So I'm working at a small company over the summer. One of my friends was the sys admin/lead programmer there, that's how I got the job. This new guy comes in a few weeks before I go back to school. So my friend goes on newegg and buys him the usual 400 dollar computer. He also always gets a standard logitech optical USB mouse and the cheapest keyboard which has the correct button layout.
He presents the computer to the new guy. The new guy says he doesn't want the mouse and keyboard "I'll bring my own ergonomic keyboard and trackball in from home." he says. So he comes back with a big old dirty microsoft ergonomic keyboard, the kind that has the keyboard split in half with a hump in the middle. And he also bring a fancy logitech trackball.
We think nothing of it really. He's just an anal guy. But then I look over into his cube one day to see the most hilarious thing ever.
The dude types via hunt and peck. I don't think that ergonomic keyboard makes a difference when you only use two fingers bub!
Laser printer. On ebay you can get used laser printers that work just fine for quite a nice cost. And even thought you have to buy toner cartridges from the OEM they last for freakin' ever. In the long run the savings of a color laser printer far outweighs the initial cost.
IANAL. However it makes sense to me that maybe you can sue. If a doctor doesn't keep your medical records safe and secure, then I imagine they could be held liable. If this is true, then I assume the same can be true of an employer. If they don't keep your personal information safe and secure, then you can sue them for being negligent or some such.
Of course, if you just want to give some convincing give them the old risk benefit analasys. If all our computers got hosed how much would we lose? Then prove how likely it is and how often it happens. Then tell them the solution.
Yeah, at first people don't like being forced to learn it. What you have to do is not put it on their computers, but show it to them on another computer. Let them see and experience the advantages of this system over the other. Migrate people who don't mind. Eventually the people who don't will watch the people who did. The people who did was be like "oh, its so fast, oh it never crashes". Then when it becomes popular people will go over in droves.
When you just stand there telling them the reasons its better they zone you out and don't listen. You're a computer guy talking about computer stuff they don't care to understand. But once they experience how much better it is, they want more. This is why Firefox is so successful. The difference in the immediate experience is so drastically and obviously superior to IE that people who use it for a few minutes and know how to effectively use tabs never go back.
People are skeptical and cautious about moving to a new technology unless they see an obvious benefit. But when people have already moved forward to a new technology and have experienced the obvious benefit it is impossible to move them backwards to something less convenient.
The only problem is that having a few linux boxes here, and a few windows boxes there makes the sys admins job not so good.
Draftees are no good, and here is why. Take me for example. I'm 22.5 years old, prime for the draft. I refuse to kill people. If a draft comes I have mutiple escape and fallback plans in place to get away. If I go to war, I will refuse to kill people. I will put my life and the lives of whoever is with me in extreme danger. I will be completely useless, in fact it would be better not to draft me than draft me.
Now, if the war was a real war. Like if someone invaded the US and we were sending them home. Then I might change my mind. Heck, I might enlist. But as for a war like this, which is incredibly unpopular, you really don't want draftees. We really didn't learn any lessons from Vietnam at all did we?
Dang, there are no maps in there. The best stuff in the archives at town hall have always been maps of the town and blueprints of various buildings. But nobody scanned those in the archives. Oh well.
this looks pretty tame to me actually. You run one command and copy a few files from the real cd. In a few days I'm sure that in gentoo at least you will be able to do
emerge doom3
and
emerge doom3-demo
The reason they have stuff like this is because of the heterogenous nature of linux systems. There is bound to be someone out there for whom the install isn't a piece of cake. And for those special cases they need the wiki. Most people will install this very easily and make it go.
From my experience the people who have problems will be the same people who have problems with their linux systems. Smart users with good working systems, i.e: 3d and sound already work correctly and software is updated to newer versions, will have no trouble.
The reason you can't play all sorts of video content in your firefox is because you are using windows. And with windows you need a seperate plugin for every kind of video encoding. So a quicktime plugin here, and a windows media plugin there, and a real player plugin there.
