I work* for a cellular phone company, and I can tell you that we get very few** complaints*** despite what this survey says. One thing we care very much for is that customers know what they're going to be charged****. So naturally I'm very disappointed***** to hear this kind of thing.
* Does not include actual employment, work implies any form of work including having to try and figure out what AT&T intends to charge me this month.
** The word "few" should not be implied to have any specific, non-subjective, definition.
*** Excludes concerns about service quality or hidden charges
**** Does not include monetary amounts
***** Disappointment should not be read to imply any desire to make anything better.
OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS
While completely free, this message may be subject to an additional $1.75 fee payable per reader to cover the costs of making this message conform to government regulations. This is not a tax, it is simply a fee squiggleslash levies to cover mandated improvements in honesty.
There are no lies in this message, because you can make any claim you like as long as you say it's completely false in the small-print.
I agree. I quoted five megs because my Amiga 500+ had that amount of RAM when it was finally retired. Enough to run virtually everything I run today with the possible exception of a decent 2004-era graphical web browser. Indeed, there's a hell of a lot of tools I had then that simply seem to no longer be available - not in the same way. SuperJAM!, Octamed, et al. I guess some people would argue XPaint or GIMP are Deluxe Paint replacements but they sure don't feel like them - they're excellent in their niches (well, the GIMP is) but they're not DPaint III.
Only someone on crack would describe a reduction in funding a "left-ward move" because it isn't total removal.
Only in your imagination.
And in real life. Not being as extreme as you wanted him to be doesn't change the fact that he's far more extremist than he advertised himself as being. Or was the repeating of the phrase "Compassionate Conservatism" a figment of my imagination too?
I'd like to know what idiots modded this a troll. If it's on the basis of the first paragraph, perhaps the idiots who did would like to read the first two words of the second.
This guy goes to the doctor. He's got omelette in his hair, beans down his front, and a french fry stuck up his nose. The doctor says 'You know your problem? You're not eating properly'.
How exactly is claiming you'd support Kyoto and then turning around and ripping it up "moving toward the center"? How is his eventual policy on stem cell research a remotely left-ward move?
He may not have had time for some of the things you'd have wanted him to do, but he's not remotely closer to the center by any stretch of the imagination. He was elected as a moderate, and has governed, largely, from the far right.
Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" and really tried to portray himself as a moderate, even saying supportive things about Kyoto during the election. I think it's hard to make a case that he moved towards the center (unless, I guess, you're extremely right-wing.)
Re:Message from the Extreme Conclusions Club
on
RIP G4 PowerMac
·
· Score: 1
In the first place, I find it absolutely hilarious that someone who thinks that computers can last forever considers everyone else "morons".
On the other, your logic is clearly faulty. Just because demand is there doesn't mean Apple has a complete business case to build Mac OS 9 computers. To begin with, the demand has to be high enough. Additionally, Apple may feel that continuing to build Mac OS 9 computers would undermine its existing product line.
As well as learning some basic engineering, you might want to brush up on your business skills too.
Oh very original. Yet again Slashdotters miss the point. Whenever they see someone doing something new, someone has to diss-it as unnecessary. "Why do I need a mobile phone when there's phone booths?" "Who really needs the source code to an operating system?" "Who needs broadband when dial-up works just fine?" and now "Why do cows need Internet access?"
In a few years, all cows will have access to the Internet. And thanks to their always-on wireless connections, they'll make up the vast majority of Internet users. 75% of Slashdot posts will be from cows, and thanks to the mass enfranchisement of other cattle, the Goatse.cx site will actually feature a picture of a goat.
What's more, you'll benefit. Right now, the Internet is dominated by spammers and trolls. But with an influx of cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, and other farmyard animals, the quality of discussion and the quality of content is likely to radically increase. All these animals know a hell of a lot more than most Slashdotters about many ordinary topics - chickens, for example, will be able to tell you about eggs, something very few Slashdotters are expert in. Ask Slashdot will finally stop having useless topics like "How do I set up my Linksys router?" or "What wallpaper should I have on my desktop?" and instead feature discussions about types of grass to eat, avoiding foxes, and telling whether your feed has dead similar animals mixed into it.
