A while ago, there was a public challenge where a Mac 8500 and a HP Vectra duked it out.
And I think the Mac wins. As big a Linux fan that I am, I could with no qaulms whatsoever recommend a Mac to my sister and tell her to install MS Office herself. Speed of install is probably more relvant to work situations, and that'll mostly be disk images anyway.
Then come marketing and promotion costs -- perhaps the most expensive part of the music business today. They include increasingly expensive video clips, public relations, tour support, marketing campaigns, and promotion to get the songs played on the radio. For example, when you hear a song played on the radio -- that didn't just happen! Labels make investments in artists by paying for both the production and the promotion of the album, and promotion is very expensive.
I just love the bald-faecd guts of it, "Hey, payola costs money and it's a hard job!". By their own admission, they are seeking legislative protection for an inefficient and antiquated businness model. With P2P, the consumers pay for all of this.
There's a few stories about C= kit being left in pretty ugly environments. I also recall one story (alas no link) about an Amiga running Alladin or some-such for an outdoor jungle show where they would open them up and hose out the mud every year or so.
For my money, I'd get a laptop, mainly so that most of the components would be be soldered in and you wouldn't get problems with things like PCI card connectors corroding. We had a server room flood once, and had flakey connection related problems for about a year after (re-seat card, problem goes away). It would also probably be easier to power, how about one of the many "MilSpec" ruggedised laptops?
It took me a year to realise the Sparc5 on my desk didn't have a floppy drive. More recently, I have been installing Debian on various Sun boxen using RARP. Certainly no more difficult than floppy and a lot more convenient.:o)
What the PC needs (more than a removal of floppy drives) is a sane boot system/standard that is reasonably open ended about how and from where the box boots.
Losing streaks
on
Gaming Zone?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
However, what about the losing streaks?
That would be the day I accidentally trashed a very expensive database that we were building by sorting a hash table that was never meant to be sorted. After getting the BOFH to restore it from backup (whew), I told my boss and went home. I am glad I was not piloting an oil-tanker that day in that state. Can tanker captains and jet pilots take the day off becauase they are too far outside the zone?
If the firewalling is at all effective, it may be the easiest way to disseminate information. But possessing such software or engaging in suspicious patterns of network activity (not using port 80 to connect to approved domains, etc) are going to get people in as much trouble. Hence the interest in things such as steganography. It'll also stick out more if the corporations manage to squash P2P as a haven for copyright violators, the haystack will be that much smaller.
We recently had a presentation from a company that sells software used to spot suspicious insurance claims. I can't see any reason why the same methods couldn't be applied to spotting suspicious patterns of Internet usage (provided people are not able to do things like use 'net Cafes anonymously).
I'm really glad we're not living in that kind of world yet...
One of the points of HTML is supposed to be that it does not care how wide the display device is. But I keep finding pages that are set up so that they can only be printed in landscape on US letter lest the text fall off the page. Poor design.
But to answer the question:
Use a printer driver for an A0 postscript plotter and print to file. I have exactly that set up, and can't see why it shouldn't work (but I am not going to print an A0 copy of goatse for/. karma).
Hmmm... I just created an A0 poster of Theo de Raadt using IE... now there's a troll.:o)
This after a week on the phone to those clueless plonks trying to figure out why I couldn't *(*&%^%%$^% see *&^*&^*&*& Sourceforge. (the suggestion being that I was obviously violating corporate policy, because the PHBs would *never* block something useful by mistake, "maybe because it's a h4X0r site...").
I should have known better than to expect anything other than default brokeness.
My next project shall be a script using a large block of DHCP addresses to shape Smartfilter's source statistics. I know just the code base... oh wait... SourceForge is blocked!...
The Gelatinous cude hits! The Gelatinous cube Hits! You are still frozen in the gaze of the Beholder! The Gelatinous cube Hits! You die!
On a more serious note, will the default policy on this sort of blocking eventually to be, "block it unless it is a RIAA or MPAA certified domain"?
