If laser printers usually only last for months, but you get a whole year out of an Ink Jet, wouldn't an Ink Jet be a better option for many people?
Just kidding, I know what you intended to write. FWIW, my opinion is that Ink Jets currently excel at photo printing, but lasers beat them for everything else. With Ink Jets costing less than a couple of spools of CD-Rs, it's worth getting one for that application. There is no law (yet) that requires you to choose either an ink jet or a laser printer, so get both.
That's more or less correct, though it's a little more complicated than that when you get to the DCS networks.
In the mid-eighties, America had, essentially, a couple of mobile phone networks (in most areas) based upon a single standard, AMPS. This was largely the result of the AT&T monopoly and its legacy (clearly, the Baby Bells weren't going to suddenly switch standards for their wireless networks, and there was little point for the "A" carriers to use an incompatable standard.)
The EU (or EC, or EEC, depending on what part of the story you're talking about, but as it's the same organization, I'll refer to it as the EC from here on) didn't have anything like that. Every country had one or two mobile phone networks, generally based upon custom standards. The UK, for example, used Motorola's ETACS. Functionally, the standards were similar, they just used different signaling methods, or had different operating parameters, that made them incompatable with one another.
This didn't bode well for the emerging European Union, as it meant people travelling from one state to another wouldn't be able to roam, and the cost effectiveness of running this many incompatable technologies was clearly a problem. So the EU passed a decree saying that the mobile phone carriers had to adopt a single standard that they would run on their 900MHz bands. The EU didn't say what the standard should be, or that they should turn off their custom networks (though it made sense for them to do so if the new standard was better), simply that the industry had to decide on a standard and get it working across all 900MHz networks. And if a country didn't actually have a 900MHz network, it was to get one started right away.
GSM started as a project by France Telecom's mobile phone subdivision and was created independently of the EU's directive. It was one of the standards considered by the various standards groups, and in the end was their choice.
Now, where it gets interesting is when you fast forward to the early nineties. Britain felt that just having two networks didn't create enough competition, so sold off the 1800MHz band for "DCS" services. This had nothing to do with the EU, and Britain said it didn't care what standards were used in that band. The two mobile phone operators at the time, Orange, and one2one (now T-Mobile), ended up both chosing GSM. This was after Qualcomm created CDMA (IS95) and started lobbying for its adoption, so you can bet both operators saw it and evaluated it. Several other countries followed suit, and also opened up the 1800MHz band, and the companies that bought licenses also decided on GSM. It wasn't until a significant number of countries had done so that the EU decided that, because the 1800MHz players currently had a disadvantage over their 900MHz competitors, 1800MHz was to be opened up across the EU, and that GSM was mandated for the remaining operators.
This wasn't a big conspiracy against CDMA. It was done because the existing operators had chosen that standard, and there'd have been no point in the EU opening 1800MHz if non-GSM operators could gain control of the bands in other countries. Had Orange and one2one choosen CDMA, or one choosen CDMA and the other GSM, and this pattern been followed by succeeding operators, then you can bet the EU would have mandated CDMA everywhere, or at least one CDMA network and at least one GSM network everywhere.
The person you're responding to claims that some operators are now running CDMA on 450MHz. I haven't heard of that. But I'd expect the same behaviour from the EU as thus far, eg if it picks up steam, to prevent 900/1800/3G GSM/UMTS operators from having an advantage over an emerging network of 450MHz CDMA operators, the EU to open that band across the Union for CDMA operation (unless, of course, there are large numbers of operators using a competing standard on the same frequency)
My belief is that much of the propoganda against GSM from CDMA proponents is based primarily on making use of a lack of
You would prefer it if the whole world adopts a mediocre, rushed-out standard whose only advantage is its installed base (GSM), over a well-thought out, high-performance technology (CDMA) that beats it hands down in every conceivable technological aspect, like support for much larger cell sizes, coverage, battery life, ease of deployment, capacity, frequency reuse and inter-cell handoff?
That's the biggest amount of BS I've ever read. Are you a Qualcomm employee perchance?
CDMA does beet GSM on larger cell sizes in theory, though in practice both find power levels end up having a bigger affect than GSM's timeslot protection imposed limits. It also has more capacity per cell. It's noticable that in order to highlight these real advantages of CDMA, you had to repeat both twice (larger cell sizes and coverage? More capacity and better frequency re-use? Gosh!)
