Wow... after returning to earth after a brief nostalgia buzz, I had to let you know... your sig rocks! How many others out there wrote their first programs in BASIC on their dads' Commodores 64s?
The iMac is a success because of gullible non-technical families with a little extra dough to waste.
er... yes. That's the idea. BMW's are for gullible non-technical people who appreciate good design and have a little extra dough to waste, too. That's what we call target demographic. There exist people who are not averse to paying a little more money for the peace of mind of knowing that they do not need any technical knowledge to wield technology, that someone has taken the time to put it in terms that they can understand. Know something else? There are a LOT more of them than there are of us. And they have money, ergo, companies cater to them (see also capitalism).
Hey: what do we call those things?!? CPU? no, that's the processor... It can't be the case, obviously. The cabinet? sounds reasonable, but that has the same connotation as case. The best name I've heard comes from, ironically, one of the stories listed: engine. Makes sense, doesn't it? it performs operations based on parameters passed to it by its peripherals...
Eh, maybe I just got sick of the people on the phone calling it a "hard drive". (shudder)
The Mac is dead. No, this is not flamebait. It's just a statement of fact.
Thank you, oh, Anonymous Coward, for blessing us heathens with your Statements of Fact. We were lost, so very lost, before we felt your hand at our backs, guiding us upon the One True Way.
Sarcasm aside, shouldn't you say, "I do not personally use MacOS, nor do any of the people I usually see use it"? As long as my Macs run, MacOS is not dead. And as the only maintenance they've required in eight Mac-years (I have three) of operation is a motherboard battery-replacement and a (portable) power supply replacement, I don't see them "dying" for quite a while. Nor do my friends who use Macs. Indeed, you might as well say "Amiga is dead", though you'd be wrong, and quite a few Amiga users would be quick to point that out, my girlfriend's mom - a commercial video editor - included.
If your post was not flamebait, then this is not a flame, merely a "clarification of fact". And please, don't be so quick to declare other peoples' platforms dead, eh? Take a look, see what's going on on the other side. You'd be surprised at the things the "dead" can do.
er, not according to an interview I read with the programmer (can't remember his name, and the book's in Grand Rapids (I'm in Lansing).) He said that he actually wanted to give the "ghosts" individual personalities, though I don't know if this made it into the final product.
It was in a book that interviewed around twenty old-school programmers, if anyone wants to back this up...
I can personally attest to the Marathon Trilogy's aliens being horrifyingly smart, rivalling the AI's in games today. Beyond that, the environment (especially in the first Marathon) was perfect: dimly lit, claustrophobic corridors, open cargo bays, etc. You'd really have to play it to understand it, but that was a scary game, evoking panic with an atmosphere that feels like movies like Aliens, Event Horizon, etc. I hadn't felt fear like that from a game until Half Life.
There was/is an old Mac network game called Bolo... one of the first networked games for Mac, IIRC. In it, the player navigated a tank from an overhead map view around an island, killing other players' tanks, building pillboxes, capturing supply depots, etc. Tons o' fun. But the best part was the fact that Bolo had a plug-in architecture for brains that you'd write in C, etc. Some of these were pretty swift, too. Very old game, but I can still write a brain that'll kick my ass every time;)
Re:Could someone tell me why TCI needs a phoneline
on
DIVX is dead
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Yeah, what's up with that? I've not gotten around to disconnecting it to see what it says... anyone know why my digital cable box needs a phoneline?
You're absolutely right; it is much, much bigger than just one nation. It is a precedent for any nation.
There's a quote from one of the victims of the Holocaust (his name escapes me at the moment) that is quite relevant here...
They came for the N, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't an N.
Where N is a group of "undesirables" (according to Nazi Germany). Eventually, all of the "undesirables" are gone and they come for him...
And then they came for me, and there was nobody left to speak up
Rarely is any evil of any magnitude perpetrated quickly; rights must be restricted gradually to keep most people from noticing. They also like to hide behind a veil of false morality: "You don't approve of our new legislation? So, you're trying to say that you promote child pornography and drug use?"
This should be a very scary thing for all of us. How do we combat it? Notice. Care. Speak out. If the people who would take our rights away aren't stopped, they'll continue, because they'll think nobody cares. And they'll be right.
2) "The Caverns of Socrates" the idea that the world you see is an illusion.
The notion that we live in a "cave of shadows", seeing imperfect representations of the true "forms" of things was advanced by, IIRC, Plato (not Socrates).
Good point! I'd never considered the possibility of time travel violating causality. Obviously, what's needed is legislation, i.e., a warning label on any device that might permit time travel:
WARNING! Do not travel to an earlier point in time and kill yourself at that point, as this will violate causality and your warranty. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Ah, but it's usually too late by that point. And force quitting rarely works cleanly; in most cases, you end up stuck in the forcequit dialog, with neither button working. It's no secret that the MacOS's stability could use some help (like OS X).
