I thought the only way to be modded flamebait here was to make a disparaging remark about FOSS or it's community.
No, most of the anti-F/OSS remarks on Slashdot get modded up, if they're well-written comments with at least some meat to them. A few years ago perhaps not, but these days there are plenty of MS-supporting Slashdotters. A lot have some good commentary as to why F/OSS isn't perfect, but unfortunately, some (most?) don't. Most end up using the word "zealot" repeatedly in a post, and whining about RMS's personal hygiene. THOSE get moderated as flamebait, because they are.
The grandparent got moderated as flamebait for the same reason. INFLAMMATORY comments which bordered on "MS SUX0RZ!!!" and really didn't say anything other than "don't use IE". Essentially, a post designed to generate a flame war, or a bunch of "me too!" replies.
It's the perfect comparison, if you ask me. Think about it: the War on Drugs" basically did nothing other than fill up our prisons. Drugs are still around, very easy to get, and tolerated by a sizable chunk of the population. Yet tens of thousands of people have had their lives ruined because they got caught doing something that millions of others do. All for no real benefit to society.
Let me relate my own personal "Camming" experience. Last year a friend got free passes to a preview for Disney's Haunted Mansion. Terrible movie, I wish Eddie Murphy would just die, blah blah. It was free, I'm a movie buff, so I went. First, we had our bags searched. Next, out came the metal detector wands. Finally, a good pat-down - as intimate, if not more so, than I've had at the airport. Eventually we got into the theatre and watched a really shitty movie.
I got home an hour after it ended and found torrents for it, as well as EDonkey and Kazaa entries. I even downloaded them to make sure it was actually the movie. It was.
I'm going to go so far as to suggest it's WORSE than the War on Drugs. Think: every single moviegoing patron harassed at the door. Potentially hundreds, if not thousands of new prison inmates a year.
AND ALL IT TAKES IS ONE PERSON TO GET AWAY WITH IT. That's it. ONE. And the entire scheme breaks down. You know damn well they're never going to be 100% on something like this, unless every single theatre does an X-ray and strip search of every patron, and every single projectionist/screener receipient/anyone else involved is also put through the same procedure. All it takes is one person to get away with it, and the internet handles the rest.
And in the meantime, the problem hasn't been solved IN THE SLIGHTEST, we've accepted being treated as criminals from the get-go, and we've created a lot of inmates. Unless of course, we go with what I suggested above.
Personally, no thanks. To properly implement this, we'd have to run our society as something less nice than it is now. You may have heard of it; it's called a Police State.
Works just fine on my 2k Pro box. Odd, because what little I know of Windows error messages leads me to believe you got a null pointer dereference, which should occur for both of us regardless... right?:)
It is important that when we wave our flags and cheer when Microsoft is laid low by the latest security flaw that we not close our eyes to the very real vulnerabilities in the Unix/Linux system.
No one is. Work is always being done to find and fix vulnerabilities in *nix variants.
No OS can be fully secured
No one with a brain ever claimed that was the case.
Assuming that Unix/Linux is invulnerable to security holes is deadly.
See last comment.
Though the OS may have more security features and "more eyes" on the code than closed source operating systems
Which is true...
we must not rest on our laurels watching Windows implode while our own house is burning.
Last time, NO ONE IS.
Geez. I know your nick is "Obvious Guy", and that's pretty much all you're saying. Well, except for the entire argument about "watching Windows implode while we rest on our laurels", which no one is doing, talking about doing, nor thinking about doing.
Straw, meet man. I'm still befuddled as to the upwards moderation you consistently get, however.
I'd say it's more likely the majority (or at least a goodly chunk) of Slashdot users use something like Opera or Mozilla*, which lets you spoof your browser ID to websites. I do it, or I'd be locked out of a good many moronic sites (one being my bank) that only think IE works.
Although with the level of pro-MS posting and moderating on a dramatic increase over the past year, I wouldn't be surprised if we have a lot of IE users here now.
(Quick! To get some instant karma, talk about some obscure SSH/apache/whatever exploit that wouldn't affect anyone using Linux as a *desktop* system and is only applicable to a service that isn't run by default on any major distro, and claim that Linux is as insecure as Windows! Then whine about Slashdot's "bias" towards Linux to make sure you keep getting modded up!)
