I'll ditto this. My wife runs a K5 (or is it a K6?) at 150 mHz. Runs all the web browser and Quicken she needs/wants.
To answer your other point, why market the 1.4 to everyone if only a small market needs it? To encourage conspicous consumption (another in my series of references to Econ 101), the motivation of almost every American consumer.
But in this case, clock speed is a valid comparison. The article specifically compares products within a family (top two PIII's to each other, top two PIV's to each other, etc)
We are not talking about a difference between PI and PI-mmx. Heck, it's not even as different as the two types of PI's.
The reliability, speed, etc. of the higher clock speed chips is actually more suspect. Remember that the 1.33 and the 1.4 chips are coming out of the same fab. But one is a little faster than the other, so they call it a PIV.
What hard hitting journalism. An amazing display of analytical prowess. I've had better stories rejected.
Of course the top of the line stuff is too expensive. What the hell is there even to discuss with this article?
(At home, I have a Celeron 466 or so on my Linux box. a PIII 600 or so on my 'doze box for games. Big frickin' deal, right? For the price of a processor upgrade, I can be running 1GB of ram in both systems. Through in another 100 bucks, and I've got more disk space than on the file server here at work (which is no slouch for what we do)).
Guess what? Processors don't really matter anymore. Neither does any of that hardware. What in the hell is anybody doing with computers that requires all of this horsepower? Yeah, something will come out. But what, and from whom? Don't we have enough cycles to have incredible voice interfaces? No, because everybody (and by that, I mean Joe Six Pack, aka, my mom) needs M$ bloatware to do anything. It's because Quicken wants to do so much that it takes many megs of RAM to load. Why???
Slashdot latest headline:
Top of the line stuff gives marginal improvements for mega price increase.
Christ, we knew that back when it was a 486-20 mHz vs a 486-25 mHz (and probably earlier). Christ on a crutch, how is this news?
I think I know how stories are picked: each one is printed out. One of the editors grabs a stack and wipes. Whatever story isn't covered in it gets posted.
Excuse me, I must go beat my head against the wall.
(And please, anybody who wants to mod this down, I would much prefer it if you answer my question: why the fuck does this matter?)
"When did it become a bad thing to follow an interesting line of conversation?"
Since AOL came onto the net. No seriously. I'll explain (with the caveat that while I had a.edu account, most of my early stuff was via Delphi).
See, prior to that day, there wasn't much traffic. You'd find a Usenet group or mailing list, and chat about whatever. Things rarely got out of hand, and even with month long off topic threads, the traffic was never too bad.
Then along came AOL. It would be easy to pick on them for being lusers, but the biggest problem was volume. There was so damned much that it became hard to sift through it all. So everything had to be on topic.
Bring it to/. Moderation is obviously set up to keep web traffic (and opinions) to a minimum (why else does stuff get modded OT?)
As much as the members and staff at/. espouse free though, exchange of ideas, etc. it scares them as much as any group. They (and Rob is a favorite target, but I won't mention him, just like he won't make a jab at RedHat) have gotten a not inconsiderable amount of wealth. Yeah, sure, they aren't buying 10,000 sq. ft. homes and ferraris, but I bet they are doing better than I am. So let's keep things quiet.
The best thing to shut Miguel (and others) up is to give them a little bit of say. Give them a little bit of power. Soon, they aren't quite as interested in rocking the boat. Human nature.
Now, for the really interesting (IMNSHO) opinions: the bad things reported about the net (stalking, isolation, etc) seem to have gotten worse the more people present. It was a hell of a lot cozier back then. People got along, and found common interest besides 'news for nerds'. They found a skiing partner, a motorcycle mechanic, whatever.
Anyway, the high school kids who get picked on, love the power of moderation. It's the first power they've felt (other than hacking their schools' computers). The owners of the site don't want to spend too much on traffic (other than the banner ads). And most of the readers don't want to have their opinions shaken too much.
Piss on 'em all. I'll say what I want. Mod me up or down accordingly (Hell, I think I've lost more mod points about my.sig than anything. Curiously, everyone talks about OS9 and OSX if they even reply. Or they talk about Win98 and Win2k. Guess what, newbies, it ain't about that. Get your head out of your ass, and ask. You may learn something about the way it was when your biggest concern was whether to shit your diaper or simply piss in it.)
I see your point. I also agree that double blind is the only way to go (used to piss me off when the different stereo and tv mags wouldn't do double or even single blind tests).
