At least now Jobs has something valid to complain
about MS copying them.
Why?
At least OS-X looks nice. But Longhorn? They took
the Fisher-Price interface from XP and made the colors even
uglier. Instead of jolly candy-like blue, now they have
murky-organic-sludge greenish. I can hardly wait (...to
disable the "themes" service).
And for those who might call me an Apple Fanboy, check my
posting history to see how much karma I've lost over the
years in just about everything I post that mentions Apple
in any way.;-)
I think the problem here comes from just how
not beta Microsoft considers the overall
GUI shown in those screenshots...
They promised to "wow" us all with a whole new
Windows experience, and gave us exactly what most
of us expected all along - XP with a makeover,
which itself amounted to nothing more than
Win95 with a makeover.
And right about now, we have a whole
lot of people at MS updating their resumes as
a result of the massively underwhelmed response
from not just "those Linux freaks" who would
damn Billy G even if he found a cure for AIDS,
cancer, and the flu all in the same day, but
from fairly pro-Windows media who paid
just to fly to see a demo of a beta of MS's
Next Big Thing (tm)
Anyone who even openned the boxes early could be fired.
Perhaps only tangentially related, but I've found that
some stores very regularly start selling products before
their official release. One that immediately comes to
mind, Blockbuster usually starts renting movies about a
week before the actual release on DVD.
I wonder, do these "release dates" actually have any
legal teeth behind them? Obviously a distributor could
refuse to sell anything to those stores that don't
cooperate, but such a threat against companies like
Blockbuster or WallyWorld amount to cutting off their
nose to spite their face - WallyWorld might just respond
with "okay, bye", instantly halving the available market
for that product.
I would phrase it along the lines of "Nikon has chosen
to artificially limit the use of some of their products,
for no purpose other than to control (and presumeably
get a cut on) what software they allow to use those
features. This may not affect you, for now, but pray
that you never need their support on a feature that at
some point in the future they deem incompatible with
their business model."
No deception. Just explaining the issues.
First of all, you said that you might not tell people
the real reason for your complaint. That's lying.
Since you appear to have forgotten what I said, I will
quote it back for you: "Assuming I bother explaining the
real reason, which most people won't understand anyway."
I didn't say I would lie, I said that I could,
and most people couldn't tell the difference. Do you
recognize the difference between "could" and "would"?
Tell me again why those two dozen people give a damn what
you think? Be honest. They're all family members, right?
Some family, yes, though I don't think I even have over
two dozen immediate family members. Some friends. Some
coworkers. And even some FOAFs.
And why? Because those who know me, trust me to make a
recommendation that will work for them, and takes more into
consideration than just "this one costs less".
Simple example - You need to choose between two cameras,
both by well-known companies, both comparable quality,
both have similar feature sets, basically identical cameras.
While both of them connect to a PC via USB, one of them
appears as a standard removeable storage device, and one
of them (the cheaper one by about 20%) requires a driver
from the manufacturer to download pictures. Now, they
both work equally well at present... But when Longhorn
finally comes out, neither will still remain in active
production, possibly superceeded by only incrementally
better models two or three times. Do you trust the
manufacturer to waste time and effort porting a driver
for a camera they don't sell anymore? Especially when
not supporting it would force anyone that owns it
to either buy a new one or to never upgrade their OS again?
And second, you're sort of ignoring the fact
that people make up their own minds.
People can make up their own minds, when
forced to. But give most people any alternative
to actually having to think, such as giving them a
conveniently prepackaged opinion, and they'll jump
at the chance. Thus we have "Democrats" and "Republicans",
or "Christians" and "Muslims", "Pro lifers" and
"Pro Choicers" - Neatly packaged, mostly thought-free
stances on some of the most complex issues facing people
in the modern world. "Aww man, I dunno, all this social,
political, and economic stuff hurts my head. Well, I
think I like with the buzzwords the Democrats use most
often, so I'll call myself one of them".
And even that level of thought gives most people
too much credit. Baa-aa-aa.
And now you think this situation is tantamount to the Holocaust?
Hyperbole. Look it up.
I tend to consider myself extremely pragmatic. But
completely ignoring the ethics of a situation in favor
of purely functional aspects commits a grave
error.
Friend, you are dangerously insane. Please seek help.
Don't confuse style for substance. You may consider me an
arrogant bastard, and may even have that assessment correct.
But it doesn't change the validity of what I have to say.
Stop acting obtuse. They make other products.
I won't recommend those OTHER products. You "get"
that idea perfectly well, don't play dumb.
you're planning to lie to people in order
to carry out your own brand of anti-business
revenge?
Again, don't play dumb. I said I could
lie to people about it and they'd never know,
but I don't need to, because they'll come away
similarly-enlightened if I tell the truth.
