I can attest to the convenience of that, as I do tech support. I've almost given up asking customers if they have "a preference as to what mail client" they use, before setting them up with the default Outlook Express.
Even on the seven or eight calls in which I pointed out that Internet Explorer and Outlook Express have had a history of security flaws, it still didn't make a difference.
I don't know about the other two, but Computer Shopper is horrible at reviews. They don't say anything negative. Instead, they just say varying degrees of "positive."
While I'd also ignore a review saying "The Pentium IV sucks ass," I do want reviews that don't just let a graph of some generic benchmarks do all the technical talking.
(I admit it. I'm not a true geek. I've never been to Tom's Hardware...I didn't know about it last time I needed a new computer.)
And now the debate on how to do a proper benchmark begins......
...or how to advertise it. Mr. Joe Game-Geek doesn't want to actually think...he wants to play!
Lessee...most people (who watch commercials at all) stop paying attention to commercials once they get the gist of what they're seeing. So let's drop the boring bechmark data at the end.
Wait! Half of the commercial is cut out after the first day it's aired! Double-Whammy!
It seeems that Digital Rights Management would actually save P2P. Go figure.
If clients like Gnutella were forced to reject files whose sharing violated their DRM flags, their illegal use would be restricted to non-protected data.
I hate to sound like a troll, but DRM may actually be a Good Thing. The only drawback(in this case) is that the controllers of DRM technology could charge up the wazoo to license the technology, and make it illegal not to.
But such is life in a free market economy.:-(
"Rights Management" seems oddly fitting, in this context.
Thinking of disorienting
on
Gaming Zone?
·
· Score: 1
Dreams would be a lot like this, too, wouldn't they? I can't recall a single dream I had where I was thinking in English...they're always an "Understand->do" experience.
For example, I know I want to punch out Godzilla. I automatically fly into the air, dodge a couple of swings at me, and hit him in face.
Of course, there always seems to be a shred of reality (or is it just masochism?) that causes him to swallow me when I get close enough...
I think he was using "phenomena" in the social sense. He was saying that scientists essentially woke up to another common part of the world around them.
They must've been in "the zone" thinking about something else.:)
The RIAA/MPAA seem to be applying it in all three areas.
The DMCA is a catch-all for companies to charge users for using equipment for unauthorized purposes. (For example, not buying their SDK to develop software.)
Last I heard, Caucasians are descended from the natives of the Caucusus (sp?) mountains in northern Eurasia, slightly left-of-center. (No pun intended)
Near as I can tell, (and, believe me, I'm not antrhopologist!), here's the object-oriented heirarchy of races:
Africans spawned Arabs and Mongols. Arabs spawned caucasians. Mongols spawned polynesians, Indians(is there a different term for that?) and Native Americans. Polynesians spawned the native race in South America, as well as the native Australians. Caucasians and South American natives spawned Hispanics.
Now, that's probably way off course, but then they come up with a new theory every other year anyway...
Oh, and it looks like almost everyone's from Asia after all.:)
Is this guy used to be M$'s security chief...Add that to Microsoft's security history, and one wonders what the heck happened to concerns about National Security.
I'm not ducking out, but this thread has made a 90 degree turn from the topic only four messages back. Could someone please mod down this and the last three messages in this thread? It's really just pointless bickering between two people who can't bear not to have the last word.
Linux doesn't. It's not even an operating system. It's a kernel. That means that there's at least one more layer of indirection(than direct access)(if cross-platform compatability is implemented, meaning no direct hooks into the kernel, and no direct access to hardware) before software can access devices. That leads to one of his points, that X is slow. X is a heap of several layers of indirection. I like it because that means I can use whatever windowmanager, video card, kernel and processor architecture I want to. With Windows, you get one windowmanager, any videocard, one kernel and one architecture.
No company has ever released a game for Linux.
In my opinion, tic-tac-toe is a game, not a game. Quake is a game. Just the fact that there can be two meanings for the same word in the same context proves that it's subjective.
Not one piece of Windows software runs well enough under WINE to consider using day-to-day.(rather subjective -- until you see that some programs run identically to their windows counterparts, such as Quake II, which makes this flat-out wrong.)
His experience with WINE may not have been a successful one. I never got DOSEmu running, so, for me, no DOS program (or even old ".com" programs like Robot Odyssey or some of Sierra's really old games) work well enough in Linux to warrent the effort to use frequently. Again, it's subjective.
Linux users are forced to use Netscape 4 if they want to surf the internet.
He may have been referring to mainstream-only software, which is a subjective distinction.
Linux has no way of changing the IP address of an interface without resorting to the command prompt.
