When I worked at, er, a large semiconductor manufacturing company on the west coast, our deparmentally-issued desktops were often 2 or 3 servicepacks and updates BEHIND what M$ had released.
Why, you ask? Well because SP3 might break Critical_Software_Application02, of course. And since we were the bread and butter of the company (Processor/Chipset Validation), things had better work, damnit!
Of course there were firewalls and such to prevent viruses and such from getting IN, but then again when some Engineer took his laptop home and infected it, there was no recourse. This was about 7 years ago, however, so I'm not sure what they've done in the meantime to prevent such things. I DO know that MORE people have laptops instead of the standard-issue desktops than before, so it might even be worse.
Long story short: Service Packs and Patches have a LONG history of breaking stuff. Corporate customers Don't Like That(TM).
The truth is, popup ads have about 10-20 times as high a clickthrough rate as regular banners do (even flash banners) - so the companies will keep paying for them.
The reason for this is probably because of misrepresentation on the ad itself. Remember the 'Your computer is vulnerable' ads that mimiced Windows popup error messages? Putting a '[X]' in the upper-right-hand corner or a 'cancel' button somewhere in the ad will generate a clickthrough if some clueless luser hits the button thinking they're closing the window.
Lies, lies, and statistics. You're quoting a statistic that is probably 90% based on dishonesty on the part of the advertiser. The other 10% is fumble-fingers on the user side.
I think I saw the same bug with portage. I was updating the wife's laptop to the latest versions of whatever overnight, and when I went to check the system the next morning it was hosed. Emerge just wouldn't work. For *anything*.
Since that system was the only system on the network running anything other than Debian (or Windows) I decided that for kicks I'd just boot via Knoppix and run the HD installer off of that. I've not had a Debian installation - even with everything running unstable - totally render the system unusable, like whatever issue with portage did to my laptop.
Gentoo is a good idea, but I don't think I was running unstable on the laptop, and it completely threw me that it would just up and die for no apparent reason. I'm sure if I'd played with it I could have gotten everything fixed, but I wasn't really in the mood. Plus in order for Gentoo to really shine you should have a fairly beefy system (or perhaps distributed compilers, a la ditscc?), and none of my linux boxes are over the 1Ghz mark.
Gaim is the only decent AIM client for I've run across for Windows - the official client is utter crap, and Trillian is bloated payware.
I stopped using Trillian when they went to the pay model. I then tried to go all-linux on the desktop, but found that my EQ addiction could not be curbed, and had to return to Windows for that...and Gaim for Windows then became my IM client of choice.
Now, if only the Gaim folks would get their act together on MSN support...
Not sure what you're meaning here though, I've been able to chat with my MSN buddies for quite some time. 0.76 fixes MSN. Er, well...if only. I mean it *works* now...and most of the problems with 'support' aren't on the Gaim Devs side - that's all MSN/Y!/AIM folks breaking the protocol *again*.
High pitch sounds are more painful to listen to, but they are easier to block than low pitch sounds...
Okay then, tell this to my wife who just had me spend ~$70 on a hard disk for the TiVo because it was whining 'too loudly'. Granted, I upgraded it from a 40gig to an 80, but that's not the point. The point is, when something is annoying you, you'll do just about anything to make it stop.
I would put a corner of the comforter, wadded up a few times, next to my ear in order to get to sleep. Thought several times about getting some earplugs. Unplugged the thing a couple of times - which made her miss recording the next day's episode of 'Survivor' (oh, the HORROR!). In the end, only replacing the drive (~3 months out of warranty, doh!) solved the problem.
So the.mp3 file has to be zipped up in order for this exploit to work properly, yes? At first I thought this wasn't a problem. But then again, those zipped-up and password-protected windows viruses of late didn't save the lusers who opened them, did it?
And then I thought of something else. What about free webhosting places that don't allow you to store.mp3's on the server? And only allow.zip or.txt or.sit for file storage? A little disclaimer...
Download the newest Britney Spears.mp3! Sorry but my provider doesn't allow.mp3 extensions, just unzip and open after downloading, thanks!...and you've just infected a slew of people.
Of course, the more reasonbly priced the better, but I know you usually get what you pay for.
Right, since our FREE (as in beer) Operating System doesn't hold a candle to those other OS's that actually cost money, and stuff, right?
I've seen packet sniffers that cost upwards of $10k on a proprietary box that you couldn't change the ethernet cards out of else it would break the configuration. But a $250 linux box running ettercap (or any of the other tools mentioned here) would have performed just as well, if not better.
You should know better than to equate cost with goodness around these parts, stranger.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I watch TV sometimes FOR the commercials. Honestly, how many of you geeks out there watch the Superbowl and actually give a fsck about the outcome of the game? I don't. I watch it for the COMMERCIALS. Those few minutes are the very best 30/60-second spots on the airwaves.
