Sure, Steam could go down and kill my game. But my kid could frisbee the disks across the room and kill the game.
You should have more control over your kid, and where you store your media, than you do over some company's servers. IF you don't, you have bigger problems, so please stop playing games and get your house in order.
Why exactly do I want a hybrid file with twice the data on my MP3 player. I may not care about space on my computer hard drive as much but every song transfered to the MP3 player that's twice the size it needs to be pushes out another song that I could have taken with me.
Converting on the fly (if you value space more), or storing 2 versions and only uploading the right one to your player (if you value time more) seems like a much better solution.
I store all my family photos and video on multiple external hard drives, which I replace every few years. (I do not however wipe and reuse old drives, I just leave them in tact with all the data). I also make sure at least one copy is off site, though that copy only gets synchronised every 2-3 months. That strategy hopefully limits my exposure to 2-3 months. Hasn't failed me yet.
I knew the man was a nutter, but that really does take the cake. Setting up a mailer daemon to retrieve web pages for you and claiming that's an efficient use of his time is just priceless and shows just how out of touch with reality he is.
I can't dictate the terms for your services nd your resources, that's true. However, your client side code is running in MY BROWSER consuming MY RESOURCES.
Nope, I'm sorry but if you want to be consistent and never use anything that is not open source, you should not use ANY service either unless the entire set of source code for the running the service is available too.
Unreasonable, isn't it? That's what happens when you push extremist views. They come back and bite you!
He is extremely clear on the fact that he neither has nor wants the power to dictate, because that would be anti-freedom. Instead, he explains, exhorts and encourages, pushing the growth of Free Software and pointing out non-Free software that may go unnoticed.
I wish he did. What he actually does is be rude and dismissive when you ask valid questions (which he likes to perceive as attacks. Hint: If you meet the man, DO NOT wear a business suit), dress up as patron saint of software St IGNUtious complete with robe, beard and halo. In other words he may have some very valid points but he comes across as a nutter and as such he probably does as much harm as good.
F/OSS only appeals to people who LIKE to trudge through others code to see how it works or make it "better". To me, software is an end to a means and I don't really give a rat's ass how it works as long as it's not doing shit behind may back that I don't want; which I can find out by other means than looking at source code.
I agree that telling people to download and modify open source if they don't like it is only going to work for computer specialists and is a waste of time as advice to end users. However you might care when the company making proprietary code discontinues it and you find yourself unable to use it. If it's open source, and it's useful and popular, there's a good chance SOMEONE will modify it and maintain it. If it's closed, it dies with the company. THIS is the real power of open source....not the suggestion that you can fix any bug you like by becoming a full time programmer.
Since the fix isn't inherited, this could increase the rate of this disorder in the whole human race. If genetic disorders never select out, a lot more people would become dependent on the treatment in the future.
Talk about a slippery slope. By that logic all medicine should be banned. It's a flawed argument, but regardless, something tells me that's an argument you're not likely to win because people would never be prepared to accept that conclusion even if you could prove you were right.
Certainly one thing you're forgetting is that logical thinking, tool use, technology and medicine are all things that have developed due to natural selection. If our brains hadn't evolved to give us the advantage, the size of the human population would be much smaller. Hell we may well have died out like the Neanderthal.
It is well known that writeable CD's and DVD's have a limited shelf life.
My experience is that most non-techies don't realise this until they lose something of value.
The point is that every X years, where X is sufficiently short to prevent data loss, you can make an EXACT COPY of the higher-quality video, with extremely little or no loss in quality.
Many problems with that. X is very hard to determine and you have to determine it with a tolerance of some percentage of loss. If it matters you make 2 copies on 2 different brands of DVD-R, and even then if it really matters you save to some other kind of storage. It's also very time consuming to recopy disks every few years. So much so that I'm not aware of anyone in my personal circle of friends, family and work colleagues that actually does it.
The words you are looking for is Planned obsolescence and it is the reason why the world is drowning in e-waste ATM.
No, it's not. A product can be planned such that it becomes obsolete in a short period of time, but still do the job intended and not die. If the XBox 360 had a built in used by date chip or similar that would be planned obsolescence. If newer games don't work on the old version that is planned obsolescence. What we're seeing is just poor quality product. Planned Obsolescence was heaven in comparison.
