Re:Hardware Issues
on
Moving To Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I finally booted up Knoppix on my main workstation last night in fact. Booted up slowly, but once up it worked like a charm. I didn't really care if the sound card, networking, or other subsystems didn't work perfectly though. Besides, this will be a great demo disk in the future for my wife, other family members, etc. to see just how capable Linux *CAN* be if setup correctly.
88 bit operations on an Intel or AMD chip could only happen if you took 2 32-bit registers, added in a 16-bit register and an 8-bit register, and then combined those registers with a matching set of 2x32, 1x16, 1x8 register set. This would be physically impossible because that would take up more than the available registers in a 32-bit machine. Of course this is all pointless since noe one is EVER going to pass more than an _int64 instruction in any code in any program ever, so you'll never see the benefits of 88-bit instructions.
That site is basically a complete lie, and if the article submitter actually thinks this sped up his machine, he should just go take a look at his system settings. My bet is that this "Hare" program just turns off a bunch of unneeded services and wasteful windows drawing options that come installed as defaults on all Windows systems.
Besides, your memory couldn't pass 88-bit instructions, and even if it could, what good would it do to process a number that big? Just a bunch of Russian mobsters preying on clueless grandma's.
That's because people hope for the best, fear the worst. In reality it's neither, and probably why so many have a hard time accepting the cold reality that we all suck and are all more than capable of turning our future into a dystopian one, far more than a utopian one. Ultimately we get neither, and just see freedom and liberty slip away as nation after nation tries to build on the failures of the nations before it, only to once again, slip away into past. It'd be nice if us humans could change this pathetically repeating history around, and actually BUILD upon our failures, but I don't see that happening ANYTIME soon.
Listen, I understand that being forced to train your outsourced replacement or you get fired anyways is completely unfair and cruel behavior by the big corp's. But outsourcing isn't entirely evil. For one thing, it means that there is *much* cheaper labor out there ready and willing to be the "code monkey's" who can slop together some PeopleSoft, C/C++, and SQL code to keep the big business CRM tool running. And if companies in the US are so willing to look half-way round the world to get such jobs done, it means there's more relevant, interesting work to go around for those in the US.
Not to mention the fact that freeing up millions of dollars the company is currently spending to invest elsewhere can only be good in the long run. Yes, I know your job might be eliminated in the short term, but that doesn't mean you can't get back out there and learn new skills or take on a completely different job. No one ever said that living in America was a free ride. We've all gotta work hard to make our living here. More money being pumped back into our economy due to outsourcing will, IMO, continue to raise stock prices, make the rich richer who will in turn spend their money on more frivolous products, which drives business further ahead. Besides, when the mega-rich have more 'stuff' they need more people to upkeep it, which is a good place for the poor and unemployed to get themselves back on their feet in the short-term so that they aren't wasting their earning potential in the long-term.
CoNNections - very brief periodical on Neural Networking related computational theories and articles. Usually written by foreigners and pretty difficult to read, from a "grasp of the English language" standpoint.
Potentials
Robotics & Automation - Usually chocked full of robotics related articles, some computational info related to robotics as well.
Forbes - used to get it, too expensive to renew the subscription right now, excellent business info. Good grasp of the business side of computers as well, including usually good writing about Linux and OSS related topics.
Vonage provides you with a glorified router which translates the incoming packets containing voice information to an RJ-11 style plug you can plug your existing phone into. While not the ultimate "IP phone address", the phones in my house are now officially 100% disconnected from the local SBC loop, and all my calls get routed over the Internet, and if you're still on the old phone network, eventually through your provider and then to your phone.
So the grandparent poster was correct, all this tech already exists. 99% of the US just hasn't had the time to adopt it yet.
I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code (the instructions that define a computer program).
"I'm not a stoner or a druggie, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the medical industry. There are some clear similarities between medicine administration (the drugs that cure our common aches and pains) and hemp, cocaine, and crank (the drugs that put us in a ephoric state)."
Give me a break, anyone who has no knowledge of the fields they speak of usually doesn't understand the true issues at hand. This blog is near worthless, IMHO.
