Make them attend an oral recitation of all the spams they've written... narrated by Fran Drescher, Gilbert Gottfried, Carrot Top and the woman who plays Janice on "Friends"
If AMD got 54% and Intel 45%, that only leaves 1% unaccounted for. I find that a little difficult to believe. Do you mean to tell me that IBM/Motorola (PowerPC) chips, VIA chips, and Transmeta chips together only added up to 1% of the market?
Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Linux is that the very nature of its origins lead to non-intuitive thinking. Hear me out please, before you mod me down as the troll that I'm not.
Think about it, and read some of the other comments here. People talk about finding documentation is/usr/share/docs, or using urpmi, apt-get or various web sites. They lament how it is that people don't just use the "man" command. This highlights two problems:
- Linux names tend to be more counter-intuitive. What, exactly does apt-get or urpmi mean? I can't tell by looking at it. "About this Macintosh" or "Windows Read Me" on the other hand are extremely descriptive,m as is the omnipresent "help" menu./usr/share/docs vs "Read Me Folder", which is clearer? This is made even worse on Linux due to its case sensitivity (ie to a new computer user "Help"=="help"=="HELP")
- Secondly, there seems to be a prevailing attitude that Linux is by the hardcore, for the hardcore. Too often I've seen simple questions shot down because those responding essentially felt that "every should know this, how can you not?" This attitude is quickly off-putting for new computer users. This is extended to books; there are scores of (arguably) decent intro-to-Windows (or Mac) books on the shelves at Chapters, but very few Linux books of the same type (no, a new computer user doesn't want to read "Hardening Linux for IP-based security hacks" they want to read "Linux for Dummies", sad but true)
Dismiss the new computer users all you want, but understand that the concerns are valid. I have 15+ years of computer experience, almost exclusively on Mac and Windows. But when I use the Linux boxes in my Eng or CIS labs, I barely know the basic commands. Furthering this problem is that in three different labs each uses a different method for something as simple as mounting a floppy.
Yes, there are some dumb computer users out there; but there are also some experienced users who just need to get their foot in the door, and there are several road blcosk to Linux which make that harder.
I wait with bait on my breath for a simple, cheap ($500-$800), computer from them that includes the styling and beauty of the more expensive models.
Yeah, and I wait on baited breath for BMW to release a $10,000 car with all the grace, beauty, styling, comfort and power of their 5 and 7-series models.
You've misunderstood what the "Apache versus IIS" example represents... You cannot make a parallel between Apache and OSX however. Apache is a product that proves a concept is sound; that open source can be secure even when it is a very attractive target. This doesn't mean all open source is secure, and it certainly doesn't mean that OSX won't be targetted more as its marketshare increases. OSX will be targetted more.
And you understood what the example represents, but then lost the message at the end. The grandparents is not trying to say that all OSS is inherently more secure, nor that Mac OS X is impenetrable due to its OSS base. Rather, he's defusing the point that a lot of anti-Apple people make: that the only reason Mac OS X is secure is due to its minimal marketshare. What the grandparent is saying is that there could well be (and likely are) other reasons. Yes, Mac will have to weather a greater storm if its popularity increases. However, it is my belief that it will survive well even with greater market share, because it has a solid, secure base on which to fall back.
No, it doesn't have to be defended because it's their music and they should be free to sell it in whatever form they want.
This is true, they can sell it however they want. However we, as consumers, can buy it however we want. If Radiohead is truly interested in their artistic vision (and who am I to say either way?) then they won't object to low sales. However, if they want their art to be a big seller, they will have to adhere to what the public wants.
I'm not saying they have to put their songs up; far from it. I'm just saying that if they expect to sell a ton of music (as opposed to making it purely for the artistic contribution), you have to sell what people want to buy.
I'm not sure the launch charge contributes too much smoke, as I've found the charge which distributes the firework to create more -- usually evidenced by a series of greyish clouds carried away by higher winds.
But, you see, that's just it. The higher-up smoke is blown away by winds. The launch smoke tends to linger more as it's lower and thus less influenced by the wind. Also, it tends to linger where there are people-the higher smoke doesn't get in people's lungs.
