Why don't the common beginning-level email programs (read: Outlook) make it very difficult (impossible?) for beginners to open potentially-dangerous attachments from email addresses that aren't in the address book?
Considering that many email viruses spread by looking at your address book, and don't spoof the from: address, this doesn't mean diddly. Recommending this to people will almost ensure they get a virus, because "someone I know sent it to me".
The ONLY solution is to have every user understand that you don't open an attachment unless you're expecting it, you have confirmed with the sender what it is, or the body of the email is so specific that you KNOW it's legit. For example, most viruses don't have the ability to learn my nephew's name and where he goes to school, so I'm pretty sure my brother's emails are legit. "Here are some pictures from my party, please enjoy!" is not.
.. with fairies and cute little elves and everyone dancing around in a circle happily. Because I swear that's the way many people think of it.
With a good chunk of the problems people seem to have online, I can usually make them see where they went wrong with this scenario: A random stranger walks up to you on the street, and asks you for $100. What do you do? I've never had someone tell me "of course, give it to him/her!". Me: "so why would you do the same just because it happened on the internet?".
A little common sense would solve so many problems, and yet people seem to leave their brains at the door when they turn on their computer.
Backwards-compatibility is a HUGE advantage to a console's success.
It looks like things are heading that way, but have you ever wondered why, in the 24 years of programmable home videogames leading up to the PS2, it never mattered? If it is such a big deal, surely one of the console makers out there would have tried it, and succeeded in all that time?
People had vast libraries of Atari 2600 games. Same with the original NES. Same with the Genesis, and Super Nintendo. No one seemed to care before, what's so special about Sony's unit that it matters now?
Second hand XBox1s will not be as cheap as second hand playstations precisely because you need the old consoles to play the old games!
Actually, the used Playstation market has thrived for some reason. I guess everyone who couldn't afford one at the time saw their chance once the PS2 was out. So the price never really has dropped on the damn things. I've been into older/obsolete consoles for over a decade now, and I've NEVER seen a console system keep its value like the PS1. 9 years after it was introduced, and you still see them selling for $40 (cdn). That is quite simply astounding; the only other consoles that get anywhere near that much here are rare items like the Atari Jaguar. Hell, I think PSOne's are still being sold for $70 or so new. Unprecedented. I can't remember a console still on the shelves 9 years later. There may have been some 2600 jr overstock kicking around in 1986, but not much of it. And I'm not talking about your local EB or specialty shop. Virtually every electronics place I go to still sells PSOne's.
The more cynical side of me thinks this might have something to do with the fact that CD-based consoles have a much shorter lifespan than cartridge-based, so we're simply seeing what happens when 90% of a console base is no longer functional.
"I can use it play all the old games" is one of those lies people tell themselves to convince themselves to buy an expensive new system with a limited games library.
For most people I know, this is anything but a lie.
Ask those people if they ever bought an Atari 7800. Or the Sega Master System adaptor for the Sega Genesis. Or a Super Gameboy, for that matter. Or, to the other end of things, a Sega 32X expansion unit. The net result of any of these purchases would be a console that plays both the newest games, plus all of your older games as well. All of these items failed miserably in the marketplace.
Fact is, right or wrong (and I'm with the "I love to play old games" crowd here), backwards compatibility has never influenced people's purchasing decisions, until very recently. Hell, people are (were) so used to switching console manufacturers (Atari->Nintendo->Sega->Sony, all in less than 20 years) that backwards compatibility was never even considered an issue.
Yup, us oldsters love to play older games even today. But for most of the gaming market, for almost the entire history of the market, no one else cared enough. Until Sony convinced everyone that it was suddenly an essential component. And no, their "market penetration" isn't the reason why. Sony isn't the first console manufacturer to have a virtual lock on the videogame industry.
Another factor that most people aren't aware of is the speeding issue.
It's easy to fudge your speed a bit with an analog speedometer. You can't easily tell EXACTLY how fast you're going (unless your eyes leave the road for a dangerously long period of time), so most people feel very comfortable letting their speed creep up a bit. 2 over, 5 over, *shrug* it's close enough. And the secret thrill if getting somewhere a tiny bit faster is always a plus.