I agree. Also, all the 'techie' complainers who lost their jobs and are having difficulty finding a new one obviously have plenty of time on their hands to complain on weblogs like Slashdot about the low salaries and lack of jobs out there. I know I probably would if I were in their position...
Well I've seen the molecular imaging apps running on a fellow slashdotter's Apple G5 system about 6 months ago. (He's a bioinformatics PhD, but I'll keep is uid confidential for now) It was really sharp, and ran perfectly fine. Since Mac OS X uses a base similar to Linux, I don't see why you couldn't view these same molecular structures on Linux already. I would think at worst it'd be a matter of porting the source code for the display program which would take *some* time, but probably wouldn't be that difficult given that it already runs in a Mac OS X environment.
Still, $3600 is steep, but I'll be waiting for one of these systems to show up on ebay in 6-12 months.;)
Fine, but what's the point? 0.9 loads just as fast as IE, and with all the configurability options can load pages much faster than IE, depending on how many ads and other images you've "blocked" per website which IE CANNOT do by default. And if you're running on a slower, older machine that DOES take a while to load Firefox then you probably don't have that much memory anyways, so why waste it with a resident Firefox running in the background that slows down some of your other memory intensive programs?
...from someone who was in exactly your position 9 years ago.
I graduated high school in the top half of my class (of only 75 students, private school with a lot of overachiever types in my particular class), but thought I was hot stuff and wanted to be a fighter pilot in the US Air Force. Went to a private college for two years majoring in Comp Sci and HATED IT! Came back to my home town metropolis to go back to the old state school (which is a good one too, but BIG!) to pursue engineering of some sort. HATED IT! Eventually started working part-time in a call center, doing school part-time, then working full-time and dropped out of school, and now I'm back in school at DeVry (HATE IT because of it's less than stellar academics) and plan on finally completing my degree in 2 more years going part-time while working full-time still.
BTW, I am now in a job that pays roughly what a fresh-out-of-college comp sci major would make (maybe a bit more) and enjoy my job but still struggle with dealing with the business types who just aren't as well-read or interested in so many intellectual things as I am.
My advice: Go to your local community college or the cheapest school in your area that you can transfer college credits from when you move on to a more challenging college to complete your major. Take all of the undergrad courses that you find to be a waste of your time (for me it was English, Social Sciences, and the Economics 101 type courses) at the community college. Not because they're worthless, but because you're not interested in them and probably won't excel at them, so don't waste the money on them at a more expensive school. Just get the credits with high grades.
Next, find a job, any part-time job, that you would somewhat like to do. Help desk tech support, cable installer, carpenter, whatever. This will keep the money coming in, and at the same time train you on the importance of your college education. If you're like me, you'll find that you'll soon grow tired of your job, you'll be excelling at it like no one else you work with, and you're attention will remain focused on completing that higher education to work with SMARTER PEOPLE!
Finally, transfer those credits you earned at community college into a bigger and/or better university when you're ready to begin your major. Quit working (unless you have the flexibility and energy to continue working) and really focus hard on whatever it is you've decided you love to study in depth.
I really wish I had been more thoughtful about the future of my life outside of high school when I was your age since I'd probably have gone on to a master's or PhD program by now, and have a better handle on the direction I should take my career. I have consistently scored as an INTP/Entreprenaur/Innovator type on the various personality traits tests that one can take over the past couple of years, and really wish I had been more thoughtful (and less willing to get away from the parents) when I was younger. As for all those who took the time to slam you for posting your question, shame on them! At first I felt like laughing when I saw the posting headline, but after reading your post I realized you have many of the same questions I had a few years ago.
Realize that your intelligence and drive are in different areas than the mass of our civilized society's values. Many of the "college grads" that I live around now are completely clueless meatheads and ex-sorority girls (as my wife and I like to joke about) who really don't have much of a clue about good taste, appropriate behavior in our society, or thirst for knowledge and understanding. I LOVE learning, just as you, but don't feel bad for not wanting to learn the way everyone else does just by drudging through 4 years of college in huge lecture halls with boring professors. Use those smarts to do things in a manner that fewer people have the insight to do.
