And the original poster said that where exactly? How do you draw the inference even? What they are saying is fundamentally true, regardless of how you feel about the articles referenced in the 'censored' list. Few people would take serious issue with that. But even if you would, rather than take a higher ground and constructively contribute to the discussion, you descend to hyperbole and name calling. 5 interesting? Maybe to someone who fits the original posters description. Ever hear of this thing called a 'middle ground' or 'happy medium'? It pretty much implies that too much of any one thing, news sources included, is not good. It's really just that simple. But talking about all that isn't as much fun as trolling, is it?
Microsoft failing entirely and Microsoft failing at something are two different matters. And, I at least, do not measure success and failure entirely by level of blind market acceptance. Search this topic for my other ranting post about a real, live and current user experience with DRM. No amount of business 'saavoy' will allow them to dance around the backlash of customers having their hands tied and their data nailed down when they don't want it to be and when it, in fact, _should not_ be to begin with. Outside of a internal business environment, DRM is completely user hostile.
Since you mention the evil ebook, I must rant, fuck my karma:
I have just been bitten by an ebook wielding website that I subscribed to before realizing the format they used. It required rebooting into Windows, using IE and installing Acrobat 6 to even download the data from their site. Acrobat 6 blocked most attempts to print to pdf etc, but I finally got PS output by installing an HP PS printer on the FILE: port. ps2pdf under Linux refused to convert the file citing redistillation not allowed. I'm hoping good old ghostscript will work, but I will have to tinker with that later tonight. In short, it's been a MAJOR PAIN IN THE FUCKING ASS to use a portion of a book that I have paid money for outside of a single program made by a single company on a single OS on a single PC. Welcome to DRMworld.
This shit will almost certainly hurt MS in the long run. That's the _only_ beauty in it that I can see so far.
Sweepingly calling the behavior a "plea for attention" is a bit off the mark. Lacking the skills that would be developed over time by actually seeking out interactions, I suspect that it is one of the only ways us introverted geeks can see to contribute to a conversation. Also, we are not simply looking for a conversation stopping, "Wow! You're smart! We dummies won't talk about it anymore and will simply marvel at you now instead!" Rather, additional data or some interesting interpretation of facts presented is what is hoped for. Alas, the extroverts simply get confused most of the time and inside are wondering who is running the football pool this week. The degrees of separation are more than six here.
This is fairly OT, but I've been wondering about this for a LONG time:
Circa 1981-82, someone published an RPG called Arkenstone that had a cash prize of $10000 (iirc) for completing/solving it. I remember holding it in my hand and lusting over it at the Computerland I begged to hang out in while mom was in the supermarket down the strip mall.
Am I the only person who remembers this game? Google finds nada concerning it. Did anyone ever collect the prize? What was the game actually like?
Been wondering about this for YEARS now.
To bring this somewhat on topic: Based on my above experience, I'd have to say that having real money involved in an RPG is either a definite plus or minus depending on how you look at it. The plus is that I still remember and wonder about the game twenty years later, so it was/is a _great_ marketing bonus and could really help provide the continuous revenue required for the kind of ongoing content production that current MMOG's so desperately need. The minus would be that maybe they made the game so hard and or crappy that nobody actually stood a chance of winning, which was quickly discovered by those who played it and thus the game fell out of favor immediately and the developer is now lurking under a rock somewhere after having been censured and/or sued!
Re:Other technologies go obsolete too, So what?
on
Software Archaeology
·
· Score: 1
Perceived value. Not many people care about 100 year old canning technology. Many, many people will get shoeboxes littered with digital media over the next century. Also, industrial (versus glass jars in the basement) canning is a very specific thing of use to very few people, software and data is much broader in scope and applicability, and thus more valuable in general. Just a guess anyway!
This guy is a TROLL people. All the others calling his bluff got modded into oblivion. Read some of them, and/or take a quick look at this dudes posting history. I've given up the -1 mod I had used to point this out instead, karma be damned. Anyone who makes a hobby of publicly mocking other racial groups while hiding behind an internet connection deserves to be called out.
Absolutely. I work in auto finance and built a web credit app entry piece for our dealers using Velocity. Senior mgmt had balked at the idea for almost two years before I got the go ahead to do it. Within four months it was taking in almost half of our total business and was accounting for upwards of 60% of approved deals. Not bad for a ~100k of code (there are some reports online too) and about thirty templates...
