I assume that IBM still uses Lotus Notes, since they own it. I have no complaints about its email/meeting/scheduling/reservation system. More complicated databases are the problem.
This isn't off-topic, and the mod that rated it as such should be ashamed of themselves.
This sentence is the core of the story around which this article is based. The fact that it is worded so poorly as to imply the complete opposite of the intent of the story makes this worthwhile.
Minor issue, but I think the ship was damaged. A story yesterday said that, at one point during the flight, he heard a "crunch". A portion of the fuselage had been crushed in when a support failed. It didn't affect the ship's performance, but still I'm sure the team's aerospace engineers are hard at work on it today.
I don't care (as much) about PS1 compatibility on the PS2, but I do care about PS2 compatibility on the PS3. I believe that Sony will do the right thing and maintain compatibility, because only a stupid company would do otherwise.
We bought our PS2 two months ago (first console since NES). We wouldn't have bothered buying one this late in its life cycle if we didn't believe that we could replay the games through a hardware upgrade.
This whole idea of Microsoft trashing compatibility sounds a whole lot like a/. story from last week, which described Microsoft's move away from backwards compatibility, and what it has already cost them.
>> If, on the other hand, you buy a substance which is well known to be hot, and considered to be MORE desirable when it is more hot, and then you dump it in your own lap, that is your fault.
More desireable to be more hot? How hot? 130 degrees? 160 degrees? 190 degrees? 220 degrees? There are big differences between those, in terms of the damage they do to someone who spills them (or drinks them). This McDonald's restaraunt KNEW they were serving their coffee at an unsafe temperature. They had been warned before.
Had the lady drank the coffee, it would have given her third degree burns to her mouth and throat, and the McDonald's would have been 100% at fault. Instead, she spilled some while trying to take the cap off (which had melted on due to the heat), so it was partially her fault that she had it in her lap and partially McDonald's fault for knowingly giving her something that dangerous.
>>There are certain levels that are called 'Hell Levels' - mainly due to the fact that your particular character is at a point where there are no monsters that fit the level of your character, or the skills available to your character make it difficult to make headway - so leveling slows to a crawl.
Hell levels were removed years ago. The level transitions are all fairly smooth now. And there is plenty of content for anyone at any level these days, with 200+ zones to play in.
>> As long as Linux application developers continue to copy Microsoft, in a vain attempt to be "compatible," Microsoft will always have the edge.
... until Microsoft breaks its own compatibility, and people see that they have a more-compatible alternative.
Microsoft has a lot of capatibility breaking in its upcoming schedule. No reason other alternatives can't be ready to step up and provide continued support for the existing "standards". Think about Intel and AMD. Intel decided to break compatibility with x86 for their 64-bit instruction set. AMD made a compatible set, and AMD won the "war," forcing Intel to scrap their architecture and copy AMD.
Since all the comments above me are from people who say that "Xandros is no more than Debian + KDE + Codeweavers, just go compile your own", I figure I should add something.
I moved one of my machines to Xandros 2.0 last December. It was my first machine to move from Windows 2000. I hadn't switched until then for a few reasons:
1) While I can figure out technical things, I want some basis of familiarity to start with. Most Linux operating systems are completely foreign. I had previously installed Debian once, but I had no idea what to do to make my sound work, and no real way to find out without wasting weeks of my free time on my own, or going to a newsgroup to get unhelpful advice.
2) I had been very nervous about making an -insecure- Linux box. Back in college I had a SGI workstation with Irix. I learned a good bit about the OS, and even reinstalled it once from scratch. I didn't learn until it was too late, however, that buried somewhere back in section 6 chapter 7 page 35 of the documentation was a list of default accounts with no passwords! The machine was exploited. I waited until Xandros 2.0 so I would have a Linux operating system with the simplicity of Debian updates to keep it secure.