Digital speedos tell you instantly, and exactly, how fast you're going. Short of cruise control, most people don't drive at the same speed very consistently, and you really notice this with a digital speedo. It makes people uncomfortable to know their exact speed. It's also a lot harder to tell the cop that you think you were only going "a few over" when you know damn well you saw 65 on the dash.
Of course, to people that regularly go 20 over the limit, it's a moot point.
Pay the same ammount for the gift (so she doesn't think you cheap)
I found the best of all possible worlds: a woman who doesn't value me based on how much money I'm willing to spend on her. She appreciates a back rub or a well-thought out dinner (I'm the cook in this partnership, btw) much more than some useless trinket whose sole value lies in what others think of it.
what can people do that robots can't? Please, someone, inform me of a good reason and I'll change my mind.
We covered more ground in a single Apollo mission lasting a few days than all Mars missions (including the current ones) will cover in several months combined. There's a reason those little rovers move in speeds measured in inches. A human could walk the distance Pathfinder did in a matter of seconds.
Imagine orders of magnitude more science being done simply because we're not restricted to a tiny radius around our landing site. THAT is what people can do that robots can't. Maybe some day, but not any time soon.
This means less resources for robotic missions, which frankly make a lot more sense than manned missions. From every practical standpoint.
As evidence, I point to the 2 rovers currently on Mars. As recently as last week, we didn't even know if they'd be able to move and collect data, all due to a programming glitch (and yes, I realize I'm simplifying greatly). Now that they're working perfectly again, we have the opportunity to explore perhaps a few dozen/hundred metres in any given direction.
Humans are self-programmable, and can potentially fix their own antennas when they go out of alignment. We have amazingly dextrous manipulators and locomotion systems that are simply beyond our current technology to reproduce artificially. A rover can get stuck on a rock, the human steps over it.
And a human can cover several KILOMETRES of ground to do experiements, with little added expense.
From a practical standpoint, there is a hell of a lot that robotic missions can't do.
When the CD-based units first started appearing, can you believe they actually came with (some) built in flash storage? Enough for saving maybe 3-6 different games. When the PS1 hit store shelves, and REQUIRED you to buy an add-on in order to save any game at all... I said the same thing as yourself. Who would want a console that you need to buy a bunch of extra parts just to use it properly? Today, memory cards are considered standard purchases along with a console.
The way I see it, onboard flash memory for a few games would satisfy most gamers out there (I think the average console/games sales ratio is somewhere around 1:4), and for the rest of us, an external HD would be just the thing. If someone coded the killer app/use for the HD, people would start buying them, and developers would use it more. Kinda like the N64 rumble pack, originally an add-on but now standard on any console.
if they ever come out with a version of their operating system that can't be used illeagally(sic) I see them going down in FLAMES
I went back to University a few years ago and am just finishing up once again. The level of software piracy around here absolutely astounds me. As a personal goal, I've spent the past couple of years trying to rid myself entirely of any software that isn't 100% legit (whether it's free "educational" MS product, or OSS, or whatever). The time I sometimes spend trying to get work done is frustrating (need to print something that isn't in a University-approved file format? ie: anything not a Word doc or PDF?), but the personal satisfaction is worth it.
I rant almost daily about professors requiring us to hand in our work with MS-specific file formats, and my fellow classmates yawn and hand me a warezed copy of MS Office. OpenOffice is SO close, but still not 100% (as I learned after initially receiving a 0 on an assignment - thankfully the prof was understanding and let me re-submit it).
I really, REALLY would like to see upcoming versions of Windows and Office be 100% unpiratable. Most students I know aren't going to be shelling out hundreds of dollars to keep up with software when there's a free alternative that does what they need just fine. Give it a few years, and we'd have an entire school generation almost entirely unexposed to Microsoft's software. Other than games (about 99% of which are also pirated, incidentally), I just can't see Joe Student *needing* Windows, to the tune of paying for software licenses for it.
