AOL users are some of the most hated and technologically incompetent persons on the Internet. I'd think that REAL Linux users would want to do everything in their power to AVOID coming in contact with AOLers. It seems to me that a Linux port of AIM is unnecessary, and bordering upon being disgraceful to those of us who value the intellectual high grounds of the Internet. So I ask of you, why bother? Who needs to talk to AOLers anyway?
How the fuck is this interesting? If someone hacks your computer, the worst thing that could happen is you'd lose some data and have to do a fresh install of everything. If you put fucking thermite in a PC, you're out $2000 worth of hardware. The solution is worse than the problem. It's like saying "I don't want to get robbed, so I'll just blow up everything I own"
Even better, I'd like to have a cyborg ME. That way, when my wife wants to go shoe shopping or cuddle after sex or talk about feelings, I can just have the roboUltraBot keep her sorry ass copmany while I go out for beer.
I do not buy e-mail addresses from so called "online marketing organizations". I harvest potential contacts from public forums. Mainly chat rooms, usenet posts, and forums like Slashdot and Kuro5hin. I am well within my legal right in doing so, since you have chosen to make your e-mail address publicly available. As I have previously said, I always include an option to unsubscribe.
The LATimes article in the story seems to be highly biased against e-mail marketing. As an internet businessman, and entrepeneur, I frequently use bulk e-mail as a way of informing my customers about new products and specials. There is nothing immoral or dishonest about this practice, and I am in full compliance with US Congress e-mail regulations.
I think that digital solicitations provide a valuable service to consumers, and have been (unfairly) given a bad reputation. I run a legitimate multi-level internet business, and use bulk mailings as my primary method of solicitation. I would be unable to support my wife and kids if it weren't for the business I gain through e-mail. Again, I fully abide by all rules and regulations against SPAM, and provide an unsubscribe option to all mailings.
It is unfair to label all e-mail marketers as criminals just because of a few persons who have no respect for users privacy and bandwidth limitations. Some of us are honest businessmen who are just trying to make a living, and have been branded as low-lifes because of a few rogue SPAMmers.
This would be akin to calling all Linux users criminals. While I'm sure that a few Linux users are career criminals, the vast majority of Linux users are law-abiding citizens trying to avoid Monopolistic alternatives. Again, a few bad apples are giving an entire group a bad name. Please, I urge you, give us a break, we're just trying to get by the only way we know how.
I'm not so sure it would be a bad idea to require a liscense to own a computer. If you think this sounds crazy, go work in support for a while, and listen to some of the idiots you get calling you because their 48x cupholder snapped off. At least if a liscense were required, it would force people to actually LEARN something about their computer and how it works instead of just blindly clicking on things and hoping for the best.
Valid point, but Dolby Digital 5.1 audio actually uses less discspace than 2 channel CD audio. Dolby Digital uses compression that's similar to MP3 compression and a 5 channel stream only uses about 384kbps while CD audio uses around 1.5mbps. The main reason that Dolby Digital hasn't become the defacto standard for all audio, is lack of hardware support (most persons do not have Dolby Digital decoders in their cars or PC's), and due to the fact that the compression is a bit lossy. Some audiophiles prefer DTS encoded surround to Dolby Digital because it isn't as compressed. I personally would like to see more games and audio CD's come out with Dolby Digital support. I know I'd buy 'em.
Thank you for the blind accusations, but I read the article prior to posting. I'm not quite sure I believe the HotorNot guy on this issue. I'd like to hear Geocities' take on the subject before making a decision.
Let's look at the facts for a moment. Geocities gives away free webspace and offsets the cost with banner ads. I am referred to Geocities by HotorNot and set up a dummy account with nothing but a jpg of myself in my Geocities directory.
HotorNot then pulls my jpg off of Geocities server, costing Geocities money and bandwidth in the process, and imbeds the image into a page served by HotorNot.
Since the html file was served from HotorNot, they're the ones racking up banner impressions and revenue, while not a single Geocities banner gets served in the process.
Geocities is still providing the disk space and bandwidth, but they're losing out on the banners, which are their primary source of revenue.
Care to explain how that's beneficial to Geocities, tough guy?
I've been following this story for a while now, and what Slashdot's article doesn't tell you is that the supposed treasure was stolen from the Thai people during Japan's occupation of Thailand during World War II.
