I always find it odd that so many "Nerds",
people who spend their time programming in
languages that demand incredibly exact syntax,
can't get basic "natural language" syntax
right.
We can. The problem arises in that other
people cannot (or rather, do not, since
most adults can form grammatically correct
sentences if you force them to).
Another, humorous, response to the parent
post nicely illustrates the problem...
The only way to parse it such that it remains
(almost) grammatically correct runs along the
lines of "three consumer appliances named Sony,
IBM and Toshiba that are inneed of more computing
power".
Now, you can say that any human reader would
get the correct meaning. And in this situation,
I'll grant that as most likely true. But if
people use sloppy grammar in "obvious" sentences,
they most likely will carry that into more
subtle sentences as well.
So when a geek chides someone for misuse of a
natural language, insisting on an exactness
bordering on formal logic - They/We do so
because it improves comprehension.
A non-geek might feel comfortable trying to
divine a sloppy author's intended meaning. But
we realize the consequences... Do that in a
programming language, and at best you'll
get buggy code. Do that in real life, and you
get ambiguities such as (no political commentary
intended) whether or not Bush said/implied
a link exists between Saddam and Osama.
It has been known for some time that blowing
hot steam across coke results in hydrogen, which
is how most commercial hydrogen is made.
One major problem...
This has, as its end products, hydrogen and
carbon dioxide (assuming we take advantage of
the obvious followup reaction to convert more
steam and the CO, into CO2 and more hydrogen)
So producing the H2 releases CO2, and using
the H2 releases CO2.
I have to admit, it sounds like a good way
to get hydrogen, but it sure doesn't help
with the whole "greenhouse gas" issue (though,
in fairness, using methane rather than coke,
methane acts as a stronger greenhouse gas than
CO2 does).
Actually, it's a great idea, now only if a
cool Open source dev would make an open version
of this and take away that whole throttling
thing.
Okay...
"while true ; do wget -r -l inf $SPAM_SITE --delete-after
--referrer=$SPAM_SITE --user-agent="eat spam and die"; done".
Enjoy.
Now, perhaps some clever little bunny will
write a simple script to set SPAM_SITE to
values scraped from Lycos. But not really
necessary, just manually change it when your
current target goes down. Personally, I'd
take great pleasure in just sitting there
watching the connections slow down more and
more, until I felt comfy making the call to
toe-tag it.
Just out of curiosity - Does the "--delete-after" option
to wget have any use other than in a DDOS?
The usual way to prove to them that you
bought the game is to send them photographs
in JPEG format of the box, manual and CD
key sticker.
Of course.
So, I'd just need to go buy a digital camera,
take a picture, email it to them, then wait
for someone to get around to opening my
email (someone with no motivation to rush,
as they would already have my money in pocket),
and maybe they'll let me play?
Frickin' hilarious.
I would have liked to play this, but hades will
get a tad chilly before I put up with BS like
that.
Another poster had the right idea. When I
buy a game, I expect it to just work, like
any other game. I pop it in the CD drive,
install it, and start playing. Any other
steps involved and it goes back to the store.
About which... Quick hint - Many stores refuse
to accept opened software returns, but depending
on your state's "warrant of merchantability"
laws, they usually can't legally refuse you.
Nor can they limit you to accepting a
replacement of the same product. If it
doesn't work, end of story, they take it back.
Funny how "state law" trumps "store policy"
every time.
Expensive? I expect it would add perhaps
$0.25 per light, so around $100 total for an
average sized room, but consider the time
saving in the long run compared with having
to un-and-re-solder 400-600 LEDs every 5-10
years.
And, the current-limiting resistors aught to
improve that lifetime somewhat (otherwise you'd
tend to lose however large of an area you have
on the same resistor all within a short period
of the first dying, since the rest get to bear
its load).
So, at least hardware-wise, I wouldn't call LED
lighting cheaper than more conventional forms,
at least until modular units enter the realm of
commodity hardware. But in terms of TCO, I'd say
it probably at least breaks even; And, what other
lighting tech in even the same pricing ballpark
could you literally chose over the entire RGB palette
in terms of color and intensity?
I agree... I had actually thought mostly in
terms of the so-called "white" LEDs, as they
seem to produce the most light for the buck,
but since you mention it, I imagine it would
look really nice to not only change the
brightness, but the warmth/coolness of a room's
lights as well.
