Do people really use the download manager?
That thing drives me nuts. The simple,
old, Netscape-4-era download dialog works
just fine. If I can't remember when or
to where I downloaded something, it no
longer matters enough to me to track down.
I like to browse with text size increased.
But every time I open a new tab or window, I
have to re-increase the text size.
I have a related, but somewhat different,
peeve... If you set Windows to use anything
over 96DPI fonts (I have pretty good eyes and
use fonts most people call unreadably small,
but on my laptop, I literally need around
200DPI to make text a "normal" size), Mozilla
honors the font sizes but doesn't resize
things like text entry areas and dropdown
lists - So at 200DPI, you can only see a bit
less than the upper half of text in any
one-line control. Ick.
Ship with more themes and a few of the more
popular extensions already installed.
Actual complete themes don't really matter to
me. But including AdBlock and User Agent
Switcher at a minimum, would not suck.
I have one more of my own to add to that
list...
Allow "browser.chrome.load_toolbar_icons" to
have a new value ("3", I guess), that means
"Load and use site icons if available, but if
I manually change my bookmarks file to specify
one on a local filesystem, don't overwrite the
damned thing". Or something like that.:-)
Is it legal to tape the call [yourself] while
they put you on hold?
You should try it, some time. Seriously, no
sarcasm intended...
As soon as a human gets on the line, say the
exact same message they use right back. "I may
record this call for quality control purposes".
Usually they don't seem to care, but some
really tweak. Hillarious, actually.
As the most drastic yet, I've had a "monitor"
on their side cut in suddenly and say
something along the lines of "no, you may not,
this call has ended, goodbye", followed by a
click before I could even teach him the definition
of "hypocrisy". Quite rude, I thought, considering
that I had planned to buy $900 worth of PC
parts from them during that call.;-)
Re:What about the studly men!?
on
Getting the Girl
·
· Score: 0, Troll
So you're saying it's okay to objectify women
if we also objectify men?
Objectify, or worship?
I consider it telling that you mostly just hear
females complaining about the sexism in
having characters like Lara Croft.
To what do you attribute that?
A real sense of having men treat them as
objects...
Or a DESIRE to have men behave toward
them the same way they do toward Lara?
The "objectification" and "sexist" argument
annoys me greatly. This doesn't involve
inequality, it involves pure, simple
jealousy. Nothing more than the basic "Why
does my boyfriend like a group of pixels more
than he likes me?" But if you get to that
question, you've already made a HUGE
(and erroneous) leap to conclude that he
does like the pixels more than you.
...the slew of buxom virtual ladies headlining
each booth that I questioned whether the industry
had evolved at all.
Well of course the industry has evolved!
Thanks to the adoption of video game ratings,
the "M" rating has greatly increased the
"strongly suggestive" content in games, while
the "AO" rating has made publishers not worry
about releasing outright porn in games.
If you don't call that an improvement, well, I
don't know what you expect. You want your
"weeners" tag to go along with "boobies"?
Get enough females interested in gaming to
make it marketable, and I guarantee
you'll see equality in video game sexual
content. You only see females "exploited"
(though in this case, can you even call it
exploitation when it doesn't involve any
real women?) because the target market
consists almost entirely of horny young men.
Add horny young women as a target demographic,
and software houses will jump at the
chance to pander to them for a buck.
But then, that presupposes the entire title
of this topic, doesn't it?
The machines are the same only if you think
high-availabilty features, engineering quality,
and extensive compatibilty testing are worth
nothing.
I think you missed my meaning with that... Yes, I
do believe that the expensive testing Dell
et al perform has significant value. But
by kitting up the exact same machine that Dell
has tested, you do benefit from their
testing, you just get around paying them for
it.
I suppose you could consider that unethical,
in a way, but if you run a small shop and
struggle just to make ends meet...
But when it comes to something critical like
a server, especially if it is likely to be around
for 4-5 years (as most servers are), then it's
gotta be from one of the big boys (HP, Dell, IBM,
etc).
Server? You mean, like the tens of thousands
of machines Google runs? The tens of thousands
of commodity-PC-based machines? That
they don't even bother swapping out when they
fail, until the next regular maintenance
cycle?
I understand the people who say "buy Dell or
HP or IBM", and I understand the people who
say "buy cheap and buy three of them for half
the price of Dell/HP/IBM". But it all depends
on what you need. If 24 hours downtime will
put you out of business, you'd better go with
Dell/HP/IBM and buy a spare as a hot
backup. If you can live with a few days of
downtime, go for high-end commodity parts and
buy spares of everything (and 99% of the time,
you'll have less downtime by swapping out a
drive/motherboard/whatever than it takes just
to get the Big Boys on the phone -
But I acknowledge that, for some uses, that
remaining 1% makes paying almost any
amount worth the peace of mind it brings).
Incidentally, the idea of "commodity" hardware
doesn't necessarily mean anything by comparison
with "server" hardware - Yes, Dell guarantees
all the parts work well together, and will
replace the whole unit via overnight shipping
if it fails; but at the heart of every Dell
server, you'll find nothing more complicated
than high-end commodity PC parts. Parts such
that, given a list of them, you could build it
yourself off-the-shelf from Pricewatch for $5k
vs $20k+.
