MY first focus is generally making sure the machine is a good 'net citizen', has what I need on it to be able to get to it remotely or get stuff to it easily, and some common office things.
Hey... MY name is David, and I don't appreciate it being associated with some windows crap. Can I sue them for using my intellectual property?
If they wanted to name it after someone, they should have called it 'Melinda'... I'm sure that would have bothered Bill in a way he couldn't legally do anything about (his wife's name).
If linux is a 'non-literal implementation' of Unix, then Windows is a 'non-literal implementation' of Mac OS, and the lawsuit from the learly 90's should be revisited.
Hey... isn't Brittany Spears a non-literal reimplementation of Debbie Gibson?
The worst experience I ever had in my job was writing (and the in-field debugging) of an atm-like machine designed to sell tickets at amusement parks in 1993/94.
One case in particular: I was at a large amusement park in Ohio famous for many roller coasters (name witheld), and we had installed this atm-like machine to sell tickets.
I was in the field updating the software. In order to do this, I entered the little booth, and had to turn the touch screen monitor around to use with the keyboard. This left the front of the machine open. As people would walk by, they would throw garbage, gum, cotton candy, ice cream, etc into the opening, thinking they were being 'funny'... it would land in my lap, then they would run away, laughing, saying to their group of friends "There was a GUY in there!"
When people buy a car, there are a number of 'performance metrics' they get...
0-60 in x.y seconds n miles per gallon 60-0 in x feet of braking x.y liter engine n number of cylinders y horsepower headroom/footroom in the cabin number of cupholders r decibels of road noise
I never hear anyone complaining that all these metrics for buying cars is confusing. We need a SET of metrics by wich we measure an entire COMPUTER, not just a processor.
We actually don't have any shortage of these metrics, we just don't have them being applied consistently so that the average consumer can use them. The average consumer latched on to 'megahertz' as if it were 'horsepower', and the marketing wonks perperuated the myth.
I'm late to this posting, but I hope the poster sees this anyway.
1) Get him a copy of the book "People Skills"
2) Learn to play a musical instrument. Piano is great for a zillion social situations.
3) Take that instrument and join the concert band/wind ensemble in your high school. You will be with other misfortunate geeks, but you will learn to socialize with them.
4) Weight Train. I'm not suggesting that you try to be an Arnold, but if you weight train a little bit, you will bust out of the two 'geek stereotypes (skinny as a rail, or fat 'comic book guy'. A little bit of muscle on your arms helps bust the geek image.
5) Join a Toastmasters group. I recently did this, and think it is a great way to learn public speaking/interaction, etc. The meeting structure will be facinating for a geek, and the amount of time spent critiquing each other will make him self-aware, so he will start considering his appearance.
All that, and buy the kid a hooker. Once he 'cleans his pipes', he will be able to concentrate.
Yes they do. I just googled and found this link, but I read about this last year in New Scientist magazine.
As one example from the article, scitnsts studying linguistics looked at architectural styles from cultures where buildings, bridges, etc have masculine, feminine, and neuter terms for them. Correlating architecture to gender, there were discernable patterns.
To quote one tantalizing point from the article, "Boroditsky said she is now considering studying how the design of bridges - a masculine word in Spanish, but a feminine word in German - differs between the two cultures. "
and this one:
Another researcher has found evidence that languages which have many terms for color, such as English, give their speakers an advantage in remembering them.
That is a little funny... Isn't a 'specially crafted image' the same 'exploit' that Geordie LaForge came up with for introducing a virus into the borg collective? Remember the first episode with 'Hugh'?
Bringing this up without mentioning M.O.N.D. is irresponsible journalism. MOND (Modification of Newtonian Dymanics) is a theory that simply says that gravity 'decays' at a slightly different rate than expected over astronomical distances. The effects predicted by this theory are spot on to the observed effects that dark energy and matter try to explain.
I googled about found this link, but I first read about it in New Scientist about a year ago.
I was 16 and working as a stock boy at a computer store hen the first IBM PC clones came out. People would look at them as if they were looking at a piece of alien technology.