As one previous poster mentioned, it'd be great to work for a bit, save some money up to go to a foreign country for a y
Well then it is indeed working as designed. MS Windows' clipboard and subsequent pasting of objects copied to it can be quite an intensive task. And you CANNOT necessarily drag and drop, copy and paste files, bitmaps, etc. uniformly between all apps in Windows. It may appear that way because you're used to moving stuff around using MS Office type applications, but I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't work with absolutely everything. MS Access 97 and 2000 in particular suck at copy-paste methods to and from other apps because it's a whole different beast than the other productivity MS apps.
This is not to say that I don't wish the X window system had better management of copied data objects, I do, but with so many different open source projects out there I think catering to all of the projects would be near impossible.
So this isn't a redundant Ask Slashdot, merely a request for innovative solutions to this current dilemma.
There are 2 constants in this world: change and death. None of us will ever overcome either. Besides, you people who theorize what the world would be like if everyone lived forever (or for nearly forever) always come up with some really crazy, whacked-out scenarios. Would you even want to live in such a world where all the evil people continued to live on and on and on? Either they live on and on or you choose to put them to death. You can't have it both ways you know.
She won't come near it when I'm doing my business, which gives me ample time (20-30 minutes *usually*) to read my book on string theory or my latest gaming manual.
Think I'm being a twit? How many IDEs are used in production build environments? (Hint: none)
Yes you are, and no, there are many.
Why is it so many job postings these days require a programmer to be proficient with Visual Studio,.NET, or any other host of IDE tools? Those just must be the "I have a huge budget and need to waste the money somewhere" types of jobs, right?
Not to mention that the submitter of this Ask Slashdot may merely be a student wishing to learn more and waste less time typing redundant code like GUI app controls on vi or notepad.
Believe it or not, some of us have moved past the early 90's and like to use our powerful computers to be lazier and not worry about moving the bits around via assembly language all the time. Of course, I find assembly language intriguing and a great learning method to programming, but c'mon, it's pointless for you to claim we should all continue to use vi, emacs, or notepad to edit our code. Creating a GUI app is hard enough with the IDE's help, let alone doing it all by hand. What a great way to introduce some really strange logic bug! Great thinking there, buddy.
Are you sure you're not Amish? I mean, they decry the evil evil use of *gasp* electricity, or buttons, but have no problem using fire for lighting and hooks to close up clothing. All four things I described are inventions for ease of use, so where's the sense in stating that the prior two inventions (harnessing electricity and buttons) is worse than using fire and hooks?
Most insightful and right on post on this discussion yet. Bravo!
And to elaborate on your thought: if Microsoft, Sun, or Redhat controlled the Internet or huge swaths of it like the Baby Bells and cell phone companies control their respective communication mediums, then yes, we'd be screwed. But they don't, and so we're not. And hence why the Internet has taken off by leaps and bounds whereas telephony growth has been stagnant or at least uninventive for the past 40-50 years. (not including those new cell phone thingys;)
Re:not gonna happen, the lobbies are too powerful
on
Do-It-Yourself VOIP Telco
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Although I haven't read the Cringley article, I agree more or less with your assessment of the situation. SecurityFocus.com had a story on VoIP security issues and whether it was worth it for a business to take on the increased responsibility of not only securing their data network, but also their voice network. (Because in essence that responsibility shifts from the Baby Bell to you when you go to VoIP.) The general findings of that article was that VoIP was great, but not without some big risks and time and money spent maintaining such a phone network.
I don't think the Baby Bells will ever disappear, just like the RIAA won't ever disappear. Let's just vote for Congress critters that will be balanced in their voting and not swing wildly to one special interest or the other.
Well I love mouse gestures and Click to Flask and can't do without them, but have zero reason to use or need user agent switching. So I guess you're right, customizeability and hence speed are great.