I don't think it was even reported on slashdot, but those Microsoft job cuts in Jan/Feb included all but 6 members of the Aces Studio team that developed Microsoft Flight Simulator for about a quarter century. After creating a buggy resource hog with version 10 which required 2 service packs to make bearable (and it's still buggy by most accounts), they simply killed off one of the best educational tools they ever built.
Of course an XBox 360 is less stable than, say, a SNES. Of course a 1960 Chevy truck was more sturdy than a 2009 model. It's in the nature of things to become more fragile the more versatile they get.
This is the attitude that's killing tech industries the world over.
There's a set of minimums to meet for a product to be fit for purpose. Okay you don't need the sturdy steel chassis of a 1960 Chevy truck to drive around town with occassional longer trips so as the technology has improved and parts could be made lighter and cheaper it made sense to do so. However if as a result the damn thing dies for no reason after a couple of months use, or touching it dents it, you bet people will be complaining.
So if someone's throwing around or stomping on their Xbox 360 and it dies, good and well, they're an idiot. If they're careful with it and it still lasts as long as a $2 item from the junk shop there's a problem.
Why is it in tech we have people rant on about how it's the way of progress and things moving forward that tech becomes useless fragile junk, or the software doesn't work on hardware specified on the box as being minimum, or loses people's data, then wonder why people think we're propeller heads?
According to TFA, it leaves Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Not exactly what you'd call heavily-populated ISPs.
Careful there. You're citing highly relevant, factually correct, widely available but politically undesirable material. Next thing you know you'll be threatened with an $11,000 fine and slashdot will be added to the list!
I really don't care about an extra 2-3 years of nursing home hell where I'm fed through a tube and can't remember my own name. I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm closer to that time of my life, but right now it's just not on my list of priorities to extend that part of my life which is certain not to be the best.
What I do care about is QUALITY of life. I bet the last few years those people who live in a more polutted place spend are not happy healthy years. Show me stats on the last 10 years of life and how sick people were.
Sounds like a class where I can just make up answers out of absolutely nothing
You have to support any position you take by using the actual texts, understanding the history of the document itself as well as the Sitzt im Leben and supporting traditions. In fact, the professors tend to make you feel pretty small if you just spout off some fundie crap and say, "it's just what I believe".
So what you're saying is that you're not allowed to spout off any old made up answer. You have to spout off someone elses made up answers from approved texts with citations. Much more appealing.
Yeah, that's like the first thing they teach you in the Army. Always turn your back to the enemy. If a hostile is dumb enough to shoot you, you can easily extrapolate their location from the force and angle of penetration.
Thanks. Now I've got a mental image of a troop charging the enemy running backwards and firing their weapons over their shoulders as they yell "aaaaaarr".
That's because for wrench/socket sets, the situation is just the opposite. Metric's unit (mm) is "just right" and doesn't need fractions or decimals
The metric unit is actually the meter. If you're measuring your wrenches in meters I'm impressed. What you're actually measuring is thousandths of a meter hence the SI prefix m for milli.
You could go measure your temperature in milli degrees celcius if you really like, or you could just stick with using decimal fractions until you need 3 orders of magnitude more precision like a sane person. 12.5 is not so much harder to understand than 12
And if you have malicious code that modified your BIOS (as some people list as a nightmare scenario), you again already have problems so large a little bit of SMM trouble means little additional pain.
Even a man in incredible pain dying of cancer doesn't appreciate a simple punch in the nose. Pain is pain. It might not be a nightmare scenario and it might have been hyped but it's not negligible. It's another facet of the attack.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, Steam could go down and kill my game. But my kid could frisbee the disks across the room and kill the game.
You should have more control over your kid, and where you store your media, than you do over some company's servers. IF you don't, you have bigger problems, so please stop playing games and get your house in order.
Why exactly do I want a hybrid file with twice the data on my MP3 player. I may not care about space on my computer hard drive as much but every song transfered to the MP3 player that's twice the size it needs to be pushes out another song that I could have taken with me.
Converting on the fly (if you value space more), or storing 2 versions and only uploading the right one to your player (if you value time more) seems like a much better solution.