But won't you rest easier at night knowing a portion from the sale of each OpenBSD CD will go to financing Britney Spears video clips? In fact, she may end up making more money out of OpenBSD than you do...
I've always believed that the future of music was in Live music, i.e. performers must play to get paid. I think with internet
distribution of music, this and the tone of the article, the future lies in performers doing actual work.
Hey, most recording artists I know don't get any money from record sales. Why would they give a toss about Celine or the RIAA? What percentage of recording artists get significant income from their record companies?
One thousands geeks crushed in a frantic attempt to be the first person in a seminar session. Someone wearing a "Microsoft's Freedom to innovate" shirt gets modded out of the venue by a gang of kernel hackers for being a troll.
The big disadvantge of digital cinema would be possible controls on the titles you are *allowed* to run.
Several years back, a local shopping mall was demanding that tennants used cash registers provided by mall management that send turnover data back to mall management so they could surcharge rent based on how well the business was doing. (they backflipped after several key tennants refused to rent under such terms)
With a $140,000 piece of digital infrastructure, you could expect considerable interest in controlling what films that projector will run and when it will run them.
"I'm sorry, there will be a 15.2% surcharge for screening Milo and Otis because a new computr game is promoting interest in that title and our subsidiary cinema plans on screening that title as well."
Or,
"I'm sorry, you cannot screen that Star Wars fan release because it has not been digitally authorised by George Lucas"
OK, I am speculating, and I can see a lot of good ways to implement this sort of pay-per-screening billing, but what would a/. post be without boundless pessimism?:)
I would have thouht that "USS Richard Nixon" would have been a more sensible name for an espionage boat. Then you could also have the "USS Oliver North" cruising around to act as a decoy.
Xix.
And *all* scientific data has errors
on
Data Quality Act
·
· Score: 2
If the dataset is big enough, it *will* have errors in it. If it is the case that data must be pulled if it is found to contain errors, it's going to be a trivial exercise for anyone vaguely numerate to remove any kind to scientific data from consideration in say a legal case.
In many years of working with large datasets, I am yet to find one that doesn't have some kind of error in it. The key thing to remember is that most of the data is right and it usually doesn't matter if there's a few problems.
(hoping this legislation has some kind of sanity clause to prevent such abuses)
Imagine how effective a deterrent the BSA could be with such
cross border jurisdiction. (OK, I agree this is an unlikely outcome, but I'd just love someone to do this just for the publicity)
Nah, they'd remove your devices for replication...
I had an 8 month "unlimited" download contract with $BIGISP and they could change anything they liked whenever they liked. The only thing that was unlimited was their rights to change the "contract".
OK, no-one forced me to sign, but as they own the only delivery mechanism available, I am over a barrel. No-one forces you to buy oil from OPEC you know, but try buying a soar powered car.
He's from Region 15 and doesn't have DeCSS. They only got it yesterday and they didn't even get the Criterion special edition with Hilary Rosen's subliminal commentary.
Someone I know who runs a tyre store was telling me how one particular franchise was willing to set up a store in a new area and run it at a loss for ten years purely to shut down any competition in the area. Add up their cash reserves and work out how long they can afford to wait to get a sizable installed base that can be leveraged later for other consumer applications.
Just for a start, how about shipping games like:
Online billing/banking?
Cheap phone calls using VoIP & MSN?
email?
web browsing?
We used to have a fingerprint scanner to access work, and it was pretty good for the most part. The most annoying things were that some people's finger's took several attempts to ID, and if you did anything that abraded your fingers, this also stopped it ID-ing. Since it was just a finger scanner/touchpad box mounted externally and an embedded 68k inside to drive it, it would probably be interesting to build using a cheap scanner.
It was a standard joke that you had to return your fingers when you finished working.
Oh great, $BIGCORP has just spent an obscene amount of cash implementing the GOOD TIMES virus. The stupidity of it all leaves me lost for words. I shall await the urban folklore with relish:
Thought you might like to know...
Apparently , a new computer virus has been engineered by RIAA that is unparalleled in its destructive capability. Other, more well-known viruses such as Stoned, Airwolf, and Michaelangelo pale in comparison to the prospects of this newest creation by a warped mentality.
What makes this virus so terrifying is the fact that no program needs to be exchanged for a new computer to be infected. It can be spread through the existing retail systems.
Luckily, there is one sure means of detecting what is now known as the "Celine Dion" virus. It always travels to new computers the same way - in a CD titled simply "Celine Dion". Avoiding infection is easy once the CD has been received - by not using it. The act of using the CD in your computer causes the "Celine Dion" mainline program to initialize and execute. It will then proceed to trash the computer it is running on.
The bottom line here is - if you receive a CD title "Celine Dion", delete it immediately! Do not use it! Rest assured that whoever's istening to this CD is surely struck by the virus. Warn your friends and local system users of this newest threat to the InterNet! It could save them a lot of time and money.
Slashdot Mirror
And I think the Mac wins. As big a Linux fan that I am, I could with no qaulms whatsoever recommend a Mac to my sister and tell her to install MS Office herself. Speed of install is probably more relvant to work situations, and that'll mostly be disk images anyway.
Xix.
Xix.
OK, so how do I know that the worm my server was infected by didn't include a trojan?
;-)
Silly me... if I cared about things like that, I wouldn't leave my server infected, would I.
How about if it just shut down insecure machines or publically shamed the owner?
Xix.
For my money, I'd get a laptop, mainly so that most of the components would be be soldered in and you wouldn't get problems with things like PCI card connectors corroding. We had a server room flood once, and had flakey connection related problems for about a year after (re-seat card, problem goes away). It would also probably be easier to power, how about one of the many "MilSpec" ruggedised laptops?
Xix.
It took me a year to realise the Sparc5 on my desk didn't have a floppy drive. More recently, I have been installing Debian on various Sun boxen using RARP. Certainly no more difficult than floppy and a lot more convenient. :o)
What the PC needs (more than a removal of floppy drives) is a sane boot system/standard that is reasonably open ended about how and from where the box boots.
That would be the day I accidentally trashed a very expensive database that we were building by sorting a hash table that was never meant to be sorted. After getting the BOFH to restore it from backup (whew), I told my boss and went home. I am glad I was not piloting an oil-tanker that day in that state. Can tanker captains and jet pilots take the day off becauase they are too far outside the zone?
Xix.
Well it's really like the Lamer Exterminator, if you got it, directly or indirectly, you probably deserved it... :o)
Xix.
We recently had a presentation from a company that sells software used to spot suspicious insurance claims. I can't see any reason why the same methods couldn't be applied to spotting suspicious patterns of Internet usage (provided people are not able to do things like use 'net Cafes anonymously).
I'm really glad we're not living in that kind of world yet...
Xix.
One of the points of HTML is supposed to be that it does not care how wide the display device is. But I keep finding pages that are set up so that they can only be printed in landscape on US letter lest the text fall off the page. Poor design.
/. karma).
:o)
But to answer the question:
Use a printer driver for an A0 postscript plotter and print to file. I have exactly that set up, and can't see why it shouldn't work (but I am not going to print an A0 copy of goatse for
Hmmm... I just created an A0 poster of Theo de Raadt using IE... now there's a troll.
Xix.
Arghh....
This after a week on the phone to those clueless plonks trying to figure out why I couldn't *(*&%^%%$^% see *&^*&^*&*& Sourceforge. (the suggestion being that I was obviously violating corporate policy, because the PHBs would *never* block something useful by mistake, "maybe because it's a h4X0r site...").
I should have known better than to expect anything other than default brokeness.
My next project shall be a script using a large block of DHCP addresses to shape Smartfilter's source statistics. I know just the code base... oh wait... SourceForge is blocked!...
The Gelatinous cude hits! The Gelatinous cube Hits! You are still frozen in the gaze of the Beholder! The Gelatinous cube Hits! You die!