And it sounds like you have an ideal situation
to try something like this... As I said, it
would require a fairly different way of thinking
about a room's illumination, which for most
people would mean a hefty remodelling (or
new construction that takes it into
consideration). Though I suppose one could
retrofit a drop ceiling without too much
extra expense.
If you seriously plan to try something like
I suggested, I'll share two thoughts on the
matter...
First, for wiring, I would go with a
row/column addressing scheme. Unless you
plan to try to actually use it as an ultra
low resolution display, that would suffice
for smooth color/intensity changes over
the span of the room, for a lot
less wires than individual addressing would
take.
Second, consider each LED as disposeable and self
contained... So ideally, each would have its
own socket and current-limiting resitor. That
way, you can replace them (they may live
a very long time, but not forever) without
needing to break out the soldering iron.
Although a big incentive may exist in using
existing lighting fixtures, by making a
standard point-source light, they totally
miss the advantage of using LEDs as a light
source. If you want a point source of light,
you get more light for less energy by using a
fluorescent.
Now, with a point source of light, you need it
much brigher than the levels you want
at, for example, a wall/floor 10 feet away.
Just a simple matter of applying an inverse
square law.
The big potential in LED's lies in allowing
people to effectively get around the distance
part of the same inverse square law... They
tend to produce very directional light, and
they cost little per unit (unlike these Luxeon
monstrosities, which cost an arm and a leg).
Imagine, rather than a desk lamp or a ceiling
light, that your entire ceiling has a grid of
LEDs spaced every six inches. The combined
light output measures far lower than a single
incandescent (or fluorescent) bulb, but
provides better overall illumination
of the room. As a result, you have no glare,
better light, and impressive electricity
savings even over a fluorescent.
As much as I hate marketing buzzwords, the switch
to LED-based lighting shift will have to coincide
with a paradigm (ugh) shift in the entire way we
think about room lighting. Only then will we
really see why LEDs can provide superior illumination
for less power. Trying to force a million fireflies
into a bottle just pisses off the fireflies.
similarly, I've found that video signals seem
to degrade when using anything longer than a 15
foot cable
At work, I have a split (regenerated) VGA
signal going over a 50ft cable with no
noticeable degradation.
The key - You want triple-shielded, with coax
RGB lines. The 50ft cable I mention cost
USD$65, but I consider it well worth
it (then again, I didn't actually have to
pay for it myself, so...).
Believe it or not, I've had bigger problems
getting keyboard and mouse cables to
extend beyond 20'... I have yet to find
an equivalent quality PS2 cable to the VGA
cable I describe.
Chip's challenge has been ported to Linux.
You need to keep the original.dat file for
levels. The Linux implementation is called
Tile World. Enjoy.
Actually, I had asked that half in jest (I
couldn't care less if they can't play a
cheesy (if decently fun) little game anymore),
but getting a serious answer... Well, thank
you!
Looks like I might spend Thanksgiving
doing an OS install.;-)
Rather than asking what to put on to protect
them, how about "What can I put on my family's
computers so they won't notice when I change the
OS to Linux"?
I have my parents already running OO and Moz, and
they don't really use their computer for much
else.
If not for that goddamned "Chip's Challenge",
I could change them over to Linux today and they
wouldn't even notice.
Anyone know of a Linux port/clone of CC? A Flash
or SW version would suffice...
Did you read the very first sentence I wrote,
or just skim for something with which to take
issue?
Although your point may hold with Linux (though
in that case, only a total idiot would
buy hardware before verifying support), since
the release of XP SP2, no major advances in
printing technology have occurred (or at least,
none have made it to consumer-level devices).
Consequently, someone who just needs a new printer
has absolutely no reason to rush out and buy
the latest and greatest (and otherwise identical
to the other few hundred printers on the market)
Lexmark printer. They can browse through the
list of drivers included with their OS, and
pick one that best meets their needs (which
in most cases means "doesn't totally suck and
costs the least"). Then they can buy that exact
printer, and feel comfy knowing that they
won't ever need to hunt down a driver disk
for it, whether during initial install, or
two years from now when they get a new PC.
Keep in mind that, for the majority, we talk
about inkjet printers here anyway. Now, I've seen
some really nice inkjet plotters, but for a desktop
8.5x11 printer, getting an inkjet means one of
two things - One, a person needs color and can't
afford a color laser; or two, quality, and speed
means absolutely nothing and they bought the
cheapest model at WallyWorld (most likely without
even considering the TCO, which thanks to
ink costing more than champagne, actually comes
out quite a lot higher than the extra up-front
cost of a low-end laser).
