I sort of miss the days where computer shops were Mom and Pop businesses similar to how bike shops are today. It wasn't perfect, but there was something about having someone to physically come to, should computer problems happen, that made those shops worth patronizing. The closest thing we have these days to this is the Genius Bar at the Apple Store.
This must be a regional problem. Around here we have probably a dozen in the economic region. They're "expensive" compared with the box at the warehouse club, though, so they don't do many custom builds.
Am I really the only one who would rather they put prices up by 25%, but supplied reliable hardware and a clean OS installation with original media?
25%, eh? Probably too low. I do this kind of work sometimes, but I can't order the parts for 25% over Dell's cost, much less make any profit at it.
It's about double for a similarly-sounding spec. The desktop is low-end. My storage servers pants the big guys on price, though - they're rolling in the dough on those.
Yeah, Medicare Part D for one. Thank Bush for that. Plus the baby boom retiring. And unfunded liabilities (even Ross Perot was on about that, Clinton never acknowledged them in his 'balance'). Remember all that talk about the Social Security 'lockbox' in the 90's?
I like the "we know how to make this, we have the technology and expertise, and we're going to build a plant so that we can sell it to our customers" approach.
I was going to dismiss this as "not much movement" but then I remembered about inflation. $4.10 in 2010 would be about $3.30 in 2001, so 5.40/3.30 = about a 64% price improvement. That's fairly respectable, though it still looks like decades until it's 'cheap'.
Call me back when they fix the depth of field issue. The whole scene needs to be in focus so that when my eyes aren't looking at precisely what the director wants, my eyes don't try to focus on something that can't be focused on.
Then Ebert is really against 3D because of how much darker the picture is, when normal movies are already projected too darkly half the time.
Hey, you got my top-two beefs about 3D in the theatres. The last one is the inter-ocular distance that the movie is shot at - it has to be an approximation for all but a lucky few.
I predict this will finally all be solved with a camera that has a very wide array of sensors, which records many (say 32) angles and software that will be able to interpolate any given IOD on-the-fly. This will be coupled with personal viewing lenses (LCD or some sort of Microvision-like system) that can be of sufficient resolution and brightness for each eye.
The movies will have to be shot with infinite depth-of-field for it to work. Some will go this route, others will stick with 2D for the artistic sense that forced-perspective allows - the genres are fairly self-apparent.
The only good 3D will be personal 3D, not theatrical. Due to all the funding for 3D coming from the desire for theatres to remain relevant, this tech will probably appear slowly, and most likely in computer games before movies.
I had 'jet fuel' as on my list of things that wouldn't ever likely get replaced with electric storage, and now this reduces the list a bit. Can we just start putting up some modern nuclear reactors and get out of the Middle East then? We've got plenty of sources here for real oil needs.
It's very important that you learn about it - the FairTax people have good write-ups, and the Harvard Economics study is a fine read.
BTW, Dollar Tree has king size loaves of bread for $1 and all my local supermarkets have store-brand for $0.89-1.50. Minimum-Wage-Mom needs to go to a different store.
Sure, bleached white flour and HFCS. I was assuming she cares about her kids. Wal*Mart has 100% whole wheat in 2-packs for $4 on occasion. Good time to stock the freezer.
As for proxies, I guess you guys do not travel much. Paypal normally detects them and refuses to accept the login, which I respect, and they are blocked in most countries I go to. Try to use one next time you are on holiday in somewhere like Thailand. In some Arabic countries (like the UAE) that I go to, their use is actually illegal.
I don't travel all that much but I'm on call and need to be able to use a real Internet when I need to. The DNS+HTTP/S only WAP's are all too prevalent in cafes and hotels these days, so I've set up an OpenVPN instance at my office on port 443 which I use to tunnel all my traffic. It's a consistency play, not getting around any stupid website or national policies specifically.