But it's CDMA that's poorly thought out, essentially a bunch of hacks based on a 1970s mobile phone model, GSM being a modern, ISDN based, network standard whose creators clearly thought about the problems earlier standards had and made significant, real, efforts to fix them. Qualcomm has had to play catch up (and for a time refused to do so) with GSM to get it to the same quality. And it's still not there. Personal mobility isn't available in the US implementation. Nor is location independence. Network services still have codes dependent on the operator you're using. You're either on your "home" network or "Roaming". What fun to an end user!
Battery life is significantly poorer (I'm still bemused by the huge one Nokia had to supply with the 6185 to give it the same life as the other TDMA and GSM based 61xx phones) due to CDMA's constant broadcasting of redundant data (that's how CDMA works, alas, and unfortunately UMTS users whose operators chose WCDMA are going to have to put up with the same thing when it comes to battery life), "ease of deployment" is a nonsense (GSM is a fully integrated modern digital network designed to actually integrate with modern switching equipment, CDMA, again, is based on 1970s hacks), and there's nothing in practice wrong with GSM's inter-cell handoffs.
To an end-user, it's pretty obvious which provides them with more freedom, a consistant experience, and more control. Clue, it's not the one where most of the phones don't support SIM cards, and most network operators will not allow the end user to have them anyway.
You can run any operating system on your PowerBook that's compiled for it. Many versions of GNU/Linux for example will install without problems.
I believe there are versions of Windows NT 4 that work with older Macs, I don't know about newer ones as there was a change in firmware architecture shortly after Microsoft stopped supporting the PowerPC version of NT 4.
There's a difference between third parties not necessarily supporting hardware, and that hardware locking them out.
Forgive me, but why are you on this website when you could be doing something useful? I mean, I do think it's good to bring the ideals of marketing to technology, but this message seems a little problematic. Applying "But could Grandma use it" ideals to Linux could be useful, but why would you want to bitch and moan about a project you have no interest in?
If I'm missing something, let me know, but the parent message looks a bit more useless than the average criticism. I know you think you're passing on useful information, but why should anyone care what you have to say?
The wireless network was not "inviting" him to connect. The wireless network is not a sentient entity, still less one with the legal power to do so. At best, it might have been broadcasting a message saying "My owner welcomes complete strangers to this network", but as of yet there is no protocol within 802.11* for doing this.
Some geeks have attempted to hijack "There's no encryption on this node" or "My SSID is public and is..." to mean this, but given most WAPs are configured by default to have no encryption and to publically broadcast a SSID, and given both can be explained by many other reasons, this is simply legally non-sustainable as an argument.
Hiding a SSID in some ways is anti-social as it makes it more difficult for your neighbours to find your network if it interferes with their's. The lack of encryption is also a bad choice, I've come across wireless equipment that works "out of the box" but requires connection to a PC to configure any encryption features - adapters to put X-Boxes and PS2s on a wireless network generally work this way. Owners of such devices are very likely to want to use unsecured WAPs.
The wireless network would have been advertising its presense. This is a useful feature. But it wasn't "inviting anyone" any more than a door knob does.
Geeks need to get out of the habit of assuming that a default configuration amounts to "permission to use". It doesn't. Only permission to use is permission to use. The only surefire way to know if you have permission or not to use a network is to look for a publically posted notice, or to get written or oral permission from the network's owner. One day, 802.11* might have something added to make it easier to make it possible for a user to unambigiously give other's permission to use their networks (and that would be a useful feature anyway), but until then, look for notices, or talk to the operator. Don't assume.
It's a disabled "feature". The most probable reason for it being in there is that it was intended to be in the final game, but the publishers had a last minute attack of nerves and asked the programmers to remove it. Assuming you have some experience of programming, you'll know it is infinitely easier to disable code than remove it. Right now, the game is withdrawn from sales, and Rockstar are working on removing the code. Not as easy as putting in an "if(0==1){}" wrapper around the bit that calls up that scene, is it?
If I were Rockstar, I'd be looking at this and saying "Fuck it. We're not going to make a profit from this one, let's annoy everyone and put the entire game into the public domain." But that's just me, and I don't have shareholders or other people's contracts to satisfy.
The comment made by the GP was not over some claim the project was irrelevent or stupid, but that it was a waste of time with the hobbiest's efforts better directed elsewhere. This is what the GP was replying to:
It's clever, but I see little reason to make the effort given the number of high quality turntables available used at low cost.
What they'll probably do is look at the statistics and say "Wow, so they found that people who have more music than average both buy and pirate more music on average too? Big whoopie. Like tell us something we can't figure out for ourselves.