Hell, I've seen students fire up Visual Studio.NET to write and compile a 20-line console program using only standard C libraries. Apparently gcc is "too much typing" for them. I say, bring on working copy-protection for all commercial software, please! And yes, I do realize what a pipe dream this is:)
And as far as voting with your wallet goes, you really never can tell it's an issue before you try it. This goes for my MP3-player (Creative). I couldn't get it working under any Linux or *BSD platform.
Any mp3 player that doesn't work as a simple USB/firewire hard drive is crap, and for precisely this reason. Same goes for digital cameras. Why would you want to use proprietary, OS-specific software to talk to your devices, when there's no good reason to?
Besides, it's nice to be able to show your friends your photos without having to install software on their computer:)
I do like the tabbed browsing but it's like I have tabbed browsing now; I just have a dozen browsers open. I switch between them along the taskbar. RAM is cheap today gentleman. I don't really care how many of my machine's resources it takes.
The reason you'd get modded into oblivion has nothing to do with criticism of Linux. It's that you're talking out of your ass.
People don't use tabbed browsing because of resource requirements. 8 IE windows or 8 tabs in Opera will behave almost identically. Once the main part of your application is loaded, the only extra RAM involved is the amount needed to handle the fact that you have more than one page open. MDI or not is irrelevant. People use tabbed browsing because we don't like to clutter up our taskbar, and because we don't want to have to click multiple times just to switch to another browser window. If taskbar clutter doesn't bother you, then fine, and if it does, and you think XP's grouping of like tasks solves this.. how is this any different than going to Google first and then doing a search? It's wasted clicks that you seemed worries about at the beginning of your rant.
The other reason people will mod you down is that your "facts" are just plain wrong. Moz has a Google toolbar, and many (most?) other OSS browsers have the equivalent: a nice text box you can enter searches into, that brings up the Google results. About the only thing missing is page ranks, and quite frankly, I don't get the point of that, but that's just me.
We didn't switch from IE because of one niggly detail. We switched from IE because of a dozen major security holes in the thing. Browse to a website and have it install software without your consent! Yay! Let it change my homepage at will! Whoopee! Don't give me any fine-grained control over Javascript! Awesome!
(Posted from Opera running on WindowsXP, so cram your "Linux supporters can't take criticism" up your ass, thanks)
Not quite. The Saturn/PS1 thing is very close, I admit. Depends on what part of the market you were in. Sony beat Sega by several months in most areas afaik.
The Master System came out a full year after the NES, and was Sega's attempt to compete with the NES. Remember, this was during the time when NO ONE thought video game consoles would make money. The NES was a huge risk in North America, which is why Atari declined to market it (as was originally proposed by Nintendo Japan). Once the NES was a success, and this was by no means overnight, other companies joined in. But Nintendo had no competition for a long time in console terms.
By the time the Genesis was out, Sega knew they had lost the 8-bit war, and was going for a pre-emptive strike against Nintendo's 16-bit entry. If you want to claim any of the 16-bit consoles were trying to compete with the NES, the closest fit would be NEC's Turbograpx16. A nice failure, far too late into the market to do any good. It was just too much of a middleman, and the Genesis being so much more advanced ensured it wouldn't last. Because of the market penetration of the Genesis, the Super Nintendo never sold anywhere near what the NES did. Of course, the installed base of the NES didn't help Nintendo, either. Many people were simply happy with keeping their NES.
Remember, the Saturn wasn't even public information until 1994, and the SNES came out in 1991, so it's not like Sega spent those 3 years killing off the Genesis in favour of the Saturn. Instead, they tried the CD and 32X units, and that managed to kill it:) Ok, there's another example: first CD-based console to the market died a horrible death.
Regardless, coming first or not has very little to do with a console's success. There are many other factors involved, and as Sony has shown, marketing trumps all. Because until the Dreamcast, there had never been a next-gen platform so completely ignored for so long, until it had competition. And now everyone brings up the Dreamcast to claim that first-to-market means death, when in fact historically it's almost always been the other way around, which was my original point. Most people don't know squat about console history (hell, half of the readership of Slashdot is younger than most of my consoles), and figure they look smart by trashing Sega, one of the most successful video game companies of all time.