Likewise, YRO will be dominated by discussions about avoiding the slaughterhouse, getting into the wild, etc. None of this "Ooooh, some obscure copyright bill might violate my right to download MP3s", this time it'll be important life and death issues.
So don't knock it. Cows have just as much right to be on the Internet as you or I. How dare you suggest they don't "need" Internet access!
Re:Message from the Extreme Conclusions Club
on
RIP G4 PowerMac
·
· Score: 1
Holy shit! I had no idea that OS 9 machines are going to stop working! When is this supposed to happen? What, is there like a big switch in Cupertino or something, and Steve's gonna up and pull it one day?
No, it'll happen more gradually than that.
You see, computers are somewhat complex devices made with lots of little bits and pieces that have what we call an "MTBF" - a mean time between (or before) failures. A lifetime, if you will. This is because it's prohibitively expensive to make something that will last forever.
Now what happens is that after a while, some of the components, generally the ones with the lowest MTBF, will fail. This happens for a variety of reasons - everything from evaporation to wear and tear (components heat up and cool down as their powered and unpowered, and generally because of this they expand and contract. This means that even the most solid looking chip on a motherboard actually has a mechnical aspect to it that can cause damage through fatigue.)
When they fail, the device may still be repairable, but this will depend on a number of factors. To begin with, the failed component might itself not be replaceable (it might be soldered to the motherboard using very, very, fine links, making it difficult for a human to remove and replace.) The replacement component, be it just the failed unit or the motherboard or whatever, might not be available any more. And, over time, this will increasingly become the case - fewer spares, as we call them, will be in stock.
So the short answer I guess is, yes, Mac OS 9 machines are going to stop working. It's inevitable. And if Apple isn't making a device that runs Mac OS 9, then people who need Mac OS 9 will have difficulty continuing.
Almost all but not all - that was my point. For two examples, look at the binary drivers for nVidia cards, and for programs that play RealPlayer and Windows AVI/ASF/WM* files (yes, source is available to play a subset of the latter, but it's notable MPlayer et al have to resort to WINE-based hacks to play some major exceptions)
It's a nice idea, but there are still a hell of a lot of binary-only packages for Linux (and GNU/Linux) varying from display device drivers to video decoders (such as Real.) Unless your chip is likely to capture a significant portion of the market, it's not terribly likely that many of those binary packages will be ported.
On top of which, as long as it runs ix86, platforms with the chip will not be limited to Linux.
I think one of the concerns is that the more lifelike something is, the more you expect it to act on every level like a human. So when it doesn't, you immediately have concern that something's seriously wrong.
As a basic example, think of a corpse. The eyes are open but it's not blinking, not breathing, it's off-colour, etc. It's entirely realistic (yes, I know a corpse is real, but I mean real as in "resembling a human"), but it's already creepy because of the minor differences between normality and actuality.
Now imagine the corpse physically gets up and starts walking around. It's just become even more "life-like" but it's going to have most of us running from the room, and those left are hardly going to feel comfortable.
Do you really want a pr0n game with this kind of problem?
Yeah, but think of all the extra functionality you've been given since 1994. Back then, could you read email, browse the web, write formatted text documents, calculate spreadsheets, manage databases, and do all the other things that we can do with today's GNOME?
Oh. You could? Oh crap. What do you mean you could do all this on your 5Mb Commodore Amiga too? Well there goes my argument then. Well, I'll get my coat.
Oh great, "it doesn't matter because we can get everyone to rewrite their software" plan. Or, I guess, end-users can always configure IPTABLES to redirect their internal port 25 to the destination SMTP server. I'm sure we'd all love to do that. Hey, tell you what, for easy backwards compatability, I'll just write me a little proxy that runs on port 25 of someone's own machine that allows you to use any email application that supports SMTP. Will handle the SMTP AUTH etc. I'm sure there are no problems whatsoever that'll introduce! (Where's the guy with that "Your anti-spam system sucks because *big long checklist*" form again?)
