The smarmy attitude got to me after a few paragraphs. "What's this 'Microsoft Internet Explorer' thing that I keep hearing about? It's profoundly inferior to everything I've ever used. People say it's popular, but they must be lying to me because it doesn't have tabbed browsing, and who can use the web without tabbed browsing?"
Sorry, but that gets old awfully damned fast. I've been using Red Hat at home exclusively for the last 7 months or so (since I got laid off and had time to really learn to use it), and while I much prefer it to Windows--even Win2k, of which I am rather fond--the difference isn't so incredibly huge that I would rather eat a Windows CD than install it.
Also, half of his problems seem to be with Windows APPS, rather than Windows. Nothing is keeping you from using a lot of the same apps in Windows, friend. When I do log in to my wife's Win2k box at home, I use OpenOffice, XChat, Gaim, and Mozilla Firebird--the same apps I use on my RH box.
How about some honest advocacy on the strengths of alternate operating systems? That would do more to show options to people who don't know they've got them. This kind of drek doesn't help anyone.
It's sad but still true, average Jennie won't download a 5-15MB browser when she gets it with her 'internet ready' computer, esepcially not when most large websites 'optimize for ie'. The users thinks the problems is with opera/mozilla/ns when they can't use sites they've always been able to access with their beloved explorer
That's odd; the hassle of downloading a setup package doesn't stop such people from downloading new media players, Kazaa, and all of the other garbage that I'm always finding on people's systems. In my experience, the real problem is just that people don't seem to know that any viable option exists. The last time they used Netscape was 4.0, and they've never heard of anything else.
My father-in-law runs into problems with IE all of the time, but he just considers it part of the computer-using experience. He is very suspicious of the fact that I use something not-Windows on our computers; I think he thinks I'm a closet commie or something...
...are the damned phone companies. In our first apartment, 1 out of every 3 calls was Qwest offering us new services. That was the only DNC list I've ever felt the need to be put on.
I can't fathom what they think they might do with this information, though. Maybe my mind isn't quite twisted enough...
Young's is quite good. Another slightly chocolatey stout is the Sheaf Stout, which is Australian, I think. I also recommend Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout, if you can find it.
... but you can reasonably expect to sit down and have a beer with him after work if you're in the right city. Can you say the same about numbers one through four?
And more importantly, you might actually want to. I quote the article:
Rumour has it he's a Guinness man as well.
How many of the top 4 are closet Bud Light drinkers? =)
Photo Editor (which comes with Off2k) will not work quite properly in a default Win2k install for non-admin users. There's a registry permissions issue which prevents Office graphic filters from being accessible by unprivileged users. It usually manifests itself with an error when you double-click on a JPEG file; Photo Editor will pop up, but then tell you that it can't get the format information (or something; it's been a while since I've seen the error). There's a Technet article on this issue that tells you how to do a workaround (basically, assign more liberal permissions to that particular registry key), but MS basically states that it won't be providing a real fix because Photo Editor is not considered a "core component" of the Office suite.
We are rolling out thousands of Win2k/Off2k systems here over the next few months, and I discovered yesterday that the standard build does not have the registry fix.
...that NMCI is contractually obligated to be no more than one revision behind the "current" Microsoft OS. Ergo, once the new Windows comes out, everybody is getting shuffled to XP.
Our site is in the middle of NMCI rollout right now. It's a horrid horrid nightmare...
Somewhat ironic summary...
on
Quicksilver
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
He highlights the dichotomy between the religious viewpoint, of a world that began in perfect knowledge and order and has steadily decayed since the Fall, and the scientific viewpoint, of a chaotic world that is slowly being brought into order and the reach of understanding.
A somewhat ironic summary, considering the laws of thermodynamics. =)
(Yes, yes, I know what he meant.)
It could be worse. You could be a technician supposed to SUPPORT NMCI with inadequate rights. Welcome to my hell. We're in the middle of transition right now.
Are you producing something that can be enjoyed by the clients of your work over and over again?
Perhaps you are selling your work too cheap. If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal. What's preventing you from doing the same?
I don't know about OSC, but a lot of other sci-fi authors have clued in to the fact that exposure sells books.
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats. Baen has also been offering CD-ROMs in some of their hardcovers which contain more books not available on their website. The most recent of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, for example, contains the entire series in electronic format. Best of all, you can copy them and distribute them however you like--you just can't sell them.