"Now, where's this Slashdot thing they keep talking about? Gosh, what a surprise, lots of idiots posting as if the results meant that because people pirate, they buy more music."
This, in short, is not the survey you're looking for. What you're looking for is evidence that piracy causes sales. Simply saying "High piracy and high sales go hand in hand" doesn't prove this, as people who want music will probably try both means to get it. What you need is a couple of test groups, identical in all except one having access to "free" (as in illegal) music, and one not, and see, after a year or two, which actually spends more money on music. Nobody's done that survey yet. It'll be interesting to see the results of one when it happens.
No, this is what counts as actual news. If you don't consider it news, and would rather see the stuff that Slashdot fills its pages with when there isn't news, you can get it from the following sources:
You certainly don't need to go to Slashdot for that stuff.
In the mean time, your geek card is hereby revoked. While you've made an honest attempt to pretend to be one, your lack of interest in an actual computing project that works well for the minority that uses it and uses technology in ways uncommon today shows a clear preference for the mainstream. Please return to Python "programming" and obsessing over how "Linux" will not be "ready for the desktop" until "Grandma" can use it, where I suspect, in pseudo-geekdom, never straying too far from the mainstream while dabbling in all that tech stuff, you'll feel more at home.
I used to run a much older version of Slackware on a 6Mb 386SX20 based monochrome 640x480 laptop, and was just about able to get Netscape 3 going on it. More usefully, I used Slack and NS4 on a 386DX25 with 8MB of RAM for several years, though it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. I wouldn't recommend either.
It's probably worth noting the biggest problem with what you're proposing is the browser, not the operating system. Despite the fact that a web browser is, for the most part, little more than a rich text viewer with some funky, not particularly complicated, networking added and a relatively minor scripting language, web browsers consume enormous amounts of memory by the 8MB standards you're using. The major issue, as I understand it, is the need to support several zillion pages of legacy, non-standard, HTML. So I'm not sure switching to DOS and GEM is going to help you much. If it does help, there are more pleasant environments that are just as efficient with memory - check out AROS for example.
Reminds me of the mid-eighties hit "Congress Wars". You had to play a senator or a representative (why it wasn't Republicans vs Dems I don't know) and control your character (top-down perspective), taking him to the other house and killing as many members as possible before their "top hitter" killed your entire side. Oh yes, I remember now - while all the carnage was going on, the two houses would be voting on various bills, so your aim was also to ensure there wasn't a majority party in both houses, as you basically would lose automatically if the houses were able to pass three bills. There was a two player mode, and I think the senate and congress differed slightly - senators were armed with semi-magical powers or something where they could push a hand towards you and you'd fly to the other side of the house.
Think it was Gremlin Graphics, or maybe Imagine, who did that one. Despite being largely unmarketed outside of Britain, the game generated uproar in the real congress, with politicians of all sides condemning it and it even leading to US-lobbied-for Scotland Yard investigations of the game's author, Roy Dallstute. To a certain extent, you could understand it, you'd be playing the game and suddenly a message would flash up: "WARNING: CONSENSUS APPROACHING. KILL MORE REPUBLICANS!" if, say, the Republicans had a majority in the other house and were close to one in the one you were playing in. If I was a politician, I'd not be overly happy about that kind of thing being flashed up in front of kids.
The hubbub only really died down when Al Gore, of all people, made some speech where he claimed it was important to recognize free speech even extended to those who oppose democracies or something in a comedic sense, and that if nothing else the game was increasing those who played it's awareness of the US political system and that wasn't a bad thing. Dallstute himself defended the game by arguing that (a) it was a game and (b) while the methods may have been unusual, the notion of politics being a game where passing laws was considered a bad thing was new, and he hoped that message would reach a new generation of politicians.
It remains to be seen what the investigation into Rockstar turns up, but I suspect compared to CW, it'll be a storm in a teacup. We might see ESRB ratings carry some legal weight, but I think it'll be meaningless outside of that.
Nah. While your point would be a good one in a fair world, the law explictly outlaws Unauthorized Access Control Mechanism for copyrighted materials Circumvention Devices, which DeCSS is. (Yes, DeCSS is used for perfectly legitimate - in the sense of not being used for anything that would hurt a copyright owner - reasons, but nonetheless, the dumbasses in Congress managed to pass a law that makes it illegal, punishable with prison time, to make your own DVD player without explicit permission from the DVDCCA. Thanks you fuckers.)
No such law, to the best of my knowledge, concerns tools like screwdrivers or modified Pringles cans.
Are you seriously suggesting that most Windows apps are written in assembler?