The other thing that annoys me is we have this wonderful attitude from the anti-spammers for virtually everything along the lines of "Why are you complaining? Only 1% of you will want to do this, and all you have to do to do that increadibly simple thing you were doing previously is (*insert 500 step plan here which usually includes replacing previously perfectly servicable software, negotiating with an ISP which, by default, is going to want to provide the same system to everyone and certainly doesn't want to make an exception for you, etc, etc*.)"
And we already know this isn't actually going to help. Indeed, if Russia and China are the biggest sources of spam at the moment, then doesn't it stand to reason that egress SMTP and/or SPF will make bugger all difference in the long run anyway? Who here seriously believes that either will actually be a serious deterent to spammers?
And if the plan is to continue the usual basket-of-filters approach, are we going to block all email from Russia and China? If so, how's that going to work? What happens when they switch to another country? What about the fact that Russia and China are two of the largest countries in the world and a lot of businesses are going to be very upset if they can't easily trade with them any more?
Why are we continuing to use these inane methods when we already know they don't work?
There aresystems that work, why aren't we using them? And why do those proposing the filters upon filters upon filters not realise how difficult they're making it to create real solutions?
You do realise that your plan to block egress SMTP completely undermines anyone who'd want to usefully use SMTP+TLS+AUTH?
WTF was this BS modded up? The proposals are a load of contradictory nonsense that ultimately undermine each other, and ultimately do little to actually relieve spam. We've tried the "Filter sources that may be legitimate but are statistically likely to be spam" method pretty much from day one. We've:
Blocked email from ISPs that didn't do a good enough job throwing off spammers. Spam levels continued to increase and legitimate email dropped from innocents who happened to use those ISPs.
Blocked email that contained keywords likely to be from spammers. Spam levels continued to increase and legitimate email dropped.
Blocked email from hosts with problematic headers. Spam levels continued to increase and legitimate email dropped because problematic headers have nothing to do with spam.
Prevented users from sending email directly by blocking outbound 25 or blocking incoming 25 from "dial-up" addresses (DUL). Spam levels have continued to rise, roaming is now much, much, more difficult and privacy has been undermined. Legitimate email has been dropped. Much frustration has been added to anyone trying to do anything non-simple.
Prevented users from running their own email servers by blocking incoming port 25 to DSL addresses. Spam levels have continued to rise, privacy has been undermined, and people with sane, rational, spam blocking systems (such as giving each entity one does business with a unique address that can be turned off if it's abused) that actually work have been undermined and made more difficult for end users to implement.
Every spam measure encouraged by the filtering/blocking enthusiasts has ultimately not made a blind bit of difference. Spammers have gotten around them. There's no reason to think that the latest filtering/blocking system will do anything but continue in that tradition.
There are systems that work. Why are system administrators ignoring them, and indeed, choosing "anti-spam" systems that actually makes them hard for end users to implement?
Re:Not surprising, and not bad.
on
RIP G4 PowerMac
·
· Score: 1
Read and write to other processes memory. It is trivial for any program to change another program's in-memory code, or to read sensitive information from another program's memory. This is because every program on OS9 shares the same address space.
This has nothing really to do with cooperative multitasking. The Amiga had/has* pre-emptive multitasking and had/has the same problem.
Probably worth noting, with reference to your first point, that as I understood it there's commonly a key combination you could use to kill the current process. This was also true of the 16 bit versions of Windows (CTRL-ALT-DEL on Windows 3.1 brought up something allowing you to kill the current program or exit Windows completely) At best though, a program that abuses a cooperative multitasking OS can at worst simply hang the computer. This, to be honest, is achievable in a variety of ways under most operating systems, being cooperative merely adds one easy way to do it.
As others have pointed out, it's "Public" not "Packet". It's circuit switched.
The reason for the acronym isn't to describe a standard, it's to describe a network. The PSTN is essentially to POTS and ISDN what The Internet is to TCP/IP.