Try searching for "honorverse disk" at Google and see what you get. Many people (myself included) put the CDs up on their web server for convenience.
It's hideously effective, incidentally. I've bought about 25 Baen paperbacks in the last two years, and several hardbacks--one of them just for the CD, though I rather enjoyed the book, too, as it turned out.
I don't doubt that for a second. However, as you point out the lack of Slurpee servers would result in a vote of "let's bring them back in again" next time around. Either that, or locals would have to fill those positions. Either way it's a win-win situation.
Either way, you've just demonstrated the inherent instability of direct democracy. Vast overreactions to just about every stimulus, based entirely on the general public perception of reality. Imagine foreign policy--who would want to negotiate any kind of treaty with such a government?
With direct democracy we wouldn't have politicians as we have today. They would not have decision making powers. Instead we would have civil servants who would be paid a fixed salary to carry out the direct wishes of their constituents. Note, the constituents - not the corporations, because they wouldn't get a vote in the issues affecting the real live humans.
I think the opinions of people are easier to buy than senators, honestly. They call it marketing. The solution here isn't to throw out the representative system of government, I'm afraid; rather, we should concentrate on making the representatives truly accountable and representative.
That's not direct democracy, sorry.
on
Public Net-work
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That's not direct democracy. Read again.
Issues come up for voting, and there would be a place where I could go and see the most popular arguements on both sides and the views of critics and pundits and politicos of my choosing regarding the issues in question if I like, and vote directly on the issues. Or, if I am busy, perhaps I could earmark my representatives by expertise. Perhaps I want to earmark a respected doctor as my representative for medical issues, greenspan as my economic representative, nader as my consumer rights representative... and have their votes count for mine as default unless I actively change my rep for a particular issue or earmark an issue as "manual".
You don't vote on issues; you vote on bills. And notice that almost immediately he assigns responsibility for his vote on a wide range of things to a representative. Only the method for choosing the representative is different. Please note, I'm not saying this is a bad idea. It's intriguing, really, and maybe even workable, but it isn't direct democracy, where every citizen is voting (or able to vote) on every issue.
At one end of the scale, we have everyone voting on everything--total participation. At the other end, we have zero participation--no one cares. By assigning the task of governance to full time employees whose job it is to represent the interest of a block of voters, we can hopefully find a happy medium in there, where everyone is adequately represented without having to be a full time voter.
Once the novelty of direct democracy wore off, I think we would find that the only people who voted on any given issue were the ones who felt that they had a direct stake in it; everyone else would default to their judgment: tyranny of the majority at its worst. It would be another kind of representative government, really, except that the reps would be self-selecting.
Direct democracy--no thanks.
on
Public Net-work
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It cuts the middlemen (politicians) out and that is always a good things.
Do you have time, expertise, and desire to research and legislate every issue that affects you? I don't.
For all of the flaws in our particular system, it provides a decent compromise. If the majority of the citizenry could be bothered to research and pick out their representatives with a bit more care, I might believe that they could responsibly legislate. But if they did that, they wouldn't really need to, would they?
The real problem with "E-Democracy"
on
Public Net-work
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...is not communication between the public and the governing bodies; it is meaningful communication. The greatest advantage of the Internet age--I can talk to anyone and anyone can talk to me without filters or gatekeepers--is also the greatest flaw. Ever try to have a meaningful conversation with a crowd of people?
Envision government running like "The Price is Right," with the audience screaming out the policy decisions. =)
I haven't finished the article yet, but I don't have much hope that there is a proffered reasonable solution.
...in "I. Asimov," which is definitely worth reading even if you are not a huge fan of his writing. Fascinating guy.
Not a huge discussion, but you get the impression of Heinlein as a brilliant but flawed personality. He was the first sci-fi I ever read, though, and will always occupy that niche, whatever his personal failings.
Lacking a free software app that provides the same functionality, ease-of-use, and ease-of-install, I guess the alternative would be to use nothing?
I have no problem paying a reasonable price for a fairly unique product that does what I want to and is easy enough for my wife to enjoy playing with. I would be willing--indeed, I would prefer--that there were an OSS package of equivalent capabilities and ease-of-use that ran on Linux so that I could use it on my system, but I have not yet found one. Have you?