And we all know that being the first next-gen console to market virtually guarantees success.
If by "virtually", you mean "almost always", you are correct. Let's see:
(Winner, released first / Loser(s), released later)
Atari 2600 / Intellivision, Colecovision, Odyssey 2 Nintendo Entertainment System / Sega Master System Nintendo Game Boy / Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx Sega Genesis / Super Nintendo (although this one was pretty much neck and neck) Sony Playstation / Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn Sony Playstation 2 / Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Gamecube
Other than the Sega Dreamcast (and I won't even touch the Genny/SNES debate), virtually all first-to-market game systems have won in their respective generation. Something tells me you were trying to be sarcastic, however:)
You can do a PROPER install of Debian with the MEPIS live CD.
This isn't a troll, I'm genuinely wondering: why do people keep saying this on Slashdot? I've done a few HD installs of Knoppix, and it sure as heck looks like Debian to me. I think the word "Knoppix" comes up a few times when booting, but that's about it. apt-get and everything else I hear that's good about Debian is right there waiting to be used.
What makes a "proper" Debian installation? Are there things I'm missing? One other question, too: why does a liveCD come on 2 CDs? Is the second CD for use only when you install to the HD? Or am I misreading something?
Doing obviously illegal things only makes us look bad and SCO look like a victim. So this is a major step backwards.
A step backwards for whom, exactly? Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure IBM didn't write this virus. I'm pretty sure Linus didn't, either. As much as RMS might turn my stomach, I'd bet a lot of money he didn't, too.
Unless your worldview is SCO vs. everyone else (ie: unless you're SCO), I don't see how something like this can hurt anyone other than SCO.
My parents were well over 8 years old when the original Star Wars' came out. More like 38 (+6 for Jedi). They still loved them.
Most people that never saw the first trilogy (yes, they exist) who have seen the new ones as adults don't think they're all that great. My folks can't stand them.
It has dick all to do with childhood memories, really, contrary to what every karma whore has posted to every single Star Wars story on Slashdot for the past 4 years. Kids will eat anything up and call it candy, that is correct. But Star Wars (ep 4-6) stood the test of time because more than just pre-pubescents thought it was good. Same can't be said for the new stuff, sorry.
If you're going after the historical angle, at least point out the fact that in 1977 no one had even attempted the special affects Lucas did, whereas the new ones could really have been made by anyone. That at least is an acceptable excuse. Star Wars WAS something special, for all ages seeing it. Ep 1/2 might as well have been Matrix sequels, really.
A watch can now last for years without doing anything to it. No winding, no fixing moving parts. Anyone - and I mean ANYONE - can now afford a decent enough watch these days. The $5 models that Wal-Mart sells keep time accurate to 1 second in a year, and last several years on their included batteries.
Something tells me your grandfather didn't sell his watches for $5 a piece.
You or your grandfather, who always could afford a watch, may not think it's progress, but to me being able to tell time is akin to literacy. It's simply better for society if everyone can do it.
This one always sticks in my craw. My understanding of current copyright law says that basically every original composition of anything (music, pictures, stories, whatever) is copyrighted the second it is created. If I write some silly nonsense rhyme on a cocktail napkin tonight, it's copyrighted. If I draw a circle on my arm with a BIC pen, it's copyrighted. Until such time as I explicitly state "this work is in the public domain", or the copyright expires (haha), it remains copyrighted. And me putting my file up on Kazaa for sharing doesn't automatically revoke my copyrights, either, no more so than putting up a work online. Copyright notices, the little R or C in a circle - all of that serves only as a reminder. Stuff is still copyrighted regardless.
Am I wrong, or are we using the definition of copyright that only includes works owned by mass content producers?
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't the common beginning-level email programs (read: Outlook) make it very difficult (impossible?) for beginners to open potentially-dangerous attachments from email addresses that aren't in the address book?
Considering that many email viruses spread by looking at your address book, and don't spoof the from: address, this doesn't mean diddly. Recommending this to people will almost ensure they get a virus, because "someone I know sent it to me".
