Note: I'm an IE6 tester, so I believe I'm reasonably qualified to comment without fear of spreading FUD.
That's funny, I would have assumed that as an IE6 tester you are incapable of commenting WITHOUT spreading FUD.:)
IMO, they are a pain, but easily disabled.
Isn't life short enough without having to disable painful features?
Take it to the extreme: if my car was delivered with a "self-destruct" button, but with a manual explaining how to disable it, I doubt I would even get in the car, much less buy it and drive it for years and trust it with my life. The company could say "but some of our users need a self-destruct feature!" But that's not the point is it?
If a feature is a pain and the software is not delivered with the "feature" disabled, that company does not have your best interests at heart. The repercussions of having a monopolist company blatantly not care about its users are very great indeed. I hope you put that in your test report:)
Not all closed-source companies are looking for permanent MS-style lock-in. The majority of them are simply trying to protect their investment, trying to avoid giving it away, a little bit of lock-in to ensure that the R&D money isn't lost after the first month of operation.
It would be great, you know, if open source evangelism really worked. If "Open Source" became a feature that ordinary consumers looked for, along with Total Harmonic Distortion and Size in Cubic Feet. Without that level of penetration into the brains of the masses out there, I'm afraid that we advocates are left holding the bag. We are "locked in" to a religion that isn't taking hold.
The parent is one such example. There is no open source video recorder with the features of Tivo, and as long as there's Tivo, there probably won't be an open source version. Developers are motivated by laziness, impatience and hubris; and as long as Tivo is "close enough", they will be lazy and impatient (why spend a year developing when we can just buy one), and hubris doesn't apply when you are developing for an audience that doesn't want what you've got.
As a result, more hackers are hacking Tivo than are trying to develop an alternative. And those people wanting a religion instead of a platform are left holding the bag. It's no use telling Tivo users "I told you so" without having an open source alternative in hand; if the open source religion says "it's Tivo or nothing" I'm afraid there will be very few converts.
So Tivo made a mistake and sold a bunch of early units without explicitly requiring the subscription. I imagine they didn't think anyone would NOT get the subscription, but they also didn't anticipate hackers opening the boxes and sharing workarounds for people to avoid paying to upgrade the hardware, either -- something the "closed source" companies don't have to worry about. And now, not making any money, trying to stop the bleeding, they've assumed that anyone actually using their services is actually trying to use their services. How rude of them!
It's doubly ironic that one of the only alternatives is Microsoft. If Tivo dies, we'll all be running WebTV, you know. Or is that what you want?
While it seems bizarre, you could imagine it working IF AND ONLY IF the products were on-topic for the blog, actually sincerely reviewed by the bloggers, etc.
It works for Robot Wisdom, the blog mentioned here, because RW's owner/operator, Jorn Barger, is madly focused on being earnest in his approach to the web. In this case, not only would he not link to something he didn't believe in, he wouldn't link to something that he felt was poorly designed. Now THAT'S good old-fashioned integrity.
Currently Barger is linking to other blogs that support his political views, which maintains his own integrity but which threatens the integrity of his blog (IMO).
I don't have a solution, of course, just some ideas.
I don't either. But I think that about sums it up: the truth is, capitalism is exploitative, cold, heartless, emotionless, unhuman, selfish, greedy, uncaring, often harmful, all of the above! Unfortunately it's also a damn sight better than anything else anyone's come up with.
People want to control other people. Capitalists do this by giving people what they want. Evil capitalists do this by telling people what they want and then giving it to them. Bad capitalists find out what people want and then suggest their product has that when it actually doesn't.
But very few capitalists force people to accept exactly what they don't want (at least in terms of products and services).
I suggest we prosecute the bad capitalists and let the evil capitalists go. Because the most evil of evil capitalists is a walk in the park compared to the most evil of evil politicians.
The following events are true. Only the names have been changed.
Scene One: a small liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania, May, 1983.