While looking into wikis, I stumbled across a nifty program called Personal Brain, from thebrain.com. It took a while to figure out just what I could do with it, but it ended up becoming a very useful tool. Some of the uses we have come up with (and actually done):
Keeping a master database "brain" of all of the RPG characters, players, and NPCs, along with web resources and useful files (e.g. PDFs of character sheets).
A logical map of the corporate network, including routers, switches, and whatnot. Since the "thoughts" can be links, files, or just text, I set it so that opening a router "thought" will start a telnet session, a server thought starts a terminal server session to that server, etc. Those were purely arbitrary. The links between network devices are color-coded by type (T1, dialup, DSL, etc). The network admin about crapped himself when I showed him--and then appropriated it for his own use.
Story aid. My wife likes to write, and she can link up characters, locations, events, and plot points in entirely arbitrary manners however she pleases.
It's worth playing with, and some may find it worth purchasing. If I used Windows more, I would.
, except Yahoo! Mail doesn't allow folder nesting. (And before you laugh at me for using Yahoo! Mail, can you access your mail at any web browser anywhere? How many times have you changed addresses in the last 5 years? I haven't at all.))
Go to Fastmail.fm and check it out. I will never depend on an ISP's e-mail address again.
To configure Palm Desktop for a non-admin user, open a cmd prompt under that user's login and type "hotsync -r". You only have to do this once for each person who needs to use it.
Now, admittedly, this is not a workaround immediately apparent to the users, but if you do even a cursory search on Google, you will find that it is a well-documented problem with a well-documented solution.
The point is a good one, however. There are many apps--even MS apps--which require admin access for full function. I spent a lot of my time at my last employer trying to find the registry permissions necessary to work around this. It can be done for most apps, but it is a PITA and requires a fair degree of comfort with the registry. This is, unfortunately, beyond many Windows technicians. We should be as comfortable with the registry as *nix gurus are with the CLI.
I posted a reply. Two minutes later, I'm looking at another post, and it occurs to me that I can change a few words and it's still apt (as another reply has already pointed out). It amused me, so I did. Those two were me--they have my name on them. I take credit for the smart and the dumb things that I say.
Slashdot Mirror
The smarmy attitude got to me after a few paragraphs. "What's this 'Microsoft Internet Explorer' thing that I keep hearing about? It's profoundly inferior to everything I've ever used. People say it's popular, but they must be lying to me because it doesn't have tabbed browsing, and who can use the web without tabbed browsing?"
Sorry, but that gets old awfully damned fast. I've been using Red Hat at home exclusively for the last 7 months or so (since I got laid off and had time to really learn to use it), and while I much prefer it to Windows--even Win2k, of which I am rather fond--the difference isn't so incredibly huge that I would rather eat a Windows CD than install it.
Also, half of his problems seem to be with Windows APPS, rather than Windows. Nothing is keeping you from using a lot of the same apps in Windows, friend. When I do log in to my wife's Win2k box at home, I use OpenOffice, XChat, Gaim, and Mozilla Firebird--the same apps I use on my RH box.
How about some honest advocacy on the strengths of alternate operating systems? That would do more to show options to people who don't know they've got them. This kind of drek doesn't help anyone.
My father-in-law runs into problems with IE all of the time, but he just considers it part of the computer-using experience. He is very suspicious of the fact that I use something not-Windows on our computers; I think he thinks I'm a closet commie or something...
...are the damned phone companies. In our first apartment, 1 out of every 3 calls was Qwest offering us new services. That was the only DNC list I've ever felt the need to be put on.
I can't fathom what they think they might do with this information, though. Maybe my mind isn't quite twisted enough...
Young's is quite good. Another slightly chocolatey stout is the Sheaf Stout, which is Australian, I think. I also recommend Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout, if you can find it.
And more importantly, you might actually want to. I quote the article:
How many of the top 4 are closet Bud Light drinkers? =)Photo Editor (which comes with Off2k) will not work quite properly in a default Win2k install for non-admin users. There's a registry permissions issue which prevents Office graphic filters from being accessible by unprivileged users. It usually manifests itself with an error when you double-click on a JPEG file; Photo Editor will pop up, but then tell you that it can't get the format information (or something; it's been a while since I've seen the error). There's a Technet article on this issue that tells you how to do a workaround (basically, assign more liberal permissions to that particular registry key), but MS basically states that it won't be providing a real fix because Photo Editor is not considered a "core component" of the Office suite.
