Most nerds re-purpose their old computers instead of junking them. Just now I'm in the process of a "side-grade", I'm building my mom a computer out of junk parts, she needs a video card, so I bought myself an upgrade, my old card (an ATI HD4650) is going to my girl friends computer, and her old GeForce 9400 is going to my mom. My mom's old computer (very old, so old that nothing is terribly useful anymore) is going to end up re purposed and hanging in my garage as part of my mural.
I just replaced an old MacMini that I using as an HTPC, its going into the kitchen* to serve up Hulu, music and recipes (stored via database),
* Anyone know where I can by small LCD monitors, btw? I think I have 14" of space to mount it in. I've noticed some cheap Dell point-of-sale monitors that would fit the bill, but have never actually seen them for sale to us normal folk.
Huh... I always buy the exact middle of the road video card ($100-130), and they generally last me around the life of the rest of my computer, meaning around 4-5 years. You don't need the bleeding edge, ever. Right now I've got an old ATI Radeon 4650, its lasted me around 3 years now, and I can play Fallout 3: New Vegas, Dragon Age, UT3, and TF2 at the highest settings. WoW (when I played it) at close to the highest settings, and pretty much everything else I'd want to play at either "high" or "highest".
On average a computer (if bought smartly, aiming for the plateau between cheap crap and bleeding edge tax) will cost much less than keeping up with consoles. Well, it will be higher if you completely ignore the fact that your computer is mutli-use, versus a console which is pretty much good for only one thing. This is a pet peeve of mine... Console fan boys like to claim that computers cost more, and completely ignore the fact that they already have and need a computer, whereas a console is completely optional. 90% of console games (at least ones I want to play) end up on the PC. I already (obviously) have a PC, so why spend $200-300?
I just upgraded my video card, not because it failed me, but for a "hand-me-down" upgrade. My mom needs something to replace her 1.20GHz Ancient Athalon, I'm giving her my old Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz box, which needs a video card to replace the crappy Intel GMA crap. So I'm replacing my 4650 with a 5770, giving the 4650 to my GF to replace her NVidea 9400-whatnot, which is going into my mom's new computer. If not for this chain, my 4650 probably would have lasted another 2 years.
I do find it odd that my monitor from 6 years ago was much better, resolution wise, than the 28" 1920x1080 I'm typing this on now. I really wish it was possible to get beyond this 1080, "HD" crap. I've had monitors with greater pixel density for years, "HD" is a step down. It should be "MD", the "M" being "mediocre", or "moderate".
Re:Screen resolution drives video card performance
on
Putting Up With Consolitis
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· Score: 1, Informative
I don't think anyone actively likes Windows
Actually I do actually like Windows 7. Its a first, the last time I came close was "grudgingly respecting" XP. Trying to get Linux to play nicely on my HTPC made me love Windows 7 (holy cow, Flash actually works! Imagine that, in 2011!), and even be somewhat nostalgic for the hog that is Vista SP2.
I still hate Microsoft... But with Win7 they actually proved that they can make quality software. It would be nice if it was OSS, or done by anyone other than MS or Apple... but... oh well.
The question to ask is not that, but rather: would your hosting their CP result in more or less suffering, overall. Which is more likely to harm children: a pedophile who has ready access to CP, or one who doesn't?
That would be the question, but there is no statistics (that I've seen) saying that the distribution of CP helps thwart the exploitation of children. Philosophically there are two schools on this; A) CP can act as an avenue of release thus minimizing actual acts against children, and B) reducing the distribution reduces demand, which reduces production (which involves the exploitation of children). Lacking objective empirical evidence, both of these are equally probable, and in real life both probably come into play.
My gut (not the best judge of things, but pretty decent when faced with a lack of evidence) says the B is probably true. And when faced with unknowns I generally follow the rule "better safe than sorry", especially when the potential negatives outweigh the positives.
They already did - they forced the government to harm its own interests by shutting down the internet completely, rather than just blocking the particular sites they wanted to keep their citizens away from.
Touche... sort of. How much influence did darknets really have? Darknets, like all other potentially transformative esoteric technology, are pretty much only known to a small circle of geeks. And of that circle an even smaller amount of privacy geeks have an actual technical grasp of them. The thing (what the hell do we call it?) in Egypt is a popular revolt, without this technology in the hands of the masses, it is somewhat dubious.
I'm not even sure how big a role the internet, itself, played. They seemed to do rather fine without any access.
That's why you're an Emo. "Emo" is shorthand for "appeal to EMOtion", which is a common logical fallacy authorities use to render docile passive people like yourself. And, judging from the content of your post above, it seems that you have a nasty case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Wait... I thought "emo" had something to do with a genre of popular music involving whiny morons in tight clothing that somehow devolved from punk.
On the other hand, I would rather not help pedophiles and people who exploit children as well. This has nothing to do with "teh government" but with basic ethics and morality. The cost is not worth the benefits. Sure, if the "teh government" decided to start cracking down on free speech, then I would be less reticent (the cost is worth the benefit), but until that becomes a very real threat, I would rather the pedophiles rot. It isn't an "emotional fallacy", it is just normal ethics. Living in some Neil Stephenson masturbatory techno-fantasy isn't worth exploiting children (or helping any other suffering brought upon real human beings).
Where is the fallacy? Suffering is bad. Being the accessory of causing suffering is bad. Right now there is more suffering being caused by pedophiles than by me not hosting their CP. Right now me not being part of Freenet doesn't cause a single bit of suffering, but me being part of it might. Actually Freenet (and Tor and the various other darknet schemes) are probably completely pointless, and won't make a bit of difference. Would they have helped in Egypt, for example? Nope, shut down the backbones, and Tor and Freenet are dead. Contemporary darknets will be useless against the proposed "kill switch" as well. Should I help child predators just for the very slight chance that I might eventually preserve internet access for a handful of nerds (will the general population know or care)?
P2P is all about "file sharing." The unlicensed wholesale re-distribution of protected works through P2P networks.
P2P is all about file sharing... correct. The rest of that statement is false. File Sharing is about "sharing files", some of these files can be illegitimate. Most P2P might be piracy, but not all P2P is piracy. Just the other day I used P2P to get a patch for Starcraft II, and download a copy of Linux. I must be a dirty pirate.