Not that this is better for the environment or anything, but in terms of nearby people, the ground smoke is much worse.
As a.Mac subscriber, I'm beginning to wonder how useful my $100/year subscription really is. And before everyone writes back to tell me of all the other features, yes, I know they're there; I just don't tend to use them.
iDisk storage-other than (infrequently) sharing photos with friends, I really don't use the online storage space at all. And 100MB isn't enough to do anything too too interesting. Plus, there's no server-side scripting supported (that I can tell anyway), so I can't even build a real website on it.
Virus protection: I buy a Mac partly because there are no viruses. Plus, I have Norton SystemWorks anyway, so I have their protection if I need something
iCal, address book etc sync: I only have one computer, so this doesn't do much for me
Really, all I use is the email. I can access it via Pop/IMAP rather than just webmail, which I quite like, but that 15MB is starting to look smaller by the day!
We refer to it as
the Internet. Corporations have intranets. The capitalization conveys meaning. Wired's usage is wrong.
So, you you capitalise the Moon? When you take your car the the Highway to the Movies, and get outraged at the Price of the Tickets, do you yell at the Teller?
Yes, proper nouns are capitalised in the English language, but you have provided no evidence that internet, web or net are proper nouns. Not everything your preface with the is a proper noun. The word internet does not denote a name, place, or anything else which would indicate a proper noun. It is just a regular noun, and lowercase is therefore appropriate.
Proper nouns are unique entities, yes, but not all unique entities are proper nouns. The sun, the moon, the solar system, the universe are all uncapitalised words.
I could see the increase coming in a couple of potential places:
If they go with a style similiar to the Compaq TabletPC, where you can detach the screen entirely. In this case, the miniaturization and heat issues could drive up the price
Adding on the hardware to allow a rotation of the screen's image (so the tablet could be viewed in any orientation) could add to the cost.
The biggest thing, IMHO, is that it could ismply be an issue of it seeming like a cooler and more enterprise/high-end usage device. Therefore, they might just charge more because they know people who need the technology will pay for it, and to differentiate it from the iBook/PowerBook lines
128kb AAC is so far from perfect that you'd have to be a tin-earred Apple fanatic to claim its anywhere *close* to CD quality.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I didn't mean perfect as in flawless quality or even CD-quality. I meant perfect as in a perfect copy of the original (however that was encoded).
Incidentally, the Airport Express uses Apple's proprietary lossless codec, so depending on the source of the original, the quality could be spectacular. Play a CD, and the lossless codec would ensure that the copy being broadcast was "perfect" (compared to the CD-before you equate my ears with cheap roofing materials again, yes I know you can get better-than-CD audio. But CD-quality is fine for most people, and that's what the AirPort express would broadcast.
The only concern I would have if I were in Apple's legal department, would be that if something like the INDUCE act passes, making it illegal to enable people to commit copyright infringement, then they might be liable, since now you are streaming perfect, digital music to all your neighbours.
The ONLY difference between this and aeronautics is that when it crashes, you have to rebuild the rocket.
Well, there's also the difference that many times, people will also die from these failures. SpaceShipOne's first test flight was manned; the da Vinci project is going to have their first flight (an attempt at the prize, not just a test flight) be manned as well. It's easy enough to shake something like this off, but if there is a well-publicised failure involving the death of the pilot, I think we'll see a very different feeling to both the contest itself, and the press coverage it gets.
Hopefully that will never happen, but should the worst occur, we may find that the public is much less accepting of this endeavour than before. Heck, even now, the (professional, well-funded, 40 years of space flight experience) space shuttles are grounded due to just such a fatal failure.
If that's slightly bigger than a PDA, then I guess PDAs have gotten alot bigger since the last time I checked into them.
This thing looks too big for a carry-it-everywhere device, but too small for anything more than basic functionality... so I guess I'm wondering, "What's the point?"
Size-wise it reminds me a bit of the Newton. And while I personally found it a bit large (I prefer my small PalmOS device), some people still use the Newton daily (my dad for one). So, as an in-between device, I'm sure it'll still have a good niche market to slide into.
