Ah, cool! Just so happens there's a MadTV marathon on Comedy Central today... Hopefully I can catch that one at some point. I just remembered laughing my ass off, but that's generally true when Newhart's involved.
I think it was a Saturday Night Live skit with Bob Newhart. Meant to be funny of course (and it was), but at the same time it's the single best piece of serious advice I've ever heard for anyone addicted to anything.
STOP IT.
That's it. Don't gimme all this psychobable, don't gimme all the physiological reasons it's not that simple, because it f'ing is.
JUST STOP IT. STOP, STOP, STOP IT.
If you don't want to drink soda any more...
STOP IT.
It you don't want to touch yourself 10 times a day...
STOP IT.
If your a crack whore...
JUST STOP IT.
Cigarettes shortening your life?...
F'ING STOP IT.
Your a 400 pound fat-ass that's about two porkchops away from a heart attack?...
Say it with me...
STOP IT!
Just stop being a weak-minded fool, deal with the discomfort that will probably result from going cold turkey, and get over it all. JUST F'ING STOP IT. NOW!!
You know, I am in complete agreement that the original policy of Apple in this matter was ridiculous. I view it as not supporting a product you sold, and that's just bad business at best.
But this guy...
I'm reading his whole experience, and it's frankly the first I've heard of it, and all along I'm thinking to myself "ok, this guy has a legit gripe, I'm behind him".
But then, as I've come to expect from everyone on this planet, he goes and blows it...
The story ends with THE PURCHASE OF A NEW IPOD!
Dude, if you were so f'ing outraged, don't buy a new one! Have some damned balls and stand up for your principals and refuse to buy another one. It's not dinner or clothes guy, it's a TOY!
The world at large (maybe just in America this is true I guess) has come to a point where they consider things that are in no way necessities, just that. They believe that every person is entitled to have a cell phone, a PC, a car, whatever else. They then feel slighted when they don't get the things they want.
If you can't afford to eat, you have a problem. If you can't pay for a roof over your head, that's an issue. If you can't put a pair of shoes on your feet, you need some help.
IF YOUR IPOD'S BATTERY GOES TITS UP, THIS IS NOT LIFE-THREATENING!!!! No matter how lousy you feel not being able to listen to your Hootie tunes on the bus while sipping your latee (and I'm not even going to bother looking up the correct spelling), it's not the end of the world.
And when a company does something unfair to you, even if you are 100% right about it, don't turn around and give in! Geez, that's like me saying "I can't believe this doctor is going to charge me $50,000 to lipo out my fat ass, that's unfair and I hate him", and then promptly writing out a check to him.
F'ing morons. Too many of them, all over the place. Very sad indeed.
Your micro-thinking. I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all.
The point of the article was to address the open-source community, AS A VIABLE ALTERNTIVE to the established leader(s), which has, largely, the stated goal of being the leader. It was addressing the community AS A WHOLE, not it's constituent parts.
From a single person's perspective, your post is hard to argue with, even if it is somewhat egocentric, but that's not really important frankly. You do for yourself, by yourself, and if it benefits others, great, and no one has the right to complain with how or what you choose to do. I agree 100%.
But when you are part of a community that is striving, by and large, towards a common goal, there certainly is a right, perhaps even a duty if one is trying to be supportive, to point out the failings of the team.
Put it this way: if Michael Jordan is on the playground playing a pick-up game, and he's taking every single shot, whether he's hitting or missing them, who cares? He can do what he wants, and who has the right to complain? It's his business. Put him on an NBA team though, with the absolute goal of winning a championship, and it becomes a lot less acceptable and most importantly counter-productive, to continue to perform that way. (Ok, I admit Jordan was the worst possible example since he's the one guy you don't mind continuing to take all the shots! Substitute Tracy McGrady or Karl Malone or even Kobe Bryant then).
The points made in the article were valid from that 10,000-foot view, but not from the 10-foot view of your post.
As currently constituted, the open-source community is no real threat to Microsoft on the desktop (servers are a different story), and never will be if the current trends continue, precisely for the reasons cited. Linux probably does need a corporate champion. Why corporate? Because accountability to shareholders is a more result-producing motivation than the desire to do good and help your fellow man (and woman!).
Personally, I think IBM is the one true hope of Linux ruling the world. They're already taking some positive steps as far as the data center goes, but if they would decide to rule the world, desktop included, they are probably the one company out there that has what it takes to pull it off and defeat Microsoft. Short of that, from what we can currently see and predict, I don't think it's going to happen from any other corner.
To each his own. I liked the astro-hooker chick better myself.
Not that I'd turn Jewel down mind you, but if you saw me you'd realize that's not saying much. Or anything.
Ugh. I hate myself.
