(for those of you that don't know, you can choose the classic skin and the behavior/performance of winamp is EXACTLY like the unreleased winamp 2.99. - there really is no reason not to upgrade)
Sounds to me that you just told me the reason not to upgrade, for those of us happy with Winamp 2.
Oh, but newer is always better, no matter what, right?:)
I've been a pretty faithful Windows user for 10 years now, and for the most part, I hate its security, but I love its simplicity. It's still my primary OS today. But I gotta tell you, XP changed all that in one fell swoop. Product activation for the geek consumer (and for anyone, for that matter) is perhaps one of the scariest things ever invented, and I can't believe how the public has just brushed it off.
I'm still running older machines that can't handle 2000. Huh. Guess that means I'm running an OS on them that is no longer supported. Is that reasonable on Microsoft's part? Sure. They can't cater to my every whim forever, and I don't fault them in the slightest for it. Now imagine trying to use XP in 5 years. Scared the hell out of me when I realized it, because I've always ran older systems that need an oldish OS. What happens if I ever need to reinstall? Or change some hardware? Sure, I could run a cracked version. Break the law, and take the risk some punk ass Romanian teenager has trojaned it. Yippee.
I look at my folks, still running 98, and probably still going to be for another few years. I look at statistics showing millions of people still on the (now or soon to be unsupported) 9x series. If things don't radically change, where will all of the XP users be in 5-6 years? Praying to god they never have to reinstall their OS, I imagine. I know we've flogged this dead horse on Slashdot, but I still don't see anyone else picking up on this. I'm still trying to explain this to a few clients that are trying to stay on NT 4 for as long as their apps are supported, and they plan on going XP as their next upgrade. They don't understand that they will be living on borrowed time once Microsoft EOL's XP, no matter how hard I try.
I like Windows. I want to continue using Windows. But it's a real bitch knowing older systems are essentially toast once they EOL their "activated" products. Hard drive failure? Oh, sorry, might as well toss that computer. Is this really where we're going with our software? Anyone know if Microsoft has any sort of information as to what, if anything, they plan to do about XP when its time is up? Because when I extrapolate my use, and the use of a lot of people I know, 10 or 20 years down the road, I see a lot of landfill. Well, or Linux machines:)
VMware makes the industry's premier set of partitioning tools for running both Windows and Linux on a single server and running multiple applications on a single system.
I've been able to run multiple applications on a single system for many, many years now. It's called multi-tasking:) Or did they mean "running multiple operating systems on a single system", in which case isn't that redudant with the first part of the sentence (running both Windows and Linux on a single server)?
Also, wouldn't a "set of partitioning tools" be something like Partition Magic or fdisk? Or are we using a more generic form of the word partition? I've used VMware a lot, and I had to re-read this a couple of times just to make sure they weren't actually talking about something else.
Keeping things on topic, anyone know how OSS friendly EMC is? I'd love a free copy of VMware instead of guiltily using a years-old copy with a crack:/
You can easily delete the "whatsnew.txt" from your Winamp directory, and Winamp will run just like it did before. You might lose some functionality specific to Winamp and how it talks with its "whatsnew.txt" file, but it will still run.
Try deleting parts of IE from Windows. Go ahead, I dare ya:) You'll rapidly find the operating system no longer works.
The argument way back when (a bit of a red herring IMHO, but nobody asked) was that Microsoft needlessly, and anti-competitively bound IE into Windows, in order to kill off Netscape. It's a little hard to get po'd at an OSS product, even if they *are* trying to kill off the competiton. It's not like it's hurting anyone's bottom line. And besides, KDE plays nicely with other browsers.
Windows has been using "personalized" menus for years now, since Windows 2000 and Office 2000 at least (possibly Office 97, I can't remember offhand). Any menu option you don't frequently use disappears after a while. To make it more fun, a fresh install hides quite a few options, so you may never even know they're there. And KDE or Gnome used to do this on RedHat 8 and/or 9 at least. Where you had your utils/apps/whatever in the main K/foot menu, PLUS another entry called "extras", which then cascaded into more utils/apps/whatever.
I gotta tell you, both systems irritated the piss out of me. Every time I'd not use something for a month, I'd forget where the hell it went, and have to go hunting around trying to find it. Grrrrr:)
A better designed heirarchy works wonders. I usually spend a fair bit of time re-organizing my start/K/foot menus, but once they're set up, wow, is it ever easy to find stuff. The problem with this, of course, is that no two people will want the same organization. I agree with another poster here, perhaps a beginner(only the main things) vs. expert (every damn item) mode is in order?