I didn't realize that you couldn't just compare the waveforms and come up with the best sound. I assume you would need some way of saying 'best' that would emulate the human ear. At that point, why not use the human ear?
However, I still say (and I think you'd agree) that we can perform a comparison with sound that can't be done with cola. With sound, we know what it is supposed to sound like. So whatever is closest is best. (Kinda like a dog show. We know what the standard is. Whichever dog comes closest to the standard is best. But, as you sorta say, sound is better because we can do a better comparison. With dogs, we know which dog is the standard, and which is an example of same.)
But perhaps this gets back to my point: for some people, Coke is the standard. In a blind or double-blind test, they call up the standard from memory. In an open test, they are saying 'Coke is Coke, but the Pepsi is more than, less than, greater than, sweeter than, etc...'
Re:Great timing
on
KDE 2.2 Tagged
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· Score: 1, Offtopic
Funny thing: you got blasted for what is essentially the truth.
I used to be able to rely on moderation. It used to work. Now the moderators seem to be turning/. into what many of its critics claim: a place where you are only respected for towing the company line.
Anyway, screw it. I've had a +2, I've hit the karma cap. May as well have some fun on the way down.
Funny? I obviously agree with that.
Flamebait? Okay, in retrospect, probably.
Overrated? Okay, now that is the moderation of a karma whore, afraid to get fucked in M2.
Good point. However, it misses something: food and drink are often comfort products, and sound files are not. Sound codecs can be judged almost rationally. You can compare output waveforms to the original, you can get 'golden ears', etc. and have a meaningful comparison.
On the Coke v. Pepsi, you can rationally compare taste preferences. But when someone buys a Coke (or Pepsi) it is often out of habit. The ritual and habit bring a level of comfort and solace (small doses only:) Not much, but enough to give a slight preference.
That's why Coke (particularly) tends to run image ads, ads that feature kids (to remind you of your childhood) and why they got so pissy about the shape of their bottles. For them, it's about the memories. For Pepsi, they run the taste tests because they have a product that tastes better to most people, and that's what they can sell. The memories aren't there, as they are in the case of Coke (pun not intended, but also not deleted:)
So we got some weirdness from '86 until just recently. Coke tried to switch to a Pepsi like flavor. In blind tests, it was a clear winner. But they stomped on someone's memories, and that pissed off the public. Shortly after that, they began marketing tradition. Pepsi countered with their whole 'New Generation' thing. Trying to make Coke look like the drink of old fogies. Well, guess what? Even the young, hip Gen-X'ers found out that tradition means something. If not something concious, then certainly somewhere in the deep recesses of the brain.
So now, in 2001, Pepsi is bringing back the taste tests.
I'm sure I've screwed up the timeline somewhat, but, to reiterate, sound codecs have no emotional attachment, so it's easy to compare, and extrapolate to what should be used. Sodas can be compared rationally, but that doesn't translate into sales.
FWIW, I like Pepsi in cans and at the soda fountain, but I love Coke in the bottles. And yes, I think it is probably an emotional thing.
In the general sense, I agree with you. However, perhaps a review (or view, if you haven't viewed it yet) of a utility curve is in order (see Microeconomics 101).
In short, EVERYTHING matters. But some things matter more.
I liked CAV disks. I hated having to get up 4 times or so during a movie. I'm far more likely to watch a movie straight through than to slow down a movie scene.
I prefer lossless encoding, but I have a 56k modem. If I want a picture or sound file in the next few hours, it's gotta be compressed.
So for most of your examples, you need to include the second part of your comparison. 'Prefer' implies a comparison between two things. One of those is quality, but you don't say 'as compared to what'.
And, again, if you can give up a small amount of quality for a HUGE increase in... usability, for example, that is a net gain to most people. Quality is nice, but it's not the end-all, be-all of the consumer (or even human) experience.
BTW, I'd have to totally ignore your last point. High IQs do not imply a large ability to govern. Look at Marilyn vos Savant (I think that's the spelling). Sure, she might be a genius, but I'm not sure that she plays well with others. An inability to motivate workers and the public is far more damaging than having 'merely' an average IQ.
Again, not disagreeing with your main thesis (quality doesn't matter to most to any great degree) but I think your supporting arguments could use a little help.