The ONLY solution is to have every user understand that you don't open an attachment unless you're expecting it, you have confirmed with the sender what it is, or the body of the email is so specific that you KNOW it's legit. For example, most viruses don't have the ability to learn my nephew's name and where he goes to school, so I'm pretty sure my brother's emails are legit. "Here are some pictures from my party, please enjoy!" is not.
.. with fairies and cute little elves and everyone dancing around in a circle happily. Because I swear that's the way many people think of it.
With a good chunk of the problems people seem to have online, I can usually make them see where they went wrong with this scenario: A random stranger walks up to you on the street, and asks you for $100. What do you do? I've never had someone tell me "of course, give it to him/her!". Me: "so why would you do the same just because it happened on the internet?".
A little common sense would solve so many problems, and yet people seem to leave their brains at the door when they turn on their computer.
Backwards-compatibility is a HUGE advantage to a console's success.
It looks like things are heading that way, but have you ever wondered why, in the 24 years of programmable home videogames leading up to the PS2, it never mattered? If it is such a big deal, surely one of the console makers out there would have tried it, and succeeded in all that time?
People had vast libraries of Atari 2600 games. Same with the original NES. Same with the Genesis, and Super Nintendo. No one seemed to care before, what's so special about Sony's unit that it matters now?
Second hand XBox1s will not be as cheap as second hand playstations precisely because you need the old consoles to play the old games!
Actually, the used Playstation market has thrived for some reason. I guess everyone who couldn't afford one at the time saw their chance once the PS2 was out. So the price never really has dropped on the damn things. I've been into older/obsolete consoles for over a decade now, and I've NEVER seen a console system keep its value like the PS1. 9 years after it was introduced, and you still see them selling for $40 (cdn). That is quite simply astounding; the only other consoles that get anywhere near that much here are rare items like the Atari Jaguar. Hell, I think PSOne's are still being sold for $70 or so new. Unprecedented. I can't remember a console still on the shelves 9 years later. There may have been some 2600 jr overstock kicking around in 1986, but not much of it. And I'm not talking about your local EB or specialty shop. Virtually every electronics place I go to still sells PSOne's.
The more cynical side of me thinks this might have something to do with the fact that CD-based consoles have a much shorter lifespan than cartridge-based, so we're simply seeing what happens when 90% of a console base is no longer functional.
"I can use it play all the old games" is one of those lies people tell themselves to convince themselves to buy an expensive new system with a limited games library.
For most people I know, this is anything but a lie.
Ask those people if they ever bought an Atari 7800. Or the Sega Master System adaptor for the Sega Genesis. Or a Super Gameboy, for that matter. Or, to the other end of things, a Sega 32X expansion unit. The net result of any of these purchases would be a console that plays both the newest games, plus all of your older games as well. All of these items failed miserably in the marketplace.
Fact is, right or wrong (and I'm with the "I love to play old games" crowd here), backwards compatibility has never influenced people's purchasing decisions, until very recently. Hell, people are (were) so used to switching console manufacturers (Atari->Nintendo->Sega->Sony, all in less than 20 years) that backwards compatibility was never even considered an issue.
Yup, us oldsters love to play older games even today. But for most of the gaming market, for almost the entire history of the market, no one else cared enough. Until Sony convinced everyone that it was suddenly an essential component. And no, their "market penetration" isn't the reason why. Sony isn't the first console manufacturer to have a virtual lock on the videogame industry.
Another factor that most people aren't aware of is the speeding issue.
It's easy to fudge your speed a bit with an analog speedometer. You can't easily tell EXACTLY how fast you're going (unless your eyes leave the road for a dangerously long period of time), so most people feel very comfortable letting their speed creep up a bit. 2 over, 5 over, *shrug* it's close enough. And the secret thrill if getting somewhere a tiny bit faster is always a plus.
Digital speedos tell you instantly, and exactly, how fast you're going. Short of cruise control, most people don't drive at the same speed very consistently, and you really notice this with a digital speedo. It makes people uncomfortable to know their exact speed. It's also a lot harder to tell the cop that you think you were only going "a few over" when you know damn well you saw 65 on the dash.