USB pen drives work just fine with OSX and any semi-modern Linux distro. Basically, any OS that can mount a USB device as a hard drive works. No drivers needed, no proprietary anything. Plug and play on almost any personal computer you're likely to find still running. Your personal collection of Commodore PETs aside:)
Cross-platform with zero problems, solid state, small (mine's a keychain fob), reliable, and (getting) cheap. The best storage technology invented in the past 20 years, hands down. With 1.5GB models hitting $250cdn and still dropping, there's no end in sight for these things.
Product activation was just a Red Herring that fanatics used to spread FUD. Unless, of course, you are using priated software.
Actually, the only people product activation hurt were legit users, who had to a) be treated as criminals by default, and b) possibly have to take extra time just to re-install their OS.
It delayed the relase of pirated versions (and subsequent locked-out-from-Windows-Update versions) by roughly a week.
I mean really, working on this kind of project seems to me to be a serious misallocation of resources.
From: Central Bureaucracy To: Unit #926568257191 Re: X-Box Emulator
Thank you for bringing to our attention this serious misallocation of resources. These units will be re-programmed to begin production on work more suited to fulfilling this year's 5-year plan. Unit #000000000001 is pleased to know all comrades are looking out for the good of the Party.
You're welcome to smoke in your house or at your place of work (provided you are the employer), silly. I'm talking about your smoking at my place of business, and public buildings that I enter.
I've always wondered about this one. On the one hand you say it's ok to smoke at work, on the other, not in any public buildings. Am I to understand you were talking about businesses that are not in any way open to the public? Can't think of too many of those, personally, other than places where smoking bans haven't really been legislated:)
This leads to the greater issue with "public" smoking. I grew up with the notion of "assumed risk": that is, by doing a particular thing, or going to a particular place, you are assuming part of the danger in doing that. This usually comes up in public events like sports games (think ball to the head) and concerts (think mosh pits). To me, the smoking debate seemed simple. Open up non-smoking establishments! If 75% of the population does not in fact smoke, and does not like smoke to the extent they think it should be banned, these businesses should thrive. Let the smokers have a few places where it's well-advertised that cigar(ette) smoke will be present. Just like mosh pits at a concert, you take a risk by going there. If you don't like it, don't go. Can't say as I've seen nation-wide campaigns to make moshing illegal, mind you.
I dunno, no matter how I slice it it always seems like a small vocal minority has been allowed to push around the rest of the population when it comes to the smoking issue. Much like prohibition, really.
Then again, nothing amuses me more than to hear someone complain about the "smell" of their clothes after a night at a bar filled with alcohol, sweating bodies, and fog machines. Yeah, the tobacco is certainly the worst smell there:)
The only possible conclusion I can draw from this is "I don't partake, therefore it's bad and no one else should be able to, either". I guess this is the same line of thinking that still has people up in arms against homosexuality. "They're doing something I wouldn't do! Let's get 'em!".
Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance
Great, so we better shut down Nevada, kill all breweries, tobacco companies, coffee importation, and *gasp* Rock and/or Roll while we're at it!
They're going to try to go after a multi-billion dollar industry because its material "is obscene by community standards". Um, just who exactly do these people think are paying these billions? Hate to break it to you, folks, but Mr. and Mrs. Joe American. Consentual pornography is, by definition, acceptable by community standards. There wouldn't be so much of it if it wasn't.
I may be a bit (ok, VERY) naive, but I've always thought of it this way:
A programmer writes software once. Users (potentially) run that software millions of times. Some extra time spent by the programmer, even if it's a lot, is more than balanced out by the combined time savings from your users.
Imagine if Microsoft could save 5 minutes of a user's time every day. Now multiply that by what, 300 million? I'd say it's worth the extra weeks or months of development man-hours.
Are you capable of forming any argument that doesn't consist of "every single person on Slashdot thinks the same way, so I'll get some karma by pointing this 'fact' out"?
The grand-parent said that desktop alternatives drive INNOVATION.
Your rebuttal is that Windows, without desktop alternatives, is SUCCESSFUL.
What the sweet flying jesus do these have to do with each other? Did you even read the post? Nowhere was it claimed that Gnome/KDE being separate made them more successful. Nowhere was it claimed that Windows was unsuccessful because of the single, unified desktop.