But I never get far enough to lock up, 'cause I have MacsBug;)
Bill and co. has decided to win his private little war using threats, sound bytes and by DECLARING ON TV WHERE THE NEXT NATO AIR STRIKE WILL BE. Is not the purpose of war to destroy things, taking them by surprise?
Not necessarily. During World War II, the United States would announce to the Japanese public which cities would be bombed, so that they could evacuate before the attack. The idea was, factories and military emplacements cannot be relocated as easily as civilians, the civilians would evacuate, reducing civilian casualties, etc. In practice, it also had an incredibly demoralizing effect on the Japanese citizens: if the enemy could announce an attack beforehand and carry it out, then the enemy was superior.
I think you might have Quakers confused with the Amish (or Mennonites, or whatever sect happens to live in your state). They're the ones who go without electricity, combustion engines, etc. If you passed a Quaker on the street, you probably wouldn't know it; my girlfriend's a Quaker and she runs a webpage. The two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, Richard Nixon was a Quaker, though they'd probably rather not admit it.
No offense was taken by either the Mac-usin' dirty Jew or his backwards Quaker girlfriend;) Just wanted to clear this up.
People that attack the group which makes life more livable must be 1.)Insane 2.)Quaker (Even thou they usaully don't attack us, and if he is one, he's one hell of a hypocrate)(snip)
The Quaker religion, aka the Society of Friends, is a religion that promotes and practices equality and nonviolence. They have no prohibitions against anything technological, in fact, one of the only things they vehemently oppose is passing judgement on another person.
>You must credit Al Gore for supporting the internet though.
True, I must. If he did. But he doesn't.
"Exporters of 56-bit DES or equivalent encryption products would make commitments to develop and sell products that support the key recovery system that I announced in July. That vision presumes that a trusted party (in some cases internal to the user's organization) would recover the user's confidentiality key for the user or for law enforcement officials acting under proper authority. Access to keys would be provided in accordance with destination country policies and bilateral understandings. No key length limits or algorithm restrictions will apply to exported key recovery products. from Gore's 10/1/96 press statement, emphasis mine.
This is one example. I located it in about two minutes. If you'd like, I can produce much more documentation of Gore's support for impractical and unconstitutional government control of communications, hidden behind a warm fuzzy "do it for the children!" attitude. Simply put, yes, he knows the Internet exists. But he's probably one of the worst things that ever happened to it.
> Despite his strange wife's agenda Al Gore is good for the technological world
I'm sorry, but in light of his stance and actions regarding privacy and his tendency to think that he's got to "make the Internet safe for kids" (as though he had more control over children than their own parents), I cannot believe the last statement. He is simply an opportunist politician who latches onto an idealistic view of something he really does not understand.
I don't doubt that he and his wife have something to do with the internet. But why does it always have to be against the privacy and freedoms of the citizens?
DISCLAIMER: I am not an IT manager, nor have I ever been. I am a tech support grunt, and all of the opinions stated herein do not represent the opinions of any of the IT people I know, but are merely my simple, uninformed observations.
Computers are great for games. It's fun to run network servers out of them. Programming is a unique power trip and one of the most elegant mind puzzles around.
But whereas the lives of home users, armchair sysadmins, hackers, hell, even W@ReZ D00Dz would go on without them (albeit nowhere near as much fun), businesses today are SOL without a uniform network. Each employee does not buy whatever system they feel comfortable with, or prefer, or trust. IT managers buy computers. The motivations of an IT manager are not necessarily to make the choice that will result in a near-bulletproof network (though security is very important to them), nor is it to make the choice that will promote free evolution of software (OSS), nor is it strictly cost; they have a budget to live within, but TCO takes support into account as well, as IT managers are not-so-cheerfully aware. The primary motivation of an IT manager is the same as that of anyone who's earned a management position: pay off the house, pay for the kids' braces, etc. In other words, not get fired
Years ago, the saying was, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Now, it's "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". Unless they've landed a job with incredible (and rare) autonomy, IT directors' requests must be approved by someone higher up. This "higher up" likely knows little about computers, outside of the fact that their clients, etc. would like documents in Word 97 format, that they dig Excel on their Packard Bells at home, etc. They also know that Microsoft is a massive company, and when they think of a computer, they see Windows 95 on the monitor because that is what they know. When the time comes to implement or augment a network, it's far easier to just accept Microsoft than to put your career out on a limb and try to convince this person that there are better solutions. And THAT, boys and girls, is how companies end up with Windows on their employees' desks.