I get the feeling that merely suggesting that Mac OS X feels less pain from viruses, trojans, and other nasties in part because it has a smaller market share would result in this sort of response
So is Mac OS X less of a target because of smaller market share? Yes.
The original authour, like yourself, is confusing 2 things here, and this is why you see so many rebuttals to these sort of comments. A larger market share makes anything a bigger target. Duh. Anyone can figure that out. The problem is, it's a meaningless statement. People get so uppity about it because a bigger target != less secure.
The fact of the matter is, being a bigger target does not mean you're going to be compromised more often, which is what we're worried about when we talk security. If it did, Apache would be spitting out Code Reds and Nimdas every other month. Being a bigger target simply means people are going to TRY to compromise you more often.
Remember kids, we don't evaluate the security of something based on attempts. We evaluate it based on SUCCESSFUL attempts. This is why the "if Linux/Unix/BSD/OSX/Commodore 64 had a bigger market, it would be as insecure as Windows" argument is a fallacy, and why it gets rebutted every time.
Why should I have to reboot, if I patch my browser or e-mail client?
This one's even more fun:
1. Install IPX on an XP box. You don't have to reboot. Cool, MS figured out how to load a network stack dynamically.
2. Now uninstall IPX. You're asked to reboot.
3. ?
4. ????????
I'm so far happy with the less frequent reboots in the modern NT world, but does anyone have an idea as to why installing doesn't require a reboot, but UNINSTALLING does?
You're thinking more along the lines of 57 CD-Rs. Now add the cost of the helper monkey to carry that much extra bulk around with you.
Good idea off-planet, bad idea at home
on
Living on Mars Time
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ugh. Any other Slashdotters want to contribute/correct me, please do:)
This has been proposed many, many times for use here on Earth. The metric-heads went gangbusters over it when Canada converted to metric back in the 70s, and it never took off, for obvious reasons:
Of course, calendars do not lend themselves to base 10, but neither do they lend themselves to base 12 or base 60
This here is the key. Our calender is (more or less) based on a logical observation of regular cyclical events in the sky. Our 12 months come from the cycle of the moon, of which we go through approximately 12 per year. The word "month" was originally "moonth", if you're curious. The problem, of course, is that nature didn't provide us with a nice 12 months of 30 days per month, so we have this hodepodge of units. We also don't have an exactly 365-day (which is base what, anyway?) year, but we manage, because measuring days is just about the most natural thing we can do.
As for minutes/seconds, this goes back to circular clock faces, and possibly sundials. I forget the exact mathematical reasoning behind it, but a circle just doesn't divide into base-100 nicely. Unless my professors just made this one up, or I'm remembering wrong, it's been a long time!
In short, the way we measure time is partly biological, and partly historical. I've managed to find pretty compelling reasons for most of it over the years, but yeah, like any measurement system, it's mostly arbitrary.
Imagine at the end of RotJ, after the destruction of the death star, but before the Ewok dance number, we are subjected to twenty minutes of Luke returning to Tatooine and discovering a sith jedi is still loose and making things miserable for Mos Eisley.
Hmm. Could we have that INSTEAD of the Ewok dance number? Especially the new one?
No wait. Let's do that with all the Ewok scenes:)
Re:The word 'Fuck' has been fucked! News at 11!
on
The Year In Ideas
·
· Score: 1
Might as well abandon the rest of the language, by that reasoning.
I find it funny to see a story like this today, considering:
As of today, both our Prime Minister and Official Opposition were not elected. The PM who *was* elected retired and named a successor (hey, it's like a monarchy!), and the Opposition party didn't exist 2 weeks ago.
Spooky.
Having said that, when we actually do vote our leaders into office, yeah, the process usually goes off without a hitch.
Everyone keeps talking about how you can't trademark common words in the US, etc. Does this mean car companies don't have any trademarks on their vehicle model names? After all, most car models use common words (other than cool companies like BMW or Acura:).
So, could I legally sell a sports coupe with a horse on the hood called a Kia Mustang? Would Ford be powerless to stop me?
And what about the Apple Music/Apple Computers debacle? I can't think of a more generic word that "Apple", yet as I recall Jobs & Co. had to sign agreements way back when that stated they wouldn't get into the music industry, because of Apple Music's trademark. I still haven't heard how iTunes affects this, btw, so if anyone has any insight...