People watch commercials. Wether or not they CAN skip over them, we watch them. Hell, sometimes I forget I'm watching a pre-recorded show on my TiVo and don't skip. Can I charge them for that time I wasted watching their commercials TWICE during the same show?
The CEO's need to STOP trying to figure out how they can squeeze every last fucking penny out of the consumer.
The faster wireless networks can grow, the faster we can shit-can cable and phone companies and their arbitrary caps.
I don't know about you, but around here, *someone* is STILL going to have to have some kind of connection to the internet for that to work. We can have all of the WiFi we want - but if we can't get to the sites we want to because A) there IS no connection (because everyone shit-canned their ISP) or B) the ONE connection that we DO still have has exceeded their bandwidth cap, we've got NOTHING.
I'm sorry, but WiFi is NOT just so that some people can get free war3z and unlimited bandwidth. To get, you have to give. Keep your cable connection, network in your WiFi as a public node. Connect up to a few buddies with cable/DSL as well. If you do it right, you'll ALL share that bandwidth.
Sharing. It's about SHARING. Not getting it ALL for nothing.
No? Our 1-year old Dell Inspiron 8100 with a 14.1" LCD uses 1400x1050. The 15" screen would go to 16x12. I expect that most, if not all, of currently-shipping laptops to do 1600x1200 easily.
Yeah, and that's why I quit EQ in the first place: all of the l33t d00ds who thought that ph4t l3wt was more important than anything else.
EQ is an IRC channel that gives you something interesting to do during the downtimes in conversation. When you delude yourself into thinking it's more than that, that is when it's time to hang up the mouse and go back to the real world.
I would rather read the book first. That way you get the complete author's version of the events, in the way they were INTENDED.
The movie, even if the author of the book is an advisor on the set, will almost always become an INTERPRETATION of the book.
The Harry Potter series is probably one of the very best book->movie conversions I've seen. (Gah, I'm typing like it's a shell script) Granted, my preferred genre of book doesn't lend itself towards good movie fare (scifi/fantasy) for the most part, but with the exception of LOTR I can't think of ANY that have crossed that boundary quite as well.
I watched the Princess Bride before I even knew there was a book. After reading the book, I watched the movie again, and it came alive. I knew backstory, and details that the movie couldn't even begin to relate were abundant. I *should* have re-read the Chamber of Secrets in the week before the movie came out.
...and considered the whys and why-nots extensively.
Why? Basically for one, and only one reason: Easier to administer on MY end. I can create a user account for them and then they can bang on the box all day long without me worrying about them fucking something up. The most they could mess with is stuff in ${HOME}. Not like they have a whole lot of critical data at age 8.
Why not? Games. Because honestly, at the age that my kids are at, that is pretty much what they use the computer(s) for. Will most of those games run under Wine? Yeah, probably. But that is going to be a real pain in the arse, and my one and only heading under Why is for ease of administration. And when you start mucking with Wine, that goes out the window (no pun intended). Not to mention that games don't autorun (as mentioned previously), and in general things just won't work like they are used to.
So, my next option is to just create a Ghost image with a minimal win98 install, some of thier favorite games pre-installed, and just re-image every few months when they screw up the system so much that it won't boot properly.
And don't give them write access to the pr0n directory on the fileserver. That's an important part.
Next time you have a drive that 'just stops', try this:
Stick it in a freezer bag with a dessicant pack. Put it in the freezer for a few hours. Take it out, hook it up. If it doesn't spin up, tap it lightly on the side with a hammer or somesuch UNDER POWER. If it spins up, furiously copy data after boot, and THEN RMA it.
I did this with a neighbor's drive. Still kinda bummed I didn't get to fsck her, too.;)
Oh come now, do you *really* expect anything like this to last 10 years? We're using an app here at work that we decided didn't have the options we needed and so went to a web-based solution after using the other for only a YEAR.
Applications, hardware, software and just about EVERYTHING change by leaps and bounds in just a 1-year lifespan. Moore's law is based on an 18-month timeline. You're talking Moore's law timeframe x7! Be reasonable in your lifetime expectations, and THEN come back and talk to us.
Slashdot Mirror
So your solution, which begins as a $1 peice of 'standard' code that you sell:...can then be 'customized', for any fee, tax-free. Right?
I don't know about you, Garth, but I for one, will not be swayed by ANY sponsor. ~holds up a slice of Pizza Hut(tm) pizza and takes a gratuitous bite~
When I worked at, er, a large semiconductor manufacturing company on the west coast, our deparmentally-issued desktops were often 2 or 3 servicepacks and updates BEHIND what M$ had released.
Why, you ask? Well because SP3 might break Critical_Software_Application02, of course. And since we were the bread and butter of the company (Processor/Chipset Validation), things had better work, damnit!