I gotta tell you, this more "realistic" style of cartooning
"Realistic"???
Did you actally watch "Waking Life"? The people's
limbs randomly detach from their bodies and float a few inches
away!
And not durring the deliberalte surreal scenes!
Give me huge eyes, insane hair-colors, and art that doesn't
give me a seizure - I'd watch a Miyazaki rendition of "Days
of our lives" before another "Waking Life" style movie!
Looks like it's going to look alot
like one of Richard Linklater's previous
films, Waking Life.
Checking out the linked article, I agree,
very similar animation.
Which I consider sad... Waking Life had
an okay plot, but the jittery, near-abstract
animation completely put me off it. Jeezus,
even Disney can do better than that.
Or if just a matter of budget, have it poorly
rendered - It will still look better.
Or, I hear Matt Stone has some free time, since
breaking up with Trey... Cheesy stop-motion
construction paper cutouts would annoy
me less!
Oh, why do I bother? Movies based on books by
authors I respect inevitably suck harder than a
US Hoover plugged into a 220 outlet. Slashdot,
please stop reviewing them and getting my hopes
up - Better not to even know they exist.:-(
But when using Acrobat Reader, you can't save
the filled out forms.. Do you know how to do this
to get around the crap?
I agree we need a truly "open" solution to this,
but in the meantime...
"alt-Printscreen", open Paint, paste, save.
I've used that method for the last four years,
and, while not exactly optimal, it does let me
edit or re-print copies of my filing at will.
I don't really know why I bother, though... At
this point in my life, the standard deduction
still comes out higher than itemizing, so I don't
know that the IRS could actually audit... "Okay,
my W2 (of which you, I, my employer, my employer's
payroll company, and probably half a dozen banks
have copies on file), says this number; follow
steps 1 through 666, of which I entered a zero
for 664 of them as instructed, and I get this
number back. Any questions?".;-)
Did you check out the other cases towards
the bottom of the page?
Okay, my bad - The bottom-most one looks pretty
sweet.
Incidentally, I did try to RTFM, but
gave up after five minutes with only the fifth
picture loaded. I see Lego bricks help poor
overtaxed machines recover quickly from the
Slashdot effect.;-)
Anyway, many people are Lego purists, and
refust to use clone brands. My experience with
them is that the quality isn't as good. But they
are about half the price sometimes.
I count as such a purist myself - Lego simply makes
the highest quality Lego-like bricks out there.
However...
Tyco makes two lines of bricks - One has a sort
of "soft" feel to them, and one feels much like
Lego bricks. The soft ones absolutely suck and
will not stick together unless they have gravity
(or some sort of glue) helping them. The other
line, however, comes very near Lego for quality.
I mention this for one reason only - Lego plates
only come in 1/3 brick sizes, whereas Tyco
plates (from the higher quality line) come in
1/2 sizes! That alone makes them worth buying
a few boxes, because between those two
sizes, the number of small vertical spaces you
can create doubles from 3 to 6 (of course, unlike
the 1/3 lego plates, the Tyco ones won't fit
sideways between studs, a way of attaching Lego
plates that expands the possible vertical spaces
even more; but I find that method of attachment
somewhat weak, and would not use it for any
structural element of a design).
As for making a Lego PC case... Yup, done that.
I'd link to pictures, but my camera recently
suffered an unfortunate fate (I healed,
it did not). But it has a mini-tower form; what
you'd normally think of as the back, I put at
the top (easier access to the connectors);
I used a gear-driven fold-out tray (no, not
PC-controllable, the gears just make it open
slower to prevent it from slamming) for the
floppy and CD-ROM; And unlike the linked
article, mine has an overall consistant color
scheme - All yellow, except for green trim
around connectors (hey, how many yellow plates
(or green bricks) have you seen? I have
a 20-gallon bucket literally full of Lego parts,
and probably only have 50 green bricks and half
that many yellow plates). And the front face of
it (the large side opposite the fold-out tray)
has the words "LEGO PC" in an italic-ish font
spelled out in blue and red bricks (blue for
"LEGO", red for "PC").
And no, I don't mean that to brag, or call myself
"better" than the submitter - But really, he could
have done better. I do like how he dealt with the
CD-ROM, but the rest? Needlessly bulky. If he
did the same in 1/4th the volume and managed to
come up with a non-random color scheme, I'd consider
it kinda neat. Otherwise? Sorry, but anyone can
build a box out of legos and throw a PC inside.
It appears that Iranian ISPs have been
ordered to block a large number of popular
Web sites
...It also appears that 90% of Slashdot's
readers (ie, the American portion) don't
really give a damn about Iranian ISPs, nor
could most of us find Iran on a map.
As a result, expect numerous misguided
comments about "freedom of speech", possibly
"freedom of religion" from those informed
enough to realize that Iran vaguely has
something to do with that nasty Islam
thingee.
And for those who would mindlessly mark this
a troll... Welcome to the real world. Now
go ahead and hit the "Moderate" button, from
the comfort of a safe place to websurf, sleep,
eat, and debate the legitimacy of US involvement
in the Middle East.
I imagine it would be much easier than you
imagine. A sustained laser at a drivers eyes
would make them swerve if not stop dead on the
road.
You imagine wrong.
