We run postgres and we're doing our damndest to get rid of it. We have some databases that get 50-100% data turnover rate daily, making hourly vacuums essential to not having the Ever Expanding Database problem. Not to mention that vacuum doesn't clean up indexes, so you'll also have to re-index periodically if you don't want those to grow to thousands of times their optimal size.
I should probably say that such reindexes require full table locks, so you could get contention issues under heavy load when reindexing your database. Mysql gets by this by making indexes in a temporary space, and switching when the index is done. This means I can select from a table, with full benefit of an existing index, even while I change an index, or even redo the index. Not that I have to... mysql doesn't require vacuum or reindex to avoid continuous linear bloat.
So... we don't like having to babysit our database to get good performance out of it. We're willing to work around lack of foreign keys to avoid having to do full database import/exports on a weekly basis, and multiple hourly cron jobs to make sure we don't randomly fill our disks. Faster? Slower? Who cares. Postgres is just too annoying to use in production.
Naw. I can remember one thing vividly from when I was about a year and a half old. When I relayed the story of that memory to my mother, she was surprised I knew it, and filled in some holes for me. Too bad I can't remember the event when I was four and walked up to my mother with a garter snake in my hand, and said, "Look mommy! A worm!". I've been told I did that, but I have no memory of it.
See, I was wondering how this could happen. Square has been constantly churning out the best RPG's in the industry while Enix was basically silent. The Final Fantasy movie notwithstanding, how in the hell does a company that only has 0.8 share points for every 1 of another, absorb that more valuable company?
I could at least logically understand Square absorbing the essentially defunct Enix, but this?
What exactly is your point, bucko? Because I seem to remember something about quite a few high-quality home and car audio systems using the equivalent of a computer CD-ROM in their systems for various reasons. Why does this matter? It's the point of the exercise, my friend. Those are pieces of equipment that everybody and their dog owns right now, as we sit and bitch about this.
Wanna know what happens when everybody and their dog buys even one CD that won't work in their players, and later finds out that most new CD's will have the same problem? Yeah, you got it: pandemonium.
And if you think the slashdot crowd is the only group of people with computers that like to listen to CD's, I think you should look up the national sales figures for computers. What's that? Oh yeah, that's the sound of millions of computers no longer playing new CD's and just as many people screaming bloody murder as a result.
But you are right. This has little or nothing to do with people like us. It's everyone else the music industry needs to worry about.
Some "observation". The mod scene has been around for quite a while, now. It's slowly getting more popular as more people do it, and the Dremel certainly didn't hurt any. I've personally wanted to build my own case since about '97 - long before the iMac, and I know I'm not the only one. C'mon, as a geek, you should know that a correlation does not a relationship make.
Or was Amazon really the first company to use cookies to control sales, instead of just the most high profile? No wait, what am I saying. Anyone who comes up with a way to click on something and buy it instantly must have gotten the idea and implementation from Amazon. Hence, all case modders owe their creativity to Apple.
Actually, I had a similar thought. Should the FSF and RMS continue to demand people use the GNU/ designation before Linux, and start to impose restrictions - license or otherwise - people will stop using it. It doesn't matter if it's payment through money or recognition, people hate to be forced to do anything, so there'll be resistance.
Want me to pay for your software I can get elsewhere? Yeah, right. Want me to put the name of your software into my software, when I can just switch to something that doesn't have that restriction? Yeah, right.
They're starting to sound whiny and annoying, and people can only take so much of that before just avoiding the situation entirely. I wonder...
What was that about Vader, squeezing, and star-systems?
1. apple makes their money selling hardware. they will lose all that revenue if people can just use a walmart $400 pc.
I dunno... Seems to me that Microsoft did just fine being a software company. Now that Apple has an OS I'd actually buy, it's a shame I don't like being locked into one hardware solution.
One worrying question - are they getting all the power for the smartcard from that laser pulse?
This is a CD, remember? It's all done with mirrors. Imagine that a correct key with a valid
checksum is the only one that would pass through
the cd and be re-emitted at the receiving diode.
