In your opinion, can we ever expect to see a "Microsoft Linux" distribution or do you think the idea is too antithetical to the current MS corporate culture or business model?
Also, what do you think would need to change to see something like a "Microsoft Linux" distribution?
Is that how slashdot works, Roland? Thanks for clarifying that bit for me. Otherwise, I might've just grunted bestially at the screen for a couple of hours.
We aren't monkey's at the obilisk, dude. We now how the reply button works.
And now we need the whole fscking world collaborating on this?
Seriously. It's a fscking database of IP>Hostname mappings. This is NOT rocket science. Jon Postel, why did you have to leave us to these asshats? We miss you.
My cost was around $20k....But the real entry price for an HDTV set is FAR less. Spend around $80-100 on a good HDTV-optimized antenna, around $100-200 on an HDTV receiver, and buy a TV that can display 1080i and 720p without downgrading to a lower res (sometimes they downgrade, but still/claim/ to be "HDTV-Ready") and you are done. The TV can cost anywhere from $500 to $Shload.
In TV's, the best bang for your buch is in DLP rear projection systems. Trust me, you WILL be pleased. Avoid Plasma. It's cool and gimmicky, but in the end it costs way more for far less, not to mention the problems you'll have with burn-in and picture fading.
Before you spend one single penny, however, go find out what channels you can get at home:
Enter your address there and it'll give you a good idea of which channels are available and where they are wrt your home. Always a good place to start.
Seems to me you're trying to say that your local ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS broadcasters lossy-up the transmission just as much as the cable/satellite companies?
They are still better than cable or sat. Think of it like this. They apply a lossy encoding. then the cable company comes along and takes that lossy encoded signal and applies another lossy encoding to that. That's what you get from, say Cox or Comcast. The OTA signal is going to be better than the cable signal, even if they cut corners, because cable and sat apply further compression to fit more channels on the same pipe.:(
Perhaps there is a cable or sat provider out there that doesn't compress their signals to hell?
There was. It was called Voom, but they didn't survive in the market against DirectTV and DishNetwork. Now they just provide channels to other service providers. You can get their HD channels as an add on the Dish, but I can't speak to whether or not the signal quality has degraded since they stopped being their own service provider.
I can say that when I had Voom, I had never seen TV like it. Even the most unimpressable vistor could be wowed by the quality of the picture. Plus, they had a 24x7 kung fu movie channel How cool is that?!?;)
Still, I don't think I'll go back to cable or sat. OTA is better and cheaper, in my opinion.
Somebody help me out here. I thought standard television was going away, not analog!
They don't make it easy to figure out, but this is the deal:
The FCC is mandating that analog signals go the way of the DoDo once a certain minimum percentage of digital viewership exists (theyfirst set firm dates for this, then realized that no one cared about their dates).
The FCC could not muster less concern for whether or not those digital broadcasts are HD, ED, or SD. They only care that they are digital, becuase the digial signal allows them to parse the signal in ever finer ways to auction off and make more money.
Most people assume that this means the broadcasts will be HDTV, but in fact the only/mandate/ is for digital signals. Those local broadcasters are leasing their bandwidth off to make some extra green on the side as well. That leaves them less badwidth to transmit their own signal, which means that even if they do claim HD, they often do so with a noisy comprression ratio.
Locally (Virginia Beach, VA), for instance, the only station to really stick to the idea of very high quality HDTV signals is PBS. Nova looks fscking STUNNING on my HD screen. As for the rest? Well, at least the signal is clear, but as for just how HD it is...I can say it's better than SD and often better than ED, but flipping to PBS shows just how downgraded the HD signal is on local stations like NBC, CBS, and ABC.
Note that locally I have access to every broadcasting network in digital and (ostensibly) HD quality to compare. This means, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB, UPN, and PBS.
Also, I have no cable or satellite service. I only watch OTA TV and movies from Netflix. Using a digital receiver, I can get crystal clear pictures that are better than the lossy encoded signal the cable and sat companies give us(though I do miss The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and I pay nothing. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
we keep getting hit by zombie machines taken over in the Education Department or from Liberal Arts:-).
It's a joke, I know. And it's cute, I suppose, but since so many/.ers push the praises of direct vocational school over the Liberal Arts, I guess I should offer the counter point.
The Liberal Arts, at its core, is the study of learning. Liberal Arts majors may not graduate with as many courses directed at a single field of study, but they do graduate with a better understanding of how to pick up whatever skills/knowledge may be needed to get where they need to go in life.
Unlike direct vocational schooling, the Liberal Arts are designed to teach a person how to think, how to solve problems, and how to adapt rather than how to perform in a particular field of study. People who've studied within the Liberal Arts tend to be successful and competant in my experience, regardless of the field of endeavor.