Re:Linux is still waiting in the wings
on
Linux on the Desktop
·
· Score: 4, Informative
"Linux innovates very little except in technological areas."
Not many have said as much in as few words.
"It's GUIs even today fall short of Windows and Mac GUIs"
I find KDE desktop behavior to be vastly superior to that provided by Windows. Try opening a full screen browser and a smaller window over it. Now try to navigate in the browser _without obscuring the smaller window_. This is but one example, and maybe it can even be done in Windows, but I've never seen it, heard of it or stumbled across it drunk.
"It's pretty rare you actually get someone with a little compassion that has felt your pain and is willing to help you out."
You aren't looking for help in the right places then. I've never been flamed while (groups.)googling. Or are you looking for a live hand-holder on IRC and/or simply can't/won't actually read any documentation?
"Everything about Linux (and Unix in general) seems to be as if it is some kind of rite of passage."
What can I say but that yes, it basically treats you like a fscking adult who has some grasp of fundamental computing principles. Some of us find that incredibly refreshing. Actually though, this is what distributions are for IMNSHO. RedHat and Mandrake or whatever for grandma and Debian and Slackware (or roll-your-own for crying out loud) for people who want more control and less automated hand-holding.
Argh, it's the same thing, over and over and over and over....
You really think using MS software implies an absence of backdoors and exploits? Considering their track record, people are practically guaranteed to die now. Also, in their EULAs, MS specifically disclaims liability for any problems that arise if you are stupid enough to use their software on life-critical systems. If you want a bulletproof, milspec, whatever you want to call it system, MS is the LAST place to look.
Space weather...as in solar winds
on
SOHO's Antenna Jammed
·
· Score: 4, Informative
This has nothing to do with terrestrial weather prediction.
FTA:
"SOHO monitors ejections of solar energy and in many cases provides the only warning of magnetic storms that are about to hit Earth. Though usually benign, these storms can knock out satellites and disrupt satellite and radio communications. In at least one case a solar storm disabled a power grid."
You've raised the d-n-d issue, which seems to come up every time this topic is discussed. How big of an issue is this really? I can't think of a single app that I use regularly (Win2k - PhotoShop, UltraEdit, SQL Enterprise Mgr, Linux - Sun 1 Studio, Mozilla, Krusader, OpenOffice) that I use dnd in. Granted that's not many apps, and it may just be my usage style doesn't include it, so I'd like to hear any comments.
I take that back about PhotoShop, I do drag stuff from one image to another occasionally.
Small, fast, and simple, it works like a charm. I'm guessing it would work on other platforms supported by Python as well.
Re:Those who can, do. Those who can't . . .
on
Robots Without a Cause
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"...I've got 3 kids under the age of 16 months..."
That's either triplets or one hell of a woman.
Re:Why can't I get Java working on my RH8 box?
on
Sun's Last Stand
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Installing a JRE/JDK and integrating it with Moz are two different things. What do you get when you type 'java' at the command line? Should the install process detect your browsers and install appropriate plugins into them? Sure. Claiming that Java is utterly broken on your RedHat box because it didn't do this is a bit extreme though.
Back in the olde days, people only had writing, no typing. They also had no tv, so they tended to think more critically and deeply on average. When they wrote, they tended to write at a great deal more length than is true today. When you are writing at length on a heavy thought, cursive flows. Individually printed lines cause one to pick the instrument up off the paper and put it back down continuously, which has the added side-effect of sending vibrations through the writing surface. And in those days I imagine that paper wasn't quite as uniformly thin and flat as we are today accustomed to. Once you get a grip on forming the letters properly and _consistently_, as out of habit, legibility is not a great issue and writing speed is much higher.
"is that TIA will be a good program for which researchers can get money...Innovations will be made..."
"... most of which will be used by employers, insurance companies and the like to further exclude anyone who might jeapordize profits."
And it'll be paid for by the poor bastards who, with the help of the government, are ultimately being screwed into debt slavery by the corporations...taxpayers! Fucking brilliant! Dr Evil would be proud...