Personally it annoys me whenever I have to open IE now-a-days because of all the extra windows it opens because of the inability to do tabbed browsing, forced viewing of ad banners, pop-ups/under/overs/sideways/etc, and flash-based ads.
And Thunderbird, while a bit buggy at times and not perfect is ten times more useful to me in so many ways than Outlook will ever be.
And THEY FAIL IT hard. I'm glad that just last month we finally got our house switched over to full Vonage phone support. Dealing with the outsourced SBC customer service reps from India is pure hell, and SBC is merely more of the same old shoddy service we've all become accustomed to in the Midwest/East.
Ahh, good counterpoint. The law enforcement *controlled* cameras may be unnecessary, especially considering the potential for abuse, however if the camera's were used for more worthwhile purposes then they are definitely worth having around.
I find it interesting that for being such a technology site, so many/. commentors (not including yourself) seem actually afraid of any technology that has the inkling of increased control. Freedom? Oh yeah! They're all about that. But more reliable technological control over somewhat flawed processes like driving, law enforcement, or terrorist attacks? No way! (Note that I am in no way condemning some of the lame-ass ATTEMPTS at solving some of these problems legislatively, like the DMCA or the Patriot Act, so I hope you get my drift)
Re-read the end of the article. Decreased insurance costs and fewer deaths due to traffic accidents means more money for other areas of spending for EVERYONE. I for one vote "Yes!" for this idea. Might even allow those of use with significantly lower rates of crashes or traffic incidents on our record to travel faster than those idiots without insurance (they can read the license plates with those little buggers) and allow the scale to be adjustable. Over 65? Better use the right two lanes buddy! Too many accidents in the past 7 years? Better get over there with the old-agers restricted to a 55mph max. speed limit on the interstates!
Slashdot Mirror
I finally booted up Knoppix on my main workstation last night in fact. Booted up slowly, but once up it worked like a charm. I didn't really care if the sound card, networking, or other subsystems didn't work perfectly though. Besides, this will be a great demo disk in the future for my wife, other family members, etc. to see just how capable Linux *CAN* be if setup correctly.
88 bit operations on an Intel or AMD chip could only happen if you took 2 32-bit registers, added in a 16-bit register and an 8-bit register, and then combined those registers with a matching set of 2x32, 1x16, 1x8 register set. This would be physically impossible because that would take up more than the available registers in a 32-bit machine. Of course this is all pointless since noe one is EVER going to pass more than an _int64 instruction in any code in any program ever, so you'll never see the benefits of 88-bit instructions.
That site is basically a complete lie, and if the article submitter actually thinks this sped up his machine, he should just go take a look at his system settings. My bet is that this "Hare" program just turns off a bunch of unneeded services and wasteful windows drawing options that come installed as defaults on all Windows systems.
Besides, your memory couldn't pass 88-bit instructions, and even if it could, what good would it do to process a number that big? Just a bunch of Russian mobsters preying on clueless grandma's.
That's because people hope for the best, fear the worst. In reality it's neither, and probably why so many have a hard time accepting the cold reality that we all suck and are all more than capable of turning our future into a dystopian one, far more than a utopian one. Ultimately we get neither, and just see freedom and liberty slip away as nation after nation tries to build on the failures of the nations before it, only to once again, slip away into past. It'd be nice if us humans could change this pathetically repeating history around, and actually BUILD upon our failures, but I don't see that happening ANYTIME soon.
Listen, I understand that being forced to train your outsourced replacement or you get fired anyways is completely unfair and cruel behavior by the big corp's. But outsourcing isn't entirely evil. For one thing, it means that there is *much* cheaper labor out there ready and willing to be the "code monkey's" who can slop together some PeopleSoft, C/C++, and SQL code to keep the big business CRM tool running. And if companies in the US are so willing to look half-way round the world to get such jobs done, it means there's more relevant, interesting work to go around for those in the US.