Xandros 2.0 has worked very well for me. A few accomplishments:
1) In four years, my wife and I have not been able to get Windows networking to function on our six computers. Her second machine could see my second machine in the workgroup, while my second machine could see her primary machine. None of them could see anything else, even though they were all in the same workgroup and even attached to the same hub, with all of them set up the same way. We used FTP to transfer files, and moved the printer cable manually. With Xandros, I set up a fileserver with (almost) a right-click and "share this folder". Amazingly, even now when the machines can't see each other, they ALL see the server. Samba does a better job of Windows networking that Windows does!
2) I have an old HP scanner. The HP driver for it blue-screens Windows 2k on boot, and they never provided an updated driver. I haven't used it in two years because of this. When I used Xandros Networks to install their scanner program (Kooka) and then plugged in my USB scanner, it just -worked-. (The first day.)
3) I have several Windows applications running well in Xandros with Crossover Office, including Excel (didn't like OO.o), tax software, GURPS character creator, etc. This helps build hope that I could leave Windows entirely one day.
Now, that said, there are some things that have gone wrong:
1) That Samba share worked great for all the Windows users, who could great and modify files in the shared directory with ease (when I had permissions set correctly in the graphical dialogs). To get my user on the Xandros machine to be able to also create and modify files at the same time, I had to dig through the Xandros support site and the Samba online docs to find the right setting to make in a config file.
2) The mouse in Xandros was "sticky". The cursor wouldn't move until I had moved the mouse a certain amount, and then it "jumped". This made it VERY hard to do things like resize columns in Excel. The fix was adding a "resolution" line to the pointer's configuration, which again I had to go to support forums to find. I have no idea why this wasn't configurable from the control center.
3) After using my scanner the first day, two days later it completely didn't work. Again, after digging around on support sites, I found the solution - it was a permissions problem. (Why did I have permission the first day but not on later days? I have no idea.) Anyway, it works fine again now, and I was even able to help some other folks who had the same problem.
In summary - Xandros 2.0 has a market. Maybe it's not a market for most Slashdot readers who work in IT or are in college or high school and grew up with Linux and PCs. But it has a market for this electrical engi
>> My Windows Server 2003 Standard install takes up 1.5GB and so does Windows 2000 Professional with all the latest patches applied. A clean install of 2K is much less than that.
I wouldn't call an install of Win 2k without any of the patches "clean"... more like "vulnerable".
Dude, in your first paragraph you attack the people who claimed the test was racist, but apparently didn't give any information to back up that claim.
Then, in your subsequent paragraphs, you claim that public teachers work just to "teach 25 years to get retirement benefits." So, where is your information to back up this claim? Please cite references for every public teacher.
Sure, there are a lot of problems in the school systems. Ultimately, I think all those problems come down to the parents. When the parents care about the education of all the kids at their local schools, and they have time to work towards better schools, then the local schools educate all the kids, and do it well.
Or, for the one I looked at...after going through their huge disclaimer page, they have a web form to fill out an application.
What do they ask for buried in the middle of the form? Your current bank information. Together with the other info, they have everything they need to initiate a wire transfer.
Pretty clear from that alone that they are scammers. No real financial institution would ask for that on an application.
Why are you afraid of words? Adults can and should be able to choose what they want.... like to buy a hunting rifle, OR to buy an explicit CD.
The irony the original poster pointed out was that both are ADULT ONLY items, yet in one case Wal*Mart properly leaves the decision up to the adults, but in the other they make the decision for us.
Go read about the secret FBI files kept during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Read all about them. There are many, many, clearly documented examples of the government tracking and taking careful notes on the legal activities of citizens. There are also plenty of examples of the government then using those notes to harm those citizens.
Tell us if you think that it is ok for the government to keep secret files on citizens.
My grandfather publically protested shady government construction contracts in the 1960s, and the FBI followed him and harassed him until he lost his business. The work he found to support his family - manual labor installing isulation - killed him. We know he has an FBI file, but my mother is waiting until her mother dies before she fights to read it.
Sadly, no, the only things funny about our sitting president is his misuse of the language. Everything else he has done is very, very, serious, and these are serious responses to a serious crisis.