Blocking outbound port 25 also undermines SPF. SPF advocates argue that roaming will still be possible if ISPs allow non-local connections to their SMTP servers with one of the new SMTP authentication schemes used to verify that the connection is valid instead of simple IP addressing. However, if outgoing port 25 isn't accessable, contacting the SMTP server you're supposed to use to send email under the profile you want to use simply will not be possible.
Not that this means I necessarily think SPF is a great idea either, but...
Nope, not speculation. Oh sure, people may have bought the PM G4 for other reasons, but Apple's primary reason for continuing to sell it was that they'd promised to continue to support (and sell hardware capable of running) Mac OS 9 until this year.
The PowerMac G4 is/was the last product in their line that ran Mac OS 9. Everything else they currently sell is incapable of running any of Apple's operating systems pre-OS X.
The Linux kernel would be entirely inappropriate given its "model" of everything from device drivers to the file system is completely at odds with that of AmigaOS.
Sure, you could clone the GUI. But what would be the point? It wouldn't work like AmigaOS underneath, it'd never feel like Amiga did.
If you think that's bad, I've heard they're already using fingerprints to identify you if you commit a murder. What is the world coming to when you can't even kidnap people at random and kill them in the privacy of your own dungeon without some local "detective" who thinks he's Clint Eastwood invading your privacy in this way?
Most operating systems are at much higher versions. Most Linuxen, for example, are at versions 9 or 10. Windows is currently at 5.1 (Windows XP), and Mac OS is at 10.3 with 10.4 around the corner. So is now the time to release AmigaOS 4.0? I mean, aren't most people thinking "AmigaOS 4?" going to assume it's really old and out of date?
Seriously though... development of AROS continues with a lot of progress. Those of us who miss the old platform will probably find AROS a nicer alternative (not limited to PPC and 68xxx for starters), though as - as with its inspiration - it lacks sane memory management and modern security it's far from being production ready today, and unfortunately AmigaOS 4 seems likely to share the same problems.
Slashdot Mirror
I work* for a cellular phone company, and I can tell you that we get very few** complaints*** despite what this survey says. One thing we care very much for is that customers know what they're going to be charged****. So naturally I'm very disappointed***** to hear this kind of thing.
* Does not include actual employment, work implies any form of work including having to try and figure out what AT&T intends to charge me this month.
** The word "few" should not be implied to have any specific, non-subjective, definition.
*** Excludes concerns about service quality or hidden charges
**** Does not include monetary amounts
***** Disappointment should not be read to imply any desire to make anything better.
OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS
While completely free, this message may be subject to an additional $1.75 fee payable per reader to cover the costs of making this message conform to government regulations. This is not a tax, it is simply a fee squiggleslash levies to cover mandated improvements in honesty.
There are no lies in this message, because you can make any claim you like as long as you say it's completely false in the small-print.
I agree. I quoted five megs because my Amiga 500+ had that amount of RAM when it was finally retired. Enough to run virtually everything I run today with the possible exception of a decent 2004-era graphical web browser. Indeed, there's a hell of a lot of tools I had then that simply seem to no longer be available - not in the same way. SuperJAM!, Octamed, et al. I guess some people would argue XPaint or GIMP are Deluxe Paint replacements but they sure don't feel like them - they're excellent in their niches (well, the GIMP is) but they're not DPaint III.
This guy goes to the doctor. He's got omelette in his hair, beans down his front, and a french fry stuck up his nose. The doctor says 'You know your problem? You're not eating properly'.
He may not have had time for some of the things you'd have wanted him to do, but he's not remotely closer to the center by any stretch of the imagination. He was elected as a moderate, and has governed, largely, from the far right.
Bush ran as a "compassionate conservative" and really tried to portray himself as a moderate, even saying supportive things about Kyoto during the election. I think it's hard to make a case that he moved towards the center (unless, I guess, you're extremely right-wing.)
On the other, your logic is clearly faulty. Just because demand is there doesn't mean Apple has a complete business case to build Mac OS 9 computers. To begin with, the demand has to be high enough. Additionally, Apple may feel that continuing to build Mac OS 9 computers would undermine its existing product line.
As well as learning some basic engineering, you might want to brush up on your business skills too.
