Well the key here is they sell some AMD based machines. What they do not have is an option for a given product whether you want an Intel or AMD processor. Looking at their website they do sell more systems with Athlons in them than I realized, but for no given model is the microprocessor brand customizable. What this means is that you do not have a solid choice of microprocessor because by picking a model number you are forced into several other choices. For example if you want an AMD processor instead of an Intel one in a Pavilion, you cannot buy your computer with a 400 gb harddrive, or if you choose Intel you cannot get an Nvidia graphics card. To the average person this seems (quite appropriately) stupid.
I think this is interesting because once it's sold off the new owner has no such contracts with Intel. Now I don't hate Intel by any amount, but if one of the big three is selling AMDs then everyone is better off.
How many years would it take Harvard law to feel the aftershock of sucking? A decade? Two? How many people will be forced to either stick with it or have lost a lot of money?
I don't know what to think about paypal. I once gave them control over one of my bank accounts but after reading all the bad things about them I took it away from them and now have nothing registered to them. Luckily paypal lets unregistered users use their service, however do expect spam whenever you use it from them.
Right, except "Personalized Menus" makes catastrophic changes aside from that one. such as no longer having personalized menus. It's like telling someone if they don't want any salt on their eggs to not have eggs to begin with.
There's a real simple solution to this. While it isn't 100%, it's close.
To contact a bank, you need to provide some sort of information to prove who you are. When the bank contacts you, there is no reason it should not need to do the same. Banks should take a passcode that they give to their clients when they contact them so that the clients know they are dealing with the real thing. This even works for phonecalls which people apparently don't realize can be phished just as easily.
Well my stance is philosophical really. Mac represents the ultimate in proprietary. However much they might use various open techniques, at the heart it only exists because it is different. Let's say every PC user gets fed up with all this crap and says "fine"--everyone moves to mac. We are now under the command of one company. If you don't like it, tough. If on the other hand every mac user ditches macs, we still have every PC manufacturer and operating system open to us.
I do not want to live in the world of a single OS (well with different versions of course), a single computer manufacturer, etc. Not only do I want choice but also I have chosen to be able to choose in the future. It's kind of like electing a despot. Sure, you have a choice now, but if you choose one option you won't have a choice later on.
To the "what the hell are you talking about" people: stuff it.
Yep I agree. The thing about slashdot is a large part of the content is the other people. Obviously slashdot itself can't be held accountable entirely for the other users' actions, but they could say something.
1) Incorrect html code
2) Modding up someone funny then modding down slightly is a net karma loss
3) Progressively worse stories are being posted.
4) "Redundant" moderation should not exist. Either people found it useful to begin with or they didn't. I don't care if one person's time stamp is 30 seconds ahead of someone elses. Speaking of redundant, what's the difference between "flamebait" and "troll"? Surely we can think of something better than that!
Ok really only 1, 2 and 3 bug me. The fact that slashdot blocks the website which scans for correct HTML is a punch in the face. The fact that they've never fixed it over the years I've gone here is even worse. I don't think I've seen any real change to the site in all this time. Sure there's been content (which I can only see after hitting control+/-), but the content is becoming worse and worse.
Oh yeah, there is also that whole thing about slashdot itself manually modding down into oblivian any messages they don't want people to pay attention to. I don't know if it's a violation of any of their claims, but it's not very nice at all.
But, sites have to be paid for somehow. Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit models for web sites?
Yes, it's called subscription. Look into it.
Personally I'd pay for slashdot, but I find it's worth $5/1000 page only to the point that it holds my attention. Not a bad price, I simply have enough grievances that I won't pay. Fix the faults and I'll pay for it.
I'm not sure why you're posting anonymously since you said it was your post.. but oh well.
I don't know that for sure. How energy intensive is the manufacture of the LED bulb versus an incandescent bulb? I don't know the answer to that question.