The environmentalchemistry.com site linked above already does this - sort of. Go to the site, and try to block the image after the folder with the random numbers. Reload, and the same image appears in a different folder with another random name.
Of course, those are themselves located in a "links" subfolder, which can be adblocked entirely. Though once you do that, the site's content is gone for good.
There is no noticeable sound degradation reripping at 160k MP3.
At least not to me, a mere mortal. Perhaps an audio god could detect a difference. But they wouldn't recompress anyway - they'd store them all as uncompressed raw audio after hand-ripping them from the original masters they borrowed from the publisher.
True, you don't have to actually learn anything to go to and complete college. Or, you can learn things to pass your classes then promptly forget them.
The point, though, is that you decided to do something (like go to college) that you didn't HAVE to do, that was not as fun as the alternatives, but you did it anyway. That in and of itself is a quality desired by some employers.
Note that the same thing applies to GEDs. Any yahoo can get a high school diploma. A GED means that you skipped school when you were young and foolish, but that you LEARNED something, went back, and earned a degree that you missed. Once you are an adult no one can make you go back for a high school degree. The fact you did makes you a better job candidate, regardless of whether or not you use anything you learned from the GED prep in the actual job.
It's very possible that tweaks with the way file paths work in Crossover Office (or maybe, just moving the files it was looking for into a main directly from their respective subdirectories) would have fixed that problem. Also, it's very possible that tweaks to the USB drivers in Linux might have enabled those to work, too. I use Xandros because it's (mostly) easy and it's NotWindows (tm), but I don't mess with crap if it doesn't work right away.
Thus, by all means, if someone can make this software work with Crossover Office, let me know so I can move one more thing off of my Windows install. Alternatively, other than the ~1 MB of config data the manager puts on the flash to program the player, the rest of the thing should be programmable as a standard removable flash/MMC device and used without the manager software at all. Again, since it wasn't recognized by the USB driver when I plugged it in, I didn't care to try harder.
If it matters to the Slashdot crowd, its manager software does NOT work well in Linux under Crossover Office. The software installed, but it couldn't find its language or player type libraries, and it didn't see the USB ports or the device.
I have a Digisette DUO-DX AR-496 digital music player. It supports MP3 and WMA and AudioBook formats, though I've only used it with MP3. Note that it can also record MP3s on the fly, using an audio-in jack. Useful if you want a digital tape recorder in a pinch. It also has a headphone jack and sounds great as a stand-along portable player.
It comes with built-in 96 MB flash memory. It has an expansion slot for an MMC upgrade. Note that the manual and website might just mention a 64 MB upgrade, but I -confirm- that it works with a 256 MB MMC. With about 350 MB of music on it now, I have more music than battery life (which is about 5 hours).
I drive a convertible, and I would never consider putting a custom stereo into it. My wife has a nifty iPod, but her stereo retransmit thingy gets a lot of static, and the whole arrangement is much more cumbersome than a single unit I can drop into the built-in tape player. Despite what some reviews of the product have said, you can skip tracks without taking the thing out of the tape deck.
While I would have tried a 512 MB MMC if I had found one, I think 256 MB were the largest made before the shift to SD whatever, which it does not support. I would eventually like more space than I have now, but it is perfectly usable as is for my commutes to and from work, with the nice variety of happy music I can sing to on a nice Spring drive in a convertible in Texas. It makes commuting fun.:)
Can you imagine a company like Charles Schwab ever sending out mail with a domain like schwab.mail.spamhous.org? I can't either. However, a company like that would buy a schwab.mail domain. This has everything to do with companies demanding a professional look and feel to their image.
No, I don't think this is a good idea. But I see why a top level domain is necessary to pull it off.
Slashdot Mirror
>> IBMs
I assume that IBM still uses Lotus Notes, since they own it. I have no complaints about its email/meeting/scheduling/reservation system. More complicated databases are the problem.
This isn't off-topic, and the mod that rated it as such should be ashamed of themselves.
This sentence is the core of the story around which this article is based. The fact that it is worded so poorly as to imply the complete opposite of the intent of the story makes this worthwhile.
>> ship wasn't damaged?
Minor issue, but I think the ship was damaged. A story yesterday said that, at one point during the flight, he heard a "crunch". A portion of the fuselage had been crushed in when a support failed. It didn't affect the ship's performance, but still I'm sure the team's aerospace engineers are hard at work on it today.
I don't care (as much) about PS1 compatibility on the PS2, but I do care about PS2 compatibility on the PS3. I believe that Sony will do the right thing and maintain compatibility, because only a stupid company would do otherwise.
/. story from last week, which described Microsoft's move away from backwards compatibility, and what it has already cost them.
We bought our PS2 two months ago (first console since NES). We wouldn't have bothered buying one this late in its life cycle if we didn't believe that we could replay the games through a hardware upgrade.
This whole idea of Microsoft trashing compatibility sounds a whole lot like a
It's not. I had no problems repartitioning using the Deluxe edition of Xandros, and I bet they didn't change anything for this version.
>> If, on the other hand, you buy a substance which is well known to be hot, and considered to be MORE desirable when it is more hot, and then you dump it in your own lap, that is your fault.
More desireable to be more hot? How hot? 130 degrees? 160 degrees? 190 degrees? 220 degrees? There are big differences between those, in terms of the damage they do to someone who spills them (or drinks them). This McDonald's restaraunt KNEW they were serving their coffee at an unsafe temperature. They had been warned before.
Had the lady drank the coffee, it would have given her third degree burns to her mouth and throat, and the McDonald's would have been 100% at fault. Instead, she spilled some while trying to take the cap off (which had melted on due to the heat), so it was partially her fault that she had it in her lap and partially McDonald's fault for knowingly giving her something that dangerous.
>>There are certain levels that are called 'Hell Levels' - mainly due to the fact that your particular character is at a point where there are no monsters that fit the level of your character, or the skills available to your character make it difficult to make headway - so leveling slows to a crawl.
Hell levels were removed years ago. The level transitions are all fairly smooth now. And there is plenty of content for anyone at any level these days, with 200+ zones to play in.
>> As long as Linux application developers continue to copy Microsoft, in a vain attempt to be "compatible," Microsoft will always have the edge.
... until Microsoft breaks its own compatibility, and people see that they have a more-compatible alternative.
Microsoft has a lot of capatibility breaking in its upcoming schedule. No reason other alternatives can't be ready to step up and provide continued support for the existing "standards". Think about Intel and AMD. Intel decided to break compatibility with x86 for their 64-bit instruction set. AMD made a compatible set, and AMD won the "war," forcing Intel to scrap their architecture and copy AMD.
Since all the comments above me are from people who say that "Xandros is no more than Debian + KDE + Codeweavers, just go compile your own", I figure I should add something.
I moved one of my machines to Xandros 2.0 last December. It was my first machine to move from Windows 2000. I hadn't switched until then for a few reasons:
1) While I can figure out technical things, I want some basis of familiarity to start with. Most Linux operating systems are completely foreign. I had previously installed Debian once, but I had no idea what to do to make my sound work, and no real way to find out without wasting weeks of my free time on my own, or going to a newsgroup to get unhelpful advice.
2) I had been very nervous about making an -insecure- Linux box. Back in college I had a SGI workstation with Irix. I learned a good bit about the OS, and even reinstalled it once from scratch. I didn't learn until it was too late, however, that buried somewhere back in section 6 chapter 7 page 35 of the documentation was a list of default accounts with no passwords! The machine was exploited. I waited until Xandros 2.0 so I would have a Linux operating system with the simplicity of Debian updates to keep it secure.
Xandros 2.0 has worked very well for me. A few accomplishments:
1) In four years, my wife and I have not been able to get Windows networking to function on our six computers. Her second machine could see my second machine in the workgroup, while my second machine could see her primary machine. None of them could see anything else, even though they were all in the same workgroup and even attached to the same hub, with all of them set up the same way. We used FTP to transfer files, and moved the printer cable manually. With Xandros, I set up a fileserver with (almost) a right-click and "share this folder". Amazingly, even now when the machines can't see each other, they ALL see the server. Samba does a better job of Windows networking that Windows does!
