Don't mistake Tony's words as support and friendship. He's using you to get his own rocks off, in his own peculiar way.
Oh, I have my doubts over, all things being equal, we (that is, the UK) would have joined in here, but we do owe the Americans one heck of a lot, and it's just right that we help them when we can - they've jolly well done enough for us to deserve it!
Why not stick to "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." You can't be all things to everyone.
From the lack of hundreds of posts like yours, the interesting (and interested) discussion in the forum, and the fact that this has been happening on slashdot for quite a while without severe negative feedback / user falloff, I would conclude that most people on the site regard movies as "stuff that matters". Besides, it's not as if it gives you lasting psychological distress to skip over a story when scrolling down the homepage. I appreciate that you're burning karma for the hell of it, but still, this could be mistaken for a meaningful comment, and that would be terrible...
Please Jon, you are suppost to be a real grown up movie reviewer guy...
I do not know anyone that would want to spend $10.00 per ticket and subject themselves to half a movie, knowing full well they have been promised a disappointing second half/ending.
Now, I think it's time to introduce you to a new concept, so pay attention. It's called "satire", "wit", "wry humour", or any of its other various names. Basically, it involved obvious exaggeration to make a point. When you see exaggeration, you therefore don't comment on the lack of accuracy. You see, that's the point of this "exaggeration" thing.
Got that? Any questions? Are you sure? It's a tough one, I know, so don't be afraid to ask...
How do the stories go so wildly back and forth between "These people want to take our freedoms!" to "ooooh.. look at the pretty movies!"?
Oh, I dunno. I think it has something to do with that keyboard thing he keeps pressing...it's called being able to think about more than one thing. Anyway, if you dislike Katz so much, then jsut filter him! Me, I think he raises good points. If I don't agree, and have something meaningful to say, I can say it in the forums.
But don't expect the slashdot crowd to understand you. They still hate java because it was slow a few years ago.
Now that was a nasty insult, as if a large proportion of/. readers were not familiar with languages like Java. That and deliberately waving the red flag by conspicuously not mentioning Java indicates that this may be a troll, but there is enough reason in there to be rebutted, so here goes:
Java is still slow. Yes, it's got brilliant portability, but it still uses an order of magnitude more resources than natively compiled code, and as KDE is already getting a lot of criticism for getting bloated, I don't think Java/C# would help at all. Bytecode languages have their uses, and I'm a great fan of them (well, Java at least), but it's not yet ready to replace the native code that does low-level GUI or console stuff.
Bytecode is a great idea, but it has its limits as regards efficiency, and this is (for now) one of them.
Yeah, I can imagine - and even then, i imagine many mods can't be arsed to waste more than half their mod points on someone with +2 to start with.
That said, i may just be bitter because I've never modded, despite being eligable. I think i actually have an activity level too high - they say they go for Joe Average, and I always hit the 2-minute limit. They obviously don't check against karma when deciding that one...sigh...oh, well.
OK, go on, explain it to me! From what I know, Doppler is when the source is moving relative to (in this case away from) the viewer. How can we be moving so fast to have an effect on light?!
The third pin is just for the laptop to sense the adapter physical presence.
Great. Talk about cheap - wouldn't the power flow tell you something there? Don't think that jsutifies the weird power cable, especially as so many other get away with just 2 connectors.
The duke of URL did a test and showed that the quake III Linux version was faster on FreeBSD 4.2 than RedHat.
It's probably just that Red Hat runs everything under the sun by default...try it with a stripped-down (read: sensibly-installed) Slackware box. That said, I suppose Slackware is as close to BSD as Linux gets, so maybe you're right:^)
If you like Slackware, you should definitely try out one of the BSD oese. I tend to favor NetBSD because it runs completely flat (the same package source files, the same kernel source tree, etc.) on my Intel and Sparc hardware.
You know, having fulfilled my quest and found a *BSD advocate who has not instantly flamed me to a crisp, I think I might take your advice...
As a question to/.'s native BSD gurus, what's the Linux binary compatibility like? I still wanna keep the ability to share binaries w/ other machines...
Isn't it possible to just use another power cord from another manufacturer? Is there some kind of reason these are not swappable?
Most laptops have different power cables anyway, and Compaq ones especially. They use a weird 3-pin connector for no apparent reason apart from the fact that Compaq are Compaq and seem to have this urge to be non-conformist - same goes for all their other products I've seen too. Ever played with the Compaq BIOS? Jokingly described as "the strong, silent type", more accurately "the one that breaks its leg but won't tell you about it and refuses to go to the doctor's"...*sigh*. Oh well, at least they keep Tech Support departments employed!
...an update to the classic teacher-pupil conversation - "Miss, miss, I can't hand in my homework because my computer caught fire"...
Anyway, what makes these babies that bad, and yet let them past standard testing? Most laptops+accessories get hot, but something of this magnitude really ought to have been caught.
1. (the obvious one) - Linux is a kernel, not a distribution. There is only one of it, and all distros use it
Except they may choose different official kernel versions, and different unofficial patches. They also might choose to have proprietary binary modules (I don't believe that is the least bit common).
On the contrary, it is very common. However, all they ever do is package together stuff you can get for free in a download, and which will work harmoniously with other distros as well. I'm not saying they're not different, but that they are all nearly 100% interoperable (and the bits that aren't are by definition bad software).
I would have to say the Redhat userland and the Debian userland are no more similar then the NetBSD and FreeBSD userlands. Somewhat farther apart even.
In which case I apologise. I'm not a big BSD user, and wasn't caliming to be. All I said was that Linux is not as fragmented as the parent post suggested.
Anyway, if Free- + Net-BSD are as interoperable as Debian and Redhat are, then what on earth are people bitching about? If they're binary-level compatible, what's the fuss?
If point one is correct, then I should be able to take the kernel from RedHat and put that on Debian os slackware
Funny, that. I do that on a regular basis (often when I've screwed machines up severely), and it does work. Of course, you lose all your modules if you boot 2.4.1 on a machine which only has modules for 2.4.0, but that's nothing to do with the distribution, and even without the modules on most systems I can get a KDE startup and login with no sweat.
software like PICK only runs on certain versions of Linux
In which case it's obvious - bad software. Any decent, rule-abiding piece of software is as portable as a No. 2 pencil.
You claim that they 'acutally use the same software' then state different software is used for installng. If they were the same software, should not the install be the same?
What I meant was that 99% of the distro is the same stuff - standard utils, X/KDE/gnome, etc are almost all built from the same codebase. As I said, the packaging systems (of which there are only two) and the setup programs are the two biggest differences.
How can one ever achieve more eloquence than the maker of Fawlty Towers - Que?
What on earth are you talking about? How does a post that confirms that indeed, they do have binaries imply that I'm in marketing (did you mean to imply Sun's marketing dept)? I also criticised the bloat that leads to huge disk-space requirements, which rather puts me out of action for being a minion of Sun...
The GPL is a horrid concept to anyone who believes that their hard work is worth something.
...yes, but a lot of the time, that worth will not go to you. I stick with the GPL because no-one can screw with my code, roll it into something proprietary, and make money out of it without asking me first.
Of course, if you are truly altruistic, you use the BSD licence and let everyone do what they will. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a selfish bastard for using the GPL. I don't want people to make money out of my code without giving something back (either by keeping it all open or paying my to relicence it). I actually admire you BSD guys for your charity - I couldn't do that.
(the obvious one) - Linux is a kernel, not a distribution. There is only one of it, and all distros use it
Most distros actually use the same software, and what you don't get automatically you can get for free. In fact, the chief thing that distinguishes different Linux distros from just different default configurations and setup programs are the multiple package management systems, but there are only two of those (DEB and RPM - yes, I know and love Slackware tgz, but it's a nice and dead simple to install on ANY system), and most software gets packaged for both.
And before I get flamed, I'd like to point out that I'm not in opposition to *BSD - indeed, I use Slackware, arguably the most BSD-like Linux distro out there - and I even believe that the split has its good points. Just saying that BSD's main partner (not rival) in the OSS world isn't as fragmented as all that...
Poetic justice that BSD is now dead, yet Slackware soldiers on, and rather successfully at that.
You're telling me, mate - Slackware ROCKS! Have you tried 8.0 yet? You'll get addicted very soon. It's not too fast to download in the UK yet, but once I get all of 8.0 I'll probably set up a mirror.
Of course you can - I got the "latest" off their site yesterday, and it came in nice binary form...pity about the huge disk usage though (even for the binaries). I've had to clear out a lot of crud to make enough space.
European firms could have jumped straight to 3G, but all firms concerned got together and decided that it would be more profitable to force consumers through an extra upgrade cycle, so switched their attention to 2.5G, which is the Windows ME of the phone world.
That, and having forked out quite so much for the licences, they need money from something that requires minimal new investment before they can afford to develop the handsets and put up the huge numbers of new antennae that 3G would require, especially with the current attitude to mobile transmitters.
OK - quick synopsis: The copy protection works in the hardware - by using dedicated CD players' fault-tolerance against them. Using some slight malformation of the CD's data, you can make a CD that a player will read, but a computer will barf at. The actual players have nothing to do with it.
However, as the article says, the line between the two is a fuzzy one - Macs can play the most strongly protected one, and dedicated players are having trouble with it too. Doesn't mean they'll stop trying, though...
