Have you people forgotten Lynx?! Highlight the link to the movie, and hit "d" for download. Heh... there are even Win32 versions of Lynx available, so that's no excuse. ;)
And if I'D actually done my research (unfiltered the level 1 comments for example, to see where this all started), I'd have seen that I was talking about JWZ himself, and that he DOES, in fact, use ALT="" for his images...
;)
Jeez... whatadumbassIam...
[ If they wanted to implemented tooltips, they
d ef-alt):
[ should have used the TITLE attribute to the A
[ tag. That's in the HTML 1.2 spec and everything.
ALT tags are required in HTML 4.0. Now, we all know that thanks to lazy browser implementation, HTML is nowhere near as strictly enforced as <pick your programming language>. I think it most definitely should be, but that's another thread altogether.
If you'd take the time follow through on the research you've already obviously done, you'd notice the following in the HTML 4.0 spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#a
'The alt attribute must be specified for the IMG and AREA elements. It is optional for the INPUT and APPLET elements.
While alternate text may be very helpful, it must be handled with care. Authors should observe the following guidelines:
Do not specify irrelevant alternate text when including images intended to format a page, for instance, alt="red ball" would be inappropriate for an image that adds a red ball for decorating a heading or paragraph. In such cases, the alternate text should be the empty string (""). Authors are in any case advised to avoid using images to format pages; style sheets should be used instead.
Do not specify meaningless alternate text (e.g., "dummy text"). Not only will this frustrate users, it will slow down user agents that must convert text to speech or braille output.'
So you see, while the ALT tag is required, you can simply put ALT="" and get around the crappy browser implementation, that is, until the browsers start requiring more intelligence of the people writing markup for the web.
For my Real Job, anywhere from 40 to 50 hours/week. For my Play Job (see URL), anywhere from 20 to 30 hours/week... and growing. I expect my Real Job to diminish some, while my Play Job grows a bit more real.
To back up the claims of others, in Lawrence, KS, our cable modem IP's are 24.124.x.x, while those next door in KC (Roadrunner) are 24.94.x.x., and neither are working in conjunction with @Home at the moment (though I can't speak for the past).
@Home may have bought 24.x.x.x, but they don't own them all now.
At the bottom of the MSNBC article...
"(c) 1999 ZDNet. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of ZDNet is prohibited."
I'm not saying permission was given, only that the MSNBC version most likely originated at ZDNet.
I was hoping for an informative Q/A session with someone I consider to be a brilliant writer. No. I don't agree with everything he says, but admire his courage in saying it, and the intelligence of his conclusions.
Maybe it's just me, but Leonard's apparent "expertise" on Geeks [note the capital letter, as Leonard seems to imply] ("Lesson for would-be interviewers of geeks: Never ask them a yes-or-no question, because that's all you'll get in response.") was entirely too distracting in the context of this story (an interview it most certainly is not).
Yes, send Stephenson back to Seattle, he DOES have more writing to do... and while you're at it, send Leonard back to to the "La Prematentious Cafe" where he can enduldge himself without fear of witnesses.
David Veatch => Pretentious enough to know better