Even if this guy does find the treasure, it doesn't even belong to Japan. For him, or any Japanese citizen to lay claim to the treasure would be to justify Japan's actions during WWII. I hardly think that ill-gotten booty, obtained while your country was burning women, children, and villages should by kept by the opressors after the war has drawn to the conclusion. If the researcher in the story was to find the buried rail cars, he should take the moral high ground and return the loot to it's rightful Thai owners, and do his part to restore some of Japan's dignity that was shattered after the war.
"That my friends is how terrorism works. You don't strike the strongest, most visible targets in this case organizations like Philips Electronics for making stuff like mp3 cd players, you attack the small targets that everyone assumes are more or less outside the conflict"
*Bzzzzt*! Wrong! If terrorists struck the small, irrelevant targets, no one would care about terrorism. Seriously, terrorism is a serious threat in our country, largely due to the World Trade Center bombing. You take out an 80 story building and people notice. If those guys had done what you suggested and said "Hey Shiek Ahmed, you busy? Let's go bomb some old lady's barn in the middle of Hicksville." No one would have cared, because they're attacking an obscure an inconsequential part of society. True, the little guys don't hold out as long in a fight, but nobody notices, and that's the whole point of terrorism.
Simple. None of the images are hosted on their site. They encourage users to sign up for dummy accounts with Geocities and such to host the jpg, and foot the bill for the bandwidth. Each HotorNot pageview only amounts to a 4 or 5k script for formatting and to access the DB. Contrast that with the fact that when slashdot serves a comments page, it's pulling several hundred k from the MySQL database and over the 'net.
When you think about, HotorNot's scheme is quite brilliant. A little shady, but brilliant.
"There are those of us who believe that it should be possible to securely talk with each other over the internet.. Without worrying about our encyrption being cracked."
And I'm not denying that, but there is a distinct difference between "should be" and "is".
I generally use envelopes, but I'm pretty sure that if someone REALLY put their mind to it, they could figure out a way to get into the envelope. I think that was what the original poster was getting at. It doesn't really matter if you use ROT13 or PGP or whatever to encrypt your data, because anyone who is determined enough is going to access the data anyway. If you're dealing with the government or another professional organization, encryption is nothing more than a minor annoyance.
That's the stupidest most unimformed post I've ever read.
Laptops are MUCH slower than their desktop counterparts and unacceptable for any modern LAN gaming. The new Geforce MX at least makes it POSSIBLE to use a laptop for hardcore gaming, but the major limiting factor is going to be the screen. Laptop screens are small, and LCD screens have a tendency to blur at high framerates/fast motion usage, making them totally unacceptable for any kind of serious gaming. In addition, laptop keyboards tend to be a bit cramped, so you would need to bring an external keyboard and mouse to maintain accurate control.
Laptop hard drives are notoriously slow, and the poster specifically asked for a fast IDE drive.
Yeah, everyone knows how well known Linux is for it's massive numbers of high quality games. Making a game console running Linux was the obvious choice.
The problem remains, though, that D2 is simply behind the times. I played D2 and was, well, bored. The game's graphics and interface is dated, and even the storyline is kind of dull.
Would you care to explain to me how old game=boring game?
Just because a game doesn't have a flashy shiny interface that requires a Geforce2 to run, doesn't make it any less enjoyable. Have you ever played Tetris? It is so simplistic, it can be coded to run on a Texas Instruments calculator, and yet it is one of the most popular games in history. People have been playing chess for hundereds of years without any major improvements to the game. Does that make chess "boring"?
Just because a game doesn't use millions of polygons and fancy lighting and texture effects, doesn't make it a bad game. Period.
Yeah, what kind of a two-bit company would only release a software title for one OS? I don't know who the hell Blizzard thinks they are, but it's high time they stop alienating the dozens of customers who use Linux. Imagine all the money they're losing by only releasing a product that works with 95% of the world's computers. Those silly software designers!
Sorry, but as my mother used to say, Look it up. Pesticides are chemicals designed to kill animals, usually insects or rodents. RoundUp is an herbicide, as it is designed to kill plant matter.
Minor addendum to an otherwise good post. RoundUp is an herbicide, not a pesticide.
Re:What's it good for if your friends don't have o
on
Update From Cray World
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· Score: 2
With recent advances in clustering technology, ALL supercomputers have become obsolete.
Don't get me wrong here, Cray's putting out some remarkable new hardware, but there's no point in spending millions of dollars on a machine that will be as powerful as an average desktop in five years time.
Not only that, but the IDEA itself of supercomputing has become obsolete within the past few years. With recent advances in distributed processing and Beowulf clustering, anyone with a bunch of old 486's laying around can combine their power to process more data than a Cray could ever dream of.