Re:The Desktop Is Not Important Right Now
on
Linux in 2004?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You've just effectively illustrated why it's unlikely Linux will EVER dethrone Windows on the desktop (yes, I said it!)... To use a basketball analogy...
If I have Larry Bird's championship Celtics teams on one side, and on the other I request anyone that wants to play show up... Even if Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Jason Kidd, Karl Malone and Tray McGrady show up, chances are that Bird's team is going to win because they are the well-organized, focused and experienced TEAM. They know how to work together effectively and they have leadership who are focusing them on one or two definitive goals. The pick-up team has the better talent almost everyone would agree, and they all love to play, but if your not focused and a real team, your not going to win.
What Linux needs to have a chance is one or two guys that can rally the troops and drive the desktop effort in a huge way. The community needs to focus on Microsoft 100% to dethrone them. Hoping that someone talented enough comes along that can write pieces to compete with Windows XP isn't going to work. Someone needs to find those people, motivate them and get the most of their talents. Microsoft does this day in and day out. That's why they are on top as far as the desktop goes, and why they will almost certainly remain there for many years to come.
And what operating system SHOULD be on a network without a firewall precisely? If I extrapolate that "network" = "internet", that's a silly statement because EVERY BOX with ANY OS on it should be behind a firewall.
Do a search on msn.com for "linux vs. windows" (here) and you get 521343 hits.
Do the same on Google (here), you get 2,150,000 hits.
Now, if you want to conclude that MSN is an inferior search engine, I agree 100%. Saying or even implying that it gives bogus results tailored to support MS's whim is just a bold-faced lie.
Just because one search engine returns different results than another is in no way proof of a conspiracy on anyone's parts. It just highlights that the engines work in different ways and index different amounts and likely types of data.
I couldn't agree more. Parents these days are so concerned with setting rules and simply telling their kids what they should and shouldn't do. I've always felt that raising children boils down to a few "simple" tasks on your part as a parent:
(1) Keep them safe and provide the basics of life. This is obvious, but many people seem to forget it.
(2) Teach them right from wrong. Remember, your children are nueral nets: tell them when something is right or wrong, and EXPLAIN WHY. They will as a consequence develop a sense for what is right and wrong and will be able to determine for themselves what's right and wrong, even when it's something they've never encountered before.
(3) Teach them to think for themselves. Challenge them constantly. Don't allow them to be lazy and always have someone give them the answers.
Those three things really are what parenting boil down to. You have to realize that for 99% of the really big decisions in your childrens' life, you won't be around to guide them. But if you've done your job, they'll make the right choices most of them time and turn out well.
I don't mean to imply any of this is easy. I'm a parent myself and it's all I can do to not kill my kids some days. Sometimes it feels like I'm running on ice (thanks Billy Joel, perfect words!). But every now and again I see my kids making a decision for themselves where the choices were the right thing and the wrong thing and the wrong thing would have been more pleasurable for them, and they chose the right thing. Those are the moments to live for because you see that you are having an impact and you are getting the rights things across to them, and they are sticking. It's worth it.
My FOUR YEAR OLD (well, four in February) has had his own computer with Internet access for close to a year now. Granted, I've locked it down very tightly to the point where he can't get to anything other than the sites or programs we OK.
I'll tell you what: giving him his own computer has been one of the BEST decisions we ever made. He is so far ahead of the other kids in his pre-school it's not even funny, and we know for a fact that the games he plays has a great deal to do with it (because we've spied on him via VNC playing games and figuring things out and developing skills that he really shouldn't be yet). The Internet access has also been a great thing because he's really getting exposure to thing he just couldn't otherwise. He was doing simple math six months ago for God's sake! He's known his entire alphabet for nearly a year, his vocabulary has been commented on by his teacher numerous times as being incredibly far ahead of the other kids. Most importantly to me, his ability to reason things out and solve problems is fantastic. I know adults that can't think something through as well as he can.
To say giving any child their own computer is a mistake is just stupid. To say being an irresponsible parent and just giving it to them without any guidance or supervision absolutey is though.
Of course, that applies to giving them just about anything. My mother gave me a giant air-blowing gun toy when I was little, and then didn't pay any attention to what I did with it. I absolutely tortured the family cat with that thing for weeks before my dad saw me once and took it away. I shouldn't have been doing it, but they certainly should have pais attention and stopped me long before they did.
I say this with COMPLETE seriousness... my child is 100 times more computer-literate than a great many of the people I work with every day. In this day and age, is that a mistake? F**k no.