Since GPS is illegal in Egypt, this means that Chimps now are too!
I store all my family photos and video on multiple external hard drives, which I replace every few years. (I do not however wipe and reuse old drives, I just leave them in tact with all the data). I also make sure at least one copy is off site, though that copy only gets synchronised every 2-3 months. That strategy hopefully limits my exposure to 2-3 months. Hasn't failed me yet.
I knew the man was a nutter, but that really does take the cake. Setting up a mailer daemon to retrieve web pages for you and claiming that's an efficient use of his time is just priceless and shows just how out of touch with reality he is.
I can't dictate the terms for your services nd your resources, that's true. However, your client side code is running in MY BROWSER consuming MY RESOURCES.
Nope, I'm sorry but if you want to be consistent and never use anything that is not open source, you should not use ANY service either unless the entire set of source code for the running the service is available too.
Unreasonable, isn't it? That's what happens when you push extremist views. They come back and bite you!
He is extremely clear on the fact that he neither has nor wants the power to dictate, because that would be anti-freedom. Instead, he explains, exhorts and encourages, pushing the growth of Free Software and pointing out non-Free software that may go unnoticed.
I wish he did. What he actually does is be rude and dismissive when you ask valid questions (which he likes to perceive as attacks. Hint: If you meet the man, DO NOT wear a business suit), dress up as patron saint of software St IGNUtious complete with robe, beard and halo. In other words he may have some very valid points but he comes across as a nutter and as such he probably does as much harm as good.
F/OSS only appeals to people who LIKE to trudge through others code to see how it works or make it "better". To me, software is an end to a means and I don't really give a rat's ass how it works as long as it's not doing shit behind may back that I don't want; which I can find out by other means than looking at source code.
I agree that telling people to download and modify open source if they don't like it is only going to work for computer specialists and is a waste of time as advice to end users. However you might care when the company making proprietary code discontinues it and you find yourself unable to use it. If it's open source, and it's useful and popular, there's a good chance SOMEONE will modify it and maintain it. If it's closed, it dies with the company. THIS is the real power of open source....not the suggestion that you can fix any bug you like by becoming a full time programmer.
... or maybe a Tata Shuffle, with the steering controls obnoxiously embedded in some earbuds?
They should make it foot powered...and do a cross licensing deal with Hanna-Barbera.
Yabba-dabba-doooooo!!!!
Since the fix isn't inherited, this could increase the rate of this disorder in the whole human race. If genetic disorders never select out, a lot more people would become dependent on the treatment in the future.
Talk about a slippery slope. By that logic all medicine should be banned. It's a flawed argument, but regardless, something tells me that's an argument you're not likely to win because people would never be prepared to accept that conclusion even if you could prove you were right.
Certainly one thing you're forgetting is that logical thinking, tool use, technology and medicine are all things that have developed due to natural selection. If our brains hadn't evolved to give us the advantage, the size of the human population would be much smaller. Hell we may well have died out like the Neanderthal.
It is well known that writeable CD's and DVD's have a limited shelf life.
My experience is that most non-techies don't realise this until they lose something of value.
The point is that every X years, where X is sufficiently short to prevent data loss, you can make an EXACT COPY of the higher-quality video, with extremely little or no loss in quality.
Many problems with that. X is very hard to determine and you have to determine it with a tolerance of some percentage of loss. If it matters you make 2 copies on 2 different brands of DVD-R, and even then if it really matters you save to some other kind of storage. It's also very time consuming to recopy disks every few years. So much so that I'm not aware of anyone in my personal circle of friends, family and work colleagues that actually does it.
The words you are looking for is Planned obsolescence and it is the reason why the world is drowning in e-waste ATM.
No, it's not. A product can be planned such that it becomes obsolete in a short period of time, but still do the job intended and not die. If the XBox 360 had a built in used by date chip or similar that would be planned obsolescence. If newer games don't work on the old version that is planned obsolescence. What we're seeing is just poor quality product. Planned Obsolescence was heaven in comparison.
I don't think it was even reported on slashdot, but those Microsoft job cuts in Jan/Feb included all but 6 members of the Aces Studio team that developed Microsoft Flight Simulator for about a quarter century. After creating a buggy resource hog with version 10 which required 2 service packs to make bearable (and it's still buggy by most accounts), they simply killed off one of the best educational tools they ever built.
