If you are going to claim that conservation does nothing good, back it up with sources.
Conservation of a finite resource is only going to extend the time until the finite resource is expended completely.
Concerning oil reserves, I've heard that we were going to run out in 2020 and other dates that are only consistent in being in a year greater than the current year. I feel pretty comfortable that we can get by in life without fossil fuels. We did it before they were discovered, and I think we can use something else.
Personally, I'm confused as to the real reasons for the conservation effort by our government, especially W's fondness of helping fellow oil people (yes, I'm completely ignorant of this proposal by choice).
Now conservation of things like forests by keeping people out of them for an indefinite amount of time seems to work, but conserving something with a known finite time limit of supply seems a little silly.
You're looking at things backwards. Time zones make it easier to deal with this issue
I don't think its backwards. Its the way UNIX does it, and it works well. The system keeps time by GMT in seconds since 1970, the time is reported (usually) as some localtime offset of GMT, but the _real_ time is always GMT. I've used this feature when I was working on a system that was 4 timezones away from me, and it was driving me bonkers to see file timestamps that were "current", but 4 hours off of my local time. I changed my TZ environment variable to my timezone, and now everything is in times that make sense to me.
Side note: If you do this, be careful. I used to do 'sudo/etc/init.d/apache restart' or stop/start, and my TZ variable got inherited by apache, and started logging web traffic in another timezone, which was confusing for a bunch of people. I learned something by it though:)
Some people consider 10 or 20 years ancient, and so do I concerning some things, but when I'm talking about stonehenge and pyramids, I don't consider middle ages ancient, but rather middle ages.
Just because something isn't made of stone and doesn't take more than 80 years to complete doesn't mean that some of the things built in the last 500 years aren't spectacular human achievements - things like the moon landing or the internet show that given enough people with enough incentive, people can do just about anything.
People seem to have a difficulty in convincing other people to devote their entire lives to something that is beyond their lifetime. The only exception might be a military person, but even then its not like they are working for a concrete goal like completing a structure, its more soft like things like "protecting freedom", "protecting our way of life", and similar.
Sure going to the moon was impressive in 1969, and for a few launches after that. So was flying in an airplane at one time. So was flying an airplane across the Atlantic ocean. Unless someone dies or there is some other problem with a flight, a normal flight or a flight across the ocean is not very interesting to people. Going back to the moon the next time would be as nostalgic as a reunion concert or something, but not too terribly exciting.
My point was that we simply do not work on projects that last longer than lifetimes anymore. I don't really care one way or another. I'd prefer if people in the electronics field spent more time with QA than anything at the time. Its just an observation how people's perspective has gotten a little shorter over the years.
I always give a snort when I read the PR about how much better SCO UNIX is. None of my customers run it anymore. It's just too much trouble, even compared to Windows.
Thats funny, almost as funny as this piece from Darl's letter:
But since SCO owns the UNIX operating system and it made up 95 percent of our company's revenue, and we were getting strong demand from customers for a next generation version of UNIX, that's where we concentrated our efforts.
I didn't really know SCO had any customers. I've heard that some people are simply stuck with SCO for now because they made some decision to go with it at some time, and its difficult to migrate off of the platform right now, but real customers? Who in their right mind would use SCO?
Even funnier is:
In June, we released SCO OpenServer 6, which was a multi-year, multi-million dollar development effort that resulted in a product that goes beyond simply leveling the playing field with Linux.
So, they are just now beyond a level playing field with a clearly inferior product. OK.
He continues with an ordered list (Every one mentions Linux, so Linux must be a threat here somewhere):
1) SCO is cheaper than Linux. I've paid for Linux support from RedHat. I will no longer do this. Its a waste of money. When I was trying to figure out why their "enterprise" OS could not handle a block device over 1TB, and there was no solution, I figured out that paying for support was worthless. I've never needed support for linux over the past 10 years, I don't see where I would need it in the future. Linux works, and works well for servers on a slew of platforms. SCO and many other OSes simply don't work on many, if any platforms besides the x86 platform.