I would agree, except that they TOLD YOU FROM THE OUTSET they were going to do this. If you were a bit pissed when they did it for FoTR, I would agree to an extent because I got "screwed" with it too that time. This time though, the two releases were not hidden facts in the least, they actually told you the exact release dates for each edition right up front! If you bought the first edition, you have no right to be pissed because you KNEW what was going to happen, you should have waited if you didn't want to pay twice. It's not like you have been living under a rock and didn't know what was going on, were you?!?
Also, most people I know love this story so much and love how these movies have been done that paying twice doesn't bother us in the least. When artists produce something of this caliber, paying them twice (five times in my case, the twice I saw it in the theater, the once I rented it and now the twice I've purchased it) is not a problem to me, they deserve it.
Besides, do like I did with FoTR: the first one is now a Christmas present for someone you love. Not a bad deal really.
Assembly on the C64 was a fun experience, unlike x86 Assembly, which is a royal pain.
Besides, there's nothing cooler than typing in an Assembly program masquerading as a Basic program, then executing the compiler via a sys command. I forget the name of the assembler, but that was a load of fun. I still have tons of code that I wrote laying around and I frankly don't understand a bit of it any more, but I remember the fun.
Then again, I remember spending something like 16 straight hours trying to finish off a demo that just wouldn't work right and realizing finally that I was doing lda instead of lad or something like that. Damn, that was painful. I guess debugging skills kinda dawn on you later:)
I remember the first raster bar I got working. One of the most amazing days of my life.
I remember understanding FLD for the first time, and realizing just how cool the concept was.
I remember writing The Hack Pack to compete with PhoneMan. Mine had a harasser program to repeatedly dial a number and play a different obnoxious sound effect each time, so I think I won.
I remember modding the hell out of C-Net 10.0 and having one of the most popular BBS's on the east coast (ColorGuard BBS).
I remember a year later writing my own BBS software (Omega BBS).
I remember riding my bicycle 10 miles to the nearest post office (why there wasn't one closer I still don't know!) to ship out a 300 baud modem to a guy in Finland so I could import warez from him.
I remember the Sprint investigator calling my mother to say I was busted (I still blame her for that one... "Mame, does your son own a computer?" "Oh yes, he does! Has a modem and everything!" D'OH!)
Actually, I remember before that, that same Sprint investigator got me in the middle of a phreaked call and I quickly ran into the back yard and burned all my documententation, CC#'s, etc. What a dumb ass I was.
I remember working in the computer department of Sears and getting fired because I was opening games and using Fast Hack'em to copy for later warez release. Did I mention I was a dumb ass? (Then again, that's what they get for hiring a 15-year old illegally I suppose).
I remember hours of playing Beach Head, Hoover Boover, Lazy Jones, Impossible Mission, Nuclear Attack, Miner 2049'er, The Last V8 and many other awesome games Of which many are still far more fun than the crap they churn out today).
I remember that little program that grinded the hell out of the heads of a 1541 to play music. Yes, the heads were moved in ways that it didn't generally like in such a way that it actually played music. I STILL don't know how they pulled that off!
I remember when I got my 9600 baud modem and how unbelievably fast it was. What was it called, V.32BIS I think? Something like that anyway.
I remember getting into a flame war with some guys on a BBS and actually setting up real, physical meeting at a local park to fight. I also remember us showing up and them seeing myself and three other rather large friends and them just taking off.
I remember MicroHut, the best computer store there ever was, and the unbelievably geeky people I met there.
I remember watching a BBS screen paint at just 300 baud.
I remember part lines on stolen calling card numbers until five in the morning (from 4pm the previous night), then getting up for school at six, and then doing the same thing again the next day for a week straight.
I remember the Newage vs. NPN war demo that I somehow threw together in a marathon 39-straight hour coding spree. Damn that was cool. Or lame. Depending on your viewpoint.
I remember somehow managing to do a rotating 3-D vector demo without understanding basic math concepts. Actually, I remember being a lot smarter back then in general. Kids tend to do that to you.
I remember the joy of ripping music from a game or demo. I remember the floppy I had with all the ripped tunes. Wait, I stil
About eight years ago I used an old C64 as a controller for a custom home automation system. It was a good idea at the time because I just dropped some relays off the parallel port and I had 14 (if I remember corretly) relays to control whatever I wanted: lights, coffee maker, etc. Some quick custom software and I was good to go. I wound up running a couple of control pads through the joystick ports and used some crazy-ass pulsing scheme as a control language (i.e., pad #1 used left direction, and it was kind of like morse code... left-left-pause.1 sec-left-pause.1 sec-left-left corresponded to turn relay #3 on for instance, and that sequence was fired as a result of a keypress on the panel using a field-programmable logic array to generate it).
Changes the screen color to black and the border color to white, if I remember correctly.