George: I just got back from California. I interviewed to be a programmer at 3 companies out there, and do you know, I was the only one to wear a suit to interviews. Me: No kidding! That's outrageous. George: I'm gonna move out there. They just have a better attitude. Me: Sounds like it. Good luck.
Scene Two: Philadelphia, 1991.
Jeff: The east coast is no place for gay techies. I've moving to California. Me: Seems like a lot of my tech friends have moved there. Jeff: Well they just have a better attitude. Me: Sounds like it. Good luck.
Scene Three: Philadelphia, 1994.
Jim: I'm moving to California. Me: That makes a definite majority of my tech friends who have moved there. Jim: Well they just have a better attitude. Me: Sounds like it. Good luck.
Scene Four: The Philadelphia suburb branch of a big-5 consulting firm, 1998.
Manager: You don't have a collared shirt on. Me: Yeah, I'm wearing a T-shirt under this $100 sweater. Manager: That's not the code, you have to wear a collared shirt. Me: OK. By the way, our recruiter can't find any good candidates. Manager: She should try harder.
Scene Five: Philadelphia, 2001.
Philadelphian: I wonder why Route 202 hasn't really become the "Silicon Valley East" like we always thought it would. Me: Yes, somehow California has become the new economic capital of the world. Philadelphian: I sure wish that kind of thing would happen here. Me: I guess we don't really have the right attitude.
Postscript. Of course wearing T-shirts didn't make the Valley the new economic capital of the world. Being open about dress, however, is part of an attitude that allows for more individuality.
In a world that is so much smaller than the world of fifty years ago, when intelligent people can move thousands of miles and even cross borders to find the lifestyle they want, demanding rigid conformity is an indicator that a company values style over substance. It doesn't stop at dress code, either; and in the long run, it *will* be detrimental to the health of the company.
It only seems like a small thing. In the 80s, the most notoriously dress-code-happy company in the country was IBM. They enjoyed an incredible run of success for decades; they were the "old Microsoft"; and then, suddenly, the world moved and IBM failed to move with it. Stuck in their old ways, worshipping their own internal culture, they failed to develop new practices. Within five years they went from the elite rulers to a company that many felt might not even survive another decade.
It wasn't their infamous dress code that led to IBM's woes. But the dress code was a benchmark for their attitude, and a management style that did not value innovation and wasn't ready for change.
Today it's very obvious that any company has to be prepared to change 180 degrees in order to survive. Products can't take 3 years in design; 3 months is often too long. Innovation has to be a part of the mix. Finding good people at any cost is critical. And enforcing a no-jeans policy for tech people is not a good start to accomplishing the above.
The fast food oil car is reality. A pair of gents drove one across the country recently, "refilling" it at fast food places (who apparently would give him the used stuff just for the asking).
And I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to write my congressman a letter. But I'll be taking an Amtrak train tonight to help a friend do some work on his house. I'll have to write the letter on my Palm Vx; it's portability and functionality are incredible. Of course, on the train I'll have plenty of tunes thanks to my Panasonic portable CD player with 40-second anti-skip technology! And I won't go hungry thanks to Snickers. Packed with peanuts, Snickers really satisfies.
Once I get there, the chores will be quick work, thanks to my new Black and Decker cordless screwdriver, the PowerDriver(tm). It's powered by the VersaPak(tm) system, so if it runs out of juice I can just pop in the spare battery pack.
Is this post your nightmare yet? I can keep going if you like!
What if Macromedia's outgoing spam was in HTML and largely depended on www.macromedia.com?
Jamie remains my favorite/. editor by once again going the extra mile in hunting down the facts behind a story. All hail Jamie!
...their PR contact did not return repeated phone calls. Oh, that is PRICELESS! Folks, if your PR people get calls from Slashdot, and ignore them, fire your PR people. They do not know what they are doing.
I bet Above.Net's flacks don't ignore phone calls from the local daily paper - even though THAT media outlet has fewer readers, many fewer readers with a clue, and many many fewer readers in decision-making positions.