In Linux mplayer can play every single type of video ever. There are no exceptions I have ever found. Every single video file I have ever seen plays correctly and better in mplayer than anything else ever. heck, it can even do full screen quicktimes which you usually need to pay for.
If you run firefox in linux and use mplayerplug-in mplayer will be integrated into your browser. This is just one way in which linux completely owns windows. Firefox in windows works with every website I have ever tried ever. And a site that doesn't work is probably a site that I don't want to visit. I know this because I haven't visited one yet.
To anyone who is saying that my idea will not work I present Penny Arcade as the counter example. Gabe and Tycho make fantastic artwork which they love to do for absolutely nothing. And because they put in so much effort and time, and their work is so well loved you have people literally lining up in the streets to give them money.
In my system the people who are very good at what they do. In fact, only the people that are so good they make people want to pay them will be the ones who survive. In fact, it will be closer to true capitalism because only the highest quality music will still be around. Not the music with the biggest productions. Not the music by the hottest artists on MTV. But the music that inspires people, the music that fills people with a passion with which they will literally get up and want to give money to those musicians just because they deserve it.
Sure, they wont get rich on it. Sure, they'll make a lot less money than in the current system. But two guys from the west coast have managed to make a living off this business model. Why can't musicians? And wouldn't the world be a better place for it?
I think you've got it wrong. It's not that I'm used to getting music for free. I actually believe that music must and should be free. In fact, all information should be free. Recorded music is just that, information. I care about artists though, they are people and I care about people. What people have to understand is this. In a world where all recorded music was free, and nobody expected it to cost money, people who love music will still make music. If those people want to make a living from music they will set up a very economical system by which they will profit from live performances and merchandise. And maybe someone will think up a new way to make money from music besides selling recordings. *gasp*
The best thing is that in a world such as this, which I am pushing for, there will be no super wealthy musicians. I don't know why people have this expecations that artists deserve to be super rich. What's wrong with being a middle class musician? You'r not going hungry.
Music will never die. Musicians will always be around and people will support them. Only the corporate recording studio structure, the super rich megastars with no talent and all image, the giant stadium concerts filled with lights and pyrotechnics. These are the things that will go away. But people will still make music, if only for their own happiness and the happiness of others. Just like programmers will continue to make software for nothing. This is the world we are heading towards. There is no stopping it as long as we keep pushing.
Do not pay for recorded music. Do not pay for software. Do not pay for information. Eventually the corporate structure will either crumble or change. This event will truly lead us to a freer society.
In short. Fuck those people at the record companies who make money and aren't even the people playing the music. And fuck those people with no musical talent riding MTV to fortunes of cash. Hooray for the people making music because they love to. Let those people develop a new business model whereby they can sustain themselves doing something they love.
I just happen to have some unpartitioned space on one of my drives. I think I'll try this out sometime soon. But the screenshots make it seem as if its just like linux with a new, non-revolutionary, desktop environment. Behind the scenes it may be different, but that doesn't matter to non-geeks.
There are plenty of good comics out there based on video games. But one that you should specifically avoid is the Mega Man comics from Dreamwave. They are the most terrible things ever.
However, you definitely should check out Dreamwave's Transformers comics. Most of them are high quality.
If you can't access the disc often, that means only one thing. You have to load all the info off the disc into ram beforehand. That means, LOAD TIMES. Want to whip out your PSP in class for a quick game before the teacher gets there? Sorry, gotta wait a minute for it to load. Oh shit, times up! Not good for the PSP. Which was already looking bad with its much higher price tag.
cd-rom? Um no. Just because you have no browser doesn't mean you have no internet connection. You can use any of the thousands of other internet protocols capable of transferring files to get the firefox setup program. *gasp*
1) If your partner is more experienced it is usually annoyance for them and great fun learning for you.
2) Vice versa of 1.
