While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.
Your kids are media slobbering brain-washed babboons? It's too bad that the vast intelligence required to know what the correct taste in media is isn't even genetic. How does this sound: could you write down a list of what you watch/read/listen to during the day, so us brain-washed babboons can understand what's "better"?
Obviously nobody is going to pay attention to the radiation levels on the box, which is good. I suggest we go a step further: equip all cellular phones with GPS. As soon as a cellphone is activated in a movie theater, restaurant, moving vehicle, etc, then immediately lower the lead shielding and expose the user's head to pure weapons grade uranium. In addition, if the cellphone user is driving 10MPH under the speed limit and constantly swerving onto the shoulder, have their FAMILY exposed to radioactive material as well. And anyone talking about something stupid in a crowded line, doing everything they can to broadcast the message "Look! I have a cellular phone!" would immediately be shot.
I think this is the kind of law we can all get behind.
I guess we don't have AIDS, Social Security, Human Rights, etc. to worry about. No, no. No, no. We must legislate Digital Music.
From the New York Times, Dec 00:
ORRIN HATCH FINDS CURE FOR AIDS
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) shocked the entire medical community today after announcing he and Congress had found a cure for the AIDS virus. This shocking revelation comes only weeks after Hatch raided several major Chinese prisons, freeing political dissidents from torture. In addition, on the way back Hatch discovered El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold. After narrowly escaping from a rival German archaeologist, he returned with enough funds to ensure Social Security will run for decades. "This is a great victory for America," Hatch was quoted as saying. "With this out of the way, we can finally get down to solving this whole digital music problem." Hatch is expected to stop whale hunting by the end of the year.
I continue to buy Macs for a couple of reasons. First off (not that this is neccesarily an "advantage":), the problems everyone constantly repeats ad nauseum on the MacOS - bad VM, bad multitasking, no protected memory - aren't nearly as bad as they're made out to be. I use Windows 2000 at one of my jobs, and run 98, RedHat, and OpenBSD on a few boxen at home, and haven't really been blown away by any of this in real-world usage between systems. The MacOS has gotten decent enough at working around its limitations that only rarely do processes not play nice with each other, hog memory, etc. The only exception to this is that it bugs me when I can't launch a new program while starting Photoshop.:) But other than that, MacOS "feels" as modern as Win2K et al in day to day use.
On top of that, when I use any Mac app, I can intuitively go to "Edit->Preferences" to change the behavior of the program. On my PCs, sometimes it's in "Tools->Options", sometimes "Edit->Whatever", sometimes the File menu, and so on and so forth. I really do find the interface much more consistent and smooth when using my Mac. Insert Aqua ranting here
Plus at work, I have two scanners plugged into my machine. One works with Win2K, one will not because HP hasn't updated the drivers yet - this being the third driver codebase they'll have to maintain for Microsoft OS's (the alternative being to maintain only two and abandon NT4). Out of all the cards and peripherals I've added to my aging machine over the years, I think I've had to install drivers like once. And that was only for added functionality. One thing that bugs me about PC folk in general is their automatic reaction - "Apple MUST open their hardware!" Shouldn't "freedom of choice" include "the freedom to choose a closed hardware/software architecture"? Even if you think it's stupid, at least try to understand there are some of us that like this relationship, propietary ROMs and all (Of course, those only live on in spirit, but still:).
The only thing that's tempted me to switch primary platforms recently is the constant wear of going to PC-dominated offices every day, or checking Slashdot every day to see the same constant knee-jerk "MAC USERZ ARE ALL |D|0+5!" postings plastered all over any Apple-centric article. You wouldn't believe how much crap people give you when you work at an ISP or - god help you - an MIS department. Someday they'll tell my harrowing story.:) Oh well, could be worse - I could be an Amiga user! Now they're really crazy! *duck*
The simple fact is that there are so many people and only a few of them can be dedicated to playing back every phone call (even at high speed) or tailing a person in hopes of finding something useful. Targets have to be picked based on high profile or probable cause and I don't qualify. Neither, likely, do you.
To a certain extent, I agree with this now, but there are a few important issues I have with that:
I may not be important enough now, but what about the future? I may have had lots of fun renting goat porn in college, but what if I want to run for Congress when I'm 35? You try explaining that to a bunch of "60 Minutes" reporters!
