It's all or nothing. Once you butt into private industry, private speech, and start mandating tolerance, it's all over.
Typical binary thinking by someone who doesn't have to have his philosophies tested in the real world.
The fact is, laws that "mandate tolerance," such as civil rights legislation, have done much to remove the artificial barriers that kept Blacks and other minorities from succeeding in the workplace.
We here in the US might gripe about the dissolution of "free speech." Our European friends may gently remind us that it's a luxury to debate philosophy when they have some pretty hard evidence that the "hate speech" websites help violent government dissidents to organize.
The US recently arrested a citizen who was making a website for Al-Qaeda. Is this occassion for the melodramatic libertarians to trot out the "1984" FUD again? Or is it possible that this person may have some valuable information? Don't forget, it's (at the very least) selfish to tell others how to run their life when you can't even get your own together.
You know, this reminds me a lot of the C.S Lewis classic, The Silver Chair. The enchanted Prince Rilian is only sane for one hour, when he is tied to his enchanted silver chair.
It makes me wonder-is DNS only sane when the world root servers are switching. Is this the time for the Puddleglums and Poles of the world to sally forth and cut the cords of DNS for good?
I think they should combine this channel with G4, or make a package deal for the ADV channel, G4, Scifi, and Lifetime! That would be the ultimate geek package...only available on time warner!
so is Mozilla's DOM implementation crappy compared to IE or what? I got into an argument with him about whether IE or Moz was better, and he said IE is a lot easier to design webpages for. I couldn't really reply to that...
My friend is a web programmer, and he says that his javascript program works fine in Mac and Windows IE, and he's trying to make it work in Mozilla, but Mozilla takes at least 4 times the code.
He also complained about Mozilla's vaunted "standards compliance." His exact words: "Mozilla invents its own standards, and it's the only one to comply to them."
He's a grump I guess (most programmers are) but I was troubled by this assertation. Isn't javascript "write once, run anyware" kinda stuff? It doesn't seem complex at all.
Dell has a comparable deal that is $999 for an Inspiron 2650, comes with a free hard drive upgrade and a CD-burner (or DVD) upgrade. Not only that, but you get some really great tech support. And no, I don't work for dell.
I have a friend who works tech support for Dell, and even he would take exception to your claims of "great tech support." They've laid off a ton of people since the economy went south. If you call Dell tech support, be prepared to wait on hold for 30 minutes.
Why doesn't Apple start putting USB 2.0 in its machines? I doubt that it's much more expensive than USB 1.1 or whatever they're using. Is it sour grapes from Intel muscling in on Firewire (USB 2.0 has been adopted very quickly by PC motherboard manufacturers). Firewire isn't going anywhere (DV is the killer app that will keep it alive). But it would sure be nice to have access to USB 2.0 stuff like high-end scanners. And I'm sure peripheral manufacturers don't like having to choose between a firewire and USB 2.0 interface for everything.
If Apple would ditch moto, they could have G3s running at 1.8Ghz today. They would most likely be faster than the G4 in just about every category. Apple screwed up big time when they decided to go with the G4. It will probably be a year until they can rectify that mistake (with the PPC 970)
Sometimes. I have enough trouble myself getting Linux GUI programs to work reliably. Even stuff like Open Office will sometimes open a huge window that takes over half the screen, without revealing the close widget. Or when Mplayer ignores your preferences and won't respond to clicking the radio button? Do you want to explain to your girlfriend to how to kill and restart processes on the command line? How about working out dependency conflicts?
Girls shouldn't be exposed to such mind-boggling exercises.
You need to respect the fact that not everyone ones to mess around with their computers all day. Most people want the path of least resistance between them and the task to be done. They don't want to fight with conf files, GUI apps that lack consistency and maturity, and no tech support.
If you are there for her to fix the computer all the time, then it might be okay. But realize that the crashes that come with Windows are much less of a problem for the nontechnical than wrangling with the complexities of Linux.
Also, an environment like KDE which has the look and feel of Windows, but doesn't have the full functionality, can bring expectations. When the desktop looks like Windows, but doesn't work exactly like Windows (such as cut and paste), it is very easy for people to dismiss Linux as merely a third-rate Windows impostor. Which hurts your credibility as the "trusted computer person" and unfairly hurts perception of Linux.