I did download a copy of Windows7 from Pirate Bay too! Mostly because the copy from a legitimate source wouldn't actually install (downloaded multiple times, burned multiple times, all a failure). Upon installing my "pirated" copy of Windows, I entered my legally purchased serial number. Damn, I must be stopped!
A majority of P2P might be piracy. I don't have proper statistics, and am not aware of any objective study proving this, but it might be true. But it doesn't matter, since conflating P2P with piracy is still fallacious. In the last week I used about 10 torrents, an not a single download was illegal.
... how about you suck it up, acknowledge you got caught, and pay the fine?
I would advocate this, but only if the fines made any sense whatsoever. Right now piracy fines are like tacking $10,000,000 to jaywalking offenses, completely disproportional to their actual harm (if any).
If someone is caught pirating a single track or film, they shouldn't have to file for bankruptcy as result. They should be charged, at VERY most, and if we decide "1 download = one last sale" (which is completely falacious), 99c*total PROVEN downloaders. 99c being the going rate for downloads, probably better if we picked the cheapest possible source, or an average of all legal sources for this figure. That would be fair.
Also not using these lawsuits as extortion or a side business, but as a legitimate way of trying to thwart piracy would be a start.
In a perfect word we would adopt some form of sane policy, both thwarting piracy and keeping them from being abused, while we thresh out some actual fair (to society) copyright laws.
Some of them, on the other hand, want to bring about the second coming of Jesus, and thus the end of the world. Meaning death and damnation to billions of people.
Sure, they are killing people now, but its the thought that counts.
but for some reason, I suspect it will be a muslim-based one. in which case, we are now WORSE off.
Assuming your not Egyptian; who cares if WE are worse off? Its their country, they should be able to pick their own damn government, no matter how much we dislike it. Our government is, in a way, a Christian based one, something about 90% of our population being Christian. Much of the world would probably doesn't like this.
Reading about this revolution, and the parties involved, no one comes off as a Muslim extremist. Reading what the Muslim Brotherhood (who last I checked wasn't that much involved in the current issue) wants... none of it is terribly "extremist". As long as they get some flavor of actual democracy, and toss out their corrupt dictator I don't much care what happens there. I'd be happy for them no matter what, as long as a Taliban type theocracy/tyranny doesn't erupt (which doesn't seem terribly likely in this case).
America's desires mean jack shit to the rest of the world. As an American I'm perfectly okay with this, we don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world thinks about us, so why the hell should anyone care what we think about them?
3) Have you ever been to a bar with an Australian?
Yes, and it wasn't a terribly unpleasant experience. First off he drank around 5 Irish Car Bombs, then noticed a rugby match was on the television and suddenly turned autistic outside of a couple strange yelps. I think the closest to violence he got was when someone brought up "Crocodile Dundee" or "shrimps on barbies"...
I would certainly be pleased to have to "sign in" to a pub if means nobody with me is going to randomly glassed or stabbed by someone out to cause trouble.
What the hell type of pubs do you go to?
I haven't seen anyone randomly attacked at a pub since college... actually no, I think I saw some random violence at a bar that was having a metal concert 2-3 years ago (wasn't truly random, some guy jumped on the stage and almost knocked over a stack, and promptly got coldcocked by another fan/friend-of-the-band). Why do you pick to go to bars where violence happens? I like a dive bar as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't ever go to one where I had a decent chance of being randomly attacked. Granted, I'm not Australian, but us Americans have the reputation for wanton, and random violence.
I probably would completely eschew any bar that wanted to enter me into a data-base or take any biometrics. I would avoid it faster than a bar that carried a chance of random violence.
Why the hell would anyone not into the whole violence thing go to a bar that is known for violence? If you go to bars like that, you somewhat deserve what you get. Or at least you can't really be surprised that something nasty happens. Why not find a bar that attracts a calmer, more balanced, crowd?
Peopel choose IE/Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera based on their own preferences these days.... I am similarly agnostic on my choice of OS, using Ubuntu for work, and development oriented stuff, and Windows 7 Ultimate for home/personal/media/gaming.
Thats what confuses me about "fanboism" these days, we've gotten to the choice where pretty much everything is competitive in performance, stability, and features. MS, especially, has come a long way, Windows7 is a rock solid release, and probably the best thing MS has done in a very lone time. Playing around with the IE9 beta also shows that IE has really become a contender (and not on monopolistic grounds anymore). Linux, likewise, has come very far, it used to something that I loved, philosophically, but pretty much hated to use, to something that has a user experience that is pretty much as pleasant as the two corporate behemoths.
I still worry about Firefox though. I'm frightened it might change into some gigantic bit of bloatware that does pretty much everything, but none of it terribly well.
My only real complain on the state of browsers is that everyone is trying to look like the new guy, Chrome.
The new Firefox betas are looking and performing very well, so well that I switched back from chrome.
The betas are part of the reason I switched to Chrome/ium. All of the the betas have been dog slow, ugly, and buggy as hell (at least on my computer). In the beginning it was the requisite extension churn, but now that most of my extensions are supported it still is slower than hell and extremely buggy. And ugly, did I forget to mention ugly? Mozilla forgot what made Firefox nice, it was light and simple, off-loading all features to extensions, now it is bloated, heavy, and full of annoying feature bloat (Panorama, shouldn't that be an extension, same with sync?). I'm seriously thinking that release 5 will be a rebranded version of Seamonkey, with integrated email, IRC, mixed with something stupid and social like Flock. I decided that I might want to switch over to something more polished. IE was out, though IE9 is actually pretty decent, so that left Chrome (or Opera, which also fails on the simple thing).
I haven't noticed Chrome being too slow on any of the 5 computers I'm running it on (the lightest being an old MacMini Core Duo 1.6GHZ, with 2Gb of RAM, the most modern being my Phenom II x4 3.4GHz box with 6Gb of DDR3, with pretty much a range between them, it even worked good on the Mini before I threw in a different processor, meaning a Core Solo 1.1Ghz). It runs well on various flavors of Linux as well. I haven't really noticed a difference between Firefox 3 and Chrome. Chrome is much subjectively "snappy" feeling than Firefox 4 beta.
