Lately, (and I'm sure lot of you have noticed) Google's search results have been a little more oriented towards commercial sites. Not good. They should apply the KISS principle.
I'm not sure this is intentional. I think everyone here has noticed a lot of the garbage that comes up with your average search lately. Most of them are sites whose business model revolves around high search rankings. You can tell because their domain names are almost always like "www.viagra-by-the-pound-direct.com" or "www.start-your-own-coffee-shop-today.com". These are usually just forwards to other web sites. It gives search engine spammers another domain to pollute with and Google also gives priority when it finds your keyword(s) in the domain name itself (AFAIK), an unfortunate policy that favors domain spammers and those who got in the game early and got the best web site names. I'd be surprised if any of their returned results that are not marked as advertisements were paid placements. I'm sure they've been tempted, but if that word got out of if people started noticing, it would give the competition a lot of anti-Google fodder.
My experiences have been different. I've owned roughly 5 Intel and 5 AMD systems in the past 12 years and have had nothing but trouble with the AMD systems. It started with the K6 and K6-2. Unstable and subpar performance. I moved on to the Athlon, at the time touted as the Pentium-killer. Constant system crashes and overheating with a board and chipset that got rave reviews on most of the hardware sites. Fed up, I vowed never to get AMD again. My next system was a Pentium 4, and it ran like clockwork. One day I decided to build a toolbox PC. I found the perfect board for the toolbox I was using, but unfortunately, it was an AMD board. I said, "what the hell" and bought an Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz). I tried TWO different boards that were warranted for up to 2100+ processors and they both wouldn't clock higher than 1.33GHz. Waste of time, money, shipping, and grief. If I wanted a system that slow I would have gone with an Athlon 1500 or a Celeron 2.0GHz for the same price. TWO DIFFERENT BOARDS (one Biostar, one Shuttle) and my 2100+ wouldn't clock at higher than that of a 1500. So pretty much every AMD system I've ever owened was a spectacular failure.
Before someone says, "you're either an idiot, or you buy shitty hardware! I'm using a system right now that has an uptime of 3446543215 days!" then I congratulate you on your luck. When I buy hardware, I generally read reviews (with the exception of the Toolbox PC, where I went for more modest parts). Perhaps I've read all the wrong reviews and took the wrong recommendations from colleagues, however, I use the same technique and criteria to choose my Intel systems and I have had nothing but excellent quality and performance with almost every Intel system I've owned (the one exception was a disasterous experiment with Intel's on-board choice of a SATA controller (Silicon Logic), but I won't go into that here. I had that board for about 3 days before returning it).
YMMV, and it almost certainly will since it is one of the three things everyone raves about here on Slashdot - Linux, AMD, and OS X.
I think I could find something to do with it. 64-bit, 802.11g, USB2 and Firewire, vertical scroller (essential!), and my favorite: a built-in 6-in-1 media reader. The price is right too. Mmmmm... I don't like AMD stuff, but this thing could quickly make me a convert.
You know how in Internet Explorer and Firebird you can type a word (like 'google') and hit Control+Enter, it will convert 'google' to 'http://www.google.com'. I like that feature. Sure, you can just type 'google' and hit enter while it tries to figure out what you mean, but Control+Enter shaves precious seconds off of the load time. In Firebird, there's also Shift+Enter and Ctrl+Shift+Enter too, but I don't use those. IE only has the Control+Enter feature. But Mozilla lacks all of them!
That is the impression I got from the roadmap too: "Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird..."
Apparently "after 1.4" means several versions after 1.4. The Mozilla roadmap is as clear as mud (pretty diagrams though). The Firebird roadmap is much more concise.
I haven't run Mozilla in awhile, been running Firebird instead. I must say it's pretty snappy and responsive. Too bad they haven't fixed the Control+Enter bug yet:(
My guess, if he didn't want to promote (through requirement) the open sharing of software he would have chosen a BSD-style license so others could do what they want with it. I don't think he's concerned that others profit from it - in fact I'm sure he'd encourage it. He's more concerned about being part of a movement where it is desired that information is to be freely shared.
I'm surprised they don't go after NetIdentity as well. They have thousands of domains that they sell third-level domains for (like john.doe.com or jane.smith.net). I've come across some of their domains just typing in random last names like smith.net, jacobs.net, fiala.com, hendricks.net, etc.
> Their hand animated flicks bombed because they were bad, not because they were 2D.
I was thinking the same thing. It might be because the CG films are expensive to make, so they have to make sure it's a blockbuster and not just employing animators. It's similar all over the industry. People don't go to the movies as much anymore because it's expensive, so Hollywood releases fewer movies and the movies they do release have to be blockbusters. Most people I know don't go to the movies casually anymore, they only go when it's an "event" (X2, LOTR, Matrices, etc).
> You actually swiched OS's because of the Dock? Seriously? I'm impressed.
I'm not surprised. I, too, have been reluctant to make the switch because I find the dock horrible. Fortunately, I can get the application menu back with little effort, but the dock is still lame. To each his own I guess.