If there's a real proxy in your way, not just a port-allow, it's a tiny bit more complex, but you can make OpenVPN do real SSL too:
I am concerned about the future if I ever decide to get an internet-capable phone. I don't want police spying on me without a warning that the encryption had been turned off.
Assume they are - do you encryption at the application layer, or at least with a VPN you control.
See, this kind of comment is why Slashdot's 5-point maximum system is problematic - if this were at the top of my display I could have stopped reading there.
Even with logarithmic scoring over 5 you would have done well.
Your point is a good one, assuming efficient central planning, but
Poor people can't afford a $20k car
I just wanted to point out, that part of the reason for this is because they're paying 22% embedded income taxes on all of their commodity needs, some of which goes to pay for these rebates. When a minimum-wage single mother of three is buying a loaf of bread for $2, about 50 cents of that is going to pay other people's income taxes.
The more common problem is hardcoded file names being case sensitive in most *unix file systems. Surely your precious Java can't fix that can it? If not why don't you apply for a job at Sun and show them how trivial it is to fix everything for every one.
IIRC, Apple contributed that code to Java because of the inverse problem on HFS+.
Think about how not-really-hard that text filter is... look for the exact match - if it fails, downcase the requested file name and the directory listing and see if there's a match. The behavior can be set globally or optionally based on an environment variable.
It's like what, 50 lines of code? OK, maybe 200 in java/c#.
They'd probably go nuts, debate and argue, and then give me a 25% cut instead
It doesn't matter. Unless you weigh into the elder welfare programs, the budget can't balance. Take out 100% of military and other federal departments and it still doesn't balance. If you include unfunded liabilities it's $800,000 per household. Tax rates have to rise to a rate so high that not working would be more profitable.
Game, set, match. Either Medicare and Social Security goes or the United States of America does. Sorry you were lied to old folk, I didn't do it. You're going to be pissed when your IRA's are replaced with TIPS based on a bogus CPI too.
I'm happy to see any math that proves this wrong, but I've seen much to support it.
Socialism is an economic policy. It is not a form of government.
Almost nobody objects to voluntary socialism. Once you make it compulsory, a government becomes involved and you have dissenters (those who do not wish to be sacrificed).
I think that there is inevitably a conflict between the goal of software freedom and the existence of a financially powerful gate-keeper who stands between the financially un-powerful free software developers and the vast majority of users. The goals of the gate-keeper will never align with those of the folks making the software.
So all Debian needs to do is figure out all the things Ubuntu focused on that worked (give them some credit, they did some things right - ease of use, marketing, branding, ease of use, advertising, ease of use, outreach, release schedule and ease of use) and do those better than Ubuntu. It's not impossible but it's hard.
The only reason they stand between Debian and the users is that they do some things right. I don't even have to like Ubuntu to see that. That they will be out-competed is only a matter of 'when'.
Surprisingly enough, different people have different needs.
The lack of auto mouse focus default really makes windows desktop suck, plus the lack of workspaces.
I'm too much of a spaz to use focus-follows-mouse. Every time I try it I wind up bumping the mouse and typing into the wrong window. If I were a hardcode pre-trunk GIMP user I'd definitely have a session set up that way, though. Fortunately, the GIMP developers have come around to an option that works with most peoples' desktops.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly Michael Dell rolls over for Ballmer every time.
Don't fight the hand that feeds you.
What is mildly amusing is that we've tried the libertarian Utopian, and it was called the gilded age.
You're kidding, right? Permanent corporations, corporate personhood and direct interference with the money supply is a libertarian Utopia?
I sort of miss the days where computer shops were Mom and Pop businesses similar to how bike shops are today. It wasn't perfect, but there was something about having someone to physically come to, should computer problems happen, that made those shops worth patronizing. The closest thing we have these days to this is the Genius Bar at the Apple Store.
This must be a regional problem. Around here we have probably a dozen in the economic region. They're "expensive" compared with the box at the warehouse club, though, so they don't do many custom builds.
