With a price point at about $300US, its unlikely many people will be buying them to strip the 8GB drive. I imagine MS isn't too worried about hardware hackers (there aren't enough around, really). A few people will buy them to do something other than play games, but most won't. There'll be a story about people doing other things with them, and MS will get some free advertising.
Why would they bother spending money to stop the drive from booting when it would be so simple to burn a bootloader "game"? It doesn't solve anything, from MS's point of view, to do so.
First off, if your drive has it do not use it, and don't use any disks you used in it. Its a hardware problem, the OS makes no difference. The click is caused by the read/write heads scratching the surface of the disk. Once a drive has the problem, it will scratch any disk used in it. If you use a scratched disk in a working drive, it will cause the problem in the new drive.
Last thing, really, why don't people use ls-120's? the disks are cheaper, the drives are cheaper and I think they work fairly well? Any ideas?
Because they were slower, and more expensive than zip drives (at least in the mid-late 90's, when most of those things were bought). Its all relatively academic now, with cdrs being faster, cheaper, and bigger than both zips or ls-120s.
I'm curious, who's still using zip/ls-120, and why?
How is a mandatory retirement age any different that an "age of majority"? We apply many restrictions to those under that age, how is it any different when applied to the other end of the spectrum?
Take a look at E2. Very well done community site, without all the trolling of./. (Also the only site I allow to transmit advertisements to me.) Cheers,
I only have connectivity when I want it, regardless of where I am. All my phones (home, cell, and work) have caller id on them. If someone wants to connect to me, I decide if I want to aswer or not.
Of course, with net access, its even easier to controll the worlds access to oneself. Cheers,
They are demanding I pay to download their ISO from their ftp. That's pretty slimy, IMNSHO.
No, they're not violating anything, but that's not the point. I'm not going to pay for a distribution I'm unfamiliar with. If it looks good, I'll give it a try. If I like it, and find it usefull, I'll buy a copy.
In the end, it won't really matter. There are lots of distributions. Unless you're supporting some niche, its pretty hard to go up against the major distros. Will a new distribution become mainstream? Perhaps. Will they if they put roadblocks in front of prospective users? Not likely, the userbase won't grow very fast, if at all. Cheers,
I'll have nothing to do with this distribution, and I'll direct people away from it whenever the opportunity presents itself.
I don't object to them asking for monitary contributions for their work. I object to them demanding it as such. I do buy copies of distributions. I don't buy them for the manuals, or support, or whatever VARish features they offer (although those are nice too). I buy them for the same reason I give money to buskers; they're making the world a better place, and I appreciate that.
I wouldn't give money to a busker who wasn't playing, and I won't pay for a distribution I can't download and try for free. Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
They're for different things
on
Bluetooth Bombs
·
· Score: 5
802.11 is overkill for the niche Bluetooth is aimed at. You don't need a fullblown NIC in your cell phone, but it might be nice if it could communicate with your PDA.
One of IBM's Bluetooth guys spoke at VanLUG last week, and according to him IBM is aiming at 50 cents/chip for bluetooth. This will never happen with 802.11. Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
When has CmdrTaco claimed to be a journalist?
on
XBox Tidbits
·
· Score: 1
If you don't like the bias/. has, go someplace more to your taste.
Because we all know the mainstream media is pure and unbiased, right? Cheers,
By you, perhaps. I choose not too, as it implies that the punctuation is part of the quote.
If we were talking about a programming language, then yes, there would be a "correct" way. Compilers are a little less complex than people, we don't expect as much from them. Natural languages are different, people can derive meaning without exacting specification. I'll use whatever spelling/grammer pleases me the most, and there's nothing you can do about it. Cheers,
This is more of a smaller! better! thing. Instead of planets bigger than our gas giants, hopefully we'll find more Earth sized ones.