Of course there were firewalls and such to prevent viruses and such from getting IN, but then again when some Engineer took his laptop home and infected it, there was no recourse. This was about 7 years ago, however, so I'm not sure what they've done in the meantime to prevent such things. I DO know that MORE people have laptops instead of the standard-issue desktops than before, so it might even be worse.
Long story short: Service Packs and Patches have a LONG history of breaking stuff. Corporate customers Don't Like That(TM).
~prays to the gods that be that Shatner doesn't decide to sing this one~
I prefer Vice City over GTA3 if only for the 80's soundtrack and the SWEET Mullets. Okay, maybe not the Mullets.
But jacking a car and cruising around Vice City jamming to my favorite 80's hits? I could do that all day long, my friend.
I cannot believe you people forgot M.U.L.E. For shame.
The truth is, popup ads have about 10-20 times as high a clickthrough rate as regular banners do (even flash banners) - so the companies will keep paying for them.
The reason for this is probably because of misrepresentation on the ad itself. Remember the 'Your computer is vulnerable' ads that mimiced Windows popup error messages? Putting a '[X]' in the upper-right-hand corner or a 'cancel' button somewhere in the ad will generate a clickthrough if some clueless luser hits the button thinking they're closing the window.
Lies, lies, and statistics. You're quoting a statistic that is probably 90% based on dishonesty on the part of the advertiser. The other 10% is fumble-fingers on the user side.
I think I saw the same bug with portage. I was updating the wife's laptop to the latest versions of whatever overnight, and when I went to check the system the next morning it was hosed. Emerge just wouldn't work. For *anything*.
Since that system was the only system on the network running anything other than Debian (or Windows) I decided that for kicks I'd just boot via Knoppix and run the HD installer off of that. I've not had a Debian installation - even with everything running unstable - totally render the system unusable, like whatever issue with portage did to my laptop.
Gentoo is a good idea, but I don't think I was running unstable on the laptop, and it completely threw me that it would just up and die for no apparent reason. I'm sure if I'd played with it I could have gotten everything fixed, but I wasn't really in the mood. Plus in order for Gentoo to really shine you should have a fairly beefy system (or perhaps distributed compilers, a la ditscc?), and none of my linux boxes are over the 1Ghz mark.
Ah well, to each his own.
Gaim is the only decent AIM client for I've run across for Windows - the official client is utter crap, and Trillian is bloated payware.
...
I stopped using Trillian when they went to the pay model. I then tried to go all-linux on the desktop, but found that my EQ addiction could not be curbed, and had to return to Windows for that...and Gaim for Windows then became my IM client of choice.
Now, if only the Gaim folks would get their act together on MSN support
Not sure what you're meaning here though, I've been able to chat with my MSN buddies for quite some time. 0.76 fixes MSN. Er, well...if only. I mean it *works* now...and most of the problems with 'support' aren't on the Gaim Devs side - that's all MSN/Y!/AIM folks breaking the protocol *again*.
I've been rejecting spam via header and body checks with postfix for about that long myself... Thanks Security Sage!
High pitch sounds are more painful to listen to, but they are easier to block than low pitch sounds...
Okay then, tell this to my wife who just had me spend ~$70 on a hard disk for the TiVo because it was whining 'too loudly'. Granted, I upgraded it from a 40gig to an 80, but that's not the point. The point is, when something is annoying you, you'll do just about anything to make it stop.
I would put a corner of the comforter, wadded up a few times, next to my ear in order to get to sleep. Thought several times about getting some earplugs. Unplugged the thing a couple of times - which made her miss recording the next day's episode of 'Survivor' (oh, the HORROR!). In the end, only replacing the drive (~3 months out of warranty, doh!) solved the problem.
So the .mp3 file has to be zipped up in order for this exploit to work properly, yes? At first I thought this wasn't a problem. But then again, those zipped-up and password-protected windows viruses of late didn't save the lusers who opened them, did it?
.mp3's on the server? And only allow .zip or .txt or .sit for file storage? A little disclaimer...
.mp3! Sorry but my provider doesn't allow .mp3 extensions, just unzip and open after downloading, thanks! ...and you've just infected a slew of people.
And then I thought of something else. What about free webhosting places that don't allow you to store
Download the newest Britney Spears
Of course, the more reasonbly priced the better, but I know you usually get what you pay for.
Right, since our FREE (as in beer) Operating System doesn't hold a candle to those other OS's that actually cost money, and stuff, right?
I've seen packet sniffers that cost upwards of $10k on a proprietary box that you couldn't change the ethernet cards out of else it would break the configuration. But a $250 linux box running ettercap (or any of the other tools mentioned here) would have performed just as well, if not better.