3) Neither partner is experience or knowledgable enough to do the work on their own then productivity increases only slightly because you have two people trying to figure out new things at once. Also makes the job programming less painful for both since you share suffering.
4) Both partners are knowledgeable and experience enough for the work. It depends on the personalities of the people
4a) personalities are conducive to teamwork, super productivity! Project gets done fast, bugs are caught during implementation, everyone is happy.
4b) personalities not conducive to teamwork, super bad! Both programmers are knowledgeable and could therefore be doing more work if they each coded separately.
As long as neither partner lacks basic social skills and is not a complete loner then teamwork is usually good experience because you can enjoy the company and conversation of another programmer while you work.
You can't beat the dollar theatre. During the week at night its a dollar. Weekend nights I think are like 2.50 or 2. I'm not sure. But the best is the 50 cent weekday matinee.
As for annoyances, I don't get too many in the theatres around here, even when its crowded. And when I get them, they don't bother me. I think they actually improve the movie experience somewhat. Sitting with a bunch of strangers is the way movies are meant to be watched, it definitely adds something.
The problem is that there are so few movies worth seeing even in the dollar theatre. I guess I'll see episode 3 for 50 cents. Other than that, I can't think of a movie I'm dying to see. It's pretty sad. All the movies I want to see I can rent at video barn where they have the HK imports and every Kung Fu movie ever.
Recorded music isn't worth anything to me anymore. I'll pay to see a concert or buy merchandise if I am compelled to do so. But unless it is for a ridiculously low price, say a dollar a month for infinite music, then its just not worth it.
Even if I did join some service, almost none of the music I listen to would be available. I listen mostly to groups like machinae supremacy, who give their music away for free anyway, classic rock which I already have on vinyl and thus am legally allowed to have mp3s of, ocremixes, and foreign music. It might be possible to pay for some of the foreign music on some of the services, but either I wont be able to read it or it wont work with Linux or it will costly ungodly amounts of money.
In conclusion I would actually pay for music if. 1) Every song ever recorded was available. 2) I could choose my format and bitrate freely. 3) Absolutely no DRM encumberance. 4) Works with Linux. 5) Super cheap, we're talking pennies or half pennies per song.
It's a good thing not too many people feel like me. The record companies would be screwed.
so they made a new lossless image format. Don't we already have lossless image formats like tiff? What makes this one better than the others? Does it have some sort of lossless compression that is currently beyond compare? Will it mean that a digital camera can store more pictures in its storage space without losing picture quality?
It seems to me that this is just adobe re-inventing the wheel into a new proprietary wheel. If it doesn't provide any sort of technological improvement I don't see how it is going to do anything for them...
At least with this one type of spam I know that the spammer is paying big bugs in bandwith to make it work. Just maybe we'll be lucky and it will turn out that voip spam isn't profitable and we will be free of it.
So assuming you put this system in place and it actually works. What happens when someone hacks your school's shitty computers and is able to verify that yes, that person in the chat room is a real 12 year old girl.
Wow, I thought only stupid non-computer type people use Kazaa. I didn't think anybody used eDonkey. I use giFT ( gnutella + openft ), winmx ( with wine ), and DC. I really don't trust any of the other p2p networks enough. Or more properly worded, I don't trust the users of the other p2p networks enough. And of course, there's always my favorite new file transfer program, gaim + jabber.
Oh yeah, BT, duh. But that doesn't really count, does it?