2) SCO has a superior kernel. Maybe. Aside from silly issues like hardcoded numbers for things like the number of open files by a process and the block device limit I've hit, I've never had a problem with a Linux kernel ever. Its as good as it needs to be. When I ran out of file descripters, I used a beta kernel until 2.2 was released with the fix in it (2.1.125 I believe. There was one stable kernel around that point of the 2.1 series. It worked well in production. The block device thing was fixed by other distro's, including RH9 at the time, but not RedHat's "enterprise" release.
3) OpenServer has better security. Maybe, maybe not. I've had no issues with Linux security over the years, but SCO could be more secure. If security is such a big issue for you, you probably will not run Linux or SCO.
4) SCO has a customer driven roadmap. Again, what customers? Linux is made by its customers.
5) SCO is more backwards compatible. I thought Microsoft had that job (Can't you still run DOS applications?) No real comment. I've never had issues, but then again if it ain't broke... don't "upgrade" and break it...
6) Its hard to sum this up, but it sounds like there is less administration on a SCO box than a Linux box. Its possible. I get pissed off at dependancy hell, but I think administrating a slew of Linux boxes is not that tough. From what I've learned today, maybe this has changed, but SCO used to require a recompile of the kernel to change its hostname. Provided this was recently fixed, it doesn't sound like SCO has come from a plug-n-play mentality.
7) SCO has a warrantee, Linux does not. OK. Score one for SCO _today_. Once SCO is out of business, I guess you can frame your warrantee, and stare at it when not trying to find people to port your apps to something else (probably Linux).
8) SCO won't fork and they have a unified code that is really UNIX.
OK. If that is a real benefit, then good for SCO. Other computer companies can change architectures, and stay in business. They can break stuff with the gentle application of a service pack and stay in business. This could be a niche market for somebody.
9) SCO is _the_ known reliable UNIX. Solaris is reliable. Linux is reliabl
Not only does it show that you have skill, but it shows that you are self-motivated and enjoy your field.
I have found this to be true as well.
I've never had a CS class or any formal training in computers, but I have used my experience with Linux and volunteer projects in order to secure a decent career in the field. Unfortunately, it was not the easier, softer way, and I believe that it has cost me a decent amount because I'm in the lowest percentile as far as a sysadmin gets paid, but I (individually) make more than an average household does in my area, and am more or less fine financially.
In other words, OSS is a good way for you to break the cache-22 of job hiring, in which you need experience to get a job and you need a job to get experience. OSS projects are much closer to real experience than anything you do in college.
Yes it is. I have yet to of met a recent CS graduate that was worthy of much in the computer field by their training alone. I'm not saying they don't exist, but if someone only does whatever small projects are required in class, are good for basic programming skills like indentation, translating compiler errors, etc, etc.
Ideology is the basis of everything. Sex is good because its fundamentally wired in our brains, and the supply is limited, yet the demand is great. Religion is fading as an ideology because many of the mysteries that religions explain are explained by science. In the US, Christianity's only value left is in "family values" and holy wars against hubris sins like sex and drugs (eg, alcohol).
You've got to instill in people that they need something that they don't have now, otherwise "progress" stops. If one is completely happy and satiated, they will not want or do anything different.
I haven't known of a structure like stonehenge or the pyramids that has been built in some time. In fact, I don't know of a single human achievement since ancient times that has taken more than a lifetime's worth of time to complete.
If you do not think that spy satellites are not weapons you are just nuts.
OK, I'm nuts. I consider a weapon something that destroys stuff. I've never considered a periscope or binoculars weapons. Sure, aided vision can be used a a tactic in defense just like weather information, but I don't consider it a weapon.
Being that we spend 3 to 10 times any other country budgets for defense (http://www.wanttoknow.info/usmilitaryspending) and most of the top 10 spenders our our allies as well, I have yet to figure out who we are defending ourselves against (or why we don't defend our border or airspace with said funds). Since WWII, it seems to be necessary for one reason or another to have some kind of military offensive against a remote country. It seems economically necessary or at least economically "a good thing(tm)" to continue this kind of behavior at this time. I would not be employed where I am now if it was not for defense spending, and the military rich area that I live in would be without something like 50% of its jobs without the military and the trickle down businesses and industry that depend on money from defense spending.
The bully on the block thing only works when you are the bully, so I guess overspending on defense is worthwhile, and even with the current level of spending, I believe its still less than 10% of the total US government budget, which seems like a reasonable percentage, but a bit excessive when you look at the military capabilities of others.