I've had this exact scenario happen a few times,
back at the peak of the "oh I have a new toy let's
annoy people with it" phase of laser pointer
popularity.
The response?
You put out your hand.
Nothing more complicated than that. 0-0.5s,
you avert your gaze. 0.5-1.5s, you move your
hand from covering your eyes toward the source
of the laser, to locate that source. 1.5s to
5s, you roll down the window. 5s to 15s, you
lay on the horn and scream obscenties at the
stupid kids trying to piss you off.
Or rather, once I did that. Every other
time, the idiot failed to do more than very
briefly flash my windshield a few times (which
I think describes the GP's point - Hitting a
rapidly moving target from more than a few
dozen feet away takes some impressive skill).
And even then, I don't seriously expect I ever
had a serious threat to my vision... The idiot
managed to keep the beam generally pointed at
my head, but it only flashed very briefly
across my eyes half-a-dozen or so times.
So did that pose a threat to me? Okay,
technically I could have gotten into an
accident in the first second or two. But
assuming you don't drive like an asshole about
six inches from the bumper of the car in front
of you (tailgating counts as a serious pet
peeve of mine), you simply won't see that sort
of thing cause an accident.
As for the wisdom shining it at an
airplane...
I would only want one answer - Did he know
he had flashed an airplane? I can see it as
entirely possible that this guy went out to do
his best Luke Skywalker impression on a foggy
night, and happened to attract some unwanted
attention. If not, perhaps give him some community
service time to remind him to think before screwing
around. If so... Well, even then, I'd chalk him
up as exceedingly rude, but 25 years in the federal
pen? maybe a year of probation. Anything
more than that just abuses the existing laws.
For in slashdot you don't need to be a
perseverant user to write a score-5 article:
even a anonymous coward can do it.
I think people took my suggestion of a
Slashdot-like moderation system a
little too literally...
The way I see it, no, an AC couldn't contribute
(because no ACs would exist - though people
wouldn't need to give true info, they
would need to create an account). But a
first-time poster could write the
equivalent of a score-5 article. A first-time
user could not, however, turn a
greybeard's score-5 article into a discussion
of the uses of cheese as a motor lubricant.
Restricting access basing on karma would discourage
a lot of experts who have not the time or the patience
to play the karma scoring game.
But they have time to contribute, purely on a
voluntary basis, to what amounts to a factual
version of a blog?
Okay, low blow. But such experts could still
contribute, as long as they write totally new
nodes. They couldn't automatically fix errors in
existing articles (though they could request
permission to do so from the highest-karma
creator/editor of the relevant article), but that
wouldn't stop someone who really wanted to write
on a given topic (as a possibility, perhaps
using a ranked versioning system would work well
in that regard - so people would create foo.1,
foo.2, foo.3, and so on, and just-plain-foo would
point to the most positively moderated version?
Just throwing out ideas here...).
I don't disagree in the least with those who have
pointed out that Slashdot's (and every other moderation
system I've seen) has its problems. But it works
far better than nothing.
but there's already plenty of free
alternatives out there
I personally have always used (and liked) AdAware
and Spybot, and as much as I hate to admit this
about purely commercial software... I recently had
a chance to try Giant.
Slower than a DOJ antitrust proceeding against
Microsoft, and takes a similarly budensome level
of system resources (100% CPU for over half an
hour on a Pentium-M 1.7GHz!), but damned if it
didn't find two problems both AA and SB had
completely missed (completely as in, not just
left inactive fragments lying around, but real
live active spyware).
Also, just stop using Internet Explorer. That
move right there will cut down at least 90% of
all spyware/adware.
Agree completely. The above-mentioned two
problems that Giant caught - Well, let me first
say that I use Mozilla almost exclusively,
only loading MSIE (in a maximally-locked-down
configuration) perhaps once a month for
sites that absolutely will not work (even
with the user agent switcher add-on) in
Moz/FF. And both the spies that
Giant caught had latched on to MSIE.
Sad. I mean, good to see MS address (one of)
their current major weaknesses; but sad that
they would use something comparable to an
antivirus scanner rather than just fix the
security flaws that lead to massive spyware
infestations in the first place.
What ever happened to SP2 as the end-all to
MS's security flaws?
Just look what a roaring success/. is for
fair and unbiased knowledge.
Granted, some abuse will still occur. Slashdot
does, however, manage to relegate the
crapfloods to -1 within minutes of the posting
That alone would help any Wiki.
Additionally, I don't suggest using the
exact moderation Slashdot does - For
one thing, Slashdot's uses moderation types
more suited to editorial content than factual
content. I would suggest instead using something
like "as true as possible", "mostly/conditionally
true", "An honest but failed attempt",
"basically false", "dangerously false",
and "troll", with karma values of +3, +2, +1,
-1, -2, and -3 respectively. Though, I just
tossed those out as an idea, and would
certainly consider the implications more
seriously if actually implementing such a
system (for example, should karma level
weight one's mods? Should new users even
get to mod? Can users mod at any time, or
only given a few points at a time as with
Slashdot?).
Moderation has its problems, and no, popularity
does not equal truth. But unless you browse at
-1, how often do you see GN**-related posts
on Slashdot? Comparitively, I could go to
any open Wiki on the net right now and change
the entry for "computer" to contain only the
lyrics to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
There are hundreds if not thousands of
revisions done on Wikipedia each day and to
have a team sit there to review each update
and research it would be monotonous without
a paid team of researchers.
