Linux is free, but I paid for Windows. Why? Several apps I use are available on Windows but not Linux.
It is highly unlikely that developers would begin writing applications for another operating system than Windows. This is the problem for Linux, and will be even more of a problem with X operating system, no matter how decent an OS it is.
Let's just hope that when the invisible woman arrives, she's played more convincingly then Jessica Alba.
Someone needs remedial English to learn the difference between 'then' and 'than'. While one can understand the sentence, it is incorrectly structured. Better, it would read, "Let's just hope that when the invisible woman arrives, she's portrayed more convincingly at that time than by Jessica Alba." Or, "Jessica Alba is hot and should never be invisible."
Also why does MySpace have it's data center in LA? With all the fiber running around now I expect to see data centers moving to more rual areas with cheaper power and land. Doesn't LA have expensive land, power, and earthquakes, and high cost of living? It would seem to me that there are many places better suited for a datacenter. I mean it isn't like you have to have your developers next to your servers.
You will always need techs and engineers close to equipment. LA (or any metro area) gives you access to talent. Decent rural tech people are rare.
These guys are funny. You basically go to a movie theater and watch a movie to which they make comments over a PA and stop the movie from time to time to perform a live skit. They are from Austin, Texas, but I have seen them numerous times in Houston. Movies viewed with them so far: Karate Kid, Pretty in Pink, and Dirty Dancing.
When I worked professionally as a repair tech, I wore a tie for exactly one day.
I agree with you completely. Although, I used to work for a company where a tie was mandatory. People would always buy me computer ties as gifts and I had about 100 of them. So, one day I am doing some service work at a company I had never visited when one of the owners strolled in. He gestured at me and I introduced myself. He then stated that he thought for the money paid he would have a more conservative, business-minded computer person building out his network and told me to never wear the tie I had on or even one like it in his building. So, I left. I told my boss about it and he told me I had to return and where a non-geeky computer tie (I think I had on a tie with a 3-D computer mouse). So, on the way over, I stopped at a thrift shop and bought a god-awful, really wide, nasty-colored tie. Needless to say, I always made sure I wore a crummy tie while at his office from then on out.
It's all about cost versus risk. In this case, the risk of WinZip stormtroopers crashing through the skylight and throwing flash-bangs is so low as to be laughable. Microsoft, not so much...
I used to work for a bank that did a fair job keeping track of licenses, or sort of. They purchased licenses for all employees for Microsoft products, eventhough a decent percentage of employees did not have it installed. They also purchased a copy of Photoshop and Corel Draw for every marketing person, eventhough only two people used the products. However, they loaded and never registered many pieces of software which would not have been a big deal to cover monetarily: Winzip, PDF printer, Winlpr, fonts, etc. It just boggles the mind that they go through so much trouble for boxed products, but just never did anything about other software. I told them that it would be better that Microsoft find out they were 20% out of compliance than for some shareware author to find out they had been using software for years on 100% of their machines without paying a dime.
Re:A New Core Class in College?
on
PGP & GPG
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· Score: 1
What level of understanding are we talking here? I understand how public/private key encryption works well enough to use it securely, and it's not that hard to grasp. I imagine a significant portion of Slashdotters understand it as well. With almost 1,000,000 accounts, if only one in ten of us got it, there's your 100K.
Any time we discuss the intelligence of the masses, I have to be a cynic. All one has to do is view Jay Walking on the Tonight Show to see that John Q Public is stupid. My wife recently attended a party with people that are all college-educated, and one thought there was a bridge from California to Hawaii. And, it doesn't stop when it comes to computers. I once fed some access control lists into a router to block some IP addresses which were given via DHCP. When one did not work, I asked a local technician (the lead network specialist) what the IP address on the computer was (because they had supposedly given me all the MACs which I put into DHCP), the response was, "It doesn't have an IP address." So, 'it doesn't work' goes further then; let's check cabling. The person then gets agitated with me and says that the computer accesses the Internet just fine. So, I ask, "what's its IP address", and am given the same response that it does not have one. I state that it must have an IP address if it is able to use Internet resources. Finally, this person says, "It doesn't have an IP address, it uses DHCP." Turns out they gave me the wrong MAC and I had to dig it up from leases files and arp tables on the switches.
I know more than ten people that read Slashdot. Of them, I cannot think of any that understand public key encryption.