So how do they get into the employees' homes? When a front-line accountant or HR grunt or marketing person chooses a computer, they may or may not realize that other platforms may be able to read their Excel spreadsheets or Word documents, but they're not going to bother, in most cases. Best Buy sells the system they use at work; they can pirate the software to use at home, and, they can use Outlook to check their mail, just like at work. They can do all of this without learning a new interface or converting documents. When something (virus, exploit, etc.) comes along and shakes up the users, IT can't blame Microsoft, because they purchased the Microsoft products themselves. They can't blame themselves, the network, or the users, for obvious reasons. The users and the management must trust the system, and so the virus writer is villified.
Virii are fascinating. Distributing them for no reason other than the malicious thrill of impairing others is wrong. IMO, anyone who distributes a virus should be held accountable for the inconvenience to users (and to tech support... "Windows just crashed... is it a virus?"...::shudder::), but I'm not trying to excuse software companies that write software with Lincoln Tunnel security holes. Microsoft has a responsibility to its users to acknowledge and patch security issues, precisely because their products are so widely used. To simply turn their heads and work on The Road Ahead or whatever and make their next product without addressing security, stability, and utility issues for the people who paid for their products, is irresponsible and arrogant.
NATO standard small-arms bore is 5.76mm, IIRC. US M-16s and variants are chambered for.223 Remington (that's tiny (223 thousandths of an inch) but fast).
Your point is correct, though. As my dad, a Navy Commander, once said, "Navies and air forces cannot win wars. They can only lose them."
Slashdot Mirror
Wow... after returning to earth after a brief nostalgia buzz, I had to let you know... your sig rocks! How many others out there wrote their first programs in BASIC on their dads' Commodores 64s?
er... yes. That's the idea. BMW's are for gullible non-technical people who appreciate good design and have a little extra dough to waste, too. That's what we call target demographic. There exist people who are not averse to paying a little more money for the peace of mind of knowing that they do not need any technical knowledge to wield technology, that someone has taken the time to put it in terms that they can understand. Know something else? There are a LOT more of them than there are of us. And they have money, ergo, companies cater to them (see also capitalism).
Eh, maybe I just got sick of the people on the phone calling it a "hard drive". (shudder)
Sarcasm aside, shouldn't you say, "I do not personally use MacOS, nor do any of the people I usually see use it"? As long as my Macs run, MacOS is not dead. And as the only maintenance they've required in eight Mac-years (I have three) of operation is a motherboard battery-replacement and a (portable) power supply replacement, I don't see them "dying" for quite a while. Nor do my friends who use Macs. Indeed, you might as well say "Amiga is dead", though you'd be wrong, and quite a few Amiga users would be quick to point that out, my girlfriend's mom - a commercial video editor - included.
If your post was not flamebait, then this is not a flame, merely a "clarification of fact". And please, don't be so quick to declare other peoples' platforms dead, eh? Take a look, see what's going on on the other side. You'd be surprised at the things the "dead" can do.
It was in a book that interviewed around twenty old-school programmers, if anyone wants to back this up...
uh... we're both talking about Zork, or one of its progenitors, right?
I can personally attest to the Marathon Trilogy's aliens being horrifyingly smart, rivalling the AI's in games today. Beyond that, the environment (especially in the first Marathon) was perfect: dimly lit, claustrophobic corridors, open cargo bays, etc. You'd really have to play it to understand it, but that was a scary game, evoking panic with an atmosphere that feels like movies like Aliens, Event Horizon, etc. I hadn't felt fear like that from a game until Half Life.
There was/is an old Mac network game called Bolo... one of the first networked games for Mac, IIRC. In it, the player navigated a tank from an overhead map view around an island, killing other players' tanks, building pillboxes, capturing supply depots, etc. Tons o' fun. But the best part was the fact that Bolo had a plug-in architecture for brains that you'd write in C, etc. Some of these were pretty swift, too. Very old game, but I can still write a brain that'll kick my ass every time ;)
Yeah, what's up with that? I've not gotten around to disconnecting it to see what it says... anyone know why my digital cable box needs a phoneline?
There's a quote from one of the victims of the Holocaust (his name escapes me at the moment) that is quite relevant here...
Where N is a group of "undesirables" (according to Nazi Germany). Eventually, all of the "undesirables" are gone and they come for him... Rarely is any evil of any magnitude perpetrated quickly; rights must be restricted gradually to keep most people from noticing. They also like to hide behind a veil of false morality: "You don't approve of our new legislation? So, you're trying to say that you promote child pornography and drug use?"This should be a very scary thing for all of us. How do we combat it? Notice. Care. Speak out. If the people who would take our rights away aren't stopped, they'll continue, because they'll think nobody cares. And they'll be right.
The notion that we live in a "cave of shadows", seeing imperfect representations of the true "forms" of things was advanced by, IIRC, Plato (not Socrates).