Hey, unlike many, I like what Stallman says, and frequently how he says it. But it looks like Stallman just copied and pasted some boilerplate. Heck, I bet Jim Allchin could have written those responses to the question on behalf of Stallman:)
But seriously, I think the interviewer wanted a solid answer in the first question: How does your view help me? We got the standard "someone can make a change". Maybe a better question is: how will this help my grandmother?
There is a binary called "shutdown.exe". Not sure if it came with a service pack or option pack, or from a stock install. It's actually not that bad.
The neat trick is that you can shutdown remote boxes. I think you do need admin privileges, though.
Since you are going to do this to Code Red boxen, they already have the telnet server, and you should easily be able to put the binary on that server.
BTW, you can also send a message. For example, to tell the admin why this is happeneing:
shutdown.exe "Your server is being shutdown now. You have been infected with Code Red [1,2,3], and it is pissing me off. Next time, please try to keep track of patches and upgrades. BTW, this (should | should not) clear up your problem. No need to thank me. Moron."
Add the/r switch if you want the machine to reboot. Add/t:x where x=number of seconds until shutdown (default is 20). Enter other machines on the network (Windows machines) as \\machinename.
I couldn't be bothered to wait for that flash demo (and that annoying fuck new-age music shit that is so common on the internet) to work, so I just looked at the pictures. Now, keep in mind that this is Slashdot, and I have just qualified myself as an expert on this product.
Does the pad do anything except for have extra little buttons on it? If that is all it does, you should just have to map them to some sort of x-input.
I know, I couldn't begin to do that either. But it looks fairly trivial. If it's that big a deal, find some developer and send him one.
Before discussing laws of economics, let's remember that most business types think that the DJI is the economy, or at least an indicator of it. That's wrong. Just plain wrong. Many of these people forget that the science of economics is generally the study of margins. Perhaps even more importantly, most economic assertions are based on several assumptions, many of which are 'broken' on the internet.
If anything, the internet opens a wonderful world of the study of applied or real-world economics. One of the failings of economics is the assumption of complete or total information. IOW, each party in a transaction has complete knowledge. In the real world, this doesn't, or rather, didn't, exist. With the internet, each party in a transaction does, or at least, can, have all the information they want/need. This is the chance to study that assumption, and see if it is valid.
Interesting that you mention CR. When CR has deemed particular vehicles 'unacceptable', they have been hit with lawsuits. Granted they are civil suits, but CR did have to pay attorneys to defend their first amendment rights.
No. The first amendment is only important for that pesky little bit that lets Scientologists and Christian Fundamentalists run rampant and without restraint.
I mean, that whole 'free speech' thing has people so pissed off, that, once again, the 'anti-flag-burning' amendment is making the rounds. Let's face it, the first amendment means precisely squat.
This is probably not going to be a popular opinion, but having documents available in pdf is a good thing. Most of your users are going to have readers, and the output is consistent.
You should also include HTML and SGML formats.
Depending on your users, they might demand.doc formats. It's probably better to ask your users rather than Slashdot. They know what they want to use themselves, and are more familiar with the standard formats of their particular academic community.
In some ways, this seems like the 'Ask a SlashdotLawyer' type of questions.
There are probably a few convenient factors that prevent them from being called "Outlook viruses".
First (as others say) is that the slobs in the media don't know of the existence of Mutt, Pine, Eudora, etc. They know Outlook, Notes, and AOL client.
Second, they don't know the subject that they talk about. Here in Washington, there used to be some smart TV reporters. But they weren't photogenic enough, so they were fired, or offered bad jobs/pay cuts. So now, WUSA has a bunch of young, attractive morons on the payroll. What does this have to do about anything? Like many media outlets, they have no experience with anything. It's not just computers. It's local politics, health science, world events... Most (not the modifier) reporters are just dumb. Reminds me of a college roommate. Okay guy, but not the sharpest tack in the drawer.
But, at least some of them interview people with half a clue. Which brings me to point three: the people they ask are either M$ users, MCSE's, or in some way involved heavily with Microsoft. To them, Outlook IS email. So they describe it that way.
The next reason I see is simple: MSNBC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, separate editorial staff, independent reporters, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Now, take all of these (which individually might be minor) but remember how much news comes over an AP wire (or Bloomberg, or whomever). Listen to your local news. Much of it is a rehash of some simple wire-service article. Reporting with an emphasis on the 're'. And these folks don't know tech.
I doubt that any of these alone could cause the problems. But taken as a whole, we have this situation. Basically, the blind leading the blind.