2) I have an old HP scanner. The HP driver for it blue-screens Windows 2k on boot, and they never provided an updated driver. I haven't used it in two years because of this. When I used Xandros Networks to install their scanner program (Kooka) and then plugged in my USB scanner, it just -worked-. (The first day.)
3) I have several Windows applications running well in Xandros with Crossover Office, including Excel (didn't like OO.o), tax software, GURPS character creator, etc. This helps build hope that I could leave Windows entirely one day.
Now, that said, there are some things that have gone wrong:
1) That Samba share worked great for all the Windows users, who could great and modify files in the shared directory with ease (when I had permissions set correctly in the graphical dialogs). To get my user on the Xandros machine to be able to also create and modify files at the same time, I had to dig through the Xandros support site and the Samba online docs to find the right setting to make in a config file.
2) The mouse in Xandros was "sticky". The cursor wouldn't move until I had moved the mouse a certain amount, and then it "jumped". This made it VERY hard to do things like resize columns in Excel. The fix was adding a "resolution" line to the pointer's configuration, which again I had to go to support forums to find. I have no idea why this wasn't configurable from the control center.
3) After using my scanner the first day, two days later it completely didn't work. Again, after digging around on support sites, I found the solution - it was a permissions problem. (Why did I have permission the first day but not on later days? I have no idea.) Anyway, it works fine again now, and I was even able to help some other folks who had the same problem.
In summary - Xandros 2.0 has a market. Maybe it's not a market for most Slashdot readers who work in IT or are in college or high school and grew up with Linux and PCs. But it has a market for this electrical engi
>> My Windows Server 2003 Standard install takes up 1.5GB and so does Windows 2000 Professional with all the latest patches applied. A clean install of 2K is much less than that.
... more like "vulnerable".
I wouldn't call an install of Win 2k without any of the patches "clean"
Dude, in your first paragraph you attack the people who claimed the test was racist, but apparently didn't give any information to back up that claim.
Then, in your subsequent paragraphs, you claim that public teachers work just to "teach 25 years to get retirement benefits." So, where is your information to back up this claim? Please cite references for every public teacher.
Sure, there are a lot of problems in the school systems. Ultimately, I think all those problems come down to the parents. When the parents care about the education of all the kids at their local schools, and they have time to work towards better schools, then the local schools educate all the kids, and do it well.
As far as profits driving performance. Heh.
Or, for the one I looked at...after going through their huge disclaimer page, they have a web form to fill out an application.
What do they ask for buried in the middle of the form? Your current bank information. Together with the other info, they have everything they need to initiate a wire transfer.
Pretty clear from that alone that they are scammers. No real financial institution would ask for that on an application.
Why are you afraid of words? Adults can and should be able to choose what they want.... like to buy a hunting rifle, OR to buy an explicit CD.
The irony the original poster pointed out was that both are ADULT ONLY items, yet in one case Wal*Mart properly leaves the decision up to the adults, but in the other they make the decision for us.
Go read about the secret FBI files kept during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Read all about them. There are many, many, clearly documented examples of the government tracking and taking careful notes on the legal activities of citizens. There are also plenty of examples of the government then using those notes to harm those citizens.
Tell us if you think that it is ok for the government to keep secret files on citizens.
My grandfather publically protested shady government construction contracts in the 1960s, and the FBI followed him and harassed him until he lost his business. The work he found to support his family - manual labor installing isulation - killed him. We know he has an FBI file, but my mother is waiting until her mother dies before she fights to read it.
Sadly, no, the only things funny about our sitting president is his misuse of the language. Everything else he has done is very, very, serious, and these are serious responses to a serious crisis.
The environmentalchemistry.com site linked above already does this - sort of. Go to the site, and try to block the image after the folder with the random numbers. Reload, and the same image appears in a different folder with another random name.