SETI@home is a perfect example of MASSIVE amounts of processing being done by many small, inexpensive computers working in unison.
Google also uses clustered computers to provide the horsepower behind their search engine. In fact, it is believed that Google operates the largest Linux cluster in the world. Many of their computers are literally junkers. They've got dozens of 286, 386, and old Sparc's working together to provide an EXTREMELY powerful search engine.
Slashdot Mirror
AOL users are some of the most hated and technologically incompetent persons on the Internet. I'd think that REAL Linux users would want to do everything in their power to AVOID coming in contact with AOLers. It seems to me that a Linux port of AIM is unnecessary, and bordering upon being disgraceful to those of us who value the intellectual high grounds of the Internet. So I ask of you, why bother? Who needs to talk to AOLers anyway?
How the fuck is this interesting? If someone hacks your computer, the worst thing that could happen is you'd lose some data and have to do a fresh install of everything. If you put fucking thermite in a PC, you're out $2000 worth of hardware. The solution is worse than the problem. It's like saying "I don't want to get robbed, so I'll just blow up everything I own"
Even better, I'd like to have a cyborg ME. That way, when my wife wants to go shoe shopping or cuddle after sex or talk about feelings, I can just have the roboUltraBot keep her sorry ass copmany while I go out for beer.
I do not buy e-mail addresses from so called "online marketing organizations". I harvest potential contacts from public forums. Mainly chat rooms, usenet posts, and forums like Slashdot and Kuro5hin. I am well within my legal right in doing so, since you have chosen to make your e-mail address publicly available. As I have previously said, I always include an option to unsubscribe.
I think that digital solicitations provide a valuable service to consumers, and have been (unfairly) given a bad reputation. I run a legitimate multi-level internet business, and use bulk mailings as my primary method of solicitation. I would be unable to support my wife and kids if it weren't for the business I gain through e-mail. Again, I fully abide by all rules and regulations against SPAM, and provide an unsubscribe option to all mailings.
It is unfair to label all e-mail marketers as criminals just because of a few persons who have no respect for users privacy and bandwidth limitations. Some of us are honest businessmen who are just trying to make a living, and have been branded as low-lifes because of a few rogue SPAMmers.
This would be akin to calling all Linux users criminals. While I'm sure that a few Linux users are career criminals, the vast majority of Linux users are law-abiding citizens trying to avoid Monopolistic alternatives. Again, a few bad apples are giving an entire group a bad name. Please, I urge you, give us a break, we're just trying to get by the only way we know how.
That is precisely why it is illegal to drive race cars on a public street. They're dangerous and pose a risk to themselves and other nearby cars.
I'm not so sure it would be a bad idea to require a liscense to own a computer. If you think this sounds crazy, go work in support for a while, and listen to some of the idiots you get calling you because their 48x cupholder snapped off. At least if a liscense were required, it would force people to actually LEARN something about their computer and how it works instead of just blindly clicking on things and hoping for the best.
Actually, I believe rappers would be better suited for the task. They seem to have some sort of obsession with imbedded gemstones in their teeth.
Valid point, but Dolby Digital 5.1 audio actually uses less discspace than 2 channel CD audio. Dolby Digital uses compression that's similar to MP3 compression and a 5 channel stream only uses about 384kbps while CD audio uses around 1.5mbps. The main reason that Dolby Digital hasn't become the defacto standard for all audio, is lack of hardware support (most persons do not have Dolby Digital decoders in their cars or PC's), and due to the fact that the compression is a bit lossy. Some audiophiles prefer DTS encoded surround to Dolby Digital because it isn't as compressed. I personally would like to see more games and audio CD's come out with Dolby Digital support. I know I'd buy 'em.
Let's look at the facts for a moment. Geocities gives away free webspace and offsets the cost with banner ads. I am referred to Geocities by HotorNot and set up a dummy account with nothing but a jpg of myself in my Geocities directory.
HotorNot then pulls my jpg off of Geocities server, costing Geocities money and bandwidth in the process, and imbeds the image into a page served by HotorNot.
Since the html file was served from HotorNot, they're the ones racking up banner impressions and revenue, while not a single Geocities banner gets served in the process.
Geocities is still providing the disk space and bandwidth, but they're losing out on the banners, which are their primary source of revenue.
Care to explain how that's beneficial to Geocities, tough guy?
If it looks like FUD, Smells like FUD...