What's the key? Modulate the laser based on
some arbitrary algorithm between text key and
output voltages.
"It turns out speaking uses auditory memory, which is in the same space as your short-term and working memory," he adds.
What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time.
Then they say later:
Visualization, you see, is Shneiderman's thing. You can tell by how his voice springs to life when he starts talking about the visual interface projects underway at the University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Lab...
So... which is it? If it's hard to speak and
think at the same time, how is it that he can
vividly explain experiments they've been
conducting, while obviously thinking about what
he's saying? People go off on rants about things
they feel strongly about, all the time. This
obviously takes thinking and speaking at the
same time. What gives?
Personally, I think it's more implying that
the train of thought being broken by things not
related to speech can impair memory. In that
case, he's right that visual/tactical useage can
augment usage. But if a computer were like HAL,
the AI would hear the emphasis in your voice,
and understand the implications of your
sentences, just like a human. You can talk to
humans, so how is this any different?
I think the reporters are just getting a
little too excited over nothing.
As an online vendor, I don't think it would
be very easy to keep track of the taxes in every
municipality in the entire world, and pay the
precise amount of collected taxes per arbitrary
time period, to an arbitrary address in said
country.
Oh good, I have taxes from countries X, Y,
Z, Q, and R. Each has a different rate, each
has a different due date for collected revenues,
each has a different reporting address, etc.
All of these things will change arbitrarily day
by day, and there is no way I know of
tracking them all over the world, especially
when it comes down to local tax laws.
The internet opens up a whole new can'o'worms
here, and they're going to have a hell of a time
getting every vending company in every country
to charge their citizens taxes, and send
said taxes back to the parent country
when/where/when appropriately.
DSL: Too far from the CO in the
middle of a God Damn business district.
Yeah, right.
Then I move to Illinois and Ameritech
refuses to offer anything below Business
class DSL which is very $$ consuming.
802.11b: Yeah right. Where do
live, San Fransisco? In most parts of the
country, this is still ignored or riding on
unslated frequencies which means it can be
turned off at any time.
Satellite: Yeah, as soon as a
few thousand/million people start logging
onto these crap sattelites that are really
1980's technology someone realized could
route internet packets, you'll start to
realize just how invalid this option is.
T1: I live in a duplex with my
landlord. That would bring the price all
the way down to $150 a month. Wow, what a
bargain.
56k: Ah yes. Always an option
for checking email. Unfortunately I like
to work on my website occasionally which I
upload via CVS. Oh, and forget downloading
upgrades. I used to run a BBS on a 2400
baud modem back in the early 90's, so I know
the agony of slow down/uploads. Besides
that, here in Illinois, every call you make,
local or otherwise, costs $0.05 per.
Emergency only, not everyday use.
Yup. Lots of options. Hell, I was lucky
to even get cable. All of these companies
offering DSL or cable wonder why they fail
miserably when people can't even sign up if
they want to. Makes sense to me...
You can't tell me they weren't making a
profit with at least 4 MILLION
customers, especially when they're operating
over ALREADY EXISTING cable
infrastructure! What are they building their
equipment out of, 24k gold?
Ahahaahahahah! Evidently you've never
lived in Illinois, or known anyone who has
ever done so in their entire lives. Illinois
has a surprisingly backwards mishmash of
private networks that each need a small fee
to provide use of their lines. Due to this,
every call you make, local or not, costs
$0.05 at the bare minimum.
Even Iowa has a better phone system. How
sad is that? Illinois also doesn't recycle or
use Ethenol in their gasoline. That's just
one example of how even a single state of the
US can vastly differ from the rest. I won't
even touch city government with a 100 meter
poll. Each state is almost its own country
loosely associated with a larger federal
control for the sake of simplicity and
cooperation between states. But just from
one side of the Mississippi to the other,
even if you only move three miles from Iowa
to Illinois, and Sweet Baby Jesus the red
tape that is required to complete said move
is insane.
Insurance up $400 a year. State taxes
down $600 a year. New drivers license, new
registration, vastly different system handling
both. Etc, etc, etc. All because I moved
three freaking miles!