Ok, if I *DO* remember correctly, I really must go shoot myself because I will have finally figured out what piece of useless trivia has been clogging up my brain keeping Calculus out.
Yeah, of course, we've all done the F**K YOU program at the mall.
It was so much cooler though when you could do something like:
10 print chr$(int(205.5+rnd(0)));: goto 10
Yes, true geeks appreciate that more than the F*U thing.
For the record, I still have three working C64's, a couple of 1541's and a huge stack of floppies (that have since been saved on CD via X1541 and StarCommander).
Anyone that was around back then might even remember me... Fantasy of Newage.
I miss those days. Not so much the Sprint investigator nabbing me for phreaking, lucky it was only a couple hundred bucks, but to a 14-year old that's a ton of cash.
Fortunately, I was a better coder than I ever was a phreaker:)
"Windows doesn't randomly bluescreen as much but if you do more than just web browse and office work it still dies fairly often."
Rubbish.
I spend easily twelves hours a day working in WinXP between work and home. At work right now, I have no less than 14 apps running: Directory Opus, Lotus Notes, UltraEdit, PowerPoint, MyIE2, IE6.0, Visio, Tomcat, WinAmp, SecondNature, Seti@Home, ZoneAlarm, Norton Antivirus and VMWare. This list is completely typical of what I have open at any given time. At home I generally have even more running.
The last time I saw a blue screen was... umm... lemme think here... oh yeah... THE LAST TIME I RAN A WINDOWS 9x OS! Ok, I probably saw some under NT as well, but the point is that under XP I'm not sure I've EVER seen one.
Did I mention I have a dual monitor setup, two video cards (not a single dual-head card) plus scanner, parallel Zip drive and a couple of other miscellaneous USB devices? My point is that hardware isn't a problem for XP either, as long as the hardware and drivers are good.
If you have an unstable XP box, 99 times out of 100 it's due to hardware problems or bad drivers, neither of which are MS's fault.
The other one time is probably your fault anyway.
Compare XP to your OS of choice and you'll find it compares favorably when you consider stability. To say otherwise is either (a) FUD on your part or (b) a result of your bad experience which is almost guaranteed to be a result of bad hardware or drivers.
MS has done a good job with XP in terms of stability, andone that says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about.
The judgement seems to only really deal with the situation where the original cartridge is bought under the prebate program and I don't think (IANAL) it applies to a cartridge bought sans the prebate.
Now, if Lexmark only sells cartridges under that program, then we're screwed. But if not, just pay the extra $30 and your fine.
(Not the greatest of options I guess, but the alternative seems worse)
Tell 'ya what... I've been using Windows regularly for about eight years and I *HAVE* received tons of these virus-infected eMails.
I'll also tell you that I've used Outlook for about three years now...
Lastly, I'll tell you that I have NEVER had a problem with a virus infection. EVER. I keep my Norton virus defs up to date... I keep my system patches up to date, and I run ZoneAlarm.
Now, you may argue that I shouldn't have to do any of that, and to some degree I would agree... But then again, people shouldn't be releasing viruses, or at least not releasing them in the wild (I used to write some comeptitors in the "Core Wars" days by the way, so there is some legitimate use for viral code I think).
I tend to agree that many, maybe even most, average users don't know enough or don't have the wearwithal to be as vigilant as I am. But I can also tell you that if they were, these problems would be no worse than the alternative OS's out there. It's not like it's that hard to leave the auto-update feature in Windows on (and I mean set to just tell me when updates are available... I don't trust MS *THAT* much), and Norton I have no problem leaving set to auto-update (I just want it to tell me when it does). ZoneAlarm is a piece of cake once you get through the first day (do you want THIS app to run 50 times), and it's pretty much overkill after updates and Norton (in fact, I can't think of a single time I actually needed ZoneAlarm to do it's job, so that's a good sign for sure).
So, before you jump all over Windows saying it's a virus haven, keep in mind that it doens't have to be that way, it's not horribly flawed by design (you don't understand the design GOALS if you say that), and it doesn't even take very much to be safe and secure.
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Ah, cool! Just so happens there's a MadTV marathon on Comedy Central today... Hopefully I can catch that one at some point. I just remembered laughing my ass off, but that's generally true when Newhart's involved.
I think it was a Saturday Night Live skit with Bob Newhart. Meant to be funny of course (and it was), but at the same time it's the single best piece of serious advice I've ever heard for anyone addicted to anything.
STOP IT.
That's it. Don't gimme all this psychobable, don't gimme all the physiological reasons it's not that simple, because it f'ing is.
JUST STOP IT. STOP, STOP, STOP IT.
If you don't want to drink soda any more...
STOP IT.
It you don't want to touch yourself 10 times a day...
STOP IT.
If your a crack whore...