We, as a society, cannot afford to devalue the degree designed to promote learning for its own sake! Such an attutude just falsely confirms a misplaced fear that many working-class students and their parents have: college education is a waste of money, unless each day's lesson can be connected to something that will be needed on the job some day.
I am a programmer. A self-employed consultant, specifically. I have a Liberal Arts degree in Religious Studies (yes, a Liberal Arts student can and does have a major, in which they devote a great deal of time!). While many of my courses were on topic with my major, many were not. I wouldn't trade those off topic courses for the world. I was studying religion, yet the school believed I'd be a better person upon graduation if I had experienced study in other fields. I took classes in Physics, Anthropology, Psychology, Computer Science, and Theater to name a few. I loved em. My interest areas are broadened, my experiences less confined, and I can carry on an intelligent conversation with pretty much anyone in any field of study.
So, in short, if you have a problem with zombie computers from the Liberal Arts department, the answer is easier than a firewall. Go tell em what they are doing. They learn quickly and might impress you if you don't approach them with a condescending tone.
Thank God I don't care about karma, otherwise I'd be scared to hit "Submit".:)
P.S. * A graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?" * A graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?" * A graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much does it cost?" * A graduate with a liberal arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
;-) See, I can laugh about it, too...but that doesn't mean it's true, just funny.
This sounds freakishly like the old Do Not Call list. As in, it's a really stupid idea.
While I agree with your point in principle (that this list will not be effective), you've used a pretty bad example. I'm on the DNC list, as are many people I know. Once that list kicked in, we all had a period of about a month or so where the calls were tapering off and after that, dead silence. That thing works like a champ! I still got calls, but only from groups that are legally exempt from the list, which is a WAY smaller group than before. I went from 2 to 4 solicitor calls a day to about 1 every two weeks, if that. The others that I know have had similar experiences.
I'm sure it's a cultural thing, but seriously, when I was in school (cue old-timey phonograph and creaky rocking chair sound) he'd have been hating life if he had the balls to show up to school with a name like Jasmine!
The times they are a changin'. (That's a good thing, I think)
but neither am I required to receive it without such certification.
If you had that choice, I'd have already sided with you, but you don't. This isn't about whether I want to send it or you want to receive it, but whether your ISP is going let you receive it. They want to block it before it ever reaches you and toss it as spam, regardless of your preferences. Thus, we, as two valid endpoints on the Internet, get a validity downgrade.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but these kinds of decisions belong in the hands of the people sending and receiving, not the ISPs...espcially when there are better options available.
The Internet was designed such that every endpoint was a valid one. When you require 'authentication' at the server level for the right to be a valid end point (which is what this is) then you are saying that certain endpoints are more valid than others.
Maybe we could expand it to all parts in the Internet. Then people could do cool stuff like check their mail at the prompt, read newsgroups at the prompt, maybe even read each others blogs at the prompt. Hey, we could call it "telnet" or something really catchy. This is just crazy enough to work, guys! Who's with me?
I'm starting my CLI-accessable blog right away. I'm gonna call it the "Finger".
Japan had a bunch of religious nutcases in control and the bombs shocked everyone back to reality.
Correction. The first bomb shocked them back into reality. The second was because we wanted to use our cool new toys.
I'm not naive enough to think the bomb wasn't a necessity, but dropping two on them was overkill, pure and simple.
I'll leave the final note to Reinhold Niebuhr:
"Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb."
Wonder how long you've got before it topples./glad I'm european.
You know the routine, when you' winnin' they grinnin' All up in your face, like they was wit' you from the beginnin' But on the flipside, When you' washed up like a riptide Fools clown 'bout how you slipped and let shit slide
Macromedia wants to help the open source community? Great. I'll settle for them going through the bother of compiling a 64 bit version of the flash plug in.
Right now, I can't view any flash content on my 64 bit machines. wtf?!? 64 bit is not a fad, Macromedia, It's OK to consider supporting it. Of course, they won't bother until Microsoft gives them a reason.
Really that's for Windows and Linux, but I couldn't muster less concern for Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
In your opinion, can we ever expect to see a "Microsoft Linux" distribution or do you think the idea is too antithetical to the current MS corporate culture or business model?
Also, what do you think would need to change to see something like a "Microsoft Linux" distribution?
feel free to post your comments below.
Is that how slashdot works, Roland? Thanks for clarifying that bit for me. Otherwise, I might've just grunted bestially at the screen for a couple of hours.
We aren't monkey's at the obilisk, dude. We now how the reply button works.
Here's hoping to United States' returned to proper grammar
The irony of this comment hurts my head.
We went from one dude:
_ for_Assigned_Names_and_Numbers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel
To a committee:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Corporation
And now we need the whole fscking world collaborating on this?
Seriously. It's a fscking database of IP>Hostname mappings. This is NOT rocket science. Jon Postel, why did you have to leave us to these asshats? We miss you.