So while I will readily agree that exceptions to
my points exist, they simply don't apply to the
particular market we deal with here. Now, in
fairness, I also don't expect that same market
of essentially clueless consumers to have the
foresight to research issues such as drivers,
privacy concerns, and lifetime ink costs. On
Slashdot, though, I do expect a little
more - Perhaps not all readers count as hardcore
geeks, but at least they all have a vague awareness
of the issues involved.
DVDs are good enough for current games/tv and other media.
Who cares about using them for media? Ever had to
keep reasonably up-to-date backups of a few hundred
GB of frequently changing data?
Up to about 200GB tapes work well enough (though the
drives cost more than the entire machine they back up,
and the tapes alone cost as much as a cheap IDE HDD of
the same size, and go quite a lot slower). Above 300GB,
a "nightly backup" either requires multiple drives, an
even more expensive tape robot (reasonable for
backup up a few TB but when you only need two or three
tapes, kinda a frivolous expense), or manual user
intervention. Oy.
I would personally like to see 200GB CD-like disks hit
the mainstream. CD robots don't cost too much,
the media wouldn't (assuming similar consumer-level
prices as current CD and DVD blanks) cost as much as
the drive you need to backup, and perhaps even "normal" people
would finally start keeping backups (I do so hate
having to tell friends, when they ask me to help them
fix their PCs, "well, I'll let you pick - Buy a new
HDD and we'll slave your old one to recover your data,
or say goodbye to your porn-oh-yeah-and-your-past-five-years'-tax-data)
if they could do it all to a single disc. Heh, well, okay,
I won't hold my breath on that last point.
When considering the purchase of new hardware,
I start by picking something with support
already built into my OS. With Linux, this
often means the difference between it working or
not. With Windows, this means the difference
between having to run a dozen tiny third party
apps that appear to do nothing at all (beyond
take up memory, disk space, and as per this
topic, spy on my activities).
It really amazes me when I go to help someone
with their PC, and I see a list of startups
dozens of entries long. When I see a system
tray that stretches halfway across the screen.
When their process list requires scrolling down
for three pages to see them all.
For a good default policy, when you buy new
hardware, throw away any software it came with.
You don't need it.
Printers? They all speak PCL or PS (unless
you very unwisely bought one that does not,
which goes back to "check for driver support
first"). End of story.
Scanners? Okay, once upon a time, these could
take some work to get up and running. But
anything less than five years old (and if
older, you can get a better quality replacement
literally for around $20)? Free hint - Plug it
in, open MS Paint, and check out the "from
scanner or camera" menu. Simply amazing,
eh? Everything you need to scan, already
built in.
Cameras? I had two of my users actually install
the software for new cameras we got just this
past week. Do you have any idea what a pain it
took to remove that software, when they
discovered that not only did they not need it,
but they couldn't use it due to some
vague, irregularly-reproduceable conflict with
other software they actually do require?
Anyway, point of story - After removing every
last trace of Kodak's crappy software
(including a very large application,
a boot-time driver, and a service!
Ack!), I demonstrated to my users that they
just need to connect the USB cable and turn
the camera on. Poof, all their pictures appear
under "My Computer" as a removeable drive named
similarly to their camera's model.
How about video cards? Okay, no argument that
you would do well to run the newest actual
video driver from the manufacturer, but
do you have any idea how many people I've see
that also have 3Dfx's task manager, NVcpl and Nwiz,
or ATi's set of up to half a dozen useless
crapware blobs, all loading at startup (I won't
even go into startups such as MS Messenger,
Office startup, Quicktime, and all the rest that
suck memory at the whopping "savings" of 5 seconds
the first time you run the relevant program)? Sad.
Truly sad, that people let such software steal their
memory and CPU cycles.
Okay, I'll grant that more exotic hardware may
well require third party support. But that quite
simply does not apply to 99% of machines out there.
So I suppose the moral of all this, to stay
on-topic... Why do people install Lexmark's
own drivers in the first place? Don't !
Use the built-in drivers, and you can get all
the same functionality without the spyware
or the bloatware.
Not to imply that Microsoft doesn't pull similar
crap as Lexmark (time.windows.com, anyone? Which
if you run your own NTP server, you will notice
does not speak plain ol' NTP). But just
because one company likes riding us bareback
doesn't mean we need to spread for the rest.