Not to mention the fact that freeing up millions of dollars the company is currently spending to invest elsewhere can only be good in the long run. Yes, I know your job might be eliminated in the short term, but that doesn't mean you can't get back out there and learn new skills or take on a completely different job. No one ever said that living in America was a free ride. We've all gotta work hard to make our living here. More money being pumped back into our economy due to outsourcing will, IMO, continue to raise stock prices, make the rich richer who will in turn spend their money on more frivolous products, which drives business further ahead. Besides, when the mega-rich have more 'stuff' they need more people to upkeep it, which is a good place for the poor and unemployed to get themselves back on their feet in the short-term so that they aren't wasting their earning potential in the long-term.
Hitchhiker: No! No, man! It's a 1x1 Matrix!
CoNNections - very brief periodical on Neural Networking related computational theories and articles. Usually written by foreigners and pretty difficult to read, from a "grasp of the English language" standpoint.
Potentials
Robotics & Automation - Usually chocked full of robotics related articles, some computational info related to robotics as well.
Forbes - used to get it, too expensive to renew the subscription right now, excellent business info. Good grasp of the business side of computers as well, including usually good writing about Linux and OSS related topics.
Vonage provides you with a glorified router which translates the incoming packets containing voice information to an RJ-11 style plug you can plug your existing phone into. While not the ultimate "IP phone address", the phones in my house are now officially 100% disconnected from the local SBC loop, and all my calls get routed over the Internet, and if you're still on the old phone network, eventually through your provider and then to your phone.
So the grandparent poster was correct, all this tech already exists. 99% of the US just hasn't had the time to adopt it yet.
While I whole-heartedly agree, cubical land does not allow for this, and hence my less-than-copacetic current existence at my job.
I'm not a lawyer or biologist, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the software industry. There are some clear similarities between genetic code (the blueprint for lifeforms) and software code (the instructions that define a computer program).
"I'm not a stoner or a druggie, but it may be interesting to compare this issue to what's going on in the medical industry. There are some clear similarities between medicine administration (the drugs that cure our common aches and pains) and hemp, cocaine, and crank (the drugs that put us in a ephoric state)."
Give me a break, anyone who has no knowledge of the fields they speak of usually doesn't understand the true issues at hand. This blog is near worthless, IMHO.
I agree. Also, all the 'techie' complainers who lost their jobs and are having difficulty finding a new one obviously have plenty of time on their hands to complain on weblogs like Slashdot about the low salaries and lack of jobs out there. I know I probably would if I were in their position...
Well I've seen the molecular imaging apps running on a fellow slashdotter's Apple G5 system about 6 months ago. (He's a bioinformatics PhD, but I'll keep is uid confidential for now) It was really sharp, and ran perfectly fine. Since Mac OS X uses a base similar to Linux, I don't see why you couldn't view these same molecular structures on Linux already. I would think at worst it'd be a matter of porting the source code for the display program which would take *some* time, but probably wouldn't be that difficult given that it already runs in a Mac OS X environment.
;)
Still, $3600 is steep, but I'll be waiting for one of these systems to show up on ebay in 6-12 months.
Fine, but what's the point? 0.9 loads just as fast as IE, and with all the configurability options can load pages much faster than IE, depending on how many ads and other images you've "blocked" per website which IE CANNOT do by default. And if you're running on a slower, older machine that DOES take a while to load Firefox then you probably don't have that much memory anyways, so why waste it with a resident Firefox running in the background that slows down some of your other memory intensive programs?
...from someone who was in exactly your position 9 years ago.
I graduated high school in the top half of my class (of only 75 students, private school with a lot of overachiever types in my particular class), but thought I was hot stuff and wanted to be a fighter pilot in the US Air Force. Went to a private college for two years majoring in Comp Sci and HATED IT! Came back to my home town metropolis to go back to the old state school (which is a good one too, but BIG!) to pursue engineering of some sort. HATED IT! Eventually started working part-time in a call center, doing school part-time, then working full-time and dropped out of school, and now I'm back in school at DeVry (HATE IT because of it's less than stellar academics) and plan on finally completing my degree in 2 more years going part-time while working full-time still.