I'm not a Google fan boy, and I've been using Firefox nonstop since it was Phoenix and have switched pretty much everyone I know over to using it.
Balanced people: "So....why should I care? Oh yeah, Microsoft's evil."
As a balanced person (I'm running OS X, Win7, Vista, OpenSuse, and Ubuntu currently); I'd be happy if Chrome/ium, IE, and Firefox were split down the middle. I would be happier if their were ten mainstream browsers with 10% usage. Competition is good.
IE benefited greatly from Firefox. Firefox might benefit from Chrome being around (it needs to, it has turned into a fat, sloppy, unfocused mess). Chrome might benefit from poor old Opera. And Opera will sit in a corner and feel depressed that no one loves it.
When I was in college I shared a bathroom with a guy who spent around 45 minutes pruning himself every morning and evening. He must have went through $300 of hair product per month, and more in cologne. This was before "metro-sexual" was in the vocabulary. After that I shared the bathroom with a guy who had, literally, a grand worth oral hygiene accessories (he bragged about it, and mocked my $1.50 Target brand toothbrush).
btw, how did you like the click-fest to see this reply? I really hope Slashdot fixes this new interface soon, it's so much clunkier than the old one...
If Slashdot was a girl, currently, I would leave her at the curb. I find it very odd that no one seemed to test this 3.0 stuff before rolling it out. Having the ability to display italics is a VERY basic thing, for example. You can mess with the threshold slider instead of hitting every "re:" though, to expand all the comments, a bit easier, but still frustrating.
Does anyone who re-designed this site, use this site?
Speaking of assignments: the FCC is planning to sell-off the Free TV frequencies sometime this decade (current date is 2015 but will probably be pushed back). What on earth would replace it, I wonder. Non-free cable tv I suppose.
Are you sure they aren't just auctioning off the part of the spectrum they freed up by pushing digital broadcasting?
Nope. You can't be a girl, Slashdot doesn't have girls, you're on Slashdot, therefore you can't be a girl. The tautology proves it.
I do appreciate a sense of style and hygiene, but honestly, the uber-dapper fellows that think they're all that because they're wearing a Luis Vuitton jacket, designer clothes and a $200 haircut always turned me off, since their personality tended to be about as deep as their clothing.
Hygiene is good. I probably would never date someone who completely failed at it. I should have qualified my reply a bit more. Wash your clothes, shower, shampoo, brush your teeth. These shouldn't be mentioned, but knowing some of the geeks I know I suppose it has to be. My best friend, who is a raging nerd, washes his hair less than once a month... Its a bit gross. Somehow he got married (well, I hooked them up), so I guess even that isn't the end of the world.
Women who over dress, over make-up, and over perfume (IMO any perfume is too much...) are also a bit of a turn off. I live in Arizona and there is a whole horde of women with artificial tans. I'm a nerd, yet I somehow manage to stay tan here by just walking to the car and doing light yard work. Not the scary "leather skin" look that is so chic here though.
Same thing with fitness. While fit people are generally more attractive, you can over do it. Trying to look like a supermodel is a bit off putting.
Basically the more work you put into looking good, the more leery I get. There are exceptions, sometimes dressing very well is acceptable (fine dining, etc...), but if your going to IHOP, its a bit scary.
Are you kidding?? I tried to install ubuntu 10.10 today. It crashed twice during install and once after install...
Probably a bad burn... Burn it at an insanely low speed, and verify (I use ImgBurn, generally). I went through this with a Windows 7 a week ago, I burned over 5 DVDs with varying speeds and never got one to actually work. They were from an official source, using an official downloader, even (Digital River, we got the student discount shortly after release, and they lied about sending the actual install media we paid for), and they all passed an MD5 and other hash checks, AND verified through ImgBurn.
Oddly a copy I "pirated" (is it pirating if I have a purchased license?) from Pirate Bay worked the first time.
Upon installing it, I spend the next day download updates. Their might not have been 241 of them, but there was over 100. Around five of which wouldn't install since they were installing out of order (all of which were.Net updates). It made me really wish that MS would use something sane like Synaptic.
Damn bad RAM.
On my Nettop I just installed XP, which didn't work since it wasn't SP3. It wouldn't update, period. Then I installed Vista (sadly don't have another 7 license, don't want to spend $70-100 for it), spend two full days updating it, same.Net madness as on Windows7. Going to install an up-to-date "pirated" copy of XP (have a valid license, why is piracy always more convenient than official channels?) when Newegg send me my new HDD, I'm sure it will be as, if not more, hellish as installing Vista or Win7.
Ubuntu needed 200 updates because you had an old install DVD/image. It happens, all OSs do this. It happened on my last fresh install of OS X too. It happened on my last install of Ubuntu, my last install of Kubuntu, and my last install of OpenSuse. OS installation is generally the nastiest bit of most OSs, but most Linux distros have a leg up with things like Synaptic. Windows would rock if they just got rid of NTFS (defraging is obsolete, or at least should be), and got some sort of decent package management, perferably system-wide and not just for MS software.
The best methods are probably patience, and being yourself (honesty in general), at least for catching a serious, long term, girlfriend.
I met my long term girlfriend (been dating for around five years, living together for two) in college. I drank too much, dressed like a moron (well, jeans and black t-shirts with boots or sandal.... when we met camo and chains with a shaved head), ran around like an idiot, got into long rants about politics, religion, philosophy, computers, Star Wars, and such. I was also a pretty large egotistical, pompous asshole (though I turned into a mere moderate one). She was rather normal, not into pretty much anything I was into. If we would have met 5 years earlier we would have hated each other on sight. Then somehow we end up dating. No pretension, no trying, no lying about who I am. We got along, warts and all.
I always ponder why people feel the need to lie, or do extensive self-engineering, and come up with huge complex strategies just to date. I'm a nerd, I'm merely average in appearance. Being a nerd I'm socially awkward, and prone to strange behavior and transitory obsessions. I've never had a hard time with relationships (outside of the 4 year period that I quit trying because of a nasty breakup). Sure, girls don't flock to me as if I was rich, or some athletic wunderkind, or a good member of some cool subculture. But I've managed to have some form of girlfriend pretty much my whole life since turning 18, a couple of whom were long term. I've never tried to impress (girls are as smart as you are, they can tell your full of shit, or desperate), I've never read a book on it, I've never drawn up a flow chart.