Wikipedia has exactly one problem, neatly broken
into two (related) main subproblems:
It allows stateless-user modification. This
allows untrusted users to completely trash
perfectly good entries, and it doesn't allow
for the creation of "untrusted" users.
A very, very simple fix for this exists - Force
users to register (they don't need to provide
any IRL info, as I'll explain in a moment), and
implement a Slashdot-like karma and moderation
(and metamoderation, if necessary) system.
Limit all users to only creating new
entries, and to editing their own entries and
those at least one karma-class below themselves
(with the highest karma-classes kept in check
by a few absolutely-trusted WikiGods (most
likely the physical maintainers of the site).
Additionally, to address your point about having
expert review of topics, allow users to grant
other users permission to edit their own
created topics.
Thus, a new user will have basically no power,
other than to contribute new material. This
stops people from making accounts just to
trash legit entries. If a new user makes a
slew of new entries consisting entirely of
mindless drivel, they'll never gain any
karma, thus can't cause any real damage.
At the same time, this allows the creation
of local experts, those who have proven
themselves worthy of editing certain topics
by higher-karma but less-expert users (if
so desired by both) based on personal
permission-granting.
I suppose this also sounds a bit like E2's
approach, but without the annoying minimum
number of nodes per level (the biggest reason
I stopped contributing to E2 - A user would
do better to write large amounts of barely
tolerable crap than to write a small number
of well-researched, well-written nodes;
Personally, I wrote a dozen or so rather
good entries and (two crap ones, I'll admit
it), including seven "Cool"s, and never got
past level 1) and with the addition of actual
editing of entries rather than only creating
or appending new ones.
#!/bin/bash MSIE="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)" while true; do let "LNUM = ($RANDOM % 100) + 1" LURL=$(head -$LNUM urls.txt | tail -1) wget -r -l 1 -w 1 --random-wait --delete-after --user-agent="%MSIE" "$LURL" done
Where "urls.txt" contains the urls of personally
verified spam-product-containing websites.
Running this myself will do nothing. A dozen
friends (with broadband) running it might cost
them a bit in bandwidth. A hundred random
people running it may even hurt. A million
Slasdotters running it would bring any common
targetted URLs to a screeching halt.
C'mon, people... Geeks don't need Lycos
to engage in vigilante action against spam.
We can do it all by ourselves, with just a
few minutes of scripting.
Have fun. Just make sure you target
the right site, rather than helping a scum
spammer out on a Joe-job.
If I understand this correctly (50/50 that I
might not), runing an x86 OS on a non-x86 CPU
requires emulating the x86 instruction set.
Correct. On a non-native platform (or one not
so close as to count as all-but-native), you
need to use emulation to run code.
For that to happen on a PowerPC, you're need both
emulation and virtualization.
Well, Yes and no. Yes, you need emulation.
And yes, the way you described it running,
you would also need virtualization. But in
general, since you wouldn't gain anything
by virtualizing an emulator (in fact, you'd
need to run it under a host OS, so you'd
probably actually lose performance),
you would do much better to just run the
emulator under one of the native OSs (Linux
or OS-X, in this case).
Now, an exception to this would exist if,
for example, the IBM 970 included support
for virtual instruction sets, something
like Transmeta promised but on which they
haven't really delivered. Then, and only
then, could you run a VM and have it also act
as an emulator.
and another partition running VMware to
emulate a (AMD:P ) x86 CPU for the all the
non-Mac OSes.
VM counts as a "virtualizer", not an emulator.
Big difference. The former just does in software
what (it sounds like) the 970 can do in hardware.
The latter translates an arbitrary machine's
instruction set (usually also translating any
needed interaction with the most common
peripherals) so it can run under the
"real" host architecture.
Of course all Apple has achieved is
validating the rumor.
Validating a rumor != guerilla-hyping an
as-yet-nonexistant iProduct.
What most people wouldn't give to have Apple's
power to create an audience for a nonexistant
product... Simply amazing. Leak some tiny crumb
about a potential new product, and when you've
already taken a million orders, you get to
decide what to make. In the unlikely event the
iGuppies don't bite, "oops, just a rumor, imagine
that".
Strange. I wonder if the same people buy from
Spam...
Re:This won't please YHWH/Allah/insert deity here
on
New Calendar Proposal
·
· Score: 1
Actually, in this case, it'd piss off Wiccans,
since the solstices and equinoxes would occur on
a different date each year.
They already do vary by up to 3 days
(not sure if that counts as an actual upper
limit, or just a 99%-of-the-time thing).
So this wouldn't change anything... In the
absolute worst case, it would mean they vary
by up to 10 days, though according to the
linked article, his proposed calendar doesn't
vary by more than three days (if I read him
correctly) from our current calendar. So,
Solstice and Equinoces should only vary by
up to six days under the new calendar.
And while I'm at it, the summary didn't
mention what an automotive CD player, which
most closely resembles your PC CD drive,
"sees".
I'll answer that one - It sees a CD-R.
