Here's $5 and a map to the Salvation Army. Upgrade that slab.
I got my computer from the Salvation Army you insensitive clod!.....or are you saying they have loads more better ones now all the Windows users have thrown their old 1Gb PCs out when they upgraded to Windows7?
I take offense at that, considering that without British tech, America wouldn't have either radar or jet fighters to jam in the first place and you'd be reading slashdot on a bulletin board transmitted over the telegraph network.
Oh, except you wouldn't have computers to read them on anyway as that's a British invention too.
Besides all that, you're an arrogant American, and you're calling someone else rude?
If you like Frankie Boyle, you might like Argumental on Dave. quote:
I never thought I'd see the day where Frankie Boyle would be referred to as only the second most offensive ginger haired chap to appear on a stage and make people piss themselves laughing while at the same time leaving them feeling both disturbed and afraid for their own safety.
Buzzcocks - was brilliant in the early days, Mark Lamarr would tease bimbo contestants by telling them the answers and they *still* wouldn't get it right. Hilarious at times.
Have I got News for You - still good, but not nearly as good as the Radio4 version, the News Quiz. Its kind of a dumbed-down version for prime-time TV audiences who need pictures to go with their comedy.
Probably because BBC America isn't the BBC, its a commercial entity set up to screw you out of as much $$ as they can get away with (the American dream, right?). The BBC itself is not allowed to fund any programmes not available to UK viewers, so these corporates have to be legally and organisationally separate, and entirely self-funded.
So the BBC will be selling the full hour episodes to BBC America, which then 'reformats' it for domestic viewing based on the current environment - ie adding loads of ads.
I suppose the trick is to buy video equipment that displays region 2 DVDs, and buy them directly from the UK. Alternatively, write in and complain that you wouldn't mind these programmes being broadcast separately (maybe during the night) in th extended version. We're doing that over here now - programmes like QI are now shown as repeats with extra bits or material that were cut from the original half-hour episode. They're called "QI XL", or "Have I Got a Bit More News For You" and contain another ten minutes or so, so the network isn't adverse to doing this.
If the beeb isn't saying what these politicians want said, then it has to be doing a sterling job. You can tell just how good a job its doing by measuring the amount of vitriol said politicians and supporters spew when confronted with it:)
I'd say the World Service does try, its a bit like Radio4 International Edition, so that doesn't really detract fromR4 being *the* best radio station anywhere.
And don't forget the comedy on R4, all the best stuff you see people raving about on the TV started life as radio broadcasts, and they were better on the radio.
The entire concept of 'cloud computing' is moronic
yup.
What could possibly go wrong?
loads.
Once we all have thin clients on our desks hooked into the cloud, we can ... we can charge users per month... Suddenly the cloud seems a lot more of a good idea. To the corporations out there that is, 'cos they don't really care what you think - you'll use the same software they 'cloud-enable' and think you're getting an upgrade of some sort.
The cloud is coming, even if it's going to take GoogleOS to make it mainstream, despite the (sensible) criticisms you and I may make.
you are in a large entrance hall, corridors sneak off on all directions. Are you feeling brave adventurer? > say "sales and support please"
you are in a marbed atrium, high-vaulted ceilings cross above you. You can see a passage way leading downwards into the dark, and a staircase leading upwards. > say "software support please"
you go down into the darkness, and come out in a labyrinth of passages. > say "server support please"
you are in a cave with a monstrous tentacled serpent, its tentacles reach out towards you. > say "operating system bugs please"
the tentacles grab you and start to tear you apart. With your last breath you hear it murmur "this is sql server support, I can transfer you back to our general support department sir"
you are in a large entrance hall, corridors sneak off on all directions. Are you feeling brave adventurer? >
I think they have, the latest set of Windows updates included a very Important one - silverlight. Beats me why silverlight is a must-have update to Windows (unless we're talking about abusing their monopoly position on the desktop), but I guess everyone's ok with it.
Not so. NT 3.51 had user-mode graphics drivers. They moved it to the kernel with the Win95 shell. There was some controversy about the wisdom of this move at the time, and was responsible for MS claiming most NT crashes and instability was due to poor graphics drivers.