In a few years, all cows will have access to the Internet. And thanks to their always-on wireless connections, they'll make up the vast majority of Internet users. 75% of Slashdot posts will be from cows, and thanks to the mass enfranchisement of other cattle, the Goatse.cx site will actually feature a picture of a goat.
What's more, you'll benefit. Right now, the Internet is dominated by spammers and trolls. But with an influx of cows, sheep, chickens, pigs, and other farmyard animals, the quality of discussion and the quality of content is likely to radically increase. All these animals know a hell of a lot more than most Slashdotters about many ordinary topics - chickens, for example, will be able to tell you about eggs, something very few Slashdotters are expert in. Ask Slashdot will finally stop having useless topics like "How do I set up my Linksys router?" or "What wallpaper should I have on my desktop?" and instead feature discussions about types of grass to eat, avoiding foxes, and telling whether your feed has dead similar animals mixed into it.
Likewise, YRO will be dominated by discussions about avoiding the slaughterhouse, getting into the wild, etc. None of this "Ooooh, some obscure copyright bill might violate my right to download MP3s", this time it'll be important life and death issues.
So don't knock it. Cows have just as much right to be on the Internet as you or I. How dare you suggest they don't "need" Internet access!
You see, computers are somewhat complex devices made with lots of little bits and pieces that have what we call an "MTBF" - a mean time between (or before) failures. A lifetime, if you will. This is because it's prohibitively expensive to make something that will last forever.
Now what happens is that after a while, some of the components, generally the ones with the lowest MTBF, will fail. This happens for a variety of reasons - everything from evaporation to wear and tear (components heat up and cool down as their powered and unpowered, and generally because of this they expand and contract. This means that even the most solid looking chip on a motherboard actually has a mechnical aspect to it that can cause damage through fatigue.)
When they fail, the device may still be repairable, but this will depend on a number of factors. To begin with, the failed component might itself not be replaceable (it might be soldered to the motherboard using very, very, fine links, making it difficult for a human to remove and replace.) The replacement component, be it just the failed unit or the motherboard or whatever, might not be available any more. And, over time, this will increasingly become the case - fewer spares, as we call them, will be in stock.
So the short answer I guess is, yes, Mac OS 9 machines are going to stop working. It's inevitable. And if Apple isn't making a device that runs Mac OS 9, then people who need Mac OS 9 will have difficulty continuing.
Almost all but not all - that was my point. For two examples, look at the binary drivers for nVidia cards, and for programs that play RealPlayer and Windows AVI/ASF/WM* files (yes, source is available to play a subset of the latter, but it's notable MPlayer et al have to resort to WINE-based hacks to play some major exceptions)
On top of which, as long as it runs ix86, platforms with the chip will not be limited to Linux.
I think one of the concerns is that the more lifelike something is, the more you expect it to act on every level like a human. So when it doesn't, you immediately have concern that something's seriously wrong.
As a basic example, think of a corpse. The eyes are open but it's not blinking, not breathing, it's off-colour, etc. It's entirely realistic (yes, I know a corpse is real, but I mean real as in "resembling a human"), but it's already creepy because of the minor differences between normality and actuality.
Now imagine the corpse physically gets up and starts walking around. It's just become even more "life-like" but it's going to have most of us running from the room, and those left are hardly going to feel comfortable.
Do you really want a pr0n game with this kind of problem?
I used to run Linux + X11 on a 8Mb 386DX-25 desktop. Worked fine and fast running Window Managers like IceWM and AmiWM.
Oh. You could? Oh crap. What do you mean you could do all this on your 5Mb Commodore Amiga too? Well there goes my argument then. Well, I'll get my coat.
Sorry for wasting your time.
The other thing that annoys me is we have this wonderful attitude from the anti-spammers for virtually everything along the lines of "Why are you complaining? Only 1% of you will want to do this, and all you have to do to do that increadibly simple thing you were doing previously is (*insert 500 step plan here which usually includes replacing previously perfectly servicable software, negotiating with an ISP which, by default, is going to want to provide the same system to everyone and certainly doesn't want to make an exception for you, etc, etc*.)"