Have you tried searching Google Maps?
Am I really the only one who would rather they put prices up by 25%, but supplied reliable hardware and a clean OS installation with original media?
25%, eh? Probably too low. I do this kind of work sometimes, but I can't order the parts for 25% over Dell's cost, much less make any profit at it.
It's about double for a similarly-sounding spec. The desktop is low-end. My storage servers pants the big guys on price, though - they're rolling in the dough on those.
Zones, ZFS, and DTrace don't have equivalents in Linux with feature parity.
The ZFS storage layer for linux is done, you can use it now. The ZFS POSIX layer isn't done, the project needs help.
52 percent MORE. Not 52 percent of households.
To be fair, TFS doesn't say MORE than what. I assumed national average, but it could very well be 48% of Marylanders.
Remember when editors were used to improve grammar?
Yeah, Medicare Part D for one. Thank Bush for that. Plus the baby boom retiring. And unfunded liabilities (even Ross Perot was on about that, Clinton never acknowledged them in his 'balance'). Remember all that talk about the Social Security 'lockbox' in the 90's?
I like the "we know how to make this, we have the technology and expertise, and we're going to build a plant so that we can sell it to our customers" approach.
The clear and present danger doesn't come from *talking* about the actions of the American government, but from the actions themselves.
Here's my local paper's spin on the matter and my correction.
I was going to dismiss this as "not much movement" but then I remembered about inflation. $4.10 in 2010 would be about $3.30 in 2001, so 5.40/3.30 = about a 64% price improvement. That's fairly respectable, though it still looks like decades until it's 'cheap'.
Call me back when they fix the depth of field issue. The whole scene needs to be in focus so that when my eyes aren't looking at precisely what the director wants, my eyes don't try to focus on something that can't be focused on.
Then Ebert is really against 3D because of how much darker the picture is, when normal movies are already projected too darkly half the time.
Hey, you got my top-two beefs about 3D in the theatres. The last one is the inter-ocular distance that the movie is shot at - it has to be an approximation for all but a lucky few.
I predict this will finally all be solved with a camera that has a very wide array of sensors, which records many (say 32) angles and software that will be able to interpolate any given IOD on-the-fly. This will be coupled with personal viewing lenses (LCD or some sort of Microvision-like system) that can be of sufficient resolution and brightness for each eye.
The movies will have to be shot with infinite depth-of-field for it to work. Some will go this route, others will stick with 2D for the artistic sense that forced-perspective allows - the genres are fairly self-apparent.
The only good 3D will be personal 3D, not theatrical. Due to all the funding for 3D coming from the desire for theatres to remain relevant, this tech will probably appear slowly, and most likely in computer games before movies.
I had 'jet fuel' as on my list of things that wouldn't ever likely get replaced with electric storage, and now this reduces the list a bit. Can we just start putting up some modern nuclear reactors and get out of the Middle East then? We've got plenty of sources here for real oil needs.
No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. but 10,000 or so Americans have died so far as a result of making war in the Middle East.
Strawman - you definez it.
I don't know what this "embedded 22% tax" is
It's very important that you learn about it - the FairTax people have good write-ups, and the Harvard Economics study is a fine read.
BTW, Dollar Tree has king size loaves of bread for $1 and all my local supermarkets have store-brand for $0.89-1.50. Minimum-Wage-Mom needs to go to a different store.
Sure, bleached white flour and HFCS. I was assuming she cares about her kids. Wal*Mart has 100% whole wheat in 2-packs for $4 on occasion. Good time to stock the freezer.
As for proxies, I guess you guys do not travel much. Paypal normally detects them and refuses to accept the login, which I respect, and they are blocked in most countries I go to. Try to use one next time you are on holiday in somewhere like Thailand. In some Arabic countries (like the UAE) that I go to, their use is actually illegal.
I don't travel all that much but I'm on call and need to be able to use a real Internet when I need to. The DNS+HTTP/S only WAP's are all too prevalent in cafes and hotels these days, so I've set up an OpenVPN instance at my office on port 443 which I use to tunnel all my traffic. It's a consistency play, not getting around any stupid website or national policies specifically.
If there's a real proxy in your way, not just a port-allow, it's a tiny bit more complex, but you can make OpenVPN do real SSL too:
http://blog.foppiano.org/2008/07/24/how-to-openvpn-over-proxy/
If you don't have an office, a rackspace cloud vm or similar should do.
The big problem is when you have like $1.68 on it, you either have to make a small purchase to burn that up, or let it sit.
Hrm.... question - if I setup a website to allow you to donate that small balance to charity would you be willing to fill out the form?
I am concerned about the future if I ever decide to get an internet-capable phone. I don't want police spying on me without a warning that the encryption had been turned off.
Assume they are - do you encryption at the application layer, or at least with a VPN you control.
See, this kind of comment is why Slashdot's 5-point maximum system is problematic - if this were at the top of my display I could have stopped reading there.
Even with logarithmic scoring over 5 you would have done well.
Your point is a good one, assuming efficient central planning, but
Poor people can't afford a $20k car
I just wanted to point out, that part of the reason for this is because they're paying 22% embedded income taxes on all of their commodity needs, some of which goes to pay for these rebates. When a minimum-wage single mother of three is buying a loaf of bread for $2, about 50 cents of that is going to pay other people's income taxes.
The more common problem is hardcoded file names being case sensitive in most *unix file systems. Surely your precious Java can't fix that can it? If not why don't you apply for a job at Sun and show them how trivial it is to fix everything for every one.
IIRC, Apple contributed that code to Java because of the inverse problem on HFS+.
Think about how not-really-hard that text filter is... look for the exact match - if it fails, downcase the requested file name and the directory listing and see if there's a match. The behavior can be set globally or optionally based on an environment variable.
It's like what, 50 lines of code? OK, maybe 200 in java/c#.
They'd probably go nuts, debate and argue, and then give me a 25% cut instead
It doesn't matter. Unless you weigh into the elder welfare programs, the budget can't balance. Take out 100% of military and other federal departments and it still doesn't balance. If you include unfunded liabilities it's $800,000 per household. Tax rates have to rise to a rate so high that not working would be more profitable.
Game, set, match. Either Medicare and Social Security goes or the United States of America does. Sorry you were lied to old folk, I didn't do it. You're going to be pissed when your IRA's are replaced with TIPS based on a bogus CPI too.
I'm happy to see any math that proves this wrong, but I've seen much to support it.
Socialism is an economic policy. It is not a form of government.
Almost nobody objects to voluntary socialism. Once you make it compulsory, a government becomes involved and you have dissenters (those who do not wish to be sacrificed).
I think that there is inevitably a conflict between the goal of software freedom and the existence of a financially powerful gate-keeper who stands between the financially un-powerful free software developers and the vast majority of users. The goals of the gate-keeper will never align with those of the folks making the software.
So all Debian needs to do is figure out all the things Ubuntu focused on that worked (give them some credit, they did some things right - ease of use, marketing, branding, ease of use, advertising, ease of use, outreach, release schedule and ease of use) and do those better than Ubuntu. It's not impossible but it's hard.
The only reason they stand between Debian and the users is that they do some things right. I don't even have to like Ubuntu to see that. That they will be out-competed is only a matter of 'when'.
Your comment wins the discussion.
Those people should use a better setup.
Surprisingly enough, different people have different needs.
The lack of auto mouse focus default really makes windows desktop suck, plus the lack of workspaces.
I'm too much of a spaz to use focus-follows-mouse. Every time I try it I wind up bumping the mouse and typing into the wrong window. If I were a hardcode pre-trunk GIMP user I'd definitely have a session set up that way, though. Fortunately, the GIMP developers have come around to an option that works with most peoples' desktops.