Although glad that OpenOffice is being advertised, I am bothered by some things with the advertisement itself. First, there is no information about OpenOffice within the advertisement. Second, it does not mention that you can download it for Linux. Third, it shows the presidents, which those not in the know of free software (as in speech mostly) might associate with aged software. Lastly, if someone is not going to download it, they certainly aren't going to email questions about it.
I hope they didn't pay an ad agency much for the development.
The list is horrible. First, as much as I loathe Microsoft, Ballmer is integral to Microsoft's partnerships, which drives much of the technology out there. Second, Sun is setting the direction for energy-efficient computer clusters; something that the whole Energy Star thing could never pull off. Third, Slash as a content management system, was up and running in the frontierland, and is important because it is still a focal point for nerds (I have never visited Digg, Kiro5hun, etc). Fourth, Linus is still advocating Linux and keeping it on one development tree; both are difficult tasks, both he pulls off well (Linux is not out of control). Lastly, obsolence is not something to take lightly -- is the same true for Eric Allman, Richard Stallman, Bill Joy, Jamie Wazinski, Bruce Perens, etc? I think they form a foundation for future coders, computer politicos, and hackers.
While it is terrible: how much money would these women make if they weren't making iPods? Extend to say: how much would they be making if not making consumer goods for the rest of the world? They probably have a better life in the 'sweatshop' than snuffed because of their gender and lack of ability to provide a service. Women in many parts of the world are considered worthless for much other than carrying unborn babies.
The real blame is not us for using overseas sweatshops. You cannot escape using products from impoverished workers. The real blame is the economic and social situations in many countries, but war is the only thing that will change those scenarios, whether a coup d'tat, civil war, empire building, colonization, or holocaust.
BUT...no business should be "running the show" on something like Excel. For serious stuff, you need a dedicated (possibly custom-made) application that does all kinds of sanity checks. A properly coded Excel spreadsheet can do a lot of that for you, but it's not really meant for that.
I believe the point is that many business people do use something like Excel instead of these more serious, well-checked, supported programs. I have seen more than a few people working for banks singing the praises of something whipped up in Excel, saving their department thousands of dollars, only to find out later that some numbers are off. I know of one business that was using Excel for all their inventory instead of springing the money for a DB (even Access). Guess what -- data loss and no transaction accounting! It cost them a small fortune to redo the entries in a decent system.
As more people complete a 4-hour training session on Excel, or share a macro-filled spreadsheet, you end up with bad, unsupported applications. The idea that each employee of a company should unilaterally generate 'applications' is rediculous. But, more and more businesses are embracing this and the result is data being saved to a non-backed-up My Documents folder, work being incorrectly generated due to bad formulas, and a myriad of other issues.
Don't get me wrong: spreadsheets are a great asset to running a business. But, they are not a decent means to shortcut expenditures. And, just because someone figures out a few formulas, that doesn't mean they can design a fool-proof application.
I recently had an opportunity to meet Eric Allman. He had people in his office, so I did not get to say hi. Afterward, I thought if I met him, what would I even say? I figured there would be an equal number of praises and complaints.
Sendmail was pretty much it in 1988. That is like saying the Christian church in 640AD called the Roman Catholic Church, uh, what other Christian church would it have been?
Judging from the e-mail address on the submitter's name, I'm guessing the point of the article is actually a political statement meant to make the RIAA/MPAA look stupid for (a) their obsession with DRM and (b) suing file sharers when actual for-profit pirates are so brazen.
I am amazed it is all worth it for less than a pound per movie. Maybe the industry can learn a thing or two about mass sales, customer demand, and proper product pricing.
I cannot read. Let me say that my attention span causes me to skim pages, skip words, go back and forth. Because of this, I end up reading with no comprehension if something goes more than a few pages. Character development is difficult for me to follow. Along comes Dan Brown with a writing style that has short chapters, little descriptive notation, etc. He has been criticized for his writing style, but I find it easy to follow. Admittedly, I listened to the 13-CD audio book for Da Vinci Code, but I read Angels and Demons and Point Deception (?) (the meteorite book). I can pretty much only read a Stephen King novel if I have seen the movie, but I can start and finish a Brown novel without difficulty. I did not finish Digital Fortress because I lost interest in the story.