Because that's the only world in which your comment makes sense. The serious problem with porting Windows software to Mac OS X is the API, not the language the apps are written in. The nearest thing I can think of to a processor dependent feature that affects higher level systems is endianism, and that, seriously, is not a major issue. It's just a matter of finding the references, which by and large are usually limited to the loading/saving part of the code.
I've asked this before, and I'll ask this again: can anyone show me one piece of evidence, one absolutely concrete fact based argument - not speculation, but facts- that proves that human beings are causing Republican Congresses?
I know, I know, the liberal scientists will probably talk about hot-air and inflammatory rhetoric causing electoral heating. Some say that if we don't curb emissions like this one, we may have an increase in heated opinions, leading to an increase in Republicans. Many blame the continued use of fossil fools for this problem.
But there's little evidence to show this. For one, Michael Crichton says these governments are purely cyclical. Over time, you get Republican Administrations, then Democrat Administrations, then Republican again. Apparently there's a wealth of historical evidence to show this fact.
Then there's the so-called scientists and how their theories change. According to many back in 2004, we were supposed to get a Democratic administration! Now they're saying we're having Republicans. Why should we believe them now?
Anyway, if Joe Barton can discredit the notion that human beings have anything to do with Republicanism, and he's doing a fine job right now let me tell you, I think this will be a great thing.
This is why I keep one plugged in at all times, just in case. It's rarely used, but it's a tough - drop it from any reasonable height and it'll still work - phone with an actual bell. (The bell isn't a safety feature, I just thought I'd mention it because it's cool.)
It's remarkable, in my view, how so many people do not do this. I understand the attraction of cordless phones, but these days you can have any number attached to one base station. With four or five outlets in the average home, one attached to the base station, one for your modem or DSL modem, and one other for your answerphone if you have one not integrated with your normal phone, you should have at least one more outlet available, and if you don't, a phone line splitter costs something in the region of $1.06 (yes, you can get them from the Dollar Store, where everything costs $1.06.)
Worse still, I live in Florida. These people suffered a week without power last year, and twice in the space of a month. And how many people have unpowered corded phones? Hmmm? Take a guess.
On a related note, a firefighter soon-to-be-relative happened to mention the whole issue with 911 and VoIP over the weekend to me. I've posted at length my concerns about VoIP and 911, so it was interesting hearing the same perspective from someone (a) who isn't a geek and (b) who actually is close enough to the wall to know how important 911 is.
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They don't. In practice, only a small number of groups continue to talk after your answerphone has told them to bugger off, generally those "Call every number from XXX-0000 to XXX-9999 and play recorded message" types, and in my experience, those only operate during the day. Oh, and they're illegal, if memory serves, because you can't communicate with their operators.
What generally happens is:
(Phone rings)
"Hi, this is Squiggleslash. Please talk after the tone, if I'm in and want to talk to you, I'll pick up."
*Beep*
Silence.
*Beeeeeeeep* *click*
It's not a problem in practice.
Here's the deal though: everyone could do this. It's more accurate than CLI (so-called, misleadingly, "Caller ID") because it really does identify callers, rather than the telephone they happening to be call from. And if everyone did do this, telemarketing would end tomorrow. In the mean time, even if only a few people use this, they benefit right away.
Instead everyone plays games with CLI and tries to find sophisticated solutions to simple problems. Gah.
Get yourself a telephone answering machine. You can use this to screen calls, and as it always answers, it guarantees the telemarketer will have to pay something, however small, for the privilege of not talking to you.
It's one of those tools that always works but nobody ever uses. It also works in that it prevents telemarketing calls from companies you have a prior business relationship with, which unfortunately the FTC DNCL and most state anti-telemarketing systems do not cover.
You're missing the point. The point is the FCC has mandated a single fixed address be associated with each VoIP line for 911 purposes, which a customer can change at will.
If you're going to move around all the time, then you're going to be aware that the number you associate with 911 is out of date. So you'll use alternative means. You probably will not use 911 for emergency calls anyway, anyone who - seeing a fellow Starbucks patron have a heart attack - whips out their laptop, waits for it to boot up, starts their VoIP software, and tries to call the emergency services on that, probably deserves a good kicking. IN practice, you'll use Starbuck's own phones. Or your hotel's. Or your employer's. etc.
For most people who use VoIP however, VoIP replaces their landlines, not their cellphones. For those people, what the FCC has proposed is perfectly acceptable and, more to the point, necessary.