How do you deal with large-scale legitimate
mail sources (i.e. mailing lists, mail
houses, etc.)?
I consider mailing lists a cute throwback
to a much earlier time. Don't get me wrong,
I subscribe to three or four myself. But
every single one of them, I could just read
on-line (and no, not all Yahoo lists, only
one in fact).
To effectively eliminate spam, I would gladly
visit a web page rather than have the same info
appear in my mailbox.
The second issue is that mailing houses that
deliver bulk e-mail for legitimate commercial
ventures will need to generate stamps for some
of their traffic.
Er... How does that differ from actual spam?
I don't give two shakes of a rat's ass whether
or not UCE comes from a "legitimate" source.
I don't want it. Any of it. So, it
really doesn't bother me that, for the benefit
of no more "Free v1@6ra" email, I also lose out
on "buy our totally legit ink cartridges" at
the same time. I consider it a perk,
not a problem.
Okay, someone explain to me why this seems
either redundant or a troll? The article
asked a question, no one else had answered
it, so I did.
I don't normally bitch about moderation, but
really, WFT? I didn't say anything bad about
Apple, or discuss politics. I responded to a
question the original poster could have
answered himself, had he bothered reading the
text at the very link he gave!
Oh and God knows we wouldn't have cars were
it not for nut jobs who want everything to be
8,000,000,000 years old.
Actually, they want it between 12 and 20 billion
years, but otherwise correct - We wouldn't
have cars if not for "nutjobs" like Copernicus
("Hey, check out this crackpot, he wants the Sun
to orbit the Earth... Hah, why don't we just make
the entire Crystal Sphere orbit my left pinky-toe?"), Kepler ("Ellipses? How about
Rectangles? Or cardioids? Or the outline of
England with a side-trip to the Isle of Man?"),
and others of a similar disposition.
Science doesn't have all the answers. But you can't have
the benefits of it while ignoring significant portions of
the answers it does have. Did evolution happen
exactly as the most popular theories claim? Perhaps
not. But has the Earth existed for longer than 6000
years? No-brainer: YES.
Please, please, please encourage all of
your liberal buddies to push this agenda
hard.
You might want to keep in mind the overall
trend of tax money sources and destinations...
To an astonishing degree (shocked the hell out
of me when I found this out), tax money flows
out of the blue states, and into
the red ones.
So yeah, you can bet that I'll push that
agenda amongst all my "liberal buddies", and
try my best to cut all you damned red leeches
off blue-funded welfare.
But look at the bright side... Companies in blue
states might grace your sad red economic state
("in the red"... tee-hee) with a few bucks from
outsourcing. Now go make me some Nikes, boy!
Oh, and remember -- all of the nuclear weapons
are in "red" states.
But, for balance, all the engineers capable of
maintaining them live (or at least got their
education) in the blue states. So enjoy them,
until they rot and pollute your groundwater,
finally eliminating the vast tracts of redness
via radiation-induced infertility.
Sorry. You don't sound like a very qualified
support person.
It takes less than an hour to reinstall
Windows.
It (can) take considerably more than
an hour to track down whatever stupid mistake
user-X made (or get them to admit they did
something wrong, with enough detail to track
it down), assuming they broke something
non-trivial.
There are 'boardswapping drones' in hardware
repair, and have been since the minicomputer
era.
You incorrectly make the mistake of assuming
that my choosing to reinstall Windows
rather than waste more time repairing it means
I could not repair it, if I so wished.
If that held true, I would actually agree with
you. But my goal in doing my job involves only
getting the job done in the most efficient manner
possible. I consider taking longer than necessary
to do a job nothing more than egotistical self
entertainment. Yes, fixing a machine the "right"
way gives almost a sort of thrill-of-the-hunt
feeling... I don't get paid to hunt, I get paid
for results.
I won't say 'beneath contempt' because
perhaps you just haven't had enough
training.
I will. "Beneath contempt". Perhaps you get
paid hourly rather than on salary... As for
myself (and my employer, but I consider that
the less relevant point), the less time it
takes me to fix something, the more time I
have to do my actual job.
Slashdot Mirror
we're still in court over something that happened five years ago
Anyone else curious about this answer?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I always find it odd that so many "Nerds", people who spend their time programming in languages that demand incredibly exact syntax, can't get basic "natural language" syntax right.