Hell, I can't even figure out just what you're replying TO, let alone what the mods were thinking.
A metric assload of posts talking about how all (800,000ish and counting) Slashdot readers are one person (the infamous Slashbot).
A bunch of "hey, Linux has problems, so stop saying anything negative about Microsoft" posts getting moderated to +5.
At least 100 people posting "Linux projects have been hacked many times in the past year, Microsoft none", while ignoring the complete and utter lack of Code Red, Slammer, Blaster, or any Warhol-type worm ever appearing for a *nix-based system, even though the majority of the internet is run off *nix. And no, the Morris worm doesn't count - Microsoft didn't even have a TCP/IP stack back in those days:)
A fair number of posts by > 500,000 UIDs, coincidentally almost always as a Microsoft apologist. Hmm, wonder who the new people are:)
Oh yeah, and (give or take) 20 different moderations to this post, varying between -1, Flamebait to +1, Insightful. I'd kill to see the UIDs of the moderators on something like this, because I'd bet a lot of money that I could guess the UID based on the moderation.
1. I'm confused. You say you're doing "book prepress". I'm not going to pretend I know what that is, but from your description it seems to be more involved than simply typing a text document with no formatting. If it in fact IS a simple text document, that you could do with a typewriter, you could just as easily use Notepad, vi, whatever, and no one would ever know the difference. If you REALLY have to have these documents in a Word format, a batch importer/converter before you send them to a customer could handle it. I still don't see how the computer slows the process, it's just wpm beyond some possible overnight processing. "drawing figures, page layout"? Show me a typewriter that can help me do this sort of thing any faster than vi.
2. You state that your contracts insist on improper use of technology. Hate to break it to you, but it's not the computers slowing you down. Not in the slightest. If your customers insisted that at least part of your book was prepared on typewriters that jammed on every third key, you wouldn't claim that the typewriters were responsible for the slower productivity, would you?
I still don't see how you can argue that the computers have slowed you down - to me it looks like a people problem more than anyone else. If people STUPIDLY use computers, well of course they'll slow you down.
You've obviously never worked in a paper-intensive office before.
Firstly, it doesn't take 25 minutes to type each and every letter. You boot the computer once, and can generally type hundreds of letters. For most companies, form letters are the rule. Instead of typing an entire letter, you can just put in the customer's name and address (takes about 30 seconds if you're slow), and off you go. But wait! With computers, we have these funky things called databases, and you can do a merge of your database info into your formletter template. Etc, etc... Add it all up, and I've seen offices that can take 10 typists and replace them with a single typist and a computer. Hell, at one point I was able to fire off several hundred letters in 15 minutes of work. Try doing that with a typewriter.
You're right though, computers waste employee time - if they're sitting around wasting their time to begin with. Which they could do equally as well by chatting with their co-workers, reading a book, talking on the telephone, or any of a thousand other things. The presence of a computer does exactly zero to change that.
Believe me, I've been around long enough to work at a place that went from 100% typewriters to 100% computers. We managed to grow the business to well over 10x its previous size, without increasing staff numbers. On top of that, we did things we never would have thought feasible/possible before.
Sure, Windows could be better in terms of security, but that wouldn't even be a problem if all those insecure services were behind (even a minimal) firewall.
Would be even less of a problem if Microsoft shipped those services turned off by default. Sure, the 1 in a million that need RPC services running (and don't know how to enable it) would suffer... it's pretty simple, really.
Either there's an ever increasing number of asteroids coming ever closer to Earth (unlikely methinks)
Actually, I've been wondering about this lately, and perhaps some Slashdotters can confirm/deny my observations:
I've always been a sky-watcher. Since before I was in school, I've been looking at the sky. Many summer nights I've spent looking for meteors, etc. So for the past 20 odd years, I've been regularly looking up at night. Often for hours at a time.
Now, in the past year or so, I've noticed a lot more fireballs than usual. For those that don't know, fireballs are like a shooting star, but instead of a short, dim streak, you see something that lasts several seconds and is a LOT brighter. Essentially, things with more mass/lower speeds that last a lot longer before burning up. I haven't been looking up more often, in fact a lot less now that I'm back in school. But I'm finding that at least once a month (sometimes several times in a night) I see a fireball. Not because I'm staring up for hours at a time - I'm talking while driving home, or going out on the porch for a breath of air for 5 minutes.