I grimace here. I don't think he made that point, because he freely admitted that Linux was excellent for programming, and he did mention that he tried to get Linux to work for him.
No company would ever consider deploying Linux.
The fact that he referenced a Slashdot article shows he almost certainly didn't say that.
No hardware company would ever release drivers for Linux.
He said they rarely release drivers. And he said why.
In reference to my second point above, think about the form of communication we're using. In English, everything is subjective. I've never heard a sentence that someone couldn't twist into meaning something different. That's what politicians and the Media are all about, remember? Ever notice that all most third-world politicians ever do is claim that their opponents' charges of corruption against them are lies? I suggest that's largely due to the inflexibility of their languages.
Compared to plastics designed for strength, CDs are very malleable. It requires a great deal of force in a very short period of time for a fragment to cause that kind of damage before deforming or shattering further.
Gives me a new variation on an old idea for a Quake mod...:)
I agree with most of what I see here, but that's because I'm a fanatic. That itself suggests that/. doesn't take a fair approach. Sure, posters bring to light good points and counterpoints, but I doubt the Geek Gods of/. are going to change their views.
I point out a recent story about why someone left Linux for Windows. Taco said some of the points were wrong, not just that he disagreed with them. There is no wrong or right when dealing with subjective issues like popular culture (even that of geeks) or news, because nobody can be exactly the same.
Most people use (or at least, IMO, should use) Slashdot for Geek entertainment and unsalted information. (Grains of salt should be taken by the reader, not the poster.)
The stories are more biased than NPR's Talk of The Nation, and that's saying something.
The old-style Aluminum-shell SCBA air tanks (used as an oxygen supply for firefighters) are only about 1mm thick...and they routinely carry air at a pressure of 22,000 psi.
Those plastic fragments were able to crack open 1mm thick aluminum shielding! That means that the pressure those fragments applied was well in excess of 22,000 psi! Yikes!
It may be just me, but I always thought that one of the main themes of RAH's books was the exploration of unconventional systems and their effect on society.
His posthumously published book, Grumbles From the Grave contains a great deal of his correspondance with his editors and publishers, all verbatim. Grumbles shows that he only wrote what the publishers (and, in turn, the readers,) wanted. That's how he made money.
The fact that his books are intellectually stimulating and entertaining is a more or less indirect result of his publishing to demand.
The worst part is, a lot of it can't be avoided. Take the argument denouncing M$'s round() function. Just because it didn't do what I (along with many, many others) had always been taught "was the only right way to round", someone posted the message.
There's no way to keep people from assuming they know everything important about a particular topic. That's unpreventable to the point of being the cause of nearly every bad decision in history.
And if a person thinks they know enough about something to say something wise about it, then by all means they should say something. I don't remember where I heard this, but this situation is like the one quoted: "No society can be both free and safe."
In this case, no social gathering can be both speak and alwasy be intelligent.
I've recently begun noticing the sheer lack of organization that people have when they see anything they can make into an "anti-Microsoft" claim. Things like not reading articles before paraphrasing them, or attacking the stability of Whistler before anyone had run it.
Don't get me wrong...I'm a politically active anti-Microsofter, writing to senators and representatives frequently. I signed a petition to keep the current operator of OPN, and I run Linux on every box I have control over. My family finally told me to shut up after I spent months trying to get them to try Linux. My step-dad is surprised every time I describe something I can do in Linux, even though he programs QNX.
The story isn't too bad. It says a lot of the same things Linux advocates say, and I think it'll serve to increase interest. For example, it goes into moderate detail about the many financial advantages Linux provides, as well as points out the existance of "Linux Boot Camps," which provide training in migrating from w32 to Linux.
The biggest negative in the whole article is the title. It seems to me that the title is an excellent way to attract readers to the more Linux-advocate content.
Sure, it looks attractive, but unless there are some major support beams underneath, I won't ride in it. I'm a firefighter for Moorland township in Michigan, and I've seen cars torn in half by collisions.
Most cars today are of unabody construction, meaning that what you see of the car is actually what holds it together. Looking at that photo link, I can't easily imagine that car holding together in a head-on collision. Even if it did, it'd probably fold over the top.
Slashdot Mirror
I can attest to the convenience of that, as I do tech support. I've almost given up asking customers if they have "a preference as to what mail client" they use, before setting them up with the default Outlook Express.
Even on the seven or eight calls in which I pointed out that Internet Explorer and Outlook Express have had a history of security flaws, it still didn't make a difference.
Hail, oh mighty Microsoft defaults! Huzzah!
