I guess I will be joining the rest of the/. faithful and finally relegating Katz to the killfile. I kept giving him a chance, but his opinions are based on such a lack of knowledge, that it renders his them as woeful and misinformed. Hence they're just stupid.
But to my specific objections. College students DO determine the mainstream and are the greatest barometers of the mainstream five years down the line. Does Katz realize that this is one of the reasons that advertisers find the 16-25 age span as the most important advertiser range?
College students were the forebringers of the goddamn Internet! They were the first to adopt it. They were the first to adopt mp3 techonology, CD PLAYER technology, DVD technology, jeez... I can keep going. They were the first to adopt the USE OF THE COMPUTER.
College students don't determine the mainstream market. Wow, that quote is soo stupid it's definitely earned a spot in my sig.
---
"College students don't determine the mainstream market." - Another wonderful Katz Quote:groan:
On my Debian box there is still no way to really edit the video I capture on my DV camera. Yes, I do have a firewire card in my computer too. Of course, you can get your SB Live working in Linux... big woop. Talk to me when you actually have a response to the stuff I mentioned up there.
Oh come on, I understand arguing performance-vs-costs issues regarding macs vs pcs, yes you can argue that you get more performance for less out of a PC.
But please, please... don't just say you can go and install Linux or *BSD on your Dell machine and boom there you go. That just oozes complete ignorance. Linux/*BSD is not a consumer desktop OS. You know why I like MacOSX? Because with it, I can boot my pc, run Internet Explorer while running Photoshop (the GIMP does not compare, and only geeks that never do any real production work would say it does,) edit my perl code, and then check out my work on my apache server, which includes photos imported from my camera and stills captured from my Digital Video camera. Oh, and then I can edit and save (sucessfully I might add) that word or excel document attachment sent to me by a friend in Office.
Now let's see Linux do that, and better yet... Do it OUT OF THE BOX.
Oh and I don't think Linux has a WM (or more likely X Server) that produces vector-based images for it's windowing architecture.
So NO... you CAN'T JUST install Linux on your dell (which costs pretty much the same, if not only about $100-$200 less)
Instead of 31337 W4R3Z D00dZ? I suppose there's better use of the taxpayers money than busting down teenagers that pirate games. While a lot of time is devoted to these kids, the real bad guys are out there, planning, learning to fly...
Ah.. more slashdot hypocrisy at it's finest. We complain when the FBI busts warez sites instead of focusing on terrorists, but then we ALSO complain when the DoJ focuses on terrorists and not Microsoft.
You know, I did the same exact thing after you mentioned it and it really dawned on me. I was so MUCH smarter and cooler back when I was 16 (1996) then today, it just ended up depressing me.
And man, it seems like I worshipped Duke Nukem 3D back then.
I know... it's been an awesome winter, but there were a few cold days and that night it still was in the low 40s, which is still cold when you're standing still.
We had a great view of the leonids here inIthaca (and people made fun of me for going to school in the middle of nowhere... HA!.. ok, maybe not)
But, where are the summer meteor showers? The last one had me standing out in the middle of a field at 5am, something I was uncomfortable enough doing because I was waiting for some cow to mug me (city mentality, I know), but it was also freezing. Now in December? I'll probably cease to exist if I'm out that late in the December in Ithaca. I better not tell my roommates or they'll drag me out again.
Umm... if you've ever used an Archos device or ever read any battery marketing bullshit before hand you'd realize that those claims are NEVER true. Do you get 6 hours of battery life playing a DVD on your laptop? I don't think so.
Do you really think you'd even get more than 1 or 2 hours from record a video stream into mpeg-4 with 4 NiMH batteries? Yes I did read the release throughly... this wasn't some FP crap.
The major problem with products like these is the battery life is going to suck royally. My iPaq uses a high end Lithium Polymer battery, and I still only get about 8 hours of battery life... and that's not even doing something too intensive like playing mp3s or watching movies.
Can you imagine the processor needed to decode mpeg4 on the fly? Can you imagine the processor needed to RECORD mpeg4 on the fly? Can you imagine how long this processor will run on 4 Rechargable NiMH AA batteries?