> As much as everyone seems to hate Red Hat for being big and pushing for what they want
I think the vocal minority here on Slashdot has said negative things about RedHat in the past. I'd dare to say there are a lot of Slashdotters who use RedHat/Fedora on the server/desktop daily. I like their products, and although I think their WS edition is way overpriced, they still make a good distro IMO. They've given a lot to the community and I appreciate their sponsorship of Fedora.
Yes, but to say that it is based on UNIX could suggest that it uses UNIX as it's base code. I think it would be better to say it was modeled after UNIX. Less possibility for misinterpretation.
I think part of their strengths over PostgreSQL is their native support for multiple platforums (especially a Windows binary). This allows developers to install it on their Windows machines, and allows web hosting companies to standardize on one (free) database across all platforms. I think budget web hosting was where MySQL gained its popularity, and it just shot off from there.
Although the PHP.net documentation is excellent, sometimes their examples leave much to be desired. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something in PHP, and if you don't know what you're doing you may not know what to look for. A book can show you the best way to do things and provide examples to help you visualize real-world uses.
> there's practically no new stuff coming out for win98(drivers, software, hardware..) and this 'support' doesn't mean that it's getting everything patched either and made sure it would run on modern hardware,
It seems to me this is at least partially the fault of device manufacturers as it is of Microsoft. Should Microsoft be required to create drivers for new devices where the manufacturer does not? Hard to say, Linux tries to I guess. The beauty of open source.
Which companyies have the least amount of outsourced manufacturing and support? I'm currently in the market, and although I like their hardware, I'd prefer not to buy it from such an ungrateful company.
Anybody have ideas? I'm sure all major manufactures outsource a lot of their manufacturing and support, but there has to be one that is better than the rest.
Easy for her to say in ivory office while she's pulling in a million dollars a year in salary, not including bonuses. She's complaining that people are willing to accept minimum wages?
Best Buy should have gotten a service plan on their servers. If they expected an exploit, they could have brought it into their technicians for a "cleaning".
A truly altruistic extortionist would have asked them to revise their policy on stalking customers and trying to sell the god damn kitchen sink when I'm just trying to buy your ubder-discounted laptop and rob you of any respectable margins.
Would you have a problem with your DNA being on government file? How is this any different? If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about, right?
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I'm not sure this is intentional. I think everyone here has noticed a lot of the garbage that comes up with your average search lately. Most of them are sites whose business model revolves around high search rankings. You can tell because their domain names are almost always like "www.viagra-by-the-pound-direct.com" or "www.start-your-own-coffee-shop-today.com". These are usually just forwards to other web sites. It gives search engine spammers another domain to pollute with and Google also gives priority when it finds your keyword(s) in the domain name itself (AFAIK), an unfortunate policy that favors domain spammers and those who got in the game early and got the best web site names. I'd be surprised if any of their returned results that are not marked as advertisements were paid placements. I'm sure they've been tempted, but if that word got out of if people started noticing, it would give the competition a lot of anti-Google fodder.
> I'd love to have an easy to use system that I could handle without much difficulty while still having the power of Unix at hand should I want it.
Xandros, Lindows, Knoppix. To a lesser extent, Libranet and Mandrake.
My experiences have been different. I've owned roughly 5 Intel and 5 AMD systems in the past 12 years and have had nothing but trouble with the AMD systems. It started with the K6 and K6-2. Unstable and subpar performance. I moved on to the Athlon, at the time touted as the Pentium-killer. Constant system crashes and overheating with a board and chipset that got rave reviews on most of the hardware sites. Fed up, I vowed never to get AMD again. My next system was a Pentium 4, and it ran like clockwork. One day I decided to build a toolbox PC. I found the perfect board for the toolbox I was using, but unfortunately, it was an AMD board. I said, "what the hell" and bought an Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz). I tried TWO different boards that were warranted for up to 2100+ processors and they both wouldn't clock higher than 1.33GHz. Waste of time, money, shipping, and grief. If I wanted a system that slow I would have gone with an Athlon 1500 or a Celeron 2.0GHz for the same price. TWO DIFFERENT BOARDS (one Biostar, one Shuttle) and my 2100+ wouldn't clock at higher than that of a 1500. So pretty much every AMD system I've ever owened was a spectacular failure.
Before someone says, "you're either an idiot, or you buy shitty hardware! I'm using a system right now that has an uptime of 3446543215 days!" then I congratulate you on your luck. When I buy hardware, I generally read reviews (with the exception of the Toolbox PC, where I went for more modest parts). Perhaps I've read all the wrong reviews and took the wrong recommendations from colleagues, however, I use the same technique and criteria to choose my Intel systems and I have had nothing but excellent quality and performance with almost every Intel system I've owned (the one exception was a disasterous experiment with Intel's on-board choice of a SATA controller (Silicon Logic), but I won't go into that here. I had that board for about 3 days before returning it).
YMMV, and it almost certainly will since it is one of the three things everyone raves about here on Slashdot - Linux, AMD, and OS X.