Once those Detroit sorts find out there's Nitro in the streets, they'll be tearing 'em up for the liquid nitro-burnin funny cars! SATURDAY! SATURDAY! SATURDAY!
Everyone seems to think that once.biz is available, it will change everything. That's not gonna happen!
The "speculative" top-level domains such as.tv,.cx, etc. hve not exactly taken off and reached critical mass such that they are widely used for anything serious. People thought.tv would be huge, but it clearly isn't. Of the major networks, only abc.tv resolves (and it's a mere redirection to their main domain). I don't recall going to one.tv site *ever*, and only two.cx sites, one of which everyone knows and the other which was only a friend's hobby site for her poetry.
The mAsses don't even necessarily understand that if a clause doesn't end in ".com" it's valid and it's a net address. As late as a year ago Jakob "Usabilty" Nielsen was encouraging people to continue to use "www" so that people would understand immediately that you're talking about a web page address.
Furthermore, with only, um, ODDITY sites using.cx, there was and is a built in factor telling people that a.cx address is somehow second rate, a joke. At least with.org,.net, and.gov you had major institutions employing the domains regularly and getting you to enter them.
That will only happen with domains where the domain holders will USE and PROMOTE their domain names. The big winners, I would expect, would be.nom and whatever sex-related domain gets through, if any (.sex,.xxx..adult, whatever). The proposed.museum seems like a "gimme", but think about it; every major museum already has a domain name in.org or.com and has been using and promoting that name for several years now. Will moma.org change to moma.museum or modern.museum or modernart.museum? I don't think so! Will philamuseum.org change to phila.museum? It's only one fewer syllable!
The registrars will promote the existence of the domains and the importance of registering them. So we can expect.com holders to register those.biz names they feel are important -- and then fail to use them to do anything but a redirection to their existing.com site. They won't promote the name; they'll even feel weird about paying the invoice for it every year. And since the trademark holders will get first bite, there won't be any news about domain fights to encourage anyone to think that.biz is real and important.
And.biz and the others have already been hobbled by the confusion over them -- adding to their second-class status.
People need to ramp up their consumerist ways
on
Telecosm
·
· Score: 2
If people aren't going to allocate enough time to consume things, we're just going to have to insist that they spend more of their time in pastimes that permit them to triple- and quaduple-consume.
For instance, no-one in our modern culture should be just watching TV. If they just do that, they're going to be only consuming one thing at a time. If they eat a bag of Doritos(TM) while watching TV, thay are consuming two things at once. If they eat a bag of Doritos and drink a Pepsi(TM), now they are consuming three things at once. Now the economy's really moving along. If they watch that TV with a TiVo(TM), or while having a TV Guide(TM) open to check other listings, now they're Quad-Consumers(TM) and are really helping out.
This is why we need mobile solutions. Read/. at home in your underwear, and you're only consuming one thing. If you have the JennyCam open in a second window, that's only two things. But read the site on your Palm Pilot(TM) at McDonalds(TM) and stop to play the Millionare(TM) game on the side of the Kollectible Klassic Kups, all while wearing Tommy Hilfiger(TM) clothes and Nike(TM) shoes, and your contribution to the GNP will be noticeable!
And if you read while you're driving with your Sprint PCS(TM) phone, and get in an accident and are taken to the Mercy Hospital(TM) in a Professional EMS Emergency Vehicle(TM), and have your heart re-started with a GE Shock-em Defibrillator(TM), all paid for by US Healthcare(TM), wow, you're a SUPER-CONSUMER! Right up to the time you're buried in a Casket Royale(TM)!
I know a lot of Slashdotters use/. moz updates as personal reminders to go get the latest build, just for browsing purposes.
I've been following the nightly builds pretty closely, and I would suggest waiting for 0.91 for most browsers. There have been a few bugs that crept in over the last two weeks or so. The most well-understood one is a problem with right-click context menus, at least on Win32. It sounds like they have the problem in hand, but it makes life painful.