The hardware for the IBM PC was amazingly open, because IBM wanted other companies to make components to fit in the expansion slots. IBM has copyrighted their BIOS, thinking that made the design reliant enough on them. Even if a company copied the hardware, they would have to license the bios.
Then came a 'clean room' implementation. A group of engineers that had never seen the bios code looked at the API, and made their own implementation.
Te problem with the original clones was they did not include a copy of basic in ROM, like the original PC... This meant that many programs would not run. You could actually buy Basic as a program you could load, but that used up 16k of RAM... a lot when the computer might have had 64k. (IIRC, that was Microsoft Basic.)
I have just applied for a patent on the first 10 million digit prime number. Much like SCO, I'm not going to tell you the number (but I can tell you the process by which I discovered it).
When the Gimps Project finds it, I am going to sue them for the $100,000 prize they will collect.
At that time, I will announce the 10 million digit number as 'exhibit A' in my lawsuit.
I can't wait to get home and see if that is the brand of thermal paste I used on a computer that suffered a heat stroke on my shiny new P4 3.2 with 800 Mhz FSB. I'd rather have that working than another t-shirt and $10.00 their next sub-par product.
It would have cost them a FEW CENTS worth of chemicals to test a batch of the stuff they got from their supplier? This seems like they went with the lowest bidder and didn't ask questions because they might not have liked the answer.
Re:Slightly OT, does anyone use iPod with Linux?
on
No WMA for HP iPod
·
· Score: 1
I use my iPod with linux.
I use the fireire support to mount it as a hard drive, then I use wine and some open source software called ephPod to upload/download music. It works very well.
I have been wanting to research some other solultions, because the ephPod interface is a little cllunky, and I'd rather not use wine for this, but I have been happy enough that I haven't really researched it further.
Some time ago, I saw a show on the Discovery Channel about the Three Gorges Dam project in China (Google for your own link). Apparently this dam retains so much water at high latitudes, that it was expected to 'speed up the Earth's rotation slightly', much like an ice-skater bringing in their arms so that they rotate faster. Why is this not mentioned as a possibility for not needing a leap second?
Last month, New Scientist had an article about some GPS receivers having a bug related to the fact that 256 weeks have gone by without a leap second. Apparently, there is going to be a 1 second interval at 12 midnight UTC tha will register twice, causing some bizarre readings. Sorry I don't have a link for it.
A while ago, I was enthralled with German board games (settlers of Catan and the like). I thoght it would be a cool idea to create a game that used commonly available pieces from other games (monopoly, chess, etc). and release the rules as an 'open source' project... and see what kind of variations it would spawn.
Your comments are close... for better adoption, although over a longer time span:
1) Software needs to be based on open standards. RFC90210 or something like that... Others need to be able to make implementations.
2) Yahoo's implmentation should do ONE THING WELL. It shouldn't try to stick an advertisement on the bottom of my emails the way their groups tools do.
3) Give the software a few months to propagate to a few major ISPs.
4) On a given date, all email going through those servers that are not 'signed' as this system specifies get some kind of flaf in the header that users can filter on. Appending something like, "Warning: This sender of this message has not been authenticated. It may not have come from the person you think it came from" to all emails that aren't authenticated. I guarantee that the 'peer pressure' from a label like that on all email originating from MY company would force us to upgrade.
5) let that bake for a year or three. By that time, everyone will be clamoring for non-authenticated email to be blocked.
I recently bought a really cheap system from a local computer store at a really good price... It came with SuSE linux, and I am planning on using it try try out debian, fedora and mandrake as well (looking for my red hat replacement).
I didn't get any media with the computer. I went back to the computer store the other day asking for a copy of the SuSE media so I can reinstall, and they got all nervous, like I was asking them to give me a pirate copy of something.
Its GPL isn't it? they sold it to me, didn't they? Aren't they obligated to give me a copy now? Should I go in there and cause a scene?
Mod this guy down... he doesn't know what he is talking about. You can't sell this kind of stuff to Iraq... This kind of stuff requires licenses no matter where it goes, and those licenses ain't gonna be approved for Iraq. Don't believe me? Check out this site, or this one.
I already have the ability to save my word processing documents as XML. I already have the ability to transform them into other things I want. So do you. check it out.
