I'm sure I'm like many people who just want a simple OSS word processor that's good at what it does and easy to use. The Firefox of the wordprocessing world if you like. Why doesn't such a thing exist? It's got to be in single most important piece of software and yet a good OSS version doesn't exist. Why the hell not? And don't say OpenOffice - that's bloated as hell and slow and inelegant.
Since I never send documents to clients in Microsoft formats, but use PDF, compatibility with MS Office isn't that important to me. I am I the only one?
Good point. But is it really true that a Linux exe can't have its own icon? I thought they could... Or perhaps they can only once installed by the user? If so, then that makes a lot of sense.
And I think many web developers would love to use a technology that is equivalent to Flash but open and OSS, if such a technology existed and was practical. But it doesn't.
It's just struck me that an interesting trend is occuring. During the 90's, the company that owned the software was the winner, in other words, Microsoft became so dominant in the PC industry because they dominated the OS space, the hardware just became a commodity. They (and pretty much everyone else) though the same thing would happen in the mobile and 'living room' spaces. But it's not - the hardware is becoming more important - Microsoft realise that they only way they are getting into people's living rooms is coming out with their own hardware (the X-Box). Similarly in the mobile space, it's the ones that control the hardware that are going to win - so to compete in the digital content market Amazon is having to make its own version of the iPod, and Microsoft is also considering it. So we have software companies and online shops turning into electronics manufacturers.
A lot of taggers are just kids and teenagers that actually have a reasonable sense of right and wrong, they just don't "get" why graffiti is wrong because the idea of actually owning a property at that age is so far removed from their experience that they have no empathy with the property owners. Also, they don't realise how expensive graffiti is to clean up.
I think a better punishment would be to have to spend a few days with the teams that have to go around the city to clean up the graffiti, and have to pay a proportion of the costs of cleaning the stuff up.
Does he really want ethics taught, or does he really mean that students should be told how to behave? You see, ethics isn't about following a set of rules (at least to those of us that aren't religious), it is about thinking and making your own decisions.
So, Ed, who is being more ethical, the man who buys a Madonna album in a shop for $20, or the man who downloads the album via P2P and then donates $20 to a charity to educate African children. Tricky isn't it?
A VIC 20 was my first computer too, but my introduction to computing was reading the manual of my next door neighbour's ZX80, and then writing programs for it on paper. I expect like many slashdotters, I was an odd child...
Anybody remember "Attack of the blue meanies" or "biorhythms"?
The problem with AJAX as I see it is that it is a bit of a Kludge.
Why did XUL never take off? I think that is a really interesting technology, much better than AJAX, but I guess being mozilla only it will never really reach mainstream? I guess it wouldn't be possible to create a XUL plug-in for IE?
Absolutely. In fact it is very easy for an organised group to communicate via email in a way that it would be impossible to spot, either automatically or by humans, if that group was not known. Just swap actions and names for other ones in such a way as you can make apparently normal conversation whilst conveying other meanings.
"We are still planning to take the dog to the vets on Friday, but we think it's going to be expensive than we had anticipated. Can you ask mother to send $100? Thanks."
If your terrorists have all agreed beforehand that "going to the vets" is a terrorist act, mother is terrorist HQ and all dollar amounts are multiplied by 1000, you have a way to communicate all kinds of stuff which is impossible to trace. Not only that, it's easy to remember.
"Tell mother we've had to call of going to the vets on Friday as Bob can't make it. We'll go in two weeks."
Every email? So the government is going to be accessing the email of every American citizen in the freedom loving United States of America? Something wrong there...
The lack of thinking behind these schemes really bug me. What kind of terrorist is going to announce their attack on a blog? What kind of terrorist group communicates plans via email? They government will spend billions on this and catch a few dissaffected youths - which they'll say proves it is working. Meanwhile, Bin Laden is apparently still going about his business as usual, and Iraq is a new breeding ground for terrorists.
Actually I think you're right. I was actually thinking of Edios, makers of Tomb Raider and Hitman etc, who are UK based.I should also mention "Team Soho", the makers of "The Getaway" and "Black Monday" (who are also in the UK), because they rock.
My point still stands, this article is BS as they mention as few companies that nobody as ever heard of as being representative of gaming companies in Europe, when in actual fact there are various ones that everyone has heard about. The author probabaly doesn't know that these gaming companies are European.
(And yes, I do know that some of these gaming companies are now owned by huge conglomerates like Vivendi, EA and Sony).
American and Japanese companies seem to get most of the press, but there are several development houses in the EU that are producing solid work.
A lot of the top games are made in Europe. Heard of Rockstar games, makers of the Vice City series? It's a UK company. Blizzard, publishers of the World of Warcraft series? Also British. Ubisoft, publishers of the Prince of Persia series, amongst others? French. I could go on...
I've just checked ebay and there seem to be lots of consoles for sale there... Many don't seem to be selling. Perhaps you can inform your dozens of waiting people...
