But to a large degree the attitude on behalf of Linux users is a *big* part of the reason I'm leaving.
And I submit that a similar reason with regards to OpenBSD (and Theo specifically) lies behind users of non-OpenBSD systems not bothering with OpenBSD.
I will continue using Debian for my servers, but that's mainly because I admin SYSV boxes for a living. I'll kindly hold the SYSV vs. BSD rant for a relevant thread:o)
Unless AOL and eBay have a peering agreement, neither has legal recourse if the other blocks their traffic. eBay is under no obligation to accept traffic from anyone unless there's a contract signed. Same for AOL.
As someone who does just that, I'd be interested in knowing how I'm being "punished." Is it the mountain of junk mail? Is it the insulting offers to transition from a low fixed rate to a variable rate? I'm having trouble figuring out if I'm really their customer or the albatross around their neck at times.
How about, instead of trying to rationalize why I should run Kazaa or something else that uses up all my bandwidth to download free songs, movies and other trash, I simply don't bother wasting my time? I don't download crappy content I know I won't enjoy, and my decision costs me nothing.
The MPAA isn't pleased with people like me, who throw $6.50 their way via a matinee showing every two years, and that's only if I get dragged to the theatre by my workmates. To add insult to injury, very few of the DVDs I buy pad the coffers of the MPAA. Likewise, the RIAA is pretty pissed at people like me, who just STOPPED buying mainstream CDs 10 years ago, and only buy used CDs these days. But the RIAA doesn't have too much to gripe about, seeing how they're getting 75% of the iTunes Music Store money I spend, and even then it's not the hundreds every month they'd -really- want me to spend.
If something regarding the content is problematic (WMA-only files, no true a-la-carte cable channel selection, 100 channels of digital turds posing as a cable "product," highly-priced cable, movies and CDs, 20min of commercials before the previews, etc), I'll learn to live without that content. This philosophy works (for me), after all, and I get to keep my money. It's my very small way of letting offending entities know that they should eat shit and die without breaking any laws, real or imagined.
And meanwhile, I continue evaluating which software is better for me, evaluate the seriousness of "huge and stupid security holes," and make the decision to continue using Firefox to the exclusion of Safari and IE (no other choice on Linux, really). I'll continue to use it carefully, as always, but it's my choice until another browser offers tabbed browsing and extensibility without sucking gobs of RAM (and hopefully that'll be... uh... Firefox still).
Maybe everyone involved should put forth some efforts to stopping the pissing match. Personally, I'm hoping the arguments will degenerate to namecalling and threats of violence. I'm THAT sick of this whole thing. At least the insults will be funny.
(I could go into some off-topic rant about why I do or don't use other unrelated software, but...:o)
It's a bit off-topic, but I think you're mistaking the supposed function of a K-12 public school system (education) with what it really does (indoctrination, obey at all costs, never question).
If education needs fixing, our nation's universities should be a good starting point.
Now, overhauling the pressure-cooker indoctrination centers into places that educate? I'm all for that, and will gladly pay my property tax knowing it's actually being put to some good use (as opposed to just paying it because I have to).
Please tell me how having to pay for a new TV (or at least a new converter) and having to accept a bunch of unknown restrictions on how I use the signal in my own home makes this digital TV superior to the currently working analog TV.
Fortunately, I stopped caring about TV in the early 1990s, so I probably won't have to worry about it. I am genuinely curious, though.
Also, I think you're wrong about this not being a political issue. I'm almost certain that when the folks out in the sticks (or otherwise without cable or sat) realize who was responsible for their TV cutting to static in 2007, they'll be at the pollbooth in 2008 to vote them out of office. This isn't a gradual thing, like eroding privacy rights. Someone took their TV away!
That phone info looks really fishy. Last I heard, Blue Springs was still in the 816 area. Why would they have a brick&mortar presence in MO, yet have a CA phone number? Maybe they're using VOIP...