Of course, to people that regularly go 20 over the limit, it's a moot point.
Pay the same ammount for the gift (so she doesn't think you cheap)
I found the best of all possible worlds: a woman who doesn't value me based on how much money I'm willing to spend on her. She appreciates a back rub or a well-thought out dinner (I'm the cook in this partnership, btw) much more than some useless trinket whose sole value lies in what others think of it.
what can people do that robots can't? Please, someone, inform me of a good reason and I'll change my mind.
We covered more ground in a single Apollo mission lasting a few days than all Mars missions (including the current ones) will cover in several months combined. There's a reason those little rovers move in speeds measured in inches. A human could walk the distance Pathfinder did in a matter of seconds.
Imagine orders of magnitude more science being done simply because we're not restricted to a tiny radius around our landing site. THAT is what people can do that robots can't. Maybe some day, but not any time soon.
Why do we need humans on Mars?
This means less resources for robotic missions, which frankly make a lot more sense than manned missions. From every practical standpoint.
As evidence, I point to the 2 rovers currently on Mars. As recently as last week, we didn't even know if they'd be able to move and collect data, all due to a programming glitch (and yes, I realize I'm simplifying greatly). Now that they're working perfectly again, we have the opportunity to explore perhaps a few dozen/hundred metres in any given direction.
Humans are self-programmable, and can potentially fix their own antennas when they go out of alignment. We have amazingly dextrous manipulators and locomotion systems that are simply beyond our current technology to reproduce artificially. A rover can get stuck on a rock, the human steps over it.
And a human can cover several KILOMETRES of ground to do experiements, with little added expense.
From a practical standpoint, there is a hell of a lot that robotic missions can't do.
When the CD-based units first started appearing, can you believe they actually came with (some) built in flash storage? Enough for saving maybe 3-6 different games. When the PS1 hit store shelves, and REQUIRED you to buy an add-on in order to save any game at all... I said the same thing as yourself. Who would want a console that you need to buy a bunch of extra parts just to use it properly? Today, memory cards are considered standard purchases along with a console.
The way I see it, onboard flash memory for a few games would satisfy most gamers out there (I think the average console/games sales ratio is somewhere around 1:4), and for the rest of us, an external HD would be just the thing. If someone coded the killer app/use for the HD, people would start buying them, and developers would use it more. Kinda like the N64 rumble pack, originally an add-on but now standard on any console.
if they ever come out with a version of their operating system that can't be used illeagally(sic) I see them going down in FLAMES
.NET to write and compile a 20-line console program using only standard C libraries. Apparently gcc is "too much typing" for them. I say, bring on working copy-protection for all commercial software, please! And yes, I do realize what a pipe dream this is :)
I went back to University a few years ago and am just finishing up once again. The level of software piracy around here absolutely astounds me. As a personal goal, I've spent the past couple of years trying to rid myself entirely of any software that isn't 100% legit (whether it's free "educational" MS product, or OSS, or whatever). The time I sometimes spend trying to get work done is frustrating (need to print something that isn't in a University-approved file format? ie: anything not a Word doc or PDF?), but the personal satisfaction is worth it.
I rant almost daily about professors requiring us to hand in our work with MS-specific file formats, and my fellow classmates yawn and hand me a warezed copy of MS Office. OpenOffice is SO close, but still not 100% (as I learned after initially receiving a 0 on an assignment - thankfully the prof was understanding and let me re-submit it).
I really, REALLY would like to see upcoming versions of Windows and Office be 100% unpiratable. Most students I know aren't going to be shelling out hundreds of dollars to keep up with software when there's a free alternative that does what they need just fine. Give it a few years, and we'd have an entire school generation almost entirely unexposed to Microsoft's software. Other than games (about 99% of which are also pirated, incidentally), I just can't see Joe Student *needing* Windows, to the tune of paying for software licenses for it.
Hell, I've seen students fire up Visual Studio
When one of us sleeps with J Lo, then we've got a good story
:)
Well, I hear Ben and her are on the rocks.