Windows 7 was brought forward by 2 years at least, MS usually expects their OSs to last 5-7 years between updates. I also seem to recall the focus of Windows 7 was to address issues with Vista, like resource usage, responsiveness and UI niggles like continual UAC prompts. They've still got UAC for example, but make it pop much less than before.
NT was a cleanr OS, but they did graft the Win95 UI on top of it, and move the graphics drivers into the kernel to support it with enough speed. I can't say that they broke more of it in Vista, but I wouldn't be surprised given the amount of changes they made to everything for Vista..NET doesn't intercept Win32 calls, it is mostly a layer on top of Win32 to provide a 'cleaner' (read different) API.
that's be more like OS/400 matters. I used to joke that you bought a database (DB2) and got a free server and OS to run it on.
That's what IBM does, they sell the whole package, not just one bit and expect you to shell out for the rest. Of course, the whole package is suitably priced, but as a one-stop solution its often the best you can get. Their hardware is really good even if it comes at a corresponding price.
My experience of senior executives of multinational corporations is that they a) think they're god, b) think they own you, c) expect you to do what they tell you and d) assume laws and morals don't apply to them.
Ah, but as its a web-based server thing, how can they know how many users are served by those sites? I may have sharepoint installed, but used by 2 users - me n Dave. Or it could be serving the entire 4000-person corporate.
So I expect they extrapolate from sharepoint sales, and Office sales - everyone using Word uses Sharepoint, right - they bought a licence at the same time, therefore.... Standard marketing-logic for 'we sold loads'. I'm sure the cash sales figures are correct however.
Of course, it also doesn't consider the number of users who bought sharepoint, tried it, then junked it as the biggest pile of steaming stuff ever to come out of MS.
I remember speaking to a professional studio engineer, and he told me about the frequency responses of the microphones they use.. basically its not so great. I'm not surprised good compression would make next to no difference to the resulting sound, especially if the majority of the compression took out the very high and low frequencies.
and besides, I do most of my listening on teeny little in-ear headphones, or in the car, so it wouldn't matter if compression did screw most of the frequencies away.
I just don't believe this now.. its one thing to silently install an extension you want me to run, but quite another to install 2 - one to silently replace it if I delete it, and to break other things.
Is there *any* way I can definitely have control of my own pc please, without installing Opera, say.
Ah, no.. my point is not that its complex it itself, but its complex because of all the "added-value" bit it was required to support - the article of hosting is a good one because it describes how any nice, clean, implementation would have to be sullied by having to support IIS integration, and SQL Server, and whatever other bodged in system MS happens to have. Instead of keeping it separate, it always has to be integrated so you can write your SQL queries in C#, or your webapps in VB.NET, nobody thought it might be a good idea to try a more decoupled approach.
As a result, you get feature sprawl, and then have to support a ton of backward compatibility issues, and maintenance becomes very difficult. And things like security issues will creep in simply because the system is vastly more complex than it should have been.
Do you have a link for that? I'd be very interested to show more flaws in the design of.NET.
I know Chris Brumme's excellent weblog about the CLR has quite a few interesting things to say, and even more if you read between the lines in places, you know he wants to say "we screwed this up big time" and he does say that occasionally. With hindsight, they did make some technical mistakes - throwing objects instead of just exceptions, allowing.Net apps to run in IIS at all, thinking GC would remove the need for reference counting, and several marketing mistakes - telling everyone exceptions were very inexpensive (I recall one particularly misinformed MS drone telling me exceptions were free because it was all handled by the CLR... d'oh)(read the blog)
If ever there was an example of keeping it simple,.NET is it - as an example of what not to do. Hats off to Chris who I think is very intelligent and talented, but the scope and spec of what they asked of him was too awkward to make a perfect job of.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's $5 and a map to the Salvation Army. Upgrade that slab.
I got my computer from the Salvation Army you insensitive clod! .....or are you saying they have loads more better ones now all the Windows users have thrown their old 1Gb PCs out when they upgraded to Windows7?
I take offense at that, considering that without British tech, America wouldn't have either radar or jet fighters to jam in the first place and you'd be reading slashdot on a bulletin board transmitted over the telegraph network.
Oh, except you wouldn't have computers to read them on anyway as that's a British invention too.
Besides all that, you're an arrogant American, and you're calling someone else rude?
Security isn't exactly a priority for drupal either, it's almost added as an afterthought.
not any more!!