Slashdot Mirror
Don't mistake Tony's words as support and friendship. He's using you to get his own rocks off, in his own peculiar way.
Oh, I have my doubts over, all things being equal, we (that is, the UK) would have joined in here, but we do owe the Americans one heck of a lot, and it's just right that we help them when we can - they've jolly well done enough for us to deserve it!
Why not stick to "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." You can't be all things to everyone.
From the lack of hundreds of posts like yours, the interesting (and interested) discussion in the forum, and the fact that this has been happening on slashdot for quite a while without severe negative feedback / user falloff, I would conclude that most people on the site regard movies as "stuff that matters". Besides, it's not as if it gives you lasting psychological distress to skip over a story when scrolling down the homepage. I appreciate that you're burning karma for the hell of it, but still, this could be mistaken for a meaningful comment, and that would be terrible...
Please Jon, you are suppost to be a real grown up movie reviewer guy...
I do not know anyone that would want to spend $10.00 per ticket and subject themselves to half a movie, knowing full well they have been promised a disappointing second half/ending.
Now, I think it's time to introduce you to a new concept, so pay attention. It's called "satire", "wit", "wry humour", or any of its other various names. Basically, it involved obvious exaggeration to make a point. When you see exaggeration, you therefore don't comment on the lack of accuracy. You see, that's the point of this "exaggeration" thing.
Got that? Any questions? Are you sure? It's a tough one, I know, so don't be afraid to ask...
How do the stories go so wildly back and forth between "These people want to take our freedoms!" to "ooooh.. look at the pretty movies!"?
Oh, I dunno. I think it has something to do with that keyboard thing he keeps pressing...it's called being able to think about more than one thing. Anyway, if you dislike Katz so much, then jsut filter him! Me, I think he raises good points. If I don't agree, and have something meaningful to say, I can say it in the forums.
But don't expect the slashdot crowd to understand you. They still hate java because it was slow a few years ago.
/. readers were not familiar with languages like Java. That and deliberately waving the red flag by conspicuously not mentioning Java indicates that this may be a troll, but there is enough reason in there to be rebutted, so here goes:
Now that was a nasty insult, as if a large proportion of
Java is still slow. Yes, it's got brilliant portability, but it still uses an order of magnitude more resources than natively compiled code, and as KDE is already getting a lot of criticism for getting bloated, I don't think Java/C# would help at all. Bytecode languages have their uses, and I'm a great fan of them (well, Java at least), but it's not yet ready to replace the native code that does low-level GUI or console stuff.
Bytecode is a great idea, but it has its limits as regards efficiency, and this is (for now) one of them.
Yeah, I can imagine - and even then, i imagine many mods can't be arsed to waste more than half their mod points on someone with +2 to start with.
That said, i may just be bitter because I've never modded, despite being eligable. I think i actually have an activity level too high - they say they go for Joe Average, and I always hit the 2-minute limit. They obviously don't check against karma when deciding that one...sigh...oh, well.
...a link would be nice, please.
OK, go on, explain it to me! From what I know, Doppler is when the source is moving relative to (in this case away from) the viewer. How can we be moving so fast to have an effect on light?!
Nice to actually see where our universe came from...and weird to be looking so far back in the past!
Now for a serious question - what's with the red colour? If these stars were that new when they emitted this light, wouldn't they be bright blue?
The third pin is just for the laptop to sense the adapter physical presence.
Great. Talk about cheap - wouldn't the power flow tell you something there? Don't think that jsutifies the weird power cable, especially as so many other get away with just 2 connectors.
The duke of URL did a test and showed that the quake III Linux version was faster on FreeBSD 4.2 than RedHat.
:^)
It's probably just that Red Hat runs everything under the sun by default...try it with a stripped-down (read: sensibly-installed) Slackware box. That said, I suppose Slackware is as close to BSD as Linux gets, so maybe you're right
If you like Slackware, you should definitely try out one of the BSD oese. I tend to favor NetBSD because it runs completely flat (the same package source files, the same kernel source tree, etc.) on my Intel and Sparc hardware.
/.'s native BSD gurus, what's the Linux binary compatibility like? I still wanna keep the ability to share binaries w/ other machines...
You know, having fulfilled my quest and found a *BSD advocate who has not instantly flamed me to a crisp, I think I might take your advice...
As a question to
Isn't it possible to just use another power cord from another manufacturer? Is there some kind of reason these are not swappable?
Most laptops have different power cables anyway, and Compaq ones especially. They use a weird 3-pin connector for no apparent reason apart from the fact that Compaq are Compaq and seem to have this urge to be non-conformist - same goes for all their other products I've seen too. Ever played with the Compaq BIOS? Jokingly described as "the strong, silent type", more accurately "the one that breaks its leg but won't tell you about it and refuses to go to the doctor's"...*sigh*. Oh well, at least they keep Tech Support departments employed!
...an update to the classic teacher-pupil conversation - "Miss, miss, I can't hand in my homework because my computer caught fire"...
Anyway, what makes these babies that bad, and yet let them past standard testing? Most laptops+accessories get hot, but something of this magnitude really ought to have been caught.
...talk about a new meaning to the phrase "Crash and burn"...
Except they may choose different official kernel versions, and different unofficial patches. They also might choose to have proprietary binary modules (I don't believe that is the least bit common).
On the contrary, it is very common. However, all they ever do is package together stuff you can get for free in a download, and which will work harmoniously with other distros as well. I'm not saying they're not different, but that they are all nearly 100% interoperable (and the bits that aren't are by definition bad software).
I would have to say the Redhat userland and the Debian userland are no more similar then the NetBSD and FreeBSD userlands. Somewhat farther apart even.
In which case I apologise. I'm not a big BSD user, and wasn't caliming to be. All I said was that Linux is not as fragmented as the parent post suggested.
Anyway, if Free- + Net-BSD are as interoperable as Debian and Redhat are, then what on earth are people bitching about? If they're binary-level compatible, what's the fuss?
If point one is correct, then I should be able to take the kernel from RedHat and put that on Debian os slackware
Funny, that. I do that on a regular basis (often when I've screwed machines up severely), and it does work. Of course, you lose all your modules if you boot 2.4.1 on a machine which only has modules for 2.4.0, but that's nothing to do with the distribution, and even without the modules on most systems I can get a KDE startup and login with no sweat.
software like PICK only runs on certain versions of Linux
In which case it's obvious - bad software. Any decent, rule-abiding piece of software is as portable as a No. 2 pencil.
You claim that they 'acutally use the same software' then state different software is used for installng. If they were the same software, should not the install be the same?
What I meant was that 99% of the distro is the same stuff - standard utils, X/KDE/gnome, etc are almost all built from the same codebase. As I said, the packaging systems (of which there are only two) and the setup programs are the two biggest differences.
How's life in the marketing department?
How can one ever achieve more eloquence than the maker of Fawlty Towers - Que?
What on earth are you talking about? How does a post that confirms that indeed, they do have binaries imply that I'm in marketing (did you mean to imply Sun's marketing dept)? I also criticised the bloat that leads to huge disk-space requirements, which rather puts me out of action for being a minion of Sun...
The GPL is a horrid concept to anyone who believes that their hard work is worth something.
...yes, but a lot of the time, that worth will not go to you. I stick with the GPL because no-one can screw with my code, roll it into something proprietary, and make money out of it without asking me first.
Of course, if you are truly altruistic, you use the BSD licence and let everyone do what they will. I'll be the first to admit that I'm a selfish bastard for using the GPL. I don't want people to make money out of my code without giving something back (either by keeping it all open or paying my to relicence it). I actually admire you BSD guys for your charity - I couldn't do that.
2) there is no Linux, there is over 190+ linuxes.
OK, a coupla things here:
And before I get flamed, I'd like to point out that I'm not in opposition to *BSD - indeed, I use Slackware, arguably the most BSD-like Linux distro out there - and I even believe that the split has its good points. Just saying that BSD's main partner (not rival) in the OSS world isn't as fragmented as all that...
Poetic justice that BSD is now dead, yet Slackware soldiers on, and rather successfully at that.
You're telling me, mate - Slackware ROCKS! Have you tried 8.0 yet? You'll get addicted very soon. It's not too fast to download in the UK yet, but once I get all of 8.0 I'll probably set up a mirror.
Of course you can - I got the "latest" off their site yesterday, and it came in nice binary form...pity about the huge disk usage though (even for the binaries). I've had to clear out a lot of crud to make enough space.
European firms could have jumped straight to 3G, but all firms concerned got together and decided that it would be more profitable to force consumers through an extra upgrade cycle, so switched their attention to 2.5G, which is the Windows ME of the phone world.
That, and having forked out quite so much for the licences, they need money from something that requires minimal new investment before they can afford to develop the handsets and put up the huge numbers of new antennae that 3G would require, especially with the current attitude to mobile transmitters.
Point taken =)
OK - quick synopsis: The copy protection works in the hardware - by using dedicated CD players' fault-tolerance against them. Using some slight malformation of the CD's data, you can make a CD that a player will read, but a computer will barf at. The actual players have nothing to do with it.
However, as the article says, the line between the two is a fuzzy one - Macs can play the most strongly protected one, and dedicated players are having trouble with it too. Doesn't mean they'll stop trying, though...