I had grown VERY annoyed by all the
broken CDs on the market. For some of them, I
actually need to physically unplug the car's
player, force the disk out, wait a few minutes
(for some sort of short-term cap-backed-up
memory to clear? Dunno) before reconnecting
the player. Swearing at the record companies
the whole time.
So, my solution, no original CD ever even
goes in the car anymore. Only copies.
Of course, this makes me a lot more
likely to commit piracy - For example, when
a friend really likes the current CD, I
think nothing of popping it out and giving
it away, since I have the original at home
and can make another copy at my leisure.
Congrats, F4i, you and other similar companies
have managed to make piracy more attractive
than buying original media.
Slashdot Mirror
Make it easier to disable flash temporarily
:-)
I'll second that request...
Improve the download manager
Do people really use the download manager? That thing drives me nuts. The simple, old, Netscape-4-era download dialog works just fine. If I can't remember when or to where I downloaded something, it no longer matters enough to me to track down.
I like to browse with text size increased. But every time I open a new tab or window, I have to re-increase the text size.
I have a related, but somewhat different, peeve... If you set Windows to use anything over 96DPI fonts (I have pretty good eyes and use fonts most people call unreadably small, but on my laptop, I literally need around 200DPI to make text a "normal" size), Mozilla honors the font sizes but doesn't resize things like text entry areas and dropdown lists - So at 200DPI, you can only see a bit less than the upper half of text in any one-line control. Ick.
Ship with more themes and a few of the more popular extensions already installed.
Actual complete themes don't really matter to me. But including AdBlock and User Agent Switcher at a minimum, would not suck.
I have one more of my own to add to that list...
Allow "browser.chrome.load_toolbar_icons" to have a new value ("3", I guess), that means "Load and use site icons if available, but if I manually change my bookmarks file to specify one on a local filesystem, don't overwrite the damned thing". Or something like that.
Is it legal to tape the call [yourself] while they put you on hold?
;-)
You should try it, some time. Seriously, no sarcasm intended...
As soon as a human gets on the line, say the exact same message they use right back. "I may record this call for quality control purposes".
Usually they don't seem to care, but some really tweak. Hillarious, actually.
As the most drastic yet, I've had a "monitor" on their side cut in suddenly and say something along the lines of "no, you may not, this call has ended, goodbye", followed by a click before I could even teach him the definition of "hypocrisy". Quite rude, I thought, considering that I had planned to buy $900 worth of PC parts from them during that call.
So you're saying it's okay to objectify women if we also objectify men?
Objectify, or worship?
I consider it telling that you mostly just hear females complaining about the sexism in having characters like Lara Croft.
To what do you attribute that?
A real sense of having men treat them as objects...
Or a DESIRE to have men behave toward them the same way they do toward Lara?
The "objectification" and "sexist" argument annoys me greatly. This doesn't involve inequality, it involves pure, simple jealousy. Nothing more than the basic "Why does my boyfriend like a group of pixels more than he likes me?" But if you get to that question, you've already made a HUGE (and erroneous) leap to conclude that he does like the pixels more than you.
...the slew of buxom virtual ladies headlining each booth that I questioned whether the industry had evolved at all.
Well of course the industry has evolved!
Thanks to the adoption of video game ratings, the "M" rating has greatly increased the "strongly suggestive" content in games, while the "AO" rating has made publishers not worry about releasing outright porn in games.
If you don't call that an improvement, well, I don't know what you expect. You want your "weeners" tag to go along with "boobies"? Get enough females interested in gaming to make it marketable, and I guarantee you'll see equality in video game sexual content. You only see females "exploited" (though in this case, can you even call it exploitation when it doesn't involve any real women?) because the target market consists almost entirely of horny young men. Add horny young women as a target demographic, and software houses will jump at the chance to pander to them for a buck.
But then, that presupposes the entire title of this topic, doesn't it?
The machines are the same only if you think high-availabilty features, engineering quality, and extensive compatibilty testing are worth nothing.
I think you missed my meaning with that... Yes, I do believe that the expensive testing Dell et al perform has significant value. But by kitting up the exact same machine that Dell has tested, you do benefit from their testing, you just get around paying them for it.
I suppose you could consider that unethical, in a way, but if you run a small shop and struggle just to make ends meet...
But when it comes to something critical like a server, especially if it is likely to be around for 4-5 years (as most servers are), then it's gotta be from one of the big boys (HP, Dell, IBM, etc).
Server? You mean, like the tens of thousands of machines Google runs? The tens of thousands of commodity-PC-based machines? That they don't even bother swapping out when they fail, until the next regular maintenance cycle?
I understand the people who say "buy Dell or HP or IBM", and I understand the people who say "buy cheap and buy three of them for half the price of Dell/HP/IBM". But it all depends on what you need. If 24 hours downtime will put you out of business, you'd better go with Dell/HP/IBM and buy a spare as a hot backup. If you can live with a few days of downtime, go for high-end commodity parts and buy spares of everything (and 99% of the time, you'll have less downtime by swapping out a drive/motherboard/whatever than it takes just to get the Big Boys on the phone - But I acknowledge that, for some uses, that remaining 1% makes paying almost any amount worth the peace of mind it brings).