Even if this guy does find the treasure, it doesn't even belong to Japan. For him, or any Japanese citizen to lay claim to the treasure would be to justify Japan's actions during WWII. I hardly think that ill-gotten booty, obtained while your country was burning women, children, and villages should by kept by the opressors after the war has drawn to the conclusion. If the researcher in the story was to find the buried rail cars, he should take the moral high ground and return the loot to it's rightful Thai owners, and do his part to restore some of Japan's dignity that was shattered after the war.
*Bzzzzt*! Wrong! If terrorists struck the small, irrelevant targets, no one would care about terrorism. Seriously, terrorism is a serious threat in our country, largely due to the World Trade Center bombing. You take out an 80 story building and people notice. If those guys had done what you suggested and said "Hey Shiek Ahmed, you busy? Let's go bomb some old lady's barn in the middle of Hicksville." No one would have cared, because they're attacking an obscure an inconsequential part of society. True, the little guys don't hold out as long in a fight, but nobody notices, and that's the whole point of terrorism.
Simple. None of the images are hosted on their site. They encourage users to sign up for dummy accounts with Geocities and such to host the jpg, and foot the bill for the bandwidth. Each HotorNot pageview only amounts to a 4 or 5k script for formatting and to access the DB. Contrast that with the fact that when slashdot serves a comments page, it's pulling several hundred k from the MySQL database and over the 'net.
When you think about, HotorNot's scheme is quite brilliant. A little shady, but brilliant.
And I'm not denying that, but there is a distinct difference between "should be" and "is".
I generally use envelopes, but I'm pretty sure that if someone REALLY put their mind to it, they could figure out a way to get into the envelope. I think that was what the original poster was getting at. It doesn't really matter if you use ROT13 or PGP or whatever to encrypt your data, because anyone who is determined enough is going to access the data anyway. If you're dealing with the government or another professional organization, encryption is nothing more than a minor annoyance.
Yeah, just like my computer experiences "instant shutdowns".
Laptops are MUCH slower than their desktop counterparts and unacceptable for any modern LAN gaming. The new Geforce MX at least makes it POSSIBLE to use a laptop for hardcore gaming, but the major limiting factor is going to be the screen. Laptop screens are small, and LCD screens have a tendency to blur at high framerates/fast motion usage, making them totally unacceptable for any kind of serious gaming. In addition, laptop keyboards tend to be a bit cramped, so you would need to bring an external keyboard and mouse to maintain accurate control.
Laptop hard drives are notoriously slow, and the poster specifically asked for a fast IDE drive.
I win!
Yeah, everyone knows how well known Linux is for it's massive numbers of high quality games. Making a game console running Linux was the obvious choice.
Would you care to explain to me how old game=boring game?
Just because a game doesn't have a flashy shiny interface that requires a Geforce2 to run, doesn't make it any less enjoyable. Have you ever played Tetris? It is so simplistic, it can be coded to run on a Texas Instruments calculator, and yet it is one of the most popular games in history. People have been playing chess for hundereds of years without any major improvements to the game. Does that make chess "boring"?
Just because a game doesn't use millions of polygons and fancy lighting and texture effects, doesn't make it a bad game. Period.
Yeah, what kind of a two-bit company would only release a software title for one OS? I don't know who the hell Blizzard thinks they are, but it's high time they stop alienating the dozens of customers who use Linux. Imagine all the money they're losing by only releasing a product that works with 95% of the world's computers. Those silly software designers!
All your vagina are belong to ESR!
Sorry, but as my mother used to say, Look it up. Pesticides are chemicals designed to kill animals, usually insects or rodents. RoundUp is an herbicide, as it is designed to kill plant matter.
Minor addendum to an otherwise good post. RoundUp is an herbicide, not a pesticide.
Don't get me wrong here, Cray's putting out some remarkable new hardware, but there's no point in spending millions of dollars on a machine that will be as powerful as an average desktop in five years time.
Not only that, but the IDEA itself of supercomputing has become obsolete within the past few years. With recent advances in distributed processing and Beowulf clustering, anyone with a bunch of old 486's laying around can combine their power to process more data than a Cray could ever dream of.
SETI@home is a perfect example of MASSIVE amounts of processing being done by many small, inexpensive computers working in unison.
Google also uses clustered computers to provide the horsepower behind their search engine. In fact, it is believed that Google operates the largest Linux cluster in the world. Many of their computers are literally junkers. They've got dozens of 286, 386, and old Sparc's working together to provide an EXTREMELY powerful search engine.