Probably a flame and/or a troll, but I almost have to agree. Like I said, I used 5.1, 5.2, was just about ready to pay for 6.2, then they came out with 7.0. Problem is that with that brain-dead compiler, I couldn't use 7.x RPMs on 6.2. So piss on 'em.
Not quite. Actually, I refuse to throw anything away (really pisses off my wife) and I also hate to let it go unused.
The irony is, I don't have DSL (thank you Verizon/NorthPoint. The latter for going out of business, the former for being dicks and not servicing my neighborhood) and all of that stuff is stuck on a dialup (which only works 50% of the time thanks to the LSR safety check). So despite this massive internal network (well, massive for a 1700 sq. foot house:) there isn't much outside connectivity. Which is fine.
Mostly, I have a bunch of circa 486/Pentium-I junk that can (just barely) decode mp3's and stuff like that. The Mame additions are due to some P-II stuff I'm starting to get. And I couldn't pass up that massive 20 GB drive when it came out a few years ago, so why not throw in a cheap little hub (which with all of this stuff MUST be replaced with a 10/100 switch:) and let the cheap boxes do cheap things, and let the big Linux box be the file server? Works great.
I guess I had too much time on my hands while my wife was pregnant, and you can only get so much pr0n over 56k phone lines:)
Now it's a good excuse to keep from changing diapers "sorry honey, I'm trying to run this Cat 5 under the carpet. I'll get the next one. Promise"
>>If it's a company you believe in, there's nothing wrong with buying the product that keeps them afloat.
That's how I wound up buying two distros (RH 5.1 and 5.2) Now that I've switched (Progeny) I may send them some money someday (ie, when I have some)
I remember what a prof said to me in college (economics, not comp sci or business, BTW). Paraphrased: "I don't think it's morally wrong to 'borrow' software while you are a student. But the day after you graduate and get a job, you should either delete it, or send someone a check." Buying a GPL distro is not too different. I have the legal right to get as many copies of FooLinux (I don't think that's a real distro, but I could be wrong:) for free/download/cheapbytes, but if you find one, and like it (and in the case of Progeny and others, use their servers for updates) then you should pay for it. Eventually. When you can.
Of course, I would like a 'set your own price' version. Works like this: I dl'ed Mandrake (as an example. I'm working on something right now that will work MUCH better with rpm's, and haven't tried Mandrake in many moons) but didn't pay for it. Say I like it. So to give something back, I want to send them some money. But I can't afford the $80 packaged set. Heck, I don't even really want it. So I go to their webpage, and click in $15 (example only) and my credit card number.
I'm sure this scheme would require some odd accounting (at least in the US) in order to get the IRS weasels satisfied, but it's a situation that I would like. Kinda like 'non-micro micro-payments'. Or something.
Work: I've spent about $100 on Linux software. Probably about $10000+ on M$ stuff (sorry, until Gnumed is ready for use, I'm stuck.) On a per box basis, it really gets ugly. About $150+ per M$ box. Even figuring for having bought two actual distros (and dl'ing tons more, and buying many through CheapBytes) I've spent perhaps $25 per Linux box. On software.
At home, between wife and I, we've spent around $300 on M$ software (full retail on Dos 6.22, Win '95, and Win '98. Gotta play them games. No bundles. I build my PeeCee's). I've spent maybe (at the far outside) $15 on distros. Most of the Linux I've used at home have been from those work CD's. On a per computer basis: $7.50 for Linux. $150 for M$.
Books: Many hundreds Linux specific (maybe $300). About $200 on M$ stuff (mostly for NT networking stuff. Turns out it was easier for me to put the tricky stuff on Linux boxes rather than pay for CAL's on the M$ boxes). And about another $300 for program specific things (Apache, NFS, Samba, etc.)
So, there is a bit more actually spent on the M$ stuff. But here is the interesting bit: Even if I had paid around $1000 each for the distros for work, I would still save money. How? CAL's. I don't need to work through and pay for weird licensing things to run services on a Linux box like on NT boxes. I can let 1 or 1000 people hit Apache on Linux. Not so for IIS.
Anyway, there's another point. And given that my data is no more useful than anyone else's, I'll even forego the +1.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll ditto this. My wife runs a K5 (or is it a K6?) at 150 mHz. Runs all the web browser and Quicken she needs/wants.
To answer your other point, why market the 1.4 to everyone if only a small market needs it? To encourage conspicous consumption (another in my series of references to Econ 101), the motivation of almost every American consumer.