bash_3_prompt $ esearch -Sc doom [ N] doomsday (1.8.1): A modern gaming engine for Doom, Heretic, and Hexen [ N] lsdldoom (1.4.4.4): Port of ID's doom to SDL [ N] doomlegacy (1.42): Doom legacy, THE doom port [ N] freedoom (0.2): Freedoom - Open Source Doom resources [ N] prboom (2.2.4-r1): Port of ID's doom to SDL and OpenGL [ N] doom-data (1): collection of doom wad files from id [ N] yadex (1.7.0): A Doom level (wad) editor [ N] glbsp (2.05): A node builder specially designed for OpenGL ports of the DOOM game engine [ N] wmdl (1.4.1): WindowMaker Doom Load dockapp [ N] gkrellflynn (0.7): A funny GKrellM (1 or 2) load monitor (for Doom(tm) fans)
Slashdot Mirror
So I'm working at a small company over the summer. One of my friends was the sys admin/lead programmer there, that's how I got the job. This new guy comes in a few weeks before I go back to school. So my friend goes on newegg and buys him the usual 400 dollar computer. He also always gets a standard logitech optical USB mouse and the cheapest keyboard which has the correct button layout.
He presents the computer to the new guy. The new guy says he doesn't want the mouse and keyboard "I'll bring my own ergonomic keyboard and trackball in from home." he says. So he comes back with a big old dirty microsoft ergonomic keyboard, the kind that has the keyboard split in half with a hump in the middle. And he also bring a fancy logitech trackball.
We think nothing of it really. He's just an anal guy. But then I look over into his cube one day to see the most hilarious thing ever.
The dude types via hunt and peck. I don't think that ergonomic keyboard makes a difference when you only use two fingers bub!
Laser printer. On ebay you can get used laser printers that work just fine for quite a nice cost. And even thought you have to buy toner cartridges from the OEM they last for freakin' ever. In the long run the savings of a color laser printer far outweighs the initial cost.
IANAL. However it makes sense to me that maybe you can sue. If a doctor doesn't keep your medical records safe and secure, then I imagine they could be held liable. If this is true, then I assume the same can be true of an employer. If they don't keep your personal information safe and secure, then you can sue them for being negligent or some such.
Of course, if you just want to give some convincing give them the old risk benefit analasys. If all our computers got hosed how much would we lose? Then prove how likely it is and how often it happens. Then tell them the solution.
Yeah, at first people don't like being forced to learn it. What you have to do is not put it on their computers, but show it to them on another computer. Let them see and experience the advantages of this system over the other. Migrate people who don't mind. Eventually the people who don't will watch the people who did. The people who did was be like "oh, its so fast, oh it never crashes". Then when it becomes popular people will go over in droves.
When you just stand there telling them the reasons its better they zone you out and don't listen. You're a computer guy talking about computer stuff they don't care to understand. But once they experience how much better it is, they want more. This is why Firefox is so successful. The difference in the immediate experience is so drastically and obviously superior to IE that people who use it for a few minutes and know how to effectively use tabs never go back.
People are skeptical and cautious about moving to a new technology unless they see an obvious benefit. But when people have already moved forward to a new technology and have experienced the obvious benefit it is impossible to move them backwards to something less convenient.
The only problem is that having a few linux boxes here, and a few windows boxes there makes the sys admins job not so good.
Draftees are no good, and here is why. Take me for example. I'm 22.5 years old, prime for the draft. I refuse to kill people. If a draft comes I have mutiple escape and fallback plans in place to get away. If I go to war, I will refuse to kill people. I will put my life and the lives of whoever is with me in extreme danger. I will be completely useless, in fact it would be better not to draft me than draft me.
Now, if the war was a real war. Like if someone invaded the US and we were sending them home. Then I might change my mind. Heck, I might enlist. But as for a war like this, which is incredibly unpopular, you really don't want draftees. We really didn't learn any lessons from Vietnam at all did we?
Dang, there are no maps in there. The best stuff in the archives at town hall have always been maps of the town and blueprints of various buildings. But nobody scanned those in the archives. Oh well.
this looks pretty tame to me actually. You run one command and copy a few files from the real cd. In a few days I'm sure that in gentoo at least you will be able to do
emerge doom3
and
emerge doom3-demo
The reason they have stuff like this is because of the heterogenous nature of linux systems. There is bound to be someone out there for whom the install isn't a piece of cake. And for those special cases they need the wiki. Most people will install this very easily and make it go.