Sounds more like "Jump-through-hoops Domain" on the surface.:o)
I happen to not have cable (because I NEVER watch TV, that's why), and I'll -still- skip on the xbox and the xbox2. There are reasons for this:
- no games that interest me. Those that do are available on the Cube or PS2, and even if they weren't, they're not exactly killer apps. Anyway, once I filter out the FPS and sports games, there's virtually nothing left
- I'm uninterested in playing games online with a bunch of strangers, much less in -paying- for the privilege of online play
- For xbox, the hardware was totally uninspiring. This doesn't mean anything significant, but coupled with the "no games" thing, it's just another nail in the coffin. I'm not sure what the xbox2 hardware will really be, so jury's out (though it's probable that the controller will STILL suck)
- I'm (almost) totally uninterested in using the console for anything except playing games. The only peripheral interest I have here is buying a used xbox and a mod chip, then making a tiny file server out of it, but the cost of the mod and a real hard drive could be more than the xbox. May as well get a quieter and cooler (in comparison to my current server) XPC for this job...
Worse than Fark, huh? How about (and NEITHER OF THESE LINKS ARE WORKSAFE) 4chan's/b/ and/f/ boards? 3 weeks of/b/ is more than enough to reduce one's brain to mush.
I click on a menu and hold the button while scrolling through the choices because that's how I learned to mouse. My first experience was with a Macintosh when they were new, and there was no other way to access the menus -- if you didn't HOLD the button, the menu would disappear.
I don't think it's right for a desktop or an app to ask me to unlearn what I learned in 1987.
Give me one good reason why I should trust the government or anyone in power. Trust is something that's earned, not expected in response to "get a grip." I don't trust the powers that be to not misuse information.
I have nothing to hide. It'd be better if the powers that be ate their own dogfood and made THEIR information public, like they're about to make ours public. Yeah, I know this isn't about "making information public," but it underscores one worry I have about this system: those with sufficient funds or power can always exclude themselves and those they like.
I know this has little to do with torrents, but what obligation do I have to add to these people's wealth, especially when they're trying to dictate what I do with -my- copy of their work in my own home? I'm not stepping into a theatre until their product and experience improves, and they can stop charging me so much to get in.
This is why I don't buy MPAA stuff on DVD very much, and the general crappiness of the MPAA's output is why I don't bother with wasting my bandwidth by passing torrents of MPAA property around or downloading them. I keep my money, they keep their stinking pile of shit.
A student's "role in the educational system" is to be indoctrinated and obey at all costs. Nothing less. If the purpose of school was education, this wouldn't even be an issue.
I'm sure you also were rudely surprised when the "II emulation" got you a 48k Apple II+ unless you added hardware like the III+IIe...
Word on the street is the III's engineers had to add circuitry to keep the advanced capabilities from being used from emulation mode. It's also said that if the power lamp was burnt out, the computer wouldn't boot up!
Perhaps the best two things to come out of the Apple III were Appleworks (an Apple II port of/// easy pieces; the files are the same between the two down to the filetypes) and ProDOS (basically a subset of SOS for the II series). There were other nice things, like the Apple keys and 80 column cards for the II series...
Re:Apple ///, no. Apple SOS, yes.
on
Top 10 Apple Flops
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'd personally like to find a list of SOS system calls so I can compare them to the ProDOS MLI calls I know and love. Too bad the web kinda fails at letting me have this info. Maybe it really doesn't exist!
Anyway, if SOS is anything like ProDOS from an assembly language point, I can't possibly see it being all -that- bad. After experiencing the hell that was programming to the File Manager for DOS 3.3, ProDOS (and perhaps SOS, since ProDOS was based on SOS) is a dream.
From what little I've used of the Apple III (on the Sara emulator), it seems fairly impressive. No way I'd be able to hack it like I can any Apple II series, though...
This is why I use Google News as my news source... that is, when I need to read news. I stopped believing print and TV news long before Google News came along.
The problem I've had with using my PowerBook G4 with a USB->serial dongle (PL2303 based) is that the BREAK sequence isn't supported. This is the case with minicom, at least. I can use it for anything not requiring the BREAK key, though.
Slashdot Mirror
And I submit that a similar reason with regards to OpenBSD (and Theo specifically) lies behind users of non-OpenBSD systems not bothering with OpenBSD.
I will continue using Debian for my servers, but that's mainly because I admin SYSV boxes for a living. I'll kindly hold the SYSV vs. BSD rant for a relevant thread :o)
Unless AOL and eBay have a peering agreement, neither has legal recourse if the other blocks their traffic. eBay is under no obligation to accept traffic from anyone unless there's a contract signed. Same for AOL.