You should know better than to equate cost with goodness around these parts, stranger.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I watch TV sometimes FOR the commercials. Honestly, how many of you geeks out there watch the Superbowl and actually give a fsck about the outcome of the game? I don't. I watch it for the COMMERCIALS. Those few minutes are the very best 30/60-second spots on the airwaves.
People watch commercials. Wether or not they CAN skip over them, we watch them. Hell, sometimes I forget I'm watching a pre-recorded show on my TiVo and don't skip. Can I charge them for that time I wasted watching their commercials TWICE during the same show?
The CEO's need to STOP trying to figure out how they can squeeze every last fucking penny out of the consumer.
Excuse me?
The faster wireless networks can grow, the faster we can shit-can cable and phone companies and their arbitrary caps.
I don't know about you, but around here, *someone* is STILL going to have to have some kind of connection to the internet for that to work. We can have all of the WiFi we want - but if we can't get to the sites we want to because A) there IS no connection (because everyone shit-canned their ISP) or B) the ONE connection that we DO still have has exceeded their bandwidth cap, we've got NOTHING.
I'm sorry, but WiFi is NOT just so that some people can get free war3z and unlimited bandwidth. To get, you have to give. Keep your cable connection, network in your WiFi as a public node. Connect up to a few buddies with cable/DSL as well. If you do it right, you'll ALL share that bandwidth.
Sharing. It's about SHARING. Not getting it ALL for nothing.
No? Our 1-year old Dell Inspiron 8100 with a 14.1" LCD uses 1400x1050. The 15" screen would go to 16x12. I expect that most, if not all, of currently-shipping laptops to do 1600x1200 easily.
Yeah, and that's why I quit EQ in the first place: all of the l33t d00ds who thought that ph4t l3wt was more important than anything else.
EQ is an IRC channel that gives you something interesting to do during the downtimes in conversation. When you delude yourself into thinking it's more than that, that is when it's time to hang up the mouse and go back to the real world.
At first I thought this article was about Sims using Computers. Go figure, 2 Sims articles in one day?!
I disagree.
I would rather read the book first. That way you get the complete author's version of the events, in the way they were INTENDED.
The movie, even if the author of the book is an advisor on the set, will almost always become an INTERPRETATION of the book.
The Harry Potter series is probably one of the very best book->movie conversions I've seen. (Gah, I'm typing like it's a shell script) Granted, my preferred genre of book doesn't lend itself towards good movie fare (scifi/fantasy) for the most part, but with the exception of LOTR I can't think of ANY that have crossed that boundary quite as well.
I watched the Princess Bride before I even knew there was a book. After reading the book, I watched the movie again, and it came alive. I knew backstory, and details that the movie couldn't even begin to relate were abundant. I *should* have re-read the Chamber of Secrets in the week before the movie came out.
...and considered the whys and why-nots extensively.
Why? Basically for one, and only one reason: Easier to administer on MY end. I can create a user account for them and then they can bang on the box all day long without me worrying about them fucking something up. The most they could mess with is stuff in ${HOME}. Not like they have a whole lot of critical data at age 8.
Why not? Games. Because honestly, at the age that my kids are at, that is pretty much what they use the computer(s) for. Will most of those games run under Wine? Yeah, probably. But that is going to be a real pain in the arse, and my one and only heading under Why is for ease of administration. And when you start mucking with Wine, that goes out the window (no pun intended). Not to mention that games don't autorun (as mentioned previously), and in general things just won't work like they are used to.
So, my next option is to just create a Ghost image with a minimal win98 install, some of thier favorite games pre-installed, and just re-image every few months when they screw up the system so much that it won't boot properly.
And don't give them write access to the pr0n directory on the fileserver. That's an important part.
Next time you have a drive that 'just stops', try this:
;)
Stick it in a freezer bag with a dessicant pack. Put it in the freezer for a few hours. Take it out, hook it up. If it doesn't spin up, tap it lightly on the side with a hammer or somesuch UNDER POWER. If it spins up, furiously copy data after boot, and THEN RMA it.
I did this with a neighbor's drive. Still kinda bummed I didn't get to fsck her, too.
Not really. My RG-1000 AP has this ability in the firmware. Speaking of which, I really should enable that... ;)
So, to get rid of oppressive regimes we should shoot people for not using Linux?
Yes, damnit! Hell, I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!
Oh come now, do you *really* expect anything like this to last 10 years? We're using an app here at work that we decided didn't have the options we needed and so went to a web-based solution after using the other for only a YEAR.
Applications, hardware, software and just about EVERYTHING change by leaps and bounds in just a 1-year lifespan. Moore's law is based on an 18-month timeline. You're talking Moore's law timeframe x7! Be reasonable in your lifetime expectations, and THEN come back and talk to us.
What do you mean the world isn't FLAT?!?