I bet if enough people started doing this, the manufacturers would relent on ink cartridge prices.
I've never bought one of the newer disposable inkjets, but I've heard that they only come with a drop of ink to begin with. If people start doing this, they will either put less ink in the printer, or none at all.
However, most people aren't that good at math. They assume that $50 is always << $400, and cannot justify spending the extra $350 for a printer that 1) works 2) doesn't need a chronic watering of expensive ink 3) the toner does not dry up. I can't justify spending any money for printing something at home, I'll print at work if necessary the 1 to 2 times a year I need something on paper.
If I would do digital photography, I would send/take the pictures to a professional on a CD. I already have the instant gratification of viewing the picture on the screen. A day to a week to have a glossy print on good paper with a professional printer seems more than reasonable to me if I want one.
BTW, what color laser did you get for $400?
I've never heard of one that cheap (never looked either), but that seems more than a reasonable price to pay for a color laser printer, if not too good.
When is Cisco, D-Link, Netgear, going to learn to turn on encryption by default?
It still astounds me that computers seem to halve people's intelligence. WhatisWEPgoingtoget you?
Yes, I just karma whored a google search for "WEP encryption break".
Also, I don't use WEP at home, nor do I use any kind of encryption by default at work for our ethernet. In fact, I've only heard of things that are by default encrypted like interbank communication, and I would assume the military might use some encryption between some links, but its not universal.
So please, WAP manufactures, start doing what none of us already do on a daily basis. It will improve security.
But all the Robotic news seems to be coming out of Japan lately, is anything being done in the US that compares?
1 out of every 2 robots in the world are already in Japan. I guess they have a head start. Societies are different. We allow Mexicans to come into this country in lieu of robotic research. Japan has a much tighter immigration policy.
No, this is not a slam against Mexicans. Its been said publicly by Bush that we like illegal aliens for cheap labor (maybe other Presidents as well).
"Terrorists" are the best artificial "enemies" as of yet.
No borders, no clear agenda, few if any known members, and "scary" by definition.
The only downside to them, is that they need to hit us on our soil every once and a while to perpetuate the fear. I'm sure most people are getting numb to the news reports in other countries.
My little brother (Marine sniper) found terrorist hideouts complete with tortured Iraqis chained to bloddy walls and CDROMs laying around with.wmvs of said torture. Don't know about connectivity. Sure it was sneakernet.
Just curious. Who were the terrorists leaving these CDROMs laying around? Sounds familiar.
The WRTG54G is not that good. At least older models. Mine overheated, which I've read is common, and I replaced it with an SMC or something. I've actually have read that the WRTG line was actually a rebranded Chinese product, and not a real Cisco or Linksys product.
Perhaps it would be better to say that you despise the way things are typically sold?
Maybe better, but I guess I think its better to blame people vs methods. Its much safer to assume that 100% of the people are doing the despised method than not. Being that part of the method is pleasantness, deception, half-truths, and other fun stuff like cold calls, its simply just easier for me to view these people as people in sales that do sales because they can't do anything else.
Also, from a psychological standpoint, salesmen work on random reinforcement, which is the strongest reinforcement that there is. A salesman never knows when they will get rewarded with a sale, and they never know the exact amount of reinforcement from a sale (would you like to pay extra for an extended warrantee that safely covers your product during the lowpoint of the bathtub curve?)
Sure, there may be exceptions. I'm sure there are. But its annoying to go through a salesman to buy something that you already want to buy in the first place.
Even if there were honest and non-annoying salesmen, again, its much safer to assume the opposite, and its truer to reality.
I thought that there were no facts, only theories that are accepted by many until it is disproved or a better theory comes around. The only fact that I know of is that I don't know of any facts. What facts might there be? Newton's laws? They only seem to work under very specific conditions because they break down at very fast speeds and on the subatomic scale.
Arguing from ignorance is the only possible creationist justification.
Its more fun that way.
I find it funny that so many people claim that they believe in evolution, yet they behave 180 degrees differently.
If people believed in evolution, then natural selection is where its at. So, when people get sick or their organs are not sufficient, they change these things the best they can and allow weak inferior human animals to breed more weak and inferior animals.