We are rolling out thousands of Win2k/Off2k systems here over the next few months, and I discovered yesterday that the standard build does not have the registry fix.
"Check out this wicked screensaver!!!! But it um, only runs as root, so you have to su first. Also, chmod and make it executable, please. Thanks!"
...that NMCI is contractually obligated to be no more than one revision behind the "current" Microsoft OS. Ergo, once the new Windows comes out, everybody is getting shuffled to XP.
Our site is in the middle of NMCI rollout right now. It's a horrid horrid nightmare...
It could be worse. You could be a technician supposed to SUPPORT NMCI with inadequate rights. Welcome to my hell. We're in the middle of transition right now.
Perhaps you are selling your work too cheap. If he produces something that people are willing to pay for, more power to him. It is a sweet deal. What's preventing you from doing the same?
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats. Baen has also been offering CD-ROMs in some of their hardcovers which contain more books not available on their website. The most recent of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, for example, contains the entire series in electronic format. Best of all, you can copy them and distribute them however you like--you just can't sell them.
Try searching for "honorverse disk" at Google and see what you get. Many people (myself included) put the CDs up on their web server for convenience.
It's hideously effective, incidentally. I've bought about 25 Baen paperbacks in the last two years, and several hardbacks--one of them just for the CD, though I rather enjoyed the book, too, as it turned out.
At one end of the scale, we have everyone voting on everything--total participation. At the other end, we have zero participation--no one cares. By assigning the task of governance to full time employees whose job it is to represent the interest of a block of voters, we can hopefully find a happy medium in there, where everyone is adequately represented without having to be a full time voter.
Once the novelty of direct democracy wore off, I think we would find that the only people who voted on any given issue were the ones who felt that they had a direct stake in it; everyone else would default to their judgment: tyranny of the majority at its worst. It would be another kind of representative government, really, except that the reps would be self-selecting.
For all of the flaws in our particular system, it provides a decent compromise. If the majority of the citizenry could be bothered to research and pick out their representatives with a bit more care, I might believe that they could responsibly legislate. But if they did that, they wouldn't really need to, would they?
Envision government running like "The Price is Right," with the audience screaming out the policy decisions. =)
I haven't finished the article yet, but I don't have much hope that there is a proffered reasonable solution.
Not a huge discussion, but you get the impression of Heinlein as a brilliant but flawed personality. He was the first sci-fi I ever read, though, and will always occupy that niche, whatever his personal failings.
I have no problem paying a reasonable price for a fairly unique product that does what I want to and is easy enough for my wife to enjoy playing with. I would be willing--indeed, I would prefer--that there were an OSS package of equivalent capabilities and ease-of-use that ran on Linux so that I could use it on my system, but I have not yet found one. Have you?
- Keeping a master database "brain" of all of the RPG characters, players, and NPCs, along with web resources and useful files (e.g. PDFs of character sheets).
- A logical map of the corporate network, including routers, switches, and whatnot. Since the "thoughts" can be links, files, or just text, I set it so that opening a router "thought" will start a telnet session, a server thought starts a terminal server session to that server, etc. Those were purely arbitrary. The links between network devices are color-coded by type (T1, dialup, DSL, etc). The network admin about crapped himself when I showed him--and then appropriated it for his own use.
- Story aid. My wife likes to write, and she can link up characters, locations, events, and plot points in entirely arbitrary manners however she pleases.
It's worth playing with, and some may find it worth purchasing. If I used Windows more, I would.I'd still like to get into wikis, though. =)
Honestly, how many different methods must we have of representing that sound? =)
Now, admittedly, this is not a workaround immediately apparent to the users, but if you do even a cursory search on Google, you will find that it is a well-documented problem with a well-documented solution.
The point is a good one, however. There are many apps--even MS apps--which require admin access for full function. I spent a lot of my time at my last employer trying to find the registry permissions necessary to work around this. It can be done for most apps, but it is a PITA and requires a fair degree of comfort with the registry. This is, unfortunately, beyond many Windows technicians. We should be as comfortable with the registry as *nix gurus are with the CLI.
<whispers>
Huh? Oh.
I posted a reply. Two minutes later, I'm looking at another post, and it occurs to me that I can change a few words and it's still apt (as another reply has already pointed out). It amused me, so I did. Those two were me--they have my name on them. I take credit for the smart and the dumb things that I say.