JUST STOP IT.
Cigarettes shortening your life?...
F'ING STOP IT.
Your a 400 pound fat-ass that's about two porkchops away from a heart attack?...
Say it with me...
STOP IT!
Just stop being a weak-minded fool, deal with the discomfort that will probably result from going cold turkey, and get over it all. JUST F'ING STOP IT. NOW!!
You know, I am in complete agreement that the original policy of Apple in this matter was ridiculous. I view it as not supporting a product you sold, and that's just bad business at best.
But this guy...
I'm reading his whole experience, and it's frankly the first I've heard of it, and all along I'm thinking to myself "ok, this guy has a legit gripe, I'm behind him".
But then, as I've come to expect from everyone on this planet, he goes and blows it...
The story ends with THE PURCHASE OF A NEW IPOD!
Dude, if you were so f'ing outraged, don't buy a new one! Have some damned balls and stand up for your principals and refuse to buy another one. It's not dinner or clothes guy, it's a TOY!
The world at large (maybe just in America this is true I guess) has come to a point where they consider things that are in no way necessities, just that. They believe that every person is entitled to have a cell phone, a PC, a car, whatever else. They then feel slighted when they don't get the things they want.
If you can't afford to eat, you have a problem. If you can't pay for a roof over your head, that's an issue. If you can't put a pair of shoes on your feet, you need some help.
IF YOUR IPOD'S BATTERY GOES TITS UP, THIS IS NOT LIFE-THREATENING!!!! No matter how lousy you feel not being able to listen to your Hootie tunes on the bus while sipping your latee (and I'm not even going to bother looking up the correct spelling), it's not the end of the world.
And when a company does something unfair to you, even if you are 100% right about it, don't turn around and give in! Geez, that's like me saying "I can't believe this doctor is going to charge me $50,000 to lipo out my fat ass, that's unfair and I hate him", and then promptly writing out a check to him.
F'ing morons. Too many of them, all over the place. Very sad indeed.
That's it. I have nothing more to say.
Come on, mod me way up, baby! You know calling this gimboid git what he is is about as insightful as you can get!
Your micro-thinking. I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all.
The point of the article was to address the open-source community, AS A VIABLE ALTERNTIVE to the established leader(s), which has, largely, the stated goal of being the leader. It was addressing the community AS A WHOLE, not it's constituent parts.
From a single person's perspective, your post is hard to argue with, even if it is somewhat egocentric, but that's not really important frankly. You do for yourself, by yourself, and if it benefits others, great, and no one has the right to complain with how or what you choose to do. I agree 100%.
But when you are part of a community that is striving, by and large, towards a common goal, there certainly is a right, perhaps even a duty if one is trying to be supportive, to point out the failings of the team.
Put it this way: if Michael Jordan is on the playground playing a pick-up game, and he's taking every single shot, whether he's hitting or missing them, who cares? He can do what he wants, and who has the right to complain? It's his business. Put him on an NBA team though, with the absolute goal of winning a championship, and it becomes a lot less acceptable and most importantly counter-productive, to continue to perform that way. (Ok, I admit Jordan was the worst possible example since he's the one guy you don't mind continuing to take all the shots! Substitute Tracy McGrady or Karl Malone or even Kobe Bryant then).
The points made in the article were valid from that 10,000-foot view, but not from the 10-foot view of your post.
As currently constituted, the open-source community is no real threat to Microsoft on the desktop (servers are a different story), and never will be if the current trends continue, precisely for the reasons cited. Linux probably does need a corporate champion. Why corporate? Because accountability to shareholders is a more result-producing motivation than the desire to do good and help your fellow man (and woman!).
Personally, I think IBM is the one true hope of Linux ruling the world. They're already taking some positive steps as far as the data center goes, but if they would decide to rule the world, desktop included, they are probably the one company out there that has what it takes to pull it off and defeat Microsoft. Short of that, from what we can currently see and predict, I don't think it's going to happen from any other corner.
To each his own. I liked the astro-hooker chick better myself.
Not that I'd turn Jewel down mind you, but if you saw me you'd realize that's not saying much. Or anything.
Ugh. I hate myself.
You've just effectively illustrated why it's unlikely Linux will EVER dethrone Windows on the desktop (yes, I said it!)... To use a basketball analogy...
If I have Larry Bird's championship Celtics teams on one side, and on the other I request anyone that wants to play show up... Even if Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Jason Kidd, Karl Malone and Tray McGrady show up, chances are that Bird's team is going to win because they are the well-organized, focused and experienced TEAM. They know how to work together effectively and they have leadership who are focusing them on one or two definitive goals. The pick-up team has the better talent almost everyone would agree, and they all love to play, but if your not focused and a real team, your not going to win.