Incidentally, the idea of "commodity" hardware doesn't necessarily mean anything by comparison with "server" hardware - Yes, Dell guarantees all the parts work well together, and will replace the whole unit via overnight shipping if it fails; but at the heart of every Dell server, you'll find nothing more complicated than high-end commodity PC parts. Parts such that, given a list of them, you could build it yourself off-the-shelf from Pricewatch for $5k vs $20k+.
I gotta tell you, this more "realistic" style of cartooning
"Realistic"???
Did you actally watch "Waking Life"? The people's limbs randomly detach from their bodies and float a few inches away!
And not durring the deliberalte surreal scenes!
Give me huge eyes, insane hair-colors, and art that doesn't give me a seizure - I'd watch a Miyazaki rendition of "Days of our lives" before another "Waking Life" style movie!
Looks like it's going to look alot like one of Richard Linklater's previous films, Waking Life.
:-(
Checking out the linked article, I agree, very similar animation.
Which I consider sad... Waking Life had an okay plot, but the jittery, near-abstract animation completely put me off it. Jeezus, even Disney can do better than that. Or if just a matter of budget, have it poorly rendered - It will still look better. Or, I hear Matt Stone has some free time, since breaking up with Trey... Cheesy stop-motion construction paper cutouts would annoy me less!
Oh, why do I bother? Movies based on books by authors I respect inevitably suck harder than a US Hoover plugged into a 220 outlet. Slashdot, please stop reviewing them and getting my hopes up - Better not to even know they exist.
But when using Acrobat Reader, you can't save the filled out forms.. Do you know how to do this to get around the crap?
;-)
I agree we need a truly "open" solution to this, but in the meantime...
"alt-Printscreen", open Paint, paste, save.
I've used that method for the last four years, and, while not exactly optimal, it does let me edit or re-print copies of my filing at will.
I don't really know why I bother, though... At this point in my life, the standard deduction still comes out higher than itemizing, so I don't know that the IRS could actually audit... "Okay, my W2 (of which you, I, my employer, my employer's payroll company, and probably half a dozen banks have copies on file), says this number; follow steps 1 through 666, of which I entered a zero for 664 of them as instructed, and I get this number back. Any questions?".
Did you check out the other cases towards the bottom of the page?
;-)
Okay, my bad - The bottom-most one looks pretty sweet.
Incidentally, I did try to RTFM, but gave up after five minutes with only the fifth picture loaded. I see Lego bricks help poor overtaxed machines recover quickly from the Slashdot effect.
Anyway, many people are Lego purists, and refust to use clone brands. My experience with them is that the quality isn't as good. But they are about half the price sometimes.
I count as such a purist myself - Lego simply makes the highest quality Lego-like bricks out there.
However...
Tyco makes two lines of bricks - One has a sort of "soft" feel to them, and one feels much like Lego bricks. The soft ones absolutely suck and will not stick together unless they have gravity (or some sort of glue) helping them. The other line, however, comes very near Lego for quality. I mention this for one reason only - Lego plates only come in 1/3 brick sizes, whereas Tyco plates (from the higher quality line) come in 1/2 sizes! That alone makes them worth buying a few boxes, because between those two sizes, the number of small vertical spaces you can create doubles from 3 to 6 (of course, unlike the 1/3 lego plates, the Tyco ones won't fit sideways between studs, a way of attaching Lego plates that expands the possible vertical spaces even more; but I find that method of attachment somewhat weak, and would not use it for any structural element of a design).
As for making a Lego PC case... Yup, done that. I'd link to pictures, but my camera recently suffered an unfortunate fate (I healed, it did not). But it has a mini-tower form; what you'd normally think of as the back, I put at the top (easier access to the connectors); I used a gear-driven fold-out tray (no, not PC-controllable, the gears just make it open slower to prevent it from slamming) for the floppy and CD-ROM; And unlike the linked article, mine has an overall consistant color scheme - All yellow, except for green trim around connectors (hey, how many yellow plates (or green bricks) have you seen? I have a 20-gallon bucket literally full of Lego parts, and probably only have 50 green bricks and half that many yellow plates). And the front face of it (the large side opposite the fold-out tray) has the words "LEGO PC" in an italic-ish font spelled out in blue and red bricks (blue for "LEGO", red for "PC").
And no, I don't mean that to brag, or call myself "better" than the submitter - But really, he could have done better. I do like how he dealt with the CD-ROM, but the rest? Needlessly bulky. If he did the same in 1/4th the volume and managed to come up with a non-random color scheme, I'd consider it kinda neat. Otherwise? Sorry, but anyone can build a box out of legos and throw a PC inside.
It appears that Iranian ISPs have been ordered to block a large number of popular Web sites
...It also appears that 90% of Slashdot's
readers (ie, the American portion) don't
really give a damn about Iranian ISPs, nor
could most of us find Iran on a map.
As a result, expect numerous misguided comments about "freedom of speech", possibly "freedom of religion" from those informed enough to realize that Iran vaguely has something to do with that nasty Islam thingee.
And for those who would mindlessly mark this a troll... Welcome to the real world. Now go ahead and hit the "Moderate" button, from the comfort of a safe place to websurf, sleep, eat, and debate the legitimacy of US involvement in the Middle East.
I imagine it would be much easier than you imagine. A sustained laser at a drivers eyes would make them swerve if not stop dead on the road.
You imagine wrong.