I think there are some problems that have been introduced into the rendering engine, because I have gotten a few really unexpected and unusual crashes. In some cases the browser window just completely disappeared without a trace or any error.
And I have had a few *really* annoying crashes while composing messages in textareas. (Like I'm doing now.) That is extra painful because you lose what you were writing!
So your best bet is to wait on this one if you have a stable build that you're running, and pick up a nightly build or 0.91 build in a few weeks.
Other than that, recent changes in how pages are built make everything seem a lot smoother and faster. I forget what they called the one fix... it had a funny description, but the upshot was that you can now click on things on an "outgoing" page if your new page hasn't loaded yet. For us impatient browsers who give up on crappy-loading sites, that one was a real breakthrough!
I wonder if he's changed his mind about the nature of time, organizational behavior, and how to get things done fast since it's been forever getting his nightclub redone. I don't expect he figured it would be this long getting done. Of course there's a lot he had to rewrite from scratch at the club.
You really hit the nail on the head, and I hope you get modded up to 5.
Putting a tourist into space WAS exploration, but not into astronomics: it was economics exploration. Missions that wouldn't have made sense as purely public projects, might now get accomplished with $20M of extra (delicate) cargo on board.
Americans everywhere should hang their head in shame; you've just been out-entrepreneured by the Russians!
Way to put her in her place. I hate it when your spouse has a dream and you have to carefully squash it and make them feel like they are more of a failure than they realize. How dare they put such burdens on us!
Luckily you caught her in time and smacked her around, so that she understands that her single role in life is to be a provider for you.
(If you're kidding, so am I; if you're trolling, so am I; if you're serious, so am I.)
Of course, I'm biased, but I think it's interesting. I wanted to post it to A) give some meaning to 18 months of personal hell, and B) allow for the discussion and study of failure. I spent a little time pursuing an MBA, and nobody ever studied failure.
Those immune to failure, feel free to criticize the story, my business and my struggles with it.
The place in my sig is (assuming my sig doesn't change, watch out future readers) a part of my original BBS that I've converted to a web-based forum. The community has managed to survive all this time, although it's not as vibrant as it was in its heyday. But it's still interesting to me, and to the users who visit, and I've pledged to keep it going as long as people are using it. It's been going in some nature since 1990.
There is still something interesting about a SMALL community, where you know a lot of the people. A large community is more anonymous. You don't know who's making various proclamations. You don't care about anyone and you don't get to know anyone.
Secret to happiness (some random thoughts)
on
Hi-Tech Repo Man
·
· Score: 2
Interesting to see that the Buddhist stance includes sublimation of desire of a few non-material things too. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks.
Personally, I find that happiness is good brain chemistry. Some people have it and some don't. For those with good brain chemistry, nothing will make them unhappy. Once in a while one of these people make it to prominence. You've seem them. A lot of them are fitness gurus. Some of them are insufferable.
For those with bad brain chemistry, only turning around that chemistry will make them happy. This can be done in the short run with drugs or in the long run with therapy. Therapy can be self-administered, even without knowing it, and I'm sure training in getting rid of desire is really good therapy.
I'm just not sure that, without all the mysticism involved, getting rid of desire is all that healthy. Desire, it seems to me, is tightly linked to motivation. Without desire of any kind, it is hard to see getting out of bed in the morning. Even if that bed is going to be repossessed.
Life is a big old mystery. Every day we learn more about it by living it. If our possessions are taken away, and it makes us unhappy, at least we are humbled by the experience. How can life be improved without the experience? Color me skeptical.
Very roughly speaking, there are two approaches to fighting bad politics. One is to fight for complete revolution from outside the system. The other is to fight for incremental change from within the system.
In my experience, people who believe in approach #1 also believe that taking approach #2 is heresy.
In reality, you need both types of political agents. If a complete rejection of UCITA fails to happen - because MS et al are more politically powerful than your list - then you will hope against hope that the folks working from within were successful.