How many times has somebody asked you which
$5,000 DSLR they should buy? I'm guessing zero
Yawn. I find this tiresome. You've written an
entire post based on a strawman, and plan to beat
the hell out of that poor sucker until the very
end, eh? Right. No one has ever asked me about
which $5k camera to buy. At least two dozen people
have asked me which $300-$500 camera to buy.
Good for you. I trust you'll immediately cease
recommending any company to anybody for any purpose.
Yes, it has grown rather difficult to find
companies that don't completely screw over their
customers. But some still exist, and I make every
effort to encourage those while discouraging ones like
Nikon.
You are completely off the handle here about
something of no consequence to anybody, ever.
Yup, nothing to see here, move along, this doesn't
affect me. Those Jews? Just cooking bread. "These
are not the droids you're looking for". We only
deprive terrorists of their consitutional rights,
you, good Citizen, can sleep well tonight.
Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- is going to
decide not to buy one of these cameras because
some nerd tells him not to.
Tell me - Does Nikon make any digital cameras
other than those two high-end ones? Do
they, in fact, quite likely make the bulk of
their digital camera-related profit from mid-range
cameras in the 4-8MP range?
And at that point, they're gonna laugh in
your face.
You give the average consumer WAAAAAAY
too much credit. Assuming I bother explaining
the "real" reason, which most people won't
understand anyway (on either its moral or
technical merits), at "that" point, they will
smile and nod, and walk away having no idea
what I said beyond "Nikon bad, don't buy".
More importantly, in my experience, most people
ask me for positive, not negative, recommendations.
They don't ask me who the shouldn't buy; they
don't just ask me what company they should
buy... Hell, they don't even just want a model number!
They want a link to an online retailer with a decent
price for a very, very specific product. I
could send them to Bill'z House of Chihuahuaz and
they would just enter their credit card when asked,
if the link I sent had a picture of a camera on it.
These people trust me, and I tend to give them good
information when asked. In good faith, I cannot
recomment a company known to deliberately limit the
options available to its consumers (high-end or not, though
I really can't understand screwing those willing
to pay the biggest bucks to buy their products). So when I say
that I've crossed Nikon off my list, that goes WAY
beyond an ignorably tiny group of pro or semi-pro
photographers who would base their purchases on more
than my personal opinion - It means up to (perhaps
well over, counting second-degree word-of-mouth?)
a hundred people who will not purchase any
Nikon electronics in the near future. Multiply that
by a few million OSI/FSF-friendly geeks that read
Slashdot, and Nikon has a serious PR problem
in the near future.
In other words, "Would all the tech-saavy people
in the audience please discourage everyone they
know from buying our products".
We geeks may not have the sort of numbers big
companies specifically target, but we do
have something they dream of having on
their side - Our positive word of mouth when
the vast majority of friends and relatives ask
us for recommendations on buying a new product;
in this case, a digital camera.
Guess which product line just got added to my
"Whatever you do, do NOT buy this one"
list?
Thanks for the help, Nikon, but we'd rather
deal with whichever of your competitors actually
wants geeks on their side.
I sense some sarcasm here, but really, what
would you like pictures of? I have...
a fan...
mounted to...
a computer.
No spiffy lights, no UV-responsive wire-wraps
(Never did get the point of those... I don't
have a whole lot of UV coming from inside my
case in the first place!), no chrome, nothing
like that.
Just four small holes drilled into the face
of the case, with a 3" screw-and-nut through
each (and the fan) to hold it in place.
Actually, yes, I do already use a similar
technique - Or rather, one which I consider
quite a bit better.
Rather than just blowing already-warm air on
a single drive, mount a 120mm fan on the
outside front of the drive-cage, blowing
inward (you might need to flip over one or two
other case fans to blow outward to accomodate
the change). Nice and quiet (I so love
120mm fans - great airflow at very low RPMs,
thus almost silent), and my hardware monitor
has never shown a HDD temp more than 10C above
ambient.
Well, we did try the "limiting the game"
option, but it did not work.
Although I tend to agree with the GP posts, I
won't attack you for doing what you considered
best. In fact, you have the right idea in your
stance that kids do not equal small adults...
Despite a century of enormous progress in
developmental and behavioral psychology, it
shocks me how many people still hold that
archaic belief.
I have to ask, though... When you say that
limiting his playtime didn't work, do you mean
that he ignored you and played anyway, or that
reduced playtime didn't bring his academic
performance back up?
If the former, one suggestion - Use a password,
and require it for the screensaver as well, and
don't let the kid know the password. Problem
solved.