Right now there's a tremendously prohibitive amount of work required to wiretap the phone of everyone in the United States. But imagine X number of years down the road, if speech and context recognition become advanced enough - it wouldn't be too tough at all.
It doesn't neccesarily have to be a sophisticated government agency spying on a high-profile politician. With the advent of search engines and the Internet, it's possible to find somewhat incriminating information without even trying. If my mother ever visited Slashdot, she could find my "goat porn" quote with relative ease. Try punching someone's name into Google or DejaNews and see what happens.
I'm not saying this is anything that will affect your or me significantly in our lifetimes, but they are issues that need to be dealt with as soon as possible. Besides, just because it doesn't affect us doesn't mean it's not important. Senators are people too!:)
Because, in terms of openness, Mac is to Windows as Windows is to Linux.
I don't quite understand why you'd say this. Have you developed on a Mac before? *All* the APIs on MacOS are published - nothing hidden, since Apple doesn't have a browser or office suite to push. A lot of the newer extensions, like Game Sprockets, are open sourced. I don't recall Apple ever publishing *any* system tool or utility in an.sea that popped up a non-disclosure agreement. And I won't even start with the "MacOSX -> Darwin -> BSD" thing because I have the feeling that's going to get done to death for this topic.
That said, I think the state of development on the Macintosh is pretty sorry, but not because the hood is welded shut any tighter than Windows. If you want to continue the car analogy, it's because Linux and Windows development environments are like really nice brand new Mister Goodrench facilities where there's a guy available to explain exactly what they did to your car, while for the Mac the only place is 60 miles away and staffed by Billy Bob Thorton from "U-Turn". When I started playing around with 3-D engines, I found exactly one so-so tutorial that didn't nearly cover everything on the Mac side. Thus, I've gone and gotten a Win9x box to learn development on. You can write software just as well for any platform, there's just a lack of very much good documentation - and thus an incredibly high learning curve - on the Macintosh.
A lot of these "It's the sysadmin's fault for not plugging big security holes" bugs me. I'm a system administrator, and the servers I run at work are quite secure. However, I run (ran) a headless Linux box in my apartment purely for IP masquing through my cable modem. This machine got compromised twice via script kiddies, who are incredibly active on the @home network. I use this Linux box purely for routing. I turn it on, it stays on, and I never thinking about it. Does not wanting to constantly be downloading patches and upgrades for the software on it make me a "lazy system administrator"? It's great that holes get sealed so quickly, but Joe Sixpack is never, ever going to adopt Linux if he has to check updates.redhat.com every night and keep a close eye on bugtraq. And watch how quickly he'll switch back to Win98 if his machine gets compromised once. Script kiddies are really going to force the hand of the Linux community, as more and more people start running the Penguin and more and more high schoolers learn the joys of SKRIPTZ.
Oh, as a sidenote, I switched to OpenBSD and haven't had any troubles since.:)
I have AT&T cable for my cablemodem, and it sucks. Service conks out for like an hour a day, at least, and we're expected to just sort of grin and bear it. The worst part is, I used to be excited that DSL was coming to my area, but that's going to be AT&T controlled too. Is this latest trend of a giant merger every other day benefitting anyone aside from rich white guys in suits?
One thing I'm surprised no one mentions is PostgreSQL's 8K rowlimit. Yes, you can hack around it pretty easily, but it's one more problem and one more headache that no one should have to deal with. I'm not a big fan of MySQL, but if you're comparing the two databases that's a definite issue that should be taken into consideration.
You can make an exact replica of a cat without a lot of fancy robotics. Just:
Find a dead cat, or make one yourself (this is the fun part)
Stuff it (the cat, not you!)
Ta-daaaaa! You now have a pet that sits there and does nothing, just like a real cat! I suppose robotics could come in handy to make it avoid you, just like a real feline.
Given that the Newton sported a StrongARM for handwriting recognition, which was (from what I hear) roughly on par with a P5, and the Palm uses a DragonBall, a derivative of the chip used in a Mac Classic, I doubt they'd be able to squeeze enough CPU speed out of a Palm to do the Newton's handwriting recognition. One of the main reasons the MessagePad 2000's handwriting recognition was so good in the end was the massively increased CPU power StrongArm gave it.