My Lyra came with 25 sample songs on it. This was the first I've ever heard of an mp3 player coming pre-loaded with music. It's almost like they've planned for this all along.
Neither country has it right, but I hope you realize that (at least in theory) if you don't do anything illegal, the RIAA can't touch you. In Canada, we're all paying for this bullshit, whether we infringe on copyrights or not.
Imagine if the government levied speeding charges on everyone's drivers license, and stopped pulling over speeders. Sounds pretty crappy if you don't speed, doesn't it?
A 300km drive is considered a daytrip to most Canadians, except those in crowded areas like Toronto. When the nearest large city is on average 5-600 kms away, a couple hours in the car seems like a picnic. Hell, I did Winnipeg-Calgary (that's about 1000 miles for any yanks in the audience) for a 4-day weekend once.
And with a car that can get 700kms on about $30 in gas, the grandparent can recoup his money on a single spindle of 100. But he was talking about an iPod, which could go up as much as $200. Never mind the booze/cigarettes issue if you're into that sort of thing.
I haven't bought a label CD since I found out about the levy on blank CDs a few years back. My friends have more than enough music for me to borrow, and I've built a nice collection this way. Of course, I don't burn them to CDs, that's what hard drives are for:)
I gave up on this long ago. You can't win. Obey the law, and get shafted. So fuck it. I still buy CDs from unsigned bands just starting out at shows and such, but I'll never buy from a label again. Personally, I'm waiting for the motion picture industry to get in on this. That way I can legally and without guilt copy as many DVDs as I want.
Happily I bought my 40gb mp3 player last month. The next model I'm going to have to smuggle into the country. Isn't that the most fucked up thing you've ever heard?
Slashdot Mirror
Digital audio by definition is lossy.
(for those of you that don't know, you can choose the classic skin and the behavior/performance of winamp is EXACTLY like the unreleased winamp 2.99. - there really is no reason not to upgrade)
:)
Sounds to me that you just told me the reason not to upgrade, for those of us happy with Winamp 2.
Oh, but newer is always better, no matter what, right?
MP3 is patented, and the patent holder is not willing to license encoders on royalty-free terms.
Then how do these guys let you rip to MP3 for free?
Hear, hear.
:)
I've been a pretty faithful Windows user for 10 years now, and for the most part, I hate its security, but I love its simplicity. It's still my primary OS today. But I gotta tell you, XP changed all that in one fell swoop. Product activation for the geek consumer (and for anyone, for that matter) is perhaps one of the scariest things ever invented, and I can't believe how the public has just brushed it off.
I'm still running older machines that can't handle 2000. Huh. Guess that means I'm running an OS on them that is no longer supported. Is that reasonable on Microsoft's part? Sure. They can't cater to my every whim forever, and I don't fault them in the slightest for it. Now imagine trying to use XP in 5 years. Scared the hell out of me when I realized it, because I've always ran older systems that need an oldish OS. What happens if I ever need to reinstall? Or change some hardware? Sure, I could run a cracked version. Break the law, and take the risk some punk ass Romanian teenager has trojaned it. Yippee.
I look at my folks, still running 98, and probably still going to be for another few years. I look at statistics showing millions of people still on the (now or soon to be unsupported) 9x series. If things don't radically change, where will all of the XP users be in 5-6 years? Praying to god they never have to reinstall their OS, I imagine. I know we've flogged this dead horse on Slashdot, but I still don't see anyone else picking up on this. I'm still trying to explain this to a few clients that are trying to stay on NT 4 for as long as their apps are supported, and they plan on going XP as their next upgrade. They don't understand that they will be living on borrowed time once Microsoft EOL's XP, no matter how hard I try.
I like Windows. I want to continue using Windows. But it's a real bitch knowing older systems are essentially toast once they EOL their "activated" products. Hard drive failure? Oh, sorry, might as well toss that computer. Is this really where we're going with our software? Anyone know if Microsoft has any sort of information as to what, if anything, they plan to do about XP when its time is up? Because when I extrapolate my use, and the use of a lot of people I know, 10 or 20 years down the road, I see a lot of landfill. Well, or Linux machines
Do you know, you're the first person on /. to ever make a comment about the nick?
/., you're the first. You should feel proud.