You have the same goals, you just have different approaches to reaching them. You are not taking the high road by trying to discredit Red Hat; you may be shooting yourself in the foot.
Slashdot Mirror
Note: I'm an IE6 tester, so I believe I'm reasonably qualified to comment without fear of spreading FUD.
That's funny, I would have assumed that as an IE6 tester you are incapable of commenting WITHOUT spreading FUD. :)
IMO, they are a pain, but easily disabled.
Isn't life short enough without having to disable painful features?
Take it to the extreme: if my car was delivered with a "self-destruct" button, but with a manual explaining how to disable it, I doubt I would even get in the car, much less buy it and drive it for years and trust it with my life. The company could say "but some of our users need a self-destruct feature!" But that's not the point is it?
If a feature is a pain and the software is not delivered with the "feature" disabled, that company does not have your best interests at heart. The repercussions of having a monopolist company blatantly not care about its users are very great indeed. I hope you put that in your test report :)
It would be great, you know, if open source evangelism really worked. If "Open Source" became a feature that ordinary consumers looked for, along with Total Harmonic Distortion and Size in Cubic Feet. Without that level of penetration into the brains of the masses out there, I'm afraid that we advocates are left holding the bag. We are "locked in" to a religion that isn't taking hold.
The parent is one such example. There is no open source video recorder with the features of Tivo, and as long as there's Tivo, there probably won't be an open source version. Developers are motivated by laziness, impatience and hubris; and as long as Tivo is "close enough", they will be lazy and impatient (why spend a year developing when we can just buy one), and hubris doesn't apply when you are developing for an audience that doesn't want what you've got.
As a result, more hackers are hacking Tivo than are trying to develop an alternative. And those people wanting a religion instead of a platform are left holding the bag. It's no use telling Tivo users "I told you so" without having an open source alternative in hand; if the open source religion says "it's Tivo or nothing" I'm afraid there will be very few converts.
So Tivo made a mistake and sold a bunch of early units without explicitly requiring the subscription. I imagine they didn't think anyone would NOT get the subscription, but they also didn't anticipate hackers opening the boxes and sharing workarounds for people to avoid paying to upgrade the hardware, either -- something the "closed source" companies don't have to worry about. And now, not making any money, trying to stop the bleeding, they've assumed that anyone actually using their services is actually trying to use their services. How rude of them!
It's doubly ironic that one of the only alternatives is Microsoft. If Tivo dies, we'll all be running WebTV, you know. Or is that what you want?
While it seems bizarre, you could imagine it working IF AND ONLY IF the products were on-topic for the blog, actually sincerely reviewed by the bloggers, etc.
It works for Robot Wisdom, the blog mentioned here, because RW's owner/operator, Jorn Barger, is madly focused on being earnest in his approach to the web. In this case, not only would he not link to something he didn't believe in, he wouldn't link to something that he felt was poorly designed. Now THAT'S good old-fashioned integrity.
Currently Barger is linking to other blogs that support his political views, which maintains his own integrity but which threatens the integrity of his blog (IMO).
I don't either. But I think that about sums it up: the truth is, capitalism is exploitative, cold, heartless, emotionless, unhuman, selfish, greedy, uncaring, often harmful, all of the above! Unfortunately it's also a damn sight better than anything else anyone's come up with.
People want to control other people. Capitalists do this by giving people what they want. Evil capitalists do this by telling people what they want and then giving it to them. Bad capitalists find out what people want and then suggest their product has that when it actually doesn't.
But very few capitalists force people to accept exactly what they don't want (at least in terms of products and services).
I suggest we prosecute the bad capitalists and let the evil capitalists go. Because the most evil of evil capitalists is a walk in the park compared to the most evil of evil politicians.
Scene One: a small liberal-arts college in Pennsylvania, May, 1983.
George: I just got back from California. I interviewed to be a programmer at 3 companies out there, and do you know, I was the only one to wear a suit to interviews.
Me: No kidding! That's outrageous.