BTW, I am now in a job that pays roughly what a fresh-out-of-college comp sci major would make (maybe a bit more) and enjoy my job but still struggle with dealing with the business types who just aren't as well-read or interested in so many intellectual things as I am.
My advice: Go to your local community college or the cheapest school in your area that you can transfer college credits from when you move on to a more challenging college to complete your major. Take all of the undergrad courses that you find to be a waste of your time (for me it was English, Social Sciences, and the Economics 101 type courses) at the community college. Not because they're worthless, but because you're not interested in them and probably won't excel at them, so don't waste the money on them at a more expensive school. Just get the credits with high grades.
Next, find a job, any part-time job, that you would somewhat like to do. Help desk tech support, cable installer, carpenter, whatever. This will keep the money coming in, and at the same time train you on the importance of your college education. If you're like me, you'll find that you'll soon grow tired of your job, you'll be excelling at it like no one else you work with, and you're attention will remain focused on completing that higher education to work with SMARTER PEOPLE!
Finally, transfer those credits you earned at community college into a bigger and/or better university when you're ready to begin your major. Quit working (unless you have the flexibility and energy to continue working) and really focus hard on whatever it is you've decided you love to study in depth.
I really wish I had been more thoughtful about the future of my life outside of high school when I was your age since I'd probably have gone on to a master's or PhD program by now, and have a better handle on the direction I should take my career. I have consistently scored as an INTP/Entreprenaur/Innovator type on the various personality traits tests that one can take over the past couple of years, and really wish I had been more thoughtful (and less willing to get away from the parents) when I was younger. As for all those who took the time to slam you for posting your question, shame on them! At first I felt like laughing when I saw the posting headline, but after reading your post I realized you have many of the same questions I had a few years ago.
Realize that your intelligence and drive are in different areas than the mass of our civilized society's values. Many of the "college grads" that I live around now are completely clueless meatheads and ex-sorority girls (as my wife and I like to joke about) who really don't have much of a clue about good taste, appropriate behavior in our society, or thirst for knowledge and understanding. I LOVE learning, just as you, but don't feel bad for not wanting to learn the way everyone else does just by drudging through 4 years of college in huge lecture halls with boring professors. Use those smarts to do things in a manner that fewer people have the insight to do.
As one previous poster mentioned, it'd be great to work for a bit, save some money up to go to a foreign country for a y
Well then it is indeed working as designed. MS Windows' clipboard and subsequent pasting of objects copied to it can be quite an intensive task. And you CANNOT necessarily drag and drop, copy and paste files, bitmaps, etc. uniformly between all apps in Windows. It may appear that way because you're used to moving stuff around using MS Office type applications, but I can tell you for a fact that it doesn't work with absolutely everything. MS Access 97 and 2000 in particular suck at copy-paste methods to and from other apps because it's a whole different beast than the other productivity MS apps.
This is not to say that I don't wish the X window system had better management of copied data objects, I do, but with so many different open source projects out there I think catering to all of the projects would be near impossible.
So this isn't a redundant Ask Slashdot, merely a request for innovative solutions to this current dilemma.
There are 2 constants in this world: change and death. None of us will ever overcome either. Besides, you people who theorize what the world would be like if everyone lived forever (or for nearly forever) always come up with some really crazy, whacked-out scenarios. Would you even want to live in such a world where all the evil people continued to live on and on and on? Either they live on and on or you choose to put them to death. You can't have it both ways you know.
Once upon a time we had our sacntuaries!
I still have mine, and it's called The CAN!
She won't come near it when I'm doing my business, which gives me ample time (20-30 minutes *usually*) to read my book on string theory or my latest gaming manual.
Think I'm being a twit? How many IDEs are used in production build environments? (Hint: none)
.NET, or any other host of IDE tools? Those just must be the "I have a huge budget and need to waste the money somewhere" types of jobs, right?
Yes you are, and no, there are many.
Why is it so many job postings these days require a programmer to be proficient with Visual Studio,
Not to mention that the submitter of this Ask Slashdot may merely be a student wishing to learn more and waste less time typing redundant code like GUI app controls on vi or notepad.