Don't try to think of it as an overly-big PDA, or really, even an ultra-tiny laptop. Instead, imagine it as a hybrid of the two. You don't need an Unreal-capable laptop, but you do need more power than a PDA. Think inventory setups, cataloguing, medicine, inspections etc
How is this a big blow to piracy? Piracy was _already_ illegal. What does making a potential piracy tool illegal accomplish? Is piracy somehow now "more" illegal now that the digital equivalent of a lockpick has been outlawed?
It doesn't make it "more" illegal, but I'll bet it makes the mod chips much harder to find, thus making the illegally-burned games that much more difficult to play.
It also means that careful pirates, who keep their bootlegs hidden, can still be busted just for owning a modchipped console. To use your analogy, if you're caught with a lockpick, you can still be arrested, even if you're not breaking into a house at the time.
And those who get caught with the games can have an additional charge added on (posession of the modchip). So while it isn't more illegal, it might mean stiffer fines for those caught.
Re:It was interesting to note...
on
Birth of the iPod
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
But don't get on at me for how it would effect the ipod's battery life, the ipod *could* be a little bigger to take a bigger battery and then we could all be happy.
I think the battery life issue is exactly the problem. You assert that everyone would be happy with a bigger iPod, but I don't know what you base that on. I know the iPods diminutive stature was one of the biggest selling points for me. And I think that the phenomenal sales of the iPod mini (despite its seemingly lackluster price per gig value) shows that the size does matter (wang jokes aside).
Furthermore, I like not having to charge my headphones.
Also, let's not forget that the bluetooth transmitter and receiver would take up additional space in the iPod and headphones, respectively
This would also be much more likely to lock me into Apple's headphones, rather than buying a generic, better-quality set of headphones I can connect via a standard jack
Others have talked about the compression issue, I won't rehash it here.
The biggest thing though is that the headphone connecter and earbuds probably cost all of $2 for Apple. A BlueTooth setup would be significantly more
I know that there is a geek tendency to use cool tecnologies just because they're there, but I don't think this is a good application of BlueTooth. Someone on Slashdot said a few days ago that Slashdotters tend to overestimate the public's appetite for their pet technologies. I think this is very valid. I just don't think there would be a market for this, given the tradeoffs.
However, I could be wrong. Market an iPod-BlueTooth headphones set as an accessory, and we'll see. There's certainly a market for iPod accessories out there, if you're right about the desire to own such a thing, you could rake in the big bucks. However, I think the continued absence of just such a peripheral indicates that there's no real demand.
Re:I do wish
on
IPv6 is Here
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I wish I could get something equivalent to my own Class A block of IPv6 addresses for my home. I'd give every object in my apartment an assigned IP Address. How the pieces of toilet paper get access to the Internet would remain to be seen, but at least on paper (heh) it would have an IP Address. And why not? So many IP addresses possible I could have my own class A block (or IPv6 equivalent) and hardly put a dent in the amount of available IPv6 addresses...but until an ISP offering DSL in my area supports IPv6 I'm outta luck...
See, to me, this is the exact thinking that got us in trouble in the first place! I realise that IPv6 has a hojillion (the technical term) times more addresses than v4, but if we start doling them out on a whim, we're going to hit the same problem again. Remember, there was a time when we though v4 addresses were all but infinite... hence Apple, Ford and Halliburton each were granted 16 million adresses (which they don't realistically need)
Human nature seems to tend towards excess whenever possible. Fresh water, trees, the ozone etc were all once abundant and we thought we'd never be able to make a dent in any of them
Even with the truly massive number of available addresses in IPv6, I'd still like to see some careful thought put into their assignment.
I wonder if these iPods are truly gifts to the students, or if they are considered to still be university property and thus cannot be resold?
I'm guessing that many of the incoming students may already have iPods and really don't need two. I suppose they could already sell the one they already have, but if (for example) Duke gives out the 20GB models, and a given student already has a 40GB, they would probably want to sell the newer one (might even get them more money despite the size difference, since it'd be brand new)
Remember that old saying "You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time"?