George: I'm gonna move out there. They just have a better attitude.
Me: Sounds like it. Good luck.
Scene Two: Philadelphia, 1991.
Jeff: The east coast is no place for gay techies. I've moving to California.
Me: Seems like a lot of my tech friends have moved there.
Jeff: Well they just have a better attitude.
Me: Sounds like it. Good luck.
Scene Three: Philadelphia, 1994.
Jim: I'm moving to California.
Me: That makes a definite majority of my tech friends who have moved there.
Jim: Well they just have a better attitude.
Me: Sounds like it. Good luck.
Scene Four: The Philadelphia suburb branch of a big-5 consulting firm, 1998.
Manager: You don't have a collared shirt on.
Me: Yeah, I'm wearing a T-shirt under this $100 sweater.
Manager: That's not the code, you have to wear a collared shirt.
Me: OK. By the way, our recruiter can't find any good candidates.
Manager: She should try harder.
Scene Five: Philadelphia, 2001.
Philadelphian: I wonder why Route 202 hasn't really become the "Silicon Valley East" like we always thought it would.
Me: Yes, somehow California has become the new economic capital of the world.
Philadelphian: I sure wish that kind of thing would happen here.
Me: I guess we don't really have the right attitude.
Postscript. Of course wearing T-shirts didn't make the Valley the new economic capital of the world. Being open about dress, however, is part of an attitude that allows for more individuality.
In a world that is so much smaller than the world of fifty years ago, when intelligent people can move thousands of miles and even cross borders to find the lifestyle they want, demanding rigid conformity is an indicator that a company values style over substance. It doesn't stop at dress code, either; and in the long run, it *will* be detrimental to the health of the company.
It only seems like a small thing. In the 80s, the most notoriously dress-code-happy company in the country was IBM. They enjoyed an incredible run of success for decades; they were the "old Microsoft"; and then, suddenly, the world moved and IBM failed to move with it. Stuck in their old ways, worshipping their own internal culture, they failed to develop new practices. Within five years they went from the elite rulers to a company that many felt might not even survive another decade.
It wasn't their infamous dress code that led to IBM's woes. But the dress code was a benchmark for their attitude, and a management style that did not value innovation and wasn't ready for change.
Today it's very obvious that any company has to be prepared to change 180 degrees in order to survive. Products can't take 3 years in design; 3 months is often too long. Innovation has to be a part of the mix. Finding good people at any cost is critical. And enforcing a no-jeans policy for tech people is not a good start to accomplishing the above.
....that's what the linked article is all about!
The fast food oil car is reality. A pair of gents drove one across the country recently, "refilling" it at fast food places (who apparently would give him the used stuff just for the asking).
And I'm not going to stand for it. I'm going to write my congressman a letter. But I'll be taking an Amtrak train tonight to help a friend do some work on his house. I'll have to write the letter on my Palm Vx; it's portability and functionality are incredible. Of course, on the train I'll have plenty of tunes thanks to my Panasonic portable CD player with 40-second anti-skip technology! And I won't go hungry thanks to Snickers. Packed with peanuts, Snickers really satisfies.
Once I get there, the chores will be quick work, thanks to my new Black and Decker cordless screwdriver, the PowerDriver(tm). It's powered by the VersaPak(tm) system, so if it runs out of juice I can just pop in the spare battery pack.
Is this post your nightmare yet? I can keep going if you like!
I bet Above.Net's flacks don't ignore phone calls from the local daily paper - even though THAT media outlet has fewer readers, many fewer readers with a clue, and many many fewer readers in decision-making positions.
Koff-koff-koff OH man it's been a while.
Everyone seems to think that once .biz is available, it will change everything. That's not gonna happen!
.tv, .cx, etc. hve not exactly taken off and reached critical mass such that they are widely used for anything serious. People thought .tv would be huge, but it clearly isn't. Of the major networks, only abc.tv resolves (and it's a mere redirection to their main domain). I don't recall going to one .tv site *ever*, and only two .cx sites, one of which everyone knows and the other which was only a friend's hobby site for her poetry.