Most of the girls I've dated told me that they dated me because I WAS myself, and confident in being myself. Put yourself in their shoes, how many idiotic men are approaching them trying to be something they are not (impressive)? Girls are people too, respect them, be honest with them, and don't be fake around them.
Yes, there are girls who are material whores, who want men with large bank accounts, fast cars, and won't look at you unless you own at least one expensive suit. Who cares? They are shallow and vapid, and would make a shitty girlfriend (longterm) for a geek. If your looking for a one night stand, they are fine, if your going for anything bigger, then let them be whores (sex for money = whore).
They intentionally published confidential and classified documents which they knew were stolen with the intention is causing unjustified damage.
What damage, and what intent? Please show the intent, and please show the damage? From everything I've read, pretty much everyone agrees that there has been no real damage (i.e. loss of life) directly traceable to Wikileaks. I don't feel too bad about the U.S. having egg on its face, I think that is completely deserved and not terribly surprising. You can't get upset with someone outing you for cheating on your wife, since it wouldn't have happened if you weren't cheating on your wife in the first place. If you don't want to be embarrassed, don't do embarrassing things. As an American, we SHOULD be embarrassed and ashamed. And as an adherent of freedom and democracy, we should have access to as much information as humanly possible, no matter how bad a light it paints us in (indeed, this information is more important to expose).
I don't trust the government to be honest, and properly expose documents. It has a vested interest in looking good, so why would it release documents paints it badly, and worse, might cause certain politicians to not be re-elected (the government, first, serves the careers of politicians). Its letting the foxes guard the chickens.
The intention, then, was to allow US, American citizens, to make informed decisions about our government, free from governmental obfuscation and propaganda. A noble, if not dangerous, goal. Democracy depends on a high degree of openness, and the high availability of information.
Yes, there are risks, but so far the consequences have been acceptable (meaning; pretty much none).
Also, we don't even know if Wikileaks are breaking any law, U.S. or international. The courts generally love the First Amendment (ala Pentagon Papers).
Furthermore, WIKILEAKS DID NOT ORGANIZE, MUCH LESS PARTICIPATE IN ANY DDOS ATTACKS. That was Anon, a third party, who has no affiliation with Wikileaks outside of agreeing with the cause (as much as Anon can agree about anything), and seeing themselves as the defender of the internet and its mythic ideal of open information.
The DDOS attacks were illegal, and there should be consequences. But illegal doesn't mean immortal (I'm not going to argue either way on that).
. Just because they are not the ones stole them does not mean they have "clean hands".
If I worked with Wikileaks I probably wouldn't be losing any sleep. So far there has been minimal harm, and a pretty good potential for benefit.
they are just are just script kiddies looking for an excuse.
Oh noes, their 1337 computer skills are less than your perceived skills! Who cares? What does that have to do with anything?
Though it is Anon, and now I won't be happy until they start to respond with Script Kitties.
DDoS doesn't work to promote a cause and the proof is here in all the posts mocking Anon.
I'm not going to side for or against Anon or various DDOS "protests"; I'm just going to say your point doesn't follow your reasoning. There are about an equal number of supporting posts as well. And if not for the attacks this wouldn't even be a discussion, which pretty much says that the attacks (good or bad) were effective in getting Anon's point across, meaning they worked.
I think the DDOS as protest idea is a mixed bag, ultimately, though. While it is very effective, and is definitely better than most of the idiotic hyperbole people here are tossing around ("its like firebombing things!", "Its MURDER!", etc...), it does walk a very fine line. It is illegal, and should be. It is also one of the few viable alternatives to physical protest I can see, there isn't any possible way to mirror an actual, real life, protest to a company that is only an online presence. How else do you get your point across?
I'm also not going to cry too much for the people who couldn't do business for the duration. I live in Phoenix, and for awhile this year our whole downtown area was pretty much dead to traffic or sane people every weekend for the illegal immigration brouhaha. A lot of businesses with no stake in either side of the hullabaloo lost business. Thats the price of existing in a society with the right of political expression. Its a decent sacrifice, since the benefits of protest is much higher than the short-term costs.
I did call myself a "knucklehead" remember? Perhaps just lazy. For the most part the italics and bold tags are pretty much functionally identical to the (proper) emphasis and strong tags. The idea of the web being semantic has been "depreciated" (if you pardon my use) for sometimes, html has, with the help of other technologies like CSS, become purely visual. This isn't why I'm attached to <i>, and <b>, obviously, thats just habit.
I hate to say it, but html, and the web in general, has become merely a way of pushing content to users over a network.
Just be glad I can't use <blink> for emphasis anymore.
Because Slashdot isn't Reddit (thank the nerd gods) or Hacker News. Slashdot has pretty much always made you choose between modding and commenting so you can't game the system as easily (modding down everyone who disagrees with you, modding yourself up, modding your comments parent up to increase visibility, etc...).
Modding isn't meant to be a popularity system (like Reddit devolved into, and why Slashdot removed a quantitative Karma score), it is supposed to increase the value of discussions. If you don't comment, your more likely to be impartial. Well... more impartial (that was italicized, can't you tell?) I'm pretty sure the "friend-foe-freak-fan" system is meant to make Digg and Reddit users happy, while being useful for the rest of us to up the threshold for known trolls.
Reddit was awesome, as was Digg in its first year, but they quickly decided to compete with 4chan, and lost all nerd appeal. Slashdot is one of the last sites around for grizzled tech veterans and hardcore, basement dwelling nerds to coalesce. If it ever lost that charm, I would be forced to do something productive with my day.
The old design didn't keep my CPU pegged at 10-12% for just reading a single page. With 5 tabs (opened at random from the front page) Chrome is now running at 25% of total processing power on my Phenom II x4 965 (3.4GHz). This makes no sense whatsoever, since I'm just reading text, and all the useful widgets have been replaced with a simple static menu.
The old-old design (which worked perfectly well) was lighter still.