Believe it or not, some of us have moved past the early 90's and like to use our powerful computers to be lazier and not worry about moving the bits around via assembly language all the time. Of course, I find assembly language intriguing and a great learning method to programming, but c'mon, it's pointless for you to claim we should all continue to use vi, emacs, or notepad to edit our code. Creating a GUI app is hard enough with the IDE's help, let alone doing it all by hand. What a great way to introduce some really strange logic bug! Great thinking there, buddy.
Are you sure you're not Amish? I mean, they decry the evil evil use of *gasp* electricity, or buttons, but have no problem using fire for lighting and hooks to close up clothing. All four things I described are inventions for ease of use, so where's the sense in stating that the prior two inventions (harnessing electricity and buttons) is worse than using fire and hooks?
Most insightful and right on post on this discussion yet. Bravo!
;)
And to elaborate on your thought: if Microsoft, Sun, or Redhat controlled the Internet or huge swaths of it like the Baby Bells and cell phone companies control their respective communication mediums, then yes, we'd be screwed. But they don't, and so we're not. And hence why the Internet has taken off by leaps and bounds whereas telephony growth has been stagnant or at least uninventive for the past 40-50 years. (not including those new cell phone thingys
Although I haven't read the Cringley article, I agree more or less with your assessment of the situation. SecurityFocus.com had a story on VoIP security issues and whether it was worth it for a business to take on the increased responsibility of not only securing their data network, but also their voice network. (Because in essence that responsibility shifts from the Baby Bell to you when you go to VoIP.) The general findings of that article was that VoIP was great, but not without some big risks and time and money spent maintaining such a phone network.
I don't think the Baby Bells will ever disappear, just like the RIAA won't ever disappear. Let's just vote for Congress critters that will be balanced in their voting and not swing wildly to one special interest or the other.
Well I love mouse gestures and Click to Flask and can't do without them, but have zero reason to use or need user agent switching. So I guess you're right, customizeability and hence speed are great.
Personally it annoys me whenever I have to open IE now-a-days because of all the extra windows it opens because of the inability to do tabbed browsing, forced viewing of ad banners, pop-ups/under/overs/sideways/etc, and flash-based ads.
And Thunderbird, while a bit buggy at times and not perfect is ten times more useful to me in so many ways than Outlook will ever be.
you forgot to mention doublewords and quadwords ;-)
OK Mr. smartypants, so what's the next data size called for the new 64-bit processors? An octetword?
You're right, but this is Slashdot where FUD is decried when it relates to Linux, but reigns supreme when posted to the front page by an "editor."
And THEY FAIL IT hard. I'm glad that just last month we finally got our house switched over to full Vonage phone support. Dealing with the outsourced SBC customer service reps from India is pure hell, and SBC is merely more of the same old shoddy service we've all become accustomed to in the Midwest/East.
Ahh, good counterpoint. The law enforcement *controlled* cameras may be unnecessary, especially considering the potential for abuse, however if the camera's were used for more worthwhile purposes then they are definitely worth having around.
/. commentors (not including yourself) seem actually afraid of any technology that has the inkling of increased control. Freedom? Oh yeah! They're all about that. But more reliable technological control over somewhat flawed processes like driving, law enforcement, or terrorist attacks? No way! (Note that I am in no way condemning some of the lame-ass ATTEMPTS at solving some of these problems legislatively, like the DMCA or the Patriot Act, so I hope you get my drift)
I find it interesting that for being such a technology site, so many
Re-read the end of the article. Decreased insurance costs and fewer deaths due to traffic accidents means more money for other areas of spending for EVERYONE. I for one vote "Yes!" for this idea. Might even allow those of use with significantly lower rates of crashes or traffic incidents on our record to travel faster than those idiots without insurance (they can read the license plates with those little buggers) and allow the scale to be adjustable. Over 65? Better use the right two lanes buddy! Too many accidents in the past 7 years? Better get over there with the old-agers restricted to a 55mph max. speed limit on the interstates!