It the latter, that should make you suspect that
something has changed other than a mere
game.... You pointed out his age, only 5... At 5,
he doesn't really have a long history of academic
performance to compare against... Two years, at
the most, and two years of "fluff" at that, not
"real" education. Boys in particular (even very
bright ones) often have a hell of a time coping
when the focus of "that place they send me away
to every day" changes from directed-play to
sit-in-a-chair-and-pay-attention-for-six-hours.
So, since the "small adults" theory has no basis
in reality, what does work?
The plain and simple carrot-and-stick. Let him
run around in circles outside for a few hours after
school to get rid of the pent up frustration of
sitting still for six hours, then after supper,
do his homework. When he finishes, dangle the carrot
to make it clear that he can play a game instead of
watching TV (an equally useless passtime, yet most
parents seem to have no problem with letting their
kids veg for four (or far more) hours every night).
If he throws a fit that you won't let him play before
finishing homework, use the stick and punish him in
the manner you see fit (I'd say "spank the little
bastard", but then I'd have the PC-police after me).
Also, keep in mind the meaninglessness of grades.
If he clearly knows the material but the teachers
still complain based on his general behavior, it
doesn't mean some game has magically ruined his
concentration (in fact, research shows that gaming
has the exact opposite effect, vastly extending
attention span in young children)... It means he has
no intention of going along quietly with 13 years of
socialized babysitting, and you will never
convince him to do otherwise.
I hope that didn't help you, since it
refers to the wrong kind of TTL.
TTL for DNS servers means (informally) how long
they will consider a given resolved IP address
as still-good. After that, the DNS server itself
will do a DNS lookup to try to get a fresher
address.
having a font used in a document would
mean the document was legally a derivative
of the font.
I'd continue this discussion but, as I have my
browser set to use Arial as the proportional
font, I would need permission from Microsoft
to create such a derivative work from their
font.;-)
Cmon, boys, you missed April 1st by a good 16
days, now...
Why would using a font make the end-product
fall under the GPL?
First of all, if you
haven't changed the font itself, you have
no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just
like with GPL'd software.
Second, if you only
use it for within an organization, you have
no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just
like with GPL'd software.
Third, the license
under which a given tool falls does not usually
extend to what it creates - I can use GCC to
compile non-GPL code, I can use GIMP to create
non-GPL (or CC, in this case?) artwork, and I
can use OO to produce non-GFDL documents.
So why would any of the above magically differ
for a font?
That only stops Windows from paging out parts of
the OS itself (like the kernel and currently-idle
device drivers).
On XP, you can just set the pagefile size to
zero. And yes, it does work, in the sense
that it stops Windows from hitting the disk
twice per second even when doing nothing at
all.
On 2000, you need to assign the pagefile to a
RAMdrive (and one that supports NTFS and doesn't
identify itself as RAM, since Windows won't
normally let you put the pagefile on a
RAMdrive).
Finally, for anyone disabling paging - Also
disable memory dumps and automatic reboot on
bluescreens, or you will regret it.
Otherwise, it works just fine, regardless of
what the naysayers and MS Knowledgebase fanboys
might say. Quite a boost in performance, too.
Re:EMR from high tension power lines?
on
Quantum Wires
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Would the electricity be carried at a higher
or lower frequency?
The frequency most likely would not change,
to maintain compatibility with the existing
infrastructure.
However, we mostly use AC to get around the
fact that DC suffers massive losses when sent
any useful distance. In a true superconductor
(not sure if these nanotubes count, the wording
used strikes me as very awkward - Something
either has a resistance of zero or it doesn't),
we could use DC just as efficiently as AC.
So competent (hmm, I know it technically works, but
why does that word seem somehow wrong here?) that
you need to manually tell it to use a shabby hack
to pretend it has stateful rules?
Just in the realm of TV, hundreds of millions
of people enjoy free programming because many of
them watch the attached ads.
Funny, most people I know pay for their
TV, via this thing called "Cable". So the
delivery doesn't come for free...
Popular syndicated shows make millions per
episode, so the content itself doesn't come
for free...
Unless, of course, you meant to say that most
Americans watch PBS, available just about
everywhere over-the-air, and having mostly
not-for-profit programming... Oh, but wait,
no ads there. Hmm...
Of course, personally, I'd go one more step and
argue that hundreds of millions of people wasting
six to ten hours per day watching TV doesn't
really count as a "benefit" to society. But I
realize that my opinions on this topic fall a
bit South of mainstream.
That is, if a web page grabs an image from another domain (a banner,
pixel, etc.) then pull it but don't send any of the cookie information
for that image.
I think you might have missed the point of webbugs...