Males have become so selectively breed to be large, that cesarian births are almost normal because babies cannot fit out of mothers anymore. Eyesight, except for blindness, has no regards for selective breeding. Some people wear glasses that don't even need corrective vision because it looks cool. The list could go on.
Oh, so those "paid endorsement" people actually use things like that term life insurance and whatnot?
You cannot say "this medication is approved by doctors" if by "doctors" you mean some English professors who have Ph.D.s... that would be misleading.
Although it may be "legal", I've seen some snakeoil salesmen on TV that were PhDs (supposedly, maybe from one of those email buy a PhD cheap programs).
Basically, I've learned that there is an inverse relationship between quality of product and advertising/marketing. Good stuff simply does not need that much external visibility.
If I have a brick and mortar store and an unsatisfied customer enters my store and begins passing out fliers and berating my business with a megaphone, INSIDE MY STORE, do you think that's acceptable?
Nah, just keep doing what pissed off that customer and watch that one customer turn into two, then three, etc.
Overall, I have found that the "customer is always right" go away and be replaced with "the dollar is always right".
I wish there was a more discriminating retailers in the electronics world that only sold quality products. Just imagine not having to return every other purchase, and having stuff just work. What a concept.
You should *NEVER* trust a review on a commerce site. That goes without saying. Always go to an independant source that doesn't have a bias. That's like going to a car dealership and asking the dealer their honest opinion on the car in the window. Stupid.
Basically, NEVER trust someone selling something -- except with your money?!?!
I utterly despise sales people, or basically anybody that directly works for money. To me, my integrity is worth more than $10, $20, or even $1,000, but I guess that is why I'm not "rich" or whatever.
I will refrain from wishing that it should be allowable to permanently stop people from doing things like this, because its very unpopular here on slashdot.
Whats wrong with Newegg? I have always found that they have competitive prices, and have always taken care of any problems I have had. Any insight is welcome.
I bought a Seagate drive that did not work from Newegg. They happily refunded my money after I paid them 50 dollars plus shipping cost plus the time it took me to do it.
I partly bought the drive based on all of the positive reviews at Newegg. After reading at Amazon's customer feedback section about how _none_ of the Seagate 300 or 400 gig drives work due to a bug in the firmware on the device, and hearing stories about how people had RMAed 3 of them, and all 3 were bad. I figured it was not worth the effort to return the drive in order to get a series of other broken ones, so I cut my losses.
I left a 0 or 1 star, whichever was lowest for the drive and a comment that I had to prune to fit within their character limit.
Now there is an almost negative comment that said that the drive was "pocking loudly". My experience was that the drive under heavy concurrent read and write use would go "klunk!" and then freeze. That is consistent with the comments on Amazon.
I then find out from a random phone call from Seagate that they fixed their firmware, and their harddrives can now store and retrieve data!!
I really wanted the disk space, so I call Newegg and asked them if there was any way I can be assured that if I were to buy another one of these drives that it would be a working one. They said No. They sell equipment as it comes shipped to them. Whether the stuff works or not is my problem.
With the cost of the RMA, the skewed comment feedbacks, and the lack of assurance that I am buying a quality product, I see no reason to ever do business with them again. I can get computer junk anywhere. I went on the recommendation from people here on/., but my experience was not a good one, and there is so much competition, I just don't see any compelling reason to use them again.
Granted, this may have been a completely isolated incident, but it was bad enough. I've learned that Amazon's feedback system appears to be the most candid and accurate, and I will be using that, and probably shopping from them or one of their partners from now on. This is always subject to change...
The mail servers were crashing and their users were specifically complaining about the mails in question.
Spam is getting to be such a problem, that real protected speech is becoming hindered. Keep in mind that this is a mass mail that was on order of 59,000 mails. I'm under the illusion that I am entitled to have free speech, but I don't feel as though whatever I feel like saying should be sent to every inbox in the world every time I think of something.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are going to claim that conservation does nothing good, back it up with sources.
Conservation of a finite resource is only going to extend the time until the finite resource is expended completely.
Concerning oil reserves, I've heard that we were going to run out in 2020 and other dates that are only consistent in being in a year greater than the current year. I feel pretty comfortable that we can get by in life without fossil fuels. We did it before they were discovered, and I think we can use something else.