There are very few things you can
say that actually apply the the US as a whole.
The shitty antiquated adherance to state-based
system ensures that. We're essentially a
bunch of separate countries that believe in
the Constitution and Bill of Rights with a
few federal mandates thrown in for good
measure. Aside from that, lots of federal
level things are overridden, very few things
are similar, and every state has a bunch of
different old laws that no longer apply to
current society.
Now, take a company, or a bunch of
companies, that instead of spreading across
one state (European country) tries to spread
across multiple states with the goal of
covering the entire God Damn
continent (Europe.) The guy is
right about us, but for the wrong reasons.
There very well may be specific states that
smack Holland around, but as a whole, we
aren't really all that far from Europe as a
whole. Except for one thing. Since they
actually are separate
countries, they have better concentration
on desired goals than any of our individual
states could muster. If the US wanted
to do that, they have to first push it past
the various branches of government and push
it down to all the individual states as
well. With things that can't be federally
mandated, that's almost a pipe-dream.
We're a slug. But we're a big slug on a
skate-board. We'll get there...
eventually.
Besides, it doesn't matter anyway. Japan
kicks the rest of the world's ass as far as
technology is concerned. Their country is
about the size of California. They're nimble,
small, and able to kick our sorry asses in
almost every facet of innovation. They
scrapped an entire cell-phone system in
three years in favor of something better.
We'd never put up with that here. Even
their corporations change business focus
before
resorting to layoffs. (Note the company
that changed from producing ice-breaking
ships to indoor skiing and beaches using
the technology they already had for making
ice and creating waves.) Here, we slog
around, and fire as many people as humanly
possible as slaves to the stock market.
All I have to say is that the type of
overhead you're dealing with (government,
business, land size, etc.) can vastly affect
the speed of saturation of new technologies.
Countries with a focus like Japan or Holland
will slap us around like you wouldn't believe
because they just have an insanely smaller
amount of uncooperative roadblocks along the
way.
But you already said that. No compelling
need. We're so individualistic, no part of
the country has the kind of focus necessary
for much forward movement. We seem to like
lateral development better. We're a jack of
all trades, master of none. That's probably
how it will always be. There's nothing wrong
with that, but it also means all of these
smaller countries will kick our ass on
something for a while before we get around
to doing it too.
Live with it. ^_^
Re:Diversifying Markets
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
Capitalism
Wow. I'm so glad you enlightened my
obviously damaged and useless brain to a word
I apparently don't have in my rather meager
vocabulary. On that vein, I shall levy many
words and phrases upon you which also fit
the situation.
Johny come lately.
New kid on the block.
Pissing in the pool.
Arrogant little bastard.
Now, you may be well informed that these
are many things that most people don't like
at first. I was the new kid on many
occasions, so I know it's hard. But when
you're the new kid that goes around telling
everyone else how much they suck, that they
aren't as cool as you, and then start waving
money around like it makes everything ok,
you might as well get ready for the ass-whuppin' you're about to receive.
What's that? An analogy? Sarcasm?
Even, God forbid, humor? Well that tears it,
I better start kicking myself in the head
for even attempting such
things where such concepts are painfully
foreign. Notice the links to Penny Arcade?
Oh wait... no, that would be far too
subtle as well. Geez, I just can't win here.
Whelp. You got me. Your vastly superior
intellectual 5K|L1z0rZ have rendered me
a simpering bowl of zombified jelly. I hope
you're happy.
psssst... that was supposed to be
funny too.
Re:why so negative towards xbox?
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
Um... I think you missed the point. I
basically said, "If you think Salon was brutal,
you should see what Penny Arcade had to say.
They think the XBox is shit on a shingle."
First of all, the mistake you made was in
marking the object "fragile." That just begs
the box to be obliterated in various sundry
ways.
And yes, the only time I've had anything
destroyed was via UPS. It seems they put my
box (insured, thank god) underneith a very
powerful magnet. The monitor took the brunt
of the damage, and when turned on (I ignored
the cracked case,) showed nice and distorted
screen and colors. I was just glad it was
still viewable. Took about a week for the
UPS insurance claims adjuster to check it,
declare it their fault, and have it fixed.