This guy kind of reminds me of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, whose goal was to travel the universe and insult everyone in it, in alphabetical order.
Of course, he had a fantastically complicated on-board spaceship computer to help him figure out how.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but how does Halliburton make money off of us sending people to Mars?
By exploiting the Martians and stealing their oil, duh!
That means you could fit every man, woman and child on earth in Texas while giving EACH of them 127.272727 square meters of land.
Well, yeah, but this is Texas! They'd keep crossing into each other's land and getting (legally) shot for it!
Hence, the population reduction the grandparent post was referring to!
So the cost dropped in June, eh? I guess those hurricaines aren't all evil then!
The best method for "rewarding" the spammers:
Make them attend an oral recitation of all the spams they've written... narrated by Fran Drescher, Gilbert Gottfried, Carrot Top and the woman who plays Janice on "Friends"
If AMD got 54% and Intel 45%, that only leaves 1% unaccounted for. I find that a little difficult to believe. Do you mean to tell me that IBM/Motorola (PowerPC) chips, VIA chips, and Transmeta chips together only added up to 1% of the market?
Seems a little fishy to me
Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Linux is that the very nature of its origins lead to non-intuitive thinking. Hear me out please, before you mod me down as the troll that I'm not.
/usr/share/docs, or using urpmi, apt-get or various web sites. They lament how it is that people don't just use the "man" command. This highlights two problems:
/usr/share/docs vs "Read Me Folder", which is clearer? This is made even worse on Linux due to its case sensitivity (ie to a new computer user "Help"=="help"=="HELP")
Think about it, and read some of the other comments here. People talk about finding documentation is
- Linux names tend to be more counter-intuitive. What, exactly does apt-get or urpmi mean? I can't tell by looking at it. "About this Macintosh" or "Windows Read Me" on the other hand are extremely descriptive,m as is the omnipresent "help" menu.
- Secondly, there seems to be a prevailing attitude that Linux is by the hardcore, for the hardcore. Too often I've seen simple questions shot down because those responding essentially felt that "every should know this, how can you not?" This attitude is quickly off-putting for new computer users. This is extended to books; there are scores of (arguably) decent intro-to-Windows (or Mac) books on the shelves at Chapters, but very few Linux books of the same type (no, a new computer user doesn't want to read "Hardening Linux for IP-based security hacks" they want to read "Linux for Dummies", sad but true)
Dismiss the new computer users all you want, but understand that the concerns are valid. I have 15+ years of computer experience, almost exclusively on Mac and Windows. But when I use the Linux boxes in my Eng or CIS labs, I barely know the basic commands. Furthering this problem is that in three different labs each uses a different method for something as simple as mounting a floppy.
Yes, there are some dumb computer users out there; but there are also some experienced users who just need to get their foot in the door, and there are several road blcosk to Linux which make that harder.
I wait with bait on my breath for a simple, cheap ($500-$800), computer from them that includes the styling and beauty of the more expensive models.
Yeah, and I wait on baited breath for BMW to release a $10,000 car with all the grace, beauty, styling, comfort and power of their 5 and 7-series models.
Some things just aren't in the cards.
You've misunderstood what the "Apache versus IIS" example represents...
You cannot make a parallel between Apache and OSX however. Apache is a product that proves a concept is sound; that open source can be secure even when it is a very attractive target. This doesn't mean all open source is secure, and it certainly doesn't mean that OSX won't be targetted more as its marketshare increases. OSX will be targetted more.
And you understood what the example represents, but then lost the message at the end. The grandparents is not trying to say that all OSS is inherently more secure, nor that Mac OS X is impenetrable due to its OSS base. Rather, he's defusing the point that a lot of anti-Apple people make: that the only reason Mac OS X is secure is due to its minimal marketshare. What the grandparent is saying is that there could well be (and likely are) other reasons. Yes, Mac will have to weather a greater storm if its popularity increases. However, it is my belief that it will survive well even with greater market share, because it has a solid, secure base on which to fall back.
No, it doesn't have to be defended because it's their music and they should be free to sell it in whatever form they want.