Neither do I. If I did I might reverse what I say, but as a green conscious consumer it's my duty to use what I know. Currently that's that LEDs use less electricity. You might be right though. Regardless, it could be one causes more pollution than the other in production in other ways, so I could be making the right choice for the wrong reason. Unfortunately people aren't forthcoming about the facts. Anyway uncertainty isn't a reason not to try to help out. Err on the side of caution, eh?
I know you're being vague on purpose. Now remember this bug is new functionality or else you already broke your promise as a library, and yes it should be fixed.
Now, given that this bug is in new unpreviously used code, so all code written around this functionality has taken the bug into consideration, it should not be fixed. Say the function "SetPixel()" or whatever had a bug. Let's say if you used it with an negative X location it took the int(x) pixel and inverted it instead of throwing an exception (or whatever). OR maybe if you run off the end of the screen it throws an exception when instead it should return an error value. It really doesn't matter. Maintain that functionality in that procedure, and add a (Gee, I dunno) "SetPixel2()" which fixes this problem.
An alternative to this is to write your library intelligently to begin with such that when you are compiling with it, it knows what version of its functions to use in the first place.
The site is currently thoroughly slashdotted, but you specify that's for 4 hours a day. Start running it more realistically (12 hrs a day?) for the bulb you're likely to be replacing. The bulbs' lives divide by 3, annual bulb replacement cost triples, electricity cost triple (for both). Without doing any math to check, wouldn't that make the break even point closer to 60 months? Granted that's still a long time, but I'm just trying to throw some more realistic numbers in.
Also don't forget you're simply using less electricity which is a good fact all by itself.
Well if it isn't intrinsically obvious to you then there's no way I can convince you. I will try anyway.
When you release a standard of some sort you are promising a certain output for a certain input. Consider you are writing an ISA. You bungle up the instruction to exit from superuser mode. Heck you forget it entirely. However, there is a bug with a trap which if used from superuser mode returns you to regular user mode.
Now you are releasing your first update (which could easily be several months or over a year later). Do you (A) "fix" the bug in the trap and add an instruction to exit from super user mode, breaking every program written (and every compiler), or (B) fix/add an instruction to exit from super user mode, but keep the bug to maintain backwards compatibility. The answer is (B), because if you do (A), you significantly lower the confidence in your standard and companies/projects will shy towards another one. What other "bug" might surface in the future which you'll treat the same way?
Now in a system that isn't used as a library is, sure you don't have any responsibilities. Please realize I find your comment very silly and lacks thought.
Well sure I build things from source all the time (via make/make install), and sure their dependencies aren't backwards compatible. I often have several versions of many libraries installed at once (which is something that should almost never have to be done).
What I am saying is yes, give everyone a chance to wipe out all the mistakes of old and move on, but from that point on, to keep compatibility. When you release a library you are making a promise that any future version of the library will offer the same functionality. New functionality is just that-- new. Bug fixes? Well you shouldn't have released it yet. People may now use the bugs to serve another purpose and you can't go "fixing" them, as you are now breaking your software.
Already there are massive problems with dependencies.
Tell me about it. When I try installing older programs I get compile errors because the libraries aren't backwards compatible, or./configure won't be able to find the libraries because the version installed is too new.
I think at some point everyone needs to get together and say OK. Everything from this point on will be compatible with everything from this point on. No more of this crap. One standard installation procedure for every distribution (but each distribution does things its own way). If RPMs are so horrible, then stop releasing everything as RPMs!
That's what city people who never actually hunted think.
Hunting is about skill, and patience, and responsibility, and consequences.
Hunting is about handling deadly tools safely.
Hunting is about working alone, or in a group, to achieve a difficult goal.
Hunting is about coming to a personal understanding that you, and your family, are also animals, that every day you live because something else - plant or animal - died to feed you.
Hunting is about the lengths you will go to keep your family fed and healthy.
Hunting is about knowing, deep in your gut, that the animal you hunt will hurt and die. And hunting (for humans) is about honoring that animal, by making its death for your benefit as fast and painless as possible, an easier death than it would suffer from the teeth and claws of some other peredator, from disease, from accident, or from starvation.
Hunting is about understanding your place in nature:
You are a predator.
You are at the top of the food chain
You are SO effective at what you do that you MUST be careful, lest you wipe out those things you depend on for your own life.
So you're saying hunting is about creating a happy illusion for yourself? I'm sorry but you're making hunting look extremely childish. Going into a largely controlled area (such as an American forest), knowing what animals exist there, and using technology (such as a gun) to destroy the native life hardly fits the description you put. You write it as a symbolic act, when in fact you are still killing, so that point is still unexcused.
You suggest you are doing the animal a favor by killing it? We're at the top of the food chain? You might want to double-check that. Hunting is about patience? So then what's with all the traps?
No, sorry I've got to call BS. I think you might believe what you write, but that's not enough. As a kid I used to torture ants. I grew out of it. I don't see why we can't all. At least take your aggression out on other people through means of (real) sport. And of course-- sport is a game.
I can literally not think of a single thing I got because of an advertisement. I came to this school because I found it by my own accord. I built my computer from scratch by my own searching. None of the websites I frequent came from an advertisement. None of the clothing I wear, food I eat, products I used came from advertising. I don't have a single piece of clothing with a logo of any sort on it. My shoes cost me $9. Pretty much I try what's on sale on a whim, and if I like it, I stick with it.
Yes, overall advertising works, however not very well. As I stated, every dollar spent reaching me has been a dollar wasted. Now if I look hard enough I might be able to find a thing or two where I initially was brought onto the product by an advertisement, but for every product that I bought on my own, they wasted money.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the key here is they sell some AMD based machines. What they do not have is an option for a given product whether you want an Intel or AMD processor. Looking at their website they do sell more systems with Athlons in them than I realized, but for no given model is the microprocessor brand customizable. What this means is that you do not have a solid choice of microprocessor because by picking a model number you are forced into several other choices. For example if you want an AMD processor instead of an Intel one in a Pavilion, you cannot buy your computer with a 400 gb harddrive, or if you choose Intel you cannot get an Nvidia graphics card. To the average person this seems (quite appropriately) stupid.
I am still impressed with their selection.
...dependent on all sorts of pills and not really living life.
The pink ones keep you from screaming.
I think this is interesting because once it's sold off the new owner has no such contracts with Intel. Now I don't hate Intel by any amount, but if one of the big three is selling AMDs then everyone is better off.
Are you suggesting routers migrate?
I can't answer that. Why? The bill that doesn't let me answer that doesn't let me tell you. No you can't see the bill, that's against the bill.
How many years would it take Harvard law to feel the aftershock of sucking? A decade? Two? How many people will be forced to either stick with it or have lost a lot of money?
-Random, unfair example.
I don't know what to think about paypal. I once gave them control over one of my bank accounts but after reading all the bad things about them I took it away from them and now have nothing registered to them. Luckily paypal lets unregistered users use their service, however do expect spam whenever you use it from them.
Right, except "Personalized Menus" makes catastrophic changes aside from that one. such as no longer having personalized menus. It's like telling someone if they don't want any salt on their eggs to not have eggs to begin with.
Right. If only the dinosaurs had a copper bathtub.
Oh well.
There's a real simple solution to this. While it isn't 100%, it's close.
To contact a bank, you need to provide some sort of information to prove who you are. When the bank contacts you, there is no reason it should not need to do the same. Banks should take a passcode that they give to their clients when they contact them so that the clients know they are dealing with the real thing. This even works for phonecalls which people apparently don't realize can be phished just as easily.
Well my stance is philosophical really. Mac represents the ultimate in proprietary. However much they might use various open techniques, at the heart it only exists because it is different. Let's say every PC user gets fed up with all this crap and says "fine"--everyone moves to mac. We are now under the command of one company. If you don't like it, tough. If on the other hand every mac user ditches macs, we still have every PC manufacturer and operating system open to us.