If you let the image itself load, the site that hosts it doesn't
need you to allow a cookie, you've already given them 90%
of what they want... Any site they partner with, that you visit,
will record you as visiting in their log file. If, on any
of those sites, you enter some personal information, they can then
go back and correlate all that information.
"At 1113572714, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-X, who reports the visitor
gave email address foo@bar.com. At 1113572790, 66.35.250.150
visited partner-Y, who reports the visitor gave the name John Doe.
At 1113572842, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Z, who reports the visitor
gave a zip code of 64105. We therefore know that John Doe,
from Kansas City MO, has email address foo@bar.com".
See the problem? As mere humans, we tend to think in terms of what we
ourselves know. Data colleting corporations will quite happily go through
a few hundred tiny chunks of data to piece together a profile of you with
such detail that your own mother probably wouldn't know it all.
Reuters is reporting that 'Amazon.com has
approached online DVD rental service companies,
including Blockbuster and Netflix, to explore
a partnership rather than launching its own U.S.
DVD rental service.'" More from the article:
"Despite its online might, shopping giant Amazon
faces a potentially expensive battle to crack the
competitive U.S. online rental market.
Ummm... Does anyone else read that as "we plan
to take over your market but might have trouble
getting started, so just give us a cut and
we'll let you live"?
NetFlix already has a healthy base of
customers, and anyone interested in such a
service already knows about them. What does
Amazon have to bring to the table, other than
not crushing them like a bug?
and apparently liken a lowly employee in the
mechanics of either someone who should themselves
have to give up personal information for simply
asking for identification for whatever purpose
(again, the extent that it is appropriate is
beside the point).
Why shouldn't a lowly clerk who asks for
my license need to swipe their own to see it?
My license serves exactly three tasks - It lets
me legally drive on public roads; the edge works
really well for smoothing the bubbles out from
under CD stick-on labels; and it provides some
degree of proof who I am.
The first ONLY has relevance to police while I sit
in the driver's seat of a vehicle on a public road.
The second doesn't matter to anyone but me (and
those who appreciate the quality of my CD
labelling skills).
The third, though?
In almost all of the situations where someone
asks for my license to ID me, they either don't actually
need it, or the license doesn't say anything more than
they already know. Two examples come to mind...
First, buying age-sensitive things such as alcohol.
Guess what, I don't care if kids get alcohol
(I did as one, as did we all), and I passed my 21st
birthday quite a good number of years ago. Unnecessary
to show an ID. As an aside, I don't look even
remotely under 21, but I consider that
nearly irrelevant to the bigger issue - The law doesn't
say a store needs to ID me, just that I can't buy before
turning 21.
Second, using a credit card. It ALREADY has my
picture on it! What the hell do they think they'll
prove by seeing another very similar picture of me on
a different small plastic card?
Personally, I think making clerks swipe their own ID
seems like a VERY good idea, and I would very much like
to have a wallet with such a feature. I have just as
much right to their information as they do to
mine - Absolutely none, and I want them to fully realize
that fact.
While I dislike tax day, I would feel even
worse about it if after paying the government
taxes I found I was giving them an interest
free loan all year long.
This year I get back somewhere around $1500.
At 2.5% interest (a typical rate for a savings
accoung - Not like I can put $28/week into a
5-year CD), that means the government has "made"
a whopping $18.50 off me, compounded weekly at
that same 2.5%.
Now, YMMV, but I consider it WELL worth my
trouble to indirectly lose an extra $18.50 in
exchange for not having taxes hurt quite so much.
And, since we had self-employment as the basis
of comparison, I expect my time spent on sending
in quarterly payements, at my hourly rate, would
almost certainly exceed $18.50.
In any case, we need to also consider what it means
that I have potentially "lost" about $20 to the
government - It means the government doesn't need
to raise taxes to make up for that $20 that I
don't even directly have to pay.
As an aside, I get into a similar argument with my
SO all the time... She insists on waiting until just
before the due date to pay bills, because she doesn't
want to give them an interest-free loan for two weeks.
While I see her (and similarly, your) point, my time
has value. If even once a year I need to take a long
lunch from work to pay a bill in person that I'd
forgotten about, that far outweighs the tiny
interest I'd get from keeping another $70 in a savings
account for an extra week.
but the government has you by the balls
because you don't even really feel the pain
of PAYING taxes. ...
nobody withholds from me, so I get to feel
it when I write my two checks to Fed and State
treasuries.
Okay, let me get this straight - I don't suffer
through the year as I pay my taxes, and get
to feel like I've hit a small lottery come
the end of April; while you suffer miserably
at having to write a very large check to the
government, which hopefully you've consciously
(and painfully) put enough aside to pay.
And you call me retarded?
We both have to pay more-or-less equally.