We can. The problem arises in that other people cannot (or rather, do not, since most adults can form grammatically correct sentences if you force them to).
Another, humorous, response to the parent post nicely illustrates the problem... The only way to parse it such that it remains (almost) grammatically correct runs along the lines of "three consumer appliances named Sony, IBM and Toshiba that are inneed of more computing power".
Now, you can say that any human reader would get the correct meaning. And in this situation, I'll grant that as most likely true. But if people use sloppy grammar in "obvious" sentences, they most likely will carry that into more subtle sentences as well.
So when a geek chides someone for misuse of a natural language, insisting on an exactness bordering on formal logic - They/We do so because it improves comprehension.
A non-geek might feel comfortable trying to divine a sloppy author's intended meaning. But we realize the consequences... Do that in a programming language, and at best you'll get buggy code. Do that in real life, and you get ambiguities such as (no political commentary intended) whether or not Bush said/implied a link exists between Saddam and Osama.
On the 2,253,532nd day, God created the optical mouse
You and your damned science!
Sure, I'll bet you thought no one would do the math....
The number of days you give... Comes out to 166 years longer than has passed since the creation!
Blasphemer!
It has been known for some time that blowing hot steam across coke results in hydrogen, which is how most commercial hydrogen is made.
One major problem...
This has, as its end products, hydrogen and carbon dioxide (assuming we take advantage of the obvious followup reaction to convert more steam and the CO, into CO2 and more hydrogen)
So producing the H2 releases CO2, and using the H2 releases CO2.
I have to admit, it sounds like a good way to get hydrogen, but it sure doesn't help with the whole "greenhouse gas" issue (though, in fairness, using methane rather than coke, methane acts as a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2 does).
Actually, it's a great idea, now only if a cool Open source dev would make an open version of this and take away that whole throttling thing.
Okay... "while true ; do wget -r -l inf $SPAM_SITE --delete-after --referrer=$SPAM_SITE --user-agent="eat spam and die"; done".
Enjoy.
Now, perhaps some clever little bunny will write a simple script to set SPAM_SITE to values scraped from Lycos. But not really necessary, just manually change it when your current target goes down. Personally, I'd take great pleasure in just sitting there watching the connections slow down more and more, until I felt comfy making the call to toe-tag it.
Just out of curiosity - Does the "--delete-after" option to wget have any use other than in a DDOS?
Saying that this is how it is, take it or leave it *IS* negotiation.
You have to pay me a million dollars for reading this. Take it or leave it.
Oh, you already read the above sentence? Guess your life just started sucking, eh?
See the problem with doing the same in a EULA? You can't read it until you've already done the action it covers.
The usual way to prove to them that you bought the game is to send them photographs in JPEG format of the box, manual and CD key sticker.
Of course.
So, I'd just need to go buy a digital camera, take a picture, email it to them, then wait for someone to get around to opening my email (someone with no motivation to rush, as they would already have my money in pocket), and maybe they'll let me play?
Frickin' hilarious.
I would have liked to play this, but hades will get a tad chilly before I put up with BS like that.
Another poster had the right idea. When I buy a game, I expect it to just work, like any other game. I pop it in the CD drive, install it, and start playing. Any other steps involved and it goes back to the store.
About which... Quick hint - Many stores refuse to accept opened software returns, but depending on your state's "warrant of merchantability" laws, they usually can't legally refuse you. Nor can they limit you to accepting a replacement of the same product. If it doesn't work, end of story, they take it back. Funny how "state law" trumps "store policy" every time.
That sounds really expensive.
Expensive? I expect it would add perhaps $0.25 per light, so around $100 total for an average sized room, but consider the time saving in the long run compared with having to un-and-re-solder 400-600 LEDs every 5-10 years.
And, the current-limiting resistors aught to improve that lifetime somewhat (otherwise you'd tend to lose however large of an area you have on the same resistor all within a short period of the first dying, since the rest get to bear its load).
So, at least hardware-wise, I wouldn't call LED lighting cheaper than more conventional forms, at least until modular units enter the realm of commodity hardware. But in terms of TCO, I'd say it probably at least breaks even; And, what other lighting tech in even the same pricing ballpark could you literally chose over the entire RGB palette in terms of color and intensity?
The quad-colored LEDs looks particularly cool.