I see! When I first read this article, I thought it was about a guy that spends too much time on his computer, doesn't really get out enough, then one day there's an electrical outage and he starts to meet people and develop deep, meaningful emotions.
No offense, but that sounds really elitist. I don't think schools are exactly in perfect condition the way they are now, but separating "superior" students away from the unwashed masses, and doing your best to keep these worthless, 2.5gpa punks at a safe distance doesn't seem quite like a fair deal for everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggest everyone on Slashdot, when called by a telemarketer, say "I'm sorry, I can't buy X because of turnip", and then hang up.
You have to think telemarketers will get confused after the 30th person who won't buy a magazine because of "turnip".
While I would take my kids to a viewing of The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, or Aladdin, I know that if I took them to the original Fantasia, they would be both bored and annoyed (or annoying..). The reasoning behind this is because children (and the vast majority of all adults and adolesents) today are media slobbering brain-washed babboons that not only don't want something better, they don't even realise that there COULD BE.
Your kids are media slobbering brain-washed babboons? It's too bad that the vast intelligence required to know what the correct taste in media is isn't even genetic. How does this sound: could you write down a list of what you watch/read/listen to during the day, so us brain-washed babboons can understand what's "better"?
Obviously nobody is going to pay attention to the radiation levels on the box, which is good. I suggest we go a step further: equip all cellular phones with GPS. As soon as a cellphone is activated in a movie theater, restaurant, moving vehicle, etc, then immediately lower the lead shielding and expose the user's head to pure weapons grade uranium. In addition, if the cellphone user is driving 10MPH under the speed limit and constantly swerving onto the shoulder, have their FAMILY exposed to radioactive material as well. And anyone talking about something stupid in a crowded line, doing everything they can to broadcast the message "Look! I have a cellular phone!" would immediately be shot.
I think this is the kind of law we can all get behind.
From the New York Times, Dec 00:
ORRIN HATCH FINDS CURE FOR AIDS
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) shocked the entire medical community today after announcing he and Congress had found a cure for the AIDS virus. This shocking revelation comes only weeks after Hatch raided several major Chinese prisons, freeing political dissidents from torture. In addition, on the way back Hatch discovered El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold. After narrowly escaping from a rival German archaeologist, he returned with enough funds to ensure Social Security will run for decades. "This is a great victory for America," Hatch was quoted as saying. "With this out of the way, we can finally get down to solving this whole digital music problem." Hatch is expected to stop whale hunting by the end of the year.
On top of that, when I use any Mac app, I can intuitively go to "Edit->Preferences" to change the behavior of the program. On my PCs, sometimes it's in "Tools->Options", sometimes "Edit->Whatever", sometimes the File menu, and so on and so forth. I really do find the interface much more consistent and smooth when using my Mac. Insert Aqua ranting here
Plus at work, I have two scanners plugged into my machine. One works with Win2K, one will not because HP hasn't updated the drivers yet - this being the third driver codebase they'll have to maintain for Microsoft OS's (the alternative being to maintain only two and abandon NT4). Out of all the cards and peripherals I've added to my aging machine over the years, I think I've had to install drivers like once. And that was only for added functionality. One thing that bugs me about PC folk in general is their automatic reaction - "Apple MUST open their hardware!" Shouldn't "freedom of choice" include "the freedom to choose a closed hardware/software architecture"? Even if you think it's stupid, at least try to understand there are some of us that like this relationship, propietary ROMs and all (Of course, those only live on in spirit, but still :).
The only thing that's tempted me to switch primary platforms recently is the constant wear of going to PC-dominated offices every day, or checking Slashdot every day to see the same constant knee-jerk "MAC USERZ ARE ALL |D|0+5!" postings plastered all over any Apple-centric article. You wouldn't believe how much crap people give you when you work at an ISP or - god help you - an MIS department. Someday they'll tell my harrowing story. :) Oh well, could be worse - I could be an Amiga user! Now they're really crazy! *duck*
To a certain extent, I agree with this now, but there are a few important issues I have with that:
I'm not saying this is anything that will affect your or me significantly in our lifetimes, but they are issues that need to be dealt with as soon as possible. Besides, just because it doesn't affect us doesn't mean it's not important. Senators are people too!