.cx, there was and is a built in factor telling people that a .cx address is somehow second rate, a joke. At least with .org, .net, and .gov you had major institutions employing the domains regularly and getting you to enter them.
.nom and whatever sex-related domain gets through, if any (.sex, .xxx. .adult, whatever). The proposed .museum seems like a "gimme", but think about it; every major museum already has a domain name in .org or .com and has been using and promoting that name for several years now. Will moma.org change to moma.museum or modern.museum or modernart.museum? I don't think so! Will philamuseum.org change to phila.museum? It's only one fewer syllable!
.com holders to register those .biz names they feel are important -- and then fail to use them to do anything but a redirection to their existing .com site. They won't promote the name; they'll even feel weird about paying the invoice for it every year. And since the trademark holders will get first bite, there won't be any news about domain fights to encourage anyone to think that .biz is real and important.
.biz and the others have already been hobbled by the confusion over them -- adding to their second-class status.
The "speculative" top-level domains such as
The mAsses don't even necessarily understand that if a clause doesn't end in ".com" it's valid and it's a net address. As late as a year ago Jakob "Usabilty" Nielsen was encouraging people to continue to use "www" so that people would understand immediately that you're talking about a web page address.
Furthermore, with only, um, ODDITY sites using
That will only happen with domains where the domain holders will USE and PROMOTE their domain names. The big winners, I would expect, would be
The registrars will promote the existence of the domains and the importance of registering them. So we can expect
And
For instance, no-one in our modern culture should be just watching TV. If they just do that, they're going to be only consuming one thing at a time. If they eat a bag of Doritos(TM) while watching TV, thay are consuming two things at once. If they eat a bag of Doritos and drink a Pepsi(TM), now they are consuming three things at once. Now the economy's really moving along. If they watch that TV with a TiVo(TM), or while having a TV Guide(TM) open to check other listings, now they're Quad-Consumers(TM) and are really helping out.
This is why we need mobile solutions. Read /. at home in your underwear, and you're only consuming one thing. If you have the JennyCam open in a second window, that's only two things. But read the site on your Palm Pilot(TM) at McDonalds(TM) and stop to play the Millionare(TM) game on the side of the Kollectible Klassic Kups, all while wearing Tommy Hilfiger(TM) clothes and Nike(TM) shoes, and your contribution to the GNP will be noticeable!
And if you read while you're driving with your Sprint PCS(TM) phone, and get in an accident and are taken to the Mercy Hospital(TM) in a Professional EMS Emergency Vehicle(TM), and have your heart re-started with a GE Shock-em Defibrillator(TM), all paid for by US Healthcare(TM), wow, you're a SUPER-CONSUMER! Right up to the time you're buried in a Casket Royale(TM)!
So you forgot you were reading /. with the Oog cookie set, eh?
I know a lot of Slashdotters use /. moz updates as personal reminders to go get the latest build, just for browsing purposes.
I've been following the nightly builds pretty closely, and I would suggest waiting for 0.91 for most browsers. There have been a few bugs that crept in over the last two weeks or so. The most well-understood one is a problem with right-click context menus, at least on Win32. It sounds like they have the problem in hand, but it makes life painful.
I think there are some problems that have been introduced into the rendering engine, because I have gotten a few really unexpected and unusual crashes. In some cases the browser window just completely disappeared without a trace or any error.
And I have had a few *really* annoying crashes while composing messages in textareas. (Like I'm doing now.) That is extra painful because you lose what you were writing!
So your best bet is to wait on this one if you have a stable build that you're running, and pick up a nightly build or 0.91 build in a few weeks.
Other than that, recent changes in how pages are built make everything seem a lot smoother and faster. I forget what they called the one fix... it had a funny description, but the upshot was that you can now click on things on an "outgoing" page if your new page hasn't loaded yet. For us impatient browsers who give up on crappy-loading sites, that one was a real breakthrough!