I feel "good" when I get my refund,
and you feel bad when you get to pay. Which
of us comes out ahead?
Slashdot Mirror
This works using the "unused" lines of CAT5.
Sometimes.
You can also use it on the Tx/Rx pairs as well.
Why?
Because ethernet uses a differential signal. You can ship a constant DC offset over it, and it doesn't interfere with the signal in the least.
At least now Jobs has something valid to complain about MS copying them.
;-)
Why?
At least OS-X looks nice. But Longhorn? They took the Fisher-Price interface from XP and made the colors even uglier. Instead of jolly candy-like blue, now they have murky-organic-sludge greenish. I can hardly wait (...to disable the "themes" service).
And for those who might call me an Apple Fanboy, check my posting history to see how much karma I've lost over the years in just about everything I post that mentions Apple in any way.
Instead of spinning it as beta
I think the problem here comes from just how not beta Microsoft considers the overall GUI shown in those screenshots...
They promised to "wow" us all with a whole new Windows experience, and gave us exactly what most of us expected all along - XP with a makeover, which itself amounted to nothing more than Win95 with a makeover.
And right about now, we have a whole lot of people at MS updating their resumes as a result of the massively underwhelmed response from not just "those Linux freaks" who would damn Billy G even if he found a cure for AIDS, cancer, and the flu all in the same day, but from fairly pro-Windows media who paid just to fly to see a demo of a beta of MS's Next Big Thing (tm)
Anyone who even openned the boxes early could be fired.
Perhaps only tangentially related, but I've found that some stores very regularly start selling products before their official release. One that immediately comes to mind, Blockbuster usually starts renting movies about a week before the actual release on DVD.
I wonder, do these "release dates" actually have any legal teeth behind them? Obviously a distributor could refuse to sell anything to those stores that don't cooperate, but such a threat against companies like Blockbuster or WallyWorld amount to cutting off their nose to spite their face - WallyWorld might just respond with "okay, bye", instantly halving the available market for that product.
Why? You have no reason not to.
I would phrase it along the lines of "Nikon has chosen to artificially limit the use of some of their products, for no purpose other than to control (and presumeably get a cut on) what software they allow to use those features. This may not affect you, for now, but pray that you never need their support on a feature that at some point in the future they deem incompatible with their business model."
No deception. Just explaining the issues.
First of all, you said that you might not tell people the real reason for your complaint. That's lying.
Since you appear to have forgotten what I said, I will quote it back for you: "Assuming I bother explaining the real reason, which most people won't understand anyway."
I didn't say I would lie, I said that I could, and most people couldn't tell the difference. Do you recognize the difference between "could" and "would"?
Tell me again why those two dozen people give a damn what you think? Be honest. They're all family members, right?
Some family, yes, though I don't think I even have over two dozen immediate family members. Some friends. Some coworkers. And even some FOAFs.
And why? Because those who know me, trust me to make a recommendation that will work for them, and takes more into consideration than just "this one costs less".
Simple example - You need to choose between two cameras, both by well-known companies, both comparable quality, both have similar feature sets, basically identical cameras. While both of them connect to a PC via USB, one of them appears as a standard removeable storage device, and one of them (the cheaper one by about 20%) requires a driver from the manufacturer to download pictures. Now, they both work equally well at present... But when Longhorn finally comes out, neither will still remain in active production, possibly superceeded by only incrementally better models two or three times. Do you trust the manufacturer to waste time and effort porting a driver for a camera they don't sell anymore? Especially when not supporting it would force anyone that owns it to either buy a new one or to never upgrade their OS again?
And second, you're sort of ignoring the fact that people make up their own minds.
People can make up their own minds, when forced to. But give most people any alternative to actually having to think, such as giving them a conveniently prepackaged opinion, and they'll jump at the chance. Thus we have "Democrats" and "Republicans", or "Christians" and "Muslims", "Pro lifers" and "Pro Choicers" - Neatly packaged, mostly thought-free stances on some of the most complex issues facing people in the modern world. "Aww man, I dunno, all this social, political, and economic stuff hurts my head. Well, I think I like with the buzzwords the Democrats use most often, so I'll call myself one of them".
And even that level of thought gives most people too much credit. Baa-aa-aa.
And now you think this situation is tantamount to the Holocaust?
Hyperbole. Look it up.
I tend to consider myself extremely pragmatic. But completely ignoring the ethics of a situation in favor of purely functional aspects commits a grave error.
Friend, you are dangerously insane. Please seek help.
Don't confuse style for substance. You may consider me an arrogant bastard, and may even have that assessment correct. But it doesn't change the validity of what I have to say.
Not that have this feature, no.
