Interestingly, I actually prefer a wheelchair for racing up the stairs. When on foot, the fact that I'm a parapalegic is what limits my climbing speed, while when everyone's in a wheelchair, I can keep up no trouble.
The Microsoft Word import filter for OpenOffice is really good. It's significantly better than if you try to use a word document from the current version of Word in the last version.
How would you feel if you were the engineer working at Intel and you found out that some douche who didn't even have fab capibility had patented the concept you just came up with, which is really a pretty obvious extention of the work you'd been doing for the past 10 years. I mean, it probably just took you a couple weeks to figure out the correct way to solve the problem, but it turns out that some random has been granted exclusive rights by the government just for looking at the problem first.
Is that scenario really more reasonable than just letting people use the best techniques they are aware of?
Do you really want to claim that photographic images and video are not valuable for communication?
What's next? Television and radio news don't qualifiy for freedom of the press because they don't even use a press?
Remember, the root servers just point to the top level domains, so you wouldn't even be messing with the existing registrars for.com /.net /.org /.co.uk / whatever. Basically all fragmentation would do is make adding new TLDs harder, which seems fine to me.
Here's the tricky thing: Set up new root servers that *duplicate* the existing servers and get all the ISPs in your country to use them. The only change is that you won't be compatible with new top level domains if you don't want to, and nobody cares if.cat works so you're likely to win. And by "you", I mean "some european country".
Or they could just let the existing organizations adminster.com /.net /.org /.us /.info /.biz and just move the root server into UN control.
In fact, anyone who wants to could run duplicate identical root servers, so there's no problem at all except that the name space could fragment in that people using alternate top level servers wouldn't have access to sites on new top level domain names. Even then the server operators could include them in a.compat TLD or something. So... anyone can do whatever they want, DNS is really just a consensus between the various ISPs anyway.
We can't actually discuss that topic. The minute that underage pornography comes up and someone wants to given an example of a picture of a nude 17-year-old in a sexual situation the FBI will storm in - reguardless of the fact that that 17 year old could have been having legal consentual sex for four years in some US states.
The problem, at least the problem I have, is an AMD socket 754 processor. All the new PCI Express motherboards are for socket 939, and I'm not spending $350 to lose 512k of level 2 cache.
I got my computer almost two years ago, and there's really no performance gain to be had by upgrading my processor and motherboard unless I want to spend the money to go dual core. On the other hand, upgrading to a 6800 Ultra or 7800 GT/GTX would be a huge jump from my current FX 5900.
Meh, I'll just keep waiting until Quake 4 comes out, and then worry about it.
kilo/mega/giga are S.I. prefixes, yes. Bytes are not S.I. units though, so there's no reason for the S.I. prefix rules to apply, any more than you need to use kiloyard instead of mile.
When I have a disease, my doctor expects me to understand the basics of that disease and how to deal with it.
When you have a computer, I expect you to understand the basics of that computer and how to deal with it.
Basic computer use isn't a field specific skill any more than how to open a door is a skill specific to locksmiths. People should understand how to deal with the tools they are using - being intentionally ignorant is not some sort of natural right.
Why should I need to know what a "gas petal" is to drive a car? When I ran into a curb, I had to "change a tire"! One day the lights wouldn't turn on in the house. It took me a while to figure out that I hadn't paid my "electrical bill". I wanted to get some food at the store, but they said I needed "money".
There are a lot of concepts that people need to deal with, and words for those concepts. The human brain is capible of storing and processing an extremely large amount of information. If you can't handle using a computer, I suggest not doing it. If you want to use a computer, you should be expected to understand what a megabyte is the same way you should be expected to understand what a "gallon" or "liter" (depending on where you live) is if you drive a car.
And there's cellphones, computers, VCR's, television sets, microwave oven's, cars, electronic thermostats, ATM's, pincodes/passwords to remember, PDA's, the WWW, e-mail, instant messaging, equipment/software at the workplace, and your average pile of paperwork (taxes, employer, health insurance,...) to deal with.
The thing is, there's a general pattern to how these things work. Once you've figured out the basics of personal electronics, there's no problem when you get a new VCR. Once you've figured out GUI computer applications, they're all basically the same. Every once and a while there's an exception, I still haven't learned to use Blender (the 3D modelling/animation package) yet, but mostly computer software is pretty much the same. Given how common items in these two categories are, not learning how to use them is just a sign of laziness and general incompetence.
If your job is sitting in front of a computer, you should know a good chunk about computers. If you hired someone as a trucker carrying oranges and they destroyed the gearbox on one of your trucks by shifting wrong, would you want to hear "knowing the details of operating a truck isn't my job, my job is to transport oranges"?
I have no idea how to personally repair my car, but that doesn't mean I can't drive it with some basic knowledge.
Most drivers in the USA go through a driver education program. It teaches you things like using the turn signals that you'd never figure out if you didn't make an effort to learn them. In order to drive, you also need to understand the traffic signs, and some basic rules of the road. Another example of something non-obvious that most drivers know is the various times when there is an implied stop sign (i.e. Minor road entering major road).
If most people who use computers had the same level of understanding of the basics of using a computer as drivers have of driving a car, there wouldn't be much of a problem.
... and that number is a 100% more valid estimate of the overall Linux desktop market share than the estimate given by the post I was replying to which is probably an order of magnitude too low and includes no reference.
Blizard's last excellent game was StarCraft. Since then, and expecially since they were bought out by V.U., the corporate culture has been destroyed - resulting in shallow formulaic re-hashes of other games.
Linux on the desktop is way less common than Mac. Mac is about 3-5% of the desktop market, Linux is about.25%. That is 6-10 times less, and I'll bet a good portion of those desktops are work machines (I know departments at my company that use Linux for desktops instead of Windows).
Existing solutions are talking about requiring students to buy $70 handsets. That's only cheaper than a wired solution because the cost is being foisted on the students.
You mean like copy is Ctrl+C sometimes, y in Vim, C-w in Emacs, etc?
I rarely have any trouble, except when I try to do things like "copy next word" or "copy this line" that aren't available in the application I'm currently in.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, I actually prefer a wheelchair for racing up the stairs. When on foot, the fact that I'm a parapalegic is what limits my climbing speed, while when everyone's in a wheelchair, I can keep up no trouble.
The real webpage is at http://quake4.ravengames.com/...
The Microsoft Word import filter for OpenOffice is really good. It's significantly better than if you try to use a word document from the current version of Word in the last version.
Is that scenario really more reasonable than just letting people use the best techniques they are aware of?
Do you really want to claim that photographic images and video are not valuable for communication? What's next? Television and radio news don't qualifiy for freedom of the press because they don't even use a press?
Remember, the root servers just point to the top level domains, so you wouldn't even be messing with the existing registrars for .com / .net / .org / .co.uk / whatever. Basically all fragmentation would do is make adding new TLDs harder, which seems fine to me.
Here's the tricky thing: Set up new root servers that *duplicate* the existing servers and get all the ISPs in your country to use them. The only change is that you won't be compatible with new top level domains if you don't want to, and nobody cares if .cat works so you're likely to win. And by "you", I mean "some european country".
In fact, anyone who wants to could run duplicate identical root servers, so there's no problem at all except that the name space could fragment in that people using alternate top level servers wouldn't have access to sites on new top level domain names. Even then the server operators could include them in a .compat TLD or something. So... anyone can do whatever they want, DNS is really just a consensus between the various ISPs anyway.
We can't actually discuss that topic. The minute that underage pornography comes up and someone wants to given an example of a picture of a nude 17-year-old in a sexual situation the FBI will storm in - reguardless of the fact that that 17 year old could have been having legal consentual sex for four years in some US states.
How can there be a category of unprotected speech? Wouldn't that miss the whole point of free speech?