I agree... I had actually thought mostly in terms of the so-called "white" LEDs, as they seem to produce the most light for the buck, but since you mention it, I imagine it would look really nice to not only change the brightness, but the warmth/coolness of a room's lights as well.
And it sounds like you have an ideal situation to try something like this... As I said, it would require a fairly different way of thinking about a room's illumination, which for most people would mean a hefty remodelling (or new construction that takes it into consideration). Though I suppose one could retrofit a drop ceiling without too much extra expense.
If you seriously plan to try something like I suggested, I'll share two thoughts on the matter...
First, for wiring, I would go with a row/column addressing scheme. Unless you plan to try to actually use it as an ultra low resolution display, that would suffice for smooth color/intensity changes over the span of the room, for a lot less wires than individual addressing would take.
Second, consider each LED as disposeable and self contained... So ideally, each would have its own socket and current-limiting resitor. That way, you can replace them (they may live a very long time, but not forever) without needing to break out the soldering iron.
Although a big incentive may exist in using existing lighting fixtures, by making a standard point-source light, they totally miss the advantage of using LEDs as a light source. If you want a point source of light, you get more light for less energy by using a fluorescent.
Now, with a point source of light, you need it much brigher than the levels you want at, for example, a wall/floor 10 feet away. Just a simple matter of applying an inverse square law.
The big potential in LED's lies in allowing people to effectively get around the distance part of the same inverse square law... They tend to produce very directional light, and they cost little per unit (unlike these Luxeon monstrosities, which cost an arm and a leg).
Imagine, rather than a desk lamp or a ceiling light, that your entire ceiling has a grid of LEDs spaced every six inches. The combined light output measures far lower than a single incandescent (or fluorescent) bulb, but provides better overall illumination of the room. As a result, you have no glare, better light, and impressive electricity savings even over a fluorescent.
As much as I hate marketing buzzwords, the switch to LED-based lighting shift will have to coincide with a paradigm (ugh) shift in the entire way we think about room lighting. Only then will we really see why LEDs can provide superior illumination for less power. Trying to force a million fireflies into a bottle just pisses off the fireflies.
similarly, I've found that video signals seem to degrade when using anything longer than a 15 foot cable
At work, I have a split (regenerated) VGA signal going over a 50ft cable with no noticeable degradation.
The key - You want triple-shielded, with coax RGB lines. The 50ft cable I mention cost USD$65, but I consider it well worth it (then again, I didn't actually have to pay for it myself, so...).
Believe it or not, I've had bigger problems getting keyboard and mouse cables to extend beyond 20'... I have yet to find an equivalent quality PS2 cable to the VGA cable I describe.
Chip's challenge has been ported to Linux. You need to keep the original .dat file for
levels. The Linux implementation is called
Tile World. Enjoy.
;-)
Actually, I had asked that half in jest (I couldn't care less if they can't play a cheesy (if decently fun) little game anymore), but getting a serious answer... Well, thank you!
Looks like I might spend Thanksgiving doing an OS install.
Rather than asking what to put on to protect them, how about "What can I put on my family's computers so they won't notice when I change the OS to Linux"?
I have my parents already running OO and Moz, and they don't really use their computer for much else.
If not for that goddamned "Chip's Challenge", I could change them over to Linux today and they wouldn't even notice.
Anyone know of a Linux port/clone of CC? A Flash or SW version would suffice...
Now those in DC will try to get /. banned
because this is an evil, scary device that
terrorists might use for SOMETHING... ;->
;-)
Don't worry - If the recent election accomplished nothing else... "Those in DC" can't even parse the title, nevermind RTFM.
Unless they can download an official pirated MPAA cheat-sheet off one of the other "internets"...
Aww man... Now I almost feel bad for setting the "anonymous FTP password" on every browser I touch to "bgates@microsoft.com".
Probably not his real email address, but still, he apparently doesn't need any more help.
Hmm, What built-in drivers?
Did you read the very first sentence I wrote, or just skim for something with which to take issue?
Although your point may hold with Linux (though in that case, only a total idiot would buy hardware before verifying support), since the release of XP SP2, no major advances in printing technology have occurred (or at least, none have made it to consumer-level devices).
Consequently, someone who just needs a new printer has absolutely no reason to rush out and buy the latest and greatest (and otherwise identical to the other few hundred printers on the market) Lexmark printer. They can browse through the list of drivers included with their OS, and pick one that best meets their needs (which in most cases means "doesn't totally suck and costs the least"). Then they can buy that exact printer, and feel comfy knowing that they won't ever need to hunt down a driver disk for it, whether during initial install, or two years from now when they get a new PC.