I don't know about the other two, but Computer Shopper is horrible at reviews. They don't say anything negative. Instead, they just say varying degrees of "positive."
While I'd also ignore a review saying "The Pentium IV sucks ass," I do want reviews that don't just let a graph of some generic benchmarks do all the technical talking.
(I admit it. I'm not a true geek. I've never been to Tom's Hardware...I didn't know about it last time I needed a new computer.)
And now the debate on how to do a proper benchmark begins......
...or how to advertise it. Mr. Joe Game-Geek doesn't want to actually think...he wants to play!
Lessee...most people (who watch commercials at all) stop paying attention to commercials once they get the gist of what they're seeing. So let's drop the boring bechmark data at the end.
Wait! Half of the commercial is cut out after the first day it's aired! Double-Whammy!
Why not just implement a keyboard that uses gloves to recognize the American and British Sign Languages?
Hey, I Liked The Boy Who Could Fly. :)
And I didn't know I was autistic back then! (Aspergers. Makes me naturally antisocial, which in turn used to make me more accepted among geeks.)
It seeems that Digital Rights Management would actually save P2P. Go figure.
:-(
If clients like Gnutella were forced to reject files whose sharing violated their DRM flags, their illegal use would be restricted to non-protected data.
I hate to sound like a troll, but DRM may actually be a Good Thing. The only drawback(in this case) is that the controllers of DRM technology could charge up the wazoo to license the technology, and make it illegal not to.
But such is life in a free market economy.
"Rights Management" seems oddly fitting, in this context.
Dreams would be a lot like this, too, wouldn't they? I can't recall a single dream I had where I was thinking in English...they're always an "Understand->do" experience.
For example, I know I want to punch out Godzilla. I automatically fly into the air, dodge a couple of swings at me, and hit him in face.
Of course, there always seems to be a shred of reality (or is it just masochism?) that causes him to swallow me when I get close enough...
I think he was using "phenomena" in the social sense. He was saying that scientists essentially woke up to another common part of the world around them.
:)
They must've been in "the zone" thinking about something else.
The RIAA/MPAA seem to be applying it in all three areas.
The DMCA is a catch-all for companies to charge users for using equipment for unauthorized purposes. (For example, not buying their SDK to develop software.)
Last I heard, Caucasians are descended from the natives of the Caucusus (sp?) mountains in northern Eurasia, slightly left-of-center. (No pun intended)
:)
Near as I can tell, (and, believe me, I'm not antrhopologist!), here's the object-oriented heirarchy of races:
Africans spawned Arabs and Mongols.
Arabs spawned caucasians.
Mongols spawned polynesians, Indians(is there a different term for that?) and Native Americans.
Polynesians spawned the native race in South America, as well as the native Australians.
Caucasians and South American natives spawned Hispanics.
Now, that's probably way off course, but then they come up with a new theory every other year anyway...
Oh, and it looks like almost everyone's from Asia after all.
Is this guy used to be M$'s security chief...Add that to Microsoft's security history, and one wonders what the heck happened to concerns about National Security.
Could ALICE be taught to respond in other, computer-based, languages, possibly producing artistic graphical models and programming code?
I actually tried to email you, but the email link on your site doesn't work. Do you have one I can reach you at?
I'm not ducking out, but this thread has made a 90 degree turn from the topic only four messages back.
Could someone please mod down this and the last three messages in this thread? It's really just pointless bickering between two people who can't bear not to have the last word.
Linux doesn't have any graphical interface.
Linux doesn't. It's not even an operating system. It's a kernel. That means that there's at least one more layer of indirection(than direct access)(if cross-platform compatability is implemented, meaning no direct hooks into the kernel, and no direct access to hardware) before software can access devices. That leads to one of his points, that X is slow. X is a heap of several layers of indirection. I like it because that means I can use whatever windowmanager, video card, kernel and processor architecture I want to. With Windows, you get one windowmanager, any videocard, one kernel and one architecture.
No company has ever released a game for Linux.
In my opinion, tic-tac-toe is a game, not a game. Quake is a game. Just the fact that there can be two meanings for the same word in the same context proves that it's subjective.
Not one piece of Windows software runs well enough under WINE to consider using day-to-day.(rather subjective -- until you see that some programs run identically to their windows counterparts, such as Quake II, which makes this flat-out wrong.)
His experience with WINE may not have been a successful one. I never got DOSEmu running, so, for me, no DOS program (or even old ".com" programs like Robot Odyssey or some of Sierra's really old games) work well enough in Linux to warrent the effort to use frequently. Again, it's subjective.
Linux users are forced to use Netscape 4 if they want to surf the internet.
He may have been referring to mainstream-only software, which is a subjective distinction.