Slashdot Mirror
Most nerds re-purpose their old computers instead of junking them. Just now I'm in the process of a "side-grade", I'm building my mom a computer out of junk parts, she needs a video card, so I bought myself an upgrade, my old card (an ATI HD4650) is going to my girl friends computer, and her old GeForce 9400 is going to my mom. My mom's old computer (very old, so old that nothing is terribly useful anymore) is going to end up re purposed and hanging in my garage as part of my mural.
I just replaced an old MacMini that I using as an HTPC, its going into the kitchen* to serve up Hulu, music and recipes (stored via database),
* Anyone know where I can by small LCD monitors, btw? I think I have 14" of space to mount it in. I've noticed some cheap Dell point-of-sale monitors that would fit the bill, but have never actually seen them for sale to us normal folk.
Huh... I always buy the exact middle of the road video card ($100-130), and they generally last me around the life of the rest of my computer, meaning around 4-5 years. You don't need the bleeding edge, ever. Right now I've got an old ATI Radeon 4650, its lasted me around 3 years now, and I can play Fallout 3: New Vegas, Dragon Age, UT3, and TF2 at the highest settings. WoW (when I played it) at close to the highest settings, and pretty much everything else I'd want to play at either "high" or "highest".
On average a computer (if bought smartly, aiming for the plateau between cheap crap and bleeding edge tax) will cost much less than keeping up with consoles. Well, it will be higher if you completely ignore the fact that your computer is mutli-use, versus a console which is pretty much good for only one thing. This is a pet peeve of mine... Console fan boys like to claim that computers cost more, and completely ignore the fact that they already have and need a computer, whereas a console is completely optional. 90% of console games (at least ones I want to play) end up on the PC. I already (obviously) have a PC, so why spend $200-300?
I just upgraded my video card, not because it failed me, but for a "hand-me-down" upgrade. My mom needs something to replace her 1.20GHz Ancient Athalon, I'm giving her my old Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz box, which needs a video card to replace the crappy Intel GMA crap. So I'm replacing my 4650 with a 5770, giving the 4650 to my GF to replace her NVidea 9400-whatnot, which is going into my mom's new computer. If not for this chain, my 4650 probably would have lasted another 2 years.
I do find it odd that my monitor from 6 years ago was much better, resolution wise, than the 28" 1920x1080 I'm typing this on now. I really wish it was possible to get beyond this 1080, "HD" crap. I've had monitors with greater pixel density for years, "HD" is a step down. It should be "MD", the "M" being "mediocre", or "moderate".
I don't think anyone actively likes Windows
Actually I do actually like Windows 7. Its a first, the last time I came close was "grudgingly respecting" XP. Trying to get Linux to play nicely on my HTPC made me love Windows 7 (holy cow, Flash actually works! Imagine that, in 2011!), and even be somewhat nostalgic for the hog that is Vista SP2.
I still hate Microsoft... But with Win7 they actually proved that they can make quality software. It would be nice if it was OSS, or done by anyone other than MS or Apple... but... oh well.
The question to ask is not that, but rather: would your hosting their CP result in more or less suffering, overall. Which is more likely to harm children: a pedophile who has ready access to CP, or one who doesn't?
That would be the question, but there is no statistics (that I've seen) saying that the distribution of CP helps thwart the exploitation of children. Philosophically there are two schools on this; A) CP can act as an avenue of release thus minimizing actual acts against children, and B) reducing the distribution reduces demand, which reduces production (which involves the exploitation of children). Lacking objective empirical evidence, both of these are equally probable, and in real life both probably come into play.
My gut (not the best judge of things, but pretty decent when faced with a lack of evidence) says the B is probably true. And when faced with unknowns I generally follow the rule "better safe than sorry", especially when the potential negatives outweigh the positives.
They already did - they forced the government to harm its own interests by shutting down the internet completely, rather than just blocking the particular sites they wanted to keep their citizens away from.
Touche... sort of. How much influence did darknets really have? Darknets, like all other potentially transformative esoteric technology, are pretty much only known to a small circle of geeks. And of that circle an even smaller amount of privacy geeks have an actual technical grasp of them. The thing (what the hell do we call it?) in Egypt is a popular revolt, without this technology in the hands of the masses, it is somewhat dubious.
I'm not even sure how big a role the internet, itself, played. They seemed to do rather fine without any access.
That's why you're an Emo. "Emo" is shorthand for "appeal to EMOtion", which is a common logical fallacy authorities use to render docile passive people like yourself. And, judging from the content of your post above, it seems that you have a nasty case of Stockholm Syndrome.
Wait... I thought "emo" had something to do with a genre of popular music involving whiny morons in tight clothing that somehow devolved from punk.
On the other hand, I would rather not help pedophiles and people who exploit children as well. This has nothing to do with "teh government" but with basic ethics and morality. The cost is not worth the benefits. Sure, if the "teh government" decided to start cracking down on free speech, then I would be less reticent (the cost is worth the benefit), but until that becomes a very real threat, I would rather the pedophiles rot. It isn't an "emotional fallacy", it is just normal ethics. Living in some Neil Stephenson masturbatory techno-fantasy isn't worth exploiting children (or helping any other suffering brought upon real human beings).
Where is the fallacy? Suffering is bad. Being the accessory of causing suffering is bad. Right now there is more suffering being caused by pedophiles than by me not hosting their CP. Right now me not being part of Freenet doesn't cause a single bit of suffering, but me being part of it might. Actually Freenet (and Tor and the various other darknet schemes) are probably completely pointless, and won't make a bit of difference. Would they have helped in Egypt, for example? Nope, shut down the backbones, and Tor and Freenet are dead. Contemporary darknets will be useless against the proposed "kill switch" as well. Should I help child predators just for the very slight chance that I might eventually preserve internet access for a handful of nerds (will the general population know or care)?
P2P is all about "file sharing." The unlicensed wholesale re-distribution of protected works through P2P networks.
P2P is all about file sharing... correct. The rest of that statement is false. File Sharing is about "sharing files", some of these files can be illegitimate. Most P2P might be piracy, but not all P2P is piracy. Just the other day I used P2P to get a patch for Starcraft II, and download a copy of Linux. I must be a dirty pirate.
I did download a copy of Windows7 from Pirate Bay too! Mostly because the copy from a legitimate source wouldn't actually install (downloaded multiple times, burned multiple times, all a failure). Upon installing my "pirated" copy of Windows, I entered my legally purchased serial number. Damn, I must be stopped!