Inaccurate information is what good stories are all about. I doubt there are many that bitched about the Indiana Jones trilogy for similar reasons. I enjoyed watching National Treasure, which was rife with errors. Any science fiction film -- don't get me started. For us computer nerds, I enjoyed many movies with tons of errors: Virus, Wargames, Sneakers, Lawnmower Man, etc. I think some people need to lighten up and enjoy a story every so often. Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, building on convenient coincidences and half-truths. That statement describes half the history books I have read in the past.
Someone going 100 miles an hour while trying to evade the police is probably going to end up wrapped around the nearest immovable object if you kill their power steering/brakes at the wrong moment.
The problem? Sounds like a great crime deterrent to me.
Slashdot Mirror
It is highly unlikely that developers would begin writing applications for another operating system than Windows. This is the problem for Linux, and will be even more of a problem with X operating system, no matter how decent an OS it is.
Someone needs remedial English to learn the difference between 'then' and 'than'. While one can understand the sentence, it is incorrectly structured. Better, it would read, "Let's just hope that when the invisible woman arrives, she's portrayed more convincingly at that time than by Jessica Alba." Or, "Jessica Alba is hot and should never be invisible."
These guys are funny. You basically go to a movie theater and watch a movie to which they make comments over a PA and stop the movie from time to time to perform a live skit. They are from Austin, Texas, but I have seen them numerous times in Houston. Movies viewed with them so far: Karate Kid, Pretty in Pink, and Dirty Dancing.
The Aquabats rock. Other nerd rockers I like are: Nerf Herder and Atom and His Package.
I agree with you completely. Although, I used to work for a company where a tie was mandatory. People would always buy me computer ties as gifts and I had about 100 of them. So, one day I am doing some service work at a company I had never visited when one of the owners strolled in. He gestured at me and I introduced myself. He then stated that he thought for the money paid he would have a more conservative, business-minded computer person building out his network and told me to never wear the tie I had on or even one like it in his building. So, I left. I told my boss about it and he told me I had to return and where a non-geeky computer tie (I think I had on a tie with a 3-D computer mouse). So, on the way over, I stopped at a thrift shop and bought a god-awful, really wide, nasty-colored tie. Needless to say, I always made sure I wore a crummy tie while at his office from then on out.
I would have thought the same thing about fonts.
I used to work for a bank that did a fair job keeping track of licenses, or sort of. They purchased licenses for all employees for Microsoft products, eventhough a decent percentage of employees did not have it installed. They also purchased a copy of Photoshop and Corel Draw for every marketing person, eventhough only two people used the products. However, they loaded and never registered many pieces of software which would not have been a big deal to cover monetarily: Winzip, PDF printer, Winlpr, fonts, etc. It just boggles the mind that they go through so much trouble for boxed products, but just never did anything about other software. I told them that it would be better that Microsoft find out they were 20% out of compliance than for some shareware author to find out they had been using software for years on 100% of their machines without paying a dime.
Any time we discuss the intelligence of the masses, I have to be a cynic. All one has to do is view Jay Walking on the Tonight Show to see that John Q Public is stupid. My wife recently attended a party with people that are all college-educated, and one thought there was a bridge from California to Hawaii. And, it doesn't stop when it comes to computers. I once fed some access control lists into a router to block some IP addresses which were given via DHCP. When one did not work, I asked a local technician (the lead network specialist) what the IP address on the computer was (because they had supposedly given me all the MACs which I put into DHCP), the response was, "It doesn't have an IP address." So, 'it doesn't work' goes further then; let's check cabling. The person then gets agitated with me and says that the computer accesses the Internet just fine. So, I ask, "what's its IP address", and am given the same response that it does not have one. I state that it must have an IP address if it is able to use Internet resources. Finally, this person says, "It doesn't have an IP address, it uses DHCP." Turns out they gave me the wrong MAC and I had to dig it up from leases files and arp tables on the switches.
I know more than ten people that read Slashdot. Of them, I cannot think of any that understand public key encryption.
Although glad that OpenOffice is being advertised, I am bothered by some things with the advertisement itself. First, there is no information about OpenOffice within the advertisement. Second, it does not mention that you can download it for Linux. Third, it shows the presidents, which those not in the know of free software (as in speech mostly) might associate with aged software. Lastly, if someone is not going to download it, they certainly aren't going to email questions about it.
I hope they didn't pay an ad agency much for the development.