> I don't have much need for a 64 bit laptop
I think I could find something to do with it. 64-bit, 802.11g, USB2 and Firewire, vertical scroller (essential!), and my favorite: a built-in 6-in-1 media reader. The price is right too. Mmmmm... I don't like AMD stuff, but this thing could quickly make me a convert.
You know how in Internet Explorer and Firebird you can type a word (like 'google') and hit Control+Enter, it will convert 'google' to 'http://www.google.com'. I like that feature. Sure, you can just type 'google' and hit enter while it tries to figure out what you mean, but Control+Enter shaves precious seconds off of the load time. In Firebird, there's also Shift+Enter and Ctrl+Shift+Enter too, but I don't use those. IE only has the Control+Enter feature. But Mozilla lacks all of them!
That is the impression I got from the roadmap too: "Deliver a Mozilla 1.4 milestone that can replace the 1.0 branch as the stable development path, then move on to make riskier changes during 1.5 and 1.6. The major changes after 1.4 involve switching to Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird ..."
Apparently "after 1.4" means several versions after 1.4. The Mozilla roadmap is as clear as mud (pretty diagrams though). The Firebird roadmap is much more concise.
I haven't run Mozilla in awhile, been running Firebird instead. I must say it's pretty snappy and responsive. Too bad they haven't fixed the Control+Enter bug yet :(
My guess, if he didn't want to promote (through requirement) the open sharing of software he would have chosen a BSD-style license so others could do what they want with it. I don't think he's concerned that others profit from it - in fact I'm sure he'd encourage it. He's more concerned about being part of a movement where it is desired that information is to be freely shared.
My $.02
I'm surprised they don't go after NetIdentity as well. They have thousands of domains that they sell third-level domains for (like john.doe.com or jane.smith.net). I've come across some of their domains just typing in random last names like smith.net, jacobs.net, fiala.com, hendricks.net, etc.
They were just being humorous. You know, an Australian publication asking, "So when are you moving to Australia." More flirting than anything...
> Their hand animated flicks bombed because they were bad, not because they were 2D.
I was thinking the same thing. It might be because the CG films are expensive to make, so they have to make sure it's a blockbuster and not just employing animators. It's similar all over the industry. People don't go to the movies as much anymore because it's expensive, so Hollywood releases fewer movies and the movies they do release have to be blockbusters. Most people I know don't go to the movies casually anymore, they only go when it's an "event" (X2, LOTR, Matrices, etc).
> You actually swiched OS's because of the Dock? Seriously? I'm impressed.
I'm not surprised. I, too, have been reluctant to make the switch because I find the dock horrible. Fortunately, I can get the application menu back with little effort, but the dock is still lame. To each his own I guess.
> As much as everyone seems to hate Red Hat for being big and pushing for what they want
I think the vocal minority here on Slashdot has said negative things about RedHat in the past. I'd dare to say there are a lot of Slashdotters who use RedHat/Fedora on the server/desktop daily. I like their products, and although I think their WS edition is way overpriced, they still make a good distro IMO. They've given a lot to the community and I appreciate their sponsorship of Fedora.
Yes, but to say that it is based on UNIX could suggest that it uses UNIX as it's base code. I think it would be better to say it was modeled after UNIX. Less possibility for misinterpretation.
I think part of their strengths over PostgreSQL is their native support for multiple platforums (especially a Windows binary). This allows developers to install it on their Windows machines, and allows web hosting companies to standardize on one (free) database across all platforms. I think budget web hosting was where MySQL gained its popularity, and it just shot off from there.
Although the PHP.net documentation is excellent, sometimes their examples leave much to be desired. There is usually more than one way to accomplish something in PHP, and if you don't know what you're doing you may not know what to look for. A book can show you the best way to do things and provide examples to help you visualize real-world uses.
> there's practically no new stuff coming out for win98(drivers, software, hardware..) and this 'support' doesn't mean that it's getting everything patched either and made sure it would run on modern hardware,
It seems to me this is at least partially the fault of device manufacturers as it is of Microsoft. Should Microsoft be required to create drivers for new devices where the manufacturer does not? Hard to say, Linux tries to I guess. The beauty of open source.
Just a note - those aren't my words, they're quoted from Mandrake's web page :)
Get unlimited for far less or start your own ISP!
Which companyies have the least amount of outsourced manufacturing and support? I'm currently in the market, and although I like their hardware, I'd prefer not to buy it from such an ungrateful company.
Anybody have ideas? I'm sure all major manufactures outsource a lot of their manufacturing and support, but there has to be one that is better than the rest.
Is it profitable to publicly alienate your regular customers?
Easy for her to say in ivory office while she's pulling in a million dollars a year in salary, not including bonuses. She's complaining that people are willing to accept minimum wages?
Best Buy should have gotten a service plan on their servers. If they expected an exploit, they could have brought it into their technicians for a "cleaning".
A truly altruistic extortionist would have asked them to revise their policy on stalking customers and trying to sell the god damn kitchen sink when I'm just trying to buy your ubder-discounted laptop and rob you of any respectable margins.
And yet you felt the need to post annonymously... ;)
Would you have a problem with your DNA being on government file? How is this any different? If you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about, right?