Personally, I'm confused as to the real reasons for the conservation effort by our government, especially W's fondness of helping fellow oil people (yes, I'm completely ignorant of this proposal by choice).
Now conservation of things like forests by keeping people out of them for an indefinite amount of time seems to work, but conserving something with a known finite time limit of supply seems a little silly.
we can't get our President to even mention the word conservation
Conservation is 4 syllables. Try "save" or "goat" or something a little more simple.
You're looking at things backwards. Time zones make it easier to deal with this issue
/etc/init.d/apache restart' or stop/start, and my TZ variable got inherited by apache, and started logging web traffic in another timezone, which was confusing for a bunch of people. I learned something by it though :)
I don't think its backwards. Its the way UNIX does it, and it works well. The system keeps time by GMT in seconds since 1970, the time is reported (usually) as some localtime offset of GMT, but the _real_ time is always GMT. I've used this feature when I was working on a system that was 4 timezones away from me, and it was driving me bonkers to see file timestamps that were "current", but 4 hours off of my local time. I changed my TZ environment variable to my timezone, and now everything is in times that make sense to me.
Side note: If you do this, be careful. I used to do 'sudo
Define ancient? Do middle ages cathedrals count?
Some people consider 10 or 20 years ancient, and so do I concerning some things, but when I'm talking about stonehenge and pyramids, I don't consider middle ages ancient, but rather middle ages.
Just because something isn't made of stone and doesn't take more than 80 years to complete doesn't mean that some of the things built in the last 500 years aren't spectacular human achievements - things like the moon landing or the internet show that given enough people with enough incentive, people can do just about anything.
People seem to have a difficulty in convincing other people to devote their entire lives to something that is beyond their lifetime. The only exception might be a military person, but even then its not like they are working for a concrete goal like completing a structure, its more soft like things like "protecting freedom", "protecting our way of life", and similar.
Sure going to the moon was impressive in 1969, and for a few launches after that. So was flying in an airplane at one time. So was flying an airplane across the Atlantic ocean. Unless someone dies or there is some other problem with a flight, a normal flight or a flight across the ocean is not very interesting to people. Going back to the moon the next time would be as nostalgic as a reunion concert or something, but not too terribly exciting.
My point was that we simply do not work on projects that last longer than lifetimes anymore. I don't really care one way or another. I'd prefer if people in the electronics field spent more time with QA than anything at the time. Its just an observation how people's perspective has gotten a little shorter over the years.
I always give a snort when I read the PR about how much better SCO UNIX is. None of my customers run it anymore. It's just too much trouble, even compared to Windows.
Thats funny, almost as funny as this piece from Darl's letter:
But since SCO owns the UNIX operating system and it made up 95 percent of our company's revenue, and we were getting strong demand from customers for a next generation version of UNIX, that's where we concentrated our efforts.
I didn't really know SCO had any customers. I've heard that some people are simply stuck with SCO for now because they made some decision to go with it at some time, and its difficult to migrate off of the platform right now, but real customers? Who in their right mind would use SCO?
Even funnier is:
In June, we released SCO OpenServer 6, which was a multi-year, multi-million dollar development effort that resulted in a product that goes beyond simply leveling the playing field with Linux.
So, they are just now beyond a level playing field with a clearly inferior product. OK.
He continues with an ordered list (Every one mentions Linux, so Linux must be a threat here somewhere):
1) SCO is cheaper than Linux. I've paid for Linux support from RedHat. I will no longer do this. Its a waste of money. When I was trying to figure out why their "enterprise" OS could not handle a block device over 1TB, and there was no solution, I figured out that paying for support was worthless. I've never needed support for linux over the past 10 years, I don't see where I would need it in the future. Linux works, and works well for servers on a slew of platforms. SCO and many other OSes simply don't work on many, if any platforms besides the x86 platform.
2) SCO has a superior kernel. Maybe. Aside from silly issues like hardcoded numbers for things like the number of open files by a process and the block device limit I've hit, I've never had a problem with a Linux kernel ever. Its as good as it needs to be. When I ran out of file descripters, I used a beta kernel until 2.2 was released with the fix in it (2.1.125 I believe. There was one stable kernel around that point of the 2.1 series. It worked well in production. The block device thing was fixed by other distro's, including RH9 at the time, but not RedHat's "enterprise" release.