Stop acting obtuse. They make other products. I won't recommend those OTHER products. You "get" that idea perfectly well, don't play dumb.
you're planning to lie to people in order to carry out your own brand of anti-business revenge?
Again, don't play dumb. I said I could lie to people about it and they'd never know, but I don't need to, because they'll come away similarly-enlightened if I tell the truth.
How many times has somebody asked you which $5,000 DSLR they should buy? I'm guessing zero
Yawn. I find this tiresome. You've written an entire post based on a strawman, and plan to beat the hell out of that poor sucker until the very end, eh? Right. No one has ever asked me about which $5k camera to buy. At least two dozen people have asked me which $300-$500 camera to buy.
Good for you. I trust you'll immediately cease recommending any company to anybody for any purpose.
Yes, it has grown rather difficult to find companies that don't completely screw over their customers. But some still exist, and I make every effort to encourage those while discouraging ones like Nikon.
You are completely off the handle here about something of no consequence to anybody, ever.
Yup, nothing to see here, move along, this doesn't affect me. Those Jews? Just cooking bread. "These are not the droids you're looking for". We only deprive terrorists of their consitutional rights, you, good Citizen, can sleep well tonight.
Nobody -- and I mean nobody -- is going to decide not to buy one of these cameras because some nerd tells him not to.
Tell me - Does Nikon make any digital cameras other than those two high-end ones? Do they, in fact, quite likely make the bulk of their digital camera-related profit from mid-range cameras in the 4-8MP range?
And at that point, they're gonna laugh in your face.
You give the average consumer WAAAAAAY too much credit. Assuming I bother explaining the "real" reason, which most people won't understand anyway (on either its moral or technical merits), at "that" point, they will smile and nod, and walk away having no idea what I said beyond "Nikon bad, don't buy".
More importantly, in my experience, most people ask me for positive, not negative, recommendations. They don't ask me who the shouldn't buy; they don't just ask me what company they should buy... Hell, they don't even just want a model number! They want a link to an online retailer with a decent price for a very, very specific product. I could send them to Bill'z House of Chihuahuaz and they would just enter their credit card when asked, if the link I sent had a picture of a camera on it.
These people trust me, and I tend to give them good information when asked. In good faith, I cannot recomment a company known to deliberately limit the options available to its consumers (high-end or not, though I really can't understand screwing those willing to pay the biggest bucks to buy their products). So when I say that I've crossed Nikon off my list, that goes WAY beyond an ignorably tiny group of pro or semi-pro photographers who would base their purchases on more than my personal opinion - It means up to (perhaps well over, counting second-degree word-of-mouth?) a hundred people who will not purchase any Nikon electronics in the near future. Multiply that by a few million OSI/FSF-friendly geeks that read Slashdot, and Nikon has a serious PR problem in the near future.
In other words: open source coders can butt out."
In other words, "Would all the tech-saavy people in the audience please discourage everyone they know from buying our products".
We geeks may not have the sort of numbers big companies specifically target, but we do have something they dream of having on their side - Our positive word of mouth when the vast majority of friends and relatives ask us for recommendations on buying a new product; in this case, a digital camera.
Guess which product line just got added to my "Whatever you do, do NOT buy this one" list?
Thanks for the help, Nikon, but we'd rather deal with whichever of your competitors actually wants geeks on their side.
Maybe a webpage to let others see?
I sense some sarcasm here, but really, what would you like pictures of? I have...
a fan...
mounted to...
a computer.
No spiffy lights, no UV-responsive wire-wraps (Never did get the point of those... I don't have a whole lot of UV coming from inside my case in the first place!), no chrome, nothing like that.
Just four small holes drilled into the face of the case, with a 3" screw-and-nut through each (and the fan) to hold it in place.
Imagination - Use it.
Were you doing it? No, I thought not.
Actually, yes, I do already use a similar technique - Or rather, one which I consider quite a bit better.
Rather than just blowing already-warm air on a single drive, mount a 120mm fan on the outside front of the drive-cage, blowing inward (you might need to flip over one or two other case fans to blow outward to accomodate the change). Nice and quiet (I so love 120mm fans - great airflow at very low RPMs, thus almost silent), and my hardware monitor has never shown a HDD temp more than 10C above ambient.
Well, we did try the "limiting the game" option, but it did not work.
Although I tend to agree with the GP posts, I won't attack you for doing what you considered best. In fact, you have the right idea in your stance that kids do not equal small adults... Despite a century of enormous progress in developmental and behavioral psychology, it shocks me how many people still hold that archaic belief.
I have to ask, though... When you say that limiting his playtime didn't work, do you mean that he ignored you and played anyway, or that reduced playtime didn't bring his academic performance back up?