What Linux needs to have a chance is one or two guys that can rally the troops and drive the desktop effort in a huge way. The community needs to focus on Microsoft 100% to dethrone them. Hoping that someone talented enough comes along that can write pieces to compete with Windows XP isn't going to work. Someone needs to find those people, motivate them and get the most of their talents. Microsoft does this day in and day out. That's why they are on top as far as the desktop goes, and why they will almost certainly remain there for many years to come.
And what operating system SHOULD be on a network without a firewall precisely? If I extrapolate that "network" = "internet", that's a silly statement because EVERY BOX with ANY OS on it should be behind a firewall.
Modded as flamebait, huh? Some Linux zealot's a bit uneasy with views and facts that counter their own I see.
I'm not exactly shocked.
Now THAT'S flamebait!
Do a search on msn.com for "linux vs. windows" (here) and you get 521343 hits.
Do the same on Google (here), you get 2,150,000 hits.
Now, if you want to conclude that MSN is an inferior search engine, I agree 100%. Saying or even implying that it gives bogus results tailored to support MS's whim is just a bold-faced lie.
Just because one search engine returns different results than another is in no way proof of a conspiracy on anyone's parts. It just highlights that the engines work in different ways and index different amounts and likely types of data.
No, you didn't turn out bad at all.
:)
Except that your an Anonymous Coward.
(Sorry, couldn't resist the obvious wise-ass comment)
I couldn't agree more. Parents these days are so concerned with setting rules and simply telling their kids what they should and shouldn't do. I've always felt that raising children boils down to a few "simple" tasks on your part as a parent:
(1) Keep them safe and provide the basics of life. This is obvious, but many people seem to forget it.
(2) Teach them right from wrong. Remember, your children are nueral nets: tell them when something is right or wrong, and EXPLAIN WHY. They will as a consequence develop a sense for what is right and wrong and will be able to determine for themselves what's right and wrong, even when it's something they've never encountered before.
(3) Teach them to think for themselves. Challenge them constantly. Don't allow them to be lazy and always have someone give them the answers.
Those three things really are what parenting boil down to. You have to realize that for 99% of the really big decisions in your childrens' life, you won't be around to guide them. But if you've done your job, they'll make the right choices most of them time and turn out well.
I don't mean to imply any of this is easy. I'm a parent myself and it's all I can do to not kill my kids some days. Sometimes it feels like I'm running on ice (thanks Billy Joel, perfect words!). But every now and again I see my kids making a decision for themselves where the choices were the right thing and the wrong thing and the wrong thing would have been more pleasurable for them, and they chose the right thing. Those are the moments to live for because you see that you are having an impact and you are getting the rights things across to them, and they are sticking. It's worth it.
My FOUR YEAR OLD (well, four in February) has had his own computer with Internet access for close to a year now. Granted, I've locked it down very tightly to the point where he can't get to anything other than the sites or programs we OK.
I'll tell you what: giving him his own computer has been one of the BEST decisions we ever made. He is so far ahead of the other kids in his pre-school it's not even funny, and we know for a fact that the games he plays has a great deal to do with it (because we've spied on him via VNC playing games and figuring things out and developing skills that he really shouldn't be yet). The Internet access has also been a great thing because he's really getting exposure to thing he just couldn't otherwise. He was doing simple math six months ago for God's sake! He's known his entire alphabet for nearly a year, his vocabulary has been commented on by his teacher numerous times as being incredibly far ahead of the other kids. Most importantly to me, his ability to reason things out and solve problems is fantastic. I know adults that can't think something through as well as he can.
To say giving any child their own computer is a mistake is just stupid. To say being an irresponsible parent and just giving it to them without any guidance or supervision absolutey is though.
Of course, that applies to giving them just about anything. My mother gave me a giant air-blowing gun toy when I was little, and then didn't pay any attention to what I did with it. I absolutely tortured the family cat with that thing for weeks before my dad saw me once and took it away. I shouldn't have been doing it, but they certainly should have pais attention and stopped me long before they did.
I say this with COMPLETE seriousness... my child is 100 times more computer-literate than a great many of the people I work with every day. In this day and age, is that a mistake? F**k no.
I would agree, except that they TOLD YOU FROM THE OUTSET they were going to do this. If you were a bit pissed when they did it for FoTR, I would agree to an extent because I got "screwed" with it too that time. This time though, the two releases were not hidden facts in the least, they actually told you the exact release dates for each edition right up front! If you bought the first edition, you have no right to be pissed because you KNEW what was going to happen, you should have waited if you didn't want to pay twice. It's not like you have been living under a rock and didn't know what was going on, were you?!?