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Your OS is shit.
And so are you.
Please, no applause, just throw money.
Pay.
Teachers.
More.
Let me add one more word:
Duh.
There is no price too steep.
"Hi Honey, look what I bought you today!"
So what kind of setup do you have? Were the digital receiver and HD-capable TV very expensive?
...But the real entry price for an HDTV set is FAR less. Spend around $80-100 on a good HDTV-optimized antenna, around $100-200 on an HDTV receiver, and buy a TV that can display 1080i and 720p without downgrading to a lower res (sometimes they downgrade, but still /claim/ to be "HDTV-Ready") and you are done. The TV can cost anywhere from $500 to $Shload.
Price-wise, mine is a bad one to compare to, since I designed and built a full home theater:
http://tom.digitalelite.com/0704_blog.htm#28
http://tom.digitalelite.com/caudroplex/index.html
My cost was around $20k.
In TV's, the best bang for your buch is in DLP rear projection systems. Trust me, you WILL be pleased. Avoid Plasma. It's cool and gimmicky, but in the end it costs way more for far less, not to mention the problems you'll have with burn-in and picture fading.
Before you spend one single penny, however, go find out what channels you can get at home:
http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/Address.aspx
Enter your address there and it'll give you a good idea of which channels are available and where they are wrt your home. Always a good place to start.
Seems to me you're trying to say that your local ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS broadcasters lossy-up the transmission just as much as the cable/satellite companies?
:(
;)
They are still better than cable or sat. Think of it like this. They apply a lossy encoding. then the cable company comes along and takes that lossy encoded signal and applies another lossy encoding to that. That's what you get from, say Cox or Comcast. The OTA signal is going to be better than the cable signal, even if they cut corners, because cable and sat apply further compression to fit more channels on the same pipe.
Perhaps there is a cable or sat provider out there that doesn't compress their signals to hell?
There was. It was called Voom, but they didn't survive in the market against DirectTV and DishNetwork. Now they just provide channels to other service providers. You can get their HD channels as an add on the Dish, but I can't speak to whether or not the signal quality has degraded since they stopped being their own service provider.
I can say that when I had Voom, I had never seen TV like it. Even the most unimpressable vistor could be wowed by the quality of the picture. Plus, they had a 24x7 kung fu movie channel How cool is that?!?
Still, I don't think I'll go back to cable or sat. OTA is better and cheaper, in my opinion.
Somebody help me out here. I thought standard television was going away, not analog!
/mandate/ is for digital signals. Those local broadcasters are leasing their bandwidth off to make some extra green on the side as well. That leaves them less badwidth to transmit their own signal, which means that even if they do claim HD, they often do so with a noisy comprression ratio.
They don't make it easy to figure out, but this is the deal:
The FCC is mandating that analog signals go the way of the DoDo once a certain minimum percentage of digital viewership exists (theyfirst set firm dates for this, then realized that no one cared about their dates).
The FCC could not muster less concern for whether or not those digital broadcasts are HD, ED, or SD. They only care that they are digital, becuase the digial signal allows them to parse the signal in ever finer ways to auction off and make more money.
Most people assume that this means the broadcasts will be HDTV, but in fact the only
Locally (Virginia Beach, VA), for instance, the only station to really stick to the idea of very high quality HDTV signals is PBS. Nova looks fscking STUNNING on my HD screen. As for the rest? Well, at least the signal is clear, but as for just how HD it is...I can say it's better than SD and often better than ED, but flipping to PBS shows just how downgraded the HD signal is on local stations like NBC, CBS, and ABC.
Note that locally I have access to every broadcasting network in digital and (ostensibly) HD quality to compare. This means, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB, UPN, and PBS.
Also, I have no cable or satellite service. I only watch OTA TV and movies from Netflix. Using a digital receiver, I can get crystal clear pictures that are better than the lossy encoded signal the cable and sat companies give us(though I do miss The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and I pay nothing. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
I hope that helps clear up some of the confusion.
we keep getting hit by zombie machines taken over in the Education Department or from Liberal Arts :-).
/.ers push the praises of direct vocational school over the Liberal Arts, I guess I should offer the counter point.
:)
;-) See, I can laugh about it, too...but that doesn't mean it's true, just funny.
It's a joke, I know. And it's cute, I suppose, but since so many
The Liberal Arts, at its core, is the study of learning. Liberal Arts majors may not graduate with as many courses directed at a single field of study, but they do graduate with a better understanding of how to pick up whatever skills/knowledge may be needed to get where they need to go in life.
Unlike direct vocational schooling, the Liberal Arts are designed to teach a person how to think, how to solve problems, and how to adapt rather than how to perform in a particular field of study. People who've studied within the Liberal Arts tend to be successful and competant in my experience, regardless of the field of endeavor.