From my experience the people who have problems will be the same people who have problems with their linux systems. Smart users with good working systems, i.e: 3d and sound already work correctly and software is updated to newer versions, will have no trouble.
The reason you can't play all sorts of video content in your firefox is because you are using windows. And with windows you need a seperate plugin for every kind of video encoding. So a quicktime plugin here, and a windows media plugin there, and a real player plugin there.
In Linux mplayer can play every single type of video ever. There are no exceptions I have ever found. Every single video file I have ever seen plays correctly and better in mplayer than anything else ever. heck, it can even do full screen quicktimes which you usually need to pay for.
If you run firefox in linux and use mplayerplug-in mplayer will be integrated into your browser. This is just one way in which linux completely owns windows. Firefox in windows works with every website I have ever tried ever. And a site that doesn't work is probably a site that I don't want to visit. I know this because I haven't visited one yet.
So is this supposed to replacy my RAM or my hard disk? or both?
To anyone who is saying that my idea will not work I present Penny Arcade as the counter example. Gabe and Tycho make fantastic artwork which they love to do for absolutely nothing. And because they put in so much effort and time, and their work is so well loved you have people literally lining up in the streets to give them money.
In my system the people who are very good at what they do. In fact, only the people that are so good they make people want to pay them will be the ones who survive. In fact, it will be closer to true capitalism because only the highest quality music will still be around. Not the music with the biggest productions. Not the music by the hottest artists on MTV. But the music that inspires people, the music that fills people with a passion with which they will literally get up and want to give money to those musicians just because they deserve it.
Sure, they wont get rich on it. Sure, they'll make a lot less money than in the current system. But two guys from the west coast have managed to make a living off this business model. Why can't musicians? And wouldn't the world be a better place for it?
I think you've got it wrong. It's not that I'm used to getting music for free. I actually believe that music must and should be free. In fact, all information should be free. Recorded music is just that, information. I care about artists though, they are people and I care about people. What people have to understand is this. In a world where all recorded music was free, and nobody expected it to cost money, people who love music will still make music. If those people want to make a living from music they will set up a very economical system by which they will profit from live performances and merchandise. And maybe someone will think up a new way to make money from music besides selling recordings. *gasp*
The best thing is that in a world such as this, which I am pushing for, there will be no super wealthy musicians. I don't know why people have this expecations that artists deserve to be super rich. What's wrong with being a middle class musician? You'r not going hungry.
Music will never die. Musicians will always be around and people will support them. Only the corporate recording studio structure, the super rich megastars with no talent and all image, the giant stadium concerts filled with lights and pyrotechnics. These are the things that will go away. But people will still make music, if only for their own happiness and the happiness of others. Just like programmers will continue to make software for nothing. This is the world we are heading towards. There is no stopping it as long as we keep pushing.
Do not pay for recorded music. Do not pay for software. Do not pay for information. Eventually the corporate structure will either crumble or change. This event will truly lead us to a freer society.
In short. Fuck those people at the record companies who make money and aren't even the people playing the music. And fuck those people with no musical talent riding MTV to fortunes of cash. Hooray for the people making music because they love to. Let those people develop a new business model whereby they can sustain themselves doing something they love.
I just happen to have some unpartitioned space on one of my drives. I think I'll try this out sometime soon. But the screenshots make it seem as if its just like linux with a new, non-revolutionary, desktop environment. Behind the scenes it may be different, but that doesn't matter to non-geeks.
There are plenty of good comics out there based on video games. But one that you should specifically avoid is the Mega Man comics from Dreamwave. They are the most terrible things ever.
However, you definitely should check out Dreamwave's Transformers comics. Most of them are high quality.
The best political video game ever is still the anti-bush game.