IRC, ICQ, everywhere else I see "hey, gimme some free weed ha ha ha ha". But on
I know you're trying to be funny, but consider this:
:)
You're posting to a place where a sizable chunk of the readership probably has more than a roomfull of computers
Is it even possible to karma whore when you've hit the cap years ago?
VMware makes the industry's premier set of partitioning tools for running both Windows and Linux on a single server and running multiple applications on a single system.
:) Or did they mean "running multiple operating systems on a single system", in which case isn't that redudant with the first part of the sentence (running both Windows and Linux on a single server)?
:/
I've been able to run multiple applications on a single system for many, many years now. It's called multi-tasking
Also, wouldn't a "set of partitioning tools" be something like Partition Magic or fdisk? Or are we using a more generic form of the word partition? I've used VMware a lot, and I had to re-read this a couple of times just to make sure they weren't actually talking about something else.
Keeping things on topic, anyone know how OSS friendly EMC is? I'd love a free copy of VMware instead of guiltily using a years-old copy with a crack
You can easily delete the "whatsnew.txt" from your Winamp directory, and Winamp will run just like it did before. You might lose some functionality specific to Winamp and how it talks with its "whatsnew.txt" file, but it will still run.
:) You'll rapidly find the operating system no longer works.
Try deleting parts of IE from Windows. Go ahead, I dare ya
The argument way back when (a bit of a red herring IMHO, but nobody asked) was that Microsoft needlessly, and anti-competitively bound IE into Windows, in order to kill off Netscape. It's a little hard to get po'd at an OSS product, even if they *are* trying to kill off the competiton. It's not like it's hurting anyone's bottom line. And besides, KDE plays nicely with other browsers.
Windows has been using "personalized" menus for years now, since Windows 2000 and Office 2000 at least (possibly Office 97, I can't remember offhand). Any menu option you don't frequently use disappears after a while. To make it more fun, a fresh install hides quite a few options, so you may never even know they're there. And KDE or Gnome used to do this on RedHat 8 and/or 9 at least. Where you had your utils/apps/whatever in the main K/foot menu, PLUS another entry called "extras", which then cascaded into more utils/apps/whatever.
:)
I gotta tell you, both systems irritated the piss out of me. Every time I'd not use something for a month, I'd forget where the hell it went, and have to go hunting around trying to find it. Grrrrr
A better designed heirarchy works wonders. I usually spend a fair bit of time re-organizing my start/K/foot menus, but once they're set up, wow, is it ever easy to find stuff. The problem with this, of course, is that no two people will want the same organization. I agree with another poster here, perhaps a beginner(only the main things) vs. expert (every damn item) mode is in order?
Nah, that'd only work if they made Mountain Dew-ios.
I get the feeling that merely suggesting that Mac OS X feels less pain from viruses, trojans, and other nasties in part because it has a smaller market share would result in this sort of response
So is Mac OS X less of a target because of smaller market share? Yes.
The original authour, like yourself, is confusing 2 things here, and this is why you see so many rebuttals to these sort of comments. A larger market share makes anything a bigger target. Duh. Anyone can figure that out. The problem is, it's a meaningless statement. People get so uppity about it because a bigger target != less secure.
The fact of the matter is, being a bigger target does not mean you're going to be compromised more often, which is what we're worried about when we talk security. If it did, Apache would be spitting out Code Reds and Nimdas every other month. Being a bigger target simply means people are going to TRY to compromise you more often.
Remember kids, we don't evaluate the security of something based on attempts. We evaluate it based on SUCCESSFUL attempts. This is why the "if Linux/Unix/BSD/OSX/Commodore 64 had a bigger market, it would be as insecure as Windows" argument is a fallacy, and why it gets rebutted every time.
Why should I have to reboot, if I patch my browser or e-mail client?
This one's even more fun:
1. Install IPX on an XP box. You don't have to reboot. Cool, MS figured out how to load a network stack dynamically.
2. Now uninstall IPX. You're asked to reboot.
3. ?
4. ????????
I'm so far happy with the less frequent reboots in the modern NT world, but does anyone have an idea as to why installing doesn't require a reboot, but UNINSTALLING does?
10x700mb 40gb.
You're thinking more along the lines of 57 CD-Rs. Now add the cost of the helper monkey to carry that much extra bulk around with you.