This is true, they can sell it however they want. However we, as consumers, can buy it however we want. If Radiohead is truly interested in their artistic vision (and who am I to say either way?) then they won't object to low sales. However, if they want their art to be a big seller, they will have to adhere to what the public wants.
I'm not saying they have to put their songs up; far from it. I'm just saying that if they expect to sell a ton of music (as opposed to making it purely for the artistic contribution), you have to sell what people want to buy.
I'm not sure the launch charge contributes too much smoke, as I've found the charge which distributes the firework to create more -- usually evidenced by a series of greyish clouds carried away by higher winds.
But, you see, that's just it. The higher-up smoke is blown away by winds. The launch smoke tends to linger more as it's lower and thus less influenced by the wind. Also, it tends to linger where there are people-the higher smoke doesn't get in people's lungs.
Not that this is better for the environment or anything, but in terms of nearby people, the ground smoke is much worse.
You can see the current cloud.
Not any more you can't. The Slashdot effect: It's like night-time, but for web servers!
As a .Mac subscriber, I'm beginning to wonder how useful my $100/year subscription really is. And before everyone writes back to tell me of all the other features, yes, I know they're there; I just don't tend to use them.
Really, all I use is the email. I can access it via Pop/IMAP rather than just webmail, which I quite like, but that 15MB is starting to look smaller by the day!
So, you you capitalise the Moon? When you take your car the the Highway to the Movies, and get outraged at the Price of the Tickets, do you yell at the Teller?
Yes, proper nouns are capitalised in the English language, but you have provided no evidence that internet, web or net are proper nouns. Not everything your preface with the is a proper noun. The word internet does not denote a name, place, or anything else which would indicate a proper noun. It is just a regular noun, and lowercase is therefore appropriate.
Proper nouns are unique entities, yes, but not all unique entities are proper nouns. The sun, the moon, the solar system, the universe are all uncapitalised words.
I could see the increase coming in a couple of potential places:
128kb AAC is so far from perfect that you'd have to be a tin-earred Apple fanatic to claim its anywhere *close* to CD quality.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I didn't mean perfect as in flawless quality or even CD-quality. I meant perfect as in a perfect copy of the original (however that was encoded).
Incidentally, the Airport Express uses Apple's proprietary lossless codec, so depending on the source of the original, the quality could be spectacular. Play a CD, and the lossless codec would ensure that the copy being broadcast was "perfect" (compared to the CD-before you equate my ears with cheap roofing materials again, yes I know you can get better-than-CD audio. But CD-quality is fine for most people, and that's what the AirPort express would broadcast.
And I like my iPod very much, thanks
And in other news, simian use of Slashdot has dropped by over 80%!
The only concern I would have if I were in Apple's legal department, would be that if something like the INDUCE act passes, making it illegal to enable people to commit copyright infringement, then they might be liable, since now you are streaming perfect, digital music to all your neighbours.
The ONLY difference between this and aeronautics is that when it crashes, you have to rebuild the rocket.
Well, there's also the difference that many times, people will also die from these failures. SpaceShipOne's first test flight was manned; the da Vinci project is going to have their first flight (an attempt at the prize, not just a test flight) be manned as well. It's easy enough to shake something like this off, but if there is a well-publicised failure involving the death of the pilot, I think we'll see a very different feeling to both the contest itself, and the press coverage it gets.
Hopefully that will never happen, but should the worst occur, we may find that the public is much less accepting of this endeavour than before. Heck, even now, the (professional, well-funded, 40 years of space flight experience) space shuttles are grounded due to just such a fatal failure.
If that's slightly bigger than a PDA, then I guess PDAs have gotten alot bigger since the last time I checked into them.
This thing looks too big for a carry-it-everywhere device, but too small for anything more than basic functionality... so I guess I'm wondering, "What's the point?"
Size-wise it reminds me a bit of the Newton. And while I personally found it a bit large (I prefer my small PalmOS device), some people still use the Newton daily (my dad for one). So, as an in-between device, I'm sure it'll still have a good niche market to slide into.