I wonder if he's changed his mind about the nature of time, organizational behavior, and how to get things done fast since it's been forever getting his nightclub redone. I don't expect he figured it would be this long getting done. Of course there's a lot he had to rewrite from scratch at the club.
...will the price of an Eminem CD at Sam Goody be MORE than $16.99 this summer?
Putting a tourist into space WAS exploration, but not into astronomics: it was economics exploration. Missions that wouldn't have made sense as purely public projects, might now get accomplished with $20M of extra (delicate) cargo on board.
Americans everywhere should hang their head in shame; you've just been out-entrepreneured by the Russians!
Luckily you caught her in time and smacked her around, so that she understands that her single role in life is to be a provider for you.
(If you're kidding, so am I; if you're trolling, so am I; if you're serious, so am I.)
Of course, I'm biased, but I think it's interesting. I wanted to post it to A) give some meaning to 18 months of personal hell, and B) allow for the discussion and study of failure. I spent a little time pursuing an MBA, and nobody ever studied failure.
Those immune to failure, feel free to criticize the story, my business and my struggles with it.
There is still something interesting about a SMALL community, where you know a lot of the people. A large community is more anonymous. You don't know who's making various proclamations. You don't care about anyone and you don't get to know anyone.
Personally, I find that happiness is good brain chemistry. Some people have it and some don't. For those with good brain chemistry, nothing will make them unhappy. Once in a while one of these people make it to prominence. You've seem them. A lot of them are fitness gurus. Some of them are insufferable.
For those with bad brain chemistry, only turning around that chemistry will make them happy. This can be done in the short run with drugs or in the long run with therapy. Therapy can be self-administered, even without knowing it, and I'm sure training in getting rid of desire is really good therapy.
I'm just not sure that, without all the mysticism involved, getting rid of desire is all that healthy. Desire, it seems to me, is tightly linked to motivation. Without desire of any kind, it is hard to see getting out of bed in the morning. Even if that bed is going to be repossessed.
Life is a big old mystery. Every day we learn more about it by living it. If our possessions are taken away, and it makes us unhappy, at least we are humbled by the experience. How can life be improved without the experience? Color me skeptical.
In my experience, people who believe in approach #1 also believe that taking approach #2 is heresy.
In reality, you need both types of political agents. If a complete rejection of UCITA fails to happen - because MS et al are more politically powerful than your list - then you will hope against hope that the folks working from within were successful.
You have the same goals, you just have different approaches to reaching them. You are not taking the high road by trying to discredit Red Hat; you may be shooting yourself in the foot.
Hello, how can I help you?
The system is down.
I'm not sure I understand you fully.
The system died at noon. I thnk it's a disk problem.
You say you think it's a disk problem?
I don't know any more. IBM said you're supposed to figure it out.
Don't you really know any more?
Do you think I'm lying?
We were discussing you - not me.
I need to discuss you! We need the system back up or operations is going to get me fired!
What would it mean to you if you got to discuss I?
It would mean I wouldn't get fired.
Can you elaborate on that?
No! Are you going to fix the system or not?
Are you saying no just to be negative?
I would be a lot more positive if you would just fix the system!
Do you think it's likely that I would just fix the system?
IBM said that you would!
You're not really talking about me - are you?
Are you going to fix the system, or should I call Sun and have you replaced?
Why are you interested in whether I am going to fix the system or not?
Forget it. You had your chance. What's the local Sun branch number?
What are your feelings now?
I'm probably screwed.
Is it because you are probably screwed that you came to me?
Yes.
You seem to be quite positive.
One last chance to fix the disk, or you're outta here.
What makes you think I am outta here?
Because I know the procurement guy?
Is that the real reason?
Yes.
I understand.
How delightfully naive.
I'm sorry, I'm being an asshole. But of course you can't elect people to control the government.
But the corporations can!
And we go back around.
Euroderf lives in northern Britain. He truly hasn't seen any advance since the 50s!