Then we can look closely at radio tx's from that area of space. Maybe we'll find intelligent life. Maybe we'll just find more space for the 6 billion known intelligent lives. Cheers,
Most Linux software is written to scratch a developers itch - not for "Granny and Uncle Jimbo". If they want to change it to suit their tastes (or pay someone to do so), thats just fine.
But don't expect people to waste time on idiot proofing if they don't see the need. If you care about it, you could always do it yourself. Cheers,
Hell, even require people to use the crippled version of xpdf if you want. We're not talking about your situation here - we're talking about personal computers.
Just don't ask to control systems that don't belong to you. Cheers,
People who rock the boat a lot don't tend to get tenure. This is bad for academia, but it would be fatal for art.
You still have the problem of a concentration of power, it doesn't really matter if its the RIAA or the gov't. However, at least with the RIAA I can refuse to do business with them. Gov'ts are a lot less forgiving of that. Cheers,
Just how many family-owned or individual-founded megacorps do you think there are?
Microsoft.
Should we shut all of those down and say "tough luck, widows and orphans, you don't get any financial security based on your parent's long and hard work" because we're afraid 1 out of 100,000 of you is a megacorp?
Well, we could exclude partnerships/sole proprieters from it. Those sort of businesses don't involve the abdication of responsability that corporations do. Cheers,
Do you really expect gov't/corporate bodies to select art which challenges their power base?
Your suggestion will not work for the same reason that the current copyright system does not work - massive centralization. Artists would have to cow tow to whoever controls the money, just as they do with the RIAA/MPAA/Whatever publisher today.
On the other hand, a system of charities (with limits on how large they can be) could work well. Of course, there's nothing stopping us from doing that now. Cheers,
Well, unless you consider living on the street to be a viable alternative, you have to sign an employment agreement. The point of labour law is to prevent employers from requiring unreasonable things in those agreements, such as non-compete clauses. Cheers,
Slashdot Mirror
With a price point at about $300US, its unlikely many people will be buying them to strip the 8GB drive. I imagine MS isn't too worried about hardware hackers (there aren't enough around, really). A few people will buy them to do something other than play games, but most won't. There'll be a story about people doing other things with them, and MS will get some free advertising.
Why would they bother spending money to stop the drive from booting when it would be so simple to burn a bootloader "game"? It doesn't solve anything, from MS's point of view, to do so.
First off, if your drive has it do not use it, and don't use any disks you used in it. Its a hardware problem, the OS makes no difference. The click is caused by the read/write heads scratching the surface of the disk. Once a drive has the problem, it will scratch any disk used in it. If you use a scratched disk in a working drive, it will cause the problem in the new drive.
Cheers
Last thing, really, why don't people use ls-120's? the disks are cheaper, the drives are cheaper and I think they work fairly well? Any ideas?
Because they were slower, and more expensive than zip drives (at least in the mid-late 90's, when most of those things were bought). Its all relatively academic now, with cdrs being faster, cheaper, and bigger than both zips or ls-120s.
I'm curious, who's still using zip/ls-120, and why?
Cheers
How is a mandatory retirement age any different that an "age of majority"? We apply many restrictions to those under that age, how is it any different when applied to the other end of the spectrum?
It has standard IDE components, right? just swap the cables, and it'll boot from the hard drive.
Take a look at E2. Very well done community site, without all the trolling of ./. (Also the only site I allow to transmit advertisements to me.)
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
I'm unaware of any right...
I am. Its called privacy. These people didn't have the right to even have this information, let alone publish it.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
I only have connectivity when I want it, regardless of where I am. All my phones (home, cell, and work) have caller id on them. If someone wants to connect to me, I decide if I want to aswer or not.
Of course, with net access, its even easier to controll the worlds access to oneself.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
And as always - if you don't like the way they do business, don't do business with them.
Did you actually read what I wrote? That's what I said I was going to do.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
They are demanding I pay to download their ISO from their ftp. That's pretty slimy, IMNSHO.
No, they're not violating anything, but that's not the point. I'm not going to pay for a distribution I'm unfamiliar with. If it looks good, I'll give it a try. If I like it, and find it usefull, I'll buy a copy.