Some people just don't learn
on
The New Boom
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· Score: 4, Insightful
One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
I think when there are shortages, companies sometimes try to "spin" the fact into a positive, to make it look as though they are in control. Product shortages are almost always a negative for a business unless you can use the shortage to increase the price, which doesn't apply here.
The IEEE is a professional body called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, so they should know what they are talking about. From the article it sounds like the PS3 will blow the X-Box 360 out of the water. My only hope is that it is not too expensive.
I also find it difficult to believe. One big problem with it is that I bet if you asked the average person in the street to explain what "intelligent design" was, they probably wouldn't even have heard of it. I only found out about it a few years ago, and only then because I read the news on the internet a lot. Most people I know don't read sites like Slashdot (or any sites on the internet for that matter) and so probably have never been exposed to the concept of "intelligent design". So how many people, when asked about it, gave an answer that they thought would hide the fact that they'd never heard of it?
The problem with evolution is that it is an apparently simple idea, that is actually quite complex. This means that many people think they understand it, think it couldn't work in practice, and are sceptical about it.
It's very common when discussing evolution with people that they bring up the idea that it is a "random" process. I think this comes down to the way that it is taught - I think sometimes at school level the teachers themselves don't really get it. I've found allowing people to actually "see" evolution happening using good computer models is the most effective way to get people to understand it.
Is this guy really the MS security VP? I find some of his answers amazing. About his uncle he says "I told him that he should turn on Automatic Updates and turn on his firewall. When he asked me how to do it, I talked him through the dialog boxes and we got him setup. In this process, I learned two important things. The first was that that the process of making these changes was a pain in the neck. The second was that when we really should have changed the default configuration for Windows Update."
It seems pretty amazing to me that the VP for Security for one of the biggest IT companies in the world should have to have this type of learning experience.
Perhaps it is the stress of having to recall a name that makes you forget it. Happens to me - if I have to introduce people I suddenly get a complete block on their names even if I've known them for years. I don't think it is any kind of memory defect as such.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure I'm like many people who just want a simple OSS word processor that's good at what it does and easy to use. The Firefox of the wordprocessing world if you like. Why doesn't such a thing exist? It's got to be in single most important piece of software and yet a good OSS version doesn't exist. Why the hell not? And don't say OpenOffice - that's bloated as hell and slow and inelegant.
Since I never send documents to clients in Microsoft formats, but use PDF, compatibility with MS Office isn't that important to me. I am I the only one?
I don't think we have the DMCA in Europe (yet!?) and so I'm not breaking the law.
Good point. But is it really true that a Linux exe can't have its own icon? I thought they could... Or perhaps they can only once installed by the user? If so, then that makes a lot of sense.
users may be illegally copying films from DVDs onto a memory chip the PSPs can read
If I own a DVD, and make a copy so that I can watch it on my PSP, I'm not breaking the law.
Dreamweaver makes standard compliant code.
And I think many web developers would love to use a technology that is equivalent to Flash but open and OSS, if such a technology existed and was practical. But it doesn't.
It's just struck me that an interesting trend is occuring. During the 90's, the company that owned the software was the winner, in other words, Microsoft became so dominant in the PC industry because they dominated the OS space, the hardware just became a commodity. They (and pretty much everyone else) though the same thing would happen in the mobile and 'living room' spaces. But it's not - the hardware is becoming more important - Microsoft realise that they only way they are getting into people's living rooms is coming out with their own hardware (the X-Box). Similarly in the mobile space, it's the ones that control the hardware that are going to win - so to compete in the digital content market Amazon is having to make its own version of the iPod, and Microsoft is also considering it. So we have software companies and online shops turning into electronics manufacturers.
Can you explain to me where the security flaw in OSX is in this case?
There is no double standard here.
A lot of taggers are just kids and teenagers that actually have a reasonable sense of right and wrong, they just don't "get" why graffiti is wrong because the idea of actually owning a property at that age is so far removed from their experience that they have no empathy with the property owners. Also, they don't realise how expensive graffiti is to clean up.
I think a better punishment would be to have to spend a few days with the teams that have to go around the city to clean up the graffiti, and have to pay a proportion of the costs of cleaning the stuff up.
Does he really want ethics taught, or does he really mean that students should be told how to behave? You see, ethics isn't about following a set of rules (at least to those of us that aren't religious), it is about thinking and making your own decisions.
So, Ed, who is being more ethical, the man who buys a Madonna album in a shop for $20, or the man who downloads the album via P2P and then donates $20 to a charity to educate African children. Tricky isn't it?
When I did small arms training, one of the hardest things to do (for the Corps at least) was to get people to pull the trigger at the moment of truth.
In other words, people have a natural resistance to killing another human being.
You give me the creeps. I hope I'm not the only one.
A VIC 20 was my first computer too, but my introduction to computing was reading the manual of my next door neighbour's ZX80, and then writing programs for it on paper. I expect like many slashdotters, I was an odd child...