It's not speed that makes wireless a toy. It's the cost! I don't consider an 11mbps wireless connection a "toy" and if it wasn't for the costs associated, I'd jump on right now.
Come on, seriously... alot of us are still on 10mbps connections to the Internet. 11mbps is far from a toy, and the speed bump will be nice but that's NOT the issue. 54mbps, 11mbps... who cares! what about the cost!?
I knew something was wrong when I woke up this morning and none of the news sites were picking up. There was this awful ping of complete and total fear where I literally felt my heart fall into stomach... something was wrong.
I ran downstairs and turned on the TV and saw the breaking news. I now know, whenever cnn, msnbc and abcnews ALL don't pick up... and then ny1.com doesn't either... that something awful has happened again in New York.
"On the other hand, I've worked with IBM sales before, and they're no push-overs either"
Riiiiighhht. Like we've EVER seen good IBM salesmanship. I'm a huge Linux advocate but we need (and luckily have) more support than just IBM. OS/2? Man, IBM sales really wiped the floor with that one. The PS/2? Yep yep yep
IBM sucks at marketing, to the consumer and at a corporate level, although this has gotten significantly better nowadays. Let's hope it gets even better competing against the greatest marketer of them all.
REM sucks d-ck. listen to something a little more meaningful. Especially REM in wma format. What complete corperate sellouts. I doubt they even give a f-ck that cd's cost $17 now. REM's soul has officially been reaped.
You're kidding, right? You do remember that in 1995, REM refused to sell their "It's the End of the World" to Microsoft, and MS offered ALOT of money. The Rolling Stones, however...
Huh? Wait... -62% profits? Where'd you get that from?
According to Apple's Fourth Quarter Earnings release they went down 22% in revenue this quarter from last year in the same quarter.
In fact, Apple reported a net profit of $66 million this quarter, (to contrast, they made $172 million this quarter last year) and in the end of the year they posted a lost of $25 million out of $5.36Billion in revenue. Pretty healthy considering their case reserve.
On the other hand, PC companies (aside from Dell) are BLEEDING money like crazy. Gateway, for instance, lost $20.8 million this quarter. Compaq lost $120 million this quarter.
Compared to those, Apple is rolling in successful times.
Oh wait, I just realized I spent WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time answering an AC's one line troll. Doh!
"Slightly smaller size"? You obviously have never once even been near the Archos Jukebox, and saw nothing but pictures of it. I had one for a week and returned it... the UI was unusable, and man it was big, bulky, chugged batteries (and took forever to recharge) and transfering songs took forever. USB also doesn't yield itself well to constant data transfers, and it takes abour 2 hours of constant transfer to fill 6 gigs with USB. Most USB ports seem to break mid-transfer, since they weren't designed for that kind of data flow.
And it isn't just transfering MP3s faster... it's transfering MP3s ALOT faster. It takes 2 HOURS to transfer 6 gigs over USB, it takes about 15 minutes through Firewire.
Expect for the fact that we already had an N64 emulator for two years that performs at higher resolutions than an N64, and at times, faster than an N64.
So yes, there can be an xbox emulator, especially since, unlike the SGI, it's sooo close to a PC. Hey, we have Playstation, and MacOS/windows emulators as well. You haven't been following the emulation scene (or even looked at it) for the past 5 years have ya?
In what way is that amazing to anyone but users of previous Mac OSes or win3.x?
In the same way that having a user connect a firewire DV camera into their computer and having it work without any configuration issues (yes, recompiling the Kernel for "Video-For-Linux" is a "configuration issue"), and then using an industrial strength GUI, and professional grade video editing software is amazing to Linux users. I mean, there barely is a viable DVD player available for Linux! (I know they're out there, but there isn't a feature complete one out there yet.) Also, I have yet to find USB support for Linux that rivals Apple's support.
Linux is great, but it's not the answer for everything. The funny thing is, OSX seems to be slowly becoming that.
This is what I hate. People talking about things they have never used.
If I want to eject my music CD from the CDROM I should be able to press the button labeled EJECT and have it pop out, not have to drag it to the trash! - Ease of use people..