Ugh. Any other Slashdotters want to contribute/correct me, please do :)
This has been proposed many, many times for use here on Earth. The metric-heads went gangbusters over it when Canada converted to metric back in the 70s, and it never took off, for obvious reasons:
Of course, calendars do not lend themselves to base 10, but neither do they lend themselves to base 12 or base 60
This here is the key. Our calender is (more or less) based on a logical observation of regular cyclical events in the sky. Our 12 months come from the cycle of the moon, of which we go through approximately 12 per year. The word "month" was originally "moonth", if you're curious. The problem, of course, is that nature didn't provide us with a nice 12 months of 30 days per month, so we have this hodepodge of units. We also don't have an exactly 365-day (which is base what, anyway?) year, but we manage, because measuring days is just about the most natural thing we can do.
As for minutes/seconds, this goes back to circular clock faces, and possibly sundials. I forget the exact mathematical reasoning behind it, but a circle just doesn't divide into base-100 nicely. Unless my professors just made this one up, or I'm remembering wrong, it's been a long time!
In short, the way we measure time is partly biological, and partly historical. I've managed to find pretty compelling reasons for most of it over the years, but yeah, like any measurement system, it's mostly arbitrary.
Or an iMac :)
Considering how fanatical owners are about them, I'd say there certainly is a market for convergence devices.
Imagine at the end of RotJ, after the destruction of the death star, but before the Ewok dance number, we are subjected to twenty minutes of Luke returning to Tatooine and discovering a sith jedi is still loose and making things miserable for Mos Eisley.
:)
Hmm. Could we have that INSTEAD of the Ewok dance number? Especially the new one?
No wait. Let's do that with all the Ewok scenes
Might as well abandon the rest of the language, by that reasoning.
I find it funny to see a story like this today, considering:
As of today, both our Prime Minister and Official Opposition were not elected. The PM who *was* elected retired and named a successor (hey, it's like a monarchy!), and the Opposition party didn't exist 2 weeks ago.
Spooky.
Having said that, when we actually do vote our leaders into office, yeah, the process usually goes off without a hitch.
Everyone keeps talking about how you can't trademark common words in the US, etc. Does this mean car companies don't have any trademarks on their vehicle model names? After all, most car models use common words (other than cool companies like BMW or Acura :).
So, could I legally sell a sports coupe with a horse on the hood called a Kia Mustang? Would Ford be powerless to stop me?
And what about the Apple Music/Apple Computers debacle? I can't think of a more generic word that "Apple", yet as I recall Jobs & Co. had to sign agreements way back when that stated they wouldn't get into the music industry, because of Apple Music's trademark. I still haven't heard how iTunes affects this, btw, so if anyone has any insight...
Off and on, yup. Nothing like a 6 hour drive to the next city, and an 8 hour drive to the next city that's bigger :)
My Lyra came with 25 sample songs on it. This was the first I've ever heard of an mp3 player coming pre-loaded with music. It's almost like they've planned for this all along.
Neither country has it right, but I hope you realize that (at least in theory) if you don't do anything illegal, the RIAA can't touch you. In Canada, we're all paying for this bullshit, whether we infringe on copyrights or not.
Imagine if the government levied speeding charges on everyone's drivers license, and stopped pulling over speeders. Sounds pretty crappy if you don't speed, doesn't it?
A 300km drive is considered a daytrip to most Canadians, except those in crowded areas like Toronto. When the nearest large city is on average 5-600 kms away, a couple hours in the car seems like a picnic. Hell, I did Winnipeg-Calgary (that's about 1000 miles for any yanks in the audience) for a 4-day weekend once.
And with a car that can get 700kms on about $30 in gas, the grandparent can recoup his money on a single spindle of 100. But he was talking about an iPod, which could go up as much as $200. Never mind the booze/cigarettes issue if you're into that sort of thing.
I haven't bought a label CD since I found out about the levy on blank CDs a few years back. My friends have more than enough music for me to borrow, and I've built a nice collection this way. Of course, I don't burn them to CDs, that's what hard drives are for :)
I gave up on this long ago. You can't win. Obey the law, and get shafted. So fuck it. I still buy CDs from unsigned bands just starting out at shows and such, but I'll never buy from a label again. Personally, I'm waiting for the motion picture industry to get in on this. That way I can legally and without guilt copy as many DVDs as I want.
Happily I bought my 40gb mp3 player last month. The next model I'm going to have to smuggle into the country. Isn't that the most fucked up thing you've ever heard?