The list is horrible. First, as much as I loathe Microsoft, Ballmer is integral to Microsoft's partnerships, which drives much of the technology out there. Second, Sun is setting the direction for energy-efficient computer clusters; something that the whole Energy Star thing could never pull off. Third, Slash as a content management system, was up and running in the frontierland, and is important because it is still a focal point for nerds (I have never visited Digg, Kiro5hun, etc). Fourth, Linus is still advocating Linux and keeping it on one development tree; both are difficult tasks, both he pulls off well (Linux is not out of control). Lastly, obsolence is not something to take lightly -- is the same true for Eric Allman, Richard Stallman, Bill Joy, Jamie Wazinski, Bruce Perens, etc? I think they form a foundation for future coders, computer politicos, and hackers.
FYI, there is a great service which can be used to view live television, called MobiTV.
While it is terrible: how much money would these women make if they weren't making iPods? Extend to say: how much would they be making if not making consumer goods for the rest of the world? They probably have a better life in the 'sweatshop' than snuffed because of their gender and lack of ability to provide a service. Women in many parts of the world are considered worthless for much other than carrying unborn babies.
The real blame is not us for using overseas sweatshops. You cannot escape using products from impoverished workers. The real blame is the economic and social situations in many countries, but war is the only thing that will change those scenarios, whether a coup d'tat, civil war, empire building, colonization, or holocaust.
I believe the point is that many business people do use something like Excel instead of these more serious, well-checked, supported programs. I have seen more than a few people working for banks singing the praises of something whipped up in Excel, saving their department thousands of dollars, only to find out later that some numbers are off. I know of one business that was using Excel for all their inventory instead of springing the money for a DB (even Access). Guess what -- data loss and no transaction accounting! It cost them a small fortune to redo the entries in a decent system.
As more people complete a 4-hour training session on Excel, or share a macro-filled spreadsheet, you end up with bad, unsupported applications. The idea that each employee of a company should unilaterally generate 'applications' is rediculous. But, more and more businesses are embracing this and the result is data being saved to a non-backed-up My Documents folder, work being incorrectly generated due to bad formulas, and a myriad of other issues.
Don't get me wrong: spreadsheets are a great asset to running a business. But, they are not a decent means to shortcut expenditures. And, just because someone figures out a few formulas, that doesn't mean they can design a fool-proof application.
s/Thanksgiving/Halloween/
I recently had an opportunity to meet Eric Allman. He had people in his office, so I did not get to say hi. Afterward, I thought if I met him, what would I even say? I figured there would be an equal number of praises and complaints.
For the record: smtp rules.
To look at the percentage of Hispanics there, some could argue they already have.
You know why computer programmers get Thanksgiving and Christmas confused? Cuz OCT 31 == DEC 25.
dnl is simply "disregard until newline". It is a method to comment lines and end statements which can be followed by comments.
Sendmail was pretty much it in 1988. That is like saying the Christian church in 640AD called the Roman Catholic Church, uh, what other Christian church would it have been?
I am amazed it is all worth it for less than a pound per movie. Maybe the industry can learn a thing or two about mass sales, customer demand, and proper product pricing.
I cannot read. Let me say that my attention span causes me to skim pages, skip words, go back and forth. Because of this, I end up reading with no comprehension if something goes more than a few pages. Character development is difficult for me to follow. Along comes Dan Brown with a writing style that has short chapters, little descriptive notation, etc. He has been criticized for his writing style, but I find it easy to follow. Admittedly, I listened to the 13-CD audio book for Da Vinci Code, but I read Angels and Demons and Point Deception (?) (the meteorite book). I can pretty much only read a Stephen King novel if I have seen the movie, but I can start and finish a Brown novel without difficulty. I did not finish Digital Fortress because I lost interest in the story.
Inaccurate information is what good stories are all about. I doubt there are many that bitched about the Indiana Jones trilogy for similar reasons. I enjoyed watching National Treasure, which was rife with errors. Any science fiction film -- don't get me started. For us computer nerds, I enjoyed many movies with tons of errors: Virus, Wargames, Sneakers, Lawnmower Man, etc. I think some people need to lighten up and enjoy a story every so often. Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, building on convenient coincidences and half-truths. That statement describes half the history books I have read in the past.
Can't we all just get along?!?!
Well, I listen to 666 just for the hell of it...
The problem? Sounds like a great crime deterrent to me.
Our LUG found it difficult to keep meetings going, but the forums have become a great place for question and answer.