Still though... the box was mashed beyond
belief, and the fact that my monitor was
horribly magnetized did not make me feel
better.
Re:why so negative towards xbox?
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but that just proves my point.
Sony actually did make games before they
attempted to join up with Nintendo. But
The Playstation 1 has been around for at
least five years. Where was Microsoft
back then?
Besides that, Microsoft does
make games. Why do they suddenly need a
console even though it has nothing to do with
their core business model? Sony has always
been in the entertainment and hardware 'biz.
Truthfully though, even though I own a PS2,
the Gamecube is probably the best true gaming
platform out there outside of the Dreamcast.
You can tell it was designed for gaming, and
gaming only. That's the kind of thing gamers
like to see - some concentration.
Microsoft is taking a big
risk with this endevor, and if they keep
ignoring what people are saying, they'll fall
flat on their ass for it. I know about a
dozen gamers or so, and only one has a friend
that will buy an Xbox. You got that right,
I only know a friend of a friend who wants
an Xbox. How sad is that?
Re:why so negative towards xbox?
on
XBox Released
·
· Score: 4, Troll
Is this my imagination, or does slashdot take its anti-microsoft bias into everything they do?
Well, you had to say it, didn't you? I'm not
going to defend Slashdot posters, other gaming
platforms, or even myself. What I will tell you
is that this isn't restricted to the Slashdot
crowd.
Go on over to the
The GIA
and read their double-agent columns for a
while. You'll get more than a few comments
for and against the XBox. The one that really
stood out to me though, was this one:
YOU BIG BULLY!
There's the truth right there. Microsoft
has had years to get into the
game, and only does so now. Why now? Where
were they back when I was 13, playing Zelda or
Sonic? The problem is, company profiteering
notwithstanding, they're making it
obvious that's all they're
interested in. "Oh look! The gaming industry
has lots of money! We can get some of that!"
Not the best way to make friends.
Besides that, have you actually read what
the general gaming community thinks about the
XBox? I've talked to random people I meet in
gaming stores, and I hear the same damn thing
every time. "The Xbox is the size of a
Buick," or "The controller could kill small children," and even a "Microsoft makes shit, and I won't buy it." These are the
very people Microsoft is
trying to target, here. What makes you think
Slashdot is going to be more forgiving
than your average gamer? The Slashdot bias
is assumed.
But head on over to
Penny
Arcade if you think Salon is being harsh.
Dear Sweet Merciful God, this thing is the
laughing stock of the entire gaming community,
and they seem completely blind to it.
I've been gaming since I was 5. Xbox is
a me-too, and I'm not impressed. Go home,
little Xbox, I don't want to play with
arrogant bastards like you.
This may seem obvious, but why not give $$ to
one of your friends to build it for you? You'd
get a pre-built system out of it, and he or she
would enjoy the system-building phase.
It's a win-win solution!
I personally love building PC's. I like
putting them together, optimizing, tweaking...
even customizing when I pull out a dremel.
Trust me. The quality you'd get from having
a knowledgeable friend do the dirty work is
far greater than the crap a major vendor will
give you.
Why? People like me build our systems with
love! ^_^
Besides, how else are you going to get that
Dual 1.2Ghz Athlon MP system you've always
wanted?
Your base system works fine with its original key, but add
a large hard drive, or more memory, and product activation
informs you that you have to reactivate. At that point,
there's nothing to keep Microsoft from declaring that your new
equipment constitutes an advanced configuration, requiring you
to pay more in order to obtain an activation key that would
enable you to use it.
Now *that* is frightening. I never even really thought of
that, and it makes perfect sense. If they know what users
are using, they can arbitrarily set up pricing schemes on what
the OS will support.
"Oh, you want to use a CDR? You need the Content
Production Expansion(tm)."
If this is the way things are going... I
really fear for the future of computing.
Especially if they pass the Bill for requiring digital content controls.