Also, most people I know love this story so much and love how these movies have been done that paying twice doesn't bother us in the least. When artists produce something of this caliber, paying them twice (five times in my case, the twice I saw it in the theater, the once I rented it and now the twice I've purchased it) is not a problem to me, they deserve it.
Besides, do like I did with FoTR: the first one is now a Christmas present for someone you love. Not a bad deal really.
Ah well, there goes my shot at Jeopardy! :)
I have a box in the closet.
An old, roting box.
This box is filled with something equally as old, but not quite as roted.
Filled with something that my wife has tried to get me to toss numerous times, but I'd sooner toss her ass out than what's in this box.
It is a collection of about 30 Compute! magazines and perhaps 50 Run! magazines.
I'd like to open the bidding at $5,000.
Assembly on the C64 was a fun experience, unlike x86 Assembly, which is a royal pain.
:)
Besides, there's nothing cooler than typing in an Assembly program masquerading as a Basic program, then executing the compiler via a sys command. I forget the name of the assembler, but that was a load of fun. I still have tons of code that I wrote laying around and I frankly don't understand a bit of it any more, but I remember the fun.
Then again, I remember spending something like 16 straight hours trying to finish off a demo that just wouldn't work right and realizing finally that I was doing lda instead of lad or something like that. Damn, that was painful. I guess debugging skills kinda dawn on you later
I remember the first raster bar I got working. One of the most amazing days of my life.
I remember understanding FLD for the first time, and realizing just how cool the concept was.
I remember writing The Hack Pack to compete with PhoneMan. Mine had a harasser program to repeatedly dial a number and play a different obnoxious sound effect each time, so I think I won.
I remember modding the hell out of C-Net 10.0 and having one of the most popular BBS's on the east coast (ColorGuard BBS).
I remember a year later writing my own BBS software (Omega BBS).
I remember riding my bicycle 10 miles to the nearest post office (why there wasn't one closer I still don't know!) to ship out a 300 baud modem to a guy in Finland so I could import warez from him.
I remember the Sprint investigator calling my mother to say I was busted (I still blame her for that one... "Mame, does your son own a computer?" "Oh yes, he does! Has a modem and everything!" D'OH!)
Actually, I remember before that, that same Sprint investigator got me in the middle of a phreaked call and I quickly ran into the back yard and burned all my documententation, CC#'s, etc. What a dumb ass I was.
I remember working in the computer department of Sears and getting fired because I was opening games and using Fast Hack'em to copy for later warez release. Did I mention I was a dumb ass? (Then again, that's what they get for hiring a 15-year old illegally I suppose).
I remember hours of playing Beach Head, Hoover Boover, Lazy Jones, Impossible Mission, Nuclear Attack, Miner 2049'er, The Last V8 and many other awesome games Of which many are still far more fun than the crap they churn out today).
I remember that little program that grinded the hell out of the heads of a 1541 to play music. Yes, the heads were moved in ways that it didn't generally like in such a way that it actually played music. I STILL don't know how they pulled that off!
I remember when I got my 9600 baud modem and how unbelievably fast it was. What was it called, V.32BIS I think? Something like that anyway.
I remember getting into a flame war with some guys on a BBS and actually setting up real, physical meeting at a local park to fight. I also remember us showing up and them seeing myself and three other rather large friends and them just taking off.
I remember MicroHut, the best computer store there ever was, and the unbelievably geeky people I met there.
I remember watching a BBS screen paint at just 300 baud.
I remember part lines on stolen calling card numbers until five in the morning (from 4pm the previous night), then getting up for school at six, and then doing the same thing again the next day for a week straight.
I remember the Newage vs. NPN war demo that I somehow threw together in a marathon 39-straight hour coding spree. Damn that was cool. Or lame. Depending on your viewpoint.
I remember somehow managing to do a rotating 3-D vector demo without understanding basic math concepts. Actually, I remember being a lot smarter back then in general. Kids tend to do that to you.
I remember the joy of ripping music from a game or demo. I remember the floppy I had with all the ripped tunes. Wait, I stil
About eight years ago I used an old C64 as a controller for a custom home automation system. It was a good idea at the time because I just dropped some relays off the parallel port and I had 14 (if I remember corretly) relays to control whatever I wanted: lights, coffee maker, etc. Some quick custom software and I was good to go. I wound up running a couple of control pads through the joystick ports and used some crazy-ass pulsing scheme as a control language (i.e., pad #1 used left direction, and it was kind of like morse code... left-left-pause .1 sec-left-pause .1 sec-left-left corresponded to turn relay #3 on for instance, and that sequence was fired as a result of a keypress on the panel using a field-programmable logic array to generate it).
Changes the screen color to black and the border color to white, if I remember correctly.