When I was a kid/young adult, most nights I'd be lucky to catch 1 or 2 shooting stars an hour. A fireball maybe once a year, and it was very memorable. These days, I'm hardly looking up and yet I see regular fireballs, sometimes as often as 2 or 3 in a night.
I realize this is entirely unscientific, but it's freaking me out. Before this past year (other than the wonderful Leonids in 2001), I think in my life I'd seen maybe a dozen fireballs. In the past year alone, I've seen easily that many. I've not seen anyone else mention this online (or obviously in mainstream news), just wondering if anyone else out in Slashdot land has noticed the same thing.
The parent is trying to be funny, but for those who've never been to Winnipeg, it's damn near the truth for most of it. Almost every (non-fleabag) hotel here has a beer vendor attached to it, along with a bar. I once lived in an apartment where there were 4 vendors within a 20 minute walk to choose from.
It's really annoying to visit some other city and not be able to buy beer, within a 5 minute drive, at midnight. I won't even start with the lack of pizza delivery in Kansas City after dark:)
And yes, damn near every community centre (ie: every linear km or so, that's 0.6 miles for the yanks) has a hockey rink or 3.
This is yet another reason I love Knoppix. A buddy wanted to try Linux on his laptop, but (for fairly unavoidable hardware issues) didn't want to remove Windows. qtParted is awesome! Boot the Knoppix CD, resize the NTFS partition, and install. You can even install Knoppix to the hard drive while you're still in Linux, so you can surf the web or whatever, while you install.
It's very nice to be able to do something like this without having to have people get a warezed copy of Partition Magic, lemme tell ya. The "you mean this is ALSO free and legal?" questions are pretty fun, too:)
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the only way to be modded flamebait here was to make a disparaging remark about FOSS or it's community.
No, most of the anti-F/OSS remarks on Slashdot get modded up, if they're well-written comments with at least some meat to them. A few years ago perhaps not, but these days there are plenty of MS-supporting Slashdotters. A lot have some good commentary as to why F/OSS isn't perfect, but unfortunately, some (most?) don't. Most end up using the word "zealot" repeatedly in a post, and whining about RMS's personal hygiene. THOSE get moderated as flamebait, because they are.
The grandparent got moderated as flamebait for the same reason. INFLAMMATORY comments which bordered on "MS SUX0RZ!!!" and really didn't say anything other than "don't use IE". Essentially, a post designed to generate a flame war, or a bunch of "me too!" replies.
Hence, flamebait.
It's the perfect comparison, if you ask me. Think about it: the War on Drugs" basically did nothing other than fill up our prisons. Drugs are still around, very easy to get, and tolerated by a sizable chunk of the population. Yet tens of thousands of people have had their lives ruined because they got caught doing something that millions of others do. All for no real benefit to society.
Let me relate my own personal "Camming" experience. Last year a friend got free passes to a preview for Disney's Haunted Mansion. Terrible movie, I wish Eddie Murphy would just die, blah blah. It was free, I'm a movie buff, so I went. First, we had our bags searched. Next, out came the metal detector wands. Finally, a good pat-down - as intimate, if not more so, than I've had at the airport. Eventually we got into the theatre and watched a really shitty movie.
I got home an hour after it ended and found torrents for it, as well as EDonkey and Kazaa entries. I even downloaded them to make sure it was actually the movie. It was.
I'm going to go so far as to suggest it's WORSE than the War on Drugs. Think: every single moviegoing patron harassed at the door. Potentially hundreds, if not thousands of new prison inmates a year.
AND ALL IT TAKES IS ONE PERSON TO GET AWAY WITH IT. That's it. ONE. And the entire scheme breaks down. You know damn well they're never going to be 100% on something like this, unless every single theatre does an X-ray and strip search of every patron, and every single projectionist/screener receipient/anyone else involved is also put through the same procedure. All it takes is one person to get away with it, and the internet handles the rest.
And in the meantime, the problem hasn't been solved IN THE SLIGHTEST, we've accepted being treated as criminals from the get-go, and we've created a lot of inmates. Unless of course, we go with what I suggested above.
Personally, no thanks. To properly implement this, we'd have to run our society as something less nice than it is now. You may have heard of it; it's called a Police State.