Keep in mind that, for the majority, we talk about inkjet printers here anyway. Now, I've seen some really nice inkjet plotters, but for a desktop 8.5x11 printer, getting an inkjet means one of two things - One, a person needs color and can't afford a color laser; or two, quality, and speed means absolutely nothing and they bought the cheapest model at WallyWorld (most likely without even considering the TCO, which thanks to ink costing more than champagne, actually comes out quite a lot higher than the extra up-front cost of a low-end laser).
So while I will readily agree that exceptions to my points exist, they simply don't apply to the particular market we deal with here. Now, in fairness, I also don't expect that same market of essentially clueless consumers to have the foresight to research issues such as drivers, privacy concerns, and lifetime ink costs. On Slashdot, though, I do expect a little more - Perhaps not all readers count as hardcore geeks, but at least they all have a vague awareness of the issues involved.
DVDs are good enough for current games/tv and other media.
Who cares about using them for media? Ever had to keep reasonably up-to-date backups of a few hundred GB of frequently changing data?
Up to about 200GB tapes work well enough (though the drives cost more than the entire machine they back up, and the tapes alone cost as much as a cheap IDE HDD of the same size, and go quite a lot slower). Above 300GB, a "nightly backup" either requires multiple drives, an even more expensive tape robot (reasonable for backup up a few TB but when you only need two or three tapes, kinda a frivolous expense), or manual user intervention. Oy.
I would personally like to see 200GB CD-like disks hit the mainstream. CD robots don't cost too much, the media wouldn't (assuming similar consumer-level prices as current CD and DVD blanks) cost as much as the drive you need to backup, and perhaps even "normal" people would finally start keeping backups (I do so hate having to tell friends, when they ask me to help them fix their PCs, "well, I'll let you pick - Buy a new HDD and we'll slave your old one to recover your data, or say goodbye to your porn-oh-yeah-and-your-past-five-years'-tax-data) if they could do it all to a single disc. Heh, well, okay, I won't hold my breath on that last point.
When considering the purchase of new hardware, I start by picking something with support already built into my OS. With Linux, this often means the difference between it working or not. With Windows, this means the difference between having to run a dozen tiny third party apps that appear to do nothing at all (beyond take up memory, disk space, and as per this topic, spy on my activities).
It really amazes me when I go to help someone with their PC, and I see a list of startups dozens of entries long. When I see a system tray that stretches halfway across the screen. When their process list requires scrolling down for three pages to see them all.
For a good default policy, when you buy new hardware, throw away any software it came with. You don't need it.
Printers? They all speak PCL or PS (unless you very unwisely bought one that does not, which goes back to "check for driver support first"). End of story.
Scanners? Okay, once upon a time, these could take some work to get up and running. But anything less than five years old (and if older, you can get a better quality replacement literally for around $20)? Free hint - Plug it in, open MS Paint, and check out the "from scanner or camera" menu. Simply amazing, eh? Everything you need to scan, already built in.
Cameras? I had two of my users actually install the software for new cameras we got just this past week. Do you have any idea what a pain it took to remove that software, when they discovered that not only did they not need it, but they couldn't use it due to some vague, irregularly-reproduceable conflict with other software they actually do require? Anyway, point of story - After removing every last trace of Kodak's crappy software (including a very large application, a boot-time driver, and a service! Ack!), I demonstrated to my users that they just need to connect the USB cable and turn the camera on. Poof, all their pictures appear under "My Computer" as a removeable drive named similarly to their camera's model.
How about video cards? Okay, no argument that you would do well to run the newest actual video driver from the manufacturer, but do you have any idea how many people I've see that also have 3Dfx's task manager, NVcpl and Nwiz, or ATi's set of up to half a dozen useless crapware blobs, all loading at startup (I won't even go into startups such as MS Messenger, Office startup, Quicktime, and all the rest that suck memory at the whopping "savings" of 5 seconds the first time you run the relevant program)? Sad. Truly sad, that people let such software steal their memory and CPU cycles.
Okay, I'll grant that more exotic hardware may well require third party support. But that quite simply does not apply to 99% of machines out there.
So I suppose the moral of all this, to stay on-topic... Why do people install Lexmark's own drivers in the first place? Don't ! Use the built-in drivers, and you can get all the same functionality without the spyware or the bloatware.