But in this case, clock speed is a valid comparison. The article specifically compares products within a family (top two PIII's to each other, top two PIV's to each other, etc)
We are not talking about a difference between PI and PI-mmx. Heck, it's not even as different as the two types of PI's.
The reliability, speed, etc. of the higher clock speed chips is actually more suspect. Remember that the 1.33 and the 1.4 chips are coming out of the same fab. But one is a little faster than the other, so they call it a PIV.
What hard hitting journalism. An amazing display of analytical prowess. I've had better stories rejected.
Of course the top of the line stuff is too expensive. What the hell is there even to discuss with this article?
(At home, I have a Celeron 466 or so on my Linux box. a PIII 600 or so on my 'doze box for games. Big frickin' deal, right? For the price of a processor upgrade, I can be running 1GB of ram in both systems. Through in another 100 bucks, and I've got more disk space than on the file server here at work (which is no slouch for what we do)).
Guess what? Processors don't really matter anymore. Neither does any of that hardware. What in the hell is anybody doing with computers that requires all of this horsepower? Yeah, something will come out. But what, and from whom? Don't we have enough cycles to have incredible voice interfaces? No, because everybody (and by that, I mean Joe Six Pack, aka, my mom) needs M$ bloatware to do anything. It's because Quicken wants to do so much that it takes many megs of RAM to load. Why???
Slashdot latest headline:
Top of the line stuff gives marginal improvements for mega price increase.
Christ, we knew that back when it was a 486-20 mHz vs a 486-25 mHz (and probably earlier). Christ on a crutch, how is this news?
I think I know how stories are picked: each one is printed out. One of the editors grabs a stack and wipes. Whatever story isn't covered in it gets posted.
Excuse me, I must go beat my head against the wall.
(And please, anybody who wants to mod this down, I would much prefer it if you answer my question: why the fuck does this matter?)
"When did it become a bad thing to follow an interesting line of conversation?"
.edu account, most of my early stuff was via Delphi).
/. Moderation is obviously set up to keep web traffic (and opinions) to a minimum (why else does stuff get modded OT?)
/. espouse free though, exchange of ideas, etc. it scares them as much as any group. They (and Rob is a favorite target, but I won't mention him, just like he won't make a jab at RedHat) have gotten a not inconsiderable amount of wealth. Yeah, sure, they aren't buying 10,000 sq. ft. homes and ferraris, but I bet they are doing better than I am. So let's keep things quiet.
.sig than anything. Curiously, everyone talks about OS9 and OSX if they even reply. Or they talk about Win98 and Win2k. Guess what, newbies, it ain't about that. Get your head out of your ass, and ask. You may learn something about the way it was when your biggest concern was whether to shit your diaper or simply piss in it.)
Since AOL came onto the net. No seriously. I'll explain (with the caveat that while I had a
See, prior to that day, there wasn't much traffic. You'd find a Usenet group or mailing list, and chat about whatever. Things rarely got out of hand, and even with month long off topic threads, the traffic was never too bad.
Then along came AOL. It would be easy to pick on them for being lusers, but the biggest problem was volume. There was so damned much that it became hard to sift through it all. So everything had to be on topic.
Bring it to
As much as the members and staff at
The best thing to shut Miguel (and others) up is to give them a little bit of say. Give them a little bit of power. Soon, they aren't quite as interested in rocking the boat. Human nature.
Now, for the really interesting (IMNSHO) opinions: the bad things reported about the net (stalking, isolation, etc) seem to have gotten worse the more people present. It was a hell of a lot cozier back then. People got along, and found common interest besides 'news for nerds'. They found a skiing partner, a motorcycle mechanic, whatever.
Anyway, the high school kids who get picked on, love the power of moderation. It's the first power they've felt (other than hacking their schools' computers). The owners of the site don't want to spend too much on traffic (other than the banner ads). And most of the readers don't want to have their opinions shaken too much.
Piss on 'em all. I'll say what I want. Mod me up or down accordingly (Hell, I think I've lost more mod points about my
I see your point. I also agree that double blind is the only way to go (used to piss me off when the different stereo and tv mags wouldn't do double or even single blind tests).
I didn't realize that you couldn't just compare the waveforms and come up with the best sound. I assume you would need some way of saying 'best' that would emulate the human ear. At that point, why not use the human ear?