Of course an XBox 360 is less stable than, say, a SNES. Of course a 1960 Chevy truck was more sturdy than a 2009 model. It's in the nature of things to become more fragile the more versatile they get.
This is the attitude that's killing tech industries the world over.
There's a set of minimums to meet for a product to be fit for purpose. Okay you don't need the sturdy steel chassis of a 1960 Chevy truck to drive around town with occassional longer trips so as the technology has improved and parts could be made lighter and cheaper it made sense to do so. However if as a result the damn thing dies for no reason after a couple of months use, or touching it dents it, you bet people will be complaining.
So if someone's throwing around or stomping on their Xbox 360 and it dies, good and well, they're an idiot. If they're careful with it and it still lasts as long as a $2 item from the junk shop there's a problem.
Why is it in tech we have people rant on about how it's the way of progress and things moving forward that tech becomes useless fragile junk, or the software doesn't work on hardware specified on the box as being minimum, or loses people's data, then wonder why people think we're propeller heads?
According to TFA, it leaves Primus Telecommunications, Tech 2U, Webshield, OMNIconnect, Netforce and Highway 1. Not exactly what you'd call heavily-populated ISPs.
Careful there. You're citing highly relevant, factually correct, widely available but politically undesirable material. Next thing you know you'll be threatened with an $11,000 fine and slashdot will be added to the list!
I really don't care about an extra 2-3 years of nursing home hell where I'm fed through a tube and can't remember my own name. I'm sure I'll feel differently when I'm closer to that time of my life, but right now it's just not on my list of priorities to extend that part of my life which is certain not to be the best.
What I do care about is QUALITY of life. I bet the last few years those people who live in a more polutted place spend are not happy healthy years. Show me stats on the last 10 years of life and how sick people were.
I don't think we can overlook the fact that tech pools in parent's basements all around the world. Spooky!
Those who denigrate aerospace projects for being over budget and over schedule are either naive or disingenous.
You left out a 3rd possibility: That they are stupid - drooling inbred moron stupid.
Sounds like a class where I can just make up answers out of absolutely nothing
You have to support any position you take by using the actual texts, understanding the history of the document itself as well as the Sitzt im Leben and supporting traditions. In fact, the professors tend to make you feel pretty small if you just spout off some fundie crap and say, "it's just what I believe".
So what you're saying is that you're not allowed to spout off any old made up answer. You have to spout off someone elses made up answers from approved texts with citations. Much more appealing.
Clicking the Start Button to shutdown is what you're used to. Clicking the Shutdown button is intuitive.
Every process has to be started. Shutting down the computer is just one of those processes.
Having a separate button for every process wouldn't be practical.
Now dragging a disk icon into the rubbish bin ala Macintosh. THAT is unintuitive.
Yeah, that's like the first thing they teach you in the Army. Always turn your back to the enemy. If a hostile is dumb enough to shoot you, you can easily extrapolate their location from the force and angle of penetration.
Thanks. Now I've got a mental image of a troop charging the enemy running backwards and firing their weapons over their shoulders as they yell "aaaaaarr".
That's because for wrench/socket sets, the situation is just the opposite. Metric's unit (mm) is "just right" and doesn't need fractions or decimals
The metric unit is actually the meter. If you're measuring your wrenches in meters I'm impressed. What you're actually measuring is thousandths of a meter hence the SI prefix m for milli.
You could go measure your temperature in milli degrees celcius if you really like, or you could just stick with using decimal fractions until you need 3 orders of magnitude more precision like a sane person. 12.5 is not so much harder to understand than 12
And if you have malicious code that modified your BIOS (as some people list as a nightmare scenario), you again already have problems so large a little bit of SMM trouble means little additional pain.
Even a man in incredible pain dying of cancer doesn't appreciate a simple punch in the nose. Pain is pain. It might not be a nightmare scenario and it might have been hyped but it's not negligible. It's another facet of the attack.
... Joanna Rutkowska is hot!
That'll happen when you wear a trench coat in summer.
As someone who is about 3/4 of the way though the 3rd season, all I can say is:
Fuck you, asshole
Have you considered a career as a UN diplomat?