I do not want to live in the world of a single OS (well with different versions of course), a single computer manufacturer, etc. Not only do I want choice but also I have chosen to be able to choose in the future. It's kind of like electing a despot. Sure, you have a choice now, but if you choose one option you won't have a choice later on.
To the "what the hell are you talking about" people: stuff it.
The basis of all that is that movies are a good deal. Ooops, huh?
My soldering iron says that fingerprints might be unique, but they aren't permanent.
Yep I agree. The thing about slashdot is a large part of the content is the other people. Obviously slashdot itself can't be held accountable entirely for the other users' actions, but they could say something.
1) Incorrect html code
2) Modding up someone funny then modding down slightly is a net karma loss
3) Progressively worse stories are being posted.
4) "Redundant" moderation should not exist. Either people found it useful to begin with or they didn't. I don't care if one person's time stamp is 30 seconds ahead of someone elses. Speaking of redundant, what's the difference between "flamebait" and "troll"? Surely we can think of something better than that!
Ok really only 1, 2 and 3 bug me. The fact that slashdot blocks the website which scans for correct HTML is a punch in the face. The fact that they've never fixed it over the years I've gone here is even worse. I don't think I've seen any real change to the site in all this time. Sure there's been content (which I can only see after hitting control+/-), but the content is becoming worse and worse.
Oh yeah, there is also that whole thing about slashdot itself manually modding down into oblivian any messages they don't want people to pay attention to. I don't know if it's a violation of any of their claims, but it's not very nice at all.
But, sites have to be paid for somehow. Do you have any suggestions of alternative profit models for web sites?
Yes, it's called subscription. Look into it.
Personally I'd pay for slashdot, but I find it's worth $5/1000 page only to the point that it holds my attention. Not a bad price, I simply have enough grievances that I won't pay. Fix the faults and I'll pay for it.
I'm not sure why you're posting anonymously since you said it was your post.. but oh well.
I don't know that for sure. How energy intensive is the manufacture of the LED bulb versus an incandescent bulb? I don't know the answer to that question.
Neither do I. If I did I might reverse what I say, but as a green conscious consumer it's my duty to use what I know. Currently that's that LEDs use less electricity. You might be right though. Regardless, it could be one causes more pollution than the other in production in other ways, so I could be making the right choice for the wrong reason. Unfortunately people aren't forthcoming about the facts. Anyway uncertainty isn't a reason not to try to help out. Err on the side of caution, eh?
I know you're being vague on purpose. Now remember this bug is new functionality or else you already broke your promise as a library, and yes it should be fixed.
Now, given that this bug is in new unpreviously used code, so all code written around this functionality has taken the bug into consideration, it should not be fixed. Say the function "SetPixel()" or whatever had a bug. Let's say if you used it with an negative X location it took the int(x) pixel and inverted it instead of throwing an exception (or whatever). OR maybe if you run off the end of the screen it throws an exception when instead it should return an error value. It really doesn't matter. Maintain that functionality in that procedure, and add a (Gee, I dunno) "SetPixel2()" which fixes this problem.
An alternative to this is to write your library intelligently to begin with such that when you are compiling with it, it knows what version of its functions to use in the first place.
The site is currently thoroughly slashdotted, but you specify that's for 4 hours a day. Start running it more realistically (12 hrs a day?) for the bulb you're likely to be replacing. The bulbs' lives divide by 3, annual bulb replacement cost triples, electricity cost triple (for both). Without doing any math to check, wouldn't that make the break even point closer to 60 months? Granted that's still a long time, but I'm just trying to throw some more realistic numbers in.
Also don't forget you're simply using less electricity which is a good fact all by itself.
Well if it isn't intrinsically obvious to you then there's no way I can convince you. I will try anyway.
When you release a standard of some sort you are promising a certain output for a certain input. Consider you are writing an ISA. You bungle up the instruction to exit from superuser mode. Heck you forget it entirely. However, there is a bug with a trap which if used from superuser mode returns you to regular user mode.