If you like Frankie Boyle, you might like Argumental on Dave. quote:
I never thought I'd see the day where Frankie Boyle would be referred to as only the second most offensive ginger haired chap to appear on a stage and make people piss themselves laughing while at the same time leaving them feeling both disturbed and afraid for their own safety.
Buzzcocks - was brilliant in the early days, Mark Lamarr would tease bimbo contestants by telling them the answers and they *still* wouldn't get it right. Hilarious at times.
Have I got News for You - still good, but not nearly as good as the Radio4 version, the News Quiz. Its kind of a dumbed-down version for prime-time TV audiences who need pictures to go with their comedy.
People have mentioned quiz shows like QI, (even if it gets it wrong occasionally), but we do great stand-up shows like Michael McIntyre's Comedy Roadshow (watch the one with Rhod Gilbert!), and also sketch shows like Armstrong and Miller (love Brabbins and Fyffe)
Or just browser through the archives on the BBC Comedy site.
Probably because BBC America isn't the BBC, its a commercial entity set up to screw you out of as much $$ as they can get away with (the American dream, right?). The BBC itself is not allowed to fund any programmes not available to UK viewers, so these corporates have to be legally and organisationally separate, and entirely self-funded.
So the BBC will be selling the full hour episodes to BBC America, which then 'reformats' it for domestic viewing based on the current environment - ie adding loads of ads.
I suppose the trick is to buy video equipment that displays region 2 DVDs, and buy them directly from the UK. Alternatively, write in and complain that you wouldn't mind these programmes being broadcast separately (maybe during the night) in th extended version. We're doing that over here now - programmes like QI are now shown as repeats with extra bits or material that were cut from the original half-hour episode. They're called "QI XL", or "Have I Got a Bit More News For You" and contain another ten minutes or so, so the network isn't adverse to doing this.
If the beeb isn't saying what these politicians want said, then it has to be doing a sterling job. You can tell just how good a job its doing by measuring the amount of vitriol said politicians and supporters spew when confronted with it :)
I'd say the World Service does try, its a bit like Radio4 International Edition, so that doesn't really detract fromR4 being *the* best radio station anywhere.
And don't forget the comedy on R4, all the best stuff you see people raving about on the TV started life as radio broadcasts, and they were better on the radio.
If you have a multiregion DVD player, you can always buy the DVDs, or the books if you don't.
The entire concept of 'cloud computing' is moronic
yup.
What could possibly go wrong?
loads.
Once we all have thin clients on our desks hooked into the cloud, we can ... we can charge users per month... Suddenly the cloud seems a lot more of a good idea. To the corporations out there that is, 'cos they don't really care what you think - you'll use the same software they 'cloud-enable' and think you're getting an upgrade of some sort.
The cloud is coming, even if it's going to take GoogleOS to make it mainstream, despite the (sensible) criticisms you and I may make.
Its Microsoft's homage to Hunt the Wumpus.
you are in a large entrance hall, corridors sneak off on all directions. Are you feeling brave adventurer?
> say "sales and support please"
you are in a marbed atrium, high-vaulted ceilings cross above you. You can see a passage way leading downwards into the dark, and a staircase leading upwards.
> say "software support please"
you go down into the darkness, and come out in a labyrinth of passages.
> say "server support please"
you are in a cave with a monstrous tentacled serpent, its tentacles reach out towards you.
> say "operating system bugs please"
the tentacles grab you and start to tear you apart. With your last breath you hear it murmur "this is sql server support, I can transfer you back to our general support department sir"
you are in a large entrance hall, corridors sneak off on all directions. Are you feeling brave adventurer?
>
I think they have, the latest set of Windows updates included a very Important one - silverlight. Beats me why silverlight is a must-have update to Windows (unless we're talking about abusing their monopoly position on the desktop), but I guess everyone's ok with it.
Windows 7 is the best OS I've used in years, and I havn't even installed it yet! :)
Not so. NT 3.51 had user-mode graphics drivers. They moved it to the kernel with the Win95 shell. There was some controversy about the wisdom of this move at the time, and was responsible for MS claiming most NT crashes and instability was due to poor graphics drivers.
Its a bit better now though.