3) OpenServer has better security. Maybe, maybe not. I've had no issues with Linux security over the years, but SCO could be more secure. If security is such a big issue for you, you probably will not run Linux or SCO.
4) SCO has a customer driven roadmap. Again, what customers? Linux is made by its customers.
5) SCO is more backwards compatible. I thought Microsoft had that job (Can't you still run DOS applications?) No real comment. I've never had issues, but then again if it ain't broke... don't "upgrade" and break it...
6) Its hard to sum this up, but it sounds like there is less administration on a SCO box than a Linux box. Its possible. I get pissed off at dependancy hell, but I think administrating a slew of Linux boxes is not that tough. From what I've learned today, maybe this has changed, but SCO used to require a recompile of the kernel to change its hostname. Provided this was recently fixed, it doesn't sound like SCO has come from a plug-n-play mentality.
7) SCO has a warrantee, Linux does not. OK. Score one for SCO _today_. Once SCO is out of business, I guess you can frame your warrantee, and stare at it when not trying to find people to port your apps to something else (probably Linux).
8) SCO won't fork and they have a unified code that is really UNIX.
OK. If that is a real benefit, then good for SCO. Other computer companies can change architectures, and stay in business. They can break stuff with the gentle application of a service pack and stay in business. This could be a niche market for somebody.
9) SCO is _the_ known reliable UNIX. Solaris is reliable. Linux is reliabl
Not only does it show that you have skill, but it shows that you are self-motivated and enjoy your field.
I have found this to be true as well.
I've never had a CS class or any formal training in computers, but I have used my experience with Linux and volunteer projects in order to secure a decent career in the field. Unfortunately, it was not the easier, softer way, and I believe that it has cost me a decent amount because I'm in the lowest percentile as far as a sysadmin gets paid, but I (individually) make more than an average household does in my area, and am more or less fine financially.
In other words, OSS is a good way for you to break the cache-22 of job hiring, in which you need experience to get a job and you need a job to get experience. OSS projects are much closer to real experience than anything you do in college.
Yes it is. I have yet to of met a recent CS graduate that was worthy of much in the computer field by their training alone. I'm not saying they don't exist, but if someone only does whatever small projects are required in class, are good for basic programming skills like indentation, translating compiler errors, etc, etc.
*) Ideology
Ideology is the basis of everything. Sex is good because its fundamentally wired in our brains, and the supply is limited, yet the demand is great. Religion is fading as an ideology because many of the mysteries that religions explain are explained by science. In the US, Christianity's only value left is in "family values" and holy wars against hubris sins like sex and drugs (eg, alcohol).
You've got to instill in people that they need something that they don't have now, otherwise "progress" stops. If one is completely happy and satiated, they will not want or do anything different.
I haven't known of a structure like stonehenge or the pyramids that has been built in some time. In fact, I don't know of a single human achievement since ancient times that has taken more than a lifetime's worth of time to complete.
If you do not think that spy satellites are not weapons you are just nuts.
OK, I'm nuts. I consider a weapon something that destroys stuff. I've never considered a periscope or binoculars weapons. Sure, aided vision can be used a a tactic in defense just like weather information, but I don't consider it a weapon.
Being that we spend 3 to 10 times any other country budgets for defense (http://www.wanttoknow.info/usmilitaryspending) and most of the top 10 spenders our our allies as well, I have yet to figure out who we are defending ourselves against (or why we don't defend our border or airspace with said funds). Since WWII, it seems to be necessary for one reason or another to have some kind of military offensive against a remote country. It seems economically necessary or at least economically "a good thing(tm)" to continue this kind of behavior at this time. I would not be employed where I am now if it was not for defense spending, and the military rich area that I live in would be without something like 50% of its jobs without the military and the trickle down businesses and industry that depend on money from defense spending.
The bully on the block thing only works when you are the bully, so I guess overspending on defense is worthwhile, and even with the current level of spending, I believe its still less than 10% of the total US government budget, which seems like a reasonable percentage, but a bit excessive when you look at the military capabilities of others.
I bet if enough people started doing this, the manufacturers would relent on ink cartridge prices.
I've never bought one of the newer disposable inkjets, but I've heard that they only come with a drop of ink to begin with. If people start doing this, they will either put less ink in the printer, or none at all.