The average person reads about a page every
two minutes. Due to re-reading, clarifying,
or what have you. 10 hours is *barely* enough
time to read a 275 page book if you take
that into account.
Besides, that has to be the most idiotic
idea I've heard in a long time. Books are not
about time! The phrase "To sit down
and relax with a good book." and its ilk
are a perfect example of why this will fail.
For a most part, books are read for pleasure.
Nobody wants to be rushed through the book
unless the ocntent is simply that
gripping.
This is just a stupid idea, period. Just
like DIVX, it'll fail. Nobody wants something
in their house they have to keep activating
to use.
Slashdot Mirror
We run postgres and we're doing our damndest to get rid of it. We have some databases that get 50-100% data turnover rate daily, making hourly vacuums essential to not having the Ever Expanding Database problem. Not to mention that vacuum doesn't clean up indexes, so you'll also have to re-index periodically if you don't want those to grow to thousands of times their optimal size.
I should probably say that such reindexes require full table locks, so you could get contention issues under heavy load when reindexing your database. Mysql gets by this by making indexes in a temporary space, and switching when the index is done. This means I can select from a table, with full benefit of an existing index, even while I change an index, or even redo the index. Not that I have to... mysql doesn't require vacuum or reindex to avoid continuous linear bloat.
So... we don't like having to babysit our database to get good performance out of it. We're willing to work around lack of foreign keys to avoid having to do full database import/exports on a weekly basis, and multiple hourly cron jobs to make sure we don't randomly fill our disks. Faster? Slower? Who cares. Postgres is just too annoying to use in production.
Naw. I can remember one thing vividly from when I was about a year and a half old. When I relayed the story of that memory to my mother, she was surprised I knew it, and filled in some holes for me. Too bad I can't remember the event when I was four and walked up to my mother with a garter snake in my hand, and said, "Look mommy! A worm!". I've been told I did that, but I have no memory of it.
Nice theory, though. ^_^
Whereas 8 Mile currently stands at 74%.
I mean... I liked 8 Mile and all, but even with the basic Trek bias, it can't be that much better...
See, I was wondering how this could happen. Square has been constantly churning out the best RPG's in the industry while Enix was basically silent. The Final Fantasy movie notwithstanding, how in the hell does a company that only has 0.8 share points for every 1 of another, absorb that more valuable company?
I could at least logically understand Square absorbing the essentially defunct Enix, but this?
Insanity!
What exactly is your point, bucko? Because I seem to remember something about quite a few high-quality home and car audio systems using the equivalent of a computer CD-ROM in their systems for various reasons. Why does this matter? It's the point of the exercise, my friend. Those are pieces of equipment that everybody and their dog owns right now, as we sit and bitch about this.
Wanna know what happens when everybody and their dog buys even one CD that won't work in their players, and later finds out that most new CD's will have the same problem? Yeah, you got it: pandemonium.
And if you think the slashdot crowd is the only group of people with computers that like to listen to CD's, I think you should look up the national sales figures for computers. What's that? Oh yeah, that's the sound of millions of computers no longer playing new CD's and just as many people screaming bloody murder as a result.
But you are right. This has little or nothing to do with people like us. It's everyone else the music industry needs to worry about.
Some "observation". The mod scene has been around for quite a while, now. It's slowly getting more popular as more people do it, and the Dremel certainly didn't hurt any. I've personally wanted to build my own case since about '97 - long before the iMac, and I know I'm not the only one. C'mon, as a geek, you should know that a correlation does not a relationship make.
Or was Amazon really the first company to use cookies to control sales, instead of just the most high profile? No wait, what am I saying. Anyone who comes up with a way to click on something and buy it instantly must have gotten the idea and implementation from Amazon. Hence, all case modders owe their creativity to Apple.
Whew. Glad I cleared that up.
Actually, I had a similar thought. Should the FSF and RMS continue to demand people use the GNU/ designation before Linux, and start to impose restrictions - license or otherwise - people will stop using it. It doesn't matter if it's payment through money or recognition, people hate to be forced to do anything, so there'll be resistance.