If the former, one suggestion - Use a password, and require it for the screensaver as well, and don't let the kid know the password. Problem solved.
It the latter, that should make you suspect that something has changed other than a mere game.... You pointed out his age, only 5... At 5, he doesn't really have a long history of academic performance to compare against... Two years, at the most, and two years of "fluff" at that, not "real" education. Boys in particular (even very bright ones) often have a hell of a time coping when the focus of "that place they send me away to every day" changes from directed-play to sit-in-a-chair-and-pay-attention-for-six-hours.
So, since the "small adults" theory has no basis in reality, what does work?
The plain and simple carrot-and-stick. Let him run around in circles outside for a few hours after school to get rid of the pent up frustration of sitting still for six hours, then after supper, do his homework. When he finishes, dangle the carrot to make it clear that he can play a game instead of watching TV (an equally useless passtime, yet most parents seem to have no problem with letting their kids veg for four (or far more) hours every night). If he throws a fit that you won't let him play before finishing homework, use the stick and punish him in the manner you see fit (I'd say "spank the little bastard", but then I'd have the PC-police after me).
Also, keep in mind the meaninglessness of grades. If he clearly knows the material but the teachers still complain based on his general behavior, it doesn't mean some game has magically ruined his concentration (in fact, research shows that gaming has the exact opposite effect, vastly extending attention span in young children)... It means he has no intention of going along quietly with 13 years of socialized babysitting, and you will never convince him to do otherwise.
Hope thaty helps someone beside me :-)
I hope that didn't help you, since it refers to the wrong kind of TTL.
TTL for DNS servers means (informally) how long they will consider a given resolved IP address as still-good. After that, the DNS server itself will do a DNS lookup to try to get a fresher address.
having a font used in a document would mean the document was legally a derivative of the font.
;-)
I'd continue this discussion but, as I have my browser set to use Arial as the proportional font, I would need permission from Microsoft to create such a derivative work from their font.
Cmon, boys, you missed April 1st by a good 16 days, now...
Why would using a font make the end-product fall under the GPL?
First of all, if you haven't changed the font itself, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.
Second, if you only use it for within an organization, you have no obligation to provide it to anyone - Just like with GPL'd software.
Third, the license under which a given tool falls does not usually extend to what it creates - I can use GCC to compile non-GPL code, I can use GIMP to create non-GPL (or CC, in this case?) artwork, and I can use OO to produce non-GFDL documents.
So why would any of the above magically differ for a font?
Management\DisablePagingExecutive to 1.
That only stops Windows from paging out parts of the OS itself (like the kernel and currently-idle device drivers).
On XP, you can just set the pagefile size to zero. And yes, it does work, in the sense that it stops Windows from hitting the disk twice per second even when doing nothing at all.
On 2000, you need to assign the pagefile to a RAMdrive (and one that supports NTFS and doesn't identify itself as RAM, since Windows won't normally let you put the pagefile on a RAMdrive).
Finally, for anyone disabling paging - Also disable memory dumps and automatic reboot on bluescreens, or you will regret it.
Otherwise, it works just fine, regardless of what the naysayers and MS Knowledgebase fanboys might say. Quite a boost in performance, too.
Would the electricity be carried at a higher or lower frequency?
The frequency most likely would not change, to maintain compatibility with the existing infrastructure.
However, we mostly use AC to get around the fact that DC suffers massive losses when sent any useful distance. In a true superconductor (not sure if these nanotubes count, the wording used strikes me as very awkward - Something either has a resistance of zero or it doesn't), we could use DC just as efficiently as AC.
great! now i have something geekish to use for bondage with girls.
Sure... Now you just need the girls.
OS X's firewall is very competent (ipfw).
So competent (hmm, I know it technically works, but why does that word seem somehow wrong here?) that you need to manually tell it to use a shabby hack to pretend it has stateful rules?
With Quicksilver, one can spare oneself a lot of poking about and futzing with the mouse
With Bash, one can spare oneself ALL use of the mouse.
Just in the realm of TV, hundreds of millions of people enjoy free programming because many of them watch the attached ads.
Funny, most people I know pay for their TV, via this thing called "Cable". So the delivery doesn't come for free...
Popular syndicated shows make millions per episode, so the content itself doesn't come for free...
Unless, of course, you meant to say that most Americans watch PBS, available just about everywhere over-the-air, and having mostly not-for-profit programming... Oh, but wait, no ads there. Hmm...
Of course, personally, I'd go one more step and argue that hundreds of millions of people wasting six to ten hours per day watching TV doesn't really count as a "benefit" to society. But I realize that my opinions on this topic fall a bit South of mainstream.
That is, if a web page grabs an image from another domain (a banner, pixel, etc.) then pull it but don't send any of the cookie information for that image.