A majority of P2P might be piracy. I don't have proper statistics, and am not aware of any objective study proving this, but it might be true. But it doesn't matter, since conflating P2P with piracy is still fallacious. In the last week I used about 10 torrents, an not a single download was illegal.
... how about you suck it up, acknowledge you got caught, and pay the fine?
I would advocate this, but only if the fines made any sense whatsoever. Right now piracy fines are like tacking $10,000,000 to jaywalking offenses, completely disproportional to their actual harm (if any).
If someone is caught pirating a single track or film, they shouldn't have to file for bankruptcy as result. They should be charged, at VERY most, and if we decide "1 download = one last sale" (which is completely falacious), 99c*total PROVEN downloaders. 99c being the going rate for downloads, probably better if we picked the cheapest possible source, or an average of all legal sources for this figure. That would be fair.
Also not using these lawsuits as extortion or a side business, but as a legitimate way of trying to thwart piracy would be a start.
In a perfect word we would adopt some form of sane policy, both thwarting piracy and keeping them from being abused, while we thresh out some actual fair (to society) copyright laws.
Some of them, on the other hand, want to bring about the second coming of Jesus, and thus the end of the world. Meaning death and damnation to billions of people.
Sure, they are killing people now, but its the thought that counts.
but for some reason, I suspect it will be a muslim-based one. in which case, we are now WORSE off.
Assuming your not Egyptian; who cares if WE are worse off? Its their country, they should be able to pick their own damn government, no matter how much we dislike it. Our government is, in a way, a Christian based one, something about 90% of our population being Christian. Much of the world would probably doesn't like this.
Reading about this revolution, and the parties involved, no one comes off as a Muslim extremist. Reading what the Muslim Brotherhood (who last I checked wasn't that much involved in the current issue) wants... none of it is terribly "extremist". As long as they get some flavor of actual democracy, and toss out their corrupt dictator I don't much care what happens there. I'd be happy for them no matter what, as long as a Taliban type theocracy/tyranny doesn't erupt (which doesn't seem terribly likely in this case).
America's desires mean jack shit to the rest of the world. As an American I'm perfectly okay with this, we don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world thinks about us, so why the hell should anyone care what we think about them?
3) Have you ever been to a bar with an Australian?
Yes, and it wasn't a terribly unpleasant experience. First off he drank around 5 Irish Car Bombs, then noticed a rugby match was on the television and suddenly turned autistic outside of a couple strange yelps. I think the closest to violence he got was when someone brought up "Crocodile Dundee" or "shrimps on barbies"...
I would certainly be pleased to have to "sign in" to a pub if means nobody with me is going to randomly glassed or stabbed by someone out to cause trouble.
What the hell type of pubs do you go to?
I haven't seen anyone randomly attacked at a pub since college... actually no, I think I saw some random violence at a bar that was having a metal concert 2-3 years ago (wasn't truly random, some guy jumped on the stage and almost knocked over a stack, and promptly got coldcocked by another fan/friend-of-the-band). Why do you pick to go to bars where violence happens? I like a dive bar as much as the next guy, but I wouldn't ever go to one where I had a decent chance of being randomly attacked. Granted, I'm not Australian, but us Americans have the reputation for wanton, and random violence.
I probably would completely eschew any bar that wanted to enter me into a data-base or take any biometrics. I would avoid it faster than a bar that carried a chance of random violence.
Why the hell would anyone not into the whole violence thing go to a bar that is known for violence? If you go to bars like that, you somewhat deserve what you get. Or at least you can't really be surprised that something nasty happens. Why not find a bar that attracts a calmer, more balanced, crowd?
Peopel choose IE/Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera based on their own preferences these days.... I am similarly agnostic on my choice of OS, using Ubuntu for work, and development oriented stuff, and Windows 7 Ultimate for home/personal/media/gaming.
Thats what confuses me about "fanboism" these days, we've gotten to the choice where pretty much everything is competitive in performance, stability, and features. MS, especially, has come a long way, Windows7 is a rock solid release, and probably the best thing MS has done in a very lone time. Playing around with the IE9 beta also shows that IE has really become a contender (and not on monopolistic grounds anymore). Linux, likewise, has come very far, it used to something that I loved, philosophically, but pretty much hated to use, to something that has a user experience that is pretty much as pleasant as the two corporate behemoths.
I still worry about Firefox though. I'm frightened it might change into some gigantic bit of bloatware that does pretty much everything, but none of it terribly well.
My only real complain on the state of browsers is that everyone is trying to look like the new guy, Chrome.
The new Firefox betas are looking and performing very well, so well that I switched back from chrome.
The betas are part of the reason I switched to Chrome/ium. All of the the betas have been dog slow, ugly, and buggy as hell (at least on my computer). In the beginning it was the requisite extension churn, but now that most of my extensions are supported it still is slower than hell and extremely buggy. And ugly, did I forget to mention ugly? Mozilla forgot what made Firefox nice, it was light and simple, off-loading all features to extensions, now it is bloated, heavy, and full of annoying feature bloat (Panorama, shouldn't that be an extension, same with sync?). I'm seriously thinking that release 5 will be a rebranded version of Seamonkey, with integrated email, IRC, mixed with something stupid and social like Flock. I decided that I might want to switch over to something more polished. IE was out, though IE9 is actually pretty decent, so that left Chrome (or Opera, which also fails on the simple thing).
I haven't noticed Chrome being too slow on any of the 5 computers I'm running it on (the lightest being an old MacMini Core Duo 1.6GHZ, with 2Gb of RAM, the most modern being my Phenom II x4 3.4GHz box with 6Gb of DDR3, with pretty much a range between them, it even worked good on the Mini before I threw in a different processor, meaning a Core Solo 1.1Ghz). It runs well on various flavors of Linux as well. I haven't really noticed a difference between Firefox 3 and Chrome. Chrome is much subjectively "snappy" feeling than Firefox 4 beta.
I'm not a Google fan boy, and I've been using Firefox nonstop since it was Phoenix and have switched pretty much everyone I know over to using it.
Balanced people: "So....why should I care? Oh yeah, Microsoft's evil."