I'm sure someone, someplace is already working on the appropriate xslt to transform Microsoft's stuff into this more open format, and I'm sure Microsoft has some ace up their sleeve technically or legally to push it into a 'gray' area...
But I just cannot imagine anyone having the gaul to say that my data is only available to me in a format that they control the terms and conditions on. how successful would a paper company be if they put 'terms and conditions' on the use of their wood pulp?
I thought this when I read the magazine over a year ago...
So this guy is using a version control system for exactly the purpose it is intended for... This is newsworthy? In that case, I probably do enough newsworthy stuff to fill a couple of magazines every day.
How about lowering the prices so you are not raping the fans?
The money doesn't have to 'go' anywhere... it can stay in your pocket. I'd be more likely to go to a baseball game if it didn't cost $8.00 for a hot dog and a coke... and if parking wasn't $25.00
Of course, I guess that's the law of supply and demand... If I would be more likely to go, there would be a lot more people likely to go, and prices would rise because there wasn't enough supply, etc.
So I guess I just argued against my argument. Oh well... I gotta go anyway, I'm late for my therapists appointment.
10+ years ago, there was a short-lied show on Fox named "Flying Blind". The girlfriend of the min character had a roommate who just wandered around in a bathrobe, apparently unemployed, but always had money for stuff...
About halfway through the second season, the main characted asked, "Just what do you DO, anyway?"
Bathrobe guy: "I have a Genius Grant..."
Main Character: "You? But you're not a genius!"
Bathrobe guy: "I was the night I slept with the lady who gives out the grants..."
Slashdot Mirror
We called those a 'one D ten T' error.
Write it out...
1d10t
idiot.
-db
This just in,
Several South American Countries are suing Amazon.com over the use of the name of their Rain Forest.
Washed up funnyman Yahoo Serious is suing Yahoo for use of his name.
Give me a break.
MY first focus is generally making sure the machine is a good 'net citizen', has what I need on it to be able to get to it remotely or get stuff to it easily, and some common office things.
Windows:
Cygwin
Java (j2sdk 1.4.2_03)
OpenOffice
Mozilla
mprime (www.mersenne.org)
updates
aim
tightvnc
Linux (Red Hat 9):
Ximian Gnome
Java (j2sdk 1.4.2_03)
OpenOffice
mprime
aim
upates
sshd (shutting off most other services)
tightvnc
Hey... MY name is David, and I don't appreciate it being associated with some windows crap. Can I sue them for using my intellectual property?
If they wanted to name it after someone, they should have called it 'Melinda'... I'm sure that would have bothered Bill in a way he couldn't legally do anything about (his wife's name).
If linux is a 'non-literal implementation' of Unix, then Windows is a 'non-literal implementation' of Mac OS, and the lawsuit from the learly 90's should be revisited.
Hey... isn't Brittany Spears a non-literal reimplementation of Debbie Gibson?
Everything old is new again.
-db
I know they are an april fools joke, but I would buy both of those things!
I mean, come on... thinkgeek really does sell a cigarette lighter in a 5 1/4 drive bay... why not an ez-bake oven?
Maybe Yoshi on the screen savers will take on that PC case for real.
-db
The worst experience I ever had in my job was writing (and the in-field debugging) of an atm-like machine designed to sell tickets at amusement parks in 1993/94.
One case in particular:
I was at a large amusement park in Ohio famous for many roller coasters (name witheld), and we had installed this atm-like machine to sell tickets.
I was in the field updating the software. In order to do this, I entered the little booth, and had to turn the touch screen monitor around to use with the keyboard. This left the front of the machine open. As people would walk by, they would throw garbage, gum, cotton candy, ice cream, etc into the opening, thinking they were being 'funny'... it would land in my lap, then they would run away, laughing, saying to their group of friends "There was a GUY in there!"
When people buy a car, there are a number of 'performance metrics' they get...
0-60 in x.y seconds
n miles per gallon
60-0 in x feet of braking
x.y liter engine
n number of cylinders
y horsepower
headroom/footroom in the cabin
number of cupholders
r decibels of road noise
I never hear anyone complaining that all these metrics for buying cars is confusing. We need a SET of metrics by wich we measure an entire COMPUTER, not just a processor.