Windows 7 was brought forward by 2 years at least, MS usually expects their OSs to last 5-7 years between updates. I also seem to recall the focus of Windows 7 was to address issues with Vista, like resource usage, responsiveness and UI niggles like continual UAC prompts. They've still got UAC for example, but make it pop much less than before.
NT was a cleanr OS, but they did graft the Win95 UI on top of it, and move the graphics drivers into the kernel to support it with enough speed. I can't say that they broke more of it in Vista, but I wouldn't be surprised given the amount of changes they made to everything for Vista. .NET doesn't intercept Win32 calls, it is mostly a layer on top of Win32 to provide a 'cleaner' (read different) API.
that's be more like OS/400 matters. I used to joke that you bought a database (DB2) and got a free server and OS to run it on.
That's what IBM does, they sell the whole package, not just one bit and expect you to shell out for the rest. Of course, the whole package is suitably priced, but as a one-stop solution its often the best you can get. Their hardware is really good even if it comes at a corresponding price.
lol. don't worry - I was just trying to be funny anyway. High-level execs are best ignored at the best of times.
My experience of senior executives of multinational corporations is that they a) think they're god, b) think they own you, c) expect you to do what they tell you and d) assume laws and morals don't apply to them.
oh, and e) actually *deserve* those bonuses. lol.
Ah, but as its a web-based server thing, how can they know how many users are served by those sites? I may have sharepoint installed, but used by 2 users - me n Dave. Or it could be serving the entire 4000-person corporate.
So I expect they extrapolate from sharepoint sales, and Office sales - everyone using Word uses Sharepoint, right - they bought a licence at the same time, therefore.... Standard marketing-logic for 'we sold loads'. I'm sure the cash sales figures are correct however.
Of course, it also doesn't consider the number of users who bought sharepoint, tried it, then junked it as the biggest pile of steaming stuff ever to come out of MS.
I remember speaking to a professional studio engineer, and he told me about the frequency responses of the microphones they use.. basically its not so great. I'm not surprised good compression would make next to no difference to the resulting sound, especially if the majority of the compression took out the very high and low frequencies.
and besides, I do most of my listening on teeny little in-ear headphones, or in the car, so it wouldn't matter if compression did screw most of the frequencies away.
I just don't believe this now.. its one thing to silently install an extension you want me to run, but quite another to install 2 - one to silently replace it if I delete it, and to break other things.
Is there *any* way I can definitely have control of my own pc please, without installing Opera, say.
because .NET installer doesn't get a chance to run and put it there...
No, not until Tuesday when you get the next set of security updates :)
Ah, no.. my point is not that its complex it itself, but its complex because of all the "added-value" bit it was required to support - the article of hosting is a good one because it describes how any nice, clean, implementation would have to be sullied by having to support IIS integration, and SQL Server, and whatever other bodged in system MS happens to have. Instead of keeping it separate, it always has to be integrated so you can write your SQL queries in C#, or your webapps in VB.NET, nobody thought it might be a good idea to try a more decoupled approach.
As a result, you get feature sprawl, and then have to support a ton of backward compatibility issues, and maintenance becomes very difficult. And things like security issues will creep in simply because the system is vastly more complex than it should have been.
I'm sure whatever it was you installed from Sony that snuck the rootkit in had similar wording in its smallprint too.
I guess its ok if MS does it, but not Sony?
Do you have a link for that? I'd be very interested to show more flaws in the design of .NET.
I know Chris Brumme's excellent weblog about the CLR has quite a few interesting things to say, and even more if you read between the lines in places, you know he wants to say "we screwed this up big time" and he does say that occasionally. With hindsight, they did make some technical mistakes - throwing objects instead of just exceptions, allowing .Net apps to run in IIS at all, thinking GC would remove the need for reference counting, and several marketing mistakes - telling everyone exceptions were very inexpensive (I recall one particularly misinformed MS drone telling me exceptions were free because it was all handled by the CLR... d'oh)(read the blog)
If ever there was an example of keeping it simple, .NET is it - as an example of what not to do. Hats off to Chris who I think is very intelligent and talented, but the scope and spec of what they asked of him was too awkward to make a perfect job of.
You also do almost 100% of the world's innovation and produce the vast majority of art and cultu
you are kidding, right? Perhaps you also think you have the best educated citizens on the planet too.