Anybody remember "Attack of the blue meanies" or "biorhythms"?
The problem with AJAX as I see it is that it is a bit of a Kludge.
Why did XUL never take off? I think that is a really interesting technology, much better than AJAX, but I guess being mozilla only it will never really reach mainstream? I guess it wouldn't be possible to create a XUL plug-in for IE?
Absolutely. In fact it is very easy for an organised group to communicate via email in a way that it would be impossible to spot, either automatically or by humans, if that group was not known. Just swap actions and names for other ones in such a way as you can make apparently normal conversation whilst conveying other meanings.
"We are still planning to take the dog to the vets on Friday, but we think it's going to be expensive than we had anticipated. Can you ask mother to send $100? Thanks."
If your terrorists have all agreed beforehand that "going to the vets" is a terrorist act, mother is terrorist HQ and all dollar amounts are multiplied by 1000, you have a way to communicate all kinds of stuff which is impossible to trace. Not only that, it's easy to remember.
"Tell mother we've had to call of going to the vets on Friday as Bob can't make it. We'll go in two weeks."
Every email? So the government is going to be accessing the email of every American citizen in the freedom loving United States of America? Something wrong there...
The lack of thinking behind these schemes really bug me. What kind of terrorist is going to announce their attack on a blog? What kind of terrorist group communicates plans via email? They government will spend billions on this and catch a few dissaffected youths - which they'll say proves it is working. Meanwhile, Bin Laden is apparently still going about his business as usual, and Iraq is a new breeding ground for terrorists.
Now I've made myself depressed...
Blizzard, however, was an American company
Yes, I made a mistake in my original post, I was thinking of Edios.
Rockstar is very much a British company, and Unisoft is very much French.
The vast majority of actual game development does come from the US or Japan.
I disagree. I think it would be more accurate to say "The perception is that..."
Actually I think you're right. I was actually thinking of Edios, makers of Tomb Raider and Hitman etc, who are UK based.I should also mention "Team Soho", the makers of "The Getaway" and "Black Monday" (who are also in the UK), because they rock.
My point still stands, this article is BS as they mention as few companies that nobody as ever heard of as being representative of gaming companies in Europe, when in actual fact there are various ones that everyone has heard about. The author probabaly doesn't know that these gaming companies are European.
(And yes, I do know that some of these gaming companies are now owned by huge conglomerates like Vivendi, EA and Sony).
American and Japanese companies seem to get most of the press, but there are several development houses in the EU that are producing solid work.
A lot of the top games are made in Europe. Heard of Rockstar games, makers of the Vice City series? It's a UK company. Blizzard, publishers of the World of Warcraft series? Also British. Ubisoft, publishers of the Prince of Persia series, amongst others? French. I could go on...
I've just checked ebay and there seem to be lots of consoles for sale there... Many don't seem to be selling. Perhaps you can inform your dozens of waiting people...
One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
I think when there are shortages, companies sometimes try to "spin" the fact into a positive, to make it look as though they are in control. Product shortages are almost always a negative for a business unless you can use the shortage to increase the price, which doesn't apply here.
This is a very interesting article about the cell chip:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jan06/2609
The IEEE is a professional body called the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, so they should know what they are talking about. From the article it sounds like the PS3 will blow the X-Box 360 out of the water. My only hope is that it is not too expensive.
I also find it difficult to believe. One big problem with it is that I bet if you asked the average person in the street to explain what "intelligent design" was, they probably wouldn't even have heard of it. I only found out about it a few years ago, and only then because I read the news on the internet a lot. Most people I know don't read sites like Slashdot (or any sites on the internet for that matter) and so probably have never been exposed to the concept of "intelligent design". So how many people, when asked about it, gave an answer that they thought would hide the fact that they'd never heard of it?
The problem with evolution is that it is an apparently simple idea, that is actually quite complex. This means that many people think they understand it, think it couldn't work in practice, and are sceptical about it.
It's very common when discussing evolution with people that they bring up the idea that it is a "random" process. I think this comes down to the way that it is taught - I think sometimes at school level the teachers themselves don't really get it. I've found allowing people to actually "see" evolution happening using good computer models is the most effective way to get people to understand it.
Is this guy really the MS security VP? I find some of his answers amazing. About his uncle he says "I told him that he should turn on Automatic Updates and turn on his firewall. When he asked me how to do it, I talked him through the dialog boxes and we got him setup. In this process, I learned two important things. The first was that that the process of making these changes was a pain in the neck. The second was that when we really should have changed the default configuration for Windows Update."
It seems pretty amazing to me that the VP for Security for one of the biggest IT companies in the world should have to have this type of learning experience.
Perhaps it is the stress of having to recall a name that makes you forget it. Happens to me - if I have to introduce people I suddenly get a complete block on their names even if I've known them for years. I don't think it is any kind of memory defect as such.