Want me to pay for your software I can get elsewhere? Yeah, right. Want me to put the name of your software into my software, when I can just switch to something that doesn't have that restriction? Yeah, right.
They're starting to sound whiny and annoying, and people can only take so much of that before just avoiding the situation entirely. I wonder...
What was that about Vader, squeezing, and star-systems?
Dude... seriously. Stop feeding the troll.
^_^
1. apple makes their money selling hardware. they will lose all that revenue if people can just use a walmart $400 pc.
I dunno... Seems to me that Microsoft did just fine being a software company. Now that Apple has an OS I'd actually buy, it's a shame I don't like being locked into one hardware solution.
Ah well... maybe next year.
One worrying question - are they getting all the power for the smartcard from that laser pulse?
This is a CD, remember? It's all done with mirrors. Imagine that a correct key with a valid checksum is the only one that would pass through the cd and be re-emitted at the receiving diode. What's the key? Modulate the laser based on some arbitrary algorithm between text key and output voltages.
Batteries not included.
First the article mentions:
Then they say later:
So... which is it? If it's hard to speak and think at the same time, how is it that he can vividly explain experiments they've been conducting, while obviously thinking about what he's saying? People go off on rants about things they feel strongly about, all the time. This obviously takes thinking and speaking at the same time. What gives?
Personally, I think it's more implying that the train of thought being broken by things not related to speech can impair memory. In that case, he's right that visual/tactical useage can augment usage. But if a computer were like HAL, the AI would hear the emphasis in your voice, and understand the implications of your sentences, just like a human. You can talk to humans, so how is this any different?
I think the reporters are just getting a little too excited over nothing.
You are crack-mad, right?
As an online vendor, I don't think it would be very easy to keep track of the taxes in every municipality in the entire world, and pay the precise amount of collected taxes per arbitrary time period, to an arbitrary address in said country.
Oh good, I have taxes from countries X, Y, Z, Q, and R. Each has a different rate, each has a different due date for collected revenues, each has a different reporting address, etc. All of these things will change arbitrarily day by day, and there is no way I know of tracking them all over the world, especially when it comes down to local tax laws.
The internet opens up a whole new can'o'worms here, and they're going to have a hell of a time getting every vending company in every country to charge their citizens taxes, and send said taxes back to the parent country when/where/when appropriately.
Tards
Let's take these one at a time, shall we?
Yup. Lots of options. Hell, I was lucky to even get cable. All of these companies offering DSL or cable wonder why they fail miserably when people can't even sign up if they want to. Makes sense to me...
You can't tell me they weren't making a profit with at least 4 MILLION customers, especially when they're operating over ALREADY EXISTING cable infrastructure! What are they building their equipment out of, 24k gold?
Also, local calls are free.
Ahahaahahahah! Evidently you've never lived in Illinois, or known anyone who has ever done so in their entire lives. Illinois has a surprisingly backwards mishmash of private networks that each need a small fee to provide use of their lines. Due to this, every call you make, local or not, costs $0.05 at the bare minimum.
Even Iowa has a better phone system. How sad is that? Illinois also doesn't recycle or use Ethenol in their gasoline. That's just one example of how even a single state of the US can vastly differ from the rest. I won't even touch city government with a 100 meter poll. Each state is almost its own country loosely associated with a larger federal control for the sake of simplicity and cooperation between states. But just from one side of the Mississippi to the other, even if you only move three miles from Iowa to Illinois, and Sweet Baby Jesus the red tape that is required to complete said move is insane.
Insurance up $400 a year. State taxes down $600 a year. New drivers license, new registration, vastly different system handling both. Etc, etc, etc. All because I moved three freaking miles!
There are very few things you can say that actually apply the the US as a whole. The shitty antiquated adherance to state-based system ensures that. We're essentially a bunch of separate countries that believe in the Constitution and Bill of Rights with a few federal mandates thrown in for good measure. Aside from that, lots of federal level things are overridden, very few things are similar, and every state has a bunch of different old laws that no longer apply to current society.