The problem, at least the problem I have, is an AMD socket 754 processor. All the new PCI Express motherboards are for socket 939, and I'm not spending $350 to lose 512k of level 2 cache. I got my computer almost two years ago, and there's really no performance gain to be had by upgrading my processor and motherboard unless I want to spend the money to go dual core. On the other hand, upgrading to a 6800 Ultra or 7800 GT/GTX would be a huge jump from my current FX 5900. Meh, I'll just keep waiting until Quake 4 comes out, and then worry about it.
kilo/mega/giga are S.I. prefixes, yes. Bytes are not S.I. units though, so there's no reason for the S.I. prefix rules to apply, any more than you need to use kiloyard instead of mile.
When I have a disease, my doctor expects me to understand the basics of that disease and how to deal with it.
When you have a computer, I expect you to understand the basics of that computer and how to deal with it.
Basic computer use isn't a field specific skill any more than how to open a door is a skill specific to locksmiths. People should understand how to deal with the tools they are using - being intentionally ignorant is not some sort of natural right.
Why should I need to know what a "gas petal" is to drive a car? When I ran into a curb, I had to "change a tire"! One day the lights wouldn't turn on in the house. It took me a while to figure out that I hadn't paid my "electrical bill". I wanted to get some food at the store, but they said I needed "money".
There are a lot of concepts that people need to deal with, and words for those concepts. The human brain is capible of storing and processing an extremely large amount of information. If you can't handle using a computer, I suggest not doing it. If you want to use a computer, you should be expected to understand what a megabyte is the same way you should be expected to understand what a "gallon" or "liter" (depending on where you live) is if you drive a car.
The thing is, there's a general pattern to how these things work. Once you've figured out the basics of personal electronics, there's no problem when you get a new VCR. Once you've figured out GUI computer applications, they're all basically the same. Every once and a while there's an exception, I still haven't learned to use Blender (the 3D modelling/animation package) yet, but mostly computer software is pretty much the same. Given how common items in these two categories are, not learning how to use them is just a sign of laziness and general incompetence.
If your job is sitting in front of a computer, you should know a good chunk about computers. If you hired someone as a trucker carrying oranges and they destroyed the gearbox on one of your trucks by shifting wrong, would you want to hear "knowing the details of operating a truck isn't my job, my job is to transport oranges"?
Most drivers in the USA go through a driver education program. It teaches you things like using the turn signals that you'd never figure out if you didn't make an effort to learn them. In order to drive, you also need to understand the traffic signs, and some basic rules of the road. Another example of something non-obvious that most drivers know is the various times when there is an implied stop sign (i.e. Minor road entering major road).
If most people who use computers had the same level of understanding of the basics of using a computer as drivers have of driving a car, there wouldn't be much of a problem.
... and that number is a 100% more valid estimate of the overall Linux desktop market share than the estimate given by the post I was replying to which is probably an order of magnitude too low and includes no reference.
Blizard's last excellent game was StarCraft. Since then, and expecially since they were bought out by V.U., the corporate culture has been destroyed - resulting in shallow formulaic re-hashes of other games.
Where do you get your numbers? From Microsoft?
In late 2003, Linux had 2.8% desktop market share to the Mac's 2.9% according to IDC. (ref: http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39 020472,39118695,00.htm
According to w3schools.com, 3.3% of browsers are reporting an operating system of Linux, compared to 3.1% reporting Mac OS. (ref: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp).
Existing solutions are talking about requiring students to buy $70 handsets. That's only cheaper than a wired solution because the cost is being foisted on the students.
Amazing. They've invented the compiler.
or
In fact, as far as I can see, the code is basically identical.
If you're used to perl, you'll spend at least an hour figuring out what it doesn't want you to do... BUT, you'll save days of debug time later.
You mean like copy is Ctrl+C sometimes, y in Vim, C-w in Emacs, etc?
I rarely have any trouble, except when I try to do things like "copy next word" or "copy this line" that aren't available in the application I'm currently in.