We actually don't have any shortage of these metrics, we just don't have them being applied consistently so that the average consumer can use them. The average consumer latched on to 'megahertz' as if it were 'horsepower', and the marketing wonks perperuated the myth.
I'm late to this posting, but I hope the poster sees this anyway.
1) Get him a copy of the book "People Skills"
2) Learn to play a musical instrument. Piano is great for a zillion social situations.
3) Take that instrument and join the concert band/wind ensemble in your high school. You will be with other misfortunate geeks, but you will learn to socialize with them.
4) Weight Train. I'm not suggesting that you try to be an Arnold, but if you weight train a little bit, you will bust out of the two 'geek stereotypes (skinny as a rail, or fat 'comic book guy'. A little bit of muscle on your arms helps bust the geek image.
5) Join a Toastmasters group. I recently did this, and think it is a great way to learn public speaking/interaction, etc. The meeting structure will be facinating for a geek, and the amount of time spent critiquing each other will make him self-aware, so he will start considering his appearance.
All that, and buy the kid a hooker. Once he 'cleans his pipes', he will be able to concentrate.
To be blunter,
Yes they do. I just googled and found this link, but I read about this last year in New Scientist magazine.
As one example from the article, scitnsts studying linguistics looked at architectural styles from cultures where buildings, bridges, etc have masculine, feminine, and neuter terms for them. Correlating architecture to gender, there were discernable patterns.
To quote one tantalizing point from the article, "Boroditsky said she is now considering studying how the design of bridges - a masculine word in Spanish, but a feminine word in German - differs between the two cultures. "
and this one:
Another researcher has found evidence that languages which have many terms for color, such as English, give their speakers an advantage in remembering them.
That is a little funny... Isn't a 'specially crafted image' the same 'exploit' that Geordie LaForge came up with for introducing a virus into the borg collective? Remember the first episode with 'Hugh'?
-db
Bringing this up without mentioning M.O.N.D. is irresponsible journalism. MOND (Modification of Newtonian Dymanics) is a theory that simply says that gravity 'decays' at a slightly different rate than expected over astronomical distances. The effects predicted by this theory are spot on to the observed effects that dark energy and matter try to explain.
I googled about found this link, but I first read about it in New Scientist about a year ago.
I was 16 and working as a stock boy at a computer store hen the first IBM PC clones came out. People would look at them as if they were looking at a piece of alien technology.
The hardware for the IBM PC was amazingly open, because IBM wanted other companies to make components to fit in the expansion slots. IBM has copyrighted their BIOS, thinking that made the design reliant enough on them. Even if a company copied the hardware, they would have to license the bios.
Then came a 'clean room' implementation. A group of engineers that had never seen the bios code looked at the API, and made their own implementation.
Te problem with the original clones was they did not include a copy of basic in ROM, like the original PC... This meant that many programs would not run. You could actually buy Basic as a program you could load, but that used up 16k of RAM... a lot when the computer might have had 64k. (IIRC, that was Microsoft Basic.)
I have just applied for a patent on the first 10 million digit prime number. Much like SCO, I'm not going to tell you the number (but I can tell you the process by which I discovered it).
When the Gimps Project finds it, I am going to sue them for the $100,000 prize they will collect.
At that time, I will announce the 10 million digit number as 'exhibit A' in my lawsuit.
I like the idea of patenting math.
Generous Compensation?
I can't wait to get home and see if that is the brand of thermal paste I used on a computer that suffered a heat stroke on my shiny new P4 3.2 with 800 Mhz FSB. I'd rather have that working than another t-shirt and $10.00 their next sub-par product.
It would have cost them a FEW CENTS worth of chemicals to test a batch of the stuff they got from their supplier? This seems like they went with the lowest bidder and didn't ask questions because they might not have liked the answer.
I use my iPod with linux.
I use the fireire support to mount it as a hard drive, then I use wine and some open source software called ephPod to upload/download music. It works very well.