Works just fine on my 2k Pro box. Odd, because what little I know of Windows error messages leads me to believe you got a null pointer dereference, which should occur for both of us regardless... right? :)
Don't worry. The next Windows kernel version will get press on Slashdot.
:)
Assuming you're still reading Slashdot in 2006/7...
Straw, meet man.
It is important that when we wave our flags and cheer when Microsoft is laid low by the latest security flaw that we not close our eyes to the very real vulnerabilities in the Unix/Linux system.
No one is. Work is always being done to find and fix vulnerabilities in *nix variants.
No OS can be fully secured
No one with a brain ever claimed that was the case.
Assuming that Unix/Linux is invulnerable to security holes is deadly.
See last comment.
Though the OS may have more security features and "more eyes" on the code than closed source operating systems
Which is true...
we must not rest on our laurels watching Windows implode while our own house is burning.
Last time, NO ONE IS.
Geez. I know your nick is "Obvious Guy", and that's pretty much all you're saying. Well, except for the entire argument about "watching Windows implode while we rest on our laurels", which no one is doing, talking about doing, nor thinking about doing.
Straw, meet man. I'm still befuddled as to the upwards moderation you consistently get, however.
I'd say it's more likely the majority (or at least a goodly chunk) of Slashdot users use something like Opera or Mozilla*, which lets you spoof your browser ID to websites. I do it, or I'd be locked out of a good many moronic sites (one being my bank) that only think IE works.
Although with the level of pro-MS posting and moderating on a dramatic increase over the past year, I wouldn't be surprised if we have a lot of IE users here now.
(Quick! To get some instant karma, talk about some obscure SSH/apache/whatever exploit that wouldn't affect anyone using Linux as a *desktop* system and is only applicable to a service that isn't run by default on any major distro, and claim that Linux is as insecure as Windows! Then whine about Slashdot's "bias" towards Linux to make sure you keep getting modded up!)
USB pen drives work just fine with OSX and any semi-modern Linux distro. Basically, any OS that can mount a USB device as a hard drive works. No drivers needed, no proprietary anything. Plug and play on almost any personal computer you're likely to find still running. Your personal collection of Commodore PETs aside :)
Cross-platform with zero problems, solid state, small (mine's a keychain fob), reliable, and (getting) cheap. The best storage technology invented in the past 20 years, hands down. With 1.5GB models hitting $250cdn and still dropping, there's no end in sight for these things.
What's scary is that if today's copyright laws were around back then, it's very likely that these things wouldn't be in the public domain yet.
Product activation was just a Red Herring that fanatics used to spread FUD. Unless, of course, you are using priated software.
Actually, the only people product activation hurt were legit users, who had to a) be treated as criminals by default, and b) possibly have to take extra time just to re-install their OS.
It delayed the relase of pirated versions (and subsequent locked-out-from-Windows-Update versions) by roughly a week.
I mean really, working on this kind of project seems to me to be a serious misallocation of resources.
From: Central Bureaucracy
To: Unit #926568257191
Re: X-Box Emulator
Thank you for bringing to our attention this serious misallocation of resources. These units will be re-programmed to begin production on work more suited to fulfilling this year's 5-year plan. Unit #000000000001 is pleased to know all comrades are looking out for the good of the Party.
Sincerely,
Central Bureaucracy
My users are dumber than 4 year olds?
How big of a 4 year old?
You're welcome to smoke in your house or at your place of work (provided you are the employer), silly. I'm talking about your smoking at my place of business, and public buildings that I enter.
:)
:)
I've always wondered about this one. On the one hand you say it's ok to smoke at work, on the other, not in any public buildings. Am I to understand you were talking about businesses that are not in any way open to the public? Can't think of too many of those, personally, other than places where smoking bans haven't really been legislated
This leads to the greater issue with "public" smoking. I grew up with the notion of "assumed risk": that is, by doing a particular thing, or going to a particular place, you are assuming part of the danger in doing that. This usually comes up in public events like sports games (think ball to the head) and concerts (think mosh pits). To me, the smoking debate seemed simple. Open up non-smoking establishments! If 75% of the population does not in fact smoke, and does not like smoke to the extent they think it should be banned, these businesses should thrive. Let the smokers have a few places where it's well-advertised that cigar(ette) smoke will be present. Just like mosh pits at a concert, you take a risk by going there. If you don't like it, don't go. Can't say as I've seen nation-wide campaigns to make moshing illegal, mind you.