But I never get far enough to lock up, 'cause I have MacsBug ;)
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Not necessarily. During World War II, the United States would announce to the Japanese public which cities would be bombed, so that they could evacuate before the attack. The idea was, factories and military emplacements cannot be relocated as easily as civilians, the civilians would evacuate, reducing civilian casualties, etc. In practice, it also had an incredibly demoralizing effect on the Japanese citizens: if the enemy could announce an attack beforehand and carry it out, then the enemy was superior.
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Except the GNU/ is silent.
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No offense was taken by either the Mac-usin' dirty Jew or his backwards Quaker girlfriend ;) Just wanted to clear this up.
By the power of Grayskull... offtopic begone!
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The Quaker religion, aka the Society of Friends, is a religion that promotes and practices equality and nonviolence. They have no prohibitions against anything technological, in fact, one of the only things they vehemently oppose is passing judgement on another person.
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True, I must. If he did. But he doesn't.
"Exporters of 56-bit DES or equivalent encryption products would make commitments to develop and sell products that support the key recovery system that I announced in July. That vision presumes that a trusted party (in some cases internal to the user's organization) would recover the user's confidentiality key for the user or for law enforcement officials acting under proper authority. Access to keys would be provided in accordance with destination country policies and bilateral understandings. No key length limits or algorithm restrictions will apply to exported key recovery products.
from Gore's 10/1/96 press statement, emphasis mine.
This is one example. I located it in about two minutes. If you'd like, I can produce much more documentation of Gore's support for impractical and unconstitutional government control of communications, hidden behind a warm fuzzy "do it for the children!" attitude. Simply put, yes, he knows the Internet exists. But he's probably one of the worst things that ever happened to it.
> Despite his strange wife's agenda Al Gore is good for the technological world
I'm sorry, but in light of his stance and actions regarding privacy and his tendency to think that he's got to "make the Internet safe for kids" (as though he had more control over children than their own parents), I cannot believe the last statement. He is simply an opportunist politician who latches onto an idealistic view of something he really does not understand.
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I don't doubt that he and his wife have something to do with the internet. But why does it always have to be against the privacy and freedoms of the citizens?
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Why do some people feel the need to plaster every ng with this crap as soon as they get it? Bah.
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Computers are great for games. It's fun to run network servers out of them. Programming is a unique power trip and one of the most elegant mind puzzles around.
But whereas the lives of home users, armchair sysadmins, hackers, hell, even W@ReZ D00Dz would go on without them (albeit nowhere near as much fun), businesses today are SOL without a uniform network. Each employee does not buy whatever system they feel comfortable with, or prefer, or trust. IT managers buy computers. The motivations of an IT manager are not necessarily to make the choice that will result in a near-bulletproof network (though security is very important to them), nor is it to make the choice that will promote free evolution of software (OSS), nor is it strictly cost; they have a budget to live within, but TCO takes support into account as well, as IT managers are not-so-cheerfully aware. The primary motivation of an IT manager is the same as that of anyone who's earned a management position: pay off the house, pay for the kids' braces, etc. In other words, not get fired
Years ago, the saying was, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Now, it's "Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". Unless they've landed a job with incredible (and rare) autonomy, IT directors' requests must be approved by someone higher up. This "higher up" likely knows little about computers, outside of the fact that their clients, etc. would like documents in Word 97 format, that they dig Excel on their Packard Bells at home, etc. They also know that Microsoft is a massive company, and when they think of a computer, they see Windows 95 on the monitor because that is what they know. When the time comes to implement or augment a network, it's far easier to just accept Microsoft than to put your career out on a limb and try to convince this person that there are better solutions. And THAT, boys and girls, is how companies end up with Windows on their employees' desks.
So how do they get into the employees' homes? When a front-line accountant or HR grunt or marketing person chooses a computer, they may or may not realize that other platforms may be able to read their Excel spreadsheets or Word documents, but they're not going to bother, in most cases. Best Buy sells the system they use at work; they can pirate the software to use at home, and, they can use Outlook to check their mail, just like at work. They can do all of this without learning a new interface or converting documents. When something (virus, exploit, etc.) comes along and shakes up the users, IT can't blame Microsoft, because they purchased the Microsoft products themselves. They can't blame themselves, the network, or the users, for obvious reasons. The users and the management must trust the system, and so the virus writer is villified.
Virii are fascinating. Distributing them for no reason other than the malicious thrill of impairing others is wrong. IMO, anyone who distributes a virus should be held accountable for the inconvenience to users (and to tech support... "Windows just crashed... is it a virus?"... ::shudder::), but I'm not trying to excuse software companies that write software with Lincoln Tunnel security holes. Microsoft has a responsibility to its users to acknowledge and patch security issues, precisely because their products are so widely used. To simply turn their heads and work on The Road Ahead or whatever and make their next product without addressing security, stability, and utility issues for the people who paid for their products, is irresponsible and arrogant.
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Your point is correct, though. As my dad, a Navy Commander, once said, "Navies and air forces cannot win wars. They can only lose them."
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