I have been wanting to research some other solultions, because the ephPod interface is a little cllunky, and I'd rather not use wine for this, but I have been happy enough that I haven't really researched it further.
Some time ago, I saw a show on the Discovery Channel about the Three Gorges Dam project in China (Google for your own link). Apparently this dam retains so much water at high latitudes, that it was expected to 'speed up the Earth's rotation slightly', much like an ice-skater bringing in their arms so that they rotate faster. Why is this not mentioned as a possibility for not needing a leap second?
Last month, New Scientist had an article about some GPS receivers having a bug related to the fact that 256 weeks have gone by without a leap second. Apparently, there is going to be a 1 second interval at 12 midnight UTC tha will register twice, causing some bizarre readings. Sorry I don't have a link for it.
A while ago, I was enthralled with German board games (settlers of Catan and the like). I thoght it would be a cool idea to create a game that used commonly available pieces from other games (monopoly, chess, etc). and release the rules as an 'open source' project... and see what kind of variations it would spawn.
Your comments are close... for better adoption, although over a longer time span:
1) Software needs to be based on open standards. RFC90210 or something like that... Others need to be able to make implementations.
2) Yahoo's implmentation should do ONE THING WELL. It shouldn't try to stick an advertisement on the bottom of my emails the way their groups tools do.
3) Give the software a few months to propagate to a few major ISPs.
4) On a given date, all email going through those servers that are not 'signed' as this system specifies get some kind of flaf in the header that users can filter on. Appending something like, "Warning: This sender of this message has not been authenticated. It may not have come from the person you think it came from" to all emails that aren't authenticated. I guarantee that the 'peer pressure' from a label like that on all email originating from MY company would force us to upgrade.
5) let that bake for a year or three. By that time, everyone will be clamoring for non-authenticated email to be blocked.
I recently bought a really cheap system from a local computer store at a really good price... It came with SuSE linux, and I am planning on using it try try out debian, fedora and mandrake as well (looking for my red hat replacement).
I didn't get any media with the computer. I went back to the computer store the other day asking for a copy of the SuSE media so I can reinstall, and they got all nervous, like I was asking them to give me a pirate copy of something.
Its GPL isn't it? they sold it to me, didn't they? Aren't they obligated to give me a copy now? Should I go in there and cause a scene?
Mod this guy down... he doesn't know what he is talking about. You can't sell this kind of stuff to Iraq... This kind of stuff requires licenses no matter where it goes, and those licenses ain't gonna be approved for Iraq. Don't believe me? Check out this site, or this one.
I already have the ability to save my word processing documents as XML. I already have the ability to transform them into other things I want. So do you. check it out.
I'm sure someone, someplace is already working on the appropriate xslt to transform Microsoft's stuff into this more open format, and I'm sure Microsoft has some ace up their sleeve technically or legally to push it into a 'gray' area...
But I just cannot imagine anyone having the gaul to say that my data is only available to me in a format that they control the terms and conditions on. how successful would a paper company be if they put 'terms and conditions' on the use of their wood pulp?
I thought this when I read the magazine over a year ago...
So this guy is using a version control system for exactly the purpose it is intended for... This is newsworthy? In that case, I probably do enough newsworthy stuff to fill a couple of magazines every day.
How about lowering the prices so you are not raping the fans?
The money doesn't have to 'go' anywhere... it can stay in your pocket. I'd be more likely to go to a baseball game if it didn't cost $8.00 for a hot dog and a coke... and if parking wasn't $25.00
Of course, I guess that's the law of supply and demand... If I would be more likely to go, there would be a lot more people likely to go, and prices would rise because there wasn't enough supply, etc.
So I guess I just argued against my argument. Oh well... I gotta go anyway, I'm late for my therapists appointment.
10+ years ago, there was a short-lied show on Fox named "Flying Blind". The girlfriend of the min character had a roommate who just wandered around in a bathrobe, apparently unemployed, but always had money for stuff...
About halfway through the second season, the main characted asked, "Just what do you DO, anyway?"
Bathrobe guy: "I have a Genius Grant..."
Main Character: "You? But you're not a genius!"
Bathrobe guy: "I was the night I slept with the lady who gives out the grants..."