Linux has no way of changing the IP address of an interface without resorting to the command prompt.
I grimace here. I don't think he made that point, because he freely admitted that Linux was excellent for programming, and he did mention that he tried to get Linux to work for him.
No company would ever consider deploying Linux.
The fact that he referenced a Slashdot article shows he almost certainly didn't say that.
No hardware company would ever release drivers for Linux.
He said they rarely release drivers. And he said why.
In reference to my second point above, think about the form of communication we're using. In English, everything is subjective. I've never heard a sentence that someone couldn't twist into meaning something different. That's what politicians and the Media are all about, remember? Ever notice that all most third-world politicians ever do is claim that their opponents' charges of corruption against them are lies? I suggest that's largely due to the inflexibility of their languages.
Compared to plastics designed for strength, CDs are very malleable. It requires a great deal of force in a very short period of time for a fragment to cause that kind of damage before deforming or shattering further.
:)
Gives me a new variation on an old idea for a Quake mod...
I agree with most of what I see here, but that's because I'm a fanatic. That itself suggests that /. doesn't take a fair approach. Sure, posters bring to light good points and counterpoints, but I doubt the Geek Gods of /. are going to change their views.
I point out a recent story about why someone left Linux for Windows. Taco said some of the points were wrong, not just that he disagreed with them. There is no wrong or right when dealing with subjective issues like popular culture (even that of geeks) or news, because nobody can be exactly the same.
Most people use (or at least, IMO, should use) Slashdot for Geek entertainment and unsalted information. (Grains of salt should be taken by the reader, not the poster.)
The stories are more biased than NPR's Talk of The Nation, and that's saying something.
The old-style Aluminum-shell SCBA air tanks (used as an oxygen supply for firefighters) are only about 1mm thick...and they routinely carry air at a pressure of 22,000 psi.
Those plastic fragments were able to crack open 1mm thick aluminum shielding! That means that the pressure those fragments applied was well in excess of 22,000 psi! Yikes!
My friends were telling me about how the could make PDP harddrives walk by making the disk heads, "do the butterfly test"
They discovered it accidentally when one "walked" off the stack and fell in front of the only door in...
It may be just me, but I always thought that one of the main themes of RAH's books was the exploration of unconventional systems and their effect on society.
His posthumously published book, Grumbles From the Grave contains a great deal of his correspondance with his editors and publishers, all verbatim. Grumbles shows that he only wrote what the publishers (and, in turn, the readers,) wanted. That's how he made money.
The fact that his books are intellectually stimulating and entertaining is a more or less indirect result of his publishing to demand.
No...It'll only take you forever if you go the speed of light. :)
The worst part is, a lot of it can't be avoided. Take the argument denouncing M$'s round() function. Just because it didn't do what I (along with many, many others) had always been taught "was the only right way to round", someone posted the message.
There's no way to keep people from assuming they know everything important about a particular topic. That's unpreventable to the point of being the cause of nearly every bad decision in history.
And if a person thinks they know enough about something to say something wise about it, then by all means they should say something. I don't remember where I heard this, but this situation is like the one quoted: "No society can be both free and safe."
In this case, no social gathering can be both speak and alwasy be intelligent.
hear hear!
I've recently begun noticing the sheer lack of organization that people have when they see anything they can make into an "anti-Microsoft" claim. Things like not reading articles before paraphrasing them, or attacking the stability of Whistler before anyone had run it.
Don't get me wrong...I'm a politically active anti-Microsofter, writing to senators and representatives frequently. I signed a petition to keep the current operator of OPN, and I run Linux on every box I have control over. My family finally told me to shut up after I spent months trying to get them to try Linux. My step-dad is surprised every time I describe something I can do in Linux, even though he programs QNX.
I'm just tired of brainless bashing.
I don't know whether I'm growing up or not.
The story isn't too bad. It says a lot of the same things Linux advocates say, and I think it'll serve to increase interest. For example, it goes into moderate detail about the many financial advantages Linux provides, as well as points out the existance of "Linux Boot Camps," which provide training in migrating from w32 to Linux.
The biggest negative in the whole article is the title. It seems to me that the title is an excellent way to attract readers to the more Linux-advocate content.
Just my two cents.
Sure, it looks attractive, but unless there are some major support beams underneath, I won't ride in it. I'm a firefighter for Moorland township in Michigan, and I've seen cars torn in half by collisions.
Most cars today are of unabody construction, meaning that what you see of the car is actually what holds it together. Looking at that photo link, I can't easily imagine that car holding together in a head-on collision. Even if it did, it'd probably fold over the top.