I dunno, no matter how I slice it it always seems like a small vocal minority has been allowed to push around the rest of the population when it comes to the smoking issue. Much like prohibition, really.
Then again, nothing amuses me more than to hear someone complain about the "smell" of their clothes after a night at a bar filled with alcohol, sweating bodies, and fog machines. Yeah, the tobacco is certainly the worst smell there
No, really.
The only possible conclusion I can draw from this is "I don't partake, therefore it's bad and no one else should be able to, either". I guess this is the same line of thinking that still has people up in arms against homosexuality. "They're doing something I wouldn't do! Let's get 'em!".
Ashcroft, a religious man who does not drink alcohol or caffeine, smoke, gamble or dance
Great, so we better shut down Nevada, kill all breweries, tobacco companies, coffee importation, and *gasp* Rock and/or Roll while we're at it!
They're going to try to go after a multi-billion dollar industry because its material "is obscene by community standards". Um, just who exactly do these people think are paying these billions? Hate to break it to you, folks, but Mr. and Mrs. Joe American. Consentual pornography is, by definition, acceptable by community standards. There wouldn't be so much of it if it wasn't.
I may be a bit (ok, VERY) naive, but I've always thought of it this way:
:)
A programmer writes software once. Users (potentially) run that software millions of times. Some extra time spent by the programmer, even if it's a lot, is more than balanced out by the combined time savings from your users.
Imagine if Microsoft could save 5 minutes of a user's time every day. Now multiply that by what, 300 million? I'd say it's worth the extra weeks or months of development man-hours.
But, I'm a hopeless optimist
All it really does is puts money in the pockets of a corporation.
You mispelled "Federal Government".
Wow.
Are you capable of forming any argument that doesn't consist of "every single person on Slashdot thinks the same way, so I'll get some karma by pointing this 'fact' out"?
Who the hell modded this Insightful???
The grand-parent said that desktop alternatives drive INNOVATION.
Your rebuttal is that Windows, without desktop alternatives, is SUCCESSFUL.
What the sweet flying jesus do these have to do with each other? Did you even read the post? Nowhere was it claimed that Gnome/KDE being separate made them more successful. Nowhere was it claimed that Windows was unsuccessful because of the single, unified desktop.
Hell, I can't even figure out just what you're replying TO, let alone what the mods were thinking.
A metric assload of posts talking about how all (800,000ish and counting) Slashdot readers are one person (the infamous Slashbot).
:)
:)
A bunch of "hey, Linux has problems, so stop saying anything negative about Microsoft" posts getting moderated to +5.
At least 100 people posting "Linux projects have been hacked many times in the past year, Microsoft none", while ignoring the complete and utter lack of Code Red, Slammer, Blaster, or any Warhol-type worm ever appearing for a *nix-based system, even though the majority of the internet is run off *nix. And no, the Morris worm doesn't count - Microsoft didn't even have a TCP/IP stack back in those days
A fair number of posts by > 500,000 UIDs, coincidentally almost always as a Microsoft apologist. Hmm, wonder who the new people are
Oh yeah, and (give or take) 20 different moderations to this post, varying between -1, Flamebait to +1, Insightful. I'd kill to see the UIDs of the moderators on something like this, because I'd bet a lot of money that I could guess the UID based on the moderation.
1. I'm confused. You say you're doing "book prepress". I'm not going to pretend I know what that is, but from your description it seems to be more involved than simply typing a text document with no formatting. If it in fact IS a simple text document, that you could do with a typewriter, you could just as easily use Notepad, vi, whatever, and no one would ever know the difference. If you REALLY have to have these documents in a Word format, a batch importer/converter before you send them to a customer could handle it. I still don't see how the computer slows the process, it's just wpm beyond some possible overnight processing. "drawing figures, page layout"? Show me a typewriter that can help me do this sort of thing any faster than vi.
2. You state that your contracts insist on improper use of technology. Hate to break it to you, but it's not the computers slowing you down. Not in the slightest. If your customers insisted that at least part of your book was prepared on typewriters that jammed on every third key, you wouldn't claim that the typewriters were responsible for the slower productivity, would you?