Have you ever used OS X? Oh... wait... no you haven't and I can tell that from that stupid mis-informed comment. OS X turns the trash can INTO an eject button when you highlight a CD or removable media device. It turns the trash can into a disconnect button when you highlight a network connection.
But seriously, ease of use is a matter of perception. On I MAC I find the concept of every app having each window as a floating MDI child without any real parent object frustrating! For example. If I have Mac IE open with 5 windows, to get to the 5th window (which is hidden behind quark) I have to click on the apple menu to activate IE, then minimise 4 windows before I can get to the 5th. On a PC, the 5th window is 1 click on the task bar away!
Bzzzz... please come again when you tried OS X and not OS 9. OS X does still carry on the floating MDI window paradigm, but when apps are minimized they are minimized as individual screens on the right side of the dock, and the "application icon" on the left side is a grouping of all the windows (ala KDE, and Win XP) where if you hold the mouse button over it, you can pick a window to bring forward or restore.
Oh, and the new iBook has an eject button too. Let's try to stop spreadin the FUD now shall we? I really like OSX, I really like *nix, and I think OSX is the best version of it out there. Anything that integrates the CLI to the degree that I can grep a highlighted set of icons and then have only the ones that pass the expression match still be highlighted is cool. Any OS that lets me use APT-GET is cool too:)
Yes this is going to seem like a flame, but here goes my karma anyway...
You see, we need a balance between security and freedom. Obviously the previous balance wasn't good enough because Downtown Manhattan and the Pentagon were given a serious blow. Civil liberties are not ENDOWED rights, they need to be restricted to keep people safe, in times such as these. It is not A BORN right to be allowed to drive in downtown manhattan. Privacy is not a BORN right... it's a civil liberty.
Ok, we'll get them back after all this is over. Most of these provisions (the one the Senate passed in particular) has a SUNSET clause. Nobody seems to mention that. These are temporary restrictions to aid in the keeping the people safe.
But then again, arguing for restricting civil liberties on/. is like arguing for expanding civil liberities at the NSA. One ferverant zealot forum vs the other with no real middle ground.
How important will PGP be to you when your entire home is destroyed by bombs/planes or wiped out by plague?
Try logging into ANY news site on the 11th. CNN had a minimalist website (and this was AFTER being akamized.) MSNBC refused to pickup, the NYTimes went to text only, the WashPost was dead.
The ONLY way to get your news was not from the new, shiny internet, or from the wonderful new WAP cell phones... nope... the only way to get info was to resort to the old stalwart, our good ole Television.
The only shining point of the Net's handling of this entire crisis was possibly the use of AIM, which kept people in touch after the bombing when cell phones went down. I verified that quite a few of my friends made it thanks to their AIM screen names. I still remember the "Hey, everyone... I'm out, but yes, I'm alive and my family is ok too." away message friend put up.
But aside from AIM, the Net (for news) was an absolute failure on the 11th.
Yea, Stuy (the other decent public high school in the country and my alma:P) has stuy.edu owned and operated by the school.
Students own stuy.com, stuynet.com (which is a forum for students), shsaa.org, shspa.org, stuyspectator.com, stuystudentgov.org and a bunch of others are all owned by people related to stuyvesant but not by the school itself.
The school itself does everything on subnets and subdomains (like math.stuy.edu, cs.stuy.edu, etc...) like most places should!
A complete heartfelt thanks to Slashdot for providign better coverage than any other news site. I was at first appalled by Taco's non-chlant first news post of this tragedy, but I guess nobody knew the scope of it.
Now that people do,/. has performed admirably, and I am thankful to all of you, and all the comments for helping us survive this horrific tragedy.
Hemos is right... things WILL NEVER be the same again.
Goddamn it, we need a Political Action Committee in support of digital rights. We have no voice on the hill right now, and until we get one we are SCREWED with these laws!
I know this is just bitching and moaning on my part, but someone needs to start forming one. We're soo good at forming development teams, but where are the people who can form a PAC?
We need to put our money where our mouths are. Anyone have any suggestions on how to start a PAC?
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I will be joining the rest of the /. faithful and finally relegating Katz to the killfile. I kept giving him a chance, but his opinions are based on such a lack of knowledge, that it renders his them as woeful and misinformed. Hence they're just stupid.