Do not, I repeat do not force a nontechnical person to use Linux. Your job as a "computer person" that your friends and family trusts is to make the computer experience easier, not harder.
Yes, Windows sucks. If it's having that many problems, see if you can roust up a copy of Win2000 or WinXP. But if you force your girlfriend to use Linux, she will probably end up frustrated and hating it (and maybe even hating you).
Then, in a few years, when Linux is ready for the desktop (if that happens) then she won't want to try it.
If you really think Windows sucks too much for her to use, maybe you should look into getting her a Mac. Forcing nontechnical people to use Linux is not the way to win friends, or spread good feelings for the operating system.
Although I have been a big fan of Stargate over the years, I think it might be time for it to bid a dignified farewell at the top of the ratings, as all good shows (Seinfeld, Mary Tyler Moore) do.
Since the departure of James Spader, the show just hasn't been the same. And while the Egyptian motif is one of the most unique in sci-fi (especially amongst Sci-Fi channel programming), I think it might be time to put the show out to pasture along with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and hope for some new good original programming along the lines of Earth: The Final Conflict.
I am no as knowledgeable in the area of the G4 chipset, so I am not sure, but all the "build your own"/"repair macs" books mention that you need ROM
As of Mac OS X, this is technically not necessary. It's possible to build (and by build I mean ordering exotic parts, heavy duty sautering, etc) a PPC motherboard using the parts described at openppc.org. Once you have a working mobo there, you could then run LinuxPPC. If you wanted to install Darwin (and by extension, Mac OS X) you'd have write your own drivers for unsupported devices, sort of similar to what has been done here.
Ordering/sautering your own hardware + writing the drivers= a very large barrier to entry. For anyone but the most hardcore, it's not work the effort.
If there were an affordable PPC motherboard, it would be a cinch to "build your own Mac" as I am sure there would be drivers for Darwin that would allow it to work on such a motherboard. And if there were a guarantee of getting Mac OS X to work on a non-Apple motherboard, I'm sure that some corporation or another would jump at the chance to make PPC boards.
It's an unfortunate Catch-22, but unless somebody is willing to risk their life savings getting PowerPC boards made, then it's not gonna happen...
Apple doesn't use a BIOS, they use OpenFirmware which is designed by Sun. Mac OS X does not require any type of "boot ROM" on the motherboard to load, so you wouldn't need an Apple part. There are a multitude of other reasons why you don't see Mac clones-think about it.
i've been trying to do this for awhile. The problem is that no one offers a (non-apple, non-ibm, non-motorola) PowerPC motherboard besides chaintech in the UK (fastest you'll get there is a 600mhz G3, and prices are higher than a comparable Apple machine. they basically exist to fleece amiga people.)
Motorola and IBM don't sell their CPUs to end users. You can order a G4 or even a G5 (PPC 8500 series) from one of Mot's suppliers like Arrow, but I believe they force you to order in high quantities (40+ at a time).
During the dot-bomb era, several companies like Eternal Computing and Silicon Fruit promised to offer affordable PowerPC motherboards to retail customers. Nothing ever came of it (insert Apple conspiracy theory here).
I think there's a market for retail PowerPC motherboards, or there will be once IBM's 970 hits the market. It's fun to mess with exotic hardware like the PPC, and its performance is very impressive considering its limited clock speed. IBM has published a spec for PowerPC logic boards that is available for free on its website (i'm sure someone else has posted the link by now).
Linux would run on these things in no time (maybe we could even build our own TiVOs with 'em). And Mac OS X would be easy to port, with or without Apple's help.
I don't think IBM would like this idea very much however, since it might undercut their huge margins on PPC-based servers. On the other hand, if they manufactured and sold the motherboard for cheap, they could bring PPC to a much larger audience.
I missed the web design glut of the late nineties, but now I find myself wanting to learn web design to assist the overwhelmed (and mostly unemployed) graphic design staff.
is this a book a good place to start? I rented an HTML book from the library back in the days of blinking text and "exciting Java applets" but now i think it mostly props up my couch (it had a chapter on VRML).
So VRML seems pretty cool. The Chapter was called Flying through the web and it suggested that the future web will be organized sort of like everquest, but with less load time. Is that a dystopian future?;)
Anyway: should I buy this book and learn HTML this way, or should I pay some tutor who used to work at pets.com or something?