However, most people aren't that good at math. They assume that $50 is always << $400, and cannot justify spending the extra $350 for a printer that 1) works 2) doesn't need a chronic watering of expensive ink 3) the toner does not dry up. I can't justify spending any money for printing something at home, I'll print at work if necessary the 1 to 2 times a year I need something on paper.
If I would do digital photography, I would send/take the pictures to a professional on a CD. I already have the instant gratification of viewing the picture on the screen. A day to a week to have a glossy print on good paper with a professional printer seems more than reasonable to me if I want one.
BTW, what color laser did you get for $400?
I've never heard of one that cheap (never looked either), but that seems more than a reasonable price to pay for a color laser printer, if not too good.
When is Cisco, D-Link, Netgear, going to learn to turn on encryption by default?
It still astounds me that computers seem to halve people's intelligence. What is WEP going to get you?
Yes, I just karma whored a google search for "WEP encryption break".
Also, I don't use WEP at home, nor do I use any kind of encryption by default at work for our ethernet. In fact, I've only heard of things that are by default encrypted like interbank communication, and I would assume the military might use some encryption between some links, but its not universal.
So please, WAP manufactures, start doing what none of us already do on a daily basis. It will improve security.
But all the Robotic news seems to be coming out of Japan lately, is anything being done in the US that compares?
1 out of every 2 robots in the world are already in Japan. I guess they have a head start. Societies are different. We allow Mexicans to come into this country in lieu of robotic research. Japan has a much tighter immigration policy.
No, this is not a slam against Mexicans. Its been said publicly by Bush that we like illegal aliens for cheap labor (maybe other Presidents as well).
"Terrorists" are the best artificial "enemies" as of yet.
No borders, no clear agenda, few if any known members, and "scary" by definition.
The only downside to them, is that they need to hit us on our soil every once and a while to perpetuate the fear. I'm sure most people are getting numb to the news reports in other countries.
My little brother (Marine sniper) found terrorist hideouts complete with tortured Iraqis chained to bloddy walls and CDROMs laying around with .wmvs of said torture. Don't know about connectivity. Sure it was sneakernet.
Just curious. Who were the terrorists leaving these CDROMs laying around? Sounds familiar.
And considering that 8 or 9 of the 19 named "suicide" bombers are still alive, those that don't have their PhDs can get them as well.
The WRTG54G is not that good. At least older models. Mine overheated, which I've read is common, and I replaced it with an SMC or something. I've actually have read that the WRTG line was actually a rebranded Chinese product, and not a real Cisco or Linksys product.
Perhaps it would be better to say that you despise the way things are typically sold?
Maybe better, but I guess I think its better to blame people vs methods. Its much safer to assume that 100% of the people are doing the despised method than not. Being that part of the method is pleasantness, deception, half-truths, and other fun stuff like cold calls, its simply just easier for me to view these people as people in sales that do sales because they can't do anything else.
Also, from a psychological standpoint, salesmen work on random reinforcement, which is the strongest reinforcement that there is. A salesman never knows when they will get rewarded with a sale, and they never know the exact amount of reinforcement from a sale (would you like to pay extra for an extended warrantee that safely covers your product during the lowpoint of the bathtub curve?)
Sure, there may be exceptions. I'm sure there are. But its annoying to go through a salesman to buy something that you already want to buy in the first place.
Even if there were honest and non-annoying salesmen, again, its much safer to assume the opposite, and its truer to reality.
There is no faith in science, only fact.
I thought that there were no facts, only theories that are accepted by many until it is disproved or a better theory comes around. The only fact that I know of is that I don't know of any facts. What facts might there be? Newton's laws? They only seem to work under very specific conditions because they break down at very fast speeds and on the subatomic scale.
Arguing from ignorance is the only possible creationist justification.
Its more fun that way.
I find it funny that so many people claim that they believe in evolution, yet they behave 180 degrees differently.
If people believed in evolution, then natural selection is where its at. So, when people get sick or their organs are not sufficient, they change these things the best they can and allow weak inferior human animals to breed more weak and inferior animals.
Males have become so selectively breed to be large, that cesarian births are almost normal because babies cannot fit out of mothers anymore. Eyesight, except for blindness, has no regards for selective breeding. Some people wear glasses that don't even need corrective vision because it looks cool. The list could go on.