However, I still say (and I think you'd agree) that we can perform a comparison with sound that can't be done with cola. With sound, we know what it is supposed to sound like. So whatever is closest is best. (Kinda like a dog show. We know what the standard is. Whichever dog comes closest to the standard is best. But, as you sorta say, sound is better because we can do a better comparison. With dogs, we know which dog is the standard, and which is an example of same.)
But perhaps this gets back to my point: for some people, Coke is the standard. In a blind or double-blind test, they call up the standard from memory. In an open test, they are saying 'Coke is Coke, but the Pepsi is more than, less than, greater than, sweeter than, etc...'
Funny thing: you got blasted for what is essentially the truth.
/. into what many of its critics claim: a place where you are only respected for towing the company line.
I used to be able to rely on moderation. It used to work. Now the moderators seem to be turning
Anyway, screw it. I've had a +2, I've hit the karma cap. May as well have some fun on the way down.
I'm a little unclear (despite the low UID): are a flamebaiter and a troll the same thing?
If so, call me a troll.
Funny? I obviously agree with that.
Flamebait? Okay, in retrospect, probably.
Overrated? Okay, now that is the moderation of a karma whore, afraid to get fucked in M2.
Good point. However, it misses something: food and drink are often comfort products, and sound files are not. Sound codecs can be judged almost rationally. You can compare output waveforms to the original, you can get 'golden ears', etc. and have a meaningful comparison.
On the Coke v. Pepsi, you can rationally compare taste preferences. But when someone buys a Coke (or Pepsi) it is often out of habit. The ritual and habit bring a level of comfort and solace (small doses only:) Not much, but enough to give a slight preference.
That's why Coke (particularly) tends to run image ads, ads that feature kids (to remind you of your childhood) and why they got so pissy about the shape of their bottles. For them, it's about the memories. For Pepsi, they run the taste tests because they have a product that tastes better to most people, and that's what they can sell. The memories aren't there, as they are in the case of Coke (pun not intended, but also not deleted:)
So we got some weirdness from '86 until just recently. Coke tried to switch to a Pepsi like flavor. In blind tests, it was a clear winner. But they stomped on someone's memories, and that pissed off the public. Shortly after that, they began marketing tradition. Pepsi countered with their whole 'New Generation' thing. Trying to make Coke look like the drink of old fogies. Well, guess what? Even the young, hip Gen-X'ers found out that tradition means something. If not something concious, then certainly somewhere in the deep recesses of the brain.
So now, in 2001, Pepsi is bringing back the taste tests.
I'm sure I've screwed up the timeline somewhat, but, to reiterate, sound codecs have no emotional attachment, so it's easy to compare, and extrapolate to what should be used. Sodas can be compared rationally, but that doesn't translate into sales.
FWIW, I like Pepsi in cans and at the soda fountain, but I love Coke in the bottles. And yes, I think it is probably an emotional thing.
Great timing with this release. I figure by the time my infant gets into college, this'll show up in Debian stable.
(Blah, blah, blah. I use Progeny. Now go away Debian flamers, it's a joke.)
In the general sense, I agree with you. However, perhaps a review (or view, if you haven't viewed it yet) of a utility curve is in order (see Microeconomics 101).
In short, EVERYTHING matters. But some things matter more.
I liked CAV disks. I hated having to get up 4 times or so during a movie. I'm far more likely to watch a movie straight through than to slow down a movie scene.
I prefer lossless encoding, but I have a 56k modem. If I want a picture or sound file in the next few hours, it's gotta be compressed.
So for most of your examples, you need to include the second part of your comparison. 'Prefer' implies a comparison between two things. One of those is quality, but you don't say 'as compared to what'.
And, again, if you can give up a small amount of quality for a HUGE increase in... usability, for example, that is a net gain to most people. Quality is nice, but it's not the end-all, be-all of the consumer (or even human) experience.
BTW, I'd have to totally ignore your last point. High IQs do not imply a large ability to govern. Look at Marilyn vos Savant (I think that's the spelling). Sure, she might be a genius, but I'm not sure that she plays well with others. An inability to motivate workers and the public is far more damaging than having 'merely' an average IQ.
Again, not disagreeing with your main thesis (quality doesn't matter to most to any great degree) but I think your supporting arguments could use a little help.
Hey, unlike many, I like what Stallman says, and frequently how he says it. But it looks like Stallman just copied and pasted some boilerplate. Heck, I bet Jim Allchin could have written those responses to the question on behalf of Stallman:)
But seriously, I think the interviewer wanted a solid answer in the first question: How does your view help me? We got the standard "someone can make a change". Maybe a better question is: how will this help my grandmother?