:groan:
But to my specific objections. College students DO determine the mainstream and are the greatest barometers of the mainstream five years down the line. Does Katz realize that this is one of the reasons that advertisers find the 16-25 age span as the most important advertiser range?
College students were the forebringers of the goddamn Internet! They were the first to adopt it. They were the first to adopt mp3 techonology, CD PLAYER technology, DVD technology, jeez... I can keep going. They were the first to adopt the USE OF THE COMPUTER.
College students don't determine the mainstream market. Wow, that quote is soo stupid it's definitely earned a spot in my sig.
---
"College students don't determine the mainstream market." - Another wonderful Katz Quote
Really?
On my Debian box there is still no way to really edit the video I capture on my DV camera. Yes, I do have a firewire card in my computer too. Of course, you can get your SB Live working in Linux... big woop. Talk to me when you actually have a response to the stuff I mentioned up there.
Oh come on, I understand arguing performance-vs-costs issues regarding macs vs pcs, yes you can argue that you get more performance for less out of a PC.
But please, please... don't just say you can go and install Linux or *BSD on your Dell machine and boom there you go. That just oozes complete ignorance. Linux/*BSD is not a consumer desktop OS. You know why I like MacOSX? Because with it, I can boot my pc, run Internet Explorer while running Photoshop (the GIMP does not compare, and only geeks that never do any real production work would say it does,) edit my perl code, and then check out my work on my apache server, which includes photos imported from my camera and stills captured from my Digital Video camera. Oh, and then I can edit and save (sucessfully I might add) that word or excel document attachment sent to me by a friend in Office.
Now let's see Linux do that, and better yet... Do it OUT OF THE BOX.
Oh and I don't think Linux has a WM (or more likely X Server) that produces vector-based images for it's windowing architecture.
So NO... you CAN'T JUST install Linux on your dell (which costs pretty much the same, if not only about $100-$200 less)
Instead of 31337 W4R3Z D00dZ? I suppose there's better use of the taxpayers money than busting down teenagers that pirate games. While a lot of time is devoted to these kids, the real bad guys are out there, planning, learning to fly...
Ah.. more slashdot hypocrisy at it's finest. We complain when the FBI busts warez sites instead of focusing on terrorists, but then we ALSO complain when the DoJ focuses on terrorists and not Microsoft.
You know, I did the same exact thing after you mentioned it and it really dawned on me. I was so MUCH smarter and cooler back when I was 16 (1996) then today, it just ended up depressing me.
And man, it seems like I worshipped Duke Nukem 3D back then.
I know... it's been an awesome winter, but there were a few cold days and that night it still was in the low 40s, which is still cold when you're standing still.
We had a great view of the leonids here inIthaca (and people made fun of me for going to school in the middle of nowhere... HA!.. ok, maybe not)
But, where are the summer meteor showers? The last one had me standing out in the middle of a field at 5am, something I was uncomfortable enough doing because I was waiting for some cow to mug me (city mentality, I know), but it was also freezing. Now in December? I'll probably cease to exist if I'm out that late in the December in Ithaca. I better not tell my roommates or they'll drag me out again.
Anyone noticed if there are any summer showers?
Umm... if you've ever used an Archos device or ever read any battery marketing bullshit before hand you'd realize that those claims are NEVER true. Do you get 6 hours of battery life playing a DVD on your laptop? I don't think so.
Do you really think you'd even get more than 1 or 2 hours from record a video stream into mpeg-4 with 4 NiMH batteries? Yes I did read the release throughly... this wasn't some FP crap.
Wow, talk about a nasty goatse.cx bomb. Everybody, don't click that link!
The major problem with products like these is the battery life is going to suck royally. My iPaq uses a high end Lithium Polymer battery, and I still only get about 8 hours of battery life... and that's not even doing something too intensive like playing mp3s or watching movies.
Can you imagine the processor needed to decode mpeg4 on the fly? Can you imagine the processor needed to RECORD mpeg4 on the fly? Can you imagine how long this processor will run on 4 Rechargable NiMH AA batteries?
Ick.