In the end, it won't really matter. There are lots of distributions. Unless you're supporting some niche, its pretty hard to go up against the major distros. Will a new distribution become mainstream? Perhaps. Will they if they put roadblocks in front of prospective users? Not likely, the userbase won't grow very fast, if at all.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
I'll have nothing to do with this distribution, and I'll direct people away from it whenever the opportunity presents itself.
I don't object to them asking for monitary contributions for their work. I object to them demanding it as such. I do buy copies of distributions. I don't buy them for the manuals, or support, or whatever VARish features they offer (although those are nice too). I buy them for the same reason I give money to buskers; they're making the world a better place, and I appreciate that.
I wouldn't give money to a busker who wasn't playing, and I won't pay for a distribution I can't download and try for free.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
802.11 is overkill for the niche Bluetooth is aimed at. You don't need a fullblown NIC in your cell phone, but it might be nice if it could communicate with your PDA.
One of IBM's Bluetooth guys spoke at VanLUG last week, and according to him IBM is aiming at 50 cents/chip for bluetooth. This will never happen with 802.11.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
If you don't like the bias /. has, go someplace more to your taste.
Because we all know the mainstream media is pure and unbiased, right?
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Is what Apache normally runs under. You've basically described how it works.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
April fools. From last year.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
By you, perhaps. I choose not too, as it implies that the punctuation is part of the quote.
If we were talking about a programming language, then yes, there would be a "correct" way. Compilers are a little less complex than people, we don't expect as much from them. Natural languages are different, people can derive meaning without exacting specification. I'll use whatever spelling/grammer pleases me the most, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
This is more of a smaller! better! thing. Instead of planets bigger than our gas giants, hopefully we'll find more Earth sized ones.
Then we can look closely at radio tx's from that area of space. Maybe we'll find intelligent life. Maybe we'll just find more space for the 6 billion known intelligent lives.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Most Linux software is written to scratch a developers itch - not for "Granny and Uncle Jimbo". If they want to change it to suit their tastes (or pay someone to do so), thats just fine.
But don't expect people to waste time on idiot proofing if they don't see the need. If you care about it, you could always do it yourself.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Hell, even require people to use the crippled version of xpdf if you want. We're not talking about your situation here - we're talking about personal computers.
Just don't ask to control systems that don't belong to you.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
It took me longer to recompile it than it did to remove the silly protections.
*sigh* I'm a real geek; I didn't need to do it, it just offended me.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
DOOM for *n?x is available. There's even a DOOM sysadmin tool.
In fact, I was playing DOOM II on an O2 at the ufie 3rd anniversary party.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
People who rock the boat a lot don't tend to get tenure. This is bad for academia, but it would be fatal for art.
You still have the problem of a concentration of power, it doesn't really matter if its the RIAA or the gov't. However, at least with the RIAA I can refuse to do business with them. Gov'ts are a lot less forgiving of that.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Just how many family-owned or individual-founded megacorps do you think there are?
Microsoft.
Should we shut all of those down and say "tough luck, widows and orphans, you don't get any financial security based on your parent's long and hard work" because we're afraid 1 out of 100,000 of you is a megacorp?
Well, we could exclude partnerships/sole proprieters from it. Those sort of businesses don't involve the abdication of responsability that corporations do.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Do you really expect gov't/corporate bodies to select art which challenges their power base?
Your suggestion will not work for the same reason that the current copyright system does not work - massive centralization. Artists would have to cow tow to whoever controls the money, just as they do with the RIAA/MPAA/Whatever publisher today.
On the other hand, a system of charities (with limits on how large they can be) could work well. Of course, there's nothing stopping us from doing that now.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
Well, unless you consider living on the street to be a viable alternative, you have to sign an employment agreement. The point of labour law is to prevent employers from requiring unreasonable things in those agreements, such as non-compete clauses.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland