No, really. Why replace Windows with Linux? It seems that the most logical move for the school district to make would be to buy Macs. Think about it:
They'll have a longer product cycle (Macs last forever and retain their value much better than cobbled-together PCs), which means the district won't have to upgrade their hardware nearly as often.
They'll upgrade their software for much less than with a Windows solution and they won't be compelled to upgrade.
Macs are already entrenched in education for a good reason: they're ease of use is legendary. Quartz is, without a doubt, the best user interface ever.
There is a plethora of commercial applications for Mac OS. These are generally easier to use and are better-supported than Free software applications.
They're inexpensive. You can already get an iMac for $799, and the education discounts that Apple gives are significant.
So, while I don't want to start a flame war here, I do believe that Apple is the most logical solution for education. While Linux is an excellent OS for those who love choice, freedom and hacking (in the "programming" context), it isn't really ready for widespread use on the desktops of non-technical users.
There's certainly a need...
on
Fair IP Laws?
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· Score: 1
By "fair", of course, you mean probably meant to say "unfair for the big bad media corporation".
This is just silly. Does Slashdot post a huge exposé every time someone fixes another crippling security hole in Mozilla? Really, it's this kind of duplicity that bothers me about Slashdot. Surely, Microsoft isn't the only one who writes occasionally buggy software?
OK, OK, it's not often that you hear the words "Microsoft" and "Research" together in the same sentence (they're usually busy buying out other companies in order to "innovate"), but their research division is pretty much autonomous from the huge corporate automaton, while still getting large amounts of funding.
So, what kind of cool things have come out of their labs? Well, for one thing, there's the ubiquitous network OS that I read about a while ago. This is possibly the coolest damn system I've ever seen. So, yes, if it's already in the M$ pipeline, you'll probably be seeing it in a store near you in coming years. It's only a matter of time and bandwidth.
On a side note, if anyone's interested, I have an inside contact at MS Research, and I was able to get my hands on a screenshot of this sweet little system, and subsequently posted them here. I hope that there's an open source alternative in the works too, this is really too cool to miss.
No, of course not. Such mechanisms are simply tools of internet censorship. I accept any kind of feasible payment, be it check, money order or credit card. Even Paypal. I'm not at all interested in the government's Christian Right agenda. Kids should be able to learn about the facts of life at an early age rather than flail around blindly until they get married and it's too late anyway.
This ruling is complete and utter bullshit. I can't believe that a so-called "strict constructionist" court would allow such a blatant trampling of our rights to free speech.
I'm about to make a big admission here: I work in the porn industry. I have a wife and 2 children that I have to feed and provide for for the next dozen years. These laws are totally misguided and are simply based on the will of a Christian fundamentalist minority that controlls Congress and wants, no, needs to see me out of a job and my family starve. This is just simply wrong, not to mention bad science.
Bad science how, you ask? Well, take my family for example. I can remember several occaisions where I have caught my 7-year-old daughter or my 11-year-old son watching some of the pornographic videos we have laying around the house, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them! They were enjoying it! The only reason the governement passes these laws is because they want to keep us from expanding our market to children, for some misguided moralistic crusade. I envision a day when we will be able to distribute our videos at a special low rate on the playgrounds of America. And frankly, my kids' future college educations ain't getting any cheaper.
With the downfall of internet banner ad sales that accompanied the burst of the dot-com bubble, it seems that no one running a serious venture on the internet can break even, much less make a profit.
My question is, how can you keep running indefinitely without any commercials during your audio streams? My understanding is that this is the bread and butter of more conventional radio stations, so how do things work with your company? Surely someone has to pay the hosting and bandwidth bills sooner or later.
Also, I'm wondering if the recent actions by the RIAA scare you, even a little? While shooting and killing college students in a raid on MP3 servers is definitely unprecedented, I wasn't entirely surprised when I read it. It had to happen sooner or later, I suppose. So how do you deal with copyright and licensing problems, and what is your company's view on the whole intellectual property situation that seems to come up every time media on the internet is discussed?
This is an important topic - it will be a huge social issue once people realize that consumer goods will come with tags that allow them to be tracked individually.
Perhaps you are right about the newer Trent Reznor works (I wouldn't know for sure, but the newest I've ever heard was "Perfect Drug" or something like that, which definitely followed the trend you described), but some of his older work (Head Like A Hole, for example) is genuinely good. Ditto for Ministry and just about anything Al Jourgenson was involved with. Just because something gets occasional radio play and is no longer "underground" doesn't mean it's bad.
Of course, if you really want to get down to it, Throbbing Gristle invented the whole sound, but that's a whole other story...
Because most people are obviously using file sharing to find new music to purchase.
I'm glad that I'm not the only who's doing this. Just last month, I was looking around for industrial music and decided to download the entire "Downward Spiral" album off of LimeWire. I ended up liking it so much that I went off to Best Buy the next week and put the CD in my pocket while no one was looking before quietly walking out the back door and sprinting for my car. Man, what a rush.
Anyway, more power to the music sharing people. I think it's about time someone ran an honest, non-biased study about this, and I'm glad to see these results. They just prove to me what I've known all along.
You know a Linux distro is designed for zealots when they have would-be project leaders run campaigns with "platforms" that include such things as "helping make sure HP participates as a good citizen in the Debian and larger Open Source communities".
The person's name is "Dale", not "Bdale". God, why don't you people spell check your posts every once in a while? You'll make people think that some Indian got elected or something.
The point is that it is their network. They can charge you whatever they want to for it. You are no more entitled to free unlimited bandwidth than anyone in a hosting center. You should even be thankful, because I know that $40/month is dirt cheap in comparison to bandwidth charges for colos.
I'm disgusted by this overwhelming sense of entitlement displayed by many in the Slashdot readership in the comments sections. Some of you believe that just because you pay a (very reasonable, flat-rate) fee for network access, email and news, you have a license to use all your bandwidth, all the time in any manner that you please. It's just plain bad manners, and I'm sure that it wouldn't have been tolerated in the internet days of yore when bandwidth and system resources were hard to come by.
Hint: the reason that @Home and its descendents won't let you use IPSec or run servers on their network is that it's their network! Either pay more for better service (like a T1) or rip off some other provider's bandwidth.
I hear that the early adopters at goatse.cx will be implementing this very soon for better compression and the deeper, richer reds supported by the standard.
RAM prices have been going up for quite a long time now. They bottomed out around last summer/fall and have been on the rise ever since. It would have been concievable for one to get 256MB of name brand PC2100 memory for $30 or less back then on Pricewatch. However, now you can't find anything decent for under $45, and the prices have continued to rise.
Yeah, it's a shitty Office knockoff that'll probably install spyware on your computer, but it COSTS LESS THAN OFFICE! Finally, we can cripple ourselves with an inferior knockoff, still pay money, still use Windows and still not have the source to fix things when they go wrong. And they will go wrong.
Honestly, are you alleged "professionals" here so poor that you can't even be bothered to pay for quality word processing software?
OK, let's pretend for a moment that reselling your bandwidth isn't in violation of your broadband provider's AUP. Even then, you have to consider that these providers rely on very thin margins to stay in business. They can stay ahead of the game by counting on the fact that not everyone will be utilizing all of their bandwidth at the same time. If you have people reselling all their idle bandwidth to other people, the link at the ISP will be overwhelmed and it will result in bad service for all parties involved. Next step? The only broadband ISP in your town goes out of business. Wow, isn't biting the hand that feeds you great?
I'm disgusted by this overwhelming sense of entitlement displayed by many in the Slashdot readership in the comments sections. Some of you believe that just because you pay a (very reasonable, flat-rate) fee for network access, email and news, you have a license to use all your bandwidth, all the time in any manner that you please. It's just plain bad manners, and I'm sure that it wouldn't have been tolerated in the internet days of yore when bandwidth and system resources were hard to come by.
Hint: the reason that @Home and its descendents won't let you use IPSec or run servers on their network is that it's their network! Either pay more for better service (like a T1) or rip off some other provider's bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, thanks for that cool transparency utility! I didn't know you could do that in Win2k!
- They'll have a longer product cycle (Macs last forever and retain their value much better than cobbled-together PCs), which means the district won't have to upgrade their hardware nearly as often.
- They'll upgrade their software for much less than with a Windows solution and they won't be compelled to upgrade.
- Macs are already entrenched in education for a good reason: they're ease of use is legendary. Quartz is, without a doubt, the best user interface ever.
- There is a plethora of commercial applications for Mac OS. These are generally easier to use and are better-supported than Free software applications.
- They're inexpensive. You can already get an iMac for $799, and the education discounts that Apple gives are significant.
So, while I don't want to start a flame war here, I do believe that Apple is the most logical solution for education. While Linux is an excellent OS for those who love choice, freedom and hacking (in the "programming" context), it isn't really ready for widespread use on the desktops of non-technical users.By "fair", of course, you mean probably meant to say "unfair for the big bad media corporation".
This is just silly. Does Slashdot post a huge exposé every time someone fixes another crippling security hole in Mozilla? Really, it's this kind of duplicity that bothers me about Slashdot. Surely, Microsoft isn't the only one who writes occasionally buggy software?
If you're so smart, how come you ain't rich?
So, what kind of cool things have come out of their labs? Well, for one thing, there's the ubiquitous network OS that I read about a while ago. This is possibly the coolest damn system I've ever seen. So, yes, if it's already in the M$ pipeline, you'll probably be seeing it in a store near you in coming years. It's only a matter of time and bandwidth.
On a side note, if anyone's interested, I have an inside contact at MS Research, and I was able to get my hands on a screenshot of this sweet little system, and subsequently posted them here. I hope that there's an open source alternative in the works too, this is really too cool to miss.