Because, in terms of openness, Mac is to Windows as Windows is to Linux.
.sea that popped up a non-disclosure agreement. And I won't even start with the "MacOSX -> Darwin -> BSD" thing because I have the feeling that's going to get done to death for this topic.
I don't quite understand why you'd say this. Have you developed on a Mac before? *All* the APIs on MacOS are published - nothing hidden, since Apple doesn't have a browser or office suite to push. A lot of the newer extensions, like Game Sprockets, are open sourced. I don't recall Apple ever publishing *any* system tool or utility in an
That said, I think the state of development on the Macintosh is pretty sorry, but not because the hood is welded shut any tighter than Windows. If you want to continue the car analogy, it's because Linux and Windows development environments are like really nice brand new Mister Goodrench facilities where there's a guy available to explain exactly what they did to your car, while for the Mac the only place is 60 miles away and staffed by Billy Bob Thorton from "U-Turn". When I started playing around with 3-D engines, I found exactly one so-so tutorial that didn't nearly cover everything on the Mac side. Thus, I've gone and gotten a Win9x box to learn development on. You can write software just as well for any platform, there's just a lack of very much good documentation - and thus an incredibly high learning curve - on the Macintosh.
A lot of these "It's the sysadmin's fault for not plugging big security holes" bugs me. I'm a system administrator, and the servers I run at work are quite secure. However, I run (ran) a headless Linux box in my apartment purely for IP masquing through my cable modem. This machine got compromised twice via script kiddies, who are incredibly active on the @home network. I use this Linux box purely for routing. I turn it on, it stays on, and I never thinking about it. Does not wanting to constantly be downloading patches and upgrades for the software on it make me a "lazy system administrator"? It's great that holes get sealed so quickly, but Joe Sixpack is never, ever going to adopt Linux if he has to check updates.redhat.com every night and keep a close eye on bugtraq. And watch how quickly he'll switch back to Win98 if his machine gets compromised once. Script kiddies are really going to force the hand of the Linux community, as more and more people start running the Penguin and more and more high schoolers learn the joys of SKRIPTZ.
:)
Oh, as a sidenote, I switched to OpenBSD and haven't had any troubles since.
Yes, but if 95% of the world drove a 1998 Yugo hatchback that article would likely make sense.
I have AT&T cable for my cablemodem, and it sucks. Service conks out for like an hour a day, at least, and we're expected to just sort of grin and bear it. The worst part is, I used to be excited that DSL was coming to my area, but that's going to be AT&T controlled too. Is this latest trend of a giant merger every other day benefitting anyone aside from rich white guys in suits?
What search engine do you use?!?!? I get more than ten billion hits for "sex" on my hard drive alone!
You're right. Sometimes I'm glad nobody's developing software for my Mac. :)
One thing I'm surprised no one mentions is PostgreSQL's 8K rowlimit. Yes, you can hack around it pretty easily, but it's one more problem and one more headache that no one should have to deal with. I'm not a big fan of MySQL, but if you're comparing the two databases that's a definite issue that should be taken into consideration.
- Find a dead cat, or make one yourself (this is the fun part)
- Stuff it (the cat, not you!)
Ta-daaaaa! You now have a pet that sits there and does nothing, just like a real cat! I suppose robotics could come in handy to make it avoid you, just like a real feline.Given that the Newton sported a StrongARM for handwriting recognition, which was (from what I hear) roughly on par with a P5, and the Palm uses a DragonBall, a derivative of the chip used in a Mac Classic, I doubt they'd be able to squeeze enough CPU speed out of a Palm to do the Newton's handwriting recognition. One of the main reasons the MessagePad 2000's handwriting recognition was so good in the end was the massively increased CPU power StrongArm gave it.
10 PRINT "IT"
...
20 PRINT "WAS"
30 PRINT "A"
40 PRINT "DARK"
50 PRINT "AND"
60 PRINT "STORMY"
70 PRINT "NIGHT"
I was way off!
No offense, but that sounds really elitist. I don't think schools are exactly in perfect condition the way they are now, but separating "superior" students away from the unwashed masses, and doing your best to keep these worthless, 2.5gpa punks at a safe distance doesn't seem quite like a fair deal for everyone.