People like you insist on making this more complex than it is. This isn't about making any conceivable combination of hardware work. It's about preventing a switchover to VoIP from destroying useful 911 service. Nothing the FCC has proposed is technically awkward or inappropriate given the narrow scope of what they're actually trying to achieve. If you bothered to read their proposals, rather than brainlessly parrot the usual Slashdot complaints, you'd see that. (Yes, brainlessly, because anyone who thinks that the FCC hasn't actually considered these issues despite the fact that they're getting input from VoIP providers is clearly not using their brain.)
You know, I live in the heart of Florida. It's hot here. My AC, my old AC, and my fiance's AC, all R134a based, are all absolutely fine, the odd leak notwithstanding. Trust me - if A/C in cars were a problem, I'd be complaining.
In fact, when I have my relatives over from Britain, they usually complain I make my car too cold.
You may be, but that's your own problem. If you're one of the 1% of Vonage customers who actually uses it using a laptop where you might concievably be anywhere, then you're just going to have to give an address where you're most likely to be at, and then avoid using the service for 911 calls.
The FCC has been pretty reasonable on this one. They're not asking anyone to put GPS devices in laptops or create some kind of database of every IP address known to man. They've said that VoIP providers are to get an address from every single customer to say where they are, and put the onus on those customers to keep the VoIP provider updated should they move around. Obviously, if you use your VoIP as a mobile phone, which is, frankly, bizarre, then you have to recognize 911 isn't going to be that useful to you. Which it isn't today either.
I'm staggered by the outright stupidity of most Slashdotters on this subject. They assume, without bothering to read a line of the FCC stuff, that the FCC doesn't understand the basic issues concerning VoIP and have simply mandated something completely idiotic. In fact, the FCC has mandated this to make VoIP credible. The big issue here wasn't that VoIP providers didn't want to provide 911 services, it was that incumbent carriers refused to allow VoIP to peer with them for 911, so VoIP providers couldn't provide proper 911.
To solve this, the FCC has said: (1) VoIP providers need to be upfront and honest about the limitations of their services as-is. (2) They need to get customers to provide information on their whereabouts and provide the means for those customers to update that information in a timely manner. and, the biggy, (3) local carriers must work with VoIP providers. If you choose, as a customer, to not provide your VoIP carrier with timely updates, then that's your problem, not the VoIP supplier. The FCC isn't saying otherwise.
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Just kidding, I know what you intended to write. FWIW, my opinion is that Ink Jets currently excel at photo printing, but lasers beat them for everything else. With Ink Jets costing less than a couple of spools of CD-Rs, it's worth getting one for that application. There is no law (yet) that requires you to choose either an ink jet or a laser printer, so get both.
In the mid-eighties, America had, essentially, a couple of mobile phone networks (in most areas) based upon a single standard, AMPS. This was largely the result of the AT&T monopoly and its legacy (clearly, the Baby Bells weren't going to suddenly switch standards for their wireless networks, and there was little point for the "A" carriers to use an incompatable standard.)
The EU (or EC, or EEC, depending on what part of the story you're talking about, but as it's the same organization, I'll refer to it as the EC from here on) didn't have anything like that. Every country had one or two mobile phone networks, generally based upon custom standards. The UK, for example, used Motorola's ETACS. Functionally, the standards were similar, they just used different signaling methods, or had different operating parameters, that made them incompatable with one another.
This didn't bode well for the emerging European Union, as it meant people travelling from one state to another wouldn't be able to roam, and the cost effectiveness of running this many incompatable technologies was clearly a problem. So the EU passed a decree saying that the mobile phone carriers had to adopt a single standard that they would run on their 900MHz bands. The EU didn't say what the standard should be, or that they should turn off their custom networks (though it made sense for them to do so if the new standard was better), simply that the industry had to decide on a standard and get it working across all 900MHz networks. And if a country didn't actually have a 900MHz network, it was to get one started right away.
GSM started as a project by France Telecom's mobile phone subdivision and was created independently of the EU's directive. It was one of the standards considered by the various standards groups, and in the end was their choice.
Now, where it gets interesting is when you fast forward to the early nineties. Britain felt that just having two networks didn't create enough competition, so sold off the 1800MHz band for "DCS" services. This had nothing to do with the EU, and Britain said it didn't care what standards were used in that band. The two mobile phone operators at the time, Orange, and one2one (now T-Mobile), ended up both chosing GSM. This was after Qualcomm created CDMA (IS95) and started lobbying for its adoption, so you can bet both operators saw it and evaluated it. Several other countries followed suit, and also opened up the 1800MHz band, and the companies that bought licenses also decided on GSM. It wasn't until a significant number of countries had done so that the EU decided that, because the 1800MHz players currently had a disadvantage over their 900MHz competitors, 1800MHz was to be opened up across the EU, and that GSM was mandated for the remaining operators.