It's not speed that makes wireless a toy. It's the cost! I don't consider an 11mbps wireless connection a "toy" and if it wasn't for the costs associated, I'd jump on right now.
Come on, seriously... alot of us are still on 10mbps connections to the Internet. 11mbps is far from a toy, and the speed bump will be nice but that's NOT the issue. 54mbps, 11mbps... who cares! what about the cost!?
I knew something was wrong when I woke up this morning and none of the news sites were picking up. There was this awful ping of complete and total fear where I literally felt my heart fall into stomach... something was wrong.
I ran downstairs and turned on the TV and saw the breaking news. I now know, whenever cnn, msnbc and abcnews ALL don't pick up... and then ny1.com doesn't either... that something awful has happened again in New York.
"On the other hand, I've worked with IBM sales before, and they're no push-overs either"
Riiiiighhht. Like we've EVER seen good IBM salesmanship. I'm a huge Linux advocate but we need (and luckily have) more support than just IBM. OS/2? Man, IBM sales really wiped the floor with that one. The PS/2? Yep yep yep
IBM sucks at marketing, to the consumer and at a corporate level, although this has gotten significantly better nowadays. Let's hope it gets even better competing against the greatest marketer of them all.
REM sucks d-ck. listen to something a little more meaningful. Especially REM in wma format. What complete corperate sellouts. I doubt they even give a f-ck that cd's cost $17 now. REM's soul has officially been reaped.
You're kidding, right? You do remember that in 1995, REM refused to sell their "It's the End of the World" to Microsoft, and MS offered ALOT of money. The Rolling Stones, however...
Huh? Wait... -62% profits? Where'd you get that from?
According to Apple's Fourth Quarter Earnings release they went down 22% in revenue this quarter from last year in the same quarter.
In fact, Apple reported a net profit of $66 million this quarter, (to contrast, they made $172 million this quarter last year) and in the end of the year they posted a lost of $25 million out of $5.36Billion in revenue. Pretty healthy considering their case reserve.
On the other hand, PC companies (aside from Dell) are BLEEDING money like crazy. Gateway, for instance, lost $20.8 million this quarter. Compaq lost $120 million this quarter.
Compared to those, Apple is rolling in successful times.
Oh wait, I just realized I spent WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much time answering an AC's one line troll. Doh!
"Slightly smaller size"? You obviously have never once even been near the Archos Jukebox, and saw nothing but pictures of it. I had one for a week and returned it... the UI was unusable, and man it was big, bulky, chugged batteries (and took forever to recharge) and transfering songs took forever. USB also doesn't yield itself well to constant data transfers, and it takes abour 2 hours of constant transfer to fill 6 gigs with USB. Most USB ports seem to break mid-transfer, since they weren't designed for that kind of data flow.
And it isn't just transfering MP3s faster... it's transfering MP3s ALOT faster. It takes 2 HOURS to transfer 6 gigs over USB, it takes about 15 minutes through Firewire.
Sorry, that's a bad link (first Google link I got.) Here's the HLE site.
Expect for the fact that we already had an N64 emulator for two years that performs at higher resolutions than an N64, and at times, faster than an N64.
So yes, there can be an xbox emulator, especially since, unlike the SGI, it's sooo close to a PC. Hey, we have Playstation, and MacOS/windows emulators as well. You haven't been following the emulation scene (or even looked at it) for the past 5 years have ya?
In what way is that amazing to anyone but users of previous Mac OSes or win3.x?
In the same way that having a user connect a firewire DV camera into their computer and having it work without any configuration issues (yes, recompiling the Kernel for "Video-For-Linux" is a "configuration issue"), and then using an industrial strength GUI, and professional grade video editing software is amazing to Linux users. I mean, there barely is a viable DVD player available for Linux! (I know they're out there, but there isn't a feature complete one out there yet.) Also, I have yet to find USB support for Linux that rivals Apple's support.
Linux is great, but it's not the answer for everything. The funny thing is, OSX seems to be slowly becoming that.
This is what I hate. People talking about things they have never used.
:)
If I want to eject my music CD from the CDROM I should be able to press the button labeled EJECT and have it pop out, not have to drag it to the trash! - Ease of use people..