They feel too much of an urge to speak quickly, making them say embarrasing or stupid things. The addition of a keyboard and a delay slow down the communication and allow us to speak our minds.
it doesn't slow a lot of people down enough. if you are building an online community, i would emphasize the art of not posting unless you have something significant to contribute.
unfortunately, i find that many people on slashdot are so eager to prove their intelligence, they plunge headlong threads they know nothing about, providing "facts" that they half-remember from another slashdot thread posted months ago. (yes, haven't we all been guilty of this).
the off-topic moderation is also not used nearly enough. i have seen threads with hundreds of responses (many modded up to +3 or more) that started when one person made an incongruous computer/car metaphor, and then another one decided to correct him with his own incongruous metaphor. Finally, the thread degenerates into Ford vs. Chevy.
moderation in general is less a measure of the "quality" of a post and more about tone. sound authoritative, you'll get the mods +. sound unsure or angry, and you'll get the mods -.
now i don't mean to whine too much about this, but come on. i can't read about some new PDA because someone decided to make an inappropriate comment about how a palm pilot is like a ford festiva and an iPaq is like a gran turino. the lameness filter probably can't get smart enough to catch those.
the "zoo" doesn't help much either, because someone who makes a boneheaded comments in a discussion about PDAs might be the world's biggest genius when it comes to embedded devices-marking him as a foe might cause me to miss something that actually is in fact, "+1 informative".
what's the solution for this? currently i read at -1, and make my own choices. But-in order to provide the best online community possible, i propose that slashdot extend the "2-post a day rule" that it currently exercises on low-karma posters to everyone. this would gently encourage the experts to save up their posts for a topic where they could truly educate others.
I guess that makes me 3l33t, since I didn't have any problems with it (despite knowing little about Linux).
I use diabian at home to run my firewall advice. It's an old K5 machine that runs at 100mhz...remember when they bought that other CPU company (what was their name, Ktech?)
I used to play Duke Nukem on it, and my name was K5KICKBUT...
it "should be read regularly" if you like pseudotechnical hogwash, incestuous relationships between advertisers and content providers, and meaningless benchmark data.
I know I'll get modded down for this...even slashdot isn't immune from morons who think they know something about computers because they can build one...if you need a support group for people who spend insane amounts of money to make their quake3 framerate go up, then by all means, go visit Tom.
I don't know about radio, but in the video/film industry there is a huge, artificial gap between "consumer" and "pro" equipment. For example, there are consumer DV cameras for $300 that have an integrated DV VTR. If you want a standalone DV deck, they start at $1200. Why is a standalone deck (without lens, CCDs, or any camera components) 4 times as much? Because the decks can convert from analog to digital...
Even with things like microphones, the price seems to increase by 4x between the highest grade "consumer" item and the lowest grade "pro" item (sometimes the consumer item is actually HIGHER quality). The effect, whether intentional or not, is lifting the barrier of entry.
Wow. I knew most PC gamers were shallow enough not to care about anything but graphics, but all you care about is lack of copy protection?
I guess it's good that Counter-Strike's creator doesn't view his fans as idiots with money to burn (a la John Carmack). Of course, in Carmack's case, he is right....
Slashdot Mirror
Typical binary thinking by someone who doesn't have to have his philosophies tested in the real world.
The fact is, laws that "mandate tolerance," such as civil rights legislation, have done much to remove the artificial barriers that kept Blacks and other minorities from succeeding in the workplace.
We here in the US might gripe about the dissolution of "free speech." Our European friends may gently remind us that it's a luxury to debate philosophy when they have some pretty hard evidence that the "hate speech" websites help violent government dissidents to organize.
The US recently arrested a citizen who was making a website for Al-Qaeda. Is this occassion for the melodramatic libertarians to trot out the "1984" FUD again? Or is it possible that this person may have some valuable information? Don't forget, it's (at the very least) selfish to tell others how to run their life when you can't even get your own together.
It makes me wonder-is DNS only sane when the world root servers are switching. Is this the time for the Puddleglums and Poles of the world to sally forth and cut the cords of DNS for good?
BRAAAAP!
I think they should combine this channel with G4, or make a package deal for the ADV channel, G4, Scifi, and Lifetime! That would be the ultimate geek package...only available on time warner!
so is Mozilla's DOM implementation crappy compared to IE or what? I got into an argument with him about whether IE or Moz was better, and he said IE is a lot easier to design webpages for. I couldn't really reply to that...