I've had this exact scenario happen a few times, back at the peak of the "oh I have a new toy let's annoy people with it" phase of laser pointer popularity.
The response?
You put out your hand.
Nothing more complicated than that. 0-0.5s, you avert your gaze. 0.5-1.5s, you move your hand from covering your eyes toward the source of the laser, to locate that source. 1.5s to 5s, you roll down the window. 5s to 15s, you lay on the horn and scream obscenties at the stupid kids trying to piss you off.
Or rather, once I did that. Every other time, the idiot failed to do more than very briefly flash my windshield a few times (which I think describes the GP's point - Hitting a rapidly moving target from more than a few dozen feet away takes some impressive skill). And even then, I don't seriously expect I ever had a serious threat to my vision... The idiot managed to keep the beam generally pointed at my head, but it only flashed very briefly across my eyes half-a-dozen or so times.
So did that pose a threat to me? Okay, technically I could have gotten into an accident in the first second or two. But assuming you don't drive like an asshole about six inches from the bumper of the car in front of you (tailgating counts as a serious pet peeve of mine), you simply won't see that sort of thing cause an accident.
As for the wisdom shining it at an airplane...
I would only want one answer - Did he know he had flashed an airplane? I can see it as entirely possible that this guy went out to do his best Luke Skywalker impression on a foggy night, and happened to attract some unwanted attention. If not, perhaps give him some community service time to remind him to think before screwing around. If so... Well, even then, I'd chalk him up as exceedingly rude, but 25 years in the federal pen? maybe a year of probation. Anything more than that just abuses the existing laws.
For in slashdot you don't need to be a perseverant user to write a score-5 article: even a anonymous coward can do it.
I think people took my suggestion of a Slashdot-like moderation system a little too literally...
The way I see it, no, an AC couldn't contribute (because no ACs would exist - though people wouldn't need to give true info, they would need to create an account). But a first-time poster could write the equivalent of a score-5 article. A first-time user could not, however, turn a greybeard's score-5 article into a discussion of the uses of cheese as a motor lubricant.
Restricting access basing on karma would discourage a lot of experts who have not the time or the patience to play the karma scoring game.
But they have time to contribute, purely on a voluntary basis, to what amounts to a factual version of a blog?
Okay, low blow. But such experts could still contribute, as long as they write totally new nodes. They couldn't automatically fix errors in existing articles (though they could request permission to do so from the highest-karma creator/editor of the relevant article), but that wouldn't stop someone who really wanted to write on a given topic (as a possibility, perhaps using a ranked versioning system would work well in that regard - so people would create foo.1, foo.2, foo.3, and so on, and just-plain-foo would point to the most positively moderated version? Just throwing out ideas here...).
I don't disagree in the least with those who have pointed out that Slashdot's (and every other moderation system I've seen) has its problems. But it works far better than nothing.
but there's already plenty of free alternatives out there
I personally have always used (and liked) AdAware and Spybot, and as much as I hate to admit this about purely commercial software... I recently had a chance to try Giant.
Slower than a DOJ antitrust proceeding against Microsoft, and takes a similarly budensome level of system resources (100% CPU for over half an hour on a Pentium-M 1.7GHz!), but damned if it didn't find two problems both AA and SB had completely missed (completely as in, not just left inactive fragments lying around, but real live active spyware).
Also, just stop using Internet Explorer. That move right there will cut down at least 90% of all spyware/adware.
Agree completely. The above-mentioned two problems that Giant caught - Well, let me first say that I use Mozilla almost exclusively, only loading MSIE (in a maximally-locked-down configuration) perhaps once a month for sites that absolutely will not work (even with the user agent switcher add-on) in Moz/FF. And both the spies that Giant caught had latched on to MSIE.
Sad. I mean, good to see MS address (one of) their current major weaknesses; but sad that they would use something comparable to an antivirus scanner rather than just fix the security flaws that lead to massive spyware infestations in the first place.
What ever happened to SP2 as the end-all to MS's security flaws?
Just look what a roaring success /. is for
fair and unbiased knowledge.
Granted, some abuse will still occur. Slashdot does, however, manage to relegate the crapfloods to -1 within minutes of the posting That alone would help any Wiki.
Additionally, I don't suggest using the exact moderation Slashdot does - For one thing, Slashdot's uses moderation types more suited to editorial content than factual content. I would suggest instead using something like "as true as possible", "mostly/conditionally true", "An honest but failed attempt", "basically false", "dangerously false", and "troll", with karma values of +3, +2, +1, -1, -2, and -3 respectively. Though, I just tossed those out as an idea, and would certainly consider the implications more seriously if actually implementing such a system (for example, should karma level weight one's mods? Should new users even get to mod? Can users mod at any time, or only given a few points at a time as with Slashdot?).
Moderation has its problems, and no, popularity does not equal truth. But unless you browse at -1, how often do you see GN**-related posts on Slashdot? Comparitively, I could go to any open Wiki on the net right now and change the entry for "computer" to contain only the lyrics to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star".
There are hundreds if not thousands of revisions done on Wikipedia each day and to have a team sit there to review each update and research it would be monotonous without a paid team of researchers.
Wikipedia has exactly one problem, neatly broken into two (related) main subproblems:
It allows stateless-user modification. This allows untrusted users to completely trash perfectly good entries, and it doesn't allow for the creation of "untrusted" users.