Have you ever used OS X? Oh... wait... no you haven't and I can tell that from that stupid mis-informed comment. OS X turns the trash can INTO an eject button when you highlight a CD or removable media device. It turns the trash can into a disconnect button when you highlight a network connection.
But seriously, ease of use is a matter of perception. On I MAC I find the concept of every app having each window as a floating MDI child without any real parent object frustrating! For example. If I have Mac IE open with 5 windows, to get to the 5th window (which is hidden behind quark) I have to click on the apple menu to activate IE, then minimise 4 windows before I can get to the 5th. On a PC, the 5th window is 1 click on the task bar away!
Bzzzz... please come again when you tried OS X and not OS 9. OS X does still carry on the floating MDI window paradigm, but when apps are minimized they are minimized as individual screens on the right side of the dock, and the "application icon" on the left side is a grouping of all the windows (ala KDE, and Win XP) where if you hold the mouse button over it, you can pick a window to bring forward or restore.
Oh, and the new iBook has an eject button too. Let's try to stop spreadin the FUD now shall we? I really like OSX, I really like *nix, and I think OSX is the best version of it out there. Anything that integrates the CLI to the degree that I can grep a highlighted set of icons and then have only the ones that pass the expression match still be highlighted is cool. Any OS that lets me use APT-GET is cool too
but nobody even seems to care about the fact that Anthrax has been confirmed in New York City.
/. is like arguing for expanding civil liberities at the NSA. One ferverant zealot forum vs the other with no real middle ground.
Yes this is going to seem like a flame, but here goes my karma anyway...
You see, we need a balance between security and freedom. Obviously the previous balance wasn't good enough because Downtown Manhattan and the Pentagon were given a serious blow. Civil liberties are not ENDOWED rights, they need to be restricted to keep people safe, in times such as these. It is not A BORN right to be allowed to drive in downtown manhattan. Privacy is not a BORN right... it's a civil liberty.
Ok, we'll get them back after all this is over. Most of these provisions (the one the Senate passed in particular) has a SUNSET clause. Nobody seems to mention that. These are temporary restrictions to aid in the keeping the people safe.
But then again, arguing for restricting civil liberties on
How important will PGP be to you when your entire home is destroyed by bombs/planes or wiped out by plague?
Try logging into ANY news site on the 11th. CNN had a minimalist website (and this was AFTER being akamized.) MSNBC refused to pickup, the NYTimes went to text only, the WashPost was dead.
The ONLY way to get your news was not from the new, shiny internet, or from the wonderful new WAP cell phones... nope... the only way to get info was to resort to the old stalwart, our good ole Television.
The only shining point of the Net's handling of this entire crisis was possibly the use of AIM, which kept people in touch after the bombing when cell phones went down. I verified that quite a few of my friends made it thanks to their AIM screen names. I still remember the "Hey, everyone... I'm out, but yes, I'm alive and my family is ok too." away message friend put up.
But aside from AIM, the Net (for news) was an absolute failure on the 11th.
Yea, Stuy (the other decent public high school in the country and my alma :P) has stuy.edu owned and operated by the school.
Students own stuy.com, stuynet.com (which is a forum for students), shsaa.org, shspa.org, stuyspectator.com, stuystudentgov.org and a bunch of others are all owned by people related to stuyvesant but not by the school itself.
The school itself does everything on subnets and subdomains (like math.stuy.edu, cs.stuy.edu, etc...) like most places should!
I can't stop crying....
/. has performed admirably, and I am thankful to all of you, and all the comments for helping us survive this horrific tragedy.
A complete heartfelt thanks to Slashdot for providign better coverage than any other news site. I was at first appalled by Taco's non-chlant first news post of this tragedy, but I guess nobody knew the scope of it.
Now that people do,
Hemos is right... things WILL NEVER be the same again.
Goddamn it, we need a Political Action Committee in support of digital rights. We have no voice on the hill right now, and until we get one we are SCREWED with these laws!
I know this is just bitching and moaning on my part, but someone needs to start forming one. We're soo good at forming development teams, but where are the people who can form a PAC?
We need to put our money where our mouths are. Anyone have any suggestions on how to start a PAC?