Now, take a company, or a bunch of companies, that instead of spreading across one state (European country) tries to spread across multiple states with the goal of covering the entire God Damn continent (Europe.) The guy is right about us, but for the wrong reasons. There very well may be specific states that smack Holland around, but as a whole, we aren't really all that far from Europe as a whole. Except for one thing. Since they actually are separate countries, they have better concentration on desired goals than any of our individual states could muster. If the US wanted to do that, they have to first push it past the various branches of government and push it down to all the individual states as well. With things that can't be federally mandated, that's almost a pipe-dream. We're a slug. But we're a big slug on a skate-board. We'll get there... eventually.
Besides, it doesn't matter anyway. Japan kicks the rest of the world's ass as far as technology is concerned. Their country is about the size of California. They're nimble, small, and able to kick our sorry asses in almost every facet of innovation. They scrapped an entire cell-phone system in three years in favor of something better. We'd never put up with that here. Even their corporations change business focus before resorting to layoffs. (Note the company that changed from producing ice-breaking ships to indoor skiing and beaches using the technology they already had for making ice and creating waves.) Here, we slog around, and fire as many people as humanly possible as slaves to the stock market.
All I have to say is that the type of overhead you're dealing with (government, business, land size, etc.) can vastly affect the speed of saturation of new technologies. Countries with a focus like Japan or Holland will slap us around like you wouldn't believe because they just have an insanely smaller amount of uncooperative roadblocks along the way.
But you already said that. No compelling need. We're so individualistic, no part of the country has the kind of focus necessary for much forward movement. We seem to like lateral development better. We're a jack of all trades, master of none. That's probably how it will always be. There's nothing wrong with that, but it also means all of these smaller countries will kick our ass on something for a while before we get around to doing it too.
Live with it. ^_^
Capitalism
Wow. I'm so glad you enlightened my obviously damaged and useless brain to a word I apparently don't have in my rather meager vocabulary. On that vein, I shall levy many words and phrases upon you which also fit the situation.
Now, you may be well informed that these are many things that most people don't like at first. I was the new kid on many occasions, so I know it's hard. But when you're the new kid that goes around telling everyone else how much they suck, that they aren't as cool as you, and then start waving money around like it makes everything ok, you might as well get ready for the ass-whuppin' you're about to receive.
What's that? An analogy? Sarcasm? Even, God forbid, humor? Well that tears it, I better start kicking myself in the head for even attempting such things where such concepts are painfully foreign. Notice the links to Penny Arcade? Oh wait... no, that would be far too subtle as well. Geez, I just can't win here.
Whelp. You got me. Your vastly superior intellectual 5K|L1z0rZ have rendered me a simpering bowl of zombified jelly. I hope you're happy.
psssst... that was supposed to be funny too.
Um... I think you missed the point. I
basically said, "If you think Salon was brutal,
you should see what Penny Arcade had to say.
They think the XBox is shit on a shingle."
There. Is that clear enough for you?
First of all, the mistake you made was in marking the object "fragile." That just begs the box to be obliterated in various sundry ways.
And yes, the only time I've had anything destroyed was via UPS. It seems they put my box (insured, thank god) underneith a very powerful magnet. The monitor took the brunt of the damage, and when turned on (I ignored the cracked case,) showed nice and distorted screen and colors. I was just glad it was still viewable. Took about a week for the UPS insurance claims adjuster to check it, declare it their fault, and have it fixed.
Still though... the box was mashed beyond belief, and the fact that my monitor was horribly magnetized did not make me feel better.
Yeah, but that just proves my point. Sony actually did make games before they attempted to join up with Nintendo. But The Playstation 1 has been around for at least five years. Where was Microsoft back then?
Besides that, Microsoft does make games. Why do they suddenly need a console even though it has nothing to do with their core business model? Sony has always been in the entertainment and hardware 'biz.
Truthfully though, even though I own a PS2, the Gamecube is probably the best true gaming platform out there outside of the Dreamcast. You can tell it was designed for gaming, and gaming only. That's the kind of thing gamers like to see - some concentration.
Microsoft is taking a big risk with this endevor, and if they keep ignoring what people are saying, they'll fall flat on their ass for it. I know about a dozen gamers or so, and only one has a friend that will buy an Xbox. You got that right, I only know a friend of a friend who wants an Xbox. How sad is that?