There is a binary called "shutdown.exe". Not sure if it came with a service pack or option pack, or from a stock install. It's actually not that bad.
/r switch if you want the machine to reboot. Add /t:x where x=number of seconds until shutdown (default is 20). Enter other machines on the network (Windows machines) as \\machinename.
The neat trick is that you can shutdown remote boxes. I think you do need admin privileges, though.
Since you are going to do this to Code Red boxen, they already have the telnet server, and you should easily be able to put the binary on that server.
BTW, you can also send a message. For example, to tell the admin why this is happeneing:
shutdown.exe "Your server is being shutdown now. You have been infected with Code Red [1,2,3], and it is pissing me off. Next time, please try to keep track of patches and upgrades. BTW, this (should | should not) clear up your problem. No need to thank me. Moron."
Add the
I couldn't be bothered to wait for that flash demo (and that annoying fuck new-age music shit that is so common on the internet) to work, so I just looked at the pictures. Now, keep in mind that this is Slashdot, and I have just qualified myself as an expert on this product.
Does the pad do anything except for have extra little buttons on it? If that is all it does, you should just have to map them to some sort of x-input.
I know, I couldn't begin to do that either. But it looks fairly trivial. If it's that big a deal, find some developer and send him one.
Before discussing laws of economics, let's remember that most business types think that the DJI is the economy, or at least an indicator of it. That's wrong. Just plain wrong. Many of these people forget that the science of economics is generally the study of margins. Perhaps even more importantly, most economic assertions are based on several assumptions, many of which are 'broken' on the internet.
If anything, the internet opens a wonderful world of the study of applied or real-world economics. One of the failings of economics is the assumption of complete or total information. IOW, each party in a transaction has complete knowledge. In the real world, this doesn't, or rather, didn't, exist. With the internet, each party in a transaction does, or at least, can, have all the information they want/need. This is the chance to study that assumption, and see if it is valid.
Damn, you'd think with a URL like that, you'd at least mention Clifford Performance on the page.
Interesting that you mention CR. When CR has deemed particular vehicles 'unacceptable', they have been hit with lawsuits. Granted they are civil suits, but CR did have to pay attorneys to defend their first amendment rights.
No. The first amendment is only important for that pesky little bit that lets Scientologists and Christian Fundamentalists run rampant and without restraint.
I mean, that whole 'free speech' thing has people so pissed off, that, once again, the 'anti-flag-burning' amendment is making the rounds. Let's face it, the first amendment means precisely squat.
This is probably not going to be a popular opinion, but having documents available in pdf is a good thing. Most of your users are going to have readers, and the output is consistent.
.doc formats. It's probably better to ask your users rather than Slashdot. They know what they want to use themselves, and are more familiar with the standard formats of their particular academic community.
You should also include HTML and SGML formats.
Depending on your users, they might demand
In some ways, this seems like the 'Ask a SlashdotLawyer' type of questions.
-George
Nope. Morons is too weak. I had the displeasure of dealing with one of them about a year ago. Actually 'arrogant moron' is a more appropriate term.
Feel free to email for details.
There are probably a few convenient factors that prevent them from being called "Outlook viruses".
First (as others say) is that the slobs in the media don't know of the existence of Mutt, Pine, Eudora, etc. They know Outlook, Notes, and AOL client.
Second, they don't know the subject that they talk about. Here in Washington, there used to be some smart TV reporters. But they weren't photogenic enough, so they were fired, or offered bad jobs/pay cuts. So now, WUSA has a bunch of young, attractive morons on the payroll. What does this have to do about anything? Like many media outlets, they have no experience with anything. It's not just computers. It's local politics, health science, world events... Most (not the modifier) reporters are just dumb. Reminds me of a college roommate. Okay guy, but not the sharpest tack in the drawer.
But, at least some of them interview people with half a clue. Which brings me to point three: the people they ask are either M$ users, MCSE's, or in some way involved heavily with Microsoft. To them, Outlook IS email. So they describe it that way.
The next reason I see is simple: MSNBC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, separate editorial staff, independent reporters, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Now, take all of these (which individually might be minor) but remember how much news comes over an AP wire (or Bloomberg, or whomever). Listen to your local news. Much of it is a rehash of some simple wire-service article. Reporting with an emphasis on the 're'. And these folks don't know tech.