He also complained about Mozilla's vaunted "standards compliance." His exact words: "Mozilla invents its own standards, and it's the only one to comply to them."
He's a grump I guess (most programmers are) but I was troubled by this assertation. Isn't javascript "write once, run anyware" kinda stuff? It doesn't seem complex at all.
I have a friend who works tech support for Dell, and even he would take exception to your claims of "great tech support." They've laid off a ton of people since the economy went south. If you call Dell tech support, be prepared to wait on hold for 30 minutes.
Why doesn't Apple start putting USB 2.0 in its machines? I doubt that it's much more expensive than USB 1.1 or whatever they're using. Is it sour grapes from Intel muscling in on Firewire (USB 2.0 has been adopted very quickly by PC motherboard manufacturers). Firewire isn't going anywhere (DV is the killer app that will keep it alive). But it would sure be nice to have access to USB 2.0 stuff like high-end scanners. And I'm sure peripheral manufacturers don't like having to choose between a firewire and USB 2.0 interface for everything.
If Apple would ditch moto, they could have G3s running at 1.8Ghz today. They would most likely be faster than the G4 in just about every category. Apple screwed up big time when they decided to go with the G4. It will probably be a year until they can rectify that mistake (with the PPC 970)
You kiss his ass and call him a great programmer.
Play some Mario Sunshine and find true video game happiness.
Sometimes. I have enough trouble myself getting Linux GUI programs to work reliably. Even stuff like Open Office will sometimes open a huge window that takes over half the screen, without revealing the close widget. Or when Mplayer ignores your preferences and won't respond to clicking the radio button? Do you want to explain to your girlfriend to how to kill and restart processes on the command line? How about working out dependency conflicts?
Girls shouldn't be exposed to such mind-boggling exercises.
You need to respect the fact that not everyone ones to mess around with their computers all day. Most people want the path of least resistance between them and the task to be done. They don't want to fight with conf files, GUI apps that lack consistency and maturity, and no tech support.
If you are there for her to fix the computer all the time, then it might be okay. But realize that the crashes that come with Windows are much less of a problem for the nontechnical than wrangling with the complexities of Linux.
Also, an environment like KDE which has the look and feel of Windows, but doesn't have the full functionality, can bring expectations. When the desktop looks like Windows, but doesn't work exactly like Windows (such as cut and paste), it is very easy for people to dismiss Linux as merely a third-rate Windows impostor. Which hurts your credibility as the "trusted computer person" and unfairly hurts perception of Linux.
Yes, Windows sucks. If it's having that many problems, see if you can roust up a copy of Win2000 or WinXP. But if you force your girlfriend to use Linux, she will probably end up frustrated and hating it (and maybe even hating you).
Then, in a few years, when Linux is ready for the desktop (if that happens) then she won't want to try it.
If you really think Windows sucks too much for her to use, maybe you should look into getting her a Mac. Forcing nontechnical people to use Linux is not the way to win friends, or spread good feelings for the operating system.
Who thinks that brak.slashdot.org should stay separate? I think it's much more fun than the normal slashdot. Visit my journal if you think so!
Since the departure of James Spader, the show just hasn't been the same. And while the Egyptian motif is one of the most unique in sci-fi (especially amongst Sci-Fi channel programming), I think it might be time to put the show out to pasture along with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and hope for some new good original programming along the lines of Earth: The Final Conflict.
As of Mac OS X, this is technically not necessary. It's possible to build (and by build I mean ordering exotic parts, heavy duty sautering, etc) a PPC motherboard using the parts described at openppc.org. Once you have a working mobo there, you could then run LinuxPPC. If you wanted to install Darwin (and by extension, Mac OS X) you'd have write your own drivers for unsupported devices, sort of similar to what has been done here.
Ordering/sautering your own hardware + writing the drivers= a very large barrier to entry. For anyone but the most hardcore, it's not work the effort.
If there were an affordable PPC motherboard, it would be a cinch to "build your own Mac" as I am sure there would be drivers for Darwin that would allow it to work on such a motherboard. And if there were a guarantee of getting Mac OS X to work on a non-Apple motherboard, I'm sure that some corporation or another would jump at the chance to make PPC boards.
It's an unfortunate Catch-22, but unless somebody is willing to risk their life savings getting PowerPC boards made, then it's not gonna happen...