And we already know this isn't actually going to help. Indeed, if Russia and China are the biggest sources of spam at the moment, then doesn't it stand to reason that egress SMTP and/or SPF will make bugger all difference in the long run anyway? Who here seriously believes that either will actually be a serious deterent to spammers?
And if the plan is to continue the usual basket-of-filters approach, are we going to block all email from Russia and China? If so, how's that going to work? What happens when they switch to another country? What about the fact that Russia and China are two of the largest countries in the world and a lot of businesses are going to be very upset if they can't easily trade with them any more?
Why are we continuing to use these inane methods when we already know they don't work?
There are systems that work, why aren't we using them? And why do those proposing the filters upon filters upon filters not realise how difficult they're making it to create real solutions?
WTF was this BS modded up? The proposals are a load of contradictory nonsense that ultimately undermine each other, and ultimately do little to actually relieve spam. We've tried the "Filter sources that may be legitimate but are statistically likely to be spam" method pretty much from day one. We've:
- Blocked email from ISPs that didn't do a good enough job throwing off spammers. Spam levels continued to increase and legitimate email dropped from innocents who happened to use those ISPs.
- Blocked email that contained keywords likely to be from spammers. Spam levels continued to increase and legitimate email dropped.
- Blocked email from hosts with problematic headers. Spam levels continued to increase and legitimate email dropped because problematic headers have nothing to do with spam.
- Prevented users from sending email directly by blocking outbound 25 or blocking incoming 25 from "dial-up" addresses (DUL). Spam levels have continued to rise, roaming is now much, much, more difficult and privacy has been undermined. Legitimate email has been dropped. Much frustration has been added to anyone trying to do anything non-simple.
- Prevented users from running their own email servers by blocking incoming port 25 to DSL addresses. Spam levels have continued to rise, privacy has been undermined, and people with sane, rational, spam blocking systems (such as giving each entity one does business with a unique address that can be turned off if it's abused) that actually work have been undermined and made more difficult for end users to implement.
Every spam measure encouraged by the filtering/blocking enthusiasts has ultimately not made a blind bit of difference. Spammers have gotten around them. There's no reason to think that the latest filtering/blocking system will do anything but continue in that tradition.There are systems that work. Why are system administrators ignoring them, and indeed, choosing "anti-spam" systems that actually makes them hard for end users to implement?
Probably worth noting, with reference to your first point, that as I understood it there's commonly a key combination you could use to kill the current process. This was also true of the 16 bit versions of Windows (CTRL-ALT-DEL on Windows 3.1 brought up something allowing you to kill the current program or exit Windows completely) At best though, a program that abuses a cooperative multitasking OS can at worst simply hang the computer. This, to be honest, is achievable in a variety of ways under most operating systems, being cooperative merely adds one easy way to do it.
The reason for the acronym isn't to describe a standard, it's to describe a network. The PSTN is essentially to POTS and ISDN what The Internet is to TCP/IP.
I hope that helps,
Not that this means I necessarily think SPF is a great idea either, but...
The PowerMac G4 is/was the last product in their line that ran Mac OS 9. Everything else they currently sell is incapable of running any of Apple's operating systems pre-OS X.
Sure, you could clone the GUI. But what would be the point? It wouldn't work like AmigaOS underneath, it'd never feel like Amiga did.
"Separate." Ok. Got it.
If you think that's bad, I've heard they're already using fingerprints to identify you if you commit a murder. What is the world coming to when you can't even kidnap people at random and kill them in the privacy of your own dungeon without some local "detective" who thinks he's Clint Eastwood invading your privacy in this way?
Seriously though... development of AROS continues with a lot of progress. Those of us who miss the old platform will probably find AROS a nicer alternative (not limited to PPC and 68xxx for starters), though as - as with its inspiration - it lacks sane memory management and modern security it's far from being production ready today, and unfortunately AmigaOS 4 seems likely to share the same problems.
(* Well, ok, I've linked to page two for a reason, flip to page one after you've finished your heart attack)