If you can't access the disc often, that means only one thing. You have to load all the info off the disc into ram beforehand. That means, LOAD TIMES. Want to whip out your PSP in class for a quick game before the teacher gets there? Sorry, gotta wait a minute for it to load. Oh shit, times up! Not good for the PSP. Which was already looking bad with its much higher price tag.
cd-rom? Um no. Just because you have no browser doesn't mean you have no internet connection. You can use any of the thousands of other internet protocols capable of transferring files to get the firefox setup program. *gasp*
Scenarios and results from my experience.
1) If your partner is more experienced it is usually annoyance for them and great fun learning for you.
2) Vice versa of 1.
3) Neither partner is experience or knowledgable enough to do the work on their own then productivity increases only slightly because you have two people trying to figure out new things at once. Also makes the job programming less painful for both since you share suffering.
4) Both partners are knowledgeable and experience enough for the work. It depends on the personalities of the people
4a) personalities are conducive to teamwork, super productivity! Project gets done fast, bugs are caught during implementation, everyone is happy.
4b) personalities not conducive to teamwork, super bad! Both programmers are knowledgeable and could therefore be doing more work if they each coded separately.
As long as neither partner lacks basic social skills and is not a complete loner then teamwork is usually good experience because you can enjoy the company and conversation of another programmer while you work.
You can't beat the dollar theatre. During the week at night its a dollar. Weekend nights I think are like 2.50 or 2. I'm not sure. But the best is the 50 cent weekday matinee.
As for annoyances, I don't get too many in the theatres around here, even when its crowded. And when I get them, they don't bother me. I think they actually improve the movie experience somewhat. Sitting with a bunch of strangers is the way movies are meant to be watched, it definitely adds something.
The problem is that there are so few movies worth seeing even in the dollar theatre. I guess I'll see episode 3 for 50 cents. Other than that, I can't think of a movie I'm dying to see. It's pretty sad. All the movies I want to see I can rent at video barn where they have the HK imports and every Kung Fu movie ever.
Recorded music isn't worth anything to me anymore. I'll pay to see a concert or buy merchandise if I am compelled to do so. But unless it is for a ridiculously low price, say a dollar a month for infinite music, then its just not worth it.
Even if I did join some service, almost none of the music I listen to would be available. I listen mostly to groups like machinae supremacy, who give their music away for free anyway, classic rock which I already have on vinyl and thus am legally allowed to have mp3s of, ocremixes, and foreign music. It might be possible to pay for some of the foreign music on some of the services, but either I wont be able to read it or it wont work with Linux or it will costly ungodly amounts of money.
In conclusion I would actually pay for music if.
1) Every song ever recorded was available.
2) I could choose my format and bitrate freely.
3) Absolutely no DRM encumberance.
4) Works with Linux.
5) Super cheap, we're talking pennies or half pennies per song.
It's a good thing not too many people feel like me. The record companies would be screwed.
so they made a new lossless image format. Don't we already have lossless image formats like tiff? What makes this one better than the others? Does it have some sort of lossless compression that is currently beyond compare? Will it mean that a digital camera can store more pictures in its storage space without losing picture quality?
It seems to me that this is just adobe re-inventing the wheel into a new proprietary wheel. If it doesn't provide any sort of technological improvement I don't see how it is going to do anything for them...
Exactly. If it was a free showing, it would be completely different.
At least with this one type of spam I know that the spammer is paying big bugs in bandwith to make it work. Just maybe we'll be lucky and it will turn out that voip spam isn't profitable and we will be free of it.
So assuming you put this system in place and it actually works. What happens when someone hacks your school's shitty computers and is able to verify that yes, that person in the chat room is a real 12 year old girl.
Not good.
Wow, I thought only stupid non-computer type people use Kazaa. I didn't think anybody used eDonkey. I use giFT ( gnutella + openft ), winmx ( with wine ), and DC. I really don't trust any of the other p2p networks enough. Or more properly worded, I don't trust the users of the other p2p networks enough. And of course, there's always my favorite new file transfer program, gaim + jabber.
Oh yeah, BT, duh. But that doesn't really count, does it?