Not to imply that Microsoft doesn't pull similar crap as Lexmark (time.windows.com, anyone? Which if you run your own NTP server, you will notice does not speak plain ol' NTP). But just because one company likes riding us bareback doesn't mean we need to spread for the rest.
I consider mailing lists a cute throwback to a much earlier time. Don't get me wrong, I subscribe to three or four myself. But every single one of them, I could just read on-line (and no, not all Yahoo lists, only one in fact).
To effectively eliminate spam, I would gladly visit a web page rather than have the same info appear in my mailbox.
Er... How does that differ from actual spam? I don't give two shakes of a rat's ass whether or not UCE comes from a "legitimate" source. I don't want it. Any of it. So, it really doesn't bother me that, for the benefit of no more "Free v1@6ra" email, I also lose out on "buy our totally legit ink cartridges" at the same time. I consider it a perk, not a problem.
Okay, someone explain to me why this seems either redundant or a troll? The article asked a question, no one else had answered it, so I did.
I don't normally bitch about moderation, but really, WFT? I didn't say anything bad about Apple, or discuss politics. I responded to a question the original poster could have answered himself, had he bothered reading the text at the very link he gave!
Sad, people.
From your own link:
Any more questions?
Oh and God knows we wouldn't have cars were it not for nut jobs who want everything to be 8,000,000,000 years old.
Actually, they want it between 12 and 20 billion years, but otherwise correct - We wouldn't have cars if not for "nutjobs" like Copernicus ("Hey, check out this crackpot, he wants the Sun to orbit the Earth... Hah, why don't we just make the entire Crystal Sphere orbit my left pinky-toe?"), Kepler ("Ellipses? How about Rectangles? Or cardioids? Or the outline of England with a side-trip to the Isle of Man?"), and others of a similar disposition.
Science doesn't have all the answers. But you can't have the benefits of it while ignoring significant portions of the answers it does have. Did evolution happen exactly as the most popular theories claim? Perhaps not. But has the Earth existed for longer than 6000 years? No-brainer: YES.
Actually, it is extra potent since you get the added benefit of putting all the herbacide that the plant has absorbed right up your nose!
I'll give this one "funny", but certainly not "insightful".
Glyphosate has very close to no effect in humans, acting by inhibiting EPSP synthase (which mammals do not have).
Or, put another way, you can safely use it to kill weeds in your vegetable garden.
Please, please, please encourage all of your liberal buddies to push this agenda hard.
;-)
You might want to keep in mind the overall trend of tax money sources and destinations...
To an astonishing degree (shocked the hell out of me when I found this out), tax money flows out of the blue states, and into the red ones.
So yeah, you can bet that I'll push that agenda amongst all my "liberal buddies", and try my best to cut all you damned red leeches off blue-funded welfare.
But look at the bright side... Companies in blue states might grace your sad red economic state ("in the red"... tee-hee) with a few bucks from outsourcing. Now go make me some Nikes, boy!
Oh, and remember -- all of the nuclear weapons are in "red" states.
But, for balance, all the engineers capable of maintaining them live (or at least got their education) in the blue states. So enjoy them, until they rot and pollute your groundwater, finally eliminating the vast tracts of redness via radiation-induced infertility.
Have a nice day.
Sorry. You don't sound like a very qualified support person.
It takes less than an hour to reinstall Windows.
It (can) take considerably more than an hour to track down whatever stupid mistake user-X made (or get them to admit they did something wrong, with enough detail to track it down), assuming they broke something non-trivial.
There are 'boardswapping drones' in hardware repair, and have been since the minicomputer era.
You incorrectly make the mistake of assuming that my choosing to reinstall Windows rather than waste more time repairing it means I could not repair it, if I so wished. If that held true, I would actually agree with you. But my goal in doing my job involves only getting the job done in the most efficient manner possible. I consider taking longer than necessary to do a job nothing more than egotistical self entertainment. Yes, fixing a machine the "right" way gives almost a sort of thrill-of-the-hunt feeling... I don't get paid to hunt, I get paid for results.
I won't say 'beneath contempt' because perhaps you just haven't had enough training.
I will. "Beneath contempt". Perhaps you get paid hourly rather than on salary... As for myself (and my employer, but I consider that the less relevant point), the less time it takes me to fix something, the more time I have to do my actual job.