No, of course not. Such mechanisms are simply tools of internet censorship. I accept any kind of feasible payment, be it check, money order or credit card. Even Paypal. I'm not at all interested in the government's Christian Right agenda. Kids should be able to learn about the facts of life at an early age rather than flail around blindly until they get married and it's too late anyway.
I'm about to make a big admission here: I work in the porn industry. I have a wife and 2 children that I have to feed and provide for for the next dozen years. These laws are totally misguided and are simply based on the will of a Christian fundamentalist minority that controlls Congress and wants, no, needs to see me out of a job and my family starve. This is just simply wrong, not to mention bad science.
Bad science how, you ask? Well, take my family for example. I can remember several occaisions where I have caught my 7-year-old daughter or my 11-year-old son watching some of the pornographic videos we have laying around the house, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them! They were enjoying it! The only reason the governement passes these laws is because they want to keep us from expanding our market to children, for some misguided moralistic crusade. I envision a day when we will be able to distribute our videos at a special low rate on the playgrounds of America. And frankly, my kids' future college educations ain't getting any cheaper.
My question is, how can you keep running indefinitely without any commercials during your audio streams? My understanding is that this is the bread and butter of more conventional radio stations, so how do things work with your company? Surely someone has to pay the hosting and bandwidth bills sooner or later.
Also, I'm wondering if the recent actions by the RIAA scare you, even a little? While shooting and killing college students in a raid on MP3 servers is definitely unprecedented, I wasn't entirely surprised when I read it. It had to happen sooner or later, I suppose. So how do you deal with copyright and licensing problems, and what is your company's view on the whole intellectual property situation that seems to come up every time media on the internet is discussed?
Haven't you ever bought anything with a UPC?
Of course, if you really want to get down to it, Throbbing Gristle invented the whole sound, but that's a whole other story...
I'm glad that I'm not the only who's doing this. Just last month, I was looking around for industrial music and decided to download the entire "Downward Spiral" album off of LimeWire. I ended up liking it so much that I went off to Best Buy the next week and put the CD in my pocket while no one was looking before quietly walking out the back door and sprinting for my car. Man, what a rush.
Anyway, more power to the music sharing people. I think it's about time someone ran an honest, non-biased study about this, and I'm glad to see these results. They just prove to me what I've known all along.
You know a Linux distro is designed for zealots when they have would-be project leaders run campaigns with "platforms" that include such things as "helping make sure HP participates as a good citizen in the Debian and larger Open Source communities".
The person's name is "Dale", not "Bdale". God, why don't you people spell check your posts every once in a while? You'll make people think that some Indian got elected or something.
Please explain to me how pirating movies and MP3s is going to drive the economy for years to come.
If code reuse is acceptable here, I don't know why the hell comment reuse isn't.
The point is that it is their network. They can charge you whatever they want to for it. You are no more entitled to free unlimited bandwidth than anyone in a hosting center. You should even be thankful, because I know that $40/month is dirt cheap in comparison to bandwidth charges for colos.
I'm disgusted by this overwhelming sense of entitlement displayed by many in the Slashdot readership in the comments sections. Some of you believe that just because you pay a (very reasonable, flat-rate) fee for network access, email and news, you have a license to use all your bandwidth, all the time in any manner that you please. It's just plain bad manners, and I'm sure that it wouldn't have been tolerated in the internet days of yore when bandwidth and system resources were hard to come by.
Hint: the reason that @Home and its descendents won't let you use IPSec or run servers on their network is that it's their network! Either pay more for better service (like a T1) or rip off some other provider's bandwidth.
Oh, and FP, BITCHES!
RAM prices have been going up for quite a long time now. They bottomed out around last summer/fall and have been on the rise ever since. It would have been concievable for one to get 256MB of name brand PC2100 memory for $30 or less back then on Pricewatch. However, now you can't find anything decent for under $45, and the prices have continued to rise.
Honestly, are you alleged "professionals" here so poor that you can't even be bothered to pay for quality word processing software?
Slashdot has been covertly endorsing products for their advertisers for quite a long time now.
Do you really think that I put that last sentence in there? Here's a hint: I didn't.
Blame the editors.
Don't believe the article, it another early April Fool's joke! Don't let the British pull the wool over your eyes!
I'm disgusted by this overwhelming sense of entitlement displayed by many in the Slashdot readership in the comments sections. Some of you believe that just because you pay a (very reasonable, flat-rate) fee for network access, email and news, you have a license to use all your bandwidth, all the time in any manner that you please. It's just plain bad manners, and I'm sure that it wouldn't have been tolerated in the internet days of yore when bandwidth and system resources were hard to come by.
Hint: the reason that @Home and its descendents won't let you use IPSec or run servers on their network is that it's their network! Either pay more for better service (like a T1) or rip off some other provider's bandwidth.