So, Wil, are you reading today?
Simple.
:)
Sign up for a ton of Hotmail accounts.
And as far as voting with your wallet goes, you really never can tell it's an issue before you try it. This goes for my MP3-player (Creative). I couldn't get it working under any Linux or *BSD platform.
:)
Any mp3 player that doesn't work as a simple USB/firewire hard drive is crap, and for precisely this reason. Same goes for digital cameras. Why would you want to use proprietary, OS-specific software to talk to your devices, when there's no good reason to?
Besides, it's nice to be able to show your friends your photos without having to install software on their computer
I do like the tabbed browsing but it's like I have tabbed browsing now; I just have a dozen browsers open. I switch between them along the taskbar. RAM is cheap today gentleman. I don't really care how many of my machine's resources it takes.
The reason you'd get modded into oblivion has nothing to do with criticism of Linux. It's that you're talking out of your ass.
People don't use tabbed browsing because of resource requirements. 8 IE windows or 8 tabs in Opera will behave almost identically. Once the main part of your application is loaded, the only extra RAM involved is the amount needed to handle the fact that you have more than one page open. MDI or not is irrelevant. People use tabbed browsing because we don't like to clutter up our taskbar, and because we don't want to have to click multiple times just to switch to another browser window. If taskbar clutter doesn't bother you, then fine, and if it does, and you think XP's grouping of like tasks solves this.. how is this any different than going to Google first and then doing a search? It's wasted clicks that you seemed worries about at the beginning of your rant.
The other reason people will mod you down is that your "facts" are just plain wrong. Moz has a Google toolbar, and many (most?) other OSS browsers have the equivalent: a nice text box you can enter searches into, that brings up the Google results. About the only thing missing is page ranks, and quite frankly, I don't get the point of that, but that's just me.
We didn't switch from IE because of one niggly detail. We switched from IE because of a dozen major security holes in the thing. Browse to a website and have it install software without your consent! Yay! Let it change my homepage at will! Whoopee! Don't give me any fine-grained control over Javascript! Awesome!
(Posted from Opera running on WindowsXP, so cram your "Linux supporters can't take criticism" up your ass, thanks)
Not quite. The Saturn/PS1 thing is very close, I admit. Depends on what part of the market you were in. Sony beat Sega by several months in most areas afaik.
:) Ok, there's another example: first CD-based console to the market died a horrible death.
The Master System came out a full year after the NES, and was Sega's attempt to compete with the NES. Remember, this was during the time when NO ONE thought video game consoles would make money. The NES was a huge risk in North America, which is why Atari declined to market it (as was originally proposed by Nintendo Japan). Once the NES was a success, and this was by no means overnight, other companies joined in. But Nintendo had no competition for a long time in console terms.
By the time the Genesis was out, Sega knew they had lost the 8-bit war, and was going for a pre-emptive strike against Nintendo's 16-bit entry. If you want to claim any of the 16-bit consoles were trying to compete with the NES, the closest fit would be NEC's Turbograpx16. A nice failure, far too late into the market to do any good. It was just too much of a middleman, and the Genesis being so much more advanced ensured it wouldn't last. Because of the market penetration of the Genesis, the Super Nintendo never sold anywhere near what the NES did. Of course, the installed base of the NES didn't help Nintendo, either. Many people were simply happy with keeping their NES.
Remember, the Saturn wasn't even public information until 1994, and the SNES came out in 1991, so it's not like Sega spent those 3 years killing off the Genesis in favour of the Saturn. Instead, they tried the CD and 32X units, and that managed to kill it
Regardless, coming first or not has very little to do with a console's success. There are many other factors involved, and as Sony has shown, marketing trumps all. Because until the Dreamcast, there had never been a next-gen platform so completely ignored for so long, until it had competition. And now everyone brings up the Dreamcast to claim that first-to-market means death, when in fact historically it's almost always been the other way around, which was my original point. Most people don't know squat about console history (hell, half of the readership of Slashdot is younger than most of my consoles), and figure they look smart by trashing Sega, one of the most successful video game companies of all time.