Don't try to think of it as an overly-big PDA, or really, even an ultra-tiny laptop. Instead, imagine it as a hybrid of the two. You don't need an Unreal-capable laptop, but you do need more power than a PDA. Think inventory setups, cataloguing, medicine, inspections etc
How is this a big blow to piracy? Piracy was _already_ illegal. What does making a potential piracy tool illegal accomplish? Is piracy somehow now "more" illegal now that the digital equivalent of a lockpick has been outlawed?
It doesn't make it "more" illegal, but I'll bet it makes the mod chips much harder to find, thus making the illegally-burned games that much more difficult to play.
It also means that careful pirates, who keep their bootlegs hidden, can still be busted just for owning a modchipped console. To use your analogy, if you're caught with a lockpick, you can still be arrested, even if you're not breaking into a house at the time.
And those who get caught with the games can have an additional charge added on (posession of the modchip). So while it isn't more illegal, it might mean stiffer fines for those caught.
But don't get on at me for how it would effect the ipod's battery life, the ipod *could* be a little bigger to take a bigger battery and then we could all be happy.
I think the battery life issue is exactly the problem. You assert that everyone would be happy with a bigger iPod, but I don't know what you base that on. I know the iPods diminutive stature was one of the biggest selling points for me. And I think that the phenomenal sales of the iPod mini (despite its seemingly lackluster price per gig value) shows that the size does matter (wang jokes aside).
Furthermore, I like not having to charge my headphones.
Also, let's not forget that the bluetooth transmitter and receiver would take up additional space in the iPod and headphones, respectively
This would also be much more likely to lock me into Apple's headphones, rather than buying a generic, better-quality set of headphones I can connect via a standard jack
Others have talked about the compression issue, I won't rehash it here.
The biggest thing though is that the headphone connecter and earbuds probably cost all of $2 for Apple. A BlueTooth setup would be significantly more
I know that there is a geek tendency to use cool tecnologies just because they're there, but I don't think this is a good application of BlueTooth. Someone on Slashdot said a few days ago that Slashdotters tend to overestimate the public's appetite for their pet technologies. I think this is very valid. I just don't think there would be a market for this, given the tradeoffs.
However, I could be wrong. Market an iPod-BlueTooth headphones set as an accessory, and we'll see. There's certainly a market for iPod accessories out there, if you're right about the desire to own such a thing, you could rake in the big bucks. However, I think the continued absence of just such a peripheral indicates that there's no real demand.
I wish I could get something equivalent to my own Class A block of IPv6 addresses for my home. I'd give every object in my apartment an assigned IP Address. How the pieces of toilet paper get access to the Internet would remain to be seen, but at least on paper (heh) it would have an IP Address. And why not? So many IP addresses possible I could have my own class A block (or IPv6 equivalent) and hardly put a dent in the amount of available IPv6 addresses...but until an ISP offering DSL in my area supports IPv6 I'm outta luck...
See, to me, this is the exact thinking that got us in trouble in the first place! I realise that IPv6 has a hojillion (the technical term) times more addresses than v4, but if we start doling them out on a whim, we're going to hit the same problem again. Remember, there was a time when we though v4 addresses were all but infinite... hence Apple, Ford and Halliburton each were granted 16 million adresses (which they don't realistically need)
Human nature seems to tend towards excess whenever possible. Fresh water, trees, the ozone etc were all once abundant and we thought we'd never be able to make a dent in any of them
Even with the truly massive number of available addresses in IPv6, I'd still like to see some careful thought put into their assignment.
I wonder if these iPods are truly gifts to the students, or if they are considered to still be university property and thus cannot be resold?
I'm guessing that many of the incoming students may already have iPods and really don't need two. I suppose they could already sell the one they already have, but if (for example) Duke gives out the 20GB models, and a given student already has a 40GB, they would probably want to sell the newer one (might even get them more money despite the size difference, since it'd be brand new)
Remember that old saying "You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time"?
Somehow, I think 1 billion is close enough. Sigh
This guy kind of reminds me of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, whose goal was to travel the universe and insult everyone in it, in alphabetical order.
Of course, he had a fantastically complicated on-board spaceship computer to help him figure out how.