It's a shame that visiting either place involves driving half a country for me.
As someone who does just that, I'd be interested in knowing how I'm being "punished." Is it the mountain of junk mail? Is it the insulting offers to transition from a low fixed rate to a variable rate? I'm having trouble figuring out if I'm really their customer or the albatross around their neck at times.
I know I'd buy a whole boatload of Japanese stuff if only iTunes Music Store allowed it.
I suppose it really IS a small world after all...
How about, instead of trying to rationalize why I should run Kazaa or something else that uses up all my bandwidth to download free songs, movies and other trash, I simply don't bother wasting my time? I don't download crappy content I know I won't enjoy, and my decision costs me nothing.
The MPAA isn't pleased with people like me, who throw $6.50 their way via a matinee showing every two years, and that's only if I get dragged to the theatre by my workmates. To add insult to injury, very few of the DVDs I buy pad the coffers of the MPAA. Likewise, the RIAA is pretty pissed at people like me, who just STOPPED buying mainstream CDs 10 years ago, and only buy used CDs these days. But the RIAA doesn't have too much to gripe about, seeing how they're getting 75% of the iTunes Music Store money I spend, and even then it's not the hundreds every month they'd -really- want me to spend.
If something regarding the content is problematic (WMA-only files, no true a-la-carte cable channel selection, 100 channels of digital turds posing as a cable "product," highly-priced cable, movies and CDs, 20min of commercials before the previews, etc), I'll learn to live without that content. This philosophy works (for me), after all, and I get to keep my money. It's my very small way of letting offending entities know that they should eat shit and die without breaking any laws, real or imagined.
And meanwhile, I continue evaluating which software is better for me, evaluate the seriousness of "huge and stupid security holes," and make the decision to continue using Firefox to the exclusion of Safari and IE (no other choice on Linux, really). I'll continue to use it carefully, as always, but it's my choice until another browser offers tabbed browsing and extensibility without sucking gobs of RAM (and hopefully that'll be... uh... Firefox still).
:o)
Maybe everyone involved should put forth some efforts to stopping the pissing match. Personally, I'm hoping the arguments will degenerate to namecalling and threats of violence. I'm THAT sick of this whole thing. At least the insults will be funny.
(I could go into some off-topic rant about why I do or don't use other unrelated software, but...
It's a bit off-topic, but I think you're mistaking the supposed function of a K-12 public school system (education) with what it really does (indoctrination, obey at all costs, never question).
If education needs fixing, our nation's universities should be a good starting point.
Now, overhauling the pressure-cooker indoctrination centers into places that educate? I'm all for that, and will gladly pay my property tax knowing it's actually being put to some good use (as opposed to just paying it because I have to).
Please tell me how having to pay for a new TV (or at least a new converter) and having to accept a bunch of unknown restrictions on how I use the signal in my own home makes this digital TV superior to the currently working analog TV.
Fortunately, I stopped caring about TV in the early 1990s, so I probably won't have to worry about it. I am genuinely curious, though.
Also, I think you're wrong about this not being a political issue. I'm almost certain that when the folks out in the sticks (or otherwise without cable or sat) realize who was responsible for their TV cutting to static in 2007, they'll be at the pollbooth in 2008 to vote them out of office. This isn't a gradual thing, like eroding privacy rights. Someone took their TV away!
That phone info looks really fishy. Last I heard, Blue Springs was still in the 816 area. Why would they have a brick&mortar presence in MO, yet have a CA phone number? Maybe they're using VOIP...
:o)
Sounds more like "Jump-through-hoops Domain" on the surface.