On a more serious note, will the default policy on this sort of blocking eventually to be, "block it unless it is a RIAA or MPAA certified domain"?
Xix.
Let's hope the hardware encryption is as robust as the XBox (or any other encryption hardware for that matter)
Xix.
But won't you rest easier at night knowing a portion from the sale of each OpenBSD CD will go to financing Britney Spears video clips? In fact, she may end up making more money out of OpenBSD than you do...
Xix.
--
"Thous shalt not Brintney Spear" -- TISM
More to the point, why should this work out any different?
Xix.
Xix.
One thousands geeks crushed in a frantic attempt to be the first person in a seminar session. Someone wearing a "Microsoft's Freedom to innovate" shirt gets modded out of the venue by a gang of kernel hackers for being a troll.
Xix.
The big disadvantge of digital cinema would be possible controls on the titles you are *allowed* to run.
/. post be without boundless pessimism? :)
Several years back, a local shopping mall was demanding that tennants used cash registers provided by mall management that send turnover data back to mall management so they could surcharge rent based on how well the business was doing. (they backflipped after several key tennants refused to rent under such terms)
With a $140,000 piece of digital infrastructure, you could expect considerable interest in controlling what films that projector will run and when it will run them.
"I'm sorry, there will be a 15.2% surcharge for screening Milo and Otis because a new computr game is promoting interest in that title and our subsidiary cinema plans on screening that title as well."
Or,
"I'm sorry, you cannot screen that Star Wars fan release because it has not been digitally authorised by George Lucas"
OK, I am speculating, and I can see a lot of good ways to implement this sort of pay-per-screening billing, but what would a
Xix.
I would have thouht that "USS Richard Nixon" would have been a more sensible name for an espionage boat. Then you could also have the "USS Oliver North" cruising around to act as a decoy.
Xix.
If the dataset is big enough, it *will* have errors in it. If it is the case that data must be pulled if it is found to contain errors, it's going to be a trivial exercise for anyone vaguely numerate to remove any kind to scientific data from consideration in say a legal case.
In many years of working with large datasets, I am yet to find one that doesn't have some kind of error in it. The key thing to remember is that most of the data is right and it usually doesn't matter if there's a few problems.
(hoping this legislation has some kind of sanity clause to prevent such abuses)
Xix.
Nah, they'd remove your devices for replication...
Xix.
Well a new store opened in town with Inkjet printers on sale at $69 AUD each. Cartridge for same? $65 AUD each...
So I bought a near new 600 dpi postscript network laser printer for $250 AUD.
Xix.
I had an 8 month "unlimited" download contract with $BIGISP and they could change anything they liked whenever they liked. The only thing that was unlimited was their rights to change the "contract".
OK, no-one forced me to sign, but as they own the only delivery mechanism available, I am over a barrel. No-one forces you to buy oil from OPEC you know, but try buying a soar powered car.
Xix.
He's from Region 15 and doesn't have DeCSS. They only got it yesterday and they didn't even get the Criterion special edition with Hilary Rosen's subliminal commentary.
Xix.
Someone I know who runs a tyre store was telling me how one particular franchise was willing to set up a store in a new area and run it at a loss for ten years purely to shut down any competition in the area. Add up their cash reserves and work out how long they can afford to wait to get a sizable installed base that can be leveraged later for other consumer applications.
Just for a start, how about shipping games like:
Online billing/banking?
Cheap phone calls using VoIP & MSN?
email?
web browsing?
Xix.
We used to have a fingerprint scanner to access work, and it was pretty good for the most part. The most annoying things were that some people's finger's took several attempts to ID, and if you did anything that abraded your fingers, this also stopped it ID-ing. Since it was just a finger scanner/touchpad box mounted externally and an embedded 68k inside to drive it, it would probably be interesting to build using a cheap scanner.
It was a standard joke that you had to return your fingers when you finished working.
Xix.
Xix.