Now you are releasing your first update (which could easily be several months or over a year later). Do you (A) "fix" the bug in the trap and add an instruction to exit from super user mode, breaking every program written (and every compiler), or (B) fix/add an instruction to exit from super user mode, but keep the bug to maintain backwards compatibility. The answer is (B), because if you do (A), you significantly lower the confidence in your standard and companies/projects will shy towards another one. What other "bug" might surface in the future which you'll treat the same way?
Now in a system that isn't used as a library is, sure you don't have any responsibilities. Please realize I find your comment very silly and lacks thought.
Well sure I build things from source all the time (via make/make install), and sure their dependencies aren't backwards compatible. I often have several versions of many libraries installed at once (which is something that should almost never have to be done).
What I am saying is yes, give everyone a chance to wipe out all the mistakes of old and move on, but from that point on, to keep compatibility. When you release a library you are making a promise that any future version of the library will offer the same functionality. New functionality is just that-- new. Bug fixes? Well you shouldn't have released it yet. People may now use the bugs to serve another purpose and you can't go "fixing" them, as you are now breaking your software.
Already there are massive problems with dependencies.
./configure won't be able to find the libraries because the version installed is too new.
Tell me about it. When I try installing older programs I get compile errors because the libraries aren't backwards compatible, or
I think at some point everyone needs to get together and say OK. Everything from this point on will be compatible with everything from this point on. No more of this crap. One standard installation procedure for every distribution (but each distribution does things its own way). If RPMs are so horrible, then stop releasing everything as RPMs!
That's what city people who never actually hunted think.
Hunting is about skill, and patience, and responsibility, and consequences.
Hunting is about handling deadly tools safely.
Hunting is about working alone, or in a group, to achieve a difficult goal.
Hunting is about coming to a personal understanding that you, and your family, are also animals, that every day you live because something else - plant or animal - died to feed you.
Hunting is about the lengths you will go to keep your family fed and healthy.
Hunting is about knowing, deep in your gut, that the animal you hunt will hurt and die. And hunting (for humans) is about honoring that animal, by making its death for your benefit as fast and painless as possible, an easier death than it would suffer from the teeth and claws of some other peredator, from disease, from accident, or from starvation.
Hunting is about understanding your place in nature:
You are a predator.
You are at the top of the food chain
You are SO effective at what you do that you MUST be careful, lest you wipe out those things you depend on for your own life.
So you're saying hunting is about creating a happy illusion for yourself? I'm sorry but you're making hunting look extremely childish. Going into a largely controlled area (such as an American forest), knowing what animals exist there, and using technology (such as a gun) to destroy the native life hardly fits the description you put. You write it as a symbolic act, when in fact you are still killing, so that point is still unexcused.
You suggest you are doing the animal a favor by killing it? We're at the top of the food chain? You might want to double-check that. Hunting is about patience? So then what's with all the traps?
No, sorry I've got to call BS. I think you might believe what you write, but that's not enough. As a kid I used to torture ants. I grew out of it. I don't see why we can't all. At least take your aggression out on other people through means of (real) sport. And of course-- sport is a game.
I thought the entire excuse for hunting was for tradition and the sportsmanship. This completely removes both. This is purely idiotic.
I can literally not think of a single thing I got because of an advertisement. I came to this school because I found it by my own accord. I built my computer from scratch by my own searching. None of the websites I frequent came from an advertisement. None of the clothing I wear, food I eat, products I used came from advertising. I don't have a single piece of clothing with a logo of any sort on it. My shoes cost me $9. Pretty much I try what's on sale on a whim, and if I like it, I stick with it.
Yes, overall advertising works, however not very well. As I stated, every dollar spent reaching me has been a dollar wasted. Now if I look hard enough I might be able to find a thing or two where I initially was brought onto the product by an advertisement, but for every product that I bought on my own, they wasted money.