These are opposing views to what is commonly accepted as fact, but they are typically not presented in a classroom because they lack credibility.
There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion. -- Jeffrey Goines in 12 Monkeys, adapted from a French book.
That seems to be one of the truest things ever said in my book.
Oh, so those "paid endorsement" people actually use things like that term life insurance and whatnot?
You cannot say "this medication is approved by doctors" if by "doctors" you mean some English professors who have Ph.D.s
Although it may be "legal", I've seen some snakeoil salesmen on TV that were PhDs (supposedly, maybe from one of those email buy a PhD cheap programs).
Basically, I've learned that there is an inverse relationship between quality of product and advertising/marketing. Good stuff simply does not need that much external visibility.
"Don't base your purchasing decision solely on these reviews."
Yes, they never lie and they are always right.
Being honest about being dishonest still isn't very honest.
If I have a brick and mortar store and an unsatisfied customer enters my store and begins passing out fliers and berating my business with a megaphone, INSIDE MY STORE, do you think that's acceptable?
Nah, just keep doing what pissed off that customer and watch that one customer turn into two, then three, etc.
Overall, I have found that the "customer is always right" go away and be replaced with "the dollar is always right".
I wish there was a more discriminating retailers in the electronics world that only sold quality products. Just imagine not having to return every other purchase, and having stuff just work. What a concept.
You should *NEVER* trust a review on a commerce site. That goes without saying. Always go to an independant source that doesn't have a bias. That's like going to a car dealership and asking the dealer their honest opinion on the car in the window. Stupid.
Basically, NEVER trust someone selling something -- except with your money?!?!
I utterly despise sales people, or basically anybody that directly works for money. To me, my integrity is worth more than $10, $20, or even $1,000, but I guess that is why I'm not "rich" or whatever.
I will refrain from wishing that it should be allowable to permanently stop people from doing things like this, because its very unpopular here on slashdot.
Whats wrong with Newegg? I have always found that they have competitive prices, and have always taken care of any problems I have had. Any insight is welcome.
2 E16822154410
/., but my experience was not a good one, and there is so much competition, I just don't see any compelling reason to use them again.
I bought a Seagate drive that did not work from Newegg. They happily refunded my money after I paid them 50 dollars plus shipping cost plus the time it took me to do it.
I partly bought the drive based on all of the positive reviews at Newegg. After reading at Amazon's customer feedback section about how _none_ of the Seagate 300 or 400 gig drives work due to a bug in the firmware on the device, and hearing stories about how people had RMAed 3 of them, and all 3 were bad. I figured it was not worth the effort to return the drive in order to get a series of other broken ones, so I cut my losses.
I left a 0 or 1 star, whichever was lowest for the drive and a comment that I had to prune to fit within their character limit.
Over time, the rating of these drives went from 4+ to 5 down to something like 1.5, which appears to be back up to 3 now. Check for yourself: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N8
Now there is an almost negative comment that said that the drive was "pocking loudly". My experience was that the drive under heavy concurrent read and write use would go "klunk!" and then freeze. That is consistent with the comments on Amazon.
I then find out from a random phone call from Seagate that they fixed their firmware, and their harddrives can now store and retrieve data!!
I really wanted the disk space, so I call Newegg and asked them if there was any way I can be assured that if I were to buy another one of these drives that it would be a working one. They said No. They sell equipment as it comes shipped to them. Whether the stuff works or not is my problem.
With the cost of the RMA, the skewed comment feedbacks, and the lack of assurance that I am buying a quality product, I see no reason to ever do business with them again. I can get computer junk anywhere. I went on the recommendation from people here on
Granted, this may have been a completely isolated incident, but it was bad enough. I've learned that Amazon's feedback system appears to be the most candid and accurate, and I will be using that, and probably shopping from them or one of their partners from now on. This is always subject to change...
The mail servers were crashing and their users were specifically complaining about the mails in question.
Spam is getting to be such a problem, that real protected speech is becoming hindered. Keep in mind that this is a mass mail that was on order of 59,000 mails. I'm under the illusion that I am entitled to have free speech, but I don't feel as though whatever I feel like saying should be sent to every inbox in the world every time I think of something.
I post to slashdot instead