This wasn't a big conspiracy against CDMA. It was done because the existing operators had chosen that standard, and there'd have been no point in the EU opening 1800MHz if non-GSM operators could gain control of the bands in other countries. Had Orange and one2one choosen CDMA, or one choosen CDMA and the other GSM, and this pattern been followed by succeeding operators, then you can bet the EU would have mandated CDMA everywhere, or at least one CDMA network and at least one GSM network everywhere.
The person you're responding to claims that some operators are now running CDMA on 450MHz. I haven't heard of that. But I'd expect the same behaviour from the EU as thus far, eg if it picks up steam, to prevent 900/1800/3G GSM/UMTS operators from having an advantage over an emerging network of 450MHz CDMA operators, the EU to open that band across the Union for CDMA operation (unless, of course, there are large numbers of operators using a competing standard on the same frequency)
My belief is that much of the propoganda against GSM from CDMA proponents is based primarily on making use of a lack of
CDMA does beet GSM on larger cell sizes in theory, though in practice both find power levels end up having a bigger affect than GSM's timeslot protection imposed limits. It also has more capacity per cell. It's noticable that in order to highlight these real advantages of CDMA, you had to repeat both twice (larger cell sizes and coverage? More capacity and better frequency re-use? Gosh!)
But it's CDMA that's poorly thought out, essentially a bunch of hacks based on a 1970s mobile phone model, GSM being a modern, ISDN based, network standard whose creators clearly thought about the problems earlier standards had and made significant, real, efforts to fix them. Qualcomm has had to play catch up (and for a time refused to do so) with GSM to get it to the same quality. And it's still not there. Personal mobility isn't available in the US implementation. Nor is location independence. Network services still have codes dependent on the operator you're using. You're either on your "home" network or "Roaming". What fun to an end user!
Battery life is significantly poorer (I'm still bemused by the huge one Nokia had to supply with the 6185 to give it the same life as the other TDMA and GSM based 61xx phones) due to CDMA's constant broadcasting of redundant data (that's how CDMA works, alas, and unfortunately UMTS users whose operators chose WCDMA are going to have to put up with the same thing when it comes to battery life), "ease of deployment" is a nonsense (GSM is a fully integrated modern digital network designed to actually integrate with modern switching equipment, CDMA, again, is based on 1970s hacks), and there's nothing in practice wrong with GSM's inter-cell handoffs.
To an end-user, it's pretty obvious which provides them with more freedom, a consistant experience, and more control. Clue, it's not the one where most of the phones don't support SIM cards, and most network operators will not allow the end user to have them anyway.
I believe there are versions of Windows NT 4 that work with older Macs, I don't know about newer ones as there was a change in firmware architecture shortly after Microsoft stopped supporting the PowerPC version of NT 4.
There's a difference between third parties not necessarily supporting hardware, and that hardware locking them out.
Boxen are computers that are infected by virii. Everyone knows that!
If I'm missing something, let me know, but the parent message looks a bit more useless than the average criticism. I know you think you're passing on useful information, but why should anyone care what you have to say?
Some geeks have attempted to hijack "There's no encryption on this node" or "My SSID is public and is..." to mean this, but given most WAPs are configured by default to have no encryption and to publically broadcast a SSID, and given both can be explained by many other reasons, this is simply legally non-sustainable as an argument.
Hiding a SSID in some ways is anti-social as it makes it more difficult for your neighbours to find your network if it interferes with their's. The lack of encryption is also a bad choice, I've come across wireless equipment that works "out of the box" but requires connection to a PC to configure any encryption features - adapters to put X-Boxes and PS2s on a wireless network generally work this way. Owners of such devices are very likely to want to use unsecured WAPs.
The wireless network would have been advertising its presense. This is a useful feature. But it wasn't "inviting anyone" any more than a door knob does.
Geeks need to get out of the habit of assuming that a default configuration amounts to "permission to use". It doesn't. Only permission to use is permission to use. The only surefire way to know if you have permission or not to use a network is to look for a publically posted notice, or to get written or oral permission from the network's owner. One day, 802.11* might have something added to make it easier to make it possible for a user to unambigiously give other's permission to use their networks (and that would be a useful feature anyway), but until then, look for notices, or talk to the operator. Don't assume.