Ok, if I *DO* remember correctly, I really must go shoot myself because I will have finally figured out what piece of useless trivia has been clogging up my brain keeping Calculus out.
Yeah, of course, we've all done the F**K YOU program at the mall.
:)
It was so much cooler though when you could do something like:
10 print chr$(int(205.5+rnd(0)));: goto 10
Yes, true geeks appreciate that more than the F*U thing.
For the record, I still have three working C64's, a couple of 1541's and a huge stack of floppies (that have since been saved on CD via X1541 and StarCommander).
Anyone that was around back then might even remember me... Fantasy of Newage.
I miss those days. Not so much the Sprint investigator nabbing me for phreaking, lucky it was only a couple hundred bucks, but to a 14-year old that's a ton of cash.
Fortunately, I was a better coder than I ever was a phreaker
"Windows doesn't randomly bluescreen as much but if you do more than just web browse and office work it still dies fairly often."
Rubbish.
I spend easily twelves hours a day working in WinXP between work and home. At work right now, I have no less than 14 apps running: Directory Opus, Lotus Notes, UltraEdit, PowerPoint, MyIE2, IE6.0, Visio, Tomcat, WinAmp, SecondNature, Seti@Home, ZoneAlarm, Norton Antivirus and VMWare. This list is completely typical of what I have open at any given time. At home I generally have even more running.
The last time I saw a blue screen was... umm... lemme think here... oh yeah... THE LAST TIME I RAN A WINDOWS 9x OS! Ok, I probably saw some under NT as well, but the point is that under XP I'm not sure I've EVER seen one.
Did I mention I have a dual monitor setup, two video cards (not a single dual-head card) plus scanner, parallel Zip drive and a couple of other miscellaneous USB devices? My point is that hardware isn't a problem for XP either, as long as the hardware and drivers are good.
If you have an unstable XP box, 99 times out of 100 it's due to hardware problems or bad drivers, neither of which are MS's fault.
The other one time is probably your fault anyway.
Compare XP to your OS of choice and you'll find it compares favorably when you consider stability. To say otherwise is either (a) FUD on your part or (b) a result of your bad experience which is almost guaranteed to be a result of bad hardware or drivers.
MS has done a good job with XP in terms of stability, andone that says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about.
The judgement seems to only really deal with the situation where the original cartridge is bought under the prebate program and I don't think (IANAL) it applies to a cartridge bought sans the prebate.
Now, if Lexmark only sells cartridges under that program, then we're screwed. But if not, just pay the extra $30 and your fine.
(Not the greatest of options I guess, but the alternative seems worse)
Ok, I realize this is Slasdot, home of the utterly over-the-top postings and replies, but this is just too much...
This guy posts saying people should be killed (well, ok, in fairness he says AT LEAST neutered or removed...)
AND THEN SOMEONE MODS IT AS INSIGHTFUL?!?
Ok, the mod was obviously a joke, but a terrible one. And I'm the guy that can make fun of a plane crash.
McBride deserves to lose his job, and probably his life savings. I wouldn't be surprised it he deserves to be in jail.
But let's tone down the murder suggestions, and for the sake of us all, DON'T mod that damned thing up, even as a joke.
Tell 'ya what... I've been using Windows regularly for about eight years and I *HAVE* received tons of these virus-infected eMails.
I'll also tell you that I've used Outlook for about three years now...
Lastly, I'll tell you that I have NEVER had a problem with a virus infection. EVER. I keep my Norton virus defs up to date... I keep my system patches up to date, and I run ZoneAlarm.
Now, you may argue that I shouldn't have to do any of that, and to some degree I would agree... But then again, people shouldn't be releasing viruses, or at least not releasing them in the wild (I used to write some comeptitors in the "Core Wars" days by the way, so there is some legitimate use for viral code I think).
I tend to agree that many, maybe even most, average users don't know enough or don't have the wearwithal to be as vigilant as I am. But I can also tell you that if they were, these problems would be no worse than the alternative OS's out there. It's not like it's that hard to leave the auto-update feature in Windows on (and I mean set to just tell me when updates are available... I don't trust MS *THAT* much), and Norton I have no problem leaving set to auto-update (I just want it to tell me when it does). ZoneAlarm is a piece of cake once you get through the first day (do you want THIS app to run 50 times), and it's pretty much overkill after updates and Norton (in fact, I can't think of a single time I actually needed ZoneAlarm to do it's job, so that's a good sign for sure).
So, before you jump all over Windows saying it's a virus haven, keep in mind that it doens't have to be that way, it's not horribly flawed by design (you don't understand the design GOALS if you say that), and it doesn't even take very much to be safe and secure.
Interesting question, which is worse, a bunch of drunks or