As a balanced person (I'm running OS X, Win7, Vista, OpenSuse, and Ubuntu currently); I'd be happy if Chrome/ium, IE, and Firefox were split down the middle. I would be happier if their were ten mainstream browsers with 10% usage. Competition is good.
IE benefited greatly from Firefox. Firefox might benefit from Chrome being around (it needs to, it has turned into a fat, sloppy, unfocused mess). Chrome might benefit from poor old Opera. And Opera will sit in a corner and feel depressed that no one loves it.
When I was in college I shared a bathroom with a guy who spent around 45 minutes pruning himself every morning and evening. He must have went through $300 of hair product per month, and more in cologne. This was before "metro-sexual" was in the vocabulary. After that I shared the bathroom with a guy who had, literally, a grand worth oral hygiene accessories (he bragged about it, and mocked my $1.50 Target brand toothbrush).
btw, how did you like the click-fest to see this reply? I really hope Slashdot fixes this new interface soon, it's so much clunkier than the old one...
If Slashdot was a girl, currently, I would leave her at the curb. I find it very odd that no one seemed to test this 3.0 stuff before rolling it out. Having the ability to display italics is a VERY basic thing, for example. You can mess with the threshold slider instead of hitting every "re:" though, to expand all the comments, a bit easier, but still frustrating.
Does anyone who re-designed this site, use this site?
Speaking of assignments: the FCC is planning to sell-off the Free TV frequencies sometime this decade (current date is 2015 but will probably be pushed back). What on earth would replace it, I wonder. Non-free cable tv I suppose.
Are you sure they aren't just auctioning off the part of the spectrum they freed up by pushing digital broadcasting?
(and yes, I'm a geek girl on /.)
Nope. You can't be a girl, Slashdot doesn't have girls, you're on Slashdot, therefore you can't be a girl. The tautology proves it.
I do appreciate a sense of style and hygiene, but honestly, the uber-dapper fellows that think they're all that because they're wearing a Luis Vuitton jacket, designer clothes and a $200 haircut always turned me off, since their personality tended to be about as deep as their clothing.
Hygiene is good. I probably would never date someone who completely failed at it. I should have qualified my reply a bit more. Wash your clothes, shower, shampoo, brush your teeth. These shouldn't be mentioned, but knowing some of the geeks I know I suppose it has to be. My best friend, who is a raging nerd, washes his hair less than once a month... Its a bit gross. Somehow he got married (well, I hooked them up), so I guess even that isn't the end of the world.
Women who over dress, over make-up, and over perfume (IMO any perfume is too much...) are also a bit of a turn off. I live in Arizona and there is a whole horde of women with artificial tans. I'm a nerd, yet I somehow manage to stay tan here by just walking to the car and doing light yard work. Not the scary "leather skin" look that is so chic here though.
Same thing with fitness. While fit people are generally more attractive, you can over do it. Trying to look like a supermodel is a bit off putting.
Basically the more work you put into looking good, the more leery I get. There are exceptions, sometimes dressing very well is acceptable (fine dining, etc...), but if your going to IHOP, its a bit scary.
Are you kidding?? I tried to install ubuntu 10.10 today. It crashed twice during install and once after install...
Probably a bad burn... Burn it at an insanely low speed, and verify (I use ImgBurn, generally). I went through this with a Windows 7 a week ago, I burned over 5 DVDs with varying speeds and never got one to actually work. They were from an official source, using an official downloader, even (Digital River, we got the student discount shortly after release, and they lied about sending the actual install media we paid for), and they all passed an MD5 and other hash checks, AND verified through ImgBurn.
Oddly a copy I "pirated" (is it pirating if I have a purchased license?) from Pirate Bay worked the first time.
Upon installing it, I spend the next day download updates. Their might not have been 241 of them, but there was over 100. Around five of which wouldn't install since they were installing out of order (all of which were .Net updates). It made me really wish that MS would use something sane like Synaptic.
Damn bad RAM.
On my Nettop I just installed XP, which didn't work since it wasn't SP3. It wouldn't update, period. Then I installed Vista (sadly don't have another 7 license, don't want to spend $70-100 for it), spend two full days updating it, same .Net madness as on Windows7. Going to install an up-to-date "pirated" copy of XP (have a valid license, why is piracy always more convenient than official channels?) when Newegg send me my new HDD, I'm sure it will be as, if not more, hellish as installing Vista or Win7.
Ubuntu needed 200 updates because you had an old install DVD/image. It happens, all OSs do this. It happened on my last fresh install of OS X too. It happened on my last install of Ubuntu, my last install of Kubuntu, and my last install of OpenSuse. OS installation is generally the nastiest bit of most OSs, but most Linux distros have a leg up with things like Synaptic. Windows would rock if they just got rid of NTFS (defraging is obsolete, or at least should be), and got some sort of decent package management, perferably system-wide and not just for MS software.
The best methods are probably patience, and being yourself (honesty in general), at least for catching a serious, long term, girlfriend.
I met my long term girlfriend (been dating for around five years, living together for two) in college. I drank too much, dressed like a moron (well, jeans and black t-shirts with boots or sandal.... when we met camo and chains with a shaved head), ran around like an idiot, got into long rants about politics, religion, philosophy, computers, Star Wars, and such. I was also a pretty large egotistical, pompous asshole (though I turned into a mere moderate one). She was rather normal, not into pretty much anything I was into. If we would have met 5 years earlier we would have hated each other on sight. Then somehow we end up dating. No pretension, no trying, no lying about who I am. We got along, warts and all.
I always ponder why people feel the need to lie, or do extensive self-engineering, and come up with huge complex strategies just to date. I'm a nerd, I'm merely average in appearance. Being a nerd I'm socially awkward, and prone to strange behavior and transitory obsessions. I've never had a hard time with relationships (outside of the 4 year period that I quit trying because of a nasty breakup). Sure, girls don't flock to me as if I was rich, or some athletic wunderkind, or a good member of some cool subculture. But I've managed to have some form of girlfriend pretty much my whole life since turning 18, a couple of whom were long term. I've never tried to impress (girls are as smart as you are, they can tell your full of shit, or desperate), I've never read a book on it, I've never drawn up a flow chart.