Slashdot Mirror
And the original poster said that where exactly? How do you draw the inference even? What they are saying is fundamentally true, regardless of how you feel about the articles referenced in the 'censored' list. Few people would take serious issue with that. But even if you would, rather than take a higher ground and constructively contribute to the discussion, you descend to hyperbole and name calling. 5 interesting? Maybe to someone who fits the original posters description. Ever hear of this thing called a 'middle ground' or 'happy medium'? It pretty much implies that too much of any one thing, news sources included, is not good. It's really just that simple. But talking about all that isn't as much fun as trolling, is it?
As opposed to anal-retentive business-suit wearing alcoholic assholes?
I'll take three hippies please...
See! Microsoft really does innovate!
"Btw, I wonder why no other open-source office application can read and/or write it."
Actually, they are working on it.
Microsoft failing entirely and Microsoft failing at something are two different matters. And, I at least, do not measure success and failure entirely by level of blind market acceptance. Search this topic for my other ranting post about a real, live and current user experience with DRM. No amount of business 'saavoy' will allow them to dance around the backlash of customers having their hands tied and their data nailed down when they don't want it to be and when it, in fact, _should not_ be to begin with. Outside of a internal business environment, DRM is completely user hostile.
"That's all this feature is." ...intended for? Doubtful, yet even if true, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Since you mention the evil ebook, I must rant, fuck my karma:
I have just been bitten by an ebook wielding website that I subscribed to before realizing the format they used. It required rebooting into Windows, using IE and installing Acrobat 6 to even download the data from their site. Acrobat 6 blocked most attempts to print to pdf etc, but I finally got PS output by installing an HP PS printer on the FILE: port. ps2pdf under Linux refused to convert the file citing redistillation not allowed. I'm hoping good old ghostscript will work, but I will have to tinker with that later tonight. In short, it's been a MAJOR PAIN IN THE FUCKING ASS to use a portion of a book that I have paid money for outside of a single program made by a single company on a single OS on a single PC. Welcome to DRMworld.
This shit will almost certainly hurt MS in the long run. That's the _only_ beauty in it that I can see so far.
"GPS doesn't add any new capability in terms of tracking that they didn't have before."
Which just makes it that much easier to use and potentially abuse. Ignoring that aspect of things is intellectually dishonest.
Point taken. I started getting grumpier the more I thought about it!
Sweepingly calling the behavior a "plea for attention" is a bit off the mark. Lacking the skills that would be developed over time by actually seeking out interactions, I suspect that it is one of the only ways us introverted geeks can see to contribute to a conversation. Also, we are not simply looking for a conversation stopping, "Wow! You're smart! We dummies won't talk about it anymore and will simply marvel at you now instead!" Rather, additional data or some interesting interpretation of facts presented is what is hoped for. Alas, the extroverts simply get confused most of the time and inside are wondering who is running the football pool this week. The degrees of separation are more than six here.
This is fairly OT, but I've been wondering about this for a LONG time:
Circa 1981-82, someone published an RPG called Arkenstone that had a cash prize of $10000 (iirc) for completing/solving it. I remember holding it in my hand and lusting over it at the Computerland I begged to hang out in while mom was in the supermarket down the strip mall.
Am I the only person who remembers this game? Google finds nada concerning it. Did anyone ever collect the prize? What was the game actually like?
Been wondering about this for YEARS now.
To bring this somewhat on topic: Based on my above experience, I'd have to say that having real money involved in an RPG is either a definite plus or minus depending on how you look at it. The plus is that I still remember and wonder about the game twenty years later, so it was/is a _great_ marketing bonus and could really help provide the continuous revenue required for the kind of ongoing content production that current MMOG's so desperately need. The minus would be that maybe they made the game so hard and or crappy that nobody actually stood a chance of winning, which was quickly discovered by those who played it and thus the game fell out of favor immediately and the developer is now lurking under a rock somewhere after having been censured and/or sued!
Perceived value. Not many people care about 100 year old canning technology. Many, many people will get shoeboxes littered with digital media over the next century. Also, industrial (versus glass jars in the basement) canning is a very specific thing of use to very few people, software and data is much broader in scope and applicability, and thus more valuable in general. Just a guess anyway!
This guy is a TROLL people. All the others calling his bluff got modded into oblivion. Read some of them, and/or take a quick look at this dudes posting history. I've given up the -1 mod I had used to point this out instead, karma be damned. Anyone who makes a hobby of publicly mocking other racial groups while hiding behind an internet connection deserves to be called out.