I think you might have missed the point of webbugs...
If you let the image itself load, the site that hosts it doesn't need you to allow a cookie, you've already given them 90% of what they want... Any site they partner with, that you visit, will record you as visiting in their log file. If, on any of those sites, you enter some personal information, they can then go back and correlate all that information.
"At 1113572714, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-X, who reports the visitor gave email address foo@bar.com. At 1113572790, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Y, who reports the visitor gave the name John Doe. At 1113572842, 66.35.250.150 visited partner-Z, who reports the visitor gave a zip code of 64105. We therefore know that John Doe, from Kansas City MO, has email address foo@bar.com".
See the problem? As mere humans, we tend to think in terms of what we ourselves know. Data colleting corporations will quite happily go through a few hundred tiny chunks of data to piece together a profile of you with such detail that your own mother probably wouldn't know it all.
Reuters is reporting that 'Amazon.com has approached online DVD rental service companies, including Blockbuster and Netflix, to explore a partnership rather than launching its own U.S. DVD rental service.'" More from the article: "Despite its online might, shopping giant Amazon faces a potentially expensive battle to crack the competitive U.S. online rental market.
Ummm... Does anyone else read that as "we plan to take over your market but might have trouble getting started, so just give us a cut and we'll let you live"?
NetFlix already has a healthy base of customers, and anyone interested in such a service already knows about them. What does Amazon have to bring to the table, other than not crushing them like a bug?
and apparently liken a lowly employee in the mechanics of either someone who should themselves have to give up personal information for simply asking for identification for whatever purpose (again, the extent that it is appropriate is beside the point).
Why shouldn't a lowly clerk who asks for my license need to swipe their own to see it?
My license serves exactly three tasks - It lets me legally drive on public roads; the edge works really well for smoothing the bubbles out from under CD stick-on labels; and it provides some degree of proof who I am.
The first ONLY has relevance to police while I sit in the driver's seat of a vehicle on a public road. The second doesn't matter to anyone but me (and those who appreciate the quality of my CD labelling skills).
The third, though?
In almost all of the situations where someone asks for my license to ID me, they either don't actually need it, or the license doesn't say anything more than they already know. Two examples come to mind...
First, buying age-sensitive things such as alcohol. Guess what, I don't care if kids get alcohol (I did as one, as did we all), and I passed my 21st birthday quite a good number of years ago. Unnecessary to show an ID. As an aside, I don't look even remotely under 21, but I consider that nearly irrelevant to the bigger issue - The law doesn't say a store needs to ID me, just that I can't buy before turning 21.
Second, using a credit card. It ALREADY has my picture on it! What the hell do they think they'll prove by seeing another very similar picture of me on a different small plastic card?
Personally, I think making clerks swipe their own ID seems like a VERY good idea, and I would very much like to have a wallet with such a feature. I have just as much right to their information as they do to mine - Absolutely none, and I want them to fully realize that fact.
While I dislike tax day, I would feel even worse about it if after paying the government taxes I found I was giving them an interest free loan all year long.
This year I get back somewhere around $1500. At 2.5% interest (a typical rate for a savings accoung - Not like I can put $28/week into a 5-year CD), that means the government has "made" a whopping $18.50 off me, compounded weekly at that same 2.5%.
Now, YMMV, but I consider it WELL worth my trouble to indirectly lose an extra $18.50 in exchange for not having taxes hurt quite so much. And, since we had self-employment as the basis of comparison, I expect my time spent on sending in quarterly payements, at my hourly rate, would almost certainly exceed $18.50.
In any case, we need to also consider what it means that I have potentially "lost" about $20 to the government - It means the government doesn't need to raise taxes to make up for that $20 that I don't even directly have to pay.
As an aside, I get into a similar argument with my SO all the time... She insists on waiting until just before the due date to pay bills, because she doesn't want to give them an interest-free loan for two weeks. While I see her (and similarly, your) point, my time has value. If even once a year I need to take a long lunch from work to pay a bill in person that I'd forgotten about, that far outweighs the tiny interest I'd get from keeping another $70 in a savings account for an extra week.
but the government has you by the balls because you don't even really feel the pain of PAYING taxes.
...
nobody withholds from me, so I get to feel
it when I write my two checks to Fed and State
treasuries.
Okay, let me get this straight - I don't suffer through the year as I pay my taxes, and get to feel like I've hit a small lottery come the end of April; while you suffer miserably at having to write a very large check to the government, which hopefully you've consciously (and painfully) put enough aside to pay.
And you call me retarded?
We both have to pay more-or-less equally. I feel "good" when I get my refund, and you feel bad when you get to pay. Which of us comes out ahead?