We, as a society, cannot afford to devalue the degree designed to promote learning for its own sake! Such an attutude just falsely confirms a misplaced fear that many working-class students and their parents have: college education is a waste of money, unless each day's lesson can be connected to something that will be needed on the job some day.
I am a programmer. A self-employed consultant, specifically. I have a Liberal Arts degree in Religious Studies (yes, a Liberal Arts student can and does have a major, in which they devote a great deal of time!). While many of my courses were on topic with my major, many were not. I wouldn't trade those off topic courses for the world. I was studying religion, yet the school believed I'd be a better person upon graduation if I had experienced study in other fields. I took classes in Physics, Anthropology, Psychology, Computer Science, and Theater to name a few. I loved em. My interest areas are broadened, my experiences less confined, and I can carry on an intelligent conversation with pretty much anyone in any field of study.
So, in short, if you have a problem with zombie computers from the Liberal Arts department, the answer is easier than a firewall. Go tell em what they are doing. They learn quickly and might impress you if you don't approach them with a condescending tone.
Thank God I don't care about karma, otherwise I'd be scared to hit "Submit".
P.S.
* A graduate with a science degree asks, "Why does it work?"
* A graduate with an engineering degree asks, "How does it work?"
* A graduate with an accounting degree asks, "How much does it cost?"
* A graduate with a liberal arts degree asks, "Do you want fries with that?"
This sounds freakishly like the old Do Not Call list. As in, it's a really stupid idea.
While I agree with your point in principle (that this list will not be effective), you've used a pretty bad example. I'm on the DNC list, as are many people I know. Once that list kicked in, we all had a period of about a month or so where the calls were tapering off and after that, dead silence. That thing works like a champ! I still got calls, but only from groups that are legally exempt from the list, which is a WAY smaller group than before. I went from 2 to 4 solicitor calls a day to about 1 every two weeks, if that. The others that I know have had similar experiences.
...but "Jasmine" is a dude? Really?
I'm sure it's a cultural thing, but seriously, when I was in school (cue old-timey phonograph and creaky rocking chair sound) he'd have been hating life if he had the balls to show up to school with a name like Jasmine!
The times they are a changin'. (That's a good thing, I think)
but neither am I required to receive it without such certification.
If you had that choice, I'd have already sided with you, but you don't. This isn't about whether I want to send it or you want to receive it, but whether your ISP is going let you receive it. They want to block it before it ever reaches you and toss it as spam, regardless of your preferences. Thus, we, as two valid endpoints on the Internet, get a validity downgrade.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but these kinds of decisions belong in the hands of the people sending and receiving, not the ISPs...espcially when there are better options available.
The Internet was designed such that every endpoint was a valid one. When you require 'authentication' at the server level for the right to be a valid end point (which is what this is) then you are saying that certain endpoints are more valid than others.
That is not the Internet.
There are far simpler ways to lessen our problems with spam that don't damage the basic relational nature of the medium.
I should not be required to be validated by a third party to send mail...regardless of the spam problem.
Maybe we could expand it to all parts in the Internet. Then people could do cool stuff like check their mail at the prompt, read newsgroups at the prompt, maybe even read each others blogs at the prompt. Hey, we could call it "telnet" or something really catchy. This is just crazy enough to work, guys! Who's with me?
I'm starting my CLI-accessable blog right away. I'm gonna call it the "Finger".
Ain't progress grand?
Japan had a bunch of religious nutcases in control and the bombs shocked everyone back to reality.
Correction. The first bomb shocked them back into reality. The second was because we wanted to use our cool new toys.
I'm not naive enough to think the bomb wasn't a necessity, but dropping two on them was overkill, pure and simple.
I'll leave the final note to Reinhold Niebuhr:
"Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb."
Sad, really.
Only a beowulf cluster of old Koreans would bother with something like that.
Wonder how long you've got before it topples. /glad I'm european.
You know the routine, when you' winnin' they grinnin'
All up in your face, like they was wit' you from the beginnin'
But on the flipside,
When you' washed up like a riptide
Fools clown 'bout how you slipped and let shit slide
Doesn't that qualify more as "The Sociology of Star Wars"?
:)
:)
Agreed.
But becuase I'm a geek, I feel the need to point out that sociology is a science. It's a Social Science. Science isn't just for lab coats.
Macromedia wants to help the open source community? Great. I'll settle for them going through the bother of compiling a 64 bit version of the flash plug in.
Right now, I can't view any flash content on my 64 bit machines. wtf?!? 64 bit is not a fad, Macromedia, It's OK to consider supporting it. Of course, they won't bother until Microsoft gives them a reason.
Really that's for Windows and Linux, but I couldn't muster less concern for Windows.
So will the next move to come out be Episode -II?
;-)
Episode 0. Real geeks use base 0 for counting.
...definately stuff that matters. :-|
The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
yet. ;-)