I still don't see how you can argue that the computers have slowed you down - to me it looks like a people problem more than anyone else. If people STUPIDLY use computers, well of course they'll slow you down.
You've obviously never worked in a paper-intensive office before.
Firstly, it doesn't take 25 minutes to type each and every letter. You boot the computer once, and can generally type hundreds of letters. For most companies, form letters are the rule. Instead of typing an entire letter, you can just put in the customer's name and address (takes about 30 seconds if you're slow), and off you go. But wait! With computers, we have these funky things called databases, and you can do a merge of your database info into your formletter template. Etc, etc... Add it all up, and I've seen offices that can take 10 typists and replace them with a single typist and a computer. Hell, at one point I was able to fire off several hundred letters in 15 minutes of work. Try doing that with a typewriter.
You're right though, computers waste employee time - if they're sitting around wasting their time to begin with. Which they could do equally as well by chatting with their co-workers, reading a book, talking on the telephone, or any of a thousand other things. The presence of a computer does exactly zero to change that.
Believe me, I've been around long enough to work at a place that went from 100% typewriters to 100% computers. We managed to grow the business to well over 10x its previous size, without increasing staff numbers. On top of that, we did things we never would have thought feasible/possible before.
Why can't we just experience the universe directly without the interference of sybols(sic) and concepts.
Because symbolic and abstract reasoning are fundamental parts of what makes us "human".
Sure, Windows could be better in terms of security, but that wouldn't even be a problem if all those insecure services were behind (even a minimal) firewall.
Would be even less of a problem if Microsoft shipped those services turned off by default. Sure, the 1 in a million that need RPC services running (and don't know how to enable it) would suffer... it's pretty simple, really.
Either there's an ever increasing number of asteroids coming ever closer to Earth (unlikely methinks)
Actually, I've been wondering about this lately, and perhaps some Slashdotters can confirm/deny my observations:
I've always been a sky-watcher. Since before I was in school, I've been looking at the sky. Many summer nights I've spent looking for meteors, etc. So for the past 20 odd years, I've been regularly looking up at night. Often for hours at a time.
Now, in the past year or so, I've noticed a lot more fireballs than usual. For those that don't know, fireballs are like a shooting star, but instead of a short, dim streak, you see something that lasts several seconds and is a LOT brighter. Essentially, things with more mass/lower speeds that last a lot longer before burning up. I haven't been looking up more often, in fact a lot less now that I'm back in school. But I'm finding that at least once a month (sometimes several times in a night) I see a fireball. Not because I'm staring up for hours at a time - I'm talking while driving home, or going out on the porch for a breath of air for 5 minutes.
When I was a kid/young adult, most nights I'd be lucky to catch 1 or 2 shooting stars an hour. A fireball maybe once a year, and it was very memorable. These days, I'm hardly looking up and yet I see regular fireballs, sometimes as often as 2 or 3 in a night.
I realize this is entirely unscientific, but it's freaking me out. Before this past year (other than the wonderful Leonids in 2001), I think in my life I'd seen maybe a dozen fireballs. In the past year alone, I've seen easily that many. I've not seen anyone else mention this online (or obviously in mainstream news), just wondering if anyone else out in Slashdot land has noticed the same thing.
The parent is trying to be funny, but for those who've never been to Winnipeg, it's damn near the truth for most of it. Almost every (non-fleabag) hotel here has a beer vendor attached to it, along with a bar. I once lived in an apartment where there were 4 vendors within a 20 minute walk to choose from.
:)
It's really annoying to visit some other city and not be able to buy beer, within a 5 minute drive, at midnight. I won't even start with the lack of pizza delivery in Kansas City after dark
And yes, damn near every community centre (ie: every linear km or so, that's 0.6 miles for the yanks) has a hockey rink or 3.
This is yet another reason I love Knoppix. A buddy wanted to try Linux on his laptop, but (for fairly unavoidable hardware issues) didn't want to remove Windows. qtParted is awesome! Boot the Knoppix CD, resize the NTFS partition, and install. You can even install Knoppix to the hard drive while you're still in Linux, so you can surf the web or whatever, while you install.
:)
It's very nice to be able to do something like this without having to have people get a warezed copy of Partition Magic, lemme tell ya. The "you mean this is ALSO free and legal?" questions are pretty fun, too