And we all know that being the first next-gen console to market virtually guarantees success.
:)
If by "virtually", you mean "almost always", you are correct. Let's see:
(Winner, released first / Loser(s), released later)
Atari 2600 / Intellivision, Colecovision, Odyssey 2
Nintendo Entertainment System / Sega Master System
Nintendo Game Boy / Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx
Sega Genesis / Super Nintendo (although this one was pretty much neck and neck)
Sony Playstation / Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn
Sony Playstation 2 / Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Gamecube
Other than the Sega Dreamcast (and I won't even touch the Genny/SNES debate), virtually all first-to-market game systems have won in their respective generation. Something tells me you were trying to be sarcastic, however
You can do a PROPER install of Debian with the MEPIS live CD.
This isn't a troll, I'm genuinely wondering: why do people keep saying this on Slashdot? I've done a few HD installs of Knoppix, and it sure as heck looks like Debian to me. I think the word "Knoppix" comes up a few times when booting, but that's about it. apt-get and everything else I hear that's good about Debian is right there waiting to be used.
What makes a "proper" Debian installation? Are there things I'm missing? One other question, too: why does a liveCD come on 2 CDs? Is the second CD for use only when you install to the HD? Or am I misreading something?
Doing obviously illegal things only makes us look bad and SCO look like a victim. So this is a major step backwards.
A step backwards for whom, exactly? Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure IBM didn't write this virus. I'm pretty sure Linus didn't, either. As much as RMS might turn my stomach, I'd bet a lot of money he didn't, too.
Unless your worldview is SCO vs. everyone else (ie: unless you're SCO), I don't see how something like this can hurt anyone other than SCO.
My parents were well over 8 years old when the original Star Wars' came out. More like 38 (+6 for Jedi). They still loved them.
Most people that never saw the first trilogy (yes, they exist) who have seen the new ones as adults don't think they're all that great. My folks can't stand them.
It has dick all to do with childhood memories, really, contrary to what every karma whore has posted to every single Star Wars story on Slashdot for the past 4 years. Kids will eat anything up and call it candy, that is correct. But Star Wars (ep 4-6) stood the test of time because more than just pre-pubescents thought it was good. Same can't be said for the new stuff, sorry.
If you're going after the historical angle, at least point out the fact that in 1977 no one had even attempted the special affects Lucas did, whereas the new ones could really have been made by anyone. That at least is an acceptable excuse. Star Wars WAS something special, for all ages seeing it. Ep 1/2 might as well have been Matrix sequels, really.
I guess you entirely missed the point of the title of the post you were replying to :)
a long standing bug in Mozilla, which fails to use the X clipboard correctly...you'll need to copy/paste to stop bugzilla being Slashdotted
But I'm using Mozilla on X, you insensitive clod!
How is that progress? Food for thought:
A watch can now last for years without doing anything to it. No winding, no fixing moving parts. Anyone - and I mean ANYONE - can now afford a decent enough watch these days. The $5 models that Wal-Mart sells keep time accurate to 1 second in a year, and last several years on their included batteries.
Something tells me your grandfather didn't sell his watches for $5 a piece.
You or your grandfather, who always could afford a watch, may not think it's progress, but to me being able to tell time is akin to literacy. It's simply better for society if everyone can do it.
they must know that works were not copyrighted
This one always sticks in my craw. My understanding of current copyright law says that basically every original composition of anything (music, pictures, stories, whatever) is copyrighted the second it is created. If I write some silly nonsense rhyme on a cocktail napkin tonight, it's copyrighted. If I draw a circle on my arm with a BIC pen, it's copyrighted. Until such time as I explicitly state "this work is in the public domain", or the copyright expires (haha), it remains copyrighted. And me putting my file up on Kazaa for sharing doesn't automatically revoke my copyrights, either, no more so than putting up a work online. Copyright notices, the little R or C in a circle - all of that serves only as a reminder. Stuff is still copyrighted regardless.
Am I wrong, or are we using the definition of copyright that only includes works owned by mass content producers?
(But then some people trust faxed signatures, so who knows?)
You mean, like most courts?