A very, very simple fix for this exists - Force users to register (they don't need to provide any IRL info, as I'll explain in a moment), and implement a Slashdot-like karma and moderation (and metamoderation, if necessary) system.
Limit all users to only creating new entries, and to editing their own entries and those at least one karma-class below themselves (with the highest karma-classes kept in check by a few absolutely-trusted WikiGods (most likely the physical maintainers of the site). Additionally, to address your point about having expert review of topics, allow users to grant other users permission to edit their own created topics.
Thus, a new user will have basically no power, other than to contribute new material. This stops people from making accounts just to trash legit entries. If a new user makes a slew of new entries consisting entirely of mindless drivel, they'll never gain any karma, thus can't cause any real damage. At the same time, this allows the creation of local experts, those who have proven themselves worthy of editing certain topics by higher-karma but less-expert users (if so desired by both) based on personal permission-granting.
I suppose this also sounds a bit like E2's approach, but without the annoying minimum number of nodes per level (the biggest reason I stopped contributing to E2 - A user would do better to write large amounts of barely tolerable crap than to write a small number of well-researched, well-written nodes; Personally, I wrote a dozen or so rather good entries and (two crap ones, I'll admit it), including seven "Cool"s, and never got past level 1) and with the addition of actual editing of entries rather than only creating or appending new ones.
It wouldn't be "copyright infringement" if they are granted the right to give you a copy.
Hmm... Good point indeed! You may well have provided the single most insightful comment this entire FP will see.
So... Since the RIAA itself gave this company permission to share these tainted WMA files, that makes them legal to download and use, right?
Sweet. Time to start deliberately searching for these files, as soon as someone releases a fix for them.
Where "urls.txt" contains the urls of personally verified spam-product-containing websites.
Running this myself will do nothing. A dozen friends (with broadband) running it might cost them a bit in bandwidth. A hundred random people running it may even hurt. A million Slasdotters running it would bring any common targetted URLs to a screeching halt.
C'mon, people... Geeks don't need Lycos to engage in vigilante action against spam. We can do it all by ourselves, with just a few minutes of scripting.
Have fun. Just make sure you target the right site, rather than helping a scum spammer out on a Joe-job.
If I understand this correctly (50/50 that I might not), runing an x86 OS on a non-x86 CPU requires emulating the x86 instruction set.
Correct. On a non-native platform (or one not so close as to count as all-but-native), you need to use emulation to run code.
For that to happen on a PowerPC, you're need both emulation and virtualization.
Well, Yes and no. Yes, you need emulation. And yes, the way you described it running, you would also need virtualization. But in general, since you wouldn't gain anything by virtualizing an emulator (in fact, you'd need to run it under a host OS, so you'd probably actually lose performance), you would do much better to just run the emulator under one of the native OSs (Linux or OS-X, in this case).
Now, an exception to this would exist if, for example, the IBM 970 included support for virtual instruction sets, something like Transmeta promised but on which they haven't really delivered. Then, and only then, could you run a VM and have it also act as an emulator.
and another partition running VMware to emulate a (AMD :P ) x86 CPU for the all the
non-Mac OSes.
VM counts as a "virtualizer", not an emulator.
Big difference. The former just does in software what (it sounds like) the 970 can do in hardware. The latter translates an arbitrary machine's instruction set (usually also translating any needed interaction with the most common peripherals) so it can run under the "real" host architecture.
What the hell are you talking about?
Hyperbole.
Look it up sometime.
Of course all Apple has achieved is validating the rumor.
Validating a rumor != guerilla-hyping an as-yet-nonexistant iProduct.
What most people wouldn't give to have Apple's power to create an audience for a nonexistant product... Simply amazing. Leak some tiny crumb about a potential new product, and when you've already taken a million orders, you get to decide what to make. In the unlikely event the iGuppies don't bite, "oops, just a rumor, imagine that".
Strange. I wonder if the same people buy from Spam...
Actually, in this case, it'd piss off Wiccans, since the solstices and equinoxes would occur on a different date each year.
They already do vary by up to 3 days (not sure if that counts as an actual upper limit, or just a 99%-of-the-time thing).
So this wouldn't change anything... In the absolute worst case, it would mean they vary by up to 10 days, though according to the linked article, his proposed calendar doesn't vary by more than three days (if I read him correctly) from our current calendar. So, Solstice and Equinoces should only vary by up to six days under the new calendar.
And while I'm at it, the summary didn't mention what an automotive CD player, which most closely resembles your PC CD drive, "sees".
I'll answer that one - It sees a CD-R.
I had grown VERY annoyed by all the broken CDs on the market. For some of them, I actually need to physically unplug the car's player, force the disk out, wait a few minutes (for some sort of short-term cap-backed-up memory to clear? Dunno) before reconnecting the player. Swearing at the record companies the whole time.
So, my solution, no original CD ever even goes in the car anymore. Only copies.
Of course, this makes me a lot more likely to commit piracy - For example, when a friend really likes the current CD, I think nothing of popping it out and giving it away, since I have the original at home and can make another copy at my leisure.
Congrats, F4i, you and other similar companies have managed to make piracy more attractive than buying original media.