I happen to not have cable (because I NEVER watch TV, that's why), and I'll -still- skip on the xbox and the xbox2. There are reasons for this:
- no games that interest me. Those that do are available on the Cube or PS2, and even if they weren't, they're not exactly killer apps. Anyway, once I filter out the FPS and sports games, there's virtually nothing left
- I'm uninterested in playing games online with a bunch of strangers, much less in -paying- for the privilege of online play
- For xbox, the hardware was totally uninspiring. This doesn't mean anything significant, but coupled with the "no games" thing, it's just another nail in the coffin. I'm not sure what the xbox2 hardware will really be, so jury's out (though it's probable that the controller will STILL suck)
- I'm (almost) totally uninterested in using the console for anything except playing games. The only peripheral interest I have here is buying a used xbox and a mod chip, then making a tiny file server out of it, but the cost of the mod and a real hard drive could be more than the xbox. May as well get a quieter and cooler (in comparison to my current server) XPC for this job...
Worse than Fark, huh? How about (and NEITHER OF THESE LINKS ARE WORKSAFE) 4chan's /b/ and /f/ boards? 3 weeks of /b/ is more than enough to reduce one's brain to mush.
While it's not evidence of sabotage in XP, MS's track record says that they're not above misrepresenting working alternatives as somehow non-working.
I click on a menu and hold the button while scrolling through the choices because that's how I learned to mouse. My first experience was with a Macintosh when they were new, and there was no other way to access the menus -- if you didn't HOLD the button, the menu would disappear.
I don't think it's right for a desktop or an app to ask me to unlearn what I learned in 1987.
Pay me to do exercise that's not fun and eat food that tastes like crap, and we'll talk.
:o)
On the other hand, you couldn't pay me to start smoking.
That doesn't really matter, as I for one don't look forward to having only sports games and FPSs available, so I'll buy the other guys' systems.
It's all about the games, most of which, unfortunately, suck more than they don't.
Give me one good reason why I should trust the government or anyone in power. Trust is something that's earned, not expected in response to "get a grip." I don't trust the powers that be to not misuse information.
I have nothing to hide. It'd be better if the powers that be ate their own dogfood and made THEIR information public, like they're about to make ours public. Yeah, I know this isn't about "making information public," but it underscores one worry I have about this system: those with sufficient funds or power can always exclude themselves and those they like.
I know this has little to do with torrents, but what obligation do I have to add to these people's wealth, especially when they're trying to dictate what I do with -my- copy of their work in my own home? I'm not stepping into a theatre until their product and experience improves, and they can stop charging me so much to get in.
This is why I don't buy MPAA stuff on DVD very much, and the general crappiness of the MPAA's output is why I don't bother with wasting my bandwidth by passing torrents of MPAA property around or downloading them. I keep my money, they keep their stinking pile of shit.
A student's "role in the educational system" is to be indoctrinated and obey at all costs. Nothing less. If the purpose of school was education, this wouldn't even be an issue.
I'm sure you also were rudely surprised when the "II emulation" got you a 48k Apple II+ unless you added hardware like the III+IIe...
/// easy pieces; the files are the same between the two down to the filetypes) and ProDOS (basically a subset of SOS for the II series). There were other nice things, like the Apple keys and 80 column cards for the II series...
Word on the street is the III's engineers had to add circuitry to keep the advanced capabilities from being used from emulation mode. It's also said that if the power lamp was burnt out, the computer wouldn't boot up!
Perhaps the best two things to come out of the Apple III were Appleworks (an Apple II port of
I'd personally like to find a list of SOS system calls so I can compare them to the ProDOS MLI calls I know and love. Too bad the web kinda fails at letting me have this info. Maybe it really doesn't exist!
Anyway, if SOS is anything like ProDOS from an assembly language point, I can't possibly see it being all -that- bad. After experiencing the hell that was programming to the File Manager for DOS 3.3, ProDOS (and perhaps SOS, since ProDOS was based on SOS) is a dream.
From what little I've used of the Apple III (on the Sara emulator), it seems fairly impressive. No way I'd be able to hack it like I can any Apple II series, though...
After the HP 932c I had, and paying $86 for new ink, HP's actions spoke loud and clear: BUY EPSON
So I did. At least the carts can be replaced one at a time on the CX5400.
This is why I use Google News as my news source... that is, when I need to read news. I stopped believing print and TV news long before Google News came along.
I'll bet you say that to all the users who are victims of false positives.
The problem I've had with using my PowerBook G4 with a USB->serial dongle (PL2303 based) is that the BREAK sequence isn't supported. This is the case with minicom, at least. I can use it for anything not requiring the BREAK key, though.