If I were Rockstar, I'd be looking at this and saying "Fuck it. We're not going to make a profit from this one, let's annoy everyone and put the entire game into the public domain." But that's just me, and I don't have shareholders or other people's contracts to satisfy.
"Now, where's this Slashdot thing they keep talking about? Gosh, what a surprise, lots of idiots posting as if the results meant that because people pirate, they buy more music."
This, in short, is not the survey you're looking for. What you're looking for is evidence that piracy causes sales. Simply saying "High piracy and high sales go hand in hand" doesn't prove this, as people who want music will probably try both means to get it. What you need is a couple of test groups, identical in all except one having access to "free" (as in illegal) music, and one not, and see, after a year or two, which actually spends more money on music. Nobody's done that survey yet. It'll be interesting to see the results of one when it happens.
- SCO news
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- Latest Cringely bollocks
You certainly don't need to go to Slashdot for that stuff.In the mean time, your geek card is hereby revoked. While you've made an honest attempt to pretend to be one, your lack of interest in an actual computing project that works well for the minority that uses it and uses technology in ways uncommon today shows a clear preference for the mainstream. Please return to Python "programming" and obsessing over how "Linux" will not be "ready for the desktop" until "Grandma" can use it, where I suspect, in pseudo-geekdom, never straying too far from the mainstream while dabbling in all that tech stuff, you'll feel more at home.
It's probably worth noting the biggest problem with what you're proposing is the browser, not the operating system. Despite the fact that a web browser is, for the most part, little more than a rich text viewer with some funky, not particularly complicated, networking added and a relatively minor scripting language, web browsers consume enormous amounts of memory by the 8MB standards you're using. The major issue, as I understand it, is the need to support several zillion pages of legacy, non-standard, HTML. So I'm not sure switching to DOS and GEM is going to help you much. If it does help, there are more pleasant environments that are just as efficient with memory - check out AROS for example.
Think it was Gremlin Graphics, or maybe Imagine, who did that one. Despite being largely unmarketed outside of Britain, the game generated uproar in the real congress, with politicians of all sides condemning it and it even leading to US-lobbied-for Scotland Yard investigations of the game's author, Roy Dallstute. To a certain extent, you could understand it, you'd be playing the game and suddenly a message would flash up: "WARNING: CONSENSUS APPROACHING. KILL MORE REPUBLICANS!" if, say, the Republicans had a majority in the other house and were close to one in the one you were playing in. If I was a politician, I'd not be overly happy about that kind of thing being flashed up in front of kids.
The hubbub only really died down when Al Gore, of all people, made some speech where he claimed it was important to recognize free speech even extended to those who oppose democracies or something in a comedic sense, and that if nothing else the game was increasing those who played it's awareness of the US political system and that wasn't a bad thing. Dallstute himself defended the game by arguing that (a) it was a game and (b) while the methods may have been unusual, the notion of politics being a game where passing laws was considered a bad thing was new, and he hoped that message would reach a new generation of politicians.
It remains to be seen what the investigation into Rockstar turns up, but I suspect compared to CW, it'll be a storm in a teacup. We might see ESRB ratings carry some legal weight, but I think it'll be meaningless outside of that.
No such law, to the best of my knowledge, concerns tools like screwdrivers or modified Pringles cans.
Because that's the only world in which your comment makes sense. The serious problem with porting Windows software to Mac OS X is the API, not the language the apps are written in. The nearest thing I can think of to a processor dependent feature that affects higher level systems is endianism, and that, seriously, is not a major issue. It's just a matter of finding the references, which by and large are usually limited to the loading/saving part of the code.
I know, I know, the liberal scientists will probably talk about hot-air and inflammatory rhetoric causing electoral heating. Some say that if we don't curb emissions like this one, we may have an increase in heated opinions, leading to an increase in Republicans. Many blame the continued use of fossil fools for this problem.
But there's little evidence to show this. For one, Michael Crichton says these governments are purely cyclical. Over time, you get Republican Administrations, then Democrat Administrations, then Republican again. Apparently there's a wealth of historical evidence to show this fact.
Then there's the so-called scientists and how their theories change. According to many back in 2004, we were supposed to get a Democratic administration! Now they're saying we're having Republicans. Why should we believe them now?
Anyway, if Joe Barton can discredit the notion that human beings have anything to do with Republicanism, and he's doing a fine job right now let me tell you, I think this will be a great thing.