Apple doesn't use a BIOS, they use OpenFirmware which is designed by Sun. Mac OS X does not require any type of "boot ROM" on the motherboard to load, so you wouldn't need an Apple part. There are a multitude of other reasons why you don't see Mac clones-think about it.
Motorola and IBM don't sell their CPUs to end users. You can order a G4 or even a G5 (PPC 8500 series) from one of Mot's suppliers like Arrow, but I believe they force you to order in high quantities (40+ at a time).
During the dot-bomb era, several companies like Eternal Computing and Silicon Fruit promised to offer affordable PowerPC motherboards to retail customers. Nothing ever came of it (insert Apple conspiracy theory here).
I think there's a market for retail PowerPC motherboards, or there will be once IBM's 970 hits the market. It's fun to mess with exotic hardware like the PPC, and its performance is very impressive considering its limited clock speed. IBM has published a spec for PowerPC logic boards that is available for free on its website (i'm sure someone else has posted the link by now).
Linux would run on these things in no time (maybe we could even build our own TiVOs with 'em). And Mac OS X would be easy to port, with or without Apple's help.
I don't think IBM would like this idea very much however, since it might undercut their huge margins on PPC-based servers. On the other hand, if they manufactured and sold the motherboard for cheap, they could bring PPC to a much larger audience.
is this a book a good place to start? I rented an HTML book from the library back in the days of blinking text and "exciting Java applets" but now i think it mostly props up my couch (it had a chapter on VRML).
So VRML seems pretty cool. The Chapter was called Flying through the web and it suggested that the future web will be organized sort of like everquest, but with less load time. Is that a dystopian future? ;)
Anyway: should I buy this book and learn HTML this way, or should I pay some tutor who used to work at pets.com or something?
While we're wondering about this, can I just step in and ask: how many angels will fit on the head of a pin?
PowerOpen would be a suitable ABI for any UNIX app that's POSIX compliant. Perhaps it could even be extended to work with cocoa apps?
it doesn't slow a lot of people down enough. if you are building an online community, i would emphasize the art of not posting unless you have something significant to contribute.
unfortunately, i find that many people on slashdot are so eager to prove their intelligence, they plunge headlong threads they know nothing about, providing "facts" that they half-remember from another slashdot thread posted months ago. (yes, haven't we all been guilty of this).
the off-topic moderation is also not used nearly enough. i have seen threads with hundreds of responses (many modded up to +3 or more) that started when one person made an incongruous computer/car metaphor, and then another one decided to correct him with his own incongruous metaphor. Finally, the thread degenerates into Ford vs. Chevy.
moderation in general is less a measure of the "quality" of a post and more about tone. sound authoritative, you'll get the mods +. sound unsure or angry, and you'll get the mods -.
now i don't mean to whine too much about this, but come on. i can't read about some new PDA because someone decided to make an inappropriate comment about how a palm pilot is like a ford festiva and an iPaq is like a gran turino. the lameness filter probably can't get smart enough to catch those.
the "zoo" doesn't help much either, because someone who makes a boneheaded comments in a discussion about PDAs might be the world's biggest genius when it comes to embedded devices-marking him as a foe might cause me to miss something that actually is in fact, "+1 informative".
what's the solution for this? currently i read at -1, and make my own choices. But-in order to provide the best online community possible, i propose that slashdot extend the "2-post a day rule" that it currently exercises on low-karma posters to everyone. this would gently encourage the experts to save up their posts for a topic where they could truly educate others.
think about it won't you? thanks.
I use diabian at home to run my firewall advice. It's an old K5 machine that runs at 100mhz...remember when they bought that other CPU company (what was their name, Ktech?)
I used to play Duke Nukem on it, and my name was K5KICKBUT...
Whoa, I guess I am l33t!
I know I'll get modded down for this...even slashdot isn't immune from morons who think they know something about computers because they can build one...if you need a support group for people who spend insane amounts of money to make their quake3 framerate go up, then by all means, go visit Tom.
Even with things like microphones, the price seems to increase by 4x between the highest grade "consumer" item and the lowest grade "pro" item (sometimes the consumer item is actually HIGHER quality). The effect, whether intentional or not, is lifting the barrier of entry.
I guess it's good that Counter-Strike's creator doesn't view his fans as idiots with money to burn (a la John Carmack). Of course, in Carmack's case, he is right....