I doubt that any of these alone could cause the problems. But taken as a whole, we have this situation. Basically, the blind leading the blind.
Probably a flame and/or a troll, but I almost have to agree. Like I said, I used 5.1, 5.2, was just about ready to pay for 6.2, then they came out with 7.0. Problem is that with that brain-dead compiler, I couldn't use 7.x RPMs on 6.2. So piss on 'em.
Not quite. Actually, I refuse to throw anything away (really pisses off my wife) and I also hate to let it go unused.
The irony is, I don't have DSL (thank you Verizon/NorthPoint. The latter for going out of business, the former for being dicks and not servicing my neighborhood) and all of that stuff is stuck on a dialup (which only works 50% of the time thanks to the LSR safety check). So despite this massive internal network (well, massive for a 1700 sq. foot house:) there isn't much outside connectivity. Which is fine.
Mostly, I have a bunch of circa 486/Pentium-I junk that can (just barely) decode mp3's and stuff like that. The Mame additions are due to some P-II stuff I'm starting to get. And I couldn't pass up that massive 20 GB drive when it came out a few years ago, so why not throw in a cheap little hub (which with all of this stuff MUST be replaced with a 10/100 switch:) and let the cheap boxes do cheap things, and let the big Linux box be the file server? Works great.
I guess I had too much time on my hands while my wife was pregnant, and you can only get so much pr0n over 56k phone lines:)
Now it's a good excuse to keep from changing diapers "sorry honey, I'm trying to run this Cat 5 under the carpet. I'll get the next one. Promise"
>>If it's a company you believe in, there's nothing wrong with buying the product that keeps them afloat.
That's how I wound up buying two distros (RH 5.1 and 5.2) Now that I've switched (Progeny) I may send them some money someday (ie, when I have some)
I remember what a prof said to me in college (economics, not comp sci or business, BTW). Paraphrased: "I don't think it's morally wrong to 'borrow' software while you are a student. But the day after you graduate and get a job, you should either delete it, or send someone a check." Buying a GPL distro is not too different. I have the legal right to get as many copies of FooLinux (I don't think that's a real distro, but I could be wrong:) for free/download/cheapbytes, but if you find one, and like it (and in the case of Progeny and others, use their servers for updates) then you should pay for it. Eventually. When you can.
Of course, I would like a 'set your own price' version. Works like this: I dl'ed Mandrake (as an example. I'm working on something right now that will work MUCH better with rpm's, and haven't tried Mandrake in many moons) but didn't pay for it. Say I like it. So to give something back, I want to send them some money. But I can't afford the $80 packaged set. Heck, I don't even really want it. So I go to their webpage, and click in $15 (example only) and my credit card number.
I'm sure this scheme would require some odd accounting (at least in the US) in order to get the IRS weasels satisfied, but it's a situation that I would like. Kinda like 'non-micro micro-payments'. Or something.
Anybody have something like that running?
Assumptions: dl'ed distros cost $1.
Work: I've spent about $100 on Linux software. Probably about $10000+ on M$ stuff (sorry, until Gnumed is ready for use, I'm stuck.) On a per box basis, it really gets ugly. About $150+ per M$ box. Even figuring for having bought two actual distros (and dl'ing tons more, and buying many through CheapBytes) I've spent perhaps $25 per Linux box. On software.
At home, between wife and I, we've spent around $300 on M$ software (full retail on Dos 6.22, Win '95, and Win '98. Gotta play them games. No bundles. I build my PeeCee's). I've spent maybe (at the far outside) $15 on distros. Most of the Linux I've used at home have been from those work CD's. On a per computer basis: $7.50 for Linux. $150 for M$.
Books: Many hundreds Linux specific (maybe $300). About $200 on M$ stuff (mostly for NT networking stuff. Turns out it was easier for me to put the tricky stuff on Linux boxes rather than pay for CAL's on the M$ boxes). And about another $300 for program specific things (Apache, NFS, Samba, etc.)
So, there is a bit more actually spent on the M$ stuff. But here is the interesting bit: Even if I had paid around $1000 each for the distros for work, I would still save money. How? CAL's. I don't need to work through and pay for weird licensing things to run services on a Linux box like on NT boxes. I can let 1 or 1000 people hit Apache on Linux. Not so for IIS.
Anyway, there's another point. And given that my data is no more useful than anyone else's, I'll even forego the +1.
Screw 'em both. I'm switching to PostgreSQL.
Any reason (technical OR philosophical) not to do this?