It's remarkable, in my view, how so many people do not do this. I understand the attraction of cordless phones, but these days you can have any number attached to one base station. With four or five outlets in the average home, one attached to the base station, one for your modem or DSL modem, and one other for your answerphone if you have one not integrated with your normal phone, you should have at least one more outlet available, and if you don't, a phone line splitter costs something in the region of $1.06 (yes, you can get them from the Dollar Store, where everything costs $1.06.)
Worse still, I live in Florida. These people suffered a week without power last year, and twice in the space of a month. And how many people have unpowered corded phones? Hmmm? Take a guess.
On a related note, a firefighter soon-to-be-relative happened to mention the whole issue with 911 and VoIP over the weekend to me. I've posted at length my concerns about VoIP and 911, so it was interesting hearing the same perspective from someone (a) who isn't a geek and (b) who actually is close enough to the wall to know how important 911 is.
(Note, normally I'd have actually selected the actual link, but in this case the Google search appears to be more informative. This is scary.)
What generally happens is:
(Phone rings)
"Hi, this is Squiggleslash. Please talk after the tone, if I'm in and want to talk to you, I'll pick up."
*Beep*
Silence.
*Beeeeeeeep* *click*
It's not a problem in practice.
Here's the deal though: everyone could do this. It's more accurate than CLI (so-called, misleadingly, "Caller ID") because it really does identify callers, rather than the telephone they happening to be call from. And if everyone did do this, telemarketing would end tomorrow. In the mean time, even if only a few people use this, they benefit right away.
Instead everyone plays games with CLI and tries to find sophisticated solutions to simple problems. Gah.
It's one of those tools that always works but nobody ever uses. It also works in that it prevents telemarketing calls from companies you have a prior business relationship with, which unfortunately the FTC DNCL and most state anti-telemarketing systems do not cover.
If you're going to move around all the time, then you're going to be aware that the number you associate with 911 is out of date. So you'll use alternative means. You probably will not use 911 for emergency calls anyway, anyone who - seeing a fellow Starbucks patron have a heart attack - whips out their laptop, waits for it to boot up, starts their VoIP software, and tries to call the emergency services on that, probably deserves a good kicking. IN practice, you'll use Starbuck's own phones. Or your hotel's. Or your employer's. etc.
For most people who use VoIP however, VoIP replaces their landlines, not their cellphones. For those people, what the FCC has proposed is perfectly acceptable and, more to the point, necessary.
People like you insist on making this more complex than it is. This isn't about making any conceivable combination of hardware work. It's about preventing a switchover to VoIP from destroying useful 911 service. Nothing the FCC has proposed is technically awkward or inappropriate given the narrow scope of what they're actually trying to achieve. If you bothered to read their proposals, rather than brainlessly parrot the usual Slashdot complaints, you'd see that. (Yes, brainlessly, because anyone who thinks that the FCC hasn't actually considered these issues despite the fact that they're getting input from VoIP providers is clearly not using their brain.)
You know, I live in the heart of Florida. It's hot here. My AC, my old AC, and my fiance's AC, all R134a based, are all absolutely fine, the odd leak notwithstanding. Trust me - if A/C in cars were a problem, I'd be complaining.
In fact, when I have my relatives over from Britain, they usually complain I make my car too cold.
The FCC has been pretty reasonable on this one. They're not asking anyone to put GPS devices in laptops or create some kind of database of every IP address known to man. They've said that VoIP providers are to get an address from every single customer to say where they are, and put the onus on those customers to keep the VoIP provider updated should they move around. Obviously, if you use your VoIP as a mobile phone, which is, frankly, bizarre, then you have to recognize 911 isn't going to be that useful to you. Which it isn't today either.
I'm staggered by the outright stupidity of most Slashdotters on this subject. They assume, without bothering to read a line of the FCC stuff, that the FCC doesn't understand the basic issues concerning VoIP and have simply mandated something completely idiotic. In fact, the FCC has mandated this to make VoIP credible. The big issue here wasn't that VoIP providers didn't want to provide 911 services, it was that incumbent carriers refused to allow VoIP to peer with them for 911, so VoIP providers couldn't provide proper 911.
To solve this, the FCC has said: (1) VoIP providers need to be upfront and honest about the limitations of their services as-is. (2) They need to get customers to provide information on their whereabouts and provide the means for those customers to update that information in a timely manner. and, the biggy, (3) local carriers must work with VoIP providers. If you choose, as a customer, to not provide your VoIP carrier with timely updates, then that's your problem, not the VoIP supplier. The FCC isn't saying otherwise.
So relax.
Oh, hold on, different type of update.