Of course, those are themselves located in a "links" subfolder, which can be adblocked entirely. Though once you do that, the site's content is gone for good.
There is no noticeable sound degradation reripping at 160k MP3.
At least not to me, a mere mortal. Perhaps an audio god could detect a difference. But they wouldn't recompress anyway - they'd store them all as uncompressed raw audio after hand-ripping them from the original masters they borrowed from the publisher.
>> AllofMP3 has a license from the artists' association in Russia, ... not the RIAA equivalent.
Uhhh.
RIAA is the Recording Industry ARTISTS Association.
ASCAP is the writer's association, right?
True, you don't have to actually learn anything to go to and complete college. Or, you can learn things to pass your classes then promptly forget them.
The point, though, is that you decided to do something (like go to college) that you didn't HAVE to do, that was not as fun as the alternatives, but you did it anyway. That in and of itself is a quality desired by some employers.
Note that the same thing applies to GEDs. Any yahoo can get a high school diploma. A GED means that you skipped school when you were young and foolish, but that you LEARNED something, went back, and earned a degree that you missed. Once you are an adult no one can make you go back for a high school degree. The fact you did makes you a better job candidate, regardless of whether or not you use anything you learned from the GED prep in the actual job.
It's very possible that tweaks with the way file paths work in Crossover Office (or maybe, just moving the files it was looking for into a main directly from their respective subdirectories) would have fixed that problem. Also, it's very possible that tweaks to the USB drivers in Linux might have enabled those to work, too. I use Xandros because it's (mostly) easy and it's NotWindows (tm), but I don't mess with crap if it doesn't work right away.
Thus, by all means, if someone can make this software work with Crossover Office, let me know so I can move one more thing off of my Windows install. Alternatively, other than the ~1 MB of config data the manager puts on the flash to program the player, the rest of the thing should be programmable as a standard removable flash/MMC device and used without the manager software at all. Again, since it wasn't recognized by the USB driver when I plugged it in, I didn't care to try harder.
If it matters to the Slashdot crowd, its manager software does NOT work well in Linux under Crossover Office. The software installed, but it couldn't find its language or player type libraries, and it didn't see the USB ports or the device.
It is the Digisette, as another poster says.
:)
I have a Digisette DUO-DX AR-496 digital music player. It supports MP3 and WMA and AudioBook formats, though I've only used it with MP3. Note that it can also record MP3s on the fly, using an audio-in jack. Useful if you want a digital tape recorder in a pinch. It also has a headphone jack and sounds great as a stand-along portable player.
It comes with built-in 96 MB flash memory. It has an expansion slot for an MMC upgrade. Note that the manual and website might just mention a 64 MB upgrade, but I -confirm- that it works with a 256 MB MMC. With about 350 MB of music on it now, I have more music than battery life (which is about 5 hours).
I drive a convertible, and I would never consider putting a custom stereo into it. My wife has a nifty iPod, but her stereo retransmit thingy gets a lot of static, and the whole arrangement is much more cumbersome than a single unit I can drop into the built-in tape player. Despite what some reviews of the product have said, you can skip tracks without taking the thing out of the tape deck.
While I would have tried a 512 MB MMC if I had found one, I think 256 MB were the largest made before the shift to SD whatever, which it does not support. I would eventually like more space than I have now, but it is perfectly usable as is for my commutes to and from work, with the nice variety of happy music I can sing to on a nice Spring drive in a convertible in Texas. It makes commuting fun.
>> a national BBS I think called Q-Link(?).
They later moved to the PC market and changed their name to America On-Line. I hear they might still be in business.
tron-sector.com's Master Control Program is most definitely "off-line"...
Can you imagine a company like Charles Schwab ever sending out mail with a domain like schwab.mail.spamhous.org? I can't either. However, a company like that would buy a schwab.mail domain. This has everything to do with companies demanding a professional look and feel to their image.
No, I don't think this is a good idea. But I see why a top level domain is necessary to pull it off.