Most of the girls I've dated told me that they dated me because I WAS myself, and confident in being myself. Put yourself in their shoes, how many idiotic men are approaching them trying to be something they are not (impressive)? Girls are people too, respect them, be honest with them, and don't be fake around them.
Yes, there are girls who are material whores, who want men with large bank accounts, fast cars, and won't look at you unless you own at least one expensive suit. Who cares? They are shallow and vapid, and would make a shitty girlfriend (longterm) for a geek. If your looking for a one night stand, they are fine, if your going for anything bigger, then let them be whores (sex for money = whore).
They intentionally published confidential and classified documents which they knew were stolen with the intention is causing unjustified damage.
What damage, and what intent? Please show the intent, and please show the damage? From everything I've read, pretty much everyone agrees that there has been no real damage (i.e. loss of life) directly traceable to Wikileaks. I don't feel too bad about the U.S. having egg on its face, I think that is completely deserved and not terribly surprising. You can't get upset with someone outing you for cheating on your wife, since it wouldn't have happened if you weren't cheating on your wife in the first place. If you don't want to be embarrassed, don't do embarrassing things. As an American, we SHOULD be embarrassed and ashamed. And as an adherent of freedom and democracy, we should have access to as much information as humanly possible, no matter how bad a light it paints us in (indeed, this information is more important to expose).
I don't trust the government to be honest, and properly expose documents. It has a vested interest in looking good, so why would it release documents paints it badly, and worse, might cause certain politicians to not be re-elected (the government, first, serves the careers of politicians). Its letting the foxes guard the chickens.
The intention, then, was to allow US, American citizens, to make informed decisions about our government, free from governmental obfuscation and propaganda. A noble, if not dangerous, goal. Democracy depends on a high degree of openness, and the high availability of information.
Yes, there are risks, but so far the consequences have been acceptable (meaning; pretty much none).
Also, we don't even know if Wikileaks are breaking any law, U.S. or international. The courts generally love the First Amendment (ala Pentagon Papers).
Furthermore, WIKILEAKS DID NOT ORGANIZE, MUCH LESS PARTICIPATE IN ANY DDOS ATTACKS. That was Anon, a third party, who has no affiliation with Wikileaks outside of agreeing with the cause (as much as Anon can agree about anything), and seeing themselves as the defender of the internet and its mythic ideal of open information.
The DDOS attacks were illegal, and there should be consequences. But illegal doesn't mean immortal (I'm not going to argue either way on that).
. Just because they are not the ones stole them does not mean they have "clean hands".
If I worked with Wikileaks I probably wouldn't be losing any sleep. So far there has been minimal harm, and a pretty good potential for benefit.
they are just are just script kiddies looking for an excuse.
Oh noes, their 1337 computer skills are less than your perceived skills! Who cares? What does that have to do with anything?
Though it is Anon, and now I won't be happy until they start to respond with Script Kitties.
DDoS doesn't work to promote a cause and the proof is here in all the posts mocking Anon.
I'm not going to side for or against Anon or various DDOS "protests"; I'm just going to say your point doesn't follow your reasoning. There are about an equal number of supporting posts as well. And if not for the attacks this wouldn't even be a discussion, which pretty much says that the attacks (good or bad) were effective in getting Anon's point across, meaning they worked.
I think the DDOS as protest idea is a mixed bag, ultimately, though. While it is very effective, and is definitely better than most of the idiotic hyperbole people here are tossing around ("its like firebombing things!", "Its MURDER!", etc...), it does walk a very fine line. It is illegal, and should be. It is also one of the few viable alternatives to physical protest I can see, there isn't any possible way to mirror an actual, real life, protest to a company that is only an online presence. How else do you get your point across?
I'm also not going to cry too much for the people who couldn't do business for the duration. I live in Phoenix, and for awhile this year our whole downtown area was pretty much dead to traffic or sane people every weekend for the illegal immigration brouhaha. A lot of businesses with no stake in either side of the hullabaloo lost business. Thats the price of existing in a society with the right of political expression. Its a decent sacrifice, since the benefits of protest is much higher than the short-term costs.
I did call myself a "knucklehead" remember? Perhaps just lazy. For the most part the italics and bold tags are pretty much functionally identical to the (proper) emphasis and strong tags. The idea of the web being semantic has been "depreciated" (if you pardon my use) for sometimes, html has, with the help of other technologies like CSS, become purely visual. This isn't why I'm attached to <i>, and <b>, obviously, thats just habit.
I hate to say it, but html, and the web in general, has become merely a way of pushing content to users over a network.
Just be glad I can't use <blink> for emphasis anymore.
Because Slashdot isn't Reddit (thank the nerd gods) or Hacker News. Slashdot has pretty much always made you choose between modding and commenting so you can't game the system as easily (modding down everyone who disagrees with you, modding yourself up, modding your comments parent up to increase visibility, etc...).
Modding isn't meant to be a popularity system (like Reddit devolved into, and why Slashdot removed a quantitative Karma score), it is supposed to increase the value of discussions. If you don't comment, your more likely to be impartial. Well... more impartial (that was italicized, can't you tell?) I'm pretty sure the "friend-foe-freak-fan" system is meant to make Digg and Reddit users happy, while being useful for the rest of us to up the threshold for known trolls.
Reddit was awesome, as was Digg in its first year, but they quickly decided to compete with 4chan, and lost all nerd appeal. Slashdot is one of the last sites around for grizzled tech veterans and hardcore, basement dwelling nerds to coalesce. If it ever lost that charm, I would be forced to do something productive with my day.
Also, has anybody noticed that the italics no longer works anymore?
Test?
It doesn't, at least in preview.... How the hell can something so basic as italics be broken?
Quotes, bold, and links seem to be fine, though, so perhaps its to force knuckleheads like me to use quote instead of italics... fat chance.
The old design didn't keep my CPU pegged at 10-12% for just reading a single page. With 5 tabs (opened at random from the front page) Chrome is now running at 25% of total processing power on my Phenom II x4 965 (3.4GHz). This makes no sense whatsoever, since I'm just reading text, and all the useful widgets have been replaced with a simple static menu.
The old-old design (which worked perfectly well) was lighter still.