This quarter revenue: IBM - 21.8 billion, MSFT - 8.0
Year '03 projection: IBM - 88.6, MSFT - 34.5
Still, it would be insane to try to take on both at the same time.
Absolutely. I work in auto finance and built a web credit app entry piece for our dealers using Velocity. Senior mgmt had balked at the idea for almost two years before I got the go ahead to do it. Within four months it was taking in almost half of our total business and was accounting for upwards of 60% of approved deals. Not bad for a ~100k of code (there are some reports online too) and about thirty templates...
"Linux innovates very little except in technological areas."
Not many have said as much in as few words.
"It's GUIs even today fall short of Windows and Mac GUIs"
I find KDE desktop behavior to be vastly superior to that provided by Windows. Try opening a full screen browser and a smaller window over it. Now try to navigate in the browser _without obscuring the smaller window_. This is but one example, and maybe it can even be done in Windows, but I've never seen it, heard of it or stumbled across it drunk.
"It's pretty rare you actually get someone with a little compassion that has felt your pain and is willing to help you out."
You aren't looking for help in the right places then. I've never been flamed while (groups.)googling. Or are you looking for a live hand-holder on IRC and/or simply can't/won't actually read any documentation?
"Everything about Linux (and Unix in general) seems to be as if it is some kind of rite of passage."
What can I say but that yes, it basically treats you like a fscking adult who has some grasp of fundamental computing principles. Some of us find that incredibly refreshing. Actually though, this is what distributions are for IMNSHO. RedHat and Mandrake or whatever for grandma and Debian and Slackware (or roll-your-own for crying out loud) for people who want more control and less automated hand-holding.
Argh, it's the same thing, over and over and over and over....
You really think using MS software implies an absence of backdoors and exploits? Considering their track record, people are practically guaranteed to die now. Also, in their EULAs, MS specifically disclaims liability for any problems that arise if you are stupid enough to use their software on life-critical systems. If you want a bulletproof, milspec, whatever you want to call it system, MS is the LAST place to look.
JSP? Eeek. Check out Velocity and Turbine.
This has nothing to do with terrestrial weather prediction.
FTA:
"SOHO monitors ejections of solar energy and in many cases provides the only warning of magnetic storms that are about to hit Earth. Though usually benign, these storms can knock out satellites and disrupt satellite and radio communications. In at least one case a solar storm disabled a power grid."
You've raised the d-n-d issue, which seems to come up every time this topic is discussed. How big of an issue is this really? I can't think of a single app that I use regularly (Win2k - PhotoShop, UltraEdit, SQL Enterprise Mgr, Linux - Sun 1 Studio, Mozilla, Krusader, OpenOffice) that I use dnd in. Granted that's not many apps, and it may just be my usage style doesn't include it, so I'd like to hear any comments.
I take that back about PhotoShop, I do drag stuff from one image to another occasionally.
Python NTLM Authentication Proxy
Small, fast, and simple, it works like a charm. I'm guessing it would work on other platforms supported by Python as well.
"...I've got 3 kids under the age of 16 months..."
That's either triplets or one hell of a woman.
Installing a JRE/JDK and integrating it with Moz are two different things. What do you get when you type 'java' at the command line? Should the install process detect your browsers and install appropriate plugins into them? Sure. Claiming that Java is utterly broken on your RedHat box because it didn't do this is a bit extreme though.
Back in the olde days, people only had writing, no typing. They also had no tv, so they tended to think more critically and deeply on average. When they wrote, they tended to write at a great deal more length than is true today. When you are writing at length on a heavy thought, cursive flows. Individually printed lines cause one to pick the instrument up off the paper and put it back down continuously, which has the added side-effect of sending vibrations through the writing surface. And in those days I imagine that paper wasn't quite as uniformly thin and flat as we are today accustomed to. Once you get a grip on forming the letters properly and _consistently_, as out of habit, legibility is not a great issue and writing speed is much higher.
"is that TIA will be a good program for which researchers can get money...Innovations will be made..."
"... most of which will be used by employers, insurance companies and the like to further exclude anyone who might jeapordize profits."
And it'll be paid for by the poor bastards who, with the help of the government, are ultimately being screwed into debt slavery by the corporations...taxpayers! Fucking brilliant! Dr Evil would be proud...