Is this my imagination, or does slashdot take its anti-microsoft bias into everything they do?
Well, you had to say it, didn't you? I'm not going to defend Slashdot posters, other gaming platforms, or even myself. What I will tell you is that this isn't restricted to the Slashdot crowd.
Go on over to the The GIA and read their double-agent columns for a while. You'll get more than a few comments for and against the XBox. The one that really stood out to me though, was this one: YOU BIG BULLY!
There's the truth right there. Microsoft has had years to get into the game, and only does so now. Why now? Where were they back when I was 13, playing Zelda or Sonic? The problem is, company profiteering notwithstanding, they're making it obvious that's all they're interested in. "Oh look! The gaming industry has lots of money! We can get some of that!"
Not the best way to make friends.
Besides that, have you actually read what the general gaming community thinks about the XBox? I've talked to random people I meet in gaming stores, and I hear the same damn thing every time. "The Xbox is the size of a Buick," or "The controller could kill small children," and even a "Microsoft makes shit, and I won't buy it." These are the very people Microsoft is trying to target, here. What makes you think Slashdot is going to be more forgiving than your average gamer? The Slashdot bias is assumed.
But head on over to Penny Arcade if you think Salon is being harsh. Dear Sweet Merciful God, this thing is the laughing stock of the entire gaming community, and they seem completely blind to it.
I've been gaming since I was 5. Xbox is a me-too, and I'm not impressed. Go home, little Xbox, I don't want to play with arrogant bastards like you.
It's not that easy. I have a registered version of Opera on Linux and went to msn.com with Opera reporting that it was MSIE.
I still got the messages.
This tells me that they're actually testing for things other than browser type.
I really don't know what to say about this...
This may seem obvious, but why not give $$ to one of your friends to build it for you? You'd get a pre-built system out of it, and he or she would enjoy the system-building phase.
It's a win-win solution!
I personally love building PC's. I like putting them together, optimizing, tweaking... even customizing when I pull out a dremel. Trust me. The quality you'd get from having a knowledgeable friend do the dirty work is far greater than the crap a major vendor will give you.
Why? People like me build our systems with love! ^_^
Besides, how else are you going to get that Dual 1.2Ghz Athlon MP system you've always wanted?
Noooo...
There is no *spoon*.
Jeez.
Your base system works fine with its original key, but add a large hard drive, or more memory, and product activation informs you that you have to reactivate. At that point, there's nothing to keep Microsoft from declaring that your new equipment constitutes an advanced configuration, requiring you to pay more in order to obtain an activation key that would enable you to use it.
Now *that* is frightening. I never even really thought of that, and it makes perfect sense. If they know what users are using, they can arbitrarily set up pricing schemes on what the OS will support.
"Oh, you want to use a CDR? You need the Content Production Expansion(tm)."
If this is the way things are going... I really fear for the future of computing. Especially if they pass the Bill for requiring digital content controls.
::shudder::
Speed reading. No doubt.
The average person reads about a page every two minutes. Due to re-reading, clarifying, or what have you. 10 hours is *barely* enough time to read a 275 page book if you take that into account.
Besides, that has to be the most idiotic idea I've heard in a long time. Books are not about time! The phrase "To sit down and relax with a good book." and its ilk are a perfect example of why this will fail. For a most part, books are read for pleasure. Nobody wants to be rushed through the book unless the ocntent is simply that gripping.
This is just a stupid idea, period. Just like DIVX, it'll fail. Nobody wants something in their house they have to keep activating to use.
grep default.ida access_log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq | wc -l
155 unique IP's.
grep default.ida access_log | awk '{print $1}' | wc -l
232 Total Hits
grep default.ida access_log | grep home.com | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq | wc -l
32 Uniqe @amp;home hits.
grep default.ida access_log | grep home.com | awk '{print $1}' | wc -l
96